The FALLOUT 3 Reviews: Logan's Run (1976)

In 1967, William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnston penned a novel that had the potential to be one of the most scathing critiques of humanity ever written. Sadly, it was a work that didn't really aspire to lofty heights and settled for something slightly above mediocrity.

It portrayed a world where human self-indulgence had literally made the earth uninhabitable and it drew a picture where 60's Counterculture and the Sexual Revolution had gone into overdrive and suddenly became the thing they despised the most: the establishment.

The 60's hippie mantra of "don't trust anyone over 30" became a law enforced with an iron hand and unyielding lethality.

Welcome to the world of Logan's Run.

The late 1960's to mid 1970's saw yet another boom in the lucrative Sci-Fi film market. 20 Century Fox scored big in 1968 with Planet of the Apes and rumors were that they were working on yet another large sci-fi project (which turned out to be Star Wars).

MGM decided that they needed a franchise of their own to compete at the box office so they tapped Michael Anderson to direct an abridged version of Logan's Run. The pressure was on since the summer of the previous year saw the box office titan, JAWS, hit the big screens and all of a sudden, the timeframe between the middle of May and the end of August became the focal point of a movie studio's major releases.

The Summer Blockbuster was born.

While very successful (earning an Oscar for visual effects, a Saturn for Best Film, and earned $50 million on a $9 million budget), Logan's Run was doomed to be eclipsed by the sci-fi films that followed, primarily Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and Alien (1979).

As far as the plot goes, the film never really delves all that deeply into the more satirical parts of the Logan novels and wisely sticks to telling the basic story within a fairly resonable runtime.

In this dystopia, overpopulation and war have all but destroyed the human race. Mankind now lives in domed cities where their every need (from food to plastic surgery to human companionship via "The Circuit") is provided for by the computer that runs all housekeeping and life-support functions.

Population control is given a rather ritualistic twist. In the future all births are achieved through cloning. Sexual contact is purely recreational (and encouraged) but pregnancy is outlawed.

Each clone is fitted with a gem embedded in the palm of their left hand known as a lifeclock. At the age of 30, the lifeclock turns black and the citizen must go to Carousel where they are subsequently put to death.

There is a strong belief in this new society that despite the obvious genocide taking place, some souls will actually be reused for future clones and thus everyone has a shot at immortality.

Dystopia being what it is, we outside observers know that the promise of renewal is pure bunk and so does the computer that runs everything. Therefore, the computer correctly hypothesizes that it will require some sort of security detachment to help enforce its will. That's where the Sandmen come in, and where Logan 5 (Michael York) enters the picture.

Those who try to escape their fate on Carousel are dubbed "runners," and it is a Sandman's job to terminate all runners.

Through the course of events of the film, the computer realizes that there is a small percentage of the population that remains unaccoutned for and assumes that despite its best efforts, citizens who decide to run are somehow managing to escape the confines of the domed city.

In a ruthlessly efficient response, the computer tasks Logan 5 with a secret mission. It alters Logan 5's lifeclock to make it appear as if Logan 5 is approaching his 30th birthday and then sends him out to make contact with any runner he can, so that he may follow the runner to Sanctuary (the mythical place where escaped runners have formed their own society) and destroy it.

To this end, Logan 5 enlists the aid of Jessica (Jenny Agutter), a girl that Logan 5 meets through "The Circuit" and correctly suspects has some intention to "run."

To this day, I always include the wonderful folks at the MGM wardrobe department in my bedtime prayers for putting the stunning Miss Agutter in the killer, green piece of nothing you see her draped in below.

Ahem... Anyway...

The following events see Logan and Jessica come to grips with startling realizations (primarily in the terrifying form of the insane robot, Box (Roscoe Lee Brown), and an amusing cameo from Peter Ustinov), catharsis, love, and finally in Logan's case, redemption.

You'll note that no one refers to the termination of runners or the renewal of those on Carousel as "death," and it is this philosophy along with the disturbingly utopian City of Domes that adds to the neo Genesis feel of the film with Logan and Jessica serving as our sci-fi version of Adam and Eve.

When the cost of paradise is paid with lives and individuality, then the only logical conclusion is to flee. Escaping from an Eden where nothing is as it appears to be is a very common theme in sci-fi and Logan's Run manages to put everything in a fairly entertaining package.

Watching Logan's Run in the present day has been bittersweet. The performances from the cast are acceptable enough to push the story along, but it really is a film that prefers style over substance. The story tends to drag during the parts where sleepguns aren't flashing or when Jenny Agutter isn't naked and the plot has holes large enough to drive a truck through.

I honestly think that this could've been one of those movies that might've been better than the book if it it had tried to more clearly address the society issues that the novel (and the novels that followed) only paid lip service to.

The caveat being that despite the rather average storytelling heights the novels aspired to, the basic concepts contributing to the premise were rather brave. The death age in the novels is 21, not 30, and I think that a project featuring young people (even minors) doing the same things that York and company did in this film would've never seen the light of day.

I still don't think society is ready for that sort of film, which probably explains why the oft-promised remake of Logan's Run still languishes in developmental hell. It's sort of tragic really.

In the 60's and early 70's, special effects really weren't at the stage where you could depict the changes in scenery or scope of concept in the Logan novels without spending tens of millions of dollars. The technology just wasn't there at the time.

Nowadays, the easiest thing to handle would be the special effects and it is the details of the story itself (especially in Logan's Run, where society is composed nearly entirely by teens and twenty-somethings) that would generate the most brow creasing and angst from film execs and audiences.

To this day, Logan's Run remains the semi-forgotten stepchild of the afterbirth of the Golden Age of Sci-Fi. An envelope pushing film rather than a groundbreaking one and certainly worth watching, however it certainly pales when compared to the true heavyweights of the genre that showed up when ILM changed all of the rules and Special FX became king.

The FALLOUT 3 Reviews: Gojira (1954) and THEM (1954) - Little Atoms, Big Monsters

"Did you see that? That was nothing, but that's how it always begins. Very small."

- Egg Shen (Victor Wong) from the John Carpenter classic, Big Trouble In Little China.

Individual phobias may vary, but human beings tend to fear two things universally: the unknown and the notion that one day something may be on a higher rung on the food chain than we are.

Few films encapsulate these elements better than the “atomic fables” of the mid to late 1950’s. In 1954, two significant films from this sub-genre were released nearly simultaneously and their influence is felt even to the present day.

Toho’s kaiju epic, Gojira (better known as Godzilla), and Warner Brothers’ blueprint for the big bug movie, THEM.

You really do have to marvel at the beauty of the respective formulae in both movies. Talk to any High School Biology teacher and they’ll give you a laundry list of implausibilities as to why there should be no such things as giant ants or rampaging radioactive dinosaurs, but these two masterpieces play on the fear of the atom so well that rational science goes straight out of the window.

To paraphrase Stephen King’s musing on Coleridge; disbelief isn’t light, it is heavy and the ability of these two movies to hook you in immediately is nothing short of astounding.

When the atom warps nature’s design, all hell breaks loose.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it but as I re-visited these films recently, I had to wonder if the respective antagonists in these films were products of deliberate irony or just the result of some huge pitch meeting. I’d like to think that more thought went into the concepts, but I do tend to give the movie business credit for being smarter than it actually is.

Take the case of THEM.

Mankind facing extinction at the mandibles of giant ants is one of the best examples of role reversal ever. No one really remembers the last time they stepped on an ant because the run of the mill human being that isn’t an entomologist doesn’t place that much weight on the existence of such a lowly creature.

Respect comes from parity or the acknowledgment of inferiority, so when mankind finds out that it may have to compete for its status as dominant species, it stands up and takes notice.

Gojira is equally ironic. In the movie, our nuclear fire spouting antagonist is called everything from a dinosaur to a monster god, but for all intents and purposes it really does act like the dragons of yore.

The thing to note is that in most Asian cultures, dragons are wise, celestial creatures and Japanese dragons in particular tend to have a role as water deities that preserve and sustain life.

Gojira, however, acts like a traditionally European dragon that brings misery and death, as if to imply that the product of the Manhattan Project had the capability of not only corrupting nature but twisting traditional symbols from Japanese folklore.

One of the films I reviewed earlier for this project (Threads) tackles the subject of the destruction of culture as a result of an atomic war, so it is interesting to see Gojira (possibly without meaning to) pay lip service to this issue head on in 1954.

You also have to admire the frankness of both of these films. One of the most iconic scenes in movie history is the scene where the daughter of the dead FBI agent (Sandy Dresher) comes out of her near-catatonia (induced by watching her parents devoured by the ants) when Dr. Medford (Edmund Guenn) tries to revive the child by giving her a whiff of formic acid. (i.e. ants secrete formic acid as both an attack and defense mechanism).

Not only does Medford succeed in bringing the girl out of her stupor, but smell of formic acid also send the poor kid into a blind panic and she begins to scream, "Them!" over and over again. Absolutely blood chilling.

It's at that point when you begin to understand that ants as antagonists are great because the goddamn things are hell bent on the survival of the colony at the expense of any nearby humans regardless of age, race, or sex.

If the ants have to eat your children in order to survive, then so be it.

"Them" will not discriminate.

In retrospect, it was a pretty ballsy move on the part of Warner Brothers to simulate putting a child in peril like that, but the concept of "everyone as prey" drives the fright train with terrifying efficiency for many other sci-fi horror gems like THEM, such as The Blob (made in 1958 and featuring Steve McQueen in one of his first leading roles) and The Blob's superior 1988 reboot featuring Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith.

The monster known as Gojira is also an equal opportunity destroyer, but the true bravery of this film springs from the honest dialogue concerning nuclear proliferation.

In order to stop Gojira, it dawns on Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (the late, great Akihiko Hirata) that he will have to create a weapon far worse than the one that created Gojira in order to destroy the beast (the dreaded OXYGEN DESTROYER!), and wonders if the mere existence of this new weapon will only serve to hasten the destruction of the planet it is supposed to save.

Serizaiwa’s exposition about brinksmanship seems nearly prophetic when you look at the events to follow in the Cold War. As much as I love the Godzilla franchise, I am somewhat saddened by Toho converting Gojira from a mirror darkly into a superhero, because the first film really is a lot more profound than most people give it credit for.

In Gojira and THEM, there is a lot of message and morale behind the respective threats to civilization.

I suppose the most glaring difference in these movies is the portrayal of the military.

In the 50’s, the US Army enjoyed an unprecedented amount of respect as both World Wars solidified its role as savior of democracy. It was only fitting that the Army should be the ultimate protagonist that faced down any unnatural threat to mankind on the Silver Screen.

No matter if the Sci-Fi Golden Age film threat came from giant bugs, big lizards, or aliens in flying saucers, you could pretty much rest assured that Big Green would come out victorious in the end.

In THEM, you still have the military filling the role of protector of humankind, but by the same token you had Dr. Medford (Edmund Guenn) constantly making sinister insinuations about the ants serving as the US's comeuppance for creating the A-Bomb in the first place.

Bitter commentary, indeed. We had ourselves to thank for our pending doom because the ants were just as much our creation as the A-Bomb was.

In short, we asked to be eaten.

Gojira , on the other hand, takes a very cynical view of the military and conflict in general for that matter. No amount of conventional armed force is capable of stopping Gojira; he becomes less of a rampaging kaiju and more of a walking metaphor.

He is Mutually Assured Destruction given life. A colossal, fire-breathing, self-fulfilling prophecy.

As I mentioned before, there is also the intriguing philosophical undertone concerning the Oxygen Destroyer: the weapon used to kill Gojira.

Dr. Serizaiwa assumes (probably correctly) that the only redeemable trait about nuclear weapons is that they are so destructive that no one is foolish enough to use them for fear of obliterating themselves alongwith their enemies.

Serizawa's concern is that the Oxygen Destroyer will provide the world’s armies with the one thing they want most; a WMD with the destructive power of a nuclear weapon but without the nasty by-product of global annihilation..

Or so they think... After all, the damned thing works by splitting the atomic bonds in oxygen molecules, therefore making air unbreathable and fostering decay in cellular tissues.

It is the central message of "at what price?" that makes Gojira a powerful piece of work.

Regrettably, that message was swept away in the campy goodness of subsequent films in the series, but I'm not really complaining since I watch Destroy All Monsters (1968) at least once every three months.

I can’t imagine any serious schlock film buff not having seen either of these movies, but the uninitiated should definitely check out both of them. For those of you that have seen these films, perhaps this bit of analysis on my part will inspire you to watch these gems with a keener eye for the subtle.

Oh, and in case you're wondering about how this relates to Fallout 3, there is a quest in the game entitled THOSE! where the object is to stop a nest of fire-breathing giant ants from destroying a small settlement close to the DC ruins.

I don't think that it is coincidental that the opposition in the quest appears to be a gestalt of antagonists from two sci-fi movies released in the same year and dealing with creatures mutated by radiation, but again I may be overanalyzing things.

The FALLOUT 3 Reviews: Threads (1984)

It's funny how the baggage of our respective zeitgeists dictates our reactions to certain world events. I, myself, am a child of the Cold War and to be honest, when anything remotely psychotic happens in the former Soviet Union in conjunction with the word "missiles," it scares the living crap out of me.

Playing the game, Fallout 3, was a very visceral experience from me because it literally brought one of the biggest demons from my childhood straight to my game console: the aftermath of a global thermonuclear war. The threat of an atomic apocalypse doesn't have the same bite with current generations as it did with mine but when I was coming up, few things were more frightening than mutually assured destruction.

In early 1983, a British writer by the name of Barry Hines asked the dreaded question, "What if?" The end product of his effort was the screenplay for one of the most terrifying pieces of film I can remember sitting through as a young adult.

Threads...

Threads follows the day-to-day drama of two families living in Sheffield, England (the Becketts and the Kemps) against the backdrop of the Global Recession of the mid 80's.

Shortly thereafter and for reasons unexplained, an incident in the Middle East between US and Soviet forces escalates into World War III.

What follows next is a heartbreaking chain of events covering the gambit from nuclear winter, martial law, and radiation sickness to the deterioration of the very fabric of society and even the death of spoken language.

It is the bitter lesson of Lamentations 4:9. Those who die at Ground Zero will be the fortunate ones because they will be spared the horror of the holocaust to come.

Threads is by far the bigger punch to the stomach of the two nuclear war docudramas of the mid 80's (the other being ABC's made for television offering, The Day After). I know this sounds odd, but the injection of the element of hope into The Day After always made it seem like the lesser of the two films in my estimations.

The Day After didn't push the buttons that Threads did. Threads's bleak and hopeless view of the shape of things to come validated the moral of my other favorite brinksmanship movie of the 80's, John Badham's 1983 classic, WarGames.

World War III is a game where the only winning move is not to play.

I will always be grateful to Ted Turner for having the courage to bring Threads to American telvision and spending his own money to do so.

To this day, there is still quite a bit of debate concerning Threads and its place in media history as a tool of caution or blatant piece of propaganda. Either way, I was happy to see that Threads has not only survived on YouTube, but actually made it to re-release on DVD sometime in 2005.

If I learned anything from "growing up Reagan," it was that some paths are best not ventured and some mistakes are best learned from by not making them.

Such is the legacy of the Cold War.

The FALLOUT 3 Reviews: Doomsday (2008)

Well, after three months of exploring The Capitol Wasteland and otherwise goofing off, I've finally beaten Fallout 3. What is Fallout 3 you may ask? Only the greatest role-playing game available for the XBox 360 that is not named Mass Effect.

To make a long story short, Fallout 3 is pretty much an amalgamation of every piece of post-apocalyptic or sci-fi material ever captured on film or in the written word since about 1930's. The game finds it's roots as much in the old Flash Gordon movie serials with Buster Crabbe as it does the Mad Max films or even Logan's Run.

The game refrences so much material that it soon dawned on me just how much the end of the world has contributed to the box office and my DVD shelf. This inspired me to revisit and review some of my favorite movies that literally begin after the end.

... the end of the world that is...

Since Fallout 3 is a pastiche, then the logical beginning of the Fallout 3 reviews should be a pastiche.

In this case it is Neil Marshall's 2008 instant cult classic, Doomsday.

Chances are that if you're reading this blog and fit the same viewer demographic as we do, then you already "know" the plot of Doomsday even if you haven't seen the movie, so I won't insult your intelligence with lengthy exposition.

In 2008 (the year the film was released no less), a disease known as (what else) the Reaper virus rips its way through Scotland. The British government reacts swiftly by fortifying Hadrian's Wall and turning into the UK version of the 38th Parallel: a totally fortified killzone.

As fate would have it, the virus makes its way to Great Britan a few years later and the government decides to take action to save its own neck.... er... preserve peace and stability.

Prime Puppet... er... Prime Minister Hatcher (Alexander Siddig) and his right hand man, Canaris (David O'Hara), send for domestic security chief Captain Nelson (Bob Hoskins). Nelson then discovers that there may be uninfected survivors in Scotland. Nelson is ordered to send a combat team into Scotland to acertain whether or not a cure to the Reaper virus has been developed in secret and to bring that cure back to London.

Nelson chooses Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra complete with bionic glass eye) to lead the squad. Their mission: find the whereabouts of the mysterious Dr. Marcus Kane (Malcolm MacDowell, who incidentally does some voice work for Fallout 3), the last scientist known to have been working on a cure before the outbreak of the Reaper virus in Scotland.

I'll have to admit, when I first saw the trailers for this film last winter, I really thought this was going to be the dumbest movie ever. That is, until I noticed that mad genius, Neil Marshall, was at the helm.

If you were scared out of your wits during The Descent or Dog Soldiers (a.k.a. the best werewolf movie since the early nineties), then you have Marshall to thank for that. Enjoyment of Doomsday is directly tied to your expectations going in.

If you're expecting deep philosophical moments of self-inspection then this isn't the movie for you. Doomsday is an unapologetic homage to Marshall's favorite B-Movies and your job as a movie geek is to much your popcorn, enjoy the gory deaths, and see if you can spot all of the other films that Doomsday draws inspiration from.

Believe me, there are a bunch.

Ironically, my main gripe with this movie about the end is... well... the ending...

Most of my favorite post-apoaclyptic movies end on rather bleak notes and Doomsday is no exception. The problem is that given the rather frenetic pace set by Doomsday, I really was expecting a bit more of a vicious settling of earthly accounts rather than the subtle and surprisingly bloodless transition to the end credits.

Still, if you're looking for a film to anchor your Last Days marathon some Saturday then Doomsday is as good a film to lead off with as any.