It’s been a big year for me putting off and/or not getting around to reviewing movies I meant to write up. Here’s phase one of a project meant to correct that:
Asylum (1972), in which a psychiatrist’s job interview curiously devolves into four short stories by Robert Bloch…
A Carol for Another Christmas (1964), in which Rod Serling deploys every ounce of his famously heavy hand reworking the classic holiday ghost story as propaganda for the United Nations…
From Beyond the Grave (1973), in which a vendor of cursed antiques provides the connective tissue for four short stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes…
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), which is the odd review out this time around…
Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds (1977), in which Toei apparently try to salvage an abortive attempt to rip off Dino De Laurentiis’s King Kong by ripping off Jaws instead…
Madhouse (1974), which is sort of like Theater of Blood, only not good…
and…
RoboCop 3 (1991/1993), which is a lot like RoboCop 2, only even worse.
#1 by RogerBW on December 23, 2013 - 8:58 pm
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Carol — yeah, heavy-handed never goes over well, but people will keep doing it. It seems so obvious that I am right and you are wrong that you must simply be deluding yourself, or stupid, or lying — whether “I” am a Real, True Christian on Fox News or someone who thinks that maybe spying on everyone all the time isn’t entirely a good idea.
Asylum — until 2005 House Officer was the official title, almost always referred to as houseman. It specifically referred to a doctor within the first three years after medical qualification.
Robocop — I remember interviews with Weller when the original came out. Apparently he spent a lot more time than anyone else in the production team considered necessary working out just how Robocop should move, in an efficient, consistent, but alien way.
Catching Fire — much of the worldbuilding in the books doesn’t make sense, since it’s just trying to slap together a really horrible (if not particularly consistent or competent) dictatorship for our heroine to rebel against. Fixing that, and particularly getting enough material out of the final book for the last two films, is a real filmmaking challenge. Sounds as if that may be happening. (I haven’t seen the film yet.)
#2 by PB210 on December 24, 2013 - 12:22 am
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“Once again, though, Frank Miller was there to open our eyes to the possibilities. RoboCop flying? A plucky child-genius sidekick? Cyborg ninjas? A Japanese takeover rendering the evil Omni Consumer Products corporation even more diabolical? ”
Well, since Robocop derives from Iron Man anyway, having him fly does not seem so odd. Also Iron Man has fought occasionally Nipponese themed foes such as Samurai Steel. His world contains cybernetic Yamato supremacists such as Lady Deathstrike.
“They saw RoboCop as a sci-fi superhero, as a character whom they could market to children to create a Star Wars-like empire of licensed merchandising”.
As noted above, Robocop derives from Iron Man. So, in that sense, the heads of Orion showed some knowledge of the background of the property by viewing Robocop that way and having Robcop as absurd. The early Iron Man comic books featured absurdities such as a robot built by aliens to resemble a caveman, a plot foreshadowing Godzilla Vs. Megalon involving an ethnically Atlantean woman who ages upon reaching the surface, time travel to meet Cleopatra, and so forth; see the link below to Supermegamonkey. The eventual films about Iron Man all received ratings lower than R, so having a PG-13 Robcop film makes sense. (Does this remind you of when you called the Adam West Caped Crusader film “stupid ass” and I pointed out that the preceding comic books had absurdities such as a boy sidekick in pixie boots and shaved legs, and why the same producer did not despise the Green Hornet?)
http://b-masters.com/2011/03/b-fest-2011/#comment-7070
http://www.supermegamonkey.net/cgi-bin/mt512/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=3&tag=Iron%20Man&limit=2000&Template=chronocomic
Robocop also derives from Judge Dredd; both Judge Dredd films did receive R-ratings. The early Judge Dredd comic books did play as bit more childish, though, with a candy that people compulsively consumed and Walter the Wobot.
Incidentally, one flaw about Robocop 3; the scene with the holdup in the coffee shop imitates a scene with a holdup in a bar in the earlier Orion film Code of Silence with Dennis Farina. However, since the Code of Silence film had the cops in plain clothes while off duty, it makes more sense.
#3 by PB210 on December 24, 2013 - 12:54 am
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“There’s something important about Madhouse that I’m not sure how to account for. From the perspective of the present day, Dr. Death seems an unremarkable sort of character. He’s Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees— the maniac you come back to again and again to see how he’s going to exterminate the forgettable nominal protagonists this time. In 1974, though, there wasn’t really any such thing as that yet. There were horror franchises, of course, and there were movies about gimmick killers, but to the best of my knowledge, no gimmick killer had ever been popular enough to hold down a franchise of his own.”
In print, one more rarely find horror series than in film. You have mentioned Doctor Mabuse and Fantomas. Aside from them, one might mention Tom Ripley, Ayesha and Doctor Fu Manchu. At a bit of stretch, one might mention Richard Stark’s Parker. Of course, only Doctor Fu Manchu of those mentioned comes close to a gimmick murderer.
http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/reply/516849#.UrjoeNF3tjo
#4 by PB210 on December 24, 2013 - 10:45 pm
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Robocop also derives from Rom, who debuted as a toy prior to the comic book series, so that Parker Bros. still owns Rom. So Robocop toys made sense in that way.
#5 by PB210 on December 28, 2013 - 3:25 am
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http://www.thepulp.net/pulpsuperfan/2013/05/08/here-come-the-bad-guys-villain-pulps/
Follow-up on comment#3
#6 by Killer Meteor on December 29, 2013 - 4:12 pm
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Nessie began with Hammer and Toho, not Toei. It is likely Toei was trying for a pre-emptive strike.
#7 by Blake on December 30, 2013 - 11:33 am
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[i]Asylum[/i] – I hadn’t seen enough anthologies when I got to this one, so the clichés didn’t feel as hoary to me. I thought the fate of Herbert Lom’s character, although not explicitly shown, was rather chilling.
[i]Legend of the Dinosaurs[/i] – This is one of my favorite non-Godzilla kaiju eiga ever, although it’s admittedly a guilty pleasure of sorts. I have fond memories of staying up until 4 a.m. to tape this bizarre little piece of filmmaking and then watching it after midnight at least once a year afterward. I also find it fascinating that this film was released on VHS by the same “Just for Kids” label that released the Sandy Frank Gamera movies back in the 1990s. Unless said VHS version was edited, I would’ve liked to see the reaction some parents would’ve had when walking into the room and seeing a horse corpse onscreen.
#8 by Blake on December 30, 2013 - 11:34 am
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Blast, wrong tags.
#9 by The Rev. on December 30, 2013 - 4:24 pm
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Annoying when that happens, isn’t it?
I bought LotD on VHS back in high school and was a bit disappointed. A few good scenes, but I mostly recall being bored. I haven’t watched it in a while, so I wonder if I’ll still feel that way.
Luckily, that same day I also bought Attack of the Supermonsters, and that more than made up for it.
#10 by Blake on December 30, 2013 - 6:18 pm
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I’m sure that the stars were simply in the right place for me to like LOTD. I think had I watched it at another (more reasonable) hour, I might’ve had the same reaction you did.
#11 by PB210 on September 20, 2021 - 8:07 pm
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Follow-Up:
In print, one more rarely find horror series than in film. You have mentioned Doctor Mabuse and Fantomas. Aside from them, one might mention Tom Ripley, Ayesha and Doctor Fu Manchu. At a bit of stretch, one might mention Richard Stark’s Parker. Of course, only Doctor Fu Manchu of those mentioned comes close to a gimmick murderer.
Bolstered list:
Fantômas
Manitou
Beast House
H. Ridder Haggard and Ayesha: four novels
Fantomas: numerous
Gary Brandner wrote two sequels to the Howling
Sadako Yamamura/Ringu
Yasunori Kato
Hannibal Lecter: returned in a few entries by Thomas Harris
Cenobites: Clive Barker will destroy him in a crossover with Harry D’Amour.
Norman Bates: died in Bloch’s Psycho II
Fu Manchu: numerous sequels by Sax Rohmer
Doctor Mabuse: at least prose sequel novel, and the short story “Doctor Mabuse and the Press Ball”
Tom Ripley: four prose sequels by Highsmith
#12 by Killer Meteor on September 30, 2021 - 4:01 pm
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Scathach80, I should have guessed!