Rixflix A to Z: Alligator (1980)

Director: Lewis Teague // 1:29; Color
Crew Notables: John Sayles (screenplay and co-story)
Cast Notables: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Dean Jagger, Sydney Lassick, Jack Carter, Michael V. Gazzo, Perry Lang, Henry Silva, Royce D. Applegate, Mike Mazurki
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

There are people out there for whom all "nature run amok" films are one and the same: all silly, all stupid, all immense wastes of time. This same logic will often be applied to practically any sub-genre of science-fiction, horror, fantasy or disaster films in equal measure, with the severity of cynicism wavering depending on personal preference, or more often, distaste. I am not making this statement to put myself above these type of people. Quite the opposite, for I actually am not all that interested in the "nature run amok" sub-genre.

Swarms of bees and waves of killer rats or spiders have never frightened me and cause little more than a big yawn from me when perpetrated onscreen. If the monster or animal has been made giant or enraged (or both) by some purposeful scientific means, well, I will probably be a little more interested, but then the film often crosses more into the "mad science" area, rather than nature just evolving or going crazy. This does not mean that there aren't fine examples of the sub-genre, and this is where one must not lock oneself into a steadfast position on an entire type of film: Jaws, one of my favorite films ever, and widely acclaimed as perhaps the pinnacle of Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking, is also the prime example of "nature run amok" onscreen. So, if you are going to roll your eyes in world-weariness every time some giant beast starts attacking people in a movie trailer, then either you also don't like Jaws, or you have clearly forgotten (or never learned) that in any genre or sub-genre of film, there are good examples and there are bad examples.

Alligator is one of those good examples. Even as a very clear "rip-off" (a term that I dislike hugely) of the famous shark flick, Alligator sprung from an incredible string of terrific low-budget scripts by then up-and-coming future director John Sayles, scripts which included Piranha (itself also a Jaws nod), The Howling and Battle Beyond the Stars. Sayles' writing for his own films would, of course, be concerned generally with higher-brow fare, but in the late 70s-early 80s he was allowed to let his freak flag fly, revealing a sensibility not only attuned to genre filmmaking and the clichés that make and break it, but also in finding ways to make those clichés somehow new again. Steadied by a solid and engaging lead performance by the vastly underrated Robert Forster (who would eventually get an Oscar nomination in Tarantino's Jackie Brown), Alligator never tries to be more than what it seems to be, but coats the expected antics in a healthy sheen of humor, though one has to get in a little ways before that humor really hits home. When it does, the laughs come fast and furious, though the film never gets "jokey" -- it is more active wit on display than actual punchlines. And for the most part, unlike in a lot of lower-budget monster flicks, the alligator action is surprisingly well-done and scarily effective at times. And man, Henry Silva's self-deprecating role is a gut-buster... literally.

I had to get the Korean DVD of this flick to once again feel the thrill I felt in the early video store days when I took this film home and discovered a bloody, gory good time. Some films, when you haven't seen them for a long time, don't hold up so well with the perspective of time and knowledge, while some, no matter what they might be about, feel like old friends who have been gone too long. Alligator, as it turns out, was one of my missing old friends. And it knows that it's silly, it knows that at heart its concept is stupid, but in no way is a waste of time.

And besides, without this film, how else would you know whether Harry Lime is alive or not?

Rixflix A to Z: Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet // Studio; 1:49/1:56 (special edition cut); Color
Crew Notables: Joss Whedon (screenplay and story), Darius Khondji (Dir. of Photography), Hervé Schneid (editor), Pitof (visual effects supervisor), Bob Ringwood (costume design)
Cast Notables: Sigourney Weaver (Ellen Ripley), Winona Ryder (Annalee Call), Dominique Pinon (Vriess), Ron Perlman (Johner), Michael Wincott (Frank Elgyn), Gary Dourdan (Christie), Kim Flowers (Sabra Hillard), Dan Hedaya (Gen. Martin Perez), J.E. Freeman (Dr. Mason Wren), Brad Dourif (Dr. Jonathan Gediman), Leland Orser (Larry Purvis), Raymond Cruz (Vincent Distephano), Tom Woodruff Jr. (Lead Alien), Archie Hahn (newborn vocal #2)
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

I don't care what Joss Whedon thinks. Well, I do care, and I agree with his stated opinion that this film was rendered "wrong" in just about every aspect, but it doesn't matter. Whether it is the frustration pronounced by a screenwriter who was simply tired of having his hard work twisted into sludge on the screen (including his own "Buffy", before he resurrected her for TV), or the budding television producer who was itching to do things his way, it doesn't matter what he thinks. Like David Fincher and Alien³, you can disown the work, but what you feel about it doesn't matter. The work still exists, it's sold on DVDs and it plays in the homes of the unsuspecting and the gullible (sometimes, and often, the same people).

But, first, let's focus on my expectations and how they can lead so easily to dashed hopes. When I saw this film in the theatre, I was already in love with the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, at that moment a director with a pair of feature films under his belt, and both of them works of immense creativity, energy and imagination, Delicatessen and La Cité des enfants perdus (The City of Lost Children). I was excited about Sigourney Weaver's fourth turn as Ripley (or rather, her first as Ripley's clone), the seemingly immortal battler of the alien threat, and I, and perhaps only I, was thrilled about Winona Ryder being in the film, if only in a pervy way. (Remember, this is before she went off the rails as a personality, and I still had a thing for her. Alright, I admit it: her damage actually makes her a little hotter to me.) And Jeunet was dragging some of his regulars to the film: Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman and some of his crew. So, yes, much like Alien³, and against my normal code, I strode into the theater with a lot of stuff and nonsense in my head, dreaming of a return to Alien glory, as with the first two films in the series.

Here's what I ended up liking: the alien sacrificial-escape scene, Weaver's basketball shot (not faked), the seven previous versions of Ripley, Weaver herself (as always), and Ryder in the tight little jumpsuit. The alien effects are fine (until the big reveal of the cross-pollinated offspring of Ripley). I also enjoyed the underwater sequence, because the swimming aliens reminded me of how much I would still like to see a modern version of The Creature From the Black Lagoon. And Whedon's script is fine, and while I still don't care about his opinion on the matter (but I do), this leads into what I didn't like: everything else. The dingy cinematography (which works fine in Jeunet's other features, but simply leads to nausea here), the unmemorable set design and costumes, and... the acting.

Especially the acting, and sometimes from actors that I happen to enjoy in just about everything else they do, such as Perlman, Pinon, Wincott and a sorely miscast Dan Hedaya. Every line, outside of those said by Weaver, is said in a too overwrought and campy fashion. And Ryder? Well, she's cute here, but she has never been much of an actress; strange that the only scene where her voice and range seem to fit the movie is at the point where she has been revealed as an android and has plugged into the ship to control it. You could say that her voice adopts a machine-like quality, but really... all they did was add some treble to her normal speaking voice and she kept acting in her same monotonous way. Which leads me back to something else I did like here: Brad Dourif, who is usually waaaayyyy over-the-top in everything (this is a good thing), but he tones it down just mildly enough here to make him seem like the smartest actor on the ship, outside of Weaver.

In rewatching the film, and this is with full knowledge of Whedon's career path and my being an ardent follower of it thereof, I was struck by how much the crew of the renegade cargo ship The Betty reminded me of the crew of the renegade cargo ship Serenity in Whedon's later Firefly. Not so much in individual personalities (though there are some obvious parallels on display), but rather in their just being at all. I know that Whedon says he got the idea for Firefly from reading The Killer Angels, but is it possible that his script for Alien: Resurrection, and the screen version devolving from it, contains a premature attempt at assembling Mal and Co.? I have never read any interviews with Whedon where he mentions this, but again, I really don't care what Whedon thinks about this.

But I do...

Rixflix A to Z: Alien³ (1992)

Director: David Fincher // 20th Century Fox; 1:54/2:25 (Special "Assembly Cut" Edition); Color
Crew Notables: Vincent Ward (story), Walter Hill (producer/co-screenplay), Richard Edlund, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr. & George Gibbs (AAN - Visual Effects)
Cast Notables: Sigourney Weaver (Ellen Ripley), Charles S. Dutton (Dillon), Charles Dance (Clemens), Paul McGann (Golic), Brian Glover (Andrews), Ralph Brown (Aaron), Lance Henriksen (Bishop II), Pete Postlethwaite (David)
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Much like "The Company" striving for centuries to capture, contain and exploit the titular extraterrestrial creature of this series, 20th Century Fox has also kept alive an ill-advised cycle of ineptitude in bringing further episodes of Ripley and her creepy pals to the screen for the past 20 years. Directorial changes and abandonments, illness befalling major behind-the-camera talent, reluctant cast members both in the film on purpose and not, wildly escalating budget problems, a crateful of different scripts and story ideas landing all around the bullseye but never on it, and some possibly deliberate misleading of the public on the direction of the series all hit the production of Alien³ like the proverbial ton of facehuggers.

The continued intriguing presence of Sigourney Weaver and some fine acting on the part of a handful of participants makes the film watchable to a certain degree, even if I cannot stand the portrayal of the now dog-transmogrified alien. But where Alien³ truly goes off the rails is in displacing the optimism that lied at the heart of the first two films: through Ripley's intelligence and drive to survive in the first film, and in the emotional spectrum and familial bonding that broke through in the second. Alien³ destroys everything that came before it in the opening scene of the film, by killing her possible future love interest Hicks and her action-adopted "daughter" Newt, and all but destroying her loyal android friend Bishop. At least the filmmakers do their dirty work before we get to see the quartet together as a sharing, loving unit. The characters from the previous film are pretty much dispatched in the same way as the "extra" astronaut at the beginning of Planet of the Apes: D.O.A. Sure, this takes some of the sting out, but it is still heinous.

I'm normally all for accepting each film for what it is, and to not have preconceptions when entering a theatre. Perhaps I'm a better person for trying to behave in that manner these days, but when Alien³ was released in '92, I had, like most of the Alien fanbase, definite preconceptions. We wanted those characters that fought and scraped and survived at the end of Aliens to return, and when the filmmakers chose to wipe them out almost completely from the get-go, it is basically a slap from the hand of a major corporation to the faces of the people that pay its bills, while screaming at them: "We don't give a fuck about you! Now, give us your money!" Suffice to say, they lost me after those initial ten minutes, and only a bored Saturday night out with my friends led me to see the next film in the series. I didn't even bother with looking up a showtime for the battle against the Predator a couple of years ago. (I did just see it a few days ago from Netflix, and I don't think I will be lining up for its sequel, either.) And I have heard that many people have rethought their opinion on this film once they have found out all the on-set problems that led to it being the way it is, and my reaction to that is: did you actually rewatch the film before you "rethought" that opinion? Because when you do, you will see that it still an underwhelming and ultimately disappointing undertaking.

So, why do I have this disc? To be honest, the last time Fox got my money for this film and the next in the series, Alien: Resurrection, was when I saw them in the theatre. I wouldn't even bother getting this pair, but I do have them. But only because Fox has someone else's money instead, and I have these films in an Alien box set that was given to me as a present a few years ago. I thank my benefactor for the first two films in the set, but really, you could have just gotten those for me. Watching Alien³ and Resurrection for this review and the next one are probably the first and last times I will watch these discs. And Fox probably threw your money away to Bill O'Reilly.

Speaking of creatures whose blood is composed of acid...

1993 Academy Awards: 1 nomination (Visual Effects)

Rixflix A to Z: Aliens (1986)

Director: James Cameron (also screenplay/co-story) // 20th Century Fox; 2:17/2:34 (dir.cut); Color
Crew Notables: Walter Hill (co-story), Stan Winston (alien effects creator/2nd unit director), James Horner (AAN, music score), Adrian Biddle (Dir. of Photog.), Ray Lovejoy (AAN - Editor)
Cast Notables: Sigourney Weaver (AAN - Ellen Ripley), Carrie Henn (Rebecca "Newt" Jorden), Michael Biehn (Cpl. Dwayne Hicks), Lance Henriksen (Bishop), Paul Reiser (Carter Burke), Bill Paxton (Pvt. Hudson), William Hope (Lt. Gorman), Jenette Goldstein (Pvt. Vasquez), Al Matthews (Sgt. Apone), Mark Rolston (Pvt. Drake)
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Sometimes when you love one film so very, very much, it makes you extremely reticent when the filmmakers wish to expand the original film into a series, or at the very least, into a sequel. When I wrote about Buckaroo Banzai a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was glad they never went through with the promised sequel, allowing the original flick to stand on its own as a goofy and cherished artifact of its times. But at the time? Hell, I wanted a sequel more than anybody.

Not so with Alien. Even though I loved The Terminator and was damn ready to pretty much follow James Cameron through hell if I had to, I was still more than hesitant at the prospect of anyone making a sequel to my beloved 1979 sci-fi masterpiece. I had the damned thing memorized by 1986, and really didn't need anything, even an official sequel scripted and directed by a director of whom I was more than eager to see more work, to scramble my memories of that film. Still, I knew full well that I would be at that film on opening weekend, and most likely, as it turned out, on opening night, dragging my fleet of friends along with me.

So, what was I worried about? If I still consider Alien to be the superior film, we are talking degrees in the single digits here. We are talking about the difference between an A+ and an A. And if I am more given to Atmospheric Slow-Roasting Mindfucks than I am to Adrenaline-Jolting Action Flicks... well, that's a personal preference. Because as "A-JAFs" go, this one not only showed the world how to do it perfectly, but it continued the string of personal oneupsmanship that has defined Cameron's career since he started out low and cheesy with Piranha II: The Spawning in 1981. Whether this has been a good thing once he hit Titanic is purely subjective (he pretty much lost my faith in him with True Lies, though I am excited about his upcoming dual return to sci-fi), but in Aliens he topped all expectations by dazzling me with stunning set pieces like the crash on the planet surface, making even annoying military stereotypes some of the more engaging characters, scripting some great over-the-top and funny (but only slightly campy) dialogue, and staging the mother of all catfights between Sigourney Weaver's Ripley (a surprising but fully deserving nominee for an Oscar) and that "bitch" of an Alien Queen. And at the time, the expansion from a single threatening alien to an endlessly regenerating brood made it seem like the idea brought to life in the first film was like a first draft, and that Cameron had taken that germ of an idea and blown it up to epic size, showing the true breadth of the danger the aliens posed.

Yes, it turned out I loved Aliens, but watching the original just after the sequel's release reaffirmed my solidarity with Alien and its moodier, darker charms. And as much as Cameron's vision has gradually lost me over the years, I still have a great love for his slicker sequel. If only it had stopped here...

1987 Academy Awards: 2 wins (Best Sound Effects Editing & Best Visual Effects) & 5 other nominations (Best Actress, Art Direction-Set Decoration, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound)

Rixflix A to Z: Alien (1979)

Director: Ridley Scott // 20th Century Fox; 2:; Color
Crew Notables: Dan O'Bannon (screenplay/co-story/visual design consultant), Ronald Shusett (co-story), Jerry Goldsmith (score), Derek Vanlint (cinema.), H.R. Giger, Carlo Rambaldi, Brian Johnson, Nick Allder and Denys Ayling (AAW - Visual Effects), Jean "Moebius" Girard (concept artist)
Cast Notables: Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Veronica Cartwright (Lambert), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), John Hurt (Kane), Ian Holm (Ash), Yaphet Kotto (Parker), Helen Horton (voice of Mother), Bolaji Badejo & Eddie Powell (The Alien).
Cinema 4 Rating: 9

Forget the hotspots and the discotheques. Forget the drugs and booze. In 1981, if I wanted to feel paranoid and nervous, disoriented and fearful, and all within the numbing, time-halting glow of a rapidly pulsating strobe effect, I simply turned off every light in the living room and watched Alien on HBO. And not just once or twice, but about two dozen times over a six month period. That year, if I wasn't watching Mad Max to the same level of obsessiveness, I was watching Alien. Over and over and over...

So many late nights/early mornings drenched in the weirdly flashing glow of the last twenty minutes of that film also left me too wound up to actually sleep, and I would stay up even later constructing my own written scenarios (pounded out on my good old faithful Corona) detailing the further adventures of Ripley as she made her way through the cosmos. Sometimes she would meet up with her fiendish alien nemesis; sometimes the battle would be against other alien races. When Cameron's Aliens came out seven years later, and after I saw it despite an initial bout of hesitation, I was overjoyed, which is something I rarely feel about sequels.

I did not get the chance to see the film on a real theater screen until about a decade after its release, but I already knew almost everything about the film before I ever saw it on cable television. Without the internet in our lives, fandom pretty much relied on two things in those days: fan magazines and word-of-mouth. A classmate of mine in 1979, the year of Alien's release, managed to not only get to the film once, but three times. This was no mean feat since we lived in Eagle River, an official "suburb" of Anchorage, AK about 14 miles outside of the city. Not only was there a complete lack of movie theaters in our town, but there was also no bus service to Anchorage at that time. But my friend had an older brother with a car who would drop his younger sibling off at the theater on his way to his girlfriend's place, so my buddy (named Don) got in his lucky triumvirate of viewings (it was exceedingly easy for a kid to sneak into an R-rated feature in those days). He then duly reported his theatrical findings in great detail to his small group of compadres, myself included, and we were thrilled to the bone with tales of the sea of weird alien eggs, the escape of the gruesome Chestburster through John Hurt's body, and the facial attacks of the smothering Facehuggers (which were all basically larval stages of the eventual monstrous titular alien). To say that we were more than revved up to get to this flick is an immense understatement.

But a trip to the theatre never occurred for me, but I found some solace (though got wound up even more) from a trio of magazines that I would snag at the bookstore in those days: Fantastic Films, Starlog and Famous Monsters of Filmland, then barely hanging on as a decent resource of genre film fascination, but still kicking. I wasn't even aware of its fabulous heyday as a fan's dream world -- I only knew what was in front of me, and even though the photos were only in black-and-white, somehow this lent an even eerier feeling to the proceedings. But what none of these magazines or verbal re-tellings could ever hope to capture was how the film would affect me when I finally ran into a couple years later -- late night, on my own, on HBO -- I was stunned. I was silent for those two hours of terror. I had never seen anything like it before, and while there have been many imitators since, even the films in its own series, nothing, in my eyes, has ever combined the hideously beautiful and the gloriously terrifying in one film the way that Alien did.

1980 Academy Awards: 1 Win (Visual Effects) and 1 Nomination (Art Decoration-Set Decoration)

Post-Xmas Toy Hangover Blues...

So, you've built a 1,045 piece Batmobile out of Legos. Now, what are you going to do for Christmas?

Luckily for me, I've got an awesome girlfriend like Jen, so if I chose to, I could've watched my new three-disc Criterion Collection version of Kurosawa's Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai to those of us who speak a more barbaric tongue). I already had the original Criterion release of this film from several years before, and had watched it numerous times, so I wrestled originally with even placing this title on my Christmas list. After all, lately I have been an advocate of not repurchasing titles that I already own, no matter what extra bonus features were crammed on the new version. In fact, I have gotten away from watching bonus features at all -- most commentaries are boring affairs for films not really worth commenting on in the first place -- and I have taken to weighing a film's price against the film only to judge whether I wish to own it. The bonus features have become gravy to me, and if I choose to watch them later, that's fine, but I will no longer purchase something just because there are ""4 deleted scenes!" on it. (Don't even get me started on the "alternate ending" crap...) It is the film that matters.

But what happens when a company goes over and above the call of duty and sends out the massive tsunami of info that comes with the 3-disc Samurai set? The original release was practically a bare-bones situation, with a rather dry (though richly informative) commentary by film historian Michael Jeck. Add the original U.S. trailer in, and that's it! The new version still includes that material, but adds a second commentary with a quintet of film scholars, a gallery of production stills and posters, more trailers and teasers, and well over THREE hours of documentary footage on the making of the film, the samurai tradition in Japanese film, and an intimate (and lengthy) conversation with Kurosawa-san himself. Oh, yes... there is also a gorgeous 58-page booklet included in the package with essays by top film historians about the master and his masterpiece, which also includes a piece by Toshiro Mifune, the star of the film.

So, yeah, I really had no choice but to include this on my Christmas list blog entry over a week ago. That Jen actually used the list was sweet, and that she got me one of the movies on my list is even sweeter, but her trip to the Pylon also represents the first time that she has actually read anything on this site. (I told her "You really should. You are the female lead character in it.") And the list also came in handy for my Secret Santa at work, who took the cue and slid a copy of Elf my way at the office party last week. Thanks, Secret Santa. Without this disc, I would feel like a cotton-headed ninny-muggins!

Kurosawa and Will Ferrell... who knew those two were connected?

Disapproval Would Be Folly...

Several times over the last couple weeks, people have asked me this question: What is your favorite Christmas movie? Of course, they sometimes ask this when I am decked out in my sweet Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas Jack Skellington silk shirt with the Jack-faced buttons running down the front. Or often they will ask this when I am standing in front of them in my Jack scarf, striped and with Jack's smiling, beguiling face on either end. I am often surprised, though, how many people don't identify Nightmare as a Christmas flick, when it most certainly is one. I am equally surprised at the number of people who have yet to see it.

But Nightmare, while it would seem it is a given, is not my choice. Even though it is one of my very favorite movies, on my list of Christmas movies (this does not include TV specials, mind you) there can really only be one choice: the original 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street (in black and white, thank you very much!) While I am not normally given to the accepted ideas of family in our society, this one gets to me, and while I watch it, nothing becomes more important to me than whether sweet little Natalie Wood (so smart, so unmoved by the fantasy trappings of Christmas) gets the home she has always wanted, and whether her mother will hook up with "Uncle Bob", the lawyer neighbor who has won their hearts, and finally give her a complete family unit again. Oh yeah, and whether she will finally believe that the twinkly-eyed old gentleman named Kris Kringle (played by Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Edmund Gwenn, the most charming Santa ever) who has entered her world is really the Kris Kringle, the Santa Claus that her mother has taught her is nothing but stuff and nonsense. And also whether we, the viewers, believe he is...

I'm telling you, this one gets to me. To use Kevin Smith's term for the manner in which men weep during movies, the room got "dusty" about three times during Miracle on 34th Street for me, and I can't friggin' help it. Jen mocked me just a little for this (though she didn't watch it with me, but did see some of it later in the evening when it ran on TCM), but I can't help it. It's been this way with this movie since I was a kid. Especially when little Susan Walker (Wood) asks her mother (a gorgeous Maureen O'Hara) whether Kris is sad because of all the trouble he is having in the film. She answers, "Yes, I suppose he is..." ---

Oh! Hey! Did a wind whip up or something? Is there a tornado coming this way? Is there something in the air content? Because something is making my eyes water... what the hell? Ah, it got to me again just writing about it. Merry Christmas everyone!

Rixflix A to Z: Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Director: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske // Walt Disney; 1:15; Color
Crew Notables: Lewis Carroll (novels), Bill Peet (co-screenplay)
Cast Notables: Kathryn Beaumont (Alice), Ed Wynn (Mad Hatter), Richard Haydn (Caterpillar), Sterling Holloway (Cheshire Cat), Jerry Colonna (March Hare), Verna Felton (Queen of Hearts), J. Pat O'Malley (Tweedledum, Tweedledee, The Walrus and the Carpenter), Bill Thompson (White Rabbit, The Dodo), Heather Angel (Alice's sister), The Mellomen [Bill Lee, Thurl Ravenscroft, Max Smith, Bob Hamlin] (Card Painters), Stan Freberg (uncredited voice)
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

You might think my rating too high for what is generally considered to be mid-tier Disney, and it is certainly not the most faithful of Lewis Carroll adaptations. But the off-kilter design, the disjointed editing, and a neat snottiness at large in the film conspire to make this a very unique experience when compared against the remainder of the Disney slate. Even the most sober viewing of the film leaves one in a slightly altered state, so it's no wonder that this one was much sought out amongst the college psychedelic set in the 60s and 70s. Other film versions of the Alice books end up being, frankly, staid and boring, even with their all-star casts; the books seem to be far better read on a personal level than acted out by a cast, and when actors do tackle Carroll's wordplay, they often talk down to their audience, which is something Carroll would have never withstood for a second. Disney took the two books, threw away half the chapters from each, shuffled the decks together, and basically gave us a bouncy if mind-twisting romp through Alice's Greatest Hits. And dare I say, it retains some of that scary edge of which the early Disney films reeked. This is not going to be a mere walk in the park, despite the soothing choral music and pastoral setting at the film's opening.

Since it is so very well-known that Alice's adventures exist in a dream world from the beginning, the film never lets us think that she is not dreaming; she is clearly in her own head at all times. And this is precisely why she should be scared. The girl, like all of us, is a mess inside. But she will work out her fears and the conflicted emotions of her adolescence and battle her way through the nonsense, only momentarily surrendering here and there to the madness, as must we all, before plowing forward anew. But, because the film cobbles together the storyline from two different narratives, the cleverly laid-out puzzles in each -- the card game in the first book, and the chess game (who cares if its outcome is impossible without illegality? It's still fun...) in the second -- are tossed aside so that Disney can just toss about three dozen manic inhabitants at the viewer and Alice. Sometimes the screen is simply awash in characters, and with so many non sequiturs flying about on top of Alice's frustrated pleas while she tries to understand what she is doing, where she is going and who she is at all, its easy to lose your own place in the insanity. How I wonder where I'm at...

Sadly, after much hinting and building up by literalizing the poem's oddball verbiage, the Jabberwock never does show up. I think Disney slipped on that count, especially after the build-up, because I would love to see the creature brought to life in animated form, even if he only exists in the language of the poem. And we never get past the first verse of Jabberwocky anyway. But we are given many memorable scenes (some would say definitive) with numerous Carroll creations. My favorite? It's not hard for me to choose: of course, it's the Mad Hatter and his crazed cronies at the tea party. "Mustard? Don't let's be silly! Now, jam! That's another matter..."

1952 Academy Awards: 1 nomination - Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture

Recently Rated Movies #35: It's Showtime, Folks!

Ah, J-horror... little did I know that when I said "yes" to a free year of Showtime and its numerous offspring, that I would be opening the gates to a zillion Japanese ghost movies. Right now, our DVR is only full to about 46% of its capacity, and I have about 16 movies saved on there, of which about 10 are Japanese films of mainly supernatural intent. If you want to find out how I will be spending the next three days while Jen is slaving away at work for the holidays... that's pretty much how...

Of course, the main reason I said "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...", and then licked my chops in the manner of Foghorn Leghorn's weasel nemesis, was that I wanted access to the Masters of Horror series (the first season of which I have been renting; steadfast readers of this blog will have read many of my reviews for those discs already) and the series which almost made me slap down the bucks for the damn channels anyway: Dexter, based on the excellent novel (now a series of novels) Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay about a police forensics expert who just so happens to spend his off-duty hours as a serial killer who hunts, traps and kills... serial killers. I was turned on to the book by my pal Eggy, who remembered a similar plotline of my own that I described to her a couple years before. Talk about not getting on the ball; I'm still kicking myself for not seeing this through. Mr. Lindsay, however, did a far better job of it than I ever could have, so it's all for the best. And now I am able to catch up on all the Dexter episodes that I missed in this, its first season, as well as the second season of Masters, by storing them up from Showtime On Demand, also free with the package. Thus far, I am a little underwhelmed by the new Masters lineup, but Dexter is even better than I hoped... and getting stronger with each succeeding episode...

Speaking of Eggy, watching all of these Japanese spookshows reminds me that Eggy and I spent a swell evening with our pal Elle watching Ju-On, One Missed Call and Ringu, just before I left for California. I imagine that we would have continued having these evenings had I not moved, as I had just discovered via a theatrical trip to The Grudge that Elle and Eggy were more than eager to eat up these movies. Now, every time that I watch one on my own down here, I think of those guys.

Great... now I'm going to be sad, apart from the whole "missing everyone at Christmas" jive. Movies really hit me where it hurts...

The List:
Onmyoji 2 (2003, Showtime) - 6; Yogen [Premonition] (2004, Showtime) - 6; Kibakichi: Bakko-yokaiden (2004, Showtime) - 5; Kansen [Infection] (2004, Showtime) - 5; Gin Gwai 2 [The Eye 2] (2004, Showtime) - 6.

And yeah, before I get a post comment about it, I know The Eye 2 is a Hong Kong film. It's not on the list because I thought it was Japanese; it's on here because I watched it and rated it on IMDB. That's why my regular Recently Rated Movies feature exists...

Psychotronic Ketchup: Anatomy of a Psycho (1961) & Hatchet for a Honeymoon (1970)

It took three tries, and I finally got my chance to see Anatomy of a Psycho. You know that tired rah-rah about "good things come to those who wait"? 'Taint necessarily so...

Somehow, I received two consecutive, damaged shipments of the same title from Netflix regarding the DVD which contains not just Anatomy of a Psycho, but also a film much farther down on my alphabetical to-see Psychotronic list but infinitely more intriguing to me, mainly due to its being directed by the only slightly sadistic Mario Bava, Hatchet for the Honeymoon. Even though Honeymoon ultimately disappoints, it is by far a much better film, and while I have not done the research, I find it incredibly hard to believe that these two films were ever on a double feature bill together -- so disparate they are in both quality, material and audience -- let alone that someone decided to release them together on a DVD. But here they are together on the same disc under the Killer Creatures Double Features banner, even though neither film has a "killer creature" as is implied, unless you mean a certifiably insane killer human (in the case of Honeymoon) and a juvenile delinquent who yells, moans and cries a lot at the supposedly wrongful execution of his brother and then sort of murders his fellow gang member, but only because the knife is already in the guy's stomach at the hands of the "hero" and the loser is going to die anyway (in the case of Anatomy).

That's about the size of it, folks: Anatomy is an extremely low-budget (though that is never a crime in itself; it's all in how you make use of whatever budget you have) juvenile delinquent film with a title that is trying a little too deceptively to play off the then-current (1961) vogue for the word "psycho" (Hmm, I can't imagine why...) The film, directed by the man responsible for the incredibly inept mad-science classic The Unearthly, tracks this kid's development from misunderstood j.d. to full-blown psychotic murderer (outside of the non-murder murder, he does torch an expensive home and gets in a couple of badly staged fights), but it fails mainly in the fact that its star, Ronnie Burns, with his scarred face locked into a crazed sneer lit up by lightning as he leaves the prison, seems insane from the moment he enters the film. The film keeps giving us a similar close-up in a couple points in the film, ostensibly to show us his mental digression, but they shoot his face in the same manner each time (though without the opening lightning).

In fact, his bare midriff shows more emotional range in the film than his face does, considering that he ends up on his back laying across tables or couches in a couple of scenes, where his shirt rides up when any other male makes threats at him or accuses him of bad behavior (like when the cop confronts him). In those scenes, there is a tenuous feeling that this film could explode into full-blown gay porn at any moment, and I do wonder if there is supposed to be some subtext that is implied there. But that would be giving the filmmakers too much credit for actually thinking their way through this film (and this would be a good point to mention that Ed Wood, Jr., King of Automatic Screenwriting, wrote some of the screenplay under a pseudonym). Surprisingly, and I am not worried about giving away anything -- in fact, I recommend that you steer away from this total waste of time, even for bad movie lovers -- the film has an almost feel-good ending for the psycho, and I suddenly started to feel like I'd found a black-and-white version of The Cross and the Switchblade, and I kept waiting for Pat Boone to pop out around the corner in his white bucks (though not with his cock in a cardboard box). No real psycho in this flick, just j.d. hell, and not the good kind.

Honeymoon, on the other hand, sports a married fashion baron with a deep, dark secret: he likes to dress the hottie models that roam about his estate (where his bridal fashion business is also located) up in bridal gowns -- and then kill them. All this while, he remains married to his cold, shrewish but rich wife, who berates him for being less than a man in the sack -- which he is... still, if you are going to be a married fashion baron who kills models in bridal gowns, why not kill the shrew and at least marry one of the hottie models, so that at the end of a hard night of eviscerating, you've got that going on for you at home? He might find it a little more satisfying than the one-sided bickering and berating he gets anytime he even breathes wrong. The problem with this is the maxim with which he conducts his serialized hunting: "A woman should live only until her wedding night, loved once, and then DIE!!" He will get around to the murdering of his actual wife, but first he has to deal with the constantly closing-in police detective who is wise to his disguise and with the very thing that I suggested: a budding romance with one of his models.

Bava shoots this in his florid and wild style, his camera swooshing and crashing everywhere, while the film is naturally loaded with tons of lit candles and eerie shots of the killer's hidden room full of mannequins dressed as unearthly seeming brides. That most of the narrative makes little or no sense dramatically or that the detective should have been able to close in on him weeks before he actually does -- well, none of this matters. There is a lot of fun to be had siding with the killer as he stays one step ahead of the fuzz, and there are many delirious scenes where he believes that the ghost of a certain someone is haunting his every step. It's all style over substance here, and with Bava, that is more than fine.

The third time that the disc arrived, it came from faraway Schenectady (the second attempt came from Georgia), as it appears that for some of these more genre-specific and less current titles, each hub seems to only carry one copy. Before this, I had only run into one broken mailing, and now I have had four in the last month (the latest arrived yesterday). Whether it is an exceptionally busy holiday season Post Office that is throwing these discs about when they get them, or whether it is the cooler weather, I am suddenly deluged with broken discs, and it is really taking away from the value of my membership with Netflix. Especially when it has taken me a month to see six discs, and I am allowed four out at a time. I don't remember this happening last December, but I also was not engaged in a viewing project like I am right now. So, maybe I am being a little hyper-sensitive about the whole mess.

Or maybe I just have a mailman that really hates Netflix. Or that has stock with Blockbuster...

Anatomy of a Psycho (1961)
Dir: Brooke L. Peters
Cinema 4 Rating: 3

Il Rosso Segno della Follia [Hatchet for the Honeymoon] (1970)
Dir: Mario Bava
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Rixflix A to Z: Akira (1988)

Director/Original Comic: Katsuhiro Ôtomo // Studio; 2:04; Color
Crew Notables: Izô Hashimoto & Katsuhiro Ôtomo (screenplay)
Cast Notables: Mitsuo Iwata (Shôtarô Kaneda), Nozumu Sasaki (Tetsuo Shima), Mami Koyama (Kei)
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Hard to believe there was a time, and not that long ago either, when anime (or manga, for that matter) weren't practically household words. At least, not in America. Sure, in the 60s and 70s, some parts of the country got their cracks at early classics like Gigantor, AstroBoy or Speed Racer. Maybe they played at some point in Anchorage, Alaska, but not on my watch. I saw them later on when cable came about and you would get blessed with an episode here and there, but in my youngest days, the only anime show that I recall seeing was a few episodes of Kimba the White Lion. I don't even remember where I saw them (it may have been the UHF channel that also showed sporadic Terrytoons cartoons), but I did all the same. I guarantee you this: I read the TV guide in the Sunday newspaper the way other kids devoured their dad's hidden Playboys. I knew that thing back and forth, trying to steal a few moments with any cartoon I could find. If they were on from the time that I was seven to about fourteen, I would have found them.

Two things spun my head around, making me realize that something incredibly right was happening in those islands not so incredibly far away from Alaska. The first was Battle of the Planets, a repackaged and Americanized version of an anime series originally called, I believe, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (but which is usually referred to with the last word in the title). When it showed up, on ABC Channel 13 on Saturday mornings I believe, I was astounded. Not that it was so great, just that it was so different from the dreck that dominated the little screen animation-wise in those days. We knew it was something new and special, but that didn't stop our juvenile attitudes from mocking it over and over again everytime we watched it, though my youngest brother Chris loved it without reservation. The second was a video that I found at Video City one morning, which made me tilt my head like a confused puppy and figure "What the heck!" The movie was called Winds of Change, and was a Japanese animated version of Ovid's Metamorphoses. From what I understand, the film actually had an international construction, but was produced in Japan -- at the time, while some quality was lacking overall, the keyword was "different" -- it wasn't formulaic Disney animation (however swell the work, the House of Mouse was rather downgraded in my mind at the time); Winds of Change represented something unique to me at the time.

Pop ahead a few years, with those series and that movie long lost to me, or at least subsided into memory's hammock for a comfy slumber. The word is out that there is something incredible hitting art house screens around the country, and the film is made in the hot and growing new genre called anime. What? Something different, something exciting, something NOT HOLLYWOOD? Count me in, and I was, and I saw Akira. I thought it was incredible. Or rather, I thought the design and the animation and the action and the violence were incredible. However, I found the characters annoying and the plotline and motivations confusing beyond belief. The ending made little or no sense to me. And the endlessly repeated cries of "Tetsuo!!!!" and "Kaneda!!!" corny and overdone to the point of nausea. In other words, I loved it. I found the manga version, and was thrilled beyond belief -- Katsuhiro Otomo's world gone mad started to make more and more sense to me, and I purchased the video as soon as it became available.

The surprising part is that Akira did nothing to further open the world of anime to me. I took cracks at a couple of series when they hit the market, but neither really thrilled me. I saw My Neighbor Totoro and liked it very much, but I didn't really get into Miyazaki until my pal Tatsuya hooked me on a purely Japanese copy of Mononoke-hime (my conversion to his camp is now full and total). Not long after, I fell into deep, abiding (and continuing) amour with Cowboy Bebop, but that is a story for another time.

The truth of the matter is that I am an anime poseur. It's not that I am pretending to like it; it's just that I am incredibly picky about the series into which I allow myself to get dragged. I loved Neon Genesis: Evangelion for about the first two-thirds of the run, and then the last few episodes pissed me off so much, I don't know if I will take the plunge again. Lately, I've been taking hits off a couple of the horror-related series, and have attempted a few episodes of some lighter, comedic series -- but I know full well that I will never surrender fully into the arms of anime.

Unless those videos are in the arms of one of those little cosplay cat-girls with the fake ears and tails. Now, that's entertainment...

How did I miss this one? I'll tell you...

As much as I try to not get involved in this whole "Christmas rush" nowadays, I couldn't help it. I had some purchases to make -- and damn it! I was going to get out there and take care of it! So, Jen and I hit the densely packed freeways and hit that big box store that steals my heart and wallet away every time: Best Buy.

When I lived in Alaska, Best Buy was about 15 minutes away on the bus, and my friends often went there as well, so I practically lived in the place. Here in OrCo, there are Best Buys around, but I have to go a little bit further and work harder to get to them. As a result, I rarely get over to Best Buy, so a trip there leaves me a little flabbergasted when I walk through the doors. In its way, due to the rarity of my appearances, every time I go to Best Buy, the moment almost become like a second Christmas for me. The prices are better than most places, and the selection is excellent, if a little confusing at times. And everything shines and glistens with that New Technology Glow, practically shouting "Purchase me! Me! Me!", whether I am interested in picking it up or not.

My intentional purchases for the evening were done in mere seconds, but then I started to look around to satisfy my own curiosity. Scanning the Science-Fiction section, I saw a cover with cheesy "monster-ific" lettering that shouted these words at me: "The Classic SCI-FI ULTIMATE COLLECTION"!!!

What the hell? I hadn't heard about this set. Just a couple months ago, I went onto Amazon to look up the status of one of my favorite sci-fi flicks, The Incredible Shrinking Man, because I had been set to wondering why it had not been released yet on DVD. The Mole People, a far inferior but still schlockily fun flick which also sprang from Universal's 50s run, was another one that I looked up, and the results for both were zip, zero, nada. Nothing at all except some VHS copies that I could purchase from yokels across the country, but absolutely zero in the way of a disc format. And yet, HERE on this collection that I was suddenly gripping with shock and awe in my cold, little hands (Hey, it actually hit 35 degrees here the other night! Go ahead and write in, Alaskan pals, and call me a whiner... heh, heh...), both of those movies were lodged onto a trio of discs with three other films, two of which I quite like: Tarantula (which is pretty fun and which also has Clint Eastwood in a very early uncredited role), The Monolith Monsters and Monster On the Campus, which I must admit I have never actually seen. All of the films are short -- the longest two being only 81 minutes each -- so Universal crammed two each on the first two discs, but then inexplicably left Campus plenty of room on the third disc. Why, when there are still other old sci-fi/horror films in Universal's possession that could be placed on there?

Of course, I don't know if this was entirely a decision on the part of Universal, because there is another partner at play here, which is also the reason why I couldn't find word of this in the locales that I searched on the net. The set was released as a "Best Buy Exclusive", and there is even a fourth disc inside the set called Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far. So, the set is not just designed to drive the monster-loving public from Amazon and its brethren and over through the doors or webportal of Best Buy, but is also made to launch a little marketing action to the captive audience. Clever... don't know if this type of advertising works, because the audience that is going to purchase this set is fairly select, and I would warrant that many of them already frequent the Sci-Fi Channel and have more than a nodding acquaintance with Galactica. But, what the heck, hey? Do what you've gotta do, marketers -- as for me, I'm going to toss the extra disc out because I don't want to know much about what has happened on the show until I actually get caught up on watching it. But nice try...

Looking back, especially after checking on Amazon again and noticing that there is indeed an entry for this set on the site, though sans cover photo (because you can only buy it secondhand on Amazon), I probably had pulled this title up when I looked before, only I didn't pay it any attention because of the lack of that photo. It will teach me to pay a little closer attention when researching titles in the future. And it is also going to teach me that I need to make my constitutionals to Best Buy a little more frequent than every six months or so.

Now excuse me, I've got some old pals to catch up with...

Joseph Barbera 1911-2006

Three Words:

Rixflix A to Z: Airplane! (1980)

Directors/Screenwriters: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams & Jerry Zucker // Paramount; 1:26; Color
Crew Notables: Elmer Bernstein (music)
Cast Notables: Robert Hays (Ted Striker), Julie Hagerty (Elaine), Robert Stack (Rex Kramer), Leslie Nielsen (Dr. Rumack), Lloyd Bridges (McCroskey), Peter Graves (Captain Oveur), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Roger Murdock), Lorna Patterson (Randy), Stephen Stucker (Johnny), Kenneth Tobey (Air controller Neubauer), Barbara Billingsley (Jive-speaking lady), Jill Whelan (Lisa Davis), Joyce Bulifant (Mrs. Davis), Jonathan Banks (Gunderson), Ethel Merman (Lt. Hurwitz), David Leisure (First Krishna), Jimmie Walker (Windshield Wiper Man), Frank Ashmore (Victor Basta), Howard Jarvis (Man in taxi), Otto the Auto-Pilot (Himself), Jim Abrahams (Religious Zealot #6), James Hong (Japanese general), Gregory Itzin (Religious Zealot #1), Maureen McGovern (Nun), Charlotte Zucker (Make-up lady), David Zucker (Ground crewman #1), Jerry Zucker (Ground crewman #2), Kitten Natividad (Bouncing topless woman on plane).
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

It is a most surprising moment. After the passengers on the seemingly doomed jet that provides the main setting for this lowbrow parodic masterpiece turn a blind eye to the unconscious bodies of first the navigator, then the co-pilot, and finally the captain being dragged to the rear of the plane (and all after much turbulence has been felt), stewardess Elaine (played with tiny-voiced blankness by an excellent Julie Hagerty) asks meekly if anyone knows how to fly a plane. The cabin erupts into chaos! People running, screaming, jumping over seats, starting fights with other passengers, throttling one another! And then, running to midscreen and stopping to turn towards the camera, is the body of a woman -- the topless body of a woman, I must add -- head unseen, just a torso -- and she jumps up and down screaming, while her tremendously sized breasts bounce up and down as if the Harlem Globetrotters were conducting a dribbling clinic. Then she runs offscreen, and we are returned to the chaos of the cabin.

I am always amazed when people tell me of their perceptions of films when they recall them from their youth. My good pal Robear told me once that he grew up believing The Wizard of Oz was totally in black-and-white, because they didn't have a color TV growing up. When he saw the film years later, he was astounded. Likewise, with Airplane!, my girlfriend Jen told me that she had only seen the film on television, and that it was a complete shock to her when she saw the film on video. If the film were R-rated, she might somehow be prepared for such an occurrence; after all, with that rating, you usually suspect that much randiness or foul language has been cut out when edited for television. But Airplane! is PG-rated, so expectations were probably considerably lowered for her in the raunch-expectation department.

Now, I am a good dozen years older than Jen, and I saw the film in a theatre the week of its release, and while, yes, the breasts shocked me (though pleasantly, I must point out), it was not as unexpected as all that, since PG-rated films often could get by with not just a spot of naughty but fairly benign nudity in those days, but also the occasional F-bomb. This was in the days before America went even more insane with the prudishness and media fear, and suddenly everything became dangerous to "the children" and we placed them all in protective bubbles that were hosed down every three hours with anti-bacterial agents, with the parents ever mindful to scrub carefully around the blinders, earplugs and mouthcorks.

No, the real shocker for me upon seeing Airplane! for the first time was its manic brilliance. I was not prepared in the least. I had no idea who these guys (ZAZ -- Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker) perpetrating this silliness were, and as for the actors, I knew Mssrs. Stack, Nielsen, Bridges and Graves were in the film, but I, like much of the world, knew them for stolid TV drama and cop shows, not for deadpan comedy. I knew the film was a spoof going in, but I didn't know the level to which this flight would climb. I was caught in its fart-spouting tailwind, completely by surprise, and I loved it enough to book two more flights before it left the theatres for the blue skies of the video world. Not long after the film, Ross and Gary, the two clerks at Video City who helped stoke my video insanity, tossed me a copy of Kentucky Fried Movie, and that was it. I was sold on ZAZ, and while their contributions to the world of comedy have run hot and cold over the intervening 25 years or so, they are still lurking about, making oddball parodies, sometimes separately, sometimes together.

The other night, I put in Airplane!, as I had not watched it for a good while and I had just snagged the "Don't Call Me Shirley" edition of the DVD. And yeah, it was as good, if not better, than ever. So many quotable lines, many of which have become part of my gang's lexicon. And yeah, there were those tits running around the cabin.

They caught me by surprise again.

Yeah, I Sat Through It Again: A*P*E (1976)

A*P*E (1976)
Director: Paul J. Leder
TC4P Rating: 2/9

"Imagine. Almost 36 feet tall... wow..." - Freighter mate on ship transporting A*P*E across the ocean at start of film.

You are going to run into this film on just about any "So Bad You've Gotta See It!"-type of site or book... and yeah, it is... and yeah, you gotta see it. Its fecundity is only matched by its stupidity, but in its tattered, zipper-up-the-back way, its actually quite clever. But only if director Paul Leder actually meant the film to be this bad. Could there be a chance that this chintzy, decrepit South Korean production is actually the most brilliant spoof in the history of movies? A film that not only mocks giant ape movies and current movie trends, but does it in the way that most common citizens "think" of or expect giant ape movies to be? Is the entire film a complete put on, and to a large degree, a cynical attempt to flip off the audience (which the big simian does at one point, though story-wise, he is actually flipping off the attacking military helicopters) and separate you from your money at the same time?

Hard to tell, but I'm banking on it just being a dumb, bad example of low-budget inept filmmaking. Not just a stumbling attempt to remake King Kong (and definitely tied to the fact that Dino de Laurentiis was legally filming his own remake around the same time for release in the same year), all the while mocking the big guy within the film to show the distance between the two apes, A*P*E also takes aim at a couple of other cultural phenomenons of the 1970s.

In the opening sequence of the film, after the ape (who is never given a proper nickname in the course of its action -- a supreme mistake on the part of Leder -- ALWAYS name your monster...) tears apart the bathtub-grade ocean liner in which he is being transported from his unseen and unremarked upon island home, the ape then immediately, without any buildup or reason, battles a giant shark to the death. Well, it would be "to the death", but the giant shark had clearly been dead long before the cameras started rolling, and the guy in the ape-suit has to do a lot of splashing and thrashing about with the shark's body in the shallow waters in which he is standing to make us believe even for a second that water is still flowing through the shark's gills, thus allowing the fish to breathe. Which the ape-suit actor absolutely fails at accomplishing. But there, in the first two minutes of the movie, Leder has not only invoked the imagery of King Kong in the viewers' minds, but has also included Jaws, of which there was still quite a mania in the media at the time.

The other cultural reference? This is never mentioned -- at least, I have yet to run across it -- but while many sites (including IMDB) note the title as Ape, every video copy I have ever run across (and every film guide as well) has given the film's proper name as A*P*E. Since the film was made (and takes place) in South Korea, to me it seems to be quite obvious that the title is a reference to one of the biggest TV shows of the era (or any era, for that matter): M*A*S*H, the show (and book and movie) with military stars between the letters of its titular acronym and which also took place in Korea. If, indeed, this is intentional and meant subliminally, then it is by far the most subtle thing that Mr. Leder ever attempted in his career.

On top of title concerns and clumsy film mash-ups, Leder also chose to make the film in that cherished format which gets a resurgence now and then, especially when filmmakers are exceedingly desperate for attention: 3-D. Now, I love 3-D, but for much of mankind, it's more the idea of 3-D that is so agreeable, not necessarily the execution. I have yet to see this film in 3-D, but it is easy to see the bits that are supposed to thrill you in this manner. Arrows, helicopters... all manner of effluvia come flying at the screen and are meant to rock you back in your seat.

And speaking of rock... there is the finale of the film where the ape engages the army in a massive battle, and the monstrous ape flings a series of rocks down from his mountaintop stand. Yes, there are visible wires on the rocks as they glide not so smoothly towards the camera, just as there are visible wires on just about every flying thing in this movie. But the beautiful part is that Leder (who also edited the film) uses the exact same gliding rock shot three times in a row! Talk about filmmaking economy! Best of all are the shots of the soldiers walking straight out at the audience, stabbing their rifles in your face over and over again. This makes little sense unless the audience is supposed to have the ape's viewpoint, and if they did, they would be looking down on the soldiers. In other words... brilliance.

I could literally fill this blog for days remarking on the problems with size and scale in this film. Yes, one can imagine he is "almost 36 feet tall... wow...", but not when he is suddenly towering over 20-story tall buildings. But this film is not about such minor concerns. It's about worldly matters and heartfelt emotions. When the ape meets his fate at the hands of the cruel military, the third-rate Fay Wray actress character (played by a pre-Growing Pains Joanna Barnes, known here as "DeVarona") mentions sadly that "It's just too big for a small world like ours."

Instead, I'd like to yet again invoke the words of the freighter mate, who followed up his "wow..." remark with this one of stunned surprise when A*P*E escapes the freighter:

"Oh... shit..."

RTJ

Psychotronic Ketchup: The Anniversary (1968)

"There is one thing that I will not tolerate in my house, Karen. And that is the shouting of abuse." - Mrs. Taggart (Bette Davis)

No, but what Mrs. Taggart does tolerate in her house is every other form of abuse, whether mental, physical, auditory or visual. Oh, and Mrs. Taggart prefers that she is the one doing the abusing. Sure, you can get your digs in at her, but she willingly takes it without flinching in the least, because she has already prepared the next step in your decline towards mental instability. If she does flinch, it is merely affected, so that she can set you up for your eventual fall.

That Mrs. Taggart, played with scene-chewing coolness by the Divine Miss Davis, all the while sporting a designer tear-drop patch (in colors to match her wardrobe!) over a seemingly shot-out left eye, hands out this abuse is one thing. That she does this willingly and without the slightest bit of remorse to her three sons, their significant others and her grandchildren is another ballgame altogether. She is the ultimate bitch-mother; really, she is almost more of a mad scientist in her approach to her children's suite of madness, and you can almost imagine that somewhere in her mansion she has a hidden laboratory laden with test tubes and beakers bubbling away, helping her to plot her ongoing campaign against the functional family unit. The kids are over for the anniversary of her marriage to her not-so-dearly departed husband, and as always, she takes the opportunity to use each one's emotions against the others, even though they all work for her in the family housing business.

They have big surprises in store for Mum, they do: one arrives with his gorgeous fiancée to announce their wedding and his separation from her power, and the middle one arrives with his wife and a quartet of bratty grandkids in tow, and with one in the oven, to boot. Their shocker for her is that they are emigrating to Canada to wrest control of their senses away from Mum once and for all. And the other son? Well, he doesn't really have any new surprises in store for her -- but he does go on a cross-dressing and panty-snatching rampage that leads to numerous complications for the other characters. Of course, Mrs. Taggart has surprises for them, too; mainly, that she has a response figured out for just about any eventuality, and is always two steps ahead of them at any given moment.

She is also cruel beyond regard: she allows her middle son and his already unstable wife to believe that their entire brood were killed in a car accident, just to get them to leave the house for a while. This is the blackest of family comedies -- yes, it is a comedy, and at times, it is hilarious -- you are shocked by some of what Mrs. Taggart says, but then you will have a guilty little chuckle over it as well. Late in the film, there is the revelation that one of the characters may have lost a baby through miscarriage due to Mrs. Taggart's onerous fiddling. When they accuse her of this occurrence, her response is a tossed-off jab about the odd shape of the mother's ears and how the baby is better off without them being passed on to it. Any sensible person would call her out for this added bit of cruelty, as well as everything that preceded it, but there isn't a sensible person left in the Taggart household. Mum made damn sure of that a long time ago.

The World According to Jim should be this much fun.

The Anniversary (1968)
Director: Roy Ward Baker (Seven Arts-Hammer Studios)
Cinema 4 Rating: 7