70's American Horror Part Fifty-One

SILENT RUNNING

(1972)

Dir - Douglas Trumbull

Overall: GOOD

 

Special effects man turned-director Douglas Trumbull's first of only two full-lengths from behind the lens was the environmental sci-fi drama Silent Running which poses a futurist scenario where plant life is extinct and artificially preserved on cargo ships hovering around Saturn.  Being one of the men who was famously behind the visuals in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Trumbull's attention to presenting a lived-in amount of intergalactic detail is impressive, even if the miniature work is comparatively less convincing than in Stanley Kubrick's aforementioned masterpiece, (which can honestly be said about nearly every other science fiction movie since).  Besides the model and set design, the rest of the heavy lifting is done by Bruce Dern as a sentimental botanist who sabotages his crew and corporate duties, spending the entire second and third acts on his lonesome with a couple of non-speaking drones keeping him busy.  The film has a humanitarian agenda that while elementary is still effectively portrayed as themes of mankind's flippant attitude towards nature is juxtaposed with Dern's environmentalist who breaks under psychological strain, only to find himself at the mercy of robots for companionship.

 

HELP ME...I'M POSSESSED

(1974)

Dir - Charles Nizet

Overall: WOOF

 

The penultimate crud rock from Z-rent "filmmaker" Charles Nizet, Help Me...I'm Possessed is both stupid and, (as far as the title is concerned), misleading.  Fans of The Exorcist knock-offs be warned; this movie has no such demonic possession high jinks.  Instead, it is a mad scientist farce with a Biblical undercurrent that is as vague and poorly thought out much as the entire plot is.  Some asshole doctor runs a clinic where he keeps people locked in cages in a small warehouse basement that is totally and convincingly, (cough, sarcasm, cough), the basement to his house.  His master plan seems to be in creating a physical form for evil that once unleashed can be destroyed so that the mere concept of wickedness is eliminated from society, as he tortures and murders people while trying to make them repent their sins.  So in other words, a perfectly cromulent agenda to partake of.  On top of how moronic the material is, Nizet has virtually no money to work with as well as the directorial chops of Hershel Gordon Lewis, so the film is as technically pathetic as it gets.  Not surprisingly, the performances are also top-to-bottom embarrassing. though at least he had the good sense to ADR everybody's lines instead of poorly recording them on distant boom mics, as was the norm for such unprofessional junk.

 

DEATHMOON

(1978)

Dir - Bruce Kessler

Overall: MEH

A television movie made by EMI Films, Deathmoon is one of the more poorly paced and hum-drum entries in lycanthropian cinema.  Director Bruce Kessler worked extensively in the TV medium and he does his best with the neutered format that tiptoes around anything that would otherwise be graphically depicted.  As one could guess, this leaves little else for the movie to do besides talk its way into sluggish boredom.  The ninety-minute running time is at least a third too much and there are only a few moments of wolfman furry to spice things up, half of which do not even properly show Robert Foxworth in his full bestial form.  Though contemporarily set and in color, it has a throwback quality not just in the mild set pieces, but also due to the Jack Pierce-inspired werewolf makeup and Foxworth even running around in the same kind of trousers and buttoned up shirt that Lon Chaney Jr frequently did.  At least from the audience's perspective, there is no mystery to the plot so watching characters endlessly try and figure out who or what is murdering everyone at a Hawaiian resort while our lead character carries on with his newfound romance is too catastrophically dull to endure.