Night Visions Back To Basics 3012 Part 1

About two months ago, I was privileged to take part of another Night Visions Back to Basics festival. The intimacy of classic festival years has been paved in way of attendance records, and accordingly, the festival has become bigger and bigger each year. Just because there's such a big number of films to cover, this festival report comes in so late. But as most good genre films are timeless, one should be able read reviews of them anytime. Let's remind ourselves how much fun we had, eh?

Haywire (USA, 2012)
Director: Steven Soderbergh

The festival kicked off with Steven Soderbergh's love letter to ultimate fighter Gina Carano. I've long held the stand that Soderbergh is a competent director with plenty of good ideas in each of his films. However, it seems that he's unwilling to concentrate to do them properly, instead opting to direct two films each year. Subsequently, he has a huge back catalogue of films no one has seen, and even his high profile films lack in substance. Even though it's admirable that such a big director is willing to make a straight action film that unashamedly is built on people getting their asses kicked, it would've paid to stay a bit longer in the screenwriter's room.

As it is, Haywire is a blandly clichéd agent thriller. Carano's agent Mallory Kane is on the run from her former employer. The agency and the consequent womanhunt seem to be led by Ewan McGregor's Kenneth. Unlinear timeline shows flashes from before and after Kane was betrayed. Her mission to rescue a hostage in Barcelona went, as in the movie's title, haywire. In her subsequent job in Dublin her contact person (Michael Fassbender) turns out to be a double-crosser. In current time, somewhere in the American midwest, she confides in the regular-seeming Aaron (Channing Tatum) to borrow his car.

Like said, there are plenty of things to enjoy here, from surprisingly good performances (Carano in particular shows unexpected acting abilities) to several good action scenes. A backwards car chase in the middle of the woods is one for the ages, and Soderbergh can stage a fight between Carano and an A-list actor like a mofo. Pity that in some instances he attempts to do a really distracting editing style that's more an experiment than a service to storytelling (or ass-kicking). I would've liked to see more famous actors get their asses kicked by Carano, with Michael Douglas and Tatum in particular being sad to be left out. But ultimately, as the viewer can't be bothered to care about any of the supposedly-clever twists and turns of the plot, and any scene without any action causes big yawns. Ultimately, the film doesn't amount to anything above average.

★★ 1/2


Bloody Pit of Horror (Il boia scarlatto, Italy/USA 1965)
Director: Massimo Pupillo

But wait, actually Night Visions opened a bit earlier than that, at least unofficially. In the Bar Molotow there was a sunday evening showing of two past NV movies followed by reminiscing of the 15-year-old history of the festival. I catched the later one of the flicks, a delicious Italian exploitation flick supposedly based on the writings of none other than Marquis de Sade.

The Castle of the Crimson Executioner was where a notorious madman butchered heaps of people back in the 17th century. A modern-day photographer decides that the castle's the perfect milieu to shoot sexy pictures for covers of horror novels. So, a group of hot model girls and technical people arrive at the castle that they think is empty. However, the castle is owned by the former actor Travis Anderson (Mickey Hargitay) who lives there with his two bodyguards. The model Edith (Luisa Baratto) used to date Travis, so they are allowed to stay. But then the model crew starts to disappear one by one. The spirit of The Crimson Executioner seems to be bent on revenge and to torture each and every one of them to death.

So all of the (pretty formulaic) plot exists solely as an excuse to show several torture devices and death traps. Having sex-hungry models in your film also allows for some steamy nudity. The budget hasn't really stretched too far, as the violence doesn't seem too realistic and the other special effects are frankly ludicrous. The unconvincing giant spider threatening a girl in her web, only to be tossed away like an American football by the rescuing Adonis, is probably the most memorable of these.

The main bad guy runs around in red tights and generally dresses like the pulp comic hero The Phantom, but without a shirt on, which is also a plus in my book. But the film also has a somehow twisted atmosphere where almost anything can happen. Like all good exploitation, it seems to exist in a delirious border between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. Even though the end result is lame, it is quite inventive and the actors seem to be having fun with it.

★ or ★★★★★

Red Tears (a.k.a. Monster Killer; Red tears - kôrui, Japan 2011)
Director: Takanori Tsujimoto

Each Night Visions seems to need to have a new Japanese gore flick in its program. This time, for a change, it doesn't come courtesy of Sushi Typhoon. But still it shares pretty much the regular quality of these flicks, which is that they have a couple of amusing splatter scenes but the flimsy plot and the overacted characters are usually quite dire.

Red Tears is both a detective story and a love story as well as a monster-hunting action film. A bunch of policemen try to figure out who has murdered a large number of people by decapitating them and sucking the corpses dry from blood. The young policeman Tetsuo Nojima (Yuma Ishigaki) falls for the shy, beautiful girl Sayoko (Natsuki Kato) who takes care of her elderly mother. But the more efficient and determined elder detective Genjiro Mishima (Yasuaki Kurata) soon starts to suspect that the women have some sort of connection to these monstrous crimes.

The plot develeopment is slow as snail nailed to the ground. Sudden shocks of the plot suddenly thrushing forward wake the viewer up, but can't manage to maintain interest for long. The unrelenting, bloody fight scenes towards the end do a little better job, but rely way too much on bad CGI effects. But the film also has a very black sense of humor which makes some body mutilation jokes quite funny in a Braindead sort of way. Kurata is also awesome. Still, by no means essential viewing.

★★

The Innkeepers (USA 2011)

Director: Ti West

Ti West has an unique vision among modern American horror directors, which is why his films feel like they're a lot better than they actually are. He doesn't dwell on violence, postmodernist irony, jokes, effects or gore like so many of his peers. West's films build very slowly and give a lot of room for character development. It's a shame, then, that his films are so clichéd. One would almost wish he wouldn't write his own scripts, but rather use his directing talent to better someone else's fresher ideas. After the quite good House of the Devil, West has decided to show others how a Haunted House thriller should be made.

Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) work at a rundown hotel that's about to get closed. There aren't that many customers so they try to find some ways to keep themselves entertained during long shifts at the reception. They both are interested in the hotel's history, which includes a young bride hanging herself after her fiancée left her at the altar. As amateur ghost hunters they attempt to capture some evidence that the bride's ghost still lurks in the hotel. During the hotel's last weekend they get an old actress Leanne Reese-Jones (Kelly McGillis) as a guest. She promises Claire she can get in touch with the hotel's spirits. But Sara soon finds out she got more than she bargained for.

The Innkeepers starts off relatively mild, almost comedy-like as Claire and Luke talk trash with each other and ward off boredom. What first seem like stock-clearence horror movie characters turn out to be kind of multidimensional in that they have several motivations, background and thoughts going on. The viewer allowing him-(or her-)self to get entangled in their lives and to learn to care for what's happening to them, finds the film more rewarding as a result. The suspense builds up very slowly, and supernatural elements are almost crept in a film that in the beginning seemed very down-to-earth. Even usually cheesy shocker points feel a lot creepier than in your average cheap jump-scarer. But once the final chase and shock-train starts, it all falls to very familiar horror tropes, like going to a dark basement to get trapped. West should work more to keep his film's climaxes worthy of such long buildup. Nevertheless, it's always a joy to see a horror film crafted well and with care. I hope West's next film won't disappoint.

★★★

War of the Dead – Stone's War (Lithaunia/Italy/Finland/USA, 2012)
Director: Marko Mäkilaakso

Here's another fresh new genre film that stems from Finnish mindpower but is actually a multinational production. Mäkilaakso's film is about zombies in the Finnish Winter War (1939-40) and has been on production (shelved) for so long that zombies have gone out of fashion thanks to overexposure in pop culture. But actually I got a real kick out of this film, I liked it a lot better than the more in-your-face, you-should-be-laughing-now -styled Iron Sky. Whether that was the intent of the filmmakers, I honestly can't say.

The American soldier Stone (Andrew Tiernan) fights on the Karelian frontier against the attacking Soviet army, alongside a small group of Finnish soldiers. When suddenly the killed soldiers can't stay dead and keep coming for their flesh, the ragtag group realizes that more sinister powers than the sheer fear of Stalinist gulags is driving the zombie soldiers. The group picks up a Russian soldier Kolya (Samuli Vauramo) on their way to get as far away from the armies of the undead and perhaps also solve the mystery. (Hint: It's because of occultist Nazi experiments)

The film is shot in a dark forest at night, and the editing is so sloppy, it's hard to make out what's happening in the most intense scenes. In the end set in a vast underground bunker system, the editing problems ease out. But by then the film looks like just another amateur zombie film shot in a basement or bomb shelter. The film's flimsy "plot" consists mostly of running away, with some frankly ludicrous character building scenes filling out the time between. But none of those problems matter, because the acting is so goddamn hilarious. The film's Finns have thick accents, reminding the production of some of Mats Helge's finest Swedish ninja flicks. This is probably a conscious choice as Finnish war veterans aren't very well known for their abilities to speak foreign languages. But then again it just raises further questions as to why the hell are they even talking in English anyway. Stone's reasons to fight in Finland's own war are familiar to anyone that has read some cheap Boy's Own war comics. Come to think of it, the plot altogether doesn't probably have a single fresh idea in it (save for one zombie horse/car chase). But it's all made with such deadpan seriousness, that the film tricks the audience into laughing at it's ineptdness. The funniest joke is the one where you can't be sure whether the one telling you it is joking or not. Frankly, I don't want to know whether they were serious or not making this, which is why I skipped the Q&A with the makers after the screening. I remain more satisfied that way.

★ or ★★★★★

The Brides of Fu Manchu (UK/West Germany 1965)
Director: Don Sharp

Christopher Lee was not only known as Dracula in the 1960's. He's also one of the most profilic actors to play Sax Rohmer's fiendish supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu, having done the role five times in his career. Night Visions presented the second one of these adventure flicks, with Douglas Wilmer's Sir Dennis Nayland Smith having to match wits against a nefarious plot to conquer the world once again. Because this is a sequel, the film starts with a frankly baffling (for newcomers at least) and explosive scene set on some Asian mountains where the previous film's ending is undone to release Fu Manchu into the world once again.

This time his plot relies on kidnapping daughters of scientists around the world and locking them in a cage in his secret underground lair. Then he blackmails the scientists to build him the technology he wants, the most sinister being a death ray capable of destroying Great Britain's most notable tourist attractions (and the home of some monarchs as well). He keeps the scientists at bay with his hypnotism skills, which can make even the sweetest of scientist daughters the most ruthless of assassins. Smith and the Scotland Yard must find clues and deduce where on Earth Fu Manchu is hiding before his plans come into fruition.

The film has not aged particularly well and multiple things in it look quite silly from today's perspective. First of all, Fu Manchu as a racial stereotype seems quite un-PC, even if this film doesn't make a big scene out of his heritage, making the villain interested in mythology from all over the world. Second, the film relies quite heavily on technology, which by today's standards looks quite primitive. The limited budget has caused many of the most impressive machinery to be described, rather than shown. Manchu's ninja minions working in a computer room also looks quite stupid. And then thirdly, for a film that's set in the modern times of 1960's, some of the threats and perils the film present seem quite out of their sell-by-date, too. Fu Manchu's greatest death trap is a snake pit, which features a couple of quite friendly-looking pythons. If someone is dropped there, the film soon cuts to the pythons squirming amongst a plastic skeleton. But nevertheless these flaws, it is always a joy to see Lee in a villainous role (even so subdued as here), and the international game of cat-and-mouse is, for the most part, fun enough to follow.

★★★

Star Pilot (a.k.a. 2+5: Missione Hydra; Italy, 1966)
Director: Pietro Francisci

This goofy Italian sci-fi gem owns its logo and title to the Star Wars craze, but it was actually made over a decade before George Lucas' Big Ideas, and re-released during that space craze. In actuality it owes a lot more to the Space Race going on during that time, and American 50's sci-fi movies, which often featured a professor, a couple of quarterbacks and the cute and useless girl exploring brave new worlds.

The plot jumps all over the place. We begin in the 18th century, when a spaceship crash lands in Sardinia. There's really no good reason why this sequence needed to be shown. "Why the heck not" seems to be a recurring motif with a lot of things about this film's plot. In the modern day professor Solmi (Roland Lesaffre), his assistants, and his ravishingly beautiful, but ditzy daughter Luisa (Leontine May) are investigating some strange natural phenomena. They find the crashed spaceship inside a cave, but soon find out that they have been followed by chinese communist spies. But no matter, as they all have to witness the attack and subsequent shut-down of the ship's robots (?!). There are also other ones alive inside the ship, and the whole crew is soon kidnapped by Captain Kaena (Leonora Ruffo). They all are kidnapped and flown out of Earth to fix her race's spaceships and find their way back home.

One really can't say that Star Pilot is a non-stop thrill ride, as there are plenty of frustratingly slow-moving scenes in the film. The incredibly slow-moving spacewalk scenes in particular seem to last for ages. But it still offers such large quantities of cheesy dialogue, baffling plot points and groovy 60's era space fashion (with large boob-windows for the gals), that it's impossible to not love this thing. A woman's place is to fix coffee for the working men, whether they want to drink it or go to bed instead. In the last 10 minutes of the film, there are so many plot twists and turns that the film borders on incomprehensible. But it has a strong anti-nuke message to the world - all the more impressive when considered that it was made before the likes of Planet of the Apes.

★ or ★★★★★

Redneck (Senza ragione, Italy 1973)
Director: Silvio Narizzano

The Italian title of this crime/on-the-run flick means Without reason, which would have been a more fitting. Both titles refer to the mentally ill bank robber Memphis (Telly Savalas), who seemingly portrays some of the most crude stereotypic habits (and the thick accent) of gentlemen from the American Bible Belt. He is also prone to killing a whole lot of people just because he feels like it. Hence, without reason.

Memphis has two partners at a big gig, Mosquito (Franco Nero) and his girlfriend Maria (Ely Galleani). But they botch the jewel shop heist operation bad (particularly because they allow Maria to drive the getaway car). While switching to another car, they don't realize a small boy, Lennox Duncan (Mark Lester), is hiding in the back seat. When they find out, they decide to kidnap him. It turns out that they didn't get much money from their heist after all, which sends Memphis into lunatic rage. Mosquito attempts to save the boy from Memphis's wrath, which makes Lennox idolize him and see him as a sort of a father figure. But since law is on their tail, they need to also trust the murderous Memphis until they can get across the border.

Redneck is as cynical and nasty as Italian flicks come. The attitude towards women is quite misogynistic (just look for the scene where Memphis attempts to hire hookers) and dismissive. It's the sort of film that will show happy German children dancing around the tree and the next moment drown them in a sinking trailer. The film's humor is quite black, is what I'm saying. And a bit odd, too. Mosquito spends time shaving naked in front of a mirror, with Lennox looking admiringly. When Mosquito leaves, Lennox checks whether his penis is as big. The film goes all the way with its craziest ideas, which is also why particularly Savalas' scenery-chewing overacting as a total maniac tends to get tiring. But it's a tough, hard flick with very unexpected plot developments and as such it's very much worth a look.

★★★ 1/2

Dragon on Fire (Guai quan guai zhao, Hong Kong 1981)
Director: Joseph Velasco

The most hilarious moments I've ever had in Night Visions (or really, anywhere else for that matter) have been with several incredibly stupid bruceploitation flicks. It's been a few years since we saw Bruce Lee clones at the festival, which makes it all the merrier that the first full night ended with a flick with no fewer than three of them! Yes, Bruce Li, Bruce Lei and Dragon lee all star in this bonkers kung fu epic. Pity that they are never on screen together.

This is the sort of bargain bin martial arts film that has been created by stitching together leftover pieces from previous films. Or at least that's what some friends with expertize on these films figured. That's why it makes little to no sense and trying to sum the plot reasonably is a fool's errand. There are several Bruce Lee-looking martial arts masters arriving to a small village to save it from ruthless gangsters. Plenty of hijinks ensue. The first half of the film in particular has multiple comedic subplots from running away from the landlord in fast-motion and whatnot.

It doesn't seem to be enough that all the lead actors look like Bruce Lee, the film also deliberately tries to confuse the audience with them. That's why one of the protagonists is named Dragon Young and the other Dragon Hung, which is mentioned in the dialogue over and over again. The third Bruce is Hung's brother and creatively named Bruce Hung. While the first two fight gangsters, he spends most of his time arguing with a Buddhist monk about whether it's OK to beat criminals to death. Surprisingly, the monk seems quite liberal on the subject. My whole view of Buddhism has been shattered! I like how the film is completely unapologetic in its shamelessness and extremely un-PC. Bolo Young makes an appearance and is being called "a large body with a very retarded mind." The fights aren't as bad as the storytelling and the goofy comedy in this one, but aren't that spectacular either.

But these kind of films can only be rated on whether they are boring or not. Dragon on Fire is not boring. In fact, even though the plot makes no sense, people appear and disappear to various locations with odd cuts and it's generally a very stupid basic western plot, the film can pace its humor, action and general insanity in suitable doses and thus it never frustrates the viewer. The end fight does take 20 minutes, but the best tricks are saved for it, and with cross-cutting two fights, the thing works quite well, too. Even if it could use even a little trimming. Talk about finding gold in the trash can.

★ or ★★★★★

Sequels to Prometheus

Today is the world premiere date of the highly anticipated new Ridley Scott film Prometheus. Unless I'm much mistaken, it will make a mint at the box office. And in Hollywood, success means sequels! But fortunately, since I'm currently traveling through time, I had the good chance to see actually four different sequels to Prometheus, each directed by a well-known name! So keep your eyes peeled because I have a feeling we haven't heard the last from the universe of Prometheus yet!

Alien (1979)
Director: Ridley Scott

OK, time to come clean. The link-bait that I am, I actually took on to review the Alien saga as "Aliens" is one of the most regular search results that has brought visitors here. And like Ridley Scott has taught us before, those strange and wonderful visitors are something we should fear, if we are to keep our virginal faces intact.

With the rate it's been parodied, remade, homaged and flat-out stolen (it seems, by Ridley Scott himself as well), it's hard to believe there is still someone who doesn't know the story of the film. The mining ship Nostromo lands on a distant planet to look for the sender of a distress signal. They find the planet deserted and the distress signal to be ancient. But one of the crew members, Kane (John Hurt), has an unfortunate run-in with a creature described as a "face-hugger", that latches itself in his face and won't let go. A day passes and the hugger drops dead. But Kane and the others have some all new worries, as an infant alien creature bursts through his belly. it's up to the other crew members to find the alien, hiding somewhere in the Nostromo, before it kills again.

At it's core, Alien is a serious remake of John Carpenter's Dark Star, co-written by Dan O'Bannon. O'Bannon had a lot of fun with blue-collar space workers with Carpenter's film, and it featured them searching for a deadly alien on board their spaceship. In that case, the alien was a red beach ball with some tentacles. Scott wisely elected for something more sinister and went to the Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger for designs. Suitably for a film that concerns sexual subtexts, the main alien was to look like a combination of a huge penis and vagina dentata.

Scott's film is a seminal ponderous 70's sci-fi film, and that is why it moves along quite slowly. Viewers accustomed to the faster pace of the sequels might well forget that. But we also get to hang around with the crew quite a lot, and see that the future isn't as glamorous and fabled as it's seen in most other sci-fi epics. They still need working class slobs to do the heavy work. One of the theses of the film is as to how far are these poor souls expendable for company's gains. The person representing these views is in fact discovered to not even be human, but an artificial copy. The maternal spaceship computer also shows HAL-like qualities while being completely true to her actual mission. These ideas are quite progressive to be found on a film made in an age before the neo-liberal profit-before-everything-else agenda has poisoned all businesses and politics.

The other major subtext, as I mentioned, is sexuality. Scott made sure as to write every character as asexual before casting the actors. The alien presents the primordial sexual fears of penetration and castration at the same time. Rape and pregnancy are fears here for the both sexes, and the aftermath of them both are bloody. There are no clear romances between the crewmen aboard, so there's no cheap teen slasher flick moralizing. At the time the film was made it was very progressive to see who would in the end turn out to be the strongest-minded and the one person able to destroy the sexual threat. But there is a sense of exploitation and stripping down just for the hell of it to get asses into seats.

Alien is an impressive work, but for me at least, impossible to look nowadays without seeing the legacy it left behind, which wasn't for smart thrillers, sci-fi, or horror movies with subtext to emerge, but to bring back the monster movie, and try to duplicate everything on display here as cheap as possible.

★★★★

Aliens (1986)
Director: James Cameron

The sequel, on the other hand, kicks unholy ass. James Cameron didn't rely on making as subtext-heavy sequel, but had enough gravy to make the beef tastier. This is an action film about the war traumas of Vietnam and the mentality of an American soldier (or rather, space marine).

Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) escape capsule is found 57 years after floating in space in suspended animation. When finally rescued and awoken, Ripley finds out that no one knows of the Alien threat. In fact, the planet Nostromo's crewmembers found facehugger eggs on, has been colonized. Contact with the colony has also recently been abruptly ended. A team of hard-assed space marines are sent to investigate and to rescue the survivors, with Ripley working on a consultant should they run into Aliens. And they do.

Image courtesy of Rob Clifford.

Ripley, alone, abandoned and confused, puts her trust into new people in the film's beginning. As it turns out, the slimy yuppies are untrustworthy and just want to use her for their own gains. The decades that have passed have changed nothing. This time the real people representing the company were much less humane than the artificial man. Ripley overcomes her prejudicm against androids by the end of the film. But Ripley's real triumph is to build a new core family.

Newt (Carrie Henn) is a ten-year-old that has been the sole survivor of the Alien attack. Ripley shows her responsibility by taking her under her wing. By the end that also means she has to go out her way to protect her. Ripley embraces he motherhood instincts she didn't have the chance to with her own daughter 57 years ago, as she was far away, mining planets. Ripley also manages to find a suitable suitor (altough this is only implied) with Michael Biehn's Cpl. Hicks. He's the only man level-headed enough to survive, while others are prone to be over-confidently macho (William Hope's Lt. Gorman) dumb, or too whining and immasculine (Bill Paxton's Pvt. Hudson).

The men break their true character when they, for the first time, see war as a chaotic battle with no means of control. The American idea of going in headfirst and just shooting everything that moves is not such a good idea against a hidden, organized enemy that knows their surroundings better than the invaders. Unlike Vietcong, Aliens can also move underneath the floorboards and have acid for blood. The loss of control and attempts at gaining them are core issues here, as is rooting for the underdogs to survive while the jocks can't figure out what to do. And all the while it is ridiculously entertaining to watch it. Aliens is truly one of the very best action films of the 80's, a big dose of both masculinity and critique of it.

Aliens proved to be at least as influential as the film that preceded it. And not just in movies, but in videogames. Space marines fighting off huge hoards of disgusting alien monsters has become a haystay of the medium ever since, and probably will stay that way. 

★★★★★

Alien^3 (1992)
Director: David Fincher

If a franchise has spawned two genre-defining classics, then it should be hard work to get the second sequel off the ground. Sadly, more often than not the makers just embarrass themselves, Godfather III style. The third Alien movie went through years of development hell. 20th Century Fox couldn't even come to terms on what exactly should be the main setting or the main hook. Some ideas were quite interesting (a wooden monk planet directed by Paul Schrader), while some seemed doomed to fail (Renny Harlin directing an even bigger action film set on Earth). What was clear that in many aspects, the ending of Aliens had to be undone.

So, our hard-luck heroine still couldn't get rid of all those pesky xenomorphs. A face-hugger crept into their ship at the end of Aliens and caused it to crash. Hicks and Newt die, and Bishop is junk metal. Ripley wakes up to find she's the sole woman on a prison planet. A new xenomorph is born out of a dog (or a slaughtered ox depending on which version you are watching), and runs amok on the planet.

The former music video director Fincher had a horrible time shooting the film. Fox executives seemed intent on watering down every idea he had, and thus the film simply cannot break any new ground. This is his Dune, a film he loathes so much he still renowns the film (every cut of it, no less). It is for all intents and purposes a retread of the first Alien, with attempts at a moody thriller where people get killed one by one. But rather than to cube all the fear, paranoia and social commentary, the return diminishes on all these categories. What is left is a cynical, overtly Christian fable of self-sacrifice. Which is made so cheesy that one can't get at all worked up about it.

I'm prepared to admit I'm a little extra bitter about the film just because it so willfully destroys my beloved Aliens. On the one hand, I appreciate that the film is willing to distance it so much with a very well-loved genre film. These days with internet fanboy outrage it probably couldn't be done. But, as with every other good idea the filmmakers may have had making this film, they don't manage to take the idea anywhere. The result is that the film repeats the early scenes of Aliens, with Ripley disoriented feeling the loss of her family and seeing only the future of dog-eat-dog, kill-or-be-killed. Also, Alien^3 doesn't get going as fast as Cameron could, but lingers on the melancholia and sadness. I'm all for cynicality if it is based on some insight. Here, it just works to remind that the world is bad and the people are rotten. The film's sex-hungry prisoners are so bad, they even have two Y chromosomes (this is a joke, right?). The faux-british accents and horrible dialogue don't do any favors. Even they are saints when compared to their self-obsessed wardens.

One can see at embryonic states some ideas that Fincher came to develop in Se7en, such as a "pregnant" soon-to-be-mother having doubts whether the world is too rotten to raise a child. Here, of course, the baby is a xenomorph, and the people in the film are worse than they are. The worst thing about the film is that it's so goddamn boring. It's easy to see where it is heading at each time, so it won't come as a surprise that everyone else dies, except Ripley and that she decides to do the ultimate sacrifice instead of allowing the xenomorphs be exploited by the Weyland-Yutani corporation. The imagery is once again stark, creepy and beautiful, particularly in the Special Edition, where Fincher is allowed to linger on them for a little more. That cut is a vast improvement otherwise, too, with some of the stupidest scenes removed from the film. But there really isn't that much interesting stuff to replace it with, either. The thing doesn't develop the characters, or the situation, enough for it to be in any way worth watching, whatever the cut is.

Theatrical Cut: ★ 1/2
Special Edition: ★★

Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The most maligned of all the sequels is Amélie and Delicatessen director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's attempt to revitalize the genre. The film does have a huge share of flaws, but at least it attempts to break some new ground and the end result is more watchable than Alien^3 in every way. I only have very few films that I feel a bit guilty about liking, but this is so hated, it is definitely in my short list of actual guilty pleasures.

200 years after the events of Alien^3, Ripley and the Alien queen inside her are cloned. The Queen is successfully removed from her body, but the cloning process has given them both some qualities from the other. Ripley is all, "here we go again", and "you gonna die, boyeee". And she's right, because soon the Aliens attack the Resurrection ship and it's passengers. Some of whom are Space Pirates for some reason.

Pirates need water to survive!

The actors and characters in the film are both its greatest strength and it's biggest weakness. One cares infinitely more about Winona Ryder's Call, Dominique Pinon's Vriess and Ron Perlman's Johner than anyone except Ripley in Pt. III. But still, the direction for the actors is simply atrocious. One can easily see Jeunet couldn't speak much English and thus the quality varies form here to here. Dan Hedaya steals the early film with his delightfully malicious General Martin Perez that's so over-the-top he wouldn't be out of place from Romero's zombie films. Jeunet also brings a lot of goofiness and comedy to the film. I almost had a vibe as if the film had been engineered to destroy the franchise, much like Joe Dante's Gremlins 2. But it is probably unintentional.

But in any way, the film captures the zeitgeist of the 90's much in the same way the first two films did. The film concerns itself with the problems of genetic engineering and cloning. The most telling scene about this is the one where Ripley meets an incomplete clone of herself that begs to be killed. What rights to the dead have to be cloned? Are people the property of their genetic code holders? The military complex's biological warfare has developed a whole new layer of evil. And also the sexual undertones of the Alien films are taken to grotesque new levels, with disturbing imagery that's borderline pornographic. Jeunet also knows how to handle the visual side, and the dark, technical spaceship interiors feel familiar and brand new at the same time.

There are plenty of thrilling scenes, the underwater dive with Facehugger eggs on the surface is easily the most exciting and well-executed. But then, they had to spoil the whole thing with the unbelievably stupid last twenty minutes with one of the worst monsters in motion picture history. I would like to think Kevin Smith got the inspiration for the Golgatan in Dogma from this Newborn creature. Still, the film is a lot better than Delicatessen co-director Marc Caro's attempt at sci-fi Dante 01, so Jeunet should be proud.

★★ 1/2

In The Year 2000

Welcome back! The world of movies is moving so fast currently that it's hard to keep on top of things. That's why I figured that right now its time to look....into the future!
"The future, Paavo?"
Yes that's right (enter guest's name here)! Its time to look all the way... to the year 2000! Even the ancient Mayans prophecized that the year 2000 would be the time in which the world comes to an end. Undoubtedly this is why 2000 has inspired so many filmmakers unleashing various visions of dystopian futures upon us. We should be fearful when looking forward to 2000. Surely, the nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union will become before that futuristic year.

Joking aside, not just cheesy 70's and 80's sci-fi flicks have taken the number 2000 to imply futurism. When the year 2000 actually was upon us, a number of sequels also put two extra zeroes to basically say that this is not your dad's Blues Brothers or something to a similar effect. This kind of market-oriented thinking usually tells what you should expect the film's quality to be. 

Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
Director: Michael Coldeway, Michel Lemire

The sequel to the classic 1980's adult cartoon anthology takes a different route from it's predecessor and features only a single, long story. It is based on a graphic novel by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, made with Simon Bisley and Eric Talbot. But in effect, it is one of those sequels that pretty much misses the point of the original movie altogether and just makes a broad-stroked caricature of it as a result. Heavy Metal 2000 is crass, loud, obnoxious, dumb and clichéd.

An ancient, evil force that manifests itself as a glowing green object (that's different in every way from the one in the previous movie), takes over a nasty space pirate/miner named, um, Tyler. As a result, Tyler goes power-mad, kills his co-worker for no reason, and attempts to seek out the secret of immortality. For some reason he stumbles upon a planet called Eden and kills everyone. Well, not everyone as he kidnaps the beautiful young Kerrie, as he believes her blood will somehow help him discover some secrets of immortality. But Kerrie's older sister, the fierce warrior Julie isn't too happy that her home planet has been freshly labeled F.A.K.K.2 (Federation-Assigned Ketogenic Killzone) and starts to pursue Tyler and attempts to find out a way to kill him. Those retarded acronyms are a source of the film's retarded sense of humor, although otherwise it is all played overtly serious. But still not serious enough for it to be funny.

Gone are the beautiful, stylized, and differing animation styles from the first Heavy Metal. In the sequel, the animation looks like a bastardized version of Titan A.E. Particularly the film's computer effects are horrendous, and the long space scenes showcasing them are dreadfully boring. They are balanced by scenes of carnage or Julie showing her boobs for no good reason. The film doesn't deliver on the second half of its name, either. All the cool 80's rock from the previous film has been switched to dreadful turn-of-the-millennium nu-metal. When the soundtrack's high point is the Billy Idol track from the end credits, you know you're in trouble. As a matter of fact, when your voice cast's most famous member is Billy Idol, you're also in a a lot of trouble. If ever there was a film for dumb assholes who only care about tuning cars and getting laid, I'd rather they watched this abomination than the original Heavy Metal.

★1/2

Holocaust 2000 (1977)
Director: Alberto DeMartino

Satanic horror films were all the rage in the 70's, and of course cheapo Italian producers decided they wanted their slice of the cake. Thus, they hired the acclaimed screenwriter Sergio Donati and director Alberto Martino to basically rip off The Omen, which had premiered the previous year. The resulting film is a sort of mirror of it's time, threatening us with the loss of tradition in order to earn money, and the risks of nuclear power.

Kirk Douglas stars as the construction magnate Robert Caine, who's on the verge of the deal of his life when he makes a deal to build a nuclear power plant in the Middle East. From the constructs he discovers some ancient ruins and writings about someone called "Iesus", but he doesn't pay much attention. But he then starts to get haunted by Doomsday prophets, mysterious ill-meaning bearded men, bad omens and horrifying dreams. When he sees in his dream that his power plant is actually the seven-headed Beast of the Apocalypse he realizes what's going on. His son Angel (Simon Ward) is actually the Antichrist, trying to bring out Armageddon using his plant. And Robert's pregnant lover Eva (Virginia McKenna) and his wife Sara (Agostina Belli) also play major parts in this plan.

Despite some delirious imagery, the film doesn't really pick up steam enough to be very interesting. Some odd madhouse scenes aside, this isn't even outrageous enough to be a good camp movie. Violence comes as some friends of Caine get killed while trying to figure out Angel's plans or stopping them. Their demises are quite familiar for those having seen The Omen. Even the presence of Douglas doesn't help too much, as he seems to be on auto-pilot and his only expression seems to be worry. He does burst into violent rage in a couple of key scenes that are welcome change to the boredom of him being undecided on what to do next. A rich tycoon is also not a very good movie protagonist, even if he is flawed and sinful, as he's hard to sympathize with. All in all, I figure these sort of films work better in Catholic countries, where people are scared with the wages of sins and the upcoming Apocalypse and Hell for all their lives. There's not much to get worked up in it here in liberal protestant Finland. Other than the possibility that a nuclear power plant might go off, but since the government didn't understand that from Fukushima, it wouldn't get it by watching this, either.

★★

Escape 2000 a.k.a. Turkey Shoot (1982)
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith

I have a soft spot for films where hunters chase after the Most Dangerous Gama – man. This Australian schlock classic offers that and much, much more. In Ozploitation movies, anything truly goes, and so the film doesn't mind cheerfully drawing parallels to the Holocaust and stealing good bits from the likes of A Clockwork Orange, Logan's Run or The Man With The Golden Gun.
The film also throws some completely bonkers ideas to the mix, such as a sadistic mute Wolfman joining the hunt without much further explanation.

The film is set in the post-apocalyptic future, where a dystopian government clears up all members of resistance, advocates of free speech and other deviants to prison camps. They are told they are there for re-education and behavior modification, when in fact they are there to fill the sadistic urges in the camp staff (and the audience). The camp is run by the laconic Charles Thatcher (Michael Ritter) and his main underling Ritter (Roger Ward), who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. But since prisoners flow into their camp faster than they can be whipped to death, Thatcher has an idea to organize a game to get rid of some extra prisoners who are becoming a nuisance. Thus, he gathers high-ranking government officials (and their pets) and sets few key prisoners into the woods. The hunt can begin.

I think this poster depicts much better of what's going on in the film than the faux-futuristic Escape 2000 one.

For a film using real prison camp footage in its opening credits, Turkey Shoot is decidedly cartoonish. The film has colorful imagery and frankly the violence seems quite stylized. For a film that's supposedly very low-budget exploitation, it actually looks quite impressive. Particularly the explosive ending wouldn't be too out of place from a Roger Moore Bond film. Sadly, the British director Brian Trenchard-Smith didn't share his contemporary Ozploitation directors George Miller's or Russel Mulcahy's career developments and didn't get any major Hollywood work after this one. Instead, he has since directed more exploitation, such as BMX Bandits, Dead-End Drive-In and two sequels to Leprechaun. But if you've never known that you wanted to see a circus freak squished against a tree trunk by a dune buggy before now, this is your film.

★★★★

Equalizer 2000 a.k.a. Defender 2000 (1988)
Director: Cirio H. Santiago

I'll say it straight away: The Equalizer 2000 is one of the most infantile films I've ever seen. Seriously, this thing makes the likes of G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra look like a high-brow study of the ills of modern warfare and it's effects on the psyche of soldiers. But being childish is not necessarily a bad thing. Basically, this is a post-apocalyptic barbarian flick that's 80 minutes of one big sandbox action figure battle.

The plot revolves around two fighting teams – The men of the evil Military Government, and the Rebels fighting for their freedom from tyranny (of course). You can tell the bad guys from their Nazi-like armored uniforms, whereas most good guys wear surplus western movie clothing. As oil has become rarer and rarer the sides mostly fight over gasoline. Some oil fields in the scorching desert are valuable to both and that's why the major battles are settled there. While fighting, huge showers of bullets are fired, but with anything particular very rarely being hit. So much for the shooting skills of the Army of Tomorrow. To help the rebels actually hit their enemies, a B.F.G. named Equalizer 2000 is built by a gunsmith. The weapon is basically what Tony Montana carried, an oversized assault rifle that can also shoot rockets. The protagonist Slade (Richard Norton) is a leather vest, a beard and a mullet-donning stranger, a true western archetype of a neutral who gets tangled in with the action, but brings order to untamed areas. Norton seems to attempt to channel Clint Eastwood, but can't even reach Brian Botswick's levels. For the ladies, there's a lengthy scene where he sharpens blades without his shirt on. He's also skillful enough to manage to avoid getting shot by machine guns by doing little skips on desert rocks.

The film's budget is so low, they couldn't even buy convincing paint to put over all the plastic, tin plate and plywood. The toy guns are quite cute, particularly the bazookas that go "Ploomp!" There's some car chasing, torture scenes and of course, lots and lots of desert battles. Nothing seems to matter that much, since the audience couldn't give a rat's ass which team will win. But if you only love the action and explosions in action movies, and too much talking and plot development makes you drowsy, this is basically porn for you.

★★ 1/2

Fantasia 2000 (1999)
Directors: Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Gebas, Paul & Gaëtan Brizzi

At the turn of the millennium there was actually at least one interesting 2000-movie project which had the ingredients to be much more than just a cheap cash-in. When Walt Disney envisioned the classical music animation Fantasia back in the early 1940's, he figured that the film could have segments removed and added every couple of years to give the movie-goers different sort of animated concerts. This ambitious idea was thwarted by Fantasia being an expensive flop when it was first released, and the Disney company struggling to recover from it for a decade. 50 years later, Disney's nephew Roy Disney had also dreamed about completing this plan for a long time. The step to create an artistically ambitious film among the animated films of the late 90's (which were still kind of decent with Mulan and Tarzan) was to him to be the crowning achievement of his career. Of course, the younger Disney eventually also had a flop in his hands, and Disney's animations sunk to depths it still haven't quite recovered from (Altough John Lasseter has helped to take a turn for the better. Hopefully Wreck-A Ralph will remedy the situation further).

But to get to the film itself, it is quite a mixed bag. As a whole, it is at least easier to watch from beginning to end than it's predecessor. The running time of 75 minutes is suitably short and there are fewer abstract animations. However, the film does have a weird fundamentalist Christian vibe, as at least three segments seem to be about Rapture. Compare this to the original which had pagan gods, mythological creatures, dinosaurs and demons – but ended with people walking to church with Ave Maria. It seems Disney in the 1940's was more open with various views of the world. 2000 has a forest spirit in the end, but it seems like something that writers came up with rather than an actual legend.

Show me people worshiping this and I'll show you Disney shareholders.

Also unconvincing is to have celebrities hosting the segments. I hate the modern Steve Martin and his horrible attempts at being funny make me in a such a bad mood I wouldn't want to watch anything he's trying to sell. The film does attempt to do its segments in very different animation styles, and at points it does show the majesticity of classic hand-drawn animation at the edge of its demise. The best segment is the one featuring George Gerswin's Rhapsody in Blue. The kind of 1930's newspaper-cartoon inspired style with splashes of primary colors depicting various depression-era New Yorkers going about their business is the sort of unbiased work the whole sequel should have been full of. Also fun is Camille Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals, which channels classic Looney Tunes with it's fast pace and gags aplenty. And Donald Duck's Pomp And Circumstance manages to mix the epicness of the tale of Noah's Ark convincingly with Donald's slapstick antics. I also got weirdly emotional at the end when Donald is reunited with Daisy.

The greatest romance of all time?

My least favorite segments are the ones where unconvincing computer animation is showcased or mixed with classic animation. The grandiose of The Pines of Rome doesn't quite come through with stupid-looking CGI whales flying into heaven. The Tin Soldier segment looks so horrible that I can't even bear to watch it. It's a miracle this was made the same year as Toy Story 2. It also isn't a particularly good idea to recycle The Sorcerer's Apprentice to the new film, as it makes the audience see the difference of the grace and emotion of the classic 40's Disney showcased against some of its modern, soulless incarnations. The final segment – the aforementioned Tree spirit segment – lacks the punch it should have as the finale. All in all, the music played by The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is of course fantastic, but it seems that only half of the animated segments on display here can keep up with it. Perhaps Disney should have been developed this a few years more instead of rushing it to be released at the turn of the millennium.

★★★