CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Dementia 13 (1963)

If nothing else, Dementia 13 is -- at least -- a powerful reminder that everybody has to start somewhere.

All snark aside, this super low-budget horror film (approx. $22,000) is Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut; one made under the auspices and purse-strings of Roger Corman and filmed utilizing the cast (Luana Anders, Patrick Magee and William Campbell) and locations (primarily an Irish castle and grounds) of Corman's The Young Racers.

Coppola's assignment was to create cheap horror in the psychological, violent mode of Hitchcock's runaway hit, Psycho (1960), and in that task, he succeeded rather admirably. For this is a black-and-white thriller filled with surprising axe murders, and which features the notorious "Janet Leigh Trick" (killing off a star in the film's first act). And, of course, underlying all the events is a "demented" killer boasting a surprise identity (one revealed just in time for the climax).

Dementia 13 depicts the unusual tale of the Haloran family, a moody Irish clan who - even after seven long years - reunite annually to celebrate the anniversary of a family drowning. You see, the three brothers (Richard, John and Billy) and the sick Mama all miss darling little Kathleen, the only sister among the boys...but she died under mysterious circumstances in the pond and now every year, the matriarch works herself to the point of "hysteria" at Kathleen's graveside.

This year is different, however. This year, brother John -- who suffers from a bad heart -- has brought along to the family gathering his wife: the delightfully scheming Louise (Luana Anders), a gorgeous if icy blond. She doesn't understand all the hand-wringing over Kathleen, and she certainly doesn't understand why Ms. Haloran wants to give away all the money in her estate to a charity in Kathleen's name. Louise and John could certainly use that money, for one thing, at least according to avaricious Louise.

In the film's compelling first scene (filmed almost entirely from a variety of doom-laden high angles), Louise and John go out by impenetrable night on a row boat ride, and Louise lays into John about his strange family, and how he should go about acquiring the money from their estate. To drown out his hectoring wife, John turns up a portable radio, and some weird 1960s rock/jazz music plays beneath the scene, jangling audience nerves. The combination of the heated argument and the bizarre music generate a weird tension here, and even though the film has only just begun, you'll feel yourself on edge.

When John dies suddenly of a heart attack on the boat ride, Louise promptly gets rid of the corpse (and the radio...) in the water, and returns to the Haloran estate determined to keep his death a secret and acquire her rightful share of the Haloran inheritance. To achieve this end, she will have to drive old Mama Haloran bonkers, she presumes. We thus follow Louise on a hair-raising (and dark) night-time trip into Kathleen's bedroom, which has remained untouched since the girl died seven years ago. There, amidst the detritus of a child's life, Louise tiptoes quietly and begins to gather Kathleen's dolls and toys, which she plans to cast about the grounds in order to terrify Mrs. Haloran. In a splendid bit of foreshadowing, Coppola cuts in this scene to an extreme close-up of a creepy Monkey Grinder armed with an axe. Louise is also unaware that she is being watched...

Louise's devious plan goes badly awry, however, when Louise dips into the local pond (where Kathleen died) to deposit some of the old toys. Deep beneath the surface of the water, she sees Kathleen's body apparently resting beneath a make-shift shrine with a gravestone that reads "FORGIVE ME." When a scared Louise comes back to the surface, she unexpectedly encounters an axe murderer on the grounds; one with his own twisted memories of Kathleen...

Before the film is done, this shadowy axe murderer has decapitated a local poacher (a gloriously gory head-rolling moment) and rather viscerally threatened Mrs. Haloran in an old work shed.. The family doctor, Caleb (Magee) -- here the Martin Balsam/Arbogast figure -- suspects that moody Richard (Campbell) is the culprit; that he may be insane. Caleb tries to warns Richard's hopelessly naive American fiancee, Kane (Mary Mitchel) -- a girl "raised on promises" -- that they should not be married on the family grounds. After all, Kathleen died during a wedding ceremony...and no wedding has been held in the castle since.

Kane tries to have faith in her gloomy husband-to-be, but learns of some disturbing news from Richard's brother, Billy (Bart Patton), a man-child type (think Anthony Perkins, please). After Kathleen died, Billy dreamed of being visited in his bedroom by an insane person...one who wanted to throw him into the pond and kill him. Billy has only now just realized that the insane person is...Richard. The scene in which Billy reveals his dream to Kane ("I'm always a little boy in my room...") generates a fine sense of the creeps and is perhaps the most unsettling moment in the film. Billy describes how the "dark figure" told him he was insane, and asked anyone else in the room who was insane to "nod his head" too. *Shiver.*

All the family secrets are revealed in the third act, and if the killer's identity doesn't come as a total surprise well, you certainly can't blame Coppola for putting up a good effort with precious few resources and scant little time (the screenplay was reportedly written in a matter of days). Although the slavish borrowing from Psycho grows difficult to ignore even over the sparse running time (75 minutes), Coppola nonetheless manages some inventive touches that hint of his authentic talent; not the least of which is how his moody camera/location work suggests earthly murders and unearthly hauntings simultaneously. I also appreciate how Coppola happily spreads the dysfunction around the Haloran family. "A nightmare has disturbed this family for six years," notes Dr. Caleb, and he's absolutely right: Mom is hysterical and likely in denial; Richard is belligerent and emotionally closed-off, and Billy is so haunted he's just never grown up. One event -- the death of a child -- has impacted all of them horribly, and any of them (or all of them...) could legitimately be around the bend.

Set in and about a gloomy Irish castle ("The kind of place you expect a ghost to wander around in," says one character), and with more than a touch of the film noir (especially in Louise's hard boiled voice overs early in the film), Dementia 13 fully displays seeds of Coppola's greatness, even if they had yet to flower fully.

Dinosaurus!

New From McFarland

The Great Monster Magazines

This is a critical overview of monster magazines from the 1950s through the 1970s. “Monster magazine” is a blanket term to describe both magazines that focus primarily on popular horror movies and magazines that contain stories featuring monsters, both of which are illustrated in comic book style and printed in black and white.

The book describes the rise and fall of these magazines, examining the contributions of Marvel Comics and several other well-known companies, as well as evaluating the effect of the Comics Code Authority on both present and future efforts in the field. It identifies several sub-genres, including monster movies, zombies, vampires, sword-and-sorcery, and pulp-style fiction. The work includes several indexes and technical credits.


The Truth of Buffy

Seemingly the most fantastical of television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer proves on close examination to be firmly rooted in real-world concerns. In this collection of critical essays, 15 authors from several disciplines, including literature, the visual arts, theatre, philosophy, and political science, study ways in which Buffy illuminates viewers’ real-life experiences.

Topics include the series’ complicated portrayals of the relationship between soul, morality, and identity; whether Buffy can truly be described as a feminist icon; stereotypes of Native Americans in the episode “Pangs”; the role of signs in the interaction between Buffy’s aesthetics and audience; and the problem of power and underhanded politics in the Buffy universe.


Native Americans in Comic Books

This work takes an in-depth look at the world of comic books through the eyes of a Native American reader and offers frank commentary on the medium’s cultural representation of the Native American people. It addresses a range of portrayals, from the bloodthirsty barbarians and noble savages of dime novels, to formulaic secondary characters and sidekicks, and, occasionally, protagonists sans paternal white hero, examining how and why Native Americans have been consistently marginalized and misrepresented in comics. Chapters cover early representations of Native Americans in popular culture and newspaper comic strips, the Fenimore Cooper legacy, the “white” Indian, the shaman, revisionist portrayals, and Native American comics from small publishers, among other topics.

NYPD Blah

CINE AUTOPSIS Likes Horror Films of the 1980s

Blogger J. Thomas over at CINE AUTOPSIS has just posted a positive review of Horror Films of the 1980s. Here's the skinny (but check out the whole piece):

"THE horror tome! Every DVD collector and/or horror aficionado cannot do without this book. Period. From 1980-1989, almost every film is covered alphabetically within year of release."

"...Even if you don't agree with the final judgement Muir lays on a particular film, you can not deny he writes well on the subject. This author is a fan who operates bi-laterally as a critic and historian. Anyone who cries fowl of a "missing" film is "missing" the point of this reference guide. It is almost impossible to list or actually see every horror film! I can't imagine what Muir went through for this book...To sum up, if you think you could do better, please bestow unto us that gift.

John Kenneth Muir's Horror Films of the 1980's is a must buy..."

MOVIE REVIEW: 10,000 BC

"Some truths do not survive the ages," admonishes the gravel-voiced narrator (Omar Sharif) of 10,000 BC, the first film of 2008 to cross the two-hundred million dollar mark. "Only time can teach us what is true and what is legend," the same narrator also pointedly suggests.

You think he's trying to tell us something?

These words are, essentially, director Roland Emmerich's attempt to inoculate himself and his production from carping film critics who complain that his prehistoric film - a heroic love poem - is historically inaccurate. Good luck with that one, Roland. Let me know how that works out for you...

Even with the opening disclaimer, it is extraordinarily difficult to deny that this film is amazingly, recklessly, wantonly, brazenly inaccurate. Sorry.

For instance, the film's events (a journey across several continents, it seems...) takes place in 10,000 BC, yet the main protagonist, D'Lea (Steven Strait) ends up battling Egyptian slavers on the plains of Giza (by the Nile), against the backdrop of the Sphinx of Giza, and the Great Pyramids (under construction....)

Now Roland, my friend, the Pyramids were likely constructed sometime between 2589 and 2566 BC. And the Sphinx? Perhaps around 1400 BC. Is D'Lea secretly using a Stone Age D'Lorean to time travel?

D'Lea's village is also attacked by Egyptian warlords on horseback, but the domestication of horses for man's use likely did not occur until somewhere around 5000 BC, right? And the use of sailing ships (deployed by Egyptians here too) likely occurred somewhere around 4000 BC. Jeez.

Still, give the film some plaudits. In depicting the opening of the Mesolithic Age, 10,000 BC does capture some of the events we understand to have occurred at that time: the extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, for example, and the alleged extinction of the still-controversial "brother of man, homo floresiensis (here depicted as a possibly psychic Old Mother). 10,000 BC also dramatizes the glacier melts of approximately 9600 BC, when many lands in Europe became more habitable. 10,000 BC? 9600 BC? What's a few hundred years between friends?

And, I must point out in defense of 10,000 BC, that the goofy stupidity of the film itself is matched, in large part, by the arrogance of swaggering mainstream film critics, who chose not to complain about these (myriad...) historical accuracies but instead laughed and savaged the film because the cavemen like D'Lea and his kin spoke modern English. (Tee hee. Tee fucking hee). I mean, that's a fair criticism?

Let's examine that. What language did the Ancient Romans of Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) speak? (Hint: Perfect English). What did the Ancient Spartans of 300 speak? (Hint, same thing). What do the extra-terrestrial Romulans of Star Trek speak? (Ditto!). What do Nazis speak in most war movies? Russians? What do historical Americans speak in most period pieces? In Westerns and so forth? Yep, modern English. If mainstream critics feel that cave men speaking English in a movie designed for English-speaking audiences is a disqualifier in terms of quality, then legitimate criticism has devolved to the Mesolithic era along with Emmerich's storytelling abilities.

There are plenty of reasons to deride 10,000 BC -- and boy do I mean plenty -- but the fact that stars Steven Strait and Camilla Belle speak our language is surely not one of them. My primary problem with the film is that it is unremittingly dull, emotionally flat, and over-long. The whole thing just feels empty to me, perhaps because the primary characters seem to possess no inner life or individual spirit. We watch them suffer; we watch them perform heroic acts, we watch them speak of "love," yet somehow we don't truly feel their pain or enjoy their triumphs. There's something emotionally-remote about 10,000 BC; something that prevents the viewer from taking firm interest even in the love story.

I've tried to pinpoint my problems with the film in terms of specifics, and here's what I've come up with: As a thinking viewer, I had a difficult time suspending disbelief when the cave-men encountered the Pyramids, and found the slaves lorded over by someone who was -- apparently -- a fugitive from technologically-advanced Atlantis. It sort of reminds of me of funny old time travel TV shows where the writers felt they had to shoehorn every major historical event of the 1930s into an episode set in 1933. You know what I mean? If you miraculously ended up in 1933, what are the chances you would meet a young Hitler, bump into Clark Gable, and dodge a stockbroker falling out of his window during the stock market crash? If you were lucky (very lucky...), you might encounter one of the three. 10,000 BC simply tries too hard to shoe-horn in thousands of years of human history when it isn't necessary (witness the brilliant Quest for Fire [1982] ).

The scope of the story should have been scaled back. Why not just tell the story of D'Lea's people; of the end of "nomadism" and the beginning of agriculturalism? Why not tell the story of survival when the environment changed so rapidly, and the glaciers melted (sort of a Day Before Yesterday)?

You know, before 10,000 BC was over, I was certain D'Lea would unearth a stargate in the sand and meet James Spader and that kid from The Crying Game...

But all that's just really my own intellectual masturbation. (Ewww). I mean, Gladiator is completely inaccurate in terms of the fate of historical figures and governments (Rome became a Republic again after Commodus was killed in the gladiator ring by a slave?! -- oh, I didn't realize...), and yet I find the Scott film an emotionally-involving effort, rich with human interest. So clearly, we can overlook questions of historical accuracy when we want to, can't we? So the matter must simply be that the characters here aren't interesting or dynamic enough to hold the screen in 10,000 BC.

Also, I found the special effects distracting. The early portions of the film make extensive (and I mean EXTENSIVE) use of green screen in moments that wouldn't seem to require such visual gymnastics. The production company shot the film in Namibia, New Zealand and Thailand, so what's the deal with all the overt studio fakery? I wonder if some footage was damaged or something. Whatever the cause, some of the green screen shots in the film's quieter moments (dialogue scenes for instance), I found jarring, risible and easily detectable.

The CGI in 10,000 BC is highly variable too. The first appearance of a Woolly Mammoth herd is ultra-impressive, but the stampede is terrible. The saber-tooth tiger (of the poster) is terribly fake in detail and movement. Again, I hasten to add that bad special effects aren't an automatic disqualifier for me in terms of liking/not liking a film, so the fault is elsewhere. These things wouldn't seem so important if we *felt* the story along with the characters.

Watching the film, I felt for much of the running time that 10,000 BC was a pale (very pale...) imitation of Conan the Barbarian (1982), only with no Conan in the picture. Just imagine how dull that would be...and you might get a sense of why this movie fails. It attempts to tell us a "legend" of a "great hero" but D'Lea is just... D'ull.

And also, the rules of this world are not carefully established by the screenwriters or by Emmerich. Is the Atlantean a god from another planet? Is the Old Mother legitimately psychic? Is there magic in the world (suggested by Evolet's miraculous third-act resurrection and the fulfillment of a long-held prophecy), or not? The film never settles on an approach or single vision. Is this prehistoric adventure or magical prehistoric fantasy?

Also, the film's other major deficit is the total lack of self-awareness and humor. Humor is an essential quality in the human equation. It existed in caveman times, just as it exists now. Humor is a coping mechanism; it is a catharsis. Yet in addition to being very flat, 10,000 BC is very, very dour and serious. A moment or two of humor might have made D'Lea's long journey a bit more bearable.

10,000 BC received reviews much more cruel and savage than it deserved. By no means is this a good film, and by no means do I recommend you see it, but jeez -- it received worse reviews than The Love Guru did!!! I found the film dull, lugubrious and inaccurate, but is it the worst thing I've ever seen? Not by a long shot. It's not even the worst thing I've seen this year. The film isn't good or exciting, but nor is it offensive, so I don't really comprehend the derisive hostility towards it. Hollywood has a long history, after all, of making historically inaccurate, silly caveman movies. A lot of people I know cherish those films. A lot of people I know would rush to the theater just to see a silly caveman movie...

I will say this, ultimately, for 10,000 BC: your enjoyment of it may vary entirely on your actual (or mental) age. If this film came out in 1979, aired on the 4:30 PM movie, and I was ten years old...I would have absolutely loved it. There's a great chase scene with giant ostriches (or "Terror Birds"), pitting man against prehistoric monster, and were I an unjaded kid, I would have really, really dug it.

But by the same token, once the mammoth stampede ended; once the saber-tooth tiger was tamed, once the terror birds turned the fleeing cave-men into lunch, I think -- even as a child -- I would have found the rest of the film really, really boring.

Where's Raquel Welch and her fur bikini when you need her?

Muir to appear on Sy Fy Radio

Hey everybody, good news here: I'm going to be a guest on Sy Fy Radio next Wednesday night, July 16th, 2008 to discuss my online series, The House Between with talk show host and Sy Fy guru (and editor-in-chief), Michael Hinman. You can listen in on the show by following this link. I'll post a reminder again next week as we get closer to the show.

And hey -- you know what I'm going to say, right? -- don't forget to keep voting for The House Between as the "best web production" in the 2008 Sy Fy Genre Awards. You can find the ballot by clicking on the Twlight Zone-style icon in the upper right hand side of the frame here. You can vote every day through July 25, so get cracking! (And thanks...)

Theme Song of the Week #19: Fantastic Voyage (1968)

(Atari) Harpoons Away!

Comic Book Flashback #10: The Micronauts, Chapter One: Homeworld (1978)

It's strange and little disconcerting for me to admit that more than a few of my favorite comic-books of all-time originated with...toys; with merchandise. This means these epics were born of -- essentially -- marketing "synergy." Somehow, that makes me feel remarkably shallow (and a little embarrassed). Still, it's useless to deny the truth: the comic-books that I fell in love with as a youth in the late 1970s carry titles such as ROM: The Space Knight, Shogun Warriors and the best of all: The Micronauts.

The Micronauts comic (from Marvel) premiered in January of 1979 (for just thirty-five cents!). This was the era of Star Wars and the original Battlestar Galactica, and I suspect that one of the reasons I adored this comic so much is that this complex book serves as an excellent combination of all the genre elements I appreciated in both those franchises, and in Star Trek as well. The stories of the Micronauts are rife with colorful and heroic characters, spectacular space battles, and even a sense of galactic "exploration" in terms of the characters leaving their "Microverse" and ending up on Earth in the twentieth century.

The first issue sets up the premise for the epic saga (which begins a "micro-cosmic NEW SERIES in the MIGHTY MARVEL tradition!"). Written and drawn by Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden, "Homeworld" lands the reader on a far away world ("once the proudest planet in the subatomic microverse...") that has been torn apart by political and class strife.

In a clever nod to Russian history and the story of the Czars, an insurgency led by the evil scientist Baron Karza wipes out the upper class and royal family. Or, as the comic puts it, "The elite of Homeworld have been overthrown by a small body of insurgents." The entire world, it seems, has "turned upon its hereditary rulers!" In turn for destroying the ruling class, the people have been promised virtual immortality by Karza, who runs the planet's grim "Body Banks," which ensure replacement body parts and eternal life for all those who obey the despot. In this world, organs and body parts are a commodity to be traded and used, and one suspects there is a Cold War parable here about Communism and a perceived lack of individuality amongst the Marxists.

The noble ruling family, led by Prince Argon and Princess Mari, can't compete with the promise of never-ending life, and is all but massacred in the rebellion. Argon is captured by Karza (and submitted to experimentation in the body banks...), and Mari is forced to cloak her identity, becoming "Marionette," a kind of pleasure-bot. Meanwhile, Karza's Dog Soldiers and his Acroyear minions destroy the so-called elitists with their "hovering strata-stations" and other weapons of mass destruction. These devices are given beautiful life in the comic; essentially the Micronaut toys made to appear hyper-realistic, and extremely cool.

While the peoples' revolution burns hot on Homeworld, an old starship called Endeavor returns from a thousand year voyage of exploration. The ship is "old...pitted and pocked by the ravages of time and space." Aboard the ship is Commander Arcturus Rann and his robot servant, Biotron. He expects a hero's welcome on return to Homeworld, but instead is termed a dangerous "X-Factor" by Baron Karza (Rann's former instructor at school...) and greeted with a firing squad.

After being blasted by Dog Soldiers, Rann awakens to find himself an unwilling gladiator in Homeworld's deadly games (bread and circuses for the bored populace.) As a prisoner, Raan meets a noble Acroyear warrior/prince who refused to submit to Karza (and whose Brother, Shaitan, is the primary collaborator with the Baron). Rann also encounters an "Insectorvid" named Bug from the planet Kaliklak ("hive world of the Insectivorids")...and teams with them, as well as Princess Mari, to escape the games. An attraction grows between Ran and Mari, and he even learns that his parents -- Dallan and Sepsis -- are revered as symbols of the Resistance because they were the first to defy Karza nearly a millennium ago.

Before long, Rann, Mari and the others flee the planet in the old Endeavor (kind of a cross between the Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon...) and are pursued by Karza's "Thorium Orbiters." In an attempt to escape from the dedicated pursuit, Rann takes his straining ship beyond the very limits of the "space wall" separating the tiny Microverse from another reality all together...and these dynamic characters are soon bound for adventures on Earth.

For a comic-book based on a set of (highly-popular) toys, there's a commendable amount of complexity to The Micronauts; complexity which makes many issues a highly-involving read, even thirty years after original publication. For instance, Rann spent a thousand years probing microverse space "telepathically" aboard the Endeavor, and in the process, accidentally created a mysterious doppelganger for himself, called "The Time Traveler," (also known as "The Enigma Force." ) This character plays a crucial role in the resolution of the rebellion and the destruction of Karza. There are also the mysterious "Shadow Priests" of Homeworld, pursuing their own strange and hidden agenda.

Some characters certainly appear reminiscent of Star Wars, particularly the big droid/little droid combo of Biotron (a 6000 series of "thinking roboids") and Microtron. And some elements seem familiar from Dune (the priests), and Buck Rogers too (the man returning to a world changed after several hundred years), but overall the comic boasts a deeper grounding in human history. I mentioned the story of the Czars, but the Prince of the Acroyears is another example of how our history has been re-cast as cosmic history. This character is often described as "Spartan" in nature, and in essence is a representative of a warrior race dedicated to combat and honor (think Leonidas, I guess...).

To some extent, Star Trek: The Next Generation picked up on this idea in the late 1980s, when the Mongol-like Klingons of the original series were transformed into honor-obsessed Spartan-type warriors in episodes such as "Sins of the Father." In issue #12 of The Micronauts, ("Blood Feud"), for instance, Prince Acroyear had to return home and combat Shaitan (a character not unlike Duras), for the ruler-ship of their rough world called "Spartak" (again, the Spartan reference...). I'm not saying that TNG stole anything (any more than Micronauts stole from anything in particular...), only that this comic is a place of intelligent, fascinating ideas; ones that reflect our history in interesting and telling ways.

I remember in 1980 and 1981 -- when I was in fifth grade -- I would stay home sick from school some days and spend the entire time reading Micronaut comics. This was before VCRs were common-place, and so the Micronauts -- in a very important way -- represented the only space epic at my fingertips. Through my entire adult life, I've kept those Micronaut comics and in going back and re-reading the adventures, I can't help but suspect that the time has come for a (faithful) movie adaptation. The saga features a distinctive look and style (based on the toys); colorful characters, some great metaphysical mysteries, and an epic, historical sweep.

Hey, if you can make a movie based on Transformers...

Space Knight '79