ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Okay, what if Doctor Who teamed up with Batman and Robin to defeat Mechagodzilla?

Geez, why am I the only person to thinks up great ideas like this!?
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Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)



Amicus' Tardis is blown off course.

I feel I have to put a disclaimer here. I am not a hardcore Dr. Who fan.

I grew up with Pertwee and Baker, and I loved them. After that I hit puberty and the good Doctor left my own personal universe. So, basically I want to say that I view this picture as a film lover, not as some serio Dr. Who fan. Thus I ask, just how did Amicus get it so wrong?

Oh, it really isn't as awful as some Who fans have painted it, and by "painted" I mean spittle daubed venom! But it looks like Amicus has tried to reinvent Dr. Who about 25 years before he needed reinventing.

I mean, I realize it's a show involving time travel, but Amicus' Tardis is just a bit too early! They have taken two of Britain's most beloved entertainers and made one a bumbling comedy side-kick (Castle as Ian), and the other a doddering old eccentric granddad type (Cushing as the Doctor). Fair enough. Cushing's Doctor is a genius, we know and understand that. But if you take away the Tardis invention, then this could be any old geezer in a sci-fi movie.

Things are further muddied by lack of screen time for Cushing. He is strangely secondary here.

It's a good job the two girls playing his nieces (Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey). They get good characterizations to work from, and that the Daleks are a colourful and dastardly foe.

Sir Peter of the Who is jostling for attention in a film that bears his character's name. The irritants continue when you reach the end credits and the action quota amounts to being very little. It's safe to say the stunt department and director Gordon Flemyng's camera were not required to work over time.

On the plus side, the production design, considering the low end budget, is visually impressive. The outer lands of the Dalek's planet Skaro is very striking, with green tints and scorched plant life. The interiors are suitably metallic in feel, plenty of odd angles, though you will have to ignore parts of the set flapping about when they aren't meant too.

The Thal race of beings that enter the story are interestingly costumed and made up, preempting Glam Rock by a few years.

And those Daleks — forever assured and entering the villain stratosphere — really do rock with their staccato voices. But ultimately the film feels like such a waste of talent and source material, so much so that not even a casual Dr. Who fan can proclaim it a worthy spin on this particular practitioner. 5/10
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Batman Forever (1995)




A different direction brings differing results.

Batman takes on a new side kick as he fights to keep Gotham City out of the clutches of Two-Face and The Riddler.

"No thanks, I'll get drive-thru"

Thus these be the first words out of Val Kilmer's incarnation of Batman and thus setting the standard for what Joel Schumacher's two Batman movies would be like.

Gone is the dark undertone from Tim Burton's visions, and the tight action sequences that marked Burton's debut out as a genuine genre piece of work. In their place comes sexy campery and ropey action set pieces.

The casting of both Val Kilmer as Batman and Chris O'Donnell as Robin is a big mistake, Kilmer easily being the most boring actor to don the suit out of all of them, whilst O'Donnell simply can't act outside of Robin's cartoonery bravado.

Nicole Kidman looks positively gorgeous as Chase Meridian, but that's all that is brought to the party. It's a waste of the very talented Kidman's ability, and a waste of the audience's time.

It's not all bad though. A comic book adaptation is only as good as its villains, and here we get a perfectly cast Jim Carrey as The Riddler, and a wildly over the top Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face.

Carrey steals every scene he is in, and it's almost too much, but as maniacal and exuberant as it is, it is the film's highlight and actually the film's saving grace. Tommy Lee Jones was reportedly unhappy from having his thunder stolen in the movie by Carrey.

The script does work enough to make the story accessible to all ages, and there are enough crash bangs and wallops to entertain in that brain-left-at-the-door kind of way.

This was the biggest hit of 1995, so the paying public lapped it up and paved the way for another Schumacher film in the franchise. But with all that star power wasted, and nipples on the rubber suits, it's hard to see now why it was so popular back then. 5/10 ____________________________________________________________________

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) (1975)



The last of the original wave of Zilla movies.

It has a mixed reputation among the fans, but Terror of Mechagodzilla is a romp of a sequel, one that's not without deep emotional heart.

The plot is bonkers of course; aliens are plotting to rule the world and have recreated Mechagodzilla after Godzilla shredded it to pieces in the previous meeting of the two beasts (Godzilla V Mechagodzilla).

There's Interpol agents running around not exactly in control of anything, and a vengeful scientist with an agenda who aids the aliens, while his daughter has become a cyborg designed to control Titanosaurus, a gigantic amphibious dinosaur that teams up with Mechagodzilla to stomp on Tokyo. All is lost for mankind . . . until Godzilla climbs out of the ocean to hopefully protect his domain.

The return of Ishirō Honda to the director's chair is a reassuring presence, and it helps the film retain a classy production level.

The monster smack-downs are neatly choreographed, the model work is wonderfully 1970s, and Akira Ifukube's thunderous score gladdens the spirit as it simultaneously rocks your bones. Yukiko Takayama's screenplay contains intelligence, where the sci-fi boffin speak is spliced with deep observations on humanity and what it means to be part of such a race, etc.

Fan division usually comes down to who likes super-hero Godzilla or who likes Godzilla in "destroy everything" mode. This is the former, and it's cheer worthy.

The atomic lizard in a bad mood would not surface again for 10 years, and by then the direction of Zilla's fortunes got increasingly silly. This marks "Terror" as something of a franchise closure to be cherished, and rightly so because it has all the good parts that made the first Toho wave so enjoyable.

So, turn up the volume, open your screens out, and indulge.

Wonderful. 8/10
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)