Tag Archives: Science Fiction

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CAPSULE: THE EMPIRE (2024)

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L’empire

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Anamaria Vartolomei, Brandon Vlieghe, Lyna Khoudri, Julien Manier, , Camille Cottin

PLOT: Rival races of aliens, the Ones and the Zeroes, possess humans in a small French town.

Still from The Empire (2024)

COMMENTS: The Empire is an epic pitched in a very odd and minor key, and we expect nothing less from Bruno Dumont. It’s best described as a deadpan satire where alien factions battle for the fate of earth, but spend more time scouting, strategizing, swimming, and sleeping around than fighting each other. Why aliens chose a sunny and sleepy fishing town in northern France for the site of Armageddon is anyone’s guess—and maybe an essential part of the joke.

Much of what plot there is seems arbitrary and almost beside-the-point; in fact, it’s not entirely clear what the point is. The aliens possess villagers at random. The evil Zeroes have a prophetic Antichrist-like baby of destiny, but the good guy Ones don’t have much of a coherent plan to deal with it. They decapitate someone, maybe as a warning? An abduction resolves in an easily thwarted anticlimax. Mostly, the two teams cast sideways looks at each other when they pass in town, and take time out to confer with their respective leaders: La Reine for the Ones, who hovers in a cathedral spaceship complete with stained glass windows, and Belzébuth for the Zeroes, orbiting Earth in a craft that looks more like the palace of Versailles. The Empire‘s most fabulous character, Belzébuth dresses in a puffy white suit with a black bow tie, and is something like a cross between Evil from Time Bandits and a depraved Pee Wee Herman. Fans of Lil’ Quinquin‘s Captain Van der Weyden and Lieutenant Carpentier will be frustrated; the comic gendarmes put in a couple appearances, and Dumont teases that we may follow their investigation into the decapitation, but they actually play no role in the plot. (I’m a bit concerned about ‘s health—Van der Weyden barely mumbles one line here.)

The Empire is loosely a parody of science fiction epics—Jane and Rudy even wield (slightly modified) lightsabers—but it’s far from Spaceballs 2. If there’s a satirical target here, it’s the simplistic Manicheanism of humanity (and humanity’s blockbuster movies) . Despite their grand pretensions, the great cosmic struggle between the Ones and Zeroes is constantly subsumed into the minutiae of daily provincial life. Carnal attraction crosses battle lines. And the final showdown between the forces of good and evil is cheekily subverted, to say the least—as if both sides had been wasting their time all along.

The premise has a mildly amusing level of base absurdity, but the film is virtually free of laugh-out-loud moments. Fabrice Luchini’s clownish prince of evil amuses as he watches black blobs twerking, and a scene or two with Carpentier supplies possible chuckles. Still, the movie is well-shot and scored, the architecturally-minded spaceships are unique, and there are points of visual interest (and I’m not just referring to Vartolomei and Khoudri, who both have nude scenes and who are both stunning). It’s tempting to dub this The Empire Strikes Out. But although the mock-epic is a bit underwhelming, if considered as another thread in the tapestry of the expanding paranormal North of France Dumontverse, it’s scenic enough to make it worth a visit for the director’s fans.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a bizarre yet movingly humane satire that exposes the philosophical deficiencies of the movie genre that dominates global film culture… In Dumont’s eccentric way, The Empire forces the sci-fi genre to represent Western culture’s deepest mysteries. It’s like a Classic Comics version of a Robert Bresson movie with Spaceballs thrown in — a manifesto opposing the most corrupt and childish film genre.”–Armond White, National Review (contemporaneous)

The Empire [Blu-ray]

The Empire [Blu-ray]
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List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE CATHEDRAL OF NEW EMOTIONS (2006)

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Die kathedrale der neuen gefühle

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DIRECTED BY: Helmut Herbst

PLOT: Members of a Seventies Berlin commune travel through space aimlessly in a shipping container clutched in a giant fist, until an amnesiac stowaway divulges information on the location of the commune’s founder.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Even in the world of animated psychedelic European science-fiction—a small niche, admittedly—there aren’t many projects that open with a naked figure trampolining on a small patch of bell peppers as the titles scroll by in the background. That turns out to be practically the baseline of “normal,” in light of what follows.

COMMENTS:  Various members of the commune/spaceship frequently repeat the phrase “My eyes are cast down in awe,” and it’s a fitting description of the experience of watching The Cathedral of New Emotions. Expanded from director/co-writer Herbst’s 1971 short, Cathedral follows the antics of a 1970s commune repurposed as soft 1970s sci-fi in the vein of or Samuel Delany. It’s like an animated Dark Star with sex and drugs, with a slight element of The Final Programme in the mix. When the spaceship is contained in a fist, hard science is not going to be a primary element, especially when the spacecraft has windshield wipers that sweep off detritus such as bugs and a Hawkman from “Flash Gordon.” The journey through space isn’t just physical. The main space of concern is the metaphysical: one character remarks that “he lives in his head,” and upon his rediscovery of commune founder Madson, a self-described “merchant of images,” he tells another that they are “also just fiction.” There’s a political element, with May ’68 and the Vietnam War referenced both directly and indirectly through the disaffected and somewhat aimless behavior of the “crew.”

Cathedral comes across as a smarter and hornier version of an offering made for stoners with brains. There is a lot of sexual imagery and content, both hetero and homo (a cocooned threeway, a visual pun regarding “blowjob”). If it’s still not clear, the lyrics of the Krautrock-styled theme song at the beginning and end of the film feature the chorus “You’re inside of me/Deep, deep inside of me, ohhh.” In keeping with the Adult Swim comparison, the closest  (watered-down) equivalent might be “Superjail!” (although that show features more grotesque cruelty and violence than sex.) Cathedral even has a pair of indeterminately gendered twins who serve roughly the same function as similar “Superjail!” pair, providing a mocking chorus and running commentary on the action. The TV cartoon’s design is also more grotesque than Cathedral‘s, although Herbst includes an element of grotesquerie related to sexual body horror.

Cathedral made its home video premiere courtesy of Deaf Crocodile as a (now sold-out) limited deluxe edition with a booklet including essays from Walter Chaw and Alexander McDonald and slipcover. The standard edition includes a commentary by German film historian Rolf Giesen that is as much a history of German animation as a discussion of this film (description is somewhat pointless because the film is experimental, Giesen says upfront, but he does talk about Cathedral and Herbst in the latter part of the commentary); a visual essay by filmmaker Stephen Broomer; “Container Interstellar,” the 7-minute short that was expanded into Cathedral; a 25-minute documentary examining Herbst’s work (mainly television shorts and an acclaimed documentary on the DADA movement); and an interview with Herbst, who died in 2021.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Defying any kind of logical description, the animated German sci-fi fever dream The Cathedral of New Emotions can proudly stand as the trippiest title released to date by Deaf Crocodile — and that’s saying something!”–Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (Blu-ray)

The Cathedral Of New Emotions [Blu-ray]

The Cathedral Of New Emotions [Blu-ray]
  • German director Helmut Herbst's long-lost animated sci-fi feature, a true hallucinogenic Space Freakout
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Apocryphally Weird

58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976)

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AKA Demon; God Told Me To Kill

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” – Proverbs 3:5-6

DIRECTED BY: Larry Cohen

FEATURING: Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levene, Mike Kellin, Richard Lynch

PLOT: NYPD detective Peter Nicholas investigates a series of spree killings in which the perpetrators all seem to act with no provocation or explanation, each justifying their actions by saying “God told me to.” Nicholas, a devout Catholic, is infuriated by this claim, but equally plagued by their certainty and his shame over his own sins and infidelities. His investigation leads him to an unearthly suspect, an individual with stories of alien abduction, virgin birth, and Nicholas’ own family history.

Still from God Told Me To (1976)

BACKGROUND:

  • Cohen was a genre chameleon whose c.v. includes the blaxploitation gangster flick Black Caesar, the giant-beast-in-New-York movie Q: The Winged Serpent, and the consumerism horror-satire The Stuff, and his previous film It’s Alive, the tale of a monstrous baby that our own Alfred Eaker called “one of the best horror films of the decade.”
  • Cohen planned to engage Bernard Herrmann, who provided the music for It’s Alive, to compose the score for the new film. According to Cohen, Herrmann watched a rough cut and afterwards discussed his plans with the director over dinner. Unfortunately, Herrmann passed away in his sleep that night. (The film is dedicated to the composer.) Cohen’s next choice, Miklós Rózsa, turned down the job, saying, “God told me not to.” Frank Cordell eventually scored the film.
  • Cohen first cast Robert Forster in the role of the detective. Forster worked on the film for several days before tiring of the director’s methods and leaving the production.
  • The policeman who goes on a shooting rampage at the St. Patrick’s Day parade is portrayed by Andy Kaufman, in his film debut. Cohen crashed the actual parade to film without a permit, and said later that he had to intervene with onlookers to protect Kaufman when the comedian taunted them.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In their final showdown, the glowing, androgynous Bernard tempts Nicholas to join forces and spawn a new race of beings on earth. As proof of his bonafides, Philip pulls up his tunic to reveal a pulsing vagina located squarely in the left side of his chest. It’s a startling sight (and a curious location at that), but it clears the bar for shock value, and ensures that Nicholas is definitively unconvinced to join the cause.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Abstract alien abduction; ribcage vagina

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: God Told Me To builds upon the intriguing decision to take the rantings of homicidal lunatics seriously, and to consider the possibility that God really is commanding the insane to do their horrible deeds. Upon this simple subversion, Cohen piles up a child’s treasury of conspiracy theories and paranoid tropes, including shadowy cabals of power, police corruption, ancient astronauts, hermaphroditism, mind control, and angel/devil dichotomies. It’s a mad melange of wild ideas and outlandish plot twists that guarantees you never quite get your footing.

Original trailer for God Told Me To (1976)

COMMENTS: “It’s based on a true story!” Larry Cohen told the Village Voice about God Told Me To in 2018. “No, seriously, it’s a picture about religion, and the violence people do in the name of religion — which feels really relevant today.” Of course, Cohen was far Continue reading 58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976) →

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MUTANT ALIENS (2001)

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DIRECTED BY: Bill Plympton

FEATURING: Voices of Francine Lobis, Dan McComas, George Casden, Matthew Brown, Jay Cavanaugh

PLOT: Josie has kept her eyes on the skies for twenty years hoping to witness her father’s return from space; but on his re-entry, he is not alone.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA:

“The president’s being eaten by a nose!”

Check the regulations.

COMMENTS: Early on in Mutant Aliens, we observe a young woman’s inner dialogue about whether or not to bang her beau. As a right-shoulder nun and left-shoulder slut exchange arguments, insults, and blows, her beau stands eagerly nearby, stretching out the front of his underpants’ waistband. Within said pants, Plympton manifests a series of metaphors: a launching missile, a locomotive, a hammer-and-anvil, etc. The scene culminates with voracious lovemaking over the woman’s observation console, the thrustful energy knocking her boob into a control lever. On the display screen, she observes an unidentified object as it comes crashing through Earth’s atmosphere.

In many ways, this vignette encapsulates not merely the building blocks of Space Mutants, but perhaps the animation-auteur’s modus operandi: Plympton suffers an insatiable desire to play with shapes and lines, and has spent his career developing plotlines sturdy enough to support his lively doodling. Mutant Aliens is an absurd narrative—Earth astronaut returns after twenty years with a mad yarn about about love and war with space noses and finger-riding space eyeballs—that features every strange curvy-cue, heaving bio-mass, and ultra-violent encounter his fan base has come to expect. Advertisement goons drool and thrust over the prospect of orbitally projected commercials; a bored secretary devises elaborate fornicatory scenarios between her left and right hands; and mutant aliens reign gross-but-cute terror on the various government suits desperately attempting to contain their menace.

Also, there’s Jesus drag racing—in song. Plympton has several axes to grind: against religion (I’m guessing he had to endure plenty of “Satanic Panic” and TV evangelism during his formative years), against Big Media (see also The Tune), against the military-industrial complex (see also I Married a Strange Person), and so on. And though he’s considerably heavy-handed—a lot of throbbing linework and delightfully icky sound effects go into his screeding—it’s hard to object. The cartoonish excess adds up to cartoonish dismissiveness, and his films feel more like jolly, middle finger Fuck Yous! than like some mopey killjoy whingeing through a megaphone.

Sure, sure, bits sag here and there (not unlike the occasional swinging breast or phallus), but by the time you notice a lull, Plympton’s wonderfully distracted pen moves on to another blast of ridiculousness. And this is the biggest draw for Plympton fans: in a way, he does the same thing over and over, within each narrative framework as well as from movie to movie. However, this “same thing” is playing around with his medium as hard as he can while poking the prudish, the pompous, and the otherwise powerful.

And that’s just peachy.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Juxtaposing the sentimental and the bizarre comes naturally to Plympton, whose films are truly singular — surreal, lovably crude, and sweet-natured but grosser than heck, with blown-up heads and bitten-off fingers galore. Mutant Aliens is no exception… Weird stuff, I tell you, but it’s terribly cute and good-natured somehow.”–Marrit Ingman, The Austin Chronicle (contemporaneous)

Mutant Aliens

Mutant Aliens
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LILAC BALL (1987)

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Лиловый шар

Liloviy shar, AKA Purple Ball

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DIRECTED BY: Pavel Arsenov

FEATURING: Natalya Guseva, Vyacheslav Nevinnyy, Vyacheslav Baranov, Boris Shcherbakov

PLOT: In the year 2087, a research spacecraft discovers the wreck of “The Dark Wanderer,” a legendary doomed ship containing mysterious purple spheres.

COMMENTS: Enmity is nasty business, and were it not for one plucky little girl, the future of mankind would fall to self-destruction. So we learn in Arsenov’s science-fiction/fantasy outing, Lilac Ball. It covers a span in time from a century into mankind’s future—when computerized intelligence facilitates deep-space exploration—to the ancient past, the time of Legends, wherein man and myth coexisted (if not in harmony, then at least side by side). In those days, myriad dangers arose for the common peasant by way of the dark sorcery of Baba Yaga and her three sons.

Events kick off in grand future style. Captain Green, the commander of the Pegasus who speaks nearly as mechanically as the ship’s computer, is tasked with escorting Professor Seleznyov and his daughter Alice to a research vacation. All of a sudden, the ship’s sensors detect an anomaly: a craft too large and too strange to be found in the database. Behold, it is The Dark Wanderer, and its floating ruins contain dispiriting records of the crew’s fate, a fair number of vitreous spheres, and the lovable four-armed archaeologist, Gromozeka. The spheres contain a horrible doom, but little Alice knows just where on Earth to find the purple ball secreted—thousands of years in the past—by the Dark Wanderer’s crew to destroy humankind at just the right time.

This movie is not without its charm, and its seventy-odd-minutes breeze by on the winds of adventure and whimsy. The first act, very much typical science fiction, is well executed; the filmmakers push their skills and budget to the limit. The Pegasus’ interior design is refreshingly dissimilar from most outings of the genre, with an open-plan cockpit/convening area (tea is served often) featuring computer consoles, greenery, short staircases, and a central table for four. Zipping back thousands of years into the past—I had had no inkling of a time machine until Alice mentions it for the purposes of returning to the “Era of Legends”—is rather less satisfying, albeit involving some endearing puppetry. (The baby roc is cute—and wholly undeserving of its fate at the hands of the Wanderer’s evil crew.)

Arsenov appears to aim for an all-the-young-adult-adventure-tropes experience, but his reach, alas, exceeds his grasp. Still, it is impossible to feel hostile toward such winsome narrative meanderings of future and past.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Curious mash-up of fantasy and science-fiction from the Soviet Union…  a strange mixture of mythologies, to be sure; part Sinbad, part fairytale, part Wizard of Oz. All in a film whose first act was straight science-fiction! There’s nothing wrong with blending genres, of course, but it’s a tricky business, and the disconnect between the two aspects of the story here is a little jarring, to say the least.” — Mark David Welsh

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan after seeing some clips and remarking that they “resemble something that AI watched in its early stages and picked up on.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

The Purple Ball / Lilac Ball / Liloviy shar (English Subtitles)

The Purple Ball / Lilac Ball / Liloviy shar (English Subtitles)
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