Fake Gucci, Rubber Shark (Bait (2012))

From http://images.mymovies.net/images/film/cin/350x522/fid12864.jpg

Dir. Kimble Rendall

Unfortunately, the genre film of yesteryear, which upstarts like myself, far too young to have grown up with them, celebrate, are missing from now. For the most part you have two options. The first, with exceptions, is the blockbuster - B-movies made with too much money, don't use the budget to their advantage, and worse, have pretentions to being great art when they barely scrape together a few virtues. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) rears its ugly head for me now for example - if there was ever was a film that needed to have been made in the seventies with less money available and someone like Roger Corman to kick its writing and presentation up the backside, it's that sort of film. Far from being a Grindhouse snob, at least some of the Hollywood films of yesterday, like Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), felt like they had more on their minds and a lush presentation even if the results are failed. On the opposite end, however, are those films that never take anything seriously. They're always ironic, they never take anything seriously, they're happy with their crappy special effects and laugh at them, try so hard to be cool, amused with how bad they are and/or cram as many references into the material they can instead of fixing the narrative plots. I.e. The Man With The Iron Fists (2012), The Asylum films like The Almighty Thor (2011), Troma's Terror Firma (1999), Machete (2010), and Sharktopus (2010), a film unfortunately presented by Roger Corman. Films which all belong to the same circle even if they're very different from each other. With these options, if it wasn't for the exceptions genre cinema would be screwed and doomed to become the plaything of churned out CGI alligators and snarky audiences. The most interesting films, in most cases, are those that dangerously veer to the pretentious but with real artistic value, are divisive, or from a non-English language country because, even as comedies, they take themselves seriously. They want to be good films, and even if they're in on the joke, or suffer from some dodgy effects, they are played completely straight. They are all sincere, a word lost in most cinema in general. I can gladly say that I can stick Bait in this category. I will confess to this being a legitimate candidate for a guilty pleasure of mine for the year, but it's a hell of a lot more entertaining legitimately than other movies.

From http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/bait09.jpg

I will confess, moments in Bait, done seriously, caused me to giggle, but it's a film that knows how absurd it is, but unlike a Sharktopus, still makes the drama dramatic, the situation serious, and tries to be great even with its obvious flaws. If this was the sort of thing at the cinema more, or what straight-to-DVD meant unless better films were made, I would actually be a happier man knowing someone was actually having fun with their work than merely making a product. In an Australian coastal city, the characters of the film are set up together in a supermarket - a tragedy in the past, a father-daughter conflict, kinky sex in the underground car park, a robbery about to go wrong. Then a giant tidal wave hits the city. People are killed in the supermarket barring a few survivors, the building is mostly submerged underwater, and there's a great white shark or two stalking around the isle for cereals. The film is (mercifully) played as a serious story; even if it's a slight B-movie, where you know how it'll end, this conviction supports the story more and allows you to drop your hesitance and actually enjoy a film for once. It's acceptable and rewarding to empty your mind with Bait because it never dares to claim to be an important message film or insult your intelligence. No pretence that it never dares to try and actually aspire to. No insipid political message. No attempt to pander to liberal or conservative viewers. No attempt to pander to anti-authoritarian teenagers. Not trying to be high art without any sense of artistry or experimentation. Not being a jokey film like the films I've mentioned in the first paragraph. The violence, surprisingly gory for a film that fifteen years in Britain can buy and see, is never uncomfortably fetishistic like the remake of Pirahna (2010) becomes.  It's done sincerely with some budget to it.

From http://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/9/92/Bait_g.jpg/600px-Bait_g.jpg

And yes, it's a film about sharks in a supermarket. Yes, this is the premise for a Z-movie let alone a B-movie. Yes it has a slight plot. Yes, when you see a CGI bird at the beginning, it shows the computer effects aren't the best. And yes its amusing how wooden one of the actors' lines are especially when they're all talking about how they will become shark food and being almost giddy about it. But it's made with quality for all its flaws, never slouching and is made with entertainment. It sets itself up quickly and the drama, while well worn, is interesting. It even includes a very sober moment, in the middle of a lurid and cliché presentation, that is actually effective. That I could suddenly chuckle or giggle at certain serious moments as well as the intentionally comedic parts is a positive for the film, amused that it followed into a moment or piece of dialogue often said in films before, but delighted by its prescience here rather than annoyed by it. That the film is structurally well made - bright, put together perfectly, able to prevent the flaws with the CGI from undermining it - makes it more rewarding because it was made with consideration. That I came to it with no expectations helped it, but it's great to see a completely un-jaded film that does what it sets out to do perfectly. It would be a minor film if there wasn't as many bad genre films in existence, but I wished films like this existed more. Those above the middling range that are merely good but have a fun or a craft to them that make them eventually memorable and virtuous for actually accomplishing something fully even if the goal is slight. With some of the awful genre films in existence, it's a lifesaver to be perfectly honest, and I wish the director can only go higher in quality from here. Considering some of the awful horror films released this year, this is one I was fully grateful for even if it'll never get into the Top Ten list.

From http://i.imgur.com/YHdfC.jpg

The ‘Z-Movie Which May Be Smarter Than It Is Said To Be...’ [Robot Monster (1953)]

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aoZjamlF5VE/S_iwdNVQYYI/AAAAAAAAAYw/
GXsovXTiA5Q/s1600/robot_monster.jpg

Dir. Phil Tucker

USA

Film #28 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s_30zQFJp4g/SCdGyxnticI
/AAAAAAAAEEM/cpFJb70Ka68/s320/RobotMon.jpg

"The trouble with modern day films is that the actors and actresses seem to be showing off rather than acting...don't you think."

- YouTube Comment -

From http://i.imgur.com/jjRn1.jpg

I will argue that American genre cinema is not as unbridled and uninhibited as one wishes it could be. Japan sits on top of both categories as the unchallenged king, able to have deep questions on the human condition alongside two androids melding together into a phallic-headed man. After that every country has vast quantities of these ideals, especially in Europe and Eastern Europe. American cinema has its fair share of imaginary phantasmagoria, but there is also many ‘should-have-beens’, films which could have been more artistically creative, more pulpy, more crazier, despite the great ideas they had to start with. Fifties science fiction is becoming for me a vast area of all these virtues in American cinema even if the films are bad. The obsession with nuclear annihilation and the Cold War, mixed with an innocent sincerity, despite the darker aspects of the era, and the development of technology like 3D, creates a distinct tone to these films where everyone I’ve seen is difficult to forget, even if I am bored by them, because of their moods created from all this. Robot Monster, dubbed one of the worst films of the genre, is a lot more potent in its tone and creation than a great deal of bad films, as has been brought up with other films reviewed in this season, made decades later.

From http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9vatnb3Ti1ra8pzzo1_500.png

When the entire human race, in a quite gruesomely nihilistic fashion, is destroyed, except for eight people, by cosmic death rays by the alien species the Ro-mans, the survivors have to content with the Ro-man charged by his grand leader to eliminate the last survivors. It is impossible to take Robot Monster seriously, but considering how legendary this film is for its titular monster, a man in a gorilla suit with a diver’s helmet for a head, this should vetoed from being a justifiable criticism. A real criticism is that, while this could have worked fully with such a low budget and small cast, a great deal of its sixty or so minutes is of the Ro-man wandering around the countryside and cave hideout. There is a fine line between moments of introspection and just having actors waddling about the shooting location, and just like being too reliant on exposition dialogue, it has undermined a terrible amount of B- and C-level films and quite a few blockbusters too. The sense of the gap in ‘bad’ cinema, the pregnant pauses and long, awkward passages of dialogue and action that catches itself out in comparison to ‘good’ dialogue and acting, which blends into the cinematic world seamlessly, is an obsession for connoisseurs of these sorts of films. There is a concern however that the border between the profoundly languid and comedic, and the utterly tedious, is up for debate. In the case of Robot Monster, for its benefit, it blurs, but other times you wonder why anyone would find any worth in a long drawn out of scene. Perversely this is the same concern that exists in areas of art cinema, the difference between Michelangelo Antonioni and Bela Tarr, in their use of slow, methodical camera takes, to a hack who leaves the camera on not knowing what to do. The difference is the latter isn’t discussing the awkward transitions in Plan 9 From Outer Space (1956) where actors move across screen to the next plot point or their next line.

From http://i851.photobucket.com/albums/ab75/paul_ayche/robotMonster33-03.jpg

Robot Monster is also peculiar – not weird, but peculiar in how goes with the concept of the end of humanity by an extraterrestrial force through a young boy’s mindset. This may spoil this film, or the one I am about to evoke if you’ve seen Robot Monster, but this film has the same narrative structure of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), the only film Dr. Seuss worked on, and one has to wonder, even if the film has glaring flaws, whether the writer of this film’s plot was purposely playing off the story as the sort of thing a younger boy would conjure up. With an opening title with sci-fi comic books and paperbacks in the background on top of each other, and the boy character wandering around in the first scenes with a toy space helmet on, with a toy ray gun pretending to disintegrate his little sister, is this film purposely playing itself off as, without revealing too much, a child’s flight of fancy? Considering the structure of the film, where an older archaeologist he meets becomes his father, his real one dead, and his assistant becomes the love interest for his older sister, and somehow this film that is dismissed as garbage manages to be actually interesting as cheapy sci-fi pulp that was shot in four days in 3D. This is not to defend Robot Monster as a great film, but like a lot of these films, it was an attempt at sincere filmmaking, and in this one, that sincerity shines through. The peculiarities of the film, of what Ro-man looks like and, more oddly, of there being scenes of stop motion dinosaurs or actual lizards fighting on tiny, model jungle opening sets, whether for the film or pre-existing footage, used numerous times including to depict mankind’s end, makes the film stranger. Why dinosaurs and overlarge iguanas? It is better not to ask and go with the surrealness of it. The Ro-man himself falls in love, or has inklings of physical passions for the older sister, and has an existential crisis about his function in life. The sister herself, an independent and technologically gifted genius, is literally tied up by her father and lover who refuse to let her act by herself by meeting the Ro-Man and having a negotiation of their lives with him in favour of a relationship. This sort of thing is far more interesting than what usually counts as entertainment in ‘so-bad-its-good’ films. Boom mikes popping up in the corner onscreen are amusing, but they don’t hold a candle to a creature, made from a gorilla suit and a diver’s helmet, being given a personality and a conflicting crisis about his existence of a drone.

From http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Robot-Monster-photo-5-400x300.jpg

This nature of what Robot Monster is – of what could have been a legitimately great film but is still memorable to see – is far more worth its weight in gold for me after a season of films like this than something ‘so bad’ you laugh at it. It’s a compelling failure rather than an excuse in film making product – like Sunday School Musical (2008) – that is completely worthless. I didn’t find Robot Monster to be the most rewarding of films of this ilk I’ve seen, but playing out as an adolescent’s imagination in cheap location scouting and costuming, it proves to be more than its reputation as a golden turkey suggests even if it’s just to illicit surprise and little else.

From http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/stills/robot_monster_02.jpg

I Would Rather Write About Something Else Than Drive Angry (2011) But...

Dir: Patrick Lussier

USA

I was going to write about the Nicolas Cage film Drive Angry (2011), since it was recently released on DVD in the UK, as a full review but it is not worth it. I feel I should post as much as possible, but the lack of interest even in a negative way for the film makes it difficult to continue discussing it unless I post it in this way instead.

It all went wrong the moment - when the film starts and a CGI car slams through the gates of an inflamed, CGI necropolis of Hell -  the voiceover starts using the phrase ‘bad ass motherfucker’ in a serious way that is also supposed to sound ‘cool’ to the viewer’s ears. My heart sank and nothing in the film for the whole 100 minutes was able to raise it. The use of the phrase caught me onto the issue with the film immediately – it tries so hard to be exploitative, with its swearing, nudity and luridness, but it felt like a cynical attempt to amplify these aspects with no sincerity to it. There have been many other films including those made merely for money – from Takashi Miike to Neveldine/Taylor – which for any flaws they have had the virtue of sincerity to their sleaze and transgressions. It felt legitimate and fitting for their stories (or lack thereof). Sincerity in the copious gore and adult content in a film improves its qualities; it feels not only rawer, but can be used to craft said exploitation into an artistic power as well. Sincere mature films tend to also be legitimately insane and bizarre, which Drive Angry attempts to be as well and fails to, which is why one-off films like Ichi the Killer (2001) and Crank: High Voltage (2009) have their audiences while the likes of Drive Angry may not. (It’s fitting for this thought of mine that it is a Nicolas Cage film too; no matter how ridiculous his acting or hair piece is, it cannot compare to his performances in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart (1990), or even something like Con Air (1997), where there is a sincerity to his weird pronunciations or visual appearance, whether the director pushes him in that direction or, unlike Drive Angry, he is doing it unintentionally and not trying to hard too mug for the camera). Drive Angry slips into an admirable but failed group of films spearheaded by Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007) and Robert Rodriquez’s Planet Terror (2007) [I haven’t seen the original Grindhouse (2007) yet] which attempted to replicate the exploitation films of the 1970s and 80s but felt for me over priced in terms of budget and hollow. (Some may argue that the Kill Bill films may be the first films to do this, which may be true, but the amount of filmic influences on them from different time periods and styles causes this to be questionable too. I also loved the first one). Since Grindhouse, despite its failure at the American box office, there has been at least a more pronounced amount of films like Drive Angry which attempt to celebrate their influences by acting like them. The problem with Drive Angry sadly is that it is trying to be a ‘sincere’ in its exploitation synthetically, trying to play up a sleaziness than just going forward in its plot as a sleazy film. Even though they were sold on sex and violence, these aspects were not at the forefront of the many older films I’ve seen but merely an additional decoration to them to sell cinema tickets. The Jack Hill film The Big Bird Cage (1972) for example is concern with giving the viewer nudity and attractive women firing machine guns, but it is not consumed in trying to make it look edgy to the viewer and is more wrapped up in its women in prison plot in the jungle. Drive Angry on the other hand spends all its time trying to make itself look legitimate as an exploitation film, all the while compromising itself. There is also a sense that, for all its grandeurs of sinking into the gutter, it suffers from a political correctness streak that causes it to sit on the fence and become cinematically inept as a result. The best (worst?) example of this is with the main female actress Amber Heard. Not only is she completely sexless for a female character, both in a film with no issues in having other actresses do full nude scenes and in terms of being a female character with no sense of charismatic beauty to her, looking like a plastic doll in baggy clothing on screen, but the film’s attempts to make her a strong character is actually far more offensive than to have had the actress parade naked on screen like the others. Political correctness is a truly dangerous concept because, instead of tackling the real issues of gender and race in humanity’s psyche, it sidesteps them and compromises in a way that is mechanical, and artistically and intellectually bankrupt. Exploitation films and transgressive cinema can only start to succeed if it either enters the sewers of the human mind or/and is subversive; if the writers of this film really wanted to have a strong female lead, they needed to write a real human being within a genre film than have Heard swearing like a sailor and punching other women. I could go on about the other actors and aspects of the film but to honest I feel that all of my problems have been expresses in what I have already typed, encroached by my complete disinterest in the film.

This sense of compromise exists throughout the film and makes it difficult to sympathise with films like this. If this is the best of these sorts of films Hollywood can up with, then we should stick with the one-off directors or the journey men and women - the later going into (economically) commercial cinema and ending up with a cult film or two in their filmographies - to provide interesting exploitation cinema instead of forcing them into creation. Whenever there are attempts to artificially create certain aspects of film within the medium of cinema, it usually fails, and it does even more so with something as ‘vague’ as the cult or exploitation film which is effected by the environment and time it was made in, and the multiple factors surrounding its creation and its viewing. Something like Drive Angry is just a dull and sanitised attempt at these sorts of films which failed miserably in the first minute of its runtime.