by VaderBomb » Apr 25, '15, 10:27 pm
The Day It Came to Earth (1979) 5/10
"Geological Gaseous Goon"... ..."GE GA GOO"
A glowing red meteor crashes into a small lake. A mobster who previously laid dead in the water is awakened as a zombie. When he's not chillin' at the the bottom of the lake next to said extraterrestrial rock, he's parading around town attempting to gather the fragmented pieces of his meteorite, spooking dozens of teens in the process.
The police officer character actually believes the outrageous tales that the teenage protagonists freak out about, which is refreshing considering how many horror movie deaths could have been avoided if some sort of authority figure had any shred of open mindedness towards the supernatural or unexplained.
Some of the dialogue and delivery is so wildly campy that you'd have to consider accepting The Day It Came to Earth as a satire but honestly, I don't. I believe that these filmmakers intended to make a classic throwback to 50s Sc-Fi alien invasion movies and succeeded only slightly.
With a ridiculously low body count and cinematography as dark as the heart of an aryan, it's surprising that I enjoyed this as much as I did. It's a monster movie where the kids don't get killed, they just get scared. The monster looks decent but is well hid due to a serious lack of lighting in many scenes.
There's just something about the vibe of low budget Horror or Sci-Fi movies from the late 70s and early 80s that I love so much and while The Day It Came to Earth isn't necessarily one of the best (Fiend, Planet of Dinosaurs, The Day Time Ended, The Dungeonmaster, Laserblast), I'm still a fan.
It's worth checking out but don't expect a great film. It's fun and cheesy and never takes itself too seriously and at around 80 minutes runtime, it's a breeze. The "Ge Ga Goo" scene will forever be solidified as one of the most pointless scenes in cinema history. I cannot believe how that scene was written, acted out and viewed by the adults involved in this film as acceptable but I'm so glad that it exists.
Strange Brew (1983) 8/10
"I was the last one left after the nuclear holocaust, eh. The whole world had been destroyed, like U.S. blew up Russia and Russia blew up U.S. and Canada. Fortunately, I had been offworld at the time. There wasn't much to do. All the bowling alleys and donut shops had been wrecked. So's I spent most of my time looking for beer."
Written and directed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, Strange Brew is full of surprisingly consistent movie magic. It's almost shocking to see how well made it is, nearly on the surprise level of the first time that I saw Bob Balaban's Parents. I never knew these guys had it in them. I mean, they're all such charming personalities who bring magic to us with their charisma. Apparently they're all incredible filmmakers to boot.
1983's Strange Brew is like Wayne's World/Dumb and Dumber meets a beer-fueled Up In Smoke and it manages to be as good as the aforementioned films combined.
Plus, it features Max von Sydow as the brewmeister! I'm convinced that von Sydow read the script and was immediately won over. I hope with all of my heart that it wasn't a financial decision to act in this. I want to live in a world where Max von Sydow truly loves this picture.
It's interesting to read that Mel Blanc is credited as the voice of Mr. McKenzie, I could have sworn that I heard Brian Doyle Murray's voice playing that part.
"We hope you enjoyed the beer, oh, like I mean the movie, eh."
Upstream (1927) 8/10
I had a chance to catch this last night on the big screen with a live band playing an original score, and what a gem it is! Previously thought to be lost until it's rediscovery in 2009, it's been cleaned up and restored quite nicely.
Upstream reminds me of my favorite pre-code comedies but a little less sexual and a little more cartoonish. The comedy within is very charming and the movie breezes by without wasting a single frame. The jokes are all solid and nothing feels forced. The characters are all very likable, aside from Earle Foxe (as Mr. Brashingham) who plays a classic heel with a classic name. He's such a brash, unlikeable mother fucker but that's the point and it all works so splendidly.
Ford shows early on that he's almost a master of his craft and with a bit of influence from Murnau, he sets the stage for his later work quite confidently. Upstream touches upon the themes of ego, success, and love and does so with much finesse. Also, there's a theater scene within this film that is the closest that we ever get to see John Ford shoot a theatrical presentation of Hamlet and it looks forward to a classic Shakespearean scene from Ford's My Darling Clementine. This is the earliest Ford film that I've watched, and I look forward to checking out more of his silent pictures.
L' isola degli uomini pesce 4/10
How an apparent 8/10 became a considerable failure with a gunshot to the head of a snake
The original Italian translated title Island of the Fishmen is a much better appellation for this film than it's subsequent American releases (Something Waits in the Dark and Screamers) because it actually makes an attempt to relate to the happenings within. Despite this, it's still an awful title and this movie is a failure in itself.
The film starts off as a fast-paced splatter monster movie. We meet a handful of characters searching for mysteries in a haunted cave. Within five minutes they either get their heads ripped off, throats slit or their faces get all fucked up by what seems to be an unstoppable amphibious monster.
Hell yeah, I'm on board so far. I don't necessarily give a shit about any of these characters surviving but the gore effects were well done, so I approve. This is a late 70s Italian splatter film. I don't go in to these types of films expecting to relate to characters or even have sympathy for them. I want to see stupid people get massacred, and the opening scenes of this film deliver in that regard. Little did I know that these opening scenes were added in afterwards for the American releases, and in hindsight it makes a whole lot of sense as to why I was so disappointed in how this movie progressed and why I mistakenly presumed that this was in fact a late 70s Italian splatter film.
Following the cave sequence, we cut to a group of men on small boat getting ravaged by the raging sea. One of these men is Lieutenant Claude de Ross and he is transporting the other passengers who happen to be convicts to an island prison. We see a bit of dissension among these men. The Lieutenant is the man who controls their destinies, and of course they aren't content. The boat subsequently gets attacked by the same monster(s) who dominated the first ten minutes of the film. Men are torn to pieces and the ones who aren't are thrown into the darkness of the ocean.
Lieutenant Claude de Ross awakens and finds himself washed ashore on a tropical volcanic island; beat up but alive nonetheless. He begins to explore his surroundings and finds out that a handful of convicts have also survived and are attempting to assess this situation. One of these convicts gets his face all slashed up by a monster and the remaining three men seemingly have quite the adventure ahead of them. The dissension progresses as the apparent hatred for the law and oppression gets between a convict and the Lieutenant and it turns out that these men have more to deal with than monsters. The strife between each other appears to be even more problematic than these issues that originally put them into this ridiculous position.
At this point, I'm jubilant. Here I think that this movie (which I initially presumed to be a splatter film, judging by it's opening sequence) is now heading into an unexpected but completely acceptable new territory. It begins to play out like an existential Lord of the Flies type-tale with the visual aesthetic of John Boorman's excellent Hell in the Pacific. If you knew me personally, you know that I love me some Hell in the Pacific, and any movie that even comes close to it's vibe is something that I'll be willing to sit through.
But I digress, and the adventure continues. The survivors stumble upon a cemetery built by the mysterious natives and one of the convicts warns of legendary stories. The graves are all dug up and he explains the rumors of zombies who inhabit the island. Here I am, still thrilled at what's taking place before my eyes. I was ready to turn to my girlfriend and tell her that this is already one of my favorite movies of all time, at least a 7.5 or 8/10 thus far. I'm relieved that I didn't jump the gun because during the end of the cemetery scene, with one little gunshot to the head of an approaching snake, this film completely changes and falls apart.
The bullet comes from the barrel of a rifle held by a woman in complete bourgeois garb sitting on a horse. Fuck. Why couldn't they keep this pure? Why must these horror movies always introduce meaningless characters halfway though? I wanted more dissension. I wanted to see these three men physically and psychologically cope with natives and zombies and monsters and more importantly each other... and goddamnit, with one bullet my dreams have been shattered and this film no longer existed as "one of my favorite movies of all time".
The woman on horseback warns the men to leave and refuses to give them any sort of information. She rides off, and naturally they follow her. This is the moment when this film ceases to be a horror film and becomes a quasi-romantic drama. They arrive at this giant, dull-looking mansion and it turns out that some rich old dude owns the island. He personifies the uninteresting, small-time dictator role and the whole movie seemingly turns into an Island of Doctor Moreau ripoff.
I honestly wished that this would be as worse as gets, but my wishes did not come true. The plot becomes so convoluted, not in the sense where I couldn't follow it, but in the sense where I didn't see why anybody would've written this doo-doo to begin with. The monsters (who appeared strong in the first half) are explained to us, and it couldn't be more ludicrous.
No joke, this is what happens: The monsters have been influenced to become addicted to this bizarre syrup and in order to receive it, they agree to swim down to the lost city of Atlantis to retrieve gold for the uninteresting dictator. It then becomes apparent that this uninteresting dictator is holding a crooked scientist captive (the father of the woman on horseback) and he is creating a new race of half fish/half man monsters who will replace terrestrial man after they become overpopulated. Stupid, right? Well, it gets worse.
The volcano explodes, the mansion burns down and everybody dies (?). Cue the last scene of the film. The girl and the Lieutenant are alive, floating on the ocean on a piece of wreckage. She proclaims how she knew that the monsters would save them and the Lieutenant looks into the distance. He point to a sailboat in the distance and announces that "They see us!". What a pointlessly happy and ridiculously crappy ending to a supremely flawed movie.
The first half is legit 7.5/10 stuff, and the second half borders on 4/10, perhaps even 3.5/10. For these reasons, I can't give it more than a 4/10 all around, despite the great first half. I've never experienced a movie which falls apart so bad halfway through. Tropical Malady is an example of a film which abruptly changes halfway through, but it's to the benefit of the overall piece. This movie is the antithesis to Tropical Malady and it's a considerable failure.
I'm really interested in hearing what people thought of this movie, I'm dumbfounded right now. I'm glad I avoided watching this movie for years, I doubt I would have enjoyed it as a teenager. 9.5/10
