40 Years Ago: Tales from the Darkside (1984)

The low budget Laurel horror anthology, Tales from the Darkside, may be a relic from the 1980s, but it's one relic eminently worth excavating, especially around Halloween time.   

Like its brethren, Rod Serling's Night Gallery and The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside -- produced by George A. Romero, Richard Rubinstein and Jerry Golod -- remains a highly didactic horror television enterprise, one very concerned with  social commentary. 

As I wrote in Terror Television (1999): "if one looks beneath the veneer of gore and grue, it seems fairly clear that many episodes of this series" are "modern morality plays, cautionary tales about what might happen to an individual who acts selfishly or maliciously."

The Writer's Bible for Tales from the Darkside made this conceit explicit. "The Other World" or "Darkside" intervention featured in each 30-minute tale was a deliberate mechanism or tool by which the cosmic scales of justice could be balanced.  

And yes indeed, this notion is squarely rooted in the great and noble tradition of EC's Tales from The Crypt or Vault of Horror.

Exhibit A regarding this didactic aesthetic is the series' sterling premiere segment, "Trick or Treat" written by George Romero himself.   Although set in rural America in the 1940s, the program aired in the early Reagan years, and remains just as powerful a parable about greed in 2011 as it was during the time of its original broadcast. 

Directed adroitly and economically by Bob Balaban, "Trick or Treat" involves a nasty old miser, Mr. Hackles (Barnard Hughes) who "collects every penny" that is due him, and gives nothing back to the poor farmers in his community who support his business at a general store.  

And in point of fact, Hackles has even set himself up as a sort of local bank by offering the farmers ample credit when the chips are down.  With nowhere to turn, they accept his "kind" help, only to see him ruthlessly leverage control of their very lives.

Explicitly, the vulture-like Hackles views the people in his town as "backward" primitives, and notes that "people make their own misfortune."  Hackles also derides "the little people and their little lives."   Accordingly, on Halloween night, this "self-made" man doesn't give out candy.  Instead, he dispenses advice.  He tells young Trick or Treaters that "I made my fortune...and so should you."

In today's vernacular, then, old Mr. Hackles is clearly part of the 1 percent.

Each year on Halloween night, Mr. Hackles makes it his business (and pleasure...) to torment the so-called little people of his town.  In particular, he instructs the poor farmers to deliver to his house their children every October 31st.  There, they will be permitted to search the imposing home for his I.O.U.s.  If the children find them, their parents' debt will be completely absolved.  If not, the debt stands.  

Of course, in all the years Hackle has played this sadistic game, no child has ever found the stash of creditor's notes, in part because Hackle's arranges nightmarish "frights" for the children: booby traps and  monster effigies that scare the kids away.

Essentially, Mr. Hackles demands that the good citizens of his town literally turn their children into "debt slaves," becoming his play things for a night in the vain hope that one lucky family might get a reprieve from their bills.  

Again, this idea represents a metaphorical commentary on the nature of the American dream.   Studies have revealed that many low-income Americans don't want the rich to pay their fair share in taxes because they believe they too will one day be rich.  After all, they might just win the lottery, right?  And every Halloween night, Mr. Hackles organizes just such a lottery...but with no real winners.  It's hard to win a game in which one man (or one percent...) leverages all the power and holds all the cards.

In "Trick or Treat's" denouement, Mr. Hackles inevitably gets the tables turned on him.  This Halloween night, it is not children who show up to play his game...it is an array of ghouls, including a terrifying witch.  

One might say that these ghouls occupy his house, even...

In short order, these representatives from "The Other Side" play a little trick on Hackles: they cast his cash (and his prized I.O.U.s) to the four winds.  Hackles attempts in vain to retrieve his "belongings" and ends up chasing the almighty dollar right down the corridors of Hell.  

"You're getting warmer now.  Warmer..." a hideous devil informs Hackles as the miser goes at last to his just reward in the Lake of Fire.  Notably, Hackles feels treated unfairly by those who wield more power than he.

But Mr. Hackles...I thought we all made our own misfortune?  Aren't you a self-made man?

Produced on a budget of just $200,000, "Trick or Treat" dominated the 1983 Halloween weekend Nielsen ratings in major markets such as New York, thereby assuring that Tales from the Darkside would soon become a weekly series; a series that lasted for four years and eighty-nine episodes.  

Episodes such as "Trick or Treat" were generally the norm rather than the exception, and various series installments tackled issues of racism, "hate" radio and other topics from the national discourse of the day.   "Trick or Treat," of course, serves as a pretty explicit and ghoulish reminder (in the early Yuppie era, no less) that "upward mobility" should concern more than the bottom line on a bank account; that our final, eternal "upward mobility" might depend on our accumulation of other currency, namely decency, empathy and compassion.  

In other words, the episode conforms to that line from Matthew: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." 

Trick or Treat...

30 Years Ago: Stargate (1994)

Roland Emmerich’s Stargate (1994) is the movie that launched a thousand ships, or at least several hundred episodes of popular cult television.  

As the initiator of the durable (though now dormant…) Stargate franchise, the film sets up a universe that, broadly-speaking, is based on the once-popular Von Daniken Chariots of the Gods (1968) notion that “God” is an ancient astronaut…an alien.

In movie-based terms, Stargate is the 30 year old film that landed Emmerich on the map in A-list Hollywood.  Although Emmerich had already directed Universal Soldier (1992), Stargate quickly proved a massive, world-wide hit, and paved the way for the director’s busy career, which has included such films as Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 10,000 BC (2008), and 2012 (2010).  

Frankly, I don’t regard the bulk of Emmerich’s oeuvre in very positive terms.  Despite the bad reviews it received on release, Stargate likely dominates even today as the best Emmerich sci-fi film in the aforementioned pack. In part that’s because the film’s opening act is so engaging, and it builds up a real sense of anticipation, mystery, and excitement.

Not that a number of critics would agree with that assessment. 

Roger Ebert awarded Stargate one star (out of four) and derided the film’s use of “action movie clichés.” Hal Hinson at The Washington Post felt that the film degenerated by the end into “routine pyrotechnics,” and The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mike LaSalle termed the film “imitation Spielberg” that “crashed inside 20 minutes.”  

Probably all of those comments are accurate to some degree. The movie is indeed girded with action movie clichés, it does resolve with fireballs and pyrotechnics, and Stargate plays, at points, like low-grade Spielberg.  The film’s first half-hour is also undeniably its strongest.  

And yet, in spite of these admittedly on-the-mark criticisms, Stargate is a hell of a lot of fun.  .

In part, that fun emerges from the cast’s dedicated and sometimes herculean efforts.  James Spader plays the comedy and wonder aspects of the tale wittily, while Kurt Russell – acting as though he’s starring in a hard-boiled John Carpenter or Howard Hawks adventure – brilliantly essays the role of laconic but tortured Colonel O’Neil.  

And although Jaye Davidson (The Crying Game [1992]) remains a decidedly unconventional choice for a primary villain -- being delicate and androgynous rather than physically menacing in the conventional sense -- the very unpredictability of his physical presence adds to the film’s sense of menace, as well as the villain’s unique decadence and obsession with youth and beauty.  Davidson’s Ra is bizarre, but also incredibly sinister.

I remember when I first screened Stargate in the theater in October of 1994. There was much talk that it was “the next Star Wars.”  

That kind of chatter proved to be hyperbole, and yet Stargate is a film that, somehow – and indeed a lot like Star Wars – is much more than the sum of its individual parts.  The heroic theme music by David Arnold, the knowing performances from Russell and Spader, and the film’s strong action chops combine with the intriguing Von Daniken presence to render a film experience much more buoyant and enjoyable than it surely could have been.  

In other words, Stargate works on a crowd-pleasing, blockbuster level, and in this case, that’s more than enough.  The film has been assaulted as being stupid on many occasions, but in some fashion Stargate is very canny in how it manipulates the audience and audience expectations. It’s a film about guns winning the day, and yet it also delivers an anti-gun message, underneath. It’s a film that reveals the Ancient Astronauts, not mankind, achieved wonders in our antiquity, and yet the film also showcases modern man confronting those astronauts and proving his worth.  

In short, Stargate boasts a great premise, some terrific production design, capable actors who are clearly having fun, and enough sci-fi gadgetry to, well, sturdily launch a franchise.  I should probably add that the film absolutely plays like high-art in comparison to underwhelming and even laughable Emmerich fare such as 10,000 BC or 2012.

“I created your civilization. Now I will destroy it.”

Down-on-his-luck linguist and translator Daniel Jackson (Spader) is recruited by the Air Force to help translate an ancient Egyptian artifact, one unearthed in 1928, near the Great Pyramids.  He determines that a series of symbols on the artifact represent not letters in an alphabet, but coordinates in outer space.  The artifact is actually a stargate: a door connecting Earth to a world on the other side of the known galaxy.

Jackson and a team of soldiers, led by Colonel O’Neil (Russell), travel through the stargate and find a barren desert world where human slaves toil to build a pyramid for a “God” called Ra (Davidson).  With the help of a beautiful local, Sha’uri (Mili Avital), Jackson learns Ra’s story. He is a ruthless alien being who survived his race’s extinction and went out into the galaxy seeking a way to extend his life.

Ra found that way on ancient Earth by possessing the body of a young man, and setting himself up as a God.  The primitive people were amazed by Ra’s technology, and fell in line.  But a group of slaves rebelled against the alien king’s authority, and Ra’s stargate to Earth was buried and forgotten, so he could no longer return.

Now, Ra – who possesses the power to resurrect the dead – plans to punish Earth for that long ago rebellion and its recent incursion.  O’Neil has brought a bomb through the Stargate to destroy any threats, and now Ra plans to send it back…to destroy the planet.

Jackson and O’Neil must not only find a way home now, they must help the humans of this faraway planet defeat Ra, and save the Earth in the process.

So you think you've solved in fourteen days what they couldn't solve in two years? 

Erich Von Daniken’s published works about “ancient astronauts” represented a major fad in the 1970s, even though the books were widely debunked and ridiculed by the scientific establishment.  Von Daniken’s theory suggests that artifacts and constructs of the ancient world -- such as the Pyramids or Stonehenge -- are the works of advanced, star-faring aliens because humans of those historic eras did not possess the technology or skill to build them.  

Primitive man thus perceived the builders – aliens – as “Gods.”  Von Daniken interpreted stories from the Old Testament (like Ezekiel’s description of a ship of angels in the Old Testaments) as being literal stories of alien encounters and incursions.

Von Daniken’s ideas have found significant currency in science fiction television and cinema over the decades since Chariots of the Gods was published.  Battlestar Galactica (1978) and The Phoenix (1982) both traded on the idea of ancient astronauts and “brothers of man” in space.  More recent films such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and Knowing (2009) also developed these Von Daniken-esque notions.  The upcoming Prometheus (2012) also appears as though it will mine this idea rather thoroughly: that aliens visited man in antiquity and helped shape his future and his very world. 

The appeal of these stories (and thus the appeal of Stargate) rests on twin concepts.  First, that we are not alone in the universe.  And secondly, that we are intimately connected with the alien races out there, existing beyond the stars.  Meeting these alien races, we are faced with the resolution of a mystery that connects our most distant past to our immediate future.  The promise is that we will join our cosmic brothers one day, and with a full understanding of where we came from.  In other words, the key to knowing who and what we really are rests on contacting the ancient peoples who set our culture in motion.  In space, then, we find our both our origin and our ultimate destination as a species.

The first twenty-three minutes or so of Stargate, -- the film’s strongest -- tread deeply into such ancient mysteries.  Who built the pyramids? Why were they built?  And what can we learn from the Ancients?  

As Stargate opens, Dr. Jackson is asked to translate the symbols that will activate a stargate, the doorway to the other side of the known universe.  The film lands the audience on Jackson’s side almost immediately, as he is ruthlessly mocked by his narrow-minded colleagues.  Then, the audience shares Jackson’s excitement as he translates the alien language inscribed on a 10,000 year old alien device.  

This part of the film races by with intrigue, humor and excitement. The sense of anticipation, of wonder, is palpable.  Spader proves especially strong here as the audience surrogate and as a committed detective.   Jackson’s obsession with “knowing” becomes the audience’s obsession thanks to Spader’s enthusiastic portrayal, and his self-deprecating sense of humor.  A lot of this could seem like dry, dull exposition, but Spader makes the material riveting to watch, and colors it with his character's idiosyncrasies.

Once the Stargate is discovered and activated, however, the film gets mired down in familiar-seeming desert terrains and the like.   After the visually-amazing “ultimate trip” to another planet, it’s a little disconcerting to come down to Earth, literally, and see familiar sand dunes and sky.  And watching Jackson and O’Neil encounter a city of primitive slaves is not exactly heart-pounding.  

But by the time the first hour is over, Ra arrives and the film picks up again. Emmerich makes the most of the film’s unseen menace at this juncture.  

In particular, he shoots an underground siege absolutely perfectly by utilizing P.O.V. shots.  Members of O’Neil’s team are picked off one at a time, and we don’t see the hunters.  Instead, the camera creeps up on the unsuspecting soldiers, and then the film cuts to their bodies being dragged off-screen by unseen creatures.  It’s almost as though we’ve shifted gears into a horror movie, and the grunting, inhuman sound effects of Ra’s soldiers augment the idea of a terrifying, unknown presence.  Even the final, momentous reveal of these minions remains quite powerful.  Looking at these glowing eyes, metal-headed soldiers, it’s easy to see how man could misinterpret them to be Gods.  

When Ra is finally introduced, he isn’t at all what we expect.  But in an action film, that kind of surprise can be a good thing, indeed.  We expect a seven-foot tall monster -- a Darth Vader, perhaps -- and are instead presented with a wispy, lithe, uncomfortable presence in Jaye Davidson.  Ra lives inside a human form, so it’s appropriate that we feel ambivalent about his appearance. We don’t know how to process him, at least not initially.  Is he male? Female?  Some strange combination of both?   

Impressively, Jaye Davidson conveys a sense of both uncomfortable beauty and absolute malevolence at the same time.  He may look beautiful on the surface, but his eyes and movements pulsate with a brand of wickedness that suggests the alien’s true nature.

Again, there’s something to be said for choosing an atypical direction in a spectacular like Stargate.  The filmmakers might have cast a bulky strong-man as Ra, but their selection of the slight, whisper-thing Davidson unhinges matters a bit.  The story becomes almost instantly more unpredictable because there is a sense in watching Davidson that we don’t know what he is, literally, and therefore what he will do.  On the few occasions that his alien features shine through his skin, we get a sense of the diabolical Ra’s inner ugliness.

Action films made today depend a great deal on quick cutting and herky-jerky, hand-held camera moves to transmit a sense of urgency.  However, the over twenty-year old Stargate plays as refreshingly retro during its accomplished action scenes. The film builds a sense of pace and immediacy through cross-cutting, first between two opposing scenes, and then, finally, between three.  

The approach generates a strong sense of momentum leading into the climax, and it’s carefully-wrought.  It helps too, no doubt, to have the muscular, steely-eyed Russell fronting an action scene.  No one in the film is made out to be a superhero, and there’s something refreshingly human and tenacious about the way Colonel O’Neil just dukes it out, punch-after-punch, with Ra’s muscle-bound minion.  I admire this scene because it doesn’t rely on special effects (except for the macabre punctuation…) or even wild (but improbable) stunts.   Instead, it’s just an old-fashioned slug-fest. 

I would like to comment again -- as I have in the past – about at what an absolutely great leading man Russell is.  His O’Neil is distinctly different from his Snake Plissken, Jack Burton, or MacReady in The Thing.  There’s a kind of retro, non-showy grittiness in Russell’s performance here.  The film features a number of scenes during which he stands back in the corner of a frame and just silently smokes a cigarette, an act which is pretty unusual in mid-1990s cinema but which reminds one of Humphrey Bogart or some other leading man of yesteryear.  

In these moments, Russell quietly dominates, and all eyes reflexively turn to him.  Even if the script doesn’t exactly give the actor emotional layers to explore, Russell’s taciturn approach suggests a contemplative mind at work, a man silently watching and reacting to everything happening around him.

Perhaps Stargate seems less-than-impressive mainly in several canned, off-the-shelf moments.  O’Neil’s subplot about losing a son is all-too-familiar in this genre, for example, but Russell’s sincerity in vetting it makes it less-than groan-worthy.  His expressive, guilt-ridden eyes go a long way towards making the commonly-seen trope seem powerful and new again.  

Not so strong, however, is the moment -- rendered in over-the-top slow motion photography -- when one of the rebellious slave youngsters goes down in a blaze of glory, and the last we see of him is a tumbling army helmet.  It feels like a moment that would be right at home in Team America: World Police (2004).

Another moment – a trade of salutes between the former slaves and O’Neil – also plays as eminently cheesy and way over-the-top.  You’ve got to wonder why a film that can foster a sense of wonder (in the first twenty-minutes), transmit a strong sense of menace (at the hour point), and convey strong action (at the climax), feels the need to go schmaltzy and sentimental in conclusion.   I suppose it’s just Hollywood: a land where implication isn’t enough and you must be spoon-fed “emotions” so you know EXACTLY how to feel all the time.  It’s insulting. 

Despite such missteps, Stargate is nimble in its special effects (especially the depiction of the stargate itself) and boasts a nice through-line about technology.  Technology doesn’t necessarily make one superior, at least in the long run, the film seems to state.  Here, the slave community comes together to stop Ra (just as slaves did on Earth, in antiquity), and the idea that gets conveyed is that we succeed when we work together.

Although I have distinct memories of the late Gene Roddenberry complaining about the ancient astronaut theory because it failed to take into account human intelligence and human ingenuity, Stargate actually possesses a commendably optimistic streak too.  Humankind here is ready to confront its former gods.  Primitive superstition is behind us. 

Of course, on the other hand, both Ra and the military men of Earth still attempt to dominate situations through violent means: with bombs, guns and other weapons of destruction.  We may not literally be slaves anymore, but even as advanced as we are, we’re still slaves to our destructive (and self-destructive) impulses.  

Stargate is never quite smart enough to square that circle.

Still, this is one of those “big” sci-fi movies where it helps if you allow yourself to get swept up by the bigness of it all.  The bigness of the soundtrack. Of the performances. Of the (high) concept. Of the desert vistas. And of the special effects.  

If you do let yourself succumb to all of that impressive eye candy, Stargate is a film of wonder, humor, imagination, and not a small degree of charm.

70 Years Ago: Godzilla (1954)

The mighty monster Godzilla is seventy years old!  And -- like James Bond, or the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise -- has also undergone quite a few changes across the decades. He keeps returning to movie screens, I suspect, because he keeps getting updated for fresh audiences.

Godzilla's essence remains intact, even as his world and occasionally his nature get tweaked.

What seems truly remarkable, however, is just how powerful the 1954 film -- the franchise's first outing -- remains, even today. It's a relentlessly dark and effective monster movie that, despite progress in special effects, remains in the top tier (if not top slot...) of its particular sub-genre.  

Godzilla features a narrative "driven by the cause and effect of technology, namely advances in scientific and nuclear weaponry," according to Justin Bowyer, in The Cinema of Japan and Korea (Wallflower Press, 2004, page 63).

Specifically, there are two galvanizing incidents roiling beneath the surface of this classic monster movie.  The first is the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by America in August of 1945. Today, these are still the only instances of nuclear warfare in human history. 

The second is the detonation of a 15-megaton American H-Bomb on Bikini Atoll, which irradiated 7,000 square miles of ocean.  The entire crew of a Japanese tuna boat, Lucky Dragon, later developed radiation sickness.

Godzilla mastermind and director Ishiro Honda utilizes these historical events as the seeds of his fantastic but meaningful story, and indeed his intent was to ignite audience memories of what had occurred. 

"The abrupt emergence from the south of the monster's unspeakable threat reminded Japanese audiences of the U.S. military bombs that had reduced the city to flaming ruins only a few years before," according to the book Japanese Cinema (2007, page 105).

In almost pointed contradiction to this social critique about modern man and his dreadful new brand of warfare, Godzilla also features a narrative that appeals to children, one explicitly about an "innocent" or "tragic" creature stumbling into the modernity of the human world, and wreaking (not entirely intentionally...) havoc.  

All the Godzilla films since the first have picked up, to one extent or another, on this story of Godzilla as an "innocent and tragic" (to quote Godzilla: 1985) being simultaneously worshiped and hated by the world of man. 

"Godzilla is about a beast of superhuman proportions encountering the human world," asserts Murray Pomerance in Cinema and Modernity (2006, page 13),  "but it is impossible without the appurtenances of modernity." 

In other words, Godzilla could not wreak his havoc on Japan if the modern world had not created, or awakened him in the first place. Therefore, in some sense Godzilla is blameless, or guilt-less, even considering all the destruction he causes.  I have seen how my son, Joel, reacts sympathetically to Godzilla. He sees him not just as a great and powerful monster, but as a being who has stumbled into a world he doesn't understand, and that, largely, rejects him, because of his very nature. 

If one ties these two ideas -- Godzilla as Nature Unbalanced due to man's poor shepherding of the world, and Godzilla as virtual innocent, yet again, made by man -- one begins to understand the deep appeal of the 1954 film, and indeed, the entire franchise.

"Humans are weak animals."

As the film opens, nuclear testing near Japan has awakened a prehistoric goliath, or “deep sea organism,” a dinosaur-like creature with the power to emit radioactive fire breath. Upon Godzilla’s awakening, several small fishing boats are destroyed at sea, their crews murdered in blinding, white-hot flashes.

A paleontologist, Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura), conducts research and determines Godzilla’s origin in the Jurassic Age. He follows the monster’s (over-sized) trail to Odo Island, where the locals recount old legends of the monster Godzilla: a creature that lived in the ocean and fed on humanity to survive.  In ages past, the islanders conducted a kind of “exorcism” ritual (with native girls as sacrifices…) to appease Godzilla.

While Godzilla moves irrevocably closer to mainland Japan, the government establishes a “Counter Godzilla Headquarters” whose first gambit is to destroy the beast at sea with depth charges.  

When that move fails to stop the beast’s progress, a second defense gambit is devised. It involves the construction of an electric fence along the coast to ensnare Godzilla.

That defense attempt fails as well, and Godzilla reduces most of Tokyo to rubble in a night of unending fire and smoke. Dr. Yamane’s daughter, Emiko (Momoko Kochi), however, knows of a secret that could reverse Japan’s fortunes.  

Her former betrothed, Dr. Serizawa (Ahihiko Hirata) has developed a weapon even more deadly than atomic bombs, a so-called “oxygen destroyer.”  He has sworn her to secrecy about the device however, because he fears it will be taken out of his hands, and used on an international, even global scale. 

With Godzilla’s reign of destruction unstopped, however, Serizawa must re-consider using the doomsday weapon.  

He knows if he uses it, however, he must also die with Godzilla, so the oxygen destroyer will never be used again by mankind…


"If my device can serve a good purpose, I would announce it to everyone in the world. But in its current form, it's just a weapon of horrible destruction."

Godzilla commences with the strange mystery at sea regarding the sinking of several Japanese fishing ships (reflecting the Lucky Dragon incident), and then moves into a tale of epic destruction and survival.  

One facet of the film that remains so effective in 2014 is the almost whirlwind, documentary approach to the narrative.  Early on, Dr. Yamane delivers a briefing about Godzilla’s possible origins and nature, and it’s like we’re students sitting in on a university lecture. 

Also, there’s a heated discussion -- or fight -- in the halls of Japanese government about whether or not to reveal Godzilla’s nature to the public. There's precious little decorum to be seen.

These and other similar moments make the audience feel like it is eavesdropping on real conferences and legislatures. It’s quite unique how the film “moves” from one plot point to another via these meetings, briefings and other formal moments.  

The characters, though very interesting (particularly in the love triangle of Ogata/Emiko/Serizawa) don’t dictate the flow of the story in any meaningful way until the final act.  

That’s important, because this fact plays into the epic feel of the drama.  These men and women -- and all of Japan indeed -- are swept into a story beyond their control.

Beyond the documentary approach, Godzilla utilizes its atomic bogeyman as a metaphor or signifier for nuclear destruction, and accordingly many of the images feel like authentic documentary footage from the Hiroshima or Nagasaki aftermath. 

 For instance, at one point there is a long, deliberate pan across a ruined, twisted, formerly-urban landscape. The scene is one of total desolation, a testament to the searing power of nuclear weapons (or Godzilla’s fire breath, as the case may be).  

A city once stood there, but now only twisted metal remains.

Shortly after that composition, other footage reveals doctors and nurses moving dozens of patients on stretchers into a make-shift hospital or recovery center.  The scene is one of human suffering on an almost impossible-to-believe scale.  The impression given is of a perpetual war-zone, a blazing hell on earth.

Godzilla pretty plainly uses the aftermath of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as its formative imagery, recalling a real-life nuclear terror not even a full decade in the past at the time of its production.   

At one point, the detonations are even alluded to in dialogue, albeit subtly, with a mother and daughter facing jeopardy from Godzilla.  

The mother tells her daughter (bleakly…) that they are going to join the girl’s father in Heaven. The inference is that he died at Nagasaki or Hiroshima.  Another unspoken implication is that the family's experience will not be an isolated event. A new age of man has begun because of the opening of Pandora's technological box.  More families will die in this fashion.

The Honda film also reflects the dawning nuclear age in another trenchant way, namely in the character of Dr. Serizawa.  

Pretty plainly, he is a surrogate for J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who worked at the Manhattan Project and is known, historically as “The Father of the Atomic Bomb.”  

According to interviews, Oppenheimer once remarked, after witnessing a test atomic bomb detonation that he had “become death” and a “destroyer of worlds.”  In a sense, Godzilla is Oppenheimer’s child, then.

Dr Serizawa in Godzilla is acutely aware that he might suffer the same fate as Oppenheimer, and may be remembered the same way…and he doesn’t want that.  

His Oxygen-Destroyer is more destructive, more monstrous even than the H-Bomb, and Serizawa knows that it very rapidly would become the object of a new international arms race.  He makes a moral, individual decision, however, and decides that knowledge of the weapon should die with him (after he has burned his notes).  A second, post-nuclear arms race is thus averted through his individual sense of right and wrong, and his willingness to sacrifice himself.   

If Godzilla is a warning about the dangers of Pandora’s Box opened in the Atomic Age, then Serizawa himself is an indicator that the box can only be shut via the auspices of individual conscience.  

Even though Serizawa has created something of monstrous destructive potential, he nonetheless possesses the moral barometer to see his work destroyed, not unloosed on the world.

Unfortunately, as the film’s ending reminds viewers, not all men are as noble or moral as Serizawa was.  As long as nuclear tests persist, Dr. Yamane warns, other “Godzillas” could rise up to threaten human civilization.

If this final warning sounds preachy to you, it may be because you haven’t just finished viewing the film.  Godzilla’s scorching imagery -- a world of black-and-white but mostly black -- earns the filmmaker the right to ponder big philosophical issues at the denouement.  Above all else, the movie serves as a cautionary tale for an age when the future of nuclear war was unwritten.

Many Godzilla movies have come and gone since this one premiered, some wonderful, some not so wonderful  However, this searing first film -- heavy on fire, blinding-light and suffering -- remains an indelible viewing experience.  Some have called Honda’s Godzilla a “grotesque” work of art.  

But one must wonder if that descriptor isn’t a commentary on mankind more than it is on Godzilla.

40 Years Ago: Body Double (1984)

"You can't believe everything you see," declared the tag line for Brian De Palma's 1984 thriller, Body Double. 

That statement might also adequately serve as the film's mantra or statement of purpose. Because that which is perceived and that which is real almost never align in this tricky, droll Reagan-era suspense movie, and even the title recognizes that fact.

After all, a "body double" is itself a visual cheat, a substitute "body" (or physique) for a lead actor or actress. For example, when the lyrical camera lovingly panned down Angie Dickinson's nude torso in the shower stall during the preamble of Dressed to Kill (1980), there was that almost-invisible transition from middle-aged A-list actress to twenty-five year old stunt double. 

And as Brian De Palma might himself remind us, the camera was doing what it does best at that very moment. 

Lying. 24 times a second. 

We believed we were seeing one thing; but reality was entirely different.

In the scandalous and controversial Body Double, De Palma points the camera's "lying" eye toward Hollywood and the tricky, even deceitful milieu of filmmaking. This is a land of constant illusion and artifice; of uncertain loyalties and unexpected betrayals. It's a world De Palma has much personal experience with, and so the movie is a blistering critique of Hollywood politics. A director can love you one day, and fire you the next. A fellow actor can be your best friend, and then stab you in the back...all for a prized role. One day you can be the cock of the walk, and the next day, you're a feather duster, to quote Tina Turner. 

And down to the often sub-standard rear-projection/process work -- a deliberate signifier that certain scenes are not "real" and form the basis of another visual "lie" -- director De Palma constantly reminds us in Body Double that our eyes are not to be trusted. Ever. This is the perfect approach for a thriller featuring many twists and turns because it challenges us to keep up and to watch closely; to register the underneath bubbling below the glitzy, shallow surface.

Notably, De Palma deploys two popular movie trends of the times to make this particular thriller so effective. The first is the so-called "dead teenager" or "knife-kill" slasher films of the period, which had come to feature ever more dramatic and over-the-top murders (like the drill homicide in Slumber Party Massacre [1982].) 

The second trend exploited here is the "music video," the short-form, self-contained music clip that had recently been popularized on the newly-founded MTV Network and in feature films such as Flashdance (1983) and Footloose (1984). In Body Double, De Palma stages a hypnotic video sequence to Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax."

In both cases, we ask if we can really trust our eyes. Is the perpetrator of the horrific violence for real? A lunatic Indian?! Is the music video love scene represenative of the film's "reality" or simply Hollywood movie-making reality? Is a winsome, lonely wife more than she seems? Less than she seems? These are the questions on which we obsess.

I'd Like You To Meet My Favorite Neighbor...

Body Double tells the tale of actor Jake Scully (Craig Wasson), a struggling actor having a very bad day. He experiences a claustrophobic panic attack on the set of his new low-budget flick, Vampire's Kiss, and the director (Dennis Franz) wants to fire him.

When he is sent home to relax, Scully discovers his girlfriend in bed with another man. Scully starts drinking again and unexpectedly meets an actor friend, Sam Bouchard (Gregg Henry) at a bar. Sam suggests that Scully camp out at his sub-let, a strange futuristic home overlooking the Hollywood Hills. With no place to go, Scully promptly agrees.

Once living in the strange apartment, Scully watches through a telescope as a beautiful neighbor dances topless each night at exactly the same time. Over days, Scully becomes obsessed with the sexy siren, Gloria Revelle (Shelton), and begins to follow her...even as a gruesome, menacing Indian man means to do her harm. Ultimately, Scully arrives too late to save Gloria from being brutally murdered.

Despondent, Scully later recognizes something familiar in the seductive dance of a porno star, Holly Body (Griffith) and realizes that's he been made a patsy; transformed into the perfect witness to a crime...so that the real culprit can get away, scot-free, in the murder of his wife. To catch the murderer, Scully descends into the world of porno movies in an attempt to meet Holly and learn the truth behind that dance...

Take Off Your Clothes: I Want to Take Some Pictures

As critic Andrew Kopkina wrote in The Nation, De Palma's Body Double boasts "clearly ironic intent" in that it's a movie "about the culture of sex and violence rather than about the awful events of the plot." (November 24, 1984, page 562). 

That's a distinction worth noting, I submit.

Because I believe that De Palma's ironic intent goes a very long way towards defusing the charges of misogyny perennially lodged at Body Double.

Clearly, however, not everybody concurs with that assessment. Entertainment Weekly's Ty Burr called the film "the most unbearably cruel of De Palma's Hitch rips" and pointed out that "the scene of a helpless woman (Deborah Shelton) getting power-drilled to death is too viciously gloating to forgive." (January 15, 1993, pages 56-47).

Reviewer David Sterritt at The Christian Science Monitor noted De Palma's skill in crafting Body Double, but derided the "sleazy material he's peddling, which feeds largely on a vision of women as objects to be ogled or butchered." (November 13, 1984, page 52).

So again, we're back to that point of demarcation with director De Palma. 

This is the elephant in the room. 

De Palma is either ironically commenting on the state of movie-dom and 1980s Hollywood; or just cravenly "peddling" viciousness and misogyny. He's either rewriting the language of contemporary film (not to mention Hitchcock thrillers) to satirize other movies, or contributing to the crisis of a crass, lurid pop culture. 

Or perhaps, he's doing both simultaneously?

It won't surprise you to learn that I don't consider De Palma a misogynist, even in Body Double. For one thing, his violence is directed at men and women here; Scully is paralyzed with fear and nearly buried alive at one point....which is pretty sadistic.

For another thing, De Palma's intent to parody Hollywood's ongoing obsession with on-screen violence has very real antecedents, as I noted above. In the aforementioned Slumber Party Massacre -- a film directed by a woman, Amy Jones -- a male killer with a drill goes around homicidally "screwing" women in a fashion not at all unlike Body Double's killer. Is she a misogynist too? Or is violence against women acceptable (and not anti-woman in nature) when orchestrated by a female director?

Furthermore, when Jones has a woman with a machete chop off the killer's drill/phallus, -- thus metaphorically castrating him -- in Slumber Party Massacre, is she being anti-man? I haven't heard any cries of misanthropy there, and nor should I. Jones, like De Palma, transgresses in order to make a point; she utilizes symbolism (the drill, the machete, etc) to craft points about the nature of violence; about male power; about female vengeance, etc.

Is Gloria in Body Double "objectified?" Undoubtedly. 

Scully is drawn to her because of her nude dance, because of her sexy body. That's the lure to spring Sam's trap, but it's more an indictment of Scully's character (and a comment on men in general), then it is a fault of Gloria "as a woman." Also, we should ask: are women's bodies objectified in Hollywood outside the world of De Palma? In porno movies? In mainstream movies? If you think the answer is "yes," then again, De Palma ought to get a pass: he's noting (and commenting) on a real life context; not crafting some personal vision of hatred towards women.

Perhaps more specificity is required here. Body Double is charged with misogyny particularly because of a murder scene in which Gloria is drilled (bloodily) to death. Indeed, we witness the murder in graphic terms. There's a shot of the drill whirring, coming down between the (male) killer's legs -- like a giant cock -- as it penetrates the helpless, supine female.

Okay. This is undoubtedly excessive. 

But excessive doesn't equal misogyny, necessarily. 

Let's recall that Body Double was created in the decade of excess, the 1980s, and the whole film practically explodes with excess. It isn't merely romantic...it's melodramatically, balls-to-the-walls over-romantic, with De Palma's tongue-in-cheek camera spinning in a frenzy as Scully and Gloria share a first kiss and the soundtrack swoons. 

The film isn't merely sexually provocative, either, it takes us head-first, blunt-faced into the sleazy world of pornography, culminating with a complaint (from a production assistant) that the director didn't get a needed cum shot. Indeed, this scene became such a touchstone that it was mirrored and "homaged" in Boogie Nights in 1997.

Given the excessive nature of the entire film, I suggest that the drill kill isn't really misogynist...just intentionally and willfully over-the-top. I judge this by the nature of the film, but also from De Palma's cinematic work, taken in totality. 

Femme Fatale (2002) is the opposite of misogynist, since the main character resists the "dream" that types her as Barbara Stanwyck. 

Raising Cain (1992) is also rather pro-woman, since the only "heroic" personality in Carter's mad brain is a female, Margo. 

And sure, Nancy Allen in Dressed to Kill (1980) is a hooker...but she's taken the profession back for women; much more a savvy Wall Street investor than a victimized damsel-in-distress. 

I can't always adjudge deep complexity to De Palma's females. Indeed, he often goes for the Madonna or Whoredynamic (Ness's wife in The Untouchables is an example of the former...) but again, that's not misogynist...just archetypal. And very, very Catholic.

This is a personal assessment, but for me misogyny doesn't enter the picture until we hit a few specific points. For one, there has to be some form of "blame" cast on the women for their own murders. In other words, the movie or moviemaker must make clear...it's their fault the bad things that happen to them. And the other side of the coin is that the men have to come off as blameless and superior.

I think critics cry "misogynist" because De Palma is never satisfied until he nudges his films over the precipice of good taste. 

By the way, that's the mission statement of great horror movies: to shatter decorum and transgress societal standards. 

So De Palma adds the sexual component to the drill kill and it instantly becomes far more memorable (not to mention disturbing). If the director had simply removed the shot of the drill going down between the man's legs, I don't think anyone could rightly complain that Body Double's major set-piece is any more misogynist than Marion's murder in the shower in Psycho; or Tippi Hedren's attack by sparrows in The Birds. 

But Body Double is about excess, and so the sexual twist on the murder certainly fits the tenor of the film.

Porno, Politics and Moving Pictures

On the surface, Body Double echoes Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) to a remarkable degree.

Both films tell the story of a voyeur who "happens" to witness a crime by using a sight amplification device, whether binoculars or a telescope. 

In both productions, that voyeur is a man who professionally toils in the visual arts (either as a photographer, or as an actor).

And in both cases, the voyeur sees a crime committed against a woman; and is dragged into learning more; his foibles and idiosyncrasies hooking and dragging him in deeper and deeper (and tying a noose around his neck, metaphorically-speaking).

In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart's character is literally crippled -- injured and confined to a wheelchair for a time; while in Body Double, Wasson's Scully is damaged too; given to paralyzing bouts of claustrophobic panic.

We have seen in other films how De Palma uses a Hitchcock film (such as Psycho or Vertigo) as a foundation or template; a well-spring for creativity. He then builds on the precepts and motifs of that older production to synthesize something fresh and original. The same is true here, because Body Double travels well-beyond (the admittedly-brilliant) Rear Window in asking the audience to accommodate competing realities. Are we watching Gloria dance in that darkened apartment, or is it Holly performing? Is the driller killer a strange Indian man, or just an actor in heavy make-up disguising himself so as to cast suspicion elsewhere? Is Scully trapped in a real burial plot, or appearing on a low-budget horror movie set that mimics the appearance of a grave? Is Sam a helpful friend, or a maniacal psychotic?

And Scully is not just a simple voyeur, he is an actor appearing in a movie within a movie, especially during the Vampire's Kiss scenes and the porno movie shoots. So, as an audience, we must constantly recalibrate our senses to understand at which "level" we are witnessing things.

The "Relax" music video is a perfect example. The sequence begins in self-contained fashion, commencing to the tune of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song. Without introduction, explanation or pre-text, we see Scully enter a stage; a debauched world of leather, lasers and lust. All around him, lascivious sex acts occur in a setting reminiscent of Cruising (a film De Palma was once slated to direct). Scully goes through a silver-curtained doorway labeled "SLUTS" and then finds himself gazing into a dressing room at Holly Body. He watches her dance on one side of the frame; while a mirrored image of Holly dominates the other side. On Holly's invitation, Jake enters the room, and the mirrored doorway suddenly swings ajar.

At that instant -- bam! -- the mirror reveals the porno movie crew shooting the scene; a scene occurring between actors Holly Body and Jake Scully. They are no longer merely the characters in a porno, but players in the larger drama. Then, De Palma breaks down the sequence even further, substituting the dead Gloria for Holly in a series of interrupted camera spins. 

So to be clear, we're essentially witnessing a character (Scully) playing another character (in the porno movie) remembering not the woman he is actually with (an actress playing a character in a porno...), but the women he fell in love with; whom Holly unwittingly doubled for.

Got that?

De Palma is doing two things in this film: First, he's satirizing Tinsel Town, a domain where "friendship" is as illusory as are special effects. It's an alien world to most of us, which is no doubt the reason that Sam's pad resembles a flying saucer that has just set down in the Hollywood Hills. And secondly, De Palma is reflecting that form (a satire of Hollywood) with self-reflexive content, twisting and turning the tale so all motives are suspect.

In the end, Body Double is a perfect reflection of the excessive 1980s. De Palma's leitmotif that "you can't believe your eyes" was especially resonant at the time. A Hollywood actor named Ronald Reagan had actually become President of the United States. And he very much brought Hollywood illusion and facade to the White House with him, excelling in stagecraft, if nothing else. Consider: 

Reagan claimed to be a family values President...yet was the only divorced commander-in-chief in our nation's history. 

Reagan was elected to reign in the Federal government...but on Reagan's watch the Federal government grew by 61,000 employees. 

Reagan claimed to be a tax cutter...yet he signed into law the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the largest tax increase in American history at that point. 

Reagan was "hired" by the American people to cut spending...but the national debt on his watch accrued to a staggering 2.7 trillion dollars, again, the highest total in history at that point. 

Reagan was supposed to be a resolute warrior, but what was Reagan's response to a terrorist truck bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 U.S. Marines? Two days later, he courageously ordered the military invasion...of a small island nation named Grenada! 

Yet Reagan played his role perfectly...he was -- in essence -- the perfect "body double" for an authentic "conservative." It didn't matter that reality didn't match his rhetoric...because when he was on camera, we believed in him...even if the camera lied 24 times a second.

So in Body Double, as in American politics of the day, the audience finds it difficult to discern truth from fiction. Like Jake Scully, we were taken in by lies, paralyzed by our fears ("bombing begins in five minutes!"), distracted by sex and violence, and then waiting for the next directorial/presidential sleight-of-hand to make it all right again.

Because in Hollywood the ending is always happy, after all. 

But caveat emptor: those fine, perfectly-formed breasts you have just ogled may not actually belong to Angie Dickinson.