Tried watching the 1973 Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three - a film which I feel should like because of Robert Shaw's character and the poster, but NYC comedies/cop movies/hostage thrillers (the Entebbe case is different - because that's an international crisis) I've never really enjoyed. It's as if its villains are too good for it. I don't know what it's trying to be. Is it a thriller? Is it a cop movie? Is it a quirky comedy? Is it a disaster film? God knows. It doesn't know. The thing is I always liked the poster.
If it was the London Underground, Shaw leading a bunch of clueless Americans who think they know better - it might have worked.
Then again, maybe I find films set almost entirely in the underground uncinematic, when they spend too much time there (Death Line I want to love - but David Ladd is grating).
Monday, 26 March 2018
George White's Cartoon Cavalcade Part 1
Been watching more.
Delving into Tex Avery's stuff. Familiar with his characters mainly through 1990s dire Hanna-Barbera nonsense Tom and Jerry Kids. Rural Riding Hood - influence on Simpsons' Brandine. Red Hot Riidng Hood - same. The Wolf cartoons the most formulaic, at least when Droopy appears, he livens them up but he is the hero. Screwball Squirrel is annoying, and then they give us what we want, as if Avery knows what the audience want. Little Red Riding Habit - for once different. The Hick Chick - fun, idiot chicken. And sub-Daffy gangster duck. Droopy - Dumb-Hounded - chases Wolf to the North Pole, then uses a boulder, looks genuinely tired. Bad Luck Blackie seems a normal cavalcade of cartoon violence but the black cat in the white hat being revealed as the true mastermind is neat. Barney Bear's Polar Pest - a wonder of ice-sculpture. Tex Avery's Who Killed Who is a winning spoof of 1930s crime movies, complete with Edgar Lustgarten-type host, transvestite gangsters, secret passages and Hooded Thugs. King Size Canary - bootleg Tweety and Sylvester Hulk-out. Features a mouse-novel called the Lost Squeakend, but forgets where the canary goes. Jerky Turkey (1945) begins with limited animation, i.e. the queue of static pilgrims, but then proves to be far from limited - with pleasingly anachronistic caravan-dwelling Human Droopy and the civilised pre-colonial community full of sandwich-men bears and Um Indians whose half-breed status being lampshaded as a corny gag shows the inventon of Avery, and that's before Super-Turkey and a traffic light appear. Warning - Don't Eat at Joe's. Avery's Batty Baseball is fun, with its setting at W.C. Field, even though sports slapstick never quite appeals to me. The Cuckoo Clock shows all MGM-universe cats do chase animals, but some are quite nervous. The banquet in Out-Foxed is an extraordinary piece of symmetry, and Screwball Squirrel wears a monocle to shut him up. Northwest Hounded Police features some unusual, somewhat Britoid Canadian accents from dogs, and Droopy's surname is revealed as McPoodle. Its designs are somewhat basic because it moves to Manhattan and a desert island (yes, off the Canadian coast), but it gets meta with Droopy appearing in the city cinema's short.
MGMs The Calico Dragon (1935), an early colour cartoon is very cutesy but storybook inventive, with its three headed dragon. See also Ising's MGM short The Homeless Flea, almost more like comics like Pogo than Droopy and co.
Peace on Earth (1939) - Epic sentimental funny animal post-apocalypse from MGM.
Porky in Wackyland (!937) -Warner fun, both uses and subverts (Dark Africa - Darker Africa - Darkest Africa) the racist Um Bongo tropics.
God What's Opera Doc (1957) is fantastic. Especially the ending.
Sniffles and the Bookworm (1939) - Cutesy but attractive WB Merry Melody, a Fievel-esque mouse and an elderly bespectacled worm lead various characters out of their books [ from Robin Hood to Frankenstein's monster, in a Karloffian design. See also the Wacky Worm.
Also watching Disney's 1937 short The Old Mill, which is a moving painting essentially, as different to the humour of MGM and Warner.
UPA's The Unicorn in the Garden is charming and feels initially like it was made thirty years later by a Canadian company. Then, it gets more 50s. The plot by James Thurber is basically a Tale of the Unexpected. John Hubley's UPA short Rooty Toot Toot (1951), a jazz thing looks like an unfinished animatic, such is its style. UPA's The Miner's Daughter (1950) shows how the UPA style looks when not succumbing to stylistic laziness. It looks great, when there have a colourist, all angles and curves and realistic non-transparent skin. And it features hallucinations of living food. Warner copied this style, seen in 1955 Looney Tune Hare Brush (the one with Elmer Fudd outwitting Bugs by dressing as a bunny, not to be confused with Rabbit Rampage - the lesser Duck Amuck).
The National Film Board's Man Who Planted Trees - serious nostalgic NFB from 1987, narrated by Christopher Plummer. Less fun, more reflective and literary, but well-done.
Havoc in Heaven (1965) - Chinese animation, strange but impressive and nonsensical in a Western context. Shown on BBC in 1981, presumably to cash in on Monkey. A lot of flying monkeys. Incredible animation,though.
Watched Tallinnfilm's grotesque industrial supermarket/ Hamlet ad Breakfast on the Grass (1987) - an unsettling but mind-expanding mix of styles from the Uncanny Valley to photomontage to Klasky-Csupo style. It becomes something astounding and malleable - full of faceless and then one-eyed metaphors for the Soviet Union, holding umbrellas. And then it turns out to be about Manet. Lots of fat women as objects of attraction too. Featuring a bootlegged recording of Hooked on Classics.
Aeg Maha (1985), also from Tallinnfilm, about a zany male cat who speaks word balloons with pictures. Features the animator's hand, and teleportation via whirlwind and Estonian reggae that sounds like the Pigeon Street theme, plus cowboys, crows, police and general fun. Astounding. Also saw Klaabu, a less impressive Tallinnfilm from 1978 about eggs in a garden romancing each other I think.
Porgu (1983) - a documentary-like vision of Hell, full of burning tea dances, melting dance bands, and clockwork soldiers whirring as gasmasked troopers leak in. Also from Tallinnfilm, the creepy adult Estonian Noggin the Nog that is Suur Toll (1980), the child-ruining-an-announcement film fun of Exercises In Preparation For Independent Life (1980) and Ja teeb trikke (1978) - experimental gun using notebook paper as background about a crazed shape-shifting, ice cream licking panda, and a dog whacking trees to the Pink Panther theme. Very strange fun.
nichut ne strashno (1981) - Cutesy Soyuzmultfilm ghost story.
Also watched Oscar winner Ference Fofusz's Hungarian shorts the Fly (1980 - a first person journey of a fly through a house before the inevitable window-crash) and the less impressive uncanny valley apples of Gravity (1984).
Son of the White Mare (1981) - Trippy Hungarian post-apocalyptic animation - like a 90 minute title sequence.
Luncheon (1980) - Hungarian short from Varga/Pannonia - a clay sunflower creature makes a dish. Simple but energetic fun.
Also watched some of Ferenc Cako's work, an ex-Pannonia animator, but now more of a performance artist.
Watched the Polish 1980 Oscar winner short Tango - which is interesting but not much of a film - but the effort in it - it's a lot of people in a room bumping into each other - that looks like an FMV video cutscene, thanks to being shot on loops via a static camera.
Czech animator/Trnka associate Jiri Barta's work is quite uncanny valley, all dummies, old aristocrats, his A Ballad About Green Wood (1983) is charmingly Oliver Postgate-esque, with its winged branch, though. A little serious, overall.
Some animation is more art than film - i.e. TVP Poland's Witold Giersz's childlike paintings. and TVP/Annecy festival associates like Stefan Schabenbeck, Daniel Szczechura, the scratchy b/w stuff of Piotr Dumala, Jerzy Kucia, Jan Lenica (an associate of Borowcyzk), and the Norman McLaren-esque Julian Antonisz (whose studio helped on Bluth's Thumbelina), all Gilliamesque, more style, less substance, no story, though Lenica's Monsieur Tete from 1959 is fun.
Delving into Tex Avery's stuff. Familiar with his characters mainly through 1990s dire Hanna-Barbera nonsense Tom and Jerry Kids. Rural Riding Hood - influence on Simpsons' Brandine. Red Hot Riidng Hood - same. The Wolf cartoons the most formulaic, at least when Droopy appears, he livens them up but he is the hero. Screwball Squirrel is annoying, and then they give us what we want, as if Avery knows what the audience want. Little Red Riding Habit - for once different. The Hick Chick - fun, idiot chicken. And sub-Daffy gangster duck. Droopy - Dumb-Hounded - chases Wolf to the North Pole, then uses a boulder, looks genuinely tired. Bad Luck Blackie seems a normal cavalcade of cartoon violence but the black cat in the white hat being revealed as the true mastermind is neat. Barney Bear's Polar Pest - a wonder of ice-sculpture. Tex Avery's Who Killed Who is a winning spoof of 1930s crime movies, complete with Edgar Lustgarten-type host, transvestite gangsters, secret passages and Hooded Thugs. King Size Canary - bootleg Tweety and Sylvester Hulk-out. Features a mouse-novel called the Lost Squeakend, but forgets where the canary goes. Jerky Turkey (1945) begins with limited animation, i.e. the queue of static pilgrims, but then proves to be far from limited - with pleasingly anachronistic caravan-dwelling Human Droopy and the civilised pre-colonial community full of sandwich-men bears and Um Indians whose half-breed status being lampshaded as a corny gag shows the inventon of Avery, and that's before Super-Turkey and a traffic light appear. Warning - Don't Eat at Joe's. Avery's Batty Baseball is fun, with its setting at W.C. Field, even though sports slapstick never quite appeals to me. The Cuckoo Clock shows all MGM-universe cats do chase animals, but some are quite nervous. The banquet in Out-Foxed is an extraordinary piece of symmetry, and Screwball Squirrel wears a monocle to shut him up. Northwest Hounded Police features some unusual, somewhat Britoid Canadian accents from dogs, and Droopy's surname is revealed as McPoodle. Its designs are somewhat basic because it moves to Manhattan and a desert island (yes, off the Canadian coast), but it gets meta with Droopy appearing in the city cinema's short.
MGMs The Calico Dragon (1935), an early colour cartoon is very cutesy but storybook inventive, with its three headed dragon. See also Ising's MGM short The Homeless Flea, almost more like comics like Pogo than Droopy and co.
Peace on Earth (1939) - Epic sentimental funny animal post-apocalypse from MGM.
Porky in Wackyland (!937) -Warner fun, both uses and subverts (Dark Africa - Darker Africa - Darkest Africa) the racist Um Bongo tropics.
God What's Opera Doc (1957) is fantastic. Especially the ending.
Sniffles and the Bookworm (1939) - Cutesy but attractive WB Merry Melody, a Fievel-esque mouse and an elderly bespectacled worm lead various characters out of their books [ from Robin Hood to Frankenstein's monster, in a Karloffian design. See also the Wacky Worm.
Also watching Disney's 1937 short The Old Mill, which is a moving painting essentially, as different to the humour of MGM and Warner.
UPA's The Unicorn in the Garden is charming and feels initially like it was made thirty years later by a Canadian company. Then, it gets more 50s. The plot by James Thurber is basically a Tale of the Unexpected. John Hubley's UPA short Rooty Toot Toot (1951), a jazz thing looks like an unfinished animatic, such is its style. UPA's The Miner's Daughter (1950) shows how the UPA style looks when not succumbing to stylistic laziness. It looks great, when there have a colourist, all angles and curves and realistic non-transparent skin. And it features hallucinations of living food. Warner copied this style, seen in 1955 Looney Tune Hare Brush (the one with Elmer Fudd outwitting Bugs by dressing as a bunny, not to be confused with Rabbit Rampage - the lesser Duck Amuck).
The National Film Board's Man Who Planted Trees - serious nostalgic NFB from 1987, narrated by Christopher Plummer. Less fun, more reflective and literary, but well-done.
Havoc in Heaven (1965) - Chinese animation, strange but impressive and nonsensical in a Western context. Shown on BBC in 1981, presumably to cash in on Monkey. A lot of flying monkeys. Incredible animation,though.
Watched Tallinnfilm's grotesque industrial supermarket/ Hamlet ad Breakfast on the Grass (1987) - an unsettling but mind-expanding mix of styles from the Uncanny Valley to photomontage to Klasky-Csupo style. It becomes something astounding and malleable - full of faceless and then one-eyed metaphors for the Soviet Union, holding umbrellas. And then it turns out to be about Manet. Lots of fat women as objects of attraction too. Featuring a bootlegged recording of Hooked on Classics.
Aeg Maha (1985), also from Tallinnfilm, about a zany male cat who speaks word balloons with pictures. Features the animator's hand, and teleportation via whirlwind and Estonian reggae that sounds like the Pigeon Street theme, plus cowboys, crows, police and general fun. Astounding. Also saw Klaabu, a less impressive Tallinnfilm from 1978 about eggs in a garden romancing each other I think.
Porgu (1983) - a documentary-like vision of Hell, full of burning tea dances, melting dance bands, and clockwork soldiers whirring as gasmasked troopers leak in. Also from Tallinnfilm, the creepy adult Estonian Noggin the Nog that is Suur Toll (1980), the child-ruining-an-announcement film fun of Exercises In Preparation For Independent Life (1980) and Ja teeb trikke (1978) - experimental gun using notebook paper as background about a crazed shape-shifting, ice cream licking panda, and a dog whacking trees to the Pink Panther theme. Very strange fun.
 |
| Soviet hauntology |
Also watched Oscar winner Ference Fofusz's Hungarian shorts the Fly (1980 - a first person journey of a fly through a house before the inevitable window-crash) and the less impressive uncanny valley apples of Gravity (1984).
Son of the White Mare (1981) - Trippy Hungarian post-apocalyptic animation - like a 90 minute title sequence.
 |
| Eggs not breasts. |
Also watched some of Ferenc Cako's work, an ex-Pannonia animator, but now more of a performance artist.
Watched the Polish 1980 Oscar winner short Tango - which is interesting but not much of a film - but the effort in it - it's a lot of people in a room bumping into each other - that looks like an FMV video cutscene, thanks to being shot on loops via a static camera.
Czech animator/Trnka associate Jiri Barta's work is quite uncanny valley, all dummies, old aristocrats, his A Ballad About Green Wood (1983) is charmingly Oliver Postgate-esque, with its winged branch, though. A little serious, overall.
Some animation is more art than film - i.e. TVP Poland's Witold Giersz's childlike paintings. and TVP/Annecy festival associates like Stefan Schabenbeck, Daniel Szczechura, the scratchy b/w stuff of Piotr Dumala, Jerzy Kucia, Jan Lenica (an associate of Borowcyzk), and the Norman McLaren-esque Julian Antonisz (whose studio helped on Bluth's Thumbelina), all Gilliamesque, more style, less substance, no story, though Lenica's Monsieur Tete from 1959 is fun.
Sunday, 25 March 2018
More reviews - 6- - Inuit, blaxploitation, Doctor in the nude, Canada
Traitement de Choc (1973) - UK Title: Doctor in the Nude, actually an arty, stylish but nothingy Alain Delon film that happens to have vampires or at least technology-using human blood-drinkers a la 1979's Thirst, which does it much better. Doctor in the Nude has the feel of a long interlude short shown where programmes run short crossed with a Rollin-type vampire film. Features a hair whipping contest and a plane chasing sheep.
The Sweet Hereafter (1999) - like an arty episode of the Beachcombers. Atom Egoyan's films have never really done it for me, not even Felicia's Journey which makes the idea of Bob Hoskins as a Brummie serial killer obsessed with a Culchie girl and his Fanny Cradock-esque mum quite boring, even though the soundtrack's nice. Most of his stuff is well-made Skinemax fluff.
Shadow of the Wolf (1992) and Map of the Human Heart (1994) - both Canadian flops about Inuit. Wolf has an impressive Maurice Jarre soundtrack, but Lou Diamond Phillips and Jennifer Tilly aren't great as Inuit lovers, though Toshiro Mifune as a shaman, well it's Toshiro Mifune as a shaman wearing a tiara! Map of the Human Heart is the one Vincent Ward made after getting fired from Alien 3 - with Jason Scott Lee and La Femme Wee Jimmy Nikita herself, and Patrick Bergin, when he was still a big star and not a guest star in EastEnders. Both films look great, but they prove the point that most films (i.e. The Savage Innocents and the wonderfully photographed but rather empty 1974 film The White Dawn) about Inuit seem to be tedious overwrought epics crowded with mysticism, and the Arctic backgrounds get boring after a while, especially peddling the idea that they're noble but child-like simpletons when confronted with civilisation. Both films share some of the same cast.
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) - Has a weird tone, half-blaxploitation, half Disney comedy adventure. Fun, if you're in the right mood, though the tone can be grating. Weird Carry On Again Doctor-ish epilogue where Redd Foxx (another similarity with COAD - having Albert Steptoe/Freddy Sanford in it) goes off to run a harem in Africa. Trouble is, Raymond St. Jacques is a more interesting detective than his supposed superior Godfrey Cambridge, perhaps because Cambridge was more of a comedian. Not a private eye or even really a blaxploitation man (weird considering how many times I saw Live And Let Die as a kid), but this is strange. The sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue (1972) is equally silly - but instead of African preachers, they're using the help of a gangster's ghost.
The Sweet Hereafter (1999) - like an arty episode of the Beachcombers. Atom Egoyan's films have never really done it for me, not even Felicia's Journey which makes the idea of Bob Hoskins as a Brummie serial killer obsessed with a Culchie girl and his Fanny Cradock-esque mum quite boring, even though the soundtrack's nice. Most of his stuff is well-made Skinemax fluff.
Shadow of the Wolf (1992) and Map of the Human Heart (1994) - both Canadian flops about Inuit. Wolf has an impressive Maurice Jarre soundtrack, but Lou Diamond Phillips and Jennifer Tilly aren't great as Inuit lovers, though Toshiro Mifune as a shaman, well it's Toshiro Mifune as a shaman wearing a tiara! Map of the Human Heart is the one Vincent Ward made after getting fired from Alien 3 - with Jason Scott Lee and La Femme Wee Jimmy Nikita herself, and Patrick Bergin, when he was still a big star and not a guest star in EastEnders. Both films look great, but they prove the point that most films (i.e. The Savage Innocents and the wonderfully photographed but rather empty 1974 film The White Dawn) about Inuit seem to be tedious overwrought epics crowded with mysticism, and the Arctic backgrounds get boring after a while, especially peddling the idea that they're noble but child-like simpletons when confronted with civilisation. Both films share some of the same cast.
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) - Has a weird tone, half-blaxploitation, half Disney comedy adventure. Fun, if you're in the right mood, though the tone can be grating. Weird Carry On Again Doctor-ish epilogue where Redd Foxx (another similarity with COAD - having Albert Steptoe/Freddy Sanford in it) goes off to run a harem in Africa. Trouble is, Raymond St. Jacques is a more interesting detective than his supposed superior Godfrey Cambridge, perhaps because Cambridge was more of a comedian. Not a private eye or even really a blaxploitation man (weird considering how many times I saw Live And Let Die as a kid), but this is strange. The sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue (1972) is equally silly - but instead of African preachers, they're using the help of a gangster's ghost.
Blame The TV Times for my indifference - Telefantasy special
In my early teens, I read a lot of books and magazines about sci-fi TV. Didn't watch much sci-fi films, but TV - I watched classic Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (also tried the first radio series), The Tripods (which still has a special place in my heart), the 70s Tomorrow People (which I liked when I was 12), Eerie, Indiana (one of the few US TV SF series to appeal to me), seasons 2 and 3 of Lost in Space (because they were more appealing and the boxes were expensive), Children of the Stones (which despite enjoying - I think I didn't quite finish the last episode - just a little too padded, then neatly tied up, which most kids' serials were - and Sapphire and Steel especially). Dark Season (1991) I watched around that time too, and found it worked, because it was two three-part stories, with little padding.
Saw episodes of Blake's 7 online. Found Doomwatch a little stolid. I enjoyed Day of The Triffids (1981). Tried some Space:1999, and kind of liked it, but then realised that not only did it get either very dull or quite fun but quite stupid, but every episode was pretty much the same - which is what I then found with most ITC series I caught, even The Prisoner because the first episodes I saw were The Girl Who Was Death and Fall Out, and when you see them first alongside a handful of clips, everything else doesn't really need to be seen. I saw some Robin of Sherwoods on ITV, and because I wasn't mad on Robin Hood, found it just to be a bunch of eco-warrior types wandering around as Clannad played - not too different from what happened in Wicklow.
I was already fascinated with Nigel Kneale - having seen documentaries and age 15, the Quatermass and the Pit film, but I only slowly got through his other work, loved the film of Pit and Quatermass (1979) the best, and Beasts (1976) despite some good performances is very silly, like old Emmerdale Farm or Crossroads with monsters - almost hinting at what a British Dark Shadows might have looked like. I enthused about a lot of these shows through my then-love of Doctor Who, and telefantasy ideas, and from what I saw of the Avengers, because as a 13/14 year old, I didn't mind Clemens. I liked his silliness and broad eccentrics, but now I find it grating. Maybe because I was exposed to characters like his on kids' TV.
Anthologies -I watched a few Twilight Zones, which never quite appealed, and also the Ray Bradbury Theatres, but even as a 13 year-old raised on PAL VT, NTSC video always seemed off-putting in a dramatic context. Maybe because my main exposure to anthologies apart from Goosebumps and Tales of the Unexpected and not giving a fuck about Are You Afraid of The Dark? on CITV, were the Simpson Treehouse of Horror specials, which make you realise how silly some of those episodes/Serling/Bradbury concepts are.
As a younger kid, my TV SF was mainly Star Trek and Gerry Anderson and cartoons, and I watched episodes of the Incredible Hulk, Six Million Dollar Man, Xena, Hercules, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Airwolf, Knight Rider, the Bionic Woman, didn't really care for those - preferred Batman, enjoyed the Munsters and Battlestar Galactica even though now I can see I just liked the fact they went to planets that looked like western towns and there were kids in it. I also enjoyed BBC stuff like Maid Marian and The Borrowers, but Buffy kind of put me off. I liked that one episode with the ventriloquist's dummy, but old teenagers put me off things. Even the X-Files I preferred to read the episode guides than watch the actual show. Then, you could be showrunner! Which I did with a lot of shows, thanks to reading the TV Times Encyclopaedia of TV Science Fiction. That quenched my thirst for some shows, intrigued me by introducing me to others (though discovering that Ace of Wands was not full of Clemens-esque stereotypes but rather dull variants with little character did disappoint - especially trying to play a dragged-up character as a grumpy old bat and not as a floral-hatted caricature).
To quote Grandpa in The Lost Boys, why watch TV when you can read TV Guide...
I tolerated and enjoyed Star Trek, but I find Voyager and Enterprise crap. I liked the Original Series and TNG, and DS9 too, even though now I don't bother. But Babylon 5 always looked a bit rubbish. Most US TV I found formulaic, miniseries less so, but anthologies definitely - even though Night Gallery could be fun, a lot of episodes bleed into either "US soap with a nasty twist", "Twilight Zone-esque comedy/sentiment" or "fun but rather shonky period nonsense". The Irwin Allen stuff I outgrew quickly. Goliath Awaits I was pleasantly surprised by, because it is bonkers.
The trouble is - when you get down to it, a lot of TV and film is samey.
Saw episodes of Blake's 7 online. Found Doomwatch a little stolid. I enjoyed Day of The Triffids (1981). Tried some Space:1999, and kind of liked it, but then realised that not only did it get either very dull or quite fun but quite stupid, but every episode was pretty much the same - which is what I then found with most ITC series I caught, even The Prisoner because the first episodes I saw were The Girl Who Was Death and Fall Out, and when you see them first alongside a handful of clips, everything else doesn't really need to be seen. I saw some Robin of Sherwoods on ITV, and because I wasn't mad on Robin Hood, found it just to be a bunch of eco-warrior types wandering around as Clannad played - not too different from what happened in Wicklow.
I was already fascinated with Nigel Kneale - having seen documentaries and age 15, the Quatermass and the Pit film, but I only slowly got through his other work, loved the film of Pit and Quatermass (1979) the best, and Beasts (1976) despite some good performances is very silly, like old Emmerdale Farm or Crossroads with monsters - almost hinting at what a British Dark Shadows might have looked like. I enthused about a lot of these shows through my then-love of Doctor Who, and telefantasy ideas, and from what I saw of the Avengers, because as a 13/14 year old, I didn't mind Clemens. I liked his silliness and broad eccentrics, but now I find it grating. Maybe because I was exposed to characters like his on kids' TV.
Anthologies -I watched a few Twilight Zones, which never quite appealed, and also the Ray Bradbury Theatres, but even as a 13 year-old raised on PAL VT, NTSC video always seemed off-putting in a dramatic context. Maybe because my main exposure to anthologies apart from Goosebumps and Tales of the Unexpected and not giving a fuck about Are You Afraid of The Dark? on CITV, were the Simpson Treehouse of Horror specials, which make you realise how silly some of those episodes/Serling/Bradbury concepts are.
As a younger kid, my TV SF was mainly Star Trek and Gerry Anderson and cartoons, and I watched episodes of the Incredible Hulk, Six Million Dollar Man, Xena, Hercules, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Airwolf, Knight Rider, the Bionic Woman, didn't really care for those - preferred Batman, enjoyed the Munsters and Battlestar Galactica even though now I can see I just liked the fact they went to planets that looked like western towns and there were kids in it. I also enjoyed BBC stuff like Maid Marian and The Borrowers, but Buffy kind of put me off. I liked that one episode with the ventriloquist's dummy, but old teenagers put me off things. Even the X-Files I preferred to read the episode guides than watch the actual show. Then, you could be showrunner! Which I did with a lot of shows, thanks to reading the TV Times Encyclopaedia of TV Science Fiction. That quenched my thirst for some shows, intrigued me by introducing me to others (though discovering that Ace of Wands was not full of Clemens-esque stereotypes but rather dull variants with little character did disappoint - especially trying to play a dragged-up character as a grumpy old bat and not as a floral-hatted caricature).
To quote Grandpa in The Lost Boys, why watch TV when you can read TV Guide...
I tolerated and enjoyed Star Trek, but I find Voyager and Enterprise crap. I liked the Original Series and TNG, and DS9 too, even though now I don't bother. But Babylon 5 always looked a bit rubbish. Most US TV I found formulaic, miniseries less so, but anthologies definitely - even though Night Gallery could be fun, a lot of episodes bleed into either "US soap with a nasty twist", "Twilight Zone-esque comedy/sentiment" or "fun but rather shonky period nonsense". The Irwin Allen stuff I outgrew quickly. Goliath Awaits I was pleasantly surprised by, because it is bonkers.
The trouble is - when you get down to it, a lot of TV and film is samey.
Saturday, 24 March 2018
West German telefantasy roundup
Der Androjager (1981) - Nice synthy soundtrack, annoying hero - like an alien Frank Spencer.
Cherie Mir Ist Schlecht (1981) is a very Nice Video Shame About The Song art student-y shot on video vampire-themed mess of Chromakey, reminds me of similar British experiments like Rock Follies or the Flipside of Dominick Hide. See also the CSO-tastic ZDF Utopian odyssey of We (1982).
Silas (1981) - ZDF classic, notorious amongst Brits of a certain age (see also its brethren - Legend of Tim Tyler (1979), Jack Holborn (1982), Patrick Pacard (1984)), this sort of serial is crying out for a Danger 5-type spoof – blind nursemaid, a comedy horse, abusive father figure, Silas nooses someone, there’s a German Nicholas Lyndhurst-type named Bein Godek, dog on a tightrope, Silas as a clown with a moustache, entertains idiot peasants by riding a horse and tunelessly playing a flute, Silas tames a bear, chased by a comedy nobleman, taken in by a nice rich family and their hearty housekeeper, then has to escape with Bein-Godek, meet Slugworth and the Princess from Conan the Barbarian, and then Bein-Godek and Silas ride into the sunset- almost wondering was it intended as a comedy…
Jack Holborn (1982) is much more conventional – a New Zealand coproduction, weirdly while Silas/Jack himself Patrick Bach supplied voices for the German dub of Lord of the Rings, David Weatherley, of the British navy played Barliman Butterbur in Jackson’s films. It’s impressive, with whole market sets and the tribal chief is an appealing Sydney Greenstreet-esque grotesque essayed by famed Maori showbander Prince Tui Teka (for Irish audiences, this would be akin to Joe Dolan as a vicious knacker), and then they introduce Arab slavers, but only in the background. Then, they all return home to England/Dubrovnik and all the adults get hanged, and Jack reunited with his mum.
These series were shown in a Winter Holiday slot, on ZDF, others in the slot – Timm Thaler and Patrick Pacard, these were HUGE in Germany, big, expensive treats – imagine the Box of Delights level. Fondly remembered by German fortysomethings.
Black Are The Galaxies (1981) - French series, begins with a scuba-masked Chuck Norris alike sinking into the water, then coming across sinister white-suited ambulancemen, one of whom looks like Tony Osoba. It begins too much like a typical French gangland saga. It features Hawk the Slayer/Fulci regular Catriona MacColl, Quite slow, overlong, attractive but uninvolving, but maybe, it loses something in translation. Not until episode 2 where we find a spacecraft. The last episodes get more exciting - with Bodysnatcher-esque silver eggs. But still a bit of a slog. The alien surgeons' space-holiday camp is striking. And there are mysterious bonfires.
Cherie Mir Ist Schlecht (1981) is a very Nice Video Shame About The Song art student-y shot on video vampire-themed mess of Chromakey, reminds me of similar British experiments like Rock Follies or the Flipside of Dominick Hide. See also the CSO-tastic ZDF Utopian odyssey of We (1982).
Silas (1981) - ZDF classic, notorious amongst Brits of a certain age (see also its brethren - Legend of Tim Tyler (1979), Jack Holborn (1982), Patrick Pacard (1984)), this sort of serial is crying out for a Danger 5-type spoof – blind nursemaid, a comedy horse, abusive father figure, Silas nooses someone, there’s a German Nicholas Lyndhurst-type named Bein Godek, dog on a tightrope, Silas as a clown with a moustache, entertains idiot peasants by riding a horse and tunelessly playing a flute, Silas tames a bear, chased by a comedy nobleman, taken in by a nice rich family and their hearty housekeeper, then has to escape with Bein-Godek, meet Slugworth and the Princess from Conan the Barbarian, and then Bein-Godek and Silas ride into the sunset- almost wondering was it intended as a comedy…
Jack Holborn (1982) is much more conventional – a New Zealand coproduction, weirdly while Silas/Jack himself Patrick Bach supplied voices for the German dub of Lord of the Rings, David Weatherley, of the British navy played Barliman Butterbur in Jackson’s films. It’s impressive, with whole market sets and the tribal chief is an appealing Sydney Greenstreet-esque grotesque essayed by famed Maori showbander Prince Tui Teka (for Irish audiences, this would be akin to Joe Dolan as a vicious knacker), and then they introduce Arab slavers, but only in the background. Then, they all return home to England/Dubrovnik and all the adults get hanged, and Jack reunited with his mum.
These series were shown in a Winter Holiday slot, on ZDF, others in the slot – Timm Thaler and Patrick Pacard, these were HUGE in Germany, big, expensive treats – imagine the Box of Delights level. Fondly remembered by German fortysomethings.
Black Are The Galaxies (1981) - French series, begins with a scuba-masked Chuck Norris alike sinking into the water, then coming across sinister white-suited ambulancemen, one of whom looks like Tony Osoba. It begins too much like a typical French gangland saga. It features Hawk the Slayer/Fulci regular Catriona MacColl, Quite slow, overlong, attractive but uninvolving, but maybe, it loses something in translation. Not until episode 2 where we find a spacecraft. The last episodes get more exciting - with Bodysnatcher-esque silver eggs. But still a bit of a slog. The alien surgeons' space-holiday camp is striking. And there are mysterious bonfires.
Eye of the Devil (1966) - 2/3 inc. Haunting - B/W
One of the last major B/W films, nicely shot but rather too noirish, which makes it look lower-budget than it actually is. But it's very generic. David Niven doesn't know where he is. Donald Pleasence is sinister as a priest who calls similarly-aged Deborah Kerr "child". Sharon Tate and David Hemmings are all ghostly. Nobody sounds French. It's like a silly, almost Harold Robbins version of the already overrated The Haunting, i.e. it's all about demonic wine. It's not quite as camp as it should be. Maybe because it takes too long. Emlyn Williams and Edward Mulhare do good in exposition roles, but while the coven scenes are sinister. it seems to be a horror movie made by people who think they are above horror movies. And then it becames a Hammer/Brian Clemens psycho-thriller-type thing. And then we meet creepy villagers. It doesn't make much sense. A major folly from J. Lee Thompson. Almost a horror version of another Filmways production - The Loved One, nicely shot, but too much going on.
J. Lee Thompson is a good director who I think worked too much doing average fare, even though much of his stuff merely exists to fill the gaps on a Sunday afternoon schedule - a solid journeyman turning out solid, if unexceptional fare. He seems most engaged doing action. I'm not a fan of his noirish thrillers so much. He seems to have had a touch too much melodrama, although The Greek Tycoon is astonishing for all the wrong reasons. He still manages to lift Happy Birthday To Me or King Solomon's Mines, and especially 10 To Midnight, and The Passage at least looks nice for a violent warsploiter.
I think a lot of this low to mid-budget pop filmmaking I've become tired of, because I've seen so much of it, that of course it gets samey. One wants new experiences.
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975) - Interesting concept but rather dull. Feels oddly Canadian, with the cast and all, but no, a US production. Also confused as to what it should be.
Thursday, 22 March 2018
13 (plus an overview on bad teen movies and kaiju - 20-ish) - French SF, animation, Action Jackson, Mad Magician, Hillbilly John, Norman loves Rose, Roughcut, Shadows run Black, Kaiju
Long Live Life (1984) - a dreary futuristic relationship comedy with Charlotte Rampling and Michel Piccoli. Then, halfway through aliens appear over Paris in brilliantly shot scenes, projecting their messages onto electronic hoardings. Then, it goes all a bit Dennis Potter. Even Charles Aznavour and Chateauvallon's Raymond Pellegrin turn up.
Mauvais Sang (1986) - Piccoli and baby Julie Delpy and Juliette Binoche appear in this confusing, rather boring reluctant Eurospy thriller.
Illustrious Corpses (1976) - Astonishing work by Francesco Rosi. Well-constructed, exceedingly well shot. The plot's meandering and hard to follow, but then it is meant to be. Great cast - Lino Ventura, Fernando Rey, an almost unrecognisable Max Von Sydow. Other Italian crime stuff I find one-time watches, even stuff like Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) - which is a better constructed, more adult spin on the Euro-Cop genre. Illustrious Corpses though moves, has lots of interesting settings within settings and mixes B/W stock footage to illuminating effect.
Action Jackson (1988) - I'm not especially a cop movie fan. Carl Weathers is great (when they killed Apollo off - that was the end of Rocky), but this though a good vehicle is incredibly derivative and unoriginal. It's an average Dirty Harry knockoff in blaxploitation drag, or vice versa.
Nelvanimation (1981) - A Nelvana shorts compilation. The Devil and Daniel Mouse is a bit Schmaltzy, basically the Apple (1980) but as a cartoon, with funny animals. Inspired Nelvana's Rock and Rule - which is even more like The Apple. Romie-0 and Julie-8 is fun and very Canadian. A lot of fat grotesques. But there is a bit of schmaltz amongst the sub-Moebius design. And the modulated voicework is grating. Some fun junk monsters, though. Intergalactic Thanksgiving is a silly Space Western, prescient of Bravestarr in the alien designs. But the clown magic mirror is fun.
Rock and Rule (1983) is weird, with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop providing the singing voice for one character - Mok, otherwise voiced by Don Francks - who himself was a singer. The New Wave stuff doesn't interest me - and some of the designs are unattractive even though a lot of it is winningly grotesque. But it's an interesting failure.
The Mad Magician (1954) - Lesser Vincent Price vehicle intended for 3D, gets minus points for casting Price and the eerily similar Patrick O'Neal as villain and hero but doesn't make them relations. (A similarity so much so that not only do their voices flow into each other but O'Neal played the villain in Chamber of Horrors - originally a pilot for a spinoff of House of Wax). Feels like a typical studio period potboiler with some 50s mad science and 3-D thrown in. Nothing really special.
The Legend of Hilbilly John (1975) - Folksy not-horror, a vaguely supernatural, more western, semi-musical Grizzly Adams-type romp with a cool stop-motion bird-thing but little else.
Norman Loves Rose (1982) - Not great 1980s comedy, kid's older brother announces his engagement to Aussie-accented Carol Kane. Kid falls in love with her (and he's about thirteen) and they well.... Not that funny, almost unwatchable, tonally all over the shop but intriguing in a sort of gonzo Aussie soap way. Warren Mitchell plays the European immigrant da. I had a similar thing (without the sex), when I was in my mid-teens, a constant passion for my cousin's much younger then-girlfriend. Needless to say, some fun elements i.e. the overprotective mother. But the ending is confusing. Is he having a string of affairs with women old enough to be his mum let alone a few years older like Rose? Is Rose giving Norman her even older friend so she can continue with his brother?
Where The River Run Black (1985) - Features Charles Durning playing a priest, as my mum noted, when isn't he playing a priest? Attractive locations, but like a cannibal film made by Christians.
Rough Cut (1980) - Forgettable and forgotten British heist movie with David Niven chasing Lesley Anne Down and Burt Reynolds. Features Timothy West and Patrick Magee with a Nazi collection a la Father Ted. Al Matthews, Apone from Aliens and Benny's dad in Grange Hill has a major role. Niven repeating same ground he did in A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (see also The London Connection and Sewers of Gold, also from 1979/1980). Feels absurdly cheap for a Don Siegel-directed film, let alone a Burt vehicle. It's sub-Euston. Also featuring Julian Holloway, Joss Ackland, Douglas Wilmer, Sue Lloyd... All virtually in walk-ons. Has Burt as an Arab, Lesley Anne Down in a burqa
Watching episodes of North Korean miniseries Nameless Heroes, notorious for starring four US Army deserters playing Brits, Americans and Irish, among a sea of Asians in whiteface, false teeth and funny wigs. Charles Robert Jenkins, who plays evil Dr. Kelton appeared in several North Korean war movies including Ten Zan - an Italian coproduction starring C-list video bargain bin perennial Frank Zagarino and directed by Treasure of the Four Crowns/Blindman helmer Ferdinando Baldi. Like Soviet films, it features "British" characters talking English in halting foreign accents. Funny that yes, a lot of Korea does really look like Wicklow. And the supposed Irish soldier,Lewis played by Jerry Wayne Parrish forgets his lines on camera, and he's clearly trying to do some sort of Irish-American twang, but only in certain vowels. Very strange viewing.
Kaiju movies, they work best in highlights - most of them just worth it for the monsters. Their monster work/FX is always better than US movies of the same era, with the exception of Harryhausen/stop motion stuff, obviously. But the actual films usually don't captivate otherwise. Apart from the oddity like Latitude Zero (1969), Joseph Cotten and Cesar Romero as rival Captain Nemo steampunk submariners who live in the titular underwater Portmeirion-via-Shang-Ri-La, where the monsters are used by old Tacheface include a rat with a zipper down its side and bat-men, while Cotten dips Richard Jaeckel and his Japanese-French cohorts in a bath to make them bulletproof. And it has a stuffed puppet lion playing a real lion, that gets wings and the brain of a woman. But aside from the steampunky Prisoner twist, it's usual Japanese B-movie folderol (they seem obsessed with undersea kingdoms), with the addition of being performed by Mr. and Mrs. Cotten (Pat Medina), and Romero. And is less formulaic than the other Toho stuff, which is genuinely hard to tell apart (often with good reason - they reuse FX a lot).
And some are stupid - Matango - a Japanese Gilligan's Island via the Lost Continent via the Blind Dead - a group of annoying sitcommy stereotypes attacked by mushroom zombies.
The Green Slime (-1968) I find formulaic, despite the monsters and funky themes. It is too similar to all sorts of US and Italian space cheapies of the same era (though The Wild Wild Planet does try to be something by going Eurospy and the Snow Devils looks unhinged, initially but then delves back into typical space opera).
.
US Teen SF movies from the 80s are increasingly samey - My Science Project, Teen Genius, the Manhattan Project, WarGames, no matter the tone or idea - they keep hitting the same beats of mediocrity.
Mauvais Sang (1986) - Piccoli and baby Julie Delpy and Juliette Binoche appear in this confusing, rather boring reluctant Eurospy thriller.
Illustrious Corpses (1976) - Astonishing work by Francesco Rosi. Well-constructed, exceedingly well shot. The plot's meandering and hard to follow, but then it is meant to be. Great cast - Lino Ventura, Fernando Rey, an almost unrecognisable Max Von Sydow. Other Italian crime stuff I find one-time watches, even stuff like Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) - which is a better constructed, more adult spin on the Euro-Cop genre. Illustrious Corpses though moves, has lots of interesting settings within settings and mixes B/W stock footage to illuminating effect.
Action Jackson (1988) - I'm not especially a cop movie fan. Carl Weathers is great (when they killed Apollo off - that was the end of Rocky), but this though a good vehicle is incredibly derivative and unoriginal. It's an average Dirty Harry knockoff in blaxploitation drag, or vice versa.
Nelvanimation (1981) - A Nelvana shorts compilation. The Devil and Daniel Mouse is a bit Schmaltzy, basically the Apple (1980) but as a cartoon, with funny animals. Inspired Nelvana's Rock and Rule - which is even more like The Apple. Romie-0 and Julie-8 is fun and very Canadian. A lot of fat grotesques. But there is a bit of schmaltz amongst the sub-Moebius design. And the modulated voicework is grating. Some fun junk monsters, though. Intergalactic Thanksgiving is a silly Space Western, prescient of Bravestarr in the alien designs. But the clown magic mirror is fun.
Rock and Rule (1983) is weird, with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop providing the singing voice for one character - Mok, otherwise voiced by Don Francks - who himself was a singer. The New Wave stuff doesn't interest me - and some of the designs are unattractive even though a lot of it is winningly grotesque. But it's an interesting failure.
The Mad Magician (1954) - Lesser Vincent Price vehicle intended for 3D, gets minus points for casting Price and the eerily similar Patrick O'Neal as villain and hero but doesn't make them relations. (A similarity so much so that not only do their voices flow into each other but O'Neal played the villain in Chamber of Horrors - originally a pilot for a spinoff of House of Wax). Feels like a typical studio period potboiler with some 50s mad science and 3-D thrown in. Nothing really special.
The Legend of Hilbilly John (1975) - Folksy not-horror, a vaguely supernatural, more western, semi-musical Grizzly Adams-type romp with a cool stop-motion bird-thing but little else.
Norman Loves Rose (1982) - Not great 1980s comedy, kid's older brother announces his engagement to Aussie-accented Carol Kane. Kid falls in love with her (and he's about thirteen) and they well.... Not that funny, almost unwatchable, tonally all over the shop but intriguing in a sort of gonzo Aussie soap way. Warren Mitchell plays the European immigrant da. I had a similar thing (without the sex), when I was in my mid-teens, a constant passion for my cousin's much younger then-girlfriend. Needless to say, some fun elements i.e. the overprotective mother. But the ending is confusing. Is he having a string of affairs with women old enough to be his mum let alone a few years older like Rose? Is Rose giving Norman her even older friend so she can continue with his brother?
Where The River Run Black (1985) - Features Charles Durning playing a priest, as my mum noted, when isn't he playing a priest? Attractive locations, but like a cannibal film made by Christians.
Rough Cut (1980) - Forgettable and forgotten British heist movie with David Niven chasing Lesley Anne Down and Burt Reynolds. Features Timothy West and Patrick Magee with a Nazi collection a la Father Ted. Al Matthews, Apone from Aliens and Benny's dad in Grange Hill has a major role. Niven repeating same ground he did in A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (see also The London Connection and Sewers of Gold, also from 1979/1980). Feels absurdly cheap for a Don Siegel-directed film, let alone a Burt vehicle. It's sub-Euston. Also featuring Julian Holloway, Joss Ackland, Douglas Wilmer, Sue Lloyd... All virtually in walk-ons. Has Burt as an Arab, Lesley Anne Down in a burqa
Watching episodes of North Korean miniseries Nameless Heroes, notorious for starring four US Army deserters playing Brits, Americans and Irish, among a sea of Asians in whiteface, false teeth and funny wigs. Charles Robert Jenkins, who plays evil Dr. Kelton appeared in several North Korean war movies including Ten Zan - an Italian coproduction starring C-list video bargain bin perennial Frank Zagarino and directed by Treasure of the Four Crowns/Blindman helmer Ferdinando Baldi. Like Soviet films, it features "British" characters talking English in halting foreign accents. Funny that yes, a lot of Korea does really look like Wicklow. And the supposed Irish soldier,Lewis played by Jerry Wayne Parrish forgets his lines on camera, and he's clearly trying to do some sort of Irish-American twang, but only in certain vowels. Very strange viewing.
Kaiju movies, they work best in highlights - most of them just worth it for the monsters. Their monster work/FX is always better than US movies of the same era, with the exception of Harryhausen/stop motion stuff, obviously. But the actual films usually don't captivate otherwise. Apart from the oddity like Latitude Zero (1969), Joseph Cotten and Cesar Romero as rival Captain Nemo steampunk submariners who live in the titular underwater Portmeirion-via-Shang-Ri-La, where the monsters are used by old Tacheface include a rat with a zipper down its side and bat-men, while Cotten dips Richard Jaeckel and his Japanese-French cohorts in a bath to make them bulletproof. And it has a stuffed puppet lion playing a real lion, that gets wings and the brain of a woman. But aside from the steampunky Prisoner twist, it's usual Japanese B-movie folderol (they seem obsessed with undersea kingdoms), with the addition of being performed by Mr. and Mrs. Cotten (Pat Medina), and Romero. And is less formulaic than the other Toho stuff, which is genuinely hard to tell apart (often with good reason - they reuse FX a lot).
And some are stupid - Matango - a Japanese Gilligan's Island via the Lost Continent via the Blind Dead - a group of annoying sitcommy stereotypes attacked by mushroom zombies.
The Green Slime (-1968) I find formulaic, despite the monsters and funky themes. It is too similar to all sorts of US and Italian space cheapies of the same era (though The Wild Wild Planet does try to be something by going Eurospy and the Snow Devils looks unhinged, initially but then delves back into typical space opera).
.
US Teen SF movies from the 80s are increasingly samey - My Science Project, Teen Genius, the Manhattan Project, WarGames, no matter the tone or idea - they keep hitting the same beats of mediocrity.
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