Once You Are in Hell, Only the Devil Can Help You Out: The Tao of Jigsaw

Without a doubt, the most prominent silver screen bogeyman of the last decade is John Kramer, or Jigsaw (Tobin Bell).

This memorable horror villain has headlined a whopping six franchise feature films spanning the years 2004 to 2009, with a seventh Saw installment on the way (in 3-D) soon.

Much like historical cinematic bogeymen such as Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Hannibal Lecter, Jigsaw's very nature informs us about ourselves; about the things occurring in our world during his terrifying reign from Saw (2004) through Saw VI (2009).

The first important thing to understand about John Kramer is that he is a man who has known personal hardship. John's unborn child died in the womb when a weaselly drug addict named Cecil (Billy Otis) slammed a door into the belly of the expectant mother, John's wife, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell).

If that tragedy wasn't sufficient suffering for one man to endure, John Kramer also weathered a terrifying car accident and the associated, bloody injuries, and -- finally -- was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. In some ways, John Kramer has been made to suffer more -- and in a shorter span -- than the Old Testament's Job. Like that Biblical character, Kramer was once a prosperous, happy man. But he was tested by -- if not God -- then certainly life.

Instead of surrendering to his enduring pain and loss, John Kramer selected another path. Sick and dying, he began to see that all those supposedly "healthy" people around him did not cherish they lives; that they were ungrateful for all they had.

So John set about to test these ungrateful, unaware people in the most painful, life-threatening manners possible. These tests or "traps" (or "games," as John Kramer terms them) comprise the gory, body-annihilating set-pieces of the Saw series. Each game is introduced with Jigsaw's euphemistic opener, "I want to play a game," and usually ends with a simple "game over."

Contextually, Jigsaw's flesh-rending, trademark games represent the crucible through which these ungrateful individuals must face their crimes, their weaknesses, their oversights, and their mistakes. In keeping with the post-9/11 context of the Saw films, nobody gets off scot-free, without losing something (usually a limb or other body part...).

For example, Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) in Saw (2004) -- who has been unfaithful to his wife -- loses a foot to rescue his family. A predatory lender in Saw VI (2009) must hack off her own arm to survive, giving up a literal pound of flesh.

Interestingly, those victims/player who do endure through Jigsaw's bloody gauntlet may also arrive somewhere special in terms of understanding: at the same destination, in fact, as their secret guru, their anonymous teacher, John Kramer.

In other words, they come to appreciate life all the more for their harrowing journey. Jigsaw's mantra, "Cherish Your Life" becomes a phrase to live by.

I hasten to add, this is not a small lesson in the Age of Terror. We should cherish our lives, the Saw movies remind us, because easy, happy, seemingly-eternal continuance isn't a given. As an ex-President is fond of reminding us, "oceans can't protect us anymore." Government can't protect us, either, as Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil Spill have proven. Life can be taken away in a heartbeat, even in modern America. That's an essential part of the human experience, despite our affluent, technological culture.

The Saw movies actually concern several entangled, interconnected aspects of American politics in the 2000s. There is blowback: a repayment for bad deeds by a wronged person; certainly a metaphor for what some people might deem imperialist foreign policy leading up to 9/11.

There is also the reckoning that comes from surviving an absolutely destructive, horrifying, and traumatic event, like the 9/11 attack itself. That attack (and Katrina, etc.) remind us how lucky we are to be alive. How the bell could have tolled for us; or for our own beloved family members in such a crisis.

And most importantly, perhaps, there is the hypocrisy of personal judgment imposed on other people. What elevates Jigsaw to the realm of villain and bogeyman-- and not merely a righteous moral avenger -- is the fact that he forces his belief system on others. He believes he knows the answers, that he knows the "right way" and that others must follow those ways so they can function on his "higher" moral level. This is self-righteous and intrusive in the extreme, yet Jigsaw sees his actions simply as helping people.

In other words, Jigsaw imposes upon his victims "games" in which they must specifically choose between two pre-arranged alternatives. Yes, they may learn from the horrifying experience. But the fact that they must learn at all is a result of Kramer's actions, no matter how John chooses to see it or rationalize it.

Jigsaw remains popular, I submit, because people of all political persuasions can interpret his behavior as being either Bush-like (pre-emptively forcing his will on others because he believes God wants him to; that he is on a holy mission) or Obama-like (legislating new social order from the bully pulpit).

I'll stay out of that particular argument...but I submit a case could likely be made from either end of the spectrum.

Finally, the Saw films boast another important and timely quality. They are unbelievably gory. Saw III (my choice for the best film in the cycle) is probably the most effectively gory film I've ever seen. By that, I mean simply that the movie boasts a powerful emotional impact, and isn't just a display of spaghetti special effects for shock and awe. This quality too is a product of our times. In the 2000s, Americans saw the bloody corpses of Uday and Qusay Hussein on cable television, photographs of prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, news footage of American corpses hanged and burned to cinders in Iraq, and even a contractor decapitated by Al Qaeda, on the Net. You want to complain about "torture porn?" Don't point at the Saw films as devilish culprits (they merely reflect what's happening in our culture), point out the mainstream media for playing such ghastly images on a seemingly endless loop, day in and day out.

Given all this pertinent historical context, let's now play a game ourselves. Let's enumerate the most important qualities of this particular silver screen "monster," or the Tao of Jigsaw.

1.) He understands that "The Knowledge of Death changes everything."

Because of his own personal experiences, Jigsaw has come to understand what truly matters in life.

It's not wealth. It's not material belongings. It's personal morality;

It's the way we treat each other in this life. As strange as it sounds, many of Jigsaw's games are designed to foster that understanding.

Because Jigsaw has accepted his own death, he has no fear, no desire for possessions, no need to gain further power or prominence in the culture. Instead, he uses the knowledge of death to "see" other people as they truly are, and pinpoint and expose their faults.

It was never done in the Saw films, but it would have been truly interesting to see John's self-righteous moral lens turned on himself; to see someone else at the same plateau of "higher" morality judge him. His students, Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) and Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) accept his dictates almost mindlessly; and other characters, such as Kerry (Dina Meyer) and Rigg (Lyriq Bent) reject him out of hand, considering him simply a criminal to be caught. Who judges the judge?

2.) He picks the right tool for the right job. Or, the punishment fits the crime.

Jigsaw is fiendishly clever and yet amazingly insightful in the manner he selects his victim's deadly "games." The games almost universally have something to do with the victim's bad behavior.

A corrupt cop, Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) is positioned by rope over a melting ice cube of considerable size, for instance, a metaphor for his "slippery" moral behavior on the job, in Saw IV. When the ice melts...he will hang.

In Saw III, Jigsaw makes an abused woman's continued survival dependent on the physical separation from her abuser (her husband). They are both impaled on long spikes, but the beaten-down woman can pull herself off...and kill her spouse in the process. In other words, this woman must release herself from the shackles of co-dependency, instead of going back to the man that hurts her. Again. She can either die with him, or establish independence in a...pointed fashion.

In Saw VI, a slimy health insurance agent, Will (Peter Outerbridge) mercilessly chooses every day which strangers should live and die according to business, according to health insurance policy "rules." He issues death sentences with an eye not towards morality, but towards the company's bottom line. Jigsaw understands this, and thus makes Will's behavior on the job personal. In his deadly game, William must choose from among his friends, family and co-workers who should live and who should die. He suddenly sees the emotional underpinnings of his policy choices clearly.

Even Amanda's ghoulish game in Saw -- which involves a helmet that will literally rip her face apart -- seems to fit the nature of her individual personal demons. She is a junkie. She puts poison into her body on a regular basis. Amanda cares so little for her "temple," apparently, that she is willing to destroy it. Accordingly, Jigsaw provides a game which requires her to protect it from total destruction; the very opposite of her typical behavior.

3.) He understands that we're all "connected."

We're all in this life together. We are all citizens of the planet Earth. Ocean may separate us, but we are all of one globe.

Jigsaw understands that all human beings are "connected" through our choices, and attempts to teach this lesson to his victims.

In Saw V, Jigsaw arranges a game for five co-conspirators involved in a real-estate swindle. All five of the people enmeshed in this "deal" were looking out only for themselves; only for their own bottom-line. The end result is that several homeless people died in a fire they caused. They were so busy looking out for their percentage, they forgot the human equation. They committed murder because lining their pockets was more important.

Accordingly, Jigsaw lands all five conspirators in a game in which one person's fate dictates everybody's fate. The five people-- like we citizens of Planet Earth -- are connected. And if they learn their lesson -- if they realize the nature of this connection -- they will survive with minimal carnage and bodily harm. If they don't realize this, if they only look out for themselves, there can be no winner. Everyone will die.

In essence, this is an environmental message. We share the Earth. We either treat it right so we all can enjoy it, or we risk losing the whole game for everybody.

4.) He knows that immortality exists not in continued survival, but in the children.

Jigsaw, John Kramer, knows that he is going to die. He knows that the body weakens, and that life ends. He is not immortal.

Throughout the Saw films, then, he takes on multiple apprentices, "spiritual" children who can learn what he knows, and follow in his fatherly footsteps. These children are Amanda, Hoffman and Rigg.

Some of John's heirs prove disappointments. Rigg is a failed student. He is shown Jigsaw's way...but never takes to it.

Amanda and Hoffman both very soon prove to be more sadistic and less fair-minded than John (who believes that "everyone deserves a second chance"). Specifically, it is always possible for victims to survive one of John's games, if they play well, if they choose correctly. There is escape if the lesson is learned and understood, and understanding is demonstrated to the game master.

In Amanda and Hoffman's games -- as Detective Kerry learns the hard way -- the deck is stacked. There is only death and annihilation at the end of the contest, and so John's brand of justice becomes simply "vengeance." As self-righteous as John is, at the very least he plays by the rules. His offspring do not.

Yet sometimes siblings fight (Amanda and Hoffman boast a terrible rivalry...), and sometimes children disappoint their parents...but Jigsaw knows that the future is theirs, regardless. He attempts to share his wisdom with them, even taking into account that they are not "him" and can never be "him." He is both a good and bad father, I suppose. Good, because he teaches his children how to live. Bad, because that way to live is, well, at best self-righteous, at worst evil.

In a deep (and yet exquisitely gory...) fashion, the Saw movies are deliberately all about our moral decisions, and about the way we pass judgment on others for their moral decisions. We can look at the context of the films, the years from 2004 - 2010, to glean a better understanding of the movies, but perhaps the most critical aspect of the Tao of Jigsaw is human nature itself. John Kramer -- Jigsaw -- will likely carry relevance and meaning for us so long as human nature remains unchanged.

In other words, "the games have just begun..."

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Primer (2004)

"How many times would it take, before he got it right? Three? Four? Twenty? I've decided to believe that only one more would have done it. I can almost sleep at night, if there's only one more..."

"...Slowly and methodically, he reverse-engineered a perfect moment. He took from his surroundings what was needed, and made of it something more ..."

-A frightened Abe (David Sullivan) debates the pitfalls of amateur time travel and the illusion of control in Shane Carruth's Primer.

The word primer may be defined in a couple of ways. For instance, a primer is an elementary book or text that introduces and prepares a reader for an understanding of a particular topic.

Or, a primer could be the first layer of paint applied in a project, before the final layer goes on.

Shane Carruth's award-winning, low-budget mind-bender Primer (2004) concerns two ingenious, ambitious young men in Dallas, Abe (David Sullivan) and Aaron (Carruth), who accidentally discover time-travel...in their garage workshop.

These two engineeers then proceed to play with time itself as though it were a primer, a dress-rehearsal that they can use, re-use, and practice with until they get things exactly the way they desire.

In other words, Abe and Aaron keep re-living the same incidents -- slathering on a new layer of paint, over familiar events, as it were -- certain that after five, ten, or even twenty iterations of the same event (like a party...), time will finally see things their way. They believe they can actually master a moment; control the direction of time and produce beneficial outcomes. Maybe not at all once. But eventually.

A downside is that Abe and Aaron's method of time travel may not be even remotely safe. After several sojourns back in time, the men begin to spontaneously bleed out of their ears...and they can no longer hold a pen steady when they try to write notes. Worse than the physical ramifications, however, Abe and Aaron eventually lose all trust in each other.

What if the other guy is using the time travel mechanism (a long box that seems like a coffin...) to his own personal advantage, and is keeping secrets about it?

"What's worse," asks Aaron, "thinking you're being paranoid or knowing you should be?"

Primer, which was made for a meager $7,000 dollars, is a cinematic head-trip of the highest order. It compellingly follows two characters who are "out-of-their-depth" according to the dialogue, and places them into frightening situations in which they must debate causality, paradox, and "recursive" loops. As a consequence, Abe and Aaron promptly find themselves in a world where evidence of their sloppy time-travel handiwork is everywhere. For instance, one night the two men run into a prospective investor who has already used their "box" (the time machine) and is now in some kind of mysterious vegetative state.


Why? The reality in which this man's trip to the past (Abe and Aaron's present...) occurred no longer exists. It's been erased from time....by Aaron and Abe. Yet the man is still present in our world, though now he never even made the trip in the first place. He's just a time-time travel byproduct...a side-effect of the process.

Time travel is described in the film "as the most important thing any living organism has ever seen," and yet Abe and Aaron hardly treat their momentous discovery with appropriate respect. They make mistakes, they break their own rules and all of existence could be at stake.

For instance, several days in a row, Abe and Aaron travel back in time several hours (the limit of their machine's capacity) and buy stocks that double in value...to get rich quick. Similarly, Aaron fantasizes about punching his white-collar boss in the nose, and then going back in time and preventing himself from doing it. These are not exactly philanthropic endeavors.

These men are simply children who "play" at life, and believe no mistake can't be undone. All of life is just a dress-rehearsal, a primer, and there's always time to make things right on the next go-round. To state that they are both short-sighted doesn't exactly make the point. These guys are on a juvenile power trip. "We know everything, okay? We're prescient," Aaron suggests.

But Abe comes to fear the power they wield, and attempts to use a secret "fail safe" time machine to undo everything he and Aaron have done...but Aaron is, at heart, a shark, and has already anticipated Abe's second thoughts. Abe's discovery of Aaron's true nature makes for one of the film's most unsettling sequences, which plays like a commentary, perhaps, on human nature.

Although it features no action scenes, no special effects, and no name actors, Primer remains one of the most exhilarating, imaginative motion pictures I've seen in years. The film is alive with smart, overlapping dialogue and a spine-tingling sense of anticipation and fear as Abe and Aaron delver deeper into the mysteries and pitfalls of their surprise discovery. Primer is unfailingly smart, and as a rule, we movie critics never like to admit when a movie is smarter than we are.

This movie is smarter than I am.

I had to watch Primer twice to piece (most of) it together.

Well, that's not exactly true. The time travel mechanics and scientific aspects of the film are much more than "basic mechanics and heat 101," but the emotional and moral aspects of the film are plain enough for general audiences to comprehend easily on a first viewing. The film takes the audience from the thrill of inventing something new, something that could change the "world" to the disappointment that, in the wrong hands, nothing important changes. Even time travel is just another get-rich-quick-scheme, a short-cut for men who feel disenfranchised by the establishment and want to leap-frog, illicitly, into the realm of the millionaire.

In a way, time travel in Primer is almost comparable to nuclear power. Yes, it is enormously advantageous for those who wield it, but it boasts troubling side-effects. In particular, it creates byproducts that are not so desirable. In nuclear power, it's spent nuclear fuel, depleted uranium and other wastes that are created through fission. In time travel, it's unexpected consequences: people without a past or future (like the vegetative man), or a possibly murderous duplicate from a non-existent past who is locked away in the attic and trying to break free.

But what Primer does so well is this: It makes us realize that nothing is for free. There's always a cost to power, nuclear or otherwise.

Primer opens with Abe, Aaron and two other men toiling in the garage, using their expensive equipment to create something new. Anything new, really. There are shots of the men laboriously preparing envelopes at the kitchen table for prospective investors in hopes of generating interest...and a budget for their work. And there are domestic scenes here too: of a patient wife, and a new baby. The pressure to "get rich" and support the family is palpable, and so the viewer quickly becomes invested in the travails of Aaron and Abe. They don't want to be office slaves their whole life, tethered to a predictable routine in which they inevitably fail to achieve their dreams. Aaron and Abe -- both engineers -- are also facing a unique timetable of extinction. "You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty?" a technician jokes. "They take them out and shoot them..."

Since time is running short for these men to make their mark in the world (as well as their millions), time travel presents Abe and Aaron an opportunity to escape the 9-to-5 drudgery so many of us face...and yet these are clearly not the men you would want to discover time travel, accidentally or not. Accordingly, the film shifts moods many times as it races through its 78-minute running time. It goes from a feeling of giddy discovery to a fear of the unknown, to downright paranoia, and the result is that when the movie ends, you feel like you've been holding your breath the whole time. You've gone from identifying with Aaron to actively fearing him.

Primer is truly that most mythical of cinematic beasts: the sci-fi movie that fans always claim they long for and dream about. One about human nature, one featuring a brilliant script, and one that puzzles out every ramification of its premise with inspired cleverness. In every sense (and aided by Carruth's able, almost cinema-verite-style cinematography), Primer feels alarmingly real. There's nothing stereoptypically Hollywood about this movie; even the time machine device (explained in laborious, wonderful detail) looks like something created in a garage, not by a special effects wizard.

And the implications of time travel, as explained by Primer, are terrifying.

If you and your best buddy discovered time travel today, would you trust him (or her) to monkey around with all our yesterdays? Or as the movie's tag-line puts it: What happens if it actually works?

Is anyone thinking that far ahead?

The Cult-TV Faces of: Clint Howard

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 110: Space:1999: "Mission of the Darians" (1975)

Every now and then, I return here to my continuing exploration of Space: 1999, the landmark Gerry and Sylvia Anderson TV space adventure from the mid-1970s....the era of Watergate, the Energy Crisis, and the War in Vietnam.

This series was the subject of my very first published book, 1997's Exploring Space: 1999 (McFarland and Company., Inc.), now available in Kindle Edition.

I've also featured over the years on this blog cult-tv flashbacks of the popular and scary 1999 episode "Dragon's Domain," as well as my own personal favorite installment, Johnny Byrne's "Force of Life."

Not long ago, I also posted an in-depth survey of Space: 1999's horror mythology.

Since one of the projects I'm working on right now is an officially licensed Space: 1999 novel (entitled "The Whispering Sea"), I've been pondering this classic series a great deal; and in particular the fashion in which talented writers Johnny Byrne and Christopher Penfold crafted meaningful and relevant drama out of real-life events, contemporary events.

Science Digest once aptly termed Space: 1999 "a visually stunning, space-age morality play that chronicles the downfall of 20th-Century technological man," and that quotation really gets to the crux of many of the series' mind-blowing narratives.

During Year One, author and script-editor Johnny Byrne penned an outstanding entry called "Mission of the Darians," the tale of the intrepid Alphans rendering help and assistance to a damaged space ark from the planet Daria.

What Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) and his rescue team discover on the colossal, nearly-destroyed spaceship, however, is a real horror. Because of a nuclear accident on board the Ark generations earlier, the Darians have splintered into two societies, two classes.

Existing on one level of the damaged ship are primitive, mutated Darians, ones who have no technology, and worship a deity called "Neman." On another level are the technologically-advanced, genetically "pure" Darians. They are led by the likes of aristocratic Kara (Joan Collins) and Captain Neman, who exploit the unknowing primitives of Level 7 as a "resource." More specifically, the "pure breed" Darians manipulate the primitives' belief in God to abscond with body parts...for limb replacement surgery...and food.

Simply put, the Darians are cannibals. The upper class feeds on the lower class. Literally. Commander Koenig, Victor Bergman (Barry Morse), astronaut Alan Carter (Nick Tate) and Dr. Russell (Barbara Bain) learn about the Darian society up-close-and-personal, and Russell is herself almost used as "spare parts" in a Darian surgical theatre.

As Johnny Byrne noted on more than one occasion, the creative impetus for "Mission of the Darians" came from a real life, disco-decade story about human nature...and survival. On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the inhospitable Andes mountains on the way to Santiago, Chile. Forty-five rugby team players were on board the doomed flight. Twelve people died in the crash, and another five expired from injuries sustained in the accident. With no medical supplies, no food, and no immediate possibility of help (the survivors learned from radio news broadcasts that the search for them had been called off...), the survivors resorted to cannibalism, to eating the flesh of their dead comrades.

On December 23, 1972, sixteen survivors were rescued from Flight 571, suffering from acute frost-bite, dehydration, malnutrition and altitude sickness. Their harrowing story was related in the best-seller, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974; J.B. Lippincott). Johnny Byrne later told TV Zone magazine, in relation to "Mission of the Darians" that

"

The Andean plane crash had happened, and I was struck by the fact that people had eaten each other to live." (David Richardson. TV Zone, Issue # 54: "Writing 1999: Johnny Byrne." Page 10, 1992.).

Later, Byrne informed me an in interview that his goal in crafting "Mission of the Darians" was not to make villains of the story's cannibals (or by extension, those who had resorted to cannibalism here on Earth.) "They had suffered a catastrophe and were trying to survive, and so the Darians weren't evil," Byrne explained to me. "Cannibalism happens. Flesh is flesh, whether it is human flesh or animal flesh. When I wrote that episode, it had just happened [in the Andes]..."

This idea of desperate times calling for desperate measures goes back to one of Space: 1999's most important and enduring "memes," what The Los Angeles Times' Dick Adler termed "limited options for survival" in a domain where resources are scarce.

The same writer also noted that where Star Trek had been "recklessly liberal," Space: 1999 was far more "realistic" in approach.

When I read Byrne this particular quote, he approved of Adler's observation, calling it "astute." "Space:1999 represents a very definite shift from the 1960s to the 1970s," Byrne elaborated. "It wasn't a hippie dream. It was the wake-up after the dream."

In Exploring Space:1999 I note that not one of the alien cultures encountered by the Alphans in Year One are technologically less advanced than the turn-of-the-century Alphans.

As "advanced" peoples, these alien cultures thus prove examples (or teachers) for the humans of Alpha to either emulate or reject. For instance, In "The Guardian of Piri," Koenig rejects the Pirian manner of "perfection" because it robs humanity of its impetus to achieve. In "Missing Link," Koenig likewise rejects the Zennite way of life because it values intellect entirely over emotions, and Koenig still believes it is "more important to feel" than to dispassionately reason. In Byrne's "Voyager's Return," the Alphans reject a society that has found purpose only in vengeance, the Sidons. And on "The Last Enemy," the Alphans encounter two humanoid races that have fallen into a state of everlasting war, and reject that outcome as well.

If, as viewers, we are to believe that the Alphans are, perhaps, being "guided" to a particular destiny (as Byrne's Year One denouement, "The Testament of Arkadia" indicates) then these particular planetary stops (Piri, Delta, Zenno, etc.) along the way are, essentially, object lessons for a species that seeks a second chance in space (after the destruction of the Earth's environment/civilization following the premiere episode, "Breakaway.")

In "Mission of the Darians," the Alphans receive another object lesson about survival in outer space. In particular, they are confronted with a terrible "what if" scenario that mirrors, in many ways, their own forseeable future. Without resources, and facing a long trip to a destination planet or "home," the humanoid Darians have fed on themselves, on their people, and on their people's hopes. They've even fed on their people's spiritual beliefs to assure continued survival. This "what if" situation is put into explicit perspective for John Koenig by a final question from Alan Carter.

The pilot asks his commander: "If the same thing happened on Alpha, would you have chosen differently?"

Notably, Koenig doesn't answer the question directly. "Remind me to tell you sometime," he quips, deflecting the query.

I asked Byrne specifically about this exchange, and he told me that Koenig's deliberate non-answer is particularly important. Koenig could not have chosen differently, Byrne explained, because ultimately survival is the name of the game for mankind. Even the humane John Koenig, -- if trapped in a desperate situation -- would act...desperately.

What makes "Mission of the Darians" such a powerful and enduring episode of this 1970s series, I submit, is that Byrne offered a very clever space-age parallel for the Andes story, on virtually all fronts.

For instance, the survivors of the plane crash who resorted to cannibalism sometimes likened the process of eating the dead to Christianity's sacred "Holy Communion."

Likewise, Byrne's fictional Darian society -- which uses a "God" Neman and angels (men in space suits) to abduct healthy, non-contaminated members of the society as food stuffs and replacement "parts" -- incorporates this spiritual, religious angle in its narrative; though in an entirely futuristic/space-age setting.

Byrne also inventively and imaginatively takes the idea of "cannibalism" to the next level here. In "Mission of the Darians" cannibalism is not just eating the dead but harnessing the dead for personal (and species) immortality; and in a very real sense, feeding on the "hopes" and "dreams" of a people in the process. Cannibalism in "Mission of the Darians" is thus literal and metaphorical.

A very strong example of the long-lived "space ark" sub-genre of science fiction (last seen in the effective sci-fi horror pic Pandorum), Space:1999's "Mission of the Darians" is also distinguishable as one of the program's most lavishly-designed and executed stories. The episode features impressive miniatures, gorgeous matte-paintings of the S.S. Daria, and several new live-action sets.

Byrne also remembered the episode's production values as "simply astounding," and credited director Ray Austin for his visualization of the narrative.

"Just the way it played out, I was amazed how one three-minute sequence featuring Barbara Bain and the Darian 'vetting' procedure so completely explained the bizarre food-chain of the devastated environment," Byrne told me.
This is no surprise, but occasionally, I get ribbed or fisked for my continued appreciation of Space: 1999 in the Year 2010. It's very easy for people who have never watched the series to laugh at the year 1999 in the title; which they mistkanely perceive to be some kind of expiration date. Without ever having seen the program consistently, these naysayers choose to deride it as campy because it was made in the 1970s and reflects several 1970s conventions in terms of fashion, hairstyles, and mode of communication.

Yet Space:1999 retains tremendous currency today, in the Era of Peak Oil and limited planetary resources. All of Space:1999's action, for instance, predicated on an accident...an atomic explosion on a lunar dump. With the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010, we've certainly seen that such massive catastrophes are possible...and boast unforseen impact.

Anyway, a regular blog reader recently sent me a great link showing that, yep, NASA still has Space:1999 on the brain too.

In particular, the Agency has launched an Online Game called -- you guessed it -- Moonbase Alpha. The game deals with survival in a difficult environment and with limited resources...the lunar surface. Check it out here.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Crazies (2010)

Breck Eisner's well-reviewed remake of the 1973 George Romero film, The Crazies (2010) opens to the familiar strains of "We'll Meet Again," a 1939 hit from singer Vera Lynn that became famous a second time when Stanley Kubrick dubbed the song over images of nuclear apocalypse at the end of his masterpiece, the black comedy Dr. Strangelove (1964).

That song and its lyrics -- forever since linked to the blazing imagery of mushroom clouds -- suggests a kind of insanity driving the pro-military/government mindset of our country. Post-Kubrick, the song intimates mankind's unchanging, self-destructive nature. We're always on the brink of wiping ourselves out with some new, high-tech weapon.

Doomsday, we shall meet you again...don't know where; don't know when.

This is a powerful and welcome note to begin The Crazies on; one that suggests that this impressive-looking production carries an intention to be the spiritual heir to Dr. Strangelove and Romero's incendiary original, both of which showcased the lunacy behind international war, and also behind ever-more insidious weapons of mass destruction.

Since The Crazies involves the occupation of a small American town, Ogden Marsh (population 1,260) by the U.S. Army and the contamination of the innocent populace by a bio-weapon called "Trixie" (designed to "destabilize a population") the tune "We'll Meet Again" and the oblique Strangelove reference are appropriate and even a little subversive.

So it's terribly tragic then, that the movie proceeds to drop the ball entirely on virtually every thematic front imaginable; refusing even to take genuine advantage of today's anti-government Zeitgeist and the pervasive fear (especially on the Right) of Federal Authorities usurping local ones.

For instance, there's a moment when a soldier blandly informs a citizen "It's okay, Ma'am...we just gotta process you" that intimates the terror of Big Government/Big Brother or a Socialist State working against its citizenry in a fearsome (but seemingly routine...) fashion. But the film doesn't push any of this sub-text beyond mere lip service. Almost like it doesn't want to offend anybody.

Instead, the U.S. Army is present in the picture largely as but another obstacle for the protagonists to navigate around and to assure more action-sequences, including a nail-biter involving a chopper and sanctuary inside a car wash. One soldier even sympathizes with the innocent refugees and doesn't rat the heroes out when he has the opportunity. I can imagine that someone in the studio marketing department must have demanded that the military not be depicted too negatively in The Crazies, or the movie would be accused of not supporting our troops during wartime, or some such nonsense.

The idea of a citizenry bullied and controlled by its own armed forces and overreaching government was far more powerfully conveyed in the original film (which by miraculous coincidence, I first watched in the year 2000...on the very weekend that Federal Authorities broke into a private residence in Florida to remove a Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez at gun point.)

By the remake's last act, things have degenerated even further into generic action movie cliches. Everyone who you expected to survive from the first frame...does survive. There are no surprises. And this resolution occurs despite the fact that the two leads repeatedly -- and stupidly -- split up, so they can be independently-menaced by the Infected.

Adding insult to injury, the film's climactic set piece actually involves a heroic couple outrunning a nuclear mushroom in a stolen truck...and making for civilization...alive and well.

Judy -- a doctor, mind you -- even gazes directly at the nuclear blast; an act that in reality would have burned out her eyes and resulted in total, permanent blindness.

Which, of course, doesn't happen here...

This silly climax and such mock, predictable heroics represent an absolute collapse of the promising and challenging aesthetic that opens the film (with "We'll Meet Again") and which so powerfully informed both Strangelove and the 1973 original

I find this turn of events disappointing and also depressing. The original The Crazies was an unrepentant taboo-breaker, one that violated the established decorum of Hollywood movies of it's era in powerful and deliberate fashion.

In the original, the Trixie contamination, for instance, caused one man (Artie) to engage in sexual intercourse with his own biological daughter. In the original, an American priest immolated himself in the town square, and the image alluded to a real incident with a Buddhist monk in Vietnam; thus equating the Army's actions in Evans City with the War in Vietnam...a leftist and incendiary implication, certainly, for "The Silent Majority" that had just re-elected Richard Nixon in a landslide.

And then there was the film's final existentialist -- nay, nihilist -- bent. An infected pregnant woman (and the film's heroine), Judy (Lane Carroll) was murdered by the occupying military force, and her fiancee, a fireman named David (W.G. McMillan) learned that he was immune to the contaminant. But rather than aid the bullying military (and his fellow man too), David kept his mouth shut...and let the apocalypse spread. Out of revenge, perhaps. Or perhaps just because he believed that humans, as a species, weren't worth saving.

The original The Crazies also featured Strangelove's sense of the absurd...of life as a cruel comedy. A cure for Trixie was discovered by a scientist, but the military mistook him for an infected man, and the cure was lost. Forever.

So, incest, political commentary, the establishment's murder of innocence (a pregnant woman, for heaven's sake!) and a downbeat, absurd, nihilist ending. These were the things that -- in addition to a frenzied pace created by Romero's brilliant editing -- made The Crazies a singular initiative, a horror movie eminently worthy of the overrused term of genre "classic."

I don't feel that I'm spoiling anything to let you know that there is very little critique of the military or the government in Eisner's The Crazies. Rather the film's anger is directed at the easy target of rednecks with trigger-happy instincts. Furthermore, the pregnant woman survives (and likely carries her baby healthily to term, despite having battled the infected and coming in close proximity to a nuclear blast...).

And one character, a local deputy, proves so innately heroic that he literally wipes out Trixie's powerful influence over his sick mind, and nobly sacrifices himself for the married couple and their unborn child. Quite the opposite of a disease so insidious that it makes a father engage in sex even with his own kin in the original, no?

Long story short: The Crazies is not nearly crazy enough, and certainly not even half-as-crazy as the Romero original of a quarter-century ago.

Contrarily, this re-do is an entirely safe horror movie that carries no meaningful subtext and, ultimately, does the open psyche no real harm...because it isn't about anything other than surviving another zombie-like apocalypse. Romero's original film has been thematically neutered here. This movie is but a Michael Bay-styled roller-coaster ride.

What makes this such a sad lobotomy, unfortunately, is the fact that Eisner is clearly an immensely skilled director, and working with a fine cast (headed by Timothy Olyphant of Deadwood and Radha Mitchell of Silent Hill [2006] and Pitch Black [2000]). Eisner stages many fine horror moments and "jolts" throughout the picture, and I can say without reservation that they are brilliantly, artfully-achieved.

A scene in a coroner's office featuring a bone saw is disgusting and downright harrowing. The now-trademark scene of the Infected Man with the pitch-fork is also wrung for maximum suspense, though the scene's punctuation is disappointing and predictable: a re-affirmation of the film's total and utter lack of descended testicles. There's even a great surprise reveal in a baby nursery that will have you leaping out of your seat.

What this comes down to, I suppose, is what the viewer seeks in a horror film. If you are looking for the equivalent of a roller-coaster ride, an essentially harmless exercise with loops, dips and jolts, the movie is undeniably effective. Still, even on this front, it doesn't achieve anything that 28 Days Later (2002) or the Dawn of the Dead (2004) re-make haven't already achieved with greater success.

But if you are seeking a horror movie that speaks meaningfully about your world, and that conveys something important about the human condition -- as the original The Crazies did -- you are going to be severely disappointed by this by-the-numbers, Cliff-notes version of superior material.

Empty-headed, mainstream remakes of horror gems?

I'm sure we'll meet again...

Greetings, Programs! Tron was 28 Years Ago Today

Director Steve Lisberger's computerized fantasy went into wide theatrical release on July 9, 1982...twenty eight years ago today.

I remember I first saw the Disney film at Cinema 23 in Verona, New Jersey, with one of my best friends, Scott Williams. I was twelve.

Tron wasn't particularly well-regarded by the mainstream critical establishment back in the summer of 1982, though Roger Ebert lauded the film and awarded it four stars. Audiences were also cold to the story of a "computer world."

The years have been kind to Tron, however. It's become something of a classic of Generation X, and a long-awaited sequel, Tron Legacy, bows December 17, 2010. I for one, can't wait...

Here's a snippet of my review of Tron:

...Impressively, Tron even seems to position itself as a critique of the "new" Walt Disney Company...post-Walt Disney. It thus bites the hand that made it, so-to-speak. For Disney is a company, the film indicates, where the computers and the bean-counters have seized control.

Contrarily, one might also cogently argue an opposite point with some validity; that Tron is actually a jingoistic Cold War statement against Communism; one depicting a battle for personal freedom against a "Red"-hued assimilating enemy, the Master Computer Program.

Beyond these intriguing and debatable sub-texts, Tron continues to fascinate new generations of viewers on the basis of the intricate, visually-complex fantasy computer world it creates with such aplomb. This is a dazzling alternate universe where all the main characters of the human world -- in the spirit of The Wizard of Oz -- boast an identity "double," -- a computer program doppelganger. Given the contemporary popularity of World of Warcraft and Second Life, Tron's notion of electronic counterparts or computer avatars acting as our alternate identities in a man-made photoelectric landscape is very timely a quarter-century after the film's release.

Greetings, Programs!

Tron depicts the story of a rogue computer programmer named Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who was fired from his job at the mighty corporation ENCOM when a fellow programmer and now executive-senior-vice president, Dillinger (David Warner) stole his design for several blockbuster video games, including the popular Space Paranoids.

Dillinger has also all-but-ousted the company's original president, the gentle and elderly Walt (Barnard Hughes) -- who created ENCOM in his garage.

Dillinger has turned Walt's creation into a devouring machine bent on the acquisition of smaller corporations and companies so as to seize a bigger market share. Assisting him in this dedicated raiding effort to control all commerce (international and domestic) is the monstrous MCP -- Master Control Program.

Flynn is zapped by a matter-transformer controlled by the MCP and "digitized." He thus enters the world of the MCP and other computer programs. There, he attempts to re-claim his cstolen reations and destroy Dillinger's machine servant. Flynn is assisted in this matter by a regulatory program, Tron, created by another information-seeking ENCOM programmer, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner). The MCP attempts to destroy Flynn -- a man the other programs revere as a god-being called a "User" -- using his right-hand man, the villainous Sark (also David Warner), to do it.

I Programmed You to Want Too Much: Big-Business Unfettered in Tron.

An excavation of the context underlining Tron is important to any understanding of this unique fantasy film.

The first significant trend to discuss here is technological advance: the evolution of arcade video games into home based game systems (like the Atari 2600) in the late 1970s; and then the lightning-fast, subsequent replacement of those game systems with home computing devices like the Commodore VIC-20 in the early 1980s.

Forget a chicken in every pot, by the mid-1980s there was a PC in every American house. Accordingly, terms such as BASIC, DOS, RAM, "user friendly" "disk drive," "program" and "memory" (not to mention "crash...") entered our lexicon as we accommodated a new and useful device into our daily lives.

Tron expresses, in fascinating terms, the sense of uneasiness many Americans felt with the rapid growth of this new technology. On one hand, humans were still at the top of the food chain in Tron: "Users" sending "programs" to do their bidding in an invisible (to our eyes...) electronic universe.

However, on the other hand, the electronic world of our helpful programs had been (secretly) co-opted by a hungry, assimilating devourer that put the food-pellet-gobbling Pac Man to shame: the MCP. This fear of insidious technology in our homes finds voice in much of Tron's dialogue. "The computers will start thinking and people will stop," warns Walt Dumont (Hughes) in one critical scene.

At other points, however, Tron expresses the desire for a "free system" in which Man and Program ally in beneficial unison. And the film's brilliant climax is not entirely unlike that depicted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) a sort of religious communion/fusion between Man and machine. As in that cinematic case, man here is the deity, shepherding his sense of traditional human values to the "cold," "intellectual" machine. In Tron, Flynn dives into the MCP (in a Godly beam of blinding light...) and briefly joins with it. His decency -- his humanity -- transforms the outward shade of evil (a crimson, coruscating red) into the film's shade of rebellion and liberty; blue...

You can read the rest of my review, right here.

The Cult-TV Faces of: William Shatner

This week, She Blogged by Night is hosting a "Shatnerthon." My friend and excellent blogger J.D. at Radiator Heaven just yesterday offered a review and retrospective of Free Enterprise (1998), a kind of Woody Allen film for Shatner/Star Trek fans. He very aptly notes that the movie is sort of "the best Kevin Smith movie not made by Kevin Smith," a great and insightful observation. Anyway, in honor of the Shatnerthon, I present today the Cult TV Faces of The Shat. If you can, name the series, and the episode the photo originates from.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Road (2009)

John Hillcoat's The Road, a cinematic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2006 best-seller, opens with idyllic views of Mother Nature. We see crimson and yellow flowers and abundant green leaves. The wind blows gently....but only briefly.

Still, these stolen glimpses of Earth's natural beauty immediately set the appropriate tone; reminding audiences of the paradise we have now...and largely take for granted.

The remainder of this haunting, deeply-affecting film is set on a scorched, post-apocalyptic Earth, a washed-out, gray world in which a beloved piano is but more kindling for the fire. In this time and place, shampoo and toothpaste are not merely luxuries...but archaeological discoveries: relics of a lost world, a lost time.

And yet this is not at all a film about "things" or material possessions.

Instead, The Road very explicitly -- and very emotionally -- concerns the bonds of family, and in particular the relationship between a loving father (Viggo Mortenson) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as the duo attempts to navigate a planetary graveyard; one populated by hungry vultures, in the form of scavenging human cannibals. The boy's mother (Charlize Theron) has taken her own life rather than exist in such a world, and in his quiet moments, the boy fantasizes about joining her. The child doesn't really understand death, and wonders, when his father dies, if he will see him again; or if he can take him with him.

In a word, the movie is heartbreaking.

The father, who is battling a terminal illness, realizes it is his most important task now to toughen up his innocent and imaginative son -- God's hand on Earth, in his words -- so the boy can survive this perpetual winter of Mother Earth and the human soul.

So the father demonstrates for the boy how to commit suicide by firearm (a pistol), should capture by the cannibals become inevitable. He lets the boy look long and hard at rotting corpses, at death itself in hopes that it will somehow become commonplace, and therefore not frightening. Weighted down by his sense of responsibility, the father also sees betrayers and monsters in every encounter with other human beings. He trusts no one.

By contrast, the boy is so loving and pure it will make your soul ache. The child virtually craves something hopeful in his life, something good. In specific terms, the father wants the boy to survive in a frightening, menacing world, and the boy just wants to hold the hand of a lonely old stranger (Robert Duvall), who lost his own son in a tragedy so horrible he can't speak of it. The boy wants to know that he and his dad are still "the good guys."

I'm the father of a young son, myself, and I was unexpectedly but deeply moved by The Road, which -- without ever seeming cheesy or maudlin, or even relying on rampaging cannibals for drama -- raises questions about what it means to be a "good" parent in a grim situation like this. The boy is portrayed brilliantly by McPhee as, well, an absolute innocent...one who carries a stuffed animal elephant in his arms at all times, and who collects little trinkets that catch his youthful fancy: bottle caps, pennies, and the like. The boy's tenderness and vulnerability are absolutely palpable, and so you feel intimately the Father's existential dilemma.

On one hand, you want to preserve that innocence at all costs. And on the other hand, you know that it must be utterly stamped out so that the boy will survive this chaotic terrain when he is left all alone.

The weak link in this family dynamic is the Mother, who selfishly selects suicide because "all the other families are doing it," the most-bizarre form of Keeping up with the Jones you've ever encountered. She walks off into a dark winter night alone, leaving her husband and son behind...and is never seen again. If the Mother had chosen to live -- to fight --p erhaps she could have tempered the Father's harshness, and helped the boy understand his life and those in it, better. But it wasn't to be.

You know all along what's coming in The Road, and you start to dread this emotional, gut-wrenching crescendo, the impending separation. You can feel it coming, and it's literally almost sickening. The father grows progressively weaker, until finally, there's the moment when he must say his final goodbye to his son, to his beloved boy.

By this point the Father has done everything he could for the child, and as he prepares to leave this world, the Dad must simply...let go. He must trust that his son will be okay; that he has learned the lessons he tried to impart to him.

It's terrifying, however, this thought of never seeing your child again; of knowing that there are dangers looming out there that you can never help him bypass.

But again, that's what parenting is all about, and The Road understands this reality all too well.

My wife, Kathryn, often reminds me that Joel doesn't belong to us; that he's his own person, with his own path and his own destination in life. So it's our most critical job as parents simply to set his course, to prepare him well for the challenges he will face. "Healthy and happy," she often whispers in my ear, when I threaten to over-protect or smother him with parental coddling. Because we can't fight all Joel's battles for him; because when we're gone, he needs to fight those battles successfully. He needs to have experienced successes doing so too, so he doesn't feel hopeless, or alone, or less-than-confident in his abilities to navigate life.

That's hard, though, isn't it?

And that's the pain that Mortensen's character carries like an albatross around his neck. Has he done enough? Has he made the right calls? Has he erred by being too hard, or was he too soft? The film's powerful last scene provides an answer of sorts to these questions. The movie comes right up to its last moment before shedding, even partially, a sense of ambiguity about the boy's fate.

The Road also asks some pretty meaningful questions about the kind of world we are leaving to our young sons and daughters. The nature of the apocalypse in the film is deliberately left unspecified. It could be a nuclear winter after a terrible war; or it could be post-asteroid impact for all we know. But still, there's a powerful notion at work here, about the things we hand off to our children. Our morals. Our hopes. Our planet itself. Do we leave it for them better than we found it, or worse than we found it? Is this not the most important question we, as parents, should ask ourselves? Isn't everything else -- the bills, the bedtimes, the Christmas presents -- pretty damn unimportant by comparison?

Just the other day, I was complaining here about about The Wolfman, and how the filmmakers involved in that horror film didn't seem to have faith in their own story, so they embellished a worthwhile narrative with unnecessary action sequences and special effects. Well, The Road is the antidote to such films. It focuses like a laser on its emotional narrative and memorable characters without resorting to unnecessary flourishes, or what I call "bells and whistles." It's one of the most involving, tense and heartbreaking films I've seen in a long while. It casts an unforgettable spell.

There are plenty of end-of-the-world movies out there. Ones that focus on destructive spectacle (like 2012 [2009]), or the survival of the species after "the end" of our way of life (I am Legend [2004]). But The Road is surely the most intimate of such cinematic stories.

It understands that the end of the entire world is -- perhaps paradoxically -- a very...personal thing.

Happy Independence Day!

The Cult-TV Faces of: Mark Lenard

Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week

"Pancakes are love."

- Speed Racer (2008)