Death is not taking a holiday here at our blog, nor at The Midnite Drive-In, where our blogs are covering apocalyptically- and post-apocalyptically-themed movies. So join us for
If you missed our Day 1 Recap, click here to see more great entries. To read the entrants from Day 2, click on the name of each individual blog below.
The Midnite Drive-in reports on Bruce Willis’ mission from the grim future, as depicted in 12 Monkeys.
Critica Retrocritiques the 1936 film Things to Come, which made some sadly accurate preductions about the dangers of modern technology.
Once Upon a Screen brings us Fail-Safe, a thriller from the Cold War that, er, pushes all the wrong buttons.
And while Douglas Adams gives thanks for all the fish, Movierob does not give thanks for Adams’ movie adaptation of his book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
We still have one more day to go in our blogathon, so keep us bookmarked, right to the end!
We had a slew of bloggers who couldn’t wait to write about the apocalypse — at least, as it is depicted in movies. See what they had to say as we present
Click on the name of each individual blog below to read their blogathon entry.
Diary of a Movie Maniac reaches way back to another country and another era for his end story — the Danish silent film The End of the World.
Caftan Woman decided to consult a Pal (George, that is) to find out what would happen When Worlds Collide.
Speakeasy offers a double feature of doom with This Is Not a Test and Five.
Fate brings the hammer down on Mike Hammer in the apocalyptic film noir Kiss Me Deadly, as reviewed by The Dream Book Blog.
Silver Screenings looks at cinema’s first adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984.
Seeker of Truth ponders whether humans should be allowed to survive, based on the evidence provided in The Story of Mankind.
In the first of two entries from our co-host The Midnite Drive-In, nuclear (and dysfunctional relationship) fallout is inevitable in Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach.
Maddielovesherclassicfilms observes the effect that an incoming meteor has on the world and its inhabitants in Deep Impact.
Movierob gives his take on I Am Legend, the first of two entries in his apocalyptic annals.
The sun is dying, so ThoughtsAllSorts tries to grab a little Sunshine for us.
And finally, yours truly takes a look at the cheesier side of apocalyptic cinema, as shown in Plan 9 from Outer Space and the film-within-a-film of Strange Brew.
We still have two more days of the blogathon to, er, survive, so keep us bookmarked for more ominous fun — we’re not dead yet!
The end has arrived! With the help of Quiggy at The Midnite Drive-In, we will spend the next three days reading bloggers’ lively — or, we hope at least, alive — critiques of movies with apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic themes.
If you are one of the participating bloggers, please leave the URL of your blogathon entry in the “Comments” section below, and we will link to your blog ASAP. If you are one of our curious readers, please keep checking back at Quiggy’s and this blog through the end of Sun., Apr. 1. We will continually update the list below with appropriate links, and I will do a daily round-up of the entries submitted thus far. So bend over and kiss yourself goodbye — at least for the next three days, as we immerse ourselves in blogs about cinematic world’s end!
Here are the blogathon entries, in chronological order:
The following is my entry in The End of the World Blogathon, being co-hosted by this blog and The Midnite Drive-In from March 30 to April 1, 2018. Click on the above banner, and read bloggers’ takes on a variety of movies with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes!
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There are a lot of great movies whose end-of-the-world themes have inspired food for thought. But what happens when filmmakers’ intentions (or pretensions) outstrip their talent? There are probably a dozen Robot Monsters for every Dr. Strangelove.
So for this blogathon, I thought I’d take a look at what happens when an apocalypse-minded filmmaker with minimal talent gets behind the camera. My first example is fictional (though all too plausible); the second example is a very real (and bad) piece of cinematic history.
Bob and Doug McKenzie, “Mutants of 2051 A.D.”
Quick comedy history lesson: “SCTV” (1977-1984) was a half-hour, “Saturday Night Live”-type spoof of TV and movies that, even though its roots were in the Second City improv troupe in Chicago, was taped in Canada. When the show became popular, Canadian TV execs insisted that each episode must contain two minutes of Canadian-based content.
From this dry idea were borne Bob and Doug McKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas), the dim-witted sibling hosts of “The Great White North,” a weekly show in which they shared tips on the best way to cook back-bacon, and how to get liquor store refunds by sticking a live mouse in an empty beer bottle.
As with many “SNL” stars, Moranis and Thomas couldn’t resist expanding their brief sketches into a feature-length film. Although it later segues into a formulaic plot, Strange Brew (1983) begins with a “Great White North” sketch in which Bob declares, “We made a movie, eh?” With that, the duo show us their movie, an ultra-low budget sci-film that runs for an excruciating minute-and-a-half before, happily, the film breaks.
If you’re not already familiar with Bob & Doug or “SCTV,” it’s hard to say how this mini-epic will play out of context. IMHO, it’s a perfect depiction of every movie fan who ever had too much time on his hands and got hold of a movie camera.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 is the immortal choice of bad-film lovers everywhere. And yet, it’s so entertainingly bad that one almost wants to believe that this is exactly what producer-writer-director Edward D. Wood Jr. had in mind all along. There have been far more sincere films, with far bigger budgets, that ended up with the same results as this movie. (If memory serves, one pundit referred to John Travolta’s 2000 pet sci-fi project Battlefield Earth as “Plan Ten from Outer Space.”)
The premise is that some outer-space beings (including future TV director Joanna Lee) have launched eight previously botched attempts to claim Earth for their own, and evidently the only plan that will get it right is to bring some corpses from a San Fernando Valley cemetery back to life. And yet, if the key sign of a sci-fi film’s success is that it successfully establishes an otherworldly environment, then Plan 9 succeeds in spades. The film is filled to capacity with:
* double-take-inspiring dialogue (“He’s dead. Murdered. And somebody’s responsible!”).
* non-existent continuity — as a writer once said about Leo McCarey’s work in the Marx Bros.’Duck Soup, if two shots don’t match, Wood’s answer is to throw them together and let them fight it out.
* strangeness accepted as normality. Prime example: Washed-up star Bela Lugosi died three days into filming and was replaced by Wood’s chiropractor, who was taller than Lugosi and who “doubled” for him simply by masking his face with a black cape.
And yet, many latter-day movies and TV shows ask us to accept just such incongruities in the name of entertainment. For example, we’re meant to accept a bare desk with a goose-necked lamp as being the office of a Pentagon official. Pretty silly. And yet, is NASA’s headquarters conveyed any more realistically on “I Dream of Jeannie”? And any number of sitcoms have dialogue that doesn’t sound any more “life-like” than the stuff that pops from the mouths of Wood’s actors.
It takes a special sense of mise-en-scene to present a facade so weird that it takes on a life of its own. For that alone, Plan 9 from Outer Space deserves its spot in film history.
It’s only 30 days until THE END OF THE WORLD…BLOGATHON, that is! Along with my blogging pal Quiggy from The Midnite Drive-In, we will be serving up blog entries related to movies with apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic themes. For further enlightenment on this blogathon (and to sign up, if you haven’t already), click here!
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and we feel fine. In fact, we feel like blogging about it in…
THE END OF THE WORLD BLOGATHON!
Along with my blogging colleague Quiggy at The Midnite Drive-In, we are looking for blogs about movies with apocalyptic themes. Specifically, we’d like you to write about a movie (or movies) in which a plot or subplot is the threat of the world ending (whether or not that actually occurs by movie’s end), or movies with a post-apocalyptic theme.
(Since there are so many movies with these themes, we request no duplicate entries for this blogathon. Please check the list at the end of this blog entry [which will be kept updated] to ensure that your choice has not already been taken.)
How Do I Join the Blogathon?
In the “Comments” section at the bottom of this blog, please leave your name, the URL of your blog, and the movie you are choosing to blog about. At the end of this blog entry are banners for the ‘thon. Grab a banner, display it on your blog, and link it back to this blog.
The blogathon will take place from Fri., March 30, through Sun., April 1, 2017. When the opening date of the blogathon arrives, leave a comment here with a link to your post, and we will display it in the list of entries (which we will continually update up to the beginning of the ‘thon, so keep checking back!).
We will not be assigning particular dates to any blog posts. As long as you get your entry in by the end of the day on April 1, we will be satisfied. (That said, the earlier the better!)
Again, be sure to leave a comment below and grab a banner, and have fun with your blog entry! Here’s the line-up so far, in chronological order:
moviemovieblogblog.wordpress.com 