John Kenneth Muir's Blog, page 14

30 Years Ago: Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Can one bad concept, executed poorly, scuttle an entire movie?  That was a question I asked myself 30 years ago.

And indeed, that's the primary question to ask regarding the seventh feature film to boast the  Star Trek  name, 1994's  Generations.

As Trekkers no doubt recall,  Generations  offers the irresistible lure of combining two generations of franchise characters and two exceedingly popular casts.  The film's prologue is set in the 23rd century days of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and crew (in this case meaning Scotty and Chekov), while the movie proper is set some seventy-eight years later, in the era of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his stalwart crew (Riker, Data, Worf, LaForge, Crusher, and Troi).  The film's climax stirs the ingredients together and brings forth both Kirk and Picard to double-team the film's nefarious villain, Dr. Tolian Soran (Malcolm McDowell).
This sounds like a slam dunk formula for space adventure success, no?  

It is, perhaps, until you consider the mechanism by which the two generations are combined.  While all  Star Trek  films feature flaws of one type or another,  Generations  endures seismic contortions to bring together two captains from disparate eras, in the process creating a narrative sinkhole from which little emerges unscathed.  

That sinkhole is called "The Nexus" or "the energy ribbon," and the script -- in true  TNG  techno-babble fashion -- generically describes the outer space phenomenon as a "conflux of temporal energy" that passes through our galaxy every thirty-eight years or so. 
Alas, the Nexus is perhaps the most inconsistent plot device to feature prominently in a  Star Trek  film, thus causing many more problems than it solves. And because it plays such an important role in the film, logical questions about it are not easily side-stepped or avoided.

In addition, the screenplay by Ronald Moore and Brannon Braga feels schizophrenic.  The book-end scenes involving Captain Kirk  are filled with wit, nostalgia, pathos, and real humor, but the middle sections of the film are slow, tedious and lugubrious. Brent Spiner's delightful Data is transformed into a clown and a coward by the addition of an emotion chip, and the script badly mishandles the noble Captain Picard too, making him seem emotionally unstable and a sexist prude.  As a feature film introduction to these beloved franchise characters,  Generations  serves both heroes poorly.
Yet despite such problems,  Star Trek: Generations  features many memorable and enjoyable moments. The exciting prologue reveals the inaugural flight of the U.S.S. Enterprise B,  and there's also an impressive action scene involving a saucer separation and planetary crash.   Generations  also presents a laudable thematic leitmotif about mortality.  It's not what we leave behind that's important, establishes Captain Picard, but "how we've lived" that matters.  Picard, Kirk and Soran -- in various ways -- all embody this search for meaning in life.  

In terms of its cinematic appeal,  Generations  re-uses the familiar TV sets, but cinematographer John Alonzo does a brilliant and beautiful job of up-fitting them for the silver screen.  The cinematic lighting of these familiar sets lends a beautiful and affecting sense of melancholy to the dramatic proceedings.  Some scenes are literally bathed in apricot sunlight, as though a golden age is burning out, coming to a rapid end.  This too fits both the movie's narrative (which witnesses an end to Enterprise-D) and the thematic drive, which suggests that "time is the fire in which we burn."

I've re-watched the first five seasons of  Star Trek: The Next Generation  in the last year or so as part of my continuing retrospective of the series, and discovered a new appreciation for the series...one I didn't expect to find, but did.  Yet love  The Next Generation  or hate it,  Generations  is not a high point in the franchise, rather a testament to the difficulty of moving beloved characters from one format to another.

The New York Times'  Peter Nichols noted that  Generations  is "flabby and impenetrable in places, but it has enough pomp, spectacle and high-tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat."  
I largely agree with the reviewer in terms of the movies flaws and strengths.   Generations  really is flabby  (feeling overlong and confusing) and impenetrable (largely because of the Nexus), but the film is also, often, quite spectacular in visualization.  
"A quick run around the block..."



In the 23rd century, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Captain Scott (James Doohan) and Commander Chekov (Walter Koenig) board the U.S.S. Enterprise-B for its maiden voyage, a short sojourn around the solar system.

Unfortunately, two El-Aurian ships carrying refugees to Earth have become caught in "The Ribbon" -- a dangerous space phenomenon -- and require rescue.  The Enterprise, under Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck) is not prepared to meet the challenge, but Kirk and his team step in.  Several El-Aurians are rescued, including Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell) but during the rescue attempt, Captain Kirk is lost and presumed dead.

Seventy-eight years later, the crew of the Enterprise-D celebrates the promotion of Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn).  Even as Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) receives grave news regarding his family on Earth, the android Data (Brent Spiner) attempts to become "more human" by installing and activating his emotion chip.

The Enterprise receives a distress call from a nearby Federation facility, and discovers that it has fallen under attack, apparently by Romulans.  A lone survivor is Dr. Soran, who is now working on a powerful Trilithium device -- a weapon that can destroy stars -- to shift the path of the Ribbon.

As Picard learns, Dr. Soran actually wishes to return to the Ribbon, so that he can enter into an alternate dimension called "The Nexus," a world of fantasy and bliss where his family still exists.  Allied with Klingon renegades Lursa and B'etor, Soran hopes to destroy the sun in the Veridian system even though it means the deaths of millions of intelligent life forms, and thus rendezvous with his loved ones.

Picard attempts to stop Dr. Soran on a desolate planet surface while Riker battles the Klingons in orbit.  After Picard enters the Nexus, he realizes he must enlist the help of the legendary Captain Kirk...

"Time is the fire in which we burn..."



Star Trek: Generation's  problems begin with the concept of the Nexus.  It is a ribbon of energy that travels the galaxy.  If you happen to be touched by the Nexus, you are transported to an alternate reality without time in which your thoughts dictate reality.

The Nexus/ribbon is incredibly intriguing in concept, and I've always appreciated outer space mystery films that deal with altered realities, such as  Solaris .  Indeed, you get the sense that this kind of depth is precisely what  Generations  was aiming for.
The problem is that the rules governing the Nexus are inconsistent.  Follow the logic with me:  According to Guinan (Whoopi Goldbeg), you can't go to the Nexus.  The Nexus must come to you.  This is why the film's villain, Soran, is using Trilithium, a quantum inhibitor, to destroy stars.  The accordant changes in gravity in the aftermath of the star's destruction offer the opportunity to re-direct the ribbon to a planet where Soran is waiting.  There, he can be absorbed by the Nexus and returned to his family.
Yet, at the beginning of the film, Captain Kirk is absorbed into the Nexus (and assumed dead by the rest of the galaxy) after the Enterprise-B enters the Ribbon.  So in this case, you can go into the Nexus.  You can get to it by ship, directly contradicting Guinan's spoken testimony and Soran's belief that there's "no other way" to get inside the Nexus. 
As has been asked by many fans on many discussion boards, why can't Soran merely fly a ship, or a thruster suit into the Ribbon, just the way the Enterprise B flew into the Ribbon?  If, for a moment, I were to buy this whole "it has to come to you" deal, why not park a spaceship in front of the Ribbon, turn off your engines, and let it just happen.  Same thing with a thruster suit.  
Bluntly stated, there is no need for Soran's over-complicated plan to put millions of lives in danger by destroying stars.  It's all a false threat and a contrivance. The film demonstrates, through Kirk's disappearance, that you can go to the Nexus, and that it doesn't have to come to you.  Are we supposed to believe Guinan and Soran, or our own lying eyes?
The next inconsistency arises over the use to which the Nexus is put.  Apparently, since the Nexus can shape reality according to thought, those trapped in the Nexus can choose to leave it any time, and return to any point in the timeline.

In the film, Picard solicits the aid of Captain Kirk and opts to return to the point five minutes before Veridian III is destroyed, to stop Soran.  Why would he choose this particular time, and not a day earlier, in Ten Forward, when he first meets Soran aboard the Enterprise?  Worf's security men could thus arrest Soran, and two star systems would survive.  There would be no casualties, either.  The Enterprise wouldn't get destroyed. End of story.  Why would any person in his right mind -- let alone an incredibly intelligent starship captain -- choose to return to a point  in time wherein Soran already holds all the cards, and the die is cast, as they say?
And there's more. When Picard and Kirk return from the Nexus, they are very quickly outmatched.  In short order, it appears that one of them will have to sacrifice their life on a rickety bridge atop a hill to stop Soran from destroying the star. Thus, I submit, Kirk and Picard should have put their heads together for about five seconds and determined to let Soran win, and permit the Nexus to take them again.  Why?  They're losing.
They can go back into the Nexus, leave again, pick another time to return to the real universe, and make a second, hopefully better-planned run at Soran.  The Nexus, in fact, offers the possibility of infinite do-overs.  It seems criminal to lose Kirk permanently in this story, when the Nexus allows characters to rewrite time again and again.  I have a difficult time believing that the two best Captains in Starfleet history couldn't engineer a solution, together, that would spare both their lives and save the universe, given the Nexus's unique temporal properties. 
In short, never has a gimmick in a Star Trek movie been quite so...gimmicky. The Nexus is a black hole of plot contrivance that sucks away all the good will the film generates.  And it's not like that good will is that abundant in the first place, in part because of the film's sour and off-key depiction of the hero.
The Measure of a Man: The depiction of Captain Picard in Generations.



What I appreciate so much about Captain Picard is that his character was conceived as a man and as a captain very different from Captain Kirk.  We didn't need an imitator...we needed a successor with his own style, approach and personality. That's precisely what the writers and Patrick Stewart gave us in the TV series. That fact established, Captain Picard as he was in the series is not an easy fit for a  Star Trek  movie.  He is introspective, occasionally morose, emotionally detached from his crew, and not at all the standard action hero type.
In the series, Picard was always much more effective as a traveling diplomat and mediator than as a starship commander in combat situations.  He surrendered the Enterprise in two of the first four episodes of the series ("Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Last Outpost"), and got his clock cleaned by an eighty year-old, broken-down starship in a war game scenario against Riker in "Peak Performance."
But Picard's admirable intellectual and diplomatic qualities don't really get audiences behind the character in a bigger film setting. When a Klingon Bird of Prey de-cloaks off the port bow of the Enterprise, Picard's response here is simply a befuddled "what?!"  He can't even conceive of the possibility that a Klingon ship could be lurking nearby. He thus appears unimaginative. Just compare Picard's confused, ineffective response in  Generations  with Kirk's decisive reaction to a cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey in  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock  (1984). Kirk spots the ship before it de-cloaks, and gets in the first licks with photon torpedoes. Is competence in the center seat too much to expect of Picard?
In  Generations , Picard is also handily defeated in hand-to-hand combat with Soran. He fails to stop the scientist's dastardly plan, and must resort to cajoling Kirk back into action. Then, Kirk fights Soran and ultimately dies trying to reach a remote control (yes, a remote control). So not only does Picard fail against Soran once, but the second time around he also gets a Starfleet legend killed because he can't handle himself in a fist-fight.   Remember, he's supposed to be the film's hero, and again, the portrayal isn't very flattering.
To top it all off, when at film's conclusion Riker notes that he never had the chance to captain the Enterprise, Captain Picard says, essentially, "don't worry...we'll get another one!"  (Really: "I doubt this will be the last starship to carry the name Enterprise).  
Again, contrast Kirk's feelings of guilt and remorse over the destruction of his beloved starship in  The Search for Spock  with Picard's nonchalant, off-handed response in  Generations . The impression is that Picard couldn't give a damn that the Enterprise is destroyed. He's lost ships before (the Stargazer), has done so again, and well, he certainly appears confident he'll get another shot at command, I guess. The script provides Picard not one word of regret that the Federation flagship has been destroyed. And he doesn't tell a soul, either, at least on screen, of Captain Kirk's noble sacrifice.
Then, bafflingly, after the moving death of Kirk and the destruction of the Enterprise, the film stops for an emotional scene in which Data cries after discovering that his cat, Spot, still lives. I wonder why the film could not have stopped, long enough, to feature a memorial service for Captain James T. Kirk, with a moving eulogy delivered by Jean-Luc Picard. Picard is a man more of words than action, and such a moment would have played to his strengths as a character; his intellect, his ability to contextualize a situation in terms of history and philosophy.  If we get tears and sadness over a cat, why not tears and sadness over a legendary starship commander's sacrifice?
I maintain that the reason so many fans hunger for the return of William Shatner as Kirk today is because  Generations  failed so spectacularly to bring adequate closure to the character. He dies in virtual anonymity -- as if he were never there -- on a distant, unheard of planet. Had Picard eulogized him in a formal service, describing how he had "made a difference...one more time," the fans would have felt that their hero had been treated with at least some decorum and respect. His life could have been contextualized and rendered meaningful.
I'm still not through complaining about how Picard is treated in this film, either.  
Early on, he is given the news that his brother and nephew have died, and indeed, how awful. We get a long dialogue scene wherein he weeps and discusses at length the end of "the Picard line." This is why we see a  Star Trek  movie, right? To watch a character weep in his quarters over the death of family members.  Is Picard so hopeless at interpersonal relationships that he's given no thought to the idea that he could still have a child?  (See:  Star Trek: Picard ). And isn't it rather selfish to be worrying about the end of the family line when his sister-in-law has lost something a lot less abstract, namely her husband and son?  Something about this whole scene is way off, in terms of Picard's character. He comes off as inappropriately concerned with himself.


And then the final straw is Picard's Nexus fantasy. Here, he visits a nineteenth century world, where a prim and proper Victorian woman -- one we've never seen before -- is his wife.  She wears a traditionally frilly 19th century dress and pretty bows and ribbons in her hair, and she dutifully dotes on Picard and his brood of children.  
So, we are meant to believe that this brilliant man of the 24th century secretly longs for a demure woman of the 19th century; one to keep his home clean and raise his kids, You wouldn't know that he was such a traditionalist from his previous attraction to the rogue, Vash, or from his relationship with Lt. Commander Nella Darren (Wendy Hughes) in "Lessons."  Do the writers here remember the episode "Family," wherein Picard was defined as the brother who looked to the stars and the future, while his brother was the conservative traditionalist who looked to the past?

In the choice of fantasy mates for him, Generations transforms Picard -- the intellectual renaissance man of the future -- into someone who appears sexist to us, now, living here in the 21st century. It's a ridiculous choice of fantasy for the character, and one that suggests the writers -- after writing for him for so many years -- have no absolutely no idea who he is.  
The woman in Picard's fantasy should have been a woman that he respected: Dr. Crusher.  She is a match for him in terms of intellect, opinion and physicality. Why wouldn't Picard imagine her as his dream woman, particularly after the events of "Attached?" More importantly, why wouldn't the writers think of Beverly Crusher, now that they were now longer constrained by the "no change" edicts of a weekly series, where you must keep everyone available for future dalliances with sexy guest stars? Frankly, in this  Generations  scene Picard comes off as infinitely more sexist than Captain Kirk ever did.  Kirk may want to screw every woman that moves, but Picard apparently desires a chaste doormat for a life partner.  Again, it doesn't ring true of the man we'd known for seven years and over a hundred adventures.
I also submit that Data is done a grave disservice in the film, begging for his life from Soran, and cackling like a madman. His belief that his "growth as an artificial life form has reached an impasse" is an interesting element on which to hang a story, but making the android a court jester and sniveling coward hardly does the character a service.  What's the point?  That to be human is to be an obnoxious, smug jerk?

Again, this judgment is not a reflection on Brent Spiner or on the character of Data as seen in the TV series overall; just a comment on the quality of writing and decision-making that informs  Generations.  
"You know, if Spock were here, he'd say that I was an irrational, illogical human being by taking on a mission like that. Sounds like fun!"  


I haven’t pulled many punches here regarding Star Trek: Generations.  The film doesn’t work in terms of science fiction premise, in terms of internal consistency and logic, or in terms of the main characters, primarily Picard.  But, the film does succeed on at least two other  specific fronts: spectacle and commentary on human nature.

It’s funny that  Trek  fans dislike  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier  (1989) when, in many ways it felt true to the almost tongue-in-cheek spirit of the original series. But that film also committed the cardinal sin of being very poor in terms of special effects presentation. By contrast,  Generations  doesn’t really capture the spirit of  The Next Generation,  but proves absolutely thrilling in terms of visual presentation. The section of the film devoted to the Klingon gambit to destroy the Enterprise is absolutely enthralling, and as jaunty, fun and engaging as any moment in the movie canon.  Furthermore, the separation of the saucer section and subsequent crash on the planet surface is rendered in breathtaking and tense terms. These moments capture the  Star Trek  spirit beautifully, particularly Data’s unexpected expletive (“Oh shit…”) as the sequence begins.  A sustained set-piece, the crash of the Enterprise is something that fans have desired to see dramatized for years, and  Generations  doesn’t disappoint.

William Shatner and Patrick Stewart also prove delightful together in the film. It really is great to see these two men stand shoulder-to-shoulder, working together and playing off one another.  I only wish the script didn't have to go through so many contortions of believability and logic to bring Picard to Kirk.  People can criticize Shatner's acting all they like, but I find his final moments in the role -- his acceptance of death -- immensely moving.  


I also must acknowledge that Moore and Braga have done an admirable job weaving together some of the thematic, human elements of this particular tale.  In one way or another, Kirk, Picard and Soran all grapple with their mortality, and their legacy in  Generations . For Kirk, he’s done nothing in the Nexus that matters, and to him a life without meaning is not worth living.  It is better of him to die having achieved something important.   

Picard, meanwhile, has never devoted his considerable energies to family, and now he wonders if upon his death, he’ll be remembered at all, or if the Picard name will be consigned to dead (rather than living…) history.  And Soran, of course, wants to escape the bounds of mortality and live forever with his loved ones in the nexus.  His legacy is to be remembered here, in reality, as a monster.  Each one of these characters must contend with life and death in  Generations,  and a viewer can see how that thread affects each of them.  Again, I’ve been tough with the writers here, but in having three primary characters grapple with aging and mortality,  Generations  certainly aspires to be  Star Trek  at its best.  The film has something meaningful and true to convey to all of us.  How do we look at the passing of time?  Are our lives burning up as the days and hours pass? Or are we building up a legacy that will inspire those who come after us?
So  Generations  is visually gorgeous (perhaps second only to  The Motion Picture  in terms of cinematic appeal) and certainly, it hopes to be more than just another movie chapter in  Trek  history.  Yet the film stumbles over Kirk’s legacy. How can we know that Kirk’s life meant something important if Picard doesn’t share his sacrifice with his own crew and contextualize his sacrifice for us? 
Generations  also trips over Picard’s character, making him seem selfish, incompetent, and sexist.  And the contrived nature of the Nexus damages the film’s sense of credibility and logic almost beyond measure.  The concept is confusing and confused, and  Generation  suffers mightily for it.  As I noted above, the film feels schizophrenic, lunging from a weeping Picard to a psychotically-humorous Data, and back again.

I am now and shall always be a  Star Trek  fan. But  Generations  is not the franchise’s finest hour, and in fact, I rank it very near the bottom of the movie pantheon despite the occasional moments of tremendous spectacle and the worthwhile message regarding mortality. Good thing  First Contact  (1996) came next.

40 Years Ago: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

As difficult as it is to believe, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of Wes Craven’s  A Nightmare on Elm Street  (1984), the horror film that introduced the world to dream monster Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund).  

Historically-speaking,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  is significant not merely for commencing a franchise that came to include five direct theatrical sequels, but a two-season TV anthology,  Freddy’s Nightmares  (1988 – 1990), a nifty re-imagination in  Wes Craven’s New Nightmare  (1994), a cross-over,  Freddy vs. Jason  (2004) and a misguided re-boot in 2010.  

The Freddy series put New Line Studios -- “The House That Freddy Built” -- on the map, as well.
In a broader genre context,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  was the rubber-reality venture that ended the long reign of the naturalistic slasher films of the early 1980s; films with titles such as  Happy Birthday to Me  (1981) or  My   Bloody Valentine  (1981). 
Those older films eschewed supernatural horrors, and focused on mad-dog killers (usually in masks) who killed teenagers with very sharp implements. The killers were largely silent killing machines, without much by way of personality.

The slashers’ episodic nature remained intact in  A Nightmare on Elm Street’s  modified “rubber reality” format, but in general, rubber reality tales (like  Hellraiser  [1987], for instance) were buttressed by more imaginative special effects, and supernatural, loquacious monsters.

Eventually, even the ultra-naturalistic  Friday the 13th  film series moved towards more rubber-reality-type fare because of Freddy’s re-direction of the genre.

In just a few short years, then, Freddy Krueger became the king of American horror films, and a pop culture sensation. The modern, 21st century horror film has moved back towards a more naturalistic setting and tone, in large part due to the success of the found-footage sub-genre, and so Freddy today seems like a character who perfectly captures his particular era: the 1980s.

The relative quality of  A Nightmare on Elm Street’s  sequels has been debated up and down, again and again, even in the Wes Craven movie  Scream  (1996), but the original film remains a powerhouse of terror, even thirty years later. The 1984 film has lost none of its atmosphere of mounting, pervasive dread, and Craven’s imaginative style and content continues to impress. 

The film’s artistic success is based on a few crucial factors.  

As Sharon Packer writes in  Movies and the Modern Psyche  (page 49),  A Nightmare on Elm Street  is “intriguing because of its ability to blend the supernatural with psychoanalytic subtexts.”  

In  Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion and Psychology,  Kelly Bulkeley argues that Craven’s effort generates it “narrative power by tapping into people’s common dream experiences, in this case, the experience of recurring nightmares.”

These observations about  A Nightmare on Elm Street  seem right on target, and yet for this critic, the film always resonates because it globally applies its surface vs. reality conceit.  

In other words,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  concerns both the appearance of reality, and the true reality that dwells or roils underneath that (false) appearance.  

Virtually every aspect of the cinematic tale can be studied utilizing this particular bailiwick. Impressively,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  even finds a literary precedent for this conceit, and frequently references the works of Shakespeare, mostly  Hamlet , but also  Julius Caesar.

In addition to this thematic virtue,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  remains a turning-point in horror history, I submit, because the “final girl” archetype, -- here represented by Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson -- finally blossoms to full maturity.  

Although Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode survived her experience with boogeyman Michael Myers in  Halloween  (1978), Nancy’s battle with Freddy in  Nightmare  is determinedly different.

At some point in the crisis, Nancy takes control and responsibility for her life and her struggle, and defeats Krueger on his own terms. Nancy does so using her insight, resourcefulness, and planning…not just by a lucky turn of fate.  

This fact is perfectly dramatized when one contrasts the “High School English Class” scenes featured in the Carpenter and Craven films.  The former is about fate, and the way that fate determines action and destiny.  

The latter is about a hero (Hamlet) digging for and excavating the truth against great odds and entrenched power. 

One scene is about surviving by circumstance, the other is about actively participating and re-shaping your own future.  Nancy is a hero, then, who takes responsibility for her survival in an affirming, powerful fashion.

“Nancy, you dreamed about the same creep I did…”

A high school student, Tina (Amanda Wyss) becomes obsessed with a recurring dream.  At night -- every night -- she dreams of a stalker in a fedora and red-and-green-sweater.  He is armed with a razor-tipped glove.

Tina discovers that her best friend, Nancy (Langenkamp) is experiencing the same nightmare, about the same boogeyman, and holds a sleep-over at her home when her mother goes out of town.  

Also at the sleep-over are Nancy’s boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp), and Tina’s juvenile delinquent beau, Rod Lane (Nick Corri).  When all the teens are asleep, the nightmare man strikes Tina and kills her brutally in her dream.

Rod is arrested for the murder of Tina by Nancy’s father, Detective Thompson (John Saxon), but Nancy is convinced that he is innocent, and that the dream stalker is “real,” and responsible for the crime. 

Nancy presses her alcoholic mother, Marge (Ronee Blakeley) for details.  She learns that some years earlier, the parents of Elm Street hunted and down and killed a man, Fred Krueger (Englund), who was a child murderer but escaped justice on a legal technicality.  The Thompsons and the other parents burned him alive, but kept his hat and finger knives in Nancy’s house -- in the furnace -- as a kind of trophy.

The murders on Elm Street continue, and Nancy realizes she must take affirmative steps to defeat Krueger and stop his plans to kill her.  

But should Nancy proceed as her boyfriend, Glen, suggests -- and which goes against her nature of “digging” and confronting the truth -- and turn her back on Freddy…thus robbing him of the energy she gave him?

“I’m into survival.”

In blunt terms,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  concerns the surface, and the underneath or “truth” that co-exists with that surface.  

Many aspects of this Craven film visit and explore this duality, or double nature.  

We detect this duality in terms of location, both with the suburban high school that seems normal, and the sinister boiler room underneath it, where Freddy rules. Many of the film's most terrifying scenes are set in dark labyrinth, or maze-like basements, a connective tissue between the surface above and the truth below.

We see the same duality in the real world, where people are presumed safe and protected by the rules of consensus reality, and the dream world, where there is mortal danger.  You die in your dream, you die in real life.

We see the duality in the Elm Street parents, who profess propriety and adherence to law and order, but who are, in fact, murderers. 

We even see it in regards to morality.  

Again, the Elm Street parents have crafted a world of apparent moral absolutism (where Christ on the cross protects teenage girls’ in their bedrooms…), but they actually practice moral relativism. For example, Lieutenant Thompson uses his own daughter, Nancy, as a pawn so as to achieve his goal of apprehending Rod Lane.  Similarly, Marge Thompson sees the murder of Freddy as the parents' "right" because the legal system failed to arrive at the conclusion they preferred.

Throughout  A Nightmare on Elm Street,  then, there exist two lines or tracks to keep abreast of simultaneously: reality as it appears to be true, and reality as it actually is. Craven's conceit here was extremely timely, and reflected something larger -- and disturbing -- happening in American 1980s culture.  

Specifically, America was experiencing, very much, the same duality on a national scale. The myth that was being peddled at the time by those in power (and which was preferable to hard reality…) was that it was possible to “have it all.”  

As the authors of  Landslide: the Unmaking of the President  (1984 – 1988) wrote of this time, the new (Reagan) administration said it was possible “to cut taxes, and increase defense spending and at the same time, fight terrorism, roll back Communism and the threat of nuclear war, all without risking American lives. Reagan seemed to be offering a miracle cure.”  (Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1988, page 11).

Again and again during this time, symbolism (or rhetoric) and reality clashed. The new Administration promised to reverse the growth of an out-of-control Federal government, but after two terms under its control, the Federal work force actually expanded by over 60,000 employees. The same administration promised tax cuts, but actually raised taxes three times: in 1983, 1984, and 1986.  

What is the price when actions don’t match words or symbolism? 

It’s fairly simple to calculate. From 1980 to 1988, America countenanced a staggering 2.7 trillion dollars in debt, roughly 200 billion dollars a year. 

Who was going to pay that debt? 

Future generations of course, and that’s precisely where the direct comparison to Freddy and his behavior comes into play.  

After all, Freddy is all about visiting the sins of the father upon the children.  He explicitly doesn’t go after the surviving parents of Elm Street (save for Marge in the finale…), but instead punishes those parents by taking their children away.  

A national debt of the egregious size we racked up in the 1980s was, similarly, a visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the children. It was the kids who would be faced with paying the piper.

Other epochs and other decades bring other bugaboos. A whole raft of horror films from the 1970s, including  Dawn of the Dead  (1979) seem born from Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” malaise, for example, and 1950s horror films, in general, arise from fears about the 1940s detonation of atom bombs in Japan. So partisanship has nothing to do with it. Reaganomics is simply, in some sub-textual way, the basis for the sub-surface fears expressed in  A Nightmare on Elm Street.

As a protagonist, Nancy Thompson fits perfectly into this discussion of reality vs. symbolism, or surface vs. reality, if you prefer. 

Like the Prince of Denmark, she digs and digs, uncovering lies and murder, until she gets to the truth behind all the death and corruption.  

She discovers that her parents are murderers, and worse, that they are okay with the fact that they took the law into their own hands.  Their protestations of righteousness are hollow-sounding lies.  And it is here, in reckoning with those lies, that Nancy realizes no one can help her.

The police are powerless to stop Freddy, because he operates in his own reality. 

Her parents are similarly helpless, because they are either alcoholic, are unwilling to listen to their child’s fears.  

And at a dream clinic, scientists also prove unable to help Nancy survive against the looming threat to her very survival.

So Nancy learns the hard-lesson in  A Nightmare on Elm Street  that the older folks aren’t going to help her.  The Establishment, as it stands, is unwilling and unable to confront the truth, and solve the problem in an effective fashion.  In a sense, her parents have already sold her and her friends out.  Their illegal behavior – their solution to the problem of Freddy -- has given Krueger license to hunt and murder their children. 

Nancy’s task is to see past the rhetoric and lies, and figure out a way in which she makes it forward. This task resonates not only with what was happening to the American economy in the eighties, but in terms of the Cold War as well. Nuclear War was never more than the push of a button away in this age, and the young generation wanted no part of it, and sought solace in what older generations called "death metal" and "dead teenager movies."

Again, the parents who brought the world to the brink of war might be viewed as culpable for creating that “demon,” while the younger generation, represented by Nancy, had to carry the burden of knowing that death -- apocalypse -- could come at any moment.  Freddy -- Craven's "bad father" -- is the avatar for all these generational fears; but particularly the fear that the world is fucked up, that it isn't your fault, and that, without doubt, the world is going to come and kill you.

What remains so fascinating about  A Nightmare on Elm Street  is Nancy’s predicament. Her mother notes: “You face things. That’s your nature…But sometimes you’ve got to turn away too.”  
What we are left with here, then, is a reckoning with the idea that society can’t continue -- that teenagers can’t grow up safely -- in the full light of reality, because it is too unpleasant. There are some things that are so horrifying that it is necessary to turn away from them.

But does turning away from them mean burying them? Does turning away mean medicating yourself to a state of numbness?  Some amount of denial may be desirable, healthy even, but first you must know what you are denying.  Nancy must learn when to dig for truth and when to turn away from the lies and corruption she finds.  So, in some weird and very eighties way,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  is about growing up, and finding your own way to navigate a messed-up world.

Again, this crisis speaks of a duality, doesn’t it? Do we face our demons, or turn our backs on them?  Perhaps because the world is so complex, both realities must be given their due...

All the sub-textual currency in  A Nightmare on Elm Street  makes the film pulsate with ideas and cultural fears, but what is actually seen on screen is…visceral.  

The death of Tina is one of the most horrifying and remarkable death scenes ever put to film (with Glen’s a close second, perhaps).  Tina’s death is violent, irrational, and based on the idea that a reality ignored is a reality that is dangerous, or deadly. 

An unseen assailant rips the beautiful teen apart, and razor cuts “happen” to her, because her parents have not been able to help her, or acknowledge the truth about the danger she faces.  Future  Elm Street  films boast far more elaborate death sequences, but for my money, Tina’s remains the most effective in the entire franchise.  Her murder galvanizes the senses. It terrifies. It goes so far beyond the pale -- and beyond rationality or Physics -- that viewers realize they have crossed over into a whole new world of terror.

A Nightmare on Elm Street  succeeds as rubber-reality and as horror film because it brilliantly charts the overlap between real world and dream world in ways that are shocking, and yet simultaneously familiar to us. 

We've all had that terrible dream in which we are being chased, and our feet sink into the ground, delaying and jeopardizing our escape. Craven harnesses that universal image for a chase scene here, in which a staircase turns to goo under Nancy's feet, and Freddy looms nearer.

Another universal image of terror involves Freddy -- just an unformed shadow -- in a dark alley.  He is a menacing but vague boogeyman who suddenly grows even more menacing, as his arms stretch and stretch to inhuman proportion.  There's something very basic or primeval about this vision, of arms growing longer and longer to entrap their prey.  And because Freddy is silhouetted, we can pour all of our various fears into him. He can be a bad father, a child murderer, a supernatural entity, or all of the above.

As a reflection of timely national fears and universal "nightmares,"  A Nightmare on Elm Street  still succeeds wildly today...much more so than its unfortunate remake.  The film also represents a milestone in terms of the horror genre's portrayal of women, and is highly effective in generating its terror.  

Long story short: forty years later  A Nightmare on Elm Street  is still bloody good.

50 Years Ago: Earthquake (1974)

The Poseidon Adventure  (1972) and  The Towering Inferno  (1974) hold up beautifully as examples of th disaster film all these years later. Each of those Irwin Allen-produced films concerns more than chaos and wreckage. These are films about the human spirit, and the drive that compels us to keep fighting when all hope seems lost.

The genre hit a speed bump, however, with 1974’s  Earthquake.
The 50 year old film written by George Fox and Mario Puzo and from director Mark Robson simply isn’t in the same league as the efforts I note above.  Instead,  Earthquake  is a meandering, largely suspense-less effort that suffers from the fact that the action is too spread out, and therefore tension is sacrificed.  A ship at sea and a high-rise on fire are largely inescapable, and concern people with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.   Earthquake’s  central disaster -- a quake that registers 7 on the Richter Scale -- doesn’t mine any particular location for suspense, and the result is a film that often feels aimless and directionless.

It doesn’t help, either, that high-point of this film -- the earthquake – occurs after the first hour, and leaves very little of excitement left for the film’s denouement.  

The acting in the film is pretty terrible too (Ava Gardner, I’m looking at you!), and the character relationships are, at times, baffling. 

The last straw, perhaps, is the inconsistent special effects. Some moments during the quake are believably rendered, but other moments -- such as the one notorious moment involving blobs of cartoon blood in an elevator -- are downright ludicrous.

Every genre has its highs and lows for certain, and the disaster film format is no exception.  I believe was spoiled by the quality of  The Poseidon Adventure  and  The Towering Inferno , watched back-to-back.  Earthquake  is thoroughly pedestrian.

But hey, at least  Earthquake  is better than  The Swarm  (1978), right?

“The question is: what in God’s name do we do now?”

In Los Angeles, at the Seismological Institute, a young graduate student analyzes data suggesting a tremor, and then a massive earthquake will strike the city in less than 24 hours. His superiors are reluctant to believe his dire warning, and equally reluctant to report his findings to the governor and the mayor.

When the predicted tremor occurs, however, the seismologists leap into action, and the governor mobilizes the National Guard in response. 

But no amount of preparation can adequately safe-guard Los Angeles from the earthquake that strikes next. Rating a 7 on the Richter scale, this quake brings skyscrapers to the ground, destroys free-ways, and sends house careening off the Hollywood hills. Worse, the Hollywood Reservoir Dam crumbles, and parts of the city flood.

Through it all, a determined architect, Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston) in a bad marriage with his boss’s daughter (Ava Gardner) shows determination and pluck.  

He rescues a number of people, including his boss (Lorne Greene)m at his high-rise office, and then teams up with a suspended police officer, Lou Slade (George Kennedy) to rescue others in the city, including Stewart’s mistress, Denise (Genevieve Bujold) and her young son, Cory (Tiger Williams).

While Stewart attempts to save the injured and dying, others, including a psychotic National Guardsman (Marjoe Gortner), attempt to take advantage of the disaster for their own twisted agendas.

“This used to be a he ll of a town.”
In my reviews of other 1970s disaster films, I’ve concentrated on the notion that films like  The Poseidon Adventure  and  The Towering Inferno  thrive on philosophical ideas about their disasters and human nature, not merely the depiction of those disasters. For example,  The Poseidon Adventure  is about fighting -- to the last breath -- to survive in difficult circumstances; to find the part of God that dwells inside of you, to quote Gene Hackman’s character, Reverend Scott. 

And  The Towering Inferno  assiduously draws a contrast between reckless, money-grubbing Big Business (represented by Richard Chamberlain and William Holden), and the selflessness of San Francisco’s municipal fire fighters, led by O’Halloran (Steve McQueen). One of these forces cares more about profit than people, and it isn’t the firefighters.

Earthquake  doesn’t feature a thematic through line or depth that is comparable, alas. Early on, there is much discussion about the responsibility of the seismologists to warn someone in authority about the approaching quake.  Is it right to sound the alarm, knowing that it might start a panic to do so? Is it right to report speculation about a quake, and risk looking like a fool to the media and city politicians if no quake occurs? 

These are truly intriguing points, but after they are raised, the movie totally abandons them.  

Without a central location -- or even a galvanizing idea -- to hold the film together,  Earthquake  quickly proves episodic and underwhelming in terms of its narrative and the hunt for deeper meaning.  
We never find out, for instance, why Stewart and Remy hate each other to such a dramatic degree.  They are an endlessly bicker-some couple, and it’s difficult to have much sympathy for either one of them.  Stewart is having affair, for instance, and Remy fakes suicide attempts on a regular basis.  It’s not a terrible surprise when a Biblical flood washes them away in the film’s final moments, given their “sins.”  But the scene isn’t as powerful as it might be because the audience doesn’t really care for the characters.  

Other moments in  Earthquake  are downright bad. For instance, Walter Matthau hams it up as a silly barfly wearing a pimp hat in several unnecessary scenes. Why is his character even in the film? He’s a cartoon character who proves agonizingly unfunny, and -- at the same time -- a walking, talking stereotype.

Similarly, what are viewers to make of Marjoe Gortner’s character, a muscle-bound grocery store worker in the National Guard who chooses the event of an earthquake to address his grievances with a group of bullies, and then attempts to rape Victoria Principal’s character, Rosa?
Is he a psychopath? Nuts? A self-hating body-builder?

More than likely, Gortner's character is present to provide some third act tension. The film badly requires that tension because the earthquake has already struck, and the flood is saved for the denouement. Gortner's "Joad" may also represent a Vietnam Age distaste for soldiers, which was seen in a lot of 1970s movies and TV programs, and today transmits as pretty superficial.

The most ridiculous moment in  Earthquake,  however, arrives when a group of survivors board an elevator during the quake. The car shakes loose of its cable and careens several dozen floors to the ground. There’s a great shot of the screaming people in the compartment, but then several big ,animated bubbles of bright red blood are superimposed over the footage, and launched at the screen.

What the hell?

For a film struggling so mightily to seem believable, and to meaningfully compete with  The Towering Inferno , this a reality-shattering moment of the highest order.
Earthquake  gets so little right, actually. Ava Gardner is terribly miscast as Lorne Greene’s daughter and Charlton Heston’s wife. I believe she was only three years younger than Greene at this point, and she and Heston share what can only politely be termed “anti-chemistry.”  

Worse, some moments -- like the rescue of Genevieve Bujold’s son from an electrical cable -- make the earthquake seem small and not, literally earth shattering.

But most disappointing of all is the focus on soap opera plotting. Stewart’s promotion, Slade’s disenchantment with the police force, Mile Quade’s motorcycle stunt, Denise’s acting job and other issues are all brought up, but ultimately left unresolved in the face of utter destruction.  
I suppose the film could have considered the way man proposes, and God disposes, but even that idea is not enunciated here.

All that established, I should also write that  Earthquake  features some beautiful matte-painting of the destroyed Los Angeles landscape.

I think that just about the only way this film could truly be described as gripping is if audiences saw it in theaters in Sensurround. I can see how that rumbling effect would add a whole new dimension to the film’s narrative Without the support of this gimmick,  Earthquake  is rendered, sadly, a completely two-dimensional affair.

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50 Years Ago: The Little Prince (1974)

This 1974 musical fantasy film from Stanley Donen, now a half-century old, is an adaptation of one of the most popular children’s novels in the world, Antoine de Saint-Expury’s whimsical The Little Prince.  

Although a child's tale on the surface, The Little Prince is famous for its social critique of a failing world. Specifically, the author based the story on his own plane crash in the Saraha during World War II, and created characters based not merely upon his life story, but upon the threat of Nazism spreading across the civilized world. In particular, the Little Prince in the story seeks to keep a kind of perfidious weed from overrunning his small world, for which he requires the help of a sheep.  It’s not difficult to interpret that rapidly-growing and malevolent weed as the fascist tide spreading in Europe, which threatened France, England and eventually the world. 

Other characters in the book (and film) similarly represent mankind’s failings in the face of peril: a king who has no subjects but insists on “borders,” a businessman who thinks he owns the stars, and a historian who believes he is the best, in fact, in history.

The story commences when a fighter pilot (Richard Kiley) in World War II crashes in the Sahara desert and unexpectedly finds that he has a companion, a small boy (Steven) Warner) who claims to be from another world, the asteroid B-612. 

This child the Little Prince, recounts his unusual journeys to other worlds, as well as his visit to Earth thus far. The pilot also learns that Snake (Bob Fosse) -- a devil-like figure -- possesses an interest in the boy, and has a way to send him home to his world: murder.

The 1974 musical is a sweet and emotional rendering of the tale, and like its literary counterpart is a highly symbolic film. Everywhere the Little Prince travels, he learns a lesson about life on Earth, and about mankind itself.  

Separated from the original 1940s context, however, the film seems more critical of adults in general (as well as adult viewpoints) than a commentary on any historical ideology or movement.  The film revives the book’s line that “it’s only with the heart that one can see clearly” and that is the central metaphor. 

Many adults in the film like the King, the historian, the soldier or the businessman are self-justifying and hypocritical in nature.  They refer to the Prince as a child, thereby diminishing him and his justifiable concerns about his planet, but they are not able to see beyond their own narrow self-interest, their own pathology.  Meanwhile, the Prince -- a child -- views all things with refreshing honesty,  purity and incorruptibility.

On Earth, however, the Prince makes a friend in the pilot and in a fox.  Unfortunately he also meets the worst personality of all, a snake or devil who crawls in the grass and wants only to kill him. Not understanding human life or death (as indeed, a child does not understand the permanence of death…), the Little Prince sees the snake’s offer of a “bite” as a way home to his beautiful rose, the love he left behind on his asteroid (and widely believed to be representative of the author’s mercurial wife).

 

A musical is often a tough sell for the committed science fiction fan, so The Little Prince isn’t going to be to every audience’s taste even though it’s a beautiful, emotional film, especially for parents of young ones.

The musical numbers are hit and miss at first, but soon become quite enjoyable, and even rousing.  Bob Fosse’s moment as the Devil/Snake is unforgettable, and seems the template for all of Michael Jackson’s dance moves in the early 1980s.  Gene Wilder’s number as the fox is also a high-point in the film.

Bereft of its original, more meaningful context regarding Nazism and World War II, The Little Prince remains an unforgettable and emotional story of children and adults, and on that basis is worthwhile.

"We Get Wise to Him. That's Our Strength: " A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Based on the 1955 short story by Bud Schulberg, “Your Arkansas Traveler,” Elia Kazan’s  A Face in the Crowd  (1957) is the cautionary tale of an American demogogue’s rise to -- and fall from -- power. 

A demagogue might be defined, broadly, as a “political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than rational argument.”
The film focuses on "Lonesome" Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a small-time crook and fraud plucked from obscurity in a county jail in Arkansas by a radio programmer, Marcia Jeffries (Patricia O’Neal). She is seeking “local color” for her radio show, and Rhodes can spin a story and sing a folk tune like no other.  

Marcia's search for an audience -- ratings, in modern lingo -- gives the charismatic but malicious Rhodes both exposure and a public platform. Before long, he’s moved to a bigger radio market. Then he transitions to national TV, talking politics and “telling it like it is” to a receptive, low-information audience that hangs on his every word and believes his every false piety.

Rhode’s rise to fame and fortune is aided and abetted by his sponsors and his network. They see his viewership swell to 65 million people. That's a lot of consumers who will buy products from sponsors.

A drunk, misogynist, mean-spirited narcissist, Rhodes appreciatively soaks up all the adoration and power, coming eventually to believe his own press. 

Eventually, he grows so powerful that he advises a presidential campaign in the art of slogans and sound-byes. He also begins hosting a political program, shrouding extreme right wing isolationist views under the soothing umbrella of Southern-fried common sense.  

Eventually, Marcia realizes the key to Rhodes’ downfall involves revealing his true colors to the masses that worship his “home-spun” wisdom and apparent “truth telling.”

As that synopsis makes clear,  A Face in the Crowd  is a terrifying story of what can happen to America once “politics has entered a new stage: the TV stage.” 

One man’s hateful, ignorant words -- not to mention resentment and anti-intellectualism -- finds purchase in the psyches of millions of like-minded people. Kazan’s camera cuts, at one point to a veritable forest of TV antennae jutting upwards from the rooftops of an urban jungle in order to make his point. These receiving devices look like metal weeds, growing and stretching upwards to the sky. 

The point, of course, is how the mass media can instantly amplify -- for its own enrichment -- one voice to a volume previously unimaginable in human history. Even Rhodes himself -- in a rare moment of apparent self-awareness – recognizes the danger inherent in this technology and its ability to broadcast an entertaining (albeit dangerous) voice to million.  

“Power,” he says, “it’s dangerous. You gotta be a saint.”

But as the film makes plain, Rhodes is no saint. 

His father was a con-man who abandoned the family, and one feels that this is the galvanizing influence in Rhodes’ life. He has never been able to get past his father’s actions, or feel truly confident in himself. Accordingly, he hates authority in all its forms. He hates his father, who abandoned him. He hates the law, which punishes him for infractions. He hates establishment figures, who possess the power he covets. 

Rhodes also hates those who are smarter than he is, like TV writer Mel Miller (Walter Mattthau). Miller represents the education and knowledge that could expose Rhodes as the ignorant lout he is. 

One of the most intriguing aspects of the film involves Miller’s impotence in the face of Rhodes’ continuing disdain and hatred for him. We are led to the conclusion that is easier for a demagogue to to hate and attack than it is for a rational person to respond meaningfully to that demagogue. 

That’s undoubtedly because demogogue’s rely on powerful emotions (anger, rage, resentment) and mob-like followers who repeat mindlessly their every word and slogan. Educated intelligent people are like deer in a headlight by comparison, making logical cases and appealing to cerebral arguments.  

Miller simply can’t conceive of the fact that a nativist, bigoted simpleton could have a better innate understanding of human nature and human foibles than he does. But Miller knows what makes his people tick.

Importantly, Miller fails to fully understand his role in Rhodes’ rise. Like Marcia, he is culpable for elevating a demagogue to the status of national treasure. Rhodes is a distraction, a joke, a fad when it is good for Miller’s wallet or career.  

Only later is the coarseness of the superstar a danger to freedom itself.

What’s amazing about Rhodes, the film subtly observes, is the yawning chasm of cognitive dissonance between his public “persona” and his real personality. 

Rhodes lives in a luxurious penthouse apartment, surrounds himself with wealth and women, and covets his TV ratings. In short, he is a coddled, entitled rich man.  But his public shtick -- his fake, media-driven image -- is as “The voice of grass roots wisdom.” 

On stage, he voices syrupy Christian platitudes like “the family that prays together, stays together,” from his humble “cracker-barrel” sound stage. In real life, he is a philanderer who marries a 17 year old girl and then cheats on her.

In real life, he is also being supported by a political establishment that wants his audience’s votes. 

So Rhodes is a text-book fraud. 

He pretends to be a common-sense, salt-of-the-earth, plain talker when in fact he is a messenger boy for the wealthy elite. Rhodes claims he believes in the common man, but he hates and derides the common man.  

His ambitions are bottomless.  “The whole country is just like my flock of sheep,” he enthuses at one point. 

Delightfully,  A Face in the Crowd  provides a prescription for the destruction of Rhodes and demogogues just like him. 

Realizing she has created a monster, Marcia turns up the studio sound during a live broadcast, and she lets Rhodes hang himself on-air. Believing the sound is off, Rhodes expresses his true feelings for his audience. “I can make ‘em eat dog food like it is steak!” He reports.  

He is so confident in the fact that his followers will mindlessly follow wherever he leads that he actually says he could “murder” people, and they’d still be on his side.

But that’s not the case. He has overestimated his appeal.

The audience at home finally realizes that Larry is not one of them at all. He is an impostor, and just as much a tool of the hated “elite” as any conventional politician or leader. He has not “told them like it is,” at all. 

He has, contrarily, pandered to them in the worst ways possible, and they have taken his words as the God’s honest truth. He has not only played them and abused them at every turn...he has gotten rich doing so.

Kazan finds a clever visual to express Rhodes’ sudden and dramatic fall from grace. We see the elevator lights going down, quickly, in his apartment building, floor to floor. He starts at the penthouse, and drops to ground level, before our eyes, in seconds. The fall is more than symbolic. It is a meteoric crash he experiences, one even faster than his surprising, relentless rise.

A Face in the Crowd  is a terrifying drama in part because of its plausibility. The mass media often gives irresponsible voices of hate, bigotry, and false piety a platform and open mic to influence the nation. 

The film notes the media’s inherent culpability for creating such a demagogue, and rightly so. If you willingly invite the devil to dance with you, you can’t complain, later, when you don’t like how he treats his dance partner. 

The film also thrives because of Griffith’s unforgettable performance. He portrays a monster of such high energy and narcissistic pride. Rhodes is a monster of considerable charisma and, hauntingly, occasional moments of insight. But he has no loyalty or feelings of responsibility to anyone or anything beyond his own self-glorification.  The thought have him possessing real power is terrifying.

A Face in the Crowd  is a sobering reminder of how a dangerous, narcissistic demagogue can use and exploit the media (in a symbiotic relationship…) to change the face and values of a whole nation. 

But the film also reminds us how to stop such monsters.  

Journalists, concerned citizens, politicians, and voters all possess a responsibility to see that his “personality finally comes through,” preferably on the very channel that created him.  

“When we get wise to him, that’s our strength,” the film knowingly concludes.

The question that makes  A Face in the Crowd  such an intense, anxiety-provoking experience is one for the ages. 

What happens if we get wise to the demagogue too late?
To answer that interrogative, one need only look at some of the worst historical tragedies of the 20th century, and the 21st century.
Let's not repeat those mistakes today.

"Every Man is King So Long as He Has Someone to Look Down On:" It Can't Happen Here

Sinclair Lewis (1885 – 1951) was the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize for Literature, and the novelist’s most famous work is It Can’t Happen Here. This work of fiction describes, in terrifying detail, how America becomes a fascist dictatorship.

The novel is set during the election season of 1935 – 1936 and focuses on a journalist named Doremus Jessup as he watches national events unfold in a surprising and terrifying way.

Specifically, a candidate, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip” secures the nomination for the presidency away from incumbent Commander-in-Chief FDR, and then defeats Walt Trowbridge in the general election to gain control of the nation,

After Inauguration Day, folksy Buzz Windrip declares martial law, relegates the Supreme Court and Congress to advisory status, and unlooses his armed “Minute Men” militia -- originally an “innocent” marching club -- upon the country. Stand by and stand back?

American citizens who protest this turn of events are sent to labor camps while Windrip systematically scapegoats Jews, blacks, and women for the nation’s troubles.  

Soon, President Windrip and his PR advisor/deputy/minister-of-propaganda Lee Sarason abolish the names of the states, and partition America into administrative provinces for easier management. The Republican and Democratic Parties are outlawed, and one party replaces them: The American Corporate State and Patriotic Party.  

Leading members of this party become known as “Corpos.”
Watching America succumb quickly to fascism, Doremus joins up with the N.U (New Underground), which helps beleaguered American citizens escape to Canada.

In the end, the tyrant Windrip is run out of office, but Sarason first, and then another dictator follow in his footsteps. 

At the end of the novel, America is still not a free country, and the ruling party wages war on Mexico as a distraction from the internal strife. 

After an apparent false-flag operation, the Party recruits a million American men to fight in the war on the border…

The Dictator: Buzz Windrip

A good starting place in any discussion of this Sinclair Lewis novel is the title. 

“It Can’t Happen Here”  is the resounding refrain of many Americans in the book, who just don’t believe something as European -- and therefore alien -- as fascism can take hold in the United States.

It’s easy to see why, in the 1930s, Americans would have said “it can’t happen here.” 

They watched as Mussolini and Hitler rose in distant lands, but because of language and cultural differences, simply couldn’t see such men assuming power in Washington D.C.  

One of the key conceits of  It Can’t Happen Here  is that American fascism -- while still fascism -- will be cloaked in different trappings. When it rises here, according to Lewis, it will do so draped in militant Christianity and fronted by a candidate boasting a tell-it-like-it-is manner.

The dictator in the book, Buzz Windrip, for instance, likes to claim his birth-date is December 25, the day celebrating Christ’s birth. He tells stories about himself that make him sound like a winner, like someone amazing.

In addition to his (false) proclamations about his pious religious nature, Windrup relies on homespun wisdom and colloquial speech to meaningfully connect with the “masses” suffering in the Great Depression.

“I try to make my speech as simple and direct as those of the Child Jesus talking to the Doctors in the Temples,” he declares at one point, again comparing himself directly to Christ.

Windrip’s appearance and attire are similarly deceptive in their home-spun nature.

The politician is known, for example to wear a “ten gallon hat” -- meaning a cowboy hat -- and he flaunts his ignorance and bad academic grades. 

Windrip likes to tell people the story of how a teacher once called him “the thickest-headed dunce in school.”

In short, this fictional fascist dictator evidences what Sinclair describes as an “earthy, American sense of humor.”  

At one point, the author even compares Windrip’s style to Mark Twain. In this fashion, the reader sees how homegrown fascism would look very different in America, from the model across the world.

Windrip’s characteristics purposefully align him with the less-educated “common men” who support him. Like them, he has a disregard for learning and flaunts a no-nothing attitude. He loves the poorly educated.

For instance, Windrip decries diplomacy, calling it “talky-talk” and notes that America is only “wasting our time at Geneva.”  

When he complains and bullies the press, he refers to journalists as “wishily-washily liberal.”

The new President of  It Can’t Happen Here  also derides so-called elites in other ways. 

He dislikes “haughty megapolises” such as New York and Washington D.C., and to assure that the intelligentsia doesn’t get out of hand he even re-writes college curricula to be “entirely practical and modern, free of all snobbish tradition.”
Lewis describes the America dictator, in fact, as a “professional common man,” one who speaks so that all other “commoners would understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own.” 
And when he seeks power, accordingly, Windrip does so for his brothers, not for himself…or so he claims

“I do want power – great, big imperial power – but not for myself, for you!” He declares. His promise? To somehow recreate the past, a time when the people who are suffering now were doing great.
His Policies

Windrip assumes control of the White House in 1937 according to  It Can’t Happen Here , and establishes fifteen policy goals.

Among these policies is the creation of a Central Bank -- to be administrated by a Board appointed directly by the President. 

Also, Windrip seeks the establishment of a commission to determine which labor unions are “qualified” to represent workers… again answerable to the President.  

Both these policies are crucial ones vis-à-vis fascism: the centralization of authority or power in one person.

Very significantly, Windrip’s platform demands the absolute freedom of religious worship, and a maximum wage.  

It is this latter promise that the wages of millionaires will be capped and that veterans will receive a stipend -- wealth distribution, essentially -- that carries Windrip to the Oval Office in Lewis’s text. 

Furthermore, Windrip’s platform targets certain demographics.  

Women, for instance, may work as nurses or in other “feminine” settings such as “beauty parlors,” but otherwise must return to the home to raise children. Typically, women are not valued in a fascist state, except as they can give birth to loyal and strong soldiers.
African-Americans, meanwhile, are to be prohibited from “voting, holding public office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching any class above the grade of grammar school.”  Windrip's supporters seek a return to pre-Civil War society, before the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.

Furthermore, all African-Americans are to be taxed 100% of all income in excess of 10,000 dollars per family, a year.  Here, we see that a fascist philosophy believes it is appropriate to limit the right to vote to certain groups of people, so as to hold on to power.

As mentioned above, absolute freedom of religious worship is protected in Windrip’s platform, but there’s an important caveat. 

No atheist, Jew, or “believer in Black Magic” shall be able to hold office until first swearing allegiance to the New Testament.  

In other words, you have to be a Christian to enjoy absolute religious freedom in Windrip’s America.

If one wonders why Windrip’s agenda specifically targets women, blacks, and non-Christians, it is because, in Sinclair Lewis’s words, “every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.” 

Fascism thrives, we can discern, when there is an enemy to hate, and an “inferior” to lord it over. 

Furthermore, any socialist, communist or anarchist in Windrip's America is to be tried for high treason. The minimum penalty upon conviction is 20 years in a labor camp, and the maximum penalty is death by hanging, or whatever method the judge in the case happens to find convenient.

In terms of the other branches of government, Congress will serve only in an advisory capacity and The Supreme Court shall have “removed from its jurisdiction” the power to rule the president’s actions unconstitutional, according to Windrip’s plan.

Finally, Windrip’s agenda includes “consistently” enlarging the military of the United States until it shall equal “the martial strength of any other single country or empire in the world.”

Actions Once in Office

After Windrip takes the oath of office in  It Can’t Happen Here,  he establishes a new cabinet position: Secretary of Education and Public Relations. In other words, this is the propaganda division of the re-formed U.S. government. 

Then “The Chief,” as Windrip is called, disbands Congress with his re-branded“Shock Troops of Freedom,” the Minute Men, whom he has ordered recognized as an “official auxiliary of the regular army.” 
The Minute Men are issued machine guns, rifles, bayonets and other weapons.

It is clear that Windrip and his PR Man, Sarason, also understand the value of imagery and symbols. 

The Minute Men wear white uniforms and their ubiquitous symbol is a five-pointed star, like the one on the American flag. Obviously, there's a corollary for the use of this symbol in history, vis-a-vis the Swastika.
In this new America, the unemployed are sent to labor camps and paid a dollar a day for their work.  Unfortunately, it costs them between 70 and 90 cents a day for their room and board in the camp…

This is the new reality of President Windrip’s America. 

Lewis writes: “There was a certain discontentment among people who had once owned motorcars and bathrooms and eaten meat twice daily, at having to walk ten or twenty miles a day, bathe once a week, along with fifty others, in a long trough, get meat only twice a week…and sleep in bunks, a hundred in a room.” (page 188).

Historical Context

FDR is one real-life historical figure featured in  It Can’t Happen Here.  He loses in a primary his bid for a second term because he can’t end the Depression quickly enough for the taste of many suffering citizens.  

Instead, FDR starts a new party, the “Jeffersonian” Party, which represents “integrity and reason.”

However, this is the wrong approach for the time, according to Lewis because this particular election year is about an electorate hungering for “frisky emotions.”  The public is angry, and desires a leader to channel that anger.

What Lewis hints at, then, is that fascism is a philosophy that hinges on emotions such as anger and resentment, and which isn’t, ultimately, susceptible to reason.  

Once you understand that resentment and other emotions are key to fascism, it is clear that the logic, and even the former positions of the dictator are largely unimportant.  He is a strong-man, one whose rage, not reason, is responsible for his popularity.

In the text, one of Windrip’s key supporters is Bishop Prang, a character based on real-life radio personality Father Charles Coughlin (1891 – 1979). 

Coughlin was a fierce anti-communist, a position which led him to come perilously close to advocating for the policies of Hitler or Mussolini at some points. Coughlin was also apparently, anti-Jew, a quality reflected in his comment: “When we get through with the Jews in America, they'll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.”

“The Chief” -- Windrip himself -- is loosely based on Huey Long (1893 -1935), the Democratic governor of Louisiana from 1928 – 1932, and a U.S. Senator from 1932 - 1935.  In fact, Long had planned to challenge Roosevelt for the presidency in 1936, but was assassinated in 1935. 

His platform called “Share the Wealth” featured elements of Windrip’s “maximum wage” plank.

I suppose the big question about  It Can’t Happen Here  involves how the American people could possibly let a fascist government come to power. 

In the first case, there is denial among the regular folk (hence the title). Nobody takes the threat of the fascist candidate seriously until it is too late to stop his ascent.

Secondly,  It Can’t Happen Here  suggests that fascism comes to a nation when the people are suffering and poor, and looking to blame someone for their situation.  In such a context, a strong-man who promises quick remedy, and does so with apparent “common sense,” “earthy” humor, and religious piety is difficult to resist. 
One of the reasons that  It Can’t Happen Here  is so abundantly worth reading today is that the issues it addresses have not disappeared. In fact, the book is scarily prophetic.

It Can’t Happen Here is a cautionary tale about what a lack of vigilance could bring to America if the so-called "poorly educated" get very angry, and tempers run irrationally hot; if experience and wisdom are no longer valued by voters and a strong man -- an authoritarian -- is sought.

For more than eighty years, Lewis's story has remained a cautionary tale. If we cherish freedom, we must not be fooled by dumb trucks, "plain speaking," populist notions, and demagoguery. We must remain vigilant, careful and informed.

40 Years Ago: Knight Rider: "K.I.T.T. Vs. K.A.R.R."

"I've never seen so many people so crazy over a car..."
- Knight Rider: "K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R."
I don't know exactly what it is about "evil twins," but cult television programs certainly love them, don't they? Perhaps it's just a matter of production exigencies. It's cheaper to feature a lead actor as an "evil" version of himself than hire an expensive guest star, I suppose.
Or perhaps, on a psychological level, we are all just fascinated by the concept of an evil twin.  Two brothers (or sisters), both from one family.  But one is twisted and evil while the other is heroic and good. Maybe we cherish this trope, subconsciously, because it helps to explain our own unique families of origins. 
Me?  I'm the good one.  But my brother?  He's pure evil.  He took all the lessons my father and mother taught us...and twisted them for EVIL!
Data (Brent Spiner) the android has an evil twin, Lore, in  Star Trek: The Next Generation  (1987 - 1994).  The witch, Samantha Stephens has a troublesome "cousin," Serena (Elizabeth Montgomery) on  Bewitched  (1964 - 1972), and so on.  
So, I suppose it's inevitable that the talking car on Glen Larson's  Knight Rider  (1982 - 1986), K.I.T.T. (William Daniels) -- the "Knight Industries Two Thousand" -- would also have an evil automotive twin, the deep-voiced, malicious K.A.R.R (Paul Frees).
As Lore is to Data, so is K.A.R.R. (Knight Automoted Roving Robot) to K.I.T.T.: An early, unstable prototype eventually de-activated by its creator, Wilton Knight (rather than Noonien Soong) for safety reasons.  

In the first season  Knight Rider  episode "Trust Doesn't Rust," the morally-challenged K.A.R.R. is discovered in storage and re-activated by a pair of crooks, who then utilize the "evil" Trans Am for a crime spree.   Knight Rider's  hero, the jocular Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) outwits K.A.R.R. in a game of chicken, and sends the evil twin plunging down off a cliff into the ocean (apparently re-using stock footage from  The Car  [1977]).
In season three's "K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R." there's a re-match between these 1982 Pontiac Trans Am titans.  

Round two commences when pair of beach combers, John (Jeffrey Osterhage) and Mandy (Jennifer Holmes), discover that K.A.R.R. is perfectly operational, only buried in the sand. They use their truck to excavate the car, and soon K.A.R.R. is attempting to enlist John in all manners of criminal activity. He damages the pace-maker of John's employer so John can take ownership of his company. And then K.A.R.R. uses his programming to steal money from a new-fangled ATM machine.
Meanwhile, Michael (Hasselhoff), K.I.T.T. (Daniels), Bonnie (Patricia McPherson) and Devon (Edward Mulhare) are understandably concerned that K.A.R.R. is back on the scene. Michael worries because K.A.R.R. -- admittedly just a very intelligent machine -- seems to "corrupt everyone he touches."
Bonnie believes she has a solution to the K.A.R.R. dilemma. She wants to install new lasers on K.I.T.T.  "I can double its penetration!" she enthuses, a suggestive line of dialogue played absolutely straight but which cheekily reinforces the widely-acknowledged love relationship that exists between mankind and his cars.
Unfortunately, K.A.R.R. launches a frontal assault on the Knight Industry rolling laboratory (in the back of a truck) and steals the penetrating lasers from Bonnie in an impressive and unexpected action sequence.
Finally, Michael and K.I.T.T. play another game of chicken with K.A.R.R. and once more, K.A.R.R. seems destroyed. 

Miraculously, K.I.T.T. himself is completely unscathed after a mid-air, turbo-boosted, head-on collision, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. K.A.R.R. just sort of explodes into debris, but you'd think both cars would suffer equal damage.

"K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R." motors along at about seventy-five miles an hour, juiced by an unfettered delight in its own silliness. The writing isn't exactly bad so much as droll, or cheeky.  It looks like everyone, especially David Hasselhoff, is having fun, and the dialogue is filled with zingers. "I'll bet George Lucas drives one of these things," says John, getting behind K.A.R.R.'s steering wheel.
When I was a kid, I watched  Knight Rider  religiously on Friday nights. And the episodes with over-sized, science fictional-type threats (such as K.A.R.R., or the truck, Goliath), were always my favorites. 

Tales of  Michael and K.I.T.T. putting away small-time crooks just didn't appeal to me. But whenever those evil twins -- and Michael also had an evil twin, named Garth, if I recall -- rolled out, I was hooked.
Today, "K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R." seems a bit simplistic, but it hasn't lost one iota of fun. I don't know why the Michael/K.I.T.T. relationship (sort of a Kirk/Spock type of thing) remains so vital, but it does.  

As William Jeanes wrote in The Saturday Evening Post last year: "Cars are like clothing. Life would go on without them, but it wouldn’t be the same. To someone like me, who has always believed that anything worth doing is worth doing to excess, it seems only right that we live in a nation with more cars than drivers. A preponderance of Americans agrees with me, which is why we as a country have carried on a 125-year love affair with the automobile."
I suspect that, not-too secretly, we all desire a talking car as a friend, one as loyal and smart as K.I.T.T. is. One who can keep us company as we get from Point A to Point B.  And that the car should actually believe he is superior than us -- while simultaneously learning the rules of human relationships -- just makes the friendship all the sweeter. Why aren't we all driving talking cars, today?
Nostalgia plays a big part in my fondness for  Knight Rider .  The 40 year old series is like a time capsule of 1980s fashions and pop tunes. There's nothing too mentally taxing here, yet the show is undeniably amusing, and in on the joke.
Of course, if you'll pardon the expression, your mileage may vary...

Abnormal Fixation at Sci-Fi Pulse Today!

The popular genre web-site Sci-Fi Pulse is covering Abnormal Fixation today, our indie-web series today! 

The site, and Ian Cullen, hav published our series press kit, which goes over the characters, cast and crew, episode titles and summaries, etc.  

Teaser trailer dropping next week!

Check out Sci-Fi Pulse here!

70 Years Ago: Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers

In 1954, Dell published a science fiction novel, The Body Snatchers  by Jack Finney. Finney's landmark work has been translated to film a whopping four times, in 1956, 1978, in 1993 and in 2007 (as  The Invasion ). 
Some of the terminology associated with the  Invasion of the Body Snatchers  franchise, including the descriptor "pod people" has landed in the pop culture firmament of our country and remained there for decades. 
We have seen variations of the paranoid tale in efforts such as  The Stepford Wives  (1975), and even on  Buffy the Vampire Slayer  ("Bad Eggs"). There have also been entire TV series titled  The Invaders  and  Invasion  which grapple with some of the same core concepts as Finney's story.

Finney's novel (which was first appeared serialized in Colliers Magazine) commences with this paragraph, and one might consider it a mission statement for the book, and also for the film adaptations :
"I warn you that what you're starting to read is full of loose ends and unanswered questions. It will not be neatly tied up at the end, everything resolved and satisfactorily explained. Not by me, it won't anyway. Because I can't say I really know exactly what happened, or why, or just how it began, how it ended, or if it has ended; and I've been right in the thick of it. Now if you don't like that kind of story, I'm sorry and you'd better not read it. All I can do is tell what I know."
After this disclaimer of sorts, Finney escorts the reader to the evening of October 28, 1976 in a small-town in southern California called Mill Valley. It's a Thursday around 5:00, and the book's main character, Dr. Miles Bennell narrates the story in the first person. He's a young family practitioner, having inherited the local medical practice from his father, and is well-known and well-liked by the locals. 
Miles is an effective literary protagonist because his style of narration is crisp and at times it feels as though readers are actually reading doctors notes, narrated directly into a tape recorder. The voice is intelligent, the language smart, but there's nothing too flowery, too knowledgeable, too over-the-top or melodramatic to break the spell. And Miles never gets to see the whole picture...he just reports what he sees. A kind of literary  Cloverfield , in a sense. Readers aren't privy to the big picture, only on how the events impact Miles and the town of Mill Valley.

In short order, the divorced 28-year old Miles is met at his office by his old flame, the recently divorced Becky Driscoll. She wants to talk business not pleasure, however. Her aunt, Wilma Lentz, has begun acting...strangely. She claims that her uncle Ira is not her Uncle Ira at all. Oh he looks like Uncle Ira, sounds like Uncle Ira, moves like Uncle Ira and has all of Uncle Ira's memories...but Wilma is sure -- just sure -- he is not the same man. 

Hot for Becky but also genuinely concerned for his patient, Miles goes to see Ms. Lentz and question her about this. "Miles, there is no difference you can actually see," asserts Wilma to the town doctor. She won't be moved from her position, and Miles attempts to talk some sense to her in what is the first of the novel's many comments on psychology and psychiatry, which in the 1950s were moving rapidly into the American mainstream.
"Now listen to me," says Miles..."I don't expect you to stop feeling emotionally that this isn't your uncle. But I do want you to realize that he's your uncle, no matter what you feel, and that the trouble is inside you. It's absolutely impossible for two people to look exactly alike, no matter what you've read in stories or seen in the movies. Even identical twins can always be told apart - always - by their intimates. No one could possibly impersonate your Uncle Ira for more than a moment without you, Becky or even me seeing a million little differences. Realize that, Wilma, think about it, and get it into your head, and you'll know the trouble is inside you. And then we'll be able to do something about it."

The preceding paragraph is critical to an informed reading of Finney's novel because it lays down the underlying subtext and dynamic of Finney's novel: the idea that psychology/psychiatry and rationality has in essence - by exploring the human mind - killed God, faith and belief and most significantly, imagination. 

Wilma Lentz just knows that her Uncle isn't the same man that he was, but she can't prove it, and there is no scientific rationale - no acceptable scientific rationale, for her beliefs. Therefore, she must be sick. Right?

If you know the story of the  Body Snatchers,  you know that Uncle Ira is indeed not himself, but a "snatched man," a replicated man, an alien invader who duplicated Ira but who lacks the emotionality of mankind. This new being, one who looks and sounds like us, is the ultimate triumph of the rational age, the age of such sciences as psychology, one might assert. The aliens have not merely sublimated emotion (as Miles has asked Wilma Lentz to do), but have eliminated it from the gene pool.

Miles is torn between two competing belief systems in the book. On one hand is the intelligent, rational, steadfast psychology of his friend Mannie Kaufman, a local psychiatrist. Mannie suggests that Wilma and the others who begin to suspect that their loved ones are not their loved ones, are actually delusional. That the madness is all within their sick minds, not in reality. He lays out a convincing case that this strange belief is merely a "contagious neurosis." In compelling terms, he describes case histories of mob hysteria (including the Mattoon Maniac of Illinois...) to prove his point. You want to believe him, he makes the case so powerfully and so logically.

But the other voice in Miles' head, the voice that ultimately allows him to believe in the alien invasion, belongs to an imaginative writer named Jack Belicec. As a hobby, Jack collects newspaper clippings that involve inexplicable happenings around America. Like the time frogs fell from the sky in Edgeville Alabama. Or that story in Idaho, about a man who spontaneously combusted...but his clothes were unharmed. Jack is the opposite side of the human equation from Kaufman, the side that can conceive of things beyond science, beyond psychosis. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in Kaufman's philosophy (or in the DSM V), and Jack is the character who gives voice in the novel to that aspect of "us."

Ultimately, the novel serves a as a rejection of "cold" science and also as plea for humanity to hold fast to the sometimes strange beliefs he holds. From the valedictory passage in the book, as expressed by Miles:

"But...showers of small frogs, tiny fish and mysterious rains of pebbles sometimes fall from out of the skies. Here and there, with no possible explanation, men are burned to death inside their clothes. And once in a while, the orderly, immutable sequences of time itself are inexplicably shifted and altered. You read these occasional queer little stories, humorously-written, tongue-in-cheek, most of the time - or you hear vague distorted rumours of them. And this much I know. Some of them - some of them - are true."

Besides the battle between science and belief, Finney's The Body Snatchers treads primarily on the idea of relationship "alienation" made literal. Those alienated from their families are actually dealing with alien life forms. That's pretty clever, actually. But if one gazes at the characters in the book, many are also coping with the fall-out of bad relationships. It can't be a coincidence that the two main characters - Becky and Miles - are both divorced. And that's the ultimate form of human alienation, isn't? You live with a person you love for years and years and then you wake up one day and suddenly don't feel the same way about that person anymore. Without warning, something has changed. Overnight, you "don't know" that other person anymore, that husband, that wife, that uncle, aunt, parent or child. Alienation of affection is what I'm talking about here, and it happens all the time in normal, mundane relationships. 

The alien invaders of  Invasion of the Body Snatchers  symbolize this strangeness in human interactions. I don't believe it a coincidence either that the changeover from human to alien comes like a thief in the night, during sleep. Alienation of affection can go on for months or years but when grappling with it, it seems to have come all at once. You don't recognize the person in bed beside you anymore. They feel like a stranger. They look like your mate; they have your mate's memories...but they feel like an interloper, a changeling.

What the aliens in  Invasion of the Body Snatchers  lack is the core of humanity and the human experience: emotions. They can pretend to have feelings and they can skillfully mimic emotions, but they don't feel anything at all. Without emotions, there is no excitement. Without excitement there is no ambition, no love. Without ambition, nobody writes books anymore...imagination vanishes. Kaufman - now an alien - will never finish the textbook about Psychiatry he began as a human being. That is the fate mankind is doomed to in the novel if the aliens win; if we abandon the imaginative side of ourselves.
Late in  The Body Snatchers , Miles confers with Kaufman as well as with a "converted" professor. They explain to Miles the end game of the aliens, beings who have arrived on Earth in giant seeds, pods for lack of a better word:
"What do you do and for what reason? Why do you breathe, eat, sleep, make love and reproduce your kind? Because it's your function, your reason for being. There's no other reason, and none needed...You look shocked, actually sick, and yet what has the human race done except spread over this planet till it swarms the globe several billion strong? What have you done with this very continent but expand till you fill it? And where are the buffalo who roamed the land before you? Gone. Where is the passenger pigeon who once literally darkened the skies of America in flocks of billions? The last one died in a Philadelphia zoo in 1913. Doctor, the function of life is to live if it can and no other motive can ever be allowed to interfere with that. There is no malice involved; did you hate the buffalo? We must continue because we must..."
You have to admit, there's a cold logic to the alien motive for their takeover of Earth, but the difference is that we still feel pity for the buffalo or the passenger pigeon. If we could change their fates, I submit we likely would. With cold science, there's no need for pity, no need for remorse, no need for compassion.
Some other interesting notations about the book and how it differs from the film versions. 

First, the ending. The climax of Finney's  Body Snatchers  is not inherently nihilistic, bleak, depressing or dark, as some have claimed over the years. In fact, at least two film versions feature abundantly darker endings than what is featured here. In the novel, the pods flee Earth when they realize how irrational human beings are (again, human emotions!), after Miles and Becky wage a hopeless war burning fields of the alien pods.

Secondly, the alien countenance: In this novel, the aliens are not easily detectable. They lack strong emotions, but as I wrote above, they have the capacity to mimic human emotions. It isn't so easy to spot them in the novel as it is in all the film versions.

Thirdly, Finney goes to great lengths to describe the science behind the "body snatching" procedure and why that procedure occurs during sleep. The explanation involves "tiny electrical force-lines that hold together the very atoms that constitute" human beings. These force-lines are in constant flux, constant change, but they change less, according to Finney, during sleep. And during sleep, that "pattern can be taken from you, absorbed like static electricity, from one body to another." Only the 2007 version of the material came this close to offering a scientific explanation for why the changeover occurs during sleep.

Also, Finney reveals what the future is for planet Earth should the aliens win: all organisms on the planet will die within five years and the the pods will seek another world to duplicate. 
The novel indicates that there was once life on Mars and even on our Moon, but that the pods duplicated - and then destroyed - all life there. 
Not one of the four films have picked up on this element, to my recollection. Maybe film number five?