1959 B-grade sci-fi flick in which invisible aliens from the Moon come to Earth to take it over by inhabiting the bodies of the dead, with a very 1959 sci-fi anti-nukes pro-world peace message.
In a word: amazing!
Best parts:
-After the alien-zombies contact Dr. Pemmer to tell him they're going to kill everyone on the planet unless they surrender and then he gets his daughter's "just friend" to go to the press with this story "This old retired scientist just told me that his dead friend's body walked into his living room and told him he was really a moonman inhabiting a corpse and demanded that we all surrender or they're gonna kill us all!" Instead of the press just ignoring him (like they don't get calls like that a hundred times a day?) every single paper apparently made huge front page stories making fun of the crazy old scientist. I wish the press really operated like that...
-The first disaster was a plane crash, which was portrayed via footage of a plane crashing directly into a gigantic 'X' painted on the side of a hill. Here's a hint: don't paint gigantic white 'X's on the sides of hills. Pilots are irresistibly driven to crash into them.
-Throughout the whole movie there's a voice-over narration which overexplained nearly everything thin the movie. Whenever something happened that wasn't re-explained by the narrator it was almost a surprise. Probably not exclusive to this movie, but quite charming nonetheless.
-The scientists decide that the aliens' only real weapon is their invisibility: that's why they have to take over our dead people and use our weapons against us. Um... seems to me that maybe the fact that they also have spaceships and are capable of "entering a dead body through the pores of the skin" would also count somewhat as weapons. But, then, I'm not a scientist...
-Lots of easy pickings, actually, of hilarious bits in this movie. My absolute favorite part, though, came when the intrepid quartet of humans had trapped an alien in the chamber (labelled above it in big white letters: "CHAMBER"), after the alien threatens them again saying they can't win and resistance is futile and all that, the army guy yells at him over the intercom, "Listen, friend! We're the ones who've trapped you!" I love that he called the alien "friend"! These things flew across space just to take us over and kill us all, but even that can't break the 1950s leading-man veneer of friendly speech! (Of course, GWBush has many times in the past referred to terrorists as "folks" so maybe this isn't that bizarre...)
Really, though, the best part of the whole movie, and this is not something I'm making fun of, was that at the end, when they finally figured out how to make the Invaders visible by shooting them with a sound gun, we're shown a couple of shots of them shooting the sound gun at animated corpses which then crumple to the ground and, after a few seconds, the translucent lumpy bodies of the aliens emerge from their bodies, stumble around a bit, and then collapse into little balls of mush. These shots were almost haunting, since what they actually looked like, aside from the context of the story, were little animations of men suddenly dying, their souls then emerging from their bodies but apparently weighed down by something. Unable to ascend or really go anywhere, the souls just collapse into a pile of glop. Wow.
Showing posts with label B Scifi Horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label B Scifi Horror. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Friday, August 17, 2007
Nemesis
8/13/07 Laptop alone 1:00pm
I remember watching this movie at my dad's apartment in Yankton, or I remember my dad watching it. I'm pretty sure it was this movie anyway; the Netflix version was a TV edit and the only image I remembered strongly from the movie was a butt. I'm pretty sure I know which scene it was from, but there was no butt. Mainly I remember the butt and the gritty neo-noir type feel copped from Blade Runner, which describes the first half of the movie fairly well. The title sounds right. It must have been this movie.
I think I mostly read a book while dad watched it, because I was pretty contemptuous of movies like this. Not a "real" movie, just a stupid scifi actioner. Now I'm almost more interested in movies like this than "real" movies, sometimes.
The opening action scenes were actually pretty bad, though. The type that remind me of the gunfights in The Life Aquatic, where people just pose in the middle of the frame and fire their guns, and then you cut to the people whom they're aiming at and watch various of them get hit or other things explode around them. No attempt to make individual gunshots correspond to any individual hits. The characters firing generally don't even appear to be aiming at all. Sometimes they hold their guns stationary; sometimes they wave them around in broad circles. The effect is the same. I wonder why even bother shot an action scene like that. You'd think if you're making an action movie you'd at least be interested in the action enough to try to make it have some kind of order or sense to it.
It's weird how the movie seemed to completely changed once it moved to Java. All of a sudden, the villains got way more weird, as if they just let the actors go crazy. Where it seemed like it was trying to strike a "restrained" note through the first half of the movie, once they go to Java it seemed to be much more about just trying to have fun.
The "fun" seemed most present with the weird well-dressed smiling guy cyborg, who showed up about ten cuts before he really became relevant, almost as if the movie was trying to warn us that we should be ready for him. He seemed to be kind of equivalent to a later level boss in a game like Final Fight or something. He was built up to be like some kind of badass, but as soon as he's dead he doesn't matter. As soon as he enters the movie for real, though, he jumps main-character-cyborg guy and they fall through a window on what appeared to be one of those giant slides they have at carnivals that you ride down in a potato sack. This quick trip down the slide led to two of the weirdest shots in the whole movie. The first came as the two are struggling, with smiling guy on top trying to choke main character guy, and first there's a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, a close up of smiling guy making a weird facial expression and reaching toward the camera. This shot is followed a few seconds later by a shot of what is supposed to again be a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, but this time the background behind smiling guy is all pink and glowy, and he's not wearing a shirt, appears to actually be standing still, and smiling open-mouthed at the camera, when his face cracks open to reveal a gun behind his right eye. They'd had a cyborg do this earlier, but the weirdest part about it was that he wasn't wearing shirt, which made him look like he actually was naked. One of those moments that's almost more surreal than anything an a "surrealist" movie, since it's not lingered on or presented as a surreal moment or anything.
The other interesting thing comes at the end of the slide, when main character guy shoves smiling cyborg's head into a big pipe that's suspended over the slide. Then we watch as the cyborg, whose head is apparently stuck in the pipe and possibly completely destroyed, we watch as his body, practically hanging from the pipe, the lower parts of the legs limp, the arm pointing a gun and randomly firing into the air, making the body wobble back and forth. It's really a pretty creepy little shot. Possibly one of the only shots in the whole movie that really works on the level it's intended to.
Throughout the movie, the characters keep making references to the main character guy's level of humanity. "86.5% is still human!" he says. "You're practically a cyborg anyway. You should join us!" The funny thing is the movie doesn't really seem interested in the slightest in the question of whether he's still "human" with all the mechanical parts in him, which ultimately isn't really that interesting of a question anyway. But it's brought up in just about every conversation main character guy has with another character. It's like the movie thought it had to pay lip service to the idea since it was a science fiction movie and there is often this idea that science fiction movies should explore some kind of question like that, at least a little bit. But really it was nothing more than a recitation of the question. And, ironically, the question probably would've seemed more relevant to the movie if it'd never even been mentioned.
I remember watching this movie at my dad's apartment in Yankton, or I remember my dad watching it. I'm pretty sure it was this movie anyway; the Netflix version was a TV edit and the only image I remembered strongly from the movie was a butt. I'm pretty sure I know which scene it was from, but there was no butt. Mainly I remember the butt and the gritty neo-noir type feel copped from Blade Runner, which describes the first half of the movie fairly well. The title sounds right. It must have been this movie.
I think I mostly read a book while dad watched it, because I was pretty contemptuous of movies like this. Not a "real" movie, just a stupid scifi actioner. Now I'm almost more interested in movies like this than "real" movies, sometimes.
The opening action scenes were actually pretty bad, though. The type that remind me of the gunfights in The Life Aquatic, where people just pose in the middle of the frame and fire their guns, and then you cut to the people whom they're aiming at and watch various of them get hit or other things explode around them. No attempt to make individual gunshots correspond to any individual hits. The characters firing generally don't even appear to be aiming at all. Sometimes they hold their guns stationary; sometimes they wave them around in broad circles. The effect is the same. I wonder why even bother shot an action scene like that. You'd think if you're making an action movie you'd at least be interested in the action enough to try to make it have some kind of order or sense to it.
It's weird how the movie seemed to completely changed once it moved to Java. All of a sudden, the villains got way more weird, as if they just let the actors go crazy. Where it seemed like it was trying to strike a "restrained" note through the first half of the movie, once they go to Java it seemed to be much more about just trying to have fun.
The "fun" seemed most present with the weird well-dressed smiling guy cyborg, who showed up about ten cuts before he really became relevant, almost as if the movie was trying to warn us that we should be ready for him. He seemed to be kind of equivalent to a later level boss in a game like Final Fight or something. He was built up to be like some kind of badass, but as soon as he's dead he doesn't matter. As soon as he enters the movie for real, though, he jumps main-character-cyborg guy and they fall through a window on what appeared to be one of those giant slides they have at carnivals that you ride down in a potato sack. This quick trip down the slide led to two of the weirdest shots in the whole movie. The first came as the two are struggling, with smiling guy on top trying to choke main character guy, and first there's a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, a close up of smiling guy making a weird facial expression and reaching toward the camera. This shot is followed a few seconds later by a shot of what is supposed to again be a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, but this time the background behind smiling guy is all pink and glowy, and he's not wearing a shirt, appears to actually be standing still, and smiling open-mouthed at the camera, when his face cracks open to reveal a gun behind his right eye. They'd had a cyborg do this earlier, but the weirdest part about it was that he wasn't wearing shirt, which made him look like he actually was naked. One of those moments that's almost more surreal than anything an a "surrealist" movie, since it's not lingered on or presented as a surreal moment or anything.
The other interesting thing comes at the end of the slide, when main character guy shoves smiling cyborg's head into a big pipe that's suspended over the slide. Then we watch as the cyborg, whose head is apparently stuck in the pipe and possibly completely destroyed, we watch as his body, practically hanging from the pipe, the lower parts of the legs limp, the arm pointing a gun and randomly firing into the air, making the body wobble back and forth. It's really a pretty creepy little shot. Possibly one of the only shots in the whole movie that really works on the level it's intended to.
Throughout the movie, the characters keep making references to the main character guy's level of humanity. "86.5% is still human!" he says. "You're practically a cyborg anyway. You should join us!" The funny thing is the movie doesn't really seem interested in the slightest in the question of whether he's still "human" with all the mechanical parts in him, which ultimately isn't really that interesting of a question anyway. But it's brought up in just about every conversation main character guy has with another character. It's like the movie thought it had to pay lip service to the idea since it was a science fiction movie and there is often this idea that science fiction movies should explore some kind of question like that, at least a little bit. But really it was nothing more than a recitation of the question. And, ironically, the question probably would've seemed more relevant to the movie if it'd never even been mentioned.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The Last Man on Earth
(7/23/07 laptop, archive.org, 1:00am, just me)
1) Vincent Price was definitely not a physical actor. Why the hell would you put your hand in your pocket before throwing a burning torch? And his attempt to casually lean back onto an outdoor table has got to be one of the creepiest bits of forced nonchalance I've ever seen. The fact that he actually outruns somebody is probably the least believable thing in the whole movie.
2) In the flashback scene, I just couldn't tell if Price was married to the younger hot lady or if he was her dad. It looked like he was trying to kiss her on the face, but it's hard to tell really what the hell he was doing, and all of his other contact with her looked very paternal.
3) When Vincent Price's little granddaughter or daughter was dying on her bed, the half-assed way the little girl didn't even bother to pretend she was acting blind while saying, "Mommy, I can't see you!" actually kind of made the scene more interesting than it would've been if they'd used a competent child actor. I think more movies should use kids who aren't interested in acting like they're in a scene for little bit parts like that.
4) "No. I won't let them put you there, Virg. I promise. No. I won't let them put you there." If only he'd stood there shaking his head and repeating himself over and over again, as the camera zoomed in slowly so you could see with ever-increasing clarity his jowls flabbing back and forth, until the camera finally did that thing where it gets so close to his face that it loses its focus, and then faded out. That would have been amazing.
5) "There was a time when I shopped for a car. Now I'm looking for a hearse." It's somewhat disorienting when a well performed line pops up out of nowhere after half an hour of poorly written dialogue being poorly performed. This film definitely suffers when there's not a voiceover. Price's voice is so good for it that it almost makes sense why he'd be cast in the lead here.
1) Vincent Price was definitely not a physical actor. Why the hell would you put your hand in your pocket before throwing a burning torch? And his attempt to casually lean back onto an outdoor table has got to be one of the creepiest bits of forced nonchalance I've ever seen. The fact that he actually outruns somebody is probably the least believable thing in the whole movie.
2) In the flashback scene, I just couldn't tell if Price was married to the younger hot lady or if he was her dad. It looked like he was trying to kiss her on the face, but it's hard to tell really what the hell he was doing, and all of his other contact with her looked very paternal.
3) When Vincent Price's little granddaughter or daughter was dying on her bed, the half-assed way the little girl didn't even bother to pretend she was acting blind while saying, "Mommy, I can't see you!" actually kind of made the scene more interesting than it would've been if they'd used a competent child actor. I think more movies should use kids who aren't interested in acting like they're in a scene for little bit parts like that.
4) "No. I won't let them put you there, Virg. I promise. No. I won't let them put you there." If only he'd stood there shaking his head and repeating himself over and over again, as the camera zoomed in slowly so you could see with ever-increasing clarity his jowls flabbing back and forth, until the camera finally did that thing where it gets so close to his face that it loses its focus, and then faded out. That would have been amazing.
5) "There was a time when I shopped for a car. Now I'm looking for a hearse." It's somewhat disorienting when a well performed line pops up out of nowhere after half an hour of poorly written dialogue being poorly performed. This film definitely suffers when there's not a voiceover. Price's voice is so good for it that it almost makes sense why he'd be cast in the lead here.
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