Schmollywood Babylon

Alien from the Deep (Antonio Margheriti, 1989)

When Antonio Margheriti left us in 2002 he gave us an impressive amount of diverse cinema. It’s easy - if you have no idea what you’re talking about - to dismiss Margheriti as just another gun for hire, a competent craftsman - but the more you watch the more you see what a fantastic filmmaker he was. He worked in all genres, but one thing is makes them all connected: his love for miniatures. If you look at it with critical eyes his miniatures wasn't even needed sometimes, but he built them anyway - which makes me think he had a lot more passion than you could expect. While he was more or less retired the last years he still squeezed out four of his most entertaining films; Indio 1 and 2, the off-beat Virtual Weapon (Terence Hill as a deceased cop coming back as a hologram, if I don’t remember it wrong!) and one of my personal favorite, the insane and extremely well-made monster movie Alien from the Deep.

On the surface a rip-off of Alien and Aliens, but it actually bears very little resemblance to its Hollywood cousins. An evil company, managed by the always watchable Charles Napier, dumps nuclear waste inside a volcano. A tough female reporter and her trustworthy cameraman infiltrates the area around the facility to capture the crime on video - but soon they’re in trouble, mysterious earthquakes hits the area and something is crawling underneath them, ready to attack and destroy!

Something like that. I’ve never focused so much on the story in Alien from the Deep, except that it’s very entertaining. The thing is, and it’s very visible in almost every movie by Margheriti, is that I’ve heard that shooting with him always was a blast. He was a nice man, he loved to have fun and the atmosphere on the set was always good - even when Klaus Kinski was involved. Margheriti was famous for his excellent food also, which probably added positive feelings to the experience. You’ll notice the same thing here, everyone seems to have fun - and Margheriti might be one of the few non-Filipino directors who could make that country look beautiful. Often it’s dirty, gritty, nasty, sloppy - but here it looks like - almost - a million bucks, a place you want to go to.

The cast is also inspired. Marina Giulia Cavalli is a good heroine, almost up to Sigourney Weaver when it comes to take matters into her own hands. Napier is always good and along him a few familiar faces from movies produced in the Philippines, Luciano Pigozzi (Alan Collins, “the Italian Peter Lorre”) and David Brass, who you last could see in Bruno Mattei’s The Jail (together with another genre legend, Mike Monty). But the lead character is of course the alien, the monster. A huge motherfucking beast, in the beginning we just see a giant claw, but then it’s a god damn kaiju showing up. Not especially movable, it seems to literally be hanging on strings, but it looks cool - it’s an original design and it’s bloodthirsty like hell, ripping people to shreds!

Margheriti never did better miniatures than in Command Leopard (that exploding airplane is still fucking awesome), but the stuff here looks great. Often in broad daylight, I guess I’m not the only one thinking of Japanese miniatures, detailed like hell and often destroyed in a blooming flower of fire. I love it so much!

No, Alien from the Deep didn’t win any Oscars, but to hell with those - it’s an helluva entertaining monster movie, packed with action, stunts, some gore, explosions and of course an alien-monster-thingie directly from the volcano of our imagination. I, personally, seriously doesn't need more to feel good.

Ironmaster (Umberto Lenzi, 1983)

Umberto Lenzi’s Ironmaster is sometimes wrongly identified as a fantasy movie, always mentioned in the same breath as Joe D’Amato’s Ator series, Luigi Cozzi’s fun Hercules films starring Lou Ferrigno and and Tonino Ricci’s Thor the Conqueror (plus many more of course, Italy in the 80’s was packed with ‘em!), but Ironmaster differs in that’s suppose to be serious historical movie set in prehistoric times, more or less like Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1981 Quest for Fire. And there’s no signs of fantasy - except Lenzi’s interpretation of the iron age of course!

A tribe is fighting for their survival, trying to keep together and do what’s good for them. But Vood (Luigi Montefiori) have other ideas. During a Neanderthal attack he sneaks ups and kills the leader of his tribe, planning to take over. It ends with him being banished from the village. Furious he sets off towards an unknown future, but by coincidence he discovers… iron. He makes a weapon from this new, invincible material, and plots his revenge on the good and honest Ela (Sam Pasco), who might be the future chief of Vood’s old tribe. Soon there’s a war between the men Vood have gathered around him and Ela, and the quest for domination have started!

You might not believe me, but Ironmaster have a pretty good script. It’s shot in the Lenzi’s usual way: hard and brutal and lots of handheld camera. I many ways it resembles the crime and war movies he made before this one, which also is the comfort zone of this underrated director. I love realism - if you can call it that - Lenzi creates, especially the breathtaking nature, the scenes where Ela is trapped among Buffalos, shot on a distance which makes it almost documentary in style. There’s actually not one boring second in Ironmaster. Lenzi and his crew have a new adventure around every corner - sometimes angry Neanderthal men, sometimes zombie-like humans infected with a flesh-eating disease!

The action scenes are, like always in Lenzi’s films, very well made. Violent and gory, intense and shot like a boss. My favorite scene is when Vood have a flashback to an earlier battle, realizing the power of his weapons, and we see everything in gorgeous, over-the-top slow motion. Once again Zack Snyder’s 300 is beaten, and once again this proves it’s an overrated piece of shit. A similar use of slow-motion is also used in Irving Lerner’s 1969’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun, an Inca drama starring Christopher Plummer and Robert Shaw (not a bad movie actually, but why the hell isn’t there a good DVD or blu-ray out?).

Everyone loves Luigi Montefiori’s performance, which is well deserved. But Sam Pasco, the hero, is actually one of the best in the genre. First of all, he more or less looks like the artwork of the movie, with an amazing muscular, almost unreal body. Pasco was a former bodybuilder turned gay porn actor, and this is his only starring role in a non-pornographic movie. He disappeared after this, but I’ve done some research and found out quite a lot about him. Take a look at this article on my old blog, Ninja Dixon, and remember to read the comments - there’s even more facts about Pasco there from those who knew him!

I also want to mention the brilliant old-school effects used in Ironmaster, where it seems like they’ve mixed miniatures (volcanos, mammoths etc) with real footage, in the same shots. Like three dimensional matte paintings (this is nothing new, but it’s a cool idea). Normal matte paintings is also used to enhance the Custer state park, where it’s shot, creating an otherworldly atmosphere. Something we’ve never seen before.

Ironmaster is good, for real. It’s a wonderful adventure romp, an effective anti-war story with great action and a script better than you can expect. Now, if someone can released a remastered blu-ray I would be very happy! The DVD from Njuta Films works fine, but it’s a couple of years old now and it needs to be rediscovered once again.

Day of the Mummy (Johnny Tabor, 2014)

I’m drawn to bad movies like flies to cow shit. I’m not necessary saying Day of the Mummy is a bad movie, but every comment on the net hints at that and the presence of a tired looking Danny Glover just puts more wood on the fire. I’m also a huge fan of Dawn of the Mummy, the best photo models in peril-film ever made, at least together with Jungle Warriors and Ratman, and Day of the Mummy at least sounds like a sequel to Frank Agrama’s classic saga of zombie-mummies (so-called “zumies”) eating stupid americans. I’m also a fan of found footage films. This isn’t one of those, but 98 % of the film is seen from the Google Glasses-ish of the hero - so I hereby once again claim that “fake footage” is the best umbrella to gather all these productions under.

Jack Wells, listen to that name. Yeah, it’s a typical hero-name and this time it’s William McNamara (you know, who at a young age died a very violent death in Dario Argento's Opera?) who gets the honor of doing yet another Indiana Jones-esque character. We first meet him in bed with two chicks, but the entertainment won’t last long for him when Danny Glover (I call him that, even if he’s suppose to play a character he just is a very bored and uninspired Danny Glover) calls him and gives him a mission: to find a valuable stone (the Codix Stone), hidden in the tomb of some ancient Egyptian emperor who everyone - as usual - thinks just is a legend. To his help he gets these fancy glasses and Danny Glover constantly talking in his ear. They go to Egypt, puts together a team and then heads for the suspected site of the tomb...and find it, of course, and then they get stuck inside the systems of tunnels...and something, or someone, is in there… and is out after their blood!!!

Alright, what to say about this fucker? After watching so much dreck in my life I have a high tolerance level and I can understand how a movie was made and how it was meant to be. Day of the Mummy is a low-budget, cheap and not especially well-written (please let me write it next time, production companies out there!). But the nice locations, the likable cast and the short running time - under 80 minutes - makes it more entertaining than it should be. I like all movies set underground and Day of the Mummy have it’s fair share of running in underground tunnel, ducking for falling stones and strange mystic tablets with cryptical hieroglyphs carved upon them.

That’s sometimes enough for me.

While the budget makes the movie suffer, it’s clearly just a cool tunnel they’ve found somewhere and it’s has very little Egyptian artifacts or cool sets for example, the pace when they finally find the tunnels and tomb is pretty good and it ends up with an aggressive mummy who both looks very cool and very corny at the same time. Like the dude in Amazing Stories episode Mummy Daddy (but that mummy looks scarier when thinking about it….) or maybe the cool sequence in Anthony Hickox’s Waxwork. I just wish they’ve spent some time giving us more gore. It’s not completely bloodless, but it’s far from what you expect from a modern horror/adventure movie.

The worst thing is actually Danny Glover. He’s a good actor and seems to be a fantastic human being looking at the work he does on the side, but here...oh boy, he’s BORED out of his mind. He just saw the script, realized he could shoot the scenes in a few hours, maybe in his own home office, and that’s it. Take the paycheck and leave. The thing is that his character, like it is now, isn’t really needed. He’s just annoying staring at us from the bottom left side of the screen, feeding the hero with empty dialogue and grumpy old man shenanigans.

I gotta give it to the filmmakers; it might be stupid, silly, sloppy...but Day of the Mummy is an entertaining, unpretentious romp. With or without Danny Glover.

Hercules in the Haunted World (Mario Bava, 1961)

There was a time when I was only watching peplum movies. It’s not because of half-naked beefcakes flexing in every scene (never been a fan of that type of men anyway), but it felt I was reliving the first time I watched Ben-Hur - but a lot cheaper of course. I think Ben-Hur is a masterpiece, but I always turn it off after the chariot race because then it just turns to the typical religious propaganda. In the Italian cheapo-counterparts they’ve wisely strayed away from all the “important” messages and focuses on action, belly dancing, random styrofoam adventures and good-looking people getting tortured in moisty dungeons. Most of these films, even the cheap ones, looks fantastic - well, at least after a while when you’ve gotten used to them. So you can imagine what happens if Mario Bava got the chance to take Hercules to the big screen.

Yeah. Mario fucking Bava. Hercules in the Haunted World is classy shit, to say the least.

It’s basically the same form of peplum like all the others, with a few exceptions. Hercules, played by one of the best in the genre; Reg Park, minds his own business, helping farmers and carrying heavy things to impress the ladies, until the day he agrees to save Princess Deianira (Leonora Ruffo) from Hades! Yes, from hell more or less. She’s kept prisoner by the evil Evil EVIL King Lico (the one and only Christopher Lee, looking good as usual!). Hercules brings his two buddies, the absurdly hunky Thesus (George Ardisson, who just died a few weeks ago!) and the stereotypical comic relief Italian, Telemachus (Franco Giacobini - not bad either, but I never been fond of funny characters in serious adventures). They meet a stone monster, they climb the hot pits of hell and becomes enemies...and friends again over the course of the movie! And in the end, well, everyone except the baddies are happy!

Hercules in the Haunted World is a masterpiece. I actually forgot how good it was! I dare to say it’s one of Bava’s best movies from the sixties, an amazing reinvention of the genre. And that brings me to the other thing which makes this movie unique, together with it’s director: it’s a horror film! Yeah, it’s actually pretty low on action, but packed with some awesome horror moments - the stone monster, the pits of hell...and the zombies, fuck yeah, I love the zombies showing up here making life shit for our heroes! They’re the old-fashioned zombies also, crawling up from the ground, reaching their arms after their victims! This Hercules adventure is a so spectacular, which is not surprising considering Bava’s talent for making stuff look a lot more expensive than it really is. In a way it’s not that different than his other unique, genre-bending classic, Planet of the Vampires, which also feels like a gothic horror movie.

But what I like the most about the film is Reg Park. Like I stated above, I never been fond of muscle guys. They always come off like assholes, caring more about themselves than the people around them - which I’m pretty sure reflects the reality also - but Reg Park have that humane, soft, gentle style which many of the other guys lack (with the exception of the always awesome Steve Reeves). You like him and he seems to like you. He never behaves like he knows best and has, I can’t explain how, a very sympathetic aura around him. He doesn’t look that abnormal either, or maybe it’s because his kind face steals the attention from his body. What a man!

Hercules in the Haunted World is out on DVD from Fantomas, which was a good release at the time - but truth be told, it needs a new release! This one would be fantastic to see on blu-ray, which I guess it’s not that impossible considering the status of Bava as a master filmmaker and more and more of films are nowadays available on blu. Let’s cross our fingers to make it happen!

Howard the Duck (Willard Huyck, 1986)

Howard the Duck was maybe the coolest movie I knew when I was a kid. It’s not that today, but it’s far from as bad as people say. Instead it comes of as a quite offbeat, strange mainstream movie made by someone who have no clue what’s funny or not. That’s not necessary a bad thing, I dig stuff when it’s a bit awkward, when something is not in place. I’m not really familiar with the character Howard as a comic book character, and the second time I’ve seen him was in the Guardians of the Galaxy cameo. Which was fun, because that movie have a similar atmosphere as this film - except it’s a lot better and a LOT funnier. But I’m not gonna spend this review bashing Howard the Duck, instead I’m gonna focus on the good things, stuff that people tend to forget over time.

Howard is a duck who lives a relatively quiet life on the planet of Duckworld, until the day he’s sucked out from his apartment by a strange beam and brought to earth, right in the darkest alley possible. After a couple of first shocking moments at the planet of hairless monkeys, he meets Beverly (Lea Thompson), who with her band Cherry Bombs tries to make the big time. It’s not going well, but after Howard takes care of her sleazy manager life seems to go in a better direction. But he miss home and when he gets a chance to be sent back - through the same beam that brought him there - he says yes… but something goes terribly wrong; a horrifying being called the Dark Overlord enters their life, and he wants to bring more of his friends to earth! Only Howard and his friends can stop him!

You can’t deny the legendary status Howard the Duck have. It’s still a pop culture phenomena, not necessary because everyone think it’s good, but because it’s so bizarre. Me? I think it’s a good movie. Flawed, but extremely well-made and with a certain edge I dig. My boyfriend Gregory had never seen it - it’s a scandal, I know - but he expected something more family friendly, something more lame. But Howard the Duck have a weird mix of very adult, often sexually related humor, and childish shenanigans. The character of Phil Blumburtt, a charming and scene-chewing Tim Robbins, is right out from a typical American family movie - he could have been a character somewhere in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! or something like that. Lea Thompson’s Beverly is more mature, intelligent, from a teen oriented dramedy and the you have Jeffrey Jones who’s downright scary as doctor Walter Jenning, who happens to get posssessed by the Dark Overlord! Howard himself is a cocky, self-proclaimed hero - but never too asshole-ish. Not saying I would like to spend time with him on a deserted island - I would probably make stew of him sooner or later!

The script is pretty thing, but fun characters make it work all the way through. The monster-part comes in like an afterthought, when it probably could have continued as a pure surreal, wacky and crazy comedy about Cherry Bombs and their new featherly manager. I’ve read some complains about the special effects in Howard the Duck, but to be honest: they look great. The duck-suit is quite impressive and life-like, even if those cold blue Donald Pleasence-eyes on Howard can be disturbing. I’ve read they spent 2 million dollars on the duck, and it obviously works. The visual effects, the matte paintings and the stop-motion monster at the end looks cool and gives a very comic book feeling to the film, which is a damn hard thing to do.

Anyway, I really like Howard the Duck. I think it’s a fun film - which could have used a lot more work on the script, which is where the problem lies: it just lacks depth. The characters and their goals are fun, but never makes you care to 100%. Maybe it’s time for a new adventure? I’m in, I will watch it. Wouldn’t you?

Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (Ed Ragozzino, 1977)

I’m not entirely sure what genre Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot is, but I guess the original concept of “docudrama” could fit quite good. But still… it’s more a mix of a mockumentary and reconstructions of stuff the filmmakers actually claims happens for real. That’s a true mindfuck: faked reconstructions! Anyway, the reason why I watched this is Exists, the latest Bigfoot-film from the genius (yes) Eduardo Sánchez, and that made me go through my huge collections of movies to find all Bigfoot films I could find. Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot, I will call it Sasquatch from now on, is very much a child of its time. Imagine something similar to In Search Of… or any other of those cinema-released docs (like the awesome Mysterious Monsters) with famous voice overs trying to convince us UFOs, ancients astronauts and all the other cool things out there is true.

Sasquatch begins with a serious voice (someone wrote it’s Robert W. Morgan, the director of Blood Stalkers, but I might have confused that statement with some other docudrama) explaining the legend of Bigfoot and the expeditions planned by the film’s main characters. What follows is basically a nature film with a few encounters with wild animals like mountain lion or bear, lots and lots of padding, more pointless words from our narrator and in the end, fucking finally, a the encounter we’ve been waiting for - you know which one. This is of course, as stated above, a reconstruction, but satisfyingly entertaining.

I see. You good folks out there think I hate this film? I don’t. It was actually quite cozy to watch a Sunday morning, even if it more or less completely lacks tension and entertainment - except that finale. Instead I’m kinda pissed off they shoot and kill an escaping mountain lion and somehow think this is a brave thing to do! Except that there’s a lot and lot and lot of footage of the fantastic wilderness around them, which actually is something I like and I can watch movies only because of this.

But it’s just a damn pity they couldn’t take the Bigfoot-concept a bit further, make it more spectacular - instead of filling it with some really boring slapstick, a few bad flashbacks to other Bigfoot encounters and the always boring macho-bullshit how it’s cool to freeze, starve and be in the forest for months and months. It’s not fun. No one thinks so, except those who wants to feel a little bit better than everyone else. The acting - I’m not sure I can call it acting, more like “acting” - is also so crappy it turns unbelievable. Especially the dude playing the comic relief chef, who looks like he comes right from a really shitty circus.

But hey, I’m not the one to complain (well, actually…), Sasquatch is still a fine addition to your collection of Bigfoot entertainment. It’s what we call in Sweden “mystråkig”, and that’s not bad for a generic fake Bigfoot docudrama!

Raise the Titanic (Jerry Jameson, 1980)

I saw Raise the Titanic yesterday, the movie Clive Cussler hated so much he forbid anyone to make a movie based on his books up until Sahara in 2005, which he hated so much he once again forbid anyone to make more movies. I haven’t read any of his books, but either they’re perfect masterpieces that can’t be tainted by the cheap movie producers or Cussler just is a grumpy old bastard. Sir Lew Grade financed Raise the Titanic, which was meant to be a big budget, but not absurdly budgeted, adventure movie - but the production spiraled out of control and he ended up investing 40 million dollars into it… and when it finally was released it earned close to seven million. And that’s it. Rumour say it was a pretty big success in Japan, but obviously not enough to recoup the money. Sir Lew Grade (or Sir Low Grade as some of his critics called him) pulled out from the movie industry and we never saw anything like him again.

But is the movie any good?

You know, this is the first time I’ve seen it and I can’t understand the hate I’ve seen. Sure, it’s not a masterpiece, a hidden diamond among cinematic turds, but it’s hardly a bad movie either. I’ll admit I, and I’m sure many others, are skeptical about the storyline. How much fun could it be to see a movie about a bunch of stiff actors finding Titanic and then raise it from the depths? It’s like the antithesis of the then so popular disaster film, why not at least give us a flashback to when it went down? Surprisingly enough it turned out to be a cozy, not-that-awfully-acted adventure flick - if adventure mean serious men looking at maps, monitors and something out of frame which obviously amazes them (clue: a big ship). David Shelby is the hero Dirk Pitt, a rough not that fun guy Sir Lew Grade hoped would be a new James Bond or something. I think Shelby is pretty decent, better than what the rumour says, and around him is a good bunch of character actors.

What’s missing, as usual in these films, are women. There’s one, but I’ve already forgotten her purpose. She’s just there to lend some glamour to this show of grey, middle-aged men. Oh,it’s Anne Archer - I had to check IMDB to remember. It’s not her fault, she’s just a victim of the lavett-loving patriarchal movie makers of the time - and I guess, grumpy old Cussler. Raise the Titanic is also packed with quite nice underwater footage and a sense of mystery, a low-key form of adventure which doesn’t involve action - it’s like All the President’s Men, a thriller who mostly deals with paperwork and telephone calls. Not comparing them in any other way, but there’s different kinds of genres within genres. What really impresses me is the miniature works and the scene where Titanic finally shows her ugly face above the surface is very impressive and super-detailed. A fantastic “miniature” (which I heard was quite big) in beautiful slow-motion for several minutes to the great score by John Barry.

That alone makes the whole movie worth watching. Also look carefully for the little joke the special effects people included on the boat, just when it’s totally above the water and we see the whole glory: one little (miniature) man frantically handling a pump up on the deck. Absurd, just like the flying cow in Speed 2, but a creative way of showing us that they had some fun on this production also.

But is it any good? Yeah, it’s a good movie. It won’t change your world, but for those of us who appreciates the seriousness of silly movies, this is a fine film. The actors are good, the special effects looks fantastic and the score is among John Barry’s best. The new blu-ray from Shout Factory looks fantastic and really brings forth the beautiful grittiness of it. A recommended buy for aficionados of big flops and underrated films.

Ragnarok (Mikkel Brænne Sandemose, 2013)

A friend showed me the trailer for Ragnarok and the next day I owned the Norwegian blu-ray. That’s how I roll, fast and brutal. Anyway, this film is out right now in the US, on VOD, theaters etc, but I couldn’t wait. No siree, I just couldn’t wait to own it. So what’s odd with this film? It’s family entertainment, but it’s also a monster film… so I couldn’t stop myself. Magnet Releasing in the US is also comparing it with Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and The Goonies...which is a bit cocky considering it’s nothing like it. Especially not the last two! But fuck that, what we have here is a quite well-made family adventure which lives mostly on the gorgeous locations, and for me deep forests and valleys is enough to like a movie.

Sigurd (Pål Sverre Hagen) is an archaeologist who’s obsessed by the Oseberg Ship (a real viking ship found in 1904) and he’s sure it has more to tell then what everyone even can imagine. When an additional rune stone is found in the north of Norway, in Finnmarken, it delivers the last key to the mystery and he, his two kids, his best buddy and assistant travels out in the wilderness to try to find out what the stone wants to say and if there’s any clue to what Ragnarok actually was… maybe there’s some truth about the end of the world anyway?

Ragnarok sure looks good. It actually looks fabulous and that alone would generate some positive reviews. I liked it also, but at the end I felt it was missing something. Maybe it was the involvement of Swedish money and creative forces, because where the movie would have gone one step more into awesome territory it steps back like there was a boring Swedish producer standing in the background somewhere complaining it’s not real enough for him. The presence of Sofia Helin, who is a terrible, terrible, terrible Swedish actress gives the movie an even more awkward atmosphere and it seems to spread to leading man Pål Sverre Hagen who mostly stares and blinks very slowly. I like Bjørn Sundquist, who plays the guide, but his character is also very underwritten and when he finally leaves the story he’s instantly forgotten. The best actors are actually the kids - who manages to be 100% non-annoying. Also watch out for Jens Hultén (who I actually made a very bad movie with many years ago) as a viking in the flashbacks, he’s a great actor - but could have used more screentime.

Ragnarok creates a nice mystery and builds slowly up to some cool revelations. The idea of the Soviet/Norwegian no mans land is cool and the sets and locations are super-classy and triggers the imagination. When the monster finally appears it looks great, in the same quality as bigger movies from Hollywood. It actually looks damn nice! The action is nice and it’s never really boring, but still…fuck, they could have done so much more! Why not let the monster hunt them into town? Now it’s just a couple of trees getting damaged - and the inside of a Soviet bunker. The characters aren’t interesting enough to root for, so why not some more destruction instead?

If it did continue the build-up the way it should have been and not became more Swedish at the end it would have been much, much better. Now it’s a good movie, well-made and delivers some fun. It’s also great they’ve took the time to make a blockbuster-type of movie in Scandinavia about local mythology.

But that’s it. A pity.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008)

So you think the refrigerator scene is absurd and unrealistic? Then I guess the rubber boat in Temple of Doom was an example of ultimate realism? Oh, it’s preposterous with the alien plot? I guess the god plot of the earlier films is much more plausible? Wait, plot holes? So… so you mean the other three films have no plot holes at all?

Sorry for the sarcasm, but reading peoples opinions about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is just plain silly. So I’m avoiding it nowadays and finding the film a lot more entertaining by watching it like you should watch it: like pure escapism. Just like the others in the series. None of the Indy films are high on realism or logic, they’re here to entertain and deliver fantastic plots - and this one, the latest - and hopefully not the last - delivers everything to the fullest!

Enough defending Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from morons, I will concentrate on how much I enjoy this slice of absurdity! The best thing is actually the reunion of Harrison Ford and Karen Allen, which by far is the best relationship ever in any of the films. It sparkles around these two fuckers when they start bitching and I’m so happy they brought back Karen once more. Their son, played by Shia LaBeouf is perfectly cast. The thing is, I really think he’s a good actor. I love his work in Nymphomaniac and The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, and it’s easy to ignore the fact he starred in a couple of the most boring blockbusters ever (they start with “T” and end with “ransformers”), and he seemed to have realized it also.

Setting the movie in 1957 is a stroke of genius. It’s a directly ancestor of the paranoia sci-fi’s of the fifties, with a dash of jungle adventure. The big difference is that Jones and his friends understands that the fear of communists is absurd, something that just hurts people - which also undermines what could have been yet another nationalistic bullshit production. The baddies are here awesome and the leader Irina Spalko (played by Cate Blanchett, in full tongue-in-cheek mode - but still deadly serious) is fucking brilliant. I love how they tie the story to the first film with placing the first scene in the storeage (which we now understand is Area 51) the first movie ended with, including a cameo by the ark!). Watch out for Andrew Divoff in a small part as a Russian soldier. An odd choice considering he’s much more than an extra in the rest of his career, but I guess it was too good salary to turn down. And he know’s the Russian language, which I guess was a part of it also.

The story is a wonderful mash of Erich Von Däniken ideas, generic UFO-mumbo jumbo and old adventure tales. The crystal skulls are of course legends in the pseudo-archaeological science since many years back, and combining that with elongated heads and lost jungle cities…Mmm, it’s a dream come true for me. I love how it avoids cynicism and trying to be “real” - it’s an adventure film dammit, something you should relax while watching. The action is excellent, while not in the same standard as the earlier films - but still deliver some fine stunts and gimmicky vehicle action.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is to say the least over-the-top, but that’s also the charm of it. It just brings the series even closer to what it probably should have looked like if it was made in the golden age of low budget Hollywood, a big budget “b-movie” done the right way. The magic lies in the acting and you can see how much fun they had.

The audience WILL reevaluate this film, just give it a few years more and you’ll see I’m correct - as usual ;)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989)

Around the time of Jesus there was 20-something dudes running around claiming they were the Messiah, a couple of them had hundreds, maybe thousands of followers. The only places Jesus is mentioned is in the bible and there’s only two sources outside that collection of stories where a Jesus is mentioned in combination of being arrested or causing disturbance, but none of them actually proves it was THAT Jesus. It was - and I guess still is - a very common name. This is facts, but to a believer I guess there’s impossible to discuss this matter with. Anyway, the Jesus-myth is still a fun story to build adventures around and in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Spielberg and Lucas delivers in Christian mumbo jumbo section. I’ve always had a very soft spot for this film, even if it more or less feels like a rehash of the first film - maybe because Spielberg kinda regretted the menacing second part and wanted to go back to the roots of Indy: a silly pastiche on old serials.

When The Da Vinci Code was released someone snarked The Last Crusade more or less is the same movie, that Dan Brown ripped it off. Nothing can be further from the truth of course, the Holy Grail is an ancient myth and the stories deals with very different parts of what people believe. Between us I think the Dan Brown theory (which he borrowed from Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln’s entertaining Holy Blood, Holy Grail) is a lot more interesting and thought-provoking, because who cares about an old chalice when the power of Maria is way more cool? Anyway, this film starts with a flashback to how Indy got his hat, his scar on the cheek, his whip and why he’s afraid of snakes. It’s a great, light-hearted action sequence with also stars Harrison Ford-lookalike Richard Young, who got some kind of career after this - including the über-expensive and super-boring Eye of the Widow, where they tried to launch him as a new James Bond/Indiana Jones style hero. Didn’t work out that good, but at least Paul L. Smith shows up and beats the shit out of some people with his fists.

It sets the atmosphere of the film and it continues the same way all the way through. It also establishes Sean Connery as Indy’s father, which is a good thing - he’s fun, but maybe a bit too animated sometimes - trying to act older and geezier than he really is (he’s just 12 years older than Ford). Alison Doody is this films woman, and I adore her coldness. Really. It’s a nice touch compared to the silliness of Kate Capshaw in Temple of Doom. This was also the last time we saw Denholm Elliot in the franchise, at least in person. He was severely ill some days here and he also looks quite under the weather from his illness, AIDS, in some shots. But he’s a lot of fun and seems to love what he’s doing. Julian Glover, who I met once, plays the rich dude Walter Donovan who hires Indy at the beginning, and he’s a class act. As usual. Can’t hate him, even if he often plays assholes!

There’s a lot of action going on and once scene after another is a chase with wild stunts, fire, shoot-outs or fist fights. Gotta love that! This film actually have two of my favorite action sequences - when Indy and his father escapes on a motorcycle and the tank fight during the end. Both have amazing stunts, some really dangerous stuff it looks like also! The only thing that always bothered me is the ending where they need to choose which chalice is the Grail. I mean, even a rich motherfucker like Donovan would understand that the chalice wouldn’t be covered with gemstones and is made of gold. It’s just a too absurd thought (at least in my world). But hey, he wouldn’t be a bad guy if he didn’t behave so stupid at least one time.

And yeah, don’t forget to look for Ronald Lacey’s cameo. He played the fantastic and seminal character of Major Arnold Toht (you know, “We are... hehe... not thirsty” guy). Here he plays Henrich Himmler and can be seen behind Hitler, played by Lacey’s good friend Michael Sheard. A fun little detail.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade might not be the heaviest or most well-written in the series, it takes things a bit too easy sometimes. But the chemistry between the actors and the awesome action makes it one of a kind.