Island City (TV movie pilot, 1994) score: 2 of 4

In this post to Pop Matters, I reviewed Gene Roddenberry's Pax TV movies, in which a post-apocalyptic Earth is ministered to by Pax, a sort of post-U.N.  The viewer surrogate is Dylan Hunt who, like Buck Rogers, wakes up after centuries of suspension.  In a classic of network passive-aggression, three of these supposed pilots were commissioned, aired and rejected, 1973-5.  (Dylan Hunt's story did go to series, sort of: that's the name of the revived hero of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, one of two posthumous series developed from Great Bird outlines.)

In the first PAX movie, 1973's Genesis II, Hunt is played by Alex Cord, with his usual pornstache. 

Dylan Hunt before his long sleep

More substantively, I wrote, the suspense is undercut by the name of an otherwise mysterious civilization, the "Tyranians."  Their subsequent villainy seems as inevitable as that of the Decepticons.  

Flash-forward to 2021: midway into a history doc, my ears reddened, when I learned of the Tyrrhenians, legendary precursors to the Etruscans (and the Mediterranean between mainland Italy and Sicily/Sardinia is known as the Tyrrhenian Sea).  d'ho.

At the risk of self-justification, I still think it doesn't work for Genesis II, in putting the average viewer ahead of the script, if only by an accident of phonetics (the movie never spells the word).  Granted, it's Roddenberryesque to veer to controversial theories of Etruscan origins: his was a restless intellect (he named Star Trek: TNG characters after Benjamin Whorf and Texas Guinan).  Still, the intriguing backstory would've been better developed for the pilot or saved for Season 1.   

back to the forbidden zone 

All of which came to mind because 1994's Island City is undone by a similar mistake. It's another TV-movie pilot, with another valiant, post-apocalyptic team sworn to restore civilization. The inventive twist: the catastrophe was neither martial nor ecologic, but side effect of an anti-aging serum, which makes millions into "Recessives," i.e. latter-day cavemen prone to violence. Why not test the wonder-drug more thoroughly? As Sherman Fraser charges in Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan, "even for TV sf, the science is awfully sloppy."

The utopian goal of greatly increased longevity is attained, but only for an elite, their lives complicated by a large, hostile underclass.  The dynamic varies Planet of the Apes, or The Twilight Zone "Eye of the  Beholder," with aging instead of looks.  

As a series, Island City would've focused on the "normals" who defend their eponymous outpost.  The pilot movie spreads itself thin, with action, soap, humor and the figurative commentary for which TV sci-fi is known.  It's unwieldy, but the humor is essential: as in the Geico commercials (and short-lived sitcom), modern-day cavemen = funny.

Even before getting to plotting, flaws: the fx are rather primitive for the '90s,  including the backlot-armored vehicles, which recall the Pax movies, or the disposable, Saturday a.m. likes of Ark II.  The patrol scenes resort to a disused quarry (or similar), like Blake's 7 and Star Trek: Deep Space 9.  One character has a teen son hooked on VR (a '90s buzz-concept), while staying within family-show rails. 

curate's egg

Like the Genesis II name-drop, Island City's bigotry parallel is intriguing in itself.  The team soon adds a sympathetic half-Recessive who, like Spock and Worf, struggles with identity.  All of which had become fairly standard (see also the soulful Diggers of Seaquest, the defensive androids of Tekwar), but there's further provocation, in that most of the elite still use the youth drug, necessitating mating-restrictions (compare the art-house Code 46).  

Unfortunately, the pilot merely sideswipes this moral tangle, dropping hints of terrorism, as some norms abstain from the drug on political grounds.  Granted, the filmmakers run out of time as they introduce the premise and a half-dozen regular characters.  Still, it's all set-up without payoff.  It didn't work in 1973, it wasn't going to work in the busy syndication market of 1994.  

before their big breaks

Island City's talented cast features an amusing Hollywood synchrony: Brenda Strong and Veanne Cox play long-lost sisters (tough officer and man-hungry refugee, respectively).  Each would soon make an impression on Seinfeld, Strong as "braless wonder" Sue Ellen Mischke, and Cox as Toby, the excitable editor.  Sitcom viewers will also recognize Gregg 23 (better than clones #1-22, but clumsy) as Eric McCormack of Will and Grace, and trooper Seall is Constance Marie, Angie on George Lopez.  One team member persevered in service: Kevin Conroy voiced the animated Batman.  

Cloned (1997 TV movie) score: 2.5 (of 4 stars)

** this review contains spoilers **

We all have the vices of our virtues, and medical doctors tend to objectify human beings.  Slowly, they may be making the world a de facto unpaid study. 

Skye Weston (Elizabeth Perkins) backtracks in the watchable 1997 TV-movie Cloned (dvd out-of-print but available).  She and husband Rick (Bradley Whitford) lost their son a year ago.  As they debate trying again, she glimpses her boy in a shopping district.  (The moment of uncanny echoes Duplicates, a 1992 TV-movie with Gregory Harrison and Kim Greist).  A smart professional, Skye sleuths, finding evidence of multiple women with identical sons.  She posts to the (primitive) Internet for help, and when she finds a slew of responses, it remains chilling, despite dial-up graphics.

Cloned was an NBC film but could pass for Lifetime.  As Cascades Gothic, its plot is less involved than a typical X-Files, which may alienate fans.  Still, the movie's frank with the horror of a woman betrayed when most vulnerable, as well as the difficulty in preventing (the return of) human commodification.  Cloned was made by veterans of TV-movies, not speculative fiction; perhaps they confused sci-fi with comic book storytelling.  If so, their muckraker lacks the scope and visual interest of the latter.  

Still, it's grounded by an impressive Perkins, a star of the era (Big, The Flintstones).  Her Skye is stuck in “Anger” stage, though she's not just a scorned mother: the rage issues, we feel, go back.  She snaps to See-the-manager mode, her comments more offensive than necessary, as Rick contains the damage.  She's actually refreshing, and the film's passive community doesn’t deserve better.  Cloned wasn't a pilot (going by Fraser Sherman's Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan), but this Skye may've supported another transit.

Not all's dire: Enrico Colantoni (Just Shoot Me, Veronica Mars) is amusing as security guard Rinker, the cheerfully-evil hired-muscle.  (Note the production felt compelled to also cast a good bald man, a federal agent.)  Roger Cross, following Ernie Hudson and Joe Morton as “black sci-fi guy," is another security guard, Tina Lifford a white-coated tech, and Scott Paulin the bottom-line shark.  

Cloned followed buzz about Dolly the cloned sheep, named for Dolly Parton, as modern priests appropriated celebrity to sell vexatious fertility.  Similarly, the villains in Cloned aren’t mad scientists but aggressive capitalists.  In a scene evoking the same year's Alien: Resurrection, it’s revealed cloning is practice for the real business, growing replacement organs (the alarm-cycle broadens to The Island of Dr. Moreau/1996, Dirty Pretty Things/2002, and Repo Men/2010).  When the sellout fertility expert, Dr. Kozak (Alan Rosenberg), claims ends justify means, Skye fires back his own words: “First, do no harm.” 

underseen for Halloween, 2020 (from behind the mask)

This year's encomiums include a pair of television-plays of 1973, but with no regard to proceedings lately before the eldership in America.    

As ever, the plays are mere hoarfrost amusements, or if the reader prefers, admonishments before "red hour," the tricks or treats.    

Dying Room Only (1973)

The late Richard Matheson was one of television's most reliable: he wrote for Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, created the underrated Circle of Fear, and supplied teleplays for various Dan Curtis productions, including both "Kolchak" features.  Like the Matheson-Spielberg Duel (1971), Dying Room Only is a desert-gothic and a precursor to The Hitcher, The Vanishing and Breakdown.  More modestly scaled, Dying Room Only has, in addition to Matheson's craft, striking desert photography, and a cast including two Oscar winners.

An “ordinary” couple is returning from a road-trip vacation.  Wife Cloris Leachman wants to drive 100 miles out-of-the-way to get photos of a native "wikiup" for a school project (the kid's back home).  Husband Dabney Coleman resists; their quarrel is horror's trigger-sin. 

In a culture dependent on racial identity, it’s not unusual for an American film to be about race even when all characters are white.  This spousal conflict, referencing Indians, evokes national anxiety.  Later, Cloris pokes into a dark storeroom, as if in the national unconscious.   

Handled correctly, such notes create an edge, especially for white viewers: for the conservative, the characters are endangered by their soft-minded disloyalty and condescension.  And regardless, they've been identified with genocide. 

When Coleman disappears, Leachman runs up against clannish locals Ned Beatty (just off the implicitly racial Deliverance) and Ross Martin.  Malignity is gradually exposed, in unnerving fashion.  The narrative is so hard on the female lead, some may object.  Early in 2nd-wave feminism, equality was dead serious -- she's on her own.

Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) 

This film is charged mislabeled, because not faithful to Mary Shelley’s novel.  Without researching the makers' intent, it's frustrating: if faithfulness were the claim, they could’ve billed it “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (available, in 1973). 

Perhaps the subtitle is more in reference to metaphor cheek-by-jowl with reality.  Frankenstein: The True Story, originally a prestige miniseries, is very much costume horror.  Amid the shocks and trading for parts, we see 17^th century industry draw motley laborers from all points, to form new, roiling communities.  Historically, the communities became Frankenstein cultures, often appalling, disowned and self-loathing.  A cultured appreciation for history helps this version be a worthy cousin to Hammer's Frankenstein, then completing its impressive run.

The cast includes Michael Sarrazin as the Creature and David McCallum as Clerval; Jane Seymour is memorably erotic as Prima.  Top billing goes to James Mason, who'd already been 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and on a Journey to the Center of the Earth, and would groom The Boys from Brazil (these credits bely Charlton Heston as first science-fiction star).  

Mason plays Polidori, a new character (by teleplay writer Christopher Isherwood) named after a real friend of the Shelleys.  Although this senior scientist is more consequential than those in most Frankenstein films, Polidori does nothing to discourage Victor’s recklessness.  Perhaps the name was too good to waste: a professed love of all implies an actual love of no one.  This Polidori is an omnivore, waiting for one like Victor to dare the jealousy of God.

With these provocative threads, and the miniseries form still largely untested, a touch of self-sabotage should not surprise.  The first minutes shatter the fourth wall, as Mason hosts clips that give away too much of the plot (skip to 5:44 to avoid spoilers).  

Well, it’s not as if we're unfamiliar with the major beats.  Since at least James Whale in 1931, Shelley's novel has likely been on-the-boards somewhere on any given day.  Frankenstein is a modernist liturgy, a ritual of egomaniacal science transgressing and punished.  The universal refusal to marry Shelley has kept her narrative electric and viral.  And we need the catharsis, when the creature so rarely completes circuit back to his creator ... this side of the mirror.  

Extraordinary Tales (2013)

This is an impressive animated anthology of Edgar Allan Poe, evidently for all ages.  As such,  the Tales are among the most familiar, and will elicit varied responses.  The animation style is more like book illustrations than anything "cartoony," and reminded me of the classics The Selfish Giant and The Woods.  Voices heard include those of Bela Lugosi (reading "The Tell-Tale Heart") and Christopher Lee.  

Caveats: some screens are busy with CGI; the pace is too fast in the first two stories.  It's understandable to schedule for parents, with content more challenging as we go (kids-to-bed before "The Masque of the Red Death"), but the opener, "The Fall of the House of Usher," plays like "Rod Usher's Greatest Hits."  It's especially regrettable in that the medium seems ideal for multiple versions of a film.    

Still, it's an impressive set, especially the wry horror of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," and the quietly terrifying "The Pit and the Pendulum."  These are reason to see Extraordinary Tales.  "Valdemar" may be the best English-language version; certainly, it's flights above George Romero's misbegotten Two Evil Eyes (1990).  While worthy Corman-Poe, Tales of Terror (1962) commercializes "Valdemar" with a romance.  (Reviews discourage consideration for The Mesmerist, a 2005 black comedy with Neil Patrick Harris.)

Extraordinary Tales is wrapped in an original frame: a Continental-accented Lady Death tries to seduce Poe (as a raven) from his attachment to life.  If their dialogue is "therapy-speak," it is, at least, perceptive: 

Lady Death: You have devoted so many pages to my name ...  All veiled love letters, addressed to me. You fear me.  And yet you are insatiably attracted. Come with me … it's time.

Poe: No -- it cannot be. I don't want to be forgotten. I was buried in a common grave. My writings were forgotten for years.

Lady Death: ... Come now, Poe. You love me! You've been a corpse walking amongst the living for a long time, Edgar. It must have been quite a strain ...  Look at your final acts: they all succumb to my prowess.  The poor, the weak, the rich, the powerful.  Everybody bows before me. 

There's nothing unusual in Poe being temporarily forgotten, it was the same with H.P. Lovecraft.  That which is most challenging to the culture triggers a quarter-century denial (where needed, the period is indefinite).  Similarly, the films we revisit from any era are almost never the hits.

If Edgar Allan Poe triumphed over death, it was from insight.  He knew the optimistic, utopian, forward-thinking society protests too much, its national poet should write "horror stories for boys" (critic Leslie Fiedler's phrase).  And so the obscurity pitched into a pauper's grave has 392 credits on the IMDb.  

Deep Red (1994 TV movie) score: 2 of 4

Haun as the first human to benefit from "Reds"

not that Deep Red

In a prologue that evokes Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and The Thing (1982), an alien ship disintegrates in Earth's atmosphere.  As tiny shards spray a park, one pierces a girl's face (as an adult, Lindsey Haun would have a recurring role on True Blood).  She not only recovers, her club foot is healed.

Duly impressed, scientist Newmeyer (John de Lancie) seizes the alien nanotech, dubbed "Reds," as a lucrative panacea/fountain of youth.  ("Deep Reds" are the upgrade, or something.)  He's opposed by the girl's mother (Lisa Collins), herself revivified, but also reeling from the murder of her husband (Newmeyer's erstwhile colleague), played by future-Jigsaw Tobin Bell.

the goodies: Collins, Pacula & Biehn

All of which might be too much premise for a mock-serious neo-noir with a dangling subplot about killer milkmen.  It might've worked as a self-spoof, but even the humor could've used Deep Reds (and milk).

As noted on Moria, Deep Red is confusing: we expect the aliens to show up (again) -- they never do -- while the indulgent character-morphing might force a rewind.  Script fixes would've been rather simple, raising questions of what happened, and, perhaps, the prospect of a redemptive remake.

Michael Biehn is well-cast as Joe Keyes, a dissolute P.I. hired by Collins.  Keyes has been down, ever since a colleague's wife was killed on his watch, which sounds like backstory for a series.  The cast also includes conspiracy vet Joanna Pacula, Steven Williams as a sketchy police contact, and John Kapelos, in basically his Forever Knight role.  Further "pilot" evidence: the nanotech isn't discredited by the end, as the new (very healthy) family drives to sundown.

Amusingly, as Deep Red begins, it seems everyone in this Dark City has a shingle, outside dirty office with desk and chair, like a comic variant of "Demon with a Glass Hand."  There are such glimmers, but like the pieces of the alien craft, they disperse. 

bats left (no, right), throws right (no, left)

My work is rarely to-the-minute, and I rarely consider when a piece will be read.  I started this post long before Covid-19 and the consequent postponing of the baseball season.  If it doesn't elevate, nor replace peanuts and Cracker Jack, it is, I hope, of interest.         

Over the winter, news of an actual MLB game to be played at the location for 1989's Field of Dreams (left) summoned one of the all-time film flubs: Shoeless Joe Jackson hitting right-handed.  Ray Liotta, playing Jackson, failed badly to hit left-handed despite pro coaches on set (per this New York Post interview).  Finally, Liotta was given permission to switch sides.  It doesn't explain why the filmmakers didn't prioritize accuracy from the start.

The 1919 White Sox added disgrace to poverty when they threw the World Series.  70 years on, the "Black Sox" were in the zeitgeist: 1988's Eight Men Out had D.B. Sweeney as Jackson.  According to MLB Radio's Ryan Spilborghs (in a special devoted to Bull Durham), the athletic motions in Eight Men Out are "terrible."  Even so, that Joe Jackson hit lefty, at least.  Filmmaking is tough, but faking a base hit is still easier than the real skill (hitting a round ball with a round bat).  Faking is Hollywood's job.

Shoeless Joe Jackson

It's not that Ray Liotta was perfect casting otherwise: he doesn't look or sound like Jackson, who was from South Carolina.  (Actually, Jackson looked more like top-billed Kevin Costner.)  The production makes matters worse in the field: Jackson threw right-handed, but Liotta's Jackson throws left-handed (again, the actor's preference).  Effectively, the switch draws the attention of anyone still oblivious.  (Field of Dreams also flips Moonlight Graham left to right as a batter, as the redemption-mad narrative grants a sympathetic washout his first big-league at-bat.)

Liotta as Jackson

Thus, we've had non-answers regarding Field of Dreams and its Bizarro World Joe Jackson.  As with Marco Rubio's awkward lunge (addressed here), the baseball flick's "epic fail" may be rooted in polarization trauma.

If so, the filmmakers added their own reason for anxiety.  Their message is memorably spoken by James Earl Jones (as author Terence Mann):

The one constant through all the years ... has been baseball.  America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers.  It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.  But baseball -- has marked the time.  This field, this game ... (is) a reminder of all that's good, and could be again.  

Fans can only forgive the script's worst sabotage: the school-auditorium meeting.  All the parents arguing for exclusion of Mann's indecorous book (from the school library) fit the Hollywood-and-Left stereotype: they're ignorant, resentful, repressed.  As Annie Kinsella, Amy Madigan warns them not to be like "the Nazis."  Just as young Ray (Costner) insulted his father (who died before Ray could apologize), the film picks a side from which to decry division.

Even with this regrettable scene, Field of Dreams delivered a plea for unity.  It went unheeded, but we should have self-mercy.  Polarization, I've come to believe, is part of the normal operation of the United States.  The owner of a high performance car should expect road noise and greater maintenance; a nation based in diversity, democracy and ambition is comparable.  (Reading on 3/27, this is ~trite.  But who makes it so?)

If we get twitchy around moves left and right, we need the distraction.  The existential unknown may be displaced to a Jack Nicholson movie: "what if this is as good as it gets?"  How would we ever react, to the honest conviction all our American plans are good for a laugh.

This blog doesn't feature comments, but I very much appreciate your reading.  

checkdown: Brooklyn's Finest (2009) score: 1.5 (of 4)

"Checkdown" is overheard lingo from American football: a play called at the line-of-scrimmage.  Thus, a checkdown review is relatively quick and rough, an attempted end-around perfectionism.  

Cheadle and Snipes posture in Brooklyn's Finest

A tragedy of Hollywood is that the established filmmaker may be subjected to more pressure than the first-time director.  It can ruin an otherwise well-made film, like this one by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen).  That it fools some (6.7 IMDb) doesn't make it less ridiculous.

Brooklyn's Finest is about men, as portrayed by stars, those being Wesley Snipes, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle, Richard Gere, even Will Patton.  Over the course of the film, the characters plan, allude to and are accused of transgressions,  but we hardly see them do bad.  Repeatedly, the movie stops short: Hollywood stars are notorious for demanding likable, admirable characters.

And so Snipes is a compelling drug kingpin, for whom an undercover Cheadle nobly bleeds, while Hawke's up-against-it cop can't quite grab the loot once he has the chance, and consequently winds up shot.  Hawke's edgy NYC detective also won't allow ethnic jokes at his poker game.  As for Richard Gere's character, he seems well-preserved and virile, for a disgraced alcoholic.  He remains a cop for the pension, but redeems himself saving abused women.

Apparently, writer Michael C. Martin and Fuqua couldn't fit a scene with a cat up a tree.    

Legion (1998 TV-movie) score: 2 (of 4)

** minor spoilers only **

Legion gets a nod in Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan by Fraser A. Sherman, so I braved a stuttery stream.  A modest Sci-Fi Channel production (not yet "Syfy" in 1998), the tale of future war is like a facetious episode of the contemporary Outer Limits.  It doesn't quite work, but with points of interest.

Terry Farrell in more familiar guise

Moonlighting from Deep Space 9, Terry Farrell is Major Agatha Doyle, who's tasked with leading a dirty-dozen military offenders against an enemy "fuel processing plant" in a civil war for the solar system.  Her platoon of "scum" all have the requisite vital specialties and tragic backstories, e.g., Parker Stevenson's an officer cashiered for desertion.  There are multiple psychopaths (one a needle addict), a saboteur fragger, and a colorful distaff column: a nympho traitor, a rape-revenge case, and a religious fanatic.

Farrell doesn't convince as a hard-bitten officer, but it's partly the script: Doyle is so one-note tough, I suspected she was an android.  An interesting cast also includes Rick Springfield and Trevor Goddard.  Corey Feldman may be cast to type, but he gives a lazy, selfish performance as a (brainy) con.

The team starts 10-strong, and as they split up for patrol, the viewer may conflate.  Most turn out to have been falsely accused and/or acting in self-defense, suggesting the script/movie might've started as a pilot.

These heart-of-gold badasses don't know just what they're fighting, except that it's big and bad and leaves piles of uniformed corpses behind.  Once revealed, the foe makes an impression (less so, for those who've glimpsed the box art), but Legion takes too long getting there.  Worse, there's little progressive learning, though the viewer may triangulate from the premise, title, and Troy Donahue's character.

In a mystery-thriller, half the fun is matching wits with the protagonists as they strategize.  Without intell, Farrell in particular is left hanging, as Doyle incongruously agonizes over her fitness to command.  The all-at-once ending seemed confusing -- or maybe I checked out.   

These flaws could have been fixed, rather easily; it may've been (self-) sabotage.  While the film superficially resembles Space: Above and Beyond,  the relatively gung ho Fox series, these Legion-aires are entirely victims of their own command.  This cheeseburger of a TV-movie dares portray an American military on imperial business (pointedly, the flag is unseen until a likely suicide errand).  Even when tongue-in-cheek, subversive content draws flak.