What’s it about?
An astronaut returns home from a space mission with a mysterious glowing green orb. Once at home, the power of the orb activates and menaces his young, innocent daughter. It shows her vignettes of its past existence, and how it has corrupted others. In the first, a young woman and a cab driver in a futuristic New York City get tangled up with double-crossing mobsters. In the second, a shrimpy boy is transformed by the power of the orb into a meathead and transported to a dangerous planet full of monsters and magic.
In the third vignette, a defense witness testifying on behalf of a space pirate turns into a Hulk-like monster and starts trashing the space station where the trial is taking place. Next, dead crewmembers on a WWII bomber are brought back to life as skeletal monsters as the plane flies on. Then a secretary is abducted by cocaine-snorting aliens and a randy robot. Finally, a gang of medieval cyborgs sets about exterminating a peace-loving race until a defender is called to help.
Is it any good?
HEAVY METAL is a cartoon anthology movie, which means it’s two things that I don’t know a whole lot about. Then throw in what I assume is meant to be some kind of connection to heavy metal music -- something else I know little about -- and I’m not sure that I’m really qualified to say anything about this movie at all. But I’ll try.
The only other anthology movie I’ve written about so far is THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969), in which the tattoos on Rod Steiger’s body come to life and play out short sci-fi vignettes. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) is maybe arguably an anthology movie but not probably not really. In fact, both of these movies hang together much more tightly than your typical anthology -- in addition to a unifying theme or story, they each have a single director and set of screenwriters who are in charge of all the pieces. In the case of THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, the frame story takes up a lot of screen time while the vignettes are brief and few. In 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the four vignettes are all clearly tied together in some way, even if the links aren’t totally obvious.
A typical anthology, on the other hand, puts the focus on the vignettes and the frame story (if there even is one) is usually extremely slight. It’s also common (but by no means always the case) that more than one director works on an anthology. For some reason, most anthologies seem to focus largely on horror, but sci-fi stories also sneak in fairly often. There’s ASYLUM (1972), in which a new doctor interviews the patients at an insane asylum and hears fantastic tales. And ALIEN ZONE (1978), in which a mortician tells gruesome stories about how the corpses in his funeral home met their demise. More famous examples are TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972), TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983), and George Romero’s CREEPSHOW (1982). They still occasionally get produced today, though they don’t seem to be very popular anymore. But FEAR(S) OF THE DARK (2007) and TRICK ‘R TREAT (2008) are two recent horror anthologies -- and the first one, like HEAVY METAL, is even animated.
I haven’t actually seen most of the movies I just listed, since it’s hard for me to get excited about anthologies. They aren’t too demanding, since they skip along from short story to short story, but they also tend to be hit or miss. Even a (non-horror, non-sci-fi) anthology like PARIS JE T’AIME (2006) which features directors like the Coen brothers, Alexander Payne, Wes Craven, Gus van Sant and more still has lots of forgettable segments mixed in with the winners. So although I don’t really have anything against anthologies, they aren’t something I am very familiar with. (Though I have watched a couple more since seeing HEAVY METAL to try and get an idea of how they usually work.)
As for cartoons, it’s a lot harder for me to give a coherent explanation as to why I usually avoid them. It’s probably partly the usual western prejudice that cartoons are for kids, but none of the three animated movies I’ve written about so far (very much including this one) are appropriate for children. I also liked them all fine, and I don’t think they’d be any better if they were live action movies. I appreciated the unique artistic styles that went into FANTASTIC PLANET (1973) and WIZARDS (1977), and even HEAVY METAL has its own animated charms. (But it also has a lot of animated sex and gore, which is often less than charming. And overall it has far less visual imagination than those other two movies -- though it does have its inspired moments here and there.)
If I have any real grounding for my prejudice, I guess it would be that it’s harder for me to relate to animated protagonists, harder for me to be awed by animated vistas, to fear animated dangers, or to be moved by animated emotions. It’s not impossible, by any means. But in a cartoon world where literally almost anything can be shown, it seems to take more creativity and talent than usual to wow me. Wile E. Coyote spends a lot of time falling off of dramatic rock outcroppings more majestic than any in the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley -- yet I’ve never once felt any of the terror and amazement that such features should inspire. A cartoon is an extra (and very large) step away from reality, so it has to work a lot harder to overcome my suspension of disbelief and really involve me in what’s happening. That’s my opinion, anyway.
So what about HEAVY METAL? It’s okay. The frame story isn’t really that interesting -- supposedly this glowing green orb is the concentration of all the evil in the world, and it corrupts folks everywhere it goes. It’s planning to kill the little girl since she’s the one destined to subdue it in her generation or something. Anyway, the green orb figures one way or another in each of the vignettes, but in a few it barely makes any appearance at all and in others it doesn’t really seem to be evil. Frankly, the appearance of the orb in many of the stories only served to remind me that there wasn’t really any logical reason to throw these stories together, and it likely would have been less distracting if there were no frame story at all.
There’s a lot of mixing of fantasy and science fiction, and a little horror too. None of the vignettes except the last one are really long enough to make a big impression -- for the most part, they end just as they are getting interesting (or are just never that interesting). But the most memorable are probably the one where the cab driver in future New York tangles with alien mobsters and the one where WWII bomber crewmen are brought back to life as skeletons. The final vignette is a cut above even these highlights, however, and is far and away the best.
Most of the vignettes feature pretty explicit sex or gore, which I suppose were the kinds of things that the producers thought fans of heavy metal would like to see. What probably doesn’t appeal to fans of heavy metal, however, are bands like Journey and Devo, which overwhelmingly fill the soundtrack. So do expect lots of topless women with giant breasts, gruesome decapitations, alien monsters, and explosions. But don’t expect a real hard-rocking soundtrack. The London Philharmonic Orchestra makes a more prominent appearance in the music than actual metal.
Still, I enjoyed the flick. It’s juvenile in the extreme, but never really mean-spirited. It’s fun enough and never really boring, and does have occasional moments of wit and grandeur. (The funny bits are scattered throughout, but only the last vignette approaches any kind of visual majesty.) It’s not really the same caliber of movie as FANTASTIC PLANET or even WIZARDS, but it’s unpretentious and mindless entertainment if you don’t mind a lot of rough edges and teenaged fantasies. John Candy and Eugene Levy provide some of the voices, but honestly I didn’t even recognize them until I read the credits. Except for the lack of actual heavy metal, it’s pretty much everything you’d expect a cartoon movie called HEAVY METAL to be.
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
1977: WIZARDS
What’s it about?
In the wake of a catastrophic nuclear war, the remnants of humanity abandon technology and evolve into standard fantasy stereotypes -- fairies, elves, goblins, demons, and so on. After some time, two twin brothers are born, each destined to become a powerful wizard. One (who grows up good) banishes the other (who grows up evil), and the stage is set for an epic contest between unambiguous moral forces.
The evil wizard begins his assault by embracing the long lost technology and sending robot assassins to dispatch the greatest heroes of the good fantasy people. One of those assassins switches sides and sets out with the good twin (now aged well past his prime), a fairy princess, and an elf warrior to eliminate the secret weapon of the evil forces: old Nazi footage that incites them into berserker rampages.
Is it any good?
Going through the years for this blog, I’ve been watching a lot of sci-fi movies that I’ve never seen before. Yet I usually have some idea of what I think the movies will be like before I see them -- either based on reputation or pedigree or even just the paragraph description that comes on the Netflix jacket. Sometimes I’m excited about movies (which often just sets me up for disappointment) and sometimes I’m halfway dreading them (which just as often creates the low expectations needed to make a movie seem great). WIZARDS is one that I was actually looking forward to.
Here’s what I knew going in. WIZARDS is an animated flick directed by Ralph Bakshi, who is probably most famous for his adaptations of FRITZ THE CAT (1972) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978). I have never seen FRITZ THE CAT, but it was the very first X-rated cartoon in the United States, so you can draw your own conclusions from that. I did somehow see THE LORD OF THE RINGS as a young Tolkien nerd -- and though I don’t remember liking the movie much, it definitely made an impression on me which I have not forgotten to this day.
The most unusual thing I remembered from THE LORD OF THE RINGS were the rotoscoped battle scenes. Although most of the movie was animated by hand, Bakshi also often resorted to high-contrast tracings of live action footage (usually for scenes with lots of orcs). It wasn’t like anything I had ever seen before at the time, but folks today be more familiar with it thanks to Richard Linklater’s WAKING LIFE (2001) and A SCANNER DARKLY (2006). Bakshi’s approach, however, is much more impressionistic and aggressive.
So I was at least interested to see if WIZARDS would have the same kind of unusual animation processes. If anything, the mixture of styles was even more wild than I expected -- in addition to cel animation and rotoscoping, there are also detailed still pencil illustrations and live action stock footage. Bakshi apparently believes in changing the animation style to suit the emotion of the scene -- which makes for some very interesting images, but can also be jarring at times.
The plot of WIZARDS is simultaneously epic and simple. It’s epic in the sense that the fate of the world is at stake, but it’s simple in the sense that the outcome hinges on the destruction of some reels of old war footage. (The unconvincing explanation for this secret weapon, by the way, is that the evil forces have nothing to fight for. They do it simply because they’re told to, but they quickly get bored or distracted. So, despite their superior numbers and firepower, they don’t make any progress -- until the Nazi films galvanize them into a focused fighting unit.) The parallels to THE LORD OF THE RINGS are pretty obvious here -- that’s another world-spanning epic that hinged on the destruction of a seemingly insignificant object. But there’s a big difference in the epic feeling between a 1,500 page 3-volume novel and an 80 minute movie. WIZARDS consequently never really feels epic, despite the movie’s attempt to paint the conflict as a global one.
The fact that the secret weapon is related to Nazism is also pretty disappointing. I don’t know if there was some kind of Nazi taboo back in 1977 (though its doubtful, considering all the WWII movies that were made during the previous forty years), but these days at least Nazis make an incredibly boring bugaboo. It seems like there was an opportunity to take a dig at something less obvious in modern society. Possibly I’m holding WIZARDS to a standard it was never intended to meet -- after all, Bakshi refers to the movie several times in the commentary and accompanying interviews as a “kids’ movie” and claims it was his attempt to show folks that he could make a movie that didn’t rely on shock and offensiveness. (This despite the fact that WIZARDS contains quite a bit of graphic violence and makes no attempt to disguise the sexuality of its characters. But I suppose that these things wouldn’t necessarily be out of place in an unorthodox understanding of what makes a “kids’ movie”.)
Anyway, I mostly just feel that the staunch “Nazis are bad” stance is pretty boring. It’s especially disappointing in contrast to a scathing scene in which religion is mercilessly skewered. It occurs when a platoon of the bad guys offers to leave a group of prisoners under the care of a pair of priests. First, the priests are mocked for the devotion to collecting ancient junk -- in this case, signs and logos of corporations like CBS and Coca-Cola. Next, they delay addressing the question of the prisoners so they can engage in caricatures of worship and oblations. After waiting for hours for the priests to finish, the soldiers simply slaughter the prisoners.
I actually think organized religion is a positive force in the world, and I also think Bakshi’s depiction is pretty unfair and inaccurate. But the scene is also exactly the kind of idiosyncratic and sour satire that I love whenever I encounter it in sci-fi. You can trace the lineage of this kind of thing back to Jonathan Swift and beyond, and one of the earliest uses of fantastic worlds was to allow more latitude for this kind of otherwise-unacceptable criticism. Satire is not the only function of science fiction, but it certainly helps answer the question “Why is this sci-fi?” when it does show up. So, compared to this scene, the Nazi bits are just tame and stale. Imagine, for example, if the footage that inspired the evil armies turned out to be speeches given by Winston Churchill or John F. Kennedy. That would be something you don’t see in kids’ movies every day!
On the other hand, goblins carrying machine guns and marching under Nazi banners are also something you don’t see in kids’ movies every day either. WIZARDS has an awful lot of crazy images, and I’d say as a collection of things you might want to airbrush on the side of your van it’s a resounding success. (Other examples: a robot assassin riding an alien horse, a hyper-sexualized fairy princess riding in a tank, one wizard shooting another wizard with a six-shooter. You get the idea.) As a movie it’s not bad either, but I think I’d definitely like to see some of Bakshi’s earlier movies now where he presumably wasn’t pulling any punches at all. (Sadly, none of them are science fiction so far as I know.)
In the wake of a catastrophic nuclear war, the remnants of humanity abandon technology and evolve into standard fantasy stereotypes -- fairies, elves, goblins, demons, and so on. After some time, two twin brothers are born, each destined to become a powerful wizard. One (who grows up good) banishes the other (who grows up evil), and the stage is set for an epic contest between unambiguous moral forces.
The evil wizard begins his assault by embracing the long lost technology and sending robot assassins to dispatch the greatest heroes of the good fantasy people. One of those assassins switches sides and sets out with the good twin (now aged well past his prime), a fairy princess, and an elf warrior to eliminate the secret weapon of the evil forces: old Nazi footage that incites them into berserker rampages.
Is it any good?
Going through the years for this blog, I’ve been watching a lot of sci-fi movies that I’ve never seen before. Yet I usually have some idea of what I think the movies will be like before I see them -- either based on reputation or pedigree or even just the paragraph description that comes on the Netflix jacket. Sometimes I’m excited about movies (which often just sets me up for disappointment) and sometimes I’m halfway dreading them (which just as often creates the low expectations needed to make a movie seem great). WIZARDS is one that I was actually looking forward to.
Here’s what I knew going in. WIZARDS is an animated flick directed by Ralph Bakshi, who is probably most famous for his adaptations of FRITZ THE CAT (1972) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978). I have never seen FRITZ THE CAT, but it was the very first X-rated cartoon in the United States, so you can draw your own conclusions from that. I did somehow see THE LORD OF THE RINGS as a young Tolkien nerd -- and though I don’t remember liking the movie much, it definitely made an impression on me which I have not forgotten to this day.
The most unusual thing I remembered from THE LORD OF THE RINGS were the rotoscoped battle scenes. Although most of the movie was animated by hand, Bakshi also often resorted to high-contrast tracings of live action footage (usually for scenes with lots of orcs). It wasn’t like anything I had ever seen before at the time, but folks today be more familiar with it thanks to Richard Linklater’s WAKING LIFE (2001) and A SCANNER DARKLY (2006). Bakshi’s approach, however, is much more impressionistic and aggressive.
So I was at least interested to see if WIZARDS would have the same kind of unusual animation processes. If anything, the mixture of styles was even more wild than I expected -- in addition to cel animation and rotoscoping, there are also detailed still pencil illustrations and live action stock footage. Bakshi apparently believes in changing the animation style to suit the emotion of the scene -- which makes for some very interesting images, but can also be jarring at times.
The plot of WIZARDS is simultaneously epic and simple. It’s epic in the sense that the fate of the world is at stake, but it’s simple in the sense that the outcome hinges on the destruction of some reels of old war footage. (The unconvincing explanation for this secret weapon, by the way, is that the evil forces have nothing to fight for. They do it simply because they’re told to, but they quickly get bored or distracted. So, despite their superior numbers and firepower, they don’t make any progress -- until the Nazi films galvanize them into a focused fighting unit.) The parallels to THE LORD OF THE RINGS are pretty obvious here -- that’s another world-spanning epic that hinged on the destruction of a seemingly insignificant object. But there’s a big difference in the epic feeling between a 1,500 page 3-volume novel and an 80 minute movie. WIZARDS consequently never really feels epic, despite the movie’s attempt to paint the conflict as a global one.
The fact that the secret weapon is related to Nazism is also pretty disappointing. I don’t know if there was some kind of Nazi taboo back in 1977 (though its doubtful, considering all the WWII movies that were made during the previous forty years), but these days at least Nazis make an incredibly boring bugaboo. It seems like there was an opportunity to take a dig at something less obvious in modern society. Possibly I’m holding WIZARDS to a standard it was never intended to meet -- after all, Bakshi refers to the movie several times in the commentary and accompanying interviews as a “kids’ movie” and claims it was his attempt to show folks that he could make a movie that didn’t rely on shock and offensiveness. (This despite the fact that WIZARDS contains quite a bit of graphic violence and makes no attempt to disguise the sexuality of its characters. But I suppose that these things wouldn’t necessarily be out of place in an unorthodox understanding of what makes a “kids’ movie”.)
Anyway, I mostly just feel that the staunch “Nazis are bad” stance is pretty boring. It’s especially disappointing in contrast to a scathing scene in which religion is mercilessly skewered. It occurs when a platoon of the bad guys offers to leave a group of prisoners under the care of a pair of priests. First, the priests are mocked for the devotion to collecting ancient junk -- in this case, signs and logos of corporations like CBS and Coca-Cola. Next, they delay addressing the question of the prisoners so they can engage in caricatures of worship and oblations. After waiting for hours for the priests to finish, the soldiers simply slaughter the prisoners.
I actually think organized religion is a positive force in the world, and I also think Bakshi’s depiction is pretty unfair and inaccurate. But the scene is also exactly the kind of idiosyncratic and sour satire that I love whenever I encounter it in sci-fi. You can trace the lineage of this kind of thing back to Jonathan Swift and beyond, and one of the earliest uses of fantastic worlds was to allow more latitude for this kind of otherwise-unacceptable criticism. Satire is not the only function of science fiction, but it certainly helps answer the question “Why is this sci-fi?” when it does show up. So, compared to this scene, the Nazi bits are just tame and stale. Imagine, for example, if the footage that inspired the evil armies turned out to be speeches given by Winston Churchill or John F. Kennedy. That would be something you don’t see in kids’ movies every day!
On the other hand, goblins carrying machine guns and marching under Nazi banners are also something you don’t see in kids’ movies every day either. WIZARDS has an awful lot of crazy images, and I’d say as a collection of things you might want to airbrush on the side of your van it’s a resounding success. (Other examples: a robot assassin riding an alien horse, a hyper-sexualized fairy princess riding in a tank, one wizard shooting another wizard with a six-shooter. You get the idea.) As a movie it’s not bad either, but I think I’d definitely like to see some of Bakshi’s earlier movies now where he presumably wasn’t pulling any punches at all. (Sadly, none of them are science fiction so far as I know.)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
BONUS BLOG -- 1974: PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
What’s it about?
A devilish record producer named Swan (played by hobbit-sized songwriter Paul Williams) steals the music to a rock opera version of the Faust legend for the opening of his new club, the Paradise. After infiltrating Swan’s mansion in an attempt to get his music back, the opera’s geeky composer is beaten up and thrown in prison, where a sadistic warden pulls all of his teeth and replaces them with metal prosthetics. (Not sure why.) After hearing that one of Swan’s no-talent pre-fabricated bands will be performing his rock opera at the Paradise’s opening, the composer escapes from prison and is hideously disfigured by a record press while trying to destroy all the 45s of the singles bastardized from his music.
As the opening of the Paradise draws nearer, the composer (now presumed dead) lurks about the club and starts killing those who sing his music. Sensing an opportunity, Swan strikes a deal with the composer to rewrite the rock opera and then have it performed on his terms. But no sooner is the rewrite finished, then Swan attempts to go back on his word. The composer, meanwhile, sets out on a new round of revenge that only brings more ghoulish publicity to the Paradise.
Is it any good?
After doing THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, I swore to myself that I would stick with straight up science fiction for a while. After all, straight up science fiction still covers a very wide range of stories -- everything from ant invasions to giant robot monsters to expressionistic allegories about shirtless Sean Conneries to Mel Brooks parodies to Afrofuturistic musical manifestos. In fact, I really should be writing about SPACE IS THE PLACE right now, since Afrofuturism is an influential but under-represented branch of science fiction.
The problem is that Afrofuturism is so little regarded by most sci-fi fans that I know practically nothing about it myself. Neither do I know anything about the music of Sun Ra (or even George Clinton, to name another more prominent Afrofuturist). The other problem is that I didn’t enjoy SPACE IS THE PLACE all that much. I’m sure part of it is that I don’t have any of the cultural context needed to appreciate a story about a jazz musician leading an exodus of the black people of Earth to a planet where there are no white people. But it’s also, in a lot of ways, not that good of a movie and not even that good of a document of Sun Ra’s music.
Anyway, since I can’t tell you anything at all about Afrofuturism, I’ll just recommend that everybody go look it up on Wikipedia. (That’s what I did after watching SPACE IS THE PLACE.) It seems interesting, and I’m going to try and learn some more about it. But in the meantime, I am going to talk about PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE instead, since it would be a travesty if we made it all the way through the seventies without mentioning any rock operas. And I am probably going to skip THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975), since there is a whole phenomenon around that movie that I have only experienced a little bit.
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is not, strictly speaking, a rock opera itself. It’s about the production of a rock opera, and there are many songs in the movie -- many from the Faust show, but others not. Paul Williams is credited as the songwriter for all of the movie’s music. I’m not sure if you guys know much about Paul Williams, but he wrote easy-going seventies hits for groups like The Carpenters and Barbra Streisand and Three Dog Night. (“Just an Old Fashioned Love Song” and “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays” are all his work, for example.) He’s also a friend of the Muppets and wrote “The Rainbow Connection”, which is featured in THE MUPPET MOVIE. And, incidentally, he acted in a few movies -- including a role as an orangutang know-it-all in BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973).
The music in PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is not much like any of those things I just listed. The songs are more prog-rock ballads (it is a rock opera, after all), and as Swan makes changes to the show they get heavier and more menacing. By the end of the movie, a mincing Transylvanian rocker named Beef is screaming the lyrics over grinding electric guitars while gyrating on the stage in full-body Frankenstein’s monster make-up as his bandmates pretend to dismember people in the audience. (By the way, one of the few unfortunate things about the movie is the stereotypically “gay” way that Beef acts. It’s too bad, since he’s otherwise a pretty great character.)
The movie’s story is obviously an update of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with a heavy dose of FAUST, but it also weaves in bits of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY and FRANKENSTEIN. The plot is pretty complicated, and Swan does a lot of back-stabbing and double-crossing. The music is almost all integrated into the story as performances or rehearsals, and there is usually something else going on to forward the plot while the songs are being sung. (For instance, the composer/phantom puts many of his plans into motion while his intended victims are on stage, singing.) One of my biggest complaints about musicals is that the plot usually stops when people start singing, so I was happy to see that wasn’t much of an issue here. There’s one amazing sequence in particular that features two long simultaneous tracking shots in split screen that plays out like a surf rock version of the opening of Orson Welles’s TOUCH OF EVIL.
Now, what about the science fiction? When Swan and the composer make their deal, part of it is that Swan will restore the composer’s voice, which had been destroyed in the same accident that disfigured him. This involves some shenanigans with a giant synthesizer that probably qualify as science fictional. But, yet again, this movie is probably more fantasy than sci-fi -- especially towards the end when the devil becomes an increasingly literal presence.
On the other hand, the look and sound of the movie is far more sci-fi than fantasy. The Paradise is a high-tech place, fitted for pyrotechnics and neon lights and all sorts of modern showiness. The Faust rock opera seems to have sci-fi elements as well -- I mentioned earlier that one of the characters is assembled in the style of Frankenstein’s monster. The composer’s phantom mask is also more like a space helmet or robot faceplate than any traditional kind of mask. And the movie is full of video cameras and synthesizers and all kinds of electronic doodads. It may be fantasy, but it’s not the old-fashioned unplugged kind.
A devilish record producer named Swan (played by hobbit-sized songwriter Paul Williams) steals the music to a rock opera version of the Faust legend for the opening of his new club, the Paradise. After infiltrating Swan’s mansion in an attempt to get his music back, the opera’s geeky composer is beaten up and thrown in prison, where a sadistic warden pulls all of his teeth and replaces them with metal prosthetics. (Not sure why.) After hearing that one of Swan’s no-talent pre-fabricated bands will be performing his rock opera at the Paradise’s opening, the composer escapes from prison and is hideously disfigured by a record press while trying to destroy all the 45s of the singles bastardized from his music.
As the opening of the Paradise draws nearer, the composer (now presumed dead) lurks about the club and starts killing those who sing his music. Sensing an opportunity, Swan strikes a deal with the composer to rewrite the rock opera and then have it performed on his terms. But no sooner is the rewrite finished, then Swan attempts to go back on his word. The composer, meanwhile, sets out on a new round of revenge that only brings more ghoulish publicity to the Paradise.
Is it any good?
After doing THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, I swore to myself that I would stick with straight up science fiction for a while. After all, straight up science fiction still covers a very wide range of stories -- everything from ant invasions to giant robot monsters to expressionistic allegories about shirtless Sean Conneries to Mel Brooks parodies to Afrofuturistic musical manifestos. In fact, I really should be writing about SPACE IS THE PLACE right now, since Afrofuturism is an influential but under-represented branch of science fiction.
The problem is that Afrofuturism is so little regarded by most sci-fi fans that I know practically nothing about it myself. Neither do I know anything about the music of Sun Ra (or even George Clinton, to name another more prominent Afrofuturist). The other problem is that I didn’t enjoy SPACE IS THE PLACE all that much. I’m sure part of it is that I don’t have any of the cultural context needed to appreciate a story about a jazz musician leading an exodus of the black people of Earth to a planet where there are no white people. But it’s also, in a lot of ways, not that good of a movie and not even that good of a document of Sun Ra’s music.
Anyway, since I can’t tell you anything at all about Afrofuturism, I’ll just recommend that everybody go look it up on Wikipedia. (That’s what I did after watching SPACE IS THE PLACE.) It seems interesting, and I’m going to try and learn some more about it. But in the meantime, I am going to talk about PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE instead, since it would be a travesty if we made it all the way through the seventies without mentioning any rock operas. And I am probably going to skip THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975), since there is a whole phenomenon around that movie that I have only experienced a little bit.
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is not, strictly speaking, a rock opera itself. It’s about the production of a rock opera, and there are many songs in the movie -- many from the Faust show, but others not. Paul Williams is credited as the songwriter for all of the movie’s music. I’m not sure if you guys know much about Paul Williams, but he wrote easy-going seventies hits for groups like The Carpenters and Barbra Streisand and Three Dog Night. (“Just an Old Fashioned Love Song” and “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays” are all his work, for example.) He’s also a friend of the Muppets and wrote “The Rainbow Connection”, which is featured in THE MUPPET MOVIE. And, incidentally, he acted in a few movies -- including a role as an orangutang know-it-all in BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973).
The music in PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is not much like any of those things I just listed. The songs are more prog-rock ballads (it is a rock opera, after all), and as Swan makes changes to the show they get heavier and more menacing. By the end of the movie, a mincing Transylvanian rocker named Beef is screaming the lyrics over grinding electric guitars while gyrating on the stage in full-body Frankenstein’s monster make-up as his bandmates pretend to dismember people in the audience. (By the way, one of the few unfortunate things about the movie is the stereotypically “gay” way that Beef acts. It’s too bad, since he’s otherwise a pretty great character.)
The movie’s story is obviously an update of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with a heavy dose of FAUST, but it also weaves in bits of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY and FRANKENSTEIN. The plot is pretty complicated, and Swan does a lot of back-stabbing and double-crossing. The music is almost all integrated into the story as performances or rehearsals, and there is usually something else going on to forward the plot while the songs are being sung. (For instance, the composer/phantom puts many of his plans into motion while his intended victims are on stage, singing.) One of my biggest complaints about musicals is that the plot usually stops when people start singing, so I was happy to see that wasn’t much of an issue here. There’s one amazing sequence in particular that features two long simultaneous tracking shots in split screen that plays out like a surf rock version of the opening of Orson Welles’s TOUCH OF EVIL.
Now, what about the science fiction? When Swan and the composer make their deal, part of it is that Swan will restore the composer’s voice, which had been destroyed in the same accident that disfigured him. This involves some shenanigans with a giant synthesizer that probably qualify as science fictional. But, yet again, this movie is probably more fantasy than sci-fi -- especially towards the end when the devil becomes an increasingly literal presence.
On the other hand, the look and sound of the movie is far more sci-fi than fantasy. The Paradise is a high-tech place, fitted for pyrotechnics and neon lights and all sorts of modern showiness. The Faust rock opera seems to have sci-fi elements as well -- I mentioned earlier that one of the characters is assembled in the style of Frankenstein’s monster. The composer’s phantom mask is also more like a space helmet or robot faceplate than any traditional kind of mask. And the movie is full of video cameras and synthesizers and all kinds of electronic doodads. It may be fantasy, but it’s not the old-fashioned unplugged kind.
Monday, June 15, 2009
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.
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.
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