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11/23/2020 0 Comments Profile: Manos: Hands of Fate Today, I share with you one of my favorite movies. Unlike many enjoyable movies, nothing about Manos: Hands of Fate is good. I can critique it, since I have made several of my own cheesy movies. Just start with the title. If you are bilingual in Spanish and English, you know that the tile is really Hands: The Hands of Fate. The story of its production is something that I couldn’t make up. Hal Warren, the filmmaker, was a fertilizer salesman. Somehow, he met Stirling Silliphant, the screenwriter of In The Heat of the Night. He thought it was a great film, but he bet Silliphant that he could make his own movie for less money… much less money. He wrote the script himself and hired local theater performers to be the stars. He saved the coveted role of “Mike” for himself. To create the scary atmosphere of the film, many of the outdoor scenes were filmed at night. In order to see the action, he had to rent huge lights. The downside to these lights is that many bugs were attracted to them and the lights were so close to the camera that most of the nighttime scenes had bugs flying in and out of the shot. But I guess this was appropriate for the satanic, lord of the flies, cult feeling that Warren was going for.  The film’s opening sequence is breathtaking--in the form of a yawn. It appears that the scenes of driving were meant to be a backdrop to the title sequence, but after “Manos: The Hands of Fate” appears, there are no other words that appear. Just endless scenes of the people in the car (who we don’t know yet) driving around while sexy saxophone music plays. I would say it is about 10 minutes into the movie that we hear the first dialogue and the characters admit that they are lost, so they sing Row Your Boat to pass the time. After passing a whole bunch of signs that tell them where various destinations are, they decide the best course of action is to stop at a rundown shack. For fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 that first saw Manos on that show (like me), this is when the movie really starts, with the introduction of Torgo. His name does work in the canon of evil sidekick names like Lobo, Igor, and Mongo. But he could also fit in with Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx. I have read that it was Warren’s intention that Torgo be only part human and maybe part goat?? Supposedly someone designed this contraption that would make it look like Torgo’s knees bent from the back. However, the actor playing Torgo wore the contraption backwards so instead, Torgo just appears to have massive knees and needs a staff to avoid falling over.  After the lost family asks for directions and gets nowhere with Torgo, our hero Mike seems determined to spend the night at the rundown shack. Now, I have watched this movie more times than I probably should have, but I still can’t figure out why Mike is so anxious to stay there. Torgo has to think it over, because after all “The Master wouldn’t approve” (who is The Master??). Torgo thinks for what seems like an eternity and decides they can stay there and he even carries their bags into the house. At this point, the viewer hears for the first time “The Torgo Theme” a repetitive motif that may be the least threatening villain theme of all time. I may not have made it clear yet, that more or less this movie plays out in real time. Once they enter the house, the family passes the time trying to make conversation with Torgo and admiring the minimalist decor. Finally, some action happens when Debbie wanders off and they have to search all two or three rooms of the house to find her and then the car won’t start! It’s once Mike goes to fix the car that the wife’s affair with Torgo begins. Kidding!! After Mike leaves, Torgo and the wife just stare at each other. Torgo says some awkward things. I believe Warren was going for some type of assault, but Torgo flicks the lady’s hair and that’s it, so she slaps him and calls him a beast. Later on that night, we learn that Torgo has many women on his mind and goes to the evil cult altar where there are like 8 or 9 women in nightgowns in some sort of spell/sleep/trance type thing. He helps himself to tickle the arm of one of the women before going back to the shack to peep on the wife in the bedroom (twice!).  Just when things couldn’t get any worse, The Master wakes up and demands that the family be sacrificed to their god, Manos. All of the captive women (which turn out to be the Master’s wives) wake up and get into an argument about what to do with the family, which turns out into a big all-out brawl. As they fight, The Master finds Torgo asleep in the shack and tells Torgo that he may no longer require Torgo’s services as… whatever the heck Torgo does.
The Master breaks up the fight and tells the women they must kill Torgo. Their first attempt at an aggressive massage doesn’t seem to do the job. So the Master takes matters into his hand and takes Torgo by the hand. He touches Torgo’s hand to one of the logs in the campfire and through an abrupt cut, there’s a pretend explosion and Torgo runs away. In the end, the family cannot escape The Master and Mike becomes Torgo’s replacement, while his wife and daughter join the Master’s wives (yuck). But honestly, once Torgo is out of the movie, so is the real drama. When the movie was finished, either something went wrong with the sound that was recorded or no sound had been recorded, as much of the dialogue had to be dubbed in postproduction. For bigger budgets, this usually isn’t an issue, but not every performer was available for the dub. The best example of this is near the beginning when Mike gets pulled over for speeding. Warren had to dub the voice of Mike and the police officer, so he is literally talking to himself. Warren went all out for the premiere in his local town. He rented out a theater and a search light for out front. He even rented a limo for the actors, but only wanted to pay for one limo so it would drop off one actor and then drive around the corner to pick up another actor. According to what I have read, the premiere was a disaster. Pretty near the beginning, the audience started laughing, which continued the entire time and eventually the cast crawled on their hands and knees to escape the theater. Warren did have good instincts when he admitted that he could simply rebrand the movie as a comedy and have a hit. Unfortunately, the film did not find a large audience until Mystery Science Theater in the 1990s. Many people today enjoy the film and appreciate Warren’s work, even if his first intention was not to make a comedy.
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10/26/2020 0 Comments Profile- Henry Mancini Henry Mancini was one of the most prolific film and television composers of all time. By the time of his death in 1994, he had received more Grammy award nominations than any other artist (this has later been surpassed by Quincy Jones). He is also one of the few film composers to have one of his arrangements become a #1 hit when his version of the “Theme from Romeo and Juliet” knocked the Beatles off the top spot in 1970. Mancini was equally respected among film critics, audiences, and popular music listeners. Of the great film composers, he stands with the top few whose music is a terrific listening experience outside of the context of the film.
However, much of Mancini’s impact seems to have been forgotten in the post-Star Wars era when big, symphonic scores returned to popularity. Film music, like any artform, has cycles, the symphonic (I daresay, classical) scores of the 1930s and 1940s gave way to rock and roll inspired scores in the late 1950s and 1960s. Disco music reigned in the soundtracks of the 1970s, until Star Wars returned the style to symphonic music. One could argue that, depending on the film genre, symphonic scores are still the norm (with added electronic elements). Mancini, like many great composers, stands out because his music often stood out as contrary to the prevailing style of the time. What the general public remembers about Mancini are the Pink Panther and Peter Gunn scores, which are incredible, yet only a fraction of Mancini’s output. By examining Mancini’s work, we see he was quite versatile. Mancini got his start in Hollywood working at Universal Studios as part of a composing team or music department that would write music for giant monster movies. Often in situations like this, members of a music department would be uncredited and the title of music supervisor would be the sole credit. It was not until the end of the 1950s with the Peter Gunn television show that Mancini’s work was noticed. Also, Peter Gunn was his first collaboration with producer-director Blake Edwards, a composer-director partnership that would serve Mancini for the rest of his career. Today, listening to the Peter Gunn theme often reminds the listener of the James Bond sound. However, the influence actually went the other way. Peter Gunn premiered in 1958 and the James Bond series did not start until 1962. We could say that Mancini’s sound influenced the sound of the 1960s spy movies. Many times, Mancini’s score would complement the films by providing a contrasting counterpoint to the comic action on screen. Consider cues like “Nothing To Lose” from The Party and “Piano and Strings” from The Pink Panther occur during outrageous comedies. Like subtext for dialogue, his music would highlight the underlying emotions amidst all the chaos. Mancini was a master of jazz and pop orchestration. He actually wrote one of the few texts on the subject, Sounds and Scores, which I highly recommend. His use of string counterpoint and jazz harmonies were imitated heavily by other composers, especially in television. Despite his ability to layer sounds, his music never had to rely on complicated textures to evoke feelings. Often, a piece could be a piano melody with simple string pad beneath. A great example of this is “Hilly’s Theme” from Silver Streak. Some of his most notable melodies are recognizable within 5 notes. Consider “Moon River” takes about 3, “Pink Panther Theme” about 2, “Crazy World” about 3, etc. In terms of Academy Awards, 1961-1962 were quite special for Mancini. He won best score and best song (“Moon River”) from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and then best song for “The Days of Wine and Roses” the following year. His final academy award was in 1982 for the Best Song Score for Victor/Victoria. In between, he was nominated for an award practically every single year. He won a best song Golden Globe for “Whistling Away The Dark” from Darling Lili in 1971 and was nominated for 9 others. Including one posthumous award, he earned 9 Grammy Awards out of 33 nominations. Although his background was jazz, his classical sound could be quite evocative, many times having an Italian quality, which makes sense considering his heritage. A notable example of this is the Italian film Sunflower--no traces of jazz harmony or instrumentation, but unmistakably Mancini. Another outlier in his canon of films is Lifeforce from 1985. He jumped at the chance to work on a science fiction-horror movie when asked. The exciting title march fits well within the John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner scores of the era. Beyond his composing work, Mancini was also an accomplished performer, playing piano on most of his albums and soundtracks. His playing style is unlike that of any other pianist I have heard. When most pianists would play louder into the keys for a crescendo, he would back off with a lighter touch for the climaxes, as if he wanted the listener to be drawn in and listen closer. If you have not listened to a Mancini score before, or if it has been some time, I highly recommend it. Almost all of them can be found on Youtube and most of them are available on CD if you prefer the old-fashioned way :)  Growing up in the 1990s, the first Star Trek series I saw on television was The Next Generation, but I was so young, it really didn’t appeal to me. I liked the colorful effects but the stories were a little beyond me. By the time I started kindergarten, a local television station was showing reruns of the original series. I could tell that it was older than The Next Generation, but at that time, I was not concerned with what century each series took place or how one series led into another. My biggest interest was the characters and the stories. I honestly was not inspired by the diversity shown on the screen until I was much older. For a young child, anything less than infinite diversity did not make sense to me. It was later that I learned how incredible it was for the bridge crew to include a Russian navigator (during the cold war), a first officer that wasn’t even completely human, an Asian helmsman (only a couple of decades after WWII) and a Black, female officer on the bridge. The idea of a society without money that had a space fleet with the goal of exploration is still incredible. It is possible that I saw every episode of the original series by the time the local station stopped showing it. The next step was to go to the local video rental store (when they still existed) and rent VHS tapes of the Star Trek movies (I don’t think the store even had a single DVD at this time). Often, the tapes would have to be rewound before I could watch (anyone remember the “Be kind, please rewind” saying?)  My Mom was a great guide through the Star Trek universe. She knew that The Motion Picture (the first movie) would not have held my interest, so she started me with The Voyage Home (Star Trek IV), which is still my favorite Star Trek movie. I love the blend of humor and adventure. The original cast was so good in comic situations and this film really revels in that. Our heroes become the outsiders when they are thrust into (then) present day earth. Everything we see as “normal” was completely bizarre to the Star Trek crew, and it allows us to critique our own society. On my first viewing, the special effect that blew me away the most was how William Shatner’s toupee managed to stay on his head as he swam underwater to save the whales! There was something about the Star Trek movies that make them so familiar and yet so very different from the shows. If you think about the original 6 movies, Wrath of Khan (II), Search for Spock (III), and The Voyage Home (IV) form a continuous trilogy. I’m not sure if this was an intentional plan after the success of the Star Wars trilogy, or if it just happened that way. For The Motion Picture (I), The Final Frontier (V), and The Undiscovered Country (VI), the viewer does not need to have seen the other films to follow the story. However, one does need to be familiar with the characters to follow character relations. I believe this detail may contribute to how Star Trek movies seem to under-perform with a wide audience compared to the movies of other franchises. How much research does one need to do before watching a 2 hour movie? I know hardcore Trek fans would argue that people need a high enough intellect to appreciate a Star Trek movie, and that the 2009 reboot did well because it was “dumbed down” for the average person. When in fact I would argue that it did well because it introduced each character one at a time. In every other Star Trek film, it is assumed that the viewer is already intimately familiar with each character and because of that, if a viewer does not already know the characters, it is like 2 hours of an inside joke and the viewer is alienated from the start.  After The Voyage Home (IV), the next Star Trek movie we rented was The Wrath of Khan (II). I had already seen Star Wars at this point, so my expectations were probably similar to original viewers when Wrath of Khan premiered in 1982. It definitely met my expectations. It didn’t have as frequent action as Star Wars, but unlike Star Wars, you saw the destruction inside the ships and how that affected the characters. I also like that Wrath of Khan was more a sequel to the television episode Space Seed than it was to the first movie. The writers did a great job giving the viewer enough information about Khan’s backstory without needing clips or a play by play of the episode. Of course, I missed all the Moby Dick references until I was much older and could appreciate that. Unlike the Motion Picture, Wrath of Khan actually acknowledged that the characters (and therefore, the actors) had aged since the television series. So much of Kirk’s identity in Wrath of Khan has to do with his reluctance to acknowledge a significant birthday (implied to be 50).  I believe the next movie I saw was The Undiscovered Country (VI). Notice how my parents guided me to the even numbered movies before the odd numbered movies. The general consensus goes that the even numbered Star Trek movies are better than the odd numbered. Even film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel admitted this trend. This was true until Nemesis (Star Trek 10) was bad and the 2009 movie (Star Trek 11) was good. I remember noticing how much darker the Undiscovered Country was compared to the previous films. I don’t just mean tone, I mean the absence of lighting on the sets. There was literally less light in the image. Apparently, the cinematographer used a lot of source lighting, meaning that the control panels themselves were lighting the actors’ faces instead of traditional film lighting. I remembered getting totally freaked out during the zero gravity assassination scene. I remember reading somewhere that the film would have been PG13 if the Klingons had red blood instead of pink. That would have been helpful for my parents to know because I believe I was about 8 when I saw it. The shot where the Klingon gets his arm shot off was too much for little Mike. Years later, I’ve come to appreciate the Undiscovered Country as one of my favorite Star Trek movies, even if the Klingon villain quoted Shakespeare too much. From the first second of the Undiscovered Country, it is clear that the style is different from the rest of the series. Instead of a grand fanfare, the music begins with low bass and cello notes, influenced by Stravinsky’s The Firebird. The music score even includes a choir, which was a first for the Star Trek series. The film itself is more of a political thriller than an adventure movie. The only real space battle is saved until the very end, but it is quite an epic one. So many elements come together to make a great sequence--the Enterprise battles a Klingon bird of prey that can fire when cloaked, Sulu and his ship the Excelsior race to assist the Enterprise, and there is a time limit because all of them know that someone on the planet is going to try to assassinate the President of the Federation. The entire plot of the film centers around the idea that it is an end to an era, the Klingons and the Federation are signing a peace agreement, ending many decades of aggression. At the same time the Enterprise and its crew are being retired. What a fitting end to the original series.  After the Undiscovered Country, I watched my favorite of the odd numbered original movies, The Search for Spock (III). I saw an interview with Leonard Nimoy, who directed the film as well as starring as Spock, in which he described how he viewed the film as an opera. In that sense, the emotions of the film work well--feelings of loss and friendship are experienced in big amounts. This film fits the spirit of the original series much better than The Motion Picture. The crew were willing to sacrifice their careers and their ship because there was a chance that Spock was still alive. I think many people group Search for Spock with The Motion Picture (I) and The Final Frontier (V) because it is not as exciting as the previous film, Wrath of Khan and not as funny as the following film Voyage Home. But there are many humorous character moments and some great action setpieces. The way Kirk tricks the Klingon crew to board the Enterprise just as it is about to self-destruct is brilliant and the fight between Kirk and the Klingon captain is directly from the television series with the added big budget elements of the entire planet falling apart around them.  So far, I have mentioned The Motion Picture (I) many times. I believe this was the next movie I watched. I say believe, because I don’t remember much of my first viewing besides that I kept waiting for something to happen. It was very difficult for young Mike to get through. It is still difficult for older Mike to get through. When I rewatch it, I appreciate the production design and effects efforts. Compared to all the other movies, you probably see more sets of the inside of the Enterprise in this movie. Also, the number of different ships seen--3 Klingon ships, the newly-renovated Enterprise in all its glory, the spacedock, 2 different space stations, shuttles, the Vulcan shuttle, etc. The shots of the Enterprise from this film were reused in many of the later films. However, the story could have used more time to develop before production started and it could have used a tighter edit. I have read that the studio was so desperate to release the movie on a certain date that Jerry Goldsmith had to compose much of the music before seeing the scenes it was written for and that the premiere was the first time most of the people in the production had seen any of it. But many years later, the practical and miniature effects still hold up really well. The scene flying to the newly refit Enterprise is long but thrilling when the Enterprise is seen and it really does look like a beautiful, massive starship. Consider too that Jerry Goldsmith’s theme had not yet become the often heard theme to the Next Generation. Of all the original movies, The Motion Picture is probably the one I watch the least. It’s not poorly made; it’s just really boring. I have to be in the right mood, or convinced to have a marathon of all the original movies. Sadly, when I have tried to do a marathon in order, my friends and I get through the Motion Picture and often don’t have the energy for Wrath of Khan.  The last of the original movies I saw was The Final Frontier (V). I actually didn’t see it until years after I saw the rest of the series because friends and family recommended I avoid it. I actually saw it on TV (probably the Sci Fi channel at the time). Even though I was probably about 12, I could still see where corners had been cut in the effects budget. Industrial Light and Magic had already taken on too many projects in 1989, so they were not available for the production (‘89 was a big effects year with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman, and Ghostbusters II).
Instead, the company that handled the effects for The Final Frontier (V) did not have the experience or the budget to do a job comparable to the other films in the series. Many of the effects do not hold up when compared to the television effects 20 years earlier. There is one shot where a Klingon bird of prey fires a torpedo at the Enterprise, and the Enterprise narrowly escapes. The shot is so poorly done, someone could literally have pulled a still image of the Enterprise with fishing wire and it would have been more effective (and cheaper!) However, I still believe that The Final Frontier could be saved with redone effects. Yes, the concept is silly, but the movie does move from point A to point B swiftly and there are many great character moments. Just like The Motion Picture, the music from Jerry Goldsmith is incredible. There are some great action cues, but the best themes (in my opinion) are the grand moments. The Star Trek fanfare at the opening transitions into a majestic cue of Kirk (at least they want us to believe it) climbing in Yosemite National Park. The music gives the feeling of American Classical music with harmonies reminiscent of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. Near the end of the film, Goldsmith combines electronic and acoustic instruments to produce an uplifting and equally unsettling sound for the Eden-like planet that the characters believe they have found. Unfortunately, the film ends with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy singing Row Your Boat off-key, but that’s another story. Everyone has their favorite Star Trek television series. Next Generation is probably my favorite of the television series, but I will always enjoy the original film series best. Their balance of action, humor, and character relations give me a great feeling for the series that has been a part of my life since I was very young. |