Dom DeLuise | Through the Shattered Lens

I wanted to write about two gems today, but I don’t feel well. Today is as good a day as any to start this series of posts. I watch a lot of movies and I just can’t write full posts about each and every one. Instead, I am going to do little roundups like this from time to time. Here we go.

The Skateboard Kid (1993) – When I was a kid, a piece of wood on wheels could make you cool. Studios knew this, so many stupid skateboarding movies were made. This was one of them. But this one has a twist. Ready for this? The skateboard talks! And it flies! To make matters worse, Dom DeLuise voices the skateboard. Stay away! Watch the Francis movies instead.

The Skateboard Kid II (1995) – What do you do when a bad movie about a talking flying skateboard comes out? Make a sequel of course! But this one has two things different about it. One, the skateboard becomes possessed by Turhan Bey. Don’t recognize the name? He actually dated Lana Turner back in the day. Also, the movie was executively produced by Jim Wynorski. He made Chopping Mall back in the 80’s and the softcore porn film Sexually Bugged! in 2014. Haven’t seen the first one yet, but the second one stinks to high heaven. No wonder he directed it under the name Sam Pepperman. This Skateboard Kid is actually better than the first if you can believe that.

Time Barbarians (1990) – The movie starts in olden times. There’s a stupid warrior, a stupid amulet, stupid bad guys, and it takes an hour or so for all three to wind up in Los Angeles. It’s like waiting for Godzilla to appear in the 2014 version. Once they get there it gets as dumb as you think. He not only can block bullets with his sword, but bullets fired from an automatic weapon. That’s some fine work! Can you believe this actually came out before The Beastmaster did the same thing with it’s sequel?

Howard The Duck (1986) – Yeah, I finally watched this movie. I don’t know why it has the reputation it does. Maybe people were not familiar with what a bad movie truly was at the time or they made the mistake of worshipping a director. I’m leaning more towards the second since you see people spend years trying to find ways to defend bad movies made by otherwise good directors. It’s not good, but it’s stupid campy fun. Harmless. The major issue with the film is that they tried to make it like E.T. in that it’s almost all about getting Howard back home. I think audiences would have preferred more of the wisecracking fun and much less of the child friendly material. Still, I enjoyed it more than Iron Man 2 & 3 so it’s a better Marvel movie than those and they have received praise.

After watching Dr. Strangelove, you may find yourself asking what that film would have been like if it had treated its doomsday scenario seriously. Well, you can find out by watching yet another film from 1964, Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe.

What’s Fail-Safe about? Well, basically, it tells the exact same story as Dr. Strangelove, except without the humor. Once again, an American bomber is accidentally ordered to launch a nuclear attack against Russia. Again, the President (played, somewhat inevitably, by Henry Fonda) has to have an awkward conversation with the leader of Russia. Again, a sinister defense advisor (this time played by Walter Matthau) argues that the world can survive a nuclear war.

Admittedly, there is no equivalent to George C. Scott’s Buck Turgidson in Fail-Safe. However, there is a General Black (Dan O’Herilihy) who has a recurring nightmare about watching a bullfight while the sky around him glows with radiation.

Fail-Safe has the same plot as Dr. Strangelove but none of the humor. In fact, Fail-Safe has absolutely no humor at all. It’s one of the most somber films that I’ve ever seen. It has a good opening with General Black’s nightmare and an effective ending that makes excellent use of freeze frames but the middle of the film is basically just a collection of endless debates.

And I’m sure that approach made sense at the time because, after all, Fail-Safe was dealing with a serious theme, it was directed by a serious filmmaker, and it featured a bunch of serious actors. And maybe if I had never seen Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe would not seem like such a slow and boring movie. But I have seen Dr. Strangelove and, as a result, it’s impossible to watch Fail-Safe without wanting to hear Henry Fonda say, “You can’t fight here! This is the war room!”