SexWorld (1978) – Review

Pornographic spoofs of popular mainstream films has been a long-standing tradition to the point of it becoming a genre unto itself, unfortunately, the stuff being made today is more akin to someone simply raiding a local costume shop and then quickly shooting a couple of scenes on video, yet back in the day a serious amount of time and money was spent to produce such sexual satiric versions, but as films like 1974’s Flesh Gordon did cost a bit of money this type of spoof has been set aside for cheaper and quicker porn parodies, ones that would be streamed and forgotten as fast as they are made. This brings us to the movie we will be looking at today, a sex parody of Michael Crichton’s science fiction classic Westworld, cleverly enough called SexWorld, which I think deserves to be remembered.

 

This looks like a nice double-bill.

Anthony Spinelli was one of the major players when it came to pornographic films during the "Golden Age of Porn," with a career that spanned three decades, but his best title was easily SexWorld, a tale about an amazing resort where guests could have any sexual fantasies fulfilled. Written by Spinelli, this film isn’t really a lampoon of Crichton’s film as it doesn’t really have much in the way of a science fiction feel to it, sure they have sex pleasure bots for the guests but it’s more about adults coming to grips with their own sexual hang-ups than it is about the science fiction elements, and there is certainly no running for your life from a robot Yul Brynner. The movie opens with a group of people boarding a charter bus to SexWorld, a place where guests are treated to a non-judgmental opportunity to work out their kinks, repair marriages or even simply delay loneliness for a brief period of time.

 

“Coffee, Tea or Me?”

Among the passengers is a painter named Joan Rice (Lesllie Bovee) and her husband Jerry (Kent Hall), there's a woman named Millicent (Kay Parker) who desires a more forceful partner but her submissive and impotent partner Ralph (Jack Wright) who can’t fulfill those needs and has someone serious mommy issues, and finally, we have the lonely and introverted Lisa (Sharon Thorpe), who relies on visiting XXX theatres and phone sex with strangers to get what she desires. During their orientation they are told “We offer everything and anything; bondage, domination, watersports and incest, whatever you desire” and while we hear the SexWorld administrator offer such a wide diversity of sexual experiences the film will remain mostly vanilla, aside from the rough sex Millicent receives as expresses her wish to be dominated and a rather bizarre interlude with Roger encountering a black woman (Desiree West), who he saw on the bus but had no interest in having sex with her because he is a colossal bigot, despite him claiming otherwise “I’m not racist, I just don’t like you people.”

 

Tonight on “The Honky and the Hottie”

The film plays quite fair in the interracial sex department because not only does Roger get his racial horizons broadened but poor introverted Lisa learns the truth behind the say “Once you go black you never go back” and there will be, of course, plenty of lesbian action with Joan fulfilling her fantasy of having sex with her next-door neighbour Marian (Abigail Clayton) and then there is Jerry who finds himself in a room with two girls that put on a show for him before including him in on the fun, but that’s about it for sexual experimentation, other than a bizarre cuckolding moment with Ralph, who is lured away from watching his wife getting ravished so that he can be cured of his mommy issues, there isn’t all that much kink on display, at least not as one would expect from a film called SexWorld.  There will be no bondage scenes or bathroom play and certainly nothing as taboo as incest.

 

I know porn is about voyeurism but isn’t this going too far?

Stray Observations:

• The premise of this film could best be compared to that of the Aaron Spellings Fantasy Island, in fact, a Fantasy Island erotic series is something Netflix should really think about investigating.
• That the charter bus that takes them to the park has a big “SexWorld” banner on the side this clearly indicates that the world of this film has achieved a healthier attitude towards sex.
• One of the rules is no fraternizing with other people from the tour group, which seems like a rather odd restriction for a place called SexWorld.
• The park’s clientele consists of both male and female guests, yet they only have male counsellors, you’d think getting honest answers about secret sexual desires would be easier to achieve if there were counsellors of both sexes.

 

This place has only slightly more privacy than what you’d get at the DMV.

Anthony Spinelli’s SexWorld only hints at its science-fiction underpinnings, that the sexual partners provided to the guests are manufactured on the spot is the only real futuristic element on display, right up to giving you a replica look-a-like of the man or woman of your dreams, whether that person is from real life or your imagination, but the nature of how the resort works isn’t the point of Spinelli’s story as it is more about creating a psychological playground for his characters than it is some kind of futuristic thriller, and to his credit, this film does handle mature themes in a way one would not expect to see in a pornographic movie – and to be sure, this is a very graphic movie – and he also spent time and effort into creating colourful sets and unusual locations for these hardcore romps to take place. It should be noted that the movie has a weird ending, where all but one of the technicians in SexWorld’s control room freeze as if suddenly turned off, and why Spinelli thought this “twist” ending was needed is beyond me.

 

Disney Imagineers worked night and day to achieve this.

Though SexWorld doesn’t push any boundaries in the field of sex and is not as kinky as one may have assumed going by the premise, it does manage to explore some of the darker places of one’s Id and I have to give him credit for creating a genuinely sincere if odd little flick, which can’t be all that easy considering he didn’t have high-calibre actors at his disposal nor a big budget, but the end result was a solid erotic journey that was more cerebral than expected and with honest themes that many viewers will be able to relate to.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) – Review

When it comes to alien visitors the Earth does seem to attract a lot of the “evil invader” types because for every E.T. The Extraterrestrial or Starman we get a half-dozen aliens who have "regarded this Earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us" but in 1951 director Robert Wise helmed a science fiction classic that strode the line between the aspects of both invading and benevolent aliens.

Loosely based on the Harry Bates short story “Farewell to the Master” Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still can be considered one of the earliest examples of a science fiction movie that worked as fun escapist entertainment while also being a message picture, a not too subtle one with the main protagonist bluntly stating “Knock off this nuclear bomb shit or you will be destroyed” and it’s through this societal lens that we get one of the best examples in the genre, one that would later be greatly explored by Gene Rodenberry on his television series Star Trek. For this science fiction tale, screenwriter Edmund H. North penned a very tight and simple script one that director Robert Wise then utilized with a documentary-style approach, so as to give the film a more believable quality to offset its more fantastic elements. The arrival of a flying saucer and its subsequent landing in Washington, D.C. is treated as “Breaking News” and the military's reaction to such an impromptu visit from outer space is only one of many of those believable aspects that Wise peppers throughout the film.

Note: Production designers Thomas Little and Claude Carpenter collaborated with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright for the amazing design of the spacecraft.

The basic plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still follows the events of a flying saucer landing on the grassy fields of a baseball complex to which out of the belly of the craft comes Klaatu (Michael Rennie), an alien visitor our world, but who is then almost immediately shot by a trigger-happy soldier. This action results in a more menacing figure emerging from the craft, Gort, a towering eight-foot-tall robot that unleashes a powerful beam that vaporizes rifles, tanks and artillery guns.  Lucky for the military Klaatu calls off the robot before it can lay waste the entire army and allows himself to be taken to Walter Reed Hospital where he tries his best to convince a politician that he needs to speak with all of the world leaders, not just the President of the United States. This proves harder than anticipated, most politicians not known for global thinking, which forces Klaatu to bid adieu to the government’s hospitality and find out for himself what makes the people of Earth tick. Taking on the guise of mild-mannered Mr. Carpenter he rents a room where he meets widow Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray), whom he befriends, and it's from Bobby that he learns much of Earth's history and culture. Later he meets up with professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) in the hope that if politicians won’t come together for the common good maybe men of science will.

 

“I’m not just a pretty face, I’m this film’s Albert Einstein equivalent.”

The heart of this picture isn’t about the military hunting for the escaped alien, or even Helen’s self-centred boyfriend Tom Stevens (Hugh Marlowe) ratting out Klaatu’s whereabouts to become rich and famous because though those elements do allow tension to percolate throughout the film, the true center of the film is Klaatu’s relationship with Bobby as it's seeing the world through those innocent eyes that he doesn’t write off the whole planet and immediately order an orbital bombardment. I particularly like that at no point in this film is there a hint of a romance between Helen and Klaatu, she doesn’t choose Klaatu over Tom she chooses the lives of Earth’s billion inhabitants over a dickhead. It should also be noted that though Klaatu announced on his arrival that he "came in peace" this does not make him a pacifist. When discussing with Professor Barnhardt how to get the world to listen to reason he glibly suggests “Leveling New York City or sinking the Rock of Gibraltar” and it's Michael Rennie’s casual off-handed delivery of this remark that has us believing that he’s not kidding around, we're just Barnhardt convinces him to try a more subtle approach.

 

This ends up getting him killed, but don't worry, he gets over it.

Over the years people have pointed out several similarities between Klaatu and a certain Jesus Christ; Klaatu took the name Carpenter as an alias which was Christ’s original occupation before becoming the Savior, and at the end of the film Klaatu is resurrected and ascends into the night sky, and sure, his coming to Earth with a message for all mankind does sound somewhat Christlike but at no point did Jesus threaten the world with complete destruction if they didn’t listen. Klaatu isn’t so much a “Turn the other cheek” type as he was “This robot here will obliterate both your cheeks and all cheeks in the vicinity” type, and I did find it particularly funny that the Motion Picture Association of America found the portrayal of Klaatu's resurrection and limitless power to be an affront to the Bible so they forced Twentieth Century Fox studio to have Helen ask Klaatu whether Gort has unlimited power over life and death, to which Klaatu explains that Gort has only revived him temporarily, "That power is reserved to the Almighty Spirit."

 

To be fair, Gort does have a certain Wrath of God vibe going on.

Stray Observations:

• Klaatu states that he has travelled "Five of your Earth months" and "250 million of your Earth miles" but this would put his starting point somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, yet neither of those planets could even support life as we know it and the idea that we wouldn’t notice an advance civilization that close is a bit farfetched.
• Two doctors marvel at Klaatu’s physiology and especially at his people’s life expectancy of 130 years and then they both immediately light up cigarettes, and I have to wonder "Was this a subtle anti-smoking message?"
• How Klaatu escaped from a locked room on the third floor of Walter Reed Hospital is never explained, we later see him open Professor Barnhardt’s locked door but how he got past Military guards still remains a mystery.
• I don’t know if this is just something of the 1950s, but Beth seems strangely okay with her son hanging out all day with a complete stranger.
• When Klaatu neutralizes electromagnetic fields across the globe it is clearly broad daylight in every country, where we see people struggling with inoperative devices, but does this mean Klaatu’s device also creates daylight in every time zone in the world as well?
• That military let a woman, who was clearly aiding and abetting the fugitive alien, to walk away after Klaatu is shot is harder to believe than death-dealing robots from space, as is the idea that the military would post only two guards at the spacecraft.

 

I’d love a sequel detailing her life after Klaatu left.

That The Day the Earth Stood Still turned out as good as it did is mostly due to the fact that Robert Wise didn’t try and “showcase” a particular shooting style and allowed the film to unfold in a very realistic manner, adding to that the incredibly talented cast of actors on display, Patricia Neal as a strong single parent, Billy Gray as young Bobby whose performance proved he was one of the best child actors of his era and, of course, we have the then-unknown Michael Rennie whose performance gave the character a sense of noble gravitas that elevated was not normally attributed to science fiction films, back that all up with Bernard Herman’s stellar score - one of the earliest and best uses of the Theremin - and we get a motion picture that set a new standard for the science fiction genre and its inclusion of what some would call "certain subversive elements" all went towards making this film practically timeless.

Checkered Ninja 2 (2021) – Review

Stories about killer dolls are certainly nothing new to Hollywood and are even known to have sparked a franchise or two, but in 2018 Norway entered the fray with Checkered Ninja an animated horror film by director Thorbjørn Christoffersen who gave us a movie that was quite a bit left of center in the world of family entertainment, yet as bizarre as that film was it still managed to strike a big enough cord to warrant a sequel.

The original Checkered Ninja was a fairly dark film, especially if it was supposed to be considered a kid’s film, as it dealt with the murder of a child working in a Taiwanese sweatshop, beaten to death by millionaire Danish toy magnate Philip Eberfrø, which resulted in a checkered ninja doll being possessed by the spirit of Nakamura Chōbei, a vengeful ninja who later teams up with a reluctant Danish kid named Aske Stenstrøm to track down and kill Eberfrø. Aske, who is not too keen on murder, eventually convinces the ninja doll of a plan that involved getting Eberfrø framed for drug smuggling instead of the more blood-soaked option. So yeah, Checkered Ninja was not your typical animated feature for kids and the sequel certainly didn’t waste any time reassuring fans of the first film that this one is going a little dark.

 

If only an avenging ninja spirit had been here.

The movie opens with Philip Eberfrø (Anders Matheson) orchestrating from behind bars the murder of any witnesses to his crime and the torching of the now spiritless ninja doll because what kid’s film worth its salt wouldn’t open with a contract killing? Meanwhile, Aske’s stepfather has come into some money when his “poop tracking ap” surprisingly lands him a lucrative job and a $150,000 signing bonus, but this windfall allows them to go on a nice trip to get the plot moving along. We also learn that hanging around with the spirit of a ninja had more than a little lasting effect on Aske (Louis Næss-Schmidt) as he’s been secretly continuing his martial arts training and spending his nights trying to become a teen vigilante, with varying degrees of success, and this does set up the sequel with new and fresh dynamic.

 

Who knew ninjas used pump-action squirt guns?

Aske is also dealing with the fact that his “girlfriend” Jessica (Emma Sehested Høeg) is suddenly ghosting him and going to high school parties without him, this because Aske is just a “child” and not cool, and if that drama wasn’t enough the spirit of Nakamura Chōbei has returned, possessing a convenient passing hedgehog because the ninja doll is currently a pile of ash, because with Eberfrø being released from prison, due to lack of evidence, a dead witness and the disappearance of all the sweatshop workers who witnessed the original murder allowing him, so our heroic duo must once again work together until Eberfrø is either dead or behind bars. At first, Aske is reluctant to use the family vacation as a way to thwart Eberfrø’s release from prison, the prison being in Thailand which is not a vacation spot his stepdad or stepbrother are interested in, but due to his belief that Jessica’s lack of interest stems from him not being a “bad boy,” he decides that becoming the apprentice to a vengeful ninja may be his ticket out of the Friend Zone.

 

“Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”

Needless to say, the Ninja isn’t all that thrilled when the new checkered doll Aske’s mother makes for them, the hedgehog having died due to the combination of its milk allergy and the ninja’s love of smoothies, with the garment being more “girlie” in nature as she used a pink checkered material dotted with cute little hearts, which is not an outfit that instills fear or allows for great stealth, of course, that is only one of the many speed bumps on the road to justice our heroes must face.  Fashion disasters aside, Aske is able to shanghai the family vacation to exotic Thailand where Eberfrø is soon to be released, resulting in a very disgruntled stepbrother who wanted to go to Spain to experience churros in their native habitat, but Aske and the Ninja quickly learn that there is a list of names of all the children from the sweatshop and if they get that list and find the children before the villains, well, they can put Eberfrø back behind bars and save the day.

 

“I found the list of kids we have to murder on Craigslist.”

This entry dispatches its horror roots in favour of the “Buddy Cop” genre as the story mostly deals with Aske and the Ninja trying to find a middle ground in their relationship, with Aske’s mind distracted by thoughts of Jessica dumping him for boys with bad reps and the Ninja’s singled minded focus on the mission, which at one point he leaves Aske in the clutches of the villains just so that he could pursue his sole goal of stopping Eberfrø,  This eventually does lead to some nice self actualizations from both parties and this makes the movie a little more introspective than many animated films of its kind – as if there are any other animated films like Checkered Ninja – but as any sequel knows you have to amp up the complications to make things a little more interesting and for this one, it comes in the form of Aske’s stepbrother who discovers the true nature of the ninja doll and forces them to take him along in a three-way partnership.

 

Negotiations on this aspect are rather pointed.

Stray Observations:

• Danish schools apparently have parkour training as part of the exercise curriculum, how cool is that?
• Aski’s stepfather decides a “Suggestion Box” would be the way to decide where they go on vacation, but the fact that they aren't allowed to discuss beforehand any preferences this would most likely result in just four separate suggestions.
• They run into Aske’s uncle, who is able to provide a timely rescue because Thailand is such a small country and not for the reason that it’s a convenient Deus ex machina.
• Aske and the ninja must infiltrate a Taiwanese nightclub called the “Lucky Fucky Club” which is certainly not an establishment you’d find in a Disney movie.

 

“Thailand, come for the scenery stay for the Ladyboys.”

What is strange is that the story seems to start out with a typical “treasure hunt” plot structure, with Aske and the ninja having to track down the ten missing children before the villains do, with them overcoming obstacles along the way, but the film wraps up after the very first one is located, which makes the ending seem rather abrupt if still mostly satisfying. It should also be noted that though there are still quite a few “adult-related moments” this sequel isn’t nearly as dark as the original film as its themes are more about friendship and being true to yourself than it is about murderous revenge, though we do get some solid revenge here, and aside from such ventures into locations like the “Lucky Fucky Club” this entry is a little more “family-friendly” and its core message is quite solid, making it a movie that I can recommend to an even broader audience. Now, the jury is still out on whether or not Checkered Ninja will become a franchise, this kind of movie rarely gets the exposure it deserves, but my fingers are crossed that someday we will get Checkered Ninja 3: Evil is Free.

Note: If there is a third installment, they definitely need to go to Japan.

Grizzly (1976) – Review

Following the success of Spielberg’s summer blockbuster Jaws, the cinema was quickly flooded with killer shark movies but one of the most blatant rip-offs didn’t involve a shark or even take place in the water as this movie dealt with “18 feet of gut-wrenching, man-eating terror!” and by that I mean William Girdler’s Grizzly, a film that didn’t just rip off Spielberg's classic but used it as a point-by-point playbook.

As the case with many “Nature Attacks Movies” there wasn’t a whole lot of plotting required for a film about a killer grizzly bear, maybe even less than usual, as the story centers around a giant bear that suddenly appears amongst a bunch of campers in a national park, which causes some undue alarm, and the head Park Ranger Michael Kelly (Christopher George) is tasked with finding this animal after it kills a pair of female campers.  We're talking about your basic "Nature Attacks" movie but for some reason, this film also felt the need to throw in a love interest in the form of a photographer Allison Corwin (Joan McCall), the daughter of a local restaurant owner, who is a character that if completely cut out would have no effect on the end product whatsoever. Her sole purpose seems to be tripping over the remains of a victim and providing at least one-bed scene, which one could argue is not all that essential, but what is essential is creating the threat of this rampaging grizzly bear and in that area, William Girdler's film is a little more hit and miss. For this type of movie to work, we have to be on the side of the hero, but Park Ranger Kelly is a bit of a one-note mess and things are not helped by the film not providing him much of a mystery to uncover. We know it’s a bear, everyone in the movie knows it’s a bear and the only real argument we get in this film is what kind of bear is it.

 

“This was no camping accident!”

In Spielberg’s Jaws, a good deal of the conflict was not man against shark but man against bureaucratic assholes, with the local mayor refusing to shut down the beaches because that would harm the island’s economy, but with Grizzly we have park supervisor, Charley Kittridge (Joe Dorsey), who blames Kelly for the attacks, saying that the bears were supposed to have been moved from the park, which I’m not sure is an actual thing park rangers are supposed to do. It’s not like there are ways to stop a bear from wandering back down into camping areas. The antagonism between Kelly and Kittridge is so poorly manufactured it’s quite laughable at times, with Kittridge spouting off such lines as “Kelly, you're a maverick. We don't have room for mavericks!” which begs the question, what exactly does it take to be considered a maverick park ranger?

 

“My ego is also cashing cheques my body can’t cash.”

We later get some bullshit about Kittridge refusing to close the parks only it's not because “It’s the 4th of July!” but because he was hoping to parlay the press coverage into somehow landing a cushy government job in Washington. Now, I’m no political insider but I’m not sure how keeping a park open so that more people can be eaten by a bear is somehow attractive to those on the beltway, then again, I'm not a political insider so maybe that is on-brand. He does invite in every yahoo with a rifle, so maybe he was courting the gun lobby? Of course, the Kelly and Kittridge dynamic is only part of the drama as we also have helicopter pilot Don Strober (Andrew Prine), a Vietnam veteran who will wax poetically about killing “Gooks” and will give us this film’s version of Quint’s U.S.S. Indianapolis speech from Jaws in the form of a story about an Indian massacre perpetrated by a killer grizzly.

“Well let me tell you a little story boy. A long time ago there was a tribe of Indians up here in these woods. They were all laying down in these parts... or something I can't remember. Any way these herd of grizzlies smelt them out. They came in and they ate them. They thorn them all up. Little children, sick ones everybody! There were few braves to go out on the hunt. They came back and the grizzlies turned on them! So there you got yourself a little situation. A whole herd of man-eating grizzlies. Just running around tearing up them Indians!”

 

“And that’s why I won’t wear a lifejacket in the woods.”

While Andrew Pine may, at first glance, be this film’s Quint analog we also have naturalist Arthur Scott (Richard Jaeckel) who dresses up in animal skins and is in charge of giving the audience the required “bear facts” and while this fits the Richard Dreyfus/Matt Hooper character his gruff manliness is also clearly trying to channel Robert Shaw as well. Sadly, these three men do not set out on a small boat to hunt down a Great White Shark, more's the pity, because them wandering around these woods is less than exciting and is downright tedious at times. A key problem with Grizzly is that we never get the suspense that Spielberg managed so expertly to create with Jaws, in this film we will simply see some poor sap in the woods, then the bear will mosey up and eat them, no dramatic tension provided.

 

Was this attack intended to rival the shower scene in Psycho?

Stray Observations:

• If the bear doesn’t look to be “18 feet of gut-wrenching, man-eating terror” as the poster claims that’s because it was an 11-foot tall bear named Teddy, who actually preferred eating marshmallows rather than campers.
• To prove this wasn’t a Jaws rip-off the filmmakers clearly thought that killing two women instead of just one in the opening scene, as was the case with poor Chrissy in Jaws, would be enough of a difference, which to be fair is typical thinking for this genre.
• A female park ranger takes a break from hunting a killer bear to skinny dip in the river because...she was hot? Now, I’m all for a little nudity in my “Nature Attacks Movies” but they couldn’t come up with something less stupid than that?
• Our park ranger hero states to his supervisor “Those campers are in my jurisdiction, now I'm going to deal with it the way I've seen it fit. Now you just try and stop me!” which technically shouldn't be too hard as he’s your boss and could simply fire your ass.
• Scotty wants to capture the grizzly alive, using some kind of tranquillizer bullet, but for years it’s been standard wildlife procedure to euthanize a bear once it has killed a human.
• I like to believe that the shark attacking the helicopter in Jaws 2 was a case of Universal ripping off the climax of Grizzly as some kind of bizarre payback.
• Apparently, Kelly was unable to find an oxygen tank to stuff in the bear’s gaping maw so he had to resort to a bazooka to blow it up.

 

“Smile, you son of a bitch”

If imitation is the highest form of flattering then Steven Spielberg must be one of the most flattered men in the world but writers Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon have since stated that didn’t think they were making a Jaws rip-off at the time, which either means these two men were either extremely self-delusional or possibly just winking at the world while the money rolled in. While this entry in the “Man against Nature” genre sports a decent cast at no point did I find this film about an “18 feet of gut-wrenching, man-eating terror” to be all that terrifying, which is odd considering a grizzly bear can be bloody fucking terrifying, yet endless shots of this particular Teddy bear running through forest never raised my fear level above modest concern. That all said, Grizzly did become the top-grossing independent film of 1976 and held that title until John Carpenter’s Halloween came out a couple of years later, and though it will go down in history as one of the more blatant rip-offs of Jaws it at least can also be considered one of the better ones.  Which isn't saying much.

Trivia Note: William Girdler had a “robot bear” constructed using a taxidermist provided grizzly bear but it was even less convincing than “Bruce the Shark” from Jaws and thus 99.9% of this movie consists of shots of a real bear with an occasional glimpse of a guy in a bear suit.

The Stuff (1985) – Review

Eating healthy has been an issue facing many of us over the years, with friends decrying “If you keep eating like that you are gonna die” but in Larry Cohen’s 1985 horror film The Stuff we get the idea that eating something that is bad for you being taken to a whole new level in a film that is both a satirical look at consumerism as well as a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with elements of The Blob thrown in for good measure.

In this classic Larry Cohen film, we have a small group of protagonists fighting against the rapid consumerism of harmful junk food that not only mind controls the consumer it’s later revealed to be a sentient organism from beneath the Earth's crust that plans to enslave mankind, basically, swap out The Stuff with McDonald's and Burger King and we’re talking a documentary here. Cohen isn’t much for subtlety or world-building and this film doesn’t spend much time explaining how any of this works or goes down, the movie opens with some worker at a mine coming across a white cream-like substance bubbling out of the ground and his immediate response is to taste it. Sure, that's the first thing I'd do in that situation.  Clearly, this movie’s premise was never intended to be taken seriously and what meagre plotting unfolds does so without care of whether or not any of it makes a lick of sense. How does a product go from being found burbling out of the ground to becoming the number one fastest-growing food product in the world, it doesn’t matter it just happens.

 

“I started reading the script but gave up after page three and just took the money.”

Enter David "Mo" Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) a disgraced ex-FBI agent who has been hired by a bunch of ice cream magnates to steal the secret of The Stuff as well as possibly perform some good old fashioned industrial sabotage. Rutherford is two parts charm to one part slime and Moriarty dives into the part with great gusto and gives us great lines such as “No one is as dumb as I appear to be.” He quickly enlists the help of Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci) who is an advertising executive responsible for making The Stuff a household name through such brilliant ad campaigns as “Enough is Never Enough” and her inexplicably joining up with Rutherford is simply another victim of a very trimmed down script. We also get Rutherford briefly teaming up with "Chocolate Chip Charlie" (Garrett Morris), whose company was stolen out from under him by the people behind The Stuff and their journey to what appears to be a ghost town operated by a group of Stuff controlled zombies gave me a very Halloween III: Season of the Witch vibe but was also one of many sequences that doesn’t really go anywhere.

 

“Hey, which one of us is a Lethal Weapon?”

It’s also clear that Larry Cohen was a fan of the movie Invaders from Mars as this film also includes a young boy named Jason (Scott Bloom) who discovers that there is something seriously wrong with The Stuff and has to flee his home when his parents insist that he become “One of us” which leads him to partner with Rutherford and Nicole who, for some reason, think a twelve-year-old boy would be a great asset in taking down a massive corporation that is brainwashing America through junk food. That the kid marches into the enemy compound alongside soldiers is right out of Invaders from Mars and the right-wing paramilitary nut Col. Malcolm Grommett Spears (Paul Sorvino) is a perfect stand-in for Colonel Fielding from that 1953 classic.

 

“Son, if your parents are here I’ll lend you my rifle.”

Stray Observations:

• Upon seeing white goop bubbling out of the ground and having the immediate thought of “I wonder what that would taste like?” has to be the oddest response ever. I’m more cautious about leftovers I find in my own fridge than this guy is about stuff popping out of the ground.
• I will give the filmmakers credit for coming up with the name “The Stuff” for this mysterious new product and I’m genuinely surprised it hasn’t been used by a food manufacturer yet.
• Actor Patrick O’Neil plays the corporate distributor of the mind control Stuff which is pretty fitting considering he was also the man behind The Stepford Wives.
• That the FDA is revealed to be either ineffective or out and out corrupt is the most believable element in this movie.
• The Stuff is very slow when it comes to attacking one of the protagonists, it’s as if our heroes have some kind of plot armour.
• Rutherford says they have to get to a big city because all the small towns are probably already controlled, but then seconds later they’re pulling into a paramilitary compound in the middle of nowhere. He’s damn lucky right-wing nut jobs don’t like tasty desserts.
• That the public would immediately believe a radio broadcast claiming that their favourite food is actually an alien invader is less believable than the idea of this film’s entire premise.
• Chocolate Chip Charlie was sent by Rutherford to get help from the FBI but when he returns all we get for this is the alien screech scene from the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

 

“I could have brought a gun or a bomb but yawning seemed like a better attack.”

Watching The Stuff I can appreciate Cohen’s blend of satirical comedy but where the film fails isn’t in the goofy fun stuff but in the horror area as we never really get a sense that The Stuff is much of a threat to our heroes – the kid escaping from his possessed family was the only moment of tension in the entire film – and that slow-moving Stuff is never properly explained doesn’t help this in any way, it also failed to overcome the problem of making a pile of Cool Whip look scary. When the film stumbles to its conclusion we are left with more questions than answers, “Did the Stuff come from space and was hiding underground waiting for its moment to strike or was it always there like some ancient Lovecraftian monster?” Cohen’s script was more interested in the wacky shenanigans of Mo Rutherford and friends than answering such queries and thus we never learn the motivation behind this particular monster or the reason it was mind-controlling people in the first place, we can assume global domination but a clearer agenda couldn’t have hurt.

 

This is clearly a rock quarry why didn't someone call Doctor Who?

If the film has one saving grace it is in the performance of Michael Moriarty who eats up lines like "My friends call me Mo, because no matter how much I get, I always want mo” as if they were mana from Heaven and it’s his goofy charm that keeps this movie afloat.  That all said, I still preferred his two-bit hustler in Larry Cohen’s Q: The Winged Serpent a little more but his industrial spy/con man in The Stuff was easily the most entertaining element which was greatly needed in a film when your antagonist is a pile of white goo. It's fair to say Larry Cohen’s attempt at satire had its moments but he never quite nailed down the balance between the comedy and the horror, regardless it is a very entertaining movie.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) – Review

When it comes to cinematic depictions of literary characters Dracula is up there with Sherlock Holmes when it comes to the number of times he has been brought to the big screen, from F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece Nosferatu to Bela Lugosi in 1931’s Dracula, Christoper Lee's run in the Hammer Films and John Badham’s more sexy Dracula starring Frank Langella, basically, the adaptations of the world's most vampire seems almost endless, but what if the man behind The Godfather was to take a shot at such a classic horror story, what would that look like?

First off, I’d like to state that this film should have been called Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula as it deviates so hard and fast from Bram Stoker’s novel that anyone familiar with the book would most likely suffer whiplash while viewing it, this is not to say that the movie doesn’t follow somewhat similar plot elements from the book or contain all the necessary characters to be called a Dracula movie, but so much of what is on screen is more “From the mind of Francis Ford Coppola” rather than that of Bram Stoker. It should also be noted that Bram Stoker did not so much as base his character on real-life Romanian ruler Vlad Dracula, a rather notorious individual with a penchant for impaling his enemies, he simply borrowed the name and scraps of miscellaneous information about him for this book, while here, Coppola clearly embraced the origins of his Dracula on that historical figure and even created a whole new origin story for him.

Historical Note: Vlad Dracula’s death was either at the hands of a Turkish assassin, or he himself was mistaken for a Turk by his own troops during battle and killed at their hands, he did not renounce God and become a cursed creature of the night.  I also doubt he wore plastic armour.

The movie opens with a bizarre origin of Dracula (Gary Oldman) where we find him riding off to fight against the Ottoman Empire only to return home to find that his wife Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) had committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. After a priest informs him that his wife's soul is now damned to Hell for committing suicide an enraged Vlad desecrates the chapel and renounces God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness, which makes me ponder "What if the priest had a little more tack, think of all the suffering that could have been spared." The story then jumps ahead four centuries with solicitor Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) being sent to Transylvanian to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisitions in London, this after the last solicitor went mad, but while staying at Castle Dracula his host finds a picture of his fiancée, Mina Murray (Winona Ryder), who Dracula believes is the reincarnation of beloved Elisabeta.

 

“Did you dare take my wife on an excellent adventure?”

Leaving poor Jonathon imprisoned in his castle, to be fed upon by his vampiric brides, Dracula books passage to England, along with fifty boxes of Transylvanian soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey to which he soon begins his mission of stalking and seducing poor Mina, well, not quite right away as he takes time to seduce/rape her best friend, the very sexily free Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost), and he turns her into an undead creature like himself, and this is the heart of the problem with this take on Dracula as Coppola clearly wanted his vampire to be a tortured and sympathetic soul, one who simply wants to be reunited with his lost love, but Dracula is such a monster that any such sympathy must fall on deaf ears and the “relationship” he develops with Mina is far from romantic.

Dracula: “I’ve crossed Oceans of Time for you.”
Mina: “Didn’t you just turn into a wolf-creature and screw my best friend?”
Dracula: “We were on a BREAK!”

 

I guess everyone has their animal needs to fulfill.

The movie does include the book's entire cast of vampire hunters; with Lucy’s suitors, Lord Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), Quincey Morris (Billy Campbell) and Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant), and Seward’s old mentor Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins).  What is bizarre here is Van Helsing's immediate assumption that she is the victim of the vampire as it is so abrupt and off-the-wall crazy that I’d assume Dr. Seward would have locked him up in the asylum rather than follow him into battle. There is no debating the fact that Anthony Hopkins is one of the finest living actors today but his performance in this film is staggeringly over-the-top and this is clearly the fault of the director and the script, case in point, while informing this group about vampires he starts dry-humping Quincey’s leg like a dog in heat while bellowing out “We are dealing with forces beyond all human experience, and enormous power. So guard her well. Otherwise, your precious Lucy will become a bitch of the Devil! A whore of darkness!” Strangely enough, this results in a trip to the crypt to lop off Lucy’s head, followed by a nice roast beef dinner, rather Van Helsing ending up sharing a room with Renfield, as one would logically assume would be the result.

 

“Academy Awards don't put food on the table.”

This film's interpretation of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is more than a little eccentric, in the book he was just familiar with the subject matter of vampirism and when discovering the nature of Lucy’s blood loss he was able to provide advice for our heroes in their hunt for Dracula, but in this movie he has apparently been after Dracula for years, calling him “The foe I have pursued all my life” but if that were the case one must question his intelligence. If you’ve been searching for Dracula all those many years why not try, I don’t know, checking out his castle? It’s not like Dracula had been keeping a low profile, he was buying plots of land in London under his own name, so this makes Van Helsing the worst vampire hunter in the history of the world.

 

Is this Dracula’s castle or Castle Grayskull?

The film doesn’t treat poor Mina Murray much better, with this whole “reincarnated lover” and her seduction by Dracula making her character come across as either wishy-washy or confused, and because of Coppola’s intent in making Dracula sympathetic, we get scenes of him fighting off the urge to turn Mina into a vampire, not wanting to curse her with immortality, while she practically jumps his bones, begging to be turned. This all comes across as rather insane, one moment she is berating him for murdering her best friend and then the next second she is lapping up his blood and pleading with him to “Take me away from all this death!” I know some girls are into the whole “bad boy” image but this isn’t some grunge rocker, who may have some groupies on the side, he is literally a bloodthirsty monster. Simply put, the Dracula depicted here is not a tragic hero and all the corny dialogue in the world won’t change that fact.

 

“I’m Batman.”

The film does try to give Mina a little more agency than what her book counterpart had, who was basically just a meal ticket for Dracula, and instead of simply using Mina’s psychic connection to Dracula to help the vampire hunters on their chase Coppola has her perform the Coup de Grâce, mind you, this does not come about due to any realization that she’s fallen in love with a monster it’s more a case of her “freeing him” from his cursed life, stating at the end “There, in the presence of God, I understood at last how love could release us all from the power of darkness. Our love is stronger than death” and then he transforms back from the bat-faced monster into pretty Vlad, making this film into some kind of bizarro version of Beauty and the Beast. I’m sure glad all those people could die so that these two could have some kind of fucked up happy ending.

 

A tale as old as time.

Stray Observations:

• Elisabeta believes a note that was delivered by an arrow through her window, which begs the question “Was that how normal mail was delivered in the 1400s or is she just that stupidly gullible?”
• If denouncing God gave you superpowers and immortality, I’m surprised more people haven’t tried this.
• The British accent that Keanu Reeves attempts in this film is so hilariously bad it’s one of the film's more entertaining elements.
• Jonathon Harker’s boss mentioned that Dracula had been buying up plots of land all over London, which in the book was explained as being bolt holes where Dracula had stashed back-up coffins filled with Transylvanian earth, but in the movie, despite Jonathon seeing Dracula’s minions filling numerous boxes of earth, this is forgotten as Dracula flees immediately after Carfax Abbey is exposed.
• Is the fact that Dracula’s shadow is a bit disconnected in its movements a nod to the independent shadow of Peter Pan, a fellow immortal?
• If one of my vampire brides was Monica Bellucci, I don’t see the point in sailing off to London to get a new one, and I don’t care if that person is your reincarnated lost love, we’re talking Monica Bellucci here!
• Mina being the reincarnated love of the film’s monster is a plot element lifted right from the 1932 Universal film The Mummy and has nothing to do with Bram Stoker's novel.
• Dracula brings a baby for his brides to feed on, a nice midnight snack, but exactly how much blood do vampires need to survive, and if this is a regular thing why wouldn’t the local villagers have either stormed the castle with torches by now or packed up and moved?

 

“Hey girls, I got us some nice take-out!”

Needless to say, this is not exactly Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and I’m normally okay with filmmakers producing their own spin on a classic story but in this case, it’s a bit disingenuous to slap the author’s name right up there with the title as if this was the ultimate adaptation. I should point out that Coppola has not made a bad movie here, there are serious elements I have problems with but that does not intrinsically make this a bad movie as the look of the film is quite spectacular, with Coppola utilizing old school filmmaking techniques rather than more modern methods to pull off the required visual effects – the film nominated for four Academy Awards and won Best Makeup, Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Costume Design and should have one Best Art Direction as well – but on the acting front things are a little dicier. Sure, people love to point out Keanu Reeves and his terrible British accent but every actor in this movie was providing broad campy performances that would have gotten laughs if found in a High School production Little Shop of Horrors.

 

"We'll all be performing the Dinner Theatre version in Florida."

Somehow, due to this being a film by legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, we are to assume that this was some kind of brilliant artistic choice instead of what it was, a goofy and bizarre take on the subject matter that had no intentions of following the source material, that all said, the film can be called many things but boring is not one of them and with its amazing visual style and the “interesting” acting choices one can’t help but be a little entertained as well as amused. Bram Stoker’s Dracula may not be the definitive version of the book but it does get points for being bold, brash and a little crazy.

Note: Whether or not this is a good adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel is an almost moot point when you consider the cultural impact the film had on the genre, with costume design by Eiko Ishioka creating a new image for the Count that would for the first time free him from the black cape he was most known for, but the film's offbeat narrative elements and questionable performances prevent it from becoming the classic that I’m sure Coppola had hoped it would achieve.

The Mole People (1956) – Review

Five years before the Fantastic Four would make their comic debut tackling the Mole Man and his legion of moloids you would find John Agar battling the under dwellers in the Universal Pictures classic monster movie The Mole People, and while these mole people may not have been in the same league as other Universal Monsters this film does have Leave it to Beaver’s dad as a co-star, so that’s something, right?

Like many science fiction movies of the day the filmmakers thought an opening narration was important to set the stage and in the case of The Mole People we get English professor Frank Baxter to explain to us all the crazy “Hollow Earth” theories which are supposed to explain how the premise of the film has some basis in reality. He is quick to point out that “This is science fiction, of course. It’s a fiction. It’s a fable beyond fiction, for I think if you’ll study this picture and think about it, when it’s over, you will realize that this is more than just a story told. It’s a fable with a meaning and significance for and for me in the 20th Century.” Now, after seeing this movie the only significance I got was that studying archeology is a good way to get yourself killed unless you’re someone like John Agar, that and don’t piss off mole people.

 

I certainly wouldn’t want to piss off these guys.

After that very informative introduction the movie proper begins and we meet the members of a scientific expedition exploring a remote mountain region in Asia, this team includes Doctors Roger Bentley (John Agar), Jud Bellamin (Hugh Beaumont), Paul Stuart (Phil Chambers) and Professor Etienne Lefarge (Nestor Paiva) and while puttering around they discover Sumerian tablet warning them of the power of the goddess Ishtar and a curse upon whoever uncovers the tablet, a curse which may or may not be responsible for the following earthquake and the discovery of an ancient oil lamp on the slopes of a nearby mountain.  When Stuart questions the fact that the engravings on the lamp seem to indicate a Sumerian version of Noah’s Ark Dr. Bentley responds "Exactly. The flood has been proven to be a historical fact, why not a Sumerian version?” And sure, the Epic of Gilgamesh does contain a Sumerian account of the Great Flood but would one go so far as to call this historical fact? If thousands of years from now future historians find the works of Stephanie Meyer will the existence of sparkly vampires be considered a historical fact? Needless to say, this group’s archeological skills come into question quite often in this movie, that they actually find a lost city of Sumerians is more blind luck than skill.

 

Hell, Tarzan finds one or two lost civilizations before lunch.

As the expedition climbs up the lonely mountainside, dodging the occasional avalanche, they come across what looks like the ruins of a Sumerian temple but before they can do much exploring the ground suddenly gives way beneath Stuart and he falls to his death and one must wonder that maybe that curse wasn't all that fanciful?  The rest of the group scale down after him only to find his mangled body and they seem strangely surprised at his death, which is a bit odd considering he fell over a hundred feet, but before they can make their way back up to the surface, a landslide rumbles down toward them and seals their exit. Searching for another means of escape, the remaining three explorers stumble across another large cavern containing the ruins of an ancient Sumerian city. The intruders are quickly captured and sentenced to death by the high priest (Alan Napier), who rules a race of albinos that are descended from the ancient Sumerians, lucky for our heroes Bentley discovers that his flashlight is a great tool in warding off people who have lived their whole lives underground. Much to the high priest’s dismay the king (Rodd Redwing) believes these so-called intruders are actually messengers of Ishtar and commands that they are to be treated as honoured guests.

 

Life Lesson: “When someone asks you if you are a god, you say yes!”

This lost Sumerian society isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be as their diet consists mostly of mushrooms and cave rats – we see that they have goats but I’m not sure how those things survive without grazing land – and all the work in this society seems to be done by a race of enslaved mole people, poor hunchbacked creatures that burrow through the earth to escape their master’s lash, but as well all know a good adventure film can’t exist without a love interest so good ole Bentley is given his own personal slave in the form of a lovely girl named Adad (Cynthia Patrick), whose natural Caucasian skin is disdained by the others and is considered a "mark of darkness" but how a few people have escaped the albino affliction is never explained, which is odd considering that 90% of this movie is exposition. There isn’t a lot of action in this film and most of what we get is simply our heroes running up and down rocky corridors, and as for the love interest, well, it has a very tacked-on feel to it and has the depth of a puddle in the Sahara.

Note: The original ending had Dr. Bentley and Adad living happily ever after but the studio was reluctant to imply an interracial relationship so they insisted on a new ending where Adad tragically dies after escaping the underground city. I guess the idea of a strawberry blonde Sumerian marrying an American was too much for audiences of the time.

Stray Observations:

• You know you’re in trouble when a film opens with an old white dude in a library explaining how what you are about to see is totally credible.
• I hate ancient tables that contain warnings of curses if you remove them, tablets that can only be read after removing said tablet, basically, gods can be real dicks and they clearly love a good Catch 22.
• Our heroes are supposed to be well-respected archeologists but the first thing they do is call Ishtar a Sumerian goddess when she was actually a Babylonian. Did they get their degrees from some low-rent community college?
• Whatever college these guys attended they clearly aced the course on speaking Sumerian as all three of them are completely fluent in this dead language, which is certainly an odd elective to be an expert in.
• The underground city they find is supposed to be Sumerian but throughout the film, all the writing we see is in the form of Egyptian hieroglyphics, which has me suspecting that the screenwriters of this film didn’t even go to a community college.
• To keep the population at a sustainable level people are occasionally sacrificed before the light of Ishtar, which is a dark but believable scenario, but the fact that they come out of the chamber of Ishtar looking like charbroiled briquettes is less so when it’s revealed that the light in the chamber is just sunlight.

 

They should have been wearing sunblock SPF 4000

Universal’s The Mole People is a bit of an odd duck when placed alongside their retinue of other classic monsters as the titular creatures are not the film’s primary antagonists and fit more in the mould of the sympathetic “monster” and it is they who end up saving the day and rescuing the hero and this puts The Mole People into the rather rare company of the science fiction genre films with somewhat complicated creatures. Make-up artist Jack Kevan did a great job in designing these bug-eyed hunchbacked denizens of the subterranean world but as most of the film is spent with a trio of rather bland “heroes” and not these shambling humanoids the film is really lacking in any form of excitement and even with Alan Napier hamming it up as a high priest there isn’t a lot here to recommend fans of classic monster movies.