Biiitch, and I mean you youngsters, you're all spoiled with your blah blah, but (cranky presuppository position insert), back in the day all we had was STAR WARS, and its special effects were analog - the ships were made with model airplane parts; the stars were made by poking pins through black felt and shining a light behind it. Child, we made everything ourselves, high as shit on Testors fumes circulating in our D&D dungeons. Computer Graphics were still at the Pong-stage. Atari was just giant pixels floating around. Life in space was tactile. And anyway, the big problem with STAR WARS? Just one woman in the whole thing. It was crush on Carrie or get lost. Corman and New World and the Italians, watching the box office from the wings, they knew - add more babes with guns, scrap the John Williams pomp, crank up the jams, let fly.
Often maligned as imitations by us pre-teen virgin nerd film snobs at the time, today these STAR WARS rips glow anew and Prime has them all - they hold up well for a very simple reason: their tactile analog special effects, 35mm film and solid HD restoration capturing the vivid tactility, deep colors and film grain so lost in modern movies (mostly). Some of these are presented some for the first time since their theatrical release in their original Panavision, with scopes, restored HD colors, oh my my my - this is some weird candy from God (Amazon) to us during this sorrowful, cold January. It may not be in 3-D, but it's better than real.
1. SPACEHUNTER:
ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE
(1983) Dir Lamont Johnson
*** / Amazon Image - A+
Time has been kind to this weird fusion of elaborate junkyard art design and middling everything else. What was once just another blatant PG blender-pureed Star Wars / Road Warrior virgin cocktail (Molly Ringwald as the semi-feral ragamuffin- her red hair niftily color-coordinated with her dirty clothes) now beguiles and corrupts. Filmed in 3D (as the plethora of things flying right at the camera will confirm), it holds up well in 2D now that the whole (wide, anamorphic) screen is visible, so no more being a16 year-old smartass bemoaning seeing his beloved Road Warrior wasteland besmirched with a PG rating, terrible cropping and a bratty redhead; no more feeling the snotty need to decree lameness without even paying attention (by the time this came out on video we were having real sex, so barely paid attention.... to anything).
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The plot is the usual rescue mission on a wild wild planet (virtuous maids held captive by a slavering bandit chief in a big metal rig as he's all crippled by his own lascivious evil) but it's the spectacularly termite-detailed art direction that makes it work. Cars are immaculately dirty and surreal; the sail -(wind powered)-trains are life size and move on actual railroad tracks; the hang gliders swoop down and capture people in low hanging talon attachments; characters show up out of nowhere on roofed circular motorcycles; a barrage of deflated Michelin man-style blubber people come sliding obscenely forth from hanging cocoons; big trippy neon tunnels suck soul energy; and--the big highlight climax--Molly Ringwald is thrown into the pit to try and survive an obstacle course spring-activated buzz saws, spikes, whirring lawnmower blades, fire jets, and an ever advancing spike-fronted bulldozer.
Funny enough, the main reason my buddies and I sneered at this film at the time was due to our reverence for the original source material for all of it: The Road Warrior, when nary two years later and George Miller destroyed that reverence himself in Thunderdome when he brought all those kids aboard, lost the whole car chase wasteland angle and turned the franchise into a kiddie friendly affair with adorable orphans, a kookie train, the Tina Turner hit song (her imperious overacting still lingers in my mind) and a 'Thunderdome' that includes bungee bounciness. What's next, George? An ewok? And don't make some lame joke about Angelo Rossitto. The man is a treasure.
It was a rough time to be a teenager, the mid-80s, during sequel fever, as greedy filmmakers forgot all the best films we saw repeatedly in theaters--Raiders, Ghostbusters, Conan,Star Wars -- had no kids in them. It was like they'd turned to writing of the sequels over to TV sitcom hacks for whom learning kids liked a movie meant putting actual kids in the sequel, which is a kind of dumb "you got an F in viewer psychology class and all you got was this lousy 7-figure writing gig" habit of Hollywood's. So Star Wars developed an ewok problem the same year (1983) as Spacehunter came out; Raiders of the Lost Ark's 1984 sequel had that insufferable Short Round, even Ghostbusters 2 (also 1984) had to have a baby in it. As I've said, kids hate kids in movies unless they're legit savages -see CinemArchtype 21: The Wild Child - rather than milk and cookies brats with big black velvet painting eyes. Well, Ringwald gets a pass because, though her acting is all over the place, at least she's a girl, and cute, and not insufferable. Well, she's kind of insufferable, but the color coordinating of the maroon-brown clothes and her cherry red hair go a long way.
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So, let's bury the hatchet and savor the anamorphic HD screen and Amazon's lovely streaming print allows us to savor Ringwald's red hair against the harsh burnt umber sky of a strange planet so elaborately and creatively detailed I thought at first it had to be a Dino de Laurentiis production, made with Ron Cobb, John Barry or Anthony Masters or someone at the art direction helm. The amount of creativity in this repurposed junkyard planet look, and the weird creatures and dangers met along the way, is well beyond the capacity of the story or direction to do justice to. It's like a quick museum tour through some elaborate interactive space that requires way more time and attention then the rushed guide is giving. The bad guy's big lair is about three stories tall and full of so much welded-together artfully-rusted bric-a-brac it should have been made into a permanent interactive art installation the moment filming wrapped. I can only imagine the sorrow of the craftsmen who labored on such spectacular mise en scene only to have it all torn down after the wrap, see the film barely recoup costs, and then have 90% of all their work lost on pan and scan home video, never---as far as they knew--to be seen again. Redemption ahoy!
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For example, the space above, a beautifully natural-industrial flooded cavern/basement kind of environment, neither indoors nor out, with mangrove tree roots that are actually pipes, and so forth, is the kind of 'in-between' zone Antonioni would approve of were he making a sci-fi film in his post-structuralist Red Desert period. And then these sex hungry sirens cohere out of the mist, debating whether to use our wandering mercenary Peter Strauss for breeding purposes, a great idea (he's into it), but that's scuttled almost immediately with the arrival of a small dragon/snake thing (like an X-mas garland with teeth) which the sirens are all afraid of but seems easily dispatched by their spears or elaborate nets. That's a wrap on the sirens - were they edited out to make this a "G" rating? No one even mentions them again. and YET, Strauss and Molly Ringwald are too scared to go back into their parked car; they escape up a hatch to the surface and leave their car behind so they can wander the desert and almost die of thirst. Jesus - why didn't they just back the car out? It makes little sense, and this great set and sexy siren thing is just forgotten for the rest of the picture- we're onto another gorgeous, creatively ingenious set, should have been an art installation, but Strauss and Ringwald just run through it and it's never seen again.
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Lastly, in my continuing push to restore some kind of platonic good faith between women and straight men, I recommend the film not just for the beautiful visions and creativity of the sets and vehicles, but also the unique relationship between Molly and Peter Strauss's characters. There's never any sexual intention between either one of them - never even a thought of it. She's obnoxious, but that's okay - I like she cuddles up to him in the dead of night because she's cold, but that it's no more than that for either of them or for the director, script or any unspoken subtext. She's more an adopted orphan, a scrappy Oliver, a Dr. Who companion, and his disinterest in even having her around speaks to, ironically enough, his worth as a mentor. It's a testament to a more innocent time, when real men were trusted to be caregivers of teenage redheads because, unlike celibate priests or pent-up nerd weirdos, they were laid, loose and not Archie Lee desperate or Humbert creepy.
Best of all, PG or no, it all ends with cocktails, evoking--in its resolutions--the great Howard Hawks!
The plot is the usual rescue mission on a wild wild planet (virtuous maids held captive by a slavering bandit chief in a big metal rig as he's all crippled by his own lascivious evil) but it's the spectacularly termite-detailed art direction that makes it work. Cars are immaculately dirty and surreal; the sail -(wind powered)-trains are life size and move on actual railroad tracks; the hang gliders swoop down and capture people in low hanging talon attachments; characters show up out of nowhere on roofed circular motorcycles; a barrage of deflated Michelin man-style blubber people come sliding obscenely forth from hanging cocoons; big trippy neon tunnels suck soul energy; and--the big highlight climax--Molly Ringwald is thrown into the pit to try and survive an obstacle course spring-activated buzz saws, spikes, whirring lawnmower blades, fire jets, and an ever advancing spike-fronted bulldozer.Funny enough, the main reason my buddies and I sneered at this film at the time was due to our reverence for the original source material for all of it: The Road Warrior, when nary two years later and George Miller destroyed that reverence himself in Thunderdome when he brought all those kids aboard, lost the whole car chase wasteland angle and turned the franchise into a kiddie friendly affair with adorable orphans, a kookie train, the Tina Turner hit song (her imperious overacting still lingers in my mind) and a 'Thunderdome' that includes bungee bounciness. What's next, George? An ewok? And don't make some lame joke about Angelo Rossitto. The man is a treasure.
It was a rough time to be a teenager, the mid-80s, during sequel fever, as greedy filmmakers forgot all the best films we saw repeatedly in theaters--Raiders, Ghostbusters, Conan,Star Wars -- had no kids in them. It was like they'd turned to writing of the sequels over to TV sitcom hacks for whom learning kids liked a movie meant putting actual kids in the sequel, which is a kind of dumb "you got an F in viewer psychology class and all you got was this lousy 7-figure writing gig" habit of Hollywood's. So Star Wars developed an ewok problem the same year (1983) as Spacehunter came out; Raiders of the Lost Ark's 1984 sequel had that insufferable Short Round, even Ghostbusters 2 (also 1984) had to have a baby in it. As I've said, kids hate kids in movies unless they're legit savages -see CinemArchtype 21: The Wild Child - rather than milk and cookies brats with big black velvet painting eyes. Well, Ringwald gets a pass because, though her acting is all over the place, at least she's a girl, and cute, and not insufferable. Well, she's kind of insufferable, but the color coordinating of the maroon-brown clothes and her cherry red hair go a long way.
So, let's bury the hatchet and savor the anamorphic HD screen and Amazon's lovely streaming print allows us to savor Ringwald's red hair against the harsh burnt umber sky of a strange planet so elaborately and creatively detailed I thought at first it had to be a Dino de Laurentiis production, made with Ron Cobb, John Barry or Anthony Masters or someone at the art direction helm. The amount of creativity in this repurposed junkyard planet look, and the weird creatures and dangers met along the way, is well beyond the capacity of the story or direction to do justice to. It's like a quick museum tour through some elaborate interactive space that requires way more time and attention then the rushed guide is giving. The bad guy's big lair is about three stories tall and full of so much welded-together artfully-rusted bric-a-brac it should have been made into a permanent interactive art installation the moment filming wrapped. I can only imagine the sorrow of the craftsmen who labored on such spectacular mise en scene only to have it all torn down after the wrap, see the film barely recoup costs, and then have 90% of all their work lost on pan and scan home video, never---as far as they knew--to be seen again. Redemption ahoy!
For example, the space above, a beautifully natural-industrial flooded cavern/basement kind of environment, neither indoors nor out, with mangrove tree roots that are actually pipes, and so forth, is the kind of 'in-between' zone Antonioni would approve of were he making a sci-fi film in his post-structuralist Red Desert period. And then these sex hungry sirens cohere out of the mist, debating whether to use our wandering mercenary Peter Strauss for breeding purposes, a great idea (he's into it), but that's scuttled almost immediately with the arrival of a small dragon/snake thing (like an X-mas garland with teeth) which the sirens are all afraid of but seems easily dispatched by their spears or elaborate nets. That's a wrap on the sirens - were they edited out to make this a "G" rating? No one even mentions them again. and YET, Strauss and Molly Ringwald are too scared to go back into their parked car; they escape up a hatch to the surface and leave their car behind so they can wander the desert and almost die of thirst. Jesus - why didn't they just back the car out? It makes little sense, and this great set and sexy siren thing is just forgotten for the rest of the picture- we're onto another gorgeous, creatively ingenious set, should have been an art installation, but Strauss and Ringwald just run through it and it's never seen again.
Lastly, in my continuing push to restore some kind of platonic good faith between women and straight men, I recommend the film not just for the beautiful visions and creativity of the sets and vehicles, but also the unique relationship between Molly and Peter Strauss's characters. There's never any sexual intention between either one of them - never even a thought of it. She's obnoxious, but that's okay - I like she cuddles up to him in the dead of night because she's cold, but that it's no more than that for either of them or for the director, script or any unspoken subtext. She's more an adopted orphan, a scrappy Oliver, a Dr. Who companion, and his disinterest in even having her around speaks to, ironically enough, his worth as a mentor. It's a testament to a more innocent time, when real men were trusted to be caregivers of teenage redheads because, unlike celibate priests or pent-up nerd weirdos, they were laid, loose and not Archie Lee desperate or Humbert creepy.
Best of all, PG or no, it all ends with cocktails, evoking--in its resolutions--the great Howard Hawks!
2. BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS
(1980) Dir. Jimmy T. Murakami, Roger Corman
Script by John Sayles; Art director: James Cameron
(New World) - *** / Amazon Image - A+
The idea that this film was actually put out by Corman's New World seems absurd- it looks like a movie that would today cost at least 100 million today. Imaginatively written by John Sayles, adapting the Magnificent Seven/ Seven Samurai, it's got a zingy cast including John Saxon as the evil warlord; Robert Vaughn as a professional killer hiding in a dusty old space arcade; starry-eyed Richard Thomas as the John Boy-meets-Luke hero; George Peppard as a kind of Han Solo meets cowboy truck driver (truckers were still 'in'); buxom Sylvia Kristel as a diminutive Valkyrie; and--a personal favorite--a robotics engineer played Darlanne Fluegel, whose haunting gray eyes perfectly counterbalance her 80s-anticipating ironed blonde hair and gray-piped pink jumpsuit, as the breeding-ready love interest. How did John Boy get so lucky?
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James Cameron worked in the art direction unit, which--as with his work on Galaxy of Terror--may partly explain why it's all so stunningly gorgeous, every frame pops to the point Star Wars now seems hopelessly square by contrast. Just dig the ship John Boy flies in (above) - it's both phallic and fallopian, like some Frank Frazetta barbarian lost a fight with a sexy slug. Why wasn't there a toy version of that instead of the tiresome Falcon or Tie-Fighters? I'm also a big fan of the cozy spaceship and planet interiors, full of warm hued-lighting and interesting touches that give them a 70s shag carpeted / older brother's van bedroom aura. Every ship has its own homey touch, you want to live in them and get to know these people (most of them anyway), but since it's a Corman joint it has to be over in under 90 minutes so Roger can save money on film cans. (Would there was a longer director's cut).
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There are still negative voices out there for this movie, but if they're going by some old video pan and scan or other, they need to shut dey mouths and watch it again... in Prime's widescreen restored-color version it pops and glows and beguiles. And if they don't appreciate Sayle's weirdly Buddhist script (lotsa talk about the 'Vardas' preaching nonviolence) or the gorgeous matte shots and creative ideas bouncing all over the place, then to hell with them. For me, the only sour note concerns the scarfaced moron underlings of Sador, who have balding ginger 'fros and piggy noses, and attitudes typical of those smirky slob horndog types in bad early-80s teen movies who always have food on their shirts and are saying crude things about girls. You know the guys I mean, they give all guys a bad name. Though this a PG they pick up a peasant girl and presumably rape her in the back of their spaceship (she comes out form the back room with her dress torn and crashes their ship for them in retaliation, killing herself in the process - it's an oddly sleazy addition, unnecessary moment --one wonders why it's kept in when so much other interesting stuff was clearly taken out). There's also some weird misplaced hostility from John Boy with the arrival of Kristel's valkyrie, and her sudden appearance as a right-sized (and how!) maiden is never explained. If I have to get this minor to quibble, you know I loved it. Hubris kept me from watching it at the time -- it seemed such a blatant ripoff to my 13 year-old Star Wars-ophile senses (Empire Strikes Back was out the same year) but now I could care less about Star Wars whereas I'm a big-ass fan of Battle Beyond the Stars. Hey, it even has more than one female character! Maybe George Lucas should have been ripping it off instead of vice versa?
James Cameron worked in the art direction unit, which--as with his work on Galaxy of Terror--may partly explain why it's all so stunningly gorgeous, every frame pops to the point Star Wars now seems hopelessly square by contrast. Just dig the ship John Boy flies in (above) - it's both phallic and fallopian, like some Frank Frazetta barbarian lost a fight with a sexy slug. Why wasn't there a toy version of that instead of the tiresome Falcon or Tie-Fighters? I'm also a big fan of the cozy spaceship and planet interiors, full of warm hued-lighting and interesting touches that give them a 70s shag carpeted / older brother's van bedroom aura. Every ship has its own homey touch, you want to live in them and get to know these people (most of them anyway), but since it's a Corman joint it has to be over in under 90 minutes so Roger can save money on film cans. (Would there was a longer director's cut).
There are still negative voices out there for this movie, but if they're going by some old video pan and scan or other, they need to shut dey mouths and watch it again... in Prime's widescreen restored-color version it pops and glows and beguiles. And if they don't appreciate Sayle's weirdly Buddhist script (lotsa talk about the 'Vardas' preaching nonviolence) or the gorgeous matte shots and creative ideas bouncing all over the place, then to hell with them. For me, the only sour note concerns the scarfaced moron underlings of Sador, who have balding ginger 'fros and piggy noses, and attitudes typical of those smirky slob horndog types in bad early-80s teen movies who always have food on their shirts and are saying crude things about girls. You know the guys I mean, they give all guys a bad name. Though this a PG they pick up a peasant girl and presumably rape her in the back of their spaceship (she comes out form the back room with her dress torn and crashes their ship for them in retaliation, killing herself in the process - it's an oddly sleazy addition, unnecessary moment --one wonders why it's kept in when so much other interesting stuff was clearly taken out). There's also some weird misplaced hostility from John Boy with the arrival of Kristel's valkyrie, and her sudden appearance as a right-sized (and how!) maiden is never explained. If I have to get this minor to quibble, you know I loved it. Hubris kept me from watching it at the time -- it seemed such a blatant ripoff to my 13 year-old Star Wars-ophile senses (Empire Strikes Back was out the same year) but now I could care less about Star Wars whereas I'm a big-ass fan of Battle Beyond the Stars. Hey, it even has more than one female character! Maybe George Lucas should have been ripping it off instead of vice versa?
3. STARCRASH
(1978) Dir. Luigi Cozzi
** / Amazon Image - A
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If you're watching all these as part of an Acidemic-azon Prime festival, let me warn you that it's better to watch this one first, because the FX are so terrible they can be hard to watch after the relative brilliance of Battle Beyond the Stars. That's not to say they're not charming, especially if you remember Lite-brite ("making things with light / what a sight, making things with Lite-brite"), HO scale airplane models, and erector sets from childhood, for these toys seem to comprise the bulk of Starcrash special-effects tool kit. Who cares, it's still a blast, a big terrible blast. Fans of the "Italian Ed Wood" maestro Luigi Cozzi (working here, as he often did, under the Americanized 'Lewis Coates') seems to have an innate sense of speed and razzle-dazzle where (he hopes?) we have barely time to notice the cheapness of one effect before another comes careening by, leaving this to feel more in common with one of those compressed feature film versions of the 1936 serial Flash Gordon (right down the helmets, and the hero's escaping his/her stint shoveling fuel into the enemy blast furnace) than Star Wars.
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The story has outer space adventuress Stella Starr (Caroline Munroe) squaring off against her future Maniac co-star Joe Spinell. As the evil-laughing cape-twirling "in league with the Dark World" Baron, Spinell is clearly having fun so it's too bad he (as well as Munroe) are so blandly dubbed by other people. It seems the Baron has created a weapon "so vast, so huge, it would take a whole planet... to conceal it," Clearly, when Coggi does remember to rip off Star Wars, he doesn't kibitz -- (there's even an actual light saber at one point). On the other hand, his real yen is clearly to do The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in space (Munroe starred in that too) and to that end there's a stop-motion giant 'metallic' warrior woman guarding beach, a sword fight with a stop-motion skeleton, a benevolent stranger in a gold mask, treachery from an evil double agent, and triumph against the forces of evil. But that's just the half of it!
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Now the bright side: even if like me you don't like Munroe's co-star Marjoe Gortner due to some archaic prejudice against overly white teeth and curly blonde hair on men, one has to admit that--maybe thanks to his being an ex-child evangelist--he handles the scenes of mystical magical force-casting with admirable dead-eyed focus (and those teeth obscured). He may be quite diminutive, but his red and black leather uniform is one of the cooler costumes on display (And there are many). As for Munroe, even though she's dubbed, and her 'sexy' outfit looks like it was cut out of a naugahyde car seat, she's quite memorable (especially if you're old enough that you remember her Starlost magazine cover) but oh, if only there was more of the evil Amazon queen, Corelia! (Nadia Cassini -above). Tossing off classic bon mots ("put her in the mind probe!") in her repurposed gladiator movie brocade, tossing her dynamite bangs and condemning our heroes to the mines, she's really something special, and with some judicial rewriting could have been the equivalent of either Aura or a gender-reversed Vultan. Sadly, like every other challenge they wiz past, Stella and the Gort escape from her clutches mere seconds after falling into them.
Even so, the film already has twice the number of cool chicks than Star Wars.
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Moving on, for like the other two films (discussed above) there's no time to stop and appreciate any of the high camp weirdness, it's onto the next exhibit. By the time we meet the king of the universe (you can tell he's important because his ship is bright gold and he's dressed in all sorts of Versace-ish golden chains and frills), we're ready for anything.
And we get it: the emperor of the universe, Christopher Plummer, barely conscious, showing why he gets the big bucks, doing a great kind of reverse hamming, trailing off into elliptical pauses for effect (or to remember his lines): "you must sail... to the haunted stars.... and find the count's... secret ship... and destroy it." Barely talking in a whisper, while schmaltzy grand piano refrains in the background, we feel the greatness enter the room in true fisher king wounded titan style.
As for the score, Legend has it that Cozzi didn't let Barry see the actual film while he was composing, lest he run for the hills, and so yeah, it sounds way too much like decade-old Bond cues hammered into Williams 'rousing sci-fi adventure' refrains. Yeah, David Hasselhof pops out from behind a golden mask (yo!) and yeah, we're like 'why couldn't he and the Gortner swapped roles? That-a been so choice, bro.
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Now the bright side: even if like me you don't like Munroe's co-star Marjoe Gortner due to some archaic prejudice against overly white teeth and curly blonde hair on men, one has to admit that--maybe thanks to his being an ex-child evangelist--he handles the scenes of mystical magical force-casting with admirable dead-eyed focus (and those teeth obscured). He may be quite diminutive, but his red and black leather uniform is one of the cooler costumes on display (And there are many). As for Munroe, even though she's dubbed, and her 'sexy' outfit looks like it was cut out of a naugahyde car seat, she's quite memorable (especially if you're old enough that you remember her Starlost magazine cover) but oh, if only there was more of the evil Amazon queen, Corelia! (Nadia Cassini -above). Tossing off classic bon mots ("put her in the mind probe!") in her repurposed gladiator movie brocade, tossing her dynamite bangs and condemning our heroes to the mines, she's really something special, and with some judicial rewriting could have been the equivalent of either Aura or a gender-reversed Vultan. Sadly, like every other challenge they wiz past, Stella and the Gort escape from her clutches mere seconds after falling into them.
Even so, the film already has twice the number of cool chicks than Star Wars.
Moving on, for like the other two films (discussed above) there's no time to stop and appreciate any of the high camp weirdness, it's onto the next exhibit. By the time we meet the king of the universe (you can tell he's important because his ship is bright gold and he's dressed in all sorts of Versace-ish golden chains and frills), we're ready for anything.
And we get it: the emperor of the universe, Christopher Plummer, barely conscious, showing why he gets the big bucks, doing a great kind of reverse hamming, trailing off into elliptical pauses for effect (or to remember his lines): "you must sail... to the haunted stars.... and find the count's... secret ship... and destroy it." Barely talking in a whisper, while schmaltzy grand piano refrains in the background, we feel the greatness enter the room in true fisher king wounded titan style.
As for the score, Legend has it that Cozzi didn't let Barry see the actual film while he was composing, lest he run for the hills, and so yeah, it sounds way too much like decade-old Bond cues hammered into Williams 'rousing sci-fi adventure' refrains. Yeah, David Hasselhof pops out from behind a golden mask (yo!) and yeah, we're like 'why couldn't he and the Gortner swapped roles? That-a been so choice, bro.
As we pop along, sometimes things get too ridiculous even for a Lewis Coates production: Hasselhof uses a gold demon mask to shoot lasers at a bunch of savages so he can rescue Stella during a big outdoor cave sequence, but THEN he throws his helmet down to fight hand-to-hand, and loses! And then, viola! now they both need to be rescued. The whole purpose of the Death Star (sorry, I meant "planet-sized weapon") is to explode it in the prince's face before he can destroy it? Whaat? Who cares? It's already over, and you can't wait to go again! Dude, find Cozzi's HERCULES and start the madness anew. The same erector set is used again, this time for flying monsters, three-headed dragons, and... I already forgot. Praise this kind nepenthe.
4. SPACEBALLS
(1987) Dir. Mel Brooks
*** / Amazon Image - A-
Time's been kind to this lumbering doofus of a film. A favorite of good friends of mine, it never used to make it past my three strikes rule. Strike 1) the off-the-beat comedic hamming of Rick Moranis as 'Darth Helmet' (it's a big helmet - get it!?), 2) the gross eating habits of Barf (John Candy's dog-wookie character), and 3) the disgusting 'Pizza the Hut'. But those are just the breakwaters, the first five or ten minutes. Once someone made me stick around to the end I started to really vibe with this film, especially once Daphne Zuniga (base hit!) shows up as a runaway bride in a gorgeous wedding gown exposing her toned, lithe, tan, bare shoulders. Escaping Prince Valium and capture by the Imperial Fleet by jumping into the space Winnebago of Bill Pullman as the Han Solo, her charm takes over the picture and lifts it over ugly hurtles. Pullman and Zuniga have a palpable chemistry and play the whole thing deadpan straight, which helps immeasurably especially when we have to endure oversize sight gags like the industrial strength hair dryer and the troopers 'combing' the desert.
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Brooks makes films for a big audience to laugh at, loud and progressively raucous, in a theater. That means that, after every single pratfall, he pauses for presumed guffaws. But it's OK not to sob instead, quietly, at home, for he also clearly loves genre films; he makes movies that endure because they take the time to hit all the mythic narrative bases, deliver a respectful look and feel of his sources (The cinematography and special effects are all as good as any other decent post-Star Wars rip), showing again Brooks never forgets t, and best of all, to avoid ephemeral pop culture references beyond its designated genre. Lovely detours into poker-faced absurdist post-structuralism (as when the bad guys watch a VHS tape of Spaceballs to figure out their next move, but wind up forwarding to the exact spot they're watching the film in) and when the Yiddish-accented Yogurt (Mel Brooks) showing off his collection of Spaceballs merchandise ("ver da real money is made") give it enough of a deconstructed edge you don't feel too stupid for liking it. Brooks also plays the evil emperor, as basically the same corrupt mayor he played in Blazing Saddles (only instead of a buxom redhead secretary to bark at (woof!) there's an 80s punk-short haired imperial officer onscreen at the urinal (hmmm). Joan Rivers provides the voice for the cockblocking C3PO chaperone and there's some great inside bits like sound effects guy Michael Winslow as a radar technician and John Hurt in his Nostromo duds chowing down at the local space diner (uh oh).
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Really though, what puts it all over, for me, and gets me watching again and again (after decades of resistance because of the first 15 minutes of gross-outs and lame slapstick) is that Daphne Zuniga as the princess spending the whole film wild and lovely, with toned, tan bare shoulders in beautifully tattered runaway bride wedding dress, blowing up whole armies when they dare to mess up her perfect (down and free-flowing --no constricting buns or coils) hair; or the heated moments of near-hooking up between her and Pullman (cockblocked by Joanie's robot) they both play so straight and so well. Such moments are medicine for an ailing psyche, and if they work to allay a panic attack, one becomes a bit loyal to them. Spaceballs has already led me safely out of two such crises! Such is the power of the schwartz and Brooks' innate love of classic genre cinema, even if we're supposed to laugh when Barf molests a waitress with his errant tail. Barf, you aptly-named cretin, the days when that was funny are gone forever! The Schwartz decrees it so.
Brooks makes films for a big audience to laugh at, loud and progressively raucous, in a theater. That means that, after every single pratfall, he pauses for presumed guffaws. But it's OK not to sob instead, quietly, at home, for he also clearly loves genre films; he makes movies that endure because they take the time to hit all the mythic narrative bases, deliver a respectful look and feel of his sources (The cinematography and special effects are all as good as any other decent post-Star Wars rip), showing again Brooks never forgets t, and best of all, to avoid ephemeral pop culture references beyond its designated genre. Lovely detours into poker-faced absurdist post-structuralism (as when the bad guys watch a VHS tape of Spaceballs to figure out their next move, but wind up forwarding to the exact spot they're watching the film in) and when the Yiddish-accented Yogurt (Mel Brooks) showing off his collection of Spaceballs merchandise ("ver da real money is made") give it enough of a deconstructed edge you don't feel too stupid for liking it. Brooks also plays the evil emperor, as basically the same corrupt mayor he played in Blazing Saddles (only instead of a buxom redhead secretary to bark at (woof!) there's an 80s punk-short haired imperial officer onscreen at the urinal (hmmm). Joan Rivers provides the voice for the cockblocking C3PO chaperone and there's some great inside bits like sound effects guy Michael Winslow as a radar technician and John Hurt in his Nostromo duds chowing down at the local space diner (uh oh).
Really though, what puts it all over, for me, and gets me watching again and again (after decades of resistance because of the first 15 minutes of gross-outs and lame slapstick) is that Daphne Zuniga as the princess spending the whole film wild and lovely, with toned, tan bare shoulders in beautifully tattered runaway bride wedding dress, blowing up whole armies when they dare to mess up her perfect (down and free-flowing --no constricting buns or coils) hair; or the heated moments of near-hooking up between her and Pullman (cockblocked by Joanie's robot) they both play so straight and so well. Such moments are medicine for an ailing psyche, and if they work to allay a panic attack, one becomes a bit loyal to them. Spaceballs has already led me safely out of two such crises! Such is the power of the schwartz and Brooks' innate love of classic genre cinema, even if we're supposed to laugh when Barf molests a waitress with his errant tail. Barf, you aptly-named cretin, the days when that was funny are gone forever! The Schwartz decrees it so.
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5. SATURN 3
(1980) Dir. Stanley Donen
**1/2 / Amazon Image: A
The special rarity of it all though is the sad desperation in Kirk's eyes. "Today, from the lofty vantage atop our endless chemical boners, we can watch Kirk jump rope and run laps and throttle a much younger man while wearing nothing but a bath towel and think he seems pretty vain, and more than a tad scared. Who is all this for? He already has the "It" girl of the mid-70s in his bed (we all had the poster). Kirk's Major is not a narcissist so much as a satyr afraid his horns are coming loose. It's not like Kirk is one of those simpering fading male stars desperate to keep our fickle love from wandering off. He doesn't care if we love him or not, he doesn't even care if we respect him or not. He just wants us to think he's still virile. He's just taking that mirage U-turn all male actors take when they see the road they're on has no more exits, just dead end credits rolling into view on the horizon like a distant ominous fog...". (full)
6. GALAXY OF TERROR
(1981) Dir. Bruce D. Clark
**1/2 / Amazon Image - A
I read all the hostile reviews when this movie came out (in the local print newspaper, as was the style of the time) and, being caught up in my 14 year-old feminist phase, I blanched in horror (the slasher craze was going full bore at the time and the theater ad page looked like a frat boy's basement slaughterhouse), so I dismissed it outright, furious and appalled that the sickos were being pandered to. Little did I know it would hold up so well, not for any special reason but, like Battle Beyond the Stars, from surfeit of imagination, aided in no small measure by ambitious production designer James Cameron and the genius of cinematographer Jacques Haitkin (Nightmare on Elm Street). You'd never guess this Alien clone was all shot in the Corman lumber yard lickety-split but it sure looks great. In fact, in one of those art imitates its own imitation things, James Cameron got the Aliens sequel largely because of this film. And no wonder! The space ship interiors are gorgeous, cozy and amniotic (love those padded walls); the strange mist-enshrouded giant space pyramid the crew scale and enter is a haunted world of eerie gel lighting worthy of Bava.
The crew is there to investigate, a bit like in that movie, what was it called? Alien? But what they find are demons of all sorts. Each meets their doom in a brutal, gory ironic way. The cook (Ray Walston) knows more than he's saying, but just smiles enigmatically when questioned and then volunteers for the dangerous work. And what a crew! Sid Haig plays a weird cult member whose devotion to his 'crystals' as his only weapons borders on absurdism (they break so easy it's a wonder they lasted him a week); Robert Englund (another future Elm-Street-er) winds up fighting himself (don't we all?); Erin Moran (Joanie!) is an empath who's not loving the weird vibes of this planet and she's claustrophobic (naturally she must slide through constricting embryonic tunnels; slug-ophobic Taaffe O'Connell provides the sex appeal in a questionably tasted but classic demise; Zalman King provides the scowling and brooding menace; Edward Albert is in the dewey-eyed mustache Skeritt role -and the captain of the voyage is Grace Zabriskie. She's one tough old salt, calling everyone "boy," like "come get some chow, boy." And somehow seeing Zabriskie and her big haunted eyes above those cool dashboard lights makes me feel grounded. Sure, she goes down tough as a burnt steak, but I don't think there's ever been a female space commander quite like her since. Or before. Trouble is, the film moves so fast that you've barely met these folks and they're already half their original number. (Corman's got to get all the reels into one big film can, remember?) Speaking of fast, see if you can spot that little stop motion lizard man thing from Joe Dante's Piranha!
Then, before you know it, it's all over. The ending is super strange and not entirely satisfying, but it is definitely unique unto itself, and if the ride ends before you even got to see half the sights, don't worry, you can always go back and ride it again. That's the joy of the Prime. You don't even need to rewind anymore. Not even Phillip K. Dick could have predicted that.
