The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), directed by Jack Arnold

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "A Small Victory", by Faith No More

     While the horror of the 1930s was supernatural, haunted houses, caped foreigners with dark gazes and so on, the horror of the 1940s onwards was science. With the onset of a World War larger and more dreadful than the one before it, the creation of bombs that could level cities and war machines that could cut through soldiers like paper, the discovery of camps where people were burned alive by the dozens, mankind had finally reached the point technologically where it could destroy itself. Not just kill some people or destroy a town, we were doing just fine with that, but actually eliminate the human race off the face of the Earth, what little of it there would be left that was inhabitable. Unlike the modern day, where people are calling for america to nuke Iran or Iraq or any other country they couldn’t point out on a map, I imagine the idea of our planet erupting in a cloud of nuclear fire was probably was a pretty sobering thought.

     In the world of Hollywood, that meant vampires and werewolves were out and mad scientists and aliens were in. As scary as science could be in the real world, audiences just couldn’t get enough of science-fiction. In the world of science-fiction, it seemed like invading tyrants from beyond the stars were showing up every other week, at least on the days when out all-caucasian crew were flying to Venus for the weekend. Robots were always murderous monsters, their bulky mechanical frames covered in buttons and blinking lights. Radiation can do anything, from healing the sick to granting superpowers and enlarging animals to gargantuan sizes (fire breath is optional). Despite that possibility of annihilation, suddenly it seemed like the world was awash with new opportunities and interesting possibilities, and that the time we were living in now was only a few steps away from that glorious utopia that Thomas More wrote about all those centuries ago. Hell, we were practically in a utopia already compared to the living conditions in 1516. Toilet paper would have blown their fucking minds.

     Some of the big sci-fi movies concepts have survived the test of time, aliens, giant insects, radioactive waste that does something other than give you cancer, but here’s one that hasn’t been trotted out in a while: Tiny, minuscule and otherwise shrunken people. There’s been a few, Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage, DC and Marvel have played around with The Atom and Ant-Man, and Honey I Shrunk the Kids, but it seems like it’s died out in recent years I mean, there are plenty of movies where humans have to contend with something bigger than we are, insects, apes, lizards what have you, but what about when you are smaller than everything? In an existential sense you could argue that we’re all specks, but our world is the right size for us, and it is built with a sort of immutability of self in mind. If you woke up one morning and the bed that was once the right size stretched out like a football field and the pencil on the nightstand was as large as a redwood, would your bedroom really feel any less alien than Venus or the moons of Saturn? Top of the food chain to the family dog’s newest chew toy. How could that not be interesting?

     That, I imagine, was American International’s justification for getting behind The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Jack Arnold back in 1957. Based on a novel by I Am Legend author Richard Matheson (who also wrote the screenplay), Shrinking Man tells the story of a writer named Robert Scott Carey, who is engulfed in a mysterious mist while on a boating trip with the wife. A bizarre but seemingly harmless incident, until Carey discovers the horrifying truth: He is shrinking at a steady rate, and there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do to prevent it. How can a man survive in a world that seems to grow more and more vast by the day, a world where a staircase would take months to climb or spiders seem to rival grizzly bears in girth? Well, if Carey does want to live he’s going to have to find out, because a world that’s hard enough for a 6 foot tall man is going to be pure hell for a three inch one.

     I suppose what I’m impressed with the most about this film is how they went the distance. By the time the 50s rolled around I guess I assumed that pretty much sci-fi/horror films were doing their best to do as little as possible to sell a movie. You know, green screens, forced perspective tricks, monsters that look like trash bags with tentacles glued on them, that sort of thing. While there are a couple of camera tricks going in The Incredible Shrinking Man, a lot of it is just plain old practical effects. When Carey is living in a dollhouse, they really recreate the room of a dollhouse in life-size. Gigantic cake crumbs, matchboxes the size of sheds, nails the size of 2x4s, you can actually believe for a moment that Carey has actually shrunk. To be fair, like many sci-fi and horror films of the period you’ve got to wait to around halfway through to get to those bits I was talking about, but I still appreciate the commitment. Like I said, a lot of movies that came out around the same time wouldn’t have even bothered.

     I also like The Incredible Shrinking Man for the fact that it doesn’t feel like a sci-fi movie, if that makes any sense. A sci-fi movie in the context of that era brings to mind images of Them or Plan 9 From Outer Space, cinematic elevator music that pile on the vapid acting, screaming women and square-jawed whitebread protagonists and still only barely manage to fill out 60 minutes. The studio didn’t think they needed a story to sell a movie, so the story in unimportant. TISM on the other hand actually feels like a classic science-fiction story being told in film form, where there’s a message trying to be conveyed beyond ‘buy something from the snack bar’. That Richard Matheson was a science fiction author as well as the author of the original story probably helped, although having the writer writing the screenplay doesn't always mean that the writer’s voice makes it through the adaptation process intact (just Harlan Ellison). The Last Man on Earth (the first adaptation of I Am Legend, starring Vincent Price) also featured Matheson on writing and also shares a similar tone to TISM, so I’d like to think the book-to-film process wasn’t as hard for him as it was for others.

     Part Robinson Crusoe style man vs. nature, part philosophy on man’s place in the universe, The Incredible Shrinking Man deals with both subjects while managing to tell a compact and concise story at the same time. A hidden pearl in a schlocky B-movie sea basically, and that’s why it gets the recommendation from me. I know some of you out there probably aren’t a fan of older movies, some of you might not even watch a movie that isn’t in color, but if you are interested in delving into the archives of science fiction film, then I’d say this would make a worthy addition to your watch queue. Keep an eye out for any mysterious mists while you’re at it, you don’t want to end up sword-fighting with your bed-bugs.

     Trust me on that one.

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

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

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

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

     It is a pretty decent concept for a movie though.

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

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

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

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

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

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Blacula (1972), directed by William Crain

Wouldn't you know it, this is the 100th post on this crappy little blog of mine! Sure, some of those posts aren't what some people would call 'content', but still. A milestone if ever there was one.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "I Put A Spell On You", by Screamin' Jay Hawkins

      As I said way back in the Beyond Re-Animator entry, there comes a point in every horror franchise’s life (most pop culture franchises in general really) where the regular old formula just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore, and so the people in charge decide to try out something new. Occasionally it devolves into self-parody, as was the case for Beyond, but sometimes it’s just a matter of tweaking the settings and characters a bit to produce new & interesting content. Take for example the Hammer Horror classic Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde, where the titular doctor’s experiments transform him from a decent law-abiding man into a sinister seductress. Or the Universal (not quite) classic The Invisible Woman, which aims for a light-hearted comedic tone rather than the chilling, but also slightly goofy horror of The Invisible Man. Or the multiple Sherlock Holmes series where it’s set in the modern day and Watson wants to have sex with Holmes for whatever reason. They’re not all as entertaining or as ‘good’ as the original product, but it is interesting to deconstruct an I.P. every once in awhile, approach it from a new angle, try to view things from a new perspective. Hell, Alan Moore has based his career on it.

     Blacula is also a variation on a familiar theme as you might have guessed, in this case Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Specifically, it is what is known as a blaxploitation film, a short lived genre in the 1970s characterized by its focus on the African-American community, not only in casting but in the topics and social issues that were relevant at the time. Although these films typically weren’t of the highest budget, more than a few of these blaxploitation films have managed to transcend into the collective unconscious of pop culture. Shaft, Superfly, The Mack, Foxy Brown (starring Pam Grier, who would later be nominated for Best Actress in the blaxploitation homage Jackie Brown), Dolomite, and of course the aforementioned Blacula. Yeah, referring to it as exploitation sounds a bit iffy, but in some ways I see the entire genre as a testament to the changes that were taking place in the U.S. at the time, the same with kung-fu movies. I mean, I highly doubt that films predominantly featuring African-Americans or Asians would have gotten much play in American theaters 10 years prior, maybe even 5 years prior, and then suddenly there’s a thriving scene around it; directors, actors, what have you. Suddenly there are a multitude of possibilities where there used to be few, both for the filmmakers and audience, and both finally have the means to explore it. Tales to explore, horizons to broaden, that sort of thing.

     The story of Blacula, in the vein of the horror stories of old, is a very simple one. Way back in the year 1780, in Dracula’s Transylvanian castle, the African prince Mamuwalde (played William Marshall) and his wife is visiting the Count to ask for his support in abolishing the slave trade. Dracula is an avowed asshole however, and his intentions are far less than noble than his guests would have believed. The Princess is entombed alive, where the only future for her is death, whether by starvation or otherwise. The Prince is beaten half to death and then bitten the rest of the way there, cursed by the Count to live an eternal life dedicated to satiating his unholy bloodlust. No longer Prince Mamuwalde, he is now Blacula (not just a name, Dracula’s racist ass self literally renames him Blacula for some dumbass reason), demon of the night.

     Years upon years later, long after the the terror of the Count had been ended by Doctor van Helsing, the coffin containing the dormant prince is discovered in Dracula’s castle by a couple of effeminate interior decorators (not the last swipe at gay people you’ll see in this movie) and is transported to America. It is there that Blacula is finally revived from his slumber and begins the reign of terror he was cursed to do. You know, biting people, consuming their life-blood, transforming them into soulless demons of the night, that sort of thing. A rather humdrum sort of existence, until he happens to spy a lovely young woman named Tina, who just so happens to share a startling resemblance to his long dead wife…

     Murder. Seduction. At least one transforming into a bat scene. Blacula is exactly what you would expect out of a vampire story, with a dash of The Mummy for that reincarnated lovers angle and a copious amount of r&b. Although I don’t know if he really gets many chances to show it, at his best William Marshall is every bit the charismatic monster that Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee was in their films, even managing to come off as a relatively noble and tragic figure if you ignore the dozen or people he helped to murder. Tina doesn’t really stand out to me, she doesn’t really have a personality beyond ‘wants to bang Blacula’, but I guess you need an attractive woman for the movie to center around, and she certainly manages to do that. The rest of the cast doesn’t really stand out as anything noteworthy to me, aside from the way they can drop epithets towards gay people at the drop of a hat.

     If I were a bigger fan of the old style of horror movies, where’s not a lot of onscreen violence and you’re kind of waiting around for something to happen, then I’d probably would more easily enjoyed this movie. I certainly wouldn’t have been as distracted. However, there’s also not really anything wrong with this movie either. It does exactly what it needs to do to tell a story and manages to carve out its own identity while doing it, and that’s about all I can think to say about it. For those interested in the old-school but in need of a twist, or those looking for something a bit campy and offbeat that’s a step or two above the typical Mystery Science Theater fare, Blacula gets a recommendation from me. For those who aren’t interested in African-Americans, I recommend the Republican Party.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Flash Gordon (1980), directed by Mike Hodges

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Flash", by Queen

     You know, in this age of cinematic universes and shameless rehashes, it’s a bit surprising that we haven’t much attention paid to the ‘pre-hero’ age of American pop culture in these modern times. To be specific, those properties that managed to carve out their own following in pulp novels, radio shows, film serials and what not before the march of progress and the rise of comic books ultimately led to their downfall. You’d think that now that time has passed, and most of the original audience for these things have all died off that it would be a perfect time for Hollywood to some exploiting, but so far it’s been pretty quiet on that front. In fact, I don’t think they’ve really bothered to try and do a pre-comic movie since the early 90s, aside from the attempts at Tarzan. Come on guys, where’s that desperate greed that got us a Robocop movie we never wanted, a Total Recall we’ve already forgotten and a Ghostbusters that’s already reviled, you’re telling me you can’t squeeze out a few more shekels from characters almost a century old? You made Sherlock Holmes into an action star, I’m pretty sure you can pull off Mandrake the Magician.

     I say this, but already they’re planning to turn Doc Savage into a vehicle for Dwayne Johnson, and there’s supposedly a new Tarzan that’s meant to come out at some point. The point was the general attitude of ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ seemed incredibly off-putting, considering the state of the movie industry these days.

     Anyway, like I said, there have been a few attempts at bringing old school characters to the silver screen, with mixed results. There was the Doc Savage movie back in the 70s, which is mostly known for being either shit or forgettable. There was The Shadow, starring Alec Baldwin, the foppish playboy of the Baldwin family. The Phantom, starring Billy Zane, which threatened to undo all the work Prince did for the color purple. Not to mention the pulp inspired movies like Buckaroo Banzai and The Rocketeer, both of which featured in previous Marathons for those interested. The sad truth of it is however, is that very few of these films really ‘got’ it, if you know what I mean. Never really captured the magic of the character, never quite able to replicate the feeling that drove that surge of popularity in the first place. Except one, and he just so happens to be the saviour of the universe.

     Flash Gordon, star player of the New York Jets, and Dale Arden, amateur damsel in distress, are taking an airplane ride when the world suddenly starts coming to an end. Earthquakes, unexpected eclipses, whatever the hell ‘hot hail’ is supposed to be, it’s all happening and no one knows what’s causing it. No one but Hans Zarkov, a disgraced former NASA, who knows exactly what’s going on: Something has caused the moon to move out of orbit, and if we don’t manage to move it back, it’s going to crash into the Earth in about 2 weeks. So because there’s no time to waste, Zarkov forces Dale and Flash (who managed to crash land their plane conveniently near Zarkov’s lab) into his homemade rocket and blast off into the great wide open to save the planet. I’m not sure blasting off into a rocket with no clear idea of where you’re going and with no supplies is a bit foolhardy but hey, it was the 80s.

     Anyway, the rocket ends up going through a wormhole and eventually ends up in the fantastical world of Mongo, composed of dozens of fantastical floating worlds and equally strange humanoid beings. Hawk Men and Lizard Men and Tree Dudes and weird colorful dwarves, it’s basically ComiCon with less cosplaying. Which would be cool, except Mongo is ruled over by the appropriately named Ming the Merciless, and it is by his hand that the Earth is facing imminent destruction. Ming doesn’t give two shits about Earth or the people who live on it, but he is interested in Dale, and he wouldn’t mind having Flash dead on top of that. Somehow, some way, the world’s most heroic football player must traverse this alien world, rescue his friends and his planet, and defeat Ming and his evil empire all within the span of 14 days. Shouldn’t be too difficult, right?

     Might as well point this out first, since it’s probably more well-known than the actual movie. Yes, Queen does the soundtrack for the film, although the orchestral scores are by someone else. However, there are only a few moments I can think of where the music you’re hearing is straight up Freddie Mercury and the guys rocking out. Other than that it’s mostly some synth tones, and maybe a reprise of the Flash theme. It’s certainly not bad, it’s appropriate to the tone of the film, but I figured that I’d throw that out there in case anyone was going in thinking it was 111 minutes of Bohemian Rhapsody.

     What is it about Flash Gordon that works, compared to other pulp hero films or even superhero films? Well, the extravagant special effects are definitely a plus; everything is colorful and all the kingdoms are visually distinct with a generous helping of art deco, and I’m no less a fan of streamlines and strong angles than I was before. The cast is also pretty fun. Max von Sydow, Brian Blessed, Timothy Dalton, the only real weak link in the whole thing is probably Sam Jones, who puts on a rather mild performance as our hero Flash Gordon. It kind of works in a weird way though, at least it was never distracting enough that I lost interest in the film. Simple acting that reflects a simpler time, when a protagonist did heroic stuff because he was a hero and no one really pushed for pulps and comic strips to go any deeper than that. I don’t know if that was the intent, but it makes sense.

     So again, what is it about Flash Gordon that makes it work, while other films of the same ilk stumble? If I had to explain it, I guess I would say because it manages to present the concept of Flash Gordon about as purely as possible, no unnecessary changes made because the audience might not ‘get it’, while also having some fun doing it. I don’t think anyone is going to deny that Flash Gordon is an inherently silly concept, least of all the people that made this movie, but that doesn’t keep them from making an entertaining movie. In a lot of cases like this, people either tend to push for serious (for fear that people will make fun of them) or irreverent (for fear that people will make fun of them for being too serious), and it ends up negatively affecting the movie. Flash Gordon isn’t about ‘gritty reimaginings’ and it isn’t about mocking its roots. It’s a celebration, not only of Flash Gordon but of an era when the world still had some things left to explore. Maybe there could be ancient underground civilizations, maybe there are entire races of people living on Saturn, maybe the future really will be a utopia of flying cars and dome cities. It’s pure, idealized escapism, and isn’t that what all these comic books and pulp novels are about? To step outside the dreary boundaries of real life into a realm of infinite possibilities and wonder, in the hopes that you’ll forget about that boring mundane world for just a little while? Maybe someone should have told Zack Snyder that before WB gave him a billion dollars.

     Anyway, it’s a good movie. Perhaps the most entertaining film of the Marathon so far, for what that’s worth. So take that recommendation and do what you want with it this Halloween. As for me, I’ll be busy exploring the possibility of Hawk Women.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Erik the Viking (1989), directed by Terry Jones

This piece was written a couple months ago, so it's only recently that the news about Terry has become known. As a fan of Monty Python, both as a source of comedy and as a creative collective, it's incrdibly depressing to see one of the architects of the troupe - and Jones was, if not as immensely poopular as John Cleese or Eric Idle, just as vital to the magic that was Monty Python than any of the other members - fall victim the ravages of time. He's all responsible for directing all those Python movies you love to quote so much, so maybe after you read this piece, you can watch this movie, and maybe even life itself, with a bit of a different perspective. Which was the mission of Monty Python from the very beginning, I believe.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Lightning Strikes Again", by Thor

     I’m having trouble starting this one off, so I’ll try this out: Whenever I watch Monty Python, whether the Flying Circus or the four feature-length films, I don’t really enjoy them for the humor. They are very funny of course, but what draws me to the work of Python is the high degree of craftsmanship when it comes to the material. There is something about the way they put their sketches together, so simple, so direct and yet so openly absurd, that I find just fascinating to watch. I mean, what is the ‘Cheese Shop’ sketch but a guy trying and failing to buy some cheese? That’s all it is, and yet the way it’s presented, the way Cleese and Palin take their lines, the slow, confusing build-up to an anti-punchline, it’s like seeing a visual model of how the human body functions in some strange way. Of course, being comedians, I’m sure the men behind Monty Python would rather people laugh at their jokes than study them, so maybe I’m doing it wrong.

     Anyway, over the years I’ve steadily decreased the amount of Python-related media in my watch queue, whether it was directly done by the comedy troupe or just the individual members. Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and Meaning of Life? Done. Fawlty Towers and Do Not Adjust Your Set? Done. The filmography of Terry Gilliam? Brazil and 12 Monkeys are fantastic films, and I’ve done write ups on both Jabberwocky and Time Bandits in this past, Time Bandits even making an appearance in a previous Marathon. Given that Python respect and the Python precedence in previous lists, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that I would do a piece on a film on yet another Python alum, in this case the esteemed Terry Jones. So here’s Erik the Viking, and you better bloody well like it.

     In the gray, bitter land of Norse, centuries before the English set foot on the soil of the New World, the viking known as Erik (played by Tim Robbins, whom you might recall from Jacob’s Ladder) is troubled. The world of the viking is a dull and dreary one it seems, a continuous cycle of raping and pillaging that only serves to fuel more raping and pillaging, and his own attempts at raping and pillaging left him with a deep emptiness in his soul. Seeking counsel from the wise women Freya, Erik is told that the great wolf Fenrir has chased the sun from the sky, the gods lie sleeping in Asgard, and the world of man is currently in the Age of Ragnarok. If Erik wishes to keep men from hating and killing one another he must journey to Asgard and awaken the gods, and to do that he must journey to the land of High Brazil and find the mystic Horn of Resounding. So he decides to get himself a team of stalwart vikings and just do that. Of course, it wouldn’t be an odyssey if there weren’t some dangerous trials to overcome, and there are some people who actually prefer living in the Age of Ragnarok, thank you very much. Well, no one said epic quests were going to be easy.

     If you’re familiar with Monty Python formula, or the Blackadder and Discworld and occasionally Mel Brooks formula too I guess, then you’re probably not going to be too put off with Erik the Viking. Take one setting in the past which may or may not include elements of high fantasy and have people who haven’t invented toilet paper behave like normal modern day folk, and the just watch the satirical anachronisms pile up. A dad nagging his son for not being a proper berserker, the antagonist (a white-collar war chief) who decides to stop Erik’s journey because an age of peace would negatively affect the blacksmithing industry, about what you might expect. Only two Pythons this time around, Terry Jones and John Cleese in relatively minor roles, but you get people like Mickey Rooney, Eartha Kitt and Tim McInnerny (of Blackadder fame), which I think is a pretty good trade-off. Funny is funny not matter who it is.

     Although, much like in Time Bandits, I wouldn’t say Erik the Viking is strictly a comedy, and I wouldn’t say it’s strictly comedic in nature. In this film people die in goofy ways, they die in somber ways, and sometimes they just die and there’s not really any emotion that feels right. The Vikings set out for glory and to see the fabled halls of Asgard, but when they finally get there the great mead halls of Valhalla aren’t exactly all that great, and the gods aren’t exactly how the legends described them. Is the message that shit happens, no matter whether you’re good or bad, and the only thing you can do is try to deal with it? Or that the world is a neutral, uncaring place, and that if mankind wants a better life for itself then it needs to take responsibility for its actions? Could be both, could be it’s just a movie and you should maybe just relax. It’s up to you.

     The thing is, the fact that it feels so familiar also means that there isn’t really that much that sets it apart. If you’ve seen Holy Grail or Jabberwocky or the first series of Blackadder then you already have some idea of how the jokes are going to be framed, how the setting is going to be used, and so on and so forth. Which doesn’t make it bad, I can name a good number of funny scenes here, but there really isn’t anything about Erik the Viking that I would recommend over more well-known, more well-regarded films. I don’t really believe in numerical scores for films, or at the very least I don’t try to base whether or not I recommend a movie solely on a number, but at this moment I can’t think of a movie more well-suited to a 7/10 than Erik the Viking. Not a movie that you’ll see a lot of praise for, but if you do end up going for it you’ll still have a fun time.

     For the sake of reference, The Usual Suspects also got a 7 on my internal judgement scale (maybe I wanted to start off on a high-note). In that case, I phrased my recommendation of the fact that it’s a movie that gets a lot of praise, but might not be as enjoyable as you might be lead to believe. The yang to Erik the Viking’s yin I suppose, but personally I’ve always preferred to be underrated than overrated. Both sides end up causing obnoxious arguments on the internet but at least you could argue the former comes from a place of positivity, at least until the death threats and comparisons to Nazis start. Coming from a guy who’s spent a majority of his life with the internet, I feel like ‘positive before Godwin’s Law showed up’ is about the best you’re going to get.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Hardware (1990), directed by Richard Stanley

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Electric Head, pt. 1 & 2", by White Zombie

     If any of you out there followed the Marathon, you might remember me dedicated a spot on the list for a film called Lost Soul. Rather than your typical horror/sci-fi/fantasy fare that usually populates this list, this was a documentary, detailing the brief rise and precipitous fall of director Richard Stanley. A rising star of the early 90s in the horror movie world, Stanley had the money, the names (Marlon ‘Double Quarter Pounder’ Brando just for starters) and the crew when he started his third major motion picture: A then-modern day adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ classic ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau’, featuring some incredibly impressive and incredibly ambitious art design and costuming. Unfortunately, the project was plagued with issues from the very start; money problems, location problems, Val Kilmer, and what was originally Richard Stanley’s epic sci-fi vision eventually became the infamous flop where Marlon Brando palled around with the prototype Mini Me. Much like Jodorowsky’s Dune, Lost Soul revels in the concept of ‘what could have been’ and pointing a finger at the oppressive studio heads who crush the artist’s creative vision, while managing to actually provide some interesting insight on the filmmaking process and the problems that arise when it comes to big studio productions. I recommended it back then, I’d still recommend it now.

     Even since I finished the piece on Lost Soul way back when, I’ve had this desire to check out the films that had allowed Stanley to pursue Moreau with such confidence, that is to say Hardware and Dust Devil. In fact I had even considered putting it in the Marathon along with Lost Soul, ultimately deciding against it for the purposes of variety. Which means that it’s totally fine to do it now, it being a new year and new Marathon and all. Starting from the beginning seemed the best place to start, so that means 1990’s Hardware.

     Sometime in the far future, at a point in time where technology only looks marginally more advanced than it was in the 90s, the United States has officially gone to shit. Nuclear attacks have left most of the major cities in ruins, leaving to radiation poisoned survivors to try and rebuild their lives from the scrap left behind. We are at war with an unknown enemy, which apparently isn't going all that well. The government is enacting what they are calling ‘population control’ laws, where citizens are being forced to choose between being sterilized or going hungry. Iggy Pop is a radio DJ, which is pretty cool, but other than that it’s pretty bad.

     It is in this harsh world that Moses, our protagonist and all-around bland dude, gets a great deal on some parts that once belonged to a maintenance droid before it wandered into a local minefield. The plan is to give them to his estranged girlfriend Jill, who splits her time between moping about how shitty life is and making very pointy, very industrial sculptures about how shitty life is, in the hopes of making them less estranged. The thing is, and this is the silly part, those robot parts aren’t from a maintenance droid. They’re from a device called the M.A.R.K.-13, an intelligent and adaptive war machine developed by the U.S. Military, built to destroy any and all human life within its zone of operations. Which can be anywhere it damn well pleases as it turns out, because it’s not long before its discovery that it manages to reactivate itself and start carrying out that whole ‘merciless slaughter’ thing. If plain old life was a struggle in this bombed-out shit heap, Moses and Jill are about to find out just how much harder it is when you throw killer robots in the mix.

     Looking at Hardware, you can recognize immediately why people were hyping up Stanley from the get-go. The man knows how to construct a unique and interesting looking world. The majority of the film takes place in Jill’s spacious studio apartment (how overpopulation is such a big deal yet an artist on welfare can afford a place like that in the city is beyond me), yet there are so many touches throughout the film that help to define Stanley’s vision of his universe. Jill’s N.I.N. chic, the constant updates by Angry Bob/Iggy Pop, their bizarre TV shows, the strobe lighting that comes and goes at a moment’s notice, it’s like a peek at the music video that ran through every grunge kid’s head back in the day. Considering Richard Stanley directed music videos before his move to theatrical films, maybe this isn’t all that surprising. But it is still hip.

     Also worth noting, the M.A.R.K.-13 itself, which was an actual machine constructed for the film. I don’t know how easy it was for Stanley to even get that shit to work halfway decently, but it pays off when it actually comes into play in the film. An actor in a suit probably wouldn’t be able to convey the same sense of ‘other’ that the MARK-13 does at its best. Keep it in low lighting, don’t show it wheeling around under its own power that much, and it makes for a suitably impressive movie monster in spite of its Johnny 5 type design.

     The problem that plagues Hardware though is the same problem that plague the films of another well-known music video alum, Zack Snyder: Under the impressive visuals, it’s just not good. Up its own ass even, packed in with a bunch of symbolism that I’m sure would look pretty good in the more visually focused world of music videos, but comes off as a bit pretentious here. Especially when you consider the fact that Hardware is really just the standard slasher formula gussied up to make it seem more ‘alternative’. The hot actress still survives, the perverts and the minorities are still killed off, all leading up to a climactic showdown between the hot chick and the monster at the end, it’s all by the books kind of stuff but presented with this aloof attitude. Like yeah, we know that Moses is an underdeveloped, rather blandly performed character, yeah Moses and Jill the entirety of their time as a ‘couple’ moping and arguing with each other, yeah barely any of the characters feel fleshed out and we try to push the message of hope and nihilism at the same time, but that’s real life! Sorry that you don’t get it, so why don’t you go back to watching Saved by the Bell reruns in your unripped jeans, you fucking square?! Stop being so mainstream, you’re embarrassing yourself.

     Horror movies are a genre that pride themselves on visual design and special effects, and in that regard Hardware deserves a watch, because Richard Stanley shows a level of creativity and inventiveness not often seen in the industry today. However, I literally could not keep my eyes on the screen for the first 40 or so minutes of the film, and gorehounds out there might be underwhelmed by the relatively low body count, so be sure to keep that in mind. In the end, Hardware shows a lot of promise, but due to some glaring issues ultimately fails to capitalize on its enormous potential. Much like Richard Stanley himself, if Lost Soul is anything to go by.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Beyond Re-Animator (2003), directed by Brian Yuzna

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Drifter", by H. P. Lovecraft

     Aside from John Carpenter’s The Thing, there is probably no other film that’s ever received as much consistent praise on these lists as Re-Animator. A then-modern adaptation of a classic story by H.P. Lovecraft, which itself was a spin on the even more classic Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Re-Animator centered around Dr. Herbert West, played by Jeffrey Combs (who you might remember from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A gifted but rebellious medical student, West isn’t interested in curing simple diseases or mending broken bones, but instead solving the one problem that has plagued doctors since the dawn of time: Death. To that end, West develops a reagent which, upon injection into the spinal cord of a corpse, actually returns the subject to life. Well, a semblance of life. Well, it turns them into savage flesh-starved monsters, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few abominable eggs, right?

     Re-Animator was basically what 80’s horror B-movies were all about, or at least what they should have aspired to be. The premise was simple, which made the story itself uncomplicated and easy to get into. The special effects were excellent, which in turn made the gore and the violence particularly gruesome, of which there was plenty to enjoy. Jeffrey Comb’s performance as Herbert West, not so much a simple ‘mad scientist’ as a unapologetically immoral yet devilishly charismatic manipulator of the human form, putting him far above your typical Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger-style horror villains of the time. There’s no cardboard acting, no hackjob editing, no obnoxious soundtrack blaring during important scenes, it’s does everything right and looks good doing it. If you’ve read any of the previous lists, if you’ve read the entries on this list right now, you know how common it is to see me write ‘the special effects were good, but the story was crap’, or ‘you might enjoy this, if you overlook these characters’. Those kinds of statements never really seem to come up for me when it comes to Re-Animator, which as far I’m concerned is the only way to quantify whether a movie is ‘good’ or not in any meaningful sense. Subjectively speaking of course, objectivity is for fancy computers and Steve Ditko.

     Then came Bride of Re-Animator a few years later, which was actually featured on the Marathon a while back. Horror franchises can generally get a least two good films out of a property before things get shitty (See: Frankenstein & Bride of Frankenstein, Halloween 1 & 2, Alien & Aliens), and Bride is no exception. There’s no attempts to reinvent the wheel here, but it does try to maintain the standards of the original while using the safety of the Re-Animator name to explore some directions, which is what everyone expects of proper sequels. In that way, while I probably enjoyed the original more, I have to admit that Bride of Re-Animator is far more bizarre film than its predecessor. Creatures made out of human limbs, disembodied heads with bat wings flying around, things get really weird there for a while. An entertaining movie and worthy sequel, and a good way to end the series. Barring any tie-in comics down the road, that is.

     Then around a decade or so later Beyond Re-Animator comes to our doorstep, proving that the Two Movie Rule was more like a Two Movie Law.

     Ugh.

     So the premise itself is fine. Herbert West, who somehow survived the end of the last movie, has been in prison for the past thirteen years after his last experiment ended up a little deadly. Eventually a new rube (Dr. Howard Phillips, a Lovecraft reference and what passes for our protagonist) arrives at the prison, eager to work with West and his reagent and completely willing to experiment on prisoners without their consent and knowledge. After a decade of research however, Herbert West has moved beyond merely raising the dead. By transferring something called Neuroplasmic Energy from a living thing into a previously living thing, one can finally restore cognitive thinking and rationality to the reanimated, bypassing the one roadblock that had hampered the success of the reagent in the past. Messing around with the ‘souls’ of living things is a risky gamble though, especially when you’re in a horror movie, and things start going to shit almost immediately. If you thought prison was bad before, just wait until the abominations of science start showing up.

     It sucks though. As good a setup as that premise is, touching upon the abuse of power in the American prison system, providing an inherently violent and isolated setting that only becomes more so when you add the reanimated, it’s a bad movie. Cardboard acting (Pinocchio is less wooden than Howard Phillips), Friday the 13th style editing which pushes the violence offscreen, rather unfortunate portrayals of women (there are three women in this film. The first is murdered, the second is forced to expose her breasts, and the third is raped and murdered. Not the best track record), and ‘comedy’ scenes that occasionally try to match the morbid absurdity of the previous films but just come off as painfully stupid. About the only thing it doesn’t manage to screw up is the occasionally decent bit of gore and the soundtrack, which while forgettable at least features the theme from the original movie. Oh, and Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, the rock which weathers the shit storm of a movie raging around him. Love ya buddy.

     So is Beyond Re-Animator supposed to be the Army of Darkness of the Re-Animator series? There does come a point in every horror franchise’s life where it devolves into self-parody after all, H2O for Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, it’s basically inevitable. You’ve reached the limit to how you far can push the formula, so you push the fact that you have no new ideas as the new idea and hope that debasing yourself will squeeze a few more drops of blood from the stone. Freddy Krueger goes from a demon of your nightmares to Bart Simpson, dropping sarcastic one-liners and making hip pop culture references in a bid to connect with ‘the kids’. Jason Vorhees becomes a space zombie. Michael Myers gets his ass kicked by Xzibit. Monster movies sure are dumb, right guys? Look at this hot chick with big boobs, look at all these horror tropes we’re messing around with! Buy our movie and we’ll let you spit in our mouth.

     The thing is, the Re-Animator series wasn’t tired. There were two movies in the 80s, and then the franchise was basically dead for 10 years. So what was the point of even bringing it back if you were going to pull this half-assed shit with it? In one fell swoop you turned the Re-Animator series from an underrated cult classic with plenty of potential material into a fucking Syfy Original Movie in one fell swoop, sinking it even lower into obscurity than it was before your attempts at revitalizing it. Why not comics? Why not pen & paper RPGs? Instead we got a movie where a rat puppet fights a detached human penis, and although that probably sounds funny out of context, the reality is that you’ll have stopped giving a shit long before that scene ever shows up. I know I did.

     Do I think that you should watch Beyond Re-Animator? No, not really. Do I think fans of the Re-Animator films will find something to enjoy with Beyond Re-Animator? Probably not, aside from a few choice special effects and the presence of Jeffrey Combs. Do I think my love for Re-Animator is keeping me from viewing Beyond Re-Animator more critically? Possibly. For any pros this film might have had though, it’s the flaws that shine through the brightest, and it’s the flaws which stick in my mind. If the only things you remember about a movie are the bad things, doesn’t that make it a bad movie? Write five pages on that and get it in to me by Monday.