1984: NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND

What’s it about?

Long after the fall of industrialized society in a destructive war, the remnants of humanity live in small colonies scattered throughout a world of wilderness. Much of the globe is also threatened by the advance of “the Sea of Decay” -- an expanse of toxic plants that blankets any area it can get its spores into. In this world, the people of the Valley of the Wind live in relative harmony with nature -- burning away the deadly spores when they come too close to their village, but also respecting and protecting the giant (and easily enraged) insects that live in the Sea of Decay.

But one day, an airship from the militaristic Tolmekian people crashes in the Valley of the Wind. The ship’s cargo is a “giant warrior” -- an ancient weapon of unbelievable power that the Tolmekians are hoping to use to destroy the Sea of Decay. Armies soon arrive to subjugate the Valley of the Wind and retrieve the giant warrior. But when Princess Nausicaa -- an inhabitant of the Valley of the Wind who has a special connection with nature -- discovers that the Sea of Decay has a place in the natural order, it becomes clear that the giant warrior must be destroyed.

Is it any good?

It’s probably time that I stop pretending that I don’t like cartoons. I’ve watched a bunch so far -- FANTASTIC PLANET (1973), WIZARDS (1977), HEAVY METAL (1981), THE PLAGUE DOGS (1982), THE SECRET OF NIMH (1982), and now NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND -- and you would think by now that I’d be able to point to one and say, “Yeah, see, this is an example of why I don’t like animated movies.”

Maybe I’m just picking really good cartoons, though it’s not like there are a bunch of animated sci-fi movies I’ve been passing up. But so far the biggest complaint I have about the animated nature of the movies is that HEAVY METAL too often fritters away its artistic potential on big breasts and geysers of blood. In fact, back when I was writing about HEAVY METAL, I suggested that the problem with cartoons is that a world where anything is possible is also a world where it’s very difficult to invoke real emotions -- real awe, real sympathy, real terror.

I still think that criticism holds true of HEAVY METAL, which is the least imaginative and least skillfully executed of the cartoons I’ve watched so far. (In general, I mean. HEAVY METAL does have its moments too.) But I was a bit hasty in applying that comment to animated movies in general. What I didn’t count on is that the limitless possibilities of animation -- when combined with imagination and skill -- can hit emotional notes with images that are impossible to create in the real world.

NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND is probably the best of the animated movies I’ve ever seen, so it’s possible that I’m letting the pendulum swing too far in the other direction now. After all, NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND is a pretty great movie in almost every respect -- not just the artistry of the visuals. It’s probably not even fair to focus on how nice it looks, since that wasn’t even the part that I enjoyed most. But it does look really awesome, and practically every new image -- from the monstrous insects to the Tolmekian airships to the giant warrior itself -- is crafted for the maximum impact. I’ve said before that none of the animated movies I’ve watched would be better if they had been filmed in live action instead. That’s doubly true of NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND.

I also really liked the story and the world of the movie. The action takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, long after a world-wasting cataclysm. Much of the world -- like the Valley of the Wind, for instance -- looks peaceful and idyllic, but characters talk about the toxic elements that still infect the soil and water. Presumably these are the remnants of industrial waste or nuclear radiation that are still polluting the earth generations later.

It’s not really clear what the effect of this pollution is -- trees and other plants still grow, people seem healthy, the world generally looks like a nice place to live. But it turns out that the Sea of Decay (really a forest) is a sprawling organic filter for these toxins. The reasons the plants in the Sea of Decay are deadly to people is that the toxins present in the topsoil and surface water are concentrated and accumulated in them -- a plant from the Sea of Decay raised on clean soil and pure water is as harmless as a daisy.

There’s some mumbo-jumbo about how the Earth created the Sea of Decay to cleanse itself of humanity’s pollution -- I could have done without that part. But I did really like what this revelation did for the central conflict of the movie. Throughout the first half of the flick, the Sea of Decay seems like a source of pollution itself -- a riotous overgrowth of toxic plant life that brings death and decay everywhere it goes, and which is expanding faster than the few human survivors can contain it. But if the Sea of Decay is actually a natural and necessary adaptation to the pollution that already exists, then it doesn’t seem so smart to destroy it then. It puts the environmentalist’s favorite choice into stark relief: either doom the planet for the convenience of mankind, or let mankind perish to preserve the planet.

I think I would have expected these kind of environmentalist themes to be more prevalent in science fiction movies, but now that I’m thinking about it I can’t really come up with many precursors to NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND in this respect. There are certainly movies that feature future Earths that have suffered some kind of unspecified environmental catastrophe -- like the desert world of A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975) or the ice world of QUINTET (1979). But the only movies I can think of that have specific pro-nature or anti-technology agendas prior to 1984 are SILENT RUNNING (1972) and WIZARDS (1977). There are, of course, many other sci-fi movies that caution against advances in science and technology -- but overwhelmingly those warnings are on behalf of mankind, not on behalf of a bunch of trees and pixies.

But NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND is unabashedly environmentalist in its sympathies and messages. I don’t really mind that since sci-fi partly exists to give shape to otherwise abstract fears. Environmental collapse is a possible danger we may have to face -- no different than the Communist invasions and out-of-control computers and overpopulated cities that science fiction helped us grapple with in earlier decades.

If you take the “prophecies” of these movies seriously, they start to be a bit much. But science fiction is a haven for hysteria -- partly because it makes for good stories, and partly because it’s actually comforting in the end. Despite the anti-science bent of so many sci-fi flicks, mankind usually wins out in the end -- and we win out over the most extreme and most unlikely versions of our fears. After all, Godzilla doesn’t show up in Tokyo and instigate a statistically significant rise in annual cases of skin cancer. No, he levels the whole city. (I know I’m mixing metaphors here, but you see what I mean.) If we can deal with Godzilla levels of carnage and destruction in our fantasies, then surely we can deal with our own messes in the real world. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that’s actually true or not -- but at least that’s what sci-fi seems to be telling us with all of its happy endings to gloomy situations.

1981: DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS

What’s it about?

A farmer raising highly venomous (and carnivorous and mobile) plants called triffids is stung by one and almost blinded. On the day his bandages are due to come off, he wakes up in the hospital to find that everyone else has gone blind due to radiation from lights seen in the sky the night before. The farmer -- whose sight was protected by the bandages -- sets out looking for others who can still see as well.

As he wanders through England, the farmer encounters many people trying to cope with the new epidemic of blindness. Some are trying to help the blind population survive, while others are taking advantage of the situation for personal gain, and still others are trying to stockpile supplies to ride out the inevitable violence, fires and disease that will soon follow. Meanwhile, the triffids -- which had been raised for a precious chemical they produce -- escape their farms and begin terrorizing the countryside.

Is it any good?

This version of DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is a six-episode BBC miniseries. There was also an earlier version, a theatrical feature in 1962 that is widely derided as cheesy and ridiculous. (I haven’t seen that one myself, so I can’t comment directly.) Both versions are of course based on John Wyndham’s novel of the same name, which is one of those modern classics of sci-fi that everybody has heard of but probably nobody has read. (John Wyndham also, incidentally, wrote a novel called THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, which has been adapted into film more than once under the title VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.)

Having never read the novel myself, I’d always thought that DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS was about some kind of alien plant invasion. But in fact the triffids are implied to be either the discovery or the invention of Soviet scientists. The miniseries gives a bit of history of the triffids -- they appeared throughout the world, starting in South America, and quickly became both curiosity and nuisance. Wild growths were contained by fire teams, and soon only a few specimens with their stingers removed remained in gardens. But then it was discovered that triffids produced a chemical that increased the efficiency of fuel by 30% -- and extensive commercial farming commenced.

The weird lights that blind the human population of Earth aren’t part of an alien attack either -- they’re simply a natural phenomenon that nobody has seen before. It’s an interesting twist in an old type of story. The triffids aren’t actually launching a coordinated attack. Rather, they’re taking advantage of a weakness at the top of the food chain to break out of captivity and become the dominant species. With most humans blinded, they can easily hunt down food and evade destruction, and soon the rural areas of England are overrun with deadly triffids.

In the end, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS really focuses far more on the blindness than it does on the triffids. The triffids are there mostly to provide evolutionary pressure on humans -- to underline the fact that an epidemic of blindness wouldn’t just result in man-made chaos. In addition, it would be a chance for the rest of the natural world to get an upper hand on mankind again.

But the blindness is also an opportunity for all kinds of amateur survivalists to reform the world in whatever way they think is right for the new circumstances. For much of the miniseries, the protagonists are shuttled from group to group (sometimes forcibly), each with a different objective. They start with an organization of mostly sighted people that’s preparing to flee the cities for the countryside, leaving the blind folks to fend for themselves while they save what they can of civilization. Next, they are kidnapped by a group that handcuffs them to a set of blind people, forcing them to look after them. After escaping that, they find a country estate being run as a Christian commune, and then set up their own small family home for a while until they are found out by a neo-feudal paramilitary organization that wants to set them up as lords in vassal to a central authority.

This is not necessarily the most realistic part of the movie, since every group they fall in with is curiously well organized. There hardly seem to be any sighted people who are just hiding out and trying to get by -- everyone seems to have an agenda and a plan to resurrect the world from the ashes. But realism is not always the greatest virtue in science fiction, and there is ample opportunity for reminders that civilization isn’t always a force for good. It took thousands of years for the cultural and governmental organs of the world to evolve to the state they’re in today -- and hardly anybody would say we’ve got a perfect system even now. DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS shows some of the imperfect systems that could rise and fail in the wake of a catastrophic blow to law and order. And if it does show them in a neat, compressed timeline -- oh well.

I realize that I haven’t said very much about triffids. As I mentioned earlier, that’s because the movie is really more about blindness than about killer plants. But there are killer plants. They mostly succeed in not being ridiculous, but mostly only because there’s relatively little seen of them. I’ve said it before -- plants aren’t really scary. Moving plants with venomous stingers are perhaps a bit scarier, but they are still just vegetables.

Overall, the special effects are decent and the acting is adequate. It’s obvious that this is a television miniseries and not a feature film. On the other hand, the script is very good, and there are a lot of ideas banging around to think about. In those respects, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS has a lot in common with PBS’s THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (1979) or with another BBC sci-fi miniseries, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (1981). It’s smart sci-fi made by smart people, doing the best they can with limited means.

1981: THE ROAD WARRIOR

What’s it about?

Mel Gibson is a drifter in a brutal post-apocalyptic Australia where transportation equals survival. He gets a tip from another drifter about a source of limitless gasoline -- a settlement with a working oil well. (And apparently an on-site refinery?) When he arrives, he finds it already under siege by a gang of sadistic marauders.

Gibson manages to get himself taken prisoner by the settlers, who he learns want to haul away the vast quantities of gas they’ve stored up to a place on the coast where they expect to find civilization. He cuts them a deal -- he’ll find a rig big enough to escape with their tanker in exchange for his freedom, his car, and all the fuel he can carry. But after Gibson fulfills his part of the bargain, circumstances cause him to stick around to help out with the escape as well.

Is it any good?

THE ROAD WARRIOR is a rare kind of sequel -- one that’s not only better than its predecessor, but also more distinctive and memorable. In fact, if you’ve never seen the movies, then most of what you think you know about MAD MAX (1979) is probably actually from THE ROAD WARRIOR.

MAD MAX is one of those classic science fiction movies that I watched as a teenager and didn’t really like very much. There are a lot of these, but unlike many of the others my opinion of MAD MAX hasn’t changed very much in the intervening decade. One problem I have with the movie is that it’s really barely science fiction at all. It takes place in a future Australia where the crime rate is high and the cops are consequently pretty brutal. But that’s about the extent of the speculation. Some folks refer to the world of MAD MAX as “dystopian”, but I honestly don’t think we see enough of it to make that kind of judgment. In fact, one of the few moments of cultural or political import is the release of a criminal by the cops because of a due process violation. That hardly seems dystopian to me.

Dystopian or not, one thing that MAD MAX clearly isn’t is post-apocalyptic. The movie’s version of Australia doesn’t look like the nicest or most luxurious place to live, but society seems to be largely intact and there’s no hint that any extraordinary disasters have ravaged the planet. But some time between the end of MAD MAX and the beginning of THE ROAD WARRIOR, some global cataclysm does occur.

In some ways, the change is bizarre -- Mel Gibson’s character seems to have walked out of one movie and into the next without being affected by whatever wars and famines have been raging around him. In other ways, the change makes sense -- the devastation of the outside world is a melodramatic echo of Gibson’s own feelings at the end of MAD MAX. But the change makes all the difference to the two movies (along with a huge increase in budget and a tighter story that relies far less on the idea of justifiable homicide).

MAD MAX is a revenge story -- sort of. I say “sort of” because only the last twenty minutes of the movie are about the revenge part. Up to that point, it’s a series of increasingly nasty standoffs between Mel Gibson’s police officer and a gang of lawless thugs. After a lot of dancing around, the thugs eventually commit the biggest error a movie character can commit -- they mess with Mel Gibson’s family.

I’m not really a big fan of revenge movies since nobody really ever wins. Even if you believe in the concept of justifiable homicide (and I don’t), killing off all the bad guys doesn’t really fix anything. Usually that’s partly the point of such movies, but MAD MAX doesn’t really seem too interested in examining anybody’s motives or the consequences of their actions. Like in old westerns, there’s a sense that even though the bloodshed achieves nothing, it’s necessary nonetheless to get “justice”. Frankly, the whole movie is just kind of a bummer.

THE ROAD WARRIOR, on the other hand, has an almost redemptive story. Gibson’s Max starts out the movie the same way he ended MAD MAX -- grim, friendless, hopeless, and alone. (Though he does pick up a dog somewhere.) His interactions with the settlers are not exactly groundbreaking -- he acts the same predictable way as hundreds of fictional mercenaries-with-a-conscience have before him -- but at least the arc allows for some character growth. It’s true that he doesn’t agree to help the settlers escape until after his car’s been wrecked and his dog’s been killed by the marauders outside the town -- in other words, not until he’s lost everything once again. But this time, instead of taking justice into his own hands alone, he returns to a community of people with whom he has common needs.

The escape itself is pretty exciting as well. Gibson and a handful of others drive the fuel tanker in one direction (knowing that the gang will follow them), while the rest of the settlers escape going another way. The budget for THE ROAD WARRIOR was supposedly ten times that of MAD MAX. If that’s true, then it’s clear where all the money went -- right into stuntman salaries and vehicles to be destroyed. The final chase takes almost the whole last third of the movie and is suitably epic. If anything, the odds seem stacked too severely against the good guys, and several sympathetic characters are dispatched in casually gruesome ways. Director George Miller isn’t above ratcheting up the tension by having Mad Max send a child out onto the hood of the speeding rig to retrieve a shotgun shell, either, so that’s the kind of action we’re dealing with here.

Escape with the rig ultimately proves impossible -- the gang are too many and the defenders too few and too exposed. But there’s a neat moment when they finally bring the tanker down and discover that it’s full of sand instead of fuel. It’s not exactly clear whether Gibson knew this or not, but the movie seems to hint that he didn’t know. I really like that wrinkle in the ending, since it seems to confirm Mad Max’s misanthropy -- even these nice settler folk have taken advantage of him and tricked him into risking his life for a tanker full of sand. But of course, the tanker’s real mission was to serve as a decoy that would allow the rest of the settlers to escape. The defenders who stayed with it must have known they were going on a suicide mission, so whether it was full of gas or sand was irrelevant to them.

THE ROAD WARRIOR is also the movie that codified a lot of the weird look of post-apocalyptic stories. A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975) did some of it first -- like the barren desert settings, the constant fighting over scant resources, and some of the whips-and-chains weirdness -- but THE ROAD WARRIOR revels in such details to a far deeper degree. And, being a worldwide blockbuster that made Mel Gibson into a star, it popularized them far and wide. In fact, THE ROAD WARRIOR was much more successful outside of Australia than MAD MAX was. In most of the world, it was called simply MAD MAX 2 -- despite making little reference to the events of the first movie and having arguably a completely different setting, it was apparently always meant to be a direct sequel. But since few people in the U.S. had seen MAD MAX by 1981, the title was changed for American distribution. As far as I know, the movie is still just called MAD MAX 2 in most of the world, but since I’m American I will keep calling it THE ROAD WARRIOR instead. It’s a better title anyway.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

One final note. Most of the movie holds up these almost thirty years later, but one exception to that is perhaps part of the depiction of the murderous gang. In MAD MAX, there are vague but repeated suggestions that at least some of the bad guy bikers are homosexual, or at least bisexual. These same suggestions return (in even greater force) in THE ROAD WARRIOR -- despite the fact that this is an entirely different murderous gang. There is no doubt that there’s at least one out and proud homosexual relationship among the marauders, and the rest appear to be enthusiasts of various flavors of what the personal sections in newspapers used to call “alternate lifestyles”. I’m not sure what the intention was in 1979 and 1981 -- if the audience was supposed to be further repulsed by finding out that the bad guys are not only murderous, but also appreciate punk fashions, experiment with bondage gear, and are tolerant of homosexuality. But watching the movies now, it has the weird effect of making the gangs somewhat sympathetic. There were moments when I could see them as practically surrogate families for each other, providing a supportive environment for lifestyle choices that weren’t likely to be accepted in square society. Of course, they’re still sadistic and evil rapists and killers, so that feeling never lasts too long.

1979: THE LATHE OF HEAVEN

What’s it about?

After an overdose, a young man named George Orr is told to report to “voluntary therapy” with a dream specialist named Haber. The overdose was an attempt by Orr to self-medicate and to eliminate all of his dreams, since whatever he dreams becomes true as soon as he wakes up. Haber at first doesn’t believe the story, but after placing Orr in hypnotic sleep and suggesting a couple dreams to him, he starts to believe as well.

Haber doesn’t want to cure the condition, however. Instead, he wants to use Orr to improve the world -- suggesting dreams to him where the weather is sunnier, where overpopulation is solved, where there is no war, where racism doesn’t exist, and so on. But as Haber’s requests become more ambitious, the unintended consequences of the changes to the world become more horrific. And soon the continued existence of humanity is in doubt.

Is it any good?

Back in the days when I used to read a lot of contemporary science-fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin was one of my least favorite writers. I used to groan every time I saw her name on the cover of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine -- I knew I would read her story, and I knew I would hate it. Of course, that was many years ago when I was a teenager, and my tastes have changed considerably since then. I haven’t read Le Guin lately though, so I don’t know what I would think about her now.

THE LATHE OF HEAVEN is of course one of Le Guin’s most well-known and popular novels. This made-for-TV adaptation from 1979 was produced by the American public television network PBS, and despite being a low budget job with no name actors, it’s pretty riveting nonetheless. No matter what I might think about Le Guin’s writing, it’s certain that her ideas are very interesting.

In a lot of ways, the premise of the story is almost exactly like all those old fairy tales of wish-granting genies and leprechauns and talking fish. Every time Haber tells Orr to dream a new “improvement” for the world, it’s obvious that things are gong to go wrong. But instead of a malicious genie twisting words to create an ironic punishment, it’s presumably Orr’s subconscious that solves overpopulation by unleashing a plague on the world or that solves racism by making everyone a uniform grey color. (It’s probably noteworthy that Haber doesn’t consider the second result a flaw -- he in fact praises Orr for finally getting it right.)

It’s always tempting in these stories to think that we can do better than the stupid protagonists who don’t know how to phrase a wish properly. I’m no more immune to that temptation than anybody else -- several times during the movie I wanted to point out the obvious omission that would result in unintended disaster. But THE LATHE OF HEAVEN is not entirely -- or even mostly -- about word games. How can you solve overpopulation without eliminating a lot of people, after all? Presumably you could raise new continents or make deserts habitable, but such huge geological changes would have even more unintended consequences than simply killing off six billion individuals of one species.

THE LATHE OF HEAVEN is really about what exactly constitutes a problem. Are overpopulation and war and racism really problems that need to be solved? Or are they simply conditions that need to be endured? Can they even be solved without changing something fundamental about the world or mankind? The movie doesn’t necessarily give any answers -- nobody makes a speech at the end about anything and there isn’t a final wish that makes everything perfect. Instead, the movie just invites the viewer to think about things differently. Given that any human “solution” to any “problem” would be imperfect and unequitable, are there some conditions that we’d be better off just accepting and living with?

I don’t want to say much more about the particulars of the story, since this is a very good movie and I would definitely recommend it. The picture quality of the DVD I watched is pretty bad in some places, but that’s apparently the result of the original materials all being lost and only secondhand tapes remaining. (It’s never unwatchably bad though.) This is also a low budget production, so some of the special effects are distracting. Others are obviously cheap but still extremely effective. Considering that the end of the movie features an alien invasion apparently portrayed by a single alien costume, it comes off surprisingly well.

There is some suggestion in the movie that Orr’s dreams may have the ability to change reality because everything -- all of “reality” -- is in fact a dream that he is having as he dies. There is only a hint of this, however, and after raising the possibility the movie moves on without really returning to it. I think it’s a pretty intriguing explanation, and makes perfect sense with the mechanics of how Orr’s reality-changing abilities work. But naturally, it would be pretty depressing if that were the “official” explanation, so I don’t mind that it’s seemingly not what is supposed to be happening.

1978: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

What’s it about?

Just as the twelve human colonies are about to sign a peace accord with the hostile alien Cylons, patrol pilots Richard Hatch and Rick “Jessie’s Girl” Springfield stumble upon a sneak attack mustering behind a moon. One of them makes it back to warn the fleet of the imminent attack, but unfortunately only super-suspicious battlestar commander Lorne Greene is in a state of readiness. Simultaneous attacks wipe out both the fleet and the colonies, and just a handful of human survivors band together on 220 spaceships led by Greene’s Battlestar Galactica.

Hunted by the Cylons and running low on resources, the remnants of mankind start searching for a legendary thirteenth colony called Earth. (Sound familiar?) But first they need to find food and fuel, so they make for the nearby planet of Carillon. Upon landing, they make an unexpected discovery -- an opulent casino and resort in the middle of a derelict mining outpost. The insect-like managers of the casino are outwardly friendly and generous, but soon it becomes clear that not all is as it appears. As Lorne Greene’s suspicions mount yet once again, he finds himself opposed by political forces that threaten the safety of the fleet.




Is it any good?

The original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA series seems to be mostly regarded as a goofy cash-in to the STAR WARS (1977) craze. That’s a pretty fair assessment of most of the series -- a lot of the episodes are schlocky “planet of the week” adventures where Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict get into all kinds of scrapes as Apollo and Starbuck. I happen to think the show is plenty fun even at that level, but there are also at least a handful of episodes that are really terrific and tense sci-fi stories as well. This two-hour miniseries aired both on television to kick off the series, and was later theatrically released as well. The first half of it (really everything until the fleet lands on Carillon) definitely falls into higher quality category.

It’s fair to say that the music, the Cylons, and many of the spaceship designs are pretty heavily “inspired” by similar elements in STAR WARS. The space battles look very much like the Death Star assault scenes with slightly less skillful special effects. But let’s be honest here -- nobody ever complained that there are too many space battles in STAR WARS. Derivative or not, the ones here are fun and exciting and are some of the best parts of the miniseries. (Unfortunately, much of the effects footage gets recycled even before the end of the miniseries, which dampens the enjoyment considerably before the two hours are up.) The first hour also moves quickly from crisis to crisis as the Battlestar Galactica deals with the overwhelming alien attack. There are a few moments of emotional anguish too. In one scene, for instance, the crew of the Galactica sits stunned as report after report streams in on monitors of devastating attacks that they’re helpless to prevent. There’s another dark stretch where the civilian survivors on a ship start clamoring for food and information -- neither of which they’ve had for two days.




The Carillon bits, on the other hand, are much more like what the series would mostly become in later episodes. The casino that’s not what it appears is like something out of a STAR TREK episode -- sort of a high concept gee-whiz idea that doesn’t really make sense in the larger context of the show. The human race has just supposedly been completely obliterated, but the first planet they land on is teeming with hundreds of humans laughing, drinking, and playing cards. This part of the miniseries is also where the irrepressible scamp Boxey and his alternately horrifying and hilarious robo-dog Muffy clamp on to the show and refuse to let go. I happen to like a lot of the actors and characters in the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, but Boxey is not one of them. The new series is excellent in its own way, but there was nothing particularly wrong with how the original series handled Captain Adama, Apollo, Starbuck, and some of the others. Boxey, however, was a bad idea that should have never been revived. (Luckily, he didn’t stick around long on the new show.)

In some ways, the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA miniseries is actually an inversion of STAR WARS. I have mixed feelings about the first two-thirds of that movie, but I love the tense assault on the Death Star and have admitted that I can sometimes be found watching it over and over again. With BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, the tense and exciting parts come in the first two-thirds -- and they come thick and fast. I could probably watch that section over and over again, while the ending is just extremely disappointing.




Finally, I’m not going to compare the plot of the miniseries too much to the new version of the show, but the biggest difference I noticed is that although the Cylons are robotic in appearance, there’s no indication that they were created by humans. In fact, it seems pretty clear from hints dropped throughout that they are simply meant to be a hostile alien race that has come into conflict with mankind (and probably everyone else they’ve ever met). From what I understand, the series later explains that the Cylons were created by another alien race which then died out, leaving their robot servants and soldiers to find their own way. Another major difference is that there are no “skin jobs” -- no Cylons that look like humans. But there are the Imperious Leaders -- a Cylon model that is more intelligent and cunning, and which serves as the Darth Vader for the series.

BONUS BLOG -- 1975: A BOY AND HIS DOG

What’s it about?

Young drifter Don Johnson wanders through post-apocalyptic America with his telepathic dog, Blood. Johnson’s life is an alternating selfish quest for food and women, and he thinks nothing of killing and raping to get what he wants. Blood helps him along, but tries to interest him in a potentially better life in a legendary place called “over the hill” where people still farm and live in peace.

One night, Blood sniffs out a woman at a violent make-shift hobo camp. In pursuing her, Johnson has to fight or evade other marauding drifters like himself and frightening mutants called “screamers”. When the girl gives him the slip despite his persistence, he follows her to her home “down under” -- an underground colony of superficially civilized survivors who operate a fascist police state underneath a twisted and creepy veneer of down-home, apple-cheeked Americana.




Is it any good?

I like to classify and categorize things, so I have been secretly working under an unverified hypothesis that there is some monolithic category of “pre-STAR WARS” sci-fi movies and another of “post-STAR WARS” sci-fi movies. This is, of course, completely untrue. I would say that sci-fi movies in the 1950s may have largely followed a predictable formula (handsome scientist saves world), but even by the end of that decade there were a lot of film makers branching out into new territory.

But one thing I have noticed about the more serious-minded sci-fi movies of the pre-STAR WARS period is that they very often have an obvious allegorical quality to them. By that I mean that many of the movies don’t seem interested in probable or even possible futures -- instead, they are interested in TWILIGHT ZONE worlds that reflect back some aspect of our own society in refracted ways.

I would put movies such as PLANET OF THE APES (1968), SILENT RUNNING (1972), SOYLENT GREEN (1973) and LOGAN’S RUN (1976) in this category. And since those are some of my favorite movies of all time, I can honestly say that I don’t really mind the whole allegorical approach to sci-fi. In fact, allegorical stories are the quickest route to one of my favorite things about science fiction: grumpy satirical misanthropy.




In the case of A BOY AND HIS DOG, though, the descent into the satirical world of the underground Kansas is pretty darn disappointing. The post-apocalyptic surface world is so full of interesting things (and so unlike anything else on film prior to 1975) that the creepy version of middle America under the surface just felt ordinary and lifeless by comparison. It was also completely unexpected. Nothing in the first two-thirds of the movie made it obvious that this underground world even existed -- let alone that Don Johnson would spend the last half hour of the movie down there, separated from his dog.

A BOY AND HIS DOG is not the first post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie. But even the earlier movies that imagine a destroyed Earth -- like THE LAST MAN (1960) and THE OMEGA MAN (1971) -- don’t go much farther than overturned cars in their depiction of wreckage. THE WAR GAME (1965) and ZARDOZ (1974) add bombed-out buildings to the mix, but the survivors mostly just huddle in shell-shocked groups. PLANET OF THE APES (1968) and especially BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970) do go whole hog with the idea of world ravaged by nuclear war, but they take place thousands of years after the event in question, when modern civilization is an archaeological memory. BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1974) features a recently post-apocalyptic New York City, but stays mostly in the steam tunnels and basements. The closest thing I can think of is the Czechoslovakian THE END OF AUGUST AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE (1967). That movie is far more meditative, however, and the future is a severely underpopulated and woman-dominated one. (Which is pretty unique in itself, I might add.)




A BOY AND HIS DOG is the first movie I’m aware of that really takes pains to depict what life might be like for those who are forced to scrabble out a living from the ruins of a shattered world. But it was followed pretty quickly by DAMNATION ALLEY (1977), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), QUINTET (1979), ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981), and then a whole blossoming sub-genre. I think there’s not much doubt that THE ROAD WARRIOR was responsible for popularizing post-apocalyptic movies (and a whole dingy aesthetic that follow them to this day), but a whole lot of what you can see there was done first by A BOY AND HIS DOG.

The biggest disappointment about the shift in focus is that there is still so much of the post-apocalyptic surface world left unseen. Don Johnson spends much of his time in underpopulated wastelands, and though he does come into “town” for a little while, he doesn’t do anything there except go to the movies. The only people he interacts with are just as unpleasant as he is. In fact, the dog Blood is the only truly likeable character in the movie, and even he has his brutal moments. (Then again, he is a dog.)

I don’t want to give the impression that this is a bad movie. It’s not, and I enjoyed much of it quite a lot. But it definitely leaves many potentially interesting stones completely unturned -- which, I suppose, is why we have had many more post-apocalyptic movies since 1975.

1974: ZARDOZ

What’s it about?

Sean Connery is an “exterminator” in a savage world, a job that consists of slaughtering the hapless and defenseless masses who inhabit the countryside on the orders of the god Zardoz. But unlike most gods, Zardoz regularly manifests himself physically in the form of a giant flying stone head to issue edicts, dispense weapons, and collect tribute. One day, Connery hides inside a tribute of wheat and sneaks aboard to find out what is really going on behind the giant flying stone head.

What he finds when it lands is a secret village full of peaceful, educated immortals who have been controlling the outside world for hundreds of years. Though the immortals are afraid that Connery will disrupt their seemingly idyllic life, they decide to let him stay for a while -- more out of boredom than anything else. But their fears begin to come true when Connery’s presence begins to bring long-festering dissatisfactions to the surface. Before long, he’s actively colluding with rebellious elements among the immortals to bring the whole society down.



Is it any good?

I’ve thought about watching ZARDOZ a few times before, but I’ve always assumed it was pretentious, self-consciously weird, and (worst of all) boring. My prediction hadn’t really changed at all -- I mean, just look at that trailer -- but I figured this would be the perfect time to watch it nonetheless. It’s not as though there aren’t plenty of other sci-fi movies that are pretentious, self-consciously weird, and boring. Luckily, it turns out that ZARDOZ is never actually boring, and in fact is not nearly as weird as I expected it to be.

Yes, this is a movie where a giant stone head flies around and talks to men who wear nothing but red diapers and belts of ammo across their chests. But that’s considered weird even within the world of the movie. One character, as he is confronted with the reality of how the “outlands” are being managed, notes that nobody else wanted the job and the current manager is at least leavening his barbarism with some wit.

And the way the story is told is very straightforward. This isn’t some experimental narrative like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) or THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973), or even THE SEED OF MAN (1969) or THX-1138 (1971). In fact, the movie is precisely as weird as FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966) and BARBARELLA (1968) and PLANET OF THE APES (1968) and LOGAN’S RUN (1976). In other words, its story depends on the existence of a strange, semi-allegorical, upside-down society that could never really exist -- but which is nonetheless perfectly consistent and logical as soon as you make concessions for the impossible conditions it operates under.




In the case of ZARDOZ, those conditions are the division of the world into two distinct groups: the ageless immortals living in intellectual seclusion, and the masses of brutals killing and dying all around them. Despite the fact that the main character -- Sean Connery’s exterminator Zed -- is a brutal himself, we see very little of the way the world works in the outlands. All we know is that some brutals (the exterminators) constitute a very slightly privileged class that either kills or enslaves humanity as they are ordered. The world of the immortals, on the other hand, is extensively shown. Practically every element that we see, from the perfunctory democracy to the clinging conformity to the frustration and ennui, ring true. The movie seems to be saying that any society (even one with the noblest of intentions and the finest of citizens) so afraid of change that it outlaws aging, death and reproduction will necessarily stagnate and fester until it becomes self-destructive.

Even before Connery arrives among the immortals, they are already falling prey one by one to either of two social diseases. Some become rebellious and begin acting anti-socially, which is invariably punished by democratically selected sentences of aging. Eventually, the rebellious ones receive so many sentences that they age into senility and are placed in a kind of demented rest home apart from the others. Other immortals simply opt out of social life instead -- becoming “apathetics” who do nothing but stand around dumbly all day. Slowly but surely these two fates are spreading to more and more of the immortals, and it seems in time that it will eventually touch all of them.

When Connery arrives, then, the world of the immortals is already a hollow shell surrounding a pit of dissatisfaction, resentment and boredom. One interesting aspect of Connery’s character is that the immortals soon realize he is in fact superior to them in every way -- except possibly education. But physically and mentally, his powers exceed their own. In other words, Connery is not (as he first seems) some ancient relict of a simpler, earthier time. Instead, he is called a “mutant” -- the product of careful selective breeding, and potentially the next step above and beyond the immortals.




Which is not to say that Connery doesn’t have his earthy side. He spends much of his early life killing and raping other brutals in the outlands. True, he believes he is following the orders of the god Zardoz, but he also never seems to gain any awareness of his crimes even as he becomes more educated. (It is clear by the end of the movie that he won’t go on killing and raping -- but whether he has any remorse for his past actions is never explored at all.)

The ending of the movie is a bit bizarre, as these things tend to be. We learn that Connery knows more than he has been letting on, and that his arrival was no mere accident. When he sneaked aboard the flying giant stone head, he fully expected to discover an imposter behind the “god”. He probably didn’t imagine the kind of world that he landed in, but the plan was always to destroy whoever the imposter turned out to be. Connery soon discovers that many of the immortals would welcome such a release -- they have forgotten how to end their lives, and many simply want to die. But this requires destroying a computer that automatically resurrects any immortal who is killed, though none of them remember where the computer is or how to destroy it.

The events that surround the discovery and destruction of the computer don’t all make a whole lot of sense. Some of the immortals do escape to live out their lives naturally. Others are slaughtered by an invading army of brutals. In the carnage and confusion of the moment, Connery separates himself from both groups, and we never learn exactly what shape the world takes in the wake of the passing of the immortals.




What else happened this year?

-- A couple of arrogant scientists meet their match when they tangle with some super-intelligent ants alone in the desert in PHASE IV.
-- Afrofuturist cosmic jazz band leader Sun Ra returns from outer space to free the black race and take them away to a planet with no white people in SPACE IS THE PLACE.
-- And Mel Brooks directs Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Teri Garr, an almost unrecognizable Gene Hackman, and a sadly under-utilized Madeleine Kahn in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.
-- There’s also an interesting musical adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s THE LITTLE PRINCE. I only watched a little bit of it, but the sets and special effects look pretty amazing. The songs, not so much.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1974...

ZARDOZ is the obvious choice.

1970: BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES

What’s it about?

Astronaut James Franciscus arrives on the planet in question, hoping to find out what happened to the missing space expedition led by Charlton Heston from the first movie in the series. He soon discovers that he has traveled two thousand years into the future and has landed on a planet where talking apes rule over mute, primitive humans. While escaping from the ape city into the desert waste of the Forbidden Zone, Brent seeks refuge in a cave that turns out to be an entrance to the ancient ruins of the New York City subway system.

Making his way through the subway, Franciscus encounters a colony of psychic mutants who live underground and worship an atomic bomb with incredible destructive powers. (Say that ten times fast.) He is briefly reunited with Charlton Heston before an attacking ape army forces them to try and stop the mutants from detonating the atomic bomb.




Is it any good?

I wanted to write about PLANET OF THE APES back when I was doing 1968, but I’m glad now that I didn’t since it means I won’t end up repeating myself. And since most folks are already pretty familiar with the first movie in the series, it’s maybe a bit more fun to talk about this one instead. Not that it’s anywhere near as good as the original -- BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES was actually my least favorite of the series for a long time. (There are five ape movies in all, not counting Tim Burton’s 2001 remake.) These days I think it’s one of the best, but honestly there are things I like a heck of a lot about all of them.

One of the reasons I used to dislike BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is that the first half of the movie is really just a condensed and lower quality version of the original PLANET OF THE APES. The movie even starts with abbreviated versions of the scenes that end the first movie where Charlton Heston discovers that the planet of the apes was actually Earth all along. These scenes use the original footage from the first movie, but they are shortened and they aren’t nearly as effective as a result.

The rest of the first half follows James Franciscus as he rapidly picks up all the pieces he needs to figure out the mystery of the planet of the apes. The very first person he meets on the planet is Charlton Heston’s primitive girlfriend, Nova. She’s mute, but Franciscus recognizes the dogtags of the man he’s looking for, so he links up with her and they ride off in search of Charlton Heston. Next, he comes to the ape city where a gorilla general is publicly whipping up support for an attack on suspected human habitations in the Forbidden Zone. While in the city, Franciscus meets sympathetic chimps Zira (still played by Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (not Roddy MacDowell, alas), who give him aid and comfort before hustling him out the door. Zira later helps Franciscus escape from some gorillas who have captured him, and after that the first half ends with the discovery of the subway station that reveals the planet’s true origins.




I still don’t really like the beginning of the movie. The producers had naturally wanted Heston to star in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, but he would only agree to appear in a cameo. (Besides a couple short scenes at the very start of the movie, he doesn’t show up until almost the end.) I have no problem with James Fransiscus -- he’s fine in THE VALLEY OF THE GWANGI, for instance -- but his Brent is no replacement for Charlton Heston’s cynical and independent Taylor. It doesn’t help that he looks a lot like Charlton Heston too.

Kim Hunter and the not-Roddy-MacDowell who plays Cornelius don’t get much more than cameos either. The only character who gets as much screen time as Franciscus is Linda Harrison’s Nova. And sadly, she is pretty much the most boring major character in the whole series -- no doubt in large part because she can’t talk and so just stands around looking surprised or afraid.

But that’s enough about the first half of the movie. Once Franciscus enters the ruined New York subways, things quickly get pretty amazing. For one thing, the subway sets are nifty, and though watching Franciscus put together the truth about the planet of the apes doesn't have the same kick as it did in PLANET OF THE APES, it’s still a great scene. It’s deeper in these same subways that he encounters the colony of psychic mutant humans that the apes are hoping to hunt out and destroy.

The mutants are underground survivors of the nuclear war that laid waste to the Earth and allowed apes to become the dominant species. (The other surviving humans are the dumb, animal-like surface dwellers like Nova that the apes round up and slaughter in organized hunts.) They have psychic powers -- defending their home with frightening illusions and piercing sounds -- and worship a powerful atomic bomb capable of destroying all life on the planet. They also wear masks that hide their horribly disfigured mutant faces.




This seems like a good time for an aside about that atomic bomb worship. It’s not totally clear what BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is trying to say about religion with these scenes -- that is, if it’s really trying to say anything at all beyond throwing up the wildest images possible. Religion is sometimes portrayed in science fiction simply as rote ritual with no serious thoughtful underpinnings -- people just keep doing things because their ancestors did them, and on and on down through the generations. That’s not really my experience with religion, but it also doesn’t seem to be what BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is positing either. The mutants aren’t dumb -- they seem educated and intelligent. But they also seriously believe that the atomic bomb is their god, and they refer to it as a “holy bomb of peace”. So if I had to guess, I’d say that the portrayal of religion in the movie is not really about religion at all. If anything, it’s more a satire of how educated and intelligent people can somehow accept an absurd idea like “mutually assured destruction” as necessary for peace.

Franciscus is captured by the mutants and put into a prison cell with Heston, and they are both then compelled to fight to the death. (“We are a peaceful people,” says one of the mutants. “We don’t kill our enemies. We get our enemies to kill each other.”) But of course the two astronauts manage to escape that particular fate by working together -- that’s all as it should be. But the interesting thing about BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is what they end up escaping to.

By this time, the ape army has busted through the mutants’ psychic defenses and are pillaging the underground city, making their way to the cathedral where the atomic bomb is kept. Knowing their city is lost, the mutants are preparing to detonate the bomb. So Franciscus and Heston race to the cathedral and find the bomb almost entirely armed and gorillas everywhere. As they sneak towards the detonator to disarm it, they are both fatally shot by a hail of ape bullets. Franciscus in particular is pretty shockingly dispatched in a Bonnie-and-Clyde or Butch-Cassidy-and-the-Sundance-Kid type of excessive fusillade. As he’s sliding down the wall with blood pouring out of the bullet holes in his forehead, it suddenly becomes clear that the sharp cynicism of the original movie has just been lying dormant in the sequel, waiting to erupt at the worst possible time for the heroes.

Things only get darker from there, though, as Heston survives just long enough to crawl towards the detonator and finish setting off the bomb. The screen goes white and a narrator drily informs us that the third planet from the sun has been destroyed. It’s an incredible ending -- and especially incredible for the time. Charlton Heston’s sci-fi flicks (the other famous ones are THE OMEGA MAN and SOYLENT GREEN) always have a thick sour streak, but having the ostensible hero destroy the entire planet is taking things a bit beyond the pale. Reportedly, Heston suggested the ending himself -- largely because he thought it would ensure that there wouldn’t be any more sequels. (Spoiler: There are three more -- but none with Heston.) But it’s in keeping with the endings of almost all the other movies in the series. These are movies with grim and depressing endings (most of them) that don’t pull any punches (most of the time). I’ll be re-watching all of the movies as I go along through the seventies, and I expect I’ll write about at least one more so I’ll save the rest of that discussion for later. For now I’ll just say that BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is not nearly as good as the original, but it’s still pretty amazing in its own way and well worth seeing because of it.



What else happened this year?

-- The 1970s version of Skynet seizes control of the world's nuclear arsenal and starts issuing orders to world leaders in COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT.
-- Peter Watkins returns to his faux documentary style with far less interesting results in THE GLADIATORS, which follows a squad of young soldiers playing a deadly televised war game.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1970...

Pickings are pretty slim this year, but BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is pretty great. Or at least the second half is.

BONUS BLOG -- 1969: THE SEED OF MAN

What’s it about?

A young couple named Dora and Cino are diverted by a roadblock as they try to make it home from a trip one day. The officials at the roadblock administer medical tests, give them a six-month vaccine against all kinds of diseases, and tell the couple to strike out on foot across the countryside until they find a home to live in. No clear explanation is given, but it seems that plagues and wars have been raging across Europe (and possibly the world) and that the destruction of civilization as we know it is imminent.

Dora and Cino find a house on the seashore whose owner has apparently died of the plague. After disposing of his body, they move in to the house and begin hunting, farming and foraging to feed themselves. Cino also collects interesting artifacts -- like a giant wheel of Parmesan cheese -- and preserves them in a makeshift museum in the house. After weeks or months with no other human contact, a band of horsemen claiming to be representatives of the government arrive and tell the two that it’s their duty to help with repopulation efforts. But Dora is reluctant to bring a child into the post-apocalyptic world. Cino, though disappointed, seems to accept this state of affairs until the rotting carcass of a beached whale symbolically presages the arrival of a strange and beautiful woman who is more than willing to have children.




Is it any good?

Thanks to a few arbitrary formative experiences in college, I will forever believe that the stereotypical “European movie” mostly involves a couple of jaded and lethargic people hanging out on a barren and overcast beach, doing nothing much of anything while the sound of the surf and the wind drown out half the non sequiturs that make up the dialogue. THE SEED OF MAN is not exactly as bad as all that, but it also doesn’t do a whole lot to convince me that this stereotype isn’t at least partly based in fact.

The movie begins in a city somewhere in Europe -- presumably somewhere in Italy -- where Dora and Cino are eating in a restaurant. I was going to describe the restaurant as “futuristic” but honestly I’m not exactly sure if the movie is supposed to be set in the future or not. I’m not sure, for instance, if restaurants in Italy in 1969 would have plausibly had wall-sized televisions in them. (Seems unlikely.) And I don’t know whether the weird little jeep vehicle that Cino and Dora ride around in is just a run-of-the-mill ridiculous European car or if it’s supposed to be what cars look like in the future. (Can’t even guess on this one.)

But what is clear is that the world is undergoing some cataclysm, even though the exact nature of the cataclysm isn’t easy to discern. There are definitely both plague and war afoot, but it’s hard to tell how far-reaching they are and what countries they involve. A bombed-out London is mentioned, and there is a reference to the “electronic brains” that help wage the war. But once again it’s unclear whether we’re meant to understand that the militaries of the world are being controlled by computers (which would be futuristic), or whether the computers are simply enabling destruction on a wider scale than was ever possible before (which wouldn’t necessarily be).

It’s also never explained why Cino and Dora are picked out to be given vaccines and diverted to a relatively safe zone. Right before they meet the roadblock, they encounter a bus full of dead children -- presumably an indication that they’re getting closer to the epicenter of the cataclysm. The officials at the roadblock quiz them on their sexual health before giving them the vaccines, so it seems that there’s already some idea that the people they select will be those that can repopulate the country. But then they are simply told to start walking across the countryside, to find a home for themselves, and to live primitively until peace returns.




After Cino and Dora discover the seaside house, nothing much happens to disrupt their solitude for a long time. Cino talks about how he wants a child, and Dora rebuffs him. A blimp on the horizon that they go out to meet turns out to be an advertising balloon blown across Europe from England. Cino grows a neck beard and Dora starts wearing dresses she finds in the house. The surf and the wind drone on.

When the horsemen arrive, it seems like something unpleasant is going to happen to disrupt the peaceful life of Dora and Cino. But rather than a marauding gang, the riders turn out to be (or at least claim to be) representatives of the government. They inspect the house and ask why Dora isn’t pregnant yet. They even see the value in Cino’s museum and donate a typewriter and a painting to display in it. After taking blood samples from Dora and Cino, they tell them to start having children and ride off, never to be seen again.

The movie now enters its weirdest section. A sperm whale beaches itself within sight of the house -- an event that Cino is excited about but which depresses Dora. Not a lot of movies have beached whales in them, so it’s a pretty neat image on that level alone. Symbolically, the whale is supposed to represent -- well, I didn’t think about it that hard. Cino refers to the whale as Moby-Dick, so I guess lets just say it represents whatever Moby-Dick represents. The giant putrefying carcass of the whale eventually drives Dora from the house, but not before a beautiful and sexually available stranger shows up to seduce Cino and attempt to murder Dora.

I say “attempt to murder” since in the ensuing struggle it is actually Dora who kills the stranger. As if this wasn’t shocking enough, it’s strongly implied that she serves a human leg-roast for dinner that night -- which Cino unknowingly devours. I know this is the first part of the movie that actually sounds interesting, but frankly I wish that they had just cut out the stranger entirely if it was just going to end with murder and cannibalism. For one thing, it doesn’t fit the tone of anything else in the movie. For another, it just makes the main characters seem psychotic or callous. (Cino wonders for a minute where the stranger has gone, but then mostly shrugs it off as he gets a second helping of dinner.) None of it has any obvious consequences either -- it’s just another unconnected event like the advertising balloon that floats by early in the movie. The stinking whale carcass has more effect on the relationship of Dora and Cino than this murder. But while the balloon and the whale episodes feel like they are freighted with lyricism and symbolic possibilities, the bits with the stranger just feel absurd and clumsy.




The rotting whale carcass ultimately helps bring the movie to its conclusion. The smell drives Dora out of the seaside house to another that they discovered a little further inland. Throughout the whole movie, I had the feeling that the relationship was not really a very strong one. Perhaps Dora and Cino were just two young people out on a date, and world events beyond their control threw them closer together then they ever intended. That would at least partly explain Dora’s reluctance to have a child -- though there are of course plenty of other good reasons why she might prefer not to.

After the whale is completely skeletonized, Dora comes back again and the weirdness recommences. Cino devises a scheme to rape and impregnate her while she is asleep (presumably drugged) and then cruelly reveals the truth to her when she unwittingly begins to complain of the symptoms of morning sickness. But as Cino dances around Dora on the beach, taunting her, she suddenly explodes like a human bomb and the beach is left deserted of life as both of them are literally vaporized. And that is exactly the sort of confusing, ambiguous and unsatisfying ending I would expect from a stereotypical “European movie” -- so my prejudices and preconceptions are happily strengthened once again.

1969: THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

What’s it about?

A young Depression-era drifter encounters an irascible stranger played by Rod Steiger. They share a pot of coffee (and a couple of creepy death threats) and soon Steiger reveals that he’s covered in magical tattoos that come to life if they are stared at too long. They were put there by a mysterious woman who Steiger is now tramping in search of, and when he finds her, he’ll kill her.

Somehow not frightened off by this weird and threatening story, the young drifter hangs out a bit longer with the illustrated man. Over the course of a day, he sees three futuristic stories play out in the living tattoos. First, two concerned parents are worried when their children’s holographic playroom seems stuck on the same death-obsessed scene of African lions. Next, the survivors of a rocket crash make their way to shelter across the eternally rain-covered surface of Venus. And finally, two more parents are faced with a horrible choice when they learn the world is to end that night and they are expected to put their children out of their misery ahead of time.




Is it any good?

I didn’t really expect a whole lot from this movie for a number of reasons. Mostly, I think I was prejudiced because it’s an adaption of a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. And much as I have enjoyed Bradbury’s stories (he was my favorite writer for years), there don’t seem to be a lot of high-quality adaptations of his books for some reason. Furthermore, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN isn’t a novel -- it’s a book of short stories with a very thin framing story about a tattooed man. So I knew this was going to be an anthology movie, and that usually isn’t a good sign.

But, as I have been learning time and time again during this project, lowered expectations are the greatest gift you can give to a lot of semi-obscure sci-fi flicks. It’s been years since I’ve read the book, so I don’t remember exactly how much frame story Bradbury lays out, but I don’t think it’s very much. I do remember that he pretty quickly abandons it after he sets up the premise. After a couple stories, there aren’t any more hobo interludes at all until the very end of the book.

The movie version, on the other hand, spends a lot of time on the frame story -- which I think was probably a good idea. Not only is there a lot of interaction between the two drifters (mostly Steiger being menacing or grumpy), but there are a couple flashback scenes that explain how Steiger got the tattoos in the first place. These parts of the movie feel a lot like a modern play, since there’s not much going on except two guys sitting around talking dramatically. I guess if you’re a big fan of naturalism in movies, it might put you off. But I usually kind dig that sort of stagey, stylistic approach (at least for a little while) since it usually means that the movie thinks it’s going to say something deep and eggheaded.



The three vignettes are also shorter and simpler than I thought they would be. The first two I remember very clearly as Bradbury’s stories, and I’m pretty sure the movie vignettes are more or less straight transcriptions of the plots, characters, and a lot of the dialogue. (I don’t remember the third one at all, but I have no reason to believe it’s any different.) A lot of Bradbury’s stories are kind of like campfire stories already -- very straightforward with nasty twists at the end -- so it’s pretty refreshing to see them up on screen without much embellishment. I think that’s part of the reason why this movie works for me -- the focus is more on beefing up the frame story than on trying to mess with the stories or to interlock them somehow. The vignettes are also far too short to get boring, and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN doesn’t even exactly feel like an anthology movie as a consequence.

Another thing that helps is that many of the same actors appear in all of the vignettes -- Steiger, the other drifter, and Claire Bloom play the main characters in all three of them. I don’t really know that there’s too much to be gotten out of this -- it’s not like the stories illuminate the characters in the frame story very much. But it does make the movie feel more cohesive, and is almost a Treehouse of Horror approach to the stories.




It’s not really clear whether the illustrated man is actually the victim of supernatural shenanigans as he claims, or if the young drifter is just impressionable enough that he imagines the pictures coming to life. Steiger seems to believe that the woman who illustrated him was from the distant future, which is how she was able to illustrate events that haven’t come to pass yet. (There’s also a blank spot on Steiger’s shoulder which he says will show folks how they will die if they stare into it.) But the real sci-fi parts of the movie are in the three vignettes. Bradbury once estimated that only a third of his stories are science fiction (another third being fantasy, and another third being neither), but all three of the vignettes here are set in sci-fi futures.

I don’t think I’m going to talk too much about the plots of the stories -- there’s not much point since they don’t really have a lot of bearing on the movie itself. But I will say they are pretty neat little stories. I liked the first two the best -- the Venus one is especially good in terms of sets and atmosphere. The first one has a pretty neat futuristic house too, but it’s one of those sterile and uncomfortable ones that nobody would actually want to live in. None of the vignettes have much character development and none of them are particularly satisfying on their own -- they’re too short for anything like that. But they are fine diversions as long as you are willing to float along with the movie.




The very ending of THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is perhaps inevitably where things start to get weird. First, there’s a long flashback of a very naked and very illustrated Rod Steiger wandering through an empty house as he looks for Claire Bloom, who has disappeared after putting the final tattoo on his body. Then the young drifter looks into the blank patch on the illustrated man’s back (I remember this happens in the book too) and sees an image of himself being throttled by the illustrated man. This leads directly to some struggling, some running, and an ambiguous ending. Steiger had been pretty creepy all along, so had he always planned to kill the young man? Or did knowledge of the future paradoxically precipitate a crisis that would otherwise have been avoided? Honestly, I don’t think it’s really worth trying to figure out the answer. I obviously enjoyed THE ILLUSTRATED MAN quite a bit -- more than I expected too, anyway -- but it’s more of a pleasure of the moment than the kind of thing you want to ponder after its done.

What else happened this year?

-- A journey to a newly discovered planet sharing Earth’s orbit (but on the exact opposite side of the sun) has an unexpected conclusion in DOPPELGÄNGER.
-- A couple of young Italians disagree over whether they ought to repopulate the world after a disaster in THE SEED OF MAN.
-- Ray Harryhausen just about perfects his dinosaur animations in the western THE VALLEY OF THE GWANGI, which results in amazing and unforgettable images like cowboys lassoing and bringing down an angry T-rex.
-- John Sturges directed MAROONED, in which three Apollo astronauts (played by Gene Hackman, Richard Crenna, and James Fransiscus) are marooned in orbit due to a technical fault. On the ground, NASA director Gregory Peck is forced to launch a dangerous rescue mission using an experimental spacecraft if they’re to be saved before they run out of oxygen.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1969...

Check out THE VALLEY OF THE GWANGI unless you’re sick of me recommending things based on Harryhausen special effects. In that case, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is worth a look.

BONUS BLOG -- 1968: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

What’s it about?

While on a visit to their father’s grave, a brother and sister are suddenly attacked by a lurching but persistent assailant. The sister manages to escape, but after encountering several other seemingly crazed people, she seeks refuge in an empty farmhouse. Deep in shock and unable to defend herself, she’s saved by the arrival of a survival-minded stranger who immediately starts boarding up the house while more of the monsters congregate in the yard outside.

After the house is secured, the basement door opens and reveals two more couples and a child who have been hiding down there the entire time. Disagreements about the best way to survive the situation lead to several heated arguments among the men. Meanwhile, a steady trickle of information from the radio and television paint an increasingly grim picture of what is happening. Eventually it becomes clear that the recently deceased are returning to life with the apparently single-minded purpose of eating the living. When the location of a local disaster shelter is revealed, the people must decide whether to make a break for it through the hordes of living dead, or to wait out the attack and hope their defenses hold.




Is it any good?

I’ve seen NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD a couple times before, but this was the first time I noticed how much like a western it really is. Replace the living dead with cowboys or Apaches, and you’ve got a new version of STAGECOACH or RIO BRAVO. Westerns have always been about tiny flickering flames of civilization struggling to stay alight in vast dark wildernesses. And they’ve always been about stubborn, bull-headed people unwilling to compromise, even when it threatens their lives. Those are exactly two of the things that NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is about too.

The two original people in the house -- the sister, Barbra, and the stranger, Ben -- are more or less the main characters of the movie. The other folks who show up later mostly serve to add some uncertainty and danger to what might happen inside the house to complement the obvious dangers outside. But Barbra and Ben aren’t perfect heroes themselves. Barbra spends most of the movie completely useless -- sitting around in shock and probably guilt after watching her brother’s death. Ben alternates between trying to slap some sense back into her (another very western touch) and defending her from the criticism of the newcomers. Besides thinking nothing of slapping Barbra, Ben is also a quick-tempered hothead who feels entitled to be “the boss” because he’s the one who did most of the work securing the house. Eventually his desire for control leads him even as far as murder. And ironically, it’s the very survival plan that he was so strenuously rejecting (hiding in the cellar) that ends up saving his life from the living dead.

Now after having done my best to make in the interpersonal dynamics sound as interesting as possible, I should admit that in practice they are probably the least interesting part of the movie. The characters are all one-dimensional and they are sometimes given to irrational behavior. Most of the actors are also not nearly good enough to make even flat characters convincing, but what saves NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is that as long as something is happening, it’s always interesting -- and something is almost always happening.




For the first half hour or so, that something is Ben boarding up the house. The movie approaches this with admirable realism -- whatever little budget the movie had must have been largely spent in getting a house and furnishings that could be convincingly ripped apart. But even more interesting is what happens after the defenses are in place. First a radio and then a television set are discovered, and until the power goes out late in the movie one or the other is practically always playing in the background. Those broadcasts turn out to be the most relentlessly gripping part of the movie. Part of this is just that it’s easy to identify with frightened people trying to glean information from TV news broadcasts after a disaster, and part of it is the masterful way it’s handled. It’s telling that during the frequent moments when characters argue or talk over the broadcasts, I found myself always straining to tune out the people so I could hear what the TV was saying.

Just as the television is something that we all like to despise until a disaster reminds us how necessary it is, so too does the end of the movie make a similar case for rednecks and hicks. When the eastern third of the United States is overrun by flesh-eating living dead who can only be stopped by a bullet to the brain, who’s finally able to clean up the mess? Why, it’s the gun-loving, simple-living country folk who think nothing of some casual killing if it’s for a good cause. Honestly, I think this part of the movie gives me more of a surge of pride and appreciation than George Romero intended. After all, the very ending of the movie is bleak and depressing (and its all the fault of the rednecks). But ultimately I suppose I figure they’re no worse than our heroes in the house -- especially Ben who, when the chips were down, killed another human so he could keep being “the boss”. In any event, the continued possibility of zombie apocalypse is reason enough for me to agree that the right to bear arms is worth defending.




Note: I know I promised to do seven entries this week, but sadly I am not going to be able to get to anymore. So this will be the last one for a little while, since I am going on a pseudo-hiatus. I will keep updating, but probably not every week anymore. Anyway, thanks to everybody who has been reading so far. There is a lot more to come yet!

What else happened this year?

-- Daniel Keyes's novel FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON was adapted into the award-winning sci-fi drama CHARLY.
-- Charlton Heston and Roddy MacDowell starred in the truly awesome PLANET OF THE APES, which is the year's grungy, cynical counterpoint to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
-- Godzilla and all of his friends returned for DESTROY ALL MONSTERS.
-- Robert Altman made one of his first features (and one of his few sci-fi movies) with COUNTDOWN, the story of an American moonshot rushed into a dangerous launch to beat the Soviets.
-- And I can't quite tell whether Ingmar Bergman's SHAME counts as sci-fi. I've never seen it and every description makes it sound like an ordinary wartime drama, and yet there are hints that it might be post-apocalyptic somehow.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1968...

Oh man it has to be PLANET OF THE APES.

1962: LA JETÉE

What’s it about?

A soldier in post-apocalyptic France is captured by the enemy and sent to a prison camp in dark catacombs under a city that appears to be Paris. In fact, all survivors of the war now live underground to escape the deadly radiation that permeates the surface of the Earth. Realizing that the irradiated world above no longer has the resources to support humanity, the enemy scientists begin work on a time travel program designed to cull necessary resources from the past and the future. Prisoners are used for the dangerous experiments -- and when it comes the French soldier’s turn, several subjects have already died or gone insane as a result of the experiments.

Sent successfully back in time, the soldier encounters a woman he remembers glimpsing once in his childhood. They strike up a friendship, and then a romance. The woman -- a memory of an almost forgotten pre-war world -- becomes a focal point for the soldier’s time traveling, and eventually he is able to visit the past almost at will. But no sooner does he realize this then the scientists fling him forward in time to beg help from humanity’s futuristic descendants. Knowing he will be executed after completing his mission, the soldier seeks a way to escape through time back to the days of his childhood and the woman he has grown to love.




Is it any good?

Only half an hour long, LA JETÉE is not a movie in the traditional sense. Instead, the story is told entirely through a montage of black and white still photographs combined with narration, music, and sound effects. As such, it’s very simple -- characters exist only as faces and short narrated descriptions. It’s less dramatic than even a radio play or a short story, and yet even stripped down to such bare essentials it is still very interesting indeed.

The short running time helps, of course. And even though the images themselves don’t move, they do change every few seconds. Paradoxically, this means that LA JETÉE often shows more of any particular scene that a typical motion picture does -- instead of cutting back and forth between two people exchanging dialogue during a two-minute scene, the photographs here can roam around and show the actors and environment from every possible angle. And each shot is carefully framed to communicate either information or emotion. Watching LA JETÉE isn’t like looking at photo stills or a storyboard for a movie -- it’s like paging through a book of carefully composed photographs.




The extreme simplicity of the movie also gives the story a fable-like quality that doesn’t really feel like any other sci-fi movie that has come before. In some ways, it feels so startlingly different that it seems it must have sprung fully-formed from the mind of a visionary, rather than being the natural product of organic developments in the genre. But even though there may not be film antecedents to LA JETÉE (and I don’t know for sure there aren’t), there were certainly many sci-fi novels and stories in the 1950s and 1960s that formed the tradition it draws from. So, taken in the context of the other movies of the time, LA JETÉE is a reminder of how little of the genre’s possibilities had yet been explored on film even by 1962.

Though the post-apocalyptic catacombs and the future world are briefly depicted, it doesn’t seem that LA JETÉE is really interested in speculating on fantastic worlds. Instead, it lingers on the ordinary world of every-day modern Paris, which is what the time-traveling soldier sees as fantastic. The movie is a meditation -- it’s absorbed in its own premise and in no hurry to trade quiet contemplation for action or character or plot. The basic story was later used by Terry Gilliam as the basis for his movie 12 MONKEYS (1995), but watching LA JETÉE is a very different experience indeed.




What else happened this year?

-- John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE casts Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in a paranoid conspiracy thriller about brainwashing, McCarthyism, communist plots, and political assassinations.
-- Actor Ray Milland took one of his few turns as director with the nuclear war thriller PANIC IN YEAR ZERO!
-- I can’t really in good conscience recommend THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE to anybody, but it has a couple unforgettable scenes at the very end. HANDS OF A STRANGER, on the other hand, is less memorable but overall a better movie about the same kind of themes.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1962...

It might as well be LA JETÉE. It’s easier to watch than it sounds, but if you prefer something less experimental then go with THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE instead.