Flash Gordon (1980)

Flash!  Aaaaah aaaaah!  Saviour of the Universe!

Professional footballer Flash Gordon meets travel agent Dale Arden when they are the only two passengers on a small plane.  After the two flirt with all the subtlety of the superheated hail that suddenly starts pouring from the sky, they will find themselves transported on an interplanetary journey to the realm of Mongo, where the tyrannical Emperor Ming rules with an iron fist.  They'll encounter hawkmen and lizardfolk; cyborgs and sexy princesses; poisonous wood beasts and electrified clouds.  They will, in other words, show us a jolly good time.

First things first: if you're looking for nuanced performances, complex characters, cutting edge special effects (even for the time), or just a script that's too classy for dialogue like "Flash, I love you, but we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!", then you're in the wrong place.

If however, you want:

• A thumping Queen soundtrack; or
• Ming the Merciless living up to his sobriquet; or
• More camp than the entire Butlins chain; or
• BRIAN BLESSED hamming it up as only he can; or
• A heroine who is smart enough to put on her heels only after she beats up the bad guy; or
• A movie that is positively gleeful in its gonzo excess

Then this might be the film for you.

As for me?  Good grief, I love this campy, silly, goofy movie.  7 year old me, seeing it soon after release, was not so impressed.  Though I did think Prince Vultan (Brian Blessed) was pretty awesome, which just goes to show that even seven year old me occasionally got things right.

Flash!  Aaaaah aaaaah!  He'll save every one of us!

The Lost World (1925)

Released just thirteen years after the book, this silent film is the earliest screen adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel.  It is also the first American feature film to use model animation as a primary effect.  Said effects - which include numerous dinosaurs - were produced by Willis O'Brien.  O'Brien would go on to do the effects on some film involving a giant ape, as well as becoming the mentor of a fellow by the name of Harryhausen.

The original version of the film was 106 minutes, while the version on this DVD (and freely downloadable at archive.org) runs a mere 68 minutes, but what I saw pretty accurately matches the movie's synopsis on wikipedia; so either not much of note was cut, or that synopsis was based on this version of the film.

The film uses the same basic premise as the book: infamously hot-tempered scientist Professor Challenger organises an expedition to the Amazon in search of a plateau filled with supposedly extinct creatures.  He's accompanied by a skeptical colleague, a big game hunter, and a journalist.  The film also adds a young woman - the daughter of a vanished colleague of Challenger's - so as to shoehorn in a romance subplot.  Said subplot is pretty thin (but might be better fleshed out in the longer version), but at least the young lady doesn't become a damsel in distress, so let's count it as a win.

In any case, the expedition makes it to the plateau, witnesses all kinds of dinosaurs as they forage, hunt, fight and stampede away from a volcanic eruption, then returns to London with an Apatosaurus they've managed to capture.

The Apatosaurus gets free, of course, and smashes and crashes its way through London before falling into the Thames and swimming away.

You may have noticed that my synopsis of the film is all about dinosaurs, and not much about people.  There's good reason for that, as O'Brien's stop motion effects are most definitely the focus and primary attraction of the film.  This movie's effects were as transformative for their time as those of Jurassic Park nearly 70 years later.  Everything else: the romance subplot, the menace of a rather ineffectual 'apeman', and so forth, is just a sprig of parsley on the side of the plate: the meal is in the monsters.

If you have an interest in the history of film, this is worth seeing.  Even 90 years later, O'Brien's effects are impressive.

Zombieland (2009)

I was reluctant to see this film because I had been disappointed by Shaun of the Dead.  I know that statement's probably going to trigger howls of disbelief - the latter film is pretty highly regarded in geeky circles.  I found it to be one half very funny comedy, and one half pretty decent zombie flick, but overall somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Eventually some friends persuaded me to give this movie a go, and as you might have guessed from the fact that I went on to buy it on DVD, I rather enjoyed it.  It's by no means a perfect film, you understand: I think the introduction of the two female characters is pretty weak, for instance.  I don't want to spoil details, but let's just say that for two supposedly smart ladies, they have a really dumb plan (it won't be the only time, either).  Also there's a section involving a 'surprise' guest star that feels a bit indulgent (though admittedly some of it is quite funny).

The 'quite funny' thing is important.  While I don't think Zombieland elicits as many laughs in its first half as Shaun of the Dead does, it sure as heck elicits a lot more in the second half.  Zombieland never forgets that it's a comedy, and even if not every joke hits home, it slings out enough of them that some are sure to land.

Columbus - so dubbed because that's where he is trying to get to - is a neurotic shut in whose survival in the zombie apocalypse can be traced back to his extensive list of Rules, such as 'always double tap'.  Don't be stingy with bullets, he tells us in voice over: better to use an extra round and be sure a zombie's dead than have it munch on your ankle.  He has some 31 of these rules, and given that they've kept him alive for two months, they've obviously got some merit to them.

Now, Columbus himself credits his survival partly to the fact that he was pretty much alone in the world before the zombies came, and his lack of ties made it easier for him to adapt, so he admits it's a bit out of character for him to buddy up with the stranger.  Yet this is what he does when he meets the zombie-killing maniac Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson, apparently having the time of his life).  Their duo will become a quartet later, and if you think that in the course of all this Columbus is going to avoid Learning An Important Lesson About What It Means To Really Be Alive, then I have some swampland you might be interested in buying.  It's a pretty minor addendum to the film's main agenda, though, which is bucketloads of zombie-fightin' hijinks.

This is well worth a look if you're interested in a zombie flick that doesn't take itself as seriously as so many of them do.  The cast is strong enough to cover most of my - relatively minor - quibbles with the script, and you should walk away from it with a smile on your face.

The Lost City (1935)

Mill Creek actually claim this as two of the 50 films in this pack, presumably due to length.  As a compilation of a 12-part serial (pretty much without cuts, as far as I can tell), it runs nearly three and a half hours.  I'm going to treat it as just one film, though.  Partly because it's clearly intended to be viewed as a single narrative, and partly so I don't have to write two reviews of this piece of junk.

Strange electromagnetic phenomena are wreaking havoc in the world, but handsome and dashing young electrical engineer Bruce Gordon traces the source of the disturbance to an isolated part of Africa.  I'll just mention that Flash Gordon made his newsprint debut the year before, and leave you to ponder any parallels between the two.

Gordon heads off to deepest, darkest Africa to uncover what's behind the disasters.  There he uncovers the Lost City, ruled by Zolok, Last of the Lemurians.  Zolok proudly proclaims his people's mastery of all things electromagnetic, but it seems the most marvelous creations in his possession are actually all the work of a Dr Manyus, whose obedience Zolok ensures by holding the Doctor's daughter hostage (do you smell a love interest for Gordon?  Of course you do.).

As an aside, it's worth noting that the actor playing Zolok appears to be more hammered than Michael Madsen in Bloodrayne in at least one scene.  This would not be surprising, as he was regularly arrested for alcohol offences during prohibition.

Anyway, the good guys escape from Zolok and his minions around the 60 minute mark, and spend all but 20 minutes of the remaining two hours blundering around the jungle encountering various people who want to co-opt Dr Manyus's inventions for their own ends.

What are those inventions?  All sorts of nonsense, frankly.  Manyus can transform ordinary men into giants, and black men into white (oh yeah, there's some major, major racism in this: "That sounds like a white girl's scream!" being one of the more absurd examples, with bonus misogyny added in for good measure).

Eventually - and I do mean eventually - they end up back at the Lost City, overcome Zolok, and save the day.

Dull stuff.

So dull, I need a pick me up.  Only one thing for it.

DIIIVE.

After Dusk They Come (2009)

In addition to having three titles of its own (the one above plus The Tribe and The Forgotten Ones), this film also has a remake.  Yes, a remake, despite only coming out in 2009.  The remake was released a year later, and is variously known as The Lost Tribe or Primevil (sic).

Apparently the reason for the rapid remake was that the production company was unhappy with this version of the film, though that didn't stop them from authorising a DVD release (the fact that it features Firefly's Jewel Staite and some guy from the Twilight films may have influenced their decision).

Ironically, the remake actually has a lower IMDB rating than this film, suggesting that the producers - though smart enough to realise that this isn't very good - weren't smart enough to work out what went wrong.

Here's a hint for them: it's the script.

What we've got here is basically The Descent, if it (a) didn't have an all female cast and (b) was not very good.  As with that film we have a group of holidaymakers with some simmering tensions between them; we have an accident that leaves them stranded in a place they're not supposed to be; and we have a degenerate race of semi-humanoid monsters that hunt them.  Heck, the hunters even share the 'functionally blind and hunt by sound' schtick of the ones from The Descent.

The faults of the film are many, and they start with the fact that four of the five holidaymakers are deeply unlikable.  Even the fifth (Staite's character) is less sympathetic than they intend her to be, though once put next to the others she's so clearly the Final Girl she may as well have it tattooed on her forehead.

This of course leads to a complete lack of tension in the film, since you know exactly who is going to die and frankly you're largely looking forward to them not befouling the screen any longer.  Pretty soon we're down to just Staite's character, which leads into a tedious and unconvincing boss battle with the 'alpha creature'.  Spoilers: Staite wins.

Unless you're just really, really keen to see Kayleigh from Firefly in a low rent creature feature, skip this one: it's not even so bad it's good.

House of the Living Dead (1974)

It's rarely a good sign when a movie has multiple titles, and this one has at least four.  The one above, plus Curse of the Dead, Doctor Maniac and Kill, Baby, Kill.  Ironically, any of the latter three titles are a better fit for the movie than the one I saw it under, which makes it doubly-confounding that House of the Living Dead is apparently the original title.

There's the kernel of a solid enough made-for-TV period thriller in here ... like a kind of "Downton Abbey with Necromancy".  Which is a thing I would watch.  ITV, get on that would you?

Alas, the execution in this film falls far short of the potential.  The fault lies squarely on the script.  It's true that some of the acting - at least from the secondary characters - isn't the best, but not even great delivery could save the clunky and unconvincing dialogue that gets trotted out here.  I mean, we're talking about a film where the police are convinced by the very impressive logic of "I can't explain how I know, I just do".

Filmed and set in South Africa, the film concerns itself with the master of a plantation and his fiancee, who is newly arrived on the ship from Britain. Now, our leading man has a near identical brother who recently suffered a terrible accident and "never" leaves his room, where he conducts strange scientific experiments.  "Never" is in inverted commas because he's actually frequently seen out and about in the fields or prowling the house at night, despite the claims of his brother and mother that he doesn't do so, and their refusal to let anyone into his room to see him.

If you give that precis more than a few moments' thought you'll probably work out the film's main twist, though as I was watching the film I got distracted by the "strange medical theories" and "unnatural experiments" that kept getting mentioned, leading me to expect a slightly different revelation.  Those elements actually turned out to be almost irrelevant to what was going on though.  In fact, you could eliminate all the intimations of supernaturalism and mad science and still tell practically the same story (you'd have to make like one tiny change to the film).  And that's probably the biggest headscratcher of all.  Bringing those elements in probably put off a lot of people who would have watched a straight-up period piece, while those they might attract would be disappointed with how little they actually mattered.

Ultimately, we get a talky, clunky melodrama with only a few hints of the macabre.  Skippable.

Resident Evil (2002)

I like this film more than it probably deserves.

However, it is a film that I think deserves to be liked.  It may have relatively modest goals as a piece of art, but it approaches them with gusto.  And yes, I just described a Resident Evil film as art.  Deal with it :)

The film opens with what appears to be the theft of helix-shaped vials from a laboratory. On their way out, the thief intentionally breaks one of the vials. A short time later, havoc descends upon the facility.  The doors seal everyone in, and the various security measures turn into deathtraps.

We then switch to Milla Jovovich, who is unconscious in a shower.  With Jovovich's inevitable nude scene out of the way, we can then get on with the plot: her character (Alice) can't remember anything, and swiftly becomes even more baffled when she is accosted first by a cop and then by a team of heavily armed commandos.

The commandos provide the exposition to both Alice and the cop: the estate Alice was living in is a cover for a secret underground research base.  Alice is part of the security detail.  It seems the computer controlling the base has run amok and murdered everyone inside.  The team is here to find out what happened, and they're taking Alice and the cop in with them.

So isolated base with which contact has been lost, totally not space marines going to investigate, and a couple of non-marines along for the ride?  The similarities to Aliens are pretty obvious, and if you're figuring the facility is now overrun with monsters and almost no-one is going to make it out alive, well ... duh.

The similarity to James Cameron's film aren't going to end there, in details as well as theme, but in my opinion Resident Evil does enough to establish itself as more than just "yet another Aliens knock-off".  And I say this as someone who has seen a whole lot of Aliens knock-offs.

Strengths of the film include the uniformly solid cast (though the always reliable Colin Salmon doesn't get enough screen time for my taste) and the relentlessly driving soundtrack.  It takes a lot for me to really notice a soundtrack - unless it's terrible, as in say the 30th Anniversary edition of Night of the Living Dead - but the music from this film definitely sticks with me.  It also doesn't hurt that the script just plays it straight: there's none of the sly winks at the camera that tend to plague many zombie films.

If you want a zombie film that has more the tempo of an action movie, check it out.