“Quivering Venusian blubber cups!”

Star Wars immediately exploded into a big cultural phenomenon, yielding an actual slew of space opera imitators, mostly lower budget imitations that tend toward cheese or ineptness or both. Something like Space Mutiny is an example of lazy ineptness leading to a really funny trainwreck. Then there's low budget sci-fi comedy, where the ineptness leads to something stale and unfunny, like 1980's Galaxina.

Plot

So after an opening title crawl (Star Wars reference) explaining that its the year 3008, and the police cruiser Infinity of the United Intergalactic Federation is finishing up a patrol mission and en route to a new assignment. On the way they get into an argument and then firefight with a ship that looks like an actual bird of prey (Star Trek reference). The Infinity is damaged, the captain eats an egg and coughs up an alien (Alien reference) and almost halfway through the movie the actual plot kicks in: The crew are assigned to recover an item called the Blue Star (Ahhhhhhhh) from prison planet Altair One on a journey that will take 27 years to complete, so before jumping into cryosleep, the crew jump into a space whorehouse for some shore leave.

They finally reach the planet, the sexy robot volunteers to look for the macguffin, gets captured by a cult of bikers, gets rescued, and then an anticlimactic fight with the metal-faced guy from the bird ship, and it kind of ends.

Cast

Galaxina: Dorothy R. Stratten was a beautiful woman with a depressing story of rising to fame as a Playboy Playmate and then being murdered-suicided by her insane, jealous husband shortly before this movie was released. That's the 800lb gorilla in the room for this movie. That said, she was very attractive and filled out a slinky jumpsuit very well. With regards to acting? Well, she was a model, and playing a robot, and her character doesn't speak for most of the movie, so...not that great.

Sgt. Thor: Stephen Macht (the dad from Monster Squad) plays the grizzled, stogie smoking 2^nd in command of the ship. He gets metal fever falls in love with Galaxina and tries to touch and kiss her, leading to painful electric shocks. She eventually reciprocates, reprogramming herself to be able to speak and to not electrify everyone that touches her.

Buzz: James David Hinton play who I think is the communications guy. Its not very clear what his role is. What is clear is his southern drawl, cowboy hat, and Dodgers jersey with the sleeves cut off. Ha ha. Isn't it funny that Dodgers jerseys still exist a thousand years in the future? Comedy!

Captain Cornelius Butt: Funnyman Avery Schreiber plays the blustering, bumbling captain of the Infinity, occasionally narrating some captain's logs. The schtick is at times funny and at times grating, and he's arguably the funniest member of the cast. Though he does take an sadistic glee in “feeding” a prisoner called Rock Biter by throwing styrofoam rocks at him through his prison bars in a painfully unfunny scene. Also, his last name is Butt. Comedy!

Maurice: Lionel Mark Smith plays the winged, ambiguously alien black mechanic who's fake ears don't match the rest of his skin tone.

Sam Wo: Tad Horino plays the weed smoking, Confuscian-esque nonsense spewing guy who hangs out with Maurice in the engine room. Doesn't actually do anything else.

Ordric from Morderick: Played by Ronald Knight and voiced by Percy Rodrigues, this is our villain. A metal faced guy in a robe reminiscent of Darth Vader, but with a silly reverb effect on his voice and a rude attitude.

Chopper: The leader of a cult of bikers that worship Harley David-Son. I’m really only mentioning him because the actor’s name Aesop Aquarian (or Stephen Morrell), which is kind of awesome.

Visuals

Directed by William Sachs, who's done a number of low budget movies. The movie looks fine. The sets and lighting are serviceable to good, the costumes aren't too terrible (except for Maurice's ears), and the model ships look all right. Hell, even the laser effects of the “space battle” look pretty good with the rotoscoping effect of lasers dissipating against shields. The fight is boring since its two ships sitting still and going pew pew pew, but it looks okay. One thing that doesn't look great is the orange filter...thing employed for exterior daylight scenes on Altair One. It hurts the eyes after a while watching Galaxina walking around a Wild West set populated by fair-to-middling alien costumes. Yes there's a wild west town set. Probably because it was cheap to film on.

Pacing though? That's rough. There are long stretches where not a lot happens.

Oh yes, and at one point Ordric is watching First Spaceship onVenus.

Writing

Written by William Sachs, the script is where the movie falls. So much of the movie is filled with 5^th grade jokes (Cornelius Butt), cheap references to other movies (there's an alien bartender named Mr. Spot who looks almost exactly like someone else, oh, who is it? Oh. Right. Barbarella), Avery Schreiber (probably) improving with mixed results, and a few actual good comedic bits. Captain Butt's narration is in turns exasperated and pompous.

Whenever someone says “Blue Star” an angelic chorus plays, causing everyone in the scene to look around in confusion for the source of the sound. That's actually the best bit in the movie, since it starts out random, gets annoying, and then comes back around to being actually kind of funny since they commit to the joke as hard as possible, even going so far as to change it to an almost Doo-wop version when Chopper says it. The god the bikers worship is an actual Harley Davidson, which isn't that funny, but the heroes escape the bikers on it, which leads to a chase scene where a bunch of bikers on horses are chasing after a spaceman and robot lady on a motorcycle. That's a moment of zen right there.

The rest of the jokes don't really work, either because of timing, editing, or delivery. They just feel randomly thrown together.

Sounds

The music seems like a bunch of stock audio mixed with public domain classical music, like Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Strauss, and Liszt. It works. I guess.

Conclusion

Galaxina would probably have been funnier if it had an actual plotline instead of throwing a bunch of jokes at the wall only for most of them to fall short. Or if it had been a serious space opera. Or if the jokes were better. In the end, it feels like people went “Star Wars! That's popular, but everyone's making Star Wars imitations. I know! A parody movie!” It's a shame because the end result is below average and plodding. Watch Spaceballs instead. 

“Books! That's what started this whole apocalypse!”

Oh Italy. Italy, Italy, Italy. Home of so many low-budget B-movie knock-offs of popular genre films. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior came out in 1981, and I nuovi barari AKA The New Barbarians AKA Warriors of the Wasteland followed soon after in 1983.

Plot

So there's this murderous gang of dudes driving around in dune buggies and bikes rampaging across the wasteland. They have big hair, even bigger shoulder pads, and follow a madman who blames humanity for bringing about the apocalypse. For that, their leader, the unimaginatively named One (George Eastman), has decided that Mankind must die. He's assisted by Shadow (Ennio Giorlami as “Thomas Moore”) who has a silly blonde mohawk wig, and Mako (Massimo Vanni), who has an even larger black mohawk wig. And the whole death cult wear white jumpsuits with HUGE shoulder pads.

Standing (well, driving) in their way is Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete as “Timothy Brent”), a wanderer and scavenger, he's also not interested in killing all of humanity. He is interested in killing One's Templars, so he's our hero. He's got a tricked out car with a giant plastic bubble installed on the roof. I don't know why. He rescues Alma (Anna Kanakis) a random wastelander, from the Templars, and looks for medical attention to her. They're rescued from Templars by Nadir, who is easily the best character in the movie. Nadir is ex-football star and B-movie star extraordinaire Fred Williamson, armed with a bow, gold armor, a gold circlet, and a shit-eating grin. He's not a great actor, but he's an enthusiastic one, and seems to be aware of exactly the kind of movie he's in and is happy to cash the paycheck.

The three find a community of peaceful not-Quakers who are led by Father Moses (Nenantino Venantini) and believe in something called god. They also believe in the Signal, which is some kind of radio transmission coming from somewhere in the wasteland and indicates hope that there might be someplace in the world that isn't a rocky quarry.

Visuals

Directed by Enzo G. Castellari, the movie is obviously a low budget cheapie. Filmed primarily in a gravel pit and a country road. There is one car, a handful of motorcycles and a couple dune buggies with ridiculous metal plates bolted on. A lot of mannequins get shot and blown up. Scorpion and Alma make love in a transparent inflatable tent. As I mentioned, the Templars have absurd costumes with giant shoulder pads and giant hair. For the final battle, Scorpion wears an articulated, transparent plastic cuirasse over his bare torso because...its bulletproof? And yet the movie moves at a rapid clip and doesn't bog down much in exposition before heading to the next ridiculous scene. That makes it noteworthy.

What's more noteworthy, but for different reasons, is the incredibly awkward scene where, oh yeah....

SPOILERS BELOW

NO REALLY, AWKWARD SPOILERS INVOLVING BUTTS BELOW

After capturing Scorpion, One sodomizes him before the rest of the Templars. Now, you don't see any penetration, but it happens. Its weird, uncomfortable, and comes out of nowhere. What's stranger is that its also the scene that makes the most out of actual direction and cinematography to create an unpleasant atmosphere. There's multiple colored lights in the background, heavy use of shadows, and rapid cuts to extreme close ups of various people. Its the one scene of the film that artistically “goes for it,” and its the sodomizing scene. That is bizarre.

END SPOILERS

Writing

Written by Tito Carpi (of several Sartana movies and various other Spaghetti-Exploitation films), Enzo G. Castellari and Antonio Visone. The plot is lazy but functional, aping standard post-apocalyptic struggle-to-survive stories and conventions.

Then there's the whole “the Templars are genocidal, homosexual atheists” thing. I will say that's not something I've ever really seen before in a movie, so, uh, points for originality. They contrast with the peaceful, god-fearing, heterosexual settlers, but I'm not really sure there's an actual message to that. The caravan people are a stock element fresh out of Westerns, and their faith is alien to Scorpion and Nadir, who side with them because they're not murderous maniacs like the Templars. I honestly think the Templars' “mission statement” was something quickly slapped together to provide them with easy villainous motivation and that's it.

Sounds

Music by Claudio Simonetti. Its the standard low-budget 80s fare. Synths, guitars, the usual. The guns (which are regular guns) have pew pew noises. Everyone is dubbed over. All of the cars have this phony engine drone dubbed over them, because THE FUTURE.

The Verdict

Warriors of the Wasteland is an awful movie, yet a bizarrely watchable one. It moves quickly, is full of (idiotic) action scenes and car chases, and it lends itself to mockery so well. I wouldn't say its incompetently made, more lazy and cheap. A simple cash in that aspires to little more. Come for the giant shoulder pads, but stay for Fred Williamson, who appears to be the only actor having fun in the film. Oh, but what fun he has. 

Why? No reason.

“I'm your home now, kid.”

I had heard about 1980's Battle Beyond the Stars for some time as one of many, many 80s Star Wars imitators. Which is fine, that's a legitimate genre as far as I'm concerned, and one I can approve of. What sold me on this movie as something worth seeing was that it was the movie that got James Cameron (and a number of other talented film people) a start in Hollywood. He did this by designing a spaceship that looks like a set of Fallopian tubes with a pair of boobs attached.

Because this is a Roger Corman production and Cameron accurately guessed that it was a design that Corman would give a green light to. That's why.

Story

It's The Magnificent Seven/The Seven Samurai in space. Literally, figuratively, and actually. Evil empire comes to peaceful farming planet (named Akir, no less, as a nod to Akira Kurosawa), demands they surrender and bullies them. Naive farm boy heads off in search for help to fend off the bad guys. That's pretty much it, except instead of Steve McQueen, it's got a talking spaceship with boobs.

Characters

Shad: Richard Thomas (most notably John-Boy on The Waltons) is our hero. A Wide-eyed, naïve idealist, he's still got the stones to volunteer to venture off into space without a plan of action to desperately seek help. Despite this, he can't really shake off his people's peaceful nature, so he's kind of a weenie and I'm not really sold on Thomas' performance.

Nanelia: Darlanne Fluegel lives on a space station that Shad reaches. She's a talented engineer and the station is populated by robots and her crazy old dad, Dr. Hephaestus (Sam Jaffe) who's a head in a jar and wants Shad to settle down with his daughter and populate the space station. Shad's like “You're really pretty but I've gotta go do this thing for my planet,” so he leaves and she follows him in her own spaceship and eventually meets up with him and becomes his love interest.

Cowboy: George Peppard (The original Hannibal Smith from The A-Team) is a literal space trucker from Earth. Shad finds him under attack by space pirates, bails him out, and cuts a deal with him. Cowboy will deliver his shipment of weapons to Akir to help them out (It helps that the planet he was originally delivering them to got blown up by the bad guys). Cowboy is a droll, easygoing, swaggering cowboy, and definitely stands out from the rest of the cast.

Gelt: Robert Vaughn (from The Magnificen Seven) plays a ruthless gunslinger assassin who's so deadly and infamous that he's wanted across the galaxy and has to hole up in a run-down, abandoned Space Vegas. Shad recruits him by offering him a meal and a place to hide. Gelt's odd because Vaughn is essentially playing the same character he did in The Magnificent Seven, but it feels a bit phoned in.

Cayman: Morgan Woodward plays a reptilian alien from the Lambda Zone. He's a slaver and mercenary, and he captures Nanelia with the intention of selling her for food. Until he learns that she's gathering people to taken on Sador, who exterminated the rest of his race. Cayman wants revenge, and has a running crew that includes two short aliens called Kelvin. They communicate in waves of heat and don't have ears. Cayman keeps them around because he's cold-blooded.

Nestor: Nestor is a hive mind, and is portrayed by several actors. Most notably Earl “The Zombie Pirate LeChuck” Boen is the lead Nestor. Nestor signs up for the mission because its bored.

St. Exmin: The extremely well-endowed Sybil Danning plays a Valkyrie warrior who lusts for battle and has a tight-fitting costume, I mean ship. She tracks down Shad and wants to join up with him because she longs for glorious battle. He mostly ignores her, despite her being a good fighter, and she obsessively follows him back to Akir and he finally relents and lets her join the group. She's the only one Shad treats like garbage, so obviously she wants to bang him and make a real man out of him, and he's completely not interested in her and repulsed by her violent ways. He does eventually give her some respect at least.

Nell: Lynn Carlin voices the sentient spaceship that takes Shad on his journey of recruitment. She's a gung-ho gal eager to be taken out of mothballs for an adventure. She also provides Shad with motherly advice and is constantly cajoling him to grow a pair and fight back against the villains. Nell's fun.

Emperor Sador of the Malmori: John Saxon is no stranger to hamming in B movies, and he's in full swing here. Sador is a cruel tyrant with an obsession with conquering anything he can and living forever. He does the first by flying his bigass spaceship around and telling planets they belong to him now and shooting lasers at the populace just to prove he can. He does the second by replacing his old body parts with new ones. A subordinate does something wrong? Sador's got a new foot. That sort of thing. He's a cartoonish villain, but that's what this kind of movie needs, and Saxon's fun to watch in it. Oh yeah, and he's got a weird mark/scar/tattoo over one eye, sort of like Sub-Zero had in Mortal Kombat 3.

Visuals

Directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, who worked a lot in animation as an animator and director (he was co-director of The Snowman Christmas short. You know, the famous one, with the kid and the snowman flying around and stuff?) Anyway, Battle Beyond the Stars feels like the most lavish Corman production I've ever seen, which almost might be damning it with faint praise. It cost $2 million to make, so there's A LOT rough around the edges in terms of costumes and visual effects, but that was a lot of money for a Corman film.

While the effects are clearly a step down from what was being done in Star Wars, there are a lot of them: alien costumes, sets, models, lasers, explosions, rear projection stuff. It was all done on the cheap, but involved a lot of young talent (like James Cameron) that was out to prove itself, and it shows. The filmmakers managed to pull off a lot of with not a lot of resources, and it looks okay. Not great, certainly, but competent, where it would have been easy for it to look terrible.

Writing

Story by John Sayles & Anne Dyer, screenplay by John Sayles (who is still a working screenwriter whose credits include The Howling). The plot is beyond derivative in this, directly lifting its main beats from The Magnificent Seven. Character work is also a little iffy. Shad is a putz, but he's not a tremendously likable one. He's a nice kid who's trying to do right, but he passes naïve and goes straight into dense. Nell is kind of the only character with real three dimensionality, and she's a spaceship with boobs.

Shallow characters and plot aside, the script features a lot of interesting Sci-Fi ideas that haven't been done to death in space opera. The Kelvin are a fantastic concept. They can't speak or hear, but communicate in heatwaves. That's weird. That's alien. And it leads to a fun visual gag where the two of them are being used as a campfire. The hyper intelligent, hyper advanced Nestor is is this weird, benevolent thing and oddly enough a source of a lot of humor.

Whenever the movie lets the weirdness through, it benefits, because those touches are what set it aside from just being The Magnificent Seven in space (Though like its inspiration, it does end on a melancholy note which really doesn't sit with the whimsical adventure themes of ADVENTURE! earlier in the film).

Sound

This was James Horner's first real soundtrack gig, and like the production crew, he was out to prove something. The score is raucous, sweeping, bombastic, and perfect space opera fare. Yes, Horner has a reputation for recycling a lot of his own material, but the Battle Beyond the Stars music just oozes fun, and its hard not to like his work.

Conclusion

Battle Beyond the Stars is a competently and enthusiastically made B-level Sci-Fi space opera. Not earthshaking, profound, or deeply intelligent, it is charming as hell, and an interesting starting point for a lot of people who would go on to do bigger and better things. It's got lasers and space battles and explosions and aliens and Sybil Danning's boobs trying to pop out of her costumes. It's a lot of fun and totally recommended, even if the ending is kind of a downer because the source material demands it.

“Indiana, we are simply passing through history. This? This IS history.”

I’ll admit, taking a critical eye to the Indiana Jones movies is an intimidating thought, because so much has already been written in praise of the trilogy that what could I possibly add except more praise? Well, hopefully it’ll be reasonable, thoughtful, and insightful praise in what turned out to be a super-long update. And it provides an excuse to watch 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark again.

The Story
Its really rather simple. Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones is an archeologist in 1936 who does extensive field work and gets recruited by the US Government to track down the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do because the Germans might find a way to weaponize it. What follows is a globe-trotting, two-fisted race against time ADVENTURE!

No, really, that’s it. That’s the plot right there. Two sentences and we’re good to go. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The Sights
Raiders is beautifully gritty. What do I mean by that? It means director Steven Spielberg and director of photography Douglas Slocombe take us from dank South America to frozen Nepal to Egypt (well, locations meant to be those places at least) and give us all kinds of incredibly well-shot and lit harrowing situations. There’s death traps, golden idols, a giant boulder, tarantulas, a creepy Gestapo agent, and a bar brawl that ends with a tavern burning to the ground. And that’s just the first half hour. Then there’s chase scenes, Nazis getting punched in the face, ancient tombs and riddles, more chase scenes, a Nazi monkey, the finding of the Ark, Indy having a semi-belligerent relationship with an ex-girlfriend, an aristocratic French archeologist working with the Nazis, a fistfight against the backdrop of a flying wing on an airstrip, Nazis getting punched in the face, a U-Boat, and the constant struggle between Indy and the Nazis over who will claim the Ark. The movie is loaded to the gills with awesome stuff that happens. It clocks in at about two hours, and the pacing and content is just so damn good that there’s really not a single bit of fat that could’ve been trimmed from the finished product. It is, in essence, a perfect example of an ADVENTURE! movie with perfect pacing. And Nazis getting punched in the face.

Some highlights: The South American intro to Indiana going through incredible effort and avoiding all kinds of death traps (and the iconic giant boulder) only to have the idol taken from him at spear point is a fantastic character introduction. The digging in the desert that leads to the discovery of the Well of Souls and the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant is suitably majestic and epic. Even the expository scene at the University between Indy and the Feds who recruit him is incredibly well done. Its straight up exposition, but all of the things mentioned come back around and happen by the end. Its fantastic.

Then there’s the action sequences, and what action sequences they are! The fight with the German mechanic and the flying wing stands out as a great miniboss fight filled with great escalation, tension, and choreography. What makes it awesome is that they essentially made it up as they went. The truck chase through the desert that follows it is also incredible. And these action scenes are done in the traditional “stunt men & pyrotechnics” method. All of its as real as it can be.

The special effects are also damn good. The Ark is mystical/magical, and in addition to the famous melting/exploding Nazis, there’s all kinds of mystical stuff throughout the film. The Ark burns the Nazi logo on its crate. Even more subtly, as the movie progresses, whenever characters even so much as mention the Ark, it causes strange localized atmospheric changes, like a gust of wind or a thunderstorm during a dig. The subtle touches are just as important as the blatant ones, and this does both well. Okay, sure, some of the blue screen effects are certainly showing their age, but honestly, it detracts nothing from the viewing experience because the rest of the movie is so visually amazing. Besides, there’s stuff that was made in the last ten years which has aged much worse in the effects department.

I think part of the reason why it works is because it’s a movie set in 1936 made in 1981 using filmmaking techniques that were not impossible for the 1930s (as in computers and stuff). Lots of locations, soundstages, props, stuntmen, pyro, models, camera tricks, stop-motion. All of it was really done in front of cameras and recorded on celluloid. It adds a…plausibility to it. It’s a direct line to that old Hollywood craft tradition and wears that heritage proudly.







The Cast
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones: Harrison Ford completely nails the two-fisted pulpy charm of the character. And Indy’s not even a character so much as an archetype to hang the ADVENTURE! on. What’s Indy’s character? He’s a brilliant, handsome, tough-as-nails archeologist who’s students all love him, hates villains, loves beautiful women, and is terrified of snakes. He wears a fedora and is great with a bullwhip. And that’s Indy in a nutshell. He gets introduced as a take-no-shit guy who doesn’t hesitate to bullwhip a guy who tries to shoot him in the back, so he’s clearly a man of action. But despite this, Indy’s not a Mary Sue character because he has incredibly spotty luck. He always manages to get the ever-loving crap kicked out of him, he gets captured all the time, and the bad guys are frequently able to trick or outwit him. About the only thing that consistently goes right for him is that he’s doggedly persistent and really good at surviving things that should kill him. In short, he is an everyman hero. The only actual character development he gets in the movie is: “Learns to respect the power of the supernatural as it pertains to legendary artifacts.” Aside from that, he’s just an awesome professor who punches Nazis and hates snakes.

Dr. Marcus Brody: Denholm Elliott plays Indy’s boss at the museum. He’s highly intelligent, well-connected, and rather paternal, but he’s past his adventuring prime and has to deal with negotiations and red tape at home. A staunch and charming ally, but not someone who can back Indy up in the field. He, like most everybody else in the archeology business in this movie, has respect for the Ark, and warns Indy to be cautious and respectful of it should he find it, because who knows what kind of forces are at work within it?

Satipo: Alfred Molina in his first movie role! He’s a cowardly and ultimately treacherous sidekick in South America and really only noteworthy for having a long and successful career after appearing in Raiders.

Sallah: John Rhys-Davies is great as Indy’s Cairo contact. He’s a jolly man with a big family and prone to singing merrily who runs a digging crew that gets hired by the Nazis to dig for the Ark (along with every other digger in Cairo). Another staunch ally, he gets a lot of choice dialogue bits. He too gets very respectful when discussing the Ark.

Marion Ravenwood: Karen Allen from Animal House is Indy’s love interest in this movie. She’s the daughter of Abner Ravenwood, an old mentor of Indy’s that was tracking the Ark. He died before the movie, but Marion has a medallion that’s the key to finding the Ark. She runs a bar in Nepal and wants to get back to the states. They have a rocky history together, and she slugs Indy one on their first reunion. Marion’s a great female character. Smart, tough, independent, feisty, handy in a fight, brunette, and capable of drinking most men under the table. God, she’s like my ideal woman. She does tend to get captured a lot, but so does Indy and that’s one more thing they have in common.

Major Arnold Toht: Ronald Lacey plays the creepy Gestapo agent with oily perfection. Sinister, weasely, and sadistic, he conveys enough menace that he doesn’t even really have to do anything physically evil on screen to get across the threat of it. It culminates in a great gag where he enters a tent with a captured Marion and brings out a chain with sticks attached that looks like a torture device but turns out to be a coat hanger. It’s a great gag.

Colonel Dietrich: Wolf Kahler plays the German officer in charge of the expedition. He’s more of the “I’m doing my job but I’m still a jerk” brand of secondary villain. And provides someone who can logistically provide all the Nazi goons that get killed during the movie.

Dr. Rene Belloq: Paul Freeman plays an incredibly sophisticated villain. He is an incredibly intelligent, cultured, and resourceful French archeologist who is a rival of Dr. Jones. He’s the one in the beginning who snatches the idol out of Jones’ hands. I think he’s possibly the best villain of the series and likely a standout one for movies in general. He’s a smug, traitorous bastard, but he’s never uncivilized about it, he’s perfectly willing to be reasonable and possibly even compromise at times. He certainly compromises by helping the Nazis (whom he doesn’t personally like, but they have the logistics and manpower to find the Ark and is ready to disagree with them on various issues). He, like Jones, is superhumanly motivated in his quest for antiquities. Similarly, he’s also got a thing for the ladies, but he’s a bit more lecherous about it (he pervs on Marion when she changes into a nice dress by looking in a mirror at her). And like Jones he also wants to find artifacts for the betterment of mankind. The difference is his hubris. He not only wants to find the relic of the century, but also to attach his name to the finding of it. Glory is his goal, and perhaps he’s also intrigued by that mysterious association with “Power” that the Ark has. He certainly wants to know what it is. He’s an absolutely fascinating character and frequently likable.

The Script
Story by George Lucas & Phillip Kaufman, Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan. Being a plot-driven ADVENTURE! I’ve already discussed a lot about what makes the movie work, but there’s still room to discuss things. Dialogue is outstanding in this movie, with some excellent one-liners and exchanges (Sallah gets a lot of them). Pacing again should be praised, because everything in the movie furthers the plot and characters and nothing is extraneous. There’s nothing that doesn’t relate to either the next scene or a bit of information that was or will be revealed. It all fits together into a watertight package. Sure some of the characters might be drawn in broad strokes, but they’re all memorable and incredibly well executed.




The Sounds
Original Music by John Williams and it is, naturally, exceptional. Of course there’s The Raiders March main theme (or as closed captioning liked to call it “Rousing Adventure Music plays”), but the other major themes are excellent as well. The Love Theme is sweeping and tender and the Ark Theme is magical, mysterious and carries a hint of danger. Like everything else in this movie, the sounds (including the sound editing by Ben Burtt) are exceptional. Oh, and throughout the trilogy, keep an ear out for the Wilhelm scream.

The Verdict
Raiders of the Lost Ark is an amazing movie. This is common knowledge. It stands up to thorough analysis. That’s like proving its good with Science! Hopefully my pretentious little insights give you an excuse to revisit the movie again and look for stuff you might’ve missed. Hell, this viewing made me look at Belloq with newfound appreciation.

And if you haven’t seen Raiders yet, what is wrong with you?? Go and correct this right now! Its only two hours long, and those are hours well-spent on every viewing.

“You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally!”

Well, here it is, the finale of the trilogy, 1990s Back to the Future Part III. Following on directly after Part II (since they were filmed together) it wraps up the series, and gives a heaping dose of Wild West ADVENTURE!

Plot
Picking up where we left off in the last film, Marty is currently stuck in 1955 and Doc is in 1885. Marty has to go back there and save Doc’s life, so 50’s Doc sends him back and Marty promptly gets stuck in the Wild West when the DeLorean runs out of gas. So, they’ve gotta figure out a way to get the car up to 88mph before Biff Tannen’s ancestor kills the Doc. The plot is, surprisingly, less complicated than the previous installments.

Characters
Marty McFly: Michael J. Fox one last time, getting to play cowboy. The character’s pretty well defined here and no real surprises. Still doesn’t like being called chicken and still has Flea as Needles, his nemesis (for all of two minutes at the end).

Dr. Emmett Brown: Christopher Lloyd is the star of the show here, no question. He’s set himself up as the town blacksmith and all around awesome guy who’s able to use his secret knowledge from the future to…well, actually just help people out actually. He’s made an enemy of this era’s Tannen though. And in this movie, Doc Brown falls in love. He is quite badass.

Maggie McFly: Lea Thompson as Marty’s ancestor (and his mom, at the end too), she and her husband are new in town.

Seamus McFly: Michael J. Fox is the mustachioed ancestor of Marty who’s married to Maggie. When you think about it, its kind of weird.

Clara Clayton: Mary Steenburgen is a schoolteacher who’s saved from falling into a ravine by Doc, essentially altering history. She & Doc fall in love thanks in part to a mutual appreciation of Jules Verne.

Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen: Thomas F. Wilson is a lot more murderous as a desperado in the Tannen ancestry.

Visuals/Effects
Robert Zemeckis directing and Dean Cundey cinematographing worked twice before and works here too, maintaining the same level of energy and ADVENTURE! the series is known for. It also happens to be a Western (well, an homage) so it touches on a lot of visual nods to standards of the genre. Effects are still solid, especially the end of the movie, which was my very first delicious taste of steampunk. You know what I’m talking about.

Writing
Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale wrapped up everything quite nicely in this one. Dialog is great, pacing is too and the whole thing is a hell of a lot of fun.

Sound
Alan Silvestri once more brings the awesomeness, merging the iconic “Back to the Future theme” with Western flourishes that just scream ADVENTURE!

“The Power of Love” gets a callback, and ZZ Top contributed a song, “Doubleback”

Conclusion
Okay, so these movies are exemplary of the effects-driven big budget blockbusters that glut our theaters every summer, I will admit that. But there is a major difference. Back to the Future as a whole is really damn good. There’s heart to it, and some great ideas driving the madness forward, and most importantly, these movies are damn fun. These movies were popular for that reason.

And that marks an excellent place to mark my hiatus. Decided by necessity and responsibility rather than a desire to stop updating for the next couple of months. Doesn’t mean I’ll let the cobwebs build up in here though. There will probably be a couple back up features, hopefully a review on a semi-weekly basis, maybe some guest reviews, and some other stuff to try and increase audience numbers and participation.

So, I’d like to thank anyone and everyone who has helped make RMWC Reviews get this far. Honestly, without a lot of the feedback I’ve received from my offline enablers, this thing wouldn’t have made it past twenty.

“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need…roads.”

Right. So Back to the Future earned its accolades and in 1989, they decided to do it all over again with most of the people that made the first a success. So here’s Back to the Future Part II.

Plot
We pick up a minute or so before the first movie ends, with Doc Brown showing up in 1985 with a further modified DeLorean (it can fly now) and he grabs Marty and his girlfriend to deal with some trouble relating to Marty’s life in the future. So they jump to 2015 and Marty has to masquerade as his own son so as to avoid Marty Jr. from getting arrested, succeeds, but 2015 Biff Tannen sneaks a trip in the machine with an almanac, hands it off to his 50’s self, causing the timeline to change and when Marty, Doc & Jennifer get back to 1985, they find Hill Valley a dystopian nightmare ruled by Biff Tannen. So NOW they’ve got to get back to the 50’s and make foil Tannen’s rise to power after the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

Trust me, it makes sense in context.

Mostly.

Hey, look over there! Its ADVENTURE!

Characters
Marty McFly: Michael J. Fox as his 80’s and 2010 self AND own son. Well, Marty’s still Marty, and he’s still incredibly charismatic as our hero. They did give him the new trait of going into a rage when somebody calls him chicken. He also gets a nemesis of sorts in Needles, played by Flea (yes, the bassist). Also, he gets a goddamn hoverboard in the future. This is both extremely awesome and infuriating, because its 2010 now and all we’ve got are stupid Segways.

Dr. Emmett Brown: Christopher Lloyd continues to be awesome. He knows what’s going on and what to do, but this movie is Marty’s show for the most part.

Jennifer Parker: Elisabeth Shue is Marty’s girl (and a different actress from who it was in the first movie). She’s a normal girl swept up in things, and gets hella freaked out when she meets her future self.

Biff Tannen: Thomas F. Wilson is back as the villain, and here, Old Biff is a hell of a lot more competent than his younger self, and throughout the movie, Biff engages in some first class dickery regarding the McFly family. Its kind of badass. Billy Zane remains one of his henchmen.

Griff Tannen: Thomas F. Wilson again as his cybernetics-enhanced, butthead of a descendant.

Lorraine Baines McFly: Lea Thompson is once more Marty’s mom, but she’s not as integral to the plot anymore.

George McFly: Jeffrey Weissman replaces Crispin Glover as Marty’s dad (aside from some footage carried over from the first movie). He’s an even smaller presence in the film.

Visuals/Effects
Robert Zemeckis is back as director and Dean Cundey is back as director of photography, and having both of them back helps the movie seamlessly fit in with the previous one. Effects are more central, what with all the time jumping, but the movie knows not to linger too long after its done with a particular time period. And the ending proves to be just as epic as the one in Part I.

Writing
Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale again, and they tie everything together quite nicely. The movie covers a lot of ground, but to its credit, its not difficult to follow and holds its cohesion as much as you would expect a lighthearted time travel ADVENTURE! film to.

Sound
Alan Silvestri’s score picks right up where it left off: being awesome. There are some period appropriate songs, like “Mr. Sandman” for a lot of the 50s stuff (yeah, it was in the first movie too, but I forgot to mention it).

Conclusion
Its got the odd distinction of being the Back to the Future movie I’ve seen the least, but damn is it fun. Not quite as tight as Part I, Part II is still a rollicking good time.

“I'm your density. I mean... your destiny.”

Oh God. I mean, Zardoz was just…wow. Look, I knew the risks going in, but you guys weren’t ready for this. I need to make it up to you guys before I go on an extended hiatus because of learnin’ obligations. Something from the 1980s should do nicely. Something ambitious. Something that just gleams with the bright glow of ADVENTURE!

Something where you don’t need money, don’t need fame, don’t need a credit card to ride this train.

Something like 1985’s Back To The Future!

Plot
You should know this already. BUT, for those unenlightened in the audience, here’s how it goes. An American teenager in the 1980s hangs out with a mad scientist who invents a time machine and installs it in a DeLorean. Because. While testing the machine, the scientist gets gunned down by vindictive Libyans and our Hero escapes in time to 1955 and gets stuck there. He teams up with the younger 1955 mad scientist and accidentally runs into his parents as teenagers, sort of triggering a time paradox that starts wiping his siblings (and eventually himself) from existence, so he has to make sure that his future mom & dad get together at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance so he can survive long enough for lightning to strike the town clock tower so he can get back to the future (DUN DUN DUN!) and return to his normal life. Standard stuff, really.

Characters
Marty McFly: Michael J. Fox in his most iconic role (even more so than Teen Wolf). He’s an everyman kind of hero, and its honestly refreshing seeing McFly as a well-adjusted, normal kid in High School who’s only family issues are that his parents are kind of lame. No orphans, no broken home, no clichéd social cripple situation for him. He’s also fairly competent when it comes to fixing the problem he created, and arguably, he’s pretty badass in this.

Dr. Emmet Brown: Christopher Lloyd plays things up big time as the friendly neighborhood mad scientist who’s invented a Flux Capacitor for time travel and installed it in a car. He’s pretty much the same in either time period, which adds to the charm of it.

Lorraine Baines McFly: Lea Thompson is Marty’s mom. Under a ton of frumpy makeup for 80’s mom, she’s herself as 50’s Lorraine, and to Marty’s unintentionally Oedipal surprise, extremely frisky.

George McFly: Crispin Glover is Marty’s dorky dad. When Marty gets to ‘55, George is revealed as, well, a shy, dorky sci-fi nut, and its Marty’s job to make sure he gets the girl.

Biff Tannen: Thomas F. Wilson is pretty much the perfect 80’s movie villain. Both 80’s and 50’s versions are just a gigantic meat headed assholes with a habit of mangling metaphors. Comical, but also dangerous enough to be taken semi-seriously. He’s also got henchmen, including one who wears 3-D glasses all the time and Billy Zane as another. Awesome.

Visuals/Effects
Robert Zemeckis in charge and Dean Cundey handled cinematography, and the two of them make the film an awesome looking event. The effects are astounding, the pacing is tense without becoming overbearing, and everything just clicks nicely.

Writing
Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale take a fairly complicated plot and keep it light and moving without it seeming too derivative of anything else out there. Dialog is great and the whole movie refuses to take itself too seriously while avoiding winking at the audience all of the time.

Sound
The movie wouldn’t be half as awesome without Alan Silvestri’s absolutely EPIC score. The main fanfare just blows your hair back, and the big, sweeping flourishes throughout the movie completely sell the action. Think of the climactic clock tower scene. Wouldn’t be nearly as tense without the music treating it like the most important thing in the world.

There’s also some other songs, like a little bit of Chuck Berry and Huey Lewis (who also makes a cameo appearance as some school official in the 80s period) provided the official “Theme Song” for the movie.

Conclusion
In a lot of ways, Back To The Future is a quintessential 80’s Adventure! movie. An original concept married to ambitious visuals and delivered with shameless enthusiasm. The end result just pulses with a certain power.

And that’s the Power of Love!

“You know, I've always had the greatest admiration for the black arts, you chaps with your... mysterious spells.”

I just realized its been quite a while since the last High Fantasy film (Prince Caspian, if you don't recall) in the rotation, and 1981’s Dragonslayer isn’t exactly high on whimsy, but it does have Peter MacNicol fighting a dragon. This I gotta see.

Plot
Set during the Early Medieval “Dark Ages” when Christianity was just making its first footholds in Pagan Northern Europe, we go to the fictional Kingdom of Urland that has a dragon problem. So some villagers make a long journey to a Wizard’s tower to recruit a sorcerer to deal with the beast, but in a test of power from one of the King’s men who followed, the old codger bites it. This leaves his young apprentice trying to accomplish the task and…things get messy by the end. Okay, so maybe its more Low than High Fantasy.

Characters
Galen: Peter MacNicol is our hero (yes, really), a sorcerer’s apprentice who’s not very good at the craft who suddenly discovers he can do some pretty spiffy magic after inheriting his master’s amulet. He goes on a kind of power trip that gets a few people killed. Still, the guy means well and is a fairly likable hero.

Valerian: Caitlin Clarke is introduced as on of the peasants who come calling for Ulrich’s aid. Thing is, she’s disguised as a boy because in Urland, there’s a lottery of all the virgins in the kingdom. The “winner” of the annual lottery is fed to the dragon, so that’s why Valerian’s daddy dressed her up as a boy. Anyway, she and Galen have that kind of bickering-flirting thing going on when he finds out she’s a she.

Ulrich: Ralph Rirchardson is the wise old wizard who gets offed in the beginning. However, he’s a major figure who’s shadow hovers over the movie.

Hodge: Sydney Bromley is the aged servant of Ulrich’s. He’s kind of a comic relief character for Galen to boss around for a little bit once he’s gotten his new powers.

Casiodorus Rex: Peter Eyre is the King of Urland and something of a jackass. The lottery was his idea.

Tyrian: John Hallam is Casiodorus’ general and right hand guy with a goofy wig, though he’s very clear that his loyalties are to the kingdom and not just the king. Which is all well and good, except he’s a big jerk who hates wizards because he’s convinced that the sacrificial status quo is better for the kingdom than some guy in a robe coming over and waving his arms around… Huh. You know, he’s got a point. Still, the movie makes him a big jerk.

Princess Elspeth: Chloe Salaman is the king’s daughter who takes a bit of a liking to Galen when he’s imprisoned. She’s a nice girl who’s unaware of just how big a jerk her dad is, and once she finds out that he’s been leaving her name out of the Lottery, she takes an extraordinary measure to ensure fairness.

Brother Jacopus: Ian MacDiarmid (yes, Emperor Palpatine himself) plays a very minor Christian missionary who gets roasted by the dragon when he tries to confront it himself. Its, uh, not a pretty scene.

Verminthrax Pejorative: And now the badass of the film, who exists in puppet and giant prop form. The dragon is pretty awesome most of the time, especially since you don’t see her (gender is a little iffy on the dragon as its also referred to as a he) in full for most of the movie. How badass is Verminthrax? Its last name is an adjective.

Visuals/Effects
Matthew Robbins directs the film with a competent eye. The beginning has that standard 80s fantasy movie feel to it (lots of browns, goofy haircuts, a trip through a forest), but as it goes on it gets progressively darker and more epic, leading to a showdown first inside the dragon’s lair, then on top of a mountain. Without spoiling it, all I’ll say is that the idea of a “lich bomb” (my term, not theirs) is pretty awesome.

The visuals are also incredibly impressive (considering 1981) most of the time. The dragon itself is awesomely designed and the stop motion puppet is fantastic (since you had some of the guys who would later become staples at ILM), but there are issues of composition and layering during the climax that undermine the epic-ness of the scene. Its pretty obvious that the two halves of the scene are spliced together in a pretty slipshod way. Didn’t ruin the experience for me, but well, your mileage will vary.

Writing
Hal Barwood & Matthew Robbins really go for Low Fantasy in this story, and I’ve got to give them credit for doing something different, especially for what’s generally a children’s film. We get some pretty gruesome deaths, the human lottery (which works exactly like that short story you read in high school) and an ending that can barely be considered happy. But its not like the movie intentionally set out to subvert all the standard fantasy tropes. Its more like the writers went “so what would really happen if a teenaged apprentice went on a slight power trip and tried to slay a dragon without any real planning or preparation?” The answer is "things would get messy."

Sound
Alex North delivers a rock solid score with some great themes.

Conclusion
Dragonslayer isn’t remembered much nowadays considering it failed hard at the box office. I’d heard about it and kept meaning to find it until now, and having seen it, it’s a respectable flick. Its not great in the same way that other 80s Fantasy movies are, but it definitely took risks to try something different. I liked it.

No trailer embed, but you can find it over here
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2902131481/

“If you will not tell me, I will hurt people!”

Oh God, no. Oh God why? Ohhhhhh God in Heaven, forgive me for what I have done. Forgive me for watching 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, for I knew not what I did.

Plot
We start with Superman doing heroic things, like saving a Russkie space capsule from a rogue satellite (that Pinko bastard) and then he watches the news reports saying that the Americans and the Russians are heating up the Cold War and he feels kind of bad about it. Then all of a sudden we go to a random classroom where the teacher was letting the students watch that press conference during class, and then she’s all like “so do you kids have any ideas on how we can stop this?” and the odd little antisocial kid in the back of the room who’s been staring out the window the whole time says “Why can’t Superman do it?” And so the kid gets the media spotlight and calls Superman out on it, and so Supes finally decides that he’s going to embark upon on a quest for peace (dun, dun, DUN!) and fly around the world to collect all the nukes and put them in a big net and throw them into the Sun. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor gets out of jail, makes deals with the recently unemployed nuclear arms dealers of the world and one thing leads to another and some really shady SCIENCE happens and we’ve got a villain, Nuclear Man, for Superman to fight on and off throughout the movie. Then there’s a subplot about a muckraking publisher taking over control of the Daily Planet and turning it into a sensationalist rag and his daughter develops a crush for Clark Kent and turns away from her wicked, yellow journalism ways.

So the lesson we can all learn from this is: If you ever get a chance to let Superman get rid of all the nukes in the world, it will only make things worse because somehow it’ll create an amoral, solar powered evil superhuman with bad 80’s hair that really likes destroying things.

Characters
Superman/Clark Kent: Christopher Reeve for the last time in a Superman movie. He’s still a very fine superman, but these movies still leave in the dickish implications of the character. How does naively throwing all the nukes into the Sun really help anything? Wouldn’t that lead to more/bigger solar flares and a huge power vacuum on Earth? And besides, this was 1987. It wasn’t like Gorbachev and Reagan were actually sitting in their war rooms with their fingers hovering over the red buttons at this point. Besides, that’s not even the worst of his dickery. He’s feeling down, and Lois visits Clark Kent and tries to cheer him up, then Clark reveals himself as Superman to her (again), takes her on a flight across the city (again) they share what might actually be a lasting moment and then he kisses her and makes her forget her identity (AGAIN). What an asshole he is for jerking that poor woman around. Then, when Lacy starts going out with Clark, Clark and Lacy decide to do a double date kind of thing with Lois and Superman. It gets…odd, and not in a good way.

Lois Lane: Margot Kidder is back, and this time for the whole movie. Nothing really majorly bad about her character, but Superman just keeps yanking her around like a negligent boyfriend. Still, its nice seeing the character back in action in full. The worst is when they re-shoot the flying scene and Super-Amnesia kiss near the beginning of the movie for no valid reason. Padding the running time does not count as a reason.

Jimmy Olsen: Marc McLure again, he had quite a bit of stuff in the Daily Planet subplot, so hooray.

Perry White: Jackie Cooper finally gets a character arc in these movies. Perry really doesn’t like the new sheriff in town, eventually resigning his post when he can’t take it anymore (don’t worry, he comes back by the end). That was actually a pleasant surprise.

David Warfield: Sam Wanamaker is the muckracker who takes over the Daily Planet. He’s a jerk because he actually wants the newspaper to turn a profit. Because its absolutely villainous to want to run a business as a success so that you can keep your building full of employees employed. Truly, a scourge on our way of life, he is.

Lacy Warfield: Mariel Hemmingway is Warfield’s daughter, a young woman who is following in daddy’s sludgy footsteps. Until she meets Clark and starts to warm up to actual, honest journalism. Or something. Also, she can apparently scream and not die in Space. No. Really.

Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind of our generation: Yaaay!! Gene Hackman’s back to chew scenery as Lex Luthor. And chew it he does. He breaks out of jail and proceeds to develop a really crazy scheme to clone Superman and he creates one. Honestly, it’s a pretty bad plot, but its so damn fun watching Hackman’s Luthor that those scenes were the best in the movie. For that reason (and for actually being able to cut a piece of Superman’s hair with some bolt cutters...., don't look at me for an explanation, I didn't write this crap) he’s the movie’s badass. Also, this Lex is really the kind of guy who would take forty cakes when nobody was looking. Forty cakes. That’s as many as four tens. And that’s terrible.

Lenny Luthor: John Cryer (hey, wait a second. He was Washout in Hot Shots) is Lex’s heretofore unrevealed nephew, and the guy who gets him out of prison. Lenny’s not really a good character, but at least he’s someone for Lex to constantly berate in amusing ways.

Nuclear Man: The comfortably named Mark Pillow had the unenviable job of being the garishly costumed, poorly executed super villain that’s able to beat up Superman. At first appearance, he’s just not a very good actor in a silly costume, but then its revealed that he literally shuts down when not in sunlight and he also has really long metallic fingernails that can grow (menacingly, that’s exactly the opposite of the word I’m going for) and you’ve got a character that’s just laughably badly executed. I’ve read that he was supposed to be Bizarro (like they tried in Superman III and that actually would’ve explained a lot of his “opposite powers”) but the end result is not Bizarre (and not even Firestorm, the Nuclear Man who is a superhero that maybe five of you out there will have heard of), and I just really feel bad for Mr. Pillow. Not so bad that I stopped laughing at the movie, but still…

Visuals/Effects
Sidney J. Furie directed this film, and there’s no doubt about it that he was working with a miniscule budget that was looking to cut costs everywhere. The result is very much a B movie feel, but you know what? The pacing at least moves fairly well (aside from the flying with Lois scene that is completely meaningless to both character development AND plot) and it does deliver a large amount of Superman action. Sure, its cheesy and bad, but at least there’s quite a bit of it, and it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining than the snooze fest that is Superman III.

Writing
Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal wrote the screenplay and Christopher Reeve himself also contributed to the story. The story is a bit silly, but how much of that is the penny pinching studio’s fault I don’t know. There were some really interesting ideas thrown around, like an independent arc about the Daily Planet, the hints that Nuclear Man was actually supposed to be Bizarro, and the fact that it was a movie about Superman eventually having to deal with the fallout (oh yes, I went there) of his rather dickish “heroics.” Nuclear Man comes about solely because of his obsessive desire to rid the world of all nukes launched. There’s also a lot that’s bad too, particularly the dangling plot thread of whatever happened to Lana Lang from the third movie? Is she buried out back of Clark’s Smallville farmstead?

Sound
I can’t believe they got Alexander Courage (they guy who did the original TV theme for Star Trek) for the score. But again, its all built on what John Williams did.

Conclusion
I may have dreaded Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but the end result was surprising. It’s a terrible, terrible movie, but at least its hilariously bad, which immediately puts it over Superman III, which was bad at being hilarious. If you want to laugh at a foolish failure of a movie, then yes, this one might actually be relevant to your interest. Sort of recommended in that regard.

And that’s terrible.

“Your torments call us like dogs in the night. And we do feed, and feed well.”

Not all stylishly dressed villains are vampires who shun sunlight to creep about in dark alleys. No, some travel about at all hours of the day, bringing with them the promises of fulfilling your deepest wishes while turning you into a twisted mockery of yourself. Which is the topic of our next subject. The 1983 Disney adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

You know. For the kids.

Plot
In Greentown, Illinois (an expy for Waukeegan, IL) in the, oh, probably 1940s, two young boys, who are opposites in personality but best buds, experience the arrival of (Cooger and) Dark’s Pandemorium Shadow Show, an assortment of strange carnie folk led by the elegantly dressed, top hat wearing Mr. Dark. The carnival blows into town and things get much worse before they get better.

Characters
Charles Holloway: Jason Robards is arguably the main character of the film since he goes through the most changes. He plays an aging librarian who’s spent his entire life with books and is now feeling too old to really connect with his young son. He’s tremendously sympathetic, and easily the only adult who can stand up against Dark’s sinister carnival

Will Holloway: Vidal Peterson is Charles’ son, a young, bespectacled, “nice kid.” He’s the meeker member of his friendship with Jim, but narratively, his relationship with his father is more important to the plot.

Jim Nightshade: Shawn Carson plays Will’s best friend, and the dark-haired, darker impulsed member of the duo. And yes, Nightshade is his actual last name. His dad’s been gone for years now, and Jim’s an antsy type who doesn’t really feel like he fits in with the town.

Tom Fury: Royal Dano plays a wandering lightning rod salesman who walks into town to ply his trade, eventually selling one to Jim. A very minor character in the book, he shows up a couple of times in the movie. While he looks like a hobo, he does have some pretty awesome boots.

Mr. Crosetti, Mr. Tetley and Ed the Bartender: Richard Davalos, Jake Dengel and James Stacy respectively. They’re three of the townsfolk who have business on main street. Crosetti’s a big, bearded barber and harbors lusty thoughts for beautiful ladies. Tetley’s just plain greedy and Ed is a former football champ who’s missing an arm and a leg (like, for real). Naturally, when the carnival comes to town, they’ve got reasons to be interested in the prizes being offered.

Miss Foley: Mary Grace Canfield is the schoolteacher of Jim & Will. A stern woman, she was regarded as the prettiest woman in town in her younger days. Obviously the carnival has something to offer her as well.

The Dust Witch: Pam Grier (Foxy Brown herself) plays the mysterious and spooky fortune teller of the circus and someone very close to Mr. Dark. She’s a really sinister figure.

Mr. G.M. Dark: Jonathan Pryce turns in a performance that’s just…evil. I’ll never be able to look at his Governor Swan role in Pirates of the Caribbean the same way again. Dark is the dapper, raven-bearded grandmaster of the carnival, the leader of these “Autumn People” and just…my God, Dark is evil. Honestly, I want to compare it to Alan Rickman’s Sherriff of Nottingham, but its less scenery chewing and more chilling nonverbal promises of unspeakable evil. The stuff Dark does in this movie, well, you’ll be sitting there going “what an asshole” during the showdown in the library. It is gloriously badass.

Mr. J.C. Cooger gets downgraded in the movie to a simple henchman, but he’s still important and an example of the Merry Go Round’s powers over time. Kid Cooger is just plain freaky.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jack Clayton, the movie blends both nostalgia for “the good ol’ days” of a simpler time with the downright creepiness of Dark’s carnival. Visually, there’s not a whole lot to say, but some of the special effects worked out pretty well, all things considered.

Arachnophobes take note, there’s a scene where a shitload of tarantulas attack our heroes. That’s not a rough estimate, either.

Writing
Ray Bradbury adapted his own novel for the film, so its quite interesting to see what he carried over and what he left out. For the most part, the story works, with the beginning through middle being outstanding at building the mood, but the big confrontation at the end just feels, underdeveloped and rushed, apparently someone else was also brought in “touch up” the script later. As an adaptation to the screen, it works really well at teasing the audience to check out the book, which is even darker, creepier and philosophical-er. Definitely worth a read.

Sound
Original score by James Horner. Its great and moody and brings the creepy.

Conclusion
While the title may be a Shakespearian shout out, the movie does indeed deliver on its promise. Something wicked does indeed arrive. A very interesting film and a fairly solid adaptation of one of the 20th Century’s most imaginative authors, its brought down a few pegs by its fumbled ending. Still, when Something Wicked This Way Comes hits it out of the park, its one of the ballsiest, least patronizing kids film’s I’ve ever seen. I promise you’ll never look at a carousel the same way again.

“What do you mean, “Don’t deny it?” I’m not denying anything!”

Who here has ever had a burning desire to see a game made into a movie? Okay, hands down. Now, who’s had a burning desire to see a board game made into a movie? Considerably less this time. Well, for you stalwarts holding out for big screen adaptations of “Hungry, Hungry Hippos,” “Candyland” and “Battleship” there is one spot of hope for you: the 1985 mystery/comedy Clue: The Movie (or Cluedo for those silly monarchists across the pond).

Plot
So it’s the 1950s and a group of unrelated characters are invited to a mansion where it is revealed that they are all being blackmailed by the same man, a Mr. Boddy. Then the murders start with the main characters all trying to figure out who did the killing. Hilarity ensues and so do three alternate endings.

Characters
Mr. Boddy: Anybody who knows the game Clue knows that it’s a bout a murder. The stiff’s name is appropriately “Mr. Boddy” and Lee Ving isn’t (alive) in the movie very long to get anything other than to make him a smug bastard who you’re just waiting to get killed. He’s apparently blackmailing all of the major characters, so they all have motives to kill him.

Mrs. Peacock: Eileen Brennan plays a senator’s wife. Haughty and easily flustered, she chain smokes when nervous. She’s really great at overreacting to everything going on.

Mrs. White: Madeline Kahn plays a rich widow who’s outlived two husbands already. Kahn’s always solid comedic timing is incredible in this film.

Miss Scarlet: Lesley Ann Warren plays the vamp-like madam of a Washington DC brothel. Miss Scarlet frequently engages in fast paced belligerent banter with just about everyone.

Professor Plum: Christopher Lloyd plays a lecherous scientist with connections to the UN. He’s fairly understated in the film (compared to Doc Brown) but always manages to stare at women’s chests with a completely straight face.

Colonel Mustard: Martin Mull plays a high placed military man who’s been a frequent visitor to Miss Scarlet’s business. Compared to the rest of the actors, he’s a bit of a weak link. Not terrible, but there’s something in his delivery that doesn’t work for me.

Mr. Green: Michael McKean plays a government employee blackmailed for being homosexual. Goes through the movie repeatedly insisting that “he didn’t do it!” in reference to the murders.

Yvette: Colleen Camp plays a maid with an outrageous French accent and a more outrageous outfit. This film probably helped contribute to the maid fetishes of millions of males. Um, not that I would know anything about that…

Wadsworth: At last we come to the film’s badass. In a movie filled to the brim with talented actors trying to out-ham one another in the scenery chewing department, but none of them, none, out-ham Tim Curry as the butler. Curry throws everything he’s got into a character who goes from collected organizer and butler to a frantic whirlwind of exposition and then back again. Curry doesn’t just steal the show, he owns it from the very start.

Visuals/Effects
This was British writer/director Jonathan Lynn’s (The Whole Nine Yards and, err, the 90s’ Sgt. Bilko movie) first feature film. The film does a great job setting up the atmosphere before knocking it down by the parody of the whole thing. Things are well lit and shot, though the film does have a “theatrical” feel to it in a lot of places that works for the movie. Still, I wouldn’t mind living in a mansion like that.

Writing
John Landis (who’s done a ton of films) and Jonathan Lynn wrote a script that was far better than anything a movie based on a board game had any right to be. They invent a fairly reasonable conceit for all of these characters and weapons to be in the same house, create characters that their actors can run with, and the banter is rapid fire awesomesauce. Campy, yes, but deliberately so. The movie even has three endings which aired separately in theaters (though the DVD has all three for your convenience).

Sound
John Morris does a very good job with the original score. There isn’t really anything theme that stands out, but its all great for the mock tense atmosphere of the film. A couple 50’s rock & roll songs round out the soundtrack quite nicely.

Conclusion
Watching Clue gives the impression that everybody on set was having an awesome time making it. The movie’s a light, airy comedy that can’t take itself seriously and neither should the audience. Its become a cult classic because of the sharp writing and even sharper comedic delivery of the actors, and its one of my favorite comedies. Definitely worth a look.

“To the winch, wench.”

There were a lot of ambitious children’s movies made in the 1980s. I suppose the confluence of special effects advancements, the home video market and a large number of directors/producers (Spielberg, Lucas, Henson, etc) willing to push the visual storytelling medium forward for a family audience. The market was there and there was no shortage of people to try and fill demand. Based on German author Michael Ende’s book of the same name, 1984’s The NeverEnding Story is just such an attempt to tell a visually impressive kids’ film.



Plot
The movie has two plots that intertwine. The framing narrative is about Bastian, a cowardly nerdy kid who’s mom died some time in the recent past who hides out in a bookstore to escape some bullies. He ends up stealing a book and holing up inside the school attic to read it.

The plot of the book within the story is pretty high concept. In the land of Fantasia, a strange thing is happening. Everything is being consumed/replaced/nullified by Nothing. It’s hard to explain without examples. Say for instance there’s a lush forest. Instead of being leveled or replaced with a hole, it is replaced with absolute nothingness, formless void. Yeah, high concept stuff. Anyway, the Child-Like Empress who is, for lack of a better word, the goddess of Fantasia, is sick and dying and if a cure isn’t found, then the Nothing will consume everything and that would be a very bad thing, so a young hero must go on an ADVENTURE! to save the day.

And then the two plots converge.

Characters
Bastian: Bastian starts off as a little weenie. He’s a damaged goods character, clearly bothered by the death of his mother (understandably) and doesn’t have a good relationship with his dad. Bastian’s arc is all about finding self-worth and confidence. This is triggered by stealing a book from an old man and running away from classes and home to read it, this securing his place as a juvenile delinquent. Wait a minute…

Atreyu: A young member of a tribe of hunters, he is the designated Chosen One to go on the ADVENTURE! Basically, he’s a Ranger in the D&D sense of the word, except the caveat for his quest is that he can’t bring any weapons, so he has to go around asking people “what can cure the Empress?” Atreyu gains badass points for calling out Bastian on his bullshit (like I said, the plot goes high concept)

Falkor: A Luck Dragon, which looks like a Chinese serpentine dragon with a dog-like head and fur mixed in with scales. Falkor is both a sidekick and a trusty steed to Atreyu. He comes off a little more laid back than he should, but I think that’s because of the limitations of the puppet. Has no arc.

The Child-Like Empress: She doesn’t show up until the end of the movie, but everything is about her. She’ a weird figure, omnipotently-powerful but vulnerable, and is a haunting presence in the film.

G’Mork: A giant wolf that serves the Nothing, well, rather the thing behind the Nothing (it doesn’t really get well explained). Anyway, G’mork is eeeeeeeeviiiiillllll and is after Atreyu, but doesn’t get a whole lot to do in the film.

Engywook and Urgl: Two gnomes, Engywook, the husband, is a scientist, and Urgl is a witch/medicine woman. They are the comic-relief bickering couple that help break some of the tension mid-movie, and crazy fun to watch.

The Rock Biter: “They look like good, strong hands, don’t they?” Well, don’t they?? A very minor character in the book, he gets expanded upon to deliver a late-movie scene of pathos that’s pretty well done. Also, he rides a giant, edible (to him) stone bicycle, which is hilarious and awesome when you think about it.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Wolfgang Peterson is a high profile director. This movie definitely helps show why. Filmed in Germany, it has to achieve two different looks. One is the normal world of Bastian’s and the other is the wildly fantastical Fantasia (Fantastica in the book) The normal world scenes are fewer in number, but generally well done, including the attic set that Bastian holes up in. The Fantasia stuff just lets the movie go nuts, with it trying to display all manner of weird creatures and environments. The best shots in the movie are in Fantasia scenes, and really convey the whole “this is not earth” aspect (such as the long-shot outside the Empress’ chambers near the beginning). Lighting and the use of color are key to achieving this.

As a side note, the one scene I remember from my first viewing long, long ago was the part at the sphinx gate where they vaporized the guy in armor. That scared the shit out of me as a kid and stuck in my mind for years. Bravo, Mr. Peterson.

What’s most impressive is the sheer amount of physical effects used in the film. This is the pre-digital age we’re talking about here, so things have to be accomplished with camera tricks, makeup and a big honkin’ luck dragon puppet. Two of the three elements have aged well over time. The camera tricks, like putting Atreyu next to the gnomes, are still solid, and the makeup effects, like the night-hob, are bloody amazing. Sadly, for animatronic stuff like Falkor, G’mork, and even the Rock Biter, the range of expression for the characters is rather limited and the mouths don’t synch up with the voice acting. A slight disappointment in today’s world, but it is very hard to fault the past for being the past. Instead, I applaud their ambition.

Writing
Having read the book, I can tell you that it is very, very good. That said, the movie concerns itself with about half of the book’s events (not even, since a lot has to be cut to make a 92 minute film. However, the adaptation is solidly done, and what remains is pretty good. So Bastian’s not a chubby kid in the film, but that’s not an issue in the movie anyway. The pacing of the movie is very rapid, and things move along quite nicely. The only problem is that the villain, G’mork, doesn’t get a lot of development or screen time, so he doesn’t really feel that dangerous.

The film also plays around with the fourth wall (as the book does) and is rather surprising in that it succeeds in playing it mostly straight. Its not a joke when the fourth wall gets broken, its integral to the plot of the story itself. That alone is brilliantly handled writing.

Sound
The sound effects are very, very good. When the rock-biter eats rocks, the foley work on it sounds appropriate.

The music is a hybrid of orchestration and synthesizers that hasn’t exactly aged well. The Falkor Flying Montage Music is pretty good though. The score was composed by Klaus Doldinger and Giorgio Moroder, but the theme song is performed by 80’s pop singer Limahl (from Kajagoogoo!). It is cheesy, 80’s pop, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you feel about that.

Conclusion
There were two more NeverEnding Story movies made, and from what I gather, were cases of diminishing returns and I have yet to see them. The first one though, stands up to general scrutiny quite nicely. It doesn’t insult the intelligence of the audience, so that a 26 year old male can appreciate it without irony. Considering the limitations of the time, it is very well done, and in our modern age, the occasional misses of the effects just add to its charm, because the writing is solid and the story is brilliantly unique. I hear the sequel (very loosely) follows the 2nd half of the book, and the third, while awful, has Jack Black in it.

But that’s a take for another time…