|
Synopsis:
On a distant planet, a stranger – a reptilian figure with a
red eye-patch – emerges from a spaceship and heads towards the small
frontier town of Oblivion, pausing by the settlement’s welcome sign
to reduce the population figure by one…. The people of Oblivion
flee, panic-stricken, as the local undertaker, Mr Gaunt (Carel
Struycken), emerges from his funeral parlour and heads for the saloon.
Inside, although the customers react with terror to his appearance,
Gaunt is greeted kindly by the saloon’s proprietor, Miss Kitty
(Julie Newmar). He then approaches Marshall James Stone (Mike
Genovese), who is playing cards…. Outside, the stranger, Redeye
(Andrew Divoff), strides down the main street of Oblivion; as he
passes, the town’s electricity goes haywire. Redeye stops outside
the saloon and buries a glowing blue object. Then he calls Stone out
for a fight, accusing him of cowardice if he refuses. Miss Kitty tries
to talk Stone out of fighting, but the Marshall unconcernedly presses
his badge, which lights up, and goes outside. Redeye tells the
Marshall to stop where he is, which he does – directly over the
buried object. Unnoticed by its owner, Stone’s badge flickers off.
Smirking “Lights out, Marshall!”, Redeye draws and fires – and
the fatally wounded Stone falls back into the practiced arms of Mr
Gaunt. Stone’s deputy, a cyborg named Stell Barr (Meg Foster), tries
to take action, but the buried object shorts her circuitry and she
collapses, helpless. Redeye takes the Marshall’s badge and grinds it
under his heel before gathering his gang and announcing that thanks to
the draconium they “found”, Oblivion is now theirs…. Out in the
badlands, a lone prospector, Zack Stone (Richard Joseph Paul), bemoans
the fact that he can find nothing but gold. Suddenly he freezes,
overcome by a frightening sensation…. Nearby, a native who has been
staked to the ground cries out in terror as he is menaced by a
juvenile night scorp. Shots ring out, and the creature dies. Zack
releases the native, Buteo (Jimmie F. Skaggs), who announces bitterly
that he has nothing to live for anyway – and that he must bury his
massacred family…. In Oblivion, Doc Valentine (George Takei)
examines what’s left of the Marshall’s badge – before diving
into a bottle…. Redeye explains to his gang his plans for seizing
power. He orders Spanner (Jeff Moldovan) and Bork (Irwin Keyes) to win
over the town with a mixture of charm and muscle, and sends Wormhole
(Frank Roman) out to the surrounding townships and cantinas to recruit
more followers. Redeye himself, meanwhile, retires to the bedroom with
his moll, Lash (Musetta Vander). As they make camp for the night, Zack
tries to dissuade Buteo from avenging his family, arguing that it
would be futile act. Suddenly, the two are joined by Gaunt, who tells
Zack of his father’s death. Back in Oblivion, Doc Valentine staggers
drunkenly into the general store run by the young widow, Mattie Chase
(Jackie Swanson), demanding more booze and pulling a gun on her when
she refuses to give it to him. Mattie assures the Doc that Stone’s
death was purely due to Redeye’s draconium, not the failure of the
force-field badge that he designed, and the Doc collapses in tears.
Zack, Buteo and Gaunt arrive at a small, disreputable cantina, where
Zack plans to cash in his draconium. At the same cantina, Wormhole is
recruiting the locals to Redeye’s cause. Zack tells Buteo that he
now has almost enough money to buy passage off the planet. Buteo
points out that he would have been paid better in Oblivion, and Zack
reveals that he left town in disgrace after a falling out with his
father. Wormhole begins abusing Zack, trying to taunt him into a
fight, but Zack says only that he “doesn’t want to hurt anyone”.
The disgusted Buteo tries to stir him into action but cannot.
Suddenly, Buteo is hit from behind, and the cantina explodes into an
all-in fist-fight….
Comments:
First the bad news. This was actually my second attempt to get
through Oblivion. The first
time around I gave up in disgust after about five minutes, when I
realised that this was one of all too many films guilty of trying to
derive “humour” from casting after-stardom TV actors in demeaning
roles that seem designed only to remind people that, yes, they used to
be big TV stars and look how far they’ve fallen, ha ha. Oblivion
has barely started before we are given a painfully clear indication of
the kind of role that has been written for poor Julie Newmar. Myself,
I would have thought that calling her character “Miss Kitty” (she
runs the local “cat-house”, naturally) was perfectly sufficient;
but no. To my absolute horror, it was soon borne upon me that every
time she opened her mouth to speak, she would also be compelled to
meow, hiss and/or spit. GET IT?? GET IT?? Nor is Ms Newmar the
film’s only victim. As the town’s drunken doctor, Oblivion
also features George Takei, whose dialogue consists of – boy, I bet
you couldn’t guess this one in a million years! – Star
Trek references. No, really!!
(Takei’s opening line? “Jim, beam me up!” – spoken while
peering into an empty bourbon bottle.) However – while this kind of
thing makes me cringe with embarrassment, producers keep doing it, so
I suppose there are people out there who find it entertaining;
although I couldn’t begin to guess who they might be. Probably the
same people I’ve had in some of my film classes, who feel compelled
to shriek with laughter if they happen to catch a glimpse of a later
television star in an early film bit part. Beats the hell out of me.
Anyway
– to get back to the point, finally – you can imagine how
surprised I was, when I obliged myself to sit down and watch Oblivion
for this Roundtable, to discover that I actually quite liked it….
The
western is a genre that lends itself to parody and satire, simply
because of the very deep entrenchment of its conventions. In this, it
mostly closely resembles the science fiction film; so perhaps it is
not so extraordinary that someone finally came up with the bright idea
of combining the two. Although a Full Moon production, and scripted by
Peter David, author of both many comics and a number of Star
Trek novelisations (making the film’s disrespectful handling of
George Takei rather surprising), Oblivion
may well appeal to fans of westerns even more than to those of science
fiction. The film gets off to a promising start with a wide shot of a
stark and eerie landscape. (You learn something every day with Full
Moon. Who knew there were deserts in Romania?) We see tumbleweeds,
cacti, and sub-John Ford rock formations – and then a spaceship
swoops across our view. Our first glimpse of the main street of
Oblivion shows us a stereotypical western town – except that
everything is lit with electricity, and a cowboy is drawing cash from
an ATM. (There’s also a billboard advertising an upcoming film –
from Full Moon, naturally!) The story that follows, albeit its events
are taking place on an unidentified distant planet, could have been
– oh, let’s face it, have been – lifted from any one of countless B-westerns: the
dirty-trick gunning down of the brave and honest Marshall, the small
frontier town left under the thumb of the bad guys, the pacifist son
forced to pick up his father’s badge….and if the desire of Redeye
and his gang to take over this singularly uninspiring little
settlement is mystifying, well, how many films have featured human
gangs behaving just as inexplicably? What is interesting about Oblivion
is not its broad outline, but its details. There are a remarkable
number of references to westerns of both the big and the small screen
scattered throughout the film; spotting them is a large part of the
fun. Yet for all that, you get the impression that Peter David
wasn’t quite sure of the audience he was writing for. Sometimes,
refreshingly, a particular allusion is simply there,
as with the passing mention of the “Cimarron Exotic Pet Shop”.
Conversely, sometimes the screenplay feels compelled to explain
itself, as when Marshall Stone draws a poker hand of aces and eights
just as Gaunt enters the saloon, and the undertaker helpfully tells
the tale of the death of a certain legendary figure from
“Alter-Earth”. While this occasional dumbing-down is
disappointing, on the whole Oblivion
plays its game of melding the historical with the futuristic very well
indeed.
As
with many westerns, the characters of Oblivion
fall neatly into the categories of “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys”;
and as with too many
westerns, the “hero” and the “heroine” are the least
interesting of the crowd. The script outsmarts itself a little with
Zack Stone. The early parts of the film throw in the usual rumblings
about Zack’s past: accusations of cowardice, his feud with his
father, his reluctance to fight when challenged. However, it turns out
that Zack is not passive out of principle, but out of necessity. He is
an “empath”, afflicted by a condition that forces him to feel what
others feel. His resignation from his position as his father’s
deputy and his departure from Oblivion for the solitary life of a
prospector followed his shooting of a bank robber, whose death pangs
he himself experienced. Now, this is all very well – except we’re
never quite clear where this curse came from, why Zack seems to be the
only person on the planet who suffers from it, or why his father
either didn’t know about it, or – if he did – why he would
regard his son as a coward, given that his condition was hardly his
own fault. Anyway, as always happens when anyone declares a
disinclination to resort to violence, Zack is finally driven to it,
partly because of suffering simultaneously through the agonies of
Buteo (who is whipped by Lash) and of Stell Barr (who has had a bullet
put clean through her circuitry), and partly in response to the taunts
of Mattie Chase. Able to end his own suffering only by ending the
suffering of others – permanently – Zack is finally forced into
action and the inevitable gun-fight ensues. Hauling away the beaten
Buteo, the reluctantly victorious Zack tells Mattie bitterly that she
got what she wanted – “People killed for the right reasons”.
Zack and Mattie hate one another on sight, so obviously she ends up as
his “romantic interest”. Well, the two of them have so much in
common, like that she’s as confusingly written as he
is. Mattie is lingeringly bitter, we learn, over the death of her
husband, who was “a dreamer”, just like Zack. Subsequently, it is
revealed that after he and his wife travelled to Oblivion to establish
the “general store”, the late Mr Chase fell victim to the dreaded
“night scorps” that lurk out in the badlands – although how
being “a dreamer” leads naturally to gruesome arachnidian death
remains unclear. Anyway, Mattie is left as sole proprietor of said
general store, and leads a life of – no rigours at all, as far as we
can see. (Wait a minute! I hear you cry. General store!? Shouldn’t
she be the schoolmarm? Well,
yes, she should, except that there aren’t any kids in Oblivion.
Charles Band must have taken to heart that old dictum about never
working with children, or with any animals not designed by David
Allen….) Mattie abuses Zack for taking no action in the face of the
disruption of his father’s funeral by Redeye and his cronies, then
denies she wanted him to resort to violence – she just wanted him to
“stand up for his father”. Eh? Mattie is not only confusing, she
is singularly unappealing, with Jackie Swanson’s performance as the
town’s token “good woman” running the gamut all the way from
whiny to tearful and back again. It is a characterisation all the more
painful in light of the fact that Oblivion
on the whole embraces a charitably wide view of womankind, serving up
a cynical, gun-slinging cyborg with a yen for “natives”, a whore
with a heart of gold and a leather-clad, bullwhip-wielding, omnisexual
dominatrix, without evincing any particular need to sit in judgement
of any of them.
The
other good guys are on the whole more interesting – or at least more
entertaining. Buteo is played by a stony-faced Jimmie F. Skaggs, in a
role that walks a precarious tightrope between humour and outright bad
taste. Buteo, you see, is the kind of all-wise, philosophy-spouting
“native” side-kick that makes Tonto look like a progressive
characterisation. Having been rescued from a juvenile night scorp by
Zack, Buteo attaches himself to his saviour and makes it his mission
to inspire him into being all that he can be – to which end, he talks
– and talks – and talks –
and talks….spouting clichés
that even most network TV writers would be ashamed to put their names
to. (Late in the film,
Buteo’s insistence that “I have nothing more to say” provokes a
cry from Zack of, “Drinks for everyone!” “Except----”
“Cancel that!”) Further back-up for Zack is provided by Stell (Meg
Foster’s unnerving pale eyes getting much screentime), who proves to
have the most interesting
kinds of concealed weapons; Miss Kitty, who mostly fulfils the
film’s expositionary needs – and who, it is inferred, is actually
Zack’s mother, not that he
is aware of it; and Doc Valentine, with George Takei in the Thomas
Mitchell role, if you will. One of Oblivion’s
neater touches is the shot of the Doc’s office door, advertising his
“parlour” being not only one of “dentistry and haircuts”, as
we might expect, but also of “inventions and robotics”. Alas,
that’s about all I can say in praise of this aspect of the film. If Oblivion
teaches us nothing else, it’s that George Takei couldn’t muster up
a convincing “western” accent if his life depended on it. Of
course, he’s not exactly helped by the fact that no-one else in the
film bothers to even attempt one.
Balancing
this rather unimpressive picture of “goodness” are our equally
uninspiring baddies. Redeye himself is lizardy in nature (at one
point, when Zack shoots his arm off, he simply grows another), looking
rather like – oh, okay, extremely
like; suspiciously like – the evil twin of Dan O’Herlihy’s
character in The Last
Starfighter. As usual, being EE-vil, Redeye takes a good look at
the region’s population and then gathers about himself as his gang a
staggering collection of boneheads and screw-ups. There’s Lash, of
course, whose constant EE-vil laughter and sarcasm I confess to
finding rather tiresome. (That’s the trouble, you see, when you
aren’t sufficiently distracted by the sight of a pretty woman in
bondage gear.) Then there’s Spanner, the most competent of
Redeye’s crew and consequently the first to die, who lusts
unavailingly after Lash, and who ultimately gets the film’s coolest
demise, as we shall see. And then there’s Bork, who almost
re-defines “boneheaded”. “I have haemorrhoids
smarter than you!” Redeye bellows at his hapless follower, and
Bork would be real insulted, if only he knew what a “haemorrhoid”
was. Instead, so very stupid is Bork that he doesn’t even know when
he’s dead. In the course of the film he takes numerous fatal
bullets, tangles with a flame-thrower, and finally ends up caught in
Lash’s electronic whip – all without missing a beat. (Takes a
lickin’, and keeps on tickin’. A word of praise here for actor
Irwin Keyes: his impression of Jack Elam is right on the mark.) The
last of Redeye’s colourful crew is Wormhole, a Zorro-wannabe who is
part Rudolph Valentino, part Lash La Rue, and all
Liza Minnelli; and who carries on his adamantine campaign against
“nebula boys” mostly, we feel, in a futile attempt to disguise the
fact that he himself is, uh, rather nebularly-inclined.
But
the highlight of Oblivion
comes from neither the good guys nor the bad guys, but instead is the
ambiguous character of Mr Gaunt. Clad in black from head to foot, with
his intimidating height and (pardon the expression) gaunt appearance,
Carel Struycken gives a beautifully creepy performance as the
undertaker, who shows up only when someone is about to die, and yet
can’t understand why people are never pleased to see him. Gaunt
fulfils a number of functions within Oblivion, such as conducting the
funeral services (“Yea, though I fly through the black hole of
death….”), including that of Zack’s father – a ceremony
punctuated by the cries emanating from the bingo game being held
upstairs, which Gaunt felt himself unable to cancel because, you know,
it’s Thursday. Observer
and chorus for most of the film, Gaunt finally intervenes in events,
ensuring that Zack, Buteo and Stell are on the spot to take on Redeye
and his gang for the final shoot-out, and even breaking his own
(unspoken) rules by participating in the demise of Redeye himself.
(“Oh, what the hell….”)
(Actually,
there appears to be some amusingly circular cross-referencing going on
here. The mysterious Gaunt’s name would seem to be a reference to
the central character of Stephen King’s “Needful Things”, which
was published a couple of years before Oblivion
was made. That Gaunt’s
first name was “Leland”, which King admitted to be a reference to Twin
Peaks – which of course featured Carel Struycken.)
Having
set up its characters, Oblivion
settles down to serving up every possible western set-piece that you
can think of: the barroom brawl, the gunfight in the middle of the
town, the abduction of the heroine by the bad guys, and the final
shoot-out. The brawl takes place in a disreputable cantina, where Zack
goes to cash in his draconium (we never do find out the actual value,
or even use, of this stuff,
other than screwing with electronics), and where Wormhole happens to
be drumming up support for Redeye. “What’s in it for us?” comes
the cry, and Wormhole reveals that converts will receive a regular
newsletter (“Oooh!”), learn the secret handshake (“Aaah!”),
and earn the right to wear a “Better Red than dead” badge – the
latter, inevitably, setting up a cry of “We don’t need no stinking
badges!” later in the film. Wormhole’s unavailing attempt to
provoke Zack leads to the brawl, with fists flying in an amusingly
unconvincing manner, and Wormhole himself suffering great indignities
at the hands – and teeth – of a trio of ferocious midgets. The
gun-fight is a nicely judged piece of spaghetti-western-iana, with
Zack wielding a gun in either hand, cross-wristed, the whole thing
being conducted in slow motion – naturally – and both of Ken’s
Rules Of High Altitude Mortality© getting a thorough
workout, as evil henchmen – or at least, venal turncoat townspeople
– drop like flies. Literally. The film’s climax is notable not so
much for its gun-play – or whip-play, or flame-thrower-play, or
spiky badge-play – but for the participation of some of the film’s
other highlights. I may say
that one of the things that originally steeled me to sitting through Oblivion
was a credit reading “Visual Effects….David Allen Productions”.
Indeed, Mr Allen is not long in making his presence felt: when we
first see the sign announcing the outskirts of Oblivion, perched upon
it is a simply adorable bat-bird-bug-thingy – which shortly
thereafter meets an untimely fate at the hands – er, jaws
– of Redeye. Sniff. When Buteo is staked out in the desert, he must
be rescued from one of the creatures known as a “night scorp”.
This man-sized, two-tailed, multi-eyed menace is, we learn, nothing
but a juvenile – and momma and poppa are not far away, showing up
with their companions in time to dispose gruesomely of Redeye. The
scorps – and Redeye’s demise – are pleasingly rendered in stop
motion; and while the rendering may not be perfect, the critters have,
as stop motion critters tend to, a degree of personality. But if
we’re going to talk personality, we’re going to have to discuss
the one aspect of Oblivion
that one we over completely: the “Mon-Thing” [*cough*]. This disturbing little beastie makes its appearance when
Buteo, having learnt that Spanner was responsible for the massacre of
his family, challenges him to an arm-wrestling death-match – one
“refereed” by the Mon-Thing, which proves to be a foul-tempered,
venom-drooling entity somewhat like a mutated bullfrog, with claws
instead of feet, spikes around its neck, and a mouth full of wicked
teeth. It also, we learn, “senses fear” – and doesn’t like it.
The film has already taken every possible opportunity to throw in
Sergio Leone-esque eye close-ups, but it outdoes itself here, cutting
not merely from Buteo’s eyes to Spanner’s, but to the googly yet
strangely cat-like eyes of the Mon-Thing as well. Unfortunately for
Spanner, the scrutiny of this creature proves too much for his
nerves….and he starts to sweat….
Well,
you know what’s coming next, don’t you?
I
WANT IT!! I WANT IT!! I WANT IT!! I WANT IT!!
Oblivion is the most
consistently entertaining Full Moon production that I have yet
encountered – although granted, my thorough grounding in the world
of the western (thank you, Dad!) might well have contributed to my
perception of its entertainment value. The acting in this film is
certainly nothing to write home about, but there are a few good
performances, particularly the deadpan contributions of Carel
Struycken, Jimmie F. Skaggs and Meg Foster. More remarkably, perhaps,
no-one really disgraces themself – if you can overlook the roles
forced upon Julie Newmar and George Takei, with which far better
actors than they could have done little. A pre-South
Park Isaac Hayes also appears in a fairly pointless cameo. (In
fairness, after my opening tirade, I should point out that the
felinity of Miss Kitty’s nature becomes less of a recurrent theme as
the film progresses – thank God.) The film even turns its budgetary
restrictions into a kind of virtue. The end of the main street of
Oblivion, for example, where Gaunt’s establishment is to be found,
is undisguisedly a painted backdrop – but in the familiar yet
off-kilter world of this film, it somehow works. Oblivion
is in many ways a typical Full Moon production, being uneven, slapdash
and occasionally painful; but there are also some laughs tucked in
there, and they occur at intervals regular enough to make the film’s
dead patches and padding less apparent than they otherwise might have
been. Oblivion ends with a placard stating “To Be Continued” – as
indeed it would be two years later, in Backlash:
Oblivion 2. That I could look at this promise/threat of a sequel
and not shudder at the
prospect, is perhaps the highest praise I could offer any
Full Moon production. |
Director: