With 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting passing the ten-year milestone back in July, I decided to do something extra-stupid to celebrate. I went and took on three of the most thoroughly discussed and dissected properties in all of science fiction:
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), in which the Doctor is an idiot, the Daleks are pushovers, and only the juvenilized Susan seems truly qualified to go adventuring through the most dangerous regions of time and space…
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), in which motion is famously the thing that’s most sorely lacking…
and…
Star Wars (1977), in which the Force– the energy field created by Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, James Earl Jones, and a whole lot of immensely talented guys named “John”– truly was with George Lucas.
Also, I’ve got some less overreaching reviews, too:
Carnival Magic (1981), in which a tiger-tamer ain’t nothing next to a psychic with a talking chimp…
Pacific Rim (2013), in which HUGE FREAKING ROBOTS punch HUGE FREAKING MONSTERS in the face for two hours…
Phantasm (1979), in which funeral parlors are even creepier than you realized…
and…
Wake in Fright (1971), in which Outback mining towns make for a truly unforgettable Christmas vacation.
#1 by blake on August 26, 2013 - 2:22 pm
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Considering that the only reviews of Dr. Who and the Daleks and Star Trek: the Motionless Picture I’ve read were the short ones from Leonard Maltin, I can safely say that I learned something new about “classic” sci-fi cinema from Hubrisfest.
I hereby unofficially declare that you must review the 1990s “Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla” to further your background on movies about humans building robots in order to punch giant monsters in the face.
#2 by The Rev. on August 26, 2013 - 3:56 pm
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I second that declaration. I also want an explanation of why that, of all the Heisei Godzilla movies, is the one you skipped over.
I wouldn’t mind knowing why Destroy all Monsters was skipped, as well. Hell, I’ll throw in Son of Godzilla too; I suspect I know why on that one, based on what I know of your movie tastes, but considering you reviewed Godzilla’s Revenge I might be completely wrong.
Then we can talk about when you’ll finally cover the Millennium series!
Lyz should thank you for this; it’s completely drawing me away from the fact that that I’ll probably never get to see her reviews on the entire run, which in light of those for the first two is particularly saddening.
#3 by El Santo on August 26, 2013 - 4:20 pm
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The reason I skipped Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is because it’s the only one I forgot to program my VCR to tape when AMC aired all the post-Biolante Heisei Godzillas in the spring of 2000, and it hasn’t come within arm’s reach of me since then. I do think it’s somewhere down near the bottom of my Netflix queue, though.
As for Son of Godzilla and Destroy All Monsters, the short answer is that I hadn’t yet developed my mania for covering things in order when the first opportunity to review a Godzilla movie cropped up late in 1999. (Incidentally, that does indeed mean that the anniversary I’m celebrating is that of the website, rather than that of 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting as a whole.) That first Godzilla review, in case you’re wondering, was for Godzilla’s Revenge, the only entry in the Showa series that I hadn’t seen when I started this project. I’ve been plugging the holes without conscious plan ever since then, and Son of Godzilla and Destroy All Monsters just happened to be the ones I haven’t gotten around to yet. I expect Destroy All Monsters is going to be the very last Godzilla movie I review, too, since I’m holding out for the merely bad AIP dub I grew up with, rather than the extra-awful international dub that all the recent home video versions seem to have.
#4 by The Rev. on August 27, 2013 - 2:53 am
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Ah, well there you go then. Cool.
I mostly wondered about [b]GvMG[/b], since you watched the worst of the Heisei series but neglected one of the better ones. My feeling on [b]SoG[/b] was that, after [b]Revenge[/b], you had no further desire to watch Minya’s further antics. I guess that’s not the case, since you saw [b]Revenge[/b] after [b]SoG[/b]. I’ve only ever seen the newer dub of [b]DAM[/b] so I can’t compare it to the older; I never was able to track it down until SFC played the newer version.
#5 by The Rev. on August 27, 2013 - 2:54 am
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DAMMIT. DAMMIT.
Stupid tags.
#6 by blake on August 26, 2013 - 4:20 pm
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I noticed Lyz took down her short (and presumably old) review of KK vs. G. I assume she’ll eventually do Rodan next, since she’s done G, GRA, and Half-Human.
#7 by The Rev. on August 27, 2013 - 2:59 am
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That would make sense.
Hopefully she’ll fix that thing about the supposed two endings when she gets back to GvKK. The first e-mail I ever sent to her concerned that.
Needless to say, she never responded. 😉
If I’d known I’d be directly conversing with her a few years down the road, I’d have been much less disappointed at the time.
#8 by blake on August 26, 2013 - 4:22 pm
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El Santo has expressed his feelings on the BMMB somewhere that he’s (or was) a little afraid to watch Destroy All Monsters! because of the surplus of reviews that classify the film as a disappointment.
#9 by The Rev. on August 27, 2013 - 2:55 am
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I do recall that. I don’t know if I’d say I was disappointed when I finally saw it; maybe a bit underwhelmed, particularly with the final fight.
#10 by blake on August 27, 2013 - 12:23 pm
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I myself was disappointed with DAM! the first time I saw it, but it grew on me with subsequent viewing, the horrid (even by my extremely low standards) dubbing notwithstanding. I now have a subbed print at home, so even that shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
#11 by RogerBW on August 26, 2013 - 6:50 pm
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The film of Doctor Who is surprisingly close to the plot of The Daleks, when one considers the violence done to the main characters. I get the impression that the big-screen treatment was intended to look expensive, since many of the UK audience would have seen the story before (made on a TV budget, in black and white) and would need to be tempted to lay down money to see it again. But I agree that the main problem is the treatment of it as generic kidvid.
As I recall the state of sci-fi films in the mid 1970s it was mostly depression and eco-doom, so it’s not surprising that nobody expected a return to Flash Gordon (which was apparently what Lucas wanted to make, but couldn’t afford the rights) to make any money.
Star Trek has always seemed to me to be trying to paint itself as the cerebral alternative to zap-boom sci-fi, but it never quite knows how to fill in the gaps left by the absence of zap-boom. This film wants to be 2001: A Space Odyssey, all that awe in the face of the unknown, but never quite works out what was good about that other film.
I don’t remember the original Trek series ever going to its future-contemporary Earth, and this was a smart move: never mind the lack of budget, it’s much more plausible to say “you are the guys on the spot who have to deal with this” when the rest of civilisation is days or weeks of travel time away. This film started a trend that the Next Gen series continued, of trying to raise the stakes by threatening Earth (“but that’s where I keep all my stuff”) but still making Enterprise the only available remedy. This isn’t Star Wars, where one guy really can be the only one who has the right Force attunement to do something; it’s Star Trek, where there’s a civilisation of billions of people, many of them experts in their fields, and no mystic powers. There should in that setting be someone else who can at least consult on the problem; indeed, the problem may be that there are too many people.
#12 by PB on August 26, 2013 - 11:15 pm
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Mr. Ashlin, have you ever thought of reviewing the 1980 version of Flash Gordon, as it tried to serve as catch-up to Star Wars, Superman (1978) and so forth? (King Features Syndicate has had a lousy track record since the 1978 Mandrake TV movie. The Phantom, Prince Valiant, etc. have done little to break this trend.) You once mentioned in a review that you prefer not to review mainstream comic book hero adaptations (or something to that effect), but I suppose the comic strip heroes might fall outside that ban.
Another obvious forerunner or influence, at least for Darth Vader, has to do with Doctor Doom; however, given the low regard the three Fantastic Four films have, and your stated preference to not review mainstream comic book heroes.
#13 by GalaxyJane on August 26, 2013 - 11:33 pm
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Oddly enough, I just rewatched “Doctor Who and the Daleks” this week, only because the Rifftrax guys had got ahold of it, and I thought it might help. Not enough was my verdict.
I would suggest that if you are serious about going back and watching some Hartnell-Era Doctor Who, to try the serial that they based the second Cushing “Who” movie on instead of this one; “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. It is simply a better story, made after the show had hit its mid-60s stride. “The Daleks” was only the second story broadcast and it suffers from the usual problems of a very early installation, characterizations and such haven’t really gelled yet, pacing hasn’t really been figured out. It’s still pretty good, but not the best story to get a feel for the show as a whole as it was then.
Needless to say I am pretty much a hopeless “Who” fan. I spent a lot of Mondays in high school asleep at my desk, because MPT simultaneously moved the show to Sunday midnights and went back to showing the series from the absolute beginning. Which was terribly unfair to a teenaged nerd who’d never seen any Doctors before Jon Pertwee.
#14 by RogerBW on August 27, 2013 - 1:39 pm
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I’m something of a fan of Who myself, though unlike some I try to retain a sense of humour about it (it is, after all, just a goddamn TV programme). Not terribly happy with the new series, finding it very much of its era (doing anything it can to bring in the mass gosh-wow audience at the expense of storytelling), but I do greatly enjoy some of the older stuff.
#15 by GalaxyJane on August 27, 2013 - 7:59 pm
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There is nothing worse than a humorless Who fan. Or at least nothing more mind-cronkingly dull. The Doctor never took himself too seriously, why should the rest of us?
I find the new series to be a mixed bag, I’ve certainly liked it more since Steven Moffet took over as showrunner. Now there is someone who never takes anything too seriously, while simultaneously having no qualms about scaring the heck out of his audience. But I definitely prefer the Doctors I grew up with. I guess I am entering the cranky “you darn kids get off my lawn” stage of my life 🙂
#16 by El Santo on August 27, 2013 - 2:23 am
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I have indeed. As a matter of fact, I’m planning an update devoted to Star Wars cash-ins from around the world, and Flash Gordon is on the short list of movies I want for it.
#17 by DamonD on August 28, 2013 - 9:52 am
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Oh, tremendous! Looking forward to those.
#18 by Naomi on August 27, 2013 - 5:22 pm
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One of my older friends told me about the first time she saw Star Wars. She’d gone with a group of friends to see a different movie, but it was sold out, so they went into a near-empty auditorium to see this little scifi thing instead. In the first scene after the crawl, when the giant ship passed overhead, she said the whole theater shook and everyone just looked at each other.
#19 by The Rev. on August 29, 2013 - 2:18 pm
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RE: Pacific Rim…
Okay, El Santo, I know who you saw as the Zigra (because I had the exact same thought when it came onscreen) and I can probably guess the Gyaos (since only one monster is seen with wings), but I’m not sure which one reminded you of Gamera. Maybe the one that smashes the wall in Australia? Or was that the Zigra? Gee, it’d be terrible if I had to go watch this again… 😀
Also, I’m surprised you didn’t continue the premise, since we also had a King Kong (albeit reptilian in form) and an Ebirah or Ganime (well, to me it was more an Ebirah/Queen Legion hybrid, but anyway). Hell, if I thought del Toro had ever played “War of the Monsters” on the PS2, I’d say the opening beastie is a nod to Magmo. I now wonder if you could do that with all the monsters.
#20 by El Santo on August 30, 2013 - 5:11 pm
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I didn’t retain any of the Kaiju code names, but the non-flying Kaiju in the Hong Kong tag-team attack is basically a giant sea turtle. I suppose you could just as accurately cite it as a Kameba riff instead, but when I see a 200-foot turtle, my mind goes to Gamera first.
#21 by The Rev. on August 31, 2013 - 5:36 am
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Huh. That was the one that struck me as King Kong, as I recall its appearance and movements being very gorilla-esque. After a little looking around, I actually find the one that smashes the Australian wall looks more like a turtle to me. The rest I still stand on.
That one near Alaska looks even more like Zigra than I remembered! Hell, THAT’S what an alien shark should look like, not a particularly spiky goblin shark with cat’s eyes.
#22 by supersonic man on August 29, 2013 - 3:27 pm
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The Doctor Who movie is historically important to me… I think that was the first time I realized, as a kid, that I could be highly amused by the badness of a bad movie, especially one in which people spout lots of completely nonsensical pseudoscience in order to explain what’s happening.
If you’re worried about how one can ever get into the Doctor Who TV series, I recommend doing as I did: start with Christopher Eccleston. His run makes a nice bite-sized sampling of everything you need to pick up, and is pretty enjoyable in a modern-but-cheesy way. And if that’s not intolerable, Tennant’s run is enjoyable too. Matt Smith makes a good stopping point where you can say you’ve seen enough.
#23 by supersonic man on August 29, 2013 - 3:28 pm
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(Why does this comment form not work when I use my phone? It keeps saying my comment is too short.)
#24 by PB210 on August 29, 2013 - 10:49 pm
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Some other franchises to review for the next Hubris bout, other paranormal adventure franchises. One often hears homages to these properties. “Buck Rogers stuff” as a phrase, for example.
Tarzan
http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/sreply/899877/loves-ya-baby-Universal-loves-rebooting-Kojak-movie
Also, in my opinion, all Tarzan movies, whether featuring monsters or man-eating plants or not, should be regarded as fantasies — because the basic concept (and which is inherent though not necessarily stated) of a man raised by apes and speaking their language is inherent in all of them …
Buck Rogers
Steven Austin (Cyborg, Six Million Dollar Man)
#25 by PB210 on August 31, 2013 - 6:53 pm
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Type your comment here
For a comparison, also recall the TV movie Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All http://flashgordon.wikia.com/wiki/Flash_Gordon:_The_Greatest_Adventure_of_All
#26 by maggiesmith on March 27, 2022 - 11:34 am
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Re Star Wars ( well, not really) For the benefit of those unfamiliar with The Other Side of Midnight (i,e. everybody) it’s a crappy ‘woman’s picture’ about a moronic French whore who inexplicably prefers creepy Jon Beck to sexy ( albeit long in the tooth) Raf Vallone. She gets what she deserves: death by firing squad ! ;-D