Farewell to the Master – Harry Bates

Posted on August 1, 2014 by don

Working in reverse order, this is the credited basis for The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951 and indirectly 2008. Saying either of these movies was based on this short story is a stretch, though.

The story didn’t seem to make much of a ripple when first published in the October 1940 issue of Astounding. It was not even mentioned on the cover despite the author having been a previous editor of the magazine. Ten years later, the rights were sold for $500. But maybe that was a good deal for Bates — by changing literally one word in the story, 20th Century Fox could probably have had it for free, without attribution. In fact, he is not credited on the 2008 version.

Unlike the movie versions, Farewell to the Master begins with the spaceship already on the ground, and having been built into a wing of the Smithsonian. The robot Gnut, wisely renamed Gort for the films, has already emerged and has stood as a still sentry before the ship for 3 months.

Cliff Sutherland, a photo-journalist not in the films, has evidence that the motionless Gnut has actually minutely changed positions overnight. Sutherland is hiding in the museum to see what Gnut is up to. For any kids reading this — this is back when journalists actually asked questions and pursued stories rather than being fawning, lap-dog stenographers spoon-fed by politicians. OK, in reality, it was probably no better back then, plus the journalists smelled like whiskey and cigarettes.

We learn that the ship in the story “just appeared”, and did not come in for a landing as it did in both films. After 2 days, a being emerged, “godlike in appearance, and human in form.” He introduces himself as Klaatu and his robot companion as Gnut. I can maybe understand people wanting to use the alternate spelling of Nut, but who added the extra “a” in Klaatu? He wasn’t handing out business cards.

Just as in the the films, he is taken down by a rogue shooter. Unlike the films, this Klaatu displays a Kennedyesque vulnerability to bullets. He is killed immediately, causing a huge departure from both films. Gnut goes still at that moment, not even attending the burial in a mausoleum at the Tidal Basin.

The ship and Gnut both prove too unwieldy to move, so the government does its thing, claiming it for the Smithsonian, and no doubt finding a way to tax it.

Sutherland’s stakeout is rewarded as he sees Gnut not only move, but return inside the ship through the elusive doorway. Sutherland witnesses a few scenes that are a mystery to him involving a mockingbird and a gorilla. The next night, Sutherland returns and speaks to a man inside.

With Sutherland becoming Gnut’s BFF on earth, Gnut puts Sutherland on his shoulders and carries him toward Klaatu’s grave. This was not so much horseplay as it was security against the army launching a howitzer at him. Gnut uses a few items from Klaatu’s grave, not to resurrect him, but to create a doppelganger.

Klaatu is only revived for a short time, so I’m not sure what the point was. As Gnut is leaving, Sutherland implores him to tell his world that the death of his master was an accident, and that we’re really swell guys. Gnut responds with what is supposed to be a gut-punch, a real mind-bender. Maybe in 1940, it was.

So, it is an OK little story, providing only a few bare basics for the films. Although the alien is named Klaatu, the full iconic “Klaatu Barada Nikto” is never used in the story. The entire middle of both movies — the 1951 boarding house & 2008 roadtrip — do not exist here, what with Klaatu being dead. The ultimatum issued to earth, the demonstration of their power, the threat of destruction — all concocted for the movies. Basically what we have here is a spaceship, a guy named Klaatu and a robot almost named Gort.

But, given its progeny, it is worth a read.

I was also interested in some of the word usage of 75 years ago:

“Ladies and gentlemen,” began a clear and well-modulated voice – but Cliff was no longer attending.
Do you think Gnut was dereanged in any way by the acids, rays, heat, and so forth applied to him by the scientists.
A while ago you used the word purposive in connection with Gnut’s actions. Can you explain that a little?

Outer Limits – Under the Bed (S1E10)

Posted on July 31, 2014 by don

Not to be confused with Under the Bed.

I feared I was on thin ice when I saw director René Bonnière had not only an accent grave in his name, but also an accent aigu. What is this, Ray Bradbury Theater?

Ridiculously cute kids Jillian and Andrew Rosman are sent to bed by their single mother Sharon. Andrew is missing his teddy bear and hears it beckoning him from below the bed. Not being named Teddy Ruxpin, this is suspicious behavior even to a dumb little kid. When he tries to retrieve the bear, his sister sees a tentacle grab him. The girl does a great job of registering the attack, and even gave me a little chill.

After a particularly awful opening narration, TV’s favorite yuppie Timothy Busfield arrives to save the day. He meets up with detective Caitlin Doyle who immediately suspects the absentee dad.

The next day, Busfield goes to Police headquarters where Doyle has dragged in Mr. Rosman for questioning. I was happy to see the police station is at the Strughold Mining Company from The X-Files.

Left: Outer Limits, Right: X-Files. Are they ever going to fix those windows?

Being a 40-year old guy on TV, naturally Busfield has daddy issues. Turns out they became estranged after Busfield’s brother mysteriously disappeared much like Andrew. The next day, Busfield is again pumping the detective about Andrew’s father.

Busfield then asks Jillian to act out the abduction with dolls. Jillian tosses the Daddy doll away. As she is searching for a way to explain the abduction, Busfield again prompts her to implicate her Daddy. “Not Daddy,” she says, tossing away the Daddy doll she already tossed away seconds before. Jillian names the boogeyman as the abductor.

Jillian just won’t give Busfield the answer he wants so he finally resorts to hypnotizing her to get more information. As she relives the trauma and screams about the thing under the bed, Busfield once again tries to inject Daddy into her mind as the culprit, “What makes Jillian afraid? Is it Daddy?” Thank God Jillian is more honest than Busfield, and she blames the boogeyman again.

This guy has more daddy issues than a season of Lost.

Later, Jillian is called to the window by Andrew. As she opens the window, Andrew becomes the boogeyman and grabs her arm. Busfield shows up and immediately asks again if it was her father.

This obsession would have made sense if that were the point of the B-story with his father, but it really wasn’t. He never suspected his father was responsible for his brother’s disappearance. This was just him being the worst, most leading anti-father child psychologist in history.

Busfield finally gets off the Daddy-wagon and figures out that it really is the boogeyman. But not before Jillian is taken. Busfield and the cop find Jillian and kill the boogeyman. It is strange that zero-mention is made of her brother Andrew. Presumably he is dead, so I credit them for not going for the feel-food ending. It is just kind of strange that they don’t mention him or look for his body.

The last scene of the episode shows the Eiffel Tower and then a French kid about to be abducted. I knew René Bonnière was going to jam France down our throats at some point.

Some good performances, and I actually got a legitimate chill. But still only manages to be so-so.

Post-Post:

The police station / Strughold Mining pictured above is located at the Britannia Mining Museum in British Columbia.
William MacDonald (Daddy) played 5 different credited roles in the X-Files. I thought that would be a record, but there were at least 4 other actors in the 5-timers club.
Per IMDb, this is the 2nd lowest rated episode from Season 1. Of course, the worst was White Light Fever.

All Cheerleaders Die (2013)

Posted on July 30, 2014 by don

The standard by which all cheerleader movies of any genre is judged is Bring it On. This is no Bring it On.

The sad part here is that All Cheerleaders Die was so close to greatness. You can still see sparkling gems scattered throughout like Leena’s Wiccan stones, but much of it is a mess.

We start out with a video profile of head cheerleader Lexi being taken by nobody Maddy. Lexi is certainly cute, but like most everyone in this high school, is an asshole. Kudos to the producers for getting the movie off to a great start by dispatching her quickly and cruelly.

The next year, Maddy puts on some eyeliner, let’s her hair down, and is suddenly gorgeous. Maybe this is a sign that Hollywood has finally figured out you don’t ugly-up girls by putting glasses on them.

Maddy’s relationship with Alex is not clear — was she a real friend, or a hanger-on just doing a class assignment? Clearly, she was not one of the cool kids. The next year, she is trying out for Lexi’s spot on the squad. We get a montage of the cheerleaders and football players practicing their craft, Not to pick this thing to death, but an unusual number of shots are poorly framed, or shot too far from — or too close to — the subjects. Maybe they were hiding the stunt people; I never had this problem with Buffy, though.

If there was one frame of the whole squad looking decent, I missed it.

Maddy’s motivation seems pretty loose. She hates Tracey because she started dating Lexi’s boyfriend Terry before a suitable mourning period. Granted, despite being a dead-ringer for Tiger Woods, he is the most hatable guy I’ve seen onscreen in quite a while, but this is thin stuff. But wait . . . for an hour, the film withholds the fact that asshole Terry raped her the previous summer. It would have been better for her motivation to be completely mysterious rather than use this flimsy excuse about dating etiquette for half the movie.

Now that Maddy is on the squad, she no longer has time for her freaky Wiccan friend Leena. But wait, wasn’t she just becoming a cheerleader to get revenge on them? How did Leena get shut out in the process? Again, we don’t know their relationship. There are indications that she is either a) a stalker, or 2) a friend from Maddy’s pre-cool days, or c) a lesbian ex-girlfriend. I think we’re all pulling for “c”, but a little nudge from the writers would have been nice.

The girls have a pool party. “Bitches only.” They send the “Dawgs” away. Maddy tries to drive a wedge between Tracey and asshole Terry by ratting out his infidelity. Mentioning that he raped her might have also caused trouble in paradise. She then tries to steal Tracey away by coming on to her. This is one of the aforementioned gems.

At yet another party, Leena is off by herself with her stones. Maddy and Tracey start making out again. Soon asshole Terry shows up and proclaims that the the football players will no longer fraternize with the cheerleaders. Tracey tells him off and asshole Terry punches her in the face. Hard.

The girls drive off and asshole Terry & his suck-ups chase them, quickly running them off the road. The car lands in a river upside down. A couple of the guys protest, but asshole Terry makes like asshole Ted Kennedy, leaving the girls to die.

Leena, following in another car, pulls the girls from the river and uses her Wiccan stones to resurrect them. Their scene waking up at Leena’s house had a lot of potential, but the opportunity was largely squandered. Like the party scenes, the large group of people was not handled effectively. This seemed to be a recurring theme — not knowing quite how to handle a crowd, and poor choices on composition.

There were some nice shots and even whole scenes in the last half of the movie, but it frequently seemed confused. Maybe this is the result of having two directors. With the exception of Leena’s neighbor Larry (Michael Bowen), I can almost make a perfectly sexist divide and say the female performers were all good to great, and the male characters were either zeroes or repugnant.

It is easy to say the tone was wrong, or inconsistent, or rushed. But then there will be 10 examples of films where the abrupt tonal change worked. Pretty much anything will work in the right hands. Unfortunately, the 4 hands directing this film were not able to make it work.

2, 4, 6, 8, I did not appreciate.

Post-Post:

What? Is there no shower room at this high school?
Terry really should be treated like Brad in Rocky Horror. Every time he appears on screen, the audience should yell “asshole!”
I’m far from high school, but Christ this is the worst music I’ve ever heard! Pretty quickly got my fill of “bitches” and “dawgs” also. I noticed the subtitles opted for the more traditional “dogs.”
Loved this shot, but again, they botched the composition. Nice 3 feet of headroom when her feet should have been fully in the frame to indicate her 100% vulnerability and obliviousness to anything other than her desire to feed.

Ray Bradbury Theater – Tyrannosaurus Rex (S2E10)

Posted on July 29, 2014 by don

I thought maybe we were back in the USA given the subject matter of this one. Sadly, no. And that is really too bad since it it features a uniquely American art form, and is personally relevant to Ray Bradbury.

Young Terwilliger brings a demo reel of his stop-motion animation to nasty, brutish film producer Mr. Clarence for review. In case we did not know Clarence was a jerk, he is given a huge squarish protrusion above his left eye. Cuz different people is evil. Clarence likes the demo, but grudgingly offers Terwilliger only $2,000 to do the special effects for his next film.

I am tempted to say his is the kind of film destined to be included in a collection of 20 for $5. Sadly, none of those 20 has yet shown the skill and dedication required for stop-motion animation. But, to be fair, I haven’t gotten to Gingerdead Man 3 yet.

Terwilliger accepts the contract and we watch him designing the dinosaur models. We get small insights into the process, such as how the artists use peanut shells to impress texture into the clay skin of the models. Also, that artists like peanuts. The filming commences and we see a little of the painstaking work required to move the models 1/16th of an inch for each shot.

Despite the work Terwilliger puts in, and how much Clarence’s lawyer praises the effects, Clarence rolls out of the shadows to berate them both and claim ownership of the models. He also demands constant changes to the bodies, more spikes, bigger teeth, angry eyes, claws like razors. Clarence demands that the dinosaur be a monster!

Clarence is finally satisfied at the screening when he sees a dinosaur that is a true monster. Terwilliger is a little fearful of his response, since the monster was clearly based on Clarence. I guess there’s not much you can do to make a dinosaur look like a man, but giving it a huge knot over its left eye was a pretty clear shot across Clarence’s brow.

Leaving the screening, Clarence realizes the dinosaur was based on him and screams for Terwilliger — for God’s sake, let’s just call him T! Clarence catches up to T in the studio and fires him, threatening a lawsuit. The lawyer tells Clarence that the film was actually a tribute to him, hero of the motion picture industry. The dinosaur represents the lonely, cunning, strong producer, all thunder and lightning, never appreciated.

Clarence, literally a blockhead, is vain enough to buy this load of crap. He generously offers, “You’re both still on the payroll, but just until the preview.” This is especially generous to the lawyer who pointed out earlier, that he had not been on the payroll for months.

At Le Cinema that night, the house is filled completely with hot French teenage girls, illustrating once again that I went into the wrong business. After the movie, the girls swarm Clarence for autographs. T is baffled by this response until he discovers that the girls are a Scout Troop recruited by the lawyer through his niece.

Final shot of the episode which suddenly puts the knot on the other side of the dinosaur’s head.

Clarence is reveling in the adulation, and the lawyer tells T, “Looks like we both still have jobs.” This despite the fact that the lawyer had no job, and T was just a contract worker for that one film. T points out that this time it is the lawyer who has created the monster.

Although, surrounding this bitter, lonely, middle-aged man with adoring underage French girls for the first time in his life might just be entrapment.

Post-Post:

This episode and the short story are considered to be an homage to Ray Harryhausen, king of stop motion animation and friend of Bradbury since their teens. A great overview of his work can be seen here.
No mention of Harryhausen, but a good article here on the group of young men in southern California who shaped sci-fi and horror during the 50s and 60s.
Out of 65 episodes in this series, this one is rated #64 by users on IMDb. That seems harsh. It’s no masterpiece, but there is a little fun to be had here. And God knows the bar is pretty low for this series.
Are there really this many open fires in the streets of France?

Night Shadow (1989)

Posted on July 28, 2014 by don

20 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong. Part XII.

Infobabe Alex Jung is shown leaving KLOF studios. There is a KLOF in Wyoming, but this seems to be California. Also, KLOF is a radio station.

Having been offered a big promotion, she is heading back to her hometown of Danford to mull it over. Reaching the town, she sees a Mansonesque man on the side of the road beside a car. She wisely drives on. An old friend of hers stops to help and is killed for his friendliness.

In the next scene, we are introduced to Kato Kaelin, best known as a friend of OJ Simpson during his murder trial. Sadly for him, it is impossible for anyone of a certain age not to make that association. He doesn’t help himself here with the giant mullet, but it was the 80’s.

While he is making out with his girlfriend, a couple of guys burst through the front door. One is wielding a rifle, the other is wearing a Freddy Krueger bladed glove, and both have stockings over their faces. After briefly scaring the couple to death, the two reveal themselves to be Kato’s friends and they all have a good laugh . . . at them peeking in at the couple making out; and eavesdropping; and breaking down the door; and pointing a rifle at them. In the friend department, that Kato sure has a type.

Christ, if there were pasta in the fridge, they’d be going all Lady and the Tramp.

The scariest part is the er, camaraderie of the three guys. For a bunch of 30 year old guys, they are they most giggly bunch of 12 year old girls I’ve ever seen. By that age, my father had been in 2 wars. I had been in no wars by 30, but did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

The one minor spark of life in the entire movie is when they close the front door and it falls off the hinges. That’s it. That’s the high point. Of the whole movie.

Alex meets her brother at the local diner. For reasons unexplained, he is Chinese. In a good movie, that might be an interesting quirk, even more-so if uncommented upon. Here, it mostly annoyed me. I suspect they hired a Chinese actor just because the role called for some chop-socky later. Across the diner, Alex locks eyes with Manson-man again. There is clearly some sort of connection because there are several seconds of their faces with lightning bolts appearing in front of them.

The Sheriff happens by and breaks the trance. When Alex looks back at the bar, Manson-man is gone.

Three bodies have shown up in Danford bearing signs of an animal attack; although one of them animals what throws his leftovers in a dumpster or car trunk. By this point, some sort of hint of what this movie is about is long overdue for the audience. However, rather than any exposition or foreshadowing, we get another shot of Alex and Manson-man locking lightning eyes.

Finally at 58 minutes in, the film decides it is about a wolfman. Kato Kaelin does an excruciating homage to Bill Murray from Caddyshack. The wolfman then kills Kaelin by . . . slashing his jugular? Biting a chunk out of his neck? Disemboweling him with a razor-sharp claw? No, the wolfman runs him through with a pipe. Don’t get me wrong, I think we were all happy to see it, and it was long overdue. It just doesn’t exactly play to the strengths of a wolfman-American.

Eventually the wolfman is pinned against a building by a police car. Alex’s brother takes a few shots at the car, and is able cause the gas tank to burst into flames. So we don’t even get a silver bullet for our 90 minutes.

Trying to be positive, Brenda Vance as Alex was very watchable; given some decent material, she could have had a solid career. Beyond her, there is not much to like. Not the script, not the infantile acting, not the effects. This movie has pretty much gotten the resting place it deserves.

Post-Post:

As long as the OJ trial was mentioned, I feel compelled to point out the role that Kim Kardashian’s father had in getting him acquitted.
I can’t find a single US city named Danford, which seems odd.
Stuart Quan had quite the career in acting and stunt work. Sad that of this mediocre bunch, he was the one to die young. At 43, he lost consciousness after snowboarding and died.
In retrospect, I might have hard that Reno thing in a song.
OK, this guy wasn’t bad:

Genre Snaps

Quick takes on Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi and time-permitting, a Western. Don't wait for the Western.

Author Archives: don

Farewell to the Master – Harry Bates

Outer Limits – Under the Bed (S1E10)

All Cheerleaders Die (2013)

Ray Bradbury Theater – Tyrannosaurus Rex (S2E10)

Night Shadow (1989)