Masterpiece of Horror Theatre- God Told Me To.

    I've talked a bit before about Larry Cohen. A TV writer in the 60's, he would rise to feature film prominence through Blaxploitation films like Black Caesar and Hell in Harlem, before aping the Exorcist in It's Alive in 1974. He originally got the idea for this film from considering the vengeful God of the Old Testament, with a healthy dose of Chariots of the Gods. Originally, Robert Forster was cast as the lead, but because of personal conflicts with Cohen, he was fired and replaced by Tony Lo Blacno. Legendary composer Bernard Herrmann (who had scored It's Alive), was to initially score the film, but after viewing a rough cut, he died (not because the film was bad, to be clear). Ultimately, the Hermann like score was done by Frank Cordell, and the film is dedicated to Herrmann's memory. The film was released to negative reviews, but would come to be seen as a cult classic in later years. It's also notable as the first film appearance of a young Andy Kaufman, a year before Taxi

       A mysterious force is compelling people to commit mass murder in New York City. A shooter on a water tower. Someone during the Police parade on St. Patrick's Day. A mass stabbing. A family killing. Detective Peter Nichols (Tony Lo Blanco) is on the case, and he learns that all the participants only said "God Told Me To", when asked for their motives. His investigation would take him into... strange territories. 

    Starting from the very first scene, this film really sets its intensity atmosphere very high. A very disturbing mass shooting is depicted, followed by a series of other crimes. It only rachets up from there, culminating in a bizarre alien plot and a lot of naked people bathed in light. The score helps this immensely, giving the scenes a sense of scale and reverence that gives the campier features of the film an air of seriousness. Tony Lo Blanco is a sympathetic protagonist whose journeys show how he himself, while not motivated by the voices, can be driven to acts that he can't quite comprehend. The alien cult is handled well. There are a ton of naked people and genitals to enhance the weirdness. Andy Kaufman is also there, briefly, if you're interested. 

    The film feels sometimes, like a television episode. Very stock filming, very cheap, very procedural like. It definitely feels like what happens when a lot of TV writers eventually go into film, but can't quite shake off the TV-ness of the production. It's a great episode of an anthology series, but I have trouble seeing it as a feature film, except for the nudity and violence. It's also a bit confusing and I had trouble following parts of it, especially towards the end. 

     I enjoyed the film, but I'm not necessarily enamored of it. Perhaps other viewings, when my mind isn't as addled by anxiety, should eventually turn me more into a fan. For now, it's a good Halloween viewing, and a good example of religious and science fiction horror, and I recommend it as a good obscure pick for Halloween night. 

     Alright, tomorrow, we get into the mix with Wes Craven's first film, Last House on the Left.

Masterpiece of Horror Theatre- The Thing (1982)

    Well, this is it both for this year, and this decade. So, to celebrate the end of era, I decided to go back to a film I did back when I was doing short versions of these on my Facebook page way back when. It has come to be one of my all time favorite horror movies. So, to close out the last Masterpiece of Horror Theatre review of the 2010's, here's John Carpenter's The Thing . (Apologies for the lateness. I haven't had a great couple weeks, and there is a lot to go into, especially the history, so I need a bit more time to process it all.)
     "Who Goes There" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1938, written by the legendary editor of the magazine John W. Campbell (for context, he would go to discover authors like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Theodore Sturgeon etc., among other... stuff, shall we say). The story of a group of Antarctic scientists fighting off a strange shapeshifting alien was well-regarded, and in 1951, producer Howard Hawks and director Christian Nyby loosely adapted into the film The Thing from Another World, which is regarded as a classic in 50's science fiction. In 1976, producers David Foster and Lawrence Thurman proposed a close adaptation of the original novella to Universal. Universal acquired the remake rights from Wilbur Stark, who owned several RKO Pictures, and began searching for directors. John Carpenter, who was heavily influenced by Hawks as a director and a fan of the original (having featured it briefly in the original Halloween) was approached as early as 1976 (while fresh off the success of Assault on Precinct 13) , but had to wait until Halloween was a big hit. Even then, being a huge Howard Hawks fan, he was reluctant to approach the project until reading the novella and finding a new angle to explore the story. The screenplay went through several writers (including Texas Chainsaw creators Tobe Hopper and Kim Heinkel, the former of who was attached to direct before Carpenter), before actor and writer Bill Lancaster (son of Burt, and known at the time as the writer of The Bad News Bears) came on, writing something very close to the original novella. As with most of his films, Carpenter himself would make some rewrites to the script. Many of Carpenter's collaborators would return for this film. His The Fog cinematographer Dean Cudley would make his debut in a Hollywood feature with this. Special effects creator Rob Bottin, whom Carpenter also worked with on The Fog, would do the legendary special effects. Escape from New York star Kurt Russell would headline the movie, along with newcomer Keith David. Unlike much of his filmography, Carpenter did not score this film, instead giving the duties to Italian composer Ennio Morricone (known for his collaborations with Sergio Leone, another director Carpenter admired), whose synthesizer score would define the film for many people. Bottin would work incredibly hard to bring the unique of a strange, shapeshifting alien to life, often working incredibly long hours, using a 35 person crew (including legendary special effects creator Stan Winston to help with the dog design), and was even hospitalized for exhaustion. The film was shot in the fall 1981 in Alaska and British Columbia, with interiors filmed in the Universal lot. Released on June 25th, 1982, it was drowned financially among the many other famous films released that year, including ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (indeed, some associated with the film have blamed it and its more optimistic view of aliens for The Thing's failure), Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Conan (1982 was a really good year for genre films). Not helping was savaging by critics, who were aghast at the fairly bloody nature of the effect. Carpenter himself was especially hurt by The Thing from Another World director Christian Nyby lambasting the film as too gory. However, eventually, the home video market and television would give the film a new, younger audience, who would adopt the film as a classic of the horror genre. Over time, it would come to be regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made and a major influence on many horror and science fiction media (you might've seen this film shown in Stranger Things), and many directors who were still frightened by it. The film has even become a tradition for scientists stationed on the seventh continent. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, it is screened every February to commemorate the beginning of winter in the South Pole. Carpenter himself would come to call this his favorite of the movies he's made and the first of the Apocalypse Trilogy (with Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness) . For my part, it is not only one of my favorite horror movies, but one of my favorite films, period.

     The film opens with an alien spacecraft crashing to Earth, so.... yeah, you know what you're getting into. Soon after, American scientists including MacReady (Kurt Russell), Blair (Wilford Brimley), Childs (Keith David), and Dr. Cooper (Richard Dysart) take at an Antarctic base witness a man on a helicopter (Larry Franco, one of the producers) chasing a sled dog across the snowy plains, trying to shoot it. When the helicopter crashes, they confront the man, who yells in Norwegian, while the dogs warms up to them. When the Norwegian shoots at them, he is killed by station commander Garry (Donald Moffat). The scientists take the dog in, while MacReady and Cooper go to the Norwegian station to investigate. They find it abandoned, with a mysterious block of ice carved out, a heavily disfigured frozen corpse, and the frozen body of a strange creature. Blair performs an autopsy of the creature, only to find it having regular human organs. The dog soon arouses the fear of the other dogs at the station kennel, which causes it to reveal itself to be some eldritch abombination that kills and absorbs the other dogs, before Childs is able to put it down. Blair also autospies the dog to find whatever took it over can make a perfect imitation. As they use the Norwegian data to track down a dig site to a large alien ship (estimated to be 10,000 years old), Blair also discovers that the alien cells can absorb, assimilate, and imitate any other cell. And when Bennings (Peter Maloney) is absorbed, it can be any one of the crew, and they would never know who it was until it was too late....

    I honestly don't know where to start with the great things about this film. I suppose I could start with my own personal favorite thing about the film: The production design. The settings used, whether the cold sterility of the base, the harsh Antarctic landscape or the devastated Norwegian base, help add to the atmosphere of isolation and paranoia. You feel just as lonely as the characters in the film, watching them handle an impossible situation and slowly devolving and turning on each other as they try to figure out who might be the alien. The fact that it is primarily set at the base, and thus it becomes intimately familiar to viewer, adds to this, as even this becomes untrustworthy and isolated as the film goes on. The special effects are simply some of the best put to film. The alien is incredibly well designed, with a unique, ever-changing look which instills a lot of fear just looking at it, and especially watching it transform from seemingly innocuous organisms and see it brutally kill the people on the base. There is one particular transformation towards the end that is seared in my mind due to both the look of the alien and the sheer intensity of the scene. Oh, yeah, the disturbing effects and the viciousness by which they are used make incredibly scary. It is horrifying seeing this creature put out of nowhere, especially after tense scenes of the crew arguing and fighting, and they go on long enough that they instill themselves into your mind. Ironically, these keep you invested in the film itself, as the scale of the threat is abundantly clear. It is a creature that can be any living thing, that can take on its form to the smallest cell and absorb it. It can be anyone, and if it escapes the uncolonized Antarctica back to civilization, mankind is doomed. Despite it being a strange being with motives beyond the comprehension of mankind, one of the other best things of the film is the fact that the scientists act like scientists. They investigate, they hypothesize, they test, and it helps them combat the creature to the best of their abilities, while still being human enough that they still don't know whether their colleagues have become a creature beyond their understanding. It helps keeps us invested in the characters, while still fearing for their safety. I would use the term "Lovecraftian" as many others have (indeed, many have speculated "Who Goes There" was written in part because of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness) to describe the overall feeling of the film. The idea of a being that is completely beyond human comprehension and dumb fleshbags unable to deal with it or get any help from elsewhere to really combat really fits into the Lovecraftian Cosmicist worldview. It is a nice metaphor for the helplessness of mankind in the face of a dangerous, unknown universe (or fickle, mercurial people) and the lack of a loving god to help us against it. Finally, the score by Ennio Morricone is iconic, of course, helping cement the atmosphere of sheer helplessness in the face of a menace beyond knowing.

     Not much here on the other hand. Some parts can get a bit confusing if you're not paying attention, and sometimes you confuse the names of characters, but you can follow each character, their roles, and what happens pretty well regardless.

     So, like I said, this is probably one of my all-time favorite horror films. I've seen it a few times since that first Facebook review years ago, and I'll probably watch it again for many more years. It is a great film. Not just a great horror or a great science fiction film. A great film, that works on so many levels, and reveals something about humanity that it is uncomfortable and disturbing to ponder. It is mandatory viewing for horror and science fiction fans, of course, but even if you don't like these genres (or are squimish about blood), it is well-crafted, well-written and well-acted enough to be worth at least one view (again, it is fairly bloody, so be warned). It is always a pleasure to watch this film.

    So, that concludes the Masterpiece of Horror Theatre for this year and this decade. I really hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy writing them, and I hope it convinced you to seek out something new to watch for the Halloween season. I want to thank you all for reading these for all years, whether on Facebook or the Linkara rip-off videos I did also on Facebook, or on this blog, and I look forward to doing them again next year along with a very Summer of  Terror I plan for next year. I don't know what I have planned for November, but I hope you stay tuned for that. To close out, here's noted SF illustrator Wayne Barlowe doing a version of the creature from "Who Goes There"

   Happy Halloween, everyone
     

Masterpiece of Horror Theatre- Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

      In 1947, a businessman and pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mt. Rainier in Washington state when he came across a bunch of strange lights he compared to "saucers", among other things. The press would come to dub these objects "Flying Saucers". This sighting was one of many during the late 40's and 50's, when people around the world began to report seeing strange objects in the skies, which was soon attributed to beings from the stars. One of the biggest proponents of this was Marine aviator Maj. Donald Keyhoe, who wrote some bestsellers with information from official sources (though with differing interpretations of those sources and the eyewitnesses listed than either the Air Force or scientists probably would've) regarding the phenomenon. Of course, Hollywood smelt an opportunity, and made many alien invasion films during the period.With the (fairly dubious) prestige of Major Keyhoe, a film was made, "suggested" by his book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space. After going through titles like Attack of the Flying Saucers and Invasion of the Flying Saucers, the title Earth vs. the Flying Saucers just felt right, apparently. Ray Harryhausen did the effects for the film, and the producer was his regular one Charles Schneer. To help the film, Harryhausen sought the guidance of George Adamski (known for his... bizarre UFO sightings). The screenplay was written by Bernard Gordon (who had to take the alias Raymond T Marcus, due to being blacklisted), George Worthing Yates, and Curt Siodmak (known for writing The Wolf Man for Universal). Stock footage of the sinking of the HMS Barham and V-2 launches during World War II were among the effects used in the film to describe the alien attacks in the film. The film is regarded as something of a classic, with Tim Burton extensively homaging the film in Mars Attacks, but Harryhausen himself has admitted it was his least favorite of the films he had done.

      Flying saucers are everywhere, being seen by pilots, farmers, and all sorts of people. This includes Dr. Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife Carol (Joan Taylor), who are driving to Project Skyhook, a military effort to launch satellites as the first shot in space exploration efforts (this was 1956, right before Sputnik). They decide to keep it secret, but is informed by Carol's father, General Hanley (Morris Ankrum) that many of the satellites have been fallen back to Earth, and the current launch goes disastrously. One of the flying saucers lands on Earth, and the occupants, after being attacked by the US military, attack back, and kidnap General Hanley. They subsequently reveal to Hanley (and later Marvin) that, after being encountered with hostility, they have decided to attack the Earth, and have mysterious designs for the sun. Now, it is a race to figure out what the aliens are going to do.

     The effects of the flying saucers are very well-done, while appearing very simply at first. It seems like it's just hung from a string, but if you look closely, you can see them being rotated very quickly. It gives them more of a realistic feeling, especially as they go around the sky, and very much when they land. The scene where the saucer is on the ground before the aliens attack was very tense primarily because of that effect and the weird distortion used for the force field. The alien suits are less than impressive (and phallic), but the make-up once they are unmasked is pretty good. The climax where various landmarks are destroyed with stop motion is practical effects is amazing, some of the best of the period that I've seen, I like the use of stock footage very subtly as an indication, especially the photo-negatives of sun (always good to see astronomical imagery) I also like that there is more of an international presence in the plot of the film (even if it focuses primarily on the US).

    The movie has something of a fast pace. It goes immediately from Dr. Marvin and Carol seeing the UFO to the UFO ruining the launch to the invasion starting. As a result, it gets a bit hard to follow, since you need to keep up with each and every detail in order to follow it. This especially applies to the ending, where the military has to deal with the aliens in Washington, but it doesn't really say how they are dealt with worldwide. I also wish the aliens had a better motivation, than just growing hostile immediately and wanting to rule the Earth. There's apparently a comic series that explores the film from their perspectives, so I might check that out. Also, for a film with this large a scale, it is way too short to really soak in the sheer terror of a menace to the entire planet.

   I kind of agree with Harryhausen that this is his weakest film. However, it's mostly in terms of plot. The effects are still top-notch, and I can see why the film became so iconic. If you like alien invasion film, science fiction films of the 50's, or the work of Ray Harryhausen, definitely give it a watch.

   Tomorrow, we return to Wes Craven with his 1991 cult classic The People Under the Stairs.

Dailles and Nightlies- Battleship

          This almost sounds like a parody, really. Now 7 years removed from it, it is sort of stunning that this film actually exists, and isn't something in the background of a Hollywood satire. A military sci-fi blockbuster based on the plotless game of Battleship. The one where you yell out a position, and it hits or misses (I'm guessing modern versions are a tie-in to the film? Haven't played it in a while) Someone actually conceived of this, and created the film with high quality effects, name actors, and military support. It is kind of astounding, and with the right combination, it might've actually worked. Unfortunately, for a concept this wonky, it is surprisingly dull and boring.

      NASA has managed to locate an exoplanet with the potential for life, and sends a signal to any potential life. But, this interesting development is sidetracked by the story of Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), who, as brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard, and yes, his name really is "Stone") helpfully exposits to the audience, is an unemployed slacker celebrating his birthday at a bar, where he attempts to impress Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), by stealing a chicken burrito from a nearby convenience store. He's tased pretty badly by the police, and while he is recovering, Stone once again helpfully explains that he wants Alex to join the Navy and that Samantha is the daughter of the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet Terrance Shane (Liam Neeson). Cut to 7 years later, and Alex is now a Tactical Action Officer on the USS John Paul Jones, and is preparing to ask Admiral Shane for his daughter's hand in marriage (why this is still a thing, I'm not sure. Seems terribly antiquated). However, he is on the verge of a discharge (for some reason that's never explicitly explained as far as I could discern). Samantha, meanwhile revealed to be a physical therapist is helping a double amputee, Lt. Col Mick Canales (Gregory D. Gadson, a real life Iraq veteran and double amputee, which is very cool) recover by taking a walk in the beautiful Hawaiian wilderness.  If you're wondering where the aliens come in, well, they land during a Navy game between the RIMPAC nations, and create a force field around the Hawaiian islands. Now, after Stone is killed, Alex, along with Petty Officer Cora Raikes (Rihanna. Yes, that one) and the commander of the Jones' sister ship Yugi Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) must fight the aliens from within, while Samantha, Mick, and a SETI scientist named Cal Zapata (Hamish Linklater) try to destroy the shields.

      There are a couple things that are competent about this film. It has two kind of interesting subplots that are more interesting than the main plot. One is the aforementioned story of real life double amputee Gregory Gadson fighting off aliens, which was generally very awesome whenever we got to see it. The other involves a group of veterans actually refurbishing the USS Missouri with the main characters to fight the aliens. Both of these could've made entertaining films in and of themselves, and didn't deserve to be attached to Battleship the movie. The acting was alright, with a surprising standout being Rihanna. (I want to see her in more films, she has only been in 6 films since this one). It is mildly entertaining how they shoehorn aspects of the game into the film, like the pegs and when they try to fire on the aliens using a grid.

     It is surprising how boring this film is. Battleship the movie should be some weird, glorious mess. This is just another blockbuster, with a few tangential connections to its origin. It's not fun, it's not really that absurd. If you've seen any alien invasion film with clear support from the United States armed forces, you've seen this. I really can't say much other than that. Beyond that, it's also clear that it is trying to take elements from the then-hottest blockbusters, especially the Transformers films from Michael Bay. Director Peter Berg (known for the original Friday Night Lights, which is likely why Taylor Kitsch is in this) is clearly attempting to ape Michael Bay's style , from the panning shots to the slow motion action. However, while Bay has turned this into something of a vulgar artform using his own openly iconoclastic mannerisms, Berg's imitation makes the film look even cheaper and more mundane by comparison (though at least Berg doesn't imitate Bay's political incorrectness, in the former's defense). It really says something that I was more confused here than by the Transformers films I've seen directed by Bay. Along with failing to get Bay, Berg also uses a lot of Spielbergian music cues and especially, JJ Abrams-esque lens flares, which make the film even harder to see. I'm probably making this Frankenstein's monster combination out to be interesting, but really, the combination of these elements make the film generic, and not terribly interesting in its own right.

     It took four goddamn days to write this. Battleship the movie should not be this hard to write about, but the film is that uninteresting. I had a hard time describing the synopsis, because literally very little of note actually happens. I really don't recommend this to anyone, except maybe battleship enthusiasts with its accuracy and how it uses military strategies from what I've read, though maybe there are errors. I don't know. This was a lot tougher than I originally imagined.