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Showing posts with label time travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time travel. Show all posts

Friday, August 12, 2022

Amityville 1992: It’s About Time


 

Amityville 1992: It’s About Time
1992
Tony Randel


This movie has virtually nothing to do with the Amityville Horror series but that’s probably not a surprise at this point. There are a flood of films with Amityville in the title now because you can’t copyright a village and/or a house style. Amityville 1992 was doing it before it was cool (it was never cool). You could safely cut out one shot and a small section of dialogue and sever all connection to that film series, but if it managed to get a few extra viewers to rent this movie so be it. 


It's a surprisingly fun little film.


Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht) is a well-regarded architect who brings home a clock from the notorious Amityville house. The clock is, of course, very haunted and soon the house and Jacob are as well. Only his son Rusty (Damon Martin) realizes something is up but who’s going to believe him?  The only other person who seems to understand is local weirdo, Iris Wheeler (Nita Talbot).

 

Frog House 1992
 

Amityville 1992: It’s About Time manages to craft an uncanny atmosphere by giving us some very atypical haunted house and demonic possession elements. I really enjoyed how the haunted clock physically infiltrated the space and began to alter the house. A less interesting film wouldn’t have demon clock extending secret drills to literally enmesh itself into the physical environment. The demon possession comes via dog bit of all things, and it too is a physical intrusion of supernatural elements. These two possessions mirror each other as the story continues.

It is pretty obvious that Amityville 1992 is not a large budget production, but the money is well used. Most of the film takes place in the house and in a turn away from the typical spooky decrepit mansion or idyllic middle-class home, the house in the movie is a nightmare on its own. It’s filled with clashing ugly patterns and colors. The layout is strange. The house feels wrong even without the haunted clock causing problems.

 

"Hurry, I need to be on the Even Horizon."
 

Another welcome element was the use of comedy in what is a dour series of films. Amityville 1992 cultivates some absurd kills and moments but uses them to build on the uncanny atmosphere almost as much as they threaten to break any suspense. It is yet another odd ingredient in an odd film. I can only guess what someone who rented this looking for some demon shenanigans and instead got a woman killed by a robot bird on top of an ice cream truck.


Direct to video sequels more often than not disappoint so it is exciting to find one that tries to bring something new to the formula and carves out its own identity in the process. Amityville 1992: It’s About Time is kooky little haunted house movie that manages to be more weird than scary but honestly the Amityville films needed more weird (or a least before Amityville went to space or fought a shark or whatever the heck is going on with these films today.)

Friday, February 14, 2020

World Without End


World Without End
1956
Edward Bernds

A group of astronauts are heading to Mars when an engine malfunction sends them hurtling at incredible speeds. They wind up on Earth in the distant future and discover that the planet is finally recovering from a massive nuclear war. Horrible mutant cavemen roam the surface while deep underground the last civilized humans face a dwindling birthrate and potential extinction.

World Without End shows a lot of promise early on. We have a group of 1950s adventures facing mutants and giant spiders in the year 2058 and then… the movie just stays stuck with its underground hijinks for too long. There is a whole planet of post-nuke exploration to engage in and instead, we spend most of our time watching meetings and court proceedings. It feels like a wasted opportunity. Post-apocalyptic adventure would become a genre standard eventually and here we can see the seeds of that subgenre but things are too limited in scope to make much of an impact.

"I'm sorry did you just say you had Toaster Strudels?
It is difficult to watch World Without End in the 21st century without observing its particular brand of morality. We are presented with a group of people so shocked and horrified by the war that they have retreated to a place of safety and seem happy to remain there. The end result is presented not as a well-reasoned pacifist stance but that this act has made the men (and specifically the men) weak-willed and soft. The protagonists also note the women are still vibrant and full of life, yet World Without End doesn’t dare to show them taking charge, that society still exists under the yoke of these lifeless men. The travelers from the past rationalize that the only solution is to bring back war and colonization. The solution isn’t some kind of enlightenment brought on by witnessing the destruction of life on Earth it is to go outside and blow up mutant cavemen with a rocket launcher. I understand that sometimes you need to fight against an aggressor in order to survive but the people living underground here have every advantage save for the will to fight back. It seems disingenuous to not even consider a peaceful solution, but World Without End is a product of its time and the idea that you should go out and beat the ‘savages’ back with your superior technology feels odds especially when This Island Earth (1955) pulled off a much more thoughtful response to war.

"Ugh these allergies are murder on my eyes."
All that aside, the look of World Without End is beautiful. Shot in Cinemascope and Technicolor, the film has a big vibrant look. The interiors of the human’s underground shelter have a big bold 1950s design and the outdoor shots are lush and rugged by turns. Even the giant rubber spider looks great, the red of its bulging eyes out really pop on the screen. World Without End joins Forbidden Planet (1956), and This Island Earth (1955) in the triumvirate of iconic 1950s SF aesthetics.

Although it definitely has its share of story problems and it isn’t quite the thought-provoking meditation nor rip-roaring adventure it could have been, World Without End is a serviceable enough SF story and a great looking piece of genre cinema.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Time of the Apes


Welcome to VideotAPE, Outpost Zeta's summer-long tribute to ape movies! Ape movie reviews every Friday and ape content at the Outpost Zeta Facebook page! Show your ape pride with a VideotAPE shirt!

Time of the Apes
1987
Kiyo Sumi Fukazawa, Atsuo Okunaka

Catherine (Reiko Tokunaga), a lab assistant at a cryogenics lab is forced to show two awful brats,  Johnny (Masaaki Kaji) and Caroline (Hiroko Saito) around the facility. An ill-timed earthquake freezes them in a chamber they are visiting and they awaken to find themselves in a time where humans are (mostly) extinct and apes in goofy helmets and southern gentleman suits rule the world. Only with the help of the human rebel Godo (Tetsuya Ushio) do they have any hope of survival.

It is a minor miracle that Time of the Apes makes any sense at all given that it is cobbled together from 26(!) episodes of a Japanese television series called Saru no Gundan and then poorly dubbed by the notorious Sandy Frank. The end result is a narrative that never feels like it is going anywhere until it unloads a torrent of background information during the climax. Sure there is plenty of action but it starts to become numbing after a while. I am sure there is an element of satire to be found here as well, but the culture gap of a Japanese production coupled with the lunkheaded and often bizarre dubbing from makes much of it imperceptible.

"But seriously what is up with the shoulder mounted pen holder?"
Time of the Apes looks pretty awful. Everything is primarily brown and orange, more than a nod to the original Planet of the Apes (1968) sets, but now much more ugly and washed out thanks to a lone VHS release. The ape costumes aren’t terrible, but they limit the actor’s abilities to emote. Once again I think the dubbing does the story a disservice as almost every ape in the film just seems irritated about the whole series of events even when we are supposed to be sympathizing with them. Honestly, with Johnny involved, I can’t blame them. What makes these apes even more strange than their Planet counterparts is the fact they are still wearing human clothing, drive around in 1970s era cars and generally look at and act just like people. It is both amusingly off-kilter and lazy.

Our human characters range from dull to annoying. Johnny, in particular, is headstrong, carefree and I want to see him end up on the wrong side of an angry gorilla. Godo is the kind of suave turtleneck wearing action hero that seemed to infest a lot of Japanese genre films in the 1970s. Catherine and Caroline, like many female characters in this era, are relegated to the background. The humans also pick up a weird-faced ape kid named Pepe, who doesn’t do much more than run around in a striped shirt.

"Tell me about the rabbits, Godo."
Time of the Apes manages to toss in a flying saucer, a supercomputer, and some psychedelic time travel. If you have only ever seen the movie as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, there is an extended climax where Godo and crew face down EUCOM, the evil computer that ushered in the end of humanity. I’m not saying it is worth watching, but it does continually dump exposition that clears up at least some of the story.

Time of the Apes is not only an extended rip-off of Planet of the Apes, it is also a very weird rip-off of Planet of the Apes, from the costumes, the dubbing, and a time-travel twist so dumb I don’t even know what to say about it. Time of the Apes is a colossal mess… which has done nothing to stop me from watching it several times.

Friday, March 23, 2018

A.P.E.X.


 A.P.E.X.
1994
Phillip J. Roth

Nicholas Sinclair (Richard Keats) is a scientist working with others to locate and eradicate the source of a plague that has devastated the world. Their brilliant plan is to locate the origin of the disease at some point in the past and send back an Advanced Prototype EXploration unit (or a robot if you prefer) to blow it up. When an A.P.E.X. sent to 1973 threatens an innocent family, Sinclair travels back to stop it, but when he returns to his time the whole world has changed for the worse.

Initially, A.P.E.X. is mildly intriguing; the overarching threat is a mysterious disease that can apparently only be dealt with by sending killer robots through time. This flips the whole Skynet narrative on its head, ‘What if the evil force of the future is really trying to stop things from getting worse?’ The story jumps to 1973 and I thought that it would be novel to have a Terminator rip-off that spent some time in the early 1970s. None of this really matters after about fifteen minutes as we are whisked back to 2073 for a solid hour of marching around the same brown wasteland shooting at robots.

 A.P.E.X. could still salvage its transformation into yet another futuristic war movie by having some interesting characters that we care about, but it fails here too. Sinclair is saddled with a bunch grouchy whiners who really have nothing else to do but yell and threaten one another. I hoped that maybe they would bond in the face of adversity but they remain jerks to one another the entire time, and I eventually stopped caring if any of them lived. Thankfully most of them do not.

"SHOUT FORCE IS READY FOR ACTION!"
You are watching a killer robot movie mainly for the killer robots. A.P.E.X. only has one model of machine to offer and you only ever two on screen at the same time, but they are reasonably cool looking. They whir and clank like they stepped out of a 1950s movie, but that is charming in its own way. Any menace they might have is completely undercut by the fact they are terrible shots, and only manage to hit a target after a good twenty plus rounds are fired. To drag things out even further, it takes twice that many shots from our heroes to blow up an A.P.E.X. bot. So the majority of the movie feels like you are watching characters stand in one place and endlessly shoot at one another. It might pad the runtime out but it doesn’t make for compelling viewing.

An android stands alone somewhere in Nebraska.
If you’ve never seen a time travel movie before the ultimate revelation about the source of the mystery disease might come as a surprise, but even then I doubt it. To further insult the viewer, some potentially interesting paradoxes of the story are handwaved away quickly with a voice over.
A.P.E.X. had some potential but it falls down and just becomes yet another cost-effective action movie set in a desolate wasteland. If you are hard up to see some robots stomp around and shoot at soldiers you might find some enjoyment here, but I suspect that most viewers will want to spend their time more wisely.

Friday, December 29, 2017

Terror from the Year 5000


Terror from the Year 5000
1958
Robert J. Gurney Jr.

Dr. Earling (Frederic Downs) and Victor (John Stratton) have developed a machine for retrieving objects from the future. They send a small statue to college, Dr. Robert Hedges (Ward Costello) for radiocarbon dating. The statue dates to the year 5200 AD. Incredulous, Dr. Hedges travels to Earling’s private island to find out more. There he falls in love with  Claire Earling (Joyce Holden), Dr. Earling’s daughter and Victor’s intended wife. To make matters even more awkward someone or something is communicating from the future and things there do not look pleasant at all.

Terror from the Year 5000 should get more credit than it deserves simply for deviating from the formula of other invasion films from the 1950s. The external threat doesn’t come from space, isn’t a metaphor for communism or some other non-American threat, and has noble aims if not necessarily noble methods. Instead of our heroes being plucky teens or square-jawed scientists, we’re given flawed people who are invested in a case of unrequited love almost as much as they are in solving the mystery at hand.

So, that's where the Eraserhead baby went.

For as short as this film is, it keeps its main threat hidden away until the final fifteen minutes, instead offering viewers a tantalizing mystery filled with weird objects from the future and messages of dread. Salome Jens' first appearances as The Future Woman are effective, a shadowy figure in a glittering outfit, she screeches and seems to kill indiscriminately.  Her device for stealing faces is strange and unnerving in just the right way. What doesn’t work, is her mutated face make-up. I get the impression that the creators were trying to make something more realistic, but the big warty nose and misshaped teeth make her look more like a witch who escaped from a local community haunted house.

As the world of 5200 AD becomes more clear, it is obvious it is not a good place. Terror from Year 5000 never comes out and directly says that nuclear war is the cause of the irritated genetic mess of the far future, but it is heavily implied. Our Future Woman simply wants to bring back some pre-nuclear disaster DNA to help cure the rash of mutated people bring born, but our brave heroes decide to simply gun her down in the process and offer a speech on doing better with our present. I can appreciate the sentiment in a way, but it certainly feels like everyone could have gone about the whole scenario in a much better fashion.

Someone has been dressing themselves!
Terror from the Year 5000 has a poor reputation, it’s never had a decent home video release, Mystery Science Theater 3000 savaged it (and perhaps rightly so), but I think underneath all its flaws there are some very interesting quirks and ideas that separate it from the slew of other late 50s b-movies. It is a weird little mutant that was snuffed out before it could become something bigger and better, but it is still worth checking out.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Detention

Detention
2011
Joseph Kahn

There is usually a part of the review where I attempt to summarize the plot to at least give the viewer a very basic idea of what the story is about.  Detention won’t allow me to do this easily. Sure, I could talk about Cinderhella, a fictional slasher that is stalking the kids of Grizzly Lake high school for real. I could mention the convoluted body swapping time travel sub-plot, or the space bear.  This wouldn’t adequately express the story, which all of this plus a dozen more plot threads constantly crashing and tumbling into each other in what appears to be a chaotic mess but manages to reveal (at least some) structure underneath.

Nonetheless, I will attempt to summarize it the best I can: Someone is stalking high school kids, and the mystery surrounding the killer’s identity stretches all the way back to a series of events at the same school in 90’s. Also, there is a guy with fly blood.

The pace of the film is relentless, visual gags are tossed in with verbal humor constantly, only to abruptly switch gears and do a little bloodletting. Primarily this is a comedy, what horror exists is mostly played off as cartoonish gore.  There is a particular obsession with the 1990’s that weaves its way throughout the narrative, and just when you think it’s a peculiarity of the story, it’s revealed to have a purpose.  This is the case throughout the movie, where throwaway jokes or visuals are often revealed to connect a portion of the plot to the larger story.

For the most part, the young cast manages to deal with the bizarreness of everything admirably.  Shanley Caswell plays Riley Jones, ostensibly the main protagonist, and despite the absurd and deadly situations she’s thrown into, manages to keep the character grounded and even evokes a note of sympathy for her endless social failings. Dane Cook doesn’t exactly stretch himself playing the sarcastic Principle Verge, but he doesn’t distract from the scenes he’s in either.

Visually the film is gorgeous; each frame is often filled with little details which warrant repeat viewings to catch all the things that were missed. The low budget is only really evident when CGI blood and fire appear on screen, but then again this can be a problem for even large budget films.  The practical effects look very good, Cinderhella has a fun design, and I wouldn’t mind a spin-off movie of her(?) exploits. The occasional exploding person or dog is always welcome.

There is a growing cult around ‘Detention'. I think it was initially dismissed by a lot of viewers because it’s easy to take one look at it and mistake it for one of the endless Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer spoofs (Disaster Movie (2008), Meet the Spartans (2008), etc.). It doesn't help that the director, Joseph Kahn’s other film of note is, Torque (2004), not exactly a confidence builder (although Torque is secretly better that its reputation and for all the wrong reasons.). ‘Detention’ draws heavily from Scream (1996) and Donnie Darko (2001), and while not exactly a spoof, it’s more of a deconstruction of these arguably already deconstructionist films.  Detention is a difficult film to categorize and occasionally even difficult to watch but, if nothing else it succeeds because it’s very funny.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Idaho Transfer


Idaho Transfer
1973
Peter Fonda

A scientific project to invent matter transference accidentally makes time travel possible. The catch is that only people 20 years old or younger can survive repeated trips back and forth. Expeditions into the future have revealed a coming ecological disaster, and a secret plan is set in motion to send a group of college age kids into the future with the resources to start a new civilization. As the project is threatened with a takeover by the government, the kids find themselves trapped in the future and forced to survive while trying to understand the nature of the disaster that will wipe out humankind.

Idaho Transfer hits all the notes of 1970’s ecological minded science-fiction. Firstly, it’s deeply pessimistic. All the good intentions in the world collapse under the weight of human frailty and weakness. The film proposes that we are going to destroy ourselves, and even with that foreknowledge, it’s inevitable. There is an encroaching doom, often visualized by the desolate landscape and punctuated with silence. Authority is never to be trusted, the government, the heads of the project, and even anyone who assumes leadership in the group of youthful survivors could become the enemy. 

The cast is composed of young actors, mostly unknowns, who did not go on to do much of anything after this film. They all bring a sense of naturalism to their characters, which match the equally naturalistic tone and presentation of film as a whole. Often our central character Karen (Kelly Bohanan) comes across as immature, self-centered and unlikable. Whether this is due to a natural presentation of her as a person, or just the result of an inexperienced actor is hard to tell.

The film is definitely a slow burn as we watch the inevitability of the situation slowly grind away any hope left in the survivors. There are some great chilling moments, Karen desperately searching for help as her sister quietly lies dying on the floor of the lab and the discovery of a vast freight train filled with bodies being a couple of highlights. The film ends on a moment that is either supposed to be a very dark joke or a bit of misguided social commentary. It doesn't quite work as well as it should, but at the same time it doesn't do much damage to the film as a whole.

Idaho Transfer appears to only exist as a video tape sourced pan and scan presentation, and you can often find it in any number of those 100 movie DVD sets. The film damage and washed-out image may actually enhance the overall eeriness of the story, but it would be nice to see it in its original framing and color one day. With such a little known film, starring no one in particular, I don’t think we’re going to see a cleaned-up Blu-ray of it, but unlike the grim eco-horror future, hope springs eternal.

Idaho Transfer is a very good, low budget movie, which delivers a creepy aesthetic without resorting to a lot of grandstanding or overly dramatic moments that would detract from the quiet horror of the apocalypse.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Future Hunters

Future Hunters
1986
Cirio H. Santiago

‘Future Hunters’ is kind of like those Transformers toys where all the little robot toys can be combined into one larger robot. It's cool in theory, but in practice the end result is kind of stiff and looks a little silly.  So imagine, instead of Devastator, the Constructicons all leaping together to form a Filipino action movie/kung-fu/time travel/comedy with the head of the T-1000.

It’s 2025 and the Earth has been devastated by nuclear war. One man, Matthew (Richard Norton), drives around in the now traditional post-apocalyptic black muscle car with spikes all over it on his quest for the head of the spear of Longinus.  Luckily for him, it’s just sitting out in the open in an abandoned church. Unluckily, a caped warlord shoots the place up with a bunch of tanks. Mathew is transported back to 1986 where he’s mortally wounded fighting a biker gang, but not before giving the spearhead to college student Michelle (Linda Carol) and her lunkhead boyfriend, Slade (Robert Patrick).  Michael tells them they need to find the rest of the spear to prevent the awful future he’s from and one of the people who can help is (gasp!) Michelle’s professor at college.

Michelle and Slade set out to find Professor Hightower (Paul Holmes), a journey which takes them to Hong Kong where they witness a pointless kung-fu battle between a taxi driver (Bruce Li) and someone who stepped out of a wuxia film from the 70’s. Later they end up in the jungles of Southeast Asia, helping out a tribe of dwarves and later falling prey to a village full of amazon warriors. Hot on their trail are a group of polite Nazis who would like the spear for themselves.

I think ‘Future Hunters’ is trying to be an over the top pastiche of various action films, it has some ‘Road Warrior’ (1981) at the beginning, there’s just a touch of ‘The Terminator’ (1984) with the time travel plot (although it’s forgotten about almost instantly), and plenty of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (1982) type adventure and globetrotting. I say I think it’s trying to be a pastiche, but I’m not certain. It’s either a sly straight faced comedy or completely bonkers. Judging by Santiago’s body of work (‘TNT Jackson’ 1974), ‘Equalizer 2000’ (1987), and ‘Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom’ (1994) to name a few), I’m leaning towards bonkers.

It’s a fast paced film that changes genres every twenty minutes so it’s rarely dull, although the jungle raid with the tribe of dwarves does feel like it drags on way too long. The plot is just short of incomprehensible. The action is passable but never great. There are plenty of scenes of Robert Patrick in his underwear, if that’s your thing.
  
If you ever wish you could watch four or five movies at the same time, ‘Future Hunters’ might be the one for you.