post-apocalypse

Manic Monday Apocalypso: Miracle Mile

blake

Here’s a kind of obscure movie that wasn’t out long enough for me to see back in the ‘80s. It perfectly captures the Reagan-era atomic annihilation paranoia which, interestingly enough, seemed to peak at the end of the Cold War.

The press reveled in presenting Reagan as an amiable dunce with an itchy trigger finger which, curiously, never took effect. They and their Democratic masters called him the Teflon President. They tried to smear him and were frustrated by their failure. (It is hard to understand, really, the Press spoke with one voice back then that can scarcely be imagined now. But the economy was going gangbusters and that pretty much determines popular success or failure, I think.)

This had two effects. One was, they perhaps bizarrely gave Reagan a kind of credibility with the Communists that scared them into bankrupting themselves. But the more obvious one was that they scared the bejeesus out of the West, giving rise to apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives like at no other time in history. Possibly at a time when they were least like to happen.

So let us look at this 1988—no, really, the wall would come down the next year—nuclear war film, which stars a bunch of TV luminaries, like Anthony Edwards, Mare Winningham, Denise Crosby and Mykelti Williamson, as well as cult favorites O-lan Jones, John Agar and Jenette Goldstein, to say nothing of a cameo by actor/director Peter Berg.

The story goes that trombonist Harry (Edwards) and waitress Julie (Winningham) meet each other at the museum, but due to a stray cigarette and some sleepy pills, Anthony ends up missing a late-night date with her. This puts him at his date location at 4:00AM in the heart of the Miracle Mile district.

While waiting outside Johnny’s Diner, the phone rings, but it’s not Julie, it’s some guy in a nuclear silo trying to reach his dad. He’s distraught because, apparently, he’s been ordered to launch.

Now, Anthony has about an hour and fifteen minutes to live, and he ends up trying to convince others in the coffee shop that it’s for real, and they’ve got to get out of the city. But as they’re in progress, he decides he has to get off—he has to go get Julie.

So it’s sort of a surreal love story.

Why the movie works (for me) is the surreality that attends this adventure. The love-at-first-sight-turning-to-boning-on-second-date. The bird that carts off the cigarette. The possums that fall from the tree. The transvestite. The 1988 cell phone. The cop covered in gasoline who shoots her gun. The old couple that refuses to talk to each other till the day they die. The helipad search for vitamins. The eerily lit all-night gym. The rioting. The elevator make-out.

All in an area I had lived in for a couple of years. Not Miracle Mile—I didn’t have that kind of money. But I knew Johnnies. (I didn’t eat there; I was more a Norm’s guy. But I’m pretty sure that they didn’t have the Bob’s Big Boy-style giant dude with twirling hamburgers.) The Fairfax district (where the museum is) still looks basically the same, and I visit the museum and other sights occasionally. So there’s a little of the Volcano-type thing that appeals to me, too.

Some people just think it’s all stupid. I don’t know: None of us really knows how we or anyone else would act in that circumstance. I think a little weirdness is in order, frankly. Some say this movie was originally meant to be part of “The Twilight Zone” movie which, I suppose, wouldn’t have fit any better or worse than John Landis’ entry, though Vic Morrow might still be alive.

If there’s a moral to this week’s entry, it’s that a lot of people, even into 1988, months before the wall came down, thought the end was nigh. In the next few years, nuclear apocalypse movies would take a big hit. (Even though an unstable Russia may have been far more dangerous than a decaying USSR.)

Now, while people still worry about nuclear bombs, they worry a lot less about total nuclear annihilation. Which goes to show you that sometimes it really is darkest before the dawn.

Manic Monday Apocalypso: The Charleton Heston Three

blake

Although he became a right-wing icon, it’s hard to think of the guy who uttered such cynical and dark anti-human sentiments in three iconic apocalyptic films of that cinematic cesspool known as the late ‘60s/early ’70s as being conservative.

Well, okay, it’s hard to imagine Ronald Reagan saying those things. We don’t have to imagine Heston saying these things, because he did.

In the first, and by far the best, movie of the pseudo-trilogy is Planet of the Apes. Heston wanders around a sort-of 19th century desert world where non-human primates struggle with Enlightenment ideas and a hugely restrictive religion that’s bent on covering up a dark past. It’s a grossly cynical movie that works because it’s also a great action film, a Twilight-Zone-esque mystery, and for all its cynicism, does not come across as a nihilistic film.

I should read Pierre Boulle’s novel. If I understand correctly, his story took place in a world more like the world of the 1960s, and I think was more meant as an indictment of consumerism and social satire. Tim Burton’s remake sort of touches on that idea–but that movie is haunted by the greatness of the original and contorts itself into absurdity trying to surprise.

The second film in the trilogy is The Omega Man. This is the second adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller I Am Legend. I’ve talked about it in the link there, so I won’t rehash it much. This movie is the most wildly uneven of the three: The high points–the horror and action setup–are as high as the low points–the whole hippie-as-vampire thing–are low.

I mean, I’ve been impressed by how good parts are, and also how much other parts make me positively wince.

So, I suppose, it’s fair to argue that Soylent Green is a better movie. Meh. It’s so steeped in the sort of thing that our current science czar believes that I find it too hard to take seriously. And it was meant to be taken seriously–and people did.

Omega didn’t really leave any culturally legacies. Soylent left one really prominent one (and a few lesser known ones). And of course Apes is almost up there with Wizard of Oz as far as iconic screen moments and bits of dialogue go.

Still, it’s hard not to look back at those days and think, “Thank God, they’re over!” At least for me, from a cinematic standpoint, anyway. The ’80s would set its own post-Apocalyptic tone with the highly entertaining Mad Max series. Then the point became not “here’s how the world ends” but more “well, now that the world’s ended, let’s party!”

Manic Monday Apocalypso: Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe!

blake

My parents were of the Saturday matinee generation, where a nickel (or was it a dime?) would get you into the movies at the crack of dawn and entertain you till dusk. (And, oh, where to begin with the analysis of cultural shifts in that slice of Americana?)

My mom was a big fan of Buster Crabbe, though she surely must have seen the reruns of the serials since she was too young (or not born) for the originals. And when I was young, we had a UHF channel that would show a variety of old, old, really old or unpopular stuff like the late ‘50s black and white “Felix the Cat” cartoons (compared to the bigger stations’ WB and MGM ‘toons), the “Life of Riley” (versus “I Love Lucy”), silent movies (I watched Nosferatu and Metropolis this way) and serials like “Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe”.

I loved this show. Even as part of the Star Wars generation–or perhaps especially because–I loved the rockets on strings, with sparklers in the back, the cheesy composed shots with giant geckos sorta-kinda chasing tiny humans, the guys with the vampire fangs or gorilla suits.

I have this box set of the serial, though if you dig around at Archive.org, I’m sure you can find it. (And feel free to notice that the #1 staff pick is an anti-Bush film by MoveOn.Org. There’s no escaping this crap, is there.) I should say that I’m referring here to the original Flash Gordon serial, not really “Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe”.

In the original serial, the planet Mongo is flying through the universe and headed on a collision course with the earth, which it will apparently destroy at no significant harm to itself. Burning meteors are dropping from the sky (at alarmingly slow speeds) and this causes the plane that champion polo player and Yale man (really!) Flash is on with Dale Arden to, uh, be in danger somehow.

Fortunately, they all have parachutes except Flash who hangs on to Dale on the way down. (Pleasure to meet you, ma’am!)

They happen to land on the lawn of crazed scientist Zarkov who has built a spaceship that he’s going to use to land on the renegade planet and try to talk some sense into the driver.

At the helm of said planet is Fu Manchu’s twin brother, Ming the Merciless, who very practically decides to put Zarkov to work in his labs (and in a space-onesie!), give Dale the “fate worse than death” and kill Flash. (Can’t use you, man! Got enough dumb thugs in security as it is.) The princess, Aura, has other ideas and rescues the hunk of man from various fates worse than–no, that actually are death.

From there on, Flash meets the other colorful members of Ming’s empire. And, I don’t want to give anything away, but he does get out of a lot of tight spots.

I think what entertains me the most about the serial is probably the Art Deco influence. Just like the original “Star Trek”, where everything is all hippied out in post-modern (?) style, and the ’80s series features oodles of big hair and, well, very ’80s-looking design. I don’t know if it’s just the lapsed time between Art Deco and now, or if it’s that Art Deco is just that much cooler than all the intervening styles.

I mean, seriously, the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s styles have their moments, but there’s a lot of ugly in them, at least to my eyes. And my opnion hasn’t changed much over the decades. ’70s style, of course, was both uniquely ugly at the time and still ugly today. I am painting with broad strokes, of course, as there are always good things around, but to my eye the Art Deco style of the serial–the curved ships, the rays coming off Ming’s throne, etc.–give it a flair that outshines the cheapness of the sets. (And is completely missing from the ’50s version, to its detriment.)

I actually liked the 1980 remake, which was surprisingly faithful to the original. It’s campy, of course, but intermittently so. Sometimes it is genuine in its earnestness. It also captures the strangely small feeling of space in the series, and eschews realism for a more colorful, interesting “space”.

Of course, these days, most people remember Freddy Mercury’s song more than anything, and probably with good reason. Mercury could sell it.

Well, until next time, mutants, stay radiated!

Manic Monday Apocalypso on Friday!: Terminator Salvation

blake

We were going to see the new Michael Keaton movie (he directs) called The Merry Gentleman, but it had cleared out to make room for the new Terminator movie, so we saw that instead.

I would save this review for Manic Monday Apocalypso but I figured some of you might consider seeing this this weekend.

I’d skipped the third movie in the Terminator series, feeling that it was really James Cameron that was the heart-and-soul of those flicks, that raised them above standard B-movie fare. (I’m dubious of Harlan Ellison’s claim on the property. Not that Cameron didn’t steal the ideas, only that the ideas are both fairly generic and not at all the point.)

A chilling factor for me is that this movie is directed by the infamous McG, who helmed the two Charlie’s Angels movies. There was much to dislike about those strangely uneven films but they at least weren’t boring. And that’s not a bad way to describe the new movie, though it’s not nearly as uneven as those earlier films. Unfocused might be a better term.

So, let’s talk about the good things. Fine acting, as you would expect from Christian Bale. In smaller roles are Jane Alexander (who could be her own MMA feature for her 1983 role in Testament), Helena Bonham Carter and the great Michael Ironside. The primary supporting roles are played by Sam Worthington and Moon Bloodgood, who I thought were fine, but seem a little callow in comparison. (Partly and maybe mostly, this is their characters, and by the end I think the actors have fleshed them out more than the writers did.) Anton Yelchin, fresh of his Checkov role in Star Trek manages to come off pretty dang tough, and evocative of Michael Biehn in the original movie. They even have a little girl in the Newt role.

Elfman does the music, and does a fine job, though there’s not enough of it. This may sound strange, but there’s not an over-reliance on CGI. The T-800–the classic Terminator–has been slightly redesigned. It was a skinny, skeletal thing in the original, stop-motion animated. But we’re sort of jaded to that now, I think, and the redesign has a more muscular build–like it’s a guy in a Terminator suit. This is a good choice.

Also, the CGI is really good. That helps a lot. It might not be a guy in a Terminator suit, but if not, it’s smooth. This helps the action feel a lot more credible, and to McG’s credit, there are some good old-fashioned fights and vehicle stunts, instead of the CGI spectaculars that get so numbing.

There are a lot of other really nice touches, too, which I won’t spoil by enumerating here.

This movie falls well short of greatness, though. First, we have the time-travel problem. The story requires John Connor (Bale) be the savior of the human resistance, but he mostly seems like a pain in the ass. In fact, I went through 2/3rds of the movie wondering what the hell he was doing that was even necessary, given the way the war was going. That was nicely resolved, though, and ultimately made sense. So I didn’t count that against it.

No, the real problem is with the characters of Marcus and Blair. We see Marcus put to death in the first scene of the movie (in 2009, presumably), and yet he’s walking around in 2018, and Connor and Reese (Yelchin) are secondary characters to him, and–to a degree–his relationship with Blair.

But because the story really should be about Connor and Reese fulfilling the prophecy of the first movie, we get a lot of cuts from Marcus to Connor or Reese, sometimes disrupting the flow of the action. Also evoking Star Trek, in the sense that the baggage the movie is required to carry is both its strength and its weakness.

This forces some awkward scenes, such as Connor having to decide what to do with Marcus. He actually makes up his mind and then yells, inexplicably, “Who are you?!” Bale does a good job, but the whole scene–a dramatic focal point–flops.

The next big dramatic moment, where Connor delivers a speech about how humans are different from machines, also flops out of sheer silliness and inappropriateness.

And without giving too much away, the story hinges on this bit of information which allows the main Skynet base–and silly me, I thought the Skynet base would be, you know, in the sky–to be attacked. Things don’t come off as expected (do they ever?), yet the Skynet base ends up seeming ridiculously easy to get in and out of.

And there’s the other thing, the big thing, which is that the view of the future doesn’t quite hold up. The original concept had humans as a ragtag underground resistance. This movie carries that idea forward, but at the same time, features humans with subs and jets–neither of which would really be sustainable in that context–and says there are areas the robots haven’t ventured. (And, queerly, at the same time, those areas are not where the humans are strongly based.)

To top this all off, there’s a strongly hierarchical command structure and traditional military at the begining of the movie, with a suddenly completely casual rebel feel at the end. And they communicate via radio. Like, regular radio.

But I suppose I’m just overthinking it. One of the nice thing about those old WWII movies, though, was that were enough people around who had been there, that movies had a certain verisimilitude I’d like to see more strongly applied to post-apocalyptic stuff. (As you know if you’ve read this blog for long.)

Anyway, The Boy liked it very much, though he was a bit taken aback by the PG-13ness of it. And it’s true, this is a much gentler movie than the first two. There were certain things that didn’t hold together for him, but it didn’t keep him from enjoying it.

So, once again, a good summer popcorn movie, like Star Trek, but rife with flaws, like Star Trek.

Manic Monday Apocalypso: Cannibal Women In The Avocado Jungle Of Death

blake

This little known camp gem is the story of a–well, I’m not exactly sure, really, that it’s post-apocalyptic. All I know is that somehow, the Avocado Jungle has sprung up between San Bernardino and the Arizona border, it’s the only source of the apparently vital avocado crop in the US, and a hyper-feminist group of cannibals known as the Piranha Women are refusing to let the precious fruit (vegetable?) be harvested.

This is a profoundly ridiculous movie, part Apocalypse Now, part Indiana Jones, and a kind of kissing cousin to the Richard Chamberlain/Sharon Stone camp spoof Alan Quartermain and The Lost City of Gold.

Adrienne Barbeau (hi, Troop!) is Dr. Kurtz, leader of the feminists, while Shannon Tweed heads a crew consisting of Karen Mistal Waldron and–I’m not making this up–Bill Maher. There’s some very good chemistry between Barbeau and Tweed, and Karen Waldron is surprisingly good as the dumb blonde. (I mean that seriously, she looks like a bimbo, but she has good comic timing.)

Obviously, this isn’t Citizen Kane, but I laughed like an idiot. (“Like” he says.)

Actually, Bill Maher is the weak link in this, which surprised me at the time I saw it because I was a big fan of his. But the reason the movie works to the extent it does is because everyone is playing it straight, like a ZAZ movie, and Maher can’t stop smirking. That aspect of it is painful to watch.

You definitely have to have a taste for this style of camp, which was really huge in the low-budget direct-to-video ‘80s, but if you do, it’s one of the better ones. (And if you are, you should also check out Nice Girls Don’t Explode from the same era.)

Manic Monday Apocalypso: Doomsday

blake

I haven’t done one of these in a while but Hoosier Daddy was waxing enthusiastic on the charms of Rhona Mitra (whom I only know as the hot next-door neighbor chick that Kevin Bacon rapes in The Hollow Man) so I thought I’d have it on when Cinemax showed it in high-def. In Doomsday, Mitra channels Milla Jovovich through Kate Beckinsale. (And she does it in a cast that includes Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell; those English can turn out a cast regardless of the movie, can’t they?)

The movie itself–well, as I’ve said before, there aren’t really a lot of “sound” post-apocalyptic thrillers. Even the best usually suffer from some logical fundamental flaw. In Doomsday, writer/director Neil Marshall–who also wrote the surprisingly cogent The Descent–doesn’t even try.

This is one where knowing the director set out to lift things directly from other films doesn’t really help. You keep recalling where you’ve seen what you’re seeing, and remembering how much more you enjoyed that other film. For a complete neophyte, that wouldn’t be the case, of course, but unless the viewer is totally swept up in fairly run-of-the-mill effects–maybe hasn’t seen any film ever made–the whole thing is a head-scratcher.

The plot is that there’s a virus outbreak in Scotland (reminiscent of the disease in Planet Terror) so England decides to wall it up (Escape from New York). A little girl is rescued at the last moment but loses an eye (a la Snake Plissken) which later is fitted with a remotely-controllable prosthetic (Harry Potter and The Goblet Of Fire). As a grownup, she is a super-duper fighting machine (Resident Evil) working for some sort of special forces group that needs her to go behind the wall to retrieve the Mad Doctor working on a cure (Escape from New York again; actually, unless otherwise noted, assume the plot point came from Escape from New York).

Behind the wall her highly unprofessional SWAT-like team (Aliens) is beset by gang members (The Warriors) who destroy their vehicles (Dawn of the Dead-remake style) and the gang members even eat one of the crew (A Boy and His Dog). Escaping from these guys on a train (another Harry Potter reference?) they find themselves in a newly reconstructed medieval Scotland (Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness) where Mitra must fight a gladiator (Gladiator) before they can escape with the goods.

Malcolm McDowell plays a Colonel Kurtz-type character (Apocalypse Now) and the whole thing climaxes with a chase scene straight out of Road Warrior. The ending is a reasonable transposition of Escape From New York with Mitra betraying her ostensible bosses and then, inexplicably, becoming queen of the punk gang who tried to kill her? I think that’s what that last scene was about but I wouldn’t swear to it. It was very Escape, too, though, reminding of the “boxing” scene where Snake Plissken kills the big guy to everyone’s approval.

I just didn’t give a damn.

You could say, cruelly but not unfairly, that this film swam in cinematic greatness and never got wet. For all the budget, acting and fetching costumery, it comes off like any of 500 low-budget movies made after Road Warrior.

But since our topic is post-apocalyptical fun, we should look at how ridiculously constructed the apocalypse part was. One nice touch is that it’s just Scotland and the wall that fences it in is right where Hadrian’s Wall was.

OK, quarantining is fine. Logical even. Most of the movie takes place 20 years later, when nobody with the disease is left alive. The entire population is immune. Yet the plan is to send someone in to get the guy who may have found a cure. Though, really, why would anyone assume that? Diseases peter out without human intervention all the time. And what possible system could a guy cut off from all support develop to inoculate people? Scotland’s under surveillance the whole time, how bad could their intel be?

Given that all of Scotland’s immune, why keep up the wall at all? Especially after the disease turns up in England?

“Well, it’s there. And we had a divil of a time putting it up, so there it stays!”

The first thing they show us when we’re in the newly recovered Scotland is a veritable horde of cattle. So whither cannibalism?

And why, with plenty of food around, and the legendary resourcefulness of the Scots, do these post-punks just hang around waiting for someone to come through the gate to terrorize and kill them? Especially given that it had never happened before (or at least not very often)?

How do they keep their S&M gear so neat and shiny?

Where’d the cars come from? And if they had them, and gas, why not use them? And can you really unbox a 20 year old Bentley and have it run like it was fresh off the line? (If so, I suppose that would explain the expense.)

I can sort of see why there wouldn’t be any old folks among the punks, but where were the children?

Why does everything explode when a car hits it? Are they storing boxes of explosives everywhere? Why?

Is movie violence really more entertaining when you show everything getting reduced to a bloody pulp?

Why is it that there always seemed to be plenty of whatever technology that was needed around but nobody had bothered to try to turn that into a sustainable lifestyle? Why, if they were dealing with a limited supply, was use not strictly rationed and substitutes found?

Obviously, I’m overthinking this: The movie never rises above “ooh, look at the pretty explosions” and it was clearly never meant to. It was meant to be “outrageous” in the director’s own words.

But you have a problem when you can’t even be bothered to give us some characterizations that we care about. Even the Resident Evil movies (which you borrowed so heavily from) manage to do that. And you can’t blame it on the actors.

Note that this all could’ve been done with a more plausible storyline and it would have worked–well, it would’ve worked better. Or it could’ve been done completely outrageously, a la Shoot ‘em Up. Then it would’ve been funny, at least.

It seems instead like, on the one hand, they were going for an honest homage (like Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark) while on the other they wanted to show they were too smart to be sincere about this stuff.

Until next time, mutants: Stay radiated!

Manic Monday Apocalypso: Gas-s-s-s

blake

There are many endings.

On the one hand, it’s arguable that I’ve never seen Gas-s-s-s because I’ve only ever seen it on commercial TV, and the last time was decades ago. The opening cartoon suggests something to a child that the movie itself doesn’t deliver.

On the other hand, it’s arguable that no one has ever seen Gas-s-s-s. Roger Corman ran off to Europe to shoot another film while this was in editing, and lambasted AIP for their editing it down to incomprehensible hash. (I want to blame Sam Arkoff, but I can’t really remember who Corman held responsible.) It was the end of the road for Corman and AIP, and curiously, the end of the road for Roger Corman as a director as well.

The movie takes the Boomer motto of “Don’t trust anyone over 30” and puts it into practice. In the opening credits an accident releases a gas upon the world which kills everyone over the age of 25. (Being in the credits allows us to overlook the question of what sort of accident could spread a gas across the entire face of the planet.) Also, the nature of the apocalypse is fleeting, with way too many people being around, acting normal in some scenes.

Anyway, this was doubtless meant in the dark vein of black comedies like Little Shop of Horrors, but it’s after the experimentation that Corman did for The Trip, and full of the psychedelic imagery and cuts that just annoy the crap out of sober people.

Corman, for all his reputation as an exploitation guy, didn’t pander in this film. Instead of some sort of utopia that his audience might have enjoyed, the world of Gas-s-s-s is more like Lord of the Flies. There’s cynicism and disillusionment and nihilism, and it ends up feeling more like a world where the adults are simply being ignored rather than dead.

Apocalyptically speaking, stories that center around wiping out a particular demographic are seldom as interesting as they should be.

This movie was also a begining, being the first filmed effort of George Armitrage. Armitrage would go on to do a couple of “nurse” movies for Corman, but his writing career probably peaked with the HBO story of the battle between Leno and Letterman, The Late Shift, and his directing career certainly peaked with Grosse Pointe Blank.

There were a handful of new, future celebs in the show as well, with Ben Vereen and Cindy Williams riding across country.

In retrospect, I wonder if Corman didn’t deliberately produce a junk movie because he wanted an excuse to break away from AIP, and to get out of the directing game. It’d be interesting to see a “director’s cut”.

It’s not something you’d want to watch in the expectations of a coherent narrative.

Manic Monday Apocalypso: The Last Woman On Earth

blake

One of Roger Corman’s favorite budget-saving tricks was to film two movies while on location instead of one. The second film was done on a shoestring-budget–an even stringer-shoestring budget than the first, shot quickly and sometimes without a full script. And sometimes, they were better than the higher-budgeted flick.

Such is the case with Creature from the Haunted Sea, and its twin The Last Woman on Earth. TLWOE is a perfect example of what makes a post-apocalyptic movie attractive to the Z-movie director: It has a cast of three and one of the three is the screenwriter.

Said screenwriter is no less than Robert Towne, best known for having written Chinatown and Bonny and Clyde. And while this isn’t his finest work–and as you might imagine this is a pretty talky flick for a post-apocalyptic thriller–it acquits itself fairly well.

Two men. One woman. The woman is the last woman on earth. Gosh, it practically writes itself.

The worst–and best–part of this movie is the fetching image of Betsy Jones-Moreland on the poster. As lovely as she is, she never quite finds herself in this state of dishabille.

Another cool thing about the movie is that it’s Public Domain. Watch it for free or download it from the Internet Archive.

Until next Monday, mutants, stay radiated!

Manic Monday Apocalypso: Introduction

blake

I thought it would be fun to start every week off with some sort of post-apocalyptic topic.

Nothing like a little doom-and-gloom to cure that “case of the Mondays” you have.


First up, Gamma World. Although I and my friends mostly played D&D, we dabbled in a few other games. The ones GMed by others never lasted long, though I don’t know if it was because they weren’t very dedicated, because I was so much better at running games, because I was a terrible player, or some combination all of the above. So for some reason I never got into sci-fi, and we flirted briefly with superheroes, but Gamma World was the only one that got much play when I was around.

It’s entirely possible, if not probable, that my friends played without me without telling me, and Lord knows I was consumed by music increasingly as my teens progressed. But I did get a call from a 7th grade pal in 10th or 11th grade saying my Jr. High group hadn’t played D&D since I changed schools.

Gamma World was highly derivative of D&D but had some cool highlights. There were little things–like the set came with a map of the post-Apocalypse USA, which, quite frankly, looks like what pass for global warming maps today.

Another cool thing about GW was that you didn’t just rolled your stats, you optionally rolled your mutations. These were, of course, comic-book type mutations, not things like “easily susceptible to cancer” or “unable to aim urine stream”. So you could have extra arms or legs or eyes, psychic powers, and I think even wings were an option. You could be a mutant animal, for sure. I think–like the superhero game–you could also pick a bad mutation to offset some good powers you had. (Much like you’d pick “kryptonite” for Superman.)

In retrospect, what GW really needed was a way to let GMs and players work out their own mutations.

Though GW was fairly generic, it also featured “social groups”. One group was for expunging mutants while another was for expunging unmutated humans. There was an animal group that was for killing all humans, and a robot group, too, I think. Not all the groups were about killin’, some were for trying to restore society or had other bases of organization.

Looking back at it, I think the real problem with the post-apocalyptic movie genre is that it seldom shows a fraction of the imagination GW creators did–and this is probably true of high fantasy and D&D, too, but high fantasy movies are really pretty rare.

When was the last time you saw a post-apocalyptic movie with a three-eyed, four-armed guy? Or a mutant animal? Or a bunch of rival societies, other than generic, purposeless, Road-Warrior-style thugs?

What puts the “pop” in apopalypse? (Work with me, here, I’m on a roll.)

Nothing, that’s what. The closest you can get is Futurama, which isn’t really post-apocalyptic.

The most recent versions of GW have been desultory enough to go out of print fast, which would be a shame, I guess, if I had time to play it.

Until next Monday, stay radiated, mutants!

Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Movies and TV Shows

blake

Good Post Apocalyptic movies are rare. Every dime store wannabe Roger Corman (including Roger Corman) makes a post-apocalyptic movie because it’s cheap. All you need is a handful of actors and a desolate shooting location and, voila, it’s the end of the world as we know it (and I’m not feeling so good).

I didn’t count the Terminator movies since they actually take place, for the most part, in the pre-apocalypso. I also don’t count Planet of the Apes, since for all intents and purposes it takes place on a different planet. The same goes for Time Machine. In other words, if it’s so far post-apocalyptic that there’s nothing left of the original civilization, it doesn’t really count.

You won’t find that first serious post-nuke movie, On The Beach, on this list, because two hours of “Waltzing Matilda” makes waterboarding seem humane by comparison. And it’s really “mid-apocalyptic” like The Day After. And, for the record, Glass’s Einstein on the Beach defines “inane”.

So, the basic rule is there has to be a complete breakdown of existing society, but enough time for some new form of rudimentary society has to have risen that recalls and clings to the old but is fragile and primitive. Scope is usually large and time is usually from ten to a hundred years or so, but that’s not necessary (see the list).

Anyone remember Ark II? It was largely forgettable SatAM moralizing about the environment but I never did actually forget it, because the Ark itself was parked in a lot visible from the 101 as you head downtown. Also, they had a jet pack.

Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Movies & TV Shows (With The Caveat That I Haven’t Seen More Than A Few Minutes Of “Jericho”)

1. Road Warrior: Mad Max 2

Can there be any doubt? The ‘80s were the glory days of action, and this movie spawned a horde of imitators. Italian teens in grungy armor running through warehouses and crap like that. But it’s a solid story, with action that really holds up.

The first Mad Max was so-so–make sure you don’t watch the version where Mel Gibson and the other Aussie-accented ones are dubbed–and the third one (Beyond Thunderdome) was pretty good, and arguably should be included on the list.

2. Wall-E

You know, you don’t get a lot of family-oriented “post apocalyptic” movies. “I know! Let’s make a movie for the kids about how the world has come to an end!” This is a unique accomplishment discussed twice on this blog already.

3. A Boy and his Dog
This is probably the only movie based on a Harlan Ellison work that actually captures the guy’s cynical, misanthropic, but highly amusing attitude. A young Don Johnson cavorts around the wasteland with his telepathically linked dog, until he’s given a chance to rejoin society, a weird midwestern small town ca. 1935 that happens to be underground. Jason Robards co-stars. The end features the worst pun in movie history.

You can watch this or download it free online here.

4. The Matrix

Over-rated and seriously tarnished by the two sequels, which played like movies done by people who had read and believed all the great things other people were saying about them. Nonetheless, a watershed action film that holds up well over time.

This is a somewhat dubious entry as post-apocalyptic because there is obviously a new order; it’s more “alien invasion” in a lot of ways. But the underground life of the surviving humans is very typical of post-apoco movies, and the Matrix itself assures that the previous civilization is never forgotten.

5. 28 Days Later

Return of the Living Dead did it first, but director Danny Boyle made fast-moving zombies fashionable. Bonus points for animal rights terrorists causing the end of civilization. Actually, probably the only film on the list that’s got a plausible post-apocalpytic story, made possible I think because it’s only a month after the end of the world.

Yes, I know, it’s only the British Isles that end but, while global apocalypses are the norm, any isolated area where civilization’s ability to intervene is highly limited can also work. (See #9 below.) You could argue, for example, that Lord of the Flies is post-apocalyptic, in a way.

6. Dawn of the Dead

Speaking of zombies, Romero’s second zombie film is still pretty funny and fast-paced, despite the heavy-handed social commentary that’s as dated as a tie-dyed shirt.

Night of the Living Dead–probably the grandfather of modern horror–is mid-apocalypse (and they don’t even know it). Day of the Dead and later movies get increasingly heavy-handed, resulting in things like the ludicrous Land of the Dead: A good movie with a ridiculous premise that we should learn to co-exist with zombies.

Nonetheless, Romero makes a good movie every now and again, mostly about zombies. (Knightriders is a solid picture, often overlooked.) And Dawn of the Dead is easily one of his best.

7. The Last Man On Earth

Vincent Price in the original rendition of Richard Matheson’s tale, later to be remade with Charlton Heston as Omega Man, and again with Will Smith under its actual title, I Am Legend.

Omega is way too hippie, though. It has become camp over time. I Am Legend is a typically facile modern remake done up big budget with lots of CGI and not a lot of heart, riding on Smith’s charisma. And I’m sure I’ll feel that way even after I see it.

Yes, the Price version is very low budget, stagey and a little slow. I still prefer it. Make your own damn list if you don’t like it.

8. “Day of the Triffids” (1981 BBC TV mini-series)

Low budget, shot on video, but remarkably effective telling of John Wyndham’s story of alien plants run amok. Previously made in America with Janette Scott in a not very good movie, immortalized by the theme from Rocky Horror Picture Show.

9. “Twilight Zone” (various episodes)

TZ rocked so hard that they could have the pre-apocalypse, apocalypse and post-apocalypse in one episode. You know what I’m talking about: Burgess Meredith and his famous glasses. But there were other good pre-, post- and mid-apocalyptic shows. Arguably, the very first episode is post-apocalyptic. Then there’s “Two” with, I think, Elizabeth Montgomery. Etc.

The famous Billy Mumy episode, “It’s a Good Life”, where little Billy wishes people into the cornfield, actually fits pretty well into the post-apoco category. The town is completely isolated and the order is sort of a mockery of what it was.

Tie:
10. Wizards

Wildly uneven, hippy-tastic, cheaply made and crude, Wizards is still one of my favorite films. In a post-apocalyptic world, the forces of good, represented by a magic wizard, hot faerie chicks and asian looking warriors, do battle against the forces of evil, represented by mutants and technology and lots of Nazi stuff.

Ham-handed? Sure. But it’s also ridiculously accurate about the desire of some for a world where magic makes technology unnecessary.

Besides which, it’s fast, funny, and–where it’s not terribly hard to look at because it’s so cheap–very fun to look at.

10. Death Race 2000
Sharing 10th place with Wizards is the campy ’70s flick Death Race 2000 with David (heh, put “Bill” there originally) Carradine and Sylvester Stallone as racers in a future where glory comes from a cross-country road race, where points are assigned by the number and kind of pedestrians you hit.

Paul Bartel’s film is not aging all that well, again having that sort of ham-handed hippy-esque anti-America feel, but maybe, for what it is–a $300K film with a relatively interesting premise made in the high ’70s–it’s aging pretty well after all.

Paul W.S. Anderson (whose Resident Evil series didn’t make the top 10) is remaking this movie as Death Race with Jason Statham and Joan Allen. ISYN.

Honorable Mention: Korgoth of Barbaria

There’s only been one episode of this funny, funny show, but it’s well worth watching if you can find it, and lack any sort of good taste. It’s basically a high fantasy setting, but it’s post-apocalyptic (ike Wizards, which it rather resembles) and has plenty of modern references for humor and plot reasons.

This brain child of Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Clone Wars) and Aaron Springer (Spongbob Squarepants) features over-the-top violence, dumb jokes and plain ol’ slapstick. Somehow, it all works.

After Dark 2007: Tooth & Nail

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I love a good post-Apocalyptic thriller. It’s too bad one’s never been made. No, no, there are a few—very few—classics of the genre, but mostly they’re quite bad. And perhaps worse than just badness, they’re stupid. Take the Triple A title Children of Men: It posited all kinds of horrors that stemmed from women not being able to get pregnant, and missed the obvious ramifications of such a situation. (For example, if youth is exceedingly rare, it would also become exceedingly valuable; the idea that there would be youth running around unemployed seemed far-fetched.)

No, it’s really best if the whole reasons behind the apocalypse are ill-defined and not much discussed.

Tooth and Nail brings the stupid with its theory of apocalypse being “we run out of gas”. And the world collapses so quickly and thoroughly, there’s no time to adapt to coal, nuclear, natural gas, or whatever. Why? Because everyone floods south to warmer climates and wars ensue. As we all know from history lessons, prior to the refining of oil, everyone had to live in temperate zones.

Despite the apparent amnesia regarding “fire”—something that might have been handy with a bunch of people running around Philadelphia in light clothing—the heroes of our film seem to have acquired virtually no survival skills in their two or three years in the apocalypse.

I’m gonna keep ripping on this movie for a while longer, so you might be surprised to know that I did enjoy it quite a bit. But make no mistake, it’s dumb enough to have been a Michael Bay film.

And it really served no purpose to make this a post-apocalyptic thriller, except as a premise for locking up a bunch of college kids in a hospital so that a bunch of cannibals could come after them. Surely they could have thought of something else. Even the setting was dumb, though: Anyone who’s ever been in a large, modern hospital could tell you that six people could hide for weeks without being found by a dozen or so people searching for them.

In the dark.

So, the premise of the movie is that Ford (Rider Strong again!), Viper (Michael Kelly) and Dakota (Nicole DuPort) are out scavenging one day when they come across an injured girl, Neon (Rachel Miner). They bring her back to the hospital, where Professor Darwin (Robert Carradine) sets her to work fixing the water purifiers.

‘cause, you know, there’s a real shortage of water in Philly. Or maybe running out of gas ruined the water, even though everyone has moved south.

This causes stress because Viper (Michael Kelly) doesn’t trust Neon and wants to spend time fixing on the barriers instead of the damn water purifiers like the Professor wants. We never see “the barriers” by the way. When Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones, and their band of cannibalistic freaks invades the hospital, they walk in through one of the “dozen” entrances to the hospital.

Because, you know, despite civilization collapsing into violence, you wouldn’t worry about finding a defensible position to settle down in.

You also would be sure to let everyone follow their whims as far as relationships, even if it meant two of your young men were without women and therefore ties to your group. (Darwin is hooked up with Dakota, Torino is hooked up with Ford, and Viper and Yukon are celibate because Victoria is picky enough to make good on that “last man on earth” threat.)

You may have noticed that while our crew hasn’t picked up any worthwhile skills, nor done anything but sit around contemplating the future, they have found the time to rename themselves after automobiles.

Things go bad when Neon fesses up that she was fleeing a bunch of cannibals who will now be coming after Darwin’s gang. Needless to say, our crew acts like an apocalypse-hardened team who is used to defending themselves against any and all attacks.

Ha. Just kidding. They act like a bunch of pampered college kids who don’t know how to fight, strategize or set traps.

I should probably point out that if you love uber-nerd Robert Carradine and tough guy Michael Madsen like I do, you will want to keep in mind that, generally, the big name on a low-budget horror flick works for a couple of days. The star gets quick cash and the movie gets the name on the box. (I hope that’s not too big a spoiler.) Interestingly, Madsen is one of the producers of the film.

The movie actually gets increasingly preposterous. At one point, one of the characters suffers a compound fracture. No problem, right? These guys have been living in a hospital for 2-3 years, they’ve probably been studying first-aid, bandaging and splinting techniques, even minor surgery. They have all the supplies organized; that’s the smart part of using the hospital, right?

No, they never bother with any of that. This leads to a whole bunch of giggling in the audience whenever a medical matter comes up.

I could go on like this. Really. For days. As I said, nobody does post-apocalyptic stuff right. It takes too much thought. We’re all way too comfortable to think through what life would be like without society to take care of us.

The upshot, though, is that if you’re a master at suspending disbelief, this is a fun little movie. Carradine and Madsen’s brief performances are what you’d expect, and Vinne Jones (X-Men 3’s Juggernaut) is over the top. Rider Strong turns in a typically good performance, and I thought Alexandra Barreto and Michael Kelly were fairly believable characters in a context where little was believable.

One thing that makes the movie work is that it moves. Not to draw ridiculously high comparisons, but Road Warrior is not really less absurd than this film, but it also moves. That’s how you keep people from questioning the absurdities. (Where the hell do they get their tires from in that movie?)

The other thing that makes it work is the interplay between Rachel Miner and Nicole DuPort. Not unlike Emmanuelle Vaugier in Unearthed, neither actress looks particularly plausible as the strong-headed tough-minded leader in a crisis situation. Miner’s eyebrows are exquisitely sculpted and her skin flawless while Nicole DuPort’s hair looks salon styled whether she’s just set a bone or painted herself with half-camouflage/half-tiger face paint.

I guess you could say the film was thought-provoking, since I’ve been rambling about it for so long, but really, you shouldn’t watch this film with any sort of pretensions. There’s a review on IMDB talking about its Nietzsche-ian undertones, for example, and I think that’s probably setting the bar a little high.

But some folks would say that Children of Men was thought-provoking, where I would say a speculative fiction movie needs to make sense on its own terms before it can actually provoke thought about real life.