Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1958, directed by Roger Corman)

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The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.  That’s the title of this one and it’s far too long for a 67-minute drive-in feature.  Maybe Roger Corman thought he could fool people into thinking the movie was better than it was by giving it a pompous sounding title.

A group of Viking men leave on a voyage and never come back.  After waiting nearly a year, the remaining Viking women vote to set sail and look for them.  Leading them is Desir (Abby Dalton) and she even welcomes the bad-tempted Enger (Susan Cabot) onto their boat.  The last remaining male Viking, Ottar (Jonathan Haze), also joins the quest.

The Viking women (and Ottar) have barely set sail when a “giant” sea serpent rises out of the water and strands them on an island.  The Viking women discover that their men are being held prisoner on the island.  Even if they can rescue their men from King Stark (Richard Devon), the sea serpent still waits for them to try to return.

The Saga of the Viking Women and yadda yadda yadda is a remarkably cheap-looking epic.  A major film about the Vikings was scheduled to be released by United Artists and Corman, determined to get his movie into theaters first, shot the film in ten days and for $65,000.  Irving Block and Jack Rabin, two special effects experts, promised Corman an amazing sea serpent and instead delivered what appeared to be a water-proof puppet.  The Sea Serpent only appears in two scenes and Corman doesn’t allow us a very good view of it.  It looks like something you could have picked up at Toys ‘R Us back in the day.

There’s nothing convincing about the movie, from the costumes to the combat to the serpent.  This was one of Roger Corman’s early misfires though, released on a double bill with the Astounding She-Monster, it still made money.  People love Vikings.

 

Music Video of the Day: Can I Play with Madness by Iron Maiden (1988, directed by Julian Doyle)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Director Julian Doyle also directed videos for Kate Bush but he may be best known for working as an editor on several Monty Python and Terry Gilliam films, including Life of Brian, Time Bandits, The Meaning of Life, Brazil, and Terry Jones’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Enjoy!

Doctor Who — Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974, directed by Paddy Russell)

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Fresh from defeating an attempt by a Sontaran to disrupt British history, the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and his newest companion, reporter Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), return to present-day London and discover that it has been transformed into a ghost town.  Dinosaurs are roaming the streets.  The Doctor teams up with UNIT to try to figure out who has been monkeying with time but what he doesn’t know is that the trusted Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) is working with the people responsible for the dinosaur invasion.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs was the second serial of the 11th season.  Like The Sea Devils, this was another case where I read the novelization long before I got a chance to see the actual serial.  Well-written by Malcolm Hulke, the novelization really got me excited to watch Invasion of the Dinosaurs.  It did not prepare me for how fake the dinosaurs would look.

It was to be expected, though.  Classic Doctor Who was never known for its wonderful special effects.  Instead, it was known for rubber monsters, torn costumes, and alien landscapes that were often made out of cardboard.  For many of us, that was a part of its charm.  The dinosaurs in this serial look like toys that have been unleashed on a still photo of London.  I’ve read that the serial was criticized for its bad dinosaur effects when it originally aired 1974 and that was long before Jurassic Park made everyone take the idea of seeing a realistic dinosaur for granted.

 

Despite the very fake dinosaurs, Invasion of the Dinosaurs still has one of the better scripts of the Pertwee era.  The villains aren’t the typical evildoers who usually showed up on Doctor Who.  Instead, they are people who have convinced themselves that the only way to save humanity is to dial back time to what they consider to be the “Golden Age,” before technology and industry blighted what they believe to be the ideal landscape.  Of course, they plan to take only the very best among the population to their golden age with them.  The villains are elitist environmentalists, convinced that they and only they know what is best.  This may be the first episode of Doctor Who where the main antagonist, Sir Charles Grover (Noel Johnson), is a member of Parliament.

Captain Yates’s betrayal of UNIT and the Doctor adds some emotional depth to this story.  While Yates was never as important a character as the Brigadier or Sgt. Benton, he was still present for almost all of the Third Doctor’s adventures and the small scenes where he would flirt with Jo Grant were some of the most awkward moments of the Pertwee era.  Captain Yates was a loyal member of the Third Doctor’s entourage and his betrayal was motivated not by greed or resentment but instead by a desire to make the world a better place.  The novelization made it clear that it was actually the terrible things that Yates saw as a member of UNIT that convinced him that time needed to be turned back.

This was the final Jon Pertwee story to be set entirely on Earth and, though Yates and the Brigadier would return for Pertwee’s final serial, it was the last true UNIT story of the Pertwee years.  Jon Pertwee had already decided that the 11th season would be his last.  The 12 season would feature a new Doctor.  And while the BBC considered actors like Graham Crowden, Bernard Cribbins, and Jim Dale for the role, the Fourth Doctor was ultimately be played by Tom Baker, an actor who was working as a construction worker when Invasion of the Dinosaurs first aired.

Doctor Who would never the same.

Clash of the Titans (1981, directed by Desmond Davis)

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High atop Mt. Olympus, Zeus (Laurence Olivier) and his fellow Gods look down on Earth and jealously manipulate its citizens.  When Zeus impregnates Danae (Vida Taylor), the daughter of the King of Argos, she and her son Perseus (Harry Hamlin) are banished to sea.  Zeus responds by ordering Poseidon (Jack Gwillim) to release the Kraken.

Years later, when Callibos (Neil McCarthy), the son of the Goddess Thetis (Maggie Smith), destroys all but one of Zeus’s flying horses, Zeus transformer Callibos into a tailed monster.  Thetis tries to get her revenge by having Callibos kill Perseus but instead, Perseus chops off Callibos’s hand, comes to possess Pegasus, the last of the flying horses, and also wins the right to marry Andromeda (Judi Bowker).

At the wedding, Cassiopeia (Sian Phillips) declares Andromeda to be even more beautiful than Aphrodite (Ursula Andress).  Big mistake.  Aphrodite demands that Andromeda by sacrificed to the Kraken.  Along with Pegasus, Ammon (Burgess Meredith), Thallo (Tom Pigott-Smith), and robot owl, Perseus goes on a quest to get the snake-haired head of Medusa so he can turn the Kraken into stone.

There’s a lot that I love about Clash of the Titans, from the Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion special effects to the blind witches who pass one eyepiece among them to Burgess Meredith’s performance as Ammon.  I even like the robot owl.  But the thing that has always made the biggest impression on me is that Mt. Olympus is portrayed as having a shelf that holds a figurine for every human in the world.  The Gods casually move the pieces around and transform them on whims.  Of all the films that have been based on Greek mythology, Clash of the Titans is one of the few that really captures the idea of the Gods essentially being a bunch of petty and jealous libertines who view humans are just being their playthings.

Let’s not overthink Clash of the Titans, though.  The main appeal of Clash of the Titans is that it’s just a good, old-fashioned adventure movie.  In this age of CGI and humorless heroes, it’s hard not love the film’s mix of old-fashion stop-motion animation, strong characters, and occasional moments of humor.  (I like the owl and I won’t apologize for it.)  Also, Medusa has appeared in a lot of movie but she’s never been scarier than in this movie.  Who can forget the yellow glow of her eyes, followed by men turning to stone?  Who can forget the hiss of her tail or the moment when Perseus waits to strike while trying not to look into her eyes?  Beyond Medusa, who can forget the Kraken rising from the sea or the blood of Callibos giving birth to giant scorpions?  Without CGI, Clash of the Titans still captures the feel of living in a different time and a different land.  Clash of the Titans brings mythology to life in a way that few other films have been able to,

I loved the original Clash of Titans when I was a kid.  I rewatched it last month and I happy to say that I love it still.

Doctor Who — The Three Doctors (1972-1973, directed by Lennie Manye)

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For the tenth season of Doctor Who, the BBC knew that they needed to start things off with a bang.  The first serial of season ten, The Three Doctors, brought together the first three actors who had played the Doctor.

A crisis was needed to explain why the Time Lords would decide to break their owns laws by bringing the Second Doctor and then the First Doctor out of their respective time zones.  Writers Dave Martin and Bob Baker came up with a story about the Doctor’s homeworld having its energy drained through a black hole.  If Gallifrey is destroyed then all of time and space will unravel.  (Everyone who has seen an episode of the original Doctor Who knows the drill.)  The villain is Omega (Stephen Thorne, who also played Azal in The Daemons), the first Time Lord, who has never forgiven his fellow Time Lords for abandoning him in an anti-matter universe that looks like a quarry.  The story is silly in the way that Doctor Who often could be but I think anyone watching will understand that the story is not that important.  Omega, the black hole, the energy blob that is sent to Earth to capture the Third Doctor, all of it was really just an excuse to bring back Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell.

Hartnell does not get to do much.  He was in increasingly poor health when he returned as the First Doctor and was also suffering from memory problems.  Sadly, this prevented him from sharing the same physical space as Troughton and Jon Pertwee.  Instead, it’s explained that the First Doctor is caught in a time eddy and can only communicate via the TARDIS’s viewscreen.  Even if he isn’t physically present, the First Doctor reveals himself to be the smartest of the three Doctors.  When he isn’t scolding the Second and Third Doctors, he’s figuring out how to enter Omega’s universe.  It’s not always easy to watch Hartnell looking frail and clearly reading some of his lines from cue cards but, even when ill, he still had the natural authority that he brought to the first two and a half  seasons of Doctor Who.

Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee are a delight to watch.  Their bickering is one of the highlights of the serial and both Troughton and Pertwee appear to have really enjoyed their scenes together.  The show also gets mileage from including the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and Sgt. Benton (John Levene) along with the three Doctors.  I’ve always enjoyed how both of them come to accept the strangest of things with barely a shrug.  This is the episode where Benton enters the TARDIS and, when the Third Doctor asks if Benton’s going to point out that it’s bigger on the inside than the outside, replies, “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

The Three Doctors is hardly a perfect Doctor Who adventure.  (If any adventure needed the presence of the The Master, it was this one.)  It is, however, a tribute to the men who played the first three Doctors and the role they all played in making the show an institution.  The Three Doctors was also the final acting role of William Hartnell, who passed away two years after the serial was broadcast.

Aliens (1986, directed by James Cameron)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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.”