Movie Review: Alphaville (1965)

"No one has lived in the past. No one will live in the future. The present is the only form of life. It is a state of existence which is indestructible. "  

-- Alpha-60.

Alphaville (1965) is one of my favorite foreign films. It is also that rare foray into existential science fiction that actually works on the screen, and is as much of a success in that category as Solaris (1972).

Jean Luc Goddard's "thinking-man's noir", is based on the adventures of a popular secret agent/private detective created by Englishman Peter Cheyney. This version of Lemmy Caution was a great leap from the previous prose and film versions of the character; This Caution is a tired and beaten man, trying to do his duty in a city without hopes or dreams. Eddie Constantine portrayed Caution, just as he did in several other movies, but his new interpretation of the character shocked many audiences. Lemmy Caution was normally more sprightly and upbeat ... but it's hard to see anyone being happy in the city of Alphaville.

The gist of the mostly-improvised story is that Caution, posing as a journalist, is supposed to find out what happened to the last agent sent into Alphaville, and to find and stop the plans of Professor Von Braun, the creator of the sentient computer Alpha-60, which does all the thinking for everyone in the forlorn metropolis. 

Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution

Alpha-60 outlawed concepts such as love and emotion; even crying over someone's death has a penalty of summary execution. Alpha-60 has even erased words from society. Each room has a "bible", which unlike the ones provided by the Gideons, is actually a dictionary, which can be replaced several times a day as more and more words and concepts are banished to oblivion. 

The movie also looks at how the heroic can fail. Lemmy Caution seems to be on the verge at times, but his willingness to beat the computer has him holding on tightly to his principles and values. He finds his fellow agent Henry Dickson (played splendidly by Akim Tamiroff) near destitute and living only for his own baser pleasures. A conversation between the two mentions that both Dick Tracy and Guy LeClair are also dead, apparently figuratively killed by the emotionless world of Alphaville, if not by literally agents of the super computer. 

Goddard puts in several strange pop references into the film, as if to subtly hint as to what's going on. Professor Von Braun's real name is Leonard Nosferatu, an aside to the classic F.W. Murnau movie about Count Orlock the vampire. Two of his assistants in the bureaucracy of Alpha-60 are named Professors Heckle and Jeckle, after the comical Terrytoons magpies.  Von Braun is constantly denying that Nosferatu exists, and the two Professors just explain the strange goings on to Caution amid people tap-dancing on tables and clackering computer machinery. 

Anna Karina as Natasha 

Depending on how one goes into a viewing of Alphaville, the movie can seem either arcane or very cheap. Caution's Ford Mustang is called a Ford Galaxy, and he states he hopes to use it to put the "vast gulf of sidereal space" between him and Alphaville. The stark black-and-white cinematography can also lean toward the uninitiated looking at the film as a cheap production, rather than the existential work it really is; there are no fancy special effects, even of the limited kind available in science fiction films of the era. The photography gives the movie a claustrophobic feel that's necessary for understanding what's going on in the characters' minds, or at least what's left of them. 

The movie has been favorably compared to Jean Cocteau's Orpheus, and Goddard was definitely influenced by that classic, all the way to the ending admonition of Caution to Natasha to not look back at the city as they were leaving it. The real highlight of the film is the word play in the battle of wills between Caution and Alpha-60, each putting forth his own philosophy until one becomes the victor.

This is one of those movies that I naturally had to replace the VHS when it came out on DVD. The Criterion Collection DVD of Alphaville has a great transfer of the original film in French, but the subtitles are slightly different than the dubbing of my old copy, which I purchased from Sinister Cinema way back when I got my first VCR. Most of the new translations make a bit more sense than what I was used to hearing, which is a good thing, but it's a little confusing at time. Luckily, I've watched this film so many times that neither the sound nor subtitles really matter. 

The film's the thing, to paraphrase the Bard, and Alphaville is a movie that it would behoove most movie fans to give a try. It's Goddard so the film snob in you can be happy, and it's hard-boiled for the blue collar side of the equation. And it makes you think, which a good movie is supposed to do. 

AVAILABLE FOR THE KINDLE ON AMAZON.COM

THE 99-CENT QUIZ BOOK OMNIBUS EDITION
By Rich Meyer

This omnibus is a compendium of all four volumes of the 99-Cent Quiz Book series. All of the original 400 questions and answers are here, on Cliffhanger Movie Serials, Television Westerns, Comic Strips, and Horror Movies. 

As an added feature, there are also forty (40) bonus questions about those same topics. This quiz e-book omnibus is great for several evenings of family-friendly and fact-filled fun!


US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AH04L5I
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AH04L5I

CA: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00AH04L5I
DE: http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00AH04L5I

Movie Review: Godzilla vs. Gigan, a.k.a. Godzilla on Monster Island (1972)

Japanese movie poster

 Great poster there on the left, ain't it? Next to Destroy All Monsters, I think it's the best of the series. Too bad that poster is for the movie that is the nadir of the Godzilla series: Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972).

The film was released briefly to US screens as  Godzilla on Monster Island, though the Big G doesn't spend a lot of time there.

The basic story is that an alien race of cockroaches have come to take over Earth since the humans on their own planet destroyed that world through pollution and waste. They hire a cartoonist to do some unspecified design work at an amusement park they're building to be their base of operations, complete with a giant Godzilla Tower. The cartoonist and his black-belt girlfriend get involved with a couple of folks who know about the cockroaches' plan. Gigan and King Ghidorah are called in to attack Tokyo and lure Godzilla (and Anguirus) from Monster Island, so the aliens can kill him and complete their plans of conquest. Naturally, things don't go as planned.

The ecology message doesn't smash you in the teeth like it did in the previous entry Godzilla vs. Hedorah. But the film will be giving you dentures for numerous other reasons. The plot, story and script of this movie makes Godzilla vs. Megalon, considered by many to be the worst G-Film, seem like Citizen Kane. Very little sense of logic was applied to it. I understand it is a kid's movie, but I saw it on TV when I was a kid and pretty much gave it a "WTF?" even then.


This movie is a stock footage parade. The rampage of Gigan and King Ghidorah through Tokyo is accomplish with mostly stock footage. Almost all of King Ghidorah's footage is from previous movies, notably Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster and Monster Zero. I think maybe, at the most,  three minutes of Gigan footage was filmed, and most of that was of the creature kicking in storefront windows. Apparently, he does not like seventies' era window dressing.

Use mannequins at your own risk
when this guy's window-shopping.

This movie has some of the most laughable special effects I've ever seen. For at least the first ten minutes of their appearances, King Ghidorah and Gigan are simple plastic models - possibly off-the-shelf toys - with no movement at all.  The Ghidorah suit is pretty laughable, with the hair-like tufts behind his heads making them look remarkably like Keith Richards. Apparently, this outfit was on its last legs, since the heads don't really move separately like they did in earlier movies. When they do move, that is.

Gigan's certainly an interesting looking monster, though never quite detailed as being a cyborg. The buzzsaw in his belly doesn't make a lick of logical sense, and the hook hands must mean he's really easy to beat at Super Mario Kart. Of course, it's not until Godzilla Final Wars that Gigan actually lives up to the promise of that appearance.

It isn't nearly as bad as the movie's heroes, Godzilla and Anguirus. Anguirus (also known as Angillas) shows up as different colors all the time. There's a scene in the ocean where he's lobster-red, and when he approaches land, and the Self-Defense Force shines searchlights on him, he's a multitude of colors, all looking as if it was painted in sickly splotches. All through the big battle scenes, at least in the parts that aren't taken from earlier movies, Godzilla is losing bits and pieces of himself, the rubber of the suit appearing to be on its last legs.

This is also the first, and thankfully only, movie in which Godzilla talks. He's kinda bossy, and sounds a little bit to me like Chester A. Riley with a head cold. (Go ahead and Google, you young whippersnappers; the rest of us will wait.) The whole concept is ludicrous and does little to help the lack of a plot.

Most folks know I love bad movies. Give me something by Ed Wood or Bill Rebane and I'm a happy camper. Godzilla vs. Gigan is NOT that kind of endearing bad. It's just a crappy movie. You'll, of course, have to watch it if you're a kaiju and Godzilla fan, but I can't see even kids wanting to sit through this thing. If there's a Godzilla movie to completely forget about, this is the one.

AVAILABLE FOR THE KINDLE ON AMAZON.COM

THE TRIVIA QUIZ BOOK: VOLUME 6

By Rich Meyer

Here we go folks with another bout of family-friendly and fun-filled quizzing! 500 questions for all ages and all skill-levels from trivia neophyte to omniscient master. This time around, the questions fall into ten categories: Capital cities, famous quotes, Green Lantern and Green Arrow, Doc Savage, song lyrics, Jack Benny's radio show, The Andy Griffith Show, comedy albums, the comic strip Peanuts and Presidents of the United States.

US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AF1MXS6

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AF1MXS6

CA: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00AF1MXS6

DE: http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00AF1MXS6

Movie Review: Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack (2001)

Japanese movie poster

One of the interesting things about the last round of Godzilla films, known as the Millennium series, was that none of them had to have much continuity with the previous films, other than the original Gojira (1954). There was also none of the sixties and seventies' Godzilla,  who was a friend to children and protector of the planet. With Godzilla Mothra King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack, the Big G goes further back than the original; he's not just a force of nature in this one - he's a mean bastard out to destroy everything in sight.

While Godzilla was ostensibly destroyed in the original movie (with a little retroactive continuity for this one), the monster in this movie is given a much more mystical origin and is basically Zombie-Godzilla for all intents and purposes. The lack of pupils and irises makes him even more evil-looking in my opinion.

Godzilla now exemplifies all the lives lost to Japanese forces during the Pacific War. He's come back to take revenge on the islands of Japan for those deaths, since the Japanese people (or at least the Government) is more than willing to consign those acts to a forgotten corner of their history. To protect the land (the actual land of Japane, not the people), the Guardian Monsters rise up: Barugon (from Frankenstein Conquers the World), Mothra (from almost as many movies as Godzilla), and King Ghidorah (ditto). It is interesting to see Ghidorah as a hero, as usually the space monster is one of the ultimate bastards. Barugon is still a popular kaiju in Japan, which explains his inclusion, rather than the more popular Rodan or fan favorite Anguirus (Angillas).

The human side to the story features the commander of the Japanese Self-Defense Force dealing with his often-drunk daughter, a reporter for a cheap digital TV station producing sensationalist dramas. She's the only one who has contact with an old man who knows everything about the Guardian Monsters, and the coming battle.

There's a lot of great action and destruction in this one, as Godzilla, left loose for the first time in his cinematic career, gets a free hand to destroy Tokyo. Nothing accidental about this rampage ... he's there to kick ass and take names! He decimates the Japanese land forces in less than a minute, and nearly destroys everything on the water as well. The battles with the Guardian Monsters show there's no quarter given to the populace of Japan. Hundreds, probably thousands of people are shown being crushed under the debris of the monsters' swath of havoc. The only way this could be worse for Japan is if Godzilla was hungry and started eating people.

Godzilla facing King Ghidorah and Mothra
(Barugon already met his end about
twenty minutes earlier).

Barugon gets a bit short-changed in the end, but does have a pretty long battle with the Big G in the movie. Mothra's role is apparently just to die and supercharge King Ghidorah a couple of times. Ghidorah is at his most impressive (short of his brief Mecha-King Ghidorah phase, which was simply too cool for words), but it is Godzilla's show all along. And one of the few instances in the long series that the efforts of the human forces actually play a major role in the villain monster's defeat, much like the original 1954 movie.

This is definitely a must-watch for the kaiju fan, and it is a very accessible film for the average movie-goer.

John Carter (2012): $300 million for ... this?

After reading John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, a book that went deep into the problems behind the latest cinematic megaflop, I decided it was finally time to sit down and watch John Carter. Given that Disney pretty much set the film up to fail with either too much or not enough control or effort at various stages, I was actually hoping to see a good adaptation of a story I had read a long time ago.

Perhaps that was the problem, as I read the entire eleven-book Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs one after the other over a period of a week or two. So I think my memories may be a little warped over what happened where. I just started re-reading the series from the first book, A Princess of Mars, from which this movie is supposedly adapted.

To be completely honest, I see very little of that book in this movie. I see very little Burroughs at all, really. I see a lot of Flash Gordon, a lot of  Star Wars and a bit of Dune, all of which can probably claim the influence of John Carter of Mars somewhere in their lineages, but I would've hoped this movie, of the original source material, would've found away to rise above that.

There's a lot of CGI. I assume that's where all the money went. And the Martian Tharks are amazing. The various Martian vistas are truly wondrous to behold, though I'm not exactly sure why Mars has a blue sky when there are no oceans. And you gotta love the babysitter beast, Woola. But not even a Michael Bay movie can get by just on eye candy anymore, and there needs to be a story.

There's some stuff that resembles one in John Carter, but it doesn't always jump out at you. The sound mixing is horrible (at least to me) and I found myself having to go back to see what people said a couple of times because the soundtrack music drowned it out. The mysterious Therns, the inadvertent reason Carter is even on Mars to begin with, are interesting, but they really seem out of place in this movie, as there seems to be enough global political strike on Barsoom that they didn't need to stick their noses in it. The super-high tech that the Therns give the Zodangans is similarly out of place.

The whole concept of the moving city of Zodanga is completely ludicrous. It's like someone had a vaguely interesting steampunk design left over from The Wild Wild West movie and had a little too much beer one night. Sure it looked interesting during Carter's escape, but it makes no logical sense on a world with rapidly depleting resources to move an entire bloody city around the planet.

After reading that book, I was in a very accommodating mood for this movie. It may have been wronged by the morons at Disney, but it also wasn't very good. It was a disservice to long-time fans of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic, and it certainly wasn't worth $300 million.

There are sometimes when a book really shouldn't be made into a movie. I think John Carter will stand, at least for a few years, as an example to prove that axiom.

Watch the fan trailer and save your Redbox dollar for a Scooby-Doo movie...

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM FOR THE KINDLE

THE 1970'S SCI-FI MOVIE QUIZ BOOK

By Rich Meyer

This is the quiz e-book for the b-movie fan in everyone! If you liked watching Peter Graves fight giant grasshoppers, Bela Lugosi turn people into Tor Johnson, or giant brains crawling around the countryside, then you'll enjoy these questions (and answers) about the movie era that spawned a thousand chills and a million drive-ins!

US SITE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004I6D6LW

UK SITE: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004I6D6LW

CA SITE: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B004I6D6LW

DE SITE: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004I6D6LW

Movie Review: Destroy All Monsters (1968)

When I was a kid, Destroy All Monsters was the gem in the kaiju eiga crown ... that Holy Grail that every Godzilla fan wanted to see. Luckily, back then in the seventies, TV stations actually played stuff that people actually wanted to watch. The CBS Late Night Movie, The ABC Friday Night Movie, WLUK's T.J. and the ANT (All Night Theatre), and Saturday afternoon movies on the local stations in Central Wisconsin finally got me to that goal. And then the early days of TNT and The Sci-Fi Channel (I can't being myself to call it SyFy out of deference to the days when it actually played science-fiction) Channel buttressed it in the mid-eighties by replaying it. It took nearly twenty years to see that film twice.

Of course now, I have it on DVD and can watch it anytime I want. And two nights ago, it was my Kaiju fix. This 1968 flick is what you would call a "monster fest", much like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman or House of Dracula  twenty five years earlier. it featured almost all of the popular giant monsters created by Toho Studios, battling on both sides of an alien invasion. In the far-flung year of 1999, space travel with the moon is common and all the world's monsters have been confined to an island for study. The invading Kilaaks take control of the island and the monsters, wreaking havoc on the world's cities. Earth isn't defenseless and fights back, culminating in a monster brawl at the base of Mount Fuji. The aliens bring in the space monster Ghidorah as a last ditch effort, but hey, you know how this ends, right? Godzilla, good guy, aliens, smucked all over the place.

Godzilla is, of course, the star of the movie, but a good number of his kaiju cohorts get a lot of airtime, namely Mothra (in caterpillar form), Rodan, Angilus (a.k.a. Angurus of Gigantis the Fire Monster fame), Manda (from the sci-fi movie Atragon) and Gorosaurus, who's only previous appearance was as the dinosaur that the giant ape kills in the Rankin-Bass/Toho production of King Kong Escapes. The monsters Varan (from Varan the Unbelievable) and Barugon (from Frankenstein Conquers the World) make brief appearances, usually at a distance, since the rubber man-in-a-suit-a-saurus costumes for those two creatures had degraded to the point that they couldn't be used for close-up, active city stomping. Gorosaurus does the subterranean monster bit instead of Barugon in Paris, destroying the Arch de Triomphe. Godzilla's son is on hand for a little comic relief in the final battle, blowing a smoke ring onto one of Ghidrah's flailing heads as he gets stomped by his dad and friends.

On the whole, the special effects are pretty good in this one, with a minimum of stock footage. Godzilla gets to stomp New York for the first time, and the monsters attack cities that aren't Tokyo for the first time. The story's fine, too. Don't bother deconstructing it; I mean it is just a monster movie and if you're watching a monster movie like you'd watch a Scorsese or Tarkovsky flick, you've got something wrong in the cabeza to begin with. The plot is adequate for the movie's intentions, and gives lots of opportunities for spaceships, monsters, aliens and wanton destruction to appear on the screen.

Sure, it's dated, but this is a fun movie and wastes an hour-and-a-half quite efficiently!

Movie Review: The X From Outer Space (1967)

The X From Outer Space (1967) was one of many kaiju-eiga (strange beast)/science fiction films released in Japan during the monster boom of the sixties. It is a seriously goofy movie. Do NOT even think about trying to find a proper rationale for anything that goes on in this film! Just sit back and enjoy the goofiness!

Several mission to Mars have gone missing with all hands lost, so the spaceship AAB-Gamma is being sent out to investigate. The crew encounters a fuzzy UFO that the comm officer notes as looking like a fried egg that impedes them a little, mainly forcing them to waste some fuel, and the ship's doctor comes down with an illness, and head for the moonbase instead. There's some romantic entanglements with the Captain, the biologist and a lady on the moonbase. The doctor on the base is forced onto the AAB-Gamma, and they again run into the UFO on their way to Mars. This time, they turn back after wasting more fuel and discovering a strange foamy substance on the outside of the ship, along with egg-like spores, one of which they take with them back to Earth.

The crew and some of the staff had a dinner party, which is interrupted by the obligatory call from the lab - the substance is missing and there's a hole in the floor ... and a track on the floor that looks like a big chicken! The four of the crew head out to a party in Hakone when the power goes out and a strange-looking  (and I mean strange - look at the picture!) monster pops out of the ground and starts on a rampage. They fairly quickly (y'know, around noon the next day) deduce that this is what escaped from the lab and they name the deely-boppered creature Guilala.

Lots of cornball destruction of the Tokyo landscape, some dams, and some tanks and planes (of course) follow. The scientists reason that perhaps that mysterious foamy substance might be a defense against Guilala, so the AAB-Gamma takes to the skies once again. The new substance, Guilalanium, sucks up energy and radiation, making it difficult for the ship to return home, since it interferes with communications and controls. They manage to find a way to shield it and, after another UFO encounter in which they are buzzed by the flying egg (and not much else), get the Guilalanium back to Earth in time to prevent Guilala from destroying the entire island. A poignant choice in the romance department and "The End" flashes on the screen.

A clip from The X From Outer Space (1967)

This was the first monster movie produced by the Shochiku Film Studio, and while it had none of the polish you would find with a Toho Production or the early Daiei Gamera films, it was still an enjoyable film. There's a lot of goofiness, with the comm officer trying hard to be the comic relief, the monster itself being just the strangest thing they could've come up with, and the quaintness of the special effects. You don't notice a lot of wires, but the buildings tend to fall apart like gingerbread houses. The design of the AAB-Gamma space ship is very interesting though; looking a lot like some sort of modified submarine and not the usual rocket/missile-shaped craft of the era.

But one of the hallmarks of being a kaiju eiga fan is to look at a movie in a Japanese manner: If the story is worth telling, you can overlook flaws in the presentation. The X From Outer Space was a tale worth telling, so I find I can quite easily enjoy it with those flaws; in fact, like a lot of films, you can enjoy it more with the flaws.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM FOR THE KINDLE

THE MONSTER QUIZ BOOK

By Rich Meyer

If you like monsters, giant-sized, human-sized or any size, then this is the quiz e-book for you! Godzilla, Gamera, Frankenstein, the Creature, the Mummy, Dracula ... nearly every creature that's tried to scare the pants off you gets a shout out in this one!

US SITE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005QRPTJE

UK SITE: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005QRPTJE

CA SITE: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B005QRPTJE

DE SITE: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B005QRPTJE

Review: Doctor Who "Nightmare in Silver" SPOILERS ABOUND

Okay, the latest episode of Doctor Who, while having a few excellent points on the plus side, really emphasizes the descent of the show into being a children's TV show again, rather than an actual science fiction program.

First the good stuff: Warrick Davis. You can't go wrong with Warrick Davis. And a couple of the special effects were good, though the sound editor didn't do a good job. How could that twit of a kid have screamed like she did if the Cyberman was moving at that speed? She wouldn't have even noticed until she was halfway down the hall.

And the final good point: The Cybermen, of course. They weren't all that scary to viewers, I don't think, but in the concept of the story, they were played to good effect, especially giving them an element of deviousness they hadn't really had before.

But the episode also went a little overboard on turning the Cybermen into the Borg. The partial conversions, the facial implements on the Doctor and Webley, even the mental combat all screamed "Borg" to me. The Cybermen could possibly have been an inspiration to the Star Trek: The Next Generation creators for the Borg, but this is such a blatant swipe.

Also, I think the writers should have maybe watch a few episodes of the original series, as I could've sworn that gold only messed up a Cyberman's respiration unit. Why touching a piece of foil to part of an implement would do anything is beyond me, at most a minor short circuit, I would think.

And now we come to the bane of the episode: The two kids. One kid, no problem. But two? Now you're pandering to the kid demographic and you officially have a kid's TV show. The mere fact that the Doctor would consider taking them along in the TARDIS, especially in a storyline where he is trying to erase his presence from history, is absurd. I suppose you can laugh it off because of his obsession with their governess, but it is lame no matter how you look at it. This is THE DOCTOR, not a babysitter. At least the initial process of turning them into Cybermen shut them up for a good portion of the episode.

Much like the previous episode, this one had a lot going for it, but stopped itself short of being a properly good episode. This one certainly did not feel like it was written by someone of the calibre of Neil Gaiman.  I suppose even the great ones phone one in now and again.

I don't hold out much hope for the next episode either, with the pointless answering of the "Question That Must Not Be Answered" either. In fact, I don't hold out much hope for the series until both Matt Smith and Stephen Moffat quit the show.

I'm still hoping that the entire Eleventh Doctor saga is some odd alternate universe that will resolve itself and disappear from the collective memory next episode or on the 50th Anniversary Special.