Fast, sure. But the speed of light?

When you’re growing up in a single-wide in 1986, this kind of thing looks really exciting. Throw in an atmosphere you’ll never be able to recreate, and you have a Christmas winner.  It wasn’t nearly as impressive as the ad, but whatever. I loved Lazer Tag.

I even had the Starbase, which you could program to play in lieu of partners, in case you had no friends or were too lame to share.

Do “futuristic” toys even exist anymore? Or is this the future? If so, where’s Snake Plissken when we need him?

Because there’s a little metal in all of us.

The TransFormers, as scored by Manowar! Notice how the visuals match the lyrics. This is a tightly-edited fan flick. Bravo!

Masters of Horror, Sci-Fi Boys

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, May, 2006.

            There are scenes in The Sci-Fi Boys that resemble a Mr. Show or Kids in the Hall sketch.  It happens when you’re into this kind of thing.  For every Ray Harryhausen monster whose name you remember, every Forry Ackerman catch phrase you can recite by heart, and every main title theme you can hum (and harmonize, because you’re just that great), you become more unintentionally funny.  You become a Giant-Sized X-Men #1-sized nerd.  Brian Posehn has made a career out of it.

            I’m nuts for this stuff.  Like the boys profiled in this documentary, I’ve been into science fiction, fantasy, and especially horror since I could eyeball a screen.  And yeah, they’re all boys.  The only women in this documentary are the black and white ingénues carried off by the monsters.  While fans and creators of contemporary fantastic cinema now come in all shapes and sizes (isn’t one of the Wachowskis becoming a lady, or was that an internet April Fool’s prank?), the absence of women in this documentary is a reminder that guys like Ackerman, Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury and the like are still weird little boys at heart.

            That’s part of the reason why the movie loses its steam.  It’s so wrapped up in nostalgia, it sentimentalizes when it should be having a laugh.  Not that it’s a bad movie.  Seeing these guys (as well as Roger Corman, John Landis, Peter Jackson, Rick Baker and others) talk about their influences and pay tribute to the greats is always fun for me.  Yeah, it’s a Universal disc, so you unfortunately have to sit through clips from junk like Van Helsing and The Mummy remake, but most folks won’t mind.  Truth be told, this would make a decent starter kit for anyone new to genre fandom.

            You could have a worse companion to The Sci-Fi Boys than the first two volumes of Masters of Horror.  Anchor Bay is giving each episode of the Showtime series the dripping-red carpet treatment, with commentaries, behind-the-scenes stuff, DVD-ROM scripts and more.  The first two episodes are John Carpenter’s “Cigarette Burns,” based on a script by some Ain’t It Cool News guys, and Stuart Gordon’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” from a story by H. P. Lovecraft.  Each episode is its own little one-hour film, with its own look and style, a feature that makes this show unique.  Even with anthology shows, most episodes look alike, so it’s nice to see this one give its directors more leeway.

            Stuart Gordon does what he does best with his episode: he’s the only filmmaker to do Lovecraft with a genuine love for the material.  (Carpenter himself came close with In the Mouth of Madness, but that wasn’t an actual Lovecraft story.  If you’ve read this far, you know that already.)  There’s a rat with a human face (good acting there, by the way), a dimensional gateway, a redhead, and some shocking baby abuse.  There’s also the prerequisite Lovecraftian self-doubt and slow, creeping insanity.  And, again, the redhead.

            “Cigarette Burns” is the most hyped of the episodes, probably because of its internet pedigree.  The results are surprisingly good, and probably the best thing John Carpenter’s done in fifteen years.  I say this as a die-hard Carpenter fan, by the way.  The man is made of gold to me.  (I saw Escape From L. A. five times at the McCreless Mall dollar theater.  I have a girlfriend now.)  I’m a fan, but I recognize peaks and valleys when I see them.  “Cigarette Burns” is a peak.  It has an angel and a Dario Argento reference.  No redheads, but this one’s probably still the better of the two.

THX-1138

Portions of this originally appeared in INsite magazine, February, 2006.

            The time has come to reevaluate George Lucas, not as a public persona, but as a filmmaker.  Cynical Star Wars fans who gave up on Lucas after The Phantom Menace have something in common with film snobs in general: they refuse to admit he’s a good filmmaker.

In 1970, the original version of THX-1138 hinted at a filmmaker who was willing to take risks.  It was a mere hint, though, as Warner Brothers removed several minutes from that film, and never released a proper version on video.  For most fans, the result was a mess: a movie that made no sense, on a pan and scan print that looked like the Wampa had used it as dental floss.

When Lucas touched up the original Star Wars films, there was a collective gasp from his fans.  In their eyes, the holy trilogy was already perfect, and needed no tweaking.  The overall reaction to the new THX-1138, however, has been overwhelmingly positive.  Have we become used to Lucas’s tendency to cover up his old “mistakes?”  I don’t think so.  The honest truth is that, for the first time, Lucas has actually achieved what he set out to do with his special editions, and has improved one of his old films.

Luckily, this one is his most important.  While American Graffiti and the Star Wars movies are entertaining, THX-1138 holds the key to the real Lucas.  This is the Lucas who, along with Francis Coppola and others, started the American Zoetrope company as an alternative to stale, Hollywood fare.  Easy Rider had broken the mold of what defined a success in Hollywood, and the studios began to look more towards youth culture to make a buck.  American Zoetrope was to be the beginning of a movement, and THX-1138 was to be that movement’s first baby steps.  It was a rebuttal to Vietnam, Nixon, racism, and other things that never quite went away.

In the film, humanity has been reduced to an androgynous, underground mass of slaves.  They’re kept in line with psychoactive drugs and bland, holographic entertainment.  Love is outlawed; the system creates more workers through other means.  THX-1138 (Robert Duvall) works in a factory, building the very robots that oppress his people.  His mate, LUH-3417 (Maggie McOmie) changes his daily dose, and he finds himself attracted to her.  They are caught, though, and LUH is taken away.  With the droids on his tail, THX searches for LUH, and in the process learns he no longer wants to be a part of this world.

The movie is more Karl Marx than Buck Rogers (and, of course, all the Joseph Campbell stuff is there, too), but that’s precisely what makes it Lucas’s most interesting work.  It’s a portrait of a man who’s going against the grain and taking risks.  Lucas did the same thing with each of his movies.  We tend not to notice this, because his successes have been used as templates for hundreds of other movies.  THX-1138 is a success, too, but on a whole other level.  See it.