Visiting and Revisiting: Starcrash (1978) Pt. 2

This is Part II of a two-part discussion about Luigi Cozzi's 1978 Italian "rip-off" of Star Wars, Starcrash. To read the first part of this article, visit my buddy Rik Tod Johnson's Cinema 4 Pylon website at: http://bit.ly/21IWR4A 

PART II

Rik: The chief influence of this film is clearly George Lucas' Star Wars; that cannot be denied. But there is a huge dose of the legacy of the late Ray Harryhausen at play as well. Stop-motion animation, not even close to being as fluid as Ray's patented Dynamation process, plays a big role in this film in a couple of scenes. The one that played a big part in coaxing me to the theatre was the sword fight between Hasselhoff and a pair of robots that look like Gyro Gearloose from the old Uncle Scrooge comics constructed them. They even look like they have stylized duckbills. Hasselhoff picks up Gortner's lesser form of lightsaber (it now reminds me more of the way that a Schwartz was used in Spaceballs) and has a battle against the extremely jerky, sword-wielding automatons. The swordplay is actually surprisingly engaging, even if the animation is definitely and expectedly subpar to its influences (most definitely the skeleton fights in Harryhausen's Jason and Sinbad films).

Where the stop-motion animation really fails for me, however, is in the scene with the giant "female" robot (with titanic, possibly titanium, breasts for some reason -- who knew robots breastfed?) on the beach. The entire sequence is clearly modeled after the Talos scene from Harryhausen's classic Jason and the Argonauts, but it is almost painful to watch, so awkward are the relatively simple movements involved in the scene. You could say that Talos in the original movie was also jerky and awkward, but he was a normally inanimate statue that had just been magically freed from its base. Talos was towering in stature and composed of metal, like the "female" robot here, but its limbs were not built for movement at all, merely to support its mass as a piece of art; hence the jerkiness in its motions. However, Talos is imbued with remarkable life by his creator -- that god being Harryhausen -- and as stiff as he is naturally portrayed, he has clearly been brought to life fully and his muscles and joints move, albeit deliberately, in a surprisingly life-like manner. The robot in this film clearly has working knees and elbows, and therefore it must be surmised that it is meant to walk around and perform its duties, most likely to guard the planet upon which it resides. However, it moves every bit as jerkily as Talos, even more so due to an obvious lower range of talent attempting to duplicate the moves of the great Harryhausen. Of course, maybe the Amazons on the planet were just inept engineers and technicians, and they made a shitty robot that could barely move as required.

Aaron: That giant robot not only had breasts, but large gear shaped nipples, as well! In a good film, striking design choices like that can easily be explained as atmosphere-enhancing aesthetics, but in Starcrash it just made me wonder, while watching that scene, why the guard had been built that way. I suppose the fact that it’s a planet of Amazons might explain why they’d choose a feminine form, but it did seem strangely sexual. And why hadn’t they bothered animating even a basic bend of the arm at least once? The animation looked like something a bright, enthusiastic nine-year-old would make in their backyard. I mean, it’s great looking for a nine-year-old playing with his action figures, but for an actual movie projected in theatres, it’s laughably subpar.

Speaking of references, I really got a kick out of how blatantly they stole the look of the Martian mastermind from Invaders From Mars for that of the judge that sentences Akton and Stella to hard labor for their various crimes. On top of those references already noted, there’s at least one shot that seems to directly echo Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Zarth Arn bears a more than passing resemblance to Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon, and some of the ship-launching sequences look suspiciously like those in Battlestar Galactica. That last one may be nothing more than coincidence considering how close their releases are to each other.

Rik: Starcrash gets a lot of surprising mileage out of just how colorful and charmingly fantasy-like its vision of outer space is. The stars at night may or may not be big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, but they are bigger and brighter here. Every planet, moon, and star is represented in the sharpest of hues, and whatever demerits can be attributed to the film on nearly every other level, one cannot deny that much of the film is very pleasing to the eye. I am only watching the film on DVD, and it is awash in the most brilliant colors, far more than I remember. I can only imagine that the Blu-ray I gave you for Christmas is even more pleasing (not that you have seen the DVD version).

Aaron: I have not seen the DVD as you say, but I have watched some clips online (and on the special features) that feature some of the footage before it was touched up, and the Blu-ray is indeed pretty great looking. Aside from some blurriness here and there as a result of aged film stock, everything is pretty eye-popping. There is one downside to this, however, as the added clarity betrays some of the shots of deep space to look like exactly what they are: multicolored light bulbs placed against a black background.

But yes, of course, the visuals are great fun. The exteriors of the ships are off kilter and interesting (though the ship from the beginning, the one that the emperor’s son escapes from, looks a bit like a guitar frame someone stuck some plastic bits to and then spray-painted grey), and the interiors are full of oddly designed furniture and decorated in primary, often clashing colors.

Rik: As I mentioned earlier, in that attack on the Galactic starship at the beginning of the film, Count Zarth Arn's minions use a weapon that creates a field of floating red spheroids that are undeterred by walls or atmosphere, and simply drift through everything in their path. The red spheroids exert a mind-altering force that serves to drive the crew of the starship mad and ultimately cause the starship to explode. This is the terrible weapon that, later in the film, Stella and her pals are recruited to stop. It is a very simple but weirdly effective scene. The spheroids are never actually touching or even in the same plane as anything else; they are merely superimposed by the filmmakers over everything (according to Starcrash expert Stephen Romano, the images are of various objects floating in a fish tank). While the effect looks as low-rent and cheesy as anything in the rest of the film, I found it to be one of the more memorable images from the film, and it has stuck with me since that first teenage showing. The same effect is used later in the film, on an even larger scale, when Stella's ship is attacked. This time, the effect grows even more psychedelic, with other elements added to the superimposed imagery. Watching it now, even seeing how simple it is, it kind of holds up for me as one of my favorite moments in the film. What did you think of the use of the red balls?

Aaron: I must admit it didn’t quite affect me in the same way. I agree it’s a nice enough image, and a clever use of their limited budget, but the weapon itself seemed so… ill defined. The characters never refer to globular red balls floating through the ship, and instead repeatedly say they were attacked by groups of monsters. But there’s really nothing monstrous about them, other than how unsettling it would be to travel through space and suddenly find yourself inside a red lava lamp. There was a lack of physicality to them that I found hard to connect with, and I couldn’t really suspend my disbelief enough for them to read as menacing in any way. They do remind me, however, of Rover, that giant white ball that acts as a security system in The Prisoner. That’s a similarly cheap and spherical effect that nonetheless still unsettles me when I see it.

Rik: The Prisoner is such a great show, and yes, Rover has always unsettled me, even to this day. Getting back to the red blobs, I did find it amusing that one of the very first things that Starcrash historian and DVD commentator Stephen Romano says when the scene pops up is to discount the theory that the filmmakers have merely superimposed an image of a lava lamp over the rest of the film. It made me chuckle because that is what my friends and I have always figured it was over the years.

Watching Starcrash now, Caroline Munro is every bit as lovely as I remember her, but there is an odd thing that must be told about her performance. Even though she is a British actress, Munro's dialogue was dubbed for its Western release by Candy Clark, who was married to Marjoe Gortner, who plays Stella's super-powered sidekick, Akton, in the film. Supposedly, when they redubbed the film, both Munro and her husband, Judd Hamilton (who played the loyal robot, Elle), were not flown over to America to save expenses, and so Clark and character actor Hamilton Camp were used in their places. It's a shame that we don't get to hear Munro's own voice as this is her biggest role in a film, and because I find Clark's line readings to be as off-kilter and often stiff as many of her own performances. Though I do adore Candy Clark in certain films, I don't think she is a particularly adept actress, and her voice doesn't quite match some of Munro's reactions emotionally. That said, the only voice I find annoying in the film is that of Elle the robot. The Texas twang with which Camp imbued the robot in the English dub is quite tiring and ridiculous, and it adds undoubtedly to the film's cheese factor.

Physically, Munro is jaw dropping gorgeous as Stella Star. She only wears her skimpy leather bikini outfit for the first chunk of the film, and as a teen, I was upset that her outfits gets increasingly less provocative as the film progresses. By the end of the film, Stella is completely covered up in a full bodysuit and cape (and ultimately, a space helmet). While one would look at any another movie for its psychological implications (has the hell-bent Stella been tamed by her conversion from bikini-wearing smuggler to demure heroine?), the real reason here seems to be Munro wanting more to wear in the film than just a leather bikini. On one of the audio commentaries, Romano quotes Harlan Ellison as saying that they had to ugly up Munro a bit for the film so that the cameras wouldn't melt. I've looked around to verify this quote (unsuccessfully so far), but I do have to agree that such a thing might have been possible.

Does Caroline Munro affect you in the same way, sir, or is my lingering affection merely a by-product of my misspent youth?

Aaron: All I can say is that Caroline Munro is delightfully cute, and it was a pleasure to spend a couple of hours watching her traverse the stars. I can only imagine what my opinion would be had I been exposed to her in my formative years. However, it saddens me to know that I can’t really appreciate her performance in this film, as her lines were dubbed by someone else. She certainly appears to be giving it her all, but the lines come out a bit stale, which is a problem that affects almost everyone in the cast, even those who were able to dub their own dialogue. You mention in particular disliking Hamilton Camp’s portrayal of Elle, and while I can’t argue with you, I have to say I kind of enjoyed the hillbilly twang he gave the robot. It was such an out of place detail that some part of me loved the randomness of having a robot in this fantasy galaxy speak like an extra on Hee Haw.

I would like to take a moment to talk about Marjoe Gortner’s character, Akton. As I said, he seems like a Han Solo analog at first, but turns out to be more Obi Wan Kenobi. That may not be entirely accurate, but he’s certainly supposed to be Starcrash’s version of a Jedi master, complete with light saber. But it continually bothered me how little they go into Akton’s powers or background. He just randomly exhibits new powers whenever the plot demands, and while no one ever expects him to have these powers, no one ever questions them either. Discussing plot holes or story inconsistencies seems almost beside the point for this film, though. Starcrash feels beyond criticism, in a way, as if the normal rules of storytelling don’t apply to it. Still, I think a little bit more information about this character would have been much appreciated.

Rik: No one is ever going to mistake Starcrash for Star Wars. But I also think that some of the spaceship design is pretty interesting. One of the ships is even named after science fiction author Murray Leinster, who specialized in pulp adventures such as this (though his works were often more elevated intellectually than Starcrash). By the time I saw this film, I was not only immersed in the technology of Star Wars, but also Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers (I actually watched the TV pilots for both series in theatres). I was swamped with outer space dogfighting, and so when I finally did get to see this film, I had already gotten a bit tired of spaceships due to the over-saturation of the market. Honestly, I really just wanted the film to get to the parts with Stella, so maybe my teenage boy sex drive had overtaken my patience with everything else. Watching the film since, though, I really enjoy many of the ship scenes, especially the quite appropriate design of the evil Count's ship, which looks like a giant, clawed hand.

Aaron: The ships are great, and straddle the line between innovative and old-fashioned. Some of the ships are clearly on tracks, and look like the planes that would attack Godzilla in his early decades, but then some of them are quite interesting and feature more detailed movement. Zarth Arn’s fist-shaped ship (try saying that five times fast) is the clear standout, though it does beg the question; what is that design for? Have you ever wondered why Zarth Arn would need five extendable digits on his space fortress? They don’t appear to provide any protection or added benefits beyond being a cool visual gimmick. Then again, given how flamboyant Zarth Arn is in his fashion sense and demeanor, that would probably be enough for him. In a quick side note, Joe Spinell as Zarth Arn really reminded me of Dave Grohl, which gave me a quick chuckle any time he was stomping around the screen.

Having now seen the film two-and-a-half times, I think I might be done with it for a while. I enjoyed it, but I think I’ll let it sit in my memory for a little while, where I can let the neat visuals and the fun swashbuckling moments overshadow the more perfunctory plot motions. Seeing the film for the first time as a man in his late thirties, I think that might be the best way to experience this film; as a burst of juvenile excitement. Best to allow it to sit in your mind and remind you of how totally awesome sword-fighting robots, spaceship dogfights, and the very idea of ‘the haunted stars’ can be.

Rik: Obviously, the design of Zarth Arn’s fist-shaped ship is so he can pull four of the fingers back to flip the bird at his enemies. He’s just that type of guy. I see your point about Spinell reminding you of Dave Grohl, and I must admit it did cross my mind briefly and made me chuckle a bit. Spinell, as he often does, sort of reminds me of the younger and not yet enormously rotund Ron Jeremy as well.

I, too, am probably done with Starcrash for a good while. Having just watched it about five more times in the past couple of months, I think it is burned in pretty good for the time being. In those two months though, my estimation for the film has gone up ever so slightly, but not so much that I ever forget my long-running disappointment with the film. Loves and hates that stem from childhood or your teen years are awfully hard to shake. I still think Caroline Munro is one of the most beautiful women to ever appear on the movie screen, but I also think Starcrash is well below what constitutes a good film, even on a pure entertainment level. That said, were I ever to throw a video party again (not that I have in the past twenty years), this might be one that I would choose to show everyone a crazy, weird time and allow everyone to riff at will.

A Visiting & Revisiting Special: Should There Be a Boycott of the 2016 Academy Awards?

This is the second part of a discussion between me and my partner Rik over on The Cinema 4 Pylon. Please head over there to read the first part at: http://bit.ly/1nqDmkS

4. Do you believe a threatened African-American artistic boycott of the 88th Academy Awards in February will be effective in solving the problem of racial diversity within the Academy? Or does it need to be much broader in scope to have any real effect?

Aaron: Do I think it will solve the problem? No, definitely not. Do I think it will help to bring attention and to the problem and the need to fix it? I will answer with a resounding yes. Already the publicity has convinced most rational people that this is a real issue. As I said earlier, Hollywood will only really follow the money; it has no real political or social leanings of its own, no matter what George Clooney wants to think. Hollywood can lead the charge on issues of social justice, and it definitely has in the past, but only once it’s been proven to be profitable. I don’t mean to sound cynical about the Dream Factory, but I think it helps explain why the entertainment industry can be this weird mix of progressive ideology and regressive social viewpoints.

As it stands, I think this situation has been a total embarrassment for the Academy, and there’s really no way they can just ignore this. Last year, when Selma star David Oyelowo was snubbed for Best Actor, the Academy could at least say ‘Yeah, but the film was nominated for Best Picture, so it’s not like we’re ignoring you.’ They could hide behind that attitude even when Selma lost to a movie about a middle-aged white guy grappling with his insecurities. But this year, with so many great performances and films helmed by and featuring people of color, how is it none of them got nominated? It boggles the mind that Straight Outta Compton only got recognized for its screenplay, because it is otherwise the exact sort of movie the Academy loves to gush over: popular, crowd-pleasing, and based on a true story. It hits all of the expected and required beats so perfectly that its lack of inclusion can almost only be read as racist.

And don’t get me started on Creed (which, full disclosure, I have not yet seen). A widely acclaimed, profitable movie written and directed by a black man, about a black man, and the only nomination in the film is for the old white guy that helps him out. This is sort of to be expected, though, because if there’s one thing Hollywood loves more than money, it’s patting themselves on the back, and Stallone’s character in Creed must have hit that sweet spot of white liberal guilt that allowed Academy voters to vicariously feel like the good guy, helping the disaffected black youth. A similar phenomenon was likely at play when The Blind Side and The Help were massive hits awarded with Academy recognition. People want a social issue that they can be the hero of, and so they see Sylvester Stallone helping this kid out, and think to themselves ‘Man, I’d love to be that guy, and prove we aren’t all racist assholes.’ This should not be read as me stating that Stallone doesn’t deserve the Oscar nomination; everything I hear is that he’s quite good in the film, and of course he was nominated for the original Rocky way back when. But to single him out in a film that is getting a lot of acclaim for both its star, Michael B. Jordan, and its co-writer/director, Ryan Coogler, seems a bit odd.

Rik: As we were putting this piece together, Academy president Cheryl Boon Isaacs came out with a statement lamenting the lack of diversity in her organization. Isaacs, who is black, is the only non-white member of the 43-member executive branch, and she put out the statement in response to both Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett-Smith, who both stated they would not be attending the Oscars this year because of the lack of diversity in the nominations. Isaacs said the Academy was instituting a five-year plan, with a goal of 2020, to drastically expand the membership of the Academy to make it more racially and gender diverse.

I personally wish that someone besides Jada Pinkett-Smith had been the first to really speak up about this issue, because she is married to someone whom it is widely believed should have received an Oscar nomination this year. Lee himself had his own horse in the race with Chi-Raq. While their announcements were certainly heard, they could potentially just be perceived as so many sour grapes. On the other side, Lee also just received an Honorary Oscar in November for his lifetime of film work, and so his absence from the February ceremony when they call his name will be noticed greatly.

No call for a wider boycott has actually been put out, but what if it did? I am not sure it will be all that effective without Hollywood itself changing massively in the types of films it puts out and how it hires minorities across the board. But if a boycott did occur, it would have to include far more than just African-Americans or Asian-Americans or women... it would need to be as diverse as the intended goal. Isaacs said the Academy's goal was 2020, and that seems to have been said to buy them some time, but will people be accepting of this type of a “wait and see” response? The only real way to get the Academy's notice is to hit them where it hurts the most: a full-scale boycott of the broadcast itself, and that might including hitting potential advertisers in the pocketbook as well. Otherwise, it will be sound and fury. And then, the only option would be to wait for five years to see if anything has happened.

And I somewhat agree on your point about Stallone’s nomination possibly fulfilling a form of white liberal guilt on the part of the members who voted for it, but from my side, I just see it as another example of a Supporting Actor award nomination (or even win) being used to recognize a longtime member for his successful career in Hollywood.

5. Will you skip watching the Oscars this year in recognition of a possible boycott, or can you not keep away?

Rik: I guess the question that we should have asked if “Would you support such a boycott?” My answer would be no, even though I am as desirous of an outcome of wider diversity in the industry as the rest. I just don’t think it is the solution to the problem.

As for skipping the Oscars? Not a friggin’ chance. Can't happen; won't happen. Unless the response is so big that they have to cancel the broadcast, I will be watching the Oscars this year. I would gladly boycott sponsors of the show, but their commercials don't affect us anyway since we purposefully watch the film on a delay so we can zip past most of the ads. Can’t boycott something if you don’t even know they are sponsoring something. (I suppose a list would get compiled, so maybe then…)

I haven't purposefully skipped the Oscars since I was a kid, so why would I start now? It's one of the few ceremonies that I continue to celebrate, even if I readily admit that I don't usually agree with most of the nominations or winners. For me, it is the last bastion of old Hollywood that most of the world gets to see, and I don't want it to go away. They just need to be more inclusive across the board.

Aaron: Yeah, you pretty much answered for me; I will definitely be watching the ceremony. At this point there is no way the issue won’t be addressed, either by a presenter, a winner, or host Chris Rock, and I’m looking forward to that. But then, I’d just be watching the awards anyway. While I realize the awards show is flawed, it’s always been that way. The movies that get nominated and awarded are never the ones I want, and the award is next to meaningless to anybody not in that room. It’s Hollywood congratulating itself for a few hours, and selling advertising space while doing so. This year the scandal gives the show the opportunity to be relevant and meaningful for the first time… maybe ever.

I see there have been some calls for Chris Rock to join the boycott and step down from his role as host this year, and I dearly hope he does not listen. If he leaves the show, sure, the parade of white stars and producers will paint an ugly portrait of racism in Hollywood, but it will also deprive the show of the one voice that could honestly address the situation from the viewpoint of someone affected by it. If we see Brad Pitt get up there and talk about diversity in Hollywood, or George Clooney talk about how Hollywood should lead the charge on these issues, it’s going to feel just as masturbatory as the rest of the ceremony. If Chris Rock is up there speaking, or if Spike Lee actually was allowed on stage, it would be an opportunity to actually speak out and affect some change.

In the end I think my thoughts echo those of Viola Davis, who said “The problem is not with the Oscars, the problem is with the Hollywood movie-making system.” The Academy Awards are a reflection of the year for the Hollywood studios; it doesn’t fully reflect the face of what is really going on in American cinema. A lot of the most vibrant and diverse works being produced will never make it onto a ballot, partially because a lot of those films, and the artists working on them, are non-union and therefore have no voice in the voting process.

Take the 2015 film Tangerine, which is miles away from the type of fare the Oscars usually reward, and is therefore nowhere to be seen in the list of nominees. Tangerine follows the story of two transgender women as they scour West Hollywood for the pimp who has wronged one of them, and was one of the most energetic and vibrant films I saw last year. The film was shot for around $100,000, and on an iPhone no less (though you wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know that information beforehand), which was necessitated by the fact that no studio in Hollywood would have dared fund the film. Like I said, not the type of film the Academy would normally praise, and yet that speaks to the blinkered existence in which the Academy lives.

So, you have a vibrant film scene happening under the radar in Hollywood, a scene that is inclusive of all comers, and more representative of what most people experience in the world around them. The fact that these films, and filmmakers, are excluded from awards recognition is not really the fault of the Oscars, outside of the fact that union membership seems to be an unofficial requirement of becoming a voting member. In order for the Academy Awards to recognize more diverse works, they need to urge their members to look outside of the big studio output, or the big studios need to start making a more diverse product. Right now it’s a little bit like a feedback loop; the studios continue making whitewashed tentpole movies and crowd-pleasing dramas, because that’s what audiences and awards shows like. The awards shows like those whitewashed crowd-pleasers because that’s the only thing being made, and on and on and on it will go until someone decides to make a change. I believe the decision to expand Academy membership and recruit new members is the right one, but it remains to be seen if it will be enough. I’ll tell you one thing, I am actually more interested in seeing this year’s Oscars than I have been in quite awhile.

Visiting and Revisiting: After Life (1998) Pt. 1

Aaron: Welcome back to Visiting and Revisiting with Rik and Aaron, a somewhat regular feature where we take turns introducing each other to films that are important to us, but of which the other one has somehow missed. We then discuss the film in blog posts that span both of our sites, in Rik’s case, The Cinema 4 Pylon, and in mine, Working Dead Productions. This is our first installment since October, and also our first non-horror film discussion. The film this time comes recommended by me, and it’s one I’m very excited about discussing, so without further ado…

After Life came out in 1998, when its director, Hirokazu Kore-eda, was 36 years old. Though he had already made a name for himself among international film critics three years earlier with Maborosi, After Life cemented Kore-eda’s position as an important new voice in Japanese cinema. I have not been able to watch any of Kore-eda’s early documentary work, although it seems to follow that his beginnings there, particularly in documenting the emergence of AIDS in Japan, formed much of his style as he transitioned to narrative filmmaking. Maborosi and After Life flow with the unhurried, documentarian’s eye for mundane details that nonetheless speak volumes about his character’s lives, a trait that he has carried with him through the following years. Kore-eda’s films also feature a warmth and humanity that is surprising in its depth, and a gentleness that invites the viewer in, prompting us to find our own meanings and messages within the film. Kore-eda’s films feature a surplus of wonderfully realized individuals, and a distinct lack of recognizable antagonists (a fact that may be hindering his commercial prospects here in the West). Even the ripped-from-the-headlines drama Nobody Knows and his award-winning Still Walking, which both feature his most villainous characters, portray those people as complex and sympathetic rather than vile cutouts.

After Life, briefly stated, is an allegorical film built around one deceptively simple question: “What one memory would you like to take with you into eternity?” The film poses this question early on, and then dedicates two hours to delicately and perceptively exploring all of the ramifications implied by said question. As a group of 22 disparate individuals find themselves in a slightly rundown bureaucratic building, they are told they will be moving on to whatever awaits them beyond death within one week. For three days they will have regular interviews with a group of purgatorial social workers with the aim of choosing one memory out of their entire life that they would want to live within for eternity. After the third day, the staff goes about the business of filming the memory, and on Saturday all of the films will be screened, after which the dead will move on. It’s a concept that could easily devolve into high camp, black comedy, or sentimental drivel, and yet Kore-eda’s style grounds everything in a gentle, subdued manner.

When After Life came out in 1998, I was 20 years old and enrolled in the University of Alaska, Anchorage. I was aware of the film, having heard about it from a pair of teacher’s assistants in my Japanese class, although their critique left much to be desired. “It was OK. Interesting,” was basically what their reaction to catching this film in a theatre amounted to. I wish I had looked further into the film myself, because it would be another four years before I finally tracked down a DVD copy. When I finally watched the film, it was while my ex-girlfriend (current wife) was out of town for a few days, the longest we had been apart since moving in together a year earlier, and I had been in a bit of a melancholy state. Very early into the film I began smiling, and I don’t think I stopped until well after the end credits rolled. It’s not that the film is funny, per se, it’s that the overall feeling is so warm and inviting, so modestly charming, the characters are uniformly likable, the rundown building they work and live in is so homey. Everything works together to invite the viewer in and encourage them to stay. After each of my viewings I’ve felt the urge to immediately begin playing the film again. I think it should be obvious by now, but After Life is a film I absolutely adore. Over the last fifteen years I’ve come to the conclusion that it is as close to a perfect film as any I’ve ever seen.

Hirokazu Kore-eda has a pretty solid critical reputation, and most of his films get positive reviews at Cannes and all the other major festivals, and yet he’s never really broken out of that audience. Rik, I’m wondering if you’d had any previous awareness of this film or his other output, beyond the times when I might have brought it up. As much as I recommend his works, and this film in particular, you are the first person who has actually listened to me and watched the film, and so I’m really excited to see what you have to say about it.

Rik: I have been aware of Kore-eda’s reputation as a growing force in cinema for some time, but had just never buckled down and tried to watch one of his films. My massive database of “must-see” films comprised of titles that have been nominated for major awards or appeared at festivals like Cannes (for example) certainly has some Kore-eda titles contained within it, but I had yet to tackle his filmography. And yes, I do remember you telling me about him from time to time, but when you have thousands of films before you already, it really became a case of “throw another log on the fire”. I would try to get to it eventually. And now I have.

I was recently reading an article onThe Guardian website where Kore-eda was, not really upset, but just mildly anxious that people have been comparing his style to Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese master director whose style became increasingly minimalist throughout his career, as he created a series of profound, classic family dramas in the late ‘40s and through the ‘50s. Kore-eda considered the comparison a compliment, of course, but felt that his own films were more like Mikio Naruse, who created leisurely paced, working class dramas for four decades in Japan, or the British director, Ken Loach, known for his slice of life films about ordinary people, though with the occasional more political thrust of films like The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Hidden Agenda.

In all three cases – Naruse, Loach, and Kore-eda – the word we are looking for seems to be “humanist”. In Kore-eda’s films, at least the two I have now seen (Hana: The Tale of a Reluctant Samurai [Hana yori mo naho] being the other one), the concern seems to lie not so much with the world in which the characters thrive but in the day-to-day details of their lives and their emotional states. In After Life, I was struck by how quickly he was able to make me care about so many different characters in such a short time, often with a minimal amount of dialogue or personal details. If you are accepting of the premise – that of an existential agency that moves people from their lives on Earth to eternal rest in a heaven-like state – then it should not take much to get you wrapped up quickly in the comforting arms of this film.

Aaron: Rik, am I alone in getting a little bit of a Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry vibe from the final parts of this film, where the memories are being recreated on a small soundstage? It seems not-so-distantly related to films like Be Kind Rewind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Synecdoche, New York, though of course predating those works by several years.

Rik: You are not alone at all, sir. I definitely sensed a similar Gondry-esque vibe, though of course it is not taken to the same level of absurdity as things in those others films. The effect here is more workmanlike; even when the agency workers meet up with problems in the course of recreating memories, and even when Shiori’s boss takes her to task for supposedly screwing up, the means of achieving their goals are through reason and hard work, and never centered on fantastical means (even taking in the actual setting of the film into consideration).

Aaron: I’ll agree with you about the workmanlike nature of the film, which I think keeps things from becoming too precious or twee. It’s like the common explanation of the difference between an artist and a craftsman. I’d argue that Kore-eda is both, but I think in temperament he falls closer to craftsman. His concern is telling the story clearly, and in documenting the actions and emotions. I don’t think he’s quite so worried about imparting a general message. As I’ve said, I believe his films allow you the freedom to make up your own mind as to how to interpret them. Which, of course, mirrors what the characters in After Life are doing. Their job isn’t to leave their subjects with a sense of power, beauty and towering importance; their job is to recreate, as accurately as possible, what an actual moment felt, looked, sounded and smelt like. And because these characters are not artists, they approach everything from the pragmatic mind of a social worker, coming up with ways to get a breeze just right, or to mimic the look of an outdoor park bench from inside a small soundstage. Again, they aren’t trying to dictate the emotion; the emotion comes from the viewer. This film is such a perfect melding between style and content.

Of course the big question here is; have you been thinking about what one memory you would choose? I won’t ask you to share it if you have, but I imagine you’ve been giving some thought to the subject. It’s one that has returned to me quite regularly since I first saw this film, and it seems to change from year to year. Once, it was a memory of sitting on the shores of Loch Ness at midnight, later it was a memory of me and my wife laying in the grass in Washington after a particularly epic outdoor concert, after the birth of my daughter I’ve had plenty to choose from, and now I might risk Shiori’s ire by choosing that most clichéd memory; a trip to Disneyland. Our last trip to Disney, my wife and daughter and I, and it was just a relaxed, good day where everything went right, and we ended it with a quiet, fancy dinner where we sat around making easy conversation. That hour at the restaurant, where we sat at a table warming ourselves (it was a chilly day) with good food and laughter seems as nice a moment to live in as any I can think of.

Rik: That answer is easy: I can’t think of one. Or rather, I can’t decide on one. If you were to ask me in one of my more depressed states, I might say that I would like to remember the moment of my death throughout eternity. That is not to be shocking or maudlin, but remembering when you died is a solid way to remind yourself that you were once alive. But if you were to ask me when I was in a good mood (which is rare these days), it might be a moment where I am at dinner with all of my old friends in Anchorage, or a moment when I was creating surrealistic cartoons in my dad’s camper a couple of years ago with my brothers, or when I was four and played on the steps of the 4^th Avenue Theatre while going to a showing of Pinocchio. Or it might be an image of me watching Destroy All Monsters on the Channel 11 monster matinee show, where I am sitting on a blanket in our living room eating a bowl of freshly made buttered popcorn. There are a number of moments I could choose – and unsurprisingly, most of them would have nobody else in them -- and it really would depend on how much I would wish to reward or punish myself at that moment of choosing.

It might surprise many that know me to find that a visit to Disneyland wouldn’t be my choice, considering how important it was for me to finally get there and also just how much I have been there over the past decade. That is mainly because, with being there so much now, it would be hard to pick a single memory. Also, I wouldn’t want to tee off Shiori, because she is a cupcake.

Aaron: One thing that bothers me a bit about the ‘one memory for eternity’ concept is that it kind of discounts how our memory works. When we think of one single event from our past, we’re actually thinking of hundreds of other tiny things that went into that one moment. When one of the deceased chooses to remember sitting on a bench with her fiancé before he goes off to war, how much of that context remains once every other memory is gone? Will she remember that her fiancé went to war? That her fiancé died? Will she even remember who the man was? This puzzle isn’t enough to dampen my enjoyment of the film in the least, but I find myself bumping up against it nonetheless whenever I think back to it.

Rik: I agree with you about the workings of memory, or at least our perception of how it works. But that brings up another problem that I had with the memory constructs in the film (and in many other uses of memory in films beyond After Life).

In my experience, our memories don’t have our faces in them. I remember the faces of other people that were at someplace or were doing something, but for myself, there is just a sense of myself, not my image. That is something that bothered me with their recreations in this film. I never see my face in my dreams, and when I have memory flashbacks, the same is true. That may not be true for everyone, especially narcissists, but I would have to believe that it is probably common.

Movies that hew closely to not showing faces in memories or dreams still often cheat and have the protagonist look into a mirror or pool of water, but I cannot recall that ever happening in one of my dreams, nor in my memories. This may be due to low self-esteem in how I see myself (or prefer not to, as it were). What I do have in those dreams and memories, however, is a complete awareness of myself, sometimes to a negative effect, but I am always in control of my sense of self, if not anything else in the dream.

Aaron: Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m thinking back to various memories and trying to determine whether I visualize myself in them or not. But now I’m putting myself in all of my memories, and I can’t be sure if it’s because you called attention to it, or if I’ve always done that. I think, honestly, it might be a bit of a mixture. I know a lot of my really old memories I see from a third person perspective, because I’ve formed those memories as much from what people have told me about them as from my actual experience. As an adult, however, I do believe you’re correct, and I don’t see myself in them. But for dreams, that’s another story. I tend to shift focus a lot in dreams, where one minute I’m me, doing something, and then another I’m in a different body seeing what I’m doing.

I think that might help explain how the memory constructs would work; perhaps they’d give you the shifting experience of both seeing and feeling what is going on. Or perhaps the memory itself will lock you into your own perspective. Or perhaps, because we are given no information at all about what happens after this one week, the memory is literally a keepsake you take with you as a memento of your life. Maybe eternity does resemble the popular perception of heaven, and the film is something you can put on one night to remind yourself of what you were before. There are so many possibilities that exist, and we’ve got so little information with which to narrow down the options.

Part Two of this discussion can be found on the Cinema 4 Pylon blog by following this link: http://bit.ly/1V2tcBd

Visiting and Revisiting: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) Pt. 2

This is Part II of a two-part article in which my friend Rik Tod Johnson (The Cinema 4 Pylon) and I discuss the 1977 film version of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. To read Part I on Rik’s website, click here.

Rik: Besides the character of Montgomery, whom you mentioned in passing [in Part I] (and who I feel is still played very strongly by Nigel Davenport), there are a couple of other major characters in the film we haven’t touched on. First, there is the Sayer of the Law, who serves as quite literally what is imparted in his name. In this version, Richard Basehart, whom I knew very well from television on Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, plays the Sayer. When I first saw the Sayer of the Law in this version of Moreau, I never made the connection that it was the captain of the Seaview wearing a mask, even though upon reflection, his basic features can be made out underneath the makeup. Because I was never enamored of Basehart as an actor (I always thought he was kind of stiff), I likewise never really connected with his performance here. I did spend time teaching my brothers to recite The Law after I saw the film, as I coached them into performing scenes from the film so we could run around as Beast-Men, but it really wasn’t because of him.

Aaron: Of the three films, Richard Basehart struck me as the most forgettable Sayer of the Law. That may be a combination of both acting and makeup, as I found the look to be fairly nondescript. It’s basically a ring of white hair around his face and a vaguely canine nose that from many angles looks merely like a larger-than-average schnozz. Obviously this is to give the Sayer of the Law a distinct appearance, apart from the humanimals but yet not quite human, and yet it lacks anything distinctive. He could just be another shipwrecked soul. Bela Lugosi’s Sayer of the Law was also less distinctively animal than some of the other beasts in Island of Lost Souls, wearing what was essentially fur glued to his face, but Lugosi has that voice, and those eyes! He’s a captivating presence even when he’s not speaking, and seems otherworldly at all times. Richard Basehart basically let the makeup convey the animalistic side of the character, while remaining fairly human in his actual performance.

Rik: Lugosi has always seemed like the perfect choice for the Sayer to me. His performance resonates with me the most (as I expect it would with a majority of humanity). The casting of Ron Perlman in the 1996 version seems like the most obvious one to make, especially given his success in playing characters saddled with extreme makeup effects. And Perlman is a very strong actor. The problem for me is I cannot recall his performance at all when I think back to the film. For that matter, I have a hard time recalling anything except Brando and his little person pal. And that ice bucket. Oh, that ice bucket…

Aaron: Yeah, Perlman had a great look to him in the film, and he was fine with what they gave him to do, but that film is such a mess that it’s hard to pick anything out aside from Brando and his increasingly bizarre character choices.  

Rik: I would love to remember his performance, but I simply can’t. I saw the film last when it came out in the theatre, and I think, apart from seeing scenes in the Stanley documentary, have largely expunged it from my mind.

The last major character we haven’t tackled is the one I would most love to, and that is Maria, played by a lovely, fragile-looking Barbara Carrera. In my memory, I continue to think of Carrera as a Bond girl of that period, but she wasn't in a Bond flick until the non-Broccoli Never Say Never Again in 1983, where she played Fatima to Connery's returning super-spy. I fell in love the instant I saw her on the cover of that Moreau novelization. She basically represents the puma in the novel who will ultimately battle Moreau to the death, and Lota the Panther Woman in the 1933 version who is at the center of all the bestiality hubbub regarding that infamous take on the tale.

Here, her character is sweet but really rather dull, almost like she is being used only for scenery (much like the cover photo that drew me to her) and/or to throw us off the scent a bit. I had always assumed just from her appearance on the island that Moreau had experimented on her. She also walks around holding an ocelot much of the time, which says to me they were at least trying to make us believe she is more than what she appears. The final scene on the boat, when a passing ship discovers them, is very strange. When we first see the lifeboat (the Lady Vain, the one in which Braddock first arrived, so that now he leaves the island the same way), we only see Maria, her face obscured by her hair. When Braddock, now changed fully back to his human form, crawls out from under his blanket, her back is to us. It is pretty clear to me that they are at least hinting that she has transformed into something else. Braddock gets distracted by the noise of the ship's horn trying to get their attention, and we see only one shot of Maria's face, and she looks unlike she does anywhere else in the film. Yes, she is crying, but her eyes seem very odd and her face seems puffier. Then the film is over.

It makes me wonder if there was an alternate ending filmed where we see her eyes are yellow as she begins to transform. Honestly, I thought she was starting to change into a cat when I went to the film that first time. And it stuck in my head that she was, and every time I see it since, I always get riled up about the ending. But there are two very good reasons for my belief that she is some sort of ocelot or panther woman: the original movie poster. The top third of the frame is definitely a female who goes through the process of switching into a ferocious panther. Since this does not appear anywhere in the film, it leads me to believe it may have been filmed and then cut (I can't imagine why you would go to the expense and then trash it, unless it was really terrible).

The second comes from the novelization, which as I mentioned is based on the original screenplay. This is the final paragraph of the book: "Maria spoke no words. She only opened her mouth, revealing two fangs, two puma-like, animal fangs."

What is your take on Maria and the case of the missing panther-woman, Aaron?

Aaron: I think anyone with any sort of familiarity with this story would recognize Maria as a panther-woman from the very outset, when she first arrives on film. Certainly the ocelot she’s constantly carrying with her would be another clue, for those not yet in the know.

And so I find it odd that the film tries to be coy about it at all. Possibly that was a move meant to keep some of the stricter censors off of the film’s scent, because when Michael York and Barbara Carrera first have sex, my initial thought was ‘wow, so the film actually went there’. If the film had been more upfront in stating that she was actually a cat, I doubt those love scenes would have been included. But then, why continue that coyness even to the end? It’s obvious as soon as the two of them are adrift on the life raft, just from the character’s positions alone, that something is wrong with Maria, and yet the film keeps holding off on showing us what we already know, only to let the shoe drop with a literal blink-and-you’ll-miss-it insert shot of Maria with a slightly lumpy face. It’s strangely anticlimactic, giving the ending a weird shapeless feel, and leaves so little an impression that even the film’s Wikipedia page neglects to include this information in the otherwise rather detailed synopsis.

Rik: Not much respect has been paid to the film in its releases on video. I had a VHS copy for many years, which I replaced with the MGM Presents Midnite Movies DVD when it came out in 2001. The only special feature is the original theatrical trailer. It would have been really nice to have a commentary to confirm some of my suspicions about the Maria character. I just found out that it was released earlier this year on an all-regions Blu-Ray disc, but there are no extra features that I can find, apart from a widescreen 1:85:1 frame, which I already have on my DVD version. I doubt we will get many answers about it anytime soon, if ever.

While I loved the makeup of the humanimals when it came out, time has not been kind. They seem rather immovable and too inorganic to me. While I like his work, it is not surprisingly to learn that John Chambers, who won an Oscar for the original Planet of the Apes, was the creator of the makeup effects. Tom Burman is credited with the makeup design. I know Burman from many horror and fantasy films he did in the ‘80s and ‘90s (though he now wastes his talent on things like Grey’s Anatomy… still, steady work is nice). How do you feel about the makeup work?

Aaron: Well, I’ll say that it makes sense now that I know the makeup effects artist worked on Planet of the Apes, because the designs and execution here have a similar rubber-mask feel, and are not expressive at all. Everyone’s expressions are constantly fixed, and when characters speak the mouth remains almost motionless but the nose portion of the mask will wobble up and down unrealistically. That said, I don’t think they look horrible in their design. They do look a bit like mythical beasts, and not so much like what I imagine transmogrified man-animals would look like, but they are distinctive enough that I could see being impressed by them if I had seen this at the age you had seen it.

We keep going back to it, but if you look at some of the beasts in Island of Lost Souls, they look like what you’d imagine when you think of someone cutting up animals and piecing them together like jigsaw puzzles. Some characters will have features that look vaguely catlike, and then a segment of their face will be clearly avian. It’s truly nightmarish, and another example of why that film stands head and shoulders over the rest of the films made. Compare that with this version of the film, where many of the non-featured humanimals seem to just have lumpy, furry faces, like maybe their having an allergic reaction to something. Outside of the main creatures, I don’t think you can look at most of the humanimals in this version and deduce what animal they used to be. They all have very similar physiognomies.

Rik: Something of which you may not be aware, Aaron, and I really wasn’t at the time, but the character of M’Ling, the Beast-Man servant, is played by Nick Cravat. Growing up watching The Crimson Pirate (and another swashbuckler featuring Lancaster called The Flame and the Arrow), I knew Cravat as Burt’s right hand guy, a generally mute character with whom Lancaster would perform acrobatics in the film. They were best friends since childhood and real life, and performed in the circus together for years before Lancaster broke through in Hollywood. His appearance with Lancaster in Moreau was the last of their nine film appearances together. I also knew Cravat from a small role in Disney’s Davy Crockett film. I never picked up on Cravat even watching the credits, probably because I really didn’t know his name at the time, just his face, which is absolutely obscured by makeup (though once again, it is easy to make out his basic features if you know what he looks like in real life).

Aaron: I’m not familiar enough with Nick Cravat to have picked him out of a lineup, but I think you’re glossing over what may be his most pertinent bit of work history prior to this: Cravat was apparently the Gremlin in the original Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode of The Twilight Zone.

I feel bad for not mentioning M’Ling before now, because he is quite a sympathetic character who also has some important bits of business to do. But the character seems underutilized in this film, showing up every once in awhile, and disappearing for so long that when he helps Braddock and Maria escape at the end I had kind of forgotten him. The character gets no real chance to develop on his own.

FINAL TAKES

Rik: My final take on the film is that I still enjoy it after all this time, though it pales in comparison to Island of Lost Souls. Lancaster's performance holds up for me, as do those of Davenport and York. But in the end, the film feels today like a Hallmark production (the ones regularly aired on NBC and CBS in the '70s, not the current TV network), or like a Reader's Digest condensed version of the tale, where they have scrubbed some of the more inflammatory material to make it palatable to the general public. For production value alone and the latent memories I have of it, this version still warrants a 6/9 on my scale, which is "good". But I would prefer people watch Island of Lost Souls if they want to see a really incredible version of this story (whether or not they end up loving it as we do).

Aaron: That’s a good point about this feeling like a condensed or sanitized version of the story, which also strikes me as a bit bizarre, because my favorite parts of this film, dealing with Braddock’s transformation and Moreau’s downfall at the hands of his creations, strive towards something that could be genuinely challenging. This movie hints at something more inflammatory than some of the other moments in the other versions, and yet the film seems to pull back from those ideas before completely committing to them. If it had gone farther in those directions, and actually addressed any of the philosophical implications of what it means to be human, or whether we can ever conquer our own natures, this could have been a classic for the ages. Reading this back, I feel like I come across as too harsh on the film, which is not as bad as I maybe make it out to be. As it is, I think my rating would be slightly lower than yours. I’d give it a 5/9 on the same scale you use, which in my eyes means it was worth seeing, but I didn’t completely like it.

Visiting and Revisiting: John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (2001) Part 1

Welcome to the second edition of Visiting and Revisiting with Aaron Lowe (Working Dead Productions) and Rik Tod Johnson (The Cinema 4 Pylon). The focus of this column, intended to be a semi-regular feature on both our sites, is to review films that one of us has already seen, possibly even multiple times, but the other has somehow put off watching over the years. Sometimes we get surprised when one or the other has not seen a fairly well known film, so we felt this was a good way to not only give the film either a fresh or updated viewing, but also to allow us to discuss the film at length afterwards.

Aaron: I saw Ghosts of Mars in the theater in 2001, if not on opening weekend, it was pretty darn close. I was 23, and I loved John Carpenter. Despite a few films in the ‘90s that I chose to ignore, he had never really let me down. Vampires, his previous film, I had seen on opening night, and despite its less-than-stellar reputation, I really enjoyed it. The fact that I liked — but didn’t love — Ghosts of Mars was, I reasoned, a testament to Carpenter’s consistent history of ridiculously enjoyable genre fare. Its low ranking when compared to his previous efforts spoke not so much to Ghosts’ lack of quality, but to the fact that it’s hard to top yourself when your filmography contains Halloween, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China, to name just the first three that pop into my head. For nearly a decade, Ghosts of Mars appeared to be Carpenter’s last theatrical film, which meant that I felt more defensive of it than I might otherwise. I had more than a few discussions where I came to the film’s defense, but arguments such as ‘sure, it’s not his best, but it’s more fun than you remember’ struck me even at the time as apologetic and noncommittal.

Ghosts of Mars begins on the red planet, with a ghost train arriving in the city of Chryse. The train’s sole passenger, police officer Natasha Henstridge, is unconscious and handcuffed, and there is no sign of the crew or her fellow officers. Brought before a tribunal, she recounts the story of how she was sent to the small mining colony of Shining Canyon to retrieve Desolation Williams, a particularly nasty outlaw accused of slaughtering dozens of civilians. What she and her fellow officers find is a ghost town, with everyone either dead or missing, and Williams (Ice Cube) still locked in his jail cell, while just over the hills, a band of resurrected Martian warriors readies themselves for battle. The majority of the film concerns the cops teaming up with the criminals to defend themselves against the titular ghosts of Mars.

The flashback structure used here, where the hero is discovered by people in authority and forced to tell their story while some larger threat grows outside, is one that Carpenter had previously used for In the Mouth of Madness, and that sort of self quoting is something he does a lot in this film. The film’s most obvious precedent is his own Assault on Precinct 13, which told a similar story of cops and criminals forced to cooperate in order to defend themselves against a common enemy massing outside. The score and editing seemed designed to quote his ‘Apocalypse Trilogy’ as well, most notably Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness, while the isolated location and idea of being replaced by an alien intelligence recalls his classic The Thing. You mentioned in one of our discussions the connection to The Fog, which is his earlier film about a mist that brings violent ghosts with it. It’s such an obvious reference that I am utterly ashamed to have not noticed it all these years.

The one thing I’m most looking forward to with this entry of Visiting & Revisiting is that we’re both approaching this with different histories, but with a certain shared level of clarity; you, as a first time viewer, and I, without the rose colored glasses through which I first saw the film. If I’m being honest, the film has several glaring problems, but I still think it’s more fun than its reputation suggests, and is also clearly a film no one but John Carpenter could make, or at least no one else would make it in this way. That alone gives it some value in my mind, as I prefer the relative failure of this, which still feels like a Carpenter film, to the failure of The Ward, his first (and to this point only) theatrical production since. The Ward makes a good contrast, because it’s a competently made film, but completely devoid of anything you look for in a Carpenter film. The result felt lifeless and generic to me, which is not a comment that I believe can be made about Ghosts of Mars, despite what the title tells you.

I know you’ve only very recently seen this film, though I also know you’re a fan of Carpenter in general. Any reason for the fifteen-year wait?

Rik: Ghosts of Mars came out to theatres at a crucial time for me. I was still beat down from the previous two films from one of my favorite directors, John Carpenter. I had seen all of his films in theatres starting with The Fog in 1980 (I snuck in… too young to buy a ticket) through Vampires in 1998. Escape from L.A. (1996) had been the first cinematic beating I took from the Master (though frankly, I did not like previous film, his remake of Village of the Damned, all that much). I liked portions of Escape from L.A. well enough, and it was grand to see Snake Plissken back in action, but goddammit, that surfing scene is still absolutely horrible and murdered the overall picture for me to this day. Vampires came after I had seen so many better vampire films, I could not get into any of the characters, and I thought much of it was lazy filmmaking. Three years later, Ghosts of Mars comes out and I just look at the trailer and say, “Hmm… not today.” I thought Carpenter was just spinning his wheels, and had really sort of given up the ghost (without actually giving up the ghost).

I avoided Ghosts of Mars until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided that I should at least watch the one remaining film on his professional resume that I have not seen. After all, since Ghosts came out, Carpenter had shown there was still life in the old boy yet with a couple of episodes a full decade ago for the Masters of Horror television anthology, one which I thought was pretty good (Pro-Life) and one that I thought was amongst his best work (the more well-known and regarded Cigarette Burns). He also came back to theatres in 2010 with the aforementioned film, The Ward, which I liked a bit more than Aaron. I didn’t care if it was missing many prime Carpenter touchstones, chiefly because Amber Heard gives me serious Ward.

And so, one morning I popped in Ghosts of Mars, and while I did not like much of it, I did not hate it either. From the outset, it was pleasing to immediately fall into that sense you can only get from a Carpenter film, which has been my chief reason for sticking with him all these, well, decades. Carpenter is a filmmaker who sticks tight to his bag of tricks. Like De Palma, he is the sum of his early influences, but unlike De Palma, whose slavish devotion to Hitchcock is both his most charming component and his ultimate downfall, Carpenter is harder to pinpoint. Yes, he is admittedly and obviously a big Howard Hawks guy — and Ghosts of Mars’ referencing of Carpenter’s own Assault on Precinct 13 likewise registers new echoes of its forerunner, Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959) — but Hawks himself was hard to hold to a set genre, and was comfortable adapting his fast-talking, tough guy style to anything thrown at him. Carpenter exists more in a specific genre, but is one of those filmmakers — whatever his influences — that has such a consistency of mood and tone to his overall oeuvre that it is hard to mistake most of his films for the work of another director. Cronenberg, Lynch, Maddin… they too have been able to do this, but except for Cronenberg’s last few films, their work has generally resided on the more extreme end of modern filmmaking (and in Maddin’s case, often the fringe), where a director can get away with this. Carpenter has been more of a Hollywood guy, and so the fact that even his most mainstream works still contain his undeniable essence behind the camera points to how strongly he has been able to brand his own style.

Aaron:  Yes, the film’s story is old hat for Carpenter, and many of the stylistic touches are as well, but there is one wrinkle in the film I really enjoy, and that is the film’s flashback structure. The entire movie is a flashback, but repeatedly the film bounces back even further as a new character is introduced and we learn their story. We also see the same events from different angles depending on which character we’re supposed to be focusing on in that instance. This isn’t exactly Rashomon, but I enjoy the way we get multiple perspectives all branching out from the main perspective of Natasha Henstridge recounting this story, and I enjoy the editing techniques he uses to differentiate which level of a flashback we’re in. The main timeline uses a lot of crossfades, as scenes fade directly into the next with no fade to white or black. Flashbacks are entered through use of one of those fades, while the flashbacks-within-flashbacks use various forms of screenwipes to transition between camera shots. The crossfade is something he uses a lot in normal scenes as well, as he uses it to cut out a lot of incremental movement. At first I thought this was Carpenter aping a then-popular technique, popularized by Robert Rodriguez in El Mariachi and Desperado, but listening to the commentary it seems like it was a choice Carpenter made in order to give the rather slow opening a sense of momentum. I have to admit, it does give a sense of creeping momentum to everything. I don’t think it entirely succeeds, but I believe it gives a sense of impending, continual danger. And as you said, it lends the film that distinctive Carpenter touch, as he’s always been a director that enjoys putting an ominous, pulsing score behind everything.

[To read part two of VIsiting and Revisiting: John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, click here]