BLUE MONKEY (Canada - 1987) Directed by William Fruet. Written by George Goldsmith. Cast: Steve Railsback, Gwynyth Walsh, John Vernon, Susan Anspach, Joe Flaherty, Robin Duke, Don Lake, Helen Hughes, Sandy Webster, Joy Coghill, Stuart Stone, Sarah Polley, Peter Van Wart, Cynthia Belliveau, Philip Akin, Dan Lett, Michael J. Reynolds, Ivan E. Roth. (R, 96 mins) A cult classic due almost entirely to its ridiculous title, 1987's BLUE MONKEY is a low-budget Canadian monster movie that's a blatant response to the previous year's box-office smash ALIENS and, to a lesser extent, David Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY. A staple of any self-respecting video store back in the day, BLUE MONKEY has been MIA in the modern era but has just resurfaced on Blu-ray from Code Red offshoot Dark Force (the print used has the alternate title INSECT), because physical media is dead. It's moderately entertaining trash if approached with realistic expectations, with plenty of slime, ooze, and general grossness to go along with some generally well-done practical creature FX. It's got an eclectic mix of American and Canadian faces and an energetic score by Patrick Coleman and Paul Novotny that would be right at home in something from Empire Pictures. And it boasts a fine cult B-movie pedigree with a script by FORCE: FIVE and CHILDREN OF THE CORN screenwriter George Goldsmith and reliable Canuxploitation director William Fruet (THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, FUNERAL HOME, SPASMS, BEDROOM EYES) at the helm, guided by executive producer Sandy Howard, a noted purveyor of '80s exploitation who bankrolled hits like VICE SQUAD and ANGEL.
Released in the fall of 1987 by the short-lived Spectrafilm, BLUE MONKEY opens with elderly handyman Fred (Sandy Webster) flirting with sweet old Marwella (Helen Hughes) before being bitten by an insect hiding in one of her plants. He's rushed to the local hospital where he loses consciousness just as a worm-like parasite slithers out of his mouth. At the same time, intense, on-the-edge cop Bishop (intense, on-the-edge Steve Railsback) arrives with his partner (Peter Van Wart), who's just been shot during a stakeout. Soon, the paramedics who brought in Fred fall ill and the parasite is moved to a lab while the ER's Dr. Carson (Gwynyth Walsh) and Dr. Glass (Susan Anspach) wait for the arrival of renowned entomologist Dr. Jacobs (Don Lake). When horny nurse Alice (Cynthia Belliveau) is left in charge of watching the secured parasite but sneaks off with douchebag orderly Ted (Dan Lett), a quartet of adorable ragamuffins from the pediatric ward (including an eight-year-old Sarah Polley in one of her earliest credits) sneak into the lab and pour a chemical on the parasite that causes it to grow and mutate, escaping from the lab and hiding in the basement boiler room. With the parasitic virus infecting the hospital, the health department orders the entire building closed and the people in it quarantined, much to the chagrin of bloviating hospital director Levering (John Vernon, cast radically against type as "John Vernon"). This also makes for a long night, as the growing and rapidly spawning, hermaphrodite creature (played by Ivan E. Roth) periodically pops up to snatch victims to use as incubators for its asexually-produced eggs, with Jacobs predicting there could be an untold number of these creatures in the hospital by morning.
Originally set to be released as GREEN MONKEY, as if that makes a difference, BLUE MONKEY has an OK set-up and third act, but the midsection is filled with an awful lot of ass-dragging, with people endlessly wandering around dark corridors or heading to the boiler room to watch the creature lay its eggs. The kids run around the hospital and cause trouble, and unfunny comic relief is provided by usually reliable SCTV stars Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke (also an SNL vet) as the Bakers, dorky expectant parents who show up to deliver the baby even though she isn't in labor yet, but obnoxious Mr. Baker's scientific calculations have determined that today is the day. Anspach's promising early '70s career (FIVE EASY PIECES, BLUME IN LOVE) had pretty much flamed out by the time she was turning up in stuff like BLUE MONKEY, and neither she nor Vernon have very much to do as both vanish for long stretches, perhaps pleading with their respective agents to get them some more reputable gigs.
Railsback is typically Railsbackian, a quirky actor who was briefly the Nicolas Cage of his day after his mesmerizing performance as Charles Manson in the hugely popular 1976 CBS miniseries HELTER SKELTER. That led to the title role opposite Peter O'Toole in 1980's highly-acclaimed, Oscar-nominated THE STUNT MAN, but beyond that, 1980s Hollywood never really could figure out what to do with him. Railsback was a promising actor who just came off as too twitchy and weird to make it as an A-list leading man, like a Christopher Walken or a Jeff Goldblum minus the eccentric sense of humor and the winking self-awareness. Even when he's playing the hero in BLUE MONKEY, he manages to look like a creep in physical pain when he's goofing off with the kids. Railsback had a long run in cult movies throughout the '80s--Brian Trenchard-Smith's ESCAPE 2000 and Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE being the standouts--and he did manage one more critically-acclaimed performance in the 1985 cocaine addiction drama TORCHLIGHT, but by 1987, BLUE MONKEY was typical of the kind of B-movie and straight-to-video gigs he was getting. In the '90s, he would occasionally land supporting roles in major releases like IN THE LINE OF FIRE, BARB WIRE, and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, and managed to channel some of that Manson insanity when he landed the title role in the barely-released 2001 indie ED GEIN. Now 74, Railsback works much less frequently these days, most recently appearing in an apparently unreleased 2019 horror movie called IT WANTS BLOOD! with such convention luminaries as Eric Roberts, Felissa Rose, Ola Ray, Tuesday Knight, and Brinke Stevens.
Directed by Nico Mastorakis. Written by Nico Mastorakis and Fred C. Perry. Cast: Meg Foster, Wings Hauser, David McCallum, Robert Morley, Steve Railsback, John Michaels, Tracy Young, Summer Thomas, Michael Yannatos, Dina Yanakou. (Unrated, 92 mins) I'm always happy to see any '80s obscurity from the video store glory days get a lovingly-assembled Blu-ray release, but at the same time, we have to wonder if the well's getting a little dry or if the priorities are being misplaced when faced with the resurrection of something like 1987's THE WIND. Directed and co-written by Greek exploitation auteur Nico Mastorakis (ISLAND OF DEATH, THE ZERO BOYS, IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT), THE WIND is just out on Blu-ray from Arrow Video (because physical media is dead), with a pristine restoration and a booklet with a well-written essay by film historian Kat Ellinger that dutifully attempts to find thematic subtext, in the process putting more thought into the film than Mastorakis ever did. Shifting his operation from Greece to Hollywood around 1986, the now-79-year-old Mastorakis was a key player in the early days of direct-to-video, and his films were ubiquitous in the inventories of every video store in existence from the mid '80s to the mid '90s. There's been a primarily nostalgia-based resurgence of interest in his work in recent years, though some of these Blu-ray releases demonstrate a definite sense of style (he loves silhouetted, backlit-fog shots) when seen in restored, remastered form and in their proper aspect ratios, and his independently-funded projects almost always demonstrated a higher-than-expected attention to quality production values. Similar to Roger Corman, a few future big names found some work on Mastorakis crews: nearly a decade before THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, Frank Darabont was an assistant art director on 1986's THE ZERO BOYS, and several Mastorakis films--including THE WIND--were scored by a then-unknown Hans Zimmer, years before becoming an 11-time Oscar-nominee and Best Original Score winner for 1994's THE LION KING. And like Corman in his drive-in heyday, Mastorakis' low-budget films were profitable enough with the worldwide demand for home video product that he had the payroll to secure the services of actors who might've been in a slump or on the downside of their careers, but were established professionals whose names or faces would attract new release wall browsers looking for something to rent when their first choices were checked out on a Friday or Saturday night.
But THE WIND, which hit VHS back in the day courtesy of the great Vestron offshoot Lightning Video, only manages to live down to nearly every negative association with the term "straight-to-video." It's a horror film that isn't scary, a thriller that isn't suspenseful, and it's got a cast of familiar, reputable actors wasting their time in something that not only wasn't good enough for the big screen, but wasn't even worth $2 to watch at home on a slow night. Mastorakis never made a great movie, but he made some that were at least entertaining, and THE WIND (released in some parts of the world as THE EDGE OF TERROR) has to be one of his worst. In a rare lead, Meg Foster and her always-captivating ice-blue eyes star as pulp genre novelist Sian Anderson, who's taking some time away from L.A. and her boyfriend John (David McCallum) to go to a remote Greek island to work on her latest book. She rents an ancient villa from British expat islander Elias (a typically harumphing Robert Morley), who informs her of the secret passageways and tunnels that were constructed under the buildings in early A.D. times as a safe place to retreat in case of attacking ships. He also tells her, in a truly clumsy bit of bush-league foreshadowing, to disregard the closets that he's left locked because "they don't contain anything valuable...just my son's hunting weapons!" The surrounding villas are deserted, and the only other person hanging around is unreliable, Detroit-born handyman Phil (Wings Hauser), who's left the place a mess and acts twitchy and weird from the moment he first appears. Elias has had just about enough of Phil and is about to fire him when Phil snaps and kills him. Hearing a noise outside, Sian looks out of a window and sees Phil burying the body. Phil also sees her see him burying the body, and so begins a night of terror as Sian barricades herself in the villa, but Phil, knowing other ways in, cuts off the phone and keeps popping up and chasing her around as violent winds kick up and howl throughout the night.
A sort of REAR WINDOW-ish home invasion thriller on a deserted Greek isle (Mastorakis shot the film on the island of Monemvassia) at least provides some occasionally interesting atmosphere, but THE WIND doesn't have nearly enough material to sustain interest for an hour and a half. Phil keeps getting in the villa, Sian keeps getting away, he disappears for a while, then he turns up again and the process repeats. The villa isn't very big, so Foster and Hauser move strangely slow and with little urgency during these "suspense" sequences. Sian's initial reaction to what she's witnessed and having a sickle-wielding Phil coming for her is played so oddly nonchalant that for a while, it almost seems like Mastorakis is setting up some clumsy twist. Sian talks to herself a lot, so you might think that she's imagining all of it, or what we're seeing is her book playing out onscreen as she workshops the plot machinations in her head. That would've been predictable, but it would've been something. THE WIND just seems to kill a lot of time, like Mastorakis is just dragging things out until he has enough footage to call it a feature-length movie. That's especially the case with a nothing role for Steve Railsback as Kesner, an American boat captain stranded at the village police station because of the high winds. He appears 50 minutes in and ends up checking on Sian after John places a phone call to the local police, then makes a quick exit a few minutes later when he's killed by Phil.
Speaking of actors with nothing to do, McCallum never leaves L.A. and makes a few brief appearances beside what might be his own swimming pool, on the phone telling a terrified Sian to lock the doors and that he'll get the cops to check on her, and the next time she calls, he's floating around the pool seemingly without a care in the world. And that's the last we see of him. Hauser as an unhinged psycho killer is usually a can't-miss proposition, as anyone who's experienced his iconic performance as crazed pimp Ramrod in 1982's VICE SQUAD can attest, but even he's coasting through on autopilot here, probably more interested in the Mastorakis-provided Greek vacation and maybe wrapping things up early so he can take a day and check out the Parthenon. The whole Greek setting is largely superfluous until a final, slow-moving chase manages to show off some scenic Monemvassia locales before Phil's hilarious, windy comeuppance (four guys are credited with operating the wind machine, and they definitely earned their pay). Foster was always a solid actress who never really got the shots she deserved (does anyone remember that she played Cagney in the first six episodes of CAGNEY & LACEY before CBS execs deemed her "too aggressive" and feared viewers would perceive the character as a lesbian, leading to her being replaced by Sharon Gless?), and while it's nice to see her in a starring role, it's in a film that's completely unworthy of her talents, and one that probably didn't need the deluxe Blu-ray treatment. Still, I'm glad it exists...I guess.
Directed by Tobe Hooper. Written by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby. Cast: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard, Nicholas Ball, Aubrey Morris, Nancy Paul, John Hallam, Chris Jagger, Bill Malin, John Forbes-Robertson, Peter Porteous. (R, 101 mins/116 mins)
When Menahem Golan offered him a job directing an adaptation of Colin Wilson's 1976 novel The Space Vampires, Tobe Hooper was coming off of the 1982 blockbuster POLTERGEIST, produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg, a film that's still shrouded in controversy over which person did what 31 years after the fact. Hooper had already established himself thanks to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), EATEN ALIVE (1977), the TV miniseries SALEM'S LOT (1979), and THE FUNHOUSE (1981). But he was also fired from two other horror films (1979's THE DARK and 1982's VENOM) and had to be frustrated with the endless gossip that he was just Spielberg's puppet on POLTERGEIST, a film that was supposed to elevate Hooper to the A-list, but only left him in Spielberg's shadow. Spielberg called their working relationship "collaborative," but many associated with the film say Hooper had to run his decisions by Spielberg and that Spielberg was present nearly every day of production and was essentially calling the shots even with Hooper on the set. When POLTERGEIST was being shot in the summer of 1981, Spielberg had RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in theaters and was about to begin work on E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL in the fall, and part of his E.T. deal with Universal stipulated that he couldn't direct another film for another studio in the meantime (MGM was handling POLTERGEIST). When POLTERGEIST was released in June 1982, critics and moviegoers considered it Spielberg's project. The controversy was enough for the Director's Guild of America to launch an investigation that yielded no real conclusions, but by the time he met up with Golan, Hooper was eager to show everyone that he didn't need Spielberg to make a Spielberg-sized blockbuster. He wanted vindication, which Golan and Yoram Globus were ready to provide--with some help--in the form of a whopping $25 million budget, more than double what POLTERGEIST cost to make. LIFEFORCE--which was shot as SPACE VAMPIRES, with the title change taking place during post-production as all parties involved thought it sounded too much like a B-horror flick--was going to be Cannon's and Hooper's biggest project yet, and was the first of a three-picture deal Hooper made with Cannon, who also agreed to finance his remake of INVADERS FROM MARS as well as his long-awaited THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (both films were released in the summer of 1986).
The much-ballyhooed Cannon/Hooper alliance failed to financially pay off. Only TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 made back its cost as LIFEFORCE and INVADERS FROM MARS tanked at the box office.
To help with the then-immense cost of LIFEFORCE, Cannon set up a US distribution deal with Tri-Star, who covered a little over half of the budget and pulled rank by re-editing the US theatrical version, cutting 15 minutes out of it (mostly at the beginning, which unfolds in a very choppy fashion in the US cut but plays much more ominously effective in the longer version), revoicing the British astronauts with American accents, and adding some incidental music by Michael Kamen and James Guthrie along with the film's regular score by the legendary Henry Mancini (again, Cannon sparing no expense). Cannon had enjoyed some success and was gaining momentum in production and distribution, and LIFEFORCE was to be their attempt to get into the Spielberg/George Lucas big leagues, but of course, much like selling Charles Bronson films to an aging audience that wasn't really interested in seeing the more exploitative elements, they failed to realize that the Spielberg/Lucas films didn't center on hot, naked vampire women from space. Sure, if you, like me, were a 12-year-old kid when LIFEFORCE came out, you loved it and probably still do today at 40. And if your mom dropped you and a couple of like-minded 12-year-old friends off at the theater, you probably bought tickets to THE GOONIES and snuck into LIFEFORCE. LIFEFORCE only grossed $11 million, but I'm sure it lost at least a few million thanks to boob-obsessed junior-high-age Fangoria readers doing exactly what we did.
Very much a product of its time (Hooper directed Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself" video and wanted Idol to play one of the male vampires, but the closest he got to a rocker was Mick Jagger's younger brother Chris), LIFEFORCE, just released on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory (both versions are included), opens with a joint US/British space mission to investigate Halley's Comet, which was due to return in 1986. The crew of the Churchill, led by American Col. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), discovers a 150-mile-long space ship in the tail of the comet, housing large bat carcasses and three encased, nude bodies--two male and one female--that are human-like in appearance. When Earth loses contact with the ship, a rescue team is sent and discovers the ship destroyed by fire, with only the three encased figures remaining. They're brought to a government research facility in London, overseen by Dr. Fallada (Frank Finlay) and the bureaucratic Bukovsky (Michael Gothard). Soon, the female alien (Mathilda May) awakens and draws the life out of a security guard, feeding on the energy--the "lifeforce"--and promptly escapes. As SAS officer Caine (Peter Firth) investigates, Churchill's escape pod lands in Texas, with only Carlsen onboard. Carlsen arrives in London and is haunted by nightmares that reveal he has some kind of psychic link with the Space Girl, who is able to enter the bodies of host victims to spread a vampiric contagion not by drinking blood, but by literally drawing--sucking--the life out of her victims.
It only gets crazier from there, as Hooper, working from a script by sci-fi/horror vet Dan O'Bannon (ALIEN, THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) and Don Jakoby, with some uncredited contributions by MARK OF THE DEVIL director Michael Armstrong and CRUCIBLE OF HORROR and THE GODSEND screenwriter Olaf Pooley, throws London into chaos and martial law with a vampire plague creating a horde of rampaging zombies, a large bat demon, and a pre-Picard Patrick Stewart as a doctor possessed by the Space Girl. LIFEFORCE combines elements of '80s blockbusters, old-school QUATERMASS sci-fi, vintage Hammer horror, modern special effects splatter, and the kind of zombie apocalypse mayhem that George Romero wanted to do with DAY OF THE DEAD before his budget got slashed. It's beautifully-made, epic in scope, with impressive visual effects by the great John Dykstra, but with a debuting May completely nude for about 98% of her screen time (19 at the time of filming, she became an instant cult horror icon with this, and has a pretty good sense of humor about it on the Blu-ray bonus features, and yes, she still looks great), it also feels like an B-grade exploitation flick. In a way, it perfectly sums up the dichotomy of Cannon's glory days: it's essentially a simple horror story that could've come from Hooper's or O'Bannon's salad days, but like its legendary producers, it has aspirations toward greatness. When I say LIFEFORCE bites off more than it can chew, it's one of those rare instances where it's meant as a compliment. It has a bold, go-for-broke attitude and its balls-to-the-wall insanity--marvel at Railsback's scenery-chewing performance--is infectious. It's the kind of film that works just as well if you approach it as a serious, unsung classic of modern sci-fi/horror or if you make it the main feature for your next Bad Movie Night. LIFEFORCE is the kind of movie where anything can happen at any moment.
LIFEFORCE, in its truncated 101-minute cut, opened in US theaters on June 21, 1985. It landed in fourth place at the box office (Ron Howard's COCOON opened the same day) and got generally negative reviews. Not surprisingly, horror fans were more appreciative of it and it found a significant cult over the years (this reappraisal was also helped once Hooper's intended version became available on DVD). LIFEFORCE gets a little too batshit at times for its own good and has more ideas than it can handle in two hours, but there's no denying that it's one of the essential sci-fi/horror films of the 1980s, and easily Hooper's most ambitious work as a filmmaker.
Hooper immediately followed LIFEFORCE with INVADERS FROM MARS (in theaters June 1986), and the extremely rushed THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (shot in June/July 1986 and somehow in theaters by late August 1986). LIFEFORCE didn't catapult Hooper on to the A-list, and in fact, his association with Golan & Globus has, thus far, constituted his last noteworthy work as a director. He did some hired-gun TV gigs in the '80s and '90s, but the last quarter century, with rare exception, has seen Hooper mired in one of the worst extended slumps ever endured by a major filmmaker. Since 1986, he's had one troubled production and terrible movie after another: 1990's SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, 1993's NIGHT TERRORS, and 1995's THE MANGLER range from awful at best to unwatchable at worst. Hooper spent a good chunk of the 2000s teaming with fanboy horror hacks Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch (co-writers of Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS and the useless 2010 remake of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS) on DTV fodder like 2000's CROCODILE, 2005's TOOLBOX MURDERS (a remake of the 1978 grindhouse classic), and 2006's MORTUARY. His most recent effort, the United Arab Emirates-financed horror film DJINN, was completed in 2011 but has yet to be released. It's great that Shout! Factory has assembled such a nice package for their LIFEFORCE Blu-ray and got the now-70-year-old Hooper to contribute a commentary. He seems like a smart guy who knows his horror history. He obviously knows how to make good movies, and milestones like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, SALEM'S LOT, and POLTERGEIST, and cult classics like THE FUNHOUSE and LIFEFORCE have cemented his place in horror history. But it's troubling to consider that this influential and talented horror legend hasn't really been able to get it together for over 25 years. Despite high points like LIFEFORCE and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, Hooper has never been able to shake the POLTERGEIST controversy, making it sadly ironic that the biggest commercial success to feature the credit "Directed by Tobe Hooper" was, in retrospect, the first major step in the derailing of his career.
