Takin' it Bond by Bond

November is the second cruelest month, after April: all my autumnal October ghoulish cheer slides down like a Bond villain off a continental shelf during an underwater chase scene. Glug glug. Down he goes to the depths, just as glug glug this was the month of my bottom alcoholically (in 1998) it was also the month Cassandra and Gabrielle (two Bond girls if there were real life versions) brought over ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE on a Friday Night just like this one, and saved my drunken life, for year longer...

Bond was there. Bond is here. SPECTRE. Dig, the ALIEN 3 of Bond movies is here, written by someone who clearly has only contempt for the series, for film, and for the realities behind the effective range of snub-nose firearms.

Whenever a new Bond appears, all the old ones show up on TV, to prep the faithful. I've been updating and elaborating my "Bond by Bond" guide from a few years back (so do revisit). Not to be misandric or lazy, for my keen insights over the years are as sexist, elaborate and thrilling (and grandiose about it) as (most) Bond films themselves.

My Favorite: Elektra King (and she has my initials)

From Father's Day Bond Marathon:
(Acidemic - 6/14)

Following a handful of similar but deceptively elaborate plots that seem to bleed across each other (making each particular film hard to remember), Bond films have always rewarded repeat viewing; as we change from children to men our perceptions of the movies change, too, and new fissures of interest are sussed out. Atomic bomb hijacking minutiae and intrigue, the most boring parts when we were kids, are now fascinating. The giant computers and tracking devices are like windows into a forgotten field of technology, like finding the distant relatives of Skynet.

THUNDERBALL:

In THUNDERBALL (1965) it takes about five minutes of real cinematic time to throw a camouflage net over one lousy sunken NATO bomber. It used to bore my senseless, but--now that I'm an adult lost in a world of whiplash editing--I love the slowness. Also, on HD widescreen, now you can see the whole plane. See, what I like is that SPECTRE was never about world domination or destruction, they were about stealing code machines from embassies and foiling relatively un-apocalyptic sabotage-blackmail schemes to save the British government a few million pounds. As for Connery's Bond, whether elbowing a fire alarm at a health spa without breaking his stride down the hall, turning some painful spine-stretching into a chance to blackmail his masseuse for sex (but then massaging her with a mink glove), he's as ruthless and predatory as he is in the books, which I love, and he's got a great opposite side spy to contend with, a woman who--like him--is smart, ruthless, charismatic, deadly, and uses sex freely and often in her work. And, on HD, the beds these spies work on are stretched out to the full widescreen so we can savor their ornate frames framing the screen and exposing our agog minds to the wonders of Mad Men-era decor. Their sex is just as much a part of the cold war spy game as the killing and cameras and the subtext never judges any of the amoral, hedonistic ruthlessness.

My first memories of Bond as a child are the very kinky edges like Largo applying scientific hot and cold to the naked heaving back of kept woman Domino [Claudine Auger]). I grew out of my S&M phase during my liberal arts feminist indoctrination, but I'm glad we have a record of before such PC buzzkilling took hold. Though it came out in the 60s, to me, this is vintage Bond via TV in the 70s: Bond in a wet suit, shooting at a shark or a bad guy with his harpoon gun while a hot girl with a cute mole lounged in the white sand at his side. And seeing it-all via network TV with my dad around the same time Spy Who Loved Me played in theaters (my parents not taking me to see it, saying I was too young, even though it was PG and far less dirty than the TV screenings of Thunderball, not that I understood the entendres). Then, in the 80s, when sexual harassment was becoming a thing, we rented all the Bonds from the newly opened video stores at the mall and saw them over and over, as reminders of the power we were once going to inherit as men, allegedly, but now never would, for with awareness comes compassion. Though forced on us via the very media we sought refuge in, we couldn't unlearn sensitivity, and lost forever the callous indifference that allows for the heedless exploitation of others in good conscience. But we still have Connery, forever.

Innocence is the last refuge of the debauched.

HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE:

(expanded 11/15)

The idea to make George Lazenby's first appearance the same one where he gets married and then cries is a bit of a misstep, makes him seem a weak version, like he can't handle the gaffe, but closer examination makes you realize he's damn good, easily the second best, and had he been allowed to continue, who knows? Instead casual fans jeered, confusing vulnerability and disguise for weakness and Brit stodginess. But maybe it was just the first time an actor up to the call was in the lead role? Imagining Connery being vulnerable or actually changing his swagger when undercover is laughable. Criticizing Lazenby for having the range isn't really fair. Blame Salzman and Broccoli for trying to change a working, beloved formula, like if Michael Myers started talking, or Groucho Marx decided to do a serious dramatic role. 

 It's the only Bond to deal with the issue of post-hypnotic suggestion and mind control (sleeper agents, recalling MK-Ultra Monarch's "angels of death", not to mention Dr. Goldfoot's bikini machina). And even cooler, the  whole second half of the film is one long winding chase down the Alps, as the villains pursuing him--relentless and intelligent--are never far behind. The skiing is phenomenal (the echoes of Leni Riefenstahl's alpine silents surely intentional). Lazenby is a bit of a cypher in spots--critics ragged on him for being such a blank slate--but that works for a spy, and Lazenby is a strong enough actor to be very subtle -- he shows real emotion underneath the cold mannequin blanket (Connery was the opposite, but those broader strokes were easier to see on the small screen). 

For example when Lazenby's Bond goes undercover as a snobby genealogist sent up to Telly Savalas' high-in-the-Alps stronghold, Lazenby's Bond puts on a posh droning bore professor demeanor that on closer viewing is a dead-on impression of his contact at the Genealogy Dept., one so vivid casual viewers think that's the Bond Lazenby has envisioned. When Blofeldt finally unmasks him, we see Bond become very relaxed, even bemused, as his uptight bookish persona drops,. And then, progressively more exhausted and scared when he has such a hard time escaping Stavros' men--even in the packed Swiss streets and rink-- when Diana Rigg skates over to where he's sitting, trying to hide,  relief floods across his face, quickly turning to adoration in a way that truly surprises him. She's there when it counts, and his kisses on her cheek as she delivers some top notch evasive driving aren't his usual brusque propositions but signs of how much he adores her. It's not like his usual cavalier élan but genuinely fondness, it's a very real affection, completely different than what we're used to. Then, at bedtime in the barn, there's the worried look in his eye when he realizes he's madly in love with this girl in ways he wasn't with anyone before; it scares him almost as bad as when he was ratlled by the man in the crazy white bear suit at the Piz Gloria rink earlier that night. This man who never flinches in the face of death, flinches when deeper feelings overwhelm him, but has the courage to stick with them. At the end, after the wedding, he breaks his usual reserve very beautifully. See it again and check out his eyes when he says a wordless goodbye to Moneypenny after throwing her the bouquet. He's like a genuinely hopeful child, warm and alive; Moneypenny recognizes it and the true extent of their bond is made clear. Lois Maxwell's relation to Lazenby's Bond isn't just the usual flirting, both actors make it deeper than anything with Connery or Moore. 

Lazenby's still Bondian, tough, resourceful, brave, but those tears at the end are earned. And Kojak's a funny Blofeldt (I always crack up when he starts his mind control tape with "You remember when you first came here? How you hated chiggens?") And Joanna Lumley is one of the sleeper agent beauties and the great Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti (L'Aventura) is perfect as his new Italian 'demolitions' mogul father-in-law, Ilse Stepatt comes off like Divine crossed with a German shepherd.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
(expanded 11/15)

This is where Moore's Bond first shows his kid-friendly slapstick side, and needs a villain to give him a lifetime of free passes. I mean, rilly... this rich killer constructs an elaborate funhouse just to chase Bond through, all so he can kill him with a golden gun? Why does he have a wax statue of Bond in there before even meeting him? What kind of a spy worth a damn is so famous a killer on a remote island can fashion a perfect statue of him. In other words, this plays like a long episode of FANTASY ISLAND rather than a real Bond movie and not just because of Hervé Villechaize. Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is the titular man, an ex carnival sharpshooter and ex-KGB assassin with a superfluous third nipple who charges a million a hit. But "who would pay a million dollars to have me killed?" Moore's Bond wonders. He then calculates to M that his situation might improve if he finds Scaramanga first, before Scaramanga shoots him. Brilliant deduction, OO7. At any rate, now on HD widescreen, Scaramanga's expressionist funhouse shooting range and island paradise--built in and around natural cave formations like a combination miniature golf course and manmade waterfall--is awfully gorgeous, but the idea he'd consider Bond a famous secret agent is idiotic - secret agents don't have publicity agents - that's the point. You never find out what they did until they write their books years after retiring, and even then have to change a lot around. This movie acts like he's a movie star. There's dumb bits of comic relief like the return of the fat sheriff from the last film, shouting at the HK locals, calling them "a bunch pointy heads in PIE-jamas" and showing no real need to be in the film except to provide highlarity (a fight scene in a belly dancer's dressing room is similarly just window dressing). Thai boxing and karate demonstrations paint a portrait of Asian culture as sweaty, brutish and quick, overcrowded, with humidity condensed on every surface. Bond girl (and supposed British field agent) Good Night (Britt Eckland) shouts confidential information in public places and bemoans Bond's womanizing like she's trying to be ditzy-era Goldie Hawn, marking her truly offensive in her incompetence the harder she tries to be irresistible/ We wouldn't see Good Night's like again until Cameron Diaz showed up in KNIGHT AND DAY (See: Terms of Endangerment).

Good thing then that she's safely ensconced in a script that relies on dumb TV plot luck instead of ingenuity: "I could have shot you down when you landed, that would have been ridiculously easy," notes Scaramanga. Yeah right. Thing is, Connery wouldn't have relied on the villain's sportsmanship, and certainly wouldn't be such a smarmy scold about not returning it. Connery's Bond admitted he was a killer, and was callous and confident enough to get away with cold blooded execution. Moore's Bond seems to think he's goddamned Pope Pious, dropping awkward sex talk like he's squinting at a Penthouse bar napkin and playing fair and self-righteous every step of the way.

MOONRAKER:

(expanded 11/15)

Bond seems very old and tired, suddenly, like he should be home watering his garden, not being spun around in a G-force simulator or pretending he could punch Jaws in the mouth and not shatter his wrist. The girls he meets and seduces seem like Valium-zonked call girls paid to pretend he's a spy, tagging behind as he romps around his mansion, uncovering little clues his butler sets up the night before, like an Easter egg hunt. It's rated G, so Bond doesn't even carry his own gun, Drax has to supply him with hunting rifles and lasers as needed. He doesn't even drink or smoke. Not even tea. He'd rather quip and try to stand up straight. He does. 

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME had been such a huge hit, so popular, the underwater sports car thing so cool, so of its time, thrilling parents and kids alike, so perfectly in tune with the shark-obsessed vibe of JAWS and gadget vibe of STAR WARS, that for the follow-up they made the mistake of trying to deliver more of the same instead of doing something new. Now instead of a car that becomes a submarine the becomes a gondola that becomes a comical parade float. Richard Kiel returns as Jaws, gets a Pippi Longstocking girlfriend with braces, and becomes a good guy by the end.

The biggest crime, so rare in any Bond movie, is that the filmmakers and Moore presume our love and laughter without bothering to really earn it, Dr. Goodhead is a painfully sophomoric and snarky name that makes Pussy Galore seem the height of feminist class, and Drax is a dreadfully dull villain, barely an afterthought, oversize head and negative charisma. The girls wear dowdy old peasant blouses, the sort that make girls in the 70s sometimes resemble sister wives from old Mormon scrapbooks, or else (much sexier) LOGAN'S RUN and ZARDOZ cast-offs and. When not seducing Bond, they stand around in readiness like the prostitutes in EYES WIDE SHUT prior to their mind control trigger activation ceremony, remodeled into a WESTWORLD for guys with British spy fantasies (or TIME MACHINE eloi). Dumb sight gags abound and repeat: an old coughing Italian man at the Venice cafe sees a floating coffin and throws his cigarette away; the password to get into the secret lab is the notes from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. That's two just off the top of my head.

On the plus side: the sets are great, Drax's big compound is like a post-modern architecture version of Times Square times a Mayan temple, and the cars and rooms are all flawless and cavernous (or really good models - and if you can't tell which is which, that's a compliment to both). And there's one legitimate great moment: a slow Carnivale clown stalk that in its weird shambling silence recalls the previous year's HALLOWEEN! And  I dig the go-for-broke presumption the US has space suit-wearing laser fighting platoons ready to go at a moment's notice against amok capitalists playing Noah of the cosmos as if that happens all the time and we just don't hear about it.

At least the 70s were almost over, and all the variety show schtick that resurged from its watery Vaudeville grave would descend once more into the abyss. With cable there would no longer be a need to appeal to the elderly, children, and everyone in- between all in the same TV hour. But it's still the 70s here and it's rated G. And so we have the sort of movie where we get a tour through a priceless antique glass exhibit and know in a few scenes it's gonna be trashed in a brawl--why else is there even a 'glass exhibit'? It's like a delivery boy trying to cross the street with a stack of boxes during the running of the bulls when he could easily just stay in a doorway 'til they pass. And bouncy music plays after every lame innuendo to the point you expect Harvey Korman to pop out of a trap door and say "Whaaaaaaa?!"

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH:

(from: The Elektra King Hair Complex: Acidemic 11/08 - revised 11/15)

Which brings me to Sophie Marceau, sweet... sweet Sophie. She's got the sense of nymphonic entitlement we need for a Bond girl. When her Elektra lounges in gold-trimmed Middle Eastern richness, she not only breaks the Vogue Kazakhstan fantasia mold, she breaks its American and British neighbors. Being French surely helps; look at the way she rocks that leather skirt at right? You could die in awe. As King, she acts like she grew up in luxury, truly comfy with the finer things designed for and by the big money French which the petit Bourgeois of America pretend suits them. By contrast Tomorrow Never Dies' Terri Hatcher, who looks like she'll start stealing the designer shot glasses as soon as Bond steps into the hotel bathroom. Marceau is Bond's equal, maybe even his superior, both in machinations and using sex to manipulate and get information, and in confidence, ease in her own skin, sense of non-abrasive authority, and sheer coolness -- little bits of business, like her use of playful ice cubes from the champagne bucket when in bed with both Bond and her terrorist Carlyle, for example, carries a sense of spontaneous improv like Brando in The Missouri Breaks and Last Tango in Paris.

Representing the Americans in World is the much more age-inappropriate Denise Richards as an atomic physicist named Christmas Jones (one of the best pieces of stunt casting in the history of cinema). One look at her marching around an abandoned Russian missile silo in sexy khaki shorts and all your worries slip away. Richard's not a great actress but she doesn't need to be, maybe even shouldn't be. Like all the best Bond beauties she acts from her hips, sexual the more she tries not to be (the way a better actress like Halle Berry can't). And as was the style in the Brosnan Bonds, there are plenty of truly bad girls, including the opening assassin in the fiery balloon and boat chase. Only TOMORROW avoids them, rather to its downfall. WORLD makes up for it, in fact there's a stretch where it seems MI6 is a true matirarchy--as Dench's M, Miss and Dr. "Warmflash" (Serena Scott Thomas)--all debrief Bond and make their own snarky comments as to his stamina and 'touching dedication.' Bond is actually outnumbered! That's pretty great, and a shame we've already slid so far back.


The best Bond movies are ageless the more they grow antiquated, but SKYFALL has so raised the bar that it's tough to go back to the lewd double entendre smirking and embarrassed pun groaning of the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan eras (which the more discreet Timothy Dalton avoided). That's why the very 90s capsule-ish THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH has always been unusual for me. One, because it has two of my favorite Bond girls, for opposite reasons; two, because for all that, it's still not satisfying--it's made at the end of the 90s and is like a tentative swimmer dipping a toe across the centennial Cocteau traversable mirror, no longer afraid of strong, cool, confident, qualified professional women, but unable to let go of 90s things like venetian blinds, Goldie's teeth, post-ecstasy depression, and sexual disillusionment


The first true femme fatale of the series she easily outpaces the cancer-stricken-looking miscast Scotsman Robert Carlyle (clearly hired because he was so good at being a terrifying Glasgow hooligan in Trainspotting, another quintessential 90s curio). here he's just another bloated and bitter townie suffering from his love to a pretty co-ed who wouldn't in a million years take him home to meet her folks. Luckily Marceau's so good as King she survives even Bond's overall trite condescension, that thing he has where every woman in the world is supposed to fall for him, give up her life on his whim, and then forget and forgive him while he wanders off with nary a word of thanks once the credits roll. In this case the opposite: all Elektra has to do is shed a tear and Bond gets all paternal. He deserves all he gets, as does every man who lets himself be blinded by her beauty, myself included. And for her, well, it must suck to be the only mature one in a world run through of stock stereotype snickering, where no one ever contradicts or refuses you. In fact, if anything Bond reminds me of Fred MacMurray in Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY, only Denise Richards is Eddie G. and Sophie is Stanwyck.

The difference is, McMurray knew Stanwyck was evil and was frightened by how much it turned him on. He knew better but just watched as if from afar as he ruined his life by scorching himself in her sultry flame. Brosnan's Bond of course is the opposite; he always has to have the upper hand, at least in his  mind, to be either a paternal lover or a cold judge and executioner when she's found to be playing him just as he's played so so so many. What is is Eddie G. said in LITTLE CESAR, that you can dish it out but can't take it no more? 

---

CASINO ROYALE: 
(1/07 -Bright Lights)

Finally saw the new Bond and totally freaked out about it. First off, it’s interesting to see Bond as a young man “learning not to trust again” –SPOILER ALERT– by actually falling in love and trying to live a normal life, with all the weeping and acting emotional that such a life entails. In other words, CASINO ROYALE is not a remake of the Peter Sellers version, but a pre-modern re-imagining of the last Bond film that attempted to be this good, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. It’s like every 37 years Bond meets a girl and falls in love for the first time.

The nifty thing about this new Bond approach is the way it remains conscious of the Moebius strip upon which it runs. It is aware, for example, that the entire cycle of Bond films–which stretch from the Cold War straight through to the future–actually involve the surpassing of technologies in real life that were created in the older films as sci fi devices. Consider for example the “full circle” of our post-modern nostalgia over the gigantic “futuristic” computers of the old Bond villains like Dr. No–with their reel-to-reel computer tapes and punch cards–which we watch on plasma screens from super deluxe DVD sets or ultra slim laptop computers. And now Bond is actually younger and the futuristic gadgets he thought were so nifty have not just been invented but have been over-promoted to the point of un-coolness, and promptly forgotten, and his boss has become a woman, and suddenly he is newly promoted to the job he’s had all his life, and he is ready to meet the only woman he will ever love… for the SECOND TIME!

This sort of thing happens on purpose a lot in David Lynch films like LOST HIGHWAY, but in James Bond it happens entirely as a way to keep the films fresh and the character alive, I know that. But that’s what makes digging for Lacanian subtexts all the more rewarding.

One of my favorite theories for life after death and alternate dimensional living is called quantum immortality. I read the phrase in Cliff Pickover’s amazing book, Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves, but actually arrived at a similar theory myself after realizing that alcoholic black-outs proved we would never die as long as we could remember where we were. (more on that some other time). Seeing Bond tonight in his sixth incarnation, in a title-only remake of the film of the book by Ian Fleming, I felt myself lost in a train car of mirrors, traveling the Moebius strip around and around like a tiger chasing its own tail, or serpent eating its own foot, and I loved every first second of it, because I don’t need to have alcoholic blackouts to double back on myself and be assured of the validity of quantum immortality anymore, I have BOND.

Everyone’s talking, for example, about how great it is that this film offers a “stripped down” Bond: no gadgets and space needles and laser beams. Right. Don’t you see, dear reader, what that means when “stripped down” is still using gadgets–such as cell phones, notebook computers, wireless webmail, satellite surveillance–that would blow the minds of Dr. No or Ernst Blodfeldt, that would make them howl with delight? That sort of stuff is, to us, “stripped down.” We have reached the primordial Now of technology already, where there is nowhere higher to go so the imaginary IS the real. With the digital age spinning faster and faster around us we realize it’s impossible to die because we see ourselves re-born before our eyes, right there plain as the phallic nose on your face in the mirror silver screen. How cool would it be in the sequel of they got all the still-alive Bond actors together in one room (top)? You know, like in 2001, when Kier Dullea sits in a room with himself as an old man and then heads back to earth as a star baby? Damn cool, is the answer, especially if they were all yelling at each other.

Another great example of the Bond effect that comes to mind is in the end of TERMINATOR 3 when future, past, future/past, and past/future all suddenly connect and stop into an eternal now with just Clare Danes, two turntables and a microphone… that future when machines take over, baby, that’s already happened. It’s as clear as the “look” on your face. And you know what?? we LOVE it. We invented it after all, and what can’t kill us only makes us smaller, faster, and more efficiently designed. (James Bond Rides the Strip)

Miss Moneypenny and her  Big Bond Phallus

(Acidemic 11/08)

An example of a character having innate understanding of Lacan's "impossibility of desire" can be found in the James Bond series' Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) and her office flirtations with James Bond (in all his various incarnations). She's remained the same for several. Come along with me on this structural adventure as we see just how and why.

Maxwell, in her grrlish days

Note that the regular flirtation of Bond and Moneypenny begins with her feigned anger at him for arriving "late." No matter when Bond arrives, she makes it seem as if he is late and that M is angry at him. But in the locus of their combined desire, Bond can never be anything but "on" time. M will usually berate him on some minor point before laying out the details of his case. Q also pretends to be annoyed with Bond's childishness, but at the same time, entrusts him with millions of dollars of high-falootin' gadgetry. He regularly saves the world but also avoids the thanks of his government as his prize is already in hand, a hot Bond girl all wet from a narrow escape.

Moneypenny doesn't give Bond thanks but what he truly appreciates. She sets herself up as an upper-middle class spinster, pining for a secret agent who prefers more exotic, younger women. And he in turn professes to love only her, implying he's sleeping with everyone but her as he can only love the one he hasn't quite gotten around to yet. And if she pushes the issue, he instantly propositions her: "Drinks, my place. Tonight." But she ignores his request; sure that he is not being serious. Between the two of them is an implicit understanding regarding the parameters of their pretend courtship. If she took him seriously, or if he was actually sincere, bad blood would instantly erupt. Alas, in our post-PC era, no such parameters can really be established, so the fine art of fake flirting is all but gone. Too bad, because it's great practice... the pair switch role from pursuer to pursued on a regular basis, each claiming they pine for the other, and so forth.

Thus, Moneypenny's desire for James is innately dependent on his withholding of that desire's gratification. Such examples occur throughout cinema as well as in life, but this one is worth noting since it's ubiquitous and recognizable, a key signifier of the Bond series. This regularity itself makes it a fine example of the Lacanian phallus. Bond "owns" the phallus, as the ultimate "one who enjoys" the way that's impossible in the Real; but Moneypenny is the one who truly owns its lack in the purest Lacanian sense; she alone understands that having access to the phallus will not prevent its lack, but will in fact destroy the position from within which that lack originates. (MORE) 

Supporting Babes of Bond - Part One:)

(Bright Lights - 11/08)

Critics are mixed and audience feedback wildly disparate over Quantum of Solace, but while you are formulating your opinion or, like me, waiting for the initial crowds to disperse before taking in the second Daniel Craig entry, why not give a ‘flix to the Bonds of the illustrious past? Better yet why not look at their hot babes? And better yet, the babes who are also evil henchmen, seductress-spies and/or the super villain of the film themselves!

The first such babe appears in Dr. No. Zena Marshall plays the sinister-spy secretary Miss Taro. A buxom, sumptuous Asian-hybrid babe in the early Playboy tradition, Ms. Marshall oozes libidinal treachery as Taro, but she’s an amateur in the spy game and James is a professional. After surviving the ambush set for him en route to a booty call at her hilltop chalet, Bond “takes what’s coming to him” as a survivor’s fee–letting her think he doesn't suspect she's stalling him until the second round of assassins arrive. He’s aware though, naturally. After the post-coitus haze has cleared, he hands her over to the authorities and calmly waits in her darkened bedroom for the next cockblocking killer to creep in.

Sexual chessboard spy games would become taboo with the dawn of “political correctness” Bond, where sex must be harnessed to confessions of love with moistened eyes or at least some amount of mutual respect, but seen today, this sort of grudge-f*cking is fresh and totally tantalizing (Connery's Bond especially never misses a chance). Why shouldn’t male spies be active in the web of counter-seduction, rather than moping around passively like Claude Rains in Notorious or John Gilbert in Mata Hari? That stuff is for chumps! The East German Stasi had a whole program of handsome undercover spies seducing lonely NATO secretaries. Sean Connery’s Bond knows full well that the best intel is won between the sheets, and he’s just the man to go after it, letting his target think she’s playing him for a sucker all the while. Call it sexism all you like, but I would argue, in hindsight, Bond shows Miss Taro real equality; she’s treated like a spy among spies, and not some precious third wave princess who must be showered in jewels and pampered royally just to get it on already.

--

FINAL LINK: We've gotten into the spirit of the thing by having a lot of 'ahem' girls up in these pics and descrips. Bond seems to breed Mad Men era sexism like a virus... but maybe I can prove I'm sensitive via this double book review of HAMMER GLAMOR (there was bit of bleed over between Hammer and Bond girls, both coming from the same country and studio) and a book called FEMME FATALE - back in Bright Lights 

That's all, but Erich Kurtz will return in ANYTHING THAT KILLS YOU MAKES YOU COOL FIRST.

Monster Capsules: BIG ASS SPIDER, WAKE WOOD, WOMAN IN BLACK, DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, VALLEY OF GWANGI

BIG ASS SPIDER

2013 - ***

A sometimes not wince-inducing monster film, Big Ass Spider shows director Mike Mendez knows how to keep a low budget giant monster flick fleet-footed. Greg Grunberg (Alias, Heroes) shoots for a Seth Rogen vibe as the semi-dopey exterminator who "thinks likes a spider" and really wants a girlfriend, a combination that eventually proves him the best man for the job of tracking and wrangling the titular amok experiment. First it gets loose inside a hospital, then grows to titanic proportion and climbs a downtown L.A. office building. Playing a kind of PG version of Seth's unforgettable psychopath in 2009's Observe and Report, Grunberg walks against the tide of fleeing extras in slow-mo to a haunting cover of the Pixies' "Where is My Mind" and even if the film defies regulations by showing full monster too early, and even though the thundering orchestral library military leitmotif quickly wearies the nerves, low-key bemusement endures throughout. Ray Wise (Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks) is the head of the military clean-up squad that at first wants nothing to do with the dopey Grunberg; Clare Kramer is the hottie lieutenant who winds up all webbed up and waiting for rescue. Lombardo Boyar is a kind of less funny Michael Peña from Observe and Report (my review here). That's not a dis on Boyar, he's fine, but Peña is hilarious because he's genuinely dangerous, Boyar is merely genial. If Pauline Kael had been alive to praise Observe and Report in 2009 she would, and maybe it wouldn't have bombed and as a result Boyar would be edgier. She'd probably also enjoy, to a point, Big Ass Spider, because she liked bad bug movies. She was a great, great lady, man.

WAKE WOOD

2010 - ***

Hammer is back with this keen medley of Monkey's Paw-ish family grief, Wicker Man pagan rural secrets, and the never-gets-old 'terrifying child who kills for no apparent reason' motiif. When a veterinarian (Aidan Gillen) moves his family to the small rural England town of the title, and his daughter has her throat torn out by a guard dog, the townsfolk (led by Mike Leigh-regular Timothy Spall) spill their secret: the town is cursed/blessed with the ability to restore the suddenly dead to life for three days so loved ones can say their proper good-bye. But the grief-stricken mother (Eva Barthistle - who was in the similar The Children two years earlier) doesn't want to let her daughter go when time's up. Ungrateful woman! Doesn't she know what will happen? Did no one tell her?! No they didn't. Pretty short-sighted of them! Soon the child's using telekinesis in combination with a crowbar to off the protesting locals and her dull yellow raincoat in the dark woods conjures vaguely Don't Look Now-ish unease. What do the dead locals care, though, when they can always come back for a visit? Aside from a heart being ripped out, some crowbar blunt force trauma, and dying farm animals, there's not much gore. Ahhahah that's a joke. It's Hammer!

WOMAN IN BLACK

2012 - ***1/2

Hammer does it again! They are really on a second roll and, despite the immense attention to Edwardian period detail--enough to suffocate any ordinary picture--Woman in Black is never stuffy and really rather ripping. A surprisingly solid Daniel Radcliffe is a London lawyer sent, Harker-style, to inventory to a dark decaying mansion in a remote, fearful hamlet. There's a great metaphysical shocker ending involving a speeding train, and the woman in black turns out to be a vindictive wraith like Eva Graps and her ghost daughter rolled into one malevolent spirit, but not some Disney type, she's a genuine fright. And if the story follows a too familiar pattern (Dark Water / Ringu meets some Innocents), hey, Hammer practically invented this shit. The ample presence of tight-lipped, suspicious locals at the inn harkens back to the days when a crisply attired Peter Cushing would get a similar cold shoulder while asking for directions and ordering a pint, and the sense of pacing is superb. Even if there's the usual stretches of our Harker-ian hero running around the dark mansion with a drippy candle, here it's done briskly with the dark always a breath away from swallowing him whole. Director James Watkins shows that the chilling power of his Eden Lake (2008) was no fluke, that he is not afraid of bleak but compelling endings, and that he is a new force on the scene, poised to become the next Terence Fisher.

 DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS

1966 - **1/2

Then again, even Terence Fisher isn't always Terence Fisher, such as in this second entry in Hammer's Dracula series (or third counting the Drac-free Brides of Dracula), which I'd been struggling to see for a long time, there having been only a terrible non-anamorphic old Anchor Bay disc which I could never get into, thanks to terrible color fading. Well, this new Blu-ray version is gorgeous proof it wasn't just the non-anamorphic washed-out dullness that made it so avoidable. Even pristine and robustly colored it's a bit of a silly mess, depending on all sorts of idiocy (like a heroine who falls for the same trick twice, and never thinks to keep wearing the cross that saved her life mere scenes ago) to generate suspense. Most of this movie consists of posh Brits leisurely debating whether to spend the night at Dracula's castle. Once Christopher Lee is revived he seems to resent having to wear fangs again, so churlishly appears only 1/3 the way through, and the script thinks one can make a cross out of just about anything (stopping just short of the old crossed fingers trick scared kids are so fond of -see also: my piece on the confusion of symbols and reality in horror films), yet the vampire's got no problem at all strutting around a monastery. So he's fine in a house of God, just not if some atheist points out the cross pattern in the tiles on the floor.

Oh well, the Blu-ray is deliciously un-faded, with rich sickly gold yellows and cherry lifesaver red gels, a 3-D-ish feeling of the dimensions and spaces of the castle, laden with all those masonic triangle candle holders, shields and soft serve swirl columns that constitute Dracula's and nearly every other Hammer castle (which is not a dis- I prefer their sets to real castles which always seem moldy). It's good that it's gorgeous, in short, as there's not much else to do in this film aside from watching idiots leaving each other behind to go investigate sounds, saying they'll be right back, slowly walking down halls, entering rooms, slowly pushing doors open, and never returning. So while Darwin chuckles from on high, we're forced to count the minutes as we're shown every last real-time moment involved in stringing a person up by his feet and slitting their throat over a big stone trough full of Drac ashes. The yellow mist is cool, but still... both Hammer and Universal seemed to think audiences wouldn't buy a character killed in the last film if he didn't get magically revived or de-thawed in the next, as if we couldn't imagine say, a prequel. At least old Drac has good taste in brides as usual. When he punks out hottie Barbara Shelley we all benefit: she finally undoes her prim bun and dour persnickety grousing manner, unleashing a wave of beautiful red hair, a gorgeous alabaster gold neckline and a truly English posh bloodlust, thus expressing within a single film the full breadth--from repressed bitter grouse to uninhibited carnal free spirit--of the English Woman, a force to be reckoned with!

The absence of Peter Cushing, though, is felt like a kidney punch.

VALLEY OF GWANGI

1969- **

Here's a bizarre mix of devotional Harryhausen animation and unconscious cowboy brutality that feels wayy too dated for 1969. The tedious story involves a posse of rodeo cowboys, led by James Franciscus, stumbling onto a desert paradise, long hidden from man, that looks almost the exact same as the depressing lifeless desert they just were traversing, with no sort of ecosystem on evidence remotely close to being able to realistically nourish apex predators like the Allosaurus (colored purple here, for reasons which I'm sure exist). I haven't read up on anything dinosaur-related since third or fourth grade but I still knew more than the alleged paleontologist riding with the cowboys --at one point he even calls a dinosaur a "styranosaurus!" which I presume is his shorthand for tyrannosaurus and styracosaurus, since his mutton chops and teeth are so bogus it must be hard for him to enunciate two such Latin syllable-enriched names in one sentence. At least he knows to get out of the sun when it's time for the Allopsaureuys / Styrackosauss smack-down!

And no disrespect meant to the great Harryhausen, but there's only so many times you can watch creatures who could never survive in their depicted ecosystem mix it up in a flat ugly middle shot diorama desert (these films always imagine dinosaurs as being in the desert, since that's where the bones are found, which again betrays a contemptuous disregard for paleontology, since America's deserts used to be fecund jungles) and here their monochrome purple colors and lack of close-up inserts make them look like plastic kid's toys. Harryhausen's no slouch; he even animates the eohippus! A movie this cheap and meant for kids would usually have regular pony footage shrunk... but taken all in all, it's not even as interesting as a typical arc in Land of the Lost and that used goddamned puppets.

So yeah, I tried to love it for as long as I can remember (it used to be on TV a lot) but I still can't dig Gwangi and I with its recent TCM screening I finally figured out why: it's not just that I hate children in monster movies--especially the burdensome cliche'd big-eyed local boy, 'one peso senor,' moppet that all monster movies set in Mexico, Italy, Greece, or Spain seem to insist on (as if to be in any sunny country is to be swamped in cute little scam artists--and it's not just that its sun-bleached scenery makes me depressed and thirsty, it's mainly because of the unconscious brutality on the part of these cowboys. They never doubt their right to grab the still surviving beasts of Gwangi's valley for public display, killing any of the ones that challenge their safety, and ensnaring the rest, thus proving the point that man destroys every thing he touches all in the name of a measly profit or science. Are we supposed to find Franciscus a hero for trapping the beast in an old church, currently under restoration but still clearly the pride of the city, and torching it. Gwangi screams and screams as Harryhausen captures his burning to death as the sacred edifice topples around him.

Harryhausen is famous for getting us to care about his monsters, but that can backfire, such as in Twenty Million Miles to Earth, which also has the tiresome 'one peso senor' kid and a climactic scene where our abused creature here even has to battle another abused creature -- a circus elephant, (also Harryhausen-animated). I love Howard Hawks, too, but have the same problem with Hatari!  I can't abide abducting animals and keeping them captive for no reason other than for a zoo or circus, or worse, medical experiments and/or forced labor, not any more. Hey, maybe we're growing more sensitive as civilization advances, so what was once normal and natural now seems unduly savage, and all the more callous for being so unconscious.

Luckily, that kind of empathy doesn't apply to Big Ass Spider/s, grasshoppers, plant or rock beings, and mantises --they never manage to earn my sympathy which is how I prefer it; the last thing I want from a giant monster film is to feel like I'm getting a PETA guilt trip. Even a genius like Harryhausen can't give a bug a soul, and for that I am truly grateful. It's this realization that prompts me to stop trying to love Gwangi and instead to look away, look away, towards my disc of Jack Arnold's classic Tarantula (1955) like the one man who finally realizes what matters in life... a giant spider... in love... with Mara Corday...

(See also: I Like Big Bugs and I Cannot Lie)

On the Perennial Rebound: DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971)

This ingenious 1971 Hammer film, long unavailable on DVD in the States, acts as a kind of HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN Victorian era all-star murderer cast, with the implication that the Jack the Ripper got started when Burke and Hare were lynched by an angry London mob, thus depriving Dr. Jekyll of fresh girl glands for his experiments in prolonging life, so somehow... naturally, he switches gender. Directed swiftly and smartly by Roy Ward Barker, it stars Ralph Bates as the Jekyll side, who reasons that in order to prolong his life, so he has time to cure all diseases in the world, it's okay to murder prostitutes for their glands, cutting them up so it's not easily apparent what organ he was after, Ripper-style. That's two of the London Victorian Age House of Horrors tableaux down right there!

In the true Hammer tradition, DJASH has a cynical detachment from the evil he doth. We root for the result of his glandular tests since it means he gets a sex change and morphs into the fabulous Ms. Hyde, played by Martine Beswick, who at least is open about being a cold, calculating sexy killer and not merely some deluded hypocrite with a yen to make it in the history books.


Martine Beswick was one of my dad's favorite science fiction actresses growing up. She was the hot Neanderthal rival of Raquel Welch in 1000 YEARS BC (1967); She was a hot CIA agent working with Bond in THUNDERBALL (1965); she tore it up as a bitchy queen in PREHISTORIC WOMEN. She was everywhere sexy British cinema needed to be. Her sexuality was robust and uninterested in flattering or teasing weak men. And woe to her girl rivals! She is what I love best about imperious British (and Commonwealth) women, as seen today in Kate Beckinsale, Kate Winslet, and Judy Davis,

As Ms. Hyde, her astonishment at her awesome breasts during the first transformation is hilarious, reminiscent of Ellen Barkin's first scenes in SWITCH. And when s/he notices her hair's grown substantially longer in the few minutes of transformation you feel her conveying a slight comical mirth about the nature of fantasy, shrugging it off as the whims of her unseen director. Why bother explaining how one's hair can grow six inches in a matter of seconds? And be shiny, sexy, and well combed, make-up on perfectly? Drag queens who labour for hours to look pretty must be miffed at the ease with which pasty old Jekyll becomes this bombshell. Imagine just drinking your hair long and silky smooth!

 

Adding to the all-Victorian splendor is a Nicholas and Kate Nickelby style family upstairs, with the elderly mom (Dorothy Allison) at the piano, and the hot sister Susan (Susan Brodrick), longing for the cold Jekyll while Nicholas-y Howard (Lewis Flander) longs for Hyde, who is "a widow," as Jekyll explains, passing his alter-ego off as his own sister! She gets a big Italian soap opera piano cue when she materializes, like it's love at first sight in the mirror. Meanwhile his professor mentor (Gerald Sim) tells Jekyll "get a good woman and one day you'll look in the mirror and see a changed man." Haw Haw! Alas, rather than the hoped for lesbian seduction, Hyde's desire leaks over into Jekyll, resulting in Bates making a kind of unconscious pass at Howard. Right there, that's four stars. Now get thee to Blu-ray!

I know why the entombed mummy sings...

In the late 50's-early 70's there was a deluge of marvelously British horror films from Hammer Studios, you probably already know that. But did you know their 1959 MUMMY secretly rules? While they sucked on UHF TV with their washed out prints and bad editing and pan and scanning, they look damned great on DVD. Being British and smart as paint the filmmakers often enriched these pics with colonial and class issue subtext, including a sub-subtext linking buxom beauty co-stars with pre-Christian paganism? Jolly brave and true of this upstart little studio, and damned British. When I read the words Pinewood Studios in end credits now I get all tingly... be it early James Bond, The Avengers, or lovely Hammer.

Many of the Hammer films have aged well; maybe it's that the DVD spit and polish really brings out the deep reds, maybe it's the pre-Christian roots and rigid class system creating far more sparks than would similar situations in the States; Britain's longer history of international third world exploiting and economic inequality makes their horror films--which after all deal with the 'return of the repressed'--- so much more "rich" than ours of the same period. For weird old America we have Edgar Allen Poe ("the divine Edgar") and maybe Ambrose Bierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and then we run into a wall. But England has a whole Victorian era to plunder; the monsters generally come from the wealthy class, and the peasant girls are the first to get it, the nobility last to be suspected and by far the most decadent. Hammer horrors invariably include a cozy tavern scene full of comic relief hypocrite doctors and priests, agitated innkeepers who won't let their daughters divulge information ("Hush up, girl!"), witnesses who no one believes because they're tipplers, and a cowardly populace who bar their door at night.

But the one I want to single out as exemplary in its completely Britishness and gutsy approach to monsterness is Hammer's THE MUMMY (1959), expanded from the 1932 original to include the Victorian equivalent of a Middle Eastern terrorist, an Egyptian Egyptologist (the nerve!) named Mehemet Bay (George Pastell) who dares suggest that ancient burial relics should stay where they are, undisturbed, or the very least stay in Egypt and not become mere curiosities for the swaths of unwashed gawkers at the British Museum. How dare this fez-wearing heathen even suggest such a thing?! But the even-keeled screenplay lets this Mehemet Bay off with plenty of sympathy; he even prays to Karnak, the god of said mummy, to release said mummy's spirit at the end of his vengeance spree. And his house is pretty nice-looking. I'd rather live there than in Cushing's wearily formal mansion. The two actors play well of each other, and their climactic battle of wits--- with Cushing blithely baiting the Egyptian into a confession by dismissing Karnak as a second-rate deity-- is truly a unique sociologically ambiguous moment in horror.

Of course it's not perfect, unless you believe Brits have way too much faith in guns over supernatural juggernauts. Every night he gets a visit from a seven foot-tall mummy who smashes doors apart and barges through rooms like a freight train, and--even after two shots from his revolver did nothing the night before-- Cushing's sure his shotgun will do the trick. What saved him the night before was the late inning presence of his worried wife, as usual the spittin' image of the mummy's dead love. And of course, Cushing insists on sending her away during the mummy attacks, so she'll be "safe." Ah so brave! So blind. So British.

Feminist-wise the film fares little better: the beautiful, cat-eyed Yvonne Furneaux (Carole's sister in REPULSION,  Marcello's clingy girlfriend in LA DOLCE VITA) is the 'living image' of the dead high priestess, the point where if Cushing had a brain he'd just ask his wife to tell the mummy to go back and kill Mehemet. Instead, even after she saves her fey and disinterested husband's life once already, Cushing sends her upstairs, "like a good little girl." Even more brainlessly, at the climax, he has her wait out in the bushes with the inspector so "she'll be safe." And of course, the cops stationed outside fall like dominoes and she's spirited off, as we all know she must. Then again, we don't watch these films to see how to smartly deal with the undead, we watch them to see heavy-breathing beauties walk down dark corridors in their foxy Victorian era negligees, and then get carried into bogs by lovesick corpses.

And man, what a girl. Slim old Peter Cushing looks like he'd be crushed in the sack with her, frankly - she's like twice his weight in this film, and he seems to be implying his characters' secretly queer by the way in which he coldly dismisses her affection; he'd much rather wrestle with a manly mummy! Oh those lads of British theater! Christopher Lee is great as the bandaged (and in flashback unbandaged) high priest, getting to use only his expressive eyes and lumbering gait; you can feel all the horror and anger of being entombed alive for centuries in his sad, lovelorn expression. Hey, if I had been buried all those centuries, I'd try to carry Yvonne Furneaux off to my swampy lair too. If I was unable to speak my love (since the cats back in my home epoch cut out my tongue) or write her sonnets (since my heiroglyphic-writing hand was paralyzed) I'd have to demonstrate it in other ways, like obeying her commands with a shambling wordless courtesy.

I love Cushing! I love this mummy more than all the Universal sequels to the Karl Freund original combined. Which says exactly nothing. Is there anyone in monster fandom who loves the mummy over other monsters? Who is like a 'mummy' fan? To me, the mummy is right at the level of the Wolfman, who leaves me kind of nonplussed, though WEREWOLF OF LONDON has great atmosphere. I love DRACULA (1931) the most, and the Hammer vampire films--with a few tedious exceptions--are my favorites. Still, Hammer's MUMMY is a mummy to be reckoned with, a juggernaut that wastes little time in moving from the door to your throat. Even the lengthy flashback to Egypt is creepy, with long ceremonies of death, death and more death, the strange props that make it associatively linked with Kenneth Anger's unforgettable LUCIFER RISING (1972).

And lastly, one can't ignore the vein of rich critique to be found in exploring the fey way Brits claim Egyptology as their own little playground in these films, seeing Egyptians themselves as having little to no right to their own artifacts, and also even after it's clear Karnak is a badass god who can help mummies live through untold centuries, he's still considered a pagan superstition compared to the god of these fey British scientists, and Mehemet Bey's way cooler and sexier than Cushing in the film. (coming off the best, actually is the American accented Eddie Byrne as the inspector). When the white patriarchal reps see this giant mummy resist bullets and crush larynxes with ease, they still refuse to believe in him, even when he walks off with their girl! I root for the mummy every time! Go mummy! This time you shall be free, shall be free. Even if freedom means a mucky swamp grave, there to float and dream until Jimmy Sangster writes you into life once more. Kharis, you magnificent bastard, I read your scroll!

Grasshoppers are from Mars: FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (1967)

As you may have read on Acidemic's sister blog, Divinorum Psychonautics, I'm fascinated by ancient astronaut theory, and light bulbs are going off in my DNA over Hammer's 1967 mind-bender, FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH, because it fits the paranormal theories of our times --it could be true! It's got everything: crystals used as computers and projectors of remote viewing, antennae mistaken for horns resulting in our modern conception of the devil; ghosts, telekinesis, thought and dream video projection, the origin of man as an alien DNA-spiked primitive ape, mind control early Catholicism, it's all right there! It's the most comprehensive paranoid-but-true ingeniously low budget vision since PLAN NINE.

And you can sympathize with the British ministry of science as well, with Qatermass' alarmism showing no purpose except to shatter public order with hysteria. "People don't believe nothin' til they see it on the telly" -- why wasn't America this hip on what was happening in their sci-fi of the era? No coincidence that this (and the BBC 1958-9 series original) predates Erich Von Daniken's groundbreaking Chariots of the Gods by a few years, or that HORROR EXPRESS and THE CREEPING FLESH came out in the early 70s, all dealing with similar evolutionary 'whoa' epiphanies about the origin of the species and our concept of the Devil. It's like the shit was in the wind, the Akashic record was opened and left on the British library reading desk for any daydreaming sci-fi screenwriter or gutsy archeologist to tap into.

But this came first by over a decade: A giant metallic capsule is found buried in the earth during an East London tube dig, a moody Brit named Dr. Quatermass (Andrew Keir) tangles with by-the-book Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) over whether it's a military threat (a leftover German propaganda device) or a science project. They find dead grasshopper-ish aliens in the ship, but after five million years they're down to their papier mâché exoskeletons, and then all hell breaks loose, literally, as the biblical vision of Hell turns out to be based on our Martian ancestor's memories of fleeing their dying fireball planet projected into our deepest collective unconscious memories. Space Locusts from Mars! Peter Graves knew what to do about giant grasshoppers in BEGINNING OF THE END (1957), but these are Martian ghost grasshoppers, and they've been dead for millions of years while still ghosting it up in the region in the form of wild local populace hallucinations (Spring-Heeled Jack's jumping was the spring of grasshopper legs). The Martian antennae might have been mistaken for horns and that's how the devil was born.

I dig that truth and belief have nothing to do with each other and yet create each other. I dig that the human ego is extraordinarily narrow-minded when it comes to consensual reality and maybe for good reason. Few of us want to connect the dots that lead us to the unpleasant possible truths such as the possibility that our difference from other life on earth is the result of some long-dead biotechnically advanced alien's mad scientist dabbling, especially since it's hard to prove it in any 'scientific' manner and it's scary to think about. We scoff but it's partly that we don't want to be considered 'nuts.' But those who would hear the horrible truth can't help but go nuts, unless it's told to us as fiction. 

FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (1967) has been unavailable on DVD in this country for some time, and used DVDs go for upwards of $70 and I suspect it's because it's too close to the truth. It fills in all the missing dots between ancient astronauts and demons, such as: the 'missing link' in human evolution; how the true story of our creation is encoded in our 'junk' DNA is ready to be projected back as soon as we evolve enough to access it, as if our brain is a video game and we've only mastered the first level but there a thousand more levels still encoded on our grey matter DVD-ROM waiting for us to access, etc.

This idea that sensory impressions of alien contact is buried in our DNA connects with the theories held by scientists like Rick Strassman, who suggests alien abduction-hallucination experiences might actually be interactive DNA code playbacks, which can arise naturally through neuron misfires or be triggered by DMT. The idea that the film's spaceships precede our known civilization enhances the "we are them" aspect. Dude, I'm totally tripping thinking about it all. The crystalline structures in the craft are totally storage for combined alien knowledge and codices for DNA, more intricate and powerful than human consciousness can grasp, vaster than the entirety of the internet all within just one crystal rendered in 'web'-ish sheet plastic that makes it look cheaper than the flimsiest carnival haunted house tableaux.

Like PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE, QUATERMASS is as marred (or enhanced depending on your Brechtian tastes) by lame special effects as it is alive with post-Roswell "truth" (as I write about here). The spaceship looks like two uninstalled hot tubs taped together and the grasshoppers look like beatnik sculptures that would be right at home with Dick Miller's "Dead Cat" in BUCKET OF BLOOD (1956) if not for their shoddy sickly white-green wet paint jobs; the visions of life on Mars looks suspiciously like a fussball table with grasshopper heads stuck onto the little wooden soccer players. Explosions are indicated by the wave of a sparkler in front of the camera. But I actually love this kind of cheap sideshow flimflam as it credits the audience with having a child's imagination enough to fill in all the blanks (with their own DNA-encoded projection memories). With the help of imagination we can be literally hallucinate better effects for the story --we can literally 'see' details that aren't there. When we're adults these details are dismissed as 'hallucinations.' Oh the fools!!

I vividly remember being told the story of this film by an excited, terrified kid late at night when I was around seven years old during a slumber party. He was agog with this tale of frozen insect demons on a spaceship that come alive as ghosts and then the whole world is destroyed and everyone turns evil... and... and... I thought the film sounded impressive and since he was scared talking about it I got scared too. He made it seem like the scariest thing ever made. It sounded so fantastical, I was sure he made it up, for no movie could be that cool and me not know about it. The way he made it sound I figured if I ever saw it I'd just drop dead from fear. But then decades later I finally see FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (AKA QUATERMASS AND THE PIT) and, whoa! This is what that kid was telling me about... and it's still cool, but much cheaper looking than I 'remembered!'

I had imagined all sorts of shocking images: giant blue grasshopper-like monsters glistening and gleaming in their icy chambers, huge pillars of flame cracking the earth in half.... Seeing it now is to laugh heartily and also to wonder if there's not even a purpose to the almost surreal level of cheapness, a kiddie sugar-coating over a core truth too shocking to consider as fact without the accompanying option that it's fake. The official cover story about the crashed craft is that it's a German V2 left over from the Blitz. That's a good alternative truth for the panicked people, and a parallel with the theory that UFOs are experimental Nazi craft brought to the States via Operation Paperclip. People need a story like that to deflect their anxiety. If we ever saw a real flying saucer we might remember it only as a hubcap; we might remember a 'grey' as a white owl; a mantis alien as a grasshopper art project, and that's how it should be. The aliens are too horrible to imagine straight on; we need to believe it might be fake to even consider it might be real. Think of the hardcore fundamentalist conservative who dismisses global warming as liberal brainwashing! God bless their horned little heads! How much like that fiery vision of Hell on Mars will their blindness will reap!

My point: without an out, an alternate "what if," people really would panic, and the first place they'd demand answers would be the science and the military, which would then have to admit they're powerless. As they say in AA, who wants to admit complete defeat? Not us! we hide in the sand of the hourglass even as our every move is under a microscope we will never see, except FIVE MILLION YEARS from now, long after this civilization is dust in some other planet's wind... and lo, people will look to finally see the lord's big TV eye looking down from the microscope of cosmic law, but there will be no bible to remind us how to handle the grasshopper mantis devil soaking up our psychic energy, because everything will be on kindle, and thus long gone, gone as a cloud, and the lord will send Denzel, to bring the bible to us, so it is written in THE BOOK OF ELI (2010)... in CGI.