Film flashback: Abby

Abby (1974), dir. William Girdler, American International Pictures

Plagiarism and the movie industry often go hand in hand. “If the film’s budget is under a million, it’s a rip-off; but if it’s over a million? Then it’s a homage” as the saying goes. Whenever you have one film that is successful, you can count on there being dozen of similar films. True today and in the 1970’s, especially in the wake of such films like The Exorcist.

Abby in particular was deemed so much of a rip off that Warner Bros. sued AIP to have Abby pulled from theaters. Was such action warranted?

We open with a priest (William Marshall) leaving for Africa. Once he arrives, he discovers a temple dedicated to Eshu, a trickster often associated whirlwinds and sex. Opening a small casket unleashes a terrific gale, knocking the men down, while on the other side of the globe (Kentucky to be exact), the priest’s son Emmett and his wife Abby have just settled into their new home when they are woken up by a fierce shaking and howling winds.

From there things get worse. Abby’s body is cold to the touch, she grows increasingly profane, but only in the presence of her husband, and then there is the deep guttural voice she snarls in when she talks.

This is an odd movie. William Marshall shines, conveying a deep dignity and power, even when the other actors seem to be unaware of how to pronounce their lines. The plot points that parallel to The Exorcist are numerous and have been mentioned elsewhere. Using Carol Speed as the victim, rather than a child, does move the film away from its roots and it is overall better for it. As the possessed Abby, Speed chews up the scenery and seems to be having a great time mowing through the cast. The final confrontation, done under the serene glow of a disco ball, echoes the final confrontation between Father Merrin and Regan, yet just different enough; although I have read where the scene in question is close enough to The Eerie Midnight Horror Show to be accused of ripping that off as well.

“Abby doesn’t need a man anymore…the devil is her lover now!”

Things That Need to Go Away: "Now, It's Personal!"

by: Jesse Baruffi

Okay, let's get this out of the way: for the most part, when I talk about these things that need to go away, I probably should clarify that I generally don't mean most of them are so awful that they should never be used again (though some are). The reason a lot of the stuff I talk about gets overused is because to some degree at some point, it does work, and probably very well, and while imitation is the highest form of flattery, it is not necessarily the best way to create great works of art. Some things simply need to be moderated and approached with caution, but Things That Need To Be Moderated And Approached With Caution just isn't quite as catchy a title.

Such is the case with "Now, It's Personal!" the latest Thing That Needs to Go Away. This refers to the conflict between a hero and a villain in which it's not simply a matter of law and order, good and evil, survival, or prevailing ideals. It is, in fact, personal, between the characters. On a certain level, this can be highly entertaining and indeed drive the story. Adding a personal element can give the audience reason to care about a conflict between individuals, after all. The problem arises when EVERY conflict inevitably becomes personal because that's what the audience responded to best.

I have several examples of this. A big one is the Star Trek movies. Ask just about anyone what the best one is and they'll tell you it's Wrath of Khan. Why? Partially because of (SPOILER ALERT FOR A 30-YEAR-OLD MOVIE) Spock's death, but mostly because of the personal conflict between Kirk and Khan. Khan saw Kirk as having wronged him, and made it his mission to deliver revenge, along with a lot of Melville references. It's also kind of an interesting inversion because usually the hero has to seek revenge, or justice if they're more idealistic, against someone who did something bad to them, but in this case, the villain hates the hero. So okay, it's the popular one, fair enough. But why do they then have to copy it? I mean, Shinzon becomes Khan for Picard in Nemesis. Picard himself gets personal on the Borg in First Contact (this one I'm kind of okay with, as the Borg aren't exactly a person), and of course Nero becomes Khan for Spock in the new movie. Of course, Nero was completely insane, and his revenge was against a guy who actually tried to help him, but the crappiness of that movie matters less in this case than does the fact that he was out for revenge.

In every case, we're given some reason why it's personal, and frankly, after awhile all that personalness stops meaning anything. If every tale is a vengeance tale, stories of nothing but retaliation for past misdeeds, not only are we mired in the past, but no one is fighting for ideals anymore, and it's hard to see any side as particularly better than the other. A big example of this problem is superhero comics. Villains are all out for revenge against the heroes now. Again, I don't mind it in small to moderate doses. Dr. Doom, for example, wants to destroy Reed Richards, but that's just one piece of his motivation. He mainly wants to rule the world because he thinks he's the most qualified to do so, and hates that the accursed Richards stands in his way. This is actually more of a psychological flaw on his part, because it impedes his true goal. But when villains don't actually commit crimes except to destroy the heroes, and heroes aren't doing any good except to squash their personal rival villains, it takes away a lot of the idealistic themes of the genre. I'm nerdy enough to believe that superheroes were not born out of the desires of physically weak boys who want revenge on the world, but on the notion that given enough power, individuals of conscience would choose to make the world a better place and inspire others to do the same. As such, this ideal must, more often than it doesn't, come into conflict with those who believe that power is used for personal benefit, which most villains of the mundane and super variety are. Again, I'm not saying it should never be, or never become, personal, but the trend seems to be moving towards only the personal, and it begins to feel a bit hollow. I don't need Dr. Light, a second-string villain, to have to commit horrible rape against a hero's wife to be taken seriously. Couldn't he simply have a really nasty light beam that he uses to blackmail people or something? I don't know, that's just one example, but you see where I'm coming from.

Not everyone needs to have a personal mortal enemy. I don't, and chances are you don't either. Not every conflict between a cop and criminal has to have a tragic backstory, or sparring commanders on different sides of a war. These situations are compelling in and of themselves. Mainly, this comes down to a matter of impact. Save the personal stuff for special occasions, because otherwise, the visceral thrill of seeing two people who have a truly vested interest in each other's destruction becomes hollow. That way, when a conflict goes beyond the ideological and enters the realm of the personal, it truly means something.

Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned From Gurren Lagann

by: Jesse Baruffi

1. Sometimes, you have to ignore reason and attempt the impossible.
2. Evolution cannot and should not be stopped.
3. If you can't believe in yourself, believe in those who believe in you.
4. Eventually though, you will need to believe in yourself.
5. A surprise attack is useful, but it only works once.
6. The world needs people who are reckless, but it needs people who are cautious just as much.
7. No matter how special another person is to us, we shouldn't try to become them, even if they're gone.
8. But our lost loved ones live on in us, and they can inspire us to be better.
9. Even though sometimes we must consider doing what is practical over what is right, it's better to find a way to do both.
10. You should always be there to punch your friends in the face when they need it.
11.Even if we gain the power to do so, we should not bring back the dead. The world has to make way for the next generations.
12. Just because humanity is capable of doing harm or evil doesn't mean we deserve to die.
13. Kissing the busty redhead will probably get you killed. It's still worth it.
14. Grow, adapt, evolve, never run away, and never give up.
15. If you dare to be awesome enough, nothing can stop you.

Film flashback: Night of the Creeps

Night of the Creeps (1986), dir. Fred Dekker, Tristar Pictures

Fred Dekker’s cult classic Night of the Creeps was a slightly different step from most of the other 80’s horror films.  Opening with an alien experiment gone awry, we cut to the black and white era of 1959. A young couple head to the make out point when the male decides to investigate said alien experiment that just happened to crash land about twenty yards from his car. Since this is a film made in 80’s, the woman meets her end at the hands (and ax) of an escaped mental patient.

Jumping ahead to the 1980’s, we are introduced to our main cast (note the names). Chris Romero and his best friend J.C. are two luckless losers in college. Chris falls madly in love with Cynthia Cronenburg at a mixer, and decides to pledge to a frat in order to impress her.

Ordered to pull a prank by the head frat boy (who’s dating Cynthia), our heroes end up unleashing hell in the form of the frozen body from the prologue, who now happens to be host to a rather large number alien parasites. Horror and humor occur in equal measure.

At a glance, this seems to be one of the first horror films that poked fun at the rules established in earlier films. The character of Detective Cameron (played to perfection by Tom Atkins) is really something special. As the former boyfriend to the girl killed in the prologue, we see someone whose life stopped for them. We aren’t given any drawn out monologues or characters info dumping us, but a look at the man’s house shows us a perfect picture of someone who never got over 1959. Atkins was an actor who could do world weary with the best of them.

Would I recommend it? I’d say the film has held up rather well, but the humor is a wee bit dated. Thankfully the horror and the humor are equally proportioned, so the film never drags too far in one direction or another. There is a slight grindhouse-ish feel to the film, just lurking under the surface. I found the character of J.C. to be a bit grating at times, but thankfully the film doesn’t focus on him too long

 Be careful though, as there are two editions running around. The theatrical one ends with a jump scare, while the TV edit has a resolution.  

"The good news is your dates are here.”

“The bad news is... they’re dead.”

My time at 12 Hours of Terror

This past Sunday I was privileged to attend the second horror film festival at the historic Belcourt Theater in Nashville, this year dubbed "12 Hours of Terror". From Noon to Midnight, I was witness to some of the best and oddest horror films ever made. I managed to interview Dr. Gangrene, who acted as 'master of spookamonies' for the event, hosting trivia contests in between shows.

There will be more in depth reviews of the films later, but what films they had; from the two best films to be shot in Louisville, to a MST3K classic, to a mind warped fever to the strangest film to feature killer genitals and mullets, the Belcourt had it all. 

"Shadows of the Apt" Doesn't Redefine Fantasy, It Just Does It Better

by: Jesse Baruffi

In a shocking twist that will surprise absolutely no one, I grew up reading lots of fantasy. While that doesn't exactly make me an expert or anything, it has caused me to spend a lot of time thinking about the genre and what makes it tick, and even try my hand at writing some. At some point, I do intend to do an article on fantasy in general, on what works and what doesn't, but that's a pretty huge topic and one I don't want to go into in a half-baked way. For right now, suffice it to say that a lot of fantasy bugs me, despite my love for the genre. I grow weary when I walk into the fantasy section of the bookstore and come across endless series of impenetrable pseudo-Tolkien stories and retellings of the author's D&D campaigns. Then more recently, I've come across the works of mega-authors like Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin, both of whom I dislike (as authors, I'm sure they're perfectly nice people). Jordan for his bizarre sexism and unwillingness to finish a story, no matter how many thousands of pages he takes, and Martin because, although he is at least a talented writer, his books are essentially plotless amoral blood porn, which also can't finish a single story in thousands of pages. Given all this, when I do read fantasy, it's either the classics, such as Roger Zelazny and Robert E. Howard, or light-hearted one-shot novels by A. Lee Martinez or well-done parodies like Order of the Stick, and I've generally avoided newer series altogether.

Then my friend Tom tells me about a series he's reading called "Shadows of the Apt" by a fellow named Adrian Tchaikovsky. He says it's a very good fantasy series and I would probably like it. I nod my head, somewhat interested, but given my recent skepticism of fantasy, combined with the fact that I am naturally both lazy and cheap, I didn't jump on buying them. This is how I know Tom is a good friend: he actually bought me all four books on Amazon and mailed them to me. Given the brazen generosity of this act, I had no choice but to read the series, and I am very glad I did.

While the premise of the series is pretty standard, i.e. an evil empire is trying to take over the world, and only a small band of mismatched idealists and miscreants can stop them, the unique execution is where the story shines. For one thing, the races of the world are all attached to totemic insects. Usually in fiction, when insects are portrayed, it's as being icky or evil or at best primordial, but Tchaikovsky is clearly a student of entomology, and treats the underappreciated creatures with a grand sense of reverence and fascination that to my knowledge has not been done elsewhere (funny enough, the series actually made me like insects more). This allows for a fascinating variety of cultures that may be dotted with elements you've seen before, but are extremely distinct and filled with vibrant individuals as well as believable cultural cohesion. For another, most fantasy worlds tend to be suspended in time, as magic by its nature is timeless, and for some reason, technology never moves beyond the medieval level, except for ancient races and bad guys. Tchaikovsky's world has a fair amount of technology to begin with, but much like in real life, the war moves it forward. We see the technological people (as there is a clear divide between who can use magic and who technology) grow more advanced, while the magical races slowly diminish, and all this just in a few short years. This allows the stakes to rise without seeming absurd or artificial, and in fact, it resembles our own war history.

Obviously, a story like this wouldn't work if the characters weren't interesting. What Tchaikovsky does to make them work well is to force them into places where they must make decisions that aren't clearly black and white. As most of the protagonists are youths on the cusp of adulthood or veterans who are past their prime, and the Wasp Empire is such a colossal enemy, they must often choose between doing the moral thing and the practical thing to survive or help others survive. I don't tend to like stories where characters always choose the practical thing in the most amoral way possible (I'm looking at YOU, Battlestar Galactica!), but in a story where the characters make a variety of choices along this spectrum, and the results are just as varied, I am pleased to see how these choices are used as honest-to-goodness character development that also moves the story along. And while the story focuses on a relatively small number of characters at first, the cast grows to be huge without ever feeling overwhelming. Even the villains are very different one to another. Certainly enough agents of the Wasp Empire are ruthless and brutal (the Empire itself being a curious mix of Nazis, Spartans, and Mayans), but many are just people doing their best in an unstoppably evil society. It is also worth noting that people die in these books. While it's not filled with pointless shock-value deaths like Martin, just about no one is safe, and many people you come to care about will die or have horrible things happen to them. As a consequence, when the heroes do succeed at something, it feels like they've earned it.

So far, there are seven of these books, only five of which are currently available in the U.S. (though I cheat and buy them from England), of a planned ten-book series. Considering he is a family man with a demanding day job, the fact that Tchaikovsky releases these 500+ page books every six months or so implies a nigh-superhuman speed and prolificity (is that a word? I'm not sure). Makes an aspiring slacker like me feel incredibly humbled by my own meager turnout.

I also highly recommend checking out his website, Shadows of the Apt, which has all manner of supplemental information, artwork, and short stories, many of which do eventually filter their characters into the books.

Animation Block: Conan the Adventurer

 “Conan! The Adventurer!”

“Conan! Warrior without Fear!”

The 1990’s were a strange time for American animation, perhaps more so than the 1980’s. The stalwarts of the previous decade were changing with the times, or at least trying to; G.I. Joe had been taken over by DiC and retooled to focus on the new toys, Transformers first had Transformers: Generation 2 (mostly just old episodes with new CGI openers), then Beast Wars. Sunbow’s fortunes had declined, thanks in part to the disastrous flops of G.I. Joe: the Movie and Transformers: the Movie. The nineties saw an influx of anime and a new cable system primed to change how networks did their shows.

Conan the Adventurer was one of those new shows. Created in a joint effort by Sunbow and Graz Entertainment (for the first season), the series told the saga of Conan and his allies as they fought against the evil wizard Wrath-Amon and his followers of Set. Because when you watch Conan the Barbarian or read the Howard tales, you immediately think of a cartoon.

And that was an odd sticking point for many fans of the Howard character, Conan was not exactly a character that could be put in the confines of a children’s show (what with the wenching, drinking, fighting, etc.) so many of them took a great deal of umbrage at the character being softened.

Granted, Christy Marx and Jean Chalopin did reduce the character by removing the harder aspects of the character, but the overall core was still the same. Conan was very much a barbarian, he distrusted magic, etc. Surely the character is more than being an oversexed pirate?

The series, for those not in the know, told the story of Conan’s quest to free his parents from a spell placed on them by the wizard Wrath-Amon. Along the way he picked up a small group of allies to aide him in his quest. The addition of the new characters actually made some sense, since the show lacked monologues we the audience weren’t privy to Conan’s thoughts. Giving him a cast meant he could explain things to them, or have them explain things to us through him. Using their magic star-metal weapons, Conan and his allies waged a war against the Serpent Men, which actually brought up another complaint by the fans, i.e. the use of violence.

In keeping with the broadcast standards of the day, Conan’s weapons didn’t actually kill or maim the Serpent Men, but rather banish them to another dimension. I know, Conan without decapitations is hardly a Conan at all, especially when compared to other shows that featured death like Mighty Max or E.X.O. Squad, but this was Sunbow. I’m not going to justify it, and I lack the knowledge to explain why they did what they did. Holdover from the 80’s perhaps?

One thing of note about the series was the story. There actually were plot arches and callbacks to earlier episodes. The writing and voice acting was excellent, with even a few Howard stories being adapted. The animation was sometimes less then perfect, with characters moving far too stiffly or sometimes going off model.

By the standards of the era, Conan was trying to be a mature show, but still pulled its punches. The series has just released onto DVD by Shout! Factory. It’s worth a rental at least.

Now, Conan and the Young Warriors? Now that show sucked.