FADE TO BLACK

 

Full cover for the official UK DVD of Fade To Black (© Vernon Zimmerman/Compass International/American Cinema Releasing – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Tonight's movie watch was a very unusual, highly memorable film, yet whose very existence I only learned about a few days earlier – but whose premise intrigued me so much that I duly purchased the DVD, which arrived this morning. A dark movie about movies, not to mention mayhem and madness, it is entitled Fade To Black.

Directed and also written by Vernon Zimmerman, Fade To Black was released in 1980 by Compass International and American Cinema Releasing, and focuses upon a film buff who takes films just a little too seriously…

Eric Binford (played by Dennis Christopher) is a geeky, shy, not unlikeable, but lowly, underachieving young worker at a film distributor's warehouse in Los Angeles. Workmates pick on him, his aggressive boss Marty Berger (Norman Burton) is forever berating him, so too is his wheelchair-bound Aunt Stella (Eve Brent Ashe) with whom he has lived all his life since his mother's death, and he has neither any friends nor any discernible future beyond his downbeat job.

However, all of these grievances are compensated for by Eric's passionate, life-long love of the movies, finding solace and escapism by screening and watching all of his favourite stars and characters in his movie memorabilia-packed bedroom every evening after work. Moreover, he has acquired through the years an encyclopaedic knowledge of the big screen. Conversely, Eric's aunt has neither patience nor interest in any of this, considering it to be an unhealthy obsession, and telling him irascibly that it's time he started living in the real world.

One day, Eric chances upon a young model and budding actress named Marilyn (Linda Kerridge) who bears a striking resemblance to his all-time favourite movie star, the one and only Marilyn Monroe. So eventually he plucks up enough courage to ask her out on a date to their local cinema to watch a movie together. To his astonishment, she accepts, finding him rather cute, and at the appointed time he duly arrives at the cinema and waits for her outside, slickly dressed in his smartest attire. Tragically, however, Marilyn has forgotten all about poor Eric and has gone out with someone else instead. Eventually, she does remember their planned date and, feeling guilty, hails a cab and drives to the cinema, but it is too late – dejected at being rejected, Eric has gone home. And for days afterwards, he locks himself in his bedroom watching movies and chain-smoking, feeling too abject even to eat, let alone go to work.

Finally, ill-tempered Stella has had enough, wheels herself into Eric's bedroom, and savagely smashes his film projector. It just so happens that the movie that Eric had been watching was Kiss of Death (1947), in which a wheelchair-bound harridan is pushed down the stairs to her death – and the shock of seeing Stella smash his beloved projector, added to the trauma that he had already been suffering from having been (as he wrongly thought) stood up by Marilyn, proves too much. In a fit of psychotic rage, Eric duly re-enacts in real life the movie scene that he has just watched on screen, resulting in Stella lying dead in her wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs inside their house.

However, Eric deftly passes it off as a tragic accident and duly inherits not only Stella's house but also her ashes, in whose urn he takes malign delight in discarding his cigarettes – a disturbing indication of the increasingly dark, macabre pathways along which his rapidly-unraveling, movie-addled mind will be travelling as this film progresses. And sure enough, having successfully disposed of his aunt, Eric duly does the same for his other tormentors, including a hooker who had insulted him, bullying co-worker Richie (an early role for Mickey Rourke), his boss Berger, and film producer Gary Bially (Morgan Paull) who has brazenly stolen an idea for a movie that Eric had previously proposed to him.

However, such is his movie-infused madness that instead of committing straightforward murders, Eric goes to great pains to recreate key killing scenes from his favourite films. He even faithfully dresses up as the silver screen assassins in question, which include Hopalong Cassidy, Dracula, The Mummy, and gangster Cody Jarrett (from the 1949 James Cagney movie White Heat), but this ultimately leads to Eric's undoing.

For whereas his true identity is concealed beneath his grotesque early disguises, when dressed as Jarrett while shooting Bially dead in a hail of bullets Eric is readily recognized – and the chase is now well and truly on between him and a posse of police. Even so, they are pursuing him somewhat belatedly, because criminal psychologist Dr Jerry Moriarty (Tim Thomerson) had already raised Eric as a suspect after profiling him regarding the earlier murders, but his suspicions had been brusquely dismissed by Captain M.L. Gallagher (James Luisi), the hot-headed, arrogant police officer leading the investigation into those murders.

What happens next I'll leave you to discover for yourselves if you watch this very engrossing movie. Let's just say the 1957 Laurence Olivier/Marilyn Monroe movie The Prince and the Showgirl (which just so happens to be one of my own favourite films) plays a major part, as does White Heat once again ("Made it, Ma! Top of the world!").

Dennis Christopher plays Eric with exactly the correct proportions of nerdy pathos and sinister psychosis, mixing and blending these potent portions of his splitting sanity to great effect – to the extent that even though he ultimately transforms into a veritable movie monster himself, you cannot help but root for him, especially during this movie's early sections, when he does his best to fit in and be accepted by those around him, only to be consistently mocked and misused by them instead.

Now, a trio of queries. Firstly: one of the investigating cops, Officer Ann Oshenbull (Gwynne Gilford, who was pregnant with future actor Chris Pine during this movie's production!), discovers to her surprise that Eric's late aunt Stella was not his aunt at all. In fact, she was his mother, but in order to prevent losing her career as a dancer (which she was before the accident that confined her to a wheelchair when Eric was only 4 years old), Stella had publicly claimed that he was the child of her deceased sister. Yet this shocking discovery was never revealed to Eric in the movie – so why was it included in the first place? After all, by not influencing the plot or any characters in any way, it served no useful purpose, it was wholly superfluous.

Secondly: despite Dr Moriarty appearing in the movie as a major character throughout it, his scientific expertise was never drawn upon. On the contrary, it was repeatedly ridiculed and dismissed by Captain Gallagher. So, once again, why was Moriarty included at all?

Thirdly: bearing in mind that Eric was far from generously paid at his job, where on earth did he get all the money from to pay for the immense collection of highly impressive movie memorabilia that filled his bedroom and beyond at home? Even when acting out his favourite movie murders in reality, he took pains to duplicate with precision the attire worn by the actors playing those roles on screen, and the extravagant costumes and props that he used when recreating The Prince and the Showgirl would have cost a fortune! Clearly, therefore, in order to take this movie even remotely seriously (which of course we shouldn't ever try to), we need to indulge in some serious suspending of disbelief!

Such contentions aside, however, I personally found Fade To Black to be very compelling viewing, boasting a plot so unapologetically implausible that it is all the better for being so – a unique example of imaginative, surreal escapism both for its viewers and for its lead character, who inhabits his own movie within the movie that the rest of us are watching.

If you would like to visit the weird world that his all-consuming obsession with the silver screen has created inside Eric's shuttered, shattered mind, be sure to click here to view an official Fade To Black trailer on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity poster for Fade To Black (© Vernon Zimmerman/Compass International/American Cinema Releasing – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

LAND OF DOOM (aka RAIDERS OF DEATH)

 

Front cover and spine of my official UK ex-rental big box VHS video of Land of Doom (© Peter Maris/Matterhorn Group/Maris Entertainment Corporation/Pegasus Home Video/PolyGram Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Last night I watched yet another of my ex-rental big box movie videos, but although this one was only purchased by me very recently, I well remember it from my video rental days back in the 1980s and 1990s. It is entitled Land of Doom, though I have seen some videos of it for sale that bear the title Raiders of Death instead.

Directed by Peter Maris, and released cinematically by the Matterhorn Group of the Maris Entertainment Corporation in 1986 (but see also later for further details concerning release dates), Land of Doom is based upon a Peter Kotis sci fi novel, with Kotis also writing the screenplay for this movie version. Following the unexpected but very considerable global success of the first two Mad Max movies (released in 1979 and 1981 respectively), the 1980s and 1990s saw a sizeable number of MM-inspired post-apocalyptic biker/survival flicks hit the big screen, of which this is one.

Set in the standard barren desert wasteland of a devastated post-apocalyptic world where only the meanest, toughest, most ruthless human survivors of the nuclear holocaust, plague, pollution, and other social inconveniences can eke out an existence, mostly by raiding what few settlements still exist and killing everyone there that they can find, the appropriately titled Land of Doom is notable within this traditionally macho sci fi subgenre for featuring a feisty female warrior as its lead character (albeit ably supported throughout by a rugged male sidekick).

Said feisty female warrior, armed with a crossbow and dagger, is the surprisingly sweet-named Harmony (played, again somewhat unexpectedly and almost unrecognisably, by none other than Deborah Rennard, who was much more famous onscreen at that time for wearing slinky haute couture outfits while playing the aptly-named Sly – wily personal secretary to Larry Hagman's evil oil baron J.R. Ewing in the American blockbuster TV soap Dallas). Harmony reluctantly rescues a wounded man named Anderson (Garrick Dowhen in his last movie role) after a gang of vicious bikers raid her home village, slaughtering its men and raping or killing its woman, except for Harmony who had remained concealed.

Anderson tells Harmony that he knows of a safe domain, secure from gangs of biker raiders like this one, though he confesses that he's not exactly certain where it is. Nevertheless, this is good enough for Harmony, who hops onto the back of a raider's motorbike behind Anderson after killing said raider when he confronts them shortly after they had left behind Harmony's pillaged village. It turns out that the raider had been sent on their trail by the biker gang's insane leader, Slater (Daniel Radell), who is instantly recognizable by virtue of his artificial arm and steel-clawed hand, his half white/half-black hair, and his Phantom-esque face mask. I'd have added to that list his heavily-studded black leather gear, except that all the other bikers in the gang are wearing much the same – after all, thanks to Mad Max you can't be a post-apocalyptic biker if you're not leathered to within an inch of your generally short-lasting life, now can you?

(Speaking of which, as a biker myself I can only assume that whoever creates these movies has no personal experience of ever riding a motorbike in full leather gear on even a hot British summer's day, let alone in the burning, unrelenting heat of a desert at noon, or they would know that wearing such outfits in such an environment would be totally life-sapping even for just a short time, let alone habitually – then again, who in the cinema world has ever let such trivialities as heath issues supersede image necessities!)

Anyway, back to the story. It turns out that by vigorously defending himself and others against the onslaughts of the biker raiders (whose motorbikes are more like two-wheeled chariots, sporting enormous spike-edged fairings and lateral fins!), Anderson has been for quite a while now a major thorn in the side of Slater – and thence Slater's second-in-command, Purvis (Frank Garret, in his only film role). For Purvis invariably suffers the savage brunt of Slater's ire when he and his biker troops consistently fail to capture Anderson and bring him back to Slater.

Incidentally, although Harmony and Anderson do eventually allow themselves a few laconic one-liners here and there, in terms of general acting Rennard and Dowhen generally seem programmed simply to go through the motions, engaging in one action/battle set piece after another throughout the movie, but revealing little depth or shade to their characters' personalities. By contrast, not only does he expose his mean streak at every available opportunity, Purvis also has a wonderful talent for dry quips, sometimes spoken directly to the camera, which adds some much-needed levity to what can at times be a ponderous "not another fight scene" affair. Overall, Garret is imho by far the best actor in the entire movie, stealing every scene that he is in, which is why I'm puzzled that he apparently never made an impression in the acting world, especially on the big screen (and with only a few TV appearances too). Does anyone know why, I wonder?

 

Frank Garret as Purvis, with his (very) mean machine! (© Peter Maris/Matterhorn Group/Maris Entertainment Corporation/Pegasus Home Video/PolyGram Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

After any number of often explosive confrontations with Slater's biker raiders, not to mention a perilously close encounter with a pair of cannibals whose "deer-meat stew" they wisely refrain from consuming, plus a fight with a pitiful zombie-like band of plague-ravaged outcasts, Harmony and Anderson rescue a friendly but garrulous gent named Orland (Akut Duz, aka Aykut Düz) and his pet puppy Guinevere from a pack of rabid feral dogs, which soon turns out to be a very fortuitous good turn.

For when H & A are ambushed shortly afterwards and successfully captured by Slater's mob, bringing them to the clawed one himself who gloats and boasts so maniacally about what he intends to do to each of them that he abruptly develops a lisp for no apparent reason, it is Orland who stages an epic rescue, armed with a flame-thrower that he just so happens to have found in a cave – along with the stand-out characters of this entire movie. Nothing less than a tribe of diminutive hooded entities whose faces are never seen but which in overall outward form resemble a memorable amalgamation of Tolkien's hobbits, the Jawas of Tatooine in the Star Wars film franchise, and Orko from the Masters of the Universe TV cartoon shows, and which speak in a babbling gibberish that, inexplicably, Orland can actually understand!

Once the climactic battle is finally done and dusted, with the bikers decimated, we would be forgiven for assuming that at long last, the arduous trials of H & A are finally over. But just as they begin to ride off into the sunset together, what should appear over the edge of a cliff face but a grasping clawed hand! Whether or not that ominous sight of an apparently still-surviving Slater heralded plans for a second Land of Doom movie, I cannot say, but I can say that no sequel has ever appeared.

So far in this review, I've mentioned all of this movie's main stars – or, to be precise, all but one of them. For its greatest star, effortlessly outshining all others, was its absolutely spectacular scenery. Land of Doom was filmed on location in the breathtakingly beautiful, hauntingly evocative mountain and desert landscape of Capadocia, in Anatolia, Turkey, dotted with crumbling relics and disintegrating remains from real but long bygone civilisations here. It all combines seamlessly to imbue every panoramic shot, every vibrant scene set amidst this surreal, otherworldly vista, with a truly unique atmosphere and aura. Once seen, never forgotten, that's for sure.

Also spectacular in my opinion is the very eyecatching artwork on the front cover of Land of Doom's official UK ex-rental video, as seen in the picture opening the present review. However, when viewing it please do bear in mind the short but significant disclaimer presented in minuscule typeface on the back cover, which reads: "The scenes depicted on this sleeve may be an artist's impression and may not necessarily represent actual scenes from the film". This is particularly relevant, I feel, to the two characters depicted on the front cover. For its red-haired brow-encircled Amazon bears no resemblance whatsoever to blond-haired, diadem-lacking Harmony (but in my opinion she does recall various poster images of the title character from the 1985 movie Red Sonja). Similarly, the semi-masked, steel-clawed male warrior is evidently not Anderson; nor is it entirely Slater either, certainly not facially nor in terms of his unicoloured hair (in contrast, the entirely different front cover artwork of videos bearing the Raiders of Death title do portray an accurate depiction of Slayer). Never mind, it is still very impressive artwork, guaranteed to attract attention from potential video rental customers back in the day, as intended.

I have seen some highly critical reviews of Land of Doom online, comparing it unfavourably with the Mad Max movies, which I feel is somewhat unfair. By definition, derivatives rarely compare well with originals, certainly not directly. Yet as long as a film is entertaining in its own right, then that, surely, is a measure of success, and for me this movie was indeed entertaining in its own right. In fact, my only disappointment was that it did not contain any monsters – no giant mutants created by the nuclear fall-out, for instance – which I feel would have given it much more dramatic diversity. Perhaps its budget simply wasn't big enough to include monsters – shame!

Lastly: as I mentioned earlier, some odd aspects exist in relation to Land of Doom's release date. In all of the authoritative movie databases that I've checked, 1986 is the year given for its cinematic release. Yet the date given on my UK ex-rental VHS video is 1985, and on various American NTSC videos that I've seen it is given as 1984. For obvious reasons, video release dates for a movie are normally the same as or later than that movie's cinematic release date, but as in this instance they are earlier, does this mean that Land of Doom was released onto video before it obtained a cinematic release? If anyone reading this review of mine can offer any suggestions, please feel free to post your comments below – thanks very much!

If you haven't seen Land of Doom but would like to do so, it is currently available to view free of charge in its entirely (with Korean subtitles) on YouTube by clicking here, or click here to view an all-action trailer for it (with Dutch subtitles).

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

The full cover of my official UK ex-rental big box VHS video of Land of Doom (© Peter Maris/Matterhorn Group/Maris Entertainment Corporation/Pegasus Home Video/PolyGram Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

REAL GENIUS

 

Front cover of my official big box ex-rental UK video of Real Genius (© Martha Coolidge/Delphi III Productions/TriStar Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Last night's movie watch was another of my big-box ex-rental videos that I've owned for about 30 years and counting but had never got round to watching until now. This one was Real Genius.

Directed by Martha Coolidge, and released by Tri-Star Pictures in 1985, Real Genius is a sci fi comedy movie starring a young Val Kilmer as science whiz kid/smartass Chris Knight who is blackmailed by his ruthless college tutor Prof. Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) at Pacific Tech (a fictional university for young geniuses) into creating an exceptionally high-powered laser.

Unbeknownst to Chris, however, Atherton aims to sell off to the military as a weapon of destruction that can be launched from space – but once he finally discovers the sinister truth, Chris at long last transforms from irreverent to relevant, from sassy to serious in less time than it takes to say "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", in fact!

And so, assisted by his fellow students, especially younger and even brighter whiz kid/nerd/room-mate Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret), as well as older and brightest of all whiz kid/weirdo Lazlo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries) who lives inside their wardrobe/closet (and which leads not to Narnia but rather to Lazlo's hidden laboratory), Chris vehemently vows to turn Atherton's pernicious plan to popcorn – literally!

Although Real Genius does have its memorable moments (notably its explosive climactic scene!), at least 15 min could have been excised from its 1 hr 46 min running time with absolutely no loss of vital content, bearing in mind that much of what does pass for content consists of asinine, increasingly tedious student shenanigans (Kilmer's character in particular swiftly transforms from goofy to just plain irritating in a very short space of time, I found). If you want to view a movie master-class in how being 'zany' and 'crazy' can be done to death, it doesn't take a genius (real or otherwise) to realise that this lightweight, over-long movie is definitely the one to watch.

Having said that, perhaps I am nowadays simply too old or mature (or both) to enjoy such screwball dormitory pranks and extra-curricular campus activities as showcased in Real Genius (all of which, incidentally, were actually based upon real-life examples executed by students at various universities!) – who knows? Maybe I'd have been more enthusiastic about this 'fun' movie had I watched it when I originally bought its video, i.e. in my mid-20s and therefore very much nearer to what I'm assuming was its intended teenage/student target audience when released.

Nevertheless, I do have an abiding love for silly-but-witty quips that makes me massively appreciate the following example offered up by Chris to Mitch:

"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "…I drank what?""

Priceless! That alone not only made me laugh but also was worth the price of the video, as well as my time spent last night watching it – so everything else, such that it was, is a bonus.

Finally: showing my age (again!), a rock song playing in Real Genius proved very tantalizing, because I recognized it immediately as 'I'm Falling' but couldn't remember the name of the band performing it – it turned out to be The Comsat Angels, from Sheffield, England, and somewhere I may still have this 1985 single, but here is their video of it.

If you'd like to enroll at Pacific Tech for a few moments to indulge in its tomfoolery amid the test tubes, its laughter inside the laboratories, please click here to view an official Real Genius trailer on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Full cover of my official big box ex-rental UK video of Real Genius (© Martha Coolidge/Delphi III Productions/TriStar Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)