Theme Song of the Week: Jem and the Holograms (1985)

The Films of 1985: A View to a Kill

Roger Moore’s final cinematic outing as James Bond, A View to a Kill (1985), is not generally considered one of the better titles in the 007 canon.  

In fact, the critical consensus suggests precisely the opposite. Most aficionados consider the film to be Moore’s worst title, and place it in the (dreadful) company of Diamonds are Forever (1971), Sean Connery’s last canon film, and Die Another Die (2002), Pierce Brosnan’s final Bond film.

One reason that folks tend to dislike the film involves Moore himself. Even he acknowledges that, at 57 years old, he was likely too old to play 007. Moore's age is usually the elephant in the room when critics discuss this film, and yet I think there's a counterpoint worth making. 

First, I hope I look as fit and handsome at the age of 57 as Moore does, in A View to A Kill. We should all be that fortunate.

And secondly, I actually prefer Moore's Bond with a little age on him, when he's less the smirking, somehow arrogant pretty boy.  

Yes, Moore is sort of leathery and grizzled here, and yet, with age also comes experience. We look at Moore's deep-lined, but still-attractive visage here, and we can see life experience all over his face. His 007 has been to the rodeo before (six times, actually...), which is important to consider because experience is, perhaps, the one advantage Bond has in a battle against a brilliant sociopath: Max Zorin.  Lest we forget, the posters for A View to a Kill asked, specifically: "Has James Bond finally met his match?"  

If this tag-line is the movie's chosen thematic terrain, then the character of each combatant in this contest is significant, as I'll write about further. Moore's humanity (reflected in his graceful, but obvious aging) thus plays into the movie's central juxtaposition of genetic perfection/moral emptiness vs. humanity/morality.

Critics complain so much about Moore's age because -- let's face it -- it's an easy target. I remember back when Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) was released, critics were calling the Enterprise crew "the over the hill gang."  Well, what I wouldn't give, in 2017, to have four or five more Star Trek films, today, featuring that particular "over the hill" crew.

Broadly speaking, I would hope people could judge a work of art on more than just the superficial quality of age, and looks. But that hope is, frankly, in vain. Critics often go for the low-hanging fruit. 

Despite the brickbats, I have -- since first seeing A View to a Kill in theaters in 1985 -- found myself frequently re-watching the film, as though checking in again to see if it remains such a poor effort.  I always return thinking that there is something -- something -- there.

But on re-assessment, I absolutely see the same deficits.

And yet A View to a Kill still intrigues me quite a bit. In fact, I would argue it is not nearly as bad as the other two 007 films that I name-checked above. Moore’s final outing carries such an endless fascination for me, I suppose, because it is all over the map. The tone is wildly inconsistent, for example.  It is a film of notable highs, and dramatic lows.

Consider that A View to a Kill features -- courtesy of Duran Duran -- one of the most memorable title tracks in the whole franchise (right up there with Goldfinger [1964], Live and Let Die [1973], and Skyfall [2012).

Consider, also, the film’s (generally) superior casting. The film features Christopher Walken, Grace Jones, and Patrick Macnee. That’s an “A” list supporting cast. (Let's just not talk about Tanya Roberts, yet).

In addition, many of the set pieces include amazing stunt-work and beautiful location photography, all scored to thrilling and lugubrious perfection by John Barry.

Still -- quite clearly – there’s something amiss with the film overall. Sir Roger Moore himself reported his dislike of A View to a Kill. It’s his least favorite of all his 007 appearances. He found it too violent, too sadistic, and, as noted above, judged himself too old to play the part.

Drilling down further, I suspect that what fascinates me about the film is precisely what troubled Moore. The film is darker than most of the other Bond films from this era, and in that way, an absolutely appropriate lead-in to the reality-grounded Timothy Dalton era. 

Yet for every foray into darkness and sadism, A View to A Kill hedges its bets with an unnecessary and silly joke, or action scene. The film keeps teetering towards an abyss of darkness, and then keeps backing away from it, into comic inanity.

Unlike Moore, I believe the film would have worked much more effectively if it maintained or sustained the dark atmosphere, and didn’t attempt to play so many moments lightly. A serious approach makes more sense, thematically, given the nature of the film’s villain: genetically engineered Max Zorin, and his plan for human carnage and cataclysm.

Lacking thematic and tonal consistency, A View to a Kill is a sometimes satisfying, sometimes inadequate Bond film, but ceaselessly fascinating. I understand why so many scholars and critics count it as Moore’s worst, while simultaneously feeling that there is also much to appreciate here.

Perhaps a better way of enunciating my point about the film is to say that I can view how the movie, with a few changes, could have been one of the strongest entries in this durable action series, especially as Bond prepared for a big transition to another actor, and to  another style and epoch of action filmmaking.

“Intuitive improvisation is the secret of genius.”

In Siberia, James Bond, 007 (Roger Moore) follows up on the investigation of the deceased 003, tracking down a computer microchip, produced by Zorin Industries, that can withstand an electromagnetic pulse.  The Soviets also want the chip recovered, and attempt to kill Bond before he makes a successful escape (in a submarine that looks like an ice berg).

Back in London, M (Robert Brown), assigns Bond to investigate Zorin (Christopher Walken), a former KGB agent, now entrepreneur. 

Zorin’s interests are varied. Beyond his tech company (which produces microchips), he breeds and sells horses.  At Ascot Racetrack, Bond, Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), and M16 agent Sir Godfrey Tibbett (Patrick Macnee), observe Zorin’s newest colt, Pegasus, an animal that may be the result of genetic manipulation, like Zorin himself is rumored to be.

Bond then heads to Paris to meet an informant, Aubergine (Jean Rougerie), at the Eiffel Tower, who possesses information about an upcoming horse auction at Zorin’s extravagant French estate. The informant is killed by Zorin’s hench-person, the imposing May Day (Grace Jones), who flees Bond by parachuting from the Tower.  

Bond pursues, and sees Zorin and May Day escaping together in a boat.

Bond then goes undercover, with Tibbett at his side, as a wealthy horse buyer, at Zorin’s event. There, he confirms that Pegasus is the product of genetic manipulation and steroid use. He also encounters a mystery woman, Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts), whom Zorin pays five million dollars.

The next phase of Bond’s investigation leads him to San Francisco, where Sutton lives, and where Zorin is planning Operation Main Strike, a man-made earthquake that will destroy Silicon Valley, and leave Zorin the sole world provider of computer micro-chips.

After Bond teams with Mayday to stop the earthquake, Zorin abducts Stacey, and flees the city by blimp.  Bond pursues, and the nemeses fight to the death atop the Golden Gate Bridge.

“What’s there to say?”

A View to a Kill feels so schizophrenic because it vacillates between extreme seriousness or darkness, and then moments of ridiculous humor. Instead, the film should have stayed with the serious tone, which benefited Moore’s Bond immensely in my favorite from his era: For Your Eyes Only (1981).

Why should the jokey moments have been downplayed, or jettisoned, and the darker moments, highlighted?  

For a few reasons. Consider, first the sweep or trajectory of film history.  Overall, it might be viewed as a shift from the artificial and stagey, to the naturalistic and real, or gritty. Certainly, that is the direction the Bond films have headed in, moving to Dalton, and then, finally, to Craig. Modern audiences apparently seek more reality, and less theatricality and camp in their thrillers.  A View to a Kill demonstrates the damaging juxtaposition of these two approaches, and should have settled on one.

I choose the darker, more serious approach for this film, because of the gravity of the conflict. Here, Bond challenges Zorin, a sociopath, and a person not bound by morals or laws. Zorin is also engineered (by his mentor and father-figure, a Nazi scientist named Dr. Mortner) to be physically strong, and, frankly, a (mad) genius).

Bond, by contrast, is the product of natural biology, and bound by laws and some code of ethics or morality. But 007 has his experience and training to benefit him, and make him a contender. This is a conflict of two very unlike men. In a way, the dynamic is not entirely unlike Khan vs. Kirk in Star Trek, except for the fact that Kirk is much more up-front about his deficits than Bond is. 

Except for rare occasions such as Never Say Never Again (1983), the films do not acknowledge Bond’s aging. In the Roger Moore films, furthermore, audiences don’t really know Bond’s deficits as a human being. Instead, he’s a bit of a plastic-man in this incarnation, able to undertake any physical challenge with perfect acuity. Because Bond's aging is not acknowledged in A View to the Kill, the real nature of the conflict between Zorin and Bond is lost to a certain degree.

Moore’s age could have worked for the picture, instead of against it, had it been acknowledged with Moore's sense of humor, and again, his grace. Imagine an older, more world-weary, less physically “perfect” Bond being forced to confront a kind of superman with no sense of morality or humanity.  It could have been his greatest test, and acknowledging Bond’s age would have created a greater contrast between the two characters and their respective traits.

Still, the grave or serious attitude in A View to a Kill is justified. 

One can dislike the sadistic violence, of course, but the violence makes sense given this tale. Zorin possesses as little regard for underlings as he does for his enemies. People are just a means to an end to him. They may be loyal to him, but he doesn’t care.  

His lack of caring, of empathy, is what gives him his power. Zorin can gun down his employees without caring, and then offhandedly quip that his operation is moving "right on schedule." He can kill a million people in Silicon Valley for his own ends, and not see how evil his plan is.  He can achieve his ambitious ends because he possesses no sense of his limitations, and no sense that other people matter.

These qualities make Zorin different from the Bond villains of recent vintage, who were more grounded in reality. Kamal Khan (Octopussy [1983]) was a glorified jewel thief who became enmeshed in the Cold War  plot. In the end, he was still a jewel thief. And before him, Kristatos was, similarly, a grounded-in-reality “agent” for the Soviet Union, attempting to conduct an act of espionage (acquire the ATAC and return it to his KGB masters).  

Zorin represents a dramatic return to the Drax/Stromberg school of villainy, but in far less cartoon-like terms.  The camp elements of Drax and Stromberg’s stories are mostly absent here, at least in terms of Zorin’s world, and so he emerges as a dire, physical and mental threat to Bond’s success.

Christopher Walken brings his patented weirdness -- and brilliant unpredictability -- to the role, making Zorin a dramatic and legitimate danger to 007, and the world at large.  

Significantly Drax and Stromberg were no physical match for Bond, and their megalomania had a kind of predictable movie villain logic to it. Zorin is determinedly different.  Scene to scene, the audience is uncertain how Zorin will react, or respond to challenges. Walken brings the character to life in a dramatic way, and contrary to what some critics claimed, does not take the role lightly. Instead, Walken's Zorin is an almost perfect (crack'd) mirror, actually for 007. He is a fully developed individual with sense of humor and mastery over his world, but one who lacks morality, humanity, and empathy.

May Day fits in too with the idea of A View to a Kill as a grave, serious, violent film. She works for a sociopath, and is attracted to him; to his power and strength. But ultimately, May Day possesses something Zorin lacks:  a conscience.  How do we know? Because she makes emotional connections to people (like Jenny Flex), that Zorin can’t make, or  can't even understand. 

Unfortunately May Day’s conflict could also have been developed far more than it is.  Her decision to fight Zorin plays more like a third-act gimmick than a credible character development, even if the seeds for that character development are right there, in the script, and on screen.

A View to a Kill should have been the supreme contrast between a man who kills for reasons of morality (Queen and Country, essentially) and a man who kills for no moral reason whatsoever.  The other characters, like May Day, are the collateral damage in their contest.  

Instead, however, the movie’s essential schizophrenia -- perhaps cowardice -- diminishes its effectiveness.

Let’s gaze for a moment at the (almost...) fantastic pre-title sequence in Siberia, which highlights some of the most amazing (and well-photographed) stunts of the entire Moore era…and that’s saying something, given the pre-title sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me, or the mountain climbing sequence in For Your Eyes Only. 

Barry’s score here is moody and serious, the matters at hand are absolutely life and death, and then…in the middle of it, we get a dumb joke to break the mood: California Girls by the Beach Boys (but performed by cover band) gets played as Bond uses one ski (from a bob-sled) to surf a lake. The tension of the set-up -- so assiduously established -- is punctured, and we are asked, as we are asked frequently in Moore’s era, to laugh instead of legitimately invest in 007's world.

Again and again, the movie lunges for the cheap gag, rather than embracing the seriousness of the affair. 

After Zorin has committed point-blank, brutal murder and devastating arson in San Francisco, and is about to detonate a bomb that will cause a massive earthquake and kill millions, we are treated to a joke action sequence with Bond and Sutton aboard a run-away fire engine.  

The stunts are impressive, sure, but to no meaningful, thematic, or even tonal point.  Do we really need to see a put-upon cop get his squad car pulped, while he reacts with angst?  Do we really need the draw-bridge operator  joke, as he shrinks back in his booth, recoiling from the demolition? Do we really need to see Bond swinging haplessly side-to-side, on an un-tethered fire engine ladder?

Only minutes after audiences gasp over Bond’s delicate rescue of Stacey from the roof of City Hall -- losing his footing and nearly falling from a tall ladder -- we’re suddenly in The Cannonball Run (1981), or some such thing.

As the movie leads into its amazing finale, a legitimately tense (and very realistic seeming and vertigo-inducing) fight atop the Golden Gate Bridge, we also have to get the requisite shot of Bond’s manhood in danger, as the blimp flies too near an offending antenna, and threatens his crotch. 

I’ll be honest here: The Golden Gate Bridge set-piece is one of my all-time favorites in the Bond series. 

The location shooting is amazing. The score is pulse-pounding, and the dizzying heights of the bridge rival For Your Eyes Only’s mountain-top finale. There’s a sense of chaos unloosed too, as Mortner arms himself with a grenade, it detonates, and the blimp shift.  

And then there’s the physical fight, at those vertiginous heights, between Zorin and Bond.  

Zorin is armed with an axe. Bond has nothing to rely on but his wits. It’s a great, splendidly orchestrated sequence, and very few phony rear-projection shots take away from the stunt and location work.  The fight's outcome is perfect too. Starting to slip  from his perch, Zorin giggles a little, before plunging from the bridge to his death.  

I love that little laugh, and Zorin’s brief moment of realization, before he falls. 

But before reaching that incredible conclusion, we have to deal with such absurdities as a large, loud blimp sneaking up on Stacey, a return visit to our put upon SF cop (now directing traffic), and Bond’s crotch in danger from that antenna.

These gags are not only dumb and unnecessary, they take away from the movie’s serious approach; an approach that could have led us smoothly into the Dalton era of a more realistic, graver 007 universe. We have seen so many fan edits of Star Trek or Star Wars movies in recent years. I’d love to see a fan edit of A View to a Kill in which some of the cringe-worthy gags got omitted, and the grave tone of the movie, instead, was maintained throughout. 

Obviously, such an edit would not fix some things. 

I would much have preferred to see a tired, bloodied Bond here, instead of one who can run at top speed, leap on draw bridges, or ski, and surf flawlessly through dangerous terrain. I would have rather seen a tired, huffing and puffing Bond these challenges, using his wits. I feel like that my preferred approach to A View to a Kill would have made it easier to invest in the story, and been a real proper send-off for Moore’s Bond, whom I grew up with...and love without reservation.

Could the movie have -- with that approach -- gotten beyond Tanya Roberts’ grating performance as Sutton? 

Would the strangely brutal violence in Zorin's mine have felt more appropriate, or better justified?  I suspect these deficits would have been judged differently, had a consistent tone been applied to A View to a Kill.

Again this film fascinates me almost endlessly. Sometimes -- such as in the Golden Gate climax -- it’s nearly a great James Bond movie. And some of the time a View to a Kill is a terrible Bond movie (the fire engine chase).

And the incredible thing is that from minute to minute, A View to a Kill vacillates between those two poles. There’s no middle ground.  Diamonds are Forever is glib, glitzy, inconsequential and dumb throughout; Die Another Die, ridiculous and campy to its core. 

But Moore’s final hour as James Bond is an animal all its own. A View to a Kill is a schizophrenic reach for greatness (and for the future direction of the Bond films…) that, simultaneously, plumbs the worst depths of the actor’s tenure in the role.

So, curse the bad, or appreciate the good?  I guess that's your view...to this film.

Tarzan Week: Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

First things first. Director Hugh Hudson's cinematic follow-up to his Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire (1981), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) is not particularly faithful to the events depicted in his source material, Edgar Rice Burrough's 1914 novel, Tarzan of the Apes.

For instance, in this 27-million dollar movie adaptation, Tarzan (Christopher Lambert) does not meet Jane Porter (Andie MacDowell) in the jungle; nor return for her later in the United States; in Baltimore, and then Wisconsin, specifically.

The film also largely omits Tarzan's varied (sometimes playful) interactions with a local village/tribe in Africa, plus his attempts to learn to read English himself.

And the film's climax -- in which Tarzan returns to the jungle, leaving Jane behind (ostensibly forever...) -- is also not exactly canonical; though it can certainly be rationalized in movie terms, since everyone involved in the production was no doubt thinking/hoping "sequel."

Importantly, however, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, does, in very welcome fashion, get at the human "truth" of the popular, often-told Tarzan story. Specifically, the film offers a realistic and believable excavation of that which Burroughs first imagined: the story of an orphaned human boy raised by apes in the wild, and his interactions with so-called human civilization.

If the Richard Donner Superman: The Movie of 1978 was all about "you'll believe a man can fly," then this careful, painstaking iteration of Tarzan is, perhaps, "you'll believe a man can swing on a vine."

And actually, that's no small achievement.

Over the long decades, the silver screen Tarzan has been involved in the hunt for gold (Tarzan's Secret Treasure [1941]), battled Nazis (Tarzan Triumphs [1943]) and faced down evil cults (Tarzan and the Leopard Woman [1946]). 

By deliberate contrast, Greystoke is a back-to-basics approach, focusing on the man and his identity rather than the pulp-styled enemies or cliffhanger challenges the character so often faces.

Crafted with meticulous care -- with talented actors, gorgeous locations and Rick Baker's still-impressive ape make-up -- Greystoke was widely welcomed in theaters in 1984 as "one of the best movies" of the year. Joseph Gelmis wrote in Newsday (March 30, 1984, page 7) that it is a "serious movie, a thinking man's Tarzan. It is also ravishingly beautiful, provocative" and "profoundly moving."

Much of that "profoundly moving" part arises from the considerable efforts of Christopher Lambert, an actor who is, in many ways at his absolute finest here. I also admire Johnny Weissmuller, one of Lambert's more prominent predecessors in the role of Tarzan, but Weissmuller's interpretation was a product of a different, more artificial/theatrical age in movie history. Weissmuller was a sort of muscle-bound body-builder-type, which today seems wrong for Tarzan. He was also a bit too clean-shaven and civilized to seem a believable man of the jungle.

Greystoke knowingly adopts a more natural approach, and Lambert is absolutely believable as an animalistic figure, one almost constantly in motion. His Tarzan is a creature of instinct, curiosity, and barely-contained energy. Lambert doesn't look like a body builder, either. His Tarzan is a lean, strong man who has flourished in the wild, sustained by that which nature provides. 

And much of Lambert's focused performance -- the character's sense of cunning and intelligence -- arises in his penetrating eyes. Lamberts' eyes are like lasers here, targeting objects and, in an instant, assessing them as threats or non-threats. Lambert also carries all of the character's emotional pain in his eyes, and at times, this is a powerful choice. It's an accomplished performance.

Jack Kroll in Newsweek described Lambert's Tarzan well, (March 26, 1984, page 74), calling him "a supple, feral creature, not an over-muscled hulk, whose animal grace becomes a human virtue and whose eyes, piercing but gentle, shows a keenness and clarity that over-civilized senses have lost."

This description really nails the Tarzan persona of Greystoke. Tarzan is not a super-human "hero" in any way, though he boasts the survival skills of his adopted family, the apes. Instead, the movie finds the character's vulnerable, human core.

Much of what Greystoke dramatizes is, in effect, Tarzan's sense of powerlessness in the face of mortality. 

As a baby, he is unable to prevent the death of his biological parents, the noble Claytons. 

As a teen in the jungle, he loses his ape mother, Kala, and is again. powerless to prevent death. 

Finally, upon return to civilization, Tarzan loses his kindly grandfather (Ralph Richardson) and even his ape father, who has been shipped to London to be studied. 

Thus life for Tarzan, as depicted in this film, is but a series of terrible losses; grief experienced and re-experienced.

This viewpoint, I submit, helps to explain Tarzan's final choice to return to the jungle at the film's climax. When life is so short, when death lurks around every corner, we cling to "home," to the place that helps us remember those loved ones that we've lost. For Tarzan, that place of happier memories is the jungle.

Unlike many Tarzan adventures of the silver screen, Greystoke also focuses explicitly on the differences between man's "modern" world and the primitive ape world of the jungle. Howard Kissel, writing a review in Women's Wear Daily (March 28, 1984, page 27), noted that Burroughs' book was written "when Darwinism and its social implications were still a dominant intellectual force." 

He goes on to suggest that "the book was aware of man's dual nature - simultaneously primitive and civilized." 

Greystoke gets at this point ably. It spends a little over half its running time in the jungle, as Tarzan ascends to the leadership of a local ape tribe, and about an hour in staid England, where instinct is derided and manners are treated as a paramount consideration.

Here's the difference as I see it: In the ape world, nobody tried to control Tarzan. Or if they did...he confronted and dominated (or even killed) them. In England, Tarzan becomes a pawn of sorts, one who is supposed to "represent" something, perhaps, like the innate superiority of man over beast. "You must overturn what has happened to you," Phillippe D'Arnot (Ian Holm) suggests. at one point. But Tarzan isn't interested in being a case study. He doesn't need to be "greater than the accident of his childhood," or a triumph of the "Imperial Science."

On the contrary, Tarzan is "what the jungle has made him" and just wants to be free to...live. 

As much as Tarzan loves and admires his grandfather, he knows that the land is not his to "sell" or "keep." His wisdom is different from the conventional wisdom of Darwin's England, and this also makes him a perpetual outsider.

The duality of Tarzan 's nature -- part man/part ape -- is often expressed in Greystoke through shots involving a mirror (or a reflection). "Mirror" is one of the first English words Tarzan learns, for instance. 

Early in the film, while sitting lakeside with another ape, Tarzan also spies his own reflection in the water and can detect, for the first time, how different he is from those around him. Later, he discovers the hut where his parents died and -- again -- gazes into a mirror, expressing a half-remembered familiarity with the alien world of human civilization.

Finally, when Tarzan courts Jane, Hudson shoots almost the entire scene inside the frame of a mirror, in a reflection. he inference is that by accepting Jane, by loving her, Tarzan fully enters the world of civilization, perhaps. 

There's a subtle message about human relationships here, as well. Jane loves Tarzan because he is not like the mannered buttoned-down men of the aristocracy, the men who are all around her. And yet, still, she wants to change him. As much as she admires him for what he is, she knows that in this state he is not an acceptable husband. Eventually, in a scene showcasing the nobility of women, Jane chooses Tarzan's happiness over her own.

Greystoke is made with great care and love (from a script by Robert Towne, under a pseudonym). For example, I admire the beautiful book-end views of the jungle that open/close the film, a reminder that the life of Tarzan -- indeed all our lives -- is but a blip in the life of the Earth. 

The ape-suits by Rick Baker hold up remarkable well today, nearly thirty-years after the film's production. And the performances are particularly strong, with Lambert providing a strong, sympathetic anchor. Richardson and Holm also do great work, creating very sympathetic "father figures" for Tarzan.

But two aspects of the film may prove troubling to some. The first is a technical issue. Andie MacDowell (playing Jane) is dubbed throughout the entire film by Glenn Close. Every time the young character speaks, there's an emotional disconnect between MacDowell's youthful appearance and Close's line readings. You can just tell something is off, and this fact diminishes the relationship between Jane and Tarzan in some critical, under-the-surface fashion. American accent or no American accent, MacDowell's line readings should have stayed in the film. Americans Kevin Costner (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), Keanu Reeves (Bram Stoker's Dracula) and Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly) have all played British characters and were not dubbed in their roles, and MacDowell deserves the same courtesy.

Secondly, Greystoke seems to go out of its way to not include or verbalize the name "Tarzan" in relation to Lambert's character. He is called Clayton, Jack, or simply Greystoke. I understand why this decision was made. It's another attempt to distance the character from his pulpy movie past and make this film a serious, believable interpretation of the legend. But Tarzan must be Tarzan...you can't hide his name any more than you can hide the name "Superman" (like Man of Steel attempted...) or "Batman." This movie very much wants to be about who Greystoke is -- his very identity -- and yet the name Tarzan ("White Skin") is a crucial part of that identity. The movie should have taken the name back for Tarzan, not ignored it.

My feeling about Greystoke is that it is a great first movie in a franchise that, unfortunately, never arrived. 

The movie accomplishes the difficult task of taking Tarzan's world seriously; of making the character and his environs believable and authentic to a degree never before seen. I just wish there had been a second film in the franchise, one which captured a little more of the pulp; a little more of the adventurous spirit of the Tarzan stories we know from our pop culture. Rex Reed wrote In The New York Post (March 30, 1984, page 39) that Greystoke boasts "lavish detail," "opulent sets and splendid canvases of Scottish life on the heath" but "the second half resembles all too often a boring Masterpiece Theater production on Public Broadcasting."

I wouldn't go that far, perhaps. 

Greystoke is a lush and enchanting character piece that gazes at the beating heart of Tarzan. It succeeds on those grounds. But I too -- particularly as the movie rounded out its second hour -- wished for a little more excitement, a little more action

After all, what's the point of being the Lord of the Jungle if you can't rescue Jane from a few perils like quick sand, giant snakes, or rampaging elephant? Right?

Greystoke remains a gorgeous and powerful movie, featuring perhaps one of the greatest Tarzans in film history (thanks to Christopher Lambert's performance.)  Yet when its over, you do wish the movie had also let Greystoke be the Tarzan of our popular imagination, at least for a little while.

I also would have enjoyed, I guess I'm saying, seeing a sequel with Lambert's Tarzan...fighting Nazis, Ant-Men and unearthing golden cities.

Movie Trailer: My Science Project (1985)

The Films of 1985: My Science Project

If a movie-goer desires to seek out a perfect time capsule of the year 1985, he or she should be immediately directed to Jonathan R. Betuel’s My Science Project (1985), a science fiction film that very strongly reflects the age in which it was made...right down to a scene of high school typing class and electric typewriters.

Described broadly, My Science Project is a “teens meet science fiction” action-adventure from the same year that gave audiences Weird Science (1985) and Real Genius (1985). All these films combine raucous teen humor and juvenile characters with sf imagery and concepts.

My Science Project is also, specifically, a teenager time travel adventure that landed smack-dab in the age of Back to the Future (1985) and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1988). 

Again, young characters are suddenly faced with scenarios out of H.G. Wells, and must contend not only with denizens of other times, but, often, temporal paradoxes as well. At the same time, they are concerned about flunking their classes.

Beyond these touches, My Science Project is packed, wall-to-wall, frame-by-frame with self-reflexive jokes about pop culture, evidencing a protean trend that would fully come into its own in the 1990s, particularly in the horror genre. 

In the mid-to-late eighties,  however, some young filmmakers who had grown up with television and film as constant background noise began utilizing allusions to those media as “touch stones” for an aging generation. My Science Project is at the tip of that spear.

Finally, My Science Project even attempts -- in the Reagan Era, no less -- to grapple with the divisive legacy of the 1960s and, among other issues, the Vietnam War and the anti-war counter-culture.  

Again, this was precisely where the culture soon headed in films such as Platoon (1986) and Casualties of War (1989).

With all this happening during its 95 minute confines, My Science Project should be nothing less than wall-to-wall excitement and invention. And though it’s true that the film’s pace is generally frenetic, My Science Project -- a box office bomb -- never fully manages to fully succeed on its own creative terms.

The movie is loud, busy, and buoyed by occasionally effective imagery (especially for the 1980s), but no single scene or set-piece really stands out, and none of the characters are entirely memorable, either.  Some scenes really fly, and other simply never take off.

But succeed or fail, this cult Betuel film will make you nostalgic for 1985.

“Do something special…do something original…”

At Kit Carson High School, grease monkey Michael Harlan (John Stockwell) meets with an ultimatum from his science teacher, Bob Roberts (Dennis Hopper): If he doesn’t submit an amazing final science project, he will fail the class.

While out on a pseudo-date with nerdy school reporter Ellie (Danielle Von Zerneck), Michael visits a Department of Defense Disposal Depot. 

There, in a subterranean storage facility, he discovers a strange unearthly "gizmo," an engine, or energy generator. Unbeknownst to Harlan, the instrument hails from an alien flying saucer that President Eisenhower ordered destroyed in 1957.

Michael, his wise-cracking friend, Vince (Fisher Stevens) and Ellie return to the high school with the device, which promptly absorbs energy from any technology nearby, including flashlights and car batteries.  Mr. Roberts is fascinated by the device and hooks it up to a power outlet in his science lab, an act which gives the extra-terrestrial machine access to almost infinite power.

The machine creates a vortex or warp over the school and sucks Mr. Roberts inside of it. Then, epochs from the past appear inside the high school itself.  

Michael and his friends soon encounter Neanderthals, Roman gladiators, the Viet Cong, and even a hungry T-Rex (in the school gym) in their efforts to shut down the alien generator.

“My ears are ringing like The Gong Show.”

Perhaps the biggest reason that My Science Project remains largely obscure today involves the characters. 

Not one of them is particularly memorable, or played with a lot of color. Fisher Steven’s quipping Vincent is the obvious candidate for break-out status here, but his character quickly wears out his welcome with a constant stream of pop-culture allusions and wise cracks. He seems so determined to reference TV shows and movies that it is not clear he is ever a real "person."

John Stockwell -- a fine actor (and now, director…) in films such as Christine (1983) and Top Gun (1986) -- leads the cast ably, and does a good job, but the script does him no favors. The scenes between Michael and his father and new step-mother go nowhere and have no emotional pay-off. They may be important thematically (as we'll see later in this review) but they are given no punctuation.

Worse, the “romantic” angle with Von Zerneck is never compelling or convincing (see Joe Dante’s Explorers [1985] for an innocent teen-romance that seems a bit more natural).

Additionally, the frenetic nature of the story requires the actors to run back and forth a lot, attempting to deal with surprises around every high school corridor. This approach leaves little time for character-based humor, or even a sense of a story arc. The overall feeling is of racing from one scene to the next, so that none carries any more weight than another.

The film also appears to have been heavily tampered with in the editing stage. The great Richard Masur is introduced as a Texas detective with great fanfare, and then has almost zero impact on the narrative. 

Visually, the film is hampered -- and made to look ugly at times -- by the near constant use of fog machines and neon strobes. 

Still, some moments are genuinely impressive in terms of imagery. The visual effects involving the vortex (and the dance of energy around Hopper’s character…) are really solid, and hold up nicely today. 

And for a pre-CGI age film, the sequence with the T-Rex in the gymnasium is particularly well-rendered.  In fact, it is well-rendered enough that it should be the highlight of the whole movie, except for the fact that the teenagers gun it down with Vietnam Era army rifles.  

Sure, the dinosaur is dangerous, but the scene has no sense of awe, no sense of majesty, and doesn’t build to anything beyond a quick “high.”

The explicit fun of teen movies like Explorers or Back to the Future is their comical interludes with danger, but somehow the presence of grenades and machine guns here (used against -- let’s face it -- a confused dinosaur) isn’t fun in the slightest.  

A better outcome would have been to see the T-Rex somehow trapped in the gym instead of gunned down.  All sense of fun disappears, after all, when viewers are left to gape at a dinosaur's blown-up chest cavity for a sustained length of time.

This is a prime occasion when the movie needs a light touch, but settles for flashy pyrotechnics.

Certainly, My Science Project is ahead of its time in terms of its post-modern or meta-approach to its story. 

Vince is a constant font of pop-culture information, referencing Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, The Gong Show, The Twilight Zone and even McCloud.  

It’s possible that these allusions were meant to welcome viewers and let them know that the movie shares their language and cultural history.  But the references don’t amount to much overall, except perhaps for the clip of the Morlocks from The Time Machine (1960).  

That (great) film spearheaded time travel adventures in the cinema, and warned of the downfall of man in the distant future. Here, the preoccupied teenage kids learn about an impending (neon) apocalypse, replete with mutants, and yet can’t be bothered to think about it, or try to stop it, even.  

The downfall of man has begun in earnest, perhaps.

My Science Project’s negotiation of 1960s issues is worthy of examination too. Good laughs are drawn from Hopper’s ‘hippie’ teacher who drives off, at one point, to “an anti-war alumni meeting.”  

He goes on the greatest trip of all, thanks to the alien machine, reliving his days at Woodstock, and so forth.  Hopper is a perfect casting choice, given his participation in Easy Rider (1969), not to mention The Last Movie (1971)

But implicit in these Hopper-based scenes is the sense of closure: the professor is an old guy living, resolutely, in the past, looking to relive past glories.  He is not a person of the present, or dealing with present concerns. The conflicts of the sixties are behind us, My Science Project suggests.

My Science Project puts the Vietnam Era -- and the deep-seated psychological fear it spawned of America military adventurism overseas -- behind us by thoughtlessly arming its citizen protagonists, and having them gun-battle their way through hordes of future mutants, as well as the aforementioned T-Rex. 

The under-the-surface message seems to be that it is okay for America to love guns and militarism again; that the diffidence that came with the Vietnam Era is gone in the Age of Reagan.  We all know how well this so-called "New Patriotism" eventually turned out (see: The Iraq War).

Writing at Tor.com in 2010, critic Jacob Steingroot offers audiences another intriguing (and, I think, valid) way of reading this Betuel film. 

He suggests that Harlan’s unsettled life (dealing with a break-up and a changing situation on the domestic front), is paralleled by the energy generator’s time/hopping alterations of reality.

Steingroot writes:

“Betuel depicts the nebulous feeling of being a teen. Things that seem concrete one day change dramatically the next. Harlan’s relationship with his girlfriend ends for reasons he can’t understand. He comes home to find that his single dad has remarried and their house has been refurnished with pink pillows and drapery. Vince, because of his parents’ divorce, is forced to leave Brooklyn for New Mexico....The confusing uncertainty of being a teen, the feeling that the world is out of control is echoed and expanded through the notion of the space/time warp.”

I appreciate Steingroot’s explanation of the film's leitmotif or modus operandi, here, and feel that it holds up well. Space/time does seem to operate in strange ways when you’re a teenager.  Life either moves too fast, or too slow, right?  Friendships change, perceptions change, and even bodies change, day-to-day.  Steingroot's thesis makes a re-watch of My Science Project much richer and much more thought-provoking.

Hailing from the age that brought us Back to the Future, Real Genius, and Explorers, to name just a few, My Science Project doesn’t earn an automatic “A,” perhaps, despite such a  worthwhile (and thoughtful) attempt to fully rehabilitate the picture.

Why? Well, for much of its running time, My Science Project lacks the visual and narrative classicism of a Spielberg or Dante film, missing that mark by quite a margin. 

But perhaps the movie deserves some extra credit all these years later for its self-reflexive approach to culture, and its (not-always-successful) attempt to put the sixties squarely in Harlan’s rear-view mirror. 

And if we accept the time warp as a metaphor for turbulent adolescence, perhaps there’s even more  to like and appreciate in My Science Project than meets the eye.