Author: Michael W Jackson

Abrigo Nuclear (Nuclear Shelter) (1981) 

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 26 minutes, rated 6.6 by 77 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy FY; Species: Nuke.

DNA: Brazil. 

Verdict:  Didactic. 

Tagline: Chernobyl next!

Leaks, mishaps, explosions from nuclear power plants have poisoned the earth of the Earth. Surviving humanity has retreated to underground hives. One such nest is in Brazil, which had embraced nuclear power with enthusiasm and the low bid contractors did the rest, no corner went uncut. Remember Homer Simpson worked in a nuclear power plant!

For oxygen supply and solar power, periodic forays to the surface are necessary, one scientist who performs this routine maintenance begins to realise that the crisis has passed and the surface is no longer dangerous.  He tries to tell his superiors, who (1) don’t believe him (saying he is stir crazy), (2) don’t listen to him (because he shouts), and (3) discredit his data with 15-minutes of Google clicking.  (4) Pox News weighs in, calling him a woke liberal snowflake in Brazil. Case closed. Remember Plato’s Cave?

He discovers that some others share his misgivings about the current arrangements, and they begin to plot…something.  Their secret is safe with AI.

For some reason it suits Pox News to keep everyone else in the hives. I didn’t fathom that at all. The A.I. generated subtitles didn’t help, and the acting ranges from the blank recitation of lines to shouting for no apparent reason, though it seemed a surprise for most inhabitants to realise the very same scientists who run the hive are the ones that devised and applied nuclear energy, and so are responsible for the catastrophe (I think). It all seemed rather preachy about the evils of nukes like the climate change priests of doom today who never tire of hearing their own voices prophesying fire and brimstone for us all.  

The hive is well realised with a couple of corridors (that reminded me of the Soviet nuclear bunker I once toured in Moscow) and lots of computer screens that in 1980 would have had novelty value. 

Ok, ok, it sounds a lot like THX-1138 (1971) now doesn’t it, right down to the uniform white clothing.  (Don’t these people ever eat soup?) Well yes it does.  But there are no enforcers here nor did I get any sense of waist-down rebellion per Orwell. Maybe it was too subtle for me.  A lot is.   

11 a.m. (Yeolhansi)(2013) 

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 39 minutes, rated 5.6 by 493 cinematizens 

Genre: Sy Fy: Species: Time Travel.

DNA: Korean, South.

Verdict: Kaboom!

Tagline: Trans-genre!

In the not too distant future a group of very young researchers in a deep-sea laboratory work on a time machine.  (Someone should have told them about clocks.)  The lab is astride a Blue Hole near the Marshall Islands because gravity in a Blue Hole ‘behaves differently.’ (So much for science.) The project is funded by a Russian oligarch in a wheel chair.  

(1) Contrary to one reviewer, the Marshall Islands are in the middle of the Pacific, no where near Belize in Central America. (2) Is the duty free shopping in the sovereign micro-state of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (Pop. 58,500) good?  (3) Why is a Russian funding SOUTH Koreans?  What do NORTH Koreans think of that? 

The Russian wants to send them into the future to bring back a cure for wheelchairitis. The lab is expensive and the Russian may have a hidden agenda, hidden at least from the subtitles. The scientists isolated in the lab look like four high school students and two teachers who all seem self-conscious about the age difference among them.  

Via a zoom meeting with no lag, no drop-out, no incomprehensible error message, no black screen, no loss of synchronisation, no nasal shots (see, it is fiction) the Russians gives the submerged Korean crew a deadline. They travel a minute into the future. BFD.* I do that every 60 seconds without spending a ruble. The Russki wants more or he wants his rubles back. So they try a desperate gamble on the as yet untested equipment to go for a 15-minute projection into the future. That would be enough for proof of concept, and in such a short space of time, what can go wrong? [Psst, check the script.]   

Two of them strap into the telephone box and the others push buttons. Everything gets convoluted after this and the genre changes from sort of Sy Fy to Total Disaster when the Kimchi hits the fan. 

Spoiler Alert! Go further at your own risk!

It takes a lot of energy to project that Tardis box and sending it off drains the tanks, then it returns with a mighty jolt that destroys the lab before the SSRN Seaview with Admiral Harriman could get there. 

The characters react in the way any well-trained, highly selected, wholly dedicated small elite group of individuals would do: they run amok, blame each other, blame Hillary, look for Hunter’s lap top, cry foul, eat canned food, smash computers which give the wrong answers, admire raging fires while keeping the sea water out, keep the sea water out while admiring the raging fires, inhale noxious chemicals while admiring the fire, recover from X-degree burns, beat up on each other with handy steel bars…this spectacle goes on at Hollywood length.  

They should have tried Joe’s cocktail shaker from As Time Goes By reviewed on this blog. 

The Ground Hog Day-repeated mayhem is as boring as it is exhausting to watch. None of the characters is developed enough to care about, despite an earlier scene of guitar strumming which was supposed to humanise one of the mannequins in the crew. It didn’t work. 

But maybe I missed the subtlety of it all. The version I watched had AI English subtitles with the dialogue dubbed in Russian over the Korean, a combination that distracted me.    

*All right, already when Joe Bogart time travelled back a minute from 10:26 it was a big deal in a small way. See As Time Goes By reviewed elsewhere on this blog. 

Dark City (1998)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated 7.6 by 203,000 layabouts.

Genre: Sy Fy

DNA: Anglo

Verdict: Where’s Dagwood. 

Tagline: [I forget.]

It’s all pretty mysterious, but Auriole Zen wakes up in Gotham City and concludes he is an amnesiac killer. Seemed obvious at the time.  (See Sherlock Holmes The Woman in Green [1944].) He scoots before John Law arrives in the form of — wait for it — Inspector Bumstead, known as Dagwood to me.  

The parenthetical reference above is relevant because most of the dark setting is 1940s: fedoras, ash trays, wide lapels, automats, cars, trench coats, and cold water walk-up tenements. Yep.

All of this is presided over by men in Gestapo coats and pancake makeup led by Francis Urquhart under a ton of makeup in a latex suit.  Round and round it goes.  

By some means or other, Zen and Dagwood team up, brokered by Mrs Zen. They find out Neo was right though his movie has not yet been released.  

A great deal of eye candy with very little plot. Water is mentioned as crucial and then…forgotten.  Yes, I got all the guff about the experiments and it made no sense. Ask Neo next year.  

I saw a few refugees from more diverting material like Popov from Loveboy.  

The doctor seemed laboured and superfluous, but we viewers are like that. Opinionated.  

Yes, I know it is supposed to be about dreams, memory, and reality. If we don’t remember it, did it happen? If we do remember it, did it happen? Are our memories real or not?  Does it matter? All very Marcel Proust, but — pssst! — no one seems to try very hard, say by writing things down, or cutting a hole in a sock, or breeding mayflies. Or even reading a book or eating a madeleine.

Roger Ebert waxed lyrical about it, both the look and content. Hmm. Not convinced myself.

The Gotham Tourist Board, by the way, claims the sun does shine there.  Some times.  

As Time Goes By (1988)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 36 minutes rated a measly 5.5 by a paltry 157 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Alien incursion

DNA: Strine.

Verdict: More!  

Tagline: Play it!

A sun bleached surfer boy with a board travels 800 miles into the desert (near Broken Hill, again) to keep an appointment made for him twenty-five years ago (when he was born). That’s odd, but wait, there’s more!

Joe Bogart crash landed his extraterrestrial bar and grill smack dab in the middle of nowhere, 800 miles into the desert. Can this proximity be a coincidence?  Hardly. Screenwriters don’t rely on chance.

Thanks to inhaling helium, this Bogart outdoes Robin Williams, spouting passages from films in the original voices lickity-split which explains a little, very little, of what is going on but which is fun to watch and identify, ‘my dear, if you give a damn.’ Meanwhile, the born again gloomy copper pursues some Mad Max wannabe’s led by a none too bright but half baked arch villain in spurs. Maybe the copper is so glum because he is pining for The Quiet Earth (1985) where he had even fewer lines.

There are many misunderstandings and much to-ing and fro-ing, but it always comes back to Bogart’s Bar out there in the desert.  

The plots holes are many but there is too much pace to look back. When I caught my breath I listed these:  

• How did the baby survive unbeknownst to his father?
• Where was the mother in all this?
• Did the six count?  
• Where can I get a cocktail shaker like that?
• What happened to the bow-tie wearing CSIRO man?
• Did it hurt? (Hope so.)
• Who cares? (Not me.) 
• And last but not least, was it that Strasser?  

Despite these plot holes, it makes more sense than the ever so serious Incident at Raven’s Gate of the same year filmed in the same locale (at the same time?) with a similar storyline played entirely differently. And also used helium! Must of been on special.

As with Incident at Raven’s Gate this Australian outback is devoid of aborigines in any form.  

Aniara 1960

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2 hours, rated 5.7 by 36 cinematizens.  

Genre: SY Fy; Species: Musical; Phylum: Opera.

DNA: Sweden

Verdict:  Bergman bleak.

Tagline: A Space Opera! 

So static watch screen timer to be sure it is running because no one is inclined to move at first.

A group of leotard clad Swedes prepare to rocket off a dying Earth in 2038, despoiled by nuclear war, to join an established human colony on Mars, where they will live the Swedish Model so loved by Australian public intellectuals in the 1980s.  

They prepare to immigrate by standing still and singing.

They board the rocket while standing still and singing.

The rocket goes off course as they stand still and sing.

Time passes.  They stand still and sing. 

More time passes: They stand still and sing.

The three week trip to Mars will last forever, as the next generation is born on the ship (with its endless supply of food, water, oxygen, Ikea parts).  The party of eight thousand settles down to live our their lives in transit, rather as many Qantas passengers have felt at times. They take out their frustrations on each other. Situation normal. 

The story started as an epic poem by Nobel Prize winner Harry Martinson so it is a science fiction poem of more than a hundred pages in the English translation. That is perhaps unique. On a long winter night, some one had the idea of rendering it as the libretto of an opera in 1959, which in turn sired this film, using the opera cast and most of its staging and direction. Lugubrious is the result.  

He must be the only Sy Fy author with a Nobel Prize for Literature. 

Beware! Killjoys can find the full text on line and insist on reading to you.  It’s as preachy as a Green politician, and just as interesting.  

It was remade in 2018, sharing the blame with Norway, and I can hardly wait to see that version.    

Incident at Raven’s Gate (1988) aka Encounter at Raven’s Gate

IMDb runtime of 1 hour and 34 minutes, rated 5.4 by 568 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Alien incursion.

DNA: Strine. 

Verdict: Dark, very.  

Tagline: ‘It’s for you!’

In the trackless Outback (near Broken Hill whose energetic Tourist Board attracts film crews like flies) is a variant of Cain and Abel, two brothers, one wife.  The older married brother is determined to farm the sand, while his younger brother plows here and there.

Since Younger did time in the Big Smoke, the local copper pins every crime and misdemeanour on him, but mainly stealing the town football trophy (that is Australian Rules football to you, Mate!).

This copper is nuts, by the way, and obsesses over Verdi operas day and night, when everyone knows Puccini’s music is better.  

Assorted incomprehensible events occur that no one pays much attention to.  Birds fall dead from the sky.  A smouldering crop circle is cut into the desert flora and it seemed electrically charged. A house with an older couple in it implodes, killing them, and leaving behind… Yep, that’s right, the football trophy, which is found by another cop who is hard of hearing, and slow of thinking.  

It opens at the Parks Radio Observatory tracking something entering the atmosphere and a scientist is sent to find the remnants.  He is a midget and doubles as an ASIO agent (see Australiens for details of ASIO agents) wearing a tan, double-knit polyester safari suit.  

The loco local cop harasses a bar maid despite her repeated efforts to brush him off.  She dies at his hands. No one investigates. 

Water seems to be disappearing from tanks but no one is interested enough to investigate.  

The midget kills the hearing impaired cop, and no one seems much bothered. 

The married brother goes nuts, spouting Sunday school phrases.  His wife shoots him – dead.  No one seems much bothered.  

One of the two destroyed houses is rebuilt (and off camera I guess the five or was it six bodies are buried).  

We are left none the wiser.  By the way, this is an Australian outback devoid of aboriginals.  

The telling is thriller style, that is, disjointed and confusing to cover plot holes and the lack of character establishment or development.

A critic — me — summed it up thusly, turgid, baffling, inexplicable, uneventful, and incomprehensible. Moreover, the lens cap was on the camera for much of the run time, offering muddy, unintelligible, obscure images of murk, darkness, inky blackness, and less.

The one man seems to have done everything from producing, directing, writing, camera work, and catering.  No second opinion evidently was heard or heeded.  

Still it made me appreciate better some of the other turkeys I have seen because I could at least see them.  

Dans une galaxie prés de chez vous (2004)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 49 minutes runtime rated 6.9 by 1,200 cinematizens 

Genre:  Sy Fy; Species: Quest

DNA: Québécois

Verdict: Tabernac!  

Tagline:  Questions? Action!

Reader Advisory:  A longtime Radio Canada television parody of Star Trek–Red Dwarf spawned this ….misbegotten specimen. The 23-minute episodes are hard enough to watch but this prolongation is cruel and unusual. However, on with the show….

A group of misfits is the only hope for humanity! 

This Frat House in space is led by the dim but decisive Captain who, with budget constraints, has made his own mechanical man with a very long extension cord for away missions. There are two women who do not scream. Iago is the science officer busy undermining the Captain.  Don’t forget Bob who is not easy to forget, but it happens avec ou sans cheveux.  Then there is Serge 6; don’t ask about Serges 1-5.

Their mission is to find a new planet for humanity to occupy since Earth is used up. The spaceship looks like the tuna fish tins that it is made from. To land on prospective planets they fax themselves down, and a scanner malfunction got Serge – see above. 

There are many references to ice hockey in the terminology, especially the glory days of Gentleman Jean Beliveau and Blond Demon Guy LaFleur. The gear worn by the crew look like the hockey uniforms of Les Canadiens.

It is also replete with Québécois slang that the A.I. subtitler could not fathom, rendering much of the dialogue even more nonsensical than it is, and it is nonsensical to begin with. One example is ‘tatas,’ an idiom that means ‘idiots,’ but which the subtitles render as ‘goodbyes.’  And yes, ‘tata’ for idiot is a reference to English-speakers who say ‘Ta ta’ for goodbye. The humour is parochial and adolescent compounded by the subtitles.

Still the players and director inject plenty of energy into the proceedings. There is also some considerable humour as when the crew, off in deep space, discover….where all the stray socks from the wash have gone over the millennia. Truly an awe-inspiring moment!  The rival captain who appears late in the piece with his can opener is none too subtlety portrayed as an Anglo.  

In case of any uncertainty the maple leaf flag is everywhere, including underwear.  

It was so big in Montréal that a sequel was made called Dans une galaxy près de chez vous 2 (2008). The title indicates the anticipated audience would grasp that 2 follows 1, but nothing more complicated than that. There were rumours in 2019 of a ‘3.’  Tabernac, indeed! [Look it up.]  

Im Staub der Sterne (In the Dust of the Stars) (1976) 

IMDb meta-data is 1 for and 35 minutes runtime rated 5.4 by 399 cinematizens.  

Genre: Sy Fy

DNA: Romania, Rumania, or Roumania 

Verdict: Huh

Tagline: Did someone say Gulag?

It starts on the flight deck of a spaceship with no credits or preliminaries.  After that fast start everything slows down.  

The crew of four women and two men is commanded by one of the women who reminds them of the importance of their mission to save a planet from….?  They don’t know what just yet but these six are planet savers – ah huh, in their baby blue onesies.  

The women are young while the two men are not. One has gone pear-shaped and the other squints as he brushes his grey hair out of his eyes.  These six are from the planet Cynro. Does that make them Cynrovians? Cynroese? … [I could go on…] They are bound for Tem-4. Evidently it usually only takes six Cynros to save a planet.  

There is nothing to see when they arrive for the Tem-4s live underground.  However Pocahontas drives up in a Legomobile  to welcome them. Off they go to a reception where they learn their six year trip was for naught.  The distress call was a mere test of a now obsolete radio system.  Oh. Well time to go then.  But no, before departure, they attend – in matching latex outfits – a frat party to end frat parties.  

What follows is some repressed Romanian script-writer’s idea of a debauched western LSD party.  It goes on and on, and then on. The Fraternity Brothers found it tame compared to Greek Row on homecoming Saturday night.  

Meanwhile the Host is revealed to be (1) up to no good and (2) receiving orders over the earbud from Boss. The purpose of the party is to ensure that no more Cynroses come a-calling so they are drugged to forget everything except the need for colour coordination in clothing.  

We meet the Boss having his sparse hair done. He is that script-writer’s idea of a homosexual without being too explicit.  He is a little round guy who commands – well, it is fiction – the whole show.  His thugs sport Roman tunics and have bulging muscles for women to ogle.    

Being slow-witted enough to be U.N. Peacekeepers, the Cynrovians have at last figured out something is amiss.  Instead of barking orders the Commander listens to what the others say, including Mr Suspicion who has been off on his own going where he was not supposed to go and seeing what he was not supposed to see. Gulp! 

What he saw was a cast of scores of Romanian extras practicing for the Gulag by breaking rocks while being beaten by Nicolae Ceausescu. (See The Mole People [1956] for details.) By now the six Cynroites have read the script and realise that Host and Boss and their associates are from Tem-3 and have conquered Tem-4, enslaving the population to mine minerals to dye the Boss’s hair, or something.  Should they intervene or just leave? Tough one. Crisis of conscience renders them numb. Me, too, by this time.  

I voted for leaving, but they stayed when Host tried to sabotage their rocket, a low-budget shoot out of sorts follows.  Boss is done for.  

After explaining Bucharest fashions to the slaves, the Cynroists blast off.  

Yes, it is silly.  But it is also noteworthy for its omissions: there is no mention of Earth or Earthlings in a universe of humanoids irritating each others, nor are there any ray guns, nor hairy spiders, not a single scream from one of the women. It is notable for a lot of scantly clad women on Tem-4, for those matching onesies (inspired by ABBA?) worn by the crew, for a couple of crises of conscience. 

No Yankee crew ever worried about blasting some strangers with a ray gun after stomping on a hairy spider or two while the damsels shrieked. 

It is most notable of all for a female commander comrade in 1976 who does the job without either hysterics or histrionics!

The Fraternity Brothers kept rewinding to the scantily clad Romanians. I wondered about the slaps.

It is a pan red production spoken in German but with Czech, Serbian, Rumanian, East German, Polish cast and crew. For once Stanislaw Lem did not write the novel, screenplay, or lunch menu.  

Australiens (2014)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 48 minutes runtime rated 5.9 by too few cinematizens 

Genre; Sy Fy; Species: Alien invasion.

DNA: Strine. 

Verdict: More!

Tagline: Banana benders unite.

Brizzy and then all of Third-World Australia (except Tasmania) comes under an alien attack. The rest of the world including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sits back to watch.  

Strine, yer on yer own! (Except for Tasmania.)

But it’s personal for the lead howler of the pub band Titanium Turtles (occasionally, Turdles) and she fights back, screeching at the alien scum!

High energy! Breakneck pace! Laugh a vulgar minute! Part parody, part tribute, all fun. It’s lean and mean compared to the ponderous and pompous Blade Runner franchise. It is adolescent in its humour, lacking the subtle sophistication of Kath and Kim. What’s not to like. Note to self: Do not ride a bike during an Alien apocalypse, not even at the gym. 

Also 20+ minutes too long in an endless end to accomodate the crowd funders.

A labour of love made on a shoestring, I ate it up with a spoon. If it had a commercial release I missed it. More’s the pity.