Tarzan’s Peril (1951) – Review

Tarzan’s Peril is the third outing with Lex Barker in the titular role but is slightly darker in tone than the previous two. There are no lost civilizations or fountains of youth this time out. For this movie we go back to the standard evil white man entering the jungle which was the staple of the Johnny Weissmuller years.

The film begins with two white dudes witnessing the coronation of Melmendi (Dorothy Dandridge), the queen of the Ashuba tribe. One of the gentlemen is Commissioner Peters (Alan Napier) who is retiring from his position and is giving his replacement, Connors (Edward Ashley), the nickel tour. The celebrations are interrupted by party crashers in the form of the neighbouring Yorango tribe lead by the brutal King Bulam (Frederick O'Neal). Bulam has been hankering to marry the beautiful Melmendi for some time now but she’d rather marry a snake than this creep.

 

Take one look at this guy and who could blame her?

Peters informs Connors that he has been able to keep gin and guns out of this neck of the woods and expresses the importance to Connors that it be kept this way. This scene seems more in keeping with Westerns of the time with white man worried about the Indians getting drunk or arming themselves, and it’s rather uncomfortable to see an old white guy forcing the newly crowned queen to promise that she will obey these restrictions. The “Superior White Man” element is something that unfortunately pops up a lot in the older Tarzan flicks.

 

“I say, it’s best to keep dangerous toys away from them.”

As rotten to the core as Bulam is, he isn’t the film’s key villain that would be the nefarious Radijack (George Macready) who, as far was Commissioner Peters and Tarzan knew, was locked up and facing a hanging for such crimes as slaving and gunrunning. Unfortunately, with the aid of two compatriots; Doctor Herbert Trask (Douglas Fowley) and Andrews (Glenn Anders) he manages to escape, and to make matter worse he plans on selling a passel of guns to Bulam.

 

“Later we’ll be selling drugs to orphans.”

When Tarzan (Lex Barker) finds out that Radijack has escaped he initially promises Jane (Virginia Huston) to not get involved and to stay out of trouble. This is an odd thing for the “Lord of the Jungle” to promise as not only was it Tarzan and Commissioner Peters who stopped Radijack in the first place but we also find out that Jane unwittingly nursed Radijack back to health years before. With that kind of history it makes no sense for Tarzan to decide to sit on the sidelines, that is unless he’s married to a stereotypical fifties wife who rains on everyone’s parade.

 

“No Tarzan, you can play with Cheeta and Tantor after you repaint the bedroom.”

Virginia Hudson is one of the worst Jane in Tarzan’s cinematic history, she’s kind of like if June Cleaver was cosplaying Wilma Flintstone. Not only does she not look the part but she’s given nothing to do but make dinner for Tarzan and later get held hostage by Radijack. When Tarzan discovers that Radijack has murdered Commissioner Peters and Connors he leaps into action, but not before first ordering, “Jane go home!” This is not one of Tarzan’s finer moments. Now, aside from the racial and sexual backwardness of the film, it does at least have some fun jungle adventure moments. We get Tarzan swinging into action against Bulam’s entire tribe, diving into them as if they were a mosh pit, and even when outnumbered, beaten and sent over a waterfall he keeps coming back for more. There are also a couple of unintentionally hilarious bits where Tarzan faces off against…

 

A rubber snake that threatens Cheeta.

 

And a goofy as hell fight with a man-eating plant.

The one thing that makes director Bryan Haskin’s Tarzan film stand-out from its brethren is the amount of time it spends with the villains and not with Tarzan. The Ape Man really doesn’t do much of anything until the third act, as the first two thirds of the film focuses on Radijack, his henchman, and their dealings with Bulam. Lucky for us that actor George Macready is up to the task with his villainous portrayal of Radijack, as it’s great fun to watch him sneer and scheme against even his supposed allies. On the downside is the aforementioned horrible version of Jane and also some overly long comedy bits with Cheeta that stop the film cold.

 

"If you see a chimp, please kill it."

It is nice to see such notable personages as Dorothy Dandridge playing the native queen and always great to see character actor Alan Napier, though it is odd that this film series has already gone through three actresses for Jane yet bring back Alan Napier for a second time to play a completely different part (He was the love interest in Tarzan’s Magic Fountain). Lex Barker continues to give a decent performance with maybe a touch more gravitas than we got in the Johnny Weissmuller films.

Note: This is the first Tarzan film by producer Sol Lesser that has elements actually filmed in Africa,
but though some stuff was filmed in Kenya the bulk of the movie is still clearly shot on grounds back in the United States.

Jurassic World (2015) – Review

Kids love dinosaurs, this is an undisputed fact, but do we really need them in all are dinosaur movies? In the first Jurassic Park movie Hammond’s grandkids were from the book so I can cut Spielberg a little slack there, but now we have the fourth Jurassic movie and we are still stuck wasting screen time with children running from CGI monsters. Does the studio think we need to see kids in danger in order to keep the suspense up? And to make matters worse director Colin Trevorrow has to toss in a subplot about the kids’ parents getting a divorce. Why is he throwing a disaster cliché in our dinosaur movie?

This movie takes place twenty years after the disaster that closed down the original park, even before it got opened, but now billionaire Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) has been given free rein to bring Hammond’s dream to fruition. What he hasn’t done is address any of the safety concerns the first film brought up. Jurassic World should have been subtitled “Dinosaur Island of Impending Lawsuits” as there seems to be almost no safety precautions to keep the guests alive.

 

Guess how long it takes before we learn these vehicles aren’t dinosaur proof?

The movie’s main plot revolves around the park needing new and more impressive attractions if they are going to keep the investors happy because apparently the world has already become blasé about living breathing dinosaurs. In Jurassic Park: Lost World Hammond’s slimy nephew believed that an island based park was a bad idea, and he was absolutely right. The expense of feeding that many dinosaurs would be immense and if you have to ferry everything in that just doubles the cost. What we never find out is what are they charging for admission because unless it is several thousand a day it’s not enough to cover for the dino food, staff salaries (who mostly likely have to live on site), research facilities, security (what there is of it) and park upkeep.

 

How much does a Great White Shark cost? And aren't they endangered?

Entering the park is Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins) two brothers who are shipped off to Jurassic World because their parents are secretly getting a divorce. Why their parent’s marital problems is a secret is never explained, but as the whole divorce thing is completely pointless to this movie let's not worry about that. Gray, the younger brother, is the film’s dinosaur enthusiast while his older brother’s job is to act bored and stare at girls because dinosaurs are so last year. Their mother chose this park because her sister Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) runs the place, and for some reason Claire is given the “Workaholic Parent” cliché which doesn’t work when that person is the kid’s AUNT! She hasn’t seen her nephews in seven years and yet she’s supposed to drop everything and play tour guide?

 

Tonight’s dinosaur bait.

Our other key player is Owen (Chris Pratt) an ex-Navy man who is training raptors to obey simple commands and is shocked when Vic Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio), the evil head of InGen security, reveals plans to use raptors as a military asset. Owen thinks this is a bad idea on mostly moral grounds and not on the obvious problem of raptors not being all that good in a firefight. Corporate greed wasn’t enough for this movie so they had to through in secret military projects to amp up the evil factor.

 

“We could rig shoulder launching bazookas on them, right?”

But raptors aren’t this film’s big bad, no for that we have the insanely silly named Indominus rex which is the latest genetically modified hybrid dinosaur. It was created by Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) who was the friendly scientist from the first movie but now for some reason he is a black turtleneck wearing mad scientist. When the Indominus escapes its enclosure, using its genetic superpowers and unbelievable intellect, Simon Masrani demands to know what dinosaurs genes were used to produce it but Dr. Wu refuses to divulge the secret cocktail because he is in chahoots with Vic Hoskins. This makes no sense as Masrani is higher up the corporate ladder than Hoskins. So I guess in the next movie we will learn more of the shadowy evil InGen corporate shenanigans.

 

“And I get to cash another paycheck.”

Now this may sound like I hated this movie but I didn’t, I was just a little disappointed. None of the Jurassic Park movies can boast great screenplays so I went in there with rather mild expectations, and for the most part they were met. There were awesome moments of dino action (sadly pretty much all CGI) and there were a few really good chuckles, but Bryce Dallas Howard’s character was so incredibly stupid that any time spent with her was painful. Chris Pratt was fine as your standard action hero, and as dumb as the scene of him leading the raptor commandos was it was still pretty damn fun. Both D'Onofrio and BD Wong seemed to have wandered in from another movie as the escaped dinosaurs rampaging through the park and the secret military project seem like two totally different films.

 

Still waiting for King Kong to show up.

This is a big dumb summer blockbuster that expects you to check your brain at the door before diving into your popcorn, and in the vein it is successful. There is plenty of prehistoric carnage to make anybody happy and Chris Pratt is a lot of fun to watch here, so if you go in with the proper expectations you will be entertained. This movie will no doubt rake in a ton of cash, and there is stuff here that is clearly setting up for a sequel, so we can all look forward to another trip back to the island.

Jurassic Notes:
• Kayaking down a river that has brachiosaur and stegosaurs wading in it seems a tad dangerous.
• Those gyro-sphere vehicles are guest driven and they let kids ride alone. Yeah, that's a good idea.
• I’m sorry but I doubt a pteranodon would try and carry off a triceratops.
• InGen’s security forces try to take out the Indominous with stun sticks. Seriously?
• The Indominous rex is bullet proof and explosive proof but not raptor proof.
• Apparently Bryce Dallas Howard can out run a T-Rex.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) Pilot – Review

The impact Star Wars had on movies and television cannot be overstated, for years Glen A. Larson had tried to get a space exodus show greenlit called Adam’s Ark but with no luck, then with the success of Star Wars the execs over at Universal quickly greenlit the project under the new name Battlestar Galactica.

The pilot episode titled "Saga of a Star World" was re-edited and released theatrically in Canada, Australia and some countries in Europe and Latin America to help recoup the expense of such a special effects laden production. Those of us who got to see this theatrical release had the privilege of seeing the traitorous Count Baltar beheaded by the Cylons, but when it aired on American television he survived to become a recurring villain.

 

Even Cylons have a hard time taking out John Colicos.

The story of Battlestar Galactica is set during "The Seventh Millennium of Time" as a thousand year war between humanity and the Cylon Empire is finally coming to a close. Commander Adama (Lorne Greene) of the Battlestar Galactica is the only member of the Council of Twelve who doesn’t trust this armistice because mankind’s very existence is an antithesis to everything the Cylons stand for, “They hate us with every fibre of their existence. We love freedom. We love independence, to feel, to question, to resist oppression. To them it is an alien way of existing they will never accept.”

 

“Secondly, have you seen them? They’re evil robot overlords for god sake!”

The President of the Council Adar (Lew Ayres) pooh-poohs Adama’s fears because it was the Cylons who sued for peace through the masterful negotiations of Count Baltar (John Colicos). Of course, anyone who has seen an episode of Star Trek knows not to trust robots or anybody played by John Colicos. This doesn’t stop Adama from having some fighters patrolling the area, and low and behold a Cylon fueling ship is discovered by Adama’s two sons; Captain Apollo (Richard Hatch) and Zac (Rick Springfield). As Zac is Apollo’s younger brother, and this is his very first space patrol, you can chart his life expectancy with an egg timer.

 

Well at least he has a music career to fall back on.

The first forty minutes of the pilot is full of solid dramatic tension that is then boosted by fantastic action as the Cylons make their attack on the fleet as well as the home worlds of the Twelve Colonies. In such a brief time Glen A. Larson and director Richard A. Colla have made you care for these characters so that it actually matters to you when they are in danger. When Adama informs Adar that the pilot who was just killed was his son it’s just gut wrenchingly powerful. This is what you get when you cast someone as great as Lorne Greene. Things get even worse when Adama learns of the attacks on Caprica where his wife, and Apollo and Athena’s mother, currently is. This is where the Armistice Ceremony was to take place but instead it is strafed by Cylon Raiders.

 

“This is Serena of Fox News reporting on how Obama’s soft on Cylon stance has led to disaster.”

Now it isn’t all doom and gloom as there are some light moments in this first hour with most of those centering on roguish Viper pilot Lt. Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) whose card game is interrupted by the Cylon attack. His character is also given the unfortunate problem of a love triangle between Athena (Maren Jensen) who is Apollo’s sister and Cassiopeia (Laurette Spang) who before the attack was a socialator, which is short for a space prostitute who is sanctified by the elders. This may sound silly but to be fair, Joss Whedon later used this profession on his short lived show Firefly.

 

Starbuck, he’s catnip to both good girls and bad.

It’s at about this point that the story structure gets a bit dodgy, we get Adama mourning over the ruins of his home where his wife perished, then we get wacky hi-jinks with Starbuck and his love life, and then the true horror raises it's ugly head as we get the introduction of Boxey (Noah Hathaway) and and his robot dog Muffy. Serena (Jane Seymour), the reporter on Caprica, survived along with her son but his daggett (that’s space dog to you and me) did not. Serena becomes the love interest of Apollo while a traumatized Boxey is given a robot replacement for his dog. Whenever I watch a scene with Muffy I just feel awful for the poor chimpanzee stuck in that horrible robot dog suit.

 

Cheeta never had to put up with this kind of crap.

Then as the survivors of the attacks form a ragtag fleet we are introduced to Sire Uri (Ray Milland) who is part of the newly elected Council of Twelve and is also a complete asshat. He’s a self-entitled prick whose sole purpose seems to be to piss off Commander Adama and roll over for the Cylons like a space faring Neville Chamberlain. I’m a huge fan of Ray Milland, but this character is just awful. We first see him living in the lap of luxury eating roast something or other and partying with his rich friends while most of the fleet are starving with barely enough water to stay alive, and then he constantly tries to get everyone to agree on a peace treaty with Cylons as if he has forgotten what happened during the last peace accord… ONE BLOODY DAY AGO!

 

Dial “M” for Moron.

The planet Carillon is the nearest place that could supply the fleet with desperately needed food and fuel but Adama is leery of it being another Cylon trap, but slimey Sire Uri gets the council to agree that Carillon is the only option. When they arrive at Carillon instead of finding a deserted mining operation, which is what they were led to believe, they find a space casino that is just full of happy winners. This kind of thing will become indicative to the series as our intrepid heroes travel through space on their way to find a mythical thirteenth colony; they keep running into more and more humans. I’m not so sure why the Cylons have such a hardon for the Galactica and friends when it looks like humanity is spread out through the galaxy. They’re worse than weeds.

 

Though apparently they are tasty.

Turns out that not only is Carillon a secret mining operation with ties to the Cylons but the casino is a front for the insectoid Ovions who have used the place as a lure to capture humans and then serve them up as living food for their hatching larvae in their underground chambers. Sire Uri had organized an awards ceremony in the casino for Apollo, Starbuck and Boomer (Herbert Jefferson Jr.) for their part in getting the fleet safely to Carillon. All the pilots were to attend which would have left the Galactica completely vulnerable, but a suspicious Adama had the pilots switch places with maintenance crews and serving staff so that when the Cylons sprung their trap Adama could spring his own. The Cylon raiders are wiped out and their Basestar is destroyed.

 

“By your command, we suck at our jobs.”

You won’t find too many cooler looking enemies than the Cylon Centurions in Battlestar Galactica, their shiny chrome armor and pulsing red eye make them one badass looking villain. Their backstory is interesting as apparently the Cylon were originally a reptilian race that came to the conclusion that humans were the ideal design, so they created robots in our image and now those reptiles are instinctual and their robot children are all that is left of them.

 

Though why the Imperious Leader looks like a deranged Jar-Jar Binks is beyond me.

On the downside, the Cylons are slow moving and are even worse shots than the Stormtroopers from Star Wars. The true villain of the series is of course Count Baltar who betrayed his species for personal gain and then when his job was done the Imperious Leader ordered his execution. But when the Cylon Basestar was destroyed at Carillon he was given a reprieve by the new Imperious Leader (voiced by Patrick Macnee who also does the opening narration) and told to open up negotiations for a new truce with the humans.

 

With his street cred that should be super easy.

Many decreed this show as being a blatant rip-off of Star Wars, as did 20th Century Fox who sued them for copyright infringement citing 34 similarities between the two films. The courts ruled in Universal’s favour, stating that the two films were very different when viewed as a whole. I for one agree with that verdict as even though there are some similarities between the two shows, their stories and character are vastly different. Sure, Starbuck is a roguish character in the same vein as Han Solo but you can find that same character in countless westerns and film noirs.

 

“I could do the Kessell Run in less than FIVE parsecs.”

Battlestar Galactica is a science fiction epic that sadly only lasted one year. It was superbly cast with several Star Wars alums like special effects wizard John Dykstra and conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie helping to make it a fantastic looking show. So join me each week as I will be going through every episode of the series as well as it’s follow up show Galactica 1980. It should be a fun ride.

“Fleeing from the Cylon Tyranny, the last Battlestar Galactica leads a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest... for a shining planet known as Earth.”

Project Almanac (2014) – Review

So you find a time machine in the basement, what do you do next? Director Dean Israelite and writers Jason Pagan and Andrew Deutschman try to answer that question as if posed to a group of idiot teenagers. The result is a movie that is more in line with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and The Butterfly Effect than it is films like Primer, Looper and Predestination.

 

 David Raskin (Johnny Weston) is a seventeen year old science prodigy who wants to go to M.I.T. but though he is accepted he does not get the full ride scholarship he needs so that he can attend. So he roots around the attic in the hopes of finding something of his late inventor dad’s that he can parley into a scholarship. What he and his sister Christina (Virginia Gardner) do find is an old video camera that contains footage of David’s seventh birthday party, but what is startling is that on this footage is a shot of seventeen year old David caught in a reflection. This leads to David and Christina checking out their dad’s basement lab and the discovery of a temporal relocation device, aka time machine.

 

"It’s cool but it’s no flux capacitor."

Right there my suspension of disbelief is challenged, not them finding a time machine hidden in the basement that’s totally cool, no what I don’t buy is the fact they we are supposed to believe that this science geek has not been in this lab during the past ten years since his scientist father died because he was told not to by his mom. This is worse than Richard Parker’s subway lab in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 because at least that was hidden while this one was in the freakin basement! For a science geek David has very little curiosity.

 

“Curiosity killed the cat, and that sounds dangerous.”

David brings his two best friends Adam (Allen Evangelista) and Quinn (Sam Lerner) into this and with the aid of his videographer sister they plan to finish his father’s work. Time travel is some tricky shit to write as anything you do will raise questions of “cause and effect” and of course paradoxes, this film takes those things about as seriously as Bill and Ted did. They immediately decide to use the device for personal gain; Quinn wants to re-take a test so that his academic path will be smoother, Christine uses it to thwart some bullies, Adam to win the lottery “duh” but it’s when David tries to use it to win the affections of his long time crush Jessie (Sofia Black-D'Elia) things take a turn for the worse.

 

Time Travel Booty Call.

Turns out when David tries to “Groundhog Day” his way into Jessie’s pants the resulting butterfly effect has some devastating effects. This film could have gone in an interesting direction as our intrepid group of teens tries to deal with the cosmic ramifications of their invention, but instead we get a twenty minute commercial for Lollapalooza that stops the movie dead in its tracks. Project Almanac goes for cheap time-travel gags and not much else. They don’t even try to explain how if you repeatedly go back in time to the exact same spot why aren't you constantly running into multiple versions of yourself from the previous trips?

 

“This is so much better than killing Hitler!”

Many will compare this film to Josh Trank’s Chronicle but the use of found footage in that film seemed organic while in Project Almanac much of the time the filming of events is beyond stupid. At one point this gang of idiots realize they need hydrogen to power the time machine so they break into their high school science department to get it. AND THEY FILM THE ENTIRE CRIME! It's one thing to want to document this wonderful scientific discovery you are making for the sake of posterity, but you may want to leave out the parts that involve felonies. Of course the biggest stumbling block to the found footage genre is justifying why characters are carrying around a camera and filming everything, and this film doesn’t even try.

 

I’m not even sure who is filming half the time.

As I’ve said before, writing a solid time travel story is not easy but if you aren’t going to take the genre seriously you then at least have to give us characters we can relate to. Sadly, this group of yahoos are too dumb for me to get behind. After their first “successful” test of the device sends a toy car back in time, but also with it ending up phased through the wall, they are convinced by Jessie to skip any more trials and move immediately to human testing. I know that a pretty girl can drop some guy’s IQ points just by their proximity but you’d think Christina would have stepped in and smacked some sense into her brother and his idiot friends.

 

“Guys, she has a vagina, we must listen to her.”

I’ll give the film credit for the cool back-pack time machine that can be operated via a smart phone, but it’s constant barrage of stupidity undercuts any cool factor it tries to build. This isn’t the worst film of the genre, I’m more disappointed of the wasted potential than anything else. So if you are a fan of time travel movies and have 106 minutes to kill go ahead and check it out, but keep expectations lowered.

Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950) – Review

Tarzan and the Slave Girl is the second outing with Lex Barker as the Ape Man and though the series still relies much on studio backlots it actually has more fantastical elements than what were seen in the Weissmuller movies.In Tarzan’s Magic Fountain our heroes encountered a hidden valley that had an elixir giving fountain of youth, and in this installment Tarzan must do battle with a lost outpost of ancient Egypt. Two things not at all that uncommon in the Burroughs books.

This movie begins with Tarzan (Lex Barker) and Jane (Vanessa Brown) hearing a scream while wandering via elephant though the jungle. When they stop to investigate they discover that a local tribeswoman has been abducted. Her superstitious people put her disappearance down to “dark spirits” but it only takes Tarzan a couple of minutes of jungle lore deduction to figure out she has been kidnapped. Along with a couple of tribesman, Tarzan tracks down the kidnappers. After a brief altercation, the abductors escape with the girl. It wasn’t a clean getaway as Tarzan managed to cut up the face of one of the villains and capture another.

 

Today’s villains borrowed wardrobe from a Flash Gordon serial.

Before Tarzan and the angry villagers can interrogate their prisoner, Jane discovers that the man is deathly ill with a very contagious disease. She quickly sends Tarzan to fetch Dr. Campbell (Arthur Shields) who, with the help of his voluptuous nurse Lola (Denise Darcel) and drunken big game hunter Neil (Robert Alda), put together a rescue party. Because hunting down kidnappers is man’s work Tarzan tells Jane to take Lola to their treehouse for safekeeping.  Unfortunately, it turns out that Lola has got the hots for Tarzan and Jane has to put her in her place.

 

Jungle Catfight.

After losing her fight with Jane, Lola runs off into the jungle only to be immediately captured. When Jane swings to her rescue she is promptly captured as well. Not Jane's finest hour, and she is basically a damsel in distress through out.  It seems that a lost civilization of people called Lionians who, surprise surprise, worship lions and are currently on a slave run to replenish their population due to this deadly disease plaguing their people. The leader of the slavers, Sengo (Anthony Caruso), targeted Jane because of Tarzan carving up his face.  Some people take facial maiming so personally.

 

That all the captured native girls are white is a bit odd.

This may not be the best Tarzan movie, but it is chock full of a lot of fun stuff; Tarzan and the safari must fight off blow-dart wielding camouflaged native allies of the Lionians, Jane and Lola will get entombed alive, we meet a sad Prince who has a dying son, Tarzan will single handled take on the Lionians warriors, people will be sacrificed to a group of man eating lions, elephants will come to the rescue, and Tarzan will of course give Sengo his comeuppance. Overall, this movie has everything one expects in a jungle adventure.

 

Luckily there are no giant apes to give them a hard time here.

This was Vanessa Brown’s only outing as Jane; she only took the part because she needed rent money, "My intellectual friends said, 'My God, what you won't do for money.'” Lex Baxter gets to a lot more this time out and seems to have settled nicely into the role and has some really nice action moments.  The comedy bits with Cheeta are limited to one drunken ape scene and him bashing Lionians on the head with a club during the big finale. This film does contain two of the big standards found in the early Tarzan films and that is elephants coming to the rescue and native bearers in a safari dropping like flies. Though to be fair, if you’re not Tarzan or Jane there is a good chance you are going to buy it when visiting the Africa of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

 

Happily Ever After.

The Visitor (1979) – Review

There is something truly fascinating about a movie that starts out making very little sense and then proceeds to get even more messed up and nonsensical as it goes. That is the case with Giulio Paradisi’s 1979 new age meets Star Wars flick called The Visitor, but what is truly astounding is the caliber of people who decided to join him on this cinematic acid trip.

The film opens on a strange alien landscape as two figures face off in some kind of cosmic High Noon in space. One of the figures is dressed like a Jedi and looks surprising like John Huston, he watches the other dark figure carefully as a powerful storm approaches and soon envelops the figure in a snowstorm, at which point it is revealed to be an evil demonic girl.

 

We are either on Tatooine or the home of The Cat People.

We then jump to Space Jesus telling a bunch of bald kids the story of the evil super-criminal Sateen who escaped from Commander Yavay’s amazing spaceship and fled to Earth. You see Sateen (totally not Satan) is a mutant with an unquenchable desire to kill and while on Earth developed psychic powers to which he uses to sow death and destruction wherever he goes. Yavay arrives and turns into a flock of birds to kill Sateen but the mutant turns into an eagle to fight off the birds and almost wins until the final three birds of the flock fatally wound him in the brain. Unfortunately, that is not the end of Sateen’s evil for he had managed to impregnate some Earth women and now Yavay’s descendants spend the centuries trying to prevent the spread of Sateen’s evil.

 

“And now I’ll pass out Kool-Aid for everyone.”

Jerzy Colsowicz (John Huston and it really is him) crashes the meeting to inform Space Jesus that a new descendant of Sateen has been found, her name is Katy Collins (Paige Connor) and she is just turning eight. If any of the above made sense to you I suggest you go and seek psychiatric help.

 

The face of evil.

This movie is the ultimate movie mash-up as it contains elements of; The Bad Seed, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, Star Wars, The Birds, Carrie, The Fury and for some reason Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s as if Giulio Paradisi put all those scripts into a blender, hit purée and then dumped the contents out on a page without worrying if it’d make a lick of sense. The main characters in this drama are Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail) the girl’s mother, Raymond Armstead (Lance Henriksen) her boyfriend and owner of a Los Angles NBA team, police detective Jake Durham (Glenn Ford) who thinks Katy is an evil little shit, and Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer) who is head of a strange and powerful cabal that uses its power and influence to spread the evil of Sateen.

 

"Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do, we do!"

It’s Raymond’s job to get Barbara to marry him so that she will get pregnant and provide Katy with a brother. You see Barbara has a cosmically powerful uterus that contains Sateen’s genetic code and will pop out evil babies and thus tip the scales in the war against evil. The problem is that Barbara does not want to get married nor does she want any more kids as she knows there is something wrong with Katy. The group tries to make Barbara more dependent on Raymond by having Katy “accidentally” shoot her mother at her birthday party. Barbara is crippled and confined to a wheelchair but still will not marry Raymond. Detective Durham investigates the shooting wondering how a loaded gun got inside a wrapped package that was supposed to contain a toy bird. He harasses Katy one too many times and ends up dead from a bird attack while driving on the freeway.

 

Sadly, hitting the brakes while being pecked at by a bird never crossed his mind.

During all this, “The Visitor” Jerzy Colsowicz and a group of his bald followers have been monitoring Katy, watching her powers grow to the point where she is able to toss bullies around with ease. Jerzy isn’t Katy’s only nemesis as the new housekeeper (Shelley Winters) isn’t taking any guff from this eight year old terror and has no problem slapping the shit out of her.

 

Think Mary Poppins but with a stronger backhand.

The true horror of this movie is just the utter hell poor Barbara Collins goes through. She gets shot in the back and confined to a wheelchair and when she refuses to marry and get pregnant she is drugged and artificially impregnated. When she goes to her ex-husband (Sam Peckinpah) and gets an abortion she is attacked by a bird, followed by a beating from Katy and then Raymond trying to strangle her.

 

You don’t cross Lance Henriksen.

Eventually, Jerzy and the housekeeper meet up on the rooftop for their close encounter with the cosmic powers which, when unleashed, form into a flock of birds that attack Katy and Raymond. One of the birds turns into some kind of ceramic/stone bird and stabs Raymond to death

 

They should have called Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren.

Jerzy comforts the poor traumatized Barbara while all the other members of the cabal are found just as gruesomely dead as dear ole Raymond. We then cut back to Space Jesus and his bald little minions as they find out from Jerzy that Katy has, “Become just like the others, she thought I wanted to kill her. We can’t kill children, only the evil part, and that’s no more”. If that’s not supposed to be incredibly creepy than they failed.

 

This is a happy ending, I guess?

This movie has one of the most impressive casts I’ve seen in a genre movie. None of them really phone it in, with Lance Henriksen being especially good as the creepy boyfriend and young Paige Connor being quite excellent as the telekinetic spawn of evil. This film is certainly what one would call an “acquired taste” as its batshit crazy for most of its running time, so if you want to see John Huston stalk and then go one on one with a mini-Carrie then this is the film for you.