THE FOG (1980)
Article 5394 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-14-2017
Directed by John Carpenter
Featuring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh
Country: USA
What it is: Vengeance from beyond the grave

100 years ago, a ship of lepers on their way to a new colony crash on the rocks due to a conspiracy of six men, and this ends up providing the basis for the founding of a seaside town called Antonio Bay. At the town’s centennial, a fog creeps into the town… and in the fog the ghosts of the dead arrive to seek six victims for vengeance.

This was John Carpenter’s theatrical feature film follow up to his phenomenally successful HALLOWEEN, and if my memory doesn’t deceive me, it wasn’t as well-received as the earlier movie. This is the first time I’ve seen it, and I do have to admit that of the Carpenter movies I’ve seen to this point, this was the most disappointing. At least part of it is that the characters aren’t as engaging this time round; I didn’t find myself really caring about anyone enough to have a strong emotional investment in their fate. I will admit that it has the best performance from Adrienne Barbeau I’ve seen to date, but I was particularly disappointed in Hal Holbrook’s performance; his character never really develops the dimension it needs to be compelling. It makes some good use of sound and silence, and there are some creative moments, but it never got my pulse racing, and there are moments I found myself waiting for the movie to just get on with going where I knew it was going. And as far as horror movie cliches go, there’s really not a whole lot of difference between not being able to turn over an engine and being stuck in the mud.

FLASH GORDON (1980)
Article 5393 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-13-2017
Directed by Mike Hodges
Featuring Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Camp space opera

Football player Flash Gordon, newspaper woman Dale Arden, and scientist Hans Zarkov take a rocketship to the world of Mongo to defeat Ming the Merciless, who is destroying the earth with a machine that causes natural disasters.

After the success of STAR WARS, I shouldn’t be surprised that someone would hit on the idea of doing a remake of one of the most famous science fiction serials of all time. And, given the time, I’m not surprised either that they decided to go the “intentionally campy” route with the concept. Unfortunately, going this route leaves me a movie that isn’t quite funny enough to be a full-blown comedy, nor does it take itself seriously enough for me to take it seriously. In short, I didn’t laugh much and I had no emotional investment at any time in the proceedings. I was hoping that the presence of Max von Sydow would make me like it better, but here I was disappointed; he didn’t do badly, I suppose, but he didn’t really add anything special to his performance of Ming. So I just had to hunt for aspects of the movie I did enjoy, and I found a few. I like the colorfulness of the proceedings, I really enjoyed Peter Wyngarde’s performance as Ming’s right hand man (though his face is almost totally obscured, he delivers his lines with just the right amount of wry humor that he ends up giving the best performance in the movie), and I applaud the perfect casting of Brian Blessed in the role of Vultan. I do rather like Queen (who did the soundtrack for the movie), but the incessant Flash melody isn’t one of my favorites of theirs, and their best moment for me was their rendition of “Here Comes the Bride”, a piece of music ideal for Brian May’s guitar orchestrations. Overall, the movie mostly was reminiscent of BARBARELLA, and I never cared much for that movie. It’s a loud, messy movie, and I’m not surprised that the promised sequel never came about.