Horror Movie Handbook meets Callous Director. Another good scientific story sacrificed to Hollywood’s Lowest Common Denom. THE RELIC finds a field researcher dabbling in tribal drugs on the dark continent shipping a crate containing a strange fungus back to his lab at the Chicago Natural History Museum. Also in the crate is a relic of an ancient god that could … Read More
OUTLAND
Outland-ish. It’s HIGH NOON in space. Well, sort of. Well, not exactly. Well, not at all. HIGH NOON (1952) is about the dark side of human frailty. OUTLAND is about some space outlaws too stupid not to shoot their cowboy guns in a pressure dome. Director-writer Peter Hyams: he knows the “how” to make a film, he knows the “where” … Read More
A SOUND OF THUNDER
A Sound of Chunder. A Sound of Thunder. One of the greatest short stories ever written. By one of the grandest Grand Masters of Fantasy, Ray Bradbury. A SOUND OF THUNDER. Vomitous movie. In Bradbury’s science fiction short story, a company called Time Safari offers big game hunters the opportunity to go back in time and kill dinosaurs. Rule Number … Read More
END OF DAYS
End of Intelligence. Arnold fans will holler in joy, fans of brainless action will holler in astonishment, and Catholics will just holler. Illogically written by Andrew W. Marlowe and ham-handedly directed by Peter Hyams, END OF DAYS gets The Terminator out of his open-backed hospital gown (Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s return to the big screen after his heart operation), whilst blowing things … Read More
2010: ODYSSEY TWO
A Midget in the Footsteps of Giants. No one said it would be easy. Following in the mythic footsteps of Stanley Kubrick and equally legendary Arthur C. Clarke. Maybe it was this inimitable pedigree that gave lowly Peter Hyams the impetus to craft such a reasonably watchable sequel to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. A tension-filled space trek where we laugh … Read More
CAPRICORN ONE
Idiotic fodder for Moon Landing conspiracy theorist idiots. As a child in Australia, I remember seeing posters for CAPRICORN ONE: the visage of the lone, space-suited astronaut, movie title scrawled across his glare-shield. Something foreboding and sobering about that poster had me believing (as I attained full cucumberhood) that the film was one of the all-time greats, placed alongside A … Read More