Festivals-a-Go-Go --- Cold War Sci-Fi on the Big Screen

Swinging to the Politico-Trippy-Headiness of Cold War Wow!

In perusing the TIFF Bell Lightbox’s latest catalogue, alongside retrospectives of Turkish filmmaker Yilmaz Guney and French filmmaker Robert Bresson (starting next week), some may have noticed a splashy section devoted to sci-fi films produced during the Cold War era in Eastern Europe, when Soviet and Soviet-style regimes were in power, and the mandate of the Party was mirrored in government-approved films.

The attraction to these films isn’t tied down to one reason. They’re artifacts of dead regimes, perhaps politicized representations of man’s place in the cosmos, subversive efforts by filmmakers to explore themes and critiques in B-movie scenarios, or outright escapism with trippy visuals, set designs, shiny spacesuits and bulbous helmets, and music that’s either dead serious, cerebral, or wacked-out.

The best-known director among the 17 represented films - spanning the former USSR, East Germany, the former Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Estonia - is Andrei Tarkovky, via Solaris and Stalker, and while these two films may receive the lion’s share of attention, there’s a whole slew of works by directors few have ever seen, or seen on DVD.

Screening from January thru March, the movies that make up Attack the Bloc: Cold War Science Fiction from Behind the Iron Curtain are largely anchored around Fridays, which tends to be TIFF’s cult film slot, and I think that’s a programming error in the sense that it restricts the wackier, B-movie efforts for the Friday crowd, and deliberately redirects the more intellectual, genre-transgressions to Sundays.

The Corman Touch: Part II

"Contrary to one's immediate reaction, there are deep social mores beneath those Lycra-cradled buttocks."

When his first and only genuine effort to make social drama, a superb adaptation of Charles’ Beaumont’s novel The Intruder (1962), flopped and lost money, producer / director Roger Corman gave up on so-called message films, and stuck with bug-eyed monsters, Poe adaptation, and eventually became the premiere producer of B-movies.

Now in his eighties, Corman’s producing credits span more than 350 titles, which is frankly insane, yet he remains the same affable yet frugal producer beloved by former protégés like Joe Dante.

Whether it was the 1978 Piranha, the 1995 Piranha (aka Piranhas), or the recent Dinoshark (2009) and Sharktopus [M] (2010) productions, Corman served as mentor to the craft of ‘efficient’ filmmaking. None of the films qualify as art, yet their makers went from editors, production managers, and special effects whizzes to directors – something typical of the old studio system, but largely absent today except with producers who enjoy productive associations with major studios.

That Corman continues to make movies is a wonder simply because he’s weathered the demise of drive-in theatres, the death of major indie outfits like AIP and Avco Embassy, his own releasing firms New World and Concord, and the lack of theatrical releases.

Around the nineties, Corman settled into making exploitation fodder for cable TV, which allowed more gore and boobery, but mandated formulaic product. The disposable nature had to be offset by brand recognition, so Corman reached back into his back catalogue and remade A Bucket of Blood (1995), Piranha (1995), and The Wasp Woman (1995).

He also riffed on the 1958 Woolner production, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, making Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995), and during the eighties he also remade Not of This Earth (1988) and Masque of the Red Death (1989).

His nineties remakes are more interesting because of the casting and virtual scene-for-scene retention of the original scripts. Piranha doesn’t need to exist, but has a minor curiosity value in seeing scenes from the ’78 Dante version replayed with slight tweaks, new faces, and the integration of effects footage from the original film.

Again, it has no reason to exist, but it made for an easy cable TV sale, filled the rental shelves, and if examined with critical eyes, shows the stylistic shifts within a 16 year period – namely faster editing, snappier dialogue, and a shorter running time for a 90 minute time slot.

Dinoshark [M], available in a swanky Blu-ray edition from Anchor Bay, is similarly brief, but unlike its unofficial sequel, Sharktopus, it takes itself too seriously and lacks the necessary fromage factor that was effectively maintained in Piranha [M] (1995). Corman’s millennium era product is sometimes amusing, but like all good B-level cheese, it requires a special blend of the right elements (Eric Roberts always helps), and luck.

I’ll have reviews of the BBC’s Human Planet (Warner Home Video) and a pair of Mimsy Farmer gialli up shortly.

This past weekend was devoted to Doors Open Toronto, and between film and soundtrack reviews I’ll interpolate a few posts and photo essays on some of Toronto’s more intriguing buildings I managed to visit, some tethered to related docs.






Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

The Corman Touch

After a delicious Eric Roberts sandwich, Sharktopus homicidus is ready for a nice aftynoon nap.

Roger Corman's built a career making economical quickies, but there was a period when he was poised to move into the low A-realm, after building an increasingly respectable reputation as a director of Edgar Allan Poe shockers such as The House of Usher (1960) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964).

Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) was supposed to be the career maker, but UA's mishandling of the film soured Corman from directing for practically 20 years, during which time he set up a new company, New World Pictures, producing and releasing native and international products.

During that time, Corman went back to being a businessman and mentor, and he continues to be involved with low budget productions, such as Sharktopus [M] (Anchor Bay), reportedly the highest rated TV movie on the SyFy network thus far.

From the Blu-ray's  commentary track, one gets the impression he'd like to work with more money, but technology's allowed him to animate almost anything - including a half-shark, half octopus, with decapitations and elaborate explosions.

Now, few attempts to make a deliberately good-bad, bug-eyed monster movie work (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus has its share of flaws, but came close, even tough all the money shots are in the trailer), but there is a special fromage factor in Sharktopus, which should please fans of no-budget monster movies cut from the Corman cloth.

To the other end, there's Philippe Resonnances [M] (Synapse Films), which comes pretty close to transcending the major limitations of its DV production values. Not unlike Sharktopus, the giant bug effects and attack sequences generally work in what's a decent riff on Ron Underwood's Tremors (1990). Shot on DV, this French film took some time getting to Region 1 land, but it's a good work sampler from a director who just needs a bit more cash and extra time to refine the script into something less overtly derivative.

Coming next: Marlon Brando's mumbling bubberesque performance in Arthur Penn's The Chase (1966), a film whose tension is derived not from whether 'Bubber' Reeves (shiny-faced Robert Redford) lives through a conflagration of small town hate, but exactly how does the salmon dress worn by actress Janice Rule (The Swimmer) maintain an unbearable level of cleavage in spite of gravity, and a persistent, southern summer breeze.






Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com