The Mummy Theme Park (2000)

 

Director: Alvaro Passeri

Screenplay: Alvaro Passeri and Antony Pedicini

Cast: Adam O'Neil as Daniel Flynn; Holly Laningham as Julie; Cyrus Elias as the Sheik; Helen Preest as Nekhebet; Peter Boom as Professor Mason; Paola Real as Damcer; John Gayford as Richard

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

You think the Sheik will like my boobs?

I encountered director Alvaro Passeri for the first time with Creatures from the Abyss (1994), an incredibly lurid and ridiculous Italian nautical horror from the nineties, a film who marked the end of the golden era of Italian genre films with a sense of aware absurdity. Alongside Passeri having an obsession with giant stuff animals in his set decoration and automated bathrooms with A.I., this film as his follow up nonetheless also marks him stepping into a new world of cinema, that of the straight-to-DVD era. From its title, it looks like a cash-in on The Mummy (1999), the big budgeted reboot for Universal of its original 1932 horror film with Brendan Fraser. I would not be surprised if The Mummy Theme Park was actually titled that way for the brand recognition, but I do not point fingers negatively even if proven. Considering Italian genre films ripped off or built themselves on what was popular in North American cinema, I consider it befitting and a compliment if that was the reason behind the title. Only that it might have undercut this film's chances with a quick dismissal are against it as a choice, as the title does nothing to show what the film to my surprise actually was.

More of a concern is that this openly goofy movie is built by love from Alvaro Passeri, deciding in this of all films to invest techniques from models to superimposition, film techniques from as far back as silent cinema, and I admire the results. This is all for a film effectively about cyborg mummies, which adds a joy, when in truth Passeri commits to an aesthetic more vast in production than some of the golden era Italian horror films from the eighties, all in the name of making the silly premise actually live up to expectations rather than be disappointing. Namely, that this has the ridiculous premise about cyborg mummies and, even if not pushing this to the level some audiences may want, replacing the potential disappointment with a joyfully over-the-top tone and spectacle to compensate for that audience still. An American photographer, taking his female assistant and love-of-his-life with him, is assigned to go to Egypt and promote the titular theme park. Created by a powerful sheik, after a fissure in the earth has exposed a secret burial site, he has decided to commit complete sacrilege of the dead, creating a theme park about ancient Egypt which has no qualms about rebuilding centuries old corpses in their original form, operating them by machinery and forcing to dead to be undead animatronics. Even how they start to go berserk, by photographic flash, evokes Itchy and Scratchy Land from the famous Simpsons episode, how everything went to shit in that episode with the mascots going on a rampage, only with someone in charge whose lack of qualms and greed for this makes this suitably karmic when it goes wrong for him. Not even skeletons are safe from this reanimation by the Sheik's scientists, and the one woman on staff who is secretly communicating with the angry ancient Egyptian gods is going to make sure he gets his comeuppance.

You have the paradox that Alvaro Passeri's take on Egypt is questionable, the one issue you have to get around with enjoying the film. It is problematic, that this Egypt feels like it is from a different century, with harems and armoured guards, one from a European Western view of Egypt that reality. It is the fantasy of the Arabia, despite modern technology being involved, from fantasy narratives outside of real Egyptian culture. Also of note is that everyone, including the Egyptians, is clearly a white European in prominent roles, Passeri's style clearly evoking old Hollywood films which did not think carefully about casting, or even one of Fritz Lang's last projects, the two part The Indian Tomb and The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959), a film which had locations shot in India, but alongside interiors in West Germany, has prominent roles even for Indian characters for an Indian epic played by white actors. In that case, it felt less offensive on purpose, more a really misguided aspect to what are still compelling pieces of adventure narrative, only stung by the bad surrealism of a European actor in obvious makeup passing off as West Asian, in rich fifties colour film images to emphasise this contradiction. In cases like this, it is understandably going to raise questions from a non-Caucasian cineaste, even the most forgiving, for justifiable reasons. The problem is here with The Mummy Theme Park, and you cannot justify privilege of exempting this film either from this problem, only admit I enjoyed the film but that it was a strange decision, more so at the turn of the 21st Century, even for budgetary reasons.

The aesthetic without this problem would have been enough, even if in danger of exoticising Egypt as merely fantasy, not of thereal place. That is because, ironically, the film whilst with its problems with this is nonetheless about exploitation of Egyptian culture even from within for Western tourists. How befitting even this proud b-flick, probably better without subtlety, will mock and parody all the transgressions done to ancient Egypt and sacrilege of the dead, only beyond an Egyptian film like Shadi Abdel Salam's The Night of Counting the Years (1969) to actually contemplate the transgressions committed to Egypt as a culture and a land to have their history stolen from them. In history where the British (my nationality) are not guiltless either in our transgressions, in raiding tombs and stealing another nation's artefacts in a colonial form, Alvaro Passeri, even if a twisted humour and a love in the set decoration in depicting it, sets out as perfect a metaphor for this even in a silly genre film as you could get, Egypt now desecrated as a tourist train ride where popcorn and pizza are available at the concession stand.

The film is absurd. You can distract a mummy with your cleavage here, and Passeri for some will need a slap on the wrist for how much lewdness there is, even for a film still suitable for fifteen year old in Britain in the age rating, ogling scantily clad or nude female cast with a considerable horniness on display. When you get a melted cat mummy man, in a moment of playful glee which is less an issue, it is with the bizarre aspect of them roaring like the MGM Studio lion in the sound clip choices that feels more on purpose than I would initially presume. The English acting, like Creatures of the Abyss' dub, is just as ridiculous here as there, and again it feels more aware of this than other Italian genre films from before it. The theme park sets, all depicted in models, has a giant dinosaur skeleton as a prominent prop clearly for the hell of it, and I can even manage to squeeze in a justifiable reference to Karel Zeman, the legendary Czeck animator and filmmaker who would literally built his worlds in films like Invention for Destruction (1958). Here Alvaro Passeri has built most of this world, barring stage sets, from model work, projecting backdrops around his cast, and techniques that are artificial but, honestly, feel more tangible and compelling than just using green screen and CGI when it lacks the encouragement to flourish. All of this to for a straight-to-video film is even more spectacular to consider in hindsight.

Passeri's films so far for me have their crassness, that lurid old era of Italian genre films we fans admits exist but can put people off them, but I think Passeri would admit to this himself as I learn of him. His heart is for the construction of the films, to play, and even the obvious CGI here, to reference that again, feels less like a necessary but a new tool he realises in like a new type of paintbrush. This has gore, some nasty practical effects, but I think less of this as a horror film, but a goofy supernatural jaunt which allowed Passeri and his production team to have fun, and that is taking into consideration one such scene having a man's tongue grow engorged and be vomited out of his mouth. In this gaudy world of straight-to-video cinema, that a craftsman is having fun and being a great craftsman at that is something I cannot believe few are even still aware of nowadays, and despite the title being a potential put-off, the film is so much more interesting even when it is ridiculous.

Creatures from the Abyss (1994)

 

Director: Alvaro Passeri

Screenplay: Richard Baumann and John Blush

Cast: Clay Rogers as Mike; Michael Bon as Bobby; Sharon Marino a Margareth; Laura di Palma as Dorothy; Ann Wolf as Julie; Deran Sarafian as Prof. Clark Dewison

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Whilst the name is frankly generic - the alternative Plankton whilst silly feels more fitting and is important to the plot - the whiff of Italian cinema is immediately there when five young adults (three women, one man, one horn dog) board a raft on the beach. This is late era Italian genre cinema, though it feels of the eighties, in the nether regions of the genre industry slowly fading away after its golden decades. Within this, in his directorial debut (and as producer), you have Alvaro Passeri, whose CV in a variety of positions, alongside being a legitimate one-man band between visual effects to animatronics, scales the drastically different sides of Italy's rich filmmaking history. Somehow Passeri can go from being an unaccredited sculptor on Tinto Brass' infamous Caligula (1979) to working on animation for Cinema Paradiso (1988), and here after two decades or so of work between anything from special effects to even the makeup department for Atlantis Interceptors (1983), Passeri decided to make a film.

His later films, finishing in 2003 with Psychovision, come in the early 2000s era of low budget straight-to-DVD cinema, which of green screen and digital effects being embraced more. Plankton, which it will be referred to, is a toe in the old lurid era of weirdo Italian genre films, feeling like a nautical cousin to the oddity Alien 2: On Earth (1980), cheese for the cave crowd, which is apt as Passeri is credited as an assistant production designer for that older film too. Plankton is definitely as mad as a box of frogs; even if it cannot qualify as truly abstract or surreal due to how grounded by an attempt at a conventional plot, in its own excesses it feels strange, where stranded on the middle of the ocean at night, a logic gap where the group shake off finding a corpse floating pass them to hang out on an abandoned ship is actually a sign of how over-the-top this will get.

This film lives in its own logic, and it lacks of logic through an honestly enjoyable way, where the problems with its structure if any for is entirely one character, having to put up with one very obnoxious character, a combination of two slasher/horror film tropes of the joker, who plays pranks on the other cast, and of the sex obsessed one trying to sleep with all the women. Thankfully, even the film finds a way to use him, as a film which manages to come up with some truly strange images, alongside a sense of self awareness which is even found in the English dub version for how broad it is. Set on an abandoned ship for nautical science, researching prehistoric fish, even the ship itself is bizarre for how it is inexplicably an Italian love hotel from a strange psychotronic genre film. White fur; a polar bear on a platform; a clock on the corridor wall, a one-eyed creature, who talks; and not least a shower which is connected to the rest of the bathroom appliances (with an actress filmed as the onscreen figure) which qualifies as the horniest I have ever witnessed in a film for how lustily it talks of even using toilet paper.

The variety of ways Plankton gets weirder as it goes is actually surprising, more so as this a) an Italian genre film which is sleazy but managed to be suitable for fifteen year olds in Britain for a lack of overt gore or incredibly explicit sexual content, and b) is ultimate about sentient floating fish and fish-people mutations, which adds to the silliness. Yes, someone punches a flying fish at some point. Yes, there is first person from a fish stalking the cast. Yes, there are flying fish depicted through dated effects, but compensates by memorable practical work. Yes, as the plot references prehistoric fish being mutated by radioactive waste being dumped in the ocean, you can make a joke this is effectively a film about irradiated sea bass, despite being a different species, and even feels like an escalation of the plot of Airplane! (1980), the famous disaster film parody where a passenger plane is in trouble due to fish related food poisoning, as eating still living mutated fish from the fridge does cause body transformation after a period of time. There is more of a self awareness throughout too as, in the middle of the final where fish mutants terrorise the ship and everything is going to blow up, I found myself laughing as the warning system is self conscious and warning people to shift.

Even in terms of sleaze, it feels drenched in it just from the love hotel decor. That is even before a sex scene involving mutation which, despite being in a film certificated as being suitable for fifteen year olds, feels like something from a Frank Henenlotter film, with proper body horror practical effects, and a legitimately gross twist on becoming pregnant very quickly in an interspecies relationship. (Or that the one surviving scientist onboard, a catatonic mess, is a male one who went mad and whose diary, when read, feels like a Freudian-William S. Burroughs smash-up of madness and sexual kink mingling with ichthyology). Italian genre cinema can be legitimately great - superbly made, haunting or/and transgressive and politically minded - but fans are made too for how strange they can be, and the sense of this being aware of this without being ironic is special for those with the acquired taste for it. When a fish man exists by way of a stop motion Ray Harryhausen tribute, you find a film by Alvaro Passeri who clearly loves making inventive images even if the film is as capable of being dumb as a brick and ridiculous. Even the later comes with a sense Passeri intended the later, and having never even heard of him before this film, only that Plankton was a film which existed, makes him a fascinating new discovery for me to appreciate now.