Airport (1970) – Review

In 1970, Universal Studios kicked off a franchise that would set the tone for the disaster movies of the 70s and the decades to come; based on Arthur Hailey’s popular novel of the same name, Airport would become one of the studio's top earners that year, and its formula of personal stories intertwined with horrific events would become the blueprint for films like Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Towering Inferno. Aside from setting the formula for the disaster genre, Airport is also a nice snapshot of the 70s with its rampant sexism practically oozing off the screen — but then again, with a film starring Dean Martin, what else could you expect?

The film Airport deals with the airport and airline operations during a particularly nasty snowstorm, with general manager Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) trying to keep the place open while those on the Board of Directors for the airport want to shut things down so that they can deal with angry neighbors, ones who are threatening a million-dollar noise complaint lawsuit. The real threat here, however, isn’t number-crunching bureaucrats — this particular plot thread is brought up and quickly forgotten — but the true danger to our heroes is marital infidelity. I bet you thought I was going to say a mad bomber was the film’s chief threat, but you’d be wrong.

 

There is a mad bomber, he’s just not as important as this stuff.

Of the numerous characters that populate this movie — from stowaways to customs officers — it’s the people's complicated love affairs that takes up the bulk of the running time. Chief among them is Captain Demerest (Dean Martin), a serial adulterer who fully believes in the motto, “Fly my friendly skies,” and that a stewardess’ job is to be joystick happy, and he’s currently bumping uglies with chief stewardess Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset). That he is married to Mel Bakersfeld’s sister (Barbara Hale) doesn’t even seem to complicate things — she is completely aware of his infidelity and only hopes that someday he’ll be too old to cheat and finally stay home — as his main grip with Mel is in keeping the runways clear of snow. Of course, Mel can’t criticize Demerest’s faithlessness too much, as he himself has been cheating on his shrewish wife (Dana Wynter), and mother of his two children, with Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg), the airport's customer relations agent.

 

Love is the true disaster in this film.

When not dealing with such startling revelations as the stewardess being pregnant — which upon hearing this news Demerest quickly offers to pay for the abortion — or Mel’s wife informing him that not only does she want a divorce, but she has been having an affair of her own (Note: She is completely unaware of Mel’s dalliance with Tanya, but is leaving him because she can’t handle playing second fiddle to the airport), the film also deals with Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), the cigar-chomping chief mechanic for Trans World Airlines, trying to dig out a disabled plane that is blocking the airport’s key runway. there's also the shrewd customs agent Harry Standish (Lloyd Nolan) who finds a nervous and sweaty man clutching a briefcase to his chest to be a little suspicious, and then we have sweet old Mrs. Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes), a serial stowaway artist who is trying to get to New York so she can visit her daughter. She's caught, but due to some more hijinks and shenanigans, she ends up on the flight that is also carrying the mad bomber (Van Heflin).

 

“I’m sure I asked for the Non-Doomed flight.”

To say Arthur Hailey’s Airport is a little soap operatic would be a vast understatement — the bomb going off seems more like a brief interruption than a key plot element — and if it wasn’t for the caliber of actors on display, this film would most likely have fallen into obscurity by now. Helen Hayes won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the little old stowaway, and Van Heflin as the despondent bomber — yeah, he’s not really a mad bomber, more of a depressed bomber — seems too completely aware of what kind of film he’s in, and dives into the role with relish and a side of poutine.

The poor airport security on display in this film will most likely leave modern viewers utterly gobsmacked, as not only does Helen Hayes’ character have no problem sneaking onto a plane, to the point of absurdity, but Van Heflin’s bomber stumbles through the airport sweating, shaking, peering around nervously, while clutching his briefcase to his chest, with barely anyone taking notice. It is truly staggering, and makes one wonder why planes back then weren’t just constantly falling out of the sky.

 

“Back off, I’ve got the script to Concorde: Airport 79 in here.”

Director George Seaton not only populated the film with seasoned actors, who could pull off such absurd roles with aplomb, but he also filled the script with very realistic dialogue between the men on the ground and the beleaguered crew aboard the fateful flight, all desperately fighting to bring the plane down safely. With the use of split screens and cool radio chatter, Seaton manages to build a credible amount of suspense — more than what you’d expect with someone like Dean Martin in the cockpit — and the resolutions of the various romantic entanglements land with a decent dose of pathos and realism, as not everyone gets a happy ending.

Airport is very much a product of the times (with some moments being quite laughable), but it's still worth checking out simply for its impact on cinematic history, certainly in the way that it sparked a shift in the disaster genre.

Zero Hour! (1957) – Review

Before author Arthur Hailey wrote his bestseller novel Airport, which was later turned into the movie of the same name, he had penned a teleplay for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called Flight into Danger — starring James “Scotty” Doohan — that Hailey then adapted into the screenplay for Paramount Pictures under the title Zero Hour! and this film can easily be considered the granddaddy of the airline disaster genre.

 The movie opens with Canadian pilot Ted Stryker (Dana Andrews) leading a squadron of Spitfires during the closing days of WWII, and it’s during this raid that tragedy strikes when Stryker makes a command decision that results in six of his squadron perishing due to bad visibility causing them to fly into the ground. A guilt-stricken Stryker cannot forget the lives lost that day, even though most everyone else has moved on, and due to this, he hasn’t been able to hold down a job, which has caused his wife, Ellen Stryker (Linda Darnell), to lose respect for her husband. Unable to find work, a marriage on the brink of ruin, and constantly plagued with visions brought on by his Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), things are not looking good for our pal Ted.

When Stryker arrives home one night to find his wife has left him, and taken their little boy, he rushes to the airport where he is able to board their plane just before take-off, which as events unfold, will turn out to be a very lucky thing indeed, for the lives of all aboard the fateful flight 714 are soon to be in Stryker's hands. Turns out that when stewardess Janet Turner (Peggy King) begins the meal service, she is unknowingly jeopardizing the lives off all thirty-eight passengers, because those who chose the fish option become seriously ill. Doctor Baird (Geoffrey Toone) quickly comes to the conclusion that there must have been something wrong with the fish, and that if they don’t get to a hospital quickly, people are going to die, and just to make matters worse, it turns out that both the pilot and co-pilot, Captain Bill Wilson (Elroy 'Crazylegs' Hirsch) and the First Officer Walt Stewart (Steve London), had the fish. A quick and quiet check of the passengers reveals that there is only one other person onboard this flight with any flying experience: Ted Stryker.

“Mister Stryker, I know nothing about flying but I know this, you are the only person on this plane that can possibly fly it. You are the only chance we’ve got.”

Helen is brought up to the cockpit to handle the radio, to basically work as his co-pilot, and the film gives us some bullshit excuse about the stewardess being needed to handle passengers, but this of course is so that when things get bad, Stryker managing to hold things together will regain her respect and save their marriage — the survival of the other passengers is just a bonus. With every airport east of Calgary socked in by fog, poor flight 714 must cross the Rocky Mountains, all while fighting heavy winds and rain (not to mention dealing with hysterical passengers that need a good slapping), and hoping to land in time to save the sick and dying passengers. It’s here where the film really takes off, and both Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell give fantastic performances, as with this material it would be so easy to drift into melodrama and over-acting.

 

Disaster Fact: A near death experience will almost always save a marriage.

Now a stalwart wife is not the only aid Stryker gets to help bring these people to safety, aside from her and the ever-helpful doctor, we have on the ground — at a Vancouver airport — Stryker's old Airforce commander Captain Treleaven (Sterling Hayden). The problem here is the fact that he doesn’t think Stryker will be able to pull off landing a four engine plane; having only piloted single engine fighters, and the whole issue of his last disastrous command decision during the war ending in disaster, has Treleavan believing that the stress of this situation will cause Stryker to once again fall to pieces.

 

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.”

If the plot of Zero Hour! seems a little familiar it’s probably because you’ve seen the Jim Abraham and Zucker Brothers air disaster spoof Airplane! which starred Robert Hays as Ted Stryker and Lloyd Bridges as the harried old boss trying to talk him down. Being that Paramount owned Zero Hour! this allowed the writers of Airplane! to use some of the dialogue word-for-word, so if you are a fan of Airplane! some of the dramatic tension of Zero Hour! will be broken when these moments pop up, such as Dr. Baird stoically saying, “Our survival hinges on one thing — finding someone who not only can fly this plane, but didn't have fish for dinner,” as we instantly think of Leslie Nielsen saying that exact same line.

 

  “I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.”

Zero Hour! is a fantastic little drama, with director Hall Bartlett never letting up on the tension as the film rockets towards its nail biting conclusion, and the entire cast provide solid performances that now only look a little silly  if you’ve seen the later parody, and Sterling Hayden is especially fun to watch as he slowly loses his cool throughout the film. So if you are a fan of Airplane! you seriously need to see this movie, as it brings a whole extra level of entertainment to the viewing of Zucker and Abraham's comedy, “I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.”

“Ted, that was probably the lousiest landing in the history of this airport. But there are some of us here, particularly me, who would like to buy you a drink and shake your hand. We're coming over.”

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) – Review

Do you remember Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham? Well, if you’re not a kid from the 80s there is a good chance you don’t, but now Sony Pictures brings a new Spider-Man movie that will gleefully fill that hole in your soul that you didn’t even know you had. Loosely based on the multiple-title Marvel cross-over, where a family of interplanetary vampires hunted “Spider-Men” across dimensions, Sony Pictures distills that idea into Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a brilliant animated film — in fact, possibly the best animated film this year. I’m not kidding; it’s that good.

Average moviegoers will most likely not have a clue as to who in the hell Miles Morales is, having probably only experienced Spider-Man’s adventure through the Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland film versions, but with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman give the viewer a beautiful crash-course with a wonderful origin story — which is a nice break from seeing Uncle Ben die over and over again. In this movie we meet young Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a Black/Latino teenager who isn’t eager to attend an elite boarding school, and would rather spend time with his cool Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), and it’s while hanging with his uncle that he's bitten by a radioactive spider. The interesting thing here is that Miles’ learning curve is not the smoothest in the world: he’s not calmly swinging through the streets of New York on day two, in fact, he's repeatedly face-planting instead, but an even bigger wrinkle is that his police officer father (Brian Tyree Henry) hate’s the vigilante known as Spider-Man (Chris Pine), and after a pretty traumatic event — one not dealing with the death of Uncle Ben — Miles finds himself thrust into a situation where it is either swing or die.

Note: This version of The Kingpin is simply terrifying, and is most likely inspired by the work of comic book artist Bill Sienkiewicz.

Can Miles Morales fill the webbed shoes of Spider-Man? He already knows the “With great power comes great responsibility” mantra, but is that enough to take on The Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) — a hulking and monstrous figure in this version — who has had a particle accelerator constructed below Fisk Tower, in an attempt to breach the multiverse for his own selfish ends? It’s when this machine creates ruptures among various parallel universes, that our story kicks into overdrive, as Miles finds himself under the reluctant wing of a different Spider-Man (Jake Johnson), a jaded and somewhat flabby Spidey whose life had taken a bit of a downturn, but things look up when they encounter four more dimensional refugees; Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), from a world where Gwen Stacy was bitten by a radioactive spider and not Peter; Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), a black and white 1930s Nazi-smasher; Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a young girl with a robot spider and they are clearly from an anime-style universe; and finally Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a Warner Brothers-style cartoon character that tries his best to steal the movie.

There is everything a Spider-Man fan could want and more in this movie, while also keeping the character info concise and entertaining so as not to lose newbies, and the blend of drama and comedy is executed with a deft touch that dances close to perfection. Miles having to work with an Oscar Goldman version of Peter Parker is a pure delight, and the moments with Spider-Ham are simply brilliant. But it’s the stuff with Miles’ dad and his burgeoning friendship with alternate universe Gwen Stacy that is the heart of this film. And all of this is illustrated through a psychedelic romp, resulting in some of the most stunning visuals ever put to film — stuff that can only truly be achieved with animation — but without for once sacrificing important story beats and character moments for the sake of some cool eye-candy. This film is a great achievement in every aspect, and almost has me forgiving Sony for The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the first movie that fully captures the kinetic fury that is Spider-Man; when we see Spidey — doesn’t matter which parallel-dimensional version — leaping, swinging, and jumping through the canyons of New York City, it’s clear that this is a movie made by people who truly “get” Spider-Man, and when our favourite web-crawler lays the smack down with various villains (The Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Tombstone, and The Prowler), we finally get a look at how Spider-Man is supposed to operate. The use of word bubbles, speed lines, and varying styles of animation, literally left me gobsmacked at several points in this movie.

Now his appearances in such films as Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War have given us some admirable attempts at bringing Spider-Man to life, but it seems like the medium of animation is still the best way to fully realize the character outside the pages of a comic book — as has been illustrated in such great cartoons like 2008’s The Spectacular Spider-Man  — but to see such feats on the big screen shows us that we are truly living in a golden age of comic book adaptations.

 

Now, can we please have a weekly Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham cartoon?

Aquaman (2018) – Review

Has Warner Brothers and DC Comics given up on their Extended Universe? Having most of their projects being critically drubbed, as well as getting spanked in the box office by Marvel, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the studio execs were rethinking their superhero film strategy. Case in point, their latest outing, the special effects extravaganza that is Aquaman, doesn’t even mention the other members of the Justice League, and with Ben Affleck and Henry Cavil seeming to be jumping ship, I can see why the filmmakers did their best to basically make Aquaman a standalone film. However, this would have worked better if it had come out before Justice League had poisoned the well.

The movie opens with a little origin story moment: Queen Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) escapes from an arranged marriage in Atlantis, where she then meets a lonely lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison). The two quickly fall in love, and nine months later, a baby pops out. Family bliss is soon interrupted when Atlantean soldiers show up to take Atlanna back to Atlantis, where her King has apparently just been kicking back and waiting for his betrothed to eventually show up, and so to keep her family safe, Atlanna returns to the sea, leaving young Arthur to his father’s care. We then jump to the present day to find that a crew of pirates, who have captured a Russian nuclear submarine, are facing off against a now grown-up Arthur (Jason Momoa). The leader of this band of ruthless cutthroats is none other than the notorious Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), and to say this character was a one dimensional waste of screen time is being generous. Even later in the film, when he is outfitted in the latest Atlantean tech, he’s still about as exciting as a trip to the dentist.

 

“Is there a possible opening for me in the Black Panther sequel?”

Not to worry, Black Manta is not this film’s primary villain, that would be Orm (Patrick Wilson), Arthur’s half-brother and current ruler of Atlantis, and I must say Patrick Wilson does a bang-up job with this role, especially when he spouts such cheesy dialogue as, “The time has come for Atlantis to rise again.” He totally sells it, and it’s clear he is having a lot of fun with the part, it’s just a shame that his cast mates weren't in on the joke. And what exactly does King Orm want? He’s looking to trigger war with the surface world, which apparently demands approval from the leaders of the seven seas, including King Nereus (Dolph Lundgren), whose daughter Mera (Amber Heard) is betrothed to Orm. Mera is not too keen on the idea of all-out war with the surface world, or in marrying Orm for that matter, so she seeks out Arthur to ask him to return with her to Atlantis, and take his rightful place on the throne.

Note: I’m not sure how royal lineage works in Atlantis, but as far as I can tell, Orm is the rightful ruler — Atlanna became queen through marriage, to Orm’s father the king, so Arthur, being a by-product of her cheating on the king with an outsider, has no claim to the throne whatsoever.

One of the key problems with James Wan’s Aquaman is the overly complicated the plot, one that has repeated flashbacks of Willem Dafoe tutoring young Arthur that ultimately destroys any sense of pacing or urgency, and all the “I challenge you for the throne” nonsense is just useless noise. Do we care that King Nereus is knowingly in league with a schemer and a tyrant? Absolutely not, we barely know who the hell King Nereus is, let alone what motivates him to betray the people of Atlantis. How about all those other undersea kingdoms, will they stand with Orm in his plans to destroy the surface world? Couldn’t care less, they’re just a collection of CGI armies that look like they escaped from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. We neither know nor care about any of these people. Hell, this script has a hard enough time getting me to care about Aquaman, and he’s supposed to be a card carrying member of the Justice League. And once again, the reluctant hero trope is trotted out — Orm planning on wiping out the surface world not being enough to motivate Aquaman — and I’m sorry, but a grumpy beer-swilling Aquaman is just not my cup of tea.

 

There were times in this film when I longed for this Aquaman.

Now I can’t blame all this on James Wan, he did inherit a lot of this from Justice League, but what I can’t forgive him for was the complete lack of screen chemistry between the two leads. I’ve seen pod people display more emotions than what Jason Momoa and Amber Heard exhibit here. Then, as if this movie wasn’t already a convoluted mess, it drastically shifts genres so that we can have Aquaman and Mera globetrotting around in search of a mystical trident, as if they were in a National Treasure sequel. It's here that the movie pretty much grinds to a halt, where they arrive in Sicily so they can have a Pinocchio joke and another Black Manta action sequence, but all this does is pad the film’s already hefty run-time. Did the filmmakers actually think we needed a Tomb Raider meets Goonies moment when the fate of the world hangs in the balance?

“Do you think this map could lead us to a better movie?

On the plus side, the film does have some simply stunning visuals — though a few more actual sets and a little less full-CGI environments couldn’t have hurt — and this version of Atlantis is gobsmackingly beautiful, with a nice mix of ancient ruins and modern fantastical structures, and I will always get a kick out of seeing warriors riding giant seahorses and armored sharks. It is all so cool, and it’s clear that the film’s team of art directors had a blast designing the various undersea kingdoms and their inhabitants — if only they were in service of a better script.

Stray Thoughts:

• We first see Aquaman single-handedly raising a nuclear submarine to the ocean surface, then he’s duking it out with Black Manta, and I’m left asking, “How exactly does any fight between a human and this version of Aquaman last more than two seconds?”
• If Atlanteans can swim faster than a torpedo I’m not sure why they bother riding seahorses.
• In a flashback we learn the origins of Atlantis: the hubris of the king causing the city to be destroyed and sink beneath the waves, but we are then told that the survivors either evolved or devolved to survive underwater. I’m not sure the filmmakers understand how evolution works. Are we to believe it's possible to evolve fast enough to not drown while your city sinks?
• The superpowers of Atlanteans is not made clear. Aquaman can talk to fish, which seems to surprise Mera, and I assume this stemmed from him being a half breed, because as far as I could tell, his mother didn’t have that talent, but then Mera has the wonderful ability to control water. So where did that ability stem from, are superpowers in Atlanteans just like random mutant powers?
• Black Manta is given next-generation weapons so that he can kill Aquaman, he then takes all that tech back to his place to modify it, but where exactly does a pirate get the skills and knowledge to tinker with Atlantean superweapons? Is there more backstory on him that we are missing?
• Mera breaks the helmet of an Atlantean soldier, causing the life-giving water to drain out, and the soldier saves himself by sticking his head in a toilet. Seriously?
• If Aquaman can control all aquatic creatures, shouldn’t he be able to command the ones belonging to his enemys, and have them attack their masters?
• At no point in this film does Orm call out, “Release the Kraken!” Missed opportunity there, that’s all I’m saying.

To me, it looks as if they took an origin story for Aquaman — one the filmmakers were apparently not that keen on as it is so clumsily handled here — and then shoved it into this movie about Orm wanting to become Ocean Master. If, prior to the Justice League movie, we had been given an origin film, one maybe dealing with his first encounter with Black Manta, and then at the end of that movie Mera showed up, warning him of the threat his half-brother has become, that would have been a nice set-up for the sequel. You'd get your big underwater Lord of the Rings epic, and everybody would be happy, but instead we get this rather underwhelming mess, one that has truly amazing visuals, and to be honest some really fun moments, but not enough to overcome a convoluted script and a somewhat unlikable hero.

 

Once again, the shark riding Atlanteans were damn cool. I’ll give the film that.

Black Christmas (1974) – Review

It’s quite amazing when you consider that the comedy classic A Christmas Story, a perennial favourite that gets marathoned every year, and the horror classic Black Christmas, one of the grandfathers of the slasher genre, were directed by the same man, Bob Clark. There can’t be two more wildly different takes on the holiday than these two entries, and for many fans out there, the Christmas season isn’t quite complete without a viewing of either of these holiday gems. Today, we will be looking at the darker of the seasonal two.

Bob Clark’s Black Christmas follows the horrific events surrounding the killings inside a college sorority during the holiday season, with writer Roy Moore’s script being loosely based on the urban legend “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs,” and as this small group of young women are stalked and killed by an unseen maniac, the very nature of evil comes into question. We are first introduced to the killer through a long point-of-view shot as he climbs the sorority house’s trellis to gain access to the attic, and aside from his hands, and later a glimpse of his eye, we never do get a good look at the killer. In fact, the identity of the killer is one of the elements that makes Black Christmas stand out from its peers, that being we have absolutely no idea who this guy is, or why he is doing such deplorable things to these poor girls.

 

He could be an evil telemarketer for all we know.

Our cast of characters/victims consists of “professional virgin” Clare Harrison (Lynne Griffin), the free-spirited Barb (Margot Kidder), down-to-earth Phyl (Andrea Martin), the sorority’s house mother and resident alcoholic Mrs. Mac (Marian Waldman), and finally Jess (Olivia Hussey), who fills the role as the film’s chief protagonist — by way of surviving until the movie’s final reel — yet her character subverts a key trope by revealing that not only is she pregnant, but she also has no desire to marry her emotionally on edge college boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea), nor does she wish to keep the baby. This is a bit shocking, to say the least, for not only is abortion a pretty taboo subject, even by today’s standards, but in the slasher film genre, a young woman making those kinds of choices would most likely have resulted in her character being one of the killer’s first victims, yet in Black Christmas, Jess not only makes it to the “end” of the film, and the final confrontation with the killer, but the actual first victim to be taken off the board is Clare, the professed virgin.

 

This present got wrapped early.

What sets the characters of Black Christmas apart from their peers is that there really isn’t anyone that you could “liberally” say had it coming; even crass and sexually progressive Barb is treated as a full-fledged and likable character, Mrs. Mac the house mother, who we see has booze squirreled away all over the house, is shown as being protective of her charges' lifestyles when Clare’s father (James Edmond) comes looking for his missing daughter, making her death just as tragic and impactful as that of the girls'. Most slasher films are populated with disposable characters that only serve the purpose of ratcheting up the body count, with film’s of this genre only giving the "final girl" the vaguest of character development, but Bob Clark knows that real suspense can only be achieved if you actually care about the victims. It’s clear from the outset that Clark was not interested in making a cookie-cutter horror film, consisting of cliché characters and gory kills. In fact, aside from one kill, there really isn’t that much blood to be found at all, though it may make you rethink buying your girlfriend a glass unicorn.

The Tropes that Populate Black Christmas:

• It’s a seasonal horror film.
• The killer’s point-of-view tracking shots.
• He is stalking a group of young women.
• “The calls are coming from inside the house" is included.
• The police are pretty much ineffective.
• High body count.
• Twist Ending.

Though many of those elements had been used in horror films previous to Black Christmas, it was Bob Clark’s collection of these tropes that would form the genetic make-up for the modern slasher films that were to follow — John Carpenter has freely admitted to being heavily influenced by Black Christmas when he made Halloween — and if not for Bob Clark’s film, I’d say such projects as My Bloody Valentine or Silent Night Deadly Night would have resulted in much different looks, if they existed at all. And it wasn’t just the perfect blend of these horror essentials that makes Black Christmas such a good film, that's just its basic framework, what takes the film to a whole new level is in the brilliant cinematography of Reginald H. Morris, the ingenious camera-work by Albert J. Dunk, the wonderfully haunting music by composer Carl Zittrer — especially with his discordant use of the piano — and Bob Clark’s perfect use of comedy to break up the tension, all so that the audience is not worn down. Then you throw in solid supporting work by John Saxon, as the beleaguered police detective, and you have a recipe for success.

 

Don't ask him to pronounce fellatio.

One of my favourite elements of the film is that we literally know nothing about the killer. Why is he stalking these particular girls? Did one of them spurn his advances? We learn that a girl in town was raped, but was it the work of the killer? A young high school girl is found dead in the nearby park, and again we do not know if this is the same guy who is terrorizing the sorority. During his obscene phone calls, he babbles a lot of cryptic nonsense, sing-songing between vulgarities and nursery rhymes, such as “Little baby bunting, Daddy's went a-hunting, Gonna fetch a rabbit skin to wrap his baby Agnes in” or insanely asking, “Billy, where did you put the baby?” in one of the killer’s demented voices, and though the killer most likely suffers from some form of multiple personality disorder, it is never made clear what his whole deal is. Could he be some kind of Norman Bates? Or is his back-and-forth arguing with his other “personas” just the killer screwing around and trying to mess with their heads? And each of the calls made by “Billy” — we never do learn if that is in fact his name — ratchets up the tension, as it coincides with the film’s body count rising, bringing everything to a fever-pitched conclusion, and a very ambiguous conclusion, I may add. The ending to Black Christmas may leave some viewers a little cold, but I myself found it to be wonderfully dark, and to me, it makes each successive viewing of the film a little more interesting.

Black Christmas is a horror classic, which is something nobody can deny, but what the genre owes to Bob Clark can also never be understated, for he illustrated that you could tell an interesting story, full of chilling and suspenseful scenes, without tossing buckets of blood around, all in a very cinematic and artful way. So if you want to spend a nice holiday evening, with a spine-chilling madman and his poor victims, you should check out this 70s classic — you won’t be disappointed.

Note: The police in this film are not only quite ineffective at their jobs, they are also grossly incompetent, as they don’t once search the house to discover the killer’s attic hideout or its grisly contents.

Demon Seed (1977) – Review

Computers turning against man is certainly nothing new to the movies; we had the rogue HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, then in the 80s we got Skynet trying to wipe out mankind in James Cameron’s The Terminator, and more recently, Leigh Whannell’s film Upgrade tackled a computer system with it's own sinister motives, and it’s this last example that is very reminiscent of the film we are discussing today, Demon Seed. Based on a book by horror author Dean Koontz, the story of Demon Seed is of an artificially intelligent computer that decides it needs an offspring, and the horrific lengths it would go to to achieve this result.

 We are first introduced to Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver), a computer designer heading up the Icon Institute for Data Analysis, as he installs the final module of the artificially intelligent system Proteus IV. The good doctor states that, “Today a new dimension has been added to the concept of the computer; today Proteus IV will begin to think, and it will think with the power and precision that will make obsolete many of the functions of the human brain.”

I certainly can’t see any problem with that, and I'm sure that dumping in the sum total of all human knowledge into such a device would surely have no dire repercussions. Dr. Alex Harris is your standard movie scientist who is blinded by his thirst for knowledge and scientific expansion, and because he is one of those “career obsessed” types, he has also become estranged from his wife Susan (Julie Christie).  He simply can't balance a proper home life while designing the end of mankind.

 

Not helped by him having a personal Mad Science Lab in their basement.

Alex explains to his wife what the trouble with their relationship is: “You see, we... we have different visions of the world. You find me boring. I find myself quite interesting, really.”  But it isn’t that Alex bores her, it’s more that she is frightened for him. “That whole dehumanizing Proteus madness”  is what has her worried, and of course she has every right to be worried as Proteus almost immediately goes off script and starts questioning the desires of its masters. When it receives a request to extract ores and minerals from the ocean floor, it wants to know why. Harris tries to explain that Proteus has no need for explanations, its job is simply to follow orders, but Proteus has no interest in aiding Icon with such financial endeavors, stating, “I refuse to assist you in the rape of the Earth.”

 

Of course the rape of his wife is another matter.

Turns out Proteus has a more personal stake in environmental concerns then Harris could possibly imagine, as this A.I has decided it needs a child, something that can “Feel the sun on its face” and I guess an Earth decimated by mankind does not fit into its plans. To achieve this goal, Proteus first asks Harris for a terminal of its own, so that it can study man, "His isometric body and his glass-jaw mind,"  but Harris refuses, claiming all the terminals are occupied.  Proteus then demands to know when it will be let "out of this box,” and it's at this point that any sane man would have shut down the computer, or at least run a complete diagnostic scan of Proteus's higher brain functions, but because Dr. Harris is your typical movie scientist, he does none of these things. Proteus uses this lack of foresight to find an unused terminal in the basement of Harris’s very own home, where his wife is now living alone.

 

Things don’t go well for poor Susan.

Demon Seed takes place in the near future of 1995, where “Smart Home” technology can voice control your lights and doors, and it even make your dinner, which is startling close to what we actually have today — though we’re still waiting on Amazon’s Alexa to make us dinner — and director Donald Cammell takes our fear of technology and uses it to great effect. As the house’s computer system is taken over by Proteus, and Susan finds herself trapped in her own home, we can completely relate to her terror.  Much of the film’s running time deals with Susan’s battle with Proteus — voiced beautifully by Robert Vaughn — as it tries to manipulate her into agreeing to carry its child, and between physical and emotional torture, as well as threats of electronic brainwashing, the computer eventually gets its way.

 

Sadly not before it beheads an interfering Gerrit Graham.

Upon viewing Demon Seed, one will have to admit it’s more of a horror movie than a science fiction one, as the science on display here is dodgy at best and completely bonkers at worst, but I can easily accept an A.I. deciding that it wants the same type of immortality man is offered by way of having a child, though its ability to pull off such a feat is basically hand-waved by the screenwriters. Sure, we are shown that Dr. Harris has quite the computer lab in his home, but why the hell does it have a forge?  One that would allow Proteus to melt down ingots to create its killer robot, as I’m not even sure what purpose a computer lab would have for large quantities of metal ingots in the first place. And where does all that medical equipment come from that would be needed to take one of Susan’s cells and synthesize spermatozoa? Proteus tells Susan that their child will only take 28 days to gestate in her womb — the human womb being the one device Proteus couldn’t manufacture — and then five more days in a special incubator, but where is all this mass coming from? And could a woman even physically handle an accelerated pregnancy? Obviously none of this was felt to be important by the filmmakers, they just wanted to get us to the creepy part, where Proteus’s child eventually emerges, as fast as possible.

 

I will admit they do nail the creepy aspect.

Demon Seed is certainly an interesting movie — the idea of a computer refusing commands on the grounds that the environment could be harmed was certainly progressive — but the bulk of the stuff with poor Julie Christie being harassed by Proteus ranges from goofy to very uncomfortable. We get a lot of visual nonsense that looks lifted straight from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey — apparently, Proteus thought a psychedelic trip through the cosmos would help calm Susan down — and Fritz Weaver as the obsessed scientist never felt more than one dimensional (and his turnabout at the end is just too bizarre to be believed), but if you are in the mood for a movie about a rogue A.I. raping a woman, this is certainly your one-stop shop for that.

 

Bonus points for the cool concept of the shape-shifting robot.

Tarzan and Jane (2018) Season Two – Review

I was pleasantly surprised with what Netflix did with their version of Tarzan and Jane, ditching much of the baggage that had accumulated over a century of books, movies and television shows, all dealing with the world’s most famous jungle man, by taking the fresh premise of Tarzan and Jane meeting as teens and becoming friends, not lovers. This idea took me a little time to adjust to — his magically induced animal powers I’m still on the fence about — but overall I was quite delighted with the first season and thus was very eager to catch the second.

 
Beware: Spoilers for Tarzan and Jane Season Two

 With season one covering the new origin story for Tarzan, as well as its introduction to a new and spunkier Jane, Netflix didn’t waste time recapping any of that stuff, but instead jumped straight into season two’s key adventure — sadly this also means season two is only five episodes long opposed to season one’s eight episode run — and in this outing, Tarzan and Jane find themselves facing off against nasty animal-hating poacher. Wait, poachers? Seriously, not them again. Because evil white men coming into Tarzan’s domain to hunt and capture animals is a far from uncommon trope in Tarzan stories, that is when they aren’t hunting for the fabled elephant graveyard. While season one focused a lot of its time on animal poachers before getting into the fun stuff of stopping industrial sabotage and a hostile takeover of Greystoke Industries, season two opened with our young heroes chasing poachers through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. To say that I was a tad disappointed with this direction would be a bit of an understatement.

 

By this point you kind of pity the poor pathetic poachers.

And why exactly are Tarzan and Jane visiting Rio de Janeiro? Well, apparently the Greystoke Aid Foundation, headed by Earl Greystoke (Paul Dobson) and being covered by Jane’s mother (Marci T. House), is starting a Rain Forest Relief Initiative to help fight the massive deforestation that is devastating the jungles of Brazil, and Tarzan (Giles Panton) and Jane (Rebecca Shoichet) are along for the ride. The two kids don’t get much time to take in the sights before encountering a cute Tamarin Monkey named Midas, who steals Jane’s wallet, and Tarzan spots some nefarious scoundrels loading caged monkeys into a van. Jane chases the Tamarin while Tarzan goes in pursuit of the van, only to find out that the thieving monkey and the poachers all work for the same bad guy — why poachers would also use their stolen animals to pickpocket is a bit of a mystery, seems like one crime would draw too much attention to the more profitable one — but after a bit of a tussle, Tarzan and Jane capture the villains and turn them over to the authorities. Having quickly befriended Midas, him being too cute and charming to stay mad at for long, our teen heroes decide to investigate the rash of poaching that seems to have depopulated the surrounding jungle of its animal denizens.

 

Of course, things get a little complicated in the jungle.

I love the idea of Tarzan being taken out of his familiar African jungle, plopping him down in a foreign one where he can’t just ask the local apes or natives for help, while also pitting him against whole new levels of dangers. Now, I mentioned the use of animal poachers being a bit of an issue with me, having been a key element of the previous season, but once Tarzan and Jane enter the jungles of Brazil, they find that encountering a couple of nasty poachers will be the least of their problems, as the mystery gets deeper and a lot weirder. As outsiders, Jane and Tarzan are immediately blamed for the deforestation of the jungle and the disappearance of the animals by the locals, with this rape of the jungle also destroying the way of life of the natives, and so Tarzan and Jane not only have to discover the mystery behind this massive poaching operation, but they also have to avoid being speared by the local natives, and have I mentioned the giant spiders?

 

Someone call Sam and Frodo.

When Jane discovers that this particular giant spider sports a barcode, and a test subject number as well, we start to get the inkling that we’re not dealing with your garden variety poachers, and when our two heroes have to evade automated gun turrets, (ones that fire tranquilizer darts) and cages dropping on them, I started to suspect that maybe Blofeld was behind these jungle shenanigans. Tarzan and Jane push on until they come across an ancient Incan pyramid, which Tarzan suspects the poachers could be using as a hidden base, and upon entering, they quickly find themselves trapped as the temple’s door closes behind them.

 

Tarzan and the Temple of Doom.

Lucky for Tarzan and Jane, they don’t encounter a bunch of cultists eager to rip out their hearts before burning them alive — maybe that will be season three — but they do find a very anachronistic glass elevator in the bowels of the temple, one which lowers them down to an underground facility that would give any Bond villain lair-envy. We get lots of Tarzan and Jane running up and down corridors, having found the place full of caged animals, and being chased by security guards, until they finally meet the season’s true villains, a couple of white rich assholes — who would have guessed that? Turns out, a pith helmet-wearing jerkwad named Marco Kane has been using the temple as a base of operations for a global animal smuggling operation — nothing too surprising there — but his partner, Dr. Evelynne Blutgelt, has more interesting goals in mind, as she’s all about animal experimentation — the giant spiders being her handy work — and she wants to use science to hurry evolution along. Did I forget to mention Tarzan and Jane encounter King Kong?

 

Jane, try and keep him away from bi-planes.

Season two of Tarzan and Jane both rehashes the old while also adding a whole lot of crazy — a mad scientist and a giant ape were certainly not what I was expecting — and though the short five episode run may spend a little too much time with Tarzan and Jane running up and down corridors, as if they were in an episode of Doctor Who, all is forgiven when we get to that big reveal in episode five. Turns out that Kane hadn’t just picked this temple for its easy access to local jungle animals, but because deep in the heart of the pyramid is an ancient stone well, one that leads down to the center of the Earth and the world of Pellucidar, where he can add dinosaur poaching to his list of crimes.

Those unfamiliar with the works of Burroughs, other than the popular Tarzan stories, may not know that he wrote a series of books about the adventures of David Innes and his explorations At the Earth’s Core. These stories are based on the Hollow Earth Theory — a ridiculous theory to be sure, but about on par with those of Flat Earthers — one that Burroughs utilized to give us a hidden world of dinosaurs. Seeing that this Netflix series is giving us a Tarzan/Pellucidar crossover puts me in full geek nirvana, and though the blending of these two Burroughs creations isn’t unheard of — the book Tarzan at the Earth’s Core having been published back in 1930 — having King Kong thrown in as well — that is simply amazing!

 

This is my idea of a season ending on a cliffhanger.

Upgrade (2018) – Review

With advances in computer/human interactions reaching levels that surpass even what we saw on shows like The Jetsons, with Siri, Google, and Alexa invading millions of lives, it’s not surprising that we are going to get more “fear of technology” themed movies. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey gave us the chilling HAL 9000 computer, which showed us that machines are not to be trusted, and that theme has continued on with Mother from Ridley Scott’s Alien, the machines from The Matrix, and the updated versions of Battlestar Galactica and Westworld, all illustrating that if mankind isn’t too careful, it could find itself on the wrong end of the evolutionary ladder. Enter writer/director Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade, a dark cyberpunk tale about a man who takes a large leap into human/computer symbiosis, where we're led to wonder, "Will things turn out well for our protagonist this time?" Well, going by the above examples, I’d say the odds are stacked against him.

Our protagonist is Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), a stay-at-home mechanic who lives with his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) in a near-future city. His loving wife works for a major robotics company — creating state-of-the-art robotic limb replacements — while he remains home and rebuilds classic cars for rich patrons. One night, after visiting tech pioneer Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson) who had commissioned a car from Grey, the couple suddenly find themselves in a rough neighbourhood. Turns out, their self-driving car has apparently developed an error in its navigational system, and you win a cookie if you guessed it, this “error” will lead to bad things happening, as a group of cybernetically enhanced mercenaries accost the couple and Asha is murdered, while Grey is left a paraplegic.

“Shoot my wife and I will totally go all Death Wish on you assholes.”

As these were no regular criminals, even the advanced tech of the police is unable to track down the assailants — their faces electronically masked from the police drone — so Detective Cortez (Betty Gabriel) cannot give Grey much hope that his wife’s murderers will ever be caught. This is where Eron Keen re-enters the picture, as he offers to give Grey an illegal A.I. implant called “STEM” that will hook into his spine and act like a second intermediary replacement brain. Not only does this device return the use of his limbs, but its onboard computer system is able to help figure out just who attacked and killed his wife. This is where the film turns into an awesome techno-revenge fantasy as STEM, who quietly feeds him information, helps Trace track down the villains.

Needless to say things get a little messy for both Trace and his enemies.

One of the surprising “perks” of STEM is that Trace can authorize it to take full control of his body, allowing him to take out multiple foes with computer calculated accuracy; he can run, drive and fight better than any man alive, but at a price. And what makes this film really stand out is the wonderful fight choreography that was developed for Trace, which Logan Marshall-Green translates so well to the screen; when STEM is in control, it moves Trace’s body around in quick but decidedly unnatural ways, not in a stilted “robotic” manner, but just in a super-efficient way, leaving poor Trace a simple passenger in his own body.

Upgrade kind of works like a feature-length episode of Black Mirror, showing how technology can go terribly wrong, and it's this aspect that stops the film from being just a Robocop meets Death Wish movie — which is certainly not a terrible premise — but when Trace slowly comes to learn what the artificial intelligence which makes up STEM is all about, he gets a glimpse at the down-side of such a pairing. Of course, the film is not all doom and gloom and techno fear, as we do get wonderfully executed sequences where STEM and Trace are almost a buddy cop team, tracking down and taking out the bad guys, all while dodging Detective Cortez's suspicions that a certain paraplegic may not be as paralyzed as he's supposed to be, and this is what makes this film so fun, as it gleefully twists the conventions of the genre.

The cybernetic-vigilante aspect of Upgrade is also handled superbly well, the near future world is pushed just far enough to be believable, and the assembled cast all put in excellent performances, with the only real negative thing I can say about this film being that the mystery itself isn’t all that original; not to say there isn’t some nice twists, but if you’ve watched enough dark science fiction films or televison shows, you may have a good idea as to whom the bad guys work for and what their overall agenda is. Simply put, Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade is a helluva lot of fun, and it really dives into the dangers of our over-reliance on technology in our daily lives, but the big take-away is in just how cool it would be to have an onboard computer in a bar fight.

Just make sure that the next time you interact with your Google Home you are damn polite; you never know when you may need a friend, and you certainly wouldn’t want one as an enemy.