Number 56: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped
Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964)
There is a school of thought that less is more, that film
titles should be short, snappy and to the point. Examples of this would be Star Wars, Gladiator, Snatch. This is
not a philosophy shared by Gene Pollock and Robert Silliphant, the writers of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped
Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?
You’d think with a title like that, the film would be pretty
self-explanatory wouldn’t you? But actually a more accurate title would be The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped
Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies but They Don’t Turn Up Until 10 Minutes
Before the End and They Aren’t Even Really Zombies Anyway but You’ll Have to
Sit Through 70 Minutes Of Tedium Before Then By Which Time You Would Have
Forgotten All About Them Anyway.
The carnival is in town so there are lots of fairground
rides and fun to be had. The fortune teller is the villain of the film and
seems to have it in for all the dancing girls and wants them all dead. Why? No
idea but everyone needs a hobby I guess. She hypnotises a young man called
Jerry into killing one of them for her. But Jerry figures something is up and
goes back to see her but she throws acid in his face.
The fortune teller tries to put Jerry in a cellar with all
her other deformed creatures but they all break out, kill her and go on a
rampage. The police show up and kill them all, Jerry gets shot off a cliff.
And that is really the whole movie in two short paragraphs,
maybe 30 minutes of screen time. The rest of the film is taken up with
nauseating shots of fairground rides and lots of song and dance numbers.
Some of those dance routines are of questionable racial sensitivity but it was a different time. Ignorance was perfectly acceptable back then,
The overly long title isn’t even accurate about the creatures
you see at the end. They aren’t zombies, they are alive and they’re not even
creatures really. Just slightly deformed people.
There is a bit of 60’s psychedelia vibe running through it and the camera often just films whatever it wants to, creating a feeling of nausea. But truthfully, apart from its stupid title, its just not a lot of fun.
Number 55: The Legend of Drona (2008)
Back to Bollywood now. Their films are always so colourful
and fun.
As with my review of Khan
the Con, I’m steering clear of the songs and trying just to focus on the
film element.
How to summarise The Legend
of Drona, well it’s got elements of Harry
Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and Superman all mixed up in there. And yeah, a fair bit of the Prince of Persia games too.
It starts with a back story about the Drona, Guardians of
the Universe. Which is pretty big-headed given they never leave Earth. Aditya
(Abishek Bachchan, son of Amitabh Bachchan who is arguably the greatest actor
in Bollywood history) is the latest in the line of Drona but is sent away at a
young age to protect him from a demon called Riz Razaida. He lives with his
Aunt and cousin who don’t seem overly fond of him (but his uncle is ok) and he
has a room in the attic to sleep in.
He grows up working in their shop (which IMDB synopsis says
is in Britain but it was filmed in Prague) and takes blame for everything. Poor
guy is all lonesome and knows nothing of his heritage. Then one day he has a
chance meeting with Riz, who is delighting the crowds with his magic. He is
what will happen if David Copperfield ever turns bad, so keep an eye on that
situation people.
Riz tries to capture Adi but this is where he finds out he’s
not alone but has had people watching over him his whole life. That’s the Harry Potter sequence over with and we
move into The Matrix portion of the
film as Adi discovers he is The One. Sorry, Drona, he is Drona.
He is helped along by Trin…Sonia (Priyanka Chopra) as he
discovers his destiny and learns the skills he will need to defeat Riz.
Riz is searching for the nectar of life that will grant him
immortality. Though he seems quite long lived anyway so I’m not convinced he
actually needs it. To find the nectar he actually needs Drona to take him to
it, which ironically means the best course of action the good guys could have
done is to do nothing and have just kept Adi in the dark about everything.
The rest of the time is taken up with a lot of travelling
across the desert with some decent fight sequences against the Nazgul to break
it up. Adi goes to see Gandalf (seriously, it’s not even subtle) to collect his
Excalibur sword before his final fight with Riz.
They have a bit of a barney before Drona slays Riz and ‘saving
the universe’, though I really didn’t see anything to suggest the universe was
in any trouble. I’m not even convinced Earth was in much danger.
It’s a decent enough film give or take a few dodgy cgi
effects and cardboard sets. After the last few films I’ve watched, it’s a
pleasure just to see something made by someone who knows how to hold a camera.
What really lets this film down though is the acting. I appreciate
Abishek Bachchan is supposed to be playing an everyman character but he’s too
ordinary looking, I just can’t buy him as a superhero. Priyanka Chopra might
actually be a tree. Kay Kay Menon just isn’t menacing enough as Riz to come
across as a legitimate threat.
It’s ok but nothing more.
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