The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Faust (1994), directed by Jan Svankmajer

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Faust 72' by Dynastie Crisis

       One of the more common tropes in literature is the ‘deal with the devil’, wherein a character gives up something precious to them to a malevolent being in exchange for their heart’s desire. American blues legend Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his talent at the guitar, and there have been numerous other tales of artists and musicians doing the same over the years. Hell you could even classify the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus as a ‘deal with the devil’ story, although Hades and Satan weren’t actually equivalent. However the archetypal example of this well-worn trope is the German legend of Faust, who made a deal with a demon in order to gain all of the world’s knowledge, which didn’t turn out so well for him. So famous is this story that the term ‘faustian’ has entered the popular vernacular, or at least the nerd vernacular.

       The tale of Faust has been adapted many times over the years; A famous play by Goethe, and of course several films. There was one by the great F.W. Murnau in 1926, and another by Peter Gorski in 1960, but the one we’re going to be looking at is 1994’s Faust, by Czech director Jan Svankmajer. Svankmajer, if you’ll recall, is the mind behind that stop-motion adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which is by far the creepiest version of the story I’ve ever seen. I was interested in seeing how he would tackle things that are meant to be scary, like demons, so here we are.

       Released in 1994, Faust was written and directed by Jan Svankmajer and produced by Jaromir Kallista through Athanor, BBC, CNC and Pandora Filmproduction, based on the play by Goethe. Petr Cepek stars as our protagonist, a man thoroughly unenthused about his life and the world at large. On a whim he decides to visit the location on a flier handed out by two men, which turns out to be a theater putting on a production of ‘Faust’, and it turns out our protagonist is playing the lead role. Not being a theater person our protagonist tries to leave, but it seems that the show must go on, whether he wants it to or not. And furthermore, what is the difference between the play and reality anyway?

       As a story, Goethe’s Faust is pretty straight-forward. Faust, feeling the limitations of human knowledge and ability, rejects god and sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power, only to realize that this attachment to the world is what keeps him from true knowledge, i.e. knowledge of god. Svankmajer’s Faust follows a similar path. Our protagonist is unsatisfied with his life, and so assumes the role of Faust in order to gain a sense of power and purpose, not realizing that once committed that you can’t just go back on it. Our protagonist works with puppets and eventually becomes a puppet himself, struggling against the inevitability of his fate. A counterpoint to Goethe, who emphasized unquestioning devotion to god, a willing ‘puppet’ if you will, or a compliment, as our protagonist cavorts with the devil and pays the price? The film is presented in an intensely surreal manner, with the nature of time and space heavily distorted, so I suppose it could be both and neither at once.

       Of course the main reason I picked this version was for the visuals, and Svankmajer doesn’t disappoint. The man has an eye for decay, every other scene this film finds itself in new forms of squalor, from deteriorating apartments to stuffy backstage areas and rotting church basements. The stop motion animation is incredibly dynamic, a little herky-jerky but just seeing the myriad ways that Svankmajer twists and morphs Mephistopheles is a fascinating bit of filmmaking. Then of course there are the puppets, or perhaps marionettes is the better word, life-size marionettes that look like they were pulled out of Toulon’s basement. The marionettes are really what made this movie, not only because they perform the play the film is centered around and perform most of the dialogue but they are also creepy as hell. Seeing them interact with real people, the unnatural way they engage with the real world, helps to develop the absurdism of the whole thing. If you’ve got even a slight phobia of dolls however you might want to steer clear.

       Potential issues with Faust are much the same as with any surreal or absurdist film, those who prefer their stories straight-forward will likely find this incomprehensible and thus insufferable. There’s also some depictions of gore and sexuality that some viewers might find uncomfortable, in spite of them being performed by marionettes. Not a lot, but certainly enough to enhance the sense of the bizarre.

       Faust gets the recommendation. Much like his adaptation of Lewis Carroll, Svankmajer manages to twist and turn it in such a way that it feels almost wholly unique and thoroughly unsettling. I was also, much like with his previous film, captivated the whole way through. He certainly doesn’t make family films, but if you’re looking for something particularly out there this Halloween then Faust is the film for you.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Star Trek: Generations (1994), directed by David Carson

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Alphabet Song" by Captain Picard

       In 1979, after a cavalcade of enthusiastic support, merchandise sales and homoerotic fanfiction from a legion of fans, Gene Roddenberry was finally able to finagle a deal with Paramount Pictures to bring his science fiction program known as Star Trek to the silver screen. Entitled Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the film would see the return of James Tiberius Kirk, Mister Spock and the rest of the cast to the bridge of the USS Enterprise for the first time in a decade, going where no man had ever gone before in a way that would have been impossible on a TV show’s budget. While several points of criticism were launched against the film when it released, such as a lack of action set pieces in favor of special effects showcases (Star Wars had come out two years prior and had quickly become the benchmark by which all films were judged), that grassroots support ultimately helped to make Star Trek: The Motion Picture quite lucrative at the box office, earning 139 million dollars over a 44 million dollar budget. In case you’re still confused about why WB signed off on the Snyder Cut horseshit, it’s not without precedent or intent.

       The success of Star Trek: The Motion Picture naturally led to a string of sequels, all of which proved to be relatively successful and none of which involved Gene Roddenberry in any meaningful way. Still, being the creator of a multi-million dollar franchise does earn you a bit of clout in the industry, and after years of workshopping ideas and casting out nets ol’ Gene was finally able to finagle a deal for a new TV show. Dubbed Star Trek: The Next Generation, the show started up around a century after the events of the original series, featuring a new cast and crew traveling on a new Enterprise, exploring a galaxy that would have been strange yet familiar to any old Trekker that stumbled across it. While initially a bit shaky, part of which can be blamed on Gene himself, once it hit syndication TNG proved to be an overwhelming triumph for the little cult sci-fi show that could; Running for seven seasons (four more than the original series had managed to do) and spawning two long-running spin-off shows in Deep Space 9 and Voyager, as well as comics, video games, novels and so on. For a good many people, myself included, The Next Generation was their introduction to Star Trek as a concept, their Star Trek, which is why CBS and Paramount’s general abandon of that part of the franchise in favor of rebooting, revisiting and rewriting the original series over the last couple years has been particularly tedious. Except for Picard that is, although judging from the reviews it seems that we were better off forgotten.

       Given the fortune that the original Star Trek had at the cinema, it’s only logical to assume that The Next Generation, once it gained steam, would also make the trip to the cinema. Which it did, several times in fact. It would also be logical to assume that, having spent the better part of a decade covering the six TOS Star Trek movies, that I would then move on to the TNG era films. Which I am, and here we are. Unfortunately this does mean we’ll be out of sync with the Apes films in the end, but I wasn’t about to watch Tim Burton’s attempt at Planet of the Apes just for the sake of synchronicity. Life goes on.

       Released in 1994, Star Trek: Generations was written by Rick Berman, Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga (all major creative figures in the TNG era) and directed by David Carson, produced by Rick Berman through Paramount. After a five year mission and saving the Federation a half dozen times Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is now officially retired, which would be fine if he had a family or any life outside of his service to Starfleet, but that was taken care of back in Star Trek III. While on a publicity tour with the newly christened USS Enterprise-B, the ship receives a distress call from two civilian transport ships who have been caught in the wake of some sort of bizarre energy ribbons, the gravimetric pressure being too great for their systems to handle. Despite a severe lack of equipment and manpower, the Enterprise-B not yet fitted for active duty, Kirk’s leadership allows them to rescue at least a portion of the survivors, including a rather desperate man played by Malcolm McDowell, which tells you right away that he’s probably the villain. While attempting to escape the pull of the ribbon however, the ship is struck by a wave of energy, breaching the hull and heavily damaging several decks, including the one that Kirk was on at the time. His body is never found.

       Seventy eight years later the Enterprise-D, lead by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) receives a distress call from a remote starbase that has been attacked for some reason. On that base is one Doctor Tolian Soran, the same guy that was rescued all those years ago, as well as some dead Romulans. Seems that the Romulans caught wind of a trilithium in the area, a substance capable of killing stars, although such a material has heretofore been impossible to manufacture in any significant capacity. Except Soran totally is the bad guy and did make trilithium, and he’s teamed up with some renegade Klingons to boot. We can easily guess what use the Klingons would have for such a horrific weapon, but what of Soran? What does he stand to gain in such a deal, and how does it connect to that bizarre ribbon of energy all those years ago, now known as the Nexus? And what about all these subplots? You’re gonna have to watch and find out.

       The first thing that came to mind when I was watching Generations was how much I enjoy the look of cinematic Star Trek. Part of that is the special effects of course, scenes like the dying stars or the Enterprise-D crash-landing on Viridian-3 looking far beyond what was possible for any science fiction television show at the time, but honestly a lot of it has to do with the cinematography. Even from the time of The Motion Picture the films have had this more natural setting that made the universe of Star Trek feel more real, as opposed to the technicolor TOS and fluorescent TNG. Generally speaking Generations is no exception to that rule, flashy where it counts but otherwise impeccable, aside from David Carson’s apparent predilection for piss yellow lighting cropping up several times over the course of the film, which when combined with shadowy setting really does not look good. It comes across like you’re watching the film while wearing those big rim sunglasses that people wore in the 70’s, or playing one of those FMV computer games from back in the day.

       As someone who cut their teeth on The Next Generation I will say it’s nice to see the crew of my Enterprise together again, even if most of the attention is split between Picard, bartender/mysterious alien Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and my favorite character Data (Brent Spiner), whose consistent struggle with his newly installed emotion chip serves as the main source of humour in the film. Malcolm McDowell puts in his usual good work, even if Soran as an antagonist is unremarkable. I even find William Shatner tolerable here, even though I found his smarmy interpretation of the character in the later TOS films to be almost an insult. Before I started these films I had heard that some of the actors phoned it in for the movies, particularly Marina Sirtis, but for their first shot at bat I think everyone put in a good day’s work.

       Speaking of films though, one of Generation’s big problems is that it doesn’t feel like a movie. This is probably a given, but when you get a bunch of people who write for TV to write a movie, the movie is inevitably going to feel like a TV show. It starts off normally, but once we get into the TNG era the tropes start to interject themselves. Picard’s stardate monologues, the A and B plots that are wrapped up by the end, even the Trek staple outdoor scene that takes place on a rocky outcropping. This might not seem like a bad thing, TNG made for some great TV after all, yet in spite of having almost two hours to flesh this formula the film feels very ephemeral. As I said earlier Soran is incredibly underwhelming as an antagonist, the aliens who loved whales back in Star Trek IV were more compelling, and despite developing the most powerful weapon of mass destruction in the series history is basically an afterthought used to move the plot. Data’s plot, which is meant to be a capstone moment for his entire character arc, is mainly used for joke fodder and the one moment it does have an impact in the story it’s resolved within minutes. Picard’s plot, revolving around the death of his nephew and his family legacy, is treated somewhat better but it’s also rather subdued and only really comes into play like twice in the film, which admittedly is more attention than Kirk’s son has gotten in the last two movies. I mean it’s not out of character for Picard to bottle emotions like that but it really feels like that should have been more of the focus than it was, especially when the true nature of the Nexus is revealed, which is yet another thing that feels like it we barely got time with. It’s like I’m not allowed to relax and think in this movie, I’m constantly being pushed along to the next scene and the next bit of dialogue. Something that I don’t think came up across TNG’s several two-parters, despite those being about the same length of time as a feature film.

       I also question the decision to place Generations deep into TNG continuity. Usually when you’re adapting a TV show, or anything really, to the screen you go into it under the assumption that the person watching it has never heard of this thing before. It’s why half of all superhero movies ever made have been origin stories or featured something related to the origin. Which isn’t to say Generations should have been a TNG prequel or anything, but scenes like Worf being promoted or Data installing the emotion chip are things which only have emotional impact if you’ve been watching the show and knew these characters. Although to be honest it feels like they fucked over Data’s character to shove in that emotion chip plotline anyway, dude’s run the gamut of human experiences but he suddenly doesn’t understand humor, so they were better off nixing it entirely. The TOS films took place after the show but it still gave you time to understand the characters before they started to change things up too much. TNG doesn't get that same courtesy, and I think the film suffers for it.

       Then there’s Kirk. Now listen, I understand how important Kirk was to the popularity and sustainability of the Star Trek franchise, but after 6 movies I’m tired of Captain Kirk. Maybe someone thought that bringing Shatner in would help ease moviegoers in, but fuck that; TNG was coming off a seven year run as one of the most successful science fiction shows in the world at the time, they earned their place in the spotlight and they didn’t need to share it with the guy from The Devil’s Rain. Some people might point out that Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan and DeForest Kelly had made guest appearances on TNG, but I would argue that those episodes always celebrated the past while promoting the future. Kirk’s screen time in Generations mainly centers around people falling over themselves to extoll the greatness of James Kirk. The idea of the two captains of the Enterprise meeting sounds good on paper, but in practice this meeting of equals consists of Kirk throwing around smarmy one-liners and Picard being treated like a chump who can’t do anything on his own. While he redeems himself somewhat at the finale, the character was better served taking the bow with the rest of the crew in Star Trek VI. Or, if they were dead set on ruining the ‘one last ride’ theme of ST6 they should’ve just bit the bullet and brought back the entire crew. Enterprise meets Enterprise sounds way cooler than just captain meets captain, would have felt like a proper passing of the torch from one era of Trek films to another, rather than an excuse to blow smoke up William Shatner’s ass.

       Watching Star Trek: Generations is like reading the abridged version of a novel. What you see might be interesting, but you can’t escape the feeling that you’re missing some important chunks of the story. Given the reputation of the TNG films though I was expecting a lot worse, and while I would have preferred a more solid first outing for my favorite Trek, I would still take this over Star Trek V. Star Trek: Generations gets the recommendation, although those who aren’t already fans of Star Trek or The Next Generation will likely find little reason to bother with the film this Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: In the Mouth of Madness (1994), directed by John Carpenter

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "At The Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft

       There has been a common refrain that I’ve seen over the years about how H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are unfilmable. They point to the relative lack of commercial success Lovecraftian films have seen over the years and major studios’ unwillingness to put money into those types of films and rest their case. Or they go the other route and say that a proper Lovecraft film would be impossible as no film could capture the sheer mind-bending horror of these monsters, that only one’s own imagination can do it justice. The former can be dismissed as the anarchy of capitalism; there are plenty of bombs that studios dumped buckets of money on and plenty of good films that didn’t get the recognition they deserve because the people with the money don’t actually care about the art and are just playing a guessing game hoping to get the most money. The latter reeks of purity tests and gatekeeping and is better off discarded. Did Mary Shelley describe word for word how Frankenstein created his Modern Prometheus all those years ago? No, James Whale and Universal took a shot in the dark, and now everybody who knows Frankenstein knows it’s about a guy who sews body parts together and zaps it to life with lightning. H.P. Lovecraft is not some insurmountable, inscrutable thing, he was a dude that wrote good horror stories. All it takes is the right eye behind the camera and the script to get it done.

       For a time, I would say that John Carpenter was that eye. After all, wasn’t The Thing a Lovecraftian story? Sure it’s a remake of another film and an adaptation of a book, but it is a story about people confronting an alien presence which is not only inhuman in form but undermines the very essence of humanity in context. The characters are more competent than your typical Lovecraft protagonist, granted, but their relative effectiveness is there to heighten the feeling of dread and panic as things become increasingly dire and they are repeatedly outmaneuvered. So The Thing certainly qualifies as a Lovecraftian film to me, but then years later I found out that Carpenter had put out a film that was directly inspired by pulp fiction's creepy uncle. Then a couple years after that I finally bit the bullet and decided to review it. Now he we are.   

       Released in 1994, In the Mouth of Madness was directed by John Carpenter, written by Michael De Luca and produced by Sandy King through New Line Cinema. We begin with a man (played by Marathon alum Sam Neill) being committed to a mental institution. A man named Dr. Ren, as played by David Warner (another Marathon alum, arrives at the hospital and believing the man might be playing up his psychosis asks him for his story, which he then provides. The man is John Trent. He was a freelance insurance investigator, and a damn good one at that; He took great pride in uncovering scams and busting con artists. One day, after almost being murdered by an axe-wielding maniac, John is hired by publisher Jack Harglow (Charlton Heston, yet another alum) to find the author Sutter Cane, who has been missing for some time. Sutter Cane is the most popular writer on the planet, a billion dollar cash cow whose novels of monsters, madness and other nameless horrors are so effective that it is driving people toward acts of violence. His latest novel, In the Mouth of Madness, is set to take the world by storm, and so finding Cane is of the utmost importance. Or rather, finding his manuscript.

       Trent was skeptical, believing the whole disappearance was a hoax made up by the publishing company to increase sales, but agreed to help find him. After days of research, Trent finally stumbles upon it: clues hidden within Cane’s previous books which form a map to Hobbs’ End New Hampshire, a town which doesn’t exist. Now convinced even more that it is all an elaborate publicity stunt, Trent and Cane’s editor Linda Styles decide to take a drive to this nonexistent town and find Sutter Cane and his latest book. This would be the worst mistake Trent ever made in his life.

       What is the essence of Lovecraft’s writing? It’s not squid monsters from outer space, it’s outer space itself: the nagging doubt of the conception of man as this special creature which had fueled Manifest Destiny and much of the foundation of the American myth. We can see this expressed, although perhaps not intentionally, in The Thing, where the rational scientific minds are undone by something beyond their comprehension and which preys upon human limitations. So it is again with In the Mouth of Madness, but rather than the characters questioning the nature of life they are now forced to question the nature of reality. The misdirects, the blurring of dream sequences and ‘real’ sequences, the repetition of certain scenes, Carpenter constantly assaults his character's ability to separate fantasy from reality, and by extension the audience. We’ve seen this type of thing before in films, eXistenZ and Jacob’s Ladder and so on, but this is the first time in a while where I’ve seen it done in such an aggressive manner. It’s like a horror movie rollercoaster.

       Which isn’t to say it’s all mind-tricks and modernist subtext, this is a horror movie and Carpenter is here to bring that spooky stuff to the screen. To be honest though while the film is on the whole unsettling when it tries to move into outright scary it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The simpler scenes are effective and even deeply disturbing, but when we turn the corner and start getting into the gorey and Lovecraftian stuff it falters. The makeup on the whole tends to look rather simple, and unfortunately the monsters I feel end up showing their limitations rather quickly. They still look good, Industrial Light & Magic put in good work, and Carpenter does his best not to overexpose them, but once you notice it you can’t unnotice it and overall it’s not as strong in that department as what Carpenter delivered with The Thing or Big Trouble in Little China.

       I also wasn’t a fan of the theme music here, which sounded less like the opening to a Lovecraft movie than it did entrance music ripped from WWF No Mercy. Perhaps by ‘94 the synth-centric soundtrack was considered outdated, but this heavy metal they've chosen to replace to go with isn’t an improvement. I felt the same way with David Lynch throwing Rammstein on Lost Highway’s soundtrack, it’s way too angry and high energy and doesn’t mesh well with the energy of the film at all. 

       Historically though, and by ‘historically’ I mean the films that we’ve reviewed so far Carpenter’s films have succeeded when it comes to casting, and it’s no different here. It’s hard to think of an actor, besides Jeffrey Combs, that so perfectly nails the ideal Lovecraft actor than Sam Neill, even at the beginning at his most composed and charming he has the look of a man who has one foot constantly dangling over the edge. Julia Carmen as the Mulder to Neill’s Scully was also rather good, I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything else but she reminds me a bit of Rosario Dawson. Jurgen Prochnow as Sutter Cane is okay but not as much of a presence as the film builds him up to be, seemed like a role you’d write for Udo Kier. Plus you can never go wrong with a bit of David Warner.

       I’ve also praised John Carpenter’s films on a cinematic level for a while now, and In the Mouth of Madness is no different either in that regard. I don’t know quite how to describe the feel of it...Retro-Hollywood? It’s not like they’re filmed in technicolor or cinemascope or anything like that, but the way the shots are composed feels very film-like, or unreal might be the better word. I got much of that same feeling when watching Last Action Hero, where the intent is this sense of heightened reality, that the audience knows that they are watching a film. Which in this case I would say is an ingenious move on Carpenter’s part, but since several of his films since Christine have had this same look I’ll settle for just calling him a good director.

       The story out of pop culture is that after his boom period in the 1980s John Carpenter lost his touch and subsequently faded into relative obscurity. After Village of the Damned I might have seen a touch of truth in that statement, but I think In the Mouth of Madness proves that the man hadn’t lost his touch. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite of his films that I’ve covered but it is his most adventurous, and he takes risks in this film that I’ve rarely seen attempted in contemporary horror cinema. An easy recommendation for Halloween and otherwise; Whenever you decide to bring that pretty young abomination from the outer reaches of space you met at work over for a romantic dinner, pop this in the VCR and see where the night takes you. Make it a double feature with Re-Animator if you want to get saucy…

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: The Guyver II: Dark Hero (1994), directed by Steve Wang

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Snake Eater", by Donna Burke

       Way back during the 201 Marathon, I covered an obscure little film known as The Guyver, directed by the team of Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George. Based on the long-running manga series by Yoshiki Takaya the film was something of a trailblazer; Getting a foot in the tokusatsu door a year before Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers would become the kid cocaine of the mid 1990s, boasting some respectable special effects (including some truly disturbing body horror), and with Jimmie Walker and Mark fuckin’ Hammill in the cast no less. It was also a truly shitty movie as well as adaptation, its desperate attempts to ape the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle style producing some of the most abysmal ‘comedy’ I’ve seen outside of a Troma movie. A novelty even in these modern times certainly, as studios have made only a few tentative steps at fucking up popular anime and manga, but not one that I would recommend, unless I recommended it in the review I guess. At the very least it’s not a film I would have thought financially or critically successful enough to warrant more than a passing mention in some no-name film blog, much less a sequel of some kind. I mean if The Guyver could get a sequel, then clearly the laws of filmmaking that we had once held so dear were now dust in the wind, and all the movies we once thought incapable of becoming series were now on the table. Where’s the sequel to Buckaroo Banzai huh? Or The Mystery Men? Or The Love Guru? If we’re living in anarchy then it better damn feel like it.

       Anyway, 1994 saw the release of Guyver: Dark Hero (or The Guyver 2: Dark Hero, I’ve seen some inconsistent labeling), with Steve Wang going solo in the director’s chair this time around. It’s been one year since our hero Sean Barker (played by everyone’s favorite Snake, David Hayter) found the fantastical bio-boosted armor known as The Guyver unit and destroyed the evil Kronos Corporation and its army of mutant monsters known as the Zoanoids, and it appears that he’s fallen on hard times. The Guyver lust for combat has been taking him down an increasingly more violent path, which hasn’t done wonders for his social life, while at the same time flooding his mind with strange inhuman symbols. Symbols which look exactly like the ones discovered at an archeological dig in Utah, where a hunter was recently mauled to death in what some people are calling a ‘werewolf’ attack. Sean needs to get all up in there, and he does, but soon finds that there is a lot more to this than simple scientific curiosity. There are eyes on this prize, human and Zoanoid, and whoever manages to get their hands on it first could not only discover the origins of The Guyver unit, but possibly of life itself.

       What a difference kicking ol’ SMG off the payroll makes, as it turns out. The comedic bits that had made the first Guyver film feel like a bad joke have been stripped away, leaving us with a Guyver that prefers slicing a fucker’s throat or stab a Zoanoid’s eyes out over wisecracks. Which might still be silly to some people, the fact that it’s a comic book movie where guys in rubber suits fight each other hasn’t changed, but to me the more serious tone is Steve Wang learning from the mistakes of the previous film and trying to correct the course. In a field that’s dominated (at least in the West) by goofy Power Rangers bullshit, it’s cool to see something that breaks with that status quo. In a way that actually goes with the source material rather than against it as well, as is too often the case. 

       If you’re going to give Dark Hero credit for anything though, it’s the fight scenes. The Guyver isn’t just a guy(ver) in a cool suit, his raison d’etre is to kick ass, and Steve Wang and co. know well enough to give us plenty of ass-kicking throughout the film. Although the number of cuts during some fights was a bit distracting, the choreography was fluid and the actor’s movements never seemed hindered by their costumes, which is sometimes the case in tokusatsu media. Less flashy than the fights can be in Super Sentai or Kamen Rider, but between it and the monsters it’s by far the highlight of the film.

       Unfortunately, this film is not one continuous stream of fight scenes, but rather an attempt at a narrative, which means it’s forced to rely on David Hayter to drive the story forward. Now I like David Hayter, his voice work on the Metal Gear Solid series is a large part of why I love those games, and he does have the right look in a Jason David Frank sort of way, but he feels like a freshman drama student who has wandered onto a movie. Well that might be a bit harsh, but it is the case that Sean comes off as awkward and unnatural when paired with another member of the cast, in a way that can’t be waved off by “the Guyver makes him antsy around other people”. Does it irrevocably damn the movie? No, but it does make that 2+ hour runtime drag a touch.

       What might damn Dark Hero however is its use of sound effects. Just about every single move during the film’s several fight scenes is accompanied by some sort of sound effect, sometimes several, and 99% percent of the time it’s noticeable to the point of distracting from the action happening on screen. For example, one of the recurring antagonists of the film is a Zoanoid that I’ll call ‘Rhino Man’, and when Rhino Man is feeling particularly he lets out the cry not of a rhinoceros, but of a cat. Not distorted in any meaningful way, just a barrage of stock yowling cat noises. I can understand the inclusion of sound effects to add some life into the scenes, because rubber on rubber isn’t that exciting outside of certain fetishes, but not when it makes your action movie sound more like a Korean game show or someone sleeping on the soundboard of a Morning Radio DJ. What should be serious threatens to turn into a complete joke, and we already had enough of that shit back in the first movie. Needless to the point of bafflement.

       In the end, while Guyver: Dark Hero is a cut above the first Guyver film, it’s own issues keep it from being a true hidden gem. If you’re interested in the idea of The Guyver or with tokusatsu in general I can recommend it as a decent enough jumping off point, especially as it explains enough about the backstory to remove the need to watch the first movie. With the amount of tokusatsu media there is out in the world though, Super Sentai, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, Garo, etc., and with The Guyver manga being in limbo for the past couple of years, my motivation to recommend has become severely dulled. If you skip out on this one come Halloween time, I don’t think you’ll be missing much out on much.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Stargate (1994), directed by Roland Emmerich

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Door Of The Cosmos", by Sun Ra

     If there’s anything that the X-Files and the History Channel have taught me, it’s that anything that could be explained by human effort of natural phenomenon was almost certainly done by aliens. Mysterious lights in the sky? Aliens. Crop circles? Aliens. Stonehenge. The Nazca symbols? Aliens. The Easter Island statues? Aliens. Celebrities saying or doing anything? They’re either aliens or members of the Illuminati, which is made up of Reptilians, which are an intelligent non-human species, which is basically another word for aliens. Yeah, no one has actually ever seen these aliens, and there’s no concrete proof that anything extraterrestrial has ever visited Earth, but they’ve apparently been hanging out here the whole, probing our B-holes without our express written permission. Turns out that whole ‘space travel’ thing we thought about doing back in the 70s was actually just redundant guys, we could have just just called Kl’rrk and asked for a lift.

     Anyway, out of all the ‘aliens did it’ theories there are in the world, none is quite so prevalent and quite so heavily argued as the idea that aliens created the pyramids of Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of South America are apparently fine). Yes, despite the fact that Egypt, one of the oldest and most powerful civilizations of early man, had access to thousands of slaves and ramps with which to move large stones up inclines, there is very vocal minority that claims that alien beings traveled millions of miles across the galaxy in order to make a couple stacks of rocks in the desert. Why they would bother to do it, why would they make it out of of rocks and not a more lasting material, if it was some sort of message or beacon why would they not just place a satellite in orbit like you see in Star Trek or something, all these questions don’t really matter. Obviously early man didn’t have the intelligence or the technology to put rocks on top of each other, so we needed the help of beings that had mastered faster than light travel in order to do it. They didn’t even send us a bill for the consultation either. Thanks aliens!

     It is a pretty decent concept for a movie though.

     The story of Stargate goes as follows: Way back in the present day of 1994, disgraced Egyptologist Daniel Jackson is commissioned by the United States Air Force in order to translate a mysterious stone disk, discovered in Giza in 1928. This disk, as it turns out, is actually a star chart, a map providing a code with which to travel to another world via something known as a ‘stargate’. The stargate, as it happens, was also found in Giza, and is indeed a portal to another world. More specifically, when the exact sequence of symbols is entered into it, the stargate creates a wormhole which links itself to a receiver stargate at another location, in this case a planet on the far end of another galaxy entirely. A planet that has just the right temperature, gravity and atmosphere to support human life. Because it would be kind of a boring movie if it ended up on some planet made of liquid phosphorus.

     Thus the decision is made to mount a reconnaissance mission, and a team is assembled. Daniel Jackson, to translate the symbols needed for the return trip, bitter/jaded Col. Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell, who can’t pull off a buzz cut), famed television actor French Stewart, and a couple of other soldiers who I don’t remember the names of and who don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Their orders: Travel through the stargate, identify any lifeforms and any potential threats to the safety of mankind, and then return ASAP. Sounds simple enough, and that’s when the alien tyrants masquerading as ancient Egyptian gods come in.

     If you’re familiar with Independence Day, or maybe the 1998 turkey known as Godzilla, then you’ve already picked apart the secret to Roland Emmerich’s filmmaking style: Spectacle. Big special effects, big set pieces, big action sequences, big names, all the things that would be really exciting to look at on the big screen with popcorn and a box of Goobers, and none of the things that would make you think too hard about stuff. Blockbusters, basically. The biggest gamble in the film industry, and one that Hollywood has increasingly started to rely on as the years have passed. After all, even a normal movie is a risk because you’re investing money into something with no guarantee you’ll make a profit or break even, and the more money you sink into a movie (as is the case with blockbusters) the less tolerable the idea of failure is and the more attempts are made at normalizing it, at doing everything possible not to rock the boat and minimize that. Which at the end of the day still might not work, because all the time spent polishing a turd doesn’t necessarily mean people will want to look at shit. For any successful film Emmerich has done, Independence Day for example, there’s been a Godzilla or a 2012. Michael Bay hasn’t made a movie in years that wasn’t a punchline, and yet his movies rake in the dosh hand over fist. There’s no way to explain it really, and with studios ballooning budgets up to a billion dollars because they think they’ll get 2 billion out of it, it’s unsustainable at best and ultimately destructive at worst. Too much pressure, in my opinion. If I ever become a filmmaker, I’ll stick with making critically-acclaimed indie gems.

     So what did the miniature rant have to do with Stargate? Not much I guess, except to temper your expectations. I mean, the concept of Stargate is sound, the film looks great, great set design, great costumes and makeup (especially love the look of the guard’s armor), but there’s not really anything… all that exciting about it, I guess is what I’m trying to say. The story plays out about exactly as you’d expect, the scene when the characters don’t believe in themselves then get inspired to victory, the big battle scene, the scene when the protagonist lets off a witty one-liner before killing the villain, the same things you’ve probably seen in a dozen other movies. Kurt Russell and James Spader put on commendable performances, but you can tell the direction of their character arcs as soon as they’re introduced, and the rest of the cast all drop into the standard roles. The love interest whose only importance is to be the love interest, the fearful town leader, the young character who bonds with the older bitter character and teaches them how to care about living again, there’s a reason they’re called archetypes. I give Stargate some points for having 90% of the cast speak in an entirely different language for most of the movie without subtitles, at least there were no subtitles on the version I watched. Really pushes the physical and visual aspects of acting, rather than relying on dialogue to push the story forward. However, when you’ve got 2+ minute long dialogue scenes with characters talking to each other in another language and that’s all that’s happening, it does get grating.

     If you’re looking for a movie where you can turn your brain off and enjoy something for a while, and you’re a fan of all things old-school Egypt (the 90s were big on Egypt, man. The Mummy remake, The Scorpion King, and Mummies Alive! just to name a few), then you’ll most likely get what you want out of Stargate. If you’re a fan of the concept, the ‘universe’ of Stargate and you want to see it explored in greater depth, than I direct you to the TV series Stargate SG-1, which picks up where the film left off. I’ve only watched a few episodes myself so I can’t really make a judgement call, but I know that I’ve often heard it lauded as one of the great science fiction shows. Which may not seem like much considering there’s only been like 5 of them in the United States, but if you’re a budding sci-fi fan trying to get your feet wet, SG-1 is at least slightly more grounded in real world stuff than shows like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica, so you might find it a bit more palatable. Stargate gets the recommendation.

Crumb (1994), directed by Terry Zwigoff

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "My Girl's Pussy", by Robert Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders

     Despite what my writings on my oft-neglected film blog might imply, I actually do more than watch pro wrestling and movies. I’m more of an all-inclusive nerd, and there are many things that I spend my time on while I waste the precious hours of my life. Books, video games, theater, history, music, hardcore pornopgraphy, and as is most relevant to this article, comic books. I’ve been reading comics/graphic novels since I was 12 or so, and I’ve always been fascinated with it as a medium for creative expression and the bizarre characters brought to life within its pages. Although I wouldn’t put myself on the level of my more serious comic book fan friends, but I feel like I’ve read enough of the things over the years to know what I like and what I don’t on a somewhat critical level. Especially if it’s written by Alan Moore or Grant Morrison, in which case I’ll probably read it regardless of popular opinion.

     Much like the film world has Troma and music has its Velvet Underground, the world of comics has its own alternative and/or underground figures that have changed and revolutionized the field over the years. One of those figures for comics was Mr. Robert Crumb, whose work with Zap and other publications in the late 60s and early 70s helped bring new form of comic art and storytelling to the public consciousness. Highly sexualized, openly confessional, frequently neurotic, Crumb’s LSD-inspired take on American society and the people who lived in it was all the rage in Flower Power centers like Haight-Ashbury and the like. You might know him from the iconic ‘Keep on Truckin’ image that has been repeated on mud flaps and other media over the years, or for the equally iconic cover for Big Brother and the Holding Company’s amazing debut album Cheap Thrills. You might even know him for Fritz the Cat, which was eventually adapted into an animated film directed by Ralph Bakshi, and was the first and only animated film to receive an X-rating (it also kind of sucks, but whatever). There was no superheroes or magical dragons in the comics of R. Crumb, just the sexual fantasies of a compulsive masturbatory visualized with pen and paper. What better subject for a feature-length film could there be than that?

     (Spoilers: Nothing)

     Directed by Terry Zwigoff and produced by surrealist filmmaker David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Eraserhead, a bunch of other stuff that people either obnoxiously love or hate), Crumb details the life and times of the famous artist in the months prior to his move from San Francisco to the south of France in the early 90’s. Through candid interviews of Crumb as well as his friends, family and academics, Zwigoff reveals to us a more intimate portrayal of the man than we are normally privy to, despite the highly autobiographical nature of his art. His loves, his hates, the erratic childhood that drew him into comics and art, all of these things come together to form the image of R. Crumb, as well as the strange and off-kilter people around him. We also get to see some critical reception to his work from colleagues and peers, which range from revelatory to displeased, particularly in regards to Crumb’s notorious views on women and sexual intercourse. Most of those displeased opinions are from women, as you might expect.

     I have to wonder whether it’s the influence of Lynch that causes the strange atmosphere that seems to hang over this movie. Despite being a down-to-earth real life movie, Crumb has a definite Lynchian bent. The nostalgia for an idyllic past comes up is a classic Lynch motif of course, but more generally I mean presenting a positive story through dark and often disturbing means. Hearing the stories of Robert’s brothers Charles and Maxon, one a suicidally depressed wreck who still lives with his mother and the other an epileptic former molester who meditates on a bed of nails for spare change is definitely what you might call a case of life imitating Lynch, and the descriptions of parental abuse are many and varied, but it’s not played as a vehicle for sympathy, just an unfortunate bump in the road that we’re all far past by now. All of this builds up into the weird and bizarre world that has built up around Crumb over the years, which is juxtaposed by the man himself. Although we can see where the basis for his art comes from, Robert Crumb appears in this film as a man who is more or less at peace with himself and his various personality quirks. He’s got nothing to prove and has no desire for it, being perfectly content with the life that he’s carved out for himself through his work. Occasionally he comes off as a bit callous, and certainly unapologetic for those who demand he should be, but I think we all know somebody who comes across the wrong way every once in a while. There’s no malice to it, just how they are as people, for good or for worse. The biggest hurdle for this movie was showing Crumb as a man rather than a saint, as we so often typify other artists, but I believe they cleared it. A ‘you may not agree with him, but you respect his work’ kind of thing, and it’s better than spending 120 minutes blowing smoke up his ass. Which Robert Crumb might actually enjoy, I don’t know. I’m not privy to his sex activities, or sextivities as we ‘in the know’ call it, but I’m sure they get pretty weird. Even weirder than the sextivities that we actually hear about in the movie, which is probably more than any of us really wanted.

     Obviously if you don’t care about Crumb or comic books in general, then you’re probably better off ignoring this movie. If you are interested in those, or underground art movements, or you like seeing movies with weird people in them, then this might be right up your alley. Generally I don’t try doing writeups about documentaries, it just feels weird to me to try and dissect them as I would a fiction film, and the director’s role in said films feel more subtle than the grand artistic statements of their personal worlds. Given the subject matter and my continual return to off-beat films however, I decided to make an exception As far as documentaries go I found that Crumb succeeded in making life seem far more interesting and eloquent than it actually is, and the scenes of pre-Millennium America gave me the bittersweet sense of nostalgia that all the kids these days love so much. The portions of the film where we get a look into his early work and his philosophy on the art of drawing were similarly very informative and frequently engaging as well. I say give Crumb a try and put it in your watch queue, get double your daily dose of info and insanity at the same time. Keep on truckin’ folks!

RESULT: RECOMMENDED

The Crow (1994), directed by Alex Proyas

Coming straight at you in glorious 2-D, it's THE RETURN OF BLOG!!

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Boys Don't Cry", by The Cure

     The 90s were a great time to be a disaffected youth, it seems. Korn and Pearl Jam were burning up the charts, leather pants were in great abundance, and MTV had not yet turned into a burning cesspool of shit. I was but a young child then, but I have read the ancient scrolls, studied our people’s tales, and know it to be true. 

     Comic books were affected by this cultural shift as well. Forget that truth and justice shit, the money was in anti-heroes: costumes as black as their deadened soul, their perpetual nights spent killing nameless gang members and lamenting how miserable their existence is. Spawn, created by Todd McFarlane, was the breakout star of that period, which eventually spawned (heh) an unimpressive movie starring John Leguizamo as a shitty clown (the role he was born to play) and an alright animated series. Other series followed suit, including The Darkness, which got its own video game for some reason, and The Crow, which has ended up inspiring more films than the illustrious Spawn has done so far. Of course, those other films are generally shat-upon sequels, but the numbers don’t lie damn it!

     For reference, I’m talking about the original Crow movie now.

     The plot begins as so: The night before Halloween in a crime ridden, Tim Burton’s Batman-esque city, an apartment has been set aflame by unknown assailants. Shelley Webster, well known doer of things, has been viciously raped and brutalized and her ultra-cool rockstar boyfriend Eric Draven (get it?) is murdered. Ernie Hudson, who’s playing the ‘cop who’s not an asshole’ in this movie, tells the grunge girl who hangs out with this couple (she’s a prominent character in this film, yet apparently not prominent enough for me to remember her name) that’s Shelley is going to be okay, but we all know that ain’t happening. It’s all very emotional, but as soon as I laid eyes on Ernie Hudson, all that plot junk just faded from my mind. God damn do I love Ghostbusters. Also there’s a crow there, he kinda flaps around

     One year later, on the night that has been nicknamed ‘Devil’s Night’ by the fearful citizenry, Eric Draven (the late Brandon Lee, son of the late Bruce Lee lives again! Recognizing Eric’s thirst for vengeance, the crow grants him life once more, as well as a nice collection of vaguely defined powers . You would think that being given superpowers by a bird would give Eric bird-based powers ala Spider-Man, but no, he’s just invincible. Which really isn't a power so much as it is a thing a 10 year old trots out when he doesn't want to lose a play fight with his friends but whatever, it’s not my movie.

     Eric Draven is now The Crow, I guess, because they never actually call him The Crow the entire movie. Hell, I don’t think they even say the word ‘crow’ more than a few times in the movie, which has got to be intentional on the film makers part. Anyways, Draven is now a totally awesomesauce superhero now, wearing leather clothes and harlequin face paint, busting out tasty licks on his guitar, and spouting out statements about love and pain that kinda sound philosophical if you don’t think about it too hard. I think at this point we’re supposed to feel sorry for Draven and his situation, but it’s played up so much that it veers from sympathetic to comical extremely quickly. Anyways, Draven receives a vision from his unexplained vision powers that flashes back to Devil’s Night one year previous, giving him the names and faces of those bad bad dudes who killed him and Shelley Webster. With that in mind, Draven makes it his mission in unlife to find and kill this gang of hoods, in ways that are both violent and ironic, while dodging the cops in typical superhero fashion. Murder is so much cooler when you can say ‘oh, I see what he did there’.

     By the way, if ‘a gang kills some guy, then that guy comes back and kills the gang members one by one until he reaches the boss’ sounds familiar, that’s because that was more of less the plot to Robocop. And probably several dozen other movies and video games, but mainly Robocop. I hope that when the Goku/Superman debates finally die down, perhaps in the next century or two, we can get started on Robocop vs. The Crow.

     Our film’s villains are what have now become classic action movie thugs, a mix of wildly anarchistic and somewhat competent. How can someone who swallows bullets with his shot of whiskey also be smart enough to fancy looking time-bombs? We just accept it and move on, because we know that fucker is definitely getting blown up at some point in the future. Their boss (who I also can’t remember the name of, if they even give him a name in the movie) is the weirdest of them all; Fucking girls to death, making out with his creepy Asian sister, shooting folks seconds after he asks them a question because he’s ‘bored’, he does it all. Why does he make out his sister? How does he control a city-wide crime organization if he constantly kills people out of boredom? It’s an exaggerated, cartoonish level of villainy that I enjoyed in Pretorius from Bride of Frankenstein, yet find more silly than endearing here. Maybe Pretorius seemed a more limited, human character to me as compared to this longhaired, katana-wielding freakazoid, I don’t know. I could be contradicting myself here.

     Comic book movies haven’t always been the million dollar blockbusters you know and love today, believe it or not. Up until a few years ago, the comic book movie ‘genre’ tended to vary between cheesy, shitty, or a combination of the two from movie to movie. For me, The Crow falls within the cheesy-but-not-that-shitty territory. The characters (sans Ernie Hudson of course), despite so gritty and alternative, were either a bit too one-dimensional or barely present for me to form any sort of emotional connections, and the antagonist’s scheme is stupid as hell. I do enjoy the aesthetic, and the action is passable, which was probably the whole point of the movie anyway. It won’t make your eyes bleed, unless you’re so goth you cry tears of blood, but I’d go for Robocop every time.

Result: Recommended if you’re a fan of the comic, internal torment, or hard-rocking alternative/industrial rock tunes.

 Not Recommended if you hate average action movies, Tim Burton, goths, or Sting.