HubrisWeen, Day 3: Crocodile (1981)

Back when I reviewed Carnosaur 2, I mentioned a weird form of nostalgia wherein I felt a need to revisit things that I disliked when I was younger. Well, there is no better example of that than today's film. Though, it's slightly more complicated than that.

You see, it's not just that I disliked this particular film called Crocodile. No, it's that I had to at least partially convince myself that it actually existed and wasn't something I dreamed up. I mean, a Jaws rip-off where the monster is a giant crocodile whose size changes so constantly that it is hundreds of feet long or 20 feet long within the same scene? Surely no filmmaker is that relentlessly incompetent.

Well, no filmmaker prior to the advent of The Asylum, surely.

Oh, but you see Crocodile is all too real, and my fascination with it is entirely earned. For this is a singularly bad film and, in fact, even more nonsensical than my childhood memories had told me.

To begin with, I will be momentarily fair with Crocodile. The film hails from Thailand, and like many a foreign film imported for American audiences it was chopped to pieces to suit the needs of its distributor. Some of the nonsense within the film comes from it being torn up and stitched back together, with a few extraneous pieces added here and there. Set pieces that were originally one long sequence have been split in two, and a few scenes were no doubt placed out of order or removed entirely. I've even heard tell of an even more salacious and exploitative cut of the film that played the American drive-in circuit, but that cut is not what made it to VHS and later to DVD.

However, no amount of unwarranted tinkering by boorish American distributors can completely account for the fact that this film is a big ball of stupid and bonkers. This is not surprising when you consider that the film's director is one Sompote Sands, whose demented films are rather the stuff of legend and make this film look sane.

But no matter what country you're in, its poster art rocks.

After a title card for "Cobra Media", whose slogan is presumably "Good films are a disease. Meet the cure," we roll opening credits accompanied by a series of piano chords that are not at all reminiscent of a certain killer shark film. And then, the omnipotent narrator intones:

"From the very beginning, Man has been trying to destroy Nature. Perhaps one day he may succeed. But, then again, on that day Nature could rebel. And this could happen!"

Now, now, if Man just explained to Nature how destroying her will boost his corporate profits, I'm sure she would agree it's a grand idea!

At any rate, the "this" that "could happen" is a bunch of Thai extras running about screaming while miniature sets (admittedly, quite good ones) are destroyed by lightning, earthquakes, tidal waves, water spouts, and...colored lights. Clearly this footage of what will later be called a "hurricane" hails from an unrelated fantasy film. The only connection to this film is a few shots of agitated crocodiles (and alligators!), presumably one of which becomes our title beastie. The footage is so unrelated to our film that there is a completely jarring cut to an undestroyed major city, while a jaunty theme that sounds like it belongs to a 1970s cop show plays.

This is the beginning of our feature proper, as Angela Akom (Ni Tien, or "Tany Tim" in the US credits) and her sister, Linda (Angela Wells) are forced to amuse themselves while waiting for Angela's husband, Dr. Tony Akom (Nat Puvani) and Linda's fiance, Dr. John Stromm (Min Oo) to get home. Such is the life of a doctor's wife, Angela warns her sister. Linda goes to change so we can get a very brief bit of rear nudity--I see no other reason for that sequence--and then we cut to dinner with the two doctors and the women who love them.

Here we get the barest reference to the "hurricane" that "practically destroyed that island" and "just missed us." Linda asks if it's true it may have been caused by "that atomic explosion" (!) with Tony replying, "Anything's possible in this day and age." Angela suggests to Tony, who is busy reading a newspaper while smoking a pipe, that they should all go for a holiday at Pattaya before Linda and John's wedding. Tony thinks it's a swell idea. There's some joking about how married doctors are to their work that turns serious when the hospital calls and Tony must go. The scene ends with a truly bizarre zoom-in towards a ceramic duck centerpiece--

--which turns out to be an "auteur" move as we now cut to a flock of ducks on a body of water. The ducks are being watched by one of the most repeated shots of the film: a close-up of crocodile's eye as the nictitating membrane slides back.

"Okay, now which is better: 1 or 2? 1...or 2? Okay, now 3...or 4?"

I hope you like that shot, because I love crocodiles and even I get sick of it. Especially since, it leads to nothing in this sequence and we cut back to Tony and John assisting the wounded being trundled into the hospital while truly irritating sirens play over the scene. (Get used to that) Tony somehow finds time to talk to Angela on the phone and agree to the holiday at Pattaya.

Meanwhile, roving underwater POV footage set to a theme that sounds way too much like those Goddamn sirens stalks an old woman in a rowboat. Cue crocodile eye close-up! Via a series of weird cuts of what appears to be an actual crocodile eating a fish or bird, the woman is the first to be devoured by our crocodile.

"Okay, now tell me, can you see the number in the circle? What is it?"

In Pattaya, Linda plays with Angela and Tony's young daughter, Anne (no idea the actress, IMDb is no help here). When Tony arrives, Anne begs him for a new swimsuit. He agrees right before an uncomfortable sequence--for Western audiences, at least--where he undresses her for bed. Angela, Tony, Anne, Linda, and John go sailing the next day. Then they all take a group photo on the beach, which--as we all know-- can only mean tragedy is coming.

Eventually.

In the meantime, the group frolics in the surf and we discover that far scarier than giant crocodiles are the speedboaters in Thailand, as one drives past little Anne in her floatie with inches to spare. Oddly, nobody seems the least horrified by this--and indeed the same boater zooms past within inches of Linda as she begins drowning. Though, despite the close-up of a croc eye it turns out that Linda is just playing an incredibly unfunny joke that all the characters find hilarious. Wankers!

There's a bizarrely filmed shower sex scene between Tony and Angela before, finally, the travelogue portion of our film draws to a close and our "giant killer crocodile" portion finally gets going.

Linda goes out in the water to find Anne, who was apparently left to swim on her own (!), and poor Linda can't hear that damn siren-esque musical theme. However, when Anne's (oddly intact) floatie pops to the surface, she realizes something is amiss. Rather too slowly, however, as while she calls for Anne the underwater POV camera zooms straight into her crotch.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

Linda screams and goes under, but not until after putting up way more of a struggle than an average human should be capable of once grasped in the jaws of a crocodile that will turn out to be an average of about 50 feet in length. I can only assume that the crocodile is eating her toes first and moving its way up. At any rate, Angela rushes into the water to aid her sister--whereupon she is almost immediately yanked under. I guess the croc was tired of playing with its food by the time she showed up.

Luckily for Tony and John, they were not there so the film did not become a parade of characters diving into the ocean to be eaten by the crocodile. However, John and Tony find out what happened--and indeed, weirdly enough, there are apparently bodies for them to identify. John responds by crying against a post as reporters pester him with questions like, "Do you think your wife was eaten by a shark?" Tony eyes the fateful beach photograph and listens to a recording of Anne begging him for that new bathing suit, as he flashes back and then covers his ears and writhes on the floor.

Everyone grieves differently.

Tony resigns from his hospital because he has now entered the "Vengeance" stage of the grieving process, and indeed his letter of resignation states that he will, as offered by his former employers, "avail myself of the facilities of the hospital, by which means I pray I may stop the death and destruction being caused by the creature responsible for my family's death." Wow. No job I ever worked allowed me to use their facilities for monster hunting after I turned in my two weeks notice. Clearly, Thailand's job market is on a whole other level.

Tony starts by examining the remains of his family, in a sequence that looks rather like he is trying to put them back together! Alas, this film is not quite that weird. Although, it is not normal--as evidenced by the next scene where a group of fishermen discover their net is full of severed human arms. Just arms, by the way. I guess the croc is not a fan of finger food.

Damn, even the crickets booed that one.

Tony goes to see the optometrist (man, no wonder this film is obsessed with eyes), who advises he's probably just under a lot of strain from all the vengeance obsession. The optometrist helpfully asks him to read a newspaper article--that happens to be about a local fisherman, Tanaka (Kirk Warren), claiming he saw a giant crocodile in the sea.

You know what means it's time for!

"Now, you're gonna feel a slight puff of air..."

We cut to the crocodile as a monkey crawls onto its back to eat crabs off its tail. Now, unless the monkey and crabs are also giants, this scales the croc at 20 feet, tops. That will not be the case next time we see it. At any rate, giant crocodiles apparently dislike monkeys and the scene cuts back to Tony as the croc lunges at the monkey.

Having now being given a target for his Ahab complex, Tony is poring over every textbook on crocodiles he can find---a pastime I am happy to engage in without benefit of a dead wife and daughter to avenge--and playing around with crocodile skulls. It turns out the latter is to confirm that the wounds on his family's remains match the teeth of a crocodile. He goes to John with this, asking John to find Tanaka. Tony hopes that Tanaka will help them find the crocodile and destroy it. Meanwhile, Tony will visit an expert on reptiles.

Well, so he says. What actually happens is that Tony goes to visit a man sitting behind a desk with an ammonite fossil on it (!) and asks him, "Can a crocodile live in the sea?" The so-called expert replies with, "Hmm. That's a very interesting thought." End scene.

Presumably it was cut before the man behind the desk admitted he wasn't really a reptile expert, he just really likes sitting behind that desk.

The answer is not only a resounding, "Yes," but, "Of course, the Indopacific or Saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) spends as much or more of its life in the sea as it does in fresh water." Also, this is a basic fact that Tony would have gleaned from any one of those books he was supposedly reading.

Cut to two beautiful women going swimming at dusk in their bikinis--though apparently in one cut, they were skinny-dipping. Random people we've never met before in the water? Why, that can only mean...

"Okay, now read the letters on the lowest line you can see..."

The croc's attack this time is also heralded by two glowing lights in the water, reminiscent of the Nautilus in Disney's version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but which are clearly meant to call to mind the reflection of light in a crocodile's eyes at night. One girl is yanked under, the other writhes around in the jaws of the croc--clearly indicating that the beast is now back to a minimum of 40 feet in length.

Cue those damn sirens as we cut to reporters are haranguing an Inspector about what or who is responsible for the series of killings. The scene, hilariously ends with the beleaguered Inspector hollering, "And put snipers on those cliffs!"

John and Tony discuss their plan to enlist Tanaka's help, the reptile expert apparently having finally admitted that a crocodile can live in the sea. Tony has a breakdown and cracks his new glasses as Anne's voice echoes in his head. He then calls a press conference, where he announces that he knows who the killer is: a giant crocodile. The press literally laughs this off and Tony throws them out. So...that was productive, I guess.

Tanaka finally comes over to visit Tony and John. Tanaka quickly agrees to assist them in hunting the crocodile, whereupon John excitedly exclaims, "We'll get that crocodile, if it's the last thing we do!"

Welp, I'm never inviting John along on my giant crocodile hunt.

Tanaka shows off the eagle Sharpied--er, tattooed on his chest and explains to the others that it is a sign of protection worn by his family for generations. It hails from an old legend, whereupon a monster will emerge from the sea and encounter the wings of an eagle. The legend, however, does not say that the eagle wins, so Tanaka ends his musing about the legend coming true by hoping it does not mean their deaths.

Okay, so John and Tanaka are not invited on my giant crocodile hunt.

Meanwhile, we cut to a coastal village where a crocodile farm is housed--and thus begins my least favorite portion of the film. Like many foreign films of this vintage, it was apparently decided that the film was incomplete without some animal cruelty. So we get to watch as a real, live crocodile is butchered. It adds nothing to the film other than a few extra minutes of run time and a lot of unpleasantness. Especially since, unlike some people, I like reptiles and do not enjoy seeing them harmed. Though perhaps it is there to make us root for:

"Okay, now: 5...or 6?"

The crocodile appearing in said village, creating whirlpools and waves with its tail. It also smashes buildings with its tail, which would make it approximately Godzilla sized. Once the water is filled with panicked villagers and tourists, the croc begins devouring them. In one memorable and tasteless shot, we see the croc's jaws in the background holding two severed legs--and then an amputee with fake flesh streamers attached to his stumps swims by in the foreground. Though, naturally, this means the croc has shrunk down to about 40 feet in the same sequence. That crocodile is fucking magic.

The croc swims off, leaving the village in flames and we cut to--more sirens. Oh, joy.

We leave the scene of chaos and ambulances, to John and Tony calmly walking along discussing how they're going to stop a crocodile big enough to destroy a whole village. Tony adds that the reptile expert has concluded that the crocodile is a mutant caused by all the atomic testing in our atmosphere. Well, naturally.

Back to the crocodile farm, where the Inspector tasks his underlings with capturing the croc. This they decide to do by setting a giant bear trap underwater. Unfortunately, their comically over-sized trap--attached to a floating barrel, naturally--is still too small for the job. The croc gets its tail caught in the trap, but quickly uproots the tree that the floating barrel is attached to, and swims off with the barrel dragging along the surface of the water, before the croc shakes the trap loose and sends it hurtling through the air--chopping a few palm trees in half.

Again, the croc must be at least a hundred feet long in this sequence.

Tony and John busy themselves by pouring red dye into a tank holding a small crocodile. I think they're testing poisons out on the poor creature, based on the dialogue, but they're having no success. I really don't think it's that hard to poison a crocodile, guys. You're just incompetent.

Speaking of which, our kaiju-sized croc goes for a swim. He then finds himself by where several young boys are skinny-dipping (and the Western audience is creeped out again!) and does his old standby.

"Do you ever wear your contacts to bed? Do you change them every day?"

Now, when the croc finally attacks the boys and grabs one, it is clearly only about 20 feet long again. And the truly curious part of this size-changing becomes plainly obvious here: it was not, as you would expect, merely a case of having a full-size prop and also using real crocs on miniature sets that accounts for the discrepancy in size. Yes, that does happen--but the croc that attacks the boys is a full-scale prop and only as big as a 20-foot croc. Yet the film also uses a full-size prop that indicates a 40-foot croc.

Basically, this film went out of its way to give a script girl fits.

Having eaten one of the kids, the croc now balloons back up to a hundred feet to pull the Godzilla act on another coastal village. Tail smashing, whirlpools, sinking severed arms (and again, only arms), flaming buildings--the works. Which means, MORE SIRENS! Aren't you just THRILLED?!

Did Sompote Sands have stock in an ambulance company or something?

John and Tony, for their part, have finally realized the crocodile attacks every three days. From this they also figure out where the crocodile will strike next: where the sea and the river meet. After Tanaka says goodbye to his wife and son, they get ready to set sail.

Meanwhile, the crocodile comes up on shore to attack a heard of water buffalo. This sequence features an impressive shot of the water buffalo walking next to a full-size, full-body prop crocodile--and, again, the thing appears to be at least fifty feet long. Of course, this is another excuse for animal cruelty as the full-size prop croc head chomps a buffalo to death and the filmmakers even include a shot of the dying animal urinating in fear.

There is a special place in hell waiting for the filmmakers.

We are now firmly in the "Orca" sequence of the film as John, Tony, and Tanaka take out Tanaka's boat and begin setting bait lines for the crocodile where the sea and river meet. Tanaka has already informed that he made some slight modifications--including adding a harpoon launcher and a machine gun, naturally. John tests the harpoon launcher by firing an explosive-tipped harpoon at a barrel. Which you wouldn't think you'd want to do if you're trying to lure an animal to that area, but whatever.

The three wait around, and the audience is forced to wait with them. While John and Tony worry that they were wrong and the croc isn't coming, they never stop to consider, "Hey, why are we hunting a 50 foot crocodile in a boat that's half its size?" Their monotony is interrupted when a speedboat approaches--which John almost blows up. Once they find out the boat's passenger is Peter (Robert Chan), a pushy news photographer, they probably wish they'd let John kill him. Oh, and during the whole sequence of Peter talking John into paying the boat driver, nobody thinks to warn the guy of the giant crocodile before they just send him on his way.

So I'm sure the smashed boat and chunks of human flesh they find shortly afterward are just a coincidence. Totally.

Peter proves so annoying and obtrusive that Tanaka smashes his own windshield to get the guy to move out of the way. Eventually, night falls with no other sign of the crocodile. So, finally, everyone goes to sleep (or passes out drunk) below decks and leaves Tanaka on deck, also asleep. And so, the crocodile strikes--by launching itself into the air and jumping over the boat!

You will believe a croc can fly!

John, Tony, and Peter are stuck below and unable to assist Tanaka as the crocodile finally swats him overboard with its tail. Tanaka almost makes it back aboard, but the croc grabs him and chomps him multiple times before leaving him with easily the goofiest death in the film, an image that stuck with me for years after but oddly goes unmentioned in most other reviews: the croc opens its mouth to show the camera a screaming, flailing Tanaka lodged in its throat.

Hmm. Inspiration for the poor bastard stuck in the shark's throat in Jaws 3-D, perhaps?

Tanaka thus disposed of, we cut to the next morning as the others have somehow gotten free and have resumed their hunt for the croc. John machine-guns a barrel of blood and then the croc attacks. A very weirdly editing sequence follows of John firing harpoons, Tony firing the machine gun, and Peter taking pictures as the crocodile roars at them. Eventually an explosion happens, and Tony declares, "You got him, John!"

The celebration is short-lived, as the croc rams the boat from beneath. Their attack only wounded it. John grabs a bundle of dynamite, but falls overboard when the croc rams them again. Tony tries to drive the croc away with machine gun fire as Peter tries to grab John, but it's no use. John is dragged under, which is delightfully rendered by giving a doll full of fake blood to a live crocodile in a tank, who shakes it around with gusto.

The boat begins to feel the stress of the various attacks and begins to sink. How much it has sunk depends on the shot--as the actual boat appears to be more or less level, while the miniature boat half-submerges at a 90-degree angle and then at a 45-degree angle. As Tony climbs the crow's nest with a bundle of dynamite, the model boat is again at a 90-degree angle and three-fourths submerged! Finally, the crow's nest tips over and Tony flings the (unlit?) dynamite at the croc.

And then the film takes a turn for the bizarre, as Peter reappears with a lit bundle of dynamite in one hand and several other bundles strapped to his body (!) before he dives into the water. Tony yells at him to stop, but our intrepid reporter swims right into the crocodile's mouth. The croc then swims over to the boat and--Ka-BOOM!

Did Tony survive the explosion, you ask? Hell if I know. The movie shows us a speedboat heading towards the wreckage of Tanaka's boat, but Peter is nowhere in sight--and then it cuts to a "The End" card, with the disclaimer that the film is fictitious and no identification with actual people should be inferred.

I'm sure you're stunned.

The story of how I finally got Crocodile on DVD again is almost as entertaining as the film itself, perhaps moreso. At the time, it was still in print but not on Netflix any longer (back when I still used it for physical discs) and I was not willing to spend the money to buy it at its current price. Well, my library at that time still had the budget to indulge my requests for them to add bizarre movies nobody else in their right mind would watch. So I requested Crocodile, making sure to specify that I wanted the film listed as 1981 on Amazon and not the 2000 film directed by Tobe Hooper.

They got me the Tobe Hooper version, and before I could put in a request again for the correct one, the DVD went out of print. Not even my library was willing to spend over $30 on this piece of shit. Thus it became a joke between Checkpoint Telstar and myself that the exchange between library employees about my request can be summarized as:

"Hey, this guy wants a killer crocodile movie."

"Which one?

"It doesn't matter, they all suck."

[And thus, I got the wrong one]

It's sadly true, of course. As with werewolf movies, I absolutely love the subject matter but the actual movies? Usually grade-A fertilizer. I can count the number of good killer crocodilian movies on one hand and have enough fingers left over to make rude gestures. And Crocodile does nothing to buck that trend.

Again, it's uncertain how much of the film's awfulness is a result of the hackjob it went through to get to the US market and how much of it was awful to start with. At least, I can't be certain because I have never encountered an uncut version of the film as it was intended. However, it's pretty clear to me that the film was awful from frame one.

Even if you were to remove the bizarre editing of the US cut--which, for instance, cuts the village attack sequence into two sequences and assumes you won't notice the re-used footage--you'd still have a monster that changes size dramatically from scene-to-scene and gratuitous animal cruelty.

That said, I do have to give props where they're due: the film's special effects are largely pretty damn good. While they're still stiff and inexpressive, the full-scale crocodile puppets are really well-done. Certainly more convincing than similar beasties in The Big Alligator River or Killer Crocodile (admittedly a low bar), and about as good as the title creature in Alligator. There's also some pretty great miniature work, almost on par with similar work you might see in a Toho studios production.

Like everything else in the film I can't praise the effects for consistency, of course, but when they're good they are good.

On the whole, I can't really recommend the film in good conscience, it is certainly an experience if you are a bad movie fan. It's a surreal and incompetent experience. And boy howdy, if you like crocodile eyes, this is the movie for you!

"Hmm, yes, I'm afraid you're going to need glasses. Also, please spit my receptionist back out. I need her."

Here we are at day 3 of 2014's HubrisWeen, where I and several of my b-movie comrades dive into 26 horror/sci-fi movies a day--one for each letter of the alphabet--culminating with the last film on Halloween. We're all just slavishly copying the pioneer of this madness, Checkpoint Telstar.

Click the banner to check out what the other maniacs chose, won't you?

HubrisWeen, Day 2: The Boogens (1981)

Peaking early is always a concern when it comes to story-telling, and especially when it comes to movies. After all, movies are usually meant to be watched in a single sitting, so if a movie gives its audience the best they can expect and then spends the rest of its running time failing to give them anything comparable, well, it will have engendered a lot of ill will by the time the credits roll.

A good example would be how Superman Returns gave its audience the amazing sequence of Superman saving a crashing plane, and then basically spent the rest of the film with him doing jack all.

Peaking early doesn't always have to be a bad thing, though. Pacific Rim's best sequence is undoubtedly the Hong Kong fight, yet I don't know anyone who wasn't still invested come the climactic battle at The Breach. If what follows the film's highlight is at least actually enjoyable, it's easier to forgive.

Yet neither of those examples peaked in the opening credits, which is exactly what The Boogens does. The question you must then ask is, "How can a movie peak in its credits?" Then follow it up with, "Is the rest of it a waste of time, then?"

To answer the second question will take the rest of this review. The first I will answer immediately.

The credits play over a montage of Old-Timey photographs and music, like a Ken Burns documentary, as a progressive series of headlines tell the story of Silver City, Colorado in 1888. A silver mine is opened, which produces a huge deposit of the precious metal and Silver City's population booms.

Then , in 1912, things take a turn for the worse. Multiple cave-ins are reported and then 27 miners are trapped in a cave-in. Worse, the next headline about these miners declares, "Miners Report Attacks In Mine." This is followed by "Mine Closed."

This is an amazing sequence, as it is marvelously creepy on its own terms and delivers a lot of exposition that could otherwise have killed the pace later on. So now we know that whatever was in that mine is bad news and we know that, given that horror movies hate shit-stirrers, somebody is going to make the mistake of opening it.

Sure enough, in present-day (or 1981) Silver City, business partners Brian (John Crawford) and Dan (Med Flory) break off the padlock on the mine entrance. Late to arrive to their new job site are Brian annd Dan's new employees, Roger (Jeff Harlan) and Mark (Fred McCarren), toting a generator. All Roger wants to talk about is how much sex he's going to have when his girlfriend, Jessica, arrives--while Mark wants to focus on the job, though he is at least amused at Roger's antics.

Dan, Roger, and Mark head into the mine to check what beams need to be replaced. Then Roger and Mark string lights and start the generator, as Roger tries to convince Mark that he's gonna like Jessica's friend, Trish--Mark is skeptical given Roger's history of set-ups. Finally, Dan and Brian use dynamite to open up the cave-in sealing the mine. Unbeknownst to the group, a haggard old man (Jon Lormer, better known as the soon-to-be vengeful zombie in the "Father's Day" sequence of Creepshow) is watching them from afar, most disapprovingly.

After the work day ends, Roger and Mark head to their hotel to get ready for moving into their rental house the next morning. That night, their landlord, Martha (Marcia Reider) heads over to warm up the house--but narrowly avoids a deer on the way and runs her car into a ditch. She gets to the house, starts up the power and phones her husband---all while the strange old man watches through the window. But even he flees when he sees her head into the basement to light the water heater. Despite some weird noises, she makes it out of the basement alive and gets into bed.

However, Martha hears the sound of the low-angle roving POV cam in the basement and goes to investigate in the kitchen. She grabs a knife, but unfortunately does not see the basement door open as she walks by it, so is thus completely caught off-guard by the creature that burst forth with a roar and drags her to her doom.

The next morning, Deputy Blanchard (Scott Wilkinson) pulls the unfortunate victim's car from a ditch. So there will be no warning for Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin) and Trish (Rebecca Balding) as they drive past on their way to the house. This also introduces Jessica's fluffy little dog, Tiger, who will prove to be a surprisingly sympathetic character given the usual prejudices against yap dogs--and one of the best dog actors in any horror film this side of John Carpenter's The Thing.

"So, I'm the hero, right? ...Right?!"

Back in the mine, the group clears the cave-in blocking a passage unmarked on Dan and Brian's map and discover a cavern with an underground pool. Roger is extremely wigged out from the get-go. The mysterious splashes in the water and the discovery of the bleached bones of close to 30 people do nothing to calm him, but Mark and Dan are unconcerned.

Jessica and Trish begin the process of moving in---which includes Jessica testing the bed for stability and Trish discovering that the cold shower she wanted to take is colder than she actually wanted. So Trish ventures into the basement, clad only in a robe. The POV cam watches her but does not strike--because it's only Tiger waiting to false scare her.

Poor Roger is tasked by Brian with going to Denver to pick up some updated maps, but told he doesn't have to go in until 3AM so as to at least give him the, uh, reunion with Jessica he won't stop talking about. He'll also be taking Brian's truck later that evening. (I'm sure this won't be relevant later)

Jessica and Roger's playful screaming causes Trish to exit her shower in a hurry, thinking that Jessica was in distress, so that she meets Mark by...literally showing her ass. Despite this, Trish and Mark hit it off while sitting and talking in the kitchen, where Mark demonstrates that Tiger actually listens to him. Seems years ago Mark made a dog electric chair as a means of showing Tiger he meant business.

During this, Tiger also demonstrates a simultaneous fear and curiosity about the basement. Then Deputy Blanchard comes by, looking for the late Martha--and thus being the interruptus to Roger's coitus. Since everyone's dressed, the reluctant Jessica and Trish are convinced to go out to dinner and leave Tiger alone in the house. Alone with the thing in the basement, which doesn't stay in the basement.

Roger collects the keys from Brian and heads home to get some sleep for the road as Jessica schools Dan at pool, and Mark flirts with Trish. Roger pulls Brian's truck into the house's garage, but the mess left by the creature chasing Tiger--which he erroneously assumes is Tiger's doing--delays his nap. The broken bed cancels it completely, so he heads out to garage...

...and promptly runs afoul of something with tentacles hiding under the truck. Those tentacles also have claws, as it turns out, and they know just how to slash open arteries. Exit Roger.

Mark and Trish are none the wiser when they get home, Jessica having stayed behind to school Brian and Dan at pool some more. The new couple make love in front of a roaring fire--only to be interrupted by Tiger. The next morning, however, Jessica can't find Tiger. Investigating the basement, Mark finds a vent in the basement that leads into the mine. Tiger turns up okay, but is visibly terrified.

Mark heads off to work and Trish heads into town for errands. At the mine, as Mark heads down with a light, the mysterious old man steals several sticks of dynamite from the back of Mark's truck and follows him in. Trish, meanwhile, is researching the old cave-ins at the local newspaper office.

Around the same time, Mark makes the observation that the bones in the mine shouldn't be in scattered piles if the men died of suffocation or starvation, Brian realizes Roger should have been back from Denver, and Jessica discovers that the truck is still in the garage. (How she fails to notice the blood and other signs of the struggles between Roger and the creature is beyond me) Trish goes to the mine to tell Mark about Roger's disappearance, and about the story she uncovered--a survivor of the cave-in who went crazy and claimed he was attacked by something in the mine.

Naturally, he wasn't crazy. And it's poor Tiger and Jessica who get to find that out. While Jessica takes a shower, the creature in the basement sends a couple tentacles up a vent in the bedroom--and Tiger gets too close to the vent when investigating. Exit Tiger.

Jessica hears Tiger's final yelp and goes to investigate, nearly losing an arm as a tentacle reaches out of the vent and grabs her. She breaks free and moves a dresser on top of the vent, but the creature is too string and tosses it out of the way and somehow emerges from the vent and gives chase. (When we see the creature later, it will definitely be hard to believe it fit through the vent--or at least as easily as it does here) Unfortunately, Jessica ends up cornered in a closet and, like her boyfriend before her, takes a claw to the throat.

Goodbye, Jessica. I liked you.

Speaking of Roger, he turns up back at the mine--or at least most of him. He's floating in the pool with half his face chewed off. The old man now makes himself known, holding the dynamite by a lighter. He explains to Dan, Brian, and Mark that his father was the survivor who "went crazy." So he grew up hearing tales about the "Boogens" and making sure that the tunnels to the houses were sealed--tunnels like the one in the basement. All of which have now been unsealed, thanks to our heroes. Mark realizes the threat and rushes to the house, calling the deputy on his way.

Unfortunately, he's too late because Trish has just arrived home and discovered the aftermath of Jessica's death. And she quickly runs afoul of the culprit:

"Rar! I am not remotely cute and cuddly! STOP MAKING KISSY FACES AT ME!"

As it turns out, Boogens are ferocious, voracious, and damn near impossible to kill. So if that mine isn't sealed up, Silver City is going to be a lovely shade of red instead.

The biggest hurdle most monster movies struggle with jumping over is the simple limitations of special effects on a small budget. You may want Stan Winston but you can barely afford Paul Blaisdell. There is one obvious way to overcome this, which is to hold off on showing your monster for as long as possible. And, indeed, The Boogens excels at this. We don't see anything of the creatures beyond tentacles until 87 minutes into a 95 minute movie.

Now, obviously, this means that any creature we actually see is going to end up disappointing compared to whatever we imagine while watching it. The upside is that, if the monster is disappointing, we don't spend the whole movie being expected to be frightened by it.

Of course, I happen to love the Boogens--which means I differ quite drastically from the opinion of the film's director. They look a bit like the hatchling version of Irys from Gamera 3 if you peeled its shell off, shortened its neck, and gave it a mouth full of teeth. Or, put another way, a frog that just went through the microwave given tentacles and fangs. The main downside is the damn things are way more adorable than frightening.

"Love me or die!"

The atmospheric touches are definitely the film's strength. As I already said, the opening titles are amazing--almost a separate horror film from the actual feature.

The funny thing about this film is that it sort of follows the pattern of a slasher film. The unseen assailant kills its victims one by one, until the final reveal when all the bodies begin showing up (and for creatures that eat people, their victims tend to be mostly intact) and then the killer won't stay dead. While, in this case, there are supposed to be multiple creatures--although only one puppet, of course--the first reveal still follows a pattern of the killer who won't stay dead.

Where it differs, of course, is that its characters are all adults (as opposed to adults playing teenagers) and while the sex-obsessed couple sure does get it, the more "innocent" couple we know to be our heroes are actually the ones who get the steamy sex scene. Hell, all of the film's nudity comes from Trish, not Jessica--so it's refreshingly a horror film that can't be read as punishing its characters for having sex. While those certainly exist, the usual exploitation model tends to forbid it because of the simple expedience of having your nudity and gore all in one easy package.

That's another way the film differs. While the film racks up a respectable body count, there's no one aside from Martha who exists solely to be introduced and then whacked in order to add to the kill count. The characters are treated like actual characters, not just fodder.

However, it still feels a bit hollow compared to that amazing opening. There's simply no way around that. Yet, I happen to really enjoy the film that follows--and I wouldn't trade that opening for anything.

Also, who doesn't want a pet Boogen?

Here we are at day 2 of 2014's HubrisWeen, where I and several of my b-movie comrades dive into 26 horror/sci-fi movies a day--one for each letter of the alphabet--culminating with the last film on Halloween. We're all just slavishly copying the pioneer of this madness, Checkpoint Telstar.

Click the link above to check out what the other maniacs chose, won't you?

HubrisWeen, Day 1: The Alligator People (1959)

I love crocodilians--alligators especially, but I have plenty of love for crocodiles, caimans, and gharials, too. I'm also rather a strange person. So it should come as no surprise that if someone told me, "I can cure you of [whatever ailment needs curing], but everyone who has taken this particular cure previously has turned into an alligator man," I would still enthusiastically agree to the procedure.

Therefore, I'd probably be a terrible victim of mad science--though perhaps a great superhero--as most people would consider turning into a were-gator a very bad thing. And they certainly wouldn't be very happy with their new spouse turning into one.

Which brings us to the case of one Nurse Jane Marvin (the incomparable Beverly Garland), who is currently assisting Dr. Wayne MacGregor (Douglas Kennedy) at a sanitarium. As Dr. MacGregor explains to a colleague he has invited over, Dr. Eric Lorimer (Bruce Bennett), when Nurse Marvin assisted him with a hypnosis experiment she spun a tale so unbelievable that he knew he had to have a second opinion on it.

Nurse Marvin again agrees to undergo hypnosis with Dr. Lorimer present. Quickly she reveals her name is actually Mrs. Joyce Webster, and she was married--or maybe, she still is. She was married to Paul Webster (Richard Crane), a pilot. The wedding almost didn't occur, as Paul was in a horrible crash and was more dead than alive--yet somehow they find themselves laughing about it as they sip champagne aboard the train to their honeymoon destination. Joyce just writes it off as a simple mistake by the doctors, but Paul is very serious when he says that he was as much a mass of human hamburger as they say. He's trying to explain how that could be, when the newlyweds are interrupted by the arrival of some telegrams.

Joyce receives some no doubt ribaldrous comments from her fellow nurses, but whatever it is that Paul receives shocks him so much that without a word of explanation he hops off the train when it stops briefly to pick up mail and he vanishes into the night.

Joyce spends months in a futile effort of tracking him down, until she finally uncovers the address of The Cypresses Plantation where Paul grew up when searching his school records. It's as likely a place as any to find him, so she makes her way to Bayou Landing, Louisiana. Hopping off the train, she finds a wooden crate on the platform marked "Radioactive Material: Cobalt 60." She somehow deduces that the crate is destined for The Cypresses and, apparently being a very lousy nurse, she sits right on the crate to wait for it to be picked up. I don't care if the box inside is lined with lead, I'm not sitting on radioactive isotopes willingly.

Well, thankfully for Joyce, a truck from The Cypresses arrives and out pops Manon (Lon Chaney Jr, who was really down on his luck at this point), a hook-handed Cajun whose largely non-existent accent comes and goes as frequently as his hook bends at the wrist. Manon agrees to give her a lift to the plantation. On the way in, Manon has to clear a branch out of the road--which allows Joyce to witness two guys having a ridiculously difficult time lassoing a lethargic six-foot alligator. This gives Manon a chance to tell Joyce all about the deadliness of the swamp and its quicksand, water moccasins, and gators--dirty, stinkin', slimy gators!

Manon doesn't like gators, in case that wasn't clear, and he further demonstrates by horrifying Joyce when he runs one over with the truck. It's unharmed, somehow--gators are tough, but against a truck from the mid-20th Century, I'd bet on the truck--and Manon pauses in his cackling to clarify that, yep, a gator took his left hand.

I can't imagine that will be important later, can you?

Joyce finds herself not exactly welcomed by the matron of The Cypresses, Lavinia Hawthorne (Frieda Inescort), who bristles at the mention of "Paul Webster", but otherwise acts as if Joyce is a horrible liar. Mrs. Hawthorne, or "Vinnie" as we'll come to know her, orders her thrown out, but Toby the butler (Vince Townsend, Jr) points out that the next train won't be until morning. So it is agreed that Joyce can stay, provided she never leaves her room.

At night, the household is disturbed by a drunken Manon firing a revolver at alligators in the swamp. It falls to poor Toby to go out and reason with the armed drunk. Joyce interrogates Louann the maid (Ruby Goodwin) when the woman comes to check on her, but Louann can only tell Joyce that the house is deeply troubled. Joyce manages to snatch her room key as Louann leaves so she snoop about later if she chooses.

Meanwhile, Vinnie goes to visit Dr. Mark Sinclair (George Macready) at his lab. Dr. Sinclair is busy helping to sedate someone in white robe, hood, and mask. Whoever they are, they are incapable of any vocalization beyond a guttural muttering, and Dr. Sinclair is deeply upset that one of his nurses knocks the person out with a punch to the jaw. After sedating the mysterious patient, Sinclair goes to meet with Vinnie. The two discuss how they overlooked the school records and now must deal with keeping Joyce in the dark. There is talk of the cobalt treatment, using the recently delivered isotopes--which Vinnie distressingly refers to as "the cobalt bomb" (!)--but Sinclair is not certain it will work, and it may make things worse.

Keeping Joyce in the dark soon becomes a moot point. A mysterious figure in a trench coat wanders into the house and begins playing the piano--as all mysterious figures do late at night when others are trying to sleep. Joyce hears something familiar in the music and goes to investigate: and promptly discovers the figure is Paul, whose skin now looks like an expensive wallet. She doesn't actually recognize her husband, but he recognizes her and flees back into the swamp--leaving inexplicably muddy footprints and water on the piano keys.

Paul finds Vinnie as she heads back to the house and, speaking with a decidedly croaky voice, he declares that Joyce must leave on the morning train.

The next morning, Dr. Sinclair arrives at the plantation house in his Swamp Buggy and introduces himself to Joyce. He makes idle chit-chat about the swamp being the cradle of life, but Joyce still tries to prod him for information. Sinclair is a better actor than, well, the actor playing him--but Joyce still sees through the act and Sinclair politely retreats to his lab. There he has one of his underlings handle the cobalt with ludicrously inadequate protective gear, while talking about how six seconds of exposure is lethal, and readies what appears to be a Death Ray projector.

Vinnie discovers that Joyce has not left on the train as planned and goes to confront Joyce. She promptly gives up on the whole "we have nothing to hide" facade when Joyce insinuates that something has been done to Paul, and reveals that she is in fact Paul's mother.

So, when Paul returns home at night to play piano, he is confronted by Joyce. He promptly flees into the swamp just as a storm picks up. Joyce gives chase, stumbling over obviously muzzled live alligators and one sorry animatronic crocodile before Manon rescues her from an angry boa constrictor pretending to be a cottonmouth (I'm guessing). Manon takes her back to his bungalow to get her warmed up. Unfortunately, Manon's insistence on Joyce removing her wet clothes turns out to have nothing to do with his concern for her health. Joyce screams when Manon attempts to force himself on her and the brute knocks her cold with a punch from his good arm.

Luckily, the scream was heard by Paul and he barges into the shack, brawls with Manon, and then carries Joyce away--leaving Manon to bellow my favorite line into the night, "I'll kill ya, alligator man! Just like I'd kill any four-legged gator!" When Paul brings the unconscious Joyce back home, Vinnie pressures him into agreeing to tell her the truth. It is agreed that in the morning, Dr. Sinclair will explain.

And so he does, after keeping Joyce waiting while he aims his cobalt-powered Death Ray at a live alligator as part of a test to see if say Ray will actually help Paul's condition. Then, knowing Joyce is a nurse, he goes about trying to explain exactly how he's been playing God with his alligator patients. You see, in advanced organisms like humans, body processes are controlled by the nervous system--in less-developed animals, they are governed by chemicals. Dr. Sinclair was specifically interested in the healing powers of one particular hormone--hydrocortisone.

Aw, yeah, that's the stuff.

Figuring that hydrocortisone would be much stronger in more primitive creatures who need chemicals to control their bodily functions, he began focusing on lizards and how certain lizards can detach and regenerate their tails. He claims that they are even some who can regenerate lost limbs. (There aren't) Naturally, he decided to devote his research towards finding a way to apply this regenerative capability to humans--by isolating a protein chemical from the pituitary gland of crocodilians. Specifically, a local variety.

"'Sup."

So, Dr. Sinclair injected this chemical into the veins of volunteers who had lost limbs, broken bones, and suffered other severe injuries. The worst of this was Paul, naturally, and every last volunteer recovered miraculously...until they began to change. Apparently, there was some kind of additional chemical in the mix that had a transformative effect. As Dr. Sinclair shows Joyce when he reveals a patient whose very brain has been affected, so that only a sun lamp will calm him down.

And I'm just gonna pause for a moment to bask as well--in the glorious rays of terrible movie science. First, you've probably noticed that the miracle regenerative treatment derived from reptiles that turns its patient into a reptile is the origin of Spider-Man's foe, The Lizard. But at least Marvel had the good sense to use, you know, lizards. If your goal was to isolate the hormone that allows lizards to regrow lost tails--which, I may add, is not ever a perfect regrowth--why would you choose to isolate hormones from alligators? Alligators, apart from being unable to regenerate anything, are not lizards. That's like discovering a hormone in bats can cure cancer, so you go about extracting hormones from orcas. If he needed an animal that generated lots of this hormone due to its size, he could have chosen monitor lizards to experiment on.

I guess "The Komodo People" just didn't have the same ring to it.

At any rate, Dr. Sinclair thinks he has a cure and Paul is determined to test it out that night---30 seconds of exposure to gamma radiation via the Death Ray. The trouble is that Dr. Sinclair has no idea if it will cure Paul, kill him, or accelerate the process.

Joyce demands to be present, and so shortly husband and wife are reunited before he goes under the beam. Joyce assures Paul she would have loved him anyways. Paul insists he thought he was doing the right thing and is adamant that the procedure take place at once. So Paul is strapped to a rotating table, the Death Ray sounds its piercing whine--

And then Manon barges in. For some reason, Manon's mere presence seems to cause the Death Ray equipment to go on the fritz, and that's before he starts punching everyone and barges into the room with the projector--only to discover that his quarry has changed into something straight out of his nightmares.

"Grr! Raarr! STOP LAUGHING!"

Manon's terrified flailing unfortunately allows him to discover just how good a conductor his hook is. Paulligator stumbles away from the Cajun-style Cajun, so he can cause his mother to faint and Joyce to scream before he tears off into the swamp. Joyce gives chase, which means she and Paulligator are the only ones clear of the blast radius when Dr. Sinclair's equipment goes nuclear.

"My God! We're gonna need 10 gallons of lotion!"

Paulligator, naturally, gets into a fight with an ordinary alligator. The fight ends in a draw, and then, as Joyce watches helplessly, Paulligator stumbles into quicksand and disappears from her view.

Back in the framing device, the psychiatrists are stumped. The polygraph shows that she wasn't lying--and indeed Dr. MacGregor did some research and concluded that there was a Paul Webster and a Dr. Mark Sinclair, both of whom's whereabouts are unknown. Both doctors agree that it would be best to not tell Nurse "Jane Marvin" about the tale she told them. If she buried it that deep, she clearly wouldn't handle having it brought back to the surface...

As a child, when I discovered science-fiction and horror films from the 1950s and 60s--and even the 30s and 40s--I immediately fell in love. I would pour through library books on the subject, especially Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Monsters, which at the time was insanely comprehensive and up-to-date. I don't recall if it was there or in another book that I first encountered a publicity still of the titular monster from this film, but naturally it made an impression.

Even as a kid, that monster mask looked pretty hokey, but as someone who loved crocodilians--even then they were my favorite animals--I could not resist the siren song of a movie about people who turn into alligators.

However, circumstances plugged my ears with candle wax. No video store or library near me had it, it never played on the whopping four channels I had regular access to, and neither was it ever available for sale. So I didn't see this until I bought it on VHS in high school. By that point my tastes had changed a fair amount, but my love for 1950s monster movies had never dimmed.

And it's a good thing, too. This film hits so many of the notes you'll find in 50s monster movies that it's practically a composite. You have an unnecessary framing device that makes the whole film a flashback, a scientist whose attempts to help people result in monsters, a disgruntled underling who exacerbates the monster problem, ludicrously inaccurate science, and a delightfully silly rubber monster.

Like many of its ilk, it takes a long time to get going. As with the previous year's The Fly (like this film, a 20th Century Fox production), we don't actually get to see our promised monster until the film is almost over. And while there is, technically, more than one alligator person in the film, you could still call its title misleading. So a modern audience might find the film boring, but I think I've summed up my disdain for modern audiences before.

What's really important is whether the characters we spend the film with before the monsters show up are enjoyable or not. It's true that Frieda Inescort and George Macready are terrible actors, but Beverly Garland is her usual awesome self and Richard Crane does a great job as the mutating Paul. The role that truly stands out, though, is Lon Chaney, Jr. as Manon. I've also been much more fond of Chaney than most classic horror fans, but he just fits the role of Manon--most likely because at the time of the film his poor life choices meant that he didn't really have to act to play a down on his luck, drunken slob. It almost borders on bad taste.

The Alligator People is no unsung classic, nor is it a lost epic of incompetence on the level of Ed Wood. It is, however, a fun time--both as a film on its own merits and as a goofy exercise in bad science. If that appeals to you on the level it appeals to me, well then you should check it out.

Just watch out for quicksand, moccasins...and dirty, stinkin' gators.

Thus begins day 1 of 2014's HubrisWeen, where I and several of my b-movie comrades dive into 26 horror/sci-fi movies a day--one for each letter of the alphabet--culminating with the last film on Halloween. We're all just slavishly copying the pioneer of this madness, Checkpoint Telstar.

Click on the banner above to check out what the other maniacs chose, won't you?

Announcing HubrisWeen 2014!

Starting on Monday, October 6th I will be participating in a form of insanity known as Hubrisween.

What is this HubrisWeen?

Last year, Checkpoint Telstar created HubrisWeen, as a means of reviewing one horror movie a day in October for every letter of the alphabet. That's 26 movies, culminating in Z on Halloween. I, being the equivalent of a brash young upstart, decided that this year I would follow suit. And I am not alone.

This year Checkpoint Telstar, Dr. FreeX, and myself shall tackle HubrisWeen together. If you click the banner above, it will take you to a central hub for all our reviews.

What movies will you maniacs be doing?

Now, now, that'd be giving away the game. However, I can give you a small preview of what you can expect to see on Monday:

Stay tuned for HubrisWeen!

Lifeforce (1985)

Vampires are played out. Aside from zombies, I don't think there is a single monster that has been so done to, well, undeath. Vampires have been nightmarish, comedic, sexy, homoerotically sexy, heroic, and even "unerotically" sexy. They've been monsters, demons, Judas, and even mere victims of a mysterious plague.

And, naturally, they've also been aliens.

To point up how played out vampires are, they were already making them into aliens at least as early as the 1950s with the Roger Corman-produced Not of This Earth, and in the 1960s with Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires and the also Roger Corman-produced (or AIP-produced, at any rate) Queen of Blood. That's not even factoring in blood-sucking aliens like The Thing From Another World or It! The Terror From Beyond Space, who weren't precisely vampires but fed like them.

It's not at all surprising that the trend would continue into the 1980s and beyond. After all, every vampire movie is required to either follow or buck the established lore of vampires--are they vulnerable to crosses, garlic, and sunlight or do they laugh at crosses, eat garlic bread with gusto, and just, ugh, sparkle in the sunlight? With a space vampire, you've already freed yourself somewhat of these rules without having to go through the list of "this works, that doesn't" in quite so rigid a manner.

Plus, since we became convinced that flying saucers existed--and even before that--mankind has loved the idea of aliens. Vampires, played out as they may be, have still maintained a hold on the pop culture imagination. Why not put these two flavors together and see how they taste?

Of course, most of the space vampire movies tended to ground their vampires in some way. After all, it makes no sense that a vampire from a distant galaxy would recoil at a cross or cast no reflection. And it certainly wouldn't have come about because its soul was taken, right?

Oh, but you see, by the 1980s metaphysics and psychic phenomena were treated as if they were actual science in their own right. So making your vampires into aliens in no way meant that they had to be logical. And yet, mysticism and science fiction had not been mutually exclusive concepts for decades. Indeed, some of the best science fiction proceeded from a starting point of grounding the "supernatural" in scientific terms.

So, when Cannon Films hired Tobe Hooper to direct a Dan O'Bannon screenplay based on the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, it's almost not surprising at all that the final film would end up resembling an earlier science fiction film that also dealt with a supernatural concept--that both are largely set in London just makes the resemblance all the clearer.

We begin with a science fiction staple: the voice-over narrator (rumored to be John Larroquette, more or less reprising his same role in Tobe Hooper's earlier Texas Chainsaw Massacre), explaining what we are seeing. A joint US / British expedition has been launched, with the goal of sending an experimental space shuttle, the Churchill, to Halley's Comet. This experimental craft is equipped with a NERVA engine which enables the craft to have Earth-like gravity on an extended flight. In this case, that translates to "they have gravity in every scene where we didn't want to go to the trouble of faking zero gravity."

As the Challenger approaches Halley's Comet, their sensors detect something strange: a clearly unnatural object in the corona of the comet: an object 150-miles long, at that. American Commander Carlsen (Steve Railsback) goes for the option of "fuck whatever our actual mission was, let's check out that space doohickey." So the Challenger pulls up alongside the strange object--the effects here, aside from the strange decision to make Halley's comet green, still hold up pretty well since the visual effects supervisor was John Dykstra--and Carlsen leads an away team to investigate the craft.

Entering through an opening that looks like "a giant artery", the characters make their way into the enormous derelict and discover a huge chamber full of the ship's mummified occupants: enormous bat-like creatures. Carlsen, ever the boorish American, breaks a finger off of one of the dead creatures just to test that it's as desiccated as it looks. The rest of the crew throws a specimen bag over the creature--oddly not grabbing one their commander hasn't manhandled.

"Huh, the first alien specimen humanity has ever encountered. Let's poke it."

Then something strange happens: the spaceship deploys an enormous structure on its "stern' that looks like an umbrella made of bat wings. And then an until-then unnoticed door opens up behind Carlsen, accompanied by a blinding light. Carlsen decides they should investigate, despite the objections of some of his crew.

Once through the passageway, the team finds a chamber full of crystalline containers. All the containers seem to be full of more of those bat creatures--except for the three glowing ones at the center, which contain what appear to be three humans: a beautiful woman (Mathilda May, credited as "Space Girl") flanked by two males (Chris Jagger and Bill Malin). All three are stark naked and you'll notice immediately a flagrant exercise of the male gaze, as our Space Girl is completely exposed in her crystal tube while her male companions have their genitals conveniently obscured.

"These prizes get weirder every carnival."

Carlsen and crew decide to take the three humanoid specimens back with them, ignoring the fact that all the men in the away team have begun acting strangely around the Space Girl whilst the lone female team member rolls her eyes at them. At first it's just the expected leering and comments about having been "in space for six months", but then it's all thousand yard stares and incoherent mumbling. Still, the crew begins trying to dislodge the three tubes...

...cut to a few months later, as the Churchill drifts back to Earth. In mission control at the Space Research Centre in London, Dr. Bukovksy (Michael Gothard) smokes nervously as the radio operator informs him that the Churchill is not only not responding to radio but appears to be radio dead. Worse, it seems like they haven't corrected their course since shortly after leaving the comet. NASA dispatches the Columbia to investigate.

The astronauts who board the Churchill are in for a nasty surprise, as the inside of the craft is completely gutted by fire. The crew are all charred skeletons. However, inside the tug bay the astronauts discover the three crystal cases are completely untouched. The bodies are brought back down to the SRC. Dr. Bukovsky convenes a meeting with several of the SRC's top scientists, specifically Dr. Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay), whose specialty is Thanatology--the study of death. Fallada is hesitant to declare the aliens dead, but an autopsy is scheduled anyway--especially since the cases, which appear to be more like force fields than an actual physical structure, have opened of their own accord.

Later that evening, Bukovsky settles down to watch some BBC and drink some liquor as he watches the BBC prattle on about how comets used to be called "disaster", which is "Latin for 'evil star'." He clicks the telly off as the announcer gets to talking about the as-yet unreleased fate of the Churchill astronauts. But as Bukovsky dozes, the lone guard on the Space Girl finds himself drawn to her seemingly lifeless form on the autopsy table inside a sterile examination room--but when he reaches out to touch her, she awakens and gets off the table.

"Greetings. I am an eldritch abomination from the stars here to devour your world."

The guard, being confronted by a naked Mathilda May, does nothing to stop her when she pulls his breathing apparatus off and begins furiously kissing him. But then the lights begin to flicker in the room--and lightning streams from the hapless guard's eyes and mouth. Bukovsky woke up to see the lead-up to the kiss on the security monitor in his office and, at first, seemed to be writing it off as a hallucination brought on by sleep and alcohol, but he realizes the truth just in time to be too late. He arrives and the guard collapses into Bukovsky's arms, little more than a smoking skeleton with a thin stretching of skin over it.

The Space Girl walks out of the shadows, looking satisfied with herself, and tells Bukovsky in a heavily reverbed voice to, "Use my body." Right about then, Fallada wanders into Bukovksy's office in time to see the Space Girl leaning in for a kiss--and Fallada wisely grabs some reinforcements before rushing to the room. The Space Girl has gone, but Bukovsky is still alive even though he's extremely weak. Fallada grabs a phone to order the guards to seal the building, assuring Bukovsky, "A naked girl is not going to get out of this complex."

Famous last words, naturally. When confronted by a cadre of Cockney guards, she force-chokes one guard, terrifies one into inaction, and uses her telekinetic powers to chuck the other across the room. She then uses her powers to completely obliterate the front window of the complex and wander naked into what seems a very cold night.

Enter Colonel Caine of the SAS (Peter Firth), curly-haired man of action. He arrives at the SRC to take over the case of the murderous space nudist, waving away the press and proceeding to get the back story from Bukovsky and Fallada. Here Caine (and the audience) learns that not only were the Churchill's memory tapes erased, but that the escape pod was missing. It couldn't have been launched by the fire, so someone must have survived but the condition of the crew's corpses make determining who it was impossible.

Caine and Fallada almost instantly strike up a camaraderie as Caine questions Fallada about his interest in death. Fallada explains that not only does he believe that there is life after death, but in fact what happened at the SRC was that the Space Girl completely draining the life force from the guard and partially from Bukovsky. "A vampire," Caine intones, and he's not wrong. And what about those two male vampires, you may now be asking? Well, they're being watched by two soldiers, who are both a bit wigged out by being assigned to watch two space stiffs. As one soldier comments that they don't look dead--the vampires prove him right by blasting apart the doors to their examination room and advancing menacingly on the guards. In a manner that keeps their privates from being visible, of course.

Well, the soldiers know the score and open fire with automatic weapons, which blasts holes in the vamps but doesn't slow them down. But the grenades do the trick. Caine and Fallada somehow didn't hear any of the prior ruckus, but the grenades bring them running to find that their specimens have been reduced to meaty chunks. But it's never a dull moment at the SRC, for just as Caine and Fallada--who totally should have been a duo that returned in a sequel to investigate other paranormal threats--are trying to make sense of the mess, the autopsy on the guard has begun. Only the guard doesn't want to stay dead for the pathologist.

George Hamilton finally hits the tanning bed one time too many.

The guard compels the pathologist to come close for a kiss and the lightning transference happens again, this time resulting in the pathologist being reduced to an emaciated corpse and the guard being returned to his healthy, naked, and extremely confused self. Fallada orders the guard and the late pathologist to each be put into "an isolation cell" (translation: supply closet). Then word comes in that the corpse of a naked woman has been found in Hyde Park in "an indescribable condition." Caine is hopeful it might be the Space Girl, but those hopes are quickly dashed--this girl isn't even a brunette. So now their quarry has clothes and they have another vampire to deal with.

Sir Percy Heseltine (Aubrey Morris) is sent to the SRC by the Prime Minister to find out what the devil is going on. He arrives just in time to witness a prediction Fallada made come true--the vampires created by the Space Girl need to be fed every two hours or they turn to dust. Explosively.

"The cleaning staff just all committed suicide, sir."

Some answers to exactly what the hell they're dealing with may be forthcoming, as the escape pod has just landed in Texas--and Carlsen is inside. He is rushed to the SRC to meet with Fallada, Bukovsky, and Caine. Caine quickly briefs him on what has happened since the return of the Churchill and implores him to explain what happened on the expedition. Basically, as Carlsen tells it, it was the space going equivalent of the Demeter in Bram Stoker's Dracula. One by one, Carlsen's crew sickened and died after leaving the comet with the bodies--completely drained of life. When Carlsen saw the Earth from the window of the shuttle, he knew he had to stop the creatures from reaching Earth. So he purged the ship's oxygen tanks, lit a fire, and then climbed into the escape pod just ahead of the resulting fireball. However, Carlsen admits he was reluctant to leave behind the Space Girl because he was so drawn to her.

Carlsen's story really didn't give them any more answers, but when Carlsen sleeps he has a dream about the Space Girl making love to him in a crypt right out of a haunted house attraction, before draining him of life. He wakes, screaming, and Fallada recognizes that it was actually a psychic visitation and reasons that if she's in touch with Carlsen's mind, perhaps he is in touch with hers. At Fallada's suggestion, Carlsen agrees to be hypnotized--and now the film starts to get truly weird.

You see, the Space Girl has left her body--though hidden in a safe place, she's no fool--and is currently inhabiting a nurse named Ellen (Nancy Paul). Using this body jumping the Space Girl has been draining victims of just enough life energy to sustain herself but not enough to leave a corpse. From the information collected from Carlsen's hypnosis, Sir Percy helps Caine track the nurse to Thurlston Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Sir Percy, Caine, and Carlsen go to visit Thurlston and its manager Dr. Armstrong (Patrick Stewart!). Armstrong leads them to Ellen's apartment and Caine and Carlsen go to question her.

Carlsen suddenly gets violent with Ellen, but he explains to Caine that he is able to see into her mind somehow (!) and knows that A) the Space Girl has moved to another body and B) the nurse knows who it is but she's actually a masochist who wants to have the information forced out of her. Carlsen advises Caine he may want to leave, but Caine responds with the immortal, "Not at all: I am a natural voyeur." One weird erotic interrogation later, Carlsen has a physical description of the patient now hosting the alien.

Giving the description to Armstrong gives them a name and Carlsen advises they want to hypnotize him using a dosage of pentothal and morphine, but when Armstrong touches Carlsen the jig is up. See the Space Girl is actually inside Armstrong. Caine and Carlsen overpower and drug Armstrong, thereby trapping her in his body so they can interrogate her.

"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!"

It...doesn't go well. Sure, they find out that the aliens used their telepathy to learn about humans and assume forms that would be pleasing to their prey, but even under the effect of the drug the Space Girl is able to control Carlsen and compel him to kiss Armstrong (giving Patrick Stewart his first-ever onscreen kiss with...Steve Railsback). This allows her enough energy to almost break free in a blast of energy and telekinesis, but Caine quickly injects Armstrong with a double dose of the hypnotic drug. Sir Percy was killed in the commotion however, and Carlsen momentarily can't stop babbling about how, "It's too late, you didn't stop it." Carlsen can't recall what it means when he regains his composure, but Caine has figured it out all too well.

The Space Girl has been leading them further and further away form London. And if there were other bodies that they didn't find, well, it's been many, many hours since she first escaped--more than enough time for her vampirism to spread like a plague. In fact, as they rush back to London by helicopter they discover that the city is a burning chaos as the vampires run wild through the streets and one of the male space vampires flies about as a ball of energy, siphoning souls to be sent up to the spaceship that has just parked itself in orbit above London to collect all the stolen souls. To make matters worse, the Space Girl has had enough of this "drugged into a stupor" bullshit and uses her powers to cause Armstrong and Sir Percy to hemorrhage blood from every orifice, which then takes on her form before collapsing into a mess on the helicopter floor.

"You're...you're seeing this, too, right?"

Well, they completely failed to stop the space vampires and lost their queen, but maybe all hope isn't lost. See, there's a reason there's only one male vampire flying around London. After their bodies were destroyed, they jumped to the bodies of the soldiers who killed them. One male vampire made the mistake of going after Fallada, who had just acquired a leaded iron sword and proceeded to impale his assailant through the "energy center" directly below the heart. Turns out, that's how you kill a space vampire. So all Caine and Carlsen have to do is get to the SRC and take that sword to finish off the other two vampires. The SRC, which is in the heart of vampire-infested London.

Yeah, that should be a cinch.

"Visine. It gets the curlicues out."

It's most in its climax that Lifeforce reminds me of Hammer's Quatermass And The Pit. Both films involve an ancient supernatural evil of an actually extraterrestrial origin devastating London by turning its population into monsters, and both films have their avatars of evil convert themselves into energy to further control their victims. But the whole film is delightfully imbued with that British sensibility that made the Quatermass films so enjoyable--quite surprising, given how many Yanks were involved in its production.

Another part of its charm is just simply the fact that, like Willliam Girdler's even more batshit-insane The Manitou before it, the film throws all this surreal crap at the screen and the characters just accept it and attempt to deal with it any way that they can. By the end the characters have encountered such insanity that Caine is fighting a space bat monster without flinching--in what is easily my favorite scene of the film.

Hey, NECA: make an action figure of this thing!

The film's effects are rarely anything but amazing. Some of the optical effects and matte paintings are obvious, but they still look incredible. The make-up and creature effects are honestly where it fumbles the most--particularly as the needs of the climax force the Space Girl's victims to change from living skeletons to generic zombies--but even there we are delivered such great sights as the true form of the space vampires and the likeness of the Space Girl forming out of blood.

The film also benefits from an amazing score by Henry Mancini, who had previously given the world the ubiquitous theme to Creature From The Black Lagoon, which is performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It's a sweeping, epic score that elevates the film far more than a more generic soundtrack of the period might have.

The acting ranges from stiff and unconvincing--most of the astronauts and Steve Railsback--to full-out scenery chewing--Steve Railsback--but most of the actors hit the right notes. At any rate, this isn't Antigone, it's a movie about a naked alien bombshell who sucks people's souls out of their faces, so it's less important for the actors to portray the depths of the human condition as it is that they not annoy the audience. And thankfully, none of them do.

Mathilda May deserves a lot of credit. Not only is she completely naked for 95% of her screentime--including several scenes that appear to be freezing cold, and then there's that blood avatar sequence that looks to have been quite uncomfortable--but she truly imbues the Space Girl with a sense of overwhelming sensuality, menace, and a supernatural otherness. Not bad, considering that she barely has any lines. Yet you can't deny she imbues the Space Girl with a distinct character. And you'd certainly be hard-pressed to find a more naked vampiress in film, outside of Lina Romay in Jesus Franco's Female Vampire, if that's what you're looking for.

Yeah, sorry, I'd doom the world for her.

Watching the film as many times as I have, I've begun to feel that it has a very strange idea about weaponized femininity. The only major female character being a soul-sucking space vampire should tip you off to that quickly enough, but the interactions between the male characters suggest something else entirely. It suggests a group of homosexual men confronted by overpowering female sexuality. Witness Bukovsky's horror at having been seduced by a woman, all the male characters seem to touch each other in oddly inappropriate ways, there's the Railsback / Stewart kiss, and the fact that Caine gives Carlsen a longing look whilst trying to plead with him to resist the wiles of the female vampire that suggests he is less trying to save his friend's soul and more that he is begging his lover not to get back with an ex.

I rather doubt that that was on purpose, but it's amusing to interpret it that way nonetheless.

The film is definitely not for everyone, but I love its mix of British sci-fi, psychic nonsense, exploitation, and vampire tropes. It rarely makes any actual sense, particularly as it goes on, but it's an amusing enough ride that it doesn't matter.

It's interesting to note that, like Blade Runner, this film is better known in its extended cut than the theatrical cut. Indeed, the only cut on VHS and DVD for many years was the extended cut. When Scream Factory released it in 2013, I finally got to watch the theatrical cut and...oof. It's not just that it's shorter. It also cuts out most of Henry Mancini's score, removes most of the space vampires' dialogue (ruining my favorite part of Caine's confrontation with the male vampire), and inserts scenes from the climax throughout the film. By doing so, they've completely undercut the effectiveness of the realization that the Space Girl has been luring them away from London by showing that it's too late well before the characters realize it. I much prefer the longer cut.

At any rate, a shorter cut still didn't bring in audiences and the film was a bit of a flop. Calling it Lifeforce instead of Space Vampires was probably part of that as well, but Cannon Films wanted to sell the film as a high-budget spectacle instead of their usual low-budget fare. It didn't work, clearly. However, like much of Cannon's output, it's since gained a cult following. As it damn well should.

This has been my contribution to the "Cannon Fodder" roundtable, dedicated to the memory of the late Menahem Golan of the Cannon dream team, Golan and Globus. The others got theirs done well before i did so why haven't you read them already?

Checkpoint Telstar: Delta Force

Cinemasochist Apocalypse: Exterminator 2

Micro-Brewed Reviews: 10 To Midnight