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mst3kproject · 7 years

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516: Alien From LA

The first thing I did in preparing for this review was look up 'Kathy Ireland interviews' on YouTube, and I am relieved to report that no, that is not her normal voice. Apparently it is her normal smile, though.

Cowardly nerd Wanda Saknussem recieves word that her father has died in Africa. When she goes to investigate or something, she falls down a hole to the lost continent of Atlantis, which is apparently a UFO that crashed into Earth a long time ago and is inhabited by people rejected from Mad Max movies. The ruler of this improbable place thinks Wanda and her father are spies, sent to scout out Atlantis in preparation for an invasion by the world above. Before they can find their way back to the surface, they must escape both the oppressive government and the many lower-level opportunists who would love to find themselves in possession of an 'alien' from the beyond!

This is a dumb movie that never lives up to its rather modest potential, but one thing I do kinda like about it is its worldbuilding. A lot of Journey to the Centre of the Earth stories, from Jules Verne onward, have been obliged to posit some kind of supernatural energy source to fuel their ecosystems. Most often this takes the form of a miniature sun at the center of a hollow shell (as in DC comics' Skartaris), providing the inner world with a sky that seems to defeat the whole concept of a land under the ground. At the Earth's Core shows us a subterranean world that runs on lava, but both Alien from LA and The Mole People tried to do something a bit more 'realistic'.

(I guess this means I have to watch The Mole People next week. Fuck! I hate The Mole People and I hate John Agar's oily face.)

The underground world we see in Alien from LA is filthy and gritty, without plant or animal life to give it any colour. The human environments are cramped, ugly, and utilitarian, even the parts we would be tempted to consider 'outdoors'. For once there's some justification for all the pipes and tubes, since one of the top priorities for such a colony would be getting air and water to everybody. We get an impression of the impossibly futuristic technology of the original spacecraft and of the cruder, more recent layer built overtop of it. And what do people living in such a place eat? Insects, of course! There's practically nothing else down there!

We also get an idea of how the Atlanteans see their universe. The government's official position is that there is no 'surface world' and therefore that 'aliens' who come from there cannot possibly exist. This suggests that they imagine their world as a cavern inside an infinite expanse of stone. Or perhaps they are aware of the Earth as a planet, but believe that nothing can exist on the surface because it would be exposed directly to space. Either interpretation suggests that Professor Saknussem's Atlantean counterpart, the scientist who was planning a trip to the surface to see for himself, is a very brave man and probably deserved a bigger part in the movie.

Unfortunately, by trying to be ‘realistic’ the movie encourages us to think about a number of questions that probably wouldn't come up in a more fantastical setting. For starters, where are the Atlanteans getting things like rubber for their tyres and cloth for their clothing? Up here these are plant and animal products, but there are no plants or animals in Atlantis. A character says she's never seen fabric like the cotton of Wanda's dress but there's no suggestion of what they use instead. Then there's the question of what this underground city runs on. I think we're supposed to assume that the spaceship has some kind of inexhaustible power source that the Atlanteans drawn on for their electricity, which is all well and good, but you can’t eat it. If the people here eat insects, then what do the insects eat? The food chain in a cave is usually connected to the outside world somehow, most often by bat droppings (I told you bats are awesome). There are deep ocean ecosystems that run off geothermal power, but even those get gifts from above in the form of dead whales and the occasional can of spam.

Not only do we have no idea how energy comes in to this sytem, we don't see how waste gets out. All these people will produce not only bodily wastes, but carbon dioxide, heat, garbage, and whatever the waste products of their industries are. The vehicles appear to run on gasoline – we even see a filling station. What happens to the pollutants to keep them from poisoning the air? Where is the oxygen coming from if there are no plants? Presumably the spaceship itself would have systems to cope with some of this, but they'd be designed to work in a vacuum, not in a pocket of atmosphere surrounded by rock – and the city itself has clearly expanded far beyond the spaceship. How does any of this work?

So much for the world, now for the characters who populate it. The only one we ever really get to know is Wanda – others are only important in how they relate to her. Her father is just her father, her jerk ex-boyfriend is just her jerk ex-boyfriend, the Atlanteans are either allies, foes, or mere background. We don't know why Gus decides to help her (besides maybe because his girlfriend threw him out and he has nothing better to do) or what Charmin sees in her. It is entirely Wanda's movie. This is rather rare, to see an adventure movie focused on a woman's journey, and the rarity of it makes it even more annoying that Wanda herself is kind of a joke.

Wanda Saknussem starts the movie as a stock pathetic nerd, a character we're supposed to like out of sheer pity, but it's taken so far that she becomes very difficult to identify with. Her ex-boyfriend, explaining why he broke up with her, tells her “your glasses make you look stupid, your hair is ugly, you dress like a nerd, you walk like a clod, and your voice gives me a headache” – and when she demands to know why he ever went out with her in the first place, he does not have an answer for her. We're told Wanda has no sense of adventure, but we see her as somebody with no self-respect. She begs the boyfriend who insulted her to take her back, and her squeaky voice makes everything she says sound unbearably whiny.

Her character development is supposed to represent her becoming more confident and adventurous, but of course what we see is her becoming more attractive. Over the course of the movie Wanda first loses her glasses, then cleans her skin in a steam vent, and finally puts on a dress with a low neckline instead of the shapeless tent she'd been wearing in the beginning. I'm a little surprised they didn't have her lose her squeaky voice while she was at it. This trope, in which a woman's appearance is used as shorthand for her entire being, is annoying, but I've always gotten particularly mad at the bit where she has to give up wearing glasses. It suggests that whether a woman is sexy is more important than whether she can see where she's fucking going, and as a person who wears glasses I must vigorously disagree. At least in The Princess Diaries the girl got contacts. Wanda just breaks her glasses and then apparently discovers she never needed them in the first place.

I do have to admit, though, that Kathy Ireland gave the part her all. For somebody to be a model, to put themselves on display in front of the whole world often in very little clothing, must require enormous confidence, but Ireland works hard to embody Wanda's lack of confidence at the beginning of this movie. Her body language while arguing with her ex-boyfriend or reading the letter at the diner is very turned-inward, with her arms kept close to her body, the posture of somebody who's trying to be unobtrusive and not take up space. At the end, she is not only less covered but walks more freely, swinging her arms and taking bigger steps as if she no longer cares whose way she gets in. Ireland's dedication to doing the Wanda Voice is also admirable... that must have been hard on the vocal cords. I'm left with the distinct impression that she could have been a decent actress if anybody had ever thought to put her in a decent movie.

After sitting through a movie in which Wanda becomes more confident and searches for her father, one would expect the 'happily ever after' to celebrate both her newfound spirit of adventure and renewed family relationship. The ending, however, contains neither. Wanda is wearing a bikini now, but she's back on the same beach where she liked to hang out before her trip to the bowels of the Earth, and her father is not with her. Instead, the movie tries to give us emotional closure by having the guy she kissed in Atlantis show up on a motorcycle to charm her.

That doesn't make any sense! How did he get here? How'd he get the motorcycle? How'd he get the driver's license?! Where's her father? Did he run off to Africa and leave her again? Did her trip accomplish anything at all? This isn't an ending, this is a distraction!

Alien from LA comes across as a movie that had some potential, but as usual, all the best ideas just fall by the wayside and instead we get a series of cliches strung together by writers who think we'd rather see the end of a shallow love story than a resolution to what the movie was actually about. Every time I watch this episode, the movie sucks me in – but every time, the ending disappoints me.

#mst3k #reviews #alien from la #80s

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Delightfully bonkers Doom Patrol is coming back for a second season

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Doom Patrol returns later this month for a second season on both HBO Max and DC Universe.

Chances are you missed Doom Patrol when it debuted last year, due to the fact that it aired exclusively on the DC Universe streaming platform. (It’s based on the DC Comics superhero team of the same name.) That’s a shame, because it proved to be a delightfully bonkers show about a “found family” of superhero misfits. For its forthcoming second season, the show will air both on DC Universe and HBO Max, hopefully expanding its audience. Judging by the official trailer, we’re in for another crazy ride.

(Some S1 spoilers below.)

Timothy Dalton plays Niles Caulder, aka The Chief, a medical doctor who saved the lives of the various Doom Patrol members and lets them stay in his mansion. His Manor of Misfits includes Jane, aka Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero), whose childhood trauma resulted in 64 distinct personalities, each with its own powers. Rita (April Bowlby), aka Elasti-Woman, is a former actress with stretchy, elastic properties she can’t really control, thanks to being exposed to a toxic gas that altered her cellular structure. Larry Trainor, aka Negative Man, is a US Air Force pilot who has a “negative energy entity” inside him, and must be swathed in bandages to keep radioactivity from seeping out of his body. (Matt Bomer plays Trainor without the bandages, while Matthew Zuk takes on the bandaged role.)

Cliff Steele, aka Robotman, is a former NASCAR driver whose brain was transplanted into a robot body after a horrific crash. (Brendan Fraser plays the human Cliff, and Riley Shanahan plays the robot version.) Finally, there is Vic, aka Cyborg (Joivan Wade), whose father gave him cybernetic enhancements to save his life after an accident. Together, they make up the titular Doom Patrol.

There’s also Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (he’s a mismatched fusion of all three); a superpowered bounty hunter who tracks people down by eating their facial hair; and a metahuman superhero named Flex Mentallo who can alter reality by flexing his muscles—because why the hell not? This is a show with a talking cockroach, time travel, a talking horse/oracle named Baphomet, a cross-dressing cabaret singer, world-destroying interdimensional entities, a farting goat, and sentient Nazi puppets, after all. Doom Patrol goes all in on the crazy train, and somehow makes it work.

Meet the Doom Patrol

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Cliff aka Robotman (portrayed here by Riley Shanahan)

YouTube/HBO Max

Larry Trainor, aka Negative Man (portrayed here by Matthew Zuk)

YouTube/HBO Max

Diane Guerrero shines as Crazy Jane, who has 64 distinct personalities.

YouTube/HBO Max

Vic, aka Cyborg (Joivan Wade)

YouTube/HBO Max

Rita, aka Elasti-Woman (April Bowlby)

YouTube/HBO Max

Timothy Dalton plays Niles Caulder, aka The Chief

YouTube/HBO Max

He has a troubled superpowered daughter, Dorothy Spinner

YouTube/HBO Max

Dorothy can bring imaginary friends to life, among other abilities.

YouTube/HBO Max

Like this one.

YouTube/HBO Max

Blasting away

YouTube/HBO Max

Where could Dorothy be heading?

YouTube/HBO Max

Each Crazy Jane personality has her own superpower.

YouTube/HBO Max

Cyborg locks and loads.

YouTube/HBO Max

Negative Man trying not to be noticed.

YouTube/HBO Max

Crazy Jane considers the patrol her family.

YouTube/HBO Max

The Doom Patrol, ready for their next mission

YouTube/HBO Max

In S1, the team faced arch-villain Eric Morden, aka Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk), who can travel through dimensions and alter reality, frequently breaking the fourth wall—as the only character who’s aware he is on a TV show—to narrate the action, thereby manipulating events to his liking. Mr. Nobody kidnaps Caulder and holds him captive in a dimension called the “White Space,” and the Doom Patrol spends most of the first season trying to rescue him, wrestling with their personal demons along the way.

In the end, the Doom Patrol defeats Mr. Nobody, but they also discover that The Chief is the one responsible for all the tragedies that gave them each their powers. Let’s just say the team is dealing with some intense feelings of betrayal right now. Caulder had his reasons: he has a super-powered daughter, Dorothy Spinner, who is deeply troubled, and his actions were a means of trying to extend his own life as much as possible so he could continue to protect her. Oh, and the entire team, except for Larry, is now the size of a cockroach. For reasons.

Judging by the S2 trailer, Dorothy is going to be the season’s Big Bad, as Caulder admits he can’t control his daughter (her mother is an immortal cave woman), and begs the team to help. (“She will unleash hell on Earth.”) In the comics, the character has the power to bring her imaginary friends to life, and we see Dorothy appear to do just that here. A pint-sized Robotman gets the better of an attacking giant rat. We see Rita trying to control her elastic powers in hopes of becoming a true superhero. And we meet a few more of Jane’s personalities. “Those annoying feckless losers I live with are my family,” Jane says. “They may be spineless but I know deep down they all care about me.”

The first three episodes of Doom Patrol will drop on July 25, 2020, on both HBO Max and DC Universe. After that, there will be a new episode each week for the next six weeks.

Listing image by YouTube/HBO Max

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