BLUE SUNSHINE

 

My official DVD of Blue Sunshine, whose front cover depicts Ann Cooper as Wendy Flemming (© Jeff Lieberman/Cinema Shares International/Synapse Entertainment DVDs – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As I've mentioned on a number of occasions, my movie tastes are nothing if not varied and non-conformist, as demonstrated yet again last night, when I watched the DVD of a decidedly macabre and thoroughly trippy but nowadays not widely-known cult sci fi/horror movie entitled Blue Sunshine.

Written and directed by Jeff Lieberman released by Cinema Shares International in 1978, Blue Sunshine stars a young Sean Penn-lookalike Zalman King as Jerry Zipkin, a maverick character who finds himself on the run as the prime suspect for a murder that he didn't commit but which proves to be just one strand in a singularly complex, much-tangled, but hitherto long-hidden conspiracy.

Set in 1977 Los Angeles, Blue Sunshine opens at a party one evening where Jerry and several longstanding friends are in attendance. The centre of attention is a popular dark-haired extrovert photographer named Frannie Scott (Ricky Crystal – fellow actor Billy's brother), who starts singing the classic Frank Sinatra song 'Just In Time', and while doing so playfully interacts with the girlfriend of another friend there, Joe (Steve Tannen aka Tannes).

This incites a scuffle between the two men, with Joe grasping Frannie's hair – only to be thoroughly shocked when it all comes off in his hand. Frannie's famous black hair is a wig, underneath which Frannie is revealed to be almost entirely bald, just a few strands of his real black hair remaining on his scalp. Frannie flees, his facial expression both glazed and crazed, so Joe and some other friends go after him in a car, but Jerry stays behind to check out the woodlands surrounding the house in case he's hiding there instead, and three of the female party goers (including Joe's girlfriend) remain inside the house, frightened and disturbed by the bizarre events that have just taken place.

When one of them hears someone at the door, she opens it, assuming that the others have returned from their search, but instead a psychotic Frannie bursts in and murders all three of the women, pushing their bodies onto the log fire. Jerry hears their screams and races back to the house, where he confronts Frannie. A furious fight ensues between the two men, spilling out onto the road where Frannie falls directly into the path of a lorry driving by, containing two men, and is killed almost instantly by the collision. Jerry runs away but is shot in the arm by one of the lorry drivers before successfully making his escape in a car.

The next day, in need of support, Jerry meets up with Alicia (Deborah Winters), one of the friends who'd been at the party with him and knows what happened with Frannie. While sitting talking to her, he happens to notice the headlines of a newspaper being read by a nearby stranger, which tell of how a bald police detective named John O'Malley (Bill Cameron) had seemingly lost his mind, having just murdered his entire family as well as a neighbour before turning the gun on himself. Could two recent killings by two apparently separate but bald frenzied psychotics be more than just a coincidence?

More random senseless killings and attempted killings soon follow, and in each case committed by someone who has lost all of their hair – but that is not the only connection. With information provided by his surgeon buddy Davey Blume (Robert Walden), Jerry discovers that all of the killers and would-be killers, now themselves all dead as a result of suicide or accidental death following their actions, had attended California's Stanford University ten years ago, and all of them had purchased a mysterious but very potent new form of LSD called Blue Sunshine from a fellow student named Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard) – the very same Ed Flemming who subsequently reinvented himself as a highly-respected local politician and is now standing for election to Congress. Moreover, one of the now-deceased attempted killers was none other than Flemming's divorced wife, Wendy (Ann Cooper).

Naturally keen not to be associated with any possible scandals, Flemming is not at all happy when Jerry turns up asking questions about Blue Sunshine, all knowledge of which he denies. He is supported by another ex-Stanford student from that same period ten years ago, a veritable man-mountain named Wayne Mulligan (Ray Young), now serving as Flemming's campaign manager, who vows to keep Jerry very much in his sights – and Alicia too, as he is greatly attracted to her.

Meanwhile, Jerry is horrified to learn that Davey, who was yet another Stanford student a decade ago, is losing his hair. However, Davey assures him that although he had indeed purchased packets of Blue Sunshine from Flemming when they were at Stanford together, he'd simply sold them on, in order to help  pay his college fees, but he had never taken any of it himself.

Davey speculates to Jerry that Blue Sunshine may cause its long-delayed but deadly effects, i.e. uncontrollable homicidal behaviour seemingly triggered by stress and loud noises, as well as extreme alopecia (hair loss), by extensively damaging its user's chromosomes, but that anyone suspected of having been a regular Blue Sunshine user would have to be incapacitated alive and a blood sample taken in order for this hypothesis to be put to the test. So Jerry goes off to purchase a gun capable of firing darts containing a strong tranquiliser surreptitiously supplied to him by Davey, and attends a political rally for Flemming, held in a local shopping mall.

This is just as well, because while there, Detective Clay (Charles Siebert), the cop who has been tenaciously albeit mistakenly chasing after Jerry as the culprit behind Frannie's death, enters into an altercation with Mulligan, during which Mulligan's hair falls off. Yes indeed, he's bald too, yet another former Blue Sunshine user, and just as homicidal as all of the others, his latent psychosis having been triggered by the loud disco music being pumped out of the speakers at the rally.

Mulligan sets out on a berserk blitzkrieg of rampaging destruction, with terrified rally attendees scattering in all direction. Only one thing stands between him and wholesale slaughter – a quaking Jerry wielding a loaded tranquiliser gun. But will Jerry succeed in felling the ogre that Mulligan has become, courtesy of Blue Sunshine? Let's just say that there is a memorable twist right at the very end of the movie, a highly disturbing epilogue, but you'll have to watch the movie for yourself to find out what it is.

Zalman King's portrayal of Jerry is just a little too quirky for my liking, his mannerisms veering on occasion toward manic over-acting, and which combined with his not dissimilar facial features remind me of a young Mork-era Robin Williams. Equally, the expressions upon the faces of the erstwhile Blue Sunshine users look positively alienesque, as if they have just stepped out of another dimension. Nevertheless, this quintessentially 70s movie boasts a highly engrossing, entertaining, novel storyline, an odd yet effective amalgamation of dark thriller, creepy horror, and medically-themed science fiction paranoia in punchy profusion.

And although it took me much of its 94-min running time to work out where I'd seen him before, I finally recognized the Ed Flemming actor, Mark Goddard, as having previously been none other than Major Don West in the late 1960s sci fi TV show Lost In Space that I used to watch avidly as a child.

If you'd like to sample Blue Sunshine for yourself (the movie, not the drug!), be sure to click here and here to view on YouTube a couple of official trailers for it – the first of which in particular, as you'll soon discover, never misses an opportunity to remind you that the movie's title is… Blue Sunshine!

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 Blue Sunshine (© Jeff Lieberman/Cinema Shares International – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

LOOSE CHANGE (aka THOSE RESTLESS YEARS)

 

Main titles and scene from Loose Change (aka Those Restless Years) featuring Guy Boyd as Rob Kagan and Cristina Raines as Kate Evans (© Jules Irving/Universal Television/NBC – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for reproduction purposes only)

In this latest trip across the border from MovieLand to TVLand (and also from TodayLand into MemoryLand), I'll reveal how serendipity is a marvellous phenomenon and comes to my rescue in all manner of different ways, as it did yet again earlier this year.

Ever since the late 1970s, I've had a haunting intro theme to an American TV show running through my mind. I can well remember my mother Mary Shuker watching this show when it was screened here in the UK, but I simply glanced up at it intermittently while doing other things, not really taking much notice. Consequently, all that I've ever been able to recall of it other than its theme music was that its storyline featured three young women, plus the face of the actress playing one of them, but I never knew her name. I dimly recall having seen her in other TV shows and a few films too, but I haven't been able to remember what they were either, so I couldn't track her name down as a means of beginning to find out what the TV show was with that lovely theme, and Mom couldn't remember the show's title or the actress's name either. So there it remained, a baffling mystery to both of us, but with a memorable melody playing wistfully in my head from time to time whenever I recalled it.

On 20 March 2021, however, while using Google to find some movie-related images of something entirely different, up popped a close-up of the unidentified actress from the unidentified TV show! It turned out that she is Cristina Raines, and once I had her name it didn't take me long to trace the show. It proved to be a three-part TV mini-series from 1978 entitled Loose Change, aka Those Restless Years (not to be confused with the long-running Aussie TV soap from the same time period entitled The Restless Years), broadcast by NBC.

And how did I know for certain that this was the correct show? Because what also popped up was a certain YouTube video of that awesome, long-lost (for me) intro theme, which was indeed the intro theme to Loose Change, as it was accompanied visually by clips and stills from that show! Result!! (It is especially fortunate, moreover, that I encountered when I did that particular video on YouTube, as originally uploaded by heliozebra, because it has since disappeared from there, but here it is below:)

 

Opening titles to Loose Change (aka Those Restless Years) (© Jules Irving/Universal Television/NBC – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposs only)

Wait long enough and the answers will come – Mom often said those words to me, and no doubt she'd smile if she knew that her words had come true yet again, especially in relation to this particular mystery that had perplexed both of us for so long. How I wish that she could have been here to have known its answer at long last.

As for the show itself: directed and produced by Jules Irving, and first screened in 1978, Loose Change is based upon the eponymous bestselling biographical novel by Sarah Davidson, and stars the afore-mentioned Raines, plus Season Hubley and Laurie Heineman, as three young women (journalist Kate Evans, artist Tanya Berenson, and civil-rights activist Jenny Reston respectively, who are based in turn upon Davidson and two of her friends, Susie and Tasha).

They first meet and become friends living together while attending the University of California, Berkeley, during the early 1960s, as shown in Part 1. They then reunite at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago as seen in Part 2. And they meet up once again but this time at an Arizona commune, as revealed in Part 3. The principal focus is upon Raines's character, Kate, who accordingly receives more screen time than the others do. Secondary characters include the young women's Korean veteran friend Rob Kagan (played by Guy Boyd) and Kate's boss Tom Feiffer (Theodore Bikel).

During its lengthy running time (originally 6 hours when first screened in February 1978, but edited down to 4 hours when rescreened and retitled Those Restless Years in July 1978), Loose Change duly unfurls the many twists, turns, and intertwinings of the trio of friends' lives during a momentous decade that also saw radical changes and turmoil in the socio-cultural history of the USA itself.

Ironically, and sadly, however, perhaps the best-remembered aspect of Loose Change as far as TV history is concerned is that it featured in a major screening error. During this show's original, February 1978 broadcast, NBC accidentally screened Part 3 instead of Part 2 to its East Coast viewers on 27 February, with the mistake not being realized until the first 17 minutes of Part 3 had already been screened, at which point it was halted, TV announcer Howard Reig apologized on NBC's behalf for the mishap, and then Part 2 was screened in its entirety. For me, however, it will be this otherwise largely-forgotten show's beautiful theme tune that will stay in my memory, just as it always has done from 1978 onwards.

If you'd like to watch this long-hidden gem of a TV mini-series, I'm delighted to say that it is finally available to purchase and watch on DVD, from Modcinema (click here for full details) and also from TrueTVMovies – click here for full details).

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV 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 front cover of Modcinema's Loose Change DVD, depicting its three principal stars – Season Hubley (top left), Cristina Raines (top right), and Laurie Heineman (bottom) (© Jules Irving/Universal Television/NBC/Modcinema DVDs – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for reproduction purposes only)

 

CRANK & CRANK 2: HIGH VOLTAGE

 

The official UK DVDs of Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage (both movies © Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor/Lakeshore Entertainment/RadicalMedia (Crank only)/Lionsgate – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 16 June 2021, my evening's movie watch was one of the freebie DVDs that I'd picked up (literally!) yesterday morning at a car boot sale where they'd been discarded. Namely, Crank, a comedy/action movie starring Jason Statham, which I'd been wanting to see for ages – and what a great movie it was!

Directed and written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Crank was released by Lionsgate in 2006, and its central theme is rather like a human version of the vehicle in the Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock movie Speed. The lead character, played by Jason, is LA-based London-originating hitman Chev Chelios, who wakes up one morning to discover to his understandable alarm that he had been knocked unconscious the previous night and then injected by one of his criminal foes with a synthetic Chinese drug that inhibits adrenaline production, so that the victim's heart soon stops beating, permanently.

Chev learns from physician acquaintance Doc Miles (played by C&W singer Dwight Yoakam) that the only way to stay alive is to for him to keep active, extremely active, in order to stimulate enhanced adrenaline production.

Consequently, while attempting to track down and take major revenge upon his poisoner, Chev tries everything possible to keep his heart rate fast and pumping – manic car chases, near-suicidal motorbike rides while standing on the handlebars, consuming industrial quantities of coke (of both kinds!), and self-injecting shots of epinephrine that he steals from a hospital while causing total chaos all around him.

Chev's mayhem-inducing efforts ultimately reach a climax (in every sense!) when he vigorously indulges in some (very) public outdoor sex with his girlfriend Eve right in the middle of LA's Chinatown. As you'd expect, this certainly speeds up his heart, but dramatically slows down the traffic, as everyone crowds around to watch – hilarious! (Many of the observers, btw, were genuine passers-by, not actors, so their reactions and their expressions of surprise and laughter were real!)

I'd never seen Jason in a semi-comedy role before, but there is no doubt that he carries this one off with great aplomb, effortlessly combining surreal humour and violent excess to great effect (performing all of his own stunts and fight scenes too). Co-star Amy Smart as Eve is also memorable, her constant obsession with unimportant minutiae being a particular delight to behold, as when she insists upon pausing to turn off her electric waffle-maker before fleeing with Chev, despite a gang of gun-toting killers being in imminent proximity!

After watching Crank, I swiftly sought out its sequel, Crank 2: High Voltage, once again directed and written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, released by Lionsgate in 2009, and beginning precisely where Crank ends. But if I thought that Crank was outrageous and eye-popping, I'd seen nothing yet!

 

Two publicity posters for Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage (both movies © Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor/Lakeshore Entertainment/RadicalMedia (Crank only)/Lionsgate – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Let's just say that Crank 2 is full of heart – Chev's, mostly, but not where it should be, inside his chest. Instead, it's now beating away merrily inside someone else's, having been surgically removed from an unconscious Chev immediately after the events of the first movie.

In its place an artificial short-lasting version has been implanted, which is keeping Chev alive for now, but not for long, unless he can keep charging it up with plenty of (very) high voltage while seeking out his own heart, and those who stole it from him (at which point this movie gives up all pretence of verisimiltude, and energetically, wholeheartedly embraces the frenetic fantasy realm of science fiction even more emphatically than its predecessor – you have been warned!).

So Chev duly sets forth in a reality-defying, hurricane-force frenzy of relentless physical fury amply augmented with substantial helpings of OTT lunacy and hilarity, aided and abetted once more by an understandably bemused Eve, throughout which I strongly advise all viewers to not so much suspend disbelief as to lock it securely away and throw away the key! Fantastic fun and once again packed with awesome if at times mind-boggling action – including another session of al fresco friskiness between Chev and Eve, this time in the middle of a race course, with horses galloping by in dangerously close proximity!

Crank 2 also features brief roles and cameos by a number of celebrities. These include Corey Haim, David Carradine (his final film appearance), Linkin Park's lead singer Chester Bennington, Dwight Yoakam reprising his role as Doc Miles, and even Ginger Spice herself, Geri Halliwell (now Horner). She plays Chev's mother, appearing alongside him in a flashback scene where he is still a youngster but no less rebellious even then than he is now as an adult. (In real life, Jason is actually 5 years older than Geri!)

Incidentally, if you're wondering what the relevance of these two movies' main title is to their theme of Chev needing to keep his body hyper-stimulated, crank is a slang name for methamphetamine, which is a powerful chemical stimulant of the central nervous system.

There have intermittent murmuring ever since the release of Crank 2 in 2009 that a Crank 3 movie will be made at some stage, and Jason Statham has been quoted as saying that he would love to do it, but as yet nothing has emerged.

Meanwhile: here and here are a couple of official trailers on YouTube to give you just the tiniest taster of the zany, wholly unrestrained mayhem that you can expect from Crank, Crank 2, and above all else Jason Statham, in excellent form as the transatlantically-transplanted London chav Chev.

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.

 

Jason Statham as Chev Chelios in Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage (both movies © Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor/Lakeshore Entertainment/RadicalMedia (Crank only)/Lionsgate – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE

 

The official UK VHS video of Ator: The Fighting Eagle (© Joe D'Amato/Filmarage/Metaxa Corporation/Thorn Video – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Last night I paid another nostalgic visit to those long-gone good old days of video rental shops and the wonderful movies that could be hired from them but which are rarely if ever screened anywhere on TV nowadays, and often have not even been given a DVD or Blu-Ray release. For the movie that I watched is a classic from that bygone age, one whose cover I so well recall seeing on countless occasions in such shops, but which I somehow never got around to renting, despite its sword-&-sorcery (S&S) genre being a favourite of mine. But after recently purchasing it in UK VHS video format from a fellow video enthusiast, I've watched it now, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The movie? Ator: The Fighting Eagle.

Directed and co-written by Joe D'Amato, and released in 1982, this Italian fantasy movie stars a youthful but muscular Miles O'Keeffe as the titular Ator, who in physical form is definitely cast from the classic Conan/He-Man/Deathstalker/Beastmaster mould of mystical warrior-hero. Moreover, the entire film comes across as being very much a S&S movie-by-numbers. Or, at the risk of mixing metaphors, a big-screen fantasy created by diligently following the standard cinematic recipe for such productions, the result of adding all of their principal ingredients, shaking them up and stirring them together, then screening the end product.

Thus we have the stereotypical pumped-up warrior-hero seeking to fulfill his noble, long-prophesied destiny, a glamorous and often feisty female companion whom he has rescued early on in the movie, various magical weapons to assist his endeavours, an evil ruler or despot needing to be conquered for peace and happiness to be restored to the land, a loved one abducted by said ruler/despot and therefore needing to be rescued by the hero, a shocking betrayal by a trusted ally, the hero temporarily distracted by some feminine wiles and witchcraft (literally!), sundry monsters to be slain along the way, and said ruler/despot duly vanquished in the final reel. And sure enough, in Ator: The Fighting Eagle, every one of those requirements is indeed met and ticked off on its itinerary of must-haves and must-dos.

Yet although this movie may be short on originality and imagination, I still found it enjoyable, enhanced in no small way by O'Keeffe's sympathetic portrayal of Ator as earnest and likeable rather than the arrogant, dour, overbearing figure that this particular category of fantasy character is all too often portrayed as in films such as this. Sabrina Siani as Ator's formidable Amazon sidekick Roon is always entertaining too, and I was startled to discover when reading the end-credits that Ator's trainer, the elderly, mysterious Griba, was played by none other than Edmund Purdom, hitherto known to me only as Prince Karl the handsome student prince in the 1954 movie version of Sigmund Romberg's eponymous musical, lip-synching to the glorious singing voice of Mario Lanza.

Ator's antagonist is an ancient spider-worshipping cult, fronted by a decidedly creepy arachnofetishist in the shape of its high priest, who delights in spending his entire screen time letting hairy tarantulas crawl all over him. As for the cult, it has been subjecting the land to an enduring reign of terror for the past millennium, so the scene that I was particularly looking forward to viewing was the long-awaited battle to the death between Ator and the Ancient One – a colossal cavern-dwelling spider whom the cult had worshipped since time immemorial.

Imagine my disappointment, therefore, when I discovered that the entire fight scene had been shot not with the mega-spider face-on to the camera, but instead with the camera positioned behind and above it, so that whereas we get a detailed full-face view of Ator attacking it, all that we see of the spider itself (other than a few split-seconds showing it emerging from its gargantuan cavern before battle commences) is the uppermost portion of its back and the back of its head plus a few flailing legs.  Never once do we see its face or its full form as seen from the front.

Equally, whereas various publicity posters for this film that I've seen depict Ator fighting a huge, fang-flaring serpent, such a creature was conspicuous only by its absence in the movie that I watched last night. So has the English version been abridged from the original Italian, with the snake scene deleted? I think that we should be told. By way of compensation, there is an indescribably cute black bear cub that loyally follows Ator wherever he goes, although I am intrigued as to why the fur on top of its head is pale grey.

All in all, Ator: The Fighting Eagle is a pleasant enough if fairly uneventful S&S adventure, with most of the magic & monster elements confined to the latter stages of its storyline. Regrettably, it is somewhat short on the kind of dry, tongue-in-cheek humour that often provides a welcome, diverting source of light relief in this kind of action-heavy fantasy flick (think The Barbarians or Deathstalker II, for instance). Equally, its absence of gore in battle scenes renders it decidedly innocuous and inoffensive by today's blood-drenched standards, but as someone who has always considered gore and splatter scenes to be largely unnecessary and decidedly unimaginative to the point of being downright lazy anyway, I have no problem with that.

Finally: three Ator movie sequels also exist, but I have so far only tracked down the first of them, Ator the Invincible (aka The Blade Master), released in the USA in 1984. The other two are Ator 3: Iron Warrior (1987), and Ator 4: Quest For The Mighty Sword (1990).

Meanwhile, click here to view an official trailer for Ator: The Fighting Eagle 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.