A Brucey Bonus

Deadly Movies Cameos: Bruce Campbell in Darkman (1990), Dir Sam Raimi

Quick history lesson: Bruce Campbell met director Sam Raimi at High School,working on Super-8 movies together. They would go on to star in and direct The Evil Dead (1981) respectively. Now since the end of the Evil Dead trilogy Raimi has had a penchant for casting Cambell in (increasingly elaborate) cameo roles. Campbell in the meantime has gone on to become somewhat of a b-movie icon, his cameo appearances serving to enhance this status. For my money the best of these, the more subtle and clever, is his appearance at the very end of Darkman where he appears as one of the many rubber masked faces of the permanently scarred Darkman (Liam Neeson), billed ‘Final Shemp’. It’s a great scene whereby Darkman disappears into the morning commute, blending in amongst the black suits and trench-coats he turns for one last look at his former lover (Francis McDormand), evading identification in one of his many life-like rubber masks. The rubber mask is of course Bruce Campbell. Genius.

Do You Remember When..,

.., Bernie met Jason in Friday 13th Part 7, The New Blood (1988): Dir John Carl Buechler

Every fan of 80’s movies will know just how hilarious walking corpses are, and I’m not just talking about Jason Voorhees. In 1989 Terry Kiser would star as film’s funniest lifeless corpse Bernie Lomax in the awesome Weekend at Bernie’s, one of my all-time favourite stupid 80’s comedies. So imagine my delight when, a few years back, I was making my way through the Friday the 13th franchise and reached Part 7, only to discover Terry Kiser starring alongside Hollywood’s most recurring celebrity corpse, Jason Voorhees. Within the space of a 5 years Kiser would get hired to be killed by a corpse, play a corpse, and a voodoo reanimated corpse. How many people can say that?

Top 5 Boogeymen Nemeses

Nemeses: noun ( pl. -ses |-ˌsēz|) (usu. one’s nemesis)the inescapable or implacable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall

Boogeymen, creatures, and monsters are 10-a-penny, but their counterparts, their nemesis, the hero that saves the girl, town, or even planet are harder to come by. Now one-off heroes and final girls are abundant, but the brave men and women who make it their life’s work to track our beloved bad guys across franchises are a rare breed indeed. So take a look at Deadly Movies Top 5 nemeses .

5. Ashley ‘Ash’ J Williams (played by Bruce Campbell)

Nemesis to: The undead.

Films appeared in: The Evil Dead (1981), The Evil Dead 2 (1987), Army of Darkness (1992)

What are They? They are Them, Know What I Mean?

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Friday Midnight Movie | ‘They’

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They is a great little sleeper scare movie of the early 2000s. Of it’s period it’s a bit of a rarity, it’s not a Scream style parody and it’s not a remake. It also comes with some decent Deadly Movie heritage; director Robert Harmon bought us the outstanding Hitcher (1986) and leading lady Laura Regan was hot off her first Final Girl performance in My Little Eye (2002) and has subsequently built up a bit of a Deadly Movie CV which includes Hollow Man 2 (2006), Dead Silence (2007), and How to be a Serial Killer (2008). One note of caution, it comes ‘presented’ by Wes Craven, who it seems had absolutely nothing to do with the making of the film on any level pre or post. That saying, ‘presenting’ often means that a big name director is happy to put his name to the product to aid distribution, so we can take some comfort in the knowledge that Craven would seem to like this.

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At it’s core They has a clever and relatable theme – being afraid of the dark. Children who were terrorised by ‘night terrors’ (these are the They if you see what i mean) are revisited by their demons as twenty-somethings. What are ‘They’? They are CG grayish nocturnal quadrupeds who exist in the eternal darkness of a sort of nightmarish other dimension…, I think. The night terrors can only exist in the dark, and therein the film does well to prey on our primal fears of the dark, it’s unknown, and it’s isolating properties. There are a few very tense scenes as all sources of light begin to fail around the film’s victims. It’s a fairly blood and gore free affair, going for sustained tension and shocks instead. There’s also an effective ending to be had and the DVD version comes with an equally interesting alternative ending. It’s not remarkable groundbreaking stuff by any means, but i bet you think twice about turning the light off when you go to bed afterwards!

Bill Paxton vs Lance Henriksen…, vs Alien vs Predator vs Terminator

Deadly Movie Connections: Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen

Only two men alive have faced off against three of horror sci-fi’s greatest monsters, the Alien, the Predator, and the Terminator; Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton. Now both men are Deadly Movie legends (Henriksen is more than qualified for Deadly Movie icon status), they have been there done that, bought the tshirt and shot the shit out of the tshirt for looking at them the wrong way. But it’s their appearance in these seminal movies, waging war on these iconic foes, that warrants a good hat doffing.

In the Red Corner Bill Paxton: Paxton squared up against the Terminator early in his career and early in the film, in the pivotal role of blue haired ‘Punk Leader’. Paxton makes the slight mistake of saying “fuck you” to Arnie. He survives but does get his ass handed to him. In Aliens Paxton really steps up to the plate as marine-meat-head Private Hudson. Hudson is word-smith of Shakespearian proportions, with musings such as “stop your grinn’n and drop your linen”, “game over man game over”, “Fuckin’A”, and “express elevator to hell, going down”. But even his intellectual ramblings and super big machine gun can’t save him from a brutal death at the hands of the Alien. Predator 2 sees Paxton basically reprising Hudson in the guise of Police detective Lambert. In an equally impressive blaze of glory exit Paxton is again disposed of, but not before he manages to unleash a round or thirty.

And in the Blue Corner Lance Henriksen: Henriksen’s Detective Hal Vukovich has a damn good go at The Terminator, unleashing a monstrous semi automatic shotgun in heroic fashion but alas to no avail. Hasta La Vista Baby. In Aliens Henriksen shares screen time with Paxton but, as the much less colourful droid Bishop, Henriksen does little in the way of gun slinging. He does however get rather tastily ripped in half by the Queen. Henriksen would have to wait almost 20 years to face of against a Predator in 2004s Alien vs Predator where his Charles Bishop Wayland would put up a bit of limp fight against the beefcake-young-jock-Predators, going down with a whimper.

Your Winner.., Bill Paxton: Unlike Henriksen, Paxto appears in three individual films across the three franchises, no crappy ‘vs’ crossovers for him. Plus he may go down, but he goes down finger firmly clutching trigger. Game over man, game over!

Do You Remember When…,

Everyone wore Aviators in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Dir Steven Spielberg

At the end of Close Encounters, as the drama enfolds, more and more of the scientists/boffins resort to wearing Aviators to accentuate their shock and awe. By the time the space craft door opens the human cast have started resembling delegates at a Top Gun convention. You do wonder whether the US government hands out free pairs with every Christmas bonus.

No global earth shattering event is too overwhelming when you protect your eyes with a cool set of Aviators.

Linda Blair Exorcises Freedom of the Press

Deadly Movies Cameos | Linda Blair in Scream (1996)

Twenty three years earlier she was vomiting on priests, doing very bad things in front of her mother, and 360’ing her swede, then in 1996 Wes Craven deployed Linda Blair in the best of the Scream franchise cameos. It’s fantastically short, as good cameos should be, lasting less than 10 seconds. Blair plays ‘Obnoxious Reporter’ strutting up to Sydney (Neve Campbell) and belting out the great line ‘how does it feel to almost be brutally butchered?!’. How Wes Craven must have enjoyed waking up for this day of shooting. There’s always something very cool about seeing different generations of final girls sharing a bit of screen time.

French Balloons and Nordic Goons

Friday Midnight Movie | The Island at the top of the World (1974)

A Rare Disney outing on Deadly Movies

It’s rare that the word ‘Disney’ makes it onto Deadly Movies, but here’s some cult Disney goodness to shove up your Friday night peephole. The Island at the top of the World has a bit of everything that cult childhood films should have, ropey effects, angry indigenous people, an evil religious guru, a long voyage, earthquakes and volcanoes, a scantly clad native girl, and a killer whale attack. You want more? There is no more!

Presenting Christopher George (1929 – 1983)

Deadly Movie Icons

Christopher George is a bit of a chiselled B-movie and TV legend, often deployed in the gruff detective, sheriff, doctor type role. Under the banner of B-movies and cult TV you could list almost his entire CV; but here at Deadly Movies we like to pay homage to his epic contribution to creature features, horror, and sci-fi:

Project X (1968): William Castle (legend) movie about a cryogenically defrosted Christopher George.

Grizzly (1976): George vs. a bear (nice)

Day of the Animals (1977): George vs. ALL the animals (sweet)

Cruise into Terror (1978): George and other cruise passengers find some Egyptian relics that somehow for some reason summon Satan. (Get-in)

City of the Living Dead (1980): George vs Fulci Zombies and the gate of Hell

The Exterminator (1980): George investigates flame throwing vigilante (Pow!)

Mortuary (1983): George and his son (Bill Paxton?!! Awesome) work in a mortuary and attempt to bring back spirits of the dead (shit the bed yes!)

The Gospel According to Bishop Lance Henriksen

Deadly Movie Connections: Bishop, Played by Lance Henriksen in Aliens (1986), Alien3 (1992), and Alien vs. Predictor (2004)

Lance Henriksen can hold his head up high and proudly acclaim that he is only second to the mighty Sigourney Weaver when it comes to appearances in Alien movies, three to the latter’s four. There is however a slight quandary when it comes to the continuity of this Deadly Movies connection, let’s start at the beginning, and by the beginning I mean the year 2172.

Aliens (1986): Dir James Cameron. The android Bishop would first appear as an advanced model of the Ash android (Alien 1979 played by Ian Holm). Bishop is the executive officer aboard the military vessel Sulaco, destined for a rescue mission on LV-426. Bishop is essentially a strategic planner who’s primary function is to aid human survival by any means necessary, which he achieves to heroic levels when being torn in half by the Alien Queen. Of course as an android this is less of a fatal guts-spill and more of a spiny rainbow ball.

Alien3 (1992): Dir David Fincher. Bishop would also appear during the finale of Alien3 billed as Bishop II who claims to be the designer of the Bishop range. After a bit of a skirmish with want away prisoner Morse and his monkey-wrench, Bishop II clearly bleeds from the head (a scene accentuated in the 2003 Assembly Cut whereby Bishop II’s entire ear is hanging off). Blood would indicate that Bishop II is human right? Well Alien lineage teaches us that droids are filled with a milky white goop (see Ash’s decapitation in Alien, Bishop’s torso and legs separation in Aliens, and Call’s weepy wounds in Alien Resurrection) rather than blood. So at this stage Bishop II is either A) a human with a very high pain threshold, or B) an advanced model of android that utilises human tissue (think Terminator). Rumour has it that in the original screenplay Bishop II was indeed a human, a fact backed up by the novelisation whereby Bishop II is a human called Michael Bishop. This ambiguity however left the door ajar for one Paul W S Anderson (cough, asshole, cough).

AVP Alien vs. Predator (2004): Dir Paul W S Anderson. Now it gets confusing. Henriksen plays Charles Bishop Weyland, a rather coarse attempt to bridge both the matter of where the Bishop android derived from and the origin of the infamous Weyland-Yutani company. So Charles Bishop Weyland both looks like the android Bishop and owns one half of the company that would go on to form the super conglomerate that would build said Bishop’s. Coincidence? So it’s pretty obvious what we’re being asked to derive from this, Charles Bishop Weyland is the inventor of the android technology and the inspiration for its appearance. Which is a very tender move by the future scientists who think of this homage to Mr Weyland some 168 years in the future, one of the many glorious timeline problems caused by this movie (I wonder if future Mac robots will look like, and be called, Steve Jobs?) . Which brings us back to the troubling appearance of Bishop II in Alien3 and adding a third variable to the conundrum that C) Bishop II is the spitting-image direct descendent of Charles Bishop Weyland, let’s say great great grandson, which would account for the blood. Hmmmm.

In conclusion: To conclude my almost pointlessly deep investigation into the character of Bishop in the Alien franchise I give you final hypothesis: Bishop is an android developed somewhere between the events of Alien and Aliens, let’s say in the year 2160’ish. He is a product of the Weyland-Yutani corporation whose physical appearance was based on that of one of the companies founding fathers Charles Bishop Weyland. Bishop II (although originally intended to be human in the original Alien3 screenplay) is an advanced form of android who is covered in living tissue (due to the new continuity added by AVP). Done and done.

Deadly Movies Investigates the Strange Case of the Three Japanese King Kong Kounterfits

Wasei Kingu Kongu (aka Japanese King Kong 1933), Edo ni Arawareta Kingu Kongu (aka King Kong Appears in Edu 1934) and Kingu Kongu Zenkouhen (1938)

Case Date 1933: Here’s an intriguing revelation that’s only known to Mole People, Richard Nixon, and 45 year-old men who work at Forbidden Planet. During the 1930s it would appear that various Japanese studios turned out knock-off King Kong (or Kingu Kongu in Japanese-English) films that were only ever given domestic release due to the incredibly blatant copyright infringement. You’ve got to admire the balls of steel approach by these on-the-fly filmmakers, cashing in on the popularity of Hollywood releases. These were, in effect, 1930s versions of today’s direct to DVD movies.., Outrageousu! (click the poster image to enlarge)

What adds to their mystique is that all three copies are lost to time. The most likely cause of this loss? The US atomic bombings in 1945. Whatever the cause, the image to the left would seem to be the only surviving still from any of these three films, most likely from 1933’s Wasei Kingu Kongu (aka Japanese King Kong 1933)

According to multiple online sources Japanese studio Sochikuh (which still exists in one way or another in Kyoto Japan) produced a quick replica of 1933s King Kong in the same year. Wasei Kingu Kongu or literally ‘Japanese King Kong’ was apparently as good as a literal remake or straight copy. Then there is King Kong Appears in Edu which appears to be some kind of bizarre period drama. Edu being the name for Tokyo prior to 1868. This film was produced by the Zensho Kinema studio which ceased making films in 1940. This, rumour has it, featured Kong fighting giant insects and bashing up old-school Japanese architecture.

As for King Kong Zenkouhen.., No-one seems to know what the hell this is about, or if it really existed in the first place. Indeed it may be the case that King Kong Zenkouhen is in fact King Kong Appears in Edu, but we may never know as all prints are lost. Many state King Kong Appears in Edu as being released in 1934, however records have the production studio, Zensho Kinema, only existing between 1938 and 1940 giving extra weight to the theory that the these two films are indeed one and the same.

Whatever the truth behind these obscure films consider this; It would appear that these Kong rip offs pre-date the man-in-rubber-suit films made famous by Toho’s Godzilla by some 16 years or so. In which case, for better or worse, they deserve their rightful recognition in Monster Movie history.

For more Deadly Movies information on King Kong adsurdities take a look at these gems

Snakes on a Plain yet Effective Modern B-Movie

Deadly Movies Reviews | ‘Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid’ (2004)

As far as guilty pleasures go this is right up there for me. It’s the sort of film that you only confess your love of to close friends, film comrades, or that person you end up cornering when drunk at a house party. You know you shouldn’t like it but you do, and you don’t just tolerate it but you genuinely enjoy it time and time again. Before you know it you are on multiple viewings and looking the cast up on IMDB. This bodes the obvious question.., Why?

The Look of ‘Future’ Space

Deadly Movies takes a look at representing the future of space travel

None more 60's: Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun (1969)

Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson (along with Sylvia Anderson) wrote, produced, and of course created the miniatures for the 1969 Sci-fi film Journey to The Far Side of The Sun. Now for me this film has faults way beyond that of the realisation of the future, but it was this particular movie future that got me thinking; How best to represent the future on film? In Anderson’s film, for example, never has the future looked more like 1969. Complete with knee high boots, bob haircuts, mini skirts, egg chairs, and plenty of psychedelia. Now of course films should be watched in the historic, cultural, and social context of which they were made, and Journey to The Far Side of The Sun certainly isn’t the only culprit when it comes to pimping the present out as the future. Take the greatness of Arnie’s Total Recall; great film but set in a future that’s more Walkman than Ipod. That’s what I’m getting at, you could pull up multiple examples from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Don’t get me wrong outdated technology is often part of the charm, but what can really throw a phaser in the works is if the fashions of the day (or fifteen minute phase) are so sewn into the visual fabric of the film that it acts as a distraction rather than a compliment. And that was indeed the case with Journey to The Far Side of The Sun.

Sleek Lines and Neutral Colours: Alien (1979)

While it’s easy to point the finger at previous attempts at (re)creating the future, you have to remember that these films were once cutting edge and that our contemporary takes on what lies ahead may well one day seem laughable. But this doesn’t mean that filmic representations of the future are doomed to ridicule. There are shining beacons of visual hope, path blazers of concept and set design that achieved the almost impossible by creating a future that, to date at least, for the new viewer cant be dated by hair-do’s, fashions, furnishings, slang, or pop references. They are the sci-fi films who’s directors, cinematographers, set designers, costume designers, and conceptual artists have given us timeless settings by which we can bathe in a film that could be a glimpse of tomorrow. Look at Fritz Lang’s timeless Metropolis (1927), or the simple lines and neutral colours used in Alien (1979) likewise some of the amazing sets seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or the mixing of cultures, periods, and ethnic design in Blade Runner (1982). These visual wonders have kept things simple and not of the period. Yes characters may smoke and there may even be the odd perm or flattop, but the effort and understanding was there that to be of the future the film must have a healthy distance from the present.