Monday, August 29, 2005






Bank Holiday Monday Viewing

Alien 2: Sulla Terra (Alien 2: On Earth, aka Alien Terror; Ciro Ippolito, 1980)

Cheeky! In Italy, where George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was released as Zombi, Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (aka Zombie and Zombie Flesh Eaters, 1979) was promoted as an unofficial sequel-of-sorts to Romero's movie. (Incidentally, Zombi 2 had its own unofficial 'sequel' when Andrea Bianchi's 1980 trash meisterwork La notti del terrore--or The Nights of Terror--was released as Zombi 3: La notti del terrore, which caused no end of confusion for me whilst, in my callow youth, I attempted to track down Fulci's own Zombi 3, made in 1987.) And when Michael Cimino's The Deerhunter was released as Il Cacciatore, Antonio Margheriti's peculiar Spaghetti War epic The Last Hunter was released as Cacciatore 2: L'Ultimo Cacciatore. (However, at least The Last Hunter doesn't disappear up its own bum! Just kidding, folks--I still prefer Cimino's Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, though.)

So it's unsurprising that the success of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) led to the production in Italy of Alien 2: Sulla Terra, more than two whole years before the release of James Cameron's official sequel to Alien, the imaginatively titled Aliens (known during its production by the even more imaginative moniker of Alien 2. Who'd'a thunk it?)

I'm not a big fan of Cameron's overblown soap operas, but I have a fondness for Aliens. There's something far more ineffably cool about Alien 2: Sulla Terra, though. Maybe it's the use of all that stock footage. Whatever it is, although it's no classic, Alien 2 does share strange similarities with the 2005 US movie The Cave, which just goes to show that it isn't only the Italians who steal the ideas for their movies: Hollywood just makes sure that the movies whose plots it steals are obscure enough that not many people will notice. (This method has, however, backfired on the producers of the recent Michael Bay movie The Island, whose narrative appears to be lifted wholesale from the 1979 film Clonus.)

Nevertheless, putting aside any question of the film's relationship with Ridley Scott's SF classic, Alien 2 does something interesting: whereas Scott's film turned to 50s US sci-fi for its inspiration, Alien 2: Sulla Terra seems to draw upon the more mystical, primeval horrors at the heart of British sci-fi, principally the work of Nigel Kneale (The Quatermass Experiment). As in Kneale's work, in Alien 2 there's the suggestion of a relationship between the alien race and humans. As in Kneale's Quatermass serials, Alien 2's attempts at building suspense are based on the deployment of the uncanny, as opposed to the fear of the other that permeates the US SF films from which Ridley Scott's film drew inspiration.

So what's the film about? It focuses on a female caver named Thelma (played by Belinda Mayne; Thelma also happens to be psychic) has a funny turn during a television interview that is interspliced with obvious stock footage. The stock footage is used to illustrate the fact that as Thelma is being interviewed, the world is awaiting the return of two astronauts who have been on a mission into deep space. Their empty space capsule crash lands in the ocean, and later a young girl on a beach has her face melted by an overzealous unidentifiable mollusc that may have been brought to earth on or in the astronauts' space capsule. Yes, it's true: strange things happen on the coastline, folks. And if you're walking on the beach and you see a strange breathing 'lump' that may have arrived on a stray space capsule, don't let your kids approach it.

Thelma and some of her pals go spelunking, and one night they take time out to frolic, which gives the filmmakers an excuse to allow Belinda Mayne to have a completely gratuitous topless scene.

In the caves, the troupe encounter aliens who seem to thrill at sucking people's faces off. As in many of the late 1970s and early 1980s Italian fantasy movies, this film has a high gore quotient, which is most spectacularly realised in a scene in which one of the group appears to become possessed by the alien life form and approaches the remaining members of the troupe, only for his head to explode and a giant red tendril jump out of his neck. There are definite shades of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) in this sequence, and it'd be interesting to know if either Carpenter or Bill Lancaster (who wrote The Thing) had seen this movie.

Eventually, the group decimated, Thelma and another survivor escape the cave system and find themselves at a deserted bowling alley, where Thelma's remaining pal is 'offed' by the aliens. Thelma runs away, heading into the city, which is similarly deserted. But everything is red (an effect achieved by the use of a nifty red lens filter): the question of how the aliens managed to turn everything red is never answered, as the film ands at this point with a title card stating something along the lines of 'You could be next...' And just when the film was becoming interesting.

This attempt at an enigmatic ending just feels cheap, as if the filmmakers had run out of money and simply decided to end the narrative at the first opportunity.

The movie has strong shades of The Quatermass Experiment (or The Quatermass Xperiment, if you prefer), the Nigel Kneale-scripted movie and TV series in which an astronaut returns to Earth as a flesh-eating blob. As Italian fantasy movies of this period go, it's a bundle of atmospheric fun, with some excessive (and occasionally silly) gore scenes. But it's not on par with, say, Fulci's rambunctious Conquest (1982). Luigi Cozzi's more widely-seen Contamination is a worthy substitute for this movie; but if you can get hold of both I would recommend having a marathon movie session, watching Alien, Alien 2: Sulla Terra, Contamination and finally Carpenter's The Thing.
Original text: ©Paul A J Lewis, 2005

Recommended Link: A Filmography of Italian Sci-Fi & Post-Apocalyptic Movies


posted by Paul A J Lewis at 11:02 pm 0 comments

Saturday, August 27, 2005

'You Don't Own a Man Until You Control His Heart'/'Go After Him With the Laser': My F-ed-Up Film Friday.

 In an attempt to relieve the tedium of my day-to-day existence, I decided today to watch Mr No Legs (Ricou Browning, 1981) (or as it's more commonly known in the UK, The Amazing Mr No Legs). It's a strange little movie, a cross between an episode of a 70s TV cop show (minus the seemingly omnipresent moralising) and an uncomfortable freak show, featuring as it does a hitman with no legs (*gasp*: I guess the title says it all, really).

There's an extended car chase that, let's face it, seems to go on forever whilst going nowhere in particular, and a crazy barroom brawl/catfight. There's also an overuse of slow-motion, seemingly inserted at random. Unlike, say, Peckinpah's use of slo-mo, the slow-motion in Mr No Legs serves no function: it doesn't add to our understanding of the action or of the mentality that drives the characters involved in the violence--most of it is simply there to add to the carnival side-show aspect of the movie.

The highlight of the movie by far is the sequence in which Mr No Legs takes on his former employer's goons by a swimming pool. He does a sort of flying kick (yes, it's in slow-motion) and wrestles/pulls one of the goons to the floor before squeezing the life out of him.

What's the movie about? I hear you ask. Well, I'm not really sure, to be honest. It had something to do with drugs: a girl got murdered, and her brother--a down-at-heels honest cop (played by Richard Jaeckel, who has a brilliant freeze-frame at the end of the film) tracks down the guys who killed her. Mr No Legs works for a drugs kingpin named D'Angelo (Lloyd Bochner), and at some point D'Angelo decides to get his goons to kill No Legs--I think it's because No Legs is seen as inefficient, which kind of suggests that he isn't as 'amazing' as the UK release title suggests. But the narrative isn't important: as in most of these movies, it's simply an excuse for a series of middling action setpieces.

What's most disappointing about the movie is the fact that Mr No Legs is only in it for a short period of time; and let me tell you, he isn't that 'amazing', either. Yeah, he's got guns attached to the sides of his wheelchair, and he can kick the butts of guys who look like they should be extras in a 1970s porn movie (and I bet most of them were at one point extras in porn movies), but he's not really that special. My great-grandfather had no legs--admittedly, his knowledge of martial arts was more limited than that of Mr No Legs himself, but I bet in a fair scrap, my great-grandad could hold his own against this supposedly 'amazing' limb-challenged hitman. But then again, my great-grandad didn't have blonde beauties surrounding him, who would do his bidding without argument; Mr No Legs does! He's one cool motherfunster.

It's a bad, bad film. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. Now, having suffered through this movie, I'm going to press it into the hands of all of my friends.

Do you want to watch a guy with no legs do push-ups on the arms of his wheelchair? Do you want to see 70s style facial hair and pudding-bowl haircuts? Do you want to see a disabled man kick all kinds of ass? No? Then what the heck is wrong with you?

They certainly don't make 'em like this anymore!


And then, after the movie madness that is Mr No Legs, I decided to sample Sergio Martino's Mani di pietra/Hands of Steel (1986).

Now this is another movie whose plot didn't seem to hold together--but that's no surprise, really. It's about a cyborg with the unlikely name of Paco (Danuel Greene), who is sent to kill a scientist but suffers conscience pangs before going on the run, falling in with Janet Agren (who I've never cared for much--but then, she's a blonde and, as anyone will tell you, I don't go for blondes), scrapping with George Eastman (or Luigi Montefiore), and finally engaging in a showdown with John Saxon himself! Yes, and John Saxon gets to deliver one of the film's finest lines: 'I can't bear to see him escape. Go after him with the laser'. Positively Shakespearean, isn't it. By the way, one of the cowriters is Elisa Briganti, the woman behind the script for Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (1979).

This movie is often lumped in with the post-apocalypse movies that were popular in Italy during the 1980s; but unlike Martino's 2019: After the Fall of New York or Enzo Girolami's Bronx Warriors films (which I highly recommend, by the way), this film isn't set in a post-nuclear wasteland. It's set in 1997, as many of these movies are (e.g. Escape From New York). Ironically enough, 1997 was the year I had my heart broken: maybe there's some significance there... Probably not, however: but these are the types of thoughts that run through your mind whilst you're watching movies like this.

This movie is one action setpiece after another, from the prerequisite barroom brawls to chases with lorries and helicopters, to a final shootout in an abandoned warehouse. There's some good action too, from Daniel Greene punching through the visor of a bad guy's motorcycle helmet and breaking the guy's face, to Greene's final standoff with Montefiore/Eastman. And it's all capped off with one of the greatest closing lines in film history (note the irony in this statement): 'You Don't Own a Man Until You Control His Heart'.

If I had the energy and zest for life that I used to possess, I think I would sit and mull over the film's 'deep' ending, but at a certain point in life you realise that these attempts at 'deep' endings really don't require an awful lot of thought--thinking about them too carefully may well cause some sort of mental malfunction. And then where would you end up? Probably running around the Arizona desert, thinking yourself to be a malfunctioning cyborg. You might just hook up with Janet Agren, and I guess all the stress would be worthwhile if you could engage in a showdown with John Saxon.

A macabre and somewhat disquieting piece of trivia: one of the movie's costars, Claudio Cassinelli, sadly died in a helicopter crash during the shooting of this movie.
Original text: ©Paul A J Lewis, 2005

posted by Paul A J Lewis at 12:20 am 0 comments

Thursday, August 25, 2005

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Tuesday, August 23, 2005


The Wire (HBO) (2002- )

I'm just watching HBO's series The Wire. This is exceptional television, extremely powerful stuff. Unfortunately, in the UK it's remained virtually unseen: the first season has been released on DVD, and the second season is due for release before the end of 2005. At this point in time, however, the US has seen four seasons of this show.

The Wire is from the pen of David Simon, author of the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Simon's journalistic account of the trials and tribulations of the 'murder police' in Baltimore, Maryland, formed the basis for one of the greatest crime TV shows ever made: Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999). All too frequently compared to NYPD Blue, Homicide was a far grittier show, less concerned with soap opera-style dissections of the lives of its lead characters, and more frequently comfortable in delivering storylines with either downbeat resolutions or simply no resolutions at all. Homicide was a show that was unafraid to ask questions, sometimes finding the answers impossible to come by.


Like The Wire, Homicide was criminally neglected in the UK: shown on Channel 4, Homicide was moved through various timeslots, ultimately ending up in an irregular early morning slot; and even worse, Channel 4 neglected to screen the seventh and final season of the show.

After Homicide, Simon's equally powerful book The Corner was made into a miniseries by HBO.

With The Wire (co-created with Ed Burns, and with some writing by established crime author George P. Pelecanos), Simon has delivered the most compelling police drama serial for many years. Like Homicide, The Wire is a gritty look at the streets of Baltimore, shot in a cinema-verite style, with location shooting and the use of handheld cameras. The theme of surveillance (signalled in the show's title and in the opening credits sequence) is foregrounded throughout, in shots taken through windows as characters watch other characters, and in an impressive sequence in the opening episode in which one of the lead characters (Dominc West) 'mugs' at a surveillance camera.


The show's first season deals with an investigation into a drugs ring, and in this season the conflicts are established fairly early on. But the show gives even hand to both the police and the drugs dealers they are after: this is not a show in which moral conflicts are presented in simple 'black and white' terms. Our sympathies flit between the detectives and their prey.

The Wire is excellent, complex television: thought-provoking and challenging, it deserves a wider audience in the UK. It is one of the finest dramatic serials to be exported from the US in a long time.
Original text: ©Paul A J Lewis, 2005

Excellent article about The Wire on MSNBC
Surveillance and the Panopticon in Modern Society
What is the Panopticon?
Michele Foucault and the Panopticon

posted by Paul A J Lewis at 11:59 pm 0 comments