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Recap and reflections

This concludes a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

We spent the whole day chasing a path to Chicago. All the improvisations between 10:20 AM and 4:35 PM were dedicated to catching the Capitol Limited, our best option. It eluded us. If we’d known that at 10:20, we’d have said the hell with it, canceled the outbound trip, booked Southwest out of Newark, and called it a day. Of course, you can’t know that. By the time we knew that the Northeast Regional (train 125) was delayed we were already in Metropark. This wasn’t avoidable. Also, we wouldn’t have been eligible for a full refund if we’d bailed out that early.

Next year it’s likely that we’ll fly out and take the train back. There’s more flexibility in flying out the day before; even if things go bad there are more options. Another possibility is the westbound Pennsylvanian. It departs New York around 10:40 AM and arrives in Pittsburgh at 8 PM. It has a guaranteed connection with the Capitol Limited, which arrives a minute before midnight. Four hours to kill in Pittsburgh isn’t awesome, but it’s time enough for a decent meal downtown.

Lessons

In no particular order:

  1. The Capitol Limited is still the best way to get from the East Coast to Chicago.
  2. One hour is not a safe connection in winter, even on the Northeast Corridor.
  3. I-78 is terrible.
  4. Despite all our tricks and toys Nature still calls the shots.

Modes of transport

  • 7:45 AM – 7:50 AM: Jeep to Easton Bus Terminal
  • 8:20 AM – 10:20 AM: Trans-Bridge Lines bus to Newark Airport
  • 10:45 AM – 10:55 AM: Newark Airport AirTrain to Newark Airport train station
  • 11:00 AM – 11:20 AM: New Jersey Transit Northeast Corridor Line to Metropark
  • 1:40 PM – 4:35 PM: Amtrak Northeast Regional to Washington, D.C.
  • 5:20 PM – 5:55 PM: MARC Penn Line to BWI Airport
  • 6:00 PM – 6:10 PM: Shuttle bus to actual Airport
  • 9:40 PM – 10:25 PM CT: Southwest Airlines 3223 to Chicago Midway
  • 11:00 PM – 11:40 PM: CTA Orange Line into Chicago
Featured image courtesy of Alex E. Proimos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/4199675334/) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Lifeforce

LifeforceThe B-movie credentials for Lifeforce are staggering. Director? Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist). Producers? Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of the venerable Cannon Films, producers of countless first-run B-grade action flicks (a genre that doesn’t quite exist any more). “A Golan-Globus Production” always produces a lusty cheer at B-Fest. Dan O’Bannon (Alien) wrote the script. Henry Mancini does the score. It’s adapted from a book titled Space Vampires. Throw in Patrick Stewart, Peter Firth (Hunt for Red October), Michael Gothard (For Your Eyes Only) and you’ve got actors to work with.  Does it deliver?

In a word–yes. This is such an ’80s film: grand sets, bad hair, self-important people standing around pontificating, gratuitous (if tasteful) nudity, overuse of electrical effects. I liked it. The creature effects are excellent throughout. There’s a bunch of creepy weird stuff too. It’s not overwritten nor does it lag. It also gets credit for the proper use of “desiccated” in a feature film. Patrick Stewart has a limited role but he sells it as only he can.

It’s weird watching and realizing there was serious money involved. Reportedly Cannon put up $25 million–considerable for 1985–and got about half of it back at the box office. The money’s on the screen–the destruction of London in the third act is way more convincing than you’d expect–but the story is goofy. It’s something of a soul-collection plot, but on a totally different scale from Dark Side of the Moon or Ghost Ship, and definitely superior to the former.

What really holds it back is Steve Railsback as the ostensible protagonist. His character is potentially interesting but he brings nothing to the role. The whiny, conflicted overwrought alpha male is something of a type in ’80s flicks. Thankfully writers eventually realized these characters are uniformly unsympathetic: we just don’t care about their problems. He’s on screen far too much for how boing he is. At least he’s usually paired up Peter Firth, who’s far more interesting.

I’m deliberately not discussing the plot. Not for fear of spoilers, but because it doesn’t matter. It’s all of a piece–you either like all the crap, er, elements, I’ve mentioned above or you don’t. You don’t watch a show like this for the plot.

Aerial navigation

This is part of a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

If you’re just joining I recommend reading the older posts first, so that you know how things got to this state. We’re now racing to BWI on a MARC commuter train, chasing the last Southwest flight to Chicago.

Jammed into a seat on a MARC bi-level surrounded by commuters isn’t the best way to purchase plane tickets, but sometimes life is shit. MARC delivered us to the BWI station a little before 6:00 PM, and we hopped the shuttle bus to the airport. Check-in and security went smoothly enough and after locating our gate we found a place to eat dinner while I booked a hotel in Chicago for the night. The flight would land at 9:25 and we’d be at the hotel before 11.

Yeah, not today. Not with our luck. No sooner had we settled back in the gate Southwest announced a two-hour delay, later shortened to 1 hour 20 minutes. Our plane was late coming up from Florida or some such. Sigh. Cue depressing music from Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

Finally at about 9:40 PM we’re airborne. The Capitol Limited is running up the Potomac toward Cumberland, dead on schedule. CSX is stabbing the Lake Shore Limited in Central New York. There’s no Wi-Fi and one of the bathrooms is out of service but we’re moving west for the first time today. With the delay we should be in by 10:45 PM CT. That puts us at the hotel by midnight, which sucks, but doesn’t affect the rest of the plan (renting a car at Union Station and driving up to Evanston).

We landed early, at 10:25. Our bag arrived in good order and we proceeded to the CTA station, where of course we had problems making the ticket gates work, because nothing else had worked properly all day. A kind employee helped us along. 40 minutes and a snow-filled walk through the Loop later we presented ourselves at the Hampton Majestic in the Theatre District, about which I have nothing but good things to say. The Capitol Limited had just arrived early into Pittsburgh. The day was over.

Tune in tomorrow for my reflections on What It All Meant.

Featured image courtesy of BriYYZ from Toronto, Canada (SouthwestUploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Decisions

This is part of a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

In yesterday’s episode we were sitting in the cold at Metropark in Iselin, New Jersey, awaiting a late Northeast Regional (train 125), our connection to the Capitol Limited in Washington, D.C.

125 arrives at 1:40 PM, one hour and 35 minutes late. Its projected arrival in DC is 4:10, five minutes after the Capitol Limited departs. I’m not sanguine. Our chances hinge on 125 making up an unbelievable amount of time and/or Amtrak holding the Capitol Limited until we arrive.

This warrants a digression about Amtrak operations. We booked this as a guaranteed connection. What that means is that Amtrak will make it right, somehow, if we misconnect. This can take many forms depending on how late you are and the local situation. Options can include hotel vouchers, refunds, bus connections, etc. It all depends on what’s possible. Sometimes, if there are enough connecting passengers and it wouldn’t incur too harsh of a late departure, Amtrak will hold a train.

We make up some time on 125, but it’s not enough and the elements are against us. We arrive in DC at 4:35 PM, and then face a prolonged disembarking as the ice and cold have frozen many of the doors shut. The Capitol Limited departed on schedule at 4:05 PM. All our attempts to catch it up since jumping off the bus at Newark six hours ago have failed.

We head to the customer relations office to meet with the station manager. He’s very friendly and I immediately feel empathy for him despite my own situation. He’s had several tough days. I can see it in his face. We are offered two options:

  1. Hotel voucher, expense voucher, comparable rebooking on next day’s train.
  2. Full refund of entire trip and Amtrak-paid travel to point of origin (now Metropark).

This is more than fair. I think there were 4 or 5 of us who misconnected from 125. It’s not enough for a bus, assuming a bus could catch the Capitol Limited (debatable; every minute that passed it moved further west). Under most circumstances I’d probably have taken option 2 with a smile, but B-Fest starts in 24 hours. I can’t, and I don’t have time to explain why I can’t. I ask for the refund of the outbound portion only and head off to see a ticket agent about the particulars. I will never forget the crestfallen look on the manager’s face. I wish I could explain.

It was time to try our luck with the airlines. I’d been gaming this a little on the way down to DC as a backup. The legacy airlines were out: too expensive and too slow. We needed an airport with good transport links, which really meant National or BWI. Liz checked Southwest from both and located an 8:10 flight out of BWI to Midway while I finished up the refund. We then booked it for a MARC Penn Line train back up the Northeast Corridor to BWI. It’s my first ride on MARC.

Featured image courtesy of Ryan Stavely (ACS-64_FAIL_5Uploaded by Mackensen) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Metropark

This is part of a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

When you last left us, we had bailed out of a badly-delayed Trans-Bridge Lines bus at the Newark Airport with the intention of hopping a train down to Metropark to catch up our Amtrak Northeast Regional (train 125) coming down from New York.

This plan unraveled almost immediately. We arrived at the AirTrain station around 10:30 in a bit of a rush. Two New Jersey Transit trains were scheduled to reach Metropark ahead of 125. One departed at 11:00 AM, the other at 11:30. The second train would be cutting things a bit fine (~10 minutes). Newark advertises four-minute headways on the AirTrain, and it’s about a 10-minute trip from Terminal A to the train station.

Time passes. No train. More time passes. Still no train. Apparently there’s some kind of mechanical issue. I pace and fret. It’s quarter of 11. The window is closing. Finally a train comes. Each minute feels like an hour. We hit the train station at 10:55. We’re sprinting. I buy tickets from the vending machine and we race for the southbound platform. There’s a train there. Our train? I rush up to the conductor: “DOES THIS TRAIN GO TO METROPARK?!” Yes, she says, with a big smile. We’re on. Thirty seconds later we’re rolling down the Corridor. It’s my first ride on New Jersey Transit.

We arrive at Metropark in good order and set about inspecting the station. I’ve seen worse. Much worse. The biggest knock is that the station is elevated, and to reach the station building itself from the southbound platform you face a somewhat long walk through a dank tunnel. Otherwise it’s fine.

We arrived at 11:20. 125 was due to depart New York at 11:35 and arrive in Metropark at 12:05. Meantime, in New York, another drama was playing itself out. It was cold today. Very cold. The creations of Man do not appreciate cold nor fine, blowing snow which gets into electrics and causes all manner of problems. In New York, the pipes froze on the consist which was to be train 125. FDA regulations do not allow an intercity train to operate without running water. Probably for the best. Unfortunately, this meant Sunnyside Yard had to cobble together a new equipment set before 125 could depart.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting outside at Metropark as a form of penance, an offering to the Transport Gods. It’s very cold. I don’t know about the equipment problem yet. I do know that 125 hasn’t left New York and the clock is ticking. I assume (wrongly), that the problem is weather-related congestion in New York; perhaps one of the North River tunnel tubes is out of service. More time passes. I explain to other passengers what I know about operations. As we stand there an Amtrak train arrives at the station, unheralded and unexpected.

“What train are you?”, I call out.

“645,” comes the answer.

It’s a Keystone Service, bound for Harrisburg. Normally it doesn’t stop here. Jovial conductors offer a lift to anyone headed there and points in between. It’s much appreciated but we’re all headed south of Philadelphia. They pass on the news from New York: 125 has an equipment problem.

Featured image courtesy of Hermann Luyken (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Bus

This is part of a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

I’m sitting on a bench at the Metropark train station in Iselin, New Jersey. It’s January 23. It’s very cold. I’m pondering how it came to this. Some form of cosmic retribution for the near-perfect runs on the Vermonter and Silver Star earlier in the month?

It started well enough, with Ken dropping us off at the Easton Bus Terminal a little before 8 AM. We planned to take the 8:10 Trans-Bridge Lines bus, which would deliver us to New York by 10:00, more than enough time to catch the 11:35 Northeast Regional (train 125) for Washington, D.C.

It went wrong almost immediately, as multiple crashes in the cold, snowy weather turned I-78 into a gigantic parking lot. By 10:20 or so we had reached Terminal A at Newark Airport (nearly an hour late), and the traffic situation into New York didn’t sound promising. Google Maps predicted an arrival in New York at 11:20-11:30, which was far too close for comfort.

If we misconnected in New York with 125 we were out of luck on the Amtrak front. 125 is the last train with a valid connection to the Capitol Limited, and the last train period scheduled to reach DC prior to the Capitol Limited‘s departure owing to weather-induced cancellations. If we arrived late into New York the only choice would be to rebook for the Lake Shore Limited, accepting the necessary repricing and likely unavailability of sleeping accommodations. I’ve documented at length why the Lake Shore Limited isn’t a desirable option.

The alternative was to bail out at Newark, ride the AirTrain out to the airport train station (on the Northeast Corridor), and catch our train south of New York. Using the last of my laptop’s battery I worked out a plan. We would get off at Newark, ride the AirTrain to station, and hop a New Jersey Transit train to Metropark in Iselin. As we walked through the terminal I called Amtrak and adjusted our itinerary to originate from Metropark instead of New York. We left the Trans-Bridge bus to its fate.

Featured image courtesy of Adam E. Moreira (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Planes, trains, and automobiles

Over the next few days I’ll be running a series of posts called “Planes, trains and automobiles,” playing homage to the classic John Hughes flick. The setting is our annual trip this past January to the Chicago area for B-Fest. Although at no time did our rental car burn down to the frame we encountered more than our fair share of problems before arriving on time for the festival. For the second straight year this was the plan:

  • Trans-Bridge Lines bus from Easton to the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT).
  • Eighth Avenue Line subway down to Pennsylvania Station.
  • Amtrak Northeast Regional to Washington, D.C.
  • Amtrak Capitol Limited to Chicago.
  • Rental car to Evanston, Illinois.

That’s not what eventually happened. Not even close. Stay tuned.

Featured image courtesy of jpmueller99 (Flickr: Amtrak #30 on the Magnolia Cutoff) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Below

Early on in the Avengers there’s a sequence where the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is interrogating some Russian mobsters. The scene is set in Russia. It opens with a freight train speeding past a warehouse. The freight train’s locomotive is painted in a black scheme with white stripes and markings. If you know your trains it’s very clearly a Norfolk Southern locomotive. NS engines aren’t found in Russia, but they’re found in Cleveland, where the scene was shot. Every time I watch that scene I think the interrogation is taking place in the United States, not Russia, because of that contextual hint.

Suspension of disbelief is a funny thing. I have no problem with the Asgardians, or Helicarriers, or any of that other stuff. That’s all fantastical and it’s fine. An American train in Russia? That’s an actual error (“bug”, if you like) and it pulls me out of the movie.

BelowBelow is erroneous from beginning to end. The more you know about World War II, specifically submarine warfare, the less you will enjoy it. Beyond factual errors there are some weird tone problems that make it difficult to watch at times. David Twohy (best known for Pitch Black and the Riddick movies) directed. Despite a fair number of recognizable performers (Bruce Greenwood, Olivia Williams, Dexter Fletcher, Jason Flemyng, Zach Galifianakis) most of the performances are middling to forgettable. This is one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched, and that’s saying something.

We open in the Atlantic Ocean in August, 1943. We need to be clear about something upfront. At this point in the war the Germans are the hunted ones. Allied naval supremacy is almost unquestioned. U-boats are on the defensive. The German surface fleet is almost gone and its remaining units trapped in ports in France, Germany and Norway. The movie doesn’t tell you any of this.

An American submarine, the Tiger Shark, under the command of Brice (Greenwood), is directed to rescue three survivors. Already, we’re in a weird place. Very few American submarines operated in the Atlantic. It is almost impossible that a submarine would pick up survivors given their unsuitability for such operations, especially as the Atlantic in mid-1943 was thick with Allied surface vessels. Letting that pass, for now, the Tiger Shark takes aboard three survivors: Kingsley, a British merchant marine officer (Fletcher); Claire, a British nurse (Williams), and a third, unnamed survivor. There then follows an unsettlingly misogynistic sequence in which the crew passes word that a “skirt” or “bleeder” has come aboard. Operation Petticoat this isn’t. Ugh.

Brice is now interviewing the survivors, who were apparently aboard a hospital ship torpedoed by a U-boat. Brice and his second, Loomis (Holt McCallany), already seem cagey. We start meeting the ship’s crew, including Wally (Galifianakis). Wally is prattling on about a malediction. This may be foreshadowing. I’ll say right now this crew bears about zero resemblance to any submarine crew before or since. Compare Das Boot; Run Silent, Run Deep; or The Enemy Below.

Our submarine is playing tag with a German destroyer. Again, this beggars belief. Most German destroyers operated in the Baltic and the Barents. I’m not personally aware of any such encounter. A German destroyer operating in the open Atlantic in mid-1943 would be at overwhelming risk of Allied air attack. We enter traditional sub movie territory as the Tiger Shark begins silent running and looks for some cold water to hide in. Whatever, fine. The Germans are pinging.

All of sudden we’re reminded that this is a horror movie and not a crappy war movie as Benny Goodman starts randomly playing on a phonograph. Creepy? The Germans commence depth-charging. This is an effective sequence, though I’m not sure I believe the “dud” bouncing along the hull. Remember this sequence; I’m going to return to it.

Now it’s time for some real bullshit. The unexplained jazz music has provoked an angry discussion amongst the submarine’s officers. Rampant paranoia. Perfect time for a crewman to discover (via discovered clothing, because screw this movie) that the third survivor is…a German POW! And the British nurse hid this because…she “Wanted to save one.” This makes no sense. We’re asked to believe that a British nurse circa 1943 would prioritize a German life over her own, that of her fellow British survivor, and over those of the American crew who saved her. That’s very unlikely. We’re also asked to believe that an American submarine crew would execute a German POW on the spot, or at least that she’d believe such a thing would happen. Granted, this crew is really twitchy for reasons that become apparent later, but she didn’t know that when she started the deception. Atrocities at sea were uncommon in World War II, at least in the Atlantic. Leaving shipwrecked survivors to drown was common, yes, but shooting survivors was not. Only one such instance was attested at Nuremburg, that of Heinz-Wilhelm Eck on the U-852. American and British forces made no special efforts to rescue German sailors but did so when the opportunity arose. This whole sequence of events is ahistorical nonsense in the service of a swiftly contriving plot.

Anyway, there’s a confrontation which swiftly escalates and the German is killed. Claire is confined to quarters. We’re treated to an artistic hand-washing sequence as Brice contemplates his choices. Maybe that’s Bruce Greenwood wondering how he gets out of this chickenshit movie. Benny Goodman starts playing again. Brice destroys the phonograph in a rage.

The submarine is still traveling underwater. It’s been under a while. Now we embark on another stupid plot thread. The officers are concerned about “hydrogen levels” and the need to surface. It’s true that hydrogen buildup was a big problem in diesel-electric submarines (like this one) and could cause explosions. However, it could only occur during a battery charge. Diesel-electric submarines ran on diesel engines when surfaced and on battery power when submerged. Batteries could only be charged by the diesels, and the diesels could only run when surfaced, because of the need to vent the exhaust. Hydrogen buildup isn’t an issue when running off the battery. Running out of battery power? Yes. Buildup of carbon dioxide because of no opportunity to vent the boat’s atmosphere? Sure. These are perfectly suitable plot threads, and tend to be in other submarine movies.

A couple crewmen throw the dead German survivor in with Claire, who hears voices and freaks out. She then delivers a stern moral stricture to the crew about respect for the dead and such. This is all very charming. As an aside, most movies set aboard World War II-era submarines try to hide that they’re using cutaway sets. The boat is much too roomy. Now Stumbo (Flemyng) is also hearing voices. We now get a little more misogyny. Good times.

Through another contrivance Claire finds the patrol log for the Tiger Shark in Brice’s quarters. She reads it, of course, and learns that the Tiger Shark was stalking shipping. In case it’s unclear, German merchant ships were not randomly trawling the Atlantic in 1943, and American submarines were not sent to the Atlantic to hunt these non-existent targets. She continues hearing voices. She discovers two things: the there’s a page missing from the log, and the log before the missing page is written in a hand other than Brice’s. What Can It Mean?

Well, well, the plot thickens. Brice isn’t the original captain–some other fellow named Winters (Nick Hobbs) is! Further, he was a fan of Benny Goodman! Where is he? The mystery is stalled as the German destroyer shows up again. Sure, whatever. Brice puts the submarine on the bottom, 200 feet down, which is a reasonable strategy. That the water is only 200 feet deep is not, unless they’re operating right off the European coast. That’s not plausible unless the British were sailing a hospital ship out there, and that’s not plausible at all.

Brice is now telling an obvious lie to Claire concerning the missing captain; that the submarine torpedoed a German submarine tender but the captain was lost overboard inspecting debris. Okay, sure. Again, no German tender would be located in these waters. It’s made clear that Brice is lying through his teeth to Claire about what happened to the captain. By the way, the German destroyer is still out there and it’s attacking with “grappling hooks.” Do I need to say it? THIS WAS NOT A THING. Brice freezes because he’s an idiot and the sub starts flooding. That’s probably bad.

The sub has developed an oil leak and is leaving a slick. They’re going to address this by free-diving outside, while submerged, and fix it. Screw this movie. NOT A THING. If a sub had damage outside the pressure hull during World War II it surfaced to repair. If there was an enemy up there well that was just too darn bad. That’s how many subs met the end, in all navies. Whatever dramatic quality this movie might possess is overwhelmed by my loathing for its sheer implausibility. None of this could happen and none of it is plausible. The free divers are now spooked by some kind of manta or stingray. Rather doubt you’d see one in the North Atlantic, but whatever.

Now is as good a time as anything to mention this stupid on-going tension among the officers. Three were topside with Winters, the former captain, when he disappeared: Brice, Loomis, and Coors (Scott Foley, who looks like a low-rent Ron Livingstone). They’re clearly hiding something, and it puts them into tension with Odell (Matthew Davis), a fresh-faced Naval Academy graduate. Odell, Coors, and Wally are in the diving party, and Coors is now spinning some story about how Winters wanted to machine-gun German survivors, and they all opposed him and in the ensuing struggle he died. Right after finishing this lie Coors has a vision of Winters and dies in an implausible accident. Did I mention this is only the halfway point of this ill-conceived mess? Cripes. It’s also implied that Odell, not Coors, was supposed to die in an “accident” out there.

Claire now tries to lead a mutiny against Brice, saying that ship is cursed. I’m not sure, given the previous rampant misogyny, why anyone would listen to her. Anyway the mutiny fails. Brice orders a course back to the United States but the sub doesn’t answer her helm and steers a course of her own. It’s turned due east, back toward where it sank the German ship. The crew is now openly speculating on whether they’re dead or cursed or what. The Chief (Nick Chinlund) isn’t having any of it, and reminds them of the hydrogen buildup which could be affecting them.

To regain control of the sub they’re going to run a new hydraulic line for the steering. They have to enter the battery compartment to do this, which means risking an explosion from the hydrogen buildup. I’m not going to bother pulling the plans of a US fleet submarine from the era to demonstrate why this is nonsense. It’s a fair guess the movie got this wrong too, along with everything else. The repair is interrupted at a bad moment, and some manner of bad thing involving hydrogen kills most of the crew. Note that an actual hydrogen explosion would have destroyed the ship. Not only is this an impossible disaster, it’s also been executed incorrectly.

Loomis, everyone’s favorite blowhard officer, has a freakout in front of the mirror. Been there, done that. Loomis goes out the escape tower, even though the sub is still submerged, and gets impaled on the conning tower. We’re running out of characters. Brice is now hallucinating the dead captain. We consult Wally about maledictions, who theorizes Winters wanted to go down with his ship. Finally, 80 minutes in, Claire realizes the truth: the Tiger Shark torpedoed her ship in a case of mistaken identity, and Brice murdered Winters in an attempted coverup.

I’m not sure where to start here. The whole plot centers around Brice mistaking a British hospital ship for a German submarine tender, torpedoing it, then on realizing his mistake killing his superior officer to cover it up instead of organizing a rescue of the survivors. It’s risible, and it’s bad writing. In the meantime Brice has gone full-on crazy: shaved, shined his shoes, said he’s “all better now.” Odell and Brice get into a fight, and Brice shoots the radio. I liked this better when Wilford Brimley did it in The Thing. The sub surfaces and there’s a confrontation on deck between Brice and Claire. It’s boring. Odell shows up. Brice kills himself, and a passing British ship rescues the remaining crew as the Tiger Shark sinks. In the movie’s final shot it comes to rest next to the British hospital ship.

In case it’s unclear, I thoroughly dislike this movie. I dislike it because it borrows a period setting but then makes little effort at establishing itself in that period. I dislike it because it has bad writing and implausible characterization. It’s neither scary nor chilling despite its ostensible billing as a horror movie. For all the talented people involved you’d think they could have done better. It’s a shame; some shooting was done on an actual period submarine, the USS Silversides, now a museum ship in Muskegon, Michigan.

Of note, there were several incidents in World War II which might have inspired this nonsense. The most noteworthy was the so-called Laconia incident. In 1942 a German submarine torpedoed a British troopship (the Laconia), off West Africa. This was a legal sinking but on realizing that the troopship had carried mostly Italian and German POWs, the U-boat actually broadcast a distress signal in the clear and began a rescue operation. There were other such incidents on both sides. Note that this wasn’t a hospital ship–hospital ships (like the one depicted in Below) were painted white with big red crosses. These were very observable by ships, which probably accounts for why almost none were sunk by submarines–of any country–during World War II (most were sunk by aircraft).

I think the basic premise–a martyred captain avenging himself on his malefactors–could be salvaged, but the movie itself is a loss. Various characters propose during the movie that they’re actually dead (remember the “dud” depth charge?), but it would be cheating to hand wave away all the serious technical errors that way. The movie makes it clear at the end that the survivors are alive, and no character during the movie points to a technical error and calls it impossible. I also don’t see why the captain would wreak vengeance on blameless members of his crew (I had a similar gripe about Dark Side of the Moon). I discussed above how many of the characters–Brice and Claire in particular–act in ways that make no sense for their characters.

This isn’t the worst period piece I’ve ever seen. That honor goes to Andy Milligan’s Guru, the Mad Monk, which despite being a 15th century period piece featured a Vespa in one shot and a light switch in another. It’s in good company though. You have to see it for yourself (though I recommend against it) to realize how wrong the tone and setting are. Without having anything as obviously wrong as a Vespa in the Renaissance, it just doesn’t ring right at any point. I first saw this thing in 2010 and it’s annoyed me ever since. If this is a “malediction” then maybe by writing this review, the longest I’ve ever written, it’ll go away.

Ghost Ship

Ghost Ship belongs to the venerable tradition of haunted ship movie (Alien being the best example), with the added twist that Satanic forces are specifically identified as the malefactors. Other examples are Dark Side of the Moon and the not-quite-brilliant Event Horizon. This genre, broadly, has a few conventions:

  1. The protagonists are on a ship, either on a sea or in space, and cannot reasonably leave it.
  2. In the course of the movie they encounter a second ship of unknown provenance.
  3. An unknown evil entity boards from that ship, and the crew starts dying one-by-one.

Ghost ShipIn Ghost Ship, our protagonists are the crew of an oceangoing salvage tug who stumble upon an Andrea Doria-like ocean liner in the Bering Strait. It’s been lost for fifty years, and there’s a secret cargo which promises a big payday. There’s also a deadly secret and…pretty soon people are dropping like flies.

So does this movie actually work? I’ve decided on yes. First of all, you’ve got Julianna Marguiles, who’s awesome and solid in horror roles. You’ve got Gabriel Byrne who brings the proper notes to the role of the tug captain. Finally, you’ve got Karl Urban pre-Eomer. For historical interest there’s Isaiah Washington pre-Grey’s Anatomy. Emily Browning, just starting out, is hauntingly effective as the ghost of a little girl from the doomed liner. There are no casting problems to speak of.

The effects work holds up after eleven years. The CG ship effects aren’t great but they aren’t on screen much either (smart move). The gore effects are excellent, and the opening sequence is particularly well-done (and brutal). All good horror movies have one standout sequence and this is fairly high on my list of good, standalone scenes.

The story works well enough. The depiction of evil as mundane and work-a-day is a welcome to relief from over-the-top characterizations. There aren’t inappropriate tone shifts. The characters get enough development that we sort-of care when they start buying the farm. The filmmakers paid attention to the background characters from the Italian liner as well (the captain was remarkably poignant in a small role).

Anyway, I think what really makes it stand out is good production values mated up with decent casting. These provide cover for an admittedly threadbare story. The end result is entertaining and worth watching.

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