Change Your Image
sasullivan
Reviews
The Manster (1959)
monster-movie classic with some unforgettable scenes
I watched this last night for the first time in 30-something years. From childhood, three scenes were indelibly stamped on my memory: the gibbering woman with the nightmarish melting face in a cage, the eye in the shoulder, and the infamous 'separation'. But what also was stuck in memory was the horrible screaming that accompanied some of these (not my own, but that of the characters ;>). Well, the movie's not *quite* as scary to my jaded sensibilities as it was then, but those scenes still had a kick; the unearthly howling, tearing sounds when the Manster 'separates' still chilled.
While it'll never be mistaken for great moviemaking, this film deserves a bigger 'cult' status than it has.
Starship Troopers (1997)
mordant, blank-faced satire
I'm tickled pink to see that fans of overrated blowhard paleo-libertarian Robert Heinlein are outraged at the liberties taken with his book. Clearly Verhoeven and his screenwriter were on to something...and ST is one of those rare flicks where the film *is* better than the book. I've watched the movie three or four times since 1998, and my only regret is that I didn't get to see it on the big screen, where the superlative SFX would have been even more impressive. There are so many things to love about this movie...its cheerful and often hilarious embrace and subversion of wartime propaganda films and 50's teen/sci-fi flick cliches, the casting of impossibly beautiful second- and third-rate actors (I wonder if they realized what use they were being put to?), the touches that seem silly but upon second thought, disturbing (e.g., the cast seems too old to be in high school -- or maybe in this future, the government finds it useful to extend 'adolescence'?), the occasional hints that the 'bug war' was purposely fomented by the government, the way the liberal dream of gender equality as the norm (e.g., the football game, that famous shower scene) is juxtaposed with the enthusiastic fascism of its beneficiaries, the way the homoerotic/sadomasochistic overtones in military culture are made explicit (e.g., Rico's whipping)....ST is both perversely playful and a great action flick. Seeing Doogie Howser in SS drag alone is worth the price of rental! It's a pity that so many have misunderstood ST that the director and writer, in the DVD commentary, are compelled to begin by stating categorically that they *don't like war*.