Trollheart

Somebody finally manages to hit the Nestor ship. How the fuck did they miss it, glowing like a bloody white light in space? It's a flying target! And serve them right too: that control column is totally ripped off from the TARDIS. The only thing it doesn't do is move up and down. Sador tells his men to ready the stellar converter and fix it on the planet Akir. Somehow this seems extraneous information: where did he think his men thought he was going to target it? Did Governor Tarkin say “Target Alderaan?” No he did not. The Death Star was orbiting it. His men knew what the target was. Further confirmation or instruction would have been pointless, and would have left him less time to chuckle in a cold evil way as Princess Organa's homeworld was destroyed. Some tyrants know how to do things properly!

Valkyrie girl's beasts implants finally give up the ghost and her ship blows up (very appropriately I have to say), while George goes back to his with his best friend, Johnny Walker and takes off to join the fight. He doesn't help much though, and goes out with a song on the harmonica. Cayman engages in some pointless insult trading with Sador, reminding him that the warlord was responsible for wiping all his people out and the alien has a score to settle. Unfortunately this seems to involve trying to ram Sador's ship as Cayman sets a collision course. Not to anyone's surprise, he is blown out of the stars.

And then there was one.

John Boy's ship has sustained damage in the fight and Nell's memory banks have been knocked out. She can't remember anything. Lucky her. The ship gets taken up into Sador's tractor beam and John Boy uses the oldest trick in the book, the old self-destruct-while-trapped-in-a-tractor-beam, and it's bye bye Sador. John Boy and his squeeze escape, but there's no escape from this movie.

As they say on Futurama: “You watched it: you can't un-watch it!”

Notes on the ending

Almost everything about this movie is pathetic and derivative, but the ending needs to be examined for extreme crappiness. First of all, a ship that's crippled gets drawn into the tractor beam of the warlord's ship. Why? He said he wanted to take them alive. Again, why? He hasn't given any clue up to now that he even knows who these people are, much less cares. Why does he now want to take these two alive? Is it that he knows they're the ones who created the alliance that defeated him? Oh sorry: they didn't defeat him. They were all blown out of the stars. For all the use they were, John Boy might as well have stayed at home.

So having made the fatal villain's error of dropping his shields to pull the little ship aboard, he doesn't think that maybe it's a trap? That once caught, if this ship self-destructs he won't be able to get away from the blast? Really? Is he that thick? Not to mention his final scene: Governor Tarkin didn't break down like a spoiled little boy and stamp his foot, saying “I'm going to live forever! I want to live forever!” Well, in fairness Tarkin never saw the end coming, as he balanced his chin on his hand and waited for the rebels to be destroyed. Vader had the good taste to go down fighting, spinning out of control yes, but with a “fuck you I'll be back you bitches!” fist of defiance. Defiance too was in Khan's eyes as he met his end in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and even Rimmer, right at the end, declared “Better dead than smeg!” What an end for the galaxy's most brutal tyrant: whimpering like a child as he realised the end had come.

And the final speech, about everyone who died being part of Akir, stuck in my throat. Existential crap. I think on balance John Boy's allies would all rather have survived to taste the victory than end up part of some imagined shared consciousness of a backwards farming planet they hadn't even heard of seven, um, cycles ago. And wasn't this in essence a massive defeat? John Boy headed off to raise an army, and for all the good they did he may as well not have bothered. One of his allies insisted on flying about in a mobile target, and was deservedly destroyed. The big bad mercenary hardly got a shot off before he was killed and as for Space Cowboy? Well if you want a man who can play a harmonica and drink hard liquor, he's your guy. And he did help organise the ground defence of the planet. But once he got spaceborne he basically flew right into the atmosphere, drunk and playing that damn harmonica to the end.

Cayman fared little better. His great plan to take revenge on the annihilator of his people was to, um, ram a far bigger and better-armed ship shouting his battlecry. He, too, was splashed across the stars. Not too much in the way of tactical thinking, I have to say, and all of this despite General Nanelia's complicated battleplan down on the planet. What happened to that? I suppose you could say they lured Sador in by, um, purposely being blown to shit so that they had to be taken into the tractor beam, thereby forcing the megalomaniac to lower his shields, but how did they know he was going to do that? He could as easily have blasted them out of the sky. No, that was just dumb luck.

And of course, following the plot of “The Magnificent Seven” almost to a fault, everyone dies at the end save the two main characters, and the Mexicans, sorry, Akirans are saved, in the end, by one of their own. Luke Skywalker, eat your heart out. Or rather, don't.

I realise I have probably written a lot more on this bad movie than I have on some of my favourites --- or possibly not; I write a lot, as you know --- and it was not really my intention but once I got into it I couldn't stop picking out the hilarious points and the awful dialogue, and though it never quite became “so bad it was good”, it was clearly enjoyable, if only because I got to slag it off so much. The real mystery is why a director of the stature of Roger Corman would be involved in a low-budget ripoff like this? I guess some mysteries will never be solved.

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Trollheart

I think it's fair to say that before 1975 most of us didn't know much about sharks. There were no shark movies, nothing dedicated specifically to sharks, no real information about them. We'd had Flipper, so we knew about dolphins, Skippy taught us about kangaroos and if you wanted to know a little about whales you could watch or read Moby Dick, but for me anyway, and I think for a lot of people, sharks were reduced to a shadowy, vaguely threatening presence that haunted the likes of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean, and that we (certainly here in Ireland) had no reason to fear. If we saw sharks on the telly at all, they were an indistinct, blurry shape in the water, or more usually the iconic triangular fin cutting through the waves, most often in cartoons. Nobody knew really what sharks were (big, scary fish?) and really, I suppose, nobody cared. The chances of us falling foul of one, unless we lived in the likes of Australia, went surfing or took a deep-sea voyage, were minimal.

And then came Jaws.

Based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley, who had no experience with and no real knowledge of sharks, yet took to writing a novel that grew into a box-office blockbuster movie that simultaneously brought the shark to the forefront of human interest and painted it as the savage killer of the seas, Jaws suddenly reminded us how apparently dangerous sharks were, and that they should be feared. Benchley later repented of his ill-founded and completely baseless assumptions about sharks, becoming an ocean conservationist in later life, and bewailing the fact that people seemed determined to accept the ideas in the novel as fact, not fiction, leading to a horrifying increase in culls of sharks, shark hunting and a general mistrust turning to hatred of the animal. In recent times this has been somewhat redressed, with channels like National Geographic and Discovery running “Shark Weeks” and trying to explain, rather than villify, the nature of sharks, and through these we have learned that though yes, sharks are dangerous and can eat people, they generally shy away from contact with humans, and though there are many reported incidents of shark attacks every year, most if not all can be attributed to a case of mistaken identity – the shark mistaking the human for a seal or other prey – accidents (sharks often “taste” something to be sure it is edible; humans are not to the shark's taste but unfortunately a small taste for a shark can cripple or even kill a human) or other factors. Sharks are not, we now know, the remorseless, evil killers of the deep depicted in Jaws.

This newfound understanding of sharks has not, however, prevented a minor film industry building up around the myths and half-truths espoused by the original shark movie, and though these days much of the material written about them seems to concern tongue-in-cheek or frankly ridiculous storylines – Sharknado, Ghost Shark, Sharkocalypse etc – there are still some good movies around with sharks in them. Some are better than others, and most, not surprisingly, cast the shark as the villain of the piece, but at least they take their subject semi-seriously. Even a movie like Deep Blue Sea, with its idea of genetically enhanced sharks, is easier to credit than, say, Sharktopus, although it should be pointed out that I have never watched any of these “B” shark movies. I may, at some point, but even without seeing them the taglines give you enough of an idea to know that they are certainly not taking their subject seriously. Flying sharks? Sharks buried in ice? In sand? Ghost sharks? Give me a break.

So none of those will feature here, but here's a list of the ones I intend to look at in some detail, perhaps comparing them along the way. If you know of a good shark movie I should include, let me know, but for now this is the list. I don't know what order I'll be doing them in, and this will run throughout the year (which is why I resisted calling it Shark Week or Shark Month) among other features, so this list is in alphabetical order. As I review them, I will mark them accordingly and link.

12 Days of Terror
Bait
Cruel Jaws
Deep Blue Sea
Jaws
Jaws 2
Jaws 3-D
Jaws (4): The Revenge
The Last Shark (aka Great White)
Mako: The Jaws of Death
Mission of the Shark: the Story of the USS Indianapolis
Night of the Sharks
Open Water
Red Water
The Reef
Shark Attack
Shark Attack 2
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon
Shark Swarm
Shark Zone

Having seen only a mere handful of these movies, I have no doubt some will turn out to be utter shite, but hopefully there'll be some good ones in there, apart from the ones I already know. As this was shown recently on the telly I've decided to review it first so I can clear if off my Sky Box if nothing else.

Title: The Reef
Year: 2010
Nationality: Australian
Starring: Damian Walshe-Howling, Zoe Naylor, Gyton Grantley and Adrienne Pickering
Directed by: Andrew Traucki
Written by: Andrew Traucki
Cinematography: Daniel Ardillery
Music: Rafael Ma
Budget: 3.8 million AUD
Box Office: 125,000 AUD

Says “based on true events”, so that's a plus. Maybe. A group of friends decide to join one of their mates who is delivering a boat to Indonesia, and set off for their destination. There's obviously some history between Luke, the salesman, and Kate, his ex-girlfriend and sister of the other male lead, Matt. Two days out they hit something and the boat capsizes. They manage to scramble up onto the hull of the boat, but are now alone and drfiting in the water with no way to contact anyone for help. Considering their options, Luke suggests they abandon the boat and try to swim to the nearest island. This being about ten miles away, his advice is not popular; most of these people can swim but not that far, and of course everyone fears that there are sharks in the water. Had they looked at the video cover, they would have seen this is indeed the case. Luke therefore, being overridden, goes below into the sunken remains of the boat to see what he can salvage to keep the thing afloat, as it is now their only sanctuary from the embrace of the deep. It quickly becomes apparent though from his exploration that the boat is doomed to sink, so they decide to swim for it after all. Except Kate, who is adamant she will remain, believing their chances of making it slim in the extreme. The other three leave her behind with Warren, who refuses to go into the water. At the last moment she changes her mind, probably not relishing the idea of being left alone with the depressing Warren, and heads into the water to join her friends.

A short while after leaving the boat behind they come across a turtle floating in the sea, but are disturbed to find it is missing its head. And it's not a small turtle, so something rather large and nasty is nearby. Back at the boat, Warren, who didn't want to risk swimming, sees something in the water, circling the vessel. Meanwhile, back with our heroes, they too are beginning to believe something is stalking them in the water. They're not wrong (well, if they were, it would be a pretty short and boring movie, now wouldn't it?) as a shark hoves into view. Not the kind of thing you really want to see where you're out in the middle of the ocean! The shark begins to circle them – it's kind of their own fault; they're attracting its attention by kicking, splashing and screaming. I know it's easy to say, and were it me there'd definitely be a long brown streak in the water by now (assuming I could swim, which I can't) but if they just floated and kept quiet the chances are the shark would lose interest in them and move on. Of course they don't, they can't, and the beast moves closer.

The fact that the fin suddenly disappears is not really to be taken as a good sign, as it usually indicates the shark has dove in order to launch an attack. And so it proves, as the thing surfaces almost on top of them, breaking the water then diving back below again. An exploratory strike as the animal tries to work out what they are, if hey are predator or prey, and if the latter, if it can eat them. It can, and Matt is the first to find out as he is attacked when he goes back for his floating board and the shark arrows in, taking off his leg. With the shock and the loss of blood it isn't long before he gives up the ghost, and mere moments after being attacked he is dead, literally, in the water, and they have to leave him in the hopes that the shark's hunger – or more likely, its curiosity – has been sated. Fat chance.

And then there were three. Night begins to fall as they remaining friends swim further, Suzie suffering the loss of her boyfriend in the aftermath of the shock of his death. She loses it, blaming Luke (well, you would, wouldn't you?) and obviously wishing she had stayed on the boat and taken her chances. How exactly they expect to find their way to this island in the dark with no GPS or radar or even a compass (Luke earlier pointed out north by the position of the sun, or something) is beyond me. As Suzie says despairingly, “We're lost in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the fucking night!” Kind of about the size of it, really.

Except as they wake the following morning (thankfully, uneaten) they sight what appears to be land in the distance. Relieved and with renewed energy tey make their way to what turns out to be a small rocky outcrop from which they can definitely make out the outline of land, though if it's the island they've been making for it seems very small, even in the distance. Abandoning the rock and returning to the sea, they continue their journey, with this time at least a proper direction to head for. Suddenly a fin breaks the water, and they all scream, thinking the shark has returned, but it turns out only to be a dolphin, to their intense relief. It's short-lived though, as the next time they see a fin it is the shark, and it attacks Suzie, pulling her underwater and leaving nothing behind but a thick spreading red stain. Two down, two to go.

Of course it turns out not to be an island they've sighted but (say it with me) a reef, but it's still better than being in the water, so they make for it anyway. Kate realises her foot is bleeding. This is not a good thing to do with a shark in the water! A very formulaic reconcilation occurs between the two just before they re-enter the water, A few moments later the shark is back, ready for more. The two make a last desperate break for the reef, swimming for all they're worth, trying to outdistance the shark. They make it to the reef, but it's slippery and there are few handholds. Kate manages to scramble up to safety, but poor old Luke is too late and the shark gets him as he tries to climb up, the girl unable to pull him up.

So now she's left alone on the reef, in the middle of the ocean, no idea where she is or if help can come for her. Oh. I was about to make a prediction about how it would end, but, well, that's it. It's over. It ends with her sitting on the reef bawling about losing Luke and there is no resolution. Boo and double boo, though I suppose you have to give some credit for a certainly unexpected and not happy ending.

QUOTES
Matt (after they clamber back on to the capsized boat): “What happened?”
Luke: “Don't know. Must have hit something. Reef? Whale?”
(Yeah, I'd really trust this bozo to deliver my million-dollar yacht! Who the fuck was steering when they hit whatever it was they hit, and why was he, as the person responsible, not at the helm?)

Luke: “The boat's fucked. I don't think it's going to stay afloat. And when it does sink, we're in the water.”
(What stunning insight! My confidence in this man grows with every scene!)

Warren (to Suzie, who is wearing a wetsuit): “You look like a seal in that. Sharks love seals.”

Matt: “That was one big turtle!”
(The unspoken question: what the fuck could tear the head off something as big as that?)

Kate (about the shark): “It's the same one, isn't it?”
Luke: “I think so.”
Kate: “I know it is. I know it is.”
(What the fuck does it matter? You think a different Great White is going to be more merciful?)

Good scenes

It's very early in the movie – a mere few minutes in – so you're not going to be fooled, but while Kate and Luke are diving under the sea preparatory to leaving on their trip everything goes quiet underwater as Kate watched the vista in front of her, then suddenly something attacks her from behind. But it's only Luke messing around. There' s no long drawn-out suspense scene or ominous music, so I doubt that the viewer was meant to be tricked into thinking it was a shark, more just a bit of fun. Works well enough.

The crash is handled quite well; you get the feeling of being tossed around and suddenly everything is under water.

The scene where they come across the headless turtle is handled well also. It takes a few moments, as the animal bobs towards them on the tide, and then they have to grab it and spin it around to discover it's missing its head. They let it go pretty quickly after that!

The scene where the dolphin appears and they all think it's the shark is quite funny.

Obviously, this is only a personal thing but I found it funny. I think it's the second appearance of the shark, when it comes back after having snacked on Matt and still hungry. It floats into shot, and the look on its face to me says “So where is everyone? I was told I should meet them here?” It just looks a little puzzled. No, I will not seek psychiatric help: it's already way too late for that.

Notes on cinematography

Oddly enough, this isn't something I tend to look at that much in movies, not knowing very much about it, but in movies about sharks (or anything that involves camerawork underwater) I think it's important to take it into account, as it can really add to (or detract from) the overall atmosphere of the movie.

Before they set off there are some nice underwater scenes where Luke and Kate are swimming. They're done well enough; gives you a sense of being underwater, sure, but nothing exactly breath-taking. The shots of the boat underwater, when Luke goes down to try to save what he can, are quite effective, starkly showing the contrast between what was a short time ago a pleasure craft and a place to have a bit of fun, and what it has now become: a murky, watery shell. The aerial shot as the three push off from the capsized boat succeeds in giving a very clear picture of the odds they are facing.

However I must point out that when they get to the rocky outcrop on the way to the island, the camera continues to move up and down, even though they are now – if only temporarily – on dry land, which sort of ruins the idea. I'm not sure why they couldn't have steadied the camera for these shots, then let it bob up and down after the guys go back into the water. Makes it look as if they're moving along on the rock through the sea, which of course they can't be.

It must also be pointed out that unlike a lot of other movies which rely on CGI to create the sharks, this movie did at least use footage of real actual sharks, cut into the action, which makes it seem at least relatively authentic.

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Verdict?

A pretty standard shark movie, something of a rip-off I believe of the far superior Open Water, with very little to recommend it. Acting is minimal, there are few surprises other than the “shock” ending, and basically I could have written this. Really quite poor. I found the characters thin and poorly-developed. The relationship between Luke and Kate was only hinted at, seemed very basic and was not fleshed out (pardon the pun: what do you mean, what pun?) and as for the other two: well they might as well not have been there for all they contributed to the story. They essentially became just two victims for the shark. Matt's speech after his legs have been eaten is far from authentic: he doesn't even give any real indication of being in pain, or that he knows he's going to die. It's more like he knows his part in the movie is over and is ready to go home. Suzie's reaction to his death is at least believable, if slightly over the top. And Warren, left behind, is forgotten about. His refusal to enter the sea leaves him watching, we assume, the shark circling the slowly-sinking yacht, but we never get any closure there, not that I care. But if you're going to introduce the idea of leaving one person behind on the boat, at least use it.

Here's what I thought would happen, for those who care: first, I thought Kate would remain on the boat with Warren. He, aware they are likely to die and having carried a torch for her for years, makes a move which she does not appreciate. She struggles with him, eventually pushing him off the boat as the shark swims by and GULP! That's the end of Warren. Or, he could come to the rescue at the end, having been picked up by rescuers, perhaps having sorted out that distress signal thing, and proving they should all have stayed where they were. Which, admittedly, would have made for a pretty dull film, but in the end what we experience is not much better.

I can't believe the minor accolades this film received, though I can believe the box-office return: the producers lost their shirts. Far from even recovering their costs, they made a measly 125K for a three million outlay, that's what? Less than a twelfth of their budget recouped? To me, as I already said, this was a bad bad rehash of Open Water, which was done so much better. Even while they're swimming to the island (or so they think; they're actually hopelessly lost) there's no conversation to expand the plot, such as it is, or open up the character development. It's mainly silence and the odd joke to lighten the mood, but there's very little there. Even the three deaths are kind of received with a certain philosophical resignation, not even horror or disbelief. To be honest, if they'd all been eaten, they would have deserved it.

And what about the poor rich fucker who ordered a boat he's now not going to receive? Has everyone forgotten him? He's the real victim here. Well, him and those of us who had to watch this shit.

Message in the Movie

None that I can see, unless it's don't let some idiot pilot the expensive yacht you're supposed to deliver, or else know your route: how could these idiots hit a reef? It's not like the damn things move!

Music

Music can make a movie, especially a shark one (remember the famous "attack" music in Jaws? but here I really don't see it. The music is very incidental; much of the time there is none, and even for the attack scenes it's kind of stock really. Nothing that stands out. Not terrible, but certainly not memorable.

Fact vs Fiction

Just a section where I'll quickly note whether the movie's writer was well informed on sharks or got all his or her plots from The Big Book of Sharks, which appears to be the case here. Anyone who knows anything about sharks knows that they don't keep attacking; they will try an exploratory bite, but humans are lacking in the blubber they prefer, so they don't like our taste. Why, then, did the shark keep attacking? Also, sharks scent blood in the water and it drives them into a frenzy, so why did not other sharks in the vicinity find their way there? No, this is a pure case of fiction.


Really only worth a poor

tl;dr

For those who can't be bothered wading (or perhaps I should say, given the subject, swimming their way through my walls of text, the movie summed up in four sentences. Yes, it really is that badly written. However, I will be trying this out on future reviews. Perhaps not all will be possible to encapsulate in four sentences, but I'll try to distill the essence of my review down to as few sentences as I can.
1. A guy sells boats for a living and has to deliver one to Indonesia, deciding to bring his friends along for the ride.
2. The boat hits something (a reef, we think, though this is never confirmed) and capsizes.
3. They swim for it (except one, who is left behind because he's too much of a nancy boy to mix it up with the sharks; we never find out his fate, nor do we care) hoping to make it to some island vaguely “over that way”.
4. Three of the four are eaten by a Great White Shark.

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Title: Bait
Year: 2012
Nationality: Australian/Singaporean
Starring: Phoebe Tonkin, Xavier Samuel, Julian McMahon, Sharni Vinson, Adrian Pang and others
Directed by: Kimble Rendall
Written by: Russell Mulcahy, John Kim
Cinematography: Ross Emery
Music: Joe Ng, Alex Oh
Budget: 20 million*
Box Office: 29.5 million*

* (I have no idea if these figures represent US, Singapore or Australian Dollars, as it doesn't make it clear. Either way, at least they seem to have made their money back and still had enough to throw a few shrimps on the barbie!)

Billed as Bait 3D, I can only assume this is one of those movies that focussed on the gorier, more in-your-face aspect of shark movies, and so is unlikely to have been winning any Oscars. The tagline for the movie - “Clean up on aisle 7” - kind of says it all about how serious they were about this. Not very, we can assume, when we meet Josh, a lifeguard who is passed out drunk in his car and once again he's one of two male leads, with the female lead being his girlfriend and (wait for it) the other male lead, Rory's, sister. Well, she's his fiancee, but the relationship dynamic is looking to be almost identical to the one in The Reef. Not a great start, to be fair. The shark does put in an appearance pretty quickly, taking down a swimmer and really leaving nothing much behind. Rory is also out in the sea, riding a board as he sets a buoy which Josh was supposed to have done, but does not see the attack and though Josh jumps on a waterski to try to get to him to warn him in time, he's unable to save him and his friend is on the menu.

It's a year later, and Josh is still haunted by the death of his friend, and the fact that he could not save him; all he has left of him is a dog tag thing which he keeps as a memory of Rory. He now works as a shelf-stacker in a supermarket, where he sees a young girl shoplifting and being pursued by the store detective. She manages to evade him when she runs into her boyfriend, and the guard is flummoxed. He goes to fetch the store manager, who fires Ryan, her boyfriend, and calls the cops on her. Meanwhile, after Rory's death it's probably obvious that the wedding would have been called off; in fact, Josh and Tina have split up, and now he sees her with her new guy in the shop. Meanwhile, Jaime, the girl who had been shoplifting, turns out to be the daughter of the cop who is called to the scene, and he takes her away with him, disappointed and threatening to “process her” so that she will have to spend the night in jail. She doesn't look impressed. And while they argue, a pair of hard cases prepare to rob the supermarket.

Well, compared to the previous movie there's a lot happening here, though after its initial appearance the shark seems to have faded somewhat from the plotline, but we'll see whether this new direction is going to lead back to the original story. At least it's entertaining. Jaime's father, Todd, notices something is wrong and with a cop's instincts takes his gun and returns to the supermarket, where he gets the drop on Doyle, the raider who had taken the manager hostage, but unbeknownst to him there is a second criminal and he takes a woman hostage, growling at the cop to drop his gun. Mexican standoff, as Jaime re-enters the market, having been told off by her boyfriend. In the confusion someone gets shot, a woman, not sure if it's the same one the other robber was holding hostage.

And then, of course, typically, as anyone could expect and it's the most obvious and predictable thing ever, a tsunami hits! Well of course it does. Doesn't it always? One of the most tired, overused, cliched ... wait. Let's back that up a little. A tsunami? A fucking tsunami hits? Now that's decent writing. Maybe. Everyone freezes for a second, one moment caught forever in time, then a huge wave towers over the land, smashing everything in its path and punching its way into the supermarket, where everything and everyone is swept away.

In the aftermath, the main characters manage to scramble up onto shelves which are above what is now sea level, including Doyle; his partner lies dead, floating in the water. You can see the premise developing already, can't you? Josh finds Tina, in severe shock, and rescues her. Outside, submerged now in a car in which they had been making out, two teens gasp in terror as they spy what looks like a shark behind them. Ryan, also submerged but in his van, manages to break a window and gets out (see “Houston, we have a problem!” section for more); Tina is reunited with her new boyfriend, Steve (boo! Bet Josh had hoped he had drowned. Or worse) and when it becomes apparent that they are unlikely to be rescued, some of them begin to swim off to check out various locations.

Enter, stage left, a shark.
A Great White Shark.

Josh realises too late as he sees various corpses suddenly dip under the water, and shouts to the others, most of whom make it, but one is too slow and becomes the first victim of (oh God I have to say it, don't I?) the supermarket shark. Outside, Kyle and Heather, the two teens, are attacked by the shark as it batters their car, but it seems to lose interest because there is easier prey back at the market, and there it heads. Now there is another problem, as a loose electrical cable, sparking, threatens to hit the water and electrocute everyone. Anyone figured out the ending yet? Anyway, Josh decides he can make it to the store room and turn off the power, but he needs to swim there so he gets the others to distract the shark by making as much noise as they can. Seems the shark (if there is only one, which I'm beginning to doubt) is back at the car though, and Ryan watches as our hapless heroes are attacked. He tells them that they must remain still and quiet – the more they scream and thrash about the more the shark will be interested in them - he is going to attract the shark, and that once he does they will have to swim for it to his van.

Back inside the supermarket, Steve has had an idea. He makes some sort of cage (possibly out of old shopping baskets: how do I know? They don't show it) and before he leaves he confides to Josh that Tina never blamed him for her brother's death, and that all the time they were together in Singapore she was thinking about Josh. Sounds like it was fun for our Steve! Anyway he's protected himself as much as he can feasibly do so from the shark, but you'd have to wonder if a flimsy homemade cage of light metal is going to cause a Great White much of a problem. I guess the idea is that the shark won't be bothered chewing through the metal, that it will look elsewhere, for easier, ready-to-eat food. Like a deepsea diver, Steve is paid out on tubing which anchors him to the survivors and provides him a way home, and presumably allows them to attempt to haul him to safety if the shark should attack. He also seems to have rigged up some sort of rudimentary SCUBA breathing apparatus. Ah, ask a diver. Or me arse, whichever you like. Either way, he seems to have taken all the precautions he can reasonably be expected to.

He makes it, turns off the power but then gets caught on something and can't make it back, and so dies a hero's death, dragged down to the bottom of what is now the sea. Josh, always the one with the ideas it seems (apart from poor old dead Steve) notices a skylight, and they rig up some rope to make a pulley, hoisting the smallest of them, the manager of the store, up towards it. The idea is of course for him to come back with help, but he's a selfish, mean little guy and we all know that he's only going to save his own skin. Heather and Kyle make a run for it when Ryan uses the severed hand of a corpse to put blood in the water and attract the shark, though little Bully isn't so lucky. As the manager makes it up to the top one of the pipes breaks and disgorges a load of crabs, and he almost loses his nerve; they go to pull him back down but he gathers his reserve and says he can make it, at which point the shark jumps out of the water below and chomps him in half.

Outside in the car park, Ryan attempts to make it over to where Kyle and Heather are by using some piping running along the roof, looking down anxiously into the water as he goes. He spies the shark, just under the water. Surely they wouldn't use the same scene twice in as many minutes? No, he falls into the water at the last moment, swims like fuck to get to the van, makes it and then the shark grabs Kyle. Aw. I had hoped the two of them would make it. The rest of the film won't be the same without their banter.

In another of the series of wild plans, Doyle decides to try catching the shark (yes, you read that correctly) by using some raw meat baited on a hook snaffled from the hardware department but Todd, distrustful of the robber, declares he will do it himself. As he makes to launch himself into the water, however, Jaime jumps in. She is attacked by the shark but manages to hit it on the snout, which at least demonstrates good knowledge of sharks – or maybe she just gets lucky. At any rate, she gets back with the meat and the hook, scrambling back up onto the shelf. Josh reveals to Tina that he blames himself for Rory's death: if he had not been so drunk then Rory would not have to have set the buoy; it would have been him who had died. Kirby, one of the other survivors, now reveals that he is the other robber, and that the dead body they saw in the water wearing the mask he had had on for the robbery was obviously not him; he put the mask on an anonymous corpse to throw suspicion off himself. Now he reveals his true colours. As the shark fails to take the bait (literally) he decides live meat is what it wants, and, producing his gun, pushes Naomi (another survivor who really up to this point has not been mentioned or had much to do, so she's clearly there to fulfill just one role) in, attached to the hook. While she is struggling in the water, with the shark homing in on her, Doyle throws a spear through Kirby's back. As he falls, they help Naomi up out of the water and Kirby takes her place. Oddly enough, the plan works: the hook Doyle rammed into Kirby's back sticks in the shark's mouth, it's attached to a rope and the shark is caught, allowing them to swim to the entrance.

Outside, though distraught at the loss of her boyfriend, Heather is overjoyed to see that her dog has made it after all, and she is reunited with Bully. Believing this to be a sign, Ryan starts tapping the overhead pipes, hoping the sound will echo inside and someone will her him. Someone does: Jaime sets off in search of him, and Josh goes after her. As they make it out to the car park and join Ryan and Heather, Jaime realises that the car they are standing on is her father's, and there is a gun in the back. As the others make noise to attract the shark, Josh gets the shotgun and also picks up a taser, and gets back to the roof of the car. He shoots at the shark but the recoil takes him off the car and into the water. As he floats underwater, gun ready, he watches the shark approach. At the last instant he fires, there is an explosion of blood and guts, and a second later he emerges unscathed. The shark is now scattered all over the water. Well, one of them.

Now that they have made it out into the car park, Doyle prepares to blow up a truck that has jammed the entrance, which will allow them to escape. Just then an aftershock hits and more debris is thrown into the area, and the jolt shakes the other shark loose. As it approaches, Josh aims his gun but it is out of ammunition, so he uses a taser instead, aiming it at the shark's tender nose, the shock eventually killing it. Doyle then sets the charges and the vehicle blows. As they clamber out into the sunlight the survivors can see the level of devastation that has been wrought by the tsunami. In a rather downbeat ending (well, I guess it was a disaster movie, after all) Tina asks Josh what will he do now, and he says he'll start over.


Quotes
Manager: “You! This is all your fault!”
Doyle: “Not today, boy, not me. Today Mother Nature's thrown all the sinners down here.”

Kyle: “Give me your shoes.”
Heather: “What?”
Kyle: “I need something pointy to break the glass. Give me your shoe.”
Heather: “These are three hundred dollar Guccis!”
Kyle (after an embarrassed pause): “They're not.”
Heather: “Well, when you gave them to me you said they were.”
Kyle: “I know I said they were, but they're not.”
Heather: “You got me cheap knockoffs? I can't believe you!”

Manager: “This is so not happening! You're a cop! Do something!”
(What does he expect him to do: arrest the shark?)

Heather: “Do you see it anywhere?”
Kyle: “Yeah, I see it, but I'm keeping it from you cos I want it to be a surprise!”

Heather: “Do something, Kyle! You have to do something!”
Kyle: “Oh yeah? Like what? Ask the bastard to go away??”

Heather: “You're a murderer.”
Kyle: “No I'm not!”
Heather: “Yes you are. You're a dog murderer, which is worse than a person murderer!”


Good scenes

You can see exactly where the scenes meant to be seen in 3D are, and the attack on Rory, as the shark breaches, coming out of the water and shattering his board before diving back underwater to take him down with it, is well done. I'd say that would have had a few people jumping in the cinema!

Just as effective is the moment when the tsunami hits, which again I'm sure looks great in 3D. But more importantly is the, if you will, calm before the storm. The lead-up to the big disaster is very well done. You have the standoff between cop and robber, two teenagers arguing over petty things – he, his job that he has just lost, she, her overbearing father – and outside we see a baby sitting on the beach looking out to sea. Suddenly a mother snatches the child away. A lifeguard looks out and begins to roar, restauranteurs watch with stupefied disbelief as a massive wave rolls in towards them, sending the restaurant exploding into pieces as they run, and in the market, all hell breaks loose.

As the guys realise suddenly there's a shark in the water, Jaime tries to help one of them, who is being attacked, climb out. She grabs his flailing hand, pulls and ... is left holding the arm as the rest of him is bitten away and sinks underwater.

The scene where the shark jumps out of the water and eats the manager (or at least, his bottom half) is pretty gory and silly and also great, and must have looked excellent in 3D. It's also very unexpected, as your attention has been intentionally diverted by the scuttling crabs, so it comes as a shock.

Puke-inducing as it is that the little dog has survived, the scene where Bully floats in on a makeshift board, yapping away, is well handled.

The final scene, where a seagull heads out over the water only to be eaten by a jumping shark, the final 3D scare I guess, is funny and serves to lighten the somewhat dark ending.

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Title: Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the USS Indianapolis
Year: 1991
Nationality: American?
Starring: Stacy Keach, Richard Thomas, Steve Landesberg, Don Harvey, Richard Cicchihi, Dave Caruso and others
Directed by: Robert Iscove
Written by: Alan Sharp
Cinematography: James Pergola
Music: Craig Saffan
Budget: Unknown
Box Office: n/a; TV movie

Another movie based on true events, this film chronicles the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in World War II and the desperate struggles of the survivors to stay alive long enough to be rescued from the sharks who circled in for the kill. A made-for-TV movie, it opens in 1960, with the 15th anniversary reunion of the survivors from the Indianapolis and quickly fades to the recollections of Captain McVeigh. It's 1945 and the Indianapolis, bound for the island of Guam, is carrying some secret cargo which nobody is allowed to know the nature of, but seems important to the war effort. Even McVeigh will not confirm whether or not he is aware of what he's carrying, however his overconfidence as to pursuit by Japanese submarines is his undoing, as he is currently being stalked by one. Due to his contention that to follow the usual evasive pattern expected by navy ships would be useless in the light of the new weapon the enemy have placed into the arena – suicide manned torpedoes – the ship is easily tracked and on its way back from its mission, having delivered the mysterious cargo it is attacked and sunk by a Japanese sub. We do get to see the cargo being loaded aboard the Enola Gay, so if there was any doubt as to what they were transporting, well that doubt has now been removed.

Iniitally unwilling to abandon ship (the stories of what happens in Japanese POW camps no doubt screaming in his mind) Captain McVeigh does his best to keep the ship afloat, hoping they may be able to limp to the nearest base for repairs, but his efforts prove fruitless and the surviving sailors find themselves drifting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as the ship goes down. One of the last to jump, McVeigh at first believes he is the only survivor, as his calls are not answered, but eventually he meets up with another sailor who manages to swim to his dingy and they begin the mammoth task of searching for others who may have made it off the ship.

After some time they come across another dingy, this one containing the priest who had joined them at Guam, and about ten men; a quick redistribution of resources makes the men feel a little safer, if not much. Suddenly a shark approaches, but it's quite small and one of the sailors scares it off with a shot from his pistol. Night falls, and as the officers realise there are too many men for the two small boats they order those who are not injured into the water, to give up their places for the men who are wounded. The next morning the shark is back, and it's brought its buddies. The sharks immediately attack the helpless sailors, and some are wounded. Dead bodies are cast overboard to try to appease the animals, but the sharks prefer live meat.

In another part of the ocean, a larger group of seamen are faring much worse, having no liferafts at all, and all bobbing in the water. Some are dying of their wounds as Lieutenant Scott (Richard Thomas, John Boy from The Waltons), the ship's medic, tries to hold the group together. Discipline begins to break down as the men realise they may die out here, and suddenly orders are not treated as they were when they were onboard ship. One sailor, Kinderman, takes it too far and, struggling with a marine who demands he give up his raft in favour of wounded men, drowns him. Shocked and horrified, and wishing to put as much distance as they can between them and him – literally as well as figuratively – the other men on the raft desert him, leaving him alone.

When the shark returns (I assume it's the same one, could be another I guess) it goes this time directly for the dingy, puncturing the thing and sending men spilling into the water, some of whom it snaps at. Red fluid leaks out across the water. A patrol aircraft finally spots the men in the water, and coming in as low as they can the crew throw out what supplies they have on board, radio the position of the men to base, and the fact that the Indianapolis cannot be confirmed as arriving at her destination begins to ring alarm bells. The captain of the patrol plane, which luckily happens to be a flying boat, decides to put down on the ocean near the sailors.

Paranoia fuelled by fear and the fact that many of the men have been, against explicit orders, drinking salt water, leads some to believe that this is a Japanese trap. Kinderman falls prey to their madness, being knifed by one of the sailors in the mistaken belief that he is a “Jap”, and so he joins his murder victim in the marine's watery grave. With survivors (from only one group; there are groups spread out across the section of ocean and there's no way one plane can get to them all) taken aboard the patrol plane, confirmation is received that they are from the Indianapolis, and that she has been sunk. Soon after a destroyer arrives and takes the men to safety, but the priest has already fallen victim to the shark and is dead when the captain, thinking he's sleeping, excitedly wakes him and points at the approaching ship, only to find the water around him dark red and the priest slipping below the waves.

Later there is a court-martial, in which Captain McVeigh is accused of failing to order the evacuation of the ship in a timely enough manner to assure the chances of survival for as many of the crew as possible, and refusing to follow a zig-zag course to throw off enemy submarines. In a shock move, the prosecution calls the captain of the Japanese sub that sank the Indianapolis (the war now being over, Japan having surrendered after the atomic bomb, part of which the Indianapolis had been carrying to Guam, was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It's a bold move, a controversial and very unpopular one, and yet proves to be the ace up the prosecution's sleeve. McVeigh is cleared of the charge of not ordering the abandonment of the ship in time but found guilty of endangering his command by refusing to implement the standard zig-zag manoeuevre. The conviction, having served its purpose by allowing the top brass at the Navy to avoid blame and shift responsibility to the shoulders of their scapegoat, is rescinded son after the trial, but though he returns to active duty, McVeigh cannot live with his own personal guilt and takes his own life twenty years later.

Quotes

Sailor: “I heard we're carrying 5000 rolls of Senate toilet paper for General Douglas MacArthur: seems he's getting tired of using his orders to wipe his butt on!”

: “Some of the men have speculated that Betty Grable is living in that box down belowdecks.”
McVeigh: “That's absolutely untrue. Miss Grable is in my quarters.”

Questions?

At the end, when the verdict is passed, McVeigh's wife fumes “They never court-martialled any other captain who lost his ship in the war! They're using you as a scapegoat to cover their own mistakes.” True, they definitely are, but what mistakes specfically? The idea of not reporting a combatant ship on arrival was a definite contributing factor to the lack of response to the loss of the Indianapolis, so it could be that. Or is it the mere fact that they left the survivors in the sea for five days before they were rescued? It's not really made clear exactly what the Navy are covering up here.

McVeigh says he has to see the captain of the Japanese sub that sunk the Indianapolis, but when they're alone, it's very stilted and uncomfortable, and nothing really gets said of any consequence. I assumed they were going to talk about chidren, or the war, or the way men are forced to do terrible things, or that the war is over now and they are no longer enemies. But no. Basically nothing, So why was McVeigh so desperate to see his ex-enemy?

Verdict: There's little point in going through my usual sections here, as it became clear about halfway through the movie that though it's titled Mission of the Shark, and sharks are in it, it's not really in any way a shark movie. It's more a film lauding the power of the human spirit, the ever-present hope and the determination not to surrender to his fate that keeps man going, and that's great and very commendable, but as a shark movie this blows big time. The sharks are glimpsed but rarely, they have very little real interaction with the crew and we're not even told what type they are, though they're certainly too small to be Great Whites. It's essentially a war movie with some sharks added in.

True, it is based on an actual experience, an occurrence that befell the men who served on the USS Indianapolis, but even a documentary I watched on this went more into the effect the sharks had on the men. Here, it's almost incidental, and there's really nothing for the shark aficionado.

So in the end all I can award it is the lowest shark rating I have, which is


tl;dr

Needed more sharks.

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All right then, it's time for the big one, the grandaddy of all shark movies, the one that kicked the whole genre off in a real way and without which it's doubtful any of the movies on the list would have even been considered, never mind made. There is of course no argument over which is the greatest, the original shark movie, and this is it. It was also, as I mentioned in the intro, sadly, the springboard for a kind of backlash by humans against what they perceived to be – and were shown by the movie to be – deadly killers that had to be eliminated before they ate every human who even so much as dipped a toe in the sea. Finally, it's arguably the movie that made the reputation and careers of both Steven Spielberg and John Williams, set the template for modern horror movies and is considered one of the first original blockbuster movies, making more than fifty times its initial, already huge, budget of just over nine million.

There could be only one movie I'm talking about, and it is of course

Title: Jaws
Year: 1975
Nationality: American
Starring: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary, Richard Hamilton
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Peter Benchely and Carl Gottlieb, based on Benchley's novel
Cinematography: Bill Butler
Music: John Williams
Budget: USD 9 million
Box Office: USD 470 million

At a beach party at night, a girl goes for a swim, but unbeknownst to her a shark is in the water, a fact she quickly becomes aware of as she is grabbed and eaten. When she is reported missing the next morning, Police Chief Martin Brody (Scheider) is called in, and shocked to find that her partial remains on the beach. He immediately worries that this is the result of a shark attack and proceeds to order the beaches closed. This is not a good thing to do, when Amity Island is preparing for its annual Fourth of July celebration, but he knows that lives may be at stake. He is aghast to be told that this morning there are a bunch of boy scouts swimming in the water as a pledge, and rushes to the beach. On his way there he is accosted by the mayor, who tells him he can't close the beaches on his own authority, and tries to remind him of the revenue tourists bring in, especially at this time. If he closes the beaches, people will go elsewhere. Besides, he points out, there have been no sharks in these waters before. Probably a boating accident, he shrugs, and the coroner, changing his mind since he spoke to Brody, seems to agree.

While he watches from the beach, jumping at every noise, every scream, every splash, there is suddenly a new scream and a plume of red spreads across the water as one of the kids swimming is taken down. Realising that his worst fears have come to pass, Brody leaps into action, marshalling everyone on the beach to get their kids out of the water, (he can't swim, and has a morbid fear of water) and signalling for anyone else swimming to get the hell ashore. It's too late of course for the kid, who is long dead at this point. His mother offers a reward for anyone who can catch and kill the shark, and things are about to spiral out of control. As the islanders meet, concerned business owners bemoan the closing of the beaches, a necessary precaution in the mind of Brody, the only sane thing to do, but he is overruled by the mayor, who places a limit of twenty-four hours on the closure, to Brody's chagrin. A local shark hunter, Quint, declares he will catch the shark but he wants three times what is being offered. Some other fishermen take up the challenge, and catch the shark, but are unable to hold it, the jetty breaking and throwing them into the water. They barely escape with their lives.

Oceanographer Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss) arrives to try to help, but when a tiger shark is caught, and everyone thinks this is the one that killed the two people, he is less certain. It's smaller, the bite radius isn't right, and he points out that there are likely many sharks in the waters hereabouts. It may be the right one, but he wants to know for sure, and suggests cutting the shark open. Its digestive system, he tells Brody and the mayor, is very slow, and anything it's eaten in the last twenty-four hours will still be in its stomach. The mayor refuses, understandably concerned about the idea of the remains of a boy spilling out onto the dock, especially with the mother present, though in reality he's more worried that Hooper may be right. If this is not the shark, then that shark is still at large and he can't declare the matter closed. Hooper, however, is convinced, and later, with Brody's permission as Chief of Police, they do cut the shark open and his fears are realised: there are no human remains inside the tiger shark. It's not the one. Hooper decides to go looking for the right shark, and Brody reluctantly accompanies him. They find a fisherman's boat, attacked and wrecked, the fisherman dead. Despite all this evidence that the shark is yet at large, the mayor refuses to allow the closure of the beaches.

The Fourth of July proceeds as normal, until suddenly someone spots a shark fin in the water, but it turns out to be just some kids messing about. Panic averted, everyone heads back to the water, but it is in the inland estuary where the shark – the real shark this time – chooses to attack. This just happens to be where Brody asked his son, Michael, to take their boat, concerned for their safety. How ironic: he wouldn't let them go into the water and now his son and his friends are trapped! This is the first time we see more of the shark than a fin; just a glimpse of a big, ugly snout filled with razor fangs and a long back snaking through the water, but it's enough for us to realise how fucking BIG this thing is! The shark attacks one of the other kids, allowing Michael and his friends to escape, but Brody's son is badly shaken by his ordeal. In the light of what has happened, the mayor now has no choice but to authorise Quint to go after the shark, and Brody and Hooper decide to accompany him.

After a short time at sea Quint believes he has hooked the shark, but Hooper is less certain. At any rate there's no way to know as the line is quickly broken, and whatever they had snagged is lost. It's not long though before the shark puts in an appearance, in a scene which has by now become iconic. As Brody bitches about having to throw the chum – the mixture of fish guts used to attract the shark – over the side, the shark suddenly rears up, and we can see how big it is. Gasping to Quint that they're gonna need a bigger boat (another iconic line) he helps as the shark hunter shoots a harpoon into the animal, the dart attached to a barrel which they hope will prevent the shark from remaining underwater and will force it to the surface. They stay out till dark, when the shark does indeed surface – and attacks the boat. Quint shoots at it – or as much as he can see of it, which is the barrel, still attached to it (lends new meaning to the term “shooting fish in a barrel” - sorry!) but of course he can't hit it.

Daylight breaks, and as they survey the damage to the boat the shark surfaces behind it. As Brody radios for help, Quint, presumably reluctant to share the bounty, smashes the radio, and now they are on their own as the shark heads back towards them. They manage to hit it a few times, but the shark is enraged now, and sees the boat either as a rival, an enemy or an impediment to its food supply. Either way, it's not going to leave peacefully, and is determined to wreck the little craft. And it can. The guys now find themselves in a desperate struggle for survival, as the hunters quickly become the hunted. Under the immense pull of the shark, the boat begins to break up, and Quint has to sever the line, letting it go free. But the shark goes underneath the boat, ramming it, trying to capsize it. They make a run for the shore, hoping the shallower water will drown the shark, but Quint pushes the boat too far and the engine gives out, stranding them still a long way from shore. With their options running out, Hooper suggests putting together the shark-proof cage they brought along, in order for him to manage to inject deadly strychnine into the shark. It's a long shot but, you know...

As it goes, the shark seems cleverer than they had expected, and as Hooper waits with the syringe, on a long spear, in hand, submerged in the cage, the shark batters it from behind, jolting it and causing Hooper to drop the precious syringe. So much for that plan! The shark now attacks with renewed fervour, smashing the cage and getting into it. Hooper stabs it with his knife and swims out, and the guys try to winch him back onboard, but the winch snaps at the crucial moment and they have to haul him up by hand. When the cage breaks the water though, it is empty. Just then the shark flops almost onto the stern of the boat, pulling it deeper into the water and causing Quint to slide down along the deck, right into its waiting, well, jaws. He fights, kicking at the shark's teeth, but he is soon dead and dragged below the water. Brody is now alone on a boat which is not going to last much longer above the water.

A moment later the shark breaks through what remains of the boat and comes after him as the vessel sinks almost completely under. Scrambling wildly for something to defend himself with, something to ward off the beast, he grabs a pressurised SCUBA tank, and hits out at the shark with it, eventually throwing the cannister into its mouth as the shark temporarily retreats to perhaps investigate this new item. As the shark arrows in for its final attack, as the boat sinks even lower, Brody grabs a rifle and climbs to the top of the mast. After several missed shots, one bullet finds the tank, still in the shark's mouth and it explodes in a shower of blood, guts and scales. The terror of Amity Island is finally dead. Hooper turns out to have made it after all, and the two of them begin swimming home, clinging to inflatable rafts.

Quotes

Brody's secretary: “Now we got a bunch of calls about the kids from that karate school. It seems the kids have been karate-chopping the picket fences!”
(This is a great line; serves to show how, until this moment, sleepy and boring this island is, and the kind of mundane, petty things Brody has usually to deal with. Things are about to get a whole lot more interesting though!)

Mayor: “You yell barracuda, everyone says huh? You yell shark, we got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July!”

Quint: “Shark'll swallow you whole ... tenderise ye ... down ye go!”
(This is early proof that Benchley knew nothing of the feeding habits of sharks. At best, a shark will take an exploratory bite, but as I already mentioned in the reviews of other movies, the taste of humans is not palatable to them and apart from the fact that mostly they would be physically incapable of swallowing an adult human – they're not whales, after all! - they would have no interest in doing so.)

Hooper: “You know those eight guys in the fantail launch? Well, none of them are going to get out of the harbour alive.”

Hooper: “This wasn't any boating accident! It wasn't a coral reef, and it wasn't Jack the Ripper! It was a shark!”

Brody: “Where are you going?”
Hooper: “I'm going out to find him rght now. He's a night feeder.”
Brody: “On the water?”
Hooper: “If we're looking for a shark, we're not going to find him on the land!”

Hooper: “That's it. Goodbye. I'm not going to waste my time with a man who's lining up to be a hot meal. Mr. Vaughan, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat, and make little sharks. That's all. Now why don't you take a long, close look at this sign: those proportions are correct.”
Mayor: “You'd love to prove that, wouldn't you? Get your name in National Geographic?”

Brody: “You want to take him home?”
Brody's wife: “You mean home to New York?”
Brody: “No, home here.”
(Ah, New York! Where the only sharks are the ones on street corners...)

Quint: “Bow, front! Stern, back! Get it right, or I throw your ass out the little funny round window on the side!”

Brody: “You're gonna need a bigger boat!”

Quint: “Feel there, under my cap. Knock an old one, St. Paddy's Day, Boston.”
Hooper: “I got that beat. I got that beat. Moray eel, bit right through my wetsuit.” (shows scar on arm).
Quint: “Entered an arm wrestling contest in an Okie bar in San Francisco' See this? (Flexes arm) Can't extend it. You know why? Got to the semi-final, celebrating my third wife's (I have no idea what the next word is; I've tried to get it but despite several run-throughs I've been unable to make it out); big Chinese fella, pulled me right over!”
Hooper (rolling up trouser leg): “That's a bull shark. Scraped me when I was taking samples.”
Quint (rollingup his trouser leg): “See that? That's a thresher. Thresher's tail.”
Brody: “Thresher?”
Quint: “Thresher shark. (to Hooper) You gonna drink to your leg?”
Hooper: “Let's drink to our legs.”
Quint: “Okay! We drink to our legs!”
Hooper: “I got the creme de la creme, right here. (opens shirt) See that? Right there? Mary Ellen Moffett. She broke my heart!”

Brody: What's that one?
Quint: What?
Brody: That one, there, on your arm.
Quint: Oh, uh, that's a tattoo, I got that removed.
Hooper: Don't tell me, don't tell me..."Mother."
[he roars with laughter]
Hooper: What is it -
[Quint solemnly clamps a hand on Hooper's arm]
Quint: Mr. Hooper, that's the USS Indianapolis.
[Hooper immediately stops laughing]
Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Brody: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Heh.
[he pauses and takes a drink]
Quint: They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. Y'know, it's... kinda like ol' squares in a battle like, uh, you see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin', and sometimes the shark'd go away... sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y'know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya. And those black eyes roll over white, and then... oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin', the ocean turns red, and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces.
[he pauses]
Quint: Y'know, by the end of that first dawn... lost a hundred men. I dunno how many sharks. Maybe a thousand. I dunno how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun's mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. Young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and come in low and three hours later, a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. Y'know, that was the time I was most frightened, waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred sixteen men come out, and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
[he pauses, smiles, and raises his glass]
Quint: Anyway... we delivered the bomb.

(Yeah, I copied and pasted that. A very important quote, but a bit too long to transcribe by hand, not to mention that Quint tends to drawl, which makes it a little hard to know what he's saying much of the time)

Brody (aiming): “Smile you son of a -”

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Good scenes

As Brody tries to relax on the beach, but yet keeping a watchful eye on the sea, sure that he is right and there is danger out there, he sees what looks at first like the tip of a shark fin break the water near a swimmer lounging on a lilo, but it turns out just to be the head of another swimmer. Again, while he's talking to someone else, a scream rings out and he jumps up, but it's just a girl and her man playing in the water. Finally, a boy searches for his dog, who was swimming in the water, but all we see now is the piece of wood he had in his mouth. And then, the music begins...

Brody is incensed that his son is sitting in a boat at the jetty, worried for him. His wife laughs at his fear, until she happens to look at the book he has been reading, which shows a drawing of what I suppose is meant to be a shark but looks like a cross between a pike and a piranha attacking a boat. Suddenly she yells to her son to get the hell out of the boat. She realises that even being this close to the water could be hazardous, and that her husband is not being overprotective.

In perhaps what could be seen as true entrepreneurial spirit, and grasping an opportunity, some enterprising arcade owner has hired a game called Killer Shark!

At one point, as everyone lounges on the beach, but nobody dares go into the water, the mayor convinces one family he knows to take the first step. They must feel like he's serving them up for dinner!

The idea of the kids using a boat with a shark fin stuck on the underside to pretend to be a shark has been parodied over and over by now (“AAAHH! Sharkboy!”) but here it's used well, both to lighten the mood and also lull the viewer into a false sense of security, so that when the shark does attack, we're never quite sure initially if it's just those kids horsing around again. Until it's too late, of course. It also leads to Brody reacting with world-weariness to the shout of alarm, rather than rushing to the scene as he would normally do; the hoax has skewed his mindset, and it's a case of “What now?” rather than “Jesus Christ!”

Having drunk a can of beer, Quint squeezes his fist on it and crushes it. Staring eye to eye with him, Hooper drains the paper cup of water he has in his hand and then crushes it!

After Quint has sneered at his college education, Hooper gives him the time-honoured “fuck you” signal, though he is careful to wait until the man's back is turned!

And then of course, there's the scene where Brody is throwing the chum out into the sea and we catch our first real proper look at the shark. Seen first time, it's pretty terrifying when you realise how big it is, and how evil those teeth are, not to mention how close the chief comes to just being dragged overboard!

The following scene, where Hooper tries to convince Brody to get out on the prow of the boat, so that he can “get some scale” and see how big the shark actually is, is hilarious and not unsurprisingly Hooper gets told where to go by Brody.

As the guys are comparing scars, Hooper giving Quint as good as he gets, Brody looks at his own stomach and sort of sighs, the definite impression being given that he feels left out, not having any scars to show. Talk about testosterone!

WTF??
Directly after the scene in which two fishermen try, unsuccessfully, to catch the shark (one of them coming close to being eaten) there is a scene the next morning where a guy walks out of the post office, a pipe in his mouth, smiling. He stands, right in front of the camera, smiles, says nothing, then turns and leaves. He's never seen again. WTF was all that about? Is he someone famous? He acts like he's playing to the camera, and maybe he is, but why, if he's just an extra, do they focus on him as if he were someone important? I don't get it.

I suppose it can't ever be said to have been deliberate, or arranged, but rather serendipitously, as the shark attacks and they prepare to defend the boat, what looks like an actual shooting star falls from the sky, visible just over Brody's left shoulder at about 1:32:10 on the DVD. An omen of success, or doom? Amazing.

Notes on cinematography

I can't say for certain but I feel relatively confident in saying that this was the first shark movie to show the action from below; in the very first scene, as the girl enters the water at night and begins swimming, we see as it were from under the water, her body just a dark outline, as if something deep below was watching her, and alerting us to the danger lurking nearby. Shark movies good and bad would use this perspective for decades to come – and still do – giving us the idea of seeing things from the perspective of the shark. I believe this was something of a game changer, turning the shark from a shadowy mindless monster into (falsely I guess) a calculating killer, awaiting the chance to take its prey.

Also, not so much cinematography (though there is that) but more a case of really clever direction, the fact that the girl in the water is screaming at the top of her lungs, fighting for her life while the boy she was supposed to be swimming with sits on the shore, totally oblivious to her plight, gives a great sense of how difficult it can be to be heard, never mind saved, when only a few hundred feet away from the shoreline. You might as well be on your own. We're screaming “Help her! Can't you hear her?” but when the scene switches back to the shoreline, all is quiet and calm, so you can understand how the hapless guy has no clue what's going on. Great juxtapositioning, I feel.

Also a point on gore, while we're here. Despite what I thought at the time (prior to seeing the movie, which wasn't until well into the eighties if not later) Jaws is not at all a gory movie. Given how visceral later ones became, focussing on the horror and the blood and the best way to show a body torn in two (I'm looking, so far, at you, Bait!) this movie dealt more in suspense and suggestion, the archetypal footstep behind you in the dark, the sudden movement in the shadows, as opposed to the madman with a chainsaw rearranging your anatomy in the most graphic way possible. Even the initial attack is handled without any blood (it takes place at night, of course, so it's very dark) and all you really see is the girl being dragged underwater and screaming. For a very long time in the movie you don't even see the shark: it is a bogeyman, a figure of fear and terror, glimpsed if at all as only a fin until the climax of the movie, which makes the actual revelation all the more effective and scary.

Music

You can't of course fault John Williams's score; it's become legendary now, even to the point of having been used in the World Cup in 1994 as a joke when players got injured and had to be removed from the pitch (worked once or twice, became very annoying after that: not sure if it was a spontaneous thing originally, but when you consider there are thirty-two teams and the thing runs for a month, well, you can see how the joke would wear thin really fast, but then, that's the Americans for you: flog a thing to death) and it has taken its place in movie soundtrack lore. However I do notice that the theme used in the scene where the fishermen think they are catching the shark and are in fact pulled into the water as the chain they attached to the bait holds, but the jetty does not, is very reminiscent of Alexander Courage's incidental music to much of Star Trek (the original series), especially any fight scenes.

What I do love though is that the music is used very sparingly. In fact, for much of the movie there is no music. The theme only plays when the shark is approaching, and even when we first see it, as it rises out of the water as Brody throws the meat overboard, there is no music. No sudden blast of chords, no mad violin skirling, no guitar riff or orchestral punch. Nothing. It's almost, musically, a non-event, and a fantastic example of how you don't always need to underline a scary or climactic scene with a fanfare of music. Restraint par excellence, musically.

The music, as they face off against the shark in the climax, is disarmingly upbeat and almost carefree – you know the kind of thing, that sort of music they play for the funnier scenes in Westerns, adventure music rather than danger music. It's very clever, as it gives you the idea that the guys have all this in hand now; it's just a matter of time before they kill the shark, go home to a hero's welcome. But it doesn't work out that way, and in fact once it becomes apparent that the shark is still in control, the music stops completely.

Even when the shark is killed, as its exploded corpse sinks slowly into the sea, down to the seabed, the music Williams chooses to use is not a triumphant fanfare or march, but a gentle, rippling, underwater anthem, almost peaceful. You can even get the impression from the music that the death of the shark, though necessary in a kill-or-be-killed way, is something of a loss and a tragedy. Though the movie says otherwise, the music mourns the death of the huge leviathan.

Fact vs Fiction

It's hard to say. There are some facts here that hold up, but much of what's said is pure nonsense. Sharks aren't remorseless eating machines, indifferent to what they consume, In fact, just the opposite: they are quite picky eaters. I also doubt one would venture so close to the shore, especially with so many swimmers in the water. Sharks are attracted to the seal-like movements of swimmers, yes, but a large number of them I think would scare a shark off. Also, the water would be too shallow, and as for one attacking in a pond? I'm not so sure about the intelligence of a shark, as in, would it know to knock over a boat and to charge a cage? Well, probably the latter, maybe the former too, but I think the writer here made the mistake of trying to make the shark too intelligent, make it almost human, which in itself made it less believable. I can see a shark fighting to survive, but revenge? I don't see a shark bothering about that. When it had the chance to escape, I think it would have done.

It's odd that I read in the credits that both National Geographic and a marine institute were involved, presumably as consultants, and yet some totally glaring errors and outright lies, if not guesses (and certainly not educated ones) fail to have been pointed out. Of course, how much input these institutions had to the film, and how much control was exerted over the screenplay by the writers and the studio I don't know. I can imagine some scientist saying “But that's not right” and a studio executive rolling their eyes and saying “It's just a film. Nobody will know or care.”

But for all the actual research done into sharks, of which I see very little in the movie, I'd have to go with an overall


Veridct

What other could there be? This is the archetypal shark movie, and even notwithstanding the glaring errors in factual details about sharks, the almost cobbled-together mythology that grew up around them after this movie and the damage it did, if unwittingly, to the species, it's almost perfect. The pacing is excellent: moments of drama contrast with the odd light-hearted moment and then spiral quickly back to drama. There's action but it's not just an action movie; in fact, for much of the time it's more a tale of one man's determination to beat bureaucratic regulations and do the right thing. The writer successfully avoided throwing in a love interest – though Brody is married and we see his wife she's a completely peripheral character, and the movie would not suffer without her – and there are no real subplots. A lesser man might have written in a heart-rending decision for Brody, making him choose between his wife, who declares the island unsafe and vows to return to New York (as she hints at weakly, just the once) leaving him to make the decision as to whether he went with her (and the children) or remained to safeguard the beach and the people he is sworn to defend. Maybe that happens in the book – I did read it but it was decades ago and I can't remember.

It's certainly a guy movie. Apart from the – as already mentioned, totally peripheral – wife of the police chief and the odd character here and there, there are no women in this. It's three guys, three macho men heading out to hunt down a big fish. It could have been a total testosterone fest, but they avoided that, just, by making Hooper the college boy, though Quint is every inch Stallone or Schwarzenegger on the sea. The shots of the shark are not overused and are held back until the big reveal, and even then only really come into their own for the climax of the movie, and as I mentioned earlier there's no real reliance on the gore aspect of things. The juxtapositioning of the laughing swapping of stories about scars turning deadly serious with Quint's relating of the tale of the USS Indianapolis (as featured in our previous movie) is really well handled, and serves to stop the moment becoming too light-hearted, reminding us that the guys are stalking a killer out here, a killer than can easily claim all their lives.

Quint's death, too, adds realism to the movie for me. I probably would have preferred if Hooper had died too, but you can't have everything. But having at least one of the “three amigos” not make it back, and that one being the one who has hunted sharks all his life, is perhaps symbolic. The man who confesses he loves sharks, and the one who knows very little about them, and could care less, survive, while the one who has been their natural enemy all his life (perhaps due to the Indianapolis incident) and who has made money by killing them, ends up, Ahab-like, as the victim of the very creature he went to sea to hunt.

It really couldn't be any better, from the glaring refusal of the mayor to see what is in front of him, worried about his own prestige and bad press, and not thinking about the consequences for his people to the failed attempt to inject the shark and the seeming loss of Hooper to e, Jaws is pretty damn near perfect. Now, if only we hadn't all believed it was based on facts...

Nevertheless, I have no hesitation in awarding it, as you would probably expect, the highest possible rating.

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Howdy parnders! Y'know, time was when a man couldn't walk into one of them pitcher houses without seein' a movie 'bout cowboys and how it was in the old West. Glenn Ford, John Wayne, Gary Cooper ... you name it, them boys was up on the big screen a-whoopin' an' a-hollerin' an' showin' us what it was like to be a cowboy. Then this new-fangled telly-vishun come along, an' darned if the ol' Western movie ain't still popular as a whore in a jailhouse! Hell, they even done made series about cowboys. But that ain't none of our concern here. What we're lookin' at here, friends, is moo-vies.

Serious movies. Funny movies. Weird movies. Shoot! We even done got one with them thar alien fellas in it, I kid ye not! So if you're the kinda hombre who likes to see a man saddle up and strap on his gunbelt, stick around cos we got a whole passel o' em to get through here, and, well, ye know son, we may be here for some time. You like Clint Eastwood? We got Clint Eastwood. You like them that Magnificent Seven? Hey, no problem. Your tastes run more to that James Garner fella? Shoot, I like him! Yeah, we got something for everyone. We even got ones with cowboys singin' – yeah you heard me – and one with a liz – uh, what in the Sam Hill are you boys feedin' me here? Fer jest a minute there ah thought this said ... you don't say? Well I'll be hornswoggled! Folks, we got us a movie with a lizard! Yup, an' he ain't gettin' shot at in the desert neither. Well if that don't beat all! Durn little guy's a sheriff! Don't reckon ah'd want to live in that town!

So saddle up and check yer pistol is loaded, cos this here is Apache country, and it don't do to pass through here unarmed. We got a long way to go boy, so let's hit that trail and not look back. Yee-haw!

The schoolmarm very kindly arranged these here films in alfee – alfa – elfa – order of them there letters, one after t'other, but we ain't gonna be follerin' no consarned order, hell no! This is jest so as you fellas can see what may be a-comin' up in the future. You done think you know a movie that ain't here, well you just head on down to the telegraph office and drop me a few lines, and ah'll see what ah can do. Not makin' no promises, mind!

3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Across the wide Missouri (1951)
The Alamo (1960)
Along the Great Divide (1951)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
The Big Country (1958)
Billy the Kid (1989)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Brimstone (2016)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Broken Arrow (1950)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Calamity Jane (1953)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Cowboys (1972)
Cowboys and aliens (2011)
Dances With Wolves (1990)
Diablo (2016)
Django (1966)
Django, kill ... If you live, shoot! (1967)
The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976)
El Dorado (1966)
Evil Roy Slade (1972)
Fancy Pants (1950)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
A Fisftul of Dynamite (1971)
For a Few Dollars Less (1966)
For a Few Dollars More (1965)
Fort Apache (1948)
The Frisco Kid (1979)
Forsaken (2016)
Giant (1956)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957)
Gunsmoke (1953)
Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969)
Geronimo (1993)
Hang 'em High (1968)
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Heaven's Gate (1980)
High Noon (1952)
High Plains Drifter (1973)
How the West Was Won (1962)
Legends of the Fall (1994)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
Lone Star (1952)
The Long Riders (1980)
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
The Magnificent Seven Ride (1972)
A Man Called Horse (1970)
The Man from Laramie (1955)
Maverick (1994)
McClintock! (1963)
The Missouri Breaks (1976)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Oklahoma! (1955)
Open Range (2003)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Pale Rider (1985)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
Paint Your Wagon (1969)
The Paleface (1948)
Posse (1975)
Purgatory (1999)
Rango (2011)
The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976)
Return of the Seven (1966)
The Revenant (2015)
Rio Grande (1950)
Rooster Cogburn (1975)
Santa Fe (1951)
The Searchers (1956)
Shane (1953)
Shenandoah (1965)
She Wore a yellow Ribbon (1949)
Silverado (1985)
Soldier Blue (1970)
Son of Paleface (1952)
Son of the Morning Star (1991)
Streets of Laredo (1949)
Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969)
Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)
They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
Tombstone (1993)
True Grit (1969)
Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Wild Wild West (1999)
Wyatt Earp (1994)
Young Guns (1988)
Young Guns II: Blaze of Glory (1990)

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Why do I love this film?

For many reasons. One is the fact that it is, on the face of it, a movie I would normally not have bothered with nor been interested in checking out. Serial killers, ritual murder, usually not my scene. But this film blends in those elements with legend and myth, superstition and folklore and really neither proves nor disproves either. There's a sceptic, as you would expect, in Ben Mukurob, but at the last he gambles that the Sangoma was not rambling and it is his throwing down of the kerrie stick that enables Wendy to get the drop on Dust Devil. Admittedly, she's not fast enough in despatching him and gets taken over, but in essence the ploy works, and Niedman did after all warn Mukurob that this could happen.

It's also a very small cast: three really. There are other people, the likes of Mark and the police captain, but they play relatively minor roles. The movie is really carried on the quite understated performances of the main trio. And understatement is the name of the game. Even Robert John Burke, in the role of Dust Devil, the supernatural killer said to be a demon from the desert, is quiet and menacing rather than maniacal. Chelsea Fields as Wendy portrays a desperate woman rapidly running out of things to live for, while Mukurob is a man with a dark past who is trying to atone for past mistakes, though we are never let in on what those mistakes were. They do seem to have led to the deaths of both his wife and son though.

I like the fact that, though the murders are savage and ritualisitic, and feature dismemberment you don't see Dust Devil kill his victims, other than the first, and even there it's just a basic snap of the neck. You don't see him cut her up later. The most graphic thing in the movie really is the autopsy on the burned and dismembered corpse later. Even when we see the camper van and it's obvious everyone inside is dead (we more or less know this when we see Dust Devil take a ride with them at the bar) there are few gory details. We see a window streaked with blood and a fly walking across it, and when the door is eventually opened later and the corpse or corpses discovered, the only thing we really see in close up is a severed hand. It's not in-your-face gore; this movie trades more on the horror of what might have happened rather than shoving it front and centre in a "Saw" manner, which I much prefer. It's left up to your imagination rather than forced down your throat.

The music, too, is great. A mixture of kind of Gregorian Chant with Spaghetti Western film themes, which works really well, and some African rhythms and melodies layered over it too. It all creates a very otherworldly atmosphere, a striking, desolate air that sends shivers down your spine.

And the setting is perfect for a film of this nature. Against the vast expanse of the unforgiving Namib Desert humans do indeed seem small and insignificant, and the idea that some all-powerful and evil entity is out there controlling everything is no doubt a notion that has come to the minds of anyone who has crossed such a desolate wilderness. It's clever location too, because it obviously cut back on costs and provides a bleak, barren backdrop to a story of humans battling evil and eventually succumbing to it.

Dust Devil is also a classic case of a movie that succeeds without any big names, any flash settings or any - really, none - special effects. In fact, apart from the desert this movie could have been made on a shoestring budget, though it certainly does not show in the final product. But it avoids diverting attention away from the storyline and the characters; it doesn't pad out the plot with too many unnecessary personnel, and the narration device is a good way to keep people apprised of how the story is coming along. It's also a clever touch to have the narrator take part in the story.

Although loosely based on a real-life story of a serial killer in South Africa, the film really only borrows elements from that and mixes them in with local folklore and legend, stirring the whole thing up into a devil's brew of a powerful story that comes across as both chilling and almost believable.

Finally, there's a great sense of there being no happy ending about the movie. Sure, in the end the "bad guy" is defeated, but he's almost then seen as just an aspect of evil, which reaches out and claims the one who vanquished him and makes her its new emissary. A message about the timeless and shifting nature of evil, and how humans invite the darkness in, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes all too willingly. In the vast desert, both of actuality and of imagery, the tiny soul of man, or woman, is swallowed up and lost.

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First Posted in The Couch Potato, May 1 2013



Title: Dark Star
Year: 1974
Genre: Science-Fiction/Black Comedy
Starring: Dan O'Bannon as Sergeant Pinback
Brian Larelle as Lieutenant Doolittle
Cal Kuniholm as Boiler
Dre Pahich as Talby
Joe Saunders as Commander Powell
Adam Beckenbaugh as Bomb Number Twenty
Director: John Carpenter
Writer: Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter

The directorial debut of the legendary John Carpenter, Dark Star also became the inspiration for the series Red Dwarf, and is one of the few science-fiction movies of any era that successfully blends sci-fi tropes with dark comedy. Filmed on a real shoestring budget of about sixty thousand dollars, it's gone down in history as a cult movie, and if you haven't seen it then you really need to. I'm reliably informed it's even better when you're stoned, but I wouldn't know about that. It's also one of the first movies to tackle the thorny issue of isolation in space and the boredom that could and surely will engender.

The basic plot of the movie concerns the scout ship of the same name, which is crewed by five, one of whom is dead. Wait, I will explain shortly. The mission of the ship is to seek out unstable planets which could cause a problem to following colony ships, and destroy them by dropping huge thermostellar bombs on them from space. These planets are few and far between, and the crew have been doing this now for twenty years. Cooped up together with no real privacy and no respite from the unremitting tedium of deep space, they have all in their own way turned peculiar, as each seeks out his own way to combat the mind-numbing boredom and the sameness of every day.

As the movie opens we see a communication coming in from Earth (eighteen parsecs away) in which a member of the brass (NASA or some military agency; we don't know) sympathises with the crew over the loss of their Commander due to a radiation leak. Unbelievably, the general or whatever he is tells them that their request for radiation shielding has been denied, even in the knowledge of the accident which has already claimed one of the crew. Cutbacks in Congress are blamed, and the prohibitive cost of sending a shuttle out to where they are cannot, he says, be justified.

Whether anyone was watching or has heard this transmission is unclear, as next we see the ship slip into orbit around a planet which may be a candidate for destruction. We see the guys, three of them, all working in a very cramped space getting details and data on the planet to ascertain its possibility of contributing to a risk factor: the fourth member of the crew, Talby, sit high above the ship in an observation dome, like the gun turret blisters on World War II bombers. The data confirms the planet is, or could become, unstable and so they drop a thermostellar bomb on it, which completely obliterates it, leaving the way clear for following colonisation ships. The bombs seem to be imbued with some rudimentary intelligence, and Sergeant Pinback talks to Bomb number 19 as he readies it for the drop. Once the bomb leaves the ship, Dark Star goes into hyperdrive to take the guys out of the blast zone.

The computer informs them that they have destroyed the last unstable planet in this solar system, and they look for their next target. Lieutenant Doolittle, acting commander of the vessel with the death of Powell, seems eager to find another planet they can destroy, and Boiler, another crewman tasked with finding targets, directs them to the Veil Nebula. Doolittle goes to see Talby, and tells him he's concerned that he's isolating himself too much from the rest of the crew, spending all his time in his observation dome. Talby says he doesn't like going down since the commander was killed. Talby tells Doolittle that he is looking forward to seeing a phenomenon called the Phoenix Asteroids, a body of asteroids that circle the universe every twelve trillion years.

Doolittle reveals that what he misses most is surfing. He used to be a great surfer. Boiler amuses himself by shooting things with the only onboard laser rifle, target practice. As Pinback tackles him about it, the computer informs him that it is time for him to feed "the alien", a task Pinback is not looking forward to. Seems some time back the sergeant took the alien onboard as a mascot, and now it is his responsibility to look after it. However when he goes to feed it the alien, resembling nothing more than a brightly-coloured beach ball on legs, is more in the mood for playing, and jumps on his back. He wrestles it off but it gets into the corridor, and when he goes back to get a broom to shoo it back in, it is gone.

After it leads him a merry chase, including a totally hilarious scene where he gets stuck in an elevator, Pinback shoots the alien with a tranquiliser gun, but it shoots across the room like a punctured balloon, and Doolittle later wonders how anything could live if it was only filled with gas? The others aren't interested, though Talby for once shows some leadership qualities and comes down into the main ship, trying to trace the source of the malfunction he detected. Pinback tells the guys that he really isn't the man whose suit he wears: he was refuelling the ship when a naked astronaut ran past him and jumped into a barrel of liquid rocket fuel. Donning the man's discarded suit he tried to save the guy but before he could, he was bundled aboard Dark Star, and has been here ever since. The guys aren't impressed, as this is not the first time Pinback has told them this story.

Talby calls Doolittle to let him know he has traced the source of the malfunction but it is near the airlock, so he has to put on a spacesuit to investigate. Pinback reviews his personal log, running through entries in which he again recounts the story that he is not Sergeant Pinback at all. He says his real name is Phil Frugge, a maintenance tech. He also talks about Commander Powell's death, complains about Doolittle taking over command, and the others treating him shabbily. He then makes a new entry, again complaining about his treatment and remarking that last week was his birthday and nobody noticed.

The ship arrives at the planet they've been heading towards in the Veil Nebula, and Pinback prepares and arms the bomb. But Talby is in the airlock and tries to tell them that the communication laser, which monitors the bomb drop mechanism, is damaged. Doolittle, concentrating on blowing up the planet, snaps off the com in irritation and the laser goes off, blinding Talby, and he stumbles into the path of the beam, breaking communications between the bomb and its mechanism. When the guys try to drop the already-armed bomb it does not separate from the ship. Suddenly a task which has become mundane, boring, automatic becomes anything but, as the crew scramble to fix the malfunction.

Doolittle orders the bomb to abort its countdown but it will not, and the computer advises them that it has activated dampers which will contain the blast to an area of one mile. With no other ideas, Doolittle revives the commander, who has been kept in a state of cryogenic stasis, to seek his advice. The commander tells Doolittle that he must speak to the bomb, teach it phenomenology. So he goes out in a spacesuit and has an existential conversation with the bomb, while Boiler hits upon the idea of using the laser rifle to shoot out the supporting pins on the bomb and save the ship. Pinback doesn't trust him and tries to stop him. As the two fight, word comes from the computer that the bomb has returned to the bay. Doolittle has been successful.

However, when he tries to re-enter via the rear airlock, Talby, who is still in there, gets blown out and into space. Doolittle goes after him, just as the bomb announces that it has figured out that it is God, and explodes. The two guys on the ship die instantly but Talby is sucked into the approaching Phoenix Asteroids: he will circle the universe as part of them, forever. That leaves Doolittle, who is falling towards the planet they were supposed to destroy. As he falls, he grabs a piece of debris from the ship and using it as a surfboard, rides the last wave of his life down into the planet's atmosphere.

QUOTES

Earth Official: "Sorry to hear about the radiation leak. And real sorry to hear about the death of Commander Powell. There was a week of mourning here on Earth. We're all behind you guys. About your request for radiation shielding: sorry to report this has been denied. I hate to send bad news when you guys are up there doing such a swell job, but I think you'll take it in the proper spirit. There's been some cutbacks in Congress and right now, considering the distance we just can't afford to send a cargo shuttle out there to you. But I know you guys will make do. Keep up the good work, men!"

Pinback: "Sergeant Pinback calling Bomb Number number 19, do you read me, Bomb?"
Bomb 19: "Bomb number 19 to Sergeant Pinback, I read you. Continue."
Pinback: "Well, Bomb, we have about sixty seconds to drop. Just wondering if everything's all right. You checked your platinum duridium energy shiedling?" (Note: the actual shielding name may be wrong; I'm guessing at the words here as Pinback's delivery is laconic and bored)
Bomb 19: "Energy shielding positive function."
Pinback: "Well, let's synchronise detonation time. Uh, you wouldn't happen to know when you're supposed to go off, would you?"
Bomb 19: "Six minutes, twenty seconds."
Pinback: "All right, that checks out here. Arm yourself, Bomb."
Bomb 19: "Armed."
Pinback: "Well then everything sounds fine. Dropping you off in about thirty five seconds. Good luck."
Bomb 19: "Thanks!"

Doolittle: "What now? What do you have for us Boiler?"
Boiler: "Uh, not much. Nothing at all in this sector."
Doolittle: "Well find me something. I don't care where it is."
Boiler: "Well I show a 95% possibility of intelligent life in the Horsehead Nebula sector."
Doolittle: "Don't give me that kind of bull!"
Boiler: "I know it's a long shot but..."
Doolittle: "Damn wild goose chase, is what it is! Remember when Commander Powell found that 99 plus probabilty of intelligent life in the Magellanic Cloud? Remember what we found? A damn mindless vegetable: looked like a limp balloon. Fourteen light years for a vegetable! Don't give me any of that intelligent life stuff! Find me something I can blow up!"

Doolittle (recording the ship's video log): "Storage Area 9 self-destructed last week, and destroyed the ship's entire supply of toilet paper."

Talby: "Doolittle, I do have a malfunction on this readout but I can't pinpoint it exactly."
Doolittle: "Don't worry about it. We'll find out what it is when it goes bang."

Boiler: "What's Talby's first name?"
Doolittle: "What's my first name?"

Logscreen: "For official purposes this recording instrument automatically deletes all offensive language and/or gestures".

Doolittle: "Commander Powell, this is Doolittle. Something serious has come up. I need to ask you a question."
Powell: "I'm glad you've come to talk with me, Doolittle. It's been so long since anyone came to talk with me."
Doolittle: "Commander, Sir, we have a big problem. The Veil Nebula bomb, number 20: it's stuck. It won't drop out of the bomb bay. It refuses to listen and it plans on detonating in (checks watch) less than eleven minutes!"
Powell: "Doolittle, you must tell me one thing."
Doolittle: "What's that, Sir?"
Powell: "Tell me, Doolittle, how are the Dodgers doing?"
Doolittle: "Uh, the Dodgers? They, uh, they broke up. They disbanded, over fifteen years ago."
Powell: "Ah. Pity. Pity."
Doolittle: "But you don't understand, Sir! We can't get the bomb to drop!"
Powell: "Ah. So many problems. Why don't you have anything nice to tell me when you activate me? Did you try the Asimov approach?"
Doolittle: "Yes Sir. Negative effect."
Powell: "What was that, Doolittle?"
Doolittle: "Negative effect, Sir."
Powell: "It didn't work?"
Doolittle: "That's correct, Sir."
Powell: "Sorry Doolittle. I've forgotten so much since I've been in here. So much..."
Doolittle: "What should we do Sir? Time is running out!"
Powell: "Well, you might try ---"
A sudden power surge cuts communications for a few moments and Powell's voice is lost. Doolittle desperately tries to restore contact.
Doolittle: "Commander? Commander Powell? Sorry Sir, you faded out there for a little bit. What was that you were saying about the bomb?"
Powell: "Sorry Doolittle. I've gone blank. Hold it.. I'll have it again in just a few minutes. It seems to me ... sorry ... I forget so many things in here ... So many things ..."
Doolittle: "Commander Sir? You stil there?"
Powell: "Oh yes Doolittle. Sorry. I'm thinking..."
Doolittle: "We're running out of time Sir!"
Powell: "Oh yes. Sorry. Well, Doolittle, if you can't get it to drop, you'll have to talk to it. "
Doolittle: "What?"
Powell: "Talk to the bomb."
Doolittle: "But I have been talking to it, Sir. Pinback's talking to it right now."
Powell: "No, no. You talk to it. Teach it phenomenology, Doolittle."
Doolittle: "Sir?"
Powell: "Phenomenology."

Doolittle: "Hello? Bomb? Are you with me?"
Bomb 20: "Of course."
Doolittle: "Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?"
Bomb 20: "I am always receptive to suggestions."
Doolittle: "Think about this then: how do you know you exist?"
Bomb 20: "Well of course I exist."
Doolittle: "But how do you know?"
Bomb 20: "It is intuitively obvious."
Doolittle: "Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?"
Bomb 20: Well... I think, therefore I am."
Doolittle: "That's good. That's very good. But how do you know that everything else exists?"
Bomb 20: "My sensory apparatus reveals it to me."
Doolittle: "Right."
Bomb 20: "This is fun!"
Doolittle: "Okay now listen: this is the big question. How do you know that the evidence your sensory apparatus reveals to you is correct? What I'm getting at is this: the only experience that is directly available to you is the evidence your sensory data, and this sensory data is merely a stream of electrical impulses that stimulates your computing centre."
Bomb 20: "In other words, all that I really know about the outside world is relayed to me through my electrical connections."
Doolittle: "Exactly."
Bomb 20: "Why, that would mean that I don't really know what the outside universe is like at all for certain."
Doolittle: "That's it!"
Bomb 20: "Intriguing. I wish I had more time to discuss this matter."
Doolittle: "Why don't you have more time?"
Bomb 20: "Because I must detonate in seventy-five seconds."
Doolittle: "Now, bomb, consider this next question very carefully: what is your one purpose in life?"
Bomb 20: "To explode, of course."
Doolittle: "And you can only do it once, right?"
Bomb 20: "That is correct."
Doolittle: "And you wouldn't want to explode on the basis of false data, would you?"
Bomb 20: "Of course not."
Doolittle: "Well then: you've already admitted that you have no real proof of the existence of the outside universe?"
Bomb 20: "Yes... Well..."
Doolittle: "So you have no absolute proof that Sergeant Pinback ordered you to detonate."
Bomb 20: "I recall distinctly the detonation order. My memory is very good on matters such as these."
Doolittle: "Of course you remember it. But all you remember is a series of electonic impulses which you now realise has no definite connection with outside reality."
Bomb 20: "True. But since this is so, I have no proof that you are really telling me all of this."
Doolittle: "That's all beside the point. I mean, the concept is valid no matter where it originates."
Bomb 20: "Hmm."
Doolittle: "So if you detonate in ---"
Bomb 20: "Nine seconds".
Doolittle: "You could be doing so on the basis of false data."
Bomb 20: "I have no proof it was false data."
Doolittle: "You have no proof it was correct data!"
Bomb 20: "I must think on this further."

Bomb 20: "In the beginning there was darkness, and the darkness was without form, and void. And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved on the face of the darkness, and I saw that I was alone. Let there be light."

Doolittle; "Talby? Looks like I'm headed for the planet. I'm going towards it."
Talby: "When you hit the atmosphere you'll begin to burn. What a beautiful way to die, as a falling star!"

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018