Attack of the Fantastical Movies

ATTACK OF THE FANTASTICAL MOVIES: ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, MOTORPSYCHO!, GALAXINA, REPTILICUS, BIG BAD MAMA, REAL LIFE, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS

How do I grade something like ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN from 1958? It has a setup that could be called “laborious” or “lackluster” or “lugubrious.” I’m not going to call it any of those words, but I can see exactly why somebody else would. In other words, it’s not until about the 45-minute mark that we get to the 50 foot woman. Yes, I wish they had reversed the numbers, 15 minutes of setup and 45 minutes of 50 foot woman. Simple mathematics. At least, 45 minutes of setup and 45 minutes of 50 foot woman. Yes, that sounds even better than “15 then 45.” The final 15 or 20 minutes of ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, though, are solid gold. Rating: ***

— It’s virtually impossible to watch EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS and not think about MARS ATTACKS! (flying saucers) and INDEPENDENCE DAY (Washington D.C. invaded), two blockbusters from 1996 with a combined production budget of $145 million and big, big, big stars, including Jack Nicholson in dual roles in MARS ATTACKS! In EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS from 1956, Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion flying saucers are the real star of the show (step aside, Hugh Marlowe) and the film thankfully wastes very little time in showcasing them. It’s the inverse of ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN. ***1/2

— Italian director Mario Bava (1914-80) became especially known for his stylish horror films. From his British Film Institute profile, “Mario Bava took a vital role in the creation of the modern horror film. If there was to be a a Mount Rushmore-style monument dedicated to four directors whose work pioneered a new form of big screen chills and thrills, those giant faces etched in granite on the mountainside would be: Bava, Alfred Hitchcock, Georges Franju and Michael Powell.” In the words of a Pavement song, a Bava film has style, miles and miles. Case in point: PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, a low-budget science fiction and horror production from 1965 that masked its cheap sets through smoky skullduggery. Bava said in Fangoria, “Do you know what that unknown planet was made of? A couple of plastic rocks — yes, two: one and one! — left over from a mythological movie made at Cinecitta! To assist the illusion, I filled the set with smoke!” Watching PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES for the first time, you might think you’ve seen this basic plot somewhere before … ahem … Ridley Scott’s ALIEN. ***1/2

— 1965 proved to be a great year for titles with exclamation points and for director, producer, writer, cinematographer, and editor Russ Meyer (1922-2004), whose films often proved to be ahead of their time. Meyer contributed two exclamation point titles — FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! and MOTORPSYCHO! — during a 1965 in which he directed three films overall; Meyer’s greatest cinematic year began with MUDHONEY. Proof of being ahead of its time: MOTORPSYCHO! (what a title) gives us a psychotic motorcycle trio led by a deeply disturbed Vietnam vet — before TAXI DRIVER, before ROLLING THUNDER, before THE DEER HUNTER, before FIRST BLOOD — in addition to all the elements (large-breasted women and endless cleavage, campy humor, satire, and quotable dialogue) we expect from a Meyer film. ***

— GALAXINA lands a few successful jabs at STAR WARS, STAR TREK, and ALIEN, but otherwise it’s a real long slog through 90-plus minutes of a lowbrow and low-budget science fiction and western parody set in the 31st century. Here’s just one example of the film’s humor: Avery Schreiber (1935-2002) plays a character named “Capt. Cornelius Butt.” Then again, I probably should have just said that it’s a Crown International Pictures release. Surely you remember Crown International Pictures? They brought us such immoral, er, immortal classics as THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, THEY SAVED HITLER’S BRAIN, SEXTETTE, and THE BEACH GIRLS. The late former Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten fills the title role and she’s been described as “a voluptuous blonde android servant.” Galaxina works better when she’s silent (the first half of the picture), because Stratten proves that she was a true novice thespian every time she speaks during GALAXINA. Stratten reportedly complained to film director and her paramour Peter Bogdanovich that the ads for GALAXINA promoted her being the Playmate of the Year, because she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress. GALAXINA would not do good for anybody wanting to be taken seriously for anything. Unfortunately, Stratten’s estranged husband Paul Snider murdered her two months after the release of GALAXINA. Stratten would be immortalized on film by the 1981 TV movie DEATH OF A CENTERFOLD: THE DOROTHY STRATTEN STORY and the 1983 theatrical release STAR 80, played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Mariel Hemingway, respectively. In case you were wondering, you see a lot more of Stratten in Playboy than GALAXINA. *1/2

— Recent weeks, mostly under self-quarantine, have included a few first-time watch monster movies: GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA and TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA, SLITHIS (possibly the worst monster movie ever made), THE GIANT CLAW, and, most recently, REPTILICUS, Denmark’s infamous first entry in the monster movie sweepstakes. Judging by REPTILICUS, the Danish should stick to pastries. They make a mean strudel, not so much a Godzilla rip-off. Apparently, there’s never been a second Danish monster movie, so I guess they have stuck to pastries for nearly 50 years since this 1961 turkey. Anyway, I wanted to find the Danish version of REPTILICUS, but, of course, I had to settle for the English dub from good old American International. The plot: Copper miners find the tail of a prehistoric reptile and it eventually regenerates into Reptilicus, a hand puppet (close-up) and a marionette (wide shot) that give the $50 Giant Claw its money for being the “best” worst movie monster of all-time. I enjoyed REPTILICUS even less than THE GIANT CLAW, though. For example, when Reptilicus eats an extra or two, the victims look like they have been cut out of a magazine and they are being thrown into the puppet’s mouth. In THE GIANT CLAW, at least its victims being eaten scene brought me back to the “Eat ‘em! Eat ‘em! Crunch! Crunch!” scene from Q: THE WINGED SERPENT. I even called out “Crunch! Crunch!” during THE GIANT CLAW. No such luck during REPTILICUS. **

— Arthur Penn’s 1967 film BONNIE AND CLYDE proved to be one of the watershed films of the second half of the 20th century and one indication was that for several years, BONNIE AND CLYDE inspired many sensationalistic crime films set during the Great Depression. Roger Corman produced a whole slew of them, with the most famous being 1974’s BIG BAD MAMA starring Angie Dickinson, Tom Skerritt, and William Shatner and directed by Steve Carver (who later directed the Chuck Norris spectacular LONE WOLF McQUADE). BIG BAD MAMA mixes in a hippie-like free love sensibility and showcases bed hopping and generous amounts of nudity between all the murder and mayhem. The title character (Dickinson) and her two not long past jailbait daughters (Susan Sennett, Robbie Lee) all have multiple nude scenes, highlighted by Dickinson’s full-frontal shot late in the picture. One of the picture’s tag lines: “Wilma gave her daughters everything — her looks, her lovers and the crime of their lives!” Dick Miller (1928-2019), yes, that guy, plays a crime fighter and you know you can’t go too wrong with a picture that features an old-fashioned bloody crime spree, much nudity and shenanigans (Dickinson looked absolutely sensational in 1974), Shatner, and Dick Miller. ***

— Many years before the proliferation of reality TV, Albert Brooks skewered it with his 1979 directorial debut REAL LIFE, a satire of the 1973 PBS documentary “An American Family.” Brooks plays an exaggerated version of himself and watching this movie for the first time in 2020, it’s difficult not to conjure up memories of all the obnoxious or obsequious hosts and participants on reality TV shows from years ago — “The Real World,” “The Bachelor,” et cetera, they’re all terrible and I’m fortunate to have survived all my encounters with them. All those creeps still give me the willies just thinking about it now, but unfortunately reality TV seems like it’s here and it’s here to stay. Take that from somebody who’s not watched a whole lot of TV in the last decade, with reality TV being one of the big reasons. I laughed a lot during REAL LIFE, from the epic sight gag on the head of every cameraman (I laughed every single time) to the fiery grand finale Brooks borrows from GONE WITH THE WIND. ****

— The Cannon Group’s best of the worst films could generously be called “sublime stupidity” and I believe that description fits NINJA III: THE DOMINATION perfectly. Part ENTER THE NINJA, part FLASHDANCE, and part EXORCIST, THE DOMINATION must be seen to not be believed. Imagine Jennifer Beals possessed by the evil spirit of a ninja with an Oriental Max von Sydow attempting to bring it out. THE DOMINATION starts out with its very best scene, a golf course massacre that leads to the bad ninja transferring his spirit into the body of telephone lineman and aerobics instructor Christie (Lucinda Dickey). Also happening in the first 30 minutes of the picture: Christie’s aerobics class, her fight against a handful of creeps who were harassing one of her students, and possibly the most awkward bedroom seduction scene in the history of cinema. Christie won’t give this creepy cop the time of day and then, practically the next moment, they end up in embrace and she pours V-8 on herself … this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. There’s also a bizarre sequence involving Christie’s Bouncer arcade game. On the International Arcade Museum page for Bouncer, it says “Bouncer was seen in the low budget martial arts film NINJA 3: THE DOMINATION. The game is in the main character’s apartment and she is seen playing it. The character becomes possessed by the spirit of the ninja, and as he overtakes her body, the arcade cabinet begins to bellow out smoke and hypnotizes her with a little laser show from the screen.” I thought she was already possessed. Yeah, I know, bizarre. Then again, bizarre basically describes both THE DOMINATION and Cannon films in general. We wouldn’t have them any other way. ***

— We’ve seen NIGHT OF THE DEMONS done better before, especially the first two EVIL DEAD movies and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, which it seems to reference through both Linnea Quigley and punk rock. We’ve seen this plot before: 10 (mostly) horny high school kids have a Halloween party inside an abandoned funeral parlor. You can fill in the rest, down to every detail both personality and plot. It’s not a bad movie, exactly, it’s just after having seen EVIL DEAD and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and EVIL DEAD 2, why settle for less? Seemingly just about every movie from the ‘80s — the good, the bad, and the ugly — has developed a cult following over time and NIGHT OF THE DEMONS is one of them, spoken about in an enthusiastic tone by admirers. I can sympathize, because I feel similarly about numerous movies. I have mixed feelings on NIGHT OF THE DEMONS. On one hand, I can’t think very highly of a movie that goes for three jump scares very early on. That loses points for it real quickly. It’s also one of those movies that I started liking less down the home stretch and I wished it would get to its inevitable conclusion sooner rather than later. On the other hand, it does have a few good moments, just not enough for a recommendation. **

Ice Castles (1979)

ICE CASTLES

ICE CASTLES (1978) **

Not that I have a problem with either figure skating or movie romance — I like THE CUTTING EDGE, for example — but ICE CASTLES is not a very good movie and that’s because it makes one (like yours truly) mad due to its relentlessly manipulative nature.

We know entering ICE CASTLES that it centers on a blind figure skater and her personal and amateur figure skating travails. Naturally, she does not start out the movie blind, so that means we are waiting for her freak accident. That makes it the pièce de résistance of the picture and that makes the picture quite sick and perverse because her disability itself becomes more important than her state before or after her disability.

When skater-on-the-rise Alexis “Lexie” Winston tries a difficult triple jump and takes a mighty fall, we see it drawn out in explicit slow motion. None of her other jumps play out in this fashion. She ends up with a blood clot in her brain and loses 90 percent of her sight. There goes her shot at the 1980 Winter Olympics, right?

Director and screenwriter Donald Wyre and fellow screenwriter Gary L. Baim undercut their own movie with such a focus on the accident.

They gave first-time actress and former amateur figure skater Lynn-Holly Johnson one helluva challenge for her debut. Let’s see here, her 16-year-old character goes through not only a debilitating accident, but she breaks up with her jealous boyfriend (Robby Benson), hooks up with a television reporter (David Huffman) who helped out her career and made all her figure skating cohorts upset by all her publicity, argues with her father (Tom Skerritt) at different points throughout the picture, eventually hashes it out with her former boyfriend, and makes her triumphant comeback — despite her blindness — for a grand finale. Johnson gives a good performance and it’s certainly better than her work in subsequent films THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, and WHERE THE BOYS ARE ‘84.

Benson can be one of the most irritating movie actors and he’s especially awful with emotional scenes; he so often turns them into bad soap opera with fake anger his dread specialty. Benson does that a handful of times during the last half of ICE CASTLES, especially in the scene at the dinner table when the four main characters (I have not mentioned Colleen Dewhurst as rink operator and trainer Beulah Smith, but she’s the fourth main character) are debating whether or not Lexie should return to competition. The melodrama hits its high point when Benson’s Nick Peterson feasts on the line “Don’t give me that. Not trying is pointless and cruel. Not trying is wondering your whole life if you gave up too soon. Who the hell needs that?” It’s all so phony baloney, but it’s nowhere as bad as Benson in HARRY & SON. In that horrible movie, I wanted Paul Newman’s character Harry to punch out his son Howard as played by Benson. Time Out London called it “a curiously indigestible phenomenon, like being forced to eat five courses of avocado by an overbearing dinner-party host.” One of Benson’s immortal lines in HARRY & SON, “Want a Cherry Coke, pa?”

American adult contemporary singer Melissa Manchester performed her two nominated songs at the 1980 Academy Awards ceremony: “Through the Eyes of Love (Theme from Ice Castles)” and “I’ll Never Say Goodbye” from THE PROMISE, another soap opera. “It Goes Like It Goes” (wow, oh wow, what a title) beat out both Manchester numbers for “Best Original Song.” “Rainbow Connection” from THE MUPPET MOVIE was obviously robbed. For many years, the Academy seemed to nominate the most forgettable songs 90 percent of the time.

I promise that I’m not a hater of figure skating or movie romance, but I will often bristle at manipulation and melodrama — ICE CASTLES, despite some good elements at work, offers large portions of both manipulation and melodrama.

Then again, RogerEbert.com writers Christy Lemire, Sheila O’Malley, and Susan Wloszczyna contributed to a 2017 piece titled “Through the Eyes of Love: On the Timelessness of ‘Ice Castles.’” But, then again, so what?

Poltergeist III (1988)

POLTERGEIST III (1988) One star
Cheech & Chong said “man” 295 times in UP IN SMOKE (1978).

By comparison, characters said “Carol Anne” 121 times in POLTERGEIST III.

Still, I have this nice dream where the movies are spliced together via the miracle of modern technology and somehow Cheech & Chong say “Carol Anne” rather than “man” 295 times. Yes, rather than the characters played by Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen, Cheech & Chong are tracking down Carol Anne and fighting the evil spirits. Skerritt makes a cameo in this alternate POLTERGEIST III, since he played Strawberry in UP IN SMOKE and that will be his character this second time around.

I do have this strange habit of imagining alternate scenes or alternate entire movies pieced together from two different movies.

For example, I remember Carey Mulligan’s character singing “New York, New York” in SHAME (the Steve McQueen and not the Ingmar Bergman version) and then all of a sudden, I had this vision of the Gremlins’ grand musical production number of the same song in GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH. Here was the big tender moment in SHAME and I wanted the Gremlins’ version instead to show up on the screen. It played out inside my head that Mulligan started before she was oh so rudely interrupted by the mass Gremlin chaos choir. I also sing the Gremlins’ version every time I come across Frank Sinatra’s standard, which must be one of the most overplayed songs in popular culture.

Fantasies like that help to pass time, especially during a bad movie like POLTERGEIST III where I often can’t stand the sight of what’s on screen.

In economics, the law of diminishing returns refers to a point at which the profit becomes less than the amount of money or energy invested.

In movies, diminishing returns refers mainly to sequels that are vastly inferior to previous films in the series. Just look at any number of movie series for examples.

This third POLTERGEIST tries our patience right from the start with its central premise and it only gets worse through its execution.

It’s rather sick.

I mean, that poor child Carol Anne (played by Heather O’Rourke).

Why couldn’t they just let her be after POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE?

What she endured in the first two movies would be enough for several lifetimes, but she’s back for a third installment and without her parents (Craig T. Nelson and Jo Beth Williams) and brother (Oliver Robins). Carol Anne’s been sent to live with her aunt (Allen) and uncle (Skerritt) at their high rise apartment in Chicago.

We know that she’s going to be put through the wringer for the third time as soon as we see her, no matter that she’s 2,000 miles and 30 hours by car away from Southern California, location of the infinitely superior first POLTERGEIST.

(By the way, Nelson was approached to return for POLTERGEIST III but he reportedly said “Two was enough.” That’s nowhere as brilliant as what Roy Scheider thought about JAWS 3-D, “Mephistopheles couldn’t talk me into doing (it). They knew better than to even ask.”)

POLTERGEIST III saddles poor Carol Anne with a psychiatrist named Dr. Seaton (Richard Fire). Of course, in the movies, psychiatrists normally do more harm than good and well, this Dr. Seaton character follows that character pattern to a T. Dr. Seaton encourages Carol Anne to chat with him about her experiences, though he believes her to be delusional, and, of course, this discussion enables the evil spirit of Rev. Henry Kane to find Carol Anne and wreak havoc on her once again.

This Dr. Seaton is a real piece of work. He belongs in the annals of bad screen doctors alongside such notables as the paranormal investigator played by Robert Joy in AMITYVILLE 3-D and the psychiatrist played by Bruce Willis in COLOR OF NIGHT.

A demon first burns Joy’s Dr. Elliot West’s face and then drags him to Hell. One of just a couple highlights in AMITYVILLE 3-D.

Dr. Seaton gets pushed to his death down the empty elevator shaft of the 100-story John Hancock Center.

Willis’ psychiatrist lives through COLOR OF NIGHT.

Well, you know, two out of three ain’t bad.

The POLTERGEIST movies, especially this third installment, have long been tinged with sadness and talk of the “Poltergeist Curse” almost overshadows the movies.

Dominique Dunne, who played Carol Anne’s older sister, died at the age of 22 five months to the day after the release of POLTERGEIST. Dunne’s ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, strangled Dunne in the driveway of her West Hollywood home. Dunne went into a coma and died five days later on November 4, 1982.

O’Rourke died at the age of 12 on February 1, 1988 under extremely unusual circumstances. She died of cardiopulmonary arrest caused by septic shock due to intestinal stenosis, and her manager said at the time, “It’s weird. She was completely healthy Saturday, they thought she had the flu on Sunday and she was dead on Monday.” She had been diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease (chronic inflammation of the intestines) in 1987.

Dunne and O’Rourke are buried at the Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

POLTERGEIST III (released June 10, 1988) was O’Rourke’s last film and it was dedicated to her memory.