Posts Tagged ‘Adventure’


The Lost World

February 8th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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dir. Irwin Allen
1960 / 20th Century Fox / 96′
written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett
from the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 director of photography Winton C. Hoch
music by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter
starring Claude Raines, David Hedison, Jill St. John, Michael Rennie, Fernando Lamas, Richard Haydn and Vitina Marcus
The Lost World is available on both standalone 2-disc DVD and as part of a budget-priced 75th anniversary four-film DVD set (the latter version omits the second disc, which features the George Eastman House restoration of the 1925 The Lost World, as well as a trailer fragment and several minutes of effects outtakes, but pairs the feature with three others – Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Fantastic Voyage and The Towering Inferno).

Playing as a sort of matinee-ready follow-up to 20th Century Fox’s successful Journey to the Center of the Earth from the year before, Irwin Allen’s The Lost World is big, colorful, and dumb in more or less equal measure. The screenplay by Allen and frequent collaborator Charles Bennett (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), freely adapted from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel with some allusions to First National’s classic silent version thrown in for good measure, may propel Doyle’s early-century action into more modern times, but the film’s effects production remains positively prehistoric. This is perhaps the slurpasaur epic, second only to Hal Roach’s One Million B.C. in its wholesale embarrassment / abuse of large lizards and others of their ilk. It’s really a dreadful show by most measures, a fact compounded by a stirringly awful turn from Jill St. John (Diamonds Are Forever), but Winton C. Hoch’s vivid CinemaScope photography and Allen’s own sense for pure stupid spectacle (this may be the genesis of his go-to suspense setup – the ledge) keep it from being a total bore.

The tale begins in London where, shortly after bopping bothersome American newsman Ed Malone (David Hedison) over the head with an umbrella, the imminent and irascible Professor Challenger (the wonderful Claude Rains, horribly miscast) heads to a meeting of the resident Zoological Society to make a shocking announcement: He has discovered an unscalable plateau hidden deep within the forests of the Amazon, a plateau populated by the living descendants of animals thought extinct since the Jurassic Age. In other words, “Live dinosaurs!”

With nothing to show for himself, his photographs and journals having been lost in an accident on the return voyage, Challenger proposes that a new expedition be mounted to his lost world, to be manned by himself, the ZSL’s own Professor Summerlee (Richard Haydn, well chosen as Challenger’s condescending professional rival), and two unbiased volunteers. Stepping up to the challenge are Lord John Roxton (Michael Rennie!), renowned big game hunter, explorer, and philanderer, and, much to Challenger’s chagrin, reporter Ed Malone, whose boss immediately fronts $100,000 for the expedition’s expenses. With the money and team in order the trip into the Amazon begins, where its roster of personnel quickly bloats beyond all recognition. Aside from the necessary addition of helicopter pilot Gomez (Fernando Lamas!) the expedition takes on the useless and slimy local profiteer Costa (character player Jay Novello, wasted in his role) as well as Roxton’s headstrong love interest Jennifer Holmes (a dreadful Jill St. John) and her brother David, the two children of Malone’s wealthy news-baron employer.

 
 
 

Gorged on superfluous humanity, the Challenger expedition hobbles its way to the isolated plateau and, with its helicopter destroyed by a wandering brontosaurus (amusingly identified by Challenger without him having had an opportunity to see it), quickly becomes stranded there. Taking refuge in a spacious cave, the team members set out to investigate their surroundings and happen upon an example of native wildlife far more interesting than dinosaurs – the beautiful Vitina Marcus as a mini-dressed tribeswoman. Unfortunately her existence suggests that more of her kind are living on the plateau, and soon the expedition finds itself contending not only with dinosaurs and other giant flora and fauna, but a tribe of monster-worshiping cannibal natives as well…

While several oft-omitted elements of the original novel found their way into this The Lost World in heavily adapted forms, including subplots involving diamonds, capture by natives, and even a dramatic conflict between Roxton and Gomez (in the novel this was the method by which the expedition was stranded, and was replaced by a brontosaurus in the 1925 film – this The Lost World keeps both), those hoping that Allen and Bennet’s writing might stick close to the source should look elsewhere. Indeed, the closest Allen’s production comes to honoring the author’s intentions is to put his name above the title card – which summarily bursts into flames. Perhaps the most grievous wound inflicted upon the material, besides the inclusion of Frosty the poodle in the character roster, is a love triangle revolving around the dull Jennifer Holmes and the backwards sexual politics that come with it. The Lost World, like From Hell It Came, is another of those films in which a woman tries to prove herself in “a man’s world” only to be happily put in her place by the final reel. The overtly objectified Vitina Marcus doesn’t escape either, being so much eye-candy that the film neglects to even name her. After an attempted rape by the sleazy Costa is thwarted young David pulls Marcus aside. “We’re not all like that,” he assures, before losing all credibility with his follow-up. “You know, you’re kinda nice!”

Ultimately more problematic than any of that is that Allen and Bennet have populated their The Lost World with such unlikable characters (not to mention that damned dog). It’s impossible not to like Claude Rains’ as Professor Challenger, miscast though he is in the role of the boorish and confrontational zoologist, and at least Gomez is granted a justifiable reason (spoiler: the death of his beloved brother due to Roxton’s negligence) for being such a jerk. Otherwise this is pretty rough going, compounded by the lackluster quality of the writing itself and Allen’s own uninspired direction. Seemingly at a loss for blocking the action in any interesting way, Allen resorts time and again to having his cast wander into a single and double-file lines to fill the frame. Winton Hoch’s vivid CinemaScope photography helps to distract from some of the deficiencies – Hoch had worked with Allen previously on The Big Circus, and would go on to photograph Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Five Weeks in a Balloon as well as episodes of several of Allen’s television series. More than just an award-winning director of photography, Hoch had helped to develop the three-strip Technicolor process as a lab tech in the 1930s. When it came to color on film he obviously knew his stuff.

 
 
 

Like the majority of Irwin Allen productions the issues of writing and characterization are all secondary to the spectacle of the thing, and The Lost World has spectacle to spare. Aside from the expected encounters with dinosaurs and cave-people Allen also treated audiences to one of his first daring ledge-walks (watch out for those obvious fall-away rocks!) as well as a climactic volcanic eruption and a gaggle of man-eating plants. Though Willis O’Brien receives credit as an effects technician (just what he contributed, if anything, is unclear – sadly this appears to have been his final on-screen credit) his time-consuming stop motion animation process went unused here, and the dinosaurs were instead brought to life through the dubious slurpasaur technique. Used to reasonably good effect in Fox’s earlier Journey to the Center of the Earth and here managed by the same studio effects techs (L.B. Abbott, James B. Gordon, and Emil Kosa Jr.), The Lost World features monitor lizards, iguanas, alligators, and geckos in a variety of rubber appliances. Though close inspection reveals the detail with which the technique was carried out (a lot of work went into matching colors, scale patterns and so forth) it never goes so far as to work – convincing an audience that a Nile monitor topped off with a triceratops’ frill and a stegosaurus’ back plates is anything other than what it looks to be is a losing battle.

The dependence on slurpasaur effects is perhaps the show’s greatest handicap, particularly for modern viewers with higher sensitivity to animal cruelty. There’s little doubt that at least some of the costumed reptiles were outright killed for the production – one is sunk into a bubbling pool and doused with smoldering lava-substitute, while an homage to the star dinosaur battle from One Million B.C. concludes with technicians hurling the participants over a ledge. These scenes were enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth even as a child, and certainly hasn’t grown on me since then. Allen trotted out this dinosaur footage at every opportunity during his television career, from The Time Tunnel to Land of the Giants, and even re-cast Vitina Marcus in her familiar cave-girl role in Turn Back the Clock, a season one episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that replays the events of The Lost World wholesale.

So what are we left with after all this? A well-shot but poorly conceived adaptation of a classic novel that’s loaded with unlikable characters and largely dependent on animal abuse for its thrills. This is one of those cases where I should by all rights hate the film, big and stupid and reprehensible as it can be, but for some intangible reason I don’t hate Irwin Allen’s The Lost World at all. Contemporary audiences apparently agreed. Though it received only middling critical attention the modestly budgeted The Lost World made a mint for both Allen and 20th Century Fox upon its release, fast-tracking Allen’s far more substantial (if no less dumb) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and setting the stage for his successful stint as a producer of 60s fantasy television.

 
 
 

Whether you’ve picked it up on its own or as part of the company’s recent spate of 75th anniversary DVD multipacks (as I did, netting The Lost World and 3 co-features, each on their own disc, for just under $10), 20th Century Fox’s DVD edition of Irwin Allen’s The Lost World is certainly a looker – if I’m not mistaken this is the first time the film has been available on home video in its original CinemaScope 2.35:1 ratio.

Aside from some modest edge enhancement, a bit of minor damage (just some speckling, light scratching and dirt – nothing unexpected for a film of this vintage) and the odd errant reel change marker, there’s very little that can be held against Fox’s presentation of Irwin Allen’s schlockterpiece. From dense green foliage punctuated with brilliant blue and red flowers to the glowing reds of a lava chamber to the ridiculous jungle attire of Jill St. John (and her salmon pink luggage), the DeLuxe color is surprisingly bold, only falling flat during the occasional optical work (as when the Challenger expedition spots their first… ehem… dinosaur). To that end DVD Savant wrote of some anomalous color timing, but I didn’t notice anything untoward – note that I’ve only ever seen the film on VHS previously, and never theatrically, so make of that what you will. Contrast is at healthy levels throughout and detail is quite strong, particularly during the miniature photography. Even with a bit of obvious haloing this gave a strong presentation upscaled on my HD set, and the technical specs are unexpectedly robust – the Mpeg-2 encode clocks in with a high average bitrate of just over 8 Mbps.

 
 

 

Audio is less impressive, but gets the job done. The feature is accompanied by two stereo tracks in the original English – the original 4-track stereo mixed as Dolby Digital 3.1 surround as well as a standard Dolby Digital 2.0. There’s some strange directional stuff going on with the 3.1 option at times, with dialogue occasionally feeling as though it’s coming through on the wrong channel, but this didn’t bother me so much as how frail it sounded overall. Paul Sawtell and Bert Schefter’s strong score comes through well enough, as do the dinosaur roars (mostly recycled from Fox’s earlier Journey to the Center of the Earth) and other effects, but the dialogue can sound quite thin and weak. The 2.0 track does nothing to improve on that front, and I assume it’s just a fault of the original recording. Monophonic dubs in Spanish and French are also included, as are optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

Film-specific supplements are light, but appreciated. A three-minute vintage featurette – Footprints on the Sands of Time - and a brief excerpt from Fox Movietone News (just under a minute) round out the documentary material, with an original theatrical trailer rounding out the video supplements as a whole. The best extras of the bunch are a set of comprehensive image galleries that cover pre-production artwork and film stills as well as ad art, an “interactive” press book, and Dell’s tie-in comic adaptation. There’s some terrific stuff here, especially with regards to the pre-production illustrations, though Fox impairs itself needlessly in making the galleries practically unmaneuverable. Those with the 2-disc standalone edition will also be treated to the George Eastman House restoration of the classic 1925 The Lost World, which runs 76 minutes, as well as some outtake footage and a trailer fragment for that (vastly superior) version of the story.

The $20 retail price attached to the stand-alone 2-disc DVD of Irwin Allen’s The Lost World seems a little steep to this bean counter, but you really can’t go wrong with the Studio Classics four-pack (unless you’re just after the GEH restoration of the 1925 film). This makes for a decent brain-off double bill played back to back with the much better Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and its demonstrable awfulness lends it some unexpected charm. Whichever edition you choose the Fox DVD is good stuff, a few caveats aside, and fans will definitely want to indulge.


Shadow of the Colossus

December 1st, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2005  Company: Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Studios, Team ICO
Designer: Fumito Ueda   Writers: Junichiro Hosono, Takashi Izutani, Masahi Kudo
Music: Kow Otani   Cast: Kenji Nojima, Kazuhiro Nakata, Kyoko Hikami, Naoki Bando, Hitomi Nabatame
Reviewed from the Ico / Shadow of the Colossus Collection, released September of this year for Playstation 3, and available for purchase through Amazon.com. The original Playstation 2 edition is also still available.

While I’ve toyed with reviewing books, comics and even a bit of music here at Wtf-Film, the one medium I’ve always wanted to cover, but never have, remains video games. I play quite a lot of them, after all, and unlike any number of naysayers I don’t see the medium as being any less a legitimate art form than the others I mentioned above. That’s not to say I think that all art is good art, and personal taste certainly enters into things, but the potential is there for video games to rattle off complex symbolism, big ideas and the just plain aesthetically beautiful every bit as well as the rest of the more lauded forms. What’s more they can do so in collaboration, while at the same time offering a brand of personal interaction with the material that’s unique unto themselves.

But I digress. I’m really not here to argue how the video game should be considered a valid artistic medium – really - you’ll find plenty of that elsewhere, and just as many dissenting opinions. Instead I present for your consideration a game that I certainly consider to be “good art”, the epic Shadow of the Colossus (or Wander and the Colossus / Wanda to Kyozou) from Japanese designer Fumito Ueda and Sony Computer Entertainment’s Japan Studio in 2005. As is too often the case I took a good long while catching up to Shadow, having never owned a Playstation 2, but its recent remastering for the Playstation 3 (along with Ueda’s freshman effort ICO) gave me all the excuse I needed to finally check it out.

Taking place in a nameless expanse at the “edge of the world”, Shadow posits the player as the boy Wander, who travels to the forbidden land with his faithful horse, Agro, and the body of the dead girl Mono in hopes that a mythical demon said to reside there can return her to life. The demon, little but a few wayward shadows and a disembodied voice echoing about an immense shrine, agrees to help, provided that Wander destroys the sixteen Colossi – the vessels for the demon’s divided evil – that roam throughout the territory. As each Colossus is defeated the evil essence within is absorbed by Wander, whose mortal form grows more corrupted and diseased with each conquest…

The simple narrative of Shadow of the Colossus is a familiar one, but is refreshingly free of the heroic ego that so often comes with the territory. Wander proves himself uniquely selfless as video game protagonists go, flinging himself out into the abyss and confronting certain annihilation with unflinching determination, but his singular devotion is to the point of fault. He is driven to sacrifice himself, agonizingly, to save a fellow mortal unjustly struck down (the scant dialogue suggests only that she was sacrificed for being “cursed”), but is so obsessed as to be blind to the consequences of unleashing the greatest evil known to his civilization. In his singular, destructive drive he reminds of Captain Ahab, neither villain nor hero, just a man slowly destroyed by his own obsession. It’s an allusion that becomes all the more fitting once the nature of the game’s action is taken into consideration.

With rare exception the Colossi Wander is fated to extinguish are appropriately massive in scale, and often appear as though they are built from bits of the landscapes from which they emerge. Alternately magnificent and horrifying, the Colossi are the fantasy equivalent of the sea-beasts of old, which a dwarfed humanity once sought to conquer at its own peril, though the odds against Wander, armed only with a sword, a bow, and his wits, seem even more heavily stacked. Each Colossi is a lumbering level unto itself, either to be tricked into allowing Wander passage on it or to be scaled outright so that its vital points, glowing sigils revealed by the sword, can be reached. The gameplay here is harrowing stuff, and quite unlike anything I’ve encountered before. Appropriately, it becomes as much a test of will for the player as for Wander, as you’re dangle perilously from the shaggy, debris-strewn bodies of skyscraper-sized humanoid giants and bizarre, impossibly proportioned animals with your stamina running out all the while.

Even so, success against them is rarely satisfying on its own terms. Much of that is to do with the context for the Colossi themselves, awe-inspiring titans tucked away in some forbidden corner of the world as guardians against the evil banished there. They aren’t the villains of the piece, even if Wander must approach them as such. Each is individual, unique, from a proportional pseudo-mechanical bull (one of the rare small Colossi) and a tremendous electric eel to the earth-shaking bludgeon-wielding humanoid bear that graces the cover art, and each is never to be seen again. For every ounce of awe their appearances inspire there’s just as much poignancy to their defeat, the Colossi crumpling tragically to the ground with venomous black mist spewing from their wounds. Wander’s reward for killing them is to have himself slowly destroyed, with no way of knowing whether or not the demon with whom he has bargained will keep its promise in the end.

Shadow of the Colossus balances its intense action set pieces and grimmer subject matter with an environmental design ethic that’s breathtaking. The forbidden terrain Wander must traverse to reach each Colossi is a vast, seemingly boundless affair, winding from darkened mountain passes through arid deserts and verdant hills to secluded wooded oases, imposing canyons and hot springs. It’s a world unto itself, separated from the outside by a towering, endless bridge and devoid of any living distractions beyond a few lizards, tortoises and birds. Though obviously once inhabited – a monolithic central shrine and other edifices of civilization past, including Asiatic temples, European castles and a massive buried Greco-Roman amphitheatre, are all testament to this – Wander is the only human life to be seen. It’s a place unencumbered by endless hack-and-slash antics, load screens, or droning soundtrack loops, a wide-open expanse both somber and beautiful, ripe for contemplation and all but demanding of the hours it takes to explore it all. I found myself wholly immersed in it, enchanted even, and after a work week worth of play I’ve yet to tire of it – something few of anything, much less games, can claim.

In lesser hands it would have been easy for Shadow of the Colossus, basically a series of boss fights scattered by lengthy violence-free trekking, to feel tired and insubstantial, but Fumito Ueda and his devoted creative team have made it into something truly special. The simplicity of its premise belies the supreme artistry with which it is related, and the sum experience of it all is quite unlike anything else. I’ll not open the can of worms that is the “best game ever” designation, but it’s certainly one of the best I’ve ever played, a potent mix of thrilling action, aesthetic wonder and quiet humanity that really is second to none. This is must-play material, through and through, and one of the easiest recommendations I’ve had in years.

Reviewed from the Ico / Shadow of the Colossus Collection, released September of this year for Playstation 3, and available for purchase through Amazon.com. The original Playstation 2 edition is also still available.

Mysterious Island

November 15th, 2011 | article by | 2 Comments »
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Year: 1961  Company: Columbia Pictures   Runtime: 101′
Director: Cy Endfield   Writers: John Prebble, Daniel B. Ullman, Crane Wilbur
Music: Bernard Herrmann   Cinematography: Wilkie Cooper
Cast: Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan, Gary Merrill,
Herbert Lom, Beth Rogan, Percy Herbert, Dan Jackson
Disc company: Twilight Time   Video: 1080p 1.66:1   Audio: DTS HD-MA 5.1 and 1.0 English
Subtitles: English SDH   Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 11/08/2011
Mysterious Island is available for purchase exclusively through ScreenArchives.com
The Wtf-Film Guide to Essential Blu-ray is the record of one man’s eclectic journey to uncover the very best of the weird and wonderful that Blu-ray has to offer. The special effects of Ray Harryhausen had to make it onto our list sooner or later, and we’re pleased as punch that it’s the former.

1961′s Mysterious Island begins with one of the great scenes of fantasy-adventure cinema. Imprisoned by Confederate forces in the midst of the Siege of Richmond near the end of the Civil War, Union Captain Cyrus Harding and his underlings, freed slave Corporal Neb and the cowardly Herbert Brown, decide to make a daring escape by the unlikely means of an observation balloon. With Union war correspondent Gideon Spillet and Confederate operator Pencroft in tow the men escape their cell and commandeer the balloon, only to launch themselves into the midst of ‘the greatest storm in American history’. Aloft for days and trapped on a steady course Westward, the escapees are savaged by weather and circumstance until the balloon itself finally gives way, ripping under the pressure of gale-force winds and plunging its crew towards the tumultuous Pacific and a mysterious, uncharted speck of land.

Buoyed by the descending bass and percussive clash of one of Bernard Herrmann’s finest fantasy scores, I remember thinking that this sequence was the most suspenseful, thrilling thing I had ever seen when I first chanced upon the film as a young child. The idea of these men, casting themselves out into the elements toward some unknown, foreboding locale, was harrowing stuff, and as their epic adventure unfolded I was filled with dread excitement. As they dangled from the balloon’s rigging over a seething sea I wondered with fatal curiosity, how would they survive, and who among them? And what if they did make it to that strange island. What then?

Of course Captain Harding and his rag-tag band of castaways do make it to the island, and what follows is a potent mix of survival adventure, science fiction and fantasy that thrills me just as much today as it ever has. Mysterious Island may follow the Vernian adventure on which it is based with only a middling accuracy, condensing and consolidating its events in an economical fashion and taking some pretty judicious liberties with it along the way, but it’s tough to complain when such diversions include the lovely Beth Rogan and her abbreviated lace-up goatskin dress (the height of Victorian fashion, I’m told). Oddly enough it’s one of the film’s many deviations from source that has gone on to make the film so beloved as it is – a sci-fi plot thread that could almost be of Bert I. Gordon’s invention, but which is elevated to the level of pulp genius under the creative auspices of effects wizard Ray Harryhausen – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Though with some obvious variation, Mysterious Island actually follows the basic circumstances of Verne’s story quite faithfully. Captain Harding and his fellows find themselves castaways on an uninhabited volcanic island, and are forced to allay those philosophical differences that plagued them in the civilized world so that they might join forces to survive. Through human ingenuity the five manage to scrounge together a rather satisfying existence, feasting on the island’s often bizarre fauna and taking up permanent residence in a comfortable cliff-side cave they call ‘Granite House’. Along the way they are aided by unlikely coincidences, like the discovery of a trunk loaded with supplies – tools, weapons, and even a copy of The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. After a brief tangle with cutthroat pirates ends in the inexplicable destruction of the pirate vessel the source of the coincidences is revealed. The island is the home port of none other than Captain Nemo, who was thought lost in a maelstrom some years before. With his submarine Nautilus inoperable Nemo was forced to continue his mission for global peace from the confines of the island and its surrounding waters, stalling his terrorist action against the world’s military fleets in favor of eradicating of the root causes of human strife through scientific invention.

Though ostensibly escapist adventure, there are some underlying themes in Mysterious Island that, though largely ignored today, must have held broad appeal in a time of Cold War and civil rights unrest. Nary half a decade after Rosa Parks and Brown v. Board of Education Mysterious Island prominently features an African American (a freed slave fighting for the Union, no less) with the same rights and privileges as his white peers – a fixture of Verne’s novel granted a newfound timeliness in the film adaptation. Indeed, the screenplay by John Prebble, Daniel B. Ullman and Crane Wilbur also simplifies the politics of the Civil War, purposefully conflating its noble struggle to free men with the contemporary Civil Rights Movement. In the context of an ongoing Cold War, Mysterious Island offers the hope of reconciliation among political ideologies by virtue of the relationship between Captain Harding and Confederate soldier Pencroft, each of whom begin the film as a prisoner of the other side only to set aside their philosophical differences for a greater good. So, too, does the character of Nemo offer hope, in converting a destructive weapon (the submarine Nautilus) into a tool for peace – if contemporary science could create the atomic and hydrogen bombs that threatened the world, then perhaps it had the power to save the world from them as well.

All that said, Mysterious Island is still ostensibly an escapist adventure with overtones of fantasy and science fiction, and that which lends it thematic weight also serves as a catalyst for some of its most exciting moments. Captain Nemo’s efforts to eradicate human suffering through science have left his island teeming with an assortment of gigantic flora and fauna, from harmless overgrown plants and oysters to the giant crabs, honeybees and flightless birds that threaten the existence of Harding and his castaways. It’s a plot thread concocted purely to take advantage of the talents of effects artisan Harryhausen, who had pretty perfected his stop motion process (now touted as Dynamation) with the color spectacle The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. By 1961 Harryhausen was at the top of his game, precisely blending live-action back and foreground plates with his meticulously crafted stop motion armatures to create spectacular special effects scenes that even the more obscenely budgeted epics of the time couldn’t match.

In Mysterious Island his work feels like a response to the big bug pictures that had been so popular in the years just prior, with Harryhausen answering the poor travelling matte grasshoppers of Beginning of the End and the monolithic composited arachnid of Tarantula! with a few gigantic creepy crawlies of his own. In the film’s most famous sequence, stills of which populate no end of children’s monster books, Harding and his crew are forced to do battle with an enormous land crab – a scene which concludes with the castaways dining on the beast after it falls into a hot spring. Truer to the giant bug pedigree are a host of car-sized honeybees, which trap young heartthrob Michael Callan and hottie Beth Rogan in the mother of all honeycombs. Later on Harryhausen takes a moment to reference both Verne’s giant squid and his own past work, as a walk on the sea floor leads into a life-and-death struggle with a colossal chambered nautilus. More than just an homage to the sensational squid attack from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, itself entering film history in Disney’s spectacular adaptation, the creature design closely resembles that of one of Harryhausen’s own creations – the city-smashing cepholapod of 1955′s It Came From Beneath the Sea.

Aside from Harryhausen’s considerable talents, Mysterious Island also serves as a colorful showcase for all manner of practical visual effects techniques. Filmed partly on gorgeous coastal Spanish locations and partly on the sound stages of England’s Shepperton Studios, Mysterious Island bridges the considerable gaps between A and B and expands its fictional locale with exceptional matte paintings, composite and miniature work. Indeed, the epic balloon escape that so thrilled me as a child is accomplished through a succession of opticals and process shots, the transparency of which do nothing to impede the experience. With modern expectations in mind there is the temptation to label such vintage effects methods as crude or unrealistic, but as I grow older I become more acutely aware of just how overrated realism is in cinema – especially with regards to such overtly fictional stuff as this. While there’s a concerted effort by the technicians to ensure that the various mattes and miniatures match to the scale sets and locations the effects themselves are more suggestive than literal, the cinematic equivalent of the illustrated plates published in the stories and novels that came before. As such I’d suggest that those tempted to question the methods by which human conflicts with gigantic arthropods and impossible transcontinental balloon trips are related are perhaps missing the point of the experience, and would do well to occupy their time elsewhere.

For my money Mysterious Island is fantastic, beautiful stuff, and a pitch-perfect example of the lost art of fantasy filmmaking as it once was. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full fifty years since it originally premiered, but the taught direction of Cy Endfield (Sands of the Kalahari, Zulu) and a screenplay that’s both wittier and more substantial than I remember have certainly helped it to age more gracefully than it might have otherwise. Much as the novel from which it was (freely) adapted has become a classic of literature, Mysterious Island deserves its place as classic of cinema escapism. For those keen on the rousing genre excursions of old it’s an absolute must-see.

Just in time to celebrate the film’s fiftieth anniversary, Mysterious Island makes its Blu-ray debut courtesy of independent collector’s label Twilight Time (in conjunction with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) in a limited run of only 3000. This arrangement won’t be to everyone’s taste, particularly in that it means a high retail price point, a contractually limited slate of extras, and venue exclusivity (it can only be officially had through Screen Archives Entertainment), but the plain fact of that matter is that licensor Sony, after the marginal enthusiasm their previous Harryhausen Blu-rays inspired, had no great interest in releasing this film to Blu-ray themselves. While I’m sure their agreement leaves Sony open to releasing the film in the future, if they should so desire, those wanting Mysterious Island on Blu-ray now (and I’m among them) will find this Twilight Time release to be their only option. Fortunately it’s a good one!

There are those who may worry that Twilight Time have been left to their own devices with regards to the transfers they’re working from, but that’s happily not the case. They’ve instead been granted access to the latest studio masters of the titles they’ve licensed. In the case of Mysterious Island that means a comprehensive 50th anniversary restoration courtesy of Sony’s second-to-none archive restoration team. There is always talk of restorations bringing films back to their original luster, but effort here really goes beyond the call of duty. I can state unequivocally that Mysterious Island has never looked so good as it does on this disc, ever, and that fans of these colorful Harryhausen effects vehicles are in for a downright exhilarating experience.

Past editions of Mysterious Island have all suffered from a variety of damage, from flicker and general aging of the elements to the specks, flecks, dust and scratches that were baked right into the film’s extensive optical printing effects from the start. I know my comparison below is not ideal – I’m forced to rely on a compressed archival copy of the 2002 DVD, having seemingly lost my original – but it does reveal the obsessive extent to which the restorers have gone to remedy the issue of print damage. The third comparison set shows one of the film’s many optical effects, one which, like the rest, was possessed of a good deal of blemishes and imperfections from the start. You’ll note that in the new restoration practically every hint of damage has been successfully removed. Such is the case even with the classic Dynamation stop motion sequences, as evidenced by the final comparison set. Specks and blemishes present in the original back projection and rephotographed during the Dynamation process have been carefully removed, leaving the footage looking even crisper and cleaner than it was when originally produced. That isn’t to say that there’s absolutely no damage to be found in this new restoration of Mysterious Island, which does present with some minor white speckling at times, but the improvements in this regard are striking.

More impressive still is the attention paid to the film’s rich and at times eccentric color design, from the white sands and pure blue skies of the coastal Spanish locations to the fantastical studio interiors, punctuated with unreal shades of yellow, red, blue and green. Whether the result of the telecine process or of fading of the elements themselves, the 2002 DVD edition had some color shifting that resulted in an overly yellow appearance. Comparison set two shows perhaps the most obvious and widest breadth of improvement. Everything from Spillet’s light white undershirt to background rock, foliage, and water has lost its yellow tinge, resulting in purer shades of white, grey, green, and so on, while flesh tones have shifted from the overly orange hues of the DVD into more natural territory. Contrast is similarly improved, with what had before been a comparatively flat image alive with rich, deep blacks and more pronounced highlights (see the third comparison set again). The sum experience of the color restoration here is utterly breathtaking, with ace cinematographer Wilkie Cooper’s dynamic photography more vividly represented than ever. Other aspects of the restoration improve in a manner more typical to these comparisons between standard and high definition. Detail takes a healthy bump upwards, bolstered by the healthier contrast and increased resolution, and the at times considerable grain inherent to the original production is blessedly retained.

Beyond the source restoration, Twilight Time’s Blu-ray is a robust technical specimen as well. The 1.66:1 1080p image is spread comfortably over a dual layer BD50, with the feature plus audio taking up more than 30 GB of space on disc. The image is AVC-encoded with a strong average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps, and the encode frequently lazes about in the upper 30s. You’ll have to look long and hard to find any technical deficiencies in the image, as Twilight Time have ensured that the film receives a very strong presentation. Thanks to its meticulous restoration and beefy technical specs Mysterious Island may well be the strongest a Harryhausen film has appeared yet on Blu-ray.

HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command line tool at a quality setting of 95%. The three DVD screenshots are sourced from my compressed archive copy of Columbia Tristar’s DVD from 2002 (my original disc is somehow missing in action – sorry!), and were captured in .png format in VLC, upconverted to 1920×1080 and saved as .png in GIMP, then compressed to .jpg using the same method as for the HD screenshots.
DVD | Blu-ray

More Blu-ray Screenshots:

While it may be the best looking, Mysterious Island is inarguably the best sounding of the Harryhausen films currently available on the format. The primary track for the feature is a new, restored 5.1 surround mix presented in lossless DTS-HD MA at an average bitrate of around 3 and half Mbps. I’m generally not much a fan of these 5.1 remixes, but this track is a stunner, with more breadth and depth of auditory potential than anything that’s come before – none of that even comes close! The foley work remains consistent with the original monophonic recording, never sounding out of place for a film of this vintage, and all of the dialogue and effects come across crisply and cleanly. The biggest beneficiary of the bump to 5.1 DTS-HD MA, however, is Bernard Herrmann’s tremendous score – for my money the best of the four he composed for Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen. The opening theme, repeated throughout with some variation, blew my mind when I first saw Mysterious Island as a child, and no other viewing of the film has touched that nostalgic experience until now. As Herrmann’s score clashed forth over the classic Columbia logo I felt a chill run down my spine – terrific stuff. With purists in mind Twilight Time have also preserved the originally monophonic recording courtesy a lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0 track. Though it obviously loses the LFE of its 5.1 counterpart, which is particularly notable in the music department, this restored track still sounds very good, and is well in advance of the 2002 DVD. Whether you’re fond of original recordings or surround remixes, Twilight Time has you covered. They’ve even included a set of optional English SDH subtitles, leaving me no room to complain.

As noted earlier, Twilight Time are contractually obligated with regards to the supplements they can provide, so Mysterious Island is predictably limited in that department. In terms of complementing video the disc presents both the original theatrical trailer and an imaginatively bizarre 1-minute television spot, each of which are presented in native 1080p AVC encodes (at 1.66:1 and pillarboxed 4:3 respectively) with lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0 audio. The only other extra is a big one, an isolated original score track (in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo!) that accompanies the feature. There’s an interesting mix here, with some cues accompanied by sound effects (a la the old Laserdisc edition) and others not. For its part the music here sounds terrific, and those who don’t already own the soundtrack will find much to love here. My one complaint is that the isolated score only appears to be accessible from the disc’s main menu (there is no pop-up that I could find), and plays as a separate timeline from which the audio for the film is likewise inaccessible. Small potatoes, but some may find it bothersome. The package is accompanied by a lovely booklet of film stills and liner notes (all too rare a thing these days) by Julie Kirgo, and my order arrived with a Mysterious Island refrigerator magnet (which replicates the attractive cover art for this release) as well.

There has been some grumbling about the rise of short run ’boutique’ labels like Twilight Time and Olive Films in the home video market, much of it arising from the perceived high price of their releases. In my mind that’s just the cost of doing this sort of business, and if Warner can charge $20 a pop for burned DVD-R of their own catalogue titles then $34.95 for an independently produced limited run Blu-ray of a big-studio title like Mysterious Island seems fair enough. I’ve put my money where my mouth is in this case, happily shelling out the nearly $40 it cost to put a copy on my shelf even though I knew I had a screener en route. It’s a matter of principle. I want to support those companies that release the movies I love, especially when they’re doing it well, and so long as Twilight Time continues to release them so proficiently as they have here I’ll have their back all the way. Now, if they can just find their way to The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and The First Men in the Moon…

in conclusion
Film: Excellent  Video: Excellent  Audio: Excellent
Supplements: Isolated Bernard Herrmann score track, Theatrical Trailer, Television Spot
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case with booklet of liner notes.
Mysterious Island is available for purchase exclusively through ScreenArchives.com

Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame

June 30th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Di Renjie
Year: 2010    Runtime: 124′  Director: Tsui Hark
Writers: Chen Kuo-Fu, Chang Chia-Lu  Cinematography: Parkie Chan Chor-Keung, Chan Chi-Ying
Music: Peter Kam Pau-Tat   Cast: Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Li Bing-Bing, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Deng Chao,
Carina Lau Ka-Ling, Richard Ng Yiu-Hon, Teddy Robin Kwan

China in the 7th Century, during the Tang Dynasty. To commemorate her crowning as the first (and, unfortunately, last) Empress of China, Wu Zetian (Carina Lau) has commissioned the building of an unpleasantly gigantic statue of the Buddha pretty much next to her palace grounds. Her rather dictatorial policies have left the Empress with a lot of enemies, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise when trouble hits her construction project.

Two of the people responsible for the building of the Godzilla-large statue are killed. More surprising than the fact of their death is the way the men die – spontaneous combustion. The deaths may very well have been caused by the victims’ moving of some magical pieces of script hanging inside of the statue, but the Empress is only prone to superstition when it suits her, and stays sceptical. After her chief chaplain (as the not exactly trustworthy subtitles call him) visits her in form of a talking deer and mutters an imprecise prophecy, the Empress decides that the stars ask her to put the mystery into the hands of Judge Dee (Andy Lau).

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Hair of the Beast

March 4th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Le Poil De La Bête
Year: 2010    Runtime: 92′   Director: Philippe Gagnon
Writer: Pierre Daudelin, Stephane J. Bureau  Cinematography: Steve Asselin  Music: Martin Roy, Alexis Le May
Cast: Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge, Viviane Audet, Gilles Renaud, Patrice Robitaille, Antoine Bertrand

Nouvelle France, 1665. The charming, if unwashed, rogue and professional seducer of women Joseph Cote (Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge), has worked his charm on the wrong girl this time, and has been sentenced to be hanged. Using his mildly impressive wit, Joseph manages to escape from his jail cell and flees into the barely settled lands outside of Quebec. On his way, he finds the rather shredded corpse of a Jesuit priest, and decides to take what’s left of the dead man’s clothes and belongings; surely, as a priest he will have a much easier life getting around. In his new priestly persona, Joseph is soon enough attacked by something large, fast and hairy that knocks him out. He is rescued by a farmer who takes him into the small settlement he’s living in – and by “small”, I really mean small. Two large-ish huts, one church and a slightly better built house for the noble owner of these lands – who is off in Quebec right now acquiring potential brides for his sons and servants - a walk through the woods away, are all the place has to offer.

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The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec

December 17th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2010   Runtime: 107′   Director: Luc Besson
Writer: Luc Besson   Music: Eric Serra   Cinematography: Thierry Arbogast
Cast: Louise Bourgoin, Jacky Nercessian, Mathieu Amalric,
Gilles Lelouche, Philippe Nahon, Jean-Paul Rouve

Journalist and adventurer Adele Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin) is adventuring in Egypt. The young woman is attempting to steal the mummy of Patmosis, the personal physician of Ramses II. Adele’s not in it for money or fame, though. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Adele is trying to acquire Patmosis so that her friend, the elderly – and nutty – professor Esperandieu (Jacky Nercessian) can revive the dead guy with his enormous mind powers. The newly alive Patmosis, or so Adele hopes, will then use the superior medical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians to cure her sister, who has been lying in a waking coma ever since a very unfortunate tennis/hatpin accident (for which Adele feels guilty) five years ago. Acquiring the mummy needs all of Adele’s (also quite enormous) powers of sarcasm and adventuring, but evading a nasty French government agent and gaining possession of the dead doctor is only the beginning of what the young writer will have to do to save her sister.

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Avatar

December 2nd, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2009   Company: 20th Century Fox   Runtime: 162′ / 171′ / 178′
Director: James Cameron   Writer: James Cameron   Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Music: James Horner  Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver,
Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel Moore, Wes Studi
Disc company: 20th Century Fox   Video: 1080p 1.78:1    Audio: DTS-HD Master 5.1 English,
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish), Dolby Digital 2.0 English
(descriptive audio)    Subtitles: English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Disc: Dual Layer BD50   Release Date: 04/22/2010   Product link: Amazon.com

To say that I didn’t see Avatar when it was in its original theatrical run (or its more recent re-release) is an understatement – I’ve avoided it outright until today.  Of the billions upon billions of dollars it has reaped in ticket receipts and home video sales not a single penny is mine, something of which I remain quite pleased.  It’s not that I harbor a particular hatred for James Cameron, repulsed as I may have been by the melodrama of his Titanic.  It’s not that the idea of an epic special effects extravaganza didn’t appeal to me – it does.  It’s the cultural phenomenon of Avatar, the millions of people flocking to see it around the world and the hundreds of critics singing its praises, from which I wish to remain distant.

I imagine that, had I seen Avatar in the midst of that sensation, my opinion of it would have been contrarian by principle alone.  So I’ve waited.  Now, almost a year after its initial run began and with two home video releases behind it, it’s safe to say that whatever unjustified negativity the film’s success fostered within me has subsided, and I can finally be unbiased – or as unbiased as one can be about something so saturated as Avatar.  At least the cell phone cross-promotions seem to be over…

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Flash Gordon

July 28th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: Universal Pictures
year: 1980
runtime: 111′
director: Mike Hodges
cast: Sam Jones, Melody Anderson,
Topol, Max Von Sydow,
Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed,
Omella Muti, Peter Wyngarde
writers: Lorenzo Semple Jr.
and Michael Allin
cinematography: Gilbert Taylor
music: Queen
and Howard Blake (orchestral)
Order this disc from Amazon.com

Plot: Football superstar Flash Gordon (Sam Jones) and journalist Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) are swept to the world of Mongo by overzealous scientist Dr. Zarkov (Topol) to stop evil Emperor Ming’s (Max von Sydow) fiendish plot to smash the Earth to atoms.

Based on the eponymous comic by Alex Raymond and owing a considerable debt to the 1936 serial starring Buster Crabbe, this big budget flop from producer Dino De Laurentiis is a picture with a bit of an identity crisis. Earnestly directed by Mike Hodges from a knowingly camp screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Batman: The Movie), Flash Gordon never quite makes up its mind as to which it would prefer to be, though that doesn’t keep it from being a lot of fun along the way. Bolstered by outlandish art deco-inspired production design by Danilo Donati (Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom) and a raucous rock score by Queen, the film has become something of a cult classic in the thirty years since its original release and remains an extravagantly ludicrous experience unto itself.

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The Inglorious Bastards

July 25th, 2010 | article by | 2 Comments »
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a.k.a. Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato
film rating:
disc rating:
company: Films Concorde
year: 1978
runtime: 99′
director: Enzo G. Castellari
cast: Bo Svenson, Fred Williamson,
Peter Hooten, Michael Pergolani
disc company: Severin Films
release date: July 28, 2009
retail price: $34.95
disc info: Region Free / Dual Layer BD50
video: 1080p / color / 1.83:1
subtitles: English [incidental dialogue only]
audio: English [Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0]
Order this disc from Amazon.com
reviewed from a screener provided
by Severin Films LLC

A motley band of five Allied soldiers on their way to court martials and executions for a variety of offenses (from killing fellow officers to desertion to using military property to conduct a long distance relationship) are loosed into Nazi-occupied France circa 1944 after their convoy is ambushed.  With certain death facing them from either side the group decides to head for neutral Switzerland until the war is over.  But they get into things way over their heads when they accidentally kill a bunch of Allies on a top-secret mission to confiscate the experimental guidance system for a new V2 rocket…

I wasn’t overly infatuated with this Enzo G. Castellari (High Crime, The Last Shark) actioner when I first saw it [courtesy of Severin Films' 3 disc DVD release from last year], but I have to admit that it has grown on me since.  As far as pulp escapisms about cadres of no-good punks leaving their bullet-riddled marks on fascist occupational forces go, it actually works quite well.

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The Lost Skeleton Returns Again

July 23rd, 2010 | article by | 4 Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: Bantam Street
year: 2009
runtime: 93′
director: Larry Blamire
cast: Frank Dietz, H. M. Wynant,
Brian Howe, Christine Romeo,
Kevin Quinn, Fay Masterson,
Robert Deveau, Daniel Roebuck,
Larry Blamire, Susan McConnell
writer: Larry Blamire
cinematography: Anthony J. Rickert-Epstein
music: John W. Morgan
and William T. Stromberg
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

Plot: Two bands of adventurers, one good, one bad, and one including a man possessed by a living skull, head into the Valley of the Monsters on the hunt for Geranium, a rare element that will . . . something . . .

Writer, director and actor Larry Blamire has made something of a name for himself in cult film circles for his low budget send-ups of the B-grade science fiction of old, and is best known for the prequel to this film – 2004’s The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. Picked up and released through Sony Pictures, The Lost Skeleton… proved pretty successful for a no-bugdet niche production with limited appeal beyond its target audience of bad cinema aficionados. A sequel seemed inevitable and, after the similarly themed 2007 effort Trail of the Screaming Forehead, the inevitable came to pass.

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Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land (1952)

July 12th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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The eighth entry in Sam Katzman’s poverty row Jungle Jim series is one of the most amusing, pitting Johnny Weismuller (49 at the time) and an attractive new anthropologist friend against greedy ivory hunters. The nonsense plot has the ivory hunters contracting Zulu tribesmen (all white) to slaughter stock footage elephants as they cross through a forbidden land of werewolf-like giant people (more make-up by Clay Campbell, The Werewolf), and features a tour-de-force wrestling match between Weismuller and a puppet hippopotamus.

Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land was the second in the series to be directed by Lew Landers, working from a script by Samuel Newman (of The Giant Claw fame). Aside from Weismuller, the film stars Angela Green (The Cosmic Man), Jean Willes (The Man Who Turned to Stone), Katzman regular George Eldredge and Tamba, the troublesome chimpanzee. The credits are prototypical of the series, right down to the fonts utilized, and few of the films would deviate from the format.


Gamera vs. Barugon

June 19th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Daikaiju Ketto: Gamera tai Barugon
(lit. Giant Monster Duel: Gamera Against Barugon)
film rating:
disc rating:
company: Daiei Motion Picture Co.
year: 1966
runtime: 100′
director: Shigeo Tanaka
cast: Kojiro Hongo, Kyoko Enami,
Koji Fujiyama, Takuya Fujioka,
Yuzo Hayakawa, Akira Natsuki,
Yoshiro Kitahara, Bontaro Miake
writers: Nisan Takahashi
cinematography: Michio Takahashi
music: Chuji Kinoshita
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory LLC
Order this film from Amazon.com

Gamera vs. Barugon is slated for release on special edition DVD from Shout! Factory on July 6th, and is available for pre-order through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Anxious to capitalize on the unexpected success of 1965′s Gamera, the Giant Monster, Daiei managed to push a bigger budgeted sequel into theaters less than six months after the fact (at the same time slating the production of their period monster trilogy Daimajin, the first of which premiered alongside this film).  Shot in ‘Scope and color by veteran director Shigeo Tanaka (The Great Wall) with …the Giant Monster director Noriaki Yuasa in charge of special effects, Gamera vs. Barugon is both bigger and bolder than its predecessor, and quite the serious affair in spite of the ludicrous monster antics.

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When Time Ran Out . . .

April 15th, 2010 | article by | 2 Comments »
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rating:
company: Warner Bros. and
International Cinema Corp.
year: 1980
runtime: 109′
country: United States
director: James Goldstone
cast: Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset,
William Holden, Edward Albert,
Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine,
James Franciscus, Burgess Meredith,
Pat Morita, John Consodine
writers: Carl Foreman and
Stirling Siliphant (from a novel by
Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts)
cinematographer: Fred J. Koenekamp
music: Lalo Schifrin
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Warner Bros. must have felt plenty gipped after successful film and television producer Irwin Allen jumped ship at 20th Century Fox and began making films under their banner.  Allen’s seminal disaster efforts The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno had grossed $200 million collectively just a few years prior, giving Warner plenty of reason to sink million after million into new Allen productions.  Allen was first put to work in the television market, where he conceived a host of derivative suspense pictures like Flood! and Cave In!, most of whose titles ended in exclamation points.  By the time Allen entered the big-budget world of theatrical pictures again things had changed.  The disaster craze had run its course, more or less, and the American public was weary of seeing the same old tropes paraded before their eyes.

1978′s The Swarm would prove Allen’s first epic failure, earning back less than half of its estimated budget of $21 million.  His big comeback feature Beyond the Poseidon Adventure is said to have done worse still, though this reviewer had no luck hunting down its box office returns.  Beyond was universally derided by critics and rejected by audiences, lasting a mere two weeks in general release.  1980′s When Time Ran Out . . . would prove to be Allen’s final chance at luring audiences back to his increasingly outdated brand, his last big swing at melding stars, spectacle, and soap opera dramatics into box office gold.  Even after The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, I doubt anyone could have imagined just how terrible an idea this one was.

Held together by little more than contractual obligations, When Time Ran Out . . . stars The Towering inferno alumni Paul Newman and William Holden (Sabrina) in ostensibly the same roles (inversely, the rich property owner and the doom-sayer), and Jacqueline Bisset (Under the Volcano), who helped usher in the American disaster craze with 1970′s Airport.  The list of unfortunately involved name talent goes on and on, with the likes of Burgess Meredith (Of Mice and Men), Ernest Borgnine (Emperor of the North), Red Buttons (The Poseidon Adventure), James Franciscus, Edward Albert, Pat Morita, and on . . . and on . . . and on . . .  Everyone looks uncomfortable to be in the picture at all, though they trudge on professionally all the same.  Meredith seems particularly perturbed, having been granted a cheap plot contrivance (he’s a high wire artist – that won’t figure into things later . . . ) instead of a role.

Narratively, When Time Ran Out . . . is pretty sorry stuff.  The script, by otherwise exceptional writers Stirling Silliphant (Village of the Damned, In the Heat of the Night) and Carl Foreman (The Bridge on the River Kwai, High Noon), follows the usual Allen tropes.  A huge cast of everyday people is accumulated in a luxury accommodation, in this case a newly opened resort hotel on an island, threatened with ongoing disaster, in this case a volcanic eruption, and forced on a dangerous trek to safety, in this case the other side of the island.  The disaster builds in the usual way, with the obvious ominous portents of danger being ignored by those in charge.  Par for the course, most of the good guys reach salvation while the baddies (and most of the supporting players) meet their untimely ends.

The traditional Irwin Allen walk of doom, a staple of his brand since 1960′s The Lost World and possibly before, feels particularly tired here, with two unnecessarily lengthy man-on-ledge set pieces tasked with the bulk of the suspense-ratcheting.  The second of these, in which the intrepid survivors contend with a slowly crumbling foot bridge suspended over a river of bubbling lava (cue Meredith and his high-wire act), drags on for the better part of twenty minutes!  Lalo Schifrin (Enter the Dragon, Dirty Harry) is particularly deserving of audience sympathies here, forced to compose some 17 minutes of endless suspense cues to keep the illusion of action going.

Warner, undoubtedly disappointed by then with Allen’s output under their name, seems to have had the decency not to spend more than was absolutely necessary to bring When Time Ran Out . . . to its unfortunate fruition.  It’s clear that after the performers’ salaries and basics of production were covered, the special effects crew was left with peanuts to work with.  The realization of the volcano is, frankly, horrid, amounting to a single matte for daytime shots and uninspired stock footage and process work otherwise.  There is a huge disconnect between the purported threat of the volcano and the reality on screen, the fine Hawaiian locations dispensed with in favor of stuffy and unconvincing studio rigs for the suspense setups.  Poor Newman (“The lava is headed this way . . .”) is gifted the dubious honor of convincing audiences of the danger (“The lava is still headed this way . . .”) as visuals of the slowly approaching molten death fail again and again to materialize.

Then there is the writing for the volcano, which is so pointed in its actions that it should be credited as a character all its own.  Particularly noteworthy are the lava bombs erupting out of it, all of which are aimed (occasionally in multiples of three) squarely at James Franciscus (the requisite baddie, who is greedy and cheats on his girlfriend and, thusly, deserves to die) and the resort hotel under his command.  The lava bombs themselves are pretty inconsistent, causing only minor damage while the heroes are around and sending the hotel up in a massive fireball once they’re safely away.  The realism of things is highly questionable even before the eruption, however.  So-called scientists operate an observatory on the precipitous rim of the volcano their studying, and go so far as to lower a glass-bottomed volcano-vator directly into it just so Paul Newman can get a peak.  Damn the seismographs, it sure looks like it’s acting up . . .

What all of this amounts to is a horrible film that easily ranks as one of the worst of the entire disaster cycle and the biggest box office no-go of Irwin Allen’s career (regaining only $1.7 million of it $20 million budget in general release).  It’s also my favorite of Allen’s films, ludicrous in the extreme and existing at a level of sublime hilarity that Roland Emmerich can only aspire to.  2012 may have whole continents ripping themselves gloriously apart, but where are the men falling sideways into library footage of lava pits just because a plot contrivance necessitates that they stand on the skids of a helicopter while it flies directly over the eruption?  When Time Ran Out . . . is one of the best inadvertent spoofs of its own genre ever devised, a film that would have been brilliant if intentional and is just too fantastically stupid to be ignored.

Warner Brothers was kind enough to keep When Time Ran Out . . . from DVD circulation until after star Paul Newman (who listed it as the only picture he regretted when interviewed by Larry King in 1998) passed late in 2008, but also greedy enough to use his namesake as a means of moving more product.  When Time Ran Out . . . was released as part of the Paul Newman Film Series in February of last year.  The disc is absolutely bare bones, lacking even a chapter selection menu, and features only the shorter theatrical cut (109′) of the film (a 141′ cut was released to VHS previously, for those who want more time to run out of).  Without its big-name star this would probably have ended up a part of Warner’s Archive Collection, alongside Irwin Allen’s made-for-TV. disaster films.  The transfer is a nice progressive job from elements in great condition.  There’s very light damage throughout, more evident in the cheap process shots, but color, detail, and contrast are all quite nice.  Frankly this looks far better than it probably should – the Fred J. Koenekamp (The Amityville Horror, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) cinematography is one of the only genuinely good things about the film.  Audio is a simple and clear monophonic track. Subtitles are available in English SDH or French.

Just one of the many top-notch effects that await you in 'When Time Ran Out . . ."

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2012

December 16th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postercompany: Columbia Pictures
year: 2009
runtime: 158′
country: United States
director: Roland Emmerich
cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet,
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton,
Oliver Platt, Thomas McCarthy,
Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover
writers: Roland Emmerich
and Harald Kloser
cinematographer: Dean Semler
out in wide release

Warning: This article probably contains some spoilers.


Plot: An increase in solar activity coupled with a rare galactic alignment showers Earth with neutrinos, heating up the core of the planet and causing its crust (and its magnetic poles) to catastrophically shift.  The world’s governments work together to preserve some semblance of humanity.

Roland Emmerich seems to have the dubious title of reigning king of the contemporary disaster genre, in spite of having only directed a few films on the subject.  His penchant for destruction on a global scale reaches dizzyingly absurd new heights in 2012, coupling a near bottomless production budget with a script that wouldn’t pass muster with a When Time Ran Out-era Irwin Allen with consistently hilarious and occasionally awe-inspiring results.

The narrative plays like a lopsided retread of the 1951 classic When Worlds Collide, only with pesky subatomic particles in the place of invading heavenly bodies.  Whereas the focus of that film was on the vast public works project to construct the humanity-saving space ark, 2012 zeros in on the disaster early and often – the ground quakes and oceans rise while familiar edifices of civilization crumble into oblivion.

Throughout Emmerich strives to retain a sense of immediacy, with the action revolving primarily about a broken family (Cusak, Peet, and McCarthy as a father, mother, and stepfather, with two preteen kids along for good measure) and their journey to save themselves.  That the father, a part-time chauffeur for a rich Russian and a full-time writer, has penned and published an under-appreciated apocalyptic science fiction novel with an optimistic conclusion ensures us that all the principle players will make it through just fine.  The catastrophe even offers up an opportunity to put Cusack and Peet’s marriage back on track, offing step-dad as soon as it’s expedient to the plot.

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Providing a secondary view on things is a government scientist (Ejiofor) with a kind heart an eye for the President’s daughter (Thandie Newton).  We also, briefly, glimpse things from the prospective of the President himself (an unlikely Danny Glover), himself lost when the USS John F. Kennedy comes tearing across the lawn of the White House.  Woody Harrelson even pops up in a minor but important supporting role as a crackpot radio host who just happens to know where Cusack and co. can find safety.

Most of 2012‘s drama falls pretty flat, from the forumlaic broken-family fantasy (the wife really still loves her old husband in spite of having remarried) to a half dozen or so people who realize too late that family ties are all that matter.  Characters plainly aren’t, with the accomplished cast struggling to provide them with any dimensionality at all, and most ultimately wind up as fodder for the apocalypse.  Here Emmerich presents with a certain cruelty, allowing numerous individuals to think they’ve reached salvation only to have the tables immediately turn on them.

In fact, there’s a nasty streak running through much of the destruction on display in 2012.  Emmerich takes obvious glee in plunging millions, even billions of people to their assorted dooms, including a pair of old ladies he sends crashing head-first into a wall for the minor sin of being in front of our escaping heroes.  Worse, he seems to want things both ways – tugging at our heartstrings with sad music and teary close-ups between shots of people trying to survive in torrents of debris before widening his scope so that we might revel in the shear spectacle of the thing.  It’s an uneasy combination, and one Emmerich isn’t nearly competent enough to pull off.  He’d have been better off forgetting such obvious attempts at garnering audience sympathy and just presenting his thrill-ride apocalypse for what it is – pure exploitation.

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Emmerich also seems to have a particular bent against the rich and powerful, apparently having realized that public opinion of both is scraping the bottom of the barrel in this time of recession.  The sentiment is no different than in the George Pal classic 2012 so obviously emulates.  The rich are condemned just for being so, even though the literal arks that save whatever is left of mankind are financed in large part by private backers.  That age-old government conspiracy subplot also rears its ugly head, and it takes our kind-hearted scientist to convince world leaders (all of them!) that they should do the right thing and save as many people as they can.

While the drama simmers at a low level throughout the rest of the narrative twists itself into impossible knots of contrivances.  We see not one, but three last-minute edge-of-your-seat plane takeoffs of the Independence Day variety, the outrunning of a pyroclastic flow by an RV, and even the shifting of an entire continent some thousands of miles just so our family can make it there reasonably unscathed.  The crowining absurd moment comes at the end, when an ark is threatened by a collision with a mountain.  What mountain, you ask?  Why Everest, of course!  In a film like this, no lesser peak will do.

I could gripe about this picture all day, but I won’t, because I was so damned entertained in spite of it all.  The expansive CGI work has been credited as “photo-realistic” by some, which is utter baloney, but that doesn’t keep it from being a world of fun just the same – it’s certainly one hell of a cartoon.  2012 explodes Yellowstone, sinks California, and wipes the rest of the world clean with gargantuan tsunamis before it hits the two hour mark.  It may struggle for momentum in the ark-bound final act out of a shear lack of more destroy, but memory of what came before is more than enough to pull one through to the end of things.

For Emmerich the world is obviously not enough (perhaps we’ll get a cataclysm on a galactic scale next go around).  I may lament its furthering of the popularity of the asinine doom-sayer lunacy surrounding the year in question, but I enjoyed 2012 for what it is – the kind of dumb loud entertainment only a hack like Emmerich can get away with (and he has, again, handily).  Art it isn’t, but recommended matinée viewing?  Absolutely.

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The Flame Barrier

November 7th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,

001a.k.a. Beyond the Flame Barrier
company: Gramercy Pictures
year: 1958
runtime: 70′
country: United States
director: Paul Landers
cast: Arthur Franz, Kathleen Crowley,
Robert Brown, Vicente Padula
not on home video

Plot: A scientist goes missing while hunting for a downed satellite in the South American jungle.  His wife, with the help of two surveyors, follows the route of the scientist’s party and discovers that a mysterious force is killing animals and people in the area.  They eventually find the satellite, and the deadly space life brought to Earth with it . . .

This is an odd little amalgamation of exploitation genres – a standard skid-row jungle adventure with an unusual science fiction twist.  The first two thirds of the film are dominated by our three main characters either driving around the California countryside (no real attempt is made to make it look particularly foreign) or wandering through cramped sets filled with jungle foliage.  The traditional issues present themselves – the jeep gets stuck in the mud and the party members are menaced by local wildlife (including a very real snake whose head is manipulated by a rather obvious string).

The men are expectantly rugged know-it-alls who take every opportunity to remind the wife who’s hired them of how difficult and dangerous the trip is going to be.  The wife fights back by being the typical genre woman – wearing a dress to traipse through the jungle, recoiling in terror at the site of anything at all living (iguanas, snakes, tarantulas, etc.), and generally bogging down the pace of the expedition with her sexual inferiority.  While she’s not the worst drawn of 50′s genre women, she’s not much of an improvement over those seen in the likes of FROM HELL IT CAME.

Minimal interest is injected into the human drama thanks to the inclusion of a ramshackle love subplot.  Questions of the wife’s motivations for starting the trip (does she really love her husband or is she just after a hefty inheritance?) go mostly unanswered, though she’s locked in the welcoming arms of Arthur Franz within minutes of discovering her husband is dead.  The love story, if it can be called that, is par for the genre – a weak woman and a bossy man discover they’re meant for each other in the face of some terrible crisis.

It’s the terrible crisis of the picture that really provides the only reason for seeing it.  THE FLAME BARRIER plays on Cold War tensions and the escalating space race, revolving around the failed launch of a satellite (a dead ringer for Sputnik, though larger) and its return to Earth with an ambiguous alien threat in tow.  The menace in this case is of the same enigmatic variety seen in the contemporary Quatermass films and Hammer’s knock-off, X: THE UNKNOWN, though budgetary necessity restrains its threatening blobiness to a cave for the duration.

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The build-up to the revelation of the would-be invader is memorable.  Strange sounds echo through the jungle as the party discovers disconcerting clues: a native chieftan left to die as sacrifice to the gods and skeletons that appear burned.  Eventually live people present with symptoms.  A native shows up covered in strange burns only to erupt in flame moments later, his body reduced to a smoldering skeleton in seconds.  The film is at its most effective while its threat is unknown, and manages some memorable if not terribly shocking images.

The revelation of the alien organism, a static blob of organic matter surrounding the satellite and with the dead scientist stuck inside of it, is a real letdown in comparison.  The nature of its danger to humanity is poorly conceived at best.  Early victims show what appear to be acid burns that cause death quickly, but not immediately, while the deadly electrical field said to surround the blob is shown to disintigrate those who come into contact with it more or less isntantaneously.  Any unease resulting from the revelation that the electrical field is growing at an exponential rate is quickly laid to rest, as our two surveyor heroes discover the solution to the problem a scant few minutes later.  Indeed, the only real danger posed by the blob seems to be to those stupid enough to wander into the cave and touch it, like a test chimpanzee that somehow survived the crash landing of the satellite and, in a asinine display of self sacrifice, one of the surveyors.

THE FLAME BARRIER is typical of the underfunded genre programmers that filled double bills towards the end of the ’50s.  The script, by Pat Fielder [THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD] and George Worthing Yates, recalls the latter’s work on the Bert I. Gordon vehicle WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST from the same year but is nowhere near as accomplished.  The science fiction aspect never really gels with the paltry jungle adventure that dominates the first two acts, and the drama is too inept to be of any real interest.  Technically adept but visually bland direction from Paul Landers [THE VAMPIRE] does nothing to elevate it beyond merely passable.

This is one of a mountain of cheapie titles distributed by United Artists currently cluttering up the vast MGM library.  While many of these have made it to DVD via the seemingly abandoned Midnight Movies line, THE FLAME BARRIER posterhas had no such luck and doesn’t seem to have ever had an official home video release.  It seems doubtful, especially with classics like THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT patiently waiting in the wings, that this little clunker will be appearing on store shelves anytime soon.

While I generally lament the lack of a proper video release for just about anything, genre fanatics can rest assured that they’re not really missing much here.  THE FLAME BARRIER is another in a long line of budget-minded programmers that never takes off and leaves prescious little to recommend.  For completists only.


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