All posts by David DeMoss

Ringu (1998)

Two teenage girls are home alone, enjoying the baseball game. (They chose to watch it on TV). One, Masami (Hitomi Sato) tells the other, Tomoko (Yuko Takeuchi) a story. Once upon a time, a little boy took a trip down to Izu, by the sea. He went out to play, and set the VCR in his family’s cabin to record a favorite TV show. But the channels in Izu are different from the one’s in Tokyo. The little boy should’ve come home to two hours of fuzz.

Instead, he found a strange, vaguely unsettling program on the tape. It ended. The phone rang. The little boy picked it up and heard a woman’s voice. “You will die in one week,” she said. And so he did.

Tomoko catches a slight case of willies at this harmless little urban legend. Turns out she and three other friends took their own trip down to Izu last week. One of their number found a strange, unmarked video cassette. They watched it. It ended. The phone rang, but no one was there. That was one week ago, to the day. {More}

Rollerball (1976)

"Ah, yes...the legendary Zenith Four-in-One. Perfect for the All-Hot-Chick Network."To be honest, I feel strangely blase about the 70s. I missed the decade by a smooth four years and (from all the Wise Ones tell me) didn’t miss terribly much. Yet all evidence would indicate the decade was a junction point for speculative fiction, particularly SF film. Ten little years brought us Star Wars, Alien, Close Encounters, Halloween, and thus the plot of neigh-on every crap film to come out of the Hollywood for the next thirty-odd years.

But forget all those flicks: time to into the darkened glass of the mid-70s, a fearful and frightening time. Jaws had just ripped up the screen and brought forth the Summer Blockbuster. Five days later, tonight’s subject sneaked into theaters, unloved and poorly announced, soon to be eclipsed by its shark-and-naked-girl-centered competition.

Rollerball is a story of the future, a brightly lit, prosaic place made all the more dystopic by the apparent comfort of its inhabitants. There are no governments anymore, you see; no nations. Just a small conglomerate of extreamly powerful companies that control, capital-E, Everything. They provide, protect, and micromanage the well-being of every man, woman and child on Earth and all they ask in return is obedience. Thoughtless, flaccid obedience.

But don’t worry, this dystopia isn’t so bad. After all, they still have sports. Or rather, the sport: Rollerball, a viral mutation of our most violent past times. Padded skaters and armored motorcyclists must bash their way around a gigantic, sloped ring, with opposing goals on either side. Players dress in standard football regalia, plus the skates and studded S&M gloves. The ball is a grapefruit sized chunk of steel, fired into play from a gun on the outer rim (and they call it “symbolism!”). Injury is common, death only a bit less so. And yet some men survive their time in the blender. Some even thrive.

Like Jonathan (James Caan), ten-year vet of the Huston…uh….Team. Ten years is an awful long time for any pro-athlete, to say nothing of a Rollerball champion. The very fact that Jonathan can still control his bowl movements is enough to astonish this critic. With the Championship fast approaching, The Powers That Be decide it might be best for Jonathan to quit while he’s ahead.

Jonathan, being human, asks the inevitable “Whuz up wit’ dat?” The Hichcockian Mr. Bartholomew (The Great John Houseman), being an avatar of Capitalist Evil, gives him the inevitable corporate blowoff. Retreating to his lavish, sports hero’s mansion (decked straight out of the middle 70s) Our Protagonist begins to ponder life without Rollerball…soon realizing (duh) that Rollerball has become his whole life. After all, the Company took away his One True Love years ago…some executive wanted her, so off she went. His family is…not talked about, and his friends…well, shucks, 99.7 percent of them play Rollerball.

So Jonathan, by the simple act of suiting up for a semi-final game, violates the Highest Law of the Land (“Do what we say, or else. Now dance, puppet”), which the Powers That Be are none too happy about. So they do what any Evil Corporation would do. Id’jet wants to play Rollerball, let him play Rollerball! See how he likes the game once we change the rules on his honky ass. There are plenty of ways to die in Rollerball by sheer dumb luck…imagine what might happen if the players were encouraged to actively murder one another…

Like most sci-fi of its strata, Rollerball paints its message in gigantic flaming letters across the well-constructed lawns of all your favorite corporate office parks. This is a movie about violence, and the societal worship of same. It is a movie about individual choice overruling the wishes of our corporate masters. It is about bloodsport: why we watch it, why we want it, and what purpose it serves in our society.

It is a film based on a short story by William Harrison. Director Norman (Moonstruck, The Hurricane) Jewison read the script and apparently knew he had to make this movie. Being Canadian, Mr. Jewison has (by his own admission) wasted a good part of his life watching hockey. And it shows. The three games that handily align with the three acts of our narrative are fast paced and remarkably easy to look at. God bless the days before shotgun editing.

Unfortunately, most of our time is spent between games, as Jonathan (slowly but surely) chips away at the mystery of his forced retirement. He goes to the Library, only to find there are no books. He asks his middle-management friend Cletus (Moses “Bumpy Jonas” Gun, no one’s slack-jawed yokle) to shake some trees around the water cooler, but Cletus comes back empty-handed. He has several repetitive talks with Mr. Bartholomew…no help there, and no help for us either.

All of this is intercut with scenes of the team, as they gear up for the semi-final mach against Tokyo. They’re all a bunch of testosterone imbalanced alpha males. Yes, thank you. They’re jingoistic, narrow minded, easily led sheeple, living out empty lives dedicated to fulfilling their most immediate, selfish needs. Yes, thank you, I know. Along with everyone else in this parallel future. Yes, thank you, I get it. Now could we please move things forward?

Here’s the thing for all you filmmakers out there: No matter how interested you are in your future, you have to give me some reason to be interested as well. The burden of proof is on you, as the storyteller. Tension is fine. Mysteries are great. But the film holds Jonathan in limbo for over an hour, and us along with him. He drifts from one shallow corporate shill to another, without gaining the slightest thread of new information.

Now, one could argue that this long middle passage is supposed to lull us into unconsciousness (therefore multiplying the impact of the Huston vs. Tokyo game and its brutally unpleasant consequences). But you won’t catch me doing that. Whatever its high points (and there are a few) I honestly can’t recommend a movie that holds its plot up in traffic for this long.

Besides, I don’t think this movie gives our corporate masters enough credit. After all, they own the frickin’ world. How can a athlete (even a highly skilled, long-living one) possibly threaten that? Why not just let nature take its course? Jonny boy’s a ten-year vet, he’s bound to fall down sometime. Unless he’s, you know, a mutant or something.

The answer? “It’s not a game a man is supposed to grow strong into,” Bartholomew says. Yet Jonathan does. And he loves it. Over and over he says, “I love this game” in the heat of the moment. Making matters worse, Jonathan is a celebrity. His is the longest career in Rollerball history. Yet Bartholomew says the whole point of the game is to “show the futility of individual effort.” (Because, as every MCI employee knows, it’s all about Teamwork). Jonathan’s continued success (and, later, his very existence) negates this World View. Therefore, he must be destroyed, before he can become an example.

Still, I seriously doubt that, with all their money and power, they couldn’t find someone, somewhere, willing to break into Jonathan’s house in the middle of the night and give him a quick double tap to the back of the head. Control of the world’s media could easily sabotage Jonathan’s Martyr Potential. If people even watch the news in this future. All anyone seems to watch is Rollerball.

Meanwhile, I’m watching James Caan, wondering if he has more than that one facial expression. Is that bemused, dopey look on his face just something you catch in Texas? Is every woman of the future a highly paid party accessory (shades of Soylent Green)? And when is Donald Pleasence going to pop in and ask from Bartholomew if he can borrow a cup of bald?

Obligatory box art picture...because I'm lazy.Things pick up eventually…after a hundred and twenty-four minutes of standing, walking, talking, and pill-popping (on screen, thank you). Then it came to me in a flash: Rollerball has a serious structure problem. I don’t care what creative writing course you took, your first act should not be as long as your second and third combined.

The dialogue in Rollerball is sparse and utilitarian, apart from the occasional corporate speech. Nothing much stands out here. Acting is even harder to gauge as the performers are rarely called upon to express anything beyond stupefied complacence. Only John Beck seems to be having any fun, given that he gets to play the lecherous swine. John Houseman is the only real standout, by virtue of being an old pro. Everyone else is on auto pilot

Like most 70s sci-fi of high mind and low means, Rollerball is front-heavy, poorly paced, and not nearly as well acted as it needs to be. High ideals won’t get you a good movie…though they are deplorably scarce nowadays. If you’re absolutely starved for some high ideals, you should probably rent Logan’s Run. But if you absolutely must go rolling, be prepared. You’ll have to lean on that fast forward button.

GG

Justice League (2001)

Strike a pose.The Justice League of America, in its most rarefied form, represents a powerhouse of D.C. comics heaviest hitters, originally created as a marketing gimmick in 1960 by that great creator of gimmicks and Godhead of the silver age, the comics writer Gardner Fox. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

With the success The Batman/Superman Adventures in the late ’90s, and the continued dumbing down of Batman Beyond, the production team of Rich Fogel, Bruce Timm, and Paul Dini set to do the Next Logical Thing: get the fuck off the WB (sure didn’t do Buffy any harm) and throw wide the golden gates of their superhero universe. After all, if two heroes could make such a splash in the admittedly-small pond of American-produced superhero animation, think of what seven might do for the network lucky enough to carry it? {More}

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Plenty of critics dismissed Mortal Kombat during its initial run in theaters. Even the genre critics gave it a lukewarm reception. They found it fun in a vague, flat-tasting sort of way; another pitiful Enter the Dragon rip-off with a vaguely mythological twist.

Still, the damn thing made $70 million domestic, three and a half times its initial budget. Hollywood’s obsession with the “sure bet” is a well-documented phenomena, and we shall dwell upon it another time. We shall only pause to say that this “franchise” mentality is rapidly becoming the norm in video games as well. Be sure to expect a lot less overall originality from the folks at all your favorite design houses. The business of video games has, apparently, become Business.

Not that it was ever anything but business, mind you…ah, enough stalling. It’s time for me to repeat myself:

Fighter games, by their very nature, are short on plot and long on action. A Character (you, in other words) is magically whisked from one flashy arena to the next, where you must hit an opponent until he/she stops moving. Repeat. So in one sense, many of this movie’s critics are correct: it is slavishly faithful to its source material in terms of structure and style. {More}

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Plenty of critics dismiss the Mortal Kombat video game franchise as nothing more or less than gory, juvenile escapism. You know: crap. Plenty more go on to dismiss the very idea of a movie based on a video game. How can you blame them? Look at Street Fighter. Look at Double Dragon. Look at the anime version of Tekken if you can find the damn thing. Should I mention Super Mario Brothers? I could’ve brought that thing home and really given myself some ammunition for a good rant…but no. Instead, I’m gonna pick on this defenseless little excuse for a movie. Brainless monument to corporate synergy though it may be, Mortal Kombat has managed the strangest of hat tricks and become the high water mark in the perpetual kiddy-pool of video game based movies.

Which is amazing when you stop to consider it. Beat ‘um Up games like MK, by their very nature, are short on plot and long on action. A Character (you) is magically whisked from one flashy arena to the next and must hit an opponent until he/she stops moving. Repeat. In this respect, many reviews of this movie are correct: it is slavishly faithful to its source material in terms of both structure and style. Consequently, Mortal Kombat is light years away from being a good movie. Many of the things that made the video game so poplar are either truncated or forgotten in the haze of this (presumably) franchise-launching production. {More}

Supergirl (1984)

"I just don't know...you sure you're not staring at my 'S'?"Both comic book and movie begin with Argo City, a civic center blown free from the planet Krypton with its gravity and atmosphere completely intact (take that, laws of physics). I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that the Action Comics team threw in a few pictures with this story. Not so here. Opening with a “bang” is one of the first things to go out the window, despite this film’s nominal connection with the wider Superman franchise. After all, why show us something we can just talk about it? And have Peter O’Toole stand around, waving his magic wand?

O’Toole is Zaltar, Argo City’s apparent savior. See, in this version of the story, Krypton’s death blasted Argo into a funky, negative universe called “innerspace” (narrated by William Shatner). Zaltar’s the guy who figured out how to keep the air in and everyone’s feet on the ground. How? Magic of course, with a little help from the film’s MacGuffin: a shinny pokeball called “the omegahedron.”

More than a miniature Unicron, the omegahedron can “create the illusion of life,” power the entire city, provide oxygen and (we assume) nourishment for its numerous inhabitants, and do all of this from the palm of Peter O’Toole’s hand.

Wait. What is this thing (so vital to the city’s basic survival) doing in the palm of Zaltar’s hand, anyway? Oh, he “borrowed” it. I see. Wonderful. This can only end well. {More}

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

''Commander Chakotay, the early years.''ou have to wonder what goes on in Roger Corman’s smooth, smooth head.

Wait, no you don’t. Certainly not anymore. These new “Roger Corman Classics” discs each come stamped with a personal reminiscence from the Man Himself. Mr. Corman, it seems, is growing into his Cult Icon status quite well. Almost seems as if he’s trying to morph into B-movie fan’s Stan Lee. All that’s missing is an “excelsior” or two.

I’ll let Mr. Corman introduce today’s feature, as he pretty much sums it all up with his usual candor and grace:

“This was the most expensive production I had financed. I always liked science fiction and my idea was to do something with the feeling of Star Wars. What I came up with was The Seven Samurai in Outer Space….” Mr. Corman goes on to mention some of the hot young talent he was able to put behind the camera. John Brother From Another Planet Sayles penned the script. Gale “don’t you dare call me Cameron” Anne Hurd scared up all the money (and proved so good at it she would go on to make a career as one of top bean-counters in Hollywood). James Horner scored up this mother. And a young Canadian pup named Jim Cameron would emerge from the bowls of the art department to become effects cameraman and chief model builder. {More}

The Brother from Another Planet (1984)

Moving on, we find writer/director/producer John Sayles, whom I first encountered through my mother and the 1997 jungle bloodbath, Men with Guns. But let’s not even go there.

Instead, let’s go back two weeks ago, to the Hollywood Video by my apartment-hive. I’d planned to fill some of the gaps in my girlfriend’s cinematic knowledge base with a little classic Star Trek. Low and behold, I spot this little bundle of weird and I felt…almost compelled. Worst case scenario, I was in for 108 minutes of bad blaxploitation comedy. Like I can’t get through that in my sleep…

Was I ever blind sided. This is no ordinary blaxploitation comedy. I’m not even sure it has a right to the label. No gunplay, no kung fu, no hookers, no afros…a few evil white guys to be sure…but what movie doesn’t have those?

Instead, Brother From Another Planet has a conscience, and Lord help us it’s a social conscience. This is a movie with Something to Say. Released just after E.T., Brother is an attempt to re-imagine the proverbial immigrant story and turn it on its head. While it succeeds in this, it does so at the expense of the little things like pacing…structure…stuff of that nature. Like me, this movie has a bad case of the Rambles. And by the ninety minute mark I was itching for it to shut the hell up. {More}

Reptilicus (1961)

Ah, yes, Sidney Pink. A name synonymous with “quality.” You may not know the name but believe you me, you know his work. This is the man who found the money to give us that great, humanitarian gift, Bwana Devil…in 3-D. And who could forget the rollicking good time (*cough*) that was Sidney’s next picture, Angry Red Planet (which he co-wrote)? Heck, even if you have forgotten (even if all of the above was not to you but stump-jumping jibber-speak), trust me on this one thing: you’ll remember Reptilicus. For about twenty-four hours. This was Pink’s second directorial credit, a worthy follow-up to 1953’s I Was a Burlesque Queen, earned in tandem with former sound designer Poul Bang. Pink also wrote the screenplay together with Angry Red Planet scribe Ib Melchior (who would go on to at least get “story” credit for Death Race: 2000), so this film really, truly can be lain entirely at Mr. Pink’s feet. Few men can say they single handedly ruined a country’s daikaiju genre, but Sidney, were he alive today, would walk away with that brass ring. No contest.

We critical folk liked to bandy about words like “forgettable,” “unremarkable,” and “crap,” but rare is the film that readily falls into all three categories. I suppose that’s a sign of something…not quality, to be sure…but something, nevertheless.

Chances are you’ve seen Reptilicus before, even if only while browsing through your satellite provider’s Guide screen. The damn thing has remained a staple on the Sci-Fi Channel, edging other, better giant monster movies right off the network after it sold out. Before that it played on countless Saturday afternoons to an audience of latch-key kids. Before that: the drive in. (You remember drive-ins, too, right?) Yet, somehow, I managed to avoid seeing Reptilicus in its entirety until just last night. Go figure. {More}

Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris (1999)

Until 1995, Gamera was the joke: about as low as you could go in the land of Giant Monsters…unless you went to the real out-of-the-way backwaters, like Hong Kong, or South Korea. He was, at best, a Godzilla rip-off, and even nerds like us look down on those. The fire-breathing clown palled around with the kids when he should have been out handing Tokyo its ass. Oh, sure, he saved the world…but from what? A giant salamander with an opal fetish? A telepathic shark from Outer Space? A star fish? I mean, c’mon. Even the Flash has better villains.

It was easy to pick on Gamera. It was fun. Not so easy any more. Because Gamera has become the pinnacle. The new high water mark in giant monster cinema. In Gamera 3, the wave broke, just in time for the Millennium. Remember when the world ended? Yeah, so do I. Remember how seriously we all took that? As if it actually mattered? Well, imagine how it felt to our Japanese brothers and sisters. There’s a palatable sense of impending doom throughout Gamera 3, adding weight and drama to the proceedings and turning this story (and its giant turtle protagonist) into more than the sum of their rubbery parts. {More}