OUTLAND

Written and Directed by Peter Hyams.
Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, James Sikking, Frances Sternhagen
1981, 112 minutes, Color, Rated R

A marginal film can be made more enjoyable with a great presentation, and OUTLAND--a marginal film in that it has good performances but is essentially nothing new story-wise--benefits enormously from a great presentation.  Sean Connery plays a Federal Marshall assigned to a remote mining outpost on the IO, the third moon of Jupiter.  There, he finds that the number of people that have gone crazy for no apparent reason is rising.  Could there be nefarious goings-on?

I haven't owned OUTLAND since the laserdisc I bought in the early 90's.  I probably still have it somewhere, but I haven't had a working laserdisc player for a couple of years now so I have to go by memory on what it looked like.  I remember it looking "okay".  It was more notable for being released in widescreen which at the time was still a novelty.  I never got it on DVD because of reviews that said it looked horrible.  The DVD may have used the existing laserdisc master, and  generally speaking laserdisc masters did not port well to DVD.  DVD had an extra 100 or so lines of resolution and was much better at handling colors and so exposed the weaknesses in the older, brighter masters used for laserdisc. An analogous situation is that some HD masters made just a few years ago don't always work well on Blu-Ray.  The technology changes so quickly it's no wonder things get transferred over and over again.*    I never saw the DVD, and I always assumed that it would eventually be remastered and re-released.  It took a little longer than I expected.

The image looks likes film and is DARK, which is as it should be.  Peter Hyams acted as his own cinematographer for many of his films, and right or wrong, he liked to shoot things in a way that almost looks like only practical lighting was used. This is not the same as actually using practical lighting; his films are stylized and it either works for you or it doesn't.  On paper, he wasn't the DP for OUTLAND but for all intents and purposes he controlled the filming of it**.  This results in atmospheric shots that sometimes border on being murky.  I like his style but can understand why one might not especially when the lighting doesn't necessarily match the subject matter, like in RUNNING SCARED, for instance.  His style works perfectly for OUTLAND, however.

The "Hyams" darkness is probably why past video versions have looked so crappy, but Blu-ray has enough resolution to make it work.  The effects look better, and the naturalistic lighting doesn't seem as "arty".   This new Blu-ray is clearly a newer and better transfer than what has been shown on the HD channels in the past and looks very nice.  The improved resolution allows one to take in and admire the sets, and the sound is a tremendous improvement over what has been available for this film in the past.  What's interesting is that Warner's opted for a single layer BD, so it's not like we're talking huge bit rates or anything.  Clearly, someone took time with the transfer.

Perhaps I wouldn't be as impressed with it if it wasn't a film from my childhood.  The plot is relatively simplistic, with no character development to speak of.  I think it tries too much to look and feel like ALIEN and employs questionable scientific accuracy--people wouldn't necessarily explode when exposed to zero gravity in reality, for instance--but dramatically the conceit works fine enough. Peter Boyle is okay in a very poorly written role.  His villain is a gross caricature of a real movie villain, with zero motivation beyond wanting to make money and I find it hard to take.  A more fully realized villain would have served the film well.

All this said I think the good far outweighs the bad.  Sean Connery was still in his prime and gives a thoughtful, physical performance.  The sets are expansive (and expensive) and go a long way toward giving the film an interesting sense of reality.  The design of the visual effects shots are creative and use the Introvision process to good effect. The Blu-Ray features a great 5.1 lossless track that greatly enhances the overall fun factor, especially with improved bass response.  James Sikking and Frances Sternhagen give great performances in supporting roles.

Really...what's not to like?  Great entertainment, at least in my opinion.  HIGH NOON in space?  Yeah, that's about right. I'm still very pleased with this one.

* Warner Brothers Home Video released Blu-Ray editions of CASABLANCA, THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND all around the same time. CASABLANCA has been re-released with a new transfer, and both OZ and WIND have been announced for re-release using new transfers.

** Stephen Goldblatt, the Director of Photographer listed in the credits, largely sat by while Hyams did the real work.  It was his second job as DP and his first Hollywood film.  He hated the experience. See this link on cinematography.com's forum for more.

THE SWARM

Arthur Herzog wrote a series of ecologically themed novels in the 1970s, the most famous of which is The Swarm. It's a good book and I'll devote a post to some other time, but most people are likely more aware of the 1978 movie based upon it than the book itself. The movie is not that good, although one can still derive pleasure from it provided they are in the proper frame of mind. That is, if they are willing to use its ineptitude as fodder for entertainment. Admittedly, not everyone can do this.

My feelings about the movie have swung from being quite enamored with it to being unable to watch it anymore. In between, there was a period where I could revel in its badness as film entertainment, but I must have less patience because the last time I tried to watch it that way I turned it off in disgust. I was just a youngster when it came out and I can still vividly recall the "The Swarm is Coming!" advertisements leading up to the film's release. Then, when the film was released there were full-page ads proclaiming that "The Swarm Is Here!" NBC expanded the film by 40 minutes when they showed it in the 1980's and that's the first time I really got into it. I read the book after seeing it on NBC and was disappointed that it was so different from the movie.  For the purposes of this discussion, we will look at the 'Extended' version of the movie, released on home video on both laserdisc and DVD. The movie was released to theaters at 116 minutes, whereas the longer version runs 155 minutes. The movie plays better in the shorter version, which is partly why I won't be discussing it. The main reason I won't be discussing it is that I no longer have a copy of the shorter version.

In the 1970's Irwin Allen was the king of disaster movies, having produced and co-directed such theatrical films and TV movies as THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972), THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974), FLOOD! (1976, TV), FIRE! (1977, TV), HANGING BY A THREAD (1979, TV), BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979) and THE SWARM (1978). Some of these films are good, most are only decent, and some are downright bad. None are boring, however, and for me, that's the important thing. Allen's formula for his theatrical films was to assemble a large cast of well-known ageing actors, place them in danger and then start killing them off. THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE is probably the only film in which this formula doesn't feel like a formula because the characters are more fully fleshed out than in any of the later films. Additionally, in Ronald Neame POSEIDON had the best director of any of the films made by Allen. INFERNO had John Gullermin, who did an okay to good job, but for THE SWARM Allen decided to do all of the directing himself.

THE SWARM boasts a pretty impressive cast, at least on paper: Michael Caine, Katherine Ross, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Richard Chamberlain, Bradford Dillman, Slim Pickens, Lee Grant, Ben Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Olivia de Havilland, José Ferrer, Patty Duke and Cameron Mitchell. With a cast like that, you would think there would be a certain level of competency, but several of the performances are downright awful. Leading the charge is Michael Caine, who alternates between being utterly stone-faced and being in a teeth-clenching screaming rage. To be fair, the rest of the cast is not much better--only MacMurray, Fonda and de Haviland truly escape into the "decent" category. To be even fairer, the bad acting is actually excusable. See, the movie was directed by Allen himself, and as a director he makes a pretty good producer.

The plot concerns Africanized bees that threaten to take over America. Caine is a leading entomologist who gets caught up in the struggle after stumbling upon an Army base wiped out by bees. Katherine Ross is the army doctor who survived the bee attack, and who ultimately becomes romantically involved with Caine. Widmark is the Army General tasked by the President with defeating the bees.

The film has two main faults. The first is a script full of bad dialogue. Or rather, I should say that the script is hopelessly outdated. At one point Katherine Ross says words to the effect of "Oh, I'm sad. So, very, very sad" while walking with Michael Caine, who also looks very sad to be stuck in the film. Second, the science depicted in the film is ridiculous.

While THE SWARM as film entertainment fails on most levels, it nevertheless does some things right. Two things, in fact. Jerry Goldsmith's score is truly great and, by far, the most accomplished aspect of the movie. The scenes of the bees swarming in the skies are generally well done, such as during the build-up to the attack on the town:

Once the bees are at ground level, however, the results are not good. Imagine puffed rice being blown by big fans, intercut with actors running around with puffed rice glued to their bodies. Add to that some truly bad dialogue spoken poorly and you pretty much have the movie in a nutshell.

The scenes of mass destruction caused by the bees are generally poorly handled, with some shocking lapses in continuity thrown in for good measure. Consider the train crash that occurs late in the film (killing good old Fred MacMurray in the process). When the train derails on a curve it starts to tumble to the left:

Yet in the very next shot we see the train tumbling to the right. The interior and exterior is intercut two more times.

Sloppy, no?

Shortly after the train debacle, the bees attack a nuclear power plant, which looks like it was designed and built by the Krell (click on the pics to get a better look):

The bees attack and Richard Chamberlain runs around with puffed rice blowing in the air, and with some glued to him as well.

And then the plant explodes.

Now, exactly why the plant explodes is never made clear. One could surmise that the bees clogged something important. Or perhaps the bees planted explosives. Don't laugh. The bees are attributed with all types of human qualities over the course of the film--intelligence to coordinate attacks, revenge, and anger to name three.

Certain scenes are blocked so poorly that they can be amusing--or at least illustrative on how things shouldn't be done in films. For instance, early in the film, there is a discussion between Michael Caine, Richard Widmark and Bradford Dillman. They stand in a circle, facing each other, and have a heated discussion. The scenes starts statically, but a few seconds in the camera starts circling the actors as they take turns raising their voices and pointing fingers. It is as inorganic a moment in a film as you are likely to find, and I can't help but wonder if Allen wasn't inspired by Brian DePalma's use of the circling camera in CARRIE. It worked in that film in part because the audience was invested in the characters' dialogue, and the swirling camera mirrored Carrie White's emotional state. In THE SWARM, the audience is most certainly not invested in what the characters are saying at this point in the movie, and the swirling character doesn't mirror anyone's state of anything save perhaps Bradford Dillman, who looks pretty befuddled throughout the scene.

I've gone over why I think THE SWARM is a poor movie, and I stand by the criticism (and abuse) I've dished out towards it. However, a few years ago I stumbled into a way for me to again enjoy the film. The movie fails on just about every level of modern movie entertainment, and that's the key to enjoying the film: setting aside modern expectations. If you stand back from the film and squint at it a bit it becomes clear that the film is in fact firmly in the 1950's monster movie mold.

Try watching it in black and white some time. It plays much better. In the context of a 1950's monster movie, all of a sudden the clunky dialogue scenes seem more at home--they are exactly what you would find in a B-level monster movie of the 50's. In fact, the more time that passes the easier it is to take it in this manner.

I don't for a second think that this was intentional, mind you. I am convinced that it was done with every intention of being 'current'. Allen was probably just making the movie the best way he knew how, and it turns out he had absolutely no idea how to handle actors. Left to flounder the majority of the actors do just that. It's debatable whether another director could have made a good movie out of THE SWARM using the same script. I doubt it myself but who knows?