If there's been an outbreak, it is probably monkeys. It usually is. They're dirty. They wee all over their hands and then touch all the bananas in the bowl, not just the ones they were going to eat, and then you've got AIDS and Ebola all in your mouth in one go.
Zaire, 1967: a devastating virus with Ebola-like symptoms called Motaba has ravaged the camp in the jungle where the US army - who were propping up the CIA-sponsored coup d'etat of General Mobutu - are based. It's bad stuff, this Motaba virus, one of those nearly always lethal viral haemmorhagic fever things that makes you unwelcome company at all but the most unruly church fetes. In fact, the mortality rate and its infectiousness are so high that the American government enact Operation Clean Sweep, which sees the afflicted area cleansed by the dropping of a massive incendiary device. Which is what happens when you don't have socialised healthcare.
In spite of the rigour and unimpeachable moral standards of their decision, by 1995 Motaba is rearing its ugly head again, making every fart a mortal risk. Unfortunately, greed and military cover-ups abound, resulting in a monkey who is a carrier of the virus being shipped to the United States for use in animal testing, which is wrong on any number of levels.
In fact, it turns out that karma is a stone cold bitch. The monkey busily infects everyone who crosses her path, probably via the old wee banana shim-sham. By the time she is smuggled out of the Biotech lab by Patrick Dempsey, to be sold as a pet on the black market in Cedar Creek, California, there's a whole world of hurt brewing across the continental United States. Not least for the kind of selfless, hazmat-suited, wrecklessly brave infectious disease specialists whose job it is to sort out this kind of mess. People like Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo, a recently divorced couple who until this point thought that their biggest problem was who got custody of their dogs. With the military high-ups planning a dastardly repeat of Operation Clean Sweep on home ground, our heroes (by this stage in various stages of infectiousness, naturally) face a race against time to identify, find and capture Patient Zero, get hold of their juices and fashion an antidote. Preferably one that can be administered with a hosepipe. Plot twist: Patient Zero is, as you may already know, a monkey. Who lives in a tree.
Outbreak is the kind of film that you can put together like a jigsaw. Everything you are expecting to happen happens and roughly in that order. There are moustache-twirlingly evil career military men who view humanity as nothing but a series of statistics and calculations of collateral damage. There are good hearted scientists doing battle with a lethal yet invisible foe. There's panic, there is death, pestilence and gruesome chapped lip make-up. Kevin Spacey - then at the height of the part of his movie career where he'd die in every film in which he appeared - also duly obliges, falling victim to the kind of torn hazmat suit japes in the laboratory which would probably have been reasonably funny had the stakes not been quite so high.
Oddly, it is no less of a film for it. The thrills and spills (mostly bodily fluids in the latter case) are ramped up at a pleasing pace, while the fundamental truth that the ins and outs of immunology is probably a little complicated and dry a subject for a Hollywood blockbuster are adroitly sidestepped with a neat blend of expositional graphics and SHOUTING. It's a familiar old warm jumper of a film, one which rewards repeat viewings.
All of this and the monkey survives. Kevin Spacey should perhaps have had a word with their agent. Outbreak gets an all-your-organs-are-liquifying-and-pouring-out-of-every-hole SEVEN out of 10 disaster points.
Friday, 26 February 2016
Thursday, 25 February 2016
Disaster Film Olympiad: The Day After
I'm going to Kansas City, as Little Richard put it. Kansas City here I come. It's not just pioneering rock and roll heroes, either. All sorts of things are on their way there, including - in November 1983 - intercontinental ballistic missiles.
It was the early 1980s. The Cold War was at its height and the situation between the great powers of East and West was at its most precarious since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In an unlikely turn of events, Ronald Reagan was in the White House. In an unlikelier one still, he was in there because he was the President. His Strategic Missile Defence initiative - known by the colloquial name of the Star Wars system - promised the possibility of a winnable nuclear war. It was an escalation in an arms race that had already gotten wildly out of control and tensions rose in tandem. After all, total and instantaneous global destruction was what was at stake.
Both of these ways of thinking were the inspiration for The Day After, the highest rated American made-for-television film of all time. Its name referred to the fact that, rather than the widely assumed cessation of all life on Earth, there would be a day after any nuclear conflict. The film set about essaying how the post-nuclear world may turn out to be with the action centring around a number of families in and around the area of Kansas City, Missouri and the campus of Kansas University at Lawrence, Kansas.
As a confrontation arose between the East and West at the East German border, the inhabitants of this hotbed of military hardware suddenly became aware that large pieces of it were starting to fly away. As one observer grimly notes, this means that the corresponding ones in the Soviet Union would, too, be on their way. As good a time as any to make sure your will is fully up to date. Upon their arrival, many people and places in the major urban areas are instantaneously anhailated, leaving a decimated band of stragglers battling for their own and each other's survival.
The Day After retains the majority of its ability to shock, appal and frighten, even from an historical distance of almost a third of a century. Many of its scenes are burnt into the minds of all who have seen it. For many, not even his sterling work in Police Academy or Three Men and a Baby will have superseded The Day After as Steve Guttenberg's standout role. A powerful legacy by anyone's standards.
That is far from The Day After's only social or cultural impact. Although its great contemporary - the British-made 1984 film Threads - remains the more affecting and chilling film, The Day After is the more outstanding and lasting piece. President Reagan watched the finished product a few days before it was released to the public and noted in his diary that it left him "greatly depressed". He would later cable Nicholas Meyer, the film's director, after the signing of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union telling him that his film's importance to its successful completion should not be overlooked. Threads, a film which has nevertheless chilled the marrow of all that have ever encountered it, cannot boast such wider historical significance.
The most striking thing about The Day After, though, is its bipartisanship. The film caused considerable controversy - both before and after its release - for its refusal to point the finger at the Soviet Union for being the people who fired first. During the production, the US Defense Department refused to provide any stock footage of nuclear explosions or other support after its makers refused to back down from its policy of non-specificity and after the film was seen by the public, The New York Post newspaper decried Meyer as a dastardly red, a fifth columnist who was successfully doing all of the USSR's propaganda work for them. Such ideological wrangles have lessened in the intervening years but, to prove Meyer and his production team's instincts correct, their decision still affords the film a great universality: a sense that nationality or politics cease to matter when it is humanity itself that is at stake.
The Day After is a film of many standout moments; its sense of sadness, frustration and futility remains quite undiminished even thirty years on. It is a film that perhaps doesn't chill or frighten in quite the same way as Threads does, but it comes as close as anyone need dare. The Day After gets a shattering 9 out of 10 Disaster Points.
It was the early 1980s. The Cold War was at its height and the situation between the great powers of East and West was at its most precarious since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In an unlikely turn of events, Ronald Reagan was in the White House. In an unlikelier one still, he was in there because he was the President. His Strategic Missile Defence initiative - known by the colloquial name of the Star Wars system - promised the possibility of a winnable nuclear war. It was an escalation in an arms race that had already gotten wildly out of control and tensions rose in tandem. After all, total and instantaneous global destruction was what was at stake.
Both of these ways of thinking were the inspiration for The Day After, the highest rated American made-for-television film of all time. Its name referred to the fact that, rather than the widely assumed cessation of all life on Earth, there would be a day after any nuclear conflict. The film set about essaying how the post-nuclear world may turn out to be with the action centring around a number of families in and around the area of Kansas City, Missouri and the campus of Kansas University at Lawrence, Kansas.
As a confrontation arose between the East and West at the East German border, the inhabitants of this hotbed of military hardware suddenly became aware that large pieces of it were starting to fly away. As one observer grimly notes, this means that the corresponding ones in the Soviet Union would, too, be on their way. As good a time as any to make sure your will is fully up to date. Upon their arrival, many people and places in the major urban areas are instantaneously anhailated, leaving a decimated band of stragglers battling for their own and each other's survival.
Steve Guttenberg as Steve Klein in The Day After (1983). You're not looking well, chief. |
The Day After retains the majority of its ability to shock, appal and frighten, even from an historical distance of almost a third of a century. Many of its scenes are burnt into the minds of all who have seen it. For many, not even his sterling work in Police Academy or Three Men and a Baby will have superseded The Day After as Steve Guttenberg's standout role. A powerful legacy by anyone's standards.
That is far from The Day After's only social or cultural impact. Although its great contemporary - the British-made 1984 film Threads - remains the more affecting and chilling film, The Day After is the more outstanding and lasting piece. President Reagan watched the finished product a few days before it was released to the public and noted in his diary that it left him "greatly depressed". He would later cable Nicholas Meyer, the film's director, after the signing of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union telling him that his film's importance to its successful completion should not be overlooked. Threads, a film which has nevertheless chilled the marrow of all that have ever encountered it, cannot boast such wider historical significance.
The most striking thing about The Day After, though, is its bipartisanship. The film caused considerable controversy - both before and after its release - for its refusal to point the finger at the Soviet Union for being the people who fired first. During the production, the US Defense Department refused to provide any stock footage of nuclear explosions or other support after its makers refused to back down from its policy of non-specificity and after the film was seen by the public, The New York Post newspaper decried Meyer as a dastardly red, a fifth columnist who was successfully doing all of the USSR's propaganda work for them. Such ideological wrangles have lessened in the intervening years but, to prove Meyer and his production team's instincts correct, their decision still affords the film a great universality: a sense that nationality or politics cease to matter when it is humanity itself that is at stake.
The Day After is a film of many standout moments; its sense of sadness, frustration and futility remains quite undiminished even thirty years on. It is a film that perhaps doesn't chill or frighten in quite the same way as Threads does, but it comes as close as anyone need dare. The Day After gets a shattering 9 out of 10 Disaster Points.
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Disaster Film Olympiad: Testament
If anyone has ever considered what life would be like after a nuclear war and somehow reached the conclusion that it wouldn't be shit, an hour and a half in the company of 1983's Testament should see you right. While the film foregoes many of our favourite nuclear disaster tropes: running around, screaming, urination, burns, viciously imploding buildings and enforcement of the harsh strictures of martial law; it remains peculiarly affecting, in spite of - or very probably because of - its gentle, quiet, meditative tone.
The Wetherly family are a fairly normal bunch, a married couple living with their three children in the (alas made-up) town of Hamelin, California. The father is the breadwinner, working a 90 minute drive away in San Francisco. If any of the Wetherlys have cause to be glad of what it about to happen it is surely Tom, who at least won't have to do that commute any more.
Sadly for Tom, the rest of the Wetherlys and everyone else, the commencement of hostilities does more than just interrupt the scheduled episode of Sesame Street. The actual strike is peculiarly restrained for a film of its type: no whizzbangs, no special effects and no hellzapoppin, just a sustained flash of light seen through the living room window.
Testament is a film about dealing with the consequences of that flash. The family and community dynamics to which we have been briefly introduced quickly begin to collapse and decay all around us. Central to the film is Carol Wetherly, Tom's wife and now presumably widow, trying to keep a brave face and keep her family, their standards of behaviour and senses of personal morality together.
Of course this is difficult enough, contending with disrupted utilities and the cessation of regular deliveries of everyday supplies, before one even factors in the unseen plague of radioactive fallout. Desperation quickly takes hold in Hamelin, but it is portrayed as doing so without frenzy; rather it comes about as a result of an insidious, steady suffocation. Of new realities and circumstances removing all of people's other options. It is a sobering look at the unavoidable patheticness of it all. Not even the local school's performance of their previously scheduled rendition of The Pied Piper of Hamelin can raise spirits, if only because the stage is quickly strewn with the teeth, toes and tears of its participants.
The Wetherly children all deal with this new way of life - something which can be shit enough without all this nonsense - in different ways. The eldest son, Brad, finds something of himself, a businesslike maturity that sees him involving himself in caring for the community as best he can. His nascent friendship with the town's elderly ham radio enthusiast is particularly pregnant with pathos.
It is sad that it took such an event for Brad to gain such wisdom and perspective, but his steely visage is neatly contrasted by his sister Mary Liz, who is paralysed with the hopelessness of the situation and regret at what she, on the cusp of womanhood, has surely lost. The scene in which she asks her poor mother what it is like to have it off with a dude is a stark reminder that such conversations are difficult enough, before the onset of widespread leukaemia, shifting norms or looting.
Mary Liz was right to be filled with existential dread: she later succumbs to radiation poisoning, the second of the Wetherly children to do so after the death of Scottie, the youngest. Both are buried in impromptu ceremonies in the front yard, with as much dignity as the exhausted, increasingly traumatised and desperate family can muster.
The whole town, in fact, is being relentlessly devastated by the constricting inevitability of it all. Survivors in varying states of mental distress begin to start thinking getting out to look for anything that has remained beyond their horizons is their only option. Even Kevin Costner, portraying a young father of a baby who dies not long after Scottie, decides that he can't hack it any more, even though he managed to get through Waterworld largely unscathed.
The Wetherlys, too, are beginning to wonder if a radical option might be their best bet. With their number swollen by Larry (a child orphaned by the initial blast) and Hiroshi, a disabled child who was a long-standing friend of the family and who they have now adopted after the demise of his father, the Wetherlys pile into the family station wagon with one eye on committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Bravely, Carol decides to persevere with living on, which is particularly good news for the children, who had perhaps not had the same idea. We leave them celebrating Brad's birthday in dismally reduced circumstances, quietly determined to face down an uncertain future.
Testament is an unusual example of its genre but it is none less powerful for it; a thoughtful look at the agonising but inescapable decline of human social norms and values in extreme circumstances. Jane Alexander, who played Carol, received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for her performance, by turns strong, sad, desperate and resolved. Testament gets 8 out of 10 disaster points.
The Wetherly family are a fairly normal bunch, a married couple living with their three children in the (alas made-up) town of Hamelin, California. The father is the breadwinner, working a 90 minute drive away in San Francisco. If any of the Wetherlys have cause to be glad of what it about to happen it is surely Tom, who at least won't have to do that commute any more.
Sadly for Tom, the rest of the Wetherlys and everyone else, the commencement of hostilities does more than just interrupt the scheduled episode of Sesame Street. The actual strike is peculiarly restrained for a film of its type: no whizzbangs, no special effects and no hellzapoppin, just a sustained flash of light seen through the living room window.
Testament is a film about dealing with the consequences of that flash. The family and community dynamics to which we have been briefly introduced quickly begin to collapse and decay all around us. Central to the film is Carol Wetherly, Tom's wife and now presumably widow, trying to keep a brave face and keep her family, their standards of behaviour and senses of personal morality together.
Carol and Brad Wetherly post for the annual family portrait photograph, 1984. |
Of course this is difficult enough, contending with disrupted utilities and the cessation of regular deliveries of everyday supplies, before one even factors in the unseen plague of radioactive fallout. Desperation quickly takes hold in Hamelin, but it is portrayed as doing so without frenzy; rather it comes about as a result of an insidious, steady suffocation. Of new realities and circumstances removing all of people's other options. It is a sobering look at the unavoidable patheticness of it all. Not even the local school's performance of their previously scheduled rendition of The Pied Piper of Hamelin can raise spirits, if only because the stage is quickly strewn with the teeth, toes and tears of its participants.
The Wetherly children all deal with this new way of life - something which can be shit enough without all this nonsense - in different ways. The eldest son, Brad, finds something of himself, a businesslike maturity that sees him involving himself in caring for the community as best he can. His nascent friendship with the town's elderly ham radio enthusiast is particularly pregnant with pathos.
It is sad that it took such an event for Brad to gain such wisdom and perspective, but his steely visage is neatly contrasted by his sister Mary Liz, who is paralysed with the hopelessness of the situation and regret at what she, on the cusp of womanhood, has surely lost. The scene in which she asks her poor mother what it is like to have it off with a dude is a stark reminder that such conversations are difficult enough, before the onset of widespread leukaemia, shifting norms or looting.
Mary Liz was right to be filled with existential dread: she later succumbs to radiation poisoning, the second of the Wetherly children to do so after the death of Scottie, the youngest. Both are buried in impromptu ceremonies in the front yard, with as much dignity as the exhausted, increasingly traumatised and desperate family can muster.
The whole town, in fact, is being relentlessly devastated by the constricting inevitability of it all. Survivors in varying states of mental distress begin to start thinking getting out to look for anything that has remained beyond their horizons is their only option. Even Kevin Costner, portraying a young father of a baby who dies not long after Scottie, decides that he can't hack it any more, even though he managed to get through Waterworld largely unscathed.
The Wetherlys, too, are beginning to wonder if a radical option might be their best bet. With their number swollen by Larry (a child orphaned by the initial blast) and Hiroshi, a disabled child who was a long-standing friend of the family and who they have now adopted after the demise of his father, the Wetherlys pile into the family station wagon with one eye on committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Bravely, Carol decides to persevere with living on, which is particularly good news for the children, who had perhaps not had the same idea. We leave them celebrating Brad's birthday in dismally reduced circumstances, quietly determined to face down an uncertain future.
Testament is an unusual example of its genre but it is none less powerful for it; a thoughtful look at the agonising but inescapable decline of human social norms and values in extreme circumstances. Jane Alexander, who played Carol, received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for her performance, by turns strong, sad, desperate and resolved. Testament gets 8 out of 10 disaster points.
Labels:
Disaster movies,
Films,
Lists,
Pictures
Tuesday, 23 February 2016
Pictures for sale
It's that time again, when Spring is starting to spring and I look around my cave of bewilderment and pencil shavings and see artistic output strewn everywhere. Maybe you or someone you know might be able to give any of these pictures a home?
If any of the above have caught your attention, you can email me or contact me via Twitter or Facebook. Alternatively, you can do the whole thing via Paypal, although do remember to leave a note stating which picture or pictures you would like.
ADELAIDE TERRACE, HOVE. 28 x 38cm, acrylic on 300gsm watercolour paper. WAS £120, now £80. |
CHIN UP, LOVE - IT'S THE PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION. 9.5 x 28cm, acrylic on 300gsm watercolour paper. WAS £50, now £30. |
NIKI LAUDA. 21 x 27cm, acrylic on textured white card. WAS £70, now £40. |
STREET FIGHTER 2: REUNION EDITION. 38 x 28cm; pen, ink and watercolour on 300gsm watercolour paper. WAS £120, now £80. |
SWAN RUGBY. 10 x 15cm; pen, ink and marker on 220gsm cartridge paper. WAS £25, now £10. |
WESTERN. 21 x 30cm; pen, ink, watercolour and pencil on white card. WAS £35, now £20. |
ZINEDINE ZIDANE. 21 x 29cm; acrylic on reclaimed book page. WAS £70, now £40. |
If any of the above have caught your attention, you can email me or contact me via Twitter or Facebook. Alternatively, you can do the whole thing via Paypal, although do remember to leave a note stating which picture or pictures you would like.
Monday, 22 February 2016
Disaster Film Olympiad: Meteor
There is a solution to every problem. This fundamental truth should pacify us all, particularly when a five-mile wide lump of rock breaks free of the Asteroid Belt and heads our way.
Nuclear weapons get a bad rap, on the whole. Generally speaking, when the nukes get dusted off, there's a feeling of resignation and defeat in the air. How refreshing it is, then, when bulk-watching disaster films to get to one featuring a celestial body threatening all life on earth. All of a sudden the Manhattan Project looks like an insurance policy. Robert Oppenheimer lightens up and appears on The Graham Norton Show joshing with his other guests, Chris Martin and Jada Pinkett-Smith.
Problem: five-mile wide asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Solution: Hercules! Hercules is the United States' contribution to world peace, a satellite in geostationary orbit with 14 100-megaton nuclear warheads pointed at the Soviet Union. It's the kind of thing that makes everyone feel that bit safer. Fortunately, Hercules can be rotated so that its payload points outward and make that asteroid feel the cut of our collective jib.
Uh-oh. Supplementary problem. The USA's top space flotsam science man, who improbably looks and sounds just like noted Scotsman Sean Connery, says that Hercules' death load will be quite insufficient for the task at hand. Like taking Gwyneth Paltrow to an all-you-can-eat chicken buffet.
But remember, there's always a solution. In this particular case it is Peter The Great. Peter The Great is the name of the USSR's peace initiative, floating somewhere above the United States, biding its time and packing serious heat. Of course, these are Hollywood movie Soviets, so they are shifty no-good bastards who initially deny it. But once Sean explains the gravity of the situation, the Russians fess up and a multinational death force of unimaginable destructive magnitude is assembled to blast some serious rock ass.
Of course, the true joy in films like Meteor is that the writers get to have some fun poking holes in the preposterousness of Cold War politics when projected across a broader backdrop. Martin Landau, now seemingly high up in the US military is flabbergasted. You can't let the Soviets into our control centres. They'll steal all the upload codes, not flush the toilet and besides, this measly god damn rock will just break up in the atmosphere. Not even Sean's growling or the firm hand of President Henry Fonda on the tiller can convince him otherwise.
He is not alone. Even after the announcement is made to a largely indifferent world, people seem able to get on with their business with admirable coolness. This air of calm persists until the rock begins to splinter, sending smaller but still devastating meteors crashing to Earth. A Swiss skiing marathon is quite severely disrupted, causing Martin Landau to cast his doubts aside.
As impact day - December 7th, a date which really would live in infamy - arrives, there's much more palpable tension. Sean is swapping his wig for one which is slightly more progressively grey on an hourly basis. Just as the US launch their missiles, a further splinter decimates New York City. First to fall is the World Trade Center, something which could never happen in real life. Unfortunately, New York is also the location of the centre for Earth-saving operations and our heroes are quickly thrust into an unseemly bonus battle for survival with a spectacularly muddy Hudson River.
Meteor is actually a really good little film. I was surprised. Surprised because I've seen enough big budget disaster movies from their golden age of the 1970s to know what to expect. Crap, essentially. Big name stars phoning in a performance, shoddy dialogue and trite situations. Which is not to say I don't love them all; but finding one that is a little better than the norm was a treat nevertheless. My favourite thing was that for once, the all-star cast was, on the whole, very well used. I would certainly have voted for Henry Fonda to be President and the multiple requirements of the Soviet interpreter to be able to speak fluent Russian, be a woman, bewitch Sean Connery AND be a famous film star were admirably met by Natalie Wood. It was a toss up between her and Yul Brynner, presumably. But with Sean Connery already on the payroll, they probably couldn't stretch the wig budget. And of course Trevor Howard is a beknighted astrophysicist ensconced at Jodrell Bank. Of course Trevor Howard! Of course Jodrell Bank!
The only potentially shaky bit of casting is Sean Connery, who I think is supposed to be an American. But we've been here with Connery before. Sean Connery doesn't have a nationality or an accent, per se. He is just Connery. Got to love a bit of Connery. Meteor gets a bold SEVEN out of 10 disaster points.
Nuclear weapons get a bad rap, on the whole. Generally speaking, when the nukes get dusted off, there's a feeling of resignation and defeat in the air. How refreshing it is, then, when bulk-watching disaster films to get to one featuring a celestial body threatening all life on earth. All of a sudden the Manhattan Project looks like an insurance policy. Robert Oppenheimer lightens up and appears on The Graham Norton Show joshing with his other guests, Chris Martin and Jada Pinkett-Smith.
Problem: five-mile wide asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Solution: Hercules! Hercules is the United States' contribution to world peace, a satellite in geostationary orbit with 14 100-megaton nuclear warheads pointed at the Soviet Union. It's the kind of thing that makes everyone feel that bit safer. Fortunately, Hercules can be rotated so that its payload points outward and make that asteroid feel the cut of our collective jib.
Uh-oh. Supplementary problem. The USA's top space flotsam science man, who improbably looks and sounds just like noted Scotsman Sean Connery, says that Hercules' death load will be quite insufficient for the task at hand. Like taking Gwyneth Paltrow to an all-you-can-eat chicken buffet.
But remember, there's always a solution. In this particular case it is Peter The Great. Peter The Great is the name of the USSR's peace initiative, floating somewhere above the United States, biding its time and packing serious heat. Of course, these are Hollywood movie Soviets, so they are shifty no-good bastards who initially deny it. But once Sean explains the gravity of the situation, the Russians fess up and a multinational death force of unimaginable destructive magnitude is assembled to blast some serious rock ass.
Of course, the true joy in films like Meteor is that the writers get to have some fun poking holes in the preposterousness of Cold War politics when projected across a broader backdrop. Martin Landau, now seemingly high up in the US military is flabbergasted. You can't let the Soviets into our control centres. They'll steal all the upload codes, not flush the toilet and besides, this measly god damn rock will just break up in the atmosphere. Not even Sean's growling or the firm hand of President Henry Fonda on the tiller can convince him otherwise.
He is not alone. Even after the announcement is made to a largely indifferent world, people seem able to get on with their business with admirable coolness. This air of calm persists until the rock begins to splinter, sending smaller but still devastating meteors crashing to Earth. A Swiss skiing marathon is quite severely disrupted, causing Martin Landau to cast his doubts aside.
As impact day - December 7th, a date which really would live in infamy - arrives, there's much more palpable tension. Sean is swapping his wig for one which is slightly more progressively grey on an hourly basis. Just as the US launch their missiles, a further splinter decimates New York City. First to fall is the World Trade Center, something which could never happen in real life. Unfortunately, New York is also the location of the centre for Earth-saving operations and our heroes are quickly thrust into an unseemly bonus battle for survival with a spectacularly muddy Hudson River.
Meteor is actually a really good little film. I was surprised. Surprised because I've seen enough big budget disaster movies from their golden age of the 1970s to know what to expect. Crap, essentially. Big name stars phoning in a performance, shoddy dialogue and trite situations. Which is not to say I don't love them all; but finding one that is a little better than the norm was a treat nevertheless. My favourite thing was that for once, the all-star cast was, on the whole, very well used. I would certainly have voted for Henry Fonda to be President and the multiple requirements of the Soviet interpreter to be able to speak fluent Russian, be a woman, bewitch Sean Connery AND be a famous film star were admirably met by Natalie Wood. It was a toss up between her and Yul Brynner, presumably. But with Sean Connery already on the payroll, they probably couldn't stretch the wig budget. And of course Trevor Howard is a beknighted astrophysicist ensconced at Jodrell Bank. Of course Trevor Howard! Of course Jodrell Bank!
The only potentially shaky bit of casting is Sean Connery, who I think is supposed to be an American. But we've been here with Connery before. Sean Connery doesn't have a nationality or an accent, per se. He is just Connery. Got to love a bit of Connery. Meteor gets a bold SEVEN out of 10 disaster points.
Friday, 19 February 2016
Disaster Film Olympiad: This Is Not A Test
Where would you like to be when the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles arrive? The wise among you will probably say 200 metres underground in a fully air-conditioned and ventilated concrete and lead-lined bunker complete with its own state-of-the-art filtration and waste disposal systems, plus fresh water, ample food, a reliable generator and varied types of communication technology. The more paranoid of you are already reading this from there. Hello, if you are. Playing the long game is admirable. You may yet have the last laugh, in addition to your agonising case of rickets.
No-one, surely, would choose to be stuck at a roadblock on an interstate highway in California. However, that is the exact scenario in which what one might loosely term the protagonists of This Is Not A Test find themselves; stuck at night in a sullenly over-zealous traffic policeman's dragnet. The object of this police attention is Clint Delany, a man on the run from the law for suspected murder. Aside from a brief skirmish with the wanted man, the group's attention soon turn to the police radio announcing the commencement of hostilities with the Soviet Union.
This comes as a real drag to our motley crew, most of whom had other plans that night. Among their number are a a dolly bird and her beatnik lover who seems to have secured their future financial stability by what were presumably dubious means; a hokey, oaky old grandpappy and his beloved (if shrill) granddaughter; a married couple on their way to holiday in Mexico; and the drivers of the Discount World lorry who had been unwittingly ferrying the hitchhiking outlaw to freedom.
Their truck has a large part to play in proceedings. It is somewhat misleadingly named: a British shop called Discount World would be filled with all manner of remaindered tat, California's Discount World is the kind of store where one might bump into Scrooge McDuck. Every single item of cartoonishly over-indulgent cuisine and couture imaginable is being ferried about in the trailer, seemingly without any irony. A shortage of alternatives leave our friendly patrolman to suggest that this trailer might be cleared out and used as an impromptu bomb and fallout shelter. As finessed plans go it is fairly weak, but it is the best one he has and besides, he's the one with the gun.
On many levels, in fact, this plod is quite the dick. His unrelenting blend of buttoned-down officiousness, intransigence and total lack of a sense of humour would be a major bummer in any situation, but in this particular one it quickly starts to seem like overkill. Literally, in the case of the small pet poodle of one of our protagonists: its respiratory needs deemed surplus to the requirements of a post-apocalyptic community of lorry-dwellers, it is duly dispatched at the bare hands of this lurching wall of malevolent gristle. It is comfortably the film's most affecting moment; the dog was the only character for whose ultimate survival I had any vested interest. I also suspect the police officer was probably also a racist, although the makers of This Is Not A Test did not diversify sufficiently during the writing or casting process for this hypothesis to be verified. But he didn't like animals. Always a red flag.
Still, there is an upside to the patrolman's truculence and intolerable heavy-handedness. Once the remainder of our heroes discover the contents of the lorry's trailer, all subsequent attempts at clearance are done with a belly full of caviar, pissed up on 100 proof bourbon and wearing a mink coat. Whether or not this clever subversion of the gravity of the situation was a carefully-planned psychological trick on the part of the policeman is unlikely to ever become clear. It is only partially effective, if so... the undeniable thrill of skulling a bottle of hooch with a crown on proves as fleeting only as each participant's individual ability to suppress the weight of their knowledge re. the impending commencement of global thermonuclear war.
By the film's denouement, our heroes have divided into several distinct groups. The huddled lorry-dwellers quickly turn on each other as the temperature rises and claustrophobia takes hold. Taking their chances in the outside world are the hokey old grandpa, his granddaughter and the first available man she was able to grab from the roadblock. Pops chooses this moment, a mere 10 minutes before curtains, to remember that just round the corner - presumably just 11 minutes round the corner - there is an underground cave with a fresh water spring. Thanks, gramps. Ten minutes is still enough time to put you in a home.
Our outlaw, too, sees a window of opportunity - albeit a rapidly diminishing one - to make good his escape. Unfortunately, his attempt to steal a car quickly ends in a contretemps with an pickup truck loaded with chickens. The sight of a frantic scofflaw retributively laying waste to the hens who have scuppered him would be a striking addition to any film; in one dealing with portending destruction it borders on the tragicomic. Look on the bright side, Clint - if this is the worst thing that happens to you today...
As nuclear disaster films go, This Is Not A Test is not particularly outstanding example. The budget was low, characters laden with stereotype and its cast of unknowns fairly wooden. Nevertheless it is, at times, an interesting study in the breakdown of human society in the face of the unimaginable. Within 73 minutes, we witness mob rule, faction forming, dog murder, extra-marital affairs, crown theft and a near-immediate descent into mass alcoholism. These scenes prove in stark contrast to the official Civil Defense films that the United States was making contemporaneously, where government was well-drilled and impervious, the populace calm and victims few and far between. In their defence, the majority of these films were only twenty minutes in duration: it is always the subsequent 53 which prove the real yardstick.
Ultimately, however, the characters on display in This Is Not A Test all display such genuinely unlikeablilty (in what were, admittedly, chastening circumstances) that when the bomb's arrival heralds the end of the film, it is a relief on a number of levels. This Is Not A Test gets 3 out of 10 disaster points.
No-one, surely, would choose to be stuck at a roadblock on an interstate highway in California. However, that is the exact scenario in which what one might loosely term the protagonists of This Is Not A Test find themselves; stuck at night in a sullenly over-zealous traffic policeman's dragnet. The object of this police attention is Clint Delany, a man on the run from the law for suspected murder. Aside from a brief skirmish with the wanted man, the group's attention soon turn to the police radio announcing the commencement of hostilities with the Soviet Union.
This comes as a real drag to our motley crew, most of whom had other plans that night. Among their number are a a dolly bird and her beatnik lover who seems to have secured their future financial stability by what were presumably dubious means; a hokey, oaky old grandpappy and his beloved (if shrill) granddaughter; a married couple on their way to holiday in Mexico; and the drivers of the Discount World lorry who had been unwittingly ferrying the hitchhiking outlaw to freedom.
Their truck has a large part to play in proceedings. It is somewhat misleadingly named: a British shop called Discount World would be filled with all manner of remaindered tat, California's Discount World is the kind of store where one might bump into Scrooge McDuck. Every single item of cartoonishly over-indulgent cuisine and couture imaginable is being ferried about in the trailer, seemingly without any irony. A shortage of alternatives leave our friendly patrolman to suggest that this trailer might be cleared out and used as an impromptu bomb and fallout shelter. As finessed plans go it is fairly weak, but it is the best one he has and besides, he's the one with the gun.
On many levels, in fact, this plod is quite the dick. His unrelenting blend of buttoned-down officiousness, intransigence and total lack of a sense of humour would be a major bummer in any situation, but in this particular one it quickly starts to seem like overkill. Literally, in the case of the small pet poodle of one of our protagonists: its respiratory needs deemed surplus to the requirements of a post-apocalyptic community of lorry-dwellers, it is duly dispatched at the bare hands of this lurching wall of malevolent gristle. It is comfortably the film's most affecting moment; the dog was the only character for whose ultimate survival I had any vested interest. I also suspect the police officer was probably also a racist, although the makers of This Is Not A Test did not diversify sufficiently during the writing or casting process for this hypothesis to be verified. But he didn't like animals. Always a red flag.
Still, there is an upside to the patrolman's truculence and intolerable heavy-handedness. Once the remainder of our heroes discover the contents of the lorry's trailer, all subsequent attempts at clearance are done with a belly full of caviar, pissed up on 100 proof bourbon and wearing a mink coat. Whether or not this clever subversion of the gravity of the situation was a carefully-planned psychological trick on the part of the policeman is unlikely to ever become clear. It is only partially effective, if so... the undeniable thrill of skulling a bottle of hooch with a crown on proves as fleeting only as each participant's individual ability to suppress the weight of their knowledge re. the impending commencement of global thermonuclear war.
By the film's denouement, our heroes have divided into several distinct groups. The huddled lorry-dwellers quickly turn on each other as the temperature rises and claustrophobia takes hold. Taking their chances in the outside world are the hokey old grandpa, his granddaughter and the first available man she was able to grab from the roadblock. Pops chooses this moment, a mere 10 minutes before curtains, to remember that just round the corner - presumably just 11 minutes round the corner - there is an underground cave with a fresh water spring. Thanks, gramps. Ten minutes is still enough time to put you in a home.
Our outlaw, too, sees a window of opportunity - albeit a rapidly diminishing one - to make good his escape. Unfortunately, his attempt to steal a car quickly ends in a contretemps with an pickup truck loaded with chickens. The sight of a frantic scofflaw retributively laying waste to the hens who have scuppered him would be a striking addition to any film; in one dealing with portending destruction it borders on the tragicomic. Look on the bright side, Clint - if this is the worst thing that happens to you today...
As nuclear disaster films go, This Is Not A Test is not particularly outstanding example. The budget was low, characters laden with stereotype and its cast of unknowns fairly wooden. Nevertheless it is, at times, an interesting study in the breakdown of human society in the face of the unimaginable. Within 73 minutes, we witness mob rule, faction forming, dog murder, extra-marital affairs, crown theft and a near-immediate descent into mass alcoholism. These scenes prove in stark contrast to the official Civil Defense films that the United States was making contemporaneously, where government was well-drilled and impervious, the populace calm and victims few and far between. In their defence, the majority of these films were only twenty minutes in duration: it is always the subsequent 53 which prove the real yardstick.
Ultimately, however, the characters on display in This Is Not A Test all display such genuinely unlikeablilty (in what were, admittedly, chastening circumstances) that when the bomb's arrival heralds the end of the film, it is a relief on a number of levels. This Is Not A Test gets 3 out of 10 disaster points.
Thursday, 18 February 2016
Disaster films, revisited
Long-suffering readers of my blog may well remember that in 2013 I attempted to watch the 100 top-rated disaster films on IMDb.com. The attempt, as predicted by all, was unsuccessful. Why should this have been?
Well, the reasons were varied. Firstly, I am flaky. Disgracefully so. The only defence I can present is that I am not being paid to write this any more than you are to read it. Maybe I should be. You definitely should be.
Secondly, watching disaster films is somewhat emotionally draining and dislocating. At best, that is. At worst it is fully traumatic, an invitation to an entirely self-inflicted pathology that could colour my remaining days. Fortunately, the intervening three years have rendered this less of an issue. I am now three years older and hopefully three years more emotionally mature. Additionally, society has since developed in such a way that chain-watching apocalyptic fiction is now no more chastening than watching the news.
Thirdly and most painfully for me to admit, my initial list and the model for its creation were shoddy. I am flabbergasted that past me would have allowed such a slipshod list into the public domain. There were countless exclusions and inclusions blatantly contrary to the qualifying criteria.
What has changed is that, over the past few weeks, I have found myself obsessively watching disaster movies once again, although this time through my own stupid free will rather than my own stupid self-discipline. I quickly realised that I had, quite unwittingly, managed to tick off a further seven of the films on my totally lousy and shameful original list.
The upshot of all this is that I am going to revive the project, but with some new rules which will hopefully see it able to thrive and - most important of all - a new list which may be amended and added to on the fly. What will any of us learn? Nothing. Which was my intention all along.
What qualifies a film for inclusion? Well, there are only reasonably mild changes from my original framework but I think they will be significant. My old first rule was "a disaster must happen in your disaster movie". A good start you'd think, but it in fact excluded a surprising number of titles. So my new rule number 1 is "A disaster must happen, be anticipated or narrowly be averted in your disaster movie".
Rule two remains unchanged. "A disaster must be the only reason for making your movie". Mundanity is the lifeblood of the disaster film. The everyday being disrupted is central. How else will your characters go about learning and growing, if not from beneath a fallen tree or stuck inside a volcano with an atomic bomb?
Rules 3 and 4 were more problematic. Inevitable and unavoidable disasters will now be included, so long as they fulfil the other existing criteria. Additionally, rule 4 will also now be disregarded. Some of the best films in the world require all of the characters being dead at the end of it. Many films that otherwise fall flat could be vastly improved by it. Food for thought for all you aspiring screenwriters out there.
Rule 5 (now Rule 3 thanks to my sharky streamlining) remains - "Your disaster must not be fanciful" - although in a reworded form and including this fancy diagram to give additional detail of exactly what I mean by it.
If you feel short-changed by this new truncated list, I may be able to placate you with an additional new Rule 4: "Your movie must be feature length, but films of any sub-genre are permissible as are made-for-TV movies". I love TV movies. Sequels and films dealing with the same historical disaster are now also allowed.
All of this meandering, tweaking and procrastination leads me to this: the reformed disaster film list. May god have mercy on all of our souls.
2012 (2009)
A Night To Remember (1958)
Airplane! (1980)
Airport (1970)
Airport 1975 (1974)
Airport '77 (1977)
Alive (1993)
Armageddon (1998)
Asteroid (1997)
Atomic Train (1998)
Atomic Twister (2002)
Avalanche (1978)
Blindness (2008)
By Dawn's Early Light (1990)
Contagion (2011)
Countdown To Looking Glass (1984)
Dante's Peak (1997)
Deep Impact (1998)
Dr. Strangelove (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb) (1963)
Earthquake (1974)
Ebola Syndrome (1996)
Epidemic (1987)
Fail Safe (1964)
Fire! (1977)
Flight 90: Disaster On The Potomac (1984)
Flood (1976)
Flood (2007)
Heatwave (1974)
Hurricane (1979)
Krakatoa, East of Java (1968)
Meteor (1979)
Miracle Mile (1988)
Night of the Comet (1984)
Night of the Twisters (1996)
On The Beach (1959)
Outbreak (1995)
Panic In Year Zero! (1962)
Right At Your Door (2006)
Rollercoaster (1977)
Special Bulletin (1983)
The Big Bus (1976)
The Cassandra Crossing (1976)
The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979)
The Day After (1983)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)
The Day The Sky Exploded (1958)
The Great Los Angeles Eathquake (1990)
The Hindenburg (1975)
The Last Voyage (1960)
The Night The World Exploded (1957)
The Perfect Storm (2000)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
The Swarm (1978)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
This Is Not A Test (1962)
Threads (1984)
Testament (1983)
Titanic (1998)
Tornado (1996)
Twister (1996)
United 93 (2006)
Variola Vera (1982)
Virus (1980)
Volcano (1997)
When The Wind Blows (1986)
When Time Ran Out (1980)
Where Have All The People Gone? (1974)
World Trade Center (2006)
Zero Hour! (1957)
Well, the reasons were varied. Firstly, I am flaky. Disgracefully so. The only defence I can present is that I am not being paid to write this any more than you are to read it. Maybe I should be. You definitely should be.
Secondly, watching disaster films is somewhat emotionally draining and dislocating. At best, that is. At worst it is fully traumatic, an invitation to an entirely self-inflicted pathology that could colour my remaining days. Fortunately, the intervening three years have rendered this less of an issue. I am now three years older and hopefully three years more emotionally mature. Additionally, society has since developed in such a way that chain-watching apocalyptic fiction is now no more chastening than watching the news.
Thirdly and most painfully for me to admit, my initial list and the model for its creation were shoddy. I am flabbergasted that past me would have allowed such a slipshod list into the public domain. There were countless exclusions and inclusions blatantly contrary to the qualifying criteria.
What has changed is that, over the past few weeks, I have found myself obsessively watching disaster movies once again, although this time through my own stupid free will rather than my own stupid self-discipline. I quickly realised that I had, quite unwittingly, managed to tick off a further seven of the films on my totally lousy and shameful original list.
The upshot of all this is that I am going to revive the project, but with some new rules which will hopefully see it able to thrive and - most important of all - a new list which may be amended and added to on the fly. What will any of us learn? Nothing. Which was my intention all along.
What qualifies a film for inclusion? Well, there are only reasonably mild changes from my original framework but I think they will be significant. My old first rule was "a disaster must happen in your disaster movie". A good start you'd think, but it in fact excluded a surprising number of titles. So my new rule number 1 is "A disaster must happen, be anticipated or narrowly be averted in your disaster movie".
Rule two remains unchanged. "A disaster must be the only reason for making your movie". Mundanity is the lifeblood of the disaster film. The everyday being disrupted is central. How else will your characters go about learning and growing, if not from beneath a fallen tree or stuck inside a volcano with an atomic bomb?
Rules 3 and 4 were more problematic. Inevitable and unavoidable disasters will now be included, so long as they fulfil the other existing criteria. Additionally, rule 4 will also now be disregarded. Some of the best films in the world require all of the characters being dead at the end of it. Many films that otherwise fall flat could be vastly improved by it. Food for thought for all you aspiring screenwriters out there.
Rule 5 (now Rule 3 thanks to my sharky streamlining) remains - "Your disaster must not be fanciful" - although in a reworded form and including this fancy diagram to give additional detail of exactly what I mean by it.
As promised, here is a helpful diagram |
If you feel short-changed by this new truncated list, I may be able to placate you with an additional new Rule 4: "Your movie must be feature length, but films of any sub-genre are permissible as are made-for-TV movies". I love TV movies. Sequels and films dealing with the same historical disaster are now also allowed.
All of this meandering, tweaking and procrastination leads me to this: the reformed disaster film list. May god have mercy on all of our souls.
2012 (2009)
A Night To Remember (1958)
Airplane! (1980)
Airport (1970)
Airport 1975 (1974)
Airport '77 (1977)
Alive (1993)
Armageddon (1998)
Asteroid (1997)
Atomic Train (1998)
Atomic Twister (2002)
Avalanche (1978)
Blindness (2008)
By Dawn's Early Light (1990)
Contagion (2011)
Countdown To Looking Glass (1984)
Dante's Peak (1997)
Deep Impact (1998)
Dr. Strangelove (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb) (1963)
Earthquake (1974)
Ebola Syndrome (1996)
Epidemic (1987)
Fail Safe (1964)
Fire! (1977)
Flight 90: Disaster On The Potomac (1984)
Flood (1976)
Flood (2007)
Heatwave (1974)
Hurricane (1979)
Krakatoa, East of Java (1968)
Meteor (1979)
Miracle Mile (1988)
Night of the Comet (1984)
Night of the Twisters (1996)
On The Beach (1959)
Outbreak (1995)
Panic In Year Zero! (1962)
Right At Your Door (2006)
Rollercoaster (1977)
Special Bulletin (1983)
The Big Bus (1976)
The Cassandra Crossing (1976)
The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979)
The Day After (1983)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)
The Day The Sky Exploded (1958)
The Great Los Angeles Eathquake (1990)
The Hindenburg (1975)
The Last Voyage (1960)
The Night The World Exploded (1957)
The Perfect Storm (2000)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
The Swarm (1978)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
This Is Not A Test (1962)
Threads (1984)
Testament (1983)
Titanic (1998)
Tornado (1996)
Twister (1996)
United 93 (2006)
Variola Vera (1982)
Virus (1980)
Volcano (1997)
When The Wind Blows (1986)
When Time Ran Out (1980)
Where Have All The People Gone? (1974)
World Trade Center (2006)
Zero Hour! (1957)
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Culture,
Disaster movies,
Films,
Lists
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