At the Earth’s Core (1976)
Article 5450 from Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-11-2017
Directed by Kevin Connor
Featuring Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Burroughsian adventure film

Two explorers tunnel through the Earth’s crust to end up in the land of Pellucidar. They are taken captive along with a handful of natives and enslaved by telepathic monsters and their brutish minions.

Though this is the second of the four Kevin Connor/Doug McClure old-fashioned adventure series, it’s the fourth and final one that I’ve seen. I’ve been fairly lenient with the series; I like them in spirit enough that I find myself somewhat forgiving of their technical deficiencies. This is the one, however, that most tries my patience. Part of the reason is that it tries to take a more lighthearted approach to the material that verges on camp, and I prefer the tone to be a bit more serious. Going in hand with that, I’m also disappointed with Peter Cushing’s performance here; much as I love him as an actor, I find him least interesting when he takes on the role of a dotty old eccentric (like he does in his two Dr. Who movies) because he seems to be playing beneath his real abilities. My greatest problem, however, is with the movie’s action sequences. So many of them are shot with rapid-fire editing between close-ups and medium shots with seemingly random scenes thrown in that they become confusing, and nothing makes me lose interest as quickly as a badly edited action sequence. As much as I like the attempt to bring the world of Pellucidar to life, I’m afraid I have to rate this one as the weakest of the four movies.

Angel of H.E.A.T. (1983)

Article 5449 by Dave Sindelar

Date: 5-10-2017
Directed by Myrl A. Schreibman
Featuring Marilyn Chambers, Stephen Johnson, Mary Woronov
Country: USA
What it is: What happens when a porn star goes legit

Government agents join forces with a vigilante organization which uses martial arts to defeat an evil scientist with an army of androids.

A cheap comic exploitation action flick with lots of nudity and stupidity – yeah, that sounds like the sort of thing a porn star might appear in if she wanted to go legit. How cheap is it? It has a single big explosion in it, and that’s animated. How exploitational is it? When it brings the plot to a halt for a scene of mud wrestling, it actually marks a step up in class for the movie. How comic is it? I’d give you a standout comic moment if I could think of one. That leaves the lame action scenes and the plentiful nudity as the selling points. In short, this one was bad, and I didn’t even find it “fun” bad. Time to move on.

ANDROID (1982)
Article 5448 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-9-2017
Directed by Aaron Lipstadt
Featuring Klaus Kinski, Don Keith Opper, Brie Howard
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction drama

A scientist performs illegal experiments with androids aboard a space station; his only companion is one of his own creations. When the android lets a group of criminals aboard the space station (because they have a woman and he’s never met one), their presence causes complications.

It’s not easy to describe this odd little science fiction drama; the presence of the three criminals makes you suspect that it’s going to be an action thriller of sorts, but the game it’s playing is a little more complicated than that. It’s something of a chess game in which the six major characters (the scientist, the android, the new android, and the three criminals) all jockey for the power to get what each one of them wants, and it has a few surprises up its sleeve before it’s all over. the entire cast does fine work, with Kinski and Opper (a co-writer who plays the android and went unbilled in the credits) the standouts; Opper in particular has a sort of clumsy, giddy charm. Its 5.8 rating on IMDB indicates that this one is not well liked in some quarters, and I can understand that; still, I found it interesting throughout and really liked the ending.

AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON (1987)
Article 5447 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-8-2017
Directed by Lots of Directors
Featuring Lots of Actors
Country: USA
What it is: Comedy hodgepodge

Comic vignettes are shown, most of which lampoon TV and old movies.

This movie is in the tradition of films like THE GROOVE TUBE and TUNNELVISION, and the fact that I didn’t use the phrase “grand tradition” back there is because neither of those movies impressed me, and neither does this one. The vignette style is inevitably hit or miss; for every routine that hits, you’ll have two or three that miss. The fifties science fiction movie parody of astronauts encountering matriarchal societies (think QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE) might have worked if it hadn’t settled for only the most obvious of targets, and the running jokes (including Lou Jacobi as a person who gets trapped in his TV set popping up in other sketches) are pretty lame. There are a few highlights. I like the bit which posits a theory about the identity of Jack the Ripper, the one where a funeral ceremony turns into a public roast featuring several well-known comedians, the movie parody SON OF THE INVISIBLE MAN (which has no fantastic content, which is part of the joke), and an ad for a double-album of music by a black artist who has no soul (featuring songs like “MacArthur Park”). And, if you haven’t turned it off when the credits start to roll, you’ll catch a surprise exploitation movie parody which features footage of Bela Lugosi, another of the movie’s better moments. Beyond that, a decent moment here or there doesn’t really redeem the rest of them. Still, it may be worth watching it for curiosity’s sake to simply see who all pops up at one time or another, a game that the movie doesn’t give away; the list of stars I mention above is exactly as they are introduced at the beginning of the movie.

ALIENS (1986)
Article 5446 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-7-2017
Directed by James Cameron
Featuring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction sequel, action style

Ripley is revived from suspended animation 57 years after the events in ALIEN. She discovers the planet where the alien was discovered has been terraformed and is now the home of a colony. When the Company loses contact with the colony, Ripley accompanies a troop of space marines to discover the problem….

For the record, I saw the director’s version of the movie, which adds about seventeen minutes to the running time; I’d seen the original movie before, but it’s been long enough so that I couldn’t immediately say where the new scenes were added (though I rightly guessed that the scene involving Ripley’s daughter was not in the original). For the record, I don’t think the added scenes damaged or slowed down the movie, though it did make it a bit more exhausting of a watch. It’s still a nifty roller-coaster of a movie with the horror feel of the previous entry giving way to the action movie style of this one. Though I’m not a big action fan, there are a few directors who I really like in the genre, and James Cameron is one of them. This is one of those sequels that was really worth the effort. Still, I did have a couple of thoughts on this one that I didn’t notice the first time. The first is that, despite the fact that the first half of the movie is very different from the first half of the original, the second half of each movie follow very similar story arcs. Second is that, like the first movie, for the most part you don’t get a really good look at the aliens, but there’s one notable exception; it takes the time to give us a big, elaborate gawking look at that queen alien. Draining, but recommended.

THE ADVENTURES OF THE AMERICAN RABBIT (1986)
Article 5445 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-6-2017
Directed by Nobutaka Nishizawa and Fred Wolf
Featuring the voices of Bob Arbogast, Pat Fraley, Barry Gordon
Country: USA / Japan
What it is: Family cartoon

A young rabbit named Rob has the ability to turn into a superhero known as the American Rabbit. He has to deal with a gang of jackals bent on extortion and their leader, Voltar.

As far as the fantastic content goes, we have a world of anthropomorphic animals, one of which has superpowers. For those into action, be aware that the superhero is one of those that eschews violence, probably to serve as a good role model for those children for whom the movie was intended. For those looking for laughs, be aware that there is a moose and his son who make chocolate and a big ape named Ping Pong, and these are the standout jokes. For those into platitudes and blandness, you’ve hit the jackpot big time here. For those expecting lots of messages about nationalism and patriotism (after all, our hero is made up in stars and stripes), be aware there’s no overt political message of that sort. For those expecting to be fully entertained, try to catch this one before you’re seven years old. And for those into general weirdness, be aware that the villain of the movie spends most of his time talking through a necktie and that it ends with everyone having a mass hallucination. It’s probably most useful for those of you with young children who you want to keep occupied while you take a nap.