| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BradH812 |
Posted - 08/13/2007 : 9:49:08 PM
And Jabootu spake to the weary traveler, the devoted follower, and sayeth, “O ye minion, in thy next review, thou shalt feel an urge to invoke the name of an animated undersea invertebrate. Thus sayeth Jabootu.”
Um, okay, two things, O Dark God of Bad Movies. First, I’m Brad Hampton, not Simon Peter. And you ain’t Jesus Christ; you’re a wooden ornament on Rock Hudson’s living room wall. Second, I throw out cartoon references all the time, and Spongebob Squarepants is one of my favorites (I can’t help it; the little yellow doofus makes me laugh), so what’s the—
“Silence!” yelleth Jabootu. “Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt give mention to a little yellow doofus who maketh thee laugh three times before thy next review is finished.”
Okay, whatever you say. So, what’s on the docket for tonight? Let’s see.... Buck Rogers In The 25th Cent—
Oh, YES!!! YES!!! YES!!! Spank me like a schoolboy, YES!!! Oh, YES!!! Plop me in a diner and call me Meg Ryan! YES!!! YES!!!
And Jabootu sayeth, “Wouldst thou like a room?”
Hold on, I’m almost done. YES!!! YES!!! Hoo boy! Whoa. I don’t smoke, but I feel like I need a cigarette after that.
Now, if I can just get the first of many hot dates with that cute lady I see at work from time to time, with the dark hair and the warm smile, I will be a truly happy man—
And Jabootu said, “She’s married, Brad.”
Damn.
Story of my life: the best girls are all taken. Ah, well, gimme the movie, and I’ll console myself with the knowledge that it’s gonna be fun ripping this puppy apart.
I considered writing a review of the season finale, “Flight of the War Witch.” I’ll have that one along in time. But why not start at the beginning? That’s where most good stories start, right? (I won’t bring up Memento if you won’t.) While the movie/pilot actually has some interesting ideas in it, its makers botch them well enough for this sucker to drop back into the Jabootu tank. Besides, it’s interesting to look at what might have been, especially for this show.
For the record, the movie and TV series are my only foray into the Buck Rogers universe. I know a little bit about the old novels, radio shows, and serials, but not much, and I’ve never seen/heard/read them. A lot of what this show does might apply to them as well, but they weren’t made in an era where science fiction could be considered high art, or in an era when people had seen 2001 or Star Wars.
Also, before getting into the review, let me point out that Andrew Borntreger has a review of Buck Rogers on his site. He has very graciously allowed me to post the link — http://www.badmovies.org/movies/buckrogers/index.html — so that I can have some visual aids with this review (my expertise, and equipment, in capturing video and audio are, shall we say, lacking). Since there are a couple of moments in this movie that words cannot do justice to (and one moment you have to see to believe), I’m gonna do something a little unusual. Right-click (or hold the mouse button down if you’re on a Mac) on the link and open the link in a separate window. Whenever I want to direct you to an audio clip or pic or vidcap, I’ll give a heads-up. How about CHECK IT OUT, done just like that, in bold letters.
By the way, Andrew’s review is a lot more succinct than mine will be, and he’s probably a better writer. But I think you’ll find plenty to like in my version of the review. I suspect it’ll be a marathon (but hey, at least we’re gonna have some FUN), but you should find that this review is funny, witty, insightful, and intelligent. It will be like nothing you’ve ever read. (Pssst: if you’ve ever read anything I wrote in this forum, well, same sh!t).
But I do appreciate Mr. Borntreger giving me his blessing in so crassly latching onto his site. If you haven’t seen badmovies.org, you don’t know what you’re missing. Thanks again, Andrew.
Now that this long-winded intro is done....
These Future Events Shall Affect You In The Future
The first credit — “A Glen A. Larson Production” — is a harbinger of things to come. Larson was pretty successful in TV in the late 70’s and early 80’s, with stuff like Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, Automan and the series this show spawned. But he was a product of his time, and his stuff didn’t age well at all. Add to that, Battlestar was such a blatant rip-off of Star Wars that George Lucas sued for copyright infringement (and I’m shocked Disney didn’t wipe the floor with him for stealing outright from Tron when he “created” Automan. The only series that Larson created that has aged well was Magnum P.I.... and Magnum had the advantage of getting an overhaul by Donald Bellisario before it went on the air, not to mention a main cast that was damn near perfect.
We hear transmissions of a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, as we go into a split-screen sequence of a rocket launch. This split-screen technique lasts through the whole prologue, and it’s really clunky. Each time they cut to a new shot, it’s the same procedure: two screens show the same thing, while one shows a different shot. Not good, filmmakers. So we see stock footage of a rocket taking off, shots of a faux space shuttle orbiting Earth, Our Hero, Buck Rogers himself (Gil Gerard) at the controls, then something that, I think, was supposed to be a comet. It looked to me like a cheap knock-off of that exploding-star shot in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
During this sequence, William Conrad gives the following narration:
“In the year 1987, at the John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA launched the last of America’s deep space probes. The payload perched on the nose cone of the massive rocket was a one-man exploration vessel, Ranger 3. Aboard this compact starship, a lone astronaut, William ‘Buck’ Rogers, was to experience cosmic forces beyond all comprehension, an awesome brush with death. In the wink of an eye, his life support systems were frozen by temperatures beyond imagination. Ranger 3 was blown out of its planned trajectory into an orbit a thousand times more vast, an orbit which was to return the ship full-circle to its point of origin — its Mother Earth — not in five months, but in five hundred years.”
At this point, we have the last of the three-screen shots. One of them is of the modified model of the space shuttle tumbling end over end; the other two are of “frozen” Buck. Buck looked like he’d been sprayed with the stuff my grandmother loved to use when floccing her Christmas tree. Don’t take my word for it; CHECK IT OUT.
Man, I could go all day on this opening narration alone. From the idea of setting the story in a time that would date the movie very quickly, to the patently bogus explanation.... Ugh! William Conrad’s voice carries its usual weight, but the lines he’s reading don’t hold up. At all. And there’s no need whatsoever for this prologue. Any audience member with half a brain will be able to pick up what’s going on in the first five minutes of the story proper. It’d be better to do it that way. Skip any explanations and give the audience a nod saying, “He’s been frozen for 500 years. Go with it.”
Ah, and now we come to the punchline. As we see Buck shuttle tumbling end over end, William Conrad continues his narration....
“For 500 years, Buck Rogers drifted through a world in which fantasy and reality merged into a timeless dream.” An abstract light pattern goes past, and we see the title zooming in.
And this is where the fun really begins. Turns out that the title is spelled out in big lights on the floor. And there’s Buck, sleeping on his side. He wakes up and lounges on his side as several women in tight jumpsuits, swimsuits, etc., sit and make eyes at him. A couple of them approach him and make come-on gestures. I’m not kidding, this is the title sequence. It’s kinda hard, at least for me, to describe this adequately. Something tells me I’ll say this again in the review. Anyway, two of the women trying to, uh, seduce Buck are a couple of his co-stars in tonight’s feature, Pamela Hensley and Erin Gray. Hey, at least they found a coupla ladies who are easy on the eyes. I’m sure they thought Gil Gerard would be the same kind of eye candy for the ladies. But looking at him now, while he was a good-looking guy, I can’t imagine anyone thinking he was the very definition of he-man masculinity.
Anyway, this title sequence could be mentioned in the same sentence as Maurice Binder and Saul Bass. As in, “Maurice Binder and Saul Bass would want to strangle the designer of these titles, just on general principle.” Binder would’ve been more offended: this sequence is a very low-rent ripoff of his famous openers for the James Bond movies.
And then, there’s... that song. Oh, ye gods and little fishes. CHECK IT OUT. There’s an audioclip on Mr. Borntreger’s site. Man, we’re four minutes in, and my eardrums are startin’ to bleed out.
While Daniel Haller is credited as director, remember that this was a TV pilot converted into a feature film (the DVD, which contains the theatrical version of the film, has it at Academy Aperture; there are some other dead giveaways about the nature of this flick I’ll mention later). The executive producer and co-writer is the man himself, Glen Larson. Not hard to figure out this was his baby, especially when you look at some of his other, uh, gifts to the world of television. I’m gonna go after Haller later on, though; he makes some gaffes even the most inexperienced journeyman director should laugh at. Oh, one more thing: the final credits will reveal who wrote this treacly piece of pseudo-pop playing in the credits. Larson. Again. The man’s talents know no bounds, eh?
The first five minutes could have been lopped off the movie, and no one would have noticed. But Buck Rogers runs a total of 89 minutes. Take out this embarrassing display, and take out three minutes for the final credits, and this movie barely breaks the 80-minute mark. Ah well, let’s get into the movie proper. (I know how long I’m rambling on, thank you. Told ya we were in for another marathon.)
And now, at last, we’re in the movie proper. So to speak. We see a giant spaceship hover into view (gee, wonder what they were trying to imitate here?), as a cheesy musical sting plays. The model of the ship looks pretty good. Unfortunately, we do a sweeping pan and camera move under the ship — and the starfield in the background stays rock steady. If ya can’t afford a motion-control system, guys, keep the camera moves as simple as possible. The ship scrambles three fighters to intercept the “hostile” craft they’ve detected. The fighter footage isn’t too bad, considering the time period and budget. I do wish they’d put some more thought on the interior of the fighter ships and their pilots’ costumes.
They take a pot shot at Ranger 3, and I imagine a 25th-Century fighter’s laser would do a lot more damage than they do here; they only leave a scratch and burn mark on Buck’s ship. Okay, okay, they did that in Star Trek II as well, but that movie made it clear there was a lot of internal damage to the Enterprise, and it was implied that Khan had intentionally fired on an area which would do damage but not destroy the ship altogether. Anyway, one of the pilots tells the others to hold their fire; he says he’s never seen a ship like this before. Hmmmmmm. He should’ve been clued in by the fact that this ship was tumbling lazily through space, clearly under no internal control. They decide to tow the thing back to their mother ship, using three tractor beams that look like a glowing green triangle. Again, the effect isn’t too bad.
I’ll get something out of the way right now. The model work on this movie isn’t bad at all. I might quibble with some details, but why bother? Considering that the movie’s total budget was, if memory serves, about a million five, it’s pretty good work. No complaints from me there. For now.
Buck is brought on board the ship and put on life support. The equipment looks fairly cheesy, especially the tubes with the track lighting in them, but it could be worse, I guess. One of the crew, a man in a black shirt (Henry Silva) leans over to check on the patient. When Buck starts breathing on his own, the man gives a little pause and says to himself, “He’s alive.” This would be pretty effective, except that I’d think he’d already know Our Hero was still kickin’. Hey, guy, look at the heart monitors, EEG, body temp gauges, etc. They do still have those 500 years into the future, right?
Cut to a beautiful young lady primping herself in a mirror. Say hello to Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley). She’s in what is obviously a royal suite, being tended to by a couple of underdressed servant girls. Oh, there’s her bodyguard, a big bald man with a Fu Manchu mustache and tattoos here and there. Henry Silva comes in, and we learn his name: Kane. We never learn of his rank; personally, I think he’s a little young to be a general. Maybe he’s some sort of advisor to the princess. But he clearly is in command of this ship. Anyway, he gives her the details on the ship he encountered. Ardala and Kane go through some expo for the audience: freezing someone cryogenically for medical reasons is fairly commonplace in the 25th Century, but Kane is surprised to see it taking place on board a ship whose instrumentation was frozen in 1987. (snicker) Dontcha just love stuff like this? Ardala is clearly very arrogant, but she doesn’t come across as being too bright; Kane has to spell everything out for her. I know, it’s exposition for the audience, and maybe it was meant for Ardala to come across as being a little dense. But when your main villain is a little dense, well, your hero isn’t going to seem all that heroic, is he. And just to show how dense she is, she begins to wonder — immediately — how good a man from the 20th Century would be in the sack. Um, I’m no military planner or anything, but considering the plan you guys will reveal in the next few minutes, a roll in the hay shouldn’t be high on your list of priorities, Princess.
So she goes to meet Buck. Buck is still groggy, and he had a headache, so Ardala orders some medicine for him. Ardala and Kane’s reaction to Buck’s mention of aspirin and the United States isn’t great, but I’ve seen worse. There is a slight problem, though: they’re an alien race in the 25th Century... but they speak in 20th-Century English. Oops. I liked Gil Gerard’s acting in this scene. When Ardala identifies herself, he has a nice “Say what?” look on his face. I also liked his expression when he said, “You mean you guys aren’t from... We’re not on Earth?” Then he lies back, saying, “I’m definitely gonna need that aspirin.” They give him the medication, which knocks him for a loop. Buck gets all goofy, thinking he must be dreaming this whole thing. Then Kane tells him, “Bear in mind that you’re a captive of a dynasty that has conquered three-fourths of the universe.”
Aw, hell no. I was chucklin’ and grinnin’ for the rest of this scene. I love how some writers, Larson included, never bother to do the first bit of research before putting the paper in the typewriter. The universe?! Let’s see. The Milky Way galaxy has about 200 billion stars. Ruling one galaxy would be a tall order (though they somehow managed to do it in Star Wars). Now imagine thousands — strike that, millions — of those, each at least 100,000 light years from one another. And to top it all off, from what we’ll learn about the Draconians, I wouldn’t have faith in them to engineer a hostile takeover of Orion Pictures — fifteen years after it went bankrupt — much less conquer whole civilizations.
Oh, by the way, that’s the name of this alien race. They’re the Draconians (snicker), ruled by the emporer Draco (snerk snort), and their mothership is the "Draconia". (chortle snicker) I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they ate lunch at Draco’s Burger Bar or got their equipment from Crazy Drac’s Military Surplus and Women’s Lingerie Store.
Anyway, the scene ends with Kane rolling his eyes as he realizes they won’t be able to question Our Hero. They overdid it on the medication, and he’s completely out of it. I got the impression that Henry Silva didn’t enjoy working on this movie; he certainly doesn’t seem to put a lot of effort into his part. Too bad, since Kane might have been an interesting character.
Kane and Ardala do a walk-and-talk down a corridor. We see a couple of guards passing by. A relatively quick observation: the guards wear what appear to be Mongolian-type helmets and costumes. From what I’ve read, the original Buck Rogers books and radio plays had a strong anti-Asian bent, having its villains be thinly-disguised stand-ins for the Chinese or Japanese. The Asian-type costumes most of the Draconians wear is, surprisingly, a pretty good move. It makes a subtle reference to the original stories, but since most of the people on board the Draconia are white, with no noticeable accents, it avoids accusations of racism. (And even if one reads bias into the costumes, it’s nowhere near as blatant as some of the stereotypes in The Phantom Menace.) The uniforms, which show no overt nationality, give an exotic look. I didn’t really have a problem with the costumes... except for the helmets. They’re brown, not black, but other than that, they look suspiciously like a certain black-clad, wheezing, six-foot-five fallen Jedi....
So, we were with Kane and Ardala. The exposition here isn’t great, but it’s not too bad. Seems Kane is from Earth, originally. Nothing is made of this, unfortunately; it’ll get one more mention later on. Also, the USA ceased to exist as a nation not long after Buck went on his little voyage. Ardala believes Buck is who he says he is. Kane doesn’t. He thinks Buck is a spy sent by “the Federal Directorate of Earth.” Here’s where the exposition gets clunky and Our Villains all but talk to the camera. The backstory: after centuries of disasters, both natural and man-made (including nuclear war), Earth is precious few resources left. They have to trade with other planets to get by now. The Draconia is going to Earth to extend an olive branch for the Emporer and open up trade talks... supposedly. Also, Earth’s been under attack by “pirate” ships, putting a stranglehold on their trade. The Draconians want to help curb this.... supposedly. In truth, the pirate ships are Draconian ships in disguise, trying to scare Earth into agreeing to make a pact with Draco’s Darling Daughter. And when Earth opens its defenses up and lets the Draconia in.... Draconia will send their fighters and bombers out from hiding, carry out a full-scale attack, and take over the WORLD!!! MWA-HA-HA-HA!!! (Some of this will be revealed in a moment. I figured it saves time to get it all out at once.) Anyway, Kane’s worried Earth might suspect Our Villains’ motives. Ardala tells him to do whatever he thinks is necessary, then heads back to her suite, telling her bodyguard, “Come along, Tigerman.”
Tigerman?!?![/i] Oh, mommy!![/i] |
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| Terrahawk |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 08:20:14 AM
Sorry, I meant Buck Rogers tried to change. It tried to become a Star Trek lite.
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. - |
| BradH812 |
Posted - 09/09/2007 : 12:13:17 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Terrahawk
One aspect is that the show pulled a "Space 1999" in the second season. It was a lot like two different shows.
I recommend you see the new BSG. Maybe you'll find I'm completely off base in my opinion of the series. You wouldn't be the first person to tell me that. :-)
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. -
Which show? BSG or Buck Rogers? I know Buck Rogers tried to change its format and its ratings plummeted in the second season. And one of these days, I'll actually get around to watching some of these shows. |
| Terrahawk |
Posted - 09/08/2007 : 8:40:56 PM
One aspect is that the show pulled a "Space 1999" in the second season. It was a lot like two different shows.
I recommend you see the new BSG. Maybe you'll find I'm completely off base in my opinion of the series. You wouldn't be the first person to tell me that. :-)
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. - |
| BradH812 |
Posted - 09/07/2007 : 6:01:15 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Terrahawk
Thanks for the review Brad.
Did you see the episode where they hold an reception for some diplomats and the entertainment is a bunch of people on roller skates with tube lighting? I almost died laughing when I saw that when SciFi ran it.
BTW, your complaint about Buck Rogers having good ideas but not following through is the same problem I have with BSG. They present some interesting situation and then do things that make no sense.
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. -
That episode with the skaters was one of the ones with Ardala in it. It was pretty obvious the crew realized they didn't have enough material to fill a full hour minus commercials, and they stuck in two minutes of filler at the last minute. They did quite a lot of this; the "Space Rockers" episode was FULL of this crap. I wonder how many people fell out laughing when they saw stuff like this in '79, let alone today.
Gotta admit I haven't seen any of Battlestar Galactica. One of these days I'll rent the DVD's, then I'll know what I'm talking about when I refer to it. *g* |
| Terrahawk |
Posted - 09/06/2007 : 8:33:59 PM
Thanks for the review Brad.
Did you see the episode where they hold an reception for some diplomats and the entertainment is a bunch of people on roller skates with tube lighting? I almost died laughing when I saw that when SciFi ran it.
BTW, your complaint about Buck Rogers having good ideas but not following through is the same problem I have with BSG. They present some interesting situation and then do things that make no sense.
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. - |
| BradH812 |
Posted - 08/24/2007 : 7:40:55 PM
Greenhornet, I'd like to know how they failed to realize just about every damn thing about Twiki was annoying. Also, I'm with ya on how they botched "Jennifer." It's funny. When Dr. Huer's dialogue required him to be a pompous dope, Tim O'Connor walked through his performance. When he had something interesting to do, though, O'Connor put his all into it.
"War Witch" came in a couple of days ago. Will probably watch it this weekend and type up the review next week sometime.
I want to save most of the bomb-heaving for that particular episode when I get going, so I'll confine most of my comments on the first season to this thread. And here's a few things I've thought about since the last post:
One of the episodes with Ardala and Kane had one of the few real surprises in the series, and it was actually pretty nice. In one scene, Buck had a knock-down drag-out fight with the resurrected Tigerman. When he had the chance, Buck refused to kill Tigerman. Later on, when Ardala had Buck dead to rights, Tigerman stepped in between them and forced Ardala to let him go. At the end of the episode, Tigerman looked Buck in the eye and said — in a surprisingly soft and cultured voice — "You spared my life once. Now I've spared yours. We're even."
Of course, the people making the series never went anywhere with this. Dummies.
Near the end of the series, it looks pretty obvious to me the show had run out of steam. It no longer had good ideas that were screwed up. The show was a flat-out bust. When I saw the episode "Space Rockers", I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. I was closer to crying, if only out of sympathy for Jerry Orbach, who was clearly exasperated at his awful dialogue. This episode might actually be worse than "War Witch," which is saying something, but it wasn't all that much fun to laugh at it.
Okay, enough on the first season. Next stop, "Flight of the War Witch." |
| Greenhornet |
Posted - 08/19/2007 : 08:47:37 AM
Thanks. I was one of those (semi) loyal fans who watched this show. I say "semi" because of the dumb parts. In "Jennifer", I got the sudden idea that she WAS Buck's old love and had also somehow gotten the ddep-freeze treatment. In my version of the story, she was also a spy because --as was related with Buck-- she had no records in the future world and thus "didn't exist" to their all-knowing computers. Further, she was avoiding him because she was more professional and didn't want her cover blown.
This could have been the greatest episode, with Buck trying desperatly to find a link to his past and his friends telling him to get over it, that it's just a coincidence and worrying about his mental health.
No such luck.
PS: was "bidi-bidi-bidi" really nessisary? How did they fail to realise it was annoying as hell?
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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