Seek the Wolf in Thyself!
My Other stuff on TV
Through browsing various databases of cheesy sci-fi and fantasy films, I ran across one I did not recognize at all. I consider myself well versed in all things cheesy where movies are concerned, but this one caught me by surprise. However, after watching it, I was even more surprised.
Having the name Ivan Reitman associated to a film usually does not put it in the “B movie” category, but even the great producers have bad movies every once in a while. Spacehunter was one of several 3D movies that came out, trying to capitalize on the success of movies like Star Wars as well as Road Warrior. Combining elements of both movies, Spacehunter is a fairly simplistic story with pretty decent set design and production value but poor scripting as well as story writing.
Once again, we delve into the dark and weird world of Roger Corman (although he was uncredited as the executive producer). His work during the 80s was priceless in many ways, while at the same time mind-numbing. This time, he took a page from Lucas’s book. He takes a classic Akira Kurosawa film, called Yojimbo, and re-imagines it in a science fantasy setting, in it’s own “galaxy far far away,” on a planet called Ura. It is an interesting cheesy mixture of fantasy and sci-fi with bad acting, a woman that is topless just about the whole movie (actress Maria Socas), a telepathic (and very poorly conceived) monitor lizard, a dance by a woman with four breasts (beat that Total Recall) and kung fu from the venerable David Carridine.
Recently I have found a new fascination in abandoned locations around the world. Of course the most famous is Chernobyl in the Ukraine. It is fascinating to me to imagine a city that was abandoned in 2 days. What is still there? Have others looted it by now or is everything undisturbed? From what I hear, the new Diehard movie goes there (I have not seen it yet).
I found this movie after researching the last film I wrote about, Outpost and decided to research it. It has a interesting production story in that it had four different versions made because the director was never satisfied with it. It was also controversial for its time because of the psychotic behavior and drug use (wow, if they could see what we watch on TV now!).
This movie is a rare one, but maybe I am alone in this. I found it on Netflix, watched it, bought it on Amazon, and watched it again. It is, in my estimation, a rare gem. But where can you go wrong with Nazi zombies? Like I said, this is one of my new favorite films because it just clicked with me. I love the premise, the production and the look and feel. I did end up using it in one campaign as a side adventure. I even mapped out the entire outpost.
Having reviewed a variety of science fiction films, I felt that I should try to watch some other genres. Fantasy was the next obvious route, but as we all know, Hollywood has a real bad history with fantasy. Only recently with movies like the Lords of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy, has Hollywood given value to the fantasy genre. Perhaps CGI makes it easier now, but back in the 1980s a storm of fantasy films came out after the success of Conan The Barbarian that gave me plenty of cheese to choose from.
The Deathstalker series was one of those that tried to capitalize on the success of Conan. They even implied in the second film that the two universes were connected. There were a total of 4 Deathstalker moves, all but the first being direct to video. Roger Corman was the producer behind all 4, and I have written many times about how inspiring some of Roger Corman’s work is for a GM. However, I have to say that Corman’s fantasy is far less inspiring than his science fiction or horror. It was not easy watching either of these films.
Another movie I remember very well from my childhood days of watching way too much TV was the Day of the Triffids. I will always remember the sounds the Triffids made. Only recently did I find out (thanks to Wikipedia) that it was based on a 1951 novel of the same name and there were also several TV series based on it. However, this movie stands out to me because of certain aspects of it that were not in the book or the TV series. Some may call it an Americanization of the film while others may write it up to the era of filmmaking, but there are some aspects that I really liked about this movie.
Coming across this in my Netflix list, and I thought “how bad could it be with Michael York?” Come on! Logan from Logan’s Run? 1997 was a time when CGI sci-fi flicks were coming out a dime a dozen and many of them had halfway decent effects. Babylon 5 was at its peak. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was hot also. Putting all that in perspective, I really thought this movie had potential.
Boy, was I wrong.
I have been trying to shorten my Netflix list this year and watch more of the lesser known movies to get them off my list. Some of those movies have been pretty bad and I can not believe I had them on my list for so long. Others had nuggets of coolness that got my mind thinking. Of course, my thoughts always go straight to gaming and what RPGs I can use these ideas in, but that’s just who I am.