Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Aliens (1986, directed by James Cameron)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When I learned that today was Sigourney Weaver’s birthday, I flashed back to the first time I saw Aliens.

I was just a kid, probably too young for the movie.  My father rented Aliens from the local Blockbuster.  It had been years since the movie had first come out but my father, who went to every Star Trek movie premiere and who still knows the lore of Star Wars better than I do, had never seen it and he was planning on correcting that oversight.  My family gathered in the living room.  We turned out all the lights.  The tape was slipped into the VCR.  Play was hit.  Our boxy television turned into a movie screen and Aliens began.

And it scared the Hell out of me.

Today, I think people forget just how scary both Alien and Aliens are the first time that you watch them.  After the first time, you at least know when the aliens are going to jump out at people and you also know who is going to survive.  Today, if I rewatch Aliens, I know not to get to attached to the any of the Colonial Marines.  I also know not to trust Carter Burke, even if he is played by Paul Reiser.  I watch the movie in anticipation of Bill Paxton’s “Game over, man,” instead of dreading it.  When I first watched it, all I knew is that the screen suddenly went dark, the soundtrack was full of screeches and the deaths of the Marines, and that the only thing scarier then being confronted with one alien was being confronted with a hundred of them at once.  When I watch today, I know Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is going to prove to be a good android.  I didn’t have the assurance when I first watched the movie.  For all I knew, he was going to just abandon Ripley (Weave), Newt (Carrie Henn),and Hicks (Michael Biehn) on the planet.

Sigourney Weaver was the heart of that film.  She went from being angry and bitter over what happened during then first Alien to still being angry and bitter but willing to risk her life to save Newt.  From the start, she alone understood the Xenomorph threat and she was ultimately victorious because she was not only as determined and ruthless as the Queen but she actually had the heart that her opponent lacked.  Ripley won because she was actually fighting for something more than just conquest.  She was fighting to save Newt from becoming an incubator.

I usually think of Aliens as being the last Ripley film.  I don’t acknowledge the third film because I find the idea of killing Newt and Hicks to be a betrayal of what made the first Aliens more than just a scary action movie.  The fourth film, I don’t acknowledge because it asks me to believe that Winona Ryder would still be acting like Winona Ryder in the 23rd century.  Aliens is a scary movie but it’s also a movie that ends with the promise of hope.  After all that she’s been through, Ripley finally has a chance to start again with Newt, Hicks, and Bishop.   That hope is something that is too often missing from the follow-ups.

Happy birthday, Sigourney Weaver!  I’m going to go watch Aliens.

Music Video of the Day: The Wild Boys by Duran Duran (1984, directed by Russell Mulcahy)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Directed by Russell Mulcahy, the video for Wild Boys cost over a million pounds, which was considered to be an astronomical sum in 1984.  Both the video and the song is based on the William S. Burroughs novel, The Wild Boys.  Mulcahy had long-wanted to adapt the book into a film and the song was written to serve as a part of the soundtrack of the proposed film.  (The film itself was never made.)

The costumes in the video were left over from The Road Warrior.  The video, featuring all of the members of Duran Duran being tortured in different ways, was controversial but ultimately very popular.

Enjoy!

Doctor Who — The Sea Devils (1972, directed by Michael Briant)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Having been captured by UNIT at the end of The Daemons, the Master (Roger Delgado) is now a imprisoned on a small island in the English channel.  He claims that he is reformed and he now spends most of his days watching the BBC.  (Has he not been punished enough?)

When the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) visit the Master to try to learn the location of his TARDIS, they come up empty.  They do, however, learn that several ships have gone missing and, understandably, they suspect that the Master is involved.

They’re correct.  The Master has duped his warden, Trenchard (Clive Morton), into helping him steal electrical equipment so that he can contact The Sea Devils, a race of bipedal reptiles the live under the sea.  The Sea Devils, much like their cousins, the Silurians, were the original inhabitants of Earth.  They’ve now woken from hibernation to discover that mankind — who they last knew to be a collection of barely evolved monkeys — have taken over the planet.  And they’re not happy about it.

The Silurians and the Sea Devils appeared in three serials during the original run of Doctor Who and all of them followed the same basic plot.  The Silurians or the Sea Devils woke up from their hibernation.  The Doctor tried to broker a peace with humanity.  Humanity reacted by blowing them up.  The Sea Devils were usually more reluctant to make peace than the Silurians.  In The Sea Devils, the Doctor himself is forced to sabotage their base to keep them from attacking humanity but that’s nothing compared to the atomic bomb that the British government wanted to drop on them.  Whenever a Silurian or a Sea Devil shows up, it means that the Doctor is going to disappointed in humanity once again.

The Sea Devils is a serial of which I have fond memories because Malcolm Hulke’s novelization was the first Doctor Who book that I ever read.  (Malcolm Hulke also wrote the serial itself.)  I read the book before I even saw the show.  The novelization was my introduction to the Doctor, UNIT, and especially the Master.  Hulke was one of the best writers of the Doctor Who novelizations, taking the time to add depth to the characters.  This was especially true of Trenchard, who is portrayed far more sympathetically in the novel than he was on the show.

The Sea Devils also features one of Roger Delgado’s finest turns as the Master.  This was the Master’s first appearance during the ninth season of Doctor Who and Delgado shows that, even when imprisoned, the Master never stops manipulating and scheming.  This episode shows why Delgado’s Master was such a classic villain and truly a worthy opponent of the Doctor.  Delgado does such a good job in the scenes where The Master pretends to be reformed that it’s easy to understand how he managed to trick Trenchard.  At the end of the serial, The Master makes another escape, again by fooling the humans around him.  Delgado made The Master into a magnetic and compelling villain.

Roger Delgado appeared twice more as the Master before his untimely death in an auto accident.  Jon Pertwee later said that Delgado’s death was one of the reasons that he decided to step away from the role of the Doctor.  The Master would eventually return and he would be played by several different actors.  For me, the true Master will always be Roger Delgado.

Barbarian Queen (1985, directed by Hector Olivera)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The forces of the evil Lord Arrakur (Arman Chapman) raid a peaceful Barbarian village, disrupting the wedding of Queen Amethea (Lana Clarkson) and Prince Argan (Frank Zagarino).  Along with slaughtering almost the entire village, Arrakur also kidnaps Amethea’s sister, Taramis (Dawn Dunlap).  Amethea survives the attack and, with her handmaiden Estrild (future director Katt Shea) and the warrior Tiniara (Susana Traverson), sets out for Arrakur’s realm to rescue her sister and to take vengeance on him.

In Barbarian Queen, there’s much violence, much nudity, and much time spent in a dungeon with a pool of acid.  This may sound like pretty standard fantasy stuff and it is, except for the fact that almost all of the warriors are women and Arrakur and his forces are even nastier than the typical sword-and-sorcery villain.  Arrakur uses rape to terrorize his enemies and his subjects and, while that may be historically correct, it’s not easy to watch.  By the time Arrakur and Amethea are facing off in the gladiatorial arena, most viewers will be ready to see Arrakur defeated in the most extreme way possible.

Barbarian Queen was released by Roger Corman’s Concorde Picture and it was filmed in Argentina.  Today, it is best-remembered for the presence of the tragic Lana Clarkson in the role of Amethea.  Lana Clarkson starred in several Corman-produced fantasy films before she was murdered by Phil Spector in 2003.  At the time of her death, the media often dismissively described Clarkson as being a “former B movie starlet” but anyone who caught Clarkson’s movies on late night Cinemax knows that she was always the best thing about the films she was in and that she had a likable and sincere screen presence that made you root for her, whether she was fighting off an army with a sword and hiding in a tree with a bow-and-arrow.  Lana Clarkson’s performance in Barbarian Queen is always strong and sympathetic.  She endures even the movie’s most exploitive scenes without sacrificing her dignity and when she fights back, she refuses to surrender.  Her determination to have her vengeance and to free the people from a tyrant is the thing that makes Barbarian Queen worth watching.

RIP, Lana Clarkson.  She was so much more than just “a B movie starlet.”

Doctor Who — The Daemons (1971, directed by Christopher Barry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When I was growing up and watching Doctor Who on PBS, I had a friend whose mother forbid him from watching the show because she thought that it promoted Satanism.

Her opinion was almost totally based on the cover of the novelization of one of the Third Doctor’s most popular adventures.

She took one look at that cover and decided that both the book and the show were promoting Satan.  I warned him that would happen when he first bought the book but, back in the day, it was nearly impossible to resist the temptation of the shelf of Doctor Who novels at Walden Books.  It was almost as if the books had been put there by you know who.

If my friend’s mother had read the book or even watched the serial when it eventually aired on PBS, she would have discovered that The Daemons did not feature the Devil.  Instead, it features Azal (Stephen Thorne), an evil horned alien who had spent centuries experimenting on humans and who had inspired many ancient myths and religions.  If my friend’s mother had watched the show, she would have seen that, rather than celebrate Satan, the show instead suggested that there was no Satan and that all of mankind’s Gods were actually visiting aliens.  She would have also seen that while The Master (played by Roger Delgado) disguised himself as a vicar, it fell to a local white witch to warn everyone in a quaint British village that the local archeological dig was a mistake.  Because of the Master’s religious disguise, everyone followed him when they should have been listening to the pagan…

In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing my friend’s mother never watched the show.

The Daemons has a reputation for being one of the best of the Third Doctor’s adventures and I’m inclined to agree.  The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and his latest companion, Jo Grant (Katy Manning), try to stop the dig and instead find themselves trapped by a heat shield that has suddenly sprung  up over the village.  One of the defining images of this episode was a helicopter busting into flame when it hit the invisible barrier.  With the Brigadier and the majority of UNIT outside of the village, The Doctor, Jo, Sgt. Benton (John Levene), and Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) try to stop the plans of The Master and Azal.  Unfortunately, the villagers themselves have fallen under the sway of evil and are planning a special maypole sacrifice.

 

So many different actors have played The Master (and the character has become so overused) that it is easy to forget just how good Roger Delgado, the first Master, was in the role.  Delgado played the Master as being incredibly evil but he also played him as having a sense of humor and style about his evil, which is something that subsequent Masters have often failed to do.  Delgado’s Master appeared in every serial of the eighth series and he proved to be more than a worthy opponent for Pertwee’s Doctor.  Off-screen, Pertwee and Delgado were close friends and Pertwee later said that Delgado’s death in a traffic accident was one of the factors in Petwee’s decision to step away from the show.  The Daemons featured Delgado at his best as the Master did his worst and tried to claim the powers of someone who humans considered to be Satan.

The Daemons is also remembered for one of the best lines in the history of Doctor Who.  When confronted by Azal’s gargoyle servant, the Brigadier calls over a UNIT solider and orders, “Chap with wings there, five rounds rapid.”  I can only imagine how tired Nicholas Courtney got of having that line repeated to him over the years but his delivery of it is perfect.  The Brigadier was such a uniquely English character, imbued with the unflappable attitude of a country that had survived the collapse of an Empire, the Blitz, and the Suez Crisis.  Nicholas Courtney took a line that sounds like something Graham Chapman would have said on Monty Python and instead made it into an iconic piece of dialogue that reminded those of us American watching on PBS that, in Doctor Who, the entire universe was British.

Though it led to the show being forever banned in my friend’s house, The Daemons is a Doctor Who classic.

Star Slammer (1986, directed by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On the planet of Arous, Taura (Sandy Brooke) leads a group of dwarf miners in rebellion against the international empire.  The empire sends Captain Bantor (Ross Hagen), Krago (Michael D. Sonye), and the Inquisitor (Aldo Ray) to capture Taura and put down the revolution.  When Bantor attempts to attack Taura, he sticks his hand in a volcanic acid plume and screams as it dissolves.  Taura is arrested.  Judge John Carradine sentences her to a term on Vehemence, a spaceship that serves as an intergalactic women’s prison.

Star Slammer is a Women In Prison film that happens to be set in space.  Taura makes an enemy of the sadistic warden (Marya Grant) and her henchwoman, Muffin (Dawn Wildsmith).  Taura also befriend Mike (Susan Stokey) and the two of them plot to overthrow the guards and make their escape.  When the now crazed Bantor boards the ship, Taura sees her chance.  Meanwhile, the prisoners have to deal not only with pervy guards but mutant rats.

Legend has it that Fred Olen Ray had rented Roger Corman’s New World Pictures studio for four days so that he could shoot some extra scenes for his film Biohazard.  Ray finished his Biohazard work in one day and then spent the other three days filming promotional footage for the film that would become Star Slammer.  He used props that were left over from Galaxy of Terror and was able to get Aldo Ray to come in for a day so that the footage would feature “a name.”  Producer Jack H. Harris looked at the footage and put up the money to shoot the rest of the film on the condition that Ray change the title from Prison Ship to Star Slammer.

Amazingly, the resulting film itself is not that bad.  Ray used the outer space setting as a way to both indulge in and poke fun at the common tropes of the Women In Prison genre and Sandy Brooke and Susan Stokey both turn in committed performances.  Ross Hagen laughs like a maniac and demands vengeance for his missing hand while trying to get his remaining hand on a mind control device.  The prisoners are kept in check by promises of prizes and free trips in return for good behavior.  A thoroughly deformed guard is promoted as a sex symbol and there’s a sharp wit to many of the scenes.  Star Slammer is much more clever and fun than anyone would have any right to expect it to be.

Music Video of the Day: Poison by Alice Cooper (1989, directed by Nigel Dick)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

There are actually two versions of this video.  Both of them feature model Rana Kennedy as the mysterious woman looking over Alice Cooper.  One version features shots where the woman is meant to be topless.  (A body double was used in those shots).  The MTV-friendly version excises the toplessness and is less focused on torture than the first version.

Director Nigel Dick was one of the big music video directors of the MTV era.  He worked with everyone who was anybody.  Alice Cooper definitely was and still is somebody.  It’s funny how he went from being the rocker that parents feared to being a beloved cultural institution and he did it while, for the most part, still remaining true to his original act and persona.  All the kids who used to get yelled at for listening to Cooper grew up and kept listening to him and Alice turned out to be a pretty smart guy.

Enjoy!

Doctor Who — Spearhead From Space (1970, directed by Derek Martinus)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Two meteorite showers have fallen in rural England and a poacher has come across a strange plastic polyhedron at one of the sites.  Brigadier General Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), the head of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), fears it could be the start of another alien invasion.  He explains to UNIT’s skeptical scientific advisor, Dr. Liz Shaw (Caroline John), that UNIT was specifically created to protect the Earth from such invasions.

Meanwhile, a bushy-haired man has collapsed in front of an old-fashioned blue police call box.  He’s been taken to a hospital, where the doctors are confounded by the fact that he appears to have two hearts.  The Brigadier, hearing the news, is convinced that the man is his old friend the Doctor and heads to the hospital.

The Brigadier is right.  The man (Jon Pertwee) is the Doctor but, as a result of being found guilty of stealing a TARDIS and breaking the Time Lord code of non-interference, the Doctor now looks and sounds completely different.  While the Doctor works to convince the Brigadier that he is who he says he is, a tentacled alien known as the Nestene is using the Autons, a race of plastic humanoids, to do its deadly bidding.

I’ve always really liked Jon Pertwee’s interpretation of the Doctor and the reasons why are to be found in his very first adventure.  While Pertwee’s Doctor was just as intelligent and egocentric as the two Doctors who came before him, he was also a man (or an alien, I guess) of action.  Rather than just stay cooped up in that hospital room, the Third Doctor is constantly trying to escape.  When the Autons show up and try to abduct him, the Third Doctor doesn’t go without a struggle.  Unlike the first two Doctors, this Doctor has no problem commandeering a car and then demanding one just like it in return for working with UNIT.  Pertwee combined intelligence with action and humor and that brought a unique feel to his five years in the role.  I’ve often seen Pertwee’s Doctor compared to James Bond.  I think a better comparison would be to Patrick McNee’s John Steed from The Avengers.  The Third Doctor was an intelligent, erudite gentleman who dressed well and knew how to throw a punch.

The majority of the Third Doctor’s adventure would involve UNIT in some way.  Exiled to Earth and with a locked-down TARDIS, the Third Doctor was the most Earth-bound of the Doctors but, as shown in Spearhead From Space, that worked well for Pertwee’s interpretation of the character.  Pertwee and Nicholas Courtney were a good team and, for Pertwee’s first season, Liz Shaw was a companion who was actually the Doctor’s equal.  (I had a huge crush on Caroline John when her episodes were first broadcast on PBS.)  The first Auton Invasion showed why UNIT was so necessary and also why it needed the services of the Doctor.

The Autons have a reputation for being the scariest of Doctor Who’s monsters.  They definitely were creepy, with their expressionless, plastic faces.  Imagine mannequins that can walk and who will also shoot you on a whim and you have an idea of why the Autons inspired many bad dreams in 1970.  (Like the Cyberman in Tomb of the Cybermen, the Autons were soon at the heart of a debate about whether or not Doctor Who was too scary for children.)  The Autons are certainly more scary than the Nestene, which was quite obviously a puppet and not very well-put together one at that.

Spearhead from Space was a wonderful introduction to Jon Pertwee’s Doctor and it remains a classic of the original series.  The first serial to be broadcast in color, it not only allows us to get to know the Third Doctor but it also introduces a classic new threat.  As this story ends, the Doctor is settling to his new role as an advisor to UNIT.  Waiting in the future are many more adventures and the Master.

The Pumaman (1980, directed by Albert De Martino)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Dr. Kobras (Donald Pleasence) has got an evil scheme.  He’s going to use an ancient gold mask to take over people’s mind and eventually take over the world.  Only the Pumaman, a man who has inherited God-like powers, can defeat Dr. Kobras and keep the mask from falling into the wrong hands.  Unfortunately, Prof. Tony Farms (Walter George Alton) doesn’t understand that he’s the Pumaman.  Vadinho (Miguel Angel Fuentes), an indigenous shaman, travels to London to convince him.

Perhaps the worst super hero movie ever made, Pumaman was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Superman movies.  Pumaman didn’t start out in a comic book.  He was created directly for the screen and his first movie was obviously meant to be the start of many adventures.  It didn’t work out that way.  Pumaman has plenty of fantastic powers but he’s not sure how to use them and he spends a lot of the movie complaining.  He might as well just be called Whinyman.  From the minute that he meets Tony, Vadinho has an expression on his face that reads as, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”  Beyond Pumaman just being plain unlikable, the movie also features some of the worst special effects that I’ve ever seen.  The success of a film like that depends on whether or not you believe that a man can fly.  Pumaman flies but he looks really stupid doing it.  That was the failure of Pumaman.

How bad is Pumaman?  Even Donald Pleasence looks embarrassed.  Pleasence always made a good villain.  He set the standard for Bond villains in You Only Live Twice.  Pleasence also had the right sensibility for a good super hero film.  If he had been born a decade or two later, he would have been equally well-cast as either Professor X or Magneto in the first X-Men film.  In Pumaman, he rolls his eyes while delivering his lines.  Not even he can believe this movie.

Pumaman saved the day and then disappeared.  Earth already had enough heroes.