Culture Shock 08.29.13: Don't feel compelled to rent 'Compulsion'

With a title like "Compulsion," a film is bound to elicit unfair comparisons to Roman Polanski's "Repulsion."

Apart from their near-homonym titles, each centers on a mentally unstable woman trapped in her apartment, and both hint at traumatic childhood abuse. But there the similarities end.

Where Polanski's film is a disturbing thriller, "Compulsion," directed by Egidio Coccimiglio from a screenplay by Floyd Byars, strives to be a dark comedy. Unfortunately, it is only intermittently dark and in no way comedic. Or maybe it isn't supposed to be comedic, in which case it doesn't know what it's supposed to be. Perhaps a cooking show.

The other comparison is to the movie on which "Compulsion" is based, director Cheol-su Park's 1995 film "301/302," which is dark, but intentionally not comedic. At least I don't think so, unless something was lost in the translation from Korean.

Instead of "301/302," the American remake's producers opted for a generic and overused title, which is our first warning sign.

Heather Graham ("The Hangover") is Amy, an aspiring TV chef for whom food is love. Amy looks like she walked out of a 1950s advertisement for the home of the future. She wears sunny floral dresses, her hair is always perfectly shaped, and she always smiles.

She also has a well-off boyfriend, who pays to outfit her kitchen with all the latest culinary toys. But it's clear she isn't getting what she needs from him emotionally. So, she retreats to her cooking and her fantasy life, where she is a famous TV chef, telling a million housewives how to whip up a meal that will spice up not only the their dinner tables but their love lives, too.

Perhaps she did walk out of an advertisement.

Amy lives in Apt. 301, and across the hall in 302 lives Saffron, played by Carrie-Anne Moss ("The Matrix"). Saffron is a former child actress who has aged out of stardom and now finds it almost impossible to get work. Instead she writes a column about sex and relationships, secretly using Amy and her boyfriend for material. But that plot element goes nowhere, and it seems just a vestigial remainder from the South Korean original, where the woman in 302 is a writer, not an actress.

When Amy discovers who Saffron is, Saffron becomes another of her obsessions. Amy, coincidentally, has been a fan for a long time, and she tries to win Saffron's affection with food.

There is just one problem: While Amy seems merely delusional, Saffron has darker demons running around her head, and they manifest as an eating disorder. Saffron literally cannot eat anything without her body rejecting it.

The film misses the opportunity to say something meaningful, while keeping with its foodie theme, by not juxtaposing Saffron's anorexia to Hollywood's obsession with near-skeletal thinness. It's the one thing that could justify transforming the character from writer to actress.

The woman who substitutes food for love and the woman traumatized into starvation are locked in a battle of wills, in which Amy's lifelong obsession with the child star seems an unnecessary distraction. The two function better as equals, which Amy can't be when she reverts to a schoolgirl with a crush.

Graham delivers a performance that winks at the audience. In her kitchen fantasies, she talks to no one and to us at the same time, making us complicit in her delusion. But Moss plays her character straight, as written. She seems to be in a different movie, an actress out of place in a world populated by fakes. Too bad this film doesn't explore that either.

Perhaps the film Saffron is in is a better one.

"Compulsion" (R) is available on DVD (currently at Redbox) and video on demand.

Culture Shock 08.22.13: New Blu-ray, DVD give 'Lifeforce' new life

How to describe "Lifeforce"?

For years, when anyone asked, I summed up Tobe Hooper's 1985 science fiction/horror film as a "Doctor Who" story where the Doctor never shows up to set things right. That summation is especially true if you have in mind early-1970s "Doctor Who," with Jon Pertwee's Doctor stranded on 20th century Earth and a full-time supporting cast of UNIT soldiers and scientists.

"Lifeforce" has all the same trappings, only, as I said, minus the Doctor: an English setting, an extinction-level menace from outer space, and principals who include a guilt-ridden astronaut, an eccentric scientist who specializes in the study of death and a no-nonsense Special Air Service officer.

Then there is the other, more blunt way "Lifeforce" may be summarized: It's the movie with the naked space vampire.

I'm not entirely sure "Lifeforce" is a good movie, but it never fails to entertain, which is the only measure that really counts, and say what you will about it, "Lifeforce" isn't a movie that does anything halfway. That is why it has earned a small but devoted following, and why Shout! Factory has given it a stunning combo Blu-ray/DVD re-release.

The film opens in 1986 with a joint U.S./British mission to Halley's Comet that unexpectedly encounters an alien spacecraft hiding in the comet's tail. Before you can say, "I don't think this is such a great idea," the astronauts, led by Col. Carlsen (Steve Railsback, aka Charles Manson in the 1976 TV movie "Helter Skelter"), are exploring the alien ship, where they find and retrieve three apparently human bodies.

The alien humanoids make it to Earth, but most of the astronauts don't, and before long, one of the aliens — the aforementioned naked space girl, played by French actress and dancer Mathilda May — is on the loose and racking up a body count as she feeds on the life force of unwary humans, who easily fall under her vampiric sway.

Mathilda May as the Space Girl.

As one scientist who narrowly escapes her says, "She was the most overwhelmingly feminine presence I have ever encountered." She is the vampire as succubus, reducing her mostly male victims to ravenous husks that must themselves feed or die. And while the special effects that bring the victims back to life are dated, the results remain startling. It's a deadly battle of the sexes, where feminine erotic power reigns supreme.

They don't make movies quite like this anymore, and it's amazing "Lifeforce" was made in the first place, but no one ever accused producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of subtlety.

On the space girl's trail are Carlsen, the mission's lone survivor, and SAS Col. Caine, portrayed with scene-stealing intensity by Peter Firth ("MI-5," "Equus"), who track her across Britain while "thanatology" expert Dr. Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay) tries to discover her weakness.

Fallada shares a name with the real-life author of "Every Man Dies Alone." Take that for what you will.

"Lifeforce" culminates in a deliriously chaotic final act, with hapless Londoners attacked by cadaverous vampires while the space girl, having finally put on some clothes, prepares to zap everyone's life energies up to her orbiting spaceship.

The new Blu-ray/DVD combo set from Shout! Factory is a marked improvement on the non-anamorphic DVD released by MGM in 1998 and worth the upgrade, and not just for experiencing Ms. May in high definition.

At times absurd, at times thrilling, propelled by an energetic Henry Mancini score and featuring an early supporting performance by Patrick Stewart, "Lifeforce" is the sort of film you must see once just to know such things exist.

Culture Shock 08.15.13: 'Lovelace' biopic leaves little to love

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Culture Shock 08.08.13: TV and movies experience reversal of fortunes

Two new books, taken together, perfectly illustrate the divergent fortunes of television and the movies.

The first is "Difficult Men" by GQ correspondent Brett Martin. In this case, the (overly long) subtitle — "Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From 'The Sopranos' and 'The Wire' to 'Mad Men' and 'Breaking Bad' " — says it all. Television is no longer mostly just sitcoms and episodic police procedurals, although both are still around and doing fine. Now there are complex shows with ongoing stories that attract some of the best actors in the business, the sort of actors who used to do only movies and looked down on TV work.

Driven by writer-creators rather than by directors, television has become the go-to platform for long-form, narrative storytelling.

At the other, seedier end of the street is Lynda Obst's "Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business." Obst is a producer who has a hard time producing movies nowadays, even though her credits include hits like "Adventures in Babysitting" and "Sleepless in Seattle."

The reason is Hollywood doesn't make the kind of modestly budgeted films she makes anymore, unless they're horror films or star-driven comedies. Everything is either low-budget indie films, on the one hand, or grotesquely budgeted effects-driven extravaganzas based on brands with built-in audience appeal. That's why everything Hollywood produces seems to be a remake, a sequel or based on a book, comic book or old TV show.

They're not all bad, but for every "Iron Man" there are a dozen "Man of Steels," crowding out other types of movies. Once, these big-budget would-be blockbusters were tentpoles around which studios built their release schedules. Now, Obst complains, just about every studio movie is a tentpole.

Even a big-name director like Steven Spielberg has to scrape together funding when he wants to make a non-tentpole like his Oscar-bait biopic "Lincoln."

That prompted Spielberg and George Lucas, jointly credited/blamed with creating the "summer blockbuster," to warn that Hollywood's big tent is on the verge of collapsing.

The common denominator behind both TV's and films' fortunes is DVD sales.

The rise of DVDs (and video on demand) in the past 15 or so years made movies more available, a development that was one thing driving pay-TV channels like HBO into original programming as a way to differentiate themselves. The subsequent decline in DVD sales, however, broke all of the Hollywood studios' financial models, leading to the tentpole-dominated model that prevails now.

The decline of DVDs is in part the work of Netflix, which is also credited with helping change TV for the better by encouraging "binge viewing" and producing its own shows like the Emmy-nominated "House of Cards," a fourth season of "Arrested Development" and the latest critical darling, "Orange is the New Black." It's not too much of an exaggeration to say Netflix changed everything.

So, is everything roses for TV and curtains for the movies? Not necessarily.

Television still falls prey to formula. For all the talk of a "creative revolution," how many of these daring new shows can be summed up as "family man (or woman) with a secret criminal life"?

And Hollywood has been here before, when big-budget disasters like 1963's "Cleopatra" nearly sank studios and cleared the way for a new generation of filmmakers who made smaller, more personal films. After a decade of bloated epics, we got the generation of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese and, yes, George Lucas.

Lest we forget, the original "Star Wars" was also a modestly budgeted film, by today's standards.

Culture Shock 08.01.13: Jackman makes 'The Wolverine' his own

Hugh Jackman wasn't the first choice to play Wolverine. Nor was James Mangold ("3:10 to Yuma") the first director attached to "The Wolverine." All films are as much the result of chance as design. But in the case of "The Wolverine" it shows.

Dougray Scott was the first pick to portray the scrappy mutant in 2000's "X-Men," but he dropped out when production on "Mission: Impossible II" fell behind. Now, it's nearly impossible to imagine anyone other than Jackman in the role. Like Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Christopher Reeve's Kal-El, Jackman's Logan is definitive, even if he isn't a carbon copy of the comic-book character.

By contrast, Mangold and screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank never put a distinctive mark on the film, which is loosely based on Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's four-issue "Wolverine" miniseries published in 1982. (Not that Claremont and Miller get screen credit for their contribution.)

That is a shame, because there are seeds sown here that, with a bit of tending, could have born fruit.

"The Wolverine" picks up immediately after the events of "X-Men: The Last Stand," in which Logan was forced to kill the love of his life, Jean Grey, after she lost control of her powers, went all Dark Phoenix on everyone, and threatened to destroy the world. Heartbroken, depressed and blaming himself for Jean's death, which is strictly true, Logan has retreated to the isolation of the wilderness.

But even playing hermit can't keep Wolverine completely off the radar. He is tracked down by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a mutant who can foretell people's deaths. She persuades Logan to fly back with her to Japan, where her employer, an old acquaintance of Logan's, wants to settle a longstanding debt.

During World War II, the ageless Logan was a prisoner of war in Nagasaki the day the atomic bomb fell, and he saved the life of a soldier named Yashida. Now on his high-tech deathbed, a billionaire industrialist Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) wants to give Logan a gift no one else can: mortality.

With the help of some superscience, Yashida will get Logan's super-healing powers, while Logan will get to live a normal life, growing old and eventually dying, ending the "curse" of immortality.

Yet Wolverine's existential crisis doesn't last long before taking a backseat to the Yashida family's internal power struggles, which are far less compelling.

When the Yakuza attempt to assassinate Yashida's granddaughter and designated successor, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), Wolverine is forced back into the "best there is at what he does" role he has tried to escape since Jean's death. Wolverine, the "ronin" or masterless samurai, is back in protector mode.

Only this time, Wolverine's healing powers aren't working, which makes fighting an army of criminals, and later ninjas, a lot more difficult.

What follows is the movie's best action set piece, with Logan and Mariko fighting their way across Tokyo. Afterward, it's all downhill en route to an overblown ending that looks like it wandered in from some other movie. When we finally learn the villain's master plan, the most striking revelation is that nothing we've just seen makes a lick of sense.

Still, Jackman makes it almost worthwhile. He is an engaging presence, and while he doesn't have much chemistry with either of his love interests, Mariko or Jean (Famke Janssen, appearing in several dream sequences), his role-reversed relationship with Yukio is fun while it lasts. If "The Wolverine" is about anything, it's about Logan as seen through the eyes of the women in his life.

How might "The Wolverine" have been different had director Darren Aronofsky not dropped out? Maybe its themes of life, death and immortality, which Aronofsky explored so well in "The Fountain" (also starring Jackman), would have been better examined? But we'll never know.

That's chance, and life, for you.

Culture Shock 07.25.13: 'Stoker' is a domestic disturbance

Philosophers and scientists have wondered for millennia about what makes us who we are, whether it is nature or nurture. It's a debate that predates even Darwin and modern biology.

Can the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle become a real lady? Can Moe, Larry and Curly become true gentlemen? Or, like Popeye the Sailor, are we what we are and that's all that we are?

To put a finer point on it: Are monsters born or bred?

That's the head-high thicket into which director Chan-wook Park wanders in "Stoker" (DVD and Blu-ray), one of the year's most daring and disturbing films.

All is not right with India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska). As she says, her father is dead. But that is just the beginning of what troubles her.

Her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman), is self-absorbed and perhaps overly eager to move on following her husband's death.

India is the exact opposite, and we wonder about the nature of her relationship with the father who took her on weekend hunting trips and helped her amass a collection of taxidermied kills.

"He used to say, sometimes you need to do something bad to stop you from doing something worse," India tells us, leaving those of us familiar with "Dexter" in mind of Harry's Code.

While Evelyn longs to get out of the house for shopping trips and ice cream excursions, India is in mourning, draped in Puritan black and reading books about death rituals. You could cut the tension, or perhaps a throat, with a knife.

Then arrives Charles Stoker, or as Evelyn calls him, "Uncle Charlie," her dead husband's brother and the uncle India never knew she had.

Isn't is odd to have an uncle, your dad's brother, whom no one ever bothered to mention? India thinks so, but her face, as always, betrays nothing.

Still, Charles (Matthew Goode of "Watchmen") is eager to help. He cooks. He tends the garden. He spends quality time with Evelyn, who seems only too eager to play Queen Gertrude to Charles' usurping Claudius.

But India is no Hamlet, and what Charles most wants is to take his blossoming niece under his wing.

He wants to be friends, but as India observes, they don't have to be friends when they're family. And family ties are the ties that bind, sometimes with zip ties.

Before long, India and Uncle Charlie are seated together at the piano, and for the first time, India, her fingers dancing on the keys, displays passion.

Where India's tutelage with her father left off, her tutelage with Charles picks up, and the gleam in Uncle Charlie's eye looks like something more than pride.

Coming of age isn't easy for anyone, especially in the movies, but coming of age in the Stoker family presents unique challenges that flirt with breaking the most taboo of taboos.

Park, a South Korean director best known to American audiences for his "Vengeance Trilogy" — "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," "Oldboy" and "Lady Vengeance" — delves deep into the aesthetic of "American Gothic" for this tale of a family in decay. The promotional art gives the game away, depicting Kidman and Goode as Grant Wood's unhappy couple, with Wasikowska as the pitchfork in the middle.

Wasikowska (Alice in Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland") gives what can best be called an obsessive performance, which combines an eerie lack of empathy with a sense of something burning beneath the surface. It's a performance that captivates and repels, and most of all surprises.

Nothing, least of all India, is what it seems.

Culture Shock 07.18.13: 'Pacific Rim' honors 50 years of fighting monsters

There is nothing more quintessentially Japanese than the idea of giant robots fighting giant monsters. Japanese producers have entertained audiences for five decades by pitting futuristic marvels of human ingenuity against lumbering, primeval and often mindless forces of nature.

Perhaps that is what you get when you have a society that has embraced a kind of neon-soaked, "Blade Runner" aesthetic of the future yet, because of geography and geology, faces the ever-looming threat of primordial devastation from earthquakes and tsunamis.

"Pacific Rim" director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") and screenwriter Travis Beacham ("Clash of the Titans") make no apologies for their love of Japanese cartoons (aka, anime) and monster movies. Peer into their film's DNA, and you'll find the genetic markers of everything from Gamera to Voltron.

In the near future, humanity faces extinction when a dimensional rift opens deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, allowing creatures from another world to come through and flatten cities all across the Pacific Rim, from San Francisco to Sydney.

To protect themselves from this seemingly endless parade of monsters, called kaiju, the nations of the Pacific Rim build giant robots, called jaegers, to fight them.

Hey, it's exactly the strategy anyone who grew up on Japanese cartoons would adopt.

The movie's characters are equally drawn from anime mainstays. They include the heroic jaeger pilot (Charlie Hunnam), the hothead (Robert Kazinsky), the quiet but formidable female (Rinko Kikuchi), the gruff and stoic leader who is keeping a secret (Idris Elba) and not one but two mad scientists who double as comic relief (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman).

"Pacific Rim" is a direct descendent of "Neon Genesis Evangelion," the influential 1990s anime series that took all of the "giant robot" cliches and mixed them with a heady dose of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

Del Toro and Beacham dial down the Freud. But just about every character still has daddy issues, especially Kikuchi's Mako Mori, who, with her purple-streaked hair and quiet demeanor, is the flesh-and-blood embodiment of "Evangelion" dream girl Rei Ayanami.

Basically "Pacific Rim" is from the template Japanese animators have used for decades, only now translated, by a Mexican director and an American screenwriter, into a colorful, action-packed, live-action thrill ride that's stripped down to the Platonic ideal of the robot vs. monster genre.

While the American-produced "Godzilla" of 1998 hid its monster, the kaiju of "Pacific Rim" are impossible to miss. While Michael Bay's "Transformers" films are an incoherent blur of CGI, the fights of "Pacific Rim" form a brilliantly choreographed ballet of destruction.

In "Pacific Rim," the power of nature is everywhere. Even when kaiju aren't attacking, our heroes' last-stand sanctuary in Hong Kong is besieged by monsoon conditions. But if nature is a constant threat, humanity's official institutions are a constant failure. Shades of Hurricane Katrina.

The world's governments abandon the jaeger program in favor of building a giant wall, which, unsurprisingly, fails to keep out the kaiju. Elba's Stacker Pentecost, however, opts for a more comprehensive solution to the "alien" problem. He turns to underground figures like Hong Kong crime lord Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), who can get him anything he needs, for a price.

Unlike other post-9/11 disaster movies that dwell on the visuals of falling buildings and ruined cities, "Pacific Rim," when not caught up in its spectacular metal-on-monster mayhem, focuses on how the human spirit overcomes a crisis, even in the face of that most intractable of monsters — the foolish politician.

Culture Shock 07.04.13: In 'The Trial' we're all guilty of everything

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning."

So begins Franz Kafka's absurdist novel of bureaucracy, totalitarianism and paranoia, "The Trial."

Orson Welles directed a 1962 film version starring Anthony Perkins, who once told a revealing story about the direction Welles gave him. As I recall, the story went something like this:

Perkins was having difficulty finding an approach to the role of Joseph K. that Welles liked. So he asked Welles how he should play the part.

"Play him as if he's guilty," Welles said.

"Guilty of what?"

"Everything!"

That bit of direction makes all the difference. The Joseph K. described by Kafka's omniscient narrator is, we're led to believe, blameless, a victim of "lies." The Joseph K. played by Perkins, on the other hand, is guilty. He's been found out, but no one will tell him the crime he's accused of committing, and it could be anything — or everything.

It shows in Perkins' brilliant and overlooked performance. His Joseph K. is twitchy, nervous and paranoid. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Nor does it mean you're innocent.

That's the insight Welles brings to the material. There are no innocents; we're all guilty of something. It's no accident that Welles paints his version of "The Trial" in the stark black and white of film noir, a genre he knew well from having made "Touch of Evil" and "The Lady from Shanghai." Everyone in film noir is compromised in some way, and Welles' "The Trial" does Kafka one better.

Welles says we're not only all the potential victims of faceless bureaucrats and politicians, we all have it coming, too.

That isn't to say all crimes are equal. Sometimes all it takes is a small crime, maybe even a crime you didn't know was a crime or that you committed.

In his book "Three Felonies a Day," Boston-based attorney Harvey Silvergate argues that because of the proliferation of complex and vague laws, the average American commits three felonies a day. That's felonies with an F, not merely petty crimes like speeding or jaywalking. That leaves all of us at the mercy and caprice of bureaucrats and prosecutors. So much for the rule of law. In the "Land of the Free," you're free only because no one has thought to lock you up.

So you say to yourself, "That can't be! I haven't committed any crimes. What crimes could I possibly have committed?"

Now you know exactly how Joseph K. feels. Is that a little bit of sweat starting to form on your upper lip, by chance? Is it starting to show? Do you look guilty? You sure look guilty to me.

So does Joseph K., who, under Welles' direction in this neglected and underrated film — I think it's one of his best — becomes a film noir everyman, undone by a deadly combination of the system, femme fatales (Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Elsa Martinelli) and his own sins, whatever they might be, because they could be anything.

"The Trial" is gorgeously shot by Edmond Richard, who would go on to shoot Luis Buñuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire" and "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." Taking advantage of location shooting in Croatia, he and Welles create a surreal, off-kilter environment of such immense scale that it threatens to swallow K. even as he attempts to navigate its shadowy corridors.

The system is bigger than any of us.

Welles' "The Trial" is available on DVD and Netflix instant.

Culture Shock 06.27.13: Richard Matheson is legend

There is only one word that truly describes Richard Matheson. He was a storyteller.

There are writers and novelists and dramatists and screenwriters. But there are precious few storytellers, people who can weave tapestries of words and magic regardless of the medium. Writers for whom the story is everything, who turn out perfectly polished gems that make other writers weep with envious love-rage, and who glide between form — screenplay, short story, novel — as easily as others might change shoes. Or so they make it seem.

We lost one last year when we lost Ray Bradbury. Another, Harlan Ellison, as marvelous as he is often maddening, is still plugging away, despite poor health and a convention appearance "farewell" three years ago, bless his mischievous heart. And now we've lost Matheson, who died Monday at age 87, leaving behind a lifetime of stories.

These are stories you know. The harrowing vampire apocalypse of "I Am Legend," which has been adapted for the big screen three times, with Vincent Price, Charlton Heston and, most recently, Will Smith. His haunting tale "The Shrinking Man," which became the equally haunting film "The Incredible Shrinking Man." The supernatural nail-biter "Hell House," which he later turned into the movie "The Legend of Hell House." The screenplay for "Duel," which set into motion the career of its director, a talented lad by the name of Steven Spielberg.

It's an honorable calling, the calling of storyteller.

But the inevitable is inevitable. The grand old men of storytelling are getting older, their typewriters growing silent. And few have risen to the challenge of succeeding them. Neil Gaiman, perhaps, scribbling away with pen and pad, a master of comic books, fantasy novels and "Doctor Who" episodes, comes closest.

Before television became all about season-spanning story arcs, there was an art to crafting a self-contained story that fit comfortably in an hour or half-hour time slot.

No TV show is more synonymous with the finely honed short story than "The Twilight Zone," and no one is more synonymous with "The Twilight Zone" than its creator and head writer Rod Serling. But another writer was just as responsible as Serling for making the show what it was.

You guessed it: Richard Matheson.

Both he and Serling adapted his short stories for the show. Soon, Matheson began contributing original scripts as well.

Matheson's stories are among the best of the series' run. They include "The Invaders," which pits Agnes Moorehead ("Bewitched") against doll-sized visitors from another world, and "Little Girl Lost."

His two most memorable "Twilight Zone" stories, however, have one thing in common: William Shatner. The first was season 2's "Nick of Time," in which Shatner and Patricia Breslin portray a young couple who become obsessed with a cafe's fortune-telling machine and its uncanny predictions. The second was season 5's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."

"Nightmare" is the definitive "Twilight Zone" story, never mind that Matheson adapted it from one of his previous short stories. From Shatner's performance as a man struggling to retain his sanity to the grotesque gremlin clinging to the airplane's wing, so much about the story is now iconic.

But it all sprang from Matheson's typewriter.

Through the decades, Matheson remained versatile. His fantasies ran from the terrifying ("The Night Stalker" with Darren McGavin) to the comic ("The Raven" with Vincent Price) to the romantic ("Somewhere in Time" and "What Dreams May Come"). The form and the style didn't matter.

All that matters to the storyteller is the story.

Culture Shock 06.20.13: Enter the ninja — in leg warmers

When you think about it, the 1980s were all about two things: dancing and ninjas.

The decade was defined by dance movies, from "Flashdance" to "Footloose" to "Dirty Dancing." And despite their reputation for stealth, you couldn't turn anywhere without glimpsing a ninja. Italian tough guy Franco Nero ("Django") portrayed one in "Enter the Ninja," and American tough guy Lee Van Cleef ("The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") played one in the forgotten TV series "The Master." G.I. Joe faced off against toy ninjas, and comic book auteur Frank Miller ("Sin City") pitted Daredevil against a magical ninja army called The Hand.

If you could somehow combine dancing and ninjas, you'd have the most '80s movie ever.

As it happens, someone already did, and it's called "Ninja III: The Domination," now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.

To find a more bonkers movie, you'd have to go to '80s or '90s Hong Kong, and even then the madness of Hong Kong's most insane films is largely a matter of cultural differences and dodgy subtitles. "Ninja III: The Domination," however, even with its partly Japanese cast and Israeli producers — the infamous Cannon Films duo of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus — is possessed of a uniquely American madness, which makes it a fine way to spend a late night with friends and whatever intoxicants are legal in your jurisdiction. (You crazy kids in Colorado and Washington have fun.)

The action starts when a ninja (David Chung) kills a yuppie businessman on a sunny, Arizona golf course, because that's what assassins known for their stealth do. The murder attracts the police who, being police officers of the '80s, are just itching to shoot someone, which they do — repeatedly — after a prolonged chase, during which the ninja performs such feats as stabbing a cop through the roof of his squad car.

The ninja, filled with more lead than ancient Roman pottery, collapses near where a young technician named Christie is repairing telephone lines. The next thing you know, his soul had jumped into her body, where it awaits the right moment to strike.

Christie, played by Lucinda Dickey, star of "Breakin'" and its punch line of a sequel, "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," is the dance-movie part of the equation. When she's not working for the phone company, Christie is dancercising at the local gym. With her blue-collar, stereotypically male job and her fondness for spandex and leg warmers, she's the reincarnation of Jennifer Beals' Alex in "Flashdance."

The ninja asserts himself slowly, and at first it just seems like Christie has become more aggressive, along with picking up some mad skills. But when she embarrasses some local street toughs, she catches the interest of the cops, one of whom — unfortunately for us — is determined to become the movie's love interest. Before long, the ninja is taking Christie's body out for a test drive, using it to assassinate random guys playing pool in their underwear.

To illustrate just how perfectly '80s "Ninja III" is, you could probably duplicate all of its special effects with one trip to the nearest mall's Spencer Gifts. To recreate a ninja possessing someone, all you need are a strobe light, dry ice, smoke machine and miniature laser show.

Shô Kosugi ("Enter the Ninja," "The Master") co-stars as the "good ninja" and choreographs the fights, which are more like Capt. Kirk vs. the Gorn than what you'd see in contemporaneous martial arts flicks from China and Japan.

Apart from an intentionally funny scene where a mystic played by the reliable James Hong ("Big Trouble in Little China") tries to exorcise the ninja, nothing in "Ninja III" quite works. But most of it at least fails in the spectacularly entertaining fashion for which the 1980s were known.

If you're going to fail, fail big. Go full savings and loan.

Culture Shock 06.13.13: Return to 'Astro City' is long overdue

"Astro City" No. 1 (2013).

After such a long time away, the signpost is still familiar and reassuring.

"Welcome to Astro City.”

Three years is too long, but with industry upheavals and "Astro City” creator/writer Kurt Busiek's health issues finally in the rearview mirror, one of the most beloved superhero comics on the stands is back, with a new No. 1 issue — never mind this is the 60th issue overall — that picks up where the series left off and serves as a jumping-on point for new readers.

If you're new, not to worry. There's a tour guide, a fellow called the Broken Man, who looks like a blue-skinned, 1970s David Bowie and connects the dots like a deranged Fox Mulder. But the clue he may know what he's talking about is he seems aware he's a fictional character in a book, and it doesn't trouble him in the least. Not when there are other things to worry about, like the gigantic inter-dimensional doorway that has suddenly appeared, tall and proud among the futuristic skyscrapers of Astro City's gleaming skyline.

Just another day in Astro City, where superheroes are as common as pennies on a sidewalk and Earth-shaking events as frequent as government holidays.

Busiek and artist collaborator Brent Eric Anderson waste no time introducing new characters and reintroducing old friends. Making a madcap debut is American Chibi, whose appearance and perky personality appear to have sprung from a Japanese cartoon. And returning is the Samaritan, Busiek's version of Superman written properly.

But where Busiek is always best, where he works real magic and metaphorical heroics, is with the ordinary, average people who just happen to live in a world of the extraordinary.

One of the greatest superhero tales ever told is Busiek's "Astro City” story "The Nearness of You” (collected in the "Astro City: Confession” trade paperback), which focuses on an ordinary man haunted by dreams of a woman he never met. An ordinary woman. Not too beautiful. Not even his type, really. But the dreams leave him with an ache, a sense of something missing. It turns out they are memories of a wife he had in another timeline – a timeline rewritten during one of those reality-rebooting events superheroes deal with every few years.

"The Nearness of You” is not only a beautiful story with a perfect ending, which I won't spoil, and it's not only a look at the "collateral damage” superheroes cause, it's a gentle critique of the comics industry, which has fallen into an endless cycle of huge events, multi-book crossovers, and reboots that lead writers to retell the same old stories again and again.

DC Comics is more guilty of this than Marvel, and it shows. How many times has Superman's origin story been retold, with a few minor alterations here and there?

Published under DC's semi-autonomous Vertigo banner, "Astro City” is mercifully free of DC's regular continuity-rewriting antics. Also, despite his use of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman analogues in the guise of the Samaritan, Winged Victory and the Confessor, Busiek's writing has always seemed more Marvel than DC.

So it is with the new "Astro City,” which kicks off with a story that puts Busiek's spin on a typical 1960s Stan Lee/Jack Kirby tale for Marvel, complete with a character who could have been designed by "King” Kirby himself. Busiek's "spin,” naturally, is to link this all-powerful, cosmic being's story to that of an ordinary man on the street. Humanity and the problems and hopes of everyday people, even in the face of literally larger-than-life events, are what interest Busiek.

And they are why "Astro City” remains a cut above all those other superhero comics.

"Astro City” No. 1 is currently available in comic book specialty shops and on the ComiXology app for Android and iPad.

Culture Shock 06.06.13: Season 4 is our 'Arrested Development'

A funny thing happened after "Arrested Development" was canceled in 2006.

The housing bubble burst.

"Hey, that's not funny!" you say? Not on its own, no, but who could have suspected a sitcom about a bankrupt family forced to live in a model house in an unfinished subdivision could prove so prophetic?

Yet as the old economy stagnated, the new economy kept on keeping on. Canceled by Fox, "Arrested Development" was resurrected by Netflix, which has released the entire fourth season all at once, because the way Americans watch television has also kept on keeping on.

Thanks to Netflix and its streaming service, supported by a growing library of TV programs, binge viewing is rapidly becoming the norm.

Who hasn't lost an entire day to a "Battlestar Galactica" marathon?

But enough about my problems. This is about the Bluth family's problems, which are as numerous and ridiculous as ever.

Michael (Jason Bateman), the son who passes for the responsible member of the Bluth family, has cut ties with the rest of his family. Again. No, this time he means it. He has sold his stock in the family company and finally finished, on his own, that subdivision. Just in time for the housing crash.

So, broke and homeless, Michael has moved in with his son, George-Michael (Michael Cera). Unfortunately, George-Michael is at college and lives in a dorm.

Meanwhile, family matriarch Lucille (Jessica Walter) is preparing for her trial for hijacking the Queen Mary in an attempt to flee from the Securities and Exchange Commission. (See the end of season 3.) The rest of the family is strangely ambivalent.

And while all of that is going on, the family patriarch, George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), is hatching a scheme involving his twin brother Oscar (also Jeffrey Tambor), a sweat lodge, gullible corporate CEOs, cheap desert real estate, and a plan to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The rest of the Bluth family is also on hand, including youngest brother Buster (Tony Hale), who still has a hook for a hand. Eldest brother G.O.B. is still trying to find the ultimate magic trick. Adopted sister Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) is still trying to find herself. And brother-in-law Tobias (David Cross) is still trying to find a clue. All unsuccessfully.

Old supporting characters are back, too, like Henry Winkler's crooked lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn and Liza Minnelli's unbalanced Lucille 2. But the heart of the story belongs to Michael and George Sr.

Michael finds himself in Hollywood, trying to turn his family's story into a movie for Ron Howard, which adds a new wrinkle to Howard being the show's narrator. And while Michael is caught up in the entertainment economy, George Sr. is caught up in his old ways: shady real estate deals and corrupt government contracts. It's just like old times. It's how the Bluths got into this mess to start with.

Unlike the original run of "Arrested Development," each episode of the fourth season focuses on a particular member of the Bluth clan. That's probably owing to scheduling conflicts. Everyone in the cast has moved on to other projects since 2006. But series creator Mitchell Hurwitz makes that work for him. Each character's story arc ends up crossing the others' arcs in surprising and funny ways.

In a way, the entire season is one very long episode that, for reasons of custom, is split into 15 segments. It's the first TV show meant specifically for binge viewing. If you don't watch at least the first six episodes in one sitting, you're not doing it right.

So, a television show that began as the story of a dysfunctional family is now equally as much the story of a dysfunctional economy, but delivered in a format best suited to the new economy.

This is our arrested development.

Culture Shock 05.30.13: 'The Burning' is a forgotten slasher gem

In a classic "Seinfeld" episode, "The Opposite," George Costanza, realizing his instincts are always wrong, decides to do the opposite of what they tell him. When his instincts say lie, he tells the truth. When his gut reaction is do nothing, he does something. The strategy works miracles.

Now apply it to slasher movies, where kids, campers and promiscuous teenagers have been doing the wrong thing for roughly 35 years. When your instinct says wander away from everyone for a skinny dip, don't. When your gut says make out with your boyfriend in the woods, don't. When you think you should go down to the basement alone, don't.

That would make for a slasher movie with a very low body count. Fortunately for us, kids in slasher movies always go with their guts, even if that means their guts end up on the floor, and especially when one of those kids is "George Costanza."

Long before he was George, Jason Alexander was Dave, one of the unlucky campers in the 1981 horror flick "The Burning," slickly promoted with a trailer in which the announcer gravely intones lines like, "If you're looking forward to midnight swims, don't."

Without an endless stream of sequels and remakes to keep its name alive, "The Burning" has fallen into obscurity. That's a shame because it's not only one of the best slasher movies to come out of the '80s, it has a pedigree that's pretty remarkable. It's the first film produced by the now powerhouse team of Bob and Harvey Weinstein, it features makeup effects by Tom Savini and a creepy electronic score by Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, and it's the first screen credit for not only the future George Costanza but also Fisher Stevens ("Short Circuit") and future Oscar winner Holly Hunter.

It's now been rescued from the vault by Shout! Factory, which has released "The Burning" in a DVD/Blu-ray combo "collector's edition" that looks great without bleaching away the film's lo-fi roots.

The story, which the Weinsteins co-wrote, draws from campfire tales counselors told to scare young New Yorkers at Hudson Valley summer camps in the 1960s and '70s. When a prank goes awry, Camp Blackfoot's creepy handyman, Cropsy (Lou David), is burned alive. He survives, barely, but returns as a horribly disfigured boogeyman to have his revenge.

It's not exactly a plot-heavy movie. Even "Friday the 13th" has it beat on that count. But it is character-heavy for a slasher flick, taking its time to let us care about some of these stock characters (the good girl, the bad girl, the jock, the dweeb) before they are gruesomely dispatched.

Unlike the "pure evil" Michael Myers but like the childlike Jason Voorhees, Cropsy flirts with being a sympathetic figure. Even if it's largely misdirected, his rage is born of mistreatment. He's the teased and humiliated outsider who is ignored, except as a subject of ridicule, and treated as something less than human even before his transformation into an unstoppable killer.

As far as the campers who accidentally set Cropsy on fire are concerned, he's a monster even before he comes back seeking vengeance. But when we see their contorted faces watching through the window as Cropsy awakes screaming, we wonder who the real monster is. When it comes to monsters, kids can be the cruelest of all.

But apart from drive-in sociology, "The Burning" delivers where it really counts.

Cropsy's garden-shears killing spree serves up several great kills, which are the main reason we're watching, and the rules of the slasher genre were still in flux in 1981, so some of the attacks still can surprise. They're not all variations on the kill scenes we've seen in the "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" sequels.

So maybe there is an upside to being virtually forgotten: No one spends the next three decades ripping off your best tricks.

Culture Shock 05.23.13: This is a 'Star Trek' into disaster

"Star Trek Into Darkness" is like a greatest hits album of all your old favorites, only rerecorded by Muzak. It's turbolift music.

It's called "Star Trek," the characters have the same names as the "Star Trek" characters who appeared on TV in the 1960s, and the plot borrows liberally from where many "Star Treks" have gone before. But this is a "Star Trek" Gene Roddenberry would barely recognize.

Director J.J. Abrams — already jumped ship to the "Star Wars" franchise — has put his distinctive mark on the "Star Trek" universe. Well, I say "distinctive," but how distinctive is a generic summer action movie with nothing to set it apart from the competition except Abrams' bizarre obsession with lens flares?

I'm not sure who the intended audience is. From beginning to end, "Star Trek Into Darkness" is a patchwork of allusions, in-jokes, and red herrings that depend on a working knowledge of the "Star Trek" mythos. Yet Abrams, his regular screenwriting collaborators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and co-writer Damon Lindelof have so warped everything they've pilfered from Treks past that I can't imagine many longtime Trekkies (or Trekkers) being happy with the results.

And the movie's emotional high points are completely unearned. We may have known these characters for years, but as far as they're concerned, they just met.

Meanwhile, an unschooled viewer isn't likely to get much besides motion sickness.

When last we left the crew of the USS Enterprise, they had just been placed under the command of a smug rookie captain with almost no experience outside of the academy, because Starfleet will apparently hand over its newest ship to just about anyone. To its credit, "Star Trek Into Darkness" starts out addressing that issue, with Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) so flagrantly violating Starfleet protocols that he is relieved of command.

There is a fine line between Kirk as charming proto-"Mad Men" womanizer (as played by William Shatner) and Kirk as oversexed fratboy douchebag. Pine's Kirk crosses it like the Kobayashi Maru crosses the neutral zone. But even that is easy to take compared to the lovebird bickering between Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana). I wonder if Uhura will remember she's dating a Vulcan? I wonder if Spock will remember it's illogical to date a junior officer? Eh, guess not.

Of course, Kirk isn't out of the captain's chair long before a terrorist attack aimed at Starfleet's senior officers puts him back on the Enterprise bridge, with orders to hunt down and kill the terrorist, allegedly a rogue Starfleet officer named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch).

It's hardly a spoiler to give away that Harrison is actually Khan in disguise, because apart from the name, this character is nothing like the one Ricardo Montalban portrayed in "Space Seed" and "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." Cumber-Khan, as I call him, is some sort of ridiculous super-ninja with magic healing blood. His midi-chlorians must be off the scale. Why call the character Khan when he's nothing like Khan, except as a bone to fans who would rather just watch "Star Trek II" again?

Well, this is, in part, a Lindelof script, and as he showed us with "Prometheus" and "Lost," stories that make sense and characters who behave somewhat rationally are not his forte. Ask yourself why anyone in "Star Trek Into Darkness" does what he does, and you'll unravel the tapestry.

And as brilliant and fun to watch as Cumberbatch is in the BBC's "Sherlock," he's simply tiresome here, as are most of the performances, apart from Karl Urban's underused Dr. McCoy, who does recall DeForest Kelley's cantankerous but humanistic portrayal.

Abrams has said he was never a "Star Trek" fan, and it shows. His two films play like a reconstruction from a CliffsNotes synopsis. Well, whatever. He is "Star Wars" fans' problem now.

Culture Shock 05.16.13: Revenge is a dish served cold

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." — old Klingon proverb.

Sushi is also a dish best served cold, and "Sushi Girl" makes it a buffet of both.

The debut feature film by director, co-writer and co-producer Kern Saxton, "Sushi Girl" (DVD, Blu-ray and streaming on Netflix and Amazon) is probably the best Quentin Tarantino movie Quentin Tarantino didn't make. Admittedly, that's a low bar. QT has many imitators, some of whose films he even produced, but imitation has become the sincerest form of failure.

Saxton doesn't fail, but he doesn't entirely succeed either, delivering what basically is a remake of  Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" in all but name. It even opens with a classic Tarantino trope: another movie's title song, in this case Shirley Bassey's "Diamonds Are Forever."

Six years after a diamond heist gone bad, Fish, the one thief who didn't get away, is unexpectedly released from prison — time off for good behavior — and whisked away to a gathering in his honor.

If Fish seems vaguely familiar, that's probably because he's portrayed by Noah Hathaway, who as a child played Boxey in the original "Battlestar Galactica" before becoming a teen heartthrob as Atreyu in 1984's "The Neverending Story."

The other four attendees are his former partners in crime. And the big boss, Duke, played by Tony Todd ("Candyman") has set out a feast to celebrate the prodigal son's return: sushi served on the nude body of a beautiful woman, paid not to react to anything she sees or hears.

This silent, unmoving "sushi girl" (Cortney Palm) is our window into their world.

So, after a little bit of reminiscing about old times, Fish's old crew has only one question for him: Where are the diamonds?

Best just to say that what follows involves a chair, duct tape and lots of everyday household implements both sharp and blunt. And while Duke and his gang try to get answers out of Fish, the film dribbles out a few answers of its own, in flashback.

An imposing 6-foot-5 with an even more imposing voice, Todd, who also served as executive producer, brings much-needed gravitas to the proceedings, while Hathaway plays on our sympathy by working those expressive brown eyes of his. Hathaway hasn't been in front of a camera in nearly 20 years, but he hasn't lost a step since he was a kid actor having to react to imaginary creatures just off-screen.

Rounding out the gang without making much of an impression are James Duval as the one member who has sympathy for Fish and Andy Mackenzie as the team's muscle.

That leaves only the resident psycho, Crow, played as a gay stereotype by Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill. Hamill has spent so long as a voice actor for cartoon characters it seems to be his default mode, and he plays Crow as a cross between his own Joker from "Batman: The Animated Series" and Heath Ledger's Joker from "The Dark Knight," complete with a tangled mop of greasy blond hair.

You get the feeling Hamill is not acting in the same movie as everyone else. He'd be more at home in Gotham, perhaps discussing the merits of market fresh strawberries with Bane. And that's got to make anyone looking forward to Hamill possibly appearing as Luke in the upcoming "Star Wars: Episode VII" just a little bit nervous.

Tarantino veterans Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn and Danny Trejo show up for glorified cameos, as does the legendary Sonny Chiba as the sushi chef, who might as well be — and probably is meant to be  — Chiba's Hattori Hanzo character from QT's "Kill Bill."

Overall, "Sushi Girl" is a pleasant enough diversion, with a twist you'll probably see coming. But its main fault is that nothing lives up to the promise of the stylish opening titles.

Culture Shock 05.09.13: New director builds a better Iron Man

Like its two predecessors and "The Avengers" before it, "Iron Man 3" is as much a comedy as an action movie. As before, it's fueled by the affable, wisecracking presence of Robert Downey Jr., again making the now 50-year-old comic book character Tony Stark his own.

Don't believe me? Open the latest "Invincible Iron Man" comic book and you'll see the character now more closely resembles Downey than the Stark of old. The movies have become the real Marvel Universe, while the comics have become a kind of fan fiction, except the writers get paid.

Joining Downey this time is writer/director Shane Black ("Lethal Weapon," "Monster Squad"), who has inherited the franchise from "Iron Man" and "Iron Man 2" director Jon Favreau, although Favreau still gets screen time as Stark's chauffeur/head of security Happy Hogan.

No stranger to the action-comedy formula, Black handles the alternating punches and punchlines so deftly you barely notice that it's all just a high-octane feint for his real agenda: a critique of the war on terror.

After the somewhat disappointing "Iron Man 2," which had to do too much heavy lifting to set up the Marvel movies that followed, "Iron Man 3" gets us back on track, with a more personal story that puts a new spin on Stark's "I am Iron Man" confession at the end of the first film.

Following the world-changing events of "The Avengers," the formerly confident Stark is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He's finally in a committed relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), but he doesn't know how to protect her from the threats he knows are out there. So, he retreats to the security of his workshop and his armor.

He's only forced out of hiding when Happy is critically injured in an attack apparently staged by the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), the mysterious terrorist hinted at in the first film.

The Mandarin is behind a bombing campaign that has American intelligence agencies baffled. What they don't know is the apparent suicide bombers aren't detonating bombs, they are bombs — living bombs caused by an experiment gone wrong.

That experiment is extremis, a biotechnology created by Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), who sought Tony's help with it — unsuccessfully — years before. Now extremis is in the hands of Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), another scientist Tony brushed off back in his playboy days.

What extremis is supposed to do is regenerate lost limbs, making it a godsend for veterans who have returned from the war on terror missing arms and legs. What Killian wants it to do is create super soldiers. And when its recipients literally go off, well, that's where the Mandarin comes in.

Under all of this is the subtext: an indictment both of the war on terror, as being largely a fiction exploited by military contractors, and the government's treatment of injured veterans. It's a coincidence that "Iron Man 3" opens as the Veterans Administration's case backlog reaches critical mass.

Between the Mandarin's living bombs and Stark's PTSD, this is a movie about wounded warriors.

Also back from "Iron Man 2" is Don Cheadle as Tony's best friend and government liaison Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes, whose Stark-designed War Machine armor has been given a red, white and blue makeover and rebranded the Iron Patriot.

For Tony and Rhodey it's a joke. War Machine is a much cooler name. But as far as the subtext is concerned, it's a more honest name. The "war machine" is what everyone in "Iron Man 3" has been put through.

The Tony Stark we all know and love is still here, and "Iron Man 3" is up there with "Iron Man" and Joss Whedon's "The Avengers" as the most entertaining Marvel films. But Black has done something surprising. He's given the Marvel movie universe depth. Now it's Whedon's turn to answer.

Ray Harryhausen, RIP

Ray Harryhausen's final film was 1981's Clash of the Titans. While not as highly regarded as Harryhausen's earlier films, especially his 1963 masterpiece Jason and the Argonauts, the Medusa set piece was arguably the high point of Harryhausen's storied career, and a fitting capstone.

The year before, George Lucas, who revolutionized movie special effects with Star Wars in 1977, paid the ultimate tribute to Harryhausen, using the master's stop-motion techniques for the thrilling Battle of Hoth sequence in The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

From It Came from Beneath the Sea to The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (and its sequels) to The Valley of Gwangi, Harryhausen has thrilled generations of moviegovers and fueled the imaginations of generations of filmmakers.

Harryhausen died today in London. He was 92.

At the end of Clash of the Titans, Zeus, played by Laurence Olivier, delivers an epilogue that seems to serve equally as the epilogue of Harryhausen's career.

Like the stars, Harryhausen's inspiration will never fade. Never. It will burn 'til the end of time.



The epic skeleton fight from Jason and the Argonauts:

Culture Shock 04.25.13: 'Skinemax' takes a stab at prestige

There came a fateful day — I think it was in 1986 — when the local cable-TV monopoly added Cinemax to its pay-television subscription offerings.

For the first month, every household that subscribed to basic cable got Cinemax free of charge. The first taste is always free. But as it turned out, one weekend would have been enough.

The following Monday at school, every boy in class knew. So did quite a few girls, too, if memory serves. We all knew there was a reason why Cinemax was nicknamed "Skinemax."

So it began: our torrid teenage love affair with clandestine, sound-turned-down, soft-focus sex. Mustn't wake mom. Earlier generations had "dirty magazines" by flashlight. We had Cinemax After Dark.

That was a long time ago, before the Internet. Now, "the good parts" of just about any movie you can name are just a click away, if that's all you really want. So, how does a premium cable channel remake itself for a brave new world where Skinemax is merely the bare Skinimum?

Answer: The same way HBO and Showtime did, shifting focus away from movies and onto original and exclusive programming.

I mention HBO, and you think "Game of Thrones" or "Boardwalk Empire." I say Showtime, and you think "Homeland" or "Dexter." These are prestige shows. Audiences love them. Critics love them. They get people talking, and if you spoil an episode, you risk grievous bodily harm. It's that serious.

Cinemax has nothing in that league yet. Of its three original prime-time series, one is a British import ("Strike Back") and one has already been canceled after one season ("Hunted"), leaving only "Banshee," which has been renewed for a second season to air next year, to generate something of a cult following. As of now, onetime also-ran Starz reaches more viewers and generates more buzz with its lineup of shows like "Magic City" and the recently concluded "Spartacus."

Still, Cinemax hasn't forgotten its target demographic. Cinemax After Dark remains, but equally retooled for the new TV landscape.

The new After Dark is filled with original series, from "Chemistry" to "Co-Ed Confidential." And if HBO can bolster its reputation with shows with a literary pedigree, like "Game of Thrones" and the upcoming "American Gods," based on Neil Gaiman's novel, then so can Cinemax, after a fashion.

Cinemax's "Zane's Sex Chronicles" is based on the works of erotica writer Zane. And "The Girl's Guide to Depravity" is based on producer Heather Rutman's blog and book about her dating experiences in Hollywood.

But the crown jewel of the Cinemax After Dark lineup is "Femme Fatales."

Taking its title from a long-running entertainment magazine that focused mostly on B-movie actresses and "scream queens," "Femme Fatales" is an anthology series that blends film noir plots and O. Henry twist endings with the maximum skin After Dark is known for.

Given that film noir typically involves poor saps falling for deadly dames, scorned women and murderous love triangles where three adds up to a shallow grave, at least the sex scenes are somewhat related to the plots — both story and burial.

The first season of "Femme Fatales" has been released on DVD and includes all 14 episodes over three discs, with deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes and audio commentaries for every episode. The second season is set for release July 16.

As yet, there's no announcement of a third season, so "Femme Fatales" may have run its course.

Sex sells, but in a buyer's market, Cinemax is still trying to differentiate itself. But when MTV no longer plays music videos, it's somehow reassuring that Skinemax still tries to live up to its name.

Culture Shock 04.18.13: It's Earth Day, and nature hates you

In the decade following the first Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, 1970, filmmakers embraced environmental themes in many ways.

Hollywood's newfound eco-awareness led to "serious" films like "The China Syndrome," which was nominated for four Oscars, and sci-fi thrillers like "Soylent Green" and "Silent Running," in which a psychopath, played by psychopath specialist Bruce Dern, kills his shipmates in order to save Earth's last forest, which, as the credits roll, floats off into deep space to the strains of a Joan Baez song.

Some consider "Silent Running" a classic.

Yet by far the dominant genre of ecological cinema in the 1970s was the "nature strikes back" movie.

Iron Eyes Cody might shed a tear at the sight of trash on the roadside, but Mother Nature wasn't having any of it. She was ticked off, she was going to make sure everyone knew it, and she had an army — basically the entire animal kingdom — at her command.

Whether spawned by pollution, genetic experimentation or just plain old revenge, these animals were out for blood.

Insects and spiders posed the greatest threat. Michael Caine and an all-star cast faced off against killer bees in "The Swarm." Ants became super-intelligent and threatened to overrun the planet in the head-trippy sci-fi flick "Phase IV." And William Shatner had to Shatner his way through a town infested with deadly tarantulas in "Kingdom of the Spiders."

Shatner's "Star Trek" co-star DeForest Kelley arguably had an even worse time of it, trying to avoid being trampled by stampeding rabbits the size of Volkswagens in the infamous B-movie "Night of the Lepus."

The 1950s had its own menacing animals, often giant bugs created by atomic testing and communism. Director Bert I. Gordon made his name unleashing irradiated terrors like "Earth vs. the Spider" and "The Amazing Colossal Man." When the 1970s rolled around, Gordon returned, first with 1976's "The Food of the Gods."

Based on an H.G. Wells story, "The Food of the Gods" gave us giant rats and even a giant, killer chicken. But that was just the warm-up. For an encore, Gordon set loose giant ants on the Everglades and leading lady Joan Collins in "Empire of the Ants."

But some animals didn't need a boost from mankind's folly to get their revenge. They simply took matters into their own claws.

1972's "Frogs" finds Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark and a bunch of disposable character actors under assault by — wait for it — frogs. Very ticked-off frogs. And snakes. As well as a few other critters, all fed up with Milland's character killing them for no good reason.

By 1978, Australian filmmakers were joining in, and in "Long Weekend," we meet a bickering married couple who are so annoying every creature in the Outback decides to kill them. And we cheer.

The decade closed with director John Sayles' "Alligator," which turned the urban legend about alligators living in the sewers into a B-grade horror flick.

In "Alligator," a the baby alligator flushed into the sewer grows to monstrous proportions by feasting on discarded lab rats injected with growth hormones.

That was just about the last gasp of the genre. Moviegoers' tastes were changing, and Hollywood assembled a new army to take on a new menace.

As the 1980s got underway, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger would slice up the new threat: teenagers having sex.

Culture Shock 04.04.13: Jess Franco leaves polarizing legacy

The first time I saw "Vampyros Lesbos," I fell asleep, which is surprising on two counts.

Jess Franco

First, as the title indicates, this is a movie about lesbian vampires, and normally I never fall asleep during movies about lesbian vampires. Second, "Vampyros Lesbos" is a film by Jess Franco, and Franco's films are usually, if nothing else, interesting.

Franco, a Spanish filmmaker who directed, by some counts, more than 180 films, died early Tuesday. He was 82.

In America, Franco enjoys little name recognition outside the circle of cult cinema aficionados. Unfortunately, one of his worst major films is probably his most widely seen: 1969's "The Castle of Fu Manchu" became fodder for the third season of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

It's hard to keep up with all the films Franco made because he made so many, often issued under multiple titles, and he directed many of them under pseudonyms. But his better-known films have made him a polarizing figure. Almost no one who has seen Franco's movies is neutral about him. They love him, or they hate him. The closest thing to a middle ground where Franco is concerned comes from those critics who divide his films into two groups: the ones they love and the ones they hate.

And Franco never made it easy. Even his most ardent fans admit he could go a little too far with his mania for zoom shots.

At best, Franco was an uneven filmmaker, but he was almost never boring. Except for "Vampyros Lesbos," but here I'm in the minority; most Franco fans regard it as one of his best films. You definitely have a polarizing filmmaker when even his fans disagree about which are his best and worst films.

Franco burst onto the horror and exploitation scene with "The Awful Dr. Orlof" in 1962. "Orlof" — sometimes spelled "Orloff" — was Franco's answer to Georges Franju's classic "Eyes Without a Face," released two years earlier. Franco would return to the character many times throughout his career, culminating in what was Franco's last good film, 1987's "Faceless" featuring Telly Savalas, Caroline Munro and Brigitte Lahaie.

For a director who seemed bent on erasing the line between art house and schlock, Franco collaborated with a lot of talented performers. He directed Herbert Lom in 1969's "99 Women," the prototype for the women-in-prison genre; elicited the most bizarre, over-the-top performance of Jack Palance's career in "Deadly Sanctuary" (aka "The Marquis de Sade's Justine"); and teamed with Christopher Lee on numerous occasions, including 1970's "Count Dracula," a tedious but unusually faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

Franco also may be the only director who claimed to have had no difficulty working with Klaus Kinski, whom Franco cast in "Deadly Sanctuary" (as the Marquis de Sade) and in his surreal thriller "Venus in Furs," which, despite the name, has nothing to do with book.

In one interview, I recall, Franco said he simply shot take after take until Kinski, exhausted, gave the performance Franco wanted. Who knew the trick to dealing with Kinski was so simple?

Most of what I think are Franco's best films are the ones he made with producer Harry Alan Towers. They include "Venus in Furs," "99 Women," and 1970's "Eugenie."

Those three starred Towers' wife, Maria Rohm, but Franco's two muses were Soledad Miranda, star of "Vampyros Lesbos," who died in a car wreck in 1970 when she was just 27, and the woman who would become his longtime companion, Lina Romay, who starred most memorably in 1973's "Female Vampire." They eventually married and stayed together until her death early last year.

For Franco there was no stopping. He kept making movies until the end.

His last film, "Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies," opened in Spain last month.