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[June 22, 1968] The Devil, you say (Rosemary's Baby)

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by Amber Dubin

It seems appropriate to mention expectations when discussing a film with such a pregnant subject matter (pun intended). Mine were fairly low to start because I am not a fan of horror movies. This is because the scares from horror films usually suffer two major foibles: the ridiculous and the cliché. Outside of Halloween festivities, I have little patience for silly looking, poorly costumed monsters. I also dislike when a film relies too heavily on violent/grotesque imagery to get a rise out of its audience. It was through this biased lens that I viewed Rosemary's Baby; though I went in expecting disappointment, predictability and lack of inspiration or fear, I was proven wrong on all counts. Rosemary's Baby has a spine chilling relatability that creeped into my psyche and won me over, despite my pessimistic attitude toward it. It has the uniqueness and incontrovertibly high quality writing that give it all the makings of a timeless horror classic.

The slow boil of discomfort begins as we open to an off-putting lullaby, mournfully serenading the viewer as we zoom into a gloomy, dismal, old city skyline. The first couple of scenes increase the viewer's sense of unease by limping along at a clunky and awkward pace into a world that just barely makes sense. The young newlywed couple at the center of the story, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes), are introduced as they enthusiastically acquire an apartment even though it's clearly run down, overstuffed and not move-in ready at all. Their reactions continue to be disjointed from reality in the subsequent scenes as we are introduced to their old and new friends. They proceed to have very awkward and/or inappropriate conversations with each of them, starting with Hutch (the family friend who brings up some very odd subjects over dinner) and ending with a first meeting with their neighbor Terry (who wastes absolutely no time launching into her sordid past of drug abuse with someone she has not even known for a full hour over laundry with Rosemary). The couple proves to have similar lack of social grace around each other, when their first night they spend at their creepy new apartment, they are eating off a blanket on the floor because they have no curtains or furniture and Rosemary awkwardly declares, "Say! Let's make love" completely apropos of nothing. Personally, I think the subsequent silent disrobing and intertwining of bodies to be not only shocking, but (and deliberately) decidedly un-sexy.


Not the models for marital bliss

It comes to pass that all this awkwardness is by design, as it serves to innure the viewer for strangeness that piles on with every scene and every new character introduced. Like the proverbial frog that gets cooked alive in slowly boiling water, both Rosemary and the viewer are slowly made comfortable with painfully uncomfortable circumstances, and we don't realize what's happening until it's too late.

In the first shock of the movie, the couple go on a late night stroll in order to avoid over-hearing what sounds like chanting coming through the paper-thin walls. As they return from their ramble, they are shocked to find a crowd surrounding the bloody corpse of Terry, the overly chatty girl Rosemary met earlier at the laundry. The elderly couple that Terry was living with react normally to her sudden "suicide" at first: expressing shock and grief when they introduce themselves to the Woodhouses as their neighbors, the Casavets. The next day, however, when Mrs. Casavet appears at Rosemary's door, her behavior is anything but normal. The older woman barges into Rosemary's place and goes through it like she owns it, speaking in nonsensical run-on sentences that are off putting and yet Rosemary doesn't react at all. Yet most unnerving is when she casually mentions having Terry cremated and bequeaths Rosemary with Terry's foul-smelling "good luck charm" that must not have been lucky enough because Terry was still wearing it when she died.


Dead women's necklaces make great house-warming gifts

It is with this bizarre house-warming gift that the Casavets begin their campaign to integrate themselves into every waking moment of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse's lives. Guy is initially reluctant to even meet them, but once he and Mr. Casavet bond over cigars they become fast friends. Bizarrely, Guy becomes so close with the septuagenarian at one point that he begins going over their neighbor's house even without Rosemary with him. It is important to note here that, for me, the most upsetting part about this movie is the way the Woodhouses talk to each other. Like many couples, they at first appear to be hopelessly in love, but as you get to know them throughout the film, their relationship is rotten to its core. Guy proves himself to be a selfish, mean, horrible man. Rosemary, in her desperate attempt to justify her continued adoration of him, consistently makes excuses for his bad behavior. The most egregious example of this dynamic comes when they decide to start trying for a baby (basically so that Rosemary will have something to do when Guy is off auditioning for roles). By apparent coincidence, the first night they are set to start trying, Rosemary's neighbor gives her a homemade dessert that makes her almost collapse afterwards.


If you ever find yourself waking up like this, it's time for a divorce

The following night Rosemary is in a fitful sleep where she dreams of being assaulted by the devil while all of her neighbors stand around her naked and chanting. She wakes up naked and sore with her back scratched up and when questioned, her husband says he 'didn't want to miss the baby-making night.' I had an almost identical level of revulsion as Rosemary when faced with the realization that her husband would take such liberties over her body without her knowledge or consent. It turns out that night marked the conception of a very difficult pregnancy, one which not only sees the steep decline in their marriage, but also Rosemary's sanity and health, while she slowly becomes completely subjugated by the incessant presence of the Casavets in her life. Bounced between her husband and her intrusive neighbor, her self-esteem is whittled down to nothing as she is constantly insulted and isolated from her own family and friends. Her husband refuses to look her in the eye for weeks, and when she gets an adorable haircut to feel more fashionable, the first thing out of his mouth is "You look horrible! This is the worst decision you've made." Ever the non-supportive, selfish man she married, Guy uses her new "hideous" hairstyle to ignore her even more as her pregnancy progresses, throwing himself into his acting career as if nothing else matters.


Despite being thoroughly mod, this look deeply displeased Rosemary's husband

Rosemary's husband and neighbors add insult to injury when they convince her to change the doctor she goes to for regular check ups, and he repeatedly ignores her pleas for help when she has unusual pains, telling her every concern she has is in her head. At one point, she rebels, throwing a huge house party with friends she hasn't seen in years, against the wishes of her oppressors. Her friends are appropriately horrified to see what she looks like, seeing how pale she is and how sunken her eyes. Breaking down into tears, she confesses that she's been in horrible pain since the beginning of her pregnancy and can't believe this level of agony is normal.

Her friends literally lock her husband out of the room and validate all of her fears, telling her how her husband and Doctor are treating her is not at all normal and she needs to get out of there as soon as possible. It appears to already be too late, however, as when the pain lessens the next day, she second-guesses her friends and settles into the routine set by everyone else in her life. The way this party resolves reveals itself to be the first in a trend of stranger and stranger happenings in the background of Rosemary's pregnancy. Little by little, every contradictory voice in her life is silenced, beginning with the party go-ers and ending with Hutch the family friend from the beginning.


A desperate call for help that goes unanswered

Hutch's re-entry into Rosemary's life triggers a headlong fall down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial theories and occult explanations for the increasingly bizarre behavior of Rosemary's doctor, neighbors and husband. Within hours of his visit to Rosemary's house, he vows to do research on her neighbors and then almost immediately falls into a coma he never wakes up from. Speaking from beyond the grave, he wills her a book about witches, filled with secret messages implying that the Casavets belong to a well established coven that's been in the area for ages. Thus ensues a Rosemary's frantic bout of research, which leaves the viewer wondering whether she's actually figuring out what's going on or completely losing her mind.

The moment of truth comes when she finally presents her findings to a new doctor, only for him to turn her over to the custody of her original doctor and her husband, as a raving lunatic. She is instantly proven right in her suspicions, though when she gets home and the entire coven is in her apartment and descends upon her, pinning her to her own bed by sheer force of numbers. Horrifyingly, she is induced into a coma by her mad-scientist doctor, and when she wakes again she is told she birthed and lost the baby. Because she rightfully believes no one around her at this point, she starts deceiving her captors by pretending to take the "medicine" they feed her and feigning ignorance as to why they take her breast milk "to be thrown in the trash." After days of placating them, she arms herself with a huge kitchen knife and follows the crying noises she's been overhearing sporadically through the walls. She finds an entrance to the neighbor's apartment in the back of one of her closets and stumbles into a room full of people gathered for a baby shower that she wasn't invited to.


Mia Farrow out-doing herself

In the performance of a lifetime, Mia Farrow approaches the black curtained bassinet adorned with an upside down cross in the center of the room. Leaning over its side, her eyes absolutely bulge out of their sockets in an expression of pure, abject terror. Recoiling, she screams, "what did you do to its eyes?!" The gathered crowd enthusiastically exclaim that her child has its father's eyes and erupt into a cacophony of "Hail Satan"s. Dazed, Rosemary stumbles around the room, receiving no comfort from the callous scheming coven as they alternatively mock and jeer at her. Her husband even has the nerve to come up to her and tell her why he signed them up to this whole situation, explaining that "it'll just be as if you lost the baby" and "this will be so good for my career." I believe Rosemary speaks for all of us by promptly spitting in the man's face and shutting him up. In the end, she tentatively approaches the bassinet again because one of the other party guests is shaking it too hard and causing the infant within to cry. You can see the heartbreaking mixture of confusion, fear and motherly love play across Rosemary's face as she resigns herself to some level of acceptance of this situation and the same creepy lullaby that began the film croons over us as we fade to black.


A movie for the ages

This film had so many iconic moments and scenes. If this isn't Mia Farrow's break-out role, then I know nothing of quality acting. I expect great things from her in the future. The script, score and plot were also a cut above. I began my viewing thinking it bizarre and ungrounded and within 15 minutes, I was enthralled, on the edge of my seat and just as anxious to find out what fresh Hell Rosemary was going to be subjected to, even as I was disgusted and disturbed by what she had already endured. Rosemary's Baby is a true tribute to the horror genre and made a believer out of this skeptical critic.

5 stars.




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 24, 1968] How Low Can You Go? (Battle Beneath the Earth and The Astro-Zombies)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Notes From Underground

The English have a great hunger for desolate places.
— Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia

And I have a great hunger for the desolation of cinematic wastelands.

Need evidence? Consider my interest in things like Teenagers From Outer Space, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, and Women of the Prehistoric Planet.

I rest my case, although I could name many more.

I recently dived deep down into the abyss of Z-grade filmmaking with a pair of inept science fiction films. Grab your flashlight and come spelunking with me into the bottomless cavern of movie malfeasance.

Dig We Must


And it can stay there!

Battle Beneath the Earth

This subterranean smorgasbord of silliness begins with stock footage of the casinos in Las Vegas. Two cops drive by and get a call to investigate a listening disturbance [sic]. That's a situation I don't recall ever appearing on Dragnet.


"Be sure not to help this guy, everybody! Just stand around and stare at him!"

In what is very clearly a set, and not Las Vegas, we see a fellow with his ear to the ground. He's raving about something that sounds like ants underground. Understandably, the cops drag him away as a kook, and he winds up in a mental hospital.

(By the way, the sanitarium has slot machines, for use by compulsive gamblers. At this point, I had to wonder if the film was a deliberate spoof. Unfortunately, I don't think so.)


Then they tell you what movie you're watching, in case you wandered into the theater by accident.

Our hero is a naval officer, recently assigned to lab duty on land after an experimental underwater habitat was destroyed in an earthquake. (Hint: It wasn't a natural disaster.) The sister of the listening guy happens to be his assistant. She tells him that her brother keeps asking to talk to him.


Peter Arne, as Arnold Kramer, in bathrobe, and Kerwin Mathews, as Commander Jonathan Shaw, in uniform. "Before I listen to your crazy story, allow me to remind you that I was the star of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which was a much better film."

It turns out that the guy isn't a paranoid nut, but a seismologist who has figured out that (wait for it) a Chinese general and his minions have dug their way under the Pacific Ocean and most of the way across the United States. The plan is to fill the tunnels with atomic bombs and, I don't know, rule the world, I guess. (We find out he's planted similar bombs under Peking, so he's working on his own, like any proper megalomaniac.)


A minion inside a Chinese digging machine. "Peek-a-boo!"

After a few skirmishes underground (excuse me, I mean a battle beneath the Earth), the good guys figure out that the general's supplies are coming from some place in the middle of the Pacific. They use their own digging machine to raid the place.


Carefully labeled, in case some swabby thinks it's a tank or something.

Along for the fun is our Good Girl, a Hawaiian geologist. She doesn't do much, really, except look pretty and fall into the arms of our hero.


"Gee, Miss Yung, you're beautiful without your glasses!" The character has a Chinese last name, but is played by Viviane Ventura, a British/Colombian actress. A small hint of casting problems to come.

The raid is a fiasco, with a bunch of Marines getting killed. Our hero gets captured by the bad guys.


Martin Benson as General Chan Lu. "Before I explain my sinister plan, in the proper manner of any James Bond villain, allow me to remind you that I had a small role in Goldfinger, which was a much better film."

At this point, our movie's Bad Girl enters. She hypnotizes our hero, using what is very obviously one of those little battery-operated handheld fans you use to cool yourself off on a hot day. She recites this bit of doggerel over and over, in order to wash the hero's brain thoroughly.

Red is green
Green is red
The East is sunrise
The West is dead

I don't think Robert Frost has any competition to worry about.


"I will control your mind through the power of a refreshing breeze!"

I should note that this character (Dr. Arnn) is played by Paula Li Shiu, a Chinese actress. All the other Chinese characters (except a few minor nonspeaking roles) are played by Occidentals. This kind of casting is embarrassing, but if Christopher Lee can play Fu Manchu, I guess anything goes.


The general in the tube gizmo he uses to descend to the underground tunnels. "The next wise guy who says 'Beam me up, Scotty' is going to get it!"

The bad guy has all kinds of supposedly Chinese stuff decorating his underground headquarters, just in case you forget what nationality he's supposed to be. He also has a pet hawk, just to show you how evil he is.


"The next wise guy who says 'This movie is for the birds' is going to get it!"

Will the good guys win? Oh, come on, you know the answer to that already.


Nothing like an atomic bomb for a happy ending.

Quality of film: Two stars.
Level of derisive amusement: Four stars.

All the Way Down to the Bottom


What happened to the word "The" and the hyphen between "Astro" and "Zombies"?

The Astro-Zombies

This cheapskate epic begins with a woman driving down the road. Get used to this kind of thing, because we'll have plenty of scenes that go on and on where people do ordinary things. Eventually, she winds up in her garage, where she's killed by a guy in a skull mask.


This, ladies and gentlemen, is an astro-zombie.

We then get our opening titles, oddly filmed over scenes of toy robots.


Nothing says quality like dime store special effects.

Cut to some science types and some government types talking in an office. Long and confusing story short, it seems there was a project to transmit thoughts from folks on Earth to brains in artificial bodies in spacecraft.


Government guy, played by Wendell Corey, looks concerned. He had a similar role in Agent For H.A.R.M.

It seems that one of the scientists working on the project got kicked out, and is now on his own. He's played by John Carradine, of course.


"You want me to play another Mad Scientist? How much does it pay?"

Naturally, Carradine has a hunchback for an assistant. Believe it or not, his name is Franchot.


"My parents could have named me 'Fritz' or 'Ygor,' but no . . ."

Franchot grabs a dead guy out of a car wreck and drags him back to the lab. If I've managed to follow the plot correctly, he wants to put a brain into his body and create another astro-zombie. Apparently, the previous one had a murder's brain and went on a killing rampage.


There's also a woman in a bikini strapped down on a table in the lab. She has nothing to do with the plot.

Meanwhile, foreign spies are after Carradine's secret. A lot of the running time is spent with the good guy spies and the bad guy spies fighting each other. The leader of the bad guys is played by the amazing Tura Satana, so memorable in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!


Tura and one of her minions.

I have to say something about Tura's appearance here. She wears tons of makeup, including gigantic false eyelashes. Her fingernails look like daggers. There's a special credit for her costume designer, who really did an interesting job.


Tura in pink. Is she auditioning for Star Trek?

No opportunity is lost to put her remarkable body on display.


A little something for the leg men in the audience.

Anyway, let me get back to the plot. We've got a couple of heroes, of a sort, as well as a heroine/potential victim.


Here they are, in a time-killing scene at a nightclub in which they watch a topless dancer covered in body paint. Is it really cricket for a guy to take a woman out to see a stripper?

They come up with a plan to have the heroine act as bait for the astro-zombie who's slaughtering women left and right.


"Uh, guys? I don't think that's such a good idea. And which one of you is supposed to be my boyfriend, anyway?"

Stuff happens. The funniest scene is when the astro-zombie runs out of energy, and has to hold a flashlight to his head in order to charge his photoelectric cells.


"Thanks, Eveready!"

Boy, this is a dreary little movie. Only the presence of Tura Satana makes it watchable.


One more cheesecake shot for the road.

Quality of film: One star.
Level of derisive amusement: Five stars.




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Movies

[May 22, 1968] Finding a New Way: Witchfinder General

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by Fiona Moore

Witchfinder General is a real game-changer not just for British horror but for horror films in general. This is a movie without monsters, ghosts, psychopathic killers or, even, witches (at least real ones). The terror comes from people’s belief in witches, and what that belief makes them do to other people, and, in making that change, this film is an artistic statement that transcends genre.

The story is set, as a clunky (and rather unnecessary, since the same information is conveyed in the first few scenes) voiceover at the start tells us, in 1645, the height of the English Civil War. It is ostensibly based on the life of a genuine historical figure of the time, Matthew Hopkins, the so-called “Witchfinder General”. He is a minor landowner who made his career travelling around Southeastern England identifying witches using bogus techniques and confessions extracted under duress. In fact, the story bears almost no resemblance at all to the known facts of Hopkins’ life, barring his name, that of his assistant Stearne (in real life their roles were reversed), the location (East Anglia) and the methods used to extract confessions from witches. This is a minor complaint, however—and might not even be a complaint, as the story the movie tells is possibly more disturbing than Hopkins’ actual biography.

Vincent Price and Robert Russell as Hopkins and Stearne

The film’s main positive figure, at least at the outset, is Richard Marshall, a young Roundhead soldier engaged to Sarah Lowes, the niece of a small-town Church of England priest. Sarah’s uncle is accused of witchcraft by his neighbours (we never learn the specific reason for this, which chillingly suggests that it’s a fairly banal local conflict that escalates to horrific extremes) and Hopkins and Stearne arrive, arrest and torture the accused. Sarah, desperate to save her uncle, sleeps with Hopkins; when Stearne, envious and sadistic, rapes her, Hopkins discards his promises to Sarah and has her uncle executed. Richard, hearing of the tragedy but arriving too late to stop it, marries Sarah and swears vengeance on Hopkins. Matters escalate, leading eventually to a bloody confrontation which clearly brings home that violence only begets more violence, and that no one in this story is going to escape without severe damage.

Ian Ogilvy (right) as Richard Marshall

The civil war backdrop is sketched in matter-of-factly. Perhaps surprisingly, given that subsequent British popular culture tends to dislike the Parliamentarians (in Sellars and Yeatman’s phrase, the Cavaliers were Wrong but Wromantic, and the Roundheads Right but Repulsive), the film resists the temptation to lay the blame for the witch hysteria at Cromwell’s door. Richard and his men are more or less positively portrayed, as is Cromwell himself when he turns up for a brief cameo after a successful military campaign. Some of the film’s power arguably lies in the fact that they, and Hopkins, are all ostensibly on the same side, and, while we see very little of the atrocities of the war itself, it is clearly part of what is fueling the communities’ drive to turn on their own. The viewer is also left to fill in some details themselves: for instance, the absence of a lord of the manor in the village where Sarah and her uncle live suggests he was a Royalist, possibly also hinting at why relationships have broken down between the villagers and why Sarah’s uncle is now accused of heresy.

Hilary Dwyer as Sarah Lowe

In casting terms, Vincent Price is credibly chilling as Hopkins, largely because of the way he underplays his role: he talks about torture and murder in the same banal tones as one might discuss a land boundary dispute, and he pretends hypocritically to be serving the public interest. Robert Russell as Sterne is a much more familiar figure from horror films, loathsome and sadistic, but provides a necessary contrast to Price, acting as a kind of expression of Hopkins’ id. Newcomers Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Dwyer, as Richard and Sarah, are very pretty to look at, but they also have the acting chops to handle their characters’ descent as they are subjected to increasing torment and degradation.

Sarah in a beautiful landscape

Michael Reeves’ direction works well, contrasting the beautiful scenery of Southeast England with the awful behaviour of its inhabitants. His best, albeit hardest to watch, efforts come in the film’s climactic scene. In it, Hopkins escalates his method of execution from simply hanging witches to burning them—not at the stake, but strapped to a ladder slowly lowered into the fire. As this takes place, the camera turns its pitiless gaze around the crowd, showing a variety of different reactions: from religious rapture, to horror, to fear, to pleasure. Most horrifyingly, it also shows children absorbing the violence around them. We later see the same children roasting baked potatoes in the execution fire, a detail that is terrifying in its matter-of-fact presentation.

Child spectators at an execution

The story’s contemporary relevance is also clear. Sexism visibly fuels the witch-hunting activities, and prejudice against women and fear of their sexuality in the wider culture allows the likes of Hopkins and Stearne to flourish. Desensitisation to war, as we are seeing in America and elsewhere, allows people to condone and commit acts of violence in their own communities. Revelations after the collapse of the Nazi regime, and reports from behind the Iron Curtain, show clearly how petty grievances between neighbours can, under totalitarian rule, lead to arrests and torture. The viewer can’t leave the cinema thinking it could never happen here: clearly it not only can–it has.

The witch-burning scene

The film makes the most of its economical 86 minutes, and is definitely not for the faint-hearted. By mining British folk culture and history, and by focusing on human evil itself rather than monsters and spirits, Reeves has opened up the possibilities of a whole new kind of horror movie and paved the ground for a new, artistic subgenre; I can’t wait to see what this new pioneer of British cinema will come up with next. Five out of five stars.




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Movies

[May 16, 1968] Counting down, and a blast from the Past (Countdown (1967) and The Time Travelers (1964))

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by Janice L. Newman

When we learned that last year’s Countdown was playing in San Diego theaters, The Traveler and I decided to make a night of it and drive down to watch it. The Traveler is a space buff, of course, so it was a natural fit. Would I recommend it? Well, it depends.

The story is simple and straightforward, with few surprises. When the Russians send up a civilian astronaut to circumnavigate the moon, with three more astronauts presumably soon to follow and actually land, NASA implements an emergency plan to get a man on the moon at any cost. He’ll be stuck there for a year, provided he can find and enter a previously-sent shelter pod before his oxygen runs out. Public relations concerns force NASA to tap the less-qualified civilian Lee for the role rather than their first choice, Colonel Chiz. After many conversations, discussions, arguments, and training sequences, Lee is sent to the moon to land a few days after the Russians. What happens next is, shall we say, narratively predictable, but I'll let you watch the movie to see for yourself.


Lee and Chiz in the modified Gemini that will go to the moon–it's clear NASA helped Warner Bros. make this film.

The movie feels grounded in realism in a way that few modern space movies do. This is a story of the ‘here and now’, with current technology, fashion, and language. It’s a bold choice, and a risky one. With technology changing so quickly, it seems likely that the movie will soon feel dated and possibly even silly. Within a couple of years, it’s highly likely that either the Russians or the Americans will succeed in landing on the moon, and what then? The story will simply be a ‘could have been’, perhaps interesting in its time, but quickly forgotten as it is eclipsed by true events. Unless the movie ends up being prescient. Who knows?

While the story and visuals are deeply entrenched in the ‘now’, however, certain aspects of the movie feel groundbreaking: specifically, the way sound is handled, both the conversations between characters and the music. I’ve never seen a movie or play where characters talk over each other so much. It’s confusing and sometimes frustrating, trying to follow the thread of a conversation as other characters are shouting. It feels more like ‘real life’ in some ways; after all, real conversations are often filled with interruptions, stops and starts which almost never show up on screen or stage. The technique was used a bit too much, perhaps, as sometimes I thought that it continued to an unrealistic degree. The actors seemed a bit uncomfortable with it as well, a few times starting or stopping in an artificial way. I imagine after training in one kind of acting, to do something so different must have been disconcerting. This is not to say that the actors did a poor job. Duvall in particular impressed me, turning in a powerful performance as the bitter passed-over Colonel Chiz.


Everyone talking at once–Altman's invention.

The real star of the movie, though, was the music. Atonal and dissonant music is not new. Arnold Schoenberg, for example, spent the first half of the century writing music that sounds strange to Classically-trained ears. What is new, at least to me, is the use of dissonance in a mainstream movie soundtrack, and not just for a moment or two, but for most of the movie. The soundtrack eschews the Romantic-style orchestral music which is standard in most films, and instead uses eerie, unsettling themes that swell and fade with high-pitched notes and low groans, punctuated by the occasional pounding of timpani. Still orchestral, but not sweet. Not predictable in its progressions, but rather filled with deliberately clashing chords. It’s not quite to the level of atonality that Schoenburg ended up writing, but it’s unusual and fresh, and it does an amazing job of building tension even absent of every other factor. In some ways, the soundtrack might have been more suited to a horror movie! Is this the beginning of a new trend in movie music? I understand that Planet of the Apes, which came out after this film, uses similar dissonant themes. On the other hand, I understand that 2001 features The Blue Danube and Also Sprach Zarathustra, which are both undeniably fine pieces of music, but hardly ‘modern’. So I guess we’ll see!


It's the music that really sells the scene as Lee struggles with the lunar simulator.

So do I recommend the movie? For space buffs, yes, absolutely. The grounding in modern technology and the efforts at realism will be appreciated by people who know what they’re looking at (even if, as The Traveler pointed out to me, they used footage of the wrong rockets). For everyone else? The plot is paint-by-numbers. The fate of the Russian astronauts didn’t come as a surprise. Nor did Lee’s. The conflicts of the movie—with Chiz, between Lee and his wife, between the surgeon and the head of the project—are all more or less resolved by the end. Everything is tied up neatly, and that’s that.

But even if space isn't your bag, if you love music, especially modern and unusual music, this film may well be worth the price of entry!

Three stars.


by Gideon Marcus

What an interesting beast Countdown is.  Like the novel, Marooned, it is very much of its time.  As Janice notes, it's instantly dated.  But the test of the plot isn't whether or not it could happen now, but whether or not it was plausible at a certain time.

There is clearly a point of divergence from our universe in this movie.  In the chronology of Countdown, a back-up "Gemini to the moon" plan was prepared.  The Soviets had more luck with their program, and, indeed, a completely different program (no mention is made of Soyuz in the film; it must have been written before April 1967.) With those facts as a given, the events of the movie make sense, and indeed, make a fascinating counterfactual.


The Soviet craft is exclusively referred to as a "Voskhod" (with varying degrees of mangling in the mouths of American actors)

The basic thrust of the movie is still relevant, even if the facts are dated.  As we speak, Apollo 8 is being planned for a circumlunar flight toward the end of the year.  We know the Soviets have been planning for such an endeavor, too, linking up their Soyuz craft in orbit in preparation.  That flight around the moon wasn't in the cards until we were worried the Communists might beat us to the punch.  What corners are we cutting to make it possible?


This is the movie's mission, but it's also Apoll 8's trajectory.

There's a lot to like about this movie.  The acting is excellent.  I recognize Robert Duvall from his endless TV roles (including "The Inheritors" and "The Chameleon" episodes of The Outer Limits and "Miniature", an episode of The Twilight Zone), and James Caan from the episode of Hitchcock, penned by Harlan Ellison, with Walter Koenig.  The direction is innovative, naturalistic and tight.  Newcomer Robert Altman does a lot with a little: this is clearly a low budget film, using flagrantly inaccurate stock-footage rockets (Atlas Agena for the first Pilgrim flight; a Titan II for the second) instead of a Saturn.  I'm kind of surprised they didn't use Saturn 1 footage, honestly.


Ted Knight as a Shorty Powers type describes the mission.  Note the Saturn V in the drawings.


But this is what we actually see–a Titan-Gemini launch.

There are two main motifs that run through this film.  The first is difficulties in communication.  Altman has his actors constantly talking over each other, often failing to listen to each other.  This manifests itself technically when Stegler's radio gives out, punctuating conversation with frequent drop-outs.


Reacting to a failure to communicate.

The second is, of course, countdowns.  Robert Duvall recites the numbers from ten to zero a dozen times in the film.  Altman knows there is suspense in that little trick, and despite its frequent use, it isn't really overdone.


Duvall counting down.

If there's a problem with the film, it's that, despite all the flurry and tension and concerns, there are really no decisions to be made.  Like a spaceflight mission, the movie completes its pre-planned trajectory with little input from the characters along for the ride.

So I think I give it 3.5 stars.  The execution deserves five; as a narrative, it's barely a two.  On the other hand, let's be honest–were these events to play out in real life, with astronauts in peril on the way to the moon, we'd be absolutely riveted.  Of course, in that case, we wouldn't necessarily know everything was going to be all right in the end…

But there's more!  Enjoy this bonus review of a…lesser Sci-fi movie.


by Gideon Marcus


There was no "Love Machine" in the movie I saw. I have no idea what it's talking about.

I shoulda run when I saw the "American International Pictures" logo.

Alright, it's true that AIP doesn't always make shlock, but this time, they indubitably did.  1964's The Time Travelers, directed (sort of) by Ib Melchior and also co-written by him is an hour and a half you'll never get back.

But is that really so bad?

We open up on a "lab" where an "experiment" in time travel is taking place.  Three scientists and a dopey electrician occupy the far left side of the room.  A screen, positioned clearly for our benefit rather than the scientists', occupies the middle of the room, showing where the time window is currently focused.

When the screen refuses to show the future, Steve, the headstrong beefcakey one, decides to push the circuits to their maximum.  The result is as expected: things spark and catch fire.  But serendipitously, the screen becomes more than a window–it's now a portal!  The dopey electrician goes through to investigate, the bohunk and the goateed elder scientist (made of wood or some other unmoving substance) go after him.  When weird humanoid mutants show up and menace Carol, the remaining scientist, she clobbers them with fire extinguisher exhaust.  Then the portal starts to collapse.  She goes through to warn bohunk and goatee…but it's too late.  They're all trapped. 

107 years in the future!

Thus ensues a chase that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the film, because it goes on for what feels like a good five minutes.  Here's where I realized that there was no budget for retakes or second unit work.  What they shot, they had, and if they were going to fill a movie's run-time, they were going to use every last bit of it.

What's really funny is the four of them hold off about a dozen mutants, armed with spears, by throwing rocks at them.  For some reason, the mutants never think to throw their spears… or rocks.

Anyway, they stumble upon a cave complex guarded by an electric gate.  An attractive older woman in form-fitting trousers (there's a lot of form-fitting trousers in this flick) greets them, accompanied by a bunch of creepy, but not ineffective androids, and brings them to their council chamber.  Turns out that only most of humanity died in an atomic calamity (depicted in stock footage narrated by the council leader, none other than John Hoyt, who is in everything, including the original Star Trek pilot).

But though the mutants increase their attacks every day, there is hope.  The future humans have discovered an inhabitable world around Alpha Centauri (which Alpha Centauri, they don't say…) and have built a starship to get there called… "Starship".  I'm amazed there are no British actors in the cast because that's a British name if I ever heard one.


John Hoyt and… Starship.


1964's finest.

It's all very When Worlds Collide, up to and including the extreme caucasianicity.

At first, the four time travelers are offered a berth on Starship.  This is great because dopey electrician (you can see the impact he had on me–I don't remember his name) has fallen in love with the assertive beauty in form-fitting trousers, Reena (none other than Miss Delores Wells, Playmate of the Month for June 1960; don't ask me how I know this).


Ahem. Form-fitting trousers.

I do like that about this film–men and women seem to share power pretty equally in this future.  Except when it comes to fighting.  Then it's all up to the menfolk and androids.

Anyway, Councilman Willard, a real jerk, insists that Starship can't accommodate any more people, so the time travelers have but one option–build a time portal back to the past.


"I don't wanna take 'em with us!

It's finished at the same time Starship is ready, and also when the mutants make their final attack.  Starship launches but then explodes, killing all on board.  The mutants fight their way to the time portal room, slaughtering many men in form-fitting trousers as well as androids.  We get to see one android catch fire and burn.  For about a full minute.  Because, after all, they shot it, so it's gonna get shown.


"So much for being a real boy…"

The portal is finished in time, the time travelers jump through, along with Reena, John Hoyt, and a few other trouser people, and they find themselves back in the lab at the moment of their fateful experiment.  But they find that time has frozen for them.  Their only hope is to jump through the screen, currently focused on the far future.  They emerge onto a landscape reminiscent of the end of When Worlds Collide…hmmm.

Then, because run-time was short, they recapped the entire movie at an accelerated (or speeded up) rate, I guess to indicate a time loop.  In fact, they do it twice before rolling credits.

Things that are bad:

  • The acting: even John Hoyt is bad.
  • The cinematography: "Hey, I set up the camera–you want I should move it?"
  • The pacing.
  • The science (Lord, the science).

Things that are good:

  • The score: sure, it doesn't always fit the action, but there is a groovy number that clearly influenced the theme of a certain show we all know and love…
  • The scene with the half-mutant refugee that Carol saves from Willard–but nothing more is done with this wasted opportunity.


    You can't see that his hands are deformed claws of flesh–I wanted to see more of this kid.

  • Delores Wells: look, I make it a point not to be a lech, but… vavavoom.
  • The magic tricks: several times, they lift stunts straight from Harry Blackstone's repertoire–they take off an android's head and put it back on; dopey electrician is "teleported" from a magic box.  It's like Vegas, but on film!
  • Superfan Forrest Ackerman has a cameo.


    Hey 4-E!

Two stars.  Don't fail to miss, even if it's tonight's Late Late Movie…unless you want a laugh and/or an eyeful of form-fitting trousers.




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Movies

[May 14, 1968] Bad Girls On Bikes (The Hellcats, The Mini-Skirt Mob, and She-Devils On Wheels)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Three For The Road

I've previously confessed my inexplicable enjoyment of beach movies. A similar vice to which I am addicted is my passion for films about motorcycle gangs.

This particular kind of cheap drive-in feature has exploded ever since the success of The Wild Angels last year.

There are already a bunch of these movies out there, all featuring guys on big bikes riding around, drinking beer, making out with chicks, getting into fights, and generally raising Cain.

But what if they weren't guys?

Three films I saw recently raised my hopes that I'd see the distaff side of things for a change. Not all of them met my expectations. Let's take a look.

The Hellcats

The poster for this low budget cycle flick certainly emphasizes the women in the cast. The trailer does the same thing, putting the names of five of the female characters right up there on the screen for all to see. But is that really what we get?

The movie starts with the funeral of one of the gang. The plot is both simple and difficult to follow, but let me do my best to explain it.

The dead member of the Hellcats was working with the cops. It seems that the cyclists are helping some gangsters push drugs, and he was informing on the crooks. The gangsters killed him, I guess. This isn't the most coherent movie in the world.

Anyway, they also kill one of the cops. The dead man's brother and girlfriend are our protagonists. They manage to join the Hellcats. Eventually, after a lot of random stuff happens, the Hellcats blame the gangsters for the death of one of their members and a big fight breaks out.

So where are all the tough biker chicks we're expecting? Well, they're around, but they don't do very much. Even the one-eyed blonde shown on the poster is a minor character. (You can see what she really looks like in the scene shown above. Not as scary as the poster.)

Not a good movie. Read a book instead.


Maybe not this one.

Quality of film: Two stars.
Bad Girl content: One star.

The Mini-Skirt Mob

The trailer for this somewhat more professionally made film makes it clear who the villainess is, and even features a knockdown, drag-out fight between the Bad Girl and the Good Girl. More false promises?

During the opening credits, I thought I had walked into the wrong theater and was watching a Western. Horses in a motorcycle movie? Well, it turns out the hero is a champion rodeo rider, although that has nothing to do with the story.

The cowboy has just married our Good Girl, played by Sherry Jackson. Hey, she was on Star Trek!

This makes our Bad Girl, played by Diane McBain, very mad. It seems she had a relationship with the cowboy some time ago, and doesn't want to let him go. Together with a few male sidekicks, she and the other members of a female gang called the Mini-Skirts give the newlyweds a hard time.

(Truth in advertising. The gang members really do wear miniskirts, as impractical as that may be on motorcycles. I'd hardly call them a mob, however, as there are only four of them. One of them, the leader's little sister, turns out to be not so bad after all.)

It all leads up to an out-and-out war, with rifles and Molotov cocktails as the weapons. People get killed. There's one death scene that's pretty darn gruesome.

The movie manages to create some suspense, and there are a lot of visually impressive scenes of the desert, courtesy of the state of Arizona.

Quality of film: Three stars.
Bad Girl content: Three stars.

She-Devils on Wheels

The trailer for this Florida-filmed epic reveals two things. It's got a bunch of Bad Girls, and it's really, really cheap.

The opening credits feature a painting of a screaming woman on a cycle. I hope you like it, because it shows up a lot. Between scenes, the same thing appears, spinning around like a record.

The Man-Eaters motorcycle club (their symbol is more cute than scary) have races to determine who has first pick from a bunch of men who are, apparently, just waiting around to be chosen as intimate companions for the night. When one member chooses the same guy too often, the others accuse her of being in love, which is against the rules. She has to drag the fellow behind her bike, leaving him a bloody mess, to prove her loyalty to the gang.

(There's a lot of fake blood in this thing. Director Herschell Gordon Lewis also gave the world extremely gory films such as Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!,Color Me Blood Red, and A Taste of Blood.)

The two most interesting Man-Eaters are Queenie, the leader, and Whitey. The latter is — how should I put it? — zaftig? Rubenesque? Anyway, she's not your typical Hollywood starlet trying to look tough.

There's also Honeypot, a new member. She gets the plot going.

After the Man-Eaters have a fight with a male gang, defeating the boys easily, the guys get their revenge by kidnapping Honeypot and returning her a bloody mess. (Do you sense a pattern here?) The Man-Eaters set a trap for the leader of the men, leading to our big shock scene (which you may have spotted in the trailer.)

Make no mistake. This is a terrible movie. The acting is atrocious. (I understand that women who could ride motorcycles were hired, rather than women who could act.) But it delivers the goods. These are very Bad Girls indeed.

Quality of film: One star.
Bad Girl content: Five stars.

Overall, not very good movies. Sometimes you just have to go back to the classics.




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 26, 1968] 2001: A Space Odyssey: Three Views

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A Trip To Tomorrowland?


by Fiona Moore

People who don’t like trippy, confusing endings for their movies are in for a bad time of it these days. The ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey at least makes more sense than the ending of The Prisoner (the filming of which series overlapped with 2001 at Borehamwood Studios, meaning Alexis Kanner had to share his dressing room with a leopard). The question is, does this make it a better piece of SF visual art?

No, I don't know either.
No, I don't know either.

The plot of the movie is fairly thin. Millions of years ago, we see human evolution directed by a strange black monolith, in a premise strikingly similar to that of the recently-released Quatermass and the Pit. We then jump to the near future of 2001, where a similar monolith is discovered on the moon and another near Jupiter. A space mission is dispatched to check the latter out, but things go wrong in a memorable subplot when the sentient ship's computer, HAL 9000, goes mad and kills the astronauts before sole survivor Dave Bowman finally shuts it down. The psychedelic denouement contains the distinct implication that the next stage of human evolution has now been directed by the monoliths, and Bowman has become the first of the new species of elevated humans.

The monolith near Jupiter, about to mess with your head.
The monolith near Jupiter, about to mess with your head.

Interspersed with the plot is a lot of depiction of the future thirty-three years from now, with its space stations, ships and moonbases. Despite some very impressive and well-thought-through effects, with actors seeming to stand upside down or move at right angles to each other in zero-G environments, the overall impression was depressingly banal and rather like one of the corporate-sponsored imagined futures in Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland attraction. We may be able to travel to the moon, but we still have Hilton hotels and Pan-Am spacecraft. The characters are also banal, in the case of Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood almost to the point of seeming robotic: HAL is much more of a character than either of the two astronaut dolls.

Captain Scarlet is much more animated than these two.
Captain Scarlet is much more animated than these two.

As an anthropologist, what interested me most was the film’s questions about violence and human nature. The message seemed to be that humans are inherently violent, however evolved we are: the first thing the ape-men at the start of the movie do once they discover tool use is to kill a tapir and then make war on a rival tribe. Bowman’s last significant act as a human is to kill a sentient machine, and we have no idea what the evolved Bowman will do as he approaches the Earth. While the current scientific consensus on the inherent violence of humans is more nuanced (I note that the film also espouses the now-outdated theory about the first tools being discarded bones, suggesting that Arthur C. Clarke isn’t as up on his anthropology as he is on his astrophysics), it perhaps works well as a cautionary note about our current political situation and the possibility that we might wipe ourselves out through nuclear warfare.

Raymond Dart came up with this theory in 1924; we're over it, Arthur.
Raymond Dart came up with this theory in 1924, we're over it, Arthur.

2001 is a beautiful and lyrical movie which raises some interesting questions about the nature of humanity, but which also bogs itself down in the dull minutiae of an imagined life in the future. Three out of five stars.

Love At First Sight


by Victoria Silverwolf

Unlike Tony Bennett, I left my heart in Los Angeles.

I happened to be in that city during the initial run of Stanley Kubrick's new science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. I understand that the director has cut the film slightly, to tighten the pace a bit and to add a few titles to the various sequences. (The Dawn of Man at the beginning, for example.) What I saw was the original version, and it knocked me out.

Instead of just gushing about the movie, let me introduce you to the little demon sitting on my left shoulder, who will do its best to convince me I'm wrong.

Giving the Devil Its Due

ZZZZZZZ. Oh, excuse me. I fell asleep trying to watch this thing. It's got the frenzied pace of a glacier in winter and all the excitement of a snail race.

Cute. Real cute. Some people are going to consider it boring, I'm sure, compared to an action-packed film like Planet of the Apes. But that's a matter of apples and oranges. I found every second of this leisurely movie absolutely enthralling.

No accounting for taste. What about the actors? What a bunch of bland nobodies! They could be replaced with wet pieces of cardboard and you wouldn't know the difference.

First of all, let me deny the premise of your objection in at least two cases. During the Dawn of Man sequence, a fellow by the name of Daniel Richter does an extraordinary job of playing the prehistoric hominoid who discovers how to use tools. (Of course, this character isn't named in the movie itself, but I believe the script by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke calls him Moonwatcher. We'll know for sure when the novel comes out.)


Not even the demon can deny that the makeup and costuming for this sequence is fantastic, better than in Planet of the Apes.

Then there's my favorite character, HAL 9000. Canadian stage actor Douglas Rain's voice is used to magnificent effect. It's exactly how I expect a sentient computer to talk.


Like everything else in the film, the design of HAL's eye is superb.

OK, I'll grant you those two. And I'll even throw in the costumes, sets, and props that appear in this turkey. But what about the actors who aren't hiding in a monkey suit or behind a glowing red circle? They're as dull as ditchwater.

Unlike Kubrick's black comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, this film doesn't have any big name stars in the cast. I think that's deliberate. Nobody is larger-than-life; they all seem like very ordinary people involved in something extraordinary.

Let's take a look at the three main human characters.


William Sylvester as Doctor Heywood R. Floyd.

William Sylvester was born in the USA but has lived and acted in the UK since the late 1940's. He's done a lot of British low budget films. I know him best for his lead roles in the horror films Devil Doll and Devils of Darkness.

Ha! And that gives him the experience to star in a multimillion dollar blockbuster? You've been watching too much Shock Theater, lady.

I can't deny that, but let me continue. Consider the two astronauts aboard Discovery in the depths of the solar system.


From left to right, Gary Lockwood as Doctor Frank Poole and Keir Dullea as Doctor Dave Bowman.

Gary Lockwood has done a lot of TV, and had the lead role in the fantasy film The Magic Sword. Keir Dullea has been in a few movies, and is probably best known for playing one of the two title characters in David and Lisa.

Let me guess; he didn't play Lisa. Anyway, you've just offered up two more minor league players. You're making my point for me. Where are the famous actors who would dominate the screen?

That's the problem. They would dominate the screen, and this is a movie best appreciated for its images and its ideas. You want to escape into its world, and think I am looking at the future and not There's Charlton Heston.

Point taken. So what about that goofy ending? What's that supposed to be, a San Francisco hippie psychedelic light show? Groovy, baby, pass the LSD!

I won't deny that the final sequence of the movie is ambiguous and mystifying. It's also a dazzling display of innovative film technique. In addition to what you call a light show, there's the eerie scene of Bowman in what looks like a luxurious hotel room.


A stranger in a very strange land.

What does it all mean? Don't ask me. Maybe the upcoming novel will make things clearer. But I adore this movie, and I expect to watch it dozens of times in the future, assuming it keeps coming back to second-run theaters. Maybe even if it ever shows up on TV, although it should really be experienced on a very big screen.

And the music! Goodness, what a stroke of genius to make use of existing classical and modern art music instead of a typical movie soundtrack. The Blue Danube scene alone is worth the price of admission. And the recurring presence of Also Sprach Zarathustra! Magnificent!

Five stars, and I wish I had more to give.

***sigh*** No use arguing with a woman in love.

You Damn Beautiful Apes!

by Jason Sacks

Man, who'd a thunk it? Just a couple weeks removed from seeing Planet of the Apes, there's another science fiction movie in the theatres which involves apes.

You might have heard of it, because this new film has the portentous title 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I loved Planet of the Apes. Just two weeks ago in the pages of this very magazine, I praised the film's restrained story, its tremendous special effects, its lovely cinematography and its spectacular use of music. Heck, I thought POTA was perhaps the finest science fiction movie in years. It's a thrilling, delightful sci fi masterpiece.

But 2001, man, wow, it's transcendent.

2001 is immaculate and powerful, smart and elliptical, with the greatest special effects I have ever seen in a motion picture. It tells a heady, fascinating story so vast it transcends mere humanity and expands into the metaphysical.

Many have criticized this film for being slow – heck, look at the devil on Victoria's shoulder to see just one example of that. But the slowness is obviously intentional. Director Stanley Kubrick clearly wants the viewer to see this film as stately and calm, playing astonishing space scenes juxtaposed with gorgeous classical music.

It's a work of genius to juxtapose Strauss's "The Blue Danube" with the image of a spinning space station. This juxtaposition and its stately pace allows the viewer to make connections, to see how a journey down a river in the 1860s will be as ordinary and beautiful as a journey into space in the year 2001. In the same way, using "Also Sprach Zarathustra" invites the viewer to imagine transcendence and evolution in an ecstatic way, bringing both a connection to the past and to the future in a way that perfectly suits Kubrick's themes.

Kubrick makes efforts to tether the viewer to his film with scenes like this.

What makes it even more thrilling is when he cuts that tether and demands the audience make connections ourselves.

What is the strange monolith that appears at different times of human evolution, and how does it propel us forward? Is the monolith a literal gift from alien beings (who might as well be gods – or God) or a symbol of mankind's evolution?

Why does the HAL-9000 computer, perhaps mankind's greatest achievement and an electronic being that achieves sentience, go crazy and destroy people?

What is the meaning of the trippy journey the astronaut takes towards the end of the film, and what is the meaning of the very strange place he finds himself? Why does he age? What is this place?

And what is that strange space baby we see at the end?

What do we make of any of this?

Kubrick asks the viewer to make up our own minds, to build our own interpretations of those scenes. 2001 feels overwhelming, in part, because it is participatory. This film demands we become involved with it as a means of determining some kind of truth and meaning out of it. Take this film in, interpret it, and determine your own truth. Like in life, there are no clear answers when considering the biggest questions.

Mr. Kubrick on the set with his actors.

Kubrick's previous film was Dr. Strangelove, a deeply cynical and polemical film (which is also hysterically funny) in which the director tells viewers what to feel. 2001: A Space Odyssey is the opposite. It's optimistic and ambiguous and highly serious. Strangelove was black and white and 2001 is glorious, rich color.

Stanley Kubrick is American's greatest living filmmaker. 2001: A Space Odyssey proves that fact.

Kubrick's film is an absolute masterpiece. Sorry, Fiona. The angel on Victoria's shoulder is right.

5 stars




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Movies

[April 24, 1968] Terrifying Psychological Horror (Hour of the Wolf, by Ingmar Bergman)

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by Jason Sacks

Ingmar Bergman is back in the cinemas at last! His last movie, 1966’s Persona, received rave reviews of its release, including by me. Persona is a fascinating, deeply haunting film about identity and personality. It is a demanding film in its style, pace and plot but is also an intensely rewarding viewing experience.

Hour of the Wolf continues exploration of many of the ideas he presents in Persona.

Again Bergman films his new feature in his usual black and white, a stark palette which gives his films a kind of painful emotional resonance. Again Bergman sets his film on a remote Swedish island far from most people. And again Bergman provides a meditation on identity, on memory and on the nature of personality.

There’s also one key difference between Persona and Hour of the Wolf that might interest the Galactic Journey audience: Hour is a horror film.

The film stars Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann as a married couple who go off to live on a small island off the Swedish coast. The Von Sydow character, named Johan Borg, is a painter who decides to travel to the island with his wife to find some peace and to do his work. He also wants to help his wife, Ullman as Alma Borg, find peace from what appears to be a recent psychological breakdown.

At first everything seems calm and ordinary on the little island, as the couple find happiness in their togetherness. But it soon becomes clear that Johan is fighting his own inner demons. He is a man of the bourgeoisie who does not belong in society, who has pain and torment from his previous life. It’s clear he has been sexually abused and is tortured by his own sexual inclinations. He becomes distant from Alma and seems to fall apart emotionally.

When the couple is invited to a party held by some other island dwellers, all of this angst comes to the surface in a phantasmagoria of psychological fear. At their castle, he is gawked at and treated like a freak by snobbish and condescending people who are also psychologically broken in their own ways.

The banal madness of the castle dwellers sends Johan into paroxysms of breakdown, imagining the castle dwellers laughing at him (delivered by Bergman in a beautifully componsed, tremendously spooky medium shot which could come out of  last year's terrifying Japanese film The Face of Another). From there we get a whole series of terrifying moments – a woman takes off her face like plastic and eyes like they're balls, a man crawls up walls, a man has wings, a character attacks Johan and we see blood. It all builds and builds with anguish and pain.

With all that, somehow there are two moments of deeply contrasting feel which nevertheless each create dread and fear in the viewer. During the dream sequence, Johann’s face is lathered in makeup and he is painted to be a frightening in-between of man and woman. He’s not quite one or the other, and that profound personal ambiguity makes the scene feel full of dread. His identity is nullified, and without identity what are we, anyway?

In the other terrible moment, Johann has a fateful encounter with a young boy while fishing, and the whole scene comes to a dreadful end, and it’s not clear if this is parable or actual, a distorted memory or a moment of terrifying breakdown.

Those scenes, together with the intense feelings of fear and confusion Alma displays on her face, describe a journey into madness and pain that help elevate this film above mere melodrama into something transcendently terrifying.

Though Bergman has never been known as a genre director, Hour fits comfortably in his oeuvre of work. Bergman has always displayed a deep fascination with the elusive nature of human psychology, exploring the nature of relationships in elliptical, often dreamlike ways which expand out perceptions of personality and truth. We see those ideas explored throughout Hour of the Wolf.

Tied to that is his attention to the nature of human relationships and individualism. Each of us is an island, but each of us has deep effect on our loved ones, Johann's breakdown affects Alma's breakdown, and each works in a cycle of cause and effect on each other. Bergman dwells on this topic frequently, and Wolf is no exception.

I've indirectly priased Von Sydow and Ullmann several times here, but I should also take a moment to single out the brilliant cinematography of Sven Nykvist. Nobody shoots a film with the austere beauty of Nykvist. He's the perfect collaborator for Bergman, and I'm so happy to see their collaboration continue with this powerful, starkly beautiful film.

Hour of the Wolf seems to elude meaning on a purely intellectual level. Bergman gives us a narrator whose intentions seem unreliable, so we never quite have a grounding in exactly why he takes the actions he does.

But who among us is always honest with themselves?

On the emotional and psychological levels, however, Bergman’s latest film displays his deep interest in the mysteries of the human soul. The darkest nightmares come from within, and those nightmares are on full display in this remarkable film.

4 stars




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 18, 1968] "You Damn Dirty Apes!" (Planet of the Apes)

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by Jason Sacks

Planet of the Apes is already one of the most talked-about films of 1968. My friends have been buzzing about this movie since it was first announced, and now that it’s appeared Apes is certain to dominate all the chatter until Mr. Kubrick delivers his long-promised science fiction film.

A lot of the conversation has been about the ending of this film. I can’t talk about Planet of the Apes without revealing the incredible climax ending in this review, so if you want the twist to be fresh to you, you will want to turn the page around paragraph twelve of this review.  You have been warned!

As you probably know, the movie stars Charlton Heston as George Taylor, an astronaut who journeys with his four compatriots to an alien planet via a deep sleep device. One companion dies along the way, so Taylor and his remaining pals journey across a desert. For three days (and thirty minutes of screen time), Taylor and his friends wander like Moses and the Jews across a desolate desert. Unlike wandering tribes of Israel, the astronauts eventually discover an oasis. This verdant area is beautiful and welcoming and perfect for a skinny dip. It’s also the absolute worst place they can end up.

After their spaceship crash lands in a lake, the astronauts have to flee and try to find civilization.

See, the astronauts' clothes get stolen and then the visitors become witness to an incredible tableau. It seems there are many living humanoids on this planet. They look like humans, in fact. They are dressed in rags, running around like savages, terrified of something even stranger.

The Apes rounding up humans as if people are mere animals.

What sparks their fear is something even more uncanny. What sparks their fear as gorillas. Riding horses. Attacking the humans, and slaughtering them like a big game hunter might hunt gorillas in Africa in our world. The apes are clearly the dominant species on this world. We witness the slaughter of hundreds of humans under the apes’ vicious attack. One of Taylor’s companions is killed in the massacre, while Taylor’s vocal chords are damaged by an ape rifle. Taylor is tied hands and feet, and brought to a very odd sort of jail.

The brutal aftermath of the hunt is reminiscent of the American colonization of the West

Amazingly, it’s a bespoke sort of jail, in which various ape species come to perform experiments on the humans. Scientist apes Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and Zira (Kim Hunter) are amazing in their portrayals of these oddly humanlike creatures, full of empathy and confusion about Taylor and yet also a deep commitment to their own ape world. The script nicely walks a fine line with these characters.

The story squarely embeds Cornelius and Zira in the middle of this fictional world, explicitly having them react as members of their society first and foremost. Our hirusite leads react as apes with moral codes and professional ethics and wow is this a wonderful breath of fresh air compared with the way most science fiction movies portray societies.

"Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"

I’ll move away from this plot summary, at least for the moment (gotta talk about the astonishing ending!) because I must make sure I discuss the many other ways this movie stands out.

First and foremost, Planet of the Apes is a fun movie. It’s full of action and twists and surprises. The crowd at the Northgate Theatre seemed on the edge of their seats the entire time as we watched this film, and the buzz at exit was full of joy.

This scene directly alludes to history and traditions inside ape world. How many science fiction movies build such a complex world?

Which implies the film had a great script. Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone wrote the initial outline, but Michael Wilson completed it. Wilson has previously worked on the David Lean films Bridge Over the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and he brings this film a similar combination of epic feel and personal intimacy we get in those films. Specifically, he creates a complex and fascinating society for the apes. This society has a history, and a religion, and social castes, and even mythologies they’ve created. All of it feels smartly earned, based on how I would imagine an ape society would be constructed, and I keep finding myself pondering this world.

One of my favorite magazines has a great article this month about the makeup required to turn Roddy McDowell into a chimpanzee.

One of the most important things about Apes has been receiving a lot of buzz in Famous Monsters and other recent zines: The makeup in this movie is amazing. I know there’s no Academy Award for best makeup, but the category should be reinstated just for this film. I was initially skeptical about the design of these characters going into the movie, but Dan Striepeke and his crew at Fox deliver an amazing design.

Franklin J. Schaffner directs the film. I’m not familiar with any of his recent work, but I know he directed Heston in The War Lord, and it’s obvious their previous project built some tremendous trust between the men. The direction is solid, professional and not showy. I’ve been pondering what Kubrick might be showing us in his sci-fi film, and I’m sure it will be much slicker and showier than Schaffner’s work here.

Leon Shamroy’s cinematography delivers in every scene, whether the gorgeous vistas of the American desert, the weird interiors of the Apes’ abodes, or the claustrophobic cages. Jerry Goldsmith’s atonal music adds so much to the story being told, and the set design work by Walter M. Scott and Norman Rockett really brings this world to life.

Tailor is paired up in a cell with Linda Harrison (Nova), a primitive, mute woman.

Okay, okay, yeah this movie is fantastic. It’s full of some thrilling and hilarious moments. Heston screaming “get away from me you damn dirty apes” is already starting to enter our lexicon. Sock it to me!

But the biggest reason everybody seems to leave this film giggling, the “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!” or “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!” moment which will go down in history, is that awesome tableau at the very end. Schaffner films the sequence perfectly. Taylor and his female companion Nova are riding a horse on a beach. We think they’re still on an alien world as the camera zooms up. We see a triangle on the edge of the screen, we witeness a pull back, and at last we get a stunning image and a powerful primal scream of anger from Heston…

"Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

Ohh yeah! If you’re not smiling thinking about this ending, you saw a different movie than I did.

This is clearly the best science fiction movie of the year so far. I don’t know much about what Stanley Kubrick has planned, but this odyssey to the Planet of the Apes is stunning.

5 stars.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 14, 1968] In Unquiet Times: The Frankfurt Arson Attacks, the Shooting of Rudi Dutschke and Electronic Labyrinth THX-1138 4EB

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by Cora Buhlert

Another Annus Horribilis

1967 was a terrible year of unrest and violence. So far, 1968 seems to follow suit, especially considering the horrible events in Memphis, Tennessee, last week.

Regular readers may remember my article about the devastating (and still unresolved) fire at the À l'innovation department store in Brussels last year. I expressed my disgust at the pamphlets distributed by the leftist activist group and alternative living experiment Kommune 1 in West Berlin. The Kommune 1 members not only expressed their glee that a department store full of people, whose sole crime was caring more about shopping than the war in Vietnam, burned down, but also hoped that more department stores would burn.

The West Berlin police viewed those pamphlets the same way I did, namely as a threat and incitement to arson. Therefore, two Kommune 1 members, Fritz Teufel and Rainer Langhans (who ironically are not even the people who claimed responsibility for the pamphlets) were arrested and tried for incitement to violence and arson. That trial concluded last month, when a judge acquitted Teufel and Langhans, accepting their explanation that the pamphlets were satire and never intended to be taken seriously.

Fritz Teufel and Rainer Langhans in court
Kommune 1 members Fritz Teufel and Rainer Langhans in court

It is possible that the Kommune 1 intended the pamphlets as satire, albeit in very bad taste. However, even if the pamphlets were intended as satire, there was always the risk that someone might take them seriously.

And then someone did…

Flames in Frankfurt

On the evening of April 2nd, the phone rang at the office of the press agency dpa in Frankfurt on Main. A woman's voice announced that fires would start in the Kaufhof and M. Schneider department stores as an act of political vengeance. Shortly thereafter, homemade incendiary devices ignited in the bedding and toy departments of Kaufhof and the women's wear and furniture departments of M. Schneider respectively.

Kaufhof in Frankfurt on Main
The Kaufhof department store in Frankfurt on Main.
M. Schneider department store
The M. Schneider department store in Frankfurt on Main decked out with Christmas lights.

Thankfully, the human and financial toll of the Frankfurt fires was far lower than that of the À l'innovation fire in Brussels. The arsonists used timers to make sure that the incendiary devices ignited after hours, when the stores were closed and the only person inside the building was the night watchman (who escaped with minor injuries).

Furthermore, the Kaufhof and M. Schneider stores, built in 1948 and 1954 respectively, are far more modern and safer than the seventy-year-old À l'innovation building. Unlike À l'innovation, both stores were equipped with sprinkler systems – something the arsonists were not aware of – and the fires were quickly extinguished, though they still caused considerable damages of approx. 282000 Deutschmarks at Schneider and 390000 Deutschmarks at Kaufhof.

Burnt cupboard at M. Schneider
Aftermath of the arson attack at M. Schneider: Even if it is a very ugly cupboard, that's no reason to burn it down.
Aftermath of the arson attack at Kaufhof
Police officers survey the aftermath of the arson attack at Kaufhof.

But who were the arsonists? Witnesses remembered a suspicious young couple and two young men hurrying up the escalators shortly before closing time. The same young couple was later seen in a student bar, celebrating and bragging. And so four suspects were arrested only two days later: twenty-four-year-old Andreas Baader, charismatic, bisexual, a failed artist with a history of car theft, who used to hang out with the members of the Kommune 1, twenty-seven-year-old Gudrun Ensslin, a clergyman's daughter from Stuttgart, student of German literature at the Free University of (West) Berlin, Marxist, occasional actress and publisher of poetry chapbooks, mother of a one-year-old son and current lover of Andreas Baader (who is not the father of her son), twenty-six-year-old Thorwald Proll, also a student of German literature and friend of Baader's and the Kommune 1 members, and twenty-four-year-old Horst Söhnlein, who runs an alternative theatre in Munich, which he trashed shortly before he was arrested, because he feared that his rival Rainer Werner Fassbinder would take it over.

Andreas Baader
Alleged arsonist Andreas Baader lounging in a café.
Gudrun Ensslin
Alleged arsonist Gudrun Ensslin

The common denominators that connect the four suspects are the Kommune 1 as well as Andreas Baader. People familiar with the West Berlin activist scene have told me that Baader is desperate to impress the Kommune 1 members, who don't particularly like him. So even if those disgusting pamphlets were intended to be satire, as Fritz Teufel and Rainer Langhans claimed in court, they did inspire four young people to commit a serious crime.

Public Enemy Number 1

Axel Springer headquarters in West Berlin
The ultra-modern headquarters of the Axel Springer Verlag in West Berlin, directly at the Wall.

However, the Kommune 1 are not the only ones who are using the written word to incite violence. Sadly, the West German tabloid press is no better. Of particular note are the various newspapers of the Axel Springer Verlag, including their flagship quality paper Welt and Bild, West Germany's biggest tabloid, sold at every newsstand, in every tobacco shop and every bakery in the country.

Bild editorial "Stoppt den Terror der Jung-Roten!"
One of the nastier Bild editorials demands: "Stop the Terror of the Young Reds".

Like all tabloids, Bild specialises in sensationalistic headlines that tap into the fears and desires of the West German population. Right now, a lot of older and conservative West Germans have decided that protesting students are to be feared. Bild as well as the other Springer papers feed those fears with lurid headlines, angry editorials with titles such as "Stop the terror of the young reds!" and political cartoons that frequently cross the line of good taste, all aimed at the supposed menace of left-wing student protesters.

Dispossession political cartoon
This political cartoon in Bild responds to the "Dispossess Springer" campaign by offering suggestions whom else to dispossess
Walter Ulbricht political cartoon
This political cartoon from Bild shows the spirit of East German socialist party chairman Walter Ulbricht marching with the student protesters.
Bild political cartoon 1968
In this Bild editorial cartoon, two long-haired students wonder if they, too, will make it into the papers, if they riot enough.
Political cartoon 1968
Officials of the far right party NPD praise student protesters as their best election campaigners.
Political cartoon 1938 and 1968
In a remarkable feat of mental contortion, this Bild cartoonist equates left-wing student protesters with Nazis attacking Jewish businesses during Reichskristallnacht in 1938.

Bild and the other Springer papers have singled out one man in particular as the chief menace to society, namely twenty-eight-year-old Rudi Dutschke. Originally from East Germany, Dutschke's idealistic and pacifistic Christian Marxism quickly clashed with the real existing Socialism of the German Democratic Republic. Only three days before the building of the Berlin Wall, Dutschke fled to West Berlin. He found work as a sports reporter for the tabloid B.Z., ironically owned by the Axel Springer Verlag. He began studying sociology, philosophy and history at the Free University of (West) Berlin, where he quickly became involved in the activist scene and joined the left-wing student organisation Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund SDS.

Rudi Dutschke
Student activist Rudi Dutschke speaks at a protest march.
Rudi Dutschke political cartoon
This political cartoon in Bild shows Rudi Dutschke standing on his head and wondering why everybody else is wrong.
Rudi Dutschke in Hitler pose
This editorial cartoon in Bild shows Rudi Dutschke in Hitler pose. Just in case there was any doubt about the cartoonist's intentions, the letters "SDS" on Dutschke's belt are styled like SS runes.
Rudi Dutschke scientists
In this Bild political cartoon, rendered even more tasteless by recent events, several doctors try to peer into Rudi Dutschke's head to find out what's wrong with him.

Rudi Dutschke is not the most violent or radical of the West Berlin student activists, but he is the most visible, taking part in every protest and relentlessly organising marches, meetings and discussions. He was invited to join the Kommune 1, hub of the West Berlin activist scene, but declined, preferring a more traditional family life with his American wife Gretchen and their infant son Hosea Che. Dutschke also knows the Frankfurt arsonists and is the godfather of Gudrun Ensslin's young son, though it is not known if he was aware of their plans. Finally, Dutschke is a charismatic speaker, which is how he ended up in the crosshairs of Bild and became public enemy number 1 to the conservative press.

Rudi Dutschke in Amsterdam
Rudi Dutschke earlier this year at a peace protest in Amsterdam
Rudi Duschke wedding
Happier times: Rudi Dutschke and his American wife Gretchen at their wedding in 1966.

According to the old saying, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me." But, as the Frankfurt arson attacks show, words can incite people to do physical harm. And so the relentless attacks on Dutschke by the tabloid press led to threats and hateful slogans left in the stairwell of the apartment house where Dutschke lives with his young family.

Three days ago, they led to something far worse.

Shots in West Berlin

On April 11th, a young man – later identified as Josef Bachmann, a twenty-three-year-old unskilled labourer from Munich – rang the doorbell of an apartment on the quiet end of West Berlin's Kurfürstendamm boulevard that serves as the headquarters of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund. Bachmann asked if Rudi Dutschke was there. The student who answered the door nodded and asked if Bachmann wanted to come in. But Bachmann just shook his head and left.

He loitered on the sidewalk outside the apartment block and waited for Dutschke to emerge. Dutschke only wanted to buy nasal drops for his three-months-old son at a nearby pharmacy and got on his bicycle, when Bachmann approached him. "Are you Rudi Dutschke?"

Dutschke nodded, whereupon Bachmann screamed "Dirty Communist Pig", pulled a gun and shot Dutschke three times, in the head, the neck and the shoulder. Miraculously, Dutschke survived and even managed to walk a few more meters, before he collapsed in front of an undertaker's office. Passers-by quickly came to his aid and lifted Dutschke onto a bench, where he lay calling for his parents, declared that he had to go to the hairdresser and hallucinated something about soldiers. He was taken to hospital and underwent emergency surgery. As of this writing, Rudi Dutschke is still alive, though in critical condition. Even if he survives, he will retain lifelong disabilities.

Rudi Dutschke's bicycle
Aftermath: Rudi Dutschke's bicycle lies on the sidewalk.
Rudi Dutschke shooting site
The police at the scene of the attack on Rudi Dutschke
Rudi Dutschke's shoes where he collapsed
Rudi Dutschke's shoes still lie where he collapsed in this crime scene photo
The spot where Rudi Dutschke collapsed
The place where Rudi Dutschke collapsed, right in front of an undertaker's office. Passers-by lifted him onto the bench, until the ambulance arrived.

Josef Bachmann fled and was eventually cornered by the police in a nearby backyard. Shot rang out and Bachmann was hit, though he, too, survived and is currently in hospital.

Police officers carry off the wounded assassin Josef Bachmann
Police officers carry off the wounded assassin Josef Bachmann.

The Smoking Gun

But who or what persuaded Josef Bachmann to shoot down a complete stranger in the street? To the West Berlin students, the culprit was clear. The various tabloids of the Axel Springer Verlag had incited so much hatred towards Dutschke that they inspired Bachmann to travel from Munich to West Berlin to shoot a man he'd never met.

The truth is more complicated. Bachmann was carrying a newspaper, when he shot Dutschke. However, it was not a Springer paper, but the far right Deutsche National-Zeitung, which contained a Wanted poster style headshot with the headline "Stop Dutschke now!" In Bachmann's home, the police also found a portrait of Adolf Hitler. Furthermore, the Springer papers are not a monolith. The tabloid B.Z. criticised the way its sister papers were turning Dutschke into public enemy number 1. And even Bild expressed their shock over the shooting in an article entitled "Millions fear for Dutschke's life".

The students, however, were too furious about the attempt on Dutschke's life only a week after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis and not even a year after the murder of Benno Ohnesorg to care about nuance. To them, the Springer tabloids had at the very least incited violence, if not helped to fire the gun. And so, protests erupted, first in West Berlin and then all over West Germany.

Protest in Berlin following the shooting of Rudi Dutschke
Students protest in the streets of West Berlin after the shooting of Rudi Dutschke.
"Bild fired, too" protest
Protesters in West Berlin carry a placard declaring that "Bild fired, too".
Student protest in Stuttgart
At this protest in Stuttgart, protesters carry placards comparing the Springer papers Bild and Welt to the Nazi papers Stümer and Völkischer Beobachter, proving that Springer does not have a monopoly on tasteless Nazi comparisons.

In West Berlin, protesters attempted to storm the Springer headquarters, only to find themselves confronted by angry printshop workers, armed with heavy tools. Kommune 1 member Dieter Kunzelmann got stuck in the revolving door of the Springer building, where workers emptied a bucket of red paint over him. When they found that they could not storm the publishing house, the West Berlin protesters torched stacks of newspapers and delivery vehicles. Meanwhile in Munich, protesters trashed the local editorial office of Bild.

Torched Springer delivery trucks
A West Berlin firefighter extinguishes a torched Springer delivery truck.
Overturned Springer delivery vehicles
Overturned Springer delivery vans. Even a van delivering the latest issue of Bravo, an apolitical teen magazine focussed on pop and movie stars, suffered the wrath of the students.
Police officers wade through newspapers
It's raining newspapers. Police offers wade through Springer papers thrown onto the sidewalk by the protesters.
Students attack the Bild office in Munich
In Munich, protesters trashed the editorial offices of Bild.

So far, the protests have spread to twenty-seven West German cities and also abroad and show no sign of stopping. The protesters are no longer just university students either, but high school students, apprentices and workers. As we've seen with other protests in recent years, the police responded with violence, escalating an already volatile situation even further.

Protests in West Berlin 1968
Protesters face off against the police in West Berlin, close to where Rudi Dutschke was shot.
Students protests Berlin 1968
Protesters and police clash in West Berlin.

Protesters attack a police water cannon.

Political Bild cartoon
The political cartoonists of Bild responded to the attacks on their headquarters with this cartoon showing student protesters attacking the Easter Bunny.

Dad's Cinema Is Dead

With West Germany burning and all the terrible things happening here and elsewhere in the world, it's easy to forget that there are bright spots as well. One of those bright spots is the 14th West German Short Film Days in Oberhausen.

14th West German Short Film Day

Poster West German Short Film Days 1968

The West German Short Film Days were founded in Oberhausen, an otherwise unremarkable industrial town in the Ruhrgebiet area, in 1954 as the first film festival in the world focussed solely on short films. The new festival gained international attention for its willingness to show experimental movies by young filmmakers and also as a place where one could see East European movies that have no distribution elsewhere.

The West German Short Film Days also became a flashpoint for radical filmmakers. In 1962, a group of twenty-six young West German filmmakers published the Oberhausen Manifesto, in which they declared "Dad's cinema", i.e. the largely entertainment focussed West German cinema of the postwar era, dead. Unfortunately, this flaming manifesto did not lead to better movies – instead the results were no better than the films the signatories criticised, but infinitely duller. A new group of young filmmakers issued a second manifesto in 1965, in which they criticised the dull problem movies championed by the first manifesto and called for making good and entertaining movies in the style of Howard Hawks and Jean-Luc Goddard. Three years later, this second group has at least made a few decent would-be noir films.

Signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto
Some signatories of the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto pose for a photo.

Talking Dicks

This year's festival was beset by controversy as well, when Besonders Wertvoll (Of Special Merit) was pulled at short notice, even though it had been previously approved. The eleven-minute film shows a close-up of a talking penis – portrayed by director Helllmuth Costard or rather his penis – reading out the new West German film grant law, which denies grants to movies deemed obscene. After reading out this very dry subject matter, the penis gets his deserved reward, while director Costard, this time fully clothed, attempts to confront the main sponsor of the bill Hans Toussaint.

Hilmar Hoffmann and Hellmuth Costard Oberhausen
Hilmar Hoffmann, head of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, and Hellmuth Costard, director of "Besonders Wertvoll". The star of the film is hidden under the table and hopefully pants.

I have seen Besonders Wertvoll at an impromptu screening at the Ruhr University in nearby Bochum. It is clearly satirical and the true nature of the narrator isn't even immediately apparent. However, the festival refused to show the film, whereupon several West German filmmakers and a member of the jury withdrew in protest.

Besonders Wertvoll
A frame of "Besonders Wertvoll", showing the film's unique narrator.

I Have Seen the Future…

But even with several films missing, the 14th West German Short Film Days still offered plenty of interesting and innovative filmmaking.

Oberhausen Short Film Festival 1968
Hilmar Hoffmann, director of the West German Short Film Days, with the three young directors Werner Herzog, Heinz Badewitz and Rudolf Thome on stage.

One film that particularly impressed me is Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB, a dystopian science fiction film made by a young graduate of the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts named George Lucas.

Eletronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4 EB

Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB plunges us into the nightmarish future of the year 2187, a world where humans have numbers rather than names tattooed onto their foreheads. The titular THX 1138 4EB (Dan Natchsheim) has been found guilty of the crime of "sexacte". His mate YYO 7117 (Joy Carmichael) is interrogated and denies ever having loved him. The unique naming pattern is based on California licence plates, by the way. THX 1138 happens to be the number of director George Lucas' licence plate, while YYO 7117 is that of Lucas' fiancée.

THX 1138 4 EB
Dan Natchsheim as the titular character of Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB
THX 1138 4EB
THX 1138 4EB on the run

Meanwhile, THX 1138 4EB is on the run through stark white corridors and what looks like an underground parking garage, tracked by countless cameras monitored by men in white jumpsuits in a white room filled with computers and screens. For most of the film, the only dialogue is the radio communication of the security personnel. They try to thwart THX 1138 4EB's escape, first by subjecting him to a high-pitched noise and then by having a guard attack him. However, THX 1138 4EB forces open a door and runs off into the sunset and hopefully freedom. Meanwhile, a voice informs YYO 7117 that they regret that THX 1138 has destroyed himself and that she may apply for a new mate – of either gender – at any time.

George Lucas THX 1138 4EB
Director George Lucas on the set of Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB.

Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB is a neat work of dystopian science fiction that manages to tell a complete and coherent story in only fifteen minutes. The film also shows that it is possible to make a science fiction movie on literally a shoestring budget.

Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB has already won the National Student Film Award and was also honoured at the West German Short Film Days. As for the talented twenty-three-year-old director George Lucas, he is planning to turn Electronic LabyrinthTHX 1138 4EB into a full-length feature film. I for one will certainly be watching. I'm am also looking forward to whatever Mr. Lucas does next.

Bild & Funk Easter 1968
The world may be terrible, but it's still Easter, so enjoy the cover of the TV magazine "Bild & Funk"
Bild und Funk Raumpatrouille Orion cover
The cover of last week's issue of "Bild und Funk" features some familiar faces, advertising a rerun of "Raumpatrouille Orion". Now where is season 2?




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 18, 1967] We Are The Martians: Quatermass and the Pit, Bonnie and Clyde, The Day the Fish Came Out and The Snake Pit and the Pendulum

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by Fiona Moore

This month sees the release of a film I’ve been anticipating for a long time: Quatermass and the Pit, the final instalment in Hammer Film Productions’ adaptations of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy. With a whole new cast of actors and a very different look and feel to Hammer’s earlier movies starring Brian Donlevy, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957), this represents a concerted effort to bring Quatermass into the 1960s.

While reportedly this film was considered as another outing for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Julian Glover as Breen provide great interpretations. Keir is the most likeable of the Quatermass actors, while still managing a bitter world-weariness in keeping with the character. Rising star Glover is a bold choice as Breen, being considerably younger than Anthony Bushell in the TV serial, but this casting shifts the interpretation from an old officer too set in his ways to acknowledge the impossible, to an immature, overpromoted man falling back on rigid denials to cover the fact that he is out of his depth. Barbara Shelley as Barbara Judd is more sexy than the usual Quatermass women, wearing outfits that one would think not very sensible for an archaeologist.

Likeable: Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Barbara Shelley as Miss Judd

The basic narrative has had only a few updates. For instance, rather than a new building, the construction work which revives the ancient horrors is the digging of a new Underground extension, something which many Londoners are having to put up with right now. The story has been compressed from six half-hour episodes to a lean 97 minutes, meaning that the plot cracks along at a ripping pace without every feeling overpadded, and we lose most of Kneale’s excruciating working-class stereotype characters. On the more negative side, the film lacks the slow buildup of tension that the TV serial had. Crucially, the themes of the original are all present. Perhaps because Kneale is here adapting his own screenplay, we do not lose the sense of anger at military proliferation, colonialism, and humanity’s self-destructive tendencies.

Colonel Breen, representing humanity's negative side.

One aspect which remains unchanged, however, leads to a rather specialised criticism I have of this movie, speaking as an anthropologist. While in 1959 the dominant theory about human evolution was, indeed, that large brains would precede upright walking, more recent discoveries by Louis and Mary Leakey in East Africa are starting to move the consensus more towards the idea that the opposite was true.

The colour film and production values give the film a much more lavish feel than the austere Donlevy movies, but are a mixed blessing. The alien spacecraft is a thing of beauty compared to the crude cylinder of the serial, but this makes the idea that it could be initially thought to be a German V-weapon less credible. The simple ground-shaking effect in the TV serial when Sladden (played here by Duncan Lamont) accesses his primitive side was somehow more terrifying than the wild poltergeist activity seen here. However, the climax of the film uses its production values to build on the sense of terror as humanity succumbs to the Wild Hunt: we have a chilling scene where a group of people surround a man and beat him to death telekinetically with stones and masonry. Rather than concluding with an explanatory speech by Quatermass, the film simply lingers on the image of Quatermass and Barbara sitting among the ruins, shattered by what they’ve experienced.

Hammer's take on the Martians.

Quatermass and the Pit provides evidence both that the themes of the original Quatermass stories remain fresh and relevant almost a decade later, and that Hammer are still capable of producing a decent horror film without relying on gore and nudity to bring in the shocks. It’s a shame there’s unlikely to be a Quatermass 4.

Four out of five stars.


by Jason Sacks

Bonnie and Clyde

And while Fiona praises Quatermass and the Pit for its lack of gore, I have to praise Bonnie and Clyde for its copious use of gore.

You're probably aware of this newest film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. In the two months since its New York premiere, perhaps you've seen the numerous newspaper articles focusing on the highly violent nature of Bonnie and Clyde, or articles which have condemned the idea that the film makes heroes of its bankrobbing protagonists.

Or perhaps you've read the rhapsodic review of Bonnie and Clyde in the latest issue of The New Yorker by their new critic Pauline Kael and possibly dismissed it because of your annoyance with Kael's now legendary condemnation of The Sound of Music three years ago in McCall's.

I've had the most amazing experience since I saw Bonnie and Clyde last weekend after it premiered at the Northgate Cinema: I've been raving nonstop to my friends about this film.

Like Kael, I was thrilled to see a film which is so bold, so intense and somehow so contemporary feeling. Despite–or perhaps because of–its setting in during the Great Depression, this film feels like a deconstruction of the myths we have told ourselves about the past. Bonnie and Clyde makes villains out of the brave federal men who chase our heroic criminals. This isn't an episode of The FBI. This is an inversion of what it means to be a hero. And in that inversion I saw myself in the faces of people who lived and died 35 years ago.

Because the world in which Bonnie and Clyde live feels like a real world. It's dusty and ugly and people wear worn clothes. Some banks have collapsed and others are near collapse and peoples' lives are miserable. In that misery, ordinary people are desperate for someone, anyone, who is able to triumph against all odds, even if the fate of those heroes seems horribly preordained.

Like all of us, the characters in Bonnie and Clyde are deeply flawed. I was especially swept up in Clyde's foibles. We're all used to seeing Warren Beatty as the smooth handsome lover in movies like Promise Her Anything and Splendor in the Grass, but here Beatty plays a man who's just not interested in love, or maybe more truthfully Clyde is a man who gets his thrills from robbery and not from women. Faye Dunaway is thus not quite Beatty's girlfriend on screen as much as she is his accomplice, fascinatingly contrary to what we expect.

With its echoes of the French New Wave and its shattering of cliche and audience expectations, Bonnie and Clyde feels like a revolution–a harbinger of the types of films I hope to see as the new decade dawns.

4½ out of 5 stars


by Victoria Silverwolf

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

Filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis had an international hit with Zorba the Greek a few years ago, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three. With that success behind him, I guess he figured he could do just about anything he wanted. He decided to do something different.

The Day the Fish Came Out

The film starts with an unseen narrator telling us about the tragic incident last year when a B-52 bomber collided with a tanker during mid-air refueling, killing most of the crew. Four nuclear bombs fell out of the doomed aircraft, three of them landing near the Spanish village of Palomares and one falling into the sea. Since this movie is a black comedy, this frightening story is accompanied by three flamenco dancers.


They also have the ability to sing with subtitles, giving away the plot.

In the future year 1972, a plane carrying a pilot, a navigator, two atomic bombs, and a mysterious metal box crashes near a tiny Greek island. The unfortunate pair of flyboys lose their clothing, and spend most of the film in their underpants.


Colin Blakely (left) and Tom Courtenay (right) offer a little beefcake.

A bunch of military types, pretending to be folks interested in building a hotel on the island, search for the bombs and box. They get the bombs back, but it seems a local fellow found the box and thinks it has a treasure inside. Unfortunately for him, it's sealed tight and can't be opened except by a laser or a special chemical. (Keep that latter possibility in mind.)

Meanwhile, a bunch of tourists, attracted by the rumor of an upcoming hotel, flock to the island. Like almost everybody else in this movie (not including the locals or the barely dressed airmen), they wear clothes that would be rejected by Carnaby Street as too extreme. They also dance a lot.


In fact, if you get a chance to watch the trailer for this movie, you'll think it's a beach movie.

After more than an hour of this stuff, the plot gets going with the arrival of Electra Brown, played by Candice Bergen, the beautiful daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. She's supposed to be an archeologist, but the way she behaves with one of the military guys makes me think she's more interested in human biology. Bergen made her film debut as a lesbian in the classy soap opera movie The Group, but here she is very heterosexual indeed.


Electra Brown in one of her more conservative outfits.

Electra has this weird device that uses a special chemical (sound familiar?) to cut through metal in order to make replicas of ancient objects. (No, that didn't make much sense to me either.) Long story short, the guy who found the box steals the gizmo, opens the box, and . . .

Well, without giving away too much, let's just say that the depressing ending finally explains the title. This movie badly wants to be Dr. Strangelove and it fails miserably. The comedy isn't funny, the satire falls flat, and there are long stretches where nothing much is happening.

Two stars, mostly for the wacky costumes.


Designed by the director, who also wrote and produced.

Stay away from this one unless you want to laugh at it. Read a book instead.


Maybe not this one.


by Cora Buhlert

Horror in the Real World

1967 is certainly turning out to be a year of disasters.

Belgium has barely recovered from the devastating fire at the À l'Innovation department store in May and now two express trains and a local passenger train collided near the village of Fexhe-le-Haut-Clocher in the French-speaking part of Belgium on October 5, leaving twelve people dead and 76 injured.

FEXHE LE HAUT CLOCHE traincrash
Aftermath of the train crash of Fexhe-Le-Haut-Clocher in Belgium.

The photos of the wrecked trains bring back memories of another terrible railroad disaster that happened only three months ago in East Germany. A barrier at a railroad crossing near the village of Langenweddingen malfunctioned. As a result, a passenger train crashed into a tanker truck, setting the train on fire. 94 people died, 44 of them school children en route to a holiday camp. The Langenweddingen train crash is the worst railroad accident not just in East Germany, but in all of German history.

Langenweddingen train crash
Aftermath of the devastating railroad crash in Langenweddingen, East Germany. Note the burned out train cars.

Horror on the Silver Screen: Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum)

Compared to the many horrors of the real world, watching a spooky movie in the theatre feels almost cathartic. And so I decided to get away from the real world by watching the new West German horror movie Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum) at my local cinema.

As the title indicates, the film is a (loose) adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum". Of course, we already had a very good (loose) adaptation of that story by Roger Corman only six years ago. And indeed, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum intends to be West Germany's answer to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, the UK's Hammer horror films and the lurid horror films from Italy, all of which are popular, if not necessarily critical successes in West German cinemas. So how does The Snake Pit and the Pendulum hold up?

Snake Pit and the Pendulum 1967
Judge Richard von Marienberg (Lex Barker in a wig) setnences Count Regula (Christopher Lee) to death.

Pretty well, it turns out. The movie starts with a bang, as a bewigged judge and a scarlet-masked executioner visit Count Regula (Christopher Lee) in his cell. The judge informs Count Regula that he is sentenced to death for murdering twelve virgins in his quest for immortality. However, the immortality elixir requires the blood of thirteen virgins and the final virgin managed to escape the Count's clutches and alerted the authorities.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The bodies of the twelve murdered virgins are arranged in a censor-friendly way, covering up any stray breasts.

The death sentence is to be executed immediately and a most bloody sentence it is, too. First, a bronze mask lined with spikes is nailed onto Count Regula's face – reminiscent of Mario Bava's 1960 horror movie La Maschera del Demonio a.k.a. Black Sunday. Then Count Regula is led onto the market square of the fictional town of Sandertal – portrayed by the Bavarian town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is famous for its medieval architecture – where his body is torn apart by four horses. Of course, we have seen similar scenes in Italian and French historical and horror movies many times, but by the rather tame standards of West German cinema, this is a remarkably bloody opening.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The judge (Lex Barker) and the thirteenth virgin (Karin Dor) oversee the execution of Count Regula.
Snake Pit and Pendulum
The executioner is ready for action.

The movie continues in the same vein. For true to form, Count Regula has vowed bloody vengeance from beyond the grave, not only on the judge who sentenced him to death and that pesky virgin who escaped his clutches, but also on their descendants.

Snake pit and the pendulum
A creepy extra in "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum"

Vengeance from Beyond the Grave

The story now jumps forward by thirty years, from the early nineteenth century into the 1830s. A mail coach is traveling to Sandertal. The passengers are the lawyer Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker), Baroness Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor), her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) and Fabian (Yugoslav actor Vladimir Medar), a highwayman masquerading as a priest. Roger and Lilian have both been summoned to Castle Andomai via mysterious letters. Roger, who is an orphan, is supposed to learn more about his parentage, while Lilian is supposed to receive the inheritance of her late mother. Both letters are signed by Count Regula, the very same Count Regula whose bloody execution we just witnessed.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor) and Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker) compare the latters they received from Count Regula.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The mail coach makes a pit stop in the woods, so Lilian of Brabant, her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker), Roger Mont Elise and Priest Fabian (Vladimir Medar) disembark
Schalngengrube und das Pendel
The woods around Sandertal are certainly spooky.

En route to the castle, the coach and its passengers must not only travel through a spooky forest where the bodies of hanged men are dangling from every tree, but are also assailed by bandits intent on kidnapping the two women. Roger and Fabian manage to fight off the bandits. But even more trouble awaits them at the castle, where the undead Count Regula and his equally undead servant Anatol (played by the delightfully creepy Carl Lange) are about to make good on the Count's dying threats.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange) is about to revive his master Count Regula.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Roger Mont Elise meets the undead Count Regula (Christopher Lee) and his equally undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange).
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Anatol harrasses Lilian.

For unbeknownst to them, Roger and Lilian are the descendants of the judge who sentenced Count Regula to death and the virgin who escaped the Count's clutches (and clearly did not remain a virgin). A gruesome fate awaits them at the castle, a fate that involves a pit full of snakes and a razor-sharp pendulum.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Roger and Lilian explore the spooky dungeons of Castle Andomai.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The ladies' maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) is about to meet an unpleasant end.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Count Regula and Anatol don't just employ pits and pendulums. Here they are about to guillotine Lilian.

The Snake Pit and the Pendulum is not quite up to the high standards set by Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations on the one hand and the Hammer movies from the UK on the other. However, it is an enjoyably spooky film that will send a shudder or two down your spine.

Harald Reinl is a veteran of the Edgar Wallace, Dr. Mabuse and Winnetou movie series and probably the best director working in West Germany right now. His skills are on full display in this movie and he uses existing locations such as the medieval town of Rotenburg ob der Tauber or the Extern Stones in the Teutoburg Forest to great effect.

The cast is excellent. Christopher Lee has graced many a Hammer movie and now brings his horror skills to West German screens. Carl Lange has specialised in playing dubious characters and outright villains for a long time now and his performance as a hangman forced to execute his own son in Face of the Frog is unforgettable. I'm always stunned that Lex Barker never got to be the A-list star in Hollywood that he is in Europe, but their loss was our gain. That said, at 48 Barker may be getting a little too hold for hero roles. Finally, I'm very happy to see the always reliable Karin Dor back in a West German production and with her natural brunette hair after the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice wasted her talents on a cliched femme fatale role and foisted a terrible red wig on her, too.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Lex Barker and Karin Dor are enjoying themselves on the set of "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum".

Almost fifty years ago, the horror film genre was born in Germany. But like so many other things, horror film making in Germany died with the Weimar Republic. Let's hope that The Snake Pit and the Pendulum heralds a revival of a film genre that was pioneered here.

Four stars

Snake Pit and the Pendulum



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