John Kenneth Muir's Blog, page 18

40 Years Ago: Dreamscape (1984)

Joseph Ruben’s  Dreamscape  (1984) is a science-fiction action movie that involves psychic researchers entering the dreams and nightmares of their patients and becoming “active participants” in them. 

The forty year old film shares some qualities in common with Douglas Trumball’s  Brainstorm  (1983), but is ultimately not as dazzling in terms of its special effects or imagination.  Perhaps more to the point,  Dreamscape  also features many plot-points -- including a man with finger-knives – that appear in Wes Craven’s masterpiece,  A Nightmare on Elm Street  (1984).

But where  Brainstorm  and  A Nightmare on Elm Street  approach their subject matters with a sense of gravitas and seriousness,  Dreamscape  often descends instead into silly action clichés, and features chase scenes (on motor bikes, no less…) instead of any consistently-applied leitmotif about the nature of the human subconscious, or the power of dreams.

These facts established,  Dreamscape  is very much a product of its turbulent time, and it expresses beautifully the “apocalypse mentality” of the 1980s Cold War Era.  

Lest we forget, this was the age of  The Road Warrior  (1982),  War Games  (1983), and  The Day After  (1983), when fears about nuclear Armageddon ran high in the nation.  Russia had invaded Afghanistan in early 1980, and President Reagan began his administration as a hard-line Hawk.  

Remember, President Reagan -- in addition to being a peacemaker with the Soviet Union in his second term -- was initially the fellow who joked on a live mic that he had outlawed Russia and that we would start bombing it in “five minutes.” He was also the leader who said that the Soviet Union was an “Evil Empire,” and that -- once launched from submarines -- nuclear missiles could be recalled.

Such statements, in conjunction with right-wing debates about “winnable” nuclear war, created an atmosphere of fear. When you coupled these comments with Secretary of the Interior James Watt’s comments that we were living in the “End Times”…things got really scary.

I grew up in the 1980s, lived through these times, and heard -- as a boy -- quite clearly the comments politicians were making about our planet’s future. I went to bed many a night in those years worrying about nuclear holocaust and wondering if I would live long enough to attend college, or get married.  Dreamscape  connects with such fears very well.

Today, we are all fortunate indeed that President Reagan underwent a re-think of his policies -- similar to the one the president of  Dreamscape  undergoes -- and became such a committed “warrior” for peace in his second term, going so far, even, as to walk-back his “Evil Empire” statement.

But the point is here is not politics, rather that this very 1980s apocalypse mentality context finds terrifying visualization in  Dreamscape,  and that the moments concerning nuclear war remain the film’s most powerful and resonant.  

Throughout  Dreamscape,  we see mushroom clouds, hideously-scarred children, and a burned-out crimson landscape function as symbols of man’s self-destructive ways.  At one point, a President who blames himself for nuclear war takes a train tour through the apocalyptic landscape, and spies the ruins of the capital building.

America -- that shining city on the hill -- is in ruins because two countries couldn’t see to get along, or to cooperate peacefully.

For all its goofy lightness and ho-hum concentration on action and romance,  Dreamscape  actually works best as a science fiction film when its phantasms grow darkest; when they deal bluntly with the national “dread” of nuclear war rather than the personal, subconscious fears of specific patients.  

Dreamscape  could have been a great film about the biggest fear of an epoch. Instead, it’s just a mediocre film that never quite lives up to its incredible potential.

“Who’s your decorator? Darth Vader?”

The U.S. government recruits a small-time con artist and psychic, Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) to work at Thornhill College’s dream research center, located in the Bates Building.

Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw) and Dr. Paul Novotny (Max Von Sydow) train Alex to psychically-link with dreaming patients, including a construction worker with a fear of heights and a boy, Buddy (Cory Yothers) suffering from nightmares of a snake man. Alex is successful in treating both patients, and helping them overcome their nocturnal fears.

At the same time, however, Alex’s success fosters resentment in another dream “traveler,” Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly). 

In addition to being psychic, Tommy is a murderer, a trait which comes in handy when shadowy government agent Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) approaches him with a secret assignment.

Specifically, the President of the United States (Eddie Albert) has been suffering from dreams involving nuclear apocalypse, and Bob fears that he will give away America’s nuclear store at upcoming peace talks with the Soviet Union.  

To prevent this eventuality, Bob orders Tommy Ray to enter the Commander-in-Chief’s dreams…and assassinate him.  To the rest of the world, it will appear that the President simply died of a heart attack in his sleep.

Alex learns the truth about Bob’s plans, however, and -- without the aid of instrumentation -- also enters the President’s dream to confront Tommy.

“He’s going to emasculate our nuclear deterrent...” 

Although decidedly not a great film,  Dreamscape  perhaps deserves a little credit for two things.

First, it expresses perfectly the “apocalypse mentality” of its time, as noted above. 

The president’s recurring dreams of apocalypse are strongly-visualized by Ruben.  The film opens with them, in fact, as the President’s (deceased) First Lady attempts -- and fails -- to outrun a nuclear mushroom and shock wave.

Later, the President (in another nightmare) tours the post-apocalyptic landscape in an ornate train car, and he gazes out across the barren, blood-red landscape. Out on the ruined land, we see the Capitol building, and the Lincoln Memorial.

Importantly, this vision of the President on a train, observing the land, calls to mind the American tradition of presidential whistle-stop tours.  Only here, a leader surveys not a beautiful land of plenty and a happy populace, but a ruined land of death and desolation.

Another dream finds the President confronted by horribly burned and scarred children, and that’s a potent image, as well.  In any war, children are always innocent victims.  They have no control over the policies of the government, or even the policies of their parents.  Here, the children have their innocence -- and their future -- taken away from them in grisly, visceral terms.  This is the true obscenity of nuclear war. Millions of children will die in such an event simply because two countries can’t accept that they have different philosophies about economics

Yet another nuclear vision is powerfully wrought in  Dreamscape:  Alex and the President end up in a subway car of scarred survivors, and that packed, modern car contrasts perfectly with the ornate old-fashioned presidential train.  

It’s as if this old, set-in-his-ways President cannot quite think in modern terms, and so out of misguided notions of patriotism and peace through strength, he leads the contemporary nation -- a nation of subways and commuters, not romantic whistle-stops -- into ruin.

Secondly, it should be noted that  Dreamscape  actually predicts real-life world events to a large degree.

On the latter front, Eddie Albert makes for a very Reagan-esque president a gentle-seeming, avuncular older man. 

His terrifying dreams of nuclear annihilation lead him to re-think his policy about the Cold War, and he plans to negotiate with the Russians at an upcoming summit in Geneva.  But by doing so, the President provokes an insurrection or rebellion on his right flank. Hawks in his administration, including Blair, are afraid he will give up the nuclear store and simply “appease” the Russians.

This is almost precisely what happened in real life, in 1985. 

First, President Reagan experiences his conversion about nuclear war. But that conversion arose not from personal dreams or nightmares, but rather from a viewing of  The Day After , allegedly. 

When Reagan softened his hardline stance regarding the Soviet Union, in anticipation of – again -- a Geneva Summit, members of his administration rebelled. 

Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for instance, wrote a letter to the  Washington Post  urging President Reagan not to give up any bargaining chips, and not to appease Gorbachev in any way. The letter was made available to the press on November 16, 1985.

Fortunately, no one attempted to assassinate President Reagan as he transitioned from “cold warrior” to crusader against nuclear war. 

Once more this is the journey Albert’s president takes in  Dreamscape.

There’s one another effective scene in  Dreamscape  worth discussing, though it is off the subject of the 1980s apocalypse mentality. 

Alex journeys inside Buddy’s dreamscape, and encounters a world straight out of German Expressionism, at least if we take the angles and compositions into effect.  In this world of cockeyed, jarring angles, Buddy asks his father to save him from the Snake Man, but the father is out to lunch, and can’t -- or won’t – help him. So Alex runs with him, and they descend through what looks like infinity itself, on a suspension staircase surrounded by blackness.

Despite some bad stop-motion photography involving the Snake Man, this night terrors scene is effective because it speaks legitimately in the language of nightmares. In our nightmares, we are all children in a sense -- alone and vulnerable -- and our imaginations run wild, unfettered.  

Between the expressionist angles, the snake man, and the dizzying descent, down and down,  Dreamscape  effectively visualizes this idea, as well as the notion of parents who somehow can’t help us. 

In dreams, we’re always on our own…unless Alex Gardner shows up. 

Given such successes, it’s a shame that  Dreamscape  isn’t a better film.  All the material involving Alex getting pursued at the race-track by small-time hoods is a waste of time, and even the romantic angle with lovely Kate Capshaw seems to diminish the film. For the most part, the film feels light and inconsequential, rather than searing or sharp. Except for the moments in Buddy’s nightmare, or on the President’s post-nuclear landscape,  Dreamscape  feels jokey and kind of dim-witted.

I should preface my next remarks by stating that I have no idea how this occurred, but  Dreamscape  also ends up aping, relentlessly,  A Nightmare on Elm Street . 

Dreamscape  was released first, but Craven’s script made the rounds in Hollywood well before either film was made. Spontaneous creation does happen occasionally in Hollywood, but there is certainly something fishy about the narrative overlap between films.

Both efforts, for instance, feature scenes set at dream clinics, where scientists discuss the nature of REM sleep and dreams. 

Both films find the opportunity to discuss the Malaysian Dream People.
And it’s impossible not to notice that Tommy Ray sprouts finger-knives at one point, or that the Snake-Man battles Alex in what looks like a hellish boiler room…Freddy’s digs.

Again, I cannot and would not assert rip-off or plagiarism without further knowledge of the facts. But I will state this: All the moments of similarity carry less psychic weight and impact in  Dreamscape.

In other words, the moments discussing the Dream People or REM sleep feel casually dropped into  Dreamscape , as if to give it a veneer of respectability or legitimacy, whereas in  A Nightmare on Elm Street , all those elements tie together brilliantly with other aspects of the story.  

For instance, in the Craven film the Malaysian Dream People are discussed because they turn their backs on Evil, and that’s the very thing that Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) -- ever the digger (hence the film’s comparison to Hamlet) -- has trouble doing.

Accordingly, it’s much easier to make a case for the validity of these concepts in  Nightmare  than it is in terms of  Dreamscape,  even though  Dreamscape  arrived in theaters first.  

Dreamscape  is one of those films from your youth that you probably remember fondly. Alas, I found that the fond memories are erased a bit in modern re-watch.  

The film features powerful nightmare imagery, but instead of exploring it fully, wants to waste your time on car chases and bike-chases, and fisticuffs.  The movie strenuously avoids trying to be about the thing it is supposed to be about: the subconscious mind.
Thus  Dreamscape’s  approach is not the stuff that dreams (or good science fiction movies…) are generally made of.

20 Years Ago: AVP (2004)

There’s a moment that feels like authentic cinematic destiny in the twenty year old  Alien vs. Predator  (2004), or rather,  AVP.   

From opposite corners -- left and right -- two classic movie monsters enter the same frame, and cast wary eyes on one another for the first time.  

The battle is joined.

The moment may work in a manner other than that as well, and perhaps in a way not entirely intended.

A fruition of fan boy dreams and fantasy, this meeting of the monstrous minds may also represent the first time in either franchise’s history that geek or fan desires are, well, pretty much the point of the whole enterprise. 

Matters such as story, character, theme and humanity are given short shrift so that two of the greatest silver screen monsters in history can duke it out. 

Again and again. 

In short, the movie is its title.  

You get exactly what the words  Alien vs. Predator  promise: a wrestling match between two extra-terrestrial menaces of different characteristics, but equal power or strength.

When the film premiered, in 2004, it was advertised with the tag-line “whoever wins…we lose,” and many critics ran with that self-inflicted wound, noting the veracity of the studio advertisement.  “We lose” was a symbol, in fact, of any audience unlucky enough to sit through the film.

I felt much the same way in 2004, though -- over rwo decades -- I’ve come to appreciate  Alien vs. Predator  a bit more. 

Why?

In part, because of what came right after. 

If you want to see two of the greatest horror movie monsters treated in genuinely shabby fashion, just spend ninety or so minutes with  Alien vs. Predator Requiem  (2007). That movie illustrates by example just how much  Alien vs. Predator  actually gets right.

But moving beyond invidious comparisons to the worst film in either monster line,  Alien vs. Predator  possesses some merit on its own terms.  

First, the 2004 grudge-match features some remarkable and imaginative visualizations, particularly in terms of its flashback sequences.  

And secondly, two characters seen in the film manage to make the enterprise feel like more than just a by-the-number monster-on-monster contest.

AVP’s  biggest deficits, by contrast, involve the nature of the action -- which is toothless -- and the depiction of the vast majority of human characters. Beyond the two I mentioned above, the majority of the characters are -- as the script describes them -- literally cattle to be manipulated by one “monster” side or the other.

Still, I'll readily admit that I can watch  Alien vs. Predator  anytime and get a thrill or two out of the experience.  
If that’s the benchmark you require of the film of this type, it may be judged a success of sorts.  
The disappointment, I suppose, is that the film possesses no ambitious sub-text or theme.  Even the flawed  Alien Resurrection  (1997), by contrast, tried to get some message across to audiences. 

Alien vs Predator feels slight or empty, somehow, and therefore not the fitting heir to two remarkable franchises.


“The enemy of my enemy…is my friend.”

In October of 2004, a satellite belonging to robotics genius Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) detects a heat signature 2,000 feet below the ice of Antarctica. Soon, satellite imagery makes out a subterranean pyramid of unknown origin.

Bishop quickly assembles a team, including guide Alexa Woods (Lathan), archaeologist De Rosa (Raoul Bouva), chemical engineer Grame Miller (Ewen Bremner), and mercenaries Verheiden (Tommy Flanagan), Quinn (Casten Norgaard) and Adele Rousseau (Agatha De La Boulene) to investigate the pyramid.
When the team arrives at remote 

Bouvetøya Island, it discovers that someone else has already drilled down to the vast pyramid.  Alexa leads the way down, though she boasts reservations about Bishop, who is dying of lung cancer, participating on the mission.
In the subterranean cave far below, Bishop, Alexa and the other humans discover that they have walked into a trap; a trap sprung by beings called Predators who were once revered as Gods by primitive man.  
Now, the human beings are to be "fodder" for another alien race: fierce serpents who gestate inside living human hosts. 
Alexa attempts to survive, even as the two alien species go to war.

“It’s time to pick a side.

The idea of ancient astronauts visiting Earth and shaping human culture -- the Von Daniken Theorem -- may be absolute, total hooey in terms of history and science. 
But much like  Prometheus  (2012),  Alien vs. Predator  utilizes the idea to good effect. Here, it is the hunters, the Predators, who taught man how to construct pyramids, who used us in human sacrifices, and who basically taught mankind the fundamentals of civilization.  

Whatever its flaws,  Alien vs. Predator’s  flashback imagery -- of Predator strutting atop pyramids, hovering spaceships behind them -- remains powerful stuff.  The script is clever in the way it accounts for the disappearance of Mayan culture (a hunt gone wrong, and the deployment of a Predator self-destruct mechanism) in terms of franchise history. Similarly, human sacrifices are re-purposed to involve the aliens in a way that is imaginative, and yet doesn’t seem like a stretch.

The best imagery in the film, in fact, involves the Predators and humans battling teeming aliens...defending Earth territory from the “serpents” before that apocalypse occurs.  The imagery here is spectacular, and it suggests that aliens and predators have always been with us…we just didn’t know it.

In fact, a truly bold  AVP  film might have been set during that encounter, in that civilization, with man playing an even more peripheral role.  Critics couldn't very well complain about paper-thin characters and characterizations, if no one spoke English, and the main characters were Predator "Gods" in an Aztec or Mayan city.

Another powerful image in the film involves Alexa Woods and the weapons a predator, Scar, gives to her.  She receives an alien tail as a spear, and an alien head as a kind of glove/shield/armor that stretches up her arm.  
This imagery reveals a lot about how the Predators regard their prey, and -- even more than that -- acts as a pointed call-back to both the flashback scenes, and the finale of  Predator  (1987). 
In the latter case, Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) had to go “primitive” and prehistoric to fight off an alien threat.  In this case, Alexa does the same thing. She uses the resources available to stand in battle beside the Predator. The impression, overall, is that we are seeing a timeless partnership replayed in the present for our own eyes.

But a human wielding an alien head as a weapon is an unforgettable visual, 

I wish the film had more moments like the ones mentioned above.  Instead, Paul W.S. Anderson relies on clichés -- both visual and written -- for much of the film. There’s the dreadful moment that you will recognize from all action movies of the 2000s, in which Scar and Alex, for example, outrun a giant fireball.  It’s such a hackneyed visual at this juncture, and could be piped in from any number of insipid buddy movies.
I should probably establish that I am not an Anderson hater, as some folks apparently are. I have written positive reviews of both  Event Horizon  (1997) and  Soldier  (1998) on this blog, as evidence of that assertion.  But facts are facts. The director crafts  Alien vs. Predator  with absolutely no sense of suspense of tension.  
There is no build-up to the action...it just happens. The film opens in Antarctica on October 10, 1904, for example, and we follow a person being pursued by something, or some things, specifically an alien and a predator. The scene is so rudimentary and by-the-numbers that it makes us feel nothing. The scene’s final jolt doesn’t even provide a good jump scare.  
When one considers the level of suspense and terror in  Alien  (1979), or even in  Predator  (1987),  AVP  does not "feel" faithful to what has come before. The filmmakers demonstrate no patience, and do nothing to establish the setting or mood before leaping into the horror moments.

Again and again, the action scenes play out in this fashion with no real tension or suspense underlying them.  Most grievously, the final battle on the surface with the Alien Queen plays out this way too.  The special effects are fine -- extraordinary even -- but there’s no real sense of danger or surprise in the unfolding of the climax.  The movie just hums along, oblivious to the notion that its horror isn’t sticking the landing. We never feel scared or tense; we never feel the pure terror of these warring goliaths.

It would be something if the scare-less movie could make-up for its lack of suspense and tension with a sense of the visually grotesque.   Alien  and  Predator , after all, are both R rated franchises, noted for their violence and gore. But in an attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience,  Alien vs. Predator  is PG-13, meaning that almost no real, dynamic or memorable violence is depicted. 
Every time there is a promise of blood or gore, or even violent impact, the film simply cuts away to another scene, or to a post-impact shot that reveals nothing in terms of damage to body parts.  
No real suspense plus no real gore makes  Alien vs. Predator  a dull boy, or at least a very bland, generic one.

The characters are mostly fodder, too, for poorly-executed, poorly-shot death scenes. Few characters register here in the way that Hudson does in  Aliens  (1986), for example, or even the way Johner (Ron Perlman) does in  Alien Resurrection . There’s just nobody that distinctive or memorable, overall.

With two important exceptions. 

First, what sense of humanity  Alien vs. Predator  possesses arises largely from Lance Henriksen. 
This is his third franchise appearance, and his third variation on the Bishop role.We’ve seen the innocent child/android (in  Aliens ), the malevolent tempter ( Alien3 ) and now the ambitious, determined man behind all that futuristic technology, Charles Bishop. Henriksen brings his trademark humanity to the role, and shows us Bishop the climber (willing to go anywhere to achieve his goal), and Bishop the sick man, facing his own mortality.  
Henriksen gets a great scene with Sanaa Lathan in the film; one where he describes how climbing to a new summit is worth the risk, even if death is the result of the journey. The dialogue is good, but Henriksen makes it soar, and grantsthe audience a thorough understanding of this flawed but admirable human being.

I also love his death scene. Refusing to be ignored as harmless (and therefore unimportant) by the Predator, Bishop strikes the hunter with a flame, showing it his teeth. The Predator stops in its track, and gives Bishop the death he has earned, the death of a warrior.  It’s a fantastic scene, and in many ways, the highlight of the film's action. Bishop didn’t get to his position of power by being ignored, by being written off as sick.  
And if he has to die, he’s going to go out the same way as he lived: noticed and notable.

Secondly, Sanaa Lathan is a solid, promising lead as Alexa Woods. She’s not Ripley, and yet she displays a similar ability to survive by adaptation. 
Alexa thinks on her feet, and the audience can see her thinking things through.  That quality makes it easy to identify with her, especially since Alexa has to do a lot of catch-up learning about her enemies in the course of the film’s action.  
Specifically, I admire Lathan’s tendency not to over-emote, or play things for melodrama. Instead, she keeps just the right amount of distance from the material. There’s one moment in which Scar takes a bloody alien stump to her face, to mark Alexa as a survivor or hunter.  She endures it without complaint or drama, but you can see her in her eyes that she is girding herself.  
No, she probably doesn’t want an acid scar on her face. But are you gonna stop a Predator in his tracks when he is, in his own fashion, honoring you for bravery?

In short, I feel that Lathan takes the character and material seriously, but doesn’t fall into the actor’s trap of overplaying scenes that, if exaggerated, could transmit as silly.

I have read a lot of reviews that claim the fight scenes in  A lien vs. Predator  are too dark, but -- having seen  Requiem  -- I can’t make the same observation. Basically, I could make-out the details of each fight in the film and I would be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy the battles on some visceral level.  Again, if that's all you're looking for, you will find it here, and likely enjoy the film.
My big complaint with the monsters in  Alien vs. Predator  is that all the Predators are squat and chunky. They look more like over-fed professional wrestlers, than the lean giant hunters we saw in  Predator  and  Predator 2  (1990). A couple of times, I was taken out of the film’s reality by the short, steroidal stature of the  Predators  here. They resemble muscle-men in costumes more than ever before in franchise history.

There are qualities to admire in  Alien vs. Predator,  as I hope I’ve enumerated in this review. 
So why don’t I like it more?  
Perhaps because the pedigree of both franchises is so strong. I feel that the  Alien  films are mostly great.  Same thing with the  Predator  franchise.  
So you put the two monsters together and get a film that is....merely serviceable?  I’m not certain how that really serves either franchise in the long run. 
But I suppose it did: the film was very profitable (though not as profitable as  Prometheus  was). Still, the film feels more like a high-concept gimmick than a fully developed, fully coherent narrative at times.

Indeed, there are points throughout where you sense the writer and director struggling for some meaty hook that will carry the movie across the finish line.  One such idea: the pyramid is like a prison! The aliens are escaped inmates, and the guards -- the Predators -- need their guns.  Another idea: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And finally, the script sees bound and determined to feature endless variations of the joke “you are one ugly…fill in the blank.” 

So  Alien vs. Predator?  
Those who choose, may enter.  
But you do so at your own risk.  
I have taken the plunge at least a couple times, in part for the visually exciting flashback sequences and special effects, and in part because I truly enjoy the performances of Lance Henriksen and Sanaa Lathan. 
And again,  Alien vs. Predator  is masterful, accomplished filmmaking in comparison to the follow-up  effort:  Requiem .

40 Years Ago: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

Director W.D. Richter's cult-classic  The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai  (1984) is the cinematic equivalent of purchasing a comic-book on a whim and then trying to figure out what is happening in that specific issue when you have zero familiarity with previous chapters.  
And I mean that entirely as a compliment.  
As Vincent Canby wrote, regarding the film, "Absolutely nothing in ''Buckaroo Banzai'' is quite clear, nor is it supposed to be, though most of it is very funny, beginning with the opening sequence."
Indeed, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai begins, and it's off to the races. Characters and their backgrounds -- or even contemporary relationships, for that matter -- are not explained to any substantial degree by the screenplay from author Earl Mac Rauch.  
Rather, the film assumes from the first frame that audience members are simply long-time, knowledgeable fans of science fiction/comic-book movies, and it trusts them to keep up.  The film commences in media res, and as though we are all fans of that resourceful renaissance man, a neuro-scientist/particle physicist/martial artist/rock-n-roller named Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller).   
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai  then rockets forward from that assumption without looking back, delving full-speed-ahead into a genre world of aliens from the eighth dimension, tragic heroic histories, the death of a beloved franchise character (Clancy Brown's Rawhide) and other familiar plot twists that deliberately reflect the cliches of the comic-book/sci-fi genres.

The result of this intelligent, take-no-prisoners approach is surely one of the funniest genre movies ever made; one that, even today, roars across the screen with an unmatched sense of confidence and good vibes.

"Is anybody out there not having a good time?" 
 

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension  is the tale of a great hero known the world-around.   Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is the subject of comic-books and arcade video games, and even the organizing factor behind a Boy Scouts-type organization called "The Blue Blazer Regulars." [correction: The Blue Blaze Irregulars]
One day, after performing difficult brain surgery, Buckaroo test-drives a new vehicle (The Rocket 88) that can travel five-hundred miles an hour.  While driving, Banzai also tests a device that he and his cohort Professor Hikita (Robert Ito) have perfected: an "oscillation overthruster" which can transition matter from our universe into the space-between-spaces as it were, the "formless void" of the 8th dimension.

Unfortunately, this technological breakthrough attracts the attention of twisted Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow), a man who, in 1938, actually pierced the 8th dimension and was possessed by the spirit of an evil alien Lectroid conquerer, a galactic "Hitler" named John Whorfin.  

Now, Lizardo requires Banzai's oscillation overthruster to return to the 8th dimension and rescue his comrades trapped inside.  From there, it's time to wage war on his peaceful home world, "Planet 10."

After his technological breakthrough in the desert (driving inside a mountain...), Buckaroo Banzai performs at a night-club in New Jersey with his gang/band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers and is surprised to spy in the audience a woman named Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), a dead ringer for his much-mourned wife.  Turns out Penny is her long lost, heretofore unknown, identical twin.

The peaceful Black Lectroids from Planet 10 -- who appear to humans as African-American Rastafarians -- contact Banzai and his people to warn him about the threat of Lizardo/Whorfin.  Worse, the Black Lectroids will initiate a false nuclear conflict with Soviet Russia within a day if Whorfin is not stopped by Banzai.  

The aliens can take no chance that this murdering psychopath could return to their world...

Banzai tracks the evil Red Lectroids and Lizardo to their headquarters in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, at the Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems factory.  Through a little computer research, the Hong Kong Cavaliers learn that Yoyodyne is an alien front company, and that Orson Welles' famous  War of the Worlds  radio program in the late 1930s was no hoax...but rather the vanguard of a real alien invasion.  Several dozen Lectroids came to Earth and adopted names such as John Bigboote (Christopher Lloyd) to engineer the release of their comrades from the Eighth Dimension...
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy."


The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai  unique approach to storytelling is epitomized perfectly by a little throwaway line occurring about an hour into the proceedings. 
  
Two of Buckaroo's team members (The Hong Kong Cavaliers) have gone in search of an evil Lectroid -- a being from the eighth dimension -- when they happen to enter Banzai's scientific laboratory. 
  
A new team member dressed as a cowboy -- New Jersey (Jeff Goldblum) -- spots a ripe watermelon on an industrial-looking device and asks, "why is there a watermelon there?" 
  
The answer? "I'll tell you later." 
  
It's the punch-line to an in-joke we're not privy to (regarding a previous Banzai experiment, no doubt), but as first time visitors to this cult-universe, we don't get it. 
  
And we're not supposed to get it. 
  
We're simply supposed to understand that Buckaroo and his team have shared many intense, crazy adventures together, all with a science-fictional bent, all with real-life consequences for each of them. 

In other words, the watermelon is a touch that adds history to the universe, but no further clarity.  It's a detail indicative of a shared past; but without any context about that particular shared past.
  
The question becomes, of course, why would anyone dramatize a story in this fashion? Why would a filmmaker remove virtually all the explanations, exposition, and meaningful context from a sci-fi film's narrative? 
  
The answer is right there in Vincent Canby's review, quoted above. 
  
If an artist knowingly creates distance between the audience and the action on screen, said action becomes...funny. 

It's the thematic equivalent to that old Hollywood approach to lensing a pratfall in a comedy film.   If you film a comedian slipping on a banana peel in close-up, we register that character's agony as he or she hits the hard sidewalk. Ouch! The audience feels sympathy. 
  
But if the cameraman steps back -- shooting from a distance (from a long shot) -- the action instead appears humorous.  We laugh.
  
That's really  Buckaroo Banzai  in a nutshell. The filmmakers have knowingly stepped back from the context of the cult-universe of their hero and central figure, Buckaroo Banzai.  It is a stance which allows us to observe all the goings-on not as intense action; not as life-or-death incident;  but as inherently amusing; as satire.  Specifically, the creators' distance from the wild-eyed, over-the-top narrative enables the audience to see the film as a comment on comic-book conceits.
  
At this relatively distant vantage point, the audience is free to laugh at the absurdities on display.  And commendably, the directorial approach to the material echoes that thematic approach.  Often, Richter literally stands back, heavily utilizing master shots and long shots to tell his bizarre story.  It's a perfect example of form echoing content, and it allows the audience a wide-angle perspective of Buckaroo's world so we can take in all the details, from the wacky, cobbled-together architecture/set design of the Lectroids to the almost-Duran-Duran aesthetic of Buckaroo's rock band.

"Buckaroo, I don't know what to say. Lectroids? Planet 10? Nuclear extortion? A girl named "John"? 


Although it hasn't often been described in such fashion, it seems apparent today that the one-of-a-kind  Buckaroo Banzai  qualifies beautifully as a "camp" entertainment.  

Now, that's a descriptor that gets bandied about too loosely today among some Internet journalists, particularly in regards to 1970s science-fiction TV series that the pop culture judges haven't aged well. 

But the term "camp" actually indicates a tongue-in-cheek aesthetic, an approach in which something is knowingly played as straight as possible so as to exaggerate its inherent qualities.  Camp co-opts serious subject matter (such as comic-book tropes in this case), analyzes that material, and then makes the material humorous by playing it so solemn and earnest that laughs are generated.  

In other words, by taking material seriously to such a dramatic extent, the " inherent ridiculousness " of the concept seems to burst forth.  

Film critic Pauline Kael, writing in  The New Yorker , understood the film's approach very well.  

She termed  Buckaroo Banzai  an example of  "unmoored hipsterism," and today that seems like the  very best descriptor possible, especially since "camp" -- fairly or not --  boasts such negative connotations for fans of superheroes, comic-books and sci-fi.  And in point of fact, some scholars now consider "hipsterism" the actual appropriation of the "camp" aesthetic from the gay subculture in which it first sprang, matured and gained pop cultural notoriety.

Regardless of what you call the particular style, however, this is surely the vibe of  Buckaroo Banzai.   The film takes genre/comic-book conceits so seriously -- but  without any meaningful context whatsoever --that these familiar conventions emerge as recognizable, and then as funny, because we've seen them before...too many times to count. 

Consider, for example, the mid-film apparent demise of the character named Rawhide (Clancy Brown).  He is one of the Hong Kong Cavaliers -- one of Banzai's lieutenants -- and there's an ostensibly sad moment in which he goes down to Lectroid venom/poision, and his friends mourn.

But, of course, because this is the first and only  Buckaroo Banzai  film, the audience has shared no adventures, no previous missions, no time with Rawhide outside this movie and its particular narrative. 

Divorced from context, the trope of the beloved character's death lacks any psychic weight or larger emotional meaning.  Instead of being sad in this instance, we actually think specifically about the cliche, and how so many movies use it to manipulate audience emotions heading into the third-act denouement.

Imagine if the first time you ever encountered Mr. Spock -- the first time he was ever featured on-screen -- was in the film  The Search for Spock  (1984).  You would have no idea what the big deal was; why he is important; or what was happening to the character.  The character and his issues in the story would suddenly become less important.  

Instead, how he is used as a cog in the film's narrative wheel would become the primary issue of concern.  To put it another way, you'd be thinking of mechanics instead of emotions.

Again, this is the "distance" from the action that  The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai  knowingly generates and cultivates.  Divorced from the meaning of the trope (the death of a beloved character), the moment just becomes another throwaway exercise in false continuity; an exercise in genre form, with no attached emotional meaning.  We are asked to reflect on form, on tradition of the form, not on the specifics of the plot.

Over and over,  Buckaroo Banzai  plays out this joke.  Buckaroo is apparently in deep mourning over the death of his wife, and in this movie, he accidentally (!) stumbles upon her identical twin, Penny.  Because we never saw Buckaroo with his wife and never saw her demise in any previous (alluded to...) adventure, this subplot again becomes about the form of pervasive sci-fi cliches rather than any specific character context.  The surprise twin! The doppelganger! The woman who looks exactly like a lost love!  You've seen this idea played out in everything from  Dark Shadows  to  Fright Night  (1985). 

But removed from the emotionality that historical context and previous franchise entries could provide the audience, the sub-plot again becomes about a concept -- a cliche -- and the movie positions it all as a joke.  Penny and Buckaroo fall in love almost instantly, as the form demands. They are meant to be together.  It plays not as real romance, but as humorous commentary.

Silly dialogue such as "Take her to the pit!" similarly recalls pulpy sci-fi magazines of the 1950s, and in general  Buckaroo Banzai  has a great deal of fun mocking the conventions of serialized comic-book adventures.  

In particular, John Lithgow is brilliant as Dr. Lizardo -- an alien version of Hitler we're told, -- who comes off as absolutely absurd.  There is nothing remotely menacing about this character, though he could take over an entire planet, apparently.  

But as played here -- with no overall context backing-up his menacing villainy -- Lizardo is simply a twitching, sneering, thick-tongued cretin, not a world-ending maniac.  We don't fear him; rather we laugh at his outrageous qualities.  So in this circumstance, we are asked to consider the qualities of comic-book villains.  Separated from a history of evil deeds, they can come off as incompetent, and therefore funny, especially since they often fail so egregiously.

Finally, the consistent distance from context makes  Buckaroo Banzai  a comedy about the genre itself, and its most-frequently hauled out conventions.  I often call the 1984 Richter film  the  This is Spinal Tap  of genre films, and that's because it serves so ably as a parody of an entire strain of literature and film  Not the rock milieu, as is the case with the Reiner film of 1984, but the conventions of comic-books and science fiction movies as they existed in the mid-1980s.  

However, this is the important thing: the film is not mean-spirited about its sense of fanciful parody.  On the contrary, the stand-back approach of the filmmakers' (both in terms of form and content) assumes a deep fund of knowledge on the part of any audience.  

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai  assumes we can keep up; that we will recognize such conventions as the death of a beloved character or the surprise appearance of an identical twin, and understand the joke.  Plus, the movie's pace is downright delirious, so that  Buckaroo Banzai  is unfailingly smart and fast-moving at the same time.

That's why, in the lingo of the film,  Buckaroo Banzai  is really something of an "inter dimensional breakthrough."  

It serves as both a straight-forward comic-book adventure and even as a post-modern, humorous comment on the longstanding literary and film conventions that make a hero like Buckaroo -- a hero in the mold of James Bond or Doc Savage -- so appealing and influential in our culture.

And that's why -- yes -- I still hope to see  Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League  in theaters one of these days.  

Because no matter where you go...there you are.

50 Years Ago: The Final Programme (1974)

In The Final Programme, released in the United States in August 1974, adventurer Jerry Cornelius  teams up with the techno-mage Miss Bruner to acquire a micro-film from his deceased father, one boasting a scientific secret that could revolutionize the world and mankind. 

 

The micro-film is ensconced in Cornelius’s booby-trapped country estate, where his brother Frank (O’Connor) is holding Cornelius’s junkie sister, Catherine (Douglas) hostage. As Cornelius works with Brunner to get the film and rescue his sister, he learns that his ally boasts the unusual ability to absorb the knowledge (and apparently bodies…) of her lovers, and that she plans to use the most advanced computer in the world, Duel, along with the micro-film data to create a completely self-replicating, “self-fertilizing, self-regenerating” hermaphroditic human.  And worse, in a secret Nazi underground station in Lapland, Brunner plans to use Jerry as her guinea pig in the experiment…

 

Did that plot summary make sense to you?

 

Michael Moorcock’s 1969 novel The Final Programme is the first adventure of an anarchist/superhero/Nobel Laureate/secret agent and “Eternal Champion” character called Jerry Cornelius. The character is sexually ambivalent, while also a symbol of heroism in multiple quantum realities.  Cornelius might also be viewed as a kind of satirical response to the popularity of James Bond in the popular imagination of the 1960s.  Unlike Bond, however, Cornelius tends to work against authority and entrenched power.  The science fiction character originally appeared in three additional Moorcock novels, including A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassins and The Condition of Muzak.  

 

Moorcock is known and revered as being one instigator of the British New Wave in science fiction literature, a span which occurred when he took over editorship of New Worlds in 1964. The notion of this “new wave” was that high and mass art could be combined in the dismantling of technical and traditional structure. Characters thus became not individuals only, but avatars upon which one could assign symbols.  The world imagined in Cornelius’s world was retro, one in which the past -- and thus past works of fiction and art -- played a crucial part in the “future.”

 

 Robert Fuest (1929 – 2012), a visual director of the highest order who helmed The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1972) and began his career as a painter and set designer, adapted the first Jerry Cornelius novel to film in 1973, but the final result failed to please the award-winning Moorcock, and by-and-large confused mainstream audiences. Studying The Final Programme today, its primary strengths are its colorful pop visual design, which might aptly be described as “psychedelic chic,” and the lead performance by Finch, who proves dashing, erotic and entirely in-the-know regarding the satirical aspects of his character.

 

Outside those admirable elements, however, the film makes for a frequently a baffling viewing experience, especially to those unfamiliar with the source material and the character of Cornelius. To put it bluntly, Fuest seems to have directed all of his considerable attention into the admittedly-impressive avant-garde visualizations and given scant thought to the script and how it moves from scene to scene, set-piece to set-piece.  Absolutely nothing is made clear regarding who the characters are, their relationships to each other, or what motives drive them. The film itself feels as though it is happening in some alternate universe where the viewer knows none of the rules, history, people, or other details of life.

 

For example, Sterling Hayden appears in just one scene in the film, in the first few minutes, and gives such an odd over-the-top performance, right down to a fourth-wall-breaking glare at the camera, that the movie grinds to a self-indulgent halt.  Is Hayden attempting to revive some mirror universe version of his beloved Dr. Strangelove (1964) character? Or is he making a comment on the absurdity of the modern military mentality and its penchant for naming aircrafts and aircraft parts with letters and numerals? Even the structural use the character is put to proves utterly baffling, and a narrative dead end.  He is introduced with flourishes of grandeur as though he is a main character, but he never reappears. He furnishes Cornelius a new, kitted-up jet….which the film then never actually shows, either.  

 

If the message of The Final Programme is but style over substance, this approach makes sense. The form of the New Wave (with the past resurrected as the future…) means that Hayden’s presence symbolizes a pop-culture reference to and comment upon an actor’s similar role in the aforementioned Dr. Strangelove. The viewer must thus acknowledge both the actor and a previous character to fully comprehend his appearance here. In this way, perhaps, the film’s milieu accurately reflects Moorcock’s New Wave aesthetic to a high degree. But once more, the film baffles on more concrete levels. After this interlude with Hayden’s general, Cornelius meets with Brunner and a gaggle of scientists who want to break into his family house, which is outfitted with booby traps, such as a sound device that provokes “pseudo epilepsy” and toxic green and orange-colored gas.  The interchangeable scientist characters unnecessarily clutter the sequence and are virtually indistinguishable from one another in terms of appearance and personal characteristics. One scientist would have done just fine for story purposes.  

 

Then, bafflingly, the scientists end up in a weird tent room booby trap that resembles a modern bouncy house. Why is Cornelius’s house outfitted this way?  What is the purpose of the tent room?   Once more, no answers of any kind are forthcoming. It’s visually appealing, but nonsensical, like so much of the film. Again, it seems to be style for style’s sake.

 

In short order, it becomes clear that The Final Programme is indeed pure phantasmagoria, a visual “dream,” essentially, with no interest in providing audiences a lucid narrative experience.  The visuals are such that they engage the imagination, but they simply can’t carry a film in which there is no real character to care about, and every aspect of the plot is treated with a self-indulgent smirk.  Like 1975’s Doc Savage, the film qualifies as high camp.

 

Again, the British New Wave interpretation might simply be that Fuest subverts the mock-profundity of many Kubrick films here, particularly with the re-appearance of Hayden, seemingly still in character from Dr. Strangelove, as well as the film’s ending, which functions as a weird inversion of and comment on the Star Child ending in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Brunner and Cornelius join to become the ultimate self-replicating human, but instead of a beautiful messiah, a Neanderthal unexpectedly emerges from this union.  

 

And the Neanderthal (in Jerry’s voice) does a Humphrey Bogart imitation as the movie ends… 

 

This ending could be the direct answer to a question posed explicitly early in the film (in flashback) when Jerry’s mentor, a Hindu professor, wonders if people would recognize the messiah when he appears.  The answer is, of course, that we wouldn’t.  We all have our own individual vision of what the messiah should be, and a genuine one would have a difficult time living up to the multitudinous images.  

 

Would we accept a Bogart-quoting Neanderthal as the next Jesus Christ?

    

Well, many people have accepted an orange-skinned reality star as one, so who knows?

 

The Final Programme also suggests man’s devolution and return to the beginning of his life-span on Earth, in pre-history, rather than a 2001-like transcendence into a glorious future. This is a comment on modern man and the failure he has become in the “Dark Ages” of the 20th century.  Better then, to become a Neanderthal, and take a do-over. 

 

This ending is not strictly what Moorcock imagined in the novel (where the messiah was beautiful, not a caveman) and was widely ridiculed by movie critics who felt it was an unworthy destination after such a trying, self-indulgent journey.  Yet the problem was not the idea -- that man’s future was in going back to the beginning – but rather the non-serious way in which it was addressed, with the Neanderthal Cornelius adopting the much-mocked mannerisms of Bogart.  Why Bogart? What does he symbolize? A pre-Bond film noir presence, perhaps, one that acknowledges (like Cornelius) that authority is inherently corrupt and positions the hero as outsider.  

 

Is the final image of a Neanderthal Hero spouting Bogart-isms (and opining that the world looks tasty) in The Final Programme the equivalent of announcing a return to a pre-1960s aesthetic? The 1960s and the popularity of Ian Fleming’s character suggested violence is beautiful, performed by beautiful men, and always acceptable because they serve the State.  Before Bond, gumshoes like the ones Bogart played on the silver screen were much more conflicted about violence and their responsibilities to society as a whole.

 

It is tempting to defend The Final Programme on the basis of its often-sensual visuals and clever witticisms. It is also tempting to defend it as a British New Wave commentary on popular art and its role in fostering the establishment. There are legitimate grounds for approbation.  But as a lucid narrative the film just never coheres.  

 

For instance: what has Miss Brunner to gain by becoming the self-replicating entity that appears at film’s conclusion?  She already possesses the amazing ability to -- through sexual intercourse -- absorb the memories, knowledge, and identities of her lovers (whom she consumes, we must assume, in a physical sense).  This ability is an amazing evolutionary adaptation in and of itself, and yet the film doesn’t acknowledge how miraculous a creature she is. Given her own special abilities, Brunner’s quest for evolutionary perfection hardly makes sense.  Why not let two other folks (Cornelius and Jenny, perhaps) undergo the dangerous experiment and then simply “consume” and absorb the product of their union, while safely and securely maintaining her own identity and superiority? 

 

Instead, when the Neanderthal super-being emerges, there is no sign of Brunner whatsoever.  The being is decidedly male, decidedly Neanderthal, and decidedly Cornelius.  The Brunner part of him has been completely buried. This may serve as rich justice for a person who consumed others.  She is consumed herself, finally. 

 

It’s also disappointing that Cornelius’s relationship with his sister in the film is given short-shrift, and that there is almost no notice taken of the beloved hero’s free-wheeling and ambiguous sexuality.  In the film, Jerry seems decidedly heterosexual, which is fine, but not accurate or faithful to the literary source.  Perhaps a bisexual Jerry Cornelius in the early 1970s is too much to ask of any film, but The Final Programme is an artwork of such wondrous excess one wonders why this  particular and daring idea was dropped.

 

It is very apt to suggest that stylist Fuest was here attempting to transform the ethos of the British New Wave to the science fiction cinema, but The Final Programme is so confusing and closed-off in the final analysis that one can’t even begin to enunciate all the concerns with it. Instead, like Jerry, one has to ask first “what are the questions?”  

Guest Post: Immaculate (2024)

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An Immaculate Ass Kicking

 

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

 

John Wick for the rectory set, Immaculate is a vicious satire of religious fanaticism. Produced by its lead, Sydney Sweeney, the movie takes its revenge on thousands of years of misogyny.

 

Novice American nun Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) enters a remote Italian convent where the priests and nuns are overly welcoming in a transparent way. She quickly discovers that, though a virgin, she is with child. Suddenly, the convent, run by Father Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), sets to make her the martyr, carrying the next coming of the messiah. 

 

Director Michael Mohan clues the audience in on the creepy underbelly of the convent almost immediately. His protagonist, even before discovering her immaculate pregnancy, is on edge, noticing peculiar behavior from the nuns and priests.  Mohan and writer Andrew Lobel remind the audience of Dario Argento’s classic Suspiria with its similar lead character’s trajectory (an American in a foreign land stumbling upon a demonic plot), but without Argento’s technicolor pallet. In its stead is a character finding her power to fight formidable, nefarious forces. The film highlights the church’s cruelty towards women, and its disregard for anything but their fetus. 

 

Sweeney makes a refreshing heroine, and allows her character’s arc from fragile child to empowered, avenging angel to be eminently credible. Morte makes a strong antagonist as a character who proves that a science background doesn’t guarantee an enlightened soul. Benedetta Porcaroli is engaging as Sister Gwen, Ceciia’s only ally. 

 

The film has ambitious intentions about weighty religious subjects and hits the zeitgeist during our hangover after the Supreme Court’s once-unthinkable reversal of Roe Vs Wade.  However Immaculate devolves into a crowd-pleasing but superficial film, where Cecilia transforms into Sister Rambo. There are some wild cringeworthy visual moments, including a hilariously grotesque metaphor for the birthing canal, which make the film worth watching — even if it’s no classic on the level of other religious horror films The Exorcist or The Omen.

40 Years Ago: The NeverEnding Story (1984)

The NeverEnding Story  (1984), a child-like, innocent fantasy film made in Germany by director Wolfgang Peterson.  His is a name you will recognize immediately for his efforts in the genre like  Enemy Mine  (1985) and those outside it too, such as  Das Boot  (1981).
The NeverEnding Story  also features stellar practical effects from Brian Johnson, the accomplished special effects director and guru behind  Space: 1999's  (1975 -1977) miniatures and pyrotechnics, plus the effects of  The Empire Strikes Back  (1980) and  Aliens  (1986). Many of the landscapes and creatures Johnson devised for this cinematic effort remain positively wondrous a quarter-century on.  

Both tonally and visually,  The NeverEnding Story  boasts a softer, more whimsical vibe than the film's appreciably darker and more adult contemporaries,   Krull  or Legend for instance. But the world  The NeverEnding Story  so ably depicts is also refreshingly fanciful and indeed, a bit surreal; what  Variety  called a "flight of pure fancy."

I realize the 40 year old movie won't be everybody's cup of tea, however.  It's not all Rrc battles, clashing armies and sword fights; and there's never any sense that this tale is part of some larger, realistic, otherworldly saga.  

Instead, as valuable description of the film's atmosphere, let me quote the  Boston Globe's  Michael Blowen.  He termed the movie "so wonderfully appropriate to children that it seems to have been made by kids.  But there is enough artistic merit in the tale to enchant adults equally."

Looking back today, it's clear that  The NeverEnding Story  succeeds most powerfully indeed as this "dual track"-styled fantasy that Blowen hints at.  On one hand, this is a  genre film starring children and intended for children; alive with adventure, whimsy and excitement.  On another level all together, however, adults can enjoy the film because it cleverly references (albeit symbolically), the vicissitudes of adult life.  
When young Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) faces several dangerous tasks in the film, it is not just adventure or ordinary fairy tale creatures he countenances, but existential dilemmas about self, about the human psychology.
In the beginning, it is always dark.... 

A dangerous book: The NeverEnding Story.  The NeverEnding Story's  particular narrative arises from a popular and critically-acclaimed literary work by German writer, Michael Ende. Alas, Ende was allegedly unhappy with the film's translation of his 1979 book, in part, perhaps, because it depicts only the first half of his narrative. At the box office, the 27 million-dollar film was considered a bomb, though (lesser) sequels were eventually produced.  Critical reviews were mixed.  
In  The NeverEnding Story,  a sad boy named Bastian (Barret Oliver) is doing poorly in school after the untimely death of his mother.  His father is cold and distant, and Bastian feels alone, rudderless. At school, he is relentlessly bullied by his classmates, and the world feels devoid of hope; of warmth.
One day, Bastian hides from the bullies in a book store and learns from an old man named Koreander (Thomas Hill) of a strange book; a book that is different from all others.  It is called "The NeverEnding Story."   Koreander claims that it is not a safe book.  He hints it can actually transport the reader to another world, another time.
Alone in an attic, Bastian reads the mysterious book. It tells of a mythical world called Fantasia where a creeping "Nothing" is devouring the world a land at-a-time. 
A young boy, about Bastian's age -- Atreyu -- is summoned to the Ivory Tower to embark on a heroic quest.  The land's Empress is dying of a strange malady, one tied to the existence and spread of "The Nothing."  Atreyu must learn how to cure the Empress's disease, an act which should simultaneously stop the "The Nothing."  But it will not be easy.
Early on, Atreyu loses his beloved white steed, Artex, in the "Swamp of Sadness," attempting to contact "The Ancient One" -- a giant old turtle "allergic" to young people.  

There, Atreyu begs the apathetic old creature -- who lives by the motto "we don't even care whether or not we care" -- for help.  The Old One finally informs the boy warrior that he must travel ten thousand miles to the South Oracle if he hopes to get his answer about the Empress.
Fortunately, a luck dragon named Falcor rescues Atreyu from sinking further into the Swamp of Sadness, and transports him to the Southern Oracle.  There, with the help of two kindly elves, Engywook and Urgl, Atreyu faces two critical tests.  

First, he must walk through a gate in which is self-worth is judged.  If his self-worth is found lacking, two giant statues will destroy him with eye-mounted particle beam weapons.

The second test at the Southern Gates is the "magical mirror test."  There, Atreyu must gaze into a mirror and countenance his true self.  Here, brave men learn that they are cowards inside.  And kind men learn that they have been cruel.

Surviving both tests, Atreyu learns that he must next pass beyond the "boundaries" of Fantasia to save his world and his queen.  This is something of a trick answer, however, as he learns from his feral nemesis, Gmork.  

As Gmork confides in the warrior about Fantasia: "It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries."

In the end, worlds collide. Atreyu needs the help (and the belief) of Bastian in his world; and Bastian must be the one to save the Empress, even though at first he can't quite make himself believe that he can help.  As the Empress notes, Bastian "simply can't imagine that one little boy could be that important."

But, of course, he is...

We don't know how much longer we can withstand the nothing. 


A beacon of hope in Fantasia, The "Ivory Tower."
In the synopsis above, one can easily detect how the dangerous, fanciful quests in Atreyu's Fantasia (Fantastica in the Ende book...) translate into relevant messages about human life here on Earth, and in particular, the challenges of adulthood.

"The Swamp of Sadness," for instance, is a place that -- if you stop to dwell -- you sink further and further.  

In other words, this specific trap is a metaphor for self-pity.  If you stop to focus on how sad you are, how depressed you feel, you just keep sinking.  And the further you sink, the harder it is to escape; to pull yourself up.  Sadness creates more sadness.

And the Ancient Guardian?  

He represents apathy and old age; wherein acceptance of "how things are" has overcome the desperate need of  hungry youth to change (even save...) the world.  Appropriate then that this guardian should be visualized as a turtle...since he can just hide from everything in his over-sized shell, never to face reality.  As the movie notes, "There's no fool like an old fool!"


The Southern Gate's first test, of "self worth," also relates to us, right here, everyday.  If we don't believe in ourselves and what we can accomplish under our own steam, how can we make others believe in us or our abilities?  Feelings of strong self-esteem and self-worth must by need precede all quests of "self actualization," right? If you don't believe you can do something in the first place, why try?

The second Oracle test -- also encountered before victory -- involves facing yourself.  There are all sorts of "monsters" and crises to fear in our everyday lives, but none of those beasts is worse or more terrifying than self-reflection;  how we sometimes view and judge ourselves.  

The magical mirror test asks us to solemnly reflect on who we are; on who we have become.  Are we the good people we could be?  Or are we hypocrites hiding behind platitudes about being good? When we look in the mirror, which face do we see?

Even the movie's nebulous but effective central threat is contextualized as a danger to the psychology; a danger to self.  What's at stake if you have low self-esteem, if you sink into depression, and you don't see yourself truthfully in that mirror of conscience?  

Well, the creeping Nothing around you -- and inside you -- just grows and grows.  

"It's the emptiness that's left," Gmork says, describing the "Nothing."   "It's like a despair, destroying this world...Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger."

So, meet 1984's  The NeverEnding Story:  the self-help book of fantasy cinema, in which every challenge Atreyu faces alludes to the book's reader, Bastian, and his unique set of challenges.  Not to mention our challenges too.

Should he wallow in self-pity in despair, with the end result that the quicksand will consume him?  Should he hate himself because he is sad, and not pulling himself up by his bootstraps as his Dad desires?

If Bastian succumbs to these visions of himself (and does not see his own self worth), the Nothing consumes him...just as it consumes Fantasia.  The answer, of course, is to believe in himself, and this message is not as heavy handed as it might have been, in part because of the delightful fantasy trappings.  

It's amusing and also rather charming to see our grown-up fears (of depression) and foibles (like low self-esteem) made manifest into the physical genre trappings of the heroic quest; dangers to be avoided and beaten down.  Depression as a swamp. Apathy as a turtle inside his shell. Self-worth as a hurdle that must be crossed, etc.

Another highly commendable aspect of  The NeverEnding Story  is how it views imagination and education.  

Of course, the act of reading (and of imagining the adventures of literary figures) is championed here as a way of dealing with unpleasantness in real life; unpleasantness like death, and like bullying.  Reading is the catalyst of everything important in the film: the introduction to adventure and the key to saving the world.  As Julie Salomon wrote in  The Wall Street Journal  back in 1984,  The NeverEnding Story  "brings back the early excitement of reading as a child, when the act of turning pages took on a magical quality."

But more than that, I appreciate how  The NeverEnding Story  turns the idea of "the Ivory Tower" on its ear.  In metaphor, the Ivory Tower has become synonymous with something negative.  The phrase Ivory Tower widely "refers to a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life."

Today, people decry Ivory Tower residents as "elitists" or as being somehow bad, even evil.  Instead, ignorance and anti-intellectualism are raised up as virtues, instead.   Don't read the newspaper?  Great!  Don't know geography?  Terrific. Who's the leader of Pakistan?  Don't know? Don't care?  Outstanding.  

Well, as  The NeverEnding Story  makes plain, nothing bad EVER originates from the Ivory Tower.  Self-enrichment and education are universal positives...in any reality.  There is no down side to being smart; to  gathering knowledge; to being a resident of this "Ivory Tower."

Ask yourself, what do others gain by keeping another person away from learning, away from the proverbial Ivory Tower? By keeping others ignorant? That's the danger of anti-intellectualism right there; that someone will "bully" another being into being something less than what he or she could be.   

Gmork makes the case aptly:  "People who have no hopes are easy to control; and whoever has the control... has the power."

When you tie together  The NeverEnding Story's  multiple strands of education (and learning to read, to experience literary worlds), imagination (putting yourself into the literary fantasy...)  and self-worth to the movie's paradise -- "The Ivory Tower," --  you get the point plainly.   

It's a message perfectly suited for adults and kids: don't for a minute believe that one person can't be important.

The question, for viewers, of course, is simply: are you interested in a fantasy film created in this vein, a fantasy film in which the advice "never give up, and good luck will find you," is championed at the expense of more mature, nuanced themes.   

I can easily imagine that, before having a son, I might have felt that this message was somehow cheesy or over-the-top.   But being the parent of a seven-year old, I find myself appreciating  The NeverEnding Story  more than ever before.  The movie is fun and inventive, and it has a light touch with this material. I find it audacious and courageous that a fantasy movie should take the form of, literally, the aforementioned "self-help book."   

Now, I don't know that I would want other fantasies to emulate this mold; but in this case, the unusual symbolism successfully differentiates  The NeverEnding Story  from its many brethren of the early 1980s. The result is that the movie is distinctive...and memorable.

Of course, not everyone agreed.  Critic Vincent Canby wrote, of the movie's approach: "When the movie is not sounding like ''The Pre-Teen- Ager's Guide to Existentialism,'' it's simply a series of resolutely unexciting encounters between Atreyu and the creatures that alternately help and hinder his mission."

Perhaps that's true, but what about when the movie does sound like a Pre-Teen Ager's Guide to Existentialism?  For me, that's where this movie's worth ultimately resides; in the idea of real life foibles and crises made manifest in fantasy terrain.  I don't think the movie's great strength --  the brawny central conceit -- should be discounted quite so readily.

Having a luck dragon with you is the only way to go on a quest...  
Falcor, the Luck Dragon...looks suspiciously like a puppy.
The other factor that distinguishes  The NeverEnding Story  today is the film's pre-CGI visualization of Fantasia.  

In fact, this movie, -- much like  The Dark Crystal  (1982) -- is a wonderful testament to the things practical effects can achieve given an adequate budget and a sense of unrestrained imagination.  Here, an entire world is built from the ground up; and it's a world of leviathan Rock Biters, racing snails, Sadness Swamps, weird "elf-tech," and much more.  

Using prosthetics, gorgeous sets, miniatures, and mattes -- and no digital backgrounds or monsters whatsoever -- the makers of this film support the storyline with their droll, highly-detailed creations.  Some of these creations are really, really weird, mind you.  

For instance, the Rock Biter is an amazing, idiosyncratic and wholly individual thing. He's crazy-looking, and yet he's got real personality and character.  I can't say he looks "real"; more like something you'd imagine from  Alice in Wonderland.   And yet he has weight and presence, and when he is sad, you feel his pain.  In the movie, the Rock Biter contemplates giving himself to the Nothing, essentially committing suicide, and the pathos is authentic.  A bad special effect could not have accomplished that feeling.

Today, some of the flying effects don't hold up; certainly that is true.  The ending of the movie also feels sudden, and a little too convenient.

But nonetheless,  The NeverEnding Story  still has...something.  It may not be what we desire of a fantasy as "serious"  grown-ups, but trenchantly it does recall such youthful stories as  Peter Pan  and  Alice in Wonderland.

Empire's Ian Nathan wrote of  The NeverEnding Story : "This was sweet and charming at the time but now it just lacks either the comedy or sophistication of kids' fantasy film that we've all become accustomed to."

I agree with him that  The NeverEnding Story  remains sweet and charming.  And the film's sense of sophistication arises from the central conceit of turning human emotions -- depression, self-hatred, apathy -- into the trials of a heroic, fantasy quest.  

But I know what he means.   

There's the sense after watching the film that, somehow,  The NeverEnding Story  isn't merely child-like, it's actually childish.  

I'll leave it up to each individual viewer to decide if that's the film's ultimate weakness, or true blue strength.

Guest Post: Late Night with the Devil (2024)

Late Night With The Devil, The Ratings Are Killer

by Jonas Schwartz-Own

 

The demonic time capsule of the tumultuous 1970s, Late Night With The Devil, is a mastery of the Me Generation mise-en-scène. The production design is pitch perfect in its dreariness, visually evoking dread in a tale of television and the desperation for success.

 

Halloween 1977, Night Owls with Jack Delroy is fighting to beat the ratings of that epoch, The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. But while Johnny features A-Listers Jane Fonda, Mark Hamill, and Burt Reynolds as guests, Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) and his third-rate studio book grade-Z hacks and charlatans, yet still mysteriously pull in viewers. To celebrate the holiday, Jack brings on a side-show psychic (Fayssal Bazzi), a former magician turned skeptic (Ian Bliss), a reluctant parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) and her charge, a young survivor of a mass suicide cult (Ingrid Torelli). The little girl appears to have been invaded by a demonic being. Would an exorcism lift Jack to the top of the ratings?

 

Brother-writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes successfully capture ‘70s television so well, audiences may mistake the footage for being actually shot in 1977. The burnt colors of the set and costume design pallet, the tacky suits the actors wear, and muted tones of the cinematography pull the viewers through the looking glass. The opening, a montage of the chaotic ‘70s, works well on its own. Though it’s obvious the narration, provided by horror icon Michael Ironside, pays homage to the schlocky “In Search Of…” series with Leonard Nimoy or to the opening of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it’s too on the nose, and sets an overstated tone. The visuals themselves would have been better.  

 

It works well for the plot twists that the film set and its occupants are amateurish, despite the show’s high ratings. It suggests more milquetoast daytime fare, like the news show Panorama or The Dinah Shore Show, than the late -night master Johnny Carson or his competition. The camerawork also hammers home the shoddiness of the crew with its zooms and camera angles. 

 

Besides the blandness of the boob tube, the directors slyly reference two major classics of the era. The most obvious is Friedkin’s The Exorcist with its tale of a child possessed, as well as a visual reference to Jack MacGowran’s death. The directors also allude to Brian DePalma’s Carrie – the little girl’s long hair dripping down resembles everyone’s favorite prom queen, the screen splits to share different conversations at the same time, and the TV audience climbing over each other and tripping over seats is almost shot-for-shot the gymnasium carnage. 

 

The lead cast is outstanding.  Dastmalchian masters smarminess with a faux warmth hiding contempt that many late night guests notice from their hosts. Bliss is hilariously supercilious, as the debunker whose delusion of dominance is revealed by endlessly pontificating. Torelli unhinges the audience every time the camera hangs on her. With a haunting smile and menacingly calm demeaner, she’s the embodiment of a Manson girl. 

 

Some of the smaller roles though are a bit stiff, like Jack’s cameraman, which lifts the audience from believing that the terror is real in the behind-the-scenes moments. 

 

While their writing could use a bit more refinement (the opening and the fantasy denouement are both more over the top than necessary), Late Night With The Devil exposes the fresh talent of the Cairnes brothers, particularly with their direction.  

40 Years Ago: The Last Starfighter (1984)

During an era in which computer-generated special effects are often over-utilized, the phrase "it looks like a video game" has frequently been deployed by film critics as a cutting insult. 
In the case of Nick Castle's forty-year old outer space epic,  The Last Starfighter  (1984), however, the phrase is actually a compliment.

This is especially true if one subscribes to the critical theory -- as I do -- that a movie's shape or form ought to reinforce and supplement the movie's content.

Here,  The Last Starfighter's  video-game-themed visuals and flourishes -- primarily featuring outer-space warfare -- hark back to the movie's central concept: that of an earthbound arcade video game serving as a futuristic sword-in-the-stone, Excalibur test that uncovers hidden greatness and heroism among certain players..

And one quality I especially admire about  The Last Starfighte r today is that it this Excalibur test concerns skill and ability and not blood-lines.  
Alex  Rogan makes it to outer space (and escapes his trailer park origins...) based on his own abilities, not because he has the "right" genetic heritage, or midichlorians, or what have you.  
That's a message that bears repeating today, especially when it is becoming more and more difficult to achieve success if you are not rich, or from the right family.



“Things change. Always do.  You’ll get your chance. The import thing is: when it comes, you’ve got grab it with both hands and hold on tight.”

The Last Starfighter  depicts the heroic journey of young Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), a man searching for meaning in his life. 
Alex lives in a "flea-speck" trailer court -- the Starlite-Starbrite -- along with his Mom and little brother, Lewis. He has been turned down for a college loan, and now plans to partake in "a world-wide tour to nowhere."
Alex is also in love with the gorgeous Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart), a girl who seems afraid to cast her eyes and aspirations beyond the confines of their small world. 

"The truth is," he tells her, "you're scared of leaving the trailer park." But Alex actively desires an escape from his life of quiet desperation.

And to his surprise, he gets his wish...

When Alex achieves the new high score on an arcade game called Starfighter, he is promptly recruited by a flamboyant alien named Centauri (Robert Preston). 

After a lightning-fast journey to the stars, Alex must then save the peaceful planet Rylos from the invading space armada of the traitorous Zur and the barbaric Ko-Dan fleet. 
At first Alex refuses to fight in this dangerous galactic confrontation, but soon he accepts his destiny as a Starfighter, and -- with the help of an Iguana-like co-pilot named Grig (Dan O'Herlihy) -- takes on "The Black Terror of the Ko-Dan" in a ship called a GunStar. 



"Death is a primitive concept."

Along with Walt Disney's Tron (1982), The Last Starfighter is one of the earliest Hollywood productions to eschew models, miniatures, and motion-control photography for a new way.

Instead or relying on tried-and-true physical techniques, the film deploys digital representations of spaceships, planet surfaces, star-bases and the like in its various visual effects sequences. 

From space cars to GunStars, from the force-field of the breached Frontier to the Rylosian base, every image in  The Last Starfighter  is computer-generated.

These CG creations indeed appear primitive and lacking-in-necessary-detail to our trained, experienced 21st century eyes, but nonetheless, they still interact meaningfully with  The Last Starfighter's  subject matter and core themes. 

Specifically, Alex Rogan's cry of jubilation that real outer space combat is "just like the game!" is meant literally. 

Space battles intentionally look like golden age video game battles, and spaceship read-outs resemble the arcade game interface/console. 

When Alex grabs the joystick on his GunStar and blasts Ko-Dan fighters to smithereens for the first time, the audience is meant to remember and embrace Alex's experience with the arcade model; and indeed, its own experiences playing video games.

This is an important element of  The Last Starfighter . The film forges a positive connection between our grounded reality -- our popular forms of entertainment such as video games -- and the intergalactic society of the stars, which the film uses explicitly as a metaphor for achieving one's dreams and goals.

Released during the aforementioned video game's so-called Golden Age (1982-1987) -- the epoch of home systems such as the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision and Vectrex --  The Last Starfighter  thus develops an idea that every gamer has at least briefly, or perhaps subconsciously, entertained.

Simply stated, that idea is that the immersing video game platform is a gateway or training-ground that leads straight to real life adventure. The player thus imagines -- or wishes himself -- essentially, into the world of the game. 
A 1983 anthology film,  Nightmares  offers a darker contemplation of the same wish-fulfillment notion, landing Emilio Estevez's character into a deadly contest based on a fictional video game called "The Bishop of Battle. 

But in  The Last Starfighter,  Alex realizes his dream of escape (and personal importance...) via his skill in video games...and actually comes to touch the stars.

These two productions function as two sides of the same coin, and both acknowledge something brewing in the American pop culture at the dawn of video game popularity: the experiential nature of the new medium and the manner in which some players view reflexes and talents honed in the game world as real-life tools. 

Thus video games are no mere entertainment, and certainly not a waste of time.  They are, in fact, teaching tools.
Any film attempting to make this point in cinematic terms should indeed utilize special effects that audiences directly associate with the visuals of early era video games. Both  Nightmares  and  The Last Starfighter  accomplish that feat. 

In the latter case, the visuals of a  Star Trek  or a  Star Wars  film wouldn't work as cleverly here as do the CG effects. The audience wouldn't make the leap so cleanly from game to reality without the game-like special effects to connect the realms, or, more aptly, to connect the dreams with the achievement of the dreams.

While integrating the up-to-date video game craze of its time,  The Last Starfighter  also puts a mythical, classical spin on its tale. Specifically, the movie terms the Starfighter arcade game, an "Excalibur" test, alluding to the Arthurian legends of Camelot. 
Or, to adopt the movie's terminology itself: "only a few were found to possess the gift." Thus a joystick jockey isn't just a simple player then, but a hero-in-waiting, a king-in-the-making. One ready to pull the sword from the stone and accept his or her true destiny as hero. This approach to heroism is also splendidly democratic: anybody with the skill and talent can become a Starfighter. Station in life -- or point of origin -- (like a trailer park) doesn't matter.

What remains so much fun about  The Last Starfighter  today is the manner in which it imaginatively and humorously integrates the entertainment past (films like  Star Wars  and Arthurian literature) with what it views as the "future" of mass entertainment (video-games; CG effects).
This means that Robert Preston -- playing an alien named Centauri -- offers a variation on his beloved character from Morton DaCosta's classic  The Music Man  (1962). Like Harold Hill in that production, Centauri arrives at his destination (Starlite Starbrite Trailer Court, not River City) in a disguise of sorts. And like Harold Hill, Centauri's primary concern seems to be wealth. Of course, in the end, the scoundrel is revealed to have -- surprise! -- a heart of gold. That's true in both films.

Also, in keeping with the video game aesthetic of  The Last Starfighter,  Centauri's/Hill's colorful language has been updated. "You bet your asteroids," he quips at one point, and the audience just knows he's referring not to space-going rocks...but rather to Atari's 1979 arcade game,  Asteroids.
And when a Ko-Dan weapon targets a vulnerable starbase, the high-tech screens inside that facility cut to a real-time image of a streaking-missile or bomb that could have been lifted right from Dave Theurer's initiative for Atari, Missile Command (1980). A weapon with a trail inches irrevocably towards its destination, an unprotected (unshielded) installation. What follows -- just as in the game - is total annihilation.




The Last Starfighter  even offers a metaphysical spin on life and death, and one also related to the Tao of video games. After Centauri is believed dead, he returns to life (just in time for a happy ending). He claims to have simply been "dormant."



Of course, in video games, our avatars die and are re-born on a regular basis every time we hit the reset or start button on our consoles. 

In the world of  The Last Starfighter,  as in the world of video games, death is not a permanent state of affairs...it's actually a "primitive concept" according to Grig.  We live to fight another day and death may just be that "unseen dimension" in which we've activated the "off" switch till the next contest, the next burst of "life" and action.
The Last Starfighter  is a lot of fun, and a memorable genre film overall...if not always a great one. 

Watching it today, one can see how it suffers from a case of that 1980s affliction called "the cutes." Specifically, there's a lot of sub-adolescent humor involving Alex's little brother, and it's just seems goofy and unnecessary today. 

Of course, Lewis serves a purpose in the plot beyond the wise-cracks and young-skewing humor too. Near film's end, we see him applying himself to the Starfighter arcade game. The next generation awaits its turn...

But when  The Last Starfighter  fires on all thrusters, it really works. It captures what few films that followed  Star Wars  managed to re-create: a sense or aura of unfettered fun.

Appropriately, the film's final shot is a memorable and even stirring one. The camera is aimed towards the Heavens, as Alex, Maggie and Grig return to the stars aboard the accelerating GunStar. 

But below the GunStar -- closer to us in the shot, at the lower left-hand corner of the frame -- stands the neon, flickering star icon/sign of the Starlite/Starbrite Trailer Park.

Like so much of the film's visuals, that neon, colored light seems a reflection of down-to-Earth technology, of the video game graphics of the day.

The image is simple and basic, but still a beacon in the night calling us to adventure. And oppositely, calling adventure to us.

In one closing shot, we get both our grounded reality (the reality of video games) and the dream of a better one: a rocket ship bound for adventure. It's a beautiful and valedictory image, and if you consider  The Last Starfighter  a film about dreaming big dreams, a meaningful one too.
Early in  The Last Starfighter , Alex notes with despair that he is "only" a kid from Earth, not a starfighter. Centauri replies that "if that's what you think, that's all you'll ever be." 
We can't all be heroes and starfighters, but Centauri's words remind audiences that when humans apply themselves, opportunities arise. When we dream (even if we're "dreaming" video games...), we imagine new possibilities.
A high score in life opens up all sorts of doorways. Not just to outer space, but to adventures unknown and great. And when we hear the words, "Greetings Starfighter," it's our responsibility to grab the joystick, kick in the thrusters, and go for the gusto. 
In suggesting that very course of action,  T he Last Starfighter  may not be great art, but in its own entertaining way, it's an inspiring genre film, and one worthy of a re-visit.  The film is as fresh and fun, and rousing as it was four decades ago.

30 Years Ago: The Shadow (1994)

In terms of comic-book or superhero films, there’s a long-standing rule that Hollywood producers have forgotten on multiple occasions.

Period genre films fail at the box office.

Indeed, Hollywood history is littered with the corpses of period superhero or comic-book movies with titles such as  Doc Savage: Man of Bronze  (1975),  Dick Tracy  (1990),  The Rocketeer  (1991),  The Shadow  (1994),  The Phantom  (1998),  Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow  (2004) and  John Carter  (2012).

All these films either adapt older properties that are no longer popular enough to generate popular success, or are new properties that serve as homages (like  Raiders of the Lost Ark  [1982]…) to the decade of the 1930s.

Either way, these films don't meet with widespread audience approbation.
Because these films all failed, however, that does not necessarily mean that they are artistic failures.  
Indeed, I count  The Rocketeer, Sky Captain  and  John Carter  as remarkable successes in terms of universe-building, and in the successful re-capturing an earlier era in entertainment. 
I’m conflicted on Warren Beatty’s  Dick Tracy . It’s a beautifully-made film, but largely an empty one, at least in terms of human interest.

Then, there's  The Shadow , the 1994 Russell Mulcahy adaptation of the Walter B. Gibson character created in 1931, and it occupies a slot close to  Dick Tracy  in terms of my admiration assessment.  
There are several powerful and successful elements at work in the film, and the jaunty, tongue-in-cheek tone makes it less dire (and less difficult to sit through) than Beatty’s 1990 comic-book film.

Some critics of the day saw these virtues and made note of them. Jeff Laffel at Films in Review observed, for instance, that  The Shadow  was a “lot less pretentious” than Tim Burton’s  Batman  (1989) and a “whole lot of fun.”  

In Cinefantastique, James Faller felt that the movie had “much to recommend it,” but that there was “never much sense of urgency or identification with the title character.”  

On the opposite end of the spectrum, The New York Post’s Michael Medved called  The Shadow  “the most embarrassing big studio bomb of the summer.”

I don’t find the thirty year old movie embarrassing in the slightest.  
The Shadow  is a fun if overlong movie, buttressed by Alec Baldwin’s game performance.  I do agree with Faller that, by film’s end, the film feels more like a breezy, occasionally diverting effort than a compelling, necessary movie.

“The clouded mind sees nothing.”

In the early twentieth century, not long after the First World War -- in far off Tibet -- American ex-patriot Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) has become a ruthless warlord who terrorizes the locals. 
One day, he is abducted from his HQ and brought before a Tulpa, a Tibetan instructor who teaches him how to ‘cloud’ the minds of enemies.  He will pay for his crimes by fighting other criminals.

Years later, Lamont lives in New York and operates as ‘The Shadow,’ a vigilante who strikes fear into the heart of Manhattan’s gangsters. The Shadow also controls, from his sanctum, a network of associates/agents who owe him favors since he saved their lives. 

As Lamont falls in love with Margo Lane (Penelope Anne Miller), the telepathic daughter of a scientist (Ian McKellen), a new threat rises. 
The evil Shiwan Khan (John Lone) arrives in NYC to take over the world. He wields a deadly weapon, thanks to Dr. Lane; a Beryllium sphere, or atom bomb!


“You know what evil lurks in the heart of men.”

One quality that makes  The Shadow  a lot of fun is its bubbly, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.  The film doesn't take itself too seriously, and that makes the re-assertion of dark superhero tropes bearable at times.
Also, Alec Baldwin -- who would have been the ultimate Batman in the eighties and nineties -- is perfect as the urbane, and faintly sinister Lamont Cranston. 

Baldwin plays a man whom the audience can believe truly boasts a seething dark side. Not only is he saturnine in appearance, with piercing eyes, but he possesses a gravelly, authoritarian voice. In 1994, Baldwin was the perfect choice for The Shadow, especially given the character’s roots in radio (a voice-driven art form).  He looks right, and he sounds right too.

The Shadow’s  opening scene set in Tibet also seems, in some crucial way, to forecast one of the crucial (and best) sequences in Christopher Nolan's  Batman Begins  (2005).  There, as you may recall, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale traveled to Ladakhi, a location inhabited by people of Tibetan descent. 
There, he trained to become a great warrior (and consequently a superhero), and master his fear. That’s pretty much what happens in the prologue of  The Shadow,  with the path of Lamont’s life altered forever by is training at the hands of the Tulpa. 

In some ways, this period of Far Eastern training works better, at least in terms of character consistency, in  The Shadow. 
Batman may be “the dark knight,” based on his childhood traumas, but Lamont is recruited to his superhero calling because, literally, of the darkness coruscating inside him. 
He is picked for training because he carries some essential understanding -- based on his history as the “Butcher of Lhasa” -- of his own psyche. He knows what evil lurks in the heart of men as The Shadow, because that evil lurks within him.  But Cranston's training has helped him master it.  
At least most of the time.

If  The Shadow’s  prologue forecasts  Batman Begins , then it is fair to state the opposite case too. 
The Shadow  also feels very much like a child of Tim Burton’s  Batman.  The first scene after the Tibetan prologue in  The Shadow , for example, imitates the opening scene of  Batman  to an uncomfortable degree. Just as the mysterious Batman terrorized street level criminals in Gotham City in that film, The Shadow here confronts a number of thugs on the Brooklyn Bridge.  
It is fair, to state, of course, that all superhero films feature scenes of heroes in criminals in conflict. 
But just consider the underlying feeling or details at work in both sequences.  

Specifically, the Shadow and Batman are both such terrifying presences that leave their respective criminals shaking and quaking in horror at their existence.  
In both cases, the hero has become a near-mythical or superhero monster, not merely a superhero.  There is a connection, in both cases, with darkness, monstrosity, and villainy. The Batman and The Shadow are both icons of fright, in these productions, at least before the audience gets to know them. They strike fear into the heart of men.

Superman doesn't do that. And neither did Adam West's Batman. Post-Dark Knight/Frank Miller, superheroes at the cinema had to be thee brooding, creatures of the night, stalking their prey under moonlight.

Also to the downside, the love affair in  The Shadow  between Margo Lane and Lamont Cranston feels very de rigueur, much like the unholy combination of the Superman/Lois Lane relationship, and the Batman/Vicky Vale relationship.  
Like the former, the love interest is named “Lane” and represents a “threat” to the hero because of some experience or knowledge she brings to the table, either as a hardcore investigative reporter or a psychic,  
And like Vicky, Margo “gets inside,” finding access to the hero’s dark, closed off world.

I don’t believe that  The Shadow  is as visually compelling or inventive as  Dick Tracy  is.  That film’s overwhelming and distinctive color scheme -- as well as its fidelity to keeping action sequences confined to individual “frames”-- resulted in a singular entertainment.  Yet  The Shadow  does a remarkably effective and impressive job creating 1930s New York City, and locations such as The Cobalt Club, The Empire State Building, the Monolith Hotel, and the aforementioned Brooklyn Bridge.

I should also note the film’s “prophetic” touches. There are some fun moments in  The Shadow  that require one to understand the history of America since the 1930s. For example, Khan quips at one point about creating a “New World Order,” and that was a critical comment of the first President Bush’s era in American politics. 
By bringing in the future, through lines of dialogue such as this,  The Shadow  proves in fact, that it is not about a sinister and complex world, but an innocent one. The appeal is thus nostalgic.
Today, I'm not sure that's a quality the the film should have aimed for.

And even though  The Shadow  is actually one of the key influences behind the Batman mythos, the long-lived hero comes off in this film like a knock-off of such modern heroes as Batman, or even Darkman. 
Furthermore, the film's supporting characters -- Roy Tam, Margo Lane, Moe Shrevnitz -- are unfamiliar to most audiences.  Sure, they are faithful to  The Shadow’ s history, but there’s the feeling this feeling about the film that it is about ten-to-twenty years too late to please those who grew up with the Gibson character.

A sequel to  The Shadow  might have had the opportunity to build on the good things presented in this film (especially the Baldwin performance), but audiences never got the chance for a return engagement.  Instead, this film simultaneously seemed too new and too much the same not to ‘cloud’ the minds of its confused audience.
As I’ve noted, I like  The Shadow.  I think it’s a notch or two better than Beatty’s  Dick Tracy , at least as pure, human entertainment.  
But I also think  The Shadow  proves the point that period superhero movies represent a tricky bet at the box office.

When we look to our silver screen superheroes, we don't want the adventures of yesteryear.  Instead, we want cutting edge technology and characters, apparently.  
Too late,  The Shadow  knows this.

40 Years Ago: Conan The Destroyer (1984)

After a high-flying first film in the franchise – due in large part to director John Milius’s symbolic visuals -- the cinematic  Conan  saga loses some dramatic altitude with this average but not disastrous follow-up, 1984’s  Conan the Destroyer .  

The sequel film, now 40 years old, is a fairly innocuous -- but also fairly childish -- adventure that adopts the wrong tack in terms of Conan’s motivations, and ham-handedly defines him as a gullible hulk rather than as a cunning warrior.  

In short, it’s difficult to believe Conan would become involved in this adventure’s “quest,” especially for the specific reasons that he does. The literary Conan -- and the Conan of Milius’s film -- would know better. 

Furthermore, the precise quest that Conan undertakes in this film from Richard Fleischer -- while picturesque at times thanks to some good 1980s special effects -- nonetheless feels like a tightly-budgeted one. 

Specifically, the major battle sequences are all small potatoes in scope and execution… especially compared to  Conan the Barbarian.  These fights are relatively uninvolving affairs shot with little distinction, on small sets, and featuring uninspiring creatures that Conan would easily dispatch under many circumstances.  

Also, the film abandons the principle of preparedness by which Conan defeated the legions of Thulsa Doom in the finale of  Conan the Barbarian.   Thus the fights here seem more like impromptu wrestling matches than warrior-against-warrior combat.

With some rather under-compelling performers in the secondary roles,  Conan the Destroyer  just feels a lot like a middling, second-rate sequel to a legitimate masterpiece. It’s not a  Superman III  (1983) or  Superman IV  (1986) styled disaster, to be certain, but the second Conan film nonetheless disappoints, falling far short of its superior model.

“We shall both have everything we want through magic.”

Queen Taramis (Sarah Douglas) of Shadizar recruits the great warrior Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) for a quest.  After promising Conan that she can resurrect his lost love, Valeria, she entices him to take her niece, Jehnna (Olivia D’Abo) to retrieve a sacred jewel that can awaken Dagoth, the “dreaming God.”

Conan, with his sidekick, Malak the Thief (Tracey Walter) agrees to Taramis’s terms, even though the warrior is not thrilled to be accompanied by the captain of the Queen’s guard, Bombaata (Wilt Chamberlain). 

Conan is also unaware that Taramis’s true plan involves sacrificing Jehnna in order to awaken Dagoth.

After recruiting his wizard friend Akiro (Mako) from cannibals, and freeing Zula (Grace Jones) -- a warrior facing down angry villagers that she has robbed -- Conan and his team retrieve the jewel from the castle of Toth-Amon (Pat Roach). In a Hall of Mirrors, Conan defeats the wizard in close quarters combat.

Later, at an ancient temple, Jehnna and Conan retrieve the horn of Dagoth, and Bombaata springs his trap, abducting Jehnna and taking her prize back to Queen Taramis.

Conan rides back to Shadizar to save Jehnna, and to stop the monstrous Dagoth…who has awakened to wreak havoc on the world of man.
 “It seems that men like women warriors.”

It appears that many of  Conan the Destroyer’s  problems arise with the basic premise, and Conan’s participation in this particular adventure.

Specifically, Taramis promises Conan that she can return Valeria to him, and Conan much too easily accepts both the possibility of such a resurrection, and the Queen’s motivations for delivering on her promise. 

The Conan of literature and film has always had a tremendous suspicion of magic, and yet here he decides to undertake a quest which will have magical results (the re-birth of a God…), so that he can be the beneficiary of other magical results (the re-birth of his would-be queen).

In short, it just doesn’t seem like Conan to take Taramis at her word about such a grave matter. He should be more suspicious of the Queen and her promises, especially given Sarah Douglas’s haughty (but good…) performance.  She doesn’t exactly inspire trust.

Conan should know that Valeria cannot return to him and that even if she could, it would be…unnatural.   

A better screenplay might have been tweaked to reflect the idea that Conan undertakes this quest for different reasons, ones entirely his own, and probably concerning the fact that he senses a terrible danger.  

Or, simply, the screenplay might have had one scene --  just one scene -- in which Conan questioned the use of magic to restore Valeria.  

Under those circumstances would Valeria want to be restored?  

Conan -- Valeria’s soul mate -- would know the answer instinctively.

Beyond Conan’s willingness to accept that his beloved Valeria can and will return to him, I find it highly unlikely that this warrior would go on a quest in which the end game is, quite clearly, resurrecting a slumbering God.

Conan has almost as little use for Gods as he does for magic.  

So why would Conan agree to help recover an object that could bring about the reign of a dark, monstrous figure, even if he doesn’t know the specifics of how dark or how monstrous the revived Dagoth would actually be?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is once again much more than satisfactory as Conan, but there are times during the film when the adventure seems more appropriate to some other fantasy character, not the man from Cimmeria.    Conan the Barbarian  dramatized the story of how Conan was forged and tempered, how he became a man.  It was a vital story to tell.   Conan the Destroyer  plays like a boiler-plate adventure, and not one that is particularly notable in Conan’s life.

It’s also plain -- since this film is rated PG, not R -- that  Conan the Destroyer  begins the unfortunate process of mainstreaming Conan, of making him “acceptable” to parents and other establishment figures worried about “morality.”  

To wit, there is almost no sex in the film at all. Conan is absolutely chaste here. There are no interludes like the kinky one with the witch/demon in  Conan the Barbarian . One might argue that Conan is in mourning, of course, but sex has been subtracted not just from his character, but from the film’s very DNA.

Similarly, there is much less gore here than in the previous film, though we do witness Conan’s decapitation of a cannibal while saving the wizard.  The violence is all just more…palatable, and therefore less involving, and less exciting.

The straight-forward, kiddie-friendly approach to the Conan universe might have worked more effectively if there was a larger, more spectacular background tapestry upon which to rely.  Although there are some impressive shots in the film of animal bones in the desert, and mystical and mysterious kingdoms, the big action set-pieces prove remarkable unmemorable.
The Hall of Mirrors sequence doesn’t make a lot of sense given the way the special effects play out, because Conan is able to determine which “reflection” is the real monster without hardship or confusion. 

Secondly, the creature’s make-up in this scene is horrible.  

And thirdly, this sequence is one of the movie’s two big fights, and it occurs in a small room, and with almost no elaboration or detail. It’s just a grudge match.

Worse, the climax in the Queen’s kingdom plays as a repeat of Hall of Mirrors battle. Dagoth awakes, and he looks like a Dark God as imagined by H.P. Lovecraft.  But he is no more difficult to put down than the mirror creature was.  And again, the battle takes place in one room, with Conan indulging, basically, in one-on-one combat.  It just feels very small potatoes, very rushed, especially compared, again, to the first film’s set-pieces. 
I have read that some critics and viewers have a problem with Grace Jones’ character, Zula, but for me, she worked just fine.  Zula doesn’t talk too much, she’s useful in a fight, and there’s no sentimentalizing of the character to any significant degree.  She’s the kind of sidekick I prefer in such fare: a capable and loyal fighter who doesn’t feel the need to crack jokes all the time.
For me, the characters who don’t work are, primarily, Malak and Bombaata.  Malak is second-rate comic relief, and not particularly useful in a fight, or any other pinch, which makes one wonder why Conan keeps him around.  

In Wilt Chamberlain’s hands, Bombaata lacks any sense of genuine menace at all, either physical or psychological.  He just comes off as…flat. 
Meanwhile, Olivia D’Abo has the thankless task of playing the Lynn Holly Johnson ( For Your Eyes Only ) role to Schwarzenegger’s Conan, lusting eternally after him, but too young for the barbarian to take seriously as a sexual conquest. D’Abo is capable in the role, but again, Jehnna is not particularly well-defined.  She knows all aspects of the Dagoth legend by heart, except the particulars of her role in it?
There’s a whole lot of walkin’ in  Conan the Destroyer  (a flaw in many modern fantasy films, I find…), and while the scenery is relatively beautiful, the relative “emptiness” of the narrative leaves one time to ponder how disappointing the film is, or how out-of-character Conan seems, or how the film might have been better without some of the stunt casting, like Chamberlain.

Less audacious, less raunchy, less downright naughty than  Conan the Barbarian , this 1984 sequel is straight-forward and often fun, but it is not the Conan sequel most of us hoped for, even with Arnold Schwarzenegger inhabiting the role for a second time. 

The first film remains a work of pop art of the first order, a magnificent epic that comments on aspects of our society, and which conveys its meaning through deftly-executed symbolic imagery. 

Conan the Destroyer’s  approach is entirely more mundane and workman-like. The movie entertains moderately, moment-to-moment, but that is not accomplishment near grand enough for this particular barbarian.