Zebraman (2004)

Directed by: Takashi Miike
Runtime: 115 minutes


Time to learn some useless knowledge. Super Sentai  is genre of Japanese television programing that involves a group of costumed heroes with a gimmick. That gimmick being any combinations of magic, robots, amazingly stupid choreography, random explosions, alien technology, and or anything else that can be merchandised. The plot of these shows is a group of photogenic nineteen to twenty five year olds who get the ability to wear weird costumes and fight the forces of evil until their contract runs out. Now that's out of the way, time to cover the insanity that is Zebraman.

In 1978, a sentai set in 2010 aired about a human school teacher who turns into Zebraman and battles aliens. Due to horrible ratings the series was canceled after seven episodes. Thirty two years later the movie catches up with Shinichi. He was fan of the show, currently a teacher, and his life has more or less fallen apart. His wife is having an affair, his daughter is dating older men, and his son is being bullied at the school he teaches at. He copes with his life falling apart by making and dressing in a Zebraman costume.

This all changes when a series of violent unexplained murders starts happening and Shinichi has new transfer student named Shinpei. Shinpei is also a fan of Zebraman thanks to someone uploading the original Zebraman episodes on to a site like Youtube. Meeting this kid encourages Shinichi to be Zebraman and to fight crime. This crime fighting leads to Shinichi being able to carry out the same silly moves that the TV Zebraman could do. Also, he learns that people are being controlled by bad cgi green slime aliens.

As superhero movies go, it has less plot holes than a Marvel movie and is happier than DC movie. Overall, it is an enjoyable movie but the plot tends to drag due to showing as much information as possible about Shinichi. There are a lot of scenes that would have been better as montages like Shinichi trying to fly as Zebraman. Yes watching a grown man in a silly costume throwing himself off a bridge in the hopes missing the ground is funny but too much time is spent showing this.

This is a go see it now to any Takashi Miike fans and worth watching over all.

MVT: The way this movie takes PG-13 material and all the sentai silliness without making you feel dumb for watching it.

Make or Break: Keeping the CGI as cheap as what you find on a TV show.

Score: 7.2 out of 10

Alien Seed (1989)

Mary Jordan (Shellie Block) loves to jog, and she even has her sights set on Olympic gold in the near future.  If only she hadn’t been abducted and inseminated by aliens.  Now her life is in mild turmoil.  Enter journalist Mark Timmons (Steven Blade), who types while wearing sunglasses indoors as if he were Saturday Night Live’s Michael O’Donoghue, and has been in contact with Mary for the purpose of telling her story to the whole, wide world.  Of course, Mary is also being pursued with much more malicious intent by the probably/definitely insane Dr. Stone (Erik Estrada), and when Mary’s sister Lisa (Heidi Paine) gets abducted too (gee whiz!), all bets are off.  Not that they were ever really on.

I am in absolute amazement how vivid and downright coherent dreams are when portrayed in media.  They may have odd elements in them, but oftentimes they’re little more than either a clue to a mystery the characters need to solve or a shorthand to delineate a character’s inner turmoil.  Personally, I rarely remember my dreams, but several differences stand out between mine and those in fiction.  One, the people I’m with are rarely people I actually know.  In fact, outside of a few instances, they’re simply bodies serving as placeholders in whatever events are taking place, and they are just as likely to become someone else (recognizable or unrecognizable) ten seconds down the road as not.  Two, not only do the people change at a moment’s notice, but the settings do as well.  I don’t even need to leave one place and go to another.  Sometimes all I have to do is turn my head, and suddenly I’m nowhere near where I started.  Three, nothing ever seems to be resolved at the end of my dreams.  They usually begin (if they have beginnings at all) and end with very little having taken place and very little of anything with any explicit value having been learned.  

There are themes that run through many of these dreams, I’m sure, and I’m even more certain that there are those who would suggest that the reason these themes remain constant in my dream life is because they remain unresolved in my waking life.  I understand the reason that dreams seem so cogent in movies, television, and so forth.  They need to serve some narrative function, so they can’t be as deliriously frustraneous as those I’ve experienced.  And that’s what, funny enough, Bob James and company get (mostly) right in their film Alien Seed.  The dreams in this film are nigh-unintelligible outside of the god-awful EBEs (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities) that are peppered here and there in them.  There is a woman sleeping in a very wet bed with some unknown person next to her.  There are women in nighties getting splashed with blood (the only reason I could decipher for this one was as a surrogate wet tee shirt shot).  There are shots of fire.  The point is little to none of what we’re shown is integrated into the film in any significant way.  I suppose that some of it is meant to mimic what UFO abductees have recalled of their experiences, and I can appreciate that.  But so much more of it is just visuals.  Granted, there are some nice boobies in said visuals, but otherwise there’s little point.  But that’s enough for some folks, and it absolutely fits with my personal experiences.

The “alien messiah” angle of the film is easily the most intriguing.  As has been posited by people for decades now, aliens have supposedly been integral in forming and guiding our civilization since its very beginning.  It’s been said they helped build the pyramids of Egypt (most famously).  It’s been said that they have regularly chosen humans with which to breed.  It’s been said that the human race sprang forth as an experiment conducted by aliens, that we’re living on a gigantic Petri dish under a galactic microscope or worse, that we’re being bred as some form of cattle (in which case you would think they should have harvested their product some time ago and/or should really get on the ball with the seeming state of global affairs).  For my part, I can’t fathom why aliens would want to interbreed with human beings, especially if they’re so vastly superior and so much further evolved from us.  Unless, of course, Earth is a big old interstellar brothel for extraterrestrials, and their outer space contraception isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  

Regardless of how involved or uninvolved one wants to get in considering this subject, Alien Seed does its damnedest to play it all inconsequentially and straight down the line.  The government (read: The American military-industrial complex) wants to possess Lisa’s baby to harness its power and increase their influence across the globe, because peace doesn’t sell (contrary to what Dave Mustaine may tell you).  The Reverend Bolam (David Hayes) and his “ministry,” which I believe is in league with General Dole (Terry Phillips), also claim ownership of the infant and the power it will bring, but his motives (whatever his specific aims may be) are more personal.  Bolam is depicted as a genuine man of the cloth, but he is also depicted in the standard cynical way for this type of character.  The very first scene he’s in, Bolam’s eyes bug out of his head as he reminds his secretary (Marilyn Garman) that they will have their usual sexual liaison that evening.  He is in a constant, diaphoretic state of agitation.  We even get a throw away shot of him tossing his clammy head back in revelatory ecstasy while kneeling by some votive candles (though he could just as easily be getting his knob shined by his gal Friday).  The most intriguing pursuer of Lisa and Mark is Dr. Stone as a biological riff on the Terminator (though neither the character nor the actor portraying him come even close to the impact of the James Cameron/Arnold Schwarzenegger/Stan Winston creation), but he gets so little screen time and he’s so ineffectual, you really have to feel bad that Estrada actually put his name on this film as a producer (an associate producer, I grant you, but still…)

What undoes this film in the final analysis isn’t that it’s dumb.  There have been plenty of dumb films stretching back to the very dawn of cinema.  And a lot of them have managed to be entertaining, even when they have been incompetent (and some are entertaining because of their incompetence).  Alien Seed is not one of those films.  There are elisions of time and plot points we are only told about when it becomes important to what narrative there is (and I’m being generous when I use the word “important”).  One can deal with characters who behave unlike actual human beings, but when it’s done with the intent of plot convenience, it’s irritating.  Motivations change just to attempt generating tension to keep the story afloat for a longer run time.  It doesn’t work.  

It’s been a complaint of reviewers for many years that chase scenes are nothing more than padding for films/television shows that are light on content.  Now, you and I know this isn’t strictly true.  Some chase scenes are so well done and so well thought out, they become integral to the potency of the work in which they are featured.  With that in mind, there are no less than three chase scenes in this film, and I can tell you confidently that not a single one of them adds any value to this film as either narrative development or spectacle.  So, no, I don’t hate this movie because it’s dumb.  I hate it because it’s dull.  But you can just read that as “it stinks.”

MVT:  There are several scenes set in the topless bar where Lisa works (Mary may work there too, but who can tell?).  They’re entertaining and engaging for the most obvious reason.  And they’re the only reason I could see anyone watching this film.  Too bad there weren’t more of them.

Make or Break:  The scene where Mark visits Lisa’s apartment is stalker-y and implausible in the extreme.  He brings her Chinese food, and then she lets him in, and then she tells him to leave.  Then he sleeps on the couch.  If this scenario took place in reality, it would end in restraining orders, I assure you.

Score:  3/10 

Hangar 18 (1980)

I’m sure there are those out there who remember the late, great Darren McGavin as the titular Mike Hammer of the 1958 television series.  Based on what I know about Spillane’s character (and not having seen any episodes), I somehow can’t imagine McGavin in a role that hardboiled.  That said, he has played some memorable villains, even in things like the much-maligned (and not completely undeservedly so) Dead Heat.  But, to my mind, the role that fit him like a glove was (you can see it coming, can’t you?) Carl Kolchak.  Beginning with the made-for-TV film The Night Stalker in 1972, the intrepid reporter in the seersucker suit made his way through a sequel film (The Night Strangler) and the short-lived series Kolchak: The Night Stalker.  While the unearthly menaces that filled the show’s runtime wavered in quality from genuinely creepy to outright laughable, two things stand out.  One, the show’s creators were not afraid to throw offbeat ideas into the mix (a Spanish Moss Monster?  A Rakshasa?).  Two, McGavin’s portrayal of Kolchak was equal parts charming, credulous, sarcastic, and audacious, and if it hadn’t been for the formulaic approach to the stories and the low production-value-to-ambition ratio, I believe the program would have lasted a long time (for better or worse).  It’s still remembered today as a cult oddity, but the people who love it do so ardently.  It’s clear that without Kolchak there never would have been The X-Files (series creator, Chris Carter, declared this influence early and often), or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Supernatural, and so on.  Furthermore, without Darren McGavin there would never have been a Kolchak, because frankly, I cannot imagine another actor being able to fill those tennis shoes even half as well.

During a routine space shuttle mission to launch a satellite into Earth’s orbit, a UFO appears, causing the satellite to explode, decapitating one of the astronauts, and forcing the flying saucer down somewhere in Arizona.  Seizing upon this golden opportunity, General Morrison (Philip Abbott) has the spacecraft carted off to the eponymous hangar.  He then tasks NASA mission manager Harry Forbes (McGavin) with assembling a special team to investigate the ship and its occupants.  Meanwhile, surviving astronauts Bancroft (Gary Collins, perhaps better known for his emcee duties on shows like Hour Magazine) and Price (James Hampton, perhaps best known as Teen Wolf’s dad in the 1985 movie) launch their own inquiry when they unjustly catch the blame for everything.

Director James L. Conway’s (perhaps better known for The Boogens and as Mr. Rebecca Balding) Hangar 18 (aka Invasion Force) comes straight out of the notions of Chariots of the Gods.  Yet, it clearly wants the money which Space Operas were raking in after the success of a certain Death-Star-centric film which came out in 1977.  The opening credits bear this out.  The main title is designed as if it were for a heavy metal band.  The rest of the credits all use a rather inconsistent “Sci Fi font.”  This is all rolled over George S. Price’s plucky, bombastic score (as conducted by John Cacavas).  Needless to say, when the first shot you get after these titles is a rather flatly-lit, undetailed miniature of the space shuttle, expectations meet reality like a runaway train.  This is a dichotomy the film maintains throughout but still manages to subvert (in the disappointing sense of the word).  It feels as if they wanted to make a Conspiracy film and tried to sell it as a Science Fiction Epic.  Ultimately, it never quite satisfies as either, and that’s unfortunate, because this could have been a true diamond in the rough.

Like with all Conspiracy/Paranoia films, the Big Bad is either the government or a corporation (typically in league with the government).  Here we have the former as embodied by the calculating Gordon Cain (Robert Vaughn), Chief of Staff (I assume) of the never-seen President Duncan Tyler.  The big election is only two weeks away, and since Tyler ran on the premise that aliens don’t exist (sort of, but yes), the presence of an actual UFO on American soil is a trifle bothersome.  As a result, top secrecy must be maintained at all times (even though an alarming amount of people are brought in to deal with it), and this also means sacrifices must be made (see aforementioned astronauts).  Like the more interesting villains of page, stage, and screen, Cain realizes he must do bad things, but he has good reasons for doing them (or at the least, he is adept at rationalizing his decisions to himself).  Normally, malefactors of this ilk are filmed awash in shadows.  They move in secret, their intentions masked from the audience until such time as their revelation will carry maximum impact.  These guys aren’t like that.  They seem to honestly struggle up to a point with the choices they have to make.  It’s an odd perspective to give to the viewer in light of the film’s narrative.  But it’s not the only odd perspective the film takes.

Harry and his team (including a bearded Steven Keats) comb over the flying saucer, trying to discover everything they can.  This sets us up for a more psychological type of Science Fiction film.  Nevertheless, we get a scene where Harry accidentally fires a devastating laser inside the lab.  We get a scene where Phil (Tom Hallick) accidentally causes the UFO to hover and glow menacingly.  The film wants to gratify the “soft” Sci Fi crowd (think: Star Wars) and the “hard” Sci Fi crowd (think: 2001: A Space Odyssey) simultaneously.  Sadly, neither are carried off completely.  Just like with its Conspiracy elements, the Science Fiction elements of the story aren’t peeled away in layers that propel the story forward and compel the moviegoers’ attention.  Everything is very plainly stated, very matter of fact.  

Additionally, the filmmakers’ take on the discoveries (inside and outside the spacecraft) is guileless.  There is nothing in the movie which cannot be guessed, guessed correctly, and guessed expeditiously, so the viewing of the film feels like reading The Little Engine That Could for the thousandth time.  Sure, it’s still a good story, but it divulges no further wisdom.  Just the same, I do have to wonder if this predictability is because of the filmmakers’ uncomplicated attitude or this watcher’s (and I’m sure many modern watchers, though this isn’t my first viewing, and I can say confidently that my reaction has remained fairly consistent) much more cynical one.  While I would love to say that the blame falls more on me than on Conway and company, their lack of commitment to their material is fundamentally demonstrated by the film’s denouement.  It’s not dark enough to completely fulfill its Conspiracy expectations.  It’s not big enough to completely fulfill its Action expectations (though credit where it’s due, there are some tasty explosions interspersed throughout the movie).  And it’s not thought-provoking enough to completely fulfill its Science Fiction expectations.  If these expectations fit your expectations, have at it.

MVT:  The discoveries made on the UFO are fun, but they’re fun in the same way that the end of your favorite film, book, et cetera is.  They’re just altogether not unexpected.

Make or Break:  There’s a big “A-Ha” (not the Norwegian pop band) moment regarding the aliens and their relationship with the Earth.  As stated, the reveal is nothing all that intriguing, but McGavin’s delivery brings it home.  Rest in peace, sir.

Score:  6/10