Rogue One

The movie is full of drop-your-popcorn chase scenes and cheer-inducing fight sequences, but there’s also a distinct darkness to Rogue One: It makes The Empire Strikes Back look like Return of the Jedi.

Read the full rev    iew on Vegas Seven...

Jupiter Ascending

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a pre-teen girl who was just coming out of her Disney Princess phase was forced to watch Flash Gordon, Brazil, Dune, Predator and a dash of Scientology mythos and then regurgitate them all into one mega-budget mess o' sci-fi nonsense?

Yeah, i haven't either but, if such a thing were to happen, the result would be Jupiter Ascending. Yet another film that proves that you can have plenty of money, talent and creativity and still produce absolute shit. Apparently due to some kind of studio shuffle, the Wachowskis made Jupiter Ascending with a big budget and little oversight--something that will not happen again, not after this. Well, and Cloud Atlas. And Speed Racer.

She does this falling and screaming thing at least a dozen times....

Here we have the perennially serviceable Mila Kunis as Jupiter, a young Russian immigrant cleaning lady who is actually the Queen of the Universe. No, fucking really.

This film is art-directed to the point of paralysis, but they gave someone 

with gold-leaf bathroom walls the kind of cheap white plastic toilet seat you get for $15 at Lowe's.

So, we open with our heroine's Cinderella drudgery, breaking into a Hallmark Channel romance-style flashback of her parents, punctuated by what might be mobsters or aliens or government agents or rival astronomers killing dad. (This, like many things in the film, is never quite explained.) Back to the present, it seems Jupiter's brother has talked her into donating her eggs for cash and giving him most of the money, because apparently cleaning other people's piss and/or shit isn't submissive and degrading enough. She bops on down to the clinic, but while she is unconscious, spread-eagled and having her ladyparts  probed (because helpless and because female), suddenly the doctors turn into weird aliens and announce that they're going to kill her.

Fortunately, Channing Tatum shows up on rocket skates to rescue her--a phrase that appears in the Jupiter Ascending script at least a dozen times. Yeah, there's some bullshit about how she is the genetic duplicate of some previous Queen of the House of Abraxas and, thus, owner of the Earth, but that's not really what this movie is about. What this movie is really about is Jupiter gets kidnapped by bad aliens in flashy outfits/falls through some really great computer animation/is rescued by Dogboy.
 

Yeah.  Charming Potato is a good-guy super-soldier space mercenary who's also part dog or wolf or something. Wait a second... half-man, half-dog in space? I know this one!

Anyway, we are treated to the first of many chase scenes. Jupiter Ascending is just over 2 hours--45 minutes of expository dialogue, 45 minutes of space-chase-fight scenes, 10 minutes of admiring Jupiter's costume changes, 10 minutes of CGI landscape beauty shots, 5 minutes of closeups of cool shit and 5 minutes of character development and plot.

Shitty hometown you don't want to go to, lame relatives you never see...

Our chief villain of the House of Abrasax is played by Eddie Redmayne in Cleopatra/Captain Hook drag, delivering all of his dialogue in a whisper that's supposed to be menacing but sounds more like his tonsils are sore from gobbling crystal meth and cock for 48 straight hours. It's perhaps the greatest post-Academy Award comedown since Halle Berry in Catwoman.

...consider this penance for stealing Michael Keaton's Oscar, you twee bastard.

He sends assorted creepy aliens and fabulously attired mercenary squads after Jupiter, thus adding to the legion of intricately designed and utterly unwritten characters that pass through Jupiter Ascending. It's like the filmmakers spent two weeks creating individual hairdos and tattoos for each one, but didn't even bother to give any of them a name.

Wait, Sean Bean? You're here too? Dang.

So after Dogboy stands around shirtless in a field of wildflowers for a good ten minutes--and you thought i was exaggerating the pre-teen Disney princess angle--Jupiter gets hauled off to the first of a number of space palaces, gets a new outfit and listens to some exposition from her "sister"--or is it "daughter," i dunno. We're basically just here for the pretty dresses and to watch this chick Bathory-bathe in the life force of humans and come out young. And get an ass shot.

Dogboy shows up and rescues Jupiter, she asks for a change of costume. (This is literally the only initiative we will seen taken or order we will seen given by the alleged Queen of the Universe.) Then we go into the terrible, obvious Brazil ripoff where we spend 10 minutes watching Jupiter and Dogboy follow some Space Twink around to various space bureaucracies to do the paperwork to establish her Earth rights. The tone is completely different than the rest of the film and it's painfully unfunny. But the worst part is this...

That's right. Terry Gilliam cameo. Terry Gilliam has to beg to get 1/100th of the budget wasted on derivative shitshows like Jupiter Ascending and is usually refused even that. But here he is, contributing to the stealing of his own schtick....

But, wait! Kidnapped again! This time she is whisked off to meet Prince Charming, who lays some crap on her about how he's a good guy and she can help him blah blah blah... it hasn't taken long for the space lords to figure out that it's pretty easy to handle the Queen of the Universe: Give her a pretty new dress, use a bunch of big words, light some candles and she'll agree to whatever you say.

Don't get me wrong. I am a full believer in the power of a good frock. But this is ridiculous. So, Prince Charming--who is actually evil--wants to marry the Queen of the Universe and Dogboy must stop the wedding... after we've had a good, long look at the gown, hair and makeup. Just like a hundred fairytales including Flash Gordon. I mean, it is such a direct Flash Gordon jack that someone should sue...

Dogboy takes Jupiter back home, only to find that the Cock Whisperer has kidnapped her (stereotypical) family, so she is immediately carried off again with Dogboy again in hot pursuit on rocket skates. Blah blah, sign over the rights the the Universe or I kill your family blah blah....

 You must pay the rent! 

I can't pay the rent! 

You must pay the rent! 

Seriously, i just want him to tie her to some train tracks already....

Dogboy to the rescue!

(Again.)

At the end, Jupiter doesn't want to be Queen of the Universe. No, she just wants to go back to Earth and scrub toilets and live with a family who doesn't appreciate her. This sort of "the only true happiness a woman can know is by having her entire identity wrapped up in her family" bullshit barely got by in the fifties: Now it's just ridiculous. Not even the endings of Mahogany and Made in Paris involved this level of abandonment of achievement for a life of domesticity.

Even more ridiculous when you compare it with a movie like Bound, where the women flipped everyone's script and came out on top. I dunno what happened with the Warchowskis, but Larry and Andy gave us The Matrix's Trinity, who was fierce and invincible and saved Keanu's punk ass countless times, as well as the aforementioned killer team of Corky and Violet.  Lana and Lilly give us Jupiter, who basically just changes outfits and waits for Dogboy to turn up and help her out of whatever mess she has wandered blindly into.They have every right to their own vision of femininity, i just wished they'd kept it a little more kickass...

The Manitou

The Manitou was one of the wave of occult horror flicks during the 70s--this time with some of that fashionable Native American culture and a few of those newfangled computers thrown in. Other than that, it's just your standard flick about a chick with a tumor on her back that has an undead Native American medicine man living in it.

Wot? I know--weird even by the addled standards of the Quaalude decade...

Our star is Tony Curtis, slumming--if you can call anything Tony Curtis does slumming, he always just seemed happy and bemused to be there, glad you see you, thank for the check--plays a two-bit psychic who hustles old ladies (so many Tony Curtis roles involve the words "two-bit" and "hustle")...

C'mon, sweetheart, let's go. I gotta get this schmatte back to Williams Costume by five
or I pay for another day's rental.

He's got a sweet San Fran bachelor pad with an awesome stereo, drinks beer out of a wineglass and knows lots of babes. Among said babes is his ex, played by Susan Strasberg with a pussycat bow at her neck and a fetus on her back. (Yes, Susan, your father was a guru of the American theatre, you fucked Richard Burton and Warren Beatty, you hung out with Marilyn Monroe, but here you are in The Manitou. And just wait until the topless laser scene...)

Strasberg shows up on his doorstep and they wander around the various tourist locales of San Francisco, as they always do in movies set there--everyone always goes to Fisherman's Wharf and the steep hills. No one ever goes to a Kwik-E-Mart. She tells him about this tumor she's got and Curtis is all, "Oh, that's too bad. But it's on your back, right? Not on your front? Like, not your lower front? Okay then." I mean, I was in New York during 9-11 and i know what fucking in the face of death is like but I'd consider "removal of a large tumor tomorrow" more of a "let's cuddle" occasion.

So, they bang, and as Strasberg and her tumor sleep, she mutters, "Panna witchy salatoo." It is not the last time we will hear this nonsense phrase repeated portentously. Nay, it will be repeated over and over until one longs for the simplicity of a "Klaatu barada nikto!" or "Pazuzu!"

So, they X-ray the tumor and the mop-topped and pastel-coated doctor declares, "They are sure that the tumor on her neck is actually a fetus." I cannot think I of something I would less want to hear from a medical professional. I' think I'd rather hear "malignant" than "monster fetus."

Of course, Tony Curtis rolls with this as he rolls with everything in The Manitou (or anywhere else) and goes to rip off another old lady. (Curtis would go on to remain unphased by the weird and the undead in Sextette.) However, when old lady goes full Linda Blair in the middle of a tarot reading, levitates and chants "Panna witchy salatoo," he finally freaks out. Bitch's monster baby tumor is fucking with my livelihood!

So he goes back and tells the doctor all about "Panna witchy salatoo"  and the doctor is like, "Whatever" and messes with his giant mainframe computer some more before stomping off to operate to remove said tumor. I'm waiting for some right-wing politician to run in and stop him because Unborn Undead Native American Mutant Demon Parasites have a right to be born, even in the case of threatening the life of the mother and jeopardizing all the lives and souls on Earth. But i'm getting ahead of myself in the story...

Holy diver, Batman!

Anyway, the doctors try to X-ray the tumor, Strasberg has seizures and speaks in "possessed voice." They try to cut it off, the surgeon slits his wrist. They try to laser it off, the laser goes nuts like a Spinal Tap stage prop gone wrong. So Tony Curtis flounces off to to find Stella Stevens, who is slathered in self-tanner to the edge of blackface and is apparently some kind of California psychic buddy of his.

They have a seance with a Gabor sister, some weird shit goes down with heads rising up out of the table and people speaking in tongues and freaky wind (But isn't there always freaky wind?) Stella's stoner hubby finds a passage in a book that seems to mention the human-tumor phenomena as well as the "panna witchy salatoo" and the gang is off to find the author...

Burgess Meredith! Yes! You loved his kung fu battle in Foul Play and leading motherfuckers straight to hell in Torture Garden, so here he is! The Scooby Gang asks for his help, he yadda yaddas about some more old books. Then they go up in his attic, which is a mere staircase above his paneling n' shag, ferns n' pre-Columbia art living room, but shrouded in yard-square cobwebs and inches of dust because, y'know, attic.

Burgess Meredith tells them that what they need is a non-parasitical undead Native American shaman to battle the Native American shaman that is attempting to resurrect himself. Tony Curtis hustles and bribes (via a deus ex machina "aunt" who has $100,000 to donate to the little Indian kids or whatever because Tony Curtis knows motherfuckers don't do shit for free). In the meantime, the tumor has finally given birth to itself--although it's a dwarf thank to the goddamn X-rays, which means it looks kind of like Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages drag.

Tonight, the role of the undead medicine man will be played by Glen Danzig...

So Tony Curtis and Live Shaman do battle with Undead Shaman. There's ice storms and computer malfunctions and random gore. Little Undead Shaman seems rather arbitrary in his attacks--he might use mind control to force a doctor to cut himself with a scalpel, or it might somehow create a giant lizard to chew on your hand, he might throw a possessed old lady at your or he might just rip your skin off. But, well, we already understand that logic isn't part of the The Manitou's universe. Panna witchy salatoo. Anahl nathrak, uthvas bethud, do cheol dienve...

Anyway, The Manitou is what happens when no one's really paying attention, just throwing casting options and plot points against the wall like so much chimp scat and seeing what sticks. But that's what makes it fun to watch: If you can't come up with good snark for The Manitou, no one can help you....

The Donny & Marie Star Wars.... Special?

The Star Wars Holiday Special is considered by many to be the Holy Grail of crappy Star Wars kitsch and, oh, it is not. That honor belongs to the Star Wars episode of Donny & Marie. It makes the Holiday Special look like it was scripted by Billy Wilder and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Unsurprisingly, we open with Marie in Leia drag and Donny Skywalker (in white, stack-heel go-go boots) boogieing through their first excruciating musical number in front of a bunch of glitter-covered risers. R2-D2 and C3-PO wander in, along with Chewbacca and Darth Vader because the producers apparently had a platinum account at Western Costume.

But then things start to get (really) weird: Redd Foxx meanders past a primitive green screen as “Obi Ben Okefenokee,” while Paul Lynde briefly turns up to whine and wave his hands in the air as the Grand Moff Tarkin. But the oddest guest star is a visibly, erm, out of it Kris Kristofferson, wearing aviator shades and leaning against a cardboard rocket ship like it’s the only thing that’s holding him up. He lurches through a half-assed disco cover of “I Want to Take You Higher” (Sure you do, Kris, sure you do.), then a half-dozen Stormtroopers show up, accompanied by a slew of chorus girls in white unitards and motorcycle helmets for an awkward dance routine to Up With People-like renditions of “Get Ready” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” The whole experience takes about thirteen minutes: Ten to watch and three to try to figure out what the hell you just saw.

The Return of Dr. X.

Every actor has something on the resume they're not exactly proud of. Elizabeth Taylor has Butterfield 8, Bette Davis has Beyond the Forest, Christopher Lee and Nicholas Cage have a few of their own. Hey, we've all taken a bad gig while struggling, or did it for the paycheck because we wanted a vacation or a dinosaur skull or a backyard water park. But there are some actors we consider beyond such things....

... like you'd never think Humphrey Bogart played a zombie or a mad scientist or a zombie mad scientist. But, well, you've never seen The Return of Dr. X. No relation to Dr. X.--it's not a sequel--or to The Revenge of Dr. X., which was written by Ed Wood and is only marginally worse.

So the upshot is that this really annoying intrepid reporter type--played by Wayne Morris as an annoying goofball dork with highwater pants and his fedora flipped up like a hayseed--is trying to interview a famous actress. You can tell she's a famous actress because she lives  in a luxury hotel, wears satin negligees and has a pet monkey and a indiscriminately foreign accent. She is played by Lya Lys, better known from her role in Bunuel's L'Age d'Or. Hey, surrealist manifestos don't pay the bills, aight?

However, when Intrepid Reporter gets to her suite, Famous Actress is dead. Stabbed. Intrepid Reporter prints the story that Famous Actress is dead. Doesn't tell the hotel manager, doesn't call the cops, just leaves the body and informs the authorities with a front-page headline. Of course, Famous Actress turns up, quite pale but very much alive and threatening to sue. But then another body drained of a rare blood type--the same as Famous Actress--turns up and Intrepid Reporter busts into the hospital where he makes friends with Random Doctor.

And just when Random Doctor sends off Intrepid Reporter with the orders to "come back when you sober up" (But he's not drunk; he's just stupid.), Random Doctor is promptly summoned to another hotel room with a dead body, this time "a professional donor," also of the same rare blood type. 

Another blood spot is found at the crime scene, but "It's not... human." Which leads Intrepid Reporter to figure it must be a -- "Gorilla murder... Aw, Mike, if you can figure that one out we'll have a front-page spread on every newspaper in the country for weeks!" (Gorilla murder, Donald Trump candidacy--tomato, tomahto, same difference.) But it's not gorilla, or even animal, so Random Doctor goes to visit a hematologist colleague of his, Dr. Flake. It is here he meets Humphrey Bogart as Kang, apparently Dr, Flake's Renfield figure.

Dr. Flake gives Random Doctor the brush-off and he leaves. Shortly thereafter, Famous Actress arrives, makeup gun apparently set on Three-Day Drunk Elvira, begs Dr. Flake and Kang for help and passes out. All of this is witnessed through a window by Intrepid Reporter.

Rosemary Lane pops up as Joan, Intrepid Reporter's girlfriend who is only present because apparently she's some kind of Uber. Also to prevent us from assuming the obvious about Intrepid Reporter and Random Doctor. (She doesn't and, yes, we've already assumed it about Flake and Kang as well.)

I didn't know Dave Vanian's dad was a butler but, really, it makes perfect sense.

Neither of these men are at all creepy. Which is why Famous Actress still has them for her doctors. And probably why Famous Actress winds up dead. Again. For real this time.

So, yadda yadda yadda, it turns out that Flake is doing experiments raising rabbits and humans from the dead. Among his experiments: Kang, who is actually the feared Dr. X. who was "that skunk who wanted to see how long babies could go without eatin'" and subsequently got the chair. There's some poking around in funeral homes and graveyards and they finally go back to see Dr. Flake who is all like "Hell, yeah, I brought an electrocuted baby murderer back from the dead and am now draining human blood to keep him alive. What?" Of course then Kang reappears and demands the vampire rolodex of people with the magic blood type he needs.  Of course one of them is Joan the Uber-Beard. And off we go...

Bear in mind that this film was released in 1939, long cited as the greatest year in cinema history. The year of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, The Women, Destry Rides Again, Laughton's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dark Victory ... and The Return of Dr. X. Ultimately, The Return of Dr. X. is an unremarkable C-grade horror movie that's not particularly horrifying at all. It's sole distinction is the slumming appearance as a zombie mad scientist sorta vampire from one of the most respected and iconic stars of all time.

 

* Also, i found out in the credits that it's apparently Dr. Flegg and his assistant Quesne. Whatever.
I'm sticking with Flake and Kang.