a movie review by Jeff DeLuzio


If a Godzilla-type monster attacked, what would the event look like from ground zero? That's the premise of Cloverfield, one of the most successful films of winter 2008.

Kaiju, films which depict impossibly large monsters doing battle with contemporary humanity, has a long history. King Kong introduced the concept in 1933, but the template for most such films first appeared twenty years later with The Beast from 20000 Fathoms. Gojira (1954) cloned the formula and added subtext; the Japanese original, with its radioactive dragon, fiery destruction, and crowded hospitals clearly channeled the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Godzilla birthed endless sequels and imitators. The Big G did battle with legions of bizarre monsters, found a child-friendly rival in a toothy, fire-breathing turtle named Gamera, and gained international kin with names like Gorgo, Reptilicus, and the Giant Behemoth. Of course, the genre quickly lost its edge and became fodder for bored ten-year-olds and Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Cloverfield restores the horror and disturbing subtext. This Kaiju has bite and power.

All of this develops from a simple premise. A very large monster attacks contemporary New York City. A group of twenty-somethings record the action while trying to rescue a trapped friend. We never learn the monster's origins and, to be honest, we don't need to know. Any explanation would only emphasize how ridiculous the premise is. We see the action as the characters experience it, and that keeps us gripped to our seats.

And these are characters, played by unknown actors. The first act of the film shows us young people at a fairly superficial party for Rob, who will be going to work in (appropriately) Japan. The video overlays an earlier one, in which chronicles a romantic day Rob and Beth spent together, the start of a relationship that he chose to abort because he would be leaving the country. Hud, the socially-inept geek of the group, receives the task of filming the event. The film gives us a home movie, that humble form which lately has mutated into Reality-tv and Youtube and camcorder shots and may become the next major artistic venue. We connect with the plausibility of the night. A plot even emerges, something that wouldn't be out of place on an MTV series.

Then something disturbs their hipster lives.

Once the attack starts, the pacing does not relent, and it affects us entirely because we can believe in these people. In this respect, the film recalls Children of Men and Saving Private Ryan. Rob heads into the city to save Beth, the woman he sent away. His motives are profoundly conflicted and entirely human.

The effects have been seamlessly integrated. Cloverfield looks like camcorder footage of New York under attack by a gigantic monster. And the choice of New York is deliberate. The best horror always addresses society's fears and, just as Godzilla processed the Bomb, this movie echoes the events of 9-11. Some scenes look like outtakes from the news of that day. We're aware of that while watching, yet the fact did not feel cheaply exploitive. The fantasy element creates a certain distance, but we're also aware that every real-life disaster seems unbelievable when it occurs.

Of course, no movie is perfect.

I appreciate the conceit that we're watching Hud's recording of events, but I wish he could he have been slightly more competent with the camera. The shakiness can be distracting at times, and if you're prone to nausea, you'll need to pack the gravol.

Other complaints take the form of nits. Hud's camcorder survives considerable violence. For that matter, so do Lily's heels. My wife wondered afterwards if they were made from titanium. When the horror depends upon the impossible monster interacting with a believable world, even minor stylizations can distract.

Cloverfield captures with Blair Witch techniques a Kaiju attack with echoes of Alien and Lovecraft. The blend feels original -- and we may never see those old Godzilla movies in the same light again.

Director: Matt Reeves
Writer: Drew Goddard

Cast:

Lizzy Caplan as Marlena Diamond
Michael Stahl David as Rob Hawkins
Jessica Lucas as Lily Ford
T.J. Miller as Hud Platt
Odette Yustman as Beth McIntyre
Mike Vogel as Jason Hawkins


Jeff DeLuzio has published one collection of short fiction, Snow-man's Land (1996), a few hundred reviews and articles (many of these online under the name "Timeshredder"), workshopped seven original plays with teens, and served on panels at a number of conventions.

www.geocities.com/utherworld
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written by The Custodian

Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) is a modern dark fantasy film from Russia. It is notable for being one of the first relatively high-style, CGI effects-laden releases from a Russian filmmaker following the breakup of the Soviet Union which enjoyed a widespread release. It is loosely (very loosely) based on a series of books by author Sergei Lukyanenko, which comprises four books - Night Watch, Day Watch, Dusk Watch and Final Watch.

Damodred, who has a good point, mentions that it is highly recommended to read at least the first book before seeing this film. The author (and the books) are popular in Russia, and the film is (like the Harry Potter movies) an adaptation of a story which it is assumed a large percentage of the audience is familiar with. Like the Harry Potter movies, then, there are a number of elements missing from the movie which, no matter how cleanly they have been excised, nevertheless vastly increase the amount of sense that the rest of it makes if they are known.

It's difficult to review this film without spoilers. Much of what lends it its particular flavor comes as part and parcel of the story. However, before attempting to dance too close to betrayal, some general observations can be made safely. This is, as I mentioned above, a dark fantasy movie. It has been placed in the horror genre by some, but that does it a disservice - not because the genre is beneath it, but because it fits badly into the shape the words 'horror movie' paint in the minds of many people.

One thing about Night Watch is clear, though, and quite refreshing - it has a very distinctive feel about it which, I am told by several people who I trust to be right about this, is authentically Russian. I am not familiar with the culture or the atmosphere of Russia or Moscow, and the film takes place entirely within modern Moscow. However, while there are little signs of the Soviet Moscow so familiar to avid consumers of Cold War film - tiled cafe walls, tiny vodka stands, the elegant Metro stations, the everyday/all day consumption of zakuska with one's vipivka it is a swirl of one shade in a riot of modern color. Industrial technology painted in pukesick green and brown coexists with cars, computers and flat panel HD televisions of intimately familiar and sharp-edged blacks and garish primaries. The contrast of three generations of family crammed into a baize-tabled dining room eating borscht, placidly ignoring a bevy of interlopers who have set up a LAN of laptops and are going about all manner of mysterious business - all this is profoundly different from American moviemaking, and it's good.

What's it about? Ah. Here comes the dance close to the edge.

I'll try to stick close to things you might see in the trailer. It's about people, mostly - and the other people that walk among us. Like many other dark fantasy movies, it concerns an underworld of power, and how people fall into and out of it, and how they co-exist once there. They are called the Others, and they come in two varieties - the Dark and the Light. This isn't a vampire movie, although vampires show up - they're one kind of Dark Other. So are witches. There are psychics, and changelings, and hunters, and cops, and inquisitors.

Long ago, the Dark and the Light were at war. We're shown their last great battle, two armies meeting by chance on a bridge, engaged in a death struggle between ring mail clad, sword-bearing foot soldiers, pikemen and their contemporaries. Realizing the evenness of the match, the generals of the Light and Dark armies call a truce, a truce that has held to this day; and to regulate the activities of the Dark Others, the Lights maintain the Night Watch. The Darks maintain the Day Watch, to keep track of the Lights. And so both sides make sure the Truce is not violated; the Lights keep the Darks from preying unduly on the normal humans, who are unaware of their very presence, licensing those who must in order to survive (I said vampires showed up, right?)

And like every good fantasy, there's a Prophecy. But I'm not going to get into that.

We join the action in modern day Moscow, when...something happens. Something that begins to tip this for-so-long static complexity of forces, and we watch as the agents of the Light and the forces of the Dark begin to move about, frantically, in reaction.

Powers are unleashed. Pasts are revealed. In some cases, lives are taken.

And it's amazing what a flashlight can do.

The movie, in my opinion alone, doesn't make it up into the ranks of truly memorable fantasy action flicks. There's no serious plot twisting; there are a few attempts at turnabouts, but they seem to have come by liberties taken with the novel source material, and it shows a bit. Much of the complexity of the novel (I've only read the first), much of the philosophy involved in the balance and difference between the Dark and Light sides which gives the Truce and the War its power is missing in favor of action sequences and more expedient storytelling.

This is offset to some degree, but not entirely, by the particular nature of the vision, as I said earlier. It's refreshing to come across a film which doesn't really feel like a rehash of The Matrix or of a Paul Verhoeven film and which manages to retain its character while playing with the big budget boys. Especially one that was made for just over $4.2 million U.S. dollars. The plotline and the trailer will call up comparisons (to Western viewers) with the big-budget spectacle Underworld. I've seen that, and my take on it is that while there are many fewer guns in this movie, and while I didn't see any women nearly as hot as Kate Beckinsale in leather tights, this was a better movie than Underworld - more interesting and much more distinctive.

The international release of the film done by Fox Searchlight, which is the one I saw, has apparently been edited as far as content - several scenes are missing and a few are added in order to make the storyline more easily followed by a language-bound audience. I saw it as a dubbed release, as well; I believe with the original cast, but I'm not positive.

Note: if you're going to see this movie, you'll want to see Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor) - they're really two parts of the same movie.

Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) - 2004
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Screenplay: Timur Bekmambetov and Laeta Kalogridis

Konstantin Khabensky - Anton Gorodetsky
Vladimir Menshov - Gesser
Viktor Verzhbitsky - Zavulon
Valeri Zolotukhin - The Butcher, Kostya's Father
Aleksei Chadov - Kostya
Mariya Poroshina - Svetlana
Galina Tyunina - Olga

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written by David Wyatt


Both the movie and the book version of A Clockwork Orange are stylistically brilliant, well constructed works that effectively pose the question: What is the price of human choice?

Alex, our humble narrator and protagonist, is a monster. He does not see others as human, even his companions Dim and Pete are nothing more than extensions of his own ultraviolent self. He shows this in the scene where he humbles Dim when that put upon character wants more choice inside the gang.

And these are his friends.

The rest of us, (except for his probation officer P.R. Deltoid -- who alone has power over him), are simply things, toys to be used and discarded, vessels for Alex's immense anger and lust. He is a true sociopath in the vein of Ted Bundy and gang-banger Sanyika Shakur. Only one thing about him is human, his love of music.

When he is betrayed by his friends and pastured, and put into the Ludovico technique. There he spots a few "malchikis about to give a little devotchka a little of the old in-and-out . . . All to the lovely strains of Ludwig van . . ." And so he sits taking the drugs and watching films of rape and murder until the conditioning wins, and he becomes ill at even the thought of violence or sex.

After Ludovico Alex is fit to resume his place in society, able to work again, never again a rapist, murderer or thief. But he has no choice in this, the desire remains, the deep hunger. This is indicated by the scene where Alex is displayed publicly, the first success of Ludovico. A beautiful woman clad only in her panties is brought on stage and paraded in front of Alex. He reaches for her breasts, and doubles over in sickness.

He returns to society and there meets Pete and Dim, who have channeled their rage in a more acceptable direction. They have become policemen, who now direct their violent rage against criminals. The see Alex and beat him mercilessly because they can. Alex is unable to defend himself, even from an unprovoked assault. He cannot choose any more. He can only endure, a perpetual victim.

Worse, he can no longer bear the music he loves. The first bars of the lovely Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ring out and the illness comes. He cannot enjoy the one thing that made him human.

Well meaning people seek to cure him to reverse the Ludovico technique. And they succeed. This is brilliantly handled in the film, where he sits in his sanatorium bed, surrounded by gigantic PA speakers, playing beautiful music. And above the brilliant music of Wendy Carlos, you hear Alex's narration, "Aye, and I was cured alright," with the viciousness and malice of the true psychopath.

And here lies the question: If we could use mind control to change a vicious person like Alex, should we? His state after the Ludovico conditioning has a certain ironic symmetry, the monster reduced to helpless victim. But at the price of his humanity? Is the Ludovico technique better than death, better than prison?

The implication at the end is that Alex may return to rape and murder, though that is not certain. At the end, he is free to choose. He is human. For better and worse. A Clockwork Orange makes no attempt to answer this question. But this important question has never been better posed.

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written by David Wyatt

Frankenhooker is one trashy movie. But it's one really good trashy movie, as long as as you aren't looking for deep thinking, insightful characterization and a message. But it's a great movie nonetheless.

The plot is simple, James Lorinz plays a Mad Scientist, who working out of a 2 1/2 car garage has come close to solving the barrier between life and death. His girlfriend played with an excess of clothing by former Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen. They're the perfect couple. He's deranged, obsessed and just plain wierd, while she's sweet, supporting and completely clueless. Unfortunately, for her, cluelessness and lawn tractors don't mix well, and she has a deadly accident. Only her severed head survived.

But what's the point of having a mad scientist for a boyfriend if he can't perform a little ressurection? Particularly, if some improvements can be made, as the earlier girlfriend had eaten way too many brownies by Hollywood Actress Standards. No, he can make her better. All he needs is a body.

Better yet, a whole lot of bodies, so as to mix'n'match. And he knows just where to get them, too. For the local town has a surplus of hookers, who are continually tempting him in their high heels, halter tops, and hot pants. So he takes out his Lionel chemstry set and whips up a batch of super cocaine. It's better than other cocaine, because it makes the hookers explode. But not before it makes them really horny so they get buck nekkid and ready for lesbian orgies.

So our intrepid mad scientest sets out upon his new quest, of collecting perfect body parts to recreate his girlfriend as the perfect woman. And eventually he succeeds, as Patty is recreated as the Woman of his Nightmares, buff, stacked and stitched. And a little bit of her new, hookers body had turned sweet Patty into someone a little more interested in gratuitous nudity. The front cover of the movie says it all: "Wanna Date?"

Joe Bob Briggs gave Frankenhooker the coveted Hubbie Award as Best Drive-In Movie of 1991. (Okay, 1990 but it takes awhile to get the nominees in order). Joe Bob called it "the movie that will still be grossing us out 20 years from now:" and gave it "a perfect 100 on the vomit meter".

Frankenhooker represents some of the finest trash ever made. Producer Edgar Ievins and director Frank Henenlotter have made a film no one will ever forget, no matter how much they might wish it. So pick up a twelve pack of light beer, a box of kleenex and check it out.

Drive In Gold Star Award to Timeshredder for letting me know the original poster quoted Bill Murray saying "If you see only one movie this year it should be Frankenhooker" and referring to the film as "A terrifying tale of sluts and bolts".

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written by David Wyatt

Those of you lucky enough to keep your lives can go. But leave your severed body parts-- they belong to me.

Film is not of this earth. As a medium, cinema may present a picture of this world, but at its heart all artistic creations are in part fantasy, a slice of life as seen by their creator. They are the product of our imagination, thus at least in part imaginary, no matter how real the images that appear upon the screen.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the films of Quentin Tarantino, and no film is clearer on that point than Kill Bill. Like David Lynch Tarantino's films inhabit a world that could be ours, It is a world of organized crime and petty selfishness, a world where evil wears a pretty, even beautiful face. The scary part of that it could be real. Sort of.

The story of Kill Bill is a straightforward: revenge. It is a common story, dating from long before the cinima. Uma Thurman plays his protagonist, a very pregnant woman left for dead on her wedding day by a gangster named Bill and a gang of hired killers. A gang she used to belong to back when she was known as the Black Mamba. She awakes after spending four years in a coma, no longer pregnant, and with only one goal on her mind, revenge on Bill and the murderers who massacred everyone, even the organist. This is the story, or more correctly the first half of the story of her pursuit of their ruin.

From this realistic premise comes a totally unrealistic movie, one owing as much to Wile E. Coyote as it does to Alfred Hitchcock. Kill Bill is a fantasy without the elves. For Kill Bill is a kung-fu movie, in fact the attempt at the ultimate ninja flick. Such movies always live in the realm of fantasy. The characters are archetypes, not flesh and blood characters but scantly characterized representations of supernatural forces, actors in a divine comedy. Nor can they be. In the average Jackie Chan movie, the hero takes on waves of skilled assassins.

But as a fencing instructor once told me: "Two mediocre swordsmen beat a great one every single time". Yet in this form of art, the hero readily defeats impossible odds. The aerobatic fighting scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are simply an extension of this cosmic fantasy into the vertical. Kill Bill is such a fantasy.

Uma Thurman's the Bride is one such archetype, the force for righteous vengeance. For honor and the retrieval of it is one constant of the genre. The villains are cold assassins, sociopaths to their last breath. Lucy Liu's O Ren Ishii represents the yakuza gangster. Her story is partly told via anime, which is appropriate and she too is a force of vengeance. But like those who might seek to wield Tolkien's One Ring, O Ren threw down the Dark Lord only to become him. And Bill is the greatest archetype of all. Played by David Carradine, he is never seen, only his fingers, his samurai sword and his murderous actions, including the shooting of the pregnant Bride carrying his child. Through his voice and ringed fingers, Bill is both comic and elevated, clearly the ultimate test.

Tarantino builds his world from our own vocabulary, one established from the popular film media. The movie is revealing of Tarantino's own video collection: Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, Kurasawa and Jay Ward with a dash of Brian Depalma The movie is a homage to genre film: spaghetti westerns ninja films, and gangster movies, a language we are intimately familiar with. Only realism is twisted in Tarantinos universe. Severed limbs spout blood like a firehose, and violence is at times graphic and other times off stage. Tarantino understands that is necessary, that oversaturated but unrealistic violence may become comic, but too much graphic violence creates revulsion. By making the violence extreme yet unrealistic he detaches the audience, and makes it possible to laugh in the middle of murder. It is Itchy and Scratchy without the animation.

For Kill Bill is very much a comedy. While it may say much about us that we can laugh at such violence, the jokes are constant, and employ the same sort of ironic juxtapositions that so enliven his earlier Pulp Fiction. Japanese movies are backed with sixties pop, and the subtitles often come in American slang. Samurai swords sing when drawn, bowling pins fall, tittering Japanese schoolgirls turn into stone killers, psychotic assassins become suburban moms. But many of the details come from simply brilliant cinematography. From the perfect animee, vibrant primary colors and exquisite camera work, Kill Bill is a visual feast. The sound editing is particularly brilliant, with bowling pins and shimmering sounds providing a fantastic intimacy to this fantasy.. It all plays homage to the films Tarantino so clearly loves. Inside jokes are everywhere, and I know I missed most of them. Kill Bill is a triumph of form over content.

For content is not what you watch Kill Bill for. Tarantino is not Norman Mailer, nor does he seek to be. The story offers no real lessons, or in-depth portraits. The characters motivations are established, they meet, fight and one walks away. Of course this is just part one, the original cut ran over four hours and when the studios objected, Tarantino cut the film in two.

In some ways, I would enjoy seeing part II. Tarantino is nothing if not clever, and if it has the wit, humor and ballet of part I it will prove entertaining. Yet I wonder if this film needs finishing. As a homage, it stands alone, and I can see nothing in part II beyond more of the same. Not even catharsis through violence. Kill Bill is a brilliant homage, perhaps the ultimate. But that's all it is, and all it tries to be. It is a film of modest ambition, immodestly done.

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written by David Wyatt

Don't kill us now. We love each other. You can kill us later after we've consummated our love.

Imagine that you're a Hong Kong producer of low-budget action films, and you'd like to make some quick bucks. So you look around and see what's hot. Hmm, looks like that American Movie RoboCop is raking it in. To Live and Die in L.A. is doing pretty well showing that there is a market for films about the battle against drug smuggling. Vampire movies with maggoty corpses are a fave, but you do need some fan service. Plus your stock in trade is the Kung-Fu movie. So why not give the people everything they want in one movie?

That simple pot luck is the inspiration behind Robo Vampire, a movie that vies for the title of the worst movie of all time. The plot basics are Asian heroin smugglers have decided to add a bit of vampire muscle to improve their odds of dealing with the brave American DEA agents, one of whom is kidnapped so they can drip water down her shapely body and make her moan orgasmically and so she can be rescued after lots of gunplay. The DEA agents counter the vampires by reanimating one of their own dead into an android crime fighter who tries to do the Peter Weller schtick without a hint of Weller's talent or creativity. It's a blatant rip-off with just enough changed to make a lawsuit dicey. In reality, this movie doesn't have a plot, it has a Manhattan street map.

One scene exemplifies the director and producer's commitment to incomprehensibility. The Asian wizard/Vamp-herd is confronted by a shapely ghost in a negligee who is pissed off that he's turned her dead boyfriend into a gorilla/vampire wearing traditional Chinese robes and cap. You see that keeps the loving from being together in death as she intended. But the Vamp-herd agrees to marry her and her Vampire-in-a-gorilla-suit dead lover to square things and gain her service. Of course the real purpose of the scene is fan service. The scene's real point, er points, of the scene are readily visible through the frustrated ghost's transparent negligee.

Having finished that scene they cut to an ambush of DEA agents by a group of Vampires. And what vampires they are: immune to daylight, they don't seem interested in blood, and they shoot acid and sparklers from their sleeves. The can also teleport and display superb kung-fu moves, but they can't walk, they bunny hop. That's right, kung-fu rated teleporting vampires are incapable of normal motion, they must extend their arms like zombies and hop around. It's beneath ridiculous. Which leads to another scene at a church where the cross is made of uncut heroin and the stunning church secretary machine guns a bunch of druggies before her clip runs dry and she"s taken prisoner so they can molest her.

All of that sets off more absurdity. Nothing, absolutely nothing makes sense in Robo Vampire. Characters are introduced constantly, appearing as if out of thin air. There are times when I wonder if this wasn't several films spliced together, and to describe the ending as a "resolution' would stretch reality. Don't expect sense. Don't expect good voice dubbing either, and you will be surprised when Chinese girls speak with New York Jewish and Australian accents.

The movie begs comparison to Ed Wood's classic Plan 9 from Outer Space. Both offer an incoherent plot and a lot of unintended humor. But the similarities end there. The director of Robo Vampire had a far larger budget, at least enough to afford real hubcaps and anti-tank rockets. The Oriental shooting site allows for some fairly spectacular scenery at points. But the real point is that Edward D. Wood Jr reached for something he lacked the talent to achieve. Robo Vampire is an exploitation flick without any attempt at coherence. Director Joe Livingstone aimed at the feet and missed low, so low that he dug his way to China. And came back out again.

Two breasts. Multiple dead bodies, with flesh rending, worm vomiting, Chinese wrestlers, bunny hopping undead, cow-corpse stuffing, and 1950's science labs still used for 1988 robotics.

It's worth five bucks. It will make your brain explode.

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written by David Wyatt

In the heart of deepest and darkest Africa there is a lost city. Run by the fearsome Leopard Queen, it is a deadly place defended by fierce warriors. But it is also a place of a great treasure, and with World War II underway but the awesome might of Nazi Germany and the beleaguered British Empire need the diamonds to pay for the war. England knows the Nazis are hot on the trail of the diamonds. So they send their best agent out to recover the loot and keep it from Nazi hands.

They send Jane.

Who is Jane? She began as a cartoon character in The Daily Mirror back in 1932. Jane is British, not quite posh, but more than cockney, a simple, loyal English girl who just happens to look spectacular in her knickers. Which is a good thing because you get to see a lot of her in bra, panties and garter belt, for Jane favors tear-away dresses. Her dresses snag often and come of cleanly in one piece leaving her standing there in very interesting lingerie. Not that Jane understands why. Why she's a good girl. Think of her as sort of an accidental Bettie Page and you're right there. She's brave, forthright, romantic and quite a bit naive. She's more virginal than Jessica Simpson, and shows about as much skin.

Of course you wouldn't send a nice girl off to Africa by herself would you, not with a bunch of Nazi killers running loose. No you'd send her with the Colonel , an upper-class twit who never goes anywhere (including a combat mission) without his butler Tombs. Together the three shall brave snakes, Nazi assassins, African Warriors and lecherous drunks on their way to preserve Merry Olde England.

Of course the Nazis send their best as well. Maud Adams (Octopussy) brings her exquisite cheekbones to the service of the Fuhrer as Lola Pagola, Deadliest Agent of the Third Reich and Jane' arch-enemy. Particularly as Lola might even look better than Jane in her underwear if only we got a peek. Of course Lola has her own dastardly retinue. Jasper Carrot plays Heinz, Herman and Hans, three psychopathic Nazi killers who make Inspector Clouseau appear competent. Then there is Carl, the African guide, strong, big and he actually is competent, but quiet.

Of course the plots against Jane begin early as assassination attempts are made on shipboard, on the plane taking them deep into the Dark Content and once again. But there she rescues and befriends a handsome, brawny and environmentally aware American explorer played by Sam Jones {Flash Gordon}. You know the movie is bad with the title character (played by Kirsten Hughes) is billed after two B-list celebrities. Chaste sparks fly when Jane rescues him from certain death in her lingerie, despite the fact that "Oh, Lord, he's a vegetarian".

Of course Jane ans her crew manage to solve the mystery of the Leopard Kingdom and get there first only to be nearly foiled by Lola and her crew of Nazi killers. But as they are about to be sacrificed it turns out that the Leopard Queen (Elsa O'Toole) is a really shapely Oxford girl in love with an Arabian Prince. When he comes for her, she happily gives her people's treasure to Jane and rides off into the sunset. So all ends well, except the dastardly Lola escapes in case the film made enough money to justify a sequel.

This movie should really suck. And in a way it does. The plot is silly, the acting mediocre, and the premise absurd. The special effects are straight out of 1960's TV. But the movie knows it's camp, and plays it that way. It's innocence is almost endearing and there are enough belly laughs to make it go even without assistance from Crow and Tom Servo.

Of course, if MST3K were to make a comeback, they'd do well to start right here.

The good guys

Kirsten Hughes plays Jane

Graham Stark bears the burden of Tombs the butler

Robin Bailey pretends to be The Colonel

Sam Jones has the expressive muscles required of Jungle Jack

The naughty, naughty people

Maud Adams wears too much clothing as Lola Pagola

Jasper Carrott does not channel Peter Sellers playing Heinrich/Herman/Hans

Ian Roberts pulls off Carl

The bit players

Elsa O'Toole makes The Leopard Queen's outfits

John Rapley shudders wonderfully as Dr. Schell

Charles Comyn holds his liqour as Paddy

Ian Steadman is steady as it goes as Capt. Fawcett

Graham Armitage starches his upper lip Gen. Smythe-Paget

Richard Huggett in not Winston Churchill

Andrew Buckland pulls off Grenville

Albert Raphael dresses like Fabio playing Ras

The people to blame:

Terry Marcel is The Director

In the year of our Lord, 1987

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