Rosenbush Cafe

Original 1953 One-Sheet

Previews By Henry B. Rosenbush

The re-emergence of 3D movies shows that the technological advances since André De Toth’s 1953 horror classic, House of Wax starring Vincent Price utlizing Stereoscopic 3-D which involved dual interlocked 35 mm projection with polarized glasses (Red and blue). During a revival in the late seventies it was reissued also in 70mm 3D. I had seen it on TV a number of times and finally got to see it on the big screen but the print I viewed was old and had jump cuts so it wasn’t like the in-the-womb experience of 1953. While at Southern Miss I saw the 3D version of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space.

The fact De Toth was blind in one eye, and couldn’t see in three dimensions, is still one of those “only in Hollywood” stories. Hearing Price recount how the director couldn’t understand the excitement others got from watching the dailies is a bittersweet testimony to film making lore.

With a wax museum owner going mad after his partner tries to kill him by setting him and the waxworks on fire for insurance money is the basis for the film. Price is a great villian, covering real victims in wax for his new museum with the help of a young mute assistant played by Charles Bronson! Naturally, there’s a cop hot on his trail, a hero and a pretty girl who almost gets to become another wax figure. Played as straight horror with a great “Phantom of the Opera” reveal of the real face of Price the film stands the test of time as a neat package from the early fifties. The 3D helps with a paddle ball sequence and popcorn popping and naturally a few scares are thrust at the audience compliments of the storyline.

Julian and Milton Gunzberg Brothers, whose company, Natural Vision, shot the 3-D hit Bwana Devil, the year before were contracted to remake the Warner Brothers film the 1933 classic The Mystery of the Wax Museum. Bwana Devil has long been considered the first color 3D American feature.

Time has not been kind to the man-eating lion flick starring Robert Stack and Nigel Bruce.

According to Variety’s less than enthusiatic review:

This novelty feature boasts of being the first full-length film in Natural Vision 3-D. Although adding backsides to usually flat actors and depth to landscapes, the 3-D technique still needs further technical advances. Without the paper-framed, polaroid glasses Natural Vision looks like a ghosty television picture. While watching 3-D, viewers are constantly forced to refocus their vision as the focus of the film changes, resulting in a tiring eye workout.

I was born in November of 1953 and still remember my parents telling me about going to see the film earlier that year (it was released in April) which perhaps accounts for my love of movies since Frances was in early stages of pregnancy with me.

Mother would take me to a number of horror films in the my childhood; Horrors of the Black Museum, House on Haunted Hill and both parents took me to a double bill of The Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds, two films released prior to my birth. By the time the sixties rolled in I was allowed to take the bus to downtown theaters and saw Village of the Damned and The Day of the Triffids alone. Movies were a family event, although my parents took me to see Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho but wouldn’t let me go to see his next film, The Birds!

The 1980s saw another 3D revolution, but again the blurry two-colored glasses wasn’t the only inconvenience. I made the mistake of sitting through several really bad movies hoping the Third Dimension would somehow balance the lack of coherent plotting. Right. There was the cheesy western, Coming At Ya and even cheesier horror film, Parasite, only tolerable because you get to see a young and inexperienced Demi Moore getting the living hell beat out of her and she was actually the best actor in the gory flick! Jason got a Three out of 10 for Friday the 13th in 3D, mainly for the murders.

Then the big studios said let’s give them Jaws 3D and Amityville Horror 3D.

The horror is right!

As expected, the shark look even less realistic and Amityville was so bad my date left me to go see another film at the multiplex while I stayed to the final credit scroll. She had better sense than I!

The trouble with 3D in the ’80s was the technology hadn’t improved and neither had the screenwriter’s guild who should have said anyone writing a script for a 3D movie should be boiled alive, which happens in Amityville. As is often the case, gimmicks only go so far to cover shoddy story telling and as was the problem with the 1970’s biggest ploy, Sensurround ©, once you have given the audiences an earthquake, rollercoaster ride and the war at Midway there really isn’t much left to excite jaded movie goers. Although Sensurround required an entire new sound system installed in selected theaters, it took George Lucas and his Return of the Jedi in 1983 to preview where the future might be headed when he equipped theaters showing the third Star Wars film with new projectors, sound systems and in some cases even new seats!

Lest not forget even the Andy Warhol factory tried a 3D double feature, which played at Drive-Ins no less! Nothing brings on a migraine more than trying to watch a 3D movie through a windshield, but there it was: Paul Morrissey directing two Space-Vision 3-D affairs that contained so much violence and sexual content - at least for the era - that the MPAA impaled them with X Ratings. The X actually made potential patrons want to see Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula aka Andy Warhol’s Dracula (1974). If watching Udo Kier vomit gallons of fake blood into a sink because the blood Dracula just sucked was not from a “wirgin” is a turn on then check it out. Certainly watching a decapitation with huge shears will look great in 3D. It didn’t look any better in 2D!

Both films basically retold the classic stories with copious amounts of blood, rubbery dismemberments and plenty of nudity. As camp wrapped in grindhouse fare goes both films are a hoot, especially if the viewer has smoked enough herb.

As sound systems like Dolby Digital and better quality screens came into existence it was a matter of time before someone worked on 3D and this year has been a great example with plenty of family affairs, but again it took a horror film, last year’s remake of the forgettable eighties schlock gore fest My Bloody Valentine, to explore more advanced bloodletting splashed into the audience. When The Final Destination opens on the 28th in 3D it’s my hook is how much Death’s morbid sense of humor will translate at the box-office with the franchise’s usual collection of Rube Goldberg-inspired finales.

The trailers for 3D movies before G-Force included Tim Burton’s surrealist vision of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

As expected, the trailer reveals that this Alice will take full advantage of Disney Digital 3D and IMAX 3D. It will be released March 5, 2010. Mia Wasikowska portrays Alice Kingsley and she is part of a huge ensemble cast of international stars including: Johnny Depp (The Mad Hatter), Helena Donham Carter (The Red Queen), Anne Hathaway (The White Queen), Christopher Lee (Jabberwock), Alan Rickman (Caterpillar), Crispin Glover (The Knave of Hearts), Noah Taylor (The March Hare) and Stephen Fry (Cheshire Cat). With such a rogues gallery of well known performers and the expected surreal aspect of the visual themes, complimented by 3D, this Alice, according to Burton, promises to contain “some framework of emotional grounding” rather than a character moving “from one crazy character to the next.”

Opening January 15, 2010 is The Book of Eli

Denzel Washington’s upcoming science fiction film looks like another version of I Am Legend, but without Will Smith to muck it up with his wooden performance on the 2008 version. My review of “IAL” was destroyed by a former programmer crack head, after it was posted on Christmas Eve of ‘08, it was never seen again and it was not backed up which is the problem of writing a review with the flu in a post window rather than in a Word Doc or even Notepad.

What I remember it was visually stunning but the acting was bad by everyone involved, especially the girl and boy and the head zombie. Denzel, on the other hand, is one of those actors who can make a subpar movie better just by showing up on the set.

Co-directed by the Hughes Brothers, Albert and Allen, this post-apocalyptic tale finds Eli (Washington) on a cross-country journey with a book that holds the secret to saving humankind. Whatever the secret is, peole will kill to get it so naturally, Eli will kill to protect it. The twin brothers are responsible for such heavy films as Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and From Hell.

Gary Oldman (can you say villian?), Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson and Michael Gambon co-star. Kunis has done plenty of film work, including playing a femme serial killer in the American Psycho sequel, but many may know her more by her voice work on the subversive FOX animated series Family Guy as put upon daughter Meg and for characters on Cartoon Network’s ultra-violent black comedy program, Robot Chicken. Stevenson most recently has starred in the HBO series, Rome while Gambon has played a wide range of characters from the mobster husband in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover to Harry Potter’s Professor Albus Dumbledore.

By Henry B. Rosenbush

South African born Neil Blomkamp, who started in visual effects before turning to directing, brings an interesting twist on the illegal alien scenario with the upcoming science fiction film, District 9

The subject of illegal aliens, or immigrants or whatever one wishes to designate them, is always a divisive topic that few rational people will ever understand. We are all humans, yet race, gender, wealth, education and religion (to name a few) divides the entire planet into different camps. District 9 is one such camp created to seperate humans and “non-humans” and long before English imports came to the shores of the northern continent and began forcing the Indian occupants across the country humans have been enslaving, torturing and killing one another. Hebrews were enslaved by Egyptians; women have been enslaved by men; blacks were enslaved by whites and the list of one race exerting power or control over another is rampant throughout the world making any complete list impossible. Everything from religious beliefs - or disbeliefs - to government sanctioned hatred leads to “ethnic cleansing, a phrase made all the more twisted by the fact only the human mind could conceive and execute such horrific plans.

In 1988, the film Alien Nation (it was followed by a short-lived television series and several mid-90s Made-forTV movies) addressed the ugliness of immigrants facing anger and resentment but the twist was these “Newcomers” were extraterrestrials. The film was uneven but offered a stellar (pardon the pun) performance by Mandy Patinkin as an alien detective assigned to ride with bigoted cop James Caan, whose human partner was killed by drug-running Newcomers.

It was basically a genre hybrid of police procedural and science fiction allegory and exposed the human weaknesses of distrust and hatred for all things different. In the end, it teetered on buddy film as the raw-beaver eating George (Patinkin) and Matthew (Caan) finally settled their differences to work together and bring down alien drug lord William Harcort (Terrence Stamp), who had assimiliated well into human high society.

John Sayles offered a lower budget variation with an alien-in-the-hood, in the effectively low-key, but highly cerebral, The Brother From Another Planet (1984). The film deposited The Brother (Joe Morton) in Harlem after he escaped from a planet where he was enslaved. His unique talent comes in the form of technical wizardy; he can fix a pinball machine by touching it. The mute brother is protected by other brothers when white alien bounty hunters (director Sayles and David Strathairn) come to take him home.

By far one of the most startling displays of human meanness towards aliens occurs in the finale of Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976) based on the Walter (The Hustler) Tevis novel. This cult favorite was proof singer/musician David Bowie was a superb actor and his performance as Mr. Sussex is riveting and always visually arresting thanks to cinematographer-turned-director, Roeg. Having come to save his dying planet, which has consumed all of its water and natural resources (sound eerily familiar?), parleys inventions into a vast and wealthy empire with the hope of transporting water back home, but in the end he is consumed by earthly vices; gin, sex, greed, etc. and is finally destroyed by the influences with no small help from the government who wants to control him. His friends turn against him and the ones who don’t are murdered.

Plagued by nightmarish dreams of his family succumbing on the bone-dry planet, the film was more an allegory than standard science fiction film. When doctors remove his protective lens and use X-rays that destroy his unique abilities the audience feels as powerless as Sussex. He can never return home and in the end he is reduced to just another reclusive, eccentric alcoholic.

The Terminator films introduced mistrusted aliens be they cybernetic killer robots or future versions of present day humans who find themselves unwelcomed in the 20th and 21st Century. In fact, to that end, the entire series posits that Skynet is involved in human race ethnic cleansing in order to rid the entire planet of humanoids. Even The Twilight Zone’s episode “People are alike all over,” ended with an astronaut, portrayed by Robby McDowell, finding himself caged in a Martian zoo to the delight of the visitors who look upon him as an animal; just another alien species.

How well was Bumblebee treated in Transformers? Electro-shocked. The real menace, Megatron was dropped into the deepest part of the ocean rather than melted into scrape metal merely so it could later be revived in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to wreak far more destruction on earth. John Carpenter’s Starman (1984) proposed what might occur if an advanced race answered our invitation from Voyager II (launched in 1977) to visit earth; we tried to capture and kill him. Surely, Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) expected warmer greetings even if his mission was to warn earth to confine our warring and prejudiced natures to our own planet.

A clever pop-culture-infused science fiction comedy, Joe Dante’s Explorers (1985), introduced the alien Wak who is fascinated by earth television, radio and movie broadcast signals. In numerous well-conceived vignettes, Wak, who has “captured” three young boys in their homemade space ship, displays scenes from a variety of sources, where aliens are mistreated and/or annihilated on earth. His shivering frightening reactions, he is after all a friendly child-like alien, speaks volumes and is an unlearned lesson to earth: all those signals of violence and hatred beaming into space say far more about the human species than the brief altruistic musings on the Voyager II disc.

Any intelligent life in the universe (and I believe there is plenty out there) would be foolish to merely land on earth expecting an olive branch of peace, especially if, like Wak, they have seen the myriad science fiction films depicting alien life forms as invaders and always destructive. Who are we kidding? Humans are the most destructive creatures to ever populate this planet and we prove it repeatedly throughout the continents and ages.

Oscar winning director Peter (Lord of the Rings Trilogy) Jackson produces this August 14th release; Rated R for Bloody Violence and Pervasive Language. District 9 looks particularly alarming as squalid South African ghettos are used to great effect as the captured bi-ped style insect aliens are forced to live separate from humans and under the control of a private company called Multi-National United (MNU). It seems the aliens, treated as refugees on earth, came here 28 years earlier and are the last of their species. Do humans welcome them? No, in fact, we somehow capture not only these visitors but their massive space craft as well making it impossible for them to leave earth.

MNU, who could care less about these mistreated visitors, stands to make huge profits if they learn how the alien’s weapons work, something they have been unable to achieve. MNU field operative Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) becomes the most wanted man on the planet after he contracts an unusual virus causing his DNA to mutate and he finds his only refuge is to escape into District 9.

The website allows visitors to enter as human or alien and receive information about both races. Naturally, I entered as a non-human and as expected the voiceover is smug and advises rules and regulations that the aliens must follow, all of which are particularly dealienizing.

As one Public Service announcement promises:

“Keeping humans safe by keeping non-humans separate.” I pose a question: Who are the real illegal aliens?

Gort and Klaatu (1951)

Reviewed by Henry B. Rosenbush

Hollywood has an odd habit of recycling ideas deploying new state of the artless special effects diminishing story and character in favor of expensive visuals.

The latest miscalculation is a remake of the late director Robert Wise’s landmark science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still (B/W-1951) from cautionary anti-nuclear message movie to an environmentally ill Save the Planet motif.

In the 1950s, aliens were usually portrayed as malevolent forces intent on conquering the earth with classic films echoing this theme in The Thing From Another Planet, War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and It Came From Outer Space and the low budgeted, but effective Earth versus the Flying Saucers. It Came introduced space travelers who accidentally crashed on earth and had the good sense to repair their ship and leave before the paranoid earthlings destroyed them.

Z-grade films like Teenagers from Outer Space, Invasion of the Saucer Men and Not of This Earth presented aliens as hostile visitors and rarely were humans left with choices other than to battle the invaders and kill them.

By the fifties, UFO sightings fueled the beliefs that not only were we not alone in the cosmos but earth was an ideal planet for scrutiny. The atomic age was here and with the likelihood of nuclear destruction from a war with Russia the Cold War spawned the alien invasion genre. Nigel Kneales’ The Quatermass Xperiment, Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit added a British twist on the invasion themes with intelligent scripts that still resonate strongly today.

Advanced technologies, like SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life or space-based telescopes or satellite tracking, were still in the future. As the original Day opened earth was tracking an unknown space craft moving at 4,000 miles an hour that landed on the Mall in Washington DC.

As expected, the military surrounds the saucer and when Klaatu (unknown actor Michael Rennie, dignified and a Christ-like; he takes the name Carpenter, dies and is reborn) is immediately shot by a trigger-happy soldier. This provocative act introduces Gort (the 7-foot Lock Martin in a metallic suit), his 9-foot robot protector. Few scenes are as potent as the realization Gort has quietly appeared outside the flying saucer accompanied by composer Bernard Herrmann’s use of the Theremin, (named for inventor Russian Émigré Leonard Theremin) before a single focused laser melts and disintegrates all weapons of hostility.

When Klaatu is informed by a representative of the President of the United States that he cannot be allowed to leave Walter Reed Hospital to learn about the customs of earth he still escapes and as a humanoid blends in at a boarding house where he meets widow Helen (Patricia Neal) and her son, Bobby (Billy Gray). The fatherless Bobby and Klaatu have an instant report that is made more profound by visits to famous DC landmarks, ending at Arlington Cemetery where the boy’s father is buried having died at Anzio.

Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe, channeling Einstein) is perfectly cast and Klaatu entrusts him to address the top scientists of the world to deliver a sobering message: earth is on the brink of annihilation from “the other planets” who will unleash a force that will destroy the earth. The punishment would fit the crime: extending our violent nature with nuclear missiles into space cannot and will not be allowed.

Throughout the film there is a sense of dread as Klaatu tries to stay ahead of the military until the meeting with the scientists. The addition of Helen’s self-centered fiancee Tom (Hugh “I don’t care about the world” Marlowe) who alerts the government leading to a shootout that kills Klaatu which in turn activates Gort, who alone could destroy earth.

With the famous line, “Klaatu barrada nitko” the only way to stop Gort Klaatu is reanimated in time to deliver a sobering message to the scientists that by provoking violence beyond the borders of earth we are inviting our own destruction.

The actual Day that the earth stands still is a knockout with all power on earth negated for 30 minutes, except hospitals and airplanes in flight, although it does not dissuade the military from a violent solution it alerts rational thinkers like Professor Barnhardt that the real danger is us. In the remake it is saved for the climax but to a lessor effect.

The years have been kind to the original and while a remake was inevitable the recent Scott Derrickson directed Day is an uneven film that unfortunately shows filmmakers have learned little about what made the 1951 version a classic.
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By Henry B. Rosenbush

My all time favorite science fiction film has always been The Day the Earth Stood Still (B/W-1951) directed with finesse by the late Robert Wise. When Klaatu (Michael Rennie) lands his space ship on the mall in Washington D.C. his first moments on planet Earth is met with hostility as a trigger happy soldier shoots him. Enter Gort, a 9-foot metallic robot with a heat ray which quickly destroys all weapons before being commanded to stop by the wounded humanoid alien visitor. One of the all time great landmark films with an early anti-war/anti-nuclear message that still resonates over 50 years later.

Having seen Earth on a double bill with The War of the Worlds (1953) in 1959, I was treated to two extremely different versions of the science fiction sub-genre of alien invasions films. In Earth, Klaatu has come to deliver a message to all the leaders of the earth: pursue the course of nuclear proliferation, that eventually will lead to space travel, and face global destruction from other planets that have outlawed war while War presented aliens from Mars with the intent of taking over the earth.

From the look of the trailer the Scott Derrickson directed film looks far different than the original. Derrickson, who helmed The Exorcism of Emily Rose, has the inimitable task of remaking a film that was flawless. Aside from today’s more sophisticated special effects, it will be interesting to see how contemporary actors Keanu Reeves and Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Kathy Bates update the roles of Rennie, Patricia Neal and others in Ryne Douglas Pearson’s adaptation. The film is slated for a mid-December, 2008 launch.

DTESS

The original short story by Harry Bates called Farewell to the Master was expanded and greatly improved by screenwriter Edmund H. North. The score by Bernard Herrmann was influential in bringing Russian Émigré Leonard Theremin’s self-named musical instrument onto the Hollywood scene. The Theremin was the world’s first electronic musical instrument and capable of producing hauntingly beautiful sounds and is played without being touched! The fascinating 1993 documentary by Steven M. Martin, Theremin An Electronic Odyssey, on Avant-Garde Cinema, is an amazing story on its own and worth viewing.

Although the original Day may have a few minor flaws; you can see Gort move in background shots or his legs bend while carrying Neal in the late reels, it is still a film of significant historical importance in the realm of movie making. Few films on the Cold War era could match its message that by pursuing a course of war the world could face annihilation from forces more powerful than America or Russia.

One hopes the remake will address the post-9/11 hysteria and dwarf the threats from Al-Qaeda, Iran, Russia or even the U.S. In the early fifties, the threats of nuclear war were real and unfortunately in the early years of the 21st Century little has changed. While movies rarely affect political policy making, the 1951 version presented an intriguing argument for peace over war. No one expects the 2008 version to halt the global madness of terrorism, war and schadenfreude but in an age where personal suffering is public spectacle in the media, on television reality programming and in the collective consciousness of the human race it would be profound for intelligence beyond ours to be humbled.

“Klaatu barada nikto!”

For comparison, check out the original theatrical trailer:

By Henry B. Rosenbush

The Day the Earth Stood Still certainly qualifies as the spaceman-lands-on-earth film by which all others imitate, including: It Came From Outer Space, The Thing From Another World, even Earth Versus the Flying Saucers all emulated the landmark science fiction film. The high production values aside, it is difficult to find fault with the 1951 Robert Wise (1914-2005) directed black and white film with its a noir-infused documentary style. Wise was the editor Orson Welles films Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The newsreel technique works, too, as we are introduced right from the beginning that this visitor is really from outer space.

Most current invasion-from-space films exploit key elements from Day and for good reason; the original film achieved excellence in its screenplay (the original short story by Harry Bates Farewell to the Master was expanded and greatly improved by screenwriter Edmund H. North),acting, special effects and a truly otherworldly Theremin-based score by Bernard Herrmann that has been reused to lesser impact in dozens of films.

When a dignified emissary from “the outer planets” arrives in Washington D.C. he is immediately shot and taken prisoner, but not before his pilot, revealed as a 9-foot robot, named Gort, disintegrates the military weaponry. The alien, a humanoid named Klaatu, but who will be known as Carpenter since he has borrowed clothes and a suitcase belonging to a Major Carpenter. Klaatu learns what people are like when he rents a room at boarding house. The colorful array of characters there, especially Frances (Aunt Bea) Bavier, includes widow Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray).

Real life news commentators H.V. Kaltenborn and Drew Pearson deliver the news of a space ship landing in Washington D.C. in a straightforward realistic manner. Image today’s news celebrities spinning the arrival with hyperbole! The Left-Wing Media would blame everything on whichever party controlled the White House and Congress. The Right Wingers would side with the alien and Religious Zealots would view the “visitor” as the Messiah, re: Jesus was a carpenter. Wise always maintained it was not a conscious effort but the Christ mythos was born.
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