RIFFS: The Moth

I watch the Moth

Flutter on the window.

It wants to get out to the Sun.

The Moth knows

He should be on the other side.

This is no place for a moth.

I empathize.

FILMS IN REVIEW: Drag Me To Hell (2009)

I love Horror Comics. Along with buckets of bones and supernatural revenge from the grave, they are rife with moral tales of culpability. Their authors look at our World as corrupt, and add a layer of fantasy where unstoppable justice is meted out. In the dark-sided world of the Pulps, people consistently get what they deserve.

Getting what she got coming is the film’s protagonist Christine, well-stiffly played as a vanilla corporate jerk by Alison Lohman. Her character is a common young person, torn between making either the good choice or opting for the easy-path of selfish gain. Justin Long plays it straight as her boyfriend, a well-meaning ding-a-ling who although he wants to help, lacks the conviction or understanding to make a difference. Dileep Rao also tries help as a Deepak Chopra-inspired mystic who soon learns he is way in over his head.

The gem of the movie though is Lorna Raver. A longtime soap opera fixture, her role as the old gypsy woman Mr. Ganush lets her acting chops out of the box, and runs them at full throttle. Her portrayal of a person wronged who will not be denied chews on the audiences’ heart with her rotten dentures. Her performance makes this film work. The character she creates is so terrifying, so committed, so insinuating in your consciousness, that she deserves a spot alongside Karloff, Lugosi and Chaney. Like them, she is just that good enough of an actor to make you sometimes empathize for the “evil” monster.

Director Sam Raimi pull out his best bells and whistles too. Gags come flying out from both sides of the screen when you least expect it, and even when you do, keeping the viewers heart pumping at full speed. The camera work varies from dreamily other-worldly, even sublime, to harrowing. Sound effects, sadly neglected element in many horrors films today, are also given their due, keeping your skin crawling with subtle touches at one moment, then shaking your soul pieces with orchestrated bombast when required.

Although Horror as a film genre today is in an upswing of production, so much of the movies coming out these days are fetid junk. They are blood soaked nonsense; full of sadism and devoid of thought or art. For Horror fans, and fans of Sam Raimi, “Drag Me To Hell” is the film we have long deserved. It is a roller coaster ride into the land of ghosts and unspeakable horrors. Other filmmakers have tried to put the aesthetics of the Horror Comics onscreen and met with varying degrees of success. This time to the audiences’ delight, Raimi hits the skull out of the park.

Four Stars

FILMS IN REVIEW: Star Trek (2009)

Like any good nerd, I had my doubts regarding the new Star Trek. Taking a “younger” approach to a familiar franchise immediately brought back memories of the abortive “Terminator 3: Arnold Goes to Dawson’s Creek”. By the time I paid for my ticket, I had come to expect that it might not be very good, and I ought to just reconcile myself to sitting through a piece of junk.

Wrong! Star Trek is a modern wonder of film-making. The film sits upon a foundation of solid acting, slam-bang action, and a story that engages the viewer well, as long as they don’t scratch the surface too deeply. It is nearly perfect science fiction, and certainly perfect Trek.

Defying expectations, Chris Pine turns in a fresh, unexpectedly good performance as Captain Kirk in-the-making, adding much of his own to the role while including just enough touching homage for the diehard fans. At his right hand, Zachary Quinto convincing uses Spock’s youth to portray a man filled with tumult, not yet a master of his emotions. Zoe Saldana as Uhura floods the decks with sex-appeal yet keeps her character a strong woman, clearly a master of her profession and a match to any man. The rest of the gang, including “Shaun of the Dead” star Simon Pegg, bolster the film well with charm, familiarity, and welcome humor.

The films shortcomings are modest and forgivable. The baddie, a gloriously evil Eric Bana, possesses a weapon that doesn’t quite make sense, but is nonetheless visually breathtaking. By injecting a heretofore unknown substance into a planet’s core, the planet almost immediately turns into a “black hole”. But instead of a bolus of infinite density, this hole is more of a Star-gate, allowing plot points to conveniently move from one region of Space-time to another. Although science goes politely out of the universe, the film remarkably manages to keeps its attractive gravity, compelling the audience forward with nary a stutter.

Also in the area of productions design, the director Abrams makes some quirky moves here and there. For interiors he favors massive, open spaces without visible walls, suggesting something out of a Peter Greenaway or Fellini film. Although that aesthetic works well on swampy alien ships, the poor Enterprise ends up looking a bit undone. The engine room, formerly a hi-tech temple in previous outings, becomes in his vision looking rather like a giant brewery. Steam pipes and massive vats mingle with the occasional flimsy-looking glass control panel here and there. However, Abrams wisely utilizes these playgrounds well for both action and wonderful gags.

These are minor niggles. The ultimate look of the film is great, finally giving the Star Trek world back plenty of big-budget, blow-your-mind special effects and sets. That, joined with reassuring futurism and likeable characters, is what I came for and received in buckets.

3 out of 4 stars.

RIFFS: Halloween

You asked me once “what is the dark, deep secret your hiding?”
And when I told you, filled with sickness you went into hiding.
In your cute costume suit,
Not ready for my sad truth
To confront demons unhidden from obvious places.

It isn’t easy being the wife of brand-new English professor.
Cramped little housing, drunkards for friends, never in silence.
Tweed coats they don’t fit right.
It’s the same every night.
Name-dropped delusions from bottles and literary allusions.

You swooned and wobbled.
I knew the party is over and I had ruined it.
Taken off your tracks suddenly,
Sharing my secret with none who would understandably listen.
Screaming and falling,
The object of your husband’s derision.

Find shaky comfort in the darkened depths of your apartment.
Your best friend brushing is your hair.
The rest of your guests can successfully ignore my existence.
I make my way out into the cold.

In the car with my forehead pressed on the cool window.
Regretfully wishing I lied one more time.
I used to be good at that.
But that’s far from the saddest fact.
It wasn’t the worst thing I could have told you at all.

RANTS: The Life of a Bad Idea

Day One:

Idea is run up the flag pole. Voices of Reason raise concerns and point to ways to make it a Good Idea. Concerns and input are ignored by the Idea Originator.

Day Two:

Bad Idea is implemented without modification. Voices of Reason whine and moan. Grumblers noted by Implementer.

Day Three:

Bad Idea now declared a “Success”.

Three Months later:

“Success” produces no or negative results. Voices of Reason are now dispirited by consequences of “Success” and urged to work harder by Implementer.

Six Months later:

Superior of Bad Idea Originator expresses concern about possible failure of “Success”. Voices of Reason explicitly threatened to make “Success” successful “or else _____.”

Nine Months later:

“Success” proves fiasco. Implementers solicit Voices of Reason for suggestions on how to make “Success” a Good Idea. Most Voices of Reason now silent or moved on to other endeavors.

FILMS IN REVIEW: Inkheart

“Inkheart” provides an enjoyable amusement park ride while it lasts. Not particularly coherent or exciting, but certainly fun. Holes in the plot and paper-thin characters are forgivable, considering its fantastic premise, which politely requests full suspension of disbelief from the audience in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Brendan Frasier once more plays another affable, sturdy hero protecting his child from supernatural harm. His light, cheery acting style works well with the high-fantasy films he turns up in. He has become an unmatched master of reacting convincingly to blue-screen CGI monsters by now.

Andy Serkis gives a great performance as “Capricorn”, an evil henchman given the opportunity to rise to gang leader status by chance. This puffed-up dictator holds dominion over a weird hilltop mini-empire populated by misfits and odd ‘n ends from the young adult section of the library. Serkis does evil great justice in his performance, providing the film’s real scares.

Countering all this darkness, Helen Mirren gets a great comic turn as a stock whacky old aunt. Jim Broadbent also buoys up the show in his well-played role as the author of the whole mess.

Clever jokes turn up to keep the pageant from getting too grim. Also pretty special effects, along with charming old world locations, give the film a lovely look. At times the direction gets a bit claustrophobic but generally stays on track, helped by the film fast pace.

Any film that openly and sincerely loves books, to the point of bibliomania, gets special status with this reviewer. “Inkheart” does a great job of sharing the fascination, comfort and joy one gets from a beloved read. Children especially ought to enjoy this movie, and seem likely to buy-into its pro-literacy propaganda.

I certainly did.

RANTS: What are “Cult movies”?

“Cult Movies” are films that through the years have found a following of devoted fans.

Before the 1980s, “second-run” or secondary distribution of movies pretty much stank. Once a movie made its first pass in the theaters, if a filmed failed to get included in a TV sale or syndication package, it was pretty much a case of the prints going back to the vaults were they were forgotten.

There were, however, wonderful exceptions.

If you lived in a city, you could go to a somewhat shabby, “art theater” that somehow paid their rent showing beloved oldies. On a drunken Saturday nights a gaggle of trannies might show up at midnight to carouse in the half-light of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” while being watched by curious co-eds. Alternatively, alienated nerds might wallow in the discord and lack of light in David Lynch’s “Eraserhead”. The following Sunday morning, coffeed-up sentimental high-brows might pop-by yet again for another pass at “The King of Hearts” or “Les Enfants Du Paradis”. Cult movies played on-and-on for years in little moviehouses, finding new fans along the way.

The term “cult movie” arose to describe these evergreen classics. A great book called “Cult Movies” by Danny Peary collected reviews and trivia  films of this kind.

But come the dawn of the Reagan years, things changed. Metropolitan rents skyrockets, and the little “repertory movie houses” disappeared, replaced by more lucrative shoe stores, chain restaurants and other sucker traps.

Salvation for hipsters came though in the form of home video, but not as quick as one might have hoped. Initially VHS, BETA and Laserdiscs were terribly expensive and many smaller films hard-to-find at all. Used tapes were traded, copied by those with access to video equipment, sold at conventions, and sold by mail order as well.

Even information about what was available was treasured. Two of my favorite magazines from those heady-days are the now-defunct “Psychotronic Video” and the still-strong “FilmFax”. Both are filled with nostalgia, interviews, and very important information on what old movies are out there to be had for the discriminating cineaste.

With the advent of cheaply printed DVDs, more cult movies are out there than ever now. Fan sites clog the Internet for many a gem of a film that maybe didn’t set the box office on fire at first, but over the years has entertained many an obsessed fan.

Here’s some of my personal favorite movies that I saw on re-release, in a theater, many years ago in Philly or Greenwich Village:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Blade Runner
Les Enfants to Paradis
The Wages of Fear
The Honeymoon Killers
Night of the Living Dead
Pink Flamingoes
Eraserhead
Monty Python’s The Holy Grail
Forbidden Planet

RANTS: What does “Pulp” mean i.e., “Pulp Fiction”?

When we were kids, at any decent newsstand, you could find plenty of anthology fiction short-story magazines. They were filled with wild short stories, ranging from the sensational, to the sleazy, to the sentimental. Cheap to buy, they were printed on the cheapest of paper or wood “pulp stock”. The titles covered the genres of romance, westerns, “true crime”, adventure, sci-fi, horror, suspense and more! Also, the magazines had wonderful, colorful covers meant to pop-out on the newsstands, many of which are collected here:

http://home.comcast.net/~pulpgallery/welcome.html

My Aunt Winnie was an avid reader of “pulps” (aka “pulp fiction”) including the suspenseful “Hitchcock Anthology” and detective “Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine”. I was lucky to catch the tail end of the horror pulps, and enjoyed reading them on the way home from school on the bus.

Pulps are largely gone now, except for a few hold-outs, revivals and digest anthologies. These days newsstands are filled instead with glossy rags filled with ads and more ads.

However, as you have noted, the term “Pulp” lives on to describe films that recapture the crime/detective dramas’ sensationalism and hard-boiled characters. Tarentino brought the genre and the style back big-time with the great homage “Pulp Fiction”. His film made such an impact that the term “Pulp” lives on to describe mainly hip crime dramas that carry-on in the same spirit/direction of his work including:

Let Him Have It
The Grifters
Snatch
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
The Limey

Also, amongst hardcore Internet movie fans (aka “fanboys”) the term “pulp movie” has broadened over time. Amongst their pimply kind, “Pulp” can be used to describe any movie that owes a debt to the long-lost Pulp magazines in terms of slick-style, subversive or perverse content, and cheap-budgets too. Blurring the meaning further, other countries have revived their Pulps on the big screen too! In Korea, a “pulp movie” can describe a crime-drama movie or a wild-action Samurai flick too!

I suspect that any acknowledgment to the original meaning has evaporated away in that particular context, but it leaves us with a great, fresh adjective for movies we like.

Viva Pulp!

FILMS IN REVIEW: Gamera at low ebb or high camp?

Movies in review:

Destroy All Planets/Attack of the Monsters  

When Gamera appeared in the 60′s, he (?) had 3 great movies in a row. However as the years trundled on, his subsequent movies suffered from lower budgets and an attempt to appeal to the tiny tots. In BOTH of these films on this DVD, the action revolves around two little annoying boys, one Japanese and one Occidental “Gaijin”, getting into trouble and good old Mr. Gamera rescuing them. Frankly, I would have let the goofy kids suffer the consequences.

 

ATTACK OF THE MONSTERS

AOTM is the American TV edit of “Gamera vs. Guiron”. The plot follow the misadventures of a couple of kiddies threatened by two silver jumpsuit-clad alien ladies who want to eat their brains. Considering how irritating the brats are I can’t blame them. But, considering how moronic the boys are, the aliens might be better served stopping off at the Osaka “Arby’s” instead.

Gamera shows up to get the kids out of their predicament. However, the Space Women have a unique giant monster of their own to give Gamera a run for his money. Gamera and Guiron go head to head on the aliens’ home planet, a lovely colorful vista for their most unusual battle featuring teleporters, fire-breathing, ninja throwing-stars (!) and gymkata (!?!).

DESTROY ALL PLANETS:

DAP is the American TV edited version of “Gamera tai Uchu Kaiju Bairasu”. It starts off well with Gamera knocking the tar out of some aliens and their oddly-shaped starship. Seeking less formidable foes, the aliens go to Earth and make life hard for two mischievous boy scouts. Unwittingly the boys provide the aliens with vital information regarding Gamera’s abilities (a.k.a. lots of stock footage from previous Gamera movies). Before the boys get in too deep though, Gamera shows up to lay down a second smack-down.

In a pinch, the aliens call upon their giant monstrous Boss in retaliation. Now I don’t mean to ruin the surprise of it for you, but the bad monster in this film is one of the oddest I have ever seen in a Japanese monster movie. In your mind, imagine the unholy offspring of “Tweety-Bird” and an octopus. Now spray paint their mutant devil-child silver. This alien fiend is simply dumbfounding to look at — super cheesy and perhaps the best justification for buying this DVD. Or, perhaps the best reason to shake your head in shame to wonder why you did.

THE DVD

Now if you are a fan of letterboxed, pristine prints of Japanese monster movies with subtitles, BEWARE! These are well-worn TV prints that have obviously been shown quite a bit. Although the transfer is not too bad, the prints themselves are faded, well-worn, scratched, and dirty at points with nice big rotten tape edits too. Worse yet, both are full-screen presentations of a widescreen original. You will wish at times that you were able to see the whole frame and wonder what you had missed. Worst of all, the gory bits typical of Gamera movies have been inexcusably SNIPPED!

As for EXTRAS, they are mighty light but do include some nice photos of Gamera and his friends at work. Also it is nice that both movies are on the same side of the DVD.

Hopefully good, clean, letter-boxed prints of these movies will become available again. An outfit named “Neptune Media” once offered these movies in VHS form with all the goodies (no pan ‘n scan, English subs, original soundtrack)  but they sadly seem to have disappeared.
IN ALL…

If you are a hardcore Gamera fan, this DVD provides a nostalgic second chance to see these movies like you may have seen them the first time: on a Saturday morning long ago, badly chopped and cropped. However if you are a stickler for quality in your DVD collection, you might want to pass this one up.

FILMS IN REVIEW: John Agar (-a-thon!)

Movies in Review:

Invisible Invaders/Journey to the Seventh Planet

This DVD release is part of MGM’s “Midnight Movie” series. Bless you MGM for bringing back all these old-time TV and drive-in favorites. Light on extra features, the DVD is two-sided featuring a great double-bill of “Journey to the Seventh Planet” on one side and “Invisible Invaders” on the other, both starring the hammy King of 50′s Science Fiction cheese John Agar (The Brain from Planet Arous).

JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET (LETTERBOXED):  JTTSP is the creative fruit of Mr. Sid Pink — the man behind the beloved “The Angry Red Planet” and “Reptilicus”. Like the latter, JTTSP was shot during Pink’s stay in Denmark. Both feature some pretty over-the-top Danish actors, bad accents and a lot of dubbing. Shot in saturated color, JTTSP chronicles mankind’s first trip to Uranus — pronounced through the film as “Your-IN-us”. I won’t blow the story for you, but expect some ridiculous-looking special effects and an evil alien mutant out to destroy the crew. Chewing up the “Doctor Who-vian” sets are Agar, as a devil-may-care ladies’ man and the beauteous former Miss Denmark Greta Thyssen as a Space Temptress.

INVISIBLE INVADERS (FULLSCREEN) Forget “Independence Day”. Forget “Plan 9 from Outer Space”. If you want a real documentary-style movie on how our Alien masters will inflict ultimate destruction upon us, look no further. The character-actor’s character-actor John Carradine gets the top bill in this invasion film, using his scratchy yet booming voice to great effect. Like in “9″, much stock footage and narration accompanies an attempt by other-worldly fiends to revive an army of undead corpses to bring civilization to its knees. This time though, the interlopers from beyond the moon are invisible! Does it sound like the Earth is doomed? No way! Again, John Agar (playing “Major Jay”) is here to save us. Jar-headed and unafraid, he also finds the time to steal lovely Jean Byron away from her useless scientist boyfriend. But the real stars in my opinion are the revived corpses! Although gore fans will be left down, this shambling all man-in-business attire army rules! Fill in whatever social allegory you want, the sight of these undead marching grey-faced dead insurance salesmen, middle-managers, and miscellaneous average-Joes is very surreal.

IN ALL…

Both films are campy enough to merit multiple viewings. Although there are meaty scenes of dialogue in both, the action clips along and you will not be bored. Even the mandatory 50s/60s stock footage montages were good and featured stuff I hadn’t seen before. And most importantly, if you like to play “Mystery Science Theater 3000 — The Home Game” these films will both provide plenty of fodder for laughs. In all, I’d peg this DVD as an economical must buy for 50′s/early 60′s Science Fiction fans. The quality of the transfer of both films is top-notch — no scratched out old teevee prints here like on other “bargain” DVDs. My only minor quibble is that MGM includes only meager trailers for the “extras”. However, I bet finding any kind of archival material at this point on these flicks now is well-nigh impossible anyway. Still, factual commentaries by an old-movie nut like me would have been nice.