Well, I’m back in the saddle at work again and catching up here on the site. I’m halfway through Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle (hat tip to Tom) and should have the review soon. And based on the story so far, I think I’ll read the other two books at some point. I have some movie and tv reviews coming up very soon. I’ve got over a thousand photos from the Southwest to edit and rate so I should have a few photo posts coming up soon. The political situation is like some kind of crazy kaleidoscopic nightmare. It sounds like Ray Bradbury’s formula for his stories, “The trip—exactly one-half exhilaration, exactly one-half terror.” And now we know just how many women are willing to admit to having sex with Donald Trump. I guess he was right about them letting him grab them. But they do seem to have been paid for the experience. Trump truly believes in capitalism. Well at least he wasn’t attacking them like Slick Willie. Either way things seem to be going well. The Republicans are afraid of losing the House, blah, blah, blah. Well they are pretty lame so anything is possible. But they really should embrace populism and try to show some backbone. It is the smart move. I still have to read some of the political columns I missed but whether there is something important to share remains to be seen. From my point of view Trump needs to clean the stables and drain the swamp. Then he can move onto policy. And he needs to punish the sanctuary cities and send the illegals home. And finally, Justice Kennedy, go away, now!
Category: Science Fiction / Fantasy
Interregnum
As threatened, I will be away until next Thursday (22MAR) and will have limited (if any) opportunity to post. But don’t despair. I will be gathering excellent photographic material and revitalizing my flagging wit. I hope that in my absence there will be no Trump related nuclear exchanges or Mueller presidential indictments or any other earthshaking events. Feel free to leave comments on this post to provide me with any topics or things that you think warrant attention. Or just to say hello.
I shall return!
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William Shatner – A Demigod of Bad Acting
Over the course of over fifty-five years of television viewing I have become jaded and much of what I once felt was entertaining has lost its thrill. For instance, as a young kid I was convinced that “The Twilight Zone” was not only great acting and entertainment but also intellectually dazzling. I thought that “Flipper” was top-notch adventure and “Lost in Space” was cutting edge science fiction. Ah, youth.
But one thing has remained constant from the early sixties to the present day. And that is the Shatner. From my first sighting of him on the Twilight Zone as the panicked lunatic on “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” to his every close-up on the original “Star Trek” TV series to his every career iteration he has distinguished himself as the World’s Greatest Bad Actor. No one can compare.
And along the way I’ve cheered him on. I thrilled to the scene where he agonized about “losing command” when the transporter separated him into “Good Kirk and Bad Kirk” and he knew that “Bad Kirk” was muy macho and he, “Good Kirk,” was a wimp. I was transfixed as marooned Kirk shouted up to the sky, “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!” And I fought back the nausea listening to his riveting rendition of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” It’s been a wild ride.
But his greatest role is one that few have seen or remarked on. In 1984 he starred in a made for tv movie called “Secrets of a Married Man.” In it he is an engineer who is going through a mid-life crisis. His job is on the line due to a difficult project. He’s stressed out and his wife is busy with the kids. He starts having sex with hookers. There are a number of hilarious Shatner overacting scenes that turn what are supposed to be serious problems into over the top comedy. In one scene he’s in the shower and looks down and starts spazzing out and choking out the words “Oh my God!” In the next scene his doctor is telling him he just has a rash on his genitals and he shouldn’t worry. Another gem is Shatner driving down the main street with his wife next to him in the car and all the hookers are calling out greetings to him by his first name (Chris) and him claiming that it’s some kind of standard hooker greeting. Ah, if only the Oscar went to the deserving.
But time is running out. Shatner was born March 22, 1931. In a few days he’ll be 87. One day soon the world will wake up to the news that the Shat is no more. And on that day, I will mourn. But in the meantime, it’s comforting to know that in this world of relativism and revisionist propaganda the gold standard for something has stood the test of time and will be there immortalized in all its tacky splendor, the life work of William Shatner. Well done Shatner, well done.
Shatner Links
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 7 – Nick of Time
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 3 – Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
A Really Weird Article About Human Motivation
Out at the fringes of the Dark Enlightenment are many very smart, very weird individuals. The guy who writes the blog that this link goes to http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-to-understand-friston-on-free-energy/ is a psychiatrist who supposedly is part of the dissident right. In this post he discusses a theory (Free Energy Principle) that unifies the behavior of living things from the single cell organism up to and including the behavior of human beings. Now I haven’t read all the details but apparently the postulator of this theory is a brilliant individual who is equally comfortable with brain physiology and quantum physics and sees links between both. Apparently, he has identified the underlying motivation behind all human activity. And it’s not love or fear or sex or power. It’s the desire to avoid uncertainty. Huh. Didn’t see that coming.
Anyway, he also links https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064518300083 to a paper about this theory that compares the potential for applying this theory in real life to the fictional psychohistory of Asimov’s Harry Seldon. In the Foundation novels Harry Seldon uses psychohistory to predict the future and also engineer changes to that history to improve the outcome.
And they call me crazy for voting for Trump! Well, anyway, I include it here for your attention.
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The Promethean – A Science Fiction Book Review
I previously read Owen Stanley’s novel “The Missionaries.” That was a satire about primitive people running up against the insanity of United Nations social engineering. Because I enjoyed his writing I figured I’d give “The Promethean” a whirl. This book takes place in the same world as “The Missionaries” but since the subject involves humanoid robots and human-level artificial intelligence I’ve slightly stretched the definition by including it in science fiction. But it also could be called a social satire or a social comedy.
The title is an echo of the full title of Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus.” In our case Dr. Frankenstein is represented by Harry Hockenheimer, a depressed American billionaire approaching forty and feeling like a failure. The mundane source of his vast wealth left him scientifically unfulfilled. He desired to create a scientific marvel and what he decides on is a robot so advanced in mind and body that it can fool all even the most intelligent audience.
The story proceeds from his plan to secretly build his man in England to the adventures of his creation, Frank Meadows interacting with modern British society in its various facets, from a small town pub, to appearing on a day time reality television show, to a University faculty dinner, and finally to an invitation at 10 Downing Street.
Along the way we meet several interesting characters who represent various facets of society and various philosophical bents including the scourge of our age, the Social Justice Warriors. But from my point of view, the most interesting character is a Scotsman academic, Dr. Habakkuk McWrath, Reader in Extreme Celtic Studies. His pugnacious and colorful speech inspires Frank to assert his humanity even in the face of the Three Laws of Robotics.
And the book concludes at its absurd climax. And what is the lesson of this social satire? I really don’t know. Perhaps it is just that humanity has reached a point where a rational appraisal of modern life can no longer find a reason to continue. The absurdity of what we do and why we do it has finally reached a point where scrapping the whole enterprise and starting over is the best way forward. But that is just my guess. Let’s just say it is a tale questioning the definition of intelligent life. It’s a moderate length story, about 170 pages and moves right along. I liked it but I will caution that it is a mild tale and cannot be mistaken for an adventure story. More of a droll cautionary tale of the world we now inhabit.
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Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman – A Science Fiction Movie Review
(Reviewer’s Note: I watched this movie almost three weeks ago and put it aside without finishing it because much better things were going on. Now that I’ve decided to finish it, I find that I’ve forgotten some of the details. Please forgive any vagueness or inaccuracies. Merciful forgetfulness has shielded me from a vivid memory of this dreck. But believe me when I say that this movie is as bad or worse than I represent it. Enjoy.)
As a worthy successor to a recent review (One Million B.C.) I have another TCM . Here is a movie that cries out for mockery. It has a plot so weak that I believe the writer must have been either a heroin addict, a congenital idiot or a democrat. This was a year after sputnik launched so the UFO is a big silver ball. The alien is a giant and he more or less fills up the whole ball. He’s a big bald-headed guy wearing a short dress that looks like it was stolen from the costume closet of the movie Spartacus. For some reason that probably didn’t even make sense to the writer, the giant is searching for diamonds. Alright, so much for the science fiction, such as it is. Now for the human interest. Harry and Nancy are a married couple with problems. Nancy is rich and has problems involving drinking and mental instability and Harry has a wandering eye for the ladies. When first we see him he’s at what looks like a diner with a blonde vixen named Honey wrapped around him complaining about how his rich wife won’t give him more money to spend on booze and trashy women. Honey is sympathetic. He has a plan to get Nancy’s money by having her committed to a mental institution. Honey is sympathetic again.
Switch scenes to Nancy driving along the roads of some southwestern landscape, cactus, sage brush and sand in all directions. She seems sad and drunk. And as she sadly, drunkenly drives along she sees giant sputnik flying around in the sky in a completely unconvincing imitation of anything moving through the air. Eventually it lands on the road in front of her. Nancy brakes into the shoulder and witnesses a truly unconvincing special effects portrayal of a fifty-foot alien coming out of a forty-foot sputnik. Most of the scene centers on Nancy screeching uncontrollably and trying to avoid the giant as he tries to paw her with his six-foot-long giant hand. Later on, we’ll learn that he somehow knew she was wearing a big diamond on a necklace. So, after a short encounter Nancy runs off leaving her car and stumbles into town. Telling the sheriff about the giant increases her reputation for being nuts. The sheriff tells his deputy to find Harry and tell him to bring Nancy home for a rest and a visit to the head shrinker.
Meanwhile Harry is now ensconced with Honey and bribes the deputy to say he couldn’t find him. Hearing Nancy’s story from the deputy gets Harry and Honey thinking that their big chance to have Nancy permanently locked up in a rubber room is at hand. They celebrate by going to Honey’s hotel room.
Eventually Harry goes to claim Nancy at the sheriff’s office. She nags at him until he agrees to go back for her car and see if her story is true. They find her car but the alien comes back. Harry fires a few rounds at the alien then bolts in fear. The alien catches Nancy and Harry drives off without her. Harry returns home and discovers that the alien has returned Nancy. She is lying unconscious on the roof of the pool house. She has scratches around her neck and her diamond is gone. Later on a doctor tells us that there are obvious signs of radioactivity. Science!
Now the sheriff decides he must act. He and the deputy agree to go out to where her car was and prove that there was nothing strange going on. Unfortunately, when they find her car they also find the space ship. The sheriff and the deputy go inside the space ship. Here they walk through a few rooms that seem to be sized for normal humans. And so, we have to ask ourselves how exactly does this giant fit in this space craft? In rough dimensions it appears that he would have to be curled into a fetal position just to fit into the diameter of the ship. And that is supposing that it was completely hollow. How would that allow these walls and floors to exist? And thus, my theory that the writer was a congenital idiot.
In one room they find a bunch of diamonds. Nancy’s diamond is there. They theorize on the scientific reasons why the giant wants diamonds. Science! When the giant returns they battle him with a pistol and a shot gun. I think I remember they blow either him or his space ship up with the shot gun. But I’m not sure. I think I was starting to lose interest at this point.
Doctors are summoned and Nancy is sedated. Harry plots putting poison in her IV drip but before he has a chance to she becomes a fifty-foot woman. Of course, all we see is her giant hand inside a room in the house. Eventually she goes berserk and breaks through the roof of the house and goes on a rampage looking for Harry. Now she is dressed in an impromptu fifty-foot brassiere and mini-skirt supposedly fashioned out of bed sheets. And all things considered she looks pretty good! At this point I reflected on the comparison between pretty and gigantic Nancy and normal sized but skanky looking Honey. Sure, the disparity in size might lead to marital difficulties but her huge size would guarantee that Harry would be pampered by his huge wife like some kind of rag doll, probably carried in her apron pocket and fed huge crumbs that collected on her clothes as she ate her huge meals. Well, enough of this random speculation.
Nancy goes on a rampage through town looking for Harry. Finally she pulls the roof off of the diner and finds Harry and Honey cowering in a corner. Nancy crushes Honey and grabs Harry in one hand and walks away. Finally the sheriff fires his shotgun at Nancy and hits an electric substation which explodes and kills Nancy. And Harry is dead too, although it’s uncertain if he dies from the explosion, the fall or from being crushed by a death spasm in his wife’s hand.
I ask you, is there a more ridiculous movie? Some will point to “Plan Nine From Outer Space” as a paragon of bad movie making and there is much justice in that. But compare the budgets of these two movies. “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” had a budget of $80,000. Looking at Plan Nine it would surprise me if $500 was expended. Unless you can claim that Plan Nine is one hundred and sixty times worse than Attack then you must admit that pound for pound, Plan Nine is a better movie. So, let’s hail Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman as the movie that provided least for the money expended.
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 Version) – A Classic Monster Movie Review
This is not part of the Universal Monster series. Paramount made this film and Frederic March was a pretty big star at the time so this movie was made as a serious literary drama. That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t contain scenes and effects taking advantage of the hedonistic exploits of Mr. Hyde. It does and to a degree that shows that this is during the pre-code period.
The plot follows the usual story line and we witness the happy, virtuous and talented Dr. Henry Jekyll metamorphose into the bestial sadistic Mr. Hyde. And we follow as Jekyll’s life and fortunes come crashing down. And of course, everyone around him is destroyed in the catastrophe.
The story by Robert Louis Stevenson was supposed to be about the duality of the human soul. The theory holds that the evil side of the human psyche is also the active/vital part and the good is the passive/weaker part. And in a sense there is truth in that. Our basest instincts are thoroughly hard-wired and are inseparable from the rest of our selves. Bottling up those instincts eventually leads to them bursting out in a destructive explosion. The saner course is to train and channel the energies of the brute and tame them to our better nature. So that’s the philosophy.
Now about the movie. Well it’s kind of fun. There are all kinds of outdated special effects and some hammy acting on display. But it’s a pretty well-done production. I think it’s an entertaining old monster movie. And I like it better than the later version with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman. I recommend it to fans of old monster movies.
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2001: A Space Odyssey – A Science Fiction Movie Review
(Warning, this whole review is one long spoiler. In my defense this movie is 49 years old.)
The only good thing about The Academy Awards is that for the whole month before, TCM plays many good (and not so good) old movies. Last night I watched 2001. As the exit music was finishing it occurred to me that this was the first time in almost fifty years that I had watched the movie from beginning to end. Back in 1968 I attended the film in a large theater in Manhattan as part of a class trip. At the time I was a sci-fi fan but I distinctly remember becoming incredibly bored during the “Infinity” sequence. And sure enough, last night I found my eyes glazing over as I waited for Keir Dullea to stop making funny faces and show up in Versailles. And then it also occurred to me that it was actually a very, very good movie. So, let’s talk about it. You already know I don’t like the “Infinity” sequence. But I find the rest of the film is excellent. Not everybody cares for Kubrick’s style in film-making. There is a great deal of stylization and idiosyncratic imagery that bothers many people. And without a doubt it is highly un-naturalistic. In fact, the ape men were the most realistic as personalities. The other characters are decidedly wooden.
But without a doubt this movie is an amazing spectacle. The matching of images to the musical soundtrack is perfect. The sequences of space ships landing and maneuvering are shown as if they were dancers in a ballet. The “Dawn of Man” sequence is riveting. I could believe that the actual event was very much like the portrayal (minus the monolith of course). It captured the essence of human ingenuity. The desperate and sordid circumstances of that ingenuity ring true.
And then there’s HAL. I hate HAL. I always have. But he is the perfect Frankenstein Monster. And the arc of his crime and punishment is, for me, a thing of hideous beauty. His relations with the astronauts are as creepy and dishonest as some Dickens villain, something like Uriah Heep. Some people feel sadness when Dave lobotomizes HAL and reduces him to the level of a two-year-old singing “Daisy.” I never shared that sadness. I guess I’m more Old-Testament.
So, that brings us back to the “Infinity” sequence which sucks. But following it we have what I call the “Versailles” scene where I guess Dave lives his life out as a captive of the monolith makers. This is weird and I guess necessary to set up the conclusion. Dave dies and is reborn as the next stage of human evolution. And he is returned to our solar system and the picture ends with him floating above earth to the sequence of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” and “The Blue Danube Waltz” playing us out.
In sum we have a fifty year old movie that is still visually stunning, that addresses the inexplicable advance of savage animals to the brink of interplanetary travel and the frightening prospect of facing our masters in artificial intelligence. What’s not to like? Well he could have added a few good-looking space babes but nobody’s perfect.
A Murder of Manatees by Larry Correia – A Science Fiction Book Review
As noted earlier, Larry Correia has published a second installment of his Tom Stranger stories (A Murder of Manatees: The Further Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent[Audiobook] By: Larry Correia, Adam Baldwin, Audible Studios Sold By: Audible).
I have to admit. This is a guilty pleasure. The stories, such as they are, border on the ridiculous. The plot is just an excuse to allow Tom Stranger and his friends and enemies to interact in an adventure that resembles science fiction in the same way that the old 1960s Batman tv series resembles Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies.
But I don’t care. It’s fun. Correia fills his little two-hour audiobook with good natured jabs at himself, modern politics, culture and the conventions of pulp science fiction. There’s never any doubt that Tom and his associates will provide quality, excellent customer service and that the bad guys will get their comeuppance.
And we can also be assured that Adam Baldwin will continue to find ways of voice portraying whatever ridiculous characters Larry invents, no matter whether it’s a bubble gum snapping android from the Jersey Shore or a hard-tweeting U.S. President on the battle field of the Mar-a-Lago golf course. Having only previously known Adam Baldwin’s acting skills from Full Metal Jacket, Firefly and Chuck I wasn’t prepared for his wonderfully hammy touch to this kind of goofy material. He absolutely makes the most of the story and its characters.
I just finished it today and I enjoyed every silly second of it. Bravo Larry and bravo Adam. I only wish there were more. And what I really wish is that Hollywood would wake up and make the Monster Hunter saga into a movie series (either tv or big screen). And I think Adam Baldwin would be a natural as Agent Franks.
But that’s a rant for another day. Meanwhile if you like goofy tongue in cheek pulp sci-fi or you’re a fan of Larry Correia or Adam Baldwin then I highly recommend A Murder of Manatees. You could think of plenty of worse ways to spend two hours.
One Million B.C. – A Science Fiction Movie Review
Turner Classic Movies is a mixed bag. They do play a lot of good old movies. But then you have to endure Alec Baldwin or Tina Fey talking to the insufferable host, Ben Mankiewicz about movies or anything else. Well anyway, they’ve been playing a lot of old bad sci-fi movies lately. It’s been great. I’ll give my thoughts on them. This is usually a combination of nostalgia and shock. I’ve seen most of these movies before but in some cases I haven’t seen them in over fifty years. Neither they nor I have aged well and so the re-acquaintance is sometimes off-putting to say the least. Both these movies and my younger self have lost a lot of respect in my current eyes. But today’s movie is a treat because I actually never saw this epic before. And first off do not mistake this masterpiece for the sound alike “One Million Years BC” re-make with Raquel Welch.
This is the 1940 masterpiece with those two towering thespians Lon Chaney Jr. and Victor Mature. Honestly this movie should get a special award for unbelievably bad special effects. But special effects is just the tip of the iceberg. The cheesiness of the sets, the really bad acting and the silliness of the plot combine to create a feast of cinematic awfulness. I loved it.
One of my favorite scenes has Victor Mature as caveman Tumak poking a seven foot tall miniature Tyrannosaurus rex in the stomach with his poorly made spear. The monster is so obviously a man in a cloth suit that it’s hard not to burst out laughing, and actually I did. Only slightly less silly are the real animals like dogs, goats, cows and even elephants covered in fake hair to make them “prehistoric-looking.” Especially funny is the armadillo with horns glued onto its head. It has been magnified to be the size of an elephant. But it doesn’t seem to be doing anything particularly dangerous. But the cavemen do look really scared of it. Equally frightening to the cavemen are magnified images of modern day reptiles. There are tegus and rhinoceros iguanas and even a baby alligator with a fake sailfish sail glued to its back. One interesting historical circumstance is the fact that several of the reptiles are noticeably harmed by each other in some fight scenes including one tegu that is obviously killed in a fight with the fake sailfish alligator. Nowadays the Humane Society would have the film-makers drawn and quartered for so much as stressing out a mosquito on set. Progress!
But where the movie really shines is the portrayal of caveman tribal dynamics. Tumak is the son of the clan leader Akhoba (played by Lon Chaney Jr). When Tumak accidentally attacks Akhoba for trying to steal a chunk of dino-burger. Akhoba throws him off a cliff. After this he wanders away and ends up being adopted by a more enlightened clan. They’re probably from Scandinavia because they have blondes, good table manners and neutered males. After he gets ejected from the new tribe for beating a spear maker who objected to being robbed Tumak ends up back at the old clan cave with his blonde girlfriend in tow. Apparently she likes the bad boy type and thinks she can fix him. While Tumak was gone Akhoba has been demoted from chief to crippled loser after being severely injured in a fight with a giant goat. Breaking with caveman etiquette Blondie institutes women and children and crippled losers first at food distribution time. Surprisingly, Tumak is supportive of the new arrangement. Progress!
Well anyway there soon ensues a crisis involving a volcanic eruption and a giant iguana that ends up with both clans coming together with Tumak as the new chief. The End.
Wow. This movie must be seen by all science fiction fans. Afterwards you’ll have a new found respect for stop action animation or even well-made monster suits. Only recommended if you really enjoy very bad sci-fi.