Mock Up On Mu

MOCK UP ON MU (Baldwin, 2008)

Other Cinema, DVD, Release Date Nov 23, 2010

Review by Christopher S. Long

(Here's the thing. I absolutely loved "Mock Up On Mu" when I first wrote about it back in 2010, but more than five years later, I re-read my review and can't help but wonder if I really got it right or was hallucinating part of the experience. That's one of the many joys of a Craig Baldwin movie. And now that I am hip deep in the middle of reading "Gravity's Rainbow" it's impossible for me not to conflate my memories of the Baldwin science-sex-occult film with Pynchon's science-sex-occult book and, well, that's kinda groovy. In any case, "Mock Up On Mu" is awesome and here's my take on it.)

In one of the hundreds (thousands?) of old film clips that comprise the bulk of “Mock Up on Mu” (2008), we see a skull peeled to expose a brain for experimentation by a B-movie mad scientist. It’s an apt metaphor for San Francisco-based director Craig Baldwin’s ongoing project. He plucks brief movie clips (often from low budget sci-fi/horror films or educational movies) from their original context and, through image and sound editing, creates new neural connections among these previously disparate elements, rejiggering them all into the plastic cortical maps that comprise his “collage-narrative” model of filmmaking.

In a Baldwin film, we can leap from a Flash Gordon serial to the crop plane in “North by Northwest,” to a Department of Energy promotional film, to Sal Mineo as Gene Krupa, and then to an audio clip from Las Vegas’s “Star Trek: The Experience” without ever being taken out of the narrative because they are the narrative. Newly filmed footage is integrated seamlessly (or not, it doesn't matter) with archival clips, and his contemporary actors freely switch places with classic Hollywood stars within a single scene, all of them “collaborating” across decades to form a single conglomerate character. Baldwin’s films are about osmosis: the past flows into the present (and vice-versa), science fact into science fiction, paranoia into politics (OK, these two aren’t exactly opposites.)

“Mock up on Mu” tells the curious story of a trio of three historical figures whose paths crossed in 1940s Southern California. Jack Parsons (played here by Kalman Spelletich) was a rocket scientist who helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and also became obsessed with the occult writings of Aleister Crowley. He saw no conflict in spending one part of his life designing sophisticated engines and the other part trying to summon goddesses in dark rituals. During his occult practices he met actress/writer/author Marjorie Cameron who became his Scarlet Woman, his wife, and later one of the matriarchs of the modern New Age movement. I don’t mention the actress who plays Cameron for reasons that will be made obvious in the film.

Parsons and Cameron may be unknown to you, but you certainly recognize the name of a third person their lives intersected with, science-fiction author turned religious founding father L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard, Parsons and Cameron immersed themselves in Crowley’s “sex magick” and their intertwining story gets too complicated to recount here, but not complicated enough for the purposes of the delightfully complicated Baldwin who layers his own original narrative on top of this more-or-less-true one.

The Year is 2019 and L. Ron Hubbard, still alive as he has been since he defeated Xenu and “seeded the world with science!”, has founded the Empire of Mu on the moon. It’s sort of a theme park, and L. Ron (as he is always referred to) needs to drum up more business so he sends the brainwashed Agent C (Michelle Silva) to seduce a military industrial stooge with the appropriate name of Lockheed Martin (Stoney Burke.) With Hubbard pulling the strings and literally twisting the dials in the background, Agent C also finds Jack Parsons who, unlike in real life, apparently didn’t die in an explosion. In fact, he secretly became Hollywood star Richard Carlson. Later they find Aleister Crowley in a cave. Then things get weird. The film, divided into a lucky thirteen parts, plays out like an adventure serial. It’s a shame it doesn’t come with its own decoder ring.

Hubbard, the Ming the Merciless-style evil mastermind of the film, is played by Damon Packard, a gifted filmmaker in his own right (his uncategorizable “Reflections of Evil” remains can be tracked down on a Tube of some kind if you can't find it on DVD.) Packard rants and gesticulates to great effect, and wears that cool Commander’s outfit better than L. Ron ever did. There is no synch sound in the film, so all voices are dubbed in later and Baldwin seldom tries to match dialogue with lip movement. Sometimes characters are heard speaking while their lips aren’t moving at all. It would seem to be a disorienting effect but in the fever-dream world of “Mock Up on Mu,” it just feels like the right stylistic choice for the material.

Baldwin certainly mocks (up) Hubbard’s crass exercise in myth-creation-as-capitalist-opportunism, but talk of Thetans and ancient warlords pales in comparison to the absurdity and the genuine horror of the “New Global Capital Regime” spearheaded by the likes of Lockheed Martin (the character, not the company, of course - the names are a total coincidence.) Science supporting the occult is deeply disturbing, but science used to design and manufacture weapons capable of destroying humanity a thousand times over is a genuine perversion. False prophets or fat profits. Take your pick as to which you find more grotesque.

Baldwin’s pastiche is powered by paranoia, but this mocked-up conspiracy theory isn’t meant to be sold as the truth - unless you think L. Ron has been hiding on the moon all these years working on the director’s cut of “Battlefield Earth.” The film’s alternate history is delivered tongue-in-cheek which is not to say Baldwin doesn’t have something serious to say about the horrors of the global military industrial complex and Hubbard’s corporate religion. He has a genuine fondness for his oddball historical figures, or at least for Parsons and Cameron whose histories get re-written with a Hollywood ending (sort of) which is only just considering how much Hollywood has unwittingly contributed to the making of “Mock Up.”

The film reminds me of a host of other material: “WR: Mysteries of the Organism,” George Alec Effinger’s “What Entropy Means to Me,” Feuillade’s “Les Vampires,” any random Guy Maddin film, and Infocom’s game “A Mind Forever Voyaging.” I make no claim that any of these sources served as inspiration for the film (except “WR” which must be a Baldwin favorite) but Baldwin’s cinema encourages the viewer to make these kinds of connections. Kenneth Anger is a more obvious source directly referenced in the movie (the real-life Cameron appeared in Anger’s Crowley-inspired “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.”)

“Mock Up on Mu” is a heady experience, an “ultimate trip” that packs in a hard-core lesson in film history along with its ingeniously deranged story of science, sex magick, and corporate crime. It has to be experienced (not just watched) to be understood. And even though Baldwin’s audiovisual bombardment can sometimes overwhelm the senses, the experience is a provocative, rewarding and thoroughly pleasure-filled one.

Video:

The DVD is presented in a full screen transfer. There are literally hundreds of different video sources used in the film, so there’s no way to evaluate the image quality in any traditional sense. Many of the film clips show deep scratches and wear and tear, but this doesn’t exactly detract from the experience of this time and genre hopping collage.

Audio:

The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital Stereo. No subtitles are offered which becomes a problem when you choose to listen to Baldwin’s commentary track but is otherwise not a significant drawback.

Extras:

The main Extra is a commentary track by Craig Baldwin, recorded from his basement while watching the film on his laptop. He identifies the source of many of the clips in the film which is helpful to those of us with obsessive minds, but he shies away from explaining his intentions too often which demonstrates some good old-fashioned horse sense.

A Behind-the-Scenes feature is really just a four minute clip of Damon Packard reading dialogue in his Hubbard Commander’s uniform. The DVD also includes a Trailer and Preview of the upcoming Other Cinema release of “The Damon Packard Collection.”

Final Thoughts:

Craig Baldwin was making mash-ups before YouTube made them ubiquitous. “Tribulation 99” (1992) was an eye-opener (or a mind expander, if you prefer) and his “Specters of the Spectrum” (1999) is, in my sometimes humble opinion, a hell of a great movie. I haven’t been fortunate enough to see “Sonic Outlaws” (1995) yet but, to borrow a phrase, I’ve heard good things.

His collage style may seem a bit more familiar now, but his films are still both idiosyncratic and radical. “Mock Up on Mu” is Baldwin’s first feature in nearly a decade and it is most definitely worth the wait. It has an organic, frenetic energy that few movies do.

“Mock Up on Mu” is distributed by Baldwin’s Other Cinema label.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS (Haskin, 1964)

Criterion Collection, DVD, Release Date Sep 18, 2007

Review by Christopher S. Long

(With "The Martian" dominating the U.S. box office you may have heard a few references to this earlier movie about an astronaut stranded on the Red Planet. I'll just say I like this gutsy B-movie a whole lot better than the slick Matt Damon sitcom and leave it at that. This review was written for the 2007 DVD release by Criterion, but Criterion re-released the whole package in 2011 on Blu-ray so you probably want to consider that before the DVD.)

The opening sequences of the B-movie sci-fi classic “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964) toy cruelly with our expectations. First, we get Adam West, and not just that, but Adam West as an astronaut. Adam West as Batman as an astronaut (Batstronaut!) would be even better, but let’s not get picky. Adam West is one of the most enjoyable actors of all-time, and we all know that he would never be in a bad movie. This could be better than we thought.

But then we hit our first major bump, literally, as the space ship is knocked out of its flight path by a meteor and forced to plan for a crash-landing on Mars. Colonel Dan (West) radios back to ground control where a Very Important Scientist warns him: “Do not dissemble space vehicle until all other procedures have been tried.” I guess the ship doesn’t like to be lied to. HAL 9000 got pretty pissed when Dave tried to bullshit him, so maybe it makes sense.

Then the news becomes grimmer still: Adam West isn’t even going to be our main character. I don't want to get into details; it's too painful to think about, but we're gonna spend most of our time with the other guy in the crew, Colonel Kit Draper. How the hell do you give Batman second billing? He spent all that time making his super-cool utility belt, and now you’re just going to shunt him off screen in favor of some stiff who never even played Batman?

At least that stiff is Paul Mantee, who actually delivers a pretty good performance as Draper, and who did appear twice as one of Catwoman’s henchmen on “Batman” so maybe that qualified him for the mission. After Draper crash-lands on Mars, he quickly sets to securing the survival basics: food, shelter, water. He’s obviously a well-trained military man, or at least an over eager Boy Scout, because he gets the job done pretty quickly. It helps that the atmosphere on Mars is just thick enough for a man to be able to breathe for about ten minutes without supplemental oxygen. As boring as some of this may sound, these scenes are rather well-conceived and even kind of exciting. Pretty soon a rather surprising thought occurs to us: This might actually be a good movie. 

“Robinson Crusoe on Mars” also turns out to be a surprisingly bold film. After the crash-landing, Draper spends nearly a half hour of screen time entirely alone, hardly saying anything other than “Hey!” as he dodges a fireball (you know, those famous Martian fireballs) except when he speaks into his recorder to leave a record for any future crews who discover his body. Over the next half hour Draper finds himself a companion, Mona the monkey, the only other surviving member of the crew. For an entire hour then, Paul Mantee finds himself performing a one-man stage act. The plot focuses on his physical ordeals but also stresses his spiritual journey, rather difficult to pull off when you’ve only got a recorder and a monkey for company, but Mantee does yeoman’s work here. The spiritual theme begins subtly but grows in significance as time passes. Draper clearly believes he has survived only through divine agency; a quiet “thank you” when he discovers a surprising oxygen source is the first tip off to Draper’s true beliefs.

Draper marks off his time on Mars on a slate, days melting into months, and even though he never expects to be rescued he still keeps motivated. Mona helps out. A resourceful little scavenger, she discovers water and edible food on this barren Eden, and sits down for dinner with Draper every night. It’s really quite remarkable to see a B-movie stay so long with just one (human) character on-screen, violating just about every rule of screenwriting and entertainment. What, no love interest? And, no, Mona doesn’t count. They’re just friends.

Unfortunately, the final forty minutes or so of the film meanders back into familiar genre territory, undermining some of the great work accomplished during Draper’s months of isolation. Singer/future Klingon soldier Victor Lundin shows up as an escaped alien slave, Draper’s very own Friday who guides him into a battle with alien overlords and a flight through those legendary martian canals.

This part of the film isn’t terrible, just a mild disappointment after such commitment to the previous one-man set-up. The highlights are the menacing space ships that look suspiciously like the Martian invaders from “War of the Worlds” (1953), which is no coincidence since director and special effects wizard Byron Haskin helmed both of these science-fiction classics. It’s amazing how cool the effects still look today: the ships just zip into place super-fast, and then zip away just as quickly. Not all the effects in “Robinson Crusoe” wear as well: the Earth explorer’s creaky orbit is not one of Haskin’s finer efforts, but that’s only a minor complaint.

There are only three actors in the case of “Robinson Crusoe on Mars,” plus Mona the Monkey (played by Barney the Wooly Monkey), and minimal dialogue for good portions of the film. This not only provides a convenient way to reduce the budget, it also yields a surprisingly focused, suspenseful, and downright audacious film, at least until the ending. “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” is definitely not your typical B-movie.

Video:

The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Ah, glorious Techniscope, Cinemascope’s slightly grubbier cousin. Techniscope usually looks a little grainier than Cinemascope which might be seen by some as a weakness (Cinemascope was certainly the more popular format), but works to the advantage of many films that benefit from that slightly grittier look. The digitally restored transfer by Criterion might look a little “dirtier” than some of their usual efforts, but it’s really supposed to. There are a few dings and scratches evident from the source print as well, but they don’t detract from the look at all. Yet another excellent job by Criterion.

Audio:

The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital Mono. Optional English subtitles support the English audio.

Extras:

The film is accompanied by a feature-length commentary by screenwriter Ib Melchior, and cast members; the track also mixes in excerpts from a 1979 interview with Byron Haskin.

The rest of the extras are included in the “Survival Kit.”

“Destinaton: Mars” is a short (19 min.) documentary detailing the ways in which “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” was accurate according to 1964 information regarding the planet Mars. Space historian Michael Lennick asserts that the film was surprisingly sorta-kinda-vaguely accurate for its time. Granted, there are no fireballs on Mars, but at the time scientists believe the atmosphere might support human respiration for brief periods of time, as featured in the film. I enjoyed this feature quite a bit.

A music video of the Victor Lundin song “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” is also included and is surprisingly sweet; think “Cat’s in the Cradle” except about “Robinson Crusoe on Mars.” The DVD also offers a slideshow of promotional material or the film and a downloadable PDF file of excerpts from Ib Melchior’s original screenplay, one much more of the Bug Eyed Monster variety.

The slim insert booklet features a nifty essay by filmmaker and space historian Michael Lennick.

The wonderful cover art for the DVD is by the great comic book artist Bill Sienkiewicz.

Final Thoughts:

Criterion has diversified its collection with several recent B-movie releases: “Equinox,” the “Monsters and Madmen” boxed set, and now “Robinson Crusoe on Mars.” In each, the studio provided a justification for including each film in the prestigious Collection. “Equinox” marked the earliest work of special effects gurus Dennis Murren and David Allen; “Monsters and Madmen” collected four films produced by Richard and Alex Gordon; “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” is directed by Byron Haskin of “War of the Worlds” fame. Of the films, “Robinson Crusoe” is easily my favorite, no masterpiece, but an entertaining and daring film which would make a worthy entry in the Criterion Collection even without its auteur stripes.

My only real complaint: needed more Adam West. But that holds true for most movies.

Scanners

SCANNERS (Cronenberg, 1981)

Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date July 15, 2014

Review by Christopher S. Long

(In case you know nothing about “Scanners” this review contains significant spoilers.)

Michael Ironside (left) thinks happy thoughts

I think David Cronenberg's “Scanners” (1981) plays better in memory than in the actual viewing. Reflecting back on the film, vivid recollections of the highlights spring instantly to mind: the gossipy woman in the food court flopping helplessly on the floor, the demonic pleasure on Michael Ironside's face as he telepathically commands a man to blow his brains out and, oh yeah speaking of that, the signature sequence in which a confident psychic's head suddenly explodes like a Gallagher watermelon, no doubt shocking the real-life theater audience even more than it did the horrified gathering of dignitaries in the movie. 

 Cronenberg always knew how to épater la bourgeoisie, but for all the literal and figurative guts on display in this twisted science-fiction tale, there are also long stretches in which the narrative flounders, the boldest ideas diluted by a standard-issue corporate espionage plot. As Darryl Revok, Ironside is a deliciously malicious villain, but he all but completely disappears for the middle hour of the movie. Leave them wanting more, sure, but Revok's too good (by which I mean too evil) to lurk in the shadows for so long; his inexhaustible army of shotgun-wielding automatons are a poor on-screen substitute for the main man. And while Stephen Lack and Jennifer O'Neill are perfectly convincing as the ostensible heroes, their characters are a bit too vanilla to carry the main action at times.

Perhaps it's ungrateful to complain about a movie with so many memorable scenes when most movies slip from memory before the end credits wrap. Cronenberg is so great at juxtaposing the surreal with the mundane to generate both creeps and (nervous) laughter. In a late scene, just as our leads have become fully enmeshed in a conspiracy involving designer drugs and dramatic mutations, they burst in on a doctor who is supposedly at the heart of it all, only to find him performing a routine physical on an older gentleman stripped down to his boxers: the patient is told to “read a magazine” as the bad guys mass outside.

I guess you want a plot summary. The scanners of the title are telepaths who only sprang into existence thirty or so years before when their pregnant mommies were injected with an experimental drug called Ephemerol. The drug's creator Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan, largely unrecognizable from his prison days as Number Six) feels responsible for his mutant children and enlists the aid of the deeply troubled Cameron Vale (Lack) to combat the rogue scanner Revok who intends either to enlist his fellow freaks to bring down the “normals” or to kill them if they won't cooperate. The rest of the story involves a shadowy corporation whose headquarters are dominated by gigantic reel-to-reel mainframe computers, a double agent, and a melodramatic reveal or two in the final act.

Also lots of blood. Some of it in explosive splatters, some gushing in narrow but powerful spurts. Cronenberg doesn't leave the goriest parts to the viewer's imagination; he means to make you squirm. The film climaxes with Revok and Vale trying to literally blow each other's minds and the stress the telepathic duel places on each of their bodies produces quite a spectacle from exploding eyeballs to burning flesh, all rendered via tremendous practical make-up effects; one can only imagine how tacky and inert the finale would look like in the digital age.

Did I begin on a slightly negative note? When I started this review, I had just seen the movie again. I'm writing this paragraph a few days later and now I'm back to remembering all the groovy stuff and forgetting about the relatively disappointing filler. It would have been amazing to be in a theater full of unsuspecting viewers when Louis Del Grande's head just suddenly blows the hell up 'cause, y'know, damn. “Scanners” has its flaws, but it jolts even the most passive viewer to life now and then, something that's true of all of Cronenberg's best work. You know that scene in “Cosmopolis” where Robert Pattinson is watching that news program and then... yeah, stuff like that.

Video:

The film is presented in “the director's preferred aspect ratio of 1.78:1.” From the Criterion booklet, “This new digital transfer was created in 2K resolution... from a 35 mm interpositive.” The image detail isn't quite as sharp as on some of Criterion's 1080p transfers and the contrast and colors seem slightly muted; I'll assume these were all conscious decisions because the toned-down look suits the film very well. Bright colors popping off the screen would distract from the creepy factor. Resolution is strong enough to show plenty of detail both in close-ups and in darker shots. It's a very clean and naturalistic presentation that should please most fans.

This is a dual-format release from Criterion with two DVDs (one with the film, one with most of the extras) and a single Blu-ray. The SD transfer has not been reviewed here.

Audio:

The linear PCM Mono track is crisp and does justice to one of Howard Shore's best soundtracks. Aside from the music, the sound design is relatively flat and straightforward with all dialogue cleanly recorded. Optional English SDH subtitles support the English audio.

Extras:

Criterion has done its usual bangup job of loading this release with extras.

“The Scanners Way” (2014, 23 min.) is directed by Michael Lennick and combines interviews with several crew members to discuss the film's special effects. I won't argue with anyone who says the effects look “dated” as long as they understand that means “much better than crappy, weightless, cartoonish CG effects today.”

We also get a new (2014, 19 min.) interview with actor Michael Ironside who reveals that he was initially just brought in for one short scene but then had his role expanded into the main villain, which probably explains his spotty presence in the story. The disc also includes a 2012 interview (14 min.) with actor Stephen Lack, produced by Subkultur Entertainment.

Criterion also includes excerpts from the Mar 10, 1981 episode of the Canadian talk program “The Bob McLean Show” (11 min.) in which the host interviews Cronenberg fresh on the surprising box office success of Scanners. I'm not sure if the clips (from several of the director's films) originally shown have been replaced here by short trailers or not. Cronenberg discusses how the horror genre picked him rather than the other way around.

The most significant extra of all, however, is “Stereo” (1969, 63 min.), Cronenberg's debut feature. The film also features telepathic main characters, but the action is shot silently with voice-over narration. It's a very dry, tongue-in-cheek film with some resemblances to the early work of Peter Greenaway though not as rigorously structural and much kinkier. It's set sometime in the future (though it could be now) at the Canadian Academy for Erotic Inquiry. The main character dresses like a magician. Yeah, it's weird. And not exactly great, but a weird start to a very weird and very rewarding career.

The extras wrap up with a couple of Radio Spots (1 min, 33 sec.) and a Trailer (2 min.)

The slim insert booklet features an essay by writer Kim Newman.

Final Thoughts:

The Scanners Way done the Criterion Way. A strong transfer and a generous dose of extras including Cronenberg's debut film “Stereo.” Fans should be delighted.