Superman II (1980)

SUPERMAN II (1980)
Article 3250 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-13-2010
Posting Date: 7-8-2010
Directed by Rchard Lester and Richard Donner
Featuring Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty
Country: UK
What it is: Superhero sequel

Superman must contend with the plottings of Lex Luthor as well as a trio of criminals who come from the planet Krypton, meaning they have the same superpowers as he does.

As I remember it, this movie had a very high reputation at the time it came out, and I think a lot of critics considered it superior to the first movie. I was more than a little surprised to see its rating on IMDB at 6.7; that’s not a bad rating, mind you, but it’s rather low for a movie that had the reputation of being a real classic. This was one I remember going to see in theaters when it was out (I never saw the original movie until many years later) in the hope that it would prove to be as fun and memorable as STAR WARS had been for me. I remember walking out of the theater disappointed; for me, the magic just wasn’t there.

Watching it again after all these years, I feel better able to express why I was disappointed. I wanted a serious take on the character and the story, not the part camp/part comic take that this movie mostly aspires to. I wanted a Lex Luthor that would prove an intimidating and real menace to the man of steel, not the egotistical buffoon we get here. There are some things I like in this movie; Christopher Reeve does a fine job, especially in the role of Clark Kent. Terence Stamp practically steals the movie as General Zod, though it should be pointed that he has one advantage in that he’s playing a character that I had no preconceptions about. I also find the performances very good, including Gene Hackman’s if I consider that he was playing the part as written rather than I would have liked it to have been written. My problems are with the script; I dislike the general air of campiness that undermines my ability to take the movie seriously. The plot moments I dislike the most are the petty revenge at the diner near the end of the movie, and (especially) the contrived situation whereby Superman is supposed to lose his powers permanently; you know this type of plot point is going to prove to be a cheat, and sure enough, it does.

For me, the saddest thing about my first viewing experience with this movie is that I mistook my dislike for this movie in particular to mean that I disliked the whole superhero genre in general. I now know that is not true, but it took me years to discover that. Fortunately, there’s still time give the whole genre that second chance.

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Soylent Green (1973)

SOYLENT GREEN (1973)
Article 3249 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-12-2010
Posting Date: 7-7-2010
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Featuring Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors
Country: USA
What it is: Seventies dystopian science fiction

In the overpopulated future, a policeman investigates the murder of a rich businessman. The policeman believes the murder was an assassination by a gang of conspirators who considered the businessman an undependable risk who might reveal secrets about a food manufacturing plant.

In one sense, this movie reminds me of PSYCHO; both movies are somewhat compromised by the fact that practically everybody knows what the big plot twists are, so the movies can’t really surprise you in that regard anymore. Still, the big end revelation is merely the movie at its most melodramatic and sensational; the movie also makes its points in much subtler ways, and for me, the real heart of the movie is that it uses the basic conspiracy investigation plot structure as a springboard for scenes in which we explore the impact of overpopulation. The movie is a touchstone for seventies dystopian SF, and it marks the third of the three science fiction movies for which Charlton Heston is most remembered for, the other two being PLANET OF THE APES and THE OMEGA MAN. Though Heston may be the protagonist here, the movie is stolen by Edward G. Robinson as the aging book who assists Heston and who remembers the good old days before overpopulation; Robinson’s reactions to rediscovering the pleasures of eating real food are priceless. The movie’s high point is the scene where Robinson “goes home”; this was Robinson’s last movie, and I can’t think of a single actor whose final scene was as immensely moving as Robinson’s is here. The movie also features a Whit Bissell in a cameo as the governor who has a hand in the conspiracy.

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Satan’s Slave (1976)

SATAN’S SLAVE (1976)
aka Evil Heritage
Article 3248 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-11-2010
Posting Date: 7-6-2010
Directed by Norman J. Warren
Featuring Michael Gough, Martin Potter, Candace Glendenning
Country: UK
What it is: Devil worship/terrorized woman movie

A woman goes with her parents to visit an uncle she hasn’t seen in ages. When the parents die in a mysterious car accident, she is taken care of by the uncle and his son. Unfortunately, they have ulterior designs on the woman…

The first scene establishes there’s some devil worship going on. The second establishes that the son is a sadistic sexual deviant. The strange car accident establishes that something mysterious is going on. After these three scenes, we pretty much have the central situation set up, and, truth to tell, there’s not a whole lot of mystery about what sort of horror the woman is going to have to face before it’s all through. Still, there’s an awful lot of running time to fill up, so how does the movie fill it? Well, like so many bad movies of this sort, it fills it up with vagueness; we get lots of dropped hints about what’s going on, a romantic triangle subplot involving one of those characters who only exists in a movie like this to give the villains someone to kill, and lots of uninteresting chatter. If the goings-on were truly mysterious, this might work; unfortunately, since you have a good idea early on where the movie is going, the vagueness becomes more infuriating than compelling. Combine this with deliberate pacing, a misplaced emphasis on subtlety, dull direction, and an unexciting score, and you have one of the duller stretches of cinema that I’ve sat through. Even the scenes of gore and sex that pop up feel too detached to have any real power. Good touches here and there help, but even these don’t really lead anywhere new. All in all, this is one dull exercise in horror.

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New Year’s Evil (1980)

NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980)
Article 3247 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-10-2010
Posting Date: 7-5-2010
Directed by Emmett Alston
Featuring Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace
Country: USA
What it is: Anemic slasher flick

A female DJ hosting a punk/new wave radio show on New Year’s Eve gets calls from a psycho named Evil who claims he’s going to kill someone at midnight for every time zone. The police believe that he intends the DJ to be the final victim.

How authentically punk/new wave is this movie? Well, at one point, we see a punkish musician stick his tongue out to the camera while the music the band is playing sounds like a guitar jam from the Allman Brothers. Later on, when a policeman addresses a crowd of angry punkers on a dance floor, one of the infuriated punks yells “Shut up!” Conclusion: if this was what punk was all about, it was a pretty feeble movement. Fortunately, I’m familiar enough with punk music to know it wasn’t feeble; it’s this movie that’s feeble. Gorehounds in particular will be disappointed; the movie actually gets less and less bloody as it goes along, and ends up feeling more like a police/crime movie than a horror thriller in the final reels. There’s a couple of interesting moments, but a plethora of stupid ones as well, and you’ll see the final twist coming a mile away. This is not one of the high points of the slasher genre.

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Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (1973)

COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE (1973)
aka The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Article 3246 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-9-2010
Posting Date: 7-4-2010
Directed by Alan Gibson
Featuring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Coles
Country: UK
What it is: Updated Vampire mayhem

A group of four VIPs are photographed taking part in Satanic rituals with a fifth unknown person. One of the VIPs is a scientist who develops a deadly strain of bubonic plague. Could Dracula be behind it all?

With this movie I finish off Hammer’s Dracula series, and the only reason I can’t say that it couldn’t have ended on a stranger note is that THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES was just around the corner. Still, this movie is a pretty odd amalgam at that; in fact, if it weren’t for the vampirism touches, this feels more like a Fu Manchu movie than a Dracula movie. In the end, I don’t know why Dracula needs both Satanic rituals AND a deadly bubonic plague virus to spread his evil, and the movie has that “everything but the kitchen sink” air about it. I do get the sense that they were starting to scrape the bottom of the “how to kill the vampire” barrel here, with a hawthorn tree and an indoor sprinkler system called into play to defeat the vampires. Dracula himself comes across as more of a super-villain rather than a creature of ancient evil, and the movie never really gels. Still, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are very good as usual, and despite the silliness factor the movie is entertaining enough.

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The Road Warrior (1981)

THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981)
aka Mad Max 2
Article 3245 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-8-2010
Posting Date: 7-3-2010
Directed by George Miller
Featuring Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston
Country: Australia
What it is: After-the-Apocalypse action flick

It’s after the apocalypse. A loner on the search for gasoline comes upon a compound that refines it, but the compound is under siege by a gang of punks led by a masked figure known as Humungus. The loner finds himself drawn into the struggle for the gasoline…

I’m not a fan of action movies; if the story, characters or humor don’t interest me, I don’t care how many car crashes and explosions they throw into the mix. So when I say this is one of my favorites of the genre, it says something about how well it’s put together. The characters are interesting, compelling and fun; outside of tortured loner Max, we have Bruce Spence’s gangly Gyro Captain, the willful Feral Kid, the more-animal-than-man mohawk-styled Wez, the leader of the pack known as Humungus (I really wonder if he would have spared the lives of the people in the compound if they had walked away from the fuel), not to mention the well-defined characters in the compound itself. Furthermore, the action sequences are to-the-point and tied to the story; for example, there are only two explosions in the movie, and they are both important to the story and not just there for show. Great little touches abound; I like the scene with Max, the Feral Kid and the music box, the first meeting with the Gyro Captain, and the clever (and very logical) twist at the end of the movie when it looks as if the mission has failed. This movie proved to be extremely popular and inspired many imitations; in fact, it became the template for after-the-apocalypse movies for years to come, though I’ve never seen one that did it better. Highly recommended.

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The Return of the Evil Dead (1973)

THE RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD (1973)
aka El ataque de los muertos sin ojos, Return of the Blind Dead
Article 3244 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-7-2010
Posting Date: 7-2-2010
Directed by Amando de Ossorio
Featuring Tony Kendall, Fernando Sancho, Esperanza Roy
Country: Spain
What it is: Blind Dead Templars sequel

A small village is holding the annual celebration of the anniversary of when the villagers rose up and killed the evil Templars that had terrorized them for ages. What they don’t know is that it is now time for the Templars to rise from the dead and seek their revenge.

I first saw this movie as part of a double-sided DVD that featured TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (the first movie of the series) on side one, and this one on side two. The original movie was letterboxed and subtitled on the DVD; this one was full-screen and dubbed, which made it seem a little chintzier from square one. It’s not a direct sequel to the original; it takes the basic concept, makes a few changes, and builds a different story around it. This one basically borrows the premise of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD; the last half of the movie has most of the major cast members barricaded in a church that is under siege by the Templars. I’m less impressed with this movie than the original; it just seems to lack that sense of dread the first movie engendered, and we actually see too much of the dead this time around. Still, there are some effective and moody moments, and there is at least one real shocking moment, albeit one that involves the actions of the trapped humans rather than the carnage of the Templars; it’s truly shocking to find out what the final action the mayor takes in order to get to the car and make his escape. Whatever its flaws, it’s still fairly clear that the whole Blind Dead series was Amanda de Ossorio’s most inspired creation.

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Ravagers (1979)

RAVAGERS (1979)
Article 3243 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-6-2010
Posting Date: 7-1-2010
Directed by Richard Compton
Featuring Richard Harris, Art Carney, Anthony James
Country: USA
What it is: Post-apocalyptic ennui

It’s after the apocalypse. When his wife dies at the hands of roving hooligans known as ravagers, a loner leaves the city to look for a place called Genesis. However, the ravagers decide to follow him…

Between this and ORCA, it looks like I’m having a Richard Harris week here. In terms of the presence of that star, these movies make an interesting contrast; whereas Harris’s performance was part of the glue that held ORCA together and helped the movie sustain my interest, here his performance is one of the big problems with the movie. He seems to react to everything with a sort of glum puzzlement that is neither compelling nor interesting, and his decision to deliver most of his lines in a hushed whisper becomes really tiresome. It’s almost as if he’s bored by the whole thing, but I wonder if he caught that from the director; Richard Compton shows little interest in the events that he is putting on film here, and I’m particularly puzzled by his inability or refusal to build up suspense in certain scenes that should be full of it. At any rate, the end result is a movie that sits there like a lump of lead; the only time it shows any energy is during the action sequences, and they’re only passable. The movie wastes some of its other star power as well; Ernest Borgnine isn’t given enough screen time to really bring his character to life, and Woody Strode is trapped in a dull role. The biggest saving grace in the movie is Art Carney; his addled sergeant (who mistakes Richard Harris’s character for a long-dead major) is fun and quirky, and he brightens every scene he’s in. Other than that, there’s little of interest here.

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The Mechanical Man (1932)

THE MECHANICAL MAN (1932)
Cartoon
Article 3242 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-5-2010
Posting Date: 6-30-2010
Directed by Walter Lantz and William Nolan
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animated robots and skeletons movie

A mad scientist has created a robot, but its pugnacious nature convinces the scientist that it needs a human heart. He decides to kidnap Oswald the Rabbit’s girlfriend for the heart. Can Oswald save her?

It gets points for trying. This surreal cartoon throws out a nonstop barrage of strange imagery and gags so steadily that it’s hard to take it all in in one sitting. The problem is that it just isn’t funny; the gags are unfocused and arbitrary, and though I watch the cartoon with a certain amount of curiosity, I’m never once compelled to laugh. It reminded me that the very best cartoons, as wild as they might be, were usually grounded with a strong center in some regard (a theme or a plot that held it together), but that’s what this one lacks. Ultimately, it’s just mildly interesting.

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Orca (1977)

ORCA (1977)
Article 3241 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-4-2010
Posting Date: 6-29-2010
Directed by Michael Anderson
Featuring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson
Country: USA
What it is: JAWS-inspired fish story

When a captain kills a pregnant killer whale and her unborn child, he becomes the target of the vengeance-driven mate of the one he killed.

This is perhaps the most famous of the various ripoffs that came in the wake of JAWS. To its credit, it takes a different tack on the subject; here, we’re obviously supposed to sympathize with the wronged killer whale rather than just see it as an object of terror. It also doesn’t try to make a villain of the captain, and attempts to provide some parallels between the captain’s life and that of the killer whale’s. Still, in order to pull this kind of story off, you need a strong script, and that’s just what this movie lacks. One of the problems is that it makes the killer whale just too damn clever; he seems to know just what to do to cause the most damage, and he seems to know where everyone is at every moment. Yes, I can understand the desire to anthropomorphize the beast, but here it approaches silliness. Furthermore, it’s so obsessed with its various themes (the intelligence of the killer whales, the relationship between the captain and the killer whale, the possibility that this may be some mystical destiny) that it fails to really develop the characters and the situation. I noticed that though I found the movie watchable enough (thanks in part to some good performances), I never really felt much tension or fear, and that’s because I never felt this was happening to real characters in a real world. Nevertheless, despite its flaws, I’ve always liked the movie a little. But I do have a serious issue with any movie that has the good sense to cast Keenan Wynn and the bad sense to kill him off in the first reel.

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