My God, It's Full of Nerds!

Random Thoughts On Pop Culture by Scott Hamilton

094/100 Reign of Fire (2002)

Mar 15

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 2 Comments

Reign of Fire is an attempt to graft some British apocalyptic idea on to an American style action movie, and it doesn’t quite work. Partly, I think, that’s because the British characters come across as way too wishy-washy compared to the American ones. The world is ending and the Brits just want to be left alone to die without making a fuss, and they’re supposed to be the reasonable ones.

The movie has a prologue set in 2008. A young boy visits his mother, an engineer, in an excavation in a London subway station. The boy comes upon a hibernating dragon, which awakes and incinerates everyone at the site except the boy. We’re then told that as soon as the dragon awoke many more appeared and they soon overran the world. Funny how the British associate the end of the world with subway stations so often, no doubt because of Londoners’ experiences with the Blitz. By 2010 the war against the dragons had been lost, and nuclear weapons were loosed against the creatures as a last ditch effort. Probably not the best idea, because the dragons eat ash.

The meat of the movie takes place years later*, when the boy has grown up to be Christian Bale. He and a smallish community are hiding in a castle, eeking out a living on what crops the dragons don’t burn to ashes. The survivors are found by an American military expedition, lead by the frequently shirtless Matthew McConaughey, which is planning to wipe out the dragons at the source. It seems the dragons have only one male, and it’s living in London. As I said before, the conflict here isn’t so much how to fight the dragons as it is if to fight the dragons, which is an odd stance for movie about frickin’ dragons. The dragons action is good when it happens, but get ready for a lot of Bale and McConaughey glowering at each other. Hmm, there;s probably a slash/fic site for that, but I’m damned if I’m going to go look for it. This one traumatized me enough.

*The trailer says the year is 2084. An onscreen title in the movie says the year is 2020. But references in the dialogue and Christian Bale’s age suggests the year is supposed to be around 2030.

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093/100 Dinoshark (2010)

Mar 14

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, Movies | 3 Comments

Time for another SyFy original movie, where “original” means “the exact same template as every other SyFy original movie, but with a different monster CG’d in.” They must be running out of possible animals (living, extinct, or mythical), because now they’re combining animals that really don’t have any business being combined. So what is a dinoshark? The only attempt to describe the animal in the movie comes up with “plesiosaur,” which it clearly isn’t. Or maybe they meant “pliosaur,” in which case I guess the creature is supposed to be something like a Kronosaurus, but with shark-like dorsal and tail fins added on.

The movie is just Jaws, set at Mexican resort town right before the (guess what?) big water-based festival. The music even sounds as much like Jaws as possible, which really made me wonder why this genre of film hasn’t progressed much in the last 35 years.

Dinoshark was produced by Roger Corman, who even appears onscreen as a scientist with a DNA sequencing computer so powerful he can figure out the structure and composition of every part of the dinoshark from its stomach goo. It’s kind of fun to see Corman eat his own dogfood for once, and completely fail to bring any conviction to his lines in the horrible script he commissioned.

The movie ends with the female scientist snarling, “Welcome to the endangered species list, you bastard,” before harpooning the monster to death, which, considering there’s only one to start out with, seems more than a little redundant. In fact, wouldn’t she be knocking dinoshark off the endangered species list and on to the extinct species list? Extinct, except for the inevitable sequel, Dinoshark vs. Sharktopus.

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092/100 Private Duty Nurses (1971)

Mar 13

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | No Comments

Private Duty Nurses is the follow-up to Student Nurses, and therefore the second of Roger Coman’s nurseploitation movies. Good luck figuring out why it’s called “Private Duty Nurses,” because I’m pretty sure they’re all student nurses and they work in hospitals or clinics.

So the three nurse characters are roommates this time, and they get involved in three complicated and allegedly dramatic situations. No comedy this time around, unless you count Dewey, their slimy landlord. (The movie’s poster only stokes confusion, with four women pictured and quotes suggesting a pun-filled sex comedy.) The first nurse, in the “free spirit” slot, is Spring, who falls for a dirt bike racer with a plate in his head who will die if has even one crash, but man, you can’t keep him from riding, man, because that’s the only time he feels, like, alive, man. The black nurse this time is Lola, who falls for a black doctor who is black, and helps the black doctor, who is black, to get a black doctor on the staff of the hospital where Lola works. He then celebrates his hard won equality by telling Lola that women shouldn’t aspire to be doctors because some of them might take place of male doctors, who really deserve it.

The really bizarre story goes to Lynn, as the sober, serious nurse. She falls for a doctor, and together they take romantic walks on the beach… where they find a dead body covered in oil. They decide to investigate. On some trips out into the bay they discuss what a problem pollution is, saying things like “the government is the biggest polluter of all” and “the government splits the fines when companies get caught polluting.” (Huh?) They even do tests for arsenic off the local pier, though they get threatened by a man in rainbow clothes and a sun hat who I guess is supposed to represent “the Man,” but looks more like the manager of an Orange Julius stand. Lynn also finds a bar where the dead man used to hang, and gets a description of one of his associates. That night the associate breaks into Lynn’s apartment and rapes her. She tells the doctor about it, and together they figure out where the rapist lives. The doctor breaks into the rapist’s house and is shot to death. Lynn runs away and the rapist steps outside to shoot her too, but is shot by a police detective who happened to be outside. The detective explains that the rapist was a drug smuggler, and that when his drug running associate died on a smuggling run the rapist dumped him over board. So the pollution had nothing to do with anything. Lynn, realizing the detective had been hanging around, berates the detective, “Why couldn’t you tell us what was going on! Why’d you have to play your cop number!” Gee Lynn, why didn’t report the attack on you to the police? Why didn’t you tell the police when you identified the murder victim? The politics in the movie are incoherent and juvenile, and I’m not sure if they reflect what the writer/director Georg Armitage really thought, or if he was just trying to pander to his perceived audience.

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If Twilight is a Saga, I’m a Superhero

Mar 13

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Movies | No Comments

Number of seconds: 93
Number of helicopter shots of NW Pacific forests: 2
Number of shots of Taylor Lautner looking for his shirt: 1
Number of meaningless “romantic” tautologies from Edward: 2
Number of shots of Bella looking as boring and pale as rice : 11
Number of declarations of love for Bella that end up sounding creepy: 2
Number of vampires that apparently got lost on the way to the greater Seattle area RenFaire: 5
Number of plot elements featured in this trailer that haven’t already been beaten to death in the previous movies: 0

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091/100 Ponyo (2008)

Mar 12

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | No Comments

Hayao Miyazaki’s previous film, Howl’s Moving Castle, was not a favorite of mine, and Studio Ghibli’s Tales of Earthsea was a big turd. I was worried that maybe Ghibli had lost their mojo, but luckily it’s back with Miyazaki’s Ponyo. It’s another simple story, about a magic “goldfish” with a human head that meets a little boy and uses magic to become a little girl. In doing so, though, she disrupts the balance of the world and it’s up to her father, a wizard/alchemist who lives in a boat under the ocean, and her mother, a nature goddess, to set things right.

The setting of Ponyo is similar to Kiki’s Delivery Service, in that it’s a more pastoral version of the modern world, where magic is unusual and rare but not totally unknown by the general population. This is also a beautiful film, with the backdrops rendered as if they’re color pencil sketches, and the foreground elements drawn to appear simple, like a child’s picture book. It’s sweet and fun, and I’m glad Miyazaki is still making movies.

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090/100 Doctor Strange (2007)

Mar 11

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 2 Comments

Doctor Strange has always been a second or third tier Marvel character, but I suppose if Ghost Rider can have two movies, he can too. This animated movie from Lions Gate was made probably to capitalize on the proposed live action Doctor Strange movie that wasn’t made, in the same way that The Invincible Iron Man was made before 2008’s Iron Man. The Invincible Iron Man even reflected some of the approaches that were taken with live-action movie, so it’s safe to say that the Doctor Strange animated movie gives us an idea of where the thinking was on the live action movie at the time.

I think one of the problems with Doctor Strange is that the character’s origin requires that he be a jerk at the beginning of the story, and it’s a tricky make the redemption of a jerk believable. The movie starts with Strange as a doctor at a hospital. He’s a gifted neurosurgeon, but rather than help disadvantaged children he goes for cases that will make interesting research papers. At the same time there’s a major supernatural battle going on in the city, between invisible demons and the Ancient One’s disciples, including Mordo and Wong. To disguise these battles the disciples create tornados that surround the demons, which seems like a case of “you’re not helping” to me. A bit later Strange is a in car wreck, and the movie then jumps months ahead as Strange tries to find someone who can heal his hands. Eventually he ends up at the Ancient One’s compound in Tibet, and you probably know the rest of the story. Sorcerer Supreme, Mordo traitor, Dormammu, etc.

I’m also not a big fan of magical battles where people just throw bolts at each other. How do we know who wins? Whoever is required by the plot. I like a little more process in my conflict. In this movie whenStrange needs to win he just calls the Eye of Agamotto back to him, and it comes. Why? I have no idea. The animation isn’t bad, but the movie doesn’t transcend the limitations of the character.

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089/100 Destination Moonbase-Alpha (1978)

Mar 10

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 4 Comments

Destination Moonbase-Alpha was Trent’s pick for my “Childhood Trauma” movie theme. The “movie” is really two episodes of the Space: 1999 edited together, and we watched the episodes. It’s kind of a shame, because as I understand it the movie version added some scrolling text to beginning that completely contradicted the whole premise of Space: 1999, and must have made the moon base personnel’s euphoria at seeing another human ship very puzzling to audiences unfamiliar with the series. The story is rip-off #843 of Ray Bradbury’s story “Mars is Heaven!”, with a ship full of the moon base staff’s friends and family landing on the moon, and only Martin Landau’s character can see that they’re really slimy telepathic aliens that look like a cross between Hedorah and the Green Slime.

I do love the poster image above. It’s like a “what’s wrong with this picture” game for Space: 1999.

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088/100 Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Mar 9

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, Movies | No Comments

With all the studios trying to avoid saying “remake” by using “reimagining” I hate to bring this up, but maybe it’s time to add another “re-” term to our lexicon. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland isn’t just an adaption of the Lewis Carrol books, nor is it a remake of the Disney cartoon, and though it positions itself as a sequel it doesn’t really continue the story so much as retell it. Perhaps we can call it a remix, with Burton taking the bits from the story he likes and combining them with his own personal obsessions. So the tea party takes place in the shadows of a ruined windmill, there are a lot more gnarled trees than I remember in any version of the story, and Christopher Lee voices the Jabberwocky. The Mad Hatter also gets a much larger role to play because he’s played by Johnny Depp. It’s certainly an enjoyable fantasy, if not a very deep one.

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087/100 Fair Game (1986)

Mar 8

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | No Comments

This Australian thriller seems to be based on I Spit on Your Grave, though without an explicit rape. Cassandra Delany is Jessica, a woman running an Outback nature preserve all by herself. One day she pisses off three comically OTT the top kangaroo poachers, and they start harassing her. Their battle escalates and escalates, until things turn fatal.

That’s about all the plot there is. What fame the movie has comes largely from a scene where the poachers tie the practically naked Jessica to the front of “The Beast,” their insanely modified pickup truck, and drive around for while. Beyond that very uncomfortable scene, the violence in the movie is actually pretty mild compared to most revenge-type movies. The most graphic violence is actually done to Jessica’s house.

One frustration for me while watching this was the number of times Jessica gets her hands on guns (one time the poachers hand her a shotgun!), but doesn’t use them to defend herself, or threaten the poachers, or anything. At one point she sneaks into the poachers campsite and steals all their guns, then welds them into some sort of postmodern sculpture. She couldn’t have kept just one in case the poachers came back?

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086/100 Werewolf of London (1935)

Mar 7

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 2 Comments

I got interested in the whole idea of botanists going to Tibet and why that’s what happens in most Yeti films, and I came upon Werewolf of London as possibly the oldest example of the trope. Werewolf is also the first movie to feature the Universal Wolfman, years before the much better known movie of the same name.

The botanist in question is Dr. Glendon (Henry Hull), who is the part of Tibet where everyone speaks Cantonese. He’s looking for the Mariphasa, a flower that supposedly only blooms in moonlight. He finds it in a valley that the locals believe is inhabited by demons, and wouldn’t you know it, Glendon is attacked by a hairy beast. Though bitten, Glendon is able to fight the creature off and make it hom with a sample of the Mariphasa.

Back in London Glendon is working hard to get the Tibetan flower to bloom, which involves a huge lamp steampunky lamp which is supposed to simulate moonlight. Glendon is also visited by Dr. Yogami (Werner Oland, the Swedeish actor who specialized in Asian roles, for reasons that have never been clear to me), who reveals himself to be the werewolf who attacked Glendon in Tibet. The sap of Mariphasa is a cure for lycanthropy, assuming the sap is taken from a bud that has flowered. With a limited number of buds and no inclination to share, Glendon has to figure out a way to keep his impending furriness from causing too many deaths, while at the same time trying to keep is wife from straying back to her childhood sweetheart.

The werewolf material here is fun, and I think the somewhat less elaborate werewolf make here, compared to The Wolfman, may be a case of less is more. It’s just more devilish and less doglike. Sadly, there are long sequences of alleged comic relief featuring little old drunk ladies that feel like they should be in a Sherlock Holmes, and they kill the movie dead just when it should be getting scarier.

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085/100 The Submersion of Japan (1973)

Mar 6

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 5 Comments

This is one of the very few major Japanese special effects film I haven’t seen before. While it’s not really bad, it is so straight-faced and serious that it I didn’t find it much fun.

The title says it all. A movie this long probably shouldn’t be so free of complications. An undersea expedition lead by Toshio Onedero (Hiroshi Fujioka, the original Kamen Rider!) discovers unusual activity at the very bottom of the Japan Trench. In the first of about four long, talky geology lessons we’re forced to sit through we learn that Japan is in danger of slipping towards the trench, and the entire archipelago could go under. Rather than deal with the situation, Toshio is send on a blind date by his boss. Though it looks like Toshio might get lucky on the beach, the date is interrupted by a erupting volcano. Shortly thereafter the Tokyo area is hit by an enormous quake which destroys the whole city. Three months later the country has largely recovered from the government has still not told the populace about the impending destruction. The rest of the movie is an escalating spiral of geology lessons, scenes where the Japanese government (lead by Tetsuro Tamba as the PM) tries to find places for the Japanese people to emigrate to, and tidal waves destroying model buildings.

I guess if you were a Japanese person in 1973 and you really wanted to feel sorry for yourself this was a great movie. The major theme here is that the people of no other country likes the Japanese people, and that’t too bad because even the islands of Japan don’t like the Japanese people. It’s like the worlds biggest pity party.

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084/100 Dial D for Demons (2000)

Mar 5

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | No Comments

This is the second horror film I’ve watched recently where I spent the whole thing wanting to punch all the main characters in the face. Dial D for Demons is a Hong Kong film about a group of young people, thankfully heavy on bikini-wearing women, who are taking a vacation at resort when supernatural things happen. In this case the supernatural things are as follows:

- One of their number, who just happens to be able to see ghosts, says the ghosts on the island look strange. This guy is played by Jordan Chan, in the kind of overly loud, grating performance they seem to love in comedic sidekicks in Hong Kong.

- The ghost whisperer dies, apparently from suicide. His friends call the police, who never show up.

- Tired of waiting for the police at the bungalow they’ve rented, everyone goes outside, only to find that the bungalows on either side of theirs have disappeared.

- After freaking out for a while, they get in an SUV and try to find the pier. They get lost.

- A bug drops on one woman’s chest while they’re in the SUV. There’s a five minute general freak out over this.

- After finally finding the pier, the strange man who lives in the apartment there tells them to look out for ghosts. Our heroes try to use the phone, and the second they do they find themselves back in their bungalow again.

- Everyone’s beeper goes off, and displays what I guess is a disturbing message, but it isn’t translated. Despite the English language title of this movie, the beeper thing is very little of the movie, and I suspect it was thrown in as a sop to the whole Ringu phenomenon.

- Because these are annoying horror movie characters, their main plan when they determine they can’t leave the bungalow is to split up. And then the killings begin.

Watching these shrill, annoying characters lose their shit over things that aren’t that scary got old really, really quickly. It was like watching an episode of Ghost Hunters, if the TAPS people were hot Asian women, which, as I write it, sounds pretty awesome, but believe me, it isn’t. At the end of the movie we find who is haunting these people and why, and man, the whole situation is full of more coincidences than a whole season of 24.

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083/100 Kamen Rider: The Next (2007)

Mar 4

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 1 Comment

The sequel to Kamen Rider: The First, Kamen Rider: the Next continues to try to make cravat-wearing, motorcycle-riding locust cyborgs cool.

The story jumps ahead two years from the end of The First. Hongo (Masked Rider 1) is now a high school substitute science teacher. Ichimoji (Masked Rider 2) is still a rich snot, though the organ rejection is finally starting to catch up with him. Much like the previous movie, The Next devotes a surprising amount of time to subplot that has no direct bearing on what should be the story, the Masked Riders fighting the secret society SHOCKER. Instead we find out there’s pop idol called Chiharu, and there’s a rumor going around that if you listen to a certain version of a certain song of hers, you die. Obviously, we’ve wandered into Ringu territory sometime between Kamen Rider films. As it turns out, Chiharu’s best freind from before she was famous is in Hongo’s class, and Hongo basically stalks her until she agrees to let him help her find out why Chiharu won’t return her phone calls anymore. Incredibly, it does turn out that SHOCKER is involved Chiharu’s career, though not in any way that makes sense. SHOCKER gassed a computer company Chiharu’s brother, Kazami, owned, in one of their random cyborg creation projects. Only Chiharu and Kazami survived, and Chiharu went back to her career, while Kazami became… Kamen Rider V3! So SHOCKER sends Kamen Rider V3 as well as cyborgs called Chainsaw Lizard (a lizard who uses a chainsaw) and Scissors Jaguar (a jaguar with a blade on each arm) and some new Hoppers to kill Kamen Riders 1 and 2. And Chiharu does fit into the climax, because apparently she was accidentally given the superpower of ripping off the most tired movie genre in Japan today, the dead wet girl movie.

The martial arts scenes are fun, just like the first movie, but geez, what is it with these movies and not being able to focus on the Riders vs SHOCKER stuff? Why the heck do the filmmakers think if we’re going to see a movie about a guy dressed like a grasshopper karate chopping chainsaw-wielding lizards we care about hospital romances and stupid ghost stories? Actually I sort of know the answer to that. These days in Japan the movie studios believe that women primarily choose what movies a couple will go to, so all movies are sold as girl-centric romances, no matter what the actual material is. Don’t believe me? Check out the Japanese poster for, say, Inglourious Basterds. I guess that the makers of Kamen Rider thought that if they grafted large chunks of female-freindly plot on to their martial arts movies they’d make more money, but they’ve ended up with mutant movies stranger that motorcycle-riding grasshoppers.

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Why Japanese TV in the 1970s was AWESOME!

Mar 4

Posted by Scott Hamilton in Nerds!, TV | 8 Comments

Two words: Starfish Hitler.

No, Kamen Rider X! Don’t let Starfish Hitler escape!

Oh, Kamen Rider X. Why would you let him throw you into the ocean? That’s his natural environment! You should do something to your advantage, like lure him into a land war in Asia.

The second half of Kamen Rider X featured villains in the (animal) (historical villain) mold, with others including Ant Capone and Spider Napoleon. I was a little befuddled as to why in the name of all that was good and holy you’d pair Hitler up with a starfish, but then I looked up what the Japanese word for starfish is, and it’s “hitode.” So that’s one mystery solved. Still unsolved: What the hell the makers of Kamen Rider X were smoking, popping, and injecting.

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082/100 Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Mar 3

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 5 Comments

Rosemary’s Baby was Tim’s choice for my “Childhood Trauma” movie theme. I’m sure most people are familiar with this movie, about an actor who sublets his wife’s womb to Satan in order to be in television commercials. Mia Farrow is of course the aggrieved woman.

Watching this after a bunch of other Devil worship movies that followed it was interesting. I noted before the central paradox of Satan worship: If you actually receive paranormal powers from the Devil you know he really exists, therefore you know God exists, and therefore you know you’re on the losing side! So how does Rosemary’s Baby deal with this? Simple. The Satanists worship the Beast o’ the Pit because they know God is dead. How do they know this? Because it’s right there on the cover of Time Magazine! It’s a well known fact that nationally distributed magazines define supernatural cosmology for the entirety of Creation.

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081/100 The Deadly Duo (1971)

Mar 2

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 1 Comment

How many movies did Chang Cheh direct? Every time I turn around, I seem to find myself watching martial arts filmed by Chang Cheh, whether that was my intention or not.

The Deadly Duo is almost laser-focused on the fight scenes. Not that your average Chang Cheh film is a Regency drawing room drama, but usually there’d be a little personal drama that would allow me to make jokes about homosexual subtexts. Not so here. The titular deadly duo get together after one short conversation, and don’t spend any time hanging out socially. This movie is all business, and that business is stabbing people in the chest.

The plot is based on a real time in Chinese history, but not one of the more famous conflicts I’d normally be familiar with. The good guys are the Song (or Sung), a Chinese dynasty of the 12th century. The Song is being encroached on by the Jin (or Ching) from the north, and things are not going well for the Song. A prince of the Song (His name is Prince! And he is funky!) has been kidnapped, and is being held by a Jin agent called Brother Man (who also sounds pretty funky). A collection of Song patriots have vowed to liberate the prince, and to do this they need to assault Man’s fortress. The problem is that Man has a whole passel of martial artists with various bizarre weapons and a small army on his side. The leader of the patriots, Flying Axe (Ti Lung), comes up with a desperate plan. If they can approach Man’s fortress from behind they might be able to get the prince out without engaging all of Man’s forces. The obstacle to this plan is that the only path to the back of the fortress is over a very rickety bridge, and only somebody with extraordinary “lifting” ability can get across. I wasn’t sure what the subtitles meant by “lifting,” but it turns out it means jumping. The guy with the best lifting ability Flying Axe knows of turns out to be a Jin double agent, so Flying Axe kills him. But luckily the traitor’s not-blood-brother, Little Bat (David Chiang), is even better at lifting. Together Flying Axe and Little Bat have what it takes to stick it to the Man.

The best part of any Chang Cheh movie are the wacky weapons, and The Deadly Duo does not disappoint. A guy named Fire Demon is talked up, though his technique of throwing fire bombs turns out to be pretty easily countered by throwing the fire bombs back at him. There’s another guy whose specialty is hiding in a fake tree, so long as his opponents don’t notice the tree being wheeled onto the battlefield, he’s golden. But by far my favorite is the guy called Golden Demon, who wields a huge pair of deadly cymbals. “You’re dead now! [rimshot]“

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080/100 Demons III: The Ogre (1988)

Mar 1

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 6 Comments

Time for an Italian horror film. And I love nothing more than a Italian horror film that’s a in-name-only sequel to an original that wasn’t that great.

So Demons III: The Ogre is about Cheryl, a mega-sucsessful horror writer in America who is living in Italy. She, her husband Tom, and their son go on vacation by renting a fricking castle, though nothing they do in the castle would seem to require such extravagance. Cheryl writes at the kitchen table, and Tom and the son go hiking a couple times. But Cheryl starts freaking out, because she realizes the castle may have been the subject of her childhood nightmares, when she dreamed of a dark basement and a creature chasing her.

It’s all very standard stuff. Cheryl panics, her husband doesn’t believe her and slaps her around, a cute babysitter is killed by the creature. There’s a scene where Cheryl inexplicably takes a dive into a murky pool of water in the basement, with results familiar to anyone who’s seen Argento’s Inferno. The one thing I found interesting was the ogre itself, which seemed like a very random creature, unless it’s based on some piece of Italian mythology I’m not familiar with. It apparently spends most of the time in a big fungal pouch stuck to the ceiling of the basement. It then emerges from the pouch as a skeleton, but somehow grows some amount of flesh and some Renaissance era clothes, though it’s all pretty rotted. It is then attracted to and kills women who where orchids, and it keeps their skeletonized bodies in a water pit in the basement. Oh, and it can be killed by a liberal application of Range Rover.

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079/100 Wrestlemaniac (2006)

Feb 28

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days II: The Watchening, DVD | 1 Comment

I added Wrestlemaniac to my Netflix queue because I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it was a pretty good flick. Either I’m misremembering what I read, or I was lied to.

Wrestlemaniac is about an incredibly annoying bunch of people driving around Mexico, looking for a place to shoot some amateur porn. They happen into a ghost town where, it’s rumored, El Mascarado (Spanish for “do mascara”), a failed experiment in wrestler creation, was being kept because he couldn’t stop killing people.

I just hated all the characters in this movie, especially the mouthy guy who was shooting the porn. I was actually glad when the masked wrestler started killing them, because then they’d stop talking and/or taking off their clothes. Sadly, the wrestler isn’t exactly scary. Yeah, he’s played by the original Rey Misterio, which is cool, but he doesn’t live up to the reputation he’s supposed to have as a Frankensteinian super-wrestler.

I also have a big problem with what could have been a great plot twist the writers missed. El Mascarado’s thing is that he, in the tradition of Mexican wrestlers, tears his opponents masks off. But normal people aren’t wearing masks, so he rips their faces off. (Oh, and the gore effects are terrible.) But one of our “heroes” is a fat guy who loves Mexican wrestling, and he has his own mask, which he puts on when faced with El Mascarado. So wouldn’t it have been neat if he’d lived, because El Mascarado pulled his mask off, instead of his face?

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078/100 Harlequin (1980)

Feb 27

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 2 Comments

Imagine Nightmare on Elm Street, but instead of teens Freddy is after politicians. That’s the first thing that came to mind when I saw this movie that manages to unintentionally act as bridge from the occult movies of the 1970s to the slasher films of the 1980s.

Nick Rast (David Hemmings) is an up-and-coming politician in Australia. The apparent drowning at sea of another politician has opened up a position for him, and the local political boss seems inclined to give him the OK. Nick has a wife, Sandra, and a son, Alex, though things aren’t going quite as well with them. Nick and Sandra have a loveless marriage, arranged by the political boss. Alex was conceived, I guess, to give Sandra something to do, but the child’s dying of leukemia.

One night Alex collapses, and the doctors say there’s no hope. Suddenly a man appears in the room. He’s Gregory (Robert Powell), and no one saw him enter the Rasts’ mansion, despite the fact that the Rasts have the kind of security that’s usually associated with drug lords in 1980s films. Gregory lays hands on the Alex, and claims he’s cured. Alex jumps up, hale and hearty. Though Nick isn’t sure what’s going on, he relents to Sandra’s wishes and lets Gregory hang around.

Gregory acts as a babysitter for Alex, while attracting the sexual interest of Sandra, and occasionally putting on a magic show for Nick’s high-powered friends. The model here is the story of Rasputin, as indicated by the anagramatic name of the political family. The good stuff comes at the end, when the political boss behind Nick gets tired of the disruption Gregory is causing and gives Nick proof that Gregory is just a charlatan. But things may not be that simple, and Gregory responds with a reign of terror against Nick.

The movie goes back and forth on whether or not Gregory is really supernatural, and I don’t think any answer can be posited that covers all the evidence given onscreen. This is a fun little movie, interesting because there’s really no other movie like it.

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077/100 Red Riding: 1983 (2009)

Feb 26

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, Movies | No Comments

In this last part of Red Riding the story focus shifts to Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), a police detective who appeared throughout the previous two installments. Kidnappings similar to the cases from the 1974 episode have started, and in flashbacks we see how Jobson saw the events of the previous two movies. Again the police produce a suspect, but a local lawyer (Mack Addy) thinks the young man is being railroaded.

The first thing that comes to mind is that the Yorkshire police department must have the most soundproofed building in all of England, especially considering what happens there in the second movie.

All in al, I’d call the full Red Riding Trilogy a satisfying viewing experience. There are certainly many interesting characters along the way. If you’re expecting a procedural drama (and from the trailer, I was), you’re going to be disappointed. This is much more about police corruption than the police actually catching anybody. Think a story closer to Fincher’s Zodiac, but with more closure.

The one thing I was disappointed with was how little subtlety was applied to the villains of the piece. They’re outrageously bad, almost cartoonishly so. There’s one scene where all the conspirators gather around and all but toast “To Evil!”

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076/100 Red Riding: 1980 (2009)

Feb 25

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, Movies | No Comments

This second part of Red Riding is set in 1980, and partly focuses on the hunt for the “Yorkshire Ripper.” The main character this time is Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine), a high-ranking police officer from Manchester asked to assess how well the Yorkshire police are doing in their Ripper investigation. As he goes over the evidence he becomes convinced that one of the victims attributed to the Ripper was killed by someone else — but the local constabulary seem oddly resistant to this notion. Hunter keeps pushing the theory, and he becomes convinced a larger conspiracy is hidden below the surface.

I’ll wrap up my thoughts on Red Riding with the next installment.

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075/100 Red Riding: 1974 (2009)

Feb 24

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, Movies | 3 Comments

Is there anything more humiliating than when the Brits pass off their TV shows as movies over here? Why can’t we go back to the glory days of American TV, when we use to release our TV shows as movies in Europe, like the Battlestar Galactica pilot? Heh, that was awesome.

So Red Riding is actually a TV miniseries, though it played in some theaters last month and is currently available on PPV. Each episode is set in a different year, and made in a different style. Thanks to Stephen Colbert I know that a “riding” is a political district in parliamentary systems, so I guess the title refers to the fact that all the stories take place in Yorkshire, and involve murder.

Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) is a young crime reporter looking to prove himself. He starts investigating the case of a missing girl, and realizes that she may be part of a series of young girls who have been kidnapped. The latest victim is found, murdered, with swans’ wings stitched to her back. The police quickly find a suspect, a retarded man who confesses to the crime. Dunford doesn’t quite buy it, and clues point towards land baron John Dawson (Sean Bean) being involved with… something. And as the movie ends, we’re not really sure what that something might be.

To call this a standalone movie is a bit of cheat. Red Riding: 1974 is well made and interesting to watch, but it’s only in the context of all three movies that it really makes sense.

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074/100 Ultraman (2004)

Feb 23

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 5 Comments

I’ve been taking a look at some of the recent Ultraman series, mostly to get up to date in time for when I get a chance to see the new movie Ultra Galaxy Legend. I’ve included to the trailer for that below.

A quick version of the history of the Ultraman TV series. The first series was called Ultra Q (1965), and didn’t feature a giant alien cop, but did have plenty of monsters. The next series, Ultraman (1966), hit on the formula that would last for decades, with a silver and red giant helping Science Patrol defend the earth from alines and monsters. New Ultraman series came out regularly until 1980, each featuring a new Ultraman and cameos by previous Ultramen. For most of the next 20 years Tsubarya, the company that produces Ultraman, concentrated on translating the franchise into animation and/or an American TV show, with disastrous results. In 1997 Ultraman returned to Japanese airwaves with Ultraman Tiga, which was followed by three successful series, Ultraman Dyna, Ultraman Gaia, and Ultraman Cosmos. These series became progressively more kiddie oriented, and frankly wussy, as they went on, with Ultraman Cosmos being billed as an Ultraman who would try to avoid conflict. Despite Ultraman Cosmos being probably the most popular series since the original era, in 2004 Tsubaraya decided to retrench and take the franchise in a different direction. That brings us to the 2004 Ultraman movie, also informally known as “Ultraman: The Next.”

Maki, a fighter pilot for the JSDF, is scrambled when a object violates Japanese air space. Maki makes contact with the glowing red sphere, which apparently crashes into his jet, destroying it. Hours later Maki is found inexplicably alive, wandering far from the crash site. He quits the air force to spend more time with his family, including his young son who is dying of some unspecified disease. He works flying commercial small planes, largely happy — until one day when he’s kidnapped by the government. It seems that before Maki’s encounter another object, this one glowing blue, fell into the Pacific ocean. It infected a submarine pilot sent to investigate it. Codenamed “The One” and imprisoned by the military, the sailor began mutating, incorporating the DNA from animals he came in contact with. He also predicted that another monster would be coming from space for him, before mutating into a form big enough to destroy concrete walls and escaping. Because of the The One’s prophecy the government has codenamed Maki “The Next,” even though he hasn’t shown any signs of mutation.

If you’re familiar with the original Ultraman TV series you may recognize echoes of the very first episode, where Ultraman bonds with the dead pilot he accidentally killed while perusing a monster called Bemular. And the early monster forms of the One do look like Bemular, if you squint.

The government, doing their best X-Files impression, lock Maki in a tiny cell underneath an abandoned arena, the theory being that the One will be drawn to him and try to kill him. The ambush set, the One shows up, but conventional military might doesn’t effect the rapidly growing monster. In the cell Maki freaks out, and he transforms into a green goliath grey and red armored giant. Hey, a monster! Time for some wrestling!

The approach here is a strip away the campier elements of the Ultraman franchise and retell it in a more science fiction-y way, and for older audiences. So there’s a bit more explanation as to where the monster comes from than your average Ultraman story, and the Ultraman design is more organic as opposed to the spandex look we’re used to. In fact, the Ultraman design looks pretty much like the bio-booster armors from Guyver. It develops as the movie goes along to look more sleek, but the organic look is still there.

The action scenes are pretty good. Not Hollywood good, but certainly the most realistic Ultraman ever put on film. It’s really the rest of the movie that’s disappointing. Maki’s maudlin worrying about his family is old after about the second scene where it’s referenced. Too much of the film is bad homage to American movies. I already mentioned X-Files, but all the scenes with Maki in the air force are straight ripoffs of Top Gun, right down to the music.

Ultraman is largely self-contained, with Maki apparently not Ultraman any longer when the story is over. This story was continued, without Maki, in the TV series Ultraman Nexus. The series takes place five years after Ultraman, with earth under secret assault by “space beasts,” apparently related to The One, and the Ultraman mantle having been passed on to someone else. I’ve only seen the first seven episodes or so, but I’m enjoying it, but I can’t wait to see how they explain the fact that no one remembers the events of the movie. There are “memory police” in the series who use what I assume is alien technology to wipe people’s memories, but the final battle of Ultraman took place on live TV. I can’t imagine how you could cover that up.

The movie and Nexus were both failures, the TV series was canceled before the customary 50 episodes, and the proposed “Ultraman 2: Requiem” movie that would have tied the whole thing together was never made. While Tsuburaya hasn’t given up on the idea of Ultraman for older audiences, the two main series that have been made since Nexus have been more retro (Ultraman Max) or downright campy (Ultraman Mebius).

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073/100 The Bermuda Depths (1978)

Feb 22

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 8 Comments

Now for a little weirdness. Rankin/Bass productions were always strange, but they’d always seem more surreal when they were rendered in flesh instead of puppets. King Kong Escapes leaps to mind, and The Last Dinosaur. The Bermuda Depths is an odd dish, made up of bits and pieces of the 1970s chopped up into a nonsensical stew.

I’ll just recount the plot, such as it is. Magnus (Leigh McCloskey) is a young man retuning to Bermuda after years away spent at colleges and, apparently, a mental hospital. In flashbacks we see that when he was very young he had a little girl playmate named Jenny. One day they found a young sea turtle, and carved their initials into his shell. How sweet. Some time later the cliffside mansion where Magnus and his scientist father lived was destroyed in a storm. Daddy died, but Magnus lived. Back in the present, Magnus reconnects with Eric (Carl Weathers!), a marine biologist obsessed with proving that there are giant animals in the Bermuda Triangle, and Eric’s mentor Dr. Paulis (Burl Ives!!). Magnus also spots a woman in the surf. She introduces herself as Jenny Haniver(!!!), and is played by Connie Sellecca at her most va-va-voomtastic. An old woman explains to Magnus that Jenny is an immortal sea witch, a rich girl who was saved from ship wreck in the 19th century by praying to “Him below.” I guess “Him below” is supposed to be the Devil, but as with many things in this movie, it’s never clear. Magnus spends his nights swimming with (and macking on) Jenny, who he realizes was the little girl he used to know. Meanwhile there’s evidence a giant turtle is coming ashore on the island, so Magnus helps Eric and Paulis trawl for the beast during the day. As the movie lurches to a climax Eric accidentally catches Jenny in on his nets, so he shoots her with a spear gun. The giant turtle shows up, and Eric harpoons the animal. The turtle destroys a helicopter carrying Dr. Paulis (Noooooo!), sinks Eric’s ship, and and drags Eric to the depths. The only survivor is Magnus, who seems as befuddled as we are.

I finished the movie no wiser on exactly what the relationship was between Jenny and the turtle. Was Jenny the turtle? Did she control the turtle? Did the turtle control her? Was the turtle the Devil? The movie treats the fact the giant turtle has the initials carved in its shell as a big reveal, but you’d have to be stupid not to see that coming, and it only muddies the issue.

The other thing I couldn’t figure out was who exactly kill Magnus’ father. Though the house collapses in a storm, we see that Daddy was attacked by a POV shot in his secret science grotto under the house, and later Paulis says he was consumed by sea life. (And you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen Burl Ives yell, “Yes, he was eaten!” at the top his lungs.) Was it the turtle? Doesn’t seem like he’d be giant by the time the scene happened. Jenny? The Devil? I have no clue. Maybe it was Paulis. He does seem to know an awful lot about it…

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072/100 Shock to the System (2006)

Feb 21

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 8 Comments

My Netflix queue is long enough that every now and then a movie shows up that I have no recollection of. There must have been some reason, way back when, why I added Shock to the System, but right now I can’t remember what it was.

Shock to the System is subtitled “A David Strachey Mystery,” one of four movies featuring the characters, and is based on a series of novels. There are basically two things that set this movie apart from any TV procedural. First, the movie tries to strike a kind of noir tone, though it’s set in the modern day. And second, David Strachey is openly gay.

The movie opens with Strachey (Chad Allen) meeting a client in a dark alley. The young man only get so far as giving David a check for his services and that he wasn’t to “find him,” but the meeting is interrupted by a speeding van. The man runs. The next morning the police contact David. His apparent client, Paul Hale, has been found dead with David’s card in his pocket. Though the death appears to be of natural causes, David decides he owes to his Paul to find out who murdered him, if that is indeed what happened.

David soon discovers that Paul was enrolled in a program that’s supposed to “correct” homosexual individuals’ sexual orientations. The program is run by Dr. Cornell (Michael Woods), a politically connected individual who appears to be hiding some secrets. There are rumors of a fight at one of the program’s group therapy sessions, and it’s possible a great deal of money was at stake over whether or not Hale was “cured.” David joins the program to find answers.

How is this as a mystery? It’s not bad, but there are a series of late revelations that moot all of David’s early investigations, and none of it has anything to do with what Paul actually wanted David to do for him. (Paul must have been an emotional multi-tasker, we find out.) Beyond the mystery, I found the characters kind of bland, perhaps the result of overcompensating to make the gay characters seem very well-adjusted. Most noir stories featured flawed heroes, and that is missing here.

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071/100 The Snow Creature (1954)

Feb 20

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 2 Comments

The Snow Creature appears to be the first movie made about the Yeti. Just to put it in context, the pictures of “Abominable Snowman” tracks that created a media furor were taken in 1951, and Hilary’s report of tracks (and successful ascent of Everest) was in 1953. The Snow Creature is very early in the process of the Yeti becoming famous, and is an interesting influence on later Yeti stories.

Dr. Frank Parrish is a botanist from LA who organizes a expedition in the Himalayans. What was it with botanists and Tibet? There are many movies that feature that trope, including Werewolf of London, one of the first werewolf movies. Are the plants in Tibet really that interesting? Anyway, Parrish sets off from the part of Tibet where everyone speaks Japanese, and while up the mountain his native guides revolt, somewhat surprisingly because they want to kill a Yeti. It seems that a Yeti attacked the main guide’s wife, and he wants revenge. Forced to go along, Parrish tracks the Yeti back to it’s cave, but when trapped, the creature causes a cave-in, apparently to kill itself and its family. The male Yeti survives, though, and Parrish has it crated up in a refrigerator and shipped back to LA. In LA it escapes, which really, they should have seen coming, and climbs the tallest building it can find hides in the sewers, threatening to attack the women of California.

This is probably the most human version of a Yeti or Bigfoot ever portrayed on film. In fact when Parrish arrives with the creature in LA there is actually a discussion of whether or not it’s actually human. Of course, that would make Parrish a kidnapper or worse, but, c’mon, he’s a white guy, so what are the rights of a Tibet mountain dweller compared to that? Some movies that came right after The Snow Creature, like Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman (1957, with Cushing as a botanist, of course), would actually take the question of a Yeti humanity to the opposite extreme, suggesting that Yeti are more than human, but after that the idea of the Yeti as a sub-human or an ape took hold and that’s where we are today.

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070/100 Snowbeast (1977)

Feb 19

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | No Comments

Sticking to Bigfoot movies made in 1977, I watched Snowbeast, a TV movie whose only ambition is as clear as the high mountain air: Ripoff Jaws. Ripoff Jaws hard, ripoff Jaws often, and ripoff Jaws early. Even among the Italian Jaws ripoffs I can’t think of one quite so blatant, once you factor out the novel setting of Snowbeast.

Set during “Winterfest” at a Colorado ski resort, Tony, a ski patrolman and grandson of the resorts owner, investigates a report of a missing girl. The girl’s companion insists her friend was taken by a creature of some sort, and when Tony finds the missing girl’s coat he believes her. But his grandmother insists that the ‘Fest must go on, so the monster keeps killing incidental characters until the big attack on the gymnasium. Then Tony, his friend and former Olympian Gar (Bo Svenson) and the latter’s wife Ellen (Yvette Mimieux) go out on the high seas tundra to kill the beast.

Practically every well-loved scene from Jaws is accounted for, though there much more much sexual tension between the three mains in Snowbeast — though I think you can kinda see Hooper being a little resentful of Quint for reasons never stated out loud. Perhaps the final insult of Snowbeast is that we never see the monster at all, other than a couple of blurry closeups. Even after the monster is killed, we just see the main characters looking down at it, out of frame. Maybe the makers of Snowbeast figured, “Jaws was really good and we barely saw the shark, our movie will be even better if we never show the monster!”

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069/100 Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigfoot (1977)

Feb 18

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 2 Comments

This movie could also be called “The Patterson/Gimlin Footage: The Movie,” because that’s basically what it is. Sasquatch was made during the second renaissance of that most famous piece of footage, when TV shows like The Mysterious Monsters and In Search of… made it common knowledge to the American public. After a prologue that trots “Patty” out again, and some extremely suspect stuff about how computers (1977 computers!) can predict Bigfoot behavior, the meat of the movie starts.

That meat is a faux nature documentary, in the style of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Rather than dialogue the movie is mostly narrated by an alleged professor leading an expedition into “Sasquatch country.” It is cute how even as late as 1977 people thought of Bigfoot as a highly localized phenomenon, even though sightings were popping up all over the country. The expedition includes about the types you’d expect, like the botanist and the skeptic, but I’m not sure why such an expedition also needs a grizzled prospector from a 1930s Western serial. There’s also the comic relief cook, who is also a crack shot. Prepare to laugh heartily, if you think a guy arguing with raccoons is really funny. And lest we forget, a white guy pretending to be an “Indian Tracker.”

It takes a while to get to Sasquatch territory, so to have something Bigfoot related happen there are a couple reenactments of famous Bigfoot incidents, like the Ape Canyon story. A bunch of time is given to a shaggy dog story Teddy Roosevelt used to tell, on the grounds that Presidents don’t lie. I mean it was the 1970s, who would believe a President could lie? When the expedition does get to where they’re going they set up an incredibly complicated detection system made of wires around a huge clearing that the Sasquatches will have to enter to get to water. That night all hell breaks out, and the Sasquatches wreck the camp. The expedition goes home empty-handed, but the narrator promises to come back the next year and get definitive proof of the creatures’ existence. Thrity-three years later, we’re still waiting.

I will now reprint the movie’s ending song, sung by what I assume is the best John Denver impersonator the filmmakers could find who would work for free.

High in the mountains
There lives a legend
Few people have seen
High in the mountains

Strong as a river
Proud as the eagle that flies in the sky
High in the mountains

Roams thorough the valleys
But makes the high mountain his home
There in God’s country
He just wants to be left alone

Wild as the wind
He travels in places where men dare not go
High in the mountains

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068/100 Escape from New York (1981)

Feb 17

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 1 Comment

Escape from New York was Joel’s choice for the “Childhood Trauma” movie theme. Besides being the second R-reated movie he’s ever seen, he claimed it was traumatic because it was a post-apocalyptic story set someplace he’d actually been. I can think of some things about the movie that would be a lot more traumatic to me: Being trapped in a car with Earnest Borgnine, thinking about the sex life Harry Dean Stanton and Adrienne Barbeau must share, and seeing the tennis shoe-wearing computer pretend to be a tough guy.

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067/100 Red Cliff, Part 1 (2008)

Feb 16

Posted by Scott Hamilton in 100 Movies/100 Days 3: The Long Weekend, DVD | 2 Comments

I got together with some friends to watch the first half of this movie. I covered it before here. In about a week we’ll watch the second half, and I’ll cover that.

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