Roses Are Red, Spacemen Are Blue

You know, I have done holiday posts for this blog, but I’ve never done a Valentine’s Day post. Maybe it’s because I think of Valentine’s Day as a crass commercial holiday, pushing an artificial and hamfisted idea of Romantic Love on the populous so that they can consume all of their sugar-coated crap. Or maybe it’s because I would have to review a romantic comedy, a genre I generally hate outside of a few movies like The Princess Bride.  Or maybe it's just because I have no love life and and I project that through refusing to honor a holiday that reminds me of my constant failure.  Well, in my continuing quest to do away with the negativity in my life I’m going to actually do a Valentine’s Day Review this year and talk about a romantic, heartwarming film from one of America’s most underrated directors. Prepare to feel the love as I review

Film, 1984 

Director: John Carpenter 

Story 

After a Voyager space probe is intercepted by aliens they send one of their own to planet Earth to check us out. Things don’t go so well though as its spacecraft is immediately shot down over North America (where else?). This alien then clones a body from the DNA of a dead man and enlists his widow’s aid in getting to Arizona where it can make a rendezvous with its comrades and go back home. Along the way the Starman will learn about the gamut of human emotions, from fear and hate to joy and… love. 

Review 

Sometimes you come across a movie that’s not good, but not bad either. It’s… okay. Starman is one of those movies. I was mildly entertained for two hours but at the end of the day couldn’t claim that I had just seen something special. On the plus side this film has some great acting, especially from Jeff Bridges as the titular alien. Watching this guy you really will believe that he’s from another planet. Everything, from his curiosity and attitudes to his gradual grasp of English will seem completely realistic and exactly like what would happen if an extraterrestrial were to visit our planet.

In addition, there are quite a few laughs to be had at Starman’s misunderstanding of Earth customs, which means that this film never gets *too* somber. Karen Allen does a good job too, ably portraying a woman who sees an alien morph into her dead husband right before her eyes, freaking the fuck out and then gradually learning to accept and even love the strange being that is dragging her halfway across the country on a road trip that is as far from normal as you can get outside of a Hunter S. Thompson novel. Special effects are generally very good (including the aforementioned morphing scene) and don’t overpower the story, as some 80s sci-fi flicks are wont to do.

Unfortunately, this movie completely lacks subtlety… everything is in-your-face and obvious – as is the norm for most Eighties movies. The US Government is EVIL as they attempt to track down Starman and capture him for medical experimentation or worse. I hate it when movies do this. If we did encounter a being from a civilization more advanced than our own, wouldn’t we want to be more diplomatic in case they would take violent offense to our actions? Watching this you clearly know who the good guys and bad guys are. Everything else is obvious too. You can definitely tell when you’re supposed to cry or laugh or go “aww.” The religious symbolism is hamfisted as well. Okay, I get it, Starman is Jesus – could we move on please?  The romance is pretty sappy and obvious too, but most movie love stories are.

I guess my biggest beef with Starman is that it doesn’t feel like a John Carpenter film. Most of his movies you can watch and tell who the director is (and not just because he puts his name before the freaking title for every one)… he’s a very individualistic director who usually makes (or made, I haven’t seen any of his latter-day movies which aren’t supposed to be that good) unique and entertaining celluloid gems. But Starman just seems like your average 80s Hollywood movie. Carpenter has said that he made this film so that he could continue to work in Hollywood, but couldn’t he have put a little more effort into it? Come on, man, you made Escape From New York! Oh, and the music score is bland and forgettable – and in a movie called Starman they didn’t even include the David Bowie song anywhere in the movie. What’s the problem guys, too obvious for you?

In the end I can only recommend Starman for someone who is a John Carpenter completest or someone who wants to watch one of the best acting jobs of Jeff Bridges’ career (just behind, you know, his Academy Award winning performance in Tron). Oh, or anyone who want to see either Karen Allen in her panties or Jeff Bridges in the buff.


Well, that's my Valentine's Day post.  Don't expect another romance movie post for a long time, because I can only take so much Hollywood lovey-dovey sugar in one year.

Obligatory Halloween Sequel

This Halloween, three more Scary Movies that you won’t see on television. All three are worth tracking down and without further ado here they are:

Onibaba (1964) – An old woman and her daughter-in-law live in the middle of a swamp in Feudal Japan. They make a living by murdering lost samurai and selling their looted weapons and armor for food they desperately need. One day a friend of their son/husband comes home and tells them that he was killed in the war – but he’s available if they need to have a man around (wink, wink). What follows is an unfolding tale of psychological savagery, with a mix of jealousy, sexuality, hate, love, lust, fear and violence that would make Freud orgasm about fifty times over. I know that I just made this movie sound like a psychological drama rather than a horror movie, but the key is all in the mood… this movie can get very creepy, and there is a horrific element that enters the film in the latter part that qualifies Onibaba as a bona fide horror classic.



Scanners (1981) – A woman is gripped by unexplained seizures in a shopping mall. A man’s head literally explodes in front of a corporate conference. Both of these events are the result of Scanners – telepaths with the ability to not only read minds but completely interface with the body of another human being. One of these scanners, until recently a homeless derelict is recruited to hunt down the leader of a dangerous group of his brethren – a group whose mission it is to eliminate all “normals” and establish scanner supremacy.  Any other movie dealing with human telepathy would be a straight-up sci-fi movie, but since this movie is directed by David Cronenberg you’re going to get a lot of body horror watching this. Cronenberg seems to be more

interested in the negative (and gruesome) consequences of human telepathy rather than the positive implications. Well, at least it gives us a pretty good sci-fi horror yarn with some great special effects. Oh yeah, and Patrick McGoohan’s in it. And yes, even though it is never shown on television and hardly anyone anymore has seen it, it is the movie which gave us this famous image:





Prince of Darkness (1987) – An L.A. church is housing an ancient and deadly secret… a canister of green goo that has been locked away for more than two thousand years. A team of scientists and grad students is called in to study it, and they find out what it is: pure Liquid Satan (now 50% more refreshing!). The evil substance calls out to the homeless population of Los Angeles and they besiege the church, while inside the science team is slowly taken over one by one by the soft drink/unholy terror. This is easily John Carpenter’s most underrated film – for some reason a lot of people don’t like this one as much as his other stuff. I can kind of see why: it is a little clunky and not as well put together as some of his other movies. But the premise is interesting, the ideas are cool and the atmosphere is genuinely scary. I certainly consider it to be better than Halloween, which is considered by most to be his best film but that I find overrated (sorry). This movie has a lot to recommend: good FX, Alice Cooper and a truly frightening pornstache. Check it out.




Well, there you go. My personal recommendations for a Horror Movie Night. And keep in mind that these don’t have to watched only on Halloween – Horror is good year round! ‘Cause when you continually confront the dull existential horror of your everyday life, the best way to entertain yourself at the end of the day is watching the horror of seeing someone’s eyes imploding or seeing the grim spectacle of endless corpses being dumped into a bottomless pit.

Pleasant dreams.

Obligatory Halloween Movie Post

Holiday movies normally suck, and the reason for this is that holiday movies often have to have a genre of films made up just for them:  the Christmas movie, the Thanksgiving movie and so on.  Also, you can only really watch them one time of the year.  Who wants to watch a Christmas movie in July?

But Halloween is different.  Halloween has a genre of movies that can be watched year-round and is not necessarily slaved to the holiday:  the horror movie.  Unfortunately, despite this Halloween can also suck movie-wise because all of the TV channels and video stores hawk the same shit year after year.  Some horror movies watched every year by the masses on Halloween are true classics; others are pure drivel.  But I get tired of watching even the good ones over and over again so this year for Halloween I thought I would share three good horror movies that aren’t replayed to death.  In fact, some of these are pretty out-of-the-way and, dare I say, cult.

Here they are.  Enjoy.

Matango (1963) – A rich business man, a movie star, a professor and his student along with the ship’s captain and first mate are sailing a yacht on a pleasure cruise when they are swept in a colossal storm that leaves them stranded on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific.  Sound familiar?  Except that instead of being a crappy sitcom this is a psychological horror movie where the castaways start going for each other’s throats as their mini-society devolves and they find mysterious mushrooms that are both mind and body altering.  This is Godzilla director Ishiro Honda’s favorite of his movies, and it’s one of mine, too. 

Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1974) – Not all vampires attack the same.  In a nineteenth century European village young girls are being found dead as wrinkled old crones, having been aged to death by something unknown.  The wandering titular vampire hunter is summoned by his doctor friend to find and slay the undead threat.  This is one of Hammer Horror’s last movies, and one of their most fun.  Where else can you see a katana-swinging Napoleonic vampire hunter with a hunchback professor sidekick slay evil beasts and bed Caroline Munro? 

The Fog (1980) – A small Pacific seaside town is celebrating its anniversary when a mysterious fog rolls in.  One by one people start dying and the local priest has a suspicion of why:  the town harbors a shameful secret, a secret that may spell death and disaster for many innocent people.  This is one of John Carpenter’s most underrated works.  It isn’t one of his best, but it is a good, spooky little film that manages to genuinely creep you out a few times.  It also actually makes ghost pirates seem like a scary idea and not a joke.

So there you go... three non-standard good horror movies for your Halloween viewing pleasure.  Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go eat candy and drink cider until I throw up.