Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) – Review

In this much-anticipated sequel to director Patty Jenkins 2017 hit we get everyone’s favourite Amazon battling through the covid-19 crisis to land her invisible jet on the nearest streaming platform – no theatre near me was showing this film – but is the magic back or has the DC Extended Universe stumbled again?

This particular outing takes places in the wondrous year of 1984 – placing this entry between the first Wonder Woman movie and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – and this is where our first problem arises because in Dawn of Justice it was established that Wonder Woman had dropped out of sight after World War One to only make herself publically known when she joined Batman and Superman to fight Doomsday, which hobbles the script when it comes to giving us some great Wonder Woman action. In the comics she is a beacon of hope that inspires mankind, much like Superman does, but in this film, we find Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is maintaining a low profile as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC and is keeping her superhero activities on the down-low, making quick in and out rescues like the Red-Blue Blur from Smallville – Note: ripping off Smallville is never a good idea – and this leaves us with a major question, exactly why is she hiding the existence of Wonder Woman from the public?

 

“Don’t worry, I took out the mall security cameras and as this is the 80s no one has cellphone cameras.”

Sadly, no excuse is given, maybe she doesn’t want the world to freak out about the existence of superheroes, but that's just guesswork and though it could have introduced some interesting ideas about the DC world of superheroes his film has no interest in exploring the ramifications of an immortal warrior with the powers of a god, instead, we quickly zip ahead to a plot that has something to do with wishes and greed. Turns out a broke conman named Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) has his mind set on getting his hands on a mysterious Dreamstone that seemingly grants wishes – don’t ask me what his overall plan was as I’ve watched this film twice now and I still can’t figure out what his intended endgame was – but first, this special item has fallen into the hands of Diana’s new co-worker Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), an insecure woman who idolizes and envies Diana for her beauty and confidence.

 

Don’t worry, she’ll get her 80s rom-com makeover any minute now.

Diana has apparently been living the celibate life for the last six decades, what with her true love Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) having died back in 1918, so she decides to test out the artifact's abilities by wishing for his return and before you can say “Quantum Leap” Steve’s soul is back and is now inhabiting the body of some random hot dude. Mousy Minerva also makes a wish, to become strong and beautiful like Diana, but being Diana is a superhero Minerva gets a bigger upgrade than she expected. Needless to say, this complicates things for all involved as good ole Minerva takes the old adage “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” very seriously and she becomes one of the film’s villains…kind of…maybe sort. Let’s just say that if you thought Macavity in the musical Cats was a lame villain, well, he’s got nothing on Minerva.

 

“Oh! Well I never! Was there ever. A cat so clever as magical Misses Mistoffelees!”

The key problem with Wonder Woman 1984 is that “Big Bad” is Maxwell Lord makes for a terrible terrible villain as he just not that interesting, when he finally gets his hands on the Dreamstone he spends the bulk of the movie running around the globe giving wishes and extracting power – and know I don't know how that is supposed to work – and though I do appreciate the fact that we don’t end this movie with another giant sky beam I still find Lord's entire motivation lacking substance and his character arc is so mind-numbingly boring that if it wasn't for Pedro Pascal chewing the scenery at every turn this character would have been a cure for insomnia. His only real character trait is his mission statement of “Think about finally having everything you always wanted” which quickly has one wishing for a poorly computer-animated Steppenwolf to show up.

 

“I’d buy that for a dollar.”

Stray Observations:

• Wonder Woman’s lasso should get its own spin-off movie, it’s not just magical it’s goddam miraculous in this movie.
• Apparently a woman can’t walk fifteen feet in Washington DC without being accosted by some sexist male asshat.
• When Steve Trevor’s soul inhabits this hot random dude’s body where exactly is that guy’s soul? Diana seems very unconcerned that her wish may have killed this poor sod.
• Minerva going from bookish nerd to hot sex symbol is about the most 80s thing in this movie.
• Diana says they can’t book a flight to Cairo because Steve doesn’t have a passport, did they even look to see if the guy whose body he is inhabiting has a passport?
• Does the Air and Space Museum keep their exhibits fueled and ready to fly? Asking for a friend.
• And I know Steve Trevor is supposed to be this amazing pilot but I call bullshit on his ability to fly a modern fighter jet.
• Diana arrives at the final fight suddenly wearing her cool golden armour, and she certainly didn't have time to swing by her apartment to pick it up, so where did it come from?

 

Does she have a pocket dimension to store stuff like this?

In the pre-title sequence, we see a young Princess Diana learn that lying is not the way to win, unfortunately, director Patty Jenkins didn’t take this sentiment to heart when she helmed this sequel because even though the title makes one assume we’re going to see a Wonder Woman movie that's actually stretching the truth quite a bit as the superheroic Amazon has very little screentime. I’m not saying that Wonder Woman doesn’t appear in this film but for a film that is two and a half hours long we spend way too much time with Diana Prince and her boy toy Steve Trevor wandering around “investigating” Maxwell Lord. There is more Wonder Woman action to be found in an episode of the 70s Wonder Woman series starring Lynda Carter than what we get in this movie, not to say there aren't some cool action sequences to found here it’s just that they are too few and far between for my liking and none of them came close to the “No Man’s Land” scene from the previous film.

 

"Road Runner, if he catches you you're through!"

There are some fun moments in Wonder Woman 1984 and Gal Gadot continues to prove she was perfect casting as Wonder Woman and even Pedro Pascal’s over-the-top performance was at least a little entertaining at times, but the visual effects dropped the ball huge during the action scenes with what looks like unfinished visual effects and a CGI catfight that rivals the one from Black Panther for looking like a PS2 cut scene.  One could point out that having two-villains is never a good idea but in this case the real issue is that neither one of them was properly developed and the resolution to both of these characters comes across as forced and hackneyed. Another thing to take note of is that setting the movie in 1984 didn’t really add much to the proceedings other than providing a few jokes about fashion and breakdancing, with none of it being that crucial to the story and is pretty much forgotten halfway through the film, well other than the 80s motto of “Greed is good” being a central theme, but as this takes place in America, and greed being integral to the foundation of the country, I think this film could have been set in present-day with no real problem.

 

Note: Steve Trevor’s role in this film was mostly to provide fish-out-of-water jokes and try on 80s fashion disasters.

I went into Wonder Woman 1984 with fairly high expectations and maybe that was my fault, but with Gal Gadot, Chris Pine and director Patty Jenkins returning for this outing I did have high hopes of another fun superhero adventure, instead, what we got was a nonsensical script, poor visual effects, and worst of all is that they totally wasted one of Wonder Woman’s best villains.  In conclusion, if I had a Dreamstone I'd wish for my two-and-a-half-hours back.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) – Review

The one thing that could be considered missing in the Friday the 13th franchise is a credible antagonist for Jason to fight, especially once he reached the stage where he was an undead supernatural monster, and this was something they intended to fix with the seventh installment in the franchise, a movie that would pit Jason Voorhees against a girl with telekinetic powers, in short, Jason vs Carrie.

After a brief recap, showing some highlights of the previous films, we jump into a prologue where we see a young Tina Shepard (Jennifer Banko) fleeing her house and her abusive father within, she climbs into a boat and pushes herself out onto Crystal Lake only to have to confront her father who has followed her out onto the dock. It’s at this point we learn that Tina has telekinetic abilities and in her heightened emotional state, she collapses the dock thus killing her father. Flash forward a few years and we find a now teenage Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln) struggling with the remorse surrounding her father's death and returning to Crystal Lake under the care of her psychiatrist Doctor Crews (Terry Kiser) and her beleaguered mother (Susan Blu), but this is where we learn that Jason Voorhees isn’t the only villain in this picture as the doctor has ulterior motives that have nothing to do with helping Tina.

 

Would you trust this man with your daughter?

As with most of the Friday the 13th movies we have a large cast of characters assembled so Jason has some good fodder to mutilate and murder, we wouldn’t want Jason getting flabby, and in the case of The New Blood we have some teens showing up at the neighbouring house for a birthday party – the guest of honour never arrives due to an untimely meeting with Jason – and it’s here that we are also introduced to the film’s love interest, Nick (Kevin Spirtas), who if was anymore bland or one dimensional he’d be invisible. Now, it’s true that strong and intelligent male characters are fairly rare to this series but the fact that this dude actually survives to the end credits is an insult to all those that came before. Lucky for us Tina’s growing telekinetic powers accidentally release Jason from his watery grave, where he'd been weighted down at the bottom of Crystal Lake in the previous film, and we are spared too much time with Rick, the dry white toast that walks like a man.

 

“Hello, I’m Nick, you may remember from dozens of other teen rom-coms.”

The incarnation of Jason in this movie is easily one of the better versions and the amazing undead make-up given to Kane Hodder worked perfectly towards giving us a truly menacing looking monster, but we also get the addition of a little more character than we were used to seeing when it comes to our favourite hockey mask-wearing killer – I especially loved how Jason looked confused when being faced with Tina’s telekinetic ability – and when his mask is eventually removed the horrifying visage was everything one could hope for when it comes to a serial killer fresh from a watery grave.

 

A face only a mother could love.

Stray Observations:

• In the previous film the county changed the name from Crystal Lake to Forest Green, in the hopes that people would forget about all the killings associated with the area, but in this movie, it’s back to being called Crystal Lake. Did the residents suddenly decide that the notoriety of their town could bring in extra tourist bucks?
• The sleeping bag kill, where Jason bashes a girl against a tree, is one of the more brutal, yet not all that bloody, kills in the series. This is one case where the MPAA’s complaints improved a scene.
• A naked swimmer being attacked from below is a clear lift from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
• I’d really love to know how Jason sets up those time-release body drops.
• Jason also continues with elaborate corpse placement, which makes me wonder “Is there a Happy Homemaker magazine for serial killers?”
• Aside from possibly teleporting ability Jason also has the power to conjure up a variety of weapons at a moment’s notice, as if he has some kind of magical bag of holding.
• Jason leaves muddy boot prints all over people's clean floors, not only is he a brutal killer but he’s also a very inconsiderate guest.

 

Jason Voorhees, the original party-pooper.

With Friday the 13th Part IV: The New Blood not only is an additional supernatural element introduced but we also get nudity returning to the franchise, with the last entry being rather chaste in that regard, but the violence still remains at the fairly PG13 level – the MPAA being particularly brutal with their rating – and it’s the final battle between Tina and Jason that is the only thing that raises the stakes at all. Director John Carl Buechler managed to pull together a fun installment with this “Jason vs Carrie” idea and he does litter the film with a nice collection of kills for the fans to cheer over, but the rather bland cast of characters prevents this film from reaching the heights it otherwise could have. Even the character of Tina has a hard time making a viewer care about because for the most part she just whimpers and complains throughout the film and it’s only when she goes full-on "Carrie White" that she becomes even vaguely interesting.

 

Jason gets a little hung up.

Having Jason going up against a protagonist with supernatural powers of her own was a pretty genius idea as unarmed campers are not all that challenging, so it was nice to see Jason having to really work for a change, sadly, the film has a bizarre this Deus ex Machina ending where Tina’s dead dad leaps out of the lake to drag Jason back into the lake. So, we spend an entire film building up Tina as this credible threat to Jason and then you steal her thunder by having her abusive parent back from the dead to save the day, what sense does that make?

 

Question: Was her dad's body never recovered at the time of his death, was it just left at the bottom of the lake or did Tina somehow conjure his corpse out of the ether?

Overall, I’d say that though this entry has its flaws it more than makes up for them by pitting Jason against a truly worthy opponent, albeit in the form of a cool Carrie knock-off, as well as in giving us one of the better-looking versions of zombie Jason. The film may stumble occasionally, much as Jason’s victims are want to do, but the end product was still a rather fun horror story with one of the most iconic film monsters in one of his most engaging fights. Friday the 13th Part IV: The New Blood may not be the best in the series but it still managed to keep an audience engaged despite the standard kills and clichés.

Gorgo (1961) – Review

When one thinks of a giant reptile rampaging through a city the first that comes to mind is, of course, the King of the Monsters himself Godzilla, but he is far from the only such creature – he wasn’t even close to being the first – and today we will be looking at Gorgo, an international co-production led by the King Brothers and would be directed by a man who made quite a name for himself with this particular subject matter, a man by the name of Eugène Lourié.

In 1953 Eugène Lourié was the director for hire on Ray Harryhausen’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms which then led him to getting the job to helm its carbon copy film The Giant Behemoth, which in turn landed him the job as director of Gorgo.  I guess the lesson here would be, stick with what works.  Now, as monster movies go Gorgo doesn’t do anything really ground-breaking with its subject matter as we get the standard introduction of our two leads, who in this instance consists of a salvage captain named Captain Joe Ryan (Bill Travers) and his first mate Sam Slade (William Sylvester), who while attempting to do some treasure hunting off the coast of a small Irish island they run into a spot of trouble when some undersea volcanic activity unleashes a 65-foot prehistoric beast into the neighbourhood.

 

“I’ve just come to borrow a cup of sugar.”

With the help of some stock character locals, the creature is netted and loaded aboard Ryan’s boat and they set sail for the big city where it will be the star attraction at Dorkin’s Circus, that is if a couple of Irish paleontologist busybodies don’t spoil all the fun. This leads to the only interesting element of Eugène Lourié’s Gorgo which would be the revelation that the creature is not yet an adult and that its mother would most likely be at least 200 feet tall. It’s at this point we get all that glorious monster versus city destruction we paid to see, with Gorgo’s mom stomping through London on its way to retrieve her stolen offspring, and despite the film’s modest budget the model work on display is fairly topnotch and the destruction of the Tower Bridge is quite spectacular.

 

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down
My fair lady."

Unfortunately, the film has a rather anti-climactic ending with the monstrous mom riding off into the sunset with her wayward kid, with mankind sitting around with their collective thumbs up their asses, and even if one were to credit this as a bit of a change from the standard monster death climax it still left me feeling kind of a letdown. Apparently, Eugène Lourié’s daughter was unhappy with the dinosaur dying at the end of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and he’d promised that his next monster movie would have a happier ending. This is a fair point, and I’m not saying Gorgo and his mom needed to die for this movie to work, but as is the film doesn’t so much end as it just peters out.

 

“Come back Shane, come back!”

Stray Observations:

• A volcanic eruption causes prehistoric fish to float to the surface but our “heroes” don’t think to grab any of them for study.
• A scuba diver is announced to have been “Scared to death” which is a pretty odd diagnosis considering they don’t even bother with an autopsy.
• There is a bathysphere scene that is an obvious lift from The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.
• Joe Ryan’s ship must have a magical winch to be able to lift a 65ft Gorgo out the water and onto the deck. That the weight of the creature didn't sink the tramp steamer would be the second miracle.
• Gorgo is touted as being “The Eighth Wonder of the World” and I’d think Carl Denham and Kong would have something to say about that.
• A television announcer states, “Gorgo, as he is called, we don’t know why, will be exhibited to the public,” but later promoter says it’s named after the gorgon Medusa, “A creature so terrifying it will turn a man to stone.” I’m not sure what a giant dinosaur and the mythological Medusa have in common so that name is a bit of a stretch.
• A photographer’s flashbulb enrages the young Gorgo causing it to break free, which is an obvious lift from the original King Kong.
• After the monstrous mother trashes Piccadilly Circus we get a General stating, “We have no idea where it will turn next.” Dude, it was established that the creature was following the trail of its baby, so my guess is that it’d be turning in that direction.

 

“Could someone please direct me to Battersea Park?”

For obvious budgetary reasons and time constraints the stop-motion technique used for The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Behemoth would be set aside in favour of the standard man-in-a-suit creation that has been used quite effectively in the Godzilla movies, and I will admit that the design of Gorgo’s was quite excellent, I just wish the special effects that supported them were a little better. Visual effects artist Tom Howard had previously provided his skills to such films as Robert Wise’s The Haunting and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but in the case of Gorgo, well, most of the effects shots are plagued with terrible blue halos and many moments of optical compositing left both monsters and people transparent. Going by Tom Howard’s resume one must assume this lacking of good effects processing in this film had more to do with time and budget constraints than his skill but regardless of all that the end result is all we have to judge.

Sadly, the only thing thinner than the effects in this movie would be the two leads who we were stuck following as they are about as likable and appealing as a case of genital lice. The only positive thing I can say about the characters of Ryan and Slade is that they weren’t depicted as sexist assholes, but this was most likely because the film contained no female characters for them to be sexist towards.

 

“I think there could be some hot mermaids down there, Ryan.”

With Gorgo, Eugène Lourié gave us a standard monster rampage movie and though it is far from the worst of its kind there isn’t much to offer fans that they couldn’t get watching a half-a-dozen other kaiju movies. It had a good monster design, and there was some nice citywide destruction, but with the two rather unpleasant “heroes” – who take up way too much of the film’s 76-minute runtime - there isn’t much for one to recommend unless you are a true diehard monster lover.

Note: The revelation that a captured monster is just the baby, and that an angry mom is on the way, is also the plot of Jaws 3D.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) – Review

With fans not all that keen on the idea of a Jason imposter, as seen in the last installment, the studio immediately course-corrected and not only brought back Jason as the franchise’s chief antagonist but they also amped up his power level by making him an explicitly supernatural and nigh-unstoppable force, and this undead powerhouse would become the default Jason Voorhees for the remainder of the series.

In a page right out of the classic Universal Horror Movies we find Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews), possibly fresh from a mental institution, on a road trip with fellow nuthouse alumni Allen Hawes (Ron Palillo) to the cemetery where Jason Voorhees is interred, but for what purpose could such a journey have? Well, it seems Tommy needs some closure and the desecrating and burning of Jason’s corpse is apparently the best way to achieve this and, needless to say, things go horribly awry. After digging up the worm-ridden corpse of Jason our “hero” stupidly uses an iron fence post to impale the body which allows Mother Nature to have the last laugh as two bolts of lightning strike the metal post and before you can say “It’s alive!” Jason is brought back to life as some kind of undead monstrosity. Poor Allen is brutally killed – having Tommy as a friend was never going to end well – and then Jason dons his trademark hockey and we're off to the races.

 

“I'm Voorhees, Jason Voorhees.”

We then get a credit sequence that puts Jason in the stylized gun barrel logo of your typical James Bond opening and it’s at this moment that we know this entry will be more tongue in cheek funny than actually scary – not that the previous films were all that scary to begin with – and the first two kills following this opening solidifies this comic aspect. The new head camp counselors, Darren Robinson (Tony Goldwyn) and Lizabeth Mott (Nancy McLoughlin) find the roadway to Crystal Lake blocked by Jason’s imposing figure and the girl’s response is “I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly” which is a nice meta-moment and this aspect would continue throughout the rest of the film. The plot of Jason Lives is pretty basic, we get a panicked Tommy trying to convince the local Sheriff (David Kagen) that Jason is alive, while the Sheriff’s daughter Megan (Jennifer Cooke), who is also one of the new camp counselors, believes him from some inexplicable reason and becomes his partner on the hunt for Jason. The rest of the movie is these two bumbling idiots trying to avoid her dad and the police all the while Jason is racking up a body count in a variety of amusing ways.

 

The comedy is quite disarming.

Stray Observations:

• Tommy Jarvis brings gasoline to the cemetery to burn the corpse of Jason Voorhees but in the previous movie we were told his body was cremated. And what happened to Tommy donning the hockey mask at the end of that film? Continuity thy name is not Friday the 13th.
• In fact, this film actually works better if considered as a direct sequel to the fourth film.
• Jason’s tombstone has no date on it, most likely because the time jump between the fourth and fifth movies would make it hard to nail down.
• The county changed the name from Crystal Lake to Forest Green to distance themselves from the history of camp blood, which I can understand, but opening up another children’s camp on the lake was really asking for trouble.
• This movie apparently takes place in 1989 but that’s only nine years after the events of the first film so the idea that Jason is a myth or a legend is ridiculous as even the teens in this movie would have been old enough at the time to be aware of the events at Camp Blood.
• Six films into the franchise and children finally show up at the camp, but as this is a vastly lighter entry none of them are going to die.
• As all the death and carnage can solely be placed at Tommy’s feet he really should have died at the end of this film and as his character never returns to the franchise it wouldn’t have mattered if he was the last victim in the film.

 

Note: I’m still fuzzy as to how setting the surface of the lake on fire aided Tommy in any way, fire certainly doesn’t have any effect on Jason and it’s not like fighting a burning corpse is easier, basically he’s an idiot throughout this entire film.

The strong comedy aspect of this installment isn’t the only thing that sets Friday the 13th Part IV: Jason Lives apart from its predecessors as this movie also has very little gore and absolutely zero nudity, which is far from a detriment because a shift away from the “Have sex and die” trope is nice, even though a couple do get offed post-coitus, and Jason (C.J. Graham) as an undead monster is an imposing enough threat that you really don’t need that extra bit of gore to sell the horror. This entry didn't just level up the comedy but the action was beefed up as well, for the first time we see Jason Voorhees tangling with the police and shrugging off bullets as a walking corpse would do. Seeing Jason wiping the campground up with the group of deputy dumb-asses was easily one of the better moments in the film.

 

“Tonight on The Walking Dead.”

Writer/director Tom McLoughlin had a deft hand with the subject matter, balancing both the comedy and the horror elements quite well, and he doesn't get bogged down in explaining any kind of "Jason Mythology" – the film’s tag line “Evil Never Dies” is all that was really needed – even how Jason is ultimate defeated doesn’t make a lot of sense, and we don’t care, it's all about the fun. Friday the 13th Part IV: Jason Lives breathed a little fresh air into the franchise in a humorous and entertaining way that would change things forever.

 

Question: Jason is literally a few feet below the surface of the lake, how is it possible that his body isn’t found immediately by the police who, one assumes, would be responding to the events of the night?

One Million Years B.C. (1966) – Review

Despite the fact that dinosaurs and mankind were separated by about 65 million years this has never stopped Hollywood from thrusting them together time and time again, whether through tales of humans visiting The Land That Time Forgot or the dinosaurs being brought back through the misuse of science, but today we will be looking at a film that took the Flintstones viewpoint of history with dinosaurs and humans living together at the same point in time.

The movie opens with narration over images that may or may not be interpretations of the Big Bang and we are told that “This is a story of long, long ago, when the world was just beginning” and throughout this sonorous narration we are treated to some bleak yet gorgeous landscapes, but eventually we are introduced to our cast of cavemen in the form of The Rock Tribe. The tribe’s chief is a violent individual named Akhoba (Robert Brown) who seems to enjoy fermenting tensions between his two sons Sakana (Percy Herbert) and Tumak (John Richardson), the latter of these being the hero of the picture, yet it’s a fight between Tumak and his father that results in the son being knocked off the cave’s ledge and being banished to the harsh desert. It’s during his forced exodus that Tumak encounters the film’s first monstrous denizen, unfortunately, fans of Ray Harryhausen who were waiting for another legendary stop-motion creation would have to wait a bit longer as the movie’s first dinosaur is just a green iguana that was optically processed to look huge.

 

Note: Apparently Harryhausen believed that if the first monsters witnessed were real creatures it would help convince the audience that all that came later were real as well, a decision that he later admitted to being a mistake.

After escaping the “terrifying” giant iguana an exhausted and dehydrated Tumak stumbles upon a group of female members of the Shell Tribe where he is spotted by "Loana the Fair One" (Raquel Welch) and despite his sunburnt visage, she becomes instantly attracted to this stranger. Now, the meeting of our film’s central lovebirds is key to this movie’s plot and Raquel and Richardson had decent on-screen chemistry, but what this sequence truly provides us is that first actual Harryhausen creation, in the form of a giant sea turtle, and this stop-motion creation has all the trademark fun and personality one expects to see from the master, but what one must wonder is why a "sea turtle" was considered a threat giant or otherwise.

 

“Chill out, I’m not even a carnivore!”

It’s when Tumak is brought back to meet the rest of the Shell Tribe that we learn the true dichotomy of the two tribes presented in this film, the Rock Tribe are presented as a brutal heartless people who would leave the old and infirm die without a second thought, while the Shell Tribe were actually developing a culture and had art and laughter and every argument didn’t end with someone dead. One of the other key differences between the two tribes was in their technological superiority as the Rock Tribe basically had blunted sticks for weapons while the Shell people had spears with hardened rock tips, and this also lent added tension to the plot as Tumak being of the asshole Rock People he wasn’t opposed to just taking what he thinks he deserves, which causes a bit of strife for all concerned, and even though the Shell People appreciated his heroic fighting off of a dinosaur his boorish behaviour gets him exiled...again.  Though, to be fair, killing an allosaurus and saving a little girl should, at the very least, earn you that bloody spear.

 

"From Hell's heart, I stab at thee"

As a prehistoric epic One Million Years B.C. is truly a spectacular offering and is easily superior to the 1940 original, which starred Victor Mature and Carole Landis, but much of that has to do with stunning visual effects by legendary stop-motion artist Ray Harryhausen – who should have been credited as a star right alongside John Richardson and Raquel Welch – and even though the film got off on the wrong foot with that silly iguana and an even more out-of-place giant tarantula, once the “real” dinosaurs make their appearance the film becomes pure gold.

 

Who needs a love story when you have titanic battles such as this?

Yet this is really a love story and amazing dino-action aside there is much to be impressed with as director Don Chaffey and screenwriter Michael Carreras did an amazing job in creating a movie with virtually no dialogue, other than the occasional grunt or piece of caveman gibberish, and they were able to construct a rather complex story that relied on the audience paying attention instead of spoon-feeding them exposition. This was no easy task as not only did they have Biblical elements of Caine and Able and the Prodigal Son to juggle but also some rather dynamic love story elements, such as the jealous cave girl Nupondi (Martine Beswick) who has her eyes set on Tumak, and then there was the leader of the Shell Tribe Ahot (Jean Wladon) who wasn’t only that keen about Tumak waltzing and walking off with "Loana the Fair One" but who can really blame him?

 

Note: Her two-piece deer skin bikini became an iconic image and has been described as "a marvellous breathing monument to womankind" and not only did it usher many a young man through puberty it also made Raquel Welch a superstar.

The story wraps up when the film’s prehistoric version of A West Side Story is interrupted by a volcanic eruption and the surviving members of the two tribes are melded into one, which gives us hope of a future with all of mankind can putting aside their differences and become one tribe, and though Ray Harryhausen’s dinosaur are the big draw here I think that little message is even more important today than when the film was originally released. Sure, one can consider that Raquel Welch was an exploited sex symbol and was basically there to keep parents happy while the kids watched the dino-action, but I find that One Million Years B.C. has a little more to offer than what one gets at a glance.

 

Note: This was a Hammer Film production and though they were mostly known for their horror films, starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, it was this movie that was the studio's most successful venture.

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985) – Review

Jason may have been killed in the last outing, with his head being split in half and brutally hacked apart by a young Corey Feldman, but that didn’t mean the franchise was dead in the water because even though the “Final Chapter” had been touted as the end of the series the accountants over at Paramount Pictures must have seen things quite differently.

The movie opens with a young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) arriving at the grave of Jason Voorhees to find two men trying to dig up the corpse, for what reason is rather unclear, but these two hapless idiots are quickly dispatched by a very much alive Jason only for this all to be revealed to be nothing more than a nightmare of a now-adult Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) who is being transferred to the Pinehurst Halfway House, a place for troubled youths that is managed by Dr. Matt Letter (Richard Young) and his assistant Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman).  Things go immediately south as no sooner does Tommy check-in when one of the other patients is brutally axe murdered by another of the residents, and we are left wondering, "Could witnessing such an inhuman act trigger the latent trauma caused by the events of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter? Will poor Tommy don the iconic hockey mask and go on a bloody rampage as the previous film hinted at?"

 

Will the ghost of Jason Voorhees get the last laugh?

Sadly, that was not to be as Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is nothing more than a disconnected collection of kills and Tommy Jarvis isn’t even properly set up as a possible suspect. We get the local Sheriff (Marco St. John) insisting that Jason is responsible for the recent murders despite his body having apparently been cremated, which is a pretty good alibi, and wouldn’t it have made more sense if he’d accused Tommy instead? We see Tommy as this reclusive introvert, who can barely put two words together, so it wouldn’t have been too hard to throw suspicion on his actions.  With a clue or two being dropped the script could easily have planted the idea that he'd picked up Jason’s baton, but this film isn’t interested in telling an actual story, it’s all about the kills.

 

We do get some rather interesting kills, ones that are worthy of a better entry.

But if Jason is really dead, and Tommy Jarvis isn’t carrying on his legacy, who's the dude in the hockey mask who is leaving bodies strewn all across the county? The killer is…drum roll, please…Roy (Dick Wieand) the paramedic. Now, if you are asking "Who in the fuck is Roy?” you are not alone and this “surprise” reveal has to go down as one of the worst twist endings in horror – and I’ve seen M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village – but what is worse than the killer being revealed as to be some complete random dude is the explanation we do get. Turns out good ole Roy was one of the paramedics called to Pinehurst when one of the "patients" went axe-happy and the victim turned out to be Roy’s mentally handicapped son who he'd abandoned many years ago, upon seeing the bloody remains of his son he snapped and proceeded to go on a killing spree.

 

Is that the face of a cold-blooded killer?

Does Roy hunt down and kill Dr. Matt Letter for allowing dangerous individuals access to an axe? Does he track down and brutally murder the other patients of the Pinehurst Halfway House for their possible complicity in the death of his son? He most certainly does, and in fairly gruesome ways, but he also kills a half-dozen other people who had nothing to do with the halfway house or his son’s death.  We are also left asking questions like "Why did he put on Jason’s trademark hockey mask?" At the end of the film the Sheriff pulls out some newspaper clippings that dealt with the Crystal Lake Murders that implies Roy was maybe using the legend of Jason as a cover story, but then again framing a dead guy isn’t all that logical – crazy killer or not that's a dumb plan – and it also doesn’t explain why went so far as to construct a latex monster mask to wear under the hockey mask?

 

Was he a method actor as well as a paramedic?

Stray Observations:

• This is the first sequel to not use footage from previous films which I assume was in the hopes of not reminding the viewer of the better entries.
• The two leather jacket-wearing greasers murdered by “Not Jason” looked like they were either off to an audition for the Marlon Brando film The Wild One or visit the local leather bar.
• It was this entry that solidified the “Sex and Drugs Equals Death” trope.
• The Mayor chews out the Sherriff over the recent killings, “This is a small town. Small towns are supposed to be safe.” Has this guy not read up on the history of Crystal Lake?
• Tommy Jarvis is a pretty badass fighter in this movie, which begs the question, "Did they have Mixed Martial Arts training in the institute?"
• For a villain who is revealed to not be a supernatural monster he shakes off being hit by a tractor rather well.
• A chainsaw vs machete fight should have been a lot more exciting than what we got in this film.
• Tommy’s badass fighting skills vanish once face to face with “Not Jason.”
• Why the fuck was the killer’s hockey mask in Tommy’s hospital bedside night table?

 

There is setting up for a sequel and then there is this stupidity.

Director Danny Steinmann was working under two directives from the studio, deliver a shock, scare, or kill every seven or eight minutes and to turn Tommy into Jason, which meant introducing and then quickly killing off a rather large number of characters, and to say this was not conducive to good storytelling would be a vast understatement,  Now, to be fair, well-rounded characters were not all that abundant in the previous Friday the 13th movies before this installment but even by slasher standards the ones in this film were practically anemic. This entry did reasonably well at the box office but feedback from fans, who weren’t all that keen on an imposter Jason, were a major factor in the decision to ditch the idea of Tommy eventually becoming the “New” Jason, and all I can say is "Thank god!" There are certainly worse slasher films out there but what Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was most guilty of was in delivering a villain nobody wanted, and that shit is unforgivable.

 

“Come back, Jason, come back!”

Octopussy (1983) – Review

In 1988 the world was treated to duelling Bonds as Warner Brothers released Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery returning for a remake of Thunderball, while Eon Productions gave us their thirteen entry in the form of Octopussy, which had a reluctant Roger Moore once more donning a tux and his license to kill, and both of these films I would consider lesser entries in the Bond franchise with both actors too old for the role, yet Octopussy stands out a little more for having a rather strong female co-star and will be the film we are looking at today.

With Octopussy we don’t such as get another “In Name Only” adaptation of a Flemming story, as was the case with Moonraker, but a completely original screenplay that used elements of Ian Fleming works, such as the short story "The Property of a Lady" for the scene where Bond gets his hands on the villain’s Fabergé egg and the backstory of the title character is from the short story collection "Octopussy and The Living Daylight." In that short story, Bond was assigned to apprehend a hero of the Second World War who had been implicated in a murder involving a stolen cache of Nazi gold, but Bond being a sympathetic secret agent he gives the man the choice of suicide or court-martial, which results in the man taking his own life via the tentacles of his beloved but poisonous pet, that he'd named Octopussy. The movie’s title character is revealed to be the daughter of that late soldier and she actually thanks Bond for allowing her father an honourable death and this puts the character of Octopussy in the category of “good” Bond girls for even though she is the head of a criminal organization she’s not a cold-hearted killer – even her army of women use dart guns to take down enemies – but she will, sadly, end up another sexual conquest of Bonds.

 

Question: What kind of a dad nicknames his daughter Octopussy?

The movie’s plot is fairly convoluted and completely falls apart if any thought is given to it. A Russian general named Orlov (Steven Berkoff) is unhappy with his countries decision to go along with N.A.T.O’s disarmament treaty as believes that Mother Russia should, instead, expand its borders across Europe. Orlov is in league with an exiled Afghan prince named Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) who plans on using his association with Octopussy (Maud Adams), a wealthy businesswoman and smuggler, to sneak a nuclear bomb into an American military base in West Germany. For when the bomb is detonated it would be assumed to have been an accident and blamed on the States which would hopefully trigger Europe into seeking disarmament, which would then result in the borders being open for a Soviet invasion.
 

Question: If the threat of nuclear retaliation is the only thing stopping the Soviet Union from rolling across Europe’s borders how does this plan take into account the nukes aboard American subs or the ones based in the States and other Nato countries?

But what, exactly, is a wealthy smuggler, one who has her own “Paradise Island” of female warriors, doing working with a crazy Russian general? Well, she thinks they are only using her organization to smuggle jewels from East Germany to West Germany via her circus – she really has a diversified portfolio – and she is completely unaware of Orlov and Kamal Khan’s plan to swap out the jewels for a nuclear bomb, unfortunately, this makes her character not only seem rather naïve and stupid but also fairly unnecessary to the plot. In earlier drafts she was an out and out villain, working with the Russians to smuggle the bomb into an American base, but this change results in her becoming a simple patsy and not only removes her character’s agency it weakens it as well.

 

“Sorry Octopussy, I make for a much more seductive villain.”

It should also be noted that in this film Bond is really really bad at his job. Upon discovering Orlov and Kamal Khan’s plan to sneak a nuclear bomb into an American military base, via Octopussy’s circus train, for some unknown reason he doesn’t immediately make his way to the nearest phone to alert the authorities and have the train stopped at the border. And why doesn't he?  Well, because that’d be too easy for Bond, instead, he embarks on a ridiculous chase across Germany which entails fighting on train rooftops, getting into a duel with trained killers and, for some reason, wearing a gorilla suit. Now, at one point during this cross-country chase, he does try to use a payphone but it’s currently occupied and so he is forced to abandon the idea of calling for help and must go off on his own to save the day.  Why Bond didn't simply yank that woman out of the booth we will never know.

 

Bond has a license to kill but, apparently, being rude is off the table.

Stray Observations:

• In the pre-title sequence Bond does the rare thing for him by actually going in-disguise on a mission, none of that “Bond, James Bond” nonsense and he even wears a fake moustache.
• In that same pre-title sequence Bond flies a little jet aircraft that runs out of fuel after about five minutes of flight time - that’s a pretty damn small gas tank - and then he stops at a roadside gas station and requests "Fill 'er up" but I doubt any such facility would have jet fuel on hand.
• Maud Adams is a resurrected Bond Girl as she appeared in The Man with the Golden Gun and was killed off by Christopher Lee.
• The age difference between Roger Moore and Maud Adams is eighteen years, which isn’t too bad until you consider that most of the later Bond girls in the Moore have around three-decade age differences between them and our hero.
• Like Pussy Galore in Goldfinger Octopussy has an army of female fighters working for her, sadly, any lesbian connotations were left unexplored.
• The bladed yo-yo buzzsaw-weapon in this movie is fairly useless, it pretty much requires your target to remain perfectly still while the blade slowly unravels towards them.
• Bond can apparently teleport into and out of a gorilla costume.
• With Bond hanging off of the outside their airplane Kamal Khan orders his henchman to go out and fight Bond, which begs the question, “Just how loyal is your average henchman?”

 

At what point do you tell your boss to screw off?

With the film Octopussy, we still get a Bond entry that takes us to exotic locals…well, one exotic locale because as aside from dreary moments in East Berlin most of the film takes place in and around Octopussy’s circus train and the only standout location being that of India. Now, the portion that does take place in India provides us with some truly stunning visual scenery, from the majesty of Kamal Khan palace-fortress to the splendour of Octopussy’s floating island but we are missing those marvellous Ken Adams sets that had become a staple of the Bond franchise. The issue of Bond’s rampant sexism is also still a problem, from using a Q gadget to check out a woman’s breasts to forcing his affections on a reluctant Octopussy – which is presented as fine because she eventually enjoys it – but at least in this outing Bond doesn’t get any of the women killed, so I guess we’ll that progress.

 

That Octopussy’s top girl survived to the end of the film was a pleasant surprise.

Overall, the film does have some truly jaw-dropping action sequences – the small jet plane pre-title sequence being especially spectacular – but one can’t help but notice that Bond is starting to feel more and more anachronistic as time goes on and that the sexist humour, that even back in the 80s wasn't all that funny, has definitely not improved with age. It was clear that at this point in the series that the tongue-in-cheek aspect was taking over and the spy/adventure element was becoming secondary to one-liners and double entendres, and seeing the great James Bond clown around is a bit depressing.

 

I’m not sure who thought this was a good idea but they should have been fired.