Mixed Effects

...you'd be pretty bored watching the hero do little more than have four gun-fights with the bad guys That's about how I felt watching Blade Runner Annoyance rather than boredom was my response to Poltergeist Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, the film is about what you would expect from a collaboration between the director of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Combining elements of a sci-fi flick, an?\-orast-like tale of demonic possession, a ghost story, and a "splatter" film, Poltergeist winds up simply a mess Much of the untidiness results from the fact that the script (by Spielberg with Michael Grais and Mark Victor), is confused, to put it mildly In addition, the film is mistitled We are pointedly told by a parapsychologist (Beatrice Straight) in the story that a poltergeist is a spirit connected with a particular person, in contrast to a ghost, which haunts a place Yet the movie is really about the haunting of a single location, a suburban California home There are also annoying and silly inconsistencies and implausibihties throughout (the handiwork of the far too many names in the credits) The reason for the presence of the supernatural turns out to be vengeance on the part of ghosts not allowed to rest in peace by a greedy and unscrupulous real-estate man who built a housing development atop their graveyard It has probably been at least two or three weeks since I saw a horror film with a premise like that Alas, we never discover why the spirits haunt the house of Diane (Jobeth Williams) and her family instead of the developer's clan, or why they kidnap her younger daughter, Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), and hide her inside the TV set (don't ask me to explain) We get no inkling either of why the exorcist/spiritualist Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein), who comes to the family's aid, gives such selt-contradictory advice about how to rescue the girl (first saving that she should avoid and then that she should approach thenns-tenous light thai is somehow thesouac ot the pow er holding her prisoner) \nd why does the family, after enduring one horror after another, continue to live in the house once Carol Anne is rescued when the spirits have not been dispelled'' In general, Poltergeist is so loud and bright and studded with feeble effects (a supposedly frightening head of a monster, for instance, looks like a harmless jack-in-a-box) that it is clear the viscera and not the mind were the filmmakers' target Spielberg is also represented this summer by ?T The Extra-Terrestrial, a film he directed and produced from Melissa Mathison's script Again the setting is one of those nameless California suburbs that all look alike?white man's land, with two-car garages and split-level houses as far as the eye can see No big-city problems here, no crime, no poverty, no pollution Children ride bikes safely in the streets, cars are used mostly for driving the kids to school and for shopping at the local mall, neighbors are friendly, families get together for pizza parties on weekend nights It's a pleasant fantasy, maybe actually a reality somewhere There are, to be sure, some shadings to Spielberg and Mathison's sunny picture of suburban life The family in question is headed by a woman, Mary (Dee Wallace, one of my favorite lost causes), whose husband has left her and their three children Still, that seems merely a convenient way of dispensing with a dominant male who would have no place in the childlike tale that is to unfold For E T is really Lassie in science fiction drag Elliott (Henry Thomas), Mary's younger son, finds a strange animal in the back yard, in this case not a dog but a stranded alien that looks like a cross between Yoda and a canister vacuum cleaner Elliott takes the creature home, gives him a name ("E T "), hides him from Mom and the mysterious, unidentified adults who are tracking him, teaches him lots of neat tricks (such as how to speak English), and loses him in a final parting that shouldn't leave a dry eye in the theater It nevertheless did I was so flabbergasted by Spielberg and Mathison's transparent manipulativeness that I didn't have time to react with the mindless emotionalism that has clouded the acuity of supposedly sharp-eyed critics like Pauline Kael, who found the film "enchanting " "Sappy" or "simple-minded" would be more accurate I fail to see what is so wonderful about filming the adults (except dear Mom and a kindly scientist near the end) in half-light, from waist level, so they appear menacing That's looking at the story from the point of view of a small child If you're a pre-teen, or have the mind of a kid, then E T is for you you're slightly older, you will prefer Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan I have to confess a fondness, or a weakness, for the TV series that ended 14 years ago I have spent more time than I would Like to admit watching the episodes that are endlessly rerun on local TV stations at odd hours in every city I've ever lived in By now the body/ mind/spirit triumvirate of Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is so familiar that watching Star Trek is like attending a family reunion The sequel is particularly enjoyable because it has a plot, and the characterizations are more important than the special effects (which are, to be honest, rather pedestrian) Kirk's old nemesis, Khan (Ricardo Montalban, cackling maniacally and gleefully overacting), a eugenic superman from the late 20th century (introduced in one of the TV episodes), is on the prowl again, this time with a "genesis device" capable of destroying the galaxy It is up to the crew of the U S S Enterprise to stop him They do, of course, though only after some gruesome problems with creatures that paralyze men's wills by entering their brains through their ears, an intergalactic battle that is shamelessly patterned after the submarine duel in Run Silent, Run Deep, and—are you ready—the death of Spock (Or perhaps not, only Star Trek III, already announced, will tell) It's all good-natured fun Nicholas Meyer's crisp direction keeps the annoying sci-fi elements (the apocalyptic threat, the special effects, the nonsensical "philosophy" borrowed from, of all people, Dickens) secondary to the amusing banter among the crew and to the hilariously melodramatic struggle between Good and Evil That Good is represented by three tired television veterans who look ready for the Actors Guild rest home is to be forgiven, since the ludicrous notion that the fate of the universe rests in their hands is nicely acknowledged in Jack B Sowards' script Gentle fun is made of, among other things, Kirk's reading glasses Some irony would have helped Fire-fox, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood from Alex Lasker and Wendell Wellman's script, based on the novel by Craig Thomas Eastwood also stars as Mitchell Gant, a slightly shell-shocked Vietnam veteran pilot brought out of retirement by the military to steal a Soviet superjet, codenamed Firefox No easy task, because the plane is in a hangar on an airbase deep inside the Soviet Union Gant reaches his objective with so little trouble that the first two-thirds of the film is rather routine and boring secret-agent stuff The last third is virtually the dogfight sequence from Star Wars set in the skies over Russia, as Gant is pursued by everything the Soviets can throw into the air, including another Firefox John Dykstra of Star Wars fame has created some truly stunning special effects in this airborne sequence that sadly do not redeem the rest of the film Gant strides humorlessly through one ridiculous setup after another, not blinking as Jewish dissidents helping him get blown away, the actor s patented crinkly-eyed doubletakes are nowhere to be seen I thought that Eastwood had left this kind of larger-than-life, smaller-than-reality nonsense behind in those spaghetti Westerns of 15 years ago that were at least acted and directed tongue-in-cheek Unhappily, Firefox is in deadly and deadening earnest I'm a great fan of Eastwood's, but the one-dimensional heroism of his latest effort is a real test of my loyalty—and my patience...

...On Screen MIXED EFFECTS BY ROBERT ASAHINA Let's face it as a (sub-)literary genre science fiction is trash Enjoyable sometimes, but junk nonetheless And films in this category are trashier still, usually emphasizing dazzling, evanescent special effects instead of plot and characterization After watching this summer's batch of sci-fi spectaculars, I felt as if I'd been eating Szechuan food every night for a week—a few spicy moments, and not much else to show for it besides heartburn Perhaps the least appetizing of the bunch is Blade Runner Although never quite explained, the title refers to the profession of Deckard (Harrison Ford), a denizen of 21st-century Los Angeles who tracks down and eliminates "replicants," genetically engineered humanoids trying to pass themselves off as real people on an overpopulated Earth Unhappily, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples' screenplay fails to develop this interesting idea, and Ridley Scotl's direction is turgid and uninspired Some have praised Blade Runnei as being an hommage to the films noirsof the '40s Like the characters Bogie used (o play, Deckard is an alienated, cynical loner on the margins of society Unlike those anti-heroes of lilm yester year, however, Deckard doesn't do very much (Neither does Ford as an actor, he is turning into this generation's Steve Forrest, a virile, bland wasp ) The plot consists of his locating and dispatching four replicants, without any interesting complications Even though Fancher and Peoples take the trouble to introduce a supersophisticated lie detector called the Voight-Kampff machine, used in identifying the simulated humans, they proceed to forget about the gimmick for the rest of the film So the hapless Deckard stumbles on his prey mostly by unbelievable serendipity Blade Runner also differs from a film noir in being shot in color, with a visual scheme so murky that it might as well have been black and white For no apparent reason, it's always raining in 21 st-century L A and no one seems to have any indoor lighting This clever vision of the future is pretty hard on the eyes tor two hours A lot of money seems to have been spent on fabricating illusions and sets (God help us if L A actually looks this rundown and scary in 2019) to little purpose Imagine a Western that has nothing to recommend it except scenic mountains, beautiful cacti and pictuiesque mining towns...