sunspot Reviews

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Worse Than Vogon Poetry

[1/10 · 20 December 2007]

An astronomical waste of money. Miscast. Disjointed. Hard to follow. Boring. Pointless. Worst of all, not funny. Not funny in the least. Even the production design is a disappointment, and what happened to the Guide itself? The Guide sequences were the most hilarious bits of the original books as well as the original BBC radio serial and later miniseries. They were apparently ditched to make room for a pointless side trip to Planet Malkovich and the wholly-unconvincing "romance" between Arthur and Trillian.

Save your time and money and get the DVD of the original BBC miniseries from the early '80s. Sure the effects are lame, but most of the roles were perfectly cast, the story flows nicely and is easy to follow, it's engaging, and it's consistently side-splittingly funny. It's not a perfect adaptation of the books or the original radio serial either, but it sure beats this Hollywood disaster.

Village of the Damned (1960)

Overrated

[6/10 · 9 July 2007]

I hate to say it, but this one's overrated. I'm a huge fan of old sci-fi flicks, and this one has a lot of good elements, but they never quite gel into a good film.

As others have already noted, the story starts off with a lot of promise when the entire village of Midwich apparently drops dead. We spend a good 15 minutes learning they're only unconscious, and then they awake - no explanation is given. Creepy, but sort of a waste of time. The book apparently handles this sequence much better - in the book there's a metallic object in the center of the village, which goes away just before everyone wakes up. This sequence is also used to introduce a military character, but he turns out to be totally superfluous again wasting the viewer's time.

The story doesn't really get going until the villagers learn so many of their women are suddenly pregnant. Given the stigma of illegitimacy in that era this segment offers the film's most interesting (and adult) character drama. The girls are obviously distressed and the men outraged, but we don't see quite as much of the villagers' reaction to these events as the first 20 minutes of the film lead us to believe we might, with the gossiping telephone operators and shop owners it took pains to introduce.

Instead the film unfortunately narrows its focus down to the lead scientist figure, his wife and the creepy kids, in particular their "son" David. And it's here that the film sort of falls apart. While the white wig suits David alright, on some of the other kids they look laughably fake. Prancing around the village in their black coats they make for quite a camp sight – if a group of drag queens haven't dressed up like that for Halloween yet, they will someday.

As the film lurches somewhat robotically toward its conclusion the remaining characters simply become vehicles to further the plot. There are a few genuinely creepy moments left – such as when we learn that the Russians nuked their village of white-haired brats – but they aren't enough to make up for the clumsily-directed "suspense" sequence which concludes the film.

Village of the Damned, in becoming a somewhat tedious monster movie, feels like it's missing a real opportunity to make some interesting social or political statements. The first half of the movie hints at becoming a character-centric, socially and politically-aware drama, something which would have made this film truly stand above its contemporaries. Instead we get a film that feels less sophisticated than contemporary American sci-fi fare, like Forbidden Planet or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It isn't an awful film by any means – indeed it's quite an accomplishment, given the budget – but it could have been so much more.

I certainly don't think it deserves its reputation as some kind of a classic. If you want a better horror film from 1960, Hitchcock's Psycho is the one to beat. George Pal's 1960 version of The Time Machine is the better science fiction film, though it's almost as flawed as Village. Other, better genre films from this era include The Haunting, The Birds, and (if it's camp you want) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. I'd recommend seeing all of those before screening Village. They're classics. This film? Not so much.

Damnation Alley (1977)

Boring, stupid and utterly pointless

[1/10 · 13 January 2007]

I must have seen at least 250 sci-fi movies since I was a child, ranging from old classics like Metropolis to '50s B-movies like Angry Red Planet to more modern post-2001 efforts like Star Wars, Aliens and The Fifth Element. Damnation Alley is, without a doubt, one of the absolute worst sci-fi flicks I have ever seen. From unintentionally funny dialog to wooden acting to lame special effects, this wreck misfires on all cylinders.

Planet of the Apes - another post-apocalypse flick - was filmed almost a decade earlier yet looked infinitely better. Star Wars cost half as much to make as Damnation Alley, was produced in the same year and makes this turkey look like an amateur film made by high school students. What a colossal waste of money. Literally 20 minutes of the film is devoted solely to shots of the flimsy-looking Landmaster driving thru the desert, with a dorky laser effect in the sky overhead. Boring.

I might be able to forgive the cruddy sets, costumes, props and effects if the story was any good, but this has to be the worst post-apocalypse story ever filmed. It makes Mad Max look like Citizen Kane. The whole motivation for the trip makes no sense right from the start of the film, and it's all downhill from there. Few of the events depicted in the film are remotely plausible, and those which are (such as the encounter with some deranged bad guys at a roadside cafe) are predictable, cheap and ultimately pointless.

This dud is absolutely not worth your time. As others have pointed out, the average episode of Airwolf or The A-Team blows it out of the water. It doesn't even have enough B-movie kitsch value to be enjoyable from that perspective. I'd much rather watch 90 minutes of the producers, screenwriters, director and actors being flogged – they've certainly earned some punishment for perpetrating this nuclear disaster on an unsuspecting audience. I'd drive from California to Albany in a jacked up Winnebago just to avoid another screening of this travesty.

Con Air (1997)

A good cast can't save an awful script

[1/10 · 4 May 2003]

Were Con Air a parody, it would have been one of the best action flicks of the '90s. Unfortunately, they played this truly awful script straight, and the result is one of the worst action flicks I've ever seen. It's like watching a 90 minute trainwreck in slow motion. I'd rather watch Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire again - at least that film was good for a few laughs, and had some imagination (lamebrained though it was). Con Air is about as original as asphalt on a highway.

The only surprising thing about this film is the sheer number of good, or at least competent actors stuck in it, including Malkovich, Buscemi, Colm Meaney and John Cusack. I'm assuming they were all offered a fortune, and probably figured this stinker of a script would either get cleaned up while in production, or that their combined talents would allow them to rise above it. It wasn't, and they can't. As writer Mike Judge once had his characters Beavis and Butthead observe on their old television program, you can't polish a turd.

Oh, and Nicolas Cage has become - without question - the most overrated actor in Hollywood. I loved this guy in flicks like Raising Arizona, but he has almost systematically turned himself into cinema's premier soulless action film "hero". His performance in this flick is tee vee movie of the week atrocious, and he sports what has to be the worst southern accent since Streisand's ludicrous attempt at one in Hello Dolly a generation ago. If it weren't for his inexplicable "status" as an A-List star, giving him first pass on fantastic scripts like Adaptation, this guy would be waiting tables in his uncle's restaurant. Here's some free advice, Nicky boy – having your character march around like he's in desperate need of a thousand pounds of Metamucil *isn't* acting. If it were, Madonna would be the next Katherine Hepburn.

Frogs (1972)

Too lame for MST3K

[29 April 2001]

Frogs mastermind the destruction of humanity, although it's a little hard to take villains you can squish underfoot seriously. Admittedly manages to have some small camp value, thanks to some appallingly stupid deaths at the hands of menaces like (spoiler warning for the terminally dense) turtles and frogs, which I suppose saves it from a no-star rating.

Still, the best that can be said of this dud is that - thanks to Battlestar Galactica - at least it's not the worst thing Ray Milland ever appeared in .. .

Disraeli: Portrait of a Romantic (1978)

Exceptional BBC Miniseries

[9/10 · 10 December 2000]

I was only about 12 when PBS here in the US originally aired this, and I recall pretending to be sick and staying home one day from school so that I could catch the final episode one weekday afternoon. I probably learned more about history that day than I did in a year wasted in our public schools, and it was entertaining, too.

Sadly, the BBC doesn't seem to produce shows like this anymore, and if they do PBS isn't buying them. Pity.

Space: 1999 (1975– )

The best-looking science fiction series ever produced, even if it often doesn't make a lick of sense

[22 August 1999]

Space: 1999 isn't really a single series. The first season is so different from the second, they're almost two separate shows. From sets to costumes to music, the second season is a completely different (and in most ways inferior) creation. Apart from the Eagle spacecraft, Landau and Bain are the only significant constants, and even their characters are in many ways completely different people in the second season.

I don't care much for the second season of 1999 -- it's just your basic tacky American raygun space drama, no different from the throwaway creations that would soon follow it in the post-Star Wars fray, such as Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers. Claustrophobic sets, feathered locks and sweaty hairy he-men abound, along with inept soap opera romance and a "kill the aliens" credo. Disposable plastic garbage - Star Trek, without even a hint of redemptive moralizing.

But the first season was something completely different. It was impeccably designed, pretentious, gothic and self-aggrandizing. It was the Brothers Grimm, on acid, in outer space. Many episodes -- perhaps a majority -- sported an improbable deus ex machina ending, accompanied by an incredible soundtrack (especially considering this was pre-Star Wars) and often cinema-quality sets, costumes and special effects. Important guest stars (such as Christopher Lee) staggered through their lifeless appearances as if their makeup were laced with novocaine, while the regular cast alternated between screaming histrionics and a catatonic state. Through it all, they improbably traversed the cosmos in their sterile, Italian-designer Moonbase Alpha, while the psychedelic universe outside repeatedly threatened to blow up around them (courtesy Brian Johnson and his team of effects wizards).

It was, in short, an overproduced mess -- high on production values, and low on everything else. The old joke is that 1999 was "marked-down" from 2001, and it's not far from the truth. Like Kubrick's classic, Space: 1999 is a glorious, stylish, seemingly drug-induced state, where a great deal of what's going on doesn't make a bit of sense and you're not supposed to care. And I have to confess, sometimes, lost in the moments, I don't.