Remembering

In our last entry we made some noises about "unfinished business with a few films" in our mammoth Horror Collection box set from Mill Creek. A careful count of our viewing habits would reveal that, of the Horror Collection's 250 films, we'd only watched 247 from the actual box set (counting the two halves of the The Lost City separately).

Will we be reviewing Night of the Living Dead -- a film we skipped in our first pass through the Nightmare Worlds portion of the box set, since we watched it on public TV on (gulp) Halloween 2009?

No, we won't -- though at least we finally watched the version on the box,. Even in Mill Creek's middling transfer it remains a taut, effective film.

Its only major flaw is a bit too much of the "hysterical/helpless woman" act from Judith O'Dea -- the film's decoy protagonist, so to speak. (Duane Jones is the true protagonist, obvs.)

Or will we be covering Metropolis, the 1927 epic that launched a thousand film studies classes -- and which we also skipped over, since we figured Mill Creek's print was probably crap?

No, we won't, though we realized neither of us had ever actually seen the film (K. thought she had, but hadn't), and so here too we watched the Mill Creek product. And even in a cut-down, grainy version that can't bring itself to fit the film's title on screen --

-- we enjoyed Metropolis and would like to see the restored version sometime. That said, the cuts in the 118-minute version we watched weren't at all obvious to us: it's hardly a hack job like some we've seen. (Looking at you, Planet Outlaws.)

No, the real unfinished business we have is with a third movie -- one that, in at least two different senses, is the thing that started this whole project. Of all the films on the box, it's the first one we ever watched together; of all the films on the box, it's (almost certainly) the first one either of us ever saw.

So, without further ado (and just shy of 2019), here's #250 of 250:

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Warriors of the Wasteland (1983)
[aka The New Barbarians, I nuovi barbari]

Grade: C-

In retrospect, the 1980s seem like the transitional decade -- the period where we went from the way things were to, basically speaking, the way things are now.

For instance, take entertainment: in 1979 you probably had a rooftop antenna, and you watched what was on TV or in the theaters. You read what you owned, or what the library had, or what a buddy would lend you.

Come the early 1990s, we had cable TV, video rentals, and services like Prodigy that weren't so different from the modern Internet, where you could chat with other people interested in all the weird stuff you liked.

OK, it cost money (and charged per minute), and it was your friend's father that had it, not your family. But at least you got to try it once or twice for a few minutes, whereupon you saw the future. (And hopefully your friend's dad didn't flip his shit.)

Nowadays, almost nothing is out of reach. Nearly every childhood memory can be dialed up somewhere on YouTube; nearly every movie, song, video game, book you were ever curious about can be bought online, or even downloaded for free.

Heck, even people can be found, if you're resourceful enough. One classmate's dead from suicide or smack, another has detestable political views, and that little blonde you had a crush on in 5th grade? She's happily married with a couple kids. Good for her.

But back in the late 1980s, such things were still on the horizon (except video rentals, we had those). 

And so, enter a childhood friend of P.'s: let's call him Dog Pound, though that wasn't his real nickname. Dog Pound was at least 5 years older than P., probably more, but only a couple years ahead of him in school.

Picture greasy black hair, wide eyes enlarged by Coke-bottle glasses, thick lips, and a subtle limp. Now add to that shitkicker boots, a Canadian tuxedo, and a trucker hat.

If you're imagining this guy as a redneck with mild special needs, you're exactly right.

Dog Pound was awkward and a bit "off", but willing to be a friend when few others were. It was Dog Pound who stood with P. at the bus stop, and never once made a cutting or nasty remark about him, ever. It was at Dog Pound's house that P. first played Intellivision, and where he ate a dog biscuit on a dare from a mutual friend.

And the first pornographic movie he ever saw? That was Dog Pound's VHS tape, which featured the sordid tale of an android who learns about sex by watching...well, you know the rest.

And speaking of VHS, Dog Pound used to wax lyrical about a movie he called "The Templars". All these decades later it's impossible to recall exactly what he said, but it probably amounted to his version of "This movie is really bad-ass."

So sooner or later, we sat down and watched it together. And not too long after that, Dog Pound and his family decamped for parts unknown (the rumor was Alaska).

Even just a few years later, P.'s impressions of the movie would have been vague: something about a post-apocalyptic landscape akin to The Road Warrior, with a roving band of men determined to kill everyone, everyhere. And that was about it.

Yet it stuck, somehow -- maybe because it felt like some bit of underground knowledge, of a piece with the Intellivision and the porn tape and everything else. Something illicit, hidden, and at risk of being forgotten.

(He was interested in roots and beginnings..."There must be great secrets buried there which have not been discovered since the beginning.")

The impression remained long enough to prompt P. to look it up in the Leonard Maltin book years later, and learn that it was named Warriors of the Wasteland and/or The New Barbarians. Cool.

Then in 2008, in the course of chasing down a DVD of the haunting TV movie I, Desire (aka Desire: The Vampire), we start thinking about B-pictures, and Ed Wood, and Warriors of the Wasteland comes to mind again. (If you're keeping time, that's about 15 years later.)

So we do our research, and find out about the Mill Creek 250-pack. In the weeks before it arrives at our door -- or the months before we order it? -- we download a copy of Warriors of the Wasteland  from Archive.org, and watch it on an iBook sitting on our coffee table, in our little apartment.

For sound, we have the boombox P. salvaged from a dumpster, running off a car stereo adapter in one of the tape bays (which doesn't even spin), and which had the nasty habit of erupting into horrible static now and then.

The audio is about a second ahead of the image, so we route it through a program that adds delay. Later, the sync error gets worse and worse, and we add more and more artificial lag, until we're processing it with about 4 seconds of delay just to keep the dialogue in sync.

Maybe somewhere around that time, P. finds himself thinking about Dog Pound. So he looks him up and, sadly, finds out that someone with Dog Pound's (fairly common) name died about a decade ago. 

Not definitive evidence, to be sure...but on some level he wants to believe things ended there. It makes a better story than a sad existence in some group home, with little to show for the past decades but a history of custodial jobs -- or, all too plausibly, a permanent place on the sex offender registry, thanks to some clumsy and utterly inappropriate attempt at seduction.

(Sorry, Dog Pound, but that kind of thing does happen on the regular: just ask Brian Peppers.)

And now, ten years later, we have a big flat-screen TV and a whole house to ourselves. We're watching Warriors of the Wasteland, the very last film in this box set that we haven't actually cued up yet (Disc 46 notwithstanding, and that'll come in time). With the click of a button, we could watch a hi-res transfer on Amazon Prime, but somehow that would defeat the purpose.

You'll forgive us if we don't bother to opine on whether Warriors of the Wasteland is good, bad, or indifferent (it's all three), or talk about how it's really a Western in homoerotic Road Warrior clothing (which it is). Somehow, those things seem irrelevant right now.

("All the 'great secrets'...had turned out to be just empty night: there was nothing more to find out, nothing worth doing, only nasty furtive eating and resentful remembering.")

Instead, we'll think about where we are: right on the cusp of a new year -- the very year in which Warriors of the Wasteland is set -- and at the end of a decade-long journey. And we'll think about Dog Pound, who turns out to be alive and well as far as we can tell, living just a handful of miles from where he and P. grew up.

(And, we're pleased to note, he's not on the registry.)

So here's to you, Dog Pound. You'll forgive us if we don't seek you out to reconnect, in what would almost certainly be a series of one-sided interactions made awkward by occasional flashes of bitterness -- or, worse, obvious signs of lust for some proximate woman whose kindness confuses you.

But you were there at the beginning of many things that still matter. And you, too, still matter -- especially from a comfortable distance.

The fourth estate

It's been over a decade since we started making our way through the 250 (ish) films in the Mill Creek Horror Collection. At long last, we've arrived at the tail end of the box, with just two movies left -- two! -- that neither of us have ever seen before.

And what do they have in common, besides aliens and space and other science fiction tropes? There are a few options, like blowing up heavenly bodies (happens in both), teleportation (ditto), or ripping off established science fiction classics (that's a hat trick).

But we'll choose this: in both films, press conferences are held in which the very fate of the earth is called into question.

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Warning from Space (1956)

Grade: D

These last two films in 50 Sci-Fi Classics really do bring us full circle, as Warning from Space amply demonstrates. Even if we didn't have the literal (and adorable) "star men" seen above, its Japanese origins and style would certainly remind us of the Super Giant films we watched near the very outset of our 250-pack quest.

Once again the Mill Creek compilers show discernment by pairing Warning from Space on the same disc with They Came from Beyond Space. Perhaps we should have reviewed them together, as they really do share a lot of themes -- like having scientists as protagonists, and showing them in the field.

Or aliens who, in need of a spokesperson, choose to inhabit a human female body.

Or societies that conceive of themselves in terms of politeness and fair play, and that are left curiously defenseless against those who transgress those norms.

Or weird stuff that pops up from a pond, while the soundtrack uses a grating electronic tone to make sure we catch on to its "alienness".

Anyway, Warning from Space is basically Japan's version of When Worlds Collide with a dash of The Day The Earth Stood Still. There's a whole lot of looking through telescopes and firing off rockets --

--  interspersed with philosophical arguments, cultural activities, and the occasional dance number.

By deciding to make Japan their point of contact, did the aliens inadvertently guarantee that the rest of the world would drag their feet? There's a whiff of that in the film -- an aggrieved undertone of "Why aren't they taking us seriously? Why are they refusing our requests for help?" --

-- to which the events of 1931-1945 might be a plausible answer. (Just saying.)

Warning from Space might rate a notch or two higher if it weren't for the cavalier way it handles a crucial plot thread near the end. It cheapens the narrative, and would have been so easy to fix! And we can't blame the dubbing, since it's apparently quite faithful.

The fun is also dampened by scenes near the end that show various animals in distress. The intention is to evoke our compassion by reminding us of how they too would suffer in the oppressive heat, but can we trust that none were harmed in the making of this film? Probably not.

On the other hand, that alien chick has one hell of a serve. Naomi Osaka, watch out!

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Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977)
[aka War of the Planets, aka Anno zero - Guerra nello spazio]

Objective Grade: F

Plus WTF Withal: D

Cosmos: War of the Planets isn't quite the last film on the box set: that honor goes to Destroy All Planets, a Gamera film we already reviewed. But it's on the last side of the last disc, at least.

And boy, did Mill Creek pick a doozy to finish things up -- because War of the Planets is one bizarre, scattershot, fever dream of a movie.

There was always going to be some background weirdness since War of the Planets has the same director (Alfonso Brescia), and much of the same cast, as a film we've already seen, War of the Robots.

Heck, it's even got Aldo Canti as an unexpectedly friendly alien who joins the starship's crew late in the film -- playing almost the exact same role he did in Robots.

But War of the Planets is much, much weirder than either Robots or the other Brescia film we've seen, Star Odyssey. Those films at least made some attempt to present a coherent narrative (despite the swapped reel in Star Odyssey), but War of the Planets is just completely and utterly out-to-lunch from the start.

It's never a good sign when you can barely understand the film's opening scene, in which the crew seems to be on a collision course with debris from a stellar explosion. Their computer refuses to route around it, confounding the crew and leaving them headed for certain doom --

-- only to discover that the object hurtling toward them was, as the ship's computer tells us in an announcement whose beginning is obscured by the crew's cheers, merely "a refraction of a cosmic explosion occurring 10 million years ago."

And that's why it didn't steer clear: the object wasn't even there. Guess Compy knows best, eh, folks?

In the original Italian version of War of the Planets, the title sequence (which follows the scene above) had a song all its own. Its refrain:

We are not alone here in space

Because here in space we have brothers

It's as hilarious as it sounds, but given the singer's thick accent -- and habit of switching between English and Italian -- it's understandable that "We Are Not Alone Here In Space" was pulled for the foreign dub (though a fragment of it pops up at around 8:45, who knows why?).

Instead, we get an extended sequence of avant-garde electronic patter, which accompanies long shots of asteroids, starfields, spaceports, and some amazing attempts at Anglicizing the names of the Italian crew.

Next, the film's protagonist, Captain Fred Hamilton (John Richardson), walks up to one of his co-workers, greets him, and clocks him for no discernible reason.

When Captain Hamilton is called on the carpet for his fisticuffs, and arguments ensue about "a bunch of notes from an electronic hunk of metal" vs. "the greatest brain ever made by man", we know we're dealing with one of those man vs. machine movies. And contrary to some other reviewers, we wouldn't describe this as a hidden subtext of War of the Planets, because it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Does a guy nearly get himself killed while doing a space-walking operation? And does the Captain need to fly to his rescue, after the computer's automated assistance isn't nearly fast enough? It's all the fault of those damn machines, machines, we built them to serve us.

Or does a couple engage in some sort of strange, alienated cybersex through a glass ball that looks kind of like the Death Star?

"How long?"

"Whatever."

(flips switch)

"Violent, or gentle?"

"You decide."

(flips switch)

Yep, it's the machines, machines, they're gonna be our bed.

Don't worry, some of us still know how to get it on properly. We don't even have to go to Tangie Town.

And some of us are named "Oko" and have overdubbed Asian accents -- who knows if that was in the original -- despite strong evidence that we don't hail from that neck of the woods.

The person who put together the soundtrack for War of the Robots really likes the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Eventually he caves in and just uses a recording of the Bach directly -- an excerpt at 23 minutes, and a long chunk around 51 minutes -- but it's present from the very first shot of the film, when the oscillations of a star are accompanied by a rapid-fire version of the Toccata's opening riff.

At other times, it's sped up even further and used as a sound effect for computer alerts and big banks of blinkenlights. And when we're not hearing the Toccata, we're hearing Switched-On-style synth tunes inspired by Bach (but without any of his chops).

The captain may hate computers, but his superiors happily take their orders from the supercomputer Wiz. When a mysterious interstellar signal disrupts communications on Earth, Wiz somehow knows that "behind this strange signal there's an alien intelligence that knows all", and "orders [them] to find the emission source and destroy it".

(Perhaps the wise Wiz could also have noted that the signal is just the freakin' Toccata lick sped up by a factor of 20. Haven't you ever played Dark Castle, Wiz?)

And guess who gets the job? OK, a mysterious woman has to persuade the Captain, though we get no backstory or explanation of why this Dr. Jane Frazier has such a sway on his judgment. Her appearance is so brief as to almost be a cameo, while the actress is uncredited and unknown to us.

It's yet another example of the seat-of-your-pants style of scriptwriting -- and direction, and editing -- that War of the Robots seems to favor. No narrative conventions needed, just full speed ahead at all times.

Soon enough, the captain and his crew get to the mysterious planet from which the emissions are coming. From there, things play out like a cross between War of the Robots and pretty much any episode of Star Trek where Kirk et al. encounter a "primitive" people. There's always someone pulling the strings, and if it's not a disembodied intelligence with godlike powers, it's usually a computer.

Meanwhile his bosses back on Earth are being hounded by "newspapermen" (though they're certainly not all men).

This prompts one of the only intentionally funny exchanges in the entire film. After the brass offer a reassuring explanation for recent events -- "I'm sorry for the headlines you had in mind, but Earth is not in any danger!" -- 

-- the reporters scramble away to the nearest phones, with one man specifically shouting "Earth is in danger!" to his editor. The two military men look at each other and deadpan:

Miller: Didn't buy it.

Armstrong: Nope.

The occasional chuckle aside, War of the Planets is a gigantic mess. It manages to both drag and rush, with botched transitions and sequences that go on too long. Characters talk over each other for no reason; scenes are interrupted mid-sentence; the action shifts from place to place, seemingly at random, leaving us uncertain as to what's going on or what's happened to whom. Seldom have we ever spent as much time glancing at each other and silently mouthing "WTF?"

In other words, both the editing and direction are atrocious. (And the prop department kinda phoned it in too.)

How much of the incoherence comes from the dubbing process is unclear, though seeing the Italian original would be the gold standard here. On a technical level the English dub is mostly decent (especially since some of the actors were speaking English anyway!), though we do get one or two gloriously ridiculous moments when a character takes a long, unnatural pause mid-sentence.

And the cinematography is fine -- nice, even -- though maybe we're just responding to the pretty colors and flashing lights, since we haven't hit the Pink Floyd show at the planetarium and we're jonesing.

As a side note, what on earth is this crucifix doing in a random explosion sequence? If there's a hidden Christian message in this film, it's buried pretty deep.

War of the Planets completely loses its marbles toward the end, when it veers wildly from ripping off 2001: A Space Odyssey to ripping off who-knows-what-they-were-trying-for (Planet of the Vampires gets brought up a lot in other reviews, but we haven't seen it).

But at least War of the Planets sticks by its core message: that humans shouldn't allow themselves to be too dependent on computers, lest we become weak, vulnerable, and alienated from our own humanity. Or something like that.

Fortunately, there's absolutely nothing timely or relevant about that message, right? Sounds totally irrational to us.

Don't you agree, Aldo Canti? You're everyone's favorite alien.

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Next up, the Umbrellahead Awards for 50 Sci-Fi Classics!