Mud Songs

Kingdom of the Spiders starring William Shatner (just before the first Star Trek movie) is so incredibly bad it’s good — and then it’s bad again. Shatner is a cowboy / veterinarian who ends up fighting thousands of killer tarantulas that invade a dusty desert town where no one can run away fast enough to escape them. The first 20 minutes are hilarious. Then it’s just tedious. Words can’t describe it. Check out the opening scene from YouTube. Nuff said.

I won’t say anything about the story of Dracula because, like Frankenstein, everyone pretty much knows how it goes. And seeing how I had the same kind of reaction to Dracula as I did to Frankenstein, I’ll copy-and-paste almost word-for-word from my comments about Frankenstein. Here goes: The original Dracula from 1931 starring Bela Lagosi may be the kind of classic that gets better with each analysed viewing, but it didn’t do much for me. I wasn’t completely bored out of my skull, but I wasn’t too entertained or engaged either. It’s not a silent movie, but there’s no musical score and the acting style is exaggerated like in silent movies. Splash some intertitles on the screen, turn down the volume and have a pianist play along to the action and you’ve got yourself a fun silent movie. I’m trying to watch more movies from the ’30s, but they all seem kind of strange to me, an awkward hold-over from the silent movie era. I’m not sure what to think of them.

The original Frankenstein from 1931 starring Boris Karloff as the monster may be the kind of classic that gets better with each analysed viewing, but it didn’t do much for me. I wasn’t completely bored out of my skull, but I wasn’t too entertained or engaged either. It’s not a silent movie, but there’s no musical score and the acting style is exaggerated like in silent movies. Splash some intertitles on the screen, turn down the volume and have a pianist play along to the action and you’ve got yourself a fun silent movie. I’m trying to watch more movies from the ’30s, but they all seem kind of strange to me, an awkward hold-over from the silent movie era. I’m not sure what to think of them.

I saw Tarantula a week ago and can’t remember any of it now. Let me think… Right, a mad scientist creates a solution that makes all kinds of critters grow and grow and grow. One of the critters is a tarantula that walks slowly across the landscape and somehow manages to kill people who just stand and scream instead of run away. (I know, it both baffles and boggles the mind.) And… that’s about it. It’s pretty bad even for B-movie standards.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is an okay B-movie, notable only because of the special effects. A guy is enveloped by an ominous cloud while out on a pleasure cruise. Six month later he slowly begins to shrink. That’s it. There’s your movie. Eventually the guy has to live in a doll house. His cat attacks him. He escapes to the basement where, even smaller, he lives in a match box, washes under a dripping hot water tank, tries to steal food from a mouse trap, runs away from a spider — that kind of thing. It’s worth a look for the cutting-edge 1957 special effects, but it’s lacking in every other regard (even for a B-movie).

The entire movie can be viewed online at guba.com (I’ve never heard of it either).

The Creature from the Black Lagoon may be the best creature-feature B-movie I’ve seen since the original King Kong. Dramatically, it’s not in the same league as King Kong, but it’s a good action movie with enough thrills and surprises so it never gets boring. The DVD Talk synopsis (edited): “Starry-eyed scientist David Reed, adventurer-investor Mark Williams and curvaceous Kay penetrate the Black Lagoon to search for a full fossil to match the skeletal claw discovered by professor Carl Maia. But what greets them is an aquatic man-fish that takes an instant liking to the way Kay fills out a contoured swimsuit. The Gill Man decimates the supporting cast while the leads argue the best way to capture it; after he blocks their exit from the Lagoon, the wily Devonian goes a step further and claims Kay as a romantic spoil of war.” The underwater scenes (impressive even by today’s standards) are exciting and especially creepy when the The Gill Man follows the “curvaceous Kay” while she’s swimming. The creature may be a guy in a rubber suit, but it’s a pretty damn affective rubber suit.
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20 Million Miles to Earth comes off as an attempt recreate 1933’s King Kong but with a half-lizard man from Venus. The stop-motion animation scenes of Mr. Lizard are fun, and some of the acting is so bad it’s hilarious, but there are too many boring filler scenes. The story never takes off. Not enough attention is given to the most interesting character: the lizard man. Watching a movie like 20 Million Miles to Earth, which was made in 1957, makes me appreciate the original King Kong even more.

It Came From Outer Space is one of the few 1950s science fiction B-movies I’ve seen to-date that actually has a coherent story, one that is strong enough to maintain the momentum of the movie without having to spice it up with cheesy special effects every 5 minutes. And it’s always fun to play Spot The Star Trek Actor, or even better: Spot The Professor From Gilligan’s Island. That guy shows up all over the place in these old “sci-fi” classics. So anyhow, a spaceship crashes in the desert and the aliens need time to repair their ship. So they make copies of some guys who work for the power company and tell the one guy who knows where they’re hiding to not tell anyone. They promise to free all the original people they made copies of as soon as they’re done fixing their ship. That’s coherent, right? The aliens don’t show their true selves too much, but when they do, they look like the one-eyed alien blob from Space 1999. All said and done, It Came From Outer Space is a surprisingly half-decent and entertaining B-movie.

Destination Moon is the 1950s “sci-fi” B-movie version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick may have borrowed from Destination Moon; check out the review I’ve linked to). Dramatically, the story about the first rocket ship sent to the moon is irrelevant. As usual, the acting is horrible and the production values are dated — but the fun is in watching how much is achieved through 1950s special effects. Long drawn out scenes showing the g-forces on the astronauts faces as they’re blasted into space; weightlessness as they float around the cabin; looking down on the earth; walking on the moon — it’s all impressive, in a cheesy, B-movie kind of way. Zero story, but interesting and entertaining special effects.

As a cheesy, “sci-fi” B-movie, This Island Earth doesn’t even approach the entertainment value of something like Forbidden Planet. (I have my doubts anything could beat Forbidden Planet. It’s impressive even outside the realm of B-movie appreciation.) There is a spaceship, an angry alien with a humongous brain and some humanoid people with big foreheads. All fine and good. The problem is boredom. The bad acting, the silly dialogue, the cardboard sets — you can only laugh your way through that for 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing cool happens until the last 20 minutes of the movie. That’s too much crap to sit through. Fast-forward to the 60-minute mark and you’ve got yourself a good time.

Forbidden Planet is the ultimate “sci-fi” B-movie. When one of the opening credits reads, “Electronic Tonalities by Louis and Bebe Barron,” you know it’s going to be a fun ride. Pick any five minutes from Forbidden Planet and you’ll see evidence of its influence on Star Wars, Star Trek and even Alien. It’s a total goofball movie full of blatant chauvinism and cheesy (yet spectacular) special effects and aliens that can read your mind, and a robot and a crazy spaceship and those insane electronic tonalities — all kinds of fun stuff. Make yourself a big bowl and popcorn and dig in.

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is a B-movie that’s no more sophisticated or frightening than The Blob. Birds start acting funny and attack people. The movie has a few good shots, but it’s boring and over-rated. If you bother to watch it (I don’t plan to see it again), let me know if you think the guy who plays Mitch, Rod Taylor, looks and sounds like Robin Williams’s father. I was convinced the two must be related. They’re not.

I’ve seen most of Hitchcock’s movies. I’ll eventually post about them as I re-watch them.

I’ve watched all three incarnations of King Kong in the past two weeks: The 1933 original, the best of the bunch for my money; Peter Jackson’s 2005 CGI-heavy remake which — although bloated with nearly 90 minutes of subplots about characters no one cares about — kicks ass when Kong is on screen; and now the 1976 version that presents us with a guy running around in an ape suit. If you’re going for camp value, then okay, maybe it works. But let’s be honest: The Kong scenes are boring. There’s no drama or intensity to any of the action. If you were 9 years old watching it on TV sometime in the ’70s and loved it then, the nostalgia factor could cloud your judgement enough that you might have fun watching it again as an adult. That’s the case for me with The Poseidon Adventure, but not here.

I’m talking about the original 1933 version of King Kong. It is a great movie and a hell of lot more violent and gruesome than I ever thought. It must have shocked and scared the crap out of audiences in 1933. I never realized what an incredible movie it is. There isn’t much of a story until Kong comes into the picture — and then you can watch the movie with the sound down if you feel like it because everything unfolds in broad strokes: 1) Island natives capture Fay Wray for sacrifice to Kong; 2) Kong runs into the jungle with Ms. Wray, protecting her instead of eating her; 3) A rescue party runs into the jungle and are killed off one at a time by Kong; 4) Kong is captured and brought back to the US… and so on. Although King Kong is sometimes considered a B-quality monster movie, it’s operatic and poignant as well. I’d love to see it in a theatre someday.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe is a made-for-TV special given a theatrical release. That’s my guess, anyway. It’s not entirely unwatchable, but the writing is silly, ridiculous and lazy, especially the ending which just sort of happens and then disappears without much explanation. There’s a short epilogue about the main characters, but does anyone care? I don’t think so. Perhaps most of the original fans of the show, having grown up over the years, will see this movie and realize that the TV show was never really that good anyway.

There is no reason to see The Happening, ever, not even out of morbid curiosity. Considering the downward slide M. Night Shyamalan has been on since, well, arguably since The Sixth Sense, it seemed inevitable that he would eventually hit rock bottom, and this is it. Even The Village had moments where you think, “Maybe this’ll get good now,” but there isn’t a single compelling moment in the entire running time of The Happening, and subsequently nothing to feel disappointed about. I like Shyamalan as a director, so I was hoping to see at least a few good scenes or cool shots. But nope. The Happening is a zero on every level. The writing, the acting, the direction — it’s all bad, mediocre at best. I know a couple people who enjoyed it because they thought of it as a B-Movie. Okay, maybe. But I think most people would agree with me: This movie sucks.

UPDATE (Dec. 16/08): Shyamalan said: “This is the best B movie you will ever see, that’s it. That’s what this is. If there’s other things that stick to your ribs as you walk out, that’s great, but it’s supposed to be, you know, zombies eating flesh.” If that’s the case, it might work as a B-movie. I don’t know. I doubt I’ll watch it again.

I’ve seen all of Shyamalan’s movies. I’ll eventually post about them as I re-watch them.

Scarface is a silly, over-rated 1980s gangster movie that is so melodramatic and dated, it’s a joke. Cubans who hear Al Pacino’s Cuban accent must laugh the way Newfoundlanders laugh at the accents in The Shipping News. It may be fun to watch as a cheesy, over-the-top, violent, blood and guts B-movie, but an animé cartoon with the same two-dimensional characters would have been just as dramatic.

In The Invasion of the Body Snatchers #4, Nicole Kidman does her best not to fall asleep and become one of the Pod People in this science fiction thriller that adds nothing new to a story that’s been done too many times already. However, it does work as a contemporary B-movie. It’s so bad that it’s good.

The plot to An American Werewolf in London is simple: a guy gets bit by a werewolf and becomes a werewolf and kills people. The 1980s special effects, although dated in places, hold up well. One of the first movies I saw on VHS, this comedy-horror movie has its scary moments, but mostly it’s just fun. Not a bad B-movie.

When Worlds Collide is one of the most watchable “sci-fi” B-movies from the early ’50s — and in colour! It’s about some scientists (or scienticians) who build a big rocket ship to take a group of people to the planet Zyra because the earth is about to be destroyed in a collision with some other rogue planet. Or something. 3 out of 4 stars on the cheese-o-meter. Couple it with Forbidden Planet, and you’ve got yourself a great double feature.