Political theory and practice

The Net (aka Project M7) (1952) 

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! 

Captive Women (1952)

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.

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.  

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.  

Highly Dangerous (1950)

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. 

Stalker (1979). 

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.

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.  

Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949).

IMBd meta-data is runtime 1 hour 13 minutes rated 5.2 by 49 cinematizens.

Genre: Spy Fy with Sy Fy.

Verdict: [Did not Disturb – Zzzzzzz.]

Mr Giles has invented Fox News sucking brains out viewers.  All the brainless people around creates litter and fearless – because he has a stunt double – Dick ambles into action.  The fate of the free-world hangs in the balance but Dick has plenty of time to turn his good side to the camera.

Giles had arrived from Prague and nothing good has ever arrived from Prague.  Moreover, he shaved his beard as a disguise.  What a dirty trick that is. Nonetheless Dick and his faithful comic relief spot him.  

The result is more Spy Fy than Sy Fy.  It is included on Scifist 2.0 because of the brain dehydrating sonic beam ear worm that pumps out Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ without end.  Cruel enough that to bring a smile to faces in the Kremlin. 

The stunt double gets a work out, and for reasons only known to the script writer, the Gypsies did it!  Yep, the Gypsies who run the fun fair are not in it for the fun and certainly aren’t fair either. Red Gypsies!  Bad Gypsies!  At least they held onto their brains.  

Dick Barton started his derring-do on the radio in the 1930s and went on, but did not reach retirement age.  He was James before Bond in his devil may care attitude, but he was also asexual.  His exploits were aimed by prepubescent boys and steered clear of any of the mushy stuff.  

The characters – the good and the bad, alike – stumble around like three stooges but evidently collide in Blackpool Tower which is pretty good work for the stunt man.  The eminence gris has a laptop to control the music, but….   

The direction is snappy, the dialogue atrocious, the setting unusual, the result juvenile.  Dick did not go on because without a stunt double, the star was killed in a car accident returning home (drunk, no doubt) from the wrap party.  Giles did not do it.  Ah huh.  

1. Red String of Fate (2021).

IMDb meta-data is run time of 9 minutes and 52 seconds, rated 7.8 by 17 cinematizens.  

Genre: Sy Fy.  

Verdict: short and sweet. 

A charming short on DUST about a forbidden love between an android and a human, both female.  In a few minutes it gets across more about the character and circumstance than a deafening three-hour long extravaganza from Hollywood or Pinewood.  

2. BackSpace (2022)

IMDb runtime is 7 minutes, rated 5.8 by 19 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Too long. 

The good guy wears white and the bad guy, well you know.  

3. Q Ghostly Remote Effect (2020)

IMDb runtime of 19 minutes and 43 seconds, rated 5.7 by 6 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Nice place to visit.

Girl meets android and falls in love.  Cf. Blade Runner.  

From Norway with spectacular scenery.  

Mad Monster (1942) 

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 17 minutes, 3.5 rated by 1,750 discerning cinematizens. That’s out of 10.

Genre: Horror; Species: Bore.

Verdict: [Snore.]

Professor Moriarty is not only a stable genius but also a great patriot. In an old dark house near a convenient swamp he experiments on men and dogs to create a savage warrior who will slay our fanatical enemies in 1942. His comely daughter is in attendance and none the wiser.  She seems to have had no mother.  Was she another of his experiments? Her beau is even dimmer.  

Morrie’s ethics clearance application for his Hairy Warrior project was decisively rejected by the third anonymous assessor, that is, Dr No. Without a nationally competitive grant Morrie was of no use to the university in the ratings game, so he was manoeuvred into early retirement. Angry, he continues to conjure a savage murderer out of a gentle giant gardener known as Pedro to everyone except the screen credits which have him as Pietro.  ‘Look, I just work here,’ said the film editor.  

The spectral seminar Morrie holds at the start for exposition is the best scene in the movie. I speak as a participant in such sessions, some to my knowledge and others not. Dr No has had more than one tongue-lashing from yours truly.    

There is a menacing atmosphere in the misty swamp and the transformation of the gentle giant into ravening wolf-man is effective, but he is no Lon Chaney and that hat! Ha! 

The whole film was undercooked in the five days it took to produce it.  Yet it is so slow that it seems almost three hours long. The director must have been taking Rohypnol by the handful.

The daughter-damsel in distress looks almost as bored as I felt, and her rescuing knight was a 10-watt bulb. Neither offered any conviction nor injected any vitality into the proceedings.  

I had read about it in detail on Scifist 2.0; ergo I knew the little I was in for.  It is freely available on You Tube in a so-so print.  

George Zucco was always committed to his roles no matter how ludicrous they were, like this one. He always gave 100 per cent. He alone carries this waste of celluloid but even he limps in the turgid and vague mishmash. By the way, The Great War left him with paralysis in his right arm, where he had been wounded. He always said yes to work and there are 99 credits for him on the IMDb. The name is Greek and he refused to change it to something Anglo, because it was his father’s name.