Elizabeth Saint | Through the Shattered Lens

Another Plan From Outer Space opens with both the Star Spangled Banner and a quick trip through history. We watch and listen as President John F. Kennedy announces that, some day, a man will walk on the Moon. Kennedy is followed by Barack Obama, announcing that we will land on Mars within his lifetime. And finally, we have President Trump, announcing that we will not only someday land on Mars but on other worlds as well.

Jump forward to 2024 and all of those predictions have come true. There are now Martian colonies and space shuttles regularly make the journey from Earth to Mars and back again. Man may have conquered space but that doesn’t mean that accidents don’t occasionally happen. For instance, after we’ve heard from the Presidents, we watch as the American spaceship Genesis One crashes into the desert.

Five members of the crew manage to survive the crash. They know they’re on Earth but, with their communications equipment damaged, they don’t know exactly where they are. As Chief Hudson (Augie Duke) puts it, they could just as easily be in the Middle East as they could be in North America. With the mission leader dead, Captain Jackson (Scott Sell) takes command and immediately starts giving out orders, much to the annoyance of Commander Strickland (Jessica Morris).

However, the crew has more than just professional jealousy and hurt feelings to deal with. Strange things are happening in the desert. Hudson swears that she saw the ship’s doctor, Yushiro (Minchi Murakami), fatally injured by something in the desert, just for the body to vanish and Yushiro to later show up quite alive and uninjured. While Lt. Brooks (Hans Hernke) worries that his watch — a family heirloom — has stopped working, Captain Jackson swears that he can hear music in the distance.

And then there’s the seemingly abandoned cabin, sitting out in the middle of the desert….

Though the title may be evocative of Plan Nine From Outer Space, this film actually has more in common with a classic episode of The Twilight Zone than it does with Ed Wood’s infamous UFO epic. Along with exploring the mystery of where the Genesis has crashed, the film is even more interested in exploring how each of the individual survivors deal with the isolation of being stranded in the desert. (Let’s just say that some handle it better than others.) About halfway through the film, there’s an extended sequence in which the survivors simply sit around a campfire and discuss not only their pasts but what they’re hoping for their futures. It’s a nicely done scene, one that adds an element of relatable humanity to the film’s science fiction story.

The film’s black-and-white cinematography not captures the harshness of the desert but it also contributes to the film’s retro feel. The film makes the best of its low-budget aesthetic, using the desert to create a properly ominous atmosphere. At its best, you can feel the oppressive heat burning down on the characters. Add to that a nicely fierce performance from Jessica Morris and you have a film that favorably compares to the early sci-fi work of Roger Corman. The film, of course, ends with both a twist and the possibility of continuation.

Another Plan From Outer Space is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Horror is all about atmosphere.

It doesn’t matter how bloody or gory a film is. It doesn’t matter how creative the filmmakers gets when it comes to creating their monster or plotting out their haunting. It doesn’t matter how meta the dialogue is or how many references are tossed in to other horror movies. It all starts with atmosphere.

The right atmosphere keeps us, the viewers, off-balance throughout the entire film. The right atmosphere leaves us wondering what’s lurking behind every corner and it makes us jump at every unexpected sound. The right atmosphere tells us that something terrifying could happen at any minute. The right atmosphere makes us feel as if we’re watching a filmed nightmare. The right atmosphere keeps us watching even when we might want to look away.

The Howling is full of atmosphere.

Now, before anyone asks, this British film is not a remake of the classic American werewolf movie. Instead, it deals with the legend of Dr. Rathbone (Jon-Paul Gates). Rathbone, it’s said, was a scientist who lived in a mansion outside of a small English village. Everyone suspected that, inside of his mansion, Rathbone was performing horrific experiments on both animals and humans. When Rathbone mysteriously disappeared, no one regretted his absence. In fact, many people suspected that perhaps Rathbone had been killed by one of his experiments and, if so, good riddance! Of course, the only problem was that, with Rathbone gone, no one was quite what had actually happened to his experiments. Were they now living in the woods or was the whole thing just an urban legend?

Dr. Rathbone, at work

As Halloween approaches, three teenagers — Jason (Erik Knutsvik), his girlfriend Kristy (Tiffany-Ellen Robinson), and their friend Sophia (Maria Austin) — camp in the woods, hoping to discover the truth. After all, there’s a lot of online clicks and youtube views to be captured by hunting the paranormal. One need only watch Mystery, Uncovered with Ben Tramer (Matthew Fitzthomas Rogers) to understand that!

(I assume that Ben Tramer was named after Laurie’s unfortunate crush in the first two Halloween films.)

When it starts storming and their car disappears, Jason, Kristy, and Sophia are forced to seek refuge in what appears to be some sort of decrepit asylum. They’re met by the caretaker, Shelley (Hans Hernke), who says he works for the Master and who, when an inmate suddenly makes an appearance, says, “Don’t mind him, he’s harmless.”

Of course, no one that they’ll meet that night is harmless…

The Howling plays out like a filmed dream, full of strange characters and nicely surreal images. The film starts with a series of overhead shots, all of which suggest that not only the main characters but the entire world is being watched and stalked by some ominous and unknown force. With the exception of a few key scenes, the majority of the film is in black-and-white and some of the images captures, especially in the doctor’s lab, are striking in their starkness. (There are also a few brief scenes where the asylum is so dark that it’s hard to visually make out what’s happening. Instead, we only hear voices in the blackness, an effective reminder of why so many people sleep with at least one light on.) The few times when color does intrude on the film, like when Shelley lights a candle or when we see an episode of Mystery, Uncovered, the effect is a disquieting one. In perhaps the film’s strongest sequence, several of Rathbone’s “patients’ suddenly appear in full, vibrant color, a nightmarish montage that seems to literally explode from the film. There’s also a nicely down black-and-white scene involving a rather haunting dance.

Lest I give you the wrong idea, The Howling definitely has a sense of humor about itself. In many ways it’s an homage to the gloriously over-the-top horror films of the past. It’s a film that obviously was made for horror fans by horror fans and, as a result, the 83 minute running time is full of references to other classic horror films. Shelley, for instance, will be a familiar character to anyone who has ever seen a haunted house film from the 40s or 50s. There’s always a mysterious caretaker. As for the Asylum itself, it feels like it could have been transported in from the twisted, psychological landscape of German Expressionism.

I liked The Howling. It’s a low-budget horror film that makes pays homage to some of my favorite horror films and makes good use of a dream-like atmosphere. And, as I said before, atmosphere is everything….