Monster: Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

There are some pretty obvious similarities between this film and the one I reviewed yesterday.  Both feature horrific creatures spawned by science gone awry.  Both feature 'teenagers' venturing to aquatic locations they don't know are dangerous.  Both have quite a lot of talky bits to pad out the run time between monster attacks.  Both even feature lead actors who were probably wondering how their career ended up in this schlock.

There are two significant differences, however.  The first is that this film is considerably better executed.  The second is that it has a whole lot more sleaze.

That sleaze was actually the subject of considerable controversy among the cast and crew. Producer Roger Corman, whose guiding principle has always been "what will make money?" felt that to get a "yes" for this film, it needed more raunchiness, so he filmed additional, highly sexual scenes after the main photography was complete.  The director and lead female actor both asked for their names to be removed from the film after seeing the final cut, but their requests were refused.

Putting aside the fact that Corman could be rather a jerk (which will not be news to anyone familiar with his career), how's the film?  Well for me, despite my general antipathy toward sexual assault as a plot element, Humanoids is so flagrant in its sleaziness and so blatant about its formula, that I find it hard to dislike.  It might be cynically exploitative, but at least it is honest about that fact.

So yeah, this is very much a boobs 'n' blood kind of film; perhaps the only movie I've seen that is more aggressively so is 2010's Piranha 3D.  Which I will review here one day, I am sure.  If you're simply not going to be entertained by a very deliberately exploitative film, you should skip it.  I certainly wouldn't blame you for feeling that way.

If you can look past that issue though, there's actually a well-crafted monster movie in here.  The influence of films like Jaws and Alien are obvious, but those certainly aren't bad movies to draw upon.  I like the design and execution of the Humanoids, and their attack sequences are staged effectively.  Their origin story and motivations are also sufficiently gonzo that I have a soft spot for them.  Finally, the film is smart enough to include an amusing subversion of its own tropes at one point, which provoked an outright laugh of pleasure from me as I was watching.

If you're in the mood for a trashtastic creature feature, this is worth catching.

Night Fright (1967)

My first thought on seeing the title of this film was to wonder if it was a cheapie knock-off of mid-80s vampire flick Fright Night, but it's actually nearly 20 years older, and also far goofier.

The film starts with a familiar trope: two college kids making out at lover's lane get murdered by an unseen assailant.  Before they get around to being killed, though, they find time for some exposition about a rocket crashing nearby.  Golly, could the two be related in some way?

B-movie stalwart John Agar is the local sheriff.  He decides to close the lake where the kids go to make out, but also decides not to tell them why.  I bet that plan goes great, Johnboy.

So, to spoil the film's big reveal: the murderer is a gorilla that NASA sent into space to study the effects of cosmic radiation.  As justifications for your monster being a guy in a gorilla suit and a funky mask go ... well, it is one.  Which puts this film at least one step ahead of Robot Monster.

So anyway, the monster roams around the woods - always at night, so the shortcomings of the costume are less obvious - while the Sheriff tries to find it (given the nature of the wounds on the first two victims, he does know it is an "it" of some kind).  In parallel to this we get a pretty tiresome teen drama about some wholesome young man and his wholesome new girlfriend, and his possibly-jealous ex and her bad boy beau.  Possibly jealous ex is also the younger sister of the sheriff's own girlfriend (who looks a good twenty years younger than the mid-40s Agar).  So there's a whole lot of talky talk going on in between the sporadic monster attacks.  Talky-talk like:

"But... but seriously, have you... have you ever thought about... oh, sometimes when I'm alone I think about things that we don't know about... about the sky and the earth and the air and the wind... or even this leaf."

Dialogue for the ages, that.

This was a very cheap production, something that is clear not just from the hokey nature of the monster costume but also from the extensive amount of padding: we get several long sequences of Agar walking around the forest, and of the college kids dancing (which reveals that the director was particularly enamored of one extra's backside), both of which serve to eat up time.  The latter sequence also shows up the movie's lack of concern with continuity, as the twilight dancing scene is intercut with other events that were clearly filmed in the middle of the day.

I actually had fun watching this because (a) the stuff with the teens is so badly done and (b) the monster only ever attacks people when they're in cars (though it will chase them if they leave the vehicle), which led me to conduct a theory that it was just acting out its anger against being sealed in a tin can and blasted into space.

Unless you have a taste for some really goofy low budget schlock though, you can skip this.

Mistress of Atlantis (1932)

It might surprise you to learn that not only did Atlantis exist, but it never sank beneath the waves of the ocean, and can in fact still be found in the depths of the Sahara.

Admittedly in 1932 that premise probably seemed a lot more plausible, what with the lack of detailed satellite images of the area, and so on.  Which is how we get this film, where two soldiers from the French Foreign Legion stumble across the hidden civilisation while attempting to survey an ancient road.

The two men are separated, and the one who is serving as our narrator meets two further 'guests' of the Atlanteans: a decidedly quirky Russian and a morose Swede.  Both these men talk in glowing terms of Antinea, the Queen of the city, and when our 'hero' (for want of a better term) is summoned into her presence, the Swede is so upset he instigates a fight.

After that is resolved, the soldier is taken to Queen Antinea (Brigitte Helm, who also starred in a little film called Metropolis).  She doesn't answer his questions about his missing friend, but does offer him a game of chess.  If he wins, she will let him go free.  He eagerly accepts, but she soundly trounces him.  Smart lady, to have become so good at a game that wasn't even invented until 9000 years after Atlantis allegedly passed out out the knowledge of ordinary humans.

The soldier returns from his meeting as smitten by the Queen as the Swede was.  So smitten, in fact, that when he learns the Swede has committed suicide, he doesn't seem to stop and consider that this sort of obsession might be more than a little unhealthy.

Alas for him, his interest is not requited.  The Queen is more taken with the other soldier - possibly because he is the only man who doesn't fawn over her.  She may over time find his resistance irritating rather than intriguing, however, and that will be quite bad for his health.

The main problem with this film, for me, is that having set all this up, it then seems in no real hurry to do much with it.  The version I saw was 77 minutes, but felt quite a lot longer, possibly because the plot (a) is largely recounted as a flashback within a framing narrative, and (b) comes to a halt a couple of times for some rather random-seeming diversions.

Some people may find the film's dreamy, somewhat disjointed pacing to be intriguing.  I did not.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

This is the third and to date last of the Narnia films.  It was a (deserved, in my opinion) success at the box office, but the franchise has since then been caught up in the legal tangles that often afflict licensed properties.  I'm going to assume you're familiar with my earlier reviews of the series for the purposes of this one.  So if you aren't, now might be a good time to check them out.

The film begins with Edmund and Lucy staying with their odious cousin, Eustace Clarence Scrubb, whom as author C S Lewis memorably put it "very nearly deserved" his name.  Eustace has always mocked his cousins for their stories of Narnia, and is outraged to be dragged along on their latest adventure with them.

As you might surmise, Eustace has the most prominent character arc in the film, as he learns to become a Narnian Hero.  He's not alone in having an arc, though: the movie does a pretty decent job of providing them to Lucy, Edmund and King Caspian (as he has now become) as well.

The original Dawn Treader novel is something of a travelogue-style story.  The only linking theme is the search for seven lost friends of Caspian's father.  The movie introduces an active evil force to oppose the adventurers, which can only be overcome by gathering the swords of the missing men.  Some Narnia purists objected to his change, but I think it is a smart one: books can get away with being less focused than a movie, generally speaking, and creating an evil to face gives the characters additional motivation to persevere in the face of the dangers they encounter.

Even with a linking thread, the movie feels quite episodic: the characters visit the island of slavers, the island of invisibility, the island of gold, and so on.  Plus there's the whole 'Aslan is Jesus' thing to squeeze in.  The movie makes an effort to rotate the focus characters in each section, which helps make them each seem worthwhile, but there feels like a bit too much content squashed into the run time.

Still, it's not as "KITCHEN SINK!" as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and it has the advantage of much more likable characters, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.  As always, the effects are excellent and the singular strength of the series - fantastic casting of the children who are the main characters - continues with the actor chosen to play Eustace.

I hope we get more Narnia films - some progress is apparently being made on that front - but if this ends up being the last, it would be a solid conclusion.

It's also my 400th review on here, and a pretty cool way to hit that milestone.

Maciste in Hell (1925)

The Italian film industry has never been shy about aping success, and so the Steve Reeves' Hercules films inspired a flood of sword and sandal imitators during the 1960, including over 20 starring the hero "Maciste".

When I fired up this DVD I expected one of those movies, but this is actually one of the original, silent era Maciste films.  Again, there were over twenty of these, with Maciste in Hell being one of the later entries.

Maciste is a tremendously strong and virtuous man, a combination which deeply concerns the forces of Hell.  They send one of their most expert agents to tempt Maciste into wickedness.  In this case, being an 'expert' seems to consist of dressing like you've just tied a woman to some train tracks somewhere, and blatantly offering "gold, pleasures or power" in exchange for becoming an ally of Hell.

Unsurprisingly, this approach meets with little success.  The demon does come up with a better plan though, as he targets Maciste's young cousin Rosabelle and her child.  Maciste saves the boy but ends up in the underworld as a result.  Initially, that just gives him the chance to beat up a bunch of demons, but things change when he meets a couple of female denizens of Hell.  There's bad girl and a good girl (yes, even amongst demons there are good girls, it seems).  The good girl warns Maciste not to kiss any woman in Hell, but ten seconds later he's making out with the bad girl.

Maciste is strong, not smart.

This turns Maciste into a demon, just in time to lead an army in an Infernal civil war.  Because being really strong makes you a good general, I guess.  Not that you really need to be much of a tactician when you can beat up a hundred enemies by yourself.

Will Maciste escape Hell?  Of course he will, eventually.  The film's not going to let it happen easily, though.

Much as with Lost World, the main selling point of this film is the effects.  While they're not the technical marvel of the other movie's stop motion, they are very ambitious for the era, with some immense sets and some cool ideas.  The plot's rather more disjointed than that other film, though, and Maciste's frequent melees aren't as interesting as say Allosaur vs Triceratops, so overall I can't recommend it.

Coraline (2009)

I missed Coraline at the theatres, so picked it up on DVD ... and then didn't watch it for five years.

On the plus side, this is the last DVD that I purchased prior to 2011 and still hadn't watched, so this blog is having its desired effect (when I started, I had stuff dating back to before 2007).

So this is based on a Neil Gaiman novel, and having seen the film, I think I'll track down the book.  I suspect I will like it more.  Not that I hated the movie, but from a glance at wikipedia, the most significant changes it made were among my least favorite elements.  But we'll get to those in a bit; first, a precis.

What we have here is a dark modern fairy tale (from Neil Gaiman?  What a shock!) filmed using the same techniques as A Nightmare Before Christmas.  I have to say though that I like this film's visuals much more.  I think they're significantly more inventive, with some great details in the design work.  I found this film a pleasure just to watch for the visual aspect alone.

Coraline is a young girl of maybe 12 years of age who is rather discontented with her parents.  They're always working, and her mom in particular interacts with her only to forbid her from doing fun things, or to tell her to stop bothering them.  I mean sure, sometimes adults are busy, but Coraline's mom isn't very nice about it.

So it's probably not surprising that Coraline is unhappy, especially as they've recently moved and she doesn't know anyone.  Which is why she's so pleased to discover a secret, magical door that leads to a world where her parents are warm and funny and very attentive.

Of course, it's the way of such things that the seeming wonderland has a darker side, which Coraline will discover soon enough.  This leads into the final act of the film, where she has to fight to save herself and her parents from the danger to which she has unwittingly exposed them.

So what did the movie do that I didn't like?  It added Wibey, a male character that is purportedly there to 'give Coraline someone to talk to', but who ends up doing quite a bit too much actually-saving-the-day for my tastes.  Way to undermine the cool female protagonist, film-making dudes.

That said, if you like Gaiman's work, or the idea of spooky, kooky movies in general, then you should check this one out.  Even with Wibey stealing way too much of Coraline's thunder, it's an entertaining flick.

This Is Not A Test (1962)

There are too many flaws with this film for me to go so far as to give it a recommendation - even a qualified one - but I kinda like it anyway.  It's a low budget "the bombs are coming" film that actually tries to treat the subject matter with some seriousness.

A deputy sheriff gets orders to set up a roadblock on a mountain road.  Initially, this is to search vehicles for a fugitive who is wanted for murder.  As he begins, however, another more grave announcement is made: a yellow alert, with a risk of imminent nuclear war.  As he explains to the passengers in the vehicles he's stopped, this means evacuations will be beginning in the cities, and he cannot let anyone move from their current position.

This is about the point where we discover that a hitchhiker in one of the vehicles is the fugitive mentioned earlier.  This fellow escapes the deputy's efforts to apprehend him, and spends the rest of the movie lurking nearby but not actually doing much.  The whole fugitive angle is one of the film's weaknesses.  As pretext which gets the deputy into place to set up the roadblock and bring the rest of the cast together, it's fine.  Having the fugitive actually be one of the people there, though, and then not doing anything with him, feels very odd.  It would have been better if he hadn't been there at all.  "I set up this roadblock for reason X, but now something much more important is happening" would have been sufficient.

The deputy decides that the group will attempt to turn one of the vehicles - a supply truck - into a makeshift bomb shelter, and sets everyone to work.  I guess it's a better option than a fridge, and long shot or not, it's the best option they have.

Or as it turns out, it's not: one of the drivers is a local and knows of an abandoned mine in the mountain, with a subterranean spring.  However, for some reason he decides not to tell anyone about this up front.  Even when he does finally bring it up, it's only to his granddaughter and a young man from the area.  Way to murder a bunch of people, guy.  The movie tries to paint this fellow as one of the more likable figures, too.  It makes for an odd and jarring development.

These issues, plus some acting that's pretty deep into 'not good' territory, undercut the film quite a bit, as do a couple of eye-rolly 'hysterical woman' segments.  This is a shame, because they distract from the mostly decent efforts to bring home the overwhelming nature of what is happening, and the sombre overall mood of the film.

With a few of the weaker cast members replaced, and a bit of script-doctoring, this would be within shouting distance of pretty good.  As is though, it has a few too many issues to recommend it.