Category Archives: Movies

A Strange Cinematic Love: Planet of the Vampires

When I was about 12 or 13 on the local late-night horror show I saw a movie that left a deep and lasting impression Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires.

PoV is a science-fiction horror that may have very well influenced Dan O’Bannon when he conceived of his classic scrip Alien. Adapted from a short story “A night of 21 Hours” (in Italy with the more apt title Terror in Space) the movie is an Italian/Spanish co-production with an international cast fronted by American actor Barry Sullivan. Two space craft, the Galliot and the Argos arrive at an unexplored world following a signal that may be of intelligent origin. Attempting to land the Argos nearly crashes and after a brief fugue state where the crew try to murder each other bare-handed they begin a search for the missing Galliot. Strange occurrences and lights plague the Argos’ crew, and they find that the perpetually fog shrouded planet harbors a lethal secret.

Planet of the Vampires lacked a decent budget and quite ironically vampires. The lethal secret of the planet has nothing at all to do with undead corpses feeding upon the blood of the living which is why the Italian title is so much more fitting. However even with a limited budget Bava, who was a master of in-camera special effects, produced a colorful, visually striking, and engaging piece of cinema. Sullivan is reported to have said that while on set everything looked sparse and cheap, and he was later stunned by how it appeared on screen. The film has only a couple of optical effects with everything else, including the ship’s telescreen communications before performed live in set and captured in camera. The cast deals with the multilingual nature of the international production well enough with only a few scenes where it was clear that the various cast did not under the lines being spoken by each other. (This sort of production was common in Italy at the time where English, French, Spanish, and Italian speakers would deliver their lines in their own languages with dubbing for various markets smoothing over the final product.)

Two elements of the story fixed in my mind over the decades. One, the ending which when seen becomes very obvious as to why it sticks and the other a very prosaic scene where Sullivan’s commander comments that their last-minute landing turned from a crash into an Academy perfect one. An observation that isn’t special but lodged deep into my memory.

Planet of the Vampires is not great cinema but it is fun and quite stylish.

Stolen Infirmity

If you follow politics, you are likely familiar with the concept of Stolen Valor where someone claims a military history or deeds that are untrue. They served in combat when in reality they never left the base admin offices and so on.

Hollywood, the most creative place on Earth, has rebooted and reimagined the concept and created what I’m calling Stolen Infirmity.

Over the least several decades there has been a general awakening in American culture to be more supportive, sympathetic, and understanding of people suffering from addictions, disorders, and past trauma. This is a good thing and these people need our attention and our compassion.

However, individuals accused of evil acts are stealing and claiming infirmities as a shield against any and all responsibility for their heinous actions.

People in actual therapy for these serious issues take responsibility for their behavior, for the harm that they have done to others, for their actions but these celebrities do just the opposite. The actions are not their fault but a result of their condition, their drinking, their sex addiction, certainly not themselves.

You can see this on full display in the recent interview where once beloved geek icon Joss Wheadon attempts to rehab his reputation. Despite numerous accusations from numerous people from nearly every production he has led. Somehow none of this true, somehow none of this is hisfault. Somehow, it’s all down to his trauma, and that actors somehow can’t understand his words.

An entire field of bulls would stink as badly.

Grab Bag

Here’s a smattering of topics to kick off the week. Forgive me if my thoughts are scattered and a little light but Monday Migraines are less than fun.

Author and Coordinating Judge Dave Farland has died. I never had the pleasure of working directly with Mr. Farland though a number of my writers pals have and none have had a single bad word about the man. He apparently was devoted to helping new writers and that is admirable. His friends and family have my deepest sympathies.

Vulcanic Eruption in the pacific. An undersea volcano near the island of Tonga erupted massively. So much so that tsunami warnings were issued around the entire pacific rim and the eruptions itself was captured and easily visible from orbiting satellites. The video is online and is both awe inspiring and terrifying.

Shudder now has the 3 hours documentary Woodlands dark and Days Bewitched exploring ‘folk horror’ films from around the world. It is an excellent primer on the sub-genre and has put many new films on my ‘want to watch list.’

The Artistry of Endings

A brief and pleasant interaction with professor and author Tananarive Due on Twitter yesterday has me thinking about endings of stories, both prose and film, and art that is required to land on the right one for the tale.

Our interaction had centered on Jordan Peele’s fantastic directorial debut with his horror film Get Out. Peele’s original vision had a much darker ending in mind for Chris, one that was a more likely outcome given the circumstances but when tested audiences rebelled against. A new ending, the one the film was released with was crafted, and the movie was a hit. A similar sequence happened around Emerald Fennell’s 2020 revenger film Promising Young Woman where a less probable victory of sorts is added to the film’s end over a more downbeat conclusion. Again the film is praised and while Promising Young Woman did not see the sort of box office magic Get Outproduced it is a very well respected and an amazing piece of art.

The wrong lesson to take away from these examples if that your story should avoid bitter or tragic endings.

1968’s Night of the Living Dead is famous for its bleak and uncompromising ending. (Spoilers ahead) Ben, the sole survivor of the characters besieged in the farmhouse, at the film’s end cautiously climbs out of the basement as roving bands of deputized citizens clear the area of the walking dead. Seen only at a glimpse through a window one mistakes him for a ghoul and shoots Ben dead.

One could easily imagine an alternate version where the vigilantes rescues Ben rather than kill him and I believed that if that had been released instead the film would be mostly forgotten. It is that futility that is at the heart of the movie and without that final punch the piece loses much of its power.

Invasion of the Body Snatcher played it both ways. The original 1956 film had the framing story with it implicitly hopeful ending added after audience screenings and the 1978 remake took a darker tone with no hope for humanity’s future.

Knowing the right ending for a story is pure art. There are no formulas, charts, graphs, or calculations that can determine correct tone and it is often the critical alchemy that elevates or dooms a piece.

The Three Genres of My Life

On the first day of this year, 2022, I posted a ranking of the twenty films I watched in theaters during 2021.

What I found interesting looking at the listing is that the top three films, Dune, Nightmare Alley, and Last Night in Soho line up perfectly with my three favorite genres, Science-Fiction, Film Noir, and horror.

Of the three two have been favorite genres of mine since childhood. I cannot remember a time when I did not watch SF or horror movies. Bouncing around my head are fragments of films, most likely Hammer Horrors in full bloody color, from early childhood.

Film Noir I only discovered as an adult with my first introduction coming through Sid Foreman’s Introduction to Cinematography course at San Diego City College with my first viewing of The Maltese Falcon. Though honestly my true love of noir films didn’t really take off until Double Indemnity which remains in my mind a platonic ideal for the genre.

There were examples of the other genres in that listing, with superheroes movies sort of filling in for Science-Fiction but sadly nothing else that really nailed film noir like Nightmare Alley. There were other horrors, the strange and unique Lamb and the more conventional but still quite entertaining Last Night in Soho. I am simply pleased that each of my beloved genres scored in the top three slots for the year.

The Hypocrisy of Ian Malcolm

Jeff Goldblum, playing mathematician Ian Malcolm in 1993’s Jurassic Park, delivered one of the films most central and memorable monologs as he lectures Hammond on the hubris and dangers of the dinosaur amusement park.

The problem with scientific power you’ve used is it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don’t take the responsibility for it.

It is also for my money the height of hypocrisy. What Malcolm is describing the process by which science advances. No one reinvents all of the processes, theories, and techniques that came before them All scientists stand on the shoulders of those that came before and if they are lucky add a bit of new knowledge, new understanding for those that come after. Malcolm as a mathematician did not reinvent calculus but learned what others had invented and discovered before adding his own discoveries in the field of chaos.

The questions should have Hammond recreated dinosaurs? Should he have proceeded more cautiously before turning it into a park? Are valid important questions but do not give me this crap that the science didn’t require discipline and it was somehow unearned.

A Disappointing Noir: The Lineup (1958)

Included with the Blu-ray set Noir Archive: Volume 3 The Lineup from 1958 in my opinion scarcely qualifies a film noir and rather a poor police procedural. Despite being penned by noted screenwriter Sterling Silliphant and directed by veteran filmmaker Don Siegal the movie plays like a larger budget television series episode which is understandable as it adapted from a TV and radio show of the same name.

After a stolen luggage job goes wrong at the steamship docks leaving a cop and a cabbie dead police inspectors Guthrie and Quine start searching for the members of a narcotics ring that uses unsuspecting passengers to smuggler rather small amounts of heroin through customs. Simultaneously a hitman, his handler, and a local get away driver, are crisscrossing San Francisco retrieving the contraband murdering as they go.

While The Lineup has some nice location shooting and captures much of the flavor of the city by the bay the film is ultimately too sedate to be of much interest. The Inspectors are never emotionally involved in their case and the hitman and his handler are too unsympathetic to be engaging characters despite some minor quirks to make them at least superficially interesting. Over all my verdict is that there is no need to seek out this movie as there are far better low budget noirs to watch.

Final Review from 2021: The King’s Man

A prequel to 2014’s Kingsman: The secret Service this film takes place in the run up to and during World War I depicting the events that led to the formation of the private intelligence service.

The Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) after serving in and suffering the horror of Victoria’s Little Wars at the end of the 19th century has become a dedicated pacifist providing food and medical aid to the people suffering during wars. (Historical points to the film for showing Brittan’s invention of the Concentration Camp during the Boer War in South Africa. Points the film will later forfeit due to gross historical inaccuracy.) As the world if pushed towards the first global war by a shadowy secret conspiracy Oxford along with his man servant (Djimon Hounsou) his housekeeper (Gemma Arterton) and his adult son (Harris Dickerson) try to foil the plot. When war breaks out Oxford finds that his son doesn’t share his dedication to pacifism and is determined to perform his patriotic duty in the Great War. In order to defeat the conspirators’ plot to destroy England by using Imperial Germany as their pawn Oxford and his people involve themselves in events from Russia to Washington D.C.

I did not care much for Kingsman: The Secret Service but the actors and setting of this film enticed me out to the theater. Overall, I enjoyed the movie, finding the familial drama compelling enough and the adventure entertaining enough to serve as a nice ‘popcorn’ distraction. If you have any real historical knowledge of the Great War and how it resolved, you will need to set it all aside during the film’s third act when everything turns on bringing America into the war to provide the force required to defeat Imperial Germany. Germany was starving by 1918 and was already staring defeat in the eyes. Plus, the filmmakers were forced to sweep aside the Lusitania as a cause for American intervention or else somehow make out heroes responsible for her sinking. Still, if you can ignore history this movie is fun and has a few surprising turns in its plot.

4 Things That Annoy Me About Firearms in Media

In lieu of writing about the Republican insurrection one year ago today I am instead going to write about several repeating aspects of guns in popular media that always irritate me when they appear.

1) Throwing People: Over and over again guns are depicted as violating Newton’s Law of Motion. A target hit by a round is lifting into the air and flung backwards. Targets weighting hundreds of pounds. If such forced was being delivered to the target an equal force in the opposite direct would be applied to the shooter. In the case of handguns to their wrists. People are not thrown by bullets and very often don’t even collapse or fall down when hit.

2) Inhuman Accuracy: The greatest offenders here are the John Woo films and his imitators and Zombie movies where people firing with a piston in each hand, moving from speeding vehicles, and leaping through the air, sometimes all three at the same time, hits distant or difficult targets. Accuracy with a firearm is much easier to obtain than with a bow but such shooting is beyond the realm of possibility.

3) Lasers on Sniper Rifles: The point of mounting a laser on a gun is to assist in accuracy. The concept being that where the ‘dot’ appears is where the bullet will impact. This is true over relatively short distances, but it is not true over scores or hundreds of yards with a sniper rifle. A bullet the instant it leaves the barrel falls toward the ground with an acceleration of 32 feet per second/per second. If a round travels at 2700 feet per second, after 100 yards it has traveled 1/9 of a second and will be 3 feet 10 inches below when that little red dot. Mounting a laser on a rifle is purely there so the ‘hero’ can spot the tell-tale dot and avoid getting shot.

4) Steady Scope Images: Related to the laser but preceding it in history is the moment in TV and film where an assassin is holding a scoped rifle to their shoulder and we get a shot of what they see through the scope, a perfectly still telescopic image of the target. No wobble or shake because the camera is mounted on a tripod but take out your smartphone and zoom to a distant object and see how steady that image appears. Through a high-powered with a tripod or bracing the image will bounced and shake unless the assassin is an android.

My 2021 In Cinema Experience

Below are the twenty films I watched in theaters during 2021. ( Missed counted in yesterday’s post) From January thru April I stayed home due to the pandemic but once I had both shots of my vaccinations and felt more comfortable about brief outing in public I returned to my beloved theaters.

The order if this list is a combination of my subjective opinion on quality, how much I enjoyed watching the features, and how often I thought about them long after leaving the theater. I can honestly say I do not regret seeing any of the film, no matter their placement, in an actual theater.

1 Dune