Consider the ascent of Alex Garland. His hit novel “The Beach” got him contact with Danny Boyle, who made a less-than-well-received film adaptation. From there, he would go on to script “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine,” before writing other critically acclaimed bits of British sci-fi like “Never Let Me Go” and “Dredd.” Even though Garland didn't direct these films, his aesthetic – reflective of a certain British kind of sci-fi pessimism, influenced by Kubrick, punk rock, and 2000AD – was apparent throughout. It was inevitable that Garland would make the leap to directing himself. “Ex Machina,” his directional debut, represented his style so very clearly. Another early genre hit for A24, the film was a critical hit and remains a movie nerd favorite.
The premise of “Ex Machina” is fairly simple: Billionaire tech-bro Nathan Bateman invites genius programmer Caleb to his isolated compound. There, he's tasked with giving a Turing test to Ava, the feminine robot Nathan has created. Yet Garland's script uses this easily understood premise to explore a number of cerebral ideas. “Ex Machina” raises questions of technology, consciousness, surveillance, and gender. We're asked to question the ethics of inventing A.I., of what it means to be alive and conscious. At one point, Caleb is cutting himself to make sure he's not a robot either. He's always observed by Nathan, who also uses his Google-like search engine to spy on the entire world. There's a hundred ideas here about questions facing our world and a culture that is quickly turning science fiction into science fact.
As “Ex Machina” progresses, its thrills become grislier. Garland's direction is precise. Rob Hardy's cinematography, when combined with the brilliantly sterile set designs, creates a chilly atmosphere. Every time Caleb and Ava are bathed in red light, during the power outages of debatable origin, that sense of inhuman grimness increases. The characters are alive and human but there's still a scientific distance between us and them, befitting a story like this. As Caleb discovers how big a bastard Nathan really is, “Ex Machina” truly makes the leap from strictly sci-fi to horror. Images of fetishtic robot women peeling away their skin, to reveal the cybernetics underneath, combine with disturbingly vivid images of humanoid machines ripped apart. “Ex Machina” is no doubt unsettling, with the level of detachment it approaches these scenes of bodily dismemberment with. And if you truly doubt why I included this one in a horror marathon, it's essentially a killer robot movie by the end. Albeit one that's more sympathetic to the robot than most.
I'm pretty sure “Ex Machina's” final images are meant to be cathartic, though some read it as the beginning of the robot uprising. Yet Ava isn't what scares me in “Ex Machina.” Nathan Bateman is clearly inspired by a number of real life tech CEOs. He owes his fortune to Blue Book, a Google-like search engine he created. Upon learning he's created an intelligent robot, Caleb mentions God... And Nathan assumes he's comparing him to a deity. He later makes a comment about killing people and it's unsure if he's joking. Oscar Isaac doesn't play him as a cold, calculating evil genius but as a hard partying bro. He deflects questions with his smooth dance moves, loves to pump iron, and is boozing throughout the film. He's a much more common type of evil: A billionaire man-child with a God complex, an all-too-believable menace in our world of Elons and Zucks.
I read somewhere, probably in Victoria Price's great biography of her dad, that Vincent Price and American International Pictures were having issues in the early seventies. It seemed to be a typical case of a star realizing his value and the producers refusing to pay him more. This is likely the reason why A.I.P. seemed so eager to turn Robert Quarry into their new horror star. He was a Hollywood bit player, with most of his experience on-stage, and probably couldn't demand the paydays Price wanted. You saw this conflict play out directly in the second “Dr. Phibes” movie, where Price and Quarry squared off against each other. Before that, Quarry's breakout horror role got a sequel. “The Return of Count Yorga” leapt from its casket a year after the first one.
The sequel offers no explanation for Count Yorga's resurrection. The setting this time is an orphanage, where Cynthia is a teacher. At a fundraising costume party, she meets Count Yorga and he's immediately enchanted with her. He sends his vampire brides to kill Cynthia's family and abduct her. The only survivor is the mute maid and a strange boy named Tommy. Cynthia's fiance, David, suspects something is up. He recruits a priest and a pair of detectives on this mission to uncover the truth about Yorga and his brides. Soon enough, everyone ends up at the vampire's manor, fighting for their lives.
Though the writing is definitely worst, “The Return of Count Yorga” is at least better shot than the original. The shaky camerawork that characterized the original is gone, replaced with a slightly sturdier composition. There's even some interesting use of color and lighting. In its best moments, the sequel has a certain ferocity. The scene of the vampire brides killing Cynthia's family is surprisingly brutal. Later, while wandering through the castle, one of Yorga's would-be victims hear the count laughing and calling to her. Yet the film is often undermined by some goofy creative choices. Kelljan must really like the visual of the vampires running in slow-mo towards people with their arms outstretched. He repeats it several times here. That house boat attack is similarly ridiculous in its construction.
I'd be tempted to call “The Return of Count Yorga” a fiasco if the mvoie had any ambitions at all. Instead, it lazily plods along through its hash of subplots until everyone is dead. That includes the count. Plans for a third film were bandied about but never materialized. I guess getting the stakes through the heart stuck this time. Quarry's horror career didn't quite end here. One suspects that those ideas for a third “Yorga” surfaced in “Deathmaster,” another vampire movie Quarry made for AIP. The studio would also cast the actor as the bad guy in “Sugar Hill” before letting him fall by the wayside. Quarry would then become a regular in Fred Olen Ray movies before passing away in 1995. He clearly had talent but I don't think these disorganized, cheesy, cheap vampire movies served him best. “The Return of Count Yorga” improves upon the original in every way except entertainment factor. [5/10]
Here’s an early episode of “The Ray Bradbury Theater,” featuring an introduction from the author himself. It stars Jeff Goldblum as Cogswell, a man on a train who believes that a peaceful life in the country is the solution to many of modern life’s problems. The man seated across from him insists that he’s a soft touch that’s full of it. He convinces him to get off the train in the next random town. Cogswell follows through, even though he’s told that no one ever gets off there. He finds the locals inhospitable and soon realizes an old man is following him around. After talking to the fellow, the stranger confesses a lifelong desire to commit murder and his long-simmering plan: To kill the first stranger he sees walk out of the train station.
“The Town Where No One Got Off” is one of the more cynical Bradbury stories. It tracks a protagonist – a hopeful writer who hasn’t actually sold anything, we learn early on – as his belief that small town life is superior to city life is challenged. When someone says they think life in the country is preferable, what they are really saying is they think people are fundamentally good and that the structure of modern life is what drives humans toward violence. A random stop-off in a random town shows that assumption to be false. There’s definitely a moment in the episode where the viewer is left wondering if Cogswell could be a murderer too. (A prolonged bit of ambiguity that is squandered, one of the weaker elements of an otherwise solid half-hour.) It’s a tasty bit of meanness though, that at least dispels the nostalgic longing for nebulous small town values, a reoccurring element in many of Bradbury’s stories.
“Munsters on the Move” has Herman given a job offer that would move the family to Buffalo. The Munsters' attempts to sell the house does not go so well and Eddie is not happy to hear the news. The family changes their mind but only after Grandpa accidentally sells the house to a road crew, who want to demolish the house. In “Movie Star Munster,” a pair of insurance fraudsters believe Herman can be their new fall guy. They convince the family patriarch that he’s been cast as the star in their new movie. Each scene is an excuse to injure him, so the con men can collect on the insurance money, but obviously this does not go exactly to plan.
While past episodes of “The Munsters” managed to take simple premises and escalate them to sillier places, “Munsters on the Move” is not as strong of an example. Some of the gags in the first half are pretty silly, such as when a pair of prospective buyers – old ladies only interested in selling the antiques inside – get scared off by Spot. Unfortunately, this is another episode with a shitty racial stereotype in it. One of the groups first interested in buying 1313 Mockingbird Lane are a group of traveling “gypsies,” that feed into every stereotype about Romani people. Grandpa even disparages them as fortune tellers, which is a cringe-worthy moment. The episode does build towards an amusingly silly climax, when the Munsters go French Revolutionary on the demolition crew.
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