Tonight’s movie is the absolutely ridiculous “Freaked” from 1992. Ever wondered what Alex Winter did after Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey? Well, the answer is this bizarre piece of horror comedy. The movie has an all star cast including Keanue Reeves, William Sadler, Randy Quad, Megan Ward, Brooke Shields, Bobcat Goldthwait and Mr. T. This is also Alex Winter’s directorial debut, teaming up with fellow “Idiot Box” alumni Tom Stern.
This film has a freaky history. It sort of originated from “The Idiot Box”, a shorted lived sketch show on MTV staring Winter and was originally supposed to be a low budget horror staring the members of the band “The Butthole Surfers”. Somehow the film ended up being produced as a feature movie by 20th Century Fox, without the Butthole Surfers and with Winter and co-writer Stern directing (Despite neither of them having any directing experience) Fox. The studio invested $12m (Equivalent of $25m today), had a novelisation ordered, a comic book and even made action figures. Unfortunately for them though the test screenings were so bad Fox pulled it from theatres, killing it’s box office and essentially relegating it to a direct to video release.
Freak Land
Our story starts out with a framing device of the lead character, “Ricky Coogin” (Winter) being interviewed, where he tells his story. Ricky is an actor and an “American Sweetheart”, but a bit of a douche in real life. He takes an endorsement deal from a shady corporation to promote a toxic fertilizer in South America. It’s pretty clear this is a bad thing, but he doesn’t want to say no to the $5m he is offered to do it. He and his friend “Ernie” (Michael Stoyanov) fly to South America where they meet environmental activist “Julie “(Megan Ward) who they offer to give a ride to (So she can get to a protest). On the way they opt to go to see a Freak Show and this is where the story really starts.
The show is run by “Elijah C. Skuggs” who has been using this toxic fertilizer to transform people into various freaks. He captures the group and transforms them with Julie and Ernie merged together into one two headed freak and Ricky turned into an especially grotesque half freak (with the other half apparently to come when Skuggs’ get’s more of the chemical). They are then taken to where the other freaks are held captive and like the other captives forced to perform at shows. Eventually Ricky learns to like and respect the other freaks and teams up with them to escape and defeat Skuggs and the evil corporation that hired him in the first place, who were in on Skuggs’ evil deeds all along.
Freak Out
I skipped over a lot there, but none of it is really that important. The plot is fairly generic, with what makes the film unique being it’s general weirdness and of course that is never more present than in the specifics of each freak. You have a human worm, you have a wolf man (Keanue Reeves), you have a cow man (also dressed as a cowboy), you have a French diver… I mean literally just seems to be a French man in a diving suit, a man that farts fire, a human toad, eyeballs with machine guns (used as guards), Mr. T as a bearded lady (Yes, you read that right) and my personal favourite a human sock puppet, who it turns out (minor spoiler) is actually a man whose head was turned into hand, which he then wears a sock on. He is played by Bobcat Goldthwait and honestly, no one else could play him. This is the movies strength, just the absolute absurdity of it.
The film is absolute B-Movie material, but with frankly unnecessary polish. It is absolutely ludicrous and just gets sillier as it goes on. The problem is it’s only really funny on occasion and usually the humour comes from the absurdity, meaning it wears thing quickly, while the rest of the story brings little to the table and the characters have little to them outside their freak gimmick. As for the effects, well, it would be generous to describe them as cartoon like. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve effectively seen the film or at least the bits worth seeing.
Freak In
I can’t help but feel this movie actually suffered from being raised to a feature with a higher production budget. On screen the only way it really benefited was in improving the cast, but these are not roles that needed top actors and given Keanu’s relationship with Alex he would have probably done his small role anyway (Remember this is way before The Matrix moved him up to A-List status) and the other names could have been swapped out for no name actors with little problem.
Ironically a couple of years after this came out MTV started making it’s own movies and with Winter and Stern having ties with MTV I have no doubt they could have made it with them closer to their original vision (Which would have had a darker tone with more graphic violence). But alas, that didn’t happen and instead it pretty much killed off Winter’s career. Probably lucky for Keanu that his role was uncredited, indeed if not for the IMDB I wouldn’t have known it was him.
Freak Off
This is a tricky one to rate. It’s not good, but as someone that occasionally enjoys bad movies I can’t say I hated it either. It is wonderfully bizarre, it just didn’t quite work for me. Your mileage may vary with this and I can absolutely see some people getting a real kick of the movie and others saying it’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen. Anyway for me it is a 4.5/10 and falls into the category of “curiosity viewing”.
Tonight’s Horror Movie is the classic Horror Cat People from 1942. This is my first viewing this October of anything older than the 1980’s so it may take some adjusting to, though it’s not like I’m new to old movies. This classic stars Simone Simon as “Irena” a Serbian immigrant haunted by her belief she is cursed and Kent Smith as Oliver Reed, her suitor and eventual husband with support from Tom Conway as a Dr. Louis Judd, a psychiatrist trying to treat Irena (But also falling for her) and Jane Randolph as Alice, a rival for Oliver’s affection. The movie is directed by Jacques Tourneur and written by DeWitt Bodeen.
Oliver first meets Irena at the zoo, where she is sketching a panther, something she does regularly. They strike up a conversation that leads to a friendship and then fall in love (It all moves pretty fast because it’s a short film and these things were usually portrayed as pretty easy in the 40’s). Irena is quite superstitious though and eventually she explains to him her belief that she is descended from the cursed “Cat People” of her village in Serbia. These were devil worshipping witches that escaped from King John’s purging of the evil in those lands. Irena believes that if she allows her passions to get the better of her she will transform into a cat (the big dangerous type, not a kitty) and potentially kill the target of her affections.
Despite this revelation, Oliver asks her to marry him. Obviously he doesn’t quite buy the curse idea and assumes Irena will come around. But she does not and so Oliver seeks help from a psychiatrist friend Dr. Judd to treat her condition. The treatment doesn’t solve the issue and a frustrated Oliver starts spending time with Alice. Not as an affair at least not to begin with, just as someone he can talk to about his frustration. This was Hays code days so they likely couldn’t portray adultery, which makes it hard to determine how far they were meant to have gone. Irena though assumes the worst and becomes jealous. At this point Irene starts showing her darker nature.
As we roll into the final third of this short film it appears as if the curse is indeed real. Irena struggles with her dark side, but eventually loses control when Oliver seeks an annulment of their marriage so he can marry Alice. Between her emotions at that and the romantic overtures of Dr. Judd she unleashes her inner beast.
This is effectively a werewolf movie, but turning into a panther instead of a wolf. With the limitations of the day and the film code in place there. On occasion the use of sound is very good in this movie, both music and effects. At one point when Alice is being stalked by Irene a bus suddenly pulls up making a noise very much like an enraged cat. The music meanwhile, while mostly typical for the era occasionally employs a more playful tone and takes on a jazzier feel. Effectively it becomes a bit more cat like (think of the music that would accompany a cat stalking it’s prey). There are also blasts of Noir like visuals and use of shadows. It’s notable these are all used very sparingly. A good portion of the movie is just standard 40’s in look and sound, but that makes those few sections more impactful.
Simone Serena, who is actually French suffers a bit in her performance due to her heavy accent, this was a problem for her throughout her career, but in an age where most people spoke with a Trans-Atlantic accent it stands out and with it still being fairly early for movies would sound, the audio quality isn’t always great at clarity with her. It’s a shame because otherwise her performance is good and she portrays her confusion and inner conflict well with her facial expressions. One scene when she is trying to grab a bird from it’s cage her face becomes very playful, but also predatory (I mean cat’s and birds, it’s exactly what you’d expect). When the bird dies though she is distraught and disgusted with herself (all done without words), but then goes and feeds it almost aggressively to the panther at the zoo. These scenes are when Simone is at her best.
By todays standards this isn’t a scary film and it is very short at only one hour and twelve minutes. But it manages to move the story on at a reasonable pace that doesn’t feel rushed. The only problem is many of the characters don’t really get enough development time for the audience to empathise with them. The film excels though in the few key moments where Irene’s darker sides comes out. It’s very well done. A lot of modern werewolf films could learn some this.
Overall though, the movie has suffered a bit for the 80 years between it’s release and my viewing. Many of the techniques employed in this film would develop through the 40’s and beyond, so this is a lot of it in it’s rawest form. It is an interesting watch still and well worth checking out for any Horror buffs that has an interest in the roots of the genre and wants to look beyond the Universal monster movies. Overall I’m going to give this a 6/10. A low 6/10 by todays standard, but in it’s day this would have been at least a 7, perhaps an 8.
Tonight’s movie is Canadian Horror Comedy “Vicious Fun”. A movie about killing serial killers set in the 80’s because… why not, I guess. The film stars Evan Marsh, Amber Goldfarb and Ari Millen, is directed by Cody Calahan and written by Calahan and James Villeneuve.
Synopsis
Our story follows Joel (Marsh), a loser film critic for a Horror magazine that manages to stumble into a gathering of America’s most successful psychopaths. At first he attempts to blend in, but his rouse only lasts until the arrival of Bob, another psycho that also happens to be dating his roommate and specialises in faking occupations, so is quick to rumble Joel. Then it becomes a struggle for survival, but fortunately for him one of the psycho’s isn’t all she seems.
Admittedly that seems a bit of a spoiler, but they unfortunately telegraphed it a bit too much in the opening scene where we see a woman (Goldfarb) hitch a lift in the car of someone that is obviously a serial killer and then kill him. That wasn’t a great start. Not only is it a bit cliché (I’ve seen the victim turns out to be the killer many times since I first came across it in Blade II in 2002 when it was still a subversion), it also gave away that she wasn’t a legit member of the psycho fun club and diminished the surprise of Joel realising the situation he is in (Would have been so much better if it come out of nowhere).
Psycho Buddies
Joel and his saviour, Carrie, find themselves having to deal with the other killers and a bunch of horrendously incompetent cops to boot. The psychos themselves are a colourful bunch of of somewhat stereotypical loonies, including a classic hulking slasher type (Robert Maillet), a John Wayne Gacy type (Julian Richings), an Yakuza assassin type (Sean Baek), an ex-CIA torture specialist (David Koechner) and of course Bob (Millen), whose ability to disguise himself isn’t actually that impressive and relies on everyone being an idiot. Fortunately this is very much a comedy horror and very much a self aware one with Joel even pointing out how bad Bob’s disguise was. Bob is clearly modelled on Patrick Bateman from American Psycho but really just comes across as your typical 80’s movie douchebag (The kind of person that is inexplicably dating the hot girl and challenges the hero to a skiing competition).
For the comedy side of things the best part is the interaction between the serial killers. That was actually quite fun, while Joel’s general pathetic incompetence was too clichéd to enjoy. Eventually Joel has to pull himself together and grow a pair with the guidance of bad ass Carrie. But this is something I’ve seen done before and much better in “Guns Akimbo”. Not only did that feature two better actors in Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving, but the balance was a lot better with Radcliffe actually becoming quite badass by the end and Weaving not feeling like an unstoppable ass kicking machine with impenetrable plot armour. It is frankly a much better film.
Assessment (some spoilers)
The way most of the killers are despatched is a little too easy for my liking, with Bob really being the only threat for Carrie, but only through luck and then even a weakened Carrie, after losing a load of blood makes short work of him. Honestly Carrie is way OP in this. Not only that but when Joel’s room mate turns up, she randomly pulls out some martial arts and takes out the John Wayne Gacy type killer. You can tell this movie came out recently. It also seems to have made the mistake of assuming it would get a sequel seeing as the movie has a big set up with no pay off (Specifically a big bad that is talked about but never shows up).
The violence is pretty well done, but the real strength of this movie is the initial premise and the synopsis I read seemed to suggest Joel pretending to a be a serial killer would go on for a lot more of the film and it’s a shame it didn’t because that was the best part I would have liked more of that and more of the killers in general. Everyone other than Bob who was just a douche. A lot more interesting things could have been done with this premise but they missed that opportunity by basically turning it into a less interesting version of Guns Akimbo. It’s also worth noting the serial killer convention idea was done in The Sandman comics back in the 90’s so the most interesting part of the film is also not original.
Stranger Nostalgia
The soundtrack is 80’s style Synthwave, reminiscent of Stranger Things. Again at this point that’s become somewhat of a cliché thanks to Stranger Things, but I’m not complaining because I like Synthwave. That brings me to the fact the movie is set in the 80’s. It’s clear they wanted to go for some kind of 80’s style but the truth is this movie could have been set any time before mobile phones were common and not change one bit. Also because it’s heroes are very much from the archetype of 2010’s/2020’s heroes and not the 1980’s ones it means that theme simply fails to click. Indeed it was only the end credit soundtrack that reminded me it was an 80’s movie.
The film seems to want to be retro while not really committing firmly enough to that to pull it off. Meanwhile the imaginative premise is blown far too early and the movie ends up going exactly as expected it to after that opening scene. The performances are all competent enough (Especially Julian Richings, David Koechner and surprisingly Robert Maillet who used to Wrestle under the name “Kurgen” in the 90’s) and the production values are solid. So it’s not actually a bad film as such, just very average.
Final Judgement
As such I’m going to give this a 5/10. Too many conflicting ideas and too many modern cliché’s waste the films few good ideas and push the interesting characters into the background. A movie that wants to cash in on 80’s nostalgia but doesn’t really show any affection for the decade itself.
For tonight’s movie I’m hitting another independent movie, this time “The Signal” from 2007. This is an everyone-goes-psycho movie, but presented in an interesting fashion through three segments from three different characters perspectives and set in the fictional city of “Terminus” on what appears to be New Years Eve. Each section (or “Transmission” as the film refers to it) has it’s own director and with that it’s own style. David Bruckner (V//H//S, The Night House) directs the first section “Crazy in Love”, Jacob Gentry (Synchronicity) directs the second “The Jealousy Monster” and Dan Bush (The Vault) directs the final piece “Escape from Terminus”.
We interrupt this transmission to make you batshit insane.
After a brief swerve of 70’s style horror (that was just on TV) we start with the trigger for everyone going nuts, which is a signal breaking through to peoples TV sets and radios. Coming across like some garbled interference but it was pretty clear what it was going to do. The film wastes no time starting up and doesn’t get bogged down in explaining the why’s of the situation. Things are kept vague enough that you can bet there are a lot of theories on this one. That works for me.
The intro sets up the two key characters Mya (Anessa Ramsey) and Ben (Justin Welborn) who are a pair of lovers that are considering eloping. Mya is married to Lewis (AJ Bowen) and the marriage is clearly not happy, though since we don’t get to to see them together pre-signal we don’t get to find out why.
Crazy in Love
The first section “Crazy in Love” follows Mya’s journey. After leaving Ben’s place she comes across a man (possibly homeless) asking for help and covered in blood. The man claims to have been attacked. Another man starts approaching them menacingly and so Mya get’s in her car and drives off. She returns to her own apartment building to find people the hallway fighting and acting generally crazy. Disturbed she quickly heads to her apartment.
As she enters, her husband and two of his friends are trying to watch the big game, but because the TV is getting the crazy signal they are mostly standing around being angry. Lewis obviously suspects Mya of her affair and questions her with an accusation tone. I can’t really judge if Lewis is a bad person normally since Mya is having an affair and Lewis has been affected by the crazy signal, but here he is aggressive and domineering.
That Escalated Quickly!
One of his friends is waving around his baseball bat and out of nowhere Lewis starts to get mad about it, after the argument gets heated he ends up bludgeoning his friend to death. As the other friend wrestles with Ben, Mya flees only to come across another murder in the hallway. This leads to a series of violent attacks and fleeing that eventually sees Mya crash a car and shout at some guy that offers help to stay away and she’s going to terminal 13 to meet her boyfriend and get out of Terminus and don’t follow her. That leads into our second segment which switches gears.
The Jealousy Monster
Transmission two: “The Jealousy Monster” is probably the most fun section of the movie, changing into a black comedy horror, but maintaining the brutality so it doesn’t feel like a section from a different film. This follows a character named Clark (Played by Scott Poythress), the good Samaritan that Mya refused to let help him. He is sheltering around a neighbours house, a woman called Anna who was going to host a New Years Eve party.
Both of them have managed to kill someone in self defence and it remains questionable if either of them are affected by the transmission. Into this mix comes Lewis (Mya’s husband), looking for Mya and clearly with a very loose grip on reality. The trio tries to keep their sense of reality but for Lewis and Anna this seems to be a losing battle. Anna is mostly harmless, Mya’s jealous and possessive husband though, much less so
Escape From Terminus
The Final section: “Escape from Terminus” finally follows Ben’s journey. I don’t want to give away too many details here as it is the final section but suffice to say it involves him having a stand off with Lewis and finally discovering Mya’s fate.
There was a lot of positives to this movie. The three directors different styles and the change in pacing and character focus kept things feeling fresh for the duration. The actors all did their job well and I quite liked the score. The plot is pretty straight forward but it didn’t really need to be more complicated and it contains in it the big mystery of why this is happening. Is the signal an attack? Is Terminus purgatory or hell? None of this gets answered, but ambiguity and mystery isn’t a bad thing for this kind of horror.
Confusion, Mysteries, Balance and Madness.
That said, they probably should have examined the situation a little more that they did. The movie reminds me a bit of Pontypool, which came out a year after this in 2008, but Pontypool actually did dig into the mystery of what was happening a little more and they did it so well the movie became a real classic. They didn’t need to dig in much here, just enough to give the mystery a bit more meat, but they opted not to. It’s not a big issue, but I think if done right it could have added to the overall mystery.
The film has a good balance between the brutality, character moments and comedy. The later is used sparingly and mostly in the middle section, but seeps out a little bit after through one of the characters from that section and it’s just enough to make the transition smooth. The brutality is fast and effective and just graphic enough for it to feel brutal without just trying to gross you out. It’s also spaced out enough that nothing is wasted. They do a good job of blurring the line between those that have gone psycho due to the signal and those pushed to their limit psychologically by the world around them.
Conclusion
On the whole I’ve got to say I liked this movie. It’s the second movie close to opening up my 7/10 spot for films this year (Hatching being the first). It’s worth mentioning (If you haven’t figured it out already) I rarely give 7 stars or higher. The decision factor for that is basically “Do I like this enough to buy the physical media”, Signal isn’t quite there but I definitely recommend giving it a watch.
UPDATE: Having the benefit of a few extra days to reflect and a few more movies to compare it to, I have decided, this is actually one I want to own. So I’m bumping it up to a 7/10. It does absolutely deserve it. Now it’s up to the other films this month to try and reach towards an 8.
Tonight I’m watching the recently released Finnish Body Horror movie “Hatching”, directed by Hanna Bergholm in her feature film debut and written by Ilja Rautsi. The film stars Siiri Solalinna as Tinja the daughter of a Finnish family. Solalinna will be doing double duty on this film as both Tinja and the movies monster, a demanding role for the young actress.
Lovely Everyday Life
The movie starts out with our host family presenting their apparently perfect, lovely life for the mother’s blog. It’s pretty clear though things aren’t completely perfect. This isn’t a classic horror dark secret kind of thing though, just that the mother is clearly more focused on image than emotional well being and is determined to push her daughter as hard as possible so as to achieve success in gymnastics. The family’s son seems to have picked up some of her mothers personality and is needy and demanding, while the father is aloof, more interested in his guitars than his family, likely explaining why his wife is almost openly cheating on him (That is the daughter knows and he it seems doesn’t want to).
The Bad Egg
The mother has a cruel streak to her as is demonstrated early on when she kills a stray bird that comes into the house instead of releasing it outside. This sets up our theme as later that day Tinja comes across a dying bird in the woods by her house and gives it a mercy killing, only to discover a nearby bird egg which she takes home. This is where the horror bit starts. The egg of course hatches and what comes out of it isn’t a regular bird. It is about the size of young Tinja and seems to have some intelligence, quickly bonding with the girl who decides to look after it and names it Alli (A name I feel that is a clue to the films meaning).
Things start to go off pretty quickly as our Hatchling kills the neighbours dog and drops it’s mutilated corpse on the pillow next to Tinja is a bit of a reversal of the classic dog “present”. Things obviously escalate and it is clear their is something more to the connection TInja has with the hatchling, the two are bonded mentally and physically, so much so Alli is starting to look like Tinja. Since this is a recent movie I’m not going to reveal much more but this is a body horror so expect violence and a bit of grossness.
Be Careful Which Wolf (Or Bird) you Feed
There is a deeper level to all this though. This is a metaphor for self loathing. Tinja’s mother’s quest to present the perfect life to her blog video viewers and the pressure she puts on her daughter to achieve in gymnastics has lead to Tinja being angry with herself for her failures, to be disgusted with herself and see herself as a monster. The story is really about a young girls fragile psyche and the importance to nurture more than a sense of shame. It’s important to note, the victims of the Hatchling are not people that have abused her, but her rivals. The monster is not protecting her, but enacting her darkest desires in her own drive to be considered special in the eyes of her mother. Eventually the child’s innocence is lost and she becomes a twisted version of her formers self. It is a darkness that as Tinja says in the final act “I hatched it”
I mentioned earlier I thought the name “Alli” was significant and it is a double whammy. It happens to be the brand name of a weight loss drug (relevant because some of the scenes in the film are heavily hinting at Bulimia) but also is a name of Greek and French origin that effectively means “Keeping ones chin up”. There is no way that is a coincidence give the mother’s attitude and the Tinja’s internal struggle between her natural good nature and the part of her that is turning into her own mother. Well played Hanna, well played.
Assessment
I liked the metaphor. It came through clearly, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with it like a lot of films do. It is also done very effectively through the horror. This is a very good bit of intelligent horror story telling. That said, I didn’t find any of the particular scenes stood out visually, nor did I find the hatchling itself particularly scary. For me though the story is more important than all that. The actors seemed pretty good, though I always find it hard to judge when I’m busy reading subtitles instead of looking at the actors. Siiri Solalinna though I’m sure has a bright future.
I also liked the haunting soundtrack, which was fairly minimalistic but effective and the physical creature effects were actually done pretty well. I thought the closeups looked a bit fake, but at a mid distance it looked really good. They transition from puppet to Solalinna about half way through and before anything too complicated is called for, which was probably for the best.
Conclusion
This came out of a fairly simple idea of Rautsi’s about a boy bringing home an egg that hatched his doppelganger. A doppelganger story is not in itself especially original or compelling, it’s what you do with it that makes or breaks it and they did well here. While the film didn’t blow me away, I definitely came out with a healthy respect for it and it’s makers. This is a high 6.5/10
For today’s movie I’m hitting up 1989’s western horror comedy Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat. I didn’t even know this movie existed until fairly recently so I’m going in without preconceptions. This is directed by Anthony Hickox (Hellraiser III, Waxwork) and stars David Carradine, Bruce Campbell, John Ireland, Maxwell Caulfield, Morgan Brittany, Deborah Foreman and a good number of other recognisable actors.
What We Do In The Sunlight.
Out story is set in the town of Purgatory, not to be found on any modern map since the inhabitants don’t want to be found. This is a town of vampires, lead by the ancient Count Mardulak (Carradine), but these vampires on the whole are trying to adapt to the modern world and find a way to live side by side with humans. As such they have developed a machine that creates artificial blood, a problem with that machine has required them to call in it’s inventor a human called David Harrison. Harrison is visiting the town with his family as a working holiday hoping it will be a restful break.
Dead and Not Particularly Loving it.
While most of the town are trying to change their ways they are not completely beyond killing as an incident early on reveals where a rude motorist by has his head knocked off by a grumpy vampire manning the local gas station. Worse than this though a sub faction within the town lead by Ethan Jefferson (Played by John Ireland) and a young vampire named Shane (Maxwell Caulfield) is scheming to wipe out the others and return to the old ways.
The Clueless Vampire Killer
Thrown into the mix a Van Helsing descendent (Played by Campbell) has arrived at the town determined to wipe out each and every vampire. Unsurprisingly Campbell provides the comic relief and isn’t particularly effective. Fortunately for him Sandy, a young vampire woman has fallen for him and doesn’t want him to wind up dead. Well, fully dead, she’s okay with undead.
The Lost Ploys.
There’s actually a lot of additional sub plots in all this and it has a large ensemble cast of big personalities so I’m not going to cover it all. Things get more serious when the rebels make their move. Being mostly younger vampires they can’t fight the older vampires hand to hand so they develop wooden tipped bullets so they can use firearms to even the playing field. Eventually this leads to an epic shootout final battle.
Bite Night.
This is a pretty entertaining film, though it definitely lands very much in the middle of the various genres is straddles. It’s not especially funny, especially horrific or overly like a Western but it does just enough of each genre to justify the label. It is very 80’s though (Which I consider a positive). There is a lot going on, everything is frantic and the characters are as colourful as possible. It has a lot of charm to it and the story moves quickly enough that it maintains a sense of adventure the whole time. This is a vampire film though, so naturally it isn’t without a good amount of blood.
Fangs for the Memory.
Because of the cast size and pace none of the characters or actors really get enough screen time to fully shine. I felt Bruce Campbell was largely wasted and it would have been nice to see a bit more of David Carradine and John Ireland too. But this wasn’t a film with any particular focus. Those three performed their roles well (As you would expect) and the rest of the cast, featuring many familiar faces did a good job of supporting. There was no real weak links in that regard, even the children did a passable job. The music my Richard Stone was perhaps a bit too obvious in what it was going for (Generic Western soundtrack) but ultimately did what it needed to.
Conclusion
Overall, I had fun with this movie. It’s not anything astounding but if you want a comparatively light-hearted Halloween romp you won’t be disappointed with this. This is a strong 6/10 (Perhaps a fang short of a 6.5).
Tonight’s movie is an independent release called “Super Dark Times”. Helmed by debuting director Kevin Phillips and staring Owen Campbell (Boardwalk Empire, The Americans), Charlie Tahan (Gotham, Ozark) as best friends Josh and Zach
Living in the 90’s
We start of with a bit of shock factor, with a dead animal in a school, which is of no real importance to the plot, but it is a nice opener. Quickly we switch to a group of college friends chatting about stuff and messing around. Pretty standard stuff. I’m not really sure how old they are meant to be. They react to a bag of marijuana like younger teenagers, but Owen Campbell was 23 when this came out and he looks clearly in his early 20’s. I guess we’ll say “Teen” and move on.
End of Innocence.
Things quickly go pear shaped when a stupid fight between the kids ends up with one of them being killed in circumstances that would be hard to explain and so the kids do the whole “Vow of Silence” thing. That never works out well. At this point it’s clear that Zach is coping somewhat better with the events than Josh. Though by “coping” I mean he’s having nightmares and anxiety, which is fairly normal for having gone through trauma. Josh however is clearly withdrawing into himself. Skipping school and sort of moping around. Since they are hitting all the school shooter tropes, I’m surprised he didn’t buy himself a trench coat.
Coming of Rage (Spoilers).
Ultimately Josh goes full psycho. It doesn’t really feel natural because the film follows Zach and not Josh. I can’t help but feel the movie would have been more interesting following Josh as he loses his mind. Instead we just see things from Zech’s perspective, and Zach is a fairly bland character and it doesn’t really feel like the pair are genuinely that close. Either Josh has had a complete change in personality almost overnight or Zach just didn’t know him that well to begin with.
Assessment.
This is more of a drama than a psychological thriller or horror. The violence in the movie, while minimal is actually portrayed in a realistic fashion: spontaneous and clumsy. There isn’t a huge amount of suspense and no real sense of terror to really justify it as a thriller or horror. A few scenes had moments of promise, the odd camera shot, a bit of nice editing but it never really delivered on that promise. Outside of the solid (if irrelevant) opening scene. the films offers little in the way of visuals to talk about. The soundtrack is minimal and transparent, possibly deliberately to push the realism. The actors performances are passable and average.
Conclusion
It’s worth noting this was pretty well loved by critics and my guess is because it is a coming of age film and a trauma survival film in one, but for me I didn’t find the journey from trauma to conclusion that enlightening or entertaining. Maybe the problem was I wasn’t really after a drama. I’m going to have to give this one a 5/10 and mark it down simply as “Not for me”.
I’m going horror adjacent with todays October review. There is definitely horror here, just more for the viewer than the characters. This is a difficult franchise to do in the modern day, but with Rob Zombie helming it, most had already written this off and assumed it was just going to be a self indulgent mess that mostly existed to showcase his wife Sherri Moon-Zombie. When the cast was announced and Sherri was as expected playing Lilly Munster, I think most horror fans knew what way it the wind was blowing.
Still, I decided to give the film a chance. In the 1980’s in the UK a lot of 60’s shows were regularly being re-run at around 5/6pm. The timing was about right for schoolkids like myself as the regular kids programming ended around 5pm and we always wanted more to watch (We were the MTV generation after all, we did a lot of TV). Amongst those shows was The Munsters, so I am well acquainted with the eccentricities and humour style of the TV.
Dead and Kicking.
To me it’s clear that Rob Zombie was trying to reproduce that style as true to the original as possible, but the fact is it doesn’t really work in the present day. Perhaps had he gone all the way and made the film in black and white it may have felt more authentic and perhaps some of the cheesier moments may have felt more charming than cheap. As it is, the style doesn’t really work. Anyone that hasn’t grown up watching The Munsters probably won’t even get what they are going for and just mark the entire movie down as just cheap and amateur.
Part of that problem may be due to the fact that many of the actors just aren’t that good. While they may be trying to act like characters performing for a sit com in front of a live audience, they always feel like they are trying a bit too hard. Over acting is abundant and while it’s clear that is meant to be part of the joke, it is also clear Rob Zombie doesn’t have the skills necessary to stop his actors slipping from soundstage sitcom and going full on pantomime.
Well, they got one thing right at least.
Memoirs of an Invisible Plot
The second huge problem is the plot. Specifically, that there isn’t one. The entire film is basically set up as a prequel to The Munsters as we know them. Most of the film is set in a comedy version of Transylvania with them only arriving in America in the last twenty minutes. There is no real antagonist, just a vague plot involving a Lester, a Werewolf cousin and his debts to a loan shark Gypsy. Neither Lester nor the Gypsy are in the movie for probably more than 5 minutes and exist only to facilitate the move to the US in a way that is about as smooth as a truck drivers gear shift.
The film focuses on the romance between Lilly and Herman. Because this is a prequel, the kids have not even been born yet so the “Family” is literally just them and Grandpa. Daniel Roebuck incidentally is the highlight of the film in the role of Grandpa, but is a long way from being good enough to salvage this mess. At the least though, I respect the casting on that one. I also didn’t mind Sylvester McCoy as Igor. His tendency for over acting meant the former Doctor Who fit this movie like a glove.
Goofy fun, except without the fun..
Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun
Unsurprisingly the focus is on Sherri Moon-Zombie as Lilly, and her performance is probably the weakest of the film. Yvonne De Carlo is no doubt turning in her grave [Insert Vampire Joke Here]. Honestly though it’s hard to say if the problem is her acting or her husbands directing. There are fleeting moments of charm but not enough to make the performance passable. The romance between Herman and Lilly is not at all interesting or romantic and the whole time through I was just waiting for them to get past that bit and move on to the actual movie. But they never did.
The entire film feels like a first act, when they move to America it feels like we are entering the second act and the film is about to really get going. But then you realise we only have 20 minutes left. Enough time for a Cassandra Peterson cameo (Though not as Elvira) and not much else. After waiting the entire film for them to get to their iconic home, we are treated to about 10 seconds of the Munsters theme before the credits roll and switch to a new song, presumably written by Zombie. That’s it.
Don’t be fooled, it takes the entire film to get to this couch.
Conclusion (or possibly Concussion)
I don’t really understand who this film is for. Fans of the series will feel cheated by the prequel nature of it (I know I did) while people that aren’t fans will write it off as cheap, badly acted garbage. As far as I can tell the only audience for this film is Rob Zombie and Sherri Moon Zombie. I don’t know if The Munsters can still work in the modern day in live action, but it definitely can’t work with Rob Zombie directing. This film is a waste of time. I’m giving it a very generous 4/10. The movie tries hard but fails miserably.
Well, October has rolled around again. Last October I decided to do the October Horror Challenge and watch a Horror movie a day for the month. I went further, not just in that I watched two horrors on the 30th and three on Halloween, but also that I reviewed a horror a day as well (I didn’t review my triple bill, so it totalled 31 reviews). I didn’t start my blog until the following month largely after positive feedback from the reviews, which I had posted to Facebook and Minds. So this year these are going straight to the blog.
Because I’m going to have to do these much faster than my regular reviews I’m keeping each comparatively short, with the length largely dependent on the time I have to do it. Last year I only did movies I’ve not seen before, this year I may be a bit more flexible but I’ll figure that out as I go. Anyway, enough with the explanations, it’s October 1st 2022, time for my first horror review….
Psycho 2 was released in 1982, twenty three years after the original These days that’s nothing but I imagine in 1982 people thought a sequel to Psycho was (appropriately enough), utter madness. I have seen this before, but i barely remembered it so I’m giving it another shot.
On the Back of Giants
We start out with the infamous shower scene from the original before switching to the present day. The first thing of note is right in the credits: Music by Gerry Goldsmith. Gerry is a talented and underrated composer who is all over the soundtracks of the 80’s and 90’s. The original film was scored though by one of the biggest legends of film scores Bernard Herrmann. Sadly Bernard passed in the 1970’s so they had no choice but to look elsewhere. Goldsmith somewhat impersonates the original films score and throws in the odd motif from it, but in general the music sounds smoother, lighter and perhaps a little laid back. The tone isn’t quite right in places, but it’s still a good score.
Someone who had more difficult shoes to fill however is “Blue Lagoon” director Richard Franklin, stepping in for Hitchcock who had also passed before this movie was made. He does a competent job but that’s about it. The movie is also a bit more graphic than the original and perhaps the most obvious change is it is in colour.
Homecoming
The story follows Norman after his release from the sanatorium. He appears a lot more stable, but is being victimised by some unknown entity posing as his Mother. Obviously it’s not his dead Mother, but the question remains is someone messing with him or is it all in his mind. Even if someone is messing with him, there is obviously a danger of him relapsing because of it. As the story progresses however it becomes clear Norman is at the mercy of more than one outside agenda.
Norman is of course played by Anthony Perkins who is easily the highlight of the movie. He plays a character just on the edge of sanity with perfection. Meg Tilly played Mary, a waitress at the dinner where Norman works after his release from the asylum. Mary has an ulterior motive for befriending Norman, but becomes conflicted as he gets to know Norman. Her performance is perhaps a little underplayed but believable.
Conclusion (Spoilers)
The final act involves a twist that comes pretty much from nowhere and somewhat devalues the plot of the rest of the film. Turns out Norman has another Mother, a character that doesn’t turn up as a real character (Instead of a shadowy figure killing people) until the very end of the film. From a character perspective at least things end appropriately enough. Norman has gone full circle. Meanwhile Mary and her mother suffer the price for playing with fire. Mary remains conflicted for the whole movie until that conflict leads to her own demise.
Overall a fairly decent horror that unfortunately can’t escape harsh comparisons with original film. The plot is a little messy, but the characters, especially Norman help to salvage that. It’s just about a 6/10. Not a bad start to my October Horrorthon.
Every now and then you get a movie where fans argue over which version you should watch. In most cases it’s just theatrical and directors cut. For Blade Runner there are seven versions (though two you probably won’t find anywhere) and three are in my view worth watching. So lets break down the differences and which ones are worth a viewing. Primarily there are two elements that divide the versions, first and most simply is the edgier content. Some cuts have a bit more graphic violence, while others kept them to a minimum. Generally speaking I’m of the view that you want the edgier stuff, none of it is over the top and it’s just extra content. As a result I don’t really find the US Theatrical release or the “Directors Cut” to be worth viewing since there are other versions that provide everything they do and that extra footage. The second and better known division is the voice overs and happy ending. These were effectively producer additions and as such are only in the theatrical versions. So let’s look at three versions worth watching.
The European Theatrical Cut (1982)
For many people this would be the first version of the film they would have seen. Not only was this the released format for theatres across Europe, it was also the version used in Australia and Asia and was used on VHS releases (as an unrated version) and is perhaps best known to American fans as the version on the Criterion Edition Laser Disc. It is different from the US theatrical release only in three slightly extended and more violent scenes. The US Broadcast version cut even more scenes, so outside of the unreleased San Diego sneak peak (Which had some additional footage that has never been seen since) this is the ultimate voice over/happy ending version.
While the voice overs rarely added anything of worth and in some occasions (such as Roy Batty’s death) actually detract from the scene, they do occasionally include some interesting nuggets of information that help frame the context in which the original release was offered. It’s also worth noting that in this version of the film I really don’t feel that Rick Deckard is a replicant. I’m not sure if that indicates Scott decided to push it in that direction later with the directors/final cut, if it was a concept rolled back by the studio or if it’s just a coincidence. There are some people that still prefer this version (Perhaps because Deckard seems more human), though they are in the minority. It is worth checking out. If you can’t find the European version, the US theatrical cut will do as the differences are inconsequential.
The Final Cut (2007)
This is regarded as the definitive version, though I feel that is a simplification. There is still merit and some additional context to be gained from some of the other versions. I also feel that over time Ridley Scott has changed how he wants to frame Deckard and where you stand on that may impact which version you prefer. This cut definitely pushes strongly in the direction of Deckard as a replicant and perhaps a lot of this was because Scott had in mind (at the time he was doing the notes for the Directors Cut at least) to do a sequel where Deckard was a replicant that can reproduce. This idea was somewhat taken up in Blade Runner 2049 but as many peoples response to that reveals, the idea wasn’t necessarily a winner and revealing Deckard’s status was always going to be divisive. To be clear though the Final Cut doesn’t directly address the idea that Rick is a Replicant, it just hint at it, but most people feel he is after viewing it.
Joanna Cassidy re-filming her death scene for The FInal Cut
The Final Cut makes significant changes to theatrical release. The most notable ones are that the voice overs are entirely gone as is the happy ending and a dream sequence about a Unicorn is added. These changes were also present in the 1992 Directors Cut, however, the Final Cut goes much further in ways that can only be seen as improvements (unless you are an effects purist), so for me the Directors Cut is no longer worth watching. Changes from that version include fixing a number of visual issues with the original, notably the death of Zhora (Where in all other versions it’s pretty clear it’s a stunt woman in a bad wig), the scene where Rick questions the mechanical snake salesman (which had terrible lip syncing) and the shot of the Dove flying off after Roy Batty’s death. On top of this it also adds in those extended edgier scenes from the European Cut. This is easily the best looking version of the film. However I’m not convinced it is the best version of the film for telling the story.
The Ultimate Collector’s Edition – A good place to find the restored Workprint version.
The Workprint Version
This is a bit of a wildcard and this version may be hard to find, but it walks a significant middle ground between the two main versions of the film and has somewhat legendary status. This is the version that was so hated by the original screener audiences in 1982 that they had to radically change the film with the voice over and happy ending for the theatrical release. But it’s the same version that when screened in 1992 as “The Directors Cut” (Which Ridley Scott quickly objected to) was so popular it actually led to the studio putting together the 1992 Directors Cut with Scott’s guidance and that led to the long journey to what would be the Final Cut. It’s fascinating how much difference ten years can make in the reception this version got.
But it’s also worth noting that while it doesn’t have the theatrical versions voice overs or happy ending (Both mandated by the producers after the negative reaction to this very version), it also doesn’t have the Unicorn dream sequence and for me that is a positive. While I don’t hate that sequence, it seems to exist for the purpose of suggesting Deckard is a replicant and frankly I prefer the ambiguity and always felt that dream sequence was out of place anyway.
This version is also notable in that it has one piece of unique voice over dialogue, after Roy Batty’s death and unlike in the theatrical release it actually adds to the scene instead of taking from it. The line is about how long it took Batty to die (all night) and how he died (fighting it all the way, like he loved life, even the pain). It makes the appearance of Gaff shortly after the scene make more sense (As hours would have passed) and the suggestion that Roy’s death was slow and painful makes his character even more tragic. I can only assume it was replaced with a different voice over on release for the same reason they threw in the happy ending, it was just felt to be too depressing.
Of course this is a workprint, so there are issues, but actually it’s more complete than you may imagine. The most notable change is in the music, Vangelis hadn’t quite scored everything and in the scene just after Zhora’s death instead of “One More Kiss Dear” we are treated to a bit of The Ink Spots. Interesting given how franchises like Fallout and Bioshock tend to use that groups music. Somehow they’ve ended up as the go to group for Tech-Noir and it seems it may have started with this workprint. Despite that absence, most of the soundtrack is actually in place along with the effects.
Not only that but the restored version from the Ultimate Box Set (Which is the version I watched) looks pretty much release ready. The Workprint does a good job of showing a third path between the theatrical and final/directors cut and it’s well worth watching if you can find it. Interestingly there has been a fan edit (The “Analogue Cut”) which uses the Workprint as a template but utilises elements of the final cut. I haven’t seen it but I highly approve of the concept.
The Universe Expanded
While Blade Runner failed in theatres on it’s original run, it went on to become a cult classic and became a huge influence on film makers and other creatives going forward. The world in which it is set seemed so real and so interesting that naturally people wanted to tell new stories in here. Some of it is worth checking out, others less so. In my view none of it is officially part of this universe, not even the so called sequel because it significantly reframes the original and in my view failed to understand what made that film. With that in mind let’s get that out of the way first as I have a lot to say about it.
The Replicant in the room – 2049
I’m not going to drop a synopsis or character analysis for 2049, so I’ll briefly cover how it relates to the original. Deckard is in the film (a long way into it) and he and Rachael somehow managed to have a child, though Rachael died in childbirth. Most of the plot follows an investigation to track them down by a new Blade Runner, Officer K, who is a Replicant himself. In theory a relatively simple plot and one that didn’t really need nearly three hours (46 minutes more than the original) to tell. But then the actual script is given a lot of needless complications that don’t really add much to the film except an excuse for David Villeneuve to push for that cinematography Oscar. The fact this movie costs double ($185m) the inflation adjusted ($92m) production budget of the original is really quite telling and while it made the film nice to look at it didn’t help recapture the magic. Ultimately the plot ends up revolving around a simple “Chosen One” mechanic with a fairly obvious twist thrown in. The movie takes twice as long to say half as much.
Harrison Ford looking like I felt watching the movie.
My biggest issue with the film is it seems to heavily push the idea that Deckard is a replicant. So much so that most people after watching assume it outright said he is. The film holds back from outright saying it is the case, but it’s pretty clear this is the intention. It’s strange enough for Rachael to randomly be able to bare children but it would be even stranger to be able to have a child with a Human.
In general the sequel answers a lot of questions that should never have been answered (and a few that shouldn’t even be questions), a common issue for franchise reboots these days and in doing so it actively diminishes the first movie (And there is no greater crime in my view for a sequel). The question about Deckard and what happened to him and Rachael was a question best left unanswered. It was definitely not a mystery worth discarding for the sake of a brief cameo in sequel. 35 years later that had it turned into a multi-film franchise in it’s own right, it was clearly not going to feature an 80 year old Harrison Ford in any kind of capacity that really matters. In short they burned down the original to prop up their own vision of the franchise.
To make matters worse Deckard is simply not Deckard in this movie. For some reason he seems to have switched personalities with Han Solo or Indiana Jones. One of the reasons Deckard stands out so well amongst Ford’s roles is that his personality is nothing like those characters. He doesn’t stand around wise cracking and goofing his way out of situations (Though he certainly gets lucky with them). He is a character built on the Film Noir template. Those elements are discard in 2049, hard to say if that is down to the writers or Ford himself. Either way I felt like Officer K was teaming up with Han Solo for the third act of the movie.
Well… it was better than his Joker.
My second issue is it pushes aside the Tyrell Corporation and the original replicants for a duplicate corporation and only marginally different replicants (Another thing that seems to happen a lot with reboots and I suspect is something to do with merchandise rights). The new corporation is lead by a moustache twirling Jared Leto that is simply far less interesting and believable than Joe Turkel’s Tyrell.
A lot of this is due to Leto’s portrayal of the character that pushes it so far into comic book super villain that it is hard to buy the character as a creative genius. The role needed a more subtle approach and Leto simply doesn’t do subtle. Indeed at this stage there is not much getting around it, Leto simply isn’t that good. He just isn’t talented enough to pull off the method approach. He’s basically Nicholas Cage without the charisma. A good part of the problem though is that his motivation (Creating replicants that can have children) is basically only there to drive a plot that was a bad idea in the first place.
I’m going to die now because that’s what replicants do at the end of Blade Runner movies. .
My third issue is that the protagonist is an empty shell whose story is largely a nihilists one, Early on it seems he is looking for purpose in life, for a while feels he is special, but ultimately must come to terms with basically his own unimportance. This theme largely replaces the theme of the original of what it means to be human and the nature of reality itself. Not that those themes aren’t touched on, but with a replicant protagonist dealing with other replicants there is no direct contrast with the human condition. As many of us that prefer Deckard as a human have pointed out this kind of story needs a central character that the can ground the audience. Perhaps Nihilists and Replicants can relate to K but I am neither of those.
More importantly the message of K’s journey seems to be to accept your lot in life, that you are not special and you are basically here to serve. Maybe there was meant to be a different message, but for me at least it didn’t come through. When Roy Batty discovered his fate, he fought it all the way and treasured every aspect of what lie he had. If you compare his screen time to K’s and consider how much more progress his character achieved it’s simply embarrassing. Officer K isn’t a terrible character, but he’s not one that should have ever been the lead.
Replicants haven’t yet learned to aim weapons.
It’s interesting to compare the opening scene of 2049 to the storyboarded opening of the original film. See Villeneuve was dropping an Easter egg with this by almost copying that unused scene (One he likely heard about the same place as me, from the documentaries on the ultimate collectors edition box set). The difference in the scenes is telling though. The point for Deckard was to both make him look a bad ass, but also to introduce you to the cold brutality of the job. K’s version however drags the scene out to a physical struggle (Deckard just shoots the guy straight away) and makes him look bad at his job. The scene is also used as the jumping on point for the main plot, but the truth is it could have been entirely skipped with minimal impact.
The one positive from K is actually his holographic AI companion “Joi” (Which is a hilarious name… if you know, you know) that pretty much is the sole interesting character in this movie outside of Edward James Olmos’ brief cameo (which was itself another misstep, losing further mystery from the original for the sake of a tiny bit of fan service).
Nuking a city for aesthetic reasons is so Fallout 3. Tenpenny would be proud.
Another problem is the reframing of the setting to be post apocalyptic. The world of Blade Runner was dystopian but it was a pretty unique feeling dystopia. The version shown in 2049 feels more generic. True the novel was set after a global nuclear war, but Ridley Scott’s version was not and when question on the subject he suggested the world was over populated and over polluted. He made no mention of War. In Philip K Dick’s world it was heavily under populated. World War Terminus wiped out most of humanity. Were Villenueve creating a new adaptation of Dick’s story that would be one thing, but he seems to want 2049 to be in both worlds at once and to me that feels disjointed.
A very uniform looking street scene. But they’ve got the glowing umbrellas so we should just focus on that.
On first viewing I really liked the cinematography of 2049, but when I re-watched I came to realise that the parts that weren’t post apocalyptic really feels like an imitation of the original. They for instance have tried to impersonate the street scenes with lots of people running around with umbrellas, but the scenes in the sequel lack the chaotic mismatch of cultures and styles that is in the original. In attempting to replicate those scenes they actually missed the entire point of them – a cultural melting pot ramped up to 11. The sequel wears the unique world of Blade Runner like a uniform.
A common problem for a lot of todays reboots is they make references and feel that is enough. The audience are expected to applaud because they repeatedly say things that should like Deckard’s instructions to his computer while examining Leon’ photo, that people have umbrellas or that they opened the film with a variation on the unused opening of the original. These are all meaningless. Set so many years after the original it made little sense to try and duplicate the street scene so closely, but perhaps the problem boils down to the fact this sequel did come so late. These kind of things are
A scene that works hard to give us multiple references to the original movie and all really just for Easter Eggs.
The visuals and the soundtrack in 2049 are both great and terrible at the same time. In isolation they are beautiful but both are like an AI’s interpretation of the original. Created to look and sound like it but without the detail shown by the human understanding of context. Ironic given the franchise. Every time I re-watch this movie it feels less impressive, that is the opposite of how I feel every time I re-watch the original (And believe me I did that five or six times while writing this).
Where 2049 did follow the original was in failing at the box office. But it’s worth noting while Blade Runner had to deal with the success of E.T. and Wrath of Khan, 2049 hit the scene in October with the closest thing to real competition being the “Kingsman” sequel and the unwanted remake of “Flatliners”. With the original film having done the hard work already, the sequel didn’t really have any excuse. Half the people that watched the film loved it, the other half hated it but as a sequel it really needed to be less divisive amongst it’s built in fan base. Of course later that year “The Last Jedi” came out demonstrating that rule far better and more dramatically. Blade Runner 2049 is not a franchise destroyer like that movie, indeed I’m not sure I’d even call it a bad movie, but it was a major disappointment and a bad sequel. At least in this fans view.
What’s more blade runner than a woman fighting with a sword to EDM? I mean aside from everything?
Black Lotus – The Animated Nonsense
For all my issues with Blade Runner 2049, at least it attempted to be in the same universe as Blade Runner. Having watched half way through the recent animated Black Lotus series I struggle to see how it can really be considered a part of the same franchise. Of course technically Black Lotus is a spin off of 2049 and perhaps that added distance is part of my problem, but ultimately it is a generic cyberpunk story where androids are called Replicants and where it rains and people walk around with umbrellas (Because apparently that is all Blade Runner is now).
Super special cyborg ninja women with no memory may seem a cool concept (to a 13 year old anyway) but it’s a plot about as far removed from the world of the original as you can get and seems better suited in the Cyberpunk Franchise than Blade Runner. On top of this the soundtrack is basically energetic modern electronic dance music (Again something more in line with Cyberpunk).
One day I may give it another chance and just try to ignore that it claims to be a Blade Runner story, but the problem is we already have a Cyberpunk anime and it’s apparently quite good (So I’ll be watching that first). Ironically with some tweaks this story would have been much better suited in something like the Snow Crash or Neuromancer worlds, but apparently no one feels those classics worth putting on the big screen…. But those are rants for another time! This one is really not worth bothering with IMHO.
One of the best point and click adventure games ever made.
The Video Game
If you don’t have an issue with some retro gaming, the game released in 1997 (five years after the Directors Cut breathed new life into the franchise) is actually an extremely good point and click adventure game and while it tells a new story it fits well in the movies universe. It’s also one of the few point and click adventure games that actually aged well. I highly recommend it and it is available on GoG, so you don’t have to mess around with CD’s.
The game features many of the original cast (and as the story runs parallel to the movies plot it allows for unlimited cameos) and while it doesn’t technically have the original soundtrack from the movie it does have a pretty accurate re-creation by Frank Klepacki (Most famous for his soundtrack on C&C Red Alert). This is who they should have brought in for Black Lotus or even 2049 because his replication of Vangelis is almost indistinguishable from real thing. The game also has great replayability with multiple endings and some game elements (like who is a replicant) changing each play through.
The Surprisingly Good Marvel Adaptation
Books and Comics
Shortly after the original film came out Marvel comics actually made an adaptation of the story and it is surprisingly high quality. It adds some extra detail but remains true to the story. This is well worth picking up if you can find it. There was also a novelisation eventually released by Les Martin (initially they wanted Philip K Dick to write it, but for obvious reasons he refused and insisted they re-release his original novel instead, which they did but eventually got Martin to do the adaptation anyway).
There was also a sequel trilogy written by K. W. Jeter that followed immediately from the events of the film, though he also tried to link the story up somewhat with the original novel (Which is not really possible given the divergence, but it does include at least one character that is only in the novel). These make for an interesting alternative continuation of the story to what we see in 2049 but ultimately doesn’t fit any better. Worth checking out but probably only for the more hardcore fans.
Apparently in the same universe.
Movie and TV tie ins
Interestingly it seems Ridley Scott actually considers Alien and Blade Runner to be part of the same universe. Though my guess is he isn’t including the Alien Vs Predator movies with that. These actually do have a lot of compatibility (even aside from recycling Alien’s computer screen readout for Deckard’s Spinner). Of course Scott also considers Prometheus/Covenant as canon and a lot of fans would disagree with him there (I actually liked Prometheus, but I can’t defend Covenant and am not keen on it’s version of the origin). Whether this link will ever really mean anything to the casual viewer or not is probably dependant on Scott’s continued involvement with both francizes. Currently he is still involved, so who knows.
Another film that strongly hints at being set in the same world is 1998’s “Soldier” staring Kurt Russel. Certainly for me it felt like a spiritual successor even if not legitimately canon. However, when listing Kurt Russel’s character’s military career it seems he was at a lot of the same battles as Roy Batty. The film never directly mentions androids or replicants and Russel’s unit are all show to have been brainwashed from birth to serve as soldiers (making it very unlikely he is an android), however his unit are all replaced by a new superior model, one whose origin is not explored and which I always felt was suggested to be artificial. The links were deliberate and the film was devised as a sort of Blade Runner sequel. Officially though, there is no link.
It’s also worth noting that because of the Philip K Dick link that many other movies and TV shows based on his work also fit somewhat into that universe. Most notable is the TV series Total Recall 2070 which despite the name was really a Blade Runner TV series. It featured an android cop teaming up with a human and featured a lot more android based stories than it did artificial memory ones (i.e. ones you’d expect from a Total Recall series). As strange as that was, the show was actually pretty good (though somewhat dated now, 90’s TV CGI aged horribly) and worth checking out if you can find it.
Final Thoughts
So that is my epic Blade Runner deep dive done. Through my research and multiple re-watches of the movie this labour of love has only increased my appreciation for the work of art that is the original Blade Runner. At it’s heart it is a philosophical movie and while it is melancholy in tone it brings with it seeds of hope.
If a machine that was created as a solider to do nothing but kill and spent it’s whole life span doing it can learn empathy for it’s enemy perhaps we can learn empathy for each other. If Deckard can find meaning and purpose and go from hunter to protector maybe we can find purpose in our lives too. If Rachael can find something to live for after having everything she thought she was stripped from her maybe we can find that strength too.
Maybe too it is a warning telling us not to forget that the people you see every day with their brains apparently turned off, operating in some kind of automatic response mode are actually still people under all of that. But it’s also a warning not to lose ourselves, not to forget we are human, not to shut ourselves off and treat everything as nothing but an objective, a target, a job. It is truly a deep philosophical story but it is built on a very human beauty.
Despite the artificial nature of a lot of the environment and of the synths in the soundtrack each note and each frame is an emotional one that tells a story. The futuristic world is built on the old world. Each brick is a ghost. This is why the world of the film feels so lived in and real. In creation of the film was a perfect storm of pressure, conflict and emotions but also of course of incredible talent. It’s not something you can replicate by throwing money at it, it is lightning in a bottle. That said, when you make a world this interesting it is a shame to abandon it.
The End
Word is Ridley Scott is involved in a new TV series that will see a further branch of the Franchise (set several decades after 2049 presumably to allow a fresh start). Bringing back franchises for TV shows is quite hit and miss but if Scott is genuinely involved (Instead of just taking an executive producer credit so they can use his name) I am certainly going to be keen to watch it. We will see.
Anyway, I hope you found something of value in this multi-part examination of the film. It’s going to be a while before I do another one of these I think and I’ll probably make that a lot shorter. I’m thinking probably The Terminator, though maybe I’ll throw a curve ball and do Airplane! We will see. Meanwhile October is fast approaching and that means I need to get ready for the torrent of horror movie reviews I will do. Feel free to leave me comments on this.
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