It’s always frustrating when a movie manages to put in all the effort of being a good film, but ends up for far from the mark you thought it could have landed on. Unlike with other films that have been mauled in this column, a lack of talent and a dodgy core concept can’t be blamed for this state of affairs. It simply ends up biting more than it can chew, and becomes less than the sum of its parts.
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The “fun” of watching older movies is waiting for the inevitability of what we would consider a car-crash-approach to dealing with sensitive issues. For Dark Night Of The Scarecrow it’s intellectual development disability, a subject that has been variously considered a magical power, something that removes all quality of life, and sign of outright evil at various points in cinema. That a 1981 made-for-tv movie can handle this topic with accuracy and dignity is impressive, and that it’s within the confines of a horror flick, is an outright miracle. It’s also worth noting that whilst this Frank De Felitta outing isn’t exactly the intellectual gore-fest slasher it tries to be, it’s actually quite a good film in its own right.
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It’s a truth well accepted that there are three truisms of the works of HP Lovecraft. Firstly, that they were pivotal in creating modern horror and, to a great extent, modern sci-fi. Secondly, that they often show quite how much of a bigoted dickhead he was. And, thirdly, that they shouldn’t be committed to film because he was all about the cosmic horror of what you couldn’t see (and not that he hit on a cheap way of making the reader do all the work). Well, Stuart Gordon (Director) and Jeffery Combs (actor) put paid to that, twice!, with 1985’s Re-Animator and, ridiculously quickly, 1986’s From Beyond. Re-Animator is, justifiably, more known, but From Beyond is more “out there”, plus it’s on Netflix right now and I wanted to use it as the first Trash Or Treasure LIVE!
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If there’s one thing Roger Corman likes in his movies, beyond wild excitement and firm budgetary control, it’s knowing that it’s going to make money. Sometimes that means going with a hunch and betting on an outsider idea capturing, and monetizing, the zeitgeist. Sometimes, like here, it means going with what’s been proven to work and hoping that there is enough of a wave of other people’s work to ride into the black on. Or, more specifically, several somethings that have been hammered together and, hopefully, won’t show the welds too much.
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I first heard of this film when I was 10, reading a preview in Sky Magazine. The basic premise had everything my young mind needed: the promise of robots, onscreen dismemberment and a snappy title. They were simpler times then, and Terminator was the apex of cool, so I thought watching it would have just been the greatest thing ever. Needless to say, I didn’t, because my parents weren’t mental and neither were those anyone I knew, so this sci-fi horror went into the “must watch, eventually” pile at the back of my mind. Snap forwards to a few weeks ago and, in one of its few moments of usefulness, Amazon Prime suggests I might want to watch it. “Yes”, says I, “Yes I do!”. But for all my anticipation and childlike excitement, the older and (possibly) wiser me was worried it would turn out to be trash. And I was right, but it was still a really good laugh.
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Here’s a trivia question for you: which three DC properties got made into movies in the 80s? If your answer is “Superman”, “Supergirl”, and “Batman” then you’re almost right, but also definitely wrong as Supergirl doesn’t count, having had its rights sold off as part of the Superman package. The correct answer is “Superman”, “Batman”, and “Swamp Thing”; a character so iconic that at the time Wes Craven released his film version of it 1982 the character hadn’t had his own comics for six years. And so successful was that film that the comic launched to cash in on it was given to beardy weirdy brit Alan Moore to write and its sequel didn’t happen until 1989! And it’s the sequel we’re interested in this time, because whilst the original was merely mediocre, The Return Of Swamp Thing was joyfully awful!
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The chances are that, based purely on the title of this film, you’ve already made up your mind if you are interested in this film or not, as no one comes up with “Humanoids from the Deep” if they want to make things enigmatic and surprising. Names like that are meant to evoke a certain set of feelings, much like how these kinds of films are designed to evoke a set of emotions whilst watching them. It’s not meant to be smart; it’s meant to be an obvious signal of a specific kind of entertainment. It pretty much screams “this will be puerile and base, in the most amazing of ways!” and then holds out an open can of beer and a smoke to entice you in. The good news is that this film delivers on those promises, the only problem is that it’s intercut with two other films that manage to do both more and less.
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When I was first presented this movie, by Richard DeValmont of Bela Lugoi’s Shed, I assumed that it was both retribution for some vile act I had performed upon him and a test of my willingness to try any movie sent my way. The title and blurb were amazingly uninspiring, the figures on the cover were in the uncanny-valley of anatomical incorrectness, and the rest of the dressing was presumably pinched off a 4th years’ doodles from maths class. The back cover was even worse and accomplished the feat of having an even less realistic alternative poster on it, looking like a softcore BDSM flick, and having six photos from the film that can only be described as “punishingly uninspiring”. But instead of the 85 minutes of boredom I expected, I got the A-Team version of Mad Max, for better or for worse.
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The 80s were a gold rush of attempts to grab the MTV generation by the wallets, which explains how W.D. Richter ever got the money together to make “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”. It was also the era of “high concept” films, which explains why it proceeded to do abysmally at the box office and then disappear into a lifetime of “The movie you wanted isn’t in, so try this…” sections of rental shops and the occasionally showing late night on cable channels. Over the years it got what could best be described as a quiet cult following, though more accurately it was a “doesn’t talk about itself much because it just takes too long to explain it” following. Not because it’s an especially intellectual or overtly strange movie, but because it’s ridiculous in so many different ways.
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The early 80s: a time in American culture filled with explorations of questionable fashions, clashes of socio-political identities, gargantuan cocaine habits, and an unending urge to somehow bring the simplicity/mythical mono-culture of the 50s back to life. Along with an assortment of rock and roll revivals, and the machinations of The Moral Majority, this meant that the time was right for comic movies to enter the prime time with DC legend Superman crashing into the box office with two smash hits: Superman, The Movie and Superman II, The Sequel. So happy were the film producers Ilya Salkind & Alexander Salkind with the money made from the franchise, that they took a scrapped subplot from a rejected Superman III, The Flop script and decided to make Supergirl!!
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Trash or Treasure 