Tuesday, June 24, 2008
White Pongo
Dear God, make it stop! Please! I know I am a bad person. I do terrible things and think terrible thoughts! The Marquis de Sade doesn't make me blush, and I idolize Bender B. Rodriguez and Larry, that swingin' lounge lizard who lived above the Three's Company apartment. But even a man as evil as I doesn't deserve any more "jungle adventure" movies comprised almost entirely of bored actors pointing at grainy stock footage! The story this time: a group of explorers plunge into the dark heart of Africa in search of the fabled white gorilla, the supposed missing link between primitive ape and modern man. Except that White Pongo isn't a missing link; he's just a regular gorilla, except with white fur. Read into that whatever racial implications you will. Especially when the white gorilla is proven to be heroic and noble, and thus must defend a white woman against the advances of a nasty, brutish black gorilla.Most of the movie is, as is par for the course, footage of someone's safari which, by now, is painfully familiar. Are we going to see that shot of an elephant raising its trunk? Check. How about a pacing leopard or something? Oh yeah, we got that, too. And when the movie isn't amazing you with the same stock footage every cheap adventure movie used, it fills itself either with shots of natives dancing around a fire or white guys walking through a jungle set. I love the theory of jungle adventure movies, but the reality is usually less than my imagination delivers. And White Pongo certainly delivers very little.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 8:40 PM | 0 Comments |
Phantom from Space
I would call this one "another snore" if I hadn't watched it immediately after White Pongo. Compared to that slog, Phantom from Space is positively scintillating. Of course, when not judged against White Pongo, the merits of this film are far more dubious, though it gets points for having that sort of misguided and ill-communicated "important message" that so many classic (and less than classic) sci-fi films had. It also has the classic deadpan-yet-excited narrator (if you know the one, then you know the one) talking about "a case from the secret files of the Intelligence Agency, so bizarre it can't be explained!" But after that fun narration, he keeps on talking, giving us times and lat-long coordinates for a crashing UFO. And he just keeps going, making this part of the film sort of like watching the "where are you now" map on long flights. When the spacecraft finally gets around to crashing, the alien stumbles out and 1) happens to be invisible, and 2) accidentally kills someone. This results in the usual string of scenes involving guys in suits stroking their chin and talking about what to do. They really don't get around to doing much of it, but what would you expect from the makers of Killers from Space?This movie tries pretty hard to be good, and I respect it's attempt to be thoughtful in its treatment of the "guys in suits chase the alien" plot. The alien isn't a villain. He simply can't communicate and doesn't know what the hell is going on with all the guys in hats pointing guns at him. But respecting a movie for trying to be thoughtful, and actually enjoying said movie, are often worlds apart. Such is the case with this one. It suffers, as many of these films do, from being filled almost entirely with scenes of very dull dialog delivered in a very dull fashion by very dull characters. I can roll with it, as I have an affinity for such stuff, but there's really not much here that would cause me to suggest anyone else bother. Unless, of course, you really like 1950s techno-babble delivered in monotone by guys in hats.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 8:19 PM | 0 Comments |
Killers from Space
Wow, I forgot how bad this movie was. I mean, I knew it was bad, but I didn't remember the fact that almost nothing happens for the entire length of the film. About the only thing anyone ever remembers after viewing this film are the space aliens, who are realized by taking regular people, dressing them up in body stockings, then sticking ping ball ball halves over their eyes. They are among the least intimidating alien invaders ever to descend to earth and take up residence in a cave. The film revolves around a scientist (Peter Graves) who disappears, then can't remember where he's been. The government suspects that he was kidnapped and brainwashed or may just be a spy. Under hypnosis and a truth serum, however, he relays a fantastical tale about being abducted by the aforementioned ping-pong ball eye aliens, who want to use his knowledge of atomic sciences to complete their ultimate weapon for the conquest of earth: the ability to radiate bugs and make them larger. What follows is much footage of Peter Graves wandering through a cave set, looking at rear projection of insects. The authorities are slow to believe the testimony despite the truth serum, but when the scientist dashes off to the local power plant, he creates a surge that causes the alien base to blow up. Hooray! One of the mainstays of awful cinema.Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 9:28 AM | 0 Comments |
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Assignment Outer Space
Although I'm a big supporter of Italian exploitation director Antonio Margheriti, even I'm hard pressed to be a booster for everything he does, and this early science fiction effort -- his second film -- certainly falls into that category that makes me shrug my shoulders and go, "Well, at least he made Yor, The Hunter from the Future." Rick Van Nutter stars as Ray, an irritating blowhard reporter in the year 2116 who gets assigned to travel with a space crew to a remote station. Problems arise when Ray immediately rubs the captain the wrong way, and the audience is forced to endure the ongoing sniping between these two equally obnoxious guys. The only thing that keeps this crew from deserving to be jettisoned out the airlock is Al, the black guy with snow white hair.After the movie slowly introduced everyone, it unravels totally into a seemingly disconnected barrage of episodes that finds the crew changing course first to Mars for some emergency, then to Venus, and finally to Earth. It seems that some sort of really poorly engineered experimental spaceship has malfunctioned and is plummeting toward Earth, where the super awesome experimental engines will destroy all life. Needless to say, only our intrepid crew can save humanity from this horrible fate.
Although I love movies crammed full of outdated future stuff and speculation on what space travel will be like, Assignment Outer Space gives you very little besides that, and even I get tired of looking at rocket models and tiny spaceman figures eventually. What remains, then, is a poorly written story that never bothers itself with its own continuity and expects us to be interested in the petty bickering between space reporter Ray and the captain. This movie would actually be much better if you watched it with the sound off and just marveled at all the cool old special effects while playing some Esquivel in the background. Most of the effects are typical 50s-60s scifi stuff -- rockets that land vertically and fly through space with a smoking sparkler sticking out the butt, good stuff like that. The big special effects misstep comes when a ship explodes and, for some reason, they use stock footage of an explosion that happens on a city street with cars parked around it. What the hell???
All in all, I can get through this movie purely on the power of the goofy old effects I love so much, but really, the whole thing is a pretty boring, poorly made affair. Margheriti would go on to make a few other scifi films that also managed to be simultaneously really cool looking and sort of boring. He was better off with cannibalistic Vietnam vets and futiristic cavemen laser battles.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 2:08 AM | 1 Comments |
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Mesa of Lost Women
Listen closely to that theme song. I hope you like it. Because it's going to play through the entire movie, almost non-stop. Anyway, this is one of those "must-see" titles that forms the basic foundation of any solid b-movie structure, and though you may wonder at times how the hell it managed to garner such a reputation, by the end of the film, the reason is clear: it has an awesome title.So the story is that a man and a woman are picked up in the Mexican desert, half-delirious and ranting about destroying giant spiders. The man then recounts his most recent adventure, in which he becomes the hostage of a seemingly insane man who takes a group of people on a jaunty sightseeing tour to a mysterious mesa, where they promptly crash their plane and discover that the mesa is not unpopulated. A local mad scientist has spliced woman DNA with spider DNA, creating a sexy race of nigh unkillable female slaves who tend to perform sexy dances in the nearby cantinas. For fun and to round out his mad scientist shtick, there are also some dwarves and some giant spiders.
This one is pretty fun. Starts slow, but once it picks up, the movie becomes increasingly cracked in the head until it reaches the stratospherically loopy conclusion. Bombshell Tandra Quinn's slinky nightclub dance remains the signature moment in the film, and that alone is worth the price of admission. That the movie throws in evil dwarves and giant spiders for good measure is just an act of magnanimity. Plus, the crazed Dr. Aranya (oh what are the chances that a guy named Dr. Spider would go on to perform mad experiments involving spiders! That's almost as ironic as a guy named Dr. Freize getting super freezing powers) is played by Jackie Coogan, who would go on to play Uncle Fester. Make no mistake about it, Mesa of Lost Women is one of the greats of bad 50s B cinema for a reason. Watch it on a double feature with The Horror of Spider Island for all your sexy spider related needs.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 10:15 PM | 1 Comments |
Lost Jungle
Oh man, here we go with another jungle adventure. And since this one stars famed lion tamer Clyde Beatty, you can bet that at least half, if not more, of the movie's running time is going to be scenes of a dude with a whip and a chair messing around with lions. But before we get to that, let me ask a question: how can a jungle be lost? I mean, I can understand being lost in a jungle, or there being a lost something inside a jungle, but how do you lose a whole jungle? It seems to me that, even in the era of travel by dirigible, the losing of a jungle would go something like, "Hmm, where did that jungle go? Oh, there it is; that giant green patch that covers half of Africa." Anyway...We open on, you guessed it, scenes of Clyde taming some lion and tigers while the junior Bowery Boys look on. In between scenes of lion taming, we get our plot: Claude's girlfriend wants to marry him before she sets sail in a clipper ship with her dad, but he's too busy taming lions to notice her advances, at least until the boat she's on gets shipwrecked. Now Clyde must spring into action to rescue her and bring back some more lions and tigers to tame, all while being oblivious to the fact that his assistant, Sharky, is trying to kill him. Once in the jungle, there's something about a lost city, but mostly, it's just scenes of people sitting around a campfire until Clyde shows up to crack a whip and tame the local wild man-eating lions.
This is better than most crappy jungle adventure movies, if for no other reason than most of the animals are actually present on set rather than represented by characters pointing at or walking in front of grainy stock footage. This lends an air of excitement and danger to the film that is absent from most other films of this type. Plus, when Clyde steps in to grapple with surly tigers and lions, he's really standing there with surly tigers and lions, and when those animals get fed up, they tend to let everyone know. Still, one old fashioned lion taming act might be thrilling in a movie. But Lost Jungle sees no reason to stop at one.
So if you like scenes of tigers balancing on top of rubber balls while bears do somersaults and a guy cracks a whip and wields a chair, then this is the movie for you. Because at just over an hour, I think about forty-five minutes of the movie is lion taming scenes. Fifteen minutes is people walking through a jungle set, and five minutes is Sharky staring menacingly. It's much more watchable than many other Poverty Row jungle adventures, but that's not saying a whole lot. But you might as well watch this one, because short of a good Tarzan movie, jungle adventure movies tend not to get any better. At least there's no lengthy elephant stampede, and they don't bring those wisecracking kids from the beginning along to Africa.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 10:04 PM | 1 Comments |
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Menace from Space
Rocky and Winky return, along with the rest of the gang, for another space-farin' adventure beyond imagination. My most recent disc of Treeline's sci-fi box set concludes with Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Menace from Space, another serviceable feature film created by stitching a couple episodes of the Rocky Jones television show together. This time around, someone from one of the moons of Jupiter is taking pot shots at the Earth, and Rocky and Winky must refuse to take along a competent crew and instead populate their ship with a chick in a mini-skirt (good decision), a senile old professor, and an irritating kid as they investigate the matter. There's a pretty funny scene where a big, strapping space ranger says he's been chained to a desk too long and would love to go on the mission. Rocky turns him down, then says the useless little kid can come along instead -- all this right in front of the sad sack desk jockey.Speaking of the little kid, Bobby, he has his irritating mannerisms cranked up to eleven, including lots of "Rolickin' rockets, Rocky!" and a positively creepy scene where he tries to get Rocky to take him along on the mission by flexing and, in his flat, unaccomplished child actor delivery, goes on and on with stuff like, "I'm getting so big and strong, Rocky! And my muscles...gosh!" And what makes it even creepier is that the kid's delivery comes out sounding very similar in intonation to the infamous "Me so horny!" speech from Full Metal Jacket. Oh Rocky! Let me take off my little boy checkered shirt so you can slather me with space froth! The writers of these episodes must have sensed that sidekick Winky was behaving pretty normal -- almost like a grown man, despite still being called Winky -- so they decided to ratchet the Bobby quotient up considerably.
Still Bobby aside, this is a pretty good little adventure. Rocky and crew trace the missile back to a society of people in jangly headwear who make their women dress like belly dancers. In other words -- advanced morally and socially far beyond us humans, who only require a small percentage of women to dress like belly dancers a small percentage of the time (and then, some of them are flabby hippies, so they don't even count). The moon men of Jupiter are being advised by a nefarious human professor who wants to use the fabulous energy sources of the moon to threaten Earth. But these aliens are basically good guys, so they aren't falling for the evil professor's tricks, at least not easily. Introducing them to Bobby probably helped the cause of obliterating the Earth, but then, we also gave them Rocky's hot babe in a mini-skirt and cape (who is aghast that the increased gravity on this moon makes her weigh over 200 pounds! Ha, ha, ha, -- women!), so things are even.
Rocky is still too cautious for my taste, but this is a pretty good space thriller never the less, with some fist fights, old rocket effects, and guys in funny sparkling headdresses. I like it better than Crash of the Moons, but not for any particular or tangible reason -- I just had more fun during this particular entry into the series.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 7:50 PM | 0 Comments |
Gamera the Invincible
Although nowhere near the league of the original Godzilla or the Godzilla films from the 1960s, Gamera the Invincible is never the less a decent example of what Daiei could do when they took a giant monster seriously. Atomic testing awakens the slumbering giant turtle, who appears here in pre friend to all children mode, and Gamera commences to trashing the Japanese landscape until a young boy in hot pants develops a psychic link with the turtle and starts bossing the Japanese military around. Hard to believe that the Japanese military went from being the scourge of Asia to taking orders from a kid in hot pants, but that's what fascism will do to ya. The kid is named Kenny, and he gave figurative birth to a whole generation of Japanese kids in hot pants who are looked to for advice in dealing with giant monsters.Gamera the Invincible isn't one of my favorite giant monster movies (though the three Gamera movies from the 1990s are), but it's good stuff. The effects are surprisingly accomplished for a movie with a low budget even by giant monster movie standards. I do wish I'd seen these growing up, because I would have loved them, especially the outrageous later entries into the series with all their blood drinking and gore. So do your kids a favor: sit them down one afternoon when it's raining (if it's not raining, they should be outside playing -- don't let them just sit there playing Frogger or Pole Position or whatever video games are popular right now. I'm pretty sure it's Frogger) and say to them, "kid, today you're going to watch space girls suck out the brains of someone just about your age, unless a giant turtle with blood squirting out his chest can fly through space to stop them." Trust me, when your kids grow up, they will thank you.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 7:47 PM | 1 Comments |
Attack of the Monsters
Growing up, I was never a Gamera fan. It wasn't that I didn't like the movies; I just never had a chance to see them. WDRB-TV 41 out of Louisville was the only source for Japanese monster movies at the time (this being the years before cable and VCRs), and they showed a definite bias toward the Toho films. So Godzilla, you betcha. Gargantuas, oh sure. But Gamera? No dice. I'd never even heard of the giant flying turtle until high school, and I didn't watch my first Gamera film until college -- where I learned that sidling up to a foxy young woman in a bar and saying, "I just had my first experience with Gamera, friend to all children. Perhaps you'd like to share in it with me?" isn't really all that effective as a pick-up line.Gamera didn't really win me over at that late a stage in the game, though I did appreciate certain things about the movies that are embodied in Attack of the Monsters -- specifically that they were garishly candy-colored and spectacularly violent. Kids films now may be restricted to movies where people are shocked by the stinkiness of baby poo and precocious tweens have to foil spies by driving around in go-carts, but there was a time when children's films included drunken jig dancing and a giant turtle being lacerated by a monster who shoots throwing stars out of his nose, causing blood to squirt out like mad. Yeah, that's the good stuff. Actually, when I mentioned drunken jig dancing, I was thinking of Darby O'Gill and the Little People, one of my favorite kids' films that also features Sean Connery punching people in the face, but now that I think about it, Attack of the Monsters has some drunken jig dancing in it as well, performed by none other than Gamera himself.
The story is pretty simple: two mischievous young lads in hot pants find a flying saucer in the woods and do what any young boys would do in such a situation: bang on the controls until the thing flies into space. The benevolent Gamera saves them from an asteroid belt, then rolls his eyes endlessly, presumably in some sort of warning that they should quit farting around in strange spaceships, but mostly it looks like he's just about had it up to here with being the guardian of the children. Unfortunately for the boys, the spaceship is too fast even for a turtle that flies by spinning around with flames shooting out his legholes like a cheap July 4th firework -- from back in the days when you were allowed to purchase such things, before someone's mom got bored and decided to mount a crusade to have them banned "to protect the children." Look lady, Gamera lets us have cheap fireworks, and if they're cool with a twenty-story tall giant flying turtle, then they oughta be cool with everyone.
The spaceship lands on some crappy planet where a Gyaos, the pterodactyl-like monster from one of Gamera's most popular adventures, gets his legs graphically chopped off by Barugon. Then some sexy space ladies show up and make all nice to the kids, even though the plan is to eat their brains and maybe drink their blood. I lost track of the menu at some point. Will Gamera save the wee lads from this horrible fate?
Attack of the Monsters isn't particularly good, but it's still fun just because it's hard to believe a kiddie film is packed so full of gushing blood and brain-sucking space women. They don't make 'em like they used to. I'm sure had I grown up with a movie like this, I would have liked it more than Godzilla's Revenge. The action kind of falters in the middle, when Gamera is lyin' at the bottom of a lake and our two young protagonists are carrying the weight of the film, but once the monster shenanigans kick into high gear, the fun begins. The effects are extremely shoddy and a glaring example of how far the miniatures and man-in-a-monster-suit craft had sunk post Eiji Tsubaraya. But what the hell, right? It's a giant flying space turtle fighting sexy brain-sucking space girls and a monster who shoots ninja stars out of his head. If I was a kid, or if I had a kid, I'd make sure this was in heavy rotation.
Oh yeah -- this is also the movie that has Gamera go-go dancing and spinning around on some gymnastics equipment, a scene that is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds. It ranks right up there with Godzilla's world famous tail slide and his Irish jig dance on Planet X.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 7:39 PM | 2 Comments |
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Honestly, I didn't really relish sitting down to watch this movie again. I'd seen it before, obviously, and pronounced it one of those movies best only watched in its Mystery Science Theater incarnation. Just thinking about watching it again made my head hurt, but for you, I sucked it up and plowed through. It turns out the movie really doesn't get any better with age.Some Martian kids decide they would be happier with Christmas on Mars, so the Martian army (or whatever) sends a Stacey Keach looking Martian, a "lovable" goofball, and a big robot to kidnap Santa Claus and make him spread joy and Christmas spirit across Mars. Naturally, the children of Earth aren't going to stand by and watch all their presents get shanghaid up to Mars.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is the sort of movie I should enjoy, as I admire the good old days when kiddie films were completely warped and totally off their rockers. You just don't get bizarre children's fare like this anymore. And I suppose I'd be much happier watching this than a movie where Hillary Duff solves problems or kids drive around go-carts and foil bank robbers. But the fact remains that, weird though it may be, it's mostly just horribly boring -- far more boring than a movie about Santa fighting Martians should be. Colorful, sure, and maybe fun to look at for a while, but for the most part, the film just grates on my nerves, and I'd much rather watch that Mexican movie where Santa and Merlin kick Satan's ass.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 7:31 PM | 1 Comments |
Galaxy Invader
Man, sometimes you forget how shoddy a film can be until you stumble across bottom-of-the-barrel junk like Galaxy Invader. This movie is the sort of thing that would eventually become the digital video micro-budget film, but here they got to shoot on grainy film stock. The story is about a space alien who crash land son earth and finds himself pursued by drunken rednecks who want to sell him to a sideshow or the government or something. We don't really know much about the alien -- he could be here to kill us all -- but compared to the fat guy who drinks the same beer through the whole movie, and the guy who wears the same t-shirt with a scissors cut in the middle of it for the whole movie, I guess the monster is the hero.I try to stay away from "so bad it's good" judgments, but man alive, this movie is so bad it's good. The acting is horrible, the monster suit is awful, and the special effects are, well, take a wild guess. Most of the movie revolves around a drunk guy yelling at his family, then shifts to be about several drunk guys stalking through the woods at night in an attempt to catch the alien. Then an old woman whacks the drunk guy in the head with a shotgun, which is filmed in slow motion and from multiple angles and in a way that makes it obvious the woman is actually lightly placing the butt of the shotgun against the actor's forehead. That obvious fact doesn't stop a flopping dummy from shooting like forty feet out over a canyon that wasn't there a second ago.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 7:08 PM | 0 Comments |
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Crash of the Moons
So here's the thing about Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. On paper, it sounds like something I should enjoy. Two guys in baseball caps fly through space rescuing people and marveling at crude special effects. The problem, however, is that one of the guys is named Winky, and Rocky Jones himself is just so...dull.Let's start with Winky. No man, no boy should ever be named Winky. I know Wee Willy set the precedent, but is he really someone after whom you would want to model your life? Jack Spratt, maybe. He had a sensible diet regiment. But not Wee Willy Winky. Winky is the sort of name a little kid gives to his penis. It is not the name of a swashbuckling space cadet. Now, you may defend Winky by citing precedent for all airplane/space rocket sidekicks and mechanics to have a cutesy nickname -- Corky being the most common. I will grant you that but still maintain that Winky falls well outside the boundaries of acceptable wacky nicknames for your co-pilot or mechanic. Corky, definitely, or Greasy or Slim. Not Winky. Winky could be an OK name for a Smurf, one who gets a disturbing nervous facial twitch every time he sees Handy Smurf, but not a space a ranger.
On top of that, actor Scotty Beckett (who, incidentally, played a character named Corky in a couple Gasoline Alley movies just prior to his stint as Winky in the Rocky Jones series) plays Winky like a Jerry Lewis inspired man-child, minus the pratfalls.
And Rocky Jones? Well, he's no Dean Martin. He's no Flash Gordon. And nope, he's no Buck Rodgers, either. He's sort of like what you'd get if a typical 1950s father became a space ranger. Strong, authoritative, yes, but never exciting or surprising. As far as space rangering go, he approaches it with cautious responsibility, which may be the proper way to do things but doesn't always make for thrilling episodes. He doesn't punch nearly enough people.
Treeline's 50-movie DVD set of sci-fi classics hits you with two Rocky Jones movies in a row -- I assume they're episodes of the television series edited together into a feature length film. Crash of the Moons is presented first, and tells the tale of Rocky and Winky (and you thought Bruce and Dick in Batman afforded easy gay jokes) as they struggle to keep two wandering gypsy moons from crashing into one another and exterminating the cultures that live 'pon each. Since these culture seem to value women in a futuristic space mini-skirts, you can see why they're worth saving. Unfortunately, the leader of one of the worlds is not especially cooperative. The movie also throws in a little kid admirer of Rocky Jones so we have someone besides Winky to pout, "Aww, gee whiz, cap!" Bobby manages to be even more irritating than Winky, but we expect that of little kids. Winky is a grown man, for crying out loud! The rest of the cast is rounded out by proper space gal Vena Ray (Sally Mansfield) and "hilariously" absent-minded Professor Newton (Maurice Cass).
The characters aren't interesting, the action drags (Rocky needs to get in more fist fights), and most of it is pretty silly, even for the time. It's not as much fun as it should be, but it still manages to be some fun, mostly because of my previously declared affinity for old sci-fi films. On the positive side, the plot is actually pretty involved, especially compared to modern sci-fi films which jettison plot and use sci-fi trappings to dress up big, dumb action movies. Rocky Jones isn't the sort of film you're going to trot out to convince naysayers that old sci-fi fare is actually pretty good, but if you're already in the camp, and if you can develop part of your brain to screen out anyone named Winky, it's harmless enough fun.
The Rocky Jones series lasted only one season, primarily because producers found the sets and costumes too involved and complex to keep the show financially viable and on a decent time schedule. That may seem a ludicrous claim looking at the end results on the screen today, but compare Rocky Jones to any other television show (not movie) from the same era, and you'll see just how advanced it was. Like most things, not all of their visions and ambitions were pulled off successfully, and indeed the original Buck Rogers and Flash Gorden serials were more of a visual feast, but for a modest kid's show from 1953 or 1954, Rocky Jones doesn't look half bad. I'd actually consider it pretty good stuff for a kid, much better than the live-action sci-fi kids get now, which is nothing but bad martial arts against cheap-looking monsters, followed with a syrupy moral delivered so ham-fistedly that even the writers of After School Specials cringe.
Disc four, side two concludes with a second Rocky Jones feature cobbled together from episodes of the television show, this one titled Menace from Outer Space. Unlike the previous Rocky Jones movie, I haven't seen this one before, and I'm actually kind of looking forward to it.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 7:24 PM | 1 Comments |
They Came From Beyond Space
England's Amicus Studio gives us an adaptation of a sci-fi novel called The Gods Hate Kansas, but upon sighting a man carrying an umbrella and wearing a bowler hat, I assumed that perhaps the movie wasn't set in Kansas, after all. This is a pretty low-key "aliens take over our bodies and engage in some nefarious scheme" type of movie, with one of those "oh, it was all a big misunderstanding!" endings, but it was ably shot and solidly acted, as one expects from the Brits. And they try to liven things up with lots of gratuitous machine gun fire. Some pretty good cheap sci-fi sets at the end, and all in all, a pretty enjoyable experience. Feels more like a TV movie than a theatrical release, but since I was watching on my TV, that was fine.Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 7:02 PM | 0 Comments |
Blood Tide
Some chick and the evil sensei from Karate Kid show up on a remote Greek island searching for the guy's sister, but all they find at first is some dumb blonde, a bunch of suspicious locals, and James Earl Jones with his shirt off. Eventually, they discover that the waters around the island are inhabited by a gigantic sea monster to which the townspeople occasionally sacrifice a virgin -- except that it ends up the sea monster is more man-sized than giant. Once again, I watch a terrible movie and still like it for some reason. I think the grainy picture quality, the crumbling locations, and a drunken James Earl Jones bellowing, "Bring me a melon!" combined with cheap "eerie music" well enough to hold my interest even though very little was happening beyond James Earl Jones drinking and sucking in his gut. Sadly, the main guy does not defeat the fish-wolf-man-monster by "sweeping the leg."Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 6:57 PM | 0 Comments |
Bride of the Gorilla
Not to be confused with Bride of the Monster, this cheap tale of the supernatural continues the "50 Classic Sci-Fi Movies" box set's preoccupation with films featuring people strolling through the jungle. Peeking ahead in the collection, I see lots of Gamera and sword and sandal movies on the horizon, which is heartening, because I'm just about at my limit when it comes to movies that feature the time-honored scene of people walking through the jungle, then one of them points and says, "Look over there!" so the movie can cut to a few minutes of stock footage of a leopard or an elephant.Bride of the Gorilla stars Raymond Burr, who most of you probably know as the reporter from the Americanized version of the original Godzilla, and many others of you know as the portly super-lawyer Perry Mason. What I didn't know until I watched this film was what a barrel-chested ass-kicker Burr was before he took on the shape of a sphere. He plays the boss foreman of a Caribbean plantation in this movie, and there's really no doubt looking at him that he could bust some heads if he wanted to. Sort of shocking, really, like when people see a young Ricardo Montalbon for the first time and discover what a huge, muscled Adonis he was. Only then do they realize that the buff chest he displays in Star Trek II is, in fact, his own and not a prosthetic as popular urban legend has it.
Anyway, I don't know what the first "plantation owner riles up the natives and gets a voodoo curse slapped on him" film was, but this one hews pretty close to the conventions of the genre -- and yes, I am happy that "plantation owner riles up the natives and gets a voodoo curse slapped on him" can be a genre unto itself. When Burr spurns a local girl in favor of a rich man's disillusioned wife, it leads to Burr sort of murdering the rich guy (mostly just by not saving him from a snake attack), marrying the widow, and pissing off the native girl's resident old crone so that she puts a curse on Burr that will turn him into a savage gorilla-man. From time to time, Lon Chaney Jr. shows up, because at the time there was a Hayes Office law that required any movie involving humans turning into monstrous animals had to feature Lon Chaney Jr. in some capacity.
Bride of the Gorilla is basically a water treading movie. It's not that bad, but it's not that good. The acting is all decent, but there's never any reason to be all that concerned for the sad fate of Raymond Burr. He's not exactly an asshole, but he's not the sort of character who evokes sympathy in the viewer, either. Lon Chaney should have given him some pointers. Likewise, the rich guy he sort-of kills is never especially villainous, and the rich woman is never much of anything other than present. There's no surprises, but at just a few minutes over an hour, Bride of the Gorilla is short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome. It's certainly better than any of the other jungle adventures we've sat through up to this point in the box set.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 11:40 AM | 0 Comments |
King of Kong Island
Oh, good gravy, Charlie Brown! When I sat down to watch King of Kong Island, I realized that thirty minutes into the film, I hadn't really seen or heard a single thing. About an hour into the film, I realized once again that I'd not heard nor seen a single thing, even though I sat staring at the TV with nothing to divert my attention. After restarting the film and experiencing the same effect, I realized that it wasn't that I was zoning out; it was that the movie itself was a vast black hole from which no interest could emerge. Queen of the Amazons was a godawful boring movie, but at least it was short. King of Kong Island is a similar "traipsing through the jungle" adventure, albeit in color, but it manages to be longer and even more boring despite having a plot that, if described in a few sentences, sounds fabulously interesting and packed with action.For starters, one can't help but mention the title. Only a rube would expect there to be anything actually related to King Kong in a movie like this. One also has to question exactly why, in the year 1968, Italian producers would seek to cash in on the King Kong name. I mean, it's not as if, as far as I know, there was a huge wave of interest in King Kong during 1968. Thus, one assumes, there wouldn't be a big market for a King Kong tie-in even if people were stupid enough to believe that's what this movie was.
But anyway, if you are going to name your movie King of Kong Island, even if King Kong isn't in it, you should at least have the basic human decency to include a giant ape, even a ratty one like in Goliathon. Or, I don't know, you could include a place called Kong Island. But King of Kong Island has neither a giant ape nor a Kong Island. It's not even set on an island, period. It takes place in Nairobi, which I guess is on an island if you consider to continent of Africa to be an island. And not only is there no giant monkey and no island, there's no king -- of an island or otherwise. So what distributors were thinking when they saddled this movie (the original title was Eva, la Venere Selvaggia, which makes no mention of kings, Kongs, or islands) with the title King of Kong Island is anybody's guess.
Instead, what we have is a very dull jungle adventure about a mercenary (Brad Harris, of Hercules and Kommissar X movie series fame) who gets betrayed by another mercenary named Albert (what a lame mercenary name -- he should have a cool merc name like Machete Jackson or Exhaust Pipe McGhee), who also happens to be a mad scientist implanting gorillas (guys in those cheap gorilla outfits you can buy at the grocery store round Halloween time) with mind-controlling microchips, which he eventually plans to put into humans -- which seems a very time-consuming way to take over the world. He should have just invented a mind control ray or something less complex to implement. Brad Harris goes into the jungle to kick Albert's ass, mainly because Albert kidnapped Brad's female buddy. And then there's something about an Interpol agent. And then Brad Harris meets one of those half-naked jungle goddesses, for no good reason really -- not that you ever need much of a reason to meet a half-naked jungle goddess.
Hong Kong's Goliathon also ripped off King Kong (and Godzilla) and had a jungle goddess, but it remembered to also be fun to watch. King of Kong Island sounds pretty crazy and interesting, but believe me, it isn't. And nothing steams my monkeys more than when someone takes a completely daft and wonderful sounding plot and executes it in such a boring fashion.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 11:33 AM | 0 Comments |
Friday, December 7, 2007
Queen of the Amazons
What we got here is a Robert Lippert production from 1947 called Queen of the Amazons, and it being a Lippert production, I assumed it would contain super-imposed shots of iguanas passed off as dinosaurs and an erupting volcano. I guess 1947 was a little early for these treats, because although they became de rigueur in Lippert's 1950s output, Queen of the Amazons doesn't feature either of them, though it does contain plenty of stock footage of natives and various African animals.The low-grade Sheena plot pretty much writes itself. It's the old story of a white woman (or in this case, a tribe of white women) who live in the jungles of Africa and are worshiped like vengeful goddesses. An expedition of other white people eventually finds them, and then there's a small shoot out with a fat guy over some ivory smuggling, and that's about that.
The best part of this film is probably the confrontation between the titular Queen of the Amazons, who speaks like a Ukrainian immigrant for some reason, and the woman who mounts an expedition in search of her fiance, who disappeared during a previous expedition and later turns up as having become more or less de facto king of the Amazons, since even in the jungle, a tribe of women are waiting for a white guy to boss them around. The queen insists that the guy loves her and wants to leave his fiance, and if the fiance stands in the way, the queen will kill her. The fiance's response to this, after having just given some other guy a speech about how her fiance is the only man in the whole world she could ever imagine loving, is just to shrug and say, "Well, okay. No reason we can't be friends. I'm gonna go get that other guy." And then she gets with the guy she gave that speech to.
This is a great movie for anyone who likes stock footage of natives or lengthy scenes of people walking through fake jungles or sitting around in fake jungles. Also, if you like to watch dull monkey antics, you're in luck. I didn't think monkey antics could ever be dull, but this movie proved me wrong.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 11:37 PM | 0 Comments |
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women
Usually, when someone says a certain movie is the same as some other certain movie, what they mean is that the makers of the second film basically just ripped off the ideas from the first film. In the case of Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, however, they are literally the same movie. When Roger Corman bought the rights to a Russian (back then we called 'em Soviets) sci-fi film, he figured he could dub the thing, splice in some footage of Basil Rathebone, and call it a new movie. Having completed that, he then decided he could rearrange the dubbed footage yet again, splice in some footage of Mamie Van Doren, and call it yet another new movie. Thus Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women was born, with the same core cast and dialog, but with a couple scenes used differently to create a different "plot." It occupies the remaining slot on disc two, side two of the 50-movie box set from Mill Creek.Where as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet was a movie about a group of astronauts wandering around the surface of Venus, getting attacked by some monsters from time to time, then leaving, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women is a movie about a group of astronauts wandering around the surface of Venus, getting attacked by some monsters from time to time, then leaving. The primary difference here is that the movie is set in the distant future of 1985 instead of 2010, and the pterodactyl happens to be worshiped by a race (as in, like, seven) of hot women who spend most of the day wearing shiny Capri pants and seashell bikini tops while lying awkwardly on very uncomfortable looking rocks by the ocean.
When the explorers shoot down the pterodactyl, the women mourn him then ask their fire god (a nearby volcano) to to take vengeance on the demons who have slain their god. The volcano apparently listens, erupts, and melts a robot that was also in the other film. He was kind of a crappy robot, and his main function was to stand at the mouth of a cave and announce in monotone robot voice, "I am here." His function in both films remains pretty consistent.
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet features a bit where the astronauts keep hearing an eerie female voice singing to them (and by voice, I mean a Theremin, which doesn't sound very much like a human voice), and one of the astronauts (or cosmonauts, comrade) thinks he sees the woman at one point. Except for some inconsistencies in the narration that sets up the movie, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women could then almost work as a Rashomon style "slightly different viewpoint of the same series of events," one in which we get to see the mysterious woman, or women.
That said, there's really not that much reason to watch both of these movies. You can watch one or the other, and they're both pretty fun, but they're also the same movie only slightly rearranged, so there's not much point to sitting through it twice. Personally, I'd rather watch Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet since the Basil Rathebone scenes are extremely short, and the bulk of the movie is astronauts yanking on dinosaur tails. The new Mamie Van Doren scenes in Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women are much longer and very poorly acted and break up the flow of the movie a lot more while adding very little. I can't remember, but I think they also cut out the tail-yanking scene in this version, though they left in the lizard monsters, carnivorous plant, and pterodactyl.
As I understand it, Corman actually managed to make yet a third movie out of this same footage, which must qualify him for some sort of an award. Not a good award, necessarily, but an award never the less.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 11:26 PM | 0 Comments |
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet
So we're up to disc two, side two of Sci-Fi Classics, and the first of our color features. Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet was one of my favorites as a kid, being as it is a relatively plotless piece of sci-fi eye candy about some astronauts who, in the far-flung year of 2010, land on Venus, stroll around, get attacked by some monster, stroll around, then get in their rocketship and fly away. The film was actually constructed out of pieces of a Russian sci-fi film, with a few token newly filmed shots of Basil Rathebone in a space station thrown in for good measure, compliments of American producer Roger Corman. I'm not familiar with the plot of the original Soviet film, so I'm not going to compare the versions.What I will say is that, although Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet will undoubtedly prove too slow moving for many people who have been raised in the era when sci-fi simply means "action film with some future stuff," I personally love it as much now as I did as a kid. The special effects are of the archaic "rocket on a wire" style that I cherish, and the sets are surreal, wild, and imaginative -- and accomplished entirely with actual physical objects, this being decades before everyone relied on computer generated landscapes and prog rock album cover illustrations. Sure there isn't much going on other than some guys in spacesuits walking around, but it's still cool, and on their walk they do get attacked by carnivorous plants, lizard men, and a pterodactyl. Ad then one astronaut sneaks up and pulls a brontosaurus' tail just for kicks.
Of course, you wouldn't want to rely too heavily on some of the science in the film. We've learned a little more about Venus in the ensuing few decades, so I doubt we'll be tooling about its surface in hover cars any time soon, but then, actual scientific knowledge is often the hobgoblin of fun science fiction. I'd rather watch 70 minutes of guys fighting monsters on Venus than 70 minutes of a guy explaining to me why there can't possibly be any life on Venus.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 11:22 PM | 0 Comments |
Wasp Woman
After sidetracking myself during my first attempt to watch Wasp Woman (I was trying to do it while writing a query letter to send to Outside magazine), I sat down again last night and applied myself a little more to the task at hand. Yes, those are my priorities. My obligation tonight? Watch Wasp Woman. Kids, this is what adulthood is really like. Don't let anyone tell you different.
Wasp Woman is basically a Roger Corman (you didn't think we'd get very far into this collection before his name came up, did you?) knock-off of The Fly, which was very popular at the time. For this particular story, an aging cosmetics queen becomes addicted to a new anti-aging formula her resident scientist has derived from wasp eggs. See, you think smearing wasp eggs on your face to reverse the effects of aging is weird, but think about what really happens. People inject themselves with bovine botulism to reverse the effects of aging. When reality is dafter than a Roger Corman sci-fi quickie, you know things have gone insane.
Of course she eventually uses too much of the wonder cream and is turned into the titular freak of nature, which causes her to go around killing people and building nests in the corners of their porches and storage sheds. Frankly, I'm surprised there hasn't been a made for the Sci-Fi Channel about a woman who OD's on botox and becomes a hideous cow-monster with the ability to shoot botulism from her fingertips. Or hooftips. Whatever she has. And shooting botulism or any other disease out of your fingertips is no less far-fetched than actually willingly injecting yourself with botulism to smooth out some wrinkles.
Scientifically, it's best to just roll with this movie. You can't expect a high degree of scientific reliability from a movie that is unable to tell the difference between wasps and bees.
Wasp Woman is a hard march for the first half hour, but once the craziness begins, Corman delivers exactly what you expect: a solid and silly if unspectacular B-movie. The acting is OK -- except for Corman's. He appears as a doctor who apparently injected himself with the essence of wood. This movie works as a great companion piece to Horror of Spider Island, and I'd like to see the freakish man-spider from that movie fall in love with the wasp woman. Now there's a monster -- a wasp-spider!?! Just what the world needs.
Wasp Woman is basically a Roger Corman (you didn't think we'd get very far into this collection before his name came up, did you?) knock-off of The Fly, which was very popular at the time. For this particular story, an aging cosmetics queen becomes addicted to a new anti-aging formula her resident scientist has derived from wasp eggs. See, you think smearing wasp eggs on your face to reverse the effects of aging is weird, but think about what really happens. People inject themselves with bovine botulism to reverse the effects of aging. When reality is dafter than a Roger Corman sci-fi quickie, you know things have gone insane.
Of course she eventually uses too much of the wonder cream and is turned into the titular freak of nature, which causes her to go around killing people and building nests in the corners of their porches and storage sheds. Frankly, I'm surprised there hasn't been a made for the Sci-Fi Channel about a woman who OD's on botox and becomes a hideous cow-monster with the ability to shoot botulism from her fingertips. Or hooftips. Whatever she has. And shooting botulism or any other disease out of your fingertips is no less far-fetched than actually willingly injecting yourself with botulism to smooth out some wrinkles.
Scientifically, it's best to just roll with this movie. You can't expect a high degree of scientific reliability from a movie that is unable to tell the difference between wasps and bees.
Wasp Woman is a hard march for the first half hour, but once the craziness begins, Corman delivers exactly what you expect: a solid and silly if unspectacular B-movie. The acting is OK -- except for Corman's. He appears as a doctor who apparently injected himself with the essence of wood. This movie works as a great companion piece to Horror of Spider Island, and I'd like to see the freakish man-spider from that movie fall in love with the wasp woman. Now there's a monster -- a wasp-spider!?! Just what the world needs.
Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics
posted by Armando at 11:16 PM | 0 Comments |