Only now does it occur to me... V: THE SERIES, "THE SANCTION" (1x5) (1984)

Only now does it occur to me... that I've finally discovered the "real" Cobra Kai. Allow me to explain.

If you're new to the "V" series, you could start by reading my initial post on the subject which, though it is eventually hijacked by a happening known as "the Nut Slide of Doom," lays out the basic reasons why you should watch the first two miniseries and then stop before you get this far (to V: THE SERIES).

To recap: the V saga tells the story of the invasion of Earth by fascist aliens (who are actually rodent-snacking reptiles in disguise) who intend to rob our planet of its resources and enslave/eat our population. Some humans collaborate with them and become Vichy-style puppets and/or Hitler Youth. Others join the resistance, engaging in guerrilla warfare against the technologically superior Visitors. This story is skillfully told in V: THE ORIGINAL MINISERIES (1983). It is enjoyably continued as the actioner V: THE FINAL BATTLE (1984). By the time we get to V: THE SERIES, its gutted budget and watered-down purpose have rendered it virtually unwatchable. (Meanwhile, the hair has gotten bigger and the costumes have become more ridiculous, so the "so-bad-it's-good" aficionados can still have a little fun.)

Jane Badler is the best: DYNASTY meets XANADU, man

 

The plot of this episode follows "Sean," son of Marc Singer's "Mike Donovan" (the BEASTMASTER himself, and the perpetrator of the aforementioned Nut Slide of Doom), as he continues his indoctrination as a member of the Visitors' youth program. Sean is now played by Nicky Katt (DAZED AND CONFUSED, THE LIMEY, THE BURBS), a longtime character actor and terrific smartass, who is at this point still a literal child.

Presumably because THE KARATE KID had come out that summer, this episode features the Visitors attempting to re-educate their human wards at a karate dojo.

 

 They introduce a new character to do so: "Klaus" (Thomas Callaway), who is equal parts "Jaws" from James Bond, random leather daddy, and "Kreese" from THE KARATE KID.

He is a sadist with a detachable hand which unveils a chain/whip extension. It's a whole thing. Anyway, he runs this evil dojo,

which is, for all intents and purposes, "Cobra Kai" with more space Nazis.

Now, the visual pun here is that the Visitors––who, remember, are reptiles in human disguises––are pretty close to cobras themselves, therefore, making this a technically more "authentic" Cobra Kai than the one featured in THE KARATE KID!

Anyway, this plotline comes to a close when Nicky Katt punches out (eventual KARATE KID alumnus) Michael Ironside and throws in his lot with the Visitors for good.

 

This does provide us with the excellent––if extremely improbable––visual of Ironside getting his ass kicked by a stone-cold child. (Who strikes first, strikes hard, and shows no mercy.)

I guess they did teach him some effective moves down at the fascist snake-man dojo. Uh, Kreese would be proud?

Only now does it occur to me... V: THE FINAL BATTLE (1984)

Only now does it occur to me... well, before I get ahead of myself, I'd be remiss if I didn't say a few words about the "V" franchise. An anti-fascist alien invasion adventure inspired by Sinclair Lewis' IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE and John Steinbeck's THE MOON IS DOWN, Kenneth Johnson's V: THE ORIGINAL MINISERIES (1983) is a close-to-perfect three hours of television. It's potent enough to have been an inspiration to great artists (John Carpenter's THEY LIVE), popcorn flicks (INDEPENDENCE DAY), 

 

and dangerous fools (David Icke's whackadoo reptilian theories) alike. I'd say without reservation that it's one of the best sci-fi properties of the 1980s, which is obviously saying a lot. It's got everything from Robert Englund playing a lovable, post-MORK AND MINDY "gentle dullard" alien 

 

to Jane Badler playing the manipulative alien Nazi version of "DYNASTY meets XANADU." 

 

It's a rare breed of miniseries, and one which forced an important question upon the Reagan-era mainstream (which has since been "answered," for all of us, in one way or another): whose side will you choose when the Nazis come?

Then, there was a sequel––V: THE FINAL BATTLE. Made largely without Kenneth Johnson's participation, there's way more action, way less diversity, and fewer instances of social commentary, but it's still fairly solid TV, and you can really see its influence on subsequent sci-fi actioners, from ALIENS to TOTAL RECALL. Part of this is because the inimitable Michael Ironside joins the cast as the ex-CIA mercenary "Ham Tyler." 

 

His one-liners feel somewhat out of place on the heels of such heavy dramatic material, but that ain't Ironside's fault.

 

It was on this project that Michael Ironside met his real-life best friend (and best man at his wedding), the musician/actor Mickey Jones.

Anyway, I guess you could say this is all a prelude to one of the greatest/weirdest happenings in television history, a bit of fight choreography I can only describe as the "Nut Slide of Doom." It's the best stunt JCVD never did. Basically, a resistance leader––played by Marc Singer (THE BEASTMASTER himself)––decides to take out one of the alien Visitors by sliding off the hood of a spaceship and knocking the alien in the face with his crotch. That this tawdry moment happens in part 2 of a project which began with such lofty political, social, and historical aims does not invalidate the fact that it objectively rules. 

See for yourself:

 

And I'm not alone here. 

 

 

When V (again, without Kenneth Johnson) was turned into a weekly TV series, they chose this exact moment––and scored by somber synth music, no less!––to cap the opening credits sequence. They even freeze frame it. Don't believe me? Just watch.

 

Anyway. I just wanted to make sure that all of you were aware of this. And I'll be returning to V: THE SERIES quite soon for even more harebrained observations. (For the record, V: THE SERIES is terrible, and if you decide to enjoy the saga, do yourself a favor and quit at the end of V: THE FINAL BATTLE.)

"Fictional Dystopias Better Than the One We're Living In" in Booth

My latest conceptual piece, "Fictional Dystopias Better Than the One We're Living In" has been published in the January 2020 issue of Booth, the literary journal of Butler University.

Only now does it occur to me... DR. MABUSE––THE GAMBLER (1922)

Only now does it occur to me... a few thoughts about DR. MABUSE––THE GAMBLER, a criminally underrated work in the Fritz Lang oeuvre. 

While, like some epics of the era, it doesn't quite have enough plot to justify it's four-and-a-half hour runtime, it's still a dizzying, edgy roller-coaster of pure Weimar id, German Expressionistic fantasy, and creeping zeitgeist horror. Probably better translated as "DR. MABUSE––THE PLAYER" (in German, "spieler" refers to game-player, gambler, actor, and puppeteer, and Dr. Mabuse is certainly all four). 

Mabuse (Rudolph Klein-Rogge, the mad doctor of METROPOLIS) is a hypnotist/gangster/psychologist/master-of-disguise/general trickster/proto-Batman villain whose schemes have enveloped most of Berlin. The great film theorist Siegfried Kracauer saw Mabuse as among a "procession of tyrants" in post-WWI German film who foreshadowed the rise of Hitler.

Fritz Lang is really at the height of his powers here: in his staging and imagery, in his use of texture and dimension, in his contrast between stillness and motion––whether he's depicting a the mass hallucination of a Bedouin procession in a Berlin theater:

Otherworldly séances:

Powerful tableaus that resemble Renaissance paintings:

The expressionistic/Bauhaus interior design of Weimar's 1%:

For all its stylish exaggerations, it's an important time capsule of the era.

Decadent Weimar nightlife realness:

Which includes one unforgettably over-the-top display of insanity, whereupon a pas de trois commences between a dancer and two giant, terrifying (papier-mâché?) heads with exceptionally phallic noses and suspiciously testicular cheekbones.

These dudes seem to like the production design just fine

Then, in a visual worthy of Ken Russell, she ascends the noses and dances atop them until they climax with a "sneeze" that, incidentally, blows away most of her outfit and leaves her with

a creepy baby...

Hot damn, Fritz! Legitimately one of the more unexpected sequences in a silent––or any––film.

Finally, I must note the majesty of  Mabuse's descent into madness, which definitely prefigures the Moloch sequence from METROPOLIS. Here, pieces of industrial equipment are reimagined as quasi-mythical monstrosities which come to life and torment the much-deserving Dr. Mabuse.

It's also worth noting that this is the state in which we find Mabuse at the beginning of THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1933), Fritz Lang's brilliant sequel, which I also cannot recommend enough.

Film Review: NATION AFLAME (1937, Victor Halperin)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 74 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Directed by Victor Halperin (WHITE ZOMBIE, PARTY GIRL). Story by Thomas Dixon, Jr. (THE BIRTH OF A NATION, MARK OF THE BEAST). Starring Noel Madison ('G' MEN), Lila Lee (BLOOD AND SAND, THE UNHOLY THREE), Harry Holman (MEET JOHN DOE, BARBARY COAST), and Douglas Walton (MURDER MY SWEET, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN).
Tag-lines: "Exposé of a Hooded Menace!"
Best one-liner(s): "Boy, the suckers will eat it up!"

In what's coming to be a regular feature of this blog, I find myself writing about American hate groups, fascists, and their cinematic depictions. Today's film happens to be written by Thomas Dixon, Jr., whose early novels celebrated hate and formed the basis for the racist, denialist 1915 epic THE BIRTH OF A NATION, which casts the Ku Klux Klan as the heroic saviors of the South during the "dark days" of Reconstruction.

However, sometime in the 1930s (upon witnessing the revived Klan and the rise of European fascism) Dixon underwent an apparent evolution of character. In NATION AFLAME, his final work, he delivers a formidable condemnation of the Klan, American Nazism, xenophobia, and political hucksterism that's more than worthy of our attention in 2017. If Thomas Dixon's mind can be changed––a mind that was directly responsible for the second wave of the Klan in the 1920s––then truly the sky is the limit: NATION AFLAME is as remarkable in this aspect as it would be if Steve Bannon were suddenly to produce a film denouncing the white nationalist movement.

Allow me to begin by offering a rundown of the plot, which unfolds with the simplicity of a fable across a slim, 74-minute runtime.

Enter: Roland Adams, the political huckster. A rich, aging clown-prince who has a certain way with crowds, and rules them with the wave of his jester-faced scepter: he wears the absurdity of this persona as a badge of pride.

With his eldest daughter reining in his more outrageous peccadillos, Adams once was Mayor of a typical middle-American city.

Against his daughter's wishes, however, he has made some dangerous friends; career criminals who know that the the huckster's power over the uneducated mob can be exploited, a fast lane to power and riches. His new right hand man is an Italian immigrant named Sandino who has re-fashioned himself as "Sands," and, in a believably hypocritical path to personal agency, becomes a true master of the xenophobic rhetoric that was once leveled against his friends and family.

He becomes Adams' brain, his attack-dog, his Richelieu. Adams' daughter has very little power over him now, though it pleases her to pretend. Sands and Adams make their xenophobic, "America First" pitch at a political cocktail party, and while it fails to impress the intelligentsia, the seeds are planted for a Populist campaign. The following clip is well worth watching:
And so the Avenging Angels are formed; a "grassroots" organization subsidized by gangsters and protected by corrupt politicians, whose members wear black hoods (patterned after the Black Legion and the second-wave Klan) and commit acts of political, racial, and anti-intellectual violence.

 Sands lays out their mission in a manner that is straightforward and unfortunately prescient:

"The only way that we can save the youth of our nation is to organize them in one single group, and through them, enforce the precepts of 100% Americanism! Corruption and politics must go! Civic virtue and patriotism must be our goals! We must enforce a reverence for our flag and our Constitution!  And what is more, protect our American womanhood, and guard the sanctity of our homes! We must guarantee that the wealth of America must be shared only by real Americans! To maintain and declare absolute boycott against foreigners is our only salvation!"

We are treated to extensive scenes of Adams, Sands, and their cronies practicing their bluster as an acting exercise, repeating the same lines over and over again until they feel they've attained the proper patriotic fervency.


"Boy, the suckers will eat it up!" says Adams. And they do. The gang is able to enrich themselves financially and politically, selling Avenging Angels memberships and apparel for $25 a pop.


"For twenty-five dollars, be true Americans!"

It should come as no surprise that Adams rides this wave of hate to ascend to a fresh political office: the Governorship. Under his rule, and amid a mosaic of domestic terrorism, the Avenging Angels beat to death reporters who dare to criticize them.

Now Governor Adams has the Oval Office in his sights, an idea planted by Sands, who grows more power-hungry by the day. Sands doesn't care much about the scandals and inquiries piling up at the Governor's doorstep, because he operates in secrecy and will still wield the full power of the Avenging Angels no matter Adams' fate. Adams' daughter makes regular visits to his office in an attempt to save his soul:

"Daddy, I'd rather see you resign than be impeached," she says...

But Sands always visits afterward, and the Governor happens to be the kind of man to take the advice he's heard most recently.

With political opponents closing in, Adams eventually decides to buck his gang and forge his own path. This, unfortunately, is short-lived as he is immediately assassinated by Avenging Angels who, at Sands' insistence, believe he has betrayed them.



Governor Adams is dead, his jester-faced scepter smashed. And the power of the Angels lives on, vindicated by the destruction of those who were not pure enough; those who were less than "100% American."

Adams' daughter aligns herself with the Angels' progressive foes and is burned in effigy amid growing misogynistic rhetoric.


Fearing her reputation already ruined, she sacrifices her remaining stature to take out Sands, entrapping him in a sex scandal that, in 1937, proves to be enough to sink the Avenging Angels for good. The end.

For me, NATION AFLAME film can only reframe Dixon's body of work, not rehabilitate it. However, like other films of the era such as BLACK LEGION and LEGION OF TERROR, it is very much the product of 1930s American Progressivism, fearful of fascist movements in Germany, Italy, and Spain worming their way into the American South and Midwest. That it comes to us courtesy of a man who never would have described himself as a progressive, and in fact publicly wore the mantle of "white supremacist," is staggering. I suppose this is evidence that even the harshest, most monstrous ideologue can have a breaking point: a crisis of conscience. This is something we must bear in mind.