Jane of Troy.

Well, we’ve got to give it points for excess epicness. It can’t be easy to scare up a cast of thousands and get them all to walk in one direction at the same time. We’re talking planning maximus. Unfortunately, HELEN OF TROY comes off as all planning, no maximus.

Sexyboy Paris of Troy (Jack Sernas) steals away plain-jane Helen (Rossana Podesta) from grumpy Spartan King Menelaus (Niall MacGinnis), sparking off a ten-year war between Greece and Troy.

The nation states of Greece send a thousand ships to attack Troy, in support of Menelaus’s grand insult, which seems a bit excessive, but only because the movie fails to capture the largesse of these mythical characters (which include Achilles, King Agamemnon, Ulysses, Hector of Troy, et al). If these Greek heroes did exist in ancient times, they must have been homo superior to have warranted such outlandish displays of love and war; carved from bronze and sex-musk and stardust. Instead, no maximus. (In this respect, Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 TROY succeeds at giving us larger-than-life icons.) Forcing melodramatic dialogue out of their mouths in an effort to transcend two-dimensionality, HELEN’s characters exist as mere plot points.

Director Robert Wise (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1951), brings Homer’s The Iliad to life (?) in this gigantic production that seems overly eager to impress with its full-scale practical props: wooden war machines and battering rams and assault towers. And a cast of thousands all walking in the same direction at the same time. (Wise might have thought he had Cecil B. DeMille beat on epics, but THE TEN COMMANDMENTS was on its way, in October of this year, 1956.)

Meanwhile, overarching all the schoolyard-swordfight battle, there is supposedly the fable of a love affair between Paris and Helen, so heated in urgent lust that it would topple empires… uh, yeah, if their plastic pretend fornication could rise above the level of hotness exhibited by the common tree-sloth. Most of the time bland blond Helen is trying not to be out-prettied by effete Paris.

Everyone speaks in High British to, uh, sound Greek. Soundtrack by Max Steiner bashes us over the head, then kicks us in the kidneys. Achilles gets shot in his Achilles tendon (what are the odds?!) and Paris is stabbed in the back by Menelaus (because if Menelaus attacked from the front, he’d only be tempted to bite Paris’s exposed right nipple in urgent lust).

And the Trojan Horse? Just like every condom, it’s used to sneak in without anyone knowing…

Dramatic license? Check. Swords and sandals? Check. Cast of thousands? Check. I’m comin’ for you, Cecil!…

END

The Passion of the Goombah.

If you can get past Paul Newman‘s insufferable “schoolyard Italian” SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME is… well, it’s still pretty mediocre.

It’s a tribute to boxing legend Rocky Graziano, his street youth, his thug life, his Army AWOL, his boxing career under the name “Graziano” (real name Thomas Rocco Barbella), his insipid love life with long-suffering wife Norma (Pier Angeli), and his eventual title shot.

Directed by Robert Wise (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, HELEN OF TROY), screenplayed by Ernest Lehman from the autobiography by Rocky Graziano and Rowland Barber, maybe this movie is painful to watch in 2013 because of all the boxing movies that have come after it, turning its storyline into a cliché in retrospect; maybe it’s the frigid two-single-beds relationship that is supposedly keeping Rocky aglow with love; maybe it’s Rocky’s arc from street hooligan to boxing darling that reads too contrived and predictable for compelling viewing – or maybe it’s just Paul Newman’s dumb Italian accent.

Newman plays an Italian like he’s in school with his friends making fun of Italians, utilizing the Jon Stewart Little Italy Mobster Accent, complete with shoulder gestures and pouty lips. It’s supposedly Method at its best; more like casting at its worst. If it weren’t for the ripped body and the sweet, sweet mug (often battered and Band-Aided), Newman would be completely unwatchable, as his portrayal of Graziano’s Italian-isms knock us right out of the movie.

Newman’s boxing style is also schoolyard – punch punch hit smack block girlie-slap punch hit… Was Rocky’s actual boxing style this haphazard? The filmmakers tout Newman’s “Method,” and his manager (Everett Sloane) is always complaining Rocky never trains – so do we assume that Newman is actually channeling Graziano’s slap-and-tickle “style”? It’s a wonder the real life guy wasn’t slapped around more by actual boxers.

Then shy Norma comes virgin-lusting after Rocky, even though she hates boxing with every fiber of her being, and even though he can’t sit through a chick flick with her – in other words, even though they have absolutely nothing in common. But apparently ‘love’ in the 1950s was hanging out with a person you constantly argued with about their life choices – and I thought that was called marriage. Which she also does to him, even though she is quite aware that boxing is the one thing driving Rocky’s pathetic and useless existence (he’s a thief, an Army deserter, a convict and a brawler, and the only reason he ever became a boxer was through the insistence of other people who saw they could make money from his lethal right hook; he also saw the means to make money and cared nothing for his natural talent or cultivating it). There’s not much to love about the pugilistic Rocky, neither is there much to grasp with the submissive, placid, non-personality Norma – nonetheless this movie shows them gravitating towards each other like an arranged marriage.

Film loses all credibility when it goes for a comedy montage of Rocky coming home with his face in various states of pummeling, and his baby crying at the sight of him, with Norma shushing the child, “It’s only daddy”; eventually, the child is older, and repeats that line to a shocked Norma when Rocky rears his battered face. Big laffs. In the very next scene, Norma weeps inconsolably to Rocky’s mother (Eileen Heckart) about how she worries over Rocky’s injuries! (Really? For the last five years’ worth of montage, you were gagging with your kid over them!)

Newman is supported by a slew of character actors that you will recognize as their older selves in upcoming movies: Harold Stone, Sal Mineo, Robert Loggia, and a bunch of That Guys – and a young Steve McQueen.

The last scene shows a street parade for Rocky in his proud hometown and echoes Julius Caesar’s Praetorian Guard during parades, reminding him that triumph is fleeting, as they held a wreath above his head while whispering in his ear, “Remember thou art mortal, remember thou art mortal.” Amidst the cheering, Rocky tells Norma, “Someday I’m gonna lose the championship, someday I’m gonna lose this punch, but right now I have everything,” and adds the film’s title, “Somebody up there likes me.”

All in that abominable Italian accent.

END

Once Upon a Scary Spinster…

If you can get past the theatrical acting and the melodrama and the distracting voiceover, THE HAUNTING is a reasonably good horror movie. Scary? In places. Silly? In more places.

Still, this may be one of the first True Horror movies, utilizing the audience’s imagination to create its scares. From the novel by Shirley Jackson (The Haunting Of Hill House, 1959) and a screenplay by Nelson Gidding, director Robert Wise (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL 1951) uses skewed camera angles, eerie noises, chilling unseen presences to create the life force of the haunted Hill House – a veritable castle where four people will spend a few nights in an experiment to discover supernatural phenomena.

Smug Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson, wishing he was Clark Gable) invites the other three: Eleanor (Julie Harris), a plain spinster living in her married sister’s lounge room, aching for adventure; Theo (Claire Bloom), ambiguously lesbian and disarmingly hot, even for black and white standards; and Luke (Russ Tamblyn, looking like he has just breezed by from a Frankie Avalon beach movie).

The scares in THE HAUNTING are admittedly effective – if you don’t think about the logic behind them. For example, Eleanor and Theo cower together in a bed, listening to gargantuan banging noises, which echo through the house, sounds of feet running around, wailing noises, watching the locked bedroom door in anxiety. Do they believe something is trying to get in? (At least, that’s the notion they whimper to Clark Gable as he smugly dismisses them as Scared Dames because he didn’t hear any sounds.) But why would something supernatural “bang” on the door if it wanted to get in? What’s the point in being supernatural if you can’t squeeze your bad spirit self through a locked door?

Other genuinely chilling sequences involve Eleanor lying in the dark, hearing voices, laughing, babies crying – oh no! Not babies crying! – and thinking she is holding fast the hand of Theo. When the lights come on, Theo is far across the room – whose hand was she holding?

The script creates much of the anxiety: “Everything seems to move when you turn your head away”; “There’s not a straight angle in Hill House”; ominous statues in the courtyard, a rickety spiral staircase where people hanged themselves; showing nothing, implying everything – but the script is also responsible for acres of backstory and montage that will either scare you to death or put you into a coma.

The hook in THE HAUNTING (Never Show The Monsters – but Make Lotsa Banging Noises) would inform modern films like THE CHANGELING (1980, starring George C. Scott) and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, 2009.

Watching people in black and white movies flirt is always good for a laugh; back in the day when being a 40-year-old spinster was scarier than any ghost. Dr. Markway’s manly advances toward plain Eleanor involve telling her that her hair is lovely. Until his wife turns up unexpectedly.

Then there is the black and white version of raunchy lesbian sex, as Theo and Eleanor get drunk in the same bed wearing long thick woolen nighties, wocka-chicka just moments away. Fat chance! It’d take a jackhammer to cleave those nighties.

Markway is “looking for proof of supernatural phenomena” – well, things keep happening and Markway never comes close to writing anything down! No research, no documenting, no experimentation. When he finds the freezing “heart of Hill House,” they all stand there talking about it, doing nothing to verify it. And he “guarantees it won’t register on any thermometer!” That guarantee would hold more weight, Doc, if you actually tried to measure it with a thermometer!

A corridor is freezing so it MUST be haunted, because other people say it’s freezing as well. No measurements, or examining for hidden passageways or air ducts; if a door closes by itself, it MUST be haunted, no examination of the door hinges, or its cant or jambs.

These are exactly the types of dills that are affected by curious phenomena – people prone to be terrified because they’re not in the least trying to discover what is behind the phenomena. (By the way, that pathetic TV show GHOST HUNTERS is not “scientific” just because they use night vision cameras to show those fairyboy “ghost hunters” peeing themselves over every little noise.)

When the other three try to oust Eleanor from the house because of her escalating battiness, she refuses, maintaining she is happy to remain in the house forever; that she feels a kinship with it. I guess cowering in the darkness and feeling as if you’re being watched is what a 40-year-old spinster calls fun. It is hinted at by the others that the house phenomena may merely be a product of Eleanor’s spinster imagination; that her fluids are out of control for being 40 and not having a man. I hesitate to guess. I didn’t take any notes.

You get that lazy when Dr. Markway is your MD. I went to him with a high temperature the other day and he felt my forehead, didn’t look at the thermometer, and diagnosed, “You either have a fever – or you’re possessed by demons. By the way, your hair is lovely…”

END

Attack of The Motionless Picture.

Poffy Khambatta

I read Kirk’s book.

Laden with anecdotes from the making of seven STAR TREK movies, William Shatner’s Star Trek Movie Memories (co-author, Chris Kenski), is – alas – light years more entertaining than the movies it describes. Shatner’s candor and dry wit propels Movie Memories like the warp drive on his vaunted Enterprise chariot. Alas, even applying warp drive to these STAR TREK stinkers would do them no service. Of course, there are the exceptions (the aficionados cry out, “The evens – II, IV and VI!” and of course, they’d be right…).

But hold onto your pointy ears! We can only watch these one at a time…

Maybe Harlan Ellison was first to coin the phrase, maybe it was just synergy, but STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE was roundly hailed as “The Motionless Picture.” For good reason.

It doesn’t move. At all. In space no one can hear the grass grow.

Witness the stagnant immobility as Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Scotty (James Doohan) silently circumnavigate the USS Enterprise in a docking shuttle, in loving reunion, as a Captain visually undresses his ship after a long separation, and you will heartily, if not sleepily, agree.

Which is ironic, considering the firestorm of indecisive action that birthed the movie Phoenix-like from its cheap, unsuccessful 1966 series that somehow spawned a cult in reruns. When fan outcry for a TREK movie reached a tipping point, Paramount execs dillydallied over whether to target the silver screen or the boob tube with a bastardized concept called STAR TREK PHASE II; a revolving door of writers and directors came and went, innumerable rewrites, pulling plugs, with TREK’S creator, Gene Roddenberry, whining about every aspect of the production from the crawlspace he was “promoted” to – until – 20th Century Fox released a tiny little thing called STAR WARS…

Suddenly, in true, characteristically gutless, tunnel-visioned fashion, the heads at Paramount greenlight a “space adventure” of their own – STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.

Eventually directed by Robert Wise, written by Alan Dean Foster, Harold Livingston and a host of poor, uncredited bastards who got the pointy end of Paramount’s stick, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE hits the 23rd century like a space version of THE WHO’S TOMMY – the sublime and ridiculous in an arranged marriage that serves cheap champagne at the reception with the best man getting drunk and falling into the cheese brioche.

Excellent concept, terrible execution. STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE is a plodding masterpiece; brains but no balls; a whole lotta nothing, to say a small lotta something. Remember this was way back in the 23rd century, long before supporting cast were actually required to act, and just after they updated their onboard computers to 1984 standards.

When three Klingon ships are destroyed by hokey special effects, by an entity traveling towards Earth to wreak more hokey special effects, Starfleet sends Admiral James Kirk to stop it; in a reconditioned Enterprise, now captained by Decker (Stephen Collins, wearing his bestest teddy bear pajamas), whose Federation Starship crew is made up of a bunch of humans and one guy in the back wearing a funny mask.

They pick up Bones (DeForest Kelley, as irascible as ever), Spock (Leonard Nimoy, dressed as Batman), Scotty (ever-complaining James Doohan) and the three Ringos – Sulu (George Takei, who can’t act), Chekov (Walter Koenig, who can’t act in English) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols, who can’t act with a decisively street Mod Squad ‘do).

Added to the crew purely for prurient masturbation fantasies is Persis Khambatta as Ilia, whom the producers tried to make a better actor by shaving her head and not allowing her to wear panties. They failed. Ilia enters the ship with the line, “My Oath of Celibacy is on record.” Huh? Where’d that come from? Well, it’s a well-known fact the producers used Trekkie geeks as extras, so she was probably using that voodoo all day to ward off guys in homemade Starfleet uniforms who considered touching her as breaking their virginity.

Rounding out the cast ineffectually is Gene Roddenberry’s nepotistic wife, Majel Barrett, as Nurse Whatever, whose key scene involves spraying some shit on Chekov’s injured arm, like she’s acting as if she’s spraying some shit on Chekov’s injured arm. This is just after Chekov injures his arm by having it near some sparklers that suffice for malfunctioning electronics and crying “Aagh!” like some community theater actress.

The Enterprise encounters a wormhole due to Kirk not reading the instructions – a wormhole that looks suspiciously like the delay effects in old Jimi Hendrix videos – and eventually runs into the alien entity that destroyed the Klingon ships, called V’Ger, a magical artificial intelligence that adheres to no scientific or technological reality; you know, like all space films made in Hollywood.

V’Ger takes over Ilia’s mind and bequeaths her a miniskirt bathrobe so short we can see her v’ger. Then the Enterprise flies into quaint dye-in-water effects supposed to be the innards of V’Ger, and the crew stand around the bridge and look at the wavy colors changing on the monitor. For about three hours.

There are two questions: In the first hour, “Where the hell is Spock?”; in the second hour, “What the hell is going on?” Well, Spock eventually appears in his Batman outfit, making Kirk spurt in his pants, but the answer to the second question seems to be More Special Effects.

The concept turns out to be excellent: V’Ger is the Voyager space probe that Carl Sagan and NASA launched to the cosmos in the 1970s as a message of amity from Earth to the universe. After traveling to a distant civilization of robots, Voyager gained cognizance and was now returning to Earth seeking its creator.

STAR TREK tries to flex its effects muscles – and strains them. Even with effects legends, John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull, the technology just wasn’t good enough back in ’78; even with George Lucas’s ILM on the job – but we can be pretty sure Lucas held his A-Team close to his chest, for his own little space dalliances.

After feeling like a fifth wheel for the body of the movie – except when cultivating the emotionless Ilia – Decker sacrifices himself by stepping into Voyager and becoming a human-machine symbiote (or something that glows a lot) while everyone else runs and anti-climactically escapes.

Thus: the human adventure begins. Be still my v’ger.

TREK vs. WARS

The Starship Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon: two sexy ships show their afts.

The biggest battle facing the Enterprise crew was not against anything in the STAR TREK movie – it was against STAR WARS. And they lost. On all counts:

ACTION: STAR WARS was actually “action-packed” as advertised; TREK’s idea of action was sparks coming out of a console and talking a lot.

SCIENCE: Everyone associated with TREK – the producers, actors and fans – love crowing about how TREK is more “scientific” than STAR WARS. And we laugh so hard that cheap champagne comes spurting out our noses. No less a science avatar than Isaac Asimov was the science consultant on TREK! And they sure went a long way to not listen to anything he said… In the end, TREK contained as much “science” as WARS – none.

ACTING: As bad as the acting was on STAR WARS (with Hamill, Fisher and those Empire extras), STAR TREK takes it to a new level of Hayden Christensen.

EFX: Though ILM was responsible for TREK’s effects, CGI was not invented yet, so the dark Chromakey outline around every effects shot makes everything look faker than Shatner’s hairpiece.

EDITING: by half-asleep Todd Ramsay. As Shatner describes in his book, the producers were so enamored with their effects, they opted for long, loving pans around everything in space, from the Enterprise to V’Ger – no wonder Ramsay spent his time sleeping.

MUSIC: Though TREK employed the great Jerry Goldsmith (PLANET OF THE APES (1968), CHINATOWN (1974), THE OMEN (1976)), WARS boasted the even greater John Williams (JAWS (1976), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (1977), SUPERMAN (1978)). Shove that in your v’ger and smoke it.

INCONSISTENCIES: It does not bode well for the Intelligence Quotient of Trekkies (or Trekkers, or – as we normal people call them – Virgins) when they purport to being such “science geeks” and then act as apologist for all the non-science in TREK.

I will only give one example of the overarching stupidity and ignorance of “science” in this movie, for lack of space (being the final frontier an’ all):

The energy force V’Ger is reported as “86 AU” in size. “AU” is an Astronomical Unit, which is the “distance from the Earth to the Sun” – about 93 million miles. Do your first grade math: 86 times 93 million equals 7,998,000,000. That means: V’Ger is 7 billion, nine-hundred and ninety-eight million miles large. V’Ger is also reported as being near the Moon on its way to Earth. The Moon is 2,160 miles in diameter and approximately 240,000 miles from Earth. What’s wrong with this picture? You with the funny mask – answer me!

Game, Set, Match: Science.

END

Ziggy played for time / Jiving us that we were voodoo…

The Film that Moved the Earth.

In 1951, in the shadow of the Cold War, in the grip of McCarthyism, as America slid into the Atomic Age, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was just another stanky B-Movie science fiction thriller with a sanctimonious message of the human race on the edge of doom. Somehow, it rose above the engine pit and is now regarded as a classic.

Port

Classic in intent; execution, still stanky B-Movie.

A spaceship (nee, “flying saucer”) lands in Washington amidst widespread dismay and theramins twoinging. Two alien beings emerge, Klaatu (Michael Rennie, doing his Charlton Heston Lite) and Gort (played by tall Lock Martin), an eight-foot metal robot (who looks suspiciously like foam rubber). Klaatu’s message to Earth is simple: “it is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder.”

McCarthy’s gonna LOVE this guy…

Klaatu’s message is only delivered in the last five minutes of the movie, where we discover there is life on many other worlds and that Klaatu’s race regard themselves as police of the cosmos, sending out their metal foam rubber drogues like Gort, who “at the first sign of violence, act automatically against the aggressor.”

With violence. So much for turning the other cheek; so much for peace begetting peace; so much for benevolent superior beings…

Though there are many unintentional Christ allegories throughout this tale – Klaatu’s message of peace; Klaatu going undercover as “Mr. Carpenter”; Klaatu dying and being “resurrected” by Gort – this Orwellian dance of paradoxy was not one of them. The main question raised when a civilization is forced into behaving under threat of obliteration is the same question I always ponder of this civilization and, in particular, religions that threaten damnation: Would you behave if there was NO threat? And what does this say about your vaunted “goodness” if it is only to avoid penalty or hell or jail or Klaatu?

Directed by Robert Wise (who would go on to direct THE SOUND OF MUSIC, 1965, and STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, 1979), I think what set this movie apart from the hundreds of 1950s atomic-themed B-fiascos that ended with the caveat “The decision rests with you” is the non-provincial nature of Klaatu’s message. Klaatu insists he will NOT meet with any world leader exclusively; that includes the president of the United States. Of course, this “insult” twists the narcissistic panties of America, but widens the audience for the film. Eventually, Klaatu decides to meet “intelligent” people – all the scientists he can muster. To prove his power, to bring them to the table, he makes the Earth “stand still” – stops everything electric, stops all the traffic in the streets, the trains on their tracks, yet keeps hospitals and necessities running. We never find out how Klaatu makes the Earth stand still, but we figure it has something to do with him being wicked at algebra.

Klaatu’s objectivity in NOT singling out America as the Earth’s spokespeople elevated the film’s message and struck that “classic” world chord.

Unfortunately, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL has not dated well (which is why, I presume, some meathead felt the need to remake it in 2008. But that’s another tale…) Social morés and filmic techniques have progressed so far that the film’s old-world execution and 1950 Amish mentality is cringeworthy.

I urge you – like I urged the KING KONG 1933 retroheads – to rewatch the film, but hold onto your… hats – This movie is from a time when white men wore hats more religiously than Jews wear yamulkes; from an age when the pointy bra was the weapon of choice for single women; when rear projection was the new CGI; when dating couples in their 40s were considered “crazy kids in love”; when everyone addressed each Mr and Mrs and kept their ties tight and girdles tighter to deter the opposite sex from unholy acts of bad thoughts; when the military protected a spaceship landing field with two inept guards; when people clustered around the radio for their news, drove cars as big as boats, lathered Brylcreem through their hair (to keep their hats on?) and wore their pants so high it chafed their nipples… it would be hideous kinky if it wasn’t so unwatchable cringy…

Two doctors (at Walter Reed military hospital, no less) marvel at Klaatu’s life expectancy being 130, because his “medicine is that much more advanced” – but medicine has nothing to do with life span! How do you account for the one-afternoon life span of a mayfly compared to the century-span of a tortoise? It’s not the superior medical program tortoises have over humans, doctor geniuses – it’s called METABOLISM. Discussing life expectancy while lighting up cigarettes! Then another doctor, befuddled at Klaatu’s healing salve, laments, “I don’t know whether to just get drunk or give up the practice of medicine.” Those are the only two options? Nothing’s changed at Walter Reed…

Unwatchable.

And – in that Golden Age of Superheroes (1938-1950s) – Gort’s fashion statement of tiny metal superhero undies over his metal spandex leggings does not go unnoticed. By female metal men with severe girdles and pointy bras.

In one of the inanest scenes this side of THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955), Gort carries the “love interest” (Patricia Neal, who shows no “love” – not even to her 45-year-old “boyfriend,” Hugh Marlowe – and therefore holds none of our interest) into Klaatu’s spaceship. She fulfills no function within, does nothing to further the plot, doesn’t even get anal-probed (which would have loosened that girdle enough for a man to get a finger under that pointy bra with a chisel), and simply walks out later, unconcerned. We realize Gort’s act was simply to comply with 1950s film poster protocol of Alien Carrying Earth Woman. Poster achieved. Back to the kitchen, woman!

Judge this film not on its superficial message (preachy messages of doom were a staple of 1950s sci-fi cinema); judge it not on its “timeliness” (there is always the threat of unmanageable war – we’re looking at you, Dubya!); judge it on the one point that even Roger Ebert misunderstood: that humans killing each other does not concern the cosmos, but that if our weapons were turned outwards, it WOULD concern other life forms. THAT – is a message for generations. THAT – is why this film is a classic, even if most humans are too provincial to comprehend the concept and even if the film doesn’t quite understand what it’s talking about itself, humans not having conquered space yet at the film’s release.

Klaatu also presages the future insane President Bush’s governing style: “I am fearful when I see people substitute fear for reason.”

On the one question which the film should have easily disqualified – the question of deities – the film-makers bowed to gutless studio standards. When the shot Klaatu is resurrected (the blood on his jacket looking like tomato sauce even in black and white), he explains his “born again” state, and makes about as much sense as any religion: “Only the Almighty Spirit has power over life and death” …You mean there IS a god, overseeing all the alien worlds and taking their weird-looking spirit forms up unto his capacious bosom?

And he wears tiny metal superhero undies.

END