Matango, aka Attack of the Mushroom People (1963)... Angie's Pick for July

Angie

After our group of friends finished watching The Calamari Wrestler together, we started discussing other crazy movies we had seen. One guy talked about a Japanese movie he had watched at a young age that contained giant mushroom people and had given him nightmares. It was decided immediately that a follow up party was necessary to track down this film and give it a watch. The party was even themed, with mushroom pizza, mushroom soup, and even cupcakes that were decorated to look like mushrooms from Super Mario Bros. The film we watched was Matango, also known as Attack of the Mushroom People for its U.S. release.

We start with a man telling us that all his companions are dead - but no, not really, only one of them is dead. He then says that if he told us what he meant, we'd think he was crazy.

From there, we flashback to a group of people out on a boat together while the credits roll. Our cast of characters has striking similarities to the Gilligan's Island crew, with one glamorous woman and one shy girl, a rich man, a professor, a skipper, and not one but two characters who are reminiscent of Gilligan himself, at least in dress if not personality. While their excursion seems to be a little longer than a three hour tour, they do still hit a bad storm along the way.

A thick fog surrounds them and their radio dies out until finally they drift toward an island. With it appearing to be uninhabited and their boat in no shape to sail, they set about trying to find food and water. Some of the shots of them wandering the island remind me of Lost, particularly the brief glimpses we got of The Others early on in that show, and while I know this is most likely a coincidence, I can't help but wonder if any of the creators saw this film, as the island does have its own mysteries to be discovered.

They find water as well as traces that suggest humans have been on the island recently. After climbing one of the higher mountain peaks, they notice a wrecked ship on another shore. On closer inspection, they realize the ship has been abandoned for a long time, and there are traces of fungus and moss growing on all its interior surfaces. They also find a sample of a giant mushroom, matango, that is native to the island, along with a week's worth of canned goods and the captain's log.

The log tells them that the mushrooms have nerve altering effects, and so they decide that they must gather food and try to repair their ship, but definitely not eat the mushrooms. While two of the men are out hunting, they find the remains of a broken mirror, and are shocked when a bird seems to refuse to fly close to the island. As they travel further, they see a strange creature moving between the trees. So naturally they shoot first and ask questions later, but the creature gets away.

As they go to sleep, a strange creature is once again seen peering into the windows of the ship. It creeps inside and appears before all of them, a humanoid monster covered in fungus growth, before disappearing before their eyes. Gilligan 1/Koyama insists that these rich spoiled people are all going crazy because there are women stranded with them and they are driving the men mad. There's then some drama about who Ginger/Mami is spending her time with, but it's not really relevant. The important part is that they are running out of food and tensions are high.

While they find some root vegetables and turtle eggs, Gilligan 2/Yoshida ends up eating mushrooms anyway, and tries to kill them all. The other men manage to overpower him and lock him up. The skipper works on repairing the yacht, and when Kasai/the-billionaire-sans-wife offers for the two of them to take the food and split, he tells him to leave. But in fact he's planning to take it all for himself and just go. Meanwhile, Mami has let Yoshida free. He seems to be developing a rash, and he kills Koyama without hesitation. They boot Yoshida and Mami off the ship to go live in the forest.

After many days of rain, mushrooms have sprouted everywhere, and Mami comes back to tempt Kasai into eating them. His hunger prevents him from resisting, and he sees visions of dancing girls. Only after he's finished indulging does she tell him that it will turn him into a mushroom. He runs away and hears laughter all through the forest. One by one, the giant mushroom people appear all around him.

The professor sees the yacht return to the shore. Inside, the skipper transcribed a suicide note before jumping into the water once he ran out of food. Only the professor and Mary Anne/Akiko are left whole. Akiko wonders if it would be better to just eat the mushrooms and transform because they would at least survive, and he then slaps her before telling her he can't live without her. There's a knock at the door, and a fungus covered arm pushes its way inside. He shoots it away, but more appear at the portholes. The creatures are coming for them. The professor heads out to try to attack them, but all he really does is leave Akiko defenseless so she can be captured. He follows the sounds of frenzied high pitched laughter to a grove full of the mushroom people. He tries to shoot them, but there are too many. Akiko calls for him, and he finds her eating the mushrooms. She tells him how delicious they are with a huge smile on her face. He manages to fight his way out amongst the creatures and make it out to the yacht to escape.

We come back to the beginning scene, and we see that he is trapped in a cell and being observed by doctors. If you didn't think anything of the fact that we only saw his back at the beginning, you're no doubt noticing it now. He asks if he should have also eaten the mushrooms, says that if he truly loved Akiko, he would have joined her there. Surely it would be better than his current life. He turns to face the camera, and we see that he too now has the mushroom growth all over his face. The doctors tell him they are glad he returned and he says that the people in Tokyo are just as inhuman as the creatures on the island.

The movie runs at a pretty slow pace, though at 90 minutes, it is brief. The trouble is that, the moment the mushrooms are introduced, we pretty much know exactly where this film is going. At least we know it's inevitable that they will eat the mushrooms, even if we don't realize it will transform them. They try to inject it with more plot by making Mami a temptress and introducing some class based conflict of the poor vs. the rich, but I don't think it's resolved very well.

However, where the movie does excel are its horror moments. While the costumes are cheap and even downright silly looking at times, the music and sound combined with the way the scenes are shot go a long way to increase the creepiness of these the mushroom people. While I was shocked on our first viewing when our friend told us this gave him nightmares, with this second viewing, I can actually see very easily how that could happen. We see the humanoid creature through shadows first, and then only bits and pieces at a time before we see the whole thing. And through a child's eyes, I can see how these otherwise very unrealistic creatures could be seen as frightening. While as an adult, the effects border a little too much on cheesy to scare me, I do appreciate what the director was trying to do and I think he pulled it off as best as he could with what he had. If you look at this as a decent attempt to emulate films like It Came From Another World, you may be able to enjoy it despite its thin plot.

While Jak was at that original party with me, I'm interested to see if he gained something new from the film this time around, or if he still finds it as silly as we did the first time we watched it. I'm also curious to see if this one is going to appeal to Noel's sensibilities or not.



Noel

Oh, this absolutely appeals to my sensibilities, and don't agree that the characters and themes are poorly resolved. In fact, I find them very deep and complex.

Our young "hero", Kenji, is a university teacher off on an affair with a young female student, and while they seem to be the plucky "one true love" of this story, they not only fall apart at the end but go through a rough patch on their way there (the slapping her then saying he loves her scene being the peak moment). The skipper, Naoyuki, is the most dependable member of the crew, always keeping calm and taking charge... until the day he bundles up all their food for himself as he sails off alone, then commits suicide off screen. Singer and tv star Mami, instead of being a vapid ditz, is probably the sharpest member of the crew, using her whiles to win her favors, but also never backing away from doing hard work and holding her own alongside the men. Her one mistake is putting her stock in Yoshida when he makes his play for power at the end, which is ultimately her downfall.

As for Yoshida, it amuses me that you pointed him out as a Gilligan, because his beach hat look was specifically modeled after Akira Kurosawa, a close friend of director Ishiro Honda. Yoshida, a best-selling novelist who's always putting pen to paper, even while delighting in the pleasures of his privileged lifestyle, goes through a fascinating shift from bumbling tag-along to the closest this story gets to a villain as he uses the philosophy of their separation from humanity to justify ignoring social norms, making repeated advances on Mami, then getting a hold of the rifle and drawing first blood. And speaking of that first blood, Senzo is almost a false villain, openly talking about doing things to the others that Yoshida ends up doing for real, and even as he hordes away his own supply of food, he's still giving the majority of what he finds to the main group. Aside from the bits he sells to Masafumi, which I'll get to. The moment where he's suddenly blown away by Yoshida caught me completely by surprise and is a great "this shit just go real!" twist.

If anyone does fit the Gilligan's Island comparison, I'd say it's millionaire celebrity Masafumi, in that he's always lording himself above the group and trying to use his class and his cash to win favors and preferential treatment, even as he's stealing cans of food from behind everyones' back. And just like Thurston Howell III, it often bites him in the ass and leaves him the most unliked of the group, and I love the moment where he has to buy his share of food off of Senzo instead of getting to partake in what the mate gives to the rest of the group.

This is a very deep cast of characters, and I like that they don't fall into easy archetypes, and that they do unexpected, yet very human things. And all the performances are surprisingly grounded and naturalistic, given the often over-the-top nature of Japanese acting. Even the 60s-era English dub track I listened to is remarkably well produced, giving everyone distinction and nuance, as well as keeping the dialogue realistic and naturally delivered. This isn't a film about Mushroom People, it's a film about people. Horrible, ugly, everyday people who speak to the worst of what we could all become if forced outside of social norms. This film is not only remarkably ahead of its time in that its cast is almost completely composed of yuppie assholes who hate one another, but in how it uses them to make a nihilistic statement that some forces can't be overcome, some battles can't be won. Especially if they're really yourself.

And that's what the Mushroom People are: they're our characters, they're ourselves. Everyday survival is a difficult thing, represented by the lack of animal life on the island and the sporadic roots and turtle eggs our heroes have to seek out for each meal. The mushrooms represent the complacency and delusion of wealth. They're abundant, they'll keep you full, they'll keep you alive, but they'll erase your identity as you're forced to conform, to put on a false face and hide the real human underneath. Note how only the wealthy characters are those to succumb to the mushroom, even our idealistic young professor. The two poor men, skipper Naoyuki and shipmate Senzo, are both killed for their efforts to stay alive. They crossed the wealthy and were discarded, whereas the wealthy have become complacent and lethargic, and will continue to do so until they're just another mushroom in a grove exclusive to fellow mushrooms.

And I think the mushroom grove is a marvelous piece of set and costume work, especially with the hallucinatory barrage of sounds and images of our rich cast delighting in their consumption of that which is destroying them. I do, though, have problems with how some of it is shot, as there are too many full-figured shots of foam suits with mushroom heads wobbling around. They should have obscured them more, and not lingered so much that the well-sculpted suits can be so closely scrutinized.

I think your inability to connect with this movie, Angie, has less to do with its pace (which is a marvelous slow boil) and its character drama, than it does the expectations with which you approached the film. You wanted something silly with mushroom people you could laugh at. Instead, the film is a character piece where the mushrooms themselves are as much of a background element as the Cenobites in Hellraiser. They may have been the selling point of the film, but they aren't what it's about. It's about the people, about the desolate island, about the Lovecraftian foreboding of an ultimate doom from which only one person will partially escape. A doom that seemingly comes from without, only to be revealed as coming from within.

I think this film is magnificent, and thank you for picking it as it's one I've heard about for years and have been waiting for an excuse to finally hunt down and watch.



Jak

"We're watching Matango this month."

It's a rare film that leaves me with a blank slate impression years later, and Matango was one of them. I had seen it at a party five years ago, and all I could recall was that the characters reminded me very loosely of the Gilligan's Island cast early on, enough that I remember wondering which had come first (Matango did, though I keep reading that the similarities are purely coincidental, which seems extremely odd). Beyond that, I couldn't remember a thing else about it. At first, I liked that I couldn't, because I wouldn't have any bothersome preconceptions clouding my experience. Then, I got worried - if it was really that forgettable, what kind of a bland 99 minutes was I in for?

I noticed the Gilligan's Island analogues again almost immediately from the beginning, though as the first act goes on, the characterizations don't follow that show's cast too closely beyond the general occupations and wardrobe direction. Still, it's hard not to hum "the weather started getting rough" when the storm begins. The first six minutes do a great job of setting up a false air of levity, even in spite of the psych ward introduction's ominous setup. It's an aspect of movies like this that I think would be so much more effective if the genre was unknown prior to viewing. While I understand why that's impossible - everyone wants to at least know what kind of film they're going to watch - it's always been an interesting thought to me how much more gripping some movies might be with no advertisements or even titles beyond "Here is a movie".

The hopeless situation post-storm is very well done. Once they reach the island and begin exploring the shipwreck, the early parts of Alien keep coming to mind. Any movie that can evoke Gilligan's Island and Alien in the first half hour is a pretty neat accomplishment. The set design is especially effective in the derelict, really making the walls look like places you wouldn't want to set your bare hands on for too long.

In lesser hands, this could have been an extremely boring setup. The characters are written with believable developments and they're never taken to the point of parody, even those jerks Koyama and Yoshida, as they easily could be with the kinds of archetypal personalities we're dealing with here. Yoshida playfully blowing smoke rings while the skipper details the dire food situation is an example of this kind of subtlety that takes this beyond the average monster movie's cannon fodder. This is good because, for its type, this one is extremely slow paced to the point that it almost subverts the genre - here is a monster flick that is all about the characters, for a change, to the detriment of the monsters themselves, as we'll soon see. Kasai's fall from authority to desperation, the skipper's calm assurance leading to the shock of his surprise betrayal, Koyama's shift from obvious villain to initial victim - with the exception of Yoshida's babbling expositional monologue when he's threatening the group with the gun, this movie has consistently strong dialogue. I highly recommend keeping the Japanese audio, though. I had English subtitles with three audio tracks available on my copy (Spanish, English and Japanese), and switched between the English and Japanese audio a few times. I found the readings on the English dub to be extremely poor in nuance in comparison. Delivery is everything, especially for this kind of survival drama.

Unfortunately, the last quarter of the movie is marred by the ridiculous premise, which is an admittedly odd thing to say considering the whole story has been leading up to the payoff of mushroom people. While I admit I can't come up with a better idea off the top of my head, I can say that I believe the movie would have worked well, maybe even better, without a monster angle at all. As a story, the conflicts between the characters have everything to do with survival and personality clashes, and the mushroom people element seems to be in there largely to sell tickets for its "wait, what? oh, weird!" factor.

Why this movie wasn't more memorable for me the first time I watched it is a mystery. It's definitely in its own class out of the films I've watched for the Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange, and is one of the better older movies I've seen, in spite of its unfortunate, ultimately silly end, complete with an obligatory "who are the real monsters here". It's a slow burn through the 99 minutes, with a fizzle at the end instead of a bang, though it's one I don't regret sitting through and one I'll likely not forget twice.



Angie

So it seems I stand alone in my opinion on this one. I should state that I made the Gilligan's Island comparisons because I don't see how an American watching this film these days couldn't see them, purely by coincidence or not. But that doesn't mean I think these characters are cookie cutter, and they obviously cannot be rip-offs.

The problem I have with them is the sexist tone that runs throughout the movie. I had a hard time enjoying the original King Kong thanks to the idea that the characters strongly suggested it was Fay Wray's character's presence that damned them, and I don't enjoy it anymore here. I know it's an old superstition about women at sea, but that doesn't stop it from rubbing me the wrong way. Add to it that Mami really is just a temptress always out to help herself and no one else, and Akiko is a demure woman who only follows around the man she loves and easily falls into the temptation of eating the mushrooms, and I'm done.

That said, I can see Jak's comparisons to Alien, as well as a film like Night of the Living Dead or a story like Stephen King's The Mist. This is definitely a film about the characters reactions to what is happening around them, and that is why not much happens beyond the character conflict. Perhaps these characters are meant to be unlikeable, making their punishment fitting for them. I'm just not a fan of watching a movie full of nothing but unlikeable characters, regardless of their eventual comeuppance.

I also think Noel hit the nail directly on the head as far as what the mushrooms stand for in the film. All good monsters should represent something, and I find, more often than not, it is Japanese cinema that often uses them most effectively. This film definitely ranks high on the list of using them properly. I may have missed it on my initial viewing, but reading his analysis makes it plain.

I also don't think this is a bad film, despite my problems with it. While it may not be something I would return to, I do think it is worth a viewing, and it's entirely possible that it will appeal far more to you than it did to me.



We'll be back on the 1st of September with a pick from Noel: Rad (1986)

Krull (1983)... Jak's Pick for June

Jak

As I type this paragraph, I've never seen the movie Krull, and yet it's my own pick for this month. I know a few people who have seen it, and all of them either loved it because it was so bad or hated it because it was so bad. So apparently I'm in for a bad movie if my friends and Rotten Tomatoes' 33% rating are to be trusted. This is not why I chose this film.

When I was very young, we had an Atari 2600 game console. Thanks to the plummeting prices from the video game market crash at the time, we ended up getting a good collection that I spent a lot of my early youth playing through. My uncle had one as well, and since we would only very rarely go to his house (Thanksgiving and a couple of birthdays were at his place, and the rest were at my grandmother's), the games he had that we didn't have were like exotic treasures to me. Among these was a cartridge labeled "Krull", with ominous cover art and levels that had so many wildly different things going on that I couldn't keep up. I figured if it confused me that much, it had to be a really good and deep game. When I found out it was based on a movie, I imagined how awesome the scenes that inspired the levels must be.

Early impressions carry an awful lot of weight, and I have a feeling that's going to make this an interesting experience for me. Even knowing now that the game's levels are really nothing more than tenuously linked-together, dressed-up rehashes of Kaboom, Pitfall, and Breakout, I still tend to think of it as a game with far more depth than a cartridge of that era could possibly hold, even as I'm playing it and cataloging every influence.

Similarly, even knowing that every person I know and every source I can find agrees that Krull is a pretty bad movie, I'm finding myself expecting that the film will have the same awe-inspiring depth that I can't seem to shake of my impression of the game that's loosely based on it. Young Jak really wants this movie to be good. It's about time to see if it is.

It starts off with the bladed star weapon, that I already know from the game manual to be called the Glaive, boomeranging around through space to bring us the title in what must have been fairly impressive special effects at the time it came out in 1983. A huge structure which looks like equal parts geode and petrified wood enters the scene and flies toward a planet with two suns where it eventually lands in the middle of a desolate landscape, breaking and shifting the land around it. It's the Black Fortress, the narrator informs us, the stronghold of The Beast and his army of Slayers which travels from world to world enslaving each one's inhabitants. Its latest visit is to the world known as Krull, where there's a prophecy that a girl will become a queen who will choose a king and have a son who will rule the galaxy.

We next see this girl, Princess Lyssa, in the middle of a conversation with her father, King Eirig. He's opposed to her idea of marrying Colwyn, the son of another king whose country theirs is apparently at odds with. She argues that they must have a guaranteed alliance with their enemies to stand against these new invaders from the Black Fortress.

We get right to the wedding which is soon interrupted by a contingent of Slayers. Of course, Lyssa is captured by the Slayers after a melee in the castle with Colwyn and the soldiers after the two kings are killed. Colwyn is hit with a Slayer's beam and falls unconscious as everyone else is slaughtered.

The next morning, an old man who we learn is called Ynyr the Old One treats Colwyn's wounds amidst the dead. He tells Colwyn that Lyssa is being held in the Black Fortress by The Beast, who can only be taken down by a mythical weapon called the Glaive which must be retrieved from a mountain peak. Colwyn scales the mountain and, after navigating some harrowing conditions, he comes back with the weapon in hand, ready to tackle the Black Fortress, only to be told by Ynyr that the fortress changes its location with every sunrise. The blind Emerald Seer can help locate it, so they head off to find him. On their way, they meet a clumsy magician named Ergo who accompanies them. Meanwhile, inside the fortress, The Beast tells Lyssa he intends to have her as his queen, in an effort to be the king of the prophecy whose son will rule the galaxy.

On their way through a mountain pass, they are ambushed by a small group of criminals who are convinced to join Colwyn's quest to take down the invaders. The group is trailed by a cyclops, Rell, who kills a Slayer that had spotted Ergo. Soon, they reach the Emerald Seer who attempts to locate the fortress before his visions are interrupted by The Beast. They bring the Seer to the Emerald Temple in the middle of a swamp where he can work beyond The Beast's influence. After a battle with Slayers and the loss of one of the criminals to quicksand, the Seer is killed by a doppelganger who nearly kills Colwyn before being dispatched by Rell. Colwyn's only option now is visiting the Widow of the Web, a dangerous sorceress who Ynyr once loved long ago.

Ynyr reaches the Widow alone and she reveals where the Fortress will rise the next day, though the price of acquiring the knowledge ends up being his life. He tells Colwyn where it is, the Iron Desert, before he dies. The Iron Desert is unreachable in time except by using Fire Mares, which the group rounds up and rides to the Fortress. Once there, they are soon attacked by Slayers. They eventually make their way into the Fortress, at the cost of Rell and a few of the criminals.

Colwyn uses the Glaive to enter the princess's chamber where she tells him he must fight The Beast. He does and eventually wins. The world of Krull is saved.

From the opening shots of the Black Fortress dawdling through space, I had a feeling this was going to be another optical effects reel masquerading as a movie. I feel like I was both right and wrong at the same time, because there are two very different movies mashed together here.

If we divide the film into thirds, I really enjoyed the middle third of the movie. It showed off the impressive sets and locations without lingering, the story moved smoothly from one adventure to another, making me genuinely want to see what happened next, and I found myself liking and caring about a lot of the characters as they were fleshed out - something which surprised me because I find that most quest genre movies with a larger cast tend to just give their characters paper doll archetypal personalities and choose to leave the depth to other genres.

The first and the last thirds are almost exactly the opposite of that. When we're not getting reams of backstory dumped on us in one minute, we're hanging on shots that seem to be designed solely to show off the locations and special effects. During the Slayers' siege of the kingdom, we have so many long stares at a single cart on fire which just plod on as if the movie's saying "Look. It's on FIRE. We set something on fire and we filmed it. Look at that thing on FIRE." Lyssa doesn't so much as react when she sees her father get killed. There are literally three full minutes of Colwyn climbing the mountain to reach the Glaive.

Somewhere soon after this part, the film finds its legs for a good while, with promising character development and exciting pacing. Then from around the point where Ynyr dies, it's a downhill slide right back into Bad Movie Land as the characters are reduced to one-note parodies of their earlier potential, and the pace goes all over the place again.

It's an extremely uneven experience, which is much more frustrating than a plain bad flick, because the cast and crew proved they could have made this a very good movie if just a little more effort and thought had been put into the opening and closing acts. The special effects were mostly impressive, though I felt the fight scenes came off kind of forced, sluggish, and awkward in their execution. The wardrobe was a neat mix of medieval and sci-fi, and the sets were beautiful and expansive. It was good that at least a few of them were part of a good movie, even if that movie was buried in the middle of a bad one. Even if it wasn't the movie that young me thought it would be.

Maybe that movie's out there somewhere. Sorry kid, this one isn't it. I wonder what Angie and Noel thought of it?

Angie

For the longest time, I thought Krull was a Conan the Barbarian rip off. "Isn't that the one they remade with Kevin Sorbo?" I would say when someone mentioned it. "No, that's Kull the Conqueror." Kull, Krull, they're practically the same thing. Then I'd see a poster with the Beast's rather ugly head on it and assume it was a straight sci-fi story, one of the many attempted rip offs of Star Wars that appeared in the early 80s, so I never bothered with it. But in recent years, I've been more curious about it.

While there's certainly some Star Wars influence present, there's also a bit of The Lord of the Rings. I'm not entirely sure if the sci-fi laser beams really mesh well with the otherwise fantasy setting. They feel tacked on, desperately trying to remind you of light sabers without actually including any. Beyond that, it's mostly a fantasy tale, and as a huge fan of most of the 80s films in the genre, I found things here and there that I could enjoy from this movie.

Ergo's entrance into the film makes you think he's going to be absolutely terrible, but apparently first impressions aren't everything, because he ends up being one of the better characters of the whole film. His presence is sorely needed at that point, since Colwyn is a vanilla bland lead and Ynyr a poor Obi Wan Kenobi substitute. From then on, the film just follows the same pattern. Our heroes walk until they run into more people, convince the people to join them, and then keep walking. This movie is paced like The Lord of the Rings is written. We don't need to watch Colwyn's entire climb up the mountain when nothing happens but a minor avalanche, and we don't need to see their entire journey on the fire mares to reach the Black Fortress. The pacing also hurts during the quicksand scene, where it doesn't look like the guy actually legitimately is sucked under because it moves so slowly and he isn't really struggling all that much.

Besides Ergo, I really like Rell the Cyclops, even if his makeup is fairly poor. Pretty much all the effects in this movie are very poor. Obviously noticeable green screen, bad creature effects, bad transformations from Ergo, just all of it. The only thing I think looks great is the crystal spider. It takes you out of the movie a bit when you're noticing just how bad these things look.

I'm also disappointed in just how minor a role Lyssa plays in the story. The legend says she will become queen and choose her king, so you would think we're getting a strong-willed, brave woman, but instead all we get is a damsel in distress. I can't measure the disappointment I felt when I saw her grab that sword as the castle is under attack, and then quickly just toss it to a guard only to watch him get killed. And instead of picking up another and fighting, she just gets captured. I can't help but compare her to Lily in Legend, who ends up in a similar predicament, but takes care of herself so much better (particularly if you watch the director's cut of that film). But I do like the idea that this prophecy is a repeating one, where there can be multiple Lyssas and the circumstances just have to be right. It reminds me of The Legend of Zelda, where the young Link appears over and over again throughout history to save the world.

Overall, I'd say this film is ripe for a remake. Use some much better effects and tighten up the pacing, pick a more charismatic male lead, and update Lyssa's role so that she puts up more of a fight. I'd say Liam Neeson could come back and play Ynyr this time, but he's already been Qui-Gon and there's no need for him to repeat that kind of role again.

Noel

Krull is an odd film, and one I keep revisiting despite saying I don't like it all that much. The early 80s was a great period for fantasy movies, but while the likes of Dragonslayer, Willow, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Legend, The Never Ending Story, and a good handful of others dazzled audiences with innovative visuals and eye-popping design work, Krull suffered alongside Clash of the Titans in that it felt old. Both were the products of studios and technicians who were passing their prime and tried in vain to keep up with talented newcomers who were pushing the industry in bold new directions, and thus those films feel exactly like what they are: the product of a bunch of old guys trying to stay cool for a new generation of kids, without really having a clue how to do so, so they just fell back on lazy imitation or old tricks which date the films and leave them feeling more like something made a decade or more earlier.

Which is a shame, because there is a lot about Krull which actually holds up. As Jak points out, the middle section is where the film is at its strongest, with some solid setpieces and an interesting batch of characters steadily (if a bit randomly) introduced into the party. You've got Ergo, the boisterous magician who can't keep his scribbled notes for spells separate from his recipes for pies, and who complains and boasts and whines and sidetracks for sweets, yet still dives in to help when the chips fall. You've got the band of outlaws and ruffians led by the great Alun Armstrong as Torquil (and also including Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane in very early roles), as men scraping by to stay alive outside the law, who are given a chance by the new king to make their sons proud and earn freedom from the chains they still wear. You've got the blind seer, tragically unable to see how the Beast will outwit him on both occasions he tries to help, and the boy apprentice who finds a new family once his mentor is slain. You've got Rell, the Cyclops, whose entire race is a tragedy in that they sold one of their eyes to the Beast for the gift of foresight, but the only future they see is the moment they'll die.

I've used the word tragedy in the last two of those bits, and that's where the strength of this section of the film lies, in that it has powerfully tragic stories that it hits the characters with, then challenges them to rise above it and move on. Even as the climax turns into silliness, Rell still goes out with a great hero moment as he defies his fated death and saves the day, even though that destines him to go out in a way of even greater pain. Even more tragic is Ynyr, who goes from being the token Ben Kenobi figure to almost stealing the show as things sidetrack into a sweeping classical fable that tells his entire life story in the span of 10 minutes through his history with the Widow of the Web, whom he saves from her fate even as he excepts the fate which finally brings him to an end. There's some shoddy stop-motion and they linger way too long on the aged Freddie Jones genuinely struggling to climb along the web, but this section is still the most moving piece for me.

And yet, despite these great moments, the film still ultimately doesn't work. Again, Jak hit the nail on the head in that the opening and closing acts are a mess, randomly throwing in cliches they're swiping from other stuff and general random nonsense. And our two leads don't help. Ken Marshall and Lysette Anthony are fine actors (Lysette especially doesn't deserve the voice they idiotically dubbed over her just because a producer thought she sounded "too British"), but Lyssa spends half the film ineffectively running through poorly designed corridors, and Ken Marshall, our hero, lacks an actual hero's journey. Seriously, they throw a few challenges at him now and then, but he ends the film exactly the proud, noble leader he opens the picture as, going through no change, no growth, nothing to make us form an attachment to him as our lead. He's already rising to the challenge in the first act, so it means very little when he rises to the challenge in the third.

I don't usually bring drafts of the script into pieces for this site, but I'm really quite fond of the early draft of Krull, and I think mentioning it can add a little context for how the film ended up as it did. Originally, it was purely a medieval fantasy piece, where the Beast was a giant black dragon, recently awoken by dark magic after having been banished to a demon realm centuries ago, and the Fortress, his mountain, never flew into space. The Slayers, instead of the oddly designed zombie storm troopers we get here, were entirely human people who pledged to fight for the Beast just so he wouldn't destroy their lands and families.

Dragonslayer beat them to the punch in 1981, so the dragon was out. Okay. They made it a demon beast thingie. Fine. H.R. Giger was hot, so they decided to cop his style for the villains. Unfortunately, everything he draws is clearly penises and vaginas, so by stripping and sanitizing those elements, they're left with flat, bland designs that don't look like much of anything. The sets are instead just smooth curves of... nothing, and look exactly like the poorly lit pieces of plaster and fiberglass they are. And they obviously had no confidence in the Beast suit they built, so they both hide it in shadows, and shoot it with a blurry kaleidoscope effect which, instead of building mystery, has the feel of Mom shoving her hand over your eyes when something she doesn't want you to see comes on TV. Even for the human characters, while their costuming is very nice, the prop work just looks cheap and shoddy, with axes and pikes and Rell's trident designed with flimsy handles and impractical blades. And the Glaive. I've never been a fan of the Glaive. It looks kinda cool for a second, but Ken Marshall has to keep holding it in odd ways to keep from slicing his own wrist, and when it's in use, the whibble-whibble-whibble sound it makes is more adorable than daunting.

And by turning the Slayers from actual people into stormtroopers, they undercut the scale of this world, the conflicting politics of the Colwyn/Lyssa relationship (she originally had a mother, and the rival kings were Colwyn's father and a Slayer character who carried on throughout the story), and leave the place feeling surprisingly deserted. We hear about a village, but don't see any of them beyond some women with food. When we're at the castle, it's just the four main figures of royalty and a bunch of soldiers, with absolutely zero presence of a commoner populace. I understand cutting out unnecessary masses for budgetary reasons, but this also makes every encounter in the story feel more random. Rell has a reason for being there, but Ergo and Torquil's band are just random people they come across who just randomly decide to tag along. By stripping out other encounters with people, which tied into those who sold out and became Slayers, we don't get any breaks between the meaningful encounters to keep them from feeling like the plot points they are.

Also, someone at some point said the story wasn't Star Wars enough, so they decided to shoe-horn some bullshit scifi elements into it. And you can tell they were added late, because every mention of other worlds or the galaxy come through voiceover or ADR lines just as a character's mouth is off screen. Also added were all the laser effects. The Slayer weapons, instead of firing beams, actually have a metal bolt at one end which they fire like a harpoon gun. Once that single shot is gone, they flip the weapon around to a piked end for melee combat. It's a musket/bayonet type of thing, and a genuinely thoughtful idea, but sticking laser animation over the metal bolts they fire has led to many a person complaining about why the aliens that shoot lasers don't keep shooting their lasers.

In the end, I like parts of this movie, and parts of what this movie was originally meant to be, but it's so shoddy at times, and so horribly compromised by the studio at others, that it just plain doesn't hold together. It's certainly watchable, and a must-see for RPG fans to want to see something resembling a table-top adventure brought to life, but it's not good. It had potential and tries so damn hard, but it just didn't fall into the hands of the right people, so it ended up broken and a shadow of what it should have been.

But the score. Holy hell the sweeping, swashbuckler score by James Horner is one of his best, and while it doesn't quite manage to be the glue that holds things together, it certainly does its job of backing the powerful moments and elevating some of the weaker ones. The ride of the fire mares, especially, is a rollicking adventure with his theme, even as it plays over a painfully drawn out deus ex machina which moves into lousy matte effects.

Jak

I've never paid too much attention to the Star Wars phenomenon beyond seeing the films and noticing "yep, there sure is a diehard fanbase for this series," so the now-obvious comparisons to it went completely unnoticed to me when I was watching Krull. That we all seemed to have a similar experience with the film anyway kind of shows me that even when you take out the derivative factor, it's still the same poor movie. If you liked the soundtrack, you can pretty much hear it again in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

I agree with Noel that the wrong people executed this, and I agree with Angie that it should be remade. As much as I believe that remakes perpetuate the culture of unnecessary repetition masking as creativity, I think I would pay to see a second take on this in the theater. I can count on one hand how many movies I've seen at the theater in the past ten years, so that's a heavy statement from me.

In the meantime, I can still play the game, and somehow the movie it's based on hasn't tainted that for me. Jumping the strands of web in the Crystal Spider's lair, fending off Slayers in the chapel, riding to the shimmering Black Fortress - I can still see them as scenes from an amazing adventure movie, except now I know it's a movie that nobody's made yet. Maybe that makes it better. Better than that, maybe someone will make that movie one day. Until then, Krull is best enjoyed with the expectation of failed execution.

Next month is Angie's pick, Floopy-Doo And The Penis Mightier Than The Borg, a porno Star Trek fan fic by the internets converted to a screenplay and directed by John Waters. See you then.



We'll be back on the 1st of August with Angie's actual pick: Matango, aka Attack of the Mushroom People (1963)

Gunhed (1989)... Noel's Pick for May

Noel

A few months ago, I was biting at the bit to revisit Gunhed, which was one of my favorite films during the 90s. But over the course of those months, I've been burned hard in my revisiting of both Guyver installments, which were stacked right alongside Gunhed in the deep echoes of my nostalgia from that time. Thankfully, this trip down memory lane paid off better than either of those.

Gunhed was initially born Godzilla 2. Toho's 1984 reboot of the franchise, The Return of Godzilla, had been a roaring success (not so much over here, as the heavily re-edited Godzilla 1985), but they found themselves drawing a bit of a blank when it came to cranking out a sequel. So they did something that would be a hell of a lot of fun to see more studios do: they held a contest, accepting open submissions from fandom, with the wining entry being promised a production deal. Jim Bannon was an American in Japan at the time - I can't find any backstory for him, but he's credited as a writer on Macron-1 around then, which is a US dubbed/re-edited version of the anime GoShogun - and submitted a story in which the Big G took on a Skynet style supercomputer who decided to wage war on humanity. I don't know the specifics of this version, if it was set in the present as the computer was rising up, or rather a post-apocalyptic nightmare of Godzilla representing nature fighting back after technology has already won. Either way, it was one of the most popular entries. It lost out to Godzilla vs. Biollante, which set in motion the fantastic Heisei era of complex, epic Godzilla films, but Bannon's story struck such a chord that Toho gave it to writer/director Masato Harada to rework into a standalone property.

In the near future, the discovery of an element named Texmexium (suck on that, Unobtanium!) allows for the dawn of the massive, artificially intelligent computer, Kyron-5. Upon his activation on the day now known as Hour Zero, he launched a cybernetic uprising against humanity. And lost. Yeah, before you start thinking Terminator knock-off, this is set in a world where that fight has already been had and mankind barely managed to come out on top. Earth is largely a lawless shambles, though, with society only just starting to rebuild as the island mountain complex housing Kyron-5 lies abandoned and gathering dust, the computer itself currently lacking the power to function, but its automated security systems keeping everyone away.

But in a day and age where manufacturing infrastructures are still trying to get back on their feet, existing electronics and computer technology (particularly plastics, as I'd imagine the oil industry would take some time to get back up on its feet) are prized trade on the black market, leading to bands of illegal raiders looking to score whatever booting up booty they can find. After a prologue filled with backstory and explosions, we meet one such group, and I'm instantly in love with the level of detail taken to give everyone a personality in outfits of scraps from a world overrun with junk. The captain is Bansho (Mickey Curtis a pop Japanese/Canadian musician going back to the 1950s), a bearded old man in a bomber cap who keeps his kids straight with words of wisdom and the occasional smack upside their head. Second in command is Babe (Aya Enjoji, her character name being pronounced Bah-beh), a badass battle vet with one eye and streaks blazed through her hair. As extra guns, you have the big black guy, Barabbas James (Brewster Thompson, known as the "world's strongest jump roper" - I'm not kidding), and the "Game over, man!" wiseguy who won't shut up, Bombbay (Jay Kabira). On tech, you have the beautiful young Boomerang (Doll Nguyen) and wise old Boxer (Yosuke Saito). And in their midst is Brooklyn (Masahiro Takashima), a long, lean, young stud with a David Hayter level of cool to the glint in his eye, all of which, added to his constant gun fiddling and cigar case full of carrots, is a mask for performance anxieties and bouts of motion sickness.

This is the family we meet up front, the well-oiled pool of scoundrels all bound by names beginning with the letter "B".

Less than 20 minutes in, all but two of them are dead.

As you can guess, the place they were stupid enough to attempt to loot is Kyron-5's massive island complex. They figure enough time has passed that whatever systems were running have bled dry, but nope, automated security is still alive and well, with pinpoint laser beams, blades that suddenly spear out of floors and walls, and hovering mines drawn to sound quickly picking off this team in swift, brutal fashion. My favorite is a bit where everyone is cramped in an elevator and Brooklyn and Bansho have a moment where the old guy pulls out a cigar and the younger a carrot, from matching cases, and just as they share a smile, something smashes in and out of the car so fast it can't be seen, and where Bansho stood, all that's left is a hole, a smear of blood, and his old bomber cap, which Brooklyn will eventually make his own in tribute to his mentor.



The only two left after all this are Brooklyn and Babe (Bombbay also made it this far, only to die minutes later by the plot point I'm just getting to), and they've increased their number by picking up a Texas Ranger, Sergeant Nim (Brenda Bakke). What is a Texas Ranger doing here? Well, it seems the southern state has become the new North American superpower, and a bioroid (androids who survived the war only to be enslaved into menial labor by the humans) working at a nuclear power plant in Dallas went on a rampage, killing dozens of people and stealing a vial of Texmexium, which it's brought back to this island in the hopes of reawakening Kyron-5, the hope for all its kind. The Rangers pursued, but the island defenses took out their choppers and soldiers, and Nim is all that's left. So Brooklyn and Babe tag along, because they have nothing else to do for the moment but survive and hope to find a way back to their ship on the top floor.

We're only about 20 minutes in, and there's still so much more to tell. :)

The bioroid gets the vial to Kyron-5's central control terminal and starts the systems back up again, but the humans are close behind. Babe and the bioroid fall into a vat of chemicals, seemingly to their deaths, and Brooklyn and Nim fight over ownership of the vial, only to set their differences aside when Kyron-5's primary defense measure kicks to life: Aerobot, a massive, multi-limbed tank, unrelentingly gnashing through anything between it any intruders to the system. Our heroes dive down a shaft into the lowest levels of the complex, and black out.

They come to, having been rescued by a pair of semi-feral children, offspring of Kryon-5's human caretakers from before its turn and the massive war (which shows you how short a stretch of time that actually took place in). They're Seven (Yujin Harada), a cynical wisecracker with a heavy limp and cybernetic ticks, and Eleven (Kaori Mizushima), a hyperactive mute who's developed her own sign language of charades. With these two, the adults are able to learn the ins-and-outs of the facility and have access to food and water, but they eventually split up in a disagreement over the best way back to the ship up on the top level. Nim and Eleven decide to slowly start scaling the outter rim of the complex, while Brooklyn and Seven decide to challenge Aerobot directly. To do this, Brooklyn will need to assemble a Gunhed - a massive, robotic tank used in the war - from the dozens of wrecks left behind from the battle of the opening prologue sequence. Both missions take a couple days, but gradually progress. Unfortunately, a new bioroid is formed, a fusion of both the original and Babe, and goes after Nim. It successfully retrieves the Texmexium and begins the countdown to Kyron-5's full awakening (as well as the center of the complex once again igniting into a nuclear reactor, which would be very very bad for our heroes), but every time the bioroid tries to kill, the Babe half of it fights off the urge, and even makes herself known to Brooklyn.

So with Nim's plan foiled by the bioroid and Kyron-5 coming back to life, all bets now hinge on Brooklyn and his Gunhed (voiced by Alexander Adrock sound-alike Randy Reyes), which he's already butting heads with over its deadpan sarcastic attitude which resembles that of Bansho. The unit is assembled, the missiles and massive gatling gun are armed, and fuel tanks (later replaced with kegs of whiskey they find) are filled and strapped to the side as the tank begins its rapid ascent through a complex filled with traps. There's a great bit where Seven buys them some time as he distracts security systems by setting off one bomb after another in a munitions level, but things eventually come to a head with the battle against Aerobot, and a fight with the bioroid as the clock counts down to the next Hour Zero.

I really love this movie, and the main reason is the density and attention to detail. I love how the entire Texas Ranger's backstory with the bioroid is largely buried in suggestions and throwaway lines, largely because it isn't important. We don't need to know the current state of the US, nor where the bioroid trying to wake up this supercomputer came from, but by slipping the little bits in they did, they suggest oodles of world-building that spark my imagination wild. Much like they do with the history of our team of raiders, who all got their "B" nicknames from Bansho. Brooklyn is named Brooklyn simply because the scraps of clothing he was able to find in this new world included a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey, despite him knowing next to nothing about baseball. And then I love that the Gunhed is a baseball fan, having some fun when it sees the jersey by replacing the "B"s and the "D"s in its readouts with the Dodgers font. And there's also great moments where you hear the baseball "Charge!" theme as it appears on screen, at one point quietly echoed by Brooklyn as he's amping himself up for battle and confronting his anxiety at being behind the controls. Why would a tank be a baseball fan? Well, think about it. In a world with artificially intelligent tanks, what would those tanks do to keep their minds occupied in their off time? What would they do for fun? Pouring through computational analyses of sports statistics seems to me like a real possibility.

In terms of performers, Brenda Bakke is the only weak point of the cast. She looks fine, and I love the design of her uniform, but she's a horrible actress lost in whether she's supposed to be Linda Hamilton or a femme fatale, and succeeds at neither. Otherwise, the cast is great. All of the raiders instantly make their presence felt in the opening, which makes their presence feel lost when they're gone. Enjoji's Babe takes an interesting turn as we see her in abstract sequences within the mind of the bioroid, fighting for control of the body and eventually sacrificing herself to take the other half out with her. Seven and Eleven are a fantastic pair of kids, smoothing out the typical rambunctiousness with a world-weary edge as Seven cynically jokes about the world, and Eleven's spastic attempts at communication come with the harriedness of desperation. Even when they have the revelation at the end that Eleven's inability to speak comes from the final key control to Kyron-5 being in her throat - something even she seems to be partially unaware of - she manages to sell it well as her desperation to escape turns into a desperation to fulfill this new longing that's been programmed in her. And again bringing up the suggestive backstory, the cybernetic implants of both her and Seven bring up some very interesting questions about what was actually going on at this Kyron-5 complex, which we know was some form of research facility. Where they truly children of the employees? Or yet more experiments?

Gah, it gets my brain juices flowing even more at the possibilities! :D



Anchoring it all is Masahiro Takashima as Brooklyn. While he's still a dependable character actor in film and tv, there was a stretch there in the early half of the 90s where Takashima was an A-list leading man in Japanese blockbusters, similar to Sam Worthington's boom a few years back, or what Channing Tattum's going through right now. But before he starred in the last two Godzilla films of the Heisei era, or as the titular lead in the fantasy epic Yamato Takeru (a wonderful film poorly released over here as Orochi, the Eight-Headed Dragon), he made his first big splash in the cockpit of a Gunhed. I'm not going to argue Takashima is a magnificent actor, as some bits, especially him nervously playing with his gun, feel a little forced, but he certainly has blockbuster leading man appeal with good looks and a good build, a can-do attitude when the cards come down, and a bit of endearing, self-aware dopiness. It's great seeing him try to be the baddest ass in the room in the opening, but failing because we can all see his anxieties as he's struggling at the controls of the ship and Babe bursts into the cockpit and wants to know who was stupid enough to let him be there. He's kind of a loser who has nowhere else to be and is trying (partially in vain) to make the best of the group he's found himself in. With the Gunhed, he finds a purpose. He finds something he can actually do, with dedication, that will allow him to face his fears, channel his anxiety into getting back at the thing that killed his friends, and a new group of people to protect who know the real him instead of the false bluster he used to wear. And he's a great image in the later half, all sweaty and streaked with oil as he bounces around the cockpit in Basho's old bomber cap.

And as his companion, we get the Gunhed tank itself, which is an interesting design. The model and full-size puppet work is a little unwieldy in action given the limits of the time (especially the "walking" scene), but it's still a neat design that owns its lack of distinction - it's a weird, almost random collection of parts and shapes piled on top of one another, and speaks with a deep, monotone voice - then counters it with little bits of personality, like the aforementioned baseball stuff, the occasional snarky remark, and great moments like how it goes from being an open doubter of Brooklyn's intended mission, to being the one rallying the human when it points out the whiskey tanks after its fuel has been depleted. Gunhed was just a thing in the background, a necessary vehicle to carry our characters from point A to point B, but in the course of doing so, establishes itself as a fully realized character on its own terms. By the time we reach the end, and Gunhed is a mangled wreck torn to pieces by Aerobot (who goes down in a convenient but rousing hero moment when Brooklyn hefts the massive gatling gun onto his own shoulder - which should have shattered his arm and collar bone, but still) when Gunhed further sacrifices himself by driving straight into the central core of Kryon-5 to give the humans a chance to escape, it's made its mark on the story, and showed why it's the one giving title to the film.

The film is not without its problems. The pace is off, especially in the second half where it's just scene after scene of Gunhed smashing through things. There's some impressive stuff in there, but they just didn't have the budget or technology to fully pull those moments off, and so they feel like what they are: stiff models stiffly running into one another. This is at its worst with Aerobot (who's name comes because he was originally supposed to fly), who's just a lump of swinging tails and arms, when they could have gone all out with gnashing claws or buzz saws or something. He's supposed to be this unstoppable wall of death, and he's instead a dump truck with a tail, and his fight with Gunhed is a sloppily staged and edited series of things smashing into other things. So I'll admit the film does get dull for a few stretches, and that people can and have tuned out in the second half as a result. And this, tied to the density of ideas and info being piled up, can make the 90 minute film feel like it's dragging over 2 hours.



And maybe some of their suggested stuff is almost too implied, to the point where it's very easy to miss if you aren't paying attention. Honestly, this was my first time picking up on the whole Texas Rangers/bioroid story. Every time I watched in the 90s, I just thought the bioroid was something that was there and already a part of Kryon-5's systems, and that the Texas Rangers were pursuing the raiders. And Seven and Eleven used to confuse me more than anything, with no explanation for Seven's cybernetics, and the sudden glow from Eleven's mouth boggling me until this time when I saw the screen saying "final key input" just as she approaches the Texmexium port. It all suddenly made sense to me now, but I can see how this is a film that could leave people lost or uninterested their first time through.

I also want to point out that the version I watched here was the Japanese version, which is actually a 50/50 mix of Japanese and English. Pulling a card that wouldn't come back into play until Firefly's use of Chinese, the suggestion here is that America and Japan have formed a merger of some sort, and so people are fluent in both languages. Brooklyn and the kids primarily speak Japanese for the whole film, while Nim and Gunhed speak English, with the suggestion that everyone is still able to understand one another. And in the opening, the raiders are all speaking in lines that slide constantly between English and Japanese - again, just imagine Firefly - showing a fusion between the languages. Writer/director Harada was a fluent speaker of both languages (like Jim Bannon, he got his start writing translations in the film industry), and not only was the international cast an attempt to make a film which could be equally marketed and successful in US theaters, but the fusion of the languages was a bit of stylistic experimentation that he put a lot of thought and effort into. Unfortunately, the distributor who bought the film turned out to be ADV Films, a then fledgling anime distributor who had no ability to get the film in theaters, and all of the dialogue was redubbed in English (both Japanese and English lines). That's why an incensed Harada has his name replaced with Alan Smithee on the fully-dubbed release, and the film has never managed to rise above a niche fandom, despite the likes of James Cameron and William Gibson being open fans who have tried to bolster its audience over the years.

I love this film. I really do. As with the Guyvers, it's probably been 15 years or so since I last saw it, but I'm glad I still enjoyed it far more than I did them. And that enjoyment has even deepened, as not only do I still appreciate the look, and the cast, and the world, and the wonderful music I haven't mentioned until now, but I've found new things to love like the little details I'm only now picking up on which suggest far bigger things in the lands beyond this island and the histories of those involved. And this was my first time seeing the Japanese/English hybrid version, which I found to be a fascinating experiment that in no way distracted from anything. I'm not sure which version you two have, Jak and Angie, but either way, its time for me to step back and hear whether or not you enjoyed this movie, or if I'm once again standing alone in defense of something odd.



Jak

Like a lot of people's mothers, mine used to tell me "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

The dubbing was very well done.

......

Welp, sorry mom, I've got a quota to meet here.

Noel, I can understand why the movie gets your imagination running wild, because it certainly leaves plenty of time for the mind to wander. The pacing is slow to the point of near inertia at times. The worst offender is the repair of the Gunhed which takes forever and does nothing to attempt to be remotely interesting or contribute to keeping the story moving. I'm reminded of reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame, wanting to know what happens next and having to pore through endless pages of Hugo's descriptions of architecture.

Between the detail of the sets, the gratuitously extended wireframe animations of unnecessary things like landing simulations, and the weird boxy crossfades between scenes, I got the impression early on that the movie is more an excuse to demo special effects than an effort to tell a lucid story. This is only galvanized by the extremely odd interactions between the people at times, annoying sounds that Seven makes for seemingly no reason at all, and the lackadaisical approach to exposition the movie takes thanks to the bizarre cuts, obfuscating closeups, arcane dialogue, and illogical attempts to visually explain what's happened ("Babe = monster" sequences, I'm looking squarely at you).



Maybe I'm just too stupid to follow this kind of film - if so, I think I can live with that. I have a feeling the story would be so much better if I were to read the script, where these opaque concepts and motivations are spelled out that the director and/or actors completely failed to translate to the audience on screen. It's funny, because at the beginning of the movie, I was faced with these two sheer walls of text detailing the story thus far, and the first note I wrote down was "Show, don't tell. This doesn't mean show words." By the middle of the movie, I wrote "On second thought, don't show. You're terrible at showing."

A great microcosm of my experience of the film as a whole is the battle at its opening. I could tell a lot of money and effort was put into the sets and machines, and there were certainly plenty of sparks and pretty lights to go around. Regardless, I felt like I was watching a car being manufactured through the entire fight. Maybe some music would have helped?

I realize that I spent most of the first half of the movie not knowing what was going on and trying to figure it out. I spent the last half of the movie not knowing what was going on and not caring if I found out or not. By the time Gunhed's low-rent Morgan Freeman voice started showing some interesting personality, the movie had long since lost me through its appallingly awful execution. I know this is only my second contribution here, so I feel I should state that I don't believe that there are many things that are objectively bad. If Gunhed isn't an objectively bad film, it's the closest thing I've seen to one in a very long time.



Angie

Generally, with this project, I make it a point to not read the first review until mine is completed because I want to have a fresh opinion on things. But seeing as how I watched this film and barely had any idea what was going on from start to finish, I figured it wouldn't hurt to read Noel's recap before setting out to document my impressions. I had even gone to Wikipedia to read their recap when I finished watching the film, and I was still lost. Jak and I did watch the dubbed version of this film, but from what I could tell, it was a dub that was going for accuracy over matching mouth movements, so I'm assuming this is not a case where the dub left things out. It's just that the movie itself leaves a lot of things out.

It starts off giving us an info dump, both in text and narration, to tell us all about what happened before the film. Then it cuts to two large clunky looking robots fighting each other in the worst version of Robot Wars I've ever seen. The movie doesn't bother explaining to you why this fight is important, but instead just moves on to the group of raiders. I honestly expected most of them to die, simply because Brooklyn is the only one who gets any kind of attention beyond a few wisecracks here and there. I feel like there's potential here - think of the group of marines in Aliens, and how we take some time to get to know them before they're killed off - but this is such a brief moment of the movie that you simply can't care about them. Then there's suddenly this bug eyed thing in the green water, and I honestly didn't know if it was an alien or a robot or what. The characters know what it is, and apparently they don't feel the need to talk about it either. Which is all fine and good in real life, where that probably would happen, but in movies with such complex worlds, it generally helps to have someone around to explain this stuff, too, so the audience will also know. It was also not clear to me that the creature fused with Babe, so much as I just kept thinking "Why are we seeing Babe's reflection in one of its eyes? That makes no sense."



I understood about the Texmexium (this is why writer/directors need a trusted editor to tell them when they have stupid ideas) and how it's an important thing both the good and bad guys want, and the countdown we see clearly means something bad is going to happen when it's over, but in terms of plot, that's about all I knew. Well, that and the fact that Seven is annoying. I suppose that sudden random screeching where he repeats certain words is supposed to be his cybernetic implants malfunctioning, but all I saw was an annoying kid who wouldn't shut up. Ditto to Eleven's glowing mouth. I missed the tiny text Noel mentioned, so I had no earthly idea what was going on there. I thought maybe Seven had shot her with something, and I didn't really understand why she's able to talk once her mouth stops glowing, though I figured it was somehow related.

There's a decent attempt here to build a rapport between Brooklyn and the Gunhed, and at times it works well. Gunhed is given a strong personality through Randy Reyes' voice, and I can see the change that Takashima is showing in Brooklyn. I think if there's anything you can blame on the dub, it's the fact that their relationship doesn't feel quite as strong as it could. Though, of course, I'm not sure if having them speak two different languages would give me that impression, either. It seems like that would be difficult to pull off, anyway, and I'm not sure I could sit through this slow moving confusing mess again just to find out.

The first half is a confusing, not well explained info dump, and the latter half is more of those boring giant sized Robot Wars fights, or even worse, some kind of poor Transformers clone as we slowly watch Gunhed go from mech to tank and back again. There just isn't a single point where the movie grabs me or holds my attention for anything more than a few minutes. It makes sense after Noel explains it, but I shouldn't have to go to outside sources in order to understand the story being presented to me. While the storytelling rule may be "show, don't tell," there are cases where you need to tell at least a little bit, and this is definitely one of them.



Noel

As I fully admitted in my review, this film has some significant problems, mostly in terms of pacing and the robot battles being nowhere near as captivating as the filmmakers seem to hope they are. And, yes, the opening prologue sequence handles its infodump in a ridiculously clumsy way. That said, while I'm not entirely surprised the two of you didn't like the movie, I am surprised you disliked it to the degree you did.

You both accuse the film of not making sense or never explaining anything. I'd counter that by arguing neither of you paid attention.

• What the initial bioroid is (a worker in a nuclear power plant who fled from Dallas following a rampage) and what its goal is (to awaken Kyron with the stolen Texmexium) are both related to us by Nim in the scene where we first meet her.
• As to the Babe!Bioroid, I don't get how it's so obtuse. The boiroid dives into the vat. Babe falls into the vat. Later, a new bioroid emerges that has Babe within, wrestling for control of their shared body. This is a clear example of them showing things through cinematic cause and effect.
• The same is true of Eleven's larynx, which lights up the moment the bioroid keys in the final sequence. As she approaches the central terminal, I'll admit "keyword input" was not printed in the largest of text, but it does hold on that shot much longer than the blink of an eye, and just as the countdown clock reaches 0, she leans to the terminal and opens her mouth to speak. Again, this is not the most obtuse of cinematic storytelling.
• As for the other threat of the ticking clock, the fact that the complex the heroes are ascending through is a nuclear reactor that will ignite when Kyron is activated is again information that is clearly related to us by Gunhed, and even has a big "Wha-huh!" reaction from Brooklyn.

This isn't just stuff I was pulling out of my ass. Everything I mentioned in my review builds upon thing that are there in the film, if you pay attention to it.

That said, I agree it's hard to pay attention to something that you're unable to connect to. Without that spark of interest, these details are easy to lose in the drone of noise that the experience has become. While I like that it plays these elements subtly instead of explaining them repeatedly in great detail with big flashing lights, as is typical of exposition in the typical blockbusters we get Stateside, the sluggish pace of the movie and numbing giant robot sequences mean the film isn't the easiest to hook people with, and if you aren't hooked, the rich depths of the narrative are never reached as it all just floats by.

Still, I had to sit down and give the English dub a watch just to see if that affected the experience at all. The script of the dub isn't bad, and no real information is lost in the translation, but the voice acting itself is really dull, with the stiff British actors failing to imitate American accents (Brooklyn is the worst of them, which is a problem as he's the one we're stuck with the longest). This element on top of the pace definitely can tip the scales even further into making this a dull experience. And Jak, as for the opening sequence lacking music, the English dub completely removes the score from several sequences, including that prologue. The Baseball "Charge!" song is a recurring motif throughout the Japanese track, and something Gunhed would pipe through his own speakers on occasion. I'm guessing they removed it over licensing concerns, but this does further deaden a few scenes, saps Gunhed of just a bit more personality, and removes context from the moment where Brooklyn himself hums the tune.

So, yes, I do insist that the dubbed version is a weaker version of the film... though I will admit it's not by much. This is a film that's already teetering on a ledge, and the dub only tips it a few inches closer to the pits. But while I agree it's a messy, flawed film, I don't think it's a bad one. Objectively or otherwise. It's a complicated film. Not always in a good way, but I still like how there's more there below the surface than most big dumb action movies would even pretend to have. I also like the performances and production design, and still argue that the filmmaking outside of the tiresome robot sequences is actually quite sound. And I think it's a film that does grow in quality with multiple viewings and invite the two of you to give it another try some time down the road.

Though, sadly, I understand why you're unlikely to do so.



We'll be back on the 1st of June with a pick from Jak: Krull (1983)

Guyver 2: Dark Hero (1994)... Angie's Pick for April

Angie

I have a weakness for renaissance men. You know, the type who can do just about anything? David Hayter is a screenwriter who worked on both X-Men and X2. He's also a voice actor, known for both the charming Lupin III in Castle of Cagliostro, and the gruff and hardened Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series. Being a fan of all three of those, I became a fan of the man himself. So when I heard he had also done live action films, I found a movie called Guyver 2: Dark Hero. A quick internet search told me that a viewing of the first film was unnecessary, and after Noel picked it and I was forced to watch it, I think we can all agree that the internet was trying to do me a favor back then. But will the sequel be an improvement over the original?

Before we begin, we should probably note that Jack Armstrong being replaced by David Hayter isn't the only casting change going on at the moment. While Jack no doubt got the boot due to his poor acting skills, it's only the demands of real life that caused our own Monthly Midnight Casting Change. It's with a heavy heart that I must tell you Tony will no longer be continuing on this journey with us. We enjoyed his sharing of the Ninja trilogy, and we got to expose him to some interesting films he had never seen before, but for the present, we must go on without him. He will be missed! But I hope you will join me in welcoming another renaissance man to our crew - Jak. Like David Hayter, Jak is also a writer and an actor, as well as a musician. His busy schedule doesn't often leave him time to watch films, but this project may change that.

All right, time to get on with it.

We start off being told that one year has passed since the original film. Sean still has the Guyver suit, and he's struggling with it. The suit is not content to sit around and live out a peaceful life with Mizky. It wants to kill evil doers, so Sean is being drawn out at night to do just that. He finds some thugs who are smuggling cocaine inside dolls, and proceeds to tear them apart. Their boss begs to simply be arrested, but the Guyver suit wants blood.

Back at home, Sean is plagued by nightmares where the suit makes him completely lose control. He also keeps seeing strange alien shapes that he sketches out in his notebook. While watching a television show where a man swears his brother was killed by a werewolf, the man shows a cave drawing he found near the site, and the drawing contains the same images Sean is seeing in his dreams. It turns out this all happened at the site of an archaeological dig, and Sean heads off to find it.



While asking for directions to the site, he runs into Cori, the daughter half of the father-daughter team directing the dig. She begrudgingly agrees to bring him along because she understands his quest for answers. She and her father are searching for answers themselves. They specialize in trying to find evidence of aliens, bigfoot, and the like. Their project is being funded by a corporation, and sure enough, it's Kronos, and all their men are really zoanoids. There's also a government agent named Atkins who is undercover on the dig. He knows something is up with Sean and wants his help to uncover this whole mess.

Eventually, they dig up an alien spaceship and find more Guyver suits inside. Kronos wants them, the government wants them, Cori and her father want to study them and prove to the scientific community that they're not crackpots, but only Sean knows it's best to get rid of them altogether. The ship keeps calling to him, and when he finally enters it dressed as the Guyver, it gives him some back story on the whole process. It reveals that the Guyver was a mistake made by the aliens - they wanted to use humans as their soldiers, but humans proved too unpredictable.

Amidst all this plot, there are of course fights between the Guyver and the zoanoids, and honestly, that's about all you really want to see. The fights are greatly improved from the last film. While the first fight with the thugs still mostly consists of him throwing the guys around, the later zoanoid fights are much stronger. The suits have been improved since the first film, giving them greater range of movement. The stuntman inside the Guyver suit uses martial arts and the fights are just all around dynamic with lots of blood gushing out. The transformation scenes are much briefer and just all around look better.

Unfortunately, the dialogue, script, and acting are only better because they were so horrible the last time around. Hayter is giving it his all, but his attempts at looking conflicted primarily come off as blank stares. He shines much better when he's voicing Sean from inside the suit, because he's clearly a stronger voice actor than screen actor. Kathy Christopherson deploys a whiny voice for most of her delivery, making her annoying when her character is otherwise a decent female lead. It also lacks any true emotional weight when it's revealed that Cori's father is also a zoanoid. And seeing as how he's killed off, the story doesn't really try to deal with it either. The most interesting thing they probably did with the movie was making the end fight be between Sean and a zoanoid/guyver hybrid. The design, at least, looks pretty great, and they seem more appropriately matched as opponents.

But the direction is where this movie really suffers. It is a little over two hours long, and should really only be an hour and a half. The extra length is due to poor direction choices, like lingering on the pulsing guyver nodules on Sean's neck for far too long, or watching him fake drive a truck on the way to rescue Cori. If you went through and did a cleaner edit of this film, you'd end up with something much more dynamic and sleeker.

But perhaps I am being a bit harsh. Noel? Jak? What say you?



Noel

Damn. After the first film failed to live up to my nostalgic embrace of its memory, I had hopes that Guyver 2 would more than make up for it. But, damn. To be fair, it is a significantly stronger film than the first, but not being as bad as the one before doesn't mean this one isn't bad, too.

In terms of the direction, on a purely technical level, Steve Wang deserves massive props for how far he came in just three years. He only made one other film between the Guyver flicks, Kung Fu Rascals, which is the silly thing playing on Sean's tv just after the opening sequence. It was an entirely independent work where he and his friends went out to a park with camera equipment and home-made special effects and just experimented and had fun, and the lessons he learned through that experience are apparent. His camera work is much crisper and more dynamic, creating a nice flow to every scene, and the action sequences are especially fantastic as the camera and editing are fast, but never frenetic, often moving with each blow of the battle so as to keep everything nice and clear. It's definitely an emulation of the choreography of Hong Kong cinema, which was building a strong cult following on our shores at the time, but it's a solid emulation that shows genuine understanding of the technique.

Where I think the film largely fails is the script, which Steve Wang deserves just as much blame for as he does props for the direction. Sure, the screenplay is credited to Nathan Long, but Long was working off a story from Wang (note how I'm avoiding any Long Wang puns - you're welcome), and Wang not only supervised the development of the script, but has gone on to collaborate with Long again on subsequent works (while I really like Wang's Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight, Long was head writer of the show and the scripting is just as stiff there). Obviously, Wang didn't have a problem with how the script turned out, and that's a glaring oversight on his part.

The central story, while kinda weak as far as sequels go, isn't my main problem so much as it is the construction. Sean is our hero, but as with the first film, he's very inactive, often just standing around until the story throws something at him. He suspects someone at the dig is working for Kronos, but instead of coming up with a way to root them out, he just glares at people a lot until he's eventually attacked. He chooses to seek out the cave, yes, but all he adds to the dig are a few names, as it's the ship that finally reveals itself with the crack in the wall, and nothing that's found on board is really changed by him being there. Seriously, other than having to fight off the enemy at the end, there is nothing about this film that would have played out differently had Sean not been there. The dig would have gone on and eventually uncovered the ship. Kronos would have bided their time before revealing themselves. Government spy Atkins would have just kept watching everything. If you then change it so that two Guyver units are found and Cori dons one of them for the 3rd act fight, things still play out largely the same, even with the twist and final fate of her father. Who's death, yeah, is surprisingly muted given how much time they spend building up to it after his reveal.

But no, we have to keep Sean in there, and staple on a weak theme of self discovery as he sets out to uncover his place in the world, only to come to the conclusion that it's up to himself to define what he wants to be. Which is fine, but there's no reason he couldn't already be there. There's the struggle with killing, but he never hesitates to viciously slaughter his foes. Then there's a BS backstory about the Guyvers being a failure just so he has something to overcome. And I hate the opening sequence, which tries to paint Sean as an American superhero in a glaringly obvious imitation of Batman and Punisher. Sean leaving behind the laser-etched calling card of "Guyver" on the wall is awful and makes no sense, and if they really wanted to go the dark vigilante route, they should have stuck to the city and actually played it out instead of sending Sean into the woods and never mentioning it again. I mean, seriously, when he finally utters the word "Guyver", why does nobody mention the vigilante killings that have been in the news? Why doesn't Atkins confront him on it while he's in the middle of confronting Sean over everything else? What point did that opening sequence ultimately serve?

Atkins, though, is my favorite part of the film. He's just as clumsily written as everyone, but Christopher Michael plays him with the great energy of a dedicated agent who gets the job done despite being fully aware that he's surrounded by monsters that could rip him limb from limb at a moment's notice. Sure, his fight scene with the female zoanoid is a painful throwback to the comical warehouse chase/battle from the first film (and the "Bitch." tag is unnecessary), but he still sells the weak one-liners of the script better than anyone else, and I love when Sean says "Protect the girl!" and Atkins looks at the approaching, bullet-proof monster and says "Who's gonna protect me?" But he still does, and still fights the good fight against overwhelming odds, and I'm glad that he survives at the end. I also like his devout belief that everything will be better in government hands running up against Sean's knowledge that weapons like the Guyver would be misused, no matter who ends up with them.



Aside from Atkins, the acting is pretty flat. All of the secondary parts are forgettable. Once the big bad reveals himself, I just wanted him to jump into his creature form quicker because his human actor has the charisma of a lima bean. Kathy Christopherson isn't bad as Cori, but Angie's right about her squeaky voice being an annoyance, and Cori is kind of a jerk in the way she keeps cutting Sean down over what's in the cave. And as for David Hayter... I have to admit that, due to this film coming out around the same time V.R. Troopers was on the air, I went for several years thinking he and Brad Hawkins were one and the same. In retrospect, Hawkins is significantly beefier than the long and lean Hayter, but they have a similar striking look with the strong cheekbones and piercing eyes. Sadly, they also have the same lacking level of charisma, as Hayter's primary display of emotion is going from a flat look to a comical sneer face that made me laugh a few times. He does nail the voice, and I have much love for the man as a writer (his draft of Watchmen continues to be my favorite version of that story), but the world was not robbed by his on-screen performances being few and far between.

To get back to positives, I'm impressed by the production values Wang pulled off despite this entry being made for significantly less than the first film (the budget of this was, seriously, only $900,000). There are some cost-saving aspects of the creature designs in that we not only have the Lisker suit from the first back in full, but other costumes have been reused with different heads (Cori's dad has the same body as the elephant nosed Russian, the bug with ridiculously long pinkies was one of the lab creatures), and all of the monster suits - including the "Max's transformation" head - are recycled during the flashbacks as ancient zoanoids. But just by replacing the heads with ones that are now fully expressive with animatronics that let their eyes move and their mouths open and close with the dialogue instantly sells the creatures better than what we got the first time around. The redesign of the Guyver suit is spectacular - broader at the shoulders, heavier "boots", light blue coloring, all more true to the manga look - and the main villain monster is amazing in both creature form and Guyvered creature form, and even had to do some nice little bits of acting in both, which were pulled off well. In addition to the creatures, there's also the great cave set with the moving wall of the spaceship, the organic spaceship interiors, and the lovely model work during the flashback chronicling the history of the creation of both zoanoids and the Guyver unit. And there's also some choice uses of CGI in the film. A few morphing effects don't work, but the ship rising out of the ground at the end looks nice, and I absolutely love the two moments of Sean summoning his armor while in motion, one while running through the woods, the other after having just leapt off a cliff.

But the high-points of the film just aren't enough to make up for a largely flat cast and a very weak script that the direction, no matter how striking the camerawork, was able to overcome. The Guyver has always been a blip of undeserved success for what's ultimately been a cheep bit of tween boy silliness on both sides of the pond, and it says a lot that when the audience who embraced both this and the works of Rob Liefeld ultimately turned on Rob, they left The Guyver floundering as well. It only worked because it came out at the right time to run into the right group of people, but that time passed and those people moved on. Both films are a perfect adaptation of the manga and anime, not in that they made it into something good, but that they perfectly captured everything that made the series both momentarily interesting, but ultimately disposable and forgettable. They didn't elevate the material, so ultimately sank after cresting that passing wave.

A few extra thoughts:

• The music is essentially the same score as the first film, and just as uneven a mix of Terminator ripoff and random keyboard pounding. It has a few nice swells during action scenes, though.
• Favorite exchange: "You go get help, I'll handle the bear!" "Right...... Wait, he'll handle the bear!?"

Jak

"What's a Guyver?"

That was the question I've had no answer to since I was told what movie we were doing this month, though it had really been around for me much longer than that. I vaguely remembered hearing about these movies a long time ago when I was a teenager as one of those weird things the Sci-Fi Channel would advertise that I tuned out while waiting for MST3K or Star Trek or whatever to return. Back then, it was probably closer to "What's a Guyver? Eh, who cares, when's my show coming back on?" Now, it seemed, I cared, and I'd be finding out soon. I made a point not to look anything up about Guyvers and Guyver-related things, not even February's Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange on the first Guyver movie, because I was curious how well this movie would stand on its own. What better way to find out than to go into it genuinely ignorant?

As it turns out, the previous movie's plot was summed up very neatly in a couple of lines right before the introductory sequence, a sequence bathed in Kool-Aid blood, some very cliche villains, and a truly unbelievable amount of slow motion. The uneven acting showcased throughout the rest of the film is established in this sequence as well. The head villain starts it off with some fine hamming followed soon by his gang shooting at the Guyver, all looking perfectly bored. I imagined the director saying, "Ok, everyone, here's where we point our guns in this direction. Ok, good, now you pull the triggers. Ok, cut, great, next scene." There's some serious cheese in how the title appears, too. "Oh, okay, so this is that kind of movie," I thought.



The story grabbed my interest early on, which surprised me because most monster fight movies I've watched use the plot as a simple vehicle to get on to the next fight. It's unfortunate that I found it really difficult to stay focused through the entire two hours because, like the acting, the pacing was all over the place. Scenes just end abruptly in the middle of conversations, fooling me more than once into thinking we were going into a flashback. On the other side of the spectrum are the travel montages and dream sequences that all went on at least three times longer than they needed to. I found myself shouting "Okay, jeez, I get it!" at the screen after sitting through more than a minute of David Hayter's pulsing neck nips juxtaposed with the collapsing walls of the dig. The endless shots of the sets and reactions when the ship was uncovered reminded me of watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which is never a good thing. Then there's the Gratuitous Jeep, a twenty-three second long shot of a Jeep falling off a cliff and exploding. Nobody's even inside of it, and it served no further purpose to the narrative. "This movie needs an exploding car!" This is why this movie is two hours.

The fight scenes were a mixed bag. Every impressive martial arts move seemed to be followed by an impossible segment of floaty nonsense that didn't even attempt to convey an illusion of impact. At times, the creatures were just standing there staring at each other. I couldn't stop laughing at the grey monster who kept beating his chest for no reason. I liked it so much that I went back and counted how many times he did it: nineteen times in two fights. At some point in the movie, I thought "You know, this doesn't look bad for an 80's flick." Later, I found out it was made in 1994. Oh.

As the scenes piled up, I realized that I've thought "Oh, okay, so this is that kind of movie" on no less than five occasions. By the time the main villain was chewing up the scenery with stock maniacal laughter and delivering the line "I love my job" straight to the camera, I was completely confused because I couldn't figure out how self-aware this film was. It felt like three or four different people with very different visions wrote scripts and cobbled them together. This is a movie that tries to analyze a man's struggle to determine his destiny. This is also a movie where "Bitch." is apparently acceptable as a one liner. So in learning the answer to "What's a Guyver?", I'm left with a new question that I may never know the answer to: "What's a Guyver 2?"



Angie

When we reviewed the first film, I promised the sequel would be better. I wasn't wrong, but I think all three of us have highlighted here that I may have also oversold it. Memories can be pretty good at lying to you sometimes, and it's possible I may have been crushing on Hayter a little too much the first time I watched this film. At least, that's the best excuse I've got in terms of why I remembered enjoying this movie before.

Noel does point out two of the funniest lines in the film, which did in fact make me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, they were more a case of the broken clock being right twice a day as much of the rest of the humor didn't come off as well. Christopher Michael did certainly make Atkins a more interesting character than the rest, but once again, I think that had more to do with one competent actor being surrounded by only passable ones.

Oh, and those chest beating moments Jak mentions? He left off the part where they used something akin to a cat wailing as the monster's cry every time he beats his chest. I kept looking around to make sure my cats weren't fighting with each other every time I heard it, because it just sounded so strange and out of place with what I was seeing on screen. I appreciate their efforts to give the monsters some kind of personality and life, but most of them came off just as silly as that.

Overall, I just can't recommend this series. Noel is right that these are a relic of their specific time period, and have not aged well at all. There are some moments that may be enjoyable in a "so bad it's good" kind of way, but you may get too bored with the films before you reach those scenes.


We'll be back on the 1st of May with a pick from Noel: Gunhed (1989)