The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), directed by Anthony Mann

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Empire" by Shakira

     It is said that all empires must one day fall, and the reason it is said is because of Rome. To the untrained eye it might seem inconceivable that the Roman Empire would have collapsed the way it did; They were one of the most dominant military and political entities on the planet at the time, stretching from Europe to Asia, from Britain to Africa, builders of vast networks of roads and aqueducts, writers of poetry and theater. Yet it was exactly that advancement, economically, socially,  and technologically that was the problem, that constant and inevitable clash between progress and regression that led to its slow dissolution and usurpation by the Mongols, the Visigoths, et cetera. A Roman Empire still existed afterwards for a couple centuries afterwards of course, but it was not, indeed could not, be the Rome that had been. Such is the way of life.

     The situation with Rome is not exactly like the one with the movie industry in the 1960s, but there are similarities. As with Rome the movie industry had grown over the years to be a veritable behemoth, and that size allowed it to perform grander and grander feats. Thus we saw the rise of ‘epics’ such as Ben-Hur and Marathon alum Saladin, films with large set pieces, large casts and large budgets. Then we saw them again, and again, until diminishing returns set in and the movie industry found that in their desperate rush to capitalize on this trend that it was difficult to fund any movies at all. Of course the movie industry didn’t collapse and epic films didn’t cease to exist, but for a while the dynamics of filmmaking certainly shifted. It’s doubtful whether the Hollywood New Wave in the 70s, the rise of Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, et al. would have happened if not for the problems the movie industry brought on itself, but surely that’s a thing of the past and has no bearing on the present day.

     Released in 1964, The Fall of the Roman Empire was written by Ben Barzman, Basilio Franchina and Philip Yordan and directed by Anthony Mann (El Cid, The Glenn Miller Story) through Samuel Bronston Productions. The year is 180 A.D. and Caesar Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness) has been overseeing the war effort against the tribal peoples of what is now called Germany. Aurelius has grown old and ill however, and his thoughts turn increasingly not to war but of peace, a Pax Romana that will unite all of the peoples of the Empire as free citizens of Rome. A monumental task worthy of a Caesar, and Aurelius decides that Gaius Metallus Livius (Stephen Boyd), commander of the Northern Army, is a man worthy of the title. Before that decision can be made final though, Aurelius is murdered by those unwilling to let peace damage their pocketbooks, and Aurelius’ son Commodus (Christopher Plummer) becomes Caesar instead. Gone are those lofty goals, gone is the Pax Romana, Commodus is here to Make Rome Great Again and he’s going to do it, no matter what his advisors or reality says otherwise. What does this mean for Livius and his beloved Lucilla (Sophia Loren)? What does this mean for Rome? I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, probably nothing good.

     An event like the collapse of the Roman Empire demands a film that is epic (natch) in scope, and on a visual level The Fall of the Roman Empire succeeds. The film takes place primarily in two locations, a military outpost in Germany and the city of Rome itself, and both look absolutely gorgeous. Huge panaramic shots that really emphasize on a visceral level the film’s scope, which is highlighted when Mann packs a scene with dozens if not hundreds of people. There are a few moments where a green screen or some other film trick is used to place a character where they’re not, but for the most part it seems natural, which for all their faults is really something you only really get with these kinds of films.

     Such stakes also call for some big fights, and The Fall of the Roman Empire has more than its share. These are not orderly affairs where soldiers jauntily march into battle, this is barely controlled chaos. Not a lot of blood, this is the 60s mind you, but there are people getting set on fire, horses falling and landing on people, it’s easy to forget sometimes that you’re watching a film and not a riot at a renaissance fair. While it might be considered to compare the level of Hollywood’s resources when compared to any other country’s film industry, The Fall of the Roman Empire blows Saladin out of the water. Despite both films centering around military conflicts, I don’t know if there’s anything in Saladin aside from Richard III’s invasion and the siege engine scene that compares to even the first battle in this film. Though there’s plenty of Hollywood ‘clanging two blades together over and over’ style sword fighting, there’s also a visceral quality to the combat that is effective even by modern standards.

     Of course it wouldn’t be a movie about Rome if the cast wasn’t made up of mostly white people, and Fall of the Roman Empire refuses to break the mould in that respect. Stephen Boyd is the sore thumb of the bunch, this blonde haired blue eyed guy with the flat American accent who looks more Teutonic than the fucking Germans they’re fighting, but you can tell by that chin dimple why they wanted him and he doesn’t do that bad. Sophia Loren is fine (and the only Roman in the cast who’s actually from Rome), a bit melodramatic but then these are melodramatic roles. Alec Guinness and James Mason (as Timonides) were on-screen veterans for a couple decades by this point so you know they know their way around a script, but the most entertaining performance is Christopher Plummer as the increasingly unhinged Caesar Commodus. The Emperor of Rome being insane is something of a cliche at this point, likely due to stories of Nero and Caligula entering the public consciousness, but Plummer does great work in making Commodus a truly despicable character. A delusional narcissist, bully, and a sniveling cretin, you start to dislike him the moment he gets on screen and by the end you absolutely despise. Which is good! You don’t need to make an antagonist some tragic figure, sometimes it’s enough to just have some piece of shit surrounded by other pieces of shit who wields too much power. Even though we learn a bit of Commodus’ backstory over the course of the film I wouldn’t say that he ever takes that step into becoming sympathetic, and I think Plummer’s performance helps cement that.

     That being said, The Fall of the Roman Empire is not simply a tale of morals, but of politics as well. Commodus and his coterie are certainly villainous in character, reveling in murder and upholding the institution of slavery, and in a grander sense represent the inability of the Roman state (or any state) to resolve the contradictions inherent within its design and thus its use of violence in order to maintain stability. Livius and his side are depicted as the heroes, but it is portrayed quite clearly that their opposition is just as much a political decision as it is an ethical one. Marcus Aurelius’ desire for a Pax Romana is predicated less so on philosophy and more so on building a unified bulwark against the Persians, and one of the major points in Timonides’ speech to the Senate is on the economical viability of free men over slaves (‘free’ in this context meaning peasantry rather than the romanticized American ‘freedom’ that we hear about today, even though conflation of the two was most likely intended by the screenwriter). Not to mention that all of Livius’ actions are made in order to maintain and even expand the hegemony of the Roman Empire, which ultimately makes him no different from Commodus aside from being more capable at it. The abolition of slavery is obviously a worthy cause and so we can support Livius in that way, but in the end they both represent failing attempts at stifling the progress of history, because the slaves would be freed and Rome would fall regardless of the wishes of these men but by the will of the masses. It’s a lot more nuanced of a film than I was expecting, even if it presents itself as some sort of melodrama.

 

     Speaking of Lucilla’s whining, there’s this thing that this movie does where a character has an internal monologue, but then they also just say things out loud sometimes as well. It only happens two times in the film, once with Marcus Aurelius and the other with Lucilla, and both times it doesn’t work. I can see where the scenes might have looked good on paper, but in execution it’s either the narration doesn’t really add anything to the scene or it makes the character in question look like someone with a severe mental illness rambling to himself on a street corner. Either have the character just say that narration out loud, this is the kind of movie where you could get away with that, or just have them stay silent and physically convey their emotions. Less is more and all that.

     One last word of warning to those prospective cinephiles out there, The Fall of the Roman Empire is advanced material if you’re not used to older films. Tops out at just under three hours, and no one talks like a real person. If you read through Shakespeare in high school and hated it then this might not be for you. It doesn’t skimp out on the action scenes though, if that’s what you’re into, and I think Livius and Lucilla’s star crossed romance set against the backdrop of political corruption and societal decay (which I’m sure bares no resemblance to these modern times) is enough to keep one invested. The Fall of the Roman Empire gets the recommendation, crack open a wineskin this Halloween and enjoy.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Brain Donors (1992), directed by Dennis Dugan

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Crazy Words, Crazy Tune", by Johnny Marvin

       Cyclical trends. Every year or so it seems that a generation of people rediscover something that was popular with the previous generation and suddenly society is inundated with the stuff. In the 70’s folks were all about the 50’s; They watched Happy Days on their TV sets, went to see Grease and American Graffitti in theaters and attended Elvis Presley concerts in droves. The 90’s saw two Woodstocks and the revival of both swing and lounge music, for some reason. Even in this day and age it’s not difficult to find a song or a movie that’s lifting the 80’s aesthetic or a video game trying to be the next Earthbound or Final Fantasy 6. A common complaint thrown at Hollywood is its insistence on reboots and remakes, but the fact of the matter is that our society in general has been recursive. We’re constantly looking backwards, recycling, repackaging and deconstructing things we’ve done before, even if we don’t really have anything to say.

       Possibly the weirdest example of recursive pop culture are what I would tentatively call

the vaudeville comedy ‘revival’, in quotes because it has to be marginally successful to be considered a revival. Once in a blue moon someone in Hollywood gets it into their head that what the movie-going public wants is some of that Depression-era cinema, a return to those halcyon days where films were more than Kevin Hart screaming at things for 90 minutes. Rather than going the Oscar bait period drama route however, ala Chaplin, they decide to just make one of those movies. Own the rights to Laurel & Hardy but both men have been dead for decades? Well just grab a fat guy and a skinny guy and have them be Laurel & Hardy! Those 3 Stooges rights burning a hole in your pocket? Call up Will Sasso and have him hang out with the cast of Jersey Shore. It doesn’t matter that these were professional actors and comedians who spent their lives perfecting their characters and their act, just have some folks in cosplay do impressions and it’s basically the same thing right? Why book Paul McCartney for your concert when you can just get a Beatles cover band? Even if they ended up being decent movies, I don’t know what the incentive would be to watch them over an actual Laurel & Hardy or 3 Stooges film. More jokes about smartphones, I guess?

Which brings us to today’s film: Brain Donors, written by Pat Proft and directed by Dennis Dugan through Zucker Brothers Productions, back when the Zuckers were known for things like Airplane! and Police Squad rather than Scary Movie 3. Bob Nelson, Mel Smith and John Turturro star as Jacques (the oddball), Rocco (the streetwise conman) and Roland T. Flakfizer (the silver-tongued lawyer), three men who are brought together when the wealthy husband of wealthy philanthropist Lillian Oglethorpe unexpectedly passes. Mr. Oglethorpe’s will sets aside a significant chunk of change for the creation of a ballet company, and long-time toadie Edmund Lazlo is confident that lucrative chairman position belongs to him, only for his schemes to be dashed when Roland (who had sweet-talked his way into being the widow Oglethorpe’s personal solicitor) catches a whiff of easy money and sweet-talks his way into consideration for the job. The winner will obviously be one who provides the greatest boon for the company though, and Edmund has The Great Volare waiting in the wings. If Roland and the boys want that fat paycheck they’re gonna have to think on their feet, which is probably going to make it hard to stand up, and Edmund isn’t going to take it sitting down, although from the look of him he’s got plenty of experience. Tutu troubles and general chaos abound, which would have arguably been a much better title for this film than Brain Donors.

This is certainly an odd one. To say that Brain Donors takes inspiration from the Marx Brothers is like saying Vanilla Ice took inspiration from David Bowie and Queen. Tuturro, Smith and Nelson are slotted into the same roles that Groucho, Chico and Harpo would have been, doing the exact same things the Marx Brothers would have done, it’s got the rich socialite that in the past would have been played by Margaret Dumont, it’s got the tacked on romance subplot, they even name drop A Night at the Opera in the credits. About the only thing they don’t do is musical interlude where one of the leads plays the piano or the harp, which admittedly might have been a bit difficult to fit into a movie that was ostensibly about dancing, but that wouldn’t have stopped the originals.

What sets Brain Donors apart from those revival films though is that while it is essentially a Marx Brothers movie, the three leads are not pretending to be the Marx Brothers. Mel Smith fills the same role as Chico Marx, but Rocco is played as a working-class Brit, rather than an Italian. Bob Nelson is the Harpo of the film but he’s not just rehashing Harpo, he’s even got dialogue. They’re subtle changes sure, but they serve to establish Brain Donors as a loving homage to the work of the Marx Bros., which is a far more palatable option than the straight up copy and paste job of the Laurel & Hardy and 3 Stooges reboot. Turning an eye to what came before without outright cannibalizing it, a novel concept indeed.

Brain Donors also sets itself apart from its influence in the way it utilizes visual comedy. The Marx Brothers were no stranger to that of course, especially Harpo, but it seems far more prevalent and elaborate in this film than it did in those films. The benefits of several decades of filmmaking techniques, but having David and Jerry Zucker in the producer chair very likely had a part in that as well. The scene where Jacques opens up a laptop computer and it extends out in such a way to eventually become a full-sized desktop PC, complete with a desk and a blowup doll definitely feels like something you would have seen in Naked Gun or The Kentucky Fried Movie. 

Unfortunately as the successor to the Marx Brothers filmography suffers from the same issues that one could place on those films, which feel more and more blatant when removed from their original context. The plot is superfluous, an excuse to tackle the Brothers’ favorite subject (high society dipshits), but paper thin as it is they still seem to struggle to make this ballet concept work. They’ve got the tacked on romance subplot as I said, but they’ve taken it a step farther to the point that it is positively anemic. Zeppo at least got a song or two, he shared the screen with his brothers a couple times, he wasn’t the moneymaker but he was still relevant to some degree. By contrast Alan, this movie’s male romantic lead, is just some guy. He dances a couple times, in a movie about dancers it’s bound to happen sooner or later, but he never really interacts with the leads in any meaningful way and to be honest I can barely recall what he looks like. I remember his fiance Lisa a bit better but she also barely has anything to do in this movie. Maybe like 3 minutes of romantic drama that is instantly resolved by the next scene, and having to fend off a rape attempt, because apparently we can’t have a movie without one of those.

       I also can’t let this review go by without mentioning how much I hate the score. Music in cinema has changed over the years, the orchestral score is not as dominant as it once was, but sometimes a film comes along that makes you think maybe we were better off back when all movies sounded the same. Why a movie paying tribute to films from the 30s sounds like a PC adventure game from the 90s I don’t know, but it’s another one of those things that just feels off. Shouldn’t the score be zanier? Some big band swing with lots of brass? Why does the opening song sound like someone plunking away on a toy xylophone? Combined with the rather long claymation sequence at the beginning you’d think you’d accidentally popped in an episode of some obscure European children’s show.

In an ironic twist though, I think Brain Donors’ biggest problem is the exact thing I was praising it for earlier: These guys aren’t the Marx Brothers. They certainly aren’t bad, but they lack the fire that made the Marx Brothers the comedians that they were. John Tuturro is a great actor, but every time I watched him toss off one-liners as Roland it felt like he was trying to be funny, whereas Groucho was funny without really trying. It’s that effortlessness that really made the Marx Brothers what they were as comedians; They were always two steps ahead of anyone else, and every time they opened their mouths or set their sights on someone they proved it. Sometimes Groucho or Chico would drop a line so quickly that it would take a second or two to register, while here they stop the film entirely so they can push out a gag. The Brain Donors cast has the basic act down, they’ve certainly got some good lines, but without the Marx’s chaotic energy it just doesn’t hit the way it should. Brain Donors is certainly wacky but it’s not always funny, if that makes sense.

When Brain Donors hit theaters in 1992 it was not a great success, grossing under a million dollars, and it doesn’t seem to have gained a significant cult following in the years since, in fact I didn’t even know this movie existed until last year. Which makes sense, having now seen it for myself. Fans of obscure 90s video store fodder or screwball superfans might want to give Brain Donors a watch, but I think everyone else would be okay if they skipped it and went for Duck Soup instead. Then maybe later they could watch a Marx Brothers movie.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Chan Is Missing (1982), directed by Wayne Wang

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Cantonese Boy", by Japan

      The relationship between Hollywood and Asian people over the years has been, unsurprisingly, about as rocky as it has been for every other ethnic minority that has resided in this country since the invention of film. Kowtowing servants speaking broken English, mysterious villains (epitomized by Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and parodied by John Carpenter’s Lo Pan) and ancient masters of the martial arts, with the added possibility of being the exotic love interest for our red-blooded American hero if you were an attractive enough woman, that was about the extent of what you could expect as an Asian actor back in those days. Hell, they weren’t even allowed to play characters where the whole gimmick was being of Asian descent! Charlie Chan? Played by longtime Swede Warner Oland, who also played the mystical Fu Manchu in three films for Paramount. Mr. Moto? Peter Lorre. Mr. Wong? Why that’s Mr. Frankenstein himself Boris Karloff, who also played Fu Manchu in 1932’s The Mask of Fu Manchu and General Wu Yen Fang in 1937’s West of Shanghai! I know that people of a certain ethnicity playing people of other ethnicities isn’t exactly uncommon in cinema history, in ways that range from the innocent to the blatantly offensive, but it’s still kind of strange to me that ‘white guy playing East Asian detective’ was its own subgenre for a hot minute there. It’s such a bizarrely specific thing for folks to have latched onto for a while, I can’t think of an equivalent.

      Which brings us right around to Chan Is Missing, directed by Wayne Wang and written by Terrel Seltzer, which I believe I found out about from an old Siskel & Ebert video. Wood Moy stars as Jo, a Chinese-American guy living in the heart of San Francisco’s famous Chinatown district. One day, in a bid for more cash and independence, Jo and his buddy Steve lend some money to their mutual friend Chan Hung so that he can get them a cab driver’s license. Several days later however, and Chan has gone missing. He had gotten into a car accident a few days prior, and ever since then he had completely vanished, seemingly without a trace. For varied reasons, not the least of which is getting back that money, but they soon discover that tracking Chan down is going to be a lot more difficult than they realized. It turns out that Chan Hung knew a lot of people, and he was a lot of different things to those different people. An eccentric, a struggling immigrant, a failure, a political agitator. Maybe even a murder suspect? A lot questions and not too many answers as Jo and Steve work their way through the briarpatch that is their friend’s life, about themselves and their own identity, as they try to figure out why Chan is missing.

      This probably goes without saying, but Chan Is Missing is not a Charlie Chan or a Mr. Wong movie, where the Asian protagonist spouts off some vaguely philosophical one-liners while someone rings a gong in the background. This is a film that takes place in Chinatown, made by and with Chinese-Americans, and it deals in issues that affected Chinese-Americans at the time, and still do today. Issues like racism, certainly, but also that of immigration, the difficulties of cultural assimilation, the tension between supporters of the PRC and Taiwan, and ultimately what it means to be a Chinese-American. Heavy stuff, and yet Chan never feels like a particularly heavy film. Even as we delve deeper into the mystery of Chan Hung’s disappearance and all the things that it dredges up it feels less like we’re falling into a pit and more that we’re walking through a foggy marsh, where detail and definition fades into the haze. What is the truth? What is the answer? They’re there, you can find them, but everything’s so hazy you might find yourself walking in circles.

      Stylistically then Chan Is Missing fits right in with film noir standards like The Third Man or what have you, with a couple of touches, a POV shot here and there, that pushes things more firmly the experimentation of the French New Wave directors like Godard. Whether or not it all works is probably an arguable point, I think the film is at its best when it blends this kind of grounded, proto-Clerks realism with touches of film noir, and the moments when Wayne Wang decides to change things up a bit can feel a bit forced. He doesn’t go to that well that often, which is why it’s a bit weird when they do show up, but I wouldn’t say it detracts from the viewing experience.

      Anything else I want to mention…? I liked the choice of songs here, especially the Chinese-language covers of rock songs. I thought the acting was good, the actors drew you into their world quite naturally. Both Wood Moy (who played Jo) and Marc Hayashi (who played Steve) didn’t really have a long career in film, appearing in only a handful of movies, but I think they do a good job as leading men here. I also like how they’re both dressed like they’re 60 year old male truckers, but that might have been the style of the time. Oh, and I 100 percent want that Samurai Night Fever T-shirt they show off too. That looked cool as hell.

      Ultimately, I’m giving Chan Is Missing the recommendation. It’s certainly rough around the edges, which should be expected with a lack of budget and a relatively inexperienced production (this was Wayne Wang’s second ever film, released seven years after his debut), but it is unique not only in its presentation but in its cultural perspective, so I’d say it deserves some time in the spotlight. While I’ve covered several Chinese films before, this is the first time I’ve seen a Chinese-American film, and it’s made me interested in more. After watching Chan Is Missing, maybe you’ll feel that way too.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Thief and the Cobbler (2013), directed by Richard Williams

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Scheherazade", by the Vienna Philharmonic

      With cinema, as with many things, we sometimes find ourselves occupied with thoughts of what could have been. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is perhaps the most well known, but I’d venture to say that much of its popularity lies in it being supremely unfilmable. A 24 hour runtime? A cast that included Mick Jagger, Orson Welles and Salvador Dali (before he went fascist)? Art direction by a young H.R. Giger? What a trip that would’ve been! What’s less fun, however, is those films that were being worked on, did show promise, but all of a sudden...stopped. Maybe it was money troubles, or troubles with the cast and crew, or studio interference, but whatever the reason the movie just does not see the light of day. Or if it does, because movie studios are as obsessed with money as they are with fucking up the things that make them money, it’s ultimately released as a shadow of its former self.

      We’ve covered one such case on the Marathon before in Lost Soul, the documentary of up-and-coming director Richard Stanley’s ambitious adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau which eventually limped into theaters as a John Frankenheimer directed trainwreck. Yet all the heartache and pain that surrounding that production almost seems like a drop in the bucket compared to that of The Thief and the Cobbler.   That whole thing took place over a year or two; Director, co-writer and animator Richard Williams (who you might recognize as the animation director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) began work on the film in 1964, and then spent the next 30 years of his life trying to put it together, funding it out of his own pocket and through whatever investors he was able to find. In the early 90s, after a deal with Warner Bros. fell apart, Williams was forced off of the film by the new rights holder The Completion Bond Company, who hired Fred Calvert to put a bullet in its brain, which in industry terms meant filling in the cracks with cheap animation done by freelancers and Disney style musical numbers. The distribution rights of that new film, known as The Princess and the Cobbler, were then sold to Miramax, where noted rapist Harvey Weinstein had the film cut again into Arabian Knight, which in the theaters went over about as well as farting in your girlfriend’s face when she’s trying to tell you she’s pregnant. Although it doesn’t seem like he was the easiest guy to work with in the world, it is a shame that Richard Williams went to his grave in 2019 having never been able to see his life’s work come to fruition. Which got me curious to check it out for myself.

      As I said, The Thief and the Cobbler was never actually made into a movie.. A workprint was made around 1992, which is where the material for Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight came from, but many scenes had yet to be animated and overall it was not in a state fit to be called a movie. Because of that, and because I had no interest in covering those other films, I decided instead to take a look at the ‘Recobbled Cut’, a project headed by Garrett Gilchrist which seeks to take as much of what was The Thief and the Cobbler as possible, the completed animation, animatics, still pictures and what have you, and fashion it into a workable narrative. It’s not a perfect solution obviously, a good portion of this animated movie isn’t even animated, but as far as I know it’s as close to Richard Williams’ original vision as we’re going to get. Recobbled Cut Mark 4 I believe is what it goes under, shouldn’t be all that hard to find. Now let’s get into it.

      In a world that is not unlike a dream, there is a golden land. In that land is a magnificent golden city, and in that city is a tall golden minaret, and at the very top of that minaret there are three golden balls. Legend goes that as long as those balls are on the minaret peace and prosperity will reign, but should they ever be removed, then death and destruction is sure to follow. However, legend also states that should this ever occur, then the simplest soul will save the day. One day, an encounter with a wily Thief ends up putting humble cobbler Tack on the shit-list of the crooked grand vizier Zigzag. Arrested and sent to the palace for punishment, Tack instead finds himself in the good graces of the beautiful Princess Yum-Yum, while the Thief catches a glimpse of the beautiful golden balls. While the two youngsters try their hand at courtship, Zigzag schemes a way to take control of the city, and the Thief plies his trade, none in the city realize the danger that looms on the horizon. One Eye, the insatiable warlord, has his sight set on ransacking the city, and he’s got about 2,000 men ready to help him do it. Disparate people with disparate aims, and yet as time goes on it seems inevitable that these paths will meet. How much stock can you put in legends? How drunk do you have to be to name your daughter Yum-Yum? And how many stories set in a fictional Middle Eastern kingdom that deals with a commoner falling in love with a princess and opposing an evil grand vizier with a bird companion whose plan involves marrying the princess against her will do we really need anyway?

      As you might expect from an animated film that was worked on for 3 decades, at its best The Thief and the Cobbler is stunning. Not only is the animation as smooth as anything you’d seen in a Disney film, incorporating an eclectic range of character designs from the simple to the grotesque, but the art, matte paintings and so on, are insane. Not only is it incredibly detailed (replicating classical Persian artwork), but how it’s used is unlike anything I’ve ever seen attempted in animation before, at least in the West. There’s a scene where Tack is chasing after the Thief in this black and white section of the castle and it might be the first time I ever felt dizzy while watching a movie, because it feels like a kaleidoscope in fast forward. The Thief and the Cobbler’s sense of scale is reminiscent of Sun Wukong on the Buddha’s palm, and I can’t think of many animated films outside of Akira and Ghibli’s best that went so far so well. It also does a great job of highlighting how it never got finished; With how much work it takes to make hand drawn animation in general much less shit this good, combined with what was supposedly a haphazard working environment, I doubt there’s many studios out there that would be willing to throw down the cash to keep the lights on. 

      The story I could also see being an issue with money hungry studio execs, because it’s not quite your standardized Hollywood fare. The characters our film are named after are almost totally silent, and while there is technically ‘action’ most of it, in fact most of the plot is driven by the extreme and often implausible whims of fate, much in the same way as a Wile E. Coyote or Pink Panther cartoon. Which can be entertaining, combined with the sense of scale you can get some truly amazing scenes of utter chaos, but it does feel at times that the movie is focused too strictly on Thief getting into slapstick situations at the expense of character development. Who cares about who Tack is as a person? Who cares about building that relationship between Tack and Yum-Yum? No matter what anybody does the world seems set on pushing towards a conclusion so I guess it doesn’t matter, basically. Makes sense for a dark comedy like Hitchhiker’s Guide, but not for a more upbeat story like it appears Thief and the Cobbler was meant to be.

      Also this is a personal thing, in this completely objective film review, but I do not agree with the choice of Sara Crowe as Princess Yum-Yum (listed as Hilary Pitchard in the credits. The rest of the cast ranges from okay to good, with the obvious highlight being Vincent Prince as Zigzag, but Yum-Yum’s voice reminds me less of a princess and more of Harley Quinn. Too high-pitched for my tastes, and since she doesn’t really get to do much in the movie she never really has time to ingratiate herself with the audience. If this were Dragon’s Lair or something where it’s full on farce it’d work, but I’m just not feeling it. I also don’t know if Bobbi Page or Jennifer Beals, the voices for the AFP and Miramax cuts respectively, were any better, I just know that this Yum-Yum wasn’t doing it for me.

      Richard Williams died having never finished his most ambitious project, and we will all die having never seen it. Still, even Williams himself acknowledged that it was fan edits like these that kept the spirit of the movie alive, so I think I can give the Recobbled Cut of The Thief and the Cobbler. If you consider yourself even a casual fan of animation I think you owe it to yourself to check it out this Halloween. If not for the story it tries to tell, then in recognition of the blood, sweat and tears that Richard Williams and dozens of others shed to try and make it happen, and to what might have been.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Escape from New York (1981), directed by John Carpenter

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Escape from New York Theme", by John Carpenter

      Although I often mention name-dropping certain directors all the time in these reviews, I do feel a little bad when I fill a slot or two with directors I’ve covered numerous times before. There are a lot of movies out there after all, and I’m potentially denying myself a great experience with a new film and/or director, maybe even a great review, by filling space with things that I was probably going to like either way. Today however I had to make an exception, because no other film has been an also-ran on this blog longer than Escape from New York. For years and years Escape had been waiting in the wings, the first name on the list, just waiting for the call-up, and yet every year it ended up pushed aside for something else. Even when I was set on covering a film by John Carpenter, Escape from New York was a victim to my capricious nature. I mean, Village of the Damned? Really? Well no more! The cycle must be broken, and it’s breaking now! Escape from New York baby! 

      Released in 1981, directed by, co-written by (with Nick Castle), and with music by  John Carpenter, Escape from New York was Carpenter’s fifth feature film and the second released during what would turn out to be his most prolific creative period, the 1980s. In an alternate, slightly more dystopian 1988, the crime rate had risen so high that rather than do something crazy like social or legal reforms, the United States decided instead to wall off the entirety of Manhattan Island into a supermax prison, or more accurately a horrific fusion of Lord of the Flies and the Warsaw ghetto where those convicted of a crime are sent to rot with no access to food, water, medical supplies or the possibility of parole or escape. Now the year is 1997; the Cold War has transitioned to World War III, and a hijacking of Airforce One has left the President stranded in the city, and soon after that kidnapped. With only 24 hours to go before a major diplomatic conference, police chief Hauk makes a gamble and brings in Snake Plissken, former soldier and current criminal. If Snake can get into New York City, rescue the President and get him out by showtime, then he’ll be a free man. If he can’t, not only will the survival of the human race be at risk, but the micro bombs that were implanted in his neck will go off. No pressure though.

      It makes sense that Escape from New York would come out the same year as another film that took an oddly long time to actually review, that being Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. In fact, prior to looking up the release dates I would have thought Escape was directly influenced by Mad Max 2, given their similarities. Both films center around ‘post-collapse’ scenarios, where society has been forced to reorganize itself into a more primitive form but retains vestiges of modernity, such as the use of automobiles or using trash cans as shields. Both films also take that concept, which on its own can be sobering and even terrifying to consider, and turns it up just enough to push things into surreality. Mad Max’s desert wasteland is populated by leather-clad weirdos with names like Lord Humongous, while Escape from New York has its sewer cannibals and warlords who staple chandeliers on their cars as a status symbol. Even our protagonist is something of a cartoon character, with his eyepatch and his gruff mannerisms, walking around with a name like Snake Plissken like it’s totally normal. You see Snake in this movie and suddenly all those stereotypical badass characters you’ve seen in every other science fiction thing you’ve ever seen, Metal Gear Solid or otherwise, suddenly have a common origin. Suddenly, making Escape from L.A. into a more comedic film makes sense, because he’s such a personification of the stoic badass that contrasting it with more and more ridiculous situations seems a natural fit. Not to mention going the completely opposite route for a protagonist in the case of Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China.

      Yet in spite of Snake being the archetypal badass action hero, and Escape being an ‘action’ film, there’s very little of the two-fisted, explode ‘em up fare that we associate with action movies of the 80s, Commando and Aliens and what have you. Rather, Carpenter’s emphasis on stealth and building suspense through the avoidance of combat feels more in line with Die Hard and maybe even post-Vietnam war films like Apocalypse Now. Yes, and with the Metal Gear series as well, although even the first Metal Gear Solid we see Solid Snake have far more in common with Pierce Brosnan in his Bond films or Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible than he ever did with his namesake.

      Going into this film blind, I was quite surprised at just how stacked the cast was. Of course you’ve got Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, right in the middle of his landmark collab with Carpenter, but then you’ve got B-movie and western star Lee Van Cleef as Chief Hauk, Halloween staple Donald Pleasance attempting a Southern drawl as the President, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine, hell they even got future Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Night of the Creeps star Tom Atkins in on her as well. Very few of those names mean anything to the casual movie goer, but for a guy who has immersed himself in genre film for years now this is the most stacked cast I’ve seen in awhile. Certainly of the Carpenter films that I’ve already covered, although the lack of any Keith David does lose it some points in the final tally.

      Of course I couldn’t talk about a John Carpenter movie without bringing up the music, in the case of Escape composed by Carpenter and Alan Howarth. There’s something about that minimalist synth that not only matches perfectly with the vibe of Escape from New York, which in spite of the weirdo characters is a very grounded film, but matches the 80s. You talk about 80s cinema, this is the kind of music that pops into my head. There’s nothing I would say is as iconic as the Halloween theme, then again getting lightning to strike twice isn’t exactly easy, but the opening track is a bit of a banger and it does the job of pulling you into the right headspace for the story they’re telling. 

      As a rebuttal to that however, I will say that it felt like I was observing a story rather than engaging with a story. Escape from New York has this great cast and there’s nothing bad about their performances, and yet I found it difficult to feel invested in anything. Certainly not in Hauk’s mission and the search for the President, because anybody who would have okayed building such a place or support it don’t have my sympathy and never will. The Duke is one note as an antagonist, which is a huge missed opportunity for a character that is simultaneously a villain and a victim. Even our protagonist Snake has some problems. He’s certainly likable on an aesthetic level, but there’s never really an arc per se, never that moment where it feels like Snake comes out a different person than he was when he went in. Which might be seen as a non-issue because Snake is such an outwardly cool character, but it messes with the dramatic stakes. Because if I already don’t care about this mission in the first place, then do I really care if Snake fails? I may feel sympathetic towards him because he’s been forced into a suicide mission, but I’m also not squirming in anticipation to see if he succeeds. Especially since the world’s been fucked over by nuclear war at this point, so whether anyone lives or dies or escapes or not really seems like a moot point.

      That being said, I’m going to give Escape from New York the recommendation. Compared to the rest of Carpenter’s films I’ve covered I’d say it's about a C-grade, better than Village of the Damned at the very least, but I think if you like the sound of your science fiction movies having a low-budget, grindhouse flair then you’ll have a good time with this one. Maybe pair it up with The Warriors and a nice pizza pie, get that full on dirty ass New York experience. Save me a slice though, watching all these movies makes me hungry.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), directed by Michael Anderson

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "The Bronze", by Queens of the Stone Age

      Years before the world knew the names Superman or Batman, people sought their heroes in the form of the pulps: cheap paperback books packed with all manner of genre stories, from the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft to the ham-fisted action of Mickey Spillane, and everything else that struggling authors thought might help pay the rent. Of this forgotten age of literature, there are few characters that were as popular or as successful as Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze. Created by Henry Ralston and John Nanovic and primarily written by Lester Dent under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson for the Street & Smith publishing company in 1933, Clark ‘Doc’ Savage Jr. was the very model of modern major adventurer; Not only was he a perfect physical specimen thanks a special exercise regiment, but he was also a scientific genius of ust about every discipline you could think of, capable of building technology that surpassed that of your typical 1930s crowd. Along with his five quirky associates -- chemist Andrew ‘Monk’ Mayfair, lawyer Theodore ‘Ham’ Brooks, construction engineer John ‘Renny’ Renwick, electrical engineer Thomas ‘Long Tom’ Roberts, and archeologist/geologist William ‘Johnny’ Littlejohn, Doc would travel across the globe, foiling the plots of wicked men and defending justice wherever it was threatened. Also performing experimental brain surgery on prisoners in order to modify their personalities and behaviors without their consent on multiple occasions, but hey, it was 1933. Give it a few years and it turns out people could do even more heinous shit to each other.

      Savage’s star would eventually fade with the rise of superheros and television, but as the 1970’s wore on suddenly there came an interest in reviving The Man of Bronze for then-modern audiences. Award-winning science fiction writer and mythographer par excellence Phillip Josè Farmer wrote a fictional biography of the man, as he would do for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ legendary creation Tarzan, entitled “Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life”. Marvel Comics even gave him two series: A short-lived run with Marvel proper, and then later on an equally short-lived run through their imprint Curtis Magazines, which was the original home of the Savage Sword of Conan. If that had been the end of the matter, a book here and there, some comics, then perhaps Doc would have been okay. Not as big as he once was, but still novel enough that it’d be a treat whenever he finally got that spotlight again. Like a professional wrestler coming out of retirement for one last match.

      So they made a movie instead, obviously.

      Released in 1975, directed by Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run) and written by Joe Morhaim and George Pal, who was also the producer. The year is 1936 and Doc Savage has returned from his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic (yes, they literally call it the Fortress of Solitude) to learn that his father, Clark ‘Dad’ Savage Snr., has died in the South American country of Hidalgo from some tropical disease. Which is immediately shown to be suspect when someone tries to put a bullet through Doc’s brain and later destroys Dad Savage’s documents. Doc and the Fabulous Five set out for Hidalgo to learn the truth, which is exactly what resident evil business tycoon Captain Seas didn’t want to happen, although he didn’t exactly try all that hard. What could the secret of Hidalgo be, that Captain Seas is willing to kill for it, and that Dad Savage could die because of it? That’s what The Man of Bronze intends to find out.

      ...Hoo boy, trying to write this review has been a chore to get through, not only because there was a several hour long power outage at my home during it, but because trying to find the right words to describe my feelings has been an ongoing struggle. I’ll give it my best to explain:

      A while back I was reading a collection of film criticism by the late novelist Harlan Ellison, and I recall him giving one of his infamous verbal beatdowns to the Mike Hodges’ 1980 adaptation of Flash Gordon, essentially calling it a besmirchment of a once great character. While I don’t follow Mr. Ellison’s opinion lockstep by any means, he eviscerated several movies back in the day for reasons that still baffle me, but during this particular instance I could see where he was coming from. Flash Gordon is, after all, a silly movie. The characters were dumb, the art design was gaudy, the special effects seem dated even for the era, and the only thing that people actually remember about the movie is the soundtrack by Queen and Brian Blessed. It’s a good thing movies based on comics slowly started to improve after this, otherwise MCU fans would be crying in their Cheerios.

      Here’s the thing about Flash Gordon though, and if Ellison were still alive he’d probably rip me a new one over it: It was fun. As silly as it was, it embraced the weirdness of the concept and took it seriously. You might have thought it was stupid, but it never insulted your intelligence as it sucked the life from your soul like Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. A movie meant to be an origin story, to reintroduce the concept to then-modern audiences, but almost immediately descends into such awful attempts at campy humor that it’s like watching Adam West’s Batman hang himself. ‘Oh look, this minor antagonist sleeps in a giant baby crib for some reason!’ ‘Wowwee, this waiter thought Doc and the Fabulous Five were going to order alcoholic beverages, but they actually ordered nonalcoholic beverages!’ ‘Try to hold the guffaws in when the final battle between Seas and Savage is the same shitty gag repeated five or six times in a row!’ Just remembering the scenes as I write this article is pissing me off a bit, like if you could punch a movie in the mouth I’d take a swing at it. I mean what have I got to lose, right? I’ve already been through 140 minutes of cinematic waterboarding, a fight would be a nice change of pace.

      Which isn’t to say that you can’t play around with the source material from time to time, but this movie feels more like a segment from The Kentucky Fried Movie stretched across an hour and a half. Doc Savage is constantly treated as this amazingly charismatic guy, going so far as to add in really obvious eye twinkle effects, despite the fact that he’s got about as much personality as warm mayonnaise. The Fabulous Five come across as less trained soldiers and peers of Savage and more a quintet of bumbling sycophants who can accomplish pretty much nothing on their own except being captured. Captain Seas looks like if your high school music teacher became a Bond villain, and is about as effective an antagonist as that would be too. There’s never a real sense of danger for the protagonists, they spend more time in traveling montages then they do overcoming obstacles, and the ‘mystery’ that kick starts this whole sad affair can be sussed out by the first act. You go into this film wondering just what it was about this character that so fascinated people years before, and what this movie tells you is that Doc Savage is vapid nonsense that looks as cheap as the paper it was printed on, and that it was better off in that bygone era where people were apparently stupid enough to think it was worth reading. Which is not the sentiment you want people to have if you’re planning on a sequel.

      Then there’s the music, the fucking music. Soaring outside the bounds of common sense, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze decides against a traditional orchestra score in favor of the works of John Philip Sousa, complete with a needlessly expository and clunky theme song. An idea that could work once, in order to replicate the feel of an old-time radio show, but then of course it keeps getting shoved in everywhere. Any sense of tension, any sense of emotional depth is crushed under the feet of the least subtle man in music history as he stumbles across the scene like a drunken bull to the tunes, and the movie devolves into total farce. If John Williams’ Superman score evokes feelings of triumphant joy and courage, The Man of Bronze evokes memories of awkward days in the school marching band. Really gets you in the mood for an adventure, huh?

      Unsurprisingly, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (Except He Doesn’t Even Have a Tan) does not get the recommendation. Don’t take my vitriol as a sign that this is some prime rifftrax fodder either, as the work it would take to make fun of it is more attention than it really deserves. If you want to see the concept done better, try Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, another movie which I liked and Harlan Ellison hated (probably because it does rip off Savage a lot). Or perhaps you could read Alan Moore’s Tom Strong series, which also borrows heavily from Doc. Or you could just wait for that new Doc Savage movie that’s in development, the one that’s supposed to have Dwayne Johnson in the title role. Even if it never ends up going into production, you’ll still have more fun waiting for that movie than watching this movie. And if I were saying this live, this is where I would drop the mic.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), directed by Terence Fisher

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Frankenstein", by New York Dolls

      Universal Studios. Not only are they responsible for producing and distributing films which laid down the foundation for horror in cinema, but they also made sure it would always be seen as cheaply made pablum thrown out for a quick buck. Yes, decades before films like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street would be mocked and parodied for the seemingly endless additions to its canon, it was actually Universal that wrote the book on horror ‘franchises’. Dracula suddenly had a daughter crawl out of the woodwork, and later a son. The Invisible Man gave way to The Invisible Woman, and later another man (although this one was an agent) before he got his revenge. The Mummy got into a whole mess of trouble, and even The Creature from the Black Lagoon had a few adventures before the curtains closed. No, not all of them followed established continuity or feature the same actors, but that wasn’t the point. You remembered Universal’s Dracula, so maybe if we put his name on this film it’d sell a couple more tickets, and so on and on. Didn’t matter if the movie was good, as long as it could make money. Which is why movie studios nowadays get straight to the point and just remake films and give them the exact same name, Halloween (1979), Halloween (2007) and Halloween (2018) for example, no matter how confusing that might be for the movie-going audience. Thanks Universal!

Of the Universal Monster line, Frankenstein had it a bit better than most. Four years after the whirlwind success of the original Frankenstein in 1931 we’d see a sequel in Bride of Frankenstein; James Whale would return to the director’s chair, Boris Karloff would return as The Monster, and aside from being a good film it’s introduction of The Bride into pop culture would go on to ensure its status as a classic and fixture of shitty film blogs on the internet. Four years after that Universal would close out the decade with Son of Frankenstein; James Whale was out in favor of Rowland Lee and Karloff would make his final appearance in his famous role, but the inclusion of Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi as a hunchback by the name of Ygor (bet that’ll never come up again) ends up pushing it into recommended viewing territory, at least it did when I reviewed it. After that...eh. There was The Ghost of Frankenstein, which saw Lugosi return but didn’t really drive me to do the same. After that would be Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, also known as one of the biggest cockblocks in horror cinema history, and then House of Frankenstein, which was actually a sequel to one of the biggest cockblocks in horror cinema history (also Son of Dracula). Finally in ‘48, and I do mean final because there were only 5 movies after this, we got Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which was actually pretty good and a movie that I might return to in a review someday, but it does seem a rather ignominious end. Once a menace to movie-goers, now reduced to a walking parody used to spook comedians. Jeez, you’d think everyone had just come off of a worldwide war or something.

Anyway, forget about Universal. It’s Hammer time.

Released in 1957, The Curse of Frankenstein was the first of three movies directed by Terence Fisher upon which the name of Hammer Horror would be built, followed subsequently by The Horror of Dracula and The Mummy. Peter Cushing stars as the titular Baron Victor Frankenstein, a man possessed with an intelligence as great as his arrogance. Ever since he was a baby baron Victor had explored the mysteries of the life, spending his adolescence in research and study with his friend and tutor Paul Kemper (Robert Urquhart). Then one day, a breakthrough: they manage to take a dog that was dead and bring it back to life, in complete defiance of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The greatest medical discovery the world has ever known, if you let the world know that is, and yet Victor hesitates. Bringing life back to something that was previously dead is certainly an amazing feat, but wouldn’t it be even more amazing to bring life to something that had never lived at all? To create life, in a way humanity has never seen before? Then you’d not just be the most important scientist of your generation, you’d be the most important human being that’s ever lived. For a prize like that Victor’d be willing to do just about anything. Maybe even...murder?

Even though Universal’s Frankenstein and Hammer’s Frankenstein films were released 26 years apart, you get the sense that Fisher and Hammer wanted to be as different as possible from that earlier. The Monster (played by Christopher Lee) is not the sympathetic creature that Karloff’s Monster was nor is he given that much focus, he’s just a monster who doubles as a plot device. Similarly Victor Frankenstein is not the repentant figure driven to undo his own grisly work, as it was in the ‘31 film and the original novel, he is out and out the villain of the film. Curse of Frankenstein doesn’t even have a mob of angry villagers wielding pitchforks and torches, although it is teased at one point. ‘This wasn’t your daddy’s Frankenstein’, it all seems to say, and it was the same philosophy that seemed to carry over as Hammer went on. Dracula would turn up the sleaze as much as late 50’s British society could stand, The Mummy...well, he’s basically The Monster with a tragic backstory. Even Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde got its own little Hammer twist, although in that case I doubt the Paramount movie was much of a factor in the decision.

Not only did this film kickstart Hammer as the gold standard in horror cinema for a while, it also established Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as staples of genre cinema for the rest of the careers. Not quite as much for Lee, who as I said is far less of a character than Karloff’s Monster was, but Cushing is far and away the highlight of the film. His portrayal of Frankenstein is fantastic, the very model of a gentleman on the surface but willing and able to throw away ethics and human decency when it benefits him or his work. The living embodiment of that ‘you thought so much about whether or not you could you didn’t think about whether or not you should’ line from Jurassic Park (a version of which even makes it way here). He reminds me a bit of ol’ Herbert West from one of my favorite horror movies actually, Re-Animator, except even worse if you can believe it. Herbert was a contemptible person, true, but he really presents himself as anything else. Victor on the other hand, while it seems like he’s capable of empathy at certain points, you’re never sure whether he’s being sincere or whether he’s being plainly manipulative. Occasionally it feels like they are trying a bit too hard to make him the bad, like stealing human body parts so he can stitch them together into some hideous flesh ogre wasn’t bad enough, but Cushing is so damn good at being a sociopath it’s not hard to see why Hammer revisited the character several more times over the years.

I also really like the art direction in Curse of Frankenstein. While the Universal monster films had that mix of Expressionism, the then-modern era and the era of the source material (at least the early ones), CoF is much more grounded and period-appropriate. Which might seem contradictory, given how often I’ve praised weird aesthetics in film, but there’s something about this slightly grimy, yet almost color saturated Georgian design that I find appealing. Especially when it comes to Frankenstein’s laboratory, as I’ve loved the concept of steampunk and otherwise ‘old’ technology ever since I first read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Time Machine. Again it doesn’t match the iconic look of Universal’s spark-spitting dynamos and what have you, but I think Curse of Frankenstein’s collection of bubbling beakers and tubs of strange liquids lends itself more to the idea of Frankenstein being this medical genius who has bridged the worlds of science and alchemy rather than just some guy who stuck some body parts together and shocked it a couple times. Curse of Frankenstein feels ‘real’, I guess, and the easier it is to suspend your disbelief when you’re watching genre films, the better off you are.

Unfortunately Curse of Frankenstein does suffer from a bit of ‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ syndrome, by which I mean it was a small production (270,000 dollar budget) and it feels like it. As nice as Castle Frankenstein looks on the inside, the fact that we spend so much time there makes things feel claustrophobic, especially when it’s the same four people talking to each other as well. You do get the occasional scene outside, but the way they’re shot is usually locked in on the characters so you don’t get much of a sense of space. It would make sense in context, since this is Frankenstein telling his story, but since there are moments that happen that he couldn’t possibly have known about, there’s not an excuse beyond ‘we’ve got no money’.

We’ve also got a small cast, and like I said, Peter Cushing is the reason you watch this movie. Robert Urquhart is okay as Paul Kremper, but like 80 percent of this movie is entering a room and complaining about something, and it feels like they subtly try to push a romance between him and Elizabeth despite him looking like he was in his early 30s when she was like 6, which is just fucking creepy. Hazel Court as Elizabeth Frankenstein, is...there. That’s not meant as a slight against the actress, she’s literally a Chekov’s Gun to build tension for the climax, otherwise it makes no sense that if Paul was so disturbed by Victor’s experiments that he was worried for her life that he wouldn’t have told her in the scene when he tried to get her to leave. Or later on, when they basically redo the scene and Paul has even more reason to want her to leave. Maybe if they actually pushed that romance angle, despite my reservations about it, there could have been some drama there, but they don’t, so she’s just...there. Waiting.

While she’s waiting, I’m going to go ahead and give The Curse of Frankenstein the recommendation. Putting aside all the smoke I’ve blown up Hammer’s ass, it really is an intriguing adaptation of Mary Shelley’s work, not all that accurate to the novel but it approaches the concept from a perspective that I haven’t seen a Frankenstein adaptation really do since then, which is a shame. If I were looking to be controversial I’d say Horror of Dracula and The Mummy suck so just watch this, but I do think if you’re a rookie looking into Hammer Horror or older horror movies, this is a good place to start. A bit like a mild cheddar cheese: It’s got a little bit of a bite, but it goes down smooth.

Don’t ask me what Frankenstein has to do with cheese. It should be obvious.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Big Hit (1998), directed by Kirk Wong

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Don't Sleep", by Mark Wahlberg

      You can thank the youtube channel Rebeltaxi for today’s entry in the Marathon. Normally I don’t like covering films that I’ve seen covered by someone else, preferring to go in as fresh as possible, but I was so intrigued by what I saw that eventually I just had to see it for myself. Plus the Marathon feels a bit more mellow this year, and I wanted to spice things up with some action. So yeah, give Rebeltaxi some love if you’ve got the time, even though he’s already way more popular than I’ll ever be. Dude mainly covers Western animation, and I think he’s got a podcast or some shit.

      Released in 1998, or Lebowski’s Year as it’s known in the Thunderbird household, The Big Hit was the brainchild of Hong Kong director Che-Kirk Wong and writer Ben Ramsey. Marky Mark Wahlberg stars as Melvin Smiley, a man with a Dangerfield-esque respect deficiency. He’s got a secret girlfriend milking him for cash, a fiance that’s got some rather overbearing parents, tumultuous tummy troubles, his criminal buddies treat him like a pushover (oh, Melvin’s a contract killer by the way) and worst of all, he’s being hounded by the local video rental place over an overdue tape. Not exactly living the life of Riley, but when his buddy Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips) comes to him with a little side hustle, the illusion of happiness might be able to last a little longer. Seems like a simple enough job; kidnap Keiko Nishi, daughter of local Japanese business magnate Jiro Nishi, ransom her off for a million dollars, and that’s that. As long as something didn’t come up, like Jiro going bankrupt immediately prior this or him being personal friends with their boss, then they’re good. But what are the odds of that?

      Making a quick return to Rodney Dangerfield, remember that scene in Back to School where he’s at a party and he makes a sandwich by cutting a baguette in half  dumping a tray of hors d'oeuvres in it? That’s kind of what The Big Hit feels like to me. You’ve got some Tarantino in there, with its quirky, conversational criminals. There’s the frenetic energy of Hong Kong action films, made even more legitimate with that John Woo executive producer credit. You’ve got some screwball comedy in there (complete with cartoon sound effects), a touch of grindhouse cinema, all wrapped up with a soundtrack that sounds like it came from some lost edition of Tony Hawk Pro Skater. There are a lot of films where you’ll see the words ‘rollercoaster ride of excitement’ used to describe them, but I don’t know if I’ve seen a movie recently that lives that gimmick as much as The Big Hit. Like I’m craving corn dogs and cotton candy right now thinking about it. 

      It helps that they’ve got a great cast to work with. No one does slack-jawed schlub better than Mark Walhberg, but it turns out that he’s pretty good at the action hero thing as well. Lou Diamond Phillips as Cisco was also a great casting choice, deftly walking this fine line between sleazeball, buffoon and psycho killer. Then you’ve got Christina Applegate as Pam the blonde Fran Drescher, Bokeem Woodbine as Crunch the local masturbation expert, Avery “The Sisko” Brooks as Paris the syndicate leader, and so on. Over-the-top and goofy, but there was never a moment where anyone slipped into full blown obnoxious territory for me, as it sometimes happens with me. Maybe the stuttering Malibu’s Most Wanted prototype, but he’s never on screen or in the film long enough for me to really dislike him. 

        The Big Hit’s greatest strengths, then, could also be considered its weakness. It’s a wacky action movie, so when it attempts to pull off romance (even though China Chow and Walhberg are capable of making it work) or anything with emotional depth it comes across as more satirical then it might have been intended. Similarly, someone used to slower pacing could find this movie exhausting; and the editing, while not as egregious as some modern action films, does have its hyperactive moments. Machine-gun cutting, if you will. Essentially this movie is going 75 on a 50 mph road, so if you’re not willing or able to match it, it’s going to leave you in the dust. 

      Ultimately I’m giving The Big Hit the recommendation. At first I thought it was going to be one of those 90s movies that folks rag on so much that they get a cult following, like Demolition Man (Wesley Snipes a producer on this film, by the by) or something, but it was actually just a straight-up enjoyable film with some damn good action sequences. If you liked films such as From Dusk Till Dawn or Baby Driver, then The Big Hit might be right up your alley. Pour yourself a nice cold glass of prune juice and enjoy.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Invisible Man (1933), directed by James Whale

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Invisible Man", by The Breeders

      This is something of a weird confession, but I don’t think I’ve ever read “The Invisible Man”. No, not the book by Ralph Ellison, although I should probably read that one too, but the work by British novelist and science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells. I was a pretty big fan of Wells’ work when I was a kid, readily absorbing works like “War of the Worlds” and “The Time Machine”, but I’m fairly certain I’ve only touched the first paragraph, first chapter at most, of his third most famous work. “The Stolen Bacillus” got in before “The Invisible Man”, to give some idea to those three people who get that reference, and to give some clarification to how weird one’s priorities can be at times. Does that work as an opening paragraph? I dunno.

      I say that partially to undercut my own credibility and also to lead into the remark that it seems like I’m not the only one who hasn’t read it. “The Invisible Man” is certainly known, but it seems like pop culture is more infatuated with the concept rather than the story. The Hollow Man franchise, Memoirs of an Invisible Man starring Chevy Chase, that one TV show in the 90s with the liquid metal effect, even Alan Moore uses an original character in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as a serial rapist who is himself brutally raped to death (because how could you take him seriously as a writer if he didn’t sprinkle rape into every story he could). Not much at all in the way of proper adaptations compared to The Time Machine or Island of Dr. Moreau, although calling Marlon Brando’s interpretation of Moreau ‘proper’ might be doing a disservice to everyone’s favorite vivisectionist. So why not throw Herbert’s baby boy a bone and completely avoid the Invisible Man movie that’s supposed to be out this year to instead talk about a movie that’s almost 90 years old instead? If this blog is anything, it’s timely and relevant with its content.

      Released in 1933, with a screenplay by R.C. Sheriff and directed by blog patriarch James Whale, The Invisible Man was one of the earlier additions to Universal’s catalogue of genre-defining horror films. On a dark and snowy night in the sleepy town of Iping, a mysterious man enters the Lion-Head inn and tavern and rents a room, sparking a flurry of rumours from the townsfolk. This man, played/voiced by Claude Rains, is revealed in a roundabout way to be Jack Griffin, your average chemist’s assistant who disappeared under mysterious circumstances a few weeks prior. ‘Disappeared’ being the choice word here, as through the wonders of 1930s science Griffin has rendered himself completely invisible, and he’s having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to make himself un-invisible. It’s enough to drive someone absolutely insane, and as they always say, it’s the naked crazy guys that you can’t see that are the problem.

      The Invisible Man is a film of two minds. On one hand scenes like the ones in Iping, or where people are throwing around questions about how Griffin’s invisibility works, a lot of the more comedic moments feels in line with what you’d expect from the Wells story, but the rest feels like Universal trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole. Flora’s entire character feels like the most blatant example of a studio mandate I’ve seen lately, for example, that movies like this need some eye-candy to flaunt around so Invisible Man must have it too damn it. Except the women in those films were generally relevant to the plot, if only as cliche ‘damsels in distress’, and Flora isn’t even that. I have to assume that she was supposed to be this humanizing moment for Griffin, to show the man he once was and how far he’d fallen, but it never really feels legitimate because she has one conversation with the fucker in the whole movie. They even have the possibility of setting up a love triangle between her, Griffin and other assistant Kemp, but they completely sidestep that angle to make sure that you could completely excise those characters and that attempt at backstory and nothing would change. Considering that Dracula and Frankenstein weren’t 1:1 adaptations either, there’s really no excuse.

      There’s also some things on the technical side that are just weird. For example, there’s a scene early on in the film where a distraught Flora walks into another to moan about Griffin, and the Kemp comes in to be a creep. Rather than do something like have Flora rush offscreen, you hear a door slam, and then cut to the room with Kemp coming in, instead they do this one shot where they show Flora move into the room and Kemp follows her, but the camera is pulled back so far that you can see where the wall ends. I don’t know if that was supposed to be the architectural style of the time or if it’s something that came out in the transfer of the film to different aspect ratios, like how in the ‘remastered’ editions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer you can see the cameras and such, but for whatever reason it’s so distracting to me. Then later on in that same scene, we’re focused on Kemp and in your head your head you think it’s going to do a closeup on his face, maybe in frame with a flower for symbolic reasons, but instead the camera backs away until the scene ends with Kemp’s head peeking out of a large bush. It’s so weird looking! The rest of the movie is fine, so I don’t know if James Whale was sick that day or what, but man did they hit hard and heavy.

      Ultimately though, Universal movies live or die by their monster, and Claude Rains does not disappoint. He doesn’t have the iconic accent like Lugosi and Karloff, but he makes up for it with this overwhelming presence that makes you sit up and take notice. Doesn’t matter if he’s singing nursery rhymes or making megalomaniacal speeches, you believe in him completely. Honestly he’s almost too good for the part, like he should be running SPECTRE or fighting Superman, not berating middle-aged Irish women over unpaid rent. Not much else to say, it’s just a damn good voice.

      So Claude Rains, the small-town Brit silliness, and seeing the novel ways in which James Whale and crew tackle the ‘invisible man’ problem… I’d say that’s enough to warrant a recommendation. I wouldn’t say it’s a priority, if you’re only passing familiar with the Universal horror there are films you’ll want to check out first, but if you’re intrigued it’s barely over an hour long so no worries about a big time investment. Throw in Erle C. Kenton’s Island of Lost Souls and this year the H in H.G. Wells might just stand for Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Call of Cthulu (2005), directed by Andrew Leman

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "The Call of Ktulu", by Metallica

       Much like a one-hit wonder band will resent having to play that one song at every show concert they have, one wonders if H.P. Lovecraft’s mouldy ass were still alive if he would feel the same way about good ol’ Klooloo. Lovecraft had a large body of work after all, poems, short stories, none of which brought him any sort of critical and commercial appeal during his lifetime, and yet nowadays his entire being is now irrevocably caught up in some big green guy with an octopus for a head. Pretty wild for a monster whose sole appearance in the original canon was made up of one short story and a couple name drops in others, a throwaway character Lovecraft came up with as he churned out his weirdo potboilers. You never can tell what about your art people are going to latch onto, but as long as they latch onto it at all I suppose.

Cthulhu has appeared in comic books, video games, tabletop games, cartoons, anime, and even a song by Metallica, yet everyone’s favorite deathless octo-priest has been largely absent in the world of cinema. There was a film released in 2007 called Cthulhu, directed by Dan Gildark, and yet it seems to have been based on Lovecraft’s story the Shadow over Innsmouth, which doesn’t mention him at all as far as I can recall. For an actual Ktulu movie, not a movie where’s he referenced or name dropped but an actual (and as far as I know the only) film adaptation of the 1928 short story it seems the only game in town is The Call of Cthulhu, an indie film directed by Andrew Leman, written by Sean Banney and released in 2005. How an indie film managed to get on the ground floor of this before any of the major studios is beyond me, probably some intercompany dick measuring contest that I have no interest in, but it did and now here we are. Also, I didn’t feel like sitting through a big movie and this was only 46 minutes long, so let’s get started then.

If you’ve never actually read The Call of Cthulhu, which I assume is inversely proportional to the amount of people who’ve heard of Cthulhu, there’s not much to it. A man, we are not given his name, reveals to another man in conversation that he is dying, and that he wants the notes and paper’s he brought with him burned upon his passing. This collection of news articles, journals, and testimonials had been compiled by his recently deceased great uncle, following a meeting with Henry Wilcox, a young artist who had been plagued with bizarre, terrifying dreams. As the great-uncle, and by extension the man, and by greater extension the audience soon discover that this incident with Wilcox is only the tip of the iceberg. Horrific events seem to be cropping up all over the world, disasters, mass murders, human sacrifices by cults, and the two common elements to them all is a bestial idol and an equally hideous name: Cthulhu. In the sunken city of R'lyeh he sleeps, waiting for the day that he will wake and engulf humanity in a maelstrom of death and madness. Or has that day already arrived?

The main draw of The Call of Cthulhu is arguably the art direction, not only adapting the story but presenting it as a black & white silent era film, with those now all-too-familiar touches of German Expressionism. I’ve made mention of my fascination with silent films several times on this blog, most notably Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, but beyond my personal interest it’s an aesthetic that captures the feel of Lovecraft’s stories more than any other. After all, so much of the content of his work is rooted in that era, World War I, the popularity of scientific studies like Egyptology and paleontology and the rapid progress in technology, that even though Lovecraft himself didn’t care for the cinema (if being a colossal bigot didn’t tip you off that this guy wasn’t a laugh-riot) the dour, dreamlike atmosphere that we associate with silent films today is the exact same as that encapsulated by Nyarlathotep or The Color Out of Space. It is more ‘real’ because it feels ‘unreal’, in a manner of speaking.

      It is there, however, that we find my biggest issues with The Call of Cthulhu. In the excellent book Hitchcock/Truffaut director Alfred Htichcock lamented to some degree the introduction of sound in cinema because it irrevocably altered the nature of filmmaking. Not just in how we watch films, but in the way films themselves are constructed -- the way scenes are directed, the way narratives are written, whether they have a character talk or not, the spectre of sound still lingers somewhere in the corner of their mind. Such is the case with Call of Cthulhu, which clothes itself in the garb of a silent era film but is still steeped in modernity. Certain camera techniques, the abundance of cuts to dialogue boxes, things which a movie audience nowadays might not know or care about but become increasingly apparent. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was trying to tell a story, The Call of Cthulhu is trying to be Dr. Caligari on a budget, basically. Whether that was the intent of the filmmakers I can’t say, but that’s the impression I get.

      Of course the $25,000 question is: What did they do about Cthulhu? Is he in fact a squid, or rather a kid? Well, I’d say it’s so-so. I liked the build-up to his appearance, the island is both unsettling and grandiose on a scale the movie hadn't really been up to that point, and the score devolving into ambient and almost whispered screams was  a nice touch, but when he finally got on screen…? It was a novel way to do it, I’ll give them credit for that, but it’s also not scary. The line that always comes up when it comes to adapting Lovecraft is how are you supposed to depict a creature on screen that in the text is indescribable and drives you insane by looking at it, and the answer is that you don’t/can’t really, you just make something that an audience can believe would freak them out if they saw it in real life. Carpenter’s The Thing did it, the Silent Hill series of games did it, and there are ways that Call of Cthulhu could have done it that would have been far simpler and far less silly than what they ended up doing. It undercuts any tension that might have been built up and shatters the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because ‘anyone who is afraid of this thing must be a dipshit!’ Which might seem overly harsh, given the amont of movie monsters that look dumb as hell, but remember that we aren’t exactly swimming in Lovecraft movies. The Call of Cthulhu is the movie adaptation of the story at the moment, and as the pioneer I think there are certain expectations that come with that. Universal’s Dracula wasn’t 1:1 with the book, but when Bela Lugosi showed up you could feel it. You felt it when the Color showed up in The Color Out of Space in last year’s Marathon. Not so with Cthulhu, and when the name of the movie is The Call of Cthulhu, you’ve got a problem.

      With thoughts of the bustling cityscape of Metropolis or the orgiastic black sabbath in Haxan, I’m probably judging a little indie film with a gimmick a bit harshly. Because the source material is intriguing and said gimmick has such potential that the fact it misses the bar compared to what could have been hits so much harder than it might have otherwise. It doesn’t get the recommendation from me, but as I said it’s only 46 minutes, so if you do it’s not a huge investment. Much like real estate down in R’lyeh, I’d imagine.