Warning Sign

Warning Sign

United States - 1985

Director - Hal Barwood

CBS/Fox Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 39 minutes

With virtually no introduction Warning Sign launches into a near apocalyptic real-world frightmare scenario set in the semi-rural American west. At a time when genetic engineering was still the stuff of science fiction, Warning Sign makes fiction out of science-fact by cashing in on post-Nam distrust of the Federal Government. Opening abruptly with an accident at a bio-engineering facility somewhere, an ensemble cast of second stringers makes this otherwise simplistic bio-terror film worth almost every minute. Later films like Outbreak and even 28 Days Later would use similar elements of disease induced (read “human-induced-disease”) apocalypse to terrify audiences, but neither had the level of contextual paranoia that sustains Warning Sign’s eerie relevance nearly three decades on.

In a small town somewhere in the U.S. it’s the end of the workweek at Biotek, a small government agricultural facility purportedly working on corn research. As the staff are getting ready for a weekend of hoe-downs and tractor-pulls however, the “plant genes” they’ve been working on suddenly turn a number of them into bloodthirsty zombie-like killers. Thus begins the ‘warning sign’ of the title, not with a bang or a whimper but more of a heavy sigh as the a Federal emergency management team shows up to reassure the angry townies that things are going to be just fine…….Just……fine.

Warning Sign is less about the pathology of microbes than papering over the rift in post-Vietnam American society between ‘real’ (small-town) America and the mysterious and deceitful Federal Government. Both are drawn two-dimensionally in Warning Sign, but the symbolism is clear; there is no longer any love (or trust) lost between the two. This is further emphasized by Yaphet Kotto’s role as the head of the Fed and the only significant character of color in the film, further emphasizing the estragement of the Government from the national average.

Cutting a path neatly down the middle of this mini-Culture War is County Sherriff Cal Morse (Sam Waterson) who only wants everyone to play nice. Conjuring up the ghost of good intentions, Cal teams up with his old buddy Dan Fairchild (Jeffery DeMunn,) a disillusioned former chemist at Biotek who believes that science should benefit everyone. Together these rational idealists restore a kind of lukewarm order to their filmic micro-universe by rote reliance on the salvation trope of ‘family’ without addressing any of the broader implications. Because in the land of rhetoric, it’s not the sickness you gotta treat, just the symptoms, right? Twenty-seven years after Warning Sign the American socio-political climate may have changed in timbre but not in tone.

 This nice Polish poster is from Wrongside of the Art where they have a number of other good posters and lobbycards.

Saturn 3

Saturn 3

United Kingdom – 1980

Director – Stanley Donen

CBS/FOX Home Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour 28 minutes 

Until my friend laid this old tape in my hands I had never heard of Saturn 3. That isn’t saying much I suppose, but he hadn’t either, and we are both big fans of robot oriented space-fiction so it was a pleasant surprise. Before watching the film I did a little research and discovered some interesting stuff. Despite not initially wanting to write extensively about what is a fairly mainstream film, after watching I was inspired to say something about it its relationship to space-fi in general.

When it was released, Saturn 3 appears to have received generally negative reviews, and remarkably, continues to do so . Not surprisingly these predominantly appear to stem from unfavorable comparison to Star Wars, which was released just a few years before. Although not mentioned in anything I read, I think it also owes a large debt to Kubrick’s 2001 in both overall plot, and Elmer Bernstein's score. But even if it’s not exceedingly original, Saturn 3 does a damned good job of wearing it’s pedigree on its sleeve.

The important thing to remember about Star Wars, especially because it has compounded its cultural significance in the last decade, is that it wasn’t very creative. As I’ve said before, it’s an entertaining movie, but the plot as we know is a generic and predictable white hero myth. Saturn 3 is not as epic or inspiring than its predecessor, but neither is it any less creative. What was so remarkable about Star Wars (and this is what I think most people find so endearing about it) was the visual design. Saturn 3 interestingly enough, was written and (initially) directed by John Barry, the same man responsible for the look of Star Wars.

The story itself centers around Adam (Kirk Douglas) and Alex (Farah Fawcet) on one of Saturn’s moons where they operate a hydroponic farm but mostly shag. When another astronaut, Benson (Harvey Keitel) arrives at their secluded love nest, they soon discover that he and his robot are not on a mission of peace. Compelling? Perhaps not, but visually everything in this movie, from the spacesuits to the ships clicks. The thing that really sells it for me is the robot, “Hector”, an eight foot tall machine powered by a giant tube of vat-grown human-fetus brains. The concept is pretty twisted if you think about it, and the way in which Hector takes on the sociopathic personality of its programmer Benson is particularly well conceived.

I’ve always cushioned my disappointment with the termination of sci-fi cinema’s great sagas with a simple philosophy; If the human geography of space has been expanded as much as my favorite films claim, then it is quite possible that each space-fiction film (of a nominally similar quality) merely represents another local facet in the same broad story. In that sense, there is no “end” to what I call the “Space-Fi Narrative Continuum”*. Garnished with moments of genuine intelligence and clothed in awesome visuals, Saturn 3 definitely makes the cut.

*In the future I'll refer to qualifying films under this label. Previously reviewed films which qualify have been back referenced.

 This Japanese poster is from Movie Outlaw

Megaforce

 
Megaforce

United States – 1982

Director – Hal Needham

CBS/FOX Video, 1990, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 32 minutes

Who can forget those ascetic days of the Carter Era when we were admonished to be ashamed of ourselves and all reticent and stuff? What a drag, no fun at all. It really didn’t feel good to be American. All we wanted was for people to get a shiver down their spine just knowing how awesome we were, but instead we were told to be more humble. Where’s the fun in humility? What the world needs is a little hubris. Hal Needham, director of such astute visions of grandeur as Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run understood the United Statesian yearning for escape from such philosophical self flagellation and conceived a new vision, a new concept of proactive intervention that coincided perfectly with our desire for a resurrected self-image. Hegemony and war needed to be fun and sexy again, and Needham, pungent genius that he was, went right for the jugular, hell bent on stuffing as many wheelies and explosions into this foreign mis-adventure as Megaforce’s already strained spandex seams could take.

But this new birth had to be helped into the world by the midwife of salvation, hand delivered sticky and mewling with anticipation and mini-rockets. For the United States so loved the world that it gave its only begotten son Ace Hunter (Barry Bostwick) and his prominently bulging manhood bankrolled by Hong Kong's Golden Harvest pictures. This guy has so much love that he can’t give enough, like a messiah offering himself up as golden spandex clad sacrament. Drink of me he seems to say, for this is my blood engorged ego. Eat of me, for this is my throbbing self-confidence. Hunter is the lone and solitary leader of Megaforce, a man so charismatic that he disdains substance or depth, relying instead on the potent charisma and sexual power of a gazillion dollar fantasy techno-boner to lead his followers to the end times.


The Megaforce milieu is introduced with a sweeping display of impractical but inspiring armored, missile-armed dirtbikes and a grand tour of a giant invisible base stuffed to the gills with secret military hardware, all of it received unsolicited from anonymous donors with the promise that Megaforce will “defend freedom wherever in the world it might be threatened.” But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is not supposed to be a point by point recital of the plot in which a sparkling wonderforce uses a dirtbike-smoke-screen rainbow and a script written by a stuntman to stop cigar-chomping Central American dictator Duke Guerrera (Henry Silva). It’s supposed to be a reminder of our national potential, a potential we have allowed to slip away, or simply to be forgotten.

It doesn’t matter that there is no substance or depth to the Megaforce message and mission, for neither the film, the messengers nor the rhetoric from which it springs require such petty practicalities to look awesome. What matters is that Megaforce (and yes, by extension the USA) believes itself, for this is above all an instrumental politics of posturing, a self-deluding canonization of the ego. That’s exactly what our troubled nation needs, a thick and heavy slice of realpolitik smothered in messianic exceptionalism. It’s just too bad we all threw our VCR’s away.

This review originally appeared in Paracinema issue 12.



Clip courtesy of lucienpsinger.

The Quiet Earth

The Quiet Earth

New Zealand – 1985

Director – Geoff Murphy

CBS/FOX Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 31 minutes

This may be the first post-apocalypse film in which the apocalypse isn’t cataclysmic, at least not in the nuclear holocaust/return of Christ sense. Although it does in fact begin immediately post-apocalypse, for some time it is not clear that there was in fact an apocalypse at all. This key question persists for the entire film; was there an apocalypse, and if so what was it? Here our protagonist (Bruno Lawrence) simply wakes up in the morning to find a world devoid of people. All of them have simply vanished at the same time, in the middle of whatever it was they were doing at that instant; flying aircraft, driving, crapping, making coffee. He proceeds to go very nearly ape-shit.

But is there ever a post-apocalypse movie that doesn’t succumb to the need for secondary characters? Is there any film about isolation or solitude that doesn’t? Once our protagonist meets a woman, Joanne, and then another man, one can’t help but shake the feeling that this is supposed to be a subtle sci-fi sociology lesson. Being the only three people on Earth reduces them to a primitive uncivilized survival situation, a textbook experiment in inter-gender socialization. The woman is a vacillating opportunist, looking for the best deal and changing her mind on a moment by moment basis. The rest is a philosophical and/or psychological lesson about the duality of man. Does the intellectual archetype offer the most attractive options for the future, or is it the physical, warrior type? Which is the true apocalypse; the potential disaster of scientific achievement, or the violent barbarity of hierarchical tribalism? The whole thing begs the further intriguing question; how do you define apocalypse?

Here's The Quiet Earth trailer from TkrB via YouTube. While you're there, check out the Saturn rising sequence, it's cool.

Star Wars

Star Wars

United States - 1977

Director - George Lucas

CBS/FOX Video, 1984, VHS

Run Time - 2 hours, 1 minute

I couldn't help but post this because I thought it was the first VHS release of Star Wars and I found it for 2 bucks at a thrift store yesterday. Alas, the first one was in May of 1982, this is two years late. Oh well, still a cool old cover.

Can - Can

Can-Can
1960 – United States
Director – Walter Lang
CBS/FOX Video, 1988, VHS
Run Time - 2 hours, 11 min.

OK, this is a fuckin musical, I fuckin hate music. But it does star Frank Sinatra, my favorite male vocalist and no less than Shirley MacLaine, possibly the most attractive woman ever to grace the screen.
Dance numbers are what I expects but okay, I’m willing to tolerate cute period costumed women for the fact that it’s got Sinatras voice, and MacLaine who is as usual, devastating, here as Sinatras lover and the owner of a semi-taboo Parisian dance club.

For performing the tawdry Can-Can at her club, MacLaine is hauled to court, and her lawyer Sinatra defends her against a conservative and ridiculously dressed French judge who falls for her charm.
At the club Shirley does a dance number in which she is, disturbingly, beat up (a dummy) for which the crowd cheers heartily. The conservative judge turns up at the show and Shirley plays passive aggressive brush off.
When she brushes him off, Shirley is arrested and a Sinatra must defend his lady-love in court. Success warms her heart even more to the crooner, but his waffling fear of commitment drives her into the eager arms of the hell-bent-for-marriage judge.
Nevertheless, despite his asinine fear of marriage to the most attractive woman in the world, he crumbles with helpless despair and sings a sad song. Ahhh.


At the engagement party, Frank cooks up a rather heartless scheme to drunkenly embarrass MacLaine out of her “above-her-class” wedding, and somehow succeeds. She breaks off the wedding in flight, and now my guess is that she’s going to want revenge on Sinatra and will drive forward with steely composure until she once again melts under the warmth of his brusquely charming leathery grin.

Anyway, at this point there’s an Adam and Eve ballet number which features Maclaine in sparkly tights which is, WOW.
The judge, thinking he has discovered the secret of Sinatras attractive insolence returns to woo MacLaine, but even his best efforts prove no match for supreme Sinatrification and predictability.

It took two sittings, but sometimes you’ve gotta really suffer before you smile.

T & A Academy 2

T & A Academy 2
a.k.a. Gimme an F
United States - 1984
Director – Paul Justman
Impulse Productions, 1991, VHS

With a name like that what could possibly go wrong? A tough question when confronted with the challenge of this movie. Clearly one of the numerous knockoffs spawned barely by Porky's, a quick glance at the box art will tell you it's going to be a poor imitation. One of those cut and paste jobs with a picture of people who just scream, "Not actually appearing in this movie".

Before we get started, I'll tell you right now that I was pretty ripped when I watched this, and even though I laughed my ass off, that doesn't mean a thing.

After the school year ends, a number of cheerleading squads go off to Beaver summer cheer camp, where they train with so called "professionals", led by Tommy, in what almost comes across as a self-improvement seminar atmosphere. Our professionals are a bunch of mid-20's partyers who never got over high school cheer squad, and despite their accumulating overplayed self doubts, and the bumbling tyranny of the camp president Dr. Spirit, continue to hold jobs at the camp. The various groups of girls who arrive to attend the camp are no less stereotypically categorized than their instructors. The girls from the "punk squad", Demons, are inevitably at odds with the girls from the "rigid discipline", Falcons squad, and the predictably cute counterpoint paraded in front of this uninspiring if pityable backdrop are the stars of the movie, the "naïve and mildly religious", Ducks squad, whose innocence is matched only by their sure-to-be-overcome-by-the end-of-the-movie-incompetence.

The worshipful campers shriek appropriately during the numerous dance fueled faith-healing style rallies staged by their saccharine counselors.
A cathartic confidence building male dance montage follows.
Tommy experiences some self-doubt brought on by a bout of self-observant shame. What can a lazy 25-y.o. party boy, with an easy job teaching high-school girls how to dance, do? Teach some high-school girls how to dance, that's what. Taking an immediate shine to the underdog Ducks and their lead hot-blonde Phoebe, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend/co-instructor, he lavishes poorly-scripted if enthusiastically recited attention on the girls. The big cheer competition is just a few weeks away, and all the teams are wrapped tight as a nun's knickers. With barely mild surprisification Tommy sticks to his guns, confessing to a fawning Phoebe that he's already got a gal he loves.

A great deal of lead-up, weak - completely un-disappointing lead-up which I never believed, and which doesn't deliver. Well, really, it was the title, the cover, and the whole girl concept that had me waiting. But frustratingly enough, there is no, or rather, essentially none here of what a formula is made.Tommy's dance scenes begin to hint at this in the very beginning, and later scream it. His good pal Roscoe, who thrusts and gyrates while wearing lycra shorts with a target printed on the ass is definitely an ominous sign. Yes, and a man in the shower dance scene is everything I needed to make this movie complete.

I swallowed the whole bag, receipt, bottle caps and all, and was surprised only to find that I wasn't necessarily the target audience. Humor value in this case is as fluid as the bottle that fuels it.
Dutch video cover with the original American box art (image courtesy Dan's Film Collection):