Introducing the MBU: Phase One

 

Tonight I watched The Bees (Alfredo Zacarías, 1978), one of a series of the killer-bees-panic subgenre of the 1970s. John Saxon stars, so I immediately started texting Sean with a play-by-play of the film, mostly because for some reason Dad hated John Saxon and famously said he'd "shoot that son of a bitch" if he ever ran into him. Of course Dad actually would never do such a thing (although he did in a dream once, right in the face), but Sean and I have always found Dad's irrational hatred for an actor he never met pretty funny. 

Anyway, captured above is Sean's inspired moment where he laments the lack of an extended bee universe. I immediately dubbed it the "MBU," the Malevolent Bees Universe, aping Marvel's MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

Phase One of the MBU begins with a recut of Freddie Francis' The Deadly Bees (1966), in which a beekeeper creates a strain of killer bees and uses them to start killing people because the scientific community doesn't take him seriously. After the bees kill a few people on remote Seagull Island, the mad beekeeper's plans are thwarted by a rival, ethical beekeeper. 

Phase One continues with Invasion of the Bee Girls (Denis Sanders, 1973). By looping in some new dialogue, it should be easy to connect this film with The Deadly Bees by revealing that the formula used to create the bee girls of this film draws upon the science established by the mad beekeeper in the first film. 

Next, Curtis Harrington's 1974 made-for-TV thriller Killer Bees our heroine, Victoria, encountering an eccentric family who are using Africanized bees to improve yields at their vineyard. With some editing tricks, we can connect villainess Madam Van Bohlen to the first two films by suggesting that her psychic power to control bee swarms is a result of experiments from the first two films. We could also suggest that our heroine, Victoria, is an ex-Bee Girl. By film's end, she has become the new Bee Queen. Perhaps we'll see her again...

Mission: Impossible creator Bruce Geller produced and directed The Savage Bees (1976), in which savage bees stow away on a freighter and attack partiers at Mardi Gras. With some simple newly-shot scenes, we can create a framing story that reveals the Bee Queen is behind this attack. 

Believe it or not, there was a sequel to The Savage Bees: Terror Out of the Sky (Lee H. Katzin, 1978). This time (thanks once again to some newly-shot footage), the Bee Queen uses her psychic bee control powers to attack a school bus, a marching band, a truck driver, and other unfortunates. What is her overarching plan? 

In Irwin Allen's The Swarm (1978), the bees mount their greatest assault yet, invading the continental United States in full force with only an all-star cast of classic Hollywood greats (Fred MacMurray! Olivia de Haviland! Michael Caine! Richard Widmark! Lee Grant! Ben Johnson! Richard Chamberlain! Henry Fonda! Katharine Ross! Slim Pickens!) standing against...THE SWARM! (And the Bee Queen, thanks to some dialogue looping and new scenes, of course.) 

Phase One of the MBeeU concludes, fittingly, with The Bees. After a tremendous amount of hilarious carnage, John Saxon learns how to communicate with the bees and basically acts as their spokesperson at the United Nations. The bees swarm the General Assembly, and in a fantastic cliffhanger to end Phase One, Saxon sides with the bees to demand humanity surrender control to the bees - or face genocide by bee sting. Wow, Dad was right: John Saxon really was a son of a bitch! At least in this role...

 

Legends of Yesterday

Today's experiment in "If intellectual property wasn't a thing:" 

I present The Legends of Yesterday, a secret cabal of extraordinary individuals long thought lost, retired, or dead. No one but their mysterious, never-seen leader (voiced by Bruce Campbell) knows that these reluctant heroes are not only alive and restored to their primes, but gifted with immunity to aging and disease. How will the 21st century react to these relics of yesteryear? What is the hidden agenda of their secretive leader? And what about M.A.L.I.C.E., the Malevolent Alliance of Lawless Individuals for Crime and Extortion? Can they be stopped, even by the Legends of Yesterday?

The Legends: 

The Six Million Dollar Man (television) - pilot, astronaut, espionage and brute force

The Bionic Woman (television) - teacher, tennis, espionage and brute force

Michael Knight and KITT (television) - crimebusting, infiltration, policing

Rollin Hand (television) - espionage, disguise

Barney Collier (television) - engineering, invention, mechanics

Colt Seavers (television) - stunts, brawling

Robby the Robot (film) - food and drink synthesis, driving, butlering, comic relief

Foxy Brown (film) - revenge, infiltration, knife fighting

Kelly Garrett (television) - infiltration, seduction, karate, pistols

John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (novels) - brawling, jungle survival, exploration, animal handling, hunting

John Shaft (novels, film) - investigation, pistol, brawling

Big Jim (toys) - kung fu, camping, driving, SCUBA

Alan Carter (television) - astronaut, pilot, wisecracks

Stretch Armstrong (toys) - stretching, brooding

Isis (television) - animal friendship, elemental control

April Dancer (television) - espionage, glam

Roy Hinkley (television) - science

Mary Ann Summers (television) - morale, logistics

John Drake (television) - espionage, rage

Belt Jones (film) - brawling, martial arts 

Mission: Unfashionable

Today I watched both the last episode of the original Mission: Impossible TV series, followed by the first episode of its late 80s revival. The original series ended on March 30, 1973; the revival premiered on October 23, 1988. Watching the two episodes back to back was an interesting exercise in observing how the show's formula remained the same while all the aesthetics had evolved dramatically.

While watching the finale of the first series, I noted with some amusement the loud home decor and fashions that so typified the era. One of the bad guys wore a shocking ensemble comprised of loud white, red and green pants, a pink fishnet tank top, brown leather coat and porn-star mustache. He worked in an apartment with truly regrettable wood paneling and a bright orange shag carpet.

The revival's premiere, on the other hand, featured far more spartan aesthetics; the men all wore professional-looking business suits, and decor was muted, angular, less cozy and more stark. The contrast was striking.

The producers, however, clearly enjoyed the original series and did their best to respect it. They brought back Peter Graves to reprise the role of Impossible Missions Force team leader Jim Phelps, hired Phil Morris, son of Greg Morris, to play the son of his father's character, kept Bob Johnson as the always unseen voice who provided Jim with the mission of the week, and they even rehired Lalo Schifrin to update the iconic music. So perhaps it's no surprise that they also kept the so-called "dossier scene," in which Phelps selects which agents are to be used for the current mission. Of course, instead of a paper dossier Phelps as in the original, in the revival Phelps used a high-tech (for the time) computer and wall screen to choose the team. The apartment colour scheme, though, remains the same: black, white and silver, though the furnishings and decor reflect 80s style rather than that of the 60s or 70s.

The first few episodes of the revival series were remakes of scripts from the original series; the revival initially began as an effort to create new content for the 1989-90 television season despite a writer's strike. But the strike ended sooner than anticipated, allowing the show to truly pick up where the original had left off, though with big 80s hair, fancier computers, blander clothes (except perhaps on the women), CDs and a lot more neon.

I watched the revival on and off while attending university, but I don't remember the series well enough to render final judgement. I do find it interesting that on DVD the picture quality of the original series far outshines that of the revival; I can only assume that the revival was shot, or at least edited, on video rather than film. It remains entertaining.

D&D TPK

I made this with a fun little iPhone app created by Bad Robot, the guys behind Lost, the rebooted Star Trek And Mission Impossible III and IV.

"TPK," in this context, stands for "total party kill."

Created with ACTION MOVIE FX
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Review: Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Famed Iron Giant director Brad Bird has crafted the best action film of the year, Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, a fast-paced thriller featuring impressively staged stunts, self-aware but never self-parodying humour, excellent performances and a surprising emotional core.

Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is languishing in a Russian prison when a team of IMF agents bust him out to lead a crucial new mission: stop a maniac from stealing the materials necessary to precipitate a nuclear holocaust. The team's initial job goes awry and the IMF is blamed for the partial destruction of the Kremlin, leading the Secretary to initiate "Ghost Protocol," the disavowal of the entire IMF. With meagre resources and a small team of three additional agents, Ethan Hunt is on the run from the Russians while pursuing a madman with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

The film's setpieces are divided geographically: Budapest, Moscow, Dubai, Mumbai. Each sub-mission puts IMF agents through their paces; there's exciting derring-do with all the requisite gunfire, leaps, car chases and explosions one could ever ask for. All the action is staged with clarity, suspense and surprising verisimilitude. At the film's midpoint, Cruise's Ethan Hunt is forced to free-climb the glass-walled outside of the towering Burj Dubai hotel. The entire sequence is bone-chilling in its effectiveness, and my palms were covered in sweat before the scene was even halfway over. If viewed in IMAX, this scene alone is worth the price of admission.

The film's true strenghth, however, lies in its characters - not just Ethan Hunt, but his team. Each member - William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton) - has their own character arc, enabling the audience to invest in each of them. In the best action films, we're given reason to care about what happens to the protagonists; otherwise, all we have is a series of empty explosions without emotional resonance. Ghost Protocol gives us reason to care.

I appreciated Ghost Protocol all the more because this is not a cynical film. Characters muse out loud about the unrealistic situations they're thrust into, but there's not a hint of self-mockery; the fourth wall is peered through with some curiosity, but never shattered. Rather, the characters seem bemusedly delighted to inhabit their hyperkinetic world. And they look after each other, working as a team, forming genuine bonds of friendship under trying circumstances. The heroes here are well worth emulating: they're empathetic, intelligent, decisive but never rash. And while the film has its share of high-tech gadgets, in the end it is the qualities of the agents themselves that lead to their ultimate success; indeed, this is an important sub-theme of the film.

Unlike many modern films, Ghost Protocol features a real denoument, a chance for the audience to catch their breath after the climax, wrap up a couple of character subplots and summarize the film's themes. It's a welcome respite, one that promises more adventures with this group of agents. I certainly hope Bird, Cruise and their team will return for more missions, since this was the best M:I film by far. Light the fuse!