The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

Starring: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray, Frances Bavier, Lock Martin

First, the Lowdown: A man from outer space comes to Earth and tells us to make with the peace already!

At a remote Army base, radar technicians detect a large object that is moving at incredible speed. Soon, all over the world wires are buzzing about the craft with no means of identifying it. Radio announcements worldwide confirm that the object has come from space, but beyond that is anyone’s guess. People around the globe stand riveted, waiting for the least bit of information on the intruding craft. In DC, radio broadcasters are doing their best to put the public at ease – pointing out that the fine spring weather has brought the tourists out in droves to the various points of interest about the town.

Speaking of which, people in the National Mall are enjoying a fine morning walking amongst the various monuments and attractions to be found there. Suddenly, a whirring sound fills the air, and a large shimmering disk descends from the sky to land in a park. The police and National Guard are quickly summoned to cordon off the area, and soon the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president are placed on full alert. The landing site is almost immediately secured and surrounded by tanks, armed soldiers, and frightened onlookers.

The ship lays quiescent for a couple of hours, but then a door opens and a ramp extends from the previously seemless surface. A man in a spacesuit and helmet emerges from the opening, assuring the crowd that he has come in peace and goodwill. As the spaceman descends the ramp to the ground below, the soldiers anxiously unholster their sidearms and train them on the visitor. Perhaps not realizing fully the gravity of the situation, the spaceman reaches inside his suit and produces an odd-looking rod. The gesture leads the military personnel to suspect it’s a weapon, and when the rod snaps open to reveal spiky protrusions, a nervous private shoots our spaceman.

But before the National Guard can take in a damage assessment, a giant robot stalks out of the craft. The presence of the alien homunculous is enough to scare away the civilians, who flee into the distance. The soldiers are now positive that the huge automaton poses a threat to them, suspicions that are confirmed when the robot begins to disintegrate all guns, artillery, and tanks in the area. The spaceman diffuses the situation by calling off his robot buddy and surrendering himself to the Earth authorities.

The spaceman is taken to Walter Reed Hospital to recuperate from his wound. The president’s secretary, Mr. Harley, comes to visit the alien – who identifies himself as Klaatu. Klaatu understands perfect English, looks human, and claims to have come from a neighboring planet. Mr. Harley points out planetary bodies are hardly “neighboring” (rockets and artificial satellites were still theoretical at the time), but Klaatu says it will be an adjustment Earth is going to have to make soon. Klaatu carries an important message, one so important that it must be delivered to the heads of state of all Earth nations. As laudable as the goal sounds, Mr. Harley informs Klaatu that it’s difficult to get nations that are on easy speaking terms to share a room together let alone ones who hold each other in mutual distrust. The spaceman is not concerned with the petty affairs of Earth politics, though, for the message he has eclipses their disputes in importance and the future of the planet is at stake. Mr. Harley agrees to pass on the suggestion to message all of Earth’s leaders for a meeting, but voices his doubts about their willingness to do so.

Evening falls on the giant spaceship, and the Army Corps of Engineers are doing their best to crack it open it, but the ship’s hull is impregnable. The robot has stood as a motionless sentry since the morning, and seems to be made out of the same indestructible material. In the following morming, the doctors who treated Klaatu are examining his x-rays and physiology, marveling at how his body makeup is nearly identical to a human being’s – right down to the internal organs. What’s more, Klaatu says the average life expectancy on his planet is about 130 – Klaatu himself is 78. Another attending physician enters the room with even more astonishing news – Klaatu had secreted a healing salve on his person and applied it to his gunshot wound – and it is now fully healed.

Mr. Harley returns with the invitation replies, and they all decline – almost petulantly. Klaatu restates that his message is too important for one nation or group of people – it has to be shared with the world. Klaatu suggests that he be allowed to mingle among the humans, to better understand our unreasoning nature, but Harley tells him that he is to remain in his hospital room, and will be kept under guard until further notice.

Later that evening, Klaatu makes his escape – having borrowed a change of clothing from the hospital’s laundry. Roaming the streets, he comes across a boarding house and takes a room – using a pseudonym borrowed from his clothes’ original owner, Mr. Carpenter. Mixing in with the natives, Klaatu desperately tries to find a way to get his message out to the world, and soon.

The Day The Earth Stood Still is one of those classics that I had heard much about, but had never gotten around to watching. As such, I knew about the rudiments of the story: spaceman comes to Earth with an ultimatum, indestructible robot named “Gort”, “Klaatu barada nikto,” etc. So it is impossible for me to view this with a completely blank slate.

Furthermore, I remember catching the gripping “first contact” scene when I was a child and I was kinda disappointed with it. I had been told about Gort from several library books on robots (Transfomers were my favorite toy at the time, but I was to later learn that practical robotics involved tasks that were a bit more pedestrian and we were a long way off from having wisecracking android sidekicks.) The books all had sections on robots in fiction and showed Gort as being one of the first robots presented in a movie – using vivid color production stills. So when I caught it as part of a TV broadcast, I was a little put off by the movie being in black and white (I was still of the mind that black and white was for old people and those too poor to afford a color set.) However, the scene where Klaatu exits his saucer was tense enough to hold my attention. And when Klaatu got plugged by a nervous tank driver, my first thought was “This is a guy who arrived in a flying saucer! You might as well count the last few seconds of your life, pal.” And I got a little bit of gratification by watching Gort zortch everything in sight. But then in the next scene it’s revealed that our spaceman not only looks human, but is about as gentle a soul as Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. No color, no marauding robot, and no bug-eyed alien made for a very disappointed 7-year old: Gort wasn’t holding up very well next to Optimus Prime.

Getting so late into the review process for this movie, it’s hard for me to come up with more things orginal to say about it. To confirm what many a critic has said, the picture is very intelligent – almost bordering on cynical, which I was not prepared for. Mr. Harley’s attempts at delicately explaining the selfish nature of human politics reveals a subvervise scorn for politics in general.

What struck me more than the “peace is the ultimate weapon” message the movie had (which shouldn’t be ignored – The Day The Earth Stood Still came out long before the phrase “nuclear disarmament”) is how sardonically the media is employed: at the beginning, the newscasters are doing their best to quell hysteria, but once the spaceman turns into a fugitive – every media outlet begins to fan the flames of panic. Famed radio commentator, Gabriel Heatter, delivers a Glen Beck-like tirade suggesting that the alien is hiding in the fields, forest, or sewers and should be hunted down like the animal he is. When Klaatu tries to contribute to a “man on the street” interview about the fugitive alien, the host becomes immediately disinterested in Klaatu’s suggestion to deal with the situation rationally. This is during a time when most movies represented news media as an honest institution that valued truth above all else.

A lot of people like to point out the heavy-handed Christian allusions in the movie: Klaatu is very Christ-like in his bearing and demeanor (he seems almost regretful when force is used); and there’s the not-so-subtle overtones in his assumed name “Mr. Carpenter”; and you would think having him being brought back from the dead would be a spoiler, but it’s not. One thing I’d like to point out to a lot of folks is that Christianity was the Scientology of the 1950s in Hollywood – it was almost expected to make some kind of connection between the Bible and whatever story was being portrayed: hell, it made it a selling point in quite a few of them.

Another thing people try to suggest is, with its talk about the United Nations and a nationless government, The Day The Earth Stood Still is either warning against or propaganda for Pat Buchanan’s New World Order. On that subject I have this to say: poppycock. People nowadays have become so used to depth and richness in our science fiction that it’s difficult to remember that it was not always so. The “golden era” works of Isaac Asimov, Lester Del Rey, and Robert Heinlein all tend to paint morality and philosophy with such broad strokes that a lot of their idealism can come off naïve at best and fascist at worst. The notion of a government free from sovreignity looks good on paper, but as this movie points out, humans are complex beings. If anything, it’s optimism for a unified government free from war and strife sounds a lot like the inexperienced wishings of a young child.

One final thing: The Day The Earth Stood Still has a rather leaden monologue at the end of it, but something I found interesting is that there is no indication on whether the citizens of Earth took Klaatu’s message to heart or not – and there is equal evidence we would act either way.

Line of the Movie: “I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.”

Five stars. How about a courtesy flush?

My Trek of the Stars, Part 11: Miri

Guest Starring: Kim Darby, Michael J. Pollard, Keith Taylor, Ed McCready, Kellie Flanagan, Steven McEveety

First, the Lowdown: Kirk & Co. find a parallel Earth, that’s run like Lord of the Flies with a case of herpes.

So the Enterprise is receiving an old-style Earth distress call, but can’t figure out why because there’s nothing local to them older than a 1993 Ford Escort. A nearby planetary body seems to be the source of the signal, and it looks and tastes like Earth, except in a different part of the galaxy. (And it also doesn’t appear to have weather on it, either.) All of the Enterprise’s attempts to contact whoever is sending the signal have failed, so Kirk orders up a landing party to beam down. (“Besides, my butt was falling asleep from sitting in that chair.”)

They beam down into a deserted Hollywood backlot that looks like it’s survived a fire. Obviously some kind of cataclysm has occurred ages ago, and by happy coincidence it looks like civilization on the parallel Earth melted down around the 1960s – it’s really thoughtful that they found a way to implode culturally so as not to confuse the viewing audience. With the apparent lack of people present, Spock deduces that the distress signal they’ve been hearing is automated – and comes from the only building with working electricity.

Still investigating the surroundings, McCoy finds a dilapidated tricycle weld in the street – and is immediately assaulted by Boo Radley with third-degree burns. Kirk breaks up the scuffle to figure out who their new special friend is, only the poor sap ends up convulsing and choking on his tongue before they can get anywhere. The only conclusions that McCoy can make is that the late retard’s metabolism has completely gone out of whack, like he’s aged several decades in the last few minutes (kinda like that one year of “Rockin’ New Years Eve” when Dick Clark when batshit insane on camera.)

Attracted to a noise from a nearby building, the landing party breaks into the condemned structure and flush out the creature hiding there: a girl about 13 years of age. The girl’s name is Miri and the sight of adults has put her into hysterics – or maybe it is Kirk’s passing resemblance to Justin Bieber. The captain orders Spock and the guards to spread out and search for signs of pollution or radiation, that way Kirk won’t get any on him. Outside, there does seem to be something there, peering at the crewmen with beady, verminous eyes, but it is keeping well hid.

Meanwhile, Miri tells Kirk and his staff about the times before when “grups” roved the countryside burning, looting, and killing (kinda like Boston when they win the playoffs). Miri also refers to the adults present as “grups” and is suspicious of their motives – and any kid who has heard the line “this hurts me more than you” can hardly blame her. According to the girl, the “grups” (a mash-up of the word “grownups”) got sick and went as crazy as a Pentacostal in a snake farm, so the “onlies” (a mash-up of the word “kids”) hid until those who had achieved majority had annihilated themselves.

Spock and the two redshirts are continuing their search of the surrounding backlot (I guess they took a smoke break every 15 minutes because they’ve only just rounded the corner). They investigate an alleyway only to be greeted with a rain of debris and the taunts of children’s voices (“Apparrently they assume my mother is so obese that her own shadow has a mass of approximately 20 kilos.”) Returning back, Spock’s suspicions about the planet being populated by feral children is confirmed by Kirk, so they decide to check out the local hospital to gather more information about what made the people there sick (and probably see if they got any oxycontin around too.) But before they can get very far, Miri finds a gangrenous sore on Kirk’s hand – a sign of the plague that killed all of the adults (see, this is why you wash your hands after using the bathroom).

Once they reach the hospital, it becomes apparent that everyone – except Spock – has a “touch of the clap” somewhere on their bodies. Conveniently, the building that was sending out the automated transmission also happens to be a research hospital with a fully stocked laboratory! (Next they’re gonna find out that the liquor stores have all manged to evade destruction too.) McCoy takes a tissue sample of everyone’s sores and discovers that there’s more bacteria found there than you’d get from the salad bar’s sneeze guard at Sizzler. Kirk orders up supplies and equipment to help Dr. McCoy – and further orders that no one else is to beam down either (“You don’t want this. It’s like fire ants are fighting each other on my scrotum.”) Rifling through the hospital records, Kirk finds a file on a “life prologation project” that looks to be the likely cause of the plague. (I guess it wasn’t from a lack of Purell.)

According to the file, whatever the “life prolongation thingie” was it happened 300 years ago. Given that there are no adults and only children, Spock deduces that the case of the clap that everyone has only affects you post-pubescently – and you thought untimely erections were embarrassing. Spock has deduced that the planetary scientists created a virus that would alter human DNA to extend one’s lifespan so that you would age one month for every 100 years (I guess the idea of overpopulation never occurred to them). But due to a miscalculation, all of the adults came down with a disease that brought on embarrassing sores, insane behavior, and death – all in a short period of time (kinda like Scientology). So once a child hits puberty, they become susceptible to it (around the age when you figure out Hannah Montana isn’t as cool as you originally thought.) Kirk knows that it’s very unlikely that the surviving children are aware of the disease’s nature, and enlists in Miri’s assistance in locating them (the fact that she’s becoming more enamored with Kirk’s George Clooney-esque charm is a further clue here.)

Back at the children’s playhouse, Jahn, a Holden Caulfield stand-in, is upset about the presence of adults and Miri’s contact with them. Jahn wants to organize and scare the adults off like ghetto kids with a truant officer, but when Kirk and Miri approach their hideout, everyone scatters and hides. Furthermore, when Kirk enters the dilapidated building, he’s attacked by what appears to be a 90-year old Aimee Mann. Naturally the poor girl has gone full-blown “clap-tastic”, so when Kirk stuns her, it puts her down permanently.

Spock has concluded four things: First, the disease attacks when its carrier hits puberty; Second, the older you are, the quicker it takes effect; Third, Spock may not develop a case of the disease, but he is a carrier; Fourth, they have seven days to bail themselves out of this mess; and Fifth, he can’t count to four.

Day two of their contagion comes along and the taunting refrains of little kid voices lure Kirk, McCoy, and Spock outside. Jahn and some cohorts then sneak into the newly abandoned lab and take everyone’s communicators – which are conveniently left out in the open. (Some people can’t be trusted with fancy gadgets.) Without the communicators, Kirk has lost the ability to contact the ship and McCoy can longer access the ship’s computers to run tests. (So here’s an important investment tip: sell your stock in Apple, the iPad technology won’t make it into the 23^rd Century.)

Day four: the disease’s progress is making all of the humans as twitchy and irritable as a group Republicans at an STD clinic. Furthermore, a study of the area indicates that the food is running out – the preservatives in Twinkies and Oscar Meyer only last for so long. Kirk and McCoy are at each other’s throats and amid all the tension Yeoman Rand finally breaks down and runs out of the room screaming – but when Miri observes the captain gently holding the sobbing yeoman, a bolt of adolescent jealousy fires within her. Just then, McCoy makes a breakthrough in his analysis and has isolated the viral agent that’s affecting everyone, and a cure should be ready before the end of the episode.

Miri has returned to the Romper Room with a scheme of her own: she’ll tell Yeoman Rand that one of the children has been injured, the kids will tie her up, and when Kirk comes to rescue her, they’ll beat on him like he’s Johnny Knoxville in Jackass. The flaw in her plan, however comes when Kirk demands to know where his subordinate is – and because the disease raging ever onward in him, he has all the tact as a hungover dad looking for the TV remote. Another thing Miri didn’t count on is that ever since she started being interested in the Twilight books, she’s become susceptible to the virus and has started to develop embarrassing sores of her own. McCoy and Spock have some good news, though, they think they’ve come up with a serum – but the bad news is, without access to the ship’s computers they don’t know what the proper dosage should be. So, it’s like buying LSD from a source you don’t trust: you could achieve a Kundalini-like experience that leaves you enlightened for the rest of your days, or you’ll spend the evening screaming about having sex with dead relatives while the walls are bleeding.

Kirk has Miri go to the kiddie playhouse to confront Jahn and get his communicators and yeoman back, but Kirk’s impassioned pleas to their children’s better nature goes over about as well as a white suburbanite volunteer in a classroom full of inner city kids. Miri, however, points out that she’s come down with the disease too – and to further hammer things home, Kirk points out that with the food supplies diminishing, the rest of the kids will die as well. (“This disease is nothing compared to a life without Little Debbie, kids!”)

McCoy, meanwhile, has grown impatient and wants to try the damn cure now (“I’m sure it’ll be nothing but tracers and a strange desire to rub my face in something soft, gimme the shot!”), so Spock leaves to check on Kirk’s progress. In the Vulcan’s absence, McCoy shoots himself up with an armful of cure and collapses on the floor mumbling a Velvet Underground tune. Spock rushes to the fallen surgeon’s aid, and Kirk chooses that moment to burst in with the audience from Bozo the Clown in tow. Conveniently enough, McCoy’s blemishes disappear right before their very eyes – leaving the children in awe at the adults’ magic.

Back on the Enterprise, Kirk tells his command staff that the kids should be all right – having been left a cursory medical team to keep an eye on them (I’m sure there was a glut of volunteers for that assignment). Starfleet is sending out a team of disciplinarians to curtail any further rowdiness on the abandoned planet. Yeoman Rand points out to Kirk that Miri really had a crush on him, to which the captain postulates on whether Miri’s relationship with her father was sound.

Things to look for in this episode:

Miri: I don’t know if this is what the producers were looking for, but she comes off like that one girl in grade school you knew was in an abusive home.

Jahn: Great Googlimoogli – Michael J. Pollard is funny-looking at any age. He looks like a troll doll after it’s been melted with a blowtorch.

The “destroyed city”: It looks like Disneyland’s Main Street USA after the apocalypse. The architecture, layout, and antiquated ruined cars give one the impression that they landed in Lincoln, Nebraska around the 1940s.

What is McCoy not today? Able to fight his addiction to his hypo. The man is going to wind up like Lenny Bruce some day.

And what about Spock? Spock seems annoyed that he’s a carrier of this case of “space-herpes”. It’s like that time when your brother got the chicken pox, and you knew you were gonna get it too, it was just a matter of time.

Chinese Roulette (1976)

(Originally released as Chinesisches Roulette)

Starring: Anna Karina, Margit Carstensen, Brigitte Mira, Ulli Lommel, Alexander Allerson, Volker Spengler

First, the Lowdown: A disabled girl manipulates her inattentive parents into an extremely uncomfortable situation.

It’s the start of the weekend and Ariane and Gerhard Christ are frantically preparing for their separate trips abroad. In their absence, their daughter Angela (who cannot walk without crutches), will be placed in the care of her governess. Angela watches the frenzy of preparation with the aloof detachment of someone who has seen the same play over and over. The Christs part company, Gerhard wishing his wife good luck in Naples as she departs. Gerhard, however, isn’t going on a trip – at least not abroad – as he picks his mistress up at the airport. The mistress, Irene, is excited to spend the weekend at the ancestral mansion Christ owns in the country – which reminds him to call the governess and tell her not to go there this weekend. Angela receives the phone call, however, sees through her father’s story about being in Oslo, and informs the governess that she wants to spend the weekend at the mansion.

Meanwhile, Gerhard and Irene have been greeted with some confusion by Kast, the housekeeper, and her son, Gabriel. To make things even more awkward, Irene and Gerhard stumble into the living room and encounter Ariane entangled sensuously on the floor with Kolbe, Gerhard’s assistant. Realizing that there’s no hiding each other’s infidelity any longer, the Christ’s laugh it off – which makes their lovers all the more uncomfortable – a discomfort that increases when Angela arrives with her governess.

There are times when I wonder if Fassbinder sees love as more of an illness than a laudable achievement. In quite a few of his movies, the cynical message is “in love, one is always used,” which is played out a little more subtly in this movie than in some of his other pieces. The Christs seem to be perfectly fine to discover each other’s affairs, almost relieved. But the extramarital lovers grow more and more ill at ease once they discover what they thought was an exhilarating and loving relationship is nothing more than something on the side to alleviate their partner’s from the dullness of routine.

At the hub of this is Angela, a disabled pre-teen who has grown weary of feeling like a burden to her parents. (She confesses to Gabriel that she knew her father’s infidelity started when she was diagnosed with her illness.) But having been shoved into the background of her parent’s lives has provided an interesting vantage point – the problem with ignoring someone is that they aren’t always ignoring you back.

In a lot of ways the movie’s climax reminded me of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. “Chinese Roulette” refers to a party game where the players are divided into teams, one team selects a person from the other, and the other team has to guess which one they chose by asking indirect questions for clues – “If the person was a car, what would they be?” As the ringleader, Angela’s talent for manipulating the emotions comes to its pinnacle here, but has a result she wasn’t expecting.

Line of the movie: “What would this person be in the Third Reich?”

Three and a half stars. It’s broccoli time!

Phantasm (1979)

Starring: Angus Scrimm, Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister, Kathy Lester, Terrie Kalbus

First, The Lowdown: An annoying teen and his older brother finds out the local mortuary really put the “fun” in “funeral”.

It’s 2am, and a guy who looks like a roadie for the Little River Band is getting it on in the middle of a cemetery with a blonde chick that looks way out of his league. (And before you start thinking roofies were involved in the process, note this: the blonde chick is on top.) Sure enough, things run their course and before you can say “90-second wonder”, the blonde chick grabs a knife and goes all stabby on the poor schmuck. Fast forward to the schmuck’s funeral: it turns out that other two members of the late schmuck’s Steve Miller cover band, Reggie and Jody, are stunned to find out he killed himself. Jody steps away from the Schmuck’s memorial service to pay respect to his own parents – who died before the movie took place or something. What Jody doesn’t know is that his precocious little brother, Mike, has snuck away to spy on the funeral service. (Why Mike wasn’t invited isn’t made too clear, my guess is that Jody didn’t want him overtired for his audition with Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.) After the service is over, Mike hangs back to watch the burial, only to see the creepy, dollar store version of Christopher Lee pick up the casket by himself and shove it back into the hearse.

But Mike can’t spend too much time worrying about that because he has bigger things on his mind. Since the death of their parents, Jody has been serving as Mike’s guardian – which is taking time from his busy schedule of driving around in his sweet Barracuda and impersonating Knight Rider-era David Hasselhoff. Mike is naturally worried that his 24-year old sibling will dump him off at their aunt’s place (you know, the weird one with all the cats and the composting toilet). For some reassurance, Mike calls upon a schoolfriend of his, whose grandmother is a fortune teller – that only speaks through her granddaughter for some reason. Before telling his future, grandma tells Mike to put his hand in a black box that has magically appeared in from of him. Mike does so and the box clamps down on his hand painfully. Grandma tells him that the only way to get his hand out of the box is to not fear it (because it’s the mind-killer, donchaknow). Mike lets go of his fear like his Bene Gesserit mother trained him to do and frees his had. Oh yeah, and the fortune teller says he as nothing to worry about (and something else about a “quick-draw haberdasher” or something?).

Back home, Reggie has taken a break from his job as the Good Humor man, and shows up at Mike & Jody’s to jam on the front porch (and thus “adult contemporary” was born.) Later that night Jody goes to the neighborhood dive to drink away the headache that his brother is giving him. And who should start hitting on him? The same creepy blonde chick from before. Jody and creepy blonde chick stroll through the same cemetery where she got all stabby earlier, and unbeknownst to them Mike has been following close behind. Things between the inebriated lovers start progressing rather quickly, with clothing being shed. However, the woods are filled with creepy noises and shadows and- hey, was that a midget in a robe? Mike apparently has an irrational fear of those with dwarfism because he runs screaming out into the cemetery like he was in a Benny Hill short (I swear, the scene needed “Yakety Sax” playing in the background). Jody follows after his cockblocking brother, who has started ranting about weird scary things that he can’t fully articulate.

Back at home Mike is working on his brother’s sweet Barracuda when he starts hearing weird voices – much like what he heard in the forest earlier. Before he can investigate, though, the car falls off its wheel chocks and would’ve crushed the poor lad if Jody hadn’t shown up just then. Mike tries convincing his older brother about something weird going on, but Jody isn’t having any of it. Frustrated, Mike decides to do some snooping around at the funeral home. At first things there look just like they would in a Scooby Doo episode (Mike’s probably thinking “Is Don Knotts or Cass Elliot going to be the guest star tonight?”), but the kid’s hopes of getting “jinkies” with Velma in the back of the Mystery Machine are quickly dashed when he is attacked by disgruntled groundskeeper. The groundskeeper can’t hold his own against a juvenile though, and in the scuffle gets struck in the noggin by a prop that looks like something that would happen if Black Sabbath had done “Tommy”. Mike am-scrays amid the chaos, now thoroughly convinced that something not good is indeed afoot at Tall Guy’s Discount Funeral Parlour.

Hoo boy, where to begin?

Looking around on the internet, I’ve noticed that there’s a bit of a cult surrounding this movie. And as with a lot of fans of “esoteric cinema”, I’ve found that the more you point out a film’s flaws, the more people rally around it. So with that in mind I’ve decided to say, “I’m gonna tear into this movie like a bull elephant forcing itself on an ostrich. I don’t give a reconstituted shit if the fandom community declares a fatwa on me.”

Having seen many a film, I’ve noticed that movies are often like women I’ve dated: even the worst ones will sometimes have at least one interesting, positive feature in them. For example: Friday the 13^th, Part IV is considered (even amongst its die-hard fans) to be one of the more boring and formulaic entries into the franchise – with the exception of watching an obviously stoned Crispin Glover gambol about, the movie itself is pretty dull – even when the teen-meat starts getting killed. However, Part IV has one genuinely creepy scene in it that involves an 8-year old Corey Feldman desperately shaving his head and confronting the hockey mask-wearing psycho. (It has to be seen in order to be believed.) There are numerous entries in my catalogue of reviews that are too laughable to be considered horrific, but still contain one element – no matter how brief – that hits off of something subconscious in me. Which is why there are times I’ll be awake at 3 in the goddamned morning worried about some maniac is going to slice me to bits – and simultaneously pissed that even the stupidest concepts make sense late at night when you’re fatigued.

Phantasm has none of that.

I’m not joking either: I went to bed after watching Phantasm, got up at about 3 to use the bathroom, and it occurred to me while I lay awake afterwards that even in retrospect there was nothing remotely scary or creepy about the film. Yeah, the Tall Guy was kinda weird and had several “surprise!” moments, but the guy’s built like Christopher Lee after he was pulled from retirement. I’m 6’6” and 300 lbs, I’m pretty sure I could take him out. My roommate told me to watch Phantasm because it scared the hell out of her when she was a kid. But after we saw it she said, “That movie scared me a lot more before I started bleeding from the crotch.”

One detractor, for me at least, was the special effects. Phantasm is pretty obviously a self-financed feature, and it shows everywhere – especially in the “mausoleum” that’s made out of contact paper. I’m not one to laugh at the special effects of a film that was put together by a bunch of average Joes looking to make a movie, but couldn’t you guys at least tried to create some fake blood? The people here bleed either red or yellow – in the same kind of consistency that you’d find at your local hot dog stand. Phantasm’s showcase effect – the evil chrome ball with blades and stuff on it – is quickly undermined by the fact that when it hits its victim, he bleeds one of Heinz’s 57 varieties. Even worse, the “ball shot” starts out kinda nasty, but gets comedic when the victim’s catsup-like blood spurts out the back of it like a fountain. For a second I thought I was watching an Italian PSA about the warning signs of a stroke.

Another place the movie’s grassroots show is in the writing – the whole of the movie is filled with “wouldn’t it be cool if X happened” ideas that are never really fully fleshed out. I get the impression that the filmmakers got really high in their college dorm and started tossing premise after premise out, and no one was there to say “Uh, wait, that last one sounded kinda stupid.” Being an aspiring filmmaker myself, I know that oftentimes you have to make adjustments in the script and story to save on money – but here it looks like the director chose the easiest way out because it meant more of the budget could be used for Cheetos and beer.

Line of the Movie: “What we gotta do is we gotta snag that tall dude and stomp the shit out of him, and we'll find out what the hell is going on up there!”

Two stars. 57 varieties and they all suck.