"Carnival of Souls" (1962)

 

• Director: Herk Harvey
• Written by: Herk Harvey & John Clifford
• Starring: Candance Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger & Art Ellison

     There was a huge boom in independent horror in the 60s. The most well-known of these indie excursions is, of course, George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" from 1968, which launched an entire subgenre of horror films. However, there are other horror films, not as well-regarded and certainly not as well-known, but definitely deserve to be mentioned and talked about. The film that I'm speaking of today is "Carnival of Souls", an intriguing, strange horror film from 1962.
     "Carnival of Souls" begins in a fairly normal fashion, with some guys challenging some gals to a car race. The girls oblige, but racing on a narrow bridge is a bad decision, and the girls' car crashes over the edge, careening into the river below. Just as the police think that they'll never find the car or any of the survivors, Mary Henry (Candance Hilligoss), the lone survivor of the crash, climbs out of the river. Her friends all dead and heartbroken from the guilt of being the only survivor, she becomes a drifter, buying an apartment in town and generally being very reclusive. The only times she goes out are to go to church to play the organ.
     However, soon she is plagued by demonic hallucinations, feverish visions of a man with dark eyes coming after her. Over time, the hallucinations become more and more frequent, and Mary's frequent attempts to reach out to people are in vain. Soon she finds herself drawn, as if in a trance, to an old run-down pavilion, nearby the scene of the crash...
     During the first few minutes of the film I found myself unimpressed by the incredibly low production values and the atrocious acting, but as the film dug deeper and the story grew more and more outrageous and complex I found myself compelled by it's atmosphere. It starts off with time moving in a relatively ordinary way, but as Mary's hallucinations become more intense, the film in turn becomes more and more surreal, and time begins to dilate. Toward the end, we aren't sure of what reality is, and if we can trust all that we're seeing.
     Dialogue becomes incredibly sparse, and Mary begins to (what we are assumed to believe) shift in and out of existence, experiencing strange, dreamlike periods where nobody can see her and she cannot hear them. There's a particularly great sequence where she spends almost 5-10 minutes simply wandering around the town in a daze, reaching out to anybody who will listen to her. But of course, no one can. It's astounding.
     But there is so much more to the film than atmosphere. It's frought with evocative Christological imagery, such as close-ups of stained glass windows adorned with priests, hands held up to the heavens. Music also plays an important role in the film. Mary is a professional organist, and as such the entire organ score becomes darker and darker as the film goes on, carrying us into her psychological despair. Mary's attempts to get closer to people become more and more desperate and saddening, and it endears her to us, despite Hilligloss' hammy acting.
     She and the audience are lead to ask themselves where she belongs, and it is something that Mary struggles with throughout the film. We aren't sure if she is merely suffering from emotional trauma or if she is actually not meant to exist on this plane. One of the things I also find incredibly effective is the fact that we are not told what exactly the beings that she keeps envisioning are. Whether they are mere stress-triggered hallucinations or something more, something not of this world, is left up to the viewer.
     The demons, or hallucinations, or whatever they may be also offer some incredibly chilling moments, especially during sequences where Mary keeps seeing the same ghoul with blackened eyelids, simply staring at her. Every time he is on screen he evokes chills, and it only gets better toward the end when Mary travels back to the pavilion and witnesses a horrifying, hypnotical dance of the dead between many different ghouls.
     In the end, the movie closes on an incredibly bleak and uncertain note, and I'm not entirely sure what the director, Herk Harvey, was attempting to say. Perhaps he was asking us to question our own mortality, or maybe he was offering us an experience in surreality, to show us what it may be like to be a wandering soul, lost in a sea of the living. Are the demons that pursue Mary truly evil for wanting to take her to eternal rest? Perhaps not.
     When any supposedly "low grade" horror movie can force us to confront things like this, and can suck us in so thoroughly with nothing but a spellbinding atmosphere, I think it deserves points. If you ever get the chance to see this film, please try to look past it's technological shortcomings, hokey acting, and somewhat clunky dialogue and instead look into the deeper, more meaningful heart of the film. At only 76 minutes, it's quick, and it sure is worth the ride. Just be careful... the bridge is out.

"Green Lantern: First Flight" (2009)

• Directed by: Lauren Montgomery
• Written by: Alan Burnett
• Starring: Christopher Meloni, Victor Garber, Michael Madsen  

     Being a kind of scrawny, ropy geeky kid, I love superhero stories. Modern mythology, complex works worthy of critical examination or simple pulpy nonsense, whatever you think of them as, they're certainly an inimitable part of American pop culture. Since I like superhero stories, it follows that I also really admire the catalogue of the DC Animated Universe. When I was a kid I used to watch "Batman: The Animated Series" every Saturday morning, and when I watched the show again as I got older I grew to appreciate it on a deeper level. If it wasn't for the standard that was set by Bruce Timm's creation, it's not outlandish to say that television animation would not have become as sophisticated as it so quickly did back in the 90s.
    While we no longer have any of the DCAU series on our television screens anymore, we DO have the availability of the DCU Animated Original Movies series, which are direct-to-video animated films that tell various stories culled from the DC Comics library. "Green Lantern: First Flight" is the third-and-a-half film I've seen from this line (I saw "Justice League: The New Frontier", "Batman: Gotham Knight" and the last half of "Under the Red Hood", but not the full film), and I have to say that if this is the standard that the Original Movies line has set then I'm plenty happy with it.
    "Green Lantern: First Flight" tells the story of Hal Jordan's (Christopher Meloni) first mission as a Green Lantern. After receiving the Lantern ring from dying alien Abin Sur (Richard McGonagle), Jordan is swept up by the Guardians, the orchestrators of the Green Lantern Corps., and is set to begin training under fellow Lantern Sinestro (Victor Garber). Sinestro and Jordan set out to find Abin Sur's killer, and uncover a scheme involving double-crossing, murder, and betrayal.
    While the film tells a good story, the main problem with it is that it is simply too short. This is certainly not the fault of writer Alan Burnett, who wrote many great episodes of "Batman: TAS". Since pretty much all of the DC Animated Movies have to stay under 80 minutes (I assume for budgetary reasons), the writer's are often forced to speed things up in order to get to the point. Unfortunately, "First Flight" suffers as a result.
    Jordan's origin story is finished within the opening credits, it goes by way too fast. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, after all, they covered his origin fairly thoroughly in "The New Frontier". What bothered me was the way it was portrayed. Jordan doesn't question the situation at all, here is this dying, bright red alien in front of him in a weird suit, offering him a ring. Jordan simply says "All right", and puts it on. I would have made Jordan more inquisitive, and I would have made Sur's death more meaningful. For example, instead of just saying, "All right," Jordan could have said, "Who are you?" or "What...?" and Sur could have cut in with, "Please, you will understand, I don't have much time," or something along those lines. That way the origin could have more impact and we could have sped through to the opening credits on time.
    It also doesn't help that once the credits are over, we're put smack dab into the middle of Jordan flying through the night sky, fully clad in his Green Lantern getup and seeming fairly comfortable with it. It doesn't flow well from the opening credits. It leaves us to assume that he's just suddenly gotten used to his powers, and while we can guess that he experimented with the ring a few times and grew comfortable with his newfound status, the fact that we don't at least see it makes it seem a little unconvincing and rushed. I would think that someone who didn't know Lantern's origin story would be taken off-guard. The least they could have done was put a "Several weeks later..." title on the bottom of the screen. Or, better yet, we could have seen a montage of Jordan learning to use the ring over the opening credits. Just something to better prepare us for the story.
    One other thing that suffers due to the short run-time is the characters. They get almost no development, which I understand since this film focuses on Jordan, but since his fellow Lantern's play a pretty important role in the film it would have been nice to get a little more on them. A prime example of this is the fact that all of the other Lantern's immediately hate Jordan for seemingly no reason. We are told that they have a distrust for humans and that they were all close to Abin Sur and resent him taking his place, but that seems like shaky motivation, and since we aren't given sufficient reason as to what made Sur so great, it's not very believable. But as I said, this is due to the short run time and is probably not the fault of the writer.
    The best thing about the film is the first half of the story, as we see Sinestro and Jordan search for Abin Sur's killer. It takes the form of a pseudo-mystery story as they scour nightclubs and interrogate criminals. It's exotic and interesting, we get to see lots of different kinds of aliens, and it reinforces the idea that the Green Lantern Corps. are basically Space Police, which is a fun concept that I wish we could have seen more of.
    The second half of the story, about Sinestro's betrayal of the Guardians, is less interesting because as soon as we get to this point it quickly devolves into a by-the-numbers superhero film, with Sinestro playing a fairly generic villain and having a generic climactic fight scene with Green Lantern (this climax, by the way, uses a really, really cheap deus ex machina that almost killed the film for me). This is disappointing, because Sinestro clearly has potential for development, the problem with this is that, as I said, the filmmakers obviously wanted to quickly get to the meat of the story, and consequently Sinestro just becomes a fairly uninteresting, mustache-twirling baddie.
    However, the film certainly isn't bad, and it's pace doesn't completely destroy the film. In fact, since the film moves so quickly, it's fairly entertaining and exciting. The film is at it's best when it plays the part of a high-flying science-fiction story, where we get to catch a look at all of the various aliens that populate the Green Lantern universe (and the Corps. itself). The voice acting is also pretty good, Christopher Meloni stands out as a very snarky Green Lantern, and Victor Garber is incredibly intense and slightly creepy as Sinestro. Michael Madsen also isn't bad as Kilowog, the giant, pig-like alien of the Green Lantern Corps.
    One of the other things that surprised me about the film was it's tone. It's pretty dark and violent for a PG-13 animated movie. Not only do we see some aliens doing drugs in a bar, we also meet an alien prostitute, and on top of that a few characters get killed in pretty violent ways. One in particular actually gets gored by a bed of spikes, and when the character dies they slide off with some nice squelchy sound effects. Two other characters get their necks snapped, and another gets his hand broken after Kilowog steps on it. There's also some curse words tossed around.
    I'm really happy that they're going this route with the Animated Films, because now that they're not tethered by being on children's television they have a lot more creative freedom, and this film shows that they're using that to their advantage. Besides, any animation that is willing to push the envelope gets kudos from me. Too often animation is considered a kid's medium, so it's encouraging to see that some filmmakers are willing to work past that stigma.
    The animation is also above-average for a direct-to-video film. However, there is some god-awful CGI in parts, and at times the characters move a little bit choppily. The general style is also a bit too "anime" and angular, but otherwise it's nice. In particular the animation is very elaborate and well-rendered during the fight scenes, which are exciting and well-choreographed.
    Overall, "First Flight" is a well-rendered, fun superhero film that unfortunately suffers from a short run time and a by-the-numbers plot. If you like superhero films then I'd pick it up, but if not then this film isn't really going to make you look at the genre any differently.

"The Expendables" (2010)

 

• Director: Sylvester Stallone
• Written by: Dave Callaham & Sylvester Stallone
• Starring: Almost Every Action Hero Ever

    Wow, "The Expendables"! A modern action film starring a whole bunch of big name action stars! I couldn't wait to see this film, the concept sounded badass. I mean, Stallone and Dolph Lundgren, together again? Jet Li? Bruce Willis? ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER? If this movie didn't seem interesting to you, you must have been a preening nancy boy! How could they go wrong?
    Oh... they go wrong. They go very, very wrong. They go wrong on so many levels that it should be a fucking sin, and Stallone and the screenwriters should be cast into the most horrible, depraved pit of Hell for unleashing this cinematic travesty upon the world. My god...
    The plot... shit, was there a plot? I have no idea. It has something to do with some made up island in Venezuela or something, and Stallone and his team of bulky action heroes are supposed to go in and kill some guy that was a former CIA agent, and there's also some stuff about the leader of the island and his hot daughter... I don't know, who gives a shit? The film is so fucking convoluted and confusing with all kinds of intersecting plotlines and boring "political intrigue" that I almost went into a coma. Characters disappear and then reappear, they do things that don't make any sense, and there are so many ancillary characters that I have no idea who is who or how they completely fit into the plot.
    But who cares about the plot, really? It's an action film, right? And it has almost every major star ever! Well, you're wrong my friend. Yes, every name that is on the poster make an appearance in the film. However, the core "Expendables" group is made up of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews. Everyone else, like Steve Austin, Dolph Lundgren, and Mickey Rourke, are either enemies or simple cameos.
    Still, that would be fine, but you know who the film decides to focus on? Statham and Stallone. That's it. They get the most screentime, the most backstory, the most action scenes, they get almost the entire film. The rest of the Expendables, you know, THE GROUP THAT THE FILM IS NAMED AFTER, get 20 minutes or less of screentime, and when they are on screen, all they get is the occasional one-liner to vomit out during a firefight. The film is basically Stallone sucking his own cock.
    Dolph Lundgren by far gets it the worst. The amazingly cool action star who was fucking Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV" becomes a villain, betraying Stallone. On top of that, he gets killed after Stallone shoots him! All in all, he has about 30 minutes of screen time, granted, a bit more than the rest of the group, but still! I'd say becoming evil and getting fucking killed is much worse than simply being one of the background characters (besides, who cares about no-names like Randy Couture?).
    Stallone obviously has some sort of personal vendetta out for Lundgren. He defeated him in "Rocky IV", what more does he want? Defeating him AGAIN at this point, 30 years later is just a kick in the balls for Lundgren, who by all accounts is a nice and charismatic guy.
    I'm sure you were also excited about Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? Well you can fuck off for all the movie cares! Willis and Schwarzenegger literally get 5 minutes of screentime. I can deal with that, Schwarzenegger is still governor and is probably very busy and Willis probably had other projects going on at the time. But you know what they do during this 5-minute cameo? They fucking talk. Two of the most badass, quintissential action stars get a cameo in one of the biggest action films of the year and they fucking talk. Seeing the trio of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis together is also incredibly surreal. All of these big action stars just standing there, talking like they're old chums. It feels less like they're playing characters and more like they're playing themselves, especially when Stallone takes a jab at Schwarzenegger by saying, "He wants to be president."
    That's one of the major problems with the film as well. It has a hell of a lot of star power with some of the biggest action heroes ever, but it's not executed very well. As I said, the screen time for each star is incredibly discordant, but they're also each shooting out one-liners, as they would if they were in their own solo films. But this just comes off as incredibly strange, like an action hero "Celebrity Deathmatch", if you will, with all of these big names fighting for supremacy, battling for the most amount of one-liners until they accidentally break the fucking universe from one-liner overload.
    Again, this would be fine if the dialogue had any sort of competency, even to the point of being so lame it's awesome. But no, it doesn't even have that. It's beyond bad-good, it's so far beyond bad-good that it's created it's own separate universe created especially for itself. I will share some of the lovely exchanges in this film:
    There's a scene right after Statham has just shot up a bunch of bad guys with a gun. Stallone turns to him and says, "That was some good shooting." Statham responds with, "That was a statement!" I'm not fucking with you guys. That is real, actual dialogue from the film. It's not even a one-liner, it's Statham explaining what Stallone just did. He might as well have just said, "THAT WAS A SENTENCE."
    There are also some bits of dialogue that just don't make any sense, like they were trying to make a one-liner but gave up halfway through, pulled a shot of tequila and said, "FUCK IT". For example, there's a scene where Terry Crews is showing off his weaponry to Randy Couture. He says something about how if his gun can't do the job, then his knife can. Couture responds with, "You should be my doctor." What?! What does that even mean?! It's like they were talking to two completely different characters on two completely different dimensional planes and the camera somehow caught the two dimensions in transit.
    The film is full of completely retarded things like this. Even the character names sound like something a 12 year-old with Down's Syndrome would come up with. Do you like a bunch of badass, grizzled action heroes that could rip your face off? Well then get ready for such awe-inspiring names as "Hale Caesar", "Lee Christmas", and "Yin Yang". Again, those are actual character names, they are completely real. They named a fucking Asian character "Yin Yang". Words fail me.
    "But wait," I can hear you saying in my head, "surely the film has a lot of great action scenes, right? I mean, with all of that action hero star power there must be some great stuff, right?" Okay, you want to know what the action is like? You really want to know? Well, I hope you like ShakyCam! LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF FUCKING SHAKYCAM. IN ALMOST EVERY SINGLE SCENE.
    The cinematography is some of the worst I've ever seen in a film. It's like they hired a spastic retard to control the camera at the exact same time there was a planet-splitting earthquake. I get that they were trying to go for a gritty, docudrama style, but why the hell does the film need it? Especially a film with a bunch of complex action scenes where it's integral that we know what the fuck is going on?! Half the time I couldn't tell what I was looking at or who was fighting who, and it didn't help that the color scheme in the film consisted of black, grey, and puke green. It literally looked like somebody vomited on the lens.
    Overall, "The Expendables" is a great example of wasted potential. It's one of the coolest-sounding action movies ever, I thought that there was no possible way they could ever fuck this up. Well, they did. The film has so much wasted potential you could compress it into a small star. The fact that they could screw something up with this much potential has pretty much completely destroyed my faith in Hollywood. Granted, it was slim before, what with "Avatar" making 2 billion dollars and whatnot, but this is just the lowest of the low. Hollywood has become like the crazy drug addict that is sucking dick for money. It has no shame and is willing to do anything at all to get some money. Fuck this bullshit. Fuck it to hell.

"Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

This movie poster, by the way, is illustrated by Frank Frazetta, a noted fantasy artist who illustrated many of the Conan stories. It kicks so much ass I don't even believe it.

• Director: John Milius
• Screenwriters: John Milius & Oliver Stone (wow!)
• Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson, Mako

     I go crazy for old pulp-style adventure and fantasy films. The "Flash Gordon" serials, hell, the "Flash Gordon" movie, "Indiana Jones", I love them all. It also goes without saying that one of my favorite writers is Robert E. Howard, who originally wrote the short stories that this film, "Conan the Barbarian", was consequently based on. The stories are brilliant. Gritty, dark, pulpy, and adventurous, with a slick, poetic prose style.
     I love the mythical "Hyborian Age" that the Conan stories take place in as well, full of shape changing demons, grizzled barbarians and intense violence. It's a world unlike any other. Naturally, with the author having such a high pedigree, I had high expectations for the "Conan the Barbarian" film. I had heard much about it but never really had the chance to watch it until, on a whim, I purchased it from Dimple Records and watched it one night with friends.
     Concerning the plot, it "borrows" scenes and elements from Howard's stories without adapting any one story, so a lot of the character's backstories are changed. Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a young Cimmerian boy who is stolen away and made into a slave after his family's tribe is murdered and ransacked. Many years later, he escapes and meets several friends who help guide him to his family's killer, the mad Snake Man cultist named Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones). Can Conan vanquish the man who stole his life and bring peace to his existence?
     Yes, he can, with lots and lots of bloody murder. I had forgotten that this film was rated "R", and for an early-80s', non-slasher film, holy hell, it lives up to that pedigree. Conan practically kills the entire country, and there is lots of big, bright, wet bloodspray, it's beautiful. I was really happy to find out that they carried over this hard, gritty tone from the stories, sparing no violence or sex. It may not contribute much to the plot, but it does wonders for the overall tone.
     Plus, the fight scenes are incredibly well-choreographed. Conan leaps off of walls and performs elaborate sword spins, just mowing down everyone in sight. The gore effects are also incredibly good for the time, my favorite sequence being when Conan decapitates a giant snake. It doesn't do any pussy cutting away, and it actually takes Conan several hits to decapitate it. It's incredibly ballsy, especially since we're talking about animal killing here, which is generally frowned upon in films.
     While the plot itself is paper-thin, there's just something about the atmosphere and the high production values of the whole film that draws me in. The film employs many huge, ornate set pieces, and there is little dialogue in the film. Often it simply involves Conan traveling somewhere, fighting someone, or taking in the landscape, and it's very hypnotic. Of particular note is a fantastic scene where Conan's lover, Valeria, tries to ward off demons from his supposedly dead body.
     The film's atmosphere is also gritty, but not like the "Clash of the Titans" reboot, where it disengages us from the fantasy in favor of the grittiness. In this instance the grittiness actually enhances the film, because the fantastic elements are nicely balanced with the grittiness, and it's all very believably presented, especially considering the source material.
     However, one of the things that bothers me about the film is it's aforementioned plot. While it borrows the general feel and scenes of some of Robert E. Howard's stories, none of it is particularly compelling. Which is incredibly disappointing, because Howard could spin some damn fine tales, full of intense prose and deep, intriguing characters.
     Because the plot of the film is so paper thin, the characters don't have much to them, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's "performance" (if you want to call it that) simply makes Conan look like a brutish, unintelligent ape, which is a far cry from the literary Conan, and it doesn't make the character particularly intriguing, which is sad because he's the centerpiece of the film.
     The rest of the actors do fine. They're not particularly good, but they deliver their lines in that early-80s, articulate fantasy vibe, which I find endearing in a cheesy sort of way. There are some noted actors in it though, like Mako in all his hammy glory as The Wizard, and Max von Sydow, who has a very brief cameo as King Osric.
     James Earl Jones though... man, he steals every scene that he's in. He doesn't even say much, really, but he doesn't need to. He has incredibly piercing, steely blue eyes (which I think are effects, but if not, holy shit) that draw you into his gaze, almost hypnotizing you to do his will. He's so icy and cold, nonchalantly slicing people's heads off. He also has a great monologue toward the end about fearing the dark. Oh, and he turns into a giant snake for some reason. But who cares, it's FUCKING COOL.    
     Supplementing the beautiful visuals and dark, fantastic atmosphere is the brilliant score by Basil Poledouris. Reportedly Dino DeLaurentiis (the producer) wanted a pop score, but director John Milius advised against it, and I'm damn glad that he did. The score is bombastic and sweeping, with a particularly fantastic cue inspired by Prokofiev's "The Battle on the Ice" from his score for "Alexander Nevsky". It plays a huge part in establishing the atmosphere of the film, giving it life.
     There really isn't much reason to see this film if you're one of those "normal" people. But if you're a kind of geeky fantasy nerd like myself, you'll probably be plenty surprised by "Conan". While there isn't much of a plot, I can't help but feel that there is something about the movie that draws it above a simple B-grade fantasy film. It's got great production values, for one thing. It's beautifully shot and scored. It's gritty, violent and sexual. It has some fantastic atmosphere and some great acting from James Earl Jones... I can't explain why, but I love it, even though it doesn't stick to the canon of the short stories. If you're into this kind of stuff, check it out.