40 Years Ago: Dune (1984)

"I probably shouldn't have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved and this was the structure to do them in, there was so much room to create a world..." 

- Director David Lynch discusses the controversial Dune (1984). (Inner views: filmmakers in conversation By David Breskin; Da Capo Press, 1997) 

The first cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 landmark novel, Dune, premiered in theaters in 1984 and immediately faced an onslaught of negative criticism. Since then, it has been remembered, often, as David Lynch's cinematic Waterloo, the Heaven's Gate of sci-fi epics. 

Writing in The New York Times, critic Janet Maslin concluded, regarding the 1984 film that: "Several of the characters in ''Dune'' are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie. The plot of ''Dune'' is perilously overloaded..." 

Roger Ebert liked the film less. He noted: "This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time. Even the color is no good; everything is seen through a sort of dusty yellow filter, as if the film was left out in the sun too long." Ebert and sparring partner Gene Siskel also rated Dune as one of the worst films of the year. 

Even dedicated Lynch scholars, like Jeff Johnson, author of Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch (McFarland) didn't have much good to say about this vintage sci-fi epic: "The Messianic plot in Herbert's novel," contended the author "yields to Lynch's Manichean vision, and the film pretends to Biblical proportions; but for all its weirdness and sprawling sci-fi excess, Dune from its inception was too large a canvas for a director like Lynch..."

Lynch himself rarely if ever discusses Dune these days, though it is interesting to recall that it is the sci-fi film he chose to direct over Return of the Jedi (1983) because Lynch felt, at least, that he could put his individual stamp on Dune; whereas in Jedi, he would be playing entirely in the world of another artist, George Lucas. 

In 2023, the big question about this particular film remains this: on what grounds can a critic assess David Lynch's Dune as a failure or a success? In terms of adaptation? In terms of how well it fits David Lynch's canon? Or in the more general entertainment terms set out above, by Maslin and Ebert: special effects, presentation and general coherence? 

I screened Dune again recently on Blu-Ray and in this new format it was nothing short of a revelation. Simply put, the movie has never looked better. Mr. Ebert accurately described the poor coloring and murky aspects of the film's visuals in his original view back in the 1980s, but I can state with confidence that this problem has been entirely remediated by Blu-Ray and apparent re-mastering. Dune's colors in this format are stunning and vivid. So the visuals as part of the movie's "problem" must, finally, a quarter century after theatrical release, be taken off the table. 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's look back first at the source material, and get a refresher on Dune's plot. 

A Beginning is a Very Delicate Time: Frank Herbert's Dune 

The sprawling, epic storyline of the novel Dune, first serialized in Analog in 1963, occurs in the year 10,191...thousands of years in our future. 

Man has conquered the stars and colonized a number of planets throughout the galaxy. These worlds are joined together in a kind of cosmic Parliament called the Landsraad, and the lynch-pin of the entire galactic economy is a spice called "melange." 

This all-important spice extends life and expands consciousness, but more than that it is the one substance in all the universe vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its navigators utilize the spice to "fold space" and transport goods and citizenry from one world to another. 

The spice also boasts psychic properties, and is used by the secretive sisterhood called The Bene Gesserit, which in undergoing "spice agony" is able to access the genetic memory of all previous, historic priestesses. The sisterhood hopes to genetically forge a "super" man called the "Kwisatz Haderach." He will be able to gaze into the psychic realm where the women can't; into the genetic memory of all men in history. He will be able to see and shape the future. 

In terms of narrative, the novel and the film involve a Machiavellian initiative by Emperor Shaddam IV to undermine a popular force in the Landsraad, Duke Leto Atreides of Caladan. In secret, Shaddam plots with the Duke's rival, the Harkonnens of Giedi Prime, to this end. He assigns the Atreides the administration of the inhospitable planet Arrakis, or Dune: the one place in the universe where the spice, melange can be harvested. Once the Duke and his people are ensconced there on that arid world, the Emperor lends his Sardaukar shock-troopers to the Baron Harkonnen, and there is a terrible sneak attack. 

Only a few survive the Harkonnen assault, include Duke Leto's son, Paul Atreides, and the Duke's concubine, the Bene Gesserit, Jessica. They soon join with the strange desert people of Dune, the Fremen, and teach them a new way of fighting, "The Weirding Way." Paul then leads a Fremen rebellion -- under the name of "Muad'Dib" -- and alters the destiny of the galaxy itself. Taking control of the spice, Paul -- the "Kwisatz Haderach" sets Dune and humankind on a new path (one that will hopefully avoid extinction).

Obviously, there is more to the "plot" of this sweeping novel, but this is Dune's story in broad strokes. In terms of historical importance, Herbert's Dune is widely considered one of the first and most important "ecological" science fiction stories because it deals with the use, exploitation and preservation of natural resources (consider the spice something along the lines of oil). But also, in part, because Herbert's work goes into detail about many life-forms on Arrakis, and reveals how they are all inter-connected in one unique eco-system. 

In terms of politics, Dune serves overtly as a metaphor for the treatment of third world nations (particularly those in the Middle East) by the world's resource-hungry Empires. Arrakis, a back-water planet, is exploited by the Landsraad for the spice that powers its economy. Yet the people of Dune, the Fremen, do not share the wealth of that resource. Young Paul Atreides, a representative of "Empire" in a way, goes nativ e in this story, and launches "jihad" against the power structure that he was born into. Atreides is much like the historical Lawrence of Arabia, T.E. Lawrence, actually.

The movie version of Dune directed by David Lynch embodies all these concepts and story lines, but by necessity must abridge some subplots, minimize some character development, and truncate much of the action. That's just the nature of any book-to-film adaptation.

Among the biggest changes from book to film: Paul brings a "sound module" technology to the Fremen, which is different from "The Weirding Way" of the novel. 

Perhaps more substantively, the movie's final sequence sees rain fall on the planet Dune for the first time in history (to herald, in essence, the arrival of the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul.) As I will discuss below, this is a change that, while unacceptable to fans of Herbert, works perfectly in Lynch's universe. 

"I See Plans within Plans:" Waking Dreams and the Underneath David Lynch's Dune. 

In terms of David Lynch, I have often mentioned how many of the auteur's films make an unconventional sense that I term "Dream Sense." 

This means that narratives themselves -- and the logic inside those narratives -- are comprehensible to the audience, but not in the strict, conscious, Euclidean sense of "reality" familiar to us from mainstream film plots or their story arcs. 

Contrarily, dreams both figure explicitly in Lynch's films as important turning points in the plays themselves and also, globally, as the mode of expression in his works of art. Dune is no exception. 

Within the narrative of Dune, dreaming is an important vehicle for the storytelling. Paul's way of gaining knowledge, his way of learning...is dreaming. 

Before the Atreides move to Caladan, before the "sleeper" awakens on Arrakis, the Duke's son experiences prophetic dreams; dreams that foretell of his destiny, and Paul's (Kyle MacLachlan) important role in shaping the very destiny of the universe. Specifically, he dreams of Dune's second moon, Maud'Dib and his future Fremen lover, Chani (Sean Young).

As viewers, we understand that this dream, this prophecy, represents truth and reality delivered to Paul, perhaps, by a Divine Being. Later, when Paul's destiny is in doubt because of the war with the Harkonnens on Arrakis, he explicitly ties belief in his dreams, in the prophecy of his future, to faith. "God created Arakis to train the faithful." One cannot go against the word of God," he says. It is the word of God, then, that gave Paul the dreams and inspired his actions.

At one point, when Paul is discouraged and in the thick of the battle, he feels cut off from his dreams. He experiences a moment of extreme self-doubt. "All the images from my future are gone," he reveals to Chani. To highlight this point, Lynch cuts to a dream montage in which Dune's second moon, Maud Di'b cracks like an egg, shattering into pieces in the night sky. This is what Paul fears, the shattering of his dreams and his failure to achieve his destiny.

"I'm dead to everyone unless I become what I may be," Paul then states. Thus he decides to drink the Water of Life and undergo the movie's equivalent of the spice agony. For Paul, the"sleeper must awaken," and to undergo this process of self-actualization and self-realization, he must tap into the language and universe of dreams that will allow him to, literally "control the world." 

Specifically, the Water of Life will allow Paul to see below the surface of things: to the hidden underneath. This is a very common Lynchian concept, of the world in two parts: as it appears to the naked eye and as it truly is. In many of his films, it is the character who faces or broaches the underneath -- and survives its lessons -- that proves successful, like Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986). The same is true of Paul here.

That underneath that Paul sees in his Water of Life vision involves an important, formerly unseen connection: the spice and the worm are one in the same. If Paul can control the worms (and therefore the spice), he will have the Empire at his mercy. 

Lynch's unconventional visuals again express the nature of Paul's revelation. The film cuts to images of outer space (the universe itself), and Paul --- laying still and prone -- is at the center of everything...the very well-spring of the cosmic mind. 

We then see images of the cathedral-like Navigator spaceship as a Third-Stage Navigator becomes aware of Paul, and swells with orange light, almost like rage. Atreides has invaded their "sacred space" and rejected their vision of reality for his own. The cathedral-like nature of the Guild spaceship reveals the wealth of the Guild but also its disconnection from "truth" and "faith." The Guild is all about dogma, control and hiding the underneath. That, in part, is what Paul shatters by taking the Water of Life. He experiences a personal connection to the Divine, to "God" if you will, and no longer needs the Church of the Guild to be his intermediary. He can be everywhere at once. 

Next in the dream vision, an outstretched, disembodied human hand is seen floating in space (in the center of Lynch's frame), representing, perhaps, Paul's new grip on the universe. Symbolically, an outstretched hand might also represent faith and justice, and that too appears to fit this context, for Paul's faith in his dreams has led him here (led him to the dangerous task of drinking the Water of Life), and justice is what he will bring for the Fremen...and to his enemies. 

Dreams occur throughout Dune. The Guild, which can fold space and time, becomes aware of Paul through another form of dreaming: psychic visions. Specifically, the Guild conspires with the Emperor to assure that Paul Atreides is killed. This is because, in those visions of the future, the Guild has seen what Paul can become; that he can become the man who stops all spice production, all spice trade, and thus all space travel. In opposition to Paul's way of knowing, through dreams the Spice Guild uses dreams to prevent destiny; to go against the very Word of God. 

Thus David Lynch's Dune concerns, in a very real sense, one man's "vision of the future" (or dream) battling another man (or organization's) plan for the future. But that dream is literal, expressed through the auspices of prophetic and psychic visions. Sometimes for human beings, dreams are all that sustain us, and sometimes dreams do come true. In Paul's case we can say that both of these truisms are accurate. His dream on Caladan awakens him to the truth of the universe and gives him the power to change the fate of the galaxy itself. The film's final scene, of rain-fall on Dune may not be motivated rationally, scientifically or out of fidelity to Herbert's novel, but it makes perfect dream sense. 

Throughout the film, Paul has dreamed of a droplet of water falling into a pool, and having a ripple effect there. This shot recurs in several dream montages, including the aforementioned Water of Life sequence. This is a metaphor the process of waking up, the "drip, drip, drip" if you will of knowledge added to knowledge, insight added to insight, of faith added to faith. And the ripple effect represents the way that Paul's circle grows, ultimately to include an Army of Fremen, Atreides retainers, and even the giant sand worms of Dune. In the film's last scene, Paul is rewarded for his faith and belief by a literal deluge from the Heavens, from an impossible rain fall. Why? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach. 

"The likes of which even God has never seen:" Dune's Production Design Reveals the Universe of the Underneath 

Seeing Dune on Blu Ray, I realized that the film's visual quality actually makes it an equal to such great science-fiction efforts as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Blade Runner (1982). That's no small statement, but I believe it's a valid one. 

Consider that David Lynch had the task of creating not one "world" in Dune, but five separate and distinct worlds, all of which had to convey the meaning of the story with images, substance and color. 

The production design of the forty million dollar film brilliantly creates a context for the action, and transmits important -- even vital -- clues about the nature of Paul's universe. 

The first world visited in Dune is Kaitain, home of the Emperor Shaddam IV. As a Guild space craft arrives in this kingdom, Lynch provides an exterior view of the royal city by night, and it looks almost identical to the Kremlin, circa 1984, with a few futuristic touches. It's an Old World City of long history, but also, clearly, of some sinister aspect.

The interiors seen on Kaitain are opulent, decked out entirely in gold, with ornate spires and an abundance of room and space. This is, quite naturally, the environs of a King. Even the Emperor's pyramidal spaceship seen at the end of the film is golden, a symbol not only of wealth perhaps, but egregious, thoughtless waste. The artifical, gold universe of this futuristic Midas proves a real contrast to the authentic, sun-warmed gold of Arrakis, a very different kind of kingdom. One world is all about wealth; the other is about survival. 

What the viewer gleans instantly (and almost subconsciously) from its views of Kaitain is that it is a world of extreme riches, but not warmth. In other worlds, this gilded, extravagant world of affluence has much to lose. if things change, if Paul's jihad is successful. That's what the production design informs us. 

The planet of the film's other villains, the Harkonnens, is called Giedi Prime, and it is a world entirely out of balance with its environment. 

Giedi Prime is an industrialized realm of lurid, sickly green hues, rains of black oil, and out-of-proportion, excessive machinery. 

According to Lynch, this world was created primarily with steel, bolts and porcelain...and those materials transmit the idea of a hard, unforgiving place. It is perpetual night-time on this world too; there is no sunlight to warm the human soul. 

The message conveyed is that Giedi Prime is an inhuman, ecological disaster. And this too informs the viewer something important about the film's storyline. As administrators of Arrakis and the spice, the Harkonnens are incapable of understanding the important connections between the Fremen, the spice and the worms. They are not interested in maintaining environmental "balance," they are strip-miners. Again, this is something Lynch establishes visually. The Harkonnens, as evidenced by their Baron's (Kenneth McMillan) egregious acne, are diseased parasites, sucking life from others. They are so inhuman, actually, that their appetites are literally monstrous. The Baron imagines sexual delight with his nephew (incest), and Rabban, "The Beast" is a brute who takes joy in killing. All the citizens of Giedi Prime are outfitted with heart plugs that can be ripped out (leading to a terminal blood flood), and the only thing surprising about this is that Harkonnens have hearts at all. 

The third society depicted in Dune involves the Guild, the Navigators. We see their massive, cathedral-like ships on two occasions, their strangely dressed travel entourage (a priesthood, clearly) on Kaitain, and we understand from their first scene (in which they approach the Emperor and demand the death of Paul), that these people carry a power above and beyond sovereign statehood. They are, essentially, Dune's version of the Catholic Church in historical Europe. Because they control access to, essentially, God (the spice), they control the levers of power in the Empire too. 

Caladan is a different case all together. This is appropriate, considering that the Atreides are the film's protagonists. Caladan is a beautiful, lush world of oceans, wood-paneling and exquisite carpentry. The people here seem to live in harmony with nature, and even their lamps are made to resemble the wild-life of the planet: roaming birds. The inference our eyes draw from Lynch's Caladan is that only in a world of natural beauty and balance can the Kwisatz Haderach arise. Nurtured in a world where everything (environment/education/physical fitness) seems in balance, Paul is able to thrive; to be receptive to the prophecy that changes his life. 

And finally, there's Dune. Arrakis. Desert planet. It is a harsh, unforgiving world, but not unlike Caladan, the planet seems to evidence a unique sense of balance. The Fremen with their stillsuits express the idea of recycling and giving back to the body usedresources, and that's also a metaphor for the planet itself. Here, the structures of Arakeen are built unobtrusively from Earthen walls of clay, and the Fremen store vast quantities of "their" water in subterranean reservoirs. The idea is of stoic conservation; of eking out a life in a difficult environment. Though Paul was born and raised in a land of natural plenty (but not opulence like Kaitain), he comes to see the ascetic beauty of Arrakis; the way that the Fremen have forged a sustainable paradigm and way of life in a harsh terrain.

In Dune, each of these five "worlds" (Kaitain, Giedi Prime, the Cathedral of the Guild, Caladan and Arrakis) is crafted beautifully, down to the smallest detail. 

Amazingly, the sets don't look like traditional movie sets; they appear to be part of a lived-in world, and many locations (the Duke's bedroom and balcony on Caladan, the Arakeen control room, the Fremen living quarters) are only visited for very short spans. Honestly, it looks like Lynch took his cameras to real locations and filmed there.

Down to the portraits hanging on the walls, the exquisite woodworking on Caladan, and the tiles in the grand hall on Arrakis. Lynch showcases his trademark attention to detail and penchant for lush visuals here. Dune is utterly, inarguably, magnificent in this regard. 

But commendably, every set, every planet in Dune isn't just eye-candy. The production design transmits to the audience a sense of history and authenticity, but more importantly, some sense of meaning in this story. Again, it's not exposition, it's not in the screenplay, it's the between-the-lines approach of David Lynch that asks the audience to examine and synthesize, from exposure to his visuals, a sense of meaning nearly "outside" or independent from the words uttered by the characters. 

I first saw Dune in high school (at the Clairidge Theater in Montclair, New Jersey), before I read the book even, and you know what? Even as a fourteen-year old, I didn't find it confusing in the slightest. Then I did read the book and the movie made even more sense. But I have never understood why movie critics insist on stating that the film is confusing. It isn't confusing, especially if you trust your eyes and pay attention to the dream imagery and production design. In fact, an opposite argument could be forged here. Through the heavy use of character voice-overs, Dune is actually over-explained, over-simplified. How can someone think the movie is confusing when the voice-overs explain everything (from Hunter Seekers to the gom jabbar)? 

Indeed, a clever critic could probably argue the point that by removing the voice-over narration all together, Dune would be a better, less-cluttered film. I don't know if I agree with that idea entirely, because the voice-overs, by my perspective, lend another "dream sense" aspect to the proceedings. With the dramatis personae conveying their deep inner thoughts, there's the feeling that, in fact, we (the audience) are psychic; privy to information gleaned outside of traditional routes available to humans. The insistent, personal, whispered voice-over works well to help the film's form reflect its very content. If we are to understand the story by dream sense, as Paul contextualizes his act of self-realization, it seems that the personal voice over helps. 

Does Dune have weaknesses? Sure. Its biggest weakness is the depiction of the final battle, between Maud D'ib's sandworm army and the forces of the Emperor. The combat is not particularly convincing or impressive, marred mainly by poor matte and blue screen work. But frankly, there was no other way to create this scene in 1984. In the age before CGI, the important elements of the sequence (worms, ships and cityscapes) had to be entirely constructed from miniatures. Those miniatures then had to be composited with the live-action actors. Not easy, especially given the vast difference in scope between combatants (worms and Sardaukar). Dune is a great film marred by a final battle scene, but that's hardly a disqualifier in terms of quality. 

Some people may also argue that the electronic score by Toto, what with all the power chords, is somehow dated in 2010. Personally, I dig the soundtrack in the way I dig the disco opening theme to Space: 1999 (1975-1977): it captures a moment in time, and has a techno-quality that still reads, even years later, as "futuristic." 

Sometimes, in illuminating the qualities of a particular film, a comparison helps. A couple of years ago (uh, maybe a decade ago now?) the Sci-Fi Channel created its own version of Dune and it was an absolute travesty, an almost cardboard rendition of Herbert's story with no sense of scale or drama, and certainly no sense of production design that could rival Lynch's vision. I'm amazed that some fans of Frank Herbert's novel have taken to this version: it looks like Dune by way of the 1930s Flash Gordon: it's a two-dimensional comic-book cartoon. With dream sense and sets that express the nature of Dune's universe, Lynch's version, despite diversions from Herbert's mythos, remains infinitely more impressive and "real." 

In terms of Dune, my hope is that the sleeping critical reception for this great film will finally...awaken. 

Abnormal Fixation at Sci-Fi Pulse Today!

The popular genre web-site Sci-Fi Pulse is covering Abnormal Fixation today, our indie-web series today! 

The site, and Ian Cullen, hav published our series press kit, which goes over the characters, cast and crew, episode titles and summaries, etc.  

Teaser trailer dropping next week!

Check out Sci-Fi Pulse here!

70 Years Ago: Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers

In 1954, Dell published a science fiction novel,The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. Finney's landmark work has been translated to film a whopping four times, in 1956, 1978, in 1993 and in 2007 (as The Invasion). 

Some of the terminology associated with the Invasion of the Body Snatchers franchise, including the descriptor "pod people" has landed in the pop culture firmament of our country and remained there for decades. 

We have seen variations of the paranoid tale in efforts such as The Stepford Wives (1975), and even on Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Bad Eggs"). There have also been entire TV series titled The Invaders and Invasion which grapple with some of the same core concepts as Finney's story.

Finney's novel (which was first appeared serialized in Colliers Magazine) commences with this paragraph, and one might consider it a mission statement for the book, and also for the film adaptations :

"I warn you that what you're starting to read is full of loose ends and unanswered questions. It will not be neatly tied up at the end, everything resolved and satisfactorily explained. Not by me, it won't anyway. Because I can't say I really know exactly what happened, or why, or just how it began, how it ended, or if it has ended; and I've been right in the thick of it. Now if you don't like that kind of story, I'm sorry and you'd better not read it. All I can do is tell what I know."

After this disclaimer of sorts, Finney escorts the reader to the evening of October 28, 1976 in a small-town in southern California called Mill Valley. It's a Thursday around 5:00, and the book's main character, Dr. Miles Bennell narrates the story in the first person. He's a young family practitioner, having inherited the local medical practice from his father, and is well-known and well-liked by the locals. 

Miles is an effective literary protagonist because his style of narration is crisp and at times it feels as though readers are actually reading doctors notes, narrated directly into a tape recorder. The voice is intelligent, the language smart, but there's nothing too flowery, too knowledgeable, too over-the-top or melodramatic to break the spell. And Miles never gets to see the whole picture...he just reports what he sees. A kind of literary Cloverfield, in a sense. Readers aren't privy to the big picture, only on how the events impact Miles and the town of Mill Valley.

In short order, the divorced 28-year old Miles is met at his office by his old flame, the recently divorced Becky Driscoll. She wants to talk business not pleasure, however. Her aunt, Wilma Lentz, has begun acting...strangely. She claims that her uncle Ira is not her Uncle Ira at all. Oh he looks like Uncle Ira, sounds like Uncle Ira, moves like Uncle Ira and has all of Uncle Ira's memories...but Wilma is sure -- just sure -- he is not the same man. 

Hot for Becky but also genuinely concerned for his patient, Miles goes to see Ms. Lentz and question her about this. "Miles, there is no difference you can actually see," asserts Wilma to the town doctor. She won't be moved from her position, and Miles attempts to talk some sense to her in what is the first of the novel's many comments on psychology and psychiatry, which in the 1950s were moving rapidly into the American mainstream.

"Now listen to me," says Miles..."I don't expect you to stop feeling emotionally that this isn't your uncle. But I do want you to realize that he's your uncle, no matter what you feel, and that the trouble is inside you. It's absolutely impossible for two people to look exactly alike, no matter what you've read in stories or seen in the movies. Even identical twins can always be told apart - always - by their intimates. No one could possibly impersonate your Uncle Ira for more than a moment without you, Becky or even me seeing a million little differences. Realize that, Wilma, think about it, and get it into your head, and you'll know the trouble is inside you. And then we'll be able to do something about it."

The preceding paragraph is critical to an informed reading of Finney's novel because it lays down the underlying subtext and dynamic of Finney's novel: the idea that psychology/psychiatry and rationality has in essence - by exploring the human mind - killed God, faith and belief and most significantly, imagination. 

Wilma Lentz just knows that her Uncle isn't the same man that he was, but she can't prove it, and there is no scientific rationale - no acceptable scientific rationale, for her beliefs. Therefore, she must be sick. Right?

If you know the story of the Body Snatchers, you know that Uncle Ira is indeed not himself, but a "snatched man," a replicated man, an alien invader who duplicated Ira but who lacks the emotionality of mankind. This new being, one who looks and sounds like us, is the ultimate triumph of the rational age, the age of such sciences as psychology, one might assert. The aliens have not merely sublimated emotion (as Miles has asked Wilma Lentz to do), but have eliminated it from the gene pool.

Miles is torn between two competing belief systems in the book. On one hand is the intelligent, rational, steadfast psychology of his friend Mannie Kaufman, a local psychiatrist. Mannie suggests that Wilma and the others who begin to suspect that their loved ones are not their loved ones, are actually delusional. That the madness is all within their sick minds, not in reality. He lays out a convincing case that this strange belief is merely a "contagious neurosis." In compelling terms, he describes case histories of mob hysteria (including the Mattoon Maniac of Illinois...) to prove his point. You want to believe him, he makes the case so powerfully and so logically.

But the other voice in Miles' head, the voice that ultimately allows him to believe in the alien invasion, belongs to an imaginative writer named Jack Belicec. As a hobby, Jack collects newspaper clippings that involve inexplicable happenings around America. Like the time frogs fell from the sky in Edgeville Alabama. Or that story in Idaho, about a man who spontaneously combusted...but his clothes were unharmed. Jack is the opposite side of the human equation from Kaufman, the side that can conceive of things beyond science, beyond psychosis. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in Kaufman's philosophy (or in the DSM V), and Jack is the character who gives voice in the novel to that aspect of "us."

Ultimately, the novel serves a as a rejection of "cold" science and also as plea for humanity to hold fast to the sometimes strange beliefs he holds. From the valedictory passage in the book, as expressed by Miles:

"But...showers of small frogs, tiny fish and mysterious rains of pebbles sometimes fall from out of the skies. Here and there, with no possible explanation, men are burned to death inside their clothes. And once in a while, the orderly, immutable sequences of time itself are inexplicably shifted and altered. You read these occasional queer little stories, humorously-written, tongue-in-cheek, most of the time - or you hear vague distorted rumours of them. And this much I know. Some of them - some of them - are true."

Besides the battle between science and belief, Finney's The Body Snatchers treads primarily on the idea of relationship "alienation" made literal. Those alienated from their families are actually dealing with alien life forms. That's pretty clever, actually. But if one gazes at the characters in the book, many are also coping with the fall-out of bad relationships. It can't be a coincidence that the two main characters - Becky and Miles - are both divorced. And that's the ultimate form of human alienation, isn't? You live with a person you love for years and years and then you wake up one day and suddenly don't feel the same way about that person anymore. Without warning, something has changed. Overnight, you "don't know" that other person anymore, that husband, that wife, that uncle, aunt, parent or child. Alienation of affection is what I'm talking about here, and it happens all the time in normal, mundane relationships. 

The alien invaders of Invasion of the Body Snatchers symbolize this strangeness in human interactions. I don't believe it a coincidence either that the changeover from human to alien comes like a thief in the night, during sleep. Alienation of affection can go on for months or years but when grappling with it, it seems to have come all at once. You don't recognize the person in bed beside you anymore. They feel like a stranger. They look like your mate; they have your mate's memories...but they feel like an interloper, a changeling.

What the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers lack is the core of humanity and the human experience: emotions. They can pretend to have feelings and they can skillfully mimic emotions, but they don't feel anything at all. Without emotions, there is no excitement. Without excitement there is no ambition, no love. Without ambition, nobody writes books anymore...imagination vanishes. Kaufman - now an alien - will never finish the textbook about Psychiatry he began as a human being. That is the fate mankind is doomed to in the novel if the aliens win; if we abandon the imaginative side of ourselves.

Late in The Body Snatchers, Miles confers with Kaufman as well as with a "converted" professor. They explain to Miles the end game of the aliens, beings who have arrived on Earth in giant seeds, pods for lack of a better word:

"What do you do and for what reason? Why do you breathe, eat, sleep, make love and reproduce your kind? Because it's your function, your reason for being. There's no other reason, and none needed...You look shocked, actually sick, and yet what has the human race done except spread over this planet till it swarms the globe several billion strong? What have you done with this very continent but expand till you fill it? And where are the buffalo who roamed the land before you? Gone. Where is the passenger pigeon who once literally darkened the skies of America in flocks of billions? The last one died in a Philadelphia zoo in 1913. Doctor, the function of life is to live if it can and no other motive can ever be allowed to interfere with that. There is no malice involved; did you hate the buffalo? We must continue because we must..."

You have to admit, there's a cold logic to the alien motive for their takeover of Earth, but the difference is that we still feel pity for the buffalo or the passenger pigeon. If we could change their fates, I submit we likely would. With cold science, there's no need for pity, no need for remorse, no need for compassion.

Some other interesting notations about the book and how it differs from the film versions. 

First, the ending. The climax of Finney's Body Snatchers is not inherently nihilistic, bleak, depressing or dark, as some have claimed over the years. In fact, at least two film versions feature abundantly darker endings than what is featured here. In the novel, the pods flee Earth when they realize how irrational human beings are (again, human emotions!), after Miles and Becky wage a hopeless war burning fields of the alien pods.

Secondly, the alien countenance: In this novel, the aliens are not easily detectable. They lack strong emotions, but as I wrote above, they have the capacity to mimic human emotions. It isn't so easy to spot them in the novel as it is in all the film versions.

Thirdly, Finney goes to great lengths to describe the science behind the "body snatching" procedure and why that procedure occurs during sleep. The explanation involves "tiny electrical force-lines that hold together the very atoms that constitute" human beings. These force-lines are in constant flux, constant change, but they change less, according to Finney, during sleep. And during sleep, that "pattern can be taken from you, absorbed like static electricity, from one body to another." Only the 2007 version of the material came this close to offering a scientific explanation for why the changeover occurs during sleep.

Also, Finney reveals what the future is for planet Earth should the aliens win: all organisms on the planet will die within five years and the the pods will seek another world to duplicate. 

The novel indicates that there was once life on Mars and even on our Moon, but that the pods duplicated - and then destroyed - all life there. 

Not one of the four films have picked up on this element, to my recollection. Maybe film number five?

40 Years Ago: Tales from the Darkside (1984)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trick or Treat...

30 Years Ago: Stargate (1994)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stargate is never quite smart enough to square that circle.

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

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