There Must Be Some Mixtape: Track #12 – "Sea Monster" by Elephant Revival

In my post about the Eddie Noack song, Psycho, the other day, I went through various other versions of the same tune. One more recent attempt, that committed to recorded life by the husband-and-wife team of author Neil Gaiman and performer Amanda Palmer, rather annoyed me. First, the versions that I have heard (all of them live) were rather lackluster in performance, which disappointed me mainly because I thought the idea of Gaiman – an author and personality whom I admire most highly – striving to croak his way through a country song could at least have been a little fun. 

The end result wasn't fun for me; it was clumsily staged and no two elements from the selection of the song to the pairing of guest musicians with star performers seemed to fit together at any time. I blamed it mostly on a rampant mood of unchecked hipsterism dominating the stage, replete with a group of weirdos delivering some OK singing saw atmosphere that might have worked just fine with this particular song had a little more thought gone into the arrangement and genuine interest in the actual audience bled through the whole affair.

Now, it might sound like I am playing Pick on the Hipster here, and maybe I was to a certain degree. It is, after all, kind of fun and easy to do. But I did state in my original post that I would, as an example, love to find an entry point into the music created by Ms. Palmer, but just haven't been given one yet. I don't want to go through life simply hating certain music without a very good reason; I would rather call a Nickelback a Nickelback, and be done with it. I would point to my forays in facing off with Rolling Stone's Best 50 Songs the past two years as further examples that I am willing to take a chance on music that I normally avoid or just don't encounter in my day to day life. (And there will be a new version of Best 50 Songs coming up in early December, most likely. Watch for it... I have been pleasantly surprised with the past results.) And maybe I went into Gaiman and Palmer's version of Psycho hoping too hard for a decent take on the song to come out of it, after having listened to four good to great versions before it. Still, that hipster vibe of insincerity, unchecked irony, and self-possessed cool just came at me too hard, and I couldn't let it pass with comment.

A slight detour...

Let's skip to archive.org for a moment. One of the things that I love most about this public domain website – aside from the easy access to just about every p.d. film in existence – is their Live Music Archive. There are thousands and thousands of free, accessible concerts available in their archive, many of them recorded openly by visitors to these concerts, and many also coming directly from soundboard recordings (much better quality in general, but I have heard some great ones made right in the crowd). Now, before you get on me about artists' rights and all that, there is one notable point to add about the Live Music Archive: to add any concert to the site, the user and/or the site must have published direct permission from at least one member of a band or the band's management to post said concerts. When one finds a Man or Astro-Man, Robyn Hitchcock, or Camper Van Beethoven performance available for legal download on archive.org, one does it with the knowledge on the artist's page that said performer has approved such posting and further sharing with their audience.

So, you won't find a Radiohead, Wilco, Muse or Red Hot Chili Peppers concert on there; most of the bigger name artists and groups don't allow such easy access. There are, however, some surprises to be found. Some in my list of personal faves do show up in the Live Music Archive, such as Warren Zevon, Cracker, the Drive-By Truckers, Smashing Pumpkins, Ryan Adams, Elliott Smith, and Ween. Mostly though, given the rather socialist notion behind the sharing of all information on the site, it is not surprising that the vast majority of bands to be found there are – ahem – ahem again – jam bands.

That's right... so many jam bands. Hippie jam bands. Stoner jam bands. Hipster jam bands. Psychedelic jam bands. Bluegrass jam brands. Electronica jam bands. Hippie stoner hipster psychedelic bluegrass electronica jam bands. Jam bands from just about every place in the world (but no strawberry jam bands... gotta go to Knott's to score some of that...) At the top is the biggest jam band ever of all time, the Grateful Dead, who have somewhere in the neighborhood of over 11,000 concert recordings ready for either streaming or download on the site. (They have a special page set up on the site.) And then, after the Dead, come all the Dead spinoff groups, many of them containing at least one or two members from the band's past (Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, etc., etc.) After that, you've got Disco Biscuits, the String Cheese Incident, moe., Umphrey's McGee, Yonder Mountain String Band, the Radiators, and eventually Little Feat and Blues Traveler. (Surprisingly, Phish  is not on archive.org officially, and I find that a truly stunning fact.)

As it turns out, while I love 22-minute guitar solos and 12-minute drum solos if either the right guitarist or right drummer are performing them – I would never turn off an Allman Brothers album if given the choice – I am not really a jam band guy. The same way that Seinfeld wasn't an orgy guy; I'd have to go buy jam band clothes, get new jam band friends, and with them came new jam band drugs. Incessant noodling without real purpose except to stretch out an already long concert can often be annoying. I wouldn't mind being at any of these concerts, but that's not really what I listen to normally (with the open admission that some groups I adore, such as Built to Spill, Frank Zappa, Wilco, Cream, and early Pink Floyd – none of them on archive.org, mind you –  are or were really jam bands at heart or started out that way). 

Despite all that, I quite often check out concerts by any group that seems interesting to me, whether they eschew needless jamming or not. I've dipped a toe into the offerings of some of the jam bands I mentioned earlier and even partake of an occasional concert by the Dead, even adding some of the better shows to my own collection. At my collector's core, I have a basic urge to find new music constantly, and the Live Music Archive makes it easy to do at the only cost that I can currently afford: free. (And without annoying commercials like on Spotify or Pandora; I only have the free versions of those apps/sites as well.)

... eventually leads me to...

Elephant Revival. That was the name of the band I encountered on archive.org. A very simple name. The "elephant" part was attractive to me because I love those creatures dearly, and also because of some residual love for the Elephant 6 record label (home of Apples in Stereo and Of Montreal) from way back. "Revival" made me think immediately, of course, of CCR, and there is nothing not to love about that, unless it is a version not involving John Fogerty. The name "Elephant Revival" seems like maybe it is missing a couple of words in the middle, like their real name should be "Elephant Foot Massage Revival" – itself a dangerous proposition – the way that "Monty Python" is not nearly complete without the apostrophe and "s" and the "Flying Circus" part. But still, even the short name "Elephant Revival" intrigued me enough to make me click on the concert first over shows from other bands that had been uploaded that day.

Now, I was guessing that "jam band" would be the eventual outcome of my first listen to Elephant Revival. Past experience had given me a working knowledge of the basic audience on the Live Music Archive, including those who relentlessly tape and post new concerts. The law of averages sees to it that the majority of bands encountered on archive.org are jam bands, and I believe, by and large, that law still stands. And, of course, I always do some research first before digging into anybody's music. Before I even heard a note, I found out that Elephant Revival was a bluegrass/folk contingent, and while I do like bluegrass far more than I usually acknowledge, I still feared the "H" word in all of this. Folk hipsters are over the radio these days, and while I do like some of the sounds I hear, the songs quite often leave me pretty cold. I can find no connection to them. Most of the time, when a pack of Mumfords with crazy facial hair, antique instruments and toothy grins show up knocking on the door to my iTunes, I turn them away roughly 90% of the time.

The first listen to the band floored me. Absolutely floored me. At first, it was the lush instrumentation; the usual suspects as far as mandolin, guitar, and fiddle went, but even if they turned into a jam band, the assured picking told me they could keep up with just about anyone. But this was a hybrid that had bluegrass at its center but seemed informed by nearly every style of music available, including pop, reggae, jazz, and even the occasional electrified solo that rocked the house as assuredly as the sharpest axeman.

And it is of significant note that the first song I heard, Will Carry On, featuring vocals by one Bonnie Paine, who may be changing my listening life as we know it. Her quavering voice on this song seems so odd on that initial encounter, and I was slightly reminded of the first time I heard Katherine Whalen on a Squirrel Nut Zippers record doing her Billie Holiday riffing. (Not a dig, just a note.) But then, a few songs later, Paine lets loose with wailing along the lines of early Grace Slick, and then I understood that Bonnie Paine was capable of so much more. When I finally watched a few live clips, I realized that Paine is also the band's main (and sometimes sole) percussionist as well, thumping a djembe or stomp box while singing the band's introspective lyrics. (She also plays cello and musical saw at times.) She is not the only vocalist though; all five members split duties here and there, and all of them are multi-instrumentalists, easily and eagerly swapping the tools of their trade between songs.

The songs were largely original, but on that first concert listen, there was the remarkable inclusion of Pink Floyd's Have a Cigar, usually a rock monster of a song with heavy guitar licks. In the Elephant Revival version, Paine takes up the role of the sleazy record agent, and the song loses none of its nastiness in being transposed to the folk/bluegrass world. In fact, it seems rather... er... revived from it. And that comparison to Ms. Slick a bit ago? In listening to a second downloaded concert from archive.org, Elephant Revival launched into their own stab at Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, and I realized that I must not be the only one who stumbled into that comparison. And if it wasn't quite as surprising as their cover of Floyd, it was still really great.

But where is the monster stuff?

OK, Elephant Revival is not a band that you would immediately think would have some horror cred, but keep in mind their folk traditionalist roots and you realize that a walk along the dark side is not that far from their repertoire. I would not be surprised to hear them do a murder ballad or two in their career, but for now, they have a couple of interesting songs that nearly cross over to the Halloween path. The Paine-penned track, Raven Song (which they used to open at least one concert taking place on Halloween), takes on the notion of the raven as a presager and messenger of death, carrying loved ones to the great beyond. It's not necessarily dark in concept, though, and is more lovely than anything, but it still fits the mood.

The howling of wolves is also represented in their track, Sing to the Mountain. In the chorus, we are told "Go and sing to the mountain, go and sing to the moon". When " sing to the moon" is offered, other band members – and in live versions, the more than willing audience – howl wildly and without concern for stepping on the lyrics. I guess it is their version of making an impromptu shark fin on top of their heads while Jimmy Buffett sings "You got fins to the left, fins to the right". Despite being a huge shark fan, as you know, I will take the wolf howls over drunken island hoppers in this instance.

But let's get to the track I have chosen to be added to my Countdown to Halloween mixtape for 2017. The song is called Sea Monster, and immediately, it seems like, yes, such a song belongs here. One could easily read the lyrics and see little more than a purposefully vague imagery involving a possible siren of the sea, calling out to sailors to lead them to their doom. That is fine for any song with that title and surely belongs in any Halloween collection. But what if the monster is not what it seems at first?

Let's listen to the song and read its lyrics first before continuing...

Sea Monster by Elephant Revival

(Music and lyrics by Elephant Revival / ℗ 2016 Itz Evolving/Thirty Tigers, Elephant Revival Publishing]

I’m going out over the sea,
I’ve got a boat, I’ve got a dream.
I trim the sails with my own hands

The song Sea Monster can be
purchased on this album.

leave all my thought back on the land.

I’m going out over the sea,
I won’t be back until I’m free.

I hear a voice, a siren’s review,
I hear it calling out of the blue.
A song of a strange unbearable thing,
it grows in the water, it goes unseen.

I’m going out over the sea,
hearing the song I’ve come to see.

What is this monster in the gyre?
All that’s thrown over the side,
And I want to know…

How we live in a world that provides and expires,
How we grow, come to know our hearts desire.

I’m going out over the sea,
All I have heard, all I have seen,
We are all out, out in a dream,
We are a boat, we are the sea.

After all the rise and fall is all that still remains.

At the end of the second verse, there is the line, "A song of a strange unbearable thing, it grows in the water, it goes unseen." In the bridge, the singer has encountered what it takes to be the true beast and asks, "What is this monster in the gyre? All that's thrown over the side..."

Before you groan and think you are being lectured on the horrors of pollution when you thought you were merely delving into a folksy tune about a sea monster, keep in mind that Puff the Magic Dragon has already had his day. Mere child's novelty has given way to a darker turn of mood. I don't suffer gladly those who pretend that mankind has no sway over the destruction of the natural world, and I suspect that Elephant Revival doesn't either. In the introduction to this song on that first concert listen, Paine attempts to set up the song but encounters some slight difficulties in doing so: chiefly, the type of audience members who grouse when bands try to bring something deeper to the stage than the mere strumming of acoustic instruments. Paine said...

"The Sea Monster in some aspects is a collection of plastic bottles and trash that have accumulated in the gyre of the ocean, which is a large thing...(laughs)... not to cause boos or anything before you sing a song... (laughs)... but it is something worth bringing consciousness to."

That "something" is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive man-made "soup" that was discovered in the mid-'80s  in a place known as the North Pacific Gyre. Not the only such vortex in the oceans of the world, just the most prominent in size, the "patch" is largely made up of minute particles but is thought in the public eye to be almost like an island or a creature made of garbage, though it is actually thin enough in most places (and chiefly under the surface of the water) as to be undetectable even from those floating through it, let alone be seen from space. This is not to say that there aren't vast areas where plastic is to be clearly seen. Whatever the imagery the patch invokes, whatever its true visibility, it is almost certainly a monster of our own devising, a Frankenstein's Monster of pollution that could be altered and even stopped if mankind changed its ways drastically.

I was not expecting any of this when I encountered Elephant Revival for the first time. For all my wailing about millennials and annoyance and ironic stances, Sea Monster is a reminder that sometimes even possible hipsters can pass by and leave us something small, sad, and crystalline in its fragility. It's a crushingly lovely song with a hard truth buried deep within it. If the siren that sings to us from the depths of the ocean is merely a call to responsibility for our world, I can live with that. Until then, we have a monster on the loose, and the death of marine life from the increased ingestion of our plastics is a horror that I cannot accept. It's probably a horror more true than anything you would normally encounter on a mere Halloween mixtape, with its usual focus on silly supernatural things.

Elephant Revival. When I get into some spending cash again, I will own all of their available material in one fell swoop. Or one swell shop. Take your pick; I will make them mine. And I will order one Bonnie Paine to go, please...

RTJ

This Week in Rixflix #10: May 12-18, 2017

Like my buddy Aaron, who wrote very long and lovingly about the subject this week on his website, most of my stray thoughts during the week that preceded Sunday, May 21 were caught up in Twin Peaks anticipation. The build-up to the show had me watching old episodes of the original series again, and also saw me considering a deep dive into my David Lynch collection, which is pretty extensive seeing as I have touted him as one of my top favorite directors for most of the past, oh, 35 years or so. (It all started with The Elephant Man in the theatres, Eraserhead on VHS – the first prerecorded tape that I ever bought – and everything else since then...)

But I am not going to delve much into my own deep fandom for the show or its creators here. I am more than willing to give the Biggest Twin Peaks Fan prize over to Aaron, even if I did watch the full show in its original run, and still have copies of some of those episodes on VHS even though I have them all on disc. I have my own collection of Peaks ephemera, and my own stories about visiting locales, etc. But I am just too, too tired this week, with too much health stuff still going on and some other side business in the works (cross those finger, damn it) to really dig hard into the subject. If you would like to read a truly wonderful personal history with the show, check out Aaron's piece, My Secret History of Twin Peaks, at http://workingdeadproductions.blogspot.com/2017/05/my-secret-history-of-twin-peaks.html.

A final note on this, while I did have some reservations going into the project, I am just happy to see Lynch filming on such a large scale again. It was just a couple of years ago he was announcing that he would probably not be making any more feature films because it was just too hard to raise the funds. When Twin Peaks: The Return was announced, I figured he would have a full hand in scripting and production, but would leave the director to others except for perhaps three or four hands-on episodes. Then he almost left the project over some personal issues with Showtime. Then he was back again, and the best possible news was announced: Lynch was going to direct every single episode himself. 

On another series, this would be interesting but nothing all that special. For a Lynch fan, such an announcement is monumental, especially given that the new Peaks series consists of 18 hour-long segments. Crunching the numbers by using an average film length of 100 minutes and keeping in mind that there is little difference between the style of a Lynch feature film and a Lynch television project, this basically means that Lynch nuts are being handed roughly the equivalent of just under another 11 feature-length films. For someone who was dreading the worst – no more Lynch on a large scale – this is truly an epic turnabout.

The Numbers:

This week's feature-length film count: 20; 14 first-time viewings and 6 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length films: Deep Time (2015), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), He Walked By Night (1948) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) – 8/9
Lowest rated feature film: Mutant Hunt (1987) – 3/9 (but I loved it!)
Average films per day in May so far: 2.61
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.02

The Reviews:

Just time for a quick trio of reviews this week, though "quick" depends on a certain amount of fairy belief in one case here. Clap your hands, children!

The Eyes of My Mother (2016) Dir.: Nicolas Pesce – How did I begin Mother's Day? Well, after a brief visit with the latest Maria Bamford comedy special, I dove into the 2016 arthouse horror flick, The Eyes of My Mother. At the time just after I watched the film, I first posted the original version of this short review on Facebook, recommending The Eyes of My Mother only to my good friends Aaron and Andrea, for whom this film would be normal viewing, but I warned all others in my friend group to tread very carefully. Mostly this was a self defense move, because I have been yelled at many times for leading certain friends down paths they would rather not walk, while I – like Aaron and Andrea – choose such paths on a daily basis. I learned a long time ago to be extremely selective in recommending films to entire groups of people and not just those inured to the more unpleasant rigors of certain genres or features. I have always wished that people realized that when I did recommend something to them, it was never with the thought that they might actually enjoy the film, but rather that it was interesting or sometimes just odd enough to catch my attention.

The Eyes of My Mother definitely falls into my interest range, and it is far more than just odd enough. A young girl living in an isolated farmhouse with her parents is taught how to properly remove the eyes from a severed cow's head by her mother, who used to be a surgeon when she lived in Portugal. A man passing by the farm is let inside the house, whereupon he murders the girl's mother. When her father comes home, he knocks the man unconscious and chains him up in the barn. The girl believes the man is her only friend, but still tortures him by cutting his tongue and eyes out in the manner taught to her by her mother, storing the parts in the refrigerator...

And that's the first 21 minutes. The girl grows up into a woman with some rather odd ideas about human relationships. We then get the modern day story, during which an entire truckload of sheer crazy is unleashed, none of which I will relate here. The film rather tricks the viewer, because it has an arthouse-style sheen to it, and is shot gorgeously in black and white, often consisting of long, slow takes. Most of the violence occurs offscreen, but that doesn't mean the film hasn't the capacity to either shock or creep out the viewer, especially as the story continues to ratchet up the horror with ever sicker twists. Likewise, there is a massive amount of blood onscreen, but some viewers might be glad that the black and white of the film diminishes that element's impact to a good degree, though you are always made aware that truly horrid events have occurred. Boy, are you ever made aware. After all this, I seriously needed to call my own Mom... which I did, of course. But I did not recommend the film to her. I'm not that irresponsible. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Deep Time (2015) Dir.: Noah Hutton – Go figure, it turns out that I am pro-environment. Who would have guessed? I fully believe that human-created climate change is severely damaging the earth, and I also endorse the belief that oil consumption must become a thing of the past on this planet. As a result, documentaries like Deep Time are right in my wheelhouse. If you must ask, the wheelhouse in question is powered by a giant hamster wheel staffed (in more ways than one) by 100% Republican senatorial slave labor; that is, the slaves in question are normally hardline, conservative senators, of whom a surprisingly large slice are not just into being dominated and beaten by senate pages (of completely shuffling gender) wearing Ronald Reagan masks and possibly other paraphernalia, but have also given their consent freely and without coercion – unless they requested it for extra kicks – to be employed in such a way. These guys make Larry Craig look like a rank amateur. (Well, he was rank regardless, but he was also an amateur...)

Director Noah Hutton is indeed the son of actor Timothy Hutton (his mother is Hutton's ex-wife, actress Debra Winger), something that I suspected going in given his name but didn't seek to verify until halfway through the film. Deep Time is Hutton's second feature built around a study of a small farming community in North Dakota named Stanley that suddenly sees a boon when "land men" (as one local refers to investors in the area) suddenly show up and start paying out huge amounts of money for the right to access their land and drill for oil on it. Some residents become millionaires practically overnight, other residents find out the hard way that there is a big difference between owning a piece of land and securing the mineral rights for what lies beneath the land you supposedly own, and local businesses like bars and hotels find their clientele altered highly when passels of roughnecks move into town to man the oil drills. As the town's population grows from around 1,200 people in 2005 to over 1,450 in 2010, Stanley had to increase its police force from one man to three, petty crime went up and the jails fill up with douchebags. (The estimate from the 2015 census is that Stanley may have more than doubled in size from 2005 to over 2,700 people. That is a boom town number.)

Most of this material was set up in Hutton's first documentary about the area, Crude Independence, released in 2009 (both films were executive produced by the late Jonathan Demme). Just as I was about to watch the copy of Deep Time that I recorded off of the PBS channel that plays films relating to the indigenous peoples of America (more on that in a bit), I found out that the film was a sequel to Crude Independence. So it turns out that I watched the second film first (only watching the first one just this morning). In hitting Crude today, I discovered that huge chunks of Deep Time were recycled footage from the first film, though the inclusion of those chunks was in order to give contrast to Hutton's follow-up interviews a few years later with many of the same citizens, in order to measure the continued impact of the oil boon upon the relatively tiny community. Crude is a pretty compact first documentary for Hutton, coming in at only around 70 minutes, and watching it after the sequel did give me more perspective on exactly what he was seeking to accomplish with his followup. (It also gave a little clarity to a couple of issues in the second film that were a tad confusing to me.)

Unfortunately, I am not sure Crude Independence would have played on the indigenous peoples PBS channel, because they were not a focus in that film at all. This is where Deep Time digs a good deal (pardon the accidental pun) deeper than its predecessor in its portrayal of the area. We see that portions of the native population are benefiting from the oil expansion, but it seems not everyone equally. In fact, some are even dead set against it, as we see one local Native American doing battle in session against city council members in order to block the further expansion of housing for oil workers. I should mention at this point that the Standing Rock Sioux protests over the Dakota Pipeline in the past year or so stems directly from the oil boon in Stanley, North Dakota, as that town is the start point for said pipeline. However, Deep Time completed filming long before the Standing Rock protests came to the fore, so you will find zero in the way of context for those events here.

The first film, despite a title that seems like it is going to rip the oil industry a new bunghole, is pretty straightforward in its approach to simply recording the thoughts of the locals and their reactions to what is going on around them. There is little attempt to editorialize, preferring instead to merely show a cross-section of the populace of Stanley and how the town is being affected, pro and con. So, yes, in Deep Time, with a more expansive running time, we see where the people started and find out where many of the same people are a half-decade later. We find out the cute teen girl with too much black around her eyes and her lovelorn boytoy from the first film are no longer that close, and have, like everyone else, moved forward in their lives. Everyone is a little bit older, and takes one of two tacks: regret about what is happening to the area whether they are benefiting form it or not, or no qualms whatsoever because they are on Easy Street monetarily and aren't looking backward. The filmmakers have their own mystery at hand in trying to find out what happened to one of the biggest interviewees from Crude Independence who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth by the time of this film. (I won't give it away here.)

But Deep Time goes far beyond all this local stuff; Hutton has grown up a little more and has bigger fish to fry. We finally see the sad toll all of this increased production is having on the land. Hutton takes his project well past the town of Stanley, and projects its focus outward in an attempt to measure the impact of the sudden increase of North American oil production on a both a global scale and also across time itself into the future. Of course, unless you have a personal financial stake in the matter and thus you create a blank spot about the rape of our planet since money is the only your mind can comprehend, the picture for both us and the planet in even the near future isn't all that rosy. I hope that Hutton makes a third trip to Stanley in 2020 (if Trump still hasn't killed us all) to find out just how the town and its possibly tragic future will seem then. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Mutant Hunt (1987) Dir.: Tim Kincaid – I may have rated several films of greater quality and artistry much, much higher in this week's movie haul, but none of them hold the pure entertainment value of this relic from the heyday of cheap VHS horror thrills. Mutant Hunt is one of those titles I passed a zillion times in the video store, and with good reason too. It was made for what must have been about six bucks and some pocket change, and the actors look like they learned their fight moves in aerobics class. It is also likely some of them learned their acting skills in aerobics class as well.

Mutant Hunt is about a group of humans with very questionable fighting skills who have a need to stand around and watch the others in their group do battle against mutants instead of all fighting at the same exact time. No? OK, uh, it is about a bunch of mutant androids/robots (really not sure which they are supposed to be) that somehow are able to get all jacked up on drugs and go on a rampage against all of mankind. No, again? OK, it's about a really horrible actress with big hair who seems completely unaware she is a really horrible actress who barks orders at her android minions as she tries to take over the world by merely devouring all scenery in the tri-state area. Somewhere in between all three of these possibilities lies the truth, and you will be all the better for it once you have seen it.

The film is absolutely ridiculous, but I had a huge smile on my face the entire time, even if my head shook nonstop for the same duration as well. The only other film I remember seeing by director Kincaid was his 1985 classic Breeders, which was actually released by MGM for some reason, even if it looks (and is) just as bad as this one. That one had a bunch of strippers/aerobics instructors fighting mutant creatures, and it angers me to this day that the world came this close to Olivia Newton-John starring in it. (Not really, but the cards were there to be played had they thought about it.) This one just has some truly silly fights (I will not disparage the art of fight choreography by suggesting that such a thing was used in this film) and over-the-top robot gore (somehow, they made it possible). Sometimes those two things are all you really need. – TC4P Rating: 3/9