underseen for Halloween: Body Bags (1993)

If we presently feel an inward relief, give thanks to the season, the sole one to grant a certain license: we relinquish the pretense of opposition to a "culture of death."  

Light and life arrange and justify themselves; it is our vain struggle against dying that needs framing by phrase and fable.

Though immersed in an ambitious essay, which I hope to publish while Sol still burns and gravediggers dig soft earth, I pause for my yearly charge, and post for the dreadful day.  

Body Bags is an intriguing title, if only from the mystique of movies made-for-TV, so often elusive after the initial window.  This was a bid for an anthology series for John Carpenter, who'd hammered his way to horror’s 2nd-tier, thanks to the (still underseen) TV slasher Someone’s Watching Me!, cult faves like The Fog, and the franchise-furthering Halloween and The Thing. As Carpenter acolytes, we appreciated his horror populism -- forgiving an excess of published interviews -- and the way he came back swinging after creative failures (Village of the Damned, any Halloween with a number appended).

the pride of Kentucky, John Carpenter

As written by the horror duo Billy Brown and Dan Angel (they'd go to series with Night Visions, and with R.L. Stine-based Goosebumps and The Haunting Hour) Body Bags is “worth a look,” successful in the modest goal of a fun, E.C. Comics gross-out. Still, every subgenre demands a certain amount of sweat: production values and pacing are good, but the stories have structural flaws that should’ve been addressed. 

Anne digs in

The opening is the most cinematic, set at night at a modern gas station (picture a sprawling version of that in the opening of 1953's Crime Wave). The point-of-view belongs to the improbably attractive young woman in the plexiglass shelter ringing up customers. Director Carpenter provides high style, as new-hire Anne (Alex Datcher) fences with late-night customers, from the disarming (David Naughton of An American Werewolf in London) to repulsive (Wes Craven in a cameo as a drunk creeper). 

Datcher is black, Naughton's white, and “The Gas Station” raises hackles with interracial flirting, but the later violence may be unrelated: the bad-guy seems to kill based on opportunity no motive needed (the twenty-years-past trauma is a cliche, but it works).  Still, the villain's real-life lineage touches the origins of horror cinema, and he meets a satisfying end: even at this full-service shop, he'll be beyond repair.

From here, Body Bags turns to body parts, first “Hair,” with Stacy Keach.  Richard seems to have it all -- nice apartment, young girlfriend -- but thinks only of his thinning hair.  His solution provides the excuse for memorably grotesque special effects.

The real problem is the girlfriend, hot-Scot Sheena Easton (initially a singer, Easton was not-bad as an actor but couldn't hide the burrrrr).  Like George Costanza, Richard needs a pre-emptive breakup.  Instead he consults an expert, as the script weakly spoofs "the Hair Club for Men,” then a stand-up comedy staple.  After a blissful interlude (think Jack Nicholson in Wolf or Wendell Pierce in "Something With Bite"), experimental plugs are revealed as mere (scalp) cover, leading to a CGI freakshow, a pocket Starship Troopers. 

The hairmonger is David Warner as “Dr. Locke,” nudge. The filmmakers even revive the Cronenbergian casting-for-name (ever notice? it's Samantha Eggar having The Brood, Stephen Lack as the prodigal weirdo in Scanners).  Locke’s assistant, naturally, is Debbie Harry (the Blondie singer).  Body Bags' ender "Eye" is a chronicle of baseball decline; the presence of Britain’s erstwhile supermodel “Twiggy” may be another elbow-to-the-ribs. 

The connecting theme here is the decline of white-American men (if that’s not too much gravity for a TV-movie with a male Medusa). Descent continues with the ballplayer, played by Mark Hamill (better known as Luke Skywalker), another bright-horizons space-hero scapegoated into spoof and satire: there’s William Shatner, of course, but also Adam West, from Robinson Crusoe on Mars and The Outer Limits "The Invisible Enemy" to Batman; Martin Landau, from Space:1999 to Ed Wood; and the Naked Gun franchise's Leslie Nielsen (Forbidden Planet), Tim O'Connor (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century), Fred Ward (The Right Stuff) and (speaking of horror) O.J. Simpson (Capricorn One). 

have your doctor take a look 

Note the fantastic genres are rarely kind to baseball, a past relic in The Twilight Zone ("Extra Innings") and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; in The X-Files "The Unnatural," the midcentury game has been infiltrated by aliens.  Closer to Body Bags is the infamous E.C. story where human parts provide the diamond essentials (bases, etc.). 

This "Hands of Orlac" update gives Hamill's character the "Eye" of a dead serial killer, with flashbacks to the killer's abusive childhood.  Directed by Tobe Hooper, "Eye" may be the most "rounded" of the three stories, with a decent setup and payoff.  

The horror-anthology feature film became rare in the 1990s, perhaps because horror was more common on television.  In retrospect, the inception of horror series with continuing characters (Werewolf, Twin Peaks, Millennium) was a sign of our (ongoing) apocalypse.  Sustainable ratings remained elusive, so genre anthologies migrated to the thunderdome of cable-TV.  

A fantastic anthology is the most subversive TV format. In its hit-and-run episodes, anything can happen, to the destruction of the human race (a frequent indulgence of the 1990s Outer Limits).  It's a tempting crystal ball for creatives: George Romero produced Tales from the Darkside and Monsters; restoration would reveal the best as art-TV (my next post: rec's for Darkside).  Wes Craven served on the 1980s Twilight Zone, and stabbed at a semi-anthology with Nightmare Cafe; David Cronenberg directed an episode of another semi-anthology, Canada's millenarian Friday the 13th: The Series. 

Body Bags seems relatively unambitious, as if Carpenter's best hope for a series was to feint toward parodic crap, promising a Showtime equivalent to Tales from the Crypt.  Such a disguise may permit brilliant tragedy or social satire, and his proposed title may allude to the Nightmare on Elm Street/Twin Peaks motif "wrapped in plastic."  Like most attempts, though, Body Bags was discarded, to fill a single morgue-drawer of evidence.  

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.”