Nov 23 2008
Life on Mars Does Not Include Wrestlers
Christmas On Mars (2008)
D. Wayne Coyne & Bradley Beesley
Warner Brothers Music/DVD
1.85
This experimental, somewhat campy, Science-fiction film is a longtime labor of love for the psychedelic Rock band The Flaming Lips. The film has taken nearly a decade to produce from the script to the screen and was made on a shoestring, often in their own backyard on homemade sets. The members of the band play all the key roles, perform the music and naturally wrote, produced and directed the thing. This is art filmmaking at its most insular. But luckily it is also pretty good.
The story deals with a rag tag group of astronauts whose job has been to begin the very first stages of colonization of Mars. They are living in a space station and have apparently been there for some time. It is Christmas eve and things are tense. The gravitation devices are going bad and the converters for the air supply are also malfunctioning. The main objective for the team is to see if life can be created on Mars and thus begin a new colonization. A baby is forming in a giant mechanical uteri device with a live in mother who feeds it from a mechanical umbilical cord from her own stomach to the baby’s pod. The main character is a Major Syrtis whose job on this evening is to try to gather the troops together for a Christmas party. But he’s having trouble because he’s having some rather disturbing hallucinations involving dead babies, weird vagina monsters and other birth imagery. The guy who is supposed to play Santa for the party has flipped his lid and run out onto the surface of Mars and froze to death. Seems he was having the same hallucinations, but even worse. Then into this whole madness comes an alien who keeps his spaceship made of light inside his mouth and looks like the little alien guy on The Jetsons, but normal sized. He will play into all the manias of the people in the station in a very savior type fashion.
All in all, this ends up playing like a acid trip, Timothy Leary penned version of 2001 meets the Nativity story. You’ve got the virgin birth, the selfless acts of kindness, the starchild etc. There is quite a bit of discussion about how humans aren’t meant to live in outer space, yet by the end they seem to have dealt with it in some positive fashion. The madness seems to have come less from the act of living in space, then from the fears and frustrations of the oncoming events. I also think there is something being said about loneliness and frustration too as our lead hero spends the whole movie basically walking alone trying to talk and connect with people, hoping they will end up at a gathering that ends up being a bust. He continually blames his feelings on being in space, but when it is probably more to do with just being isolated and lonely.
This isn’t a “hardware” type sci-fi film. There is very little gadgetry or the like in the movie. Instead this is a slow moving, almost trancelike “head” film that tries to bring you along into a bizarre little world. There is a lot of really striking imagery throughout the movie from the pod the baby and mother live in, to the blown out lighting of the alien walking on the face of the planet. Then there is all the vagina imagery…
The fact this was made by a group of musicians and not filmmakers is very striking, as it is consistently interesting to look at. The pace flags and bogs down more than a few times, and the story gets a bit muddled here and there. But more often than not, this is an interesting, visually arresting achievement.
Wrestlemaniac (2006)
D. Jesse Baget
Anchor Bay
1.85
The idea of a killer Luchador wrestler movie is an inspired one. And casting Ray Misterio Sr. as the killer is a pretty solid move in the right direction as he has a solid fan base, and is menacing enough to pull off the part. Too bad so much of the rest of this movie is cookie cutter crapola that it doesn’t really rise to the idea at hand.
A group of highly obnoxious twenty-somethings (well the girls look a lot harder rode than that, so twenty-something is being generous) are in Mexico looking to go shoot a porn video. so you have the “director” easily the most obnoxious fuck in a movie in a long time (though oddly not nearly as obnoxious as some real life porn directors like Matt “I wish I was Marilyn Manson” Zane or Kid Sparkle), a fat guy “camera man” the ho’s and the stoner who owns the van. One of the ho’s is played by an ex wrestler chick, so you know she is going to be the one who makes it to the final reel. Her crazy hair and inflated lips actually made her look like a legit porn chick, but she never takes off her clothes. These dimwitted asswipes go to a deserted town, after Irwin Keyes (the scary guy from House of 1000 Corpses) tells them not to. And naturally the Ghost of the crazy Luchadore starts bumping them off.
After a reallllly painful first half hour where you want to reach into the TV and start strangling the little fuckers yourself, the movie picks up a bit. In fact the murder of the annoying “director” is satisfyingly brutal and made me laugh out loud. There is also a couple of sequences a bit later that inspire a slight bit of dread such as when the fat kid and other porno ho find the wrestlemaniac’s lair and there are dozen’s a people’s faces nailed to the walls. See since he’s a Luchador he has to unmask his opponents, but since they aren’t wearing masks he rips off their faces instead! Okay, its stupid, but it supplies some decent grue along the way. Then immediately after that is an actually a cleverly directed scene where the fat kid and the killer square off and instead of showing it, the camera goes outside the double doors and we hear the slaughter going on. Then the other girl comes crawling out all bloodied and screaming, only to have the killer walk out and get her seconds later. It is actually a very effective moment (that they fuck up moments later by having the fat kid still be alive) that shows that these people are capable of a better movie than delivered.
After this point it is like the director just threw up his hands and decided he was just going to make a goofy horror movie and not worry about anything else. You could start a drinking game for whenever the wrestler chick has a close up of her ass. When her shorts get “accidentally” ripped off and she is forced to spend the rest of the movie in her underwear, we get even more close ups of her ass. She has a nice butt, we get it. Then she, white shirt and all, hides in a barrel full of water… I’m not sure the director even cared about the fact he was making a horror movie at this point. The scene where she hides with her legs spread wide enough to drive a truck up her cooch is just hysterical.
And yes it has a shock ending that is just silly and stupid that is supposed to allow for a sequel. I certainly hope not. To add insult to injury, there are outtakes of the fat kid comically rapping during the end credits! Dear lord, these are the kinds of movies that are getting funded! Someone put up a budget for this!
2008-11-23
04:17:22
Andy Copp
