Frankenstein (1931) – Review

1931 was certainly a great year for horror as not only did it see Bela Lugosi bringing his performance of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the big screen the world was also treated to a more sympathetic monster in the form of James Whales' adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, starring the great Boris Karloff, and where Lugosi's film was a supernatural tale of dark sexuality Karloff's was a journey into the darker realms of science fiction.

As was the case with Tod Browning’s Dracula, James Whale’s Frankenstein is not so much based on the book as it is on the numerous stage plays that were produced after the success of Mary Shelley’s gothic tale of science and horror, in fact, the plot of Whale’s film has very little to do with the source material, other than a mad scientist bringing a corpse to life, and the creature performed by Boris Karloff was very different from the one depicted in the novel. With a film five minutes shorter than Tod Browning’s film vampiric tale, Frankenstein runs a brisk 70-minutes in length, James Whale didn’t waste much time getting to the meat of things as the film opens with Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) partaking in a little lite robbing a grave so that Henry could have the proper material to bring his experiments to fruition.

 

I wonder if Fritz got paid extra for working the graveyard shift.

And what exactly are these experiments, the ones that need freshly unearthed corpses? Turns out that Henry is one of those quintessential mad scientists who wish to dabble in God’s domain, in this case, it is in the creation of life itself, which for Frankenstein means cobbling together a patchwork of body parts that he hopes to instill with life through the application of electricity – you can’t have great mad science without a nice electrical storm – and the final ingredient he needs to finish his work is that of a brain, unfortunately, the job of securing such an item he leaves to his less than reliable assistant Fritz, which results in the clumsy hunchback bringing back the corrupt brain of a criminal rather than that of a nice healthy one. To be fair to Frankenstein, the employment pool of assistants who would be up for grave-robbing, as well as committing acts that are affronts to God, must have been rather small.

Help Wanted: Seeking a person with questionable morals, physical deformities are not a must but appreciated, smokers need not apply.

Not everyone is thrilled with Henry’s activities, his wife Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) and her "close" friend Victor (John Boles) are both concerned with Henry’s current obsession and they seek out his old mentor Doctor Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) in the hopes that he could talk his former pupil down from his lofty perch atop an ancient watchtower located in the heart of the Bavarian mountains. Of course, this is easier said than done because talking a mad scientist out of performing his mad science is usually a futile gesture as obsession goes hand in hand with madness, and before you can say “Crazy, am I? We'll see whether I'm crazy or not” lightning is flashing, electrical diodes are sparking, and life is being infused into Frankenstein’s creation.  Colin Clive's somewhat manic performance in this film is a wonderful counterpoint to Karloff's rather silent one and minimalist approach, and when Clive bellows "Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!" you get everything you need to know about his character.

Note: The laboratory in this film was a creation of art director Charles D. Hall and electrician Kenneth Strickfaden and it became the model of mad scientist lairs for decades to come.

As mentioned, there isn’t much from Mary Shelley’s novel to found in this cinematic adaptation, in fact, her description of the creation of the Monster was rather vague in her book, with the young doctor simply stating “I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet” which left a lot of room for Strickfaden and James Whale to get creative with their science, but where the book and the movie really diverged is in the creature itself. In the book, the creature was a wholly articulate being who confronts his creator with its own disappointment in itself "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel" Worse yet is the fact that Frankenstein himself is repulsed by the appearance of the creature, whose watery white eyes and yellow skin barely conceal the muscles and blood vessels underneath, and the doctor flees like the abject coward he is. Not so the creation of James Whale, his Monster (Boris Karloff) was a mute creature of pathos and hardship, being thrust into a world against its will and is almost immediately subjected to the tortures of the hunchback Fritz. The Monster in the film is a sympathetic creature, and much of this is due to Karloff’s brilliant pantomime performance, and though the creature commits a series of murders it's hard to lay the blame solely on him as it's his childlike mind that simply strikes out in self-defence, or in the case of the unfortunate drowning of the little village girl Maria (Marilyn Harris), it’s more a case of a complete lack of understanding.

 

I lay some of the blame on the parents living by a lake and not teaching their kids to swim.

The creature from the book is a creature fueled by hatred for having been abandoned by his creator, who is then forced to wander a world that wants no part of him, and just how unfriendly is the world to this hapless creature? Well, he does befriend a blind hermit but is quickly chased off by the man’s family when they arrive, he rescues a child from drowning but is shot at by the father for his troubles, so it’s no surprise that by this point he swears revenge against all humans, and can you really blame him? On the other hand, the cinematic version is as far from its literary counterpart as possible, with legendary make-up man Jack Pierce and James Whale transforming Boris Karloff into a lumbering but sympathetic brute, one that only strikes out when attacked, and his being a mute and a somewhat mindless monster forgoes there being any chance of there being philosophical debates between creature and his creator that were found in the novel.

Note: The Bernie Wrightson illustrated edition of Mary Shelley’s novel gives us a creature that is as monstrous-looking as it was powerful and is one of my favourite versions of the Monster.

Stray Observations:

• For some reason they changed the protagonist’s name from Victor to Henry and gave the name Victor to Frankenstein’s best friend instead.
• Baron Frankenstein makes a comment about Henry’s lab being in "An old ruined windmill" but it’s actually an old watchtower. Could this be a foreshadowing of where Henry will have his final confrontation with his creation?
• Maria’s father claims his daughter was murdered but as no one actually witnessed the Monster tossing her into the lake it would be assumed she simply drowned. Did the Bavarian CSI investigate the crime scene and find giant footprints by the water?
• The Monster is somehow able to stroll into town to attack Elizabeth, which is hard to believe considering how the villagers were all out and about readying for the wedding, but an even stranger notion is that the Monster somehow knows where the location of Henry Frankenstein's house. Did Victor leave one of his business cards lying around the watchtower?
• In Mary Shelley’s novel, the Monster briefly befriends a blind hermit and later demands that Frankenstein build him a wife, but those events don’t take place here, instead, they are to be found in the sequel titled The Bride of Frankenstein.

 

Is this the first case of a movie studio dividing one book into two films?

This entry further cemented Universal Studios as being the premier home for horror and its “Universal Gothic” aesthetic, which owed a lot to German expressionism found in such films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis, became the expected setting for horror for generations to come. As an adaptation, the movie kind of falls into the category of “In name only” but it’s this cinematic incarnation that has become the public’s default setting for how we remember Frankenstein and his Monster, which is mostly due to the wonderful performance by Boris Karloff and his iconic look that was created by make-up man Jack Pierce, and while this silent lumbering creature may bear little resemblance to his literary cousin it certainly eclipses all versions of the creature before and since.

James Whale’s Frankenstein was a film that explored the fine line between genius and madness, where a modern Prometheus would be punished for his hubris in the most literal fashion, and in doing so it would inspire countless other films as the character of Doctor Frankenstein would become the proto-mad scientist, whose brethren would inhabit test tube strewn laboratories in every corner of the globe. Tod Browning’s Dracula may have opened the floodgates of the Golden Age of Horror but it was James Whale and Boris Karloff who elevated the game and changed the landscape forever.

Dracula (1931) – Review

Long before vampires were brooding emo creatures who sparkled and stalked high school girls, Universal Pictures launched what could be considered the first "Cinematic Universe" in their adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic gothic horror tale, Dracula, with the man who had already made a compelling performance in the stage version, Bela Lugosi.

Universal’s 1931 production of Dracula runs a brisk 75-minutes in length, which makes it more of a condensed version of the Bram Stoker novel than it does a faithful adaptation of the source material, with large portions of it completely missing, yet even with such a short running time the movie still managed to capture much of the mood and atmosphere of the novel. The film opens with a solicitor named Renfield (Dwight Frye) travelling to Count Dracula's (Bela Lugosi) castle in Transylvania, despite being warned by the locals about what a really bad idea that is, and after a scary coach ride and a bizarre greeting from his host, a man with a rather eccentric attitude towards nature, “Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make” he starts to wonder if maybe he should have taken their advice and maybe switched careers to something safer like bullfighting. That night he is menaced by Dracula’s three wives - "Dear Penthouse, I never thought something like this could happen to me" -  until he is eventually attacked by the Count himself.

 

It’s things like this that have made Yelp reviews so important.

Renfield, who is now a raving lunatic and slave to Dracula’s will, helps his master travel from Transylvania to England so that the Count can broaden his menu. Upon arriving in England, after decimating the crew of the ship they travelled upon, Dracula quickly begins to snack on the locals which brings him to the notice of Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), a well-respected scientist who immediately suspects that this recent plague of death is due to the work of a vampire, a conclusion I'm sure many of us would have made. Meanwhile, over at the local sanatorium run by Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston), where the giggling mad Renfield has taken up residence, the lovely Mina Seward (Helen Chandler) and her friend Lucy Weston (Frances Dade) have caught the eye of the hungry Count and before you can say “I never drink... wine” Lucy is a blood-drained corpse and poor Mina is being drawn into his seductive web.

 

One must admit Dracula is a snappy dresser.

This production of Dracula is more an adaptation of the stage play than it was of the novel, producer Carl Laemmle Jr. had originally planned to make this a big-budget cinematic adaptation, one that would strictly adhere to the Bram Stoker novel, but due to the stock market crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, the studio chose not to risk an investment on such a sprawling film and this resulted in much of the book being tossed into the dustbin in the service of the economy.  No greater victim of this was the character of John Harker (David Manners), who in the book was the one who went to Castle Dracula while in the film he is your standard boring love interest whose sole job seems to be in doubting Van Helsing’s claims that a vampire is roaming about and clutching Mina’s hand like a moon sick schoolboy. Harker is allowed to join Van Helsing in the rescuing of Mina, not that he does much, and the exciting sea and land chase that took the book’s group of heroes from England and back to Transylvania, for the final confrontation with Dracula, is now reduced to Van Helsing and Harker jogging next door to Carfax Abbey and stabbing Dracula while he lays in repose in his coffin.

 

“I’d like to sink my fangs into the throats of Universal’s accountants.”

For the film, Bela Lugosi was hired to reprise the role that he made famous on Broadway and his suave and seductive depiction of the world’s most famous vampire quickly became the iconic default setting for the character, when one thinks of Dracula you can’t help hear Lugosi’s thick Hungarian accent, and only Lugosi could have pulled off such great line deliveries as “To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious!” and it was this performance that cemented his incarnation of Dracula for generations to come. Now, as great as Lugosi was in this film the standout actor here is undoubtedly Dwight Frye as Renfield, whose journey from concerned solicitor to insect-eating madmen was easily the more memorable performance, sadly, he was so good in this role that he was quickly pigeonholed into playing eccentric or jittery characters for the bulk of his career.

 

“I’m up for the lead role in a remake of Reefer Madness.”

Stray Observations:

• An opossum and an armadillo can be seen scuttling around Castle Dracula despite these animals only being found in the Americas. I like to think Count Dracula had them shipped in special as pets.
• If vampires need blood to survive what exactly were Dracula and his brides dining on before Harker showed up? The nearby villagers are clearly aware of the dangers of going out at night so where is Dracula getting his fresh blood supply?
• Killing the crew of the schooner Vesta, during a storm as turbulent as the one depicted here, seems a little careless on the part of the Count and could have easily resulted in his coffin ending up at the bottom of the sea.
• Doctor Seward’s sanitarium has the worst security imaginable as Renfield seems to come and goes as he pleases, and sure, he’s aided by Dracula at times but I still say Seward should have fired the idiotic attendant.
• The subplot of Lucy as the vampiric “Woman in White” is never resolved and we are left wondering if she’s still out there feeding on little children.
• In the novel, Dracula had boxes of earth stashed all over London and the surrounding area, but in the movie, he only has Carfax Abbey as his singular bolt hole. It certainly wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where he had taken Mina.

 

“Don’t worry my dear, who would think I'd be dumb enough to come back here?”

Dracula was helmed by legendary silent movie director Tod Browning, the man behind films like London After Midnight and Freaks, but any serious student of film history must realize that Browning didn’t have much of an impact on the film, his distrust of the medium of sound being a major factor here, it was cinematographer Karl Freund who elevated this picture to the classic stature it has today, in fact, Tod Browning was known to leave his cinematographer to take over filming during much of the shoot, making Freund something of an uncredited director on the film. What Browning actually brought to the project may be debated but what cannot be denied is the impact Dracula had on Universal and the film industry itself because from 1931 to the present day Bela Lugosi and Count Dracula are forever linked.

 

“Please, I’m not interested in converting to Catholicism.”

Even though vampires have gotten even sexier over the years, with Frank Langella’s performance in the 1979 version of Dracula being an especially romantic take on the Count, one shouldn’t forget that a sexy and handsome vampire was quite far from what Bram Stoker had described in his book, the creature depicted in his novel was probably closer to the Max Schreck version we saw in the silent film Nosferatu, it was Lugosi who brought the world the suave and sophisticated vampire we know today, but what is even stranger is the fact that despite there being over a hundred films about Dracula, not just vampire films but ones based solely on the Bram Stoker’s character, Bela Lugosi himself had only played his most iconic role twice in his lifetime, this film and the 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and that’s just sad.

Universal’s Dracula was the beginning of the Golden Age of Horror because not only was it a box office success for the studio it also ushered in such cinematic greats as Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, Lon Chaney Jr’s The Wolf Man and Claude Rains as The Invisible Man and turned the Universal Monsters into a cinematic juggernaut, and it all started here with Bela Lugosi and the most famous vampire of all.

Once Upon a Time in China (1991-1997) – Review

There have been many films based on the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung, a real-life Chinese martial arts master and folk hero of Cantonese ethnicity, yet the series of movies by Tsui Hark starring the incomparable Jet Li has become the benchmark when it comes to making historical martial arts films and it remains one of the best examples of the genre ever put to film.

 

Once Upon a Time in China (1991)

The first chapter in Tsui Hark's sprawling epic wonderfully blends the fantastical elements of the martial arts genre while using a true-life character to bring up social and political problems that existed back in nineteenth-century China but, sadly, also exist in modern times. At the center of this is Jet Li as the legendary Wong Fei-hung whose stoic demeanour and attitude shifts as certain conflicts arise and it's Jet Li's lightning-fast-and-fluid fighting style that often brings these conflicts to an awe-inspiring conclusion. From Wong Fei-hung's brilliant use of an ordinary umbrella to dispatch numerous foes to the wonderfully staged ladder fight during the film's big climactic battle there is so much to love about this film that it's hard to pick out a favourite movie which makes this a must-watch for any fan of the genre. Another theme that runs throughout this film series is how technology and weaponry impacted the world when it comes to combat and can be best summed up by the character Iron Vest Yim, "No matter how good our kung-fu is, it will never defeat guns."

 

Once Upon a Time in China II (1992)

Where the first film in the series dealt with the evils of Western interlopers and the exploitation of the Chinese, with some nasty corrupt Chinese officials and street gangs to spice things up, in Once Upon a Time in China II the primary foe is a xenophobic cult of Chinese terrorists who want to murder or burn anything that they deem foreign. The film deals with Caucasian characters a bit more charitably this time out, though we still get the occasional racist moment from ignorant whites who don't trust Chinese medicine, but not only do we get a psycho-religious cult causing problems we also have a local government official hellbent on quashing an underground movement that plans overthrow the Qing government and establish a republic in China and he doesn't care who he has to kill to ensure that happens.

This outing is vastly more political than what was displayed in Tsui Hark's first chapter in the series, with two separate factions giving the hero a massive headache, and it also has a lot more brilliant martial arts sequences than the previous entry and with Jet Li eventually facing off against the legendary Donnie Yen and the great Yuen Woo-ping stepping in as fight choreographer, you know you're going to get an amazing film.

Je Li remains perfectly cast as the cool and collected Wong Fei-Hung, with maybe a few cracks in his armour due to his feelings towards Aunt 13, beautify played by Rosamund Kwan, and we still get some moments of levity brought to us by Siu Chung Mok as Leung Foon, and all this adds up to a masterwork of storytelling brilliance and stunning action sequences making this film a worthy sequel.

 

Once Upon a Time in China III (1992)

This third installment in the Once Upon a Time in China series doesn't have as solid a script as the previous two movies and tonally it's all over the map, most of the film's running time deals with the comedic shenanigans surrounding Wong Fei-hung and "13th Aunt" Yee Siu-Kwan romantic entanglements that are occasionally broken up by fight scenes between rival kung-fu associations. There is a subplot dealing with an assassination attempt but it's pretty damn thin and barely has an impact on the plot, and I'm using the word "plot" lightly here, and though there are some great martial art sequences too many of them consist of people in elaborate "Dancing Lion" costumes that make the fight choreography rather muddled and chaotic.

Jet Li is, as always, great in his most iconic role and it's fun to see the character of Wong Fei-hung up a bit but then there is this jealousy sub-sub plot that kind of got annoying as it went along. Overall, this is a fun martial arts film but disappointing when compared to the previous two.

 

Once Upon a Time in China IV (1993)

In this fourth outing, we get the Red Lantern Sect replacing the White Lotus Sect as the ant-foreigners who Wong Fei-hung must face off against and as always, he is caught between two threats, this time it's the Germans who provide the foreign conflict, as he tries to bring peace to China. Jet Li is also replaced in this fourth film and though Vincent Zhao is a serviceable Wong Fei-hung he's a bit younger looking and doesn't quite have the gravitas that Jet Li was able to muster, we also get a lot more blood and gore in this sequel which is probably included in hopes this might help people forget were missing Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan. What I won't forget or forgive is the poor treatment of horses in this film which clearly illustrates that China had no animal cruelty laws when it came to filmmaking, for that alone this film loses a point.

Note: If you liked the "Dancing Lion" fight sequences from the previous film you're in for a treat as there is a lot of that here, sadly, I wasn't all that enamoured with those overlong and muddled action set-pieces in Once Upon a Time in China III and they're no better this time out.

Overall, this is an average martial arts movie with more prominent wirework and even more visible wires, laughably visible at times, but there is still stuff to enjoy and the time period these stories take place is quite fascinating.

 

Once Upon a Time in China V (1994)

The previous film ended with Eight-Nation Alliance occupying Beijing, Germany itself practically declaring war on China, but in this fifth outing, much of the political undercut is set aside for a rather fun and exciting pirate adventure. Wong Fei-hung and his companions find themselves embroiled in the problems of a small port town that is having pirate troubles and with the local authorities in a state of disarray, it's up to the heroic men of Foshan to put things right.

One can best describe Once Upon a Time in China V as a blend of John Woo's Hard Boiled with Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean and surprisingly this combination works really well, with Wong Fei-hung's pupil "Bucktooth" practically turning into Chow Yun-fat as he leaps through the air while blasting away with his guns, unfortunately, there is some "comedy" bits early on that are quite cringe-inducing and we also have Wong Fei-hung and his continuing love interest problems with "13th Aunt" and "14th Aunt" which leads to some rather lame comedic misunderstandings.

Overall, this is a definite step up from the previous film, certainly helped by Tsui Hark returning to helm the picture, and the blend of martial arts and gun-play action makes this entry all the more unique and distinctive from the other chapters in the series. Basically, this is a fun action film with a kick-ass Peter Pan and his goofy Lost Boys having a blast taking on a bunch of bad-ass pirates.

 

Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997)

This sixth and final instalment in the franchise takes the racism of foreign invaders coming to China, which was a key component in many of the previous films, now has Wong Fei-hung and company venturing forth to America to experience even more racism. Obviously, martial arts in a Wild West setting had already been explored in the David Carradine television show Kung Fu but at least with this enterprise we get Jet Li instead of Carradine in bad Asian make-up, but what is a bit odd is that in Once Upon a Time in China V, which was basically a cool pirate movie, we saw that Wong Fei-hung was not all opposed to using guns and his one pupil, Bucktooth, was John Woo levels of good when it came to gunplay, yet in this film, the only protagonist to use a gun is the "Billy the Kid" character who they befriended along the way. Having characters point out, once again, that Kung Fu can't beat a speeding bullet is a bit silly when clearly all our heroes are quite aware of this fact.

That all said, the action in this film is quite fun and Wong Fei-hung and Clubfoot battling out against a raiding band of Native Americans adds a certain spice to the series and only the umpteenth trip to the well of "Will 13th Aunt and Wong Fei-hung finally get together" brings the story to a halt. Seriously, did we really need an amnesia subplot involving a pretty Native American girl and the ever-jealous Aunt 13 to pad out the running time? And though the comedy is still a bit problematic at points we don't reach cringe levels of embarrassment this time out.

Basically, if seeing Wong Fei-hung in a Cowboys and Indians setting sounds good to you then check this film out as you won't be disappointed and only a few strange script choices mar what is otherwise an excellent martial arts flick.

Cherry 2000 (1987) – Review

There have been many dystopian movies released over the years, with Mad Max rip-offs being a genre all unto themselves, but in 1987 Orion Pictures released a rather odd little entry in this post-apocalyptic wasteland of cinema in the form of Cherry 2000, a film that brought a little more sex and a lot less action than what fans of the time were probably expecting.

Part of the charm and fun in watching speculative science fiction is when the futuristic time period the film takes place in has since been passed, still know moonbase or trips to Jupiter despite Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's assurances, and we are left asking such questions as “Where’s my flying car?” and that is certainly the case with Steve De Jarnatt’s Cherry 2000, which takes place in far off year of 2017. Now, even though this film does have your standard post-apocalyptic wasteland it’s not all biker gangs and assless chaps as there are still city centers where people live relatively normal lives but society has truly fallen on hard times in the area of intimacy as actual sex acts among men and women has become overly litigious and to combat this some men have turned to androids to fulfill their emotional and sexual needs. Enter Sam Treadwell (David Andrews), an employee of the ever-growing recycling industry, whose Cherry 2000 model (Pamela Gidley) has short-circuited during sex on a wet kitchen floor.

 

He’s just lucky he didn’t get electrocuted in the process.

Distraught over his malfunctioning sex bot, Sam goes to a local robot repairman who tells him that she is damaged beyond repair but her valuable memory disk, which contains her entire personality, is intact and can be used in a new body if he can but find the same model, thus his Robo-girlfriend can be restored. Unfortunately, the Cherry 2000 model is no longer produced and the only remaining ones are to be found in a defunct warehouse in "Zone 7" which is in a particularly dangerous and lawless area that is ruled over by a rather deranged overlord named Lester (Tim Thomerson) and the only chance Sam has of accomplishing such a journey is in the hiring of ace tracker Edith "E" Johnson (Melanie Griffith) to get him in and out of the wasteland.

 

Did you ever notice that Las Vegas never survives the post-apocalypse in these types of movies?

What follows is your typical adventure buddy film where the two leads will start out in a rather antagonist fashion, bickering and pointing out each other's faults, but over time they will grow to appreciate each other, and with this being a male/female dynamic this will of course lead to romance and end with our two heroes heading off into the sunset together. This does happen but not before having some heartfelt moments with E. Johnson’s mentor Six-Fingered Jake (Ben Johnson), whose job is to give wise advice to idiot Sam, who really needs it, but where the film fails in plotting and originality is more than made up for by its crazy cast of oddball characters, with Tim Thomerson stealing the show as this bizarre wasteland overlord whose nutty minions live in a sort of post-apocalyptic Club Med, who when they aren’t murdering intruders they are throwing barbeques and dancing the Hokey Pokey. It’s all so delightfully goofy that you start to wish the movie centred around them and not Sam and his stupid sex robot quest.

 

I certainly can’t picture Lord Humongous living in a place like this.

Stray Observations:

• That a sex robot can be damaged due to sexual activity on a wet kitchen floor, resulting in a complete core meltdown, seems like a pretty big defect. I guess jacuzzi sex would be completely out of the question.
• Apparently, in the future recycling will become such a lucrative industry that the average employee will be expected to wear a three-piece suit.
• To pick up a woman at a bar you are expected to bring a demo reel of previous sexual performances, or as we would call it today OnlyFans.
• In the future you will need an agreed-upon contract, arbitrated by a third party, for something as basic as a one-night stand. That this hasn’t actually come to pass yet is quite surprising.
• Our heroes getting across a canyon river involves them letting their car get caught by a magnet on a crane, which leaves them dangling in the air where they will then survive multiple rocket launcher attacks before the shooting of the crane operator in such a way that when he dies he will slump forward on the lever that will move the crane to where they need to go. It’s at this point that any sane person’s bullshit meter would have exploded and have written off this movie as a failure to even be remotely believable, even by cheesy B-movie standards.
• Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet and Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still can be seen in the robot repairman's shop just to remind us that there are good robot movies out there.

 

Question: Were Robby and Gort turned into sex workers?

It goes without saying that Sam Treadwell will learn that “There's a lot more to love than hot wiring” and thus he will find himself attracted to the scruffy badass that is E. Johnson and the two of them will eventually drive off into the aforementioned sunset together, but not before we get a massive gunfight and a cool car chase or two because that’s what this film was selling to its audience, but where the film fails was in the male protagonist, who is simply too bland and uninteresting when compared to even the most minor character in this movie.  Lucky for us, the film does make up for his lack by including a plethora of fun side characters, aside from the brilliant Tim Thomerson, as Lester the wasteland overlord, we also have Cameron Milzer as his goofy wife, who seems more interested in sandwiches than in gunfights and is a pure delight in every scene she’s in, then there is Maniac Cop’s Robert Zdar as one of Lester’s oddball flunkie, and we also have Blade Runner’s Brion James as an outland thug, and even Laurence Fishburne’s blink and you miss his part as a nightclub sex lawyer is more compelling than our supposed hero, add to all that is the fact that we have Melanie Griffith on the cusp of her stardom, she’ll star in Working Girl a year later. That is a lot of great talent assembled for a relatively silly B-movie which is then completely hobbled by a bland lead actor and I can only imagine what this film could have been if they’d cast someone like Bruce Campbell in the lead.

 

Dude, just get your robot-loving hands off her.

I’m not sure what kind of film Steve De Jarnatt and company were trying to pull off here as it’s more a hodge-podge of science fiction tropes than it is a well-crafted story, that the hero chooses a flesh and blood woman over a robot doesn’t really bring much conflict to the table, and we also don’t even find out what events led to the world being this way. Was it simply economic collapse or something dyer that turned the United States into a blend of Road Warrior and Blade Runner? The filmmakers seemed more interested in the goofy antics of their collection of oddball characters than it was in world-building, and to be fair, for the most part, this does kind of work – as mentioned Tim Thomerson and his renegades are the highlights of the film – and if you let slide the whole absurd “Man goes on a perilous journey to get a sex robot” aspect of the movie you may find yourself having a good time. Overall, Cherry 2000 has some cool production designs and its cast, lead actor aside, all work towards making this a rather fun and entertaining sci-fi flick.

Note: There are a lot of far-fetched ideas I'm willing to accept when I sit down to watch a science fiction movie but Melanie Griffith's character going through all this shit for a measly $500 dollars was beyond the pale stupid.

Morbius (2022) – Review

In the early 70s the comic book industry’s self-censorship board, under the guise of the Comics Code Authority, was updated and the ban on stories dealing with vampires was lifted but instead of resurrecting Dracula editor-in-chief Stan Lee wanted a costumed villain and thus Morbius, the Living Vampire, was born, unfortunately, in 2022 this tragic and sympathetic antagonist became the latest victim of Sony Picture’s attempt to cash in on the success of Spider-Man over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The character of Michael Morbius has quite the storied history, from his beginnings as an antagonist of Spider-Man to his joining the superhero group Midnight Sons alongside the likes of Ghost Rider and Doctor Strange, but a story about a man who would make the journey from monster to hero is not what we got in this movie from Sony Pictures, which could have led to an interesting and compelling movie, so instead of giving us the dark and complex character found in the pages of Marvel Comics we get a Morbius who is about as likable as a case of syphilis. Our story here deals with a 10-year-old orphan Michael Morbius, who suffers from a rare blood disease and is confined to a hospital in Greece, befriending a fellow patient and bonding over their shared illness, eventually, a grown-up Morbius (Jared Leto) will become a world-renowned scientist, having created synthetic blood that saves countless lives, but his true obsession is in finding a cure for himself and his old friend Milo (Matt Smith), which has something to due with splicing human genes with those of a vampire bat and involves him going down to Costa Rica to capture a swarm of vampire bats, I’m only surprised that the bats didn’t simply inspire him to don a cape and cowl to fight crime.

 

“I’m Batman!”

Due to the illegal nature of these genetic experiments, Morbius and his colleague Doctor Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) are forced to set up shop aboard a vessel in international waters, boat and equipment all funded by good ole Milo, and while the experiment does seem to work it has the unfortunate side effect of transforming Morbius into a vampire, granting him superhuman strength, speed, reflexes, and echolocation, but during this initial transformation, he kills and drains the crew of their blood after they attack him out of fear. This leads to the introduction of FBI agents Simon Stroud (Tyrese Gibson) and Al Rodriguez (Al Madrigal), who serve practically no purpose in this movie other than to wander around crime scenes and act as if they were auditioning for parts in Law and Order: Special Morons Unit.

 

“You have the right to a better script, anything you say can and will be used to ruin this movie.”

Milo discovers that Morbius has cured himself but becomes furious when Morbius refuses to cure him as well, not wanting to curse his friend with vampirism, of course, Milo sneaks off with a vial of the formula and before you can say “Vampire in Brooklynn” the bodies are piling up and it’s up to Morbius and Martine to find a way to cure their erstwhile friend or see that he can never harm anyone ever again. Needless to say, things escalate from there, with Milo even murdering their surrogate father Dr. Emil Nicolas (Jared Harris) for no apparent reason, and what fails to work here is that we never get a true understanding as to why Milo goes evil after taking the formula. In an earlier flashback, we see a ten-year-old Milo going all "Tonya Harding" on a bully but there is a pretty wide gap between that and committing murder at the drop of a hat, and the only thing that saves this poorly written character is in how much fun Matt Smith seems to be having as if he realized that he’s in a terrible movie and decided not to give a fuck and let it all hang out.

 

“With these teeth, I can really chew the scenery.”

What is quite disappointing is that the film is competently directed by Daniel Espinosa and Oliver Wood’s cinematography is top-notch, even the acting isn’t all that bad, so the blame for this dumpster fire of a movie falls on the shoulders of screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless and the idiot execs over at Sony Pictures, who through a terribly deceitful marketing campaign tried their best to make the world believe this movie existed within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. On the plus side, the film does look good, as mentioned the cinematography is first-rate and stylistically speaking the action sequences were quite interesting, not that I quite understand why Morbius and Milo leave behind this blurred coloured wake when they move, but it did look cool and was one of the few elements in this film that at least had a spark of creativity.

 

The ongoing battle of style over substance.

Stray Observations:

• Ten-year-old Morbius is sent to New York so that he can attend a School for Gifted Youngsters, sadly, it’s not run by Professor Charles Xavier.
• In the comic, Michael Morbius was a highly respected and Nobel Prize-winning biologist, but in the movie, he publicly declines the award, going so far as to show up at the award ceremony just so he could turn it down in person, like a complete dick.
• Morbius has a little girl as a patient and he is forced to induce a coma to prevent her from having a stroke, yet we never find out what happens to her and we are left wondering if she is still in a coma or dead?
• Why does the crew of Morbius’s research vessel look to be manned solely by heavily armed mercenaries? And sure, he’s in international waters but it’s not like he’s off the coast of Africa and has to worry about Somalian pirates.
• Morbius overhears a couple of counterfeiters saying “We need to get back to the lab” but do counterfeiters have labs? And if they did, would they be equipped with what you’d need to synthesize a cure for vampirism?
• The powers that Morbius displays are never clearly defined, and we don’t know how he can hear one voice among countless other New Yorkers or why he can control bats and Milo can’t.
• During a post-credit scene, the Vulture sets up a meeting with Morbius and tells him that “I’ve been reading about you, I’m not sure how I got here, has to do with Spider-Man I think, I’m still figuring this place out, but I think a bunch of guys like us should team up, could do some good?” But exactly what did he read about Morbius that would lead him to believe a team-up would result in anything good? As far as the world is concerned Morbius is a mass-murdering vampire, not an ideal candidate for a team member.
• And where in the hell did Adrian Toomes get his Vulture gear? He appeared in a detention cell wearing a prison-issue jumpsuit and I doubt he’d have access to Chitauri technology in this world to build a new one.

 

“It’s amazing what you can find on eBay in this world.”

Basically, Sony Pictures should not be allowed to get near a comic book property unless it's a Spider-Verse sequel, and Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman have complete control because left to their own devices you end up with something like Morbius, a soulless entry that doesn't have an original thought in its short 104-minute running time. From the stale trope of the "hero" having to face off against his dark opposite, in this case, a hilariously over-the-top Matt Smith, to its origin story that was so anemic it would starve a child vampire.

Bloody Birthday (1980) – Review

When it comes to slasher films one of the more popular hooks is to attach your carnage around a particular day on the calendar, Halloween, Friday the 13th and My Bloody Valentine to name but a few, yet there are only so many specific dates to choose from – I'm still waiting for a horror movie based on International Talk Like a Pirate Day – so with Bloody Birthday we don’t so much as get a slasher film based on a particular calendar date but one that is of more generic quality.

If horror films get one thing right it’s that kids can be downright creepy, if they’re not the actual Anti-Christ there’s still a good chance that they’ll either be spraying you with pea soup or murdering you in your sleep, but with Bloody Birthday we get a cross between the Bad Seed and Village of the Damned, which to be fair is an interesting combo. The plot of this film, if one can consider what follows to be a plot, deals with three children who are born during a solar eclipse, two boys and a girl, Curtis Taylor (Billy Jayne), Steven Seton (Andy Freeman) and Debbie Brody (Elizabeth Hoy), and as they approach their tenth birthday they decide to go on a killing spree, for reasons unknown and never truly revealed.  It should be noted that this story takes place before the outcry that video game violence destroying the minds of kids “Won’t someone think of the children!” and so with this outing, we get some phony-baloney astrology explanation for why these kids are sociopathic monsters.

 

“Could we do our book reports on The Life and Murders of Ed Gein?”

This film has two protagonists in the form of teenage Joyce Russell (Lori Lethin) and her ten-year-old brother Timmy (K.C. Martel), who find themselves targeted by the terrible tri in question, that they survive multiple attempts on their lives speaks more towards the ineptness of the three little monsters than does on how good Joyce and her brother are at staying alive. Despite these two escaping death numerous times Bloody Birthday does have a good-sized body count; starting with two young lovers killed while having sex in an open grave, the brutal bludgeoning of town Sheriff James Brody (Bert Kramer), who also happens to be Debbi’s dad, the shooting of schoolteacher Viola Davis (Susan Strasberg) and a pair of teens interrupted while making out in the back of their van. What is surprising, if anything in this film can be considered surprising, is that with the death toll mounting Joyce and Timmy’s parents are completely M.I.A. as they are having some kind of “no kids allowed” vacation, yet they don’t seem all concerned that their two children are living alone in what has become the murder capital of Middle America.

 

“Next summer how about we go to Sleepaway camp?”

Stray Observations:

• People making out in cemeteries is something I’ll never understand, I guess the thrill of possibly getting caught adds to the moment, but in this film they have sex in an open grave and that’s just wrong.
• I doubt it’s police procedure to visit a public school and bluntly ask “Does anyone know what murder is?” and then proceed to interrogate a classroom full of ten-year-olds about a recent double homicide.
• Debbie has a peephole in her closet so that she can charge admission to her friends so that they can watch her older sister dance around naked, it’s nice to see young entrepreneurs in action.
• The killer kids are pretty adaptive, when the Sheriff avoids stepping on a skateboard planted on the back steps they immediately move into plan “B” and beat him to death with a baseball bat.
• Does this town not have a coroner? The kids claim that the Sheriff fell on those steps but the injuries sustained from a fall are very different than that of multiple contusions received from a beating via a baseball bat.
• Curtis wraps his jacket around the gun when he shoots Miss Davis to muffle the sound of the gunshot, now I’m no firearms expert but I don’t think a thin piece of material is going to hide the sound of a .35 revolver going off.
• Apparently, the cops of Meadowvale don’t believe in investigating because this trio of killers leaves behind mounds of physical evidence that wouldn't take a Sherlock Holmes to discover.

 

Could this be an ad for Bounty "The quicker-picker-upper!" paper towels?

Aside from a throwaway scene of Joyce giving her brother an astrology lesson, mentioning such tidbits as Saturn being eclipsed during the birth of a child could result in them being born without empathy, we get no real motivations for what turned these kids into serial killers, nor why they waited for their tenth birth before beginning their bloody rampage. We get legendary actor José Ferrer as the doctor, the one who performed the three deliveries during the solar eclipse, but there’s no moment in the script where he reveals some dark mystery concerning their births that would explain this kiddie killing spree.

 

Are these kids secretly working for the funeral business?

The murders themselves have been depicted in a fairly tame way and the only reason this film got an “R” rating was for the glorious amounts of gratuitous nudity liberally sprinkled throughout, the aforementioned peephole providing a fair amount of that, but aside from the standard “teens having sex” trope, this could be aired on late-night cable with very little editing required. Basically, as 80s slasher films go this one doesn’t really have much to make it stand out from its contemporaries, other than the killers being children, and with a pair of clueless protagonists and a town that should not only dread sundown but every other time of the day, this is a pretty forgettable example of the genre.

Note: The film does have your standard “open ending” to allow for a possible sequel but Bloody Birthday was a box office disappointment and this threat never came to pass.

The Silent Masterpieces of Fritz Lang (1919-1929)

When one looks at the more than five decades of films that make up the career of Fritz Lang it's hard to think of any other filmmaker who has accomplished so much and influenced so many, becoming a legend in his home Weimar Germany and then later in Hollywood, and though when the name “Fritz Lang” is mentioned his magnum opus Metropolis is the one title that readily leaps to mind those early years in the silent era brought the world so much more.

 

He brought us epic fantasies, daring heroes and nefarious villains.

If the towering cityscapes of the futuristic world of Metropolis were the only thing to have come from the mind of director Fritz Lang his name would still be an important part of cinema history but his incredible output not only stretched across decades and genres, below you will find my thoughts concerning his time making silent films, while also shaping the world of cinema.

 

The Spiders: The Golden Lake (1919) & The Diamond Ship (1920)

With a message in a bottle that leads to a lost Incan civilization, a rumoured treasure trove of gold, a criminal organization known as The Spiders and a beautiful Inca princess to win the heart of the hero we have what adds up to be one truly fantastic adventure story, a film that feels ripped right out of the pulp stories that featured the likes of Doc Savage and The Phantom, even the hero here blazes away with twin .45 automatic like The Shadow, but to make things even better Fritz Lang has a woman as the head of The Spiders and she is a total badass and a more than worthy foe for our hero. Watching this is it's clear that Fritz Lang's early work was quite impressive in scope and scale, from fantastic sets depicting an ancient Inca temple to hot air balloon escape and booby-trapped treasure rooms, The Spiders - The Golden Lake is an amazing adventure film that even goes in surprisingly dark directions making this a must-see for any fan of pulp action stories and the serials that they spawned. Note: One must respect any criminal organization that leaves a spider totem at the crime scene as a calling card, that's just cool.

Much in the vein of the serials, only with a longer wait between chapters, Lang released The Spiders: The Diamond Ship which found our millionaire adventurer Kay Hoog seeking vengeance after the death of the woman he loved and he will stop at nothing to destroy the criminal organization known as The Spiders, who I again, must shout out with respect as seeing them committing robberies while dressed in top hat and tails and domino masks, which is just so damn cool, but this time out the villainous Lio Sha and her minions are seeking a mystical diamond that would allow them to place a puppet on the throne of China and allow them to control all of Asia. Basically, your typical supervillain plan.

At almost twice as long as the previous instalment the pacing isn't quite as tight as what was found in The Golden Lake but with Karl Freund stepping in as cinematographer the visuals take a staggering leap forward, and with our hero finding himself escaping from one death trap after another the wonderful use of light and shadow brings this adventure tale to a whole new level, of course, there is also the issue with the plot dealing with the "Yellow Peril" and all the racism that this entails, which includes caucasian actors wearing Asian makeup, sadly, this type of thing was normal for the time and is something modern viewers will have to grin and bear. Overall, The Diamond Ship is another fun pulpy adventure tale that is full of secret passageways, hidden pirate treasure and the prerequisite damsel in distress, all going towards making another nail-biting adventure mystery, with the only downside being that this was supposed to be the second instalment of four, but those two further parts were never made.

 

Harakari (1919)

Fritz Lang's adaptation of the opera Madame Butterfly is a pretty big misfire because despite some nice production value regarding the reconstruction of a Japanese town the lacklustre cinematography and a cast of Caucasian actors in "yellowface" makes this a hard film to get through and the only film in Lang’s filmography I’ll never be re-visiting.  One really has to question the decision to make a silent film based on an opera, but hey, he's the genius.

 

Four Around Woman (1921)

This high melodrama from Fritz Lang is packed to the gills with a cast of notorious characters and damsels in distress; from slimy blackmailers to unscrupulous gigolos to an insanely jealous husband, and jewel thieves with really bad timing, and we also have women of both questionable morality and noble faithfulness, which made Four Around a Woman a rather packed if silly outing from the German master.

 

Destiny (1921)

With this film, Fritz Lang brings us one of the earliest incarnations of Death in a story that seems ripped from the pages of the Brothers Grimm, with elements that would later influence such films as The Seventh Seal and Death Takes a Holiday. With Lang's Destiny, we are treated to the fantastical journey of a woman's bid to prove that love is stronger than Death, and the cinematography and visual effects brought forth in Destiny are simply amazing as is Bernhard Goetzke's performance as Death and Lil Dagover as the woman who will attempt to thwart Death and save her beloved, basically, this is the prototype to dozens of Gothic tales, and fans of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman graphic novel will find a lot to enjoy from this dark romance.

 

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)

Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler could be considered cinema's introduction of the "supervillain" as its title character isn't just a "Napoleon of Crime," like Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty, but a villain with both powers of hypnosis and mind control making him a truly dark Übermensch for our heroes to overcome. I'd say most cinematic villains to follow almost pale in comparison when you consider that Dr. Mabuse is this charismatic evil character who is a criminal mastermind, a doctor of psychology and a master of disguise - you have to watch the film a second time just to pick up on how many various characters are Mabuse in disguise - and Carl Hoffmann's fantastic cinematography paired with Lang's intense direction resulted in a gripping film with epic scope. Overall, Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler is an amazing tale of crime and madness told by one of cinema's greatest directors who was aided by a remarkable cast, especially Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the terrifying Dr. Mabuse. Do yourself a favour and track this one down.

 

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924)

Based upon the epic poem Nibelungenlied Fritz Lang's 1924 masterpiece Die Nibelungen: Siegfried is easily one of the more impressive films to come out of the silent era but it can also stand toe-to-toe or even eclipse many of the sound era films that followed, from the man-made primeval forests of the Nibelungen to the staggeringly constructed castles and fortresses that populate this world, there is nothing small about this movie.  When Lang goes epic he goes all the way and when you see the heroic Siegfried battling a dragon you can't help but be impressed when you consider the fact that special effects men like Willis O'Brien, of King Kong fame, were not around to create this effect using tabletop miniatures, instead, a full-sized 60-foot-long fire-breathing dragon puppet was built and the sequence is nothing less than brilliant.

 Any troubling issues with the plot can be laid at the hands of the source material for the idea of Siegfried being the ultimate wingman for King Gunther is a little problematic, as his cheating in a contest so that Gunther could win the hand of the warrior queen Brünhild takes a little of the shine off Siegfried's heroic stature, that said, Brünhild does get her revenge and if anything can be said about Die Nibelungen the adage "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" is no better explored than in this Norse tale of heroes, magic and revenge, of course, the real revenge gets going in part two Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge. Overall, the film is a stunning piece of filmmaking and Fritz Lang is the consummate storyteller with this entry, he creates a tale of such epic scope that one can't help but simply sit back and marvel at it all.

 

Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924)

With this second installment in Fritz Lang's adaptation of the epic Norse poem Die Nibelungen we drift away from the more fantasy elements found in part one, there are no dwarves or firebreathing dragons in this chapter, but we do get one badass protagonist in the form of Kriemhild, who does everything in her power and then some to achieve justice for the murder of her beloved Seigfried. Actress Margarete Schön's portrayal of Kriemhild of Burgund, a woman destroyed by grief, is simply chilling as we see her go from being a beautiful princess in love to a vengeful dark queen who will burn the world down to get her revenge. If there is any negative thing to say about this character is that we really didn't get much screentime between her and Seigfried in the first part, so their love story seems a little on the shallow side for it to have resulted in such an intense and hate-fueled rage that followed his death.  Overall, Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge is another cinematic masterpiece from Fritz Lang and where it lacks in the fantasy elements of the first chapter it more than makes up for it in the incredible battle scenes that engulf the last third of the movie. When you watch this movie, you can't help but see how much Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones owes to this film.

 

Metropolis (1927)

When watching Fritz Lang's Metropolis it's impossible to deny that this film is a magnificent example of science fiction and one of the most influential films ever made which is what makes it so incredibly hard to believe that it was a box office disaster when it was originally released, it truly staggers the mind that such a powerful and creatively brilliant film was a cinematic bomb. This film not only consists of amazing miniatures, beautiful matte paintings and some truly massive sets depicting a city of the future but it also told the timeless tale of social classes at odds with one another that even today bite rather close to the bone. It's possible that this film's political allegory didn't sit too well with the people of the 1920s - and it was banned in Russia for its controversial subject matter - but as time marched on so went the appreciation for what is easily one of the greatest achievements of the silent era.

What really amazes me is that I had never actually sat down to watch this film until recently picking up the Bluray, having seen but a few clips of Metropolis used in documentaries about science fiction in film, and watching it now I'm stunned and can only say that when people state that "This is the greatest and most influential films ever made" they are grossly understating things. From the mad scientist creating the robot Maria to towering skyscrapers, this film has left its stamp on hundreds of films since its release, from James Whale's Frankenstein, George Lucas's Star Wars and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner just to name a few, so if you are like me and have somehow let this masterpiece pass you by doing yourself a favour and hunt down a copy and I bet you will be amazed and as captivated as I was.

 

Spione (1928)

With Spione director Fritz Lang goes back to his roots with an action-packed spy thriller that harkens back to his earlier outings such as The Spiders and Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, when asked about this film Lang referred to it as "A small film with lots of action" which this movie certainly does have, from thrilling car chases to a spectacular train wreck there is some great action to be found, but it was due to the financial disaster that was Metropolis, which had almost bankrupted the studio, that Lang was forced to curb his budget and set aside panoramic visuals for the more tight and economic style found in Spione which works perfectly well for a paranoia-inducing espionage thriller.

Lang's spy film has all the hallmarks of the genre, from secret passageways to death traps it has all the elements that would later appear in the James Bond franchise, and the spycraft on display is quite spot on. For the plot of Spione Fritz Lang did a bit of "Ripped from the headlines" and littered those pieces with a larger-than-life villain in the form of the menacing Haghi, played by the amazing Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who is almost reprising his role as underworld chieftain from Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. It was with this film that espionage spy thriller really took form and Fritz Lang's mastery of pacing and storytelling is easily one of the genre's most important parents.

 

Woman in the Moon (1929)

Dubbed "The first scientific science fiction film" Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon was the first film to depict the use of liquid rocket fuel, a rocket with two stages and zero gravity in space, but the film does veer away from the scientific conjecture of the time by revealing that the Dark Side of the Moon has an atmosphere and there is, apparently, a good deal of gold lying around, and sure, Lang may have strayed a little bit from plausibility but the film's protagonist never comes across Cat-Women or even ancient abandoned cities, so we must give him a little credit for that, of course, we do get to see the hero striding across the Moon's surface in a cardigan sweater while accompanied by a ten-year-old street urchin, which is the stuff that makes Woman in the Moon so charming.

Now, the plot of Woman in the Moon isn't all about scientific progress and space exploration we also get a love triangle between the hero, his partner and his partner's fiance, needless to say, the drama surrounding this makes for a tense flight, unfortunately, a difficult love interest are the least of their problems as this film also borrows elements from such previous Fritz Lang Movies such as The Spiders and Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler with our heroes being threatened by a sinister criminal syndicate who want to control all the gold found on the Moon. It should be noted that one of the villains comes along for the trip and could be considered a precursor to Doctor Smith from Lost in Space, though in this case, he's a little more competent when it comes to villainy. Overall, Woman in the Moon is a stunning achievement in filmmaking that embraces science with one hand and great storytelling with the other, giving us a film rife with love, greed, cowardice and bravery.

If one thing can be said about Fritz Lang as a filmmaker it would be his unparalleled ability to bring his vision to fruition, whether that be a German expressionist view of the future or a fantasy world of Nordic legend his films remain a testament to true genius, with a few good collaborators including his wife and collaborator Thea von Harbou, and was this vision he helped shape the very industry itself.