Something I Saw Or Thought I Saw

 

Top: Erreur tragique (Feuillade, 1913)

Bottom: Blow-Up (Antonioni, 1966)

Five From A Favorite - Planely Possible (1997)

Planely Possible is an episode from the short lived late-90's HBO anthology show Perversions of Science, which itself was basically a sci-fi counterpart to the hugely popular horror series Tales From the Crypt. Perversions lasted only one short season, was clearly working on a comparatively meager budget, and was probably doomed from the start (it aired in the ominous late-night Friday time slot, following another equally esoteric and luckless but awesome show - Ralph Bakshi's animated cyberpunk anthology Spicy City), but it nevertheless employed a distinct visual approach - an anxious 50's sci-fi comic-book aesthetic - and managed to operate pretty consistently outside of the box with its stories and ideas, and thus enjoys something of a respectable cult following these days despite having never been officially released on any format.

My very favorite episode of the series is easily Planely Possible, a deliciously maniacal and twisty story involving a man named Walter (George Newbern) who, after his wife (Elizabeth Berkley) has been killed, meets a crazed engineer (legendary character actor Vincent Schiavelli) who believes that he can transport Walter to an alternate plane of existence where his wife is still alive. Yes, yes, all standard sci-fi fare, and yet the episode plays out with such restless unpredictability and macabre wit - as Walter jumps through the various planes of existence and is greeted by one nasty surprise after the next - that it gains a special kind of energy and ends up transcending its fairly textbook genre plot and hokey acting and becomes easily one of the most entertaining half hours of television I've ever seen. We may not be talking high art here (though the thing does have panache and atmosphere to spare), however as a lost gem of both HBO programming and anthology television, Planely Possible is well worth noting, and seeing for that matter (if you can get your hands on a copy.)

Three Images - Female (Curtiz, 1933)

The Trees of Tarkovsky

Five From A Favorite - Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

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Quatermass and the Pit is one of the best movies to come from the legendary British production company Hammer Studios, and one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made. I love everything about this movie. I love the brilliant Nigel Kneale script that is constantly spilling over with big ideas, and I love the high intensity of Andrew Keir's performance as the perpetually perturbed and sweaty Prof. Quatermass. I love the splash of the surreal that criminally underrated director Roy Ward Baker typically brought to his films, particularly in the scene where the Martian race memories are being recorded through a machine that gives them the appearance of a Bruce Conner work.

But most of all I love the ending where, after the giant alien/devil spectre and its mind control powers have been defeated, Quatermass and Barbara (Barbara Shelley) sit in the street, overwhelmed with exhaust, and not exactly happy or relieved at what they've just seen - as you would find to be the case in many other movies of this ilk after the Big Bad has been taken down - but rather dazed, disheartened, and still in the process of soaking in the revelations they've learned, communicating sheerly through their slouched body language knowledge that the city has now pretty much gone to shit, and that things will probably never be the same again, and that in all likelihood the death of their friend they've just witnessed - a death in service of defeat of the ultimate evil - is perhaps when all is said and done a rather minor victory. The whole "the day is saved but the damage is done" sentiment is far from original of course, but here, distilled to a single, silent shot as the credits play out, it attains a certain level of poignancy.