Note that the tagline has been changed from 'killing' to 'doing'
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Another couple of nice posters
British quads for Peter Walker's slasher / giallo styled Schizo and Jess Franco's Count Dracula, complete with Christopher Lee in a move that probably annoyed Hammer.
Note that the tagline has been changed from 'killing' to 'doing'
Note that the tagline has been changed from 'killing' to 'doing'
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Blue Nude
Rocco is an aspiring Italian-born actor and screenwriter, resident in New York, who in the meantime performs whatever hustles he needs to to get by, ranging from stripping to acting in porn films and as an escort, and endeavours to extricate himself from the various tricky situations these tend to get him into with gangster lowlife types.
Though not framed as a mondo, with the only voice-off we hear a vaguely Taxi Driver style one of Rocco's working in his room on the screenplay in which he is the main character, the film actually ends up capturing more of a particular time, place and world than many a comparable documentary might through the presence of several actual porn performers of the time including Wade Nichols, Carter Stevens and Susan McBain; a roughie shoot that results in an accidental piece of quasi-snuff, and lots of actuality shots of 42nd Street type locations. (I say quasi-snuff because, to their credit, the filmmakers avoids the more obvious and sensationalist scenario of a film being made with the intention of murdering its female performer at the climax.)
Another reference point is Sylvester Stallone, a poster of whom as Rocky adorns Rocco's wall, encourgaging us to think of the actor's parallel struggles to bring Rocky to the screen and not so hidden porn past with The Party and Kitty and Stud's / The Italian Stallion.
If Taxi Driver is a film about the relationship between film and real life, Travis Bickle taking inspiration from the heroes of the western film and trying to apply their mythic solutions to the real-world situation of New York circa 1976 with decidedly ironic results, Blue Nude performs a similar function for the relationship between Italian-American actors and filmmakers of the period such as Stallone, De Niro and Scorsese and its own Italian protagononist.
Rocco's voice-off as he works on the screenplay in which he is the protagonist echoes Bickle's reading / writing of his diary serves to suggest that, whilst certainly possessing more self-awareness than Bickle and a fundamentally different attitude of being able to adapt to circumstances, also fails to adequately recognise the difference between his situation as an Italian immigrant and those of his Italian-American models.
A telling exception is Rudolf Valentino, though Rocco's need to identify who Valentino is to his new girlfriend signals that there is a problem here as well. Valentino and the Latin Lover type he represented were, after all, figures from half a century ago. Yet the myth of the American Dream, as promulgated by Hollywood, has endured. (In that it was inspired by the real life case of Chuck Wepner, the almost unknown boxer who went the distance with Muhammad Ali, Rocky provides a partial exception to this rule.)
One difficulty in making sense of all this is that the dubbing of the film into Italian makes it harder to ascertain how far Rocco is actually out of place. We don't know if he is thinking and writing in English rather than Italian, or if his screenplay suffers from translations of the “hill of boots” variety, although a reference to linguistic misunderstanding in the dialogue does sees Rocco correct a fellow immigrant on the distinction between Scorsese and Scozzese.
Rocco's misunderstandings perhaps thus appear more in terms of attitudes and his awareness of the porn demi-monde in particular, as when he wonders about the mixture of milk, whisky and honey he and the other male performer are served – apparently the 1970s equivalent of viagra – and later attacks his colleague, failing to recognise that the man and his new girlfriend are only acting when declaring their affections for one another in the course of the shooting of another film.
Renato Romano / Raf Valenti is credited as executive producer and Giacomo Rossi Stuart as assistant director besides their acting roles.
A sense of continuity with director Luigi Scattini's earlier mondo films is provided by Piero Umiliani's music, with snippets of score (and dialogue) from Sweden Heaven and Hell audible on the audio track. The main theme here, with acoustic guitar, electric piano and commentative lyrics about New York, rather than vocalism and organ, is quite different from most of the composer's other work for Scattini.
Though not framed as a mondo, with the only voice-off we hear a vaguely Taxi Driver style one of Rocco's working in his room on the screenplay in which he is the main character, the film actually ends up capturing more of a particular time, place and world than many a comparable documentary might through the presence of several actual porn performers of the time including Wade Nichols, Carter Stevens and Susan McBain; a roughie shoot that results in an accidental piece of quasi-snuff, and lots of actuality shots of 42nd Street type locations. (I say quasi-snuff because, to their credit, the filmmakers avoids the more obvious and sensationalist scenario of a film being made with the intention of murdering its female performer at the climax.)
Another reference point is Sylvester Stallone, a poster of whom as Rocky adorns Rocco's wall, encourgaging us to think of the actor's parallel struggles to bring Rocky to the screen and not so hidden porn past with The Party and Kitty and Stud's / The Italian Stallion.
If Taxi Driver is a film about the relationship between film and real life, Travis Bickle taking inspiration from the heroes of the western film and trying to apply their mythic solutions to the real-world situation of New York circa 1976 with decidedly ironic results, Blue Nude performs a similar function for the relationship between Italian-American actors and filmmakers of the period such as Stallone, De Niro and Scorsese and its own Italian protagononist.
Rocco's voice-off as he works on the screenplay in which he is the protagonist echoes Bickle's reading / writing of his diary serves to suggest that, whilst certainly possessing more self-awareness than Bickle and a fundamentally different attitude of being able to adapt to circumstances, also fails to adequately recognise the difference between his situation as an Italian immigrant and those of his Italian-American models.
A telling exception is Rudolf Valentino, though Rocco's need to identify who Valentino is to his new girlfriend signals that there is a problem here as well. Valentino and the Latin Lover type he represented were, after all, figures from half a century ago. Yet the myth of the American Dream, as promulgated by Hollywood, has endured. (In that it was inspired by the real life case of Chuck Wepner, the almost unknown boxer who went the distance with Muhammad Ali, Rocky provides a partial exception to this rule.)
One difficulty in making sense of all this is that the dubbing of the film into Italian makes it harder to ascertain how far Rocco is actually out of place. We don't know if he is thinking and writing in English rather than Italian, or if his screenplay suffers from translations of the “hill of boots” variety, although a reference to linguistic misunderstanding in the dialogue does sees Rocco correct a fellow immigrant on the distinction between Scorsese and Scozzese.
Rocco's misunderstandings perhaps thus appear more in terms of attitudes and his awareness of the porn demi-monde in particular, as when he wonders about the mixture of milk, whisky and honey he and the other male performer are served – apparently the 1970s equivalent of viagra – and later attacks his colleague, failing to recognise that the man and his new girlfriend are only acting when declaring their affections for one another in the course of the shooting of another film.
Renato Romano / Raf Valenti is credited as executive producer and Giacomo Rossi Stuart as assistant director besides their acting roles.
A sense of continuity with director Luigi Scattini's earlier mondo films is provided by Piero Umiliani's music, with snippets of score (and dialogue) from Sweden Heaven and Hell audible on the audio track. The main theme here, with acoustic guitar, electric piano and commentative lyrics about New York, rather than vocalism and organ, is quite different from most of the composer's other work for Scattini.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
The Fellowship of the Frog
Another piece of CP Company clothing, this time reminding me of the krimi The Fellowship of the Frog:
I particularly like that the ensemble is completed with black gloves ;-)
I particularly like that the ensemble is completed with black gloves ;-)
Monday, 10 November 2008
Garage kits
I've recently become aware of the Garage Kits hobby and the availability of all sorts of weird and wonderful resin models. Browsing on Ebay just now two that caught my eye were Barbara Steele in Black Sunday and Steve Reeves as / in Hercules:
What other kits have you seen, or built?
What other kits have you seen, or built?
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Tecnica di un omicidio / Professional Killer / Hired Killer / No Tears for a Killer / Technique d'un meurtre
This is another film by the non-mondo Franco Prosperi, a man whom I've managed to confuse with his better known counterpart on at least one previous occasion. The date of the film, 1966, makes it easier to distinguish between the two men, however, since the other Prosperi would have been busy with Africa Addio around the same time.
The story is nothing special. Clint Harris, an ageing hitman, is hired by the shadowy organisation to do one last job before retirement: locate and terminate Frank Secchy, an independent who is suspected of making a deal with the authorities.
After Harris's brother is murdered, he agrees to take the job although the high fee he requests and receives – $200,000 compared to the initially offered $50,000 – leaves it open whether the matter is more business or personal.
Admittedly there are complications that would justify the fourfold increase in price. The first is that no-one knows what Secchy looks like, as he has undergone face changing surgery of variety seemingly much more common as a movie McGuffin than in real life. The second is that Harris, who normally works strictly alone, is required to take an up and coming youngster, Tony Lo Bello, along on the job and show him some of his hard-won professonal wisdom.
It's a collection of clichés, yes, but certainly provides a solid framework for the requisite action scenes that demonstrate Harris's no-nonsense professionalism and further allow for the development of his and Lo Bello's personalities and relationships with one another. Even if they don't quite emerge as fully rounded, believable individuals, they are nevertheless something more than instantly forgettable types. Nor is this the fault of the actors or the writers, instead simply being the archetypal effect that the filmmakers were going for.
One point of comparison that comes to mind is Point Blank: if Boorman's film is more complex in its narrative structure in disrupting chronology and making it hard to tell what is real and what being imagined by the protagonist, Lee Marvin's Walker is nevertheless is a similarly memorable instance of an impossibly single minded man on a mission, a human Terminator. (As another similarity both films also feature a drug-addicted supporting female character.)
Crucially, however, it is not that Robert Webber, who plays Harris, represents a poor man's Marvin, nor that Tecnici di un omocidio is merely a more straightforwardly structured version of Point Blank for the Italian vernacular audience and its international counterparts. Boorman's film, after all, wasn't released until after it.
Prosperi's mise en scene, use of location and the urban landscape impress
Rather, it's that both Prosperi and Boorman were drawing inspiration from the same hard boiled, film noir world and seeking to adapt its premises to an ever more technocratic, bureaucratic world in which romantic, independent figures were concomitantly more and more of an anachronism. (The lone avenger of Fuller's Underworld USA, with his one man vendetta against the faceless organisation that was responsible for the only business death of his father, would be another case in point.)
This is also reflected by Tecnici di un umodicio's visual style. Prosperi makes extensive use of the zoom, moving in and out on his characters from a distance. It is however excessive in a meaningful rather than overused sense, neatly establishing a shared paranoiac atmosphere. Harris is never sure if he is under surveillance by the organisation, his younger counterpart or the mysterious Secchy and the spectator of which of these points of view – if any – he or she might be momentarily sharing / occupying. Adding to this effect is the director's neat use of unusual angles to isolate and dwarf the characters against their environs, a probing use of hand-held camera and a persistent self-referentiality through repeatedly bringing techologies of vision and surveillance to the fore.
Paul Virilio or the panopticon?
The main attraction for many Eurocult fans will, of course, be the presence of a young Franco Nero in the role of Lo Bello. Clean shaven and wearing thick framed glasses and a sports jacket, he's almost unrecognisable compared to Django, with the part allowing him an early opportunity to demonstrate his range and avoid the typecasting that Corbucci's film and other spaghetti westerns could so easily have led to. (With regard to the spaghetti western, it's also worth noting that the relationship between the older and younger hitmen has some similarities with the Van Cleef / Eastwood pairing in For a Few Dollars More and the various films in the Day of Anger mould in which Van Cleef played a mentor figure; Unforgiven also fits this pattern somewhat, albeit with a more complex take on the relationship between the old timers and the newcomer out to make a name for himself.)
Robby Poiventin's score, all big-band brassy crime jazz, is another major asset, beginning with an opening theme that really draws one into the film's world and never really letting up thereafter.
Well worth a look.
The story is nothing special. Clint Harris, an ageing hitman, is hired by the shadowy organisation to do one last job before retirement: locate and terminate Frank Secchy, an independent who is suspected of making a deal with the authorities.
After Harris's brother is murdered, he agrees to take the job although the high fee he requests and receives – $200,000 compared to the initially offered $50,000 – leaves it open whether the matter is more business or personal.
Admittedly there are complications that would justify the fourfold increase in price. The first is that no-one knows what Secchy looks like, as he has undergone face changing surgery of variety seemingly much more common as a movie McGuffin than in real life. The second is that Harris, who normally works strictly alone, is required to take an up and coming youngster, Tony Lo Bello, along on the job and show him some of his hard-won professonal wisdom.
It's a collection of clichés, yes, but certainly provides a solid framework for the requisite action scenes that demonstrate Harris's no-nonsense professionalism and further allow for the development of his and Lo Bello's personalities and relationships with one another. Even if they don't quite emerge as fully rounded, believable individuals, they are nevertheless something more than instantly forgettable types. Nor is this the fault of the actors or the writers, instead simply being the archetypal effect that the filmmakers were going for.
One point of comparison that comes to mind is Point Blank: if Boorman's film is more complex in its narrative structure in disrupting chronology and making it hard to tell what is real and what being imagined by the protagonist, Lee Marvin's Walker is nevertheless is a similarly memorable instance of an impossibly single minded man on a mission, a human Terminator. (As another similarity both films also feature a drug-addicted supporting female character.)
Crucially, however, it is not that Robert Webber, who plays Harris, represents a poor man's Marvin, nor that Tecnici di un omocidio is merely a more straightforwardly structured version of Point Blank for the Italian vernacular audience and its international counterparts. Boorman's film, after all, wasn't released until after it.
Prosperi's mise en scene, use of location and the urban landscape impress
Rather, it's that both Prosperi and Boorman were drawing inspiration from the same hard boiled, film noir world and seeking to adapt its premises to an ever more technocratic, bureaucratic world in which romantic, independent figures were concomitantly more and more of an anachronism. (The lone avenger of Fuller's Underworld USA, with his one man vendetta against the faceless organisation that was responsible for the only business death of his father, would be another case in point.)
This is also reflected by Tecnici di un umodicio's visual style. Prosperi makes extensive use of the zoom, moving in and out on his characters from a distance. It is however excessive in a meaningful rather than overused sense, neatly establishing a shared paranoiac atmosphere. Harris is never sure if he is under surveillance by the organisation, his younger counterpart or the mysterious Secchy and the spectator of which of these points of view – if any – he or she might be momentarily sharing / occupying. Adding to this effect is the director's neat use of unusual angles to isolate and dwarf the characters against their environs, a probing use of hand-held camera and a persistent self-referentiality through repeatedly bringing techologies of vision and surveillance to the fore.
Paul Virilio or the panopticon?
The main attraction for many Eurocult fans will, of course, be the presence of a young Franco Nero in the role of Lo Bello. Clean shaven and wearing thick framed glasses and a sports jacket, he's almost unrecognisable compared to Django, with the part allowing him an early opportunity to demonstrate his range and avoid the typecasting that Corbucci's film and other spaghetti westerns could so easily have led to. (With regard to the spaghetti western, it's also worth noting that the relationship between the older and younger hitmen has some similarities with the Van Cleef / Eastwood pairing in For a Few Dollars More and the various films in the Day of Anger mould in which Van Cleef played a mentor figure; Unforgiven also fits this pattern somewhat, albeit with a more complex take on the relationship between the old timers and the newcomer out to make a name for himself.)
Robby Poiventin's score, all big-band brassy crime jazz, is another major asset, beginning with an opening theme that really draws one into the film's world and never really letting up thereafter.
Well worth a look.
Friday, 7 November 2008
Il Cacciatore di uomini / Chasseur de l'enfer / Chasseurs d'hommes / Jungfrau unter Kannibalen / Mandingo Manhunter / The Devil Hunter
This 1980 Jess Franco cannibal film opens with some cross-cutting juxtapositions to establish many of the familiar themes and binary oppositions of form: jungle and urban jungle, primitive and civilised, black and white; if the appeal to structuralism seems misplaced, remember that the cannibal genre and its mondo predecessor have quasi-anthropological and ethnological origins, as Claude Levi-Strauss or Jean Rouch for the masses.
These two seemingly disparate worlds soon intersect as a criminal gang, headed by the ever-sleazy Werner Pochath, kidnaps visiting starlet, Laura Crawford, as deliciously incarnated by Playmate Ursula (Buch)Fellner in what we can reasonably assume was not too much of a challenge for one of her physical rather than thespian talents, and foolishly head for the cannibal infested wilderness...
Buchfellner spends as much time out of her clothes as in them
Fearing for the loss of his investment, the starlet's manager hires Al Cliver's Vietnam-veteran mercenary adventurer Peter Weston to go get the girl and out alive; fans of Euro horror will here note that the Weston name suspiciously echoes that of Cliver's co-star Ian McCulloch's character in one of the key films of the closely-related zombie sub-genre of the time, into which Franco and Eurocine would also inevitably venture with the likes of Oasis of the Zombies and Zombie Lake.
The Devil of the title
One other staple of the cannibal film, animal slaughter, is however conspicuous by its absence. Teasing out whom to attribute this merciful omission to, the producers emerge as the more likely candidate. Franco had not shied away from the odd spot of random animal cruelty in films like Bloody Moon or Exorcism, where a snake and a bird respectively made their ultimate sacrifices in the name of his art, whereas Cannibal Terror also distinguished itself in keeping things strictly within the bounds of essentially consensual human-on-human violence.
Everything else is present and correct, with copious nudity from both the tribespeople and Fellner; dancing, rites and other practices of intentionally dubious inauthenticity; a touch of flesh eating, and lots of more or less aimless trekking through the jungles.
Familiar names amongst the crew credits: Rosa M Almirall AKA Lina Romay and Nicole Guettard, AKA the first Mrs Franco
While running considerably longer than previously extant and accessible versions – according to the IMDB the previous runtime was 92 minutes – the new footage in this integral version leads to more of an extended remix that gives us a bit more of what was already there rather than a radically different film as can often be the case in Franco's notoriously tangled filmography.
The old put the camera on its side and climb along the ground trick
The remix idea refers in part to Franco's extensive use of the zoom and actual repeated use of certain shots, such as the natives corybantic ecstasies, but also applies to one of Devil Hunter's more outstanding features, which I didn't remember from a previous viewing. This is the score by Franco and his long-time musical associate Daniel White, a reverb heavy slice of music concrete style soundscape experimentation that at times recalls Bruno Nicolai's equally impressive work on Virgin Amongst the Living Dead.
Another point of note is the way Franco represents the natives' bug-eyed cannibal god / monster, the Devil of the title. Not only does he show the creature's point of view through a hazy subjective camera but also deploys the same technique when we are positioned with one of his victims. While the cynic might easily see this as yet another sign that Franco is an inept filmmaker whose enthusiasm far exceeds his abilities, as an expression of the figure's inhuman power it provides a justification / rationale to Franco's otherwise bizarre seeming assertion that his film influenced Predator.
In terms of the film's own inspirations, meanwhile, the most likely candidate emerges as Sergio Martino's Mountain of the Cannibal God, insofar as it is also a relatively light and straightforward adventure piece. The survivalist and atrocity exhibition themes of Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World and Cannibal Holocaust are less evident, whilst the ever-present sense of irony precludes the more simplistic unpleasantness found in Umberto Lenzi's Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox and arguably the more dubious racism endemic within the cycle as a whole.
Irony seems to have been something somewhat lost on Fellner, however. A regular feature in a number of Franco's films and similar low-budget exploitation fare around this time, she later repudiated her involvement in them, explaining that she was young, foolish and misled by her managers.
Severin have clearly put a lot of work into this DVD. While the low-budget nature of the film is obviously something that cannot be overcome, it's a delight to see another Franco film in a presentation that actually allows you to appreciate what he was trying to do rather than putting aesthetic obstacles in the way. Perhaps this isn't sufficient to make Devil Hunter a recommendation to those with more mainstream tastes or a low tolerance for 'bad' cinema, but as a disc 'by fans for fans' it is exemplary.
These two seemingly disparate worlds soon intersect as a criminal gang, headed by the ever-sleazy Werner Pochath, kidnaps visiting starlet, Laura Crawford, as deliciously incarnated by Playmate Ursula (Buch)Fellner in what we can reasonably assume was not too much of a challenge for one of her physical rather than thespian talents, and foolishly head for the cannibal infested wilderness...
Buchfellner spends as much time out of her clothes as in them
Fearing for the loss of his investment, the starlet's manager hires Al Cliver's Vietnam-veteran mercenary adventurer Peter Weston to go get the girl and out alive; fans of Euro horror will here note that the Weston name suspiciously echoes that of Cliver's co-star Ian McCulloch's character in one of the key films of the closely-related zombie sub-genre of the time, into which Franco and Eurocine would also inevitably venture with the likes of Oasis of the Zombies and Zombie Lake.
The Devil of the title
One other staple of the cannibal film, animal slaughter, is however conspicuous by its absence. Teasing out whom to attribute this merciful omission to, the producers emerge as the more likely candidate. Franco had not shied away from the odd spot of random animal cruelty in films like Bloody Moon or Exorcism, where a snake and a bird respectively made their ultimate sacrifices in the name of his art, whereas Cannibal Terror also distinguished itself in keeping things strictly within the bounds of essentially consensual human-on-human violence.
Everything else is present and correct, with copious nudity from both the tribespeople and Fellner; dancing, rites and other practices of intentionally dubious inauthenticity; a touch of flesh eating, and lots of more or less aimless trekking through the jungles.
Familiar names amongst the crew credits: Rosa M Almirall AKA Lina Romay and Nicole Guettard, AKA the first Mrs Franco
While running considerably longer than previously extant and accessible versions – according to the IMDB the previous runtime was 92 minutes – the new footage in this integral version leads to more of an extended remix that gives us a bit more of what was already there rather than a radically different film as can often be the case in Franco's notoriously tangled filmography.
The old put the camera on its side and climb along the ground trick
The remix idea refers in part to Franco's extensive use of the zoom and actual repeated use of certain shots, such as the natives corybantic ecstasies, but also applies to one of Devil Hunter's more outstanding features, which I didn't remember from a previous viewing. This is the score by Franco and his long-time musical associate Daniel White, a reverb heavy slice of music concrete style soundscape experimentation that at times recalls Bruno Nicolai's equally impressive work on Virgin Amongst the Living Dead.
Another point of note is the way Franco represents the natives' bug-eyed cannibal god / monster, the Devil of the title. Not only does he show the creature's point of view through a hazy subjective camera but also deploys the same technique when we are positioned with one of his victims. While the cynic might easily see this as yet another sign that Franco is an inept filmmaker whose enthusiasm far exceeds his abilities, as an expression of the figure's inhuman power it provides a justification / rationale to Franco's otherwise bizarre seeming assertion that his film influenced Predator.
In terms of the film's own inspirations, meanwhile, the most likely candidate emerges as Sergio Martino's Mountain of the Cannibal God, insofar as it is also a relatively light and straightforward adventure piece. The survivalist and atrocity exhibition themes of Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World and Cannibal Holocaust are less evident, whilst the ever-present sense of irony precludes the more simplistic unpleasantness found in Umberto Lenzi's Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox and arguably the more dubious racism endemic within the cycle as a whole.
Irony seems to have been something somewhat lost on Fellner, however. A regular feature in a number of Franco's films and similar low-budget exploitation fare around this time, she later repudiated her involvement in them, explaining that she was young, foolish and misled by her managers.
Severin have clearly put a lot of work into this DVD. While the low-budget nature of the film is obviously something that cannot be overcome, it's a delight to see another Franco film in a presentation that actually allows you to appreciate what he was trying to do rather than putting aesthetic obstacles in the way. Perhaps this isn't sufficient to make Devil Hunter a recommendation to those with more mainstream tastes or a low tolerance for 'bad' cinema, but as a disc 'by fans for fans' it is exemplary.
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Sette uomini d'oro nello spazio / Star Odyssey
These are the continuing voyages of the spaceship Giallo Fever. It's five-year mission: to seek out the worst in European cinema, to boldly go where few trash film fan have gone before...
Yes, it's Al Bradley / Brescia's Star Odyssey, one of that select group of Italian filone films that make their Turkish counterparts seem almost accomplished by comparison.
The model, however, is not less Star Wars, as was the case with Luigi Cozzi's Starcrash and most other entries in the sci-fi filone circa 1978-81 – although we do get a spot of light-sabre style action – but rather Star Trek, with the film taking place in and around Earth a few hundred years in the future, rather than a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
The bridge of the Enterprise Mark I
Dig that moustache
In this time mankind has started patrolling the other planets in the solar system, but has not yet developed any kind of faster than light travel. We also soon learn that people have developed the mental ability to control others' minds and to move small objects, and that a new metal – call it Unobtanium, since that's total world production apparently only amounts to around 1kg – has been discovered.
These aren't the droids you're looking for...
But if man is technologically more advanced than now, he is also several hundred years behind the alien species to whose attentions he has new come. Worse, these aliens are if anything behind contemporary man in terms of their culture and civilisation, inasmuch as they soon decide that Earth makes for a useful supply of resources, including slaves, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
The professor and his robot
Needless to say the Earth government is not about to take this lying down if they can help it, as the advice of the smartest man in the world is sought and a hand picked team of superheroes are assembled to take on and repel the invaders...
The German Marxist theorist Ernst Bloch posited the idea of uneven development, noting that in any given civilisation economically, culturally and politically development need not necessarily follow from one another and, indeed, could be in inverse relationships. Though it may admittedly seem something of a stretch to introduce such notions to a discussion of Star Odyssey, I think they apply at at least two levels.
You can tell he's evil because he doesn't look like us?
The first is the obvious subtext of the film itself, with the Professor remarking upon how the aliens' desire to enslave and exploit man is really no different from that of the relationship between the white coloniser and the non-white colonised a few centuries earlier, as a theme which further cements the filmmakers Star Trek-like future utopian message:
A lethal boxing robot, further illustrating technological development outstripping moral development.
The second is as a no doubt unintentional comment on the status of the Italian sci-fi film in relation to its better-resourced Hollywood counterpart. For if Space Odyssey is a clearly impoverished production it's also a well-intentioned one where the filmmakers have clearly tried – if failed.
The inter-galactic auction of Earth
When the alien warlord demonstrates his super weapon, he does so by destroying a city or two. Perfectly (un)reasonable, except the stock footage used is in black and white in an otherwise brightly coloured film, and is clearly of WWII vintage. Was the idea was again to cement that the bad guys, for all their technological superiority, were really no more than fascists, and, if so, perhaps not that different from Star Wars, with its unthinking, unfeeling, supremely loyal to their leader / fuhrer Stormtroopers?
The enslavement of mankind is represented only by stock footage of Africans but not the other people that the aliens apparently sample from, like the Japanese. If budgetary considerations were clearly to the fore here, it also helps reinforce the idea that the aliens are only doing what we Europeans were doing a few hundred years ago.
Brescia's scrapheap challenge: make a film from this
Wir sind die roboter...
Another reference point, oddly enough, is Douglas Adams, specifically in the form of not one but two paranoid – or more specifically suicidal – robots, Tilk and Tilly, who provide for some intentional comic relief with their Romeo and Juliet style romance. Tellingly the pair are also rescued from a rather contemporary looking scrapyard and again provide a 'we've learned something today' reinforcement of the message from space:
Tilk: Great integrated circuits! What's that thing? Look Tilly! A prehistoric cave robot!
Tilly: I've never seen anything so ugly.
Tilk: They say creatures like this shouldn't be allowed to run around loose. They ought to be kept in zoos.
Tilly: Now Tilk, that's just prejudice. He has as much right to activate as we have, even if his tin is a different color.
Of course, if all this serious, pseudo-intellectual stuff isn't your thing you can always enjoy the sheer awfulness of the film and the misfortune of the various filone veterans, including Gianni Garko, Franco Ressel and Chris Avram, reduced to appearing in it; the bleep and sweep heavy synthesiser based score, and the sheer MST3K-ness of it all.
[The film is available for download from Cosmobells blog]
Yes, it's Al Bradley / Brescia's Star Odyssey, one of that select group of Italian filone films that make their Turkish counterparts seem almost accomplished by comparison.
The model, however, is not less Star Wars, as was the case with Luigi Cozzi's Starcrash and most other entries in the sci-fi filone circa 1978-81 – although we do get a spot of light-sabre style action – but rather Star Trek, with the film taking place in and around Earth a few hundred years in the future, rather than a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
The bridge of the Enterprise Mark I
Dig that moustache
In this time mankind has started patrolling the other planets in the solar system, but has not yet developed any kind of faster than light travel. We also soon learn that people have developed the mental ability to control others' minds and to move small objects, and that a new metal – call it Unobtanium, since that's total world production apparently only amounts to around 1kg – has been discovered.
These aren't the droids you're looking for...
But if man is technologically more advanced than now, he is also several hundred years behind the alien species to whose attentions he has new come. Worse, these aliens are if anything behind contemporary man in terms of their culture and civilisation, inasmuch as they soon decide that Earth makes for a useful supply of resources, including slaves, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
The professor and his robot
Needless to say the Earth government is not about to take this lying down if they can help it, as the advice of the smartest man in the world is sought and a hand picked team of superheroes are assembled to take on and repel the invaders...
The German Marxist theorist Ernst Bloch posited the idea of uneven development, noting that in any given civilisation economically, culturally and politically development need not necessarily follow from one another and, indeed, could be in inverse relationships. Though it may admittedly seem something of a stretch to introduce such notions to a discussion of Star Odyssey, I think they apply at at least two levels.
You can tell he's evil because he doesn't look like us?
The first is the obvious subtext of the film itself, with the Professor remarking upon how the aliens' desire to enslave and exploit man is really no different from that of the relationship between the white coloniser and the non-white colonised a few centuries earlier, as a theme which further cements the filmmakers Star Trek-like future utopian message:
A lethal boxing robot, further illustrating technological development outstripping moral development.
The second is as a no doubt unintentional comment on the status of the Italian sci-fi film in relation to its better-resourced Hollywood counterpart. For if Space Odyssey is a clearly impoverished production it's also a well-intentioned one where the filmmakers have clearly tried – if failed.
The inter-galactic auction of Earth
When the alien warlord demonstrates his super weapon, he does so by destroying a city or two. Perfectly (un)reasonable, except the stock footage used is in black and white in an otherwise brightly coloured film, and is clearly of WWII vintage. Was the idea was again to cement that the bad guys, for all their technological superiority, were really no more than fascists, and, if so, perhaps not that different from Star Wars, with its unthinking, unfeeling, supremely loyal to their leader / fuhrer Stormtroopers?
The enslavement of mankind is represented only by stock footage of Africans but not the other people that the aliens apparently sample from, like the Japanese. If budgetary considerations were clearly to the fore here, it also helps reinforce the idea that the aliens are only doing what we Europeans were doing a few hundred years ago.
Brescia's scrapheap challenge: make a film from this
Wir sind die roboter...
Another reference point, oddly enough, is Douglas Adams, specifically in the form of not one but two paranoid – or more specifically suicidal – robots, Tilk and Tilly, who provide for some intentional comic relief with their Romeo and Juliet style romance. Tellingly the pair are also rescued from a rather contemporary looking scrapyard and again provide a 'we've learned something today' reinforcement of the message from space:
Tilk: Great integrated circuits! What's that thing? Look Tilly! A prehistoric cave robot!
Tilly: I've never seen anything so ugly.
Tilk: They say creatures like this shouldn't be allowed to run around loose. They ought to be kept in zoos.
Tilly: Now Tilk, that's just prejudice. He has as much right to activate as we have, even if his tin is a different color.
Of course, if all this serious, pseudo-intellectual stuff isn't your thing you can always enjoy the sheer awfulness of the film and the misfortune of the various filone veterans, including Gianni Garko, Franco Ressel and Chris Avram, reduced to appearing in it; the bleep and sweep heavy synthesiser based score, and the sheer MST3K-ness of it all.
[The film is available for download from Cosmobells blog]
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