Author Archives: Bob Evans

The Two Most Influential Science-Fiction Films of the 1930’s

So here’s the next in my continuing essay series. Before I dig into the two films and my arguments for selecting theme, let me talk for a couple of moments about definitions.

Science-Fiction is the genre of literature in which a development, advance, or change in scientific knowledge is critical to the plot, and that the removal of that elements renders the plot impossible.

Influential I touched on lightly in the first essay, but I want to expand here by detailing who and what is influenced. I am not speaking about the general public at large, thought that will nearly always be true as well, but that these films I have selected had an outsize impact on future filmmakers, often for generations.

So let’s get into the next decade, the 1930s.

My first selection is a well-known film, a classic know by huge numbers of people around the world;
Frankenstein – 1931 – James Whale

Certainly this tale has been around a hell of a lot longer than this 1931 film from Universal Studios. The novel by Mary Shelley was published in 1818 and has been adapted to stage and screen many times. In fact the 1931 production was not the first. Thomas Edison made a short based upon the novel (And knowing the man I’m willing to bet no royalties were paid,) that featured a creation scene done with a paper-mache monster burned to ash and run in reverse.

However it was James Whale and Universal’s Frankenstein that set the tone and standard for so many films to follow. It is unquestionably a science-fiction film because Dr. Frankenstein explains about visible rays, X-rays, and his discovery of a ray that generates all life. It is harnessing this ray, not sheer electrical power that revitalizes the monster’s corpse-like construction. This film is the granddaddy of all mad scientist movies. The lone inventor/scientist, working in some ruined, desolate, and gothic locale, that’s this Frankenstein and through this film German Expressionism. This is a film that continues to be referenced years and decades later, inspiring filmmakers to this day.

Things to Come – 1936 – William Cameron Menzies

This is a film that is not very well known outside of genre fans, but it is a critical film in the history of science-fiction movies, Based up the works of and with screenplay by H.G. Wells, this movie was a serious attempt to peer ahead and not only see what may be possible but also explain how we move from the present day to that fictionalized future. These days that is old hat in Science-Fiction films, but with this movie it was fairly revolutionary. Metropolis never explains where the city is, how it came to be, but merely waves it into existence and sets the story in motion. H.G. Wells, always the historian, loved plotting about the connecting dots between his times and his imagined futures; in effect he created the concept of the future history. Movies ever since Things To Come, if they were set in the future, have felt a pressure to explain how that future arrived. Things to Come was also the first post-apocalyptic movie and many to the tropes and plot devices of that genre were first established here. Two final aspects that influenced film making for decades, Things to Come gave us the clean art-deco city of the future that lasted all the up to Logan’s Run, and it gave the idea that people in the future would wear terribly silly fashions.

I think the climate is changing

And I mean the political climate.

Yesterday’s SCOTUS decision was a bad one in my opinion. It’s already having repercussions beyond the Republican obsession with the ACA. (Apparently at least one employer is already wanting to use the decision to discriminate against gays. This was totally predictable.) Now, I am not going to go into why the decision was wrong headed. I already did a post/essay on how I think you slice that gordian knot or individual religious freedom and public accommodation.

What I want to say is that this is really, I think, going to be bad news for the Republican Party when it comes to Presidential Elections.

Here is a graph I made of the female vote for all presidential elections since Reagan. (I selected 1980 because I think that is the point where a new republican started started to be born.)

Seriously, How is what happened at SCOTUS July 1 going to help that red line get any closer to that blue one? It won’t. Add the hispanic votes walking out the door and the youth vote giving the conservative party the finger and I think things look nasty for the Republicans in presidential elections.

The Two Most Influential Science-Fiction Films of the Silent Era

This will be the first in hopefully a lengthy series of essays as I yammer away about which two SF films of each period I consider to be the most influential. Naturally ‘influential’ is a quite subjective measurement and you are welcome to comment, argue and suggest films that you think had a greater impact than the ones I suggest.

I will start with the silent period, covering basic 1890-1930, but after that I intend to tackle the question decade by decade.

A trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune) – 1902 – George Melies

I consider this one of the most important SF films from the silent era because this is really the movie that kicked off SF as spectacle. The science was ludicrous and no one making did so under the illusion that this was a reality based adventure. This was about the wondrous and magical effect that the motion picture camera afforded the filmmakers. This is a short film, just 13 minutes long, but it cast a long shadow across the landscape of cinema. This film is the birth of special effect and special effect from this moment onward would remain at the heart and soul of SF cinema.

Metropolis – 1927 – Fritz Lang

Director Fritz Lang is a towering figure in film. The visionary man behind such classics as ‘M’, the film that made Peter Lore an international star, Lang always had a deep and sincere love for Science-Fiction. (In fact it was Lang who convinced Robert A. Heinlein to start writing Young adult novels.) I would argue that Lang’s better SF movie was 1929’s Woman in the Moon (Frau in Mond.) Woman in the Moon is less didactic and pays a closer attention to scientific details while delivering a better story and adventure. (This film was also a favorite of Werner Von Braun who saw it as a teenager and right up through Apollo copied the paint schemes for rockets from this movie.) However, Woman in the Moon simply has not impacted to trajectory of SF films in the manner that Metropolis did.

Metropolis, a sprawling massive production set in a future city divided between the exploited poor and the extravagantly wealthy, set design and social models that were to be copied for decades, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner look and feel can be trace directly back to Metropolis. The sprawling, towering city of the future was born here in this film.

The original print was lost for decades until 2010 gave us a restored version that is close to the original running time, but not quite. 1984 gave us a version where musical Giorgio Moroder revived the film with a soundtrack that included Queen’s Freddie Mercury, Adam Ant, Pat Benatar and many others.

Your thoughts?

Hillary the Inevitable

In the 2008 primary season we were treated to a barrage of opinion pieces that proclaimed the inevitability of Hillary Clinton in her quest for the Democratic Nomination. Of course we have the advantageous position of historical high ground to see just how wrong all those predictions turned out to be.

Here it is 2014 and without the mid-term election yet resolved the opinion are flying fast and furious about 2016. Those opinions are as rooted in serious thought as the Fast and Furious films were dedicated to realistic physics. Naturally one of the most persistent memes is that Hillary is once again the inevitable Democratic Nominee for PotUS.

‘Inevitable’, you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means. Hillary is no more ‘inevitable’ in her aspirations than any particular character is inevitably going to survive their encounter with George R.R. Martin’s bloody word processor.

It is certainly true that Hillary (It is no disrespect to refer her by her given name to prevent confusion with her equally famous spouse.) possesses tremendous advantages going into the fight; her name recognition, fund raising ability, a deep well of contact and connected supporters, all play an important part in a candidates odds of success, but other factors matter as well.

Hillary is a spectacularly poor campaigner. Like Mitt on the Republican side, she has actually won only a single electoral contest. She has displayed a gross inability to connect with voters, has a notoriously thin skin criticism, holds grudges with a tenacity unseen since Nixon, and has approached the nomination process, both in 2008 and 2016, as though it were a coronation.

None of this means she will not be the nominee. Just as Mitt was able to achieve victory in the Republican Primary field of 2012 she could pull it off, but I think it would take a similar dynamic.

Mitt faced a Party that did not trust him and was further to the right than what seemed his natural position. (Personally, I am not convinced we know what is Mitt’s true position. He was always the salesman and in a predominantly liberal state he played up the moderate and in a conservative primary he switched colors faster camera-equipped traffic light.) Hillary faces a party that is becoming more populist and more liberal while she herself has a difficult time selling that message. Mitt survived because there were plenty of not-Mitt candidates to split the vote, allowing the distrusted Romney to claim the Republican Iron Throne. Clinton would be best served by a pack of not-Hillary candidates who could split the more liberal voter of her party, allowing her a similar path to victory.

The rise of popular and decided liberal politicians such as Elizabeth Warren is a major threat to Hillary and only time will tell if she can survive and once again fail while being declared inevitable .

The things one remembers

I can clearly remember a disappointment of my young life. I was 11 or 12 when this occurred. As is quite normal for a boy of that age I adored monster movies. For me big rubber monsters smashing cities were the height of cinema. Usually I could only watch such fare on TV during the Creature Feature that played late night on Saturdays.

Ahh, that was a show that consumed many many of my hours. It literally was called ‘Creature Feature’ and, in my mind, I can still see the opening logo. So many classic and far far from classic films played during that late night and early morning hours.

However this particular summer I am remembering was not about an old black-and-white film playing on a local television station, but rather about a new release I desperately wanted to see,

Based on release dates this had to be 1972 or 1973 and Godzilla vs The Smog Monster had come to the local drive-in I burned to this movie. I had never seen a Godzilla movie in any other format than televised and the idea of seeing one on the huge screen at the drive filled me with an unquenchable desire.

I laid out hints to all the adults on the household, but to no avail. The weekends came and went and there was no surprise announcement that we were going to the drive-in, nothing but bitter disappointment

Now, I am not faulting my older brothers and sisters for their film choices. This was pretty much a kiddie Godzilla and it would have held little to no attraction to anyone with a discriminating taste. So the film played and moved on, leaving me behind, my desires unfulfilled.

Over the years I have seen many Godzilla movies, bastardized and cut-up American versions, subtitled original versions, movies that were Godzilla in name only, and even the most recent American adaptation, but somehow in all those years, and with that early bitter miss, I never watched Godzilla vs The Smog Monster.

Until recently.

HULU Plus has quite a library of films and I discovered, quite by accident, that via the Anime Network their collection included Godzilla vs The Smog Monster. Suddenly I remembered being that young boy and that movie I had so desperately wanted to see. Naturally I treated myself to the long long delayed satisfaction.

So two weeks ago over several night I watched the film in bit and bites as I relaxed after a long day working and writing. I can say that the younger me probably would have loved the monster fights, but many aspect of this, the most trippy of Godzilla movies, wouldn’t have played well to me.

You know how Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ has those animated sequences? Well so does Godzilla vs The Smog Monster. It also has musical/dance numbers and Japanese hippies.

I’m glad I got to see it, and pay off that younger me who wanted it so badly, but man it was to date the strangest Godzilla film I’ve watched.

Sunday Night Movie: The Body Snatcher

This could be a repeat entry in this series for me, but this is also one of my favorite films and easily my favorite Boris Karloff performance.

The Body Snatcher (Not to be confuse with iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) is a 1945 film helmed by then novice director Robert Wise as part of Val Lewton’s cycle of the-body-snatcher3 psychological horror films, which included Cat People, for RKO. Based upon the short story by Robert Lewis Stevenson this movie is about doctors, students, and grave robbers. Rather than a retelling of the Burke and Hare affair, though that one has been put to film a number of times including in a flawed but lively comedy staring Andy Serkis and Simon Peg, this story deals with fiction characters involved in the sordid business of robbing graves and murdering people to supply medical schools with dissection specimens.

A young student, without the means to continue his education, becomes the assistant to a famous doctor, McFarland, and quickly finds himself caught in the middle of McFarland’s antagonistic with the cabman and resurrectionist John Gray, played with wonderful oily charm by Karloff. The young man, a person of good morals, find himself pulled deeper and deeper into the crimes of the school as he desperately tries to get the doctor to save the life of a paralyzed little girl. When grave-robbing turns to murder the stakes are raised and the confrontation long delayed between the doctor and cabman explodes.

This is a wonderful little film. I remember getting this on laserdisc when I still watched movies on that pre-DVD format. I found it in a used shop for something like $8 and I had never seen it. Figuring it wasn’t too much of a risk I bought the disc and that weekend discovered this classic of horror cinema. This is not horror that beats out from supernatural monstrosities , but rather from the pride and need to dominate in the human condition. Not all of the Val Lewton psychological horrors of this cycle are to my tastes, but this one and Cat People certain are worth the scant time they take to view. This film is highly recommended.

Sunday Night Movie: Godzilla 1985

So with the upcoming release of another American production of a Godzilla movie, I godzilla-1985-poster decided to revisit the franchise for my Sunday night viewing pleasure. At first I was going to watch Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the Godzilla movie that most American would
mistakenly call the original film. It was in fact the Japanese film, severely cut down and with an American reporter, Steve Martin, (Played by Raymond Burr) stuck in with some ham-handed editing and thoroughly unmatched cinematography. Then It struck me that the right film in the franchise to watched was this one from 1985. Continue reading →

How Life Has Changed

I remember clearly a bit of frustration from my youth. I had read the Isaac Asimov novelization of the film “Fantastic Voyage” and I desperately wanted to see the movie. I have always been a fan of film and fantastic genre fiction particularly so. The problem was that this was the 1970s. There were no Blu-rays, DVDS, VHSs or Betamaxes around to sate one’s entertainment cravings.

The town I lived in did not have a revival theater, and all I could do was searched the listing on the weekly TV Guide and hope that some station like TBS , which aired a lot of films, would pay it.

I remember weeks of searching the guides, with no indication of an upcoming presentation, only my fondest hopes for one. It didn’t appear.

This weekend on a whim while scanned through the instant view option at Netflix I started watching Fantastic Voyage. Now I had seen it in the intervening years, so I was not watching to to satisfy that unscratched itch from decades past. It was just a way to pass the time and look at the filmmaking of years gone by.

However it did get me thinking about those months when I forlornly hoped against reality that it would appear in the listings.

We truly live in an age of Science-Fiction, so many treasures await our pleasures. We are approaching a film lover’s paradise.

I’ve been very busy

In addition to working 50 hours a week at my day job, I have been racing to complete my novel in progress. The final section has been handed over to my sweetie-wife for her proofing and when that is done I will be ready for beta readers.

To pass the time here is a picture of Obama on the iron throne as tweeted by the White House.

Obama Iron Throne

Sunday Night Movie:Zero Dark Thirty

Thanks to getting back onto a disc plan with Netflix, my selection of films has opened op and last night I watched a film I have wanted to see for some time, Zero Dark Thirty.

This is the dramatized account of the hunt for and the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. 220px-ZeroDarkThirty2012Poster From my basic knowledge of the facts I did not spot any glaring inconsistencies and the film was written and produced with a minimum of political bias.

The film uses as it’s focus a CIA operative named Maya, we never learn her last name and as for film purposes I wouldn’t even assume that this is her real name. We follow her multi-year trek through shards of intelligence data and bureaucratic infighting to try and located the world’s most hunted man. The tension is real and the filmmaker, Kathryn Bigalow who won an Oscar for ‘The Hurt Locker’ showed deft skills in managing a story that spanned such a vast amount of time and locations.

I appreciate that Ms. Bigalow did not using the stomach-wrenching video we have all seen of the attacks on 09/11. There was no need for that sort of exhibitionism in a tale this deftly told. She also never gave us the face of Bin Laden, I suspect so that even in the form of an impersonator as to deny him all manner of publicity and fame.

The script was well written by Mark Boal who was responsible for the reporting about Black Hawk Down that Ridley Scott turned into a fine film. The cast boasted no superstars, but was well represented with talented actors who seemed to inhabit their characters.

This film is worth the time.

Robert Mitchell Evans

Literary Saboteur