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One of favorite SF horror films and my favorite Hammer production is Quatermass and the Pit (1967), released in the U.S. as Five Million Years to Earth because American audiences were not familiar with screenwriter Nigel Kneale recurring scientist character Bernard Quatermass.

Hammer Films

Quatermass, (Andrew Keir) leader of the British civilian rochet research group is put out when the Ministry of Defense assigns a Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) to his project as they hope top establish ballistic missile bases on the moon. However before to properly lock horn over that the pair become involved with a strange missile-like device found deep underground while a subway extension is being constructed. While Breen believes it to be an unknown ‘V-Weapon’ from the second world war Quatermass recognizes that is not of the earth. Before long secrets of human evolution are uncovered and a new threat to humanity’s existed rises.

As I mentioned this is a favorite of mine and I own an import UK Blu-Ray disc of the feature as for the longest time no such Blu-ray had been released in this country. However, I had never seen the film on the big screen.

Until yesterday.

The New Beverly Cinema, owned by filmmaker and cinephile Quintin Tarantino, exhibited a copy project from a technicolor print and that was not something I was going to miss. So, I drove 3 hours there and 2.5 hours back to watch this beloved film the way it had been intended to be seen.

I was not disappointed.

From a show of hands before the screening I would guess about a third of those attending had never seen the film at all. It was well received. Oh, there were a few giggles when some of the effects showed their age but in general the audience sat rapt, silent, and engrossed in Kneale’s vivid screenplay bursting with fantastic ideas.

One scene displayed Kneale’s gift of prophesy. Quatermass asks an archeologist what he thinks humanity would do if it discovered, perhaps due to some climate catastrophe that the Earth was doomed? Roney answers, “Nothing. We’d just continue squabbling.” Ironic laughter filled the theater after that bit of foresight.

The screening was paired with John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness another film I thoroughly enjoyed, but having seen that on its original run and despairing at the thought of not getting home until past 2 am, I bailed on the second feature.

Quatermass and the Pit remains a wonderful bit of cinema and well worth 5 hours behind the wheel of my car to see in its original technicolor glory.

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Released in 1965 and first seen by me sometime in the early 70’s on the late-night horror movie show Creature Feature the Italian SF/horror movie Planet of the Vampires has zero vampires but a clear influence on the film Alien. (Though it must be said that Ridley Scott reports that he has never seen this movie.)

The twin starships Argos and Valiant arrive at an unknown planet investigating mysterious signals. While attempting to land, they lose control of their craft and lose consciousness. Upon awakening the crew launch into murderous attacks on each other, save for the manly heroic captain, who manages to snap everyone out of their violent delirium. Now with their ship damaged and repairs expected to be long and difficult the crews must unravel the mystery at the heart of the planet if they are to survive.

Direct with style and flair by Mario Bava Planet of the Vampires though hampered by a quite small budget is a visual treat. Bava’s use of color is fantastic, and he was a filmmaker who understood the camera and how to wrest every bit of production value from every last lira.

Little can be said for the performances in this movie. The international cast each performed their lines in their own native language regardless if any other in the cast understood with the final product dubbed for whatever market it sold to. This gives you the double handicap of actor not being able to effectively play off each other and the usual limitation of the budget voice actors often used in genre imports.

Still, despite its many failings the movie works, the eerie set for the planet’s landscape, the giant skeletons of long dead space travelers, and the twilight zone ending all combine for a cheap but entertaining bit of cinema.

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I saw Prometheus in the theater, found it terribly disappointing and therefore skipped its direct sequel Alien: Covenant when it was released. Following the modestly entertaining Alien: Romulus I decided to watch Covenant since it was one of my streaming services.

20th Century Studios

The first hour of Alien: Covenant was pretty damn good. The science, while far from being ‘hard sf’ was insulting and the neither the script nor the characters mind numbingly stupid as they had been in the previous film.

Then they reached the point where it had to bring in Prometheus and the film died. The action was lackluster with a dropped frame style that made everything too much like a video game and the plot progressed predictably with every ‘reveal’ blindingly obvious.

So, how do I feel about this most inconsistent franchise?

The two best films in the series are easily Alien and Aliens.

Next would be Alien” Romulus, derivative but entertaining.

Next Alien: Resurrection, more action than anything else and populated with what feels like the ‘alpha’ version of the Firefly crew.

Everything else, Alien 3, the Predator crossovers, and the two prequels are the trash dump of the franchise.

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The seventh film in the Alien franchise Alien Romulus is set between the events of Alien and Aliens. The film is directed and co-written by Fede Alvarez and produced by Ridley Scott’s production company ‘Scott Free’ and Walter Hill’s ‘Brandywine.’

20th Century Studios

Romulus returns to the theme of ‘blue-collar’ workers in dire trouble established by the original 1979 feature film. In this story a collection of miners and other assorted low-value labor board a derelict station in hopes of obtained hyper-sleep pods that will allow them to escape their indentured servitude by making the 9-year voyage to the nearest planet not controlled by the corporation. the station however harbors secrets and dangers the characters are wholly unaware of and what started as a quest to escape rapidly become one of survival.

In my opinion Romulus ranks third in the franchise, directly after the original and Cameron’s direct sequel. Fede Alvarez and production designer Naaman Marshal have done a quite admirable job is creating a film that feels as though it is part of the world established by the original film and its sequel. Graphics recreated from those movies do not draw attention to themselves but create the familiar environment of those production. For the most part story beats and scenes that do call back to earlier movies do not feel as though they were forced into the film as some sort of obligatory ‘fan service.’

For the most part.

There are sadly several bits that do feel forced and contrived. I think in general it is preferrable to reference earlier films in a franchise with production design and props but not dialog. The dialog spoken by previous characters is theirs and it is unquestionably better to find the right words for you characters rather than take them from another.

The weakest section of the film for me is the final ten or fifteen minutes. Not only does it not feel earned and rather forced it extends a film that had reached a natural and satisfying conclusion with references to substandard entries in the franchise and caused the movie to end with more stolen dialog.

I find it ironic that the most enduring thematic element in the franchise is the one that screenwriter Dan O’Bannon objected to the most when it was inserted into his original script for Alien. The entire corporate conspiracy sub-plot, that the ship had been diverted deliberately and that the crew was considered expendable O’Bannon never liked but has become the defining theme of the films. It lives strong and proud in Romulus.

The next element of my review contains a spoiler so here’s a few thoughts before I continue.

Alien Romulus is a decent if somewhat flawed film that earns at least one viewing.

***SPOILER WARNING***

Through extensive and fairly well deployed CGI the filmmakers recreated on the screen Ian Holm, portraying another android in the same series that ‘Ash’ belonged to. There were some minor ‘uncanny valley’ issues, but they were well managed and actually fit the style of the film for an ‘artificial person.’

The fact that the plot revolves around a soulless corporation pushing workers to their death and seeking a way to extract value even beyond their death while the film literally extracts value from a deceased laborer is deeply ironic.

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As I write this people across the internets are celebrating the 45th anniversary of the release of Alien, a science-fiction horror film that spawned sequel after sequel and nearly countless knockoffs and imitations.

20th century films

In my appraisal there are only two Alien films of quality, Alien and Aliens. James Cameron wisely decided when he wrote and directed the sequel to the original film that his was not to be horror but action/adventure with only tone of horror. With the conclusion of Aliens Ripley’s story came to an organic and satisfying end. Healed from her traumatic encounter with the Zeta Reticulian parasite and with a new composite family there should have been no more to tell for this woman.

Naturally the studios screwed that up and insulted the audience along the way.

With the next film, Alien3, a production that had a hard release date before it has even a story treatment much less a script, after abandoning such vaunted SF concepts such as wooden space stations crew by technophobic monks, the producers opened the story by killing Ripley’s new family.

The producers considered the audience suckers for investing any emotional energy or commitment to these characters. The lesson is quite clear. Nothing you care about matters. No victory is lasting, all happiness is fleeting, we bring you only despair. Is it really surprising that this production is the one that introduced sexual assault to the franchise?

The proper course after Aliens would have been to craft new stories about new characters. The bold and correct choice would have been to even abandon the parasite as the central threat. Horror repeated becomes adventure and further repeated become dull. This is of course not what the studio did, instead, reviving poor Ripley from her demise and adding scores of parasites in a futile attempt to create a sense of danger and dread where only lame action now existed.

Two ‘prequel’ movies have been produced, a pair of Alien vs Predator movies have squeezed a little more cash from the concept and this year, yet another movie will be released but everything after Aliens has been crap.