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In honour of our resurrected blog, a resurrected review of a film about a resurrection:
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When Andy Brooks gets home from Vietnam, his family and friends can’t help but notice that he is somehow “different”.
They don’t know the half of it…
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Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
#1 by PB210 on February 28, 2014 - 9:45 pm
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“Though by 1972 various cinematic protests against the situation in Vietnam had begun to emerge, most of them resorted either to allusion or to displacement to get their point across”.
Incidentally, in print, Rambo debuted the same year in First Blood by David Morrell. It also plays as a horror novel critiquing the Vientam conflict under the cover of horror/suspense. The novel First Blood has more of a horror feel than the eventual film adaptation*, though the latter does follow the plot and themes reasonably closely. The novel features Rambo as a spree murderer in the woods.* Kim Newman included First Blood in the Appendix to Horror: 100 Best Books and its sequel. David Morrell notes that he, due to his visa** had to handle political themes carefully, per his loyalty oath.
*This may disappoint more reactionary readers. Those seeking more jingoistic adventure novels should turn to the Nick Carter novels from 1964 to 1990, the literally hundreds of adventure novels about Mack Bolan, and to a lesser degree, the novels about the Shadow as well as Steve Austin, Cyborg/the Six Million Dollar Man (the first Steve Austin novel involves him in the Arab-Israeli conflict).
Incidentally, for a more jingoistic paranormal flipside to Dead of Night, one could consider Cyborg the novel that way.
**Morrell also came from Canada.
#2 by lyzard on February 28, 2014 - 11:17 pm
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Books always come first, and tend to get away with a lot more because less people are paying attention.
I like Rambo a lot but it’s certainly a different beast from the novel. In a way it puts me in mind of Death Wish – not that it subverts its source in the same way, but the shift in intent and outcome almost make it an independent entity.
#3 by PB210 on March 1, 2014 - 6:45 am
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I would guess by Rambo you mean First Blood (1982), in contrast to the 2008 baseless sequel?
To continue the comparison to other 1972 military themed paranormal works, Cyborg plays as fairly patriotic, though the adaptation has a slight soupcon of Vietnam-era distrust of all things military and Le Carre style espionage critique.
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/05/25/friday-in-the-bionics-and-other-labs/
#4 by PB210 on February 28, 2014 - 9:47 pm
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Follow-up: Rambo died in the novel First Blood. I would find it intriguing if Morrell ever decides to feature a paranormal sequel to First Blood.
#5 by The Rev. on February 28, 2014 - 10:49 pm
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Holy crap, I just watched this a week or so ago (and brought up that I did so on the BMMB yesterday)! Is this what it felt like when I brought up Prehistoric Women? It’s eerie.
I found it on my Roku, remembered your old review (happily I remembered almost nothing of it, save that you liked it) and watched it. So now I have Aswang, Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet and this that I am indebted to you for. (And to a lesser extent for getting me off my butt and watching Zombie Holocaust, even though that one I would’ve come around to on my own, albeit who knows when.)
Seriously, if you all haven’t see it, go watch it before reading the review. The less you know going in, the better. It is fantastic, and the fact that Bob Clark is better known for Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things than this is a goddamn shame.
#6 by lyzard on February 28, 2014 - 11:26 pm
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…and which came up as a random link while I was posting, and which I read again just before reading this.
Yes. Yes, it is. 🙂
As far as that goes, he’s better known for Baby Geniuses.
Sigh.
I caught this film on TV years ago – well, it was one of the first things I ever reviewed, so that tells you how long ago – knowing next to nothing about it, and it just blew me away. I was astonished and delighted when I discovered it was out on DVD. At least it finally seems to be finding an audience.
#7 by The Rev. on March 4, 2014 - 3:39 pm
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No wonder you were creeped out by it, if that’s the case.
Anyway, I forget Baby Geniuses, mostly because I want to. Also the sequel, which he is also responsible for.
As I was reminded this past weekend at T(ween)-Fest (write-up coming to Ken’s site….well, maybe before the end of the year at the rate I’m going), he also did Porky’s. More to his credit, though, they also reminded me that he did A Christmas Story and, most pertinently to the movie at hand here, the truly excellent Black Christmas. Had I recalled that whilst watching this, I would have been less surprised that he could make an effective horror movie. They’d be a heck of a double feature.
#8 by Ed on March 15, 2014 - 6:49 pm
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Another good Clark flick is the Sherlock Holmes film Murder by Decree.
#9 by PB210 on March 1, 2014 - 9:41 am
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Incidentally, regarding horror/fantasy dealing with PTSD or shell shocked veterans, an episode of the Shadow radio show did feature the Shadow battling a shell-shocked veteran.
http://www.shadowsanctum.net/radio/synopsis/s4-25.html
(In the pulps, the Shadow himself had served as a secret agent in World War I.)
#10 by Jen S on March 1, 2014 - 1:17 pm
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Wow. I immediately thought of at least three different zombie tales where the horror wasn’t just the wrongness of the returnee, but the unconscious motivations of the people who desperately wanted them back: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Pet Semetary, of course, and Stephen King’s original short story The Return of Timmy Baterman, which is also based on a grieving parent’s loss of a child to war, and what dying in a war can mean if you aren’t allowed to move on.
#11 by RogerBW on March 1, 2014 - 3:32 pm
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Am I the only person who thinks this might have been one of the inspirations for Universal Soldier?
#12 by Keithb on March 1, 2014 - 11:27 pm
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Jen S – There is also the classic “The Monkey’s Paw” – I have only heard it in an excellent live telling, so I am not sure about the source.
#13 by The Rev. on March 4, 2014 - 11:48 pm
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Thoughts post-review…and I’ll say it again before proceeding: You all should track this down ASAP and give it the love it deserves.
I have to admit, the dog scene, even though I saw it coming, shocked me with its sudden and brutal violence, especially the way he flips the dog away after the deed is done. I also liked the touch of Dr. Allman’s reaction to Charlie’s grief.
I half-agree about it not being “a Tom Savini film.” The blood is patently fake, especially when compared to the real blood we see being drawn from a real arm at one point. However, that neck gash and the Andy make-up scream Savini to me; the latter in particular put me in mind of Cropsy.
Richard Backus was undeniably fortuitous casting. I’m not saying he was in Karloff’s league, but his ability to change so much via simple facial expression is of a piece with the latter’s eye-acting. That smile he gives his mother really surprised me with how natural and loving and…well, human it looked, compared to his earlier unchanging mask of near-contempt, and especially put up against some of his truly chilling expressions later on. The “I died for you” line could’ve come off as risible, but by that point I’d completely bought into him and found it strangely poignant and completely unsettling at the same time. Much like the ending, come to think of it. Man, that ending…one of the better “happy downer” endings I’ve ever seen,