Leprechaun III (1995)

 

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith

Screenplay: David DuBos

Cast: Warwick Davis as the Leprechaun; John Gatins as Scott; Armstrong as Tammy; John DeMita as Fazio; Michael Callan as Mitch; Caroline Williams as Loretta; Marcelo Tubert as Gupta; Tom Dugan as Art

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #161

 

With all this killing, I've lost me shilling.

The Leprechaun franchise is not particularly well regarded, and as a testament to having seen Leprechaun 5: In the Hood (2000), it is not a series for me to willing completely except as a completionist. Number three of the series was also handpicked out of context for me to cover (and watch) for two reasons. One is that it is the first of two directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, the British born Australian-based filmmaker who I would argue grew in recognition when the documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!, which retroactively created the "Ozploitation" genre for Australian genre cinema, where Trenchard-Smith gained acclaim for making a slew of films like The Man From Hong Kong (1975) and Dead-End Drive-In (1986). Secondly, this is set in Las Vegas, even if it is low budget and minimalising on location shooting throughout. Vegas fascinates me, a place I would like to go to even if I found myself hating it and wanting to leave immediately, probably stemming as much from Hunter S. Thompson's infamous trip there for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and growing up as a kid with CSA: Crime Scenes Investigations, when the original series took place in the city. Even depictions of the more cleaned up version such as Showgirls (1995) or even Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) fascinate me.

It is, even if it helps the carbon footprint increase every day, an artistically created environment both radiating pure spectacle out of an old Hollywood picture and pure kitsch as a landmark, where you can inexplicably have gangster Bugsy Siegel and Liberace having left a mark on the environment. It also makes sense, baring Ireland, for an evil leprechaun played by Warwick Davis to be placed there. Trenchard-Smith's next film in this franchise shot the greedy bastard into space in the far-future for a joke; here, effectively a personification of said greed in an environment of numerous gambling establishments is perfect. Even a sight gag, a slot machine even found in a hospital waiting room, shows where the film could have ran with the premise further if it had the budget.

Trying to explain the actual plot for this film, not this imagined version, is pointless as Leprechaun III's biggest flaw is that, to get to eccentric and sometimes original gags, you have to create a plot even if it is exceptionally rudimentary. The part about the titular fiend is not an issue - an Irishman missing limbs drops a petrified leprechaun into a pawn shop, where the owner stupidly removes the amulet around its neck despite the original owner's warning. The leprechaun, as an legends and folklore CD-ROM kindly informs us the viewer, is obsessed with wealth, possessing a pot of gold where even one coin by itself can grant a single wish, which is Las Vegas as a setting allows for a monkey's paw-like scenario or a very angry leprechaun tracking the coin back.

The rest is the issue, a romance between the female assistant to a David Copperfield like stag magician and a guy who only gets interesting when Warwick Davis bites him, which is most of the film and bland. Unfortunately, this type of plot feels strung together with a lack of pace. Instead it is the side characters who are of note and keep it propped up, even a joke like two loan sharks debating poor socks they have worn in the past, or figures of cult status like Caroline Williams of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II (1986) as one of the casino staff, an older woman whose interest in a magical coin leads to her becoming as inflated in places as if a group of strategically placed beach balls was in her body. Davis as well, in full makeup, manages to also make what could come off as demeaning and cheese inducing interesting because he is clearly having fun and is clearly among a type of actor, no matter how bad the film could be, who is bulletproof because of his professionalism. Even bumping into an Elvis impersonator and mimicking him, dressed in full green lederhosen, Davis is game and, again, for an inherently silly monster villain, his charisma is there.

In fact, it would have been inspired if this had the budget, or a significantly better script, to imagine a greedy leprechaun with magic powers (to cause people to spit out coins like a slot machine or statues to fire arrows) try to take over Las Vegas or cheat at the dice table more than he does here. When the film does actually try to be more creative, it is interesting. A journeyman who has worked in many genres, I do suspect Brian Trenchard-Smith is much more comfortable with action, which is he great at, than horror-comedy here, but I also say this as someone whose admiration for him does not want to blame him for the issues with the film either. He does embrace the bright fluorescent pink and green lighting, which won me over, but he feels straight jacketed not having a fight scene or a bit more pace to the material. When the script allows for something unpredictable, it is, the most memorable scene involving a scuzzy casino owner being seduced by a blonde woman who crawls out of the television. It has Warwick Davis impersonate infomercial figures like a psychic or an Evangelical preacher, but the scene gets freakish and interesting when the woman turns out to have been the television having transformed into a robot of wires, a piece of horrifying moving parts to have sex with especially with the rubber face and giant rubber breasts protruding off the front.

Then there is when the lead male is bitten and, yes, turns into a were-leprechaun. Sadly, it does get into Irish stereotypes about their obsession with potatoes, but it also gives him an actual personality when he develops furry eyebrows, an Irish accent and starts to speak in rhyme. A better, better film for me would have had true love prevail but with the main female character loving a half-leprechaun who occasionally gets distracted by gold; her own character gets interesting, in a nice subversion of a potentially icky moment when a wish brainwashes her to swoon over the casino owner, when her seduction technique involves slapping him around first. The problem with many horror films, and films in general, is when a lack of an imagination or taking a risk is involved, to the point of stressing that normalcy must be returned to even though, frankly, it is boring.

As a result, Leprechaun III is merely average. I have seen better from Brian Trenchard-Smith and most of the film, deliberately broad and meant not to be taken seriously, is a production which drifts along until it hits a funny line or weird moment. As a fan of the director, I am probably soften on the film than most people would be, always an issue with horror franchises especially when they strayed away from theatrical releases of this happening, that you need people to be on top or focused form, or the production with be lazy. I sense, if this was made with a bit more of this, this silly premise would have been a hell of a lot more entertaining.

We're Going to Eat You (1980)

 

Director: Tsui Hawk

Screenplay: Roy Szeto and Hark Tsui

Cast: Norman Chu as Agent 999; Eddy Ko as the Chief; Melvin Wong as Rolex; Michelle Yim as Ah Lin; Mo-lin Cheung as Lin

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #160.

 

Don't tell me you've got to piss again.

Most horror films do not break out into martial arts fights continually. This is why Hong Kong cinema is awesome, and here in particular you have a martial arts comedy film which does not tone down the horror either - someone is sawn in half to establish the premise. This is also of note as this is a very early film by Tsui Hawk, once a Vietnam born young man who, from here, would eventually become a legendary director and producer in Chinese cinema. This is before he started playing with camera angles, editing and aesthetic style normally avoided in the martial arts genre, back when he here keeps the camera back in his fights. The premise is simple, whilst establishing though that Hawk's very idiosyncratic nature was still here however despite a drastically different tone in how is was made, where on Cannibal Island an agent is chasing after the criminal "Rolex", only to meet a community that lives off human meat picked off from outsiders.

Even the cannibals themselves are suffering inequality, as the security force lead by their leader demands more portions over the populous of half crazed people, said leader the kind with a mistress demanding not his heart but an actual one. It is a lurid spectacle, entirely a fun horror ride due to there being so many fake outs, including a trick of a cut-off hand (by tilt upwards of the camera) revealing it was an already severed one, that becomes part of the joy of how broad and over-the-top the production is. It does already show Hawk's competency in skill of Hong Kong cinema, and beside, unless you scrap the barrel, by this point you have enough people behind the camera of these Hong Kong films that it was possible to deliver a quality film even for a lurid pot-boiler.

The only detail which does jar is a questionable joke character, a very tall and broad shouldered male actor in female drag, a traditional Chinese red dress, excessive makeup and hair up. His character is viewed as a woman, rather than gay or trans or a cross dresser, but I do wander whether the joke is as much meta textual that a male actor is playing broadly effeminate or not. Thankfully, with an incredibly black sense of humour, everything else is We're Going to Eat You is great.

It is a broad premise to set up fight choreography, but this feels effortless without losing creativity. It is not remotely the most extreme Hong Kong film, as the Category III films would push barriers, but it is a fascinating hybrid found common from the region. All of it interconnects well too - the horror wraps around the action, as you have to fight off cannibals, as does the comedy which is mainly physical, and the horror is still bloody, even inventively gristly such as a self inflicted wig splitting. Even a lesser know film like this can pull out incredibly amounts of gymnastics, the hero escaping a trap which dangles him between trees with hands and feet tied a good early example, and they are as mentioned creativity, such as when roller-skates suddenly get introduced in the end weaving between the final boss fight that is also taking place in the same area.

Even the music is exceptional - a scene involving a blind man, trying to catch a character, a thief who eventually starts running around like a mischievous monkey and crawling up walls to survive, has percussion chime in at precise comic timing. I caught on, though, pieces was "borrowed" from Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977), which is not a bad thing.

Tsui Hawk would go on, becoming a veteran who influenced Hong Kong cinema even when he was the producer, and it is good to see one of his earliest projects, whilst lacking his later flair, still possessing his idiosyncratic nature. In fact, that sense of creativity even for a project like this likely helped him, cutting his teeth on a project like this where the tone itself can juggle so many pieces without collapsing. It would allow him to adapt to any production, which would benefit him in larger budget efforts and even working with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and the result here long before then also happens to be a unique horror film too.

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (2009)

Director: David Russo

Screenplay: David Russo

Cast: Marshall Allman as Dory; Jeanette Maus as Amelia; Sean Nelson as Jason; Tania Raymonde as Ethyl; Vince Vieluf as O.C.; Tygh Runyan as Methyl; Richard Lefebvre as Weird William; Natasha Lyonne as Tracy

Abstract List Candidate

 

[Some plot spoilers]

 

You guys name the turds you find?'

Little Dizzle is not the best example of unconventional American independent cinema, but is sad David Russo never made anything else as he has a distinct style as a director/writer/animator here that would have been interesting to see progress. He immediately shows, even if this was the one project he ever wanted to make before leaving cinema, his talents with an opening montage of a message in a bottle travelling in super fast time delay footage across the oceans. That it just leads to our protagonist Dory (Marshall Allman) finding said bottle and its message to just be a "fuck you" also states the playful absurdity of the production we will watch.

Dory, whose search for meaning comes with him going through as many major religions as he can and even atheism in search of worth, is a self proclaimed "Data Meister" who, finally snapping, burns his bridges so much his "ashes are halfway to Mars", left with only becoming a janitor for an office complex to work with. To be a janitor, hanging out with people his own age, their boss a cross dressing former soldier who fought in the first Desert Storm in the first Gulf War, is to see the world few do, as explained when the term "janitor" originated from "Janus", "arch" or "gate" and the Roman deity regarded as the doorkeeper of heaven. Among nice people, his life is arguably better now, the initial set up is playful with touches of stranger aspects peering occasionally from under the surface, with the production value afforded just from being able to film in a large building complex. A lot of the film has an amusing humour, such as the funny use of black censorship bars for a sex scene, and how (after some cleaning) the same room will be used for a meeting. You also find some very choice and inspired musical cues too, such as a cleaning montage set to non-English rap music.

The plot is steadily introduced when a company occupying one of the floors are testing experimental cookies which self heat in the mouth to reproduce the "just baked" taste. Such cookies, tested on the janitor staff by prompt of Tracy (Natasha Lyonne), have a very adverse effect on men only. Namely, that they cause pregnancy of strange fluorescent blue fish unable to survive long after their birthing. It is an odd premise, finitely a subversive gender swap, with the most interesting detail being that everyone who experiences this comes from it with a greater happiness. Birth and pregnancy are profound biological and cultural aspects of human beings which cis-males are separated from due to biology; yes, there is clearly a joke that these male characters, as it develops from the digestive tract, are pooping out blue fish rectally when they have gestated, but the experience and emotional bond to their fish is meaningful to them, tragically as said offspring will die soon after.

In terms of whether the fish fully amounts to hidden dept will depend upon whether layers can be found in the film. Certainly in terms of the themes at hand, it takes a big handful of concepts like from a bowl of experimental cookies. Dory's spiritual crisis could be seen as a gag and simplistic, between being now Jewish to wearing a Nietzsche t-shirt, but he fits a type of figure, of a generation, where in the West there is a disconnect from organised religion but sometimes reticence to abandon spirituality, which is befitting of also how alternative spiritual beliefs would grow over the decades such as Wicca. Co-worker O.C. (Vince Vieluf), the other most prominent character, wants to become an artist, his exhibition of toilet related art frankly the last dying breath of taking instillation art seriously, whilst it is ultimately his idea to provide the homeless with coats embroidered with "I'm sorry" on the back, to promote self healing for anyone who reads it, is a very naive and very easy to misinterpret idea, but possible the best one he had.

If anything, Little Dizzle as a film skirts around these subjects, alongside the corruptness of the company behind the cookies, much to Tracy's own horror, with a comic broadness. The weird aspects come from hallucinations caused by said cookies, alongside pregnancy and a desire to ingest salt, such as a sacred animation fish, Dory's shower freak-out done in deliberately fake computer animation, and a lot of manipulation of sound and visuals. Definitely, the film hedges its bets on that initial premise - the blue fish - and imagines the emotional attachment with sincerity and absurd humour.

It feels definitely as much of its era too, from a period when French filmmaker Michel Gondry and many films about young adults trying themselves were common in cinema. Also the musical choices definitely show a point when it was more common to have more "indie" or idiosyncratic choices, probably the best choice in this film a cover of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft by The Langley Schools Music Project. An outsider music institution, the project was musical performances by four different Canadian elementary school choirs recorded in the seventies, covering songs between the Beach Boys to that song, originally by Klaatu but more famous by The Carpenters, that was released as an LP in 2001 and became a cult gem. It is a perfect choice for the ending, a sweet one where, rather than the presumed conclusion of beating the evil corporation, out lead decides against it because he has gained something much more profound from his misadventure.

Whether the film actually works as a great film is entirely subjective in this case, although there is plenty to admire. Certainly, it is not "abstract", as it never gets to the point the hallucinations warp reality fully. Likewise the blue fish, including the titular notion of the Immaculate Conception, never gets immensely religious and surreal, which could be the one real flaw of the film, that there was a lot left on the table which could have been explored. As it stands however, I admired the film, sad to see that its creator had no really continued beyond this.

Abstract Spectrum: Quirky/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Punk Rock Holocaust (2004)

Director: Doug Sakmann

Screenplay: Nick Esposito, Doug Sakmann and Christopher Stella

Cast: Kevin Lyman as Himself; Heather Vantress as the Warped Tour Reporter; Lloyd Kaufman as Belial / Satan; Doug Sakmann as William Van Landingham, III / Main Executioner / Explosion Stunt Executioner; Steven Smith as the Fuse Action News Reporter

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #159

 

And that my friends is how the drummer from Def Leppard really lost his arm.

Tongue in cheek, I am glad the type of music in this film, a slasher film built around the Warped Tour and to promote it as a brand, faded away whilst heavy metal, even still off the record charts, got its groove back after the nu metal decades. I say this as someone, growing up as a teen in this era, who immediately recognised Bowling for Soup, all crushed to death by one of their own members, so call me a hypocrite at the same time. 

Having grown up in the early 2000s, and been able to catch up with some of the trend, there was a time when even Metal Hammer magazine had bands like Funeral for a Friend prominent, not a derisive comment but that, reading it in the late 2000s, those bands were not as prominent when the heavier music gained popularity again and were more likely to dominate their free CD compilations over those bands likely to go on the Warped Tour. This period instead was nu metal on its way out, when ska punk was a thing, and we were just off the "New Wave of American Heavy Metal" whilst cult metal bands from Europe and around the world, chugging along, would eventually become the legends but not until after this period, even those like Meshuggah who started in the early nineties.

Here the Warped Tour, whose staff and founder Kevin Lyman play himself, are lightly mocking themselves even, though it does come with a Woody Allen levels of self confidence issues when a joke says they are about as punk as Pee Wee Herman. Punk Rock Holocaust itself is peculiar as a hybrid of concert footage, a promotional film, and a micro budget slasher film which however has a level of production value few have. To my surprise, hearing of this in a negative light over the years, this was a surprise, a mess, but one that would have actually thrown a kitchen sink on stage if considered funny, that production value a huge virtue alongside a sense everyone was having fun.

Contextually director Doug Sakmann has already made a short film called Re-Penetrator (2004), a porn horror story inspired by Re-Animator (1985) which suggests he was already unconventional, a good thing as the worst nature of slashes especially was predictability and telling a conventional story blandly. He has to work around that, honestly, this is a long list of deaths tentatively wrapped around a story involving a Warped Tour. The attempt at said plot is more complicated than you would initially think, all stemming from a band playing "industrial New Wave synth pop" being slighted by Lyman, demonic revenge and Troma figurehead Lloyd Kaufman playing Satan, if the Devil had followed comedian Bill Hicks advice and gotten into the music industry, a huge music mogul pulling the strings on popular bands. To this film's credit, it is openly humorous with this plot, an absurd film desiring to build a high body count but with a silliness, where the masked killer is so evil they will contaminate the vegan food stand with animal fat.

Again, it is a messy film in structure. They also make the blasphemous mistake, when Andrew W.K. comes to save music, to cut away between his set and death by electrocution to another scene at the autograph tents where his songs are muffled in the distance. It does also make too many defensive jokes about Warped not really pushing punk, which is less a criticism but a sense of too much insecurity then they might have realised. It is contrasted by the level of humour which is not in jokes and amateurish but are actually funny, such as a fake French hardcore band named Beret, created by Kaufman's Satan because this was the time when the United States and France, during the second Gulf War, were divided on the conflict, the hostilities something he can make a profit on by having an angry French band all in stereotypical white and black shirts, berets and black trousers being snotty.

In terms of said micro budget, it's ambitious too which is a blessing when, rather than a lack of budget not being a deterrent, having a very dull sense of imagination is a dangerous mindset that can affect anyone. A lot of the bands and musicians - Bowling for Soup, Andrew W.K, "Jeff from Simple Plan" who is impaled on a guitar - were clearly happy to be involved for a lark, but rather than an indulgent and dull experience, it's an indulgent film which still stays creative. Baring one tasteless joke comparing the growing massacre as "Hot Topic meets Altamont", (see The Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter (1970) for why), it was an absolute blast. A playfully ghoulish film as, whilst the insecurity can be felt, has also the glee to just imagine the Warped Tour staff being unscrupulous, to the point of feeding the increasing numbers of victims' bodies to the staff in economic cannibalism and taking it to an exaggerated extent.

The amount of resources in general are a huge assistance, a whole sense of a culture being displayed, almost documentary-like, which happens to have been invaded by a slasher film. Between skateboard half pipes being used in the midst of performances, and all the various stands and tents you get to see , it has a vibrant colony of people on screen for my initial jokes I look to with fondness seeing them enjoying themselves. The production even shots in the real New York Time Square, with advertisements for The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Prince's comeback album to a major record label, Musicology (2004), all in the goal to recreate a famous scene from Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), where Jason in the same square scares off some punks by showing his face under the mask.

The practical effects are also a high point, the entire crew behind them (or the few depending) the MVP for Punk Rock Holocaust. It gets to the point, with the ambition, that what I first thought was a comically cheap prop, cyanide apparently coming in black and blue pills in an orange medical bottle labels clearly "Cyanide", was actually done deliberately for a joke. Probably the most elaborate scene is helped by a band called The Phenomenauts, one of countless bands inspired by old science fiction pulp and also embracing it in an elaborate stage persona and show, meant as a crew of a spaceship with one of the members a robot. Not only do they bring in firework guns, which can hurt people in this film, but also a tour van even is crushed by a crane and blown up. (That the band snuck into the tour twice the previous two years before, only to be officially invited for the 2004, adds a nice contextual touch to them having a big scene in this film).

The film even shows the kind of resourcefulness that other micro budget films, with less resources, would applauded by recontextualizing real demolition footage. The schism with the Warped Tour itself, whilst compelling, feels like a detriment to all these wonderful little touches as, whilst its funny that founder Kevin Lyman has actually made a pact with Satan, making the joke they are conformist and designed by Old Nick to steal your soul does cross a line in making the likes of Less Than Jake and Pennywise feel compromised by accident. A shame as, with the rest a better balance of goofiness, like trying to synch around actual mosh pit footage with a killer going stab happy, you have something completely charming. Deeply silly, indulgent and with flaws, but a utterly entertaining for me whilst it lasted.

The Fall (2019)

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Screenplay: Jonathan Glazer

Archive Review

[A review left unfinished earlier this year, it qualifies as an archival piece because it did not include any references to whether it qualified for the Abstract Rating or not. Also as a very short review of a short, I wonder if it had been sufficiently detailed enough, even with the additional context added now later, to be a good review or not. For the sake of appreciating Jonathan Glazer's work however, I have provided the review nonetheless.]

 

After making Under the Skin (2013) - his startling sci-fi film which combined the unnatural, Scarlett Johansson in a brave role as an alien temptress, and the banality of Scottish urban environments, where Johansson is inexplicably in a film where you have buses, beans on toast and even Greggs sandwich shops onscreen - Glazer sadly vanished throughout the rest of the 2010s. In general, in he has been elusive to film making in general, but especially in the theatrical field as he has only made three feature length films between 2000 and 2013. But then the director who made his name with music videos for the likes of Radiohead suddenly dropped a project on BBC Two one night, when this ominous short suddenly was shown after an episode of The Americas with Simon Reeve on the unsuspecting public on 27 October 2019.

It is so short, The Fall is like a fragment of a nightmare rather than a production you can easily discuss in greater detail. One of the influences was a snapshot of Eric and Donald Trump Jr on a big-game hunting jaunt, holding a dead leopard they had shot, and it is not a surprise to see this as what it literally says on the surface without need for deeper detail, that of a mob who are trying to get a terrified man out of a tree at night in the middle of the woods. They do, taking a picture having pounced on him like prey, like an animal captured or killed at a big game hunt, only to proceed to hang him. The hanging, which evokes actual lynchings without any attempt to neuter the iconography, does take an odd turn when there is not only a drop in the middle of the woods, but that it is endless downwards for the victim.

Prominently the cast wears masks, ornate and carved, evoking for me Japanese theatre. They are startling in obscuring emotion in the mob and the victim, with their fixed feature and the strong emotions to them. The symbolism beyond the obvious is so minimal, like a dream, it would be absurd to spin a political slant baring the fact that, in its presentation and tone, it is inherently scary to witness. Anything beyond comparing this imagery to real life commentary would obscure inherently potent imagery which is political in its universal simplicity. Glazer for an interview with the Guardian website went as far as talk about the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the likelihood of this happening again¹, and mob mentality is an aspect of humanity, in any context, which is still a dark side of us as a species. That there is a lynching, alongside the comparison to hunting a person down like an animal, itself is as frightening as an image because people have sadly become victims of this.

The film, shown on BBC2 without opening and ending credits, has a strange nature to it which is compelling. All set at night, with the quiet coda that, managing to stop himself on the way down, we leave with our victim with a leg each side of what is an endless well climbing up slowly, hopefully a victim who has survived unscathed. Mica Levi, an indie musician who stormed cinema composition with her music for Under the Skin, gives The Fall something evocative and minimal to adding to the tone. The result, alongside its intention and clever screening tactic, causes one hope that Grazer produces more work soon as he has still firing on all cylinders. 

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1) Source HERE.

Generation X (1996)

Director: Jack Sholder

Screenplay: Eric Blakeney

Based on the Generation X comic book series from Marvel Comics

Cast: Matt Frewer as Russel Tresh; Finola Hughes as Emma Frost; Jeremy Ratchford as Sean Cassidy; Heather McComb as Jubilation Lee / Jubilee; Agustin Rodriguez as Angelo Espinosa / Skin; Randall Slavin as Kurt Pastorius/ Refrax; Bumper Robinson as Mondo; Suzanne Davis as Arlee Hicks; Amarili as Monet St. Croix / M

Ephemeral Waves

 

You know I don't like Jello.

There for me is a dividing line between when superhero films meant just Superman and Batman, with the others for theatrical cinema and television a random assortment, with DC Comics in dominance and no standard template, and then the moment Marvel Comics managed to get its act together, leading to the current era which began as far back as Blade (1998) when they got their foot through the door, then the X-Men (2000) firmly planting their flag in the genre. Personally, I find the older era for more interesting, a lot of esoteric productions I am more inclined to watch, as decisions  even with great films like Batman Returns (1992) you get something idiosyncratic, whilst the template the Marvel Studios films have stuck to bored me to the point I have not watched them at all. Which is a shame as, open to American comics as a medium, Marvel have a fascinating history of figures and stories I would be interested to look, even the bad creative decisions, and whilst The Cannon Group did release Captain America (1990), the company were mostly regulated to television and had to also deal with rights issues in lieu to that company, hence why it took the 2000s when Spider Man finally had a theatrical movie.

That television should not be ignored though, and whilst the elaborate films of now sadly, from the few I saw up to the early 2010s, been very predictable, there is a greater joy in those titles which were not high budget films but attempts at hits like Generation X. It is ironic that the 2000 X-Men film had a huge significance on the way superhero films would dominate cinema globally, apt as this review is about the first attempt to adapt the characters to live action, a TV movie that acted as a pilot for a show that never came to be, trying to adapt these iconic characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at a time when they were a big seller in the nineties.

The X-Men, and I say this as an outsider with lack of knowledge on the actual comics, had to take a while to get to that success, steadily growing as a franchise since the sixties. Created in 1963, they were a metaphor for racial intolerance, as outsiders marginalised by society and even seen as a threat, one which has lasted as long as it has due to the fact the metaphor can still tragically relevant to the modern day and that, for a reader, that metaphor can also extend to anyone LGBT, trans, even just an outsider like the loners at a school could easily see themselves as these characters and have someone to represent themselves with. This was  especially when through the seventies onwards more characters were added, including the iconic Wolverine, and X-Men became an actual rainbow of figures of all ethnicities, men and women, even characters with disabilities, as the character of M here, just an overconfident girl with insane levels of invulnerability, was all this in the comics by accounts but also autistic.

By the time of this TV movie, we already had the 1992 X-Men animated series, which I have fond memories of watching as a young kid at the time. I would have been too young to know of this, especially as this is not based on the main series but the titular spin off, part of a time when the X-Men comics were very popular and these spin-offs could exist. This film however, which yet has a fitting connection or two with what came before and after in the franchise, was definitely a failure. A curious one, from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), a film without his knowledge was coded with blatant metaphors of the main male character's struggle with his own homosexuality, and The Hidden (1987). Someone also clearly saw Batman Forever (1995), the Joel Schumacher films in that franchise with Batman & Robin (1998) closing off the old superhero films, as Batman & Robin was reviled and Superman was M.I.A since the Cannon Group acquired the rights and fumbled the character in the late eighties with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). I like the Joel Schumacher Batman films, and I will not try to defend them nor claim them as guilty pleasures. In fact, whatever you think of their erratic natures and ridiculous camp, you cannot just lift Schumacher's trademark that he wanted to make every location bold and distinct even in all the neon gels he used. He made more grounded films, but the former production designer had an eye for aesthetic which is an acquired taste but I admired.

Batman Forever was actually a hit, so Generation X borrows all the canted camera shots and coloured gels it can get. That is actually one of the best bits of the TV movie, alongside Max Headroom star Matt Frewer looking at Jim Carrey's performance, playing one of the villains in that earlier film, and thinking he can be even more over the top and a sex pervert too. What likely killed the show before it even got started were many creative choices which feel like the screenwriter was bored with the comic they had and decided to doodle off to the side. Writer Eric Blakeney, whose career before was writing television like 21 Jump Street, could have easily went with the main metaphor of these characters. For those who have no ideas what the X-Men are, or at least going to their origin to scrutinise where someone deviated greatly from the source material, in the world of the comic people have mutant genes which provide them superhuman abilities or drastic bodily changes when they hit puberty, also leaving a potentially subversive metaphor that the cruelty and bigotry the normal world has for them is a jealously as much as a fear that they are now evolutionarily inferior. It also leaves many metaphors of the existential and moral crisis teenagers and even adults have in drastic circumstances, as these "mutants", in coping with the changes few can share the equivalent of and affecting them physically and mentally.

In the world of Generation X, this has already lead to the darkest timeline as, when the comics had the likes of giant "Sentinel" robots created to hunt down mutants, where Frewer's evil scientist Russel Tresh tries to lobotomise a mutant, to get his pineal gland, just to only get a discharge for medical misconduct and the poor mutant victim gets shipped off to a mutant camp ran by the government. The nineties, as we neared the Millennium, even with a title like this speculated about the future ahead, where here night time in the setting is a neon soaked dark metropolis, and Tresh lands on his feet well after his dismissal. Now he has joined an advertisement company where he is paid to brainwash people with subliminal messages for Slick Lips Lipstick, Coffin Nail Cigarettes and, with wonder why Sega thought it was a wise decision contextually to allow this, the real life beat em up arcade game Virtua Fighter. He only comes off as going too far when he now wants to control people in their dreams.

With a little research, the production had to change and create new characters because of the budget being preventative from trying to bring certain characters onscreen, comics with a lot more ability to push imagination with fewer resources required. Set at the Xavier Academy where young mutants have been rescued from the camps and persecution, at the same real building used in the Bryan Singer X-Men films, the two adults in charge are Emma Frost, soap actress Finola Hughes wandering around in sexy leisure wear, and Banshee, played by Jeremy Ratchford who also voiced him in the animated show I grew up with, even though his Irish accent is terrible. The teens, a little group in a giant school are thus: Refrax (eye lasers), Mondo (a toned down gift from the source character of being able to briefly absorb the density of what he touches), Skin (one of the leads, with a super stretchy body), M (perfect, but does little, original a more interesting sounding character due to being with a learning disability), Buff (an interesting female character in this time period as, with a super muscular body, she is uncomfortable with her appearance before such body types were more accepted), and Jubilee, a character I also saw in the animated series who was clearly meant to be a character sold to viewers at the time. It is strange how Jubilee, standing out in the animated series is the mall rat teen who shot fireworks out of her hands, was a trend character who never became as big as the attempts to sell her did, especially as the character would appear in other live action films.

Inexplicably the screenwriter, like the one I have imagined in this review for a joke and build up, was much more interested in writing a premise about a fifth dimension, where dreams are a real life version of Plato's realm of perfect forms, and can be accessed with psychic powers and a dream machine. I am sure one mutant, maybe more, exist who could tap into dreams, and considering Dr. Strange in the Marvel back catalogue and all their creations there has to be a few, but baring every mutant now being a "little" psychic", someone got bored and accidentally created a premise befitting a director of a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel instead. I am not precious about accuracy to source material, the man who has no real investment in the X-Men, but there was a fine line between a drastic story risk which still played to the premise about adolescent mutants with powers, and a premise which limits this aspect almost entirely even in knowledge of the budgetary restraints.

Beyond this, Generation X has a lot of plot, but is vet limited to what actually transpires. Whilst X-Men gained so many parallels to keep the metaphor alive, this is instead the school of TV action, drama and exposition, a constant flux of event which when works is why television is compelling, makes the notorious oddities like Steel Justice (1992) (about a detective in a futuristic Los Angeles who can make a dinosaur robot toy a giant one with magical powers) more compelling, but also makes anything which does not really push the limited budget or characterisation less exciting. This story eventually becomes a group of over powered mutants against one normal man, more severe as a plot fault if you stop and think about it. Matt Frewer's Russel Tresh is a deeply creepy figure, who coxes Skin in dreams to become a voyeur to and [Trigger warning] threats to "mind rape" his little sister to get his to follow orders, but he never has any sense of threat to suggest this film, with no greater depth to it. There is no real sense of threat from this character even when he gets dream powers. The only time that he stands out in terms of how he should have been written as is when the film recreates the scene from Batman Forever where he kills his boss from a fall from a giant window in a tall building; using television budget effects to conjure dreamt shadows of birds, in a dream sequence surrounded by business people at conference table, it is one of the only moments  where the film gets vaguely imaginative as well.

The darker tone is surprising, as the release that came after, not for television but beyond on VHS, even has cursing, not dancing around the subject but a scene just created for Jubilee to say "shit" and "fuck" for go measure in the same sentence. The result however, in spite of this clear attempt at a darker and neon stained tone is something missing the mark. Definitely, with good reason, it never got the television series - tonally it varies drastically, where Tresh can be an uncomfortably menacing figure but who also auto suggested a board of potential investors beforehand in their dreams to fart at the same time at a certain hour mid-meeting. The only constant detail is the aesthetic, which is compelling even on this television budget as hyper-saturated. Even the teen protagonists are not likable, bickering and insulting each other to the point of being detestable. The only time, and the one plot detail that stands out, is when Refrax suddenly shows real nobleness, when in his affections with Buff, going on a date at a country fair, an ability to see through clothes finally clicks; he goes before anything transpires, with actual honour, only for her to think otherwise, his sincere attempt to tell the truth and show his love for her a good moment.

I admit I enjoyed Generation X, just as a failed curiosity sadly ignored, as it never had a DVD release. X-Men, the Bryan Singer film, came only a few years later and erased this title from existence. Ironically, it was Wolverine, a grizzled old vet, rather than the teenagers who broke out, all because the production hired an unknown named Hugh Jackman at the last minute that ran with the role and made his own career. X-Men has had a lot of films over the 2000s, from 21st Century Fox, to a varying amount of success but with the perverse tale of New Mutants (20??) as a fitting coda, an attempt to go back to young teen mutant characters which has been in limbo since it was first announced for release in 2018, between Fox being gobbled up by the House of Mouse and the COVID-19 pandemic. Generation X itself was meant to be a big title, causing one to wonder how the production and Marvel reacted to its clear failure; Stan Lee himself made the unfortunate comment, in an L.A Times article just before its television premiere¹, that "[if" this thing doesn't create demand[...] I'll eat my hat!". One wonders whether he would have lived up to the bet and ate said hat, considering how gun-ho and passionate he was.

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1) Source HERE.

Ashes to Ashes (1993)

Director: Paul Rinehard

Screenplay: Paul Rinehard

Cast: Christine Collard, Dan Boesch, John Whitman, Mary Reed, Joseph Greselin, Ken Nimocks

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #158

 

Must be squirrels.

From the obscurest realms of horror cinema comes another shot-on-video film, a supernatural tale where a widowed father brings his daughter and son to a new home, one cursed in a gristly past. It does dangerously veer towards stereotypes, where a band of gypsies used to live there at the turn of the century, their male leader "the Barker" indulging in child murder which, when he turned on to one of their own children, led to a bitter fall out. It is however a premise, the haunted home, we will always return to as our won architecture will, as it ages, wear the signs and marks of their pasts, and there is always that curiosity, if undisclosed, of the people who lived where we lived before you, even if it is never anything sinister and finding their possessions abandoned to time up in the attic. Here, just from the wooden panelling decorating the walls instead of wallpaper, something weird is in the air.

The father is a father. The son has a mullet. The daughter, Wendy, is the most interesting figure and worthy of more detail as she is mute and is confined in a wheelchair. This poor girl is called "bitch" a lot and tormented, but it is interesting to see a very progressive choice in lead. It is also a figure more threatened in such an environment, when the moment they get to the house in broad daylight, and no one else seeing, a random man wearing a top hat menaces her. It does bring up the sense of real world fear, that if you cannot scream, and you are limited in movement with the inability to use one's legs, you could feel more vulnerable if nocturnal noises were heard at night. If you encounter a ghost girl, as here, naturally anyone in her position would be spooked.

A true micro budget film, so obscure I doubt few know of its existence even in the SOV community, it does use its limitations to an advantage. It feels far more distinct, more eerie, rather than have monsters or cheap superimpositions effects that instead you have actors in period dress costume just appear onscreen. In any real life context, a person appearing in your house at night would terrify, and it feels close to a theatre technique to forgo any practical effect for just the visitors to be tangible and still be a threat, able to torment the living here regardless.

Contextually, Ashes to Ashes even on its miniscule budget could work. Little touches like the depiction of the ghost world as just another room in the location, with moody flickering lights, electronic noises in the soundtrack and a woman using tarot cards, are evocative enough with an open mind. It is an extreme minimalism on restrictions, not an issue if you can use it well. Even without the little splashes of gore (such as a stick to the back of the head) or odd touches like ghost voices layered over gibberish over the opening, this minimalism can still be creepy. A bloodstained clown is inherently scary, especially as it is just a guy in the basic of clown costumes, pretending here to be a ghost, popping up and suddenly having fake blood appear around his guts.

The issue is that, as with so many stories, the production just wants to tell a really generic story and refuse to stray from the template even if it is not spectacular. Our real protagonist Wendy is threatened, but beyond the innate weight of her characterisation, there is not a lot to go with that is not generic. Barring some unintentional humour, such as the brother with the mullet being possessed by his own guitar playing, Ashes to Ashes is as dry as toast, which is an insult to toast as a metaphor. Sadly, this is also an ultra obscure horror title which might not be worth investigating due to this one flaw, undermining all its best virtues.