CULT TV BLOGGING: V: "Pound of Flesh"

Well, I suspect this is going to be my final episode review of the new V series, unless it unexpectedly takes a dramatic upswing in quality.

I'll keep watching for a while longer, but I just don't know that I need to devote space on the blog here to a TV series that is pitched so bloody low. And, I don't see any point in slamming someone else's hard work every single week and wallowing in negativity. I'd rather write about TV shows and movies I actually do like.

But okay, for the record, "Pound of Flesh" involves, primarily, the development of the Fifth Column. Turns out that these renegade Visitors are mysteriously developing human emotions and more than that, learning to reject Anna's narcotic "bliss." Upset, Anna devises a test (using herself as a baseline) in which she can test the Vs for human emotions. Those that fail the test get skinned.

Meanwhile, Ryan needs phosphorous for his pregnant human girlfriend, and dovetails that personal necessity with a mission to embed a message of resistance ("John May Lives!") in Anna's live, global announcement of the new "Live Aboard" program. In an another subplot. Erica takes her son, Tyler, to go live with his father...Krycek! Actually, it's Nicholas Lea, looking like he hasn't aged a day since The X-Files last aired.

I tried hard to pay attention to all the narrative details of "Pound of Flesh" but I was constantly distracted and rendered aghast by the terrible green-screening and digital sets of the mother ship corridors and chambers. I mean, judging by this episode, V doesn't actually feature any standing sets for the Visitors' headquarters. I was mesmerized as Ryan boarded the Mother ship and obvious matte-lines surrounded him for minute after minute. At the very least, I suppose this approach saves money, but visually it's dreadful.

Last week I noted that Erica was beginning to annoy me, and this week I have to say the same for Ryan. Ryan (Morris Chestnut) is supposed to be one tough reptile. I mean, he's been living among the human race in secret for years, even developing a steady relationship with a human female. He must be one hell of an infiltrator, right? Well, not according to "Pound of Flesh," during which -- both times at the Visitor checkpoint; boarding and leaving the Mother ship -- he is recognized by Vs as appearing out-of-place. Go back and watch those scenes: for some reason Chestnut plays it like he's on the verge of chewing his fingernails off. He looks totally suspicious and out-of-place, when, as a long-standing undercover agent, he should be cool as a cucumber. It's an odd acting choice, and makes no sense given the character's history under "deep cover."

Then there's Georgie, who impulsively decides, because Ryan has been on the mother ship for a few hours, to mount a bloody rescue. So he boards the ship, stabs a Visitor in the back, and promptly gets apprehended by the Vs. Now, this opens up whole worlds of problems. First, and again, V plays the Resistance fighters as impulsive nutcases who threaten the very movement by their irrationality and quick-action. Does Georgie think, for a minute, that the Visitors won't be able to probe his mind, or torture him for information about his fellow rebels?

I shouldn't be too hard on Georgie. Given Ryan's inexplicably twitchy behavior on the Mother ship -- in what should have been an easy mission for a deep-cover agent -- I guess Georgie really did need to do some rescuing. But now, everyone needs to go back aboard the Mother ship to rescue him. D'oh!

I also have some difficulty with the utter lameness of the embedded message that sabotages Anna. "John May lives?" To the human masses, that mean absolutely nada. Other embedded messages that would have been more effective: "The Vs are lying." "The Vs are Reptiles." "Don't Trust Them!" or even "Anna is a Socialist." The Resistance members said it themselves: they had this one opportunity to surprise Anna and send a message to the people of the world. They chose to direct their message only at The Fifth Column Members (the only people who know who the heck John May is). But, it seems to me, if they had sent a message like one of the ones I suggested above, the Fifth Column would still know something was up, and the sound-byte would have had the added benefit of also arousing human suspicions.

But again, I have found that I can't watch V with an engaged mind, because nothing about the series stands up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. Last week, in the comments section here, we all noted the show seemed geared toward ten year-olds. But I think that assessment is too generous by four or five years.

Sayonara, Anna...enjoy your invasion.

CULT TV BLOGGING: V: "Welcome to the War"

ABC's re-imagined V returned with a new episode on Tuesday, after an hiatus of several months. When last I wrote about V here, I felt it was showing some signs of improvement after a diffident start. Following last night's show, Scott Rosenbaum's "Welcome to the War," however, I'm not so sure anymore. In other words, the series -- for all its admittedly interesting moments -- is still packed with infuriating contrivances and logical fallacies that more careful writers would avoid like the plague.

"Welcome to the War" (directed by Yves Simoneau) opens with an assassination attempt on Erica's life by the Visitor who was guarding the warehouse she blew up in previous episode. Erica, a mere human, successfully beats the alien warrior in brutal one-on-one combat with knives. We see a flash of the guard's reptilian skin here too, but once more, Erica doesn't think about dragging the alien's ass to the FBI labs, where her superiors can see that the Visitors are reptilian liars. Does she really distrust her superiors -- fellow humans and fellow Americans -- this much? That she wouldn't at least try to bring them in to the resistance?

Erica also doesn't even stop to photograph the alien body (of reptilian nature) so she can keep a record of the alien physiology/nature for herself (as exculpatory evidence in the event she is framed). Nope. It seems Erica is all about planning for the future...except when it actually comes to planning for the future. How about taking the corpse to a physician she trusts in the FBI and having a full autopsy and biological analysis run? So she can have a better understanding of her enemy?

Erica is quickly becoming a character I deeply, vehemently dislike. In this episode Erica projects a lot of swagger, but not much by way of brains. Her son, Tyler, is aboard the alien ship, and has told her himself that he will be home by dinner. Yet Erica nonetheless spends the entire episode in a rage, shouting "She's [Anna] got my son!" and threatening to kill (in her words) "the bitch." Yes, Anna has her son...for the moment. But is this character really that impulsive, that stupid, that she thinks she can raid the mother ship -- by herself -- and free her son from the technologically-advanced aliens? If so, she's the wrong woman to be leading a secret resistance, that's for sure. I get that the series is forging a "Battle of the Mothers" between Anna and Erica, but do the writers need to make Erica so unrelentingly dumb?

The contrivances really stack up in "Welcome to the War." The Visitors frame a man named Kyle Hobbes for the bombing of their warehouse (where their R6 compound was destroyed). They do so by creating a computer-generated image of the warehouse before the explosion, right down to Hobbes' fingerprints on the explosive device. This is indeed amazing futuristic technology, but no one in the F.B.I. seems to remember that extra-terrestrial, unexplained technology is not exactly admissible in our American legal system. No matter, these agents just take the aliens' word -- using never-before-seen, unexplained alien technology as their evidence -- without a second thought. If these guys actually caught Hobbes, he'd walk out of jail in a day because the evidence against him is alien malarkey, or at the very least untested in the legal system.

Realizing that Hobbes could be a valuable ally, Erica then sets off to find the mercenary/terrorist before the F.B.I does. Now remember, this Hobbes guy is an absolute master, a culprit whose name is listed on multiple "ten most wanted lists" according to Erica herself, and the F.B.I. has never been able to catch him. Well, amazingly, Erica apprehends Hobbes herself the very afternoon the Visitors frame him for the warehouse crime.

Sure, she got Hobbes' address from her turncoat partner's secret files, but this is still a huge contrivance. First, that Hobbes would still be living at an old address (it's been at least a few days since her partner died; and likely weeks since he was "observing" Hobbes). And second, that Hobbes would actually be there at the exact moment Erica showed up. And third, that he would be so easily apprehended. I mean, he's there all by himself. Does he "build armies" all by his lonesome? Not a soul to watch his back?

And again, V does something stupid. In Hobbes' hideout, we see that he has all the exits and entrances to his sanctuary scoped out on security cameras. This means, lest we forget, all that footage is being recorded. Well, when Erica spirits Hobbes away, the F.B.I. agents are already entering the building, meaning that they would see Erica and Hobbes on the security cameras exiting the premises (they don't), and furthermore, if they bothered to watch the recorded footage, they'd see Erica and Hobbes fleeing the building together; not to mention conspiring. None of that happens. I don't understand why you would even introduce security cameras into this scene if you didn't intend to follow through with the notion that, uh, the devices actually have a function and use, and the F.B.I. agents are smart enough to figure that out.

Pinpointing the logical fallacies in V episodes is still like shooting fish in a barrel. When the show isn't just being brazenly stupid, it settles for recycling lines from Jurassic Park ("Nature finds a way") and old X-Files plot-lines (the aliens are actually tagging humans, just like the Syndicate/aliens in Carter's series).

The best aspects of "Welcome to the War" all involve the Visitors. We learn from Anna that the Visitors do not attach emotions to memories the way that humans do. This is because, in her words, the aliens have been "designed" to be "efficient." This brings up some fascinating ideas: Designed by whom? Do the Visitors practice eugenics? I like that, finally, we are getting some development of the aliens. I still want to know more about their society and history, though.

Even more fun is Anna's sex scene with a strapping Visitor "volunteer" in the episode's last scene. This moment recalls the high camp of the original series. There, Diana was always bedding her underlings, and often depicted in the afterglow of a sexual romp. One of my favorite lines occurred while Diana was in bed with one of her men. "Peel you another goldfish?" She asked, in all seriousness.

Well, in the new V, there's no time for such silly species-specific small talk. Anna has sex with the poor guy, lays her eggs, and then leaves her partner behind as "nourishment" for her young. It's a pretty awesome scene (even if it ends with terrible CGI). And it shows just how merciless Anna is. Or maybe it's her nature as a lizard...we'll see.

My reservations about the new V continue to linger. The series needs to be smarter. Don't give Erica a George W. Bush-type, cowboy swagger, when she should be a clever chess player. Don't make the F.B.I unrealistically gullible (gee, let's take this alien video at face value and arrest someone...even if it won't stand up in our court system), and don't introduce unnecessary complications into scenes (like a building' security camera perimeter) if you don't know what to do with them.

Welcome to the War, V. Is this all you got?

The Questor Tapes Re-Activate!

The San Francisco Chronicle and other news outlets have reported this week that Rod Roddenberry and Ron Howard's production company, Imagine, are teaming to produce a new version of the classic 1970s Gene Roddenberry TV pilot, The Questor Tapes:

"The script, about a robot with incomplete memory tapes who is searching for his creator, was originally written by Roddenberry as a 13-episode TV series, but after disagreements with bosses at America's NBC network the sci-fi mogul abandoned the project.

The production eventually aired as a one-off small screen movie in 1974 - and now Roddenberry's son is hoping to bring "The Questor Tapes" back to life to honor his dad's memory.

Rod Roddenberry says, "My father always felt that Questor was the one that got away. He believed that the show had the potential to be bigger than Star Trek."

Personally, I think this is great news: The Questor Tapes never got a fair shake in the 1970s. Network brass wanted it to look more like The Six-Million Dollar Man than an original series and so Roddenberry stuck to his creative guns...scuttling the show. Although I'd rather see Genesis II re-made, I believe Questor would make for a great new series; especially as we continue to lose quality sci-fi program, seemingly by the bushel full.

Here' a snippet of my review of the original TV movie:

The Questor Tapes is an almost perfect representation of the Gene Roddenberry aesthetic. There is (gentle...) criticism of 20th century industrial/technological mankind here, his "squalor...ugliness...greed...struggles."

Yet this damning view is balanced and tempered by an essential optimism about intrinsic human nature. Our "greatest accomplishment," declares Questor is "our ability to love one another."

Questor is a character much like Mr. Spock or Lt. Data -- an outsider who is nonetheless fascinated by mankind. The perspective as "outsider" permits Questor, Data or Spock to be both critical and positive about the human race, without any of it seeming personal, political or petty. Like Spock, Questor is dedicated to logic, and uses that word (logic) frequently. "Logic indicates the simplest plan is often the best," etc. And also like Spock, Questor is peaceful. He is not programmed to kill, yet he can incapacitate enemies with the equivalent of a "nerve pinch."

But if Questor is a child of Spock, he is also the father of Data. There can be little doubt of that. Questor desires to be human, just like Data, and wants to understand humor. "Humor is a quality which seems to elude me," he tells Jerry at one point. Also, like Data, Questor is a sexual being, and this facet of his personality also conforms to an essential quality of all Roddenberry productions: kinkiness.

To get information out of Lady Helena Trimble, Questor -- an android -- makes love to her. Beforehand, he tells her that he is...um..."fully functional." Next Generation fans will recognize that particular turn of phrase from Data's seduction of Tasha Yar in the first season episode "The Naked Now."

In another scene from The Questor Tapes, Jerry and Questor visit a European casino and Questor learns that the House is cheating, utilizing fake dice. The android is able to beat the cheaters by adjusting the balance of the dice. In the second season episode of The Next Generation entitled "The Royale," Data does precisely the same thing.

The Questor Tapes has aged poorly in a few, minor ways...all mostly visual. For instance, a close-up glimpse of Questor's high-tech interior reveals a rotary telephone cord...not exactly state of the art. And the very idea that "tapes" would carry an android's programming? Well, that is passe, of course too. Even Vaslovik's Information Center is obviously pre-world-wide-web.

Yet none of that matters in the slightest. What matters here, and what grants The Questor Tapes a real "heart" is the relationship at the forefront of the production: the friendship between a human (Jerry) and a machine (Questor). There's funny banter and quiet affection there, and the relationship will remind you (in a positive, not derivative...) way of the long-lived Kirk/Spock friendship. It's different in that Jerry has no authority over Questor: he's a teacher in the subject of humanity, not a commanding officer. Despite the difference, there's definitely charm here...

TV REVIEW: V: "It's Only The Beginning"

Last night, ABC's V actually remembered that it is supposed to be a science fiction series.

The episode, entitled "It's Only The Beginning," featured a tantalizing glimpse of a Visitor narcotic called "Bliss," a view of the mothership engine room and propulsion system, and then climaxed with galactic implications: a cosmic pull-back from Mother Earth. It was a CGI push away from our world, through the asteroid belt, to the fringe of the solar system itself -- a move designed to reveal a fleet of V ships...waiting for the order to colonize.

This final, impressive shot seemed like a spiritual heir (and homage...) to an iconic shot from the original 1980s series: a similar pull-back through orbital space that revealed a slew of Visitor saucers hidden behind our moon. It was a nice, ominous touch.

Contrarily, the episode last night opened with one of those hackneyed "Fourteen Hours Earlier" tricks that is tell-tale sign of post-production editing pickles. I know: I had to deploy the same tired gimmick myself in one episode of The House Between when fashioning a difficult third season episode almost out-of-whole-cloth. But once beyond that underwhelming beginning, this episode moved fast and revealed a lot; much more, in fact, than the previous three episodes combined.

For instance, we saw that the Visitors are equipped with suicide pills that disintegrate their bodies should they be captured or discovered. The suicide pill leaves nothing behind but ash, and is surely an homage to another alien invasion series, the brilliant 1960s endeavor The Invaders. As you may recall from that Roy Thinnes program, David Vincent could never prove his case about the aliens because the corpses of the invaders always went up in smoke and spontaneously combusted before authorities could arrive.

Also -- finally -- this new V acknowledged in "It's Only The Beginning" that "skinning" a Visitor could be the very thing to wake up our people from apparent mindless devotion to our new extra-terrestrial "friends." When this idea is brought up, however, Ryan goes ballistic and tells the Resistance fighters he better not ever hear them talking about such a thing again. The reason, ostensibly, is that the Visitors would retaliate with tremendous force and wipe everybody out. I don't know how believable Ryan's explanation is, but I'm happy to see that the issue was addressed. This was exactly what I was seeking; just a simple acknowledgment that skinning a Visitor on TV was a legitimate battle option.

Last night's show also revived the anti-Obama subtext of the pilot. Ryan -- a secret Visitor -- has a faked birth certificate showing he was born in "Hawaiian Gardens," California. As Orly Taitz will tell you, Obama's purportedly "fake" birth certificate names Hawaii as the state of (fake) birth. Coincidence?

Also, the episode's central plot -- a Visitor scheme to poison our seasonal flu shots with an alien substance called R6 -- clearly parallels the tea bagger furor and resistance over government-mandated flu vaccinations. Again, I don't agree with V's paranoid right-wing view of Obama (I'm still waiting for the FEMA concentration camps -- or at least our taxes to go up -- before I resist). But if you want a timely subtext or context, there it is, enunciated between the lines.

V clearly has a long way to go before it becomes "must see TV," but I do feel the series is clawing itself out of the deep ditch it dug in the first two awful weeks. Personally, I find Erica Mitchell's character, Agent Evans, difficult to warm up to as a lead character. She's more reptilian and cold than the Visitors, to tell you the truth. No wonder her son, Tyler is looking elsewhere for warmth.

Yet last night -- for the first time -- momentum was undeniably building. I actually found myself caring about finding what was going to happen next.

And, of course, that means we must now to wait till March 2010 for the next episode...

TV REVIEW: V: "A Bright New Day"

If you've been keeping up with this blog, you know I'm not the world's most devout fan of the new ABC version of V.

However, last night's episode, "A Bright New Day," was aptly-named by my reckoning. It seemed like the first installment of the series that was at all promising. In other words...a distinct improvement.

I feel this way because some of my gripes about the new series were actually addressed. For instance, instead of merely hearing about the general reaction of Americans to the Visitors, in last night's segment we actually witnessed some of that reaction.

Early in "A Bright New Day," we got a lightning-quick montage of various confused people in the confession booth at St. Josephine's. "Are the Visitors demons or angels?" "Is everything we believe a lie?" "Can they heal my sister's cancer?" They asked Father Jack. Again, this was a lightning-quick touch -- a token move, perhaps -- but it was nonetheless a start at constructing the larger global context that has largely been absent thus far.

We also met the wife of the U.S. Air Force pilot killed in the first episode, Mary Faulkner, and learned of her issues with the aliens. In the spirit of Diana, the tricky Anna co-opted this human leader and even (finally...) had a good scene (told in jump cuts...) during which she rehearsed the correct human emotions for dealing with grief. A very slippery lizard, this Anna.

"A Bright New Day" also afforded the series the first mention by name of the Visitor's Fifth Column, an important ingredient of the original series. And beyond that, we got more detailed glimpses of Visitor technology, Visitor written language...and Visitor's lady's underwear. These are all steps in the right direction and signs, I hope, that the show is making a much-needed course correction.

Most impressively, "A Bright New Day" featured at least two authentic, jaw-dropping surprises during the hour. I'm an old hand with genre TV, but I didn't see either of these shocks coming. Again, for perhaps the first time, I felt last night that V was actually making a concerted effort to entertain, rather than just kind of plodding around on automatic pilot.

My big concern with the series now is something that a clever reader brought to my attention last week. In the comments for the review of last week's episode, a reader named Pete noted "if the V traitor *really* wants to fight the V, why doesn't he just go on TV and expose himself as a reptile?"

As hard as I've tried to suspend disbelief since reading that comment...I just can't do it. This is the elephant (or reptile...) in the room.

The whole premise of V and a Visitor Fifth Column just crumbles when you consider this idea; that Ryan, the Fifth Columnist, could defeat the Visitors in one swift stroke by going on television and cutting open his human skin to reveal his scales before a live global audience. Last night, even Anna noted herself the importance of public opinion; and keeping public opinion in favor of the Visitors. Imagine how public opinion would swing against the aliens if Ryan went on TV and revealed to the world that the Visitors were a pack of liars? All the material in "A Bright New Day" about Ryan re-organizing the Fifth Column is a runaround; a time-waste., a cheat. If he wants to win in one fell swoop, Ryan would simply himself to the world.

Now two things. First, some people might say Ryan doesn't want his fiance to know he's a lizard. My answer: priorities, Ryan, priorities! How happy of a marriage can he hope to have if the Visitors are ruling the world? If their love is true, his girlfriend would forgive him his lizardly nature. Secondly, the series could get around this point simply by acknowledging it: by having a throwaway line from Ryan in which he says he can't reveal himself on TV because he's afraid of his girlfriend's reaction or something. It would still be stupid; but at least it would be acknowledged.

However, that's not the end of it. Here's my sinister, paranoid side coming out. There is one other way in which Ryan's unwillingness to reveal his lizard-nature makes narrative sense. What if the Fifth Column is not only anti-Visitor, but also anti-human? What if Ryan, as part of the Fifth Column, is actually carrying water for another malevolent force out to harm humanity, and thus can't reveal himself for that purpose? Remember, the original V miniseries ended with the Resistance sending a message to the Visitor's wartime enemy, another alien race. out there in space

So is V setting this subplot up with Ryan's refusal to strip for the camera? We'll see. I hope that I'm not being cleverer than the writers of the series here...

TV REVIEW: The Prisoner: "Arrival" (2009)

"Breathe in. Breath Out. Village Life Goes On."

-- Number 2 (Ian McKellen) in AMC's mini-series, The Prisoner.

Railing against remakes and re-imaginations is becoming something of a full-time job around these parts, and yet, as a blogger, I have no desire to write the same review over and over again.

That review consists, basically, of my disappointment that a remake of a popular, even classic property has been dumbed down for modern audiences by sacrificing the subtext and social commentary.

You may have read that particular review in regards to ABC's V, of late.

And yet, here I am, confronted with AMC's new mini-series, The Prisoner, which is based on one of my favorite genre TV series of all time, Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner (1967-1968).

And once more, I am conflicted between my real, heartfelt desire to embrace new genre television and my objective critical reaction; essentially a wholesale rejection of that which has been delivered to us because, simply, the quality of the thing is not up to snuff.

Regarding the original Prisoner's first episode (also entitled "Arrival,") I wrote: "In the valhalla of genre television there is nothing even remotely like The Prisoner, the late-1960s British allegory that focuses explicitly on the idea that "no man is just a number." With steadfast zeal and an almost radical sense of dedication and single-mindedness The Prisoner devotes itself to the ideals of individual freedom and liberty, and finds that contemporary Western society -- here represented by a hermetically-sealed Village -- doesn't measure up."

The new Prisoner is so confused, so hopelessly muddled, you can't tell what it's about (or even what it wants to be about).

On a purely literal reading, you can't even easily discern what information, precisely, Number 2 (Ian McKellen) hopes to extract from the new Number 6 (Jim Caviezel). The original program saw sharp-tongued McGoohan match wits -- week-after-week -- with a different, desperate Number 2, over the reasons behind his resignation from the British secret service. Even in apparent surrender to brain-washing, emotional betrayal, and outright torture, the original Number 6 remained...indomitable.

The new Number # 6 isn't cut from the same stubborn cloth. "Please, I'm nobody," he whimpers pitifully in the first hour, making a personal admission McGoohan's character would just never make, under any circumstances. Then, this Number 6 actually has to be told otherwise by his doctor at the Village clinic. "You're a free man," she insists helpfully.

If this Number 6 is that close to the breaking point at the beginning of his stay at the Village, where's the fun of watching Number 2 go at him for six episodes?

But -- okay, fine -- Hamlet gets re-interpreted all the time. Mel Gibson even made him a man of action, so perhaps this Number Six is going to stiffen his spine in the course of the mini-series.

But a more egregious sin committed by the remake is that it unnecessarily muddles the crisp premise of the original. For instance, the new program adds mysterious Crystal Towers (which look like the World Trade Center towers...) to the skyline of the Village, as well as the not-very cryptic instruction to "follow the towers" to find escape. If that's all it takes to escape, grab a few inmates and that tour bus and go. On foot, the Rover (still a big white ball...) might get you, but in a large vehicle?

The mini-series also resorts to frustrating, momentum-halting, Lost-style flashbacks so audiences can see this Number 6 working on the job he unceremoniously quit, and learn about his reasons for resigning (something we were never, EVER told on the original series).

Again, in the original series, Number 6's refusal to reveal the the reason of his resignation was about a larger, thematic issue. About privacy. About the fact that a government that catalogued, numbered and tagged people still didn't have the right to be privy to individual, personal decisions. Number 6's reasons were his own; and that's why he didn't share them.

Here, I suspect we're going to discover some noble reason for Number 6's resignation. That -- as a data analyst observing human behavior -- he was asked to do something immoral; or that he saw something that he didn't like. That's a corruption of the original program's philosopy. It wasn't that the original Number 6 was trying to do something good, necessarily, by resigning. It's that he believed he had the right to make personal decisions independent of Big Brother. He fought to preserve that right -- the liberty of the individual to make choices for himself.

The new mini-series also throws in mind-altering drugs, and cripples the new Villagers with an arbitrary case of selective amnesia. This means they can apparently remember Thomas Edison and Darwin (mentioned by name...), but have only vague flashes of the Statue of Liberty or Big Ben (images scrawled in secret by Village rebels). This means that the denizens can quote the number of stars in the heaven, but not the source of that information.

You see, this Village isn't just an inescapable burg that happens to be geographically isolated. On the contrary, Number 2 makes the case that the Village is the only civilization in the entire world; and that it is the only civilization where any of the prisoners have ever lived; that has ever existed in human history. This makes no sense, because human memory is a web of connections; a network of context. Can you remember Darwin without remembering the idea of evolution? And if you think of evolution, might you not also think of the Scopes Trial? And Tennessee? And then the American South? See my point? You can't know Thomas Edison, but not know how his inventions were put to use.

In broad terms, the new version of "Arrival" follows the outline of the original premire episode. In other words, Number 6 arrives in a daze, takes a taxi that travels to "local destinations only," and then buys a map that shows only the territory of the Village.

Finally, he becomes entangled with a woman who might be a traitor (the doctor at the clinic) and matches wits with Number 2. But the new show -- in a telltale sign of our age -- also mistakes soap opera-storytelling for mature drama.

Therefore, we are introduced, at length, to Number 2's family, including his sick wife (or rather, a wife he may be keeping sick...) and his curious son, who may be ready to rebel against his Dad and the Village.

Therefore, the cab driver and his family become recurring characters too, and we see their home life as well.

Therefore, we get those disruptive flashbacks showing Number 6 hooking up with a strange woman following his resignation.

The lovely female doctor at the clinic is also apparently a regular character here, a prospective love interest.

Again, this is all just totally unnecessary and burdensome material. The original Prisoner concerned one individual bucking the system in the here and now of the Village; battling his incarceration in the present. He had no friends. He could trust no one. He was a man alone, and his mind -- and his privacy -- were his own too. The new Prisoner spreads the focus around, both in terms of characters and of time line. The result of this unnecessary opening-up is that a sense of immediacy and place is sacrificed.

The thing I most disliked about this new version of The Prisoner is that it is edited exactly like everything else you see on TV these days. It relies on flash cuts, shaky-cam action, and sped-up/slowed-down footage. There's nothing original in the execution And that too is a betrayal of the surreal qualities inherent in the original (right down to production design). Again, this is how I wrote of the original series: "One of the facets that I've always admired about The Prisoner is this powerful sense of place, of another world (and the Village is, in fact, a place called Portmeiron in North Wales.) The series would not be so effective if the Village seemed fake. This is the oddest "jail" you've ever seen, yet it feels real, not gimmicky or the product of special effects.

Well, the new Village looks like a typical movie construct; and because it has been made so large -- more "The City" than "The Village" -- it's impossible to get a real feel for it. The original Village was small enough that Number 6 could explore it, prod at the boundaries, and become familiar with every aspect of it. The new Village -- of greater size -- could never be fully explored by one man.

In fairness, this new Prisoner is much better than the remake of V. And I enjoyed how it attempted to position itself as a sequel to as well as a remake of the McGoohan series. On the latter front, note that old Number 93 is dressed as Number 6 from the original series, that he lives in a similarly-decorated house (down to the lava lamp), and was also obsessed with escape. More importantly take a look at his number. 93. 9 - 3 = 6. Get it?

But overall I found this new Prisoner unnecessarily lugubrious. It is underwhelming from a visual standpoint; soap-opera-ish in the extreme, and it layers too many complications upon the franchise's clean, vibrant premise.

Be seeing you? Perhaps not...

TV REVIEW: V: "There is No Normal Anymore"

Last week, I didn't have much complimentary to say about ABC's re-imagination of the 1980s classic V. The new series pilot was woefully flat; lacking in suspense, scares, visual distinction, and much by way of interesting characters.

The second episode, last night's "There Is No Normal Anymore," isn't much of an improvement. In fairness, the sophomore episode opens with a full-head of steam. We get signs that the Visitors are illicitly monitoring and intercepting earthbound 911 telephone calls, and also witness another Visitor seeker weapon in action (though it resembles a CGI version of the famous Phantasm ball...).

There was even one sequence last night that actually accelerated the heart-beat a bit. Specifically, the hunky, cussin' priest and Agent Evans were interrogated -- in separate settings -- about their individual encounters with the Visitors. The sharp cross-cutting here did a good job of building tension. At least until it was all bled away by the 20 minute mark...

But other than that aggressive start? The new V most decidedly lacks imagination and, perhaps more importantly, science fiction color. I wonder how long it will be before we get interviews with the producers declaring that V isn't supposed to be science fiction at all, because everything indicative of the genre is downplayed here to an alarming extent. For instance, there's been zero on-screen speculation about the Visitors' world of origin, their technology, or even the idea of parallel evolution, since the Vs apparently (on the surface...) so closely resemble human beings. Wouldn't someone on the 24 hour cable networks be talking about alien biology, alien ship design, anything?! How about civil defense matters in the case of a surprise attack?

Worse than this apparent oversight, our lead -- Agent Evans -- has apparently taken it entirely in stride that the Visitors are humanoid Lizards in men's clothing. She's very upset, you see, that her FBI partner of seven years is a traitor and possibly a terrorist. But she never expresses astonishment or horror that, gee, he's also a sentient reptile. In fact, nobody comments on that at all this week. It's almost like, behind-the-scenes, the makers of V are actually embarrassed by their very premise.

Damningly, the new V doesn't even seem to know what the Visitors are doing here on Earth yet, either. Perhaps the show is hedging its bets because of all the behind-the-scenes turmoil, but it means, in practice, that we get a lot of shots of High Commander Anna simply staring at underlings; possibly bemused; possibly sinister; possibly impatient. Your guess is as good as mine. But three or four of these shots an episode is just gilding the Lilly; at least until we have a better idea of what she's thinking.

Costs must be out of control on the new series too, judging by the dearth of effects shots and interesting sets in last night's show. In the original V, we saw more laser blasts, more alien make-up, more ship take-offs and landings, more mother-ship interiors in a single hour than we have seen in the first two episodes here. Again, there's just nothing in this re-imagination that remotely suggests "event" television or a sense of scope commiserate with the idea that aliens have arrived on Earth for the first time. Agent Evans declares "there is no normal anymore," but the problem with the new V is that, pretty much, everything is exactly as it was before. People still go to work; people still send their kids to school; everyone still watches 24 hour news and worries about TV ratings. The alien problem ranks about as high as illegal immigration, health care, or the winner of the next American Idol, it seems.

Honestly, if aliens hovered over our cities and wanted to open diplomatic relations, claiming to be "at peace, always," wouldn't our government (or the Chinese Government, or the Russian government...) respond: okay, space brothers, but in the meantime, how about vacating our sovereign airspace and backing the fuck off? If I were President, my answer would be: I would be happy to consider diplomatic relations with your people. Till I decide, all your ships and personnel are to remain in orbit around the moon. But the new V can't even imagine that the premise of the show is real, and thus the show itself doesn't feel like a thoughtful meditation on an alien arrival.

My gut instinct about the new V is that it is attempting for a fast, earthbound 24-vibe -- with aliens as terrorists -- but at the expense of the intelligent, science fiction allegory of the original.

Virtually by definition, that seems like dumbing down.

This House You Have To Watch Every Minute: The Seen and Unseen In The Haunting films (1963/1999)

When first we glimpse Hill House in Robert Wise's chilling The Haunting (1963), the imposing old structure is a featureless black obelisk: a jagged silhouette carved out from brooding night sky.

Secrets dwell inside Hill House -- in the dark; in the night -- and yet the director's selection of visualization (a shadowed, blackened house with no distinguishable architectural features) purposefully confounds our desire to peer inside this monument to the unknown; to learn about the "unquiet dead" who may walk the lonely, vast hallways of this spectral monolith.

Hill House is a place "born to be bad," according to the film's opening narration, but it is something more than that too: "an undiscovered country waiting to be explored." And The Undiscovered Country, as we remember from our Shakespeare, is Death Itself.

Robert Wise structures his horror film (based on the sterling novel by Shirley Jackson) as a probe into that ultimate unknown; but more than that too, as an ambiguous probe into that unknown. Never in the film, for instance, is the audience 100% certain that it has actually witnessed the supernatural and the ghostly. On the contrary, our senses are heightened and tweaked by disturbing noises, by the sinister-seeming twist of a doorknob, and more. Yet certainty still eludes us; just as certainty about the paranormal eludes people in real life.

You Should Be Receptive...and Innocent: Exploring The Self in The Haunting.

It is no mistake or coincidence that the four explorers countenancing the chaotic, uncertain terrain of Hill House are -- in the spirit of Hugh Crain's strange edifice itself -- a determinedly unconventional group. This is important structurally to the narrative. The sojourners reflect the sojourn.

Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) gave up a "conventional" life and a proper upbringing (courtesy of his upper-crust English family) to prove the existence of the supernatural. This is his life's work, which makes him either commendably dedicated or utterly foolish. He says he wants his people "innocent and receptive" so that they will discover the secrets of Hill House. If someone is innocent and receptive, however, he or she is not looking for the angles that might be played; and every little noise becomes significant and meaningful. So Markway may (intentionally or unintentiaonally...) be encouraging hallucinations or delusions (though he says, explicitly, that this must not be the case if their research is considered to be legitimate).

Theodora (Claire Bloom) also fits the bill of "unconventional." She not only boasts extra-sensory perception, but is "out" as a lesbian. To some people in traditional society in the 1960s the latter quality would make her untrustworthy at best, abnormal at worst. And when strange handwriting appears on the wall of Hill House, Theodora is the first suspect. She's jealous of the attention Markway showers on Nell, and this spooky handwriting (which names Nell...) may be her petty revenge; her game playing. She has a cruel, jealous streak that could effect the exploration of Hill House.

Then there's Luke (Russ Tamblyn), a playboy and would-be millionaire who has a frat-boy sense of humor; but also a burgeoning curiosity and conscience. Is he just a money-grubber, a dabbler, or something more? What's his angle?

And finally, we arrive at the most unconventional of the explorers: Eleanor or Nell (Julie Harris), a spinster who had a poltergeist experience as a child but who, in essence, has never truly left the confines of her home. The sheltered, inexperienced woman has spent years caring for her invalid mother (now deceased...) and the chance to explore Hill House is most definitely an escape from the drudgery of her day-to-day existence. She is motivated to stay at Hill House; to "belong" to the group. We wonder: is Nell's subconscious somehow causing the noises that bedevil Hill House at night (as it caused the rock storm that fell upon her house in childhood?) Or is Nell hallucinating? Or, worst of all: is she so desperate for attention that she is "pretending" all the experiences with the supernatural. When Nell almost falls off a veranda at Hill House, who can adequately judge what caused her to grow dizzy? It is convenient that Markway, the object of her affection, would rush in to her to care for her...

These idiosyncratic individuals -- who don't conform to the boundaries of society-at-large and who don't entirely fit the bill of "normal" or "trustworthy" -- investigate the home of a 19th century robber baron of sorts, Hugh Crain. He too is a kindred spirit: an unconventional person and one who didn't believe in the rules of society. He built his oddball house to reflect those beliefs. For instance, all the doors in Hill House are hung crookedly...so that -- after a time -- they slam shut, apparently of their own volition. And all the angles inside the house are off-center a bit....just like the characters in the drama. The house --as Markway reminds us -- "does have its oddities." Just like every team member...

In such a strange environment -- with four such anarchistic individuals in close-quarters -- the probe into the unknown is tainted by the frailties of the individual personalities. We can't rule out that one or all of the explorers is perpetrating some kind of hoax; or simply that some one's imagination has gotten out of control. Consider the moment in which Nell becomes convinced that someone is holding her hand in the dark. She believes it to be Theodora, but when the lights come up, Theodora is across the room, in her own bed. Wise's camera never leaves Nell's face during the "event." It stays on Nell, in extreme close-up throughout the purported "visitation", and thus we are left to wonder if she is hallucinating, or really countenancing something supernatural. If something were holding and crushing her hand...why don't we ever see it?

Similarly, on the night of the loud noises at their door; Theodora and Nell never actually see anything abnormal. And importantly, Luke and Markway are elsewhere in the house at the time...they could easily be responsible for the noises. Similarly, anyone could have written Nell's name on the wall. When the film's biggest scare arrives -- Mrs. Markway's (Lois Maxwell) sudden appearance from the attic -- even it is not ghostly in nature. She became lost in the attic and tried to escape...stunning Nell.

And finally, Nell's death could be suicide brought on by the fact that the attention seeker was being ostracized from the group, and on and on...

My argument vis-a-vis the original The Haunting is this: I believe Hill House is haunted and that the explorers experience paranormal or supernatural events there. However, the film retains an authentic sense of terror because Wise walks the line of ambiguity brilliantly. Nothing supernatural is ever truly seen, and we become perched on the edge of our seats by the things we don't see; but which we believe to exist. I'm not making the argument that showing ghosts in horror movies is always less effective than hiding them, only noting that The Haunting still scares -- 45 years after it was made -- because it exhibits this spine-tingling sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. We don't know what is making the horrible noise outside the bedroom; we don't know if that is a human face in the sculpture on the wall, or merely a trick of the light. We can't be certain if the door is bending because of a supernatural force...or someone leaning on the other side of it. But taken all together, these events are chilling and add up to something meancing. More so, they are chilling because we never get satisfactory answers about them.

Wise's exquisite camerawork in The Haunting generates genuine terror, but notice that the camera truly grows perturbed only when the dramatis personae have also grown perturbed or hysterical. Theodora and Nell are worked up to raging terror by the time Wise deploys that prowling, angling camera which circumscribes the perimeter of the bedroom door. We interpret this odd, angled movement as the search by something inimical -- on the other side of the door -- seeking an entry point. But we see nothing; and the camera's twisted perspective could simply be the perspective of two very frightened women Similarly, Nell's fainting spell on the veranda coincides with the camera lunge from the high tower; again as though something invisible is approaching...or attacking. Yet the sudden, alarming camera movement could be interpreted as a reflection of Nell's sudden, dangerous vertigo. Especially if we are to believe she is suicidal (a belief which also plays into the climax and the staircase set piece).

And by the time we see a Hill House door swell and retract (as if breathing by itself...), every character -- especially Markway -- is desperate and fearful. These apparent manifestations of the supernatural could be the manifestations of the characters' out of control hysteria and fear.

One of The Haunting's central set-pieces involves Nell and Markway's ascent up a rickety, vast spiral staircase. The staircase is loose from the wall (again, not a danger that is supernatural in origin). But the quest to reach the top metaphorically reflects the team's overall quest. Markway and his people are climbing the tallest mountain and seeking answers on the summit. But even they cannot reach Heaven for answers about life beyond death. And again, notice that when Nell and Markway do finally achieve the top of the spiral staircase, Nell is frightened out of her mind not by a ghost...but by another desperate human, Markway's wife. In other words, Nell has reached the pinnacle of Hill House -- climbed as far as she can possibly climb -- and the terrors/answers she gets are still of the human, not supernatural variety.

The Haunting succeeds as a great horror movie because there exists enough ambiguity in the camera-work, the characters, and in the script to support multiple interpretations. Either the house is haunted, or Nell is a very disturbed individual responsible for the so-called haunting, or all the characters are just "innocent and receptive" to their admittedly creepy environment. These interpretations compete for primacy in The Haunting, and that competition results in an incredibly active viewing experience; a high-level of engagement with the material. And that engagement leads to unbearable suspense...


Just Because You Can Do A Thing: Remaking and Unmaking The Haunting (1999)

Ambiguity was not in fashion in 1999 when Jan De Bont re-made The Haunting. Therefore, what remained unseen but detected in Wise's classy original film became seen....and predictable. Not just seen actually, but dramatized in full-color, in ample lighting, utilizing the latest in state-of-the-art computer generated special effects. Because of this see-it-all approach, the remake leaves itself only one possible interpretation: Hill House is haunted by a malevolent spirit who can re-shape reality to his liking.

You can almost detect how the makers of The Haunting (1999) were onto the kernel of something clever in reconceiving the film. They seized on the good idea that Hill House was an outward manifestation or reflection of Hugh Crain's twisted psyche. But they went too far. The filmmakers thus transformed Hill House into a bloated monstrosity with oversized rooms that might resemble a human rib-cage, or a bizarre drawing by H.R. Giger more than a real house. Again, you can understand this approach at the same time that you realize it just doesn't work. Houses -- even haunted houses -- aren't hatched or born out of twisted psyches. They are built and constructed plank-by-plank and it is simply impossible to believe that the out-of-proportion, bizarre Hill House of The Haunting (1999) was ever built by 19th century hands, using 19th century techniques and plans. Because of the house's egregious (though inventive) design, the film sacrifices some vital piece of believability. A house with a Godzilla-sized fireplace? With a hall of mirrors? With a virtual river inside one hallway?

Bottom line: If we can't believe in the house as a real, tangible place from human history; we don't believe in the story being told there, and the movie automatically fails to suspend our disbelief.

Another bad move in The Haunting grants the Crain-spirit seemingly invincible powers over flesh and blood, stone and mortar. The house repetitively grows appendage-like vines out of the walls and entraps human characters in them on a regular basis. Stone gargoyles come to life and attack people in broad daylight. Curtains dance with ghostly apparitions whose shapes we can see, process, and comprehend. The digital special effects are repeated so often and in such ample light that the "horror" imagery becomes commonplace instead of frightening. A flying gargoyle and ambulatory statue are things you can run and hide from, things you can strike with your fist or with a weapon. Contrast that kind of nemesis with the amorphous, unseen thing perhaps prowling in Wise's original. How could you escape an angry spirit that seemed to exist by its own set of "laws?"

The Haunting remake eschews ambiguity in other ways. We also see and detect here the all-too-human motives of Hill House's ghost, Hugh Crain. He's apparently enslaving all the children he used to exploit in life (just like Kathie Lee Gifford...) and this version of Eleanor (Lily Taylor) -- a surprise(!) descendant of Crain's second wife -- must free the children from his hellish grip. All is made right when Nell and the children ascend to Heaven and Crain passes through the "door of judgment" to Hell itself.

Again, there's nothing like taking uncertainty entirely out of the equation. In the original Haunting it wasn't even plain whether one ghost or multiple ghosts (or no ghosts...) were at work. The new Haunting provides us an "earthly" agenda for a specific ghost (enslavement of the children), a proper fate (punishment for bad deeds) and a reward for the righteous victor in the fight against him. De Bont's The Haunting takes the shivery indeterminism of Wise's classic and shelves it in favor of mind-numbing, imagination-crushing certitude.

No expense was spared to remake The Haunting in 1999, but the spine-tingling ambiguity and uncertainty of Wise's original were abandoned in favor of an onslaught of digital effects. This is a case where seeing is not believing; and where certainty crushes the mind's capacity to imagine the unseen. That's why the original The Haunting still "walks alone" as a classic.

The remake, in every sense of the word, is un-"Wise."

And The Worst Horror Film Remake So Far Is...?

...Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls.

The original Carnival of Souls (1962) was a one-of-a-kind experience. Forged on a tiny budget in the middle of nowhere Kansas, it was undeniably crude. Yet the film by Herk Harvey was surreal and creepy too; a mesmerizing, unsettling journey into a disturbing, black-and-white netherworld.

In my review of the film, I wrote:

"Performances in Carnival of Souls are truly variable, from the exquisite and sublime (the entrancing Hilligoss) to the terrible (there's a moment when a stranger by a water fountain addresses the camera directly), but there's an alchemy at work in Carnival of Souls, one impossible to dismiss.

The film's production deficits somehow manage to play into the overriding sense of the unreal and dream-like. There are no zombie attacks, no fierce action sequences, no bouts of blood-letting here. Instead, the venture methodically and memorably (and with unforgettable imagery) charts one woman's tragic plight as she slips slowly - piece by piece - from the world of the living to the world of the dead. In that half-detected twilight between life and death, she begins to regret that she never embraced life as meaningfully as she should have. Because now, death's cold embrace - a dance partner in the carnival of souls - is all she can look forward to.

The 1960s Carnival of Souls had budgetary drawbacks but viewers could easily overlook them because the film nonetheless expressed something powerful and resonant about mortality. That abandoned Saltair Carnival was a realm of terror, and our heroine was never going to escape it; no matter how hard she tried. Ultimately, we're all going to have our dance card punched by Death too; and thus something rings true about the stark, mysterious film and the hopeless, inevitable air that dominates it.

The same could not be said for the dreadful 1998 remake. It stars Bobbie Phillips as Alex Grant, a young woman who witnessed the murder of her mother twenty years ago by an abusive clown, Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). On the anniversary of her Mom's murder, Alex is accosted by Louis once more, and she drives her car into the waters of a California harbor rather than let the sadist endanger her younger sister, Sandra (Shawnee Smith). Following the accident in the harbor, Alex begins to move throughout different stages of her life, is terrorized by Louis repeatedly, and even sees gesticulating, spasming demons straight out of Jacob's Ladder (1990).

Technically-speaking, Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is a much less-accomplished effort than the original film, an odd fact given that the remake undoubtedly cost far more than Herk Harvey's groundbreaking original. In fact, this 1998 film is staged so ineptly that sometimes reverse angles don't even match. And the characters are so often shot in in close-up and medium-shot that you can't tell where characters are positioned in relationship to each other. One scene that features Louis popping up in the back-seat of Alex's car is so badly composed and edited that you aren't even sure that Miller and Phillips were in the same car at the same time to shoot the scene. Additionally, the movie is over-lit and blandly shot in a style that makes your average Sci-Fi Original Movies look like Fellini.

The newer Carnival of Souls also boasts all the tell-tale marks of bad 1990s screen-writing. In the original film, we met a character who happened to be in a car wreck, but the audience knew little about her background. As the movie went on, we learned she was a bit of a cold fish, and that she had held a job as a church organist. But we came to sympathize with her through her experiences; through the strange events occurring all around her. We identified with her because something strange and terrible was happening to her; and because, we felt, it could happen to us too.

By contrast, the 1998 film layers on facile psychology and off-the-shelf characters (in much the style as Rob Zombie's Halloween remake, actually...). Alex is a "psychologically damaged" character with "a tragic past" she must overcome. The events of the film take place on the anniversary of her Mother's murder...the event she could never get past. How many times have we seen that kind of predictable set-up before?

The Boogeyman of Carnival of Souls this time around has changed too. He is not some wide-eyed, pale-faced personification of Death, but rather Alex's "personal" demon: the groping, gruesome and utterly obvious Louis. The focus on the inner life -- on mortality itself -- has been turned outward to the simple defeat of a two-dimensional "bad guy" the audience can hiss at. Certainly, a good film could be made from these concepts, but this isn't it. These changes only make Carnival of Souls much more two-dimensional, much more run-of-the-mill than the original film.

The 1998 film is also slathered with dopey New Age, touchy-feely dialogue about death. Alex shares a discussion with a man who might be an angel. He tells her, "It's time to let go." She replies "I can't. I haven't lived yet." At another point, during a discussion of closing down her bar (The Mermaid Bar), Alex tells her sister "I'm not ready to go." Sandra replies "I know, but you're closer than you think." Welcome to Foreshadowing 101. But once more, the whole concept of the original film is undercut because death is now a safe harbor, a peaceful zone...not a realm of the unknown and the terrifying. I suppose this change has occurred so that the film can end with a kind of happy ending: our heroine has beaten the bad guy, "achieved" the rescue of her sister, and moved on to a "good place."

This movie should have been titled Horrorway to Heaven.

Really, I could go on and on about what a lousy film this is. There's a gratuitous sex scene on a boat that pops up out of nowhere with bizarre urgency but then leads nowhere. And the movie constantly skips time frames -- back and forth between scenes -- thus negating even the most rudimentary sense of narrative momentum (and precluding the need for that pesky thing called "continuity.")

And rather ungraciously, Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls even fails to credit the original 1962 film as a source of inspiration. There's no "based on" opening credit here, despite the fact that the overall outline of the film is the same as the original (a woman dies and doesn't know it...) and despite the fact that certain shots are explicitly re-staged (the car pulled from the water...). The IMDB lists John Clifford, the writer of the original Carnival of Souls in the credits for this film, but I watched this film yesterday and his name is nowhere on the front of the film. The opening credit reads: written for the screen and directed by Adam Grossman.

Bottom line: Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is a bad remake, and an arrogant one too. It has the audacity to adopt the title of a beloved older film but then substitutes weak ideas for the powerful ones of the original. A remake of Carnival of Souls need not have been slavishly imitative of the original, but it could have captured at least some of the ambiguity, some of the terror, some of the spikiness of the 1962 effort. This remake fails on all fronts.

I'm a big admirer of Wes Craven, but I sure as hell wish his name didn't appear before the title of this travesty, the lousiest of horror remakes.

What were my other contenders for that title? Next in line: the remake of The Hitcher (2007), and Jan De Bont's The Haunting (1999).

The Seven Best Horror Film Remakes So Far?

Remakes, remakes, remakes...

Old ideas, endlessly recycled. That accounts for much of what Hollywood sells horror fans these days...and there's even more to come (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Blob, The Fly...again). But since it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, I'm going to shine a light today on those occasions when remakes have been, by my estimation, remarkably successful. We'll start with the best, and work our way down to number seven...

1. John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)

Critically-reviled at the time of theatrical release, this film has become a horror classic, and more so, one of the ten most important titles in the genre. Carpenter went back to the original short story, "Who Goes There?" (by John W. Campbell) and adapted that, thus deflecting charges that his remake was somehow unfaithful to Howard Hawks' beloved The Thing From Another World (1951).

Featuring state-of-the-art special effects that still haven't been surpassed, the claustrophobic The Thing exhibits a finely-honed sense of paranoia. Today, the glacial, icy feelings of personal “alienation” evoked by the film positively chill. Furthermore, John Carpenter’s The Thing involves not just alienation from civilization. It also makes a very squeamish, uneasy case for the frailty and fragility of the human form itself; alienation of the flesh. In the era of the mysterious "gay plague," -- the selfsame era of body consciousness, "Let's Get Physical" and aerobics (see John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis in Perfect..) -- the notion of an invisible invader (or infection...) hiding in plain sight but corrupting beauty felt incredibly resonant.

2. The Fly (1986)

Another A-list horror director, David Cronenberg, also provided audiences a meditation on AIDS in the era of Reagan. And as I recall, I came out of The Fly remake all wobbly in the knees. David Cronenberg never shies away from charting the physical, biological disintegration of the film's lead character, a brilliant but vain scientist portrayed by Jeff Goldblum. And because this character's disintegration and illness is contextualized within a sincere, affecting romantic relationship (with a character played by Geena Davis), the movie operates as an almost operatic tragedy.

Human beings are but sacks of water and bulbous organs held together by that thinnest of membranes, the flesh, and The Fly remake plays cannily with the idea that flesh is both wondrous and infinitely corruptible. The same body that makes you feel like an Olympic runner one day can incapacitate and make you feel deathly-ill the next. Seth Brundle's computer may not understand "the flesh," but you can't say the same of Cronenberg's audacious re-crafting of the 1958 original. Here, on display, we powerfully feel the desires of the flesh, as well as the treachery of the flesh. And the end is so gory, so gooey, so apocalyptic, you leave a showing of the film shattered and sick.

3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Another remake that is as good, as relevant, and as resonant as the brilliant original (in this case, a 1956 film). Here, an alien invasion doesn't evoke the Eisenhower era of McCarthy-ism and the Red Scare but rather the Self-Help, Me Generation of the late 1970s By then, the divorce rate was skyrocketing in this country (2 in 5 marriages ended with divorce...) and it seemed that people were choosing to make themselves happy first and preserve their commitment second. Tellingly, the aliens -- represented by a creepy Leonard Nimoy (doing a malevolent twist on his Spock portrayal) -- utilize pop psychology, self-help and other tricks to infiltrate the human community. I'm Okay, You're An Emotionless Alien from Outer Space: the ultimate demonizing of a spouse who, post-marriage has "suddenly changed." Again, the topic is literally "alienation." But it's alienation from spouse this time. The '78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers also trades powerfully in post-Watergate conspiracies and cover-ups, and features one of the best, most nihilistic closing shots in film history.

4. The Blob (1988)

Director Chuck Russell hit it out of the park with this utterly merciless remake of the 1958 Steve McQueen picture. He pulls a Janet Leigh on us by killing off the heroic jock early on, then upturns expectations again by murdering an annoying kid (wearing a Sony Walkman...) with no compunctions and no sentimentality. Finally, his film turns the school cheerleader (Shawnee Smith) into a Rambolina-style killing machine, forecasting the direction of the genre (and the role of women in horror...) in the 1990s.

Over and over again, The Blob remake mixes surprise with shocks. This "blob" isn't even an alien organism, as was the case in the original, but rather a secret government experiment gone wrong (reflecting, perhaps, the country's unease at the with the Iran-Contra scandal). The Blob even finds time to tweak the state of the genre itself (another prophetic taste of the 1990s post-modern approach...), taking the primary characters to a showing of a movie entitled The Garden Tool Massacre.

"Wait a minute," a character in the movie-within-a-movie realizes upon seeing a Jason-style slasher, "hockey season ended months ago...." Smart, brutal and dominated by graphic death scenes of a most gruesome variety (including one in a phone booth), The Blob remake of 1988 was superior in every way to the modest source material.

5. Nosferatu (1979)

In 1979 -- the same year that John Badham romanticized Dracula for the Bee Gees generation -- Werner Herzog remade the legendary 1922 Nosferatu (by Murnau). But where Badham heightened the romance in the tale of the good count, Herzog did precisely the opposite, focusing on, of all things, rats as a harbinger of death and decay. Dracula (Klaus Kinski) is no lovelorn prince here, either, but the equivalent of an addict: unable to control his rage and literally quaking for his next fix. Van Helsing is depicted as a useless man of science and comes across as an ineffectual old man. One of the film's finest moments involves a tracking shot across Dracula's dark, dank crypt, where we see a row of decaying corpses...their mouths forever opened in horror; protesting silently the vicissitudes of fate. This shot captures Dracula's curse of death and eternal life, as does his telling line, "It's more cruel not to die."

6. The Ring (2002)

This scary remake of the brilliant Japanese Ringu (1998), set off a blazing trend of J-horror remakes here in the States. But that fact aside, the American version of The Ring re-contextualized the story of Samara to post 9/11 America. Thus The Ring is consumed with the notion of the mass transmission of suffering and horror.

The terrible pain of the few gets broadcast to many and is repeated on a loop; a coded reflection of our modern world, and the ascent of international, 24-hour news cable stations. If you break it down, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC exist to broadcast the suffering of a few to millions of people. There's a school shooting in heartland USA, and suddenly cameras appear on the scene like vultures, broadcasting the terror of young students to the entire country. Such ubiquitous, highly disturbing images hang in the ether of the mainstream media, take on a unique life of their own, and even perpetuate themselves (with ancillaries like newspapers, the Internet, etc) - and what is the cumulative result on our psyches? Can we know how such images will effect every individual who comes across them? Will the depiction of real evil on the news foster evil in real life? Does the mass media, by revealing such horrors on such a routine basis, inure audiences to the suffering of others? And are we so disconnected from our common humanity that we must witness the real, horrible suffering of others to stay engaged with our emotions?

The Ring creepily suggests that "witnessing" -- the act of watching -- is enough to make us all culpable. When we watch them -- just by flipping on the TV (or in the case of The Ring, pressing the play button on our VCR) -- that's enough to hold us accountable. The horror touches us as surely as it did those who "suffered" in the transmitted event.

7. The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Just after the divisive 2004 Presidential Election, Alexandre Aja re-interpreted Wes Craven's 1977 savage siege film (about a battle between the Haves and the Have-Nots) to reflect the scarifying Red State/Blue State Divide so ruthlessly exploited by Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove in '04.

Here, the subject of the remake is explicitly the application of American power (and how Blue States and Red States view that application of that power...). The deranged savages in the desert dwell this time in mock town used as a test site for nuclear weapons, a symbol of America's violent past. In the battle between the Carters and the savages, the film reflects the on-going Iraq War, and even uses Old Glory herself -- an American flag -- as a weapon of destruction. Aja's film is about violence, about our history of violence, and how, to this very day, many of us see violence as the solution to problems. It's also, like the source material, incredibly intense, incredibly bloody, and harrowing.

Don't Tell Them What You Saw: Les Diaboliques (1955) vs. Diabolique (1996)

There are plenty of good reasons why H.G Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955) tops many "best films ever made" lists, even today. Filmed in spare, expressive black-and-white and dominated by fragile characters who might euphemistically be termed "dissolute," Clouzot's venture suggested -- or at least paved the way -- for elements of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). Both film classics obsess on images of decay and death, and both successfully "trick" the first-time audience about character motivations and the ultimate direction of the narrative.

Les Diaboliques -- a title roughly translated as "The Devils" -- is set almost entirely at the Delassalle Boarding School, a campus almost in ruins from disrepair and neglect. The headmaster is the sadistic Miguel (Paul Meurisse), a man who grew up in poverty and who, in adulthood, clutches tightly to his wealth...which all arises from his wife, a former nun named Christina (Véra Clouzot). Miguel refers to Christina in not-so-loving fashion as his "little ruin," a pointed contrast, perhaps, to his big ruin...the school itself. Christina is unhappy that Miguel is so miserly that -- though they are rich -- they "live like poor people."

Miguel is also fooling around with a teacher at Delassalle, the sexy femme fatale, Nicole Horner, played by the smoldering Simone Signoret. But this is no ordinary adulterous love affair. For one thing, Christina is aware of the affair, and as the film starts, helps Nicole tend to her black eye...a result of Miguel's abuse. "The legal wife consoling the mistress?," another teacher at the school asks with astonishment.

Apparently so.

Together, Christina and Nicole plot to murder the evil Miguel, first by poisoning him, then by drowning him in a bathtub at Nicole's house in Noirt. The strategy is to transport the corpse (in a large basket) back to the campus, where it can be dumped in secret. But the murder plot goes awry, and Miguel's corpse goes missing after Nicole and Christina dispose of it in the school's filthy swimming pool.

This development is troublesome for several reasons, not the least because Christina suffers from a terrible heart condition, and the slightest bit of anxiety -- or terror -- could kill her. She is allowed "no emotions. No vexations," according to her doctor. But then, a little boy reports that he saw the headmaster alive...and the terror builds and builds until the unbearably suspenseful denouement.

Les Diaboliques qualifies as a film noir in part because of the overwhelming aura of hopelessness that blankets the movie. Poor, wounded Christina can never escape her husband...even after his demise. Secondly, the film's subject matter, a little bit police procedural, a lit bit mystery, makes it entirely simpatico with traditional noir values. Most important, perhaps, is the moral quandary the film exquisitely expresses. Christina is a nun who believes that "divorce is a deadly sin," and yet she knowingly participates in a murder attempt. Christina a keeps a shrine to her namesake, Christ, in her apartment with Miguel, but again...murder? It's the only way for her to keep the school...and her money. But does the retaining of material wealth justify killing even a really, really bad person? Though she dreams of ridding herself of Miguel, Christina fully understands the cost to her soul. "We are monsters," she laments, "I don't like monsters."

There's also a powerful sexual undercurrent here. Les Diaboliques is packed with innuendo, particularly during an early scene in which the dominating, abusive Miguel urges the saintly Christina to "swallow" her food, and she almost gags on the mouthful. Not to mention, of course, the hint of a lesbian attraction between the apparent partners in crime, Christina and Nicole.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, Les Diaboliques is also clearly part horror film. In the film's scariest and most-oft imitated scene, we witness Miguel rise from the dead -- in a bath tub -- his eyes transformed into white, unseeing orbs. This shocking, macabre moment is echoed in the film's enigmatic climax, which some critics have complained rather strenuously about. It suggests that another character has also returned from the grave, at least according to the testimony of a naughty little boy.

I have always maintained that the second "resurrection" might be real (as opposed to the first resurrection...) and not just the case of a schoolboy telling tall tales. On the contrary, there could be a haunting at the school. Why? The explicit subject matter of the film has been the cost "after death," -- to the soul itself -- of moral turpitude. And with all the Christ imagery in evidence here, the idea of resurrection is thus very much in play. The terrible act that comprises film's startling finale clearly demands retribution; even beyond-the-grave-style retribution. Christina's important statement that she has become a monster might even be interpreted literally. So I view the ending as being at least ambiguous, and thus totally consistent with the preceding narrative.

Deftly directed and entirely anxiety-provoking, Les Diaboliques is one of those films in which form reflects content to an admirable degree. The movie is dominated by images of water, of drowning. The film opens with rain splattering in a puddle on hard, broken pavement, our first indication of the "storm" coming. Miguel's (false) death occurs in a bath-tub. And then, of course, there's the swimming pool -- a much larger bath tub of sorts -- and the climactic return to a bath tub in Christina's apartment. This pervasive water imagery serves, I believe, to remind audiences that it is actually Christina who is drowning here. The whole world is closing around her, in a deluge of deceit and treachery.

"He'll Never Hurt Us Again:" Or "It's Men. Testosterone. They Should Put It In Bombs."

In 1996, director Jeremiah Chechik made an extremely literal remake of Diabolique, excising the criticized hint-of-the-supernatural of the original coda and substituting a contemporary, nineties, "Year of the Woman"-style, feminist context. Here, the narrative more plainly concerned a cycle of domestic violence; of men abusing women; and abusing wives.

Even more so, the film consciously reflected the lurid, tabloid culture of the Clinton Era -- the decade that gave our nation celebrities such as Amy Fisher, and the aptly-named Lorena Bobbitt.) The three-ring white-trash circus known as The Jerry Springer Show even makes a cameo appearance in the film (playing on a television in the background.) The message: attempted murder has become the language of the culture.

In the updated film, the story is very much the same as before. A murderous love triangle between headmaster Guy Baran (Chazz Palminteri), ex-nun Mia (Isabella Adjani), and man-eater Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone) ends...badly.

The "swallow" innuendo returns in this remake too, but is much more on-the-nose since Guy actually says "swallow it for once in your life," to his put-upon spouse.

But otherwise, there are long spells in which Diabolique is actually a line-for-line regurgitation of the 1955 film, only in (much less-effective) color. By contrast, Nicole's garish wardrobe in this version represents a brilliant, resonant touch: she's dressed like a white-trash cougar, contextualizing the character as part-and-parcel of the Jerry Springer Culture. Stone is terrific as heir to Signoret, playing a snapping, sarcastic femme fatale who apparently lives by the proverb, "the tongue is like a sharp knife; it kills without drawing blood." When another character reminds the smoking Nicole that second-hand smoke kills, Stone quips, "Yeah, but not reliably," and then stalks off. Ouch.

Where the two versions of Diaboliques diverge is in characterization, and in climactic action. The first film featured a rumpled detective investigating the disappearance of Miguel. He was a retired commissioner named Alfred Fichet, and he didn't really accomplish much in terms of his investigation. In keeping with the film's hopeless tenor, he arrested the guilty parties only after the the third-act, tragic death.

The remake of Diabolique pulls an early "Starbuck" on us (Dirk Benedict to Katee Sackhoff..) and changes the old man into a woman named Shirley Vogel, played by Kathy Bates. In this case, Shirley is a rather butch, rather crass, rather cynical cancer survivor. Like her predecessor, she also stumbles upon a crime in progress, but because the climactic violence is perpetrated against a male (and a nasty one at that...), Shirley lets it go rather an apprehending the guilty parties. She just shrugs her shoulders and joins the conspiracy: three women "survivors" allied against one monster of a man.

The nineties Diabolique involves a triangle, of course, but this time Nicole is the wild card and, in many ways, the film's protagonist. In the original film, she sided against poor Christina. In the remake, this is no longer the case. Nicole regrets her treatment of the saintly Mia, and joins her in murdering Guy. Critics, including Roger Ebert, absolutely hated this ending, feeling that it utilized the conventions of the slasher film in a gimmicky, cheap way. While the new Diabolique is clearly not in the same league as the original film, I argue that the re-interpreted ending actually works in context of the 1990s.

Early in the film, Nicole and Mia drown Guy, but it's a trick; Nicole and Guy are actually in on a plan together (only Mia doesn't know it.) The swimming-pool scuffle that ends the modern remake is staged, in close visual fashion, as a deliberate repeat of that earlier drowning...only in the pool this time. And here, finally, Nicole actually comes through; actually works with Mia. She actually gets her hands dirty.

In the earlier bathtub drowning, Mia noted to Nicole that she didn't seem upset by the execution of a cold-blooded, hands-on murder. This was so -- as we learn later -- because there was no real murder occurring. Nicole was playing at being a murderess, and the victim (Guy) wasn't really dead.

But if you study the swimming pool battle, it's clear that this time around, Nicole is absolutely shaken, mortified, by the battle. The confident facade of the femme fatale has finally dropped, and Nicole has embraced, at long last, her sisterhood in abuse and degradation, Mia. She's finally turned her venom in the appropriate direction: towards Guy.

It's no coincidence, either, that this Diabolique removes the relevant discussion of Miguel/Guy's poor upbringing. Exculpatory evidence is not presented, so-to-speak. This "Guy" is a person to be hated and despised, with no ameliorating humanity. And even his name, "Guy," reminds us of his offending sex. Why, this version even suggests the cad was having an affair with a third woman (whom he paid to have an abortion...), thus justifying Nicole's switching teams at the last moment. The subtext of this film: Guy -- like many an abusive man -- had it coming.

While it's abundantly clear that the nineties Diabolique will never make a list of "100 best films of all time," it could very well make a list of "100 Best Remakes" of all time, especially given Hollywood's blazing pace for recycling old material. The re-made Diabolique might rightly land somewhere in the high-twenties or low-thirties of such a tally. It would certainly place well behind Invasion of the Body Snatchers or John Carpenter's The Thing, and yet light years ahead of Jan De Bont's The Haunting (1999), or the 2009 Friday the 13th. But at the very least, I can assert that this remake attempts to speak relevantly to American culture in the 1990s, rather than just blindly echoing the moves of a great, timeless film.

It's also enlightening to consider how each film ends. Clouzot's 1950s Les Diaboliques ends with legal justice, but moral tragedy. The 1990s Diabolique ends with an illegal murder, but a murder that is morally justified. Take your pick: which ending is "happier?" And what does each ending say about the society (and time period) that fashioned it?