~Harry H Long

While I sometimes offer some personal information about myself in the course of reviewing, I normally don’t go into great detail. This blog after all is about my opinion of films and television not a personal diary (my apologies to those whose postings are of that nature but I find it inconceivable anyone gives a damn of what I had for lunch). However my lengthy hiatus warrants, I believe, some explanation. Last fall I added a second part-time social service position to my existing one, adding an additional four hours daily of training, shadowing and being shadowed. That period – giving me 9 hour days that pretty much obliterated my time for writing (or viewing for that matter) – lasted nearly until the holidays – and we all know how they eat up time.

Then, the day after MLK Day, I was headed out to work when I took a tumble on the ice and landed on my knee, causing the quadricep tendon to detach completely and landing me in a rehab facility for several weeks, followed ultimately with surgery and grueling physical therapy sessions. I am mending nicely, by the way – and more rapidly than the experts anticipated – but it has still been a long haul of limited mobility and ability. I was terminated from one job because I was physically unable to report for work. Frankly I’ve been pretty damned depressed. I was in a kind of brain fog that inhibited my ability to concentrate. I’d manage a couple sentences and then couldn’t find the words for what I wanted to say. But my mood is improving thanks to the doctor’s and the physical therapist’s delight in my healing progress and the realization that while the road to recovery is long it won’t be quite as long as anticipated. Knee pain is, surprisingly, nigh nonexistant. I am looking forward to being able to get down on my hands and knees – or more importantly to get up from same – so I can clean out the cats’ litter boxes, but I’m managing most other tasks with varying degrees of difficulty.

CLARICE
2021 / CBS DVD, Paramount Home Entertainment / 550m (4 discs) / $33.99 / NR
Unlike a great many I was less than whelmed by “The Silence of the Lambs”, possibly because of my indifference to Anthony Hopkins or simply because I’ve seen too many horror films (and lets face it… it IS a horror film, as are its follow-ups for the large and small screens). If I found a certain cannibal less than intriguing, however, the opposite is true of Clarice Starling, the trainee FBI profiler who’s his antagonist. To my relief the infamous eater of fava beans (with liver and chianti) is legally precluded from appearing in this series, which takes place after Clarice’s encounter with Buffalo Bill and the botched assignment that followed it. She’s in disgrace with other agents for the latter and under mandated psychiatric sessions for PTSD from the former. She declares she’s just fine but Rebecca Breeds’ performance suggests this woman is wrapped way too tight, suppressing the horror of that confrontation. She is rescued from desk duty when former senator, now Attorney General, Ruth Martin (Jayne Atkinson) – and mother of Buffalo Bill’s almost final victim – creates an elite task force within the FBI and declares Clarice must be part of it. She will, however, have Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz), the agent she shamed on the Buffalo Bill case, as her boss.

The unit’s creation has been prompted by the corpses of two women washing up from the Anacosta River, showing signs of having been murdered in similar fashion. Martin and Krendler declare it the work if a serial killer but Clarice suspects that the deaths are made to look like the serial killings to divert from some other purpose. Well, it’s no spoiler to reveal that of course she’s right (Clarice always is) and the season’s overall story arc (there are some stand alone episodes dealing with other cases) has Clarice, usually unauthorized and going rogue, delving into it. Naturally this inevitably results in our hero being imperiled, something that might have gotten tiresome, but as the show has not been renewed we’ll never know. The ultimate revelation presents a rather cliché villain but I can’t fault the writing otherwise – though there’s not much here that deviates from the standard police procedural. The production values are solid, though the cinematography has that distressing recent trend to have a bright light source in the background with the foreground, including the actors, underlit in a kind of uniform murk that’s frankly tiring on the eyes, not to mention unattractive. Where did this approach come from and why is it everywhere? The case is fine and I’d be remiss in not also saluting Devyn A. Tyler as Clarice’s roommate and fellow agent. She’s worth the price of admission alone.

THE STAND / THE STAND
1884, 2020 / CBS DVD, Paramount Home Entertainment / 361m, 510m (3 discs) / $44.99 BR / NR
I read Stephen King’s novel, way back when it first came out in paperback… while in a cross-country bus trip… while coming down with the flu. That last added a certain personal frisson to the work’s early chapters – which deal with 90+% of the world’s population succumbing to a particularly virulent virus escaped from a government laboratory – which I doubt it otherwise possesses. By the time I was finished with the book I knew I was also done with King. He understands the elements of horror but his mundane prose cannot create mood or much in the way of tension In the wake of the virus some members of the population have dreams involving a corn field and a 108 year old black woman yclept Mother Abigail who urges them to come to her in Colorado. Others dream of a “dark man” named Randall Flagg who is walking cross country to Las Vegas and make their way to join him there. It’s no spoiler to reveal that Flagg is a demon that possesses supernatural powers and thus the stage is set for a smackdown of good vs evil. Ecxept… (SPOILER ALERT)… none of King’s good guys accomplishes the task of doing in the demonic baddie. That’s accomplished by one of his own minions and “the hand of God,” leaving a handful of pointless martyrdoms and a “hero” who’s stranded miles away with a broken leg. One might reasonably ask “What’s the point?”

Aside from a more graphic approach the newer version differs from the earlier one (and the book) by flashing backwards and forwards in time for the first several episodes. Those with a fresher than four decades old memory of the novel may find this approach less confusing than I did. Oddly it also features a very low key performance from Alexander Skarsgard than offered by Jamey Sheridan in the earlier version. (We are., however, spared the cheesy demon makeup and glowing red CGI eyeballs.) Whether Skarsgard’s banality of evil approach works or not is a bone of contention for some and the object of some debate on the internet. It mostly worked for me but a little more sense of evil bubbling below the surface and steely determination might have been advisable. Sheridan will probably be more effective for some. In the lead good guy part of Stu Redman Gary Sinise (in an early role) and James Marsden are equally effective. In the first production Rob Lowe and Molly Ringwald are flavor of the day casting; there’s nothing particularly notable about their contributions. Most of then heavy lifting comes from old reliables such as Ruby Dee (as Mother Abigail), Ossie Davis, Ray Walston and Miguel Ferrer. In the newer version Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abihgail didn’t impress me as much as I’d expected; I certainly wasn’t convinced she was over a century old. I kept wondering of Cicely Tyson might not have been a better choice (she’d have needed less makeup). King fans will no doubt have their favorite version and nonfans such as myself won’t care one way or the other.

STAR ODYSSEY (Sette uomini d’oro nello spazio)
1979 / Alpha Video / 103m / $6.98 / NR
Italian genre films rarely lead the way. They react to whatever is trending and thus the Bibical epics of the 1950s led to ”Hercules” and the pepla films (all those leftover Hollywood sets couldn’t go to waste) and the Hammer and Mexican horror films prompted the likes of “I Vampiri” and “La maschera del demonio” (aka “Black Sunday”). That said the Italian filmmakers take a novel approach to their subjects – the dreamlike, very grim fairytale approach of “La maschera… “ is more Cocteau than Hammer, for instance. With the possible exception of Mario Bava’s “Terrore nello spazio” (aka “Planet of the Vampires”) – with its prefiguring of Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris” in having a planet affect the astronauts who land there – Italian science fiction is pretty bad… and there was a slew of it after the success of “Star Wars”. This effort (which combines the title of the Lucas film with that of Kubrick’s epic) may be one of the worst. From the awful electronic score to special effects that could have come from a high schooler with a used Kodak 8mm wind-up camera this is one bleak production. To be fair the special effects in most Neopolitan genre is pretty lacking but what’s on display here, along with some particularly impoverished set design reeks of a lack of money.

Normally Italian genre films at least look good (with rare exceptions the directors of that country are more interested in the visuals than the content) but here only the frequently odd costumes show any imagination. The plot has something to do with an alien invasion by some chap who seems to have got his face caught in a waffle maker and his harvesting earthlings for an intergalactic slave market. His ship is made of some incredibly rare material that’s impervious to earth’s weaponry (our planet greets him by firing on his ship, which pretty much kills off any possibility of good fellowship). Earth’s most brilliant scientist (garbed in an outrageous caftan) is tasked with defeating the alien menace and has his cohorts steal some of the unobtanium to determine how to create a counter-weapon (given he’s been handed this assignment you’d think he’d be given the dang stuff, but no). Maybe the Italian cut is better than this dubbed import but many scenes are long non sequiteurs that go on and on then end without having gotten anywhere. The only “Star Wars” steals are light sabers and a male and female robot whose banter is, I suppose, meant as comic relief. Fans of bad flicks need look no further. This makes “Stella Starcarsh” look like high art.