FSF, August 2008

by Spilogale, Inc

  Yet for reasons not entirely clear, we have developed a certain affection for you. We'd just as soon keep you around, if only for the entertainment value.

  We're going away for a bit now, and when we return, we expect to find that you have made significant progress toward sitting at the adults’ table. This will, of course, mean fewer senseless military conflicts, less reality television, and no more Sudoku.

  Don't make us come down there.

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  Department: Films: Not With a Bang, But With the Sex Pistols by Lucius Shepard

  According to a consensus of the world's filmmakers, our future is a fait accompli. We will be ravaged by a deadly virus; billions will die or become the living dead; cities will be quarantined and the survivors will revert to barbarism; a powerful clique within the government will seize power; a man or woman with great martial skill and a highly individual moral code will be sent into the quarantined zone to recover some vital information or object, and during the course of this mission, he or she will discover something that will prove that the government was responsible for the plague or has some otherwise significant culpability. There are variations on the theme, but that's the essential end-of-the-world scenario, one that far outstrips the second-place entry, i.e., death by killer asteroid or meteorite, which endured a brief millennial vogue.

  It's a reasonable scenario, actually—the elements for a pandemic are all in place—but the prescience of these contemporary John Carpenters and George Millers is somewhat muted for me by the furnishings of their films. Why is it, I find myself wondering, that ‘80s punk fashions should so abound in the post-apocalyptic futures conjured by these visionaries? Escape From New York and The Road Warrior were both released in 1981, during the flourishing of the punk aesthetic, so a reliance on the imagery of the day is understandable; but it would seem the many reimaginings of their seminal vision filmed since that time might mine some other depth for barbarian accessories. Perhaps the directors of these films are merely committing the sin of homage, or it may be that the fund of imagination responsible for such pictures has gone bankrupt. I think it more likely that when they cast their minds ahead, these great men have foreseen that vast secret stores of hair products and make-up will be unearthed from beneath our dead cities, not to mention loads of ‘80s synth, music much beloved by the punkiest generation.

  The most recent incarnation of this pop culture staple comes to us courtesy of Neil Marshall, who has previously given us two entertaining little horror films, Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Despite the chops Marshall displayed in those films, it's hard to believe that he can return to form after a showing as abysmal as his latest, Doomsday, a mash-up of the sort one commonly sees on YouTube—such sudden downturns in quality usually reflect a drastic lowering of aspiration, a surrender to the realities of modern filmmaking. The movie opens promisingly enough, introducing us to spandex-clad commando, Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), who is engaged in holding together the last vestiges of a decaying Britain. Thirty years earlier, an outbreak of the “deadly Reaper virus” (as opposed to the cuddly Reaper virus), in Glasgow of all places, caused Scotland to be quarantined behind a steel wall stretching eighty miles from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, protected by automated batteries that blow away anything (as Marshall gorily demonstrates) from the size of a bunny rabbit on up. I suspect Marshall's choice of a virulent Glasgow betrays some subtext—at least I know quite a few Scots who would welcome such a wall, though with the guns facing in the opposite direction. Be that as it may, in terms of the movie, all signs of human life disappeared from Scotland until 2032, when satellite imaging picked up activity on the streets of Glasgow. Now the virus, too, has resurfaced, this time in London, and the evil Canaris (a thuggish David O'Hara), the power behind the British Prime Minister, orders Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins in Thankless Role 538 of his career) to assemble a team to go into Glasgow and find Martin Kane (Malcolm McDowell in Thankless Genre Role 327 of his career), a scientist who was working on a cure. Miller knows just where to go for a team leader: Eden Sinclair. As a child, she was thrust by her mum onto the last chopper out of Scotland and thus has a burning, churning urge to learn what happened. So off they go, the team, into the ghostly ruins of Glasgow, packed into a pair of Damnation Alley-style armored vehicles (there is scarcely a post-apocalyptic movie that Marshall doesn't “pay homage” to). Things are moving along rather nicely at this stage, a suitably dark atmosphere having been established, and I was settling in for what looked to be a decent B-picture (nothing original, yet done with a certain panache), when a force of Mohawk-sporting, S&M gear-wearing, cannibal gutter punks attack the team, overwhelm vehicles designed to resist rocket assaults with Molotov cocktails, capture Eden, and the movie veers into low comedy.

  Derisive audience reaction (sniggers, guffaws, and the odd profane catcall) began in earnest when Sol (Craig Conway), the leader of the punks and, as it turns out, Kane's son, fronts his tribe in what appears to be a send-up of the stadium scene in Escape From New York (currently being remade for 2009, oh joy!), prancing about on a stage with dancers and leading a group singalong to “Good Thing” by Fine Young Cannibals, distributing paper plates to the mob in preparation for a feast, while one of Eden's team is flash-roasted and then served piping hot by Viper (Lee-Anne Liebenberg), Sol's consort, a tattooed young lady who seems to think that waggling her tongue Gene Simmons-style conveys her evil essence—whatever her intent, she waggles away whenever the opportunity arises. Sol, who specializes in yelling during moments of anger, frustration, and pretty much any old time, doing his best impression of Lord Humungus from The Road Warrior, yells aplenty when Eden breaks out of punk jail along with Cally (MyAnna Buring), Kane's daughter, whom Sol has imprisoned because ... well, just because. They make their escape by means of a train that's conveniently waiting at the station, ready to chug off into the countryside in search of Kane, here portrayed as the mad Steward of Gondor-Lite by McDowell. He's hanging out in a medieval castle, the head dingbat of a bunch of armor-wearing, bow-and-arrow-toting, sword swingers who eschew technology and resemble your local chapter of the SCA, participating in jousts, throwing roast beef up into the air and like that. This feudal schtick puts the punk ethos of Sol's rebellion into somewhat comprehensible perspective, but basically it serves to amp up the comedy, some of which may even be intentional.

  By the time the survivors of Eden's team reach Kane's castle, there have been so many logical gaffes and plot holes that to list them would be overkill; however, two in particular deserve mention. First, we learn early on that the Scottish survivors have become cannibals because they have run out of food; yet the team has just entered Scotland when they run smack into an enormous herd of cattle. Secondly, before imprisoning the team, Kane, a blood scientist, tells them that their quest has been in vain, the virus is incurable, this despite the fact that he and his subjects are immune, and that his daughter is ultimately handed over to the evil Canaris government with the instruction that a cure can be distilled from her blood. The general slovenliness exemplified by these irrationalities makes it impossible to enjoy the film, even as an exercise in camp. There follows a pitfight before a howling audience between Eden and Telamon, a massive armored chap who caves like a sissy after a few karate kicks, thereby allowing Eden and her pals to flee into a mineshaft where she happens upon a brand-new Bentley in a box, with a full tank of gas and an activated cell phone.

  No, seriously.

  Pretty lucky, huh?

  Off Eden and her team go again, only to be pursued by Sol and his band of neo-barbarians who appear out of nowhere in jalopies tarted up with skeletal remains and so forth—they may not look fast, but they're capable of outrunning Eden's ride, a fact that must distress executives of the Volkswagen Group, manufacturers of the Bentley. The ensuing chase scene is an almost note-perfect reprise of the climactic chase in The Road Warrior, with punks and punkettes alike suffering grisly, comic deaths ... at least they were comic the
first few times I saw them. In short, Doomsday should be avoided like the deadly Reaper virus.

  Sticking with the end of the world as a theme, a better result (not for the world, but for the moviegoer) can be had by a viewing of The Signal, a low-budget filmic tryptich by a trio of Atlanta-based directors, David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry, and Dan Bush, each of whom tell part of a larger story. The first and most traditionally horrific, Bruckner's Transmission 1: Crazy For Love, follows an adulterous wife, Mya (Annessa Ramsey), home after a nooner with Ben (Justin Wellborn), where she finds her suspicious husband Lewis (AJ Bowen) watching a game on TV with some pals. Zzzzt. The picture goes haywire, resolving into a many-colored Rorschach blob. A minute later, someone is bludgeoned by a baseball bat and Mya flees her blood-splattered house only to discover that the world has been driven insane by a signal that comes through every TV, cell phone, and radio. People armed with guns and hedge clippers and whatever falls to hand are committing mayhem on one another ... albeit not mindlessly. The signal amplifies bloodlust and leaves its victims with sufficient mental capacity to deny or rationalize their guilt, a symptom that strikes me as very twenty-first century.

  It's in Jacob Gentry's more comedic Transmission 2: The Jealousy Monster that the film really comes together. The episode opens with a wife sitting at the dinner table talking to her murdered husband. Several other people join her over the next half hour, including Lewis, who's searching for Mya, and the situation grows increasingly surreal—at one point, the group has a deadpan discussion about whether or not to kill someone knocking at the door; at another, a woman believes she is dancing with her husband, whose body lies a few feet away.

  The last episode, Escape From Terminus, by Dan Bush, takes place after most of the citizens of Atlanta have been slaughtered, and covers events that occur after Ben and Lewis arrive at a bus station, both men hunting for Mya. It's hampered by having to tie all the narrative strands together, yet it maintains the movie's surreal edge and is highlighted by a conversation between one of the characters and a decapitated head. Though it's a bit uneven, The Signal employs its interlocking narrative with considerable deftness and the recurrence of characters in one another's stories seems entirely natural.

  Sometime this summer or this fall, a little movie called Paranormal Activity will sneak into your town, play for a few days or a week, and then be gone without much fanfare. After Cloverfield, I thought I was done with the Blair Witch mode of home video “documentary” filmmaking. I was wrong. First-time director Oren Peli has taken the form and, working with basically a two-character cast and from a completely improvised script, has fashioned a terrifying ghost story that left me exhausted and unsettled for a couple of days after watching it. Much credit must be given to the actors, Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston. They play a young couple who have just moved in together—Katie has felt haunted by an indefinite presence her entire life and, half playfully, Micah decides to record their nights when they are asleep. Katie begs him not to disturb the entity, but Micah's ego won't let him hear her, and so it begins. I'm not going to tell you any more about the movie, except to say it makes The Blair Witch seem about as scary as a day-old sandwich and, though it's always hard to guess what will scare people, I'd wager you won't make it through this one without experiencing major anxiety. The picture's paced so well, the actors are so persuasive.... Put simply, Paranormal Activity revitalizes a worn-out scenario, gives it a canny new edge, and succeeds in adding to the canon of horror cinema.

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  Short Story: Another Perfect Day by Steven Popkes

  Poke around a bit at www.stevenpopkes.com and you'll find out that Mr. Popkes is originally from Southern California, has degrees in Zoology and Neurophysiology, is currently working for NASA on the Ares project, and has a side interest in hot air engines. What you won't find on the site is any indication of whether the life of Mr. Popkes has been influenced in the way Sam's life was changed in this work of fiction.

  Sam Prokofiev woke up with the sun. For a moment, he watched the light grow across the ceiling. Golden. He could imagine it shining first over the Atlantic, then up across the fine Florida sand to the old Hollywood Beach Hotel, lingering over the pink stucco and then flashing down Hollywood Boulevard into his window. The palm trees rustled, faintly. He could hear the gulls. It was too early for the cars.

  Another perfect day in paradise.

  He took a shower, shaved, walked past the small grand piano, drawing his fingers over the top, past the closed door of Lina's room, to the kitchen.

  After breakfast he looked at today's entry in the date book. It was a habit Lina had instilled in him when they first met, back when she was still Joe's secretary. Lina had died three years ago, but after he had tracked gigs, practice sessions, dates with different girls, payment dates from managers, dates with one girl, payment dates to pawn shops, an engagement date, a marriage date, birthdays, vacations, anniversaries, doctor's appointments, prescription refills, medication schedules and finally funeral arrangements, he wasn't about to give it up. He had a drawer full of these little date books, each as neatly labeled as notes on a staff.

  Cleaning the pistol was first. Then, it was gardening in the back yard and an afternoon of fishing. All things he liked. Damn. It was first of the month again. Penciled in at the bottom of the page was the single word “compose.” Once a month, he stared at the keys to see if something would come to him. Just like he promised Lina.

  He sighed and got up from the table, pulled out the pistol box from the sideboard and took his cup of coffee to the patio outside. He sat down and opened the box, pulled out the heavy .38, and set it in his lap. He pulled out the other items from the box: cleaning solvent, wiping rags, the box of ammunition—

  A huge, fat man jumped the fence and ran pounding across Sam's garden, screaming “Don't do it! Don't do it!” Before Sam could react, he yanked the pistol off his lap and stood, obese and wheezing, ten feet away.

  Sam stared at him. The young man was grossly heavy—maybe three hundred pounds—pale, wearing shorts and a light shirt. Over the shirt he was wearing a harness with various boxes and meters. He tried to speak but couldn't catch his breath.

  Sam brought over a chair and eased him down into it. The chair creaked ominously but didn't break.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'll be—” He stopped to pant for a moment. “—okay in a minute. Asthma."

  "I see.” Sam sat back in the other chair. He felt a little nonplused. “What am I not supposed to do?"

  "Shoot—yourself."

  "Ah. Do you have a name?"

  "Wilson.” Wilson's breathing gradually came under control. “Wilson Taylor."

  "Well, Wilson,” began Sam. “I wasn't planning to shoot myself. I was cleaning the pistol. I do it every month."

  "You were going to shoot yourself over the death of your wife.” Wilson seemed able to breathe without difficulty now. “She died last year. I came to save you."

  "Are you sure you have the right house?” asked Sam hopefully. “I'm Sam Prokofiev."

  "You're Sergei Prokofiev. Born in the Ukraine in 1891. Spent a lot of time traveling and composing before settling in Moscow in 1929. Met and married Mira Mendelssohn. Favorite composer of Stalin until the guy died in 1942. Khrushchev didn't like you so you and Mira emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1939, just before World War II. Mira contracted cancer in 1944 and died a year later. You killed yourself out of grief today, March 15, 1945.” Wilson looked at Sam with triumph. “Except you didn't. I saved you."

  Sam stared at him. “World War ... Two?"

  "Well, yeah. It's not like you could have left Russia after the war started."

  "Of course,” Sam said, recovering himself. “Thank you.” The phone was inside. Maybe Sam could get to it without drawing attention to himself. “Would you like a glass of lemonade?"

  Wilson frowned. “You said you weren't going to kill yourself."

  "Maybe I was about
to."

  "Maybe it was murder, then. Many conspiracy theorists have thought you were never the type to commit suicide. They insist you were assassinated by the MKVD."

  "My very thoughts."

  Wilson looked around the yard. “This isn't Queens."

  "Are you sure?"

  Wilson ignored him. “You don't see palm trees in Queens."

  Sam gave up. “No, you don't."

  Wilson thought for a moment. “I must have overshot. Quick, man. What's the date? I could still reach him."

  "February 1, 1947."

  Wilson fell silent for a moment and stared at the ground. Sam stood up. “I'll get some lemonade."

  "Where is this? California?"

  "Hollywood, anyway. Hollywood, Florida."

  "He's already dead. What am I going to do?” Wilson buried his head in his hands.

  Sam patted his shoulder sympathetically and deftly snagged the gun as he went inside. He locked it in a drawer in the bedroom and then returned to the kitchen. He found Wilson frantically searching the room.

  "I hid the gun,” Sam said softly.

  "I need a pad of paper. And a pencil. It must have been the Uncertainty Principle.” Wilson stared up at him. “Do you think it was the Uncertainty Principle?"

  "I'm certain of it.” Sam found a pad and pencil and gave it to Wilson.

  Wilson sat at the table. “You said lemonade?"

  Sam pulled the pitcher out of the refrigerator and poured for both of them. He looked at Wilson's pudgy hands and unfocussed eyes. This boy wasn't dangerous. Hell, when Sam and Strav were playing gigs up in New York they dealt with much worse than this.

  Wilson looked up suddenly. “What were you doing in Florida with a gun in 1947?"