Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

As genres go Christmas movies are sadly more miss than hit, for every Miracle on 34th Street we get a dozen films like Santa Claus Conquerors the Martian, and in 1985 the men who brought us Superman: The Movie decided to take a stab at the Christmas movie, and with Supergirl director Jeannot Szwarc at the helm that’s exactly what we got…stabbed.

 

"You'll believe a sleigh can fly!"

The movie starts out promising enough, as we pan down from a starry sky to a snowy Scandinavian landscape and quaint cottage full of people eagerly awaiting the arrival of their beloved friend Uncle Claus (David Huddleston), a kindly man who bring toys for all the children. Many are impressed that Claus can cut wood for the whole village and still have time to carve all the wooden toys he provides each year, but it's his love for the children that makes all this possible. After giving out wonderfully hand-carved toys to the children he and his wife Anya (Judy Cornwell) bid their friends goodbye, as they have more stops to make, and even though the weather is getting bad they can’t even think of disappointing the children who live on the other side of the forest. The storm intensifies and soon their reindeer collapses in exhaustion, as the snow whips around them, and Claus embraces his wife as the winter storm takes their lives.

 

This is a pretty dark way to start your Christmas movie.

The Northern Star appears and a magical cone of light descends on the frozen countryside, and out of it steps a large contingent of elves. Claus, his wife, and reindeer all wake up (resurrected?) as a group of colourfully dressed little people approach. They are led to their new home at the North Pole where they are informed by the Ancient Elf (Burgess Meredith) that Claus is "The Chosen One" and that he will fulfill the duties of the Prophecy.

 

“Let me tell you about the Matrix.”

When one delves too deeply into the how and the wherefore of Santa Claus things are going to get weird, it’s just best to explain as little as possible and get your plot moving along as quickly as you can, sadly that is not the case here.  In this film, we find out that the elves have been making toys for ages - possibly centuries - but with no one to deliver them, they’ve just been stockpiling them until The Chosen One from the prophecy would arrive. Claus is told that he is to deliver these gifts to all the children of the world, and when he mentions the feasibility of such a task being accomplished by a man his age he is told that he will now live…forever.

 

“Get to work fat man.”

Yeah, that’s not terrifying at all. Some poor schnook and his wife get caught out in a storm, are saved/resurrected by some creepy elves, and then told that they will now be working in the toy delivery business for all of eternity because of some prophecy. Sounds more like a cult than a magical workshop.

 

They’re all just waiting for the comet to come and take them away.

We are then treated to a montage of Santa Claus delivering toys to all the "children of the world" over the centuries, though as the dates climb closer and closer to modern times I start to doubt the veracity of the demands for just dolls and wooden toys.  Are wooden ducks and wagons still all the rage?

 

“Where’s my Atari game console?”

When Santa receives a letter from a little girl, about how her brother tortures her cat, Mrs. Claus states that "This boy should not get a present this year," Santa is shocked by the suggestions, “You’ll have folks saying that Santa Claus only rewards the good little boys and girls,” and Mrs. Claus gives her rebuttal, “Isn’t that as it should be?” And good ole Kris Kringle immediately caves and orders his elves to start making lists because making lists never goes wrong.

 

Note: The letters arrive magically at the North Pole, flying through the air to be deposited down the chimney of Santa’s workshop, so one must assume they don’t get to use this fireplace for things such as I don’t know…fire?

It’s not until about the 40-minute mark that the real plot of the movie starts to rear its ugly head, as a seemingly overworked Santa Claus promotes an elf named Patch (Dudley Moore) to assistant status, but his radical ideas of mass production results in shoddily made toys and unhappy children on Christmas morning, and this causes a now-disgraced Patch to run away to prove he is useful. Of course, he ends up hooking up with the film's villain, B.Z. (John Lithgow) an evil toy manufacturer who is being investigated by a Senate committee for producing dangerous products.

 

Does the United States Senate actually oversee the quality of toy manufacturing?

The other key players in this movie are Joe (Christian Fitzpatrick), a homeless kid who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, and Cornelia (Carrie Kei Heim), a little rich girl who we later learn is being raised by her step-uncle (Is that even a thing?) who of course turns out to be the evil B.Z our villain du jour. The relationship that develops between Joe and Cornelia shifts from insulin shock-inducing sweetness to kind of creepy, as the two kids are only about nine years old, but for me, the most disturbing relationship is between Joe and Santa.  As the movie progresses it seems that even though Santa has befriended Joe - Note: Later Joe states that he is Santa's only friend which is just sad and also, "Suck it elves!" - but each year when Santa drops by to visit he never once asks about Joe’s homeless state. The kid is an orphan living on the streets and all Santa gives him is a carved sculpture of Patch the elf. That’s just dick!

 

Joe must survive on product placements left out in the snow by sad little rich girls.

The stakes get raised when B.Z. dupes poor Patch into staying around and manufacturing him magical treats, candy that allows the user to float up off the floor, and when this product becomes a Christmas hit, one that completely overshadows that old-fashioned Santa Clause toy giving racket, B.Z. gets an idea, a wonderfully awful idea, that he can market a stronger dosed version of the magical treat that will allow kids to actually fly, and he will then release it on March 25th in what he will call Christmas 2. Who knew toy manufactures had the ability to create holidays, I thought that power was reserved for greeting card companies.

 

I think the filmmakers are implying that the commercialism of Christmas is bad.

Aside from Santa being depressed at being upstaged - I myself would think he’d relish the idea of retirement by now - the real threat turns out to be that this new Christmas treat is dangerous and potentially lethal, as we learn that if it is placed near extreme heat it could explode. Joe is kidnapped by B.Z. for overhearing the plans to take over Christmas, because if word of that got out well…um…nothing would happen because that actually isn't a crime, but then Cornelia overhears the exploding treat dilemma, which is a crime, she calls Santa for help - she also called 911 but she doubted the police would believe a child about such things.

 

Villains need to stop discussing their evil plans in the kitchen.

Of course, Santa will come to the rescue and B.Z. will be thwarted, but how this ending plays out is just plain weird, as Patch discovers Joe tied up and gagged in the factory boiler room and finally tumbles to the fact that B.Z. may not be all that nice of a guy, he and Joe decide to bring the treats to Santa at the North Pole, but unfortunately, the cargo hold of Patch’s flying sled isn’t heat shielded so poor Patch and Joe are mere moments from exploding all over the Arctic.  Luckily Santa and Cornelia arrive in the nick of time and the day is saved, but what of B.Z., is he going to get his comeuppance?

 

Apparently, the police do take calls from nine-year-old girls seriously.

The police arrive and arrest all of B.Z.’s associates, because judges love to issue warrants based on one phone call and no actual evidence, but this does panic B.Z. enough so that he chows down on the amped-up flying magical treats, and escapes into the stratosphere.

 

“I regret nothing!”

So Christmas is saved, and everyone party's down at Santa’s workshop, but Joe wants to know what is to become of Cornelia, as her guardian is currently orbiting the Earth.  Santa and Mrs. Claus agree that she can stay at the North Pole, at least until next Christmas, because no one will wonder whatever became of B.Z.s’ step-niece and his most likely sole heir. As for Joe, well nothing is mentioned but we assume that he is finally taken in by the Clauses and is still slaving away at the toy factory to this very day.

 

“Child Services will never find you here.”

About the only real enjoyment, I got out of this film was watching Lithgow hamming it up, with the evil cranked up to eleven, but as his character doesn’t show up until about the hour mark it’s really not worth the wait, and I haven’t even mentioned the awful puns we are subjected to, the never-ending supply of elf puns that Patch tosses out at the drop of a hat. This film's idea of humour is having Patch drop the letter “s” from the word "self" to make such amusing bon mots as “I’m elf-taught” or “It’s elf-explanatory” and this goes on for the film's entire running time, and by the end of the film we are just begging for someone to ram a candy cane through Patch's eye.  That this film was marketed as a Dudley Moore vehicle makes it all the worse.

 

There is a special room in Hell set aside for Patch.

Like Salkind's Supergirl, this Christmas disaster just meanders around without purpose for most of its running time, and the film's failure pretty much resulted in Jeannot Szwarc no longer working as a film director, but on the plus side he has made a decent name for himself now in episodic television with great work on such shows as Fringe and Scandal.

So if you’re looking for a good Santa Clause story to watch I advise a viewing of the Rankin and Bass Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, and give this big-budget extravaganza a miss.

 

I'll say one positive thing and that is that the Big Lebowski does look the part.

The People That Time Forgot : Book vs Movie

Nestled inside the world’s largest volcanic crater is the land of Caspak. Its jungles teaming with countless varieties of prehistoric life, and it is in this terror-fuelled land that adventurer Tom Billings must look to find his lost friend, Bowen Tyler. Edgar Rice Burroughs returns us to this mysterious world where evolution has been turned on its head.

The People That Time Forgot was first published 1918 as a three part serial for Blue Book Magazine and is a direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot. When we last left this lost world Bowen Tyler and lovely Lys La Rue were alone on the cliffs of Caprona, where Tyler had tossed a canteen into the sea that contained a manuscript of their travails.

When the manuscript is found, an expedition is quickly mounted and is led by Tom Billings who is the secretary of the Tyler family shipbuilding company and a long-time friend of Bowen Tyler himself. Billings is your standard pulp hero; strong, intelligent, courageous but a little thick when it comes to things of the heart. They arrive off the coast of Caprona, and its seemingly insurmountable cliff walls, but not insurmountable to American ingenuity as Billings came prepared with several options for getting up those sheer cliffs; the first was in drilling steps bit by bit up the rock face, another was to fire cables via mortars to the top and scale them that way but as the height of said cliffs was higher than even he expected he must put plan three into effect which is to assemble the seaplane he brought along for just such a contingency.

 

Over the ice.

The plan is simple. Fly up and scout this strange land via air, find a suitable landing place and then proceed to ferry the rest of the men up from the cliff base. Unfortunately things do not go exactly as planned as almost immediately upon entering Caspak airspace Billings is attacked by pterodactyls and though his seaplanes guns, as well as his not to shoddy piloting skills serve him well he eventually gets a bit too overconfident in his exploring and one final encounter with a flying saurian sends his plane crashing into the trees.

Cut off from his men and with no idea where Bowen Tyler or his company is Billings is forced to trudge on alone into the interior of Caspak hoping to either chance upon Tyler or find some other way down the cliff walls. As this is a pulp jungle adventure story, Billings almost immediately runs into a pretty face, a beautiful native girl named Ajor; who is running for her life from a group of Alus (Alus are the lowest evolutionary rung of men on Caspak) but with his pistol and rifle, Billings makes quick work of these Neanderthals. Ajor herself is a Galu which are the people who have achieved the highest form of evolutionary progress and are what all men of Caspak hope to someday become.

 

Classic cave girl cleavage.

With Ajor at his side Billings begins the long trek north to return Ajor to her people and to hopefully find some sign of Tyler. Along the way they encounter many of the primitive subhuman classes of Caspak; the club wielding Bo-Lu, the hatchet armed Sto-Lu, the spear wielding Band-Lu and the bow using Kro-Lu, each a step the evolutionary ladderm but all who seem intent to killing poor Tom on site and taking Ajor for their own. It’s on this journey we discover a little more on how evolution works here in this topsy-turvy world. It seems that each species of man all come from “the beginning” and that each individual will, over the course of seven cycles (700 years) move up the evolutionary ladder. At one point a Bo-Lu will receive the “calling” and will then leave behind his people, fashion himself a spear, and go and join the Sto-Lu. Thus the chain of evolution moves north across Caspak until eventually they end their journey as a Galu.

 

“As primitive as can be.”

Ajor is the rarest of creatures though her parents both made their seven cycle journey she was born a Galu,  and it is from her that we learn of the other race on Caspak that could be the greatest threat of all, the Weiroo who are a race of winged humanoids that because they are unable to sire anything other than males they must kidnap the young women Galus to keep their species alive. It’s this crazy world that Billings must try and understand or die, but with the strong and capable Ajor at his side, as well as with the allies he makes along the way, he just may do that and find Bowen Tyler.
Sadly the fascinating evolutionary biology of Caspak is pretty much abandoned when Amicus Productions translated this book to the big screen in 1977 with returning director Kevin Connor at the helm, and looking at this film it is no surprise to learn Amicus folded before the movie even got released.

 

If only the movie was as exciting as this poster.

As I mentioned in my review of The Land that Time Forgot how nice it was to find a low budget film that seemed to really care about the source material- sure there were some key changes from book to screen but as a whole it was fairly faithful and certainly captured the spirit of Burroughs’s work. So it was a shock to see that the same company that did so well by the first book in the series apparently didn’t even read The People That Time Forgot let alone try and make a faithful adaptation of it.

 

“We may not have been in the book, but we suck.”

Right off the start the movie veers away from the book by having Tom’s character changed to Major Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne) a friend of Tyler’s who leads a small team to Caprona; Hogan (Shane Rimmer) mechanic and gunner, Norfolk (Thorley Walters) paleontologist, and Lady Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Cunningham (Sarah Douglas) photographer. So aside from having the lead being a man who was friends with Tyler the script completely jettisons the book. They do take a seaplane that is brought down by a pterodactyl but not because of the pilot’s over enthused adventurous nature but because they really suck at fighting off a flying dinosaur.

 

Machine gunning a slow gliding monster is apparently trickier than it looks.

After a rough forced landing they need to get their plane unstuck and after discovering a nearby stegosaurus they attach some cables to it so the poor beastie can be used as a winch system. Yes folks, the first things our heroes do upon discovering a living breathing dinosaur is to quickly use it as personal property. No one in this party will ever stop and marvel in awe at the majesty of this prehistoric world- they’re all basically assholes.

 

Dinosaurs make no marked improvement for the sequel.

They eventually run into cave-girl Ajor (Dana Gillespie) who is only a name check from the book as her character has no bearing on the one from the pages of Burroughs’ novel. This version of Ajor speaks English because she was taught by Tyler, while the book Ajor knew nothing of Tyler or his friends and never even learns English but instead teaches Tom the language of Caspak. The language thing I can let slide for the ease of film story telling but making her Tyler’s friend is bullshit.

 

“Mongo just pawn in game of life.”

Ajor agrees to help them find Tyler (returning Doug McClure) and will lead them across this dangerous world where they will of course be assaulted by more cave people before finally running across samurai like warriors called the Nargas who had captured Tyler some time ago.

 

“There is a prehistoric samurai standing behind me, isn’t there?”

Why are their samurai warriors on the lost world of Caspak? Why did the filmmakers decide to create a completely new race of people when the book was just chock full of different races to choose from? This isn’t a case of lazy writing as it is just bad and pointless.

 

Either King Kong or He-Man lives here.

The Nargas are an evil volcano worshiping people that toss the men of our group into the dungeons of Castle Grayskull while immediately deciding to sacrifice the women to appease the angry volcano god. Those gods are always angry.  The men are thrilled to find Tyler lollygagging around the dungeons and quickly team-up to rescue the girls.

 

McBride and Tyler to the rescue!

Once again the island is going through volcanic upheavals, something that never happened in either book, so not only do our heroes have to fight their way through the Temple of Dumb they have to keep ahead of a world exploding around them.

 

Note: This very same year this dude was dueling with Alec Guinness in Star Wars.

Now if the movie wasn’t dumb enough, we get Tyler deciding to hang back to sacrifice himself so that the others can escape. What the fuck? So not only does our intrepid group suck at adventuring, but they also fail at the very goal that brought them here. In the book Billings falls in love with Ajor and as this is a Burroughs book she is captured and must require rescuing, but when her and Billings find themselves surrounded by the their enemies and about to be killed Ajor’s people arrive in the nick of time to save them, and with them is Bowen Tyler. Also alive is Lys La Rue who in the movie world apparently died between films because fuck you, movie.

 

Random explosions are a sure sign of volcanic instability and also poor writing.

The book ends with Bowen Tyler, Lys La Rue and Tom Billings about to leave Caspak when it is revealed that Ajor cannot go with them because of her being born a fully evolved Galu rather than attaining that form through the usual metamorphosis. She must stay to ensure the progression of her people. Good old Tom decides at the last minute that he cannot live without Ajor and stays while Tyler and Lys leave for home after an assumed double wedding. In the movie there is no romantic involvement between Ben and Ajor at all as Lady Charlotte is clearly his intended love interest, so the film ends with everyone back on the boat, minus the now dead Tyler of course, and where Ajor is apparently given to Hogan as a conciliation prize for fixing the plane while everyone else was off adventuring.

 

Ajor starring in “I was a Mail Order Cave Bride.”

The book by Edgar Rice Burroughs is a fantastic adventure tale set in a prehistoric world of untold dangers where evolution spans the length of the land rather than time, while the film is a cheap knock-off that is cast with actors that don’t even seem to know what kind of movie they are supposed to be in and written by screenwriters that I’m assuming never got further than reading the inside flap of the book.

This was the last of the Burroughs three books adapted by Amicus Productions and one can only dream of what the third book of the Caspak Trilogy would have looked like if they hadn’t gone under.  What B-Movie star would we have seen battling the winged men of Caspak?

 

Christopher Lee in “Out of Time’s Abyss” perhaps?

Sorceress (1982) - Review

Fantasy films of today, with their epic scope and amazing visual effects, bear little resemblance to the Sword & Sorcery movies of the 80’s that I grew up with, still they were vastly entertaining and I will always have a soft spot for them, but today’s entry is one that I completely missed…until now.

 

How can you not love this poster?

Upon seeing Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger; low budget movie making master Roger Corman knew there be gold in them their sandals and quickly gave staff writer Jim Wynorski the directive to go home and bring back a barbarian fuelled script in a weeks’ time with the only caveat being that it star two women. Thus 1982’s Sorceress was born.  With long time Corman veteran Jack Hill at the helm, Playboy Playmate twins sisters to star and a deal to film it in Mexico for obvious budgetary reasons, greatness awaited.

The movie begins with your standard fantasy opening, evil wizard Traigon (Roberto Ballesteros), to attain even greater power, must sacrifice his firstborn to the dark god Caligara. But not surprisingly his wife is not too keen on this idea and flees after giving birth. Traigon and his minions catch up to her but just as he is about to take away the baby for sacrificing he discovers that his wife gave birth to twins, and even under torture she will not reveal which of the babies was born first. Enter mystic warrior Krona (Martin LaSalle) who distracts Krona long enough for the wife to stab Traigon in the back with her dying breath. Traigon gives a dying declaration that he will return and then fades away in sparkly blue light.

Note: It is strange that sparkly blue light is the about the only sign of magic in a movie called Sorceress, which I guess isn’t too surprising as the movie does not contain an actual sorceress.

Krona vows to gift these twins with his powers and abilities as a warrior and is only briefly put out when he is told that they are “girl children.” Now one would expect a montage of these two growing up and being trained to be great warriors who will one day avenge their murdered mother but no, Krona places his hands on the twin babies and we get some more “sparkly blue light” and thus they are now going to become awesome warriors in the twenty year jump cut without the pesky need for training. Krona then drops the babes off with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru with strict instructions to raise them as boys because when Traigon returns he will be looking for twin girls. Brilliant plan, I like it.

We first see the now grown-up twin warriors Mira (Leigh Harris) and Mara (Lynette Harris) as they bathe nude in a stream while being spied upon by a satyr named Pando (David Millbern). Pando is armed with a reed flute and an apparently very noticeable penis as Mira and Mara mistake the thing between his legs for a weapon and punch him in the face. You see apparently the only way Mira and Mara could be raised as boys is to not tell them about the Birds and the Bees and to have them actually believe they are boys despite them having lady parts. The result is that as heroes Mira and Mara do not come off as the sharpest tools in the shed.

 

Who would guess these two aren’t boys?

Followers of Traigon arrive at the home of the kindly farmers that raised our “heroes” and demand that they be told where they can find “The Two Who are One.” Which is fantasy speak for where are the twins that Traigon needs. The farmer refuses to cough up the information and not only is he and his wife brutally killed but the minions also rape their natural daughter before killing her as well. So in the first ten minutes of the movie we get a woman tortured to death, a nude scene with twin sisters and a horny satyr, the murder of their adoptive family and a rape. Roger Corman does not mess around.

 

This is a different kind of Blue Movie.

Mira and Mara arrive too late to save anyone but with their blue light infused powers they are able to defeat the villains easily. On hand to watch their remarkable fighting skills is Valdar (Bruno Rey) a Viking and our favorite satyr Pando, and why a satyr is hanging around with a Viking is one of the great untold mysteries of this film. Valdar is so impressed by the twins warrior abilities that he vows to protect them and aid them on their quest.  They never ask for his aid or even really seem to need it, but hey you’re getting a Viking’s help so suck it up.

 

Valdar the Horrible and friend.

What follows is your standard fantasy quest as our “heroes” must face great adversity as they make their way to fulfill the prophecy or some such nonsense. At one point they hook up with a barbarian prince named Erlick (Roberto Nelson) who is introduced to us cheating at dice to show his roguish character, but barbarian Han Solo this guy is not. He immediately has less than pure thoughts about Mira and Mara but is hampered by the fact not only do they think they are boys but that they have no idea what the difference between boys and girls is let alone how babies are made.  This makes for an awkward and very creepy situation.

Traigon hasn’t just been sitting around twiddling his thumbs all this time as he has his super-hot priestess Delissia (Ana De Sade) and her ape sidekick to help track down “The Two Who are One.” The sheer goofiness of the ape Hunnu (Douglas Sanders) beggar’s description and when he and his ape army bombard our heroes with laughing gas filled exploding coconuts it is cinematic joy.

 

Hunnu is nightmare fuel, plain and simple.

So Mira and Erlick are captured and with some fast talking and a little mind altering drinks Traigon convinces Mira that he is a victim of nasty propaganda and that all he wants is what is best for his daughter. Meanwhile Delissia seduces the drugged Erlick, convincing him that it is in everyone’s benefit that he have sex with Mira and then later sacrifice her to Caligara. He seems cool with that. What is really not cool is that Mira and Mara are psychically linked so that they always feel what the other is experiencing so that when Erlick proceeds to have sex with the drugged Mira we are treated to Mara writhing around on the ground in coital bliss. Valdar realizes what is happening and when Mara proceeds to go onto a second earth-shattering orgasm Valdar concludes it’s all good as that means it must be Erlick providing the lovin. *sigh*

Will Mira and Mara be reunited? Can Erlick shake off his drugged stupor and save Mira from the dark god Caligara? Can Traigon be defeated in time? Will someone please shoot Pando? All these questions and more are answered in the exciting conclusion of Sorceress. This is really one of those “seeing is believing” type movies as anything I write down here pales in comparison to the awesomeness that is put up on screen. The comedy goes from goofy to outright weird. When Traigon calls forth an army of the dead the zombies rise out of the ground and proceed to attack the vestal virgins but their intent is more amorous than flesh eating, Valdar wittily comments, “Been buried a thousand years, ya know.” Because nothing is funnier than rape jokes.

 

Valdar: “Isn’t one enough for you?”
Erlick: “You forget Valdar, these two are one.”

The movie should have had a disclaimer “No actors were used in the making of this picture” as everyone in it is pretty awful. Now some of that can be attributed to the poor dubbing of the Mexican actors but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the Mexican actors probably sucked even in their native language. The effects are laughable even by Roger Corman film standards, and the final clash between the forces of good and evil is a ridiculous looking winged lion centaur-thing that shoots lightning out of its eyes up against a disembodied head of a woman with half her face messed up. What is fascinating is that this was not in the script but something Corman asked his effects guy to come up with for the trailer, apparently the trailer needed more oomph, and if it looked good enough he could put it into the movie. Artistic integrity takes a back seat when it comes between Roger Corman and making a buck.

 

I could get behind any religion that had this for its god.

But he was right, the movie may be god awful mess but damn is it fun, and it was successful as well making some series cash for such a low budgeted cheesy film. Even Roger Corman was shocked to see how many people lined up in the snowy cold to see his picture.   The sad part of the chapter is the falling out between long-time friends Jack Hill and Roger Corman that resulted in Hill demanding his name be taken off the picture. From what I’ve heard is that the Jack Hill version was two hours long, focused on a new religion that Hill espoused, and had at least two ballet numbers. It would certainly be interesting to see that version but sight unseen I’ll have to side with Roger on this one because the end result is a gloriously goofy movie that I just love despite and because of its flaws.

The Maze Runner (2014)

How long do you think it will before we get a reality show that pits teenagers against each other in some horrific game? With political parties tearing countries apart and with climate change wreaking havoc across the globe it may not be as far off was one would hope. A dystopian future could be right around the corner, but until then we’ll just have to settle for another young adult adventure novel brought to the big screen and today, we are looking James Dasher’s The Maze Runner.



Written as the first part of a trilogy it made a pretty decent splash back in 2009, with each of its sequels creating consecutively smaller splashes, but The Maze Runner was a very fun read which I quite enjoyed and this book should have easily translated to the screen, unlike say some films like The Giver.

Director Wes Ball starts out strong with this adaptation of the source novel, but my guess is that he was given a clear “This movie must be under two hours!” directive by the studio that resulted in the second half of the film being a bit of a jumbled mess. This is unfortunate as the cast is solid and the art direction is excellent, but they are all undercut by the messy script.

For those unfamiliar with the book; the story begins when sixteen-year old Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) wakes up in a rusty elevator that brings him to The Glade. He has no memories of who he is, where he came from or what in the hell is going on, so when he goes a little berserk upon finding himself surrounded by a bunch of strange young men one cannot blame him. The Glade is an encampment that has slowly grown over three years as a new memory wiped inhabitant is delivered once a month, but the kicker is that The Glade is in the center of a MASSIVE maze that in all those three years no one has been able to solve. They haven’t failed to solve the maze because they are group of slackers but because the very nature of the maze seems to make the solution impossible; it shifts and rearranges itself every night and if you happen to still be in the maze at night monstrous creatures called Grievers will surely kill you.

 

The Maze

About the Grievers; in the book they are bulbous fleshy monsters that have mechanical appendages that lash out to kill and can even drag you into its fleshy surface but their main weapon is their sting which can cause extreme pain for days if not weeks and can lead to death if not treated. The Gladers are provided with a serum that prevents you from dying.

 

“Grrr-arrgh!”

In the movie they seem more heavily mechanical, with a clear monstrous head, which to me made them less frightening. The movie also completely eliminates that fact that The Gladers have a cure for the Griever venom which is what gives you flashes of memory.

Thomas is introduced to Alby (Aml Ameen) the leader of The Gladers, Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) the second in command, Minho (Ki Hong Lee) the head of The Runners which is the group of boys that tries to map the maze each day, Gally (Will Poulter) who is instantly a huge dick to Thomas for no real reason, and Chuck (Blake Cooper) a sweet kid who had arrived just a month before Thomas.

 

Lord of the Flies Cos-Players.

Every member must contribute to the group and Thomas is given gardening detail and is sent out into the woods to collect fertilizer. (Note: Who the hell looks for fertilizer in the woods? We clearly see they have pigs in their encampment, one even arrived with Thomas, so there’s your fertilizer you idjit.) While wandering aimlessly through the woods he is attacked by a crazed youth named Ben (Chris Sheffield) who seems to believe that Thomas is responsible for all of this and proceeds to try and tear his head off.

 

“I know who you are!”

It seems he got himself stung by a Griever and so because of this madness Ben is cast out into the maze to presumably die as no one has ever survived a night in…The Maze!  The group is also a bit freaked out as no one has every been attacked during the day before.

Someone getting stung during the day isn’t the only new thing as the elevator arrives days ahead of schedule to deposit a new Glader but this time it is an unconscious girl and with her is a note saying, “This is the last one.” She briefly regains consciousness long enough to spot Thomas and yell out his name before passing out again, thus causing more suspicion to be aimed at poor Thomas. Also clutched in her hand are two syringes that will be revealed to cure Griever stings.

 

Thomas calls dibs on the only girl.

Those familiar with the book will have noticed some minor changes so far; as I mentioned earlier that in the book the Gladers are provided with the Griever antidote which can cause flashes of recalled memories which can result in a bit of madness. Gally in the book really hates Thomas because after he is stung and given the antidote he has memories of Thomas being the person behind their entrapment while in the movie Gally is never stung and just hates Thomas because he is a threat to the status quo, but the biggest alteration at this point is that the new girl Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) is not shown to have a telepathic link with Thomas. This is a strange thing for the movie to leave out as it becomes a crucial plot element later in the trilogy but in this movie Teresa is barely given any screen time at all and virtually no character. It’s as if the director believes that girls have cooties and should rarely be seen and certainly not heard telepathically. Now we do get some of Thomas’s weird memory flashbacks that not only alludes to the idea that Thomas was in fact part of the Maze’s creation but that he and Theresa may be talking telepathically, but this is pretty thin and looks like weak fan service.

 

Gally really, really angry

Worse is to come as Thomas is insistent on everyone escaping the Maze and that he will be their Moses while tonight Gally will be playing the part of Pharaoh. The thing is they never solve the maze as it was intended, Thomas lucks out on killing a Griever when it gets crushed between shifting walls while chasing him and takes a mechanical part from its brain that turns out to be a trigger device that will open a passageway out of the maze. This Deus ex machina device allows them to jettison most of the mystery of the maze found in the book.

 

The movie does not stint on cool maze running though.

This is most likely due to time constraints, the way the group find out about the exit to the Maze in the book and the complex code hidden in its very structure would have probably taken too long to explain, that or they didn’t trust the intelligence of their audience. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was the time factor.

Aside from Teresa’s character getting the short shrift, it’s Gally that the film completely screws up. In the book he is the one of the Gladers that no one really likes and who after being stung by a Griever eventually flees into the Maze and becomes a pawn of the creators, well more of a pawn than everybody else. The movie version is just a two dimensional asshat whose apparent sole purpose is to turn the Gladers against Thomas.  The screenwriter was clearly a fan of The Lord of the Flies.

Now this not a bad movie it just could easily have been a much better one. The second half just rushes along at break neck speeds giving no time for character development or plot. Cool shit happens but it doesn’t always make logical sense and this results in the lack of any true suspense. The movie did make considerably good bank at the box off and with a mere 34 million dollar budget it’s not surprising that the sequel is already in the works. Fingers crossed that they will take better care with the book to screen adaptation this time, but some of the changes in this movie will make elements in the second installment a bit tricky to make work. So here’s hoping.

The Land That Time Forgot: Book vs Movie

Dinosaurs’ still roaming the earth today is a fantasy element to be found in stories dating from as far back as 1912s The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the upcoming Jurassic World and our love of those magnificent beasties will certainly keep this genre alive.  So it is no surprise that the author of some of the world’s greatest pulp adventures didn’t tackle that subject a time or two and today we are going to look at Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot and its 1975 movie adaptation.

The Land That Time Forgot was original published in 1918 as a three part serial for Blue Book Magazine and starts as many of Burroughs’ books do with someone finding a manuscript belonging to the hero, in this case it was found in a thermos that had been tossed into the ocean by Bowen Tyler in the hopes that someday it would be found and someone would attempt a rescue.

The story takes place during WWI and begins with Tyler and his Airedale terrier Nobs aboard an American passenger ship that is struck by torpedo from a German U-boat. The ship goes down quickly and many of its survivors are killed by the cruel deck guns of the German crew with eventually only Tyler, his dog and fellow passenger the beautiful Lys La Rue seemingly to be the only ones left alive. They are soon rescued by a passing tugboat but their good fortune does not last long as the very same sub that sank Tyler and company attacks the tug, but the brave captain of the tugboat will not go down without a fight, and before the tug sinks beneath the waves he manages to engage the enemy sub so that his crew, with the help of Tyler and Nobs, overtake the Germans and capture the sub.

As an author Burroughs wasn’t above using coincidences to help move the narrative along but in the case of The Land That Time Forgot he may be stretching the bounds of credulity a bit too far, not only do we find out that the German U-Boat, U-33 happened to be manufactured by Tyler’s family shipyard but that the captain of said U-Boat is the ex-fiancé of Lys La Rue. I know it’s a small world but that’s a bit much. U-boat commander Baron Fredrick Von Schoenvorts was made to be Lys’s ex because this allows suspicion to fall on her when small acts of sabotage begin to plague the submarine and thus throws a roadblock in Tyler’s romantic life. Of course it turns out that the saboteur is not Lys, or even one of the German crew, but one of the tugboat crew that just so happens to really, really hate America.

With a destroyed radio, a broken compass, poisoned provision and now low on fuel the occupants of U-33 find themselves off the coast of the mysterious sub-continent of Caprona with their only hope of survival is in finding supplies beyond its apparently impenetrable cliffs. Lucky for them a warm current is discovered that leads them to a passage under the cliffs and into the primitive land of Caspak a world rife with prehistoric life ranging from the age of dinosaurs to the dawn of man.

The only surprising thing here is that it took until 1975 for this story to be adapted for the big screen. Produced by Amicus Productions and with a screenplay by noted fantasy author Michael Moorcock, but unfortunately this film did not set the world on fire as its low budget dinosaurs were more laughable than threatening.

What is shocking is how faithful this low budget movie is to the source material, which is hardly the case when such studios adapt popular books to the screen, with the most notably missing thing being that of Tyler’s dog Nobs, other changes can be argued as an improvement as director Kevin Connor wisely leaves out such tidbits as this particular sub being built by Tyler’s family and that the German commander previously being engaged to Lys, though in the movie she is now named Lisa Clayton (Susan Penhaligon) and given even less to do than the Lys in the book. The movie also streamlines the taking of the sub by removing the tugboat rescue and attack and replacing it with Bowen Tyler (Doug McClure) leading a group of survivors to capture the sub when it unknowingly surfaces close to their lifeboat. Also missing is the anti-American traitor and saboteur and so such of machinations are now left to the Germans alone.

 

Finding a way in.

When they enter Caspak, as the natives call it, both the book and the movie follow each other quite well with the first encounter being one of the crew getting eaten by a plesiosaur and the Americans and Germans quickly putting aside their differences to survive in this prehistoric world. Without fuel for the submarine they could be here for the rest of their lives so no sense fighting a war that no longer has any bearing on them.

 

A horrible encounter of the prehistoric kind

The most interesting aspect of this lost world is not the dinosaurs that roam its verdant jungles but the way evolution seems to work here. At first they meet primitive Neanderthals called Bo-Lu (club men) and they even befriend one by the name of Ahm (Bobby Parr) who believes Tyler in company are Galu (rope men) and that someday he will be a Galu as well. At first they think this is a superstitious belief centering on reincarnation but when they start noticing that are no children of the Bo-Lu or of the increasingly higher evolved Sto-Lu (Hatchet Men) or Band-Lu (Spear Men) they start to wonder if evolution on Caspak runs quite a bit differently than it does for the rest of the world, it is as if evolution moves geographically and not across the ages as Darwin figured out. The further you travel up river the higher evolved creatures appear and where cavemen hope to someday become Cro-Magnon men.   A mystery not truly solved until the sequel The People That Time Forgot.

 

Quest for Ahm.

Lady Luck finally smiles on our heroes as Ahm leads them to pools of oil that Schoenvorts (John McEnery) is sure can be refined to fuel the sub. The group build a palisade quaintly named “Fort Dinosaur” and begin to share duties of hunting and oil refining while also doing their best at avoiding the local denizens.

 

A world of titanic struggles.

This leads to what is really the biggest difference between book and movie and that is the end. In the book while Tyler is out exploring Lys is kidnapped by a group of Sto-lu and the Germans abscond with the sub and desert Tyler to never be heard from again. The movie on the other hand has your standard “prehistoric world volcanic destruction sequence” with Germans waiting as long as they can for Tyler and Lisa to return, aside from one evil German who laughs from the deck as he spots them on the burning shores, but the sub cannot survive the boiling waters and it sinks with all hands. So the movie wins points for not having all the Germans being total dicks. Both book and movie end with Tyler and Lys/Lisa standing on the cliffs of Caprona as Tyler tosses out his thermos that holds the manuscript of their adventures and hopes of rescue.

 

“What kind of postage should I put on this?”

I must say I highly enjoyed both versions of this story and can recommend them to any fan of the genre. Doug McClure is not so much an actor as a he is a walking piece of beef, but in the role of stalwart Bowen Tyler he is well cast. Actually the whole cast does a remarkable job trying to sell this prehistoric world that is clearly large rubber puppets and creatures hanging from strings, and that is no small skill. If Kevin Connor had been given a bigger budget they may have been able to afford to use stop motion techniques instead of silly rubber suited monsters and this film would be looked at more fondly.