Cult-Movie Review: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Based on Ira Levin’s best-selling novel, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) presents viewers with a dark, mirror-image of the Christian nativity scene during its final, horrifying moments. 

Here, a human mother -- Rosemary rather than Mary -- gives birth not to the savior Jesus Christ, but to the Anti-Christ.  At the same time, craven worshipers and sycophantic attendants gather to witness the historic occasion. 

This is the beginning of “Year One…”

Meanwhile, surrounding Rosemary (Mia Farrow) are several signs and symbols of encroaching darkness and societal collapse, from the Time Magazine headline that asks the question “Is God Dead?” to the deliberate betrayal of marriage vows which stem from her husband’s (John Cassavetes) insatiable narcissism.

Even the architecturally-imposing but dilapidated and decaying Dakota Building -- infested by creepy old denizens like the Castevets -- expresses something deeply unsavory and perverse about “modern life” in the American 1960s.  Man’s world has been twisted and left to ruin…

For decades now, critics and scholars have written about Rosemary’s Baby in terms of the fears the film reflects and expresses. They have pinpointed those dreads as either “fear of pregnancy” or “fear of children/parenthood.”

Yet both examples clearly miss the film’s point. 

Rosemary’s Baby is explicitly about women, and the sexual politics that stem from that identity. 

Accordingly, the film concerns the fear of a life that is out of one’s control.

It is the fear that arises when a woman can’t exert control over her own body, and therefore her own destiny.  The out-of-control and devilish pregnancy explored in the film is but another embodiment of Rosemary’s inability to shape her own life, as well as the connected fear that others are determined to shape it to perfidious ends.

If God is indeed dead, suggests Rosemary’s Baby, it is because the 20^th century American patriarchy killed Him, substituting its own narcissistic, preferential rules for the human values of liberty and freedom for all (even women).

This 1968 horror film, which critic Tim Grierson at The Village Voice termed “defiantly feminist,” thus explores vividly and memorably “the anxieties of women trapped in a male-driven society.”

“Awful things happen in every apartment house.”

In Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband Guy move into the old Dakota apartment building after a tenant on the seventh floor has died.  There, Rosemary and Guy soon meet the neighbors, the Castevets (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon).  One night, Roman Castavet makes a clandestine, dark proposal to Guy, a struggling actor.

Soon after that secret deal is arranged, Rosemary is drugged by the Castavets and, while under the influence, ushered into a religious ritual wherein she is forced to copulate with Satan.  Rosemary awakens the next day to finds scratches on her back, but Guy lies and tells her he just took some liberties with her while she slept.  

Rosemary soon learns she is pregnant.  This news coincides with the fact that Guy’s acting career finally seems to be taking off.

As the pregnancy progresses, Rosemary grows more and suspicious about it.  Her doctor, Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) refuses to tend to her excessive daily pain, and Guy won’t let her schedule an appointment with the doctor she prefers, Dr. Hill (Charles Grodin). 

Meanwhile, Rosemary’s friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) falls into an inexplicable coma after warning her that he has some grave news regarding the situation…

Soon, Rosemary comes to the realization that no one in her life is looking out for her, and that if she is to save her baby, and her future, she must act.  But is it already too late? 

“We're your friends, Rosemary. There's nothing to be scared about. Honest and truly there isn't!”

Rosemary’s Baby serves as a blistering social critique of what one might term the Mad Men Era in the 20^th century, which by the mid-1960s was beginning to show cracks, if not outright crumble.

But this was an era in which a wife could be treated as a child, and boasted very little control over her own destiny.  Rosemary fits that description perfectly.  She speaks in a sing-songy voice and is infantalized by all the men around her.  She is not the competent, capable heroine of today's horror genre, the final girl.  Instead, Rosemary is a woman who is only just beginning to realize how little control she asserts over her own life.

Andrew Sarris in his review of the Polanski film writes that: “What is frightening about Rosemary's condition is her suspicion that she is being used by other people for ulterior purposes. She has no family of her own to turn to, but must rely on a husband who seems insensitive to her pain, neighbors who seem suspiciously solicitous, a doctor whose manner seems more reassuring than his medicine, and a world that seems curiously indifferent to her plight. When she tells her story to a disinterested doctor, he dismisses it as pure paranoia…”

But here’s the thing: Rosemary’s situation -- pregnancy by Satan -- is odd enough, but her treatment by the patriarchal society is completely routine for the epoch.

Consider that Rosemary is not permitted to decide where she wants to live. Instead, she must petition her husband for the right to make that choice.  She does not get to choose her own obstetrician either. That duty is also assigned to her husband. 

Guy (John Cassavetes) even gets to dictate (with a handy calendar no less), when “they” should begin attempting to get pregnant.   She has desired to have children for some time, but her feelings have not been taken into account, until now, when that desire can be co-opted by others.

Later, when Rosemary’s pregnancy begins to go awry, the doctor, her husband, and the neighbors all poo-poo her very legitimate concerns about pain and weight-loss.  

And when Rosemary runs, helpless, to another doctor, Hill, he betrays her because he’s part of the dominant culture’s “boy’s club,” though not a devil-worshiper.

Lest this aspect of life in the 1960's be dismissed as part and parcel of the film’s considerable (and effective) atmosphere of paranoia, one should remember the facts of women’s health in the 1960's:

“In the 1960's, a woman had to get permission from her husband to have a tubal ligation,” for instance, “a procedure that made pregnancy impossible.  Single women were generally refused such procedures.” (Laban Carrick Hill, American Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 1960s; 2009, Hochette Book Group, NY.) 

Similarly, author Sue Vilhauer Rosser reminds readers in Women, Science and Myth: Gender Beliefs from Antiquity to the Present (ABL-CIO, 2005, page 407) that “women sought to control their own bodies” in the 1960's “through access to safe birth control, abortion and information about their physiology and anatomy; to define their experience as a valid aspect of their health needs; and to question the androcentric bias found in the hierarchy of the male-dominated health care system and its approach to research and practice.”

The relevant line there, perhaps, involves a woman’s ability to define as valid her own health needs. 

That’s precisely the war that Rosemary repeatedly wages in the Polanski film. Her pain is routinely dismissed by others, and her dislike of the “vitamin” drink prepared by Mrs. Castavet is similarly ignored. 

The reason why? 

Men such as Guy, Sapirstein and Roman boast an alternate agenda for Rosemary. Her pain is irrelevant to that agenda. Finally, Rosemary acts out or rebels against her male masters in the only way the culture permits, in terms of fashion; in terms of her appearance.  She gets a very severe hair-cut. 

Perhaps one of the scariest qualities of Rosemary’s Baby today is the fact that there are still folks out there who want to go back to the 1960's in terms of women’s health care. Oddly, these are usually the self-same men arguing that government shouldn’t intrude into people’s private lives. That libertarian principle, however, is ritually sacrificed when it comes to control over the uterus.

On a connected note, the most unpleasant interaction I’ve likely ever had with a horror movie fan arose over a discussion Rosemary’s Baby that came down to sexual politics. 

At a horror convention, a fan approached  me at a vendor’s table and began asking my cinematic likes and dislikes.  He almost immediately went into chapter and verse regarding his dislike of Rosemary’s Baby.  He went so far as to say that Mia Farrow’s character “deserved to be raped.” 

I questioned him about that.  I asked two questions, actually. 

First, what did Rosemary do, precisely, to deserve being raped? 

And secondly, why did she deserve to be raped by the Devil? 

His response was -- verbatim -- that she was “too whiny,” and that because she was so whiny, she had it coming. 

To "whine" means “to complain” and this fellow clearly disliked Rosemary because she had the audacity to complain about her plight, her terrible misuse by husband, doctor, and neighbor.

So there you have it. Even today, some folks feel threatened by the fact that a woman may not do exactly what men want her to do. She steps out of that narrow box, and deserves rape…and rape by the Devil, no less.  

Why would anyone who loves his mother, sister, daughter, or wife hold such a draconian belief?

Fortunately, such beliefs have, in my experience, been the rare exception in terms of horror fandom. Horror film fans -- often judged harshly by others, themselves -- are not usually the type to repeat the mistake.

But Rosemary’s Baby and this fan’s hostile viewpoint towards it lead characters always reminds me of a famous quote from the great Rod Serling:  

“If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive."

Movie Trailer: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

The Films of 1968: Barbarella

Roger Vadim’s 1968 cult-classic Barbarella boasts a mixed reputation with critics and audiences, and understandably so. 

In short, the erotic space fantasy starring Jane Fonda (and based on the 1962 “adult” comic by Jean Claude Forest) is in equal proportions impressive and tiresome. 

Barbarella impresses on the basis of its stunning costumes, incredible sound-stage production design, and on the back of Jane Fonda’s in-the-know, delectable performance as the titular character. She is the film's greatest special effect.

The film proves tiresome, however, on the basis of its story-telling approach which is, alas, pure camp. 

As I’ve written here before, camp is an aesthetic style constructed on a sense of knowing theatricality. The camp approach is one of exaggerated artifice. It is the antithesis of “real,” or “genuine,” as Susan Sontag once noted.  

While it’s true that camp productions prove “susceptible to double interpretations” (see: Adam West’s Batman [1966-1968]), it is also accurate to note that camp, through its flamboyance, distances the audience from a production’s narrative and characters.

My personal and critical equation on this subject is that camp -- while occasionally or briefly amusing under some circumstances -- severely reduces our ability to care about a work of art. 

If everything is played as a joke we start to see important dramatic elements (plot, character, theme) as jokes too.  Accordingly, we dis-invest from something we perceive to be camp.  If the artist can't take the material seriously, how can we?

There’s much magic in Barbarella, to be certain, from Jane Fonda’s zero-g, spacesuit strip-tease, to the interior set design for her shag carpet spaceship: the Alpha 7. But every time we feel as though we could invest in the character, and her world -- one in which sex is no longer saddled with centuries of Puritan guilt -- we regret it, because of the distancing camp style.

Though undeniably a cultural touchstone, Barbarella nonetheless feels deeply inconsistent. Some moments feature astonishing, erotic, and even disturbing visuals, and other moments are so silly in conception and execution that audiences feel silly going along for the ride.

“The universe has been pacified for centuries.”

In the 41^st century, the President of the Solar System contacts his best agent, Barbarella (Jane Fonda) to travel to the distant Tau Ceti solar system. 

There, Durand Durand (Miles ‘Shea), the inventor of the deadly weapon known as the “particle ray,” has vanished.

Barbarella’s vessel, the Alpha 7, experiences magnetic disturbances on approach to the sixteenth planet in the system, and crashes on the surface. 

There, Barbarella experiences strange and erotic adventures. She learns the primitive art of love making from the Catchman (Ugo Tognazzi), falls in love with a blind angel called Pygar (John Phillip Law) -- the last of the ornithanthropes -- and challenges the “Great Tyrant,” the Black Queen (Anita Pallenberg).

 

Barara also faces danger from mobile, fanged toy dolls, carnivorous parakeets, and Durand Durand’s most fearsome and diabolical invention, an “Excessive Machine,” (essentially an orgasmatron).

“Are you typical of Earth women?”

Today, we live in the era of CGI or digital sci-fi movies. Alien landscapes and world-building are built, often, via the conjunction of green-screens and computers.  

This approach permits for spectacular scope, certainly, but not necessarily a sense of reality. Often, these alien worlds look cartoon-like. Going back to 1968, and the making of Barbarella, this method of “seeing” science fiction vistas didn’t exist. Everything to appear in a film had to be designed, constructed, painted, etc.

Barbarella is a “sound-stage” movie. By this I mean that the labyrinth of Sogo, the Chamber of Dreams, the ice plains of Tau Ceti 16, and other wonders are all real; tactile. 

It’s true that matte paintings are utilized occasionally in some sequences, and that some scenes meant to suggest scope fail because of inadequate miniatures, but many of the visuals remain unforgettable. 

In fact, they still look stunning.

Above, I mentioned Barbarella’s spaceship interior, and it’s a good place to begin a discussion of the film’s design. 

The Alpha 7 interior is decorated with wall-to-wall carpet…or fur, like a 1970s van…but also features statuary and other works of art (a large painting, for example). The ship appears designed for comfort, by a hedonistic 41^st century society, rather than for mere utilitarian functionality. The cockpit is a recessed cubby in the floor -- like a tub -- surrounded by piano-like control keys. And beyond the cubby is a wall-sized view screen.  It’s colorful, it’s weird, and it is a splendid first peek at the film’s future world.  It suggest a way of looking at the world (and humanity) in a complete different way.

The ice plains and ice ship are impressive too, especially given that they are constructed on a stage.  

And certainly -- though undeniably weird -- the evil, silver-fanged dolls leave quite an impression.  It’s not clear what they are, or why they exist, yet they are pretty unforgettable in terms of their imagery and horror.  

Since the film is about the innocence of sex and lust, shorn of societal and historical taboo, it’s entirely possible that the murderous baby dolls represent the (unpleasant) specter of sexual responsibility.  They represent children, the natural result of sex, and a menace that eats everything with their sharp teeth, including parental time and freedom.

But that’s just one possible interpretation.

There are moments here that, certainly, forecast the Star Wars approach. We engage in Barbarella with a lived-in kind of universe, where no explanations are given.  We meet fantastic aliens (like Pygar), broach a deadly weapon (the Particle Ray, rather than the Death Star), and even get a mid-air battle between the Queen’s fighters and Pygar and Barbarella. 

This dogfight sequence, though a decade behind Star Wars in terms of special effects execution, certainly helps the stage for the “space fantasy” approach of that Lucas film.

A key question regarding Barbarella involves sexism. Is the film sexist for depicting a kind of space nymph engaging in intercourse with every male alien she encounters? 

I suppose it depends on how you think about it.  

This story is set in a universe in which a common salute/greeting is “Love.” It occurs in a universe that has been “pacified for centuries,” and in which there is no longer a state of “primitive neurotic irresponsibility" among humans. 

Barbarella lives not in a world that has responded to and rebelled against long-standing Puritan sexual mores, but a world in which those beliefs have been overcome…and then forgotten. 

She is, therefore, innocent, and that’s the way that Jane Fonda portrays the character.  When asked if she is typical of Earth women, she responds that she is “about average.”   Barbarella is not supposed to be a sex goddess, or "liberated" in a 1960s sense. She is a future human, divorced for all her life from the shame and guilt that human cultures imposed on sex.

Barbarella is innocent. She has no guile or guilt about her body, her person-hood, her attractions, or anything else. If that’s indeed the case then the costumes she so memorably wears are not exploitative.  They are just...futuristic. 

And apparently in the future, there is little modesty.

Finally, Barbarella defeats her enemies under her own power and with her own gifts. They try to kill her with sexual pleasure, and she discovers that her power in that realm overcomes theirs. They try to kill her with her sexuality, in other words, only to find that her “power” is indomitable.

Or, if you look at it the opposite way, the film is sexist in a profound way. Barbarella is an object for male sexual gratification, and not a hero in her own right.  She's but a a dumb blond (forgive the stereotype...), bumbling from one "adventure" to the next, unaware of how she is used.

It is easier, I feel, to make this particular argument because of the film’s camp approach. Fonda’s innocent portrayal of Barbarella can be misinterpreted as something else, and the character can be perceived as gullible, and even dull-witted.  

This is just one case in which a tongue-in-cheek approach hurts the film and its characters.

Much of the film’s humor is annoying, frankly, because of the insistence on keeping things camp. There’s the scene here in which Dildanno gives Barbarella the ridiculously-long password to possess an invisible secret key and she effortlessly repeats it.

And then there's the line that “Only an invisible key can open an invisible wall."

Such material makes it plain: the whole thing is a joke to the filmmakers.

It’s tough to remember today, but there was a time when filmmakers, critic and audiences didn’t take sci-fi seriously.  The genre was the purview of the adolescent mind, filled with gimmicks like invisible keys, positronic rays, and dream chambers. Barbarella doesn’t take any of these concepts seriously, and again, that undercuts the film’s hero and her journey.

Barbarella goes on a hero’s quest in this film, not entirely unlike the one undertaken by Flash Gordon. She unites an alien planet against a tyrant, and a mad-scientist. The fact that she is the film’s protagonist grants Barbarella some level of agency, but that agency is undercut because the universe around her -- though beautifully conceived in 1960s terms -- doesn’t have any grounding in reality or science.  It's all just phantasmagoria.

“A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming,” Barbarella advises in the film. The sad truth about this Roger Vadim film is that the dramatic situations begin with promise, because of the filmmakers' imagination. But by the end of Barbarella, you'll be screaming in frustration at the way the director and writers handle virtually every aspect of their space fantasy universe.

Barbarella doesn’t get her due from the filmmakers.

Movie Trailer: Barbarella (1968)

The Films of 1968: The Green Slime

When I was five years old and living in New Jersey, a TV station out of New York, WABC, (Channel 7) aired The 4:30 PM Movie every week day. 

And via this 4:30 PM Movie platform, I was introduced to a multitude of cinematic treasures.  For instance, this was how I first encountered all the Planet of the Apes films, The Omega Man (1971), Soylent Green (1973), and, yes...The Green Slime (1968).

Alone among those titles The Green Slime has gained quite a reputation as something of an anti-classic.  Specifically, it has earned only a lowly score of 3.7 from user/reviewers on the Internet Movie Database.

In additions, books such as The Official Razzie Movie Guide and Son of Golden Turkey Awards have pretty well mocked and eviscerated the film too. 

The former resource calls the movie a "camp classic" while the latter describes The Green Slime in this fashion: "Some of the worst American actors meet some of the worst Japanese special effects in this multinational fiasco." 

So that's the conventional wisdom.

The New York Times was slightly more forgiving of The Green Slime, however.  Critic Howard Thompson opined that  the film "opens promisingly, keeps it up for about half-an-hour but then fades badly. There is a quiet, tingling efficiency about these early scenes and very little nonsense. The trick photography and stratospheric effects are neat and clean. And the plot itself isn't half bad for this kind of operation."

Well, first off, I believe The New York Times' Howard Thompson was actually more accurate in assessing and describing the film's strengths and weaknesses than the professional and amateur mockers have been.

In 2016, the film's special effects have undeniably aged poorly, and the actual Green Slime monsters probably never looked particularly convincing, let alone scary, to adult eyes.  Not even back in '69.  It wasn't really until Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), perhaps, that space monsters were suitably scary on-screen, and The Green Slime looks almost prehistoric by comparison.

I might also add that the science as presented in the film seems ludicrous.  And that the acting is -- termed politely -- stiff.  Blow dried might be a better description.  

If we're keeping count, one might note that much of the dialogue is risible...and thus humorous.  The view of scientists is pretty cliched too, with one professor's irresponsibility walking hand-in-hand with his idiocy.  

And last but not least, the overt swinging sixties vibe (down to the awesome theme song and scantily clad astronaut ladies drinking champagne...) readily encourages the prevalent "so bad that it's good" interpretation of the film.

So please, take all these negative points as absolute givens if you decide to watch The Green Slime.   Don't say I didn't warn you, okay?

But playing devil's advocate now, this Japanese production filmed at Toei is also -- to my surprise -- constructed on some pretty sturdy film craft.  The film's director, Kinji Fukasaku (1930 - 2003) is well-known as a favorite of Quentin Tarantino's and even in The Green Slime, one can detect the reason behind his admiration. 

No, this isn't The Yakuza Papers (1971) or Battle Royale (2000) -- not by a long shot -- yet Fukasaku is the same artist; one extraordinarily gifted with visuals, especially talented at selecting the very right shot at the right moment.  

The upshot is that a producer could actually mount a shot-for-shot remake of The Green Slime in Hollywood today --  featuring big-name actors and upgraded special effects -- and it would probably be pretty damned good.

"We found something strange up there, sir."

The Green Slime is the story of a planetary disaster in the making.  The multi-national UNSC (United Nations Space Command) learns that a rogue asteroid, named Flora, is on a collision course with Earth. 

In fact, it will strike in less-than ten hours. Stalwart Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton) is assigned to destroy the asteroid before catastrophe occurs.  Unfortunately, Rankin's assignment will also involve relieving his old friend, Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel), from command of the international space station, Gamma 3...and seeing his old flame, Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi), again.

But Jack is a non-nonsense kind of officer, and rushes in where angels fear to tread.  On a rocket mission to the rocky surface of Flora, Horton's team detonates several explosives in short order.  The threat to Earth is pulped, but a single glop of indigenous green slime lands on one astronaut's pants.

Upon return to Gamma 3, the crew celebrates the mission's success, unaware that the green slime has begun to grow in the decontamination chamber.  In fact, the Green Slime thrives on electricity, and soon becomes a walking, cyclopean, tentacled monstrosity capable of "feeding on energy and discharging energy."

The Green Slime can also regenerate at a "frightening" rate.  Even one drop of spilled Green Slime can regenerate a nursery full of these squeaking monsters.  In other words -- to quote Alien -- "you don't dare kill it!" 

Very soon, Jack realizes that there is no choice but to abandon and then destroy the overrun Gamma 3 station, lest the alien threat reach planet Earth...

"If he's right, those things are going to be all over the place!"

As I wrote at the start of this piece, it's easy, from a casual viewing, to detect what's bad and unintentionally funny about The Green Slime. 

I do not now and never shall deny any of those important elements. 

But solid film criticism isn't merely about plucking low-hanging fruit from the vine.  In some instances, it's about excavating those things that get buried in favor of the obvious.  And the fact of the matter is that The Green Slime is highly entertaining for a number of reasons, and it seems fair and judicious to enumerate those reasons in this review.

In particular, I recommend that viewers pay special attention to the visual compositions, and the ways Fukasaku uses the frame to create an escalating sense of tension.

For instance -- effortlessly and perfectly -- Fukasaku shifts to hand-held shots in the interior of a small spacecraft set just as the movie's protagonists undertake their important mission to Flora. The sudden shift from a more stately grounded camera to the hand-held shots supports the story's rising anxiety level.

I also admire how the director dramatically marshals whip pans and intense camera pushes during the big "reveal" moments and the sustained battle sequences.  

There's nothing wrong with any of these compositions, and in fact, many are actually quite gorgeous.  If you just try not to focus on the floppy-armed monsters, and look at the particular shots, there's a level of real artistry apparent. 

And not all the special effects look terrible. There are some inventive angles here of the Green Slime climbing up an Infirmary wall, edited in reverse, apparently.

That sense of artistry extends to the film's numerous space sets, which have sometimes been termed "cardboard."   I didn't see that much, frankly, except in a few short sequences where Gamma 3's doors appear momentarily light weight.  And on the contrary, the surface of the planet Flora as visualized here is quite dynamic and intriguing: a live-action studio set of considerable intricacy, color and depth.  In the days before CGI, everything had to be built -- including whole planets -- and The Green Slime's foreign Flora looks like fantastic today.

I could also comment on the effective choreography and early wire-work in some of the flying/battle sequences in space, a precursor to such EVA battles as we've since seen in Moonraker (1979), among other films. 

With all this good work, it is a mystery to me why a clearly capable director allows his poorly-designed, silly-looking monsters to get so much damned face time on camera.  This film could have been significantly improved by some shock cutting, by featuring dimmer light in a few moments, and by other techniques that could hide or mask the fakery.  If those steps had been taken, The Green Slime might be remembered very differently today.

In terms of atmosphere, The Green Slime is gloriously a product of its time and specific context, the late 1960s.  This was our world in the midst of the Apollo Program, with a moon landing on the horizon.  Accordingly, the film benefits from the same kind of 1960s retro-futurism and can-do attitude as TV series like Thunderbirds or Star Trek. 

That means the film is veritably filled with astronauts in red and blue jump suits, bustling about and moving quickly into action to face danger and save the world in the process.  Launch a space mission to save the Earth in under ten hours?  No problem! Just hit the accelerator!  The Green Slime goes into laborious detail showing space cruiser launches, futuristic cities and other examples of man's "high technology" in this possible future.  The breadth of imagination in terms of production design and miniature work on display here is not so easily dismissed, even if we have outgrown both miniatures and can-do futurism.

In terms of the world it presents, The Green Slime offers an irony-less view of can-do space adventuring, with serious men and women going about their business without tongues-in-cheek.  In today's hipster world, this is just something else to laugh about, no doubt, but The Green Slime is the product of a more optimistic age.  One in which we all believed -- without question -- that man would conquer space.  I find this facet of the film charming and innocent, I must admit.  The film's confidence in us, in mankind, is one of its finer qualities.  This faith is reinforced in the subplot that many critics find so deplorable, the Rankin-Elliot rivalry.

Specifically, Rankin is all about the job, damn the consequences.  We're all expendable! 

And Elliot is the opposite, willing to save his men at the expense of the mission. 

In the end, both men -- and both approaches -- are required to save the day.  This plot-point alone seems evidence of a more innocent, less polarized time in our world.  Today the answers to a lot of our national and international problems are both liberal ones and conservative ones, but no one wants to admit that fact.  It always has to be either/or; not a little bit of both. 

The Green Slime's dueling commanders -- fighting over the love of a woman and the path to success -- each must compromise a bit, and come to see the validity in opposing approaches.  Is this particularly deep?  Perhaps not, but it's another byproduct of The Green Slime's more optimistic epoch.

I've written a lot here about the things I admired in The Green Slime, in part because I enjoy highlighting positives more than I do writing a review focusing on some weak dialogue, or bad special effects. 

The Green Slime is not a great movie, but it is enjoyable and it boasts some visual distinction.  Snark about the movie can be found elsewhere. 

In the final analysis, whether or not you enjoy this film depends largely on your perspective of a common criticism.  Many reviewers have complained that the film features effects that make it look like "a Godzilla movie."

If you think that comparison is a valid criticism and a sign of "bad" cinema, then don't waste your energy on The Green Slime.  You won't be that into it.

On the other hand, if you believe the comparison to Godzilla films is actually a positive -- because Godzilla movies possess incredible artistry and valuable social commentary -- then by all means, sit back, relax, and have a good time with this silly movie played ever-so-straight. 

I know which camp I belong in.

Cult-TV Movie Review: Shadow on the Land (1968)

"These are the symbols of democracy. A democracy we take as for granted as the water we drink. But democracy is a living thing; its skeleton an ideal; its bloodstream dissent; its tissue comprised of all the people who inhabit it.  All the people.

But what happens if the life of democracy is paralyzed by fear, or greed, or simple laziness, and the country is yielded up, or co-erced, or persuaded into accepting a dictatorship, a leader whose word alone is all of law? 

The skeleton of democracy is destroyed, its bloodstream, dissent, is bound in the barbed wire of concentration camps. And the leader's special police...terrorize the bulk of the people into acceptance.  And the flag of the Internal Security Forces -- the symbol of fear and darkness -- will fly over our land."

- A Voice of "God" narration, from the opening of the TV-movie, Shadow on the Land (1968).

The stirring and unsettling words printed above are accompanied on screen in Shadow on the Land by impressive views of national landmarks that we Americans hold dear: the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument. 

Yet these words are also accompanied by images that terrify every American citizen, regardless of political stripe or political party: a giant black "X" marked through our country's Constitution; red arm-bands decorating the uniforms of  a gestapo-like police force.

This TV-movie created by Sidney Sheldon and written by Nedrick Young contemplates something that we all fervently hope is absolutely impossible: the rise of a fascist, totalitarian dystopia in America.  It's a 1960s TV variation on Sinclair Lewis's classic 1935 literary work, It Can't Happen Here.

In Shadow on the Land, The United States has been a dictatorship for some forty years, ever since the country's Leader exploited a national emergency ("riots in the ghetto" according to the screenplay) to seize total control of the nation and declare martial law.  

The people, in essence, gave the Leader "a blank check."

Over the years since the takeover, "discipline" has replaced "freedom" in America as an ideal.  Dissenters -- part of an organized resistance group called "Society of Man" -- are sent to detention camps where they are they are beaten and tortured.  The police force, the ISF, is ubiquitous and well-armed.

As the drama commences, an ISF officer, Colonel Andrew Davis (Jackie Cooper) is arrested by authorities for stealing documents pertaining to the Leader's new top-secret initiative, "Operation Hammer."  

Davis is hauled off to Detention Camp 12, and tortured for information. The resistance movement attacks the camp and rescues Davis in an extremely violent sequence with overturned cars, soldiers electrocuted on fences and bullet-ridden corpses.  This night-time action scene is impressive as such on its own, but there's one important moment of undeniable real power here as well.

In particular, two nameless Society of Man fighters attempt to bring down the ISF flag and fly our Stars and Stripes instead. The first man is gunned down viciously (on-screen). 

Without thought, a second man jumps into the breach and raises the flag...and is also gunned down with extreme-prejudice, right before our eyes.  

But the flag goes up; Old Glory reigns. 

This moment goes by quickly, and without comment, but it certainly makes a powerful statement.  These two men died to make a symbolic gesture that few people would ever see (in this context of a night-time prison break). They didn't die freeing other men, or retreat to fight the good fight another day. Instead, they gave up their very lives in service of a representation of liberty. 

As I was sitting on my comfortable sofa watching this scene I tried to imagine myself in those men's shoes.  Giving up my life -- everything I hold dear -- for the simple but powerful and universal idea of freedom.  

We've seen people doing this very thing, or something quite like it, in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Fighting to the death for the cause of freedom.  But as Americans, we really haven't had to do that. We recently fought two wars, but most citizens haven't had to give up our sons or daughters to wage them.  We haven't even had to endure tax hikes, or conserve our oil.

How many Americans of today, I wonder, would sacrifice their personal futures just to see the U.S. flag raised?  I'm no better or more noble than anyone else.  And when I realized that, while watching this old TV movie, I was a little shaken.  

What would you and I do if you lived in the America portrayed in Shadow on the Land?

Shadow on the Land delvers further into this concept. 

A high-ranking Colonel in the ISF, Shep McCloud (Marc Stanger) is actually working for the Resistance, and he delivers a wounded Davis to Davis' brother, a priest at the local Midnight Mission, played by Gene Hackman. 

This priest believes that all of life is a trial, one leading to death, and doesn't want to help his own biological brother.  He says that he "renders unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" and that "God" should decide. But Shep insists...and he's a tough man to refuse.

In fact, Shep needs a lot of help, from both the priest and from a lovely ISF psychologist, because Operation Hammer could mean an end to the Society of Man.  On this very night -- Christmas Eve -- the Leader plans to stage a "false flag" operation, one equated to the the Reichstag fire in the teleplay. 

Specifically, ISF soldiers will dress as resistance fighters and attack a power plant control room in California, plunging the state into darkness and cold.  This terrorist act, the Leader believes, will finally turn the nation against the Society, and pave the way for the enforcement of "new restrictions" and the doubling of the ISF force size.

Most of this 1968 TV movie involves McCloud's attempts to prevent Operation Hammer from succeeding, and finding unexpected allies along the way.  

Even the hesitant priest comes to McCloud's aid, after Colonel Davis's death by torture.  The movie ends at the dawn of Christmas, with the reminder that "there's always another battle to fight."

One of the most interesting facets of Shadow on the Land is its alternate reality viewpoint.  It is still the year 1968, but fascism has reigned in America for forty years, since 1928 ostensibly.  

Still, America in 1968 looks almost the same as we remember it. There are freeways, Christmas decorations, office meetings, restaurants, etc. The only difference is that no one is free.  That concentration camps dot the landscape, and every park, every avenue, every building is is monitored by the ever-present ISF soldiers.

Perhaps the tele-movie's second most powerful moment occurs when Davis attempts to find sanctuary following an ISF raid on the mission.  He begs people for help in the park, in the streets, even in a diner.  He tells them he's an army officer. He's bleeding, and desperate.

And no one lifts a finger. 

No one even makes eye contact with him.  

The point transmitted by this scene is plain and clear: a fascist state depends on two things: a militia to bully people, and an apathetic, cowed populace.   Again, this got me thinking. Who would I rather be?  The guy who dies raising the flag?  Or the guy staring down at his lunch plate as a free man is captured and tortured?

Shadow on the Land was apparently a backdoor pilot for a TV series.  The concept was never picked up for broadcast, but I was struck how timely it seems today.  For instance, the opening narration discusses America losing democracy in three ways. 

First by fear, and certainly, this country knew crippling fear after September 11, 2001, in the age of color-coded terror alerts and warnings about powerful politicians of "mushroom clouds over" American cities.  Lately, we have seen fear ginned up over Ebola and ISIS, but as usual, the media tells us to be afraid of the wrong things.  Many more people die a year from heart attacks or in car accidents than have from Ebola or Islamic terrorism

The second way is by greed, and indeed we saw Wall Street's sickening greed bring this great country to her knees in the Economic Meltdown of 2008.  We bailed Wall Street out and now look where we are.  They've got bonuses, and there's no money left for our schools, our workers, or, apparently, a middle class.  Today, we worship wealth...and the rich.

And third, finally, by laziness. 

So many voters are poorly educated, not taking the time to know the positions of the candidates they support, much less American history.  

In terms of action, Shadow on the Land is pretty-fast paced and brutal. And John Forsythe gives an, icy performance as high-ranking ISF officer, General Bruce.  

But again, while watching, I just kept thinking that something like this TV-movie could be done very effectively today, when we've moved into a more technological age, when both political parties have apparently accepted surveillance of U.S. citizens without oversight, and the right of American interests to torture anyone deemed an enemy.

I also liked the film's notation that all the people in a democracy deserve equal rights.  Not special rights...equal ones.  

This was a crucial point in 1968, a tumultuous year that saw the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.  It was the year of the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, too.  
Today, such issues are still with us. 

If this concept had gone to weekly series in 1968 (when the optimistic Star Trek was still on the air), 

I wonder how it would have been welcomed...