SUMMERFEST '22: Days of Future Past (June 13-19)

These are all movies that, when they were made, were set in the future. But are now the past. More than half of these ended up being set in the last five years.

The Time Machine (1960)

Trailers: Forbidden Planet, Time After Time

This is kind of a cheat, since most of it takes place in the 8027th century, but the main character’s initial travels take him through the first half of the 20th, making stops in 1917, 1940 and 1966. I liked the device of showing us the passage of time by way of the mannequin across the street and her changing fashions (although … the shop kept the same mannequin for decades?). And I kind of love the ending, which is the kind of conclusion you don’t see often with time travel stories.

The Apple (1980) (rewatch)

Trailers: Can’t Stop the Music, Xanadu

The metaphor could not be more obvious and the filmmaking could not be more half-baked. But my goodness everyone on screen is going for it 1000%. There are flashes of inspiration here, particularly in the songs, which feel like “body snatcher” versions of much better songs. There are loads of great campy moments that may or may not be intentionally hilarious (I mean … “I’m coming … coming for you…” — they had to know how obvious that was, right?). It’s an absolute mess, but it’s an entertaining mess. Hey, hey, hey! BIM’s on the way!

Timecop (1994)

Trailers: Universal Soldier, Double Impact

A fun movie, with some great action (and sick Van Damme splits!), but this is an especially bad and ill-thought-out time travel plot. For an organization that deals with time travel day in and day out, they seem really surprised when their agents come back and something has changed in the timeline, leading to confusion. I guess the idea is that they’re there to *keep* things from changing, but you’d think they’d debrief their agents after a mission to be sure. I also couldn’t believe how relevant the political aspect of the story felt to current events.

Rollerball (1975)

Trailers: Logan’s Run, Outland

This was a good deal more contemplative than I expected, given that all I’ve seen of it are the sportsy scenes. I ended up enjoying it, but in the end it’s not much different from other future dystopian stories where society has traded freedom for comfort and consumption. James Caan is great, as usual, and I liked the look of everything. But I feel like other movies have covered these kinds of ideas better (though this may have been one of the first to do it).

The Running Man (1987) (rewatch)

Trailers: Total Recall, Escape from New York

I love this movie and it’s always a fun watch, but on this rewatch I couldn’t help thinking of how much more detailed the world of this story must be in King’s novel, which the movie presumably eschews for the most part in favor of a pure action spectacle. I’m more curious than ever what Edgar Wright’s version of this material will be, if this indeed ends up being a future project of his. Perhaps the best thing about this movie, though, is the absolutely perfect casting of Richard Dawson.

Blade Runner (1982) (rewatch)

Trailers: Alien, The Fugitive

This movie is beautiful and iconic and I know I should love it but it never fails to leave me cold. That is not at all to say that it’s not a good — even great — movie. But I always feel like I’m standing outside of it, chipping away at it and only occasionally getting glimpses of what it’s trying to say to me. I also wonder if the deliberate ambiguity about Deckard’s true nature (the nature of everyone in the film, really) makes it hard for me to relate to him or anyone else. And like a lot of dystopian movies, the details and worldbuilding look great but I can’t tell that very much of it has more meaning than just being interesting background noise. This one just remains an enigma to me.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Trailers: The Matrix, Chain Reaction

Cool idea that I think someone could take another crack at now that technology has advanced. Good action and some pretty brutal violence, if you’re into that kind of thing. Keanu Reeves had just come off of Speed here, and while he’s fun to watch, I missed the empathy of Jack Traven. I liked what the Great Whatsit of this movie ultimately turned out to be (to say nothing of its timeliness -- especially as it takes place last year), but the conclusion feels rushed and unearned. Side note: That visor eyeglass thing in the image above reminds me far too much of Martyrs (2008).

Super 8

After work yesterday morning, I went to see Super 8, which was one of my most anticipated movies of the summer. I spent the week wallowing in some the movies that inspired it - Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, Alien, Scanners, E.T., etc. - and walked into the theater with a mixture of excitement and trepidation (because it probably was not going to live up to expectations).



The movie is certainly not perfect, but it is EXTREMELY good, worthy to be put next to the awesome geek movies of most of our childhoods, particularly those centered around child characters. I say "most of our" childhoods, because I'm still catching up to movies that everyone else my age saw when they were kids. I don't have the nostalgia to look back on these movies as the Best Ever (I mean, E.T. is quite good, but robbed for Best Picture in 1982? Not really. Yeah, I said it.), but I definitely get warm fuzzies just as if these movies were actually a part of my own childhood.

The less said about the plot of Super 8 the better. The trailer tells you everything you need to know before going in. A group of kids are making a movie, and strange things start happening that turn their little town upside down. There are a bunch of kid actors you've never heard of and one that maybe you have (Elle Fanning, who I vastly prefer to her older sister), plus the Friday Night Lights guy (Kyle Chandler), the guy who used to date Julianna Margulies on E.R. and in real life (Ron Eldard), and the guy who's in every Frank Darabont project except Shawshank (Noah Emmerich).

The mysterious element in the movie is ever so slightly underdeveloped. I think this is mainly because the movie is far more interested in the kids - as well it should be - and their point of view is limited. These are some of the best movie kids I've seen in a long, long time. They are real kids, not actors playing some Hollywood jagoff's idea of what kids are like. They talk like real kids, about topics that kids actually talk about. It's hard for the main character Joe (Joel Courtney) not to be a favorite, but he gets serious competition from Cary (Ryan Lee), the runt who's way too into explosives. Cary is just such an awesome kid, and I want to hang out with him and watch movies. I also really dug Charles (Riley Griffiths), whose family is very reminiscent of the Weasleys of Harry Potter. He's not as awesome as Ron (but then, who is?), and he has kind of an unlikeable streak, but he still manages to be a mostly sympathetic character. Notable small roles are filled by the amazing Dale Dickey (one of the great supporting actors of last year's Winter's Bone) and Dan Castelleneta (the voice of Homer Simpson). I want to see it again so I can spot Abrams regulars Greg Grunberg and Michael Giacchino in cameos as well (Giacchino also composed the wonderful score).

This movie is clearly inspired by the classic "Peter Pan era" Spielberg films, and as one of the film's producers, his stamp on the material is hard to deny. But I feel like Super 8 is very much its own film. In the same spirit as those great early 80s adventures, but it never feels like a copy of any of those films.

I don't think you'd get very far out of the theater after the movie before you realized this, but stick around for the credits and you will see Charles's film in its entirety. It is fantastic, and I was very much reminded (not just during their little film, but in the scenes where they were making it as well) of those guys who made their own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark when they were kids. Lots of cool movie geek references are woven into their story, like the fact that Joe learned about makeup from Dick Smith's book (Smith is a legend in film makeup, having most notably created Linda Blair's super-scary demonic look for The Exorcist).

Side note: In watching all those movies in preparation for Super 8, I have discovered that - aside from it being the film Super 8 most closely resembles - I find Close Encounters of the Third Kind to be Spielberg's greatest film, period. The scope of that story is unreal, and the various human perspectives on the mysterious elements are some of the best storytelling I've ever seen. I need to do a proper post on it someday.

With March upon us, the winter "take out the trash" season is mostly in the past and it's time to get back into the groove. I saw three new movies this weekend, all of which are worth talking about.


Rango

Our story begins with a four-bird mariachi band (!!!!) and their hilariously on-the-nose lyrics which give us a series of signposts through the story. Johnny Depp gives voice to a lizard who's spent his whole life in a dry aquarium, his only friends a plastic fish and a naked Barbie doll with no head or legs. He keeps himself amused by staging theatricals, but he seems completely unaware that his tank is in the back of a pickup truck and that said truck is moving him and the rest of his owner's belongings to presumably a new home. One severe bump in the road, however, and the tank goes flying. Soon our not-yet-Rango is taking advice from a run-over armadillo and heading out across the desert to a town called Dirt, where he is told he can find water.

What follows reminded me quite a bit of The Three Amigos, actually. Rango is a character whose entire life has revolved around making things up to keep himself amused. He's an excellent improvisor, which comes in handy in the beginning, but he hasn't had the opportunity for real life lessons, and he certainly has never been put to any kind of test as far as his bravery or moral code might be concerned.

This movie is an utter delight, with some really unique-looking and photo-real animation. It's probably not what you're expecting, and that's a very good thing. It's a western, plain and simple, and the look is very much The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (especially the creatures who are all pretty salty characters). It isn't the least bit cutesy, as you could probably tell from the ads, but what you might not know is that there's a sauciness that will sail over kids' heads and hit adults in their giggle spots. Just to give you an idea of the kind of thing the movie gets away with, in the first scene of the film, our hero makes a breast implant joke. Oh yes. This has the audacity and nudge-nudge-wink-wink that the original Shrek had, only it goes a bit farther.

Voice talent is really exceptional here, and the best part is that, except for Johnny Depp and Bill Nighy, whose voices you could not mistake if you tried, you can't really tell who's who. These aren't characters built on a particular actor's gifts, these are original characters played by actors who don't want you to know who's behind the microphone. One of the most impressive moments for me was the appearance of The Spirit of the West, which you would swear up and down is the voice of exactly who it looks like on screen but is in actuality Justified's Timothy Olyphant.

I really loved this, and I think it would appeal to most moviegoers, but especially those of you who like westerns.



The Adjustment Bureau

This was much better than I expected, mostly because of how great Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are. The concept is interesting and very sci-fi - what if our lives were designed to follow a certain plan and there were people whose job it was to make sure we stayed on that plan? Damon Lindelof (formerly of LOST fame) recently compared it to the Desmond/Penny storyline on LOST, and that's pretty accurate. I don't want to give too much away. If you've seen the trailer and the ads you know enough about the premise.

It seems weird to talk about this as if it's something revolutionary, but it was refreshing to see a movie with some actual characterization, with people in it that you care about. This is not a movie that expects us to root for people just because they're played by pretty actors and, well, we're just supposed to care. David and Elise feel like real people with real issues, and I loved that. I also loved that there was some thought behind not just *why* everyone in the "bureau" was so desperate to keep them apart, but what it was about each of them that, when put together, was bad for the other person (in the eyes of the Plan).

Some of the philosophizing was a bit ponderous at times, such as the whole speech about what happened on the two occasions that the organization stepped back and let people make their own decisions, without any adjustments. (Not to mention the fact that the premise starts to fall apart if you think about it too much.) Actor-wise, I was also disappointed by Anthony Mackie, whose heart didn't seem to be in this movie. I hope all this doesn't sound like I hated the movie, because I definitely didn't. It works very well as a romance and mostly well as a sci-fi story. Above all, it's an engaging and entertaining movie, anchored by two good performances. I was also glad to discover that there was a reason for Matt Damon to be wearing that hat in all the trailers. :P

On a more trivial note, there are loads of cameos in this from political/news figures, like Jon Stewart and Mayor Bloomberg.



I Saw the Devil

Expectations were pretty high going into this, after hearing one critic compare it to The Silence of the Lambs. Disappointment, therefore, was inevitable. This is straight up horror, and certainly not the kind most of you reading this would be into. It's even a bit too much for me, but there were elements that I did like.

Basic story. A young woman is waiting for a tow truck when she is beaten nearly to death, kidnapped, then brutally murdered by a maniac who proceeds to chop her into pieces, despite her pleas for her life and the life of her unborn child. And that's just the first ten minutes. Bad luck for our murderer that his latest victim was the daughter of a retired and venerated police chief and the fiancee of a secret agent (though not that secret, since several people in the film seem to know what he does). Secret Agent Man vows revenge, but can't bring himself to strike a fatal blow. So he catches up to the killer repeatedly, inflicts painful wounds, and repeatedly lets the killer go, swearing that he's going to keep coming and that the attacks are going to get worse.

Over the course of the story, we're supposed to be getting the impression that Secret Agent Man is becoming a monster just like the man he's hunting. But I'm afraid I just could not get behind that idea. The killer is so disgusting and abominable that I was cheering for Secret Agent Man throughout. There are some interesting notions, I suppose, about how useful revenge is and who really comes out the winner in this scenario. There's also something to be said here about the illogical nature of engaging oneself in a battle of wills with a soulless maniac who can hurt you far more effectively than you can hurt him. But the movie doesn't lean on either of those ideas as much as it does the "who's the real monster" thing. And the movie's biggest problem for me is that this question is not nearly as ambiguous as the movie would like it to be. Spoiler Alert - the serial killer is the monster. There is no doubt in my mind about that.

This movie sort of piggybacks on Chan-Wook Park's vengeance trilogy (the killer is even played by the star of Park's Oldboy), but doesn't explore the idea of revenge quite as thoughtfully, in my opinion. And while the camera work, music, and acting are all top notch, there are some things I found incredibly difficult to watch, and not in a good way. There's a "dinner" scene in particular that exploits the horror of cannibalism beyond the bounds of decency, even for shock cinema. I never thought I'd find myself longing for the delicate sensibilities of Serbian cinema.

Next week brings us another good cinematic haul - notably Jane Eyre (!), Battle: Los Angeles, and Red Riding Hood.

Never Let Me Go

This movie has been dividing critics for a few weeks. There are folks that really love it and folks that can't stand it. I'm on the "really love it" side, but I think I understand why some people aren't connecting with it. This was my favorite thing I saw this weekend, so without further ado, let's dig into...


Never Let Me Go

This is a movie essentially about death. It's kind of a downer, and it's very British, which is part of the problem I think people have with it. But I'll get into that later. Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate version of our own world, where scientific breakthroughs that our world has not yet made (or at least taken advantage of) have led to significant extensions in human longevity. But we don't hear much about that at first (or really, in much of the rest of the movie). Our concern is to be with Kathy H. and her childhood friends, Tommy and Ruth.

Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth attend a kind of boarding school called Hailsham. It looks like most other boarding schools, but there's something a bit different about it. Their new teacher explains to them the conceit that frames the film. These children are not like other children. They cannot grow up and be anything they want to be. They were created for a specific purpose. They will be adults, but not for very long. After they leave school, they will begin their "donations," and when their bodies can no longer sustain themselves, they will achieve "completion." In our own terms, these children have been cloned in order to provide organs for transplants. They are kept alive as long as possible, through as many organ removal surgeries as their bodies can handle, until they die, after which presumably the remainder of their organs are kept for future use. The teacher who tells the children this is either fired or abruptly leaves the school, but she is not really telling the children anything they don't already know.

See, unlike a lot of these "clone farm" plots, and there are several, where people are being raised in order for their organs to be harvested, these children are not being lied to. They are fully aware of what is in store for them, and that they will not live long past the age of thirty. They accept this and make no effort to fight it. They don't even seem to think of themselves as being the same as their "originals." They go to school and are never allowed to leave the property until they are 18, when they move to living facilities with others like themselves and await their notice for the first donation, after which they will be moved to a kind of hospital. They have an option to apply to be "Carers," which is not a medical position but rather one of moral support for someone through their donation process.

There is a sweet romance at the center of the film. Kathy and Tommy are childhood sweethearts, but Ruth comes between them and instead she and Tommy are the couple for several years. This is actually maybe my favorite performance that I've seen from Keira Knightley (who plays Ruth). It's refreshing to see her play kind of a bad girl - well, not bad exactly, but our sympathies are not really with her, at least in the love triangle plot. I'm becoming more and more intrigued by Andrew Garfield, who plays Tommy. I first took notice of him in the extraordinary Red Riding 1974, and his is supposedly one of the strongest among several strong performances in the upcoming The Social Network; and of course he's going to be a much bigger deal soon, when he takes on the red and blue tights of Spiderman. He's pretty wonderful here. His character as a child is very angry and prone to bouts of rage, but these urges are subdued as he gets older, which makes his one last outburst at a key moment in the film that much more emotional.

The jewel in the crown, though, as might be expected, is new Hollywood "It" girl Carey Mulligan, who plays Kathy. She gives the film its soul and there's such an understated peace to her performance that I found really moving. She makes the most of her circumstances and does try to get a deferral for the start of her donations, but she has accepted her fate. The realization she eventually has that makes up the last lines of the film is pretty staggeringly beautiful. I have to give props, too, to Isobel Meikle-Small, who plays young Kathy. Not only does she physically resemble Mulligan quite uncannily, she also gives a pretty great (and not child-actor-y) performance.

Whether you like this movie or not is probably going to depend on a couple of things. First, I think younger people may have a hard time identifying with this movie. The theme of death and coming to the end of one's life is one that is probably more easily accepted and relatable to older viewers. Second, this movie is most definitely British - not just in setting and regarding the cast, but in terms of tone. There is a distinct "stiff upper lip" reserve about it that I think a lot of Americans are put off by or at least have trouble connecting with. I noticed something similar in people who didn't like Gosford Park, another movie that is English Liek Woah. I think people want it to be more dramatic and conflict-heavy, but that's just not the point of this story. It's not that there's no conflict, obviously, but I think a lot of people just don't buy the quiet acceptance. That's totally their prerogative, but I don't share that opinion.

Very, very good movie. I wish it every success as it traverses the dangerous waters of Oscar season, and I have no doubt we'll still be talking about it when those awards roll around.

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Avatar

I had been dubious about Avatar screening at BNAT. I knew nothing of the Fox fiasco. It just seemed both too close to the release and too high profile a release. But it was still a possibility, as Harry is friends with James Cameron. I started thinking we might when Anne Thompson ran her piece on IndieWire about the possibility. Not that she had any real information, but she must have gotten the idea from somewhere, even if it was just vague murmurings. Then, as I looked through my goodie bag the morning of BNAT, I noticed an Avatar shirt and another flag was raised. And finally, I noticed a Real-3D standee propped up right outside the BNAT theater, and when we hadn't seen anything else in 3D, it started looking more likely. Oh, and also there were a gaggle of security guards in the corridor to the exit door.

So Harry started to introduce the final film, not naming it, but casually dropping Cameron's name, so we know what we're building up to. Lots of excited murmurs. He explained about the, ah, antipathy between Twentieth Century Fox, especially Tom Rothman, and himself, but said that Cameron was determined to bring it to us. So much that he went to Fox THREE times, and was told no three times. And then something happened. Went a little something like this.

CAMERON: Can I?
FOX: No.
CAMERON: Okay, seriously, can I?
FOX: No!
CAMERON: For the last time, can I?
FOX: For the last time, NO!
CAMERON: *RAGEOMGIKEELYOU*
FOX: ... okay

So the 3D glasses elves passed out our newfangled 3D glasses, the kind that don't give you a headache and that you can use as actual sunglasses. And the movie started.


Avatar
I need to see this again before I can really say much of substance about it. I know a lot of you are pretty sick of all things Avatar, and I can't say I blame you. They've been marketing the crap out of this movie, because they can't really afford the luxury of a demographic-driven campaign with a film this size. I was ready for a huge thud when people started seeing this film. It couldn't possibly live up to all the hype, even in the effects department.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've forgotten who James "King of the World" Cameron is. There is a reason he hasn't made a whole bunch of films in his career and yet most of those films are iconic in our culture. The man has reinvented sci-fi at least once and made the most financially successful film of all time (and before you start, the Leo fangirls could not possibly have done all that Titanic business themselves). Love him or hate him, Cameron knows how to reach an audience.

I won't pretend the story is anything special. That is not a criticism; just an observation. This is not literature. It is, however, a good, straightforward piece of storytelling. It is also first-rate worldbuilding - the kind we haven't really seen from Cameron and which we associate more with the original Star Wars movies. Some of what follows you've gleaned from the trailers, but most you probably haven't.

Pandora is a distant planet - I'm afraid I can't remember much more detail than that, but I do know that I've forgotten stuff that's definitely in the movie as regards where it is. A great deal of Pandora's topography is made up of rainforest, and it is a rich source of a valuable mineral that people on Earth call "unobtainium" - go ahead and laugh, most of us did, and it is a pretty weak name, but I can totally see someone thinking it's brilliant for five minutes and then wincing by the time it sticks. There are several teams of Earth people on Pandora, not just to get the (*cringe*) unobtainium but to learn about the planet and the creatures that live there. The human equivalent on this planet is a species called the Na'vi, and you've seen them - they resemble, as 's husband remarked, ten feet tall blue cat people. That's fairly accurate, I'd say. As humans can't breathe the air on Pandora without special masks, they have taken DNA from the Na'vi and mixed it with human DNA to create Na'vi "avatars" - bodies that the humans can inhabit with their minds so that they can move about the planet and experience it more fully and efficiently.

The Na'vi have a tremendously intimate and spiritual relationship with their planet. They are plugged into it, as it were, not unlike an organic form of internet. A part of their anatomy can connect with a corresponding part of certain animals on their planet and forms a bond between animal and rider. They have enormous respect for the life cycle and the cost of the death of something in their world. So when the "sky people" come and start trying to rape that world and drive them into another area, it's much more than an inconvenience. It is, in fact, a sacrilege.

At the center of the story is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). His twin brother, a scientist, was part of a mission to Pandora but was killed. So they bring Jake in, despite the fact that he's a soldier and has not been trained to use an avatar. Jake is reckless and impulsive, like many mythic heroes before him. His presence annoys the other scientists, who don't see what use he'll be. He is particularly a fly in the ointment of Grace (Sigourney Weaver). But he proves to be a quick study, with good instincts and resourcefulness, and he is soon given the task of learning the Na'vi culture, absorbing himself into it and gaining their trust, so that he can persuade them to move to another area before the big machines come in and start tearing everything up to get to the unobtainium (*snort* yeah, sorry, I'm not quite done laughing at that).

Like Kevin Costner's soldier in Dances With Wolves, the closer Jake gets to the Na'vi culture, the more highly he regards it, thanks in no small part to the female Na'vi who is tasked with teaching him their ways. Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is the chief's daughter and, as you might expect, is none too fond of our cocky hero. However, also as you might expect, they eventually fall in love. I'm not always fond of how Cameron does romance, and he doesn't always get it quite right, but he's capable of doing so and I think the romance here is pretty wonderful. The scenes where Jake interacts with the Na'vi are the best parts of the movie, particularly his scenes with Neytiri, and Zoe Saldana is one of Cameron's great heroines (he does TOO write great women) and gives the best performance of the film by far, in my opinion.

Of course, now that Jake has bonded with the Na'vi and understands much more about them, the issue of asking them to move and let the sky people come in and rip up their rainforest has suddenly become very complicated indeed. He switches sides fairly quickly, but not implausibly, because he's absolutely right. What his side is doing is wrong. And that's as far as I want to go into the plot, because there's so much in the third act that I couldn't possibly absorb it all.

I don't think anyone is overstating anything by saying that Cameron has changed how movies are going to be made in the future, but I'm not sure people understand what that means. The brilliance of the effects are that they're so masterfully done that you forget about them. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Pandora was a real place, and I'd swear that the Na'vi exist, that some of them have studied acting, and were cast as characters in this film. It is that freakin' real. This is thanks, at least partly, to the participation of WETA, and if you remember how well Gollum was done in Lord of the Rings. this is on a much larger scale and, in my opinion, even more impressive. I don't know how they did it, and I don't really care. All I know is that this is the most detailed, gorgeous, and fully realized fictional world that I've ever seen. And it's not just window dressing. It serves the story and makes you give a damn about the world and characters that have been created. That's movie magic, my friends.

Suck It, Day Six - Lifeforce

This movie is about naked space vampires and the hick astronauts who love them, and let's face it, you're either going to be into that or you're not. As for me, I dig it. This gem is from the illustrious Tobe Hooper, who brought us The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist (along with another vampy selection we'll see a bit later this month, hint hint).


Lifeforce

I find this movie all kinds of awesome, but it's not really a characteristic vampire movie. For one thing, there's not really any blood. The "vampires" don't really do the blood thing; they suck the, well, lifeforce out of people, kind of like J.K. Rowling's dementors. Only way sexier and more naked.

The movie starts a bit like Alien - there's something strange out there (in this case a giant shaft of a spacecraft that opens up like an umbrella) and people go and check it out. They find a bunch of batlike creatures who have apparently been dead a while, but they also find three caskets seemingly made of glass and containing three naked humanoid creatures.

The female awakens and takes the lifeforce of one of the officers, and soon the whole ship is zombified, absorbing each other's lifeforce and allowing the naked vampires to collect the energy on the ship where they were found. (Mad props to the makeup and effects people, by the way, for some pretty awesome zombie-like creature effects.) I should clarify that the whole ship is zombified save one person - Col. Tom Carlson (Steve Railsback). Carlson has a psychic link with the female vampire and has become infatuated with her, but not wanting Earth to suffer the same fate as his ship, he sets fire to the ship with the vampires still on it and gets the heck out of Dodge via the escape pod.

Sadly, this does not stop the vampires from arriving in London and causing all kinds of chaos and plaguey-ness with their lifeforce-sucking ways. Soon, martial law is declared in an effort to keep the plague contained in London. Carlson teams up with someone from the SAS, Col. Colin Caine (Equus's Peter Firth, who bless him is one of the several decent actors in this film who spends much of his screen time wearing a "what the crapping crap?!?!?!" expression), and the two of them try to stop the vampocalypse.

Oh, and it turns out that all the vampire legends we know and love started when these naked vamps came to earth that other time, a long long time ago.

The finale defies description. Here is the best I can do. Carlson and Caine find vampire chick in a church, and she and Carlson get (wait for it) naked and engage in the least sexy naked kissing I have ever seen. Carlson then sacrifices himself by impaling himself and the girl in a kind of naked-ke-bob, before the church explodes (from the sheer absurdity, I guess) and they're both sucked up into the spaceship. The end.

There's not much this story has in common with traditional vampire stories. No stake through the heart or aversion to sunlight. In fact, literally the only way to kill one of these creatures is by impaling them with lead, not a wooden stake. There are a lot more sci-fi type effects here than blood, and it looks like this movie single-handedly kept Spencer Gifts in business, because half of the lighting effects resemble those plasma globes. That's not a criticism, because it all looks rather awesome. But it's 80s awesome, if you take my meaning.

Anyway, it's still a lot of fun (though it's longer than it needs to be). Occasionally genuinely scary, even more occasionally hysterical, and naked with disturbing frequency. There's also a pretty cool score by Henry Mancini (of "Pink Panther," "Moon River," and "Peter Gunn" fame).

Check out the super-crazy finale, embedded below, if you dare. Um, I mentioned the nakedness, right? Okay you've been warned.