Frankenstein’s Movie - DOOMSDAY

There are a lot of options out there to satisfy your thirst for post-apocalyptic action.  Try a little After the Bomb highway mayhem.  Maybe a good dystopian future is your thing.  Zombies are always a possibility.  Or, if you're Neil Marshall in 2008, you could just chop it all up and haphazardly sew the pieces into a lurching genre monstrosity called DOOMSDAY.

The Capsule:

Sometime in the early 21 century, Scotland is plagued by the Reaper Virus (note to scientists, don’t let heavy metal bands name your virus).  In order to contain the infection, the British government walls off the entire country.  When the Reaper Virus resurfaces in London 30-odd years later, the government sends an elite military team into the wasteland in search of Dr. Kane (Malcolm McDowell), who was working on a cure.  Led by badass Major Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), the team must battle hordes of cannibal punks and medieval knights (!) through decaying cities, open roadways, and tourist attractions of post-apocalyptic Scotland.  Even if they manage to find a cure and get out, they will have to deal with Canaris (David O'Hara), a nefarious politician who may not have the public’s best interest at heart.

DOOMSDAY is another case of the advantage of going in with super low expectations.  I heard this movie was terrible, even from a person who’s taste is remarkably close to mine (yes, those people do exist).  But I enjoyed director Neil Marshall’s other work, DOG SOLDIERS and especially THE DESCENT, so I figured as long as it wasn’t a bunch of people leaning in the corner pissing themselves for two hours, I would get something out of it.  I am happy to say it is not two hours of people pissing themselves.  It has some serious problems, but despite everything, I kind of dug it.  

This movie can make no claims at originality.  It’s filled with such blatant lifts that it can’t even be called homage with a serious face.  Obviously, I have no problem with rip-offs (see GRIZZLY, THE CAR,
HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP), even unofficial remakes like LOCKOUT.  The interesting thing with DOOMSDAY is that it doesn’t just rip-off one film, it rips-off a half dozen of them and blends them together into an oddball smoothie.  DOOMSDAY is clearly a take on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and ROAD WARRIOR, but it also has elements of GHOST IN THE SHELL (the anime), ALIENS, 28 DAYS LATER, and most bizarrely, EXCALIBUR.  

It is amusing how brazen Marshall is about his cinematic larceny.   He’s kind of playfully smirking about it.  A Carpenter-esque electronic theme plays when Sinclair is being briefed about sneaking into and escaping from the Scottish surrogate for New York.  Two minor characters are named Carpenter and Miller.  The open roads are filled with MAD MAX cast offs, even though there is no real reason for it.  The scene where Sinclair’s team searches Kane’s seemingly abandoned lab evokes ALIENS so intentionally that they use some of the same dialogue.  Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs)—check, yellow rotating emergency lights—check, close quarter gun battles against silent, relentless foes—check.  The only thing missing was a power loader, and that is just because it suddenly changed gears back to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.  

Major Sinclair is more GHOST IN THE SHELL’s Major Motoko than Snake Plissken (although she does occasionally wears an eye patch when she’s using her robot eye to look around corners).   Rhona Mitra—who, it turns out, is not Cate Beckinsale—plays her with an icy proficiency.  She never loses her cool even when she is surrounded by people who want to kill and/or eat her.  The closest she comes is her irritation at the guard who keeps whacking her with his spear while she’s trying to talk, up until the moment she kills him with one blow.  Do not interrupt this woman.

She is such a badass that her boss gives her 46 hours to complete her mission.  If they had given her the full two days, she would have just spent the last two hours waiting at the extraction site, smoking.  They had to make it challenging for her.

Sol (Craig Conway), the chairperson of the Glasgow Cannibal League (not sure if that is the official title), is a kick.  He lacks Issac Hayes’ A1 King of New York coolness, but he makes up for it in batshit showmanship. His court is like a post-apocalyptic Cirque du Soleil, with brawling punks spinning on ropes, fire jugglers, and bikers doing stunts in the center ring.  Sol comes strutting out on stage with his fur lined leather coat and receding Mohawk, The Fine Young Cannibals blaring from the speakers.  He gets the crowd amped up about the impending execution/barbecue of one of his captives by throwing paper plates to the crowd.  It’s more of a symbolic gesture; these guys are more into grabbing handfuls of cooked meat than having a proper picnic.  

In fact, I think the whole cannibal angle is mostly for show.  There don’t seem to be enough non-cannibal affiliated people around for these guys to sustain a full man eating lifestyle.  Plus, it is shown that there are huge herds of wild cows just outside of Glasgow, so they are clearly not desperate for food.  Cannibalism is merely a status thing in Scotland.  Every once in a while they make a big show out of eating a dude.  They are kind of like lapsed Catholics only going to Mass at Christmas.  

Malcolm McDowell’s role is not nearly as meaty (cannibal pun!).  Kane is the standard brilliant scientist driven mad by isolation and paranoia, holding power through ruthless dogma.  He makes grandiose but senseless statements like, “In the land of the infected, the immune man is king.”  Since all the hundreds of survivors in Scotland are immune, doesn’t that make everyone a king?  Clearly people just go along with him because Malcolm McDowell makes everything sound dramatic and important.

More interesting by far is the whacked out medieval world he’s built.  His people haven’t just adopted a simpler way of life, they’ve gone full Renaissance Fair.  There are serfs and blacksmiths and dudes with hay carts.  I think I saw Hodor in one crowd shot.  Sinclair even has a fight with the Black Knight!  I am sure none of the extras had any idea they were in a movie set in the future.  And as soon as they escape the castle, bam, straight into the ROAD WARRIOR.  You could get whiplash from this movie.  

You could also get whiplash from the fight scenes, which unquestionably are the worst thing about the movie.  They are cut so quick and shaky, I had no idea what was going on most of the time.  Sinclair’s fight with Sol’s girlfriend, Tattoo Face (Lee-Anne Liebenberg, officially named Viper, but I’m sure you will agree Tattoo Face is more appropriate), is an absolute nightmare.  It plays out like an epileptic seizure until the moment Tattoo Face gets decapitated.  At least Marshall gave us a moment to appreciate that gag.

The Black Knight fight at least provided a few wide shots that last more than a half second.  This was especially important since the opponents are so unevenly matched (he has a full suit of armor, she has a tank top).  It does establish that she has the advantage of speed and she targets the knight’s weak spots, making her victory at least somewhat plausible, but the whole thing could have been done so much better.  Given that Marshall (and his DP, Sam McCurdy) went on to do some absolutely eye popping fight sequences for Game of Thrones, this seems especially embarrassing.  The problem is more with the editing, my opinion.  This is a great looking movie and many of the shots are beautifully composed.  It's a pity you barely get the chance to see them.

Then there are the ROAD WARRIOR sequences, which have their own issues.  It is a nice juxtaposition to see a bunch of crazy, spiked up wasteland vehicles chasing after a brand new, shiny Bentley, but if you are competing with George Miller at his own game, you are going to lose.  The bad guy’s cars look more conspicuously designed than efficiently and realistically pieced together, and there just isn’t enough creative stunt work.  There are a few nice moments, like when the Bentley drives straight through Sol’s Murderbus.  It’s an impressive endorsement for Bentley, because the car makes it through without a scratch.  Forget muscle cars and tanks, this is the baby you want to be tooling around in after the fall of civilization.  

It’s also a cute touch that Sol has his dead girlfriend propped up beside him in his car, and she keeps getting more and more accidental abuse.  It turns out to be a very misguided gesture of affection.

Even though he stumbles on the action, Marshall sticks to his horror roots and makes it nice and bloody (at least in the unrated version I have).  The squibs are super juicy, heads explode, and the virus makeup is mega gross and boily.  The wide eyed doctor from Sinclair’s team actually stops running for a second just so he can wince when a biker punk has a messy wipeout.  Overall, it is very satisfying.  

Another bright spot in the movie is Sinclair’s boss, Bill Nelson, played by Bob Hoskins.  He’s mostly just in the 28 DAYS LATER style London under siege by the infected scenes, and he plays the same guy Bob Hoskins always plays, but any Bob Hoskins is refreshing.  I love that he represents the Cockney perspective in the austere, upper crust Parliamentary briefings.  He gets to use the phrases “tits-up” and “fuck-all” in the same speech.  It’s a nice counter to Alexander Siddig’s wimpy Prime Minister Hatcher and the overtly evil Canaris.  

In the end [Spoiler], Sinclair gives Nelson the recording she made of Canaris’ boasting about letting all the poor people in London die out before offering the cure to the virus.  The implication being that Nelson will release it to cause a huge public outcry against Canaris.  Because we all know that releasing a recording of damaging statements and showing a cavalier attitude toward abuse of power will end a politician's career instantly.  Unless Canaris explains it was just “locker room talk”.

Extra crazy points for the last scene.  Sinclair has decided to stay in the Scottish Wastelands, for some reason.  She goes back to Glasgow and presents the cannibal punks with Sol’s head.  After a second to reflect, they all cheer and accept Sinclair as their new leader.  I don’t quite see her motivation for doing that, but those guys do seem like a fun bunch and they really know how to throw a barbecue, so why not?  

In keeping with the theme, though, it is a totally rip off of the end of FURY ROAD.  Wait a minute…

C Chaka   

Outback Education: FORTRESS

Everything might be big in Texas, but everything in Australia is deadly.  It has the world’s deadliest snakes, the world’s deadliest spiders, the world’s deadliest kangaroos.  And if movies are to be believed, and why shouldn’t they, the world’s deadliest people.  I’m sure there must be some safe people in Sydney, but I don’t watch movies about people in Sydney.  The Australian movies I watch are in the Outback.  People are not safe in the Outback, in any sense.  The depiction of the Outback is like the depiction of New York City in the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s.  It’s a dangerous place filled with crazy people who mean to do you harm.  The Outback has slightly less porn theaters, though.  Like the period New York street punks, Outback crazies love to prey on innocent outsiders who stumble into their territory.  What happens, though, when the innocents themselves are from the Outback?  FORTRESS (1985) aims to show you.

The Capsule:

On the outskirts of the outskirts of civilization, single-room school house teacher Sally Jones, aka Miss, has her class interrupted by four gun-toting masked freaks.  She and all nine of her students, ranging in age from 8 to 15, are forced into a van and carted off into the bush.  They are sealed up in a cave while the kidnappers depart to figure out how to set up a ransom demand in the middle of nowhere.  Sally leads the kids on a dangerous escape, only to be recaptured later at a farmhouse.  They manage to get away again, taking out one of the kidnappers in the process.  Holding up in an easily defendable hilltop cave, Miss and her students prepare for a final fight with the remaining kidnappers.  It’s school kids vs. psychotic reprobates, and there might not be as much difference as you’d think.

FORTRESS was made for HBO, making it a few steps up from the standard made for TV movie of the day.  HBO meant that it could have profanity, blood, and (brief) nudity, so it was pretty much a real movie.  It’s a well-made film.  The acting is skillful across the board, it has tight pacing, and the script is solid.  In spite of this, it often has a down and dirty exploitation feel.  The kidnappers are genuinely scary.  The freaky animal masks are bad enough, but the people under the masks are worse.  They all have that edgy vibe of unscrupulous losers with that first taste of being in control.  The goal of the ransom gives them just a hair of restraint, but it could clearly go off the rails at any second.   There is a strong threat of sexual violence towards Sally and fifteen year old Narelle.  Sometimes it is insinuated, sometimes it’s blatant.  Every moment with them is extremely uncomfortable.  The other kidnappers wear animal masks, but the leader is in a Father Christmas one.  Now, I’ve seen more than my fair share of Christmas horror, and this motherfucker is without  a doubt the most disturbing Santa Claus ever.  These guys are so bad that the one in the Daffy Duck mask is played by Vernon Wells, one of the lead psychos from ROAD WARRIOR.  And he’s the most reasonable one of the lot. 

You do have to question their logic, though.  Sure, one teacher and nine kids may be easy pickings (at first), but they are in the middle of nowhere.  None of the kids look well-off.  Their parents are most likely dirt poor farmers like everyone else there.  How much ransom are the kidnappers expecting from that bunch, three, four hundred dollars tops?  That’s Australian dollars, too, not American dollars.  Will they accept payment in barley?  Dingo pelts, maybe?  Their get rich quick scheme seems to be missing the get rich part of the equation.

In addition to their seriously flawed concept, the kidnappers really misjudged the choice of kidnappees.  On paper, it does sound like a sure thing (though I doubt these guys ever put any plans down on paper, seems like more of a drunken epiphany kind of decision).  Nine little kids and a schoolmarm, what could go wrong?  Except that these are little kids living in the fucking Australian Outback (technically it’s the Australian bush, but Outback sounds better).  They grow up resourceful there, because they sure as hell don’t have actual resources.  The kids start out scared, and the kindergartners do whine and cry a bit, but under Sally’s firm guidance, they become a serious and capable pack.  As soon as they are sealed in the first cave, they start McGuyvering shit to escape.  They respond to the increasing threat by becoming more dangerous themselves.  It’s deceiving.  They still look like cute little kids, but they aren’t messing around.  The booby traps they set to protect their “fortress” cave are not like the ones in HOME ALONE, they are like the ones in PREDATOR.  An innocent school yard rhyme they are always singing takes on more sinister implications near the end.  These little bastards mean business.

As cunning as these pint-sized survivalists are, they wouldn’t stand a chance without their teacher.  Sally is a fantastic character, and Rachel Ward plays her perfectly.  She is strong, quick witted, and very determined.  She feels like a real person, though.  She gets scared, she messes up sometimes.  She has doubts.  Once, when she has to swim through an underwater passage to escape the first cave, she panics and almost drowns.  Her limitations don’t stop her, though.   I like that she never stops being a teacher.  The first thing she tells the kids when they are being loaded into the kidnappers’ van is that they are going on an adventure.  When they are talking about how to escape, she calls it a council of war.  She keeps her students calm, working together, and on track, whether it’s rationing out food or making spears.  The kids may be in mortal danger, but she still reminds them to watch their language.  I hope someone nominated her for the Australian Teacher of the Year award after this.

If you are wondering just how far this movie will push the juvenile justice, the answer is (SPOILER) all the fucking way.  When our pack finally gets the drop on Father Christmas, everyone from Sally to the 8 year olds get their licks in.  Except for Tommy and Narelle, who are hurt, but they give their murder proxy to the other kids.  The pack has become so determined and merciless that they don’t just kill Father Christmas, they completely butcher him.  Again, including the cute little 8 year olds.  Instead of showing the damage being done, the camera stays on their savage, snarling faces, which is even more unsettling.  The greatest thing, though, is the next scene.  It goes from them brutally murdering a (debatable) human being, to the whole class sitting outside the school enjoying story time as if nothing had ever happened.  Of course, the story is Beowulf, and the kids seem to cheerfully identify with the notion of keeping a trophy of an epic battle (which will payoff brilliantly in the last scene).  When the cops drive up, it’s not to congratulate them on surviving a horrible ordeal, it’s because they found the bodies.  As they question Sally about the inconsistencies in her story (namely, leaving out the class participation mutilation), the kids silently file into the school behind the cops and just stare at them.  It’s like a scene from THE BIRDS.  The cops wisely decide to drop the whole thing and get hell out of there.  School is in, bitches.

I’m so curious about what happens to the kids afterward.  I figure that either:  a) they become the Warriors of the Wasteland from ROAD WARRIOR, or b) they grow up normally, because this kind of thing is just a coming of age ritual in the Australian bush.  I’m leaning toward the latter.

Note to self:  Never visit the Australian bush.  

Note to Australians:  I’m kidding, of course.  Please don’t hurt me.

C Chaka