Reviews: Bioshock

                  Recently I played my way through Bioshock, a thoughtful, disturbing critique of Objectivism. Atmospheric, rich in detail, intelligent, and frightening, it’s a great example of the potential of video games to deal with dark, mature themes in an engaging and thought-provoking manner.

                  The story goes that the protagonist, Jack (no last name), is on an airliner that crashes somewhere in the Atlantic circa 1960, just outside the surface entrance to Rapture: an Objectivist Utopia built under the sea. Descending in a bathysphere, the player is treated to a short propaganda film (“Is man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”) and an awe-inspiring first look at the city under the sea, which consists of huge, water-tight art-deco skyscrapers connected by tunnels, looking as though New York or Los Angeles had been submerged so quickly that the neon lights still glow in the depths (among the many striking images of this scene is a huge whale gliding lazily amid the buildings).

                  Rapture, we learn, was the creation of a man called Andrew Ryan, who desired to create a haven for the intellectual and scientific elite of society, a place “where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small…” In short, a land of totally free industry, with no laws or Religion, only unbridled creativity. No gods, no kings, only Man.

Once inside the city, however, Jack and the player quickly learn that Rapture is no Utopia. Devoid of any restrictions, man’s baser nature rose to the surface with a vengeance, leading to the rampant drug abuse and nightmarish practices (the very first level deals with a surgeon who determined to push the boundaries of human beauty after the manner of what Picasso did with painting. And yes, that means exactly what you think it means).

                  See, the scientists of Rapture, freed from ‘petty morality,’ discovered the drug ADAM, which causes semi-controlled mutations. The trouble is that ADAM, together with its stabilizing supplement EVE, is highly addictive and mind-altering, resulting in alarming ‘Splicers’ roaming the derelict city in a paranoid frenzy, attacking anyone who crosses their paths. Andrew Ryan, the city’s administrator, refused to regulate the drug or do anything to stop its spread due to his belief in total autonomy and freedom of market.

                  So now Jack, guided by the friendly-sounding rebel leader Atlas via a two-way radio, has to make his way through the city to find a way out of there, or, failing that, a way to take down Ryan and his mad dream for good. Along the way, he has to splice himself with the ADAM, which is found in “Little Sisters:” little girls with ADAM producing sea-slugs growing inside them, who are in turn protected by the hulking “Big Daddies:” spliced giants in massive diving suits who have been conditioned to protect the Little Sisters (the Big Daddies are some of the game’s most impressive creations, and are fittingly its most famous element, featured prominently on the box-art). Here we have one of the primary elements of the game: the moral-choice system. In each case you can choose to rescue the Little Sister (by removing the slug and returning her to normal) or you can ‘harvest’ her by killing her and taking the slug. The latter grants you more ADAM, but the former…well, doesn’t involve butchering a helpless little girl. The game has two endings depending on which choice you make.

                  The above element may be of moral concern to some, understandably so. I believe, however, that the system is necessary for the story the game is telling. The question is “was Ryan right when he said that the only thing that matters to you is you? Will you do whatever you need to survive, or will you show compassion and humanity?” Most people, I think, tend to choose the latter option (in part because you receive more than enough ADAM to proceed either way, so the choice isn’t really that hard). Nevertheless, having the option to murder children, even if it is presented as wrong and evil, is a legitimate moral concern, and the player must decide for himself whether it would spoil the story for him.

                  On the whole, however, I think Bioshock is one of the more morally rich and worthwhile games on the market today. It’s a story of the dangers of pride and greed, of the horror that lurks in men’s hearts, and of the importance of kindness, family, free will, and (perhaps most importantly) altruism. In short, it’s an utter rejection of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, and that can only be a good thing.                  

                  Rapture, we learn, had problems even before ADAM and EVE. For one thing, with everyone set free from any obligations or regulations, maintenance problems quickly began to emerge…which no one wanted to fix. No one was willing to do the menial jobs like plumbing or janitorial work, since they were all supposed to be ‘society’s elite’ and so above such tasks, so the buildings are filthy. The tunnels leak, the bathrooms are frequently swimming, and whole sections of the city are flooded or in ruins.

                  Then there’s the fact that, once released from ‘petty morality’ the result isn’t brilliant strides in science and art, the result is a nightmarish hell-hole. Artists and scientists pursue their visions with a single-mindedness that leads them to sweep others unwillingly along with them, grinding up their fellow citizens in their own pursuit of happiness. They make some incredible discoveries, but then, rather than trying to find the best, safest, or most worthwhile use possible, they dump them on the market in the most petty, carnal, and unstable form.  

                  Indeed, the city was so heartless, so hostile to any kindness, generosity, or charity that the swelling underclass became willing to follow anyone who would show them any kindness at all. A man who expressed any altruism in Rapture, therefore, would have an army ripe for the taking…

                  At the entrance to Rapture is a banner proudly summarizing its philosophy: “No God, No Kings, Only Man.” Well, they got Man, alright, and it turns out that there’s a reason we have God and kings in the first place. As C.S. Lewis once noted, “all get what they want. They do not always like it.”

                  The problem is that an exultation of the Will above all else (“A man chooses, a slave obeys”) is a self-defeating philosophy, because the dominance of the Will always means, eventually, the subjugation of the Will; of someone else’s Will (this point is emphasized a number of times, most notably in the story’s key twist). Saying ‘Will is the supreme good’ means, in practical terms, ‘my Will is the supreme good,’ which is the same as saying ‘I get to do whatever I want.’ It’s the philosophy of the two-year-old in a clever sounding-package.

One of the most interesting details in the game is, typically, one that takes some thought to fully understand. In a world built around self-interest, where every carnal pleasure is encouraged and the needy are dismissed as ‘parasites,’ religion is obviously banned (one of the many ‘regulations’ that undermines Ryan’s broad claims of ‘liberty’). In one level, in which Jack explores a wharf, you find boxes of contraband: Bibles and crucifixes. As time goes on, you discover more and more; hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Often you discover an executed body marked ‘smuggler’ nearby.

Here the game acknowledges the fact that man is not naturally satisfied with himself: man needs God. The people of Rapture, cut off from God and kings and told to be free, freely decided that they would rather like to have God back, thank you very much. They wanted God so much that they were willing to risk Ryan’s wrath to have Him. They wanted Him so badly that thousands and thousands of Bibles and crucifixes were smuggled in, the warehouses on the wharf are chock full of contraband Bibles (interestingly enough, this is the only contraband we see). And these are just the ones that were discovered. The game shows an unusual grasp of human nature in this detail: wherever government has tried to quash religion, it has only flourished. The atheist, much as he may hate to admit it, is always the oddity. The people of Rapture, we see, were almost literally starving for God. Ryan’s perfect vision could not satisfy them.

Rapture’s motto, “No God, no Kings, only Man” is ironic in another way: what, exactly, does Ryan think kings are? Does he think they are some kind of separate species distinct from man? No, kings are nothing more than men, men who, if he were consistent, Ryan would more often than not respect by his own philosophy. Kings are men of strong will who create. There is no distinction between “Kings” and “Man,” as if one were contrary or outside the other. And while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget that God became a Man as well…

But Ryan isn’t consistent. He is stubborn, unrelenting in his ideals, but he is inconsistent. He praises liberty and free-will, yet more than once he murders people who do not conform to his will (including imposing the death penalty for smuggling and other offenses). He insists that he despises laws, yet bans religion, free-speech, and other such basic human rights.

The truth is that Ryan is everything he supposedly hates: he imposes his will upon others, constraining and depriving them of “the sweat of their brow” just as much or more so than any of those people he so despises. It might be that he was a man of ideals who utterly failed to live up to them when it came to the point, as so many of us do. Maybe. Or the truth may be that perhaps Ryan never actually believed in freedom or liberty or any high ideals like that, despite what he told himself. Maybe he chaffed at laws and regulations merely because they prevented his doing exactly what he wanted. Maybe he built Rapture, not as a place where anyone could be free, but where he specifically could be free to do as he liked. I rather suspect it’s the latter, but it’s clearly a point where there isn’t a solid, easy answer. All we can say is that Ryan’s mouth said one thing while his actions said another. At one point Ryan recounts the story of how he once bought a forest, only to have the state insist he allow the public to have access to it. In response, he burned it to the ground. All that matters to him is himself.

 Again, for such an imposing, dignified, sophisticated figure he bears a striking resemblance to a toddler.

He himself, at one point, seems aware of this contradiction. As he watches the utopia he created collapse into anarchy, he asks himself whether he might have been wrong, whether his ideals might be mistaken. The moment of grace is opened for merely a moment before he slams it shut again, declaring that “to question is to surrender. I will not question.” He so determined in his own will, his own chosen course, that he will not allow even the question of truth to interfere. He’d rather win than be right.

As you can probably tell from the fact that I just spent three paragraphs discussing him, Ryan is a fascinating and three-dimensional character; expertly written and wonderfully brought to life by voice-actor Armin Shimerman. If I had the time or inclination, I could probably write a whole essay just about this one character. He may be a heartless, monstrously self-centered hypocrite, but his personality is so forceful and his idealism so absolute that he becomes fascinating. Like a black hole, he’s empty and void, but he draws you in nonetheless. His final scene will probably go down in history as one of the most memorable and remarkable video-game villain show-downs of all time.

Other characters are not as fascinating as Ryan, but are at least well-written and engaging. There’s Atlas, your helpful guide, of whom I can’t say too much without giving away major plot points, but suffice to say he isn’t quite what he seems (there are a number of clever clues to his true nature throughout the proceedings). Dr. Bridgid Tenenbaum, a Holocaust survivor (she was spared because she collaborated with Dr. Mengele), who has since recovered her humanity and acts as the advocate for the Little Sisters. She’s interesting because she is aware of her own former evilness and doesn’t seem to want to escape herself, but only to help the innocent children, basically admitting that she doesn’t deserve or is now incapable of having a normal life. Frank Fontaine, Ryan’s arch-nemesis, who is a criminal mastermind who came to Rapture as a smuggler before deciding that a city that denied all moral and legal regulations would be a true utopia for an opportunistic mobster like himself. Yi Suchong, the brilliant-though-amoral geneticist who created the Big Daddies (and, in a richly deserved moment, discovered for himself just how effective they were). Finally, there’s Sander Cohen, an utterly insane ‘artist’ who does things like coating live people in plaster for statues, murdering his competitors, and rigging pianos to explode if the pianist fails to play his songs right. Almost all of these characters have a surprise or two up their sleeves and only a handful are ever encountered in person: most are met only through radio messages or audio-diaries that are found scattered throughout the levels. For the record, my favorite of the bunch is Dr. Suchong, just for the sheer vindictive pleasure I had in discovering how justice caught up with him.

There are a lot of bite-sized joys in the game: little details that bespeak the care and effort the developers put into it. The way the Big Daddies gently pick up the Little Sisters to put them into their sleeping tubes for a while; the delightfully-annoying vending machines that laugh mechanically when you access them; the incoherent muttering of the splicers before they attack; the way the Little Sisters refer to their Big Daddies as ‘Mr. Bubbles’ and delightfully cheer them on as they try to kill you; the fifties-style cartoons instructing you on how to use each new power. Then there is Rapture itself, which is a triumph of design. Art-deco towers rise out of the ocean floor, gleaming with neon and glowing spot lights, while inside there is nothing but filth and decay as far as the eye can see: rubble blocks doorways, water spills in and pools on the floor, oil puddles every few feet, and charred and disfigured corpses lie every few feet. Everywhere you go is the same sense of ruined opulence, with dim, flickering lights illuminating the plaster-covered corpses inhabiting a rich, beautiful theater, or spacious, sumptuous apartments cut in two by a cave-in from the floor above while the former inhabitants rot on their own dinner tables. The city itself is symbolic of its own history: from the outside, it is beautiful and awe inspiring. Inside, it is a nightmare. Rapture is a whitewashed tomb: inside is nothing but decay and filth.  

Bioshock is an excellent game, but it’s not perfect. For one thing, while I appreciate the vast scope and opportunity for exploration, it sometimes becomes all too easy to get lost and hunting through the dark, decaying rooms for the means to proceed can sometimes get oppressive or downright boring. Key information is often delivered via the audio-logs, which can sometimes be almost incomprehensible due to ambient noise, the sounds of combat, or simply the heavy accents of many of the characters, not to mention the fact that the diaries themselves are easy to miss. You can go back and listen to them again, but these can be tedious, especially since the map screen, where they’re found, is rather difficult to navigate properly. Switching between weapons and powers in the heat of battle can be frustrating, and one of the most annoying elements in the game is the need to manually switch between ammo types, meaning that it’s entirely possible to pull up a gun that is out of the selected ammunition, requiring you to switch to a different type while enemies tear into you with machine gun fire. Likewise, guns don’t automatically switch to the next ammo type when they run out of their present type, something that would have been greatly appreciated.

In general, though, Bioshock is a rich, disturbing, and ultimately rewarding experience. The game has a good story, which is told very well. It looks great, has incredible art direction, good writing, and tackles deep, important themes in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. It’s at times smart, scary, and beautiful, while remaining fun to play almost throughout.

Final rating: 4/5

                   Recommended to anyone who doesn’t mind the gruesome violence and profanity, despite some structural flaws.

Memorable Quotes:

Andrew Ryan: “In the end, what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No. A man chooses, and a slave obeys.”

Atlas: “Would you kindly?”

Frank Fontaine: “Life ain’t strictly business.”

Andrew Ryan: “What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks ‘what is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says ‘what will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says ‘watch out, or you’ll step on the toes of God.’”

Andrew Ryan: “There are two ways to deal with mystery: uncover it, or eliminate it.”

Andrew Ryan: “In the end, the only thing that matters to me, is me. And the only thing that matters to you, is you.”

Mst3k – 307: Gamera vs. Gyaos

                  Another Gamera film, and this one sees Gamera in full on heroic “friend to all children” mode. In other words, this is a kid’s film, complete with an annoying kid sidekick for Gamera in the form of Ichi (whose name is appropriate, since he’s as painfully irritating as a bad itch). Ichi is, if anything, even worse than Kenny: self-righteous, sanctimonious, and with a voice that could cut glass (though at least Gamera is actually a good guy here, so he’s not as creepy).

                  Still, it’s not all bad: there’s a surprisingly strong subplot about a road crew being obstructed by a community of farmers who are trying to extort higher prices from the construction company. Normally the film would be all on the side of the farmers, with the road crew being greedy and ‘nature-killing’ capitalists. Here, though, the film is more on the side of the road crew, with the farmers being depicted as artificially creating trouble for the workers to try to extort more money from the construction company. At the same time, the farmers aren’t wholly unsympathetic either: their desire to get the highest price they can for their land is presented as reasonable, though the extent they go to that end is frowned upon. The unexpected nuance here sets the film in a higher category than most of the Gamera films.

                  Finally, Gyaos herself is a pretty cool monster: vicious and deadly, with a good design that makes her seem like a monstrous vampire bat. Her sonic beam, however, is pretty lame-looking, even by the standards of the day (even in its cheapest moments, the Godzilla series never had beams that looked that bad) and her weakness is basically the same as Barugon’s, only with sunlight instead of water. Still, she comes off better than most Gamera villains, and you can see why she became his arch-nemesis.

                  Riffwise, this is another solid episode, with numerous quips about the monsters and the ridiculous plans to defeat Gyaos. Japanese monster movies are, of course, rich riff-material, even the better ones, and this is certainly no exception, with lots of jokes about the goofy effects and the evil Ichi. Host-segments are similarly solid, with the stand-out being the “Arts and crafts" sketch, which features some hilariously dark turns from the 'bots.

                  So, in summary, Gamera vs. Gyaos is another excellent episode from a strong season.

Opening: Crow and Tom are in riff-overdrive and are stuck imagining Lucille Ball and Harvey Fierstein.

Invention exchange: The Mads invented printers that print your self-image. Frank is a clown, Dr. F is Miss Ohio. Joel has a fax-machine Kleenex dispenser. He ends by destroying the cure for the common cold. They’re both pretty amusing.

They always have fun whenever anyone is credited as ‘planner.’

Crow: “And the student body of Yale as the townspeople.”

Reporter wonders whether Gamera is still benevolent. I don’t know, he wasn’t all that benevolent last time (though granted he had about three minutes of screen-time).

Businessman: “The whole country is watching to see if we finish the road on time.”

Joel: “They’re starved for entertainment.”

Farmers are refusing to sell their land, which is delaying the road work.

Interestingly enough, the film sympathizes with the road-building company and portrays the farmers as just trying to get as much money as possible.

Girl: “The chief is calling you.”

Servo: “What, Sitting Bull?”

Chief orders workers to keep working despite the recent volcanic eruptions.

Servo (as the foreman): “I should’ve taken that job at Honda.”

Cut to a helicopter surveying the volcanoes, which gets cut in half by a yellow beam.

Then to reporters mobbing the authorities.

Crow: “I’m a doorman! Leave me alone!”

And cut to the two goofy comic relief guys meeting a mob of protesters.

Crow: “Oh, no, it’s the cast of head-injury playhouse!”

Foreman: “Where’s the headman?”

Servo: “We’re a mob, we don’t need a head man!”

And a cute girl shows up and shoos the workers away.

Call back to ‘Rex Dart: Eskimo Spy.’

Old man is conspiring with the other farmers to make as much trouble as possible so the road men will pay more.

Crow: “Let’s rape the land! Come on!”

Workers find the camp wrecked.

Now we meet Ichi, who is even more annoying than Kenny, if you can believe it, who meets a reporter looking for a story.

(Ichi plays with his slingshot)

Crow: “Die, frog, die!”

Servo (on the music): “It’s Yoyo Ma!”

Crow: “My mama was a saint!”

Joel: “No, no, Yoyo, Crow.”

Ichi and reporter investigate a cave they find.

Joel: “It sounds like someone is leaning on their organ.”

Ichi: “Look at that!”

Servo: “It says abandon hope all ye who enter.”

There’s a cave-in and the reporter panics and leaves him (I can’t say I blame him, all things considered).

And he gets eaten by Gyaos.

Servo: “Welcome to this week’s edition of ‘Eat the Press.”

Servo: “I don’t know where my friend went but there’s a pile of poop here with shoes in it.”

And Ichi runs out of the cave to find Gyaos emerging from the earth (so how did she eat the reporter?)

Ichi gets trapped under rock, Gaos goes to eat him, I’m rooting for the monster…

And Gamera shows up.

Servo (as Gamera): “Hey, I stick my neck out for nobody, kid.”

And Gaos wastes a lot of time posing when she could be chowing down on the fat kid.

First host segment: Joel feels arts and crafty today and teaches viewers how to make Gaos while Crow and Servo toss off useless and dangerous advice for the kids (“Mucilage does not taste just like honey, from one who knows”). It’s quick, quirky, and very funny.

Gamera bleeds ‘primordial ooze.’

Joel: “Come on it takes a real turtle to cry, Gamera, let it out!”

And Gamera saves the kid. Boo!

Gamera then dumps him on his back and takes off. Right, I’m sure the kid would stay on easily.

Joel (as Ichi): “I’m tripping big time!”

And Gamera lands right in the middle of the town…without killing anyone or destroying anything. You know, this movie isn’t very believable (hang on, gentle viewer, you ain’t seen nothing yet).

There’s some rigamarole and they get Ichi off his back.

Crow (as Gamera): “Like I live to serve you! I’m outta here.”

They keep mixing up Ichi with Kenny. It’s understandable.

And the kid suddenly is sitting at the head of a military tribunal, repeatedly interrupting the scientists.

Scientist: “I have a little data on this…”

Crow: “Ichi did an etch-a-sketch.”

Incidentally, I suspect the scientist is dubbed by George Takei. Awesome!

He even comes up with a theory of how Gaos produces her ray after hearing about her five minutes previously.

They settle on killing Gaos. As Crow says “Good plan.”

Joel: “Random bombing should do the trick.”

Planes are all shot down.

Joel (as a thoughtful-looking Ichi): “I wish to play with clay now.”

Cut to Gamera underwater…

And back to Ichi.

Ichi hugs his sister

Servo: “Did you ever see ‘The Last Emperor’ sister?”

Cut to Ichi playing with his cars.

Servo: “If the UN calls, I’m playing with my slot-cars.”

Ichi: “Don’t touch them, sister!”

Crow: “They’re part of the set, now we can’t do the next scene!”

Great ‘multiplying helmets’ gag.

Workers all leave, except for comic-relief duo and the foreman.

It’s established that Gaos is nocturnal (no one except Ichi was keeping track).

Second Host Segment: Gammeradammerung opera. They only get three words in before movie sign.

The military uses lights to keep Gaos down.

Comic-relief guys are supposed to be keeping watch, they fall asleep of course.

Gaos shows up indeed, military opens fire. It works about as well as you’d expect.

Servo (as Gaos): “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, would you let me talk?”

Gaos blows the military away then flies off.

Gaos attacks city, naturally. Model work is really bad.

Joel: “No! Not Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood!”

Citizens assemble at a stadium to be under the lights.

Group of guys take Gaos’ picture

Crow: “Hey, you guys took my soul!”

Gamera shows up to fight.

Joel and the bots do a ‘Gaos’ cheer.

Gaos hits Gamera

Servo: “Tragedy struck at the midland tilt-a-wheel today…”

(on Gaos using her ray)

Servo: “I bet the hole in the ozone is this bird’s fault.”

Gamera crashes into a ship:

Crow: “Hey, he hit the Popeye convention!”

Sun starts rising.

Crow: “Oh, great, now you’ve made the sun-god mad. Good one.”

Gaos cuts her own toe off to escape the rising sun.

Scientists examine the severed toe, which is shrinking.

Cut back to Gaos in her cave, painfully re-growing her toe.

Scientists…

Joel: “It’s true: You’re impotent as a dish-rag Phil.”

They learn that sunlight destroys Gaos.

Back to Gaos for a hilarious moment where she accidentally drops a rock on her new toe.

And the scientists hatch a plan to kill Gyaos by keeping her out in the sunlight

Scientist: “There has to be a way, let’s think about it.”

Joel: “Where’s Ichi?”

And Ichi bursts in.

Girl: “You’re interrupting an important meeting, don’t you see?”

Joel (as Ichi): “You’re fired!”

Their plan is to make Gyaos dizzy by spinning her around quickly so she’ll be too dizzy to fly away.

(and yes, it is fully as goofy as you think)

They note that Gyaos must weigh ‘twenty-five ton.’ Twenty-five?! Yeah, maybe if she were filled with helium.

They’re planning on spraying fake blood to lure Gyaos to the spinning platform, as the foreman explains to the two comic relief guys

(Foreman picks up the phone)

Crow: “Yeah, I’m sending over a couple of blood donors mwahahaha!”

Joel: “It’s an army of meter men!”

Farmers try to sell land, Foreman explains that work has stopped and they might change the course.

Crow: “Now I’ve got this monster thing to deal with!”

Old man berates farmers for ‘weakening.’

Crow: “Hey, could you get the subplot out of the road? We’re trying to kill a monster here!”

All (singing): “53 bottles of blood on the wall, 53 bottles of blood! Take one down, write pig on the wall…”

Third host segment: Joel is Gyaos the Great, doing turtle spinning while Servo whispers instruction. Very funny, especially Servo and ‘Gromit the Wonder Dog’ in the beginning. Crow is also great as the host.

So, they spray the blood, Gyaos flies over, but seems uninterested.

Crow: “Okay, let’s face it, he likes blood but not the way you make it.”

Joel: “It’s the last resort, but send up the peel-n-eat humans.”

There she goes, she lands and starts slurping it down.

Then they spin her.

Servo: “Woah, either I’m spinning or this is some really good blood here!”

By the way, how fast was that revolving restaurant built to spin?”

Worker 1: “Something wrong!”

Worker 2: “Nothing serious!”

Joel: “We’re just gonna die, that’s all.”

And the power goes just as the sun comes up.

Joel: “Uh, that’s us getting crushed, isn’t it Steve? We’re dead aren’t we?”

As the scientists watch Gyaos smash up the place.

Crow: “Make a fountain of blood, I oughta…”

Wait, so Gyaos has a built in fire extinguisher?!

As Gyaos flies over

Servo: “Uh, honey, could you hand me that ‘Birds of Japan’ book?”

Reporter notes that the plans to stop Gyaos have ‘failed miserably.’

Servo: “So, what is this, How Green was my Valley all of a sudden?”

Farmers get mad at old man because the road is being moved after all and they won’t be able to sell.

Joel: “You blamed me for the top soil too!”

And Ichi saves him by throwing his toys at the mob.

Servo: “Get a pencil under his tongue, quick!”

Actually rather touching bit where the old man slowly picks up Ichi’s toys.

Ichi insists that Gamera wouldn’t have any trouble dealing with Gyaos, apparently forgetting that he tried once and failed miserably.

Ichi: “Then he could come here and burn up all the men who were mean to grandpa.”

Crow: “Uh, you’re getting into a weird area there, Ichi.”

Ichi hits on the plan of just lighting a fire to attract Gamera. And the reason no one else has thought of this is…?

Grandpa brings his plan to the military. Actually rather nice bit.

(as they start cutting down trees)

Servo: “The logging industry! Over three billion down! We work for you while we work against you!”

And Gyaos just puts out the fire. Maybe they should set the fire during the day?”

Ichi: “Ah! Gamera!”

Crow: “I’ll have my candy now!”

Ichi: “I told you he’d come, didn’t I?”

Servo: “Great, why don’t you go out and say hi?”

Crow: “Ah! So he finally learned how to duck.”

Joel: “I guess he remembered he had a shell.”

Gamera and Gyaos fight…

Gamera introduces his ‘rear-jets propulsion’

Ew, Gamera bites a bit off of Gyaos.

Gamera takes one glancing blow to the tail and collapses. God, he’s a wimp.

Gyaos picks up Gamera and starts dropping him several times.

Servo: “Hey, isn’t this how Aeschylus died?”

(It is: eagle dropped a turtle on his head).

Crow: “Hey, he’s supposed to be the hero and he’s getting the snot kicked out of him!”

Really goofy bit where Gamera throws a rock into Gyaos’s mouth.

Gyaos has pink blood.

Joel: “Oh, I can’t watch this! I’ve grown to know that character so well!”

Ichi: “Be careful now Gamera!”

Servo: “Hey, no coaching from the sidelines, shrimp.”

Gamera flies off carrying Gyaos

Crow: “Oh, what, Gamera has a luggage rack?”

Gamera dumps her into a volcano.

Foreman decides to start work on the road again, in the same place.

Everyone stops to thank Ichi for…something.

And we suddenly get repeats of scenes from this movie and the last two…for no reason.

Joel: “Here are scenes from next week’s Gamera!”

They identify these as outtakes.

Final host segment: They talk about how lame the attempt to kill Gyaos was in this film and come up with some of their own. They ask the audience for theirs and Frank sends one in, also coming up with a plan to 86 Dr. F.

Stinger: Two comic relief guys. Meh, I would have gone with the spinning Gyaos.

Movie Quality Rating:

1.     Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster

2.     The Crawling Eye

3.     The Black Scorpion

4.     Gamera vs. Barugon

5.     Mad Monster

6.      Lost Continent

7.     Gamera

8.     Gamera vs. Gyaos

9.     First Spaceship to Venus

10.  Stranded in Space

11.  Rocketship XM

12.   Moon Zero Two

13.  Godzilla vs. Megalon

14.  The Crawling Hand

15.  Catalina Caper

16.  Daddy-O

17.  King Dinosaur

18.  Jungle Goddess

19.  Wild Rebels

20.  The Corpse Vanishes

21.  Ring of Terror

22.  Untamed Youth

23.  The Slime People

24.  Project Moonbase

25.  The Sidehackers

26.  Women of the Prehistoric Planet

27.  Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy

28.  Cave Dwellers

29.  Tim of the Apes

30.  Pod People

31.  Hellcats

32.  Rocket Attack USA

33.  Robot Holocaust

34.  Robot Monster

Conclusion: Another very strong episode, with a semi-decent movie and some excellent riffing and host-segments.

Final Rating: 7/10.

Reviews: Night of the Lepus

“Ladies and gentlemen: you’re attention please! There is a herd of killer rabbits heading this way and we desperately need your help!”

            I could pretty much end the review right there. I mean, what else needs to be said about a movie that can include that line?

            Most bad movies at least have a decent concept. That is, you can see where someone would say “yeah, this could be good, have X-million dollars.” The most intriguing and thought-provoking thing about Night of the Lepus is the question “just who the heck thought that giant rabbits would make good movie monsters?”

            I mean, can you picture what the pitch session must have been like for this movie? “I’ve got an idea: it’s a horror story about giant, man-eating bunny rabbits that attack a small Arizona community.” “Brilliant! Everyone’s afraid of rabbits, right? Here’s a couple thousand dollars!”

            To be fair, the film was based on an actual book called Year of the Angry Rabbit by Russell Braddon (using the broadest possible definition of ‘based on’). To be fair to Mr. Braddon, the book was a satire; something no one associated with the film seems to have noticed (assuming any of them actually even read the book, which is doubtful). The movie itself was originally titled Rabbits before someone involved realized “wait a minute: rabbits aren’t scary!” Then, presumably, there was a long, awkward silence as everyone realized what they had done, followed by a frantic scramble to come up with a different name (“How about Night of the Bunnies?” “You’re fired.”).

            The story goes that rancher Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) is having an explosion of rabbits destroying his ranch (and, in a very poorly staged scene, his horse…it breaks a leg in a rabbit hole and he has to shoot it). Unwilling to use poison, since this is the 1970s and echo-friendliness is all the rage, he turns to Drs Roy (Stuart Whitman) and Gerry Bennett (Janet Leigh) to find an alternative solution. They, assisted by Dr. Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelly, Star Trek’s Dr. McKoy) decide to try gene manipulation (poison is bad, but genetic tampering is a-okay), but due to the antics of their very annoying daughter, Amanda (Melanie Fullerton), one of the altered rabbits is released into the wild, resulting an unspecified amount of time later in a herd of ten-foot rabbits, who soon start dining on the local population. In case you were wondering, no, Amanda is never brought to task for causing the deaths of dozens of innocent people, and no, there is no explanation offered for why the rabbits have suddenly turned carnivorous: it’s just taken for granted that giant rabbits would eat people (okay, they actually just slather some red paint on them while leaving their bodies totally intact, but let’s pretend we don’t notice that). From then on, it’s a question of how the characters will kill the rabbits (“kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!” sorry). It’s a mark of the film’s intelligence that the first thing they try is sealing up the entrances to the mine where the rabbits are gathered (the stupidity of this approach is emphasized by the fact that one rabbit digs a new opening during that same scene…and opening that no one bothers to close, by the way).

            This film is pretty much exactly what you’d expect when you hear the premise “giant killer bunny rabbits:” it’s a lot of repetitive scenes of cute, adorable bunnies hopping around miniature sets in slow motion while the music rather frantically tries to convince us that they are scary and impressive. Meanwhile, the actors gamely go through the motions, looking like they’re thinking of all the horrible things they’d like to do to their agents for landing them this picture. Make no mistake, the scariest thing in this movie are the recorded rabbit screams that are occasionally played over the attacking bunnies (though people with sensitive stomachs are also advised not to look directly at Janet Leigh’s wardrobe: what was up with Seventies fashions anyway?).

            Words fail to express just how completely the movie backfires. It’s really a surreal experience seeing bunches of cute little rabbits bounding about to dramatic, solemn music and realizing that this is supposed to be scary. It’s as if you were told you were going to a serious medieval drama and accidentally got Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which you then sit through assuming that it is meant to be taken seriously (though the killer rabbit in that movie is a lot scarier than the ones here). Except that in this case it isn’t an accident: you remind yourself over and over again that someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea for a horror movie. Meanwhile, for all the attempts to make the rabbits into deadly menaces the stupidity of the human characters, coupled with repeated shots of cute, screaming rabbits being killed, means our sympathies are entirely with the rabbits (“Get ‘em, Hazel! Show Dr. McCoy who’s boss!”)

            The thing is, though, even if you look past the cute widdle monsters, this would still be a pretty bad film. The writing is awful: characters pop in and out, appearing and disappearing as though a few pages of an earlier draft got mixed into the shooting schedule and no one noticed that the characters no longer serve any purpose or even have roles that overlap (how many medical specialists does one film need?). Characters repeatedly do stupid things: the aforementioned “let’s bury the animals known for their digging prowess” plan, the opening scene in which Hillman rides his horse straight into a clearly visible rabbit burrow (it’s done in a helicopter shot, and we can see the bloody thing from the helicopter!), the scene where characters hide from the rabbits in a basement…behind a thin wooden door…and then start shooting up at them as if to announce “here we are and you could easily come and kill us!” The editing, especially during the climax, is also terrible: the last ten minutes feel like the editing equivalent of when you give up on a picture and just scribble all over the page in frustration. As a matter of fact, that’s probably what it was: can you imagine being the editor for this thing? “Alright, John, it’s your job to make this film actually scary, now get to work, our careers are on the line.”

            Then the film can’t even get rabbit biology right. In the first place, the rabbits we see are very clearly domestic rabbits: fat, slow, and multi-colored (there’s some attempt to justify this by claiming that a rabbit farm was released in the past, but it doesn’t really work). The rabbits are also mysteriously nocturnal, which real rabbits are not, and…well, I covered the whole ‘they eat meat’ thing, didn’t I? Then there’s the fact that the film offers two pronunciations of ‘Lepus’…and both are wrong (for the record, it’s pronounced the same as ‘leper’).

            As I noted above, effects wise it’s mostly regular rabbits hopping happily about on miniature sets. For attack scenes they sometimes have a guy in a rabbit suit, which they rather desperately try to avoid showing (but it sneaks in sometimes and is an absolute riot when it does…though I don’t envy the poor guy who had to wrestle a horse in it). For post-attack victims, they just smear a lot of fake blood on them, and that’s it: there very clearly are no wounds whatsoever on their bodies, which are often rendered in loving close-ups so that we can study and make careful notes of the intactness of the skin. In one scene, a character is mauled by a rabbit, has his clothes soaked in blood, and then literally seconds later is up and running around like nothing happened. Folks, they just didn’t care. And can you blame them? They’re making a film about giant killer rabbits!

            You might be able to tell that this is one of those movies that is bad, but a whole lot of fun as well. You just can’t help laughing at the frantic attempts to make rabbits into terrifying monsters, while the rabbits themselves merely wiggle their noses and hop around in a rather confused manner, as if they themselves were mildly bemused by the situation. There are a lot of little pleasures in the film, such as the way no one in town questions the sheriffs warning of giant killer rabbits (as quoted above), but enthusiastically rush to follow orders. Not one person so much as asks for a clarification that they’re actually fighting giant bunny rabbits. Actually, no one in the film really expresses much objection to the idea: the sheriff goes along with it, as does the National Guard. No one so much as cracks a grin or sniggers at the thought of being attacked by the Easter Bunny: they just take it completely in stride (there’s a moment where the sheriff orders a deputy to call up the governor and ask for the National Guard. I would have loved to hear that call). I also like the way the commander of the National Guard unit still bellows into his megaphone even when it’s pointing directly at his subordinates two feet away (the national guard itself, meanwhile, consists mostly of stock-footage from The War of the Worlds, meaning, amusingly enough, that the Arizona National Guard is apparently almost twenty years behind the regular army in terms of equipment).

            Personally, my favorite character in the film is the unnamed helicopter pilot, who has no lines but who throughout the proceedings wears the most epically bored expression that you will ever see (the repeated use of the helicopter itself, meanwhile, indicate that renting it took up a decent amount of the film’s budget). I also was frankly amused that the rabbit army was dealt with using essentially the same tactic used at the end of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, so apparently someone working on the film was a man of letters and learning. And at the end is the unanswered and intriguing question, “so, what did the town do with hundreds of giant rabbit carcasses? Become the rabbit-stew and fur-coat capital of the West?”

            Not much else to say really: this is one of those classically bad movies that you can’t help loving, even while you tear it to shreds. The sight people screaming in horror at the sight of enormous bunnies will add years to your life. Add in the numerous opportunities to make Watership Down references, and you have a great party film to pop in and laugh yourself to the floor at.

            Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes the film does indeed end with a dramatic shock-zoom on a rabbit chewing grass in a sinister manner, no doubt plotting cruel vengeance in its cute, fuzzy little mind (I swear, I am not making that up: that really is the last shot of the film). That they failed to add a “duhn-duhn-duhn” chord seems to have been simple oversight.

            Final Rating: 2/5. An awful movie by any standard, but hilariously so. Recommended for anyone looking for a classic bad movie to have some fun with.

Suggested alternate title:

Watership Down 3: The Armageddon  

On the Zombie Myth

                Every culture has its own myth about the End of the World, and you can usually tell a good deal about it by how it anticipates its own death. Rather like if you asked someone how they would like to die if they had the choice (I don’t recommend doing this: these days you’re likely to be viewed as morbid at best, criminally creepy at worst): one person might say in a warm bed, surrounded by loving family members. Another might say on the field of battle fighting for his country. Still another might say in his sleep so that he didn’t have to anticipate it.

                What is our End of the World myth? Not so long ago it was nuclear war: the final, cataclysmic confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that would destroy both. With the fall of the USSR, nuclear war has become a little less likely (though the good people of Iran and North Korea seem eager to bring it back), and the nuclear war myth has fallen out of favor. No, today our most prominent End of the World myth, I would say, is the Zombie Apocalypse.

                Zombies are everywhere these days: just spend about five minutes on any entertainment-related website and you’ll see what I mean. Whole books are written (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) about surviving the coming zombie uprising. There are ‘zombie walks’ where a bunch of people get together (sometimes for a specific cause, sometimes just for fun), splash on some fake blood, and shamble down the street. I’d say that zombies are the monster of the present era, their only possible rival being vampires (who these days are less monsters and more superheroes, but I’ll deal with them in a later post).

                The Zombie Apocalypse myth, like all myths, has a number of variations, but the basic outlines remain fairly consistent: for some reason, the dead begin rising again to feed upon the living. Sometimes they are born of a virus (usually developed as a bio-weapon), sometimes from radiation from space, sometimes for no apparent reason at all. If a zombie bites you, you become a zombie (anywhere from immediately to several hours or even days later). In this way, the zombie hoard grows and grows, usually unnoticed at first, but soon swelling to an overwhelming level. Society breaks down, carnage fills the streets, lawlessness and terror reign as people try to flee the major population centers, or turn on each other in suspicion or blind attempts to save themselves. The only way to kill the undead is to destroy their brains (“Kill the brain, kill the ghoul”). A small group of people from various walks of life band together in some specific building – a cabin, a mall, etc. – and barricade themselves against the onslaught. At first they manage to keep the hoards at bay, but somehow, usually due to the stupidity or selfishness of one of the members, the group’s defenses break, the zombies enter their refuge, and they either must flee to another place of relative safety or are overwhelmed and killed. The story usually ends with either the final triumph of the undead over the living or some radical shift in society that allows the survivors to live on, but in a harsher, more primitive manner.

                The above is a summary of the basic form of the myth: in any given version, things will play out slightly differently. A couple of key factors to note: the undead are born in one of two ways, either completely unpredictably or through the actions of some authority figure or institution (a major company, the military, etc). The zombies remain unnoticed at first until their number grows to an unmanageable size. The zombies are infectious, so if even one zombie remains unkilled, it can create a new hoard of zombies. Society breaks down quickly, and only a small group of people – usually led by one or two intelligent and level-headed individuals – manage to survive. This group is itself undone by the stupidity or selfishness of its members. Finally, there’s the fact that it’s very rare for society to recover from the zombie outbreak: it is either destroyed or changed forever.

                What does this say about our society? Well, the first and most important thing is that it expresses a dissatisfaction, or even outright hatred, of the society we live in. The whole story is effectively about how sick modern Western society is. Depending on the story, the entire outbreak might be the fault of the government or corporate greed (note the anti-authoritarian bent). Once it happens, society fails to notice anything wrong (we are dehumanized and insular: unwilling to face problems until it is too late), then almost immediately collapses once the outbreak is made known (our ‘civilization’ is a house of cards, doomed to fail at the first serious disaster). Most of the population is devoured or turned into zombies (we have no practical survival skills and cannot act properly in a crisis). The rag-tag band of survivors, meanwhile, is led by one or two intelligent and ‘enlightened’ individuals who serve as the audience surrogates. The viewer assumes that he, who sees through the sheep-like nature of the modern man and recognizes how sick society has become, will be one of the leaders who gathers his small band of followers, recognizes what they must do to survive, and barricades them inside the mall. One thing to note is that this leader is often a white-collar, middle-class worker: a reporter, a student, etc. He is almost never a soldier, policeman, or other ‘authority figure’ (though such a person is often included in the group). Despite the enlightened individual’s efforts, however, the stupidity and greed of one or more of the group allows the zombies to enter the refuge, killing all or most of the survivors (again reflecting that we are a selfish, stupid, and unprepared society). Finally, society is either destroyed or altered, suggesting that we are doomed to failure and a return to a more primitive, yet enlightened form of life. Often times a little hip satire is worked in, questioning how like zombies we are with our consumerist, sheep-like culture.   

                So, let’s sum up: our culture a). is suspicious or actually despising of authority figures b). feels that it is dehumanized, weak, materialistic, and insular, unable to identify threats or problems before it is too late c). has few or no practical skills and little ability to deal with crises d). exalts the few who do not follow the pattern, the non-conformists who see through the regulated, sheep-like nature of the culture e). suspects that things would be better if we could just listen to the few enlightened individuals and if the stupid, selfish average person would just get out of the way f). disparages the tools of the state, such as policemen and soldiers as unthinking, incompetent drones who cannot be relied upon to protect us and g). feels that it is doomed to collapse into anarchy and/or despotism.

                Does that sound like a healthy culture to you?

                Now, as horrible as the Nuclear War myth was, there was at least a kind of grandeur to it: a final, cataclysmic duel between warring super-powers, sometimes envisioned almost as the Apocalyptic showdown between the forces of Good (the United States) and Evil (The Soviet Union), other times as the folly of mankind at last reaching its peak in a final, useless war to end all wars. The Zombie myth, however, is anything but grand. It is meaningless, sometimes lacking even an explanation. It’s just random, helpless events spiraling to a random, hopeless conclusion, one filled with violence, decay, disease, and vice. Its trappings are rotting corpses, human entrails, dirt, dust, festering sores, vomit, and blood. There is no good, there is no evil, there is no meaning, there is no purpose, there is only survival and death. The Zombie myth tends inexorably towards an atheistic and nihilistic worldview: the Apocalypse for the Godless.

                What are to make of a culture that seems to so thoroughly despise itself? What do we say to a society that condemns itself as ignorant and immoral, then goes on to predict its own horrific destruction? This alone should alarm us: we appear to loathe our own culture and society. Our heroes are the ones who see through and push back against it, the rebels and renegades, and we imagine it collapsing, not at the hands of some foreign superpower in a great war, but in meaningless, bloody corruption: almost literally rotting itself out of existence. A culture that thinks like that cannot long endure.  

Basically, there has to be something wrong with our society if this has become our favorite End of the World scenario. The individual theses of the Zombie myth may not all be correct, but at least some of them must be, or else they would not strike such a chord. The truth is, we are materialistic and we are dehumanized (I mean, for goodness sakes, we think killing unborn children is a fundamental right and that a man trying to have sex with another man is natural and healthy). We do tend to not want to face problems until it is too late (take a look at the US Government’s utter refusal to address its unsustainable Medicare program).

                I am not, by nature, a cynical man, but the whole ‘look at these sheep-like drones’ attitude the Zombie myth embraces is something I am very cynical about. From what I can tell, practically everyone in the country thinks this way, rendering the whole thing a rather pathetic bid to feel important or enlightened (indeed, if this attitude really were as rare as its adherents suppose, we wouldn’t see so many popular films and books expounding it). I am also cynical about self-styled non-conformists, since it seems to me they tend to be the most conformist and narrow-minded individuals of all, blindly attacking things like government, religion, and the military at every opportunity without even considering that they might be wrong to do so. The idea that the average citizen would be a more capable leader in a crisis than a soldier or a cop, meanwhile, is often little more than a laughable fantasy on the part of the storyteller (the writer, director, author, etc). I also think that things like 9/11 showed that we are not necessarily as hopeless in a crisis as some seem to think.

                Then there’s of course the fact that a Zombie uprising is, to say the least, a rather unlikely scenario and even assuming it did happen would probably be far more easily dealt with than is generally depicted. For one thing, biting isn’t a very good way of spreading diseases (consider: when a dog gets rabies it doesn’t mean that hoards of rabid dogs will soon be marching on major cities), especially not against victims that can kill you from a distance, like humans can. For another, the zombies probably wouldn’t last long after their bodies stopped working, since there’s a reason corpses rot and fall apart. Even assuming a massive hoard of zombies appeared on the scene and didn’t get wiped out by the Air Force (which seems oddly absent in most versions of the story), they would probably last about a week at the most before the maggots, flies, feral dogs, and so on finished them off.

                But despite the above caveats, I think the Zombie Apocalypse myth sheds a lot of light on our present culture and deserves to be taken seriously. If you want to know what a culture is like, don’t ask its adherents, for they will make it sound too good, nor its detractors, for they will make it sound too bad. Don’t look at the art, for the artists are often a culture onto themselves, and don’t look at the government or the religious leaders, since they too are usually set apart. Look at the stories it tells, particularly the stories that are told over and over, the ones that practically everyone knows about and which are consistently popular. You will see in those stories the reflected attitudes, beliefs, and values of the culture. And the fact is, what we see reflected in the Zombie story is a very ugly culture indeed.