Phantom of the Opera (Robert Markowitz, 1983, TV movie)

Who  would've guessed that the opera ghost can't carry a tune?

The setting is Budapest, circa early 20th Century - we are not told when, but Bartok is considered a young man of promise.  Elena Korvin sings Marguerite in Faust.  She hasn't the disciplined talent or voice for it but is encouraged by her doting husband Sándor, who is the opera's conductor.  Also keeping her in employment is the opera house's owner, the lecherous Baron Hunyadi.  After a disastrous opening night, Elena is further hit by a scathing review paid for by the Baron as retribution for spurning his advances.  She throws herself from a bridge.  Sándor's revenge on the critic leads to a fight and ubiquitous accident with acid that leads to his disfigurement.

Four years later, aspiring singer Maria Gianelli becomes an understudy in a new production of Faust.  Hunyadi still owns the theater.  Korvin survives in the catacombs beneath, having been rescued by the homeless who live there.  When Korvin sees Maria, and hears her natural talent, he believes her to be his Elena  returned.  Both roles, Maria and Elena, are played by Jane Seymour.  Korvin determines to groom Maria to his late wife's vindicator.

This Phantom was produced by the Halmis, both Roberts Sr. and Jr.  They're a prolific pair, having put out a handful of worthy productions and a library's worth of mediocre ones.  Phantom is one of the latter.  A few of the notes are there but the script and direction fail to find a melody.
Phantom stars Maximilian Schell as Korvin, Seymour, Michael York as an English director overseeing the new production, and Jeremy Kemp as Hunyadi.  They're a good cast doing their earnest best, but the script by Sherman Yellen doesn't  support them.  Their characters are inconsistent, lurching from scene to scene as the plot requires rather than developing naturally.  Korvin is meant to be a  musical genius but cannot tell that his wife is a terrible singer.  When at first he tutors Maria, he is singularly disinterested in her as a person...later he will kidnap her in a demented effort to protect her from the world, yet at no time does he ever evince an inkling of genuine affection for her.  Meanshile, Hunyadi's villainy remains restrained until the story needs it as a plot device. York  as the love interest is all over the map, one minute throwing an conceited fit and the next acting the gentleman and detective to boot.  Presented thus, no chemistry ever develops between any of the characters...and what is the Phantom of the Opera without passion?

The editing is sometimes unhelpful as well, such as the backstory: a stranger helps the ailing Korvin escape to the underground, and I was left wondering who this samaritan was and what his motivation might be  until well late n the story.  The director neglects to let us in on it.  I thought he'd been forgotten.  We never really do learn except by inference near the finale.  The Phantom has made a lair for himself but allowed the homeless to remain with him.  What are thy to each other?  No one involved has any interest in exploring this.  Is he a kind of leader to them, or an eccentric that they tolerate?

Filmed on location in Budapest, photographer Larry Pizer makes the whole affair very...brown.  Perhaps the idea was to emulate a sepia tone to suggest  antiquity, but no amount of lit candles lend warmth or make for a  golden aura, it's just...brown.  After a  while you long for a splash of color.  You want a splash of emotion.

As a phan, I hate to dislike any telling of the Phantom of the Opera.  Alas, of all the versions of this story I've seen this is the least inspired, without flair or feeling or sense.  There are no scares to be had, nor romance, both vital to any good Phantom.  Even the Phantom's masks look defeated.

This is currently available on YouTube.

Ye ban ge sheng (Weibang Ma-Xu, 1937)

aka Song at Midnight

Every midnight Xia listens for the song of her lover, dead ten years now. He never fails her.

Song Dan-Ping had been a revolutionary forced to flee his home and take up a new life and new identity.  Changing his name, he became an actor.  Success and fame followed, and soon he had met an admirer in Xia.  The two fell in love.  Unhappily for them Xia's father, a general, had already arranged for her to marry another, a financially advantageous alliance.  Actors being amongst the lowest class, Song never had a chance.

The fiance Tang Jun was a cruel and proprietous man.  When Xia defied him for Song, Jung flung acid into Song's face.  Disfigured and ashamed, Song had word sent to his beloved that he had died - hoping to spare her.  Instead, it sent her mad. 

We learn all this in flashback halfway through the movie, related by the very-much-alive Song who serenades Xia every night.  It's not a spoiler, for a ghost he's very physical.  Ye ban ge sheng was inspred by the classic Universal horror films of the Thirties, and by the silent classic The Phantom of the Opera.  Director Weibang Ma-Xu imbues his frames with gloom, dread, and loneliness, not a single moment taking place in daylight hours.  Rain falls, fog drifts, cobwebs waft.  Men and Women in Western dress emerge from Western automobiles to seek shelter in a ton closed down for the night.  it's a town where the people lurk in superstitious fear of the ghostly singing that comes every night.  They all know the legend of the doomed love.   The performances are often exaggerated, adding to a creeping sense of unreality and theatricality.

Into this comes a theater troupe looking for a venue.  Its best to warn that the most easily available copy (it's on YouTube) is difficult to follow in places.  For one thing it suffers poorly translated English subtitles.  They make for an amusing read, but are nearly incomprehensible - I'd advise you to skim them for a general suggestion of meaning rather than pay strict attention to them.  Also problematic are the visuals, lovely as they are.  It's a dark film by design with an alluring lighting scheme, and unfortunately age has only deepened it's shadows to overwhelm much of the scenery.  If Ybgs could have a digital restoration, it would be a textural wonder.  Are you listening, Criterion?  Ye ban ge sheng is reputed to be China's first horror film surely deserving of inclusion in the Criterion Collection right there.

The troupe makes itself at home in a lodging house and begins to renovate the disused theater, not knowing that it it now the home of the "phantom" Song.  Song sees in leading man Xiao Ou a chance to reach out to Xia and earns his favor by becoming a secret vocal tutor.  In exchange Ou approaches Xia, who mistakes him for her lost love become flesh again.  Unbeknownst to any of them, tragedy looms again as Ou's own girlfriend catches the eyes of the unrepentant Tang Jun, who - being upper class - got away with the assault on Song Dan-Ping ten years earlier. 

Ye  ban ge sheng is not an apolitical film, not are it's politics easy.  It's backdrop and heart lay with an aversion to the warlord's feudalism that still ruled much of China  in the midst of civil war.  Complicating matters, conflict with Japan had finally become all-out war in 1937.  Both sides were calling for solidarity against the Japanese, a spirit that isn't reflected in Ybgs as Song, ever the activist at heart, plies Ou with a revolutionist opera and encourages his new friend to keep the cause alive.  Dan-Ping's cause is the director's own and he leaves no doubt who the film's true villains are.

Ye ban ge sheng's place in the pantheon of Phantom of the Opera movies is an interesting one and deserves to be better known.  What it retains of Gaston Leroux is the shamelessly romantic side of pulp - it's a movie that wears it's heart on its sleeve politically and humanely.  While this Phantom, like Leroux's, is a shadowy teacher or music and aspiring composer, he is not psychotic.  He is a wholly innocent figure of heartbroken love, as later Phantoms will be (see some of the TV adaptations of the 90s), playing to audience sympathy.   To that end, he is also a man of attractive looks until assaulted with acid, a plot twist that originated here and transplanted whole into the next adaptation, Universal's Phantom of the Opera (1943), a prestige production directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Claude Rains as Eriq the Phantom.  Even people with only a passing knowledge of the Phantom of the Opera think of his as a character disfigured by acid...you can thank Ye ban ge sheng for that.  Ybgs also deviates from the Leroux in its finale, though perversely echoing Lon Chaney's 1925 classic with an exciting chase sequence involving the opera  ghost and an enraged public. 

In 1941, director Weibang Ma-Xu made a sequel, Ye ban ge sheng xu ji (literally 'Song at Midnight - the sequel').  Ye ban ge sheng has been remade twice, once as a two-part film in 1962 (aka The Mid-Nightmare) and again in 1995.  The latter was directed by Ronnie Yu and starred Leslie Cheung.  As yet I have  not seen any of these.

This was my second time seeing the movie, and I have to say I'd love to own a restored  copy with accurate subtitles.  It's grown on me considerably, having thought it soulful but confusing the first time several years ago.  "We didn't be baffled  forever."

O.C. and Stiggs (Robert Altman, 1985)

Let it be stipulated right up front that the Schwab family are monsters.  According to a number of sources I've read, they are meant to represent the middle class, but if that's so then they belong to the upper reaches of middle-classdom.  They are conspicuously wealthy and conspicuously unworthy.  The Schwab patriarch is a bigoted boor, his wife an oblivious alcoholic who thinks she's fooling everyone, the daughter an obnoxious brat and the son was born to sport taped-up hornrims and underwear pulled over his head by the school bullies.  These people stepped out of a cartoon.  Not a parody, a cartoon.  I stress that because the film and its characters are an adaptation of a series of stories published by National Lampoon.  We expect satire, but Robert Altman takes the clan a few steps further.

That's an awkward choice, because from all accounts he has played down the antics of the films teenage protagonists Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie and Mark Stiggs.  The two are meant to be taken as a couple of laid-back smartasses expressing their contempt for suburbia, for everything bourgeois, and for their peers.  We are supposed to snicker at their war waged on everyone in sight.  They're smarter than Beavis and Butthead and less manic than Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo.  Unfortunately, their contempt is not based on moral outrage, like Hunter S. Thompson's, it is because they are a couple of sociopaths.  A typical day for them is to buy a Studebaker (so they can feign being too poor to have insurance),  turn it into a monster truck, and crash into other people's cars.  For them, an amusing wedding gift is a loaded uzi.   Their dripping sarcasm spares few: Wino Bob,  because he amuses them; a girl that O.C. is attracted to (he's  quick to drop her for "some sluts" when she displays some humanity and taste);  Dennis Hooper, a brain-fried Vietnam vet, because he can get them armaments; King Sunny Ade, because Stiggs thinks being a fan makes a political statement; and Schwab's neighbor, a self-made millionaire.  The guy got rich selling tacky clothing to plus-sized women..."hogs", in his parlance.

So I have to ask, as crass as the Schwabs are, how can they be morally offensive to the titular antiheroes who value nothing?  We hate them, Altman hates them, but why do O.C. and Stiggs hate them?   Altman goes after familiar targets as easy as they are deserving, but he asks us to accept as surrogates a pair of champions who are every bit as loathsome.  Schwab is confronted with poverty when his house is used as a "charity" front, but our heroes have no genuine concern for the homeless folk - they too are fodders for a joke, for which O.C & S hope to make a buck themselves.   O.C. is no Hawkeye, and Stiggs no Trapper John.  Their misanthropy has no fire in it.

It helps that it's Altman.  His style is unmistakable, and he fills the movie with his usual impeccable cast (including Paul Dooley, Jane Curtin, Melvin Van Peebles, Martin Mull, Ray Walston, Cynthia Nixon, Jon Cryer, Tina Louise and Bob Euker),  his usual quirks, his visual and aural layering,  and enough quiet touches that I almost forgot what scumbags I was being asked to sympathize with.  Still, the humor never quite finds its groove nor do the  nominal heroes ever earn their  rewards.

I have not read the original stories from National Lampoon, nor do I desire to.  It's enough to have read that Altman has excised most of their destructive swath and taken their edge off.  It's impossible to guess if that was a good move....O.C. & Stiggs are too assholish for the film to be amiable, but it also fails as the black comedy it wants to be because Alltman has defanged it.  Had he not done so it could have been a success, or maybe an Ishtar-caliber bomb.  Instead it's simply forgotten.

UFO - The Long Sleep (final episode)

The waters are awfully icy this morning. Col. Lake informs Straker that a ten-year-old case has just been reopened and asks if he would like to look into it personally. 'Asks' night not be the right word, more like 'taunts'...and then we learn why. The case involved a woman who had been hit by a car and sent into a coma. The man that hit her was Straker, and the woman has just woken up. The way Lake lets her boss know borders on cruelty. Straker has such a look of guilt on his face that he can't object.

Under the care of Dr. Jackson, Catherine Frazer rebuilds her memories of the accident and the circumstances that led to it. As a young woman she had just run away from her parents and spent the day with another youth she had just met, Tim Redman. Tim also was an escapee with nowhere to go, he running from academia. Together they wasted a day in an abandoned farmhouse. At night, Tim introduced her to drugs. While they were high, they encountered by chance a couple of aliens planting a device in the barn. What fun!

Imagine the poor aliens' bewilderment at these two crazed humans who steal the key to the device to play tag with, lead them on a merry chase to the roof, and then one of these mad terrestrials leaps off the roof to his own death. Imagine poor Tim, who thought he could fly.

Now imagine poor Catherine. She awakes the next day to see Tim's body dragged away by the aliens and witnesses the UFO fly away. She hitches a ride to return to the city only to have to flee the driver who tries to molest her. She runs right into the path of one Ed Straker.

It's Ed that Jackson calls in to help revive her memories (that's right, Jackson, the girl's state is fragile so call in Mr. Tact). She has no family now, her parents died waiting for her to recover.

Someone else is waiting. Tim was revived by the aliens ten years ago, programmed, and stationed as a sentinel to watch over Catherine. As long as it may take, they want that key.

Something about Cathy's tale has Ed spooked. In 1974, three days prior to colliding with Cathy, a UFO was spotted over Turkey. A few hours after that Turkey was rocked by an earthquake that killed 80,000 and leveled a city. (note - that places this episode as taking place in 1984, so it has now been four years since our introductory episode 'Identified'). Somehow Straker makes the leap: the UFOs destroyed the Turkish city, therefore they must have been about to do the same to rural England. (Really? Not, say, London?) Yes, it must have been a bomb! No, not the plan, I mean literally a bomb - and it's still there!

Indeed it is. A bomb, barely covered by loose soil hastily tossed ten years ago, in a farmhouse no one has set foot in for ten years, not even local kids looking for diversions. Yep. Not only that, the key is still on the houseboat it landed in, the boat that still sits on the same patch of river under the bridge Catherine threw it from. The chase is on because now Tim knows, and so does Straker. they both obtained the final lost memory with the use of an alien serum that sped up Catherine's heart rate as a side effect. Tim used it on her and carelessly left it behind. To stop him it must be used on her again. For once, Straker is unable to make the call that endangers a life, and the morally inscrutable Jackson is reluctant as well. It's Foster who insists. Turkey, 80,000 people dead...Straker put the fear into him. Ed, though...you'll remember the last time someone he was responsible for was in a hospital waiting for him to make a choice. Ed has come to care about Catherine.

We see Ed in the waiting room. it's a nicely understated callback to 'A Matter of Priorities' without exposition or otherwise being obvious. I like the direction of this episode very much, the work of Jeremy Summers who also directed The Psychobombs. The flashbacks scenes are in sepia, until that gives way directly to shifting bright color filters for the pharmaceutical high. It's an effective transition. The script is by the same David Tomblin who gave us The Cat With Ten Lives, Reflections in the Water, and three episodes of The Prisoner. Just what the aliens get from killing by the tens of thousands is unclear, but it doesn't exactly hurt their aims either. One might speculate that it throws nations into chaos as cover for the aliens to do their work. Real-world answer is likely the same fuzzy spec script communication that resulted in 'Destruction': they're aliens so they must want to kill us all (and who said anything about body harvesting?) You might wonder why the aliens don't simply send another key on the next UFO headed our way, as in 1974 SHADO was probably not up and running yet, but it may be a matter of resources - notice they left a human drone behind to deal with it instead of their own personnel. That's a minor matter. What counts is that this is the rare episode that lets us have a little backstory for our civilian characters, not much but enough to invest in them, get to like and root for them.

Alas, this is UFO so things come to a sad end. Tim accomplishes his task and essentially falls over dead. SHADO techs fail to disarm the bomb, so they employ a miniature rocket to send it into space. Returning to the hospital, Ed finds that Catherine died as Tim did: their life force spent. Catherine aged rapidly. Jackson doesn't have any answers but guesses that the aliens brought Tim back to life by stealing some of her life essence.

Tim and Catherine met, perhaps fell in love, and spent one glorious day together. They spent ten more years apart but locked together, and died still tied one to the other.

Lake's anger at Straker has vanished, replaced by empathy for his pain and for Catherine. Ed goes home alone.

10 'Century 21' logos. Even those thrilled me as a child, part of the ritual of watching every Sunday around noon like seeing the old UA symbol appearing before Bond flicks when they aired on the ABC Sunday Night Movie.

And so UFO comes to a close. Plans were shaping for a second season in which SHADO would expand their forces, the aliens would step up their fight, and much of the action would take place on and around the Moon. Unfortunately the show was dropped by ITC. Not ready to give up entirely, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson took what they had and created Space: 1999.

UFO - Timelash

The morning after leaving to pick up Col. Lake at the airport, Commander Straker suddenly appears at SHADO HQ disheveled and apparently stark raving mad and taking it out on the machinery. Taking the show out to the Harlington/Straker sets, he leaves in his wake a hefty damages bill and questions: how did he get back into the building, why is he holding dangerous drugs to increase metabolism, why is Lake unconscious on the roof, and why is one of the lesser technicians dead in a go-cart, riddled with bullets?


Lake isn't much help when she comes to. She's diagnosed as having sustained a blow to the back of the neck that has caused a two-hour amnesic gap. I don't know what's more impressive, knowing to tap a neck to produce a two-hour amnesia (top that, Spock) or diagnosing that it's been done.


The answers will have to come from Straker, who also inhabits a recovery bed. Not coming around fast enough for Henderson who declares that a SHADO without Straker is a dire emergency and promptly orders Dr. Jackson to administer a drug that might kill Straker instead of hastening his recovery. Makes sense. You wouldn't want to just give the man a day or so to get his wits back. Might be a rough job of it, from his ravings. "They murdered time!"


Here begins the flashback. Returning from the airport the night before, Straker and Lake are first tracked by a UFO, then attacked as they near HQ. We know something happens as the screen image turns negative for a moment, but just what it is will take unraveling. I've seen the episode some four or five times over my life, and I'm still trying to work it out. Hurrying on to the studio lot, night suddenly turns to day and time has stood still - people frozen mid-stride, birds aflight, tossed objects that remain in the air. Straker grabs a piece of wood and strikes at a stool doing bullet-time and can't make it move, failing to realize that he should have been unable to pick up the wood...or open doors for that matter. Apparently only objects that were under the influence of kinetic energy are paralyzed while those at rest can still be manipulated. Probably a neat conundrum in there somewhere, make for a cool sci-fi novel. There's no time to explore it here, but we do pause for some brief exposition that clears up nothing.


Let me see if I have this close to right...at first it appears that SHADO has been caught in a bubble of frozen time. We have to guess why Straker and lake are immune, perhaps because they were caught at the edge of the affect area. Their watches no longer work. Straker has a better theory: the aliens have projected in which they themselves move at a highly accelerated rate, making everything around them appear to stand still. This explains how they could get past moonbase, an incoming UFO is travelling in such a bubble, and because its path brings it right to HQ the forward edge is now affecting Harlington/Straker studios. SHADO is shielded by heavy lead within its walls, so another field generator has been placed inside HQ, thus necessitating a traitor to plant the device. They wouldn't have to do that to blow the place sky-high, so the idea must be to take it over entirely. An ambitious scheme on all fronts!

Wait, that doesn't sound right either...if the wave is hitting the studio, then everything there should speed up too. My brain hurts, it'll have to come out.


Frozen time, sped-up movement...either way it presents us some problems that haven't been worked out. For instance, if the world is still moving at normal speed then things like elevators, guns, and electronic security panels should not be moving at his speed. Nor go-carts. Nor should the laws of physics bend to his will - gravity and others. So, we have to wonder. Like Straker, we're guessing. Best leave it at that.


Like I said, not a lot of time (heh!) to discuss it because - let's all shout it angrily together - "TRAITOR!!!" One of our lesser techs, Turner, is an agent for the aliens and it didn't take mind control to turn him. Looks like Straker's not a hit with everyone after all. Turner is one of those with a hate-on for humanity and how he's been treated, and sells us out with the promise of a chance to whip out his psyche and wave it at Straker.


The rest of the episode, a good half maybe, is a game of cat and mouse with Lake & Straker hunting Turner while an unhinged Turner tries to kill them. Somewhere on the base is a bit of equipment that the tech rewired into a transmitter for the alien time wave. Again, I'm too slow to follow what does what here. The signal is being sent from a UFO outside the time envelope, and though it is on it's way it has to come slowly because it is operating at a different temporal level and must adjust as it passes the threshold. I think. I wonder if that shouldn't affect the oscillation of the signal as well (ala sound and light waves). Meanwhile, Turner is able to play with time in ways a Gallifreyan would envy, projecting himself backwards or forwards, pulling Straker out of incidents to witness them again. So what kind of time manipulation are we talking about here? A world slowed down or people sped up? if there's an explanation for this it could only be pulled from Jackson's backside. It's wicked fun and doesn't make a lick of sense. Seems to me the aliens have endowed Turner with more power than they've allowed themselves, a rather foolhardy move. You can tell from the childishness of his taunts that his cogs have slipped big-time. He's been promised a high place in the new regime. Aren't they all?

I'm also not clear how Straker and Lake made it into the affected field and whether they were meant to. I doubt it, as they were attacked before arriving...and why do they not need to adjust at the same rate the UFO does once they're through the envelope? Really, there are all sorts of things that you're not meant to think about here. Timelash was written by Terence Feely, who also contributed scripts to Space: 1999 and The New Avengers. I enjoyed those as well, but this is easily the better piece aided by terrific direction and fx work.


I don't care. It's a brisk episode that grabs your attention right away and never lets up, nor is it straightforward enough to easily guess where it's going. If sense must cede to sensibility, this is a good way to go. with many wondrous little touches and a little skewed humor. This is among the best of what UFO could be when it comes to sheer exuberant strangeness. So, I'll give it 9 magic machine guns that never need reloading.



Asides:
It's good to see Henderson again, and Jackson! I'm gonna miss these guys.


ep concludes with Straker coming to his senses. Jackson explains to Henderson that Straker has experienced...ah, I can't remember what he caled it, but it sums up what we just saw. But how the hell does he know that??


One of these episodes, either this one or Mindbend, has a glimpse of the Interceptor cockpit sets. Between the swift pace and looking away to take notes, I failed to spot them.


Give Harlington/Straker a hand, ladies and gentlemen! That prop gets a lot of use. maybe they're filming a sequel to whatever movie used it last time.


Catch the funky wind machine effect on Straker's face as he tries to target the UFO? To quote MST3K, "That's quite a tic ya got there, son."


Turner fumes that Straker is "the guy all the girls admire". There's no evidence from the series to support that. I can buy that Turner believes it, though, it's clearly a sore spot and I can see him endowing Straker with every trait he feels a failure at.

UFO - Ordeal

"Two weeks here and you're going to feel on top of the world", the therapist says.  He should have said "out of this world".  It would have been truer.

Immediately followng his return home from a stint on Skydiver, and the night before a mandatory stay at SHADO's torture  health spa, Col. Foster spends the last of his energy on a party.  (Prediction for the 80's: your future will be fashion retro with a nostalgic wave of mod 60's excess.  Get your unironic Austin Powers on!)  So he's drained going in, struggling when he realizes he's locked in the sauna with the temperature rising, and limp when the aliens find and kidnap him.

Except they don't.  Foster has passed out and is having a vivid stress-induced nightmare.  You're not told that until the final moments of the episode, and there's a deft bit of sleight-of-hand to fool us all: SHADO HQ has been hunting a UFO that broke though their perimeter, and Foster's nightmare hinges on just that scenario.  It almost feels like  a cheat upon reveal, but the former is common enough for SHADO while the nightmare would be a  common one to personnel.

Speaking of entertainement in general, this is exactly the twist that always turns audiences off.  The 'it was all in his/her head' ending.   People become invested in the situation only to be told "It didn't happen?"  "It didn't mean anything!"  It smacks of the writers not being able to think up a decent solution to the central dilemma so they reach for their handy book of trite cop-outs.  An argument can be made that the dream of Ordeal does certainly mean something and has some value, but in this case I can only be just so enthusiastic about it.

The episode is illustrative of the fear, tension, and fatigue that must be what every SHADO agent carries just under the sonscious barrier on a daily basis.  That's worth seeing.   As an inner look at Paul Foster, he turns out to be not that interesting.  We see very little that we hadn't already seen on the surface.  That is, we may not know it's a dream but sriter Tony barwick does, so he's aware that manifestations of Straker, Freeman, Jackson and the like are taken from Foster's own perceptions and expectations.  Of ccourse, Barwick doesn't want to tip his hand, so we get the same Straker, Freeman, etc.. that we always do...and honestly I don't think Barwick was after anything other than a thrilling experience, which he deelivers quite expertly.  From our POV, we've never been the abductee before.  Now we have.  I'm just saying we could have had that small bit more, not enough to break the illusion but enough to leave lingering questions about Foster and his working relations.

Maybe there is something,  though.  For a fantasy concocted by Foster's id, Lt. Gay Ellis features a lot in his rescue.  For example, how often so we see her take to the lunar surface personally when someone under her command needs rescuing?  Foster is an exceeption, is he?  Must be awfully special to her...It's your classically romantic scenario, she spends every minute after in his company, reassuring and comforting him right up to the moemnt he comes to on the sauna floor at the health spa.

The episode is gripping on a first viewing, with plenty of tension as Straker orders the UFO shot down (will  the Sky 1 pilot Waterman comply?), as the damaged UFO crashes on the moon,  Foster having his lungs filled with the liquid aleins use for space travel, etc.   Having seen it a number of times, I know it holds up on rewatch.  So,  I'm giving it 7 rights clearances to Paul McCartney's catalog.  Never ceases to surprise me that 'Get Back' made it in in the first place, and more that it's still there.

Asides:

F.O., Foster! That means you're first, alphabetically!

At SHADO HQ, a female technician brings coffee to a male tech...at least it  didn't seem as if he aked, she simply offers him some.  Either the sexism problem is more institutionally entrenched at SHADO than any of us has realized, or she really likes the guy and wants him to notice.  I'd like to think it's the latter.  She reminded me a little of someone I fell for once.

"Have you ever been in a sonar bath before?"  Sounds neat.  Is that like a sonic shower on Star Trek?  Hmm, so you need steam for a sonar bath?  How does that work?  Why not just call it - oh, I see.  Sauna bath.  Ne'mind.

Should have been a lot more green liquid gushing out of that helmet, and to clear Foster's lungs he should have been leaning forward. Still, kudos for getting the  panic right.

On learning that Foster was abducted, a Skydiver crewmember exclaims, "How could that happen?"  She must be new, because it happens to SHADO people all the time!

At the spa there's a guy named Franklin who's overweight.  Oh, sorry, I meant to say fat.  We're supposed to be thoughtful of others and not inflict 'political correctness' on them.  Franklin's a tub.  That means he's the comic relief.  Just pointing out that he's a fatass is inherently funny.  So go ahead and have a  laugh at his expense, because even the score mocks him.


Two episodes to go.

UFO - Reflections in the Water

RitW made my brain feel fuzzy.

There's trouble in one particular stretch of water. A commercial ship has been blown apart by what the crew reported as 'flying fish', a film crew has had one of it's divers killed by a slashed air hose, and unusually warm currents are diverting marine life from their usual habitats. Fortunately for Earth, the film crew happens to be under contract at Harlington/Straker and their director a stupefyingly boring man with a keen eye.

I guess those flying fish set the tone for the whole story. Are they cool, or absurd, or some cruel joke played on victims? Basically, they're missiles that shoot lasers instrad of actually hitting their targets. Oops, missed! PSYCH, no we didnt! Na-na-nana-na! UFOs already have laser weapons, so why be so elaborate? Why, because its fun!

At this point the narrative needle skips its groove with a montage of clips previewing the rest of the story. UFO's production team was experimenting with the lesser credits format and someone must have liked it because it would become a staple of Space: 1999's title credits. Not being used to it on UFO, it's momentarily confusing.

Skydiver investigates and finds a UFO plying a route along a cable powering an underwater dome. Straker and Foster don scuba gear and check the place out, finding that its walls are accommodatingly transparent (always handy if you're trying to keep a secret, much like blowing up every ship that passes overhead).

Peering in, they spot one of their own: one Lt. Anderson. Traitor! Or he could just be under mental control, if he weren't such a lying traitor. Back on Skydiver, Straker orders its captain to maintain his position surveilling the dome - he'll be in contact when he gets back to HQ. This was the first instance where I felt my mind slipping, and it wouldn't be the last. Suddenly I needed to rewind the entire block and see it again...surely I'd been mentally wandering and missed some crucial line of dialog? How are Straker and Foster returning to HQ if Skydiver isn't taking them? Sky 1 seats one, and it's not a taxi service. Had they rendezvoused with another Skydiver or some other vessel? Are they going to swim back?

It happened again not long after. There's Anderson, that sickening traitor, smiling at them all innocent-like. Straker straps him up for a third degree. Expert grilling technique, that, consisting of shouting a single question at him denial after denial. Even after two doses of truth serum, Anderson insists he doesn't have a clue what Straker and Foster are on about. Y'know, SHADO personnel have been known to succumb to alien brainwashing - well, sure, you could excuse an innocent person that way but not a lousy traitor. What cheek, pretending his honor has been hurt.

Frustrated, Straker demands the psych evaluation be rushed into his hands. That's Col. Lake's job. Surely the evaluation will explain why Anderson has turned on SHADO...but it doesn't. It's a rather terse reply, almost snide...and there I went again, needing to rewind. I watched the scene three times. Was it the computer that made the analysis (as has happened before) or a doctor such as Jackson (also standard SHADO procedure)? Wasn't Lake, yet she's the one who put forward the questions. She's approached them as many different ways as she can think to, and the answer is always the same. Yes, that's what happens when you're trying to squeeze a computer to yield more than it's programmed with. Yet, I don't recall UFO ever mentioning before that its computer not only has an artificial personality but one that's cranky. That's what it's like to work under Straker, he even pisses off the machinery. Lake knows the feeling well. She's the only one (besides HAL) with the guts to snap at him. Even SID knows better.

Straker and Foster return to the dome. Discovering that it's housed in some wonderful self-sealing skin, they enter to find that the UFO has been there. I'd been wondering about that, as we know they don't last long in our atmosphere, and it's surmised in The Sound of Silence that immersion in water doesn't help. So, now we know the craft doesn't remain in the ocean but rests in the dome. But it's still in an oxygen-rich site, so...? Oh, well, back to the plot.

In the dome they find more SHADO personnel, including themselves. Also Anderson again, who is locked in a cell back at HQ. Aha, thinks Straker, it's plastic surgery. Personally, I leapt immediately to clones and thought that Straker must not have seen enough science fiction TV shows, but no - he's right, it's not clones. If the aliens figured out how to clone bodies, they'd have no more need to raid Earth.

Exploring further (and with the clock ticking, orders having been left to torpedo the dome in exactly an hour), they find a replica of SHADO HQ, wherein they espy their duplicates lipsynching to voice recordings of the genuine SHADO agents. We learned early in the episode that the aliens have mounted an ambitious invasion plan with a force of at least twenty-five UFOs standing by. Now the plan is revealed: when the fleet makes a go for Earth, all defense forces will be ordered to stand down...and they'll do it, too, because they know that Straker has a penchant for wild, suicidal gambits that always pay off.

Not to worry. Straker and Foster blow the joint, figuratively and literally, and when the assault launches it is ably if improbably fought off. We never learn how the aliens intended to neutralize SHADO HQ, which they would have had to do for their own fake to be effective. There's also a question raised about the Interceptors taking out four UFOs - watch the editing, we see exactly three missiles fired. I've always wondered about those three nozzles mounted fore of the visor - are they weapons or thrusters? I still don't know.

Oh, and all's cool between Straker and Anderson, the traitorous bastard, it's all smiles and backslaps. So that's okay then.

This was just plain fun, and I give it 7 "Damn dome!"s and other alliterate outbursts.
The score - no, the musical score - included a short burst heavy on brass that sounded like the standard villain's cue on the '66 Batman. Because it occurred while onboard Skydiver, I thought Burgess Meredith was about to enter quacking.

UFO - The Responsibility Seat

Spring is in the air. Hey, didn't we just have a seance for Autumn? Techie Lt. Ford is taking a good long look at the attractive officer bringing Freeman coffee, and Straker's head is being turned elsewhere.

Straker's a busy guy, he can't even keep track of his appointments. Case in point, he's been told that a reporter, Joe Fraser, is scheduled to interview him. He'd like to brush it off but that's what you get when you step into the leadership position. Well, maybe it won't be too bad: Joe turns out to be Jo, and Ed can't take his eyes off her. Nor can he take his mind off her when she turns out to the wily type who'll record your conversations without telling you and 'accidentally' bug your office. Bad enough if you run a movie studio, but if SHADO's your gig you'd better get your guard back up. Straker makes it a personal effort to get the tape back and find out if Fraser's running a game.

That means his second, Freeman, taking the center seat for a while. Freeman has been a fine commander of personnel when implementing orders that have come down from the top, but his instincts when it comes to second-guessing his superior have been spotty. Now hell be second-guessing himself. Almost immediately an incursion by three UFOs is reported. One makes it to Earth and disappears. routine stuff, except this time full responsibility for the search is on Freeman. Ford assures him that an unidentified radar blip is certain to be nothing, but Freeman launches Sky 1. It's a weather balloon. A good leader listens to his people, values their input an trusts their competence. An important lesson, though not one that Straker has ever had any use for... Another good lesson is accepting your mistakes and not making your subordinates pay for them. Thankfully, Freeman's a quick study.

You can tell this was an early episode by the amount of time wasted by unnecessarily detailing the launch of Sky 1. Same with the re-use off an fx shot of Interceptors lifting off that contains an unfortunate mistake (looking as if a part falls off one of the models). There's also the matter of an assassination that seems to take out Straker, only to be revealed as a scene being shot at the studio, and the victim a stunt double or actor. We've seen these fakeouts too often to be fooled this far into the series.

Freeman's not the only one out of his comfort zone. Straker may act unflappable when it comes to command but romance is a field he's lost at and never returned to. It might be just an infatuation with Fraser, or maybe it's loneliness, but there must be something about Fraser - Jo - that keeps Ed hooked even after she's used his cranium to deconstruct a vase. Ah, well, he doesn't yet have his answers, after all. One must have patience. String things along, allow a background check to run its course. Jo Fraser, unknown to any news agency. Would you like some wine? Look, I placed a romantic dinner setting for two before I set out to work this morning.

Ed can't get out of his own way. He'd like to tell her to hit the road. He'd like to stroke her hair and hold her close. Instead he sits there with a stony look on his face and confuses the hell out of her. She tells him he's cold. Not the first time he's heard it. So he strokes her hair. Cuddles for a while. Then once he has her waiting in bed he yells at her to get the hell out. Background check reveals she seduces rich men (like studio execs) then takes them for their money.

"It's a man's world, remember?", she yells at him. She'll do what she has to survive, and to hell with everyone else. Screenwriter Tony Barwick has shown us before that we're never quite as advanced as we pat ourselves on the back for re: equality consciousness. Straker is usually the unwitting signifier on that front. When he met her, Jo was apologizing for her own name, of all things, that she should have cleared up her gender before the meeting.

Can Fraser be called a confident person? Where the men deliberate, she acts boldly from an unfailing belief in her ability as a con artist. On the other hand, there's not much kindness left in her for the world. She's hardened and bitter. Yet, there's also a passage of dialog in which she begins to admit that she could have softened for Straker. Was that just another lie to get through the moment or was it genuine?

Straker is not a confident man when it comes to his own feelings. No wonder he avoids them, in situations like this he can't even read his own judgement, let alone trust his instincts.

Freeman does a little better, but not enough to feel comfortable in the responsibility seat. A second blip appears, this time near Moonbase where it's likelier to be important. It turns out to be a Russian commercial rig out of control and on a path to collide with Moonbase. Knowing that it may cause an international incident, he orders it blow up. He trusts his people, he makes the call, he accepts that there will be consequences.

Foster, as usual, goes his own way, which means treating orders as suggestions. There's confidence for you! Like Straker, he risks everyone's lives for the improbable chance to save them all. He climbs aboard the runaway rig, deals with the cabin crew drunk off anoxia, and brings the truck to a halt inches short of Moonbase's command dome. I wondered why non one thought to shoot out a wheel, or - once he was aboard - take advantage of that live feed from the Russian base to translate a warning to the crew. Or, would it be too wild to suggest, just point out the damn front window and look scared?

TRS is in some ways a fractured episode. Either of the two main plots might have been expanded for a more acute look at Straker or Freeman. Freeman, that would have been welcome. He's had too little of his own material, and this is the last we'll have featuring him in any significant way. George Sewell did a wonderful job essaying a complicated role that originally threatened to devolve into a skirt chaser of no depth. Straker we've seen his personal loneliness before but not like this. The third thread makes for an exciting sequence and raises many possibilities worth exploring regarding SHADO having to share the moon with other nations.

None of these fully develops, yet I'm giving it 7 awkward silences between potential paramours. TRS pursues a fragile human quality juxtaposing one quality over a number of different players, and I found that humanity over plot to be refreshing. In the aftermath, Freeman and Straker congratulate each other for their respective handling of their scenarios. Freeman says of Fraser, "If it'd been me, I'd have probably got myself emotionally involved or something". As ever, Straker is imprisoned behind his own stoicism and says nothing. We see it, of course. We can only guess that he feels as bad for Jo as he does for himself.

UFO - The Psychobombs

Writing about The Psychobombs might not be conducive to enjoying it. Thinking is not the best approach to this ep that I do like.

A UFO lands at night in the English countryside (the deuce you say!) and puts three nearby citizens under its spell. Linda, Clark, and Mason have been reprogrammed so that their brain/body chemistry can induce brief periods of amazing strength under stress (akin to tales of people lifting cars off o loved ones), and with an electric catalyst can even become organic bombs of tremendous destructive power. You'd have to ask Doctor Jackson, who will explain to you that the biology of the victims has been altered to harness the energy of the universe itself...on the one hand very New Agey for the era, or something related to speculations of zero point energy.

Once again the aliens have a new method mind control, this one producing much faster results than before. Depending on your disposition you can conclude either that the show is being inconsistent as usual (grammatically speaking, would that be oxymoronic?) or that the aliens, those wacky funsters, really do love to experiment.

Under alien direction the three send Straker an ultimatum: dismantle SHADO or see its forces destroyed. When Straker doesn't immediately comply, the first target (an important ground radar facility) is visited by one of the living bombs and blown sky high. Clark the Bomb really isn't aware of what's happening. Well, yeah, especially now he's gone off.

Next off the bench is Amatol Mason, sent after Skydiver 3 at its base as Straker, Jackson, Foster, and Lake still race to sort out what they're dealing with. Clem steals the identity (or at least the fingertips whorls – don't ask) and gets past the first security barrier but not the photographic or vocal IDs. The ship launches but not soon enough.

This is what makes the episode – not this single encounter but the tension that informs it. Director Jeremy Summers does a fine job establishing and maintaining suspense throughout. While the alien ploy is best unexamined, it yields a story that easily keeps my attention from beginning to end.

More uneven is the hunt for the living bombs when Foster gets close to Linda Simmonds. Foster takes the mission of getting close to his surveillance subject literally and makes romantic moves on Linda...and, look, he's using that old 'creepy stalker guy who knows everything about you' ploy again! And it works again! “How did you know?”, he's asked. “We have our methods.” Sure, and so do the aliens. They've really done their homework on SHADO, seems they know that Foster is an easy mark if they lay on the sex. Serves him right for turning into a player. Linda kisses him and alien control now has a low-level effect on him as well (don't ask). He's invited her back to SHADO HQ to meet the gang.

Straker is the final target, and Explodey Linda is the last bomb left. Using the identity of the first two, a likely landing site for the UFO is pinned down, and a police report from the night in question points to the owner of a car involved with the death of a cop. Linda had been pulled over; the cop was killed. Linda's boss is dead too. Straker makes his usual gamble with disaster when he learns that she's on the way, and decides to throw open the doors.

Linda is a figure deserving of sympathy. She leaves a wake of death behind her in happy ignorance, and it catches up with her as she holds the fate of SGHADO personnel in her hands, literally, and makes an impossible choice.

6.5 UFOs, now available in the new convenient pop-top style! Tempted to go 7, but those questions and then Foster...

Asides: Clem is taken from his sleep when the UFO lands, but not his wife lying next to him. Why not her too? Because the airtime doesn't allow for four bombs, no doubt.

I think given the physiological nature of the aliens and their need for human bodies, we can take the mind control as a matter of course now instead of thinking it's meant to be a clever new twist and saying”Oh, not that again.” It's just expediency on their part to use us as we are if taking our bodies is rare enough to go to war over.

From his car, Straker, calls in and asks whether Foster or Lake are available, and when he's told they're not he sounds put out. He might assume they're busy doing their jobs, but no – if they were doing their jobs then surely they'd be sitting around all day in hopes of his ringing in. Them being unavailable must mean they're goofing off while he's not there to keep an eye on things. “Spread it around I'm on my way in. I find it helps improve efficiency.” Ah, good, it's Tony Barwick. He knows how to write Straker!

UFO - The Sound of Silence

I've gone through this series some five times now and The Sound of Silence never makes enough impression to remain much in memory. I think now I know why: this is what you get when a story sketch is treated as if it were a developed script.

The opening pageant is promising as a UFO approaches Earth behind an American space program craft. SHADO defenses are stymied by the close proximity. It's a taut, well-directed bit of business but has little to do with the plot that follows. Actually, it establishes a tension that what follows tries to maintain itself upon.

The UFO makes it to the English countryside and hides in a lake on a private estate. This is a gamble, as the alien craft cannot last long in water. Foster leads a force of Mobiles scouring the area. Meanwhile, life goes on oblivious for the family – the father, his son Russell (a famous showjumper), and Russ' sister. Oh, and Cully the Hippy who makes a habit of trespassing there. We know he's a hippy because he has a bad wig, is contemptuous of others and their property, and is cruel to animals. None of the characters are well-developed, we know them by their response to each other. For example, Russell hates hippies and that's pretty much the sum of the characterization he's endowed with. Soft-spoken and even-handed. Anne is more jovial. Roughly speaking, they're about as developed as Russell's horse. If we weren't already familiar with Foster and Straker, they'd be non-entities in equal measure here.

UFO, your era is showing. Cully is pure stereotype. Dialog is scattered lightly with “hippy”, “fuzz” and a highly non-PC line, jokingly offered, trading on racist tropes on Native Americans. It's not strong enough to cause much offense but does stand out.

If the people are in the dark about the alien presence, the horse isn't. Nor is Cully's loyal-to-a-fault dog, a pleasant type that puts up with having wood and knives chucked at it. Get close to the lake and you'll notice how the entirety of the local wildlife has gone nervously silent. It's a smart idea around which to base an episode, that animals have a sixth sense about the aliens' presence. This could be good.

Foster is paying attention. Russell has gone missing and been reported. On meeting the family and getting a tour of the property, Foster realizes where the UFO must be. Another excellent action sequence ensues as the craft is drawn into the open. I have to say, the fx crew earn constant praise for their miniature vehicles but not enough for their miniature landscapes.

The UFO is destroyed, freeing a canister from its confines. Fearing that the object may be a bomb other destructive device, it is rushed to SHADO HQ (Was that wise? It was, after all, out in the middle of nowhere, do you want to rush a potential WMD to a populated area?) “The closer you are to an explosion: , Straker says, “the better your chances are.” Ummm...okay. Hard to argue with.. Now we have a third fine setpiece as the object is examined and cut into, with all HQ personnel silently on edge. Inside the canister is Russell in hibernation for transport back to the alien home world.

Now this is chilling. It doesn’t tell us anything new, but its the first time we've seen how humans are physically treated as raw resource material. This is what happens to us when we're captured – we're canned like food.

Russell begins to come around, and the direction is very leading. His blank expression and the disorientation through which he sees suggests, dare I say...alienation? Anne looks on hopefully and it looks like an “AHA!” moment. Here's where the horse sense will come in! Russell's horse will tell them whether it's him or not!

Hey, wait, why are you guys giving Anne the amnesia drug now, this hasn't been resolved yet!

Aaaaaand that's where I'm at with this episode. We keep getting elements worthy of exploitation that are never developed. Animal instincts. The problem of telling when a human is still a human. The problems with hiding the real purpose of SHADO from space programs like NASA. The disruption of life on the estate on which the aliens hide. It's all there...and just lays there. Writers David Lane and Bob Bell don't seem to be all that interested in the aliens, and the people themselves fail to engage me. Three riveting suspense sequences and a lot of dull business that doesn't build.

A final scene has Foster visit the farm after life has been returned to normal. We see Russell having fun with his horse (ergo it must be Russell still). Perhaps he's there for another sexual conquest now he's been established as the series' lothario as Freeman was proposed initially. I'd like to think he was making sure the horse took to its owner. No one thought it worth making clear.

So again the problem of applying a number comes up. Subsmash is an ep I really do enjoy more than many, because it's well made, moves well, and entertains...but because it does nothing you couldn't find in any other show I gave it a 5 (that was painful to do). Close-up earned a 3 for being kinda creepy in an offensive way. TSoS suffers neither of these problems and is sporadically lively, but not enough and not in total. It's going to fade from memory like it always does.

4 entitled class-tier attitudes

Asides:

Russell is played by Michael Jayston. Some have speculated that Jayston was not actually born but grown entire from the severed hand of David Tennant.

Phantasm: Ravager

(0ne mild spoiler)

The Tall Man is dead. Long Live the Tall Man.

“The American way of death”, that's what the man said. Coscarelli, that is, Don Coscarelli. He was talking about Phantasm and what he wanted to explore with that film. What he ended up with, I think, was a movie about how it's sometimes scarier to be the one surviving. Young Mike has lost his parents and now lives in daily unchecked terror of losing what little he has left of all he knows of life: his older brother Jody loves him but aches to dump him with someone else and take off. It's a movie that deals with the bonds of loyalty and abiding love between the brothers an their friend Reggie, a local ice cream vendor. That latter has always resonated with me, but as I grow older the fear of loss – and specifically of abandonment of being alone - strikes a deeper and deeper chord.

The trio have become entangled with a mysterious Tall Man, an alien of sorts in human form who empties cemeteries, re-animating and transforming the dead into armies of slaves. The Tall Man proves to be their dissolution, and Mike, Reggie, and Jody will spend the next three sequels trying to find each other across the countryside, across dimensions, and even across time. Phantasm: Ravager, the fifth and probably final film in the series, has been promoted as the one that will bring resolution.

On a personal note, I saw this at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon, with a crowd of Phans all roughly my own age. I'd guess that most of us have been with Phantasm from the beginning. The bond of abiding love isn't just between the brothers and the Ice Cream Man. If someone put a razor-forked metal sphere to my head and forced me to choose just one horror film as my favorite, it would be Phantasm. Besides an investment in the heroes, the emphasis on surreal dream-logic driven narrative strikes a chord with me. So does the score, and just about everything else.

Phantasm benefited from an alchemy of elements – the chemistry of the cast, the imagination of Coscarelli and his collaborators, dreamy imagery, an iconic score from Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave, science fiction, horror, humor...I think even the year, 1979, was a vital ingredient. Phantasm was informed by the sentiments, concerns, and the language of cinema of the Seventies but it's premise and physical, visceral realization of fantastical subject matter looked forward to what Eighties cinema would become within and without the horror genre after the likes of The Evil Dead (1981) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Phantasm is swimming in gateways: I think the film itself was a gateway for the genre and for Coscarelli himself who went from grounded dramas (Jim, the World's Greatest and Kenny & Company) to unhinged fantasia like Bubba Ho-Tep and John Dies at the End.

Phantasm Ravager picks up not long after the finale of Phantasm IV: Oblivion. As Oblivion ends in Death Valley, the Tall Man has taken Mike's mind (literally, encased in a metal orb). Reg, armed with his signature quad-barreled shotgun, sets off into the maze of inter-dimensional gateways to rescue his friend.

We don't know how long he's been wandering the desert (“Some fuckwad jacked my Cuda.”) but not too long we assume from his inner monologue and state of his clothes. He's still on Earth but as later dialog suggests it may not be his Earth. A couple of killer sphere drones aren't far behind him. Even closer is a nasty shock when he suddenly finds himself in a wheelchair in the garden of a care facility. “They bring us here to die”, says a fellow patient. The patient has a familiar face. Mike is there too, coming to visit him with great concern. Mike knows nothing about tall men or other planets. What he knows is that his dear friend has been diagnosed with dementia.

Which life is real? Have all of these adventures been a hallucination? Trying to placate Reg's alarm, Mike floats a theory he's heard of alternate realities. Reg may have gone Billy Pilgrim, unstuck between realms. I believe that there is actually more than one Reg, one for each alternate reality, and that as some hop back and forth, their experiences are bleeding into the mind of yet another. As a theory this covers a number of discontinuities in previous films as well – there's more than one Mike and Jody, relatively aware that they are dealing with shifting realities and misaligned memories but not knowing why. In fact, Ravager offers no reason to believe that anything in the movie takes place in what DC Comics would call “Earth 1”.

Ravager is Reg's story as he bounces back and forth between realities, either of which may be unreal. The Tall Man has wiped out civilization on one Earth, but the seemingly normal in the hospital one may be a trick. Once again, in ways that are uncomfortable and heart-sickening, it resonates with my own life. Reggie faces the loss of his own mind at the end of his life preceded by the loss of identity, dignity, autonomy, and sanity. Which is the more desirable existence, an ignominious decline and death as a nobody in an uncaring facility or being the hero of a fantastical realm standing against impossible odds to defend the love of dear friends? Which is more credible?

Understand that I love all of the films in this series. They're a wonderful set of adventures that spark the imagination and are compelling for the bonds they showcase. Still, II, III, and IV d not deal with issues as I and V do. This, I think, is what ultimately makes Ravager and elevates it above its low indie budget.

If you want solutions, this is not the film for you. From the beginning, a vital part of the allure of the Phantasm universe is the fact that we are presented with facets of a mystery without explanation, and no small amount of discontinuity in the narratives the heroes' lives. Currently many phans are disputing the worth of Ravager for its nondisclosure. For myself, the last thing I wanted was an explanation which could only serve to make that realm a smaller one, severely and needlessly amputating the many possibilities suggested by these films. Simply, it's a richer universe in our imaginations than it could be if confined to the screen. I do, however, wonder what the Tall Man's purpose with Mike is...in Ravager he calls Mike an experiment.

The closure promised is not of the plot points, those are MacGuffins. What matters more is the the bond. Always the bond. Jody, Mike, and Reggie have been apart since 1979, sharing each other's company only in brief respite from the nightmare and Mike only as a wraith of dubious alliance after having been transformed by the Tall Man. Ravager brings them together again for the first time. Their long search is rewarded.

One of the reasons I expect that there will never be another sequel is the recent passing away of Angus Scrimm, the Tall Man. Mr. Scrimm was a versatile and much beloved character actor who's indelible, captivating, and intensely scary portrayal of the Tall Man made an immediate impact. There could never be another Tall Man. Without him, the conflict of our protagonists has no center and no weight. I never had the pleasure of meeting Angus Scrimm but everyone who did attests that he was the kindest, most outgoing of souls. The audience I was with applauded loudly his first appearance in Ravager and the dedication to him in the closing credits. You played a good game, sir.

It's a delightful performance. Scrimm's Tall Man is an exercise in graceful menace as his face and vocal inflections dance from arrogance, amusement, frustration, curiosity all bubbling just underneath his unshakable poise. In Ravager for the first time we his calm demeanor break in the face of Reggie's loyalty. “WHHYYYYYYYYY?, shouts the Tall Man, in a surprising lament. It's the opposite of Anakin Vader's infamous “NOOOOOOO!” - compelling instead of cringeworthy.

Scrimm also gives us another glimpse of Jebediah Morningside, the human who first opened the doorway to the alien realm and whose body became the template for the entity known as the Tall Man. Morningside was a kind and decent man who wanted nothing but good for his fellow man. Jebediah is another resident in the care home. One quiet moment broke my heart: Jebediah crossing the hall and looking up at Reg, his body shockingly old and frail, taken by the ravages of time. The sad look in his eyes...I may avert mine when I see it again. “I'm afraid this body of mine is nearly finished.” It's an ironic note from Jebediah, an omen from the Tall Man, and an acknowledgment from Angus to us his many fans.

Noted above, the movie is limited in budget. That's putting it mildly, Ravager began as a series of webisodes involving the adventures of Reggie as the Tall Man sweeps across the Earth. These were the work of David Hartman, formerly an animator at Disney who contributed to earlier Coscarelli films. These were done with Coscarelli's blessing, and with the original writer/director's collaboration they modified the series into a feature film. Having tasted studio interference, Ravager was self-financed. Hartman directed. This results in some of the fx work not being up to par and the camerawork being subject to diminished means. Frankly, it looks a lot better than I'd feared. Working a coherent – and achievable - story from these shorts must have been quite a challenge, given the tantalizing but unused sequences that appear under the closing credits. They're ambitious bits set in the North against monster-sized spheres, once scene pitting a jet fighter against them. Some of the scenarios that did make it in (like the devastated Earth and the Red Planet) are left unexplored... disappointing but understandable for the limitations involved.

I'd also feared seeing it with an audience, given some of what Ravager has met online. Phantasm is a big thing with me...I was too young to see it at the theater but knew from the trailers that it was something special. When it debuted on American network TV(CBS Friday LateNight, 12:35 AM. following “The Zombie” episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker) I sat alone in the dark, back turned to a large living room, next to the front door that creaked and cracked as the house settled. It's one of my fondest memories sharing this with friends who were similarly watching at their homes.. I am grateful and delighted to say that seeing the Ravager was also rewarding, in a bittersweet way. The audience applauded many times throughout as beloved players Reggie Bannister, A. Michael Baldwin, Angus (always Angus!), Kat Lester, and Gloria Lynn Henry made their entrances. Reg's and the Tall man's lines elicited cheers and laughs. Even the Cuda got a hand.

To Messrs Coscarlli and Hartman, to the casts and crews of all five, thank you.

UFO - Close Up

I spent the evening watching coverage of one of the day's bigger news stories unfolding and couldn't help seeing its echo in Close Up. Frankly, this episode baffles me, all the more for having been written by Tony Barwick.

Straker has a new plan to stoke his passions for, a probe satellite that takes images not by conventional camera but by electron telescope. He wants to lure a UFO close enough to send the probe after it back to the aliens' home world. Everything goes swimmingly until...well, until the final minutes of the episode. Really, that's it. The A-plot of Close Up is a procedural that takes us from trial tests through funding to implementation. While this is a major step forward for SHADO and promises tantalizing discoveries for the audience, its telling is fairly dull. This is the first of three major problems.

BTW, I did a lazy-fast search on electron telescopy and couldn't find anything. I'm guessing it was still an exciting theory back in 1970, so maybe I shouldn't be too harsh...still, from the photographs that Straker and company were oohing and aahing over I have to say they didn't strike me as all that impressive. Conventional spy satellites were already projected to yield more breathtaking results. In color, while we're at it.

The second problem is plausibility. UFOs travel at FTL speeds, which we know the probe cannot. I've grown up on filmed sci-fi entertainment and have learned to put up with non-science nonsense, and it's often not easy. When a show violates its own established rules, it makes things unnecessarily harder. We might also wonder why the aliens would not spot a tail, but I'm not overly fussed with that (perhaps they hibernate on the voyage between solar systems). At story's end we find it's all been for naught as the craft's telemetry has malfunctioned, failing to provide crucial information with which to measure the images it sends back. Yet, the images are crystal clear, and one wonders that technicians could not reconstruct the missing info from the original programming: distances from the planet at which the scanning was meant to begin, speed of the craft, etc. Really, none of the photos have any worth?

That's quite an expensive gamble, too, that the UFO thwarted from its path will give up easily and just run off home instead of hanging around out of range for another go. We've seen them do that often enough. SHADO may have trouble appropriating funds, apparently that's pocket change to these aliens.

There area few nice things here of note, foremost being the fx work - not just the models. There's a launch sequence that meticulously recreates genuine rocket launches that were still an exciting staple of popular TV at the time. FX master Derek Meddings was probably responsible for this and would go on to perfect the immaculate launch fakery in Moonraker - the final element being the blinding glare of the rocket fire.

It's the third problem that drops my rating. The B-plot, where I think the real story might have been intended. The human factor, as Straker himself alludes to in one of several awkward scenes involving a bewildered Lt. Ellis. I'm not sure if even Gabrielle Drake knew how her character was supposed to react to Commander Straker's speeches most of the time. What are we supposed to make of them?

Sigh. Okay. Let's back up. The ep's "human factor" begins with a technician developing the satellite who pleads with Straker for funding to develop micro-photography, insisting that it could be applied to space research. Straker is unimpressed and unsupportive. At least he doesn't verbally backhand the guy - he'll save that for Ellis after her diligent work. He just can't help himself. He's got to put her in her place, a woman and beneath him.

Now, this is fully in keeping with his character as we've come to know him, and as previously written by Barwick...but it comes out of nowhere in the middle of this story that had not hinted at being a character piece. The look on Gabrielle Drake's face is wonderful acting, Ellis' humiliation and shock. I felt it with her. It's an ugly moment. I felt something I've not felt before from UFO: uncomfortable. We've just shifted gears; where is this going?

I still cannot answer that. What did Barwick intend to do with this? Straker has been set up for a humbling that never comes. He realizes almost immediately that he has put his foot in it, but - again according to character - assumes that Ellis faults herself rather than his own chauvinism. Okay, here's my big problem - I'm not sure that Barwick doesn't think so too.

Coming from Barwick, that's upsetting. He's the guy whose scripts have deftly pointed out more than once that Straker's smug superiority is partially based on an ignorance of others' experiences (his insistence that racism has died out, for example). We've seen him patronize SHADO's female personnel in the same sentence as he's applauding equality in the workplace. So why is it that Ellis is the one treated by this script as needing a lesson? Oy, and what a lesson!

"You're doing a fine job, Gay.", Straker tells her. "A man's job." Oof. Just stop there. "You don't have to do it any better because you're a woman." No, really, stop digging. "And don't ever forget a very attractive girl."

The forehead slap due here should leave a bruise.

I cannot read the look on her face. I honestly think even Drake didn't know how to play a reaction. She seems to want out of the scene every bit as much as Ellis does. And so did I. Almost immediately we have another scene in which Straker addresses the entire Moonbase staff but singles Ellis out for direct bit of fatherly reassurance - or maybe it's another rebuke. Her body language says "okay, whatever, I don't get it." It might not have been acting.

Seriously, what the hell? I don't get it. Whatever Barwick was aiming for, he failed to communicate it. The coda should provide a clue, as Straker is treated to a demonstration of micro-photography. Ellis participates in a trick that fools him into thinking that he is looking at the surface osf the alien homeworld but turns out to be Ellis' bare thigh. This takes place back on Earth, yet Ellis is wearing her embarrassingly revealing Moonbase uniform. Again, if Barwick is trying to be pointed he fails to nail it down. At any rate, the tech gets his funding and Ellis gets no recognition from Straker that he is a misogynist ass.

The episode was something I didn't expect from UFO, a little queasy. It didn't get better in retrospect as the antipathy toward women of another socially stunted manchild filled the news cycle. I give it 3 lovingly crafted miniatures, which might still be too generous.

Asides:
a nice editing choice when we see the gray-green alien world s the probe approaches it, the soundtrack gives us the same music cue that accompanies that world's entrance to the weekly closing credits sequence.

When Straker speechifies at the coda and natters on about all matter consisting of "billions" of particles, it put me in mind of another turtle-necked pop scientist. I half-expected Straker to declare that "we are all made of starstuff."

UFO - The Cat With Ten Lives

Just in time for the Halloween season, it's an episode of spooky cats, seances, spirits, and the possession of Regan – a year before William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist was published and three years before Friedkin's film. The Cat With Ten Lives was originally aired on September 30th, 1970.


In this case Regan isn't a little girl but a Moonbased Interceptor pilot (“You're gonna die up there.”). We're introduced to him in an opening sequence in which the aliens step up their game considerably, using a two-pronged attack on Moonbase involving six UFOs. It's an exciting setpiece for us, and exhausting for the pilots who barely fend off disaster. That makes eight UFOs in just the past week. It's not a good time to be an Interceptor pilot, what with Straker considering SHADO under siege and even Foster riding them hard in combat training. Regan is lucky to be getting a few days leave at home.

Sleep will have to wait, though, he and his wife are obligated for a dinner party with the unhappy prospect of a dull cinematography display. Or maybe not, as his hosts have received an anonymous gift in the mail; a Ouija board! Oh, yes, lets; go right to the embarrassed eyerolling and the goodnatured ribbing before the planchette spells out 'S – E – A – N -C – E'. They have made contact with the spirit of Captain Obvious.

The game livens a little when Regan suffers a spell akin to a fugue state or a blackout. He's rattled enough to take the wrong way home. A cat in the road halts their journey, and the couple are assaulted by aliens who subject the pilot to some kind of procedure. He is released but his wife is not. The direction of the abduction sequence is marvelous.

It is determined that Regan was deemed medically unsuitable for organ harvesting, and that presumably his wife was found eligible. Still, quite a coincidence that the aliens just happened upon a SHADO operative as it is. Even more so that the only reason Regan was caught was because of a stray cat happening upon his trip at that moment. But, wait, isn't it true that the only reason he took that path was because he was upset by the Ouija game, which just happened to arrive from a mysterious source?

As plans go this is beyond improbable, and a little Rube Goldbergian. And, ya know, the only reason I don't mind is because of the season. It shouldn’t work, yet it does. Logic is out the window, but spooky stories are not about logic. They're about taking us for a ride, and TCWTL does exactly that. I defy anyone to watch this plot unfold and predict where it's going. Where it's going is another attack on Moonbase with another “controlled” agent – so, yes, it should be predictable, but the path to that end is so circuitous and unlikely that it's highly entertaining.

The plan seems to hinge on knowledge of one pilots' social calendar and work rotation, which one would think rather hard to come by for an alien. They would also have to rely on the man to not only keep his dates but not to balk at the idea of using the Ouija board when he's a skeptic. I guess that's why the word “seance” came up so prominently, there were aliens nearby frantically thinking “SEANCE!” at the party in hopes the partiers would comply. The séance is then used to plant the idea in Regan to take one road home over another. Let's take it a step further and guess that the reason SHADO is being run ragged is to exhaust Regan into pliability. It's that kind of script. Silly.

Speaking of tortured thinking, Jackson has some disturbing news that sparks some not fully cooked speculation. SHADO has been operating under thee assumption that the aliens' bodies are compatible with our own, and that their resources are depleted. Turns out there's a good reason for that: the aliens' bodies are our own! They're using us whole like meat puppets. I say 'they' because Jackson says 'they', but it's another wild leap based on one body. The upshot is that the aliens may b incorporeal beings that require physical form to operate, and that means stealing bodies. So what we knew wasn't wrong, exactly, just more advanced than we imagined.

Questions arise. If the aliens need bodies in order to function, how did they get here to take ours in the first place? The body Jackson found has had vital sections removed that govern emotional response, suggesting the aliens need our brains for the motor functions, language centers, and critical thinking. Must the body inhabited be human – that is, could an alien entity choose to take over another animal? Say, a cat? Jackson thinks so. As it happens, Regan has brought a cat into SHADO HQ. It's the same one that got him and his wife into the aliens' hands. Regan, meanwhile, has snapped. He's assaulted Foster and returned to Moonbase when he was ordered grounded by Straker. Must be mind control, happens every other week. Straker, that intuitive wonder, he figures it out. There's a four-footed infiltrator on the base, and is the one influencing his pilot. Luckily there was a dog food commercial being filmed at the studio that day. How's that for a convenient plot point?

The cat deserves singling out. Instead of the standard black cat you'd usually get for the Halloween season, we have a sleek and slinky Siamese that exudes a sly, observant intelligence. This feline is well cast.

What fascinates me about this revelation is what's not explored but merely suggested. When Regan attacks Foster, prompted by the cat, Regan acts like a cat, snarling and clawing. But the cat isn't a cat anymore! Is it? It's an alien intellect. It's intentions are those of an alien, cold and calculated, the advanced plotting of an intellect. Yet, the actions dictated to Regan are those of an animal. This suggests to me that the aliens' thoughts are translated through the physical wiring of the brain it inhabits, and are thus affected by or dependent upon the characteristics of that brain. Remember that the aliens have in thee past been unable or unwilling to communicate verbally. Perhaps the speech centers of their hosts bodies have been cut or are otherwise inaccessible. I don't know what it all means or how it adds up, but I'm fascinated by the possibilities!

A more obvious wasted opportunity lies in bringing back Vladek Sheybal for a single scene that amounts to exposition. It's a waste of his talent and charisma, frankly. Think of what his hypothesis means, and imagine a Jackson-centric episode that forced him to prove his theory by pitting his wits and sly cunning against the alien/cat/Regan. Sounds like a 10 right there.

But we get what we get, and I lapped this one like cream. I am giving it 8 convenient headaches for a dull dinner party.

Thoughts:
“Here we go again” , someone says at ep start as the UFOs attack. They could be addressing the audience, which is kinda delicious because what follows is not exactly business as usual no matter that it leads to the same ol' thing.

The cat/alien has one hell of a range when it comes to mental telepathy! He influences Regan from England while the pilot is flying over the moon!

There's subtle moment that reveals a vital plot point. After Regan has been abducted, he is talking about his wife. Obviously the man is in shock and grieving, as there's little hope she will ever come back alive. So, his zombielike responses would be natural. However, while he speaks, he switched his wedding ring from his left hand to his right. It's a visual clue that something about him has been reversed or tampered with. Again, the direction in this ep is especially nice.

UFO - Mindbender

or, 'Banditos on the Moon!'

If there's a word that can't describe this episode, it's 'meh'*.

Trying the sunspot trick again, a UFO makes a run on Moonbase but explodes four miles out. The debris is pored over for an explanation, but it yields no clues...only an interesting bit of crystal one of the astronauts brings back, thinking it's a natural rock formation. Soon the man, Lt. Conroy, is hallucinating that he's in old Mexico fending off banditos, which he imagines the base personnel to be. The situation ends with Conroy and another man dead.

Back on Earth not long after, another agent goes berzerk when he thinks SHADO HQ has been overtaken by aliens. He had handled the Conroy's belongings, including the rock. He too ends up shot.

Straker is at a loss for an answer. It doesn't help that he's already got general Henderson on his back for a report he'd promised to write, without which Henderson's job is on the line. It's really too much to take, he shouldn't have to! In fact, he doesn't! Both men escalate a confrontation until Straker is ready to take the scene to blows -

– at which the director yells “CUT!” Grant Taylor, playing Henderson, is all smiles. What are we watching? It's the filming of an episode of UFO! This is the point at which Ed Straker goes off the deep end, and the script goes with him. That's right, Ed handled the rock.

What follows is a wonderful bit of heavy meta storytelling. Now Straker, whose cover is as at he head of a movie studio while in reality leading a secret organization to fend of alien marauders, suddenly finds that his life is nothing more than the fiction of a popular TV series.

In a turn to make your head woozy, we're now seeing the sets of UFO as it is seen by the people who actually make the show – we see the Moonbase Command Center and the plywood that supports it, and the lights, and the cameras, and the fact that it is a doorway away from the Earthbound HQ and the Skydiver set...We see Harlington/Straker studios is really Pinewood, and we see that the actors who play roles in UFO are...well, actors who play roles on UFO. Only Ed Straker is confused, except his name isn't Ed Straker. Straker is in his office and isn't seeing anyone.

I've seen meta done by any number of talented writers and directors. It's often at pains to be clever and ends up straining my suspension of disbelief. Mindbender doesn't try to draw the audience into the trick, we're either there or we aren't. It works. It's also a refreshing change of pace for the series, totally unexpected, and credibly drawn. The important trick is that it isn't just a gimmick but flows organically with Straker's character.

With Conroy, we learn that he was attempting to write a bit of fiction set in the Old West before his obsession became flesh. The next man imagined an alien threat, as well he might belonging to SHADO. Straker is pushed over the edge by the stresses of his double life. Se head of SHADO he has to deal with a hundred emergencies at once from bureaucracy to an inexplicable outbreak of madness like an infection that's getting his people killed by the dozen. At the same time, he's got to maintain his stance as head of the studio, dealing with such infuriating, time-wasting rubbish as ego-maniacal stars trying to hijack their own vehicles.

If the obsessions and anxieties of the affected inform their hallucinations, then it's telling that Straker now believes he may actually be actor Howard Byrne. It was Byrne who came to him that day demanding full script approval for the show he stars in, going over the heads of his producers and threatening blackmail to get his way. Straker's own career with SHADO has been shadowed by persistent allegations that he himself bullies his way into “running the whole show” to satisfy his ego, and that there's no dirty trick he won't stoop to. He's certainly aware of his reputation. Mindbender suggests that it does indeed weigh on him, and that he might even find it a source of pain or regret in spite of his outward nonchalance. It's dramatic depth, but there's sly with as well – the shot in which the real Byrne suddenly appears to be Straker's stunt double makes open sport of the wig Ed Bishop wears in the role!

To be sure, there's humor here, without becoming comedy. The best example is the histrionic p[performance of Grant Taylor, first as Henderson and then as Grant playing Henderson. He goes over the top in his blowup in Straker's office, going as far as braying like a sheep, and then the scene is polayed over and over again as the scene is rehearsed and filmed. It's a brilliant bit that turns from pathos to humor to something more nuanced as Grant tones it down his tone to Straker's (Byrne's) sudden fever pitch. So too does the dialog echo the conundrum: “let's get back to realities”, implores a Henderson who is no longer Henderson., and what he means is exactly the opposite. “I'm really seeing you for the first time”, replies a bewildered Byrne/Straker, and the line's meaning is dubious because it's only a line and not the first time he's said it. Mindbender was written by Tony Barwick, whose knowledge of these characters bests everyone's but the actors themselves. It's a subtle, brilliant, witty and thoughtful screenplay.

There is also personal pain. Straker relives the most painful moments of his life, the death of his son and the loss of his wife, played out before him as entertainment...which may be disconcerting to us, the audience, because that's just what they were. Michael Billington as Paul Foster is now Mike the actor who plays Paul Foster predicting that these personal tragedies will be great episodes. It's difficult to watch.

Directorial choices and editing are perfect, including the decisions of when and when not to shift between character POVs. Conroy's delusion is first displayed from his perspective to take us by surprise, then explained to us. The opposite happens with Beaver, to cement our objective understanding of the situation. When Straker goes gonzo, we go with him all the way.

The best adjective I can apply is 'rewarding'. That's what this felt like, a solid payoff for getting to know the characters (Henderson as well, not just Straker), and for investing in the series. This might bet eh single best episode it has to offer.

I give it 10 sheep. *MEEHHHH! MEEEHH-H-H-H-H!

Thoughts...

If only the episode were longer, it would have been a joy to see Dr. Jackson have to deal with Straker under the stone's influence. It's already jampacked as it is.

Steven Berkoff appears again as an Interceptor pilot. This time he's been granted a name, Captain Steve Minto. The part amounts to even less than it did last time, but it's still nice to see him.

So, the aliens are not above sacrificing their pilots as pawns. This was a suicide mission to wreak havoc with SHADO.

I saw the movie Saturn 3 this past week, and saw on IMDb that Ed Bisshop was in it. I failed to notice, and am not sure just who he was. He didn't get a screen credit.

Ah, some wall art that isn't painfully '60s! I like the b&w cityscape. It has the contrasts of pen and ink but with a flowing watercolor texture. That's the kind of look I aspire to in pencil.