The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014), directed by David Gregory

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Jocko Homo", by Devo

As far as mediums of art go, cinema is arguably the most popular and unarguably the least cost-effective. One movie, with a 90 minute runtime, requires dozens or even hundreds of people working together and thousands or even millions of dollars to sink into the budget. As the movie industry has grown over the years, and the budgets required to make films have become more and more bloated, the prevailing thought in Hollywood has been to put out movies as a product than as artistic statements. Which has always been true to an extent, people put in money they expect money back, but the optimal case has always been to balance that desire with an artistic vision, most often the director’s vision. Hell, this ‘blockbuster’ culture that is currently threatening to collapse our entire film industry only really became a thing in the mid 70s, at the height of the auteur director period in American film history. Sure, sometimes you end up with a Waterworld scenario, but I think it’s okay to risk a Waterworld once in a while in order to get a Star Wars or a Conan the Barbarian. Then again, I’m not a billion dollar film studio executive, so what the fuck do I know?

     Lately, it seems like I’ve been less interested about films and more about the making of films, and especially the films that could have been. The most prevalent example I think of at the moment is Jodorowsky’s Dune, the documetary detailing surrealist filmmaker’s extravagant and ultimately doomed attempt at adapting the classic sci-fi novel Dune to film, by all accounts a psychedelic epic which would have featured design work from a pre-Alien H.R. Giger, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali and flaming giraffes. Sure, there’s no way to tell whether that movie would have been good or not if it had seen the light of day, but I think it’s in our nature to imagine what could have been, and in so doing aggrandize it over the things we do have (looking at you Lynch). Not to mention in the cases of films that did work, like in Heart of Darkness (the making of Apocalypse Now!) and My Best Friend (detailing the working relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski across several films), seeing the extreme difficulties that filmmaking can bring, it seems a shame that all that work could go to waste. Especially when it’s obvious that the director and crew had such a passion for what that film was meant to be, as was the case for Jodorowsky and the basis for out entry this time around.

     Lost Souls: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau is exactly what it says on the tin. In the early 90’s auteur horror director/witchcraft enthusiast Richard Stanley, fresh off of Hardware (1990) and Dust Devil (1992), decided to pursue his lifelong dream of adapting his vision of H.G. Wells’ classic story “The Island of Dr. Moreau” to film. The film (from what Stanley reveals to us) was to be a modern interpretation of the novel: A castaway comes across an island where Doctor Moreau, vilified and ostracized from the scientific community for this theories, has become the godlike creator of a race of horrific animal people who, in a bit a symbolism, fail to live up to the dreams of the creator and ultimately destroy him and themselves. Graphically violent, amazingly grotesque make-up and design, and a director that seemed to understand the heart of the Wells’ story better than any other adaptation had managed to accomplish beforehand. The potential seemed to be there for Richard Stanley’s dream to be the definitive Moreau film, just as Spielberg had done with Jurassic Park and Kubrick with The Shining. When New Line picked up the film, and with it some A-list talent, including Bruce Willis, James Woods and the legendary Marlon Brando as the good Doctor, that grand vision seemed to be all but assured.

     Of course, history has proven it wasn’t. Without completely explaining the story, I’ll say that a series of bad production issues, corporate money paranoia, John Frankenheimer, Val Kilmer, and Marlon Brando’s fat ass all combined lead to a film more at home on Mystery Science Theater 3000 than the Criterion Collection. It’s a pretty crazy story, as the making of these flop movies occasionally are, and since it’s about a horror movie that never was, I figured it was appropriate for Halloween. Watch it, and pine for what could have been. If only...if only.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: They Live (1988), directed by John Carpenter

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Know Your Enemy", by Rage Against the Machine

     How much are we influenced by our entertainment? Does pop culture prevent us from recognizing and addressing the problems of our society? Ever since the birth of capitalism and the advent of advertising, artists of all shapes and sizes have played with the idea that the Earth (or at least the First World parts) has become one big Island of the Lotus-Eaters, blinded by a soporific haze of mindless consumerism and hedonistic pleasure that prevents us from kicking up a fuss when we inevitably end up being exploited for whatever reason. It’s been covered in novels (Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451), music (The Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket”, Crass’ entire discography) art (that one Andy Warhol painting with the soup cans), and of course film. Despite being the most expensive and consumer-friendly form of popular media, cinema has quite the track record in scolding people for the blind consumption of entertainment and not paying attention to the world around us. Robocop, Brazil, Videodrome, Catch-22, etc., etc., etc. 

     But since I’ve already watched those movies, let’s talk about They Live instead.

     Released in 1988, who those true Americans in the audience reading this will recognize as the year Van Halen released their landmark album OU812, They Live was directed by John Carpenter in what I tend to consider the tail end of his ‘golden age’, which lasted from the late 70s to around the mid 90s. So many interesting films to come out of that period of time: Halloween I & II, The Thing, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, Starman if you pretend it’s a film about Jack Knight and not a romantic drama, just a nice gooey chunk of goodness for your brain to enjoy. Maybe not all of them are what you might call the pinnacle of film, but they were inventive and innovative in an era of increasingly worthwhile science-fiction, horror and action films, and that’s where my interests lie.

     In a city that is probably San Francisco, a man known only as Nada (professional wrestler and kilt enthusiast Rowdy Roddy Piper) arrives in town looking for work. With only the clothes on his back and a backpack full of tools, Nada ends up staying in the local shantytown, doing manual labor at the local construction site. It’s not glamorous work or work that allows you to afford the basic cost of living apparently, but it’s honest work, jobs that Nada and his new friend Frank (Keith David) are willing to do in these tough and troubled times.

     All that changes when Nada comes across some unusual sunglasses, left behind by some shifty people taking up residence in a nearby church. When worn, they reveal to Nada a vision of the world that he never thought possible. Everything around him; billboards, magazines, television, is in fact subliminal propaganda designed to keep humanity docile and unaware of their environment. Not to mention the fact that some people, especially cops, politicians and news reporters, aren’t even people at all, but are in fact god damn aliens. Nada quickly finds himself caught up in the guerilla war between these god damn aliens and the paltry amount of humans with access to the special sunglasses, which apparently makes up the entirety of the resistance movement as far as we know. Throw in copious amounts of gunplay, a bit of romance and the longest fight scene to ever take place in a parking lot and you got yourself a movie.

     Although They Live came out in the late 80s, a time when we thought Guns N’ Roses was the greatest band in human history, it feels much more like a sci-fi film from the pre-Star Wars 70s, like a Westworld or Soylent Green. Aside from literally naming the protagonist ‘nothing’, which sounds like something pulled from a Frederik Pohl paperback, and the most blatantly obvious moral lesson since Reefer Madness, there’s a distinct feeling of ‘old school’ that runs throughout the film. Whether it’s the bizarrely low budget looking aliens (creepy, but nowhere near what Carpenter had accomplished in The Thing or Big Trouble in Little China) or the way the characters exist more as set pieces than people. Which sounds like an insult, and maybe it is for those types of films, but with They Live it seems like the point was to make that kind. It would make sense, seeing as two years previous he directed Big Trouble out of a desire to make a kung-fu movie, a genre that also saw its greatest prominence in the 70s. Maybe the late 80s were the John Carpenter equivalent of a Throwback Thursday? Who can say for sure?

     It’s a little bit goofy, to be honest. Piper tries to go for some Arnie-esque one liners that make him less like a badass freedom fighter and more like he’s trying to troll Hulk Hogan on Saturday Night’s Main Event. The whole movie in general is full of weird dialogue, weird scenes that may or may not be intentional though, so it’s actually kind of a plus I guess? I don’t know man, the concept is cool, there’s plenty of action, and it’s just stupid enough that you can have fun with it. Try it out this Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: Se7en (1995), directed by David Fincher

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Sin", by Nine Inch Nails

     Ok, I’ll come right out and admit it: I haven’t seen Gone Girl. 

     I know, I know, I’m a horrible person, no respect for quality cinema, etc., etc., etc. Apparently it’s a really good movie, according to the folks whose opinions I care about, but I haven’t got around it. I’m incredibly busy for a man with no prospects and no future you see: Reading, writing, playing video games, exercising, lamenting the loss of my childhood, my schedule is absolutely packed. When I do find time to watch a movie, it usually ends up being some weird movie from the past (my preferred genre of cinema) that I can write about, not the current Oscar bait or unremarkable summer blockbuster. I think the most recent film I watched was actually Birdman, quite good by my estimates, but I only ended up watching that because I heard enough about it beforehand. I love movies, I’d love to make movies, but I just don’t have the time or the interest to constantly stay on top of the ever-growing movie pile. I’ll probably watch it at some point, along with Mad Max: Fury Road and about a dozen other movies, but who knows when I’ll get to it?

     I will admit that I am interested in exploring the work of David Fincher however, except for Alien 3, and since our esteemed director’s work seems primarily focused on the thriller genre, it seemed well-suited for our Marathon of the Soul. While there were several films that I could have chosen, Zodiac, Gone Girl, The Social Network for you technophobes out there, I decided to go with a film that I not only had eyes on for a while, but one I felt was creepy and bizarre enough for a proper Halloween treat. Ladies and gentlemen: Se7en.

     In an unnamed city, which is probably New York City or Chicago but is never identified as such, officer William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) meets officer David Mills (Brad Pitt) at a gruesome murder scene. Somerset is the jaded veteran officer, a man worn down to nothing by years of wading through the grime and muck that is this urban hell, who just so happens to be one week away retirement. His replacement, a recent transfer, is literally the polar opposite: young, headstrong, quick to anger and slow when it comes to the more subtle aspects of police investigation. So no real game-changer in that department, it’s an archetype that’s been replicated in countless stories throughout fiction, mystery fiction or not. Rush Hour, 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon, etc., etc., etc. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, you get the idea.

     The next day, Somerset and Mills come across an even more gruesome and bizarre murder scene: A man who was apparently forced to eat until his stomach literally burst. Strange, but not necessarily a big deal, until another body turns up, this time with the word ‘greed’ written in blood at the scene. It seems that there is a serial killer loose in the city, one who murders people in ways that visually represent the 7 deadly sins, and does it quite effectively to boot. Diametrically opposed though they may be, it’s up to Somerset and Mills to investigate, and put a stop to these grisly killings once and for all, before the Sin Killer manages to elevate himself to the ranks of the most infamous murderers in history. 5 more sins to go…

     If I were to compare Se7en to another film, and what is film criticism without comparison to other things, the first thing to come to mind was Manhunter. Although some of the camera work and the artistic design of the crimes gives the impression of the Hannibal TV series (recently canceled, resquiat in pace), but for whatever reason my mind immediately went to that film. Aside from the similar nature of the films, there’s a sense of tension that weighs upon the investigation as you’re watching. Even in Se7en’s quieter moments, you find yourself drawn into the case, wondering when Somerset and Mills will finally hit upon the right track. I’ve only seen one of his films, but I have to give Fincher the nod for his ability to pull off a suspenseful atmosphere.

     I also wouldn’t feel too wrong in throwing out a comparison to True Detective as well, particularly season 1 True Detective (because I haven’t been keeping up with season 2). Two detectives, one a nihilistic loner and the other kind of a douchebag without the greatest homelife, tracking down a serial killer Pretty basic, but it’s a matter of tone as much as it is structure. In both stories, and even in Manhunter, an almost supernatural slant to the crimes. There’s nothing actually magical in True Detective, same as in Se7en and Manhunter, but the way the murders are framed coupled with the oppressive atmosphere gives the impression of a quasi-mystical serial killer. It gives the story greater freedom of movement than the average detective story, and really only the weird ones even garner my interest nowadays. Except for Columbo of course. Columbo is always great.

     On the other hand, it definitely seems like Se7en is focused more on artistry than crafting a solid mystery. Somerset and Mills aren’t so much catching a serial killer as they are crafting a shelf from IKEA: Every step/clue is set up for them, and they are lead to each murder in a nice and orderly manner. It makes them a reactive force rather than an active one, and while it’s not uncommon in detective fiction, Se7en missteps when it comes to giving the audience a sense of progression. Especially when it finally gets to revealing the serial killer, which really disembowels the idea of a proper mystery. Maybe you could away with it if you labeled it strictly as a thriller rather a mystery film, or maybe Fincher was making a statement on how everything is shit and all your hard work is meaningless, which falls in line with Somerset’s character. One is a lazy answer, one is the artistic answer, but it still feels like a kick in the balls either way.

     So some definite story issues, but the atmosphere and tone are really good, cast is good aside from being saddled with some hokey dialogue and the music is okay if you love Nine Inch Nails. Overall a decent movie, and considering some of the shit that makes up typical Halloween fare you could easily do a lot worse. Like Alien 3 worse, and no one wants that.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: Westworld (1973), directed by Michael Crichton

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Wild Wild West", by Kool Moe Dee

     If there’s one things we’ve learned in the hundreds of years since the invention of speculative fiction it is this: People will always find a way to fuck themselves over, no matter what. Human have been around for quite a while, and in the dozens, some might say hundreds, of years, we have packed the entirety of the human literary canon about how arrogant, spiteful dicks people are, and how they ruin their and other people’s lives through their arrogant, spiteful ways. We can’t get enough of the stuff. Of course, since we’re so busy talking about how bad other people, how stupid they are, how their way of doing things isn’t like ours, we tend to be very slow at actually trying to make the world a better place. It seems like humanity loves to revel in the idea of of our own helplessness when it comes to our media, that our lives have to be bad, that we have no agency, in some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy/egotistic masturbatory session. Or maybe that’s just how I see things, being a severe depressive and all. Can’t say for sure.

     If there’s any man who knows the folly of man’s arrogance, it’s Michael Crichton. From his first novel back in 1966 until his death in 2008, Crichton loved to explore the ways in which we humans could fuck ourselves over through our own stupidity, generally through some horribly mismanaged sci-fi concept. The most famous of these explorations was of course Jurassic Park (adapted to film in 1993), recently given a franchise update in Jurassic World (which seems to simultaneously one of the most hated and most successful movies of the year if anonymous people on the internet is anything to go by), but it has also been seen in other Crichton adaptations like Congo, The Terminal Man and The Andromeda Strain. So when it came time to hand the directorial reins over to Crichton, it makes sense that his debut film, the film that I’m featuring on this list, would deal with the same themes that he would later use with cloned dinosaurs and hyper-intelligent gorillas in novels/movies. We’re talking Westworld

     In the far-flung American future of hovercrafts and things that aren’t hovercrafts, the most popular amusement park in the world isn’t Disneyland or Six Flags or Dear Leader’s Happy Funtime Child Pit & Salt Mine (#1 in North Korea),it’s Delos. For a paltry 1000 dollars a day, you can vacation in Medievalworld, Romanworld or Westworld, perfect recreations of those historical periods populated entirely by androids. You can talk with them, fuck them, kill them,beat them up, all under the watchful eye of trained Delos technicians and engineers. Ever wanted to rob a bank on horseback? How about swordfighting a knight while feasting on mutton and mead? Does a drunken outdoor orgy with men & women of indiscriminate ages strike your fancy. The heights of debauchery and wish-fulfillment in a safe, controlled environment can be yours when you try Delos, so why not take a trip to Westworld today? Heck, even our animals are artificial!

     Of course, this being a movie, the day that our protagonists John Blane (James Brolin) and Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) decide to take a trip to the most magical place on Earth is the day that everything goes to shit. It seems that the rate of malfunctions in the robots has dramatically since the park opened, mostly tied to a breakdown in their logic processors it seems, and in true Jaws fashion the higher-ups are too interested in their profits to notice when something is about to go tits-up. Blane and Martin might find shootouts, bar fights and sex with robo-hookers fun now, but what happens when the machines don’t want to listen anymore? What happens when the sensors that keep the (very real) guns from firing on real people stop working? Worst of all, what happens when you have a bloodthirsty Yul Brynner gunning for your ass? You get three guesses.

     Crichton was already a fairly accomplished novelist before his work on Westworld, so it’s not surprising at all that this movie probably reads far better than it plays. Particularly in the case of the protagonists, Blane and Martin. I can’t writing and erasing things down trying to accurately describe my feelings about it, but the heart of the issue was that they were completely totally uninteresting characters. Barely characters really, you never really learn much about them, never really get to identify with them (unless you too are a scrawny douchebag with a pornstache) and thus, inevitably, don’t care about whether they live or die. Compare it to Jurassic Park, which is pretty much this move but with dinosaurs: You cared about Hammond, you cared Malcolm, because you learn about them through the course of the film by the way they act and interact with others. Crichton manages to impart a bit of personality to other characters, most of which have even less screen time and dialogue, but Peter Martin (who is technically the protagonist I suppose, with Blane being the deuteragonist) is a nonentity. Sit through the entire movie and the most you’ll figure out about him is that he doesn’t like to get shot by robots. The last half of the movie is filled with corpses, and this fucker is still gives the most lifeless performance in the room.

     Westworld isn’t what I would call a bad movie though (otherwise it wouldn’t be this list presumably), and for a debut film by someone who presumably didn’t study filmmaking it’s quite well made, all things considered. I mean the ‘Amusement Park run amok’ setting concept was good enough that Crichton managed to successfully recycle, it managed to at least touch upon how the removal of consequence affects man’s behaviour and sense of morality, and Yul Brynner as a cowboy Terminator years before Arnie played a killer robot is pretty cool. If you keep in mind that this movie is from the early 70s, when science fiction was at this weird crossroads between new wave philosophy and commercial genre fiction, the concept is enough to warrant a watch. If you liked Soylent Green and Logan’s Run, then you might like to take a trip to Westworld this Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: Predator 2 (1990), directed by Stephen Hopkins

     Another year has gone by, and that means it’s time to watch some weird movies for Halloween! This year, I’ve endeavored to not only pick movies that I’ve wanted to see, but also films that capture that fantastical tone that we associate so strongly with this holiday for the strange. Fantasy, sci-fi, adventure, even some dark comedies thrown in for good measure, all of them viewed by me for the very first time. Some I can’t praise enough, some I struggle to praise at all, but I wouldn’t change a thing about it (especially since I’m so lazy). So here’s a smattering of the films on display this year; take a look, critique it if you want, tell me how much a fucking idiot I am for not liking the movies you like, but above all I fervently hope you pick one of these movies to watch that you’ve never seen before. That’s why I’ve constructed this list, and it’s why I review the movies that I do, so that you guys out there might find something new that you can enjoy or that inspires you in your own creative work.

Happy Halloween!

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Welcome To The Jungle", by Guns N' Roses

     Although the Predator has arguably never enjoyed the cultural or artistic significance that other sci-fi horror films of that era have enjoyed, Alien, The Thing, the Star Wars Christmas Special, it’s certainly carved its own place in pop culture. Video games, comic books (including three different instances of Batman vs. Predator), novels and a series of mostly subpar films, some of which include the xenomorphs from Alien, another franchise that could be considered generally shit. Of course even the most shameless of franchises have a grain of good in them; Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens are certainly well-favored in the public eye, Halloween Part 1 & Part 2, Batman & Batman Returns, and although I wouldn’t say it’s a fantastic film, Predator is at least an entertaining and competently made one. But what of its sequel, 1990’s Predator 2? Is it a Terminator 2, or a Cars 2? Does it make for a great Halloween movie? Only I can say for sure.

     So the first Predator is a pretty simple premise, but in case you’re somehow incapable of watching it or looking it up yourself, here it is: Sometime in the radical 1980s, a paramilitary group led by ‘Dutch’ Schaefer are engaged in some work in the jungles of South America where they are stalked and systematically killed by an extraterrestrial hunter (some might say a predator). While thematically it’s pretty much just a slasher flick filled with guns and latent homoeroticism, there are a couple of things about Predator that manage to make it interesting. First off all, it has a great cast: Carl ‘Apollo Creed’ Weathers, Jesse ‘Sexual Tyrannosaurus’ Ventura, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead, in the prime of his 80s Action God days. Secondly, the design of the Predator alien and his weapons are quite interesting to look at, and the effects concerning his vision and his cloaking device are pretty cool as well. Finally, the movie is pretty damn violent at times, and if you happen to be a bit of a gorehound like I am, you’ll find something to like there. In a lot of ways Predator is the beefcake version of Alien, which is probably why the idea of the two properties collaborating has always been intriguing, if not properly executed. Then again, every single versus movie ever made has failed to meet expectations, so that’s not surprising.

     Following in the footsteps of Aliens and Judgement Day, Predator attempts to be bigger and better while still retaining the core concept of what made the original film work. Instead of the steaming jungles of South America, our film takes place in the ‘urban jungle’ of Los Angeles in the then far-off year of 1997, a Demolition Man-esque warzone between the L.A.P.D and the textbook definition of what White America apparently thought inner-city gangs were back in the 90’s (paganistic, barely coherent and constantly under the influence of drugs as they fire off assault weapons? I don’t know how anyone could possibly be offended). Rather than buff action hero Schwarzenegger, we get Michael Harrigan (Danny Glover), a renegade cop who plays by nobody’s rules but his own, who is stalked by an all-new all-deadly Predator. You’ve got Gary Busey as a shady government agent, voodoo sacrifices, weed, Bill Paxton, and the macho Latina chick that seemed to be a prerequisite in these kinds of movies. Maybe there wasn’t a truck vs helicopter fight going on, but it was definitely a ‘bigger’ movie than Predator.

     However, there are some problems. Although Predator 2 seems to be attempting some biting social commentary (gang violence, exploitative media, culture of fear) it comes off less a Robocop or Dawn of the Dead type satire than it does a Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Also, despite there being plenty of action, and thus an appropriate amount of death, the movie seems rather muted when it comes to violence. Compared to the original film, which had arms blowing off, graphic depictions of skinned bodies and such, the killings in the sequel seem rather tame in comparison, if they’re even on screen at all Not to say there offscreen deaths can’t be valid in a dramatic sense, but this ain’t the 50s anymore and sometimes a punch in the face can hurt just as much as one to the back of the head. I don’t know if it was censorship imposed by the studio/ratings board that caused it or if that was just the way it came out, but once you see it you can’t unsee it. If we’re already going with the idea that a slightly overweight cop can fight a 7 ft tall homicidal alien just as well as Arnold ‘Terminator the Barbarian’ Schwarzenegger, something that can eviscerate a room full of coked up gang members with machine guns without getting a scratch, then I want some visceral death scenes. You pushing the underdog story? Then you make sure the audience knows just how much of an underdog the protagonist really is.

     Even taking its flaws into account, Predator 2 is a fairly entertaining movie, and I can appreciate the way it expanded upon the lore of the Predators themselves. Between the two I’d still say Predator is the better film, mostly because it’s the more straightforward film, not bogged down by the ridiculous stuff that plagues its descendent. If you’ve seen the first movie last Halloween and you’re wondering whether you should try the sequel, I’d say you’ll probably find something to enjoy this year. Watch out for anything beyond that though, especially the Alien vs. Predator films. You may not survive.

Some news

Sorry there isn't much to look at folks. Been working on some stuff, including the Halloween movie list, and so I've been kept from writing standalone articles. I'll try to see if I can find something to post here, just so it doesn't feel so dead.

Till next time, comrades.

10 Things That Fill Me With A Bittersweet Sense of Nostalgia When I Think About Them

10. Scott McCloud's Zot!

9. FLCL

8. Yu Yu Hakusho

7. That one ending theme to Dragonball where Bulma is looking out of a window

6. Pretty much any song by Randy Newman

5. Summers that meant something

4. The DNA Cowboys Trilogy by Mick Farren

3. That one girl I had a crush on since elementary school

2. Disney's Hercules

1. My childhood

Feel free to post things in the comments that fill you with a sense of loss.