Reviews

Really superb episode from the first season of The Six Million Dollar Man. Before Bigfoot and the Bionic Tennis Shorts became fads the series was an action adventure midseason replacement for grownups. My dad thought it was cool and let me watch. Steve Austin was originally a human outfitted with mechanical parts, not a comic book superhero with a disco mustache. Still wore the lounge suits but there was some serious television going on, and while my heart will always be with "Day of the Robot" this is likely the most serious of them all.

The subplot involving Steve getting to the bottom of the mystery surrounding his father's disappearance is a masterful way to both humanize the Bionic Man and build upon the character that Lee Majors had slowly been developing. Climbing a mountain to find a crashed spy plane are just the action/adventure trappings, around which are some decent performances. The cast helps drive the story forward, with "Star Trek" alumni and a convincing appearance by George Montgomery as the deserter co-pilot who has to break it to Steve that his father wasn't a coward after all.

Interestingly, Steve then apparently climbs back up the mountain to retrieve his father's remains for burial back at Arlington. When? Did he report back to Oscar first or go back up alone solo? Or did someone have the good sense to formally intervene for a diplomatic truce and land a Chinook up there with a qualified forensics team. While uniformly enjoyable, most of the first season stories don't leave one wondering what happened between scene wipes. This one has a complexity that is greater than what the series usually expected of itself.

Also done without much fuss or bother. The episode is straightforward, such to the point that there isn't much humor or joking around. No sly one liners, but Montgomery's line about Steve having just buried his father sticks with you. Dodgy stock shots of parachutists and mountain climbing scenes with the ground visible below aside, there isn't a spare scene or unnecessary moment and it's all storytelling. No tricks or gimmicks. The bionics work is part of the story and none of it is sensationalized. Compared to the mayhem with Bigfoot or the Death Probe it is almost a totally different show.

If only the series had been able to maintain such an edge, though sadly seven year olds like myself were enthralled and our parents put off by the body count. ABC found out and by the end of the 2nd season it was a family show. By the end of season 3 he was jumping up into trees to save cats, and then came the mustache. Still never missed an episode.

"Fog Island" is like a 1940s detective/horror pulp magazine come to life in the seediest of black and white. George Zucco is excellent as the vengeance-driven owner of a gorgeously macabre island mansion populated by hidden passageways, secret cubbyholes, skeletons in the basement and a gloomy glowering gloom that is to be basked in like a cold subterranean bath. To regard the film as a horror genre outing misses the point. It's a "Shudder Pulp" crossed with an old dark house creaker, not quite a horror movie but more than just a dime store mystery. For one thing the "horror" is all man-made, unless you believe that phony psychic didn't just get lucky in foreshadowing the unnerving conclusion on a least two occasions. No monsters, vampires or other supernatural manifestations of dark fantasy, but instead a dank, claustrophobic, mouldering catacomb of doom under a house no sane person would want to live in for very long.

Only real complaint I'd have is that the good stuff is over far too soon, including co-star Lionel Atwill packing the fastest knife in slasher movie history. Zip! Boom! Baa! And it's back in his coat pocket or whatever quick-draw device he carries it in, faster then the Hays Code censors could take offense to the film boasting an utterly cold-blooded psychopath. Not just willing to kill off his so-called friends but without thinking and at instances which couldn't have been meditated upon, unless that was his goal all along. His demise at the conclusion was too easy, horrifying and nightmarish as the scene is, right out of a gruesome EC Comics nightmare, taking other equally unworthy souls down the toilet through their own stubborn headed greed, and good riddance. Everyone pretty much gets what they had coming, another shared attribute with late 40s pulp horror. The film is also devoid of the usual comic relief hokum - thank God - and its obligatory romance actually meshes well with the plot for a change ... Likely a lingering after-effect of having been tightly honed as a stage production first rather then a filmed deal derived from populist formulae. Most refreshing.

Questions remain: How did the murderer know about the secret floor chamber in the crypt? And whose skeleton does he add his fresh kills to? Slamming the lid like he'd dumped a sack of coal. Did the skeleton come with the house? The movie won't tell. It's just sort of there, like the secret panel on the mantlepiece, the trick organ key, secret passageway, levitating pneumatic desk, escaped felon butler, opportunist former cellmate and random copy of "Crime & Punishment". There was no way for the story to have ended up any other way & questioning the logic of such elements undoes the fun. Some might call those plot holes, I prefer to look upon them as curiously successful touches to a dank and clammy little film that is amongst my favorite ways to pass 68 minutes of life. Deserving of a real archival restoration, if that's even possible.

Seriously. Right down to the demented Count who transforms into a slavering disfigured drooling monster for the big finish down in the Eel Grotto. The plot revels in perverse psycho-sexuality rife with symbolic symbolism symbolized by a barrage of symbols that eventually become a checklist. The film wallows in overtly arty cinematography - the image of the rotund ladies swimming in the pool will stick with you - and boasts one of the most interestingly staged car crashes in movie history. You are in the car with them and for my money it was the high point of the film. Which does go on for about twenty minutes more than it should have: What is it with these film magnates insisting we invest three hours in their forty million dollar movies? Even ALIEN got in & got it done in under two hours for 1/8th of that. Take a hint.

Not sure about the eel thing. They are (sorry) repulsive slimy room-temperature cold wriggling things best left alone, in nature, where they belong. We do not wish to drink them or bathe with them, and those of a perverse mindset may be disappointed that the riveting image of Mia Goth languishing in a bathtub filled with them lasts just as long in the complete film as it does on the trailer. I would wish to prefer to think that the majority of their presence in the film is CGI manipulation of some kind - Lots of sensuously undulating swimming eel scenes, including in rehearsed groups like synchronized swimmers. Right. So, they were faked unless being found in the guts of things gutted onscreen. Like, ew.

Other than the shock sequences involving the eels the film sets out to try and disturb its viewers rather than "scare" them in the traditional sense of the term. I am claustrophobic, have a fear of drowning and will admit to being owned by the depravation tank scene. The main gist of the film is about its location(s), the arty staging of the cinematography, and it's methodology of creating ill at ease within the viewer. The story works up until the big revelatory moment, then languishes in a seemingly arbitrary repeat of certain earlier passages played with a reversed tone. It's to emphasize the disease and corruption which lurks beneath the seemingly placid appearance of this "heath spa", a horror film motif the Italians approached with more directness in films like "Slaughter Hotel".

Is the movie any good? Well, it depends on what you are looking for. I actually liked Dane DeHaan as the schnook sent to endure the action of the film, but you are not watching this for the performances. If you want outright horror with severed heads flying and stuff being blown up you can skip this one. If you like lingering in twisted Freudian psycho-fantasies where everything is a clue and every meaning has more than one interpretation, rent this immediately (selling my DVD/BR after one viewing: am good with one sitting).

If you are a fan of ghoulish old Euro Horror creakers you might want to take a look to see what has become of the form: They even burn the place down at the end, which is right out of Hammer Horror. The climactic scene of the wicked Count claiming his daughter (ew, again) to continue the bloodline right out of the Spanish made "Blood Castle" and its staging borrowed from Hammer's "Kiss of the Vampire". The waltzing scenes come from "Web of the Spider" and the creepy little girl music them from any dozens of other continental Euro Thrillers stretching across several genres.

The film even references Paul Verhoeven with a kid playing with a "Robocop" action figure during a flashback scene just like "Robocop" has a kid playing with an action figure in a flashback scene referencing another pop culture form (ROM: Space Knight). It references the reference like it symbolizes the symbolic symbols, namely to the point of overkill which many viewers will find tedious, others fascinating. I found to be more of the same of forms which I enjoy, with just, like, lots of #$*ing eels ... Blehh.

Which just goes to show that nobody's made a really new "original" horror film since "Dawn of the Dead" in 1978. It's been *that* long ...

I mean, you can, if you insist. Hell I had to buy the damn thing, to know it was on my shelf as a physical unit. To say "I have "Mardis Gras Massacre" uncut on DVD", paid the right price for it (less than $15*) and yeah. I wish it was the VHS, but now I don't have to go through all the rigamarole to find one that is in decent playback condition enough to rip a copy onto my phone. Which is where movies like this belong. In some scummy gutter like venue where men watch shamefully as stacked 70s movie babes are suggestively stripped nude, oiled, shackled to a table and eviscerated for the entertainment of jaded minds. What other reason is there to see it? And if you're going to go along with it that far you might as well own your own copy, and in the most degrading format possible. Which these days means on a phone so you can take it anywhere, gleefully sneaking some sleaze in private, at convenience, and with no one else observing how you consume it.

Rest assured I watched the damn thing with my clothes on sitting up at my desk and found the proceedings to be about as erotic as getting fresh squid at the Korean market up on Avondale Place. The nudity is all depicted in static long shots, the closeups of the Hero Torso which the guts are cut out of laboriously fake in appearance. If anything the Code Red DVD picture quality hammers home the fact that one is watching cheaply made depraved prurient junk. The women are attractive enough, but so what? If you can't see them. The movie is a pale drab exercise in applied sleaze and a working demonstration of how even the most artless and inept among us can likely squeeze out a gory low budget horror film if they put their minds to it. The filmmakers did it purely for the money with no delusion of art, artifice of reality, imagination. Or even the honest filthmongering of your basic Grand Guginol showpiece with freaks biting off chicken heads and turning into gorilla women. The fascination for me to see it an extension of a morbid interest in the DPP "Video Nasty" list, wanting to see what the furor was about, why this or that title ended up "banned" from kids who were looking for a cheap rental night thrill. Or vicarious sex criminal wishing to see his most base of fantasies played out, since he doesn't have the stomach to go through with it himself. I bet Mary Whitehouse sold more movies than any other hustler of horror schlock dreck just by being herself. Hell that's why I bought it.

The movie sucks and is awful on so many different levels, but has a kind of mindless attention to duty which is still somewhat admirable. The women all walk through the proceedings like they are waiting in a dentist's office, and the inept handling of the shock sequences deadens whatever juxtaposition of prurient fascination which make other gore-shockers border on the pornography department. This does too, but only in the sense that porn is a cheat and this stupid little movie cheats at every chance it gets to try and escape being anything less than a base voyeuristic fantasy for sick twisted minds who wish pain & suffering on their fellow human creatures.

So in that sense score one up for being able to lambast the thing for being stupid, predictable, drecky and unrewarding. Adventuresome and challenging horror thrillers are given distinction by having crap like this available to be better than, and yes even stupid "Drive-In Massacre" is better than "Madi Gras Massacre". At least that movie gave us a couple of characters to observe. Here it's just gutting mannequin dolls with strange disco music playing. Watch it if you feel the need but you're not missing anything by looking for something else. It's no "Psycho Puppet", that's for sure. There's nothing in this movie that you haven't already seen done by those who had genuine talent and vision for morbid phantasmagorical cinema shows. This one has the imagination of last season's shriveled brown iris bulbs. The taste of a warmed up leftover TV dinner. And the fun factor of a soggy sandwich bag. You can do better.

And that's saying a lot. I am not a committed fan of Japanese manga/anime type entertainment but actually found myself caring about the plight of the characters here. I've read the novel a dozen plus times & saw the 1997 film in a theater on release week. It was a riot. Total strangers hi-fived each other on the way out then went drinking together to rave about the experience to anyone who would listen. Got the video the day it streeted and came to know every line, cadence, beat and explosion. It's a party movie aimed at low attention spans and exactly the movie we deserved at the time.

This is different, a thoughtful and surprisingly low-key adaptation of the source material for Japanese television with some understandable alterations, lots of J-Pop schmaltz rock, and big weepy Manga eyes. Still far more faithful to the book than the 1997 movie, whose filmmakers must have studied this presentation for ideas - It even opens with a football game & high school dance, and our protagonist is likewise motivated by his yearning for the gal of his dreams. There is none of the rightist philosophical discourse which flavors the book. The series' futurist Utopia has none of the contradictions which flavor the 1997 film. The "bugs" are also transformed into Manga movie monsters, organic plasma spewing blobs with lots of whispy tentacles, and quite lethal enough to be worthy of the Mobile Infantry. They will do.

Yes, it shows the powered armor. LOTS of powered armor in fact, which is cool to finally get to see though the design employed has more in common with the Shogun Warriors walking angular Swiss army knife contraptions than the 9 foot tall ape like shells which encased the novel's heroes. Not that it's a problem, and the big payoff for devotees of Heinlen's novel will be the sequence saved until the final episode as the armored Starship Troopers are finally strapped into their re-entry capsules, fired from the Rodger Young, and do battle on the enemy's home planet in an impressive display of cartoon carnage. The entire sequence takes about 12 minutes but was worth every second leading up to it.

Viewers can of course skip the other five installments but by doing so will miss the journey Johnny Rico goes through learning how to control both his powered armor and his grief at the loss of his mother to the alien menace, whatever they are supposed to be. If the series has a weak spot it's that Johnny's romantic aspirations for Carmen Ibanez continue being his motivating factor long after the novel lets go to allow Johnny to focus on learning how to be an effective soldier. Yet the damnedest thing is that I found myself caring about not just Rico but his squad mates as well, suddenly realizing that they are likely facing their own deaths and understandably unnerved. They can only rely on their training, their technology, and each other against overwhelming opposition, a difficult notion to get across on a cartoon yet it somehow manages to. Only the most ruthless and adaptable survive, which is itself right out of Heinlen's Social Darwinism, no classroom lectures required and nothing lost in the translation. War will still be Hell.

The series has yet to surface on a DVD, an almost unforgivable oversight on the part of whomever holds the rights. How do you say "Get the lead out and press this already" in Japanese? The series deserves to be seen, especially considering the brainlessness of the (more or less) abysmal live action direct to DVD franchise which followed up the 1997 film. Here is a thinking person's alternative, and tracking down a fan-subtitled version of the complete six episode series took about three minutes. Look in the obvious place, you shouldn't have to spend a dime and that's a shame. I'd like to reward whomever was responsible with a purchase and have a hard copy on the shelf with the others so I can watch it again at whim -- Nice work!

... I Had To Look

No joke - I purchased my "Starship Troopers II" DVD in 2006 (used, $1, eBay) and have only just found the patience to watch it. Oh, I knew it sucked. Artless, low budget in-name only sequel to the Paul Verhoeven B-Movie anti-blockbuster. Itself an in-name only film treatment of the Robert Heinlen novel, which remains un-filmable due to its subtle complexities. And I'm not just talking about the powered armor or right wing agenda. The book was written with objectives in mind which are at odds with 21st century pop culture sensibilities. Verhoeven's film will have to do.

He refused to lower himself to reprise his movie just for money but some of the high-caliber talent behind it reunited for an inevitable franchise that has been correctly shipped direct to the DVD pressing plant, never illuminating one cinema screen. Crap like this belongs on DVD, no offense to genius Phil Tippett, who not only broke ground with his bug creations for the first film but pretty much wrote how outlandish creatures are currently portrayed onscreen with "Jurassic Park". And no offense to Ed Neumeier, who not only scripted the original film but had pushed the hyper violent cyberpunk epic previously with "Robocop". They are pros and knew what they were doing when putting this very forgettable film together. I trust they were well paid for their time.

The cast is blameless. Only one player returned from the Verhoeven film, specifically steel-eyed Brenda Strong (ship's Captain Deladier) who is brought back as a cigar-chewing female Sergeant, and while it's not a problem I don't get why. Ed Lauter lends temporary credibility to the first few minutes as a besieged MI general cut off from any hope of rescue with a small squad of troopers whom he promptly sends off into the jaws of a plot device. Its name is Dax, he is played by actor Richard Burgi, and is the best thing about the film, which threatens to come to life a couple times when he is onscreen. The second best thing is the steampunk catapult Suitcase Nuke defense system for a lost outpost only he knows how to operate, and its deployment at about the 25 minute mark is the film's climax. It's all downhill from there, including just knowing that a certain character is going to switch off a certain device at a certain moment and guarantee certain doom for anything else of an original nature happening at all.

It's not just that it's a smaller, meaner film. Small films can still be ambitious + convincing, and I like it mean sometimes. It's not just that the core plot component is derivative. The original is about the most derivative film ever made (except maybe "Robowar", LOL) but used its appropriation with bombastic unapologetic glee. Here they just check off the cliches like numbers on a list: The lost unit cut off from rescue, the creepy abandoned base with a power shortage, the gaggle of offbeat personalities making up the speaking roles (the Black Guy, the Crazy Guy, the Techno Nerd, the Green Rookie Scared Witless), the ass-kicking females who are suddenly hot when stripped to a muscle shirt with their hair down, the quirky shifty-eyed loser with the secret, the nympho who was game enough to do a nude scene, the resentful anti-hero pressed into action by circumstance ... Et cetera.

The way the film is photographed is an immediate tipoff: Almost everything is murky, cloudy, smoky, dimly lit. All hallmarks of low budget science fiction filmmakers who are trying to obscure the low budget components of their low budget sets. The main abandoned base location is also helpfully half demolished, meaning that the set designers only needed to drag in heaps of junk to obscure a few functioning prop pieces like doors and make the lights flicker. Computer generated effects fill in the gaps including the bulk of the monster design and none of it boasts the improbable believability of the first film's visceral impact. The violence, gore, and sex are unearned checklist items to be covered without the fun factor which made the first movie such a guilty pleasure masterwork. This one is just guilty, mostly with snitching its premise from the early "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Conspiracy". Which got the job done in 48 minutes for a fraction of the cost & is still a genuine freakout the first time through.

But whatever. After twelve years of not knowing I had to look and got what I deserved. No hard feelings either -- I was fortunate to see the first film in a near riotous screening at an 8th Avenue theater in NYC the week it was released; Complete strangers high-fived each other on the way out. Nothing could ever live up to that experience and I think the filmmakers were aware of it, kept their sights aimed low. Put a mean little film together, made some money, and moved on to other projects.

Worth a rental or $1 used DVD, you'll get what you pay for. Beer may help.

Good gracious, what a movie. Been watching my Peplums again after a need to better understand the character of Hercules came up. Sure, he's called Maciste (or however its pronounced) in this one but it's essentially the same guy: Muscle-bound demigod begotten from the Sire of Zeus/Jupiter wandering the Earth righting wrongs. Here he comes upon another Peplum Egyptian Pharaonic era royal court beset by all sorts of fascinating evils furthered by the attention-riveting Chelo Alonso, perfectly as the intelligent yet bloodthirsty slave girl come to be Queen of an Empire.

Or whatever — This is one of the most violent and potentially disturbing Sword & Sandal mini- epic I can recall, with an implied body count in the thousands as she has entire human settlements wiped out to further her ambition for ultimate power. Humans torched alive on top of elaborate towers is a favored method of dispatching the unworthy, but our favorite will always be the Crocodile Pool into which assorted cast members are tossed to suffer hideously as they are devoured alive.

And you know, something tells me we're missing a proper introduction to the plot device, as a key character is dispatched fairly early into proceedings, later appearing in a manner in which their identity cannot be confirmed and is supposed to be of bother to the story. Because, I suspect, he was devoured whole by crocodiles in a scene removed from the surviving print, which only mentions the Crocodile Pool towards the end of the proceedings. This totally defies how Pepla are usually structured and in a manner which can only be the result of external meddling.

Much like a James Bond film the best Peplum thrillers establish an elaborately horrifying execution or torture device for its crazed villain's inept underlings fairly early on. The threat of ending up thrown into its workings then hangs over the rest of the plot, indeed driving its plot once the Hero has come into the story. And sure enough Mark Forrest's very capable Maciste is indeed thrown bodily into the Crocodile Pool at what would have been exactly the right moment — If we had known about the Crocodile Pool previously.

Since we do not my suspicions were raised upon a 2nd viewing when going back to make sure the movie really was as cool as I'd thought it was. And "Son of Samson" is, just off-balanced by not having the Crocodile Pool established in the mind's eye of the viewer prior to Maciste being tossed into it. And a 3rd viewing established the likely place where our introduction to its horrors should have been cemented. There is no reason for the plot to insist that the identity of a certain key character is anyone but that person … Unless, that is, he had been devoured by the crocodiles & a dummy used in his place.

The good news is that even after three viewings the film remains of fascination and deserves a restoration. Ms. Alonso is nothing shy of a revelation and her final doom is perhaps the most disturbing moment in Peplum history since Kirk Douglas had his run-in with the Lepers. I'll even forgive the movie for not having a rampaging monster for a big showdown match. Trust me: Maciste has his hands full in this one just contending with all the evil scheming afoot. Fitting in screen time for a giant cyclops or mechanical moon-men would have proved a distraction, and the film concludes on exactly the right note to leave the viewer wondering, "Wait … what was that again, with the thing?"

Guys, guys GUYS! People get a grip, please. There's a thing called The Spoiler, whereby commentators on films will spoil the fun of getting to see the movie for other people by carelessly revealing a pivotal development, revelation, or secret held by a movie. The fun for viewers is to get to encounter that revelation on their own without having the moment ruined by knowing about it in advance.

"Nightmares" has such a revelation and it only comes in the very last minute of the film. The payoff was fantastic, and thank goodness I had not sought out reviews of the film beforehand or the fun would have been ruined. Almost every review, post, or synopsis of the movie contains that revelation which viewers should have to earn after sitting through the rest of it. By knowing in advance the potency of the scenes which lead up to it is diluted and there were some very potent scenes here which would have suffered from advance knowledge of the revelation.

Best way to sum up the story is to say that a patient from a secret drug treatment program for the criminally insane is released prematurely, goes off his personality modifying meds, and embarks on a journey through the seedy side of America's east coast during which he commits several gruesome killings. That's the extent of what should be revealed. Anything more would spoil the mind- screw of that last minute, and reduce the meaning of the film to a checklist of slasher movie components pieced together by an oblique story which will only serve to distract genre viewers from the horror of it all.

And hence the film's current status: Regarded as a classic by some but dismissed by many more as boring & derivative. Because without coming upon that revelation on your own it is sort of a 2nd rate overly arty if competently made slasher-type horror movie rating just about 5 out of 10: Covers the bases, constructed with skill but not really having anything too spectacular with a comparatively modest body count (I believe it is eight, if you count the big flashback scene). The gore effects may or may not have been "supervised" by Tom Savini, it doesn't really matter, they serve the film well enough. The extra notoriety the controversy generated only means more opportunities for reviewers to spill the beans for audience members who could care less.

I'm glad I ignored it all. With that spoiler intact I give the film a 7 out of ten, with very tight plotting that is only revealed as being more thorough than usual once that revelation takes place. The film is very well made from a technical standpoint with an interesting use of film speeds and droll, non-sensational music. But who watches slasher movies for their plotting, technical work or soundtracks? They are traditionally a series of gruesome set pieces connected by some sort of story which may or may not hold up to the light of day when evaluated separate from the gore. This one does and that alone is somewhat remarkable. Just don't read any more reviews until after watching it or you too may be tempted to dismiss the results for being something different than the usual brainless mayhem.

I don't know guys, didn't think this movie was all so silly. Yeah OK, most of the canine cast are pooches who sort of look like they want to play, go walkies and have a snack. Perspective might have something to do with my reaction: I got bit pretty bad as an 11 year old and by a beagle, of all things. Not Snoopy but a vicious snarling little ball of teeth who would not let go and scared the crap out of me enough to turn me into a cat person for most of my life. Only as an adult in what one might refer to as middle ages have I become more fond of dogs. Cats don't care. Dogs celebrate your very existence each time you walk into the room. Mmyesh you do, Pumpkin Butt.

I also buy the premise of a swarm/pack/stampede of similar animals or insects having a collective response to stimuli which could provoke group reactions. Imagine if all the millions of mosquitoes in the Adirondacks collectively went after every living warm blooded creature en masse, all at once. Deep Woods Off and your windbreaker would not help for long. Thankfully it isn't going to happen, but if applied up the ladder of life forms one could see how it would be kind of scary to have every domesticated pet turn into my friend the beagle all at once and form up into packs of ravaging bloodthirsty killers.

The film also goes out of its way to explain the science of its premise in terms that come across as being at least as plausible as "King Kong Vs. Godzilla" so I was willing to give the film a chance. And it does have one insanely creeped out sequence which I won't ruin. I will cite ALIEN (1979) as my favorite film ever and for about ten minutes "Dogs" had me wondering if I should maybe turn a couple lights on and fix a drink. Freaked the hell out of me, with a sober plausible cast of non-sensational types making it all feel pretty familiar up until that moment. The festival of carnage which then climaxes the film and its obligatory 70s paranoid ending sort of broke the spell, which is too bad as they were onto something there for a while. Yeeeesh.

Do I recommend the movie? Sure, if you want to potentially be freaked out by something that really is as skin-crawlingly scary as a character describes it as. The snarling dogs may be unsettling to some viewers but my guess is that was sort of the point -- Horror movies used to be designed to actually scare audiences and they do a fairly good job of it. Though my sensibilities as a film consumer are also rooted in the 1970s & don't rely on mind- blowing special effects, can set aside the absurdity of seeing a poodle mutt depicted as vicious due to personal experience, and watched the movie all alone in the dark with the lights off. Which was the right decision.

It is impossible for me to write an objective review of ALIEN simply because I believe it is not just the best motion picture film ever made, but is a pinnacle of artistic expression that owes its debt to pretty much everything that came before it. The story was a cultural funnel into which it all flowed. The only thing it can be correctly compared to might be the original 1977 release of STAR WARS even though its objectives could not have been more different. It is the most thorough and convincing portrayal of the future ever committed to celluloid. Certainly more convincing than 2001: A SPACE ODDITY, which is too sterile and gleaming. The future will not look like a dentist's office.

The future will be ugly, loud and busy. It will be a retrofitted mess of the past, present and futuristic forms. Like a city which adapts to changing times by modernizing certain parts while still facilitating its old function with its crumbling old infrastructure. If you're curious to see what the future of commercial space travel may look like watch this film. Humans will come and go, we may be tooling about on space craft, we may be crossing vast distances of space, and yes: It stands to reason we will encounter life forms startlingly different than ourselves. Unless we are very lucky it is almost inevitable that like other creatures on this planet they will react to us with fear, hostility or aggression for primal reasons related to territoriality or survival. It is doubtful we will have much in common.

We won't meet these alien life forms by looking for them. We will come across them as we go about our human ways, pressing deeper into the universe while going about our mundane business on the surfaces of worlds never meant to accommodate warm blooded protein and sugar consuming bipedal air breathers. I doubt the aliens we do find will look like HR Giger's creations, but at least in Giger we finally had an artist's vision for a life form that is suitable for the vastness of space. It is infinitely adaptable, roughly taking the form of whatever creature it gestates inside of and born ready-made to thrive in whatever the host's native environment may be. It's a weapon — natural or engineered, doesn't matter — a DNA replicating machine which mimics its host creature so it may corrupt and devour it more efficiently.

Here it takes the bastardized form of a man and effortlessly eliminates five human adults inside of 48 hours. It would have infected whatever biosphere it was introduced into, skillfully devouring, replicating, spawning and breeding until a critical mass is reached and all other forms of life in that biosphere would be eliminated in a survival of the fittest test with one inevitable outcome. The only way that its threat would be believable and frightening is if the fictional universe the story takes place in is 100% convincing. ALIEN's is, boasting the most effective production design in the history of cinema, bested only by NASA's Apollo moon landing program.

We believe in the universe it is set, the people who inhabit it, and the hardware they use to perform the tasks required by their mode of existence. If we were not thoroughly convinced the entire premise would fall like a house of cards. Ridley Scott, Dan O'cannon, Ron Shussett, Ron Cobb, Christopher Foss, H.R. Giger, John Mollo, Roger Dickens, Les Dilley, Brian Johnson, Jerry Goldsmith, Terry Rawlins, and the cast chosen to enact the story all collaborated seamlessly to produce a completely convincing facade telling a tightly plotted story about humans stumbling across an alien life form. Through duplicity and against protocol, the organism is allowed to infect the human biosphere within the ship, and the crew inevitably discover that the only way to contain the outbreak to their ship is to destroy it. It is a perfect metaphor for the necessary evils of modern life.

The film was successful and its dominance of the horror/action movie market spawned an outbreak of similarly themed films, some of which came close to replicating ALIEN's impact on our culture, but none really being able to introduce anything very useful to the premise. Queens laying eggs dumbs the creature down to familiar Terrestrial life patterns. I would prefer to think that the universe holds many surprises about how life thrives that aren't anything like the patterns we are comfortable with. The bug hunt in the first sequel is well done, but whatever success its offspring may have enjoyed all relate back to the singular vision and urgency behind the artistic quest that this film set out to resolve.

It does so in ways that go beyond the impact of individual scenes. Every film of its kind made since has been influenced by ALIEN in one way or another, and that influence will continue for as long as humans make films. Nobody will ever be able to "undo" its contributions, negate them from our society's palette. You can mix in Predators or A list casts with super-real computer effects, but it will always come back to this film and the startling possibilities it suggested. If it hadn't been done so well we wouldn't still be talking about it, proof that they really did get it right. We have only just begun to explore what forms the possibilities suggested by ALIEN may take, and someone someday will get it just as right in their own era's equivalent.

I hope I'm around to see that happen, maybe even have a hand in making it. Who knows.

10/10