Sci-Fi Rundown
Now Playing: The 21st Annual Ohio 24 Hour Science Fiction Marathon *whew*
Just so you know, I didn't actually write this as the marathon progressed, but I found this format to be more suitable to discussing the marathon, since these things are about the experience of being in a theatre full of movie geeks, and this experience is inseparable from the films themselves.

I arrived for this thing around 9 AM, three hours before showtime, and I had a pretty good spot in line. These lines are always really boring, with anticipation drawing out the waiting time, but I brought my copy of Guy Maddin's collected writings, FROM THE ATELIER TOVAR. Highly recommended for fans of either his film work or his columns in various magazines. Finally, when the doors opened I got my usual seat in the lower level general admission section. I can't comprehend the idea of having reserved seats for this be in the balcony, which is much too high for movie-watching, in my opinion, but I won't complain since I pay less for superior seats. Bruce Bartoo, SF emcee and all-around good guy, does his usual pre-marathon spiel, and I still can't shake the image of him two years ago on crutches (it was my first SF marathon). But oh well. On with the show...

First movie starts off late, as usual. The vintage trailers are an important part of the experience as well, so I'll comment on those at the appropriate spots. We open with DUCK DODGERS IN THE 241/2 CENTURY (1957, Chuck Jones) as usual- not much new to say about this one. Still awesome. Then we see some trailers of films with effects by Phil Tippett, this year's marathon guest of honor. A good selection- EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, ROBOCOP, JURASSIC PARK, STARSHIP TROOPERS, with DRAGONSLAYER thrown in to demonstrate that not everything he's done has become a classic of its kind. Follow this up with trailers for most of this year's marathon films, and then the first film- GODZILLA, MOTHRA AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK (2001, Shusuke Kaneko). Like the latter-day Gamera films, also directed by Kaneko, this movie relies heavily on the mythos of its rubbed-suited stars. Here Godzilla is the bad guy, with Mothra, Ghidorah the 1000-Year Dragon, and Baragon, who's cool but obviously doesn't merit an above-the-title following. The characters in this one are as cartoonish as ever, which I guess is supposed to match with the effects, and all in all the cartoonishness that keeps this movies from being great is also what makes them charming- in other words, good marathon movies. Best moment comes early, when a soldier remarks that Godzilla was claimed to have been spotted in New York at the end of the last century, but that people in Japan don't believe it was really him- I'm inclined to agree. Too many resurrection scenes though. Rating: **1/2.

Next up are some more trailers, including an extended tribute to Man In Suit himself- Godzilla! He's celebrating the big five-oh this year, I guess, and it was fun to watch trailers for Godzilla movies of all stripes. Most fun was the KING KONG VS. GODZILLA trailer, followed by GODZILLA 2000. Two trailers for the Emmerich movie was excessive though, especially since I seemed to be the only one booing. Then came some more tried-and-true shorts: BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA, the immortal GRAVITY, and Kevin O'Brien's BREAD cycle, which truth be told I'm getting pretty sick of. Then the feature, THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN (1960, Edgar G. Ulmer). Ulmer made one of my favorite no-budget noirs ever (1945's DETOUR) but I get the feeling that most of his films were closer to this, a bargain-basement effort if I ever saw one. Basically this is a guy who is sprung from prison and turned invisible (the effects have a certain charm) in order to break into places. Didn't really engage me, and it didn't help that the film was shown partially out of frame due to the Arena Grand's inability to show films in Academy ratio. Still, memorable for one of the best quotes of the fest- "you'd better lay off the giggle water." Rating: *1/2.

Then came another old favorite, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954, William Arnold), shown in 3D. It was preceded by similarly themed trailers, from various underwater movies (the highlight was the Tony Randall/Janet Leigh comedy HELLO DOWN THERE!) to some beach-party/horror hybrids. The final trailer was one of the least-liked of the night by the audience, but I personally found it to be the best- Albert Brooks' REAL LIFE, included solely because the trailer is for some reason or other in 3D. This thing's a hoot- if the DVD ever gets released, this had better be on it. As for CREATURE, I saw this a few years back at Nightmare at Studio 35, and just as it was pretty cool then it was pretty cool this time as well. Rating: **1/2.

Our special guest this evening, Phil Tippett, showed up to introduce his directorial debut, the made-for-cable STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HERO OF THE FEDERATION. The screening (its first on the big screen, allegedly) was preceded by a highlight reel of Tippett's more recent work with his effects house, on such films as CATS AND DOGS, EVOLUTION, and HELLBOY, as well as those hamster-and-bunny commercials for Blockbuster. Good work, I guess, although I'll remember him for his classic work. Ah well. The film itself is about what you'd expect from a $5 million sequel to an over $100 million movie. This is pretty much RIO BRAVO in space, only without interesting characters- think a low-rent PITCH BLACK, which wasn't exactly high-rent to begin with. The bugs show up, but we've seen those before, and the one new touch the movie has is that some of the soldiers are hosts for baby bugs, and they progressively infect the others in order to bring down the humans. The crowd seemed to dig this, but I'm a fan of the original film just as much for its satire of militarism as for its kickass aspects, and with the exception of the opening and closing scenes the sequel does away with the satirical bent altogether. Who would've thought that satire was more expensive than CGI? Rating: *.

After the film there was a Q+A with Tippett, and then we were subjected to the short film BATMAN: DEAD END. This is the kind of phenomenon I despise- short films that get a cult following because they combine known geek commodities and look like demo reels that beckon studios to hire some young turk. Sure, this is a professional-looking job, and I guess it's cool that director Sandy Collora made the film on a limited budget, but it's one thing to make a movie on nothing when you and those around you are basically winging it, and another entirely when you surround yourself with professionals who know what they're doing. Besides, this is just Batman, the Joker, the Alien, and the Predator all thrown into one short film. In the making-of special screened after the short (which was twice as long as the actual short) Collora says something like "every so often there's a movie that changes the course of filmmaking, and I believe this is one of those movies." Get over yourself, dude.

Next came the throwaway film THE GIANT CLAW (1957, Fred F. Sears), strategically programmed so that people could duck out to get autographs from Tippett and Collora without missing something important. Some good trailers beforehand, with Larry Cohen's Q getting applause because of David Carradine, and then they showed THE CHUBBCHUBBS which it seems has become a new marathon tradition. Anyhoo, THE GIANT CLAW is pure MST3K material, a schlocky creature-feature about a giant alien buzzard that attacks airplanes. Lots of audience participation for this one, and at one point someone remarked that bad movies have gotten better than they used to be, which in light of this film made sense. Of course, now that we know better what works onscreen and what doesn't, these have become a dying art form, with airplane-menacing alien buzzards cloaked in antimatter shields going the way of the dodo, so to speak. Which doesn't make this movie good, but certainly makes it entertaining. Also the source of the fest's other classic quote: "that makes me chief cook and bottle-washer in a one-man birdwatcher society." Rating: *.

Then came the evening's final premiere of the night, ROBOT STORIES (2003, Greg Pak), which marked a segue into more respectable fare, as well as for parents to take the kids home lest they lose interest. This movie is basically a collection of technology-themed short films, and the affair might be thought provoking if it was any good. Of the four shorts, the only one to make an impression on me was the third, "Machine Love," about a work robot who falls for another robot in his building. It's not a great short film, but it finds a lightness that makes it watchable, and its ending is just about right, as the two robots express their love in a uniquely robot-like way. Sadly, much more characteristic of this film is the second short, entitled "The Robot Fixer," about a fiftysomething mother whose grown son is in a coma, and who begins to fix his old robot action figures. This short is heavyhanded in tone and the central metaphors pound themselves over your head for far too long. The other two fall somewhere in the middle, but in the end the film never recovers from "The Robot Fixer." Rating: *.

The shift toward respectability experienced a setback with the night's next film, MUTINY IN OUTER SPACE (1965, Hugo Grimaldi). It was preceded by another canonical SF short, Renate Druks' trippy SPACEBOY, about which I've remarked before and won't bother to again. The titular mutiny of Grimaldi's film comes late in the game, following much MST3K-worthy intrigue on the deck of a space station that appears from the outside to be a wagon wheel painted silver. The cause of all the hubbub is the station's infestation with an alien fungus, which grows rapidly in the heat that humans require but also somehow finds its way outside the station as well. Lots of laughs from the crowd that stayed awake, but this movie isn't nearly the fun guilty pleasure that THE GIANT CLAW is, and most of my enjoyment of the film came from the flattering uniforms worn by the female crew members and from retrospective laughter by the guy next to me at a remark I made about the sharply cleft chins on numerous men in the film. Rating: *.

The classic trailers had mostly fun out by this time of night, but there was one more short on the program, that being THE ANIMATRIX: FINAL FLIGHT OF THE OSIRIS (2003, Andy Jones). I'm not a huge fan of this one, so potty break for me. The film that followed was THE OMEGA MAN (1971, Boris Sagal), another adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I AM LEGEND. Here Chuck Heston stars as a gun-toting loner following a nuclear apocalypse, who scavenges to survive and is pitted against a band of mutants who proport to return the world to pre-scientific times. Compared to LAST MAN ON EARTH, another Matheson adaptation that screened at the horror marathon last fall, this is bloated and preachy, with Heston stalwart and iron-jawed where Vincent Price was (more appropriately) obsessive and crazed. More interesting was the sociopolitical subtext presented by the film, with the mutants representing communists (they're communal and speak of the sins of "modern" society) and Heston plays a kind of messiah of capitalism- a major plot point being that his blood contains the only vaccine to the infection that has taken over the world, and there are even shots of him that make him look crucified. Not a good movie, but the opening scenes of the film were certainly an influence on the next film on the program, 28 DAYS LATER (2002, Danny Boyle). We've all seen this one already, and once my favorite character in the film kicked it I began to nod off, which given the behavior of most around me seemed the right thing to do at the time.
Ratings- THE OMEGA MAN: **. 28 DAYS LATER: **1/2.

The marathon finished with two somewhat more contemporary offerings, TOTAL RECALL (1990, Paul Verhoeven) and THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981, George Miller). I hadn't seen TOTAL RECALL in years, so I stayed up although my eyes began to droop a little about halfway through. The effects are still awesome in this, and even where they've dated they're still impressive conceptually. What doesn't really work anymore is Arnold, who can't pull off the emotional range required of the character, particularly when he's in over his head. Also the happy ending here feels like a betrayal of the mindscrew that's come before- after the film's mixup of reality and fantasy, there needs to be one more twist of the knife. Rating: **1/2.

As for THE ROAD WARRIOR, it's still awesome (Rating: ***1/2), though exhausting for a crowd that had been there nearly 24 hours already. And so I staggered out of the marathon like a Romero-style zombie, re-emerging into the world of sunlight and a lack of giant buzzard monsters with the oddly comforting realization that I have five months to get ready for the next movie marathon.