The Semiquincentennial Movie Project is
an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the
United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is
choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union,
as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will
represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly
entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold
(although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into
said fold).
Week #28: Florida -
The
state of Florida was established on Mar. 3, 1845
Details about Florida:
State bird: Northern mockingbird
State flower: orange blossom
State tree: palmetto
Additional historical trivia:
For drive-in fans: In Ft. Lauderdale there is a drive-in theater that has the most screens, with 14 of them.
Carabelle is noted for having the world's smallest police station. It's a phone booth.
The oldest continuously settled community in the U.S. is located in Augustine.
If you love golf, there are more golf courses in Florida than any other state. (Makes sense).
For fans of one of my favorite T.V. shows, In Search Of, Florida is home to Coral Castle. This structure was supposedly built by one man, and has some stones that weigh tons.
Famous people born in Florida: Tom Petty, Jim Morrison (lead singer of the Doors), Ronnie, Johnny and Donnie Van Zant, (brothers who fronted Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special), Sidney Poitier, Wesley Snipes, Matthew Stafford, Deion Sanders, Janet Reno and Marco Rubio.
Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959):
First thought: This movie should probably have been called Attack of the Giant Trash Bags. Of all the movies I have ever seen in my life, (and believe me I have seen a LOT!) these monsters are probably some of the most laughable (and that's even considering A*P*E*...). There is some interesting background to this, however. Roger Corman, always on the lookout to cut the budget down to the bare bones, had the guys who played the monsters design their own costumes. Zip! Why pay a costume designer when you can just get the actors, who you already are paying, to do the job for you?
Attack of the Giant Leeches was made for about $70. (Just kidding! It was actually made for about $70,000, but it LOOKS like it was made cheaper...)
It was directed by Corman stalwart Bernard L. Kowalski, who had more success as a TV director. He directed some episodes of Columbo, as well as episodes of Magnum P.I., Knight Rider, Baretta and Jake and the Fatman. This was his third big screen effort. He had previously directed Hot Car Girl and Night of the Blood Beast, both for Corman's AIP studios. This one was originally released as a double feature with A Bucket of Blood.
The movie starts out slam bang as a local poacher in the swamps fires upon a creature he sees. He pumps several bullets into it, but when he tells the locals, no one is able to find the body, so they assume the guy was drunk, and probably just shot an an oversized alligator. (All back country characters in these movies are alcoholics, did you ever notice that...?)
Apparently these mysterious creatures living in the swamp have resentment issues, because the guy turns up dead not long after.
The local game warden, Steve (Ken Clark) is of a mind that the culprit is a renegade alligator and goes out looking for it with his girlfriend, Nan (Jan Shepard), but comes up empty. Meanwhile the mysterious predator, (it is still assumed that there is only one), continues to ravage unlucky souls who find themselves in the swamp at the wrong time. Only the rest of the victims keep disappearing, as far as the local constabulary is concerned.
Steve thinks this "gator" is dragging it's victims underwater to some hideaway. The local sheriff (Gene Roth) wants to set off some dynamite charges to try to uncover the missing bodies, and hopefully kill the "gator" in the process. but Steve is adamant about preserving the pristine swamp and thinks that dynamite might damage the environment.
The next victims to fall prey to the creatures are the wife of Dave (Bruno VeSota), a local storekeeper, and her secret lover. See, Liz (Yvette Vickers) is the essence of a tramp. She has been cheating on Dave with his best friend, Cal (Michael Emmett). And you just know these two sinners are going to get what they deserve... Although maybe not the way that one would expect.
Dave figures out that Liz is cheating on him and goes looking for her and finds her in flagrante delicto with Cal. He is going to shoot them both, apparently, and Cal, being the cad that he is, tries to pin the blame all on Liz. Dave chases Liz and Cal through the swamp, and when he finally corners them near the water's edge he gets his revenge in an unexpected way as one of the creatures shows up.
No one believes Dave when he tells of seeing the creature, however. They assume, with reasonable assurity, that Dave killed them both and dumped the bodies in the swamp. This eventually leads to a couple of locals going out into the swamp hoping to find the bodies and get some reward money. And, no spoiler alert, they become victims themselves to the creatures.
Eventually Steve works out that the creatures are leeches, somehow transformed into giant size due to all that nuclear activity that is being done nearby. (Of course it's "nuclear radiation"... what other guilty party could be blamed in a 50's monster movie...?)
At one point the sheriff decides, on his own, to go against the advice of Steve and set off dynamite charges. And most of the bodies end up floating to the surface. Steve and a friend go underwater looking for the leeches and a battle occurs and eventually (maybe) the creatures are defeated.
One has to wonder: Are there only two of the leeches that were affected by the radiation? That's all we see. The movie ends, as usual, on a happy note that the threat has been vanquished, but I couldn't help but think: the swamp appears to be devoid of any creatures other than the leeches. It is never stated outright, but I think you are supposed to decide the leeches eliminated the other swamp denizens like the alligators. Did these two do all that all by themselves?
As noted above, don't go into this movie expecting some horrific monsters. Often those creatures look exactly like what they are in real life, just a couple of guys in decorated trash bags. The acting is not exactly top notch, either. Yvette Vickers, despite the fact that she is playing a stereotypical backwaters tramp, is about the best part of it. (And, yes, I am giving her some points for a scene of her in a bathing suit...)
At only 60 minutes in length, it won't use up too much of your time to give it a go. Admittedly there seems to be a few scenes where they are padding the scene and extending sequences just to get the movie up to a full hour. The scene where Dave chases Liz and Cal in particular takes up about 5 or 6 more minutes than might be necessary, and you can't help but wonder why the two couldn't put more distance between them and their pursuer. Especially since Dave has to stop every now and then to fire off his rifle or reload it.
I disparaged Teenage Zombies way back at the beginning of my movie review blogging for it's obvious efforts to pad a 45 minute TV show into a full length feature film, so I would be disingenuous if I didn't do the same here. But Giant Leeches has a phenomenally better acting output. (If you've watched Teenage Zombies, you know that's not hard to accomplish, but be that as it may).
So the end result is that Attack of the Giant Leeches is worth a watch if you appreciate cheesy low budget schlock like I do. Just don't go into it expecting Godzilla, or for that matter, The Horror of Party Beach. I think it's better to watch it for the unintentionally funny stuff than it is for its strictly horror output.
Drive safely, folks. Especially if you have to cross a swamp on the way home.
The following is a guest post by my friend Jim Bob Turner: I made a few editorial notes, but it's mostly his thoughts. For the most part you should be able to figure out to what or whom he is referring without my help. -Quiggy
Hamlet (1948):
OK, so my buddy Quiggy said he was tryin' to "expand my whore risin's". Hey! He said it, not me... and where them "whores" was in this movie, I can't say. I sure didn't see any...
But anyways, I'm good buddies with him, so I sat down an' watched this here movie on his say so. It was about some guy, I think he was called Hambone, or something like that. "Hambone". Sounds like my kind of guy, I'm going in thinking maybe this guy an' me could get together and share some good recipes. He might even have a good recipe for fried possum...
Anyways, the movie starts off with some guy saying that this is the "story of a man who could not make up his own mind...", and right away I'm thinking maybe this guy he's talkin' about tips the jug a little too much. I get the same way, especially when I've drunk a little too much of cousin Cletus' moonshine. Cletus may not be able to add two and two together and come anywheres close to 5, but he does make a pretty mean batch of mountain dew...
I should point out at the start that this Hambone character comes from some play from about 1000 years ago. I think it was a play that Miz Winfred wanted us to read for English class back in my high school days. It was writtened by some guy named William Shake A Spear. I didn't read it, of course. I got the class nerd to help. It might actually have been my friend, Quiggy (ed. note: it wasn't me... I didn't meet Jim Bob until after high school). He gave me a quick 5 minute sum up. I didn't think I missed much.
So, anyway, the movie starts out with some guys who are guards on a balcony and they are talking about one of them claiming that he seen this ghost of the old king, who later turns out to have been Hambone's daddy. See, some time before this point, Hambone's daddy had died. His uncle, Claude, ended up marryin' Hambone's mother and now his uncle is his stepdaddy. Sounds like normal to me... what's the big deal...?
I guess Hambone didn't take to kindly to his uncle Claude becomin' his new daddy. He seems to think there's sumpin' fishy going on in Denmark, which is home country. Hey, "sumpin's fishy in Denmark"! I think I came up with a new phrase! I like that better'n the line in the movie... (ed. note: Jim Bob is referring to the line in the play/movie "something is rotten in Denmark." I have to admit I like Jim Bob's line better myself. too.)
Hambone seems to be so glum about the whole situation that I think he's even thinking about suicide. I think that's the whole point behind that earlier dig at him, when the guy says the movie is about a guy who can't "make up his mind.." At one point Hambone even has an argument with hisself, tryin' to decide whether or not to drink the kool-aid. (ed. note: Jim Bob is referring to that famous piece known as "Hamlet's Soliloquy".)
So the guards decide they gotta tell Hambone what they seen. An' Hambone, thinkin' he's just gotta see for hisself, goes with them to the next guard watch. Hey, gotta give ol' Hambone some credit for having guts. You wouldn'a got me up on that balcony... There he meets up with ghost daddy and his daddy tells him the truth of what happened. Hambone's daddy, the former king, had no name in this picture, or I guess in the Shake A Spear play either. Leading me to ask that one question... hey, Hambone...who's your daddy?
Hambone learns of the truth behind daddy's death from the ghost. It turns out that Claude dumped some poison into Hambone's daddy's ear and killed him. Hambone decides that the best thing for him to do is to somehow prove that Claude is a bad guy. He decides he is gonna try to act like he's gone crazy. Hambone missed his calling. He shoulda been a stage actor, because he manages to pull off this play acting.
At least he does as far as his mommy, Gertie, and his girlfriend, Filly, is concerned.
But Claude suspects that Hambone may not be as crazy as he's puttin' on
to be. Watch out, Hambone. Any guy that would kill his own brother is
not a guy you wanna even play lawn darts with, much less try to trick.
Claude gets his advisor, Possum to spy on Hambone. Possum thinks Hambone may not be faking it however. But he thinks the madness might have something to do with Filly, who as it turns out, is Possum's daughter. Hambone continues to play the part even when he thinks no one else is watchin', so he convinces Filly that he's done lost it, too.
But wily old Hambone, he ain't done yet. He gets a band of wandering actors to put on a play for Claude, but he gets them to change part of the usual play by puttin' in a scene that includes the same evil deed that Claude pulled on his daddy, hoping that Claude's guilty conscience will get the better of him. But when it comes down to it, Claude starts to pray for forgiveness and Hambone, who was gonna kill him, decides that he can't go through with it. Not because he himself has some kind of change of heart; he's just worried that Claude will be forgiven and let into Heaven, and Hambone wants him to go the other direction. (You gotta appreciate such focus on gettin' revenge).
The story gets a little more twisted as it goes on. Claude sends Hambone to Limey country (ed. note: He means England.) The plan is that some friends that Claude has will kill Hambone while he's there and keep Hambone outta his hair. But Hambone and his ship get attacked by pirates. I just thought of a movie I watched years ago where this kid says "Gettin' killed by pirates is good..." But Hambone don't get killed by them pirates. He gets returned to Denmark. And I guess Claude is startin' think what's a guy gotta do to get rid of his enemies...
I forgot to point out that at one point Hambone accidentally killed Possum. Torn up by the death of her father, and the fact that Hambone seems to have lost his hold on being sane, Filly killed herself by jumping in a pond and drowning. Filly had a brother, Larry, who had shown up after his daddy's death and wants revenge. So Claude and Larry arrange a good ol' fashioned duel. My buddies over in Kentucky, the McCoys, woulda been proud. Them lowdown Hatfields would have deserved the same kind of showdown.
There's some sneaky little goings on involving fixin' up a sword with poison so that when Larry nicks Hambone he is gonna die toot sweet. All'n' of the bad guys gets their come uppance in the end. Too bad Hambone is one of them. I kinda liked him. Now I'll never get his recipe for pork chitlins...
Quiggy: Well, thanks Jim Bob.
Hope you folks enjoyed Jim Bob's foray (actually mine, just in case you are slow on the updraw...) into the artistic world.
And, BTW, if you'd like another angle on Hamlet, check out Renaissance Man. As with my review of that movie, this one is dedicated to Rachel of Hamlette's Soliloquy, who I hope likes this take on her favorite Shakespeare play.
The Semiquincentennial Movie Project is
an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the
United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is
choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union,
as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will
represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly
entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold
(although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into
said fold).
Week #27: Maryland -
The
state of Michigan was established on January 26, 1837
Details about Michigan:
State bird: robin
State flower: apple blossom
State tree: white pine
Additional historical trivia:
48222.
The only zip code in the world that has 0 population. It's a boat that
floats on the Detroit River and delivers mail to other ships.
The
state is divided into the "upper peninsula" and the "lower peninsula",
and is one of only 5 states that does not have all of it's land mass in
one contiguous mass.
"Yoopies" (not to be confused with "yuppies") is the name for people who reside in the upper peninsula. U.P.s, get it?
There are more lighthouses in Michigan than any other state, due to the need for them on the Great Lakes.
Speaking of the Great Lakes, Michigan is the state where the wreck of the famous Edmund Fitzgerald occurred.
Credit
(or blame, as your political affiliation may be) Michigan for the
Republican Party. The first Republican Party meeting took place in Ripon.
Famous
people born in Michigan: Casey Kasem, Tom Selleck, Madonna, Henry Ford,
Charles Lindbergh, Michael Moore, Jim Bakker and numerous sports
figures, including Magic Johnson, Serena Williams and George Gipp (the
original "Gipper").
The Rosary Murders (1987):
The Rosary Murders may be a difficult movie for some. For one thing, one of the primary things that hinge on the plot is the fact that the main character, a Catholic priest, hears the confession of a man who admits that he is committing a rash of murders, but that he, the murderer, is not going to stop. But since the priest has heard about it through a confessional, he is bound by his profession and faith in his role as a priest to not reveal this to anyone. (And, by the way, that is apparently a true fact in the Catholic Church; the priest could be subject to excommunication. I got this from a website in which a real priest in the Church addressed the issue).
The other issue, and this is the one that may push this movie into a realm that you might not want to address, even if you are watching it alone. The main criminal character is committing these murders as a result of guilt and blame against the Church for it's lapse of strength in getting him to stop committing incest with his daughter, which ultimately led to her committing suicide.
Having been forewarned, I leave it up to you whether to continue even reading this blog entry.
The movie is based on the first book in a series of murder mysteries which was written by William X. Kienzle. The screenplay was written by none other than Elmore Leonard, a man who could fashion good nail-biting scripts on his own.
William X. Kienzle
Elmore Leonard
The problem early on is the almost supersonic speed in which it opens, seemingly trying to jam about a hundred pages of story into the first 15 minutes. However, if you can go along with this, the rest of the movie does manage to slow down enough for you to follow along.
The first murder is not so nearly as gruesome as one might expect. In fact, given the circumstances, you might not even realize a murder had taken place. The priest (and all the victims are either priests or nuns) is on life support and dies. It is only revealed a little later in the film that his life support equipment had been unplugged.
Father Robert Koesler (Donald Sutherland) is introduced as he converses with a girl who confides in him that she wants to resign from the nunnery in order to get married. Unfortunately for her, she becomes the second victim in a series of murders that targets Detroit Catholic Church leaders. The murderer has taken to leaving his calling card with the victims; a black rosary wrapped around the victim's left hand.
A love interest (of sorts) makes it's way into the film as a female reporter, Pat Lennon (Belinda Bauer), investigates these deaths. The "love interest" portion is fully on Pat, however. As a Catholic priest, Father Koesler is not allowed such human frailties as "sexual attraction". (I'm not going into any outside history with this, so just chill...)
Also involved in this story is a police lieutenant. Kosnicki (Josef Sommer), who thinks that not only can Koesler help solve the crime, but also that maybe Koesler is hiding something.
Which, in fact, Koesler is... See, the murder approached Koesler via the confessional booth and basically told the priest flat out that he was the murder. This leaves Koesler in a moral dilemma, since as a priest he is bound by certain rules of the Church that he can't reveal anything he heard in confession, including the admission of murder.
Koesler thus becomes an amateur sleuth, trying to determine the identity of the killer without crossing the threshold of the sanctity of the confessional. He only has as his primary clue is that the murderer is committing his acts because of the death of his 16 year old daughter. (It is only later that he discovers the actual truth; her suicide brought on by remorse from the illicit, immoral actions of her father.)
I can't decide whether the solution to this crime is ingenious or just plain stupid. Without giving it away entirely, the solution has it's roots in something Biblical (much like the way Dr. Phibes disposes of his enemies in The Abominable Dr. Phibes).
Just a note: I rather liked Kienzle's Father Koesler mysteries when I read them back in the 80's and 90's. It's too bad this film didn't strike a nerve with the public, as I would have liked to see some of his other mysteries make it to the big screen. (I feel the same way about Rabbi Small, who unfortunately only got a short-lived TV series that went nowhere...)
The Rosary Murders was not a huge hit at the box office. It only pulled in about $1.5 million in ticket sales. There is no information I could find on it's budget, but with Donald Sutherland an Charles Durning probably getting a decent paycheck, I'm betting it was what would be considered a bomb. As a matter of fact, aside from Sutherland, who is usually pretty good on film, most of the rest of the cast is subpar. Almost as if they were just mailing it in... Which probably goes a long way in explaining both why this movie did not fare well, as well as why there was never another Koesler movie.
My opinion is that the film is OK. But please, don't let the mediocre film deter you from diving into Kienzle's mysteries. Like Harry Kemelman's Rabbi Small mysteries, you get a really good amateur sleuth who is also a religious leader in the community. You will get a thrill out of the inner working of the religious community as well as a fairly good mystery. In fact, if the movie had just exerted a bit more effort into portraying the interaction of the characters on the religious side, I think this movie might have fared better. (Mind Over Murder, the 3rd book in the series, would have made a good source for film).
Or are you one of those people who will accept as "truth" anything the government tells you because "why would the government lie to me", and thus dismiss the idea of extraterrestrial visitations outright? Maybe you are an incredulous denialist who refuses to accept anything that would fly in the face of a cherished belief or worldview.
Today is World UFO Day, a day that was established to focus on efforts to "raise awareness about the undoubted existence of UFO’s and with that intelligent beings from outer space." Any open-minded investigation into the phenomenon would bring questions, such as just what are people seeing out there. It's surely true that much of it could be explained away with such things as weather balloons or "swamp gas", but occasionally those simplified explanations have to be manipulated to make them work.
This has led to a variety of ever more stronger (and stranger) efforts to discredit the idea that alien life forms are making frequent visits to our planet. One of the ones that intrigue me the most is the idea, proposed by fundamentalist Christian writers, that these "aliens" are actually a vanguard of demons under the auspices of Satan, with the goal to deceive humans. See UFOs and the Alien Agenda by Bob Larson (a guy whom I consider to be nothing more than an overrated "witch hunter". Larson got his start by demonizing rock and roll, but be that as it may. Truth be told, he kind of looks like an alien to me anyway...)
As I have previously stated else where on this blog, the July 2 date for World UFO Day was established to commemorate the famous UFO crash in Roswell, NM. That incident was the inspiration behind the 1980 film Hangar 18, as well as the focal point for one of my favorite episodes of the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, both of which are appearing today on the blog.
The TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the third live action iteration of the classic space series, and is probably my favorite of the franchise. (There was an animated series that appeared between the cancellation of the original series and The Next Generation series, so technically ST:DS9 would be the fourth series, historically). As far as it's staying power, it lasted 7 seasons, as did Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. With 174 total episodes it only ranks second in number of episodes, behind ST:TNG (at 176 episodes), and was very popular during it's run. (ST:V had 172 episodes).
The main reason, BTW, that I prefer ST:DS9 over ST:TNG was the rarity of the appearance of a Betazoid on ST:DS9. I don't shy away from stating that I absolutely hated the Counselor Troi character on ST:TNG. Although not the actress... I just hated the concept of an empath race... "I sense pain...intense pain". She must've been reading MY mind.
Star Trek Deep Space Nine "Little Green Men" (airdate Nov. 4, 1995):
Ever the suspicious and distrusting sort, Quark has the shuttle checked out by Rom. Somewhere along the way of the series Rom, who was originally just an employee in Quark's bar, gained some extensive technical knowledge of spaceships. By this episode I guess he was fairly competent enough that Quark trusted him to give the shuttle a good going over. Rom declares the ship in perfect condition. So Quark volunteers to use the shuttle to take Nog to Starfleet Academy on Earth.
Hitting the road
But Quark isn't doing this because he has a heart of gold. Rather he has decided to use the opportunity to make a little money on the side. He is smuggling a batch of illegal kemacite, which he intends to sell at a substantial profit. (See? Quark's heart is in the right place after all, as any good capitalist...)
A problem occurs when, while trying to bring the shuttle out of warp, there is a malfunction. Or sabotage, as Quark concludes, since he and his cousin are not exactly buddy-buddy in the first place. Rom figures out if they use some process involving part of their illegal contraband they can manage to pull the shuttle out of its warp. The problem is that they end up traveling through a time warp and end up in 1947... On July 2, specifically... Near Roswell, NM... (You can see where this is going, can't you?)
Communicating with the aliens
The rest of the episode plays out like a comedy of errors. The 1947 military figures on hand try to figure out how to communicate with the aliens, as do our Ferengi visitors. The aliens, coming from a time when advanced technology has given them tools that are not a part of the current timeline, have what are called "universal translators", but they are malfunctioning, so neither can understand each other. But Rom is able to fix the problem.
Problem solving
Side note: The universal translator as depicted in the Star Trek franchise is one of those things that come off as "it works: we don't have to explain it:.. it just works". Thus, instead of having to have the 1947 Americans have their own universal translators, the device makes whatever the Ferengi say in their own language come out as English to the Americans. Quite a bit of the technology of Star Trek was just a device "invented" to overcome a plot problem or even a TV budget problem. Such as the "invention" of the transporter. That was just implemented because the budget for the TV show wouldn't allow for frequent shuttle craft landings on planets. If you are curious about the physics of Star Trek, I recommend an excellent book: The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M. Krauss.
Eventually these suspicious (and obviously overly wary "Red Scare" adherents) are convinced that these aliens are going to go over to the other side (a.k.a. the Russians). Of course, the clueless Quark is not helpful, by threatening to deal with the Russians if these Australians ("Americans!" "Whatever...") don't want to play ball... Which leads to the military to use tactics that are not Geneva Convention approved to get the aliens to conform to their own way of thinking.
Can we try waterboarding instead?
Fortunately for the Ferengi, Odo (Rene Auberjonois) has smuggled himself onboard the Quark shuttle. See, as head of security on Deep Space Nine, Odo doesn't trust the motives of Quark. The two are not exactly good friends in other words. (Truth be told, I'm not sure Quark has any "good friends"...) So Odo hid on board the shuttle and is now in the same predicament of being stuck in the past.
Odo and Quark
Odo, by the way, is a shapeshifter race of aliens, which means he can become whatever the hell he wants to be to blend in. On Earth he starts out by shifting into the form of a dog. Not sure what form he took to conceal himself on Quark's shuttle, unless he hid out as some kemacite in the ship's hold.
Nice Odo! Down, boy!
With his help, and the help of a couple of sympathetic non-military humans, Professor Carlson (Conor O'Farrell) and Nurse Garland (Megan Gallagher), they are able to escape and use the now repaired ship.
Carlson and Garland
Unfortunately for Quark and his greedy ambition, they have to use the remaining contraband to open another rift in time to get back to their present day. There is still another connection to the actual events in the historical Roswell incident: When one of his subordinates asks what they are going to do, the general in charge, General Denning (Charles Napier) replies "About what, Captain? All we ever found was a crashed weather balloon..."
General Denning
As I have stated on numerous occasions, I really like when a serious dramatic TV show strays into comedy. Star Trek The Original Series and ST:DS9 both did this with the Tribbles episodes. The humor for this one relies on being able to accept that aliens did really crash at Roswell, but I doubt that without the efforts of Shimerman, who really was a pretty funny guy in the episodes he appeared in on DS9, that this could have been quite as funny.
Some of the other actors are pretty standard cardboard characters, however. I cringe at the interplay between O'Farrell and Gallagher, who are engaged to be married. I realize it is meant, in retrospect, as a parody of a trope that was common in the 40's and 50's movies, but it comes off a bit stale. A funnier pairing of a married couple could be found in The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a 2001 parody of classic 50's sci-fi movies.
Get a room for crying out loud!
Charles Napier, however, is a treat, no matter what kind of character he plays. Here he is also doing a parody of a standard gun-ho "America first" military man, but I like his character and his performance. And he could do comic and serious roles both with equal panache. In The Blues Brothers he was a hoot as the leader of the country western band that is one of the title characters' nemeses. And in Rambo: First Blood Part II, he was sufficiently despicable as the military big wig who sends Rambo into Vietnam to look for missing prisoners of war. This was Napier's second appearance in the Star Trek Universe. Previously he had played Adam, referred to in reviews as a "space hippie", in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Way to Eden".
The "space hippie"
There is that underlying subplot that drives the story of "Little Green Men". Quark, being the essence of an unscrupulous capitalist, sees latinum (the monetary form used in the Star Trek Universe) out the wazoo and possibly even ruling the planet because of the lack of advanced technology on 1940's Earth. (The Man Who Would Be King, anyone?) But Quark is due for a lesson in the "my country, for better or worse" mentality of the 1940's military.
As an avowed fan of Quark, who gets way too much hate from some sectors of the fan base (kind of like those people who dislike Wil Wheaton's Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation), I enjoy episodes where he is featured. And probably for the same reason that that fan base dislikes them: i.e. the Ferengi were used often for comedic relief. Admittedly I sympathize with one objection. There does seem to be a tinge of antisemitism with the portrayal of the characters. But that leads to a question... if the Ferengi characters are antisemitic caricatures, then why were most of the actors who played them Jewish? It doesn't seem to me that they would if they felt the characters were such.
As far as where "Little Green Men" ranks in lists of best episodes of the series, it is ranked fairly well, considering the number to choose from. Den of Geek is probably the most generous, ranking it #20, and Bjorn Munson ranks it #42. Most of the other lists I looked at had it at least in the top 50, so maybe there are more comic relief fans in the Star Trek Universe than there are haters.
The year of 1980 was my transition year in terms of theater experience. I turned 18 late in 1979 and, after I graduated high school in 1980, I gained an independence. No longer did I have to have my parents permission to go to the movies. I missed out on anything that came out before the summer of 1980 since I was still in high school and still under the parental thumb. But beginning in about May of 1980 I was in a theater pretty much at least once every two weeks.
Unfortunately, I was limited to only what was showing locally, since Dallas-Ft. Worth theaters were a minimum of 75 miles away.. We had only one multiplex, with only four screens, and two drive-ins, each of which had two screens. That meant at the maximum I only had 8 potential movies to choose from at any time. Of course, if it was a big draw, sometimes the multiplex had two screens dedicated to the same film. I remember specifically that The Empire Strikes Back occupied two theater screens at the multiplex during it's initial run.
The upshot was that a lot of movies never made it to the "boondocks" that I called home. Being a rabid science fiction fan at the time, I have no doubt that I would have gone to Hangar 18 if it had appeared in a theater near me, but it didn't. I don't even recall seeing a trailer for it.
I have always wanted to see it, however. Apparently it wasn't seen by a whole lot of people at that. Rotten Tomatoes ratings, for instance, are based on contemporary ratings of critics at the time. Their rating of 40% Fresh is a result of only 5 contemporary critic reviews. If so few critics even saw, how wide spead was it's distribution in the first place?
Just last month I was browsing the stacks of used DVDs at the local Half Price Books and happened upon a copy of the film, so I snagged it, thus giving me the opportunity to have it play at The Midnite Drive-In. As for whether it was worth the 45 year wait... read on.
Hangar 18 (1980):
I'll start off with a tidbit of trivia. The director of Hangar 18 was also the director of the above reviewed episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I didn't know that when I planned out this pairing, but it's a nice little bit of coincidence.
The movie was produced by Sunn Classic Pictures, the same people who gave us such classic documentaries as In Search of Noah's Ark, In Search of Historic Jesus, Beyond and Back and The Lincoln Conspiracy, all beloved films of my childhood. They were also behind the movie and subsequent TV series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. Mostly known for family oriented films in the 70's, it also was responsible for the production (although not the distribution) of two Stephen King movies, Cujo and The Running Man. (Just my opinion, but that transition to more adult oriented films may be what contributed to their decline. The studio only lasted for 8 years after it's first attempt at a non G-rated film, Hangar 18. By then it had been acquired by Taft Communications, which is also now defunct).
"In spite of official denials, rumors have continued to surface about what the government has been concealing from the American public at a secret Air Force hangar. But now, with the help of a few brave eyewitnesses who have stepped forward to share their knowledge of these events, the story can finally be told."
-from the opening of Hangar 18
Thus begins our story. The film is tangentially the story of the Roswell incident. There are many things that diverge from the story as it played out historically, however. Even a neophyte knows that there wasn't even a space shuttle in existence in 1947, but the movie starts out with that premise. And that's where the whole thing starts to get a little tricky (and, you might say, unbelievable...)
Shuttle
What's "unbelievable", you might ask? No, I'm not referring to the whole concept of alien life forms. I am referring to an incident that happens aboard the space shuttle. The space shuttle is about to launch a satellite, but the crew on board see a strange sight. An object that should not, theoretically, be there (in other words, a UFO). But instead of aborting the launch they go ahead with it. Surely even if the space program was in bad financial straits, the logical thing would have been to abort and call the astronauts back. Even the base notices the odd "blip" in the neighborhood back at base.
The launch goes on as planned, but the satellite crashes into that UFO. And worse, one of the astronauts (listed in the credits as Judd Gates, but called by the President as "John Gates"...), who happened to be outside the shuttle trying to make sure the launch goes off as planned, gets decapitated. The reaction of the remaining shuttle crew, Steve Bancroft (Gary Collins) and Lew Price (James Hampton) is almost like "Gee! He's dead... Oh. well. Let's go home..." And, believe it or not, they just leave the body out there to float in space for eternity.
The third astronaut loses his head
Despite the somewhat incredibly unlikely scenario of the opening 10 minutes, the film does manage to start getting better as it progresses. It gradually morphs into what we expect from a government conspiracy and coverup film.
The first thing is that somehow that satellite ends up causing enough damage to the UFO to make it crash land on Earth. It crash lands somewhere in Arizona. General Morrison (Philip Abbott) sends a key figure, Harry Forbes (Darren McGavin), to coordinate the efforts to check out the landed spacecraft. This whole thing spells trouble from the outset, because, coincidentally enough, there is an election coming up just around the corner. What's going to happen to the President's re-election campaign if this news gets out?
Harry Forbes
That becomes more clear when the General calls White House Chief of Staff Gordon Cain (Robert Vaughn) who immediately tells the General that he doesn't want to talk about over the phone and to get his ass to Washington, pronto. Meanwhile, a civilian who saw the thing land has brought a local sheriff to the scene, but all traces of it are gone.
Gordon Cain
That's because the powers that be are on the ball. They moved it to Hanger 18 on a base in Texas (yeah, I know... Area 51 is supposedly in Nevada. So basically the film is covering it's ass so they don't just disappear off the face of the Earth for exposing the "truth"...)
UFO
The weasel in the cornfield, to put it bluntly, is Cain. Cain intends to do everything he can to cover up this situation. At least until after the election. Citing the bad press that another politician got when he reported seeing a UFO, he suggests keeping it quiet. But there are still the astronauts who saw the UFO. What to do about them? Why, it's simple. Make them scapegoats. The political bigwigs have the newspapers print a story that blames Bancroft and Price for the death of Gates.
Bancroft and Price have proof of the real story, however. The tapes of the launch. Uh huh, not so fast. The bigwigs have covered their butts on that too. They altered the tapes, erasing any of the conversation about the sighting and everything else.
Price and Bancroft
At the base Harry brings Phillip Cameron (Tom Hallick), an expert to check out the spaceship along with a small crew of specialists. Meanwhile, Bancroft and Price head to a remote area where they hope to find real proof of what happened. In other words, they think that maybe, just maybe, because of it's remoteness the government may not have gotten around to altering their tapes of the event.
The film jumps back and forth between these two events. On board the space ship the investigators find the bodies of two aliens (who look a lot like rejects of an early incarnation of The Blue Man Group).
Alien
And at the remote base, with the help of a friend, George Turner (Michael Ruud), Bannister and Price find the proof that there really was something there.
Bancroft: George, can we have this tape, or a copy?
Turner: This is a Department of Defense operation. You guys couldn't get out of here with a coffee cup. If the brass even knew I let you in here, I could lose my job.
(I think "losing your job" is the least of your worries there, George...)
But they do get George to pinpoint the site of the crash and head off in that direction. Meanwhile, back in D.C. our evil government bigwig Cain learns of this. And that's not good news. At least it's not for Bannister and Price.
We are only a third of the way through this film, but now it's starting to gel into the trajectory that pretty much was part and parcel of the average conspiracy theory film. But believe me, there are some twists and turns yet to come. And not just the typical ones. You are going to drop your popcorn when you learn the past history of the aliens (if you haven't read Chariots of the Gods, at any rate...) I'm going to leave off here, because, despite how cheesy a lot of this movie is, I think that one reveal is well worth watching this movie just once. It is bound to stick with you.
Investigating the UFO
OK... just one more tantalizing bit... they find a human woman on the alien space ship, in suspended animation. She is still alive. (Now you're really intrigued... right?)
There are some parallels with this film and Capricorn One, a film that came out a couple of years earlier. In that film, in case you don't want to read the whole link above, NASA faked a Mars landing and everything went haywire, resulting in a cover up and the necessity to remove from the scene anyone who could expose the coverup. One thing that gets me: With all the people involved in the coverup, wouldn't that necessitate removing those people at some point? Kind of like the rumor/conspiracy that NASA faked the real moon landing. If it was really faked there would be a hell of a lot of people that needed to "disappear", don't you think?
Here's another thing to tantalize you. Those alien bodies that the crew found on board the spaceship... There is no credit anywhere in the websites I looked for who the actors were. Even people who were in movies that had no lines in the films can be found as "uncredited" appearances on sites like IMDb, but there is nothing, nothing anywhere that reveals who posed as the alien bodies. so, maybe they weren't human actors after all?
The reception of this movie by the critics generally dubbed it overly melodramatic and required a gullibility on the part of the viewing public. And there is a gullibility requirement, not the least of which is the idea that the only reason to cover up the landing is it might hurt the current President's chances of re-election. (That's the ONLY reason? Not that there are bigger threats to worry about than the Russians? Not that a whole foundation of religious history would be brought into question?)
Despite a somewhat lame tendency in dialogue, despite the pretty much standard B-movie plot, despite the fact that the special effects are pretty lame even for 1980 (that spaceship looks like it belongs on a sound stage for a rock opera, not as a viable interstellar Winnebago...) , this film is not all that bad. The aforementioned Capricorn One is a better movie over all, but this one was still entertaining for one watch. Not sure if I will ever watch it again, but I was entertained for the hour and a half I spent watching it.
That's all for now. Drive safely, folks. And watch out for those strange objects coming down from the sky. Or better yet, just ignore them, otherwise some guys in black suits might come looking for you...
