Prometheus (2012)
Dir: Ridley Scott
"The search for our beginning could lead to our end."
My 50th entry of this here blog was a four-part look at the Alien franchise. It was meant to be a five-part series, but I just never got around to Ridley Scott's 2012 sort-of Alien prequel Prometheus. I can't remember why; it's possible I just didn't feel like popping it into the player. It's not a bad film overall, but it definitely falls below the first three Alien pictures. Anyway, in honor of the first official "Alien Day," here's the "lost" entry on Prometheus. Pack your spacesuit, be careful what you drink and for fuck's sake don't get lost...
In the year 2093, archaeologists/lovers Shaw (Noomi Rapace, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Drop) and Halloway (Tom Hardy-lookalike Logan Marshall-Green, TV's 24, Devil) discover cave paintings beneath the Isle of Skye that appear to represent a star map leading to what they believe to be the origin of mankind. The deeply Catholic Shaw hopes to find proof of the existence of God, while the atheistic Halloway is looking for the meaning of life. They convince billionaire tech guru Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, L.A. Confidential, Ravenous) to bankroll an expedition to the planet indicated on the map and soon find themselves rocketing through the stars aboard the advanced scientific research vessel Prometheus. Joining them on the expedition are Weyland's representative Vickers (Charlize Theron, Monster, Mad Max: Fury Road), android assistant David (Michael Fassbender, Inglorious Basterds, X-Men First Class), ship's captain Janek (Idris Elba, TV's Luther, Pacific Rim), Geologist Fifield (Sean Harris, Creep, MacBeth), biologist Milburn (Rafe Spall, Shaun of the Dead, Life of Pi) and a host of cannon fodder mercenaries and technicians. Arriving at the planet, they discover an abandoned temple filled with enormous humanoid corpses and a room of urns filled with a strange black liquid. While the other return to the Prometheus during a violent storm, Fifield and Milburn get lost in the temple's tunnels and are attacked by a snakelike creature. Back on the ship, David exposes the belligerent Halloway to a sample of the black liquid, who is killed by Vickers with a flamethrower after he begins mutating into a zombielike creature. Fifield, having mutated into a similar creature, returns to the ship and murders several of the crew members before being put down. Having done the bone dance with Halloway after his exposure to the black liquid but before his mutation, the infertile Shaw discovers that she's miraculously become pregnant with a rapidly-gestating, inhuman fetus, which turns out to be a writhing, tentacled monster when she aborts it using the ship's MedPod. Weyland shows up and reveals that, with help from David and Vickers, he's stowed away aboard the ship in a cryotube; he's close to death and hoping that the planet will provided him with a key to extending his life. David reveals that one of the "engineers (the giant corpses discovered within the temple) is still alive in suspended animation and he, Weyland, Vickers and Shaw head back to the temple to arouse him. Meanwhile, Janek discovers while studying a holomap that the temple is actually a hangar housing a ship that was bound for Earth with the intent of wiping out mankind when an accident befell it 2,000 years prior. Back in the temple, the awakened engineer kills Weyland, rips David's head off and, eager to resume his old mission, begins to prep his ship for flight. In a suicide maneuver, Janek crashes the Prometheus into the alien ship and Vickers is crushed by the debris, leaving Shaw alone to face the enraged engineer. As Shaw prepares to defend herself from the huge, superstrong humanoid, it is attacked and smothered by the creature that Shaw extracted from her body earlier, now grown to an immense size, which forces a tube of some sort down the engineer's throat. David's still-functioning severed head reveals to Shaw that there are other alien ships left vacant on the planet and that he knows how to fly them. As Shaw and her disembodied companion set off to find transport, a somewhat familiar-looking creature bursts from the chest of the comatose engineer...
At least as far back as the commentary track for the 1997 DVD release of Alien, Scott had expressed his interest in returning to that world. While he expressed admiration for James Cameron's Aliens (which took the story in a tonally different direction, emphasizing action over horror), Scott felt that the Alien sequels missed following up on the most interesting "unanswered question" from the movie-the "space jockey" discovered in the derelict ship and the origin of the alien creature itself. In 2004, promoting the 25th anniversary theatrical re-release of Alien, Scott announced that he and Fox were actively pursuing scripts for a prequel movie, which Scott would produce with his brother Tony (The Hunger, True Romance) in the director's chair. Eventually, a script by a emerging screenwriter John Spaihts (The Darkest Hour, the upcoming Dr. Strange) called "Alien Engineers" came across Scott's desk that so excited him, he decided to take on the directorial duties himself. Scott and Spaihts worked closely for several months fine-tuning the script but the execs at Fox, perhaps mindful of both Scott's recent box-office losing streak and the financial disappointment of the past several Alien-related films, wanted another "name" attached to help sell the picture. They settled on Damon Lindelof, co-creator of the recently wrapped and very popular television series Lost. As Spaihts was summarily dismissed, Lindelof stepped in and convinced Scott to downplay the prequel aspects of the film, eliminating any direct connections to Alien and crafting a script that served as a sort of "sidequel;" a film taking place in the same universe but without any direct connection to the previous film(s). Prometheus was the final result of their efforts. It was released in the summer of 2012 to mixed reviews and solid (but not overwhelming) box office returns.
Prometheus is a flawed but interesting film. Though they cause some canonical problems with the Alien films (more on this later), it's production design and visual effects are astonishing; it's the best-looking science fiction film in years and, even though I'm FAR from a 3-D enthusiast, seeing it in IMAX 3-D on the largest screen in my state was a special treat. Though many of the characters are either unlikable or underwritten, the performances are all solid, with Fassbender's David being an absolute standout. The creature design is top-notch; the hulking, Giger-inspired engineers are genuinely menacing with their black, shark-like yes and chalky white skin. The "proto-alien" creatures, while sadly lacking any Giger's biomechanoid influences (that's something that will supposedly be addressed/explored in the upcoming sequel), have a slippery, sea life-like quality that's unsettling in a Japanese hentai sort of way. I also get a kick out of how anti-Catholic the script is; it's not often that you see a multi-million dollar studio franchise pic that heavily implies that Jesus Christ was an albino alien and features a legitimate on-screen abortion (albeit of an alien life form). Speaking of the script, however, it's here that the film's flaws begin. It feels like an early draft, without all of its ideas properly fleshed out. Why does Halloway descend into drunken belligerence when when he can't speak with a living engineer? Why, exactly, does David choose to experiment on/doom the crew? Why plant the suggestion that Vickers might be an android without following up on it and/or giving it any relevancy to the greater plot? Why raise all sorts of questions about the origin of mankind, the purpose of our creation and the intent of the engineers and then not even begin to answer any of them? A lot of this may have to do with the "built-in sequel" mentality of current Hollywood blockbusters; the studio is SO sure of the film's potential that a sequel is seen as a sure thing. Lindelof stated in interviews that he intended this to be the first of three films that would run parallel to the original Alien trilogy; perhaps the biggest problem with Prometheus is that it FEELS like just a bunch of setup for the film(s) that Scott and Lindelof REALLY wanted to make (ironically, Lindelof was not asked to return for Alien: Covenant, the currently in-production sequel to this film). Perhaps the most infamous script problem (the rage over which can still be felt echoing through the halls of the internet) is that of Fifield and Milburn getting lost in the temple and encountering the alien "hammerpede." The "two characters go wandering alone through the old dark house and get killed" scenario is an accepted horror trope at this point, but it strains even the most forgiving credulity when the guy getting lost is the one who mapped the goddamn temple and the guy who antagonizes the alien life form is a fucking world-class biologist! In actuality, this is an error of editing, as deleted scenes show the storm wreaking havoc with Fifield's mapping device and Milburn encountering earlier, benign worm-like alien creatures. Scott was offered the chance to prepare a director's cut for home video but declined-he shouldn't have; it might've given the masses cause to re-evaluate the film. Finally, to address the canon problems caused by the production design that I mentioned earlier, despite this film being part of the Alien franchise and taking place several years prior to Alien, no attempt is made to give the film a low-fi, "retro future" look to match up with the previous film. Prometheus features 3-D hologram maps, advanced stasis chambers that appear capable of monitoring their occupants' dreams, sleek, form-fitting space suits and a MedPod capable of performing complex surgical procedures in minutes. Compare this with Alien, with it's Apple II-esque computer tech, bulky, Moebius-designed pressure suits and decided lack of MedPod technology (Kane needs to be frozen for return to Earth in order to remove the alien within him). Compared side-by-side, the two just don't match up (the Star Wars prequels suffer from the very same problem).
So is Prometheus an Alien prequel? No, not really; it's a side story that sheds a little bit of light on a mysterious scene from the first movie, but ultimately raises more questions than it answers. It's undeniably a great looking, well-acted movie that's more brazen and ballsier than most of it's big-budget brethren, but there's as much to be irritated about as there is to admire. It is, however, required viewing for all Alien fans, especially in preparation for the upcoming Alien: Covenant, which will hopefully see the big-screen return of our favorite biomechanoid. Also, it officially knocks those shitty Alien vs Predator movies out of continuity!
Well, that was fucking long, huh? Happy Alien Day, folks!
"In space, no one can hear you scream."
Enter...If you dare!
Big thanks to "Diamond" Dave Wheeler for the bitchin' logo!
Monday, April 25, 2016
Entry 114: Terminator: Genisys (2015)
Terminator: Genisys (2015)
Dir: Alan Taylor
"The rules have been reset"
Since James Cameron's The Terminator is nothing if not a cyberpunk-twinged slasher flick, I figure the whole franchise is fair game for bringing down to the Basement. I'll start with the most recent flick in the series, primarily because I just watched it last night. Throw on your leather jacket and shades, reset your CPU and come with me if you want to live; we're traveling through time with Terminator: Genisys.
Jesus Christ, this movie...I'ma try to explain it as succinctly as possible...The film opens in 2029 with the human resistance smashing Skynet's defense grid and arriving at the evil supercomputer's central core just in time to witness the original T-800 (series star Arnold Schwarzenegger) being sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (this is a recreation of a scene scripted, but never filmed, for Terminator 2: Judgement Day). John Connor (Jason Clarke, Death Race, Zero Dark Thirty) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney-where the fuck did this guy come from and who decided to make him a movie star? He has all the presence and charisma of a used condom lying in the gutter) back through time to protect his mother, but is then attacked (in one of several odd developments that are never properly explained) by some sort of human personification of Skynet (Matthew Smith, TV's Doctor Who). Reese arrives to find Sarah (Amelia Clarke from TV's A Game of Thrones) already developed into the hardened badass she became between the first two movies, accompanied by and aged T-800 she's nicknamed "Pops." You see, the attack on John has altered the timeline in such a way that, instead of striking at John in 1992, the T-1000 and reprogrammed T-800 are sent to, respectively, kill and protect Sarah in 1973. Sarah and Pops make quick work of the evil T-800 (the Schwarzenegger vs Schwarzenegger fight is one of the film's highlights), but, for reasons unexplained, the T-1000 (Byung-hun Lee, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, the G.I. Joe movies, replacing Robert Patrick, who was offered the role but declined to participate) has also shown up in 1984. After Reese helps them defeat the T-1000, Sarah reveals that she and Pops have built a crude time machine and plan to use it to travel to 1997 to stop Judgement Day from happening. Because of visions he's had of the altered timeline, Reese convinces Sarah to travel with him to 2017 instead, while Pops spends 33 years preparing for their arrival. In 2017, Reese, Sarah and the now much older-looking Pops discover that Skynet has become an iCloud-style app called Genisys, John Connor is alive and well as an evil human-Terminator hybrid and Reese's birth has moved from 1964 to 2004. My fucking head is about to explode-I'm not doing a poor job of summarizing; these things really aren't given ANY sort of adequate explanation other than "because time travel!" Any way, Sarah, Reese and Pops defeat the evil John and manage to ward off the activation of Genisys/commencement of Judgement Day, Pops gets upgraded to a T-1000 (?!) and a mid-credits stinger lets us know that the battle isn't over...
2015 is going to go down in history as the beginning of the era of nostalgia, when Hollywood decided to stop remaking properties beloved of Gen Xers and Gen Yers and instead produce heartstring-tugging, carefully calculated belated sequels to said properties. Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World topped the box office, Mad Max: Fury Road cleaned up with critics and we got announcements for new Indiana Jones and Pee-Wee Herman movies. On TV, Full House got a sequel series and Sam Raimi finally gave us the long-delayed Evil Dead 4 in the form of the ten episode Ash vs Evil Dead Starz series. All of these things were designed very carefully to recreate beloved moments from the parent franchises/remind viewers why they enjoyed the properties in the first place, and all of them were financially (if not critically) successful. Why, then, was Terminator: Genisys, built on the same model, not? Probably because it's about 75% a terrible fucking movie. By this point, every trace of the claustrophobic intensity that made Cameron's original such an effective thriller has disappeared. The gritty, murky future combat scenes in the original, where emaciated and rag-clad tiny squads of human soldiers battled monolithic, slow-moving but imposing Hunter-Killer machines have been replaced by legions of action heroes clad in futuristic, G.I. Joe-inspired armor battling flashy CGI robots in crystal-clear widescreen. The script is INSANELY convoluted and nonsensical; it never provides any explanation for its timeline changes and manages to retcon out of existence most of the first movie and all of the second (the only two that people actually fucking liked!). Worst of all is the casting of Courtney, who takes Michael Biehn's wiry, sweaty, wild-eyed, PTSD-suffering Kyle Reese and turns him into a bland, musclebound, quip-spouting generic action hero. Looming over all of these problems is the fact that The Terminator probably never should've been a franchise. The original is a tight, self-contained and nearly perfect thriller. The almost as good T2 expands the narrative into a widescreen action epic, but also closes the plot loop with a hopeful, slightly ambiguous ending that works best if it ISN'T expanded on. The three non-Cameron sequels have all felt like they're searching for an identity and reason to exist other than making money. They're desperate attempts to find a story where there isn't one. If you're going to watch it anyway, there are a few pleasures to be found in Terminator: Genesys. As always, Schwarzenegger is a joy to watch in his signature role, and the idea of the T-800's bio-flesh aging like real human tissue is, honestly, kinda brilliant. Amelia Clarke gives the film's other standout performance; she's no Linda Hamilton, but she does a nice job playing a Sarah Connor who never had to witness the death of Reese and never had to spend years locked in a mental institute; she's tough and resourceful, but also hopeful. Director Taylor (a vet of Game of Thrones and Disney's Marvel Studios movies) does a decent job of recreating the sets and lighting of the original film in the movie's early 1984 scenes, and the previously mentioned Arnold vs Arnold fight, though too brief, is amusing. Considering it's the third Terminator film to have only modest box office success, it's likely that Terminator: Genisys will be the end of the road for the franchise (the rights revert to Cameron in 2019, and he'll be busy with his four (!) Avatar sequels).
Dir: Alan Taylor
"The rules have been reset"
Since James Cameron's The Terminator is nothing if not a cyberpunk-twinged slasher flick, I figure the whole franchise is fair game for bringing down to the Basement. I'll start with the most recent flick in the series, primarily because I just watched it last night. Throw on your leather jacket and shades, reset your CPU and come with me if you want to live; we're traveling through time with Terminator: Genisys.
Jesus Christ, this movie...I'ma try to explain it as succinctly as possible...The film opens in 2029 with the human resistance smashing Skynet's defense grid and arriving at the evil supercomputer's central core just in time to witness the original T-800 (series star Arnold Schwarzenegger) being sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (this is a recreation of a scene scripted, but never filmed, for Terminator 2: Judgement Day). John Connor (Jason Clarke, Death Race, Zero Dark Thirty) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney-where the fuck did this guy come from and who decided to make him a movie star? He has all the presence and charisma of a used condom lying in the gutter) back through time to protect his mother, but is then attacked (in one of several odd developments that are never properly explained) by some sort of human personification of Skynet (Matthew Smith, TV's Doctor Who). Reese arrives to find Sarah (Amelia Clarke from TV's A Game of Thrones) already developed into the hardened badass she became between the first two movies, accompanied by and aged T-800 she's nicknamed "Pops." You see, the attack on John has altered the timeline in such a way that, instead of striking at John in 1992, the T-1000 and reprogrammed T-800 are sent to, respectively, kill and protect Sarah in 1973. Sarah and Pops make quick work of the evil T-800 (the Schwarzenegger vs Schwarzenegger fight is one of the film's highlights), but, for reasons unexplained, the T-1000 (Byung-hun Lee, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, the G.I. Joe movies, replacing Robert Patrick, who was offered the role but declined to participate) has also shown up in 1984. After Reese helps them defeat the T-1000, Sarah reveals that she and Pops have built a crude time machine and plan to use it to travel to 1997 to stop Judgement Day from happening. Because of visions he's had of the altered timeline, Reese convinces Sarah to travel with him to 2017 instead, while Pops spends 33 years preparing for their arrival. In 2017, Reese, Sarah and the now much older-looking Pops discover that Skynet has become an iCloud-style app called Genisys, John Connor is alive and well as an evil human-Terminator hybrid and Reese's birth has moved from 1964 to 2004. My fucking head is about to explode-I'm not doing a poor job of summarizing; these things really aren't given ANY sort of adequate explanation other than "because time travel!" Any way, Sarah, Reese and Pops defeat the evil John and manage to ward off the activation of Genisys/commencement of Judgement Day, Pops gets upgraded to a T-1000 (?!) and a mid-credits stinger lets us know that the battle isn't over...
2015 is going to go down in history as the beginning of the era of nostalgia, when Hollywood decided to stop remaking properties beloved of Gen Xers and Gen Yers and instead produce heartstring-tugging, carefully calculated belated sequels to said properties. Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World topped the box office, Mad Max: Fury Road cleaned up with critics and we got announcements for new Indiana Jones and Pee-Wee Herman movies. On TV, Full House got a sequel series and Sam Raimi finally gave us the long-delayed Evil Dead 4 in the form of the ten episode Ash vs Evil Dead Starz series. All of these things were designed very carefully to recreate beloved moments from the parent franchises/remind viewers why they enjoyed the properties in the first place, and all of them were financially (if not critically) successful. Why, then, was Terminator: Genisys, built on the same model, not? Probably because it's about 75% a terrible fucking movie. By this point, every trace of the claustrophobic intensity that made Cameron's original such an effective thriller has disappeared. The gritty, murky future combat scenes in the original, where emaciated and rag-clad tiny squads of human soldiers battled monolithic, slow-moving but imposing Hunter-Killer machines have been replaced by legions of action heroes clad in futuristic, G.I. Joe-inspired armor battling flashy CGI robots in crystal-clear widescreen. The script is INSANELY convoluted and nonsensical; it never provides any explanation for its timeline changes and manages to retcon out of existence most of the first movie and all of the second (the only two that people actually fucking liked!). Worst of all is the casting of Courtney, who takes Michael Biehn's wiry, sweaty, wild-eyed, PTSD-suffering Kyle Reese and turns him into a bland, musclebound, quip-spouting generic action hero. Looming over all of these problems is the fact that The Terminator probably never should've been a franchise. The original is a tight, self-contained and nearly perfect thriller. The almost as good T2 expands the narrative into a widescreen action epic, but also closes the plot loop with a hopeful, slightly ambiguous ending that works best if it ISN'T expanded on. The three non-Cameron sequels have all felt like they're searching for an identity and reason to exist other than making money. They're desperate attempts to find a story where there isn't one. If you're going to watch it anyway, there are a few pleasures to be found in Terminator: Genesys. As always, Schwarzenegger is a joy to watch in his signature role, and the idea of the T-800's bio-flesh aging like real human tissue is, honestly, kinda brilliant. Amelia Clarke gives the film's other standout performance; she's no Linda Hamilton, but she does a nice job playing a Sarah Connor who never had to witness the death of Reese and never had to spend years locked in a mental institute; she's tough and resourceful, but also hopeful. Director Taylor (a vet of Game of Thrones and Disney's Marvel Studios movies) does a decent job of recreating the sets and lighting of the original film in the movie's early 1984 scenes, and the previously mentioned Arnold vs Arnold fight, though too brief, is amusing. Considering it's the third Terminator film to have only modest box office success, it's likely that Terminator: Genisys will be the end of the road for the franchise (the rights revert to Cameron in 2019, and he'll be busy with his four (!) Avatar sequels).
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Entry 113: Sleazecast #2: Coffy (1973) and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)
Coffy (1973)
Dir: Jack Hill
"She's the godmother of them all...the baddest one-woman hit squad to ever hit town!"
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)
Dir: James Signorelli
"Elvira makes her big scream debut in her hot new comedy."
Because I didn't embarrass myself enough last month, here's the SECOND installment of the Sleazecast (at least I don't descend into drunken incoherence this time!):
https://archive.org/details/SleazecastEpisode2BlackMamaWhiteMama
As before, I owe thanks to engineer/permanent panelist Benjamin, along with guest panelists Mrs. Basement of Sleaze, Blaze, King Nate, Hot Body Doug and, um, Cassandra...
I'll be back in a day or two with a new blog...
Dir: Jack Hill
"She's the godmother of them all...the baddest one-woman hit squad to ever hit town!"
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)
Dir: James Signorelli
"Elvira makes her big scream debut in her hot new comedy."
Because I didn't embarrass myself enough last month, here's the SECOND installment of the Sleazecast (at least I don't descend into drunken incoherence this time!):
https://archive.org/details/SleazecastEpisode2BlackMamaWhiteMama
As before, I owe thanks to engineer/permanent panelist Benjamin, along with guest panelists Mrs. Basement of Sleaze, Blaze, King Nate, Hot Body Doug and, um, Cassandra...
I'll be back in a day or two with a new blog...
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Entry 112: Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
Dir: Joseph Zito
"America wasn't ready...but HE was!"
Tonight, please welcome to the Basement martial arts expert, '80's B action movie icon and once-ubiquitous internet meme Chuck Norris, in his first (but certainly not last) appearance. Batten down the hatches, keep an eye on your neighbor and prepare for Invasion U.S.A.!
Norris stars as denim enthusiast Matt Hunter, a former CIA agent who now makes his living as an alligator wrangler in the Everglades (I can't make this shit up). Because Hunter loves freedom even more than retirement, he agrees to rejoin the agency when Russian commies, led by his old nemesis Rostov (Richard Lynch, God Told Me To, Cut and Run), invade Florida on Christmas Eve. This communist invasion is supposedly a nationwide crisis, but the budget-conscious Zito only informs us of this via talking heads on television. Rostov is so terrified of Hunter (who nearly killed him during their last encounter) that he has chronic nightmares in which Chuck and his mustache menace him and he threatens to derail the entire invasion scheme by obsessively insisting that Hunter must be eliminated before plans can proceed. There isn't much to the plot beyond this, just a series of ever-escalating action scenes in which Chuck thwarts the schemes of Rostov and his minions, leading to a finale in which Chuck manages to galvanize the army to combat Rostov's death squad while he himself (in a gloriously over-the-top scene) blows up Rostov with an anti-tank missile.
Having previously done their low-rent version of Rambo in Missing in Action (which was filmed in a hurry and managed to beat Stallone's First Blood Part II to theatres by several months), Zito and Norris here turn their attention to doing a quicker, dirtier take on John Milius's overwrought commies invade America thriller Red Dawn. Despite (or perhaps because of) it's lack of any sort of narrative subtlety, I enjoyed the shit out of this Cannon Group production. It's lean and mean and moves along at such a brisk pace that it's over before you realize that it doesn't make much goddamn sense (why, during a legitimate attempt to invade the United States, would the Russians send their top agent to Florida? Wouldn't he be better utilized in New York or, perhaps, D.C.? Isn't it a bit convenient that Rostov and his team just happen to make landfall a few miles from the one spot in all of America that his deadliest foe has chosen to take his anonymous retirement?). Because this movie gives precisely zero fucks about appealing to anyone who isn't here to watch Chuck kick ass (and because, honestly, Chuck isn't a very good actor), there's no love interest or any sort of romantic subplot, but Chuck does receive some aid from a plucky reporter (Melissa Prophet, Time Walker, Action Jackson). Chuck did perform most of his own stunts for this flick, and Zito stages a particularly thrilling sequence in which Chuck drives a pickup through a shopping mall in pursuit of Rostov. This also stands as one of the most sadistic of the cycle of '80's action movies; it puts an emphasis on terroristic acts committed by Rostov and his goons-blowing up suburban houses with families inside on Christmas Eve, attempting to bomb a school bus full of children...Oh, and Rostov's favored method for disposing of his enemies is to put his gun down their pants and blow their dick off. Watch for character actor Billy Drago (The Untouchables, Hero and the Terror) in an early role as a drug dealer. Matt Hunter returned (sans Norris or Zito) in Avenging Force, a loose sequel in which the character was played by Norris' fellow Cannon golden boy Michael Dudikoff. Invasion U.S.A. does leave me with one lingering question: if the communist invasion is a nationwide event and this movie takes place entirely in Florida, what happens to the other 49 states? Since there's only one Chuck Norris, I think they're fucked.
Dir: Joseph Zito
"America wasn't ready...but HE was!"
Tonight, please welcome to the Basement martial arts expert, '80's B action movie icon and once-ubiquitous internet meme Chuck Norris, in his first (but certainly not last) appearance. Batten down the hatches, keep an eye on your neighbor and prepare for Invasion U.S.A.!
Norris stars as denim enthusiast Matt Hunter, a former CIA agent who now makes his living as an alligator wrangler in the Everglades (I can't make this shit up). Because Hunter loves freedom even more than retirement, he agrees to rejoin the agency when Russian commies, led by his old nemesis Rostov (Richard Lynch, God Told Me To, Cut and Run), invade Florida on Christmas Eve. This communist invasion is supposedly a nationwide crisis, but the budget-conscious Zito only informs us of this via talking heads on television. Rostov is so terrified of Hunter (who nearly killed him during their last encounter) that he has chronic nightmares in which Chuck and his mustache menace him and he threatens to derail the entire invasion scheme by obsessively insisting that Hunter must be eliminated before plans can proceed. There isn't much to the plot beyond this, just a series of ever-escalating action scenes in which Chuck thwarts the schemes of Rostov and his minions, leading to a finale in which Chuck manages to galvanize the army to combat Rostov's death squad while he himself (in a gloriously over-the-top scene) blows up Rostov with an anti-tank missile.
Having previously done their low-rent version of Rambo in Missing in Action (which was filmed in a hurry and managed to beat Stallone's First Blood Part II to theatres by several months), Zito and Norris here turn their attention to doing a quicker, dirtier take on John Milius's overwrought commies invade America thriller Red Dawn. Despite (or perhaps because of) it's lack of any sort of narrative subtlety, I enjoyed the shit out of this Cannon Group production. It's lean and mean and moves along at such a brisk pace that it's over before you realize that it doesn't make much goddamn sense (why, during a legitimate attempt to invade the United States, would the Russians send their top agent to Florida? Wouldn't he be better utilized in New York or, perhaps, D.C.? Isn't it a bit convenient that Rostov and his team just happen to make landfall a few miles from the one spot in all of America that his deadliest foe has chosen to take his anonymous retirement?). Because this movie gives precisely zero fucks about appealing to anyone who isn't here to watch Chuck kick ass (and because, honestly, Chuck isn't a very good actor), there's no love interest or any sort of romantic subplot, but Chuck does receive some aid from a plucky reporter (Melissa Prophet, Time Walker, Action Jackson). Chuck did perform most of his own stunts for this flick, and Zito stages a particularly thrilling sequence in which Chuck drives a pickup through a shopping mall in pursuit of Rostov. This also stands as one of the most sadistic of the cycle of '80's action movies; it puts an emphasis on terroristic acts committed by Rostov and his goons-blowing up suburban houses with families inside on Christmas Eve, attempting to bomb a school bus full of children...Oh, and Rostov's favored method for disposing of his enemies is to put his gun down their pants and blow their dick off. Watch for character actor Billy Drago (The Untouchables, Hero and the Terror) in an early role as a drug dealer. Matt Hunter returned (sans Norris or Zito) in Avenging Force, a loose sequel in which the character was played by Norris' fellow Cannon golden boy Michael Dudikoff. Invasion U.S.A. does leave me with one lingering question: if the communist invasion is a nationwide event and this movie takes place entirely in Florida, what happens to the other 49 states? Since there's only one Chuck Norris, I think they're fucked.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Entry 111: The Dungeonmaster (1984)
The Dungeonmaster (AKA Ragewar-1984)
Dir: Charles Band, David Allen, John Carl Buechler, Steven Ford, Peter Manoogian, Ted Nicolau, Rosemarie Turko
"He is the overlord of strange beasts and stolen souls..."
When I started this movie, I thought I'd flipped on VH1 Classics instead, as it begins in fantastic 80's music video style, with a man with improbably-feathered hair waking up in an inexplicably smokey bedroom with a sexy brunette in a wind-blown red dress standing over him. He arises and chases this mystery woman through some industrial-looking tunnels, before cornering her in a run-down warehouse, where she proceeds to strip down to nothing but her high heels and our hero mounts her on a bed that appears out of nowhere. "Fucking A," I thought, "this is an 80's porno!" Before I could begin masturbating, however, a couple of slime-faced mutants bust in and ruin the party, and our hero wakes up. It was all a strange dream/nightmare. Welcome to The Dungeonmaster.
The aforementioned hero is Paul (Jeffrey Byron, Nickelodeon, Metalstorm: the Destruction of Jared-Syn), a computer analyst who, in a refreshing change of pace from most films of the time, is presented here as something of a sex symbol; he has a pretty goddamn great head of hair and spends his time away from work running and working out while wearing some uncomfortably short Magnum, P.I.-style shorts. He also has a pair of bitchin' glasses that allow him to interface with ATMs to withdraw money without a pesky card and PIN...innovation! After an unnecessary (but not unwelcome) women's aerobics scene led by the "dream woman" in the red dress, we learn that the "dream woman" is, in fact, Gwen (Leslie Wing, Ghost Warrior, The Frighteners); Paul's real-life girlfriend. Paul wants to marry Gwen, but she's jealous of his obsession with CAL, the computer program he's developed/is linked up with. After going to sleep that night, Paul dreams of himself in a fantasy land, wearing a grey vest and bracers that make him look like he's going to D&D night at a gay bar. He finds Gwen chained to a rock and is challenged by Mestema (Richard Moll, House, TV's Night Court), who is impressed by his development of CAL. CAL informs Paul that Mestema is a pseudonym for Beelzebub (in actuality, he's one of God's angels from Jewish mythology; CAL straight-up sucks), and Mestema informs Paul that, thanks to his harnessing of technology, he's the "challenger" he's been waiting for for 1,000 years (if he's been around since the dawn of man, what's he been doing for the other 1,000?). Mestema lets Paul know that he's gonna have to partake in several challenges, and if he fails even one of them, his soul will writhe in eternal damnation (I feel cheated; I'm pretty sure that's where I'm headed, and I haven't gotten to dress up like a medieval warrior even ONCE). We're then treated to the challenges, each taking the form of a short film directed by one of Band's Empire Pictures stable of directors:
-Paul and Gwen battle a slew of frozen historical figures (including Genghis Khan and Jack the Ripper) in a cave, directed by Turko (Scarred).
-Paul battles a bunch of pasty-faced monsters, his own undead double and a foul-mouthed demon that looks like a Jim Henson first draft in another cave in a segment directed by effects artist Buechler (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Cellar Dweller).
-Paul goes to a WASP concert, where the band performs "Tormentor" and Blackie Lawless turns out to be Mestema in disguise, who Paul and CAL defeat by disintegrating with a high-frequency tone. Band himself directs this portion.
-In the film's best segment, Paul is harassed by two little people (including Phil Fondacaro; Vonkar from Willow), before being forced to do battle with an animated, laser-shooting stone idol. This sequence was directed by stop-motion wunderkind Allen (Star Wars, Laserblast), who deserves better.
-Paul saves Gwen from a serial killer in slasher-inspired segment directed by actor Ford (Escape from New York, Starship Troopers).
-Paul gets involved in some shapeshifting (once again cave-bound) bullshit I can't even begin to wrap my brain around in a segment directed by Manoogian (Eliminators, Arena).
-Finally, Paul races around the desert in a souped-up car and saves Gwen from Mestema and some fetish-gear attired thugs in a Mad Max 2-inspired post-nuke sequence directed by Nicolau (TerrorVision, Subspecies).
After that, Paul and CAL interface and defeat Mestema "for real" in a Laser Floyd-looking lightshow duel and Gwen suddenly gets over her discomfort with CAL and agrees to marry Paul. The end.
I'm not gonna lie; The Dungeonmaster is a shitty movie. At only 77 minutes long, it's barely a feature, yet it took me two attempts to get through it. The central conceit (a fantasy anthology utilizing several different directors) isn't a bad one, and given the right talent this could've been the schlocky horror equivalent of Lumiere & Co. However, Band has neither the budget nor talent to pull bring his vision to fruition. None of the segments link up in any sort of clever or meaningful way and the episodic narrative just slowly plods from one event to the next until it's over. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the directors involved (all pulled from Band's Empire Pictures stable) aren't particularly talented (Buechler and Allen are great effects artists, but they're not directors) and none of them brings any sense of individual style to the table. As a result, all the segments look and feel more or less the same and the whole film may as well have been directed by Band. I do wanna give a shout-out to Moll, the film's strongest asset; he chews the scenery with gusto and seems to be having a ball reciting dialogue like: "You have spirit, woman; why waste your tender youth, your supple body. He is a mere child." Skip it.
Dir: Charles Band, David Allen, John Carl Buechler, Steven Ford, Peter Manoogian, Ted Nicolau, Rosemarie Turko
"He is the overlord of strange beasts and stolen souls..."
When I started this movie, I thought I'd flipped on VH1 Classics instead, as it begins in fantastic 80's music video style, with a man with improbably-feathered hair waking up in an inexplicably smokey bedroom with a sexy brunette in a wind-blown red dress standing over him. He arises and chases this mystery woman through some industrial-looking tunnels, before cornering her in a run-down warehouse, where she proceeds to strip down to nothing but her high heels and our hero mounts her on a bed that appears out of nowhere. "Fucking A," I thought, "this is an 80's porno!" Before I could begin masturbating, however, a couple of slime-faced mutants bust in and ruin the party, and our hero wakes up. It was all a strange dream/nightmare. Welcome to The Dungeonmaster.
The aforementioned hero is Paul (Jeffrey Byron, Nickelodeon, Metalstorm: the Destruction of Jared-Syn), a computer analyst who, in a refreshing change of pace from most films of the time, is presented here as something of a sex symbol; he has a pretty goddamn great head of hair and spends his time away from work running and working out while wearing some uncomfortably short Magnum, P.I.-style shorts. He also has a pair of bitchin' glasses that allow him to interface with ATMs to withdraw money without a pesky card and PIN...innovation! After an unnecessary (but not unwelcome) women's aerobics scene led by the "dream woman" in the red dress, we learn that the "dream woman" is, in fact, Gwen (Leslie Wing, Ghost Warrior, The Frighteners); Paul's real-life girlfriend. Paul wants to marry Gwen, but she's jealous of his obsession with CAL, the computer program he's developed/is linked up with. After going to sleep that night, Paul dreams of himself in a fantasy land, wearing a grey vest and bracers that make him look like he's going to D&D night at a gay bar. He finds Gwen chained to a rock and is challenged by Mestema (Richard Moll, House, TV's Night Court), who is impressed by his development of CAL. CAL informs Paul that Mestema is a pseudonym for Beelzebub (in actuality, he's one of God's angels from Jewish mythology; CAL straight-up sucks), and Mestema informs Paul that, thanks to his harnessing of technology, he's the "challenger" he's been waiting for for 1,000 years (if he's been around since the dawn of man, what's he been doing for the other 1,000?). Mestema lets Paul know that he's gonna have to partake in several challenges, and if he fails even one of them, his soul will writhe in eternal damnation (I feel cheated; I'm pretty sure that's where I'm headed, and I haven't gotten to dress up like a medieval warrior even ONCE). We're then treated to the challenges, each taking the form of a short film directed by one of Band's Empire Pictures stable of directors:
-Paul and Gwen battle a slew of frozen historical figures (including Genghis Khan and Jack the Ripper) in a cave, directed by Turko (Scarred).
-Paul battles a bunch of pasty-faced monsters, his own undead double and a foul-mouthed demon that looks like a Jim Henson first draft in another cave in a segment directed by effects artist Buechler (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Cellar Dweller).
-Paul goes to a WASP concert, where the band performs "Tormentor" and Blackie Lawless turns out to be Mestema in disguise, who Paul and CAL defeat by disintegrating with a high-frequency tone. Band himself directs this portion.
-In the film's best segment, Paul is harassed by two little people (including Phil Fondacaro; Vonkar from Willow), before being forced to do battle with an animated, laser-shooting stone idol. This sequence was directed by stop-motion wunderkind Allen (Star Wars, Laserblast), who deserves better.
-Paul saves Gwen from a serial killer in slasher-inspired segment directed by actor Ford (Escape from New York, Starship Troopers).
-Paul gets involved in some shapeshifting (once again cave-bound) bullshit I can't even begin to wrap my brain around in a segment directed by Manoogian (Eliminators, Arena).
-Finally, Paul races around the desert in a souped-up car and saves Gwen from Mestema and some fetish-gear attired thugs in a Mad Max 2-inspired post-nuke sequence directed by Nicolau (TerrorVision, Subspecies).
After that, Paul and CAL interface and defeat Mestema "for real" in a Laser Floyd-looking lightshow duel and Gwen suddenly gets over her discomfort with CAL and agrees to marry Paul. The end.
I'm not gonna lie; The Dungeonmaster is a shitty movie. At only 77 minutes long, it's barely a feature, yet it took me two attempts to get through it. The central conceit (a fantasy anthology utilizing several different directors) isn't a bad one, and given the right talent this could've been the schlocky horror equivalent of Lumiere & Co. However, Band has neither the budget nor talent to pull bring his vision to fruition. None of the segments link up in any sort of clever or meaningful way and the episodic narrative just slowly plods from one event to the next until it's over. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the directors involved (all pulled from Band's Empire Pictures stable) aren't particularly talented (Buechler and Allen are great effects artists, but they're not directors) and none of them brings any sense of individual style to the table. As a result, all the segments look and feel more or less the same and the whole film may as well have been directed by Band. I do wanna give a shout-out to Moll, the film's strongest asset; he chews the scenery with gusto and seems to be having a ball reciting dialogue like: "You have spirit, woman; why waste your tender youth, your supple body. He is a mere child." Skip it.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Entry 110: Pigs (1972)
Pigs (AKA The 13th Pig, Daddy's Deadly Darling, The Strange Exorcism of Lynn Hart, Love Exorcist-1972)
Dir: Marc Lawrence
"It's horror! It's murder! As daring as has ever been shown before!"
I can't find a sharable trailer for this one online anywhere, and I looked pretty goddamn hard. Anyway, this is a strange one, folks. Grab a bucket of slops and jump the fence; down here in the basement, we're gonna spend a little time wallowing with Pigs.
Young runaway Lynn (Toni Lawrence, the director's daughter and a future ex-Mrs. Billy Bob Thornton) takes a job as a waitress at a rural southern cafe run by Zambrini (director Lawrence, best known as an actor in movies like The Asphalt Jungle and The Virginian), a down-on-his-luck former circus performer. In addition to restaurant entrepreneurship, Zambrini also owns a swine farm stocked with 12 boars to whom he feeds human flesh, either bodies dug up from the local cemetery or the corpses of his own victims. The only folks who have any inkling of what Zambrini's up to are a couple of nosy old biddies who live down the lane, who believe that the pigs are the transformed bodies of Zambrini's victims (clearly, they're confusing the abilities of a carny with those of a warlock). Thankfully, affable Zambrini has made nice with the local Sheriff, Dan (southern character actor Jesse Vint, Chinatown, Macon County Line), and he dismisses the claims of these old coots as a load of hogwash (forgive the pun). In a scene that'll have you doubting your sanity, one of the old women dreams that Zambrini comes into their home at night, resplendent in tuxedo and shitty pancake makeup to threaten them with magic. Dan nurses a little crush on Lynn, but she goes out with a local oil field worker instead, but castrates and murders him when he tries to rape her on her second date. Zambrini, sensing a kindred spirit in Lynn and looking on her with fatherly affection, reveals to her the secret of his hogs and they dispose of the body together. A sleazy PI (Jim Antonio, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, Outbreak) arrives in town and informs Sheriff Dan that Lynn is, in fact, a mentally unbalanced escapee from a nearby mental institute who had been repeatedly raped by her father as a child. When the PI confronts her alone, Lynn kills him. A panicked Zambrini begs her to flee town, but she has an episode, mistakes him for her father and butchers him with a straight razor. As Dan and his men close in, the enraged hogs break free, kill Lynn and consume both her and Zambrini's corpses, leaving only her necklace for Dan to find among the swarming swine.
This is a strange one, folks. Not really a horror film, it's more of an off-kilter character study/rural slice-of-life picture with some horror elements thrown in. With it's eerie, cluttered, run-down southern gothic sets it MUST have been seen by Tobe Hooper and at least partially inspired the look of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hooper, however, was focused on the visceral impact of the horror in his film, using every opportunity to amp up the claustrophobia and dread of his setting, while in Pigs, Lawrence really isn't concerned with the killings/horror aspects at all and his direction is relatively flat/pedestrian. As a low-rent portrait of a severely damaged woman, this film reminds me most of previous Basement entry The Witch Who Came from the Sea. While Lawrence's performance here is nowhere near as intense and impressive as Millie Perkins in that film, she does good work here as Lynn, moving easily from quiet and vulnerable to vicious and deadly. Vint is welcome as always as the Sheriff and the elder Lawrence makes Zambrini, undeniably a murder, gruffly likeable. Speaking of Lawrence, he's an interesting guy-he started out as a promising young actor in '30s Hollywood, then was blacklisted and named names before HUAC (I'm not going to call him a piece of shit for doing so because I don't know the particulars of his situation). He fled the country and worked in Europe for several years before returning to the states and working as a reliable character actor for directors like John Schlessinger, Joe Dante and Robert Rodriguez.
Like so many indie/regional genre pictures of it's time, Pigs was chopped up and rereleased several times under several different titles, including one that shoehorned exorcism footage into the beginning and end and tried to pass this off as an Exorcist cash-in! In it's unedited, original state, Pigs is a little slow-moving, and gorehounds and dolphin-floggers will find insufficient blood and nudity here to satisfy them. Fans of off-kilter, strange cinema won't want to miss it, however; it's certainly unique.
Dir: Marc Lawrence
"It's horror! It's murder! As daring as has ever been shown before!"
I can't find a sharable trailer for this one online anywhere, and I looked pretty goddamn hard. Anyway, this is a strange one, folks. Grab a bucket of slops and jump the fence; down here in the basement, we're gonna spend a little time wallowing with Pigs.
Young runaway Lynn (Toni Lawrence, the director's daughter and a future ex-Mrs. Billy Bob Thornton) takes a job as a waitress at a rural southern cafe run by Zambrini (director Lawrence, best known as an actor in movies like The Asphalt Jungle and The Virginian), a down-on-his-luck former circus performer. In addition to restaurant entrepreneurship, Zambrini also owns a swine farm stocked with 12 boars to whom he feeds human flesh, either bodies dug up from the local cemetery or the corpses of his own victims. The only folks who have any inkling of what Zambrini's up to are a couple of nosy old biddies who live down the lane, who believe that the pigs are the transformed bodies of Zambrini's victims (clearly, they're confusing the abilities of a carny with those of a warlock). Thankfully, affable Zambrini has made nice with the local Sheriff, Dan (southern character actor Jesse Vint, Chinatown, Macon County Line), and he dismisses the claims of these old coots as a load of hogwash (forgive the pun). In a scene that'll have you doubting your sanity, one of the old women dreams that Zambrini comes into their home at night, resplendent in tuxedo and shitty pancake makeup to threaten them with magic. Dan nurses a little crush on Lynn, but she goes out with a local oil field worker instead, but castrates and murders him when he tries to rape her on her second date. Zambrini, sensing a kindred spirit in Lynn and looking on her with fatherly affection, reveals to her the secret of his hogs and they dispose of the body together. A sleazy PI (Jim Antonio, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, Outbreak) arrives in town and informs Sheriff Dan that Lynn is, in fact, a mentally unbalanced escapee from a nearby mental institute who had been repeatedly raped by her father as a child. When the PI confronts her alone, Lynn kills him. A panicked Zambrini begs her to flee town, but she has an episode, mistakes him for her father and butchers him with a straight razor. As Dan and his men close in, the enraged hogs break free, kill Lynn and consume both her and Zambrini's corpses, leaving only her necklace for Dan to find among the swarming swine.
This is a strange one, folks. Not really a horror film, it's more of an off-kilter character study/rural slice-of-life picture with some horror elements thrown in. With it's eerie, cluttered, run-down southern gothic sets it MUST have been seen by Tobe Hooper and at least partially inspired the look of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hooper, however, was focused on the visceral impact of the horror in his film, using every opportunity to amp up the claustrophobia and dread of his setting, while in Pigs, Lawrence really isn't concerned with the killings/horror aspects at all and his direction is relatively flat/pedestrian. As a low-rent portrait of a severely damaged woman, this film reminds me most of previous Basement entry The Witch Who Came from the Sea. While Lawrence's performance here is nowhere near as intense and impressive as Millie Perkins in that film, she does good work here as Lynn, moving easily from quiet and vulnerable to vicious and deadly. Vint is welcome as always as the Sheriff and the elder Lawrence makes Zambrini, undeniably a murder, gruffly likeable. Speaking of Lawrence, he's an interesting guy-he started out as a promising young actor in '30s Hollywood, then was blacklisted and named names before HUAC (I'm not going to call him a piece of shit for doing so because I don't know the particulars of his situation). He fled the country and worked in Europe for several years before returning to the states and working as a reliable character actor for directors like John Schlessinger, Joe Dante and Robert Rodriguez.
Like so many indie/regional genre pictures of it's time, Pigs was chopped up and rereleased several times under several different titles, including one that shoehorned exorcism footage into the beginning and end and tried to pass this off as an Exorcist cash-in! In it's unedited, original state, Pigs is a little slow-moving, and gorehounds and dolphin-floggers will find insufficient blood and nudity here to satisfy them. Fans of off-kilter, strange cinema won't want to miss it, however; it's certainly unique.
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