20 Years Ago: AVP (2004)

There’s a moment that feels like authentic cinematic destiny in the twenty year old Alien vs. Predator (2004), or rather, AVP.  

From opposite corners -- left and right -- two classic movie monsters enter the same frame, and cast wary eyes on one another for the first time.  

The battle is joined.

The moment may work in a manner other than that as well, and perhaps in a way not entirely intended.

A fruition of fan boy dreams and fantasy, this meeting of the monstrous minds may also represent the first time in either franchise’s history that geek or fan desires are, well, pretty much the point of the whole enterprise. 

Matters such as story, character, theme and humanity are given short shrift so that two of the greatest silver screen monsters in history can duke it out. 

Again and again. 

In short, the movie is its title.  

You get exactly what the words Alien vs. Predator promise: a wrestling match between two extra-terrestrial menaces of different characteristics, but equal power or strength.

When the film premiered, in 2004, it was advertised with the tag-line “whoever wins…we lose,” and many critics ran with that self-inflicted wound, noting the veracity of the studio advertisement.  “We lose” was a symbol, in fact, of any audience unlucky enough to sit through the film.

I felt much the same way in 2004, though -- over rwo decades -- I’ve come to appreciate Alien vs. Predator a bit more. 

Why?

In part, because of what came right after. 

If you want to see two of the greatest horror movie monsters treated in genuinely shabby fashion, just spend ninety or so minutes with Alien vs. Predator Requiem (2007). That movie illustrates by example just how much Alien vs. Predator actually gets right.

But moving beyond invidious comparisons to the worst film in either monster line, Alien vs. Predator possesses some merit on its own terms.  

First, the 2004 grudge-match features some remarkable and imaginative visualizations, particularly in terms of its flashback sequences.  

And secondly, two characters seen in the film manage to make the enterprise feel like more than just a by-the-number monster-on-monster contest.

AVP’s biggest deficits, by contrast, involve the nature of the action -- which is toothless -- and the depiction of the vast majority of human characters. Beyond the two I mentioned above, the majority of the characters are -- as the script describes them -- literally cattle to be manipulated by one “monster” side or the other.

Still, I'll readily admit that I can watch Alien vs. Predator anytime and get a thrill or two out of the experience.  

If that’s the benchmark you require of the film of this type, it may be judged a success of sorts.  

The disappointment, I suppose, is that the film possesses no ambitious sub-text or theme.  Even the flawed Alien Resurrection (1997), by contrast, tried to get some message across to audiences. 

Alien vs Predator feels slight or empty, somehow, and therefore not the fitting heir to two remarkable franchises.

“The enemy of my enemy…is my friend.”

In October of 2004, a satellite belonging to robotics genius Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) detects a heat signature 2,000 feet below the ice of Antarctica. Soon, satellite imagery makes out a subterranean pyramid of unknown origin.

Bishop quickly assembles a team, including guide Alexa Woods (Lathan), archaeologist De Rosa (Raoul Bouva), chemical engineer Grame Miller (Ewen Bremner), and mercenaries Verheiden (Tommy Flanagan), Quinn (Casten Norgaard) and Adele Rousseau (Agatha De La Boulene) to investigate the pyramid.

When the team arrives at remote Bouvetøya Island, it discovers that someone else has already drilled down to the vast pyramid.  Alexa leads the way down, though she boasts reservations about Bishop, who is dying of lung cancer, participating on the mission.

In the subterranean cave far below, Bishop, Alexa and the other humans discover that they have walked into a trap; a trap sprung by beings called Predators who were once revered as Gods by primitive man.  

Now, the human beings are to be "fodder" for another alien race: fierce serpents who gestate inside living human hosts. 

Alexa attempts to survive, even as the two alien species go to war.

“It’s time to pick a side.

The idea of ancient astronauts visiting Earth and shaping human culture -- the Von Daniken Theorem -- may be absolute, total hooey in terms of history and science. 

But much like Prometheus (2012), Alien vs. Predator utilizes the idea to good effect. Here, it is the hunters, the Predators, who taught man how to construct pyramids, who used us in human sacrifices, and who basically taught mankind the fundamentals of civilization.  

Whatever its flaws, Alien vs. Predator’s flashback imagery -- of Predator strutting atop pyramids, hovering spaceships behind them -- remains powerful stuff.  The script is clever in the way it accounts for the disappearance of Mayan culture (a hunt gone wrong, and the deployment of a Predator self-destruct mechanism) in terms of franchise history. Similarly, human sacrifices are re-purposed to involve the aliens in a way that is imaginative, and yet doesn’t seem like a stretch.

The best imagery in the film, in fact, involves the Predators and humans battling teeming aliens...defending Earth territory from the “serpents” before that apocalypse occurs.  The imagery here is spectacular, and it suggests that aliens and predators have always been with us…we just didn’t know it.

In fact, a truly bold AVP film might have been set during that encounter, in that civilization, with man playing an even more peripheral role.  Critics couldn't very well complain about paper-thin characters and characterizations, if no one spoke English, and the main characters were Predator "Gods" in an Aztec or Mayan city.

Another powerful image in the film involves Alexa Woods and the weapons a predator, Scar, gives to her.  She receives an alien tail as a spear, and an alien head as a kind of glove/shield/armor that stretches up her arm.  

This imagery reveals a lot about how the Predators regard their prey, and -- even more than that -- acts as a pointed call-back to both the flashback scenes, and the finale of Predator (1987). 

In the latter case, Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) had to go “primitive” and prehistoric to fight off an alien threat.  In this case, Alexa does the same thing. She uses the resources available to stand in battle beside the Predator. The impression, overall, is that we are seeing a timeless partnership replayed in the present for our own eyes.

But a human wielding an alien head as a weapon is an unforgettable visual, 

I wish the film had more moments like the ones mentioned above.  Instead, Paul W.S. Anderson relies on clichés -- both visual and written -- for much of the film. There’s the dreadful moment that you will recognize from all action movies of the 2000s, in which Scar and Alex, for example, outrun a giant fireball.  It’s such a hackneyed visual at this juncture, and could be piped in from any number of insipid buddy movies.

I should probably establish that I am not an Anderson hater, as some folks apparently are. I have written positive reviews of both Event Horizon (1997) and Soldier (1998) on this blog, as evidence of that assertion.  But facts are facts. The director crafts Alien vs. Predator with absolutely no sense of suspense of tension.  

There is no build-up to the action...it just happens. The film opens in Antarctica on October 10, 1904, for example, and we follow a person being pursued by something, or some things, specifically an alien and a predator. The scene is so rudimentary and by-the-numbers that it makes us feel nothing. The scene’s final jolt doesn’t even provide a good jump scare.  

When one considers the level of suspense and terror in Alien (1979), or even in Predator (1987), AVP does not "feel" faithful to what has come before. The filmmakers demonstrate no patience, and do nothing to establish the setting or mood before leaping into the horror moments.

Again and again, the action scenes play out in this fashion with no real tension or suspense underlying them.  Most grievously, the final battle on the surface with the Alien Queen plays out this way too.  The special effects are fine -- extraordinary even -- but there’s no real sense of danger or surprise in the unfolding of the climax.  The movie just hums along, oblivious to the notion that its horror isn’t sticking the landing. We never feel scared or tense; we never feel the pure terror of these warring goliaths.

It would be something if the scare-less movie could make-up for its lack of suspense and tension with a sense of the visually grotesque.  Alien and Predator, after all, are both R rated franchises, noted for their violence and gore. But in an attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience, Alien vs. Predator is PG-13, meaning that almost no real, dynamic or memorable violence is depicted. 

Every time there is a promise of blood or gore, or even violent impact, the film simply cuts away to another scene, or to a post-impact shot that reveals nothing in terms of damage to body parts.  

No real suspense plus no real gore makes Alien vs. Predator a dull boy, or at least a very bland, generic one.

The characters are mostly fodder, too, for poorly-executed, poorly-shot death scenes. Few characters register here in the way that Hudson does in Aliens (1986), for example, or even the way Johner (Ron Perlman) does in Alien Resurrection. There’s just nobody that distinctive or memorable, overall.

With two important exceptions. 

First, what sense of humanity Alien vs. Predator possesses arises largely from Lance Henriksen. 

This is his third franchise appearance, and his third variation on the Bishop role.We’ve seen the innocent child/android (in Aliens), the malevolent tempter (Alien³) and now the ambitious, determined man behind all that futuristic technology, Charles Bishop. Henriksen brings his trademark humanity to the role, and shows us Bishop the climber (willing to go anywhere to achieve his goal), and Bishop the sick man, facing his own mortality.  

Henriksen gets a great scene with Sanaa Lathan in the film; one where he describes how climbing to a new summit is worth the risk, even if death is the result of the journey. The dialogue is good, but Henriksen makes it soar, and grantsthe audience a thorough understanding of this flawed but admirable human being.

I also love his death scene. Refusing to be ignored as harmless (and therefore unimportant) by the Predator, Bishop strikes the hunter with a flame, showing it his teeth. The Predator stops in its track, and gives Bishop the death he has earned, the death of a warrior.  It’s a fantastic scene, and in many ways, the highlight of the film's action. Bishop didn’t get to his position of power by being ignored, by being written off as sick.  

And if he has to die, he’s going to go out the same way as he lived: noticed and notable.

Secondly, Sanaa Lathan is a solid, promising lead as Alexa Woods. She’s not Ripley, and yet she displays a similar ability to survive by adaptation. 

Alexa thinks on her feet, and the audience can see her thinking things through.  That quality makes it easy to identify with her, especially since Alexa has to do a lot of catch-up learning about her enemies in the course of the film’s action.  

Specifically, I admire Lathan’s tendency not to over-emote, or play things for melodrama. Instead, she keeps just the right amount of distance from the material. There’s one moment in which Scar takes a bloody alien stump to her face, to mark Alexa as a survivor or hunter.  She endures it without complaint or drama, but you can see her in her eyes that she is girding herself.  

No, she probably doesn’t want an acid scar on her face. But are you gonna stop a Predator in his tracks when he is, in his own fashion, honoring you for bravery?

In short, I feel that Lathan takes the character and material seriously, but doesn’t fall into the actor’s trap of overplaying scenes that, if exaggerated, could transmit as silly.

I have read a lot of reviews that claim the fight scenes in Alien vs. Predator are too dark, but -- having seen Requiem -- I can’t make the same observation. Basically, I could make-out the details of each fight in the film and I would be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy the battles on some visceral level.  Again, if that's all you're looking for, you will find it here, and likely enjoy the film.

My big complaint with the monsters in Alien vs. Predator is that all the Predators are squat and chunky. They look more like over-fed professional wrestlers, than the lean giant hunters we saw in Predator and Predator 2 (1990). A couple of times, I was taken out of the film’s reality by the short, steroidal stature of the Predators here. They resemble muscle-men in costumes more than ever before in franchise history.

There are qualities to admire in Alien vs. Predator, as I hope I’ve enumerated in this review. 

So why don’t I like it more?  

Perhaps because the pedigree of both franchises is so strong. I feel that the Alien films are mostly great.  Same thing with the Predator franchise.  

So you put the two monsters together and get a film that is....merely serviceable?  I’m not certain how that really serves either franchise in the long run. 

But I suppose it did: the film was very profitable (though not as profitable as Prometheus was). Still, the film feels more like a high-concept gimmick than a fully developed, fully coherent narrative at times.

Indeed, there are points throughout where you sense the writer and director struggling for some meaty hook that will carry the movie across the finish line.  One such idea: the pyramid is like a prison! The aliens are escaped inmates, and the guards -- the Predators -- need their guns.  Another idea: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And finally, the script sees bound and determined to feature endless variations of the joke “you are one ugly…fill in the blank.” 

So Alien vs. Predator? 

Those who choose, may enter.  

But you do so at your own risk.  

I have taken the plunge at least a couple times, in part for the visually exciting flashback sequences and special effects, and in part because I truly enjoy the performances of Lance Henriksen and Sanaa Lathan. 

And again, Alien vs. Predator is masterful, accomplished filmmaking in comparison to the follow-up  effort: Requiem.

40 Years Ago: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

Director W.D. Richter's cult-classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984) is the cinematic equivalent of purchasing a comic-book on a whim and then trying to figure out what is happening in that specific issue when you have zero familiarity with previous chapters.  

And I mean that entirely as a compliment.  

As Vincent Canby wrote, regarding the film, "Absolutely nothing in ''Buckaroo Banzai'' is quite clear, nor is it supposed to be, though most of it is very funny, beginning with the opening sequence."

Indeed, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai begins, and it's off to the races. Characters and their backgrounds -- or even contemporary relationships, for that matter -- are not explained to any substantial degree by the screenplay from author Earl Mac Rauch.  

Rather, the film assumes from the first frame that audience members are simply long-time, knowledgeable fans of science fiction/comic-book movies, and it trusts them to keep up.  The film commences in media res, and as though we are all fans of that resourceful renaissance man, a neuro-scientist/particle physicist/martial artist/rock-n-roller named Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller).   

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai then rockets forward from that assumption without looking back, delving full-speed-ahead into a genre world of aliens from the eighth dimension, tragic heroic histories, the death of a beloved franchise character (Clancy Brown's Rawhide) and other familiar plot twists that deliberately reflect the cliches of the comic-book/sci-fi genres.

The result of this intelligent, take-no-prisoners approach is surely one of the funniest genre movies ever made; one that, even today, roars across the screen with an unmatched sense of confidence and good vibes.

"Is anybody out there not having a good time?" 
 

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is the tale of a great hero known the world-around.   Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is the subject of comic-books and arcade video games, and even the organizing factor behind a Boy Scouts-type organization called "The Blue Blazer Regulars." [correction: The Blue Blaze Irregulars]

One day, after performing difficult brain surgery, Buckaroo test-drives a new vehicle (The Rocket 88) that can travel five-hundred miles an hour.  While driving, Banzai also tests a device that he and his cohort Professor Hikita (Robert Ito) have perfected: an "oscillation overthruster" which can transition matter from our universe into the space-between-spaces as it were, the "formless void" of the 8th dimension.

Unfortunately, this technological breakthrough attracts the attention of twisted Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow), a man who, in 1938, actually pierced the 8th dimension and was possessed by the spirit of an evil alien Lectroid conquerer, a galactic "Hitler" named John Whorfin.  

Now, Lizardo requires Banzai's oscillation overthruster to return to the 8th dimension and rescue his comrades trapped inside.  From there, it's time to wage war on his peaceful home world, "Planet 10."

After his technological breakthrough in the desert (driving inside a mountain...), Buckaroo Banzai performs at a night-club in New Jersey with his gang/band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers and is surprised to spy in the audience a woman named Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), a dead ringer for his much-mourned wife.  Turns out Penny is her long lost, heretofore unknown, identical twin.

The peaceful Black Lectroids from Planet 10 -- who appear to humans as African-American Rastafarians -- contact Banzai and his people to warn him about the threat of Lizardo/Whorfin.  Worse, the Black Lectroids will initiate a false nuclear conflict with Soviet Russia within a day if Whorfin is not stopped by Banzai.  

The aliens can take no chance that this murdering psychopath could return to their world...

Banzai tracks the evil Red Lectroids and Lizardo to their headquarters in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, at the Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems factory.  Through a little computer research, the Hong Kong Cavaliers learn that Yoyodyne is an alien front company, and that Orson Welles' famous War of the Worlds radio program in the late 1930s was no hoax...but rather the vanguard of a real alien invasion.  Several dozen Lectroids came to Earth and adopted names such as John Bigboote (Christopher Lloyd) to engineer the release of their comrades from the Eighth Dimension...

"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy."

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai unique approach to storytelling is epitomized perfectly by a little throwaway line occurring about an hour into the proceedings. 
  
Two of Buckaroo's team members (The Hong Kong Cavaliers) have gone in search of an evil Lectroid -- a being from the eighth dimension -- when they happen to enter Banzai's scientific laboratory. 
  
A new team member dressed as a cowboy -- New Jersey (Jeff Goldblum) -- spots a ripe watermelon on an industrial-looking device and asks, "why is there a watermelon there?" 
  
The answer? "I'll tell you later." 
  
It's the punch-line to an in-joke we're not privy to (regarding a previous Banzai experiment, no doubt), but as first time visitors to this cult-universe, we don't get it. 
  
And we're not supposed to get it. 
  
We're simply supposed to understand that Buckaroo and his team have shared many intense, crazy adventures together, all with a science-fictional bent, all with real-life consequences for each of them. 

In other words, the watermelon is a touch that adds history to the universe, but no further clarity.  It's a detail indicative of a shared past; but without any context about that particular shared past.
  
The question becomes, of course, why would anyone dramatize a story in this fashion? Why would a filmmaker remove virtually all the explanations, exposition, and meaningful context from a sci-fi film's narrative? 
  
The answer is right there in Vincent Canby's review, quoted above. 
  
If an artist knowingly creates distance between the audience and the action on screen, said action becomes...funny. 

It's the thematic equivalent to that old Hollywood approach to lensing a pratfall in a comedy film.   If you film a comedian slipping on a banana peel in close-up, we register that character's agony as he or she hits the hard sidewalk. Ouch! The audience feels sympathy. 
  
But if the cameraman steps back -- shooting from a distance (from a long shot) -- the action instead appears humorous.  We laugh.
  
That's really Buckaroo Banzai in a nutshell. The filmmakers have knowingly stepped back from the context of the cult-universe of their hero and central figure, Buckaroo Banzai.  It is a stance which allows us to observe all the goings-on not as intense action; not as life-or-death incident;  but as inherently amusing; as satire.  Specifically, the creators' distance from the wild-eyed, over-the-top narrative enables the audience to see the film as a comment on comic-book conceits.
  
At this relatively distant vantage point, the audience is free to laugh at the absurdities on display.  And commendably, the directorial approach to the material echoes that thematic approach.  Often, Richter literally stands back, heavily utilizing master shots and long shots to tell his bizarre story.  It's a perfect example of form echoing content, and it allows the audience a wide-angle perspective of Buckaroo's world so we can take in all the details, from the wacky, cobbled-together architecture/set design of the Lectroids to the almost-Duran-Duran aesthetic of Buckaroo's rock band.

"Buckaroo, I don't know what to say. Lectroids? Planet 10? Nuclear extortion? A girl named "John"? 

Although it hasn't often been described in such fashion, it seems apparent today that the one-of-a-kind Buckaroo Banzai qualifies beautifully as a "camp" entertainment.  

Now, that's a descriptor that gets bandied about too loosely today among some Internet journalists, particularly in regards to 1970s science-fiction TV series that the pop culture judges haven't aged well. 

But the term "camp" actually indicates a tongue-in-cheek aesthetic, an approach in which something is knowingly played as straight as possible so as to exaggerate its inherent qualities.  Camp co-opts serious subject matter (such as comic-book tropes in this case), analyzes that material, and then makes the material humorous by playing it so solemn and earnest that laughs are generated.  

In other words, by taking material seriously to such a dramatic extent, the "inherent ridiculousness" of the concept seems to burst forth.  

Film critic Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker, understood the film's approach very well.  

She termed Buckaroo Banzai an example of  "unmoored hipsterism," and today that seems like the  very best descriptor possible, especially since "camp" -- fairly or not --  boasts such negative connotations for fans of superheroes, comic-books and sci-fi.  And in point of fact, some scholars now consider "hipsterism" the actual appropriation of the "camp" aesthetic from the gay subculture in which it first sprang, matured and gained pop cultural notoriety.

Regardless of what you call the particular style, however, this is surely the vibe of Buckaroo Banzai.  The film takes genre/comic-book conceits so seriously -- but  without any meaningful context whatsoever --that these familiar conventions emerge as recognizable, and then as funny, because we've seen them before...too many times to count. 

Consider, for example, the mid-film apparent demise of the character named Rawhide (Clancy Brown).  He is one of the Hong Kong Cavaliers -- one of Banzai's lieutenants -- and there's an ostensibly sad moment in which he goes down to Lectroid venom/poision, and his friends mourn.

But, of course, because this is the first and only Buckaroo Banzai film, the audience has shared no adventures, no previous missions, no time with Rawhide outside this movie and its particular narrative. 

Divorced from context, the trope of the beloved character's death lacks any psychic weight or larger emotional meaning.  Instead of being sad in this instance, we actually think specifically about the cliche, and how so many movies use it to manipulate audience emotions heading into the third-act denouement.

Imagine if the first time you ever encountered Mr. Spock -- the first time he was ever featured on-screen -- was in the film The Search for Spock (1984).  You would have no idea what the big deal was; why he is important; or what was happening to the character.  The character and his issues in the story would suddenly become less important.  

Instead, how he is used as a cog in the film's narrative wheel would become the primary issue of concern.  To put it another way, you'd be thinking of mechanics instead of emotions.

Again, this is the "distance" from the action that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai knowingly generates and cultivates.  Divorced from the meaning of the trope (the death of a beloved character), the moment just becomes another throwaway exercise in false continuity; an exercise in genre form, with no attached emotional meaning.  We are asked to reflect on form, on tradition of the form, not on the specifics of the plot.

Over and over, Buckaroo Banzai plays out this joke.  Buckaroo is apparently in deep mourning over the death of his wife, and in this movie, he accidentally (!) stumbles upon her identical twin, Penny.  Because we never saw Buckaroo with his wife and never saw her demise in any previous (alluded to...) adventure, this subplot again becomes about the form of pervasive sci-fi cliches rather than any specific character context.  The surprise twin! The doppelganger! The woman who looks exactly like a lost love!  You've seen this idea played out in everything from Dark Shadows to Fright Night (1985). 

But removed from the emotionality that historical context and previous franchise entries could provide the audience, the sub-plot again becomes about a concept -- a cliche -- and the movie positions it all as a joke.  Penny and Buckaroo fall in love almost instantly, as the form demands. They are meant to be together.  It plays not as real romance, but as humorous commentary.

Silly dialogue such as "Take her to the pit!" similarly recalls pulpy sci-fi magazines of the 1950s, and in general Buckaroo Banzai has a great deal of fun mocking the conventions of serialized comic-book adventures.  

In particular, John Lithgow is brilliant as Dr. Lizardo -- an alien version of Hitler we're told, -- who comes off as absolutely absurd.  There is nothing remotely menacing about this character, though he could take over an entire planet, apparently.  

But as played here -- with no overall context backing-up his menacing villainy -- Lizardo is simply a twitching, sneering, thick-tongued cretin, not a world-ending maniac.  We don't fear him; rather we laugh at his outrageous qualities.  So in this circumstance, we are asked to consider the qualities of comic-book villains.  Separated from a history of evil deeds, they can come off as incompetent, and therefore funny, especially since they often fail so egregiously.

Finally, the consistent distance from context makes Buckaroo Banzai a comedy about the genre itself, and its most-frequently hauled out conventions.  I often call the 1984 Richter film  the This is Spinal Tap of genre films, and that's because it serves so ably as a parody of an entire strain of literature and film  Not the rock milieu, as is the case with the Reiner film of 1984, but the conventions of comic-books and science fiction movies as they existed in the mid-1980s.  

However, this is the important thing: the film is not mean-spirited about its sense of fanciful parody.  On the contrary, the stand-back approach of the filmmakers' (both in terms of form and content) assumes a deep fund of knowledge on the part of any audience.  

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai assumes we can keep up; that we will recognize such conventions as the death of a beloved character or the surprise appearance of an identical twin, and understand the joke.  Plus, the movie's pace is downright delirious, so that Buckaroo Banzai is unfailingly smart and fast-moving at the same time.

That's why, in the lingo of the film, Buckaroo Banzai is really something of an "inter dimensional breakthrough."  

It serves as both a straight-forward comic-book adventure and even as a post-modern, humorous comment on the longstanding literary and film conventions that make a hero like Buckaroo -- a hero in the mold of James Bond or Doc Savage -- so appealing and influential in our culture.

And that's why -- yes -- I still hope to see Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League in theaters one of these days.  

Because no matter where you go...there you are.

50 Years Ago: The Final Programme (1974)

In The Final Programme, released in the United States in August 1974, adventurer Jerry Cornelius  teams up with the techno-mage Miss Bruner to acquire a micro-film from his deceased father, one boasting a scientific secret that could revolutionize the world and mankind. 

 

The micro-film is ensconced in Cornelius’s booby-trapped country estate, where his brother Frank (O’Connor) is holding Cornelius’s junkie sister, Catherine (Douglas) hostage. As Cornelius works with Brunner to get the film and rescue his sister, he learns that his ally boasts the unusual ability to absorb the knowledge (and apparently bodies…) of her lovers, and that she plans to use the most advanced computer in the world, Duel, along with the micro-film data to create a completely self-replicating, “self-fertilizing, self-regenerating” hermaphroditic human.  And worse, in a secret Nazi underground station in Lapland, Brunner plans to use Jerry as her guinea pig in the experiment…

 

Did that plot summary make sense to you?

 

Michael Moorcock’s 1969 novel The Final Programme is the first adventure of an anarchist/superhero/Nobel Laureate/secret agent and “Eternal Champion” character called Jerry Cornelius. The character is sexually ambivalent, while also a symbol of heroism in multiple quantum realities.  Cornelius might also be viewed as a kind of satirical response to the popularity of James Bond in the popular imagination of the 1960s.  Unlike Bond, however, Cornelius tends to work against authority and entrenched power.  The science fiction character originally appeared in three additional Moorcock novels, including A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassins and The Condition of Muzak.  

 

Moorcock is known and revered as being one instigator of the British New Wave in science fiction literature, a span which occurred when he took over editorship of New Worlds in 1964. The notion of this “new wave” was that high and mass art could be combined in the dismantling of technical and traditional structure. Characters thus became not individuals only, but avatars upon which one could assign symbols.  The world imagined in Cornelius’s world was retro, one in which the past -- and thus past works of fiction and art -- played a crucial part in the “future.”

 

 Robert Fuest (1929 – 2012), a visual director of the highest order who helmed The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1972) and began his career as a painter and set designer, adapted the first Jerry Cornelius novel to film in 1973, but the final result failed to please the award-winning Moorcock, and by-and-large confused mainstream audiences. Studying The Final Programme today, its primary strengths are its colorful pop visual design, which might aptly be described as “psychedelic chic,” and the lead performance by Finch, who proves dashing, erotic and entirely in-the-know regarding the satirical aspects of his character.

 

Outside those admirable elements, however, the film makes for a frequently a baffling viewing experience, especially to those unfamiliar with the source material and the character of Cornelius. To put it bluntly, Fuest seems to have directed all of his considerable attention into the admittedly-impressive avant-garde visualizations and given scant thought to the script and how it moves from scene to scene, set-piece to set-piece.  Absolutely nothing is made clear regarding who the characters are, their relationships to each other, or what motives drive them. The film itself feels as though it is happening in some alternate universe where the viewer knows none of the rules, history, people, or other details of life.

 

For example, Sterling Hayden appears in just one scene in the film, in the first few minutes, and gives such an odd over-the-top performance, right down to a fourth-wall-breaking glare at the camera, that the movie grinds to a self-indulgent halt.  Is Hayden attempting to revive some mirror universe version of his beloved Dr. Strangelove (1964) character? Or is he making a comment on the absurdity of the modern military mentality and its penchant for naming aircrafts and aircraft parts with letters and numerals? Even the structural use the character is put to proves utterly baffling, and a narrative dead end.  He is introduced with flourishes of grandeur as though he is a main character, but he never reappears. He furnishes Cornelius a new, kitted-up jet….which the film then never actually shows, either.  

 

If the message of The Final Programme is but style over substance, this approach makes sense. The form of the New Wave (with the past resurrected as the future…) means that Hayden’s presence symbolizes a pop-culture reference to and comment upon an actor’s similar role in the aforementioned Dr. Strangelove. The viewer must thus acknowledge both the actor and a previous character to fully comprehend his appearance here. In this way, perhaps, the film’s milieu accurately reflects Moorcock’s New Wave aesthetic to a high degree. But once more, the film baffles on more concrete levels. After this interlude with Hayden’s general, Cornelius meets with Brunner and a gaggle of scientists who want to break into his family house, which is outfitted with booby traps, such as a sound device that provokes “pseudo epilepsy” and toxic green and orange-colored gas.  The interchangeable scientist characters unnecessarily clutter the sequence and are virtually indistinguishable from one another in terms of appearance and personal characteristics. One scientist would have done just fine for story purposes.  

 

Then, bafflingly, the scientists end up in a weird tent room booby trap that resembles a modern bouncy house. Why is Cornelius’s house outfitted this way?  What is the purpose of the tent room?   Once more, no answers of any kind are forthcoming. It’s visually appealing, but nonsensical, like so much of the film. Again, it seems to be style for style’s sake.

 

In short order, it becomes clear that The Final Programme is indeed pure phantasmagoria, a visual “dream,” essentially, with no interest in providing audiences a lucid narrative experience.  The visuals are such that they engage the imagination, but they simply can’t carry a film in which there is no real character to care about, and every aspect of the plot is treated with a self-indulgent smirk.  Like 1975’s Doc Savage, the film qualifies as high camp.

 

Again, the British New Wave interpretation might simply be that Fuest subverts the mock-profundity of many Kubrick films here, particularly with the re-appearance of Hayden, seemingly still in character from Dr. Strangelove, as well as the film’s ending, which functions as a weird inversion of and comment on the Star Child ending in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Brunner and Cornelius join to become the ultimate self-replicating human, but instead of a beautiful messiah, a Neanderthal unexpectedly emerges from this union.  

 

And the Neanderthal (in Jerry’s voice) does a Humphrey Bogart imitation as the movie ends… 

 

This ending could be the direct answer to a question posed explicitly early in the film (in flashback) when Jerry’s mentor, a Hindu professor, wonders if people would recognize the messiah when he appears.  The answer is, of course, that we wouldn’t.  We all have our own individual vision of what the messiah should be, and a genuine one would have a difficult time living up to the multitudinous images.  

 

Would we accept a Bogart-quoting Neanderthal as the next Jesus Christ?

    

Well, many people have accepted an orange-skinned reality star as one, so who knows?

 

The Final Programme also suggests man’s devolution and return to the beginning of his life-span on Earth, in pre-history, rather than a 2001-like transcendence into a glorious future. This is a comment on modern man and the failure he has become in the “Dark Ages” of the 20^th century.  Better then, to become a Neanderthal, and take a do-over. 

 

This ending is not strictly what Moorcock imagined in the novel (where the messiah was beautiful, not a caveman) and was widely ridiculed by movie critics who felt it was an unworthy destination after such a trying, self-indulgent journey.  Yet the problem was not the idea -- that man’s future was in going back to the beginning – but rather the non-serious way in which it was addressed, with the Neanderthal Cornelius adopting the much-mocked mannerisms of Bogart.  Why Bogart? What does he symbolize? A pre-Bond film noir presence, perhaps, one that acknowledges (like Cornelius) that authority is inherently corrupt and positions the hero as outsider.  

 

Is the final image of a Neanderthal Hero spouting Bogart-isms (and opining that the world looks tasty) in The Final Programme the equivalent of announcing a return to a pre-1960s aesthetic? The 1960s and the popularity of Ian Fleming’s character suggested violence is beautiful, performed by beautiful men, and always acceptable because they serve the State.  Before Bond, gumshoes like the ones Bogart played on the silver screen were much more conflicted about violence and their responsibilities to society as a whole.

 

It is tempting to defend The Final Programme on the basis of its often-sensual visuals and clever witticisms. It is also tempting to defend it as a British New Wave commentary on popular art and its role in fostering the establishment. There are legitimate grounds for approbation.  But as a lucid narrative the film just never coheres.  

 

For instance: what has Miss Brunner to gain by becoming the self-replicating entity that appears at film’s conclusion?  She already possesses the amazing ability to -- through sexual intercourse -- absorb the memories, knowledge, and identities of her lovers (whom she consumes, we must assume, in a physical sense).  This ability is an amazing evolutionary adaptation in and of itself, and yet the film doesn’t acknowledge how miraculous a creature she is. Given her own special abilities, Brunner’s quest for evolutionary perfection hardly makes sense.  Why not let two other folks (Cornelius and Jenny, perhaps) undergo the dangerous experiment and then simply “consume” and absorb the product of their union, while safely and securely maintaining her own identity and superiority? 

 

Instead, when the Neanderthal super-being emerges, there is no sign of Brunner whatsoever.  The being is decidedly male, decidedly Neanderthal, and decidedly Cornelius.  The Brunner part of him has been completely buried. This may serve as rich justice for a person who consumed others.  She is consumed herself, finally. 

 

It’s also disappointing that Cornelius’s relationship with his sister in the film is given short-shrift, and that there is almost no notice taken of the beloved hero’s free-wheeling and ambiguous sexuality.  In the film, Jerry seems decidedly heterosexual, which is fine, but not accurate or faithful to the literary source.  Perhaps a bisexual Jerry Cornelius in the early 1970s is too much to ask of any film, but The Final Programme is an artwork of such wondrous excess one wonders why this  particular and daring idea was dropped.

 

It is very apt to suggest that stylist Fuest was here attempting to transform the ethos of the British New Wave to the science fiction cinema, but The Final Programme is so confusing and closed-off in the final analysis that one can’t even begin to enunciate all the concerns with it. Instead, like Jerry, one has to ask first “what are the questions?”  

Guest Post: Immaculate (2024)

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An Immaculate Ass Kicking

 

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

 

John Wick for the rectory set, Immaculate is a vicious satire of religious fanaticism. Produced by its lead, Sydney Sweeney, the movie takes its revenge on thousands of years of misogyny.

 

Novice American nun Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) enters a remote Italian convent where the priests and nuns are overly welcoming in a transparent way. She quickly discovers that, though a virgin, she is with child. Suddenly, the convent, run by Father Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), sets to make her the martyr, carrying the next coming of the messiah. 

 

Director Michael Mohan clues the audience in on the creepy underbelly of the convent almost immediately. His protagonist, even before discovering her immaculate pregnancy, is on edge, noticing peculiar behavior from the nuns and priests.  Mohan and writer Andrew Lobel remind the audience of Dario Argento’s classic Suspiria with its similar lead character’s trajectory (an American in a foreign land stumbling upon a demonic plot), but without Argento’s technicolor pallet. In its stead is a character finding her power to fight formidable, nefarious forces. The film highlights the church’s cruelty towards women, and its disregard for anything but their fetus. 

 

Sweeney makes a refreshing heroine, and allows her character’s arc from fragile child to empowered, avenging angel to be eminently credible. Morte makes a strong antagonist as a character who proves that a science background doesn’t guarantee an enlightened soul. Benedetta Porcaroli is engaging as Sister Gwen, Ceciia’s only ally. 

 

The film has ambitious intentions about weighty religious subjects and hits the zeitgeist during our hangover after the Supreme Court’s once-unthinkable reversal of Roe Vs Wade.  However Immaculate devolves into a crowd-pleasing but superficial film, where Cecilia transforms into Sister Rambo. There are some wild cringeworthy visual moments, including a hilariously grotesque metaphor for the birthing canal, which make the film worth watching — even if it’s no classic on the level of other religious horror films The Exorcist or The Omen.