Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

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.

Doctor Who — The War Games (1969, directed by David Maloney)

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The War Games is an episode of firsts and lasts.

It featured the last regular appearance by Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor.  (Troughton would return for three guest appearances.)  Having played the role for three years, Troughton feared getting typecast and felt it was time to leave.  It was also the last episode to feature Frazer Hines (as Jamie) and Wendy Padbury (as Zoe) as companions.  (Hines holds the record for appearing in the most episodes as a companion.)  Finally, this episode was the last to be broadcast in black-and-white.

The War Games also featured a very important first.  This episode featured the first appearance of the Time Lords and the first trip to their home planet.  This was the first episode that showed the society that the Doctor fled when he stole his TARDIS and went to Earth.

At ten episodes, The War Games was either the second or third-longest serial in Doctor Who history, depending on whether or not you count The Trial of the Time Lord as just one long (and regrettable) serial.  The serial opens with the Doctor and his companions apparently landing in No Man’s Land during World War I.  As things progress, the Doctor notices anachronistic technology and Jamie is shocked when a redcoat shows up in a World War I prison.  The Doctor discovers that an alien known as The War Lord (Philip Madoc) has determined that humanity is the most bloodthirsty race in the universe and that he has abducted soldiers from Earth’s bloodiest wars.  They are fighting war games on The War Lord’s planet and the survivors will become the members of the War Lord’s army.  Helping the War Lord is the War Chief (Edward Brayshaw), a renegade Time Lord.

(Just as with The Time Meddler‘s Monk, there’s a fan theory that the War Chief was an early incarnation of The Master.  I don’t believe it, myself.  The Master was far more cunning than The War Chief.)

Despite running for four hours, The War Games is a rare Doctor Who serial that doesn’t have any slow spots and the scenes where the characters cross from war zone to war zone are creatively realized.  The serial starts out as if it’s going to be yet another dry historical episode and then it gradually reveals that all is not as it seems.  I especially liked the performance as Jane Sherwin as Lady Julia, an ambulance driver in the World War I zone.  (Jane Sherwin was also the wife of Doctor Who’s then-produccer Derek Sherwin.)

What really makes The War Games stand out is the final episode.

Having brought an end to the War Games, the Doctor is faced with the impossible prospect of returning the soldiers to their proper times.  He is forced to call upon The Time Lords for help.  Bernard Horsfall, Trevor Martin, and Clyde Pollitt appear as the Time Lords, who dematerialize the War Lord and send the soldiers back home with no memory of what happened.  Unfortunately, The Time Lords are not just going to let the Doctor off the hook for violating their police of non-interference.

First, Jamie and Zoe are sent back to their original times, both with no memory of their life on board the TARDIS.  The Doctor is then put on trial for having stolen his TARDIS and interfering in time and space.  The Doctor argues that he has been fighting evil.  The Time Lords accept his argument and then say that his punishment is to be sent to 20th Century Earth.  He’ll keep his TARDIS but he won’t be able to use it.  And, because the Doctor is well-known on Earth, he’ll have to regenerate.  He’s given five faces and told to pick one.  The Doctor refuses them all.  The Time Lords pick one.  “That’s the worst one!” the Doctor says before he finds himself spinning through space and time.

It’s a poignant ending to the Second Doctor’s adventures.  The Time Lords do not come across as being as bad as the Doctor often made them out to be but it is easy to see why an adventurer like the Doctor would feel constrained by their society.  That the Second Doctor called them for help despite knowing what the consequences would be not only shows how dangerous The War Lord’s plan was but also how the Doctor would always do the right thing even when it was dangerous for him to do so.  The Time Lords could have just as easily dematerialized The Doctor as punishment for stealing his TARDIS.  Jamie and Zoe are spared punishment but they lose their memories of the amazing adventures they shared.  And the Doctor changes once again.

For viewers like me, who got to know Doctor Who from the episodes that were broadcast late at night on PBS, The War Games is a bridge between “old” Doctor Who and the classic era of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.  In America, we didn’t get to see much of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor but what we got established him as one of the best to ever play the role.

 

Yor, The Hunter From The Future (1983, directed by Antonio Margheriti)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Yor (Reb Brown, wearing a loin-cloth and blonde wig) is a hunter who makes his way through the desert, fighting dinosaurs and cavemen and drinking the blood of his enemeis.  Yor finds a village and, after saving Kalaa (Corrine Clery) and Pag (Luciano Pigozzi) from a dinosaur, he becomes a valued member of the community.  Yor does not know much about his past and he is searching for the meaning behind an amulet that he wears.  With Kalaa and Pag, he goes on a quest for answers and instead finds himself being attacked by flying saucers, robots, and laser beams.  Despite the dinosaurs and the cavemen, it turns out that this film is taking place in the future, after a nuclear apocalypse.

That’s a great twist and it’s too bad that the film’s title gives it away.  When I first saw this movie as a kid, I loved it.  What kid wouldn’t love a movie the mixed dinosaurs with flying saucers?  Rewatching it as an adult, I still love this film even though I now know better than to take it seriously.  It’s a cheap production and the special effects are so ineptly done that, when the killer robots shoots their laser guns, the beams don’t even appear to be coming out of the barrel.  But I still appreciate the way the film combined two genres, caveman fantasy and post-apocalyptic science fiction and the cast’s commitment to bringing this mix of styles to life.  Director Antonio Margheriti knew that the best way to deal with an incoherent plot was just to toss in a lot of action.  No matter what else you might say about Yor, it’s not boring.

Reb Brown plays Yor and, despite the fight wig, gives one of his better performances.  It helps that, for once, he doesn’t scream like a girl during the action scenes.  John Steiner plays the evil Overlord gives another one of his trademark evil performances.  Yor even gets a Flash Gordon-style theme song!

The movie ends with a cliffhanger and the narrator asking, “Will he succeed?”  Tragically, there was never a Yor 2.

Doctor Who — The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967, directed by Morris Barry)

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In 1966, Doctor Who changed forever.

William Hartnell was in failing health and having difficulty remembering his lines.  He was also not getting along with the current production team and was unhappy with the direction of the show.  (He felt that it was getting too violent and dependent upon the bug-eyed monsters who he had originally been told would have no part of the show.)  It became obvious that Hartnell would not be able to continue as the Doctor.  At the same time, Doctor Who was an unqualified hit and one that the BBC wanted to keep going.

Producer Innes Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis decided that since the Doctor was an alien, they could just say that he could transform himself physically at will, which would allow them to recast the role.  Hearing the news, Hartnell is said to have replied, “There’s only one man in England who can take over, and that’s Patrick Troughton.”

William Hartnell was correct.  Patrick Troughton, 46 at the time, was a stage-trained character actor who had become a television mainstay.  As opposed to Hartnell, whose Doctor was stern and stubborn, Troughton played the Doctor as being “a comic hobo,” (to quote show creator Sydney Newman).  The Second Doctor enjoyed his travels and had an unquenchable curiosity.  Like an interstellar Lt. Columbo, The Second Doctor often played the fool to get the better of his enemies.  He also become a father figure to many of his companions, a role that Troughton also played offscreen as well.

Unfortunately, many of the Second Doctor’s adventures are missing or are only available in audio form.  When I was growing up, my father and I would watch Doctor Who on PBS.  PBS started with the Fourth Doctor and the Fifth Doctor before then going back to the Third Doctor and then finally broadcasting what they had of The First and Second Doctor.  There were so few of the Second Doctor’s serials available that it only took PBS a month and a half to finish up with Troughton.  People like me got to know Troughton’s Doctor more through his later guest appearances (The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors) than through his original adventures.

The Tomb of the Cybermen is the earliest serial known to exist in its entirety to feature Troughton as the Second Doctor.  In this 4-epiosde serial (which also launched the show’s fifth series), The Doctor and his companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) materialize on the desolate planet Telos and discover an expedition of humans are trying to enter the Tomb of the Cybermen.

In those days before The Master, The Cybermen were one of the Doctor’s main recurring enemies.  Former humanoids who sacrificed their emotions and individual personalities to become cyborgs, the Cybermen were relentless and ruthless and just as dangerous as the Daleks.  (The Cyberman also had something Daleks lacked, the ability to climb stairs.)  In Tomb of the Cybermen, the expedition assumes that the Cybermen buried in the underground tomb are no longer functioning.  It turns out that the Cybermen are just waiting for someone to revive them.

Tomb of the Cybermen is a classic Doctor Who serial.  The plot borrows considerably from the legends about mummies and cursed Egyptian tombs.  The expedition arrogantly enters the tomb, despite being warned not to.  It turns out that the expedition’s leaders want to use the Cybermen as their own army and their willing to sacrifice everyone with them to try to achieve that goal.  The revived Cybermen aren’t interested in an alliance.  The Doctor and his companions try to escape the crypt while also ensuring that the Cybermen will never escape again.  The plot is simple but exciting.  The Second Doctor pretends to be baffled by the tomb and its technology but later reveals that he always understood more than he let on.

The Tomb of the Cybermen is not only a great Troughton showcase.  It’s also historically important as one of the first serials to really upset Britain’s moral guardians.  Reportedly, British children were left terrified and unable to sleep after witnessing the Cybermen bursting forth from their tombs.  The infamous Mary Whitehouse would often cite Doctor Who as being detrimental programming for children.  The Tomb of the Cybermen was one of the serials that she often cited as just being too violent and frightening.

It’s a shame that we don’t have more of Patrick Troughton’s serials to watch because The Tomb of Cybermen reveals him to be the prototype for almost every Doctor who would follow.  (There’s a small moment where The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria hold hands while stepping into the Tomb and it says so much about who the Doctor was, post-Hartnell.)  I’m glad, though, that we do have this showcase of the Second Doctor at his best.

Warrior Queen (1987, directed by Chuck Vincent)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The place is Pompeii in the year 79 A.D.

One of the jewels of the Roman Empire, Pompeii is overseen by the decadent Clodius Flaucus (Donald Pleasence).  Despite the warning that the statues of the Temple of Jupiter have been crying salt and that a goat was recently born with the head of a human, Clodius refuses to believe that anything bad could happen to Pompeii.  (“I’d like to see the cow!” Clodius exclaims with  a laugh.)

In the arena, the gladiator Goliath (Marco Tullio Cau) throws deadly frisbees and demands slave girls as his reward for victory.  In the streets, all the women adore Marcus (Rick Hill) but he has eyes only for one of the new slaves, the comely virgin Vespa (Tally Chanel).  Vespa has been purchased by Berenice (Sybil Danning), a former mistress of Caesar who is secretly working to free the slaves.

Warrior Queen was directed by Chuck Vincent.  Vincent was a veteran of the adult film industry and was considered to be one of the best hardcore directors around.  His X-rated films were even positively written up in the New York Times.  In the 80s, he tried to go mainstream and ended up making movies like this one.  Produced by British B-movie impresario Harry Alan Towers and filmed largely in Italy, Warrior Queen was an attempt to capitalize on the minor sword-and-sorcery revival that followed the success of Conan the Barbarian.  There’s plenty of nudity and violence but there’s not much plot and the film feels much longer than its 70-minute run time.  When the volcano does erupt, it’s represented by stock footage and someone shaking the camera while filming the extras.  Pompeii has never looked so cheap.

The main attraction here is Sybil Danning and Donald Pleasence.  Pleasence gives it his all and earns however much he made for this movie.  Danning is only in a handful of scenes and can be seen yawning at several points in the movie.  I think she’s supposed to be the title character but she’s actually neither a warrior nor a queen.  Rick Hill (of Deathstalker fame) and Tally Chanel are at least appealing as the leads, even if Chanel looks more like a lost cheerleader than a Roman slave girl.

The main thing that I learned from watching this film is that the lava that hit Pompeii wasn’t actually that thick, wide, or deep and everyone should have been able to just hop over it and escape.  Anyone who died at Pompeii has no one but themselves to blame.