24 – Distress Call (Supernova)

Wandering through the woods, moving towards this new town of Llort, you begin to wonder what you’ve got yourself into on this island of horrors. As soon as you make it back to your room you’re packing your bags and getting the hell out of here.

“Help me!”

You stop in your tracks, a voice, asking for help…ordinarily you’d call back, try to find them, but your experiences so far have taught you to be…cautious…

Fuck it they’ve taught you to stay as far away as possible from, well, anything.

“Please…”

Telling yourself that you’re making a big mistake you creep cautiously towards the voice. You see a faint glow through the trees and eventually make out a clearing. A young boy is laying prone, a small tree lays fallen across his legs, beside him is brightly glowing object, an eerie, yet enticing aura surrounds it.

“Is somebody there? Please…my leg…”

Never taking your eyes off the object, you step from the trees.

A pleasant surprise this time, I get to review a film which I haven’t seen for so long it felt almost new…almost. One of the films I owned before I started collecting films for this project and one which, as far as I’m aware, is fairly unknown, or at the very least forgotten.

It’s a Sci-fi horror where a ship responds to a distress call, it’s not Alien, it’s not Event Horizon, it’s 2000’s Supernova, directed by Walter Hill…or is that Thomas Lee? Either way, it’s time to review it.

The film follows the crew of the Nightingale, a medical ship with a complement of 6. After a brief introduction to the ship and crew they receive a distress call from a distant star system and go to investigate. As you would expect things don’t go well and the crew find themselves fighting for their lives. So yeah, sounds a bit like Event Horizon…

I should point out now that the pleasant surprise was for seeing a film that felt new, not at the quality of the film. This film was handled very badly. The director himself, Walter Hill, didn’t even want to put his name to it so the pseudonym Thomas Lee was used. Hill’s work was screened to test audiences without special effects, which Hill said would go very badly, and it was badly received. MGM got a second director in to change things, this also didn’t go well and ultimately they asked Francis Ford Coppola of all people to edit the film. So yeah it was all a bit of a shit show. Apparently Hill wanted to do something that sounded more akin to Event Horizon with grim effects and creature makeup whilst MGM wanted it to be sexy and fun. I’d love to have seen Hill’s original vision for the film but instead we got this mishmash.

Talking of sexy and fun it’s certainly quite a horny film. Most of the cast get it on at some point, in fact everyone except for the captain and the Navigator and he’s constantly flirting with the ship’s computer called ‘Sweetie’. It’s not super graphic but it’s prominent enough that it feels a bit Red Shoe Diaries. It’s very of its time and something that would probably have been less of a focus 10 years earlier or later.

The story, as we’ve already noted, is fairly generic, the space mission gone wrong, mysterious alien artefacts, explosions and time limits. There’s very little to make this stand out from a myriad of other films of this sub-genre. I didn’t find myself being too invested in what was going on with the plot, its sort of a film of two halves, the first half being a pure science fiction film, albeit a fairly grim one, whilst the second half it becomes a slasher film…wait…isn’t that Alien? You see?

I have to say, with how badly this film did and how much it seemingly disappeared into the ether, I had some fun with it. I think maybe something is wired in me where a sci fi horror is always enjoyable to me on some level even if it’s not that great. Just the fact that I’m taken to another place, and in this other place is also a horror film. I love films that take me out of my own reality and this film does do that.

Something else I love in my Sci fi is James Spader, ever since watching Stargate at the cinema back in 1994 and more recently hearing him as Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. He’s good in this film and so is everyone else, as far as the actors go they did a good job, they just got put into a sub-par film.

The effects in the film are pretty good, you can tell that they had a decent budget, we are unfortunately at a CGI heavy era but at DVD quality at least they hold up pretty well having been done by Digital Domain, a company responsible for the special effects in an enormous number of films including many of the recent Marvel films. In terms of more contemporary films they handled the effects in Titanic, Armageddon and Lake Placid.

As is often the case I’ve really found myself torn between a couple of scores for this on. Let’s start by saying I easily took a 4 or 5 out of the equation, it’s also not a 1 so that leaves a 2 or a 3. It’s very middle of the road, but it should have been more than that, there’s a better film in here, it was…disappointing and disappointing films get 2 Pears out of 5. If this happens to be on TV sometime, or pops up on your streaming service, it’s got some entertainment value, but I wouldn’t go out of your way to see it.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

As I watched this film there was at least one scene where I was like “Oh yeah, I remember this scene” so the film obviously had some stand out moments, but only stand out enough to bury themselves in my subconscious. The one where I really got that sudden recollection was when the crew wake up from their naked warp sleep thing, they had to be naked, it was very important to the plot…but yes they wake up and the captain’s pod has malfunctioned. This was one of the cooler scenes in the film, the captain has become fused to his pod, like the warp jump tried to combine the two of them. The effects and the tension in this scene are great and it really shows how much potential the film had, we really needed more of this. Body horror and sci-fi go so well together and we really don’t get any more of it in the rest of the film unless you count the character Karl Larson’s ‘Vampire from an episode of Buffy’ face later in the film.

Another scene which stood out, and again one that I remembered once I’d seen it again was when Ben, the aforementioned Navigator, is trapped in a room, dying, whilst a mutated Karl tries to break his way in. Ben tries to get Sweetie to remove all of the oxygen from the room, his override code being “I Love You”, to which Sweetie responds “I’ve always known that Benjamin” and her subsequent tone of loss when Ben dies and she can no longer hear him. It’s a surprisingly moving moment between Man and Computer.

Honestly this is a struggle, there is VERY little that really stood out to me in this film or worth talking about in any great detail. These two examples make me sad more than anything, sad at what this could have been.

In the words of Dr Evers…it’s a bomb.

15 – Imagined Fears (Forbidden Planet)

As the tape comes to a stop the room falls silent. You sit a while, listening, listening for the sound of a footstep, for the sound of a door opening, for anything.

Several minutes pass, still nothing. Slowly you stand, turning, scanning the room…nothing.

Perhaps the creature on the tape has moved on, maybe it was a prank, stories like that can’t be real. It all sounds like the work of somebody’s over-active imagination. You’re guilty of it yourself, sitting here in this old house, imagining monsters laying in wait, monsters in some dark cellar, monsters climbing the creaking stairs…

Creak…

You run, bolting for the front door as you hear wood splinter behind you as the monster bursts out from the cellar staircase and into the hall. Throwing the front door aside you think you feel the creature swipe the air where your head was moments before, its razor sharp talons cutting the air instead of your scalp.

You know it has those talons, you just know. Just like you know that it’s huge, big enough to get jammed in the door frame, the momentum that carried it through the cellar door having ebbed away. You know that it won’t stay stuck there forever though, even now it’s probably searching for another way out, perhaps a French window.

Crash!

Your lungs burning, you know it’s gaining on you…so of course, it is. You think you can make it into the mist up ahead, so of course…you do.

The mist surrounds you, and all is white.

Another classic this time, but perhaps not one which everyone would think of as horror, especially if they haven’t actually seen it. I certainly feel it belongs in the genre. The 1950s was when many of the horror films that had been so prevalent in the 30s and 40s began to give way to Science Fiction, or really in many cases disguised themselves in a futuristic chrome carapace, but the horror was still there.

Our film this time expertly combines both Science Fiction, and Horror, it’s 1956’s Forbidden Planet.

I first saw this film many years ago, back in the early 90s when it was already close to 40 years old. Despite its age, and despite its PG, or is it U rating? The BBFC website sates U but the Blu-Ray is PG, perhaps it’s because of the extras? But then it would normally say? Arghh, OK so I got side tracked, my point will still be valid. DESPITE its age, and DESPITE being suitable for those of all ages, I found it quite frightening when I was 10 and it still has that power.

The story follows Commander Adams and the crew of the excitingly named starship C-57D as they travel to the planet Altair IV to determine the fate of an expedition which travelled there 20 years prior. There they meet Dr Morbius, his daughter Altaira and the real star of the show Robby the Robot. The crew soon find that things aren’t all they seem on this peaceful looking planet as an unknown horror stalks them.

I’ll leave it at that for the story, not a lot I know but if you’ve not seen it then I don’t want to spoil anything. If you have seen it, then you don’t need me to tell you what happens, and we can discuss specifics in the spoiler section.

What I will say about the plot is that it’s not a simple, predictable 50s monster movie by any means. There’s mystery to it and certainly more than meets the eye, not only that but there’s tension. I mentioned being scared by the film when I was younger and I think it’s the fear of the unknown which is prevalent here, it successfully has you on edge.

The Atmosphere in Forbidden Planet is phenomenal. The beautiful sets, special effects and the sound, oh the sound. If there’s one thing which can be put on a pedestal above everything else in this film it’s the sound. The haunting electronic tones give an alien, mystical feeling to the whole film. If ever a film transported the viewer away from their sofa to another place it’s this one. I’m listening to the soundtrack as I write this and it honestly gives me the chills.

The film does have it’s more light-hearted moments, mostly the interactions between Robby the Robot and the cook, but they’re fairly infrequent and don’t detract from the more serious tone of the rest of the film.

Talking of Robby the Robot, he really is a work of art. One of the most expensive film props ever made at the time, costing somewhere around $100,000, 7% of the film’s entire budget, and equivalent to over a million in today’s money. He’s an iconic character and probably the aspect of the film that’s most recognisable to modern audiences. Robby is the creation of Robert Kinoshita, who also created the robots from the Lost in Space TV Series in the 60s and the earlier film Tobor the Great.

It’s fascinating to me to see Leslie Nielsen in a film where he doesn’t already have grey hair. I think Airplane is the next oldest thing I’ve seen him in and he was already 54 then. Here he’s a youthful 30 (Maybe even 29 when it was being filmed) and not only that, this isn’t a comedy. Later on he certainly became typecast as the king of ridiculous comedies but here he plays the straight man and he’s good!

There is one aspect where the film hasn’t aged well and that’s Morbius’s daughter Altaria. There’s a lot of “Hey a broad!” type stuff from the all male crew and she mostly seems to be there as the naïve love interest of more than one crewmember. This is pretty standard 50s fare to be honest and probably what society and therefore the audience of the time would be expecting so I’m not going to be too harsh on it.

Not harsh at all in fact, this is a straight up 5 Star Sapphires out of 5. An exemplary sci-fi horror, one which still holds up today. Sure the social side of things has dated, it’s very 1950s, but it can hardly be marked down for being a product of its time. If you’re looking for an eerie, beautiful film with a more cerebral plot than your run of the mill 50s sci-fi horror then look no further!

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

OK, so as there’s not a lot of bad, and even then it’s more of a case of this film being made in the 1950s, let’s start with that.

I mentioned before about the way Altaira is used in the film. Being more specific there’s a scene where one of the crew is explaining to her about kissing and demonstrating it, trying to explain it as something all high societies do etc… so it starts off bad, but then Commander Adams catches them at it, dismisses the crew member and the berates Altaira for dressing provocatively in front of his horny men. So yes that side of the film has aged badly.

Moving on to more positive things. The monster, or at least the manifestation of Dr Morbius’s subconscious that is the Monster from the ID. The effects for this creature are fantastic, from the footprints in the sand and bending metal steps of the ship, to the red crackling outline of the monster as the crew fruitlessly pour fire from their guns and energy batteries into it.

I said before about how this isn’t your one dimensional monster movie. The idea that the Monster that killed the other colonists and attacks Adams’ crew is a creation of Morbius’ mind and the very same thing which destroyed the Krell civilization really adds more intrigue and awe than one might expect from a science fiction film of this era.

The plot of Forbidden Planet is often compared with that of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with Morbius playing the part of Prospero, Altaira as Miranda and Adams as Ferdinand. I won’t go greatly into detail, there’s a good article on it here, but if we ignore the futuristic setting then there are a great many similarities.

There’s honestly not a huge amount of specifics that I’d like to discuss. When it comes to films that I enjoy as a whole package like this it’s harder to pinpoint stand out moments. It’s an experience, an atmospheric piece which makes you forget the present for a while and live in the future.

I think it’s time for little drink, 60 gallons ought to do it…

5 – A New Friend (Alien from the Darkness)

Stepping from the Inn you find yourself on a wide cobbled square surrounded by thatch roofed buildings. At the centre of the square is a tall pole. Different coloured ribbons hang from the top and flutter lazily in the breeze. Your hand brushes the scrap of paper in your pocket…the map, perhaps later, there’s a whole island to explore.

Hullo there friend!

A cheery voice rings out. You look over to a quaint little shop with a multipaned bay window where a jolly looking man with white mutton chops is beckoning you over.

My name is Albert, I heard we had a new visitor to the island. I’m the town chemist, can I interest you in anything?

You glance into the shop through the open door behind the man. Various jars line the shelves, full of things you’ve never seen in any other chemist shop, is that a tentacle?

No? How about some advice then? Not everyone is as they seem. Beware false friends. But most of all, enjoy yourself!

OK…so this is a review I was both amused by and dreading to some degree. Little did I know when I purchased this film in a ‘Wow Anime!’ period I was going through back in the early 2000s, when it was becoming available over here in the UK, that I would be reviewing it 20 years later.

Alien from the Darkness, or Alien of Darkness as the DVD I have calls it (淫獣エイリアン is its original Japanese title or Injū Eirian in the Hepburn romanization), is a Japanese Hentai, about the crew of a Spaceship who discover and explore a derelict craft which turns out to have an alien entity on board. The Alien turns out to be hostile, not to mention horny, and so of course the crew end up in a fight for survival in this pornographic horror from 1996.

I will be the first to admit that I went into this film as a bit of a sceptic. It had been around 2 decades since I last watched it and I honestly couldn’t remember much about it or if it was any good. Spoiler alert, you may be surprised by the result.

I’m going to go right out and say that this would be a better film without the porn side of it, but also if you take those scenes out it barely even qualifies as a film anymore with its already meagre runtime of 45 minutes. The graphic sexual scenes are what they are, they vary from standard lesbian porn scenes to the hentai staple of invasive tentacles. To be fair we’re not talking full hardcore, though it’s entirely possible my copy is cut, being from the 90s, but it’s certainly over and above incidental sexual scenes that are present in many exploitation films for example. The porn scenes are what people are generally watching this for. The thing is, as a by product of wanting to watch some horny space ladies get it on, the viewer inadvertently ends up watching a fairly decent sci-fi horror. It’s nothing special but I’ve very much seen worse.

The film makes no effort in disguising its influence from a film I’ve already reviewed. Alien. Crew finds an abandoned ship. Crew brings something alien aboard their own ship. Crew start to die. OK so that’s fairly vague but wait until you see the crew’s stasis pods and then tell me Alien wasn’t an influence.

I think what I wasn’t expecting in a 45 minute long hentai was a secondary plot, hell I wasn’t even expecting a plot full stop, I actually found myself fully engaged with the film. Yes it’s got some ridiculous scenes and it’s not a film I would ever recommend to people, unless they were after a sci-fi hentai, but it has plenty of good points.

The artwork is decent and at times quite creepy with the various decomposing corpses on the abandoned ship they find. The absolutely bizarre but entirely welcome inclusion of a cute pet ferret running around the ship and providing some awwww moments as well as taking part in the main plot and providing some comic relief. Speaking of comic relief there’s a fair few examples of it in the film. It’s entertaining and after all, isn’t that what films are supposed to be.

With this in mind and taking the film as what it is, porn, I’m going to give Alien from the Darkness 3 rotating vibrators out of 5. This film has no right being this watchable, it feels like the director Norio Takanami wanted to be making something more serious, and it shows.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

The film is strongly influenced by Alien, but surprisingly doesn’t go the whole way and instead goes with quite a few of its own ideas, or at least ideas from different films. Having the creature spend most of the film in the form of a young woman was likely so they could show more boobs but it also means that the crew have no idea that she is in fact the cause of all the deaths and makes this into more of a slasher than Alien.

There is a secondary plot based around the banned substance Metrogria, and our second secret protagonist Lindo, who is trying to smuggle it onto the black market. This was a surprise to me, the fact that they included this in a 45 minute film shows that they cared about more than just a string of tentacle rape scenes.

Let’s talk about Einstein. This furry little ferret was a highlight of the film for me, he’s very cute, even if he sounds ridiculous, his noises clearly being made by a person pretending to be a ferret. He seems like a stand in for Jonesy, the cat from Alien, but really he’s a far more important character. Near the end of the film he leaps at and bites the Alien’s dick! This in turns makes it drop his owner Hikari, who was being gripped by the monster’s tentacles and allows her to shoot it with the Metrogria and blow it out the air-lock. Einstein is my hero.

For a hentai the women are drawn as relatively normal, if physically fit women, which I guess makes sense if they’re the crew of a spaceship. A little more variety in body shape would have been nice but to be honest it’s just nice that they don’t all have massive gravity defying breasts.

In some ways it’s a shame that the film is as short as it is. It does mean that there’s always something happening and the pacing is quick, but it’s a little too fast, even now writing, at this point a week or so later, many of the scenes blur into each other in my mind. It would have been good if we’d had more time to get to know the crew, so we could actually care when they get killed.

Flair, our main protagonist is frankly dull, because, she’s just a monster in a human form, so she doesn’t talk to the crew, or lure them to her in clever ways, they just kind of stumble into each other’s paths and fall under her spell. She’s frankly far more interesting in her monster form, if only because it’s something different to look at.

With regards to the rating system I used, shout out to the scene which I found hilarious the first time I saw it, where the captain and the doctor are getting it on and one of them produces what looks like a grenade, but hey, the captain certainly seems to enjoy it.

This is Emma, last survivor of the…wait, I already did that one…

3 – How do you like your Eggs? (Alien)

As you stare at the TV screen, engrossed, a respectable looking man in a tweed suit walks into shot and turns to camera.

Scientists have yet to determine the age of the craft, or who created it. What they suspect is…hold on…it looks like the first team is returning, perhaps they can…oh…I think somebody is hurt. Dave, cut it there, we’ll do some interviews once we find out what’s happened.

That’s all there is.

Willa steps into the room. The TV screen has turned to static.

Local kid found that tape floating in the brook just east of town. Strange thing is, nobody has any idea where that was filmed. Oh the island is small, but it’s also big at the same time, like a scrunched up piece of paper. You never know what’s hiding round the next bend.

So! How do you like your eggs?

Once again it seems the random number dice Gods have been kind to me. Today’s film is not only my favourite in the Alien franchise, but one of my favourite films of all time.

Alien is a household name when it comes to either the Science Fiction or Horror genres and is probably the film most people think of when asked to name a film which straddles both. We’ve all seen it (We’ve all seen it right?) but we’re still going to review it, Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, Alien.

The story of Alien follows the crew of the Nostromo, a commercial towing vessel. The ship intercepts a signal from a nearby planet and the crew heads down to the surface to investigate. Once there they discover an alien craft with an organism onboard, an organism which soon has the crew fighting for their lives.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw Alien. It was certainly when I was younger than the film’s 18 rating, likely watching a late night TV edit, but I didn’t care, and probably wasn’t aware, I just knew it by reputation. This was one of those films that everyone had to have seen, you were a real grown up if you could say that.

Since then I’ve seen Alien an unknown number of times in various forms, cut for TV, uncut and finally the Director’s Cut. This is one of those films that I’m very happy to own on Blu-Ray, it’s a beautiful film with a stunning sense of enormous scale and claustrophobia at the same time. The iconic look of the alien and its surroundings is the work of Swiss artist H.R. Giger. The organic but, well alien, look of his designs adds hugely to the feeling of unease and fear we get from the alien itself. The design is so important to the film that it’s one of those, sadly rare, times when the average viewer is aware of who created it.

Every time I watch Alien, I’m reminded how timeless it is. Partly this is due to its sci-fi future setting but mostly for me it’s because the film is so tight, it’s so focused on the small crew of the Nostromo and we are so engaged and on edge for almost the entire film, that we don’t have time for reflecting on the depiction of computers or characters’ hairstyles. All of that other stuff becomes iconic and I feel myself believing that it’s entirely what things could look like in the early 22nd century (The far future setting certainly helps as it’s a long time before anybody’s going to be able to call Ridley Scott out on that.)

So hey, this is a horror review, is Alien a horror? As a whole series I think it becomes a matter of opinion and certainly varies a little by film, but this film? Damn straight it’s a horror, it just happens to be set in space. Alien, when you really break it down, is a slasher film. A group of people, being hunted down and taken out one by one by a seemingly unstoppable foe. Slasher, and a terrifying one at that. The claustrophobic setting of the Nostromo, the body horror, the excellent creature effects, the eerie score, and the superb acting keep you paranoid and in suspense for most of the film.

I was going to point out a few stand out members of the cast, but that would be doing a disservice to the others. They are all excellent, from the comic relief (Well as much as a film like Alien allows it) duo of Harry Dean Stanton’s Brett and Yaphet Kotto’s Parker. To Sigourney Weaver’s no nonsense Ellen Ripley, they all do their part to immerse you in the film’s universe and make it real to you. The Alien itself is a true monster, it’s both beautiful and repulsive at the same time, a marvel of design with a reproductive cycle to keep you awake at night.

All of these things come together to create something very special and that’s why I’m (unsurprisingly I imagine) going to award Alien, 5 Rolled up Magazines out of 5. This is a true masterpiece, a candidate not just for best sci-fi horror, but for one of the best films period. A film which stands the test of time and feels as new as the day it was released, but then you don’t need me to tell you that, you’ve seen it, right?

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So now that the 3 people who haven’t seen Alien have left the room let’s indulge in some specifics, starting with the iconic Chestburster scene. This scene is fantastic, the mood of the film turns lighter briefly with Kane seemingly fully recovered from his ordeal with the face hugger, everyone’s smiling and joking when suddenly Kane starts convulsing. The crew hold him down and we meet the alien for the first time as it bursts bloodily from Kane’s chest. It’s so visceral and such a contrast to the relaxed feeling moments before that it continues to be shocking with every watch.

Another sequence of the film I love, and one which shows that Alien isn’t just a one trick pony, is the scene where Dallas is crawling around in the air ducts trying to flush the alien out. The paranoia and the claustrophobia in this scene are intense. Every junction in the ducts has multiple directions the alien could come from and the crew’s simple tracking device does nothing to ease the tension. In the end it’s a simple jump scare, but it works.

Let’s talk about Ash. He could just have been a particularly zealous crew member. He could have been a character who was killed for his error of overriding Ripley and bringing Kane back onto the ship, that could have been the limit of his involvement. Many films would have done that. Not here. Having Ash turn out to be an Android, and one programmed to make sure the alien is recovered, crew expendable, really comes out of nowhere. We’re busy worrying about where the alien is and who it’s going to kill next when suddenly there’s another threat, one which we had no idea about, we didn’t even know Androids were a thing! Ian Holm is fantastic and somehow manages to make a scene where he tries to kill Ripley with a rolled up magazine scary, rather than ridiculous.

Ripley has a reputation for being a bit of a badass, but that mostly comes from the sequels, here she’s more of a hardass. She’s far from being a damsel in distress but she’s certainly terrified by her situation and to be honest it’s another thing that I love about this film. She isn’t a superhero, she’s just doing the best she can and keeps her head when those around her are panicking. Ultimately she defeats the alien, blasting it out into space, but it feels like a desperate fight for survival rather than plot armoured inevitability.

Whether you prefer this, or its admittedly excellent sequel Aliens (That’s usually the extent of it, I don’t know many people claiming it’s Alien: Resurrection) this is where it all began and where many other films in the sci-fi horror sub-genre got their inspiration.

This is Emma, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.