PROMETHEUS (2012)

Now the dust has settled and the weight of expectation dissipated I finally settled down to watch Ridley Scott’s long anticipated PROMETHEUS. A prequel of sorts to the ALIEN franchise its release set the Xenomorph amongst the pigeons for being not very good. Many people were expecting another horror film in space and what they got was an unexpected mediation on the nature of man. Though I have always thought anything is better as long as it is...IN SPACE.

A team of scientists and support crew answer an ancient riddle and find themselves far across space on an isolated planet. When they arrive they find the answer may not have been what they were looking for.

PROMETHEUS is an incredibly frustrating film. All the elements are there for a classic but somewhere along the line it all goes horribly wrong (which is very much the film’s plot but I doubt it was meant to be a meta mediation on the nature of film making).  What is right with this film is the art side. Ridley Scott’s direction and editing is superb as ever. The art design is breathlessly good. There is a lovely sense of retro with the suit designs but combined with modern sensibilities. One of my major issues with science-fiction is the habit of doing pointlessly futuristic versions of things which have not changed in millennium. “This isn't chess this is chess...IN SPACE” and so on. Prometheus keeps it pleasingly simple. Coffee cups look like coffee cups and t-shirts look like they are from Primark. It suffers from the same problem as the STAR WARS prequels did. The film, set chronologically first in the film continuity, have more advanced looking tech than those set afterwards. PROMETHEUS gets away with it by having this as a state-of-the-art expedition whereas the tech in ALIEN was on a run-down space barge and I doubt such matters were a concern for the casual viewer.

What is a cause of concern for the casual viewer is the script of PROMETHEUS is a confused mess.  In theory it should be fine as it is nominally by Damon Lindelhof, Hollywood’s go to man for consistently good sci-fi.  Having read his superior initial draft of the script I wonder if either corporate meddling or Ridley Scott asked for changes which sent the whole work into a blind alley. The initial draft was closer to ALIEN and this film is basically Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? It is all Ancient Astronauts and secrets from the dawn of man rather than phallic Aliens stalking people around corridors.  In losing the horror aspect it rather loses any point in being linked to the ALIEN franchise.  There are plot holes a plenty, characters act illogically and everybody seems terrible at their jobs. There are archaeologists ripping open tombs with a gay abandon and biologists contaminating samples left and right. Though I concede if they did their jobs properly it would somewhat take from the drama. They could have switched the film’s genres as I would have paid to see Time Team...IN SPACE.

"I'm Dr. Elizabeth Shaw"

PROMETHEUS has one very odd thing about it. I think, on a fundamental level, the reason this film does not work is Ridley Scott has made a DOCTOR WHO adventure and forgotten to put the Doctor in. It is reminiscent of Colony In Space or the Mutants with its themes of industrial arrogance and colonialism. All of the film’s problems would have been solved by Jon Pertwee striding around the place pointing out the obvious. Are your archaeologists being useless? Let the Doctor tell them that and show them what they should be doing.  If your film ends because somebody does something stupid let the Doctor doing something terribly clever and point out the folly of your plan. One of the characters even shares a name with one of Pertwee’s companions: Dr. Elizabeth Shaw.  

"No I'm Dr. Elizabeth Shaw"

PROMETHEUS could have been wonderful instead it is simply, all right. It entertains but it falls apart too much to ever be good. It is a shame they did not realise and embrace their DOCTOR WHO roots as nothing would have been better than if they had landed on the isolated planet to find, waiting in the dark, Daleks.

THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955)

As it is the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who this year I have decided it was time to revisit his immediate fictional predecessor Bernard Quatermass. Invented by Nigel Kneale in the 1950s Quatermass was a British Rocket Scientist who took on unknown alien menaces threatening humanity (well the British Countryside). 

Originally a BBC series the Quatermass Experiment Hammer licenced it for the screen in 1955 and began its success sparked the Hammer Horror genre. I shall be watching the whole Quatermass series and so begin where it all started.

A mission to space, launched by Prof. Bernard Quatermass' British Rocket Group, goes ever wrong and crashes back to earth. Only one of the three astronauts has survived and he begins to change into something else, something inhuman. When he escapes from custody Quatermass realises that what the astronaut is turning into is a threat to all humanity.

This is a frustrating film. I enjoyed it but I do not think I can say it is actually a good film. The script compresses the orginal 6 part BBC drama in 90 minutes which gives it a great pace. However, there is something lacking in this film. Some things happen and then at the end they stop and I never quite care about the journey. The more I have thought about the more I have wondered if it is because it was essentially the first Hammer Horror. It lacks the  vividness and lurid incident of the later films and goes beyond taking itself seriously. Hammer Horrors were never tongue in-cheek, that was a dreadful post-ironic media imposition, but they knew what they were there for. To get the teenagers in on a Friday night on the promise of swooning maidens and horrid monsters. The Quatermass Xperiment comes across as too earnest and it seems like it wants to say something relevant about the space race when it does not actually have an opinion.

"Evening All"

This feeling is not helped by the casting of Brian Donleavy as Quatermass.I do not think I have ever seen such a spectacular bit of miscasting in any film. The character is written as  a questing enthusiastic scientist seeking to push the boundaries of science but Donleavy delivers it like some humourless drill sergeant less interested in the pursuit of knowledge than throwing his weight around. His performance is stiff and lifeless and every time he walks on screen the film sinks. What is even more frustrating is the supporting cast are uniformly excellent with Lionel Jeoffries appearing briefly and being more Quatermass than Quatermass himself. One piece of casting which I did not know about and was a pleasant uprise was Jack Warner was Police Inspector Lomax. Dixon of Dock Green himself plays Lomax with a gusto which draws you in. I see why he became Britain's favourite copper for all those years. He is set up as the counterpoint to Quatermass, the supposed rationalist and intellectual, as a salt-of-the-earth man who believes in the bible. He comes to accept what is happening because of the evidence presented even if he does not think man should be meddling. Clearly there was supposed to be more of an opposition on the character arcs between Lomax and Quatermass. Lomax accepts that the events are going wrong because of the evidence presented. Quatermass who was supposed to embrace the unknown, has his faith in science and progress put to the test by events going wrong, or more importantly, not as he predicted. This is there in the script but Donleavy's stilted baleful performance robs the film of any of it.

"I don't know what's stiffer. This man or your acting"

There are some lovely moments in the film. A wonderfully strange bit when the changing astronaut absorbs a cactus into his body for no discernible reason (well there is a bit of techno-babble why but it never really explains the scene). Later on there is a riff on the scene from Universal's Frankenstein when the Monster encounters the child playing. Unlike in that film there is no real denouement to the scene apart from perhaps indication of the last vestige of the astronaut's humanity when he leaves the child to play. 

But those two scenes alone do not a great film make. This film has more worth as a curiosity than an actual film on its own merits. If you are a fan of Hammer Horror it is interesting to see where it all began and to see the first hero of British TV on the big screen. The film was named the Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X Certificate fad but it never quite lives up to its own publicity. It set the stage for what was come but never really comes to life itself. So an inauspicious start to watching the Quatermass series but hopefully it can only get better from here. I am disappointed nobody has done the Quatermass XXXperiment yet.

THE MUTATIONS AKA THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

THE MUTATIONS AKA THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

Students from a local university are being kidnapped and delivered to a madman for experimentation. Meanwhile a dark Carnival shows its new freaks to 70s London. Could they be related? 

An almost forgotten gem THE MUTATIONS AKA THE FREAKMAKER is a film I have been wanting to see for years. Starring the ever present Donald Pleasance I became aware of the film from Doctor Who Magazine. Pleasance's co-star in this, is the Fourth Time Lord himself Tom Baker in what must have been his final film role before he took the keys to the TARDIS. Directed by the great Jack Cardiff this is a unique entry in the canon of British horror and exploitation.

Donald Pleaseance plays Professor Nolter the, as ever deranged, scientist who tests his theories on crossbreeding plants and animals on unwilling students. Tom Baker plays Lynch, the deformed owner of a travelling Freak Show, who abducts Nolter's test subjects. The failed experimental mutants become side-show attractions for Lynch's circus. However, soon a revolt by the circus performers and an escaped mutant brings the freak making to an end.

This film is a horror miscellany with a plot that appears to be cobbled from two different scripts altogether. We have a plot about a mad scientist and his deformed assistant and a plot about a revolt in a circus freak show and neither really have any bearing on the other. It gives the impression somebody watched Frankenstein and Todd Browning's Freaks and decided they should make a beautiful mutant baby. It is such an audaciously odd mash-up it transcends itself. There's a unreal atmosphere which permeates the film helped by the vivid saturated Eastman colour, odd soundtrack and casting actual circus freaks. 

Every box of a horror film is ticked on a lurid register. Young ladies in danger, a dashing hero, a twisted henchman and a mad scientist who has lost sight of his humanity. One of the Professor's mutant experiment's escapes half way through and becomes the eventual hero of the piece.  It creates an almost textbook retelling of Frankenstein with the monster who is more human and humane than his creator. There is also a howlingly clumsy late in the plot romance between two characters who are never developed. I wonder if the producers watched it and decided they needed a romance so just gave some lines to two extras.

However, there is an odd artificiality to the film. Ironically with Tom Baker in the cast if feels more like a Doctor Who version of a horror film than an actual horror film. It is essentially the Brain Of Morbius but without the Doctor and Sarah Jane. 

"The Unexpected Delights of Speed Dating" 

The cast are all wonderful. Donald Pleasance is hardly in it and his performance is almost identical to Dr. Loomis in Halloween. Rumour has it the role was originally intended for Vincent Price which I can well imagine. Tom Baker is always Tom Baker but he puts in a rather more restrained performance than would come as his legend grew. The Circus Freaks like the Human Pretzel, The Alligator Woman and Popeye help to contribute to the films rather arch air by not acting. Clearly chosen because they were freaks rather than actors they give those odd performances only non-actors can. They reminded me of Mick Jagger in Performance, and Tory budgets.

The cinematography is lovely with some fantastic time lapse photography in the opening credits. It is the film's soundtrack by Basil Kirchen which really stands out. Kirchen produced a number of soundtracks for films like The Abomnible Dr. Phibes, and his strange jazz is so mutated from its origins it fits the film. Kirchen was known for an album called "Worlds Within Worlds" where he prefigured sampling and looping by mixing the sounds of insects and autistic children with jazz noodling. It is a suitably unreal soundscape for such an unreal film.

The biggest surprise in this film is the director. In what is essentially an exploitation B-Movie the director is Academy Award nominee cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Jack Cardiff's work spanned silent cinema to the mid 80s. He was the cinematographer on everything to A Matter of Life and Death to Conan the Destroyer. His directorial output was intriguing for a man who had worked for Orson Welles and Powell and Pressburger it was all pretty exploitation. He directed Scent of Mystery (Presented in Smell-O-Vision) and the Dark of the Sun. A long forgotten and incredibly violent account of the Congo Crisis which had the greatest poster tag line I have ever seen "You don't kill for women. You don't kill for Diamonds. You kill because you're paid for it". I hope it was because he was a fan of genre. I revel in very skilled artists and authors who never leave the confines of the genres they love, like Neil Gaiman and Quentin Tarantino. It really is a bit like finding Steven Spielberg making a revenge fantasy about topless Biker babes.

"All-right babes, I wanna spray tan"

I am pleased I managed to finally see the film and it is so very odd that I wish they still made films like this. It would certainly liven up BBC2s late night schedule. There is simply not enough these days about mutants and chemical freaks.  Now if you will excuse me I am off to watch The Only Way is Essex.