Freaked (1993)... Angie's Pick for October

Angie

There are a number of movies I have memorized by heart, but none more so than the Bill & Ted films. (Well, maybe The Little Mermaid. It's close.) I don't just know all the lines, I know the facial expressions, the musical cues, everything. While the films sparked my love for Keanu Reeves in my youth, and makes me more forgiving than most of his poor acting skills even today, I also hold a special place in my heart for his co-star, Alex Winter. Alex is a little more difficult to find than his counterpart, spending a lot of his time post-Bill behind the camera rather than in front of it. But he did have one starring role after those films, in a film he co-wrote and co-directed called Freaked.

The film starts off with a fantastic animated credits sequence that is sure to get your attention. The punk score and bright colors may scream early 90s at you, but the animation style is so interesting that it masks the dated nature of it all.

From there, we're brought to the set of talk show, where former childhood star Ricky Coogan, who has been horribly disfigured, comes to tell his story. He was approached by the large corporation EES (Everything Except Shoes) to promote Zygro 24, a chemical that has been banned in the US and Europe. The company (whose CEO is played by William Sadler, aka Death in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) insists the product is safe, even though the guy who works at the plant shrinks down in size as he's explaining all this to Ricky. They offer Ricky 5 million dollars, and as pompous and greedy as he is, he can't refuse.

Ricky takes his best friend Ernie with him. Ernie is played by Michael Stoyanov, best known for being the less "whoa-ful" of Blossom's brothers. Ricky's biggest fan, Stewie, has also stowed away on the plane, and the boys get a great laugh at seeing him hurt. At the airport, groups are protesting the chemical and Ricky's involvement with it. Ricky finds one of the girls attractive and covers himself in bandages just to get close to her. He's unable to keep up the act when she insults his acting ability.

On the way to the factory, he sees advertisements for a freak show and they decide to stop. They meet Elijah Skuggs, who manages the show. He offers to show them a private exhibit, since the show isn't going on that night. It's all just a ruse, though, and he actually ties the three of them up in order to turn them into freaks, which he does with the help of his machine and Zygrot 24. The transformations are done with stop motion animation and a lot of fun. He merges Ernie with Julie, the protester, and turns Ricky into an even more gruesome form of Two-Face. He really wanted to transform Ricky completely, but ran out of Zygrot 24, so he locks Ricky in his outhouse until he can get more to finish the job. The outhouse is apparently a TARDIS, as it's huge on the inside.

Ernie and Julie can't help but vomit when they look at him, and while their reaction is obviously exaggerated for laughs, his get up is quite disgusting, particularly when he spurts puss from warts on his face and hand. Ricky meets the other freaks, including an uncredited Keanu Reeves covered in hair as Ortiz the dog boy. There is also a human worm, a nose man , a cow boy (as in, he's a cow), a bearded lady (played by Mr. T), sock head (voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait), The Eternal Flame (who continually farts flame), a female pinhead, and a frog man (who's just a French guy in a diving suit).

Ricky is not yet ready to accept his fate. The freaks share their stories with him (including a hammer lying on the ground that used to be a wrench), but Ricky is still in denial. He's convinced that EES will come and save him and put him back to normal. He also discovers that he has a psychic connection with Stewie now, and Stewie goes around telling people about Ricky's plight, which gets him captured. I think we're not technically supposed to know that it's EES capturing him, but who else do you think it would be?

The freaks perform a show, and for the main event, Ricky does Shakespeare. The audience loves him. A man from EES arrives and tells Ricky how ugly he is, and the crowd turns on him. Ricky flies into a rage and the audience leaves in a panic, but Skruggs is happy.

Ricky takes advantage of a milk man to escape the outhouse, but two giant Rastafarian eyeballs stop him. Ricky finds out that Skruggs' plan is to have him transform into a full monster and kill all the other freaks at the end of the next show. On his way back to the outhouse, he runs into the other freaks, who are also trying to escape as milkmen. He gets into a fight with Ortiz when they don't believe him. Ortiz is distracted by a squirrel, and when the eyeballs run him off, the freaks accept Ricky as their leader. They hatch a plan to defeat Skruggs and escape. They sneak into his lab and manage to make a formula that would turn Ricky into a good superfreak, but they leave it there when Skruggs shows up.

EES arrives with Stewie in tow. They want to use Skruggs mutation machine to mutate workers so they have extra arms and other extremities to increase production. Stewie sneaks around them to steal the good superfreak formula and bring it to Ricky during the freak show, but an audience member pours it over Stewie instead, transforming him. In response, Skruggs pours his goo on Ricky, completing his transformation, and Ricky and Stewie fight. The costumes for the two superfreaks are really impressive.

In the midst of the chaos, EES tries to steal Skuggs machine, so he pours goo on them as well, merging them all into nothing but a shoe. Because of course. Ricky almost kills Stewie, until he realizes he truly cares about the boy. Skuggs attacks Ricky, but Ricky is far too strong for him. Skuggs ends up in a vat of the chemical and comes out as Brooke Shields, the host of the talk show we saw at the beginning of the movie. Most of the freaks are cured because they had eaten some macaroons they didn't realize had antidote in them. There's a fun reveal where Ricky had been in shadow during the talk show scenes during the film, and his profile looks like him in freak form, but when they turn the light, on you realize there's just a cactus behind him. Brooke Shields is revealed to still be Skuggs, but Julie (now separated from Ernie) shoots and kills him. But of course there is a fake out death so Ernie can then arrive and shoot him again, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Writing out the plot for this film, and watching it right on the heels of Leonard Part 6, you can see that these movies are both overly silly in their own way, and logic is thrown out the window for the sake of laughs. But unlike Leonard Part 6, it seems pretty clear to me that everyone on the set of this film was having a ridiculously good time. They know the absurdity they are dealing with, and they embrace it fully. Some of the jokes are in poor taste and don't age well by today's standards, but I'm more willing to forgive it because the movie as a whole is irreverent and gross.

The initial creature designs are done by Screaming Mad George, and for the most part, they look fantastic. While their movements aren't always perfect, they are well done. The biggest problem is for Winter, as the design leaves him limited in conveying emotion and speaking in a muffled voice behind the half prosthetic in his mouth. But even so, I think he does a great job with it, and the fact that this is a comedy and not a drama means it's not much of an issue.

The movie manages to be both a chance to see Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves, and William Sadler acting together again, and also a silly comedy that hits my funny bone in just the right way. But I can also see it not appealing to everyone. While I'm hoping both Jak and Noel will appreciate it, I figure it's also entirely possible they may not care for it at all.



Noel

Like Angie, I couldn't help but compare this film to Leonard Part 6 while watching it. On paper, they're absolutely the same type of chaotic, silly nonsense. The plot is crazy, the characters completely over-the-top, random asides and gags are pelted at us several times a minute just to keep us on our toes. The problem with Leonard was that it had actors who didn't get how to deliver the material and filmmakers who didn't get how to capture it. Here, we don't have that problem. Everyone has just the right mad gleam in their eyes as they sink their grotesquely mutated teeth into every crazy line, and properly mug with the pantomime zeal of a silent film actor in every perfectly framed, canted, or whirling shot. Every action, every choice, every music cue, every background drone of ignited farts just because the Eternal Flame is standing there, is pitched to perfection so as to sell each moment for all it's worth.

The problem is that I don't find a lot of it to be worth all that much.

No, Angie, I don't enjoy this film. I don't dislike it, and certainly don't loathe it to the degree I do Leonard, because they do admirably pull off everything they set out to achieve. That's good for them, and I appreciate them for it. I just don't know that I wanted to see them achieve everything they set out to. A decade ago, I probably would have thought this was one of the funniest films around. I may be steadily growing a stick up my butt, because these days I'm a lot more sensitive to things like the gay bashing when those of a "sensitive disposition" are focused on and told to get out, frequent abuse is heaped on a child for a chuckle just because he's aggravating in his sincere admiration, and Rosie the Pinhead is just downright wrong, especially to someone like myself who has a mentally handicapped individual in my life. Surprisingly, I don't find Mr. T's bearded lady as transphobic as I expected. It's a transformation she took on willingly, and wears it with confidence and grace, and is surprisingly never made fun of for it.

I wish she had represented the majority of the film, that these are genuine people beneath their outward unusual appearances. There are moments where the film seems to want to explore this angle, of people not only longing to be accepted by the public, but by themselves, yet they're far too fleeting for the film to ever find that anchor of emotional weight. We hear about what Ernie and Julie learn by having their gender politics thrown out of whack, but we never really get to see them take that journey because they're too busy actually whacking one another. Ortiz, a proud, confident man, is on the verge of being the one to challenge Ricky to accept the state he's found himself in and wear it with pride, but then Ortiz is off chasing a squirrel and we don't see him again until the end. Even Worm's lectures come in the voice of a snob, and end with him desiring someone to wipe his ass for him. The film gets so caught up in all these crazy things they can get away with that they forget to take a few extra minutes to try to be something just a little bit more, just a little bit deeper, to ultimately give it all meaning. And isn't the theme of accepting who you are left somewhat moot by the majority of them being cured in the end?

The look of the film absolutely is superb, with excellent makeup effects of both a subtle and completely over-the-top nature, but there's a point where they go maybe just a bit beyond over-that-top than they needed to. I love Worm, and Cowboy, and especially the Rastafarian eyeballs with machine guns (not as racist as you'd expect it to be), but I don't know that I need the random moments of bloody gore as people actually violently die, the constant references to turds, and have I mentioned I hate few things as much as vomit jokes? Yeah, you can imagine how much I loved the scene where Julie and Ernie are firehosing the contents of their shared stomach. Additionally, a lot of the actual gags and one-liners fall flat for me, so all I'm left with are shrill sights of absolute grotesquery, screaming and flinging puss at me from my TV. Again, I can't say it's entirely bad as that's exactly the film they wanted to make, but it sure doesn't make for a night of entertainment I enjoy partaking in.

Which isn't to say I dislike it all. I did get a few solid laughs in there, like with the Ramada Inn towels, the backstory of the hammer, and the notion that thirteen people disguised as milkmen is just one milkman too many, and there are some great performances, particularly by Randy Quaid, Michael Stoyanov, and *gasp* Keanu Reeves. The problem isn't them, it's just that a lot of the humor feels forced, like we're supposed to laugh at it just because of how absurd and random and grotesque it is, instead of actually crafting something witty which has something to say.

Again, I don't hate this movie. It's amusing enough and has some neat ideas and visual effects, but it ultimately doesn't work for me. All of the energy and garish inventiveness on display makes for a lovingly crafted rubber mask of an entertaining film experience, but once you get past the surface, it's still just a rubber mask, with nothing beneath it to give depth to what we see on the outer layer. One could argue that Alex Winter is what lies beneath this mask, but while I think he's definitely a capable filmmaker, and I've enjoyed some of the other work I've seen (especially the live-action Ben 10 movies), he's not a particularly gifted storyteller nor comedic writer. And I'm sorry Angie, he's not that good of an actor, either. And it's not just the makeup, as he's really lousy in the scenes where he's not covered in prosthetics, too. Too much overly forced mugging, dancing around with word emphasis which kills a lot of his one-liners, and he's just not that appealing of a lead.

So I'm sorry, Angie. It didn't work for me.



Jak

Unlike Leonard Part 6, I'd never heard of this movie before, not so much as the dimmest memory of a sun-bleached box in the video store, so I didn't have any idea of what to expect. The intense and very uniquely well done opening credits suggested I was in for a sort of gross-out acid trip of a movie.

As usual, my initial impression was wrong. Well, sort of. It's a lot closer to an edgy cartoon brought to life, successfully (the makeup is worth the price of admission alone), complete with some truly awful jokes.

Locked in an outhouse that operates under the physical laws of a Dungeons & Dragons Bag of Holding, mutated beyond any hope of returning to his former life, our hero Ricky struggles with a small door labeled "Fyre Exit" which refuses to open. "That's against the law!" he cries - out of his entire dire situation, this is what he chooses to focus his frustration on. This is one of the bits that works - or maybe I should amend that to say that this is one of the bits that works for me. This movie is so full of wildly different stabs at comedy that it's less a consistently funny movie and more a way to determine exactly what your sense of humor is. You, any of you, even you, WILL find at least two parts that will make you laugh out loud, though the rest of the movie may be a slog of groans getting to those parts.

The story is paper-thin lunacy, and I'd be grasping for cynicism if I thought that was anything other than intentional. If Rad was mid-80s concentrate, Freaked is early 90s extract. And like a lot of things from the early-to-mid 90's, it's not about the story as much as it's about the attitude and the presentation. When I looked up information on it after watching, I wasn't surprised at all to find out that the writing and directing team were also behind MTV's The Idiot Box, because the humor and pacing is much more like a sketch comedy show than most comedy films I've seen.

As Angie pointed out, the cast and crew obviously had a riot making this, and that's what makes me enjoy it far more than the similarly paced and similarly bizarre Leonard Part 6, which felt more like a paint-by-numbers, "insert joke here" affair of crass marketing than anything entertaining. If something's not going to end up being very good, it should at least have some element of "look how much fun we had" behind it. This has that all over it.

So while I didn't ultimately find it to be what I'd call "a good movie", I don't hate it for its unevenness, either. When it misses, it misses awkwardly and noticeably. However, when it hits, it hits hard and well. "The hideous frogman!" is my new favorite movie moment.



Angie

Noel, I can understand that some of the jokes here are just too offensive to be taken lightly these days. The pinhead is no doubt there as a reference to Tod Browning's Freaks, but that doesn't make her portrayal any less cringe-worthy. The gay bashing was something that was so commonplace for the time period (this is just a couple years after Alex and Keanu were calling each other the f word after hugging, for instance), but we've come so far that it comes off badly now and the attempt at making some kind of lesson about how we view gender roles with Julie and Ernie comes off completely disingenuous. The movie clearly puts attempts at comedy over being respectful or, as you point out, having any kind of meaning, and as both you and Jak said, some of those attempts just don't work. So I can certainly understand if some of the more offensive ones are too difficult to overlook.

As Jak said, this movie is very early 90s. The soundtrack, the offensiveness, and the style are all firmly from that time period. And I think it's obvious that my love of Bill & Ted goes a long way in making me fond of the film despite some of its bad spots. I'm not even going to pretend like Alex Winter is a good actor. Much like Keanu, he seems born to portray Bill S. Preston, Esquire and comes off awkward in most other roles. If this film wasn't so cartoonish in style, his acting wouldn't work. But the fact that he hasn't really done any acting since means he's aware of it as well.

And Noel is right, this film has no real message to speak of. I went through and watched the film again with commentary from Alex Winter and Tom Stern, and near the end, when Ricky stops just short of killing Stewie, Alex attempts to say that the theme of the film is that love conquers all. But he does so with a chuckle, and this is after the two of them spent most of the commentary laughing at their own jokes and occasionally reminiscing. They also pointed out repeatedly that they made this when they were 25 years old and knew nothing, and that pretty clearly shows.

When I was in college, I took a film as literature class. We had a group project, and my group picked Reservoir Dogs. At the end, after we had all talked about various scenes and how their presentation conveys various ideas and portrays the characters, the professor asked us what the message of the film was. We suggested that the film asks if there is honor among thieves, and answers it with a no. But it's a fairly shallow message. That film, like many of Tarantino's works, is more about the snappy nature of the dialogue, the excellent selection of the soundtrack, and the style he brings to his shots. And I love every bit of it. My point being that sometimes I enjoy style over substance, as long as the style is executed well.

As I said before, this movie isn't for everyone. Your tolerance for the low brow has to be pretty high. But for those not easily offended, who love a high dose of insanity and cartoonishness, this is a film worth checking out.



We'll be back on the 1st of November with a pick from Noel: BMX Bandits (1983)

Leonard Part 6 (1987)... Jak's Pick for September

Jak

I've got a vague memory of my parents renting a Bill Cosby movie called Leonard Part 6 when I was eight, and wondering why I'd never heard of the first five parts. Of course, they don't exist, and from all that I've heard in the years since, that meta-joke is the only trace of comedy that supposedly exists in the whole movie. Bill Cosby himself discouraged people from seeing it leading up to its release. "Wow," I thought, "how bad could it be?"

I've tried to write this review a few times now, and each one reads like overly snarky exaggeration or hyperbolic bile - and the internet's got way more than enough of that already. So instead, I'm going to detail the plot below as objectively as possible, with no interjections of my opinions or thoughts until the end, because it really does need to speak for itself first. This may be difficult.

It starts with a CIA agent being killed in his swimming pool by a trained rainbow trout. The CIA chief, played by Joe Don Baker, lures back Leonard Parker, a retired agent who now runs a fancy L.A. restaurant, by sending one of their agents to try to kill Leonard by way of a shootout in the restaurant's kitchen. After taking out the agent, Leonard arrives at the CIA meeting and learns of a series of murders at the hands of several different trained animals (housecats, squirrels, and gophers). Apparently, Medusa, a vegetarian woman in charge of an evil organization, has gained a formula which can take control over all the animals of the world, and Leonard is tasked with stopping her. He refuses to and leaves, saying he is retired.

Leonard's daughter has arrived at his house with her new boyfriend, a play director who is 65 years old. Leonard isn't happy about this.

A CIA agent arrives at Medusa's compound and is killed by frogs who throw his car into the water, drowning him. Meanwhile, Leonard pines for his wife, who left him seven years ago. He calls her in the middle of the night to talk about their daughter's relationship, a conversation which ends with them setting up a dinner date the next day. A four minute montage of tailors sewing clothes, and Leonard working out and getting shaved and manicured follows. Leonard's workout tape is interrupted temporarily by Joe Don Baker, giving mission details to recover the animal control sphere from the compound's "B Room". Leonard ignores this and goes to his dinner date with his wife at her house down the block from him.

They appear to be reconciling at the beginning, until she starts spilling wine and sauce all over him, ending with her smashing a plate of rice into his face. She's still angry about catching him in the middle of what appeared to be an affair. Leonard leaves, instructing his butler to drive him to a fortune teller he would always see before he'd go on his missions.

The fortune teller speaks in gibberish and slaps his face as her children throw stuffed dolls at him and laugh. She hands him a pair of ballet slippers and a red jewelry box. He is ready to accept the mission the CIA has for him and is outfitted with numerous weapons and a set of hair clippers. His butler leads him to his tank gun-equipped, rocket-powered sports car and he goes speeding to the compound, attempting to blow up the gates. Medusa laughs, watching him on security cameras as he exhausts all his firepower. She finally lets him in by opening the gates.

She sends thirteen dancing vegetarian warriors dressed as birds out against him. They dance around Leonard, scratching him up and stripping him of his remaining weapons. All appears to be lost, until Leonard puts on the ballet shoes and starts ballet dancing, which lets him win the fight against the warriors. He uses the hair clippers to shave one of them bare. Medusa, now angry, sends her armed guards after Leonard as he proceeds further into the compound, hidden amidst a group of ostriches. He reaches the room with the sphere in it, which is filled with bees (because it's the "B Room"), and opens the red jewelry box which contains a magic queen bee who leads all the bees out of the room. Leonard makes off with the sphere as the guards are covered in bees.

Leonard arrives back at his house, where he performs drunken surgery on himself to extract a bullet from his arm. Later that night, he and his wife watch their daughter's play, where she ends up nude in her scene. After the play is over, one of Medusa's agents ties up the cast and kidnaps Leonard's wife, leaving a note telling him to return the sphere if he wants his wife back.

Leonard goes to the CIA to retrieve the sphere where they are attempting to use it to control animals and failing. Leonard instructs the rabbits to attack the CIA agents, and runs off with the sphere in the chaos.

Leonard and his butler replace the fluids inside the sphere with dishwasher liquid and head to the compound, though not before the fortune teller drives next to them and switches places with the butler in the passenger seat. She gives Leonard butter, meat patties, and a hot dog weenie before leaving.

Leonard returns the sphere to Medusa at the compound and, of course, they do not return his wife. Medusa knows they replaced the fluids and says that it doesn't matter because the liquids have nothing to do with the sphere's operation. In 15 minutes she will activate the machines that will allow her to control all the animals.

Leonard is thrown into a cell with his wife where lobsters approach them menacingly. One of the lobsters cuts the wires that attach him to the wall, and he threatens another with the butter to get it to cut his wife's wires. The lobsters retreat as both of them wield butter.

Leonard and his wife storm the rest of the compound on a horse, interrupting the activation with one second remaining, and grab the sphere. He fends off the vegetarian guards with the meat patties (which burns them on contact) as his wife frees all of the animals from the compound. Medusa's sidekick takes a bite of the hot dog and his head explodes.

Leonard throws meat at the machinery, which causes everything to burst into flames. He drops Alka-Seltzer into the vats of fluid, drowning the villains in a tide of goo. Leonard escapes on the back of an ostrich as the compound self destructs. Joe Don Baker and the CIA arrive and are incensed at the destruction of the sphere, and Leonard, not caring, heads back home with his wife as the goo gushes out of the compound.

Leonard and his wife celebrate at his restaurant by her pouring and smearing food all over him. The end.

And now here's the part where I'm supposed to present my own opinions and I'm still finding it hard to construct a sentence that can adequately represent them. This movie is proof that there are things money can't improve. The sets and special effects were fantastic for a 1987 film, yet it still managed to be the most tedious movie I've watched in a long time. It's obvious which segments somebody thought were supposed to be funny, making it that much more apparent when the jokes and gags fail to land. It reminds me of the stories my friends and I would write when we were very young, before we figured out that directionless randomness doesn't necessarily equal entertainment - which leads me to now wonder if I'd have enjoyed this movie when I was eight, or if I'd have also concluded back then that this is stupid.

Actually, yeah, there it is. That's what I'm going to go with. This is stupid.



Angie

My expectations for this film were exceedingly low. If you're going to watch a film that both the director and star admit is terrible, you can't really go into viewing it any other way. Given my recent track record with the films we've been picking for the Exchange, I was steeling myself for another film that I probably wouldn't enjoy. So imagine my surprise when I found out Leonard Part 6 really isn't that bad.

Now, saying it's not bad doesn't mean it's good, and this film isn't. I'm just saying that there are moments of amusement to be gained here, if you're in the right frame of mind for them. This is an incredibly silly film, a film that is quite intentionally stupid on purpose. It's clear that Cosby was going for a kind of absurd humor throughout, but the main problem is, 9 out of 10 times, that humor falls flat. I laughed hysterically when the gang of frogs surround the agent's vehicle and then literally hop as one into the water, carrying the car and drowning him. Shortly after he had been writing down "Gribbit" to record their words. It's stupid - so, so stupid - but for that moment, at least, it hit me perfectly.

However, plenty of other moments of humor don't do the same for me. Watching Leonard's estranged wife cover him with food, for instance, is probably the most painful of the attempts at humor, primarily because it's used twice. I feel like the ballet moment could have been funny, but the fact that we're told about it as the film opens, and then see the fortune teller give him the shoes, makes the scene largely expected and therefore less absurd and more tedious. Though I do find Medusa's explanation of the dancers' origins pretty funny.

Speaking of Medusa, Gloria Foster is fantastic. I recognized her voice as the Oracle from The Matrix the moment she spoke, and I love watching her play over the top here. She really deserved a larger career than she got, and she's definitely too good for this film. It's also worth mentioning that Cosby is still Cosby here. While a little more subdued than the character most of us are used to seeing him play on his show, he's still charming and makes wonderfully expressive faces. It's just that the story and the jokes are so weak that just having him here isn't enough.

The story with his wife and daughter are pretty well done, and you can certainly see similarities in there with both his sitcoms and his comedy routines, but they take up far too much time in what is supposed to be a zany parody of James Bond. I suppose you could see it as an attempt to make the audience feel something more when the hero's ex-wife is captured, since you've witnessed so much of their broken relationship up until now, but it's truly not necessary at all and, frankly, the extra time still doesn't make their reunion any more believable. Helping him save the world doesn't mean she will automatically forgive him for cheating on her, after all.

I don't regret watching it, but I'll probably never watch it again. For a movie so badly regarded, I think that's giving it a fairly decent compliment.



Noel

Jak, I'm left in much the same position as you. I watched the first half of this movie at my dad's place, where he and I quickly fell into expressions of stupor as we stared at the screen, occasionally turning those stuporous looks at one another to confirm that, yes, we were both indeed left just as lost by this film. He gave up after half an hour, so I packed it up and finished it at home. I was left in the same state by myself, occasionally pausing the film so I could turn off my television and stare into the eyes of my reflection as I pondered how this film manages to exist in the state it does. And when the film was over, and the credits had played out in full, I realized I'd been staring at the main menu for five minutes as perceptions of the regular world slowly dawned on me. It's a mesmerizing experience, in a way, but instead of leaving me in a state of peaceful complacency, it left me empty and hollow, and chilled at the abyss I now found in myself. I'm left with unanswerable questions of "how" and "why", and an experience that can only enlighten through repetition, but when a second viewing is likely to be the same numbing hell as the first, it leaves me finally excepting the truth that some questions aren't meant to be answered.

But a lack of definite answers does not require a dismissal of the art of theories, so in order to try to purge this from my system, let me see if I can speculate about how a cinematic foreskin boil like Leonard Part 6 came into existence.

It's long forgotten now, but there was a time when Bill Cosby was both a sex symbol and a dashing male lead. Shortly before the first of his three domestic sitcoms, he starred in I, Spy with Robert Culp, where the two played a pair of dashing international sleuths who frequently saved the world, and looked sharp while doing it. In the 80s, with the rise of the summer action movie, I could imagine Cos looking at Beverly Hills Cop and saying, "Y'know, I used to be able to do that stuff. That used to be me." Thus, an idea came into his head, that of a now retired spy - with Leonard Parker resembling, but not officially his old role of Alexander Scott - who is forced back into the game while also dealing with family issues which get mixed up in events. If you look at Beverly Hills Cop, it's not impossible to have a gritty crime drama play out within comical shenanigans, and you could imagine Cosby's resolve, "We'll dooooooo that! But cleaner, so the kiddies can come see!"

So this was passed to a writer, but something was lost in the translation and, forgetting to do his researched, he mistook his old memories of I, Spy with those of Get Smart, and penned a gag-laden script filled with under-arm missiles, Jane Fonda training montages, and people being killed in silly ways by cute animals. And since the studios heard the word "Kiddies!" echoing from the direction of Bill Cosby's mouth, they mistook that to mean the little tots were the intended audience, and signed off on the script lickety split. By this point, the script had found its way back into the pudding sticky hands of Bill, who was storming about the house, reading it out loud, interspersed with cries of "How could they! How dare they! This doesn't represent my art!" but then he stopped when he heard the laughter of those metaphorical kiddies and realized it might be worth it to play along. Maybe even sell some more Jell-O. But he still had his fond memories of Alexander Scott and tried to take it a little seriously, mostly approaching the role with a buttoned-up charm... until he got to the setpiece with the vegetarian bird dancers, ostriches, and vats of dishwasher fluid brought to roiling life by Alka Seltzer, and by then his dignity was pretty much thrown out the window.

For a director, they went to a British newcomer named Paul Weilland, who apparently has actual comedy chops, as he built a decent career after Leonard when television direction brought him in touch with Rowan Atkinson, with whom he collaborated on a number of Mr. Bean episodes and a Blackadder film. He also did City Slickers 2, a sequel I don't hate. Granted, with all of these, he was working with actors at the tops of their comedic games, who not only got the jokes in the script, but helped to hone them. Here, he had a Bill Cosby who was trying to play his secret agent as either a straight, dashing lead, or as his exasperated sitcom dad, and instead of really digging into and selling the jokes of the script, Cos seemed to be embarrassed, a feeling which became infectious as nobody but the two villains even really tried to give the material on the page a chance and instead either deadpanned it or went off in directions that had nothing to do with anything. I'm thinking the butler and the psychic here.

Oh, and have I mentioned Jan de Bont yet? Jan is most famous as the director of Speed and Twister, a great pair of 90s action movies. Before taking his own seat in the directorial chair, he honed his skills as one of the top Hollywood cinematographers of the late 80s/early 90s. He did Cujo, Die Hard, Black Rain, The Hunt for Red October, and Basic Instinct. If you look at his work on Leonard, it's admirable as every shot is lovingly framed and lit. Just look at the sequence where the frogs gather under a car and hop it into a river. There's a genuine layer of tension to the buildup as you first have one, then more, then dozens of frogs and the spy in the car doesn't realize their sounds are what he's jotting down in his wiretap notes as they all suddenly leap as one and... the scene is awful. It's not awful because it's poorly done, no. It's masterfully done, it's just entirely wrong for the movie. Too much of this film is shot with the slick seriousness of a Ridley Scott movie, and this not only kills the joke, but creates a massive clash where intent and execution grind against one another, creating the mesmerizing tone which bore into my skull like an eggbeater in a metal pail full of delicious jelly beans.

And I don't understand how this happened. These are people who should know better. The director went onto better things, yet so little of the comedic filmmaker he came to be is on display here. The writer, Jonathan Reynolds, penned a pair of comedies - Switching Channels and My Stepmother Is An Alien - which, while not great, are competent works I mostly enjoy. Bill Cosby is an excellent comedian, a great sitcom lead, and even used to cut quite a slick figure in his I, Spy days, so why has it always been so hard for him to make the transition to film? Even Jan de Bont can't be accused of not getting the humor, as before this, he'd shot Ruthless People, one of the greatest screwball comedies of all time.

On paper, this is a film that should work. These are talented people, and even the stupid, nonsensical storyline, and the jokes it's filled with, aren't all that bad. Yes, they're stupid, but a stupid laugh is still a laugh, and there's nothing any stupider here than you'd find in the classic Pink Panther movies, or Austin Powers, or even Zoolander. Yes, I'm going there. Zoolander is a masterpiece, but look at that and this side-by-side and tell me, on paper, how they're any different? What isn't working here is not the conception, but the execution, as everything in the film, from the performances, to the direction and editing, to even the lack of any score in most scenes, ends up leaving it all a collection of interesting pieces that should fit, but are instead repelling one another like the same polarized ends of a magnet.

This is exactly the type of film I should enjoy, exactly the type of humor that should have me rolling in my seat with giddiness as I defend a forgotten little gem that nobody understands. Instead, I'm left with a hollow ringing in my soul, an echo of this... this... thing, I don't know, I can't come up with anything else to call it. It's a failure, yes, but one of the most bizarre and incomprehensible failures around. The basic story at its core isn't awful. The script written from it is stupid, but still serviceable and occasionally a hair clever. It could work if delivered right, but it isn't. And yet, despite not clicking with the material, nobody changed it. Instead of just playing his performance mostly straight, why didn't Cosby insist on a rewrite? Why didn't the director? Why didn't somebody sit down and say, "Fellas, this isn't working. What can we do about that?" After the movie was put together, Cos instantly came out against it, publicly tearing it a new one as a horrible film. But why was it a horrible film, Bill? Aren't you the leading star with the pull to reshape it? Aren't you the sole producer, without a gaggle of other cooks in the kitchen to blame for everything going wrong? Aren't you the guy credited with the original story, who could have taken a look at the script that was handed to you and said "No no no, this isn't what I was going for."?

Bill, who's fault is it for this film being what it is? Who's fault is it, really?

J-E-Y-O-U.



Jak

Angie, I really wish I could have found some kind of positive experience in this film like you did, as I'd have less of this bad taste in my mouth. And once again, Noel and I agree on a picture. This is beginning to become an unexpected trend. Next thing you know, I'll be watching Gunhed again and finding new layers of depth. (Don't get too excited, Noel, that was a joke.)

I went into this knowing it would be bad and was genuinely surprised that the bad movie I had in mind was so much better than the pile of awful choices that I ended up watching. I only thought I knew what failed execution looked like. We've reached a new shade of low and I think my contributions to this blog over the next few months are going to be more glowing (relatively speaking) than they would have been otherwise, just because of how much lower the bar for "bad" has been set now.

I'm not fishing for overstatement laughs here, I mean it. Ed Wood's films and Manos rank higher than this because those are at least honestly bad - there was a drive and a vision, however flawed it may have been, which was pursued, and missed its mark for one or more reasons, usually more. Leonard Part 6, though - it's some kind of cinematic poo golem, a bad movie without a soul. Whereas most soulless Hollywood fluff has at least a few laughs and thrills here and there, Leonard has this subtly shallow, cynical core that shines through its high production values, which I can't quite pinpoint beyond the lingering shots of Coke products and the overly random gags and story elements that seem to scream "the rubes oughta laugh at this."

We didn't.



We'll be back on the 1st of October with a pick from Angie: Freaked (1993)

Rad (1986)... Noel's? Pick for August

Noel

Rad is a very specific movie which plays to a very specific type of audience. If you're the type of guy who debates how Automan and The Powers of Matthew Star rank up alongside the likes of Airwolf, you'll probably be a fan of Rad. If you custom built a BMX bike while a mix tape of Stan Bush power anthems and Tangerine Dream's Street Hawk theme played on your Walkman, you'll probably be a fan of Rad. If you ever...

Wh-wha...

what are you doing here?!

Nobody was supposed to find you sealed away with your mint and carded action figure collection for at least another 17 months!

No! Stay away! Noooooooooooo-*Zap*

Tony

Hello, Exchangers, Tony here. You might remember me as the guy who kept forcing all of those lousy Ninja movies on Noel and Angie. As the blog's recent lack of Ninjosity suggests, I'm no longer a contributor to the Monthly Midnight Movie Exchange (having been replaced, and improved upon, by Jak), but since Rad was one of my original picks, I thought it only fair that I should come back and bat lead off for this month's review. Oh, and don't worry about Noel. I merely shot him with a homemade sleep ray, which ionizes Celestial Seasonings tea and combines it with force-focused photons which are then fired from an old Nintendo Zapper gun. He currently believes he's watching an episode of Power Rangers. He'll wake up in a few hours with a slight headache and a desire to kick a giant rubber monster in the balls. So basically how he usually feels when he wakes up.

Okay, dudes, let's walk this sucker

Rad tells the story of Cru Jones (Bill Allen, but not the Microsoft Bill Allen), a high school senior, paper boy, and BMX fanatic who finds his purpose when a large race track is built in his small California town. Dubbed “Helltrack”, it will be the site of the largest and most lucrative BMX race in the country. Unfortunately for Cru, several things are working against him and his dreams of BMX glory.

For one, there's his mom (Talia Shire of Rocky fame), who wants Cru to focus on his upcoming SAT's - which, it just so happens, are taking place on the exact same day as the qualifying races for Helltrack. And then there's Duke Best (Jack Weston), the owner of Mongoose bicycles and president of the Federation of American Bicyclists, who sees a threat in the young upstart. Finally, there's Bart Taylor (played by Olympic Gold Medalist Bart Conner in his first acting role), poster boy for team Mongoose and the top-rated BMX rider in the nation, not to mention a first-class prick. But Cru is unbowed. Wearing his street clothes and a battered hockey helmet, he makes his way through the brutal qualifying rounds to earn a spot in the actual race. This doesn't sit well with Best, who stands to lose a lot of money if his golden boy doesn't win Helltrack. After failing to recruit Cru to team Mongoose, Best begins to throw up a series of bureaucratic obstacles to insure that Cru is unable to compete in the race.

But not everything is going badly for our hero. All of the top BMX riders in the nation have descended on Cochrane, and one of them happens to be the beautiful female rider Christian (Lori Loughlin). After seducing one another with what is surely the only BMX freestyle dance scene in film history, the two bond over some ass-sliding (not what you think, sinners) and before you can say "convenient plot tumbler falls into place", they're in love. With encouragement from Christian, and a lot of help from his friends, the townsfolk, and plucky little sister Wes (Laura Jacoby), Cru manages to beat Best at his own game and claim his spot in Helltrack. Under the banner of “Rad Racing”, Cru squares off against the 19 best riders from North America. Best instructs two of his racers (twins Chad and Carey Hayes) to take Cru out, thus clearing the way for Bart to win. But Bart has other ideas. When the twins cause Cru to crash, Bart stops and waits for him to catch up. From there, it's a sprint to finish, with Cru edging Bart at the line with a nifty - and totally unnecessary - 360 spin. After being dismissed from Mongoose by a livid Best, Bart goes over to congratulate Cru on his victory. Wes suggests that there's room on the Rad team, which is met with an enthusiastic response by all as they hoist Bart's bike into the air as credits roll.

I've never seen such raw talent and determination in one kid before!

Rad is a fascinating story. I'm not talking about the plot, I mean the film itself. To the uninitiated, this may look like just another forgotten 80s movie that tried marrying the latest thing (BMX) with the underdog kid formula that was so popular and successful at the time. And while the latter is true, Rad is not forgotten. Not by a long shot.

Directed by Hal Needham (Smokey and the Bandit, MegaForce), Rad was a huge dud at the box office in 1986, pulling in just over $2 million dollars. But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity. First, it became a massive hit on the burgeoning home video market, where it stayed on the top-ten video rental list for two years. Pretty impressive, right? Unfortunately over the next couple of decades, the rights to the film became muddled. With the original studio, Embassy, out of business, no one seemed to know who owned Rad. Limited to just that one initial VHS release, you'd think Rad would've simply faded away. Instead, it flourished, and Rad is more popular today than ever. Not only does it have the requisite fan sites where the like-minded gather to quote the film and discuss the awesomeness of John Farnham (singer of "Thunder In Your Heart" and "Break the Ice"), its 25th anniversary inspired a weekend long celebration that drew cast and crew as well as over two thousand fans to the original filming locations (Cochrane and Calgary, Canada, which stood in for the fictitious Cochrane, California). Star Bill Allen remains extremely active within the Rad fan community and is currently spearheading an effort to get the film an official DVD release. There's even a documentary in the works entitled A Rad Documentary.

But why has Rad inspired such a rabid following? Not unlike "Why is Justin Bieber famous?", that's a hard question to answer. For most of us, what it boils down to is that Rad is one of the few movies to focus on the sport of BMX racing and freestyle. While enjoying a resurgence today, BMX peaked in the mid-80s after, of all things, the movie E.T. prominently featured BMX bikes in its classic chase scene finale. It just so happened that my next door neighbor at the time was one of the best BMX racers in the state of Ohio, and that only served to fan the flames for me. Pretty soon, I traded in my cheap, off-the-rack "Led Sled" and got a high end bike of my own. It was a 1985 Mongoose Californian, which cost $214 and had to be special ordered (and just so happens to be the same model that Cru rides in the movie). Having temporarily outgrown Star Wars, and with my penis still a good six years away from fully coming on-line, BMX and freestyle were my obsessions for the rest of the decade.

Look, I'm not so blinded by nostalgia and my love for BMX that I can't see that the acting in this movie is about on par with the Stumblebum, Idaho repertory theater company. And I know it's corny and hopelessly dated. I also know that I don't care about any of that. Rad is the definitive pop culture work dedicated to the sport of BMX and freestyle, and that is, well, pretty rad.

Whoa, it looks like Noel is coming to, and it just so happens that I'm wearing a rubber monster costume... Don't ask. I'm gonna scram before one of Noel's size elevens finds its way to my balls, but I'm genuinely curious to find out what the rest of you thought.



Jak

I heard we were doing Rad this month and saw the poster for it. "Oh gross, a BMX bike movie," I thought. I have zero interest in bikes and less than zero interest in BMX, so I found every reason to put off watching this. Visions of plotless BMX culture sequences filled my head. Eventually the day came where the deadline was near and I had to make myself put the fanmade DVD in. The menu popped up and an electronic drum fill introduced an opening synth riff that was so mid-80's, I wouldn't be surprised if its soundform output was a portrait of Reagan playing an Atari and drinking New Coke. Then the lyrics come in and it's screaming to be the score of a training montage: fire, glory, risking it all, the thrill of the moment, moves like lightning and hearts of thunder. All right, I'm in the right mindset for this now: this is going to be the Rocky of bike movies. It even has Talia Shire in it.

It opens with a series of genuinely impressive bike tricks, impressive enough that I didn't realize it went on for four whole minutes. Like many movies before it, I hoped this wasn't an indicator of the pacing to come. It was, though this turned out to be one of the things I liked about it.

I was surprised because I usually don't like when a movie meanders. In this case, I found the tangential scenes much more charming and entertaining (obligatory cheesy romance scene notwithstanding). Once we got back to scenes where the focus was on the main plot's development, the writing seemed to turn hamfisted and forced, the characters stopped being nearly so likeable, and even the acting became less believable, as though the actors didn't know what to do with their lines. It reminded me of my experience watching Krull in that way, like there were two very different writing and directorial teams at work on different parts of the same movie.

For the big racing sequences, my brain sort of shut off because it was a formulaic story (underdog beats the odds!) from a formulaic genre (competition!) from a formulaic period (1986!), so I knew how it was going to end from the moment the plot was set into motion. At least the bike tricks never stopped being impressive, which is more than I can say for the incessant electro pop soundtrack (or that dance sequence. Yow.)

In the end, I found myself wishing it had been exactly the kind of movie I was initially dreading it might be. I have to admit that's an experience I've never had before.



Angie

Does the fact that I've never seen any of those titles Noel mentioned serve as a warning sign here? It may. I had also never heard of this film before now, though being not quite yet five at the time of its release may be to blame. But then, The Karate Kid came out two years before that, and I know that movie very well, so maybe not.

I see a lot of similarities in structure between this film and that one, with the main difference, beside the karate/BMX racing swap, being that Mr. Miyagi's role is fulfilled by the love interest. I'm sure there's no coincidence there, as Hollywood probably made tons of these films to try to cash in on that movie's success. I loved The Karate Kid as a child, and when I watched it earlier this year, I was pleased to see just how much that film held up. So while I have zero interest in BMX bikes or racing, I thought it was possible I may still be able to get some enjoyment out of this film.

I'm sorry, Tony, but that didn't happen.

When I heard the first couple songs on the soundtrack, I appreciated the 80s cheesiness of them, but after a while, they all started to sound the same, and I was a bit surprised to find out there were multiple artists involved, as I couldn't really tell them apart. Though I think the biggest hurdle for me is the dialogue. I spent a lot of time thinking, "No one would talk like that. Ever." The scene early on with the adults having a meeting about adding Helltrack to their town is so obviously dumbed down to make sure children can understand it that the adults involved seem really stupid. Not to mention the leap in logic that a town thoroughly annoyed by the antics of its three newspaper delivery boys (and girl) would welcome such a competition to their town just for the sake of profit. Of course, that does make it convenient when the old man who thinks life would be better if there were no children suddenly changes his mind and decides to help the local boy after all.

Speaking of, I adore Ray Watson, and I did at least enjoy watching him in this film. It was also interesting to see Lori Loughlin in something other than Full House. I adored Talia Shire in the Rocky films, so seeing her essentially playing Adrian as a mom is fun, though I don't entirely like the way she's pushed to the side so much. I also rekindled a part of my memory I hadn't visited in ages when I realized Jack Weston looks familiar because I saw him in Short Circuit 2.

I had a lot of time to think about these other films and television shows because the movie spends a lot of time showing us people on bikes. Cru escaping the cop who's apparently not really trying to arrest him but just playing a game of cat and mouse. The ultra-ridiculous dancing the other bikers put on before Cru and Christian take over on the bikes. Cru training with Christian. And then, of course, the race itself. I'm sure these moments are excellent for people interested, and I can see how it would be enough to latch a kid into wanting to ride as it did for Tony, but as an adult, it just doesn't interest me one bit.

There's one other thing that bugs me, and after that, I swear I'll stop nitpicking and play nice. When we're first introduced to Bart, he's a jerk. He stops a parade just so he can hit on two girls right in front of Christian, who it's at least suggested is his girlfriend before he dumps her soon afterward. He's also not too nice during the dance scene. But once it comes down to the approaching race, he's a pretty good sport, confident he can win this one, and not in agreement with Duke's antics to try to ruin Cru's chances. Him slowing down in the race really shows it, because he wants to race Cru fair and square. It therefore makes perfect sense when the good guys offer him a spot on their team at the end of the movie, but it's a really bad writing choice to make his character so inconsistent without showing us any motivation for his face turn.

In the hands of a better writer, I feel like this movie could have stood up and been a lesser known film for fans of Rocky and The Karate Kid to discover and enjoy. As it is, I'm afraid it just lives as a poor imitation. To try to include some kind of positive here, I will say I agree that the story about what happened to the film is an interesting one, and I would gladly watch The Rad Documentary if it's ever released.



Noel

Dammit, Tony! I don't know what's worse: that I smell like Celestial Seasonings, or that I'm making "fwip" noises as I strike dynamic poses with the full expectation that they'll be backed by flashy graphics and a shredding guitar. If you'd give me half a second, you'd find out I'm actually riding at your side on the final lap of the Helltrack.

Rad is not a great movie. The plot is formulaic. The dialogue is formulaic. The cast is formulaic. The villain is formulaic. The small town drama is formulaic. The romance is formulaic. The lead is formulaic. Also a bit of an asshole, but a formulaic one. The struggles with his mom over education vs. "This is the one thing in life I know I can do!" is formulaic. The power ballads and 80s synth track are formulaic.

This movie is formulaic. But you know what? Formulaic does not equate bad. I do enjoy a film that goes outside the box, tries new things, and completely blows my mind as it opens my perceptions up to new possibilities. I also enjoy the palate cleansing comfort food of a film where I pretty much know every twist going in, and just ask that they be given to me in an interesting way. And Rad gives me that. Hal Needham is a former stunt man/coordinator, and the majority of his films are catered to showing off physical prowess in the form of circus-like spectacle, and he absolutely delivers here as the art of BMX stunt riding is shown in every conceivable way, through both the pounding speed of the races and the lingering slow motion of every flip, spin, and tire pogo during moments like Cru's morning paper route, daily game of chase with the bulldog motorcycle cop, practicing in a home-made obstacle course with his friends, and, in the greatest segment of hyper-reality ever committed to celluloid, Cru and Christian mutually alluring one other with a phantasmagoria of pops and locks and obviously fixed on a rig closeups at the local dance, all set to the emo romance pop ballad "Send Me an Angel".

Even outside the stunts, there's a color and energy to the goings on as this small town is invaded by emblazoned athletes and corporations infatuated with their own product. Though, as mentioned, Cru is a bit of an asshole at first, trolling people on his daily route and being the type of smartass who can get away with it because of that smile. Bill Allen gives him an everyman appeal. He's not perfect, but he believes in what he can do and so we join his friends in cheering him on as he sets out to do it. And it helps that Allen is skilled enough with a bike to sell the shots where it's obviously him, unlike Lori Loughlin who's often replaced by a man in a wig. Which isn't to say Christian is a bad character, she's not, but she ultimately doesn't do much beyond show up and fall in love, as the town itself is far more instrumental in helping Cru fight through increasingly petty rule changes, and she doesn't even take part in the final race. Talia Shire is also quite good as the mom, even though her conflict with Cru is minimal, and Ray Walston is always a treat, especially when he's flipping the bird.

As for the rest of the cast, Tony's not off in that they're made up of largely untrained talents, or whatever character actors they could find. Bart isn't bad as Bart, and has a realistic cockiness and athleticism, but he's pretty flat in the charisma department and never actually feels like a threat to Cru. The twins are pretty hard to take seriously when they walk around in the spacemen uniforms from Forbidden Planet, and never pull off the threat when they're sent to take Cru down. And even Duke Best is a pretty limp villain, as Jack Weston sloshes through the role in a way that would never cut it as a CEO in the real world. Other roles, like Cru's friends and various types around town, feel like local amateurs, but have an authentic charm, and there's even an adorable moment where we pause the movie for two minutes just so an announcer can run down a list of the actual BMX racers who showed up.

It's not a top-quality production, there's pretty much zero depth or complexity to the whole thing, every scene ticks off the list of expected scenes, and there's no real threat to overcome beyond some assholes being assholes to the asshole. But it still stirs the thunder in my heart, and I'm with this movie for every kick of the pedal, the winning of every achievement we knew would be won, and every gratuitous 80s use of a child saying "shit".

Tony, thanks for first introducing me to this film a few years back, and returning to share it with me now.

But if you EVER pull another stunt like the one you did to open this piece, I'll amass every force in my power to-*Zap*



Tony

Angie, Jak, I was never optimistic you were going to fall head over wheels for Rad. For one thing, we're working with a slim generation gap here. It may only be a few years, but in pop culture terms, that's a lifetime. There's just nothing here for either of you to gain any nostalgic purchase. The music, the fashion - hell, the entire BMX culture - are nothing more than antiquated oddities to the both of you. My best hope was that the underdog formula and uber sincerity of it all might win you over. Alas, it didn't. Perhaps those are antiquated notions as well.

Noel, I obviously had a pretty good idea of what your reaction was going to be. Like Angie and Jak, this isn't exactly your section of pop cultural turf, and I know you have about as much interest in bikes and the sport of BMX as you do in rubbing your balls on a rusty cheese grater, but you had a certain appreciation for Rad the first time around, so I was confident it would hold up on a repeat viewing. I'm glad I was right.

We can't force others to love something. It doesn't matter how hard we try, or how strong of a case we make, love isn't compelled. It just doesn't work that way. Not even when the other guy is total a dick who will only break her heart, while you're clearly better looking and have more to offer. Oh, and this whole “friends” business? Well, you can take that and stuff it in a sack, sister! I've got your “friends” right--

But, I digress. My point is, there is no right or wrong here. I don't take offense to Angie's reactions to Revenge of the Ninja or Rad for the same reason she wasn't upset that I didn't fully embrace anime after watching Memories.

Angie, Jak, I sincerely appreciate the both of you indulging Noel and I in our little switch-a-roo, and for allowing me to come back and share not only the movie Rad, but also a little bit about the sport of BMX and freestyle with you and your readers.



We'll be back on the 1st of September with a pick from Jak: Leonard Part 6 (1987)

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)