Autumnal Equinox

It's the first day of fall today which means it's time once again to check in on 'ol Ranger Asmodeus:

Megaforce

Despite official denials by leaders of the free world, sources now confirm the existence of Megaforce, a phantom army of super elite fighting men whose weapons are the most powerful science can devise. 

Their mission....to preserve freedom and justice battling the forces of tyranny and evil in every corner of the globe. 

This 1982 summer schlockbuster--helmed by stuntman Hal Needham, director of the beloved Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), The Cannonball Run II (1984) and Rad (1986) among others--is like some demented offspring of a Sid and Marty Krofft kiddie TV show and a U. S. armed forces recruitment commercial; it's basically a live action version of a 1980s boy's cartoon/toy line like G.I. Joe or M.A.S.K. but with characters sketched even MORE paper thin than the animated Duke or Matt Trakker from those cartoons ever were, and was undoubtedly one of the inspirations for Team America: World Police (2004).

I wouldn't in good conscience ever call Megaforce one of the great films of all time, but it certainly was pretty damn stoopid entertaining fun to this lunkhead.  Filmed using IntroVision, a pre-CGI type of front projection composited in camera, Megaforce looks pretty good even on my bare bones budget DVD, though with a 20 million dollar budget behind it had really ought to.  There's some nice miniature model work, some kick ass 'splosions, a few holograms/holographs, and lotsa, lotsa spandex with costumes designed by Mattel, but it's obvious the majority of the budget went towards the spandex, er, I mean the full size working vehicles used in the film: a whole fleet of motorcycles with machine guns and rocket launchers mounted on the handlebars (Pew!); tricked out dune buggies with slick racing stripes that shoot cool blue Terminator Future War style lasers animated by Ralph Bakshi Productions (Pew! Pew!); and even some crazy high tech six wheeled mobile computer lab thing with a revolving radar dish on top and everything (Pew! Pew! Pew! Beep! Boop!). Totally f'n awesome stuff like that, poppin' wheelies, jumpin' over tanks and shootin' stuff--20 mil worth baby!  Oh, and there's a cameo by a Rubik's Cube too.

I won't spoil all the details of the-film-with-the-catchphrase "Deeds Not Words" for anyone that hasn't seen Megaforce yet, but will just say the plot revolves around the theft of a cigarette lighter and something about the invasion of the fictitious and peaceful Republic of Sardun by the military forces of its aggressive and equally fictitious neighbor Gamibia, led by the ruthless Duke Guerera played by Henry Silva (who I recognized from a few old episodes of The Outer Limits) in a prescient foreshadowing of the eerily similar invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army eight short years later in 1990.  There are also references to a secret underground base in the desert a la Area 51 which houses this super elite international phantom army, along with a high tech computer system that monitors all global communications, friendly or hostile, with the personal information of every living human being on earth stored in the giant computer's data banks, creepily available at the touch of a button to members of Megaforce... paging Edward Snowden... oh wait, he won't be born until 1983 so wouldn't be much help in '82 anyway, so forget you melon farmer!

But enough about cigarette lighters, geopolitics and privacy (or the lack thereof in the modern age), one other thing Megaforce was way ahead of its time in depicting was FLYING MOTORCYCLES!  Yes flying motorcycles, though there are also scenes of regular non-flying motorcycles and dune buggies parachuting out of the sky from planes, I'm talking about honest to God flying motorcycles here: armored bikes with light sensitive paint, capable of running totally silent in stealth mode--though their normal engine sound is a deep electronic rumble similar to the legendary Evel Knievel's mythical Stratocycle; these bad boys can shoot rockets and laser beams from their handlebars, can emit a smoke screen in all the colors of the rainbow from their tail pipes, have a built in self destruct mechanism in case they fall into enemy hands and ALSO THEY CAN FLY!

A word or two must be said about the star of the film, Ace Hunter as played by a helmet haired Barry Bostwick.  Oozing oodles of goofy charm, Ace Hunter rocks a Jesus beard and baby blue silk headband to complement his standard issue body hugging spandex military uniform, as he quips his way through the film as leader of Megaforce.

How smooth is Ace Hunter?  His trademark move is kissing his thumb and then giving the thumbs up sign to his Sardunian love interest Major Zara played by the lovely Persis Khambatta, sporting a bit more hair here than she did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

The rousing soundtrack is pretty great with some nice music video era electronic synths and a patriotic sounding martial main theme by Jerrold Immel.  The best though is the totally awesome song "Mega Force" by the band 707 that plays over the end credits along with clips from the film.  This catchy hard rock guitar anthem also repeats on a loop over the DVD main menu so if you happen to fall asleep watching it, you may wake up humming along with the words memorized through subliminal osmosis.  Here's the aforementioned song over the end credits; but just a word of warning if you'd like to avoid spoilers, since this is basically a greatest hits montage of the entire film:



Best line is a toss up.  First one is from Duke Guerera the bad guy to Ace Hunter the good guy near the climax of the film:
"You're an idealist.  In the seventies we could be idealists, but today... it's too expensive!"

Later, Hunter says to Guerera:
"The good guys always win... even in the eighties."

Wait, what the hell?!?

And here's a trailer.  Enjoy!

Musica Moonday

Here's the incomparable Don Knotts crooning "I Wish I Were a Fish" from the 1964 Lovecraftian kiddie film The Incredible Mr. Limpett:

What the Peeper Saw

"Poor Marcus, poor little devil..."

I first came across What the Peeper Saw back in the late 1980s at my best friend Robby McDonald's house in rural New Jersey late one Saturday night as we were channel surfing trying to find something else to watch after Saturday Night Live.  According to James Arena in his fantastic 2012 retrospective tome, Fright Night on Channel 9: Saturday Night Horror Films on New York's WOR-TV, 1973-1987, this 1972 film aired in the final year of Fright Night's fourteen year long run on channel 9 WOR-TV on May 9, 1987, so this was probably the exact date my buddy and I stumbled across it.  I don't think we watched the whole thing but probably caught it already in progress as we flipped back and forth during commercial breaks between Night Flight or Saturday Night Dead, intrigued by the radiant Swedish beauty of Britt Ekland and the suggestive incestuous overtones between her and her young stepson--though admittedly if Britt Ekland was my stepmother I would probably go crazy with Oedipal yearnings as well.

Watching this film again for the first time several decades later I found there was quite a bit of tastefully shot soft focus nudity which I'm sure was mostly cut out of that late night airing so long ago but I do seem to recall seeing quite a bit of skin back then which had kept this memorable title stuck in my brain ever since; for several years afterwards Robby and I--hopped up on coffee and cigarettes or, later on in high school, semi-zonked out of our heads on harsh locally grown skunk weed and/or oregano--would channel surf the analog airwaves late at night in vain, always searching for What the Peeper Saw, hoping to catch another airing of that weird Euro trash movie about the pervy kid and his hot blond step mom we saw that one time.

Marcus, the sociopathic kid at the center of the film played effectively by Mark Lester, has a memorably creepy scene early on in the film where he unabashedly takes a bath in front of his new step mother Elise, the aforementioned Ms. Ekland; he proceeds to play with a rubber bath toy, evocatively squeezing it so that water squirts from it in a not very subtle Freudian act before groping her bosom from behind while she's on the telephone with his recently widowed father.  This was the very scene that Robby and I saw years ago, after which we just looked at each other and said in unison, "what the fuck is this movie we're watching, and how have we never seen it on TV before?".

After finally seeing the entire uncut film again on the recent Blu-ray release from VCI, I can say this really is one great little fucked up movie, with a fucked up ending to match, though I can see why it was probably only ever shown once or twice late at night and not frequently aired during daylight hours in a Saturday afternoon monster movie matinee slot for the kiddies!

A few other small and probably insignificant observations from this sleazy exploitation psycho-drama:

• The main titles look like something straight out of a Wes Anderson film:

• The movie was produced by Leisure-Media, Inc., the most seventies sounding film production name ever.

• Young master Marcus has a German Shepherd named Trotsky(!?)

• There's an odd scene occurring in the background during the latter half of the film that takes place at a swinging shindig where several party guests gather around a human table comprised of a presumably naked black woman laying on her back with fruit perched on top of her body for the guests to partake of and enjoy.

• There's a strange painting of what looks like a three headed horse or perhaps a bull's head in the main couple's bedroom, the type of painting that would traumatize a young child for life.

I'm sure there are other similar little details that I missed but these were the ones that stuck out for me.

Here's the trailer, enjoy!

Happy 7/11 aka Free Slurpee Day!

Commercial for 7-Eleven's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace 32 oz Super Slurpee movie collector cups:

Poor Pretty Eddie

Yowza, here's a new old one I watched recently for the first time: Poor Pretty Eddie aka Redneck County, Black Vengeance, and Heartbreak Motel .  This sleazy 1975 backwoods set hicksploitation flick stars Shelly Winters, Slim Pickens, and Ted "Lurch" Cassidy and was apparently produced by pornographers attempting to make a legitimate mainstream picture to avoid undue attention by the FBI!  It knocked my socks so far off my feet I was inspired to write this capsule review entirely in haiku form.

Caution: spoilers ahead!

Poor pretty Eddie
Slow motion kick to the crotch
Shelly Winters sloshed

Rape scene cutaway
Rednecks ogling humping dogs
White sequined jumpsuit

Rabbit stew breakfast
Is that a dog collar?  Yep
This meal is ruined

Low Southern Gothic
Race relations? Women's rights?
Slim pickin's down here

Lurch stabbed but not dead
D. Lynchian red wedding
Not so pretty Ed

Here's a trailer:

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry

In preparation for the new Mad Max film coming out soon which looks to be a welcome throw back to the dangerous practical automotive stunts of yore, I watched Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) this weekend as a testament of how car chase films used to be made before the advent of CGI, namely using real live cars to actually smash up and destroy on film, and the main star in this one is a real beauty, a 1969 lime green Dodge Charger R/T 440.

There are a couple scenes in this flick that I almost couldn't believe were actually done live on camera were it not for mine own eyes: one a high speed chase involving a police helicopter flying perilously close to the aforementioned Charger--a scene with an added element of pathos since the late Vic Morrow was a passenger on this non fatal helicopter ride--and the ironic climactic scene, which I shan't spoil for anyone that has never watched this film, but which is a pretty amazing shot to see for the first time and would probably be done in CGI if filmed today.

Starring Peter Fonda--with his long flowing locks looking startlingly similar here to a pre-op Bruce Jenner--and an unbilled cameo by Roddy McDowall, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is a great action car chase flick; it would make a good double feature with Tanatino's Death Proof.

Here's the trailer:

Radio Free Albemuth

I haven't really had a ton of time to view many fantastic films or post much here on Obscurantist Drivel lately other than the odd commercial or two, though I did sit down to watch some more trad films, most recently The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Ten Commandments (1956), the latter of which had some pretty interesting proto-sci-fi/horror concepts.

One genre film that I did happen to catch last week on Netflix was the 2010 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Radio Free Albemuth, which despite the low budget and Syfy channel level acting and special effects was a pretty faithful and interesting adaptation of PKD's posthumously published novel of political paranoia and an alien satellite beaming knowlege directly into people's brains via a pink laser beam.  Keep an eye open for small parts from Rich Sommer (Harry Crane from Mad Men) as an FBI agent and Ashley Greene (one of the sparkly vampires from Twilight) as a Jesus fish necklace wearing delivery person.  And hey, isn't that Alanis Morissette?!  Maybe some day we'll also get a screen adaptation of VALIS, PKD's published-during-his-lifetime and amazingly-even-weirder-than-the-original rewrite of Radio Free Albemuth; if Amazon's upcoming The Man in the High Castle series is a hit, I'm sure we'll see more PKD adaptations coming down the pike.

Don't go in expecting a Blade Runner type visual masterpiece; if your expectations are tempered accordingly you may enjoy this odd little talky low budget film, obviously a labor of love from its creators; there are worse ways to waste a couple hours of your life.

Here's the trailer:

At the Earth's Core

As I mentioned in my previous post, I first watched At the Earth's Core (1976) some time in the mid 1980s on a Sunday afternoon airing of "Planet 7 Cinema" on WABC-TV channel 7 out of NYC, and in spite of its pre-Star Wars level low budget special effects, e.g. men in stiff rubber monster costumes; a giant fire breathing toad that explodes like a '75 Ford LTD after being hurled off a cliff; steam train and Iron Mole vehicles that are obviously miniature models; set bound jungle foliage, etc. I, as an ardent fan of Doctor Who was well versed in the ability to overlook such production "quirks" and have loved this juvenile escapist fantasy adventure ever since; to this day I think it's a perfect film to doze off to on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  Maybe it's just me but there's something oddly soothing about a '70s synthesizer score combined with weird electronically modulated staccato voices of subhuman pig men that lulls me into a state of altered consciousness, not fully awake yet still just this side of the border of Slumberland.

I love how the film begins with the sounds of electronic synths typical of some arty 70s prog rock song before mutating into a triumphal orchestral score over scenes of British industrial might.  It then moves along at a nice, brisk pace--it's only about twelve minutes and 4,000 miles later before the steampunk'd out earth boring vehicle, the Iron Mole, piloted by the brawny Doug McClure as David Innes and Peter Cushing as Doctor Abner Perry (who is essentially reprising his role of the absent minded genius from the two 1960s theatrical Dr. Who films) burrows beneath the Earth's crust and they're in the fanciful underground world of Pellucidar.  Like Dorothy stepping out of her sepia toned Kansas world into Technicolor Oz, these two nineteenth century specimens of American virility and English ingenuity are here greeted by a weirdly illumined pink sky, and within five minutes of arriving they're attacked by a bird beaked Anglo kaiju before being captured by a band of pig faced troglodytic Sagoth.  A word about the dinosaurs in this film: as mentioned earlier these are not Harryhausen level stop motion creations, but instead are more akin to the man in suit kaiju from Godzilla films, but they still possess personality and their own special charms, particularly the aforementioned giant fire breathing toad and one stiff moving triceratops-like creature that looks as though it lumbered straight out of a Victorian's conceptual etching of an antediluvian thunder lizard.

Though this is essentially a film for kids, it still has a little something for the dads, namely Caroline Munro as the primitive Dia, whose finely shaped bosom--tanned, oiled and fairly busting out of her animal skin brassiere--could have gotten top billing above even Messrs. Cushing and McClure, for Munro's divine bodily architecture surely must have kick started puberty for many a young red blooded male, including yours truly, and probably for just as many young females at that.  Along with such primeval sex appeal there is also a bit of the old ultra-violence present (I'm exaggerating, it's really just regular violence) that may not be appropriate for the youngest or most sensitive of children: in one scene, Doug McClure battles a prehistoric hippopotamus which he then stabs in the ear hole, leaving the side of its head a bloody red mess.  Soon after, one of the pterodactyl like Mahars is violently garroted with a chain around the neck, Jabba the Hutt style.  Really nothing most of us haven't seen by around the age of five years old though.

The film was obviously shot studio bound but due to the lush foliage and set dressing looks more expansive than it surely was, helped greatly by the colorful cinematography; the pink, purple, yellow, green, red, and orange hues lend an air of fantastique luridness that make some scenes look as though they were conjured up directly from the cover of some tattered, dog eared pulp scifi magazine, and as such the recent Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber comes highly recommended.  One wishes that director Kevin Connor could have teamed up with stop motion giant Ray Harryhausen in the 1970s to create a series of similarly pulpy films based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books: Doug McClure could have made a fine albeit burly John Carter and Caroline Munro a voluptuous red skinned princess of Mars.

Here's my favorite bit of dialogue:
David Innes (Doug McClure): "Get a tight hold, Doc."
Dr. Abner Perry (Peter Cushing): "I have a firm grip upon your trousers, David."

Enjoy the trailer:

Don't touch that dial...

Here's a fantastic intro and commercial bumpers for a short lived Sunday afternoon genre movie series called "Planet 7 Cinema" that aired on channel 7 WABC-TV in the New York City area in the mid 1980s.  I always recalled this intro primarily because it was where I first watched At the Earth's Core (1976) one lazy Sunday afternoon at the family home in New Jersey, and since then always associated a strange laughing blue mechanical man and wind up dog with that film due to the great triumphal intro score by Mike Vickers that was also used to good effect in this creative and colorful bumper that really captured my imagination as a kid.

Special tip 'o the hat to YouTuber Tapthatt2012 for preserving this little piece of NYC television nostalgia for future generations.

Enjoy!



Note: I really don't recall if the silence at the beginning of this clip before the music kicks in was intentional or a transmission error, though my guess is it is an error.  One would think the little toy dog's yaps should be audible but until any other version shows up on YouTube, this is all we've got to go by.

Vernal Equinox

First day of spring!

Musica Moonday

"The Fox Chase" from Darby O'Gill and the Little People:

Morozko (AKA Jack Frost)

AKA Frosty AKA The Crystal Star AKA Father Frost

I had a bit of a difficult time thinking of what to say about this strange little Soviet film.  I had not grown up watching Morozko so had no real nostalgic sentiment coloring my views towards it like so many other films from childhood I still look fondly back upon now and still love to this day that perhaps don't really warrant such affection, e.g. Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot; The Alien Encounters;  At the Earth's Core, etc.  I know the English dubbed version known as Jack Frost was roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I really think this film doesn't deserve derision or even gentle ribbing, but instead demands to be viewed in the context it was made: a film produced in the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War in 1964, based on Russian fairy tales and primarily marketed to children.  This is actually a pretty good kiddie film with colorful cinematography, some beautiful set designs, and nice location scenery, and this middle aged yet by all accounts still ruggedly handsome man living in the United States in the 21st Century thoroughly enjoyed this quaint film.  And it has several elements of the fantastique to admire: an ugly witch that lives in a walking house perched atop giant chicken legs, some beautifully gnarled and twisted trees as part of the lush background scenery with some Sid and Marty Krofft style costumed walking tree creatures to boot, and a little mischievous gnome-like creature called Father Mushroom that turns the main hero into a were-bear.  Not bad for a kid's movie!

More than anything, this film reminded me of the Swedish Pippi Longstocking films I grew up watching on TV in the 70s and 80s; you knew there was probably something being lost in translation in the English dubbing of these strange foreign films, but in the end the meaning of the stories is still successfully carried across the airwaves to the viewer--child or adult--transcending the barriers of time, space, language, and cultural differences, and that's not a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon.

Here's the trailer:

Snowbeast

Caution: Spoilers ahead!

Though not given a huge amount of respect from most aficionados of "les cinema du Sasquatch", Snowbeast is still a relatively well made, solid entry in the Bigfoot genre, even if it's not a beloved classic.  Written by The Outer Limits writer/producer Joseph Stefano--who also happened to write the screenplay for a little movie called Psycho--this 1977 made for television film follows the basic template set by Jaws a couple years earlier, with a bloodthirsty Yeti stepping in for the great white shark; instead of a quaint New England fishing village the setting here is a small ski resort town beset by increasingly frequent hominid attacks on the tourist population.

There are not a ton of monster scares in Snowbeast but what it does have are lots and lots of shots of people skiing and snowmobiling with just a sprinkling of sexual tension between the three leads (but unfortunately no fondue): Bo Svenson plays a down on his luck former ski champ; Yvette Mimieux is his long suffering wife who also happens to be a crack investigative TV news reporter who just recently did a story on the mystery of the Sasquatch; and Robert Logan plays her old boyfriend and manager of the local ski lodge that is under assault by the hairy creature.

Like a lot of other 'squatch flicks, the creature in Snowbeast is implied rather than shown straight out, mainly in first person view lurking behind trees and barns, backed by an ominous Jaws like score, with only an occasional glimpse of its great hairy hand.  I wasn't sure if they even had a full costume made for this movie until near the end when the beast is finally seen in its full glory and the film makers' restraint in showing only occasional glimpses becomes fully justified: that ain't no 100% yak hair, Peter Graves approved, The Mysterious Monsters Yeti costume, that's for sure!

And of course, Snowbeast doesn't let you down when it comes to the classic ol' hairy hand smashing through the glass window scene, an always appreciated stock-in-trade scene of 70s Bigfoot films, though instead of a log cabin bedroom or trailer home bathroom window, the Yeti in this flick smashes in a school auditorium window during preparations for the annual winter carnival celebration and the crowning of the new Snow Queen--though in a twist on the usual rite of the winter solstice, it is not the young and virginal Snow Queen that is sacrificed during this frenzied Bacchanalia but the driver of her chariot, the Snow Queen's very Mother that is the victim of the Snowbeast's pagan blood lust.  In the ensuing chaos of the monster's attack on civilization, the Snow Queen's silver crown is trampled and smashed and the owner of the ski lodge herself--the old Crone, previously an unbeliever in the very real and furry incarnation of unbridled Nature, red in tooth and claw--is violently knocked down by the mob, probably breaking her hip in the process (and we all know what happens then).

I must also mention the cinematography on this film is pretty damn decent for a low budget made for television film.  The commercial breaks fade to a bloody red instead of the normal black and there are some moody 70s style lens flares from shooting into the sun.  The natural scenery is also used to good effect: the location filming adds verisimilitude and it really does look cold, capturing the eerie, almost magical feeling during the short days of winter around daybreak or dusk, when the sun is low in the sky--just barely peeking above the tree line--and shadows are long, and you can see your breath, and you just don't know what strange thing might be watching you from the dark woods beyond.

Best line in the flick:
The manager of the ski lodge is about to identify a crime scene victim: "I must have seen her somewhere, maybe I'll recognize her when I see her face."

Sheriff (after a pause): "She doesn't have one..."

Here's a clip:



That's all for now--see you next time.

Here's "Snowbeast" by Gary Busey Community College to play us out:

The X from Outer Space

Sat down and watched The X from Outer Space (1967) for the very first time recently.

Having no nostalgic or emotional connections to this giant monster movie, while watching the titular antennaed birdlike creature repeatedly destroy Japan I will report that I did have an occasional olfactory flashback to the strangely comforting petrochemical smell of those small rubber monster toys sold for a quarter in egg shaped plastic capsules from bubble gum vending machines back when I was a kid.

As for the film: I liked it a lot; colorful with a great swinging sixties soundtrack.

Here's the international trailer:

Krull

How have I never seen this movie before now?

Then again I finally watched The NeverEnding Story for the first time just last summer so I guess there's always "new" stuff out there for idiots like me to "discover" (have you heard of that band Led Zeppelin?  They're totally awesome!).  Having picked up Krull on Blu-ray* for the low, low price of $4.99 (new) at my local MovieStop recently I have to say: I loved the hell out of this fun 1983 sci-fi/fantasy adventure, and I don't care who knows it!  As far as I'm concerned Krull is the best damn Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi.

Prince Colwyn rockin' the Glaive and flippin' the bird

This pulpy swashbuckling Saturday matinee mash-up of Arthurian sword and sorcery and pew-pew laser gun action involves a motley band of outlaws (including a comedy relief shape shifter, a giant melancholic cyclops, and a scruffy Liam Neeson) led by the Robin Hood-like Prince Colwyn (Ken Marshall, armed with a big five bladed ninja throwing star called a Glaive) as he and his merry men attempt to rescue Colwyn's betrothed, the Princess Lyssa (Lysette Anthony), held prisoner in the Black Fortress in the clutches of the villainous Beast and his vile army of Slayers.  It's got a rousing score by James Horner, which in my estimation certainly elevates it above mere standard B-movie status, along with some nice action set pieces, some inspired organic/bio-mechanical set designs and beautiful location shots; it also has a couple of actors that would appear together in Dune the following year (Francesa Annis and Freddie Jones), and even the future Keeper of Keys and Grounds of Hogwarts, Rubeus Hagrid himself (Robbie Coltrane).

In this age of overly green-screened, CGI Hobbitry/bombast, Krull is a genre flick that made this viewer particularly wistful for the craftsmanship and handmade artistry of pre-digital cinematic illusion: matte paintings, miniatures, prosthetics, stop motion animation (there's a lengthy scene involving a giant stop motion animated transparent glass spider that was particularly enjoyable); these ancient techniques are all used liberally and effectively throughout this fun film.  Certainly, some of these effects don't look 100% realistic--but then again neither did all the high tech CGI wizardry of Peter Jackson's recent Hobbit trilogy either (budgeted at a whopping $750 million versus Krull's relatively modest $27 million). And for a movie that depicts the magnificent, majestic creatures known on the planet Krull as Fire Mares (horses that are so fast that ribbons of fire literally burst forth behind them from their hooves as they run, much like Doc Brown's DeLorean when it travels through time!  Oh and they can fly too!) do we even care about realism?  Should we even care?

Still, regardless of how ridiculous the whole premise is in the first place, I say give me real live Fire Mares over CGI bunny-sleds any day!

*Just a few words on the Blu-ray: it's super cheap but looks good--crisp and clean while still looking very film like with lots of nice grain left intact, but there are NO extras: no subtitles, no alternate audio tracks, not even a chapter list, let alone a trailer; just a menu screen with a "play movie" button.  It does have chapter stops though, so it's got that going for it.  Hey, it's from Mill Creek, what do you expect?

Here's the trailer:

The Mysterious Monsters

This may be the most startling film you'll ever see.
--Peter Graves

One of the many pseudo-documentaries exploring the Great Mysteries of the Unknown produced in the witchy 1970s, The Mysterious Monsters was a film I had long heard about but had never seen before; thanks to YouTube that has now been rectified.

This 1975 film from Schick Sun Classic Pictures practically invents the template that the long running television show In Search of... would replicate a year later in 1976, with Peter Graves--Captain Clarence Oveur himself--acting as your onscreen host to the investigatory proceedings, a role Leonard Nimoy would admirably fill for six seasons on In Search of...  The silver haired and humorously monotonic Graves interjects some welcome gravitas in between dramatic recreations of eyewitness encounters with the legendary Bigfoot along with just a bit of the Loch Ness Monster.  But whereas other low budget Sasquatch documentaries of this era might be content to merely suggest the existence of a mysterious monster through teasing glimpses of a beastly silhouette in the woods or film footage from the creature's point of view as it leers from behind dense shrubbery at skinny-dipping coeds or voluptuous snow bunnies frolicking in the woods oblivious to the prehistoric peeper lurking nearby, The Mysterious Monsters is proud to show off its top notch Bigfoot costume; the camera lingering lovingly and frequently on it like one of the weekly "bears" on an old episode of The Outer Limits, so that the viewer gets a good long look at the fine makeup job, one of the creepiest this reviewer has seen.

Though one of the very best films I've seen in the Bigfoot genre, I don't think The Mysterious Monsters ever manages to escape the gravitational bounds of the established tropes of the pseudoscience documentary genre to truly transcend into the refined aether of sublime weirdness that something like Overlords of the U.F.O. does, probably because it rationally sticks to the subject of mainly Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Abominable Snowman/Yeti-kind while only just dipping a big toe into the murky waters of the Loch Ness Monster mythos, choosing not to discuss any other of the Great Mysteries floating around in the 1970s or attempting to tie together all of these disparate threads into one Grand Unified Fortean Theory--so no ancient astronauts, UFOs, ghosts, or demonic possession here, thank you very much.  And there were a few characters and scenes in this film that I was sure I had seen in other documentaries--they all start to blend together after a while--but that could just be my advancing decrepitude and creeping senility.  But in spite of all that seems familiar in this type of film: the standard 1970s synthesized electronic musical score; the always memorable disembodied hairy Bigfoot arm through the window scene; the telegenic host as the voice of reason that surely the facts presented prove Bigfoot must really exist; the beautifully grainy 16 millimeter film look; all these are really first rate examples of the genre, and that's saying nothing of the abundant lens flare from shooting into the sun that would undoubtedly make J.J. Abrams figuratively (and possibly literally) cream his jeans.  To wit, I liked this movie a lot--it's pretty much a perfect example of a mid-1970s Bigfoot documentary.

There's just something about the great dark shape of the untamed Sasquatch that taps into some primal human fear of the unknown, which is probably why films about Bigfoot were so popular in the tumultuous, post 1960s Watergate/Vietnam War era when the whole world seemed turned upside down.  Bigfoot emerged into the collective consciousness of the 1970s as a "known unknown", to nick a term coined by that great American rascal Donny Rumsfeld; a dark and shaggy reflection of paradise lost, a dangerous and foul smelling but almost cuddly folk hero symbolic of our monstrous id.

Best line from this flick is from a pro-Bigfoot scientist defending the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film footage of a purported female Sasquatch:
"I don't know what the breasts of a Sasquatch ought to look like..."

Here's the trailer for your viewing pleasure:

The Hobbit 4: The Battle of the Two Hobbitses

The Hobbit (1977): Bilbo Baggins carries a big pipe

So I finally saw The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), the third and final installment of Peter Jackson's hobbit trilogy this week which inspired me to go back and revisit an old childhood favorite: the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.  This was originally going to be a simple review of that animated version but instead morphed into my thoughts about what I personally think the live action films failed to accomplish that the much maligned made for television cartoon actually got right.

To wit, a simple bedtime fairy story that Jackson and company spent nearly eight hours to tell was accomplished in an economical ninety minutes in the Rankin/Bass cartoon; granted the cartoon omitted a few important threads from the book that are fleshed out somewhat in the live action film, such as Beorn the shapeshifting bear-man and the Arkenstone of the dwarves, and there were some interesting creative choices in the 1977 version that some might not have agreed with, ie: Gollum looked like a big frog, Bilbo looked like my spinster aunt Grizelda, the wood-elves looked like goblins, and the dwarves other than Thorin were all relative nonentities, but I think the Rankin/Bass 'toon still managed to capture the spirit--the tone--of the original book, creating a feeling similar to that of listening to an enchanting fireside fairy tale in a way that the live action films are less successful at, as Jackson's trilogy seems to be more interested in large scale theme park ride-like spectacle and bloodless CGI battles to small character moments, though there are a few sequences of wonderment in the live action films I really enjoyed,  especially Bilbo seeing the butterflies fluttering amidst the tree tops of Mirkwood Forest in the second film and the dwarves singing the Misty Mountains song at Bag End in the first.

Though at this point it's become a cliche to compare The Hobbit trilogy to the Star Wars prequels I think it's actually a pretty fair comparison and a good warning to avoid any big budget prequels in the future: I dutifully went to the theater and watched both prequel trilogies, and can even say I really enjoyed parts of them immensely, but that is as far as my appreciation goes: I liked them, or parts of them.  They were okay... I guess.  But the original untampered with Star Wars (pre-Special Edition) and The Lord of the Rings trilogies?  Those I LOVED--it may simply be nostalgia talking but the earlier trilogy of both series seemingly captured both lightning in a bottle and my imagination; they made me think about them even after leaving the theater, looking forward to my next viewing.  In comparison, the prequel films remained in my mind only as long as I was watching them, and once the credits rolled were then jettisoned from my consciousness--like the recollection of ever having seen Caddyshack II or Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, any feelings of goodwill instantly evaporated upon leaving the theater.  Will I ever watch these films again?  Possibly, but I won't feel compelled to in order to find enjoyment in their predecessors, just as I don't need to watch the sequels to The Matrix to fully enjoy the original film as a standalone story.

My main gripe with The Hobbit trilogy is what I consider to be its major fatal flaw: the expansion of a small story of an unassuming hobbit's adventures in the larger world of Middle-earth that could have been a tight, focused narrative told in one or maybe two parts being stretched out into a trilogy of three extremely long faux-epic action films (see the Narnia films for another example of off-tone faux-epicness infecting simple tales for children) that at the end of the day feel overly padded and yet somehow still incomplete.  For whatever reasons, be they creative or financial, this smaller prelude of a tale should NEVER have been super sized to the epic proportions of the esteemed film trilogy that follows it if only for reasons of simple aesthetics: the smaller, shorter story of The Hobbit is simply out of all seemly proportion when placed next to the truly epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy and thus comes across as bloated and artificial, and the over reliance on CGI characters and scenery certainly don't do it any favors compared to the real life locations and prosthetics used in the earlier films.

A trilogy of butt numbingly long films worked beautifully for The Lord of the Rings trilogy since that story was already an epic saga of good versus evil taking place during war time and those films captured pretty well the tone of the books.  I'm certainly not a book purist and realize some things described on the page may need to be changed or adapted for film but in the expansion of the smaller quest tale of The Hobbit into the larger tapestry of Jackson's previous Middle-earth films, the personal story of Bilbo Baggins--the title character and the audience's entry into this magical world--is overshadowed in favor of the larger geopolitical threads Jackson was more interested in exploring, but giving the director the benefit of the doubt perhaps that was done purposefully?  And that's saying nothing of the addition of invented characters like Tauriel (who I actually thought was decent) and Alfrid (who I thought should have been cut entirely or at least saved for the extended editions) or what could have been exciting cameos for sharp eyed fans of Legolas, Radagast the Brown, or Azog the goblin, who although they are all Tolkien creations don't actually appear in the original story but who have more screen time than a character like Beorn who actually was in the book but barely included in the film.  Did we really need to see back story and character motivations for the orcs and goblins to know these were the bad guys in these films?

A three film telling could probably have worked out ok if planned that way from the start, but since it happened so late in the production the end result was, for this viewer at least, a disappointing albeit not entirely unsatisfying muddle.  I think if Guillermo Del Toro stayed on as director we may have gotten a better, shorter and more magical hobbit story (in one or possibly two parts) than the trilogy of missed opportunities from Jackson we ended up with...and maybe the dwarves could all actually have looked like dwarves with full on ZZ Top beards instead of the well trimmed goatees and fashionable stubble we got on the "hunky" dwarves?  And there could have been less use of CGI and more use of bigatures and prosthetics?  And it could have been filmed on actual good old fashioned two dimensional 24 frame per second film instead of being shot on the ugly high frame rate digital that ended up looking like a big budget 3D soap opera?  I could continue but I fear I'm starting to sound like a Neo-Luddite now.

Of course at this point this is all academic since The Hobbit trilogy is finished and out there and is what it is, which for this viewer is an overlong bloated series slavishly bound to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, bogged down by endless CGI action sequences and full of missed opportunities to simply tell the story of The Hobbit yet--frustratingly--highlighted by occasional flashes of brilliance.  I think there was a potentially great film (or pair of films) hidden in this merely average trilogy.  It will be interesting to see once some time has passed if Peter Jackson ever decides to revisit the series and release an edited down one or two film version.

If that is not in the cards I unreservedly look forward to watching the inevitable fan edits that will trim away the excess fat to reshape the narrative so that The Hobbit is once again about a simple hobbit's adventure instead of what now appears to be the exciting action packed story of a vengeful one handed albino goblin, the forbidden love between a star-crossed dwarf prince and a she-elf warrior, and the greedy machinations of the cross dressing servant to the Master of Lake-town.  Oh, and the guy from the British Office guest stars as a hobbit too.

The Hobbit (2012): Bilbo Baggins carries a big sword

1/18/15 Update:
Well, that didn't take too long.  Some fine fellow has edited down Peter Jackson's three Hobbit films into one 4 hour long epic film, about half as long as the combined running time of the officially released films.  I haven't had a chance to watch it yet so would not be surprised if there are some parts that are a little rough around the edges due to having to work with whatever footage was available, but I imagine this will give a good idea of what a shorter one (or two if split) film Hobbit would have played like in an alternate universe.  Kudos to the phantom editor--I look forward to watching his take on the story.

Here's the link to The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit:
https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Though not necessarily a Christmas movie per se, this 1979 animated adaptation of C.S. Lewis' 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is inextricably linked to the holiday in my mind, both in its overt religious themes and its general snow covered wintry ambience.  Along with Rankin/Bass' version of The Hobbit, this made for TV movie was one of the gateway drugs into the world of fantasy literature for me, since I saw the cartoon versions first and then read the books they were based on later.  Thanks television!

Compared to the recent 2005 live action feature film or even the 1988 BBC miniseries, this version is a relatively low budget affair directed by Bill Melendez, director of the beloved trilogy of Peanuts holiday specials A Charlie Brown Christmas, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and the slightly lesser A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  Though it lacks the big budget sheen and special effects set pieces of the 2005 film, this is an extemely faithful adaptation of the novel with a narrative that moves quickly but is well paced and about 99% free of any extraneous padding, which is not something I would say for the 2005 live action film (or Peter Jackson's bloated Hobbit trilogy).  Obviously not as polished as a Disney production, the animation is decent for a made for TV movie, though the character design could be considered a bit wonky, especially for the four Pevensie children and their Brady kids fashions; there are a few scenes where these kids just look downright ugly.  Susan fares the worst, usually looking like some type of greasy haired encephalitic inbred; maybe she was just going through an awkward phase since once the kids are portrayed as adults they lose most of the ugliness in their original lumpy, pasty faced designs.

That caveat aside, this adaptation still manages to retain a bit of the "veddy British" cozy tea time atmosphere of the original story, a feeling of homely magic that I personally felt was more or less lost in the 2005 film in favor of Lord of the Rings-lite style battles and CGI spectacle.  And though I can only really remember a Minotaur or two in the White Witch's army of monsters and some Centaurs on Aslan's side in the live action film, this cartoon version features a whole menagerie of weird and bizarre creatures in the two armies, including but not limited to: a unicorn, a flying horse, a couple of dryads, a werewolf, a trio of witches and a plethora of assorted ghouls and goblins.  Not a bad monster count for a kiddie cartoon!

Here's a short clip: