Some of you may have noticed that I sort of have a thing for the Cold War. So does the guy who writes Checkpoint Telstar. Consequently, I thought of him immediately when I realized it was the 25th anniversary of the revolution in East Germany which signaled the end of that era, and we put together a little bilateral roundtable-like thingy to celebrate:
Then I also reviewed a couple movies that don’t fit with the main program:
Double Dragon (1994), in which a nominal adaptation of an early chopsocky video game goes in peculiar directions indeed…
and…
Unknown World (1951), in which a journey to the center of the Earth goes nowhere at all.
#1 by Rabukurafuto on December 1, 2014 - 11:17 pm
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The Japanese Double Dragon localizers had no idea what “Koga Shuko” meant either so they didn’t bother coming up with kanji for the name. I like how the film sounds though, adding cyberpunk and fake mysticism to the story.
Regarding video game movies, Super Mario Bros.: Peach-Hime Kyuushutsu Daisakusen! in 1986 appears to be one of the first, but it was direct to video and unreleased outside of Japan.
#2 by supersonic man on December 2, 2014 - 4:28 am
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Good stuff. Your take on Reaganism in the Wargames review might be the clearest short summary of what went wrong in the eighties that I can recall hearing.
#3 by RogerBW on December 2, 2014 - 10:24 am
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Your introduction to Unknown World reminds me of The Core, which I quite enjoyed, but which I felt could never quite break away from somebody’s vision of a Serious Science Fiction Film and embrace the lunacy. I wonder if one should class UW with Destination Moon: we can actually show people travelling under the Earth! That should be enough, shouldn’t it?
It’s probably a good idea to talk about “the enemy”. Look at the trouble the Red Dawn remake had when someone realised that it had to sell in China to have any hope of getting its budget back. Frantic rewrites to make it a North Korean invasion instead…
In the UK, we had “Invasion Literature” (generally about how the dastardly Germans were going to roll into poor defenceless England) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; it went out of fashion after WWI.
For what it’s worth, that initial disclaimer before Dr Strangelove isn’t in all versions – not in my mid-2000s DVD copy, at least. I find it fascinating that, for all the wailing the USAF made at the time the film was released, we’re now learning more and more things about what they were up to around then that make the USAF of the film look like models of professionalism.
As far as I can tell, people weren’t entirely sure of Curtis LeMay, but they were terrified of Thomas Power, his successor. I’ve seen convincing arguments that the PALs (the locks designed to prevent nuclear weapons being used without presidential authorisation) were a direct response to worries that he’d do something very much like the Ripper/Turgidson plan here.
I saw War Games on its initial cinematic release in the UK. There’s a sense of energy about it, that at least some of the people involved were having a good time making it, which always helps. And yes, NORAD did do tours in the 1980s, but you needed to give a little notice (memory says 24 hours) so that they could do a basic background check.
I think that in the 1980s filmmakers were mostly dismissing computer game settings (as distinct from the idea of computer games) as kids’ stuff, unworthy of the attention of grown-ups. After all, if the guys writing them were any good, they’d be in movies, right?
#4 by ronald on December 2, 2014 - 10:28 am
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Seconded re the Wargames review. I suspect one of your fellow B-Masters would overwhelmingly disagree, of course.
However…
“In the 80’s, it was us rattling sabers all over the globe, us destablizing regimes that didn’t suit us and arming monsters like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, us training Third World paramilitary police forces to rape nuns to death For The Cause.”
That last part’s an exaggeration for effect, right? I’d have thought that, as was the case with Harry Reems’ character in Forced Entry (1973), the rapes were their own idea…
#5 by El Santo on December 3, 2014 - 9:54 am
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When your mission is explicitly to teach cops how to be better terrorists, I figure you own your pupils’ field innovations just as surely as you own the official curiculum.
#6 by Jen S 1.0 on December 5, 2014 - 4:47 pm
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Ugh, unfortunately not. Rape has been used as a method of terror and oppression in war since humans first began throwing sticks and stones in an organized manner. For recent examples, see the Russian troops in Germany in the aftermath of WWII, Nanking, the ethnic cleansings in Yugoslavia and Serbia, and so on until you lose the will to live.
#7 by ronald on December 2, 2014 - 10:59 am
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On a separate note, does anybody wonder if, upon returning to his plant, George Sylvester promptly fired that worker whom Ohman’s vision “revealed” was a communist operative?
“So, are you gonna finish the windows?”
from MST3K
#8 by Richard on December 2, 2014 - 7:31 pm
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For another viewpoint on the Cold War in the 1980s, check out the episode “The Grand Design” from the British series “Yes, Prime Minister”.
The new PM, Jim Hacker, is being instructed in how to launch Britain’s nuclear arsenal:
PM Jim Hacker: “Just like that?”
General Howard: “Just like that.”
Hacker: “When I say so?”
Howard: “When you say so.”
Hacker: “…Wouldn’t anybody argue with me?”
Howard: “Officers are told to obey orders without question.”
Hacker: “What if I were to get drunk?”
Sir Humphrey Appleby: “On the whole, it would be safer if you didn’t….”
Hacker: “Suppose I did, and then were to change my mind?”
Howard: “Well, that’s all right, no one would ever know, would they?”
#9 by supersonic man on December 3, 2014 - 1:23 am
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“It’s jingoistic, authoritarian, and hawkish, all of which read conservative to me. But it’s also strongly communitarian, having no patience for the anarchocapitalist leanings of modern Movement Conservatism.”
There’s a word for that outlook. Fascism.
#10 by El Santo on December 3, 2014 - 9:52 am
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Except that it isn’t that, either, although I’ll concede that the social order Invasion USA seems to be advocating is one in which Fascism could easily take root.
#11 by Supersonic Man on December 3, 2014 - 10:48 pm
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All I know about the movie’s politics is from you, so I’m interested to hear on what grounds you say the movie isn’t fascist. Still strong on democracy, perhaps?
Because “fascist” has been a dirty word for a few generations, people don’t realize how popular the philosophy still is, or how many people still live under it, unless they see an example that’s both blatant and labeled as an enemy, such as Syria. Putin is pretty much a fascist. China’s current system is definitely fascism, no matter how much they call it communist. I would say there are even forms of fascism which have gained longevity by adapting to become nearly benign, such as the long period of single-party rule in Japan, which shed the militarism and repression and in return, gained the ability to practice all the centralized state-sponsored corporatism it could dream of. Some would say that doesn’t count as fascism anymore, but there’s no other word handy for that technique of merging state and corporate interests under elite control. There are other examples of both the Chinese and Japanese types.
I would say Dick Cheney’s gang were rather fascist, though most of them probably weren’t quite willing to go so far as to try to override democracy in order to keep power. Whether that was due to remaining bits of conscience or just due to recognizing that they would never win that particular battle, we may never know.
#12 by Supersonic Man on December 3, 2014 - 11:01 pm
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An afterthought: just so it doesn’t sound like I’m just sticking the F-word onto every right wing bete-noir, I’ll say some cases which I believe are definitely not fascist. Ronald Reagan was not. The Koch Brothers are not, nor is the average rotten wall-street banker — they’re too disinterested in actively administering anything but their own fortunes. Probably most teabaggers are not, though I don’t want to rule out some of the neoconfederate ones.
#13 by Richard on December 5, 2014 - 10:41 am
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By the way, your one-stop website for all things related to Cold War – atomic scare culture is CONELRAD.com. From movie reviews and commentary (they have a *complete* production history of “Duck and Cover” and by providing all the historical background information, were co-producers on the 2002 Special Edition DVD release of “Invasion: USA”) to source documents dealing with nuclear war relocation plans by government agencies, there’s probably no better place for such information.
#14 by Jen S 1.0 on December 5, 2014 - 4:50 pm
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El Santo, have you read Ian Walker’s Zoo Station? It’s a very interesting and well written account of the experience of being an outsider in East/West Berlin and Germany. He’s unfortunately besotted with certain strains of Communism but also points out the flaws in both systems. He wrote it in the early eighties, when no one dreamed the Wall would ever come down, but was in fact destined to crumble only a few years from its publication. I’m assuming you grew up in the 80s, as I did, and it will really capture memories of the global mood.
#15 by Seance on December 7, 2014 - 5:19 am
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DD was…
Lugnet – “All The Way” Grindhouse Video! Featuring: Christina Lindberg “Thriller: They Call Her One Eye” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2luOuo5-iQ
More Info here: http://seance.blogg.se/
#16 by PB210 on December 15, 2014 - 8:01 pm
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Mr. Ashlin, do you think that perhaps that the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain lack of an otherworldly viewpoint disinclined them more from risking MAD?