Political theory and practice – Page 22

The Ship of Monsters!

La nave de los monstruos (1960). (The [Space] Ship of Monsters.)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour 23 minutes, rated 6.4 by 400 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Musical; Subspecies: Mexican.

Verdict: A Mexican musical science fiction film. What more needs to be said?

Two Venusian bathing beauties roam the universe in one-piece swimming costumes kidnapping frat boys in rubber suits, aided by Tin Man. Is this a good start, or what?! During a rest stop on Earth they meet a singing cowboy and it is love at first bite, for one of the beauties is a closet vampire with Halloween wax fangs. And that is just the beginning!

There are no men on Venus because they have all died from dehydration in pissing contests, yet, well, they have their uses, so the Queen of Venus dispatched this duo to bring back some mating material. They go hither and thither loading up with males of the species they encounter, per the rubber suits above. Some of them do, despite the odds, make the frat boys look good. (Sidebar: the lack of men on Venus has a history, see the Queen of Outer Space [1958] reviewed earlier on the blog.)

Yes, this movie has everything, and then some more. Tin Man falls in love with a juke box, and that’s not the half of it. Meanwhile, the monstrous frat boys get loose and wreak havoc in Chihuahua. Not even the cows are safe. (You do not want to know.) Señorita Vampire is so evil that even these monsters defer to her. But in the end lust conquers all as Tin Man and juke box exchange circuit breakers.

Whatever the scriptwriter and director were on, there should be more of it. Just when I thought I had seen everything…!

Luis Buñuel take note.

I came across it in a blurry print on You Tube with some blurry subtitles, not that the latter make any more sense than the whole thing. For those who like their r’s rolled, the soundtrack is just fine. This film makes Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1952) look like dreary high art, however, after Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) it offers pleasant relief.

N.B. Not to be mistaken for Gene Autry crooning to aliens in Phantom Empire (1935). If you haven’t seen this item — don’t. It runs to 4 hours! Four hours of this singing cowboy is cruel and unusual punishment. No wonder it was divided into segments and served in small doses, otherwise there would have been no survivors at the candy counter.

Travels with Epicurus

Travels with Epicurus (2012) by Daniel Klein.

Good Reads meta-data is 176 pages, rated 3.81 by 2,574 litizens.

Genre: [Time] Travel.

Verdict: Easy Does It.

In different printings the book has two subtitles: ‘A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of Fulfilled Life’ or ‘Meditations from a Greek Island on the Pleasures of Old Age.’ The latter seems to fit the text better, and is less tiring than ‘journeying’ and ‘searching.’

In its brief compass, professional funny man Klein ponders the pleasures of growing old and older. He takes aim at the ‘forever young’ fad and many others with acerbic comments. He romanticises and fantasises about life on a Greek rock.

The red line through the book is ‘enjoy the moment’ because it is all there is right now. Mostly we don’t do that. We go at most of our lives as means to an end that ever recedes. It is as if to say, ‘Once I have everything I want, I will relax and smell the roses,’ but first I have to get all that. Plato called that sickness pleonexia. The Ferengi on Star Trek embody this syndrome. More is always better. Remember Marilyn at the tax office, insatiable?

Before all that, Klein starts out rescuing Epicurus from his friends. Far from recommending hedonistic pleasure-seeking that his name has come to imply, Epicurus offered a much more basic message. ‘Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, be there and do that.’ Extract all the pleasure possible from the here and now, whatever it is. An Epicurean who has understood Epicurus will savour a lentil soup as much as Iranian black caviar. (A Google search failed to produce a recipe for lentil soup in the magazine that takes his name.)

When I push the pedals on the stationery bike at the gym sometimes there is an exercise class on. The music is set to ear-drum bursting, the pace is frantic, the result must be a kind of out-of-body experience, I am guessing without personal experience, for the participants. But the noise alone deadens me in the next room perched on the bike. In front of the speakers I have been surprised it has not caused fatalities. No one in such a class, it seems to this jaded observer, is savouring the moment. Rather they are numb, and on more than one level. The more so when these sessions have names like Body Attack, Storm, Ignite, Destroy, Smash, and Pound.

Like Machiavelli, Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE) has been bastardised into a stereotype miles from the original. For what it is worth, when Eppy opened a school in Athens he allowed women and slaves to join in the meals and the discussions. The scandal mongers of Pox News descended. As a result virtually nothing of his original work survived the vigilantes so that the little we know of his teachings comes second and third hand centuries later. Yet his name is widely mis-taken in vain.

There is an 11-minute film listed on the IMDb but I could not find it online, but there are plenty of other films on You Tube for those who must see the movie. The few I sampled lack Klein’s light touch. A couple even managed to make pleasure painful.

Klein’s other titles include Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates (2009) and Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington (2008). Although Wikipedia doesn’t know it, this is the same Daniel Klein who wrote Blue Suede Clues (2002) and Viva Las Vengeance (2003).

The Whip Hand

The Whip Hand (1951).

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 22 minutes, rated 6.0 by 596 cinematizens.

Genre: Sp Fy, not Sy Fy. Species: Paranoia, Red.

Verdict: Zippy.

In Lake Wobegon the Reds are on the beds, not under them. Adopting the approach of capitalism, the Reds have bought everything in town and set up a germ warfare laboratory. All the paperwork is in order. Taxes are paid. Zoning laws obeyed.

Believe it or not, one of the Reds is Perry Mason before he went to law school and got all self-righteous. Too bad because he made a marvellous villain. And he had competition in this picture because there is a string of villains from mouth-breathing grunters to oily salesmen to a blond adonis who whittles with a very big knife.

Into this Village of the Reds one rainy night an intrepid newsman stumbles after clonking his head, and he seeks medical treatment for his split infinitive. The town doctor applied a Band-Aid and tries to send Newsie on this way, but the good-looking sister who peeled the Band-Aid is fly-paper, and the plot thickens.

We knew from the get-go there were Reds about, but somehow after four years of residence Sister has not got it. No, she is not blind or stupid but a helpless creature of the scriptwriter who made her that way. She and the Newsie set out to foil the numerous and well organised bad guys and don’t do very well when they rely on Olive (‘We be Texicans’) Carey.

But thanks to a footnote citation to his earlier work, Newsie calls in the FBI cavalry who arrive in time to hear the mad scientist’s speech at the end before he gets his just reward from some of his experimental victims. Seeing these cripples whack him with canes, crutches, braces, and walkers made me dream.

Scifist 2.0 lists it but I am not sure what the Sy Fy element is. Germ warfare? An intelligent Newsie? The imperceptive sister? Anyway that entry is why I sought it out and watched it.

A quibble or two, or I do not get the title and I did not hear it used in the film. Maybe this intel missed the opening seconds of my attention span.

It is offbeat and moves at a good pace. I know there were post-production changes that led to a lot of re-shooting to please the then-master of RKO, and maybe some pages of the script got lost that explained the title.

It opens with sledge hammer subtlety in Moscow with a scene in Russian without subtitles where a uniformed man rattles on in front of huge wall map of the USA and points at Minnesota in a meaningful way. Get it? Is he tuning in to Garrison Keillor?

By the way such a long scene with neither subtitles nor an explanatory voiceover was daring for a B movie audience.

On the subject of subtitles, it has been an article of faith in the Hollywood since the advent of talkies that subtitles are unacceptable to a mainstream audience. Hence the frequent use of voiceovers. ‘Article of faith,’ because there is no evidence.

Battle Beneath the Earth

Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

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.

Instant Doctor

Instant Doctor (2020)

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.

The Basel Killings (2021)

The Basel Killings (2021) by Hansjörg Schneider.

Good Reads meta-data is 212 pages, rated 3.42 by 189 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: Foggy. Very.

The city’s geography is a major character.

On a cold and foggy night in Basel Switzerland Inspector Hunk chances on an habitué of the local bars sitting on a bench in the square. He has exchanged pleasantries with this man before and having nothing better to do, Hunk sits down next to him for a quiet word or two as he lights a fag. The two of them sit in companionable silence for a time as the snow begins to fall, and a tram rolls by.

This opening is neatly done.

The more so when Hunk realises his unresponsive seat mate is not snoozing off the beer, but dead. Murdered.

It’s the best part of the book. After that the krimi tropes come one after the other

the obstructive superior officer
the incompetent peer officer
the difficult girlfriend
the school of (obvious) red herrings
closed-mouthed witnesses
the sympathetic prostitute
Hunk’s repeated complaints about getting old
“

The geography of Basel drew my interest as the city itself borders both Germany and France. A passport is needed to go to work or to dinner. The city tram lines run to the border. Directions are given by reference to the borders. Then there is the weather. With the Rhine nearby there is recurrent fog, especially on a winter night. (Oh, and yes, I have been there, briefly. Two days and one night.)

The author is more honest than many other Swiss writers to admit and make central to the plot the endemic racism in the country, the readiness to blame everything on incomers, the casual hypocrisy about drugs and prostitution as long as the taxes are paid, and the domination of the society by the banks.

However, I found this novel hard to read and hard to follow. Hunk seemed to be a pinball bouncing around with little forethought, as if he has never done before this. When he did eventually try to investigate the backgrounds of some involved, he was inept. Certain files, when he finally got around to looking, were unavailable, and their records were marked ‘FA.’ What could FA possibly mean on a file? With his previous twenty plus years on the police force he could not figure this out.I got it long before he did: Federal Archive. That made the file restricted, yet he got access to it easily by telephoning and asking. So what is the big deal. Was it that hard for him to telephone?

Moreover, I never quite got the villain’s motivation. Nor could I credit a Swiss police officer with no probable cause and no warrant breaking into an apartment to find evidence with a witness watching him all the while. Any defence lawyer would win on that: Hunk broke in and planted the evidence in Marlowe’s fish bowl would be the assertion.

Gypsies figure in the story but I could not fathom the relationship of these travellers to the 1% of the native Swiss population that speaks Romansh. That would have added interested. Maybe I missed something.

While I liked the atmosphere of the cold, wet fog, it was over used. Sure, the weather can be like that, but repetition on the page drains the meaning from it. If the sun ever shines, the author will not be able to set a scene. Likewise some of mannerisms suffered overkill e.g., four different people flick dust off a shirt or jacket sleeve. Maybe more, if I lost count. Now just maybe that might happen but it does not make fiction.

My major reaction however is that the villain appears in act III of a three act play after a whole cast of characters has been introduced, none of them are relevant to the plot. Oh. It seems I wasted my time trying to keep them straight.

While the book is touted as the first in a new series, a scratch reveals that it is the first to be translated from the Schweizerdeutsch, but the fifth in the original series. Ergo the irritations and glitches that I noticed were not those of a novice.

Deadly Mantis (1957)

Deadly Mantis (1957)

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.

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.

Galatea

Galatea (2013) by Madeline Miller

Good Reads meta-data is 49 pages rated 3.94 by 24,583 litizens.

Genre: Fiction. Species: Short Story.

Galatea finds life puzzling and ends it all.

After reading the Song of Achilles and Circe, I am ready for anything that comes from MM’s keyboard, even this slight story between hard covers. Well, almost ready because I found this one didactic, and did not get the point until I read the afterword, and then I felt I had been preached at under the false pretence of a story fabricated from myth. The scatological language early on should have tipped me off. The MM of the earlier novels had no need for such vulgarity to get a reader’s attention.

The Crocodile’s Kill

Crocodile’s Kill (2022) by Chris McGillion.

Good Reads meta-data is 284 pages. rated 3.29 by 7 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: Less of Timor might be more.

The set-up: Impetuous FBI agent is banished to distant East Timor (because no place in Mongolia was available) where she cannot do any harm and might do some good.

In Dili she is seconded to Interpol (yep, it still exists but Reinhard Heydrich is no longer the head) to investigate the systematic abduction of babies less than two years old along the Indonesian border. The scars – physical, social, and psychological – of the 1975 Indonesian invasion and occupation until 1999 of eastern Timor are still vivid there. Recent Timor history is sprinkled throughout to explain motivations and attitudes.

The local liaison officer is glad for any help, but, well, this one is high maintenance.

The characters are differentiated and varied. A host of locals pass by as this odd couple investigates. A third officer joins the pair as a translator, file clerk, driver….to earn her spurs in the field.

By the way, the titular croc is ….. (Read it for yourself.)

The book is free from the tropes that drag down many of the krimi samples I read. The action is not deferred for long and boring backstories. Too often these backstories are supposed to make the reader either identify with or feel sorry for the protagonist. Further, the local does not pout about the FBI agent he has to be shepherd. Wise, since she might punch him out if he did. Nor is his superior officer obstructive and stupid, a tired device to create tension, as if the front story was not important enough to do that.

There is no catalogue of descriptions of clothes and food. When these are described it is brief and in context moving things along. Nor are there tedious descriptions of the characters. I am not sure what any of them looked like and willing to leave it at that. The movement in the interior along the border is purposeful, not a travelogue. I followed it on Google Earth until fiction replaced fact.

Even better the characters are distinctive, one from another. They don’t sound the same or even similar, and not every nit is picked to death. More than once something comes up, and a character chooses to let a comment go through to the keeper. (That last phase from cricket has no exact analogue in baseball.) Not every point gets argued to dust in lieu of doing anything, as is often the case in the krimi samples I read and decide not to continue to the full text because they are too talky.

In order to flavour the story Timorese there are continued and repetitive translations from the local languages and Portuguese that wear a reader down. I take the purpose to be context, but well I got abraded by it. Reminded me of Alexander McCall Smith and that is no recommendation to my mind. Yes, I know this mislike puts me in (another) minority.

The plot, though distasteful, is arresting and the situation is certainly new to me, despite my years of krimi reading.

While there is much stress on the urgency of the investigation, there is plenty of time to describe the region’s recent, malign history. And the region has far too much history for those who have had to live through it, from the Portuguese occupation for hundreds of years (which ended overnight) to the Japanese for a few, with some Dutch intrusion, and the commercial exploitation of late, including now Australian contractors who are expert at cutting corners. Then there are those Indonesians whose map of Greater Indonesia greeted visitors to Jakarta airport for years; it included Timor, East and West, and all of New Guinea and Borneo all the way to the Solomon Islands. Though that map is no longer displayed it likely remains in the minds of many people.

P.S. I came to wonder if the FBI agent assigned to East Timor would have done some homework before travelling to the island. A few clicks on Wikipedia if nothing else.

Disclosure: The author is a pal of mine.

Red Snow

Red Snow (1952)

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.