And now: MAXIMUM ENERGY!
posted by Ray Young at
6:23 AM
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Previous Posts
- You are all forgiven…
- Life without Zoë
- Frankenstein (1910)
- Drawing Restraint 9: Giveaway
- Darkness at the break of noon
- Spring takes its toll
- Caught in the Headlights
- Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower
- The Last Wave
- In the kitchen at parties
Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]
3 Comments:
"There is, in fact, a character named Mull. Some sources claim that it’s played by Bruce Glover, unrecognizable inside a gorilla suit topped by a bizarre skeletal mask. (Mull is the Space Monster.)"
The Space Monster seems suspiciously similar to Robot Monster with its gorilla suit aliens with deep sea diver helmets.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I've had a similar love affair with FMTSM. When you're a little kid, the brain is a sponge and processes information quickly, forever fixing our perceptions of whatever it is we're absorbing. In this case, it would be film.
FMTSM is an accident. It can never be replicated because everybody involved had a different idea as to what was being created. This movie, like the Frankenstein monster, was composed of many unrelated pieces, and indeed, an abomination opened it's good eye. For this kid, FMTSM was mind-boggling. The wonderful pop songs that actually compliment the onscreen action. The absurd aliens that somehow actually mean business regarding their plight.(Could Nadir's face-to-the-audience explanation of their tragedy soon be our own reality?)
Hilarious comedic asides that incredibly don't appear intentional. The astro-robot at a press conference smiles, and "freezes up" in a mechanical glitch as the camera slowly zooms in on Frank's insane fixed smile. Could Buñuel have done better handed the same material? The shocking revelation as Frank’s rug is pulled back revealing a gooey brain and gigantic radio tubes, and a Q-Tip is used to "fix" him.
Inside the alien ship we witness a "really weird" purification process, where young girls are placed on a conveyer belt, while Princess and Nadir glance at each other in approval, or (shudder) shake their heads in disapproval, and the victim is, well, we hear a scream! Surreal shots of spacemen running across twilight fields. Shackled space monster Mull reaching out to tear apart our screaming heroine, his huge talons an inch away. A major military assault on the alien ship, bombs and rockets exploding upon the giant golfball shaped shell.
This was my Star Wars, folks. This was the greatest movie ever made! And finally, Mull and Frank go at it inside the ship, as Princess assures us: these Earth weapons cannot harm our ship! But neurotic Nadir freaks out: “They have atomic weapons,” he cries, “if they use them we are finished! We must take off immediately!” Princess replies with some wonderfully misplaced pathos: “Where shall we go, Nadir?”
And they blast off! And the spaceship explodes! And Frank and Mull and Princess and Nadir are all wiped out, the race now officially obliterated. Our heroine cries for poor Frank who saved her life, but the camera fades out at warp speed, as though to prevent the costly exposure of another single precious frame of film.
A toast! A toast to FMTSM for delivering to us exactly what the trailer promised it would. Forty years later, it's better than Revenge of The Sith or that War Of The Worlds remake. Anybody with half an astro-brain can see that.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home