Ken Van Wagner

As 2022 ended and a new year began, I began to reflect upon the things that have been my sources of imagination and inspiration. It was not too difficult to acknowledge what inspires me today, but I realized so much of it was based upon things that touched my soul as a child and teenager that I had (almost) forgotten their original sources.

As a writer and artist, books played an important role in establishing my love of both, but there is one genre that combined both artistic aesthetics with scientific knowledge that was    probably the biggest influence in my life – paleoart. 

Now I say that with a caveat – I was, and still am a little picky about what works and doesn’t work for me when it comes to this specialized genre. Having grown up in the latter part of the 20th Century, I was lucky enough to find myself caught up in what would be known as the “Dinosaur Renaissance,” which continues to this day. However, I admit it was the pre-Renaissance artwork that engaged me as a child, so I look back with fond nostalgia on the works of the artists and filmmakers who opened my mind to the strange worlds and fantastic creatures of the past.

Get ready for a trip WAY down Memory Lane!

When I was seven years old in 1969, I was out at the Shop Rite grocery store when a strange coloring book caught my eye:

It was, of course a promotional item for the latest film produced by that Master of Model Manipulation, Ray Harryhausen.  At that time, the name of Ray Harryhausen meant nothing to me, though I’m sure I’d already seen his previous films on the small screen. (i.e. a 20 inch black and white television) Regardless, the dominating image of that mighty mythical Allosaurus-Tyrannosaurus hybrid (Ray confided in me as such when I asked him years later as well as confirming this in later interviews!) is what immediately grabbed me by my tender pre-teen nads and has never let go since. Dinosaurs with a capital D have never left my imagination in the fifty-plus years since that fateful day in Shop Rite. 

I immediately cajoled my poor mother to let me see this wondrous work on the big screen after I had finished coloring my way through the Forbidden Valley and its prehistoric denizens. I was enthralled, though I was initially disappointed that as the star of the film Gwangi was not in the Godzilla-esque dimensions that the poster exaggerated him to be. Nevertheless, it began an obsession, not only with dinosaurs, but all prehistory. 

What makes classic paleoart so compelling to me was exemplified by the Gwangi poster – a vision of a past life-form that actually existed – yet romanticized to a larger than life vision of a lost world.

This holds true even when the purpose of the art was not to sensationalize an upcoming theater release of a monster movie. Even “serious” paleoart that was commissioned for museums and books often relied on a healthy dose of imagination of the artists, though the best ones managed to convey a naturalistic vision even while imbuing a sense of drama. This holds true even today, when our knowledge of dinosaurs in particular underwent an exponential expansion.

When it comes to classic paleoart, three names inevitably come up, as their works were probably imitated by contemporaries more than any others – Charles R. Knight, Zdeněk Burian, and Rudolph Zallinger.  I’m not going to elaborate extensively about these gifted men, you can easily search on the internet for their bios and examples of their work. Ray Harryhausen himself cited Charles Knight as one of his inspirations when rendering his own three dimensional depictions of prehistoric animals.

What I AM going to do though, is showcase their works that have stood out for me – in particular their evolving vision of that most famous of dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex.

As Knight was probably the earliest artist to have rendered a life portrait of the tyrant king in all his glorious prehistoric majesty let’s start with one of his most famous early paintings:

Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops family – circa 1919 courtesy of the American Museum of Natural  History

Of course, this century-old image of both dinosaurs is seriously outdated, but it established a precedent that has lasted to this day – the two most famous antagonists in prehistory are shown together for the first time in a life portrait. Whether you root for Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops, this confrontation has fascinated the scientific and public consciousness like no other.

Personally, I rank this painting as one of my favorites, in spite of the inaccuracies for several reasons.  Although the head of this T.rex is more iguana-like in shape, with the eyes and ear placed too far forward compared to the actual skull, the massive powerful neck is remarkably accurate for the time as the cervical vertebrae of T.rex are known to have unusually robust neural spines. The posture of this tyrannosaur, although still showing the typical theropod “tripod” stance, does have the back more horizontal than even the famous skeletal mount in the American Museum it was based upon, while the tail is held off the ground. Also, from a purely aesthetic point of view, this Tyrannosaurus is one of the only ones portrayed pre-Dino Renaissance that is not showing off his impressive teeth. He may be on the prowl, but this king isn’t wasting his time roaring at his prey; a more natural yet still formidable predator.

This example of Knight’s work was also an obvious influence on a T.rex that sparred with a most unlikely opponent:

King Kong may have come out of this scrap on top, but his opponent was hardly the “sluggish reptilian imbecile” that had come to be the popular image of dinosaurs at the time the film was made. Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen always animated their dinosaurs as active alert creatures, even if their appearances weren’t scientifically accurate. Interestingly, the diminutive forelimbs of this tyrannosaur were facing “palm inward” which is the modern accepted position for almost all theropod dinosaurs today!

Roughly ten years after his painting for the American Museum in NY, Knight was commissioned by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for a series of large gallery portraits that still adorn the museum’s halls. He revisited his earlier theme of Tyrannosaurus vs Triceratops, this one perhaps considered the most iconic of his paleo art:

Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus – circa 1927 courtesy Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Here there is no mistaking the dramatic confrontation between predator and prey, although if I were the tyrannosaur, I wouldn’t be striding head-on into a pair of javelins! This is again one of my favorites, as the Triceratops in particular seems to be striking the pose of the mounted skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History in NY, providing a more anatomically accurate depiction of the three-horned beast! Also worthy of praise is the pose of the attacking T.rex, with the horizontal posture and tail properly held off the ground-hardly a shuffling cold-blooded reptile. Also interesting is the inclusion of the second T.rex in the background facing in the same direction – implying perhaps this was a hunting pair? If so, Triceratops was in trouble!

Oddly, after painting what many considered the high-water mark of Knight’s career, his later portrayals of Tyrannosaurus veered away from being fairly accurate to downright cartoonish in some aspects. Check out this pair of T.rex from 1940:

The animal in the back looks positively jaunty with his high-stepping style. The Maastrichtian version of the Ministry of Silly Walks! Also, apparently neither T.rex has been doing much power walking, as their poor thighs and calves have been reduced to lizard-like proportions.  Why Knight’s naturalistic style changed to this near-caricature probably had much to do with the scientific attitudes of the later 1930s through the early 1960s that denigrated dinosaurs as evolutionary failures not worthy of “serious” study as were mammals; hominids in particular. Even Charles Knight himself tended to refer to dinosaurs as “unadaptable and unprogressive.”  Nevertheless, he still imbued his art with an active style showing the tyrant king as ready to scrap, even with his own species!

The next piece of artwork was for an article in Natural Geographic magazine that was published in 1942:

Here the cowering T.rex of the previous drawing has apparently had enough of his rival doing his showgirl struts and decides to respond with biting commentary; actually one of the few pieces of Knight’s work to show actual contact between adversaries. Again however, the once burly neck of 1919’s T.rex has been reduced to just enough flesh to hold up their heads, while their thighs display as much muscle definition as a dead frog’s. And what is up with that tail that should have stopped just a couple of feet after that first bend in the road? On the plus side, this is one of the few pre-Renaissance paintings of T.rex that has the head (of the biter) rendered at an angle that correctly represented how broad the rear of Tyrannosaurus’s skull was, and hinted at binocular vision.

Finally, here is one of Knight’s Tyrannosaurus paintings from 1944, less than ten years before he passed away in 1953:

Here Tyrannosaurus has regained some of the dignity that was lost after 1927; the tripod stance is typical of the time, but the tail is shorted to a reasonable length again and not quite dragging on the ground; this T.rex is apparently just starting its day as the rising sun highlights the towering head while the remainder of the body is still in shadow. It seems to be almost contemplative, rather than aggressive. 

Charles R. Knight truly was a pioneer in the field of paleoart; his works have inspired  paleontologists for generations, while paleo artists have admired (and often imitated) his iconic style even during his own lifetime. The best of them have paid homage, while others only proved that imitation is not always the best form of flattery.

Next up: a paleo artist who really had to take the long road, on the other side of the Iron Curtain no less; Zdenek Burian 

Yes indeed – for the first time since 1956, the original King Kong is returning to theaters nationwide for a one-time event Sunday March 15, 2020!

If you haven’t seen this film on the big screen before, now’s your chance!

See the link below to order tickets!

https://www.fathomevents.com/events/tcm2020-king-kong-1933

Unlike my previous entry about the iconic Godzilla, when discussing the late Charlton Heston, there is no one “defining” role you can place the actor in. Depending on what phase of his long career is the point of discussion, he was either regarded as a strong actor who fit the bill nicely when playing larger-than life characters, a liberal of the late fifties who supported civil rights and social causes or later post-Watergate as a conservative curmudgeon whose world view was through the narrow lens of the growing neocon movement and the NRA. Whatever the case, it cannot be stated that the man as an actor let down his audience when performing, even if his range was less expansive than some of his contemporaries. Curiously, although known in the fifties as playing biblical or historical characters from centuries earlier, it was in the late sixties and early seventies that his roles shifted to more science fiction subjects. In particular, three films from this period had Heston’s character portrayed as a cynical everyman, bemused by the situations he was forced into against his will; the 1968 Planet of the Apes, The 1973 Soylent Green, and the film in discussion The Omega Man from 1971

Circa 1955: Seriously, he liked to be called “Chuck?” This is not the face of a Chuck.

How will the world end? That depends on how one defines “end.” If talking about the end of the planet itself, that’s likely a few billion years down the road; not much concern to humanity since we’ll be long gone as a species by then (that is not to say our intelligence, or what we arrogantly believe is human intelligence won’t somehow survive to that point through A.I. or interplanetary travel even if its original source is extinct.) If discussing extinction events for life however, then one has to determine if it means the end of all life, some life, or in the usual case for most apocalyptic science fiction all human life. Stories of humanity’s downfall likely existed even before the advent of written history, but in most cases it was due to supernatural causes, with the usual culprit being someone (or someone’s) angering whatever deity was involved, with the deity wielding judgement using global destruction as punishment. This fear of divine retribution has become so ingrained that to this day, millions still believe we are living in the “end times,” which has apparently lasted for the past four to five millenniums!

During the Age of Enlightenment however, as scientific reasoning started Western Europe on a path towards modernization, the idea of an apocalypse didn’t fade away; rather the source of causes of disaster began to shift away from strictly supernatural providence to more “natural” events. It could still be considered “Judgement Day” by a higher power, but rather than a nebulous idea of divinely smote extinction, specific events could now be cited; earthquakes, vulcanism, disease, starvation, etc. As the nineteenth century progressed, two other factors started to be more defined as potential causes of human extinction-warfare, and extraterrestrial events such as meteoric impacts. With the twentieth century, two world wars and the discovery and use of nuclear weapons at the conclusion of the second, the idea of the end of humanity took on a very real dimension; for the first time humans had the technological means to end their own species in a matter of hours, or at least destroy modern civilization, a situation we have lived with for almost three-quarters of a century. A few decades later, the scientific discovery that long before modern humans, Earth had gone through several sudden mass extinctions (everyone’s favorite being the end of non-avian dinosaurs) some almost certainly caused or aided by impacts from comets or meteors, has changed the view that modern man was immune to such extraterrestrial events.  Far from being taboo, the subject of human survival in a post-apocalyptic future has been a very popular genre in a variety of media to the present day.

In 1954, author Richard Matheson had written what eventually became his best known work, I am Legend. Like many of his contemporaries of the post-war period, Matheson’s work was influenced by the fear of scientific and military technology that put the destruction of civilization as a very-real possibility.  I am Legend is set in a near future where through human folly, a man-made plague created as a biological weapon has decimated the population of earth leaving one man, Robert Neville, as the sole uninfected survivor. While he is not the only human left, the remaining remnants are mutated by the virus, becoming vampire-like undead who can only walk freely at night. This story has been directly adapted for the movies on at least three occasions, and has been “borrowed” for a whole genre of similar themed films and television shows too numerous to mention. However, since the theme of my thread was on films I saw on hot sultry nights that were actually set in the heat of summer, the version of Matheson’s story that stuck to me like glue was the Heston version from 1971 The Omega Man. Like most adaptations from written works, it does differ in some very significant details, but the basic theme of the plight of a man alone pitted against those who seek to destroy him still keeps its roots in I am Legend. Unlike my two previous entries, The Omega Man was only a modest-budgeted production, but it was certainly a cut above the many quickie horror films that were churned out for grind-house viewing at the time.

Actually a more interesting book cover than most of the movie posters I’ve seen for this film. I like how it juxtaposes Heston’s character of Neville with his main antagonist Mathias rather than simply showing anonymous mutants surrounding the star.

So you may ask, what is it about this film that resonates with me? While The War of the Worlds provided spectacle as humanity was under onslaught during “a pleasant summer season” and Gojira/Godzilla King of the Monsters had the brooding atmosphere of oppressive menace with a monster that symbolized the threat of nuclear weapons, The Omega Man, a film not filled with dazzling special effects, instead captivated me by its characters. If the movie had simply been about the last person left and his struggle for survival and sanity in a post-apocalyptic future, it might have been entertaining enough, and for the first ten minutes of the film this is how it seems to play out. As a first time viewer when I saw this film late one summer night on television in the early seventies, I was unfamiliar with Matheson’s book or its first film adaptation The Last Man on Earth from 1964.  So I was caught completely off-guard when the source of Neville’s apprehension suddenly ambushed him as he was pulling into his garage after high-tailing it home in his “car of the day” Mustang convertible. The sudden appearance of the sinister hooded figures trying to kill Neville put a whole new twist to what I thought up until then was a modern variation of Robinson Crusoe. Neville wasn’t alone; except as the target of the other “survivors” who were the last remnants of a population decimated by a man-made plague.

August 1977 – Two years since the global disaster of biological warfare between the Soviet Union and China, Los Angeles is now a deserted ghost town, where the last conflict of humanity is being played out. Neville, the sole recipient of an experimental vaccine he developed that made him immune to the plague is pitted against “the Family-” those still alive in the third and final stages of the disease and dying off either slowly by attrition or quickly due to Neville’s bullets.  Led by the charismatic Jonathan Mathias played with conviction by Anthony Zerbe, the Family is a throwback to the pre-Industrial Age of the twelfth century, when blasphemy and heresy were sought out and punished in Europe by Church-sponsored Inquisitions. Although the Family as a whole seeks to destroy Neville, it is truly Mathias and his lieutenant Brother Zachary (Lincoln Kilpatrick) who harbor a fanatical grudge against the car-driving, jazz-playing, gun-toting, military scientist. Interestingly, while both men want to see the end of Neville, their motives are different. Mathias, a former television news anchor whose mind has become unhinged by the effects of the disease, manifests a Messiah complex. Once reporting about the end of civilization while it occurred but now afflicted by the “punishment,” his mission is a holy crusade to destroy what he believes obsolete and evil, considering Neville the symbol of the very plague which caused humanity’s downfall. Zachary, on the other hand, hates Neville not only because of his not showing any signs of the disease, but as an African-American resents the Caucasian Neville living in his fortified penthouse or as Zachary succinctly put it, “honky paradise.” Unlike Mathias who considers any technology more advanced than medieval level evil, Zachary is more than willing to resort to using the same weapons that Neville has to even the odds on what I suspect is a more personal score, as to him Neville represents the oppression of the Man that was ongoing long before the plague struck.

I guess it was fortunate for Neville that Mathias led the Family; if it were up to Zachary it would have played out more like Assault on Precinct 13! As for Mathias, it was his good fortune for the Family to have access to old Hollywood props; otherwise it would be hard to explain how a group of sickly city dwellers managed to design and build a medieval catapult!

The situation has been a stalemate for over two years; Neville resigned to his existence as a self-appointed executioner as he holds no hope that any “normal” people still exist, preferring to live in his home in spite of being surrounded by enemies seeking to kill him. Unafflicted, only Neville is free to roam the city during the daylight hours while the diseased Family is forced to remain in darkness. Unable to endure the sun due to the debilitating effects of the plague that have rendered them deathly pale, sore-riddled and light-sensitive, Mathias and his followers are not true vampires, but are considered vermin by Neville whose sole motivation is to hunt down and kill the wretches. Once night falls however, he has no choice but to hole up in his apartment as Mathias and his people stalk the streets, too numerous in numbers to attempt open combat even with superior weapons.

The dichotomy between these opposing sides is nicely framed with a flashback expository sequence where the viewer sees both Neville and Mathias already taking sides; Neville working at a remote facility in a desperate attempt to develop a vaccine against the weaponized disease, while Mathias’s reporting devolves from objective broadcasting to an increasingly pessimistic and subjective editorial where he states on air to a watching Neville, “We were warned of Judgement. Well, here it is…here…now…in the form of billions of microscopic bacilli. This is the End…” It took me a long time to realize that Mathias’s former profession is exactly why he was the perfect foil for Neville, as it would make sense that to people struck down by the disease, Mathias would be a face and personality they would recognize and listen to, even as they did to his broadcasts before the collapse of civilization. Anthony Zerbe was perfectly cast as his voice was a soothing yet eerie tonic for someone who exuded charm tinged with the madness of a zealot. As bookends to the flashback sequence, we see both Neville and Mathias from their points of view-Neville fighting to hold onto his sanity by surrounding himself with both artistic and scientific objects to give his life meaning and focus, his only “companion” a bust of Julius Caesar that he holds one-sided conversations with. Meanwhile, Mathias and his Family nightly taunt Neville, burning books and other articles of civilization while calling him out until he’s goading into spraying gunfire at them.

This situation could continue indefinitely until Neville exhausts his resources, or the last of the Family die off. However, one day while making his rounds of the deserted city, after turning up old unburied corpses and a Family member recently dead of the plague, he stumbles across something else-a woman hiding in a department store who appears “normal.” Not quite believing himself, Neville gives chase but is unable to locate the woman. Deciding to stop for a drink after convincing himself his mind was playing tricks on him, he momentarily lets down his guard to explore a dark wine cellar, only to fall victim to an ambush by Family members. At the mercy of the merciless, Neville is put on trial in a court where Mathias passes judgement; with his fate already decided-as a technological “heretic” Neville is to be burned alive.

Interestingly, at least Mathias was willing to hear Neville out; almost as though he needed someone who he could match wits with, even if he was confident of his own righteousness. The only time a chink appears in his charm is when Neville tasks him to explain why the Family doesn’t try to seek a cure, to which Mathias snaps “There is NONE!” as though admitting to himself he knows they are all doomed to die of the plague.

In keeping with their beliefs in the failure of technology, the Family loads Neville onto a tumbril (again it begs the question, was it made by the Family or found on some deserted studio backlot?- maybe best not to dwell on this too deeply, nor the question of where the Family found all those black-hooded robes in post-apocalypse LA?) and haul him off to Dodger Stadium to be burned alive along with various books and pieces of junk left over from civilization. A very nineteen seventies soundtrack by the under-appreciated Ron Grainger adds tremendously to the overall scene, as it seems Neville is doomed, his posture reminiscent of the Crucifixion (not a coincidence, as is seen later!) Unexpectedly after more than two years, the stadium lights suddenly blaze, the glare driving Mathias and the Family to cower under their robes helplessly. A lone figure suddenly sprints across the field and cuts Neville’s bonds, forcing the dazed scientist at gunpoint off field before the brief reprieve of the lights is gone and the Family realizes their guest of honor is missing! At this point, the “imaginary” woman Neville saw earlier that day suddenly appears brandishing a gun, ordering the bemused Neville to an underground locker where she and her companion “Dutch” have stashed a motorcycle, apparently in preparation for a quick getaway. Luckily (due to seeing a few stashed earlier in Neville’s garage) Neville is skilled enough in his cycling to outmaneuver the Family even with the woman Lisa (Rosalind Cash) riding as passenger, with help from Dutch (Paul Koslo) throwing phosphorous grenades that momentarily blind the pursuing cultists before making their escape into the city outskirts.

Once reaching their destination, Lisa reveals to Neville that Dutch and her weren’t the only ones unafflicted by the plague. A handful of teens and younger children who have managed to escape the clutches of the Family live in the hills overlooking the city, all of them infected, but fortunately showing no overt symptoms of the plague save one – Lisa’s teenaged brother Ritchie (Eric Laneuville) who is on the verge of “turning.” This then was the purpose of Neville’s rescue – Dutch, a former med school student is aware of Neville’s research in bio warfare, knows that Ritchie and the others’ survival depends on getting Neville to help. Neville admits to the others that he alone is immune to the plague, but the possibility exists that a serum could be produced from his blood antibodies. Because he has the equipment to attempt to cure Ritchie in his apartment, they decide to move Ritchie with Lisa along to assist, while Dutch remains with the children. Not unexpectedly, Lisa and Neville begin to grow close, providing an interesting take as their interracial relationship was one of the earliest portrayed in mainstream feature films. Over the course of a week progress is slow, but eventually the teenager shows signs of recovery – Neville’s blood serum is indeed a cure! Feeling exuberant at the news, Neville and Lisa plan to join the others and leave the city, realizing that along with himself, Ritchie can also provide antibodies to further help inoculate the rest of the group.

Neville tried his shot at passing his antibodies to Lisa in a more intimate manner at first.

Lisa convinces Neville that she needs to make a last shopping trip before they all leave the city (which actually makes sense since they have no idea where they’re headed except away from LA, and Walmarts weren’t as ubiquitous back in 1971!) Neville is reluctant to let her leave, but Lisa assures him she’ll stay safe. Meanwhile Ritchie, now cured, questions Neville’s desire to leave the city and abandon the Family members to a slow death. Ritchie believes that if he can be cured, Mathias and his followers at least deserve a chance to be offered the serum. Neville, unable to reconcile his animosity towards the plague-ridden Family, has no desire to attempt to help them, considering them too far gone from humanity to be worth saving. While Neville leaves his apartment to tell Dutch of the success of the serum, Ritchie decides to take matters in his own hands and makes a vain effort to convince Mathias to accept the cure. This goes as well as expected-Mathias, his mind warped by the disease, is convinced Ritchie’s offer is nothing but a trick, that the teen is Neville’s spy.

Neville returning home, finds the note Ritchie left stating his intentions. Fearing the worst, Neville dons his military regalia and armed for bear, makes a hasty beeline after Ritchie. Earlier, the teenager had revealed to Neville where the Family holed up during the day-a place Neville had been seeking in vain for over two years. Arriving after dark, Neville finds the lair empty-except for the body of Ritchie, murdered by the Family.

I always thought “Oh my God,” was to Charlton Heston what “I’ll be back” was to Schwarzenegger! No one else could deliver an OMG like Chuck!

Frantic and now fearful of the Family out in numbers, Neville makes his way back to his apartment, dodging barricades the Family has set up in his way. He encounters resistance, but takes care of things in typical Neville fashion before making it to the safety of his garage.

“I can’t abide these Jawas. Disgusting creatures.”

The electricity is on, so Neville is unsuspecting as he takes the elevator up to his penthouse. Greeted to a dark apartment lit only by candles. Neville calls out to Lisa. He is given a nasty turn when the woman he has fallen in love with steps out of the shadows, pale and cloaked. Lisa it seems, succumbed to the disease while she was out shopping. But she is not alone-under the spell of Mathias, she has let the Family and its leader into Neville’s stronghold. Once again at the mercy of the merciless, Neville is forced to watch while Mathias and his brethren “cleanse” Neville’s apartment with all the finesse that a 1970’s rock group would treat a hotel room.

Nowadays it would have been Mathias stamping on a smartphone! Oh the humanity!

It appears Mathias is the winner here, having taken Lisa into his fold, and Neville all but beaten. Yet Neville’s luck still holds for a moment; he overpowers Mathias and uses the cult leader as a human shield while he makes his getaway with a feebly resisting Lisa and his only bottle of serum that somehow escaped destruction. Unfortunately time is not on his side, as it is still too dark to safely leave, but seeing no other choice attempts to make a break for it. Lisa, still under Mathias’s spell, is compelled to hesitate in the shadows as Mathias stands on the apartment balcony calling out to her hauntingly. Neville, his gun jammed, futilely calls Lisa into the light, but to no avail. Mathias takes that moment of hesitation to hurl a spear Zachary had left on the balcony in a failed assassination attempt on Neville. Surprisingly for a city newsman, Mathias’s aim is true, and mortally wounds Neville as Lisa laments that she’s part of the Family now. That morning, Dutch and the children drive into the city to find Neville near-death, but conscious enough to pass along the bottle of serum and gesture to retrieve the now-torpid Lisa. Seeing this last act to the finish, Neville dies, his body now assuming a true crucifixion posture that made the point of him “saving the world by sacrificing himself” a little heavy-handed by even 1970’s standards. Nevertheless, the movie ends on an uncertain note-does the serum Neville retrieve still have the ability to cure Lisa? And without Neville, will Dutch be able to successfully treat the others?

This movie is firmly set in the seventies, but as a time capsule of that era, it reveals aspects that make it work in a way I didn’t find compelling in the 2007 remake I am Legend. Due to the limitations of special effects of the time, the Family couldn’t be rendered like the hyperactive mute CGI monsters of the later film, so instead the menace they projected was the fear of outsiders, of those different from “normal” which swung both ways. As the film was made during the latter years of the hippie movement, and the war in Viet Nam still raging, the portrayal of the Family as cultists rejecting modern society darkly mirrored the apprehension and mistrust “the silent majority” had towards the counterculture movement. At the same time, with the real-life horror of Charles Manson and the murders committed by his “family” only two years earlier combined with news-making extreme groups like the Weathermen and others, it seemed that anarchy and violence were becoming commonplace in an America that was deeply divided on political and moral issues. Neville sees Mathias and the Family as barbarians, worthy of nothing but extermination; however the Family’s numerous attempts on his life provide the very reason for his thinking. A longer film might have delved deeper into the psychology behind the conflict between Neville and Mathias; for instance did Neville at first attempt to negotiate peacefully, or did the deadly conflict begin as soon as the majority of plague victims died off? Neville provides a rationalization to Dutch as to why he remains in the city, but even Dutch and Lisa view Neville warily at first; why stay in the city hunting down the Family when he could have easily left for more peaceful surroundings? As for Mathias, I can forgive his lack of rational due to the effects of the disease, but his hypocrisy is glaring in that he wants to erase history, yet he and his followers remain in the very place that is nothing but a reminder of the “evils” of the old world. Why not leave the city and found a commune or at least admit that some technology (like sunglasses!) is a good thing.

However its flaws, The Omega Man is still compelling to me, and fascinating as even though set in the nineteen seventies, some of the same issues persist to this day. We may not be as fearful of World War III, but the threat of pandemics either man-made or otherwise is still among us, along with a resurgence in nationalism that emphasizes the threat and fear of the “other” as enemies. Although these films were created for entertainment, the best of them still can entertain and give the viewer pause to contemplate; and this is why I think all of the films in discussion are worthy of viewing.

I realize here it is now at the end of November, when I meant this post to be about “summer movies.” You’ll have to forgive my delay, for one my site was down for a couple of weeks. Second, the films I discuss I like to see in the best format possible, and I realized after I had begun writing this post that I did not have a Blu Ray version of this film! Thankfully that situation is now remedied, and I can say the Warner Bros. transfer manages to give the film a crisp look considering the source material is over forty years old. The soundtrack by Ron Grainger is regrettably not in stereo, but stereo versions of the music alone do exist and sound excellent.

EDIT: August 6th 2020

How eerie is it that life imitates art. Covid-19 is still claiming victims, but people are surviving; even so, we have a terrible lesson to learn about how incredibly quickly a small hotspot can travel round the world in a scant ten months! Thankfully no one has decided to don black hooded robes- yet…

This wraps up my posts about summer movies set in the summer, as I have to take the next few weeks to get my next novel Eye of Ra: Bravo’s Child ready for the holiday release! I will return with a new topic as soon as I can!

Happy Holidays! – Ken

All images used under Fair Use

When the name Godzilla is mentioned, no explanation is needed as to who (or what) is the topic of discussion. However, in the sixty-four years since his first film debut, this iconic film monster has had more career ups and downs than John Travolta, and fans and critics alike have widely varied opinions on this monster’s best and worst depictions in this long-running franchise. Recognized world-wide, Godzilla is to giant monsters what Mickey Mouse is to animated characters – there may be better examples of both, but there is little argument that Disney’s mouse and Toho’s creation are undeniably popular AND extremely profitable to the point that they long ago transcended their original conception of movie characters into a variety of media.  Godzilla spun off from the movies into comic books, video games, manga, animated tv series, model kits, toys and even advertising.  It is difficult to believe that when the original Gojira was produced back in 1954, Toho studios was investing in a huge gamble; their was no guarantee that their Tokusatsu film would prove financially successful. With one of the largest budgets for a Japanese film up to that point, this was no foray into low-budget film-making. That the film was successful domestically was a triumph for Toho; but what set Gojira apart from other contemporary Japanese films was its success in the international market. In the US at least, this was due in no small part to a recut, English dubbed, with additional footage shot with actor Raymond Burr in his pre-Perry Mason days released two years after the original: Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

 

You can decide. I only saw the original Gojira within the last twenty years; not really a fair comparison to my childhood impressions. Gojira might be the better film overall from a critical standpoint, but Godzilla was the monster movie that I remember from all those hot summer evenings that gave me nightmares!

Now I’m not going to debate (or deride) the merits of Gojira vs Godzilla, King of the Monsters; there are enough reviewers and film scholars who have discussed this at length, and retreading old ground isn’t the point of my site. But as background, as a kid growing up in New Jersey in the heyday of pre-cable broadcast television, I had the joy of being within reception of most of the local New York stations. Exposed to all manner of old movies that were shown either as late shows or “genre” weeks, I saw many Japanese science – fiction films, always re-dubbed into English with varying success. Most were the later color films from the 1960’s and early seventies, but of all of them, one stood out from the rest- Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Even with the recut, the insertion of Raymond Burr, and the toning down of the anti-nuclear message, this film still existed on a plane of consciousness different from the many sequels that followed in its wake. There was no sly winking at the audience that this would be Saturday matinee absurdity, like King Kong vs. Godzilla or Monster Zero (aka: Invasion of the Astro Monster); Godzilla, King of the Monsters took itself as seriously as the original film it was cut from. Even if Gojira had not spawned the over two dozen plus (and still counting!) sequels, reboots and sequels to the reboots, this film would still have stood out as a cut above the average B-movie monster flicks of the time.

Gojira was inspired in no small part by several sources.  From cinema, the financially successful 1952 re-release of King Kong (nearly twenty years after its first run in 1933!) followed by the 1953 success of Ray Harryhausen’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (itself tapping into the monster-on-the-loose well Kong’s re-release opened). Another, darker source was the all-too real experiences of World War Two and Imperial Japan’s defeat culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And perhaps the most influential, the Castle Bravo H-bomb test of March 1, 1954, which created the worst radiological disaster of the entire US nuclear testing program. More importantly from Japan’s perspective, the ill-fated fishing boat Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon Number Five) that was caught in the downwind fallout of the bomb test and the subsequent radiation poisoning of the exposed crew raised awareness in Japan and elsewhere of the dangers of nuclear testing and its unforeseen consequences. Although The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms used the premise of a polar nuclear test to unleash its prehistoric monster, the nuclear aspect of the Rhedosaurus was largely muted, instead exploiting the anachronistic spectacle of the monster destroying boats, a lighthouse, and finally wandering amidst the concrete canyons of Manhattan. Other than using the novelty of the bomb as the catalyst which looses the creature, Beast (although my favorite Ray Harryhausen film from his b/w period) has far more in common with the pre-atomic age King Kong or the silent 1925 Lost World then with the later atomic-themed monsters that followed in its wake. There is no denying that Beast set the foundation for American giant monster films of the 1950’s and beyond, but it took another country, the only one that experienced the receiving end of nuclear fury not just in war but in peacetime to create a cinematic icon that combined mythological aspects, cultural introspection, and moral dilemmas that permeated the subconscious far beyond a simple “monster-on-the-loose” story.

So what is it about this film I love? While The War of the Worlds provided spectacle in beautiful Technicolor, Gojira (and Godzilla KotM) had something else: atmosphere. Although I don’t believe it was intentional on the part of the studio, there is no way to underestimate the effect of using the rather delicate nitrate black and white film stock for this film. Even when I recently got the Criterion Blu-Ray restoration of both Gojira and Godzilla, the footage still has the look of a documentary: while the scratches had mostly been removed, and the soundtrack remarkably cleaned up, the original Gojira footage is still several degrees grainier or softer focused than the inter-cut American footage from Godzilla, though with this restoration it is less noticeable than before. This in no way denigrates from the film; instead the underexposed footage and lack of sharp focus greatly enhances the special effect scenes. I knew even from my earliest viewings of the film that the monster was mostly brought to life through a stunt performer wearing a thick suit, but by having Godzilla primarily appear at night, the flaws of that first suit design are hardly noticeable, especially when compared to studio publicity shots in broad daylight where the suit’s walleyed expression and breathing holes in the neck are clearly visible.

Why good cinematography is ESSENTIAL! The camera can be cruel or kind (or playful) I can think of many a special effect scene that was saved (or spoiled) by how it was composed. On the left, a shadowy towering monstrosity, unstoppable in his advance; on the right, costume party date!

Like The War of the Worlds, Gojira/Godzilla was also set in the hot, hazy days of summer. The first victim of his wrath, a small freighter the Eiko-Maru is sunk on August 13, with another sunk only hours later. These first attacks are at night, and as I mentioned earlier, having the majority of Godzilla’s appearances at night added tremendously to the overall nightmarish quality of the film. Again like The War of the Worlds, Gojira/Godzilla doesn’t hold back on scenes of death and destruction at least by the standards of the 1950’s. American monster films of the same era rarely depicted such scenes due to budgetary restrictions or US censorship codes (this was the Cold War after all, and the last thing the government wanted was a graphic if fictionalized view of what nuclear weapons could inflict on civilian population centers.) The Rhedosaurus marched through Manhattan, but you sensed once the monster was put down, a few weeks of cleaning up and you’d hardly notice that New York had been rampaged through. Same with even the Godzilla-sized octopus of It Came From Beneath the Sea or the “big as a battleship” ridiculous bird-puppet of The Giant Claw. The only non-Japanese monster film from this period that even came close to Gojira/Godzilla’s level of destruction was the titular monster of the UK produced Gorgo, which is interesting as the monster’s rampage was comparable in scope to the Blitz of London during World War Two, while Gojira/Godzilla clearly mirrored not only Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the conventional firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities during the war. The latter film’s scenes of Tokyo in flames was a grim reminder of events that had transpired only nine years earlier, and the aftermath of scenes of victims burned and/or irradiated almost too close to home to be palatable to Japanese audiences when the film was first released.

While Godzilla, King of the Monsters is often neglected or dismissed when kaiju films are discussed, nevertheless for an American recut, it works surprising well. While repeating viewing does produce the unfortunate effect of revealing some glaring errors (Japanese characters who were described as dying in Burr’s voice over narration early in some scenes appear in later scenes as one example) one of the better choices made for the American recut was to leave intact most of Akira Ifukube’s somber score. Unlike the Americanized versions of Godzilla Raids Again, Rodan, Varan or most notoriously King Kong vs Godzilla, the original score was not replaced with stock cues from whatever studio had the US distribution rights. Akira Ifukube’s score would be recomposed numerous times over the next sixty years, but even in this first film, Gojira’s theme is front and center, something that was unique to Toho’s monsters. Every major kaiju over the next ten years would have a theme unique to their character, a musical accompaniment to reflect power, terror, or in the case of Mothra, melancholy fantasy.

And speaking of melancholy, there is little in Gojira or Godzilla that reflects optimism, or even relief. A recurring theme even in the Americanized version is the underlying despair that even comes across in Raymond Burr’s portrayal of an American newsman caught up in Godzilla’s reign of terror. Even before Godzilla makes his way to Tokyo, the human protagonists are each introduced as caught up in a moral dilemma of their own, especially the three-way relationship between Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kōchi), her “unofficial” boyfriend of Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada), and her formally betrothed, Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata). Emiko and Ogata are in love, and while they really don’t hide that fact from anyone, both are wracked with guilt over their relationship as neither wants to confront Serizawa who though appearing aloof still has feelings for Emiko. As for the doctor himself, he has his own personal cross to bear; having discovered a new power that has the potential to be as lethal as nuclear weapons if used maliciously, he is torn between the desire to find a peaceful application for his discovery or to hide his secret from the world indefinitely if he fails to find one. As a plot device, Godzilla provides the means to bring the tensions between these three to a head. Even Emiko’s father Dr. Yamane (played by the great Takashi Shimura, one of Akira Kurosawa’s favorite actors) is caught up in the conflict the monster’s appearance creates, wanting Gojira to be studied to determine how the creature could survive exposure to intense radioactivity from H-bomb testing, while the government seeks only a way to kill this aberration of nature. Unlike The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, there is no explanation given as to why Godzilla decides to set his sights on Japan, but considering what Godzilla was supposed to represent to Japanese audiences, this lack of explanation doesn’t hinder the film.

The buildup to the first appearance of Godzilla is one of my favorite sequences from the film, even if the Big G himself isn’t onscreen. In both Japanese and American versions, a typhoon begins blowing at night on Odo Island, where a small Japanese fishing village is located.  Just prior to the storm, village elders had explained to visiting authorities that the mysterious ship disasters were caused by a monster lurking offshore of the island; a creature from folklore called Gojira or Godzilla, depending on which version you are watching. While the typhoon brings wind, rain and lightning, it brings something else as well; something large enough to make the ground boom from its footsteps, something that (in Godzilla, anyway) pierces the sound of the storm with a thunderous roar, and most terrible of all, something that crushes buildings in the village and kills several people in its path.

Even now, after years of living in hurricane territory, whenever one makes landfall nearby I always think back to this sequence, and the nightmares it gave me.  At least I have yet to come across giant footprints though!

After this buildup, Godzilla is revealed (at least from the shoulders up) in broad daylight, but his appearance is hardly a letdown. Unlike his later incarnations, where his personality was reflected in the whimsical and increasingly juvenile costumes up until his first reboot in 1984, this Godzilla is a horror of size, teeth, and noise. Although there were a few attempts in the Showa series (running from 1954 through 1975) that had Godzilla portrayed as an unstoppable force of nature, none of the later films showcased how terrifying a creature 50 meters tall would seem to anyone close up.

Faced with this menace, the Japanese Self Defense Forces do their best to try to eliminate the threat, but like nuclear weapons, Godzilla represents a level of power that no conventional force could hope to confront head on and survive. As clearly shown in the real-world nuclear tests conducted by both the US and the Soviet Union throughout the 1950’s, ships, planes, tanks, and troops would be all but annihilated when directly exposed to the power of a nuclear explosion. Godzilla’s first full appearance on land has the creature come ashore from Tokyo Bay and tread heavily until a commuter train runs smack into his foot. After trampling the train cars, trashing a bridge and scaring the bejesus out of the passengers that somehow survive the carnage, Godzilla turns and heads back to the water. Now clearly aware of the threat, the government fully mobilizes the military to defend Japan’s capital, as all manner of artillery and tanks are lined up to repel or kill the monster should he appear again. In addition, a high tension line is strung around the area Godzilla is most likely to make landfall. However, just like the confident US military leaders surrounding the Martians in their gully, the Self-Defense Forces have no idea of what they are truly in for. For just like the Martians, Godzilla first wades into the line of fire, contacting the high tension lines, fighting both the lethal voltage and cannon fire going off all around him, neither doing any real harm. Eventually though, he is provoked into unleashing his deadliest weapon, a reference to mythology with a scientific twist – an  intense beam of radioactive fire blown from his mouth. Once the monster releases this power, whatever chance Tokyo had of getting by with a few damaged buildings is literally gone with the wind. With this display, there is no doubt that Godzilla represented a nuclear weapon – his legs and tail the blast, his body the radiation, and his breath the thermal pulse that could ignite anything flammable within range. Generating enough heat to melt steel, once hit by this radioactive blowtorch the high tension towers glow white-hot and collapse, buildings burst into flame, and soldiers futilely try to outrun this hellfire before being incinerated.

“Time for a career change, George. I’ve…I’ve always had a dream of going to law school, or becoming a police detective, or maybe even stand up comedy…”

While this second rampage is really the highlight of the film (and the reason fans have loved Godzilla trampling cities ever since) there are moments that again go above and beyond typical monster movies of the time. In one scene, a woman huddles with her three children as embers from the firestorm fall around her; whether you understood her Japanese or not, you know she and her children are doomed and she is resigned to their fate-a scene that few US films would have included. In two other sequences, two separate television news reporters are commenting on the monster’s rampage – both men’s faces glistening with sweat from a combination of heat and fear – one reporter from a relatively safe distance, but the other is transmitting live from a tower directly in Godzilla’s path. Realizing there is no escape, the desperate man continues to broadcast even as he announces he and his cohorts are finished; the tv camera panning higher and higher as the monster looms over them.

Fake news, indeed.

In one incongruous scene a brief glimpse of what Godzilla could have been appears. It was said that Toho’s special effects head Eiji Tsuburaya was enamored with the original King Kong, and had hoped to create Gojira using the painstakingly slow stop motion process that Willis O’Brien (and Ray Harryhausen) had used when bringing Kong (and Harryhausen’s Rhedosaurus) to life. Incredibly, and as a strange coincidence foreshadowing Harryhausen’s It Came From Beneath the Sea that was in production at the same time as Gojira, Tsuburaya wanted the monster to be a giant octopus!  Fortunately instead, we got the towering dinosaur/dragon/god we have all loved for over six decades. Even so, I think Tsuburaya wanted at least one shot to pay homage to his love of stop motion:

I have never read who actually animated the tail for this shot, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Tsuburaya did it himself! In the history of Godzilla, only one other film comes to mind that had any stop motion in addition to the Suitmation and animatronic effects, two also brief shots in (appropriately) King Kong vs. Godzilla!

After his hissy fit through Tokyo, Godzilla finally retreats back into the bay, leaving even Dr. Yamane convinced that yeah, maybe studying something so destructive and uncontrollable is not a good idea if you have to trade cities and thousands of lives in the process. Interestingly, this second rampage is not even close to the end of the film – rather it’s the third act. The real drama is yet to come, as Emiko reveals to Ogata the secret Serizawa had revealed to her. The scientist had inadvertently stumbled upon a WMD, a way to disintegrate all living matter in water by destroying the oxygen in it(?) Serizawa’s Oxygen Destroyer might be the means to defeat Godzilla, but at what cost? Serizawa himself states when he first made his discovery he was frightened beyond words, unable to eat or sleep for days. Yet in spite of this, he continued his research, reflecting the conflict many Manhattan Project scientist felt towards the end of the war, when Germany’s defeat was imminent, and the threat that Hitler would have nuclear weapons first was over. In spite of Germany’s surrender, work on the atomic bomb continued, ultimately to be used against Japan which had a negligible nuclear weapons program at best compared to the US effort. In both Japanese and US versions, Serizawa’s conflict is clear, though in the US version it is slanted more towards “weapon falling into the wrong (read: communist) hands” rather than simply a fear that the Oxygen Destroyer would provoke an arms race on both sides.

Ultimately, Serizawa is moved to use his device after being convinced that the real – life horror of Godzilla has to be stopped even if as a consequence it may bring worse down the line. In any other film, Serizawa would be touted as the heroic scientist who dreams up the solution that saves the day; in Gojira however, Serizawa realizes that while his Oxygen Destroyer is the means to end the terror of Godzilla, the only way he can guarantee it never be used again is to take his own life along with the monster’s.

With Ifukube’s dirge-like score accompanying Ogata and Serizawa as they descend into Tokyo Bay armed with Serizawa’s only supply of his Oxygen Destroyer, this sequence is not really suspenseful in the sense of will it or won’t it work; instead it is a slow motion ballet performed by the divers and Godzilla himself. Unlike the fire-raging beast on land, when we first see Godzilla on the bottom of the bay, the creature is simply resting. As though spent by his rampage, Godzilla is still awe inspiring when viewed underwater, but perhaps whatever rage compelled him to rise from the ocean to attack has now subsided; he is almost peaceful. Nevertheless, the threat he represents has to be neutralized. As Ogata vainly cries for the doctor to accompany him to the surface, Serizawa and Godzilla face off, the doctor unleashing what was probably an agonizing death to a creature that had brought death. Instead of a triumphant celebration at the vanquishing of this nightmare, the death of Godzilla was as tragic as Serizawa’s-neither wanted to have what they acquired through science, but neither could go on living with the power (or knowledge of power) that they wielded.  Far from the end however, in Gojira at least, Dr. Yamane speaks a warning out loud that unless nuclear testing is stopped, another Godzilla would appear.

And appear, and appear, and appear…

This is why I believe Godzilla has managed to survive as a decades-long franchise whereas a monster even as popular as King Kong has not. While I will unabashedly declare the original King Kong is my all-time favorite movie, Kong himself was one of a kind (unless you count the quicky sequel Son of Kong.)  Except for the the two remakes in 1976 and 2005, the hilarious Toho incarnations in King Kong vs Godzilla and King Kong Escapes, the regrettable King Kong Lives! and the recent Kong: Skull Island, King Kong exists as a single entity, and his incarnations (and motivations) are pretty limited. Of course as Godzilla vs King Kong is scheduled for release in 2020, Kong’s shot at a bigger franchise may be coming. Godzilla, with his long running history has more in common with a comic book superhero (or villain), in that over the years he has developed numerous powers, different appearances, fought all manner of opponents, and even formed his own kaiju version of the Avengers at least once in his long career. He has grown from 50 meters to 100 plus meters and back, and even survived the transition from Suitmation to CGI relatively intact. But long before any of this, Gojira (and Godzilla) was a monster, and a film, that entered our subconscious nightmares of an uncontrollable power lurking in the night, ready to unleash Armageddon at any moment.

Although the summer is almost over, I hope to have one more posting following this thread. Not a monster, nor an alien, but a terrifying view of the future from 1971, The Omega Man.

-Ken

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When the name H.G. Wells is mentioned, inevitably the thought of classic science fiction and fantasy is brought to mind. Wells, along with Jules Verne popularized this literary genre in the late 19th Century, which though often mingled with fantasy elements, included more (what was then) topical scientific theory. While in most of Verne’s works, science and technology are espoused as advancements highlighting the progress of mankind, Wells tended to look at science through a more skeptical lens; his messages were more ambiguous, his tales cautionary in nature. Nowhere was the scale and scope of this criticism more broadly expressed than in Wells’s classic The War of the Worlds. First published as a serial novel in 1897, the book has never been out of print in the 121 years since its release.

I won’t go into details about the novel itself; if you’re a fan of science fiction or fantasy in general the book should be known to most readers. Indeed, my first exposure was when I found a battered Scholastic Books copy in my house while I was still in high school; the cover art alone was enough to compel me to read it.

Sadly, not my copy; it was donated to charity several years ago.

What resonated with me as I read the novel was not just the late Victorian England locale, but the first person narrative by the anonymous protagonist who witnessed the Martian invasion from its start until the aliens’ downfall.  I was not seeing the catastrophe unfold from a third person vantage, but through the eyes of the narrator, complete with all the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations he experiences. Although having spent time in the UK I can safely say few of my memories were of oppressive summer heat, Wells goes to describe in detail the invasion taking place in a hot, dry, dusty June countryside, with only a single thunderstorm breaking up the parched landscape Wells evokes in his writing. I was totally immersed while reading the novel; finding myself imagining what being caught up in such a fantastic yet terrifying scenario would be like.

The novel was a success for Wells; he continued for almost another half century to write on a variety of topics, some more controversial than others. However, it was The War of the Worlds that popularized the genre of alien invasion; with the possible exception of The Time Machine, no other work of the author could be sourced as inspiration for so many other works in a variety of different mediums.

For obvious reasons then, the idea of translating this novel into a motion picture had been kicking around almost since the earliest days of cinema. The film rights to the property had been purchased by Paramount Studios as far back as the 1920’s but it took nearly thirty years for the film to make it past the screenplay stage. This was due to several factors; perhaps the most infamous being the Orson Welles Mercury Theater Radio version broadcast on Halloween Eve in 1938.  With World War Two only a year away, the real world tensions of the time overshadowed the entertainment value of the property and by various accounts was either dismissed as in bad taste or taken literally as a real invasion (some believing the “Martian invaders” were actually Nazi or Japanese forces using advanced technology.)

Orson Welles speaking to reporters after the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.

“Why did I do it? Seriously? To impress Rita Hayworth. Have you seen the gams on that dame?”

By the late 1940’s Paramount once again considered making a film adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Several ideas were considered at the time; some like the version Ray Harryhausen dearly wanted to make, were fairly faithful to the literary source, with turn of the century England as the setting. The Martians and their machines were story-boarded by Harryhausen based off the descriptions in the novel of hundred-foot-tall tripods with their octopus-like pilots; Harryhausen even went so far as to build and animate a test scene of a Martian emerging from its space traveling cylinder.

It would have been a joy to have seen this in stop motion, but with the tiny budgets Ray had to endure throughout the 1950’s I can’t see how it wouldn’t have fallen short of the scope and scale of that was needed for this story.  Had Ray not retired after Clash of the Titans, he probably would have been in a better position to negotiate with MGM the budget his version deserved.

Paramount had several prestigious directors who were considered for the project; Cecil B. DeMille was an early choice, and he certainly could have handled the epic scale of the production, but the famed director turned his attention to other projects. After several years of no starts, it was ultimately producer George Pal who championed the film and imbued the production with his own unique style of film making. Although the version Harryhausen hoped to make was intriguing, Pal opted to update the story and locale for his production. As a post-war science fiction film, I think he made the right choice. Not only would 1950’s audiences identify more closely with a contemporary setting, but by having the film take place in the present Pal could pull out all the stops when it came to updating not only the Martians, but also showcase US military technology that had advanced far beyond the pre-World War One artillery and dreadnoughts of the novel. Pal also had one big advantage; He had a solid record of producing films that did well at the box office, from his stylized but charming Puppetoons series to his more recent (and Oscar-winning) sci-fi features, Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide.  With his formidable box-office track record, this allowed Pal the option to pursue and obtain a larger budget for the production; in this case a staggering two million dollars, unheard of for a science fiction film at that time. While a bigger budget is not always a guaranteed formula for success, (in fact, my real admiration for Ray Harryhausen is for what he was able to accomplish on the crumbs he was tossed in his earliest films for Columbia’s Sam Katzman unit) but for a film as epic in scale as what Pal sought, the extra expense needed to produce The War of the Worlds paid off handsomely.

So now that I’ve given an abbreviated background history of the film in general, what is it about this 1953 film that I love? In a word – spectacle. From the introduction, with the distinctive voice of Paul Frees summing up how warfare has escalated to now truly unimaginable weapons (implying nuclear weapons as the product of “super science”) with a military drum march in the background as the title cards sudden jump from black and white stock footage to beautiful three-strip Technicolor, the film rarely slows its pace. With Sir Cedric Hardwicke providing a Wellsian overtone after the credits, we are told the of the fact of Mars being inhabited, and their nefarious intentions. This voice-over narration provides enough information about the Martians as we need to know without dwelling on it. They considered the other planets of the Solar System (except Venus, apparently) but found all of them inhospitable. This then was the purpose of their invasion; with their own world slowly dying, the Martians have no choice but to migrate to Earth; it is strictly a matter of their survival.

Mars: circa 1953. I dunno; kinda looks like Vegas from a distance…

The War of the Worlds was not the first film of the 1950’s to depict an alien invasion; 1951 saw both The Thing and The Day the Earth Stood Still become successful box office entries, no doubt due to the very public reporting of UFO’s making news, and the speculation that sightings were of extraterrestrial craft. However, while both of these films are considered classics in their own right, Pal’s film did not stop with one alien, or one spaceship. Instead, the Martians send multitudes of ships to engage in full-scale conflict on a global scale. War was indeed depicted, with humanity pitted against a merciless enemy that had absolutely no desire to negotiate or accept any form of surrender any more than humans would against ants or any other species considered vermin. For an alien invasion sci-fi film, this was the first one that really showed destruction on a grand scale. Most science fiction films of the period (including Ray Harryhausen’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) had a more limited scale, contrary to what the lurid movie posters for those low-budget films often insinuated.  Perhaps a few landmarks would be destroyed and even hundreds of lives lost, but on the whole far less devastation compared even to World War Two conventional bombing raids. The War of the Worlds with its larger budget, (and perhaps George Pal’s own sense of the horrors of World War Two – he having fled Germany shortly after the Nazis came to power and later invaded his native Hungary) showed – at least what was allowed to be shown by the censorship standards of the early 1950’s the terror of total war.

A sequence that really struck home for me was the initial appearance of the Martian war machines, and their obliteration of the Earthly military forces. Director Byron Haskin’s skill at handling non-action scenes often incorporated tracking shots, providing a wonderful build up to the action as both military and scientific minds initially ponder what this new enemy is up to, believing them very dangerous, but almost certainly stoppable once surrounded by overwhelming numbers of heavy artillery pieces, tanks and troops.

At dawn, the first Martian machine slowly rises out of the gully their meteor craft has landed in; serene yet deadly, as its cobra-like head surveys the countryside. Gene Barry playing the lead as nuclear scientist Clayton Forrester, is giddy with excitement, exclaiming as he views the manta-shaped craft, “This is amazing!” The surrounding forces prepare to open fire; only Sylvia Van Buren’s (portrayed by a very young Ann Robinson) uncle Pastor Collins is doubtful. Believing the Martians to be not only more scientifically advanced, but spiritually and morally more advanced as well, he willingly risks his life in a vain attempt to show the aliens mankind is willing to communicate, not just attack. An advancing Martian craft takes notice as the unarmed minister approaches; the man holding his Bible aloft, the golden cross on its cover glinting in the early morning light. It slowly drops down, takes but a moment before the inevitable humming of the Heat Ray powering up makes its intentions clear before burning the hapless Collins to a crisp. To the Martians, Collins attempt at communication is no more than how an ant’s approach to a cruel child with a magnifying glass would be interpreted; initially interested, but only since the ant represents an easy target to incinerate without a second thought.

This is not 1977; and this close encounter is not going to end well….

This callous murder unleashes the full fury the US military can throw; in glorious Technicolor we see artillery fire, close-ups of tank turret guns going off, mortars being set off by ground troops in trenches. Caught in this barrage, any Earthly army would have been wiped out. Not so these invaders; using what was then the new idea of electromagnetic force fields to update the story from the novel, Pal’s Martians calmly hover while the world explodes around them, their shields briefly flickering between explosions to give Barry’s Dr. Forrester just enough visual data to deduce that the solid shells and cannon fire cannot penetrate these defenses. For almost a minute they let the military do its worst; then as if they have toyed enough with their unsuspecting  adversaries, the Martians turn the tables and show mankind what they are capable of. Not just the hellish Heat Ray that showered fire and fury in a colorful display of sparks, but their even more devastating disintegrating beam; a volley of bright green energy blobs that annihilate anything they contact. In seconds, the Earthly forces are routed; no armor is safe from these war machines. In one particular scene, the Heat Ray scorches the military command center; a hapless soldier screaming as he is set on fire from the sparking ray; in another, Colonel Heffner (Vernon Rich) yells to Forrester to leave the carnage, only to walk into the path of the disintegrating beam. In a wonderfully macabre (and technically challenging) moment, Heffner freezes in shock, as over the course of 144 separate matte paintings his body first glows green, his features vanish, with the ghostly effect of his skeleton showing briefly before he disappears completely.

If you gotta go, go out in three-strip Technicolor!

This sequence, from the wonderful special effects to the quick jump cuts between Martian Heat Rays striking guns, tanks, soldiers, to the memorable sound effects to the bright greens, reds yellows of the Martian machines and their weapons deservedly became a favorite of mine. However, Pal doesn’t stop with scenes of conventional combat; after an interlude where Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren take refuge in a farmhouse surrounded by a nest of Martians (a moment that hearkens back to the novel) we are told that nowhere on Earth has been spared.  Sir Cedric narrates through a montage of scenes of chaos and destruction; the Martians are on a world-wide campaign to wipe out humanity.  From a hastily convened conference with military leadership in Washington DC, the realization is clear-only one weapon left in Earth’s arsenal can stop the Martians. Anyone guess what that is? Yup.

Here again is where I find this film so compelling. Nuclear weapons were in the forefront of many science fiction films of the 1950’s, but their depiction usually fell flat for two reasons. One, because the majority of these films were of far smaller budgets and scale, invariably if an atomic bomb were shown as either a last resort (as in Kronos) or as a catalyst for creating the aliens or monsters (think The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms) it was alway stock footage of an actual nuclear test-usually the Crossroads Baker underwater shot, or the original Trinity test of 1945. Seeing this same stock footage in many movies had to have been tiresome even to 1950’s audiences. Secondly, nuclear weapons were often discussed or considered, but never used for various reasons (again, due to the budgetary restrictions – even though movie posters hinted that audiences might really see a nuclear weapon in use.) Not so with this version of The War of the Worlds. Not only was the use of the bomb a showcase of the movie, but to create it, two novel approaches were engaged. Although stock footage was used, the method of delivery of the A-bomb on the Martians was as high-tech as anything available at the time, the experimental Northrop YB-49 flying wing. Looking almost as alien as the Martians themselves, this very real aircraft could have been the main striking force of the US Air Force bomber inventory. Instead, due to various technical issues, it was the more conventional B-52 that went on to be America’s strategic nuclear bomber of choice. In an ironic twist, in the 1996 Independence Day, the nuclear bomber used was a B-2 stealth bomber, a flying wing built by Northrop, the same company that failed to get the government contract to produce the YB-49 over forty years earlier.

How could this thing not be expected to return from a mission – it’s a freaking boomerang!

But for the actual bombing of the Martian war machines, Paramount’s effects team didn’t resort to stock footage or water tank clouds to reproduce their bomb. Oh no, they went full on and used real explosives and colored powders ignited on one of Paramount’s sound stages. Reputedly the mushroom cloud reproduced was 75 feet tall and reached to the top of the set.

“Define overkill..”

Yet, underneath the swirling maelstrom of indescribable heat, blast and radiation the Martians are once again seen untouched behind their protective shields, nonchalantly shrugging off the power of the atom. With this last chance to stop them now gone, humanity has but one hope –  head for the hills, and pray the war machines can’t handle steep slopes! But say goodbye to civilization, art, culture, technology or even agriculture.

This next sequence is another that truly showed why a large budget was needed for this film; the exodus from doomed Los Angeles by millions of refugees. Filmed mostly on Sundays to allow real location photography to be intertwined with scenes shot on the Paramount backlot, I truly felt a sense of impending doom, especially once the city streets were deserted with only Forrester driving his truck as one of the last to leave. These shots were so clear and have held up well in the sixty-five years since the film’s release that aside from the vintage autos, a viewer would be hard pressed to date the film.

Forrester and his colleagues determine that there could be a slim chance to stop the Martians; not by military hardware, but by a clue found in the anemic blood of the Martians that was briefly studied prior to the futile dropping of the A-bomb. Regrettably, even this opportunity is lost as Forrester and his team, having delayed their departure from LA to gather scientific equipment, are caught up in a mob of criminals who were looting the abandoned city.

This part of the movie always troubled me; firstly because as Forrester said, “Fools, they cut their own throats!” but secondly, if what Forrester and his team were doing was so vital to possibly defeat the Martians, why they weren’t assigned a full military escort was beyond me.  Especially since after the failure of the A-Bomb, General Mann (Les Tremayne) was the one who knowingly nodded to Forrester, “Our best hope lies in what you people can develop to help us.” However, I think Pal wanted to keep this sequence that mirrored a similar scene from the novel not only to showcase the fabric of civilization unraveling under the onslaught, (he did a similar sequence towards the finale of When Worlds Collide) but also to take away any chance that mankind would be the savior of itself. Beaten and robbed of his truck, Forrester was brought down to the level of pure survival, just like everyone else. Stripped of any scientific rank, (finally losing his trademark glasses – and by connotation his position as one of humanity’s greatest scientists) the man runs through the city, not seeking answers or a way to escape, but only to find Sylvia, whom he suspects would be too terrified to do anything but hide in a church as she had told him she had done as a child years earlier. His feelings for this young woman he had scarcely known but a few days ago become his obsession; if the world is coming to an end, he wants to be with her.

And the end certainly looks near, as the finale of the film puts the Martians on full display. They arrived not to conquer, but to raze the city to the ground, inhabited or not. Unlike the novel, where the Martians spare a good portion of an evacuated London, these Martians are the Mongols from space; not a building, bridge or landmark is spared. Again, showing this destruction was unique among American science fiction films of the time; perhaps because the Second World War and all it’s horrors had ended only eight years earlier.  At the time the film was in production the Korean War was still raging; other studios shied away from showing images that might be too close to reality for audiences to accept. The Cold War was in its darkest days as Stalin still ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. Obviously, the “Red Menace” of the Martians could be a metaphor for Communism, and showcasing the aliens as pitiless invaders devoid of compassion hell-bent on destroying any semblance of Western European or American culture fit well with the anti-communist hysteria of the time. Of particular note is during the narration of the Martians invading countries one by one; not once is the Soviet Union mentioned either as ally or foe. Even in the main military conference room, where a giant world map shows the advancing Martians, the U.S.S.R. does show some Martians within its borders, but no Soviet military personnel are present (odd considering they and the US would be the only countries at the time capable of using nuclear weapons on the Martians.)

“мы приходим в мирные товарищи!– We come in peace, comrades!”

Communist stand ins or not, the Martian’s destruction is put on full display as LA is destroyed block by block as Forrester dodges both Heat Rays and crashing debris in his search for Sylvia. He searches three churches; the first finds him briefly looking around before deducing she isn’t there. The second, a Catholic cathedral he vainly searches and is almost out the door when he encounters two of his colleagues; attacked by the mob that attacked him, they lie wounded and helpless, unable to provide a clue to the fate of the other scientists or Sylvia. Finally he finds her in the third church, as the Martians move ever closer, the sound of their weapons overwhelming the hymnals sung by the stoic refugees awaiting their fate in the church’s pews. A stained glass of the Lord is shattered by the touch of the Heat Ray, as Forrester and Sylvia cling to each other in the destruction.

That moment when you just KNOW things are going to turn Old Testament real fast…

Enough is enough apparently as the Martian machine sputters, falters, and crashes. In the deafening silence, the masses huddled in the church slowly come to the realization the sounds of Martian weaponry have stopped. Furtively, they make their way to the door, unsure of what awaits them; the sight of the now silent machine awes and puzzles them. Forrester, once again the curious scientist, makes his way to the front of the crowd. Slowly a single hatchway opens; the arm of a Martian weakly attempting to make its way out, before its pulse stops and life ceases. Forrester turns to the other survivors, “We were all praying for a miracle,” he says humbled, as the chimes of churches in the city proclaim their salvation from the invaders. Sir Cedric wraps things up with an epilogue paraphrased from a line in the novel.  “When all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved…by the littlest things that God in His wisdom had put upon this Earth.”

While there are those who complain the main difference in the novel and the movie are the seemingly polar opposite views of religion, I found this last narration taken from the novel (as was most of Sir Cedric’s narration) compelling evidence that even Wells, an avowed humanist and socialist was actually more religious than he let on. Wells’s beef was more that entrenched dogmatic religious doctrine had no place in the modern world, not that religion itself was a bad thing in and of itself. It is true that Wells has his protagonist fall in company with a curate who represented an outmoded and useless burden of religion while Pal’s Pastor Collins is more sympathetic, if hopelessly naive about a shared spiritualism with the Martians. When watching Pal’s films, a common theme of a higher power intervening on behalf of the beleaguered is often showcased.  His Puppetoon short Tulips Shall Grow showed a divine intervention halting the nuts and bolts Nazis invading Holland. In When Worlds Collide, although it is scientific achievement that allows humanity to evacuate Earth before it is destroyed, the ending with its Biblical reference clearly showed God was still rooting from the sidelines for a literal salvation of the human race.

For 85 minutes, the boredom of the summer doldrums can be alleviated by watching this wonderful film. It’s just long enough to be completely entertaining without becoming ponderous, the effects and saturated Technicolor are gorgeous, the stylized 1950’s dialog and characters quaint and sometimes over the top, but subtlety was not what this film is about. I’m not going to compare this film with the 2005 adaptation with Tom Cruise, nor with Independence Day or other more recent alien invasion films; for better or worse these other films exist within the context of their times and standards. To appreciate George Pal’s film, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief by the standards of the 1950’s complete with understanding the popular attitudes and trends of the period. When I first saw this film many years ago on television, my mind was far more receptive to the story unfolding; the war machines were frightening and unstoppable, the enigmatic Martians terrifying in a spooky kind of way, while the desperation of millions driven headlong in flight an ominous warning of how humanity could lose itself when reduced to the lowest common denominator – survival.

**Updated 7/14/20** Two years after I had commented that Paramount needed to release this on Blu-Ray, it happened! And not just any typical Blu-Ray release, this was given the Criterion Collection treatment!  Beautifully remastered in 4K definition with a choice of a conventional monaural soundtrack or a special 5.1 surround mix that took original sound elements and made them pop like never before!  This was the film that goaded me into buying a high-end laserdisc player over twenty years ago – superseded ten years later by the DVD release. I have overdosed on Technicolor now that this gem of a Blu-Ray is available!   See my new link to this one-of-a-kind cinematic masterpiece!

**NOTE – as an interesting coincidence, Mars is going to be at its closest approach to Earth the end of July 2018 – keep an eye open for any unusual meteor showers!**

Hope you enjoyed my thoughts on this sci-fi classic – next up – the H-bomb in physical form – the original Gojira

Ken

All images used under the rights of Fair Use

 

The days seem to last forever, the air is hot and humid, and school is out! Ah the joys of summer!

However, one of the real pleasures of the season to me is the inevitable summer movie season – if for no other reason than it provides an entertainment outlet away from the oppressive weather. Now I’m not just talking about the latest Marvel releases or other big budget CGI laden eye candy, (looking at YOU, Jurassic World II)  I’m also talking about those movies that decades ago filled theaters when they were one of the few reliably air-conditioned public venues you could escape to.  Both the chill of deep winter and the heat of summer drive me indoors, so a good many of my fondest movie memories took place at those particular times of year. In fact, since many of the films themselves were set in those seasonal extremes, it made the connection between the films and the season particularly linked.

Think of Jaws for example. Released at the very edge of the summer season in 1975, it rocketed to become one of the very first summer blockbusters – its success indeed may have even precipitated the entire concept of summer big releases. 1975 truly became the “summer of the shark” with audiences both enthralled and terrified for the entire season. In this case, timing the film’s release to coincide with the fictional Amity’s summer beach season drove the point home in ways a Christmas release would not have done. Other than perhaps the shower scene in Psycho, probably no other movie made more people fearful of partaking in what would otherwise have been a normal summer activity.

Having grown up on the Jersey Shore, most of my summer recollections were of hazy hot days punctuated by occasional thunderstorms that usually cleared the atmosphere for a few days before the cycle of humidity would begin again. Not having the advantage of central air conditioning in my house, I spent many a restless evening fitfully sleeping with only a window fan providing any relief from the stifling heat. As a result, I become a big watcher of what was then called the “late, late show.” While I spent many a sleepless night watching late night reruns of old TV shows, it was the science fiction/horror movies of summer that became ingrained in my memory. The interesting trend I noticed was an odd coincidence; a good many of these films struck a similar theme – that when (or if) humanity came under onslaught, whether through giant monsters, alien invasion, natural disasters, or man-made folly through nuclear or biological warfare, it took place in summer, or at least in the warm months. I often wonder if this was deliberate, especially in the post World War II era, as the climatic end of the war took place in the heat of August 1945.

So for the next few months, I’m going to discuss those films which seemed to embody the very essence of the oppressive atmosphere, but gave viewers like myself a chance to mentally escape, not to an a happy alternative, but to the darker recesses of imagination, where death, destruction, or the threat of a grim apocalyptic future seemed linked to the season of backyard grills, fireworks, outdoor parties, and family vacations…

So sit back, pick up a cold drink and revel in the madness of summer!

Ken

First Up…the sci-fi classic that set the trend for summer alien invasions, The War of the Worlds.

 

 

After many months, I have finally gotten the momentum to start putting together my site!