The Changeling (1980) – Review

When it comes to horror movies, nothing beats a good ghost story. Sure, axe-wielding psychos and limb rendering monsters can be fun, but give I'd take a creaking haunted house over those any day of the week. For me, the most quintessential examples of this specific horror genre is Robert Wise’s 1963 film The Haunting – a film to this day that still gives me the shivers – and the other is, of course, Peter Medak’s The Changeling. What makes these two films stand out amongst their peers is that they aren’t so much horror films, as psychological-thrillers that just so happen to include a supernatural element.

The film’s protagonist is John Russell (George C. Scott), a composer who after losing both his wife and daughter in a tragic roadside automobile accident decides to rent a massive secluded mansion, where he can compose and grieve in peace. That the place is a massive sprawling gothic mansion does seem a little odd – just how much space does one need to grieve – but the sets designed by Trevor Williams are fantastic, and they, along with the haunting music of Rick Wilkins and cinematography of John Coquillon, all create one of the best haunted houses in movie history.

 

I certainly couldn’t see myself staying in this place all alone.

The one major hurdle filmmakers of haunted house movies all have to overcome is the question every audience member is going to eventually ask, and that is, when the occupants of said haunted house start to encounter supernatural activity, “Why in the hell are they still hanging around?” When walls start to bleed, and demonic eyes peer in from outside the window, as they did in The Amityville Horror, I pretty much lose sympathy with the family for not just getting the fuck out. Now, in the case of The Changeling, when Russell first notices creepy goings on – doors opening on their own, loud rhythmic banging, and ghostly whispering – it’s possible that he thinks the ghost could be that of his recently deceased little girl, and his bereavement could easily make him wish that to be the case, despite the events not seeming to hold up well to that theory. It’s on one night when he follows the sound of water running, and sees the apparition of a drowned boy in a bathtub, that he finally concludes that this haunting has nothing to do with his daughter.

 

Unless his daughter was a boy and drowned in a tub.

Russell then wholeheartedly dives into the mystery of the house, with the help of Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere), who works for the historical preservation society that rented him the house, and the two of them start digging through old newspapers and archives to find out about previous owners. At first, they believe the ghost to be that of a girl killed by a coal cart in 1909, but after a séance – using automatic writing or psychography – they learn that a crippled boy named Joseph Carmichael was murdered in that house by his father. This leads our two heroes to cross paths with powerful Senator Joseph Carmichael (Melvyn Douglas), and this is where things get very complicated very quickly, as the horror behind the mysterious ghost is finally revealed. It’s this element that puts The Changeling into one of my favorite kinds of ghost stories, the murder mystery one, and with no Scooby gang to aid our heroes, it’s up to Russell and Claire to confront the living and the dead.

 

Who was kept in this hidden attic room?

One of the most outstanding things about The Changeling is how truly terrifying it can be without relying on loud musical stings or cheap jump scares — the very atmosphere of the house builds on an almost primeval dread, with us as the viewers practically screaming at the people on screen to get the fuck out of that house. And if you were to ask anyone who has seen The Changeling what scene freaked them out the most, it wouldn’t be the creepy séance, or even the ending where Claire is chased by the little wheelchair, it would be the moment when the rubber ball, that belonged to Russell’s dead daughter, came bouncing down the stairs. Just typing these words has given me goose pimples.

The Changeling is simply a masterpiece of the genre, with many of its scariest moments blatantly lifted by later filmmakers, and though it didn’t manage to make a killing at the box office at the time of it’s release – mostly due to  a poor distribution deal in the US – it has managed to remain on many top ten lists of Scariest Movies year after year. With today’s recent boom in horror movies – with the likes of The Conjuring and Ouija: The Origin of Evil raking in box office gold – it’s nice to able to look back at a film that managed to terrify audiences with simple practical effects and zero gore. In fact, the only blood in the film comes when a police detective (John Colicos) threatens Russell’s investigation into that long ago murder, and he is decidedly stopped for his efforts.

 

Do not screw around with this ghost.

The specter in The Changeling is certainly not of Casper the Friendly Ghost variety, and when things don’t seem to be going it’s way, the ghostly entity turns violent, even against those that were trying to help, but this all makes perfect sense when you consider that the angry spirit is that of a child, and thus prone to nasty temper tantrums. The only moment in the film that completely lost me was when Russell re-enters the house – after it had just tried to murder Claire – to apparently yell at the ghost for being a dick.

 

There comes a point when you just have to cut your losses and get out.

Simply put, The Changeling is one of the scariest horror movies ever made, almost forty years later and the film is still terrifying audiences with its incessant dread and chills, with not an ounce of its age lessening its impact one bit. If you like creepy mansions, spooky séances, hidden rooms, murder mysteries and supernatural shenanigans, then The Changeling is the film for you.

Note: The film is loosely based on the alleged haunting of Henry Treat Rogers' mansion in Cheesman Park, Denver, Colorado, while playwright Russell Hunter was living there during the 1960s.

Radius (2017) – Review

Take a high-concept idea, throw in a heaping helping of dread, and then mix it all up with some nice existential quandaries; the result of such a concoction would be the film Radius, a science fiction/thriller by Canadian directors Caroline Labrèche and Steeve Léonard — a film that keeps the viewer guessing along with the film’s protagonists. Pulling off such a feat is not an easy task but Labrèche and Léonard, who also penned the movie, manage to construct a masterpiece that is a throwback to the days of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

We are first introduced to Liam Hartwell (Diego Klattenhoff) as he staggers bloodied from a car wreck – though he doesn’t know who he is as he’s also suffering from amnesia – but things get even worse for poor Liam when he tries to flag down a passing car and the driver suddenly dies, with the car just sliding to a stop. From here things get even worse, with dead birds plummeting from the skies and a diner full of unexpectedly dead patrons; it doesn’t take Liam long to realize that he is the cause of all these deaths, and that he seems to have acquired a "field of death" with a fifty foot radius.

 

As super powers go, this has to be one of the worst.

While hiding out in his backyard shed – even afraid of calling the police – he is found by Rose Daerwood (Charlotte Sullivan), a woman who apparently was in the same car accident as Liam and is also suffering from amnesia, but more startling is the fact that she doesn’t fall down dead when she approaches Liam. At first, Liam assumes that whatever strange affliction was causing him to end life around him is over, but that would be too easy. Turns out, Rose isn’t exactly immune to his death field but while she is around, it's cancelled, that is until she steps too far away and his killing field returns. Thus, we have two characters – who haven’t a clue as to who they are or what's happened to them – having to work together to solve the mystery behind Liam’s condition, all exasperated by hearing news reports that Liam is the chief suspect in what the authorities assume to be a terrorist attack.

 

“Google says you’re screwed.”

Not only does Radius give us a very cool conundrum – a pair thrown together under extreme mysterious conditions – but it also deals with the more philosophical idea of identity, offering up an interesting debate on how much of us is wrapped up in our memories and history, and if we lose them does that give us a clean slate? As the mystery unfolds, the cosmic origins of Liam’s “Radius of Death” almost moves to the backburner, with the more important enigma of Liam and Rose’s relationship moving to the foreground, and more importantly, what it was before they stepped into the Twilight Zone. Radius has a supporting cast of characters that either aid or hinder our heroes – at one point they get help from Rose’s husband (Brett Donahue), who is rightly concerned about his wife’s amnesia and her new “terrorist” friend – but the film is mostly about Liam and Rose, which puts a heavy burden on Klattenhoff and Sullivan, and these two actors do a fantastic job exploring the horror and drama of the situation.  As their feelings towards each other swing wildly across a spectrum of emotions as the mystery slowly enfolds, the film rests solely on their shoulders, and they pull off a remarkable job with such tricky material.

 

When you both have amnesia, who do you trust?

The concept of a “Death Radius” is nothing new — Labrèche and Léonard were inspired by an old Superman comic book storyline, and there was an Ultimate X-Men story where Wolverine had to make a tough decision when he encountered a young boy who radiated death – but what these two filmmakers managed to do here, and with a very limited budget and small cast, is truly remarkable. So if you are a fan of dark and twisty science fiction – with a good amount of hard edged drama – then this venture into The Twilight Zone is highly recommended.

 

Sci-fi doesn't get much better than this.

Flood (1976) – Review

Movies such as The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure marked Irwin “The Master of Disaster” Allen as a big-budgeted disaster film artist. But he also brought some of his movie mayhem to the small screen with his 1976’s made-for-television movie Flood. Of course, the problem with taking the disaster genre to the small screen was in creating all that thrilling carnage on a small television budget.

Due to a lesser running time, 1976’s Flood has a smaller cast of characters, at least when compared to what you’d find in the typical disaster movie of the time – had to make room for those commercial breaks – so the numerous soap opera subplots that we would normally be forced to suffer through were cut down dramatically, but not completely. We are first introduced to charter helicopter pilot Steve Brannigan (Robert Culp) as he ferries well-paying tourist Mr. Franklin (Roddy McDowall) up to the lake for some fishing, but when town councilman Paul Burke (Martin Milner) learns from Steve that another leak has sprung in the earthen dam, the massive one that overlooks the town, he organizes a quick council meeting to demand they open the sluice gates before the dam fails. Mayor John Cutler (Richard Basehart) is quick to point out that the town of Brownsville’s economy depends on tourist fishermen, and if they drain the lake the town could die. Thus, we have a mayor who is your standard cliché of a politician weighing the safety of his constituents over economic forces, that he is wrong and the hero is right is pretty much his only defining characteristic.

 

“We can’t close the beaches; it’s the Fourth of July.”

Despite Paul's passionate arguments, the council vote against opening the sluice gates – having not yet received the official word from the geological surveyor who examined the dam – and thus, Paul is forced to handle things his own way. He races to the local hospital, where his fiancée Mary Cutler (Barbara Hershey) works, to warn them to prepare for massive casualties when the dam breaks. The Mayor is Mary’s father, and despite Paul’s fact-based claims, she doesn’t believe her father would endanger the town, but luckily the hospital’s doctor (Whit Bissell) agrees to evacuate patients that couldn’t survive if the hospital were to lose power. Lucky for him, that is only old Mrs. Parker (Gloria Stuart), who Brannigan is able to helicopter over to another hospital, one that is not endanger of being washed away.

 

“I’m the real Greatest American Hero.”

Things get even more complicated when Paul learns from Sam Adams (Cameron Mitchell), the guy who manages the dam’s operations, that the Mayor did in fact get the geological report, and that he lied to the council because he doesn’t believe in the surveyor’s findings. So basically, the mayor is a raging asshole, and worse is the fact that Mary won’t take a stand against her dad, ignoring all the evidence that Paul lays before her, stating that even if there was such a report, her father probably does know better. Mary’s insane trust in her dad seems stuck in a 1950s “Father Knows Best” attitude, and it is truly ludicrous, especially considering the fact that if he is wrong, many people will die.

 

Want to take bets on her being right to trust her father?

As this film is called Flood, and not The Chronicles of Honest Mayor Cutler, the dam does fail and a torrent of raging water races to town. The film’s remaining thirty minutes is spent dealing with Paul and Brannigan as they race from one end of the town to the other rescuing various idiots, culminating in them having to dynamite a bridge, which had been clogged with debris, and was preventing the flood waters to run off. This also results in the saving of Mary’s idiot brother Andy (Eric Olson), who was found washed up against the bridge just as they are about to blow the thing. The film also has a ridiculous subplot of expectant mother Abbie Adams (Carol Lynley), wife of the soon to be dead dam manager, who goes into some kind of bizarre debilitating labor that causes her to fall to the floor and repeatedly pass out.

 

Carol Lynley clearly went to the William Shatner School of Over Acting.

As Flood had no reasonable budget for a disaster film – going by what we see on screen, I’m guessing it couldn’t have been more than $45 dollars – we don’t see much in the way of flood carnage. The collapsing earthen dam is a pathetic looking model — shot at night to hide how lame it really is – and aside from the rare shot of water rushing around, which somehow kills the town hall secretary like some kind of stealth flood, there isn't much on hand to offer fans of the disaster genre. We do get idiotic moments such as the rising water drowning Mary’s even dumber mom (Teresa Wright), as she tries to save Leif Garrett, thinking he was her missing son, and that she fails to save the kid – though he does show up alive later, rescued by someone else – is just another weird moment in the movie, and her death is basically payment for her husband’s hubris.

 

Are we supposed to feel bad for him?

The only real positive thing I can say about Irwin Allen’s Flood is that the camaraderie between Paul Burke and Steve Brannigan comes across as quite genuine, providing a few decent laughs, and the chemistry between the two is even more believable than that of Paul and his fiancée Mary. Richard Basehart’s pompous “I know I’m right” mayor may be the film’s chief human antagonist, but his daughter Mary was so infuriatingly stupid that I had hopes the flood would wash her away as well. The film ends with Paul and Steve flying off into the sunset, apparently to get medical supplies, but I’d like to believe that they never return to that stupid, stupid town.

 

“Fuck this town, let’s go to Vegas.”

Disaster Pedigree:
• Roddy McDowell and Carol Lynley were aboard The Poseidon Adventure.
• Whit Bissel was in the 1974 Alex Hailey’s Airport.
• Richard Basehart was aboard the 1953 Titanic.
• Gloria Stuart was aboard the 1997 Titanic.

 

Note: It’s clear they didn’t even have enough money to properly blow up a bridge.

The Predator (2018) – Review

According to this film, on the Predator home world, they apparently have their own form of Greenpeace — am I getting that right, is that what this film is about?

With this latest outing in the Predator franchise, action comedy director Shane Black does his best to cram five different movies into one – with one of those movies being about a Predator wanting to save mankind from global warming or something – and the result is a mess on a biblical scale. I have no doubt that Mr. Black has a three hour cut of this film that probably makes a little more sense than what we find here, but after the studio's heavy cutting and forced reshoots, what little made it to the theaters can barely be considered as having a plot. The final product can only be described as being “One ugly motherfucker.”

The “plot” of this film follows a bunch of army misfits – doing their best imitations of what the cast of Stripes and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would look like if they were in a monster movie – as they tangle with nasty alien Predators as well as evil shadowy government organizations. The movie’s primary hero is Army sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), whose entire team is wiped out when a Predator crash-lands I'm the middle of a hostage rescue mission in Mexico. Quinn is taken into custody by Will Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), a moustache twirling villain who runs a covert anti-Predator organization called Project Stargazer, and Quinn is shipped off with a bunch of Section Eights to cover up his claims of a Close Encounter, because apparently throwing him in a black site or shooting him in the face were not available options.

 

If this is your idea of a cover-up, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Well, luckily for us, just before Quinn was captured by the “evil military man,” he manages to mail some of the Predator’s armaments back home, where his cute as a bug autistic child Rory (Jacob Tremblay) opens the package. The kid immediately figures out how the alien tech works and decides a Predator helmet and wrist gauntlet would make for a good Halloween costume. I certainly can’t argue with that logic. While all this is going on, Traeger has sent for Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), an evolutionary biologist who is on some kind of government call list if you need an alien’s DNA analyzed, and she is asked to examine a captured Predator – Quinn left it unconscious after stealing the poor alien's swag – and when the Predator awakes, it proceeds to wipe out much of the staff of Project Stargazer — this is possible because the place is staffed with utter morons. Casey then grabs a tranquilizer rifle and proceeds to chase the alien warrior across the facility's rooftops as if she's Jason Bourne. I shit you not, this actually happens.

 

“I can take this thing out, I’ve played hours of Destiny on my PS4.”

The Predator is 100 minutes of characters running around in the dark shooting at either aliens or each other – with the heroes surviving only because they are in possession of the all-important “Hero Death Exemption" card – and once in a while, the film will take a break from all this action to explain some of the more idiotic plot points that make up this so-called story, stuff that would barely pass the smell test from your average five year-old, and that is certainly not the target demographic of your typical “R” rated movie. The people of Project Stargazer believe that the Predators gather DNA from species that they believe can make them better hunters  – thus, we get this whole super-hybrid Predator bad guy for our heroes to fight – but they also believe that the Predators plan on taking over the Earth once we finish making the planet uninhabitable for humans, and for some reason they've also come to the conclusion that the Predator that crashed in on Quinn was bringing a package to help humanity against the “evil” Predators.

How exactly did the people of Project Stargazer come to these startling conclusions? Did we miss a movie where Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum used their Apple laptop to hack the Predator mainframe? In this movie, both heroes and villains pull so much information out of their collective assess that the film should have been called The Prostators.

 

Quinn should trade that rifle in for a colonoscope.

The film does have tons of Shane Black’s trademark banter – Quinn’s team of army misfits providing the bulk of this – but unlike in his previous film, such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys, we never come to care about any of these asshats, they are just dialogue-spouting joke machines with no other reason for existing. When they get picked off one by one you can almost feel the audience's collective “Who gives a shit” wafting across the theater. Could there be a version of this film out there that works? I’m a big fan of Shane Black so I’d like to think so, but from what I saw last night, I highly doubt any version of this movie would have made any sense; there are just too many plot holes and unexplained character motivations on hand for any of this to work. Now there is a good amount of action – humans versus Predator as well as Predator versus Predator – and much of that is fun to watch, but the overall end product is a vacuous mess of clichés and characters that all add up to a whole lot of nothing. Shane Black's The Predator looked to be trying to expand the universe of the Predators, something the AVP movies tried and failed at, but sadly this expansion falls in on itself like a black hole, where neither light nor intelligibility can escape.

 

“Please sir, can I have a sequel.”

Stray Thoughts:

• The big badass hybrid Predator brings a pair of Predator Dogs to hunt the fugitive Predator, and for some reason being shot in the eye makes one of these alien dogs befriend Olivia Munn.
• Traeger orders one of the Project Stargazer guards to kill Casey and take any contraband she has, but there is no way he’d know she had any contraband on her, and killing the person you just hired to study Predator DNA seems rather stupid and pointless.
• The big badass hybrid Predator is basically invulnerable to small arms fire, which makes the fights with him long and mostly pointless.
• The big badass hybrid Predator brutally murders every person it encounters, unless that person is Quinn or Casey, then he just smacks them aside, leaving them alive and virtually unharmed.
• Rory has what I call “Super Autism” which is a form of autism that Hollywood devised to allow characters to solve any problem as if by magic.
• Even if Rory’s autism allowed him to figure out Predator language and tech, it still wouldn’t allow him to know passcodes to enter alien ships. That’s as if learning German would mean you could sneak into the Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
• The big badass hybrid Predator wants Rory’s DNA because apparently autism is humanity's next evolutionary step, though I’m not sure how Rory’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and inability to handle loud noises, would be much help on a hunt.
• With the help of Rory, the villainous Traeger finds the crashed Predator ship, and then magically constructs a camp and electrified perimeter fence in minutes.
• Casey is able to magically teleport herself to the location of the final fight, even though Quinn and the Predator ship would have crashed miles away from her. Basically, there is a whole lot of magic going on in this science fiction film.

 

Where's a Predator wrist nuke when you need it?

Deluge (1933) – Review

Presumed lost for years, the 1933 film Deluge, released by RKO pictures, but produced by a small company called Admiral Productions Inc, is a film that could be argued as to be one of Hollywood’s earliest true disaster films, preceding such films as The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), and the big earthquake movie San Francisco (1936), starring Spencer Tracey and Clark Gable – and with the spectacular footage of the destruction of New York, with the now cliché shot of the Statue of Liberty being hit by a tidal wave, one could make a solid argument that this is the case. However, Deluge, based on the book of the same name, is more of an apocalyptic film, if not post-apocalyptic, rather than a true disaster film.

The film opens with a title card explaining that the film you are about to see is “A tale of fantasy – and adventure in speculation – a vivid pictorialization of an author’s imaginative flight,” and it then goes on to explain that it has to be fantasy because God, as stated in the Holy Bible, promised not to pull any of that kind of crap again.

 

I must say this is the strangest way to avoid calling God a liar.

The movie proper begins with a group of scientists who are very concerned with the rapidly dropping barometer readings – forcing them to issue severe weather warnings that will ground planes and cause ships to seek safe harbor – but things go from bad to worse when there is an unexpected solar eclipse; earthquakes begin to shake countries across the globe, the West Coast of America falls into the sea, the Arctic Ocean is overflowing, causing the Great Lakes to submerge Chicago, and massive quakes topple the skyscrapers of New York City, just before an immense tidal wave roars in to finish the job. To say that the miniature work of the city being destroyed, as buildings rock and crumble in a stunning array of shots, is amazing would be a gross understatement, and it's with this film that special effects director Ed Mann set the bar for cinematic mass destruction to come — and he set it very very high.

What makes this movie more of an apocalyptic film rather than a disaster movie is all the carnage takes place before the movie’s twenty-minute mark. The remaining forty-six minutes – and yes, that means this film is only 66 minutes long – is about the survivors and what has become of society. Usually your typical disaster film will spend around an hour setting up a variety of characters – that we can later tick off as they live or die by the whims of the screenwriter – but this movie has only a couple of characters introduced before the world, as they know it, meets its end. We meet professional swimmer Claire Arlington (Peggy Shannon) – whose plans to break a long distance swimming lesson were cancelled by the storm – and Martin Webster (Sidney Blackmer) and his wife Helen (Lois Wilson), who try to get their two children to safety as the world falls apart around them. When the storm waters recede, and the weather clears, we find a lone survivor standing in a new and bleak landscape.

 

Somewhere Burgess Meredith has just broken his reading glasses.

We are then introduced to two men, Jepson (Fred Kohler) and Norwood (Ralf Harolde), surviving in a cabin located on the outskirts of New York, their prospects of living in this newly devastated world doesn’t at first seem all that promising, as the two don’t get along and the cowardly Norwood is alive only on the sufferance of the much larger Jepson, but when Jepson finds Claire Arlington washed ashore – who also somehow survived the destruction of New York City – things look up for the two men, if they don’t kill each other over this new prize, that is. Things do not look decidedly up for poor Claire.

 

“Who said beachcombing is for bums?”

This is where the film gets dark – as if worldwide destruction on an unparalleled scale wasn’t dark enough – we have Jepson claiming “finders keepers,” and Norwood trying to rape Claire the minute Jepson has his back turned. Jepson easily kills the weaker Norwood, but Claire doesn’t stay around to congratulate the winner, and she dives back into the sea. Lucky for Claire the next beach she washes up on is inhabited by Martin Webster – living alone in a cabin by a large cave – and the two begin a slow to halting relationship, one that hits a few road bumps when Jepson arrives to reclaim his property. Unfortunately, Jepson isn’t the only danger out there – as Martin is soon to discover – because a gang of rapists and murderers roam the nearby territory, a group that Jepson quickly joins, and soon our young lovers are fighting for their lives against something even worse than pissed off Mother Nature.

Note: This was a Pre-Code movie – meaning it was not under the governing offices of Motion Picture Production Code or “Hays Code” as it is more known – which allowed the filmmakers to include shots of the bound remains of a raped and murdered woman, not to mention Peggy Shannon in a two-piece bathing suit.

Deluge is loosely based on a book by English author S. Fowler Wright, and like the book, the movie explores the nature of humanity, how society would function when the “rule of law” is washed away with rest of the world. Martin Webster is depicted as a strong moral man – though I found his pushiness for her to decide to “be with him” a bit creepy at times, especially considering that she has just recently escaped being raped twice – and Jepson and his gang are depicted as the embodiment of anarchy and the animalistic nature of man. Things get a little complicated for Martin when they are rescued by people from a nearby settlement and it turns out his wife and kids survived the cataclysm — talk about awkward moments — and now Martin must choose between the mother of his children, who he still loves, and Claire, who he also deeply loves. Martin actually doesn’t decide – when Claire tells him that he must decide between his wife and her, the loser sobs, “I can’t make a choice” – and so after a Claire has a heated argument with Helen, with Claire telling the woman, “I’m used to fighting for what I want,” we get Claire actually making a unique decision, diving back into the sea to seek a new life somewhere else.

 

“Goodbye Martin, you dick.”

This differs greatly from the book, where Martin gets to have both Claire and Helen as wives, but that kind of ending would certainly not fly, even in a pre-code movie. The 1930s were a different time, racism and sexism didn’t really exist — I mean, they certainly existed, but the terms didn’t really exist yet — it was just the way things were; but this film does dance almost to the edge of progressiveness. In the survivors settlement, a man by the name Tom (Matt Moore), one of the townsmen who found Helen in the aftermath, informs her that because there are more men than women, the menfolk have passed a decree that any adult woman must have a mate, and he hopes she will choose him. Helen turns down this offer, refusing to believe her husband is dead, despite the overwhelming odds, and when he does arrive, with his new woman, she takes things surprisingly well. That Claire’s ultimate reaction to this is “Fuck that for a bag of chips,” and takes off into the unknown, is rather empowering.

 

Note: The film is not progressive enough to avoid horrible black stereotypes.

Films like The Day After Tomorrow and television shows like The Walking Dead owe much to director Felix E. Feist's Deluge, it both created the mold of what disaster films would become, and also explored the highs and lows of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. At sixty-six minutes in length, it didn’t have too much time to delve very deep into such heady subject matters, but what we got was pretty interesting and well crafted.

Eighty-Five years later, and I find that the twenty minutes of catastrophic destruction in Deluge still holds up to this day — more emotionally impactful than a lot of the CGI nonsense we get in modern blockbusters — with cinematographer Billy Williams, matte artist Russell Lawson and model builder Ned Mann, all putting in stellar work. I highly recommend checking out this once lost masterpiece – the whole thing is available on Youtube, but I recommend the Kino Lorber Blu-ray as it includes an informative commentary track, as well as a second feature film starring Peggy Shannon – and if you do check out this movie, I hope you will all be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

Note: The footage of New York’s destruction was sold by RKO to Republic Pictures, and used in such serials as Dick Tracy vs Crime Inc and King of the Rocket Men, as well as the movie S.O.S. Tidal Wave.

City on Fire (1979) – Review

By the late 70s, the golden age of the disaster film was coming to a close – Irwin Allen’s 1980 commercial bomb When Time Ran Out would be the nail in the coffin – but in 1979, a joint American/Canadian venture released a movie about an entire city ablaze, a film called City on Fire, and though it couldn’t compete with the big budget disaster films, like 1974’s Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, it still managed to pull off some impressive carnage. Sadly, this was not enough to prevent the film from being a box office disappointment, and the film is now known mostly for being mocked by Joel and the Robots on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

 

You know you’re doing poorly if you end up in this kind of double bill.

It’s not often we get a Canadian disaster film – though the film is set in some unnamed American city – but like it’s American cousins, City on Fire follows the tried and true method of assembling a star studded cast – with the American stars getting limited screen time to cut down on costs – and then having their “dramatic” lives thrown into disarray by some disaster or another.

We have corrupt mayor William Dudley (Leslie Nielsen), who allowed an oil refinery to be built inside the city limits; Diana Brockhurst-Lautrec (Susan Clark), rich widow socialite that just so happens to be in town for the dedication of a new hospital – where the film’s climax will take place – and she’s also having an affair with Mayor Dudley. Next we have hospital Chief of Staff Frank Whitman (Barry Newman), who is informed by head nurse Andrea Harper (Shelley Winters) that this new hospital isn’t exactly up to code, and Frank himself is a bit of a sexual player – we are introduced to him blowing off a one-night-stand, who later turns out to be a nurse working at his hospital – so, obviously, he will eventually hook-up with Diana, because you have to have true love win out in a disaster film. Rounding out this all-star cast are Ava Gardner as alcoholic reporter Maggie Grayson, James Franciscus as Maggie’s put-upon producer, and Henry Fonda as Fire Chief Risley, who is clearly in “Boat Payment Theater" mode.

“Has my cheque cleared yet?”

Like many disaster films, there really isn’t much of a plot, and this one's catastrophe is started by a disgruntled employee (Jonathan Welsh), who starts the fire out of sheer spite after being fired, and then for the next two hours we just bounce from one group of characters to another, seeing how they handle the raging fire around them. To pad out the running time, we get a couple kids starting a fire near their tree house – in a scene that works as an anti-smoking PSA – and then there is a subplot dealing with a couple reporters who have photographic evidence of Diana’s affair with the mayor, but none of it really goes anywhere, nor is it all that relevant, and it mostly just acts to add potential victims to the big fire to come. Of course, what audiences have come to see is all the glorious calamity that a major disaster will bring, and director Alvin Rakoff – a man most known for the terribly campy film Death Ship – does pack this film with a considerable amount of fiery carnage, and to spread the budget a bit further, he manages to sneak in plenty of news reel footage of actual fires.

“Stock footage runs rampant throughout the city. Film at Eleven.”

I will tip my hat off to the men and women who make up the stunt team, they provided some truly amazing fire gags for this film– one particular stuntman is bounced off the hood of a passing car, while doing a full body burn, and it is amazing – but you can only afford so much practical effects and stunt work, and when the visual effects end and the people step in to take care of the big moments, well let’s just say things get a little less convincing.

 

Is that a fire or the Aurora Borealis?

Drama kicks into high gear when fire chief Risley informs the Mayor that the new hospital is about to become the center of a Fire Storm — when this happens all the oxygen will be sucked out and everyone inside will suffocate – and so a major evacuation must be organized. It's this rescue attempt that takes up the bulk of the film’s last act – with side moments of Diana helping a woman give birth and Dr. Whitman leading a bunch children in an enforced game of Follow the Leader – culminating in the fire department creating a “tunnel of water” for the evacuees to flee through. As a whole, this stuff works rather well – though the long shots of people staggering down fire-torn streets could have been trimmed to help the pacing – and we do get some good "edge of your seat" moments.

 

I’m curious as to what the film’s water budget was.

City on Fire doesn’t bring anything new to the genre: stock characters deal with their numerous cliché problems amongst the flames, as expected, and aside from the aforementioned stunt work, which I must say again was damn impressive, there is nothing to really set the film apart from its brethren. I will say it’s nice seeing James Franciscus playing a decent human being this time around – he plays total assholes in The Towering Inferno and When Time Ran Out – and many people today only know Leslie Nielson from Airplane parodies and The Naked Gun movies, but he was a fairly respected dramatic actor for decades, and he gives a nice multi-dimensional lift to what would normally be the stock corrupt politician.

“Yes, I’m serious … And don’t call me Shirley.”

Most disaster films deal with natural disasters, earthquakes, storms, tidal waves, or accidents like plane crashes and building fires, but City on Fire is the rare example where there is an actual human villain, and not just some asshole guilty of fire code violations. But what is strange here is that when the film ends, we get this strange monologue from Henry Fonda, where he states, “All it takes is one man, could be anybody... your neighbor, my neighbor... one man to destroy a city.” A nice sentiment to be sure, but at no point in this film did anybody learn about the disgruntled worker who started the fire, and he dies without telling anyone. So where did the fire chief come up with this “one man to destroy a city” idea? One has to assume the filmmakers got to the end of the movie and then had a sudden epiphany, “We need a message,” and stuck on that bit of treacle crap, hoping that the great Henry Fonda could sell it. That this coda was not earned – or really even needed – is a perfect example of writers not really giving a damn about the story, and that if you are going to make your disaster film into a treatise on humanity, then maybe you shouldn’t wait until the last 30 seconds to dive into the subject.

 

“It only takes one cliché character to destroy a city.”

City on Fire was made because Canadian tax incentives allowed the filmmakers to make a disaster film without spending too much money, and though it doesn’t have much in the way of great visual effects, there is enough practical effects and amazing stunt work to give this film a recommend to fans of the genre.

Note: The film is, of course, guilty of "stunt casting " by including numerous stars with a solid history of disaster films under their collective belts, which is always a bit of treat to spot.

City on Fire - Disaster Pedigree:

• Henry Fonda was in The Swarm.
• Ava Gardner starred in Earthquake.
• Leslie Nielsen and Shelley Winters were in The Poseidon Adventure.
• James Franciscus was in both The Towering Inferno and When Time Ran Out.

 

Note: The fire at the oil refinery causes some buildings to randomly explode.

Monster on the Campus (1958) – Review

 In the 50s, atomic monsters or alien invaders were all the rage – from giant tarantulas to flying saucers – but despite their inability to destroy buildings, one other science fiction staple overshadowed them all, and that would be that of the mad scientist. In fact, many of the atomic monster that rampaged across America were created by such scientists “meddling in things that man must leave alone,” and today we will look back on one of the lesser known entries in this genre, Monster on the Campus. Directed by Jack Arnold, legendary director of such classics as The Creature of the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space, we get a film that seems to be trying to say something – message pictures were nothing new to this genre – and with Monster on the Campus, you can certainly try and read some deeper meaning into the film, and many people have tried. But all I found was a film about a scientist who was a bit of a dick, nothing more, nothing less.

The main character of Monster on the Campus is Dr. Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) – sadly not the Donald Blake who turns into The Mighty Thor – a science professor at Dunsford University, who after receiving a coelacanth (a once presumed extinct fish) from a lab in Madagascar, he soon finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation, when dead bodies start piling up around campus. Blake is impressed with the coelacanth’s ability to remain unchanged after millions of years. He informs college student — the fish delivery guy — Jimmy Flanders (Troy Donahue) that, “The coelacanth is a living fossil, immune to the forces of evolution.” Professor Blake lectures his students about evolution and de-evolution, telling them that man is the only creature that can decide whether to move forwards or backwards, and this bit of "science" proves he must have serious tenure because such spoken beliefs would get you kicked out of any credited college or university.

 

“Now students, a word about Scientology.”

What Professor Blake will soon come to understand is that the coelacanth has irradiated blood – the lab that shipped the fish used gamma radiation as a preservative – and any ingestion of the blood will cause the victim to regress down the evolutionary ladder. Jimmy’s German Shepherd licks up some of the irradiated blood and becomes immediately vicious – while also sporting enlarged canines – and later, Blake cuts his hand while transporting the fish into storage – by stupidly sticking his hand in the fish’s sharp toothed mouth – and this results in Molly Riordan (Helen Westcott), assistant to fellow college professor Dr. Cole Oliver (Whit Bissell), being found hanging from her hair, dead in Blake’s backyard, with an unconscious Blake lying next to the body. The police rightfully suspect Blake in the woman’s death – his tie clip is even found in the poor woman’s hand – but when finger and hand prints of a much larger man are found at the scene, the police believe somebody might be after Blake.

 

“I’m a man of science, there is no way I’m a murderer.”

Later, a dragonfly lands on the coelacanth for a little snack – which Blake seems to insist on leaving out unrefrigerated – and soon it is transformed into a prehistoric monster with a two foot wingspan. It at first buzzes around Jimmy and his college sweetheart Sylvia Lockwood (Nancy Walters) – despite dragonflies not having the ability to buzz – and it then enters Blake’s lab where, with the help of the two students, he is able to capture and kill the overgrown insect. Remembering that a dragonfly earlier drank from the coelacanth's corpse, the professor starts to put two and two together, which means he’s about five steps behind everybody in the audience, but shit hits the fan again when he dribbles infected dragonfly blood into his pipe.

Science Note: Prehistoric or not, bacteria from a coelacanth or giant dragonfly would not survive being lit and smoked in a pipe.

Once again, a prehistoric man rampages across the campus – this time killing the policeman sent to bodyguard Blake – yet despite the “evidence,” the college authorities do not hold with Blake’s theory that the killer is a de-evolved madman. It’s when Blake tries to explain to his colleagues, and the police, that this killer could be transforming into a Neanderthal – going step by step over how the events could have taken place – that it finally dawns on him that he himself is the Neanderthal, and because Blake is a complete dick, he doesn’t immediately come clean. Instead, he borrows keys to Dr. Oliver’s mountain cabin, so that he can go off and experiment in private. This, of course, results in a poor forest ranger (Richard H. Cutting) getting killed — an axe brutally embedded in his face — and Blake's beautiful fiancée (Joanna Moore) being menaced by the monster. It is not until this moment that we the audience finally get to see what the Monster on the Campus looks like, and when we do, it is no wonder they kept it hidden until the end.

 

I’ve seen a more convincing mask at Walmart on Halloween.

Monster on Campus is a weird combination of The Island of Doctor Moreau and the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – the scientist who sent Blake the coelacanth was even named Moreau – with Professor Blake transforming into a hideous creature that would terrorize the populace, but this movie lacks any of the thoughtful philosophies brought up by H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson in those stories. What we are left with is bottom-half Drive-In material – the disturbing death of Molly being the only moment that stood out for me – but at a brisk 76 minute running time, at least the film didn’t wear out its welcome. As mad scientist movies go, it’s not the worst example – with Blake being more of a jerk than truly mad – but overall, the film is a fairly forgettable entry in the genre.