Movie Appraisal: The Dark Side of the Moon (1990)

Recently I've been enjoying some sweet space horror movies. I've always liked the genre, especially with some spaceship floating through space and finding something waiting out in the cold darkness. It's always been fascinating to me. I mean, look at the tagline of this movie: "Something is waiting." This movie is about space, anything could be waiting. Anything at all. It's what makes space so fascinating, and it's what makes space a perfect place for all the best kinds of horror. You have to be creative when you use space as a medium for sci-fi and for horror. It's not just regular movie monsters jumping out at you, but can be anything from creepy aliens to something very different. Hell, it can even be ourselves. Sometimes we are the demons.

The Dark Side of the Moon was a direct-to-video affair from 1990, directed by D. J. Webster and starring some actors who I recognize and some whom I've never seen before. Joe Turkel is arguably the most famous of the cast (being in Blade Runner will do that for you), and besides my vague recognition of Alan Blumenfeld, Turkel is really the only actor in this movie that I've seen in other sources. I will say that for a direct-to-video movie, it's pretty high quality. There are very few effects, which is a good thing. When they do show up, they're not the best things I've ever seen. Most of the movie's charm comes from watching the actors do their thing and watching the story unfold.

Now, before I get far into this, I have to say that I have a special liking for these types of movies, and I really did enjoy this one. Again, kind of a cheaper sci-fi horror/space horror affair, but it's competent and pretty fun to watch. It has a pretty standard, almost SyFy channel-esque plot and plot twist at times, but the acting and the cinematography are MUCH MUCH better than most direct-to-video crap I've seen in the last decade or so. Hell, this is better than most of the movies I've seen in theatres. I mean, I'd much rather watch this than the travesty, the absolute abomination, that is Black Swan. That movie still makes me angry even almost two years later.

The film starts out on a maintenance spaceship going to fix a satellite only for all systems on the ship to fail. It moves quickly as the crew tries to figure out what's wrong despite all of the systems being green. The ship's computer, a robot woman... uh... thing... named Lesli, tells the crew that nothing is wrong, and yet the ship is rapidly losing both air and heat, and the systems still aren't responding. Now, I have to take a moment and talk about Lesli. Her character is utterly baffling to me. She's a robot computer thing controlling the information of the ship and such, but she's also somehow a beautiful woman for some reason. She never moves out of the chair she's sitting in, and she never truly has any real relevance to the plot beyond being used as an exposition machine. She has a beauty mark and a whole lot of cleavage, but never is shown to have any effect on any of the male crew members who treat her as a machine and nothing more... all the while the one female crew member, Alex, is hit on by basically all of the slimebag characters. Lesli also seems to have some element of artificial intelligence rather than just being a computer, but I'm still baffled. Why does she exist as an actual person? Can she move out of her seat? Can she move at all? Why was she made like that? Does she have functionality close to what a human would? Why didn't they simply make her a gynoid then? She became kind of the central question to me. She was treated as an utterly normal thing to have on a ship (maybe a little experimental with Joe Turkel's character taking care of her, but still...) and it seemed that most of the suspicion for earlier events of the movie fell onto her, but she was never really utilized. Why didn't she do anything? Why was her presence never really a thing? Why did the antagonist presumably try to take her over? And more importantly, why did he fail? I was much more interested in what the hell Lesli was and what she represented and how she was being portrayed than I was in the actual plot of the movie. I still have no idea why she existed in her form in the movie besides being good to look at, but why waste the resources and the time and money and such to have that character when a computer would have been sufficient? I mean this as a question both in the universe of the movie and to the filmmakers. I mean, Camilla More did a fine job as the character, but I'm still baffled by Lesli's presence in the film. I guess if I had the choice I would have used her in some way, used her to make a statement or as a central protagonist or ally to the antagonist. When Joe Turkel's character Paxton goes rogue, I assumed he would shut off control of Lesli's character. It was set up earlier in the film that he could do that with a swipe of his hand, just shut off certain controls to certain crewmembers. That's why I thought he was visiting her near the end of the movie. But no. He went to visit her so she could tell him to back off... and I guess he did? I'm so baffled that my head hurts. I could go on about this for a very long time. It's easily the most confusing and most interesting part of the film. It sets it apart from other films of this type, but still has no reason to be in the movie. Why is she there? What is her purpose? Why wasn't she put to better use? I mean... if I has a robot that could move and was humanesque... well, I would have sent her into the shuttle the crew finds, instead of risking the lives of the crew. Okay, I'm going to stop. I could keep harping on this for a long time.

So, anyway, the ship finds another ship, this one a lost space shuttle, drifting towards them and then eventually docking with them. Nobody is alive on board though. The shuttle does give them both air and some hope, but that doesn't last long. The shuttle has a ton of water damage for seemingly no reason and eventually they find a body in a standard sci-f horror way. The doctor, Dreyfus Steiner (played by Alan Blumenfeld), discovers that the body has a perfect triangle cut into its stomach... and that's when the plot gets a little ridiculous. It all has to do with the Bermuda Triangle and a corresponding triangle on the dark side of the moon, and all that space in between somehow. It's a really silly plot, really SyFy movie schlock, but it actually works kind of well as long as you don't think too hard about the whole thing and how it would work because the moon... you know... orbits the entire Earth and the Earth rotates itself. Also, since the FAR SIDE OF THE MOON is not always dark, there really isn't a DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. It would be like calling the where it is night on Earth "The Dark Side of the Earth." It's silly. (Yes, I know that the term references a radio blackout to and from Earth from that far side of the moon, but most people think of it as an actually dark place which is totally false.)

Yeah, the sci-fi of the movie is weird. Thinking about the movie too long in most aspects of it will make your head ache. It has a Biblical plot tied in with the Bermuda Triangle too... because why not. And let me tell you that the religious aspect is dealt with in the most awkward way possible, showing some of the crew having religious affiliations just fro the express purpose of showing parts of the crew having certain religious affiliations. It's not well handled, with the captain crossing himself at one point despite never mentioning religion the rest of the time, the doctor being Jewish suddenly and inexplicably before having it forgotten before and afterwards, and the body of Gotier having a cross around its neck. And the Devil is some kind of parasite that leeches onto a certain body and gets transmitted through the triangle in the possessed people's stomachs.

The effects for the devil are ridiculous. He's not scary, quoting Biblical passages at me and being so over-the-top evil. It's kind of silly rather than terrifying. There is a scene in this movie as well that's also kind of baffling as the Devil goes to take over his first living victim. There is a weird nude scene... but I already found the objectification of women off here with Lesli. With Alex showing her breasts its all kinds of why? What I mean is that in some of these movies the girls get naked for some reason... a reason that I guess only the filmmakers know. I don't mind it. I mean, seriously, who minds a little nudity from time-to-time? But in my opinion the nudity felt incredibly awkward and out of place in a movie that was kind of sterile and felt like a good made-for-TV movie. I mean even the gore effects are pretty tame... and yet... nudity?  I guess it goes together with the B-movie status of most of these films, but I find it kind of strange. I haven't seen too many other movies this summer (besides Possession) to have a girl show off her assets. And it's weird that it would be this movie to be the first in a while to have a girl get naked in front of the camera.

Anywho, the pacing of the movie is pretty good. I found myself interested in the movie the entire time. I was never bored, never wished for it to be over. The ending was good, although I think some people would be unhappy with it. I honestly feel that it should have ended with the Devil succeeding... but that's okay. It worked well the way they did it.

I honestly enjoyed this movie quite a bit despite certain failures of the plot and sense. I enjoyed the characters, enjoyed the situation, and found the movie acceptable in most ways. It is highly reminiscent (even though it came out before these movie) of Event Horizon and Sunshine, but much, much worse than either of those films. I still haven't reviewed Sunshine, have I? That's a movie I have to get around to watching again. Hell, I've been wanting to watch Event Horizon again too. I love that movie so much.

Well, anyway, I guess I'm moving into doing some space horror movie reviews. I was on an Asian horror binge for a while, and I do have more to watch and more will be incoming, but I need a break from those movies at times. The ones I've seen are all very similar to one another and most... although being creepy at times... are rather dry and boring at others. I recently took some time and saw Whispering Corridors and Apartment 1303, a Korean and a Japanese movie respectively, but haven't written reviews of either of them yet. They'll be coming, I just don't know when. I also saw Roger Corman's Galaxy of Terror, and I can't wait to put out a review of that.

Uh... oh no... I'm getting away from The Dark Side of the Moon! It's a decent movie, but one I would not recommend unless these types of movies are your thing. There are many better space horror movies, and this one is more average and kind of dumb when compared to others. I enjoyed it though although as you can tell I had way too many unanswered questions that I was baffled by in the end. That took away from my ultimate enjoyment of the movie.

Movie Appraisal: Nightflyers (1987)

Here's a movie that deserves a review more than most movies I review. See, some of the movies I review are definitely bad or arguably quality. The quality films I never have much to say about. Mostly I reiterate why I think the movie is quality and why the movie seems to be a quality movie. Yeah, I can go on for a while about how a good film might have good effects, good acting, good directing, and good pacing, but honestly most of the good movies I watch and review are relatively boring to review. The same is obviously not true for an utterly terrible movie. I can go on and on and rant until my fingers bleed about how a bad movie is literally the worst thing ever. At the same time there are many mediocre films I review as well, with most of them presenting their own unique problems.

Most of the movies that I analyze are mediocre films. Ones that have the ability of both being much better and much worse films than they are. Each is fun to review because they all present a unique challenge for review because, to be a mediocre film you have to either succeed or fail in different categories or you have to  be an utterly cookie-cutter film with no real quality besides not being terrible and having some competence. Well, Nightflyers is a mediocre film on a whole, but has both very good and very bad qualities to it. It's based on a novella by George R. R. Martin that I've never read before, although it seems as though it was better received than the movie was at least.

I've seen reviews of this film go anywhere from saying this movie is amazing to saying it is the worst thing ever made. I like films like this simply because of all the differing opinions and because I think the truth of this movie lies somewhere in between the two extremes although I have to say that the visuals of this film really put it into the realm of more negative than positive.

There are way too many negatives aspects of this movie. The pacing is all over the place, never feeling consistent and never feeling comfortable with the pacing of its story. The characters are pretty one-dimensional despite the film having the feeling that everybody involved wanted the characters to have more meaning than that. The sets are generic. The scenes are either too light or too dark. The visuals throughout the film are such a mess that there's no way to accurately describe how much of a mess they are. And the directing of the actors is sometimes absolutely baffling. I have to point out that Robert Collector, the director of the film, did ask to have his name removed from the credits after obviously some issues during editing. He is instead credited with the pseudonym T. C. Blake. And the editing reflects the idea that no director really seems to have had a say in the final cut of the movie. It's all over the place, rarely has a consistent pacing, and works against itself constantly. Visually, this film is a trainwreck, possibly one of the biggest trainwrecks in the visual department that I have ever seen. It is ugly, drab, and never really feels comfortable with its style or visuals to the point where I had trouble believing this was a horror film or believing it was a sci-fi film. My suspension of disbelief was absolutely shattered time and time again. I also have to add that I hated the opening narration. A film that is any good doesn't need an opening narration. This one didn't need it either, but there it was.

That paragraph right there seems to be saying I didn't like any aspects of the film at all... but that's not true. I liked some parts of it, and that was some of the most disappointing aspects of the movie. The script and the dialogue were really well done, reminding me of better science fiction films all the while I was watching this one. The story is pretty solid, being an odd amalgamation of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Event Horizon with maybe some Alien mixed in for good measure. The villain is reminiscent of HAL (VERY REMINISCENT), and I kind of liked that, especially because this movie is nowhere near as pretentious as 2001 certainly is. Although I hated the psychic aspects of the movie, the psychic characters were some of my favorites, and the backstory of seeing a specific psychic as a witch was actually intriguing. I liked a great deal of the science dealt with in the film, and the premise of the people on the expedition going to find extraterrestrial life was one that I thought was both fun and interesting. The crazy computer plot was enjoyable, as they often are, and the gore was both tastefully done and well crafted. I did like some of the costumes (the ones that were not incredibly 1980s). And the middle of the film was pretty good in general.

So, here were many aspects of this movie I liked... and there were many aspects of this movie I couldn't stand at all. Overall I mostly enjoyed the film, finding it more entertaining than not even if it was incredibly derivative at times. The visuals on this thing are terrible though, reminding me more of 1950s sci-fi B-movies than late 1980s horror sci-fi. That's basically unforgivable, really taking away from any positives this movie could have offered. I think it's a slap in the face to say this about any film, but this movie would have worked better as a radio drama... at least then I wouldn't have had to stare at the rotten visuals for 89 minutes.

I can't recommend this film. In fact I'm actively going to tell people to stay away from this flick. It's not good enough to spend the time watching, and it's not bad enough to deride. This would be a prime candidate to remake with better visuals and a better cast. (Although I will admit that most of the actors were pretty decent, some moreso than others though.) It's basically an utterly mediocre film that doesn't add much to the genre and is entirely forgettable and very drab. I bet tomorrow I won't even remember I had ever watched it, and sadly... that's all for the best.

Movie Appraisal: Apollo 18 (2011)

So, that was fun.

Okay, I have to admit that I like these kinds of movies, not sure why, but I like the idea of them. There's something about space or the sea... some kind of abandoned ship in one of those places that appeals to me in a visceral kind of way. I loved Pandorum, Ghost Ship, Sunshine, and Event Horizon... probably others too, but I can't remember all of them... or maybe I just did mention every last one I've ever seen. Who knows? My point is that Apollo 18 is similar to those movies without being the same kind of rehashed plot. In many ways this movie is equal parts Sunshine (let's use that as an example) and Paranormal Activity, and it makes a fairly fun movie.

This is a found footage film and I think it works well as that except in a few cases where I was confused about where the shots were actually coming from. Some of the wider shots left me confused. I would assume that there is some explanation as to where they came from: the rover or something, but I found it a bit mystifying at times.

I also found the movie, although it was fairly short, to be very slow-paced. Now, usually I like slow-paced films, but this one seemed to be much less about creating a mysterious atmosphere than creating any believable bonds to the characters... or even creating true horror. I suppose this should be classified as a horror movie, but... well, it isn't very scary, nor is it very suspenseful. You know right away what's going to happen. You know the plot before the movie even begins. It becomes heavy-handed and somewhat clumsy at telling its own story.

The plot and story are both strong here, but again, the heavy-handedness of what the filmmakers are trying to say undermines a lot of what could have made the story great. So, no, this isn't a great movie. It was a fun movie. It was a movie I enjoyed watching for the most part, but it will never be one of those great movies I hold onto throughout my entire life.

The characters are basically there to exist. They don't really matter. You can tell me that you love Nate or Ben or John and tomorrow I'll forget who those characters even were. They don't matter. Their personalities don't matter. They could have been named gruff commander who is going to go crazy, dashing and handsome young captain who will die at the end while thinking about his family, and guy who basically does nothing in the course of this movie and it would basically come down to the same thing. Or they could all be named Man and that's about as much characterizations as we get out of them. They are astronauts. They are cool people who are doing something awesome. Heroes, not villains. Well, that's what you get out of characters.

The setting is the mainstay of this movie. It's the freaking moon. Everybody wants to go to the moon and everybody was unhappy when the moon program was cancelled due to budget cuts and such. So, a horror movie based off of an unheard of mission to the moon with everybody dying horrible deaths?I think everybody loves hat premise. And it was executed well, not perfectly, but certainly predictably. Obviously the Soviets had to land somebody on the moon too, obviously they didn't return, obviously the American lander would get broken and they'd have to use the Soviet ship to escape, and obviously they would all die. Oh, and obviously there would be moon monsters because what fun is making any movie when you don't have moon monsters? If I ever make a movie I'm inserting moon monsters into it regardless of what genre the movie is. If it's a freaking romantic comedy there will be moon monsters. The movie will take place on the moon and it will be about moon monsters falling in love.

Okay, I'm being dumb, but I'm trying to make a point here. The moon monsters are dumb. The phrase moon monsters is not intimidating, it is not scary. Showing those moon monster spiders is basically undermining the entire premise of me trying to be afraid of something unknown. I see that they are moon monster spiders. What's there to be afraid of? Just spray some bug spray or something... whack 'em with a hammer, and you're good. I'm obviously trying to be a big jokester, but my point is valid. Showing the moon spiders just makes the monster a whole lot less scary. I was much more intrigued when the monster was a simple rock. The moment it started movie inside of old grizzled commander's helmet I found myself chuckling at the obvious CGI. It took me right out of the movie. I mean, it didn't happen often with the monsters, and for the most part it was handled pretty well, but it was a huge misstep and left me with a shattered perception of a moon movie without crazy moon monsters.

The moon shots were well done for the most part, and I really did like it when the young heroic astronaut was inside of the crater. That was incredibly well done, with the flashing light or whatever that was supposed to be. Although why he just didn't have a flashlight is beyond me. Is there some reason that flashlights don't work on the moon that I don't quite understand? Again, don't get me wrong, I thought the scene was well done, but a flashlight would have been superior for what they were doing unless moon flashlights don't exist, which I suppose is a valid reason for them not using one. I just have no idea myself, and it stuck in my mind as a question. Both crater scenes were well done. I liked how I literally could not tell what was going on in either scene and there was a big hectic feeling all around. I liked that. It was well paced and well done all around. If that had been the only time we see the little moon monsters, I would have been okay with it, but no... no, of course that's not the only time.

As for other elements of the movie... uh... when they're in the spacesuits, it's pretty cool. I mean, that had to be fun for the actors. The Soviet lander was a nice, if all too predictable, touch. I liked it when they notice the different footprints in the moon dust. That was neat and had the exact right tone for what was happening. Sometimes the acting was not the best, and there were certain "What the hell is going on?" moments from the actors that felt incredibly hammy. A lot of movies insist on using that line, and I suppose it might be used if we were in that situation in real life, but the delivery of the lines just did not do the line justice at all and came off as hammy all around. It's a nitpick, but I've seen that line used poorly way too often and I want to say that it's a real problem.

The radio sounds were also a nice touch, but they did get old after a while, kind of bogging down the movie, being a convenient and not readily explainable reason for the two mooned astronauts to be cut off from everybody else. I thought it was kind of silly towards the end of the movie even if early in the movie the communications disruptions were subtle and appropriate.

Oh, and I have to say that the government being full of awful people is always something I have to like. There's something about a bunch of bad men who are absolutely ruthless running the country that appeals to me so much even though I'd absolutely hate it. The government, in this movie, are absolute jerks (I want to use a harsher word than jerk by the way.) and I love every second of knowing that those careful jerks are probably right about their logic. I don't particularly think that the government is well portrayed in this movie if you want a sympathetic and namby-pamby (That's a term, right?) government, but if you want a ruthless, "We're sending you guys out there to see what's out there and also so that you probably all die alone in space." type of of government, that's the one you get in this movie. I love to hate them. It's fantastic.

Altogether, I did like this movie even if it was all over the place in terms of pacing, plotting, and quality. It was predictable, sure, but I, for one, would have been disappointed if certain elements weren't there. It was a fun movie and one that anybody who is a fan of these sorts of movies should try out. If you don't like found footage films or movies like Pandorum, Sunshine, or Event Horizon... I guess Solaris counts as well... then you should avoid it.

Movie Appraisal: Pandorum (2009)

I don't know what it is about critics, but I rarely agree with them about horror films, except possibly the more beautiful and artistic "horror" films like Jacob's Ladder, I suppose. After watching this film, I decided to see exactly what the critics thought of it, and I was unsurprised to find that they mostly hated it. This kind of film simply is not something a film critic could ever like. I say this knowing that a lot of films I like critics seem to hate. I almost get the feeling that these critics don't like psychological horror, science fiction, action-intensive, character-driven, beautiful films... and those are the very things that drive me to fall in love with any given film.

I think very obvious comparisons can be drawn to Event Horizon. Both films enjoy very similar ideas of a spacecraft dying on a mission. Paul W. S. Anderson was also attached to both films. He directed Event Horizon and he was a producer of Pandorum. The psychological horror aspects of both films are also very obvious and, to me, very well done. As a lover of the psychological horror genre, it was no hard for me to predict everything of this movie from nearly the first moment I knew what the plot was, but it was riveting, playing with twists and turns like a crazy road leading to a creepy castle. I think I prefer Event Horizon though. I think Sam Neill really made that movie into something amazing. Dennis Quaid does a good job in his role, but I feel that he never really does enough to have this be an outstanding performance. Most of the psychological horror involves his character and he never really leaves the room he starts out in. What I'm saying is that if you want a film involving space madness and you want a good actor to be the crazy dude, I'd choose Sam Neill over Dennis Quaid every time.

The plot is basic at best, but a basic plot is still interesting. I find this film to pretty much be something like Event Horizon mixed with Mad Max (1979) and maybe having a little bit of some kind of creepy alien or monster movie in there for good measure. It's a good film with a simple premise. The actors are decent although there were times I had trouble figuring out what they were trying to say or do. I felt some of the characters motivations were spotty at best sometimes, and some of the solutions to plot points seems a little forced at times.

Any movie that deals with amnesia is always a tough one to sell. I thought this one did a good job though... kind of in the same way I thought Unknown (2006) did a decent job with the same kind of plot point. I did have to question a few things at the end, but a character actually questioned a plot hole for me, and really received no good answer. So,what I'm going to believe is that the filmmakers saw the plot hole, put the line in, and then just figured it was all cool. All right. I have no real complaints. It had bothered me before it was questioned, but having the question out there, even if the plot hole remains, makes me feel better.

I guess I have a thing for movies about dead ships, be they actual boats or spaceships. I never knew I actually had a thing for movies like that, but it really seems as though I do. I really did enjoy this film. It captivated me from start to finish. If you've ever seen Event Horizon and you liked it, you'll like this film because it's more of the same kind of thing. If you hated Event Horizon or Ghost Ship or hate the whole premise of these kinds of movies, then you're going to hate this film, guaranteed. I really liked this film. It was fun to watch and I'm glad I did get to see it.

I do have one other complaint and that's the monster/alien/mutant... things. I liked them, but I liked seeing less of them. I like the less is more style of filmmaking, and I feel that showing us these things all over the place in the second half of the film wasn't as interesting as not really seeing them and not knowing what they are like in the first half. I think that's just a personal preference though. They did look pretty damn creepy and I thought they worked well as primary antagonists, although I think that I would have rather had more explained about them or less... it felt like the filmmakers took a very middle ground and it kind of ended up with me being kind of confused and wondering exactly what was going on.

Anyway, I did like this film. I thought it was fun. It may not be the best film ever, but some of the scenes are incredibly memorable. One in particular occurs during the end with the main character, Corporal Bower (played by Ben Foster), doing some shenanigans very near a bunch of the creatures. I liked that scene a lot, thought it was very tense, very fun to watch... and I guess that's really all I can say about this film. It's a nice science fiction, psychological horror film that's fun to watch. It's never going to be the best film ever, but it works as a fun little horror flick to make one happy in these interesting days.