It's Not a Minotaur

Film: The Maze
Format: Internet video on Fire!

When you pull up an older horror movie, you’re never really sure what you’re going to get. Sometimes, you get something that’s a lot of fun and sometimes you get The Maze. This is a movie that desperately wants to present its audience with something new and terrible and does so for two acts. And then the third act happens. I’m not going to spoil the third act of this; it deserves to be seen. Suffice it to say that what happens in the third act of this film is one of the most unintentionally funny things I have ever seen in a movie in years.

It's almost a shame because the idea here is a very good setup for a horror movie. Gerald McTeam (Richard Carlson), heir to a Scottish castle and title, is engaged to Kitty (Veronica Hurst). Everything is fine until Gerald receives a telegram that tells him to return to the family castle immediately. He does so, and also ceases communication with Kitty and her aunt Edith (Katherine Emery). Soon enough, a missive arrives from Gerald releasing Kitty from their engagement and more or less telling her not to ever seek him out.

Ten Days of Terror!: Invaders from Mars

Films: Invaders from Mars
Format: DVD from Peotone Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

There’s a part of me that loves 1950s science fiction because it has so many qualities that I admire. It’s so often campy without trying, meaning that it’s the sort of camp that has a chance of actually being good. It’s also so often earnest. Science is respected as being the source of American (and thus, in the mind of these movies, human) strength and power. The aliens generally want to destroy our civilization and enslave us or take over our planet. And, since this is pre-Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we get a good variety of aliens to attack us. Invaders from Mars, as the name implies, is right in that sweet spot of alien invasion, campy characters, weird special effects, and boostering for the American military.

One night, young David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) sets an alarm for himself to do a little stargazing. After a mild, good-natured rebuke from his parents, (Leif Erickson and Hillary Brooke), David is awakened by a thunderstorm. Looking out into it, he sees a massive spacecraft descending not too far from the family home. He wakes up his father (again), who puts the boy back to bed and decides to go take a look. When he finally comes back the next morning, Dr. MacLean is angry, short, sullen, and otherwise unemotional. He’s almost, dare I say it, a pod person. David notices a strange puncture mark on the back of his father’s neck.

Lust in the Dust

Film: Duel in the Sun
Format: DVD from Mt. Morris Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Anyone who has worked on a group project knows that there’s often a benefit to having the suggestions of other people. Sometimes, though, other people turn out to be much more of a hindrance than a help. In the case of Duel in the Sun, King Vidor is give the sole directorial credit, but there are six uncredited directors on this film. Six. I can only imagine that at some level, this led to a “too many cooks” situation.

This is exacerbated, at least for me, by the fact that this film stars Jennifer Jones, who tends to leave me cold. This is balanced by it also featuring Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore. Still, I specifically watched this because Jones was nominated for Best Actress for this film, so she was the main reason I spent time with Duel in the Sun in the first place.

Future Past

Film: Things to Come
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I have a big soft spot for old science fiction. I’d love to say it’s because I grew up on early sci-fi, and that is a part of the reason. I love early pulp stuff and there’s some truth to the idea that I’m enamored by science fiction that predicts a crazy future that has never come to pass. Things to Come, based on work by science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells, is that sort of film. The film covers nearly 100 years of “history” from war to war to devastation, recovery, restoration, and the threat of war again.

Interestingly, the film predicts a massive war starting at the end of 1940, missing the actual start of World War II by just a little more than a year. On Christmas day, war appears imminent, and three men discuss the possibility of coming hostilities. Cabal (Raymond Massey) is pessimistic, believing that war will only cause terrible harm. Harding (Maurice Braddell) agrees, and he does not look forward to the coming conflict. The third man, Pippa Passworthy (Edward Chapman) does not share their fears, suggesting that war probably will not happen, but if it does, it will stimulate innovation and invention. When the war starts that night with a bombing raid on “Everytown” (a loosely-concealed and renamed London), the country mobilizes and the war truly begins.

The war here is stylized to look very much like the sort of static trench warfare that World War I was most famous for. The war continues for years to the point where it is being fought simply because it is still being fought. Humanity is stricken by a plague known as the wandering sickness (in many ways the first cinematic zombies) that only adds to the general destruction and desolation. In 1970, the wandering sickness is essentially cured through the actions of The Chief (Ralph Richardson), who simply shot anyone came down with the illness, which ultimately claimed half of Europe’s population.

At this time, a strange airplane lands in Everytown. It's Cabal from the beginning of the film. He represents a group of scientists who now live in Basra, claiming that his, well, cabal (called Wings Over the World), has outlawed war and independent nations in the attempt to restore order and civilization. He is captured by the Chief and put to work getting the Chief's airplanes back into service. The Chief's main mechanic Gordon (Derrick de Marney) uses the fixed airplane to hie himself off to Basra to warn the scientists. Wings Over the World attacks, dropping a sleeping gas on Everytown, and when everyone is asleep, Wings Over the World occupies the town and kills the Chief.

And progress goes on. We get a montage of nearly 70 years duration as the world once again embarks on that path toward a technological world of marvels, but there are some who wish for it to slow down or even stop. Unrest begins as Wings Over the World attempts to launch people into the aether above the world. But many want the progress to stop if for no other reason than to prevent things from turning into war and pestilence again.

Any film that predicts a recent future is obsolete before too long, and while this film is disturbingly accurate in terms of what it shows humanity to be like, the future it predicts never really comes even close of coming to pass. Science fiction films always have this trouble, and it is definitely true here, when this film was rendered obsolete a few years after the arrival of the major conflict and long before the walking sickness.

It’s an interesting view of the future world, but it would in many ways be so much more interesting if it didn’t attempt to be anything that has since become such typical old science fiction tropes that they become expected and cliché. It’s not fair to this film, since in many ways it invented these particular clichés. However, once the cliché is there, it's almost impossible not to see it, regardless of it being fresh and new here.

Sadly, this is a film that has aged poorly. It comes off as stagey as well as preachy and moralizing. Too bad, really. I imagine for its time it was something truly special, but now the story is a bit dull and silly. While the lesson is still an interesting one, I’d rather not have a moral shoved down my throat simply because it can be.

Why to watch Things to Come: Science fiction when it was new.
Why not to watch: It’s aged less like wine and more like a dairy product.