Time Masters (1982)

Posted on March 12, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

He signed his work “Moebius.” His name was Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, born in Paris in 1938, a fashion illustrator who turned to comic strips to let his vast imagination loose – and swiftly became one of the most acclaimed illustrators in Europe, creating Blueberry, The Incal and Madwoman of the Sacred Heart (both with cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky), Arzach, The Airtight Garage, and many, many others; he was also an in-demand concept artist for feature films, helping design the worlds of Alien, Tron, and The Abyss. Sadly, he passed away on March 10 at age 73, but he left behind a seemingly bottomless well of works and a lasting influence on visual artists, authors, and filmmakers. Open a book of his to any page and you’ll see why. His art was uncluttered, modern, and never hid behind gimmicks. His lines were simple, but elegant and suggestive. His color was eye-popping. He didn’t shy from the cartoonish, yet his work was never less than tactile: erotic, scatological, effortlessly realistic; a panel later he could be ethereal, metaphysical. Metal Hurlant, the illustrated magazine he founded with Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and Bernard Farkas, helped propel his stardom in the graphic arts world, and – though it was an anthology – it was Moebius’s art with which the magazine became most closely identified; when it was translated into English in its latecomer American counterpart Heavy Metal, the letter pages were filled with tongue-tied adoration for the French artist, and collections of his work began to finally appear on these shores (though most are now out of print).

The Xuls of the planet Gamma 10, absorbing and conforming victims into their collective, soulless intelligence.

Meanwhile, at his home base in France, Moebius formed a partnership with the director of Fantastic Planet (La Planète sauvage, 1973), René Laloux. They intended to launch a series of one-hour animated specials for French television, each adapted from a science fiction novel by Stefan Wul, the author of Oms en série (the novel which inspired Fantastic Planet). The first would be L’orphelin de Perdide (The Orphan of Perdide), designed and storyboarded by Moebius and animated by Laloux’s fledgling studio. Ambitions grew for the project, and it was quickly determined that the production should be expanded into a feature-length film, now retitled Les Maîtres du temps (Time Masters). Animation was shifted to a studio in Hungary to accommodate the workload, and both Laloux and Moebius concluded in later years that this move ultimately led the production astray – the quality of the output became inconsistent. They would be dissatisfied by the final product, which was the victim of an inadequate budget and (Moebius’s accusation) a few inexperienced animators, who rendered some the film’s central characters too crudely. But at least the film was completed and released. Although Laloux would go on to another science fiction epic, 1988’s Gandahar (released in a butchered form in America as Light Years) – completing a trilogy of sorts – Moebius wouldn’t have much luck in the animation industry. Proposed adaptations of The Incal and Arzach went unfinished, though jaw-dropping clips of the projects are available on YouTube. (Arzach was ultimately adapted into an animated series in 2004.)

Yula and Jad, the telepathic gnomes of Devil's Ball, decorate their cabin with stolen treasure.

Time Masters is about a young child, Piel, who is orphaned on the planet Perdide after a swarm of alien hornets attacks his parents (which happens off-screen); as his father, Claude, is dying, he uses an egg-shaped communication device to send an emergency transmission to his friend Jaffar. Then he commands his son to take the microphone – which Piel calls “Mike” – and travel across the alien landscape until he finds a region called the Dolongs, where Jaffar can meet up with him. But Jaffar is very, very far away, escorting Prince Matton and Princess Belle toward Aldebaran; the greedy, cold-hearted prince is essentially a fugitive, having stolen the royal treasure of the planet Atral. When Jaffar receives Claude’s message, he redirects his ship’s course toward Perdide, much to the prince’s anger. So while Piel faces dangers from the flora and fauna of Perdide, guided by his companion “Mike,” Jaffar and his crew encounter obstacles of their own, including intergalactic policemen and faceless, winged drones controlled by a single fascistic consciousness. (There’s also the problem of the prince, who at one point uses “Mike” to place Piel’s life in danger.) Jaffar’s unlikely allies include a ukelele-playing old man named Silbad, a gang of space pirates, and two telepathic “gnomes” named Yula and Jad. The Time Masters of the title are introduced in the film’s climax, and their reality-twisting plans for Perdide turn this Moebius-designed film into a genuine Moebius strip.

Silbad welcomes Jaffar and his friends to the planet called Devil's Ball.

Laloux and Moebius may have expressed disappointment with the completed film, but here’s the thing: I won’t hesitate in naming Les Maîtres du temps as one of my favorite animated films. I mean, Moebius was right when he complained that the character animation was inconsistent (the gnome animation is Disney-worthy, while Jaffar, Belle, and Matton are gracelessly handled), and the ending, perhaps hampered by the small budget and limited resources, feels too abrupt. But sometimes the heart won’t listen to the head. Time Masters may be flawed, but it has so much going for it that I find it irresistible. The scenes with Piel on Perdide, talking to “Mike” and naively interacting with the planet’s wildlife, are exquisitely done, both in translating Moebius’s style faithfully to the screen and maintaining a delicate tone of awe, ominous danger, and childhood innocence. Both Perdide and Devil’s Ball (Silbad’s home) express Laloux’s fascination with xenobiology, making this film of a piece with Fantastic Planet and Gandahar; like those films, he doesn’t mind stalling the narrative with lingering shots of alien forests and lakes, and he tops himself here with giant lotus flowers that eject telepathic space-gnomes into the air, like humanoid pollen (they scream with the voice of children, “Close your minds! We’re here!”). Those two stowaway gnomes, Yula and Jad, are the heart and soul of Time Masters. They act as the film’s chorus, commenting on the action by detecting the thoughts of the crew (Prince Matton’s thoughts “smell terrible”), and are given the film’s most inspired dialogue and animation.

The domain of the Time Masters, as revealed in the film's close.

I’m also fascinated with the way the film even-handedly trades between childrens’ entertainment and intellectual, adult science fiction, with no apologies for depicting death and violence straightforwardly – for, in Laloux’s animated worlds, these are essential components to the cycle of life. Memorably, Piel encounters an ambling, four-legged, friendly beast with a short, cylinder-shaped trunk, who lets the boy ride on its back through the jungle; a few scenes later, Piel urges the cute, cartoony creature to take shelter in a cave, where it’s brutally strangled to death by a barely-glimpsed, black-tentacled beast. Piel drops his microphone and runs, and Laloux gives us a creepy shot of the device abandoned next to a stripped skull. Therefore, when Piel confronts a swarm of deadly hornets at the shore of a lake, the danger feels all the more immediate; indeed, the insects pile on top of the poor child, pecking at his skull, tearing at his clothes, bloodying him up. So give the film credit for being uncompromising, which places it in a similar orbit with Metal Hurlant (Jean-Pierre Dionnet helped initiate the project) and other French SF comics and art of the period. Most importantly, this is the rare chance to see what Moebius’s art looks like on the big screen. In its best moments, Time Masters speaks as much to the artist’s skills as to his formidable imagination and heart; and reminds us of why we’ll miss him.

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Count Dracula (1970)

Posted on March 9, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

The most prolific of exploitation directors, Jesús “Jess” Franco has, to date, 192 titles listed under his name and multiple pseudonyms on the IMDB. The Spanish director’s films range from horror to women-in-prison movies to pornography. Among the cult film community, he is both adored and intensely loathed; but his output is too ubiquitous to ignore. I admit to being an admirer of what might be his best-known work, Vampyros Lesbos (1971), the most psychedelic entry in the early-70’s lesbian vampire genre, which Franco trippily filmed to the jazzy psych-rock of The Vampires’ Sound Incorporation. That memorable outing was a gender-bending take on Dracula, starring Franco’s muse, the beautiful Soledad Miranda, who died in a car accident in Portugal before the film’s release. But the dry run for Vampyros Lesbos was a much more straightforward adaptation of the source material: Count Dracula (1970), which featured Miranda as the vampirism-stricken Lucy Westenra. If that sounds like ideal casting, consider that the casting coup also extended to Herbert Lom (Mysterious Island and Hammer’s Phantom of the Opera) as Van Helsing, Klaus Kinski as the lunatic Renfield, and none other than Christopher Lee as the Count. It’s like fantasy football for horror geeks.

Jonathan Harker (Fred Williams) dines with Count Dracula (Christopher Lee).

Famously, Lee was disgruntled with Hammer by the late 60’s and early 70’s; the studio dragged him kicking and screaming into each new Dracula sequel, which departed further and further from Bram Stoker’s novel (the last two entries in the series proper took place in the 1970’s, to frequently embarrassing effect). His decision to head to Spain to play the character for his Bloody Judge (1970) director Jess Franco was therefore an act of protest. Franco promised a more faithful adaptation of the book, one which would follow Stoker’s structure, lean heavily on his dialogue, and use not just characters like Lucy, Mina, Renfield, and Dr. Seward, but also Quincy Morris, the (admittedly minor) gun-toting American so frequently left out of decades of Draculas. Further, Lee would get the chance to play a Dracula who begins the film as an old man, but loses his grays the more he feeds on blood. The Stoker enthusiast could not be happier. Alas, this would still be a Jess Franco film.

Klaus Kinski broods in his cell as Dracula's servant Renfield.

Franco employs his usual loose, almost improvisational cinematic style, his wobbling camera following his actors nervously and, with a tiring frequency, zooming in and out on their features as though doing so will enhance interest (it usually doesn’t). There is a moment when he accidentally zooms onto an actor’s chin, and the camera then centers itself awkwardly. It’s like watching Dark Shadows at times, with no retakes or edits possible. When Franco films Kinski – that infamously restless actor – hurling a bowl of slop at the wall, and smearing it carefully across the surface like an artist working at his canvas (clearly some Kinski improv), it’s hard not to notice the cameraman’s moving shadow, so poorly is the sequence blocked. Sadly, you’re left to wonder if it’s by accident that the occasional effective moment, or striking image, happens into the film: Kinski brooding at his window, dressed in white against a white cell, like something out of Ken Russell’s The Devils; the vampire women in Dracula’s castle lunging for an infant abandoned in a bundle of rags in a corner of the crypt; Miranda, looking like a Bruce Timm design, standing in her nightgown as the vampire nymphet ideal. Though you can’t go too awry when you’ve cast a Dracula this well, the dubbing knocks that down a notch or two, and when Lee gently kisses Miranda down her face before biting into her neck, you can’t help but feel that he’s simply recreating a famous scene in a better film – Hammer’s original 1958 version. Fidelity to source material is one thing. Cinema is far more vital when it’s cinematic. Ultimately, Franco’s dry, clumsy version of Stoker can’t hold a cobwebbed candle to what Terence Fisher could pull off. It would take a stylized and freewheeling departure – Vampyros Lesbos – to make the most of Soledad Miranda’s seductive eyes, and find 20th century celluloid inspiration out of Stoker’s 19th century text.

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Goldfinger (1964)

Posted on March 7, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Goldfinger (1964) is probably my favorite James Bond film. (Look, if Sean Connery had stuck around for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, we’d be having a different conversation.) “Favorite” is the operative word here; From Russia with Love (1963) is superior in many ways, with a better all-around cast, a classic espionage plot, and a stronger aura of Ian Fleming. Goldfinger is simply fun. It’s also the moment when the James Bond series reached its apotheosis. From here on out the 007 films would get more expensive, more spectacular, more over-the-top, and, ultimately, more self-aware – they would never again be as pure, as genuine. If you were to introduce the series to a creature from another planet (for I can think of no other being who would be unaware of James Bond), you’d choose Goldfinger. The cocky chauvinism, the impish humor, the early-60’s style and sophistication, the ludicrous plot – it is the series in a bottle that goes down like fine Chianti.

Gert Frobe as Auric Goldfinger, one of James Bond's most memorable adversaries.

It is also the birth of the blockbuster, leading straight toward Thunderball (1965), with its excessive merchandising campaign. From Dr. No (1962) onward, the series was an international sensation, and the budget was bigger for each production – Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli took the dollars they earned and put them right back into each new James Bond film, calculatedly giving the audience exactly what it wanted…which meant, ultimately, that Fleming’s novels were increasingly left behind in the race toward bigger and better. You can see those points of departure creeping into Goldfinger, whose Aston Martin DB5 is considerably more gadget-equipped than the novel’s DB III. But the series had not yet lost its sense of good storytelling. This is a duel between 007 and Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) which escalates from cards to golf to a laser beam that threatens Bond’s gender. Gadgets are introduced by Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and then satisfyingly put to use, while the plot unfolds with an easy-to-grasp logic: we see how Goldfinger is smuggling his gold out of England (inside the structure of cars shipped out of the country, then stripped in a factory, the gold melted back down); we’re with Bond as he overhears the details of Operation Grandslam, a plot to rob Fort Knox; we then uncover the hidden twist in that plot, which makes sense in such an offbeat way that it puts a smile on your face. Now consider that our hero is held prisoner – helpless – for half of the story, something you would never see in other Bond films. You could argue that it makes Goldfinger less exciting, since, by necessity, that means less action. I would argue that it adds to the suspense, building toward the memorable Fort Knox showdown with Goldfinger’s henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata), which makes a flying-hat duel a lot more thrilling than it ought to be.

Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) helps Goldfinger cheat at cards.

Guy Hamilton takes over directing duties for Terence Young, and – surprisingly – you don’t really miss the gifted Young. How can you complain, when you have one memorable image after another, such as the aforementioned laser beam (“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”); or Shirley Eaton, with binoculars, lounging in a black brassiere and panties, one foot lazily hanging in the air; or the innocuous-looking old lady guarding the gate of the factory, who grits her teeth and opens fire at Bond with an oversized machine gun; or – my favorite – a bar of Nazi gold thumping onto a putting green, and sending Goldfinger’s putt awry with its weight. I could go on: Bond’s formidable Aston Martin foiled by a simple mirror; the classical statue decapitated by Oddjob’s bowler hat; the debut of Q’s gadget shop (“I never joke about my work, 007”); the introduction of Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore (“I must be dreaming!”). After a memorable stop at Dr. Strangelove (1964), production designer Ken Adam is back with a bang – note that even a minor, briefly-glimpsed location in the pre-credits sequence (the room where Bond sets his explosive) is gorgeously designed. His idea of Fort Knox’s interior is so permanently embedded in my cinematic imagination that I feel it must be a factual representation, even though I know it to be highly improbable. The judo-skilled Pussy Galore, significantly, is the first Bond girl to be just as tough as 007, though inevitably she succumbs to his rape-y advances. In the novel, Galore – a minor character – is a lesbian; the fact that Bond conquers her homosexuality is just one of the dated and uncomfortable aspects of the book (Fleming’s anti-Korean racism being even more distracting). Ironic that a character so firmly rooted in a particular era and mindset has managed to effortlessly endure: even in the film adaptation, Bond is casually slapping the behind of Dink, his big-breasted blonde masseuse, and – perhaps the biggest cultural crime of all – dissing those young, long-haired upstarts The Beatles.

Bond ruins Goldfinger's shot.

Yet, in this Mad Men era, these dated aspects only add to Goldfinger‘s camp appeal – just like the can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head theme song, sung to the hilt by Shirley Bassey, and fully integrated by John Barry into his superb score. This is a film in which a poolside scene is overcrowded with extras, the vast majority of whom are beautiful, bikini-clad young women. To say that this is a white male’s fantasy is pointless; of course it is, but in the eye-poppingly colorful, playfully exaggerated world of Goldfinger, it’s nothing less than dazzling pop art. No other Bond adaptations were necessary, but of course we got a multitude, evolving to reflect every decade’s sensibilities; and most of the 1960’s Bond parodies used Goldfinger as the key reference point. I could simply dwell here, though: lingering by the pool, sipping my martini, waiting for Felix Leiter, a mission, and a masseuse.

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