INSTALLMENT 2:
In Which Sublime And Ridiculous Pass Like Ships In The Night

Twenty years ago—it seems like just yesterday it burns for me with such clarity—during the 1964–65 television season, I learned a startling truth about working in the visual mediums of film and video. I was writing for a series you'll all recall titled The Outer Limits, and it was the most salutary experience I've ever had as a scenarist. It was the second year for that anthology of sf/fantasy stories; and because ABC-TV had decided they were going to cancel the show; and because it was more fiscally responsible for them to let it go one more season than to layout large amounts to replace it with something new; and because everyone involved, from production companies to the network itself, was skimming off the top: the budgets were tiny even for those frontier days of black-and-white. So in a very real way, no one was watching what we did. And we were able to write what we wanted to write, because no one really gave a damn.

As long as we stayed within budget.

So that meant what we had available by way of special effects and expensive location shooting was minimal, and we had to substitute imagination.

The plots were more complex than what is usually doled out on network series, and we used misdirection, like "limbo" sets and suspense in place of Anderson opticals. We leaned heavily on characterization and inventiveness. The shows that came out of that wonderful season continue to be rerun in syndication. Not a year goes by that I don't receive tiny residual checks for my Outer Limits segments that continue to draw a viewership here and overseas. In England, several years ago, they were a primetime rage.

The startling truth that has become clear to me since I wrote those shows, having afterward worked on multimillion dollar productions, is that vast sums of money budgeted for science fiction films and television specials are more likely to produce an impediment to serious filmmaking than it is to grease the way to the production of films that we remember with pleasure. I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule—Alien and Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. and 2001: A Space Odyssey come immediately to mind—but they are glaring exceptions that seem, to me, only to buttress the rule.

This startling truth intrudes on my perceptions as I view, this month, five films that range from minuscule budgets (by today's acromegalic standards) to bottom lines that would, in times past, have sent dozens of Titanics down the nautical ways.

 

If Arthur (1981) gladdened your heart, and if you squirmed with pleasure in the warmth of that feeling, then I do not think you will regret my recommending Splash (Touchstone Films). By the time this review sees print, you may have to hunt beyond the first-run theaters for this marvelous minnow; but if you passed it by on the grounds that the basic premise seemed silly, you'll find a reconsideration and the search eminently worthwhile. Because it is fitting and proper that Splash was one of the biggest moneymakers of the summer filmgoing season. It is a dear movie in the sense of that adjective as fondly-considered, honorable, heartfelt and scarce. Scarce, as in reasonably-priced.

It only cost eight million dollars (as opposed to $46 million for the unlovable Greystoke reviewed here last month); it was directed by a thirty-year-old actor best known for his tv sitcom role as straight-man to The Fonz, whose most outstanding previous directorial outing was the flawed Night Shift (1982) (as opposed to Greystoke's Oscar-winning Hugh Hudson); its leading man comes to the big screen directly from one of the more embarrassing tv series in recent memory (as opposed to Greystoke's internationally-lauded cast); its special effects are so few and so subtle as to seem nonexistent (as opposed to Greystoke's $7 million-plus for Rick Baker's ape makeup alone); and it was distributed—and some say partially financed sub-rosa—as an independent production by Disney's Buena Vista (whose track record for fantasy is notable for The Black Hole [1979] and Tron [1982]); not to mention a basic plot premise so trivial it might have been rejected for one of the tripartite segments of Fantasy Island (as opposed to the alleged canonical presentation of Burroughs's classic novel).

Yet despite all those seeming drawbacks and question marks, Splash comes out of nowhere, with a minimum of screamhorn ballyhoo, to endear to us its director, Ron Howard, its leading man, Tom Hanks, its lovely female lead, Daryl Hannah, and the fledgling Touchstone Films, as a gentle, uplifting fantasy that puts most other gargantuan projects in the genre to shame. Most particularly Greystoke.

Splash is a love story, the romance between a likeable, average guy who runs a wholesale fruit and vegetable business in New York . . . and a, uh, er, a mermaid. Now hold it! Don't go running the other way. If you need pith and moment, you can salve your lust for cheap entertainment with a perfectly acceptable rationalization that it's a cunning contemporary reworking of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth. Which it is, truly. Trust me on this one.

There is no need to explicate the story line further. It is more than strong enough to support the charming, faultless performances of Hanks, Hannah, Howard Morris and those two inspired escapees from SCTV, John Candy and Eugene Levy. (Candy, in fact, seems to me to be the worthy inheritor of Belushi's mantle, with a style and charisma that the late comedian never fully developed, for all the mythic revisionism attendant on his death.) Nor need more be said about the plot's twisty turns than to add that it provides a showcase for Ron Howard's abilities as a director: a talent as sure and as correctly self-effacing as that of Sturges or Capra. With this film the lisping Winthrop of The Music Man (1962), the freckled Opie of The Andy Griffith Show, the straight arrow Steve Bolander of American Graffiti (1973) and the incurably naive Richie Cunningham of Happy Days outperforms older and more extolled directors whose finest moments are not the blush on a butterfly's wings to what Howard has done here so, well, endearingly.

One final word before I send you off to see Splash, a word about internal logic and the use of restrained, intelligent special effects.

A traditional mark of bad sf films has been the need to "explain" specious reasoning of plots and SFX. Long-winded oratorios that throw around gobble-dygook that confuses photons with protons, parsecs with light-years, oxides with oxhides. It is an indication that the makers of the film are ignorant, have perhaps read but not understood an Asimov essay, and hold the audience's intellect in contempt. Too much is said, too much is roundaboutly rationalized, too many flashing lights dominate the screen.

In Splash—take note all you parvenu filmmakers—we willingly suspend our disbelief that such a thing as a mermaid can exist, that such a creature could have a tail in the ocean and legs on land (as we never did in Miranda [1947] or Mister Peabody and the Mermaid [1948] no matter how beguiling Glynis Johns and Ann Blyth were as the sea-nymphs) because the scenarists and the production crew believe it! When you see Splash take note of the one brief conversation Eugene Levy has with Howie Morris, in which the rationale is established. It is, they say, because it is. Nothing further is needed. But it suffices because in the one special effect scene I can recall, gorgeous Daryl Hannah lies in the bathtub, runs her hand down her thigh . . . and it begins to pucker as with scales. C'est ça.

 

Both the most and the least a responsible film critic can say is that the third Star Trek movie is out, and Trek fans will love it. Like a high mass in Latin or the asking of the four questions at a Passover seder, films continuing the television adventures of the familiar crew of the starship Enterprise are formalized ritual. Without all that has gone before—the original NBC series (1966–69), a Saturday morning animated version (1973–75), endless novelizations, a cult following that has spawned its own mini-fandom replete with gossipzines, newszines and even a flourishing underground of soft-core Kirk-shtups-Spock pornzines—these films would be non-events. (Though I am told that results of a studio-fostered research sample gathered from an audience last March 17th imparted the confusing statistic that 44% of those queried were "unfamiliar with Star Trek." I cannot explain this intelligence.)

But it is all True Writ now, and these movies need not be judged as if they were Film, or Story, or even Art. What it is, bro, is a growth industry.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Paramount) seems less interesting than ST II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) but infinitely better than the first feature-length adventure of them as boldly went where no man had gone before, Star Trek—The Motion Picture (1979). I'm not sure that's saying much, except to point out that producer-writer Harve Bennett has had the sense to keep creator Gene Roddenberry in a figurehead mode, thus permitting a savvy commercial recycling of time-tested and much-beloved tropes; and by allowing Leonard Nimoy to direct this film, Bennett has kept Spock in the fold: a canny solution by a minister without portfolio of the thorny problem posed by an indispensable star who wanted out.

And with but minor flaws easily credited to, and excused by, this being Nimoy's first major stint behind the camera, he has done a commendable yeoman job. There is, for instance, a pleasing easiness in the performances by the "regulars"; a result (I am told by several of the actors) of Nimoy's sensitivity in directing them as actors and not, as in past films directed by Wise and Meyer, as mere button-pushing background, as foils for the "stars" and the SFX whizbang.

There are a few interesting new moments this time: Christopher Lloyd's Klingon villain (strongest in the earlier stages of his appearance onscreen, before he converts from the guttural alien tongue to English); a 6-track Dolby stereo sound system designed to blast you out of the Cineplex box whereat you'll be screening the film; a nice sense of alien landscape on the Genesis Planet, especially the scenes of snow falling on giant cactus; the Klingon "Bird of Prey" battle cruiser.

Contrariwise, there are the usual problems: no one, not even Nimoy-as-Director, seems able to tone down William Shatner's need to mouth embarrassing and spuriously portentous platitudes as if he were readying himself to play the title role in the life story of Charlton Heston; the fine cast of "regulars" is once again denied extended scenes in which their talents can be displayed, in lieu of Shatner's scene-hogging and the expected flaunting of expensive special effects; Robin Curtis, replacing Kirstie Alley as the Vulcan Lt. Saavik, is as memorable as spaetzle; and the plot makes virtually no sense if examined closely.

But neither the positives nor the negatives of such effete critiques matter as much as a dollop of owl sweat. Star Trek has become, obviously, a biennial booster shot for Trekkies, Trekkers, Trekists, and fellow-trekelers. And as such, places itself as far beyond relevant analysis as, say, James Bond or Muppets movies.

The most and the least a responsible film critic can say is that the third Star Trek movie is out, and Trek fans will love it. For the rest of us, it's better than a poke in the eye with a flaming stick.

 

The Ice Pirates (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is so ludicrous it ought to be enshrined in the Academy of Dumb Stuff with such other sterling freaks of nature as the lima bean, poison ivy, the Edsel and the singing of Billy Idol. A space opera that melds (and this is how they're selling it) Star Wars (1977) with Captain Blood (1935), this poor gooney bird of a movie has all the grace and charm of a heavy object falling downstairs.

If you accept the basic premise that the story takes place in a distant galaxy where the rarest, most valuable commodity is water, and that buccaneer swash-bucklers make raids on the incredibly evil Templar Empire to hijack ice cubes from their interstellar refrigerator tankers, then I have some dandy land in the Sargasso Sea for sale that I think you'd like a lot. Furnished.

The acting, keynoted by performances by Robert Urich (late of the tv series Vega$) and Mary Crosby (who tried to kill J. R. Ewing on Dallas), makes one look back with fondness on the thespic abilities of Jon Hall and Vera Hruba Ralston, Audie Murphy and Jack Webb.

This is the sort of thalidomide offspring of Battlestar Ponderosa that ought to be led out of the theater wearing a Hartz Flea Collar.

And yet, may Allah forgive me, there is a devil-may-care quality to this moronic sport that lingers with affection in the memory. There are moments—as when one robot kicks another in the nuts—that plumb such Olympian depths of stupidity that one must credit co-author/director Stewart Raffill with a degree of chutzpah unknown since Hitler opined he could conquer Russia in the wintertime.

I cannot in conscience recommend this film, but if you're the sort of entertainment-seeker who ain't embarrassed when the pregnant lady comes out of the audience to do a full striptease on amateur night at The Pink Pussycat, this may be just the grotesquerie for you. If so, don't write to thank me for the tip.

It's not nice, I know, to tempt you with a review of a wonderful film you may never be able to see, but having been privileged to attend a screening of The Quest (Okada International), a short film produced and directed by Saul and Elaine Bass, written by Ray Bradbury and based on his 1946 Planet Stories allegory, "Frost and Fire," I must risk your censure in hopes that some convention committee will bust its buns laying on a showing of this remarkable fantasy.

The film (as was so with the novella) operates off a lovely, simple idea: a race of humanoid creatures has a life span of merely eight days. They are born, live and die in the place where they have always dwelled, but a hunger burns in them to know what lies "beyond," out there. Yet by the time an emissary to out-there grows old enough to be trained for the journey, s/he is doomed to death before s/he can reach the goal. The film is the journey finally made by one of these people, set on the path as a child.

Saul Bass, whom cineastes correctly hold in awe for his innovative main titles on The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Anatomy of a Murder (1960), North By Northwest (1960), Psycho (1961), Exodus (1962), Walk on the Wild Side (1963), and forty other major films, who directed the shower sequence in Psycho and the final battle sequence in Spartacus (1961), and whose short films include the unforgettable Why Man Creates (1968), has done with live action and animation what studios spending millions have not been able to do: he has conveyed the ephemeral magic of Bradbury's world-view without awkwardness in translation, without stilted dialogue or precious pomposity.

In less than half an hour of the most incredibly affecting visuals since the exundation of computer-generated graphics attendant on Star Wars and its horde of imitations, Bass and Bradbury have brought forth a small miracle of cinematic wisdom and beauty. I cannot recommend it too highly.

At present no plans are on line for commercial distribution, but schools, libraries, colleges and accredited convention committees can obtain The Quest in 16mm or videotape either through Pyramid Films, in Santa Monica, California, or by direct arrangement with Saul Bass/Herb Yager and Associates in Los Angeles. Acquisition is hardly difficult if desire exists.

It is my hope that I've whetted the appetites of those who program films for sf conventions. Before the next imprudent and morally reprehensible scheduling of such dreck as John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) or one of those detestable Friday the 13th/Halloween pukers, let those who pretend to some affection for film, who announce their respect for convention attendees, locate The Quest and showcase it. In their lemminglike rush to saturate film programs with dross, scheduling officials would be ennobled by a sober shake of the head and the presentation of an important little film that is about something more meaningful than mass slaughter by devious means.

 

Of the many low blows leveled against Scott Joplin, the great ragtime composer, by a universe that seemed determined to keep him unknown in his lifetime, one of the most unfair was his scandalous treatment by the organizers of the famous "Louisiana Purchase Exposition," the St. Louis Expo of 1904.

Joplin was by far the most popular musician of his day. Yet the nabobs who styled themselves arbiters of taste in those post-Victorian times of Late George Apley anal retention considered his work the merest popular trash, fit only for nautch houses and performances on streetcorners.

After a long and bitter struggle, Joplin's publisher managed to get the Exposition to invite Joplin to perform as one of a number of "American artists." It was a grudging invitation, and they set up the great black innovator in one miserable booth . . . next door to John Philip Sousa's augmented march band.

Joplin and his exquisite little rags were, perforce, blown away by the brassy riptide of Sousa's martial maelstrom. In the cacophony of "Under the Double Eagle" no one paid pennyfarthing attention to the wonder of "The Cascades."

Preceding as paradigm.

I opened this column with the observation that too often a large budget gets in the way of a good film being made—as witness Greystoke at $46 million—while a reasonable financial outlay (for these inflated days) forces the producers to use imagination instead of flash&filigree—as witness Splash at $8 million. Concomitant to this theory is the demonstrated truth that films on which so much lucre has been expended get a sales campaign that blasts out of the public consciousness those possibly better films whose budgets don't include a 24-hour-a-day television blitz.

The horrible reality of that low blow trembles in my thoughts as I come to the film I've saved for last: what may be one of the most memorable sf films ever made, a textbook example of how to make a motion picture in this genre skillfully, inexpensively, and imaginatively, but a film that may, like the delicate tracery of Scott Joplin's work, be outblasted by the brassy special effects monstrosities being pushed so hard by studios with megabucks invested in inferior product.

I speak of Iceman (Universal). And I say it is magnificent.

I suggest that Iceman may well be one of those classic films utilizing the furniture of sf to illuminate the human condition that both aficionados and mundanes will overlook, or not even consider sf, as happened to two of the finest movies ever made in our realm: Seconds (1966) and Charly (1968). Overlooked entirely or, at best, quickly forgotten in the Doppler effect created by the passage of Jedis, Greystokes, firestarters and other assorted treks.

The story: a mining and exploration company, drilling in the Arctic above the 66th parallel, excises a block of ice in which a living Neanderthal has been frozen for 40,000 years. He is revived, he is sequestered in an immense terrarium for study, and communication is established with him.

It is not a new idea. (Richard Ben Sapir does it with greater panache and innovation in his outstanding 1978 novel, The Far Arena, which I commend to your attention.) But within the scope of this uncomplicated plotline, such riches of drama, humanism, compassion and philosophical depth have been thrown up onto the screen that Iceman becomes no less than a shining icon of cinematic High Art.

The Australian director of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) and Barbarosa (1982), Fred Schepisi, has been imported by producer Norman Jewison; and he brings to this film the undeniable brio that seems to mark the work of this entire generation of Aussie directors—Peter Weir, George Miller, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong—a passion and intelligence against which we in America dare to throw the likes of De Palma, Landis, Ashby, Colin Higgins or Mark Lester. Based on a story by John Drimmer, the screenplay by Chip Proser and Drimmer is a model of clarity and foreshadowing. Engaging performances by Timothy Hutton as the anthropologist who becomes the prehistoric man's teacher and companion, and Lindsay Crouse as the project director, buttress and resonate to the absolutely astonishing acting done by the classically-trained (at the Chin Chiu Academy of the Peking Opera) Eurasian John Lone as "Charlie," the man frozen in time.

It is beyond words to attempt a characterization of the effulgence Lone brings to what might have been no better than a reprise of Victor Mature vaudeville grunting. There is a world of pathos and nobility in Lone's iceman, and if there is a God, Lone will be onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion next year at Oscar time.

But more than superb acting and intelligent story, Iceman reaches toward questions that burn fiercely at the core of the human equation.

And in the final moments, when it seems that an insoluble situation has been constructed from which no satisfying egress exists, the scenarists, director and actors give us a finale that lifts our arms to the skies, that raises our eyes to the heavens, in precisely the bodily position the iceman was first found. As one who despises counterfeit emotion à la Love Story (1970), who does not cheer for the Rockys of this world, who winces at the cheap manipulation of much contemporary cinema, I found it difficult to admit that I was sitting with tears at the final freeze-frame of Iceman.

This is what filmmaking is all about.

It was made for less than ten million dollars. If you see it, you will never forget it.

 

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / September 1984