Zardoz (1974): or, I Have Seen the Future, and It Does Not Work

"You have been raised up from Brutality, to kill the Brutals who multiply, and are legion. To this end, Zardoz your God gave you the gift of the Gun. The Gun is good!...Penis is evil! The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the Gun shoots Death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth, and kill! Zardoz has spoken."

After speaking these words, the giant, floating stone head from which the voice of Zardoz emanates vomits forth a torrent of rifles, handguns, and ammunition. These are immediately seized by The Exterminators, a clan of hirsute, horse-riding savages who worship Zardoz and immediately put his gospel into action, running down and trapping the lesser race of Brutals--all dressed in tattered black suit-coats for easy identification--raping the women and pumping the men full of hot lead.

Thus begins the incredible 1974 futuristic fantasy Zardoz, written and directed by John Boorman (the cinematic mastermind behind such classics as Excalibur and Deliverance), and starring dramatic heavyweights Charlotte Rampling and Sean Connery. Boasting some of the most amazing costuming and set design of any film of its era, the movie brings to life a utopian/distopian future and touches on themes of immortality, new age religion, science run amok, and the struggle between Eros and Thanatos that some say defines the human condition.

Oh, and it's based on one of the most beloved children's literary classics of all time.

Man, I love the 70s.

Sometimes you just need a little head, and sometimes...

After the Exterminators force their Brutal slaves to load Zardoz's mouth with their grain harvest in exchange for the bounty of firearms, the Great Stone God takes off into the sky again, soaring back to his unknown living place. We know from a pre-credits floating-head explainer that the man behind the curtain is Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy), a member of a race of secluded, educated Immortals who has been assigned the governorship of the Outer Provinces. How he happened upon the Giant Stone Head/Gun Distribution system of government is something we will learn much later, but it seems to be working pretty well for him. His Floating Stone Ship of State is packed to the uvula with grain, other agricultural products (presumably from other provinces), and a few dozen naked Brutal women, all sealed in shrink-wrap plastic for freshness.

Unfortunately for Arthur, he has unwittingly swallowed a stowaway: Zed (Connery), the leader of the Exterminators who has been nurturing an unhealthy curiosity about just where his god goes when not spitting death dealers at the savages. (Either that, or he just thought Zardoz sure had a pretty mouth...) Emerging from his hiding place in the grain stores, Zed surprises Frayn on the return trip to the enclave, giving him a taste of his own theology in the form of hot lead and a quick trip out the mandibular orifice.

Sure, Zed sounds like a badass, and he is--which is a testament to Connery's powerful screen presence, especially since he spends most of the movie dressed like this:

These Boots are Made for Ass-Kicking

Soon enough Zed lands in the Vortex, home of the Immortals, who we learn later are the descendents of the rich, powerful, and educated of the Earth's former society. When the world was dying (how this occurred is neither clear nor important), the scientists and aristocrats discovered the secret of eternal life, and naturally kept it for themselves and slapped a force field around their opulent hippie commune to keep the riff-raff out. The future as Gated Community--prescient, no?

Over the centuries the Immortals have developed incredible psychic powers--they can read one another's thoughts, don't have to sleep, and periodically join in a hive-mind known as Second-Level Meditation in order to share their ever-increasing scientific knowledge. Their society is a mixture of the ancient and the futuristic--they grind grain using 15th century stone mill wheels, but cook the resulting bread in a laser-powered EZ Bake oven, for instance. The whole operation is overseen by The Tabernacle, a crystal-based supercomputer that stores all human knowledge and communicates with its subjects through gaudy diamond-ring communicators.

So round, so firm, so vacuum-packed.

However, it turns out eternal life ain't all it's cracked up to be. With everyone able to tell what everyone else is thinking, the Immortals have been forced to develop a very rigorous, formalized system of behavior in order to minimize "psychic violence." Anyone guilty of such violence is punished by the society--not physically (they're way beyond that), but by being sentenced to age a certain length of time, depending on the severity of the crime. You can be forever twenty-five if you're a good boy; step out of line, you could find yourself an immortal 50-year-old. The worst repeat offenders--the Renegades--are aged to the point of jabbering senility and put in an old folks' home on the outskirts of the commune, where they spend eternity playing Miss Havisham's tea-party in a decrepit, cobweb-strewn ball room. It's actually kind of a chilling idea, if you think about it.

Furthermore, the intense boredom of eternal life has created another caste among the Immortals, known as the Apathetics. These poor souls have lost all interest in life, and stand around in a trance-like state: zombies who do not eat brains, or move around, or do much of anything, really. (The growing number of these Apathetics is what caused Frayn to teach the meat-eating Brutals to cultivate grain, since without sufficient work force they couldn't grow enough to support themselves.) Finally, in a stable society in which there is no death, the need to procreate is obviously obsolete; as a result sexuality has atrophied to near non-existence, and no male Immortal has been able to achieve an erection in several hundred years. (Whether this explains the matriarchal nature of the Immortal society I'll let others hash out.)

Of course this means that Zed--a primitive who has no trouble at all getting and maintaining wood--is extremely interesting to the Immortals, particularly apparent co-leaders May (Sara Kestelman) and Consuella (Rampling). They immediately subject Zed to rigorous scientific study, projecting his violent memories on screen (for the unexpected titillation of the Immortal crowd) and showing him salvaged ancient porn in an attempt to see the spongy tissues in action again.

Charlotte Rampling presents her findings at the Worldwide Scrotum Symposium

Much of the movie has to do with Zed touring this Brave New World with his new friend, Friend (John Alderton), a Byronic/Mephistophelian Immortal who is so profoundly bored with eternal life that he's willing to encourage any disruption, unapproved throughts, or even outright sabotage, just to break the monotony. He's the opposite of Rampling's Consuella, who sees the "corrupting" influence Zed's presence is having on their society and wants him destroyed. But as it turns out Zed is not quite the mindless killer they all believe him to be, and has reasons for his actions that they couldn't guess, and will lead to a massive upheaval in the film's final reels.

All Sean's years as a street-mime in Glasgow finally pay off.

Many of the film's ideas have to do with sexuality, and how Zed reawakens the primitive desires for both sex and death in the sterile world of the Vortex. Standout scenes include the Porn Test--Zed watches unmoved as he's shown a film of a girl soaping her voluptuous breasts, and another of some heavy petting and kissing--then stares meaningfully at the antogonistic Consuella and arches an eyebrow, apparently raising his fleshy flag in salute at will! Later he awakens the violent tendencies in Consuella and her crew, and must flee like Frankenstein's monster to escape the torch-bearing mob. He hides in the Apathetics Storage Area, where a drop of his sweat causes one Apathetic girl to awake from her stupor. She touches him for more sweat, which she licks from her fingers and passes on to the other Apathetics via a kiss--women and men, who pass it on, regardless of sex--leading to an all-out orgy! That's some Naschy-level musk there, people!

There are a couple of scenes I found strangely chilling, as well. One scene involves the jovial and subversive Friend finally being called out for his thought crimes. He refuses to go to Second-Level with the rest, leading to an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style psychic assault that looks a bit silly, but nonetheless is disturbing. When he's pronounced Renegade and sent to the Eternal Tea Party, the reveal of his aging--on only half his face, for some reason--is kind of frightening, as is the scene when Zed is swamped by the Renegades who seek to leech the vitality from him. It's like Trash's nightmare from Return of the Living Dead, only without Linnea Quigley's breasts.

Not so apathetic now, are ya?

Ther *are* a lot of breasts on display, though, fear not. When the Immortals' bodies are damaged by physical violence or accident, they are "regrown" in the Vortex, in another scene reminiscent of Body Snatchers, with reconstituting naked men and women sprawled in transparent sacks around a glass-and-steel framework. (No small feat, as Boorman reveals on the commentary, "In 1973, when I made this film [in Dublin], it was very difficult to get Irish girls to expose their breasts..."). Rampling, Kestelman, and mystic Immortal Avalow (Sally Anne Newton) also get their kits off, revealing the director's penchant for skinny, small-breasted women that would continue at least as far as Excalibur. A late scene in which May and Avalow impart the sum total of human knowledge to Zed while he inseminates them is a psychedelic standout.

Visually, the movie is simply amazing, and it's hard to believe it cost as little as it did, even in 1974 dollars. (It was budgeted at one million dollars, $200K of which went to pay Connery's salary.) The acting is great--Rampling is stunning to look at as always, and the way she plays Consuella--cold and authoritarian at first, but later passionate and confused--is quite masterful. Alderton is a show-stealer as Friend, with just the right mix of boredom, wry humor, and slowly simmering rage. Sean Connery is...well, Sean Connery, but as usual this is an asset for him. The rest of the cast does well too--really not a bad performance in the bunch.

"Don't look now, Charlotte, but the wallpaper has turned to asses."

On his entertaining and informative DVD commentary, director Boorman admits that the film "was probably too ambitious for the amount of money we had," and that "You could say that there were maybe *too* many ideas in this picture..." That may well be true, but all Mad Movie fans should thank their lucky stars Boorman packed as many ideas in as he could--because a more enjoyable hour and forty minutes I have not spent in quite some time. 3+ Thumbs, easily. Watch it before the future is here!

Nota bene: In fact, you should watch it twice--once cold, and once to listen to Boorman's commentary, as I did. The anecdotes about Connery are worth the second viewing alone, but he also shares a lot of insight, both technical and thematic, that any fan will love to hear. (For instance--the first choice for the role of Zed was not Connery, but Boorman's Deliverance star Burt Reynolds! Imagine THAT!) Heck, even the collection of radio spots are worth a listen, as they're read by the legendary Rod Serling! You couldn't ask for more, really.

A Boatload More Images from Zardoz (1974):

This is the exact same spot Boorman used for the Lady of the Lake sequence in Excalibur.

Really. No shit.

Home Movie Night at Chez Connery

I envision a future of Princess Leia haircuts and Plentiful Pointless Drapery

Friend, upon learning it's tofu crisps for dinner AGAIN.

They told him there was haggis on the other side of the force field.

"Go ahead. Mention the mask. I fucking dare you."

Sean couldn't look more thrilled on his big day.

If my education had been like this, I'd have done more extra credit.

Connery displays his most prized possession: the Petrified Ballsack of Robert the Bruce

And they all died happily ever after!

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Amuck! (1972): or, Rosalba Rocks My World

Have I mentioned lately how much I'm in love with Rosalba Neri?

Well, I am. A LOT.

From groovy gialli to Mad Mad Mad Mad Science masterpieces to strangely uninvolving WiP-fare, you can always count on my girl Rosalba to class up the joint with her intense acting, amazing wardrobe, and general gob-smacking goregousity. Happily, all these qualities are showcased in Silvio Amadio's 1972 mystery/thriller Amuck! (aka Alla ricerca del piacere). With other highlights including (but not limited to) swingin' 70s sex parties, a menacing butler, Eurohunting duck-snuff and the fifth awarding of the rarefied "Retard Seduction" post label, this flick should have any fan of Neri's or Italian thrillers generally standing at full attention.

IYKWIM.

Rosalba Neri: Smokin' Hawt

We open with a pretty young blonde arriving at a residential island off the coast of Venice, dumped off the water taxi at the iron gates of a palatial, slightly gothic mansion. The girl is Greta Franklin (the mouth-wateringly beautiful Barbara Bouchet of Black Belly of the Tarantula, Don't Torture a Duckling, The French Sex Murders, and dozens of other movies now in my Netflix queue), and she is to be the live-in secretary for brooding novelist Richard Stuart, played by Farley Granger (Rope, Strangers on a Train). The writer's previous secretary, Sally (Patrizia Viotti) disappeared a few months previous under mysterious circumstances.

As usual in Italian thrillers of this particular vintage, very little is what it seems at the Villa Stuart, and the few things that are hold their own peculiarities. It turns out Greta is Sally's BFF (which in this case is Italian for "lesbian lover"), and has placed herself in Richard's employ to find out what happened to her vanished friend. Sally's last few letters, in which she detailed the author's drug-fueled swingers' parties and sexual power games, have led Greta to believe the girl may have met with foul play. (Sally writes eloquently about being "driven by another will...A willing slave in this world of perverse pleasures!" And what's the downside again?)

"I am pleased to inform you that this window is secure. Please to continue with the undressing."

Deep undercover, Greta proceeds to pump the Stuarts...for information! Which involves getting extremely cozy with the mistress of the house, Eleanora Stuart (Rosalba Neri, natch), who shares her husband's penchant for perverted sex and portentous pronouncements. Of course it's a dangerous game, and exactly how dangerous becomes clear early on when the naked Greta is surprised by a peeping Tom at her window, who turns out to be the slow-witted, giant fisherman Rocco (Petar Martinovitch, who also had a bit part with Rosalba in the excellent Lady Frankenstein).

To calm the girl's nerves Eleanora gives her a glass of drugged liquor. The potent potable does its work too well, rendering Greta so lethargic and compliant that Lady Stuart can't resist taking advantage. There follows an extended (extending?) lesbonic assault from Eleanora, which Greta in her drug-induced dream-state is either powerless or unwilling to repel.

Take a just-out-of-the-oven chicken pot pie, toss its innards into a white-hot coal-burning furnace, and then dump that furnace into the bowels of an active volcano, and you're still only just approaching the incredible HAWTNESS of this scene.

I'm pretty sure there are no nipples in this pic, but feel free to examine it closely and let me know.

Greta scarcely has time to examine her...shall we say "complicated" feelings about what happened, as the next evening she finds herself attending one of the swingers' parties Sally warned her about. Sipping another glass of drugged whiskey, Greta joins the other guests for a peep at the Stuarts' home movies, which turn out to be independently produced porn. The feature presentation stars Sally as Little Red Riding Hood, here lured off the straight-and-narrow by a pantsless Italian Big Bad. Whether from the drugs, the visual stimulation, or the blood-boiling memories of the previous evening, Greta allows herself to be seduced again, letting slip in the throes of passion that she knows the Stuarts' former secretary--a fact that leads to a wonderfully villainous raised eyebrow from Rosalba and the hatching of a new power play by Richard.

Finally starting on her non-sex-related job duties the next day, Greta starts transcribing chapters Richard's left for her on his huge DICtation machine. Stenography turns to HORROR, however, as she listens to her boss describe a situation much like the one her friend detailed in her letters, only with MURDER at the end. Is this a veiled confession, or is the oversexed writer just screwing with her mind (for a change)? Disturbed, Greta extracts a key from Richard's desk and goes snooping in the cellar, where she finds Sally's clothes stashed in a trunk. She goes to the Venetian police, but when they return to search the study they find no tapes, no manuscript, and no key to the basement. Lacking hard evidence, Greta must stay on and learn more about the twisted pleasures that brought her friend to ruin, and for which she herself feels a strange, irrepressible desire...

Stern Italian Butler knows what you did, and is very disappointed in you.

I don't want to give away too much of how the mystery pans out, but suffice that it's twisty and turny and perverse enough to satisfy a fan of Italian sex thrillers such as I'm. What I would like to celebrate, however, are some of the assorted wonderful bits of the movie that have rocketed it up to #2 on my list of All-Time Favorite Rosalba Neri movies:

Rosalba's Wardrobe

Remember what I said about how you can always count on Rosalba to class things up with, among other things, her groovy, easily-droppable wardrobe? Well, I wasn't just whistlin' Dixie, parishioners. Put on a drool cloth and take a look at some of the fashions Rosalba sports here:

Looking at her gives me a funny feeling--it's either love, or vertigo.

In Serious Leather

"Please cover yourself--you are insufficiently groovy."

I'd drink her under the bar(s).

Bonus Eurobabes

You'd think that a stunningly beautiful, dominating screen presence like Rosalba would be more than enough primo Euroflesh for one movie, and you'd be right...however, Amuck! goes that extra mile by giving us a pair of bonus blonde Eurobabes in Barbara Bouchet and Patrizia Viotti, both of whom would make excellent main courses despite their relegation to side dishes here.*

Bouchet: Beautimus

Work it, Patty

"Tee-hee! Being this HOT makes me giddy!"

*Okay, so Bouchet is technically the star of the movie. But watch it and tell me Rosalba doesn't OWN this flick.

Euro Duck Hunt

This may be the only movie of its genre I've ever seen that has as its heroine-in-peril centerpiece an extended duck hunting sequence, complete with actual duck hunt stock footage showing the unfortunate fowl going down like Spitfires in the straights of Midway!

"I regret nothing!"

I don't know if the director was an enthusiast, or if he thought Duck Snuff was the next big thing, but it's something you don't see in Italian Sex Thrillers every day--probably with good reason. However, both Bouchet and Rosalba look awesome in their aristocratic hunting gear, it has to be said.

Camo would be a crime

Be vewwy quiet

When You Seduce the Tard, You Reap the Whirlwind

When I was speeding through the excellent Mill Creek 50 Chilling Classics set, I was amazed as many were to find a single disc on which three movies contained instances of what can tactfully be called Retard Seduction--hot women making sexual advances on slow-witted characters either out of cruelty, a sick sense of humor, or in the case of Lady Frankenstein, for SCIENCE!

Here Rosalba becomes my first double-inductee in the Retard Seduction club, as she uses her CONSIDERABLE feminine wiles to enlist Rocco's help in her and Richard's nefarious schemes.

As if THAT were necessary

Of course in almost every case the seduction of a 'tard carries grave karmic consequences, and it will surprise no one that this movie is no exception--however, a nice little Aesop's Fables nod in the climactic struggle made me smile, and say what you will about Rosalba, but no matter how big you are, disobey her orders and she will fucking cut you!

In closing, I LOVE THIS MOVIE. Rosalba's acting is great as always, as she plays the perverse, unhinged lady of the house to perfection. Farley's Richard Stuart is suitably deadpan and creepy, and Bouchet is so gorgeous to look at, any acting shortcomings went flying right over my head. There is a bit of silliness halfway through where out of nowhere Rosalba suddenly has an ESP fit, which comes to exactly nothing, and a bit of cruelty to eels that will disturb some PETA inclined folks (to say nothing of the duck snuff), but the good here far outweighs the bad imo.

"Dust Bowl? WTF?"

I can't really tell you why the American distributors retitled this one Amuck!--while it *is* an awesome word, and I'm always in support of exclamation points in movie names, no one really goes AMUCK in the flick, at least in the way I understand the term. (The literal translation of the Italian title, "In Search of Pleasure," is much closer to what the flick is about.) Still, it's sexy, twisted, and pretty to look at (even though my print was a damaged pan & scan version--we need a restored widescreen DVD, stat!), and I'm pleased to give it a 3 thumb rating. Highly recommended to all Mad Movie fans. See it!

"OBEY!"

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Psychomania (1973): or, Do You Wanna Be in My Gang, My Gang, My Gang?

I admit I did a double-take upon pulling up the imdb entry for today's movie, Don Sharp's 1973 British living-dead bikers flick Psychomania (aka The Death Wheelers). It was that "1973" that pulled me up short--by its style, tone, and decor, I'd have guessed the movie was at least 4-5 years older than that, certainly older than George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) or the Hell's Angels incident at Altamont, factors which it seems to me would have had to inform any movie made after them that dealt with a) rampaging motorcycle gangs or b) zombies. Incredibly, Psychomania wraps both these things into one movie--it's about a living dead motorcycle gang, for Pete's sake!--and yet seems strangely uninformed by either of those seminal events.

As a result, for me the movie has a sort of antiquated, frankly naive charm about the way it presents its ne'er-do-well gang of rebellious youth, a motorcycle gang more in the mold of 1953's The Wild One than more modern, super-violent movie bikers (though to be fair, Brando's crew would still kick these guys' asses) , and the rather blase, un-zombified, un-gut-munching take on what it means to come back from the dead. Unfortunately, as it is in life so it is in movies: charm will only take you so far, and eventually you have to make with the goods.

"I iz a Zombi! Vroom-vroom! Raaaarrr!"

The movie starts out very promisingly, with a series of credits-sequence shots showing a group of leather-clad bikers around a fog-shrouded circle of stones. We learn later that this Stonehenge-like ancient monument is known as "The Seven Witches," and legend has it that these are the remains of a coven who broke their deal with the Devil and were punished by being turned to stone. The moody cinematography and slow-motion riders deliciously called to my mind the Blind Dead's famous riding technique from Armando D'Ossorio's famous series, but with iron horses instead of fleshy ones.

We soon learn that our bikers are part of the tantalizingly named gang "The Living Dead," a group of mod-era miscreants who stalk the motorways with their skeletal-font jackets and wonderfully designed skull-face helmet visors, searching for any excuse to run squares off the road and cause whatever havoc they may. The group is led by stoical thrill-seeker Tom Latham (Nicky Henson), whose Mother (Beryl Reid) is a rich widow and a dabbler in the occult. Tom is a spoiled, amoral brat, whose lack of compassion for anybody or anything distresses his good-girl biker mama Abby (Mary Larkin). After Tom interrupts a graveside make-out session with Abby in order to capture a Satanic toad, his flustered girlfriend admits, "Sometimes you scare me, Tom!" The stone-faced Wild One spits back, "It's not me that scares you--it's the world!" No, I'm pretty sure it's just you, frog-licker.

Having got all the kicks he can from a life of privelige and random acts of vehicular homicide, Tom is now bored to the point of suicidal thoughts. Abby is afraid to "cross over" with him, despite his seemingly nonsensical assurances that "We'll come back!" Turns out Tom has an inside line on immortality thanks to his parents' occult interests--his father apparently had discovered the secret to returning from the dead, though the old man bungled his sole attempt years ago, thus leaving Tom without a strong male role model and precipitating him into a life of bike-riding and peace-breaching. Anxious to shuffle off his mortal coil to ride for kicks through the Undiscovered Country, Tom grills his indulgent Mum for Dad's secret.

Some families tiptoe around the Elephant in the room. Tom's prefer to lounge around the Decapitated Spaceman.

After discussing the matter with her suspiciously occult-savvy manservant Shadwell (George Sanders in his last film role), Mum gives Tom a key to the room where Daddy died, which has been shut for 18 years. Once inside Tom finds himself face-to-face with a full-length mirror that shows him visions from the past, as he sees his mother, dressed as if she's on her way down the shops for the day, standing in the center of the Seven Witches and summoning The Devil, then cheerfully signing away her first-born son (who is nearby in a cute little bassinet) to his Diabolic Majesty in exchange for...something. That part isn't clear. At any rate, horror of it all causes Tom to faint dead away, but when he awakens and hears Mum and Shadwell talking about the secret of living death, he quickly jumps up and heads out to have a go.

The secret, as it turns out, is elegant in its simplicity: in order to return from the dead, you simply have to BELIEVE that you will--but really, really believe, without a shred of doubt in your skull. (Apparently Tom's dad hesitated at the moment of death and so was lost.) With the courage that can only be gained through intense boredom and pants-stretching arrogance, Tom summons his gang for another rampage, this one through a shopping center downtown, where the Living Dead crash through vendor stalls, knock over bread sellers, joust with stolen umbrellas, and generally run the gauntlet of street-chase slapstick gags until the cops show up--check that, the COP (the constabulary could apparently only spare the one)--to chase them off. The Living Dead lead the copper on a lively hunt until, on a long bridge crossing the Thames, Tom screams toodle-oo at life and crashes over the side to his watery grave.

Tappin' that ass like aquarium glass

Sobered by the death of her morose sweety, Abby goes to the Latham estate to ask Mum if the Living Dead can bury Tom "in our own way." Surprisingly--and hilariously--the gang's "way" is to bury their leader on his bike in a grave that's clearly a few inches too shallow. While Tom's corpse sits bolt upright and holds onto the handlebars like...well, Grim Death (what did they do, nail him there?), the rest of the gang don Hippie Clothes and throw flower wreaths into his grave, while one of them sings a plaintive and earnest folk song that producers were doubtless hoping would be a hit single, "Riding Free." With lyrics like "They tried to clip his wings just like a fly...so instead of standing still, he chose to DIE!", I don't see why it didn't burn up the charts!

So why would the Living Dead fish Tom's bike out of the river, presumably restoring it to working order and filling the tank with gas, then just bury the mean machine with him? If you guessed "So that he can come bursting out of the grave with tires squealing to wreak his vengeance upon the living!" then give yourself a biscuit! Because of course that's exactly what happens. Trailing grave dust, ZomTom starts living his death to the fullest by running down a pedestrian, killing a gas station attendant, and then staging a massacre at his local pub--but not before telephoning his Mum and Shadwell with the good news. Neither seems at all surprised that he's made it back, and are quite excited to hear he's coming home dead--it's like The Monkey's Paw in Bizarro World.

"How do you birds feel about...necrophilia?"

Once ZomTom reveals himself to the rest of the gang and further informs them that once you're dead you can't be hurt, the bikers can't fling themselves off bridges fast enough--all except Abby, who is still reluctant to cross over, despite her boyfriend's proof of concept. The scenes with the other bikers doing themsevles in for immortality are some of the more entertaining ones in the movie, as one leaps into the river bearing Jacob Marley-style chains, another drops off an overpass into oncoming traffic, and another decides to go out from 15,000 feet via a purposefully thwarted skydiving attempt! I guess it's a good thing coming back from the dead reconstitutes your bones from powder and slaps your brain back inside your skull for you, what?

So what do you do once you're immortal and invulnerable? Well...pretty much the same things you did before, only MUCH HARDER. The gang goes on another shopping centre rampage, this time killing pedestrians and destroying an entire Sainsbury's Grocery Store (in the most vicious scene, red-jacketed femme fatale Jane [Ann Michelle] lines up and revs through a baby stroller, to the mellifluous wails of the occupant). Later Tom lays out his plans to his Mother and Shadwell--he plans to kill judges, teachers, policemen, anyone in authority, forever and ever. Shadwell gasps incredulously, "You mean the entire Establishment?!" Sure, if that's all you got.

It's the "Don't Go Out Like a Punk" death montage!

He's no dummy

Unchain My Heart
"I regret nothing!"
World's Cutest Speed Bump

Like I say, Psychomania is not without its charms. For one thing, it's a very groovy movie, with all the mini-miniskirts, mod fashions and psychedelic furniture you could want. (The opening shots of Mrs. Latham's parlor are particularly envy-inducing for anyone with a taste for the groovy.) The version of the motorcycle gang mystique here is, as I say, kind of old fashioned even for 1973, but kind of charming for all that.

The acting is fairly good--standouts are Larkin as the confused Abby, Henson as bored and amoral Tom (I was detecting notes of Malcom McDowell in A Clockwork Orange), and Michelle as the wildcat Jane. Pug-nosed, baby-faced Denis Gilmore is the best of the bikers as the psychopathically vicious Hatchet. And of course George Sanders is excellent as Shadwell, who clearly is more than just the butler at the Latham estate.

"Whattaya fancy tonight, Viv?"

The main problem I have with Psychomania is that, given its subject matter and ESPECIALLY given its production year, I'd have expected a little more in terms of horror-y goodness, and it's just not there. Most scenes take place in broad daylight--even the graveyard resurrection--and would have benefited from a darker, more gothic atmosphere. The zombie bikers suffer absolutely no ill-effects from dying--no rotting, no loss of memory or personality, not even a lowering in body temperature. (In fact, the only side-effect seems to be increased arrogance and insufferableness.) The murders, what few of them there are, are mostly bloodless, and there's no sex or nudity to speak of, just TV-style British innuendo. Worst, a good portion of the movie is made up of long riding/chase scenes, which are exciting and well staged the first time you see them, but quickly wear out their welcome.

I began to wonder at one point whether the flick might have been intended as a kind of campy farce--the point exactly was when the last 4 bikers get put in glass sideways-oriented morgue drawers that look more like refrigerator salad crispers and all wake up at the same time to surprise the coroner. But if there were supposed to be laughs here, they're underplayed as much as the horror and violence elements, which results in a rather boring last half-hour. The ending, when one might have expected a little dust-crumbling or flesh-rotting for one's money, is a severe anticlimax.

Femme Fatality

Psychomania is fun in its way, but really could have been a lot more. It's worth seeing at least once, but no more than that. 1.75 thumbs, or 2 if you really like the mod era.

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Moon Zero Two (1969): A Visual Review

The plot of Hammer Studios' 1969 sci-fi flick Moon Zero Two revolves around Captain William H. Kemp (James Olson), intrepid space explorer famous for being the first man on Mars. Disgusted with the abandonment by Earth government of further exploration in favor of chasing the almighty dollar in the form of moon mining and passenger flights, Kemp has quit the military and now makes his living scavenging space trash with his partner, Russian-born Kaminsky (Ori Levy). When his lover and head of Lunar Bureau of Investigation Elizabeth Murphy (Adrienne Corri) threatens to ground him for his own good if he can't come up with money to upgrade his rickety old space ship, Kemp is pulled into the machinations of corporate overlord J. J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchell), who wants to crash-land an asteroid containing 6000 tons of sapphire on the lunar surface without letting the government know, so he can claim it and get even richer. Along the way he meets Earthbabe Clementine Taplin (Catherine Schell), whose brother has mysteriously stopped radioing from his mining claim on the far side of the moon.

It's a decent plot as far as moon-based action flicks go, but the real joy of the movie is in what I like to call its "Visions of Future Past"--that is, the fully-realized world of the future according to what folks thought it might be like circa 1969. With groovy futuristic fashions, endearingly clunky miniature work, a riotously intrusive score, and a surprisingly prescient view of the commercialization of space exploration, Moon Zero Two works for me less as a mystery/thriller than as a beautiful, comic-booky document of the time, through the lens of a possible future.

Come with me as I show you the wonders the future has in store for us:

We start with a Schoolhouse Rock-style cartoon under the main credits (with an AMAZING groovy theme song--see the end of the review to hear it in all its glory), in which a US astronaut and Russian cosmonaut battle over who'll have possession of the Moon:

Tim Conway interviews Kruschev...IN SPACE!

Soon, however, the political concerns of the spacemen are shoved aside as commercial interests take over, rendering the whole US/USSR space race a moot point. And presumably killing Communism as well, since after this the former hostilities are only hinted at in the broadest way possible.

Good service, but strangely lacking in atmosphere

These credits would seem to presage a Peter Sellers-style zany comedy, but after this it pretty much plays straight with the plot detailed at the top of the review. So instead of recapping that, I prefer to focus on the things that really brought me joy.

1. Future Tech

I always have fun with Future/Past movies, more for what they get wrong than what they get right. For instance, passenger travel to the moon is administered by "Pan-Moon" spaceways, an obvious evolution of Pan-Am airlines. After all, in 1969, you couldn't envision a future where they wouldn't be the preeminent travel brokers, right?

Apparently you also couldn't envision a future without paper-cup coffee machines:

"Not checking out his butt, not checking out his butt, not checking out..."

Nor one without phones like this:

Kaminsky once again grabs the Hitachi instead.

Best of all, Kemp has the latest in remote control technology for use during his scavenging spacewalks: a wrist-based Wii-mote!

It gets AM *and* FM!

Even amusements of the future get an update:

I'd buy it.

2. Future Fashion

By far the best thing about the movie is its vision of hair, clothes, and accessory fashions in the future. In 1969 they were dreaming of a far groovier future than we could ever have hoped to bring into being:

Maybe she's born with it

"The Princess is in another castle!"

Future Goth

Sexy Curls

Exciting Accessories

And this to say nothing of baddie J. J. Hubbard, who can really rock the futuristic monocle:

Hair Sponsored by Fruit Stripe Gum

The Future's So Bright, I've Got to Wear Shade

3. Special Effects

I loved the design of the space-suits here--very comic-book influenced and coloroful.


These play well in a scene where Kemp and Clem find her brother at his mine, the victim of foul play:

Cover of Weird Science

A gunfight ensues with the presumed murderers. Moon Zero Two envisions a future where gunpowder-based firearms are still de rigeur. While this robs us of the laser battles to which we've become accustomed, I really enjoyed the "depressurization squibs" and thought them quite effective.

"Top o' the Moon, Ma!"

Other special effects highlights:

Filmed on the same sound stage as the NASA Moon Landing

KILLDOZER 2: IN SPAAAACE!

Fraggle Rock: IN SPAAAACE!

4. Future Entertainment

Besides a rousing game of Moonopoly, the residents of Moon Base have for entertainment one of the greatest floor shows in the galaxy:

Your guess is as good as mine

Don't ask me

Indians?

Moon Zero Two was one of many, many movies lampooned on MST3K, and it's easy to see why it was attractive fodder for the show. It's less concerned with action and suspense than with explaining to the viewer how its self-contained world functions, and the political/commercial concerns that led to its state. While those seem prescient now, they're not terribly exciting. There's lots and lots of slow-motion space-walking, and even a slow-mo barroom brawl. (Threatened by punks, Kemp pulls a fire-alarm lever on the wall to disable artificial gravity! Why they'd need such a lever, I have no clue.) The acting is nothing great, though Adrienne Cory is good as Kemp's lover and superior. Even the Faustian bargain offered by J. J. to Kemp near the end lacks any real punch, as there's never any doubt how things will turn out.

The Duke of DVD makes a cameo

However, despite all its shortcomings, I found myself riveted just at the groovy beauty of it all. A neat cinematic time capsule of what people's dreams of the future once were, I left it with a smile on my face and a song stuck in my head. The fashions, the effects, the plastic furniture--it made me happy, and that's worth 2 Thumbs.

Bonus: the Uber-Groovy Theme Song! Listen and wonder!


Now see if you can get THAT tune out of your brain!

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