Mothra

I Larvae Good Movie

Mothra 
Japan 1961 
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Toho/Mill Creek Steelbook  Blu Ray Zone A

And so onto Mothra.

Made by the director of the original Gojira (aka Godzilla, reviewed here), Ishirô Honda, Mothra is similar in style to that movie in that it’s a fairly slow burn for the first part of the story. It’s strong on characterisation though, focusing on a scientist, a reporter and the reporter’s photographic assistant, played by Hiroshi Koizumi, Furankî Sakai and  Kyôko Kagawa respectively. We also have screen legend Takashi Shimura turning up as the chief editor of the newspaper where the reporters in question work.

The film starts off with a somewhat overly long opening credits sequence where the typography is superimposed over shifting shots of very colourful rock textures, before we get into a ship crashing on the supposedly irradiated shores of Infant Island in yet another reference, presumably, to the real life radiation accident with a bunch of fishermen that inspired the original Godzilla movie. When the few survivors are rescued it is found that they are not irradiated at all and a group of investigators, including the main scientist and the reporter (who stows away), are sent to Infant Island to investigate. It is there that they find two teeny tiny doll sized ladies played by the Japanese pop duo The Peanuts, who are kind of guardians of the Mothra legend and held in high regard by the group of natives who, just as in King Kong VS Godzilla (review coming very soon), consist of a bunch of Japanese people in black face. Not very politically correct these days, I guess, but fine for anyone over the age of thirty, I would imagine.

It’s in this first section that Honda sets up the necessary human villain who is the spanner in the works regarding the peaceful coalition of islanders and civilisation. This is a ‘single monster’ movie (albeit a dual incarnation monster) and so there has to be an antagonistic element somewhere. This comes in the shape of a philanthropist bad guy and his henchmen who all come from the country Rosilica. In my naiveté, I suspected that Rosilica was a less than subtle stand in for Russia so the writers could have a dig at that country and show them up to be the land of origin for the less than intelligent and evil antagonists. As it turns out, I was only half right... it’s an amalgam supposed to represent both super powers... Russia and the USA, showing them up to be the bad guys as, well, subtly as it can manage I guess.

Anyway. Long story short... the villain kidnaps The Peanuts so he can put on shows with them in Japan and so they sing (regularly) and this, combined with their psychic link to the sacred Mothra egg and the natives doing their ritualistic dance, causes Mothra to hatch as we first see her, in larvae form... which is basically a white grub-like creature which swims across the seas to rescue The Peanuts, causing a wake of destruction in her path. This is because, in the words of the two ‘small beauties’ (as they are referred to in the film), Mothra has no sense of right or wrong... which is possibly at odds with her heroic nature later on in the Godzilla franchise but certainly it’s a step in the right direction to having a film with a ‘good monster’ in it as opposed to the normal perception of them.

From hereon in, the movie is about the cities trying to battle the Mothra larvae while the heroes are trying to track down the film’s prime villain, who has stuffed The Peanuts into a suitcase and is on the run with them. At one point, when the humans think they have destroyed Mothra, all that’s happened is it has cocooned itself, emerging from the cocoon a day later as the full on flying ‘moth’ version of the creature, with it’s voice as distinctive as Godzilla’s roar.

And that’s pretty much everything and the story continues mostly as you’d imagine but, once again, Honda shows a real knack for framing and building characters rather than just concentrating on monstrous action. Indeed, the first half of the movie is devoid of this kind of spectacle asides from a fairly cheaply done blood sucking plant on Infant Island. He also takes time to hone in on little details which other directors might not bother with, such as a view of a ship’s wake through calm water by way of an establishing shot and to add to the atmosphere of the thing.

We also have Yûji Koseki’s score, which seems organ dominated at times and which is, mostly, very different from what Akira Ifikube would do for a film like this. And, of course, there are the songs sung by The Peanuts including the famous Mothra Song. Plus some nice use of leitmotif as the Mothra theme comes back in different arrangements in moments when you’d least expect it to.

All this and some nice but variable special effects. The model work in some of the scenes is still quality stuff and some of those tanks must have been just fronts of lorries for some of the shots because there’s an impressive moment when a human, not a puppet, is riding a motorbike right next to one of those things. And it still makes me laugh when somebody says that they’ve called on the 'Rosilican Heat Ray Brigade', as though those mobile heat ray cannons actually existed... but the model shots of them and the tanks battling the Mothra larvae are still very impressive here.

What’s not so impressive are the matte lines where shots are composited together and, as you might guess, this nice new Blu Ray transfer of the film just makes that dodgy stuff all the more apparent. It’s also really easy to spot the strings holding Mothra up too so... that’s not necessarily a good thing either, to be honest. Although, having said that, I’m glad they didn’t make the heretical decision to digitally remove the strings for the Blu Ray edition.

In terms of the leading villain, I find it curious that a big, elaborate ‘death by Mothra’ scene was planned for him originally but, in the final movie, he never actually meets Mothra. Instead, he just has a ‘super villain mad moment’ towards the end and is gunned down by the authorities for his trouble. Which actually seems quite a lot bleaker, truth be told.

All in all, though, while it possibly drags a little for some people's tastes during the first three quarters, Mothra is a solid entry into the kaiju eiga of Japanese cinematic legacy and it’s easy to see why she was revived for the Godzilla franchise a little while later. Although, due to the way she’s pitched here, she doesn’t die at the end (instead is seen as a rescuer character), it should have made bringing her into the Godzilla franchise an easy task but my memory is kicking in and telling me that it’s not necessarily the ‘same’ Mothra in the later films because, I seem to remember she starts off in her larvae state in the first of her Godzilla appearances too?* I’ll know soon enough because it’s in the Criterion Blu Ray set I’m steadily working my way through so I’ll report back on that sometime soon. If you’re a fan of Japanese monster movies then the original 1961 version of Mothra certainly isn’t the worst of them and it’s well worth a look, especially to see how the human characters are portrayed in these things.

*My memory was faulty, it turns out. There are, in fact, three Mothras
 in that next film and it does follow on from events in this one... kinda. 

Thanks to Charlie Brigden for helping me source a Blu Ray copy of this.

The Ritual (2017)

In Tents Horror

The Ritual (2017)
2017 UK Directed by David Bruckner
UK cinema release print.

The Ritual is a UK horror movie directed by David Bruckner and based on a novel by Adam Nevill. I’ve not read the book myself but, from what I can see on brief mentions of the plot hook, the whole reason the four friends are going on a hiking trip to Sweden in this movie is either absent in the book or, maybe, a reveal later on. I don’t know which but I expect some major changes have been made... however, it’s clear that I am unqualified to pass any kind of judgement on this in terms of its success as an adaptation so, you know, the usual caveats apply as far as that goes.

As in the trailer, the movie starts off with five friends in a pub but when two of the friends go to an off licence at the request of main protagonist Luke, played here by Rafe Spall, they get into a spot of bother when they accidentally disturb a robbery in progress. Luke hides but is forced to watch his best mate killed while doing nothing himself. 6 months later he and the other three remaining friends of the group, including the annoying Dom played by Sam Troughton (grandson of The Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton) attempt to fulfill what their dead friend Robert (played here by Paul Reid) would have wanted for their annual ‘lads’ trip... a hiking holiday in Sweden. You so know this is going to go wrong... right?

So, yeah, when the weather gets cold the four chums are wanting to get where they’re going on their hike quicker, especially after Dom twists his ankle... so they decide to cut through a big, spooky looking forest and shave some hours off their time. You would think that when they come across a freshly killed animal strung up in a ritualistic pose in a tree, the blood still dripping from its body (I think it was a horse but I’m not 100% certain due to the way the body is arranged), they might want to turn back the way they came but, no, this is a group of lads so the whole thing gets very Blair Witch very quickly... especially when they stumble upon a deserted cabin with strange ritualistic totems and an unnerving atmosphere. When the four awake from some very unusual nightmares, they find themselves strangely compromised and, from then on, everything goes into full-on survival horror mode while they four are whittled down in number as they try to find their way out of the woods before, something, finishes playing with them and killing them off.

And it’s actually very well put together. Maybe not as intensely scary as you might hope but it's certainly very suspenseful in places. The director does some very nice things with the way it’s shot which I really liked. You get the obvious ‘camera looking at the backgrounds of the forest’ so the audience can strain to see whether they can see anything lurking on the peripherals but there’s also some very blatant stuff where he will just point the camera away from the main parts of the shot, into another part of the forest or looking up at the sky and... he will just hold it there and just put these deliberate pauses into the flow of the action. Which is something I thought was quite effective, actually.

Another nice thing that’s done on more than one occasion in the movie is to blend bits of the forest into flashbacks of the main protagonist’s earlier encounter in the newsagent. While there’s certainly a sense that the four friends have had very vivid dreams, you also get a sense that the thing they are up against in this is manipulating their minds while, simultaneously, you get the feeling that Luke’s dead friend Rob is trying to help him survive his experiences from beyond the grave. The director shows this by, as I said, blending the two environments and the people into various bits of the forest, quite unexpectedly, at various points in the narrative. Now I couldn’t work out if this was done as CGI or built practically as sets (it looked good enough that it could have just been created on the sets themselves rather than with ethereal looking computer aided trickery) but it’s very effective and helps give the film another level of surprise to keep you off guard as an audience and thus keep you vulnerable for the next big scary moment... depending on whether you actually felt the film was frightening or not.

So... yeah, there’s also some nicely effective scoring by Ben Lovett which is just the right side of being ‘B-movie over the top’ in places without being too clichéd and with some really relaxing atmospheric textures in it too (alas, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of soundtrack for the release of this one, as yet, which is a shame). And this, coupled with some fine performances from all the actors, a nice reveal on the kinds of people you would expect to meet in the middle of a forest and even a mini King Kong homage (I suspect)... all make for a nicely entertaining, ‘satisfyingly pulpy’ horror movie. However, there is one slightly disappointing thing about the movie and it’s this...

None of the characters are that sympathetic or, honestly, anyone you’d really want to hang out with if they were in your local pub. Especially the main protagonist Luke, who is played brilliantly by Rafe Spall but, he’s not exactly someone who you’d want to get to know. So, all in all, I really didn’t mind if the whole lot of them got killed throughout the course of the movie if I’m being brutally honest and this, for me at any rate, watered down the tension to some extent. You kind of go through the movie expecting Luke to redeem himself and make good on his inaction at the start of the film which ‘possibly’ got his friend killed but, as the story wanders on, although you can see he wants to finally do what’s right, I didn’t get the feeling that he’d made good on his shot at redemption by the time the credits roll. In some ways, it just re-enforces the lack of moral fibre the character exhibits from the start of the film, if you have a think about the way things are left here (which I'm obviously not going to reveal).

Still, for all that, I’d still say go and see The Ritual if you are a fan of horror movies and it’s still playing on a big screen. It’s nicely performed, nicely shot and has a lot going for it as long as you don’t feel you have to like the characters. It’s never going to be the greatest horror movie in the world but there are some nice moments which make it worth taking a look at if you have the time.  Not something I’d watch again but highly recommended in terms of the quality of the piece.

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D

Creature’s Pet

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D
USA 1954 Directed by Jack Arnold  
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

There’s a reason why I took my Universal Blu Ray box set around to a friend’s house and stayed the weekend just so I could watch one of my favourite Universal monster movies on her television. It was pretty much to relive, to a certain extent, a moment from my childhood. I’ve probably blogged this story before somewhere on NUTS4R2 but since this is one of the films in question, I think it’s worth repeating here...

When I was a youngster in the early to mid 1970s, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, my parents took me into London to see a very special screening. It was in, I believe, a cinema in Piccadilly which was better known for screening “adult movies” and it definitely wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to see this happening. The screening was a double bill of two movies projected in their original 3D format... Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. Now, you have to remember that this was the 1970s... 3D was a phenomenon pretty much unseen in cinemas since, maybe, the late 1950s? It was a few years before Star Wars would come out and make a splash on the art of cinema and a rare screening of a 3D movie was definitely something which was an education for this mere slip of a boy.

And this wasn’t the polaroid glasses of colour 3D movies or even the red and blue glasses that came out in the 1980s for certain 3D novelties... these were original prints from the 1950s and we had cardboard glasses with red and green surfaces in them. Now I have to say the fact that these were old movies certainly showed somewhat... It Came From Outer Space was pretty crystal clear but the Creature From The Black Lagoon print was kinda faded, from what I can remember. That didn’t necessarily make the movie lose its 3D but it was more of a struggle to watch without giving yourself a massive headache. But it really didn’t matter... I must have been the only kid in school who saw a 3D movie at that age (let alone two) and I’d always loved these kinds of movies anyway. I think it was the first time I’d seen either of these two, perhaps.

And that’s why, when I found out the basic set of Universal monster movies released on Blu Ray had an option to watch this one in 3D... I immediately rang up my friend and invited myself around. Now, I have to say that it’s ten times better here than I ever remember seeing it. Presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio, which means you don’t get to see the telephone poles rearing up above the undergrowth in the uncharted Amazon in certain scenes, the 3D on this one pops out like it’s not done in a long time and gives me a closer experience, I would suspect, to the movie if I’d seen it on it’s original run, some twenty years earlier than the screening I attended in the 1970s (for the record, I wasn’t born until 1968, people!). Certainly, the whole movie on this newish release looked crisper and more vibrant than I’ve ever seen it looking before and the lady I was watching it with was totally blown away by it, judging from her comments. And not, I hasten to add, on the quality of the 3D (although she did specifically mention how good that was compared to recent movies she’d seen in the format) but also the movie itself... which is nice.

So about the movie... I’ve always had a lot of love for the classic Universal monster movies and this one goes in the same niche as all the others... one of my “comfort horror movies” which I like to watch, not to be scared of (they really aren’t that scary these days) but as something I can sit back to and lazily drift along with, without having to think too hard. Being as it’s the first of the Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy we’re talking about... I guess you could call it my creature comfort.

The film is based on a tall tale/urban myth that producer William Alland heard at a party one night about a ‘real’ half man/half fish creature and thought the concept would make a great horror movie. Alland went on to produce a lot of sci-fi tinted 1950s creature features but, if readers want to put a voice (at least) to the name, then he played the faceless voice of the interviewer who links all the pieces of Orson Welles classic movie Citizen Kane together... the newspaper reporter, hot on the trail to find out what Kane’s dying word meant.

Anyway, the film was scripted out, cast and produced in 3D and it was a fairly modest hit...  at least enough of a hit to spawn two sequels, Revenge Of The Creature (also originally released in 3D and a great follow up to the original) and The Creature Walks Among Us (which I think is the worst of the three, especially in terms of the monster make-up devised for this third outing).

The film starts off with the birth of the planet and explosions... well, it’s a 3D movie after all. They are constantly having to find things to chuck out of the screen at the audience. This is followed up with the discovery of a 3D ‘popping’ fossilised hand, a clawing living creature hand, the death of some explorers at the hands of the unseen creature and a new expedition to find the rest of the fossilised creature. This takes our fish scientist leading man, played by Richard Carlson, his boss played by Richard Denning and the object of both their affections, Carlson’s fiance played by Julie Adams, on a journey that takes them into close contact and unparallelled peril as they first try to catch the creature, who is fixated on Julie Adams’ character in much the same way that the titular giant ape was fixated on Fay Wray in King Kong. And after the reality of their situation becomes somewhat clearer, then they are just trying to escape it as the creature blocks off their exit from the lagoon which he calls his home.

While the film does trade in the whole beauty and the beast angle which set the cinema screens alight over twenty years earlier in King Kong, it doesn’t follow the same template where the creature is brought back to civilisation, escapes and goes on the rampage... they saved that one for the first sequel. That being said, the creature, beautifully designed by Millicent Patrick (mostly), certainly elicits the same kind of sympathy from the human audience that Kong did back in 1933. That’s one of the strengths of Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Another great strength of the movie would be the underwater sequences which are truly amazing and were the first of their kind in 3D. It was groundbreaking stuff and you can’t help but admire the amount of effort that went into these underwater shots... especially for the various actors in the creature suit. It was very much a case of shoot, air hose, shoot, air hose etc. A truly gruelling time from what I understand. However, when you see sequences like the “underwater ballet” as the creature swims below Julia Adams and her stunt double, mimicking the movements of the character just under her... and then gets bolder and touches her ankle... well, it’s totally worth all the effort and its a truly startling film, for its time.

The music in that particular scene is a little reminiscent of the two note motif John Williams used in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and one wonders if he was aware of that at the time. Certainly the music of this movie is excellent, produced as a patchwork by various composers (as was the norm for these kinds of productions) by the likes of Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner and even a young Henry Mancini. I was particularly please when I watched it again this time around that my friend actually agreed that the music was pretty good and, seriously, the three note stinger theme for the creature, played over and over throughout the course of the picture, is definitely not going to be something you’re going to forget in a hurry. If you want to get a really faithful rerecording, miked in the right way, then you can grab a beautiful CD of some selected highlights from the score by clicking this link to the record label Monstrous Movie Music here.

The film is an absolute pleasure to watch every time and with character actors like Whit Bissell popping up, it’s one I’m never going to get tired of, especially when the design of the creature itself is so provocative and beautiful. And having this new 3D transfer finally makes it worth having the scene near the end when the terrible, terrible bat special effect pops out of the screen to startle our creature hunting crew... it doesn’t make the effect look any less cheap but, hey, at least now it’s serving its practical function once more.

Honestly, I can’t heap enough praise on this movie and, frankly, nor do I have to. If you like the movie or have enjoyed this review, there’s a big behemoth of a book currently available at the time of writing this review called The Creature Chronicles: Exploring The Black Lagoon Trilogy by Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg which can tell you all you’d ever want to know about this particular series of films. The book is available from amazon here (UK) and here (US) and my review of it is here. I’m pleased to say that I had some feedback on that particular review in an email from one of the writers and they seemed pretty pleased with what I had to say about it so, seriously, if you trust me and you like these kinds of movies, go check the book out for yourself.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Creature From The Black Lagoon. A truly beautiful, black and white movie with a team of rugged scientists, a beautiful woman and a wonderful gill man at the heart of the story... all hanging together pretty well, very entertainingly performed and with a score as ear catching as Julie Adams is eye catching. Definitely a fine moment in horror history and one to watch if you’re into cinema in any way, shape or form. A genuine classic and always a pleasure to watch... in its 3D or 2D version.

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues

Beast And Desist

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues
USA 1955
Directed by Dan Milner
MGM Midnite Movies DVD Region 1

Warning: This has spoilers I guess but... it's not that kind of movie.

I’m sure my regular readers all know that I enjoy a pretty bad B-movie as much as any A list picture... so I felt pretty sure I was going to have some fun with this one. Well, maybe I did a little but, I think I’d have to stress that in terms of letters of the alphabet denoting the quality of a movie (something which isn’t strictly true of B movies at all, in fact) then I’d have to say that The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues is pretty much a Z movie.

The first big mistake of the film is to have a guy rowing out to sea and diving below the surface. We know we are definitely in an underwater part of the movie at this point as composer Ronald Stein’s music suddenly goes into the old Hollywood cliché of using harps on the score as soon as our quick to be dead diver penetrates the surface... which isn’t a bad thing actually. It’s a musical crutch that a lot of famous film composers have deferred to over the years. However, rather than hold back on what shape or form our terrifying monster will take, director Milner hits us with a sighting straight away... and it looks just terrible.

Seriously people. Any credibility the film might have retained past the first couple of minutes is immediately harpooned in the foot as the monster appears and wrestles with his human opponent. You remember those little old rubber finger-topper puppets of monster’s heads with the popping eyes and arms which would wiggle up and down when you moved your finger? This thing looks just like that but with absolutely zero flexibility (it just a rigid mess) and it looks like a giant version of one of those puppets has been plonked on top of a hastily “monsterised” diving suit and, yes, sometimes you can see the arms of the guy in the suit as he grabs people in his vicinity. This is the worst, sorriest excuse for a monster I’ve yet seen in a movie of this nature and, believe me, I’ve seen some real humdingers in my time.

So anyway, the guy washes face-down on the shore and we come across several people who discover his corpse, one after the other, including Professor King played by Michael Whalen and a less than enthusiastic... or even interested in much of anything throughout the film by the looks of him... government agent called William, played by Rodney Bell. Also our main male protagonist Dr. Ted Stevens, played by Kent Taylor, aided and abetted by an astonishing 1950s B-movie widows peak style hair cut makes his appearance here. We take Taylor’s word that both this corpse, and others found later face-down in more or less the same spot, have bad radiation burns to them. Hmmm... couldn’t see any evidence of that myself but, well, all I can say is it’s lucky they all were dumped face down so the make-up department didn’t have to spend time and money on the unusually specific, front sided burns these victims of the undersea beast were left with.

Actually, this first, post death sequence is all very interesting because, although all the acting in this sequence and pretty much all the movie for that matter, is the epitome of the term wooden, there is potentially a certain slow burn atmosphere in this sequence, as it plays out at a very leisurely pace. Unfortunately, of course, that atmosphere is completely killed before it’s even begun by having an opening scene which revealed that the monster is not a thing of terror, best left to man’s darkest nightmares but, instead... an abominably cobbled together, soulless puppet that looks about as threatening as a packet of chewing gum. So they kinda lost me on atmosphere before they even got to it on this one, I’m afraid.

Actually, the slowness of the pacing, which can work quite well in horror films which don’t have monsters that resemble something made out of papier mache with a guy in it as their main fear factor, is something which is kept going throughout most of the movie. There’s no real drama in this film... just very slow walking from one scene to the next with not much thought to bothering to say the lines in a way that would make them sound even vaguely interesting. For example... the professor studies a tortoise on the beach for a while... then we see a bad guy who’s spying on him for money, George, intently watching the Professor studying his tortoise from the safety of some handy, beach side plant growth. This goes on for a while.

So not much happens in terms of stimulating the audience’s mind except for, maybe, putting George’s contact to a foreign power Wanda, played by Helene Stanton in a bathing suit at one point and the delivery of some truly awful lines in the script such as Professor King, who is responsible for the whole underwater creature malarkey in the first place, talking about his secretary Ethel in such terms as... “A sneaking, prying female.” Yep, he’s not holding back at all when it comes to Ethel in this story. They even have his daughter Lois, played by Cathy Downs, use the old “would you mind helping me with this zipper” routine when it comes time to further establish that she is the romantic interest to Kent Taylors oceanographer here. We know he’s a red hot scientist because his famous scientific text books are quoted by one of the other characters... “Biological Effects Of Radiation On Marine Life” and “Nature’s Own Death Ray”. Yep, they sure sound like text books that would be on the reading list of any proud student of science if you ask me.

Yes. The writers have really gone to town in this one, cleverly enhancing the psychological depths of their characters by giving them lines that underpin their subtle affection of each other... like bad guy George’s appreciation of ex-girlfriend and link to the mysterious foreign powers who yank his chain, Wanda. "I didn't know then that they could put beauty and poison so cleverly together  into one package." he says, and we believe him. The writers also are good at establishing the motivations of their characters and filling in their background with subtle, poetic words like Professor King’s aside to his daughter... “You know, science is a devouring mistress. She devours all who seek to fathom her mysteries." Yes... I think we get the picture.

With all these terrible lines flying around, it’s easy to miss that the plot of the film really revolves around an underwater shaft of plutonium powered light which foreign powers want as a weapon and with the titular monster being, somehow, a kind of guardian of that strange and, frankly, incredulously vague phenomenon. Things get out of hand when Kent is revealed as being on a secret government mission, independent of the less than wildly enthusiastic William’s own sluggish investigation of the case, instigated by stories of a “phantom killer” roaming the area. As opposed to stories of a pop eyed, rigid, unthreatening puppet roaming the area, I guess. The two join forces and after being almost poisoned when bad guy George puts pills in their diving equipment... pills that don’t even dissolve and which can be quickly retrieved from the breathing tubes (no don’t ask me, I honestly don’t think any research went into the writing of this movie at all)... our two intrepid and mostly lethargic heroes go look for the monster themselves, narrowly escaping the man in the monster suit’s naked arms poking out of the costume as he tries to... I dunno... “huddle” William to death, somehow.

Meanwhile, bad guy George kills Professor King’s busy body secretary, shooting her from his hiding place in the bushes with his harpoon gun. She runs straight down the beach to the camera, does a kind of surprised exclamation of swiftly striking death... which is about a believable as telling a dog to roll over... and reveals the harpoon sticking squarely out of her back, as though shot from behind... where the empty beach is. What? This makes no sense at all. George is lurking in the bushes somewhere way over to her right, shoots her and, from that angle of trajectory, she gets a harpoon squarely in the back? C’mon guys. With sight lines like these, maybe the filmmakers should have been called in on the investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination because... this stuff makes no sense whatsoever.

And then we have the end of the film where Professor King destroys what he’s has created and then, because he is busy wrestling with The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues, accidentally blows himself up with his time bomb, as well as the creature and, presumably, the shaft of unspecified plutonium light which destroyed an entire ship a little while earlier, just because it sailed over it. His daughter is naturally upset... well, a bit upset, I think... it’s kinda hard to tell. She looks a bit sad, I guess, but she has the arms of the dashing Ted to fall back in, with his widows peak and scientific know how... presumably the man who unwittingly hastened the death of Lois’ father in the first place, with his pondering looks, inquisitive nature and that ostentatious hairstyle that really ought to have had a cast credit of its own.

And that’s about it.

Ronald Stein’s musical score is sparse and, for this kind of movie, extremely subtle. A stand alone release was issued commercially for a week or two, before it was withdrawn due to legal issues, on the 5 disc set of 11 Stein Soundtracks called Mad, Mod and Macabre... which I will happily recommend to anyone who is able to obtain a copy. There are some interesting scores on that one and, in the case of this film at least, they are certainly better as a stand alone listen than having to endure this tosh for repeat watchings. I would recommend The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues to only those who have seen all “the good” B-movies and are running dry of black and white monster movies to watch... and only then if you have a lot of movie stamina. Mostly a dull affair which delivers gold if you are one of those people who can be appreciative of the levels of incompetency and unintentional comedy to be found in films of this ilk. There are a lot of better ones out there which can tick the same boxes and be a much more fun watch, however.

Q (aka Q - The Winged Serpent)

Eggcentric

Q (aka Q - The Winged Serpent)
1982 USA 
Directed by Larry Cohen
Anchor Bay UK DVD Region 2

Well this is a curious little film I’ve just finally gotten around to seeing... after it being on my “to watch” list for a couple of decades. I was an admirer of this director’s famous “babies with teeth” trilogy It’s Alive, It Lives Again and It’s Alive III: Island Of The Alive which is, to be fair, equally confounding in its structure and tone. That trilogy was also a bit of a romp and I’m a sucker for those stop motion killer babies, even though they never look real (in much the same way that Ray Harryhausen’s creations never looked that real but you always made allowances because they were just so much gosh darned fun).

Q, for me, is a little bit more problematic.

It’s interesting because it starts with a flourish of brilliance in terms of the camerawork but, when the film starts proper, my first impulse was... “This is terrible.” However, it’s also quite compelling from a performance point of view and, coupled with the basic “1950s monster movie in 1980s clothes” appearance (or is that vice versa?), it makes for an uneven but never dull, treat.

The film opens with credits which are very clichéd in that they’re a roaming view of the streets of Manhattan from above... but then, as the credits finish, instead of just cutting to a new establishing shot, the camera kind of side-swipes left and we slam straight into a man on a rig cleaning windows on the side of a skyscraper. That was a pretty cool moment.  For me, that opening sleight of hand, which slightly shifts your perceptions of where the camera was filming from, is the most brilliant thing about this movie. As far as I’m concerned, it was all downhill from there but, like I said, it is kinda interesting.

The story, such as it is, starts off with a flying Aztecian serpent going around biting the heads off of random people, including the aforementioned window cleaner, who becomes a victim of its first “on screen” attack... although when I say “on screen”, the creature isn’t actually revealed in full until a little later. The film seems to be an “ahead of its time” homage to the 1950s monster movies which probably inspired it but, it’s not too long before the director is also revelling in the exploitation genre too, as we watch a toplesss and friskily endowed young lady sunbathing on top of her building and rubbing lotion onto herself... before she’s promptly chomped down as reptilian bird chow.

The story then changes tone and we get two things going on. On the one hand we have the introduction of David “Grasshopper” Carradine and Richard “Shaft” Roundtree as two detectives working the murders... which they will soon find is caused by Quetzlcoatl, the flying snake lizard thing. Simultaneously, we have an actor I’m really not that familiar with, called Michael Moriarty, who plays a small time, washed up crook. He messes up an audition playing piano which his girlfriend, played by Candy Clark, has fixed up for him. As a consequence of this, he is hired as a getaway driver on a diamond robbery but then gets roped in on the actual caper. Due to complications, he runs off by himself with the haul of diamonds (which he promptly loses when he gets hit by a car in busy traffic). When he runs from both the police and his fellow criminals, his fear and paranoia take him to the top of a skyscraper where he finds the nest and unhatched egg of the flying reptile... information which he keeps to himself.

From here on in, the different plot threads start coming together... kinda.

I don’t know. Although the film all makes sense, I did find it feeling like various scenes didn’t connect like they maybe should do... even though they clearly did. It might be because the film was shot very quickly... but it feels like, I don’t know how to say this properly so I’ll use an analogy. Remember those old polaroid cameras where you’d take a shot and the photograph would start developing when exposed to the air before your very eyes. Well this felt like that somewhat... but like you only got halfway through the developing process. You could see all of the picture but it looked kinda faded and only half glimpsed... somewhat. That’s how the movie “felt” to me.

The acting seems very naturalistic from both Moriarty and Carradine and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of that stuff turned out to be ad libbed while the cameras were rolling. In that way, the disjointed, fragmentary nature of the various character’s encounters, such as I perceived them, seems more Altmanesque, in some respects. Certainly, Moriarty and Carradine both put in amazing performances in this... it just didn’t quite feel like either of them were particularly relating much to other characters they encountered the way they should be. Roundtree is also, of course, excellent in this but he doesn’t get much air time.

The monster effects are a real throwback to low budget 1950s shenanigans and appear to be a combination of stop motion and puppetry. For most of the build up into the early parts of the story, the monster pretty much is not in shot when it strikes, and this is probably a wise move by Cohen so he doesn’t alienate his audience right from the outset, I suspect. There’s never really a moment in the film when you become scared by the antics of the title creature... least of all when its gulping down on unsuspecting extras or protagonists. Frankly, I didn’t really care or believe in any of the people in this film enough to worry if they came to a sticky end but there were some little moments which make the film worth a look sometime... asides from the excellent acting.

One of these is when we cut to a shot of a stray human leg fallen onto the streets as the crowd panics. I couldn’t help but snort in laughter and it’s one of the things that makes me think that Cohen is very much “in” on the joke in terms of the amount of parody and homage in the movie.

The other thing is a jump scare moment which, although I didn’t really register, I would imagine must have been a quite spectacular adrenalin rush moment when this was shown in cinemas in front of a large, paying audience who would be concentrating on the action. In this scene, Richard Roundtree is standing on the roof of a building and you are maybe expecting a monster to attack him... as it happens, I wasn’t, but I’m guessing that’s why this sequence and the one soon to follow (which I won’t talk about) play out the way they do. In this one though, a kite suddenly lands in Roundtree’s face from the side of the screen... must have been a pretty big jump moment in cinemas, I’ll bet.

Other than this though, I can’t say there’s much to recommend Q - The Winged Serpent... especially if you break it down into little bits like I just did. I know this movie has a very passionate and dedicated following of people but it seems I’m not one of them. It’s not a film I would highlight to most people but it is an interesting watch, perhaps, if you’re into acting as an art form in and of itself and/or interested in B movie monster homage. I’m certainly more in tune with the latter and I’m certainly glad I saw it... but I can’t imagine I’ll be revisiting it that often again in my life unless I need to hook back into it for research purposes. Still... really don’t take my word for it because I know some people out there love this movie... and you may be one of them.