Firewalker (1986)

Letter openers are not what they used to be.  Today when you buy one or are “gifted” one by some benevolent corporate entity or what have you, you get a rounded off piece of plastic with a blade surrounded by more plastic.  For your protection.  Is it safe to use?  You bet, but it’s also damned boring to look at, and it has no sense of adventure to it.  Letter openers used to look like daggers.  The looked like something some magnificent bastard in a tailored suit would brandish at you from behind a three-foot-wide oak desk.  As I was growing up, we had several of these faux death implements around my house, one of which resembled the one discovered in J. Lee Thompson’s Firewalker.  It was curved, had an ornate (yet still chintzy) scabbard, everything but the jewel in the butt of the hilt.  Nobody that I know of was ever hurt by it, but it sure looked like it could do some damage, and it was fun to pretend you were a pirate or somesuch while running around with it.  Was this unsafe for a child to play with like it was a toy?  You bet, but it sure as shit wasn’t boring.

Max Donigan (Chuck Norris) and Leo Porter (Louis Gossett, Jr.) are two pro-am treasure hunters who have apparently never actually found any treasure but have found plenty of trouble.  Following their latest near-death experience, the guys are approached by the lovely Patricia Goodwin (Melody Anderson) to aid her in finding a hoard of Aztec/Mayan gold.  Meanwhile, El Coyote (Sonny Landham) is chasing after the team for the aforementioned sacrificial dagger, and he’s not above using magic to get it.

The Cannon Group produced Firewalker based on two criteria: the popularity of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s Indiana Jones movies and the popularity of Norris, one of the studio’s golden goose stars (alongside Charles Bronson).  Like the big budget Paramount pictures, this is an adventure with a sense of humor (whether or not that humor works is entirely up to you; it was pretty flat for me), but it’s also tonally light (despite the sacrificial aspects and an attempted rape) to the point that it threatens to float away if even a mild wind should pass through wherever it is playing.  This is rather against type for Norris who had been a monosyllabic ass-kicker, taking down villains and winning the Vietnam War for America for a long time (and before stuff like Sidekicks and Top Dog).  Unlike the Harrison Ford character (who does stumble into situations bigger than himself quite often but essentially comes from a place of expertise that goes beyond his physical skills/struggles [he is a professor of archaeology after all]; Jones understands the history and meaning behind the artifacts he pursues), Max comes off as simply gormless.  He loves to spin yarns about the escapades he and Leo have gotten into and out of (even one involving Bigfoot; why couldn’t we get that movie?), but they feel capricious more than anything else.  Max (and by extension Leo) don’t have a plan, and they don’t really have any specialized knowledge that distinguishes them as remarkable.  They’re just like two college buddies who become constantly and unwittingly ensconced in wild goings on over an extended weekend of drinking.  Thus, they don’t really stand out as anything other than schlubs (Max’s martial arts skills notwithstanding).

The relationship between Leo and Max is an interesting one.  From the film’s outset, we’re lead to believe two things:  one, that they will be opposites in characterization (like The Odd Couple but in an adventure milieu), and two, that they will be equals.  Neither of these proves true.  Although the men bicker and argue over the situations they are in, I believe it’s fair to say that both got themselves screwed equally, so neither has any leg to stand on with regards to laying the blame at the other one’s feet.  Once they get to relaxing, they are incredibly similar as well.  Both find the same dumb things funny.  Both are more than happy to start and/or end a (obligatory) bar brawl.  Both have no clue what they’re doing and simply luck upon any positive things that happen in their lives.  Aside from having someone to talk to in public, they could easily be the same person.  

To the second point, Max is (unsurprisingly) the focus of the film’s story, and he is the alpha of the duo, so to speak.  Leo is more than content to follow Max around like a dog and do whatever Max wants to do.  He even admits as much to Patricia at one point.  Max gets to save everyone in the film and play the hero.  In fact, not only does he have to rescue Patricia, but he also has to save Leo’s bacon more than once.  Max catches Patricia’s eye right off the bat, and their romance is the only one in the film.  Leo never has a chance with her or any woman in the movie, despite the possibilities for some great scenes inherent in a triangular relationship (which this film doesn’t have).  As it happens, Leo is basically Max’s valet.  Everything he does is to support his white pal/master.   Combined with the portrayals of every other non-white and/or non-American character in the film, it paints a rather clear, mildly racist picture.  For example, the sadistic General (Richard Lee-Sung) is so cliché, he speaks in clichés (“So, gentlemen, we meet again”).  The Native American, Tall Eagle (Will Sampson), who helps the trio out, is the classic old shaman/chieftain who abides by the traditions of his people but has quirky, modern sensibilities (“I don’t know how Tonto did it”).  Central American soldiers drink while on duty and are insane with lust at the sight of a woman.  Intriguingly, Max’s old pal Corky (John Rhys-Davies) is white and a man of some power, but he is also an amalgam of Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnahan from Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King and Kurtz from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (read: basically power hungry and more than slightly insane).  So, he is also an “other” from Max, but he is also what Max could easily become and soon.  That this isn’t explored more fully in the narrative is a failing, but I think it is also beside the point of the story.  However, coming as all of this does from the long tradition of pulp adventure stories, none of it comes off as particularly offensive, particularly when viewed in that light.  That doesn’t automatically make these facets palatable, but it does make them a bit more acceptable for the duration of the movie.

The Blu-ray from Olive Films presents the film in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and the detail in the image is clear as a bell, accentuating Thompson’s mobile camerawork throughout (though it also needs mentioning that editor Richard Marx [I believe no relation to the singer/songwriter, but you never know] appears to either not know quite how to match many of these shots with one another or was given a jumble of disparate shots without the coverage to adequately tie them together; the world may never know).  The colors in the film are also very nicely displayed on the disc and the two combined make for a darn fine-looking visual package.  The HD 2.0 audio does an acceptable job mixing the dialogue, effects, and score (though the dialogue is less prominent than other elements on rare occasions, just not enough to ruin anything, and you’re likely not watching Firewalker for its dialogue, regardless.  The disc has no special features.     

MVT:  Despite the issues with their onscreen relationship, Norris and Gossett do have charm, and the pair have a certain chemistry together that works well enough for them.

Make or Break:  There’s a scene near the end that actually has some nice, tense action, and it involves one of my favorite action/adventure sights: people hanging over some perilous abyss/deathtrap/firestorm/anything.  So there’s that.

Score:  6.25/10

The Colossus of New York (1958)

Say what you will about the 1950s (and I know a lot of folks today love to bemoan how repressed and repressive it was underneath a false veneer of happiness; I personally love watching films from that time because the filmmakers had to be extremely sneaky and creative in order to discuss more subversive/unpopular topics), but that era had a tremendous amount of style to burn.  The future was still being sold as a predominantly positive thing back then, with everyone soon to receive their own personal jet packs and live in utopian cities comprised of fully automated houses that would take care of people’s every need and whim (and have a look at Tex Avery’s World of Tomorrow cartoons for some great parodying of notions like these, even though I believe they may have been produced in the Forties).  The future was sculpted in glass and metal, and it was a glorious interweaving of smooth curves and jagged angles.  It felt like the future should feel.  Fast forward to today, where the future lives.  It is still carved largely from metal and glass, but no one is buying its promises any longer.  People have become cynical to the point that no matter how good looking the future may be on a surface level, it’s not to be trusted.  There is an undercurrent of grime that just makes it all feel ugly and worthless, no matter how attractively designed.  We’re not encouraged to think about a positive future anymore, and when we do, we’re deemed naïve, unrealistic.  I know this because it has happened to me.  Further, I’ve become the cynic I used to think was holding me back.  I tend to criticize the negatives before I laud the positives.  Despite this, there is an ember of hope that still burns within me.  The odds on it being fanned into a flame are slim (there’s that cynic again), but it exists, and it is this sliver of light on which Eugene Lourie’s The Colossus of New York turns, even while journeying to some dark places.

Dr. Jeremy Spensser (Ross Martin) applauds his brother Henry’s (John Baragrey) innovations in automation, while he himself is gearing up (no pun intended) to accept a Peace Prize (I don’t recall the actual name “Nobel” being bandied about) for his work in fighting world hunger.  After Jeremy is killed in an accident, his neurosurgeon father, William (Otto Kruger), suddenly has a stroke of genius(-ish): with Henry’s assistance, he transplants Jeremy’s brain into a robot body.  Meanwhile, Henry starts to make time with Jeremy’s widow(-ish), Ann (Mala Powers), and surely all of this will work out splendidly, right?

When people think of Science Fiction from the 50s, most automatically conjure films of the Atom Age Monster ilk like Them! and The Deadly Mantis or Space Adventure films like Fantastic Planet and Queen of Outer Space.  But there were more toned down, slightly grittier movies to be found as well, and The Colossus of New York is one of those.  The film doesn’t fit snugly into a single category, and if anything it may be described as a Robot Gothic Melodrama.  It largely takes place at the Spensser family manse, and it’s all about the secrets and twisted inter-relationships among a family that appears happy so long as everything is going along smoothly (read: “a false veneer of happiness”) .  The chief antagonist is patriarch William.  He is obsessed with his son Jeremy and the idea of continuing his work to the point of monomania.  In contrast is Henry, who, even though he is well-regarded in his field and is essential to William’s scheme, is judged as the lesser brother by his father.  Henry’s pursuit of Ann, while a genuine expression of long held emotions, has an air of bitter revenge to it as well.  What better way to get back at his dismissive father than by taking something that meant so much to his favored sibling?  Ann and son, Billy (Charles Herbert, whom you’ll recognize from that same year’s The Fly), are the emotional lynchpin of the film, although even in that respect, the filmmakers are more concerned with the men of the family.  The relationship between the Colossus and Billy is far more important to the film and its characters than the relationship between Ann and pretty much everybody, except in how that motivates the deranged actions of the robot.  Billy is the Spensser male untouched by madness or poor decision-making skills.  He, above them all, recognizes good from evil instantly, and he doesn’t allow appearances to deceive him (he does, after all, trust a giant, metal man with a creepy voice within moments of meeting him).  It’s Billy who most deserves to be saved from this family, and it’s he who can deliver salvation to them (especially his dad), because he’s innocent (cynics might argue that he’s naïve).

The film also touches on ideas of identity, and it does so in several interesting ways.  The first and most obvious deals with the concept of the relationship between the mind and the physical, human body.  This is even brought up directly in a conversation between William and family friend John Carrington (Robert Hutton).  William scoffs at John’s idea that a person’s soul is the synthesis between their body and mind.  William believes that a person’s mind can exist and continue on without a flesh-and-blood body.  John espouses that the human mind removed from the human body is removed from humanity.  And of course, he is ultimately proved correct.  Once Jeremy’s brain is encased in the Colossus’ body, it’s a swift progression into inhumanity and insanity.  This is displayed in the Colossus’ visual perception and communication ability.  When he is first activated, Lourie provides the audience with shots from the robot’s perspective.  The screen is filled with static and television scan lines.  He is (and we are) instantly lost to the real world (of the film), a watcher from within his new body.  His voice, likewise, is unearthly.  It warbles and crackles, and many times it elevates into piercing screams that can unsettle even the hardiest of wills.  His face is inexpressive, and his voice is frightening.  Unable to articulate his “soul,” Jeremy’s mind descends into madness that much quicker.  There is a theory that the process of transforming Jeremy into a cyborg is flawed and may, in fact, have caused his derangement.  The implication is that, because this new body was made by men and not by nature/God/what have you, it is even more imperfect, more distant from the natural world, and therefore more impersonal/evil.  Nevertheless, this same detachment from humanity grants Jeremy a sense of ESP, as well as the power to (mechanically) hypnotize mere human minds.  With the granting of these new, formidable powers comes the classic corruption we’re perennially warned about, yet only the physically weakest of the characters is powerful enough to triumph in this spiritual conflict.

The Blu-ray of The Colossus of New York from Olive Films is pretty darned nice, despite its lack of extras.  The picture quality is exquisite, with deep pools of black accentuating the Noir-esque lighting and compositions.  The Mono audio is enhanced for DTS-HD, and it really brings out the sound effects as well as Van Cleave’s spare, stirring piano score.  I think it would be very difficult to top this release in the presentation department.  Check it out.

MVT:  The Colossus is one of those iconic, yet still somehow rarely spoken of monstrous creations that just works, especially for its budget constraints.  Charles Gemora and Ralph Jester’s design elegantly gives the character a sense of massive power without showing you every last rivet.

Make or Break:  You can see some influence of this film on Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop in the scene where the Colossus first awakens, and it’s an astonishing scene that feels offbeat for its time.  If the Dutch director never saw this film, I would be surprised, but then again, great minds do think alike.  Or so I’m told.

Score:  6.75/10        

Caveman (1981)

When I first considered reviewing Carl Gottlieb’s (co-screenwriter of JAWS) Caveman, I immediately thought of it in terms of comparisons to Eddie Cline and Buster Keaton’s Three Ages with the latter’s Stone Age segment.  I also assumed that the 1923 film was the earliest cinematic depiction of cavemen in comedic fashion (however, cavemen have been beating up dinosaurs in an adventurous vein on screen going, to my knowledge, as far back as 1912 in Man’s Genesis).  To absolutely no one’s surprise, I was wrong, and (to the best information my five minutes of research could cull) the earliest funny caveman movie was Charlie Chaplin’s 1914 short His Prehistoric Past (although it is feasible to disqualify it from this particular discussion, because it’s a short film [the same could be argued about the Keaton film, since that one is three short films cut together, but I digress], and because it’s not a straight up caveman film [I’ll let you spoil the particulars on this hundred-and-one year old film for yourself]).  Still, both of those films and Caveman (and the vast majority of prehistoric films) deal with a man standing up to a strong, evil tribal leader/rival in order to win the hand of the woman he loves (whether or not he realizes who that is).  To my mind, the reason this plot is so pervasive is because it is simple and primal.  It deals with the will to survive/dominate one’s world, and what could play to that better than killing giant beasts and taking the person you desire sexually?  Naturally, unlike something such as Don Chaffey’s One Million Years B.C. (which, of course, gave us arguably the world’s most famous fur bikini), Gottlieb’s film has to frustrate our protagonist Atouk (the unlikely, but brilliantly cast when you think about it, Ringo Starr) in comedic ways, even when his life is threatened.  But the basic themes are present, and they work well (as they work well in most of the subgenre just for being what they are).

Atouk is the runt of a clan ruled by Tonda (the late John Matuszak), and he desires Tonda’s voluptuous woman Lana (Starr’s real life spouse Barbara Bach, who proves here that even cavewomen knew how to crimp hair).  However, after being kicked out of the clan on a trumped up gross incompetence accusation, Atouk and friend Lar (Dennis Quaid), meet up with Tala (Shelley Long) and her blind friend, the elderly Gog (Jack Gilford, who, unsurprisingly threatens to steal the entire movie at times).  But while Tala has eyes for Atouk, Atouk still pines for Lana and hatches schemes to take her away from Tonda.

Caveman is one of those movies that exemplifies just exactly how far a PG rating could be stretched back in the early Eighties.  There is cleavage and fur-clad bums thither and yon.  There is toilet humor galore, including, but not limited to, an explosive fart gag, a fart in the face gag, and (most famously) a scene where characters literally dig through a pile of dinosaur shit.  Atouk gets goosed and molested by a sentient plant.  A dinosaur gets its genitals stimulated.  Perhaps most startling, our hero basically Rufies his desired and tries to get in her loins while she’s passed out.  Yet, this is handled so innocently, so desperately on the part of Atouk/Starr that it doesn’t play as offensively as it could have in another context.  Atouk genuinely has feelings for Lana (however wrongheaded they may be), and he has a sense of wide-eyed reverence for her (he offers her fruit he has squirreled away, while the rest of the tribe has failed to “bring home the Bronto”).  That I saw this at such an early age amazes me (well, not really; this would have attracted me just from the Chris Walas designed Abominable Snowman [played by Richard Moll] and David Allen’s stop motion dinosaurs [an obsession I’ve had since 1933’s King Kong and set in stone by The Valley of Gwangi, a film my uncle claims was made for kids who like to pull the wings off of flies, though I only half agree with that statement]).  That I understood all of it, including the “naughty” bits, is impressive and indicative of just how much can be conveyed through an extremely limited vocabulary (I still like saying “zug zug” from time to time), and pantomime/gestures (a filmic vocabulary created and refined in the silent era by luminaries such as those named in the first paragraph).

The film’s primary theme concerns itself with misfits and the coalition/power built around what many consider to be the dregs of society (yet another in the long, long list of things that I would argue harkens back to Tod Browning’s superlative Freaks).  As previously stated, Atouk is a runt.  Lar, who is good-looking and in relatively good health, is kicked out of the clan for hurting his leg (a wounded hunter-gatherer is a useless hunter-gatherer).  Gog is sightless and old.  Later on, Atouk will meet up with a black man, an Asian man (who, of course, is the only one who can speak fluent English), a little man, a gay couple, and various other throwaways.  Outside of those more clearly defined in their outsider status, the majority of the others in this makeshift tribe are closer in resemblance to Atouk.  They are slight of build, odd, shorter than normal, essentially square pegs.  Just as Atouk is the opposite of Tonda (weak versus strong, short versus tall, Ringo versus handsome, et cetera), Tala is the opposite of Lana.  She is blonde, skinny, small-chested, and quite intelligent (Lana may be intelligent as well, but her unwavering obeisance to Tonda marks her as a sheep, not a shepherd, so to speak).  In cinematic terms, this signifies Tala as “good” and the natural choice to be Atouk’s mate (in a Betty versus Veronica sort of way).  Atouk just needs to have his eyes opened, because even though he accepts these oddballs who have coalesced around him, his desire lies with the popular opinion of what a man should be and should want in a woman (be they cave or otherwise, and rather ironic considering Starr and Bach’s relationship off screen, but this is the movies where there is little difference between what’s “right” and what choices its traditional, underdog protagonist will make).  Atouk doesn’t want to be a misfit (hey, who does?), yet this is the exact thing he must embrace in order to triumph in his prehistoric world.

Caveman was released in America on DVD and Blu-ray via Olive Films, and it’s presented at 1.85:1 ratio.  The color palette of the film was never something that popped off the screen, but its hues look nice here, and the picture quality is as pristine as it can get.  The mono soundtrack is in English only (not that this movie would need much in the way of dubbing or subtitles), and it’s satisfying with every grunt and gaseous expulsion coming through loud and clear, but especially Lalo Schifrin’s jaunty score, which is so catchy, it will resound in your head for days (nay, years) after hearing it.  The disc includes a trailer for the film.

MVT:  I love the film’s light, slightly naughty tone.  You can slip into this film like a comfy pair of old slippers and just enjoy it like a pot of macaroni and cheese.

Make or Break:  The Make for me is the Ice Age scene.  Anyone who has read my reviews knows of my adoration for hirsute monsters, and the Snowman is a great costume.  Plus, the slapstick chase across the ice just works in spades, like something out of a Three Stooges short.  Sold!

Score:  7.5/10