Recently Rated Movies: Classical Beach Boys, Star Wars for Girls, and a Tragic Son

Death in Venice (1971)
Dir.: Luchino Visconti
TC4P Rating: 6/9

I am woefully unarmed in any discussion involving Thomas Mann's writing. Despite everything I have read in my life, he is a blind spot. I am able to reel off the names of his three or four most well-known books, and know just enough about him to help me in crossword puzzles, but that is all. I am willing to admit that I have not read the man, or Mann, as it were. Therefore, I was absolutely unprepared for watching Italian director Luchino Visconti's film version of Mann's 1912 novella, Death in Venice.

As part of my Tower of Film project, which I wrote about in great detail a few years ago and which is the now the chief guiding force behind what movies I choose to view (though not the only criteria), Death in Venice came up as a selection for the year 1971 based on its nomination at the 1972 Oscars for Best Costume Design, as well as its nomination for the Palme d'Or at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. Part of the problem in watching films from far behind, long after they have come out, and yet still trying to approach them with a blank state of mind, is going in without being affected by the acclaim and recognition (or conversely, derision and hatred) the film received before you got to see it. Such knowledge can influence your opinion positively or negatively. You can blindly accept that all of the 4-star reviews and nominations are automatically correct. You can also enter the film cynically and believe that "nothing could be that good," and leave the film with the notion that they must have been a right bunch of fuckwits to think this movie was anything worthwhile. In both cases, it can prevent you from thinking through the film for yourself. The biggest part of watching a film is actually watching the film.

Because of my then-lack of knowledge regarding Mann's story, I did not know what I was in for with Death in Venice. I did read up on a synopsis of the novella before I sat down to watch it the other day, and it jibes pretty closely with that of the film (with one minor change I will mention in a moment). A middle-aged writer named Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Vienna on vacation and becomes enamored, from a distance, by the singular beauty of a teenage Polish boy named Tadzio. As time passes, Gustav runs across the boy time and again in public settings and comes to be obsessed with the teenager. So far, so creepy. He never speaks to or touches Tadzio, but he does begin to follow him about the city, and his family becomes increasingly aware of this intrusion. Meanwhile, a cholera plague is developing in the city, and Gustav not only begins to notice the city falling apart, but captures the virus himself. The more his obsession with Tadzio grows, the more Gustav worries about his own looks, and takes to having his hair darkened and wearing makeup in public. Eventually, Gustav sits on a beach chair and watches Tadzio get beaten up by another boy on the beach. Tadzio wades into the water, stares back at Gustav, but as Gustav attempts to rise and meet the boy, Gustav slumps sideways on his chair in death.

Director Visconti changed Gustav's profession from writer to composer, and then loaded his version with the music of another Gustav -- Mahler, that is, after whom Mann, an acquaintance of Mahler, supposedly based his character's physical description and first name. The composer's music dominates the entire film to the point that even if I were the most ardent Mahler fan, I might be sick of it by the end. Assuredly, it fills one's ears with glorious sound equal to and even beyond the measure of the cinematography, settings, and costumes that dance before your eyes (the Oscar nom is well deserved). Sadly, for me, despite the excellence of those separate elements, Death in Venice went on far too slowly and too long, and I grew restless for its conclusion. And take it from me; I find L'Avventura to be pleasantly paced.

This is where I part ways with the popular, cultural acceptance of Death in Venice. I don't find the story interesting in the least. I understand the metaphor at play here (Gustav, an artist, is driven to distraction, while his world crumbles around him, more with the ideal of true beauty and not necessarily with a mere child), but I did not enjoy spending two-plus hours with what would appear to modern society as a budding pedophile creeping about a historic city to steal another surreptitious glimpse as a boy a quarter of his age. While I am used to be complicit in other acts of voyeurism as seen through the eyes of the protagonist/antagonist in many, many other films (Hitchcock, De Palma, and many noir films as prime examples), in this case, I had a sense of great unease in the process.

And yet, I do find much to commend in the film. Apart from elements that I already lauded earlier in this review, Dirk Bogarde, an actor who has grown on me immensely over the past decade as I finally got a chance to see his body of work, is a fine choice for Gustav, even if he is largely silent for much of the film. Physically, the role suits him to a T. As for Visconti, I had only seen three of his fourteen films before watching Death in Venice: his first film, Ossessione (1943), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), and his Italian political epic, The Leopard (1963) I ranked all three of these films as "8" (out of 9 on my scale), having enjoyed all of them greatly (and all for very different reasons, as they exist in quite different genre). Death in Venice, unfortunately, didn't catch me the same way, but its influence is already so widespread (operas and other homages in literature and film), that it doesn't need me to help it along. It will be just fine without me paying a revisit.

Strange Magic (2015)
Dir.: Gary Rydstrom
TC4P Rating: 5/9

In a interview made in tangent with the release of Strange Magic, producer George Lucas noted that he had already made Star Wars for 12-year-old boys. He wanted Strange Magic to be for 12-year-old girls. This is odd, because most of the 12-year-old girls that I knew when Star Wars came out (I was 12 myself at the time, you sickos) loved Star Wars as much as the boys. Not that I have done a scientific study, but based on what I saw around me back then and moving forward through Jedi, nearly every kid in 1977, no matter the gender, was crazy about that film. And has been ever since.

My immediate question back to Mr. Lucas would be, "Why didn't you just give Leia her own lightsaber in Star Wars, and then Strange Magic wouldn't have to have been made at all?" Seriously, why make this?

This one was arduous. I mean, really tough to get through. Supposedly inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (in that there are fairies, elves, and sprites in a dark forest and much talk about love potions in it), Strange Magic is stuffed to its spiracles with all manner of classic magical beings, bugs, reptiles, squirrels, and whatever other small woodland creatures they could imagine in an extremely lush forest setting. It looks marvelous -- apart from the more human faces on the fairies, which show so little emotional range I was instantly reminded of The Polar Express -- and their world is very inviting at first, which is part of why sitting through nearly 100 minutes of cliched dialogue and trite situations is so very draining. I guess they thought that Pixar gets away with longer running times in animated films all the time, so why can't we. The difference is that Pixar (apart from the Cars films) has interesting stories and characters with real life and personalities built into them.

Then there is the music. Characters break into song at every possible moment, and often with just the first couple lines of a song, or the first verse and chorus, or just the chorus of something. There are songs I love here and songs that I hate as well, but it doesn't matter; they seem to be from the George Lucas playlist. I have a hard time believing that 12-year-old girls in 2015 are going to be familiar with many of the music snippets from the '50s, '60s and '70s. There are current songs in the mix as well, such as Lady Gaga's Bad Romance and Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Crazy in Love, but they are definitely in the minority here. The net they cast musically is so wide and scatterbrained that none of it makes a lick of sense when jammed together. I guess that if a kid watching this gets to learn a little about older music and decides to do the research into discovering more, then all the better, but within the film, the stew of music really doesn't flow very well and just makes me visualize someone just randomly flipping through an iPod while the soundtrack was being created.

And yet, every once in a while, Strange Magic's magic would work strangely on me. I chuckled at a line here or there that was delivered by a couple of the side characters, even if their type has been better represented in nearly every other animated film ever made that had a main villain with toadies at his beck and call. Design-wise, my favorite character was the white, mouse-ish imp that plagues the heroes even though it is clearly meant to be lovable. As I usually do, I enjoyed Alan Cummings' voice as the Bog King, but I preferred when he was singing rather than hearing him spit out such stiff lines of dialogue. There are snippets of the musical sequences where I can see what they were going for, such as when they finally fully use the title song by ELO during the big romantic awakening between the lead characters. The film breaks its ADHD tension and settles down for a couple of minutes. The characters and the song actually seem to work together, the scenery is lovely and moonlit, and the romance of the scene is pretty effective. And then the film jumps back to its lyrics-dropping, manic self.  

While I am all for everybody being in love in whatever combination they so please in real life, I can see the more morally uptight twitching their noses at the combinations proposed throughout Strange Magic as more proof that Hollywood is trying to indoctrinate their kids into some form of bestial nuptials administered by Satan himself. Not that I believe any of that b.s., but it is easy sometimes to see where the Huckabees, Santorums, and Bachmans of the world get their dim-witted, knee-jerk fire. You know, all it takes is just one film with a frog making out with a mushroom, and we are all doomed for the pits of Hades.


Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015)
Dir.: Brett Morgen
TC4P Rating: 7/9

Goddamnit, at this point I don't care if it was a suicide or a covered-up death by misadventure or murder. There seem to be scores of documentaries or docudramas out there now about Kurt Cobain leaving this void, and I am sure many more will be heading our way in the future. The Cobain doc machine has become a cottage industry of its own, almost to the point where I start to wonder if Nirvana and Courtney Love are almost encouraging the continued controversy around the supposed mystery.

Of course, I don't really believe that. (Or do I?) To do so would add me to that particular group of trolls that respond to every article in which it is mentioned that Cobain definitely committed suicide with accusations that the writer must be getting paid by Love (or with some far more graphic form of compensation) to say things that point away from conspiracy theories regarding her involvement or outright direct responsibility for his death.

The obstacle with any film about Cobain is that his death will eventually override it. You can delve into his past all you want, but the ultimate tragedy of his life fairly stains everything. After all, these films would likely not be made about his life without what happened at the end of it, and all that he created in his lifetime are likewise soaked in it. Things that even might have appeared loving or innocent get suffused with the shadow of that ending.

Cobain: Montage of Heck is not going to block out the cries of those who feel he was either murdered by Love or that she was at least involved in covering up his murder. In fact, it may turn up the volume on those cries. This is because Montage of Heck has the full cooperation of Cobain's family, including his daughter Frances Bean, and Love herself. Nothing sets off a Love-hater more than Love herself showing up, flapping her gums, and continuing her assumed inconsistency. (Myself, I am no fan of Love's, except to say that I thought she was exceptional in The People vs. Larry Flynt, a film that I adore.)

Kurt's death is barely mentioned just before the credits, but as I said, his suicide (yes, I said it) hangs over every second of the film. Taking its title from a sound collage Cobain created in 1988, Montage of Heck is composed of interviews with family and friends, animated recreations of moments in his life, unreleased live footage including behind the scenes footage from the acclaimed MTV Unplugged performance, and a steady parade of Cobain's diary clippings, notes, drawings, and song lyrics. To director Bret Morgen's credit, we get to see all sides of Cobain's personality, the beautiful and the ugly, the truly inspired and the merely profane, and as a father both loving and ambivalent. We get to understand exactly why he turned to heroin, but like any story involving the narcotic, it is never portrayed as glamorous in the least, especially when we see how idiotic and downright filthy Cobain and Love are under its influence. (I can't even imagine the smell that must have permeated that home.)


For me, I am still mad that I got cheated out of more new Cobain music after In Utero, which I still feel is one of the best albums ever released, and which showed dramatic progression from what Nirvana put out on its first two already excellent discs. Cobain's Beatle-esque sense of melody was ever-growing, and it actively disgusted me at first that we were not going to ever know what lay ahead musically. Sure, Cobain may have crashed and burned eventually in some other way. Maybe he would have become a shell of his former self, like an updated version of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett. Or he could have cleaned up his life, found inner peace, and his muse may have departed at the same time.

Back to reality: he is gone from this world all the same. The question is, do I want to accept he is gone forever and then use films like Montage of Heck as tribute and testament to a lost artist of great promise and talent? Or do I want to, twenty years after his passing, remain enraged to the point of boiling over because of an assumed cover-up of murder or at least rather loose investigation into a mysterious death? At the risk of upsetting all the drama-thrivers in the world (goddamnit, they are legion these days), I think that I will choose the more peaceful path...

Zappa Still Alive in "Roxy the Movie"

Roxy the Movie (2015)
Dir.: Frank Zappa
TC4P Rating: 7/9

Except for my brother Otis, I often feel quite alone in my regard for Frank Zappa, especially in 2015. Some of my friends have Zappa in their collections, but nobody that I am aware of listens to him on a regular basis like I do. And except for when I am with my brother, I have no one else in my life with whom to discuss Zappa and his work.

While I was aware of Zappa when I was a bit younger (I remember being fascinated by him when he hosted one of the more notorious episodes of Saturday Night Live), I did not own one of his albums until 1980. After hearing the song Dancing Fool on Dr. Demento's show, I purchased my first copy of Sheik Yerbouti on double LP (with that iconic cover photo of Frank in Arab garb), and I never looked back. Within a year, I owned seven more of his albums. I kept buying even more albums, anything that I could find in our local record stores. I followed every move Zappa made in the press, including his political misadventures, and it just made me feel even more connected to this music from what truly had to be another universe, though he was (tragically) human as anyone else, just prodigiously, ridiculously more talented and outspoken. At a garage sale in the mid-'80s, I picked up the very first Mothers of Invention LP, Freak Out, and after that, it was just a not so simple matter of filling in the gaps, owing to how crazily prolific he was, both in his lifetime and posthumously. Tupac has nothing on Frank.

It is now some thirty years later, and I have nearly every Zappa album -- official and otherwise -- around ninety albums in some form or another, LP, disc, or digital. I have read numerous biographies on the man and even his own autobiography, books of analysis and criticism of Zappa's music output, and magazines devoted to his legacy. The Zappa Wiki Jawaka is a regular online destination for research for me, and I also regularly listen to The Zappa Podcast, released sporadically throughout the year, which is the true apotheosis of Zappa nerdom. Zappa, like Lincoln, is never far from my mind.

And like many Zappa fanatics, it is the hope of discovering missing artifacts and long dormant music that spurs us through the years. For some, one of these artifacts being dangled on the end of a forty year old stick is Roxy the Movie, a concert documentary built from a quartet of performances in L.A.'s Roxy Theatre in December of 1973. The shows featuring the music of one of Zappa's justly renowned and finest ensembles were available on a double LP called Roxy and Elsewhere in 1974, along with selected tracks in the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore series. (And even more from two of the shows on a 2014 release called Roxy by Proxy.) But what had happened to the movie that was being filmed during that set of shows?

Sound problems, man. Really, synchronization problems. Something got messed up, the timing on the sound in relation to the image went out of whack, and it took forty years (with shifting focus on Zappa's part until his death in 1993) to figure the mess out and release a finished film out of it. Editor John Albarian was brought in to sort through the wreckage. As he puts it in the liner notes, " Four shows multiplied by four cameras multiplied by 80 minutes equates to about 21 hours of picture and sound that needed to be sunk together but couldn't due to their difference in speed." It took him over eight weeks to figure out what needed to be done to get the film and sound to play together nicely. Then he had to cut the film together.

And what we have is what we didn't have before. Criticism is fairly useless, because you can't go back and have Frank do it all over again. We were missing this, and now we get to see it in all of its ragged glory. If you are not already a convert to the cult of Zappa, I am not sure if maybe Baby Snakes is the better entry point film-wise, but Roxy the Movie does show off one incredible band on some of Zappa's most complex (and therefore, difficult to play) pieces.

The Band:

• Napoleon Murphy Brock (flute, tenor saxophone, vocals)
• George Duke (keyboards, synthesizer, vocals)
• Bruce Fowler (trombone)
• Tom Fowler (bass guitar)
• Ralph Humphrey (drums)
• Chester Thompson (drums)
• Ruth Underwood (percussion)
• Frank Zappa (lead guitar, percussion, vocals)

Zappa, after discussing sound problems with the audience (certainly presciently), launches into a discussion of marital aids that leads into Penguin in Bondage. Next is the percussion-heavy T'Mershi Duween, followed by a medley jamming together The Dog Breath Variations and a section of Uncle Meat. Excellent renditions of RDNZL and Inca Roads give the entire band a workout before leading into one of my favorite numbers from the film, Echidna's Arf (of You), with its manic start-and-stop rhythms. 

Most impressive for me in the film was getting to see Ruth Underwood attempt some insanely intricate vibraphone, marimba, and xylophone parts in several songs. This is especially true in the next number, Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?, where Frank even calls attention to her at one point when it is her turn to shine (though she has already been going crazy on percussion the entire time). She is clearly very caught up in the concert and has a definite rapport with Zappa onstage. 

Next up is Cheepnis, a number clearly close to Zappa's monster-movie loving heart (and mine). He introduces the number with a lengthy discussion of the Roger Corman film, It Conquered the World (that I just watched again right before Halloween), including a description of its absolutely silly monster. As Frank describes it, "The monster looks sort of like an inverted ice-cream cone with teeth around the bottom. It looks like a... like a teepee or... sort of a rounded off pup-tent affair, and, uh, it's got fangs on the base of it. I don't know why but it's a very threatening sight. And then he's got a frown and, you know, ugly mouth and everything..." Napoleon Brock Murphy's lead vocals tell us the tale, but the middle section with the squeaky vocals describing the giant poodle attack (my favorite part of the song) is completely missing from this version, though the full song does appear on Roxy and Elsewhere. [Note: The poster art (and blu-ray cover art) for Roxy the Movie is itself a takeoff on the original poster for It Conquered the World.]

The show closes with a quite lengthy (17 minutes) version of Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church). Zappa stresses that he wants to make sure they get this take right, and tells the audience, "This is a hard one to play," and then adds with a smile (even though he does play guitar during it), "That's why I don't play it." Clearly meant to stretch the limits of his orchestra, the entire band is up to the task, but in this number, it was the twin drum playing of Thompson and Humphrey that stood out for most for me, as well as jazz giant George Duke on keyboards. The song itself devolves into a weirdo dance contest with members of the audience (and one ringer stripper, who is really not that good) trying to keep up with whatever wild cacophony the band can play. It's truly stupid but also fun in its way, even if it goes on too long. Still, as a record of a Zappa concert in 1973, it is pretty accurate, even if there is an element of "you just had to be there" to get it.

If there is a criticism on the film from me, it is one how Zappa's guitar playing is not showcased as well as I thought it would be. He is rather jammed into a corner of the stage, and oftentimes the camera appears behind his guitar so we don't really get to see him play from that position. He looks cool, sure, but if you are trying to study the man and his style, he is often not afforded the most opportune of angles. Still, Zappa himself is his charismatic best onstage in Roxy the Movie, and fully in control of both the band and his audience in that neo-game show host voice that he perfected.

Extras on the disc include three additional song selections, totally around 20 more minutes, not included in the film. One song has another dance segment, this time involving groupie supreme, Miss Pamela Miller (one day Mrs. Des Barres), who is given the highly misogynistic task of sexually titillating the band members (even taking a crack at Ms. Underwood) to distract them from their playing. One could be taken aback at this behavior in 2015, but again it falls into the category of accepted behavior for 1973 (and well afterward) and comes off less dirty and more innocent silliness than it would seem. And besides, in a time capsule aspect, it is easy to see what was so appealing about Miss Pamela. She was a lovely girl.

And now I have another addition to my extensive Zappa catalogue, not just by having Roxy the Movie, but also because the Blu-ray comes with a second disc with the soundtrack to the film. Will the onslaught of Zappa releases ever end? I certainly hope not, and I am fairly certain that his recorded legacy will not only outlast the impending 25th anniversary of his death in 2018, but also probably my own demise. Hopefully someone will invent a way, besides identity theft, for me to purchase new Zappa albums when I am dead and buried. Just pipe the music into my coffin...

The Shark Film Office: Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)

Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)
Dir.: Wyott Ordung
TC4P Rating: 4/9
Creatures: shark, octopus, and a monstrous octopus-like thing with a glowing eye.

Monsters, nuclear waste, girls in trouble, sharks... some of the essential elements of low-budget "B" movie thrills back in the 1950s. It helps even more if the girl is in a swimsuit and is wet half of the film, and if the monster is a giant octopus of some indeterminate species, and if the giant octopus has a single eye the size of a cargo hatch and the creature glows due to possible exposure to nuclear testing. And, oh yeah, sharks...

Roger Corman had all of these elements down already in 1954 in his very first full producing credit, Monster from the Ocean Floor. The film is clearly influenced by the previous year's big monster hit, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Corman and first-time director Wyott Ordung seem to be taking great pains to try and replicate the thrilling underwater sequences that made Universal's film an instant classic. Great pains, maybe, but with a much lower budget, and so there is an obvious drop in quality when things are done on the cheap like this.

Still, the filmmakers get a lot of mileage from several shots of lead actress Anne Kimbell's eyes freaking out behind her goggles when her tourist turned skin diver character encounters various creatures underwater throughout the film. Her character, Julie, is an odd one. She seems incapable of walking down the beach without fainting at the slightest provocation, but when no one believes that she has seen something out of the ordinary (especially the marine biologist who is obviously trying to get into her pants), she doesn't hesitate to go out diving by herself over and over again in dark, strange waters to find some evidence that she was right. I want to give Corman and Co. some credit for making their heroine so self-sufficient throughout most of Monster from the Ocean Floor, but then they keep reminding us they have her on the standard "fainting girl" leash, and tug her back to perform her required duties as a helpless blonde.

On one of these trips, she runs into a very large octopus -- not the monster of the title, though -- and her reaction at its sudden appearance jars her immensely. As the camera zooms in on her face, there is a drum roll on the soundtrack, and the camera cuts to a stock footage shot of a giant octopus, not really being menacing, just doing what it does in the water. But the camera cuts back to Julia's face mask and the sheer terror her eyes suggest behind it. Of course, she skedaddles, and when she reaches Steve on the surface, he tells her, "An octopus is the biggest coward in the sea." It is kind of cute, and unintentionally funny (I think) when he asks her how big the octopus is, and she just throws her arms out as wide as possible like a little child would.

After Julia finds out from the locals that the disappearances of villagers being attributed to an unknown creature off the shore begin in 1946, it doesn't take her (or us) long to connect the dots. However, what she doesn't realize is that she has become the focal point of the village's mob rule belief that the monster can be convinced to simply go away if the proper sacrifice is given. And Julie is that gift. While Julie wades into the water to begin a dive to find more information, Pablo runs into the surf, cuts his hand open, drips blood into the churning water, and then walks back to show with a satisfied grin on his mug. Since this is unlikely to do much in the way of bringing danger to the girl, it plays like a monumentally stupid scene.

But it leads to the diving sequence, which is the best filmed (perhaps accidentally) part of the film. After swimming about through the kelp forest (according to Roger Corman's autobiography, the diving scenes were filmed off Catalina Island), Julia has another one of her "shocking moments," accompanied by the appropriately stomach-churning, percussive score, when a shark swims into view. Unlike the octopus scene, it becomes quite clear that the diving actress is in the frame with the shark and the frantic waving of her diving knife is probably a very real reaction to the situation. If not, she is a far better actress than she seems to be on land.

Since I doubt there was ever more than a single camera used underwater (it is Corman after all), it seems that the shark takes several passes at Julie. On the first pass, it seems to swim right at her face before turning to the right and gliding its body right past her. It comes back and swims right above her, and Julie waves the knife several times and even comes close to hitting the fish at one point. The next pass sees the shark swimming towards her midsection, where Julie pulls back her arms, and when the shark turns, it looks like she connects with the knife twice in the tail section. Two more passes just above Julie and then one more past her continue the excitement before the shark moves on to less stabby pastures, and Julie departs as well.

The shark appears to only be about five to six feet long, but it serves well as a momentary villain in the context of the film, even if all of the violence being attributed to sharks by the townspeople is really the work of the mysterious monster instead. Apart from the briefest of statements in Corman's book, I have yet to find any account of the filming of the shark diving sequence. If they were done in far more controlled circumstances such as in an aquarium or with safety glass, it might be more apparent, for it does appear they are truly in an ocean atmosphere. And that shark does invade Anne Kimbell's personal space more than once and quite clearly so. I find it surprising that they just decided to dive off of Catalina and waited to see what might appear and then use it in the film, but maybe this is the case. We are talking an ultra low-budget film here, and they probably just decided to shoot the works and see what they could get. If a shark molests the lead actress, then so be it.

As for that mysterious monster, its appearances are so cloaked in a Vaseline lens you'd swear it was a Penthouse photo shoot. Before the shark-diving scene, Julie walks along the beach and when something startles her, she screams and runs, only to fall down in the sand. A pretty cow with a bell hanging off a yoke is shown to be the cause of her distress, but just after we see the cow, the camera cuts to the surf and from just offshore, a glowing octopus-like creature rises above the water. It has a single, giant eyeball, and it waves its tentacles menacingly in Julie's direction. It is unclear whether Julie sees the creature or not; regardless, she passes out cold on the beach. When Julie comes to, she goes back to where the cow was, but finds only the makeshift yoke with the bell.

The cow scene leads right into the aforementioned shark scene. As I said, for a girl who faints at the sight of a cow, Julie has no qualms about diving in the waters of the Pacific Ocean unaccompanied, even when she has a burgeoning romance with a marine biologist who owns his own mini-submarine.

That's right. Steve has a mini-submarine. I didn't mention it before, because I wanted to concentrate on the shark, but we see his single-person sub throughout the picture. The little Aerojet is the way that the two of them "meet cute" at the beginning of the film. As she swims just off the beach, she gets startled by the sub coming to the surface and running into her path. Of course, after her initial anger, she falls for the guy. "Will it fly?," she asks sarcastically, and he replies without missing a beat, "Underwater!" Steve takes the Aerojet out on his own (and thereby gives us a taste of what his craft can do) and discovers an empty deep sea diving suit, fully intact exact for the wearer, and brings it back. What happened to the diver? Could it be the doings of the mysterious monster?

A bit later, Steve and Julie go diving together, but of course, he is in the relative safety of his Aerojet while Julie swims along under her own power. This also means that as he showboats, he leaves his date all alone in the open ocean. This leads into the octopus scene, which awakens Julie's curiosity about what is going on this town.

On her final solo trip into the ocean, Julie finally encounters the monster as she turns the corner around a reef. We can another one of her wild, panicked stairs while the kettle drums explode on the soundtrack. The monster is not seen very clearly -- the lens is about as foggy as can be -- but it is the same glowing, octopus-like creature that we saw off the beach. Steve has already found out that Julie is out there in the water somewhere, and even though he has no idea where she actually is, he jumps into his Aerojet to head to the rescue.

The creature starts to lurch its way towards Julie, who of course, is totally unable to swim away faster than the bumbling monster. He becomes trapped against a nook in the reef, and we get a closeup of the monster's head and eyeball as it peers in at Julie. Strange how the camera seems to be very clear as it points at Julie's panicked face, but even more foggy when trained on the monster. But here comes Steve in his rescue sub! His first pass at the monster gets waved off by a tentacle, but he turns the sub around and aims it straight at the giant head. He embeds the Aerojet fully into the monster's eye socket, and escapes out the top of the sub. Julie, and the village, are saved. The monster? Not so much.

Given the budget and varying talents at work, Monster from the Ocean Floor was far more involving than I expected. It's silly, the monster is even sillier, but I still rather enjoyed the experience of seeing it for the first time. (Until the other day, it was one of the few Corman fews I had yet to see.) And the shark scene was definitely better than I could have expected from such low-rent fare. 

87 Minutes and Entirely Non-Tantric: Stung, and How Not to Get That Way

Stung (2015)
Dir: Benni Diez
TC4P Rating: 4/9

Wasps are fuckers.

I can look at most predatory species and recognize the beauty behind nature's design even when it results in the death of smaller, weaker creatures. But wasps are fuckers. I defend sharks and spiders from people who are afraid of them, who see only terror where I see wonder at the natural order of things and for efficiency and cunning. Wasps are still fuckers. I can even look at common social insects like wasps -- such as ants, bees, and termites -- and after recognizing both the benefits and downsides of all species, come out with a solid realization of just how necessary they are to the planet. But with wasps, even understanding their place in our world (they are vital in controlling many invasive and pest species of insects), I can only come to one conclusion. Wasps are just plain horrid, scary fuckers.

I think it is because wasps seem to take delight in being outright assholes. I think that if you were able to ask a wasp one on one if they took pleasure in messing with your day, the wasp would just stare back straight at you with its big waspy eyes... and then stab you right in the thorax. Because they are fuckers.

And I have had a few run-ins with wasps and hornets (which are categorized as wasps) over the years, and have learned they are not something with which one should mess. I am wholly unafraid of bees when they are zipping about, but show me one wasp and I give the area a wide berth. For me, their over-the-top aggression is more brutal than necessary, and in that way, I guess they seem a little more human to me than other species. And that form of humanity is something I prefer to avoid at all costs.

The other day, I wrote about a small film called Harbinger Down that was created with the intent of showcasing the use of practical special effects over the currently preferred measure of computer-generated effects. While the film ultimately fails on a dramatic level, its intent and the eventual execution of its effects work was sincere and ably done. While I did not love the film, I liked it and truly enjoyed the attempt. It gives you a cool looking monster, gets you caught up in the action, and delivers a finale that makes the trip worthwhile.

Here now is Stung, another such attempt at showcasing practical effects, but which has wasps as the main antagonists. (As if wasps could be anything but...) Immediately, I assumed there was going to be an extra scare and "ick" factor involved, simply because of the giant wasps (especially if they were even halfway to being done well). And Stung does have a doozy of a poster (see above), and while I know that I should never do that whole "book-judging-cover" thing, from the outside view, Stung looked interesting. 

Once I heard about it, that is. I didn't know Stung existed until my buddy Aaron sent me a message on Facebook saying he had just watched it. "Pretty neat effects and creature work, but really really boring go-nowhere story," he wrote. This did not kill the movie for me, though, since I am a "monster first" kind of guy. All Aaron did was guarantee that I would have to see for myself if the effects and creature work were indeed pretty neat. And the story? They have stories in these things?

Stung starts with a pair of caterers -- the driver, Paul, and his boss, Julia -- and they are as mismatched as hell. Paul finds her attractive but Julia is wholly committed to making a go of the catering business after inheriting it from her father; he, at least in what we are given to go on, is somewhat of a loser who would rather party on and smoke weed than work hard or make a good impression. And yet, making an impression is exactly what Paul wants to do in regards to Julia, but she has no respect for him, and rolls her eyes at his awkward attempts at establishing a rapport with her. Preparing for a party on a huge estate owned by a widowed matriarch and her reclusive son, Paul seems to run afoul of Julia's gaze with every step.

Then the wasps attack. The wasps are relatively normal at first, bigger than they should be but not outrageously so, only where anyone passing them would give them as wide a berth as possible. But as the party kicks in (though it never really seems to get kicking, and in fact, seems like it is barely populated by anyone except a handful of guests), the wasps get more and more aggressive. When they start attacking the guests with force, and the running and screaming start, it seems like a basic bug attack movie. Then, from out of the mouth of an attractive MILF, who had hit on Paul just a few moments earlier, come a pair of enormous insect limbs, and then her face and body split apart as an almost fully formed, human-sized wasp replaces the MILF. The film takes a turn here, as the partygoers finds itself being taken over one by one by gigantic wasps. Guest with even the slightest sense of survival flee for the mansion and lock the doors behind them.

From here, Stung becomes one in which the small contingent of actors who were paid to deliver lines do battle against the wasps, trying in vain to keep them from entering the mansion, and also discovering that those who had been stung by the wasps outside have the potential to turn into wasps themselves. From the information that I can gather from Stung, the filmmakers have combined social and solitary, parasitoid and predatory wasps into one huge wasp species, and given the creatures in this film the ability to reproduce in multiple ways. There is clearly a queen wasp introduced in this film and she is quite evidently laying eggs. There is even an attempt to ram one of her pupae down the throat of a certain character, and I assume the intent is for the pupae to feed on that person's insides. 

But there is no way that the people being rendered from the inside out at the party, which hasn't been going on that long when the attack happens, could have been turned to mulch so quickly nor would there have been opportunity to introduce larvae into their systems in the first place. Unless the wasps were pumping their eggs into the hors d'oeuvres (something which we never see, by the way). And even taking into account the vagaries of monster movie science, while insects the size of the ones in this film are a physical impossibility, it is hard to swallow that their exoskeletons, rather necessary for their bodies to operate and keep form, could have hardened so quickly, especially in what seems to be mere minutes in many cases.

Despite the basic unbelievability of the hybridization of wasp characteristics, I am happy to report that I too found the creature effects -- averaged out, of course -- as neat as Aaron did. There were a few moments that had me cringing as the filmmakers would wish, and I chalk this up to their having sold the illusion properly to me. Like Harbinger Down, the discarded facial skins of the victims can be seen hanging off the limbs or body of the monster, and I found it as effectively gruesome here as I did in that film. The film is exceptionally gory, as it should be, and there is a genuine sense of menace from the invading creatures through much of the film. 

However, after watching the much superior creature puppetry, the small bits of CGI that have been used in Stung stick out like the red lipstick that your least favorite aunt's poodle pops out at you every time you are forced to pet him on your bi-monthly visits. There is a fire effect used late in the film that looks terrible close up during the action in which it is used, and looks even worse from a distance when we see it on top of a vehicle flying down the road. Bad digital fire and explosions have already ruined at least one episode of Psych for me, along with other shows and films. Here, it just made me laugh out loud after I had been fairly, though not totally, caught up in the ceaseless wasp attack. And, by the way, fire apparently does not burn either insect or human flesh even when both are enveloped in what must be several minutes. This I learned from Stung.

Stung does have a couple of strong cards hidden in its hand. The first is that the slimy, skeezy son of the matriarch who owns the estate is played by Clifton Collins, Jr., and true to form, he is gives his usual, off-kilter performance in what could have been a nothing role. (It's still not much of a role, however.) He's twitchy, he's nervous, and he's beyond weird, and fits in well with the premise in which he is more than likely to have had a hand in bringing down on his party guests. Stung is also brightened by the presence of Lance Henriksen, who just so happened to appear in Harbinger Down as well. As the mayor of the town in which the estate is located, Henriksen gets a chance for a little character work before the film becomes rife with bug attacks for good. He, unfortunately has to deal with lines like "That young man has balls of steel. To be a man you have to be a man." And to be an actor, you have to deliver your lines, whether they are weighted down by stupidity or not. Henriksen does his job, and with his practically trademarked gravitas makes us believe that his character means every dumb thing he says.

But the lead characters are where the film has real problems (besides that stupid fire scene). The actors (Jessica Cook and Matt O'Leary) are appealing and do fine with what they have been given, but Stung tries both too hard (at first) and then not hard at all (the remainder of the film) to convince us that these two belong together. There was potential for some fun toying with sexual politics here, but it gets squandered and resorts to the obvious at every turn. Paul, a nebbish basically rejected by Julia at the beginning of the film (though it is clear she finds him a little cute), goes Die Hard on the wasps, and we discover there is potentially a man of action underneath his juggling stoner exterior. He takes to fighting giant wasps as if to the manner born, and don't think for a second that Julia doesn't notice this. However, he is no Bruce Willis, and there are definite limits to his badassery. To counter this, Julia will get ample opportunity to strip down to her inner Ripley and save Paul's bacon more than once. (She has a good cry first before she releases the Rip though.)

I guess someone could argue that the filmmakers are just trying to outguess our expectations for each character, but from the way the behavior of the wasps were not so carefully considered, it is hard to believe any discussion of the motivations of Paul and Julia went beyond, "They don't realize they are perfect for each other. Then he goes nuts on the wasps, and then she goes nuts on the wasps. And then maybe they bang."

In the end, despite the fun wasp attacks, I enjoyed Stung far less than I did Harbinger Down. Because of moments like the CGI fire scene, Stung comes closer to the territory that I thought it was going to represent when I first put it on, which was in the realm of a Syfy-style, tongue-in-cheek production where there would be little regard given to making the effects work even semi-believable. To their credit, director Benni Diez and his crew (the film is a German production filmed in English) do a decent job in making Stung as watchable as it is. If you just want to see a film where giant wasps attack a group of truly stupid humans, this is your huckleberry.

But if you like your burning bugs nice and crispy (and your side dish composed of charred human forearm), you are going to be disappointed.

Drooling Over Gravy (but Please Mind the Gags)

Gravy (2015)
Dir.: James Roday
TC4P Rating: 6/9

When Jen and I were finally ready* to move past the December loss of the second of our beloved pair of rat terriers last year, one rescue cat already had an in with us. A friend of Jen's mom was fostering a cat in Denver named Muffin, who was born to a feral mother who had figured out pretty early that her kitten was an indoor cat. We had known about her months earlier before we were ready, but when the time came in April to finally take the next step, Muffin was still up for the taking. She still needed her "forever home," as they say in rescue pet vernacular, though I prefer to be more realistic and call it an "8-14 year home".

After setting up a transport system through the Underground Railroad Rescued Kitty Network, which included our meeting a transfer agent at the airport in Las Vegas, we finally got our Muffin. Except we really couldn't call her Muffin. Cats don't know their name most of the time anyway, but Muffin? Ew... The problem wasn't that it was too cutesy; it just wasn't our cutesy. And we preferred to use a name that we decided upon, even if it was still cute. Her name briefly changed to Blueberry Muffin, and then in no time at all, to just The Blueberry.

If you are a fan of the show Psych, then you know the name. The Blueberry was the tiny Toyota Whatever that co-lead character Burton "Gus" Guster (played by Dulé Hill) drove throughout most of the run of Psych from 2006 through 2014. It belonged to the pharmaceutical company for whom Gus served as a customer rep, and Shawn Spencer (the other lead played by James Roday) and Gus would use the car mostly to investigate crimes for their psychic detective agency, obtain obscene amounts of fast food, or both.

We came to Psych a little late, a couple of years into its run. We were on the USA Network to watch our boy Bruce Campbell on Burn Notice, and there was this weird other show about a fake psychic bouncing around the fringes whenever we watched the spy show. Every once in a while, one or both of us would watch an episode. Or a pair of episodes. Or a mini-marathon of episodes. The show was catching on with us, even if it was subtle at first. I still remember a conversation where one of us said, "It's OK... kinda funny." And then -- overnight it seems -- it became really funny to us both. We were all in from that point. Psych became a permanent part of our schedule and it became rather common to find a day we both had off where we would rather just stay in bed watching Psych for eight hours than step outside for a breath of fresh air. The wacky antics of Shawn and Gus had taken over our lives.

And then it is seven years later and we are renaming a cat after a car in a TV show about a fake psychic detective and his pill-slinging best friend. Our cat doesn't seem to respond to the name The Blueberry any better than if I said "kitty" or "doormat" to her, but she is the right cat at the right time, and our lives are better for her intrusion into them.

But I came here to talk about a new film named Gravy.

It has been well over a year since Psych aired its last new episode. There are talks of possible TV movies reuniting the cast (or at least the two main characters), and everything ever created by the show is readily available on streaming, download or DVD. We have much of it. Reruns show sporadically on a couple of cable channels as well, and we catch them when we run into them. But Psych -- new Psych, that is -- for the foreseeable future is out of our lives. We had to move on to other shows, other pastimes, other distractions.

And so too did the cast and crew of Psych. Most noticeably missing from our routine is the relaxed, brotherly (sometimes a little too close) gab between stars Roday and Hill, and my immediate question was going to be whether they would do another project together. Such attempts can be dangerous, especially when actors have become pretty well-known as a team on a successful project. Such attempts can destroy legacies, and rarely work out for the better. But I, like many people, not only didn't want to see an end to the adventures of Shawn and Gus (though admittedly, the last season was pretty up and down in quality), we want to believe that Roday and Hill are a team. We want to believe they are best pals in real life and do everything together.

Taking that out of the equation, the real question is "What next?" Actors move on to new roles; so too must our star pals. There are few actors, like Campbell, that I do follow through every single iteration of their careers. Was I going to follow the stars of Psych to their next stop? Would it be like David Duchovny, where following him over to Californication was a no-brainer? (There would at least be ample amounts of nudity and swearing on the show.) Or would it be like Kelsey Grammer, where even the slightest whiff of Patricia Heaton on Back to You sent me packing right away?

And here now we come to Gravy, a film that has just come out on disc via Scream Factory after limited theatrical showings early in October. After wondering what Roday and company might do next, the answer it appears is this, a very bloody, quite violent horror-comedy that has no intention of tricking you for even a second, apart from some casting, that it might be a comfy fit within Psych's somewhat limited range of light comic sensibility. In fact, just from its opening sequence, and the setting up of its plot, Gravy is more intent on showing that as a director/co-writer, Roday is capable of journeying far beyond what he showed with already established characters on Psych (he directed eight episodes and had a hand in writing sixteen episodes of the show through its run). And Gravy, despite some clumpy moments, did help establish that impression with me.

The film takes place (primarily) on Halloween at a small Mexican eatery and bar west of nowhere. The restaurant's crew is casually cleaning up after what has been a busy but festive evening, and most of the characters are dressed in the Halloween costumes in which they served their shift. Bartender Kerry (Sutton Foster) is a quarterback princess, itty bitty diva waitress Cricket (Molly Ephraim) is a beauty contestant, and busboy Hector (Gabriel Luna) is a boxer. Big changes are on the way for the staff. Security guard/bouncer Winketta (Gabourey Sidibe) is about to graduate school in a week, and Kerry is just about to leave to start a new career as a paramedic. Boss Chuy (Paul Rodriguez in an effective cameo role) wants the staff to gather to celebrate before they close for the night. It seems to be just another closing on just another night for everyone concerned.

Enter the cannibals. Brothers Anson (Michael Weston) and Stef (Jimmi Simpson), along with Stef's batshit insane girlfriend Mimi (Lily Cole) have been sizing up the place (making special note that the restaurant has no windows), and before anyone can catch their breath, they have the doors welded shut, the mouthy French chef Yannick (a wonderfully caustic Lothaire Bluteau) chained at the neck in the kitchen, and the rest of the staff tied to chairs and forced to play games to keep them from being turned into the next course. Anson and Stef are gourmands with a taste for human flesh, and spend each Halloween capturing a small assortment of people, and then torture and devour them until they are completely stuffed.

It is not the sort of premise you would expect from one of the driving creative forces behind Psych, and especially not his first big project after the show was put to bed. Yes, Psych did have many gruesome murders and occasional serial killer plotlines that went beyond the show's usual light tone and the regular slapstick antics involving Shawn and Gus. And some of their most popular episodes were the Halloween-oriented episodes where they would tackle hoary cliches of the horror genre. (These same episodes, despite the mystery solving, would often have Shawn and Gus running around in the dark screaming like little girls.)

But I had no idea what to expect from Roday in Gravy, and he truly sticks to his guns. The dialogue and situations are definitely funny, but he and co-writer Todd Harthan (himself a writer and producer on Psych) have done themselves proud in keeping the horror the most important element here. Once you have settled in to the cast, which is also made up of many performers who appeared on Roday's show (Foster, Simpson, Weston, Kate Rogal, and Ethan Sandler) and therefore makes you anticipate that you will get more of the same, the violence between the characters as they fight for survival can be more than a little shocking. Thankfully, Roday keeps a steady tone throughout the manic proceedings (and it gets truly crazy in the second half). He also shows a nice touch for counterpoint using follow-up shots and soundtrack cues. (The inclusion out of nowhere of the children's song Farm Animal Friends early on is a special favorite moment for me.)

For the most part, the cast is up to the task as well. Jimmi Simpson, a favorite of Psych fans for his portrayal of the memorably named and tragic Mary Lightly (though he comes back for a swell song in the musical episode), is having a field day as Stef, and imparts both control freak leadership and villainy in equal amounts. Michael Weston, another Psych cult hero, carries the film on a wave of non-stop babble as the brother who is more than a tad jealous of his brother's girl. His pairing up with Sutton Foster, the multi-Tony Award winning actress, throughout the film is nicely underplayed and never goes for the obvious notes. There is a silly wraparound cameo part for Sarah Silverman (wearing a bunny costume) that seems to be bigger given her prominence on the DVD cover, but that is obviously to help sell the film. 

My one gripe (and it is a minor one) is the commitment to the gore implied in the premise. While there are a few body parts displayed in the film, the intention of the villains to have dishes creatively named after each of their victims is given short shrift, and largely gets forgotten. The film is bloody, bloody, bloody, but it is not very gory. Practically every room and character gets soaked in the red stuff, but the film becomes more focused on the multiple fight scenes or bickering between the characters, and less on delivering the promise that a cannibal orgy on Halloween night bodes. If there is a failing in Gravy, it is on this promise. And especially so since the title of the film itself is food-based. Yes, the big night in Big Night turns out to be a twist on that which is anticipated at the start of the film, but the chefs still deliver an amazing meal. Maybe Anson and Stef should have gotten a little more help for Yannick in the kitchen so we could get more than just a couple of dishes out of their endeavors.

It is hard to say how I am going to feel about Gravy in a couple of years. I just watched it for a second time this afternoon, and there are indications that I am going to grow to like it even more over the coming years. However, the small errors were more glaring this go-around too, so who knows? Minor annoyances can turn into big, unavoidable itches after a while. And I haven't even shown the film to Jen yet, my partner in all things Psych (and otherwise). Jen is not a horror movie fan for even a second, though she will watch one if there is something interesting to it or has been so critically acclaimed that she can't avoid it. (She loves The Silence of the Lambs, for instance, but approaches it as more of a mystery film than a horror film. And she adores the Evil Dead films.) I bought the Blu-ray of Gravy, and was going to spring it on her right away, but then decided to give it a shot myself first. It may be a touch too bloody for her tastes, but she can make the decision to watch it on her own.

Oh, and those Psych pals, Roday and Hill? They show up onscreen in Gravy as well for a cameo turn, but it is very brief (and kind of funny). They don't show up in The Blueberry, but they make it to the party all the same. And so their first big project after their long-running hit show is together as a team after all, which is just what a Psych fan would want. Whether my wife ends up wading through the oceans of gravy in Gravy and seeing our old pals in it is up to her.

*[Note: We will never be ready.]

For One Practical Purpose: Harbinger Down

Harbinger Down (2015)
Dir: Alec Gillis
TC4P Rating: 5/9

You would be forgiven if you thought from the rating that I gave to Harbinger Down, a new monster picture release from the Oscar-winning special effects team of Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr., that I didn't like it. My "5" rating is what I use for an number of things: outright product with no real soul or purpose apart from crass monetary gain, the most rote or trite of projects that probably bored me to tears with their unoriginality, and anything middle of the road that didn't really strike me as good or bad either way so I have no place else to put it.

I liked Harbinger Down. I just didn't like Harbinger Down as much as the makers of Harbinger Down would like me to like it.

Harbinger Down has purpose, so it definitely does not belong in the category in which I placed it for that reason alone. And its purpose is one that is close to my heart: bringing back the use of (mostly) practical special effects to the monster picture. This gets the film as close to soulful as it can get for me. 

I am not going to launch into a diatribe against the ever increasing use of CGI effects, because that territory has been far too well trod by fanboys and geeks of all stripes for eons. It has become a cliche in its own rite to rail against CGI, and I do not disdain their use as another tool in the filmmakers' bag of tricks. I have the same gripes as many a grumpy old man about how everything feels dark and muddy onscreen these days, but computers are used in so many different areas these days that it just becomes downright quixotic to tilt against the subject anymore. Like any other area of expertise, I feel that when the proper talent and attention are applied in that area, the results can be truly astounding. Of course, this often means the proper amount of money as well, and that is where things get sticky. In this age of the Sharknado, where you can sell the audience on a fake-looking tornado teaming up with an even more fake-looking shark to do ridiculous things that sharks and weather would never do together as long as you have a graphics guy who wants to make a few bucks and is not concerned about artistic reputation, it has become really hard to knock a success that turned out exactly the way that its creators intended. They won't make them if you guys don't keep coming to them. (And I will admit that I watch the really crappy stuff just as much as I watch the primo stuff, so I am at fault as well. But how you can not want to watch something called Sharknado, Sharktopus, or Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark?)

Gillis and Woodruff want to, as much as possible, return us to the not actually bygone days of practical effects. After their elaborate effects work for the 2011 remake of John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing was rejected and replaced with mostly CGI work (and the film landed with a thud), they launched a Kickstarter campaign to create their own practical effects film. They wanted us to take a trip back to the late '80s, when computers hadn't chiefly taken over the monster game (or even our lives in such a total way), and when puppeteers, makeup experts, and live effects teams still held sway in making incredible visions come to life on the movie screen. A large cross-section of fannies ranting about CGI now probably weren't alive when a half-assed effect attempt back then would get kicked around just as much as today, but of course, we didn't have online boards on which people could overly obsess about these things back then. The backlash wasn't as immediate, was far more localized in its impact, and sometimes took months to travel around.

In 1989, there were a spate of underwater-themed action/sci-fi flicks released (generally with monsters), and I saw three of those in the movie theatre: DeepStar Six, Leviathan, and The Abyss. The last one, of course, is the classic and we responded to it appropriately. It was yet another film that my friends and I saw a zillion times but the film was reported to be disappointing at the box office. (Apparently, money and tickets gathered in Alaskan theatres is not counted the same.) But we saw DeepStar Six first, and then the Peter Weller-starring Leviathan. 

Back then, I had an Apple IIe, and while the internet, in an extremely embryonic form, was just getting started, I wouldn't have access to the WWW for a few more years. The planet was just on the verge of bursting fully flowered into a magical new age of information access, but at that moment, trying to learn something was still mostly based in practicality. Seeing it for yourself or using resources at hand to find the information you needed. Did you have the time to look it up and read through it? You may have to write everything down so be sure to have a notebook at hand. If I wanted immediate information on those then-current underwater films, I had to rely on whatever newspapers might have been laying around or saved in the house, and a few months later, microfiche at the library to look at -- you got it -- more newspapers. We relied on movie credits and what we remembered from them, and then books in the library or bookstore about cinema to fit info together. (And it was fine... and we liked it!)

And as each succeeding underwater flick came out in 1989, if you wanted to discuss how much more cheesy the monster in DeepStar Six looked in comparison with the creature you saw in Leviathan when it came out a few months later, you went afterwards with your pals to a Denny's and stayed up until three a.m. while you shoved down a chili size cheeseburger with fries and a Dr. Pepper, and pretty much left it at that. And once in a while, I might go home and sit at my Apple IIe and pound out a couple thousand words about the movie I just watched. Then maybe I might have printed it up slowly on my dot matrix printer. Maybe I would show what I wrote to my brother or a friend. That was the extent of it, until the next film came out, and the cycle began again. Your friends would share their responses to a film, friends of friends and family members might be influenced by these opinions, but that would be largely it. The majority of the world didn't hear it, didn't see it, and certainly, our responses were never gauged or collected online by studios or filmmakers to tell them immediately of our displeasure in or our fangirl squees over their efforts.

So, now it is just a handful of hours since I have watched Harbinger Down -- online, of course, and streaming -- but it's now 26 years later from the caveman days. I am ready to use several modern forms of popular social media to tell the world -- or at least my meager slice of that audience -- how I felt about a relatively simple monster effects movie that would have garnered not much more than a few minutes of discussion at that old Denny's table while we shot our soda straw wrappers across the table at one another. But we have websites now where I can swiftly gather any technical detail I wish about the making of Harbinger Down, where I might have to wait years for it to be published before. I can find full bios and filmographies of every person involved in creating the film, and I can also find scores of fellow reviewers giving their varied opinions on the film's success or otherwise. I can know so much more information in seconds about the film than I ever could before at any point in time. Immediacy is everything. But the ultimate question at the end of all the gathering and collating and searching remains the same as when one would leave a theatre, bundle up for the cold weather outside, pile into your buddy's car, and drive to that still appealing after-film gab session at a popular dining establishment.

Did you like the movie?

I am the precise audience for whom Gillis and Woodruff created Harbinger Down. I am a monster movie fanatic, and yes, the purveyor of fine, fanged fiends is certainly targeted by this film. And while I said that I won't use this as a forum to rail against CGI, I will admit without reservation that I feel a special kind of glee when someone even attempts practical and/or live effects in a film these days. So, mark me down for #2. And then there is the intangible third, which I have not mentioned thus far: Harbinger Down takes place in Alaska, off Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, to be precise. While I have never gotten even within a thousand miles of that outpost from old apartment in Alaska's biggest city, the fact that it takes place in my home state pretty much ensured that I would see it eventually (even if I am fairly certain that little if any of it was actually filmed there). And finally a fourth point: Lance Henriksen. As I said, I am the audience... precisely.

First, a brief synopsis. The film opens on June 25, 1982, the date Carpenter's version of The Thing was released, which is not coincidental, but whether such an in-joke pays off depends on how the film delivers. A Soviet space capsule comes hurtling to earth, while a cosmonaut is desperately trying to fend off some form of attack by a dripping liquid... something. Cut to the present, in Dutch Harbor, where a college professor and a pair of female students are driving a rented vehicle to the docks to take a boat out into the Bering Sea to study beluga whale activity. Up until the title of the film appears, the action is being captured on a camera by one of the students, though this conceit goes away completely (and thankfully) after the title. Captain Graff of the fishing ship Harbinger is played by Lance Henriksen, and it turns out one of the college students is his granddaughter, Sadie. We meet the crew, there is some bickering as happens between a lot of people in small quarters, but all seems fine.

When Sadie goes to collect data on belugas, she locates a faint signal, and notices a flashing light inside some ice. She convinces the captain to pull the ice chunk out of the water, and pulls the remains of the capsule onto the deck. The ice melts, the alien evil drippy thing is released, and the games begin. The creature will take over the first body, make a lot of mess, shock the population of the craft, and then run amok for the remainder of the picture. Nearly everyone will be wary of everyone else, and everyone will be a suspect. Who is the creature now? What forms will it take? Why has everyone stopped worrying about fishing or beluga whales? The film will continue to build in gore and violence on the route to its inevitable, foreshadowed conclusion. (The goddamned ship is named Harbinger and we are told in the title it is "down".)

And I just sort of liked it. The pace is fairly brisk, and Harbinger Down doesn't get bogged down in anything too philosophical or in strained, personal dramas. There is enough mystery planted about a couple of characters to paint them as possible wild cards later in the action, and the truly annoying characters that you can't wait to see killed (mainly because they yell at everyone else, sometimes for no reason whatsoever) are set up pretty quickly so that you can enjoy it when their fate is ultimately revealed. For his part, Henriksen is far more committed here than he often is when he signs up for these quickie sci-fi roles, where he usually plays a sheriff, a farmer, or a corporate baddie. He shows enough fire here to remind me (not that I needed it) as to why I fell in love with him onscreen in the first place. The film is efficient enough where I felt it probably could have used another ten minutes to flesh out some details, but damn if it doesn't just keep moving solidly to its destination.

And that destination -- in fact, its stated purpose, and the reason I showed up as well -- is those effects. And for the most part, they play pretty well, even if some of the editing lets them down in places. The first transformation scene is held a little too long and there is a shot or two that not only reminds you too much of the puppetry at work, but also that Carpenter's team did it so much better. After that, we get several scenes of flashing lights and briefer glimpses at the creature that, for me, were too brief as I really wanted a chance to take it in longer. (I know that I have just wished for the thing that didn't work right in the first creature scene, but so be it.) I really enjoyed the way the creature would still be wearing (really, dangling) the skinned face of its previous host from its ever-growing body while it attacked the crew. It was a solidly gruesome touch. The finale is the best part of the film, and where I feel the creature effects really shine. But I don't want to say anything more about that lest I spoil the result.

If anything, the film serves as a metaphor for the perils of constructing a non-direct remake out of references to another film or films. Stan Winston, who created the dog creature in the 1982 The Thing (though Rob Bottin and his team did the bulk of the effects), was the mentor for both Gillis and Woodruff, and they have built Harbinger Down from the top down with echoes from that earlier film (and also from the original film, 1951's The Thing from Another World). Apart from the aforementioned date in-joke, there is the way the crew stands in a circle staring in awe around the found object. There are the transformation scenes that do nothing but directly recall Carpenter's superior effort. There is the paranoia that runs rampant among the crew as they try to determine in any others or all of them have been taking over by the creature. There is the isolation of the icy locale of the film (above the Arctic Circle in the 1951 film; Antarctica in the 1982). If anything, the fact there are even more than a couple of references to another specific film pinpoints Harbinger Down as not just an homage to a better work, but also creates so much weight on its shoulders that it cannot possibly ever lift itself up. 

Which brings me to why I could not like this film any more that I did, which is just below my calling it a good film. Were it mere homage to The Thing, and then went off wildly in a new direction, I might be more willing to drop to my knees and begin servicing the film without pause. But Harbinger Down, despite its good intentions to bring monster and effects fans something for which they have been clamoring greatly over the past couple of decades (though we have had other films), is entirely too slavish to the concept of being a new example of The Thing. I will stop short of calling it a parasite upon the host body of Carpenter's film, sucking out its essence and replacing it with a carbon copy, because Harbinger Down has just enough of its own nerve to make things interesting. But I will say that Gillis and Woodruff could have used the opportunity to do something more original with the money they raised and then married their wonderful effects knowledge to that.