IMDb meta-data is an epic runtime of 1 hour and 31 minutes, over-rated 4.5 out of 10 by 811 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Verdict: Z.
That old saying about the China syndrome, remember it? Well, the Chinese did it and following Interstates 80, 40, and 10 are planting subterranean atomic bombs from the west to east coast, starting – Gasp! – with Route 66. These reds are under everything, not just beds. The bombs won’t fit under beds, doh!
The only thing standing between these Europeans made-up as Chinese is Sinbad and a crew of ageing frat boys dressed in Army Surplus Store uniforms. Plenty of stock footage is included to cheapen this bargain basement production even more. The plot is ludicrous enough for The Avengers of the same year, but played straight, serious, and numbing.
When he goes spelunking Sinbad takes along a geologist who does not know what lava is. Ouch! Where did she get a PhD? Trump University! Wait, don’t blame her, blame the scriptwriter! Besides we know Sinbad did not take her along for her big brain but so he would have someone to protect.
The Z verdict above is for bottom of the barrel where I found this film. I was unable, well, unwilling to watch it straight-through, but did it in 10-15 chunks to manage the pain.
It is an Italian production (don’t be misled by the Anglo pseudonyms of the crew) set in the United States with a cast of British actors. No doubt tax accountants can explain that. There are a few expatriate Americans among the Brits, like Commander Stryker, which simply brings out the contrast even more.
IMDB meta-data is runtime of 7 minutes, rated 6.0 by 33 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Verdict: A Brazilian gem.
In the near future a man waiting for a subway train coughs and coughs, and then the train is delayed, and he keeps coughing. Along the platform is an Instant Doctor kiosk. He enters and AI takes over. Would he like a diagnosis? Yes. Result: bronchitis. Would you like treatment? Yes. A vapour descends and his congestion clears, leaving him with a happy smile for only a few credits. Then AI in the kiosk asked if he would like the second diagnosis? Second? Well, why not. There is time before the train is due. The second diagnosis is…an inoperable, fatal brain tumour that will haemorrhage in 27 days and 3 hours with mortal results. That will be a further 60 credits. Staggering out of the automated kiosk he is no longer smiling and oblivious as the train pulls alongside the platform.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 19 minutes, rated 5.1 by 3,628 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Creature; Sub-Species: Bugs.
A classy Paul Frees opening voiceover goes on and on about the early warning systems against a Red surprise attack in 1957: picket boats, Pine Tree Line, and the DEW Line all funded by tax payers. The Air Force boys have many toys, and happily play with them until they discover they are on the menu for lunch.
After 15 minutes on all those precautions and gizmos, it turns out none of them are relevant to the story that follows.
We are for lunch!
An earthquake in the Arctic Circle vivifies a dormant creature for this feature. See title above. First two, then three, then more Air Force men disappear while the footprints of a gigantic…bug appear. Paul Drake, magnifying glass in hand, is summoned from his office in the Smithsonian Institute. Alas, he is no Ed Gwen.
Peter Gunn is the man on the scene for the Air Force and he has seen plenty on the scene. He and Drake team up, along with a photographer who contributes nothing. All the military men are alert and dutiful, all the journalists are respectful and motivated by the greater good. Hence, we know it is work of fiction, where there are no slackers or careerists in uniform and no self-serving egoists in the Fourth Estate.
Some verisimilitude enters when the Mantis scare is denounced as a hoax perpetuated by Mortein to sell more bug spray. Lacking, however, were free marketeers rushing to the lecture circuit to condemn the spurious crisis as another ploy by big government to emasculate hapless citizens by saving their lives, or Republican senators voting against doing anything and then denouncing the government for not doing enough. That would be true to life; ripped from today’s headlines.
It is Them! with snow and without Sandy Descher but with the final showdown in a tunnel. A discerning viewer will notice some differences. In this case the bug is not an atomic mutant. Ergo, the bomb-happy airmen need not feel guilty. Moreover, there is only one bug and not a swarm. Also this cliché has the mandatory helpless woman, a photographer, in need of manly protection. Cringe.
Peter Graves was unavailable. Too bad, his experience with grasshoppers would have been invaluable. All the Reds remained under the beds. Nor were any of those Air Force toys of any use! The men of the DEW line only proved to be a buffet for The Mantis.
It was entertaining, though the mantis was overexposed, and there were many repetitive scenes, especially of jet planes that seemed completely ineffective but the Air Force footage was free. Drake gave up science later and went to work for Perry Mason. Peter Gunn’s mellow baritone carried most of the movie as far as it went. Mano à Mano is easier to watch than Red Snow which is more highly rated by the Human Comedy. Like Red Snow there was some Arctic footage cut into the film from the same documentaries. Move over Roger Corman.
Peter Gunn was not the dedicated scene stealer that his counterpart in Them! was. Not Marshall Dillon, the other one.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 15 minutes, rated 6.6 by 58 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Spy Fy.
Verdict: 0.
The Cold War is very cold on the Alaska side of the Bering Strait where Wild Bill Hickok and a cast of extras watch another, smaller cast of extras on the other, Red side. That is the top and tail of this D movie. In between, cut and pasted from two other, earlier movies, is a trek by loyal American Inuits to safety, after the Bad Reds have poisoned their food. One of these earlier documentary movies, twenty years previously, featured the same Inuit actor who is in this 1952 patchwork film, one Ray Mala.
The result is broken-backed with the two stories barely joined by a thread. Still Hickok has that heartthrob smile, and the documentaries show another, white world. Scifist 2.0 has the details of the quilt work for those who must know.
The acting, well, what acting, because most of it is covered by narration – seldom a good sign but it saves a lot of money on sound engineering. The closest we get to acting is from two of the Russki pilots who seem to think they are in a movie and should play their parts, a consideration that did seem to trouble anyone else in the cast.
As usual, the comic relief is annoying, as well as superfluous. Probably played by the producer’s nephew.
Then there is that Kremlin flyby at the end to pad things out and out.
Bad Reds planting bombs reminded me that I have yet to endure the Z movie that is Battle Beneath the Earth, an Italian production, set in the USA with British actors. I have watched a few minutes of it on You Tube, because I cannot stand more than that in one sitting. One suspects the explanation of this instance of multinational cooperation lies in tax laws.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 26 minutes, rated 5.5 by 158 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Spy Fy.
Verdict: Not much Spy nor Sy fiction.
The Brits lead the world in…? Good question. Anthony Asquith, the director of this film, certainly leads the world in his ability to make a movie out of screenplay with plot holes, meaningless digressions, and forgotten characters.
A team of scientists, who disdain the term ‘engineers,’ it seems, have developed the Vulcan long-range aircraft and installed ‘nuclear motors’ in it. That’s it! That is what Brits lead the world in – delta-wing aviation. This one is sleek and amphibious (for some reason), though any engineer would tell these scientists that the drag on the surface of the water far exceeds the friction on wheels taking off from a runway. (For pedants, the only advantage of water-landing and takeoff is that no runway is needed.)
The special effects of this zoomer and boomer are well done. The top dog among the scientists is James Donald, woefully miscast as an action man, who makes the best of an odd role for this introspective, professorial type down to the elbow patches on the tweed jacket and all. He has an international team around him. A meteorologist with an off-again, on-again French accent, an oily Herbert Lom (who steals the show) with his Czech undertone, a Canadian security officer who does nothing and does it in a loud voice, all under the direction of the redoubtable Maurice Denholm (who has been in everything – twice). Then there is that doctor, smiling and affable with one and all, and dark and sinister as soon as they leave.
Denholm has an accident, and Doctor makes sure it is fatal, that in the first 15 minutes. Well there goes that. We know the villain as the villainy gets started. The rest is anti-climatic. Some screenplay.
The script also includes a bed-ridden elderly man who dies. A romance between the French accent and a shy scientist. The security officer does nothing. None of the above relates to the plot.
There are references to cabin fever among the workers but nothing is made of this and they are at the pub seeking relief more often than we see them doing any work. And speaking of workers, we never seen anyone with a spanner. Those peons are not part of the show since they lack slide rules.
Doctor can also pilot a supersonic jet. Was that an elective in Med School? Did Denhom fall or was he pushed? We’ll never know. It is all very Cold War but there is only one cryptic reference to the ‘east.’
It is on Scifist 2.0 because of the nuclear motors, and the nifty pressure suits the pilots wear, but really it is a domestic drama about a workaholic who neglects his fetching wife whom Lom covets, while the others practice their accents.
The other issue is whether the thing will fly, and well, I think, we all knew the answer to that from the get-go, British technology always works. Remember the hovercraft! Wait, don’t remember that. But then we never do find out about M1- M6 that preceded M7. Gulp!
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 24 minutes runtime, rated 5.8 by 235 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Austrian.
Verdict: All singing, all dancing, all whitewashing.
In early 2000 Austria declared its independence of the four-power occupation that had controlled the country since 1945 when the Red Army liberated Vienna. This declaration was noticed instantly by World TV in New York City, the headquarters of the World Global Union. A peacekeeping force of Michelin Men arrived in Vienna on flying marshmallows to collect WGU lederhosen, accompanied by WGU President Hilde. Before levelling the country and turning into a parking lot, she decided, since she is already there, to convene a panel to assess Austria once and for all.
Q was not available, so she summoned stereotypes from Africa, South America, and Asia to a be a jury. The newly elected president of Austria, Kurt Waldheim, then proceeded to defend the country by a display of dancing, drinking, art, poetry, music, and skiing. His whitewash of Austrian history is enough to make a US Republican green with envy. No bad, no ugly, only Good is on display. The historical repression of ethnic minorities, the near destruction of Hungary, the endless wars in the Balkans, the endemic anti-Semitism, the belligerence that led to World War I, the continuing irredentist tensions with Italy, the denial of the vote to women, the brazen murders of Moritz Schlick and Engelbert Dollfuss, the willing embrace of Anschluss, the enthusiasm for the SS, the denial of its own history, the national conspiracy of silence about the Brown Years, all of these are omitted in favour of Mozart, Strauss, Sissi, Rilke, Klimt, Freud, Mach, Semmelweis, Schrödinger, Gödel, Mahler, Schubert, and so on. Most of these latter individuals were reviled while they lived or ignored but now
The World President arrives with honour guard.
…..
In a strategy to divide the Axis powers, in 1943 the Allies had declared Austria the first victim of Nazi German aggression in the 1938 Anschluss. Later that was taken as exoneration for all crimes. It is alluded to in the film as though it bleached away any and everything that is not said or shown. There is a review of a short history of Austria elsewhere on the blog that has more about this volte-face and suppression of history.The national museum omits most of the decade of the Brown Years, I noticed on a tour in 2020.
After weeks of drinking, dancing, singing, and partying the panel members dry out long enough to stumble onto their flying marshmallows and take off, having decided Austria is free to waltz on. All is forgotten, leaving nothing to forgive.
Apart from the World Government, flying marshmallows, World TV, the personal communicators, and Michelin suits, 2000 is just like 1952 right down to the automobiles and clothes. Though the world president does support a snazzy 1920s cloche hat.
On the IMDb it is genre-ed as Romance (those two presidents), Fantasy (those marshmallows), and Comedy (those stereotypes), but not Sy Fy. Strange that. I would add Musical to the genre list for all that singing and dancing.
There is an entry for it on Scifist 2.0 that goes into great detail, as usual.
Josef Meinrad
Note that the World President is a woman, who is direct, forthright, and not easily misled. No one finds that odd, and the Austrian president, the ever reliable Josef Meinrad, likes that. By the way he was in the Front Theatre in World War II that entertained Wehrmacht troops in the East. Make of that what you will.
I came across in on You Tube in a poor print for those who want to watch it in German.
IMDB meta-data is 1 hour and 4 minutes of runtime, rated 5.1 by 120 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Post-apocalyptic.
Verdict: Drive-in fodder.
A promotional still photograph. Believe it or not.
In AD 3000 women cook, clean, bear children, and obey husbands, or else. This Republican paradise was the result of a nuclear war as a narrator explains in the tedious introduction.
The Mutants fear the Upriver thugs, while Norms mind their own business. Norms and Mutants fall into an uneasy alliance, until Mr Pomfritt betrays it.
It is all swords and sandals as the Crips and Sharks battle it out, again and again and again. Robert Clarke earns another Sy Fy credit in more on the job training as an actor.
Mr Pomfritt
Pomfritt has more than 388 credits on the IMDb between 1947 and 2014. Here he is an action man and a sneaky villain. Wholly miscast in either role, he is behind all that make-believe acne.
The direction is lifeless though a few of the players try to resuscitate it to no avail. Stuart Randall (pictured above with those two women in distress) as the chief Thug infuses his part with a conviction noticeably absent from everyone else. Any interest the screenplay might have had was lost in the director’s confusion.
The title must refer to the Sabine women because there are no captive women present, despite that egregious still photograph above. The Fraternity Brothers were very disappointed. They were hoping for some tips for getting dates with Kappas.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 30 minutes runtime, rated 5.9 by 573 cinematizens.
Genre: Spy Fy with some Sy Fy for spice.
Verdict: Fun.
Margaret Lockwood takes a train, again, and adventures follow, again. An entomologist, she knows a bug or two. James Bond was on hols, so she is recruited – ineptly – for a mission to darkest Rurantania behind the Ironclad Curtain because there are rumours of germ warfare developments there. Bugs, germs they are all one to her. It is all in the tradition of British amateurism of the S.O.E. (Look it up.)
To amuse her nephew she has followed the exploits on the radio of a super-spy called Conway. (This must surely be a reference a Dick Barton alias.) When she agrees to accept the mission, instead of going to Torquay, she takes the cover name of Conway.
Once in Rurantania she encounters a cocky American journalist and troubles follow. Soon she is arrested and rather than being tortured – ‘So old fashioned; so unreliable,’ says the chief of the secret police – she is shot full of drugs, where upon — Spoiler alert — in delirium she becomes Conway, and soon escapes from prison, drags the confused journalist with her to break into the super secret germ warfare shed, steal vital samples, and abscond by – of course – taking the next train.
For the time it is quite unexpected that she is the action figure, and the journalist tags along very reluctantly as she starts fires, cuts barbered wire, crawls through forests, drugs attack dogs, clonks armed guards, and pockets specimens of deadly bugs. Moreover, it is the only film from this period in which a man is not amazed that a woman is a scientist. This trope remains common in science fiction into the 1970s, but there is not a scintilla of it here. Credit is due.
Conway also took trains in The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Night Train to Munich (1940). According to the biography on the IMDb her father worked for a railway company so maybe she had a Lifetime Rail Pass.
Eagle eyes may spot an uncredited Anton Differing at the train station at the end, wearing uniform well, as he always did. If there were an Oscar for uniform wearing it would be his.
IMDb runtime of 2 hours and 42 minutes, rated 8.1 by 132,000 members of the human comedy.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Enough!
The write up on the IMDb was interesting but the execution exceeds even the Hollywood gold standard for self-indulgent, incomprehensible nonsense. The intriguing premise is ground into the mud by the repetitive and aimless direction.
What is that premise? That there exists a place where dreams come true. Getting there is risky, staying there is impossible, but… of such stuff as dreams are made, just follow the yellow brick road. Instead of dragons, sea monsters, raging seas, precipitous cliffs, or wicked witches, those who venture into The Zone must get past heavily armed guards (wearing white biker helmets), barbed wire, land mines, and trek through mud and more mud. (There is a lot of mud in this movie.) Once in the Zone, there is The Room where dreams come true … maybe.
The protagonist is a guide who, for a fee, will lead a few people into the Zone and find the Room, through the traps for the unwary. He is addicted to the challenge but seems to have no dream of his own to realise. He is contracted by a scientist and a novelist to shepherd them to the Room. The scientist dreams of recognition for this work; the novelist wants to restart his career. That is the quest.
They start and after that it is a sepia dreary ruined world. The mud, the ruins seen now prefigure Chernobyl. The visuals are powerful but pointless. Every shot of the mud is attenuated far past the breaking even point. Then repeated. And again. Each repeat is held for nearly 90 seconds. (Yes, I clocked some.) And then repeated. One camera set-up yields 3 – 4 minutes of mud each time, and too often more. That’s entertainment – not!
This goes on for nearly three hours, and I confess I did not endure it all. Why should one? None of the three central characters engage a viewer. There is no structure once the quest starts. They could be going around in circles for all the audience knows. We never quite get what motivates the guide, but there is nothing else in his life but the Zone. He has sacrificed his family to this neurosis, it seems. He needs help, preferably off camera.
A viewer.
Why is it forbidden to enter? Unknown. Why do trains pass through it? Unknown.
Who cares? Not me.
After much stumbling about in the aforementioned mud, they come to the Room, but none of them dares enter it. Oh, 2+ hours for that balk. So they sit in the mud and deliver long, boring monologues to each other. If that is the payoff, go to a pub.
At an IMDb rating of 8.1, there are viewers who think it is the greatest movie ever made. There are many tributes on You Tube and the Internet Movie Data Base. Read ‘em and weep for our kind. Serge Eisenstein’s two parts of Ivan the Terrible taken together run but 8 minutes longer than this turkey, and each is far superior in every way.
While the core idea was intriguing it is far from original, and while the staging is effective the whole is less than the sum of those nearly three hours. Much less. As a 20-minute film on DUST it would have been a winner. Franz Kafka did this sort of thing in short stories with far greater effect because they punch.
And yes, I got all the religious imagery that was as subtle as a sledge hammer.
Having watched Ivan in his two parts, the AI Mechanical Turk on You Tube threw up this film, and I was intrigued by the description. Silly me.
Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 and 2 (1944 and 1945 [1958])
IMDb meta-data for Part I is runtime of 1 hour and 35 minutes, 7.7 rated by 10,000 cinematizens.
For Part II runtime is 1 hour and 28 minutes, rated 7.8 by 7,400 cinematizens.
Genre: Historical fiction.
Verdict: Compelling.
Ivan (1530-1584) came to the throne amid a court of murderous schemers, the envy of the Republican Party in their depravity, but the hypocrisy of church and state combine in an elaborate coronation. In his acceptance speech Ivan alienates just about everyone by claiming he is Tsar of Russia not just Duke of Muscovy. Period! Everyone else is a vassal, rich or poor. Further, he declares his warlike ambitions against any and everyone. Is this Vladdie’s favourite movie now? It was Stalin’s.
This is a matinee idol Ivan, not the pockmarked, volatile reality. He is honest. He is noble. He is smart. He is, well, a right pain for being holier than all the thous.
Around him everyone is a lowlife schemer, because ‘Why should he be Tsar, and not me?’ Truth to tell he is the first Tsar, created out of the ambition of his regents. The plots thicken.
The acting and camera work are throwbacks to silent movies, with tight close-ups, exaggerated gestures, bug-eyed stares, shadows that menace, amid the pomp and riches of the Kremlin. Roger Ebert slams it for this and much else. Indeed no nit was too small for him to pick at it from the size of the doorways to the bejewelled garments. Be that as it may, the whole works.
Of course, Ivan the Formidable was paranoid and unstable to begin with and got more so with age. He purged the ranks of the boyars (nobles) more than once, while Stalin took notes, and made war on the Kazan (for the stans), Astrakhan (to get those hats), Tatars (for the sauce – oops), Lithuania (for those dumplings), Latvia (for the herring), Poland (for the kransky), Ukraine (for fun), and anyone else handy. The Turks felt left out and soon he put that right with another war. He also went looking for enemies in Siberia, and found them. He was a devout Christian, clutching a cross, as he went about murdering far and wide. Amen.
To make war more effectively he modernised the realm with codes of law (taxes and conscription), personal oaths of loyalty, pay for the army, reduced first the powers of the boyars and then their number, started printing Bibles to reduce the monopoly of priests. He also confiscated church property to pay for his wars, claiming priests were disloyal. Henry VIII had the same idea.
He faked an abdication and installed a figurehead to draw out his enemies into a trap. This cinematographic Ivan has a common touch and is much loved by the toiling masses. Hint, hint, just like Comrade Number One.
The film is epic in scale in every way. It is hard to believe that with its cast of thousands it was made during the Great Patriotic War aka World War II when the Nazis were within reach of Moscow, while the Soviet Union was rearming and making a new nine million-man army. While stylised in black-and-white there is a short scene in colour (made on film captured from a German photographic unit) that surprises the viewers, as director Sergei Eisenstein intended it to do.
A few tidbits were illuminating. When going into battle the Russian soldiers each put a coin in a bucket, as above. After the battle each survivor takes one out. The residue indicate the casualties. Simple and effective book keeping.
I saw these two at Tuesday film night in graduate school and was awed by them. Then the other day they appeared on You Tube in restored versions no doubt in much better condition that the prints I saw those years ago. So I had a look.
