Three Films Make A Post: It's High Noon at the end of the Universe.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983): To get out of the way what every write-up of this one, however short, must contain: there’s nary a metalstorm in Charles Band’s film, nor is Jared-Syn destroyed.

Most probably, there’s just no time in-between the attempts to squeeze tropes of the western, post-apocalyptic exploitation and the kind of magic you encounter in space operas into some kind of script-shape; there’s also surprisingly little time for actual fun visible on screen, and even Tim Thomerson and Richard Moll seem to sleepwalk through the affair. For a “one damn thing after another” kind of film, this feels curiously bland and uneventful – if ever “meh” was an objective, palpable quality, Metalstorm achieved it.

The Sea Wolves (1980): Speaking of bland, Andrew V. McLaglen’s war as a boy’s own adventure for old men movie does share that quality on a much higher budget level. Despite the presence of Gregory Peck, David Niven and Trevor Howard – all past their prime but usually still perfectly able to carry a dumb adventure movie – there’s a foot-dragging and disinterested quality to direction, script and acting that makes the whole “war as adventure” angle particularly problematic: after all, shouldn’t a movie doing that sort of thing not at least do it in a way that’s actually entertaining and exciting to watch?

Roger Moore adding his usual old man every woman wants to screw shtick to proceedings does nothing to improve things either.

Look Back (2024): But let’s end on a positive note. This sixty minute anime by Oshiyama Kiyotaka (who not only directs but is also responsible for production, character design and co-scripting) is an utterly lovely thing – a heartbreaker that earns its central moment of sadness, as well as a film about a complicated female friendship (or let’s be honest here, Lesbian love not named such to not scandalize certain people) that doesn’t attempt to come-up with a clear-cut answer to anything, and a film that doesn’t use its moment of magic to heal all things broken.

Three Films Make A Post: There are places you should never visit. This is one of them.

Indigenous (2014): Your usual young tourist types visit Panama and go off with a local to tourist up a forbidden waterfall. There, they encounter the Chupacabra. The usual mix of running through the jungle, screeching, and “I’m so sorry”s ensues. Well, you can’t blame Alastair Orr’s film for rampant originality, or pretend it does anything with the characters that’ll make you care for them even the tiniest bit. The whole film is shot competently enough but terribly dull even if you’re like me and okay with generic horror films being generic. There’s just nothing to grab one even a little bit here.

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993): On the other hand, at least Indigenous doesn’t reek of complete loathing for the audience that pays the filmmakers’ bills. This Full Moon abomination, on the other hand, directed by Charles Band himself, does reek so quite a bit. At one hour of running time, at least fifteen minutes of which are taken up by the credits and flashbacks to Dollman, Demonic Toys and Bad Channels, it’s difficult to shake the feeling of watching a really bad clip show episode of a horrible TV show (or Phantasm IV, for that matter). It doesn’t help that the plot of what’s there of actual new footage makes little sense even for a Full Moon film, the jokes are tepid, and most of it feels like filler with little of interest happening whatsoever. Not even Tim Thomerson and Tracy Scoggins reprising their roles from the earlier movies can save anything here, because there’s no attempt on screen to do anything but dupe us suckers paying for Full Moon films into literally buying crap.


Three O’Clock High (1987): Fortunately, this 80s high school comedy rides to the rescue. This is not exactly in my genre of choice but Phil Joanou’s film recommends itself even to people like me with a non-generic story made out of very generic elements and a focussed script that plots comedy nearly as tightly as a good thriller. Which is a good fit for Phil Joanou’s breathless direction that really goes in for the living nightmare elements of the plot, as if this were a Hitchcock film, and Casey Siemaszko one of Hitchcock’s everyman protagonists going accidentally stumbling into a convoluted plot. Just that it takes place in high school, and there are jokes which are actually funny. There’s no boring second here.

Past Misdeeds: Trancers (1985)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

In what should be the 23rd Century (although the film also calls it the 25th, so who knows), the delightfully subtly named future cop Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) spends all his time mopping up the remnants of the mind-controlled zombie slave troops (so-called "Trancers") of his dead arch-enemy Whistler (Michael Stefani). His obsession is quite understandable, because Whistler killed Deth's wife, but still costs the cop his job.

Deth spends his new-found free time diving in the submarine ruins of Lost Angeles, until the Future's ruling council has need of him again. That point in time comes sooner than expected. For some reason the film is unwilling to explain, Whistler is still alive and has somehow managed to find his way into the Los Angeles of 1985 to do the Terminator thing. Obviously, Deth is the best man for the job to protect the council's ancestors and bring Whistler back in.

It looks like (the film doesn't bother to explain this point either) you can send dead matter back through time as you wish, but can only transfer the consciousness of people into the bodies of their ancestors. As luck will have it, Deth's and Whistler's respective ancestors both look exactly like they do, so Deth can go on a merry hunt through Los Angeles without having to look at a strange face in the mirror.

Jack ropes his ancestor's one-night-stand Leena (future Academy Award winner Helen Hunt, not as completely annoying as she would soon become) into working as his native guide - and of course future love interest. To make life a bit more difficult for him, he is only a lowly reporter, while Whistler's new body is a Police Detective without rank but with considerable influence.

Once, before his unhealthy obsession with living dolls overwhelmed Charles Band's complete output as a producer and overrode even the small interest in making watchable movies he might have had, the producer/director/writer/etc was trying to be a small-time Roger Corman, just with less talent and imagination. At least, Band had enough clout to rope in promising talent (see Reanimator). Trancers was made in that still promising phase of Band's career and is probably his best work as a director.

Of course, keeping in mind that I am talking about the future director of The Gingerdead Man and Dangerous Worry Dolls here, one has to keep one's expectations at a realistic level, which is my long-winded way of saying that, while words like "style" or "intelligence" just don't belong into the man's vocabulary as a director or producer, Band's work here at least doesn't suck completely. He points, he shoots, he doesn't embarrass himself.

The movie's script by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, the pair responsible for the rather delightful "Tim Thomerson is Sergeant Rock and meets aliens" film Zone Troopers, has more logical flaws than my attempts at doing arithmetic. From the wildly inconsistent way time paradoxa work (people whose ancestors are killed and their own children disappear, but everyone still remembers them?) to the fact that the film really should have ended after about 30 minutes - a point where Deth has ample time and opportunity to get rid of Whistler - there is not much that stands up to even the mildest of scrutiny. Worse, the film never explains any of its concepts that need explaining. My remarks about the way time travel works are based only on conjecture, for example. Still, I can't say that I cared much about logic or needed explanations while actually watching the film, because what the film lacks in artfulness, it makes up for in (sometimes consciously ironic) low budget film charm. Following Deth, we flit from one obvious and silly situation to the next.

This is the sort of film that doesn't need to spare the killing of a department store Santa Claus for the grand finale, because it also has a (terrible, of course) punk rock club, little girls with the souls of gruff police chiefs and our hero riding a motor scooter instead of a motorcycle to throw at us. Among other things. But most importantly, Trancers not only shows us those things but does its best to let them be fun, by not taking itself serious. Not taking yourself serious in the good and entertaining way must be a lot more difficult to achieve than it looks like or most films that try for the effect wouldn't be as bad. The difference between Trancers' version of this brand of fluffiness and the bad sort as incorporated in Troma films or Band's later Full Moon Productions lies in the fact that it still takes its audience serious. Where a Troma film winks at itself in a mirror, this is a film still winking at us sitting in front of it.

While I usually just can't stand Helen Hunt, I do approve of the fact that the film doesn't make her character completely useless and only be there to be rescued by Thomerson and wear troubling fashion. She's useful, she has moments of being sensible, she's as much as you can hope for in a cheap SF actioner.

And she's next to nothing compared to the film's true trump card, the utterly awesome Tim Thomerson doing the perfect square-jawed cynical hero with delightfully silly one-liners (personal favourite: "Dry hair is for squids") while having at least one toe in the territory of a parody of a perfect square-jawed cynical hero, which, let's be honest, is the only way those guys can ever be made sympathetic. Somehow, Thomerson even makes Deth kinda cool.

A few years later, Band would go on to turn Trancers into a confused franchise of films that have nothing to do with each other beyond Thomerson, but none of the later films is even vaguely watchable, so this is the one to watch if one wants to see Thomerson doing what Thomerson does best.

Doctor Mordrid (1992)

Extradimensional sorcerer supreme Dr. Mordrid (Jeffrey Combs) is spending his time on Earth awaiting the earth-shaking attack of his arch enemy Kabal (Brian Thompson). I’m not sure that’s the best use of his time, seeing as he himself imprisoned Kabal in a magic space castle and knows very well where the guy is, so he might look out for him there, but what do I know.

Obviously, Kabal does break out of his decrepit space castle prison and starts spending his time stealing silver, diamonds and other elements useful for his plans to free a bunch of demons from said space castle prison and rule Earth with them, like the most overpowered petty criminal you’d care to imagine. Once he finds out, Mordrid probably would do something against Kabal, but before he can, he gets arrested for a sacrificial murder Kabal committed, on proof so non-existent the film doesn’t even bother to make anything up, but mostly because his love interest and neighbour Samantha Hunt (Yvette Nipar) – who works for the police as an advisor – sends her cop friends over to him to ask him for clues in the case. Nope, I have no idea, really.

Eventually, Samantha helps Mordrid break out and there’s a kinda-sorta show down in a museum. The End.

In the dark times of Marvel cinema licenses, the option for a Doctor Strange movie did actually land with Charles Band’s Empire for a time. Fortunately, that option expired before Band could actually make the film. Not to be discouraged by little things, Band re-tooled what already existed of pre-production materials into a project called “Dr. Mortalis”, which - with the end of Empire - then again got retooled into the Full Moon production we have here, which may or may not have started out as an all ages project that grew some breasts and mild ickiness.

Given that history, it’s no surprise the resulting film is a wee bit uneven. One would think, though, that all that reshuffling and rewriting might have convinced some of the people involved, let’s say Band who is co-credited as a director together with his father Albert, to include a plot that at least tries to hang together instead of delivering the series of scenes with little actual connection we get here. Now, I’m really not asking much of my movies, but I do prefer a film about battling extradimensional sorcerers to not take a twenty-five minute plus detour into a police station without any need apart from making the film longer. Bonus points would be available for a plot that would hang together a bit more, and a villain who’d be doing something mildly more interesting than stealing stuff.

As it stands, this is the most pedestrian use of its set-up imaginable, with a handful of pleasantly strange (sorry) scenes unable to keep one’s interest awake during all the boring tedious bits.
It’s too bad, too, for Doctor Mordrid does have some things going for it. First and foremost, Jeffrey Combs gives his character with an admirable lack of irony, so much so I’d be okay with having watched this thing just for the sake of seeing a man treat things with dignity and seriousness I wouldn’t have believed you could react to without hamming it up. I bet he’d even have been able to talk about the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth with an impression of absolute sincerity.

The production design has its moments too, particularly when it comes to Mordrid’s space sorcerer age bachelor pad and the space castle prison (the film doesn’t even bother to give that place a snappy name). There’s also a very mild tyrannosaurus versus mammoth skeleton fight in the finale, but there, the fun idea is – as is so much else in the film – buried under a half-hearted execution that spends more time in a police station than on a sorcerous duel.

In short: Hideous! (1997)

I am generally quite down on Charles Band and Fullmoon Entertainment productions after about 1992 or so (what with them generally sucking badly in the worst possible manner) but this big gloopy ball of weirdness is much more fun than I could have hoped for, starting from an outrageously silly premise and just getting intensely strange, and then stranger.

Unlike most of these films that spend more time winking at their audience while exclaiming how funny they are, this one actually had me amused throughout, thanks to a cast of strange stereotypes with an extra dollop of weirdness, played with the proper kind of overacting by a cast (among them Michael Citriniti, Mel Johnson Jr., and Jacqueline Lovell as the strangest henchwoman imaginable) that actually isn’t phoning it in, even though they are in a film with mutant killer foetuses concerning the misadventures of people in the medical specimen collectors’ underground. A film not containing all that much of said killer foetuses to boot, because special effects ain’t cheap, buddy, but talking it. Fortunately, said talking’s often so funny – as well as off – you might not even miss said foetuses. If all this does sound a bit like a Troma movie, there certainly are more than just a few parallels, but it’s Troma done right, which is to say, actually funny and weirdly subversive in feel instead of just screaming at you that it is.

Hideous! (it truly works hard for that exclamation point) is directed by Charles Band himself with unexpected verve, and just goes from one moment of fun off-the-cuff weirdness to the next. There aren’t many films around who get their mandatory bit of nudity in by having Lovell (the actual brains of her collector’s operation, like every good henchwoman should be) staging a hold-up while being topless and wearing a gorilla mask, which won’t even be the weirdest habit the character will show. And if that sounds like your idea of fun, this one’s for you as much as it is for me.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,comedy,charles band,michael citriniti,mel johnson jr.,jacqueline lovell,tracie may

Ragewar (1984)

aka The Dungeon Master

80s science geek (that means he wears glasses, but with a HUD) Paul (Jeffrey Byron) has invented what seems to be some sort of super computer - talks, understands, knows all - that just happens to look like a home computer circa 1984. Paul's love life isn't quite as great. While he's in a relationship with dancer Gwen (Leslie Wing), his attempt at proposing marriage only results in a "you love your computer more than me" lecture.

Because nobody actually cares about this stuff, a demon/black magician/Satan calling himself Mesteema (Richard Moll) teleports the couple into a low-visibility set with lots of open flames and foamy rocks, chains Gwen to one the latter and challenges Paul - or as Mesteema prefers to call him "Excalibrate" (not to be confused with "Exacerbate", "Excruciate" or "Exterminate") - to some fun and games. Otherwise, Messy'll do unspeakable things to Gwen, and seeing as part of his hobby throughout the film is to put her in one ridiculous outfit after the next, these things won't be pleasant.

With that starts a series of random vignettes - broken up with some ridiculous discussions between Paul and Messy - in which Paul is harassed by little people, fights a giant stop motion Indonesian idol, duels various unfrozen criminals in Messy's ice museum, fights heavy metal band W.A.S.P. and does a bit of mad maxing in an episode where Gwen also suddenly turns from damsel in distress into post-apocalyptic ass kicker. At least Messy is a fair opponent and provides our hero with a) a particularly ridiculous outfit and b) a bracer of shooting lasers and talking to one's computer +10.

All of these vignettes are written and directed by a horde of different people from Charles Band's Empire stable (hooray for pre-doll-fixation Charles Band), and it really shows - there's no characterisation, and no plot throughline to speak off. The writers couldn't even be bothered to get on the same page about what Paul's computer can and can't do, except for the laser shooting part, but since this is a film where everything shoots lasers, from stop motion statues to the guitars of W.A.S.P., that might just be coincidence too.

So, obviously, if you're looking for coherence, even the lightest characterisation or character development, suspense, thematic resonance or a script that does anything more than throw out random nonsense, this is not the film for you.

If, on the other hand, you want to see one of the most 80s of movies ever made in the 80s or beyond that still finds time to steal most of its "ideas" (those that aren't directly ripped off from the genres of the day - sword and sorcery, post-apocalyptic action and metal panic horror) from old episodes of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone this is certainly the thing to see. There's horrifying fashion (making its bad guy some sort of demonic hobby fashion designer and even joking about it really pays off for the film), rubber mask zombies, rubber mask monsters, more cartoon laser beams than in a weird fu movie, that surprisingly awesome stop motion statue, a soundtrack that hits all the 80s film music spots from dumb semi-orchestral loudness in the credits to disco beats to synth funk to heavy metal, scenery chewing while being made up like a five year old's version of a bad magician by Richard Moll, sets so threadbare you want to give Band a dollar so he can double the budget, the list of beautiful things goes on and on. Plus, Paul says "I reject your reality and substitute my own".

While nothing of this is done particularly well (he said politely), I can't help but be delighted by the sheer mass of stuff that's in here, with no genre left behind, as if Band's merry band (sorry) were making a highlight reel from a TV show that never existed.

I'm also quite in awe of the childishness of the whole affair. The film feels exactly like the sort of thing my eight-year-old self could have made up to my own great satisfaction in '84, with nary a hint that the people who made this were actual grown-ups who should have known better. Of course, if Band had known better, he never would have built his own private cheapass movie empire out of cardboard, imagination, the blood of many a doll, and people with more talent and enthusiasm than sanity, leaving us without a whole lot of unwatchable crap about killer dolls, but also without some really great movies, and others - like Ragewar - that are not great in a way that I can't help but love.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,horror,sf,charles band,jeffrey byron,leslie wing,richard moll

Parasite (1982)

The Future™. In one of the fascist-corporate cities of a post-apocalyptic USA, scientist (I don't dare speculate what kind) Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini, looking appropriately sweaty and tired for most of the film) is building a dangerous parasite for his government. Why? The government and the corporations are evil, silly!

In a peculiar (that is, one that doesn't make sense even after you've witnessed it) accident, Paul manages to infect himself with his own creation. The scientist destroys all but one of the other parasites, and flees the city for the country, where no government applies and people tend to mind their own business. After setting up his badassitude by waving around a toy laser gun and winning an awkward slow motion fight scene, Paul (and the parasite pal in his belly, as well as the other parasite pal he carries around in what looks a lot like a thermos) comes to a quiet little post-apocalyptic desert town, and decides to set up his lab in what I imagine to be the last motel left in the world.

However, people just won't let Paul cure his state in peace. Black suited government bad guy Wolf (James Davidson) - a man with a laser looking a lot like a pen I once owned he's not afraid to use - is on his trail, and he'll do anything to get Paul's parasite back. Yes, even mutilating coffee-hoarding old coots.

Even worse than Wolf is the parasite itself: during an altercation with the small town's local (very mild, as far as these things go) population of post-apocalyptic punks, the thermos-dwelling parasite really digs into one of the punks' chests, so soon enough, Paul will not just have to deal with Wolf but also fight and catch a murderous, hungry, and growing parasite. At least the latter has an adorable smile. Plus, there's also young, pre-op Demi Moore as Paul's love interest and woman who will shoot a gas tank until it explodes in her moment of being plot-relevant.

As people of style and taste all over the world know, before producer impresario/writer and sometimes - like here - director Charles Band became obsessed by the spirit of a murderous barbie doll and only ever made films about murderous dolls, or at least things and people as small as dolls, anymore, he not only produced some actual classics of great low budget filmmaking, but directed some pretty decent films - and of course a load of crap too - himself. One might have to stretch one's definition of what can be called a pretty decent film a little if one wants to describe Parasite (well, actually, Parasite 3D, but who cares about 3D?) as such, but if one adjusts her expectations accordingly, the film's perfectly watchable.

Parasite's script works by the checkmark model of scriptwriting, which is to say, it's more like a list of elements from better films (Alien, of course, the first Mad Max film, clearly - you know, the classics) worked through one after the other, and less like an actually story, but at least it's taking its ideas from the right movies. Now and again, the writers even manage to work in a scene or two, or even an idea, which works on its own merits, and not on those of better films. The motel owner (Vivian Blaine) who seems to have stumbled in from Sunset Boulevard and her demise, for example, are perfectly clever little low budget movie ideas executed well. I also can't help but appreciate that film at least tries to turn the post-apocalyptic punks from one-note into two-note characters - their leader Ricus (Luca Bercovici) even has a backstory as a slave on a government farm.

On the negative side, the prospective viewer really needs to have some patience with the classical flaws of this sort of production (and let's be honest, especially of films Band didn't give to more talented directors). The pacing is erratic and drags more often than not, plot holes are large enough to fly a death star through, the "future" is represented by a small handful of 80s cheapo futurist gadgets and perspex on a gas pump, there are as few locations in use as a film could possibly get away with; and let's not even talk about the "dramatic" climax. But hey, at least the parasite looks good.

Me, I've been entertained by much worse films, and have ignored much larger flaws, so while I wouldn't exactly tell anyone to go out looking for Parasite, it's something I find perfectly alright to watch.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,charles band,horror,sf,post-apocalypse,robert glaudini,demi moore,luca bercovici

On WTF: Trancers (1985)

Trancers is what happens when you combine the natural awesomeness of Tim Thomerson with Charles Band in his least annoying mood and subtract any dolls or puppets - a very fun little movie. You can read more about it in my review on WTF-Film.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,charles band,sf,action,reviews,tim thomerson,other places