Jeff Goldblum Movie List

Posted onOctober 24, 2011 - 4:02 am by Admin | 0 Comments

What defines a film as science fiction or horror? Is it the central theme? The locations? The type of antagonist? This isn’t an easy question to answer, and I’m sure if you take ten movies and ten people and ask them whether they think they think they’re science fiction or horror, five will pick science fiction and five will pick horror.

But relax people, things can be both. What I’m looking at are those movies that straddle the line. Obviously, because this series is called Subgenres of Horror and not Subgenres of Sci-Fi the movies I’ll talk about will primarily be horror films, although with mid-to-heavy elements of science fiction (Apologies for sounding like a weatherman).

But where do I start? I suppose it’s only suitable with life itself, assuming “life” means injecting thousands of volts of electricity into a body made up of bits of cadavers in a mad experiment which is bound to go pear-shaped in one way or another. And by that I of course mean Mary Shelley’s immortal tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his oft-misnamed monster. As you will know, there have been oodles of adaptations and interpretations over the years, from the first (Thomas Edison’s 1910 version) to the weird (1990’s Frankenhooker) to the musical (1976’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show). But none compare to James Whale’s immense 1931 Universal adaptation, simply named Frankenstein.

Frankenstein is a perfect example of how good it can be when horror and science fiction cross over. The horror of the film is plain to see – from the gothic castle of the title character himself and the surrounding misty almost-fairytale village to the monstrous exploits of the good doctor, not to mention the creature himself – Boris Karloff as the creature seen by everyone as a monster marauding around town causing death and destruction. And indeed, if that is all that happens then the film wouldn’t really be any different than something like Friday the 13th.

But these elements are essentially window-dressing for the bigger picture, which is where the science fiction creeps in. Frankenstein makes his creature, and with a whole dose of theatrics famously proclaims “it’s alive!”, but – to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum – was so busy wondering about whether he could do it that he never asked whether he should do it. Create life. There was a line in the original version of the film that was obscured by a sound effect when the Hays Code came into practice, where Colin Clive says “Now I know what it feels like to be God!”. You can imagine what Mary Whitehouse would have said about that line, let alone Will Hays.

Then there is the monster himself. This is where the horror really comes back into play, as the monster I’m referring to is Dr. Frankenstein. You know, that guy who ignores all communication from his friends and family so he can go and rob graves with his hunchbacked friend with the funny accent. Fritz also doesn’t come off in a particularly positive light, given that he steals brains and is not just seen as a creepy weirdo but also a klutz who picks the wrong brain that results in the creature being a bit edgy.

The scene that really sums up the creature is the scene with the little girl by the lake. The scene has such a delicate balance and Whale has unending sympathy for the monster (unsurprising given what he’s supposed to be with his “criminal brain”). The transformation from glee to horror as he throws the girl in is all the more potent because of the information the audience has over the creature, where he doesn’t understand what the hell he’s done, which links into the finale where he’s destroyed because of this, while his creator – who knew exactly what he was doing – lives.

Frankenstein and his creature obviously returned in a ton of sequels (well, it was mostly just the creature) with the standouts being 1935′s Bride of Frankenstein and 1953′s Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which is probably the best horror comedy ever, as well as hundreds more adaptations. But it’s Whale’s version that remains the best, and the most-loved. Whale also adapted another classic novel two years later with  1933′s The Invisible Man, another tale about an experiment that crosses the line ending up in someone – in this case both the scientist and the experimented – going mental and rampaging about, something by all accounts the novel’s author – H.G. Wells – wasn’t too happy about. Who knows what he thought of the four sequels, although he might have liked 1942′s Invisible Agent, which features the formula being used to smash Nazis.

Of course, in 1933 another so-called monster smashed his way into public consciousness. I’ve wrestled with King Kong as a science fiction horror film, and while I think it has elements that fit both genres (namely vicious attacks by Kong and dinosaurs alike), I’d put it more as a science fiction fantasy film. That said, if you haven’t seen the original (kind of hate that I have to say that) Kong, you should stop reading now and seek it out. Well, maybe not stop reading, at least wait until the end of the article.

Like Frankenstein and many of Universal’s horror classics, a lot of science fiction horror films were adaptations. A lot of rich source material became the basis for some great movies, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (which has had a ton of adaptations but notably a 1931 Paramount film and a 1941 MGM film), another Wells classic in The Island of Dr. Moreau, filmed in 1933 as Island of Lost Souls, with two further adaptations under the novel’s title in 1977 and 1996, only one of which features Marlon Brando and a dwarf.

By the 1950s the British were adapting themselves with 1955′s The Quatermass Xperiment, based on the acclaimed 1953 BBC television drama and produced by Hammer Films. Both serial and film revolved around a space flight coming back to Earth with an alien presence, leading Brian Donlevy’s scientist Bernard Quatermass to try and save the planet from alien invasion and destruction. A big hit in the UK, it led to two sequels based on other BBC serials, 1957′s Quatermass II and 1967′s Quatermass and the Pit. While there were varying reactions to the films, they and the television serials have been massively influential in the horror genre thanks to creator Nigel Kneale, whose name will come up again later.

Over in America, Howard Hawks himself was busy with his own adaptation, 1951′s The Thing From Another World. Based on John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, the film tells the story of an Antarctic research team which finds something buried in the ice, something that happens to have come from outer space. It’s a fantastic movie, although a very different movie to the obvious point of comparison: John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing, another interpretation of the novel although very much fuelled by Carpenter’s love of the film.

But whatever aliens can do, giant monsters can do better, and did so as the 1950s were defined as the age of atomic horror. The development of the atomic bomb and its use in both test situations and wartime missions gave birth to the atomic monster in its various forms. 1953′s The Beast From 20, 000 Fathoms had an atomic test wake up a dinosaur to go on a stop-motion rampage. Based on a short story by Ray Bradbury, it’s a pretty neat film but its main draw is Ray Harryhausen’s amazing animated work and some great visuals.

But the very next year a monster appeared that demonstrated the devastating power of the A-bomb from a nation still shaken from its use on them. 1954 saw the first appearance of the world’s most famous lizard in Ishiro Honda’s masterpiece Gojira. A far cry from the campy antics of the later Godzilla flicks like Destroy All Monsters, Gojira is a stark and uncompromising attempt to open discussion on a horrendous atrocity, and like the best science fiction a parallel on real-life events and debates, as well as providing a terrifying experience.

Instead of coming over like a hyperactive colourful monster movie as its sequels and imitators have, Gojira is a slow and meditative film about death, power, and humanity’s ability to create such power and the moral argument behind when it can – or should – be used. The title creature is a black shadow over Tokyo, a terrifying weapon of mass destruction who can set people and buildings aflame with ease, and whose earsplitting roar signifies the inevitability of this creature’s attacks. The attacks themselves come at night, an eerie echo of World War II night-time raids and something the older generations in this country can identify with all too well.

The mass destruction Gojira causes intentionally recalls what was done in WW2 to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it’s hard to watch the footage of his attacks and not feel it emotionally, especially given that many of us have since witnessed images of the effects and aftermath of nuclear weapons, as well as other atrocities. It gives the film an extra layer that is utterly haunting and also humbling; after all, if it can have an effect like this on someone like me, it’s unimaginable what kind of effect it would have on a survivor from those cities.

But while Gojira himself has that power, the military also has it through the oxygen destroyer, a weapon that can destroy all life underwater and potentially cause the same kind of destruction – or worse – than Gojira. The scientist who invented it initially refuses, but then states he will only use it once, ending up committing suicide to ensure its secrets die with him. While it’s successful, its use creates a foreboding postscript, espousing that if weapons like these continue to be created, monsters like Gojira will also return.

Unfortunately, the film gets lumped in with the rest of the Godzilla series too often; this is not to say those movies are unworthy, some of them are fantastic, but none of them are as good as Gojira. Roger Ebert himself called it “idiotic”, but don’t be put off – this is a brilliant and important film.

America also emphasised the atomic threat in 1954 with Them, the giant ant thriller that has become the poster boy for those kind of movies that are generally known as the “big bug” movement. But while Them is rightly held up as a good example of those movies, there are two notable entries I find that are better movies, although both tackle the atomic age in very different ways. And they’re both directed by the great Jack Arnold.

1955′s Tarantula has a unique point of view, well, as much of a unique point of view you can have with a gigantic bug movie. Instead of the animal being irradiated and becoming gigantic through the dangers of atomic weapons, it instead grows huge through science trying to save mankind. Vaguely based on an episode of Science Fiction Theater Arnold had directed, Tarantula has a scientist working on solving the problem of world famine through using a radioactive isotope to produce nutrients which can be fed to animals and cause them to grow several times in size. In his lab he’s already fed guinea pigs and rabbits, and for some reason, a tarantula.

Unfortunately, the tarantula escapes when the lab is broken into, and soon grows to a massive size as it roams the Arizona countryside. It’s a strong film with some neat sequences and a fine lead from John Agar, along with a grumpy Leo G. Carroll. However, it’s Arnold’s directing where the film really finds its feet, using the rock formations of the desert along with great use of the massive spider in silhoutte, which is really effective in making the film quite scary. The spider is also mostly real, so you rarely have to deal with animatronics, which in a film like this can really hurt it.

Arnold also made another much-loved film the previous year, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, another great Universal classic. But two years later he made what is his masterpiece, and which also features a monstrous arachnid, albeit in a completely different position altogether. The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Based on the acclaimed novel The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson (who also wrote the hugely-influential  I Am Legend, a film which after three adaptations still hasn’t had its true genius put on celluloid), the film revolves around Scott Carey, a businessman who comes into contact with a strange mist while vacationing aboard his boat. Pretty soon, his clothes seem to grow larger and his wedding ring falls off; he’s shrinking, much to his wife’s denial. In the end he grows so small that he has to live in a doll’s house, where he’s at danger from the family cat, once a domesticated pet, now a deadly foe.

By the last act of the film Scott is small enough to fit in a matchbox, which sets up the remarkable finale as he fights to survive against a spider intent on making Scott its victim. It’s this act when the film ramps into real horror movie mode. The first two acts of the film focus on the psychological aspects as much as the physical, especially as Scott wrestles with trying to keep his life normal with his wife forever growing, and while the misogynistic thread from the novel is toned down, the scene with the circus dwarf gives it an airing and it works well.

But the last act is where the film turns into primal – and almost primordial – horror, as Scott faces down the monster spider, who is not only the one obstacle between him and the outside world (its web blocks a grate that looks onto the garden) but the biggest threat to his food supply (there’s a small bit of cake by the web that’s his only real food source) and his life. Eventually, he takes it on, but doesn’t see it as an enemy, instead a mirror of himself. He’s not fighting for some vague prize, this is a fight to the death for life itself. For existence.

When he does kill the spider, there’s a sense of futility. The cake crumbles, with no strength to eat it, and the bigger picture comes to light with one of the more unique endings of a movie like this I’ve ever seen, as Scott escapes the inside world and steps out literally and metaphorically into a larger world, accompanied by a climactic monologue that drags the film into existentialism, and cements the film as a classic not just of the genre (and subgenre) but cinema itself.

But while Grant Williams was fighting gravity and a giant spider, Steve McQueen was fighting off a gigantic gelatinous blob in the aptly named The Blob (1958), which in itself is a fun monster movie about an alien substance that falls to earth and goes on the rampage, but has been occasionally purported to be about the spread of communism (the blob itself is a “red menace”), a fact refuted by those involved in the production.  Following The Blob, science fiction and horror kind of stayed in their own corners, aside from the occasional foray into the animal-attack genre in movies like 1978′s The Swarm and the computer-wants-to-have-sex-with-your-wife genre in 1977′s absolutely barmy Demon Seed.

Speaking of absolutely barmy, 1978’s entry into that category is Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The second adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers, Kaufman’s film is generally considered to be not only the best version, but the most fucked-up by a long way. Donald Sutherland is a San Francisco health inspector on a crusade to stop the world being taken over by aliens who take over people by growing exact replicas in pods and having those replace the original person. Helping Sutherland is Brooke Adams as a frightened co-worker whose husband has been duplicated, an even more neurotic than usual Jeff Goldblum, and self-help guru/psychiatrist Leonard Nimoy.

Certainly a film of the seventies, Kaufman’s picture is stark, naturalistic and driven by great performances. Sutherland is so brilliant that it’s just a breeze to watch him, no matter what he’s doing, and Brooke Adams is appropriately vulnerable, to the point where you want to take her home and make her a cuppa. But most surprising is Nimoy, who skewers his trustworthy persona of Spock as a good friend of Sutherland who turns alien, much to everyone’s surprise and horror. He also does a good job of making psychatrists look like absolute quacks who you should never believe.

The film doesn’t plaster itself with effects, but what little there are work brilliantly. There’s a shot near the beginning of an alien taking over a plant that is an amazing piece of work, and just looks real. But while the effects are few and far between, the ground is made up by Michael Chapman’s cinematography, the sound design and Denny Zeitlin’s eerie score. Chapman also lensed Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and the film has the gritty aesthetic of those movies, although he pulls a few tricks out of his hat when Sutherland and Adams are on the run, particularly some great dutch angle shots. Probably his best work is in the montage scene where Sutherland is trying to get through to people, and discovers they know who he is, with great shots of him walking frantically amongst crowds, any number of which could be his enemy, with audio of his telephone conversations laid over.

The sound design and the score go hand in hand, both communicating a sense of foreboding and unsettling alien sounds. Ben Burtt’s work on the absolutely terrifying alien scream is genius, it’s something you’ll be hearing in your nightmares. Unfortunately, while the film is critically acclaimed, and was so at the time, it gets a lot less exposure than it should.

Talking of exposure, it was the following year when scifi-horror really exploded back into the public consciousness, and explode it did – through John Hurt’s chest.  Ridley Scott’s Alien is generally regarded as the subgenre’s masterpiece, and with good reason. Alien is smartly written, visually stunning and has the unerring ability to scare the living daylights out of you like no other film.

The plot is dead simple: a commercial starship is interrupted on its way home by a distress signal from a nearby planet. The crew go down to the planet to investigate only to find a derelict alien ship. Said ship unfortunately contains an egg which contains a parasite that attaches itself to a crewmember, who is quickly brought back on board only to “give birth” to a terrifying creature that brings a new meaning to the term “vagina dentata”. It’s the “parasite” angle that works as a neat trick to get the alien back to the ship so they can kick off with the actual horror, as the film – as has been said many times – is generally a haunted house movie, with an injection of Swiss genius for good measure.

And that Swiss genius is Mr. H.R. Giger, who designed the alien in its various stages of the lifecycle. I’m not going to go into massive detail in regards to the origin of the design (as you should all own the fantastic Alien Anthology/Quadrilogy that goes into a ridiculous level of detail in the supplemental features), although it’s rumoured Ridley Scott had one of Giger’s books that featured the painting Necronom IV, and picked that out as an idea of what he wanted as the design. But whatever the inspiration, the final design is not only horrifying but also is still the scariest creature in the history of the movies that doesn’t have the surname Wayans.

Honestly, it’s just a horrendous thing to look at. But that’s not nearly as horrendous as what it does. I’ve heard various rumours about the concept of the alien lifecycle, that Ron Shusett came up with it after reading EC comics, or that he and Dan O’Bannon were inspired by the tarantula hawk (which is a real-life wasp that does horrible things to tarantula spiders). Either way, holy frack. The first thing about the alien is that it rapes you. I bet Ridley Scott loved this, given that his main inspirations for Alien were Star Wars and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But not only does it rape you, it impregnates you.

Just let that sink in. Rape is bad enough by itself, but you have to add impregnation to that. Then, on top of that, the way the host creature gives birth is via it bursting out of your chest. Wow. Even in 2011 that still sounds outrageous, so god knows what the 1970s thought, even with some of the films that were made in that period. The iconic chestburster scene itself is still an immense sequence, one that makes you feel like you’re there to the point where you recoil from the blood. It’s vicious and prolonged and in terms of pure visceral horror is one of the few scenes in horror that can match anything from The Exorcist.

Speaking of The Exorcist, Alien shares something else beyond naturalistic performances and fantastic special effects: dread. Both films are pervaded with an atmosphere that gets under your skin but that you can’t easily describe. With Alien, it goes hand in hand with the tension of the film, which kicks off when they land on the planet and never really stops. The scene where they’re walking through the room with the space jockey in always stands out as one which captures this sense of foreboding (with the nail firmly hit on the head by Lambert’s line ‘Let’s get the hell out of here’) which is captured especially well through Jerry Goldsmith’s astonishing score.

Of course, Alien had a Jaws-style impact on cinema, which meant that it was followed by lots of well-intentioned admirers who weren’t just interested in making a Nostromo-load of money by cashing in on the film’s success. Unsurprisingly, one of the first on the scene was his royal highness Roger Corman, whose 1981 flick Galaxy of Terror sported a xenomorph-esque creature on the poster, alien rape and Joanie from Happy Days. Also in the running were Brit flicks Inseminoid (1981) – which again tackles the suddenly popular topic of non-consensual alien intercourse – and Xtro (1982), which poses the question that perhaps deadbeat dads that run out on their kids are possibly actually alien abductees, which I’m sure Jeremy Kyle would have a field day with. As with most British scifi and horror, it’s barking mad.

1982 itself is considered to be movie heaven if you’re a film geek, with a ton of films that run the gamut genre-wise which are seen as classics today. One of those – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – even had a little horror in it, a bit like the original TV show. In the squirmiest scene in scifi, Ricardo Montalban inserts two alien eels into the ears of a couple of men so they’ll help him kill Captain Kirk. The scene includes plenty of fun close-ups of the eels entering the ears, with some quality giant prosthetic ear work, and even manages a bit of gore when they come back out along with a sludge of blood.

But 1982 also featured some pretty great things, pretty damn important things in the realm of science fiction and horror. However, you’ll have to wait until Part Two before we start talking about those things. So until then, “keep watching the skiis.”

JMO, but DJ looks like he's hoping to be cast in The Sopranos.
FYI Deejster, it's been off for a few seasons. Remember, it ended up with everyone gettin' whacked, or eating soggy onion rings, or Tony getting the whole diner to join in a group sing-a-long, or the power went out or somethin'. Who knows. Anyway, 'Don't Stop Believing', DJ.

You can always hope The Playboy Club casts you as an extra. Wait, what? Damn. Sorry.
Well, there's always college (if you haven't been). Exhibit A: why actors and athletes should have an edumacation to fall back on. Winny Cooper's gotten her PhD in Crazy Hard Math or Physics or something smart (that's the actual name). And you know you straight guys hope she teaches ya a thing or two.
Happy Saturday!!!

*The more you know star shoots across ths screen*

"A candle loses nothing of its light by lighting another candle."--catholicschoolgirl


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