LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) *** ½

FORMAT:  4K UHD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on September 15th, 2011)

Aliens come down to Earth hidden in meteors. When they make their first appearance, some bozos run out and wave a white flag because “everyone knows the white flag means peace!” Well, apparently the aliens didn’t get the memo because they vaporize those idiots with their Martian Death Ray. Later, a preacherman gets up in the aliens' business trying to spread the word of God to them. You can probably guess what happens to this guy. Anyway, the aliens overrun the town and Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) and some hot hysterical ‘50s babe try to survive the onslaught. Just about when you think the aliens have kicked our asses, they catch a cold and die. Wimps.

The War of the Worlds is pretty fucking cool on all accounts. First and foremost, the special effects are badass. The spaceships look like they came straight out of a Galaga game, and the aliens themselves are great. They sorta look like the bastard offspring of E.T. and a Simon game. The carnage these guys create is impressive too. They blow shit up, turn humans into ash, and set guys on fire. And the sound FX used for the Martian Death Ray is one of the coolest ever captured on film. Another thing I dug about the movie is that it actually shows civilization starting to crumble. There’s rioting and looting in the street, which is something you didn’t see much of in ‘50s Sci-Fi flicks.

The only problem I had with the flick really is the slow talky patches in between the Martian attack scenes. In that respect, the film is kinda paced like a porno movie. Talk, good stuff, talk, good stuff, etc. The ending’s kinda lame, but then again, the ending of book was lame too; so what you gonna do? Say what you will about the movie, it’s a fuck of a lot better than that Spielberg remake.

QUICK THOUGHTS:

This is one of the better ‘50s Sci-Fi movies.  If it wasn’t for the overly religious ending, it would have been ever better.  Still, Gene Barry is the definitive ‘50s Sci-Fi movie scientist.  He’s levelheaded in the face of danger.  He’s smart without being too much of an egghead about things.  He’s got high level security clearance, but he still feels like an Everyman.  Barry is terrific and helps carry the movie whenever the aliens aren’t on screen. 

4K UHD NOTES:

At first, I thought the transfer was just sort of fair-to-average in the early scenes.  Once the Martians show up, the transfer (like the movie itself) really takes off.  The red and green lights emanating from the Martian ships looks awesome in 4K, as does the death ray effects.  The alien effects have never looked better too, which makes this a highly recommended upgrade for fans of the film. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE HUMAN TORNADO (1976) *** ½

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on November 5th, 2011)

This sequel to Dolemite opens with the title character (once again played by the one and only Rudy Ray Moore) banging the wife of a white sheriff. When the racist sheriff and his deputy bust the door down, she screams, “He made me do it!” To which Dolemite yells, “Bitch are you for real?” The sheriff then orders the deputy to kill his wife and Dolemite. After blasting her with a shotgun, the deputy sets his sights on Dolemite, but he is able to escape by jumping down a hill. Then Moore’s voice comes on the soundtrack and he assures the audience he actually did the jump himself (“Y’all don’t believe I jumped… well watch this good shit!”) and the words “Instant Replay” flashes on the screen and the jump is rewound and replayed.

This scene typifies what I love about Rudy Ray Moore’s movies. They’re full of unpredictable cinematic zaniness. Not many Blaxploitation films of the ‘70s feature this kind of fourth wall breaking. Not only that, but it also goes to show that Rudy Ray Moore was doing his own stunts long before Jackie Chan made it chic.

Even the title clues you in on just how far outside the box Moore was thinking. He could’ve very well just called the movie Dolemite Returns or Dolemite 2. But no, he went The Dark Knight route instead.

The title by the way is literal. You see, there’s a scene in this movie where Dolemite seduces the bad guy’s wife and fucks her so hard that the house falls down around him. If you can’t already tell, this movie is something special.

The Human Tornado is more cartoonish and straight-up crazy than Dolemite was, but it’s not quite as mind-blowingly awesome as the original. I think the movie’s main flaw is that it’s heavily padded with way too many musical performances and scenes of Dolemite doing his nightclub act. All of this shit slows the beginning of the movie down and it takes a while to regain its footing.

Despite that, The Human Tornado offers a generous helping of awesomeness. It’s got a bunch of fast-motion Kung Fu fights, a terrific theme song, and plenty of WTF imagery. (There’s a bizarre fantasy sequence where a white woman imagines three black bodybuilders coming out of a toy box.) And of course, it has Moore kicking ass and saying funny rhymes. My favorite: “He caught me with his wife now he wants to take my life! He thinks he’s bad! He’s got no class! I’ll rock this shotgun up his muthafuckin’ ass!”

Before They Were Famous Alert: Look for a pre-Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson as part of Dolemite’s entourage. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Super Mario Bros. is one of the most perplexing video game adaptations ever made.  It would be easy to categorize it as one of the worst if only the genre wasn’t littered with so many lousy movies.  (Many of which were directed by Uwe Boll.)  In fact, the biggest problem is that it strays so far away from the source material that it never really feels like a Super Mario Bros. movie.  Taken on its own merits, it’s still a sloppy, weird, and occasionally amusing Sci-Fi flick.  It’s just that it is bound to disappoint anyone expecting a halfway faithful adaptation of the beloved Nintendo video game. 

Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) are two plumbers who try to save a princess (Samantha Mathis) who is kidnapped and taken to a subterranean parallel universe lorded over by King Koopa (Dennis Hopper).  He’s trying to merge the two worlds into one kingdom with him ruling over everyone.  Oh, and he wants to turn everybody in our world into monkeys too.  It’s then up to the two plumbing brothers to stop him. 

The casting is pretty good.  Hoskins is spot-on as Mario and Leguizamo has an infectious playfulness about him as Luigi.  Hopper looks like he’s having fun chewing scenery as the baddie and while Richard Edson and Fisher Stevens don’t elicit laughs per se, they have chemistry together as his bumbling goons.  Lance Henriksen also has a random blink-and-you-miss-it cameo at the end.  The oddest bit of casting is Mojo Nixon as Toad.  No matter how bad it gets, I can’t completely hate any movie that has Mojo Nixon in it. 

Although the production design looks expensive, it also manages to be ugly and inconsistent.  The “Dinohattan” stuff is decent as it looks like a low rent Demolition Man sort of thing.  Some of the action is OK (like when Mario’s car winds up on top of another car during a chase scene) and the effects (especially Yoshi) are pretty good too.  It’s just… you know… it never feels like a Super Mario Bros movie.  Honestly, it probably played better when it was originally released.  Now that we have the animated Super Mario Bros. Movie, a near-perfect translation of the game, this just kind of feels pointless now.  That said, it’s better than its reputation may have led you to believe, but it never really works either. 

NOSFERATU (2024) **

Folks, there’s a reason why the publicity department isn’t showing you what Nosferatu looks like in the new Nosferatu.  Remember the iconic look sported by both Max Schrek and Klaus Kinski?  Gone.  I don’t mean to tell tales out of school, but once we finally got a look at Nosferatu, I about fell out of my chair laughing.  Spoilers ahead. 

This new Nosferatu sports a fucking Rollie Fingers mustache.  Seriously.  Burt Reynolds has nothing on my boy Count Orlak.  Once I saw him, I just couldn’t take the rest of the movie seriously.  I tried.  Honestly, I tried.  It’s just I didn’t know if he was going to suck someone’s blood or offer them a hoppy IPA with nutmeg undertones. 

We’re talking Hipsteratu. 

I mean, this isn’t the first vampire with a mustache in cinema history.  Lon Chaney Jr. had a dapper one as Son of Dracula.  Gary Oldman’s flavor saver wasn’t bad either in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Bill Skarsgard in Nosferatu is one Yosemite Sam looking motherfucker. 

It’s disappointing because the movie looks like a million bucks (although it cost much more).  Some of the drab color schemes work, especially when it’s been completely drained out, so it looks like the black and white original.  I dug the sequence where our bland hero (Nicholas Hoult) goes to Orlak’s castle as the lack of transition shots added to the dreamlike quality of the scene.  Once I finally saw the Count, I was wide awake. 

Guys, I don’t know.  Maybe after It, The Crow, and this we should put a moratorium on remakes and reboots where Bill Skarsgard plays pasty-faced dudes. 

I will say this for Skarsgard, I wasn’t expecting him to hang dong in this.  We’re talking Schlongferatu.

And, you know, for a movie in which almost nothing happens, it’s awfully exhausting.  Lily-Rose Depp blusters and sobs and screeches, but we never feel any sexual tension between her husband OR the bloodsucking Count, which is the big problem.  I mean, Bela Lugosi I can see a gal getting worked up about.  Gary Oldman, sure.  Heck, even the original Nosferatu is a hottie compared to the new guy, who looks like a freeze-dried Frank Zappa. 

Sigh, I still can’t believe they made a movie where Nosferatu sports a Fu Manchu.

Even Willem Dafoe is disappointing as the vampire hunter.  He has a moment or two where it looks like he’s having fun, but he’s never really let off the chain to chew the scenery.  He does get the best line of the movie when he says, “It would make Sir Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!”

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BAD TIMING (1980) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Nicolas Roeg directed this odd and bewildering melodrama.  Art Garfunkel stars as an uptight professor who is banging the free-spirited Theresa Russell.  When she overdoses, he takes her to the hospital where he is questioned by cop Harvey Keitel.  Through flashbacks we learn she was married (to Denholm Elliott) and that she and Garfunkel had some serious ups and downs in their relationship. 

Roeg’s artsy-fartsy style works for movies like Performance and Don’t Look Now, but it’s a little cumbersome for a film that’s essentially a relationship drama.  Cutting back and forth between the present and the past seemingly at random is one thing when you’re filming a police interrogation scene.  It’s another thing entirely to intercut scenes of a couple having sex with graphic footage of a tracheotomy. 

The sad thing is Russell (who later went on to marry Roeg) is excellent.  It’s just that the flimsy script leaves her at sea.  You know in movies about the making of a movie, how the dialogue often sounds melodramatic and contrived in the film-within-a-film scene?  That’s how most of the dialogue in Bad Timing sounds.  Like something out of a movie within a movie. 

While Russell is fantastic (and has a couple of nude scenes), Garfunkel is anything but.  The movie might’ve survived had Russell been paired alongside a talent that was her match every step of the way, but the casting of Garfunkel is befuddling at best and a bit painful at worst.  I mean, there were so many other qualified actors you could’ve brought in who could’ve done a better job than Garfunkel.  Heck, there’s a bunch of better musicians who could’ve given a better performance.  For Christ’s sake, Paul Simon would’ve been a better choice than Art Garfunkel.  And the less said about his nude scenes, the better.  Keitel gets by from being Harvey Keitel, but his Sherlock Holmes schtick late in the game becomes tiresome. 

AKA:  Bad Timing:  A Sensual Obsession.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ABDUCTION (2011) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Before Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner fell off the face of the Earth, he tried his hand as an action hero.  Abduction was his first attempt.  It was directed by… (checks notes) Boyz N the Hood’s John Singleton!?!  A quick look at IMDb tells me that this was to be the late director’s final movie.  Which only goes to show that you probably shouldn’t direct a Taylor Lautner action movie is there’s always a chance it will be your final directing credit. 

Lautner stars as a high school student who stumbles upon a picture of himself on a website for missing children.  He calls the missing kids hotline, which turns out to be a trap because the bad guys come after him and the people he thought were his parents die protecting him.  Taylor and his girlfriend (Lily Collins) go on the run.  Before long, the bad guys, the CIA, and the guys from the CIA who are also bad guys come after him. 

Basically, all this plays like a Young Adult version of The Bourne Identity.  Despite a decent hook, it quickly devolves into your typical man on the run (or in this case, teen on the run) cliches.  The title also makes no sense because Taylor’s character was never abducted to begin with. 

For a movie so generic and forgettable, it has a shockingly good supporting cast.  We have Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello, Sigourney Weaver, and Alfred Molina in the cast.  (They all must’ve been Team Jacob.)  They came to play too, which is nice, as their efforts make the film, at the very least, watchable.

I guess Singleton was trying his hand at a mid-budget studio action flick.  Even the rather lame 2 Fast 2 Furious had a sense of energy and silliness to it.  While competent and slick (the direction that is, the script is another matter entirely), it’s never quite engaging.   With a passable action star in the lead and a script that wasn’t so generic, this might’ve worked.  With Lautner front and center, Abduction just seems like something your grandmother would watch on Ion TV in the middle of the afternoon. 

CAVEMAN (1981) **

Ringo Starr and Dennis Quaid star as cavemen in this goofy prehistoric comedy.  They spend most of their days having to hide from dinosaurs and avoid getting beat up by the big and hairy John Matusak.  Ringo wants Matusak’s mate, Barbara Bach for his own, and when he unsuccessfully tries to woo her, he is cast out of the tribe.  Along with Quaid, another cave babe (a pre-Cheers Shelley Long), and her blind father (Jack Gilford), they find a new tribe and discover fire and music (on the same night, no less).  Eventually, Ringo brings everybody together to do battle with Matusak’s tribe and in doing so, learns Shelly’s the real gal for him. 

The stop-motion effects (by Jim Danforth) are really well done, even if the dinosaurs themselves are overly cutesy.  In fact, other than the oddball cast of familiar faces grunting and running around in loincloths, the dinos are the best thing about it. 

There’s no actual English dialogue (mostly) except when the cavemen say each other’s names as everyone speaks in grunts or in childish caveman language.  (Theater patrons were given a handy pamphlet with all the meanings of the caveman language when it was first released.)  It’s all kind of silly and harmless, though it’s rarely laugh-out-loud funny.  It would probably be perfect for kids if it wasn’t for the cringey scene where Starr gives Bach berries that make her fall to sleep and then he tries (and fails) to bang her. 

Starr coasts on the sheer fact that you’re watching everyone’s fourth favorite Beatle in a dumb caveman movie.  At least some good came out of it as he met his future wife Barbara Bach while making this.  Bach looks great in her skimpy pelts, even if she isn’t really given anything to do other than look great in a skimpy pelt.  No wonder Ringo snapped her up.  Likewise, Quaid is mostly wasted as he’s basically a third wheel, which is ironic since the first wheel hadn’t even been invented yet.  Richard Moll also shows up in a memorable bit as an Abominable Snowman. 

The director and co-writer, Carl Gottlieb (most famous for co-writing the screenplay to Jaws) also co-wrote Jaws 3-D, which also starred Quaid.