Mummy Dearest

 

 

 

 

 This is my entry in The Two Jacks Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room

 

What if?  There are rumors, or at least there were, that Elvis faked his own death.  Witness the many "sightings" of Elvis at the grocery store, or filling up at the gas pump at the station, or door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales. 

Believe it or not, there have also been rumors that John F. Kennedy survived his assassination attempt. Not so many people claim to have actually seen him wandering the streets, true, but many of the inconsistencies surrounding his death and the aftermath have led to some admittedly crackpot theories.

A fascinating read on the subject is "Who Shot JFK? A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories" by Bob Callahan.  The book covers everything from the reasonably believable (The C.I.A. or the Russians or the Cubans were involved) to the downright insane (aliens were involved).  If I'm not mistaken that's where I first read about a theory that the body that was autopsied at Parkland was not the President but a look-alike and JFK survived the assassination.

My personal belief, after years of reading various theories, is that Lee Harvey Oswald may not have been the one who actually succeeded in his attempt, although I do not subscribe to the theory that he was not actually involved. I also do not subscribe to that theory that it was someone else that died.

However, it does make for an interesting "what if?"  So that what if is a sub-context of today's post.

Bubba Ho-Tep  (2002):

Living in a nursing home, an elderly man lives in a barely coherent state, thinking about his past life, and watching the poor souls around him dying off, as will happen in such a place.  After all, old age does come along in a stealthy manner. The old man lies in his bed, lamenting the decline of his sexual libido. And musing about his past, wondering if his ex Priscilla would come to see him if she knew he was there. 

Priscilla. As in Priscilla Presley.  For this isn't just any old man. This is THE Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell).  Yeah, the one who supposedly died in the 70's.  Only the staff believes his real name is Sebastian Haff, a former Elvis impersonator.  Because, see, just prior to the death of Elvis, Elvis had gone to one of the best Elvis impersonators in the business and made a deal to trade with him.  Sebastian would take the place of Elvis and be the center of all that attention, and Elvis would become Haff, just a normal Joe, albeit one who made his living impersonating Elvis.

 

 

 

(Just a note: I don't have any idea if such a thing existed prior to Elvis' death.  I personally thought the rise of impersonators only became such a thing after his death.  But maybe someone who has been around longer than me could clear that up.)

Anyway, Elvis/Sebastian's roommate dies and the daughter of the man shows up to collect his stuff.  A rather self-centered girl, she had only been there once before, 20 years earlier, to drop him off.  In the process of her visit, Elvis reveals his true past.  He had made a deal with Haff to switch places, with a codicil in the contract between them that if Elvis wanted his old life back he could do it.  But the contract burned up in a fire. And in the following years Elvis had been hurt while performing under the impersonator guise. And the imitator had died in a hotel room while still playing the "real" Elvis. So only the real Elvis knows the truth. And the rest of the world still thinks he's a delusional impersonator.

Elvis (I will call him that for the rest of the review) has only one real friend in the nursing home.  Elvis thinks the old man has lost most of his marbles because this old man thinks he is John F. Kennedy. What complicates this matter is the old man (Ossie Davis) is black, and of course, JFK was white.  The way Jack tells it is they dyed his skin black, among other things.

The nursing home garners a new resident, albeit not one who is registered with the staff.  This new resident, instead, is a manifestation of the evil spirit of a dead Egyptian mummy(?) JFK and Elvis discover this soul eater, and Jack has some ideas.  He has a book about the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Not the real book you may have heard of, however.  This is one called The Everyday Man and Woman's Book of the Dead.

Jack thinks he's figured out what happened.  This Egyptian mummy has risen from the dead and needs souls to survive.  What better way to get it's nourishment than around an old folk's home where it's not curious that people are dying?

And what got Jack to thinking about this?  He found some graffiti in the stall of one of the restrooms. Hieroglyphs, but still your standard fare for public restroom graffiti."Pharaoh gobbles donkey goobers." and "Cleopatra does the nasty." (Did I mention this is a comedy/horror film?)

Elvis is not entirely convinced, of course, and thinks Jack is just nuts. Until a few moments later when he meets the mummy face to face, decked out in boots and a cowboy hat, yet. 

 

 

 

He also gets a vision of what happened, not only in the long past, as in how the mummy died in ancient Egypt, but even a glimpse into the recent past, when the rediscovered mummy is being transported by bus and the bus crashes off a bridge into the local river. Which explains how Bubba Ho-Tep, as Elvis has named him, came to be hanging around the rest home.

How the mummy came to be on a bus is pretty funny, too.  It seems some thieves hijacked the mummy for ransom. (It wasn't like it was King Tut, with all the security guards around to guard the valuable relic.  He was just a lesser known mummy, probably King Tut's brother...) But the thieves were transporting their illicit cargo by bus and ran into a storm in East Texas and crashed into the local river.

So Elvis and Jack know the truth, but since everyone else thinks their old coots who are losing their grasp on sanity, it's up to them to save the rest home and the rest of society from this scourge of the undead.

I'll leave it up to you to watch to see how it all comes out.  Bubba Ho-Tep makes for some pretty good entertainment.  And believe it or not, Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars (take that as you will). It won two U.S. Comedy Arts Film Festival Awards (Best Actor and Best Film) (Side note: I don't know that much about the USCA awards. It was an HBO sponsored event than only lasted about 13 years, from 1995-2008. And I can't find a page on the internet that lists what it was up against.)

It was also an "Official Selection" for several film festivals including one that is near and dear to my heart because of it's local venue the SXSW (South by Southwest) Film Festival in Austin. Hey, it's not Gone with the Wind, but as long as you can get a feel for comedy/horror it is just as good as say, The Evil Dead, (one of star Bruce Campbell's first films). And you get to see Ossie Davis put on a good tongue-in-cheek performance as a black John F, Kennedy.

Well, time to fire up the old Plymouth, and go "take care of business".  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

H. G. Wells Week Part I: The Time Machine

 This is my first entry in a celebration of my first hero in the writing world, H. G. Wells.  When I graduated from Bugs Bunny kiddie books to reading at a higher level of comprehension, the first books I got into were science fiction.  I can't say for certain whether it was an H. G. Wells book, but I do know that from first grade on, I gravitated to science fiction over every other genre available to me. And time travel was always top in that genre.  (Maybe that's why I also ended up as a history major in college).

 

 

 

Whether or not it actually was The Time Machine that was my actual first foray into Wells, it was HIS first foray into writing novels.  He had previously published some short fiction, including a piece he wrote in college called The Chronic Argonauts, but this was his first real success.  And what a story to kick off your career.

In the novel the main character is simply referred to as The Time Traveler (note: I use the American spelling to avoid that annoying spell correct, but the original is spelled with two Ls, as is the British custom), although he would garner a name for obvious purposes in both radio and film adaptations.  The first person narrative of the story is such that we really have two first person narrators.  Of course, the bulk of the story is The Time Traveler relating his adventures as he used his time machine to travel to the far distant future. But we also get Mr. Hillyer, the character who remains in the background mostly as an observer during The Time Traveler's oration of his escapades.

Wells was an avowed socialist and much of his fiction is tinged with socialist ideology.  The story of that far distant future with the Eloi and the Morlocks is ostensibly a parable of what life would evolve into if the current state of affairs (i.e. non-socialist) was allowed to continue. (And note: I do not intend this or any other entry in my blog to espouse a socialist or any other political ideology.  I just note it for it's historical aspect.)

The Time Machine as a story has been adapted for the big screen twice (three times if you include Time After Time, but that was only the jumping off point for the movie, and after the initial idea of time travel is introduced, it goes off in a different direction.)It was also the subject of a made-for-TV film broadcast in 1978.

None of the adaptations include the final trip that the Time Traveler makes after escaping the Morlocks in 802,701.  Before heading back to his own time, the Time Traveler presses on to see how the world actually ends.  It is my guess that part of the reason it never made it to any of the films is that it's pretty much a downer.  Read the full length novel to get this, as I won't delve into it here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Time Machine (1960):

The first film version of The Time Machine was released in 1960 and featured Rod Taylor and Alan Young.  It was also the second H.G. Wells book to be turned into a film by legendary director George Pal.  (His first foray into Wells was in 1953 with a version of War of the Worlds).

Some interesting notes to begin:  The original Time Traveler in the Film was to have been Paul Scofield, but Pal went with Rod Taylor.  Also considered for the part were James Mason and (just imagine) David Niven. In the film all the characters in the novel were given actual names. As stated above, the author (as one of the visitors to the Time Traveler's house) only referred to the main character as "The Time Traveler, but he also only called the guests such names as "the Medical Man", "the Psychologist", "the Editor" etc. Only one character, minor in the novel, was identified: Filby.

In the film, the cast of visitors was reduced to a more manageable number of four.  The guests were Filby (Alan Young), Hillyer (Sebastian Cabot), Kemp (Whit Bissell) and Bridewell (Tom Helmore).  And the Time Traveler himself was given the name "George". His credit is actually as H. George wells, so he is supposed to be the author. 

 

 

 

George, at the beginning, is late for a dinner date with his companions.  He bursts into the room disheveled and begins to relate the story what has happened. To begin with he reminds them of the last week's encounter which he had introduced the concept of a machine that could travel through time, exhibiting a scale model which he causes to zip off into the future.

His friends are disbelieving of his claim that the model went off to the future, and leave.  But George actually has a full scale model in his laboratory which he proceeds to test out after his friends leave. He discovers on his first test that he has actually managed to jump ahead six hours.  Encouraged he goes forward in time, stopping briefly in 1917 and 1942.  (Right during World War I and World War II.)

Discouraged that man still wars with each other he jumps back into his machine, but violent events cause him to stop once again, this time in 1966 (5 years in the future from the time of the movie's production).  Once again, George is disappointed because the world is on the verge of war. In fact, air raid sirens are wailing calling people to hide in the fallout shelters.  George manages to get on his machine and escape just as nuclear weapons begin to fall.

He presses on, but finds his machine encased in a mountain.  (And how the machine manages to not be crushed by this, even though it is hurtling through time is best not to be dwelt upon...) Finally the mountain falls away and George stops the time machine.  He finds himself in a lush garden landscape in the year 802,701.  His machine stops outside a large sphinx-like structure.  George goes to investigate his new surroundings, absolutely sure that civilization must have survived over the centuries.

He finds them in the person of a race called the Eloi.  The eloi seem to live in an idyllic heaven, not having to work, but they are child-like.  They show no curiosity, and at one point, a girl is drowning in the river but only George has the wherewithal to jump in and save her.  His rescuee is Weena (Yvette Mimieux), but even she shows no curiosity in her situation.

 

 

 

The Eloi are basically unhelpful to George in trying to find out what has happened.  Frustrated, George demands an explanation and is led to a library where all the books are in such disrepair that they fall apart.  Disgusted George claims he is going back to his own time. But as it turns out, the Morlocks, a race that lives underground,  have moved his time machine inside the Sphinx and no one in the Eloi seems to have any care.

It also comes to light that the Eloi are being raised and cultivated like cattle to feed the Morlocks. It is up to George to save the round of new "livestock" the Morlocks enticed into their underground facilities, which include his new found friend, Weena.  And in the process retrieve his time machine.

As stated above, when George escapes the Morlocks he does not travel on further into the future but instead returns to his own time and is in the process of relating his adventures to the guests seen at the beginning of the film.

The film received mixed reviews upon it's release (mainly for content, not for the acting ability of it's two main stars).  It did get an Academy Award for Best Special Effects at Oscar time. (And George Pal was a wizard at special effects. Several of his previous films had garnered this prestigious award, including one for War of the Worlds (coming later in this H.G.Wells Week blog party.)

 

 

 

The Time Machine (2002): 

In the early part of the 21st century Wells' book got another stab at the big screen.  This time it was directed by Simon Wells, who just happened to be the great-grandson of H. G. Wells himself.  (And maybe there was some back room wheeling and dealing to get that to happen.  Although Simon had directed a few animated features this was, and so far is, his only foray into live action film.)

The connection to Wells' book is tenuous, at best, with this output.  About the only things that coincide with the original novel is that a guy does indeed create a time machine, and the main character does indeed end up in the future, eventually, at the year 802,701.  And of course the races in the future do consist of the Eloi and the Morlocks.  But the parallels deviate quite dramatically from the book after that.

The main character, Dr. Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) is a professor who spends more time doing pure research than devoting his life to making a profit from his endeavors.  His one love, aside from research, is Emma (Sienna Guillory), a woman who he is determined to make his wife.  He is going to meet her to propose.  But during the proposal they are accosted by a mugger who accidentally shoots and kills Emma.

 

 

 

Distraught, Alexander spends the next few years trying to develop a time machine.  The only motive and the only goal is to go back to that point in time and try to prevent the events that lead to Emma's death from happening. And, having created his machine (a triumph of technology and far more impressive than the contraption Rod Taylor's Time Traveler made in the 1960 film), Alexander proceeds back to try to prevent the death of his enamorata.

 

 

 

But, to his disappointment, although she is not killed by the mugger, a happenstance accident still causes her death.

So Alexander decides there must be some way to discover how to save her by traveling to the future.  He stops off first in 2030 (and even at this date 20 years after the movie, a lot of the "future" still has yet to happen, including a highly interactive AI named Vox (played by Orlando Jones) who tries to help Alexander).  In 2030 we hear a news broadcast that there are plans to blast the moon with bombs in order to create a living space for people to move and live on the moon.

But when Alexander goes forward another 7 years, the project that was only in planning stages in 2030 had devastating effects.  It destroyed the moon, and the result was that the Earth became virtually uninhabitable too.  So he progresses further into the future and through the magic of CGI we see the Earth basically transformed into a new planet. Finally, he stops the machine in 802701.

He is hurt during his landing and is rescued by Mara (Samantha Mumba) who nurses him back to health.  The race of Eloi live above ground (Literally. They live in dwellings on the face of a cliff.) 

 

 

 The Morlocks, who live underground, venture above ground periodically to capture Eloi, and on this occasion capture, among others, Mara.  

Her brother, Kalen (played, coincidentally, by Omera Mumba, Samantha's real brother) helps Alexander by leading him to the ruins of a library where he encounters, once again, Vox, who tells him how to find the underground dwelling of the Morlocks.

He is captured by the Morlocks and meets up again with Mara.  He also meets with a bigwig Morlock (Jeremy Irons).

 

 

 

 The Uber-Morlock, as he is called in the credits, finally tells him a fact that should have been obvious if Alexander had been the genius he was supposed to be.  The reason he can't change the past and save Emma is because if he did, then he would never have invented the time machine to try to save her, the ultimate "grandfather" paradox in new form.  (And here I will explain the grandfather paradox for those of you unfamiliar with it.  What if you created a time machine and went back in time and in the process accidentally killed your grandfather before he met your grandmother?  You would not have existed, and therefore you would not have created the time machine in the first place,)

The final minutes of the film involve Alexander fighting off the Morlocks and ultimately creating a new society. 

This movie is not nearly as cohesive as the first one, nor is it really as good.  But it is entertaining in its own right, and the special effects are good in their own right.

 As a footnote I will say that The Time Machine .did inspire another time travel movie that came from the same concept,Time After Time. I won't delve into that one here, saving it for a future review, but suffice to say H. G. Wells himself ends up chasing Jack the Ripper into the future to prevent him from committing his atrocities in another time period.

The Bond Age (Pt. X)

2017 marks 55 years of James Bond on the movie screen.  To celebrate this momentous year, I am undertaking to review the entire oeuvre of Bond films, all 24 of them (at this juncture in history), two at a time.  These will appear on the 7th day of each month  (Bond's agent number being "007").  At the beginning of each entry I will give my personal ranking of each movie and of each movie's theme song.  (These are subjective rankings and do not necessarily agree with the view of the average Bond fan, so take it as you will).  I hope you enjoy them, nay, even look forward to the next installment.  As an added note, I am deeply indebted to Tom DeMichael, and his book James Bond FAQ,  for tidbits of information with which I am peppering these entries.                                                                                                                                                                                                  -Quiggy

By the time the series reached the dawn of the new millennium, the Bond saga had been going on for 40 years.  Many of the series regulars over the years had come and gone.  We had seen a woman take over as M, we had seen four separate actors don the tuxedo and persona of Bond, and we had even seen the departure of the stalwart Lois Maxwell, and her unrequited passion for Bond.  The only remaining figure who was still being played by it's original actor was "Q" (Desmond Llewelyn).  But even that was not a taboo role to change.  In The World is Not Enough, we still had Llewelyn's "Q", but looking forward to the eventual retirement of the actor, a new associate was introduced in this outing.

John Cleese, the Monty Python star, was introduced as an assistant to "Q".  Although he was not actually named in the film, Bond quips that if Llewelyn was "Q", Cleese must be "R".  The introduction turned out to be more prescient than the producers had thought.  Shortly after the movie was completed, Llewelyn was tragically killed in a car accident in December.  Having John Cleese take over the role added a bit of a twist to the character.  He continued the role of being exasperated by Bond's nonchalance with his gizmos, but he also added a twist of an acerbic wit, reminiscent of some of his characters on Monty Python's Flying Circus.

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Quiggy's Personal Ranking of the movie: #14

Quiggy's Personal Ranking of the theme song: # 14

Best Bond Quote:  I couldn't resist...The last line as Bond and Dr. Christmas Jones make their ubiquitous liaison in the finale:  Bond "I thought Christmas only came once a year."

Best Bond Villain Quote: Renard: "There's not point in living, if you can't feel alive"

Best Weapon:There are lots of neat little things in this one.  I'm particular fond of the helicopter that has five circular saws attached to it for use in tree trimming.  Of course, you just KNOW that's not the only use they have...

In one of the longest opening sequences ever in a Bond film, James Bond is in Spain, where he is retrieving a satchel full of money.  While he and the Swiss banker who is holding the money converse, the banker is killed by his personal assistant, just as the banker was about to name the killer of another MI6 agent.  The killer gets away.

 Bond returns to MI6 HQ where he gives the satchel of money to its rightful owner, Sir Robert King.  But King has been rigged so that a lapel pin explodes killing him while he is inspecting the money. Bond sees the same assassin from Spain, and gives chase. She commandeers a boat, and Bond hijacks an experimental boat from Q to try to catch her.  An exciting chase scene around the Thames makes for a very good opening.  Bond ends up injuring his shoulder as the assassin explodes in a flaming balloon.

 The opening credits feature a song by a band called Garbage.  The song, however is not truly garbage, although it does push the envelope a bit with the sultry style that lead singer Shirley Manson brings to the song, but as far as I'm concerned, it is much better than some of the other songs that were chosen over the years.  I still feel a hard-driving style, like the themes for A View to a Kill and Live and Let Die fit the Bond theme more, but I'll take this one.

Bond is eager to go after the killers, but M decides that his injury is too severe, so she denies him the opportunity to be on the case.  Bond of course has other ideas, and he convinces his physical therapist to give him a clean bill of health.  Bond takes off to investigate the terrorism angle, first by meeting up with King's daughter, Electra (Sophie Marceau).  Electra has taken over her father's oil business, and is overseeing the installment of a pipeline.

It turns out that the money that Bond retrieved is somehow connected with an extortion ransom that Sir Robert had paid to get his daughter released from being kidnapped by an anarchist named Renard (Robert Caryle).  Renard has one unique attribute.  He is dying from a bullet lodged in his brain, which has the effect of rendering him immune to feeling pain and gives him extraordinary endurance.  Bond is sent to protect Electra from further harm, but she is initially indifferent, since she thinks MI6 is responsible for her father's death, by not preventing the assassination.

Bond and Electra go skiing to view the pipeline and are attacked by some terrorists.  Bond manages to save Electra, and wins her trust.  Bond then goes to see an old nemesis, Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane), who now runs a casino.  Zukovsky tells him about the Renard connection.  Electra shows up at the casino, and promptly loses a million dollars to Zukovsky.  She dismisses the loss when Bond expresses his dismay and  tells Bond "there's no point in living, if you can't feel alive".

Bond follows a lead and goes to Kazakhstan where he meets nuclear scientist named Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), {who must be the most improbable scientist ever, but this is Hollywood and they were trying to reach a younger audience}.  Jones betrays Bond, who was posing as a scientist, to Renard.  She doesn't know who he is, she just was suspicious of him.  Renard, it turns out, is working on getting a nuclear bomb which he plans to use to blow up the pipelines that compete with Electra's pipeline.  If you are already ahead of me, you know what that means.  And so does Bond.  He confronts Electra, who it turns out, has been a victim of what is called the "Stockholm syndrome" in which a victim ends up falling into a romantic relationship with her captor.

The finale has Bond, with Jones, who is now on his side after discovering who he really is and what Renard's evil plans entail, trying to stop Renard from his plan.The movie works on several levels, but this trope of using nuclear weapons to cause havoc has started to become passe' in my opinion. Still, I think that the story is entertaining enough that it keeps one riveted throughout.  My only quibble is the casting of Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist,as I intimated earlier.

Die Another Day (2002) 

Quiggy's Personal Ranking of the movie: # 9

Quiggy's Personal Ranking of the theme song: #19

Best Bond Quote: (Bond has just turned over a briefcase full of diamonds, rigged with a bomb) Bond: "Don't blow it all at once."

Best Bond Villain Quote: Graves: "You only get one shot at life.  Why waste it on sleep?"


Best Weapon:  Without a doubt, it's the invisible car.  I want one of those!


Bond is in North Korea with a couple of South Korean agents.  He poses as an arms dealer where he trades a satchel full of diamonds for a cache of weapons from Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee), along with his aide, Zao (Rick Yune) .  But he is revealed as a impostor, and  he is exposed.  A chase ensues which ends in the death of Colonel Moon, but Bond is captured by General Moon (Kenneth Tsang), the colonel's father.

As the opening credits roll, featuring one of the worst Bond theme songs in recent years, by Madonna, instead of seeing the classic dancing shadows and such that one has come to expect, we instead are treated to scenes of Bond being tortured while in captivity.

After the credits, Bond, who is now almost unrecognizable with shaggy long hair and beard, has been traded in exchange for Zao, who had been captured by the West during Bond's captivity.  M, who thinks that Bond probably revealed secret information while in captivity, has revoked his  007 status and plans to have him removed to a re-education facility (or possibly imprisonment, it's kind of vague to me).  Bond insists that someone must have betrayed him and wants to go after the traitor, but M refuses.

Bond engineers an escape from the hospital and goes to Hong Kong where he gets help from a Chinese agent.  He makes a deal with the head agent because the Chinese have had three of their secret agents killed by Zao.  The Chinese agent sends him to Havana where Zao has gone to a gene therapy clinic.

In Havana, Bond encounters Giacinta "Jinx" (Johnson (Halle Berry), who it turns out has her own agenda.  It turns out, as Bond later discovers, that Jinx is an agent for the American NSA.  While Jinx performs her own operation, Bond finds Zao as well as the diamonds that had been given to Colonel Moon. The diamonds now have a signature of Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), a wealthy industrialist.

Bond seeks out Graves and manages to make an enemy of him right away.  Graves has an assistant, Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) who is helping him.  But Miranda turns out to be an agent of MI6 and is trying to find out what Graves' plans are.  Graves has created a satellite called "Icarus" which, ostensibly, is his gift to the world.  It can focus light from the sun to create ideal climates in areas for growing food.

But of course, that isn't Graves real objective.  You see, the Icarus satellite can also be used to create a giant laser than can be focused to destroy military installations.  Something quite similar to the object Scaramanga created in The Man with the Golden Gun, but 30 years later, technology has made an even more devastating weapon possible.

And once you find out what Graves true agenda is, you will be just as surprised as I was.  I won't reveal who Graves actually turns out to be (although you may guess just based on that passing comment).  The last 20 minutes of the movie is what puts this one so high in my personal rankings.  That and the invisible car of course, which I still want..

Time to go off and try to save the world.  Or at least save the part where I live...


Quiggy