Live And Let Die (1973)

Ugh. You all don't even know how much I've been dreading this. In my quest to go through the entire Bond filmography, I knew I'd have to suffer through a lot of crap. The Bond films aren't exactly known for consistent excellence. But out of all the things that were weird or wacky or wackily weird about the series, nothing can top the mountain of bizarre WTF-ness that is Roger Moore.

I can't stand the Roger Moore Bond films. I hate the way Moore plays Bond, I hate the way they are crammed to the brim with goofiness and absurd comic relief, and I hate how boring they are. Now granted, as of my writing this entry I have not seen all of them, and apparently I've missed out on some of the better ones, but I'm not holding my breath. And frankly the fact that I've seen four of the Roger Moore Bond movies and am still only about halfway through them since he was Bond SEVEN DAMN TIMES makes me want to punch a llama. And I don't even know why I'd punch a llama. I like llamas. Moore just takes me there I guess.

Whatever. Let's get this started so I can get this over with and get to Timothy Dalton. I'm pretty sure that's the first time that sentence has ever been typed out.

"Live and Let Die" was the first Bond movie made in the 70's, and more than nearly any of the rest of them is clearly a product of its time. In a change of pace from the usual evil villain out to take over the world plot it focuses on drug trafficking, black gangsters and strange voodoo magic, as if Bond wandered on to the set of a blaxplotation movie being filmed across the way and everybody just kind of rolled with it. This has the side effect of, at least for me, making it seem little like a Bond movie past the twenty minute mark. It feels like I'm watching "Shaft." Only here Shaft is pasty, English and far less intimidating.

God, it's like casting Hugh Grant to play Jules Winnfield.

Obviously this was to capitalize on a fad and attempt to boost numbers in the box office, but I can't tell you what an utter shock it is to hear blaxplotation style dialogue being thrown about in a Bond movie. I had to rewind the movie every time somebody called James "honkey" or "cue-ball," just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. And I think my jaw literally hit the ground when Felix Leiter said "Get me a make on a white pimpmobile!" The levels of bizarre and "does not fit" are off the charts.

"New for 1973 - The Pontiac Pimpmobile. Starting at the low price of $3,000 or 2 kilos of heroin. Test drive one today."

The plot, much like many of the lesser Bond films, is convoluted and overly-long. It involves agents in the Caribbean/Southern US getting killed, and Bond is sent to investigate (much like "Dr. No"). The trail leads him to Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), a dictator of a small island, whom we find out doubles as a drug lord named "Mr. Big." His plan is to distribute a crap-ton of heroin on the streets for free using his chain of restaurants as a front, driving the competition out of business and creating many new addicts in the process. Then he'll charge jacked-up prices for the drugs once that is accomplished and make lots of money.

Doesn't that just scream "James Bond movie?" True, there may be Bond villainy to be found, as Katanga has henchmen, an underground liar complete with a shark tank (!) and has a tenancy to monologue, but he's still just a jumped up drug dealer when you boil it down. And Yaphet Kotto, as intimidating as he can be, isn't really selling the role very well here. He's really low-key and comes across as kind of sleepy most of the time. He doesn't seem like he cares very much, and I'm just not feeling it. And as we all know, any good action flick hinges on its villain. This is particularly true of Bond movies.

Look out, Jane Seymour! It's an evil medicine man! Quick! Get her a medicine...woman?

Even the henchmen aren't very notable. Julius Harris as the hook-handed Tee-Hee serves as kind of a prototype for Jaws, but Richard Kiel this man was not. Like most of the rest of "Live And Let Die," he's just kind of sleepily floating through the thing. And I don't what we are supposed to make of Whisper, the henchmen whose gimmick is that they can't speak above a whisper, since that's clever. What is he going to do, inaudible me to death?

Every once in a while "Live And Let Die" throws in a relatively decent vehicle segment, the most famous being the boat chase through the bayous of Louisiana. And while that bit is alright and more in line with what we're used to with the franchise, at that point we are also introduced to what is one of the more egregious examples of everything that is wrong with the Roger Moore movies...

Mitchell!? NO!!!

I'm not sure why Clifton James is in this movie as Sheriff J.W. Pepper, but his mere presence alone would be enough to make me write off the entire film, even if the rest hadn't been a snore-fest. There are plenty of problems that I have with the Roger Moore series, but the one thing that I can't see fixing any of it is a tobacco chewing, "Where you goin', boy" spouting, goofball redneck sheriff. Once again, it's something that just does not belong in a Bond flick.

Finally, let's talk about Moore himself. The problem with Roger Moore is that he's way too big of a ham, and he doesn't feel the slightest bit intimidating. Connery's smirk was less of a smile and more representative of a wolf getting ready to eat a small animal. Even Lazenby could throw a convincing punch and scowl when he needed to. And let's not even bring up Dalton's cold eyes, Brosnan's sleek physicality or the muscular wrecking ball that is Daniel Craig. But that raised eyebrow of Moore's always makes me feel like he's one step away from tugging at his collar with his finger and going "Nee-uh-uh-uh" like we're watching Benny Hill or something. There's no badassery with Roger Moore. He doesn't seem like a dangerous guy, he seems like someone you might hire to do your taxes. 

Yes, you're correct. Carnac the Magnificent would be a much better role for you.

And I know I've said this before, but my god is James Bond a creep. It's really getting old with this schtick of Bond being an utter pig, which has the ladies tripping over themselves to strip off their panties quicker. It's not quite as bad here as it was with the later Connery films as far as brute force goes, but here Roger Moore basically tricks and extorts women into having sex with him, which is just another flavor of "creepy border-line rapist."

There's little chemistry going on between the actors, either. Roger Moore and Bond girl de jour Solitaire (Jane Seymour) together are rather luke-warm at best, with the more intense but far more ill-fated and mean-spirited relationship being between Bond and Rosie (Gloria Hendry), a double agent working for both the CIA and Kananga whom Bond basically lets die without much concern. Of course that's immediately after he has sex with her, since he's a nice guy like that. And while there is a decent scene between Roger Moore and Yaphet Kotto where Kananga reveals he is Mr. Big, I was honestly hoping that it was going to be Hank Hill under the mask.

"I sell heroin and heroin accessories."

I also find it rather strange that his introduction is so underwhelming. Usually when a new Bond is paraded out in his debut it's with a dramatic reveal, usually involving a slow buildup or a flashy action sequence culminating with a one-liner to showcase what the new guy can do. But here we just see Roger Moore lying in bed with a woman way too hot for a dude like him. Then the doorbell rings and he gets up, answers it, and makes coffee for his boss while trying to keep the girl out of sight. Thrill as he attempts to hide the fact that he just had sex!!!

And that really sets the stage for the entire affair. "Live And Let Die" is just not trying very hard. And it's really about as exciting as watching James Bond get out of bed and hide a chick in his closet. I honestly don't have too much more to say about "Live And Let Die." I didn't care for it. It was actually a struggle for me to stay awake during most of it, much like "Thunderball." And, much like that film, I really don't like it.

But hey, good news. I've only got six more Roger Moore films left to go! ::shoots myself::

Man, that trailer makes me wish I hadn't nearly slept through most of this movie.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Live And Let Die" isn't the worst Bond movie, but man is it bad. It's a boring introduction to my least favorite Bond actor, and the tone, setting and themes are a radical departure which simply do not fit. About the only good thing I can say about it is that it doesn't take place in outer space, but don't worry. We'll get to that soon enough.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

Alien (1979)

A quick aside before I continue: This my 200th entry in this blog, and I'm particularly proud for having done so many. Like my 100th entry, when I did a favorite of mine, "Demolition Man," for this one I'm doing one of my favorite films of all time. Thanks to everyone who reads this little experiment of mine!

In the late 70's struggling screenwriter Dan O'Bannon was living on producer Ronald Shusett's couch. He was homeless and had no money. His lone previous writing project had been "Darkstar," the sci-fi comedy which was also the directorial debut of a young John Carpenter. He was a man with great talent, but little success. Then Fox picked up a the rights to a screenplay he had called "Alien." To direct they got an unknown British television commercial maker named Ridley Scott and a barely tested stage actress named Sygourney Weaver to be the lead. It had a budget of $11 million.

And after it came out in 1979, the movie world was never the same.

There are a lot of movies I would call "one of my favorites," and plenty of movie franchises I would say the same about, but when it comes to the "Alien" series, the only thing that can even come close to comparing in terms of my all-time favorite sci-fi films is "Star Wars." And now that the prequels have come along to taint what was once glorious, I'm unsurprisingly leaning more towards Ripley and the Xenomorphs.

I played bass for "Ripley and The Xenomorphs."

"Alien" essentially created modern sci-fi horror. Before then space had been a sterile, clean place for the Kubricks, Roddenberrys and Lucas's of the world to make pretty and high-tech looking. After all, it's space travel! The future! Warp Factor 1, Kessel runs in less than 12 parsecs and "I can't let you do that, Dave" and whatnot. But "Alien" gave us a realistic, dirty, lived-in future which actually looked like what space travel would probably be like in our eternally less-glamorous-than-we-imagined reality.

Perhaps it was this sense of realism that made what the film had in store for its audiences so hard-hitting and shocking. Scary creatures from another planet attacking us was not something new by any means. Hell that's every 50's drive-in movie ever made. And the idea of a person becoming corrupted by the monsters had been done in "Invasion of The Body Snatchers." But that film didn't feature the shocking gore combined with the sublime direction and timing of Ridley Scott. It was almost like a proto-Cronenberg experiment in body horror - something inside you that you can't control, violating you and literally getting under your skin before it claws its way out, ripping you apart.

The infamous chestburster sequence, which also happens to be my personal favorite movie scene of all time, got such a reaction from audiences that it was famously reported that people were getting sick in the theaters. The level of gore on display was the kind of thing you saw in "I Spit on Your Grave," not a monster movie about something from space. Those movies are silly and unrealistic. Or at least, they were until "Alien" came around to inject that realism. It always seemed authentic, even with an outlandish creature running about, because it took itself seriously, contained real characters, and all the grit and grime that comes from a setting that feels legitimate.

They did not skimp on the dank, that's for sure.

Most people today seeing it for the first time would probably consider "Alien" to be slow and timid compared to what they're used to, and they wouldn't be too much to blame for feeling that way. Cinema has evolved a lot in the 34 years since it was released, and time is not kind to most horror movies, as it's the nature of the genre to push the envelope and ramp up the scares. And like the majority of horror films of that era, a good amount of time is spent with building atmosphere and characterization. This has the trivial consequence of making it so you don't want to see bad things happen to the characters, which makes you feel something when those things inevitably happen.

He died with his dignity.

And like any respectable horror film, much is left to the imagination. Despite the horrific gore-fest of the dinner scene, that's the most graphic "Alien" gets by a mile. The rest is done in quick flashes of violence and is actually kind of subtle, even though what's happening is that the alien is ramming its "tongue" through the brain of its victims, which is pretty hardcore. It's even implied that the alien may have raped the character of Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) before killing her, or for all we know she was killed because of the rape (if it happened), which is all kinds of horrible that's unpleasant to even entertain the thought of. But we're left to draw those conclusions based on what the movie doesn't show us. And that, for my money, is the way to go, because when let to their own devices, our minds always do far worse things to the characters than the movie could have shown us.

Speaking of characters, "Alien" also set the precedent for what is now commonly referred to as "The Strong Female Lead," although few have been as well written or portrayed. Sygourney Weaver's performance as Lt. Ellen Ripley is one of the great landmarks in sci-fi and horror movies in general. There hadn't been too many movie characters like her before: a strong, intelligent, resourceful woman who was capable of being a badass, all while being totally organic about the whole process, and not making a big deal (or any deal at all) about the fact that she was female.

Wow. It's almost like you're an actual person instead of simply being defined by your gender...

A lot of characters like that and the actresses portraying a tough woman, be it your Michelle Rodriguezs or Milla Jovovichs or what have you, tend to come off as really artificial to me, mostly because they're always so in-your-face about being tough. They constantly have to remind the audience with a sneer and a one-liner that they're a badass, and are often combative far past the point where any normal person would stop and take it down a notch, just for variety's sake.

With Ripley it wasn't like that. She is a normal person in every respect, and she acts like it. She gets scared, confused and desperate just like anyone else would. But she just so happens to be brave and clever (and lucky) enough to survive to the end credits when everyone else didn't. There isn't a single point during "Alien" which seems like the pandering moment where the women are supposed to say "You go girl!" to the screen. It's nice when a movie doesn't treat its viewers like trained seals.

That's not to ignore the rest of the cast, all of whom are just legendary in this movie. Ian Holm, Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton are of course phenomenal. But for me the two standouts besides Sygourney are Veronica Cartwright and John Hurt. Cartwright gives a performance which has to hold some kind of world record for a single person conveying that much fear. It's almost to the point of being obnoxious, actually. Had it not been for a stellar acting job it probably would have been. And John Hurt had an alien rip out of his ribcage. I'd say that earns anybody a mention when talking about memorable performances.

"WAAAASSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!?!?!"

The only weakness to "Alien" is that there are aspects of it that time has not been kind to. This is mostly the specials effects on the alien itself. At the end of the day, it's just a guy in a suit. And while I'll prefer that any day over CGI, the problem is that since the suit was so awkward, and the poor dude couldn't actually see anything while wearing it (true story), there's never a great sense of gracefulness or predatory instinct when you finally get a good look at the thing. It's far too slow moving, almost like it's sleepy or drugged out of its mind, and there's one shot in particular (in Lambert and Parker's death scene) where it looks like the thing is a Thanksgiving Day Parade float, just smoothly cruising down the avenue, animatronic arms slowly moving up and down. It looks ridiculous.

"Mammy! Doncha know me?! It's your lil' baby!"

Also, there's always been something that's bugged the crap out of me: When Dallas or Ripley are talking to Mother, the ship's AI, they interact with it by typing out questions into the computer. Well, they'll only hit like 5 keys, but those 5 keystrokes are apparently enough to type of something like "REQUEST EXPLANATION FOR SCIENCE INABILITY TO NEUTRALIZE ALIEN." I have no idea what that interface is like at that point. I know watching them type all that out isn't exciting, but come on. Type faster. Ripley one-finger types like she's trying her best to break the damn thing.

MUST. TYPE. HARD ENOUGH. TO BREAK. FINGERS!!!

But those hardly ruin the movie, and most of the problems can be traced back to "Alien" being a product of its time, and for the budget they had it still looks fantastic. Even with the Apple II looking computers and their keyboards with buttons as big as cats. This is a film I could watch over and over and over again. Which I have done.

And somehow, in some ways, impossibly...in 1986 it got even better.

This trailer is a shockingly accurate representation of the movie. Starts slow with nothing happening, building an uncomfortable atmosphere before going INSANE at the end. Well done.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Alien" is one of the best science fiction films ever made. It's also one of the best horror films ever made. And it's certainly, in my opinion, THE best film to cross those two genres. And it's one of my all-time favorite movies. It shaped my tastes in sci-fi, horror, gaming, and film. I can't express my love for it enough.

The Running Man (1987)

At the time of this entry, there are only two days remaining. Two days until the triumphant return of one of the greatest Action Movie Gods of all time. He is the giant who cannot be hit by bullets. He is the man who can make something explode just by pointing something else at it. He is the man who can look badass in both a loincloth and a spandex bodysuit. He's the King of The One Liner. He's also one of my favorite actors. I can be speaking of none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this week, he returns.

I can't accurately describe my excitement for "The Last Stand." I'm so excited, in fact, that I couldn't help myself and needed to pre-game before seeing it. I decided to pop in one of the less popular Arnold vehicles, "The Running Man."

Right off the bat, I can see two reasons why "The Running Man" is usually not one of the films mentioned often in conversations about Arnold movies, unless the people discussing are big fans. The first is that frankly it's not one of his better movies. That's not to say it's bad, but it's a little too tame on the violence and a little too cheesy for its own good to hold up next to some other classic Schwarzenegger films. Which brings us to the second reason: 1987 saw the release of two Arnold movies. "The Running Man" was one. The other movie was "Predator."

Yeah, "Predator" wins.

How in the world any movie is supposed to hold up next to what is one of the best action films of all time I have no idea. It seems unnecessarily cruel to compare the two, since the source material at a base level is better in one over the other, but especially so since "Predator" director John McTiernan went on to do "Die Hard," and "The Running Man" director Paul Michael Glaser went on to do "Kazaam." Did "The Running Man" ever have much of a shot at being the more memorable film?

"The Running Man" is set in what is now considered a pretty cliched setting: In the not-too-distant future, television and The Media will be the most powerful thing on the planet, and there will be a distopian landscape where human life is held with the same amount of reverence as used toilet paper. In this future, the most successful and popular show is "The Running Man," where criminals (as determined by the corrupt government) fight to the death in embarrassing bodysuits against gladiators in even more embarrassing outfits known as "stalkers" in order to win their freedom. Of course, it's all a hoax and even if you win, they kill you in secret.

Hey, it may be cliched now, but I'm sure back in 1987 it was a bit less plausible and frighteningly less close to home.

Bee tee dubs, he's the author of the book it's based on. #themoreyouknow

Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richards (yeah right), a former cop who gets thrown in the slammer after not killing a bunch of starving people, whom he's then framed for killing anyway. After breaking out of the most ineptly run prison in the world after only a year and a half, Ben ends up in the custody of the government after being a bit of a prick and trying to abscond to Hawaii with this random girl who he finds now living in his brother's apartment. They make it as far as the airport before she predictably betrays him to the authorities at the first possible opportunity.

Ben is then forced into participating in "The Running Man" by the guy who runs away with both the literal and proverbial show, the movie's villain Damon Killian, played by Richard Dawson. Dawson was on a lot of TV shows, most notably "Hogan's Heroes," but everyone remembers him as "That host of Family Feud that tried to make out with all the female contestants." Richard Dawson was awesome, and he was actually a very good actor as well. There's no contest when I say that out of everyone in "The Running Man," Dawson throws down the best performance as the slimy bizarro-version of himself as the host of the eponymous show. And to be honest once again, were it not for him I really wouldn't consider "The Running Man" to be watchable. Even with Arnold in it.

Arnold's bulge was up for a Golden Globe. It lost to David Bowie's. True story.

There's just too little payoff to be found, in my opinion. There are really only four big fights in the entire film that Arnold has, and none of them last very long or are satisfying in terms of the carnage we'd expect from the premise. The first fight between Ben and Subzero (played by not-Harold Sakata professional wrestler Professor Toru Tanaka) starts off reasonably promising, but it's over pretty quick as Arnold takes him down with a single maneuver. The next stalker, Buzzsaw, has the longest fight and goriest kill, but most of it consists of Buzzsaw dragging Ben around behind his motorcycle and the violence isn't shown. Not very thrilling. The walking Lite-Brite Dynamo just crashes his car with Ben never touching him. Lastly, the stalker with the best weapon, Fireball (played by NFL legend Jim Brown) doesn't seem to realize how easily he could kill him with a flamethrower and gets taken out like a punk with barely any fight at all.

There's also a decent fight between Jessie Ventura and Arnold, but it's not actually the character of Ben Richards. It's only a guy with Ben's face mapped over his own in post. Although we never do find out who they had just sitting around the place who just happened to be a competent but expendable fighter the exact size of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know. It's an 80's action flick. I'm not going to lose sleep over something like that. But it still doesn't change the fact that for an R-rated action movie about futuristic gladiators staring Schwarzenegger, this is a pretty tame outing.

"And if you survive, the grand prize will be...having your story be repackaged as a teen fiction phenomenon which will serve as a better alternative to a lousy teen fiction phenomenon!"

Also, if you have Arnold promise the villain with the horribly cheesy but strangely badass line, "I'll live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I'm going to ram it into your stomach and break your goddamn spine" and you don't have him follow through with that promise...reconsider how you are going about making your film. Seriously you guys, that one was a freebee.

This. I want to see Arnold do this.

Lastly, "The Running Man" is just a little too corny for its own good. Don't get me wrong, my favorite thing about Arnie is the one-liners, but here they just aren't up to par. There's a couple groan inducing ones including "What a hot head" after he roasts someone and "What a pain in the neck" after he garrotes someone else to death, but as you can probably already tell, they weren't very creative. Some also required some pretty forced lead-ins. Even the most memorable one-liner "Here is Subzero! Now plain zero!" is honestly just confusing to me. "Plain zero" implies simply nothing, while "Subzero" implies less than that. Is he saying that he's improved Subzero by killing him? Has he made him at least break even now?

Hell, the best one-liner in "The Running Man" came from Richard Dawson when, after Arnold says "I'll be back," he quips "Only in a re-run." Taking away my hatred for whenever they have Arnie recycle a line, when compared with any of the numerous phenomenal quotes from that same year's "Predator" it's not even close. That can't compete with stuff like "Stick around." That can't even compete with "Knock, knock." This movie wishes that it could have that same badassery, and it tries, but when you kill your main villain by firing him into a wall in a rocket-car and the line after is "Well that hit the spot," it's just sad.

What spot? Was the rocket-car's name "Spot?" What the hell are you talking about?

THE BOTTOM LINE - While "The Running Man" should be required watching for anyone who's a fan of Arnold, it's probably the weakest of his 80's films, if only because back then his peaks were so high. It's alright, but this is one of the weakest. The only ones worse are probably "Conan The Destroyer." Or "Red Sonja." Or "Twins." Okay, so maybe "The Running Man" ain't all that bad. At least see it for Richard Dawson being awesome.