Godzilla (1998) – Review

When it comes to Japanese exports there is no greater example than Godzilla and with over thirty Godzilla films and counting it’s a hard point to argue, but when it comes to Americanizing this iconic monster things haven’t gone all that well. Lately, we’ve been treated to Godzilla in the new Monsterverse that at least tried to capture the spirit of the Japanese creation, with varying degrees of success, but back in 1998 Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the two men behind the disaster epic Independence Day, were given the opportunity to make the first American Godzilla film – not counting Japanese versions that simply had Raymond Burr unceremoniously stuffed in – and to say they completely failed to stick the landing would be the understatement of the century.

When a Japanese fishing vessel is attacked by some enormous creature the United States Government calls in Dr. Niko "Nick" Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick ), an expert in the effects of radiation on biological matter, to investigate and before you can say “Kaiju!” a monstrous lizard is rampaging across the island of Manhattan and it’s up to Nick and friends to not only figure out how to stop Godzilla but also to discover his reason for visiting the Big Apple. Now, that all seems well in good but what follows isn’t really much of a Godzilla movie, sure, there’s a giant city-destroying monster that stems from the testing of atomic bombs yet the creature bears very little resemblance to the Godzilla most of us grew up watching. In fact, the plot of this movie has more in common with the Ray Harryhausen classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms which had atomic testing wake up a dinosaur, that then proceeded to Manhattan Island for some late-night dining. It should also be noted that it was Ray Harryhausen’s dinosaur classic that inspired the original Gojira.

Note: The Rhedosaurus in that film was radioactive and was somehow able to wander around New York City without being spotted, which is something the makers of this film clearly took to heart.

But the 1998 Godzilla film wasn’t just a monster movie as it's also had romantic-comedy elements stuff inside it; while hunting for the creature Nick runs into his old college girlfriend Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo), who we learn had a four-year relationship with Nick and then ran off without even a phone call or Dear John letter.  Now, eight years later she uses their past connection to steal classified information from Nick, so as to help her land a job as a reporter, which results in him getting fired, and she’s supposed to be our hero’s romantic love interest for this film, seriously? Practically every moment spent with the Audrey character is both painful and unnecessary and I’m left wondering why couldn’t Nick’s paleontologist boss (Vicki Lewis) have been this film’s love interest?

 

Scientists hooking up while hunting a monster is practically a staple of the genre.

We also get a subplot with a French secret service agent (Jean Reno) who is leading a team that intends to cover up their country's role in the nuclear testing that created Godzilla – if all else fails blame the French – but that element of bizarreness is overshadowed by the film’s third act when our heroes all converge on Madison Square Garden to discover a nest with over 200 eggs. It’s at this point that the film stops being a Godzilla movie and takes a sharp left turn into Jurassic Park territory with everyone running away from baby Godzillas that were blatant raptor analogs.

 

“Welcome, to Jurassic Dreck.”

Stray Observations:

• The filmmakers take the brave stance of blaming France’s atomic testing for the creation of Godzilla because we wouldn’t want to give America a black eye, which makes the use of stock footage of American nuclear testing a rather odd choice here.
• The old Chinese survivor reacts to Jean Reno’s lighter by uttering the word “Gojira” which implies that the flame reminded him of the attack, which of course makes no sense as this version of Godzilla doesn’t breathe fire.
• Audrey’s boss holds the promise of promotion via sexual quid pro quo, while Nick’s boss on the Godzilla hunt is your basic “Man Hungry Woman” who constantly flirts with him. Is this a Godzilla movie or study on workplace sexual harassment?
• Nick is mocked for his theory that the creature has been mutated by radiation, but if the task force didn’t already believe this to be the case why did they bring him along in the first place?
• If this was a proper monster movie a character betraying the hero for personal gain would have resulted in some kind of ironic comeuppance, which means this film needed a scene of Audrey being eaten while trying to get footage of Godzilla.
• An Apache helicopter pilot states “He’s right on my tail sir, I don’t think I can shake him” because he, apparently, forgot that helicopters can go up.
• Going by the sheer amount of eggs they find at Madison Square Garden Godzilla’s womb must be part Tardis.
• That Godzilla is eventually killed by the military leaves me wondering if the filmmakers had even seen a Godzilla movie before.

 

This is not how you treat the King of the Monsters.

When the film went into pre-production Toho Studios gave the American creators a 75-page dossier of what they could and could not do with Godzilla's character, which consisted of a few simple rules; Godzilla cannot eat people, only fish, he has to have three rows of dorsal plates and no more or less than three toes on his feet and four fingers on his hands, he cannot be made to look silly and he absolutely cannot die in the movie. Needless to say, none of this was taken to heart by the studio and was blissfully ignored. What we got was a fast-moving iguana that though large was nowhere near the size of the Godzilla we saw in the Toho films, who could be seen towering over skyscrapers in those movies. Worse is that they also removed his ability to breathe atomic fire, instead, his breath simply fans the flames of an existing fire because that makes sense. This begs the question, “If you are going to make so many drastic changes to the character of Godzilla why bother calling the film Godzilla at all?”

 

Oh, right, brand recognition.

On the visual effects side of things you’d expect the guys behind Independence Day would knock that aspect out of the park, and as for the citywide destruction that’s exactly what they do, but when it comes to Godzilla himself things are a little dodgier. As far as late 1990s computer-generated monsters go this one isn’t too bad but as most of the scenes took place at night, and in the rain, you really can't say just how good the monster looks. Overall, as a Godzilla film this entry is a complete failure but if you considered it a remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms then it’s a little more passable, but only a little.

 

"You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?"

That this film was going to piss off Godzilla fans was a no brainer, and I’m not sure what the studio was even thinking when they went for that particular design, but even if this film had included the true King of the Monsters it still would have had that horrible love story to curdle your soul. This is one Godzilla film that will never be considered canon and is best forgotten by all parties concerned.

Dr. No (1962) – Review

When it comes to literary characters with pop culture cache Ian Fleming’s James Bond is up there with the likes of Dracula, Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes, but Bond's journey to the big screen wasn’t an easy one and was almost derailed by a televised version of Casino Royale featuring an American spy named Jimmy Bond, and when it came to casting this iconic role as the “World’s Greatest Spy” for his big-screen debut the likes of Cary Grant, Richard Burton and David Niven were bandied about but they all turned it down, it wasn’t until they finally cast 32-year-old Sean Connery as Bond that we were off and running in what would turn out to be a very lucrative franchise.

That the Bond films are notorious for taking great liberties with the source materials is no news flash, some of the films basically being “In Name Only” adaptations of Fleming's novels, but with this first Bond film producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli kept Dr. No fairly close to the book, with James Bond (Sean Connery) being sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of two MI6 associates, Commander John Strangways (Timothy Moxon) and his secretary – who are both killed by a trio of henchmen known as “The Three Blind Mice” – and throughout the first half of the film we get what can best be described as a solid espionage thriller with Bond utilizing all kinds of spycraft to not only find out what happened to Strangways but to survive the various assassinations attempts orchestrated by Dr. No's underlings. And though the plot of the film does deal with the villainous Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), and his plan to disrupt US test launches, it does leave out book Bond fighting a captive giant squid and Dr. No being buried alive in a pile of guano, which is greatly missed opportunity, in my opinion.

 

“I’m sorry, Mister Bond, but my giant squid is not feeling all that well.”

As a Bond outing, many viewers may find this one a bit of slow burn and we don’t even meet the villain until the film’s last act, and while Connery gives us a cool and calculating spy who women love and men want to be, but the supporting cast, on the other hand, was a little more problematic. Once arriving in Jamaica Bond meets up with his CIA counterpart Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) for the first time, which would also be the last time for Jack Lord whose performance as Leiter was pretty much sleep-inducing – though this didn’t hurt his career any as he later landed the starring role in Hawaii Five-O – and Bond is also assisted by a local Cayman Islander named Quarrel (John Kitzmiller) whose depiction of a native fisherman led to some fairly uncomfortable racial stereotypes such as Quarrel being depicted as a superstitious and somewhat cowardly servant to Bond. This kind of thing had been an unfortunate cliché in Hollywood for years, dating back to such films as The Cat and the Canary and Ghost Breakers, and that Quarrel meets his end facing off against a “dragon” is rather disappointing.

 

Note: Quarrel’s son will get better treatment in the Bond film "Live and Let Die."

Of course, dodgy African American stereotypes weren’t the only ethnic issue plaguing Dr. No as the title character was to have been of Chinese-German ancestry but in the film he is being played by French-Canadian Joseph Wiseman, with make-up applied to make him look Asian, and that isn’t all, we also have Bond getting it on with femme fatale by the name of Miss Taro (Zena Marshall), who was secretly working for Dr. No, but she is portrayed by a British actress and also made up to appear Asian. Seriously, could the producers not find an attractive Asian actress to play this part? Now, aside from dubious and bizarre casting choices, Dr. No is a damn solid Bond film, with some nice action set pieces and beautiful locals and even more beautiful women, but the real success stems from how perfect Connery was in the part. As secret agent James Bond Sean Connery is able to pull off equal parts suave charm as well as the cold calculating elements of a vicious killer, all without missing a beat, and nobody delivers post-murder quips better than Connery.

 

Not to mention the fact that he does look great in a tux.

When it comes to Bond films a very important element is the Bond girl and though the duplicitous Miss Taro may have been the victim of awkward casting the key Bond girl in Dr. No was the beautiful beachcomber Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), who Bond would encounter while skulking around Dr. No’s island. With Andress being a Swiss actress and a worldwide sex symbol casting her as a Bond girl was an obvious no brainer – though the studio quickly decided her Swedish accent didn't quite fit the bill for a girl who collected seashells in the Caribbean – but as gorgeous as Ursula Andress was her character in this film doesn’t add much to the plot. Bond runs into her while investigating the island of Crab Key and then brings her along for the sole purpose of being a bit of eye candy as well as the prerequisite damsel in distress.  This is not to knock Andress impact as a knock-out Bond girl, no one is denying that, it’s just a shame that they didn’t give her much more to do other than look great and act naïve.

 

“Hello, could someone get my agent on the phone?”

Stray Observations:

• “M” criticizes Bond’s choice of a Berretta M1934 which leads to the introduction of the Walter PPK as a standard MI6 issue.
• This first Bond film has no gadgets and Major Boothroyd of Q Branch is portrayed by actor Peter Burton, Desmond Llewelyn as “Q” would not appear until the next Bond outing.
• Bond’s iconic drink of a martini "Shaken, not stirred" is first introduced here, which most bartenders will attest is the best way to ruin a martini, but as shaking the drink lessens the alcoholic effect that makes it a perfect drink for a spy.
• A tarantula placed in Bond’s room is one of many attempts to kill our hero but as a tarantula’s bite, while painful, is hardly lethal it makes no sense to use one as an assassination attempt.
• The song “Under the Mango Tree” must have been very popular in Jamaica, not only does Honey Ryder sing it while coming out of the surf but we also hear it playing at a local restaurant and one of Dr. No’s informants has it on her record player.
• This film sports three “Bond Girls” but Ursula Andress doesn’t make an appearance until about the hour mark, but boy what an appearance.

 

I’d wait under a mango tree for days if this was the reward.

Dr. No didn’t just introduce us to Sean Connery as Bond it was also loaded with so many other iconic elements that would appear throughout the run of the franchise; we have the aforementioned cool quips from Bond to exotic locals and beautiful women, we get the Maurice Binder’s title sequence and its iconic gun barrel – that doesn’t actually feature Connery but his stunt double –- and for the first time we also hear Monty Norman and John Barry’s excellent musical score which includes one of the most identifiable themes to ever appear in a movie. That all said, there is one key ingredient that sets this film apart from other films of the genre and that would be the magnificent sets provided by production designer Ken Adams, which would become a continuing hallmark of the series, and if I ever decided to become a supervillain Ken Adams would be the first and only person I’d look to for designing my fortress lair.

 

If I were to have an HR department in my lair this would be it.

With Dr. No, director Terrance Young may not have helmed the best of the Bond films, especially with the ethnic issues not ageing all that well, it still manage to assemble all the proper components that would later become synonymous with the world of James Bond. Dr. No features plenty of humour, great action and all the escapist thrills the series would be known for, all while introducing Sean Connery as the iconic hero.

 

Note: The movie ends with Bond overloading a nuclear reactor which would have resulted in the spread of radioactive fallout over Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti, and rendering portions of them uninhabitable for over a century. James Bond may be a great spy but not so great for the environment.

Popeye (1980) – Review

What do you do if you can’t get rights to the Little Orphan Annie? That was the problem facing legendary producer Robert Evans when Paramount lost the bidding war for the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Annie, but something as minor as rights issues wasn’t going to stop Evans so he called an emergency executive meeting to ask the question, “Which comic strip characters do we own?” and this, of course, resulted in the answer of Popeye the Sailor Man, which leads to the bigger question, “Is that really the best way to decide on a multi-million dollar movie?”

When one thinks of Popeye a few things leap readily to mind; his massive forearms, his squinty eye, that eating spinach gives him an incredible boost in strength and, most assuredly, the violent love triangle between him, Olive, and Bluto. That last element is key to the mythos of Popeye the Sailor Man and was really the only thing screenwriter Jules Feiffer and director Robert Altman had to hang their picture on, unfortunately, that wasn’t quite enough to hold a two-hour movie together. The comic strips and cartoons could never be considered all that plot-centric and Altman and company strangely took that disjointed aspect to heart and created a movie that was simply an assemblage of comedic sequences without a central plot to hold the whole thing together.

 

“I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam."

The movie opens with Popeye (Robin Williams) arriving in the seaside town of Sweet Haven in search of his long-lost pappy, but instead of a tearful reunion with the man who abandoned him he is confronted with a large collection of oddball characters who live under the thumb of the mysterious and never seen, Commodore, whose insane taxes are enforced by the brutish Bluto (Paul L. Smith), a hulking man who has his mind set on marrying Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall) despite the fact that she’s broken their engagement multiple times. Almost as inexplicably Popeye and Olive find themselves drawn together – Cupid’s bow must work overtime in this town – but with the introduction of plot thread of them finding an abandoned baby, which they call "Swee'Pea" (Wesley Ivan Hurt ), they slowly become a somewhat family, and that’s pretty much the plot of the movie. Sure, we also learn that the enigmatic Commodore is actually Popeye’s long-lost father Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston) and that Swee'Pea can somehow predict the future, which results in the baby being kidnapped by Wimpy (Paul Dooley) and given to Bluto so that he can make a fortune by predicting gambling results.

 

Wait a minute, Wimpy does what?

Robert Altman did a fantastic job with such ensemble pictures as M*A*S*H and Nashville but those were films that were based in a somewhat grounded reality, while in the case of the fantastic cartoon world of Popeye – which, I'll admit, was wonderfully realized by production designer Wolf Kroeger – doesn’t really have much depth beyond its clapboard sets and goofy costumes to draw an audience in. Musical numbers are randomly plopped down without much impact on the plot and, at best, they could be called nicely padded moments and at worst painfully unfunny, and aside from the Sweethaven anthem and Olive Oyle's "He Large" ode to Bluto they are fairly forgettable. From Popeye’s arrival to the film’s conclusion I never quite found myself engaged in any of these wacky characters and most of this comes from the fact that we never become invested in their goals. Popeye’s desire to find his father comes across as rather arbitrary and the complete left turn the plot makes with the introduction of psychic Swee'Pea and the Commodore’s treasure didn't help any.

 

Meanwhile, over at David Lynch’s Popeye.

Watching this movie one cannot help ponder on a few things that the script never bothered to address.  Olive Oyl is not rich or beautiful so why exactly does Bluto want to marry her? How did Poopdeck Pappy and Bluto set up this whole Commodore con game in the first place? And what is it with Swee’Pea’s precognitive abilities and why would a mother abandon a baby that can see the future? Also, I know Wimpy is a bit of a chiseler but isn’t kidnapping a baby for a bag of hamburgers seem a bit extreme for his character? While the film offers little in the way of answers to such pressing questions it does seem to have time for lots of comedic slapstick provided by the background cast, which was made largely out of circus performers, which I will admit is all performed admirably but it obviously doesn’t go towards moving the film’s rather thin plot forward.

 

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a screenplay today.”

That all said, one must admire Altman’s casting because he really nailed it with the hiring of Robin Williams for the title role as he simply perfect as Popeye, which was also his first movie role, and he never breaks character to wink at the camera to let the audience in on the joke, but even his great performance pales in comparison to that of Shelly Duvall’s as one must assume was part that she was born to play.  Ray Walston also did an excellent job as the irascible Poopdeck Pappy but his appearance during the last act can be considered a case of too little too late, as for Paul L. Smith was as Bluto, well, even though he was the one actor who didn’t perform his own songs he was perfectly fine in the role but I personally couldn't help thinking “What, you guys couldn’t get Brain Blessed?”

 

“Sorry, he’s off filming Flash Gordon.”

One can certainly admire all the work that went into this movie but that doesn’t stop a person from being occasional bored and or confused by the mess of its screenplay while watching this cacophony of nonsense. I’ll admit the action scenes were all well executed and the cast across the board provide noteworthy performances, but none of that adds up to a product that comes close to what Max Fleischer cartoons provided decades earlier. The few moments of “cartoon craziness” are simply overshadowed by a fairly uninteresting plot and though Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall should be given high marks for their work here it wasn’t enough to save this picture.  Robert Altman's Popeye will forever remain one of those "What were they thinking?" musicals.

 Note: The marvelous set for the small town of Sweethaven was built on the Mediterranean island of Malta and is still standing there to this day and is now a tourist attraction called Popeye’s Village.

War of the Worlds (2005) – Review

There have been several adaptations of H.G. Wells's seminal book of aliens from Mars invading the Earth but only three have really stood the test of time, these would be the 1938 Orson Welles radio play, the 1953 film adaptation by legendary producer George Pal and finally, the Steven Spielberg production released back in 2005, but one of the truly interesting aspects of the original H.G. Wells story is just how easily the subject matter could be updated and made timely for future generations.

The 1953 George Pal adaptation of War of the Worlds for an audience that was gripped by the beginnings of the Cold War and the Martian invasion was both an analog to the Red Scare and the American public’s fear of the atom bomb, then we jump ahead five decades and we have an American populace once again gripped in fear but now it’s not the Russians but a more obscure threat grown in the shadow of the terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001. When watching Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, one glimpse of Tom Cruise covered in ash and it’s obvious what emotions Spielberg was trying to evoke in the viewer, sadly, the one thing this 2005 fell victim to was the desaturated look that had become prevalent in films of the early 2000s. Gone are the glorious glowing red death rays and the brilliant pulsing green lights of the Martian war machines in George Pal’s version, instead, we get cold grey CGI war machines that march through an even bleaker landscape.

 

“Set filter on drab…and fire!”

Like the original H.G. Wells novel the protagonist of Spielberg’s adaptation is your everyman, in the book he was an unnamed 19th-century writer and in this 2005 adaptation he’s a blue-collar dockworker named Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), and like the protagonist in the book Ray must navigate a war-torn landscape to find his wife – or ex-wife as the case may be – unfortunately Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp decided to make Ray a deadbeat dad and he’s travelling across this war-torn landscape with his two children, 10-year-old daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning ) and teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin), and the key difference here is that Ray is not hoping to be reunited with his true love, which was the case in the Wells novel, but simply to hand off the children to his ex-wife, and as Robbie so accurately points out “Then you will only have to care about yourself, which is exactly the way you like it!” Now, one would think this will lead to character growth, with Ray coming to realize how much he truly cares for the children, but his two kids are so bloody annoying that I was all for Ray ditching them both and striking out on his own.

 

Robbie, a poster child for abstinence.

One’s enjoyment of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds will stem from how much you can take of Dakota Fanning’s screaming as the hyper-annoying Rachel or the idiotic actions of Justin Chatwin’s Robbie, who wants to rush off and join the soldiers fighting the aliens so that he can “Get back at them!” These actions and character motivations are not only intensely stupid, and yes, I understand that this film is trying to capture the emotions that Americans were dealing with after the attacks on 9/11 but these aren't terrorists from across the sea it’s an all-powerful alien invasion and Robbie isn’t five years olds. The moment when Robbie abandons his father and little sister so that he can run off with the military because he “Wants to see” has to be one of the dumbest scenes in cinema history, and what’s worse is that after all the carnage that follows Spielberg didn’t have the balls to leave the kid dead. This is not the same Spielberg who killed the little Kintner kid in Jaws, that Spielberg would have shown Robbie atomized by a death ray.

 

This reunion scene is a complete “Fuck you” to the audience.

As for the invading aliens themselves, Spielberg certainly had a larger budget and a greater set of tools than what George Pal had back in 1953 when it came to creating alien invasion, and thus the tripod war machines that George Pal was told were too expensive, now, the people over at ILM were able to realize this piece of “Martian” weaponry in all its glory. Koepp and Spielberg did add a little wrinkle to their invasion for in their film in that we are told that the tripods' pilots travelled to Earth within “lightning storms” as a way to enter their machines, which are assumed to have been buried underground for millions of years. I’m not sure how this makes sense as an invasion tactic – can the aliens predict what kind of opponents, if any, they will be facing millions of years in advance or do they simply seed every planet in the universe just in case one of them becomes a viable destination – but regardless of the plausibility of such an invasion Spielberg and company are masters at building tension and unleashing spectacle.

Note: We never do learn where these particular aliens come from and it certainly can’t be the Red Planet, what with science and astronomy making Mars no longer a viable launching point.  Interdimensional aliens, perhaps?

The budget that Spielberg and his effects team had may have allowed them to make an adaptation of War of the Worlds that would be closer to what H.G. Wells had written all those many years ago, certainly more than any adaptation previous to this one; this movie gives us the “Red Weed” that the aliens seem to be using to possibly terraform the Earth, but we still don’t get the poisonous black smoke that appeared in the novel and but even though Spielberg keeps the focus on the “everyman” which is more in keeping with the original book, but this didn’t stop Spielberg from having Tom Cruise take out a tripod with a grenade. As this is another modernized retelling of the original novel this kind of thing should be expected and where this particular adaptation really soars is in the horrifying visuals on display, such as a locomotive engulfed in flames barreling through a railway crossing and the grim sight of dozens of dead bodies floating down a river, but Spielberg wasn’t just trying to capture the horror and gripping terror of the original novel he wanted to show humanity at both its best and its worst, that the threat being represented here was very real, stating "They are a wake-up call to face our fears as we confront a force intent on destroying our way of life." Was Spielberg warning us about possible alien invasions or threats of closer in nature?

 

“As God is my witness, I will never go hungry again.”

Once again we get an adaptation that takes great liberties with the source material, updating the setting to current times and lacing the story with themes that would resonate with modern viewers, which was to be expected, but I personally prefer the Technicolor adventure film that George Pal produced back in 1953 because even though Steven Spielberg is the king of special effects extravaganzas this film had me praying that the aliens would vaporize Tom Cruise's very annoying family and that is not a feeling you want to be generated in your alien invasion film.

Note: As in the George Pal version the war machines in this version are also protected by an invisible force field, something not found in the book, but in Spielberg’s film these shields apparently drop as the bacteria kills the pilots, and one has to admit that's a strange feature to have in your death machine. This addition was clearly so that the military could have at least a small victory in this film, “Go America!”

War of the Worlds (1953) – Review

When H.G. Wells, the grandfather of science fiction, released his serialized story of War of the Worlds he not only created one of the best examples of the genre but also a template for all the alien invasion books and movies for generations to come, and his book itself has been adapted many times from the Orson Welles radio play that panicked a nation to a Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise and two annoying kids, but the first such adaption would be the one produced by a master of the genre himself, George Pal.

When H.G. Wells penned War of the Worlds back in 1897 he was commenting on British Imperialism, superstition and the theory of evolution and much as his book The Time Machine it reflected the author’s socialist political views and the anxiety surrounding the Industrial Revolution, but as in the case of both these books, the filmic adaptations tended to strip much of the deeper meaning and replace it with stalwart heroes punching things. So let’s take a look at how the first adaption of War of the Worlds went down and where the filmmakers went right and where they veered quite a bit from the book.

 

Don't expect anything like this in Pal's version.

Updated for contemporary times, and moving the setting from Britain to America - much as Orson Welles did for his radio play - we find a movie that embodies the Cold War paranoia of the 50s, and while the original authors intent was to show the devastation an invading society – Wells not being a fan of his own country’s tactics around the globe – this 1953 adaptation is set in a world embroiled with the Red Scare and the threat of the atomic bomb. After the movie's opening introduction, where we learn from the narrator (Cedric Hardwicke) that “Across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely joined their plans against us.” This narration is one of the few direct lifts from the book and beautifully sets up the dangers our heroes will be facing.

 

The Martians were clearly not members of the Geneva Convention.

The plot to 1953’s War of the World is an incredibly economical beast for at mere 85-minutes the story just races along at break-neck speeds. When a supposed meteor lands near a small Southern California town scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry), who is one of those movie scientists who are experts in multiple fields, and before he can fully enjoy the local square dance with beautiful town librarian Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson), the meteor is revealed to be a spacecraft that is inhabited by aliens who are more about death rays than diplomacy. Things get really bad when Martian war machines emerge from the crater and decimate the military forces allied against them. These war machines pack weaponry that can either disintegrate their opponents with a "skeleton-beam" or burn them to a crisp with their heat-ray.

Note: The manta ray looking ship, with its cobra-like periscope, is easily one of the best designed alien ships in cinema history and with the added brilliant sound effects it is terrifying to behold. Producer George Pal had intended the war machines to walk on the tall tripod legs as illustrated in the book but the studio nixed this idea as being too expensive.

While fleeing the destruction wrought by the Martians Forrester and Sylvia attempt to escape via a small plane but soon are forced down near an abandoned farmhouse, unfortunately, a Martian cylinder “lands” right into the farmhouse and our two heroes are trapped in the rubble. They do manage to escape just before the farmhouse is obliterated but not before meeting a Martian face to face and taking a souvenir in the form of a Martian probe and they head with it to Pacific Tech in the hopes of finding a way to defeat the invaders. A quick study of Martian blood allows them to deduce that the aliens are rather anemic and frail and if they can’t beat their machines may have better luck attacking their biology. Sadly, the scientist never gets a chance to save the day as a mob of looters hijack their trucks and smash all their equipment, in a scene that is rather terrifying in its reality, but just as the end is nigh the war machines suddenly start to power down and crash. Turns out that while Martians were impervious to humanity's weapons, they had "No resistance to the bacteria in our atmosphere to which we have long since become immune. After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth."

 Question: Wouldn't a civilization with supposed “vast intellect” have checked out the Earth’s air quality before invading.

George Pal’s War of the Worlds was a landmark in cinematic science fiction and heralded a boom in the alien invasion saucer movie genre, leading to such classics as It Came From Outer Space and Earth vs the Flying Saucers, but as an adaptation of Wells’ book, it missed the mark by quite a fair margin. In the novel, there was no heroic scientist, a character that would become a staple of the genre, as the unnamed narrator of the book is a 19th-century writer fleeing the invasion while trying to find his wife. As for the Martians themselves, as mentioned, the movie went with a craft that floats on “invisible legs” instead of the massive tripod as depicted in the book, but the Martian themselves look quite different than their literary counterparts. In the book, they were bear-like in size with greyish and oily skin, had lipless V-shaped mouths and sported "Gorgon groups of tentacles" while the creatures in the movie were two parts creepy to one party goofy.

 

I bet he sees via the Technicolor three-strip process.

Another key difference in the Martians is their complete invulnerability in the movie, they are seen floating along the ground with blister-like force fields that no weapon can penetrate and when even the atom bomb fails to make a dent we get the military freaking the shit out, “Guns, tanks, bombs - they're like toys against them!” The Martian tripods are far from invulnerable in the book as a group of them are wiped out by army units positioned around the cylinder and later one of the Martian fighting-machines is brought down in a fight with a British battleship. The military having a few victories does not lessen the danger of the Martian invasion as their heat-ray and chemical weapons are devastating – the movie completely leaves out the poisonous “black smoke” from the book and the Martian “Red Weeds” as well as the fact that the aliens seem to be harvesting people for food – and that the overwhelming Martian forces make it clear that despite the militaries best efforts the Martian victory is inevitable, that is until by an onslaught of earthly pathogens, to which they have no immunity, takes them out.

 

It’s not much of a war if one side can’t even fight back, it's more of a slaughter.

As for the film’s ending, with people praying for a miracle and God stepping in to save the day, things are a lot different in the book, even though Wells does write that the Martians were "Slain after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in His wisdom, has put upon this earth" the depiction of religious people in his novel are far from flattering, there is no heroic Pastor Collins (Lewis Martin) who dies a martyr's death, instead, there is a cowardly and thoroughly uninspiring parish priest who the narrator regards with disgust, and the film's final scene in the church, with our heroes reunited while a heavenly choir can be heard, has no parallel in the original book.

 

Note: The film also gives us the standard female lead whose main job is to scream and bring coffee.

Now, if George Pal’s movie is, at best, a rather loose adaptation of the book its impact on cinema and the genre cannot be understated as is the brilliance of director Bryon Haskin and the Paramount crew who all worked towards assembling a truly terrifying invasion tale. Not only was this a tight and well-orchestrated movie but it had Academy Award-winning special effects and sound designs that though iconic were pillaged by dozens of movies to follow, and the Martian war machines, which were designed by Al Nozaki, were the true stars of the picture – no slight to Gene Barry or Ann Robinson – which all went towards making it one of the best of the postwar American science-fiction films. Though some aspects of the film are rather dated, what with the Cold War theme being fairly predominant, there is no denying the greatness and importance of George Pal’s version of War of the Worlds. This is a must-see for fans of cinema history and science fiction in particular.

 

Note: Many other people tried to get a War of the Worlds movie greenlit, including the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Alexander Korda, but the one man I do wish had been involved was legendary animator Ray Harryhausen, whose preliminary designs looked fantastic.

The Legend of Hell House (1973) – Review

When tackling a haunted house story one of the more troubling aspects to tackle is why the residents don’t simply “Get Out” instead of hanging around while the walls drip blood and ghostly forces are trying to tear their faces off, and the two best literary examples of this would be Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” and Richard Matheson’s “Hell House” and both of these have been suitably adapted to the screen.  Today we will look at the big-screen adaptation of  Matheson's take on one of the most popular subgenres of horror.

What would one do if an eccentric millionaire were to offer $100 thousand pounds to investigate the "Mount Everest of haunted houses?" That is the dilemma facing physicist Dr. Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill) when millionaire Mr. Deutsch (Roland Culver), the current owner of the notorious Belasco House, wants proof of "survival after death" in "the one place where it has yet to be refuted." That dozens of people have met with horrible fates while in that house – including two past investigative attempts that resulted in eight deaths and only one survivor– is something that should give anyone pause but not so with our good doctor Barrett who wants to prove that the house is simply a battery that stores residual energy and that takes a living person, not a malevolent spirit, to manifest paranormal happenings.

 

Seems like a cheery enough vacation spot.

Lionel isn’t alone in this particular exploration of the Belasco mausoleum as he is joined by his wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), who is emotionally withdrawn and not someone who should be visiting a place of pure evil for any reason, and despite Lionel’s better judgement, he allows her to accompany him and that this poor decision bites him severely in the ass should be a shock to no one. Now, good ole Lionel isn’t the only investigator in this group as Mr. Deutsch provided the same cash offer to a mental medium named Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and another medium, albeit of the physical variety, named Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall) who just so happens to be that selfsame survivor from the previous investigation twenty years ago.

 

I wonder who is going to survive this time.

The team has one week to come up with some concrete evidence – the story takes place five days before Christmas so one must assume Mr. Deutsch wants his answers as a Christmas gift – and my big question is “Were they paid in advance?” We later learn that Fischer was only there for the money, that he’d planned on keeping his psychic abilities closed off and would then simply take the money and run, but what exactly was in their contract? If Barrett didn’t come up with any sort of evidence would they not see a dime of that money? I’d certainly want a little cash upfront before entering a house that has apparently killed people, who am I kidding, I’d never set foot inside Hell House for all the tea in China, but when the end credits roll we never do find out if Mr. Deutsch was ever going to cough up any of that dough.

 

“Did you bloody well get anything writing?”

When our tiny group settle in for their investigation we are told a little bit of the house’s backstory, that Emeric Belasco (Michael Gough), a six-foot-five perverted millionaire known as “The Roaring Giant” and was a twisted man who held parties that included sadism, bestiality, mutilation, murder, vampirism, necrophilia, cannibalism and participants were also known for drug addiction and alcoholism. After a massacre that left all inside dead, and Belasco missing, it is now believed that the place is haunted by the tortured spirits of his victims. Needless to say, Disney’s title as “The Happiest Place on Earth” is still fairly secure. Things get off to a rough start when Florence begins to manifest physical phenomena inside the house, despite her not being a physical medium, with tables bouncing up and down and chandeliers dropping in for the kill but is Fischer who perceives that the house is using Florence as a conduit and that she should leave immediately. This doesn’t sit well with her or the house and soon we get Florence channelling a spirit she believes to be the murdered son of Belasco, and he’s not happy with Fischer’s appraisal, “Who the hell do you think you are, you bastard? You might have been hot stuff when you were fifteen, but now you're shit!”

 

“Maybe we should see if there is a vacancy at the Holiday Inn.”

With The Legend of Hell House director John Hough created a veritable playground for spooks and spookiness and unlike Robert Wise’s adaptation of "The Haunting of Hill House" there is no ambiguous nature to the hauntings in this movie, we do get some serious psychological moments but it’s clear early on that some serious evil shit is actually occurring and we’re not talking just some atmospheric caused delusions. That the screenplay was provided by the book’s author certainly helps in this area and though Matheson toned down the graphic violence and more intense sex scenes of his novel there is still quite a bit on display here. Hough and cinematographer Alan Hume breathe a wonderful sense of dread and claustrophobia within the walls of the Belasco House and even if Ann Barrett's unhappy married life is a little thin on the script side of things, such as the house causing her sexual exhibitionism never quite being explained, but the quartet of talented actor all bring their “A” game for this outing. Add to all that the hauntingly electronic score by composer Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson and you have a true horror classic on your hands.

 

Note: Barrett has developed a machine to negate paranormal energy which makes him somewhat of a grandfather to the Ghostbusters.

The whole reason behind this particular investigation is nothing more than an excuse to get people inside this haunted house but despite that, it does a good job of pitting science against the supernatural and succinctly illustrating the arrogance of supposed learned men. Overall, this is a beautifully shot spookfest and all involved should be proud of the result and this is a journey into terror is one I heartily recommend.

 

Note: Soon after the completion of this film director John Hough teamed up with Disney and gave the world The Watcher in the Woods, which is another atmospheric horror film that is fun for the whole family.

Casino Royale (1954) – Review

If you are out for a pub trivia night and the question arises “Who was the first person to play James Bond?” do not be so quick to yell out Sean Connery because back in 1954 CBS televised a live broadcast of an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale which starred American actor Barry Nelson, the only American to date to play Britain’s greatest spy. What’s even stranger is the fact that Nelson wasn’t an American playing a Brit as this particular adaptation makes Bond an American agent working for the "Combined Intelligence Agency."

Aired as an entry in the CBS dramatic anthology series Climax! this adaptation of Casino Royale does follow the source material fairly closely, well, as close as you can be for an hour-long show that changes the nationality of James Bond from Brit to American. The show opens with James Bond (Barry Nelson) coming under fire while arriving at the world-famous gaming establishment Casino Royale and as the show unfolds we quickly learn that Bond has been brought in to bankrupt a notorious Russian operative named Le Chiffre (Peter Lorre) at baccarat, the reason for this is that Le Chiffre has gambled away money belonging to the Soviet Union and unless he wins big his masters will have him killed.

 

“Can someone please explain baccarat to me?”

Though this televised adaptation follows the plot of the novel it does take several liberties with the source material, not only is Bond no longer a British agent working for MI6 but the character of CIA operative Felix Leiter is now, for some reason, a British agent named Clarence Leiter (Michael Pate) and the book’s love interest and double agent Vesper Lynd, who was basically Bond’s personal assistant and arm candy in the book, is now Valerie Mathis (Linda Christian), a previous love of Bond’s but who is now Le Chiffre's current girlfriend and is later revealed to be a member of France's external military intelligence agency. Basically, to get this showdown to a reasonable length the character of Vesper Lynd was combined with that of Bond's French contact from the novel, René Mathis.

 

“Darling, should we shoot the writers?”

What Bond fans will find most disconcerting is Barry Nelson’s portrayal of Bond as his performance offers none of the charm or “coolness factor” that one expects to find when watching a James Bond adventure, which was not helped by people referring to our hero as “Jimmy Bond” but I can’t blame too much of this on the actor because aside from the miscasting a lot of the script was chopped up at the last minute to make it fit the time-slot. Barry Nelson has since stated that “They went through and cut three words here, a line there, a half-a-word here, and their script ended up looking like a bad case of tic-tac-toe. I tell you it was so frightening that when I entered my only thought was, 'Oh, God, if I can only get out of this mother!' I was very dissatisfied with the part, I thought they wrote it poorly. No charm or character or anything." In fact, the only reason Nelson took the part was for the chance to work with the legendary Peter Lorre.

 

“I should have stayed in Casablanca.”

This adaptation of Casino Royale was billed as a starring vehicle for Peter Lorre and he was absolutely fantastic as the despicable vile Le Chiffre and any moment he is on screen is pure gold, sadly, that is pretty much the only thing to recommend out of this Bond vehicle as the poor script and collapsed timeline did the story no favours. The Bond girl is weak and underwritten, which is surprising considering she’s a combination of two characters, and we get only one gadget to make an appearance – which isn’t even Bond’s but a villain’s cane that functions as a silenced gun – and we don’t even get the prerequisite car chase, which is petty much a prerequisite in a Bond adventure. Now, we do have a rather chilling torture scene, with Le Chiffre trying to force Bond to reveal where he had hidden the winnings and though it isn’t the ball-busting torture from the book it’s still fairly unsettling and Barry Nelson sells it well.

 

“No, Mister Bond, I expect you to bathe.”

With a meagre 50-minute running time this is the shortest Bond adaptation and that it was intended to be a pilot for a possible James Bond television series should surprise no one – anthology shows like Climax! were often used as a testing ground for future shows – and though this “pilot” was never picked up Ian Fleming did write a few spec scripts which he would later rework as short stories that would appear in his 1960 anthology For Your Eyes Only. The only real reason to track down this Bond oddity is simply for the novelty of it and, of course, watching the great Peter Lorre doing what he does best.