Ava (2020) – Review

Assassins and contract killers in movies have had a long and storied history, from the cool and professional assassins like Max Von Sydow in Three Days of the Condor to the more dynamically sharp-dressing badasses like John Wick, but we don’t get too many movies with a female in this particular job set so when we do get such an outing I take notice and with Jessica Chastain attached to such a project I was even more intrigued.

In this film we are introduced to trained assassin Ava Faulkner (Jessica Chastain) a particularly deadly killer working for some shadowy organization – who these people are is never made clear other than they are called “The Management” so that could be a C.I.A. black ops division or some private organization – but Ava is making her employer (Colin Farrell) nervous by her habit of asking her targets what bad thing they did so as to end up with a kill order.

Note: Why her talking to her targets is a bad thing is never revealed, they end up dead so what do the higher-ups care if she chatted them up first?  One can assume that they were worried she'd uncover some conspiracy, something along the lines that her targets were being taken out for some rather unethical reason, but such a revelation never arrives.

Ava’s grouchy mentor Duke (John Malkovich) tries to assure her that everything is fine, despite her almost getting killed on a job due to the faulty intel she was provided, but as things continue and the bodies start to stack up even Duke’s salient reassurances start to sound like hollow platitudes.

Question: Aside from Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film From Russia with Love are there any other examples of unattractive female killers in movies?

Of course, Ava isn’t just your run-of-the-mill action film, not with Jessica Chastain attached as both producer and star, so we also have a massive “B” plot dealing with Ava’s dysfunctional family. We first meet her estranged sister Judy (Jess Weixler) who was forced to be the one to hold the family together when Ava ran off eight years ago, and then we have her mother Bobbi (Geena Davis) who manages to be cruel and snarky despite being in a hospital bed, and finally, we have Ava’s ex-fiancé Michael (Common) who is now engaged to Judy despite still carrying a torch for Ava. We also have a “C” subplot about Michael’s gambling problem and the massive debt he owes local underworld figure Toni (Joan Chen) but this doesn’t really go anywhere or add much to the proceedings other than adding another cool fight sequence.

 

I love Joan Chen so I’ll forgive the film for this unnecessary diversion.

I’ll credit Chastain for trying to create a fully developed and interesting character with Ava and her substance abuse problem, leaving home due to her asshole father and joining the army before being recruited by the “organization” but as good as Jessica Chastain is in this part it’s really nothing we haven’t seen before – the tortured killer with a heart of gold is certainly not new to Hollywood – and the only thing that makes this movie stand out is the calibre of actors they assembled for what is basically a B-movie.

 

“I get to do my entire role from this bed, right?"

Stray Observations:

• Was Ioan Gruffudd killed off after just a few minutes of screen time because of his portrayal of Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four movies?
• It’s never made clear what Ava would do if she learned one of her targets was an innocent person. Would she have let them go or kill them but then feel really bad about it?
• If Ava is considered one of the best killers in the organization why would they send a guy to simply knife her in a park? Wouldn’t a sniper or a car bomb be a more practical approach for such a dangerous target?
• That Ava buys Duke’s story that the guy she had a brutal fight within the park was just some random addict, and not a professional killer sent by the company to take her out, means she is either incredibly gullible or incredibly stupid…or possibly both.
• The cast is full of movie assassins; Geena Davis played an amnesiac killer in The Long Kiss Goodnight, Colin Farrell played the assassin Bullseye in Daredevil and John Malkovich played a paranoid hitman in Red.
• Watching 66-year old John Malkovich fighting 44-year old Colin Farrell was surprisingly fun to see.

 

It certainly beat anything we saw in Daredevil.

As an action film Ava had some okay to decent choreographed fight sequences but in a category that has recently given us Charlize Theron’s Atomic Blonde and John Wick’s puppy loving killer packing theatres with their brilliant over-the-top action, well, decent just doesn’t cut it. One can appreciate what Jessica Chastain was trying to do here, giving us a complicated anti-hero, but the cliché riddled script and only above average action scenes makes this a hard film to recommend. If you like your action films with a liberal dose of family drama then check out Ava, otherwise, give it a pass.

Archive (2020) – Review

If I learned anything from watching countless science fiction movies it’s that you shouldn’t mess with artificial intelligence and bringing back your dead wife is never a good idea. In this movie not only does the protagonist of writer/director Gavin Rothery sci-fi thriller Archive attempt both of those things but he also breaks the cardinal rule of "Don't get into bed with an evil corporation." That’s just common sense, folks.

The plot of Archive looks like your standard entry in the “mad scientist” genre with robotic expert George Almore (Theo James) being hired by a shady corporation called ARM – we never learn what this acronym means but I’m sure the “M” stands for malevolent – to fix an old decommissioned facility deep in the Japanese mountains, but when running around fixing security systems good ole George is also building several prototype robots that he hopes will eventually house the consciousness of his recently departed wife.

 

It’s also possible he's just a huge fan of HBO’s Westworld.

Throughout the film, George is harassed by his corporate boss Simone (Rhona Mitra ), who isn’t happy with his progress and is quite sure that he's hiding something from her, and then we have Vincent Sinclair (Toby Jones) from Archive, a company that provides the living with the ability to talk to the dead for a few more hours via a monolithic looking casket that stores an analog version of their consciousness.  But why does this system only allow for a limited amount of minutes before degradation? Well, that’s just one of many science-fiction elements that Rothery isn’t all that interested in explaining because this film is more about obsession and betrayal than it is about its sci-fi trappings. The key problem I had with Archive was not in its loose approach to science but rather in its unlikeable protagonist. Sure, one should sympathize with George because of the tragic loss of his wife – a terrible car crash we see through various flashbacks – but his very goal of bringing back his wife goes against her dying wishes. Then we have the whole issue of him being a complete dick to the earlier robot prototypes once he gets the new sexier model online.

 

This is the real hero of the movie and we needed more of her.

There are two robots working alongside George, with the first one having the intelligence of a toddler while the second one that of a petulant teenager, but with time running out on resurrecting his wife Jules (Stacy Martin) George not only ignores his earlier creations but even cannibalized one of them to speed up the process on the latest model. It’s the second prototype, called J2, who is the true heart of this film and her jealousy of this new “sister” is warranted, no matter how many times George tries to dismiss it, and it’s through this sweet robot's journey that I really began to dislike George. I would have been much happier if the film ended more like Alex Garland’s Ex Machina with J2 escaping into the real world, sadly, that is not the story Gavin Rothery was trying to tell, instead, what we get is a film that owes a lot to Blade Runner, with the look of the film being very much influenced by designer Syd Meade and the seemingly corporate-run world is right out of Philip K Dick’s book, but without a protagonist like Rick Deckard it falls rather short.

 

“Do androids dream of copyright infringement?”

It’s in the third act when things truly get interesting but as I want to avoid getting into spoiler territory I’ll just say that I don’t think this film quite earned the last-minute change the plot makes. Now, I’ll admit the film’s conclusion is thought-provoking but it also raises more questions than it answers, which, is not necessarily are a bad thing, but for it to completely work it would have needed a stronger protagonist, one I actually cared about. That all said, the film is gorgeous and Gavin Rothery’s history as a graphic artist is put to great use and I look forward to seeing further projects from him, but maybe he could leave the writing to someone else.

Moonraker (1979) – Review

When one thinks of the world’s most famous secret agent James Bond the phrase “In Space” does not readily leap to mind but after a little film called Star Wars broke box offices records around the world producer Cubby Broccoli and the people at United Artists were among many who scrambled to take some of that real estate for their own, but there was one little problem, in any of Ian Fleming’s stories his dashing hero had never actually gone into space. Needless to say, that was a problem that was easily overcome.

 The 1979 Bond film Moonraker is a perfect example of an "In Name Only" adaptation as the Ian Fleming book didn’t have anything to do with outer space, it mostly dealt with a multi-millionaire named Hugo Drax, an industrialist who turned out to be a dedicated Nazi planning to launch his “Moonraker” nuclear missile at London, while in the movie we have French billionaire Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) planning to destroy mankind by launching 50 globes of the nerve gas into Earth's atmosphere after which he'd then repopulate the planet with his collection of handpicked genetically perfect young men and women.  So, aside from keeping the name Hugo Drax there is no holdover from Fleming’s book – well, the creation of a “Master Race” does have a bit of a Nazi feel to it but that's about it – and the title “Moonraker” was used simply because it sounded outer-spacey.

Note: Hugo Drax's plan in this movie was more in keeping with your standard comic book supervillain plot and is something one would expect from the likes of Batman's archenemy Ra's al Ghul, who was often plotting to wipe out humanity to “save” the Earth.

Not only was the villain’s evil plot something right out of a comic book but returning to the franchise was monstrous henchman Jaws (Richard Kiel) a character who would fit right in with the X-Men's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  Jaws first appeared in the previous film The Spy Who Loved Me and though he was defeated by Bond the steel teethed killer was so universally well-liked that he was brought back for Moonraker, proving the age-old adage that you can’t keep a good villain down. Now, in Ian Fleming’s book The Spy Who Loved Me there was a hoodlum named Sol "Horror" Horowitz, who simply had steel-capped teeth, while his filmic counterpart was nigh-invulnerable and could bite through a steel cable with those nasty teeth of his. It’s clear that Jaws wasn’t a villain out of the pages of a spy thriller and had more in common with X-Men villains like Sabretooth or Juggernaut, but the reason this change worked so well was mostly due to the amazing performance by actor Richard Kiel.

Note: After the release of The Spy Who Loved Me many children wrote in asking “Why can’t Jaws be a good guy?” which would explain his change of heart at the end of Moonraker, and I will admit to liking the idea that Jaws got himself a girlfriend.

So with a mad supervillain plot, and a couple of nasties who would have been more at home in a comic book, we have an entry in the Bond franchise that though still wildly successful was starting to show a little wear and tear around the edges. One of the more painful elements of the Bond series that has lasted long past its “Best Before Date” is the lead characters rampant sexism and general attitude towards the fairer sex, and though some may excuse Roger Moore’s Bond as being a “product of his time” it still makes watching these moments a little cringe-inducing, especially when Moore lobs one of his horrible sexual bon mots just before seducing some poor women and then getting her killed.

 

Sleeping with Bond is the equivalent of a fatal STD.

Stray Observations:

• The space shuttle is hijacked en route from California to England but crashes in the Yukon, which begs the question, “Were the pilots extremely lost, or were they taking the scenic route to England?”
• Holly Goodhead is up there with Pussy Galore as ridiculous Bond Girl names.
• Bond is given a tour of the Drax facilities, including a ride on the astronaut’s training centrifuge, but why? He’s looking for a missing shuttle not planning on buying the place.
• Bond is surprised that Doctor Goodhead (Lois Chiles) is a woman because he is a sexist asshat.
• Once again the seduction of one of the villain’s female employees leads to the woman’s death. Nice work Bond.
• Bond carries around a camera with “007” printed on it because why not let everyone know you have a license to kill.
• The gondola chase includes one of the dumbest moments in Bond history, the pigeon taking a double take at Bond’s hovercraft gondola.
• When Bond arrives in Rio it’s during Carnival because according to movies Carnival runs about 365 days a year.
• It’s odd that a man with a “License to Kill” doesn’t carry a gun. A lot of Bond’s fights would have been considerably shorter if he’d been able to just shoot his opponent.
• How did Drax go about finding so many beautiful loving couples who were cool with the idea of the genocide of all humanity on Earth?  Was there a special type Craigslist in the 70s for this kind of thing?
• No matter how impressive the radar jamming of Drax’s massive space station was it wouldn’t stop people from Earth spotting it with the naked eye.

 

A kid with a backyard telescope would have spotted that thing.

Attempts at Killing Bond:

• The movie opens with a nondescript villain planning to leave Bond on a disabled aircraft instead of just shooting Bond in the face. Not only is this a less than an effective way to murder Bond it’s also rather expensive as it costs you an aircraft.
• The centrifuge chamber is cranked up to lethal speeds to kill Bond, and can someone please explain to me why such devices always seem to have lethal settings?
• Drax has a sniper set up in the woods to shoot Bond during a pheasant hunting excursion, which is rather silly considering that even the local police would be able to tell the difference between a supposed shotgun wound and that of one left by a sniper rifle. Also, Bond killing the sniper with a shotgun at the range depicted here is patently ridiculous.
• A knife-throwing assassin kills Bond’s gondola driver first instead of taking out his primary target.  These killers need better training so they can prioritize things more efficiently.
• An assassin comes after Bond with a Kendo stick because when tackling one of the most dangerous spies in the world why not try a long piece of wood?
• Jaws demonstrates the ability to bite through the steel cable of a cable car but instead of biting through the ones holding up Bond and Goodhead’s car he proceeds to ride his own car up to theirs so he can have some hand-to-hand combat.
• Bond survives a boat attack on the Amazon River because Q thought to include a hang glider in his souped-up spy boat.  This also results in another wonderful Q invention biting the dust.
• Bond is dumped into a pool with a python because, apparently, we are now in a Tarzan movie.
• Bond and Goodhead are placed in a room beneath a launching space shuttle, where they will be incinerated by the rocket’s exhaust, but why there's an apparent boardroom below a launch bay is the bigger question.  Was Drax's hidden base hard-up for space?

 

“Mr. Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you.”

That insightful line of dialogue goes a long way towards explaining the trope of Bond villains not simply just shooting Bond on sight – wonderfully lampooned in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery – and as the Bond series pushed their villains closer to their comic book counterparts it actually kind of makes sense.

Over-the-top villains and sexist heroes’ aside what makes films like Moonraker worth watching is the spectacular stunt sequences and when it comes brutal fights and wild chases this movie is bar none fantastic. It should also be noted that the original Fleming novel Moonraker Bond never so much stepped a toe out of Britain and as part of the allure of a Bond movie was in its global jet setting nature changes had to be made, and with this film audiences were not disappointed as we see Bond go from the beautiful Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, now doubling for the Drax family manor, to the depth of the Amazon rainforest where Drax had his villainous lair located.

 

Interiors courtesy of Ken Adams.

As for the space element of Moonraker, well, despite Cubby Broccoli’s insistence that his film was not “Science fiction” but “Science fact” it's all quite laughable and Bond’s journey into space owed more to the likes of Flash Gordon than it did to the works of Arthur C. Clark or Philip K. Dick. When NASA finally notices Hugo Drax’s massive space station they are somehow able to scramble an attack force of Marines and launch them into outer space at a moment’s notice – while in reality preparing a launch takes up to three years – and then when they do get to space we are treated to fun if rather ridiculous laser battle.

 

Note: This predates Donald Trump’s Space Force by four decades.

When one sits down to watch a James Bond film it’s for the pure escapist nature of the franchise and if you can let slide the occasional sexist moment and blatant misogyny Moonraker will provide you with an entertaining two hours, that all said, it was also clear that at this point in time the series was struggling to feel relevant and sending Bond into space came across as a rather sad attempt at remaining popular with the kids, unfortunately, further entries with Moore would prove to be even less engaging with that particular target audience.

Question: The film ends with the standard Bond trope of MI6 cutting in and seeing Bond having sex with whichever Bond girl managed to survive to the end credits, but in the case of Moonraker Bond and Goodhead are aboard one of Drax’s shuttles, so how could they access that ship’s onboard cameras?

Fantasy Island (1977) – Review

 When one thinks of the original Fantasy Island series, it’s often in comparison to The Love Boat as they both had a somewhat anthology-like format and a variety of guest stars every week, but the pilot movie for Fantasy Island, which aired on ABC back in 1977, was a rather darker animal than what the show would later evolve into. In this first made-for-television movie, the audience had no idea whether or not the enigmatic Mr. Roarke was a good guy or some kind of bizarre villain, and with the show’s basic premise being “Be careful what you wish for,” it wouldn’t be too far off the mark to assume Roarke was the Devil.

The structure of the pilot sets up the formula that later episodes would follow: a seaplane would come in for a landing and the diminutive character of Tattoo (Hervé Villechaize) would ring the bell so as to inform his enigmatic boss Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban) that “De plane! De plane!” had arrived. A group of guests would then disembark and be greeted with a hearty, “My dear guests! I am Mr. Roarke, your host. Welcome to Fantasy Island!” We would then learn what particular fantasy each guest is willing to pay $50,000 to fulfill — that’s over $200 thousand in today’s money — and with that, we were off and running, but what was a little off-putting in this first pilot was that after Roarke had greeted all the guests, and sent them off to their respective bungalows, he coldly muttered to himself, “Welcome to Fantasy Island… indeed,” and Montalban’s delivery of that line was so chilling that if we were told this was a horror movie it wouldn’t be at all surprising.

 

Will any of these guests survive?

As this was a feature-length television movie we have the time for three fantasies to be explored – the series with its sixty-minute runtime would quickly cut this down to just two – so let us take look at what kind of people would fork out such a large sum of money for a visit to a mysterious island. First off we have wealthy businesswoman Eunice Hollander Baines (Eleanor Parker) who has asked Mr. Roarke to stage her funeral so that she can discover who’s loyal to her and can be trusted with her business after her death. There is her philandering husband Grant Baines (Peter Lawford), who could be having an affair with her personal secretary of six years Connie Raymond (Tina Sinatra), then we have Eunice’s brother Charles Hollander (Dick Sargent), a rather meek and mild-mannered individual guilty of only being the wrong Darren, and finally, there is Elizabeth 'Liz' Hollander (Carol Lynley) the long-lost sister to Eunice and Charles and who is your classic stone-cold bitch, and later discover that Liz was not only kicked out of the family business but out of town as well.

 

“Can I get a shot of Scotch with my comeuppance?”

Mr. Roarke provides Eunice with a pair of glasses, a fake nose and a maid’s uniform so that she will be able to eavesdrop on her family during the fake funeral, unfortunately, this doesn’t work out too well as Liz puts on an Oscar-winning performance declaring her love for her dear departed sister which causes Eunice to reveal to her “grieving” sister that she is still alive. Sadly, it turns out that this was all an act and that Liz was the one having an affair with Grant and now with Eunice already declared dead she teams up with the asshat husband to murder her sister for real. Needless to say, things go awry and it’s Liz who goes plummeting off a cliff instead of Eunice, having slipped while attempting to push her sister off, but then Eunice oddly doesn't have Grant immediately arrested as an accomplice to attempted murder, instead, she wants him to be her loyal arm candy with a jail sentence forever hanging over his head. Damn, but that is some cold-ass shit.

 

“My dear Mister Baines, you are so fucked.”

The second fantasy is a twist on the classic tale of “The Most Dangerous Game” only in this case world-famous big game hunter Paul Henley’s (Hugh O'Brian) fantasy is to be the hunted rather than the hunter. He is informed by Mr. Roarke that three “dedicated” hunters have been chosen to participate and that Henley will have to survive three separate hunts over the weekend, with each day a different hunter being assigned to take him out. Roarke throws a rather nasty wrinkle into the first hunt by having Henley drugged and waking up chained at the wrist to the woman (Victoria Principal) Mr. Roarke had provided him the night before as some kind of high-class escort. What is really odd here is that this poor woman had no idea she was to be part of some kind of “Most Dangerous Game” so we have to assume Roarke hired a prostitute with full knowledge that she could end up dead. Even worse is when she falls into a pit trap, saved only by still being manacled to Henley a the time, that when Henley pulls out a knife to gain some leverage we hear Roarke’s voice over a loudspeaker giving some rather nasty advice, “Good boy! Cut her arm off!” What a sadistic bastard.

 

Can we assume Roarke will give her a bonus after all this shit?

As the hunts proceed we learn that each of them has a history with Henley and very personal reasons to see him dead. One of them he cheated in a land deal, the second hunter had a child who was crippled when a drunken Henley crashed his car and the third hunter's wife had an affair with Henley before running off never to be seen again. By the end of this particular fantasy, we come to the conclusion that it was Henley’s guilt over these incidents that has driven him to this bizarre form of punishment but then Roarke throws a little twist on things by revealing that it was Paul Henley who was cheated in the land deal, that he wrongly took the blame for the child’s injuries and he wasn’t the only man with whom the married woman had been cheating on her husband with and that deep down Henley knew all along that this was the case, in fact, it was his guilt over the countless animals he had brutally killed over the years that was the real reason he desired to be hunted.

 

 

I’m surprised Mr. Roarke didn’t have a Gorn hunting Henley.

The third and strangest fantasy concerns World War II veteran Arnold Greenwood (Bill Bixby) who wants to relive a romance he had with a woman named Francesca (Sandra Dee) all those many years ago. Greenwood is brought to a perfect recreation of the British pub where he first met Francesca Hamilton in later days World War II and as it happened originally a German air raid throws the pair together. What is rather interesting here is that this is the one fantasy that is rather harder to explain without some kind of supernatural element being involved. It’s one thing to build a perfect replica of a British pub but are we to believe that Roarke was able to find a woman who was a dead ringer of Greenwood’s long lost love?

 

 

“Do you think this jukebox will play As Time Goes By?”

But finding a lookalike actress to play the part of Francesca isn’t the strange part, we learn through one of many flashbacks to the real events that Greenwood was a bit of the jealous type and when he discovered that Francesca was actually married after she clearly told him she was unattached, he goes nuts and strangles her to death and then covers up the murder by making it look like she died during another German bombing. Then we jump back to the current timeline and find that poor Greenwood has once again discovered that this Francesca has also been deceiving him about being single and so he proceeds to, once again, strangle her to death.

 

This island is certainly hell on women.

The next morning a distraught Greenwood goes to Mr. Roarke to confess his murdering of Francesca but Roarke seems confused and states that he saw her board the seaplane that very morning. Greenwood drags Roarke over to the “scene of the crime” to prove what he had done but there is no evidence that murder of any kind had taken place. The last we see of Greenwood is him boarding the plane to leave the island with a somewhat catatonic look to him. Seriously, he’s a murderer and his only punishment was to relive the events again? And what kind of sick fantasy revolves around reliving a weekend where you murdered your first love? Did he hope it would turn out better this time?

 

It’s this kind of inexplicable morality that has one questioning Roarke’s motives.

The network wasn’t the only ones a little put off by the darker aspects of this pilot and thus later fantasies would have a much more whimsical and fun feel to them, with goofy fantasies outweighing darker more dangerous ones. Also, the fantastical elements of Fantasy Island would be broadened greatly as to allow guests to travel into the distant past or to far-flung locals, where they could become victims of the Salem Witch Trials or be sentenced to Devil Island, but more often than not their fantasy would be something more mundane like having a threesome with a couple of supermodels. Which, to be fair, is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of something called Fantasy Island.

Note: It was this darker element of Fantasy Island that made me excited when I heard Blumhouse was making it into a horror movie but it turned out to be a complete mess and a travesty on all counts.

Tammy and the T-Rex (1994) – Review

What would you do if you had access to full-sized animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex for a week? Well, the answer to that question is you'd make a movie about a mad scientist putting the brain of a teenage-boy into that of a robot T-Rex. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it, and that was this situation facing writer/director Stewart Raffill when he was asked if he could make a movie with said dinosaur before it was shipped off to some dinosaur park, and with no more than a couple of weeks prep time to come up with both a script and a full cast he cobbled together the makings of a film that was destined to become a cult classic.

The film starts like any average teen comedy would, with the introduction of your standard high school strife and a small group of teenagers battling with their hormones and personal identities, but where Tammy and the T-Rex stands in the lexicon of teen romcoms is in a decidedly weirder subcategory. We are first introduced to the film’s two leads, the bubbly and beautiful cheerleader Tammy (Denise Richards) and her adorably hunky boyfriend Michael (Paul Walker), but the road to love has many obstacles and in this case, it comes in the form of Tammy’s ex-boyfriend Billy (George Pilgrim) a possessive asshole who refuses to acknowledge his relationship with Tammy is over. It’s his insane jealousy that puts the film's plot in motion because it leads to him and his gang – of course he’s got gang – beating up poor Michael and leaving him to be mauled to death at by lions at wild Animal Park. This would then lead to Michael getting his brain stuffed inside a robot dinosaur, because…why not?

 

Enter the mad scientist.

Mad scientists have been a staple of science fiction from the very dawning of the genre, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the Dutch horror film The Human Centipede, and with Tammy and the T-Rex we get a delightfully goofy entry in this subgenre in the form of Dr. Wachenstein (Terry Kiser) and his lanky and beautiful assistant Helga (Ellen Dubin). It seems that Dr. Wachenstein has created a fully-functional robot Tyrannosaurus Rex that he hopes will lead to the secrets of immortality. Now, does that make sense to anyone else? Not being a mad scientist myself, and even after watching this movie multiple times, I’m still a little fuzzy on the correlation of a robot T-Rex and immortality, but later in the film, Wachenstein comments to Helga that eventually everyone will want their brains placed in immortal robot bodies, even their pets. This doesn’t really explain why his first step was putting a human brain in a robot Tyrannosaurus Rex but it does lead to lots of dinosaur carnage.

 

“Doctor, wouldn’t a robot collie have been a safer option?”

Of course, looking for logic in a film called Tammy and the T-Rex is in itself fairly ridiculous and Stewart Raffill knew exactly what kind of movie he was making, cheap, gory and a lot of fun. The animatronic dinosaur was a fairly impressive creature, or at least as far as theme park attractions go, but it certainly wasn’t going to rival anything found in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Though the robot could roar, blink and wiggle its little arms it was rather stationary when it came to actually moving around – there are a few horrible optical shots of the T-Rex walking that are as brief as possible – but being this beast was never intended to be an actual living dinosaur its weird clunkiness actually works for the movie. The plot of the movie may have been utterly nonsensical but that is part of its charm and one could almost imagine the script as something out of improv sketch comedy with audience members shouting out things like “Robot, dinosaur, teen gangs, revenge, brain swapping!”

 

“Get my agent on the phone.”

With a cool animatronic dinosaur, literal guts dropping left right and at the center of it all the ever-delightful Terry Kiser hamming up the place you have the key ingredients to “success” but without the casting of Denise Richards and Paul Walker, this film may have vanished along with Blockbuster Video. It’s these two young actors that really sell the movie – amazing as this was both of their first starring roles in a feature film – and neither of them once wink at the camera as they play their parts straight down the line, if a little dramatic at times, with this being a comedy after all. It’s Denise Richards’ sincerity that does the most to sell the absurdity of the whole situation and the scene where the T-Rex resorts to charades so that Tammy can figure out that Michael’s brain is inside the robot dinosaur is pretty much genius, and pulling off the star crossed lovers plotline when one of the invested parties is a dinosaur is no easy matter yet Richards handles it like a pro.

 

I guess there are worse leading men in Hollywood.

Stewart Raffill’s Tammy and the T-Rex was never going to win any awards but it never failed to deliver on that ludicrous premise and that can’t be said of all “So bad it’s good” movies out there. Watching this movie you can tell that everyone involved was having a good time and any fan of the genre will have an equally good time if entering such a viewing with the right attitude and it’s one I heartily recommend if for nothing else but for the sheer audaciousness of its premise.

Note: It doesn’t hurt that not only was Denise Richards a fine young actress she also made for a spectacularly looking leading lady as well, what more could you want from a film about a robot dinosaur in love?

Anastasia: Once Upon a Time (2019) – Review

 Did you know that the legendary Grigori Rasputin was actually a kindly wizard who could open portals through time? You didn't? Well, me neither, and it is this kind of startling information that will be revealed to those who watch writer/director Blake Harris’ fantasy film Anastasia: Once Upon a Time, a film so sweet and saccharin that it spends most of its time trying to look like a Disney Channel Original. But how, you ask, does one turn a historical tragedy into a film aimed at tweens?

Our story begins in 1917 where the Romanovs are holding a grand ball at the Winter Palace and it's outside the palace that we find young Anastasia (Emily Carey) sitting on a swing with her best friend Grigori Rasputin (Armando Gutierrez), who's not so much a mad monk here but more of a kindly uncle figure, and he convinces her to go inside and join her family at the party – Anastasia is a tad miffed that “All of Russia” can’t attend the ball – but dark forces are on the move and despite Rasputin’s warnings to Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov (Brandon Routh) he snubs Vladimir Lenin (Jo Koy) by not inviting him to the party. Apparently, this affront was enough to spark the February Revolution which starts off with Lenin and his socialist cronies storming the palace to wipe out the Romanov family and save Russia for The People. Lucky for Anastasia this Rasputin has the ability to create time portals and he sends the girl forward through time – her family to moronic and slow to hustle through the portal and thus they are left behind to deal with Lenin’s tender mercies – and so Anastasia finds herself all alone in the United States circa 1989.

 

“Tonight on a special episode of Sliders.”

Before going through the portal Rasputin had gifted Anastasia with a magic amulet that would glow blue to indicate where she would find aid or red when there was danger. Unfortunately for our heroine, Lenin had his own magic user on staff in the form of Yara the Enchantress (Donna Murphy) and she uses her mind control magics to force Rasputin to go after Anastasia and bring her back.  What follows is probably one of the most painful pieces of treacle ever put to film. The glowing amulet leads to Anastasia to a teenage girl named Megan (Amiah Miller) an outcast herself who is often targeted by a trio of “Mean Girls” who seemed to have escaped from Cliché High School 101. Megan and Anastasia become fast friends and we are treated to scenes of them going to the mall so that we can have the obligatory makeover montage, a sequence where they dance on stage with popstar Bliss (Aliyah Moulden) and eventually ending their day at a Halloween party, and all of this is intercut with Rasputin wandering around looking for Anastasia.

 

Are we really sure this isn’t a Disney Channel movie?

I know I’m not remotely the target demographic for this type of film but I can’t see any age group getting much out of this thing. The period costumes are so bad one has to assume they were scavenged from the Halloween racks at a local thrift store and the very look of the film is of an over-saturated cotton candy explosion. A half-hour into this thing and I was worried my eyes would start to bleed. The acting is bad across the board with performances that would make Florida Dinner Theater look good by comparison – I have no idea how they got Brandon Routh to be in this thing but even he sucks balls here – and the two young leads have about as much screen presence as wet toast.

Stray Observations:

• I'm not sure why Rasputin chose the late 80s as a safe place to hide Anastasia nor why he’d pick the United States.  Was it the "Just say no to drugs" campaign that inspired him to choose this time period?
• Both Anastasia and Rasputin take such technological wonders as modern vehicles and cars with a great degree of aplomb.
• Rasputin takes a city bus to the mall but we never find out how he paid the fare? Did he mesmerize the driver?
• When Megan learns that Annie is actually thee Anastasia she asks what happened to her family and Anastasia but the book she recently purchased clearly shows a photograph of her family’s graves. I guess putting two and two together wasn’t her strong suit.

 

Her whole family comes across as rather dim.

In 1997 Fox released an animated film Anastasia and even that film was more sensitive to the execution of the Romanov Family – it taking place years after the event and giving Rasputin a goofy bat sidekick – but not only does this film do its best to gloss over the tragic events it also uses time travel magic to re-write history. The movie ends with Anastasia returning to Russia moments before she initially entered the portal, thus she is now able to hustle her family out before Lenin and his goons capture them, but this time the portal just opens a doorway to outside the palace with no explanation as to why the time-travelling aspect was not used, and they are then aided by a Chinese delegate who had been attending their party. Because, why not?  We then get an epilogue where Megan discovers that their new neighbours include a now eighty-three-year-old Anastasia. Holy Mother of God is this film bad!

Historical Note: The Romanov girls apparently did carry lockets with amulets bearing Rasputin's picture and a personal prayer, made creepier by the rumours that Rasputin had seduced not only the Tsarina but also the four grand duchesses, and he was known to visit the girls’ bed chambers while they were in their nightclothes. Also, he died years before the Romanovs were executed.

 

“Tale as old as time, Beauty and the Beast.”

Munsters, Go Home! (1966) – Review

At a glance, the television series The Munsters could be considered nothing more than an Addams Family rip-off but the key difference between those two shows was that though the Munsters looked like monsters they acted like people, while on the other hand, The Addams Family looked like people and acted like monsters, making this show a rather complimentary entry in the genre. Sadly, The Munsters only managed to last two seasons - crushed in the ratings by the Adam West Batman show - but when the network wanted to spice up a possible syndication deal they created a theatrically released Munster movie and thus the world was treated to Munsters, Go Home! and for the first time, we saw this odd family in glorious technicolour.

The basic premise of the series was that these rather benign versions of the Universal Monsters had moved to a suburb in California and they considered themselves to be a fairly typical working-class famil and they either didn’t notice or would become perplexed when the average neighbour would run away in terror at the very sight of them, but with Munsters, Go Home! that familiar structure was altered somewhat as most of the story takes place in England among a family of nefarious criminals who are even odder than the Munsters.

 

You don’t getter much odder than Terry-Thomas with an axe.

The plot of Munsters, Go Home! kicks off with Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne ) learning from his wife Lily (Yvonne De Carlo) that an uncle of his had recently passed away and according to the will Herman has now inherited an English manor known as Munster Hall in Shroudshire, England. Their son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is at first confused by this windfall, “Mom, how come Pop inherited an English title? I thought he was made in Germany.” It turns out that after he was created he moved to England and was adopted by a family called Munster, who gave him their name.  So I guess we're to assume Doctor Frankenstein was a terrible father figure and Herman ran away from home. Excited with the prospect of becoming "Lord Munster" Herman packs his family into the Munster Koach and soon they are aboard an ocean liner bound for England.

 

Travelling in style is Herman’s motto.

The section of the movie that takes place aboard the American transatlantic passenger ocean liner SS United States comes across as rather poor filler, padding the film’s runtime to feature-length, with the only element of consequence being Herman’s niece Marilyn (Debbie Watson ) encountering a new love and suitor onboard ship in the form of Roger Moresby (Robert Pine), a rich motorcar enthusiast who will have more bearing on the plot once they get to England.

 

An affair not to remember.

Now, I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the character of Marilyn as to the fact that the Munsters consider her unattractive, with her actually being quite normal looking and them decidedly not, but that she believed them never made sense to me. She’s not imprisoned in the Munster house so she must be completely aware that it’s her adoptive family that are not the American norm. Does she even watch television or go to the movies? When Roger calls her beautiful and her response is to think he is being sarcastic one must wonder how much of a mess the Munster’s made of this girl's poor mind.

 

Is she suffering from sort variation of the Stockholm Syndrome?

The movie kicks into gear when they finally reach Munster Hall because, as it turns out, the British Munsters are unsurprisingly not too keen on their American counterparts taking the title and holdings of the Munster family. Cousins Grace (Jeanne Arnold) and Freddie Munster (Terry-Thomas) are furious that these American Munsters are getting the manor and that Herman will be Lord Munster instead of Freddie. Their mother the Lady Effigie Munster (Hermione Gingold) is a little more restrained, insisting that with the planning of the mysterious Griffin they will easily be rid of these interlopers. Unfortunately, the first plan involves trying to scare the Munsters away with chain rattling, ghostly moanings and sliding doors that reveal skulls and corpses with Freddie dressed in a white sheet. Needless to say, this is not the way to get rid of a Munster as it actually makes them feel right at home.

 

“Oh Lily, they’re playing our song.”

Things get even more complicated when Herman and Grandpa (Al Lewis) discover a hidden passageway that leads to a secret room where they find a printing press and a crate full of counterfeit pound notes. Instead of immediately contacting the police Herman stupidly confides in Lady Effigie, who denies all knowledge of the counterfeiting operation located beneath her very home and assures him that she will inform the police immediately, which allows her and the Griffin to plot another way to get rid of Herman and his family. This next "brilliant plan" is to con Herman into entering the annual Shroudshire Road Race where he would have a fatal “accident” and this plan is only slightly less stupid then Freddie prancing around in a white sheet.

 

It does give us one of the coolest automobiles ever designed.

Stray Thoughts:

• The Last Will and Testament states that Freddie Munster's father disowned him so the title "Lord Munster" would pass to Herman but for a title to transfer beyond the next in line it would take an act of Parliament.
• If the counterfeiting operation was in the basement of Munster Hall why were the henchmen sneaking crates of fake money into the basement?
• When the counterfeiting operation is discovered Herman calls out, “Car 54, where are you?” a reference to an earlier sitcom that starred both Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis.
• The plan is to kill Herman Munster during the race, making it look like an accident, but what were they planning to do with Lily and Grandpa Munster tied up in the basement?
• Both the Munster Koach and the Drag-U-La were designed and built by George Barris, the man behind the Adam West Batmobile.
• For a pair of vampires Lily and Grandpa seem to have very little problem with the sun.

 

Did they pack a shit ton of sunblock for this trip?

Munsters, Go Home! is a rollicking fun comedy with a cast of characters you can’t help but fall in love with. Fred Gwynne is pitch-perfect as the towering patriarch of this Norman Rockwell family from Hell and though the film’s plot is paper-thin the wonderful comic antics keep things going at a good clip so we're never given a chance to get bored. Surprisingly one of the best elements of this movie was that of the Marilyn love affair subplot, with her discovering that Roger’s family hates the Munsters and they stand in the way of their love, which led to a nice heart-to-heart with her aunt Lily, “You’ve only had your heartbroken, wait till you’ve had a stake driven through it a half-dozen times like I have.” It’s this kind of humour that is the staple of the Munsters and is what makes the show and this movie timeless. Munsters, Go Home! is a must for fans of the series or even just fans of the Universal Monsters and goofy comedy in general.

 

This is a fun-filled adventure for the whole family to enjoy.