Will is a member of the Television Critics Association and has written for Decider.com, the Onion A.V. Club, The Dissolve, Indiewire, Rhino.com, TV Week Magazine, The Virginian-Pilot, Popdose.com, and EW.com along with writing for Bullz-Eye.com and Premium Hollywood.
…but, c’mon, a 1972 McDonald’s training film is still worth posting, don’t you think?
Posted Jan 06, 2006
If I’d only been able to watch this in 1986, when I began my stint with Mickey D’s, maybe I wouldn’t have been such an asshole…
Halloween is the time of year when studios decide to empty their vaults of everything even remotely frightening and foist it upon a public who enjoys being scared. As I mentioned yesterday, the quality of the material ranges from legitimately good to downright excruciating, and as the years go on, we’re also finding the market flooded with the same material simply being reissued and re-reissued and re–re-reissued. Once in awhile, though, you get handed a film that’s either never been on DVD before or is almost impossible to find anymore, and that’s the case for 1/3 of Fox’s brand new set, “The Fly Collection,” which rounds up the fondly-remembered first two films in the saga of the Delambre family – “The Fly” and “Return of The Fly” – then also resurrects the oft-forgotten 3rd film, 1965’s “The Curse of the Fly.”
David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the original film was actually a successful modernization of the tale of a scientist whose attempts to master the technology of teleportation go awry when his DNA is accidentally melded with that of a common housefly. Unfortunately, the special effects of a ’50s film obviously can’t compete with those of an ’80s film (especially not one made for the kind of budget that Cronenberg had to work with), so a lot of people tend to dismiss the original “Fly” because, oh, well, the guy’s got a big, fake-looking fly head.
Don’t be one of those people.
In fact, Kurt Neumann’s 1958 adaptation of the George Langelaan short story worked remarkably well for its era, with Neumann wisely choosing to avoid showing the aforementioned fly head for as long as possible…and, even when we do see it, it’s not the almost-cartoonish creature that you see on the cover of the DVD set, which is actually a shot from “Return of The Fly.” The head of the creature in “The Fly” actually looks comparatively realistic, and because of the emotional build-up to the reveal, we actually find ourselves not focusing on it nearly as much as we otherwise might have. “The Fly” is very much a tale like “The Phantom of the Opera,” with scientist Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) accidentally fusing himself with the fly in the process of testing his own invention, then pleading for his wife, Helene (Patricia Owens), to assist him in finding the other half of his experiment – the fly with a human head and hand, of course – before his brain gives in to the fly side of his being. Naturally, she’s horrified by his appearance, which he hides from her for the majority of the film, but even once she’s seen how he now looks, the bond of love between them proves stronger, which is why she finally agrees to his request to kill him and destroy both his head and hand beneath a metal press (yikes!) so that no-one will know what’s happened. Inevitably, we do see the fly with a human’s head and hand, and although the special effects may be laughable by today’s standards, the horrific, high-pitched shrieking of the creature as it’s being eaten by a spider – “Help meeeeeeeeeee!” – is still creepy stuff in 2007.
Here’s a comic-book-movie analogy for you: if last week’s “Heroes” season premiere was “Spider-Man,” where we got all the back story and set up out of the way, then this week’s episode was “Spider-Man 2.” Or, in other words, it dispensed with all the boring crap and just set straight to kicking ass and taking names.
Note to self: if I ever get amnesia and end up tied up in the back of a bar in Dublin, remind me to answer all of my captor’s questions so I don’t get a fierce arse beating. Still, Peter managed a nice comeback right around the half-hour mark of the episode. And, y’know, it was right around then that I noticed something else: did Peter reform himself after he exploded and give himself a better build, or did Milo Ventimiglia just spend the summer working out? Either way, dude looked downright musclebound when he swaggered out of the back room. The whole “Peter’s identity in a box” thing seems odd, but I’m willing to wait and see how it plays out.
For one shining moment during this episode, you could almost believe that the Bennet family was normal…well, until Claire drove off to school, anyway. It was back to business when HRG and the missus started chatting about the death of Hiro’s dad. Looks like the search for the seven remaining Isaac Mendez originals is going to be an ongoing plot thread throughout this season. By the way, I couldn’t believe that Mrs. Bennett actually got a funnhis season that didn’t involve her being eccentric; I grinned when, after Claire reached into the boiling water to retrieve the wedding ring, she said, “We do have a colander, dear. No need to be flashy.”
It seems so weird that Ando and Matt have never before, given that we’ve watched a year’s worth of “Heroes” episodes involving both of them, but it looked like we weren’t going to get much in the way of development on the whole “who killed Mr. Nakamura?” storyline this week…but, then, there was the great scene when Mama Petrelli realized that Matt was reading her mind and promptly “yelled” at him, which was followed by our first official “oh, shit” moment of Season 2, courtesy of the unexpected attack on Mama Petrelli. The sudden cuts back and forth between the attack and Matt and Nathan running to try and stop it made for a highly disconcerting effect.
If there’s one thing Bullz-Eye and Premium Hollywood readers alike know about me by now, it’s that I’m way too polite for my own good…but even *I* couldn’t find anything more polite to say about “Cavemen” in my Fall TV preview than lines like this…
“Given how people reacted to the mere idea of transforming a series of Geico commercials into a 30-minute sitcom, you’d think that the producers would’ve set their sights on being the best damned comedy of the new season. Instead, they’ve got a heavy-handed and horribly-failed attempt at poking fun at the foolishness of racism, one which will almost certainly have the NCAAP foaming at the mouth.”
…and this:
“Any series which falls back on a parody of ‘Baby Got Back’ in 2007 deserves whatever horrific fate may befall it. If ‘Cavemen’ lasts more than a few episodes, it’ll either be because the writers have figured out what went so horribly, horribly wrong, or, more likely, because people are perversely fascinated by how incredibly bad it is.”
Do I feel bad about making these statements? No, because, hand on heart, the pilot really was that bad. But after having the opportunity to speak to Joe Lawson, who wrote and created the original GEICO commercials that inspired “Cavemen,” I was surprised to find that I was actually kind of looking forward to seeing more of the series…and, honestly, I didn’t necessarily expect that. I’ve got a pretty open mind, and I was planning to keep it open while watching the premiere episode (which, you may have heard, will not be the pilot episode that most of us critics ripped to shreds), but was I actually looking forward to watching it? Not so much. But as you’ll see from this conversation between Lawson and myself, he manages to explain away the pilot without actually defending it, which is a pretty impressive accomplishment in and of itself, while also coming across as a guy who really does think he’s got a good sitcom on his hands.
We’ve only got one thing left to mention in the preface, and that’s that a few quotes from this piece have already appeared in an article for The Virginian-Pilot, since the only reason Lawson and I came to chat in the first place was because of his connection to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia…but The Pilot only wanted 300 words, and since I had just much good stuff left over, it seemed like a shame to waste it!
Okay, read on…!
We get a lot of scary DVDs here at the Bullz-Eye offices…and we’re not just talking about “I Love New York: Season One,” although lord knows that certainly qualifies. No, we’re talking about stuff that falls into the horror genre; sometimes it’s legitimately good stuff, sometimes it’s absolutely excruciating, but whatever the level of quality, it’s all brought front and center whenever October rolls around and spotlighted as part of the festivities surrounding Halloween. Since we’ve got a pretty decent backlog of stuff lying around here, we decided that we’d offer up a Scare of the Day for every day this month…and what better way to start off than with something from the A’s?
I can still remember when “Alligator” played at the Great Bridge Twin, in Chesapeake, Virginia. I didn’t actually see it there – I was only nine years old when it opened – but I definitely saw the trailer for it before some movie or other, and, damn, it scared the hell out of me…and I was still intimidated by the film a few years later, when we finally got cable and it was showing in regular rotation on some premium network or other. Unsurprisingly, watching the film now doesn’t exactly provide the same level of fright (to say the least), but what is surprising is that “Alligator” is actually a highly entertaining flick.
The original goal of “Alligator” seems to have been to parody “Jaws” while still creating a legitimately frightening film. The grade-B special effects means that it succeeds more at the former than the latter, but, for the record, I can still see how a 9-year-old boy, even if he wasn’t as naive as I was at that age, would get freaked out by it. (I mean, come on: a kid gets devoured by a giant alligator in his own pool, for God’s sake! It’s one thing to be scared of sharks in the ocean, but when even your own pool isn’t safe…?) Of course, the 37-year-old me is far more impressed by the fact that the film stars Robert Forster, who played bail bondsman Max Cherry in “Jackie Brown,” and was written by John Sayles, who went on to write and direct movies such as “Matewan,” “Eight Men Out,” “Passion Fish,” and “Lone Star.”
The premise of the film takes the old urban legend about baby alligators being flushed down people’s toilets and growing to gargantuan size in the sewers, then explains away the growth by claiming it’s the work of various scientific experiments with growth hormones; actually, the experiments are being done on dogs, but the dog corpses are being disposed of in the sewers, where the alligators are feasting on them. Forster plays the cop who first sees the giant alligator, but, naturally, no one believes him until the creature goes more public with its dining. Given that the movie is an unapologetic “Jaws” parody, “Alligator” provides a Quint equivalent in Colonel Brock, a big-time big game hunter who vows to catch the beast; Henry Silva plays the character with all the bluster and ego he can muster, even going so far as to hire urban youngsters to serve as aides to the Great White Hunter. Silva isn’t the only great character actor in the film; we’re also treated to enjoyable performances from Dean Jagger (Harvey Stovall in “Twelve O’Clock High”), Sidney Lassick (Charlie Cheswick in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), and Michael Gazzo (Frank Pentageli in “The Godfather Part II”).
Probably the best bits about this DVD reissue are the special features; we’re treated to a lengthy on-camera interview with John Sayles about his experience working on the film, as well as audio commentary from Forster and the film’s director, Lewis Teague, who went on to helm “Cujo” and “Cat’s Eye.” Given this information, it may not surprise you to learn that Stephen King once went on the record in describing “Alligator” as his all-time favorite monster movie…but, frankly, if you don’t dwell on the highly iffy FX or the unabashedly fake blood and instead just enjoy the fun, you’ll totally see where King’s coming from.
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