“All hail our insect overlords—whether in the backyard or Hollywood!”

Today’s movies are:
The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)
Encounters at the End of the World (2008)

Offbeat and intense, The Hellstrom Chronicle won the Best Documentary Oscar in 1971. Unfortunately, despite the movie’s success, it’s not available on DVD yet—but I’m still hoping! I’ve done some research, but really can find no info as to why it’s unavailable. Perhaps the flick is trapped in a power-play between greedy and feverish egos. Who knows what lurks in the hive-mind of Hollywood? Perhaps an argument between executive producer David L. Wolper and distributor Warner Bros.? (And Warner Bros., when is a DVD of Ken Russell’s The Devils coming out? But I digress…)

ABC-TV always used to show The Hellstrom Chronicle opposite NBC’s Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights back in the day, and I remember seeing it multiple times before I was in my teens. I’d like to think that I remember teachers telling us to tune in and watch Hellstrom because it was educational, but I’m really not sure.



Using the format of the documentary, director Walon Green (co-screenwriter of The Wild Bunch and Friedkin’s awesome Sorcerer*) and writer David Seltzer (screenwriter of The Omen and Frankenheimer’s Prophecy), along with fantastic insect microphotography from Ken Middleham (Saul Bass’ Phase IV and William Castle’s Bug) and a moody, creepy score from Lalo Schifrin (if you don’t know who he is, shame on you!), have made a completely un-objective documentary with actors playing parts, a sort of unfunny mockumentary.









In other words, a science fiction film where the insects take over the world.



But it’s this lack of objectivity, and an adherence to a bitter thesis that keeps The Hellstrom Chronicle fresh. This flick is like anti-bug agitprop: a warning against the eventual victory of our soulless insect overlords.



It’s the complete antithesis of every “nature is cute and nice” documentary, making The Hellstrom Chronicle even more awesome. While Hellstrom’s ideas are all based on fact and genuine theories, that he’s a composite fictional character adds to the sci-fi feeling of the movie.



Hellstrom’s narration is fantastically bleak as well, beyond what any “real” scientist would say, with a sardonic edge of grim resignation: it’s nothing but descriptions of how ruthless and vicious bugs are, and their Darwinian single-mindedness and superior adaptability will leave them the winners of a despoiled planet.

As such, the narration’s very reminiscent of the narration for some of Werner Herzog’s documentaries. If you’ve ever heard the way Herzog describes nature in his docs (“the birds do not sing; they SHRIEK in agony”), it will be easy for you to imagine the German director in the role of Hellstrom, describing the way a wasp’s jaws crush a bee’s head in a gleefully gruesome manner, or intoning with morbid solemnity how it would take man billions of years to rebuild after an atomic war, while insects could repopulate the planet in a matter of weeks. Fun stuff all around!

Here’s actor Lawrence Pressman channeling Werner Herzog, warning us we are dooooomed! YAY!

And speaking of insects, The Oscars are happening soon. These awards only mean anything to me when they are attached to a film I already like, like The Hellstrom Chronicle. Then I can get on my soapbox and gripe, “How come this Academy Award winner isn’t on DVD yet?”



Otherwise, I’m not surprised when undeserving films win.
But I am annoyed about how it only seems to be five or six flicks that garner every nomination. Booooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring! I’m not saying that they have to truly open their minds, just un-narrow them a bit. But really, does it matter?



I do seem to remember—but no, I’m not going to look anything up at Oscar-dot-poop--what if I’m wrong?—that there used to be more variety among the nominated. But then again, who cares? There are Johnny Paycheck songs to be listened to.



The fab Werner Herzog has been Oscar nominated this year for Encounters at the End of the World, a movie I liked, but also had reservations towards.

I caught Encounters at the End of the World in June 2008 at NYC’s Film Forum, a place I don’t visit as much as I used to when they had interesting film series about Don Siegel and Sci-Fi/Horror Fests. Anyhoo, at the time I wrote:

Uncle Werner goes to Antarctica! And while this flick is superficially a lot of fun (there’s plenty of laughs), there’s a mean spirit behind much of it, which leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Herzog zaps the foibles of a few blowhards, but to what purpose? The people he makes fun of are flunkies—why hold them up to ridicule? And if you’re mad at these people, Herr Herzog, please tell us why? The film also lacks a focus, being too much like a travelogue, moving from one subject to the next. Herzog should have concentrated the documentary on the marine biologist who was making his “last” dive. It seems that he and Herzog bonded over a love of apocalyptic sci-fi movies.



Meanwhile, this man has dived in freezing water and discovered new species of life! That should have been the topic of Encounters at the End of the World.


(photo of Herr Direcktor by the magnificent Rick Hall over at Toe Stubber)


As it stands, despite my gripes, if you’re a Herzog fan, this is a definite renter. There’s much to chortle over (grumpy Werner is in fine form), and there is some really incredible footage in this flick. And who knew that seals sounded like transmissions from Mars?

For an even more deliciously cynical and sarcastic look at life (and bureacracy) at the research stations of Antarctica, visit Big Dead Place: it's written by the people who actually work there!



Turning away from my notes….
I really-o truly-o want Uncle Werner to win the Oscar just to hear what he says. I hope he doesn’t punk out and not drop a heaping pot of scathe on the Academy; or at least a sharp and witty biting of the feeding hand. C’mon, Werner, you like kung fu movies more than Godard, so make it interesting!

[* = regarding Sorcerer, a flick I and the Missus enjoy very much, although I think she regards it as an existential comedy (which isn’t a bad way to look at the flick, actually): she started this when we first watched the film together, and now, in our household Sorcerer is always referred to as (scary voice) : “FOUR DOOMED MEN!”

[Alternative Universe Digression: I would KILL to see an NC-17 film called FOUR DOOMED MEN! if it was directed by John Carpenter, produced by Robert Aldrich, written by Walter Hill, starring William Smith, Joe Spinell, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton as the FOUR DOOMED MEN!, with cameos by Ernest Borgnine and Warren Oates.]

Here The Missus and I are at the infamous Ruby’s on the boardwalk at Coney Island, circa 2004, back when we were a'courting. (With the so-called revitalization of Coney Island around the corner, Ruby’s is probably doomed, but with this kooky global economic crisis, who knows?)

Remember, Haneke’s original German-language Funny Games and the Brazilian cop-movie mind-fuck Elite Squad are two of her favorite films. No wonder I love her!]

WHOA! In my investigating, I found that over at the excellent Ferdy on Films etc. site, Marilyn Ferdinand has given a thorough examination of The Hellstrom Chronicle, well worth reading.
Please check out her review, and the site in general: good stuff!

And as we finish writing, on the stereo comes Van Halen’s “Atomic Punk!” YeeeeeeeeeeeoW!

Natas Jr.: a review of Omen 3:The Final Conflict (and an attempt at formatting)

Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)
This review is based on the “edited for TV,” pan & scan version shown on AMC in January 2009, so maybe some things got cut out of The Final Conflict (I’m sure all the gore), but what is left is so bad that it’s highly doubtful that if unedited, the flick would be any good anyway.

So here goes:







While The Omen and Damien: Omen 2 were not necessarily great intellectual achievements, they were exciting, with their bleak worldview (Satan’s winning! Yay!) and formula for mayhem: disposable character discovers odd fact about Damien, Satanic forces represented by Jerry Goldsmith’s deliciously Lucifer-riffic music conspire against the sucker in a very complicated and convoluted way, then bait & switch: it looks like the poor sap’s gonna get killed by one thing, but no, they’re saved! Aannnnnnnd—splat! They get killed by something else, in a very gory way. (This is essentially the same formula the Final Destination series has used to commercial success, and I love this formula.)

[BTW, David Seltzer, screenwriter of The Omen, was the screenwriter and ghost-writer, respectively, of two of my favorites movies: The Hellstrom Chronicle and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I see a certain worldview here, do you?]

The first of the many problems The Omen 3: The Final Conflict has is that there are not enough killings! In the first two movies, you just looked at Damien wrong, and it was goodbye.

Here, Catholic monks are obviously conspiring against the Anti-Christ, and nothing happens. The big problem is that the flick is too British in temperament, too restrained, perhaps too polite. The third entry in a franchise that prides itself in gruesome killings is not the time to develop manners---it’s the time to go completely ape!

By the way, in the first film, Damien’s birthday is June 6, 1966; yet this movie takes place in 1981 or ’82, with a very adult Sam Neill as Satan Jr. Huh?

And this movie had probably got THE worst, most sickly sweet and sanctimonious ending I’ve seen in a while. I wanted to throw something at my TV!

There is one bright light (and for this, we may perhaps be able to thank the Brits): Sam Neill’s blasphemous monologs and sermons. Some Scandinavian death-metal band really needs to sample Neill’s speeches for a song: Here, the writing and performing become stellar, real top notch quasi-Shakespearian British thespian stuff, and while this movie stinks, it is worth it just to fast-forward to these intense and delightfully evil scenes. It’s for great moments like this that I wade through so much crud.









Best parts: Some of Sam Neill/grown-up Damien’s awesome monologs—kids, memorize these and then FREAK OUT!

“Oh my Father, Lord of Silence, Supreme God of Desolation, though mankind reviles yet aches to embrace, strengthen my purpose to save the world from a second ordeal of Jesus Christ and his grubby mundane creed. Show man instead the raptures of Thy kingdom. Infuse in him the grandeur of melancholy, the divinity of loneliness, the purity of evil, the paradise of pain.”

“Suffer the little children to come unto me. Your words, Nazarene. Not mine.”

“Nazarene, charlatan, what can you offer humanity? Since the hour you vomited forth from the gaping wound of a woman, you have done nothing but drown man's soaring desires in a deluge of sanctimonious morality. You've inflamed the pubertal mind of youth with your repellent dogma of original sin. And now you absolve in denying them the ultimate joy beyond death by destroying me? But you will fail, Nazarene, as you have always failed. We were both created in man's image, but while you were born of an impotent god, I was conceived of a jackal. Born of Satan, the desolate one. Your pain on the cross was but a splinter compared to the agony of my father. Cast out of heaven, the fallen angel, banished, reviled. I will drive deeper the thorns into your rancid carcass, you profaner of vices. Cursed Nazarene. Satan, I will avenge thy torment, by destroying the Christ forever.”

[Interestingly, Omen 3 screenwriter Andrew Birkin (brother of sexy Jane Birkin and uncle of Charlotte Gainsbourg) wrote the films The Name of the Rose (1986), The Cement Garden (and directed; 1993), The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006).]





Sexy Svetlana, the siren of Stalingrad sez, "Satan's swell!"






[Whew! Now I just have to learn how to italicize or bold text, adding Mp3 files, and URLs. No problem: Duck soup!