Student Protests: Haven't I Seen This Movie Before?

Living in Montreal as I do, it's become pretty difficult to ignore a few little things that keep happening in and around my city: the escalating student protests, the mob mentality violence, the police brutality, the divisive reactions to the provincial government's legislative response to the crisis, the nightly pot banging marches outside my window in my supposedly sleepy west end neighbourhood, the list goes on...

It's also hard for me not to think that maybe I've seen this movie before. These kinds of protests and the subsequent public reactions to them are nothing new. It has happened in many different places and during many different times, including in our own backyard. For those of us with even dim memories of decades past, it does all seem kinda familiar. For someone my age, much of that familiarity does not come from the events first hand but, rather, from the pop culture of the day.

Also familiar from both life and pop culture is the slowly increasing number number of comments turning up in the social media spheres regarding "entitled" and "spoiled" "kids" who should "get a job", "learn about responsibility", "sacrifice" and generally "wake up" and get used to life in the "real world".

We have certainly heard that kind of thing before, like in, say, way back in 1968....

Jack Webb in the TV series Dragnet (who became something of a poster child for parodies of  "the establishment" in the 60's, 70's) concisely encapsulates the often dismissive, judgmental and condescending attitude on the part of the established order faced by many different successful and not so successful popular movements towards social change.

On the other hand, the protesters and the activists, even in their pop culture form, are also not above employing their own similarly incendiary language and rhetoric....





Sure, these kinds of clips aren't exactly Montreal 2012. The issues are different. The time is different. The place is different. The culture is different. The underlying emotion, basic ideological conflicts and general atmosphere, though, are really not so different. Social change has and will continue to happen all the time. Otherwise, we'd all still be living in caves and eating Brontosaurus Burgers (again, there might be some pop culture in there).

When seen through the eyes of the events of the last one hundred days here in Montreal, looking back at the pop culture zeitgeist of the so called "youth revolution" of the 60's can be quite thought provoking. If nothing else, it can give us a much broader social and historical perspective. If nothing else it makes it clear that one thing remains unchanged: the issue of student protest and social and political reactions to it is just as devise today as it was then.

While these movies, TV clips and pop culture in general are not necessarily historically accurate records of the events of the day per se, they are incredible time capsules to the way these movements were seen at the time.

For example...

Wild in the Streets (1968) is, at first glance, a silly film. It only takes a few minutes of viewing to see, though, that,  in spite of its superficial silliness, the movie is fascinatingly telling of its time and the attitudes towards the issues that it attempts to address.

Wild in the Streets tells the story about how the youth population of the late 60's (52% of the US population was under the age of 25 at that time, according to the film) manages to change the voting age in the USA to 15. As a result, they elect the first 24 year old President of the United States of America.

Let's make no mistake, this movie was made, first and foremost, like almost any film anywhere, to make money. American International Studios, the people responsible for the picture, were the major producers of Drive-In type B-movies at the time. And it is easy to see the film as cynical  exploitation of then very lucrative youth market. Yet Wild in the Streets does manage to address the issues of the day in a surprisingly well rounded, albeit over the top, manner. The movie both plays to and satirizes the youth movement at the same time.

The youth movement, led by the young millionaire pop star, Max Frost,  wants to see Frost elected as the youngest President of the United States in history. In order to do so, they concoct a plan to get the Legislative Branch of the US government to lower the voting age by putting LSD in their water supply. The scene of all these middle aged politicians tripping out on acid is shot with that classic swirling focus and tilting camera angles that was practically de riguer for movie acid trips of the day.  The scene is played as a youth empowerment fantasy for laughs while simultaneously the film also manages to create an underlying sense of something sinister. It's kinda funny but, still, watching all these hippies manipulatestoned out of their mind elected officials into enacting legislation that will allow their guy to be elected President (in what amounts to a bloodless coup d'etat) is quite unsettling.



The satire arches up even higher as the newly elected President Frost orders that everyone over thirty years of age be rounded up and sent to "re-education" camps where they are forced to drop acid every day. It's part youth culture empowerment fantasy, part satirical political cautionary tale.

View the complete film of Wild in the Streets by clicking here.

A clip from Punishment Park was featured earlier in this post.

On the the almost opposite side of the spectrum is Peter Watkins' still controversial 1971 film, Punishment Park  . Peter Watkins is a British filmmaker known for his mockumentaries. Unlike much of the genre, his mockumentaries are not comedies. If fact, they are generally deadly serious affairs.

Two of Watkins' better known earlier mockumentary works are Culloden and The War Game. Culloden (1964) documents the history of the Battle of Culloden, in which the English (some say brutally) put down a Scottish rebellion in 1746. The film utilizes historical reenactments shot it a TV news documentary style.  The War Game is a 1967 mockumentary film that takes places in England after a hypohthetical nuclear war. It unflicnlingly depicts the potential devastation of such a conflict. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the only mockumentary to ever win an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Punishment Park, follows in the tradition of those two films by telling the story of how convicted young radical revolutionaries in the US  are sent (under the pretext of an actual existing piece of US legislation enacted in the 1950's) to a desert in Southern California. Once there they are given the chance to escape their sentence if they can survive what is essentially a three day desert death hunt at the hands of the police and National Guard trainees. The central conceit of Punishment Park is that it is a documentary ostensibly shot by a European film crew.



As is the case with many of Watkins' films, he uses only non professional actors. Also like much of his work, the cast improvises a great deal of the film. In this case, the convicted protesters were played by actual activists, students or other similarly inclined young people. The cops and National Guard trainees were played actual cops, ex-cops, National Guardsmen, veterans or others who also may have been similarly ideologically inclined. The result of this non professional improvisational approach creates an unexpectedly engaging discourse between the two sides. Watkins does not take the easy route of merely making the activists righteous heroes and the authorities two dimensional closed minded villains. While the film undoubtedly leans more to the left than than the right, neither side is portrayed as completely right or completely wrong.

In fact, almost everybody  in the movie comes off as pretty much equally unlikable. And that's kinda the point of the whole endeavor. Unmistakably, Punishment Park is agit prop, yet it is not the simple agit prop that often defines the genre. Watkins seems to be ramping up the rhetoric and the hyperbole for the exact purpose of instigating inflammatory debates (and perhaps even second thoughts) on the issues of power vs revolution, peace vs violence, social order vs individual rights, equality vs oligarchy and so on.

It's almost as if Punishment Park is there to kick you in the ass and get you upset about the questions it raises, whether you like it or not.

When you go back into the history of 1960's student protest films, there are many forgotten films that are actually still quite relevant, most especially in light of the recent Occupy movement and the even more recent Quebec student protests. Among others there's Medium Cool (1969), The Revolutionary (1970, starring the now much more right leaning Jon Voight) and this one, The Strawberry Statement (1968):




I'm not sure why the local Montreal TV stations have not been running these movies every night for the last 100 days...

Five Movies With Big Time Mommy Issues

Psycho: the classic "go to" movie for mommy issues...and, no, it's not on this list.

I had a film teacher once who used to say that all great directors, as some time or another, return to their childhood via their films. It is a theme that can be seen in all the great directors of cinema history: Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Orson Welles, Pedro Almodóvar, Akira Kurosawa and, of course, the man who practically turned revisiting his childhood into a genre unto itself, Steven Spielberg.

These filmmakers, and many others like them, return to their juvenile past in any number of ways:  through narrative, symbolism, flashbacks, or, most importantly, through some form of cinematic recreation of their memories of their own mothers.

Once you start looking at the maternal images and themes in many of these films, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that these guys must have had some pretty rough childhoods. All great directors had traumatic childhoods, it seems, for which they apparently believe their mothers were responsible.

Examples are all over cinema history. As a pointed out with my post on movie crucifixion scenes, I could run a post a week on the subject and still not cover all the examples out there in cinema history. In this case, I could go on for years.

Keeping that in mind, here are five films that I find to be fascinating instances of movies with Big Time Mommy Issues...




Notorious
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1946

Legendary British born Hollywood thriller director, Alfred Hitchcock, practically owns the concept of movies with Big Time Mommy Issues. Few directors have had the word "Freudian" connected to them more often than Mr.Hitchcock. This is so largely on account of the fact that it is true.

It might seem like Hitchcock's 1960 slasher horror thriller classic, Psycho, would be the obvious choice when it comes to flushing out the director's cinematic maternal issues. The key wold there is "obvious".  As amazing as Psycho is, there are numerous other and more subtle examples of maternal themes that run throughout Hitch's work.

For instance, there's Cary Grant simultaneously escaping his own domineering mother yet at the same time seeking maternal protection from Eva Marie Saint while on the run in North by Northwest. The theme is even present in Hitch's quasi-apocalyptic thriller, The Birds (not the least of which is central conflict with Mother Nature, herself).  However, one of the most interesting displays of Hitch's mommy issues comes into play in one of Hitchcock's most purely cinematic films, the 1946 thriller, Notorious.

The plot of Notorious involves US government agent Cary Grant attempting to flush out some escaped Nazis in post World War II Brazil. To carry out his mission, he turns to Ingrid Bergman, the American daughter of convicted Nazi spy. While romancing Bergman in some of the most steamy Hollywood love scenes of the era, Grant manages to recruit her. She is to go to Brazil and resume the acquaintanceship of suspected Nazi operative Claude Rains. The somehow totally not suspicious Rains fall in love with Bergman. He asks her to marry him, which, as it turns out, plays nicely into the whole infiltrate the ring of Nazi spies plan.
 


It's the rare thriller director, then or now, who would bring a mother into this kind of a story. With Hitch, of course, such a thing is almost expected.

Despite being a suave elegant middle-aged man and an accomplished Nazi operative, Rains has got this really domineering mother who continues to play a very influential role in her son's life. He reports to her at the end of her bed each day. The story goes that these scenes were lifted from Hitch's real life in which his domineering mother required him to report the activities of his day to her in a similar manner. Some biographers report that this practice continued into Hitch's adult life right up to 1940, the year he relocated to Hollywood to further his film making career.

Whatever the exact particular inspiration, the scenes between Rains and his mother (played by veteran Austrian actress Leopoldine Konstantinare) are some of the most interesting dialogue scenes in Notorious. Rains is constantly facing his mother's continued disapproval, even as he attempts to break free of her influence by asserting his independence and marrying Bergman ( it's all part of the plan, as far as she and Grant are concerned, though). Rains finally figures out that he has, in fact, married an American agent. Before sharing the revelation with anyone else, he goes to his mother. Now Hitchcock's Freudian Mom is totally in her element. Not only is he is able to scold her son over his poor choice of a wife, but she is also able to regain power over his life. She concocts a clever plot to kill Bergman via slow acting poison. She  oversees the plan. She is often seen sitting or lying down; the maternal monster's power is such that she can exact control even from an apparently passive position.


 

Domineering control and manipulation to the point of attempting to murder Hitch,  don't know how to say this but you got a few issues there, buddy.



Alien
Directed by Ridley Scott 
1979

On the surface, perhaps not a movie one might immediately associate with maternal issues. But, then again, there are those alien eggs...

Original Alien designs by HR Giger: See what I mean?

Besides some more subtle, underlying maternal themes, sexual imagery abounds in Alien. The alien monster with the big shiny phallushead and vagina dentata mouth, for example. Even the so-called "face hugger" aliens contain subtle phallic and vaginal imagery.

How does sexual imagery fit into discussion of maternal symbolism?  Duh. Aside from adoption, artificial insemination, surrogate and other clever means of sidestepping the course of nature, what's the number one major prerequisite for all moms everywhere?

Along with all the sexual imagery, images and themes of fertility, impregnation and maternity permeate Alien as well. Yet the presence of these images and themes is very much a perverse one.

An egg is often seen as a traditional image of fertility. This may be so but the egg is literally alien as well as  enigmatic, ominous and ultimately deadly. As the humans approach the alien egg for the first time, they shine flashlights through it. Murky fetal shadows appear inside the egg. There is life inside but it is dark and unknown. The egg then suddenly opens with of its own accord with a slowness that is both purposeful and potentially sinister. As the human astronaut approaches it, an alien being springs out. It quickly wraps itself around its victim's face, inserting a tentacle down the victim's throat. More sexual imagery. This time it is of a both invasive and aggressive nature. The alien "face hugger" then both feeds off of and at the same time keeps its host alive. Later, it impregnates it's human victim turned host. Finally, after it has gestated for a sufficient amount of time inside the human, a new alien being violently and bloodily bursts out of  its host's stomach, leaving the host dead. The whole sequence of events is a twisted and horrific vision of fertility, impregnation and childbirth.

In Alien, even the spacecraft itself has maternal overtones. The computer that runs the ship, the Nostromo, is, without much subtlety, named Mother. Mother, the computer, runs the ship when the crew is in cryogenic sleep. Mother also knows things the crew does not. It awakens them and sends them on their mission to investigate an unknown alien transmission.  In fact, Mother is operating on her own hidden agenda that remains unknown to the crew for much of the film. Mother may know best but just what the hell is she up to?

Mother's womb-like main computer access room 

The opening sequence of the film shows the ships crew being awakened from cryogenic sleep. The long sleep is a state that requires the nurturing care of  Mother, the computer. The scene where they crew quietly and delicately awakes from their long slumber is another birth image. Only this one is more positive than other such visual analogies seen in the film.


Even in the midst of all the death and fear that surrounds the crew, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley rarely loses her cool. She remains focused and driven by the vital task at had, get rid of the murderous alien creature. She is even cool and calm as she engages the ship to self destruct, the only truly reliable means of killing the alien creature. However, when Ripley discovers that the alien is blocking her route to the escape shuttle, she attempts to shut the self destruct sequence off. It being too late in the process, Mother will not cooperate. When this happens, Ripley has one of her most outwardly emotional displays seen in the film. In a rare moment of cathartic release, she screams and throws things at the computer, yelling out one simple word: "Mother!".


 





Nixon
Directed by Oliver Stone 
1995

Oliver Stone is quite the director. Often Over-the-top and highly Stylized, Stone's films are built around complex themes and characters that are, even in their complexity, boiled down to their most simplistic elements. And, oh yeah, it is often the case that, in an Oliver Stone picture, everything almost always comes back to the mother's. This is most especially true in his bio-pics.

In Alexander, legendary ancient Greek warrior's thirst for conquest was drilled into him by his mother, mostly through the use of Angelina Jolie's uber-stylized accent along with the off kilter angles with which she was shot. In W., President George W. Bush's, as portrayed by Josh Brolin, political foibles and miscalculations (as Stone's film classifies them to be) were in no small part created by the judgments and disapproval of his dad, James Cromwell,in the role of Bush 41. Though, in subtle shots and cinematic allusions, Stone implies that the George Sr. did so as the screws were being put to him by matriarchal Barbara Bush, as portrayed by Ellen Burstyn.

Nixon, Oliver Stone's 1995 biopic of Richard M. Nixon,  the only US President to resign, throws many thematic and stylistic concepts into he mix. Not the least of those ideas are the influences that Nixon's mom, Hannah Nixon, had on the future president. In real life, Nixon did, in fact, reference his mom in his last day on the job speech as President before leaving the White House forever. So it's not surprising that Stone chose to include her in his pastiche of Nixon's personal and professional life.

Nixon is portrayed by the unlikely Anthony Hopkins. His mother is portrayed, with just the appropriate amount coldness and distance, by Mary Steenburgen. Hopkins, though, never actually appears on screen with Steenbergen. In those scenes, Nixon is played by actors portraying the younger versions of Nixon. In one scene memorable scene, 12 year old Nixon (as played by Corey Carrier, the 10 year old Indy from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) is caught with a cigarette. Shot in that classic dark moody black and white cinematography that often constitutes a flashback in a Stone film, the scene depicts Steenburgen attempting to get a confession out the young Nixon. Hanna Nixon was a Quaker so, in the film, the maternal Nixon uses the pronoun "thee" towards her son. Just that, in of itself, suggests a constant sense of both emotional distance and judgement. Nixon finally confesses to possessing the cigarette but his mother promises not to tell his stern father about the incident. She states that it is "our little secret".

Hmmm...I wonder which part of Nixon's later life Stone is implying that story from his childhood may have informed.





Historically accurate or not, the intent of the scene is pretty clear.

Nixon's mom turns up in various other flashbacks throughout the film and, in all instances, displays a powerful sense of emotional distance coupled with a domineering demeanor towards her son.

Joan Allen plays Pat, Nixon's wife. Stone very strong suggests, both visually and textually, that Pat is Nixon's maternal substitute. Many of Allen and Hopkins's scenes involve Nixon crying on his wife's shoulder and/or confiding in her in a way in which, the film suggests, Nixon was never able to do with his mother.

The most powerful of the dark maternal images in Nixon turn up when the film supposedly recreates an interview conducted with Hannah Nixon shortly before her death in 1967. An aged version of Steenbergen appears once again in black and white, though this time it is much more grainy than in previous scenes, while sitting in a nursing home. The interviewer asks what Mrs. Nixon thinks of the fact that her son may well run for President in the next year. On the surface, her answers are all positive and supportive of her son. She even flashes the occasional smile when referring to him. However, to the great credit of her performance, Steenbergen delivers the seemingly nice answers with a subtle yet strong sense of cold emotional dissonance that lurks behind even her smiles.



It's hard not to draw the conclusion that, as far as Oliver Stone is concerned, all of the Nixon's characters flaws and his ultimate political fate all go right back to his mother.

Seriously? The carpet bombing of Hanoi? US backed regime change in Chile? Watergate? You wanna put all that on the guy's mother?


Braindead
Directed by Peter Jackson 
1992

Before The Lovely Bones, King Kong, Lord of the Rings, The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson made a some pretty fucked up movies. Very entertaining....but fucked up.

Bad Taste, his first feature made back in 1987, is about aliens that come to earth in order to turn people into food. It is very much what they like to call now a "splatter" movie. In 1989, he made Meet The Feebles, a darkly twisted satirical movie about a group of Muppet-like puppets. Of this period of Jackson's work, 1992's Braindead takes the proverbial gory cake.

Known as Dead Alive in its North American release, Braindead, in addition to its absurdly extreme amount of gore, contains some of the most over-the-top Mommy issues ever put on film. On account of a Sumatran Rat Monkey (pretty sure that's fictional) that ends up in a New Zealand zoo, there is an outbreak of zombieism in Wellington. Long story short, the films's protagonist, Lionel Cosgrove (played by Timothy Balme) must fight off a most of his recently zombiefied neighbourhood.  To add the tension, his mom, played by Elizabeth Moody, also succumbs to the zombie epidemic. Even before she was infected, though, Lionel's mom was not exactly portrayed as a saint. Often shot from close, unflattering angles, she is yet another mom that is domineering and unlikable. She even goes so far as to make disparaging remarks regarding Lionel's Italian girlfriend.



In what is already a pretty damned ramped up film to begin with, Braindead ends with some of the biggest mother issues ever put on film...literally.

Before we get to that point, though, there is a lot of incredibly gory dismembering, disturbingly relentless attacks by a zombie baby, a kung fu fighting priest, and a scene  involving a lawnmower and room full of zombies that features one of the greatest slayfests this side of the Evil Dead movies.

After all that, Lionel's mom re-appears. She has now become the biggest-assed zombie ever (seriously -check out the scene). Proclaiming that she will keep and protect her son forever, giant zombie mom grabs Lionel and literally  sticks Lionel "back" into her gigantic womb. Our hero then must cut himself out in an absurdly over-the-top Freudian celebration of gore and rebirth.

While there is very strong sense of wry humour, satire and slapstick in Braindead, I still can't help but think, "What in the hell did Peter Jackson's mom do to him?".

In case you haven't already, Take a look. (the clip is in German but more than likely you will get the gist of it)

See what I mean? That scene puts the Big in Big Time Mommy Issues...




The Mummy
Directed by Karl Freund 
1932

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Happy Mother's Day!

The Avengers and The Movie Crossovers That Never Happened

The Avengers have arrived.

The long awaited big screen adaptation of the legendary Marvel Comics superhero team in is finally playing in theaters. There has never been a crossover movie quite like The Avengers; characters established in their own original movies, made with the express intention of later putting those characters together in one big movie. The hype surrounding the release of Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America was not just about the opening of a big blockbuster movie in and of itself.  As much as anything else,  the hype was also about how each movie brought the world one set up closer to The Avengers.

Movie crossovers are nothing new: Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, King Kong vs Godzilla, Alien vs. Predator...the list goes on. Granted, putting Frankenstein and the Wolf Man in the same movie was as an after thought and not the reason why they made a Frankenstein and a Wolf Man movie in the first place but, still, you get the general idea.

It's all been done.

Or has it?

What about those crossover movies, some potential dreams comes true, some potential nightmares come true, that never quite made it into movies theaters?

 In the world of Hollywood Development Hell that is the movie business, many ideas, crossover and otherwise, are talked about. Few come to fruition.








Some of those ideas can run anywhere from the bizarre to the unfeasible or, in some cases, both.

Take, for instance, these examples...





The Beatles in The Lord of the Rings as Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Speaking as a huge fan of all three of the above, I am so glad this project never came to be.

Back in the day when Beatlemania was all the rage, The Beatles original old school show biz manager, Brian Epstein, signed a three picture deal for the The Fab Four with United Artists. A Hard Day's Night and Help! were the first two films of these deals.

By 1966, things had changed a bit since those two cinematic moptop romps were filmed. The Beatles had performed their last live show.  They started smoking those funny cigarettes Bob Dylan gave them. They were among the first people on the UK to drop acid. And, perhaps most significantly, the lads from Liverpool were replacing lyrics like "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" with lyrics like "No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low". 

The Era of Beatlemania had officially bitten the dust.

The boys themselves, now Zuckebergesque millionaires in their mid-20's, decided that they wanted to run their career a little differently from here on in. And they had the power to do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted. As anyone who has sat through the Star Wars prequels can tell you, that kind of creative control in not necessarily a good thing.

The Beatles were now, in part, defined by their own reactions against the earlier part of their career. They no longer had any taste for the incredible amount of handling they had undergone during their Beatlemania phase, for instance. Huge stadium shows were out. Rather than making live TV appearances, they made short films of their songs (early rock videos, really) to show on the Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand. And they sure weren't into making silly off-the-wall movies designed to sell soundtrack albums. Nonetheless, there was still a small matter of the contractual obligation they had for that pesky third Beatles movie. Well, if the lads were gonna do a film, they were gonna do it their way. Their, it turns out, lead to some -shall we say?- interesting ideas.

In the mid 60's, Italian film maker Sergio Leone had just created the genre that became known as the Spaghetti Western. The genre was typified by films of his like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Yep, one of The Beatles movie ideas was that they would be the stars of a western; quite possibly a Leone-like Spaghetti Western. The movie may well have featured John, Paul, George and the aptly named Ringo sporting Clint Eastwood-like hair and beards while slinging their genre deconstructing six guns to the tune of an Ennio Morricone soundtrack perhaps peppered with a few psychedelic sounding Fab Four Country and Western songs.

The movie, oddly tittled A Talent For Loving, was actually scheduled to shoot in Spain. The reason for aborting the production was ostensibly on account of weather problems in that country. Though some might say it was the Hands of the Good Movie Gods intervening. If so, The Beatles would continue to keep those Hands pretty busy for some time to come.

The other idea the Beatles had was to do a film adaptation of JRR Tolkein's classic Fantasy  trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.  Back in the Sixties, The Lord of the Rings was seen as more of a mind blowing trippy hippie kinda book and not as much as the celebrated epitome of all geekdom that it is today. The lads were serious enough about the idea to approach the director of the SF classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick. This made perfect sense because, aside from Kubrick being an accomplished A-list director at the time, 2001 was a movie that was very popular with the hippie crowd in 1968.

The Beatles. Tolkien. Kubrick. 1968. Did I mention the part about those funny Dylan cigarettes and being some of the first people in the UK to drop acid?

Stanley Kubrick's Lord of the Rings, Beatles-style, had already been cast too: George Harrison as Gandalf, Paul  McCartney as Frodo Baggins, Ringo Starr as Sam Wisegamgee and John Lennon as Gollum.

Hey, man, don't shoot the messenger.

According to most reliable Kubrick biographies, the legendary director did actually consider taking the job. Kubrick finally passed on the film, though, on the grounds that the books, even with his 2001 visual effects team on the job, were unfilmable. In the pre-Industrial Light and Magic and CGI era, Kubrick was right.

While a Kubrick LOTR would have been fascinating, God knows how much of Tolkien would have actually made it to the final cut. Just ask Antony Burgess, Stephen King and Vladimir Nabokov how Kubrick film adaptations worked out for them.

Not to mention that The Beatles are not actors. They would have been plugging their own personalities into pre-established Tolkien characters. So the movie would have ended up with a Maharishi-like Gandalf, a over-the-top cutesy Frodo, an angry anti-authoritarian Golum and a goofily downbeat Sam.

It's also rumoured that, after Kubrick turned the project down, British film maker John Boorman was approached. Boorman too would have been an "interesting" fit, having gone on to direct films like Deliverance, Excalibur and one of the trippiest SF exercises of all time, Zardoz.

According to Peter Jackson, it was Tolkien himself, by virtue of the fact that he was still alive at the time, who put the ultimate kibosh on the whole bizarre mash-up of a project.

The Beatles finally ended up getting their long desired hippy dippy adventure movie and got to honour their United Artists contract at the same time. The solution to both problems was the animated film, Yellow Submarine. The animated movie was appropriately psychedelic to the era. It also demanded very little of The Beatles, outside of writing some new songs and appearing in a short live action epilogue at the end of the film.

Another crossover that never happened...

Zeppelins, Dinosaurs, Vikings and Nazis
With a line up like that, how could you go wrong? 
Well, let's start with never making it...

While none of the above elements were established movie franchises per se, they were, and still are, elements that, even by themselves in just one film, can make for awesome movies.

Hot on the heels of the success of the original 1933 King Kong, producers and directors Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper were approached by MGM studios to make a fantasy adventure movie so big that it would make King Kong look like a spider monkey. The movie in question was to have been titled War Eagles.

The basic elements of the movie would have gone something like this: explorers discover a lost valley. In this remote valley, descendants of Vikings lost centuries before continue to thrive. Also still existing in this valley: dinosaurs. Vikings and dinosaurs. Of course. De rigeur for any great adventure epic, really.

In addition to dinosaurs, there are also giant prehistoric eagles (the fossil records for which have yet to be discovered, I guess). Naturally, the Vikings ride these giant eagles majestically through the skies. Somewhere along the way, it being the eve of World War II and all, the Nazis attempt to invade the US of A. Their attack fleet is made up, naturally, of Zeppelins. Oh, yes, indeed, my friends, the climatic battle of War Eagles would have featured Vikings riding a top giant prehistoric eagles fighting off Nazi Zeppelins over the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

Total Geekasm.

For the 1930's, War Eagles have been positively Michael Bay in its scope (though probably better directed). The movie would have been in Technicolor, the same process for making colour movies (a rarity back then) used in The Wizard of OZ and Gone With The Wind. Willis O'Brien, the effects legend behind King Kong, was set to do the visual effects. The screenplay was written by Cyril Hume, who wrote many of the hit MGM Tarzan movies as well as the now classic 50's SF film, Forbidden Planet.

With a premise so rich and a team like that, it begs the question: how did this movie not get made?  Well, the answer had something to do with the real life version of World War II.

Producer Cooper was also very much the adventurer. He was a flier and subsequent POW during World War I.  Not unlike the Carl Denham character in King Kong, Cooper shot wildlife documentary footage in exotic locales like Africa and South America during the 20's. On the brink of  the US entry into World War II, Cooper left Hollywood to join the US Air Force, despite the fact he was already old enough to have been exempt from military service. When he left, War Eagles was put on hold. It was never picked up again. At the time of Cooper's departure, the film was pretty far into production too, as this excellent book tells us.

A novel , supposedly based on the unfilmed screenplay for War Eagles, came out many years later, though, I'm told, given War Eagles' history and pedigree, it is something of a let down. IMDB lists a 2012 version of War Eagles, with a similar plot to the original, as being "in development" but it cites no stars, director, writer, producer or studio attached to it.

Hey, Peter Jackson, you showed a great amount of admiration for King Kong in your 2005 remake. Maybe you could get to War Eagles after that Hobbit thing, k?

Star Trek Meets Eddie Murphy
The best idea in blockbuster movie crossovers since Richard Pryor met Superman.

Back in the mid 80's, riding high on the phenomenal success of the first Beverly Hills Cop movie, former Saturday Night Live star Eddie Murphy was just about the biggest comic on the planet. It seems that somebody got the idea of expanding Murphy's comedic range beyond that of just the planet.

Also not doing too badly in the mid 80's was the Star Trek franchise. The feature film series based the seminal SF TV series was hot off the one two punch of the hit movies, Star Trek II and III.  Leonard Nimoy, director and star of the upcoming Star Trek IV,  felt that, after all the emotionally wrenching death, destruction and resurrection in II and III, it was time for the Trek franchise to lighten up a bit. After all, where was the Star Trek movies answer to the show's classic comic relief episode, The Trouble With Tribbles?

Well, the answer certainly wasn't in the idea that came next.

Apparently some of the suits at Paramount Pictures got wind of the lighter direction idea for Trek. I guess they looked at some Beverly Hills Cop box office receipts and suddenly came up with a brilliant idea. Why not put Eddie Murphy in the next Star Trek movie? Unfortunately, their question was a rhetorical one.

Nimoy played the studio's little game and considered the idea. Murphy, reportedly a huge fan, leaped at even the very idea of appearing in a Star Trek movie. The wacky alien concept was bounced around but, in the end, it was decided that Murphy would be funniest if he were allowed to stay squarely in his mid 80's urban context. Thus the idea of a time travel story line was born.

According to Nimoy's book, I Am Spock, Nimoy met with Murphy in the ascending superstar's new sparsely furnished Hollywood Hills mansion. Nimoy writes that both parties,while remaining enthusiastic, expressed reservations over such a crossover and that both were well aware of its potential for failure.

The story goes that someone at the studio suddenly became aware of Superman III, which featured ground-breaking comedian turned movie star Richard Pryor in a central role. The combo of the very funny Pryor and the very established franchise of Superman was, well, poorly received by critics and fans alike. Superman III did okay at the box office yet still sent the franchise into a slump. Somebody at Paramount got appropriately scared of the idea of mixing franchises and of potentially killing both Murphy's and Trek's reputation simultaneously. Keep the two apart, though, and there was almost guaranteed success for each.

That ended up being the right call. Star Trek IV went on to become one the highest grossing Star Trek movies ever. Murphy's next two movies, The Golden Child and Coming to America, are still among the star's top ten highest money makers ever.

The time travel scenario did stay in the picture, though. The part Murphy was supposed to have played in Star Trek IV eventually morphed in the role of  20th century marine biologist Dr.Gillian Taylor, Kirk's love interest.

Imagine if Murphy had stuck with the part that far ; now that woulda been a crossover.

Which brings us to....

Batman vs. Superman
Wolfgang Petersen's Super Perfect Das Bat Force One starring Jude Law and Colin Ferell. 

Cast your mind back the time just after Joel Schmuacher and George Clooney "killed" the Batman franchise; the time when it was painfully obvious that Christopher Reeve would never play Superman again. Around that time, superhero movies were seeing something of a box office renaissance with the success of X-Men and the first Spider-Man movie. Hulk, Daredevil and Fantastic Four movies were also on the way. Not surprisingly, the idea of of reviving both the Superman and Batman franchises was very much one the minds of the people at DC Comics and Warner Studios. Reportedly, the predominant feeling was that bringing life back to Warner/DC's dormant flagship characters would best done sooner than later. Many different options on how to go about reviving Supes and Bats were explored.

What they settled on was Batman vs Superman.

Batman vs Superman...hmmm....well, the idea of getting those two guys together in a movie is a good one and one that is long overdue at that. However, the "vs" angle can be a bit problematic. Anyone who read World's Finest Comics (which regularly featured Superman-Batman team ups) when they were a kid knows that the two superheroes' alliance was generally an amiable one. Sure, in later Justice League and other comics, there was plenty of tension between The Gothamite and the Metropolitan. However, with the exception of Frank Miller's extremely gritty The Dark Knight Returns, relations between the two rarely broke down the "vs" level.

The battling superhero scenario has certainly been done in the comics. Plenty of times, in fact. It's a premise that can work, within certain limits. You can have The Thing vs The Hulk or The Hulk vs Wolverine and even the monumental Marvel-DC crossover of Superman vs Spider-Man seemed to make sense, but when comes to Superman and Batman, the whole "vs" concept just doesn't quite mesh.

Wolfgang doin' the directan' thang

Nonetheless, Batman vs Superman moved ahead. The studio got Wolfgang Petersen, director of such films as Das Boot, The Perfect Storm, Enemy Mine, The Neverending Story, Troy and Air Force One, on board to direct. Petersen stated publicly that he was very into the idea and loved the film versions of both characters that had appeared thus far. In fact, he still claims that he is interested in directing a Batman vs Superman movie some day.

Possible casting choices that hit the rumour mill at the time included Jude Law or Josh Hartnett as Superman and Colin Ferrell or actual eventual Batman, Christian Bale, as The Dark Knight himself. Apparently, Bale was also at one point considered for the role of Superman.

Wow. Imagine. Bale vs Bale. That, I woulda paid good money to see.

Like the Eddie Murphy meets Star Trek idea, however, Warner/DC got cold feet on the idea mixing franchises. Lighter heads prevailed. They decided that it would be better to revive each character separately. If Batman vs Superman bombed, both characters were screwed at box office. If only one or the other bombed, well, they always had Batman vs Superman in their back pocket to help boost the hypothetically less successful franchise.

In time, Warner/DC finally went with Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. For the Kryptonian's resurrection, there was Bryan Singer's ostensible follow up to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, Superman Returns. Batman Begins was a huge hit, as was its sequel, The Dark Night (and most likely that will also be the case for the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises). Superman Returns, on the other hand, did well financially but not so well with critics and fans. Whatever the case, there was never any talk of Bale's Batman duking it out with Brandon Routh's Superman.

In fact, now with The Avengers finally here, the DC superhero movie crossover project may well come full circle. Marvel Comics has just made a huge, bold and more than likely very successful move with a feature film version of their superhero team. Warner/DC have apparently been thinking about a potential movie featuring that company's biggest superhero group, The Justice League (also known for years on Saturday morning TV as the Super Friends) for some time. Now, it may well happen.

All Warner/DC needs to do now, is, after the 2013 Superman movie, Man of Steel, reboot Batman yet again (neither Nolan nor Bale are interested in seeing the Dark Knight join the league). Then they just need to tackle the small matter of making a Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman movie. And, well, popular or not, they've already established a movie Green Lantern, who could be ready to join the Justice League any time.

But, you know, after looking at the Development Hell process in detail in this post, it's possible that just about every project on this list may well come into being before we will ever see anything like a Justice League or a similarly ambitious crossover movie happen.

My Adventures in YouTube Land

In the roughly year and a half that I have been blogging and article writing, I have found that, as a relatively new contributor to the land of Internet discourse, the general tone of discussions and debates that I've been involved in have been surprisingly reasonable. The comments I've gotten on "He Had on a Hat" and on my articles for other online writing have, while often in disagreement with my ideas and opinions, remained relatively positive and reasonable.

All that seemed to change, though, once I started posting videos on YouTube. For some reason, on YoutTube, unlike blogs and web articles, the member comments are much more raw and the opinions more unbridled. I began posting videos on YouTube innocently enough. There was some stuff I was kinda expecting certain types of reactions to. Like, for instance, the responses to this scene from the 1972 movie Catlow, in which Leonard Nimoy lets it all hang out...




Typical comments from other YouTubers went something like this:

 "To see Leonard fighting naked is the hottest thing ever! O.o"

And so on and so forth...but even in this case, there were a few comments that surprised me:


"oh man, you don't really see anything important. So disappointed :( lol "

Then there was this little edit I made featuring a montage of Chuck Heston's religious epic roles set to Johnny Cash covering a Depeche Mode song



There were several potential sources of outrage there from fans of either Heston, Cash, Depeche Mode, Jesus or all four but, nope, not a single comment.

Interesting.

Even when I called the fan classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on its lack of originality....



Nothin'. Trekkies? Trekkers? Geeks? Nope.

No contest on that one either.

Then I dug up this little gem featuring a very young Christopher Walken on an episode of the original 1960's version of the TV series, Hawaii Five-0:




While many of the comments I received either praised Walken or commented on how young the guy looked (many of them bringing, not surprisingly for YouTube comments, Walken's "ass" into the discussion), a couple of commentators took issue with the text I wrote accompanying the clip in which I referred to lead H50 actor Jack Lord as "stiff".

They opened by quoting my own words:

"'Lord, an actor whose performances could sometimes be as stiff as his hairpiece, is just a little better than usual working with the young Walken.' That shows how much the writer who wrote that piece knows about Jack. Copying the 'stiff' label is ignorant and shows he doesn't know the difference between serious acting and stiff acting." 

I quickly pointed out to this poster that implying that I knew nothing about acting or of Jack Lord's work was, to put it mildly, a majorly erroneous a assumption, most especially in my case. Anyone who knows me or reads "He Had on a Hat" regularly knows what I'm talking about.

Even on that heated discussion, though, I was later able to make peace with the Lord fans who clearly misinterpreted  me as being a Jack hater.

The YouTube comments, though, really seriously heated up when it came to this clip of William Shatner interviewing controversial radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Shatner's talk show, Raw Nerve.

While I quickly received a number of Rush bashing and Shatner praising comments, the Limbugh fans out there (and, yeah, there are a lot of them) soon took notice of what they perceived as a one sided discussion.

Here's one of the more colourful additions to the conversation:

"Rush is the best. I want to tell you little pinhead libtards who are clueless which looks like most of the people in here are. Since we are talking health care, I've had type 1 Diabetes all of my life WITHOUT INSURANCE FOR MOST OF MY LIFE. During the Clinton admin, I went to the gov health clinics that Clinton shut down after 2 years in his term. It was the worst health care I have ever seen. The medicine was low grade, doctors were clueless about the disease, and it was full of racist brainwashed blacks...you pinhead liberals complaining you don't have anything BOOO HOOOO. Get a job you stupid stinky idiots. If you don't like what you have find something else and work hard. Stop thinking the gov should do everything for you. Stupid lazy idiots. Celestial Woodway is a racist. You people don't know shit. I have the experience and I know what I'm talking about. So stick your Obama dildo up you ass."

Woah, okay...I, in no uncertain terms, absolutely object to the use of the term, "stinky".

Seriously, though, a great many responses to these highly objectionable words went through my head. I felt that engaging the guy (and, yeah, I'm assuming it's a guy) would just dredge out more and more of the same extreme rhetorical hyperbole. So I cut right to what I felt was the real heart of the matter by saying:

"I am glad to see that the discourse remains civil and reasonable."

After that, I never heard another word from that person ever again.

Yep, that's how the Internet and YouTube comment section debates seems to work. You can call people "racists", "libtards" and even go so far as to label them "stupid stinky idiots". You can respond to these kinds of statements in kind and inevitably escalate the hate even further. But, if you take on a calm and moderate tone, well, that just stops everything cold. Some things are simply just not tolerated on the Internet.

Until next week, have fun out there in cyber debate land, all you stinkies...

Disaster Movies of Titanic Proportions

From The Onion's Our Dumb Century

The sinking of the RMS Titanic was a story so big and so tragic in its day that even one hundred years plus four days later, people lime me are still blogging about it.  The demise of the White Star Line's flagship on its maiden voyage in 1912 went on to become story that even influenced our very culture. I first heard about The Titanic when I was 5 or 6. The disaster was sounded so culturally archetypal (that's the exact wording I used at 6 years old) that, for the longest time, I thought it was a story from the Bible. No doubt the "God Himself couldn't sink her" line has something to do with that . After all, the good book is full of people challenging God's power and living to regret it big time, usually via some form of flood, plague or other Act of God (which, BTW, has always sounded like the kind of thing that goes down in an abusive relationship, but that's a whole other blog post).

Of course, there are the movies that are based on the event itself, like A Night to Remember and that one there that's one of James Cameron's early low budget art house movies from his pre-Avatar period.  More than that, though, the sinking of the Titanic has influenced movies in terms of both theme and narrative. Particularly prevalent are movies from the pinnacle of the 70's disaster movie craze that are filled with themes of decadence combined with human technological hubris. Like, you know, the hubris of, say, building ridiculously large ships that don't have even enough lifeboats on board because, after all, "God Himself couldn't sink her" and then decadently partying it up on said ship till an iceberg comes along and sets things straight.

These themes are, of course, most often seen in disaster movies, most especially one made sure the height of the genre's popularity in the 1970's.

Here's three for instances...

The Poseidon Adventure

Many of the 70's disaster movies are essentially the Titanic in a different context. Case in point, The Poseidon Adventure.

Producer Irwin Allen's  spectacular 1972  disaster movie even keeps the passenger liner setting of its inspiration. The ship in question is the mythologically monikered SS Poseidon. While on a New York to Athens cruise, The Poseidon gets hit by one of the biggest tidal waves ever recorded. Of course, the wave doesn't just chose to hit the boat at any old time. No, the great waters of the world decide to flex their aquatic muscles just moments after midnight on New Year's Eve. In a heavily ramped-up sequence of stunts and screaming, many people are brutally killed on what some might call the Worst New Year's Eve Ever. The survivors must find their way to the "bottom" of the ship, which, of course in now the "top" of the ship before the whole kit and caboodle (oh, yes, the caboodle too) sinks. And all the while, everyone is in their nice fancy-pantsed tuxedos and hoity-toity evening gowns. It all makes for a very Titanic paradigm. That, and the whole movie is a blatantly flimsy excuse to show Ernest Borgnine running around in his undershirt for two hours.

Not to be confused with its two 2005 remakes.

The Towering Inferno

Irwin Allen is at it again. And this time it's 1974.

This disaster of Titanic proportion gets out of the water and into the world's tallest building. Set in San Francisco, The Towering Inferno features a 138 story marvel of modern architecture that was at the time the world's tallest fictional skyscraper. A second tower, not quite as tall, stands next to it. The "twin towers" of the film are a fairly obvious allegory to then just opened World Trade Center in NYC; a veiled comment on how buildings as tall as those of the World Trade Center towers were, ultimately, doomed to disaster.

No comment.

Due to some shoddy wiring by a crooked contractor, a small electrical fire breaks out on the 79th floor. Only it doesn't stay small for long. This, of course, happens on the opening night (ie: maiden voyage) of the skyscraper . The top floor of the, as it is refereed to in the film, Glass Tower is filled with San Francisco's decadent social elite. Everyone is all feted up in their decadent evening gowns and tuxedos, 70's style (and, oh yeah, there's some kitschily hideous clothes on display in this movie).

Of course, the building is too tall for any of the fire engine ladders to reach high enough to rescue anyone. So that leaves us with a lot of people running around on fire and some spectacular failed rescue attempts in the form of fiery helicopter crashes.

The Towering Inferno features one of the most impressive casts that big Hollywood money can buy: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, William Holden, Robert Wagner and, filling out the historical irony department, O.J. Simpson.

Speaking of the historical irony department, the 70's disaster movie genre may have, from a 21st century stand point, gotten very disturbing. The Airport series of movies, which depicted many innovative airborne disasters, were also very popular at the time (though, thematically speaking, not quite Titanic enough for this post). At one point, the series producer's idea for next film in the Airport franchise would have involved a 747 passenger jet crashing into -wait for it- the world's tallest skyscraper. The Airport producers ditched the idea when they heard that The Towering Inferno was in the works.

Good thing. That movie woulda been a bit too creepily prescient all around. And just imagine what those video rental figures would have been like on September 12, 2001.

Raise The Titanic

Raise The Titanic is a disaster of a different sort; a disaster at the box office, involving both hubris and decadence.

This 1980 film was based on the bestselling novel of the same name by author Clive Cussler. After Raise The Titanic, Cussler did not allow another one of his books to be adapted to the big screen ever again. The only exception being Sahara in 2005, and even then Cussler sued over it.

As the title suggests, the film is about an attempt to raise the Titanic from its watery grave (nobody tell James Cameron about that idea). Through a convoluted series of plot thickening events, it is discovered that not only is there this rare fictional mineral that's really important to American national defence tech but that the only known samples of this mineral were on board the RMS Titanic when that iceberg went and sunk it. Suddenly, the Americans and Russians are in a race to find the Titanic and raise it from the bottom of the ocean. The Americans, led by badass Logan's Run Sandman Richard Jordan and a slumming Jason Robards, find the Titanic first.

They finally (SPOILER ALERT) succeed in raising the ship. However, when doing so, they conveniently skip over the fact the Titanic's hull was split in two when it sunk. That plot point might be a passable bit of artistic license were it not for the fact that there is a scene where they actually show footage taken from a submarine that shows the Titanic in two pieces on the ocean floor.

The critical and financial success of Raise The Titanic, or lack thereof,  is where the hubris and decadence bit comes in. In 1980, the movie cost an estimated $40 million to make. To date, the film has only made back $13 million worth of that initial investment. Those numbers include the era of Beta, VHS, laser discs, DVD, Blu-ray, cable movie channels, Netflix, digital downloads and the financial bump of just about any movie with the word "Titanic" in the title that came in the wake of Cameron's 1997 blockbuster. The almost total failure of Raise The Titanic drove both Cussler and veteran British film producer Lord Grade out of the movie business entirely.

Raise The Titanic is also historically significant in another way. It was nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay and Worst Supporting Actor at the 1st Annual Golden Raspberry Awards.




I'd only seen bits and pieces of Raise The Titanic on TV once or twice so I decided it was only fair to seek  it out and watch it. As is often the case with bad movie hype, it really wasn't THAT bad. Not the greatest movie I've ever seen but certainly no insert your favourite go-to big budget movie that bombed here either.

I'll be back with some more Disaster Movies of Titanic Proportions for the 200th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic...

Five Great Movie Crucifixion Scenes*

*that aren't from movies about Jesus

The first still from Mel Gibson's upcoming Robocop reboot

After bunnies and chocolate eggs, the most prominent image of Easter is that of Jesus Christ crucified on the cross. It's an image that permeates more than just Easter. There are few other images in our Judeo Christian-based culture that are quite as resonantly iconic (well, if you leave out the Judeo part, anyway). The image of the 11th and 12th Stations of The Cross have been revisited by artists in many different mediums over the last twenty or so centuries.

Film makers are no exception. In the history of cinema, many directors have gone there and in many different ways. A good deal have gone to the literal representation of the crucifixion in biblical films like William Wyler with Ben Hur and George Stevens with The Greatest Story Ever Told while others have taken more controversial routes like Norman Jewison with  Jesus Christ Superstar,  Martin Scorsese with The Last Temptation of Christ and, more recently, Mel Gibson with The Passion of the Christ. Far more prevalent, though, are the allegorical Christ figures of movie history. Peruse through enough academic articles and serious-minded fan websites and you will find alleged Christ parallels in every cinematic icon from Rhett Butler to Luke Skywalker.  Many times the perceived savior allusion is more than just literary in nature; they are visual and cinematic in nature and they usually key thematic and dramatic scenes in film. The image most commonly cinematically referred to is that of the crucifixion of Christ. These scenes borrow not just the thematic concepts of the crucifixion but much of the classic iconography of the crucifixion as well: outstretched arms, nails through the hands or wrists, the crown of thorns and the spear in the side, to name a few.

For some, these visual crucifixion cues are more apparent and meaningful than others. For someone raised Catholic as I was (though I'm most definitely in the "fallen" category now) and who was later taught film criticism by a Jesuit priest, such images leap off the screen. For those with more secular upbringings who were taught film criticism (if at all) by, say, an avowed Marxist, probably not so much. However, as Marshal McLuhan was fond of saying, "The medium is the message". If those images are up there on that movie screen and a viewer notices it, consciously or not, then they do have some kind of meaning.

I could spend a blog post each week pointing out each and every visual Christ allegory that has ever appeared in a movie at one time or another. I've narrowed it down to five of my favourite examples. Here are five examples of films that have borrowed, used for their own purposes and some might say twisted and even ridiculed the imagery that, next to bunnies, is most strongly associated with this time of the year.

WARNING: Big time SPOILER ALERT, if you have not seen any of these movies.

Conan The Barbarian
1982
Directed by John Milius

Who's Standing in for Jesus?
Future Governor of California and champion body builder turned action movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this case, Mr. Schwarzenegger is playing legendary fantasy writer Robert E. Howard's most famous creation Conan The Cimmerian, an ancient and, I might add, pagan barbarian.


What's the context?
While seeking revenge for the murder of his father, Conan tracks down the evil, mystical and snake-themed warlord Thursla Doom, (James Earl Jones, who was then still trying to break away from that Darth Vader typecasting thing). After tracking down Doom, Conan attempts to infiltrate Doom's temple but is captured. Doom then sentences the barbarian to death by crucifixion. While tied to a tree (not nailed to a cross), Conan endures his torment in the most pro-active way possible. At one point, a vulture attempts to peck out Conan's eyes. Before the bird can do so, Conan bites the thing right in the neck and kills it. The barbarian is later rescued by one of his comrades in arms and is brought back to health with the help of the magic of an old wizard.

What makes it a crucifixion?
The religious allegories of the scene, while present as a stylistic motif, are a bit tenuous, to say the least. Conan almost, but doesn't quite, die while tied to a tree and is then brought back to "life" via supernatural means. Yeah, that's sorta kinda a crucifixion and resurrection metaphor, but, really, the only allegory that really holds up to scrutiny is Conan's incredible ability to survive hardship, torment and almost certain death.
The scene is often described a quintessential moment in defining the character of Conan, both in cinema and in literature. The scene itself is taken directly from a similar yet much more powerful description of Conan's similar crucifixion in Howard's original short story, A Witch Shall Be Born.

Artist Boris Valego's rendering of  A Witch Shall Be Born

"By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and on this grim tree a man hung, nailed there by iron spikes through his hands and feet. Naked but for a loin-cloth, the man was almost a giant in stature, and his muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs and body, which the sun had long ago burned brown..."
-Robert E. Howard, A Witch Shall Be Born, 1934

That section of the original Conan story is some of the best writing of Howard's career and, in my opinion, the most powerful passage ever written for his signature character. In the story, Conan ends up on the wrong side of a bloody coup d'etat in ancient city state. He is literally crucified for defying Constantius, the new conqueror. Conan is nailed, not tied, to a cross, not a tree. The vulture scene is basically the same. Conan's only rescue comes in the form of a passerby, one of Constantius' rivals, who merely cuts down the cross and lets Conan fend for himself from there. Conan, of course, manages to survive to fight another day. In an effort to retain some believability, Howard has Conan spend several months recovering. Conan finally exacts his revenge when, after conquering his army, he finally captures and then crucifies Constantius, the very man that had Conan nailed to the cross in the first place. Not only does Conan overcome suffering at the hands of his enemies but he does quite aggressively.
"You are more fit to inflict torture than endure it.", says Conan to his former tormentor as he leaves the man hanging on the cross.
Not exactly "turn the other cheek" stuff, is it?
No, Conan is not a messianic figure of salvation and resurrection ; he survives crucifixion not because of his virtue or because of divine providence but because Conan The Barbarian (in both movies and books) is, quite simply a tough, determined and unkillable badass.

The Omega Man

1971
Directed by Boris Sagal

Who's standing in For Jesus?:
Charlton Heston, as U.S. Air Force Colonel Robert Neville, M.D..


What's the context?:
The Omega Man is the second of  three film adapatations of Richard Matheson's short story I Am Legend (the first is The Last Man on Earth in 1964 with Vincent Price and the third is I Am Legend with Will Smith in 2007).
In 1975 (which would have been four years into the Not-Too-Distant Future when the film was made) the Cold War has become one of biological warfare. Heston, an Air Force research physician, injects himself with an experimental vaccine, but it is too late. Most, if not all, of the world population has already succumbed to the plague created by the war. Heston believes he's the last man on Earth. He goes on to spend his days roaming the deserted streets of Los Angeles and his nights fighting off a cult of plague infected nocturnal albino vampires. The cult is determined to destroy all remaining technology and Heston along with it. However, Heston and his large cachet of automatic weapons and greenades have something to say about that plan.
Heston is rescued from the albino vampires one night by a group young hippie survivors. The young "kids of today" are immune to the plague because of their age. Can you tell this movie was made in the early 70's?
With the help of one of the young hippies, a former medical student, Heston is able manufacture a new vaccine from his own blood as he, of course, is immune to the plague.
Before he can get out of the city with the new vaccine, however, one of the albino vamps manages to impale Heston with a large spear. Heston dies slowly, posed in a Christ on the cross style crucifixion pose. The young hippies retrieve the serum he made, get out of the city and get the closing credits rolling.

What makes it a crucifixion scene?
K, this allegory is pretty ham-handed but, as the aforementioned Jesuit Priest who taught me film criticism used to say, "It's all there.". First, there's the outstretched arms and the slightly bent knees: you know, you basic Christ on a the cross position. Then Heston bleeds profusely from the wound inflicted by a large spear (yes, yes, he was not stabbed exactly in the side but let's not too holier than thou about every little detail, okay?). Not to mention the fact that the man has just effectively saved all of humanity from its own, you might say "sins", with a serum that was literally made from Heston's own blood.
Once it's all laid out like that, the symbolism is pretty forced and, frankly, even as these kinds of things go, kind of silly in how seriously it takes itself.
On the bright side, though, perhaps the grateful survivors of this future world will someday drink wine at communion each week, as a way of symbolizing the sacrifice of the Blood of Heston...

Blade Runner

1982

Directed by Ridley Scott

This image is closer to that of a Resurrection that it is to that of a Crucifixion but more on that later.

Who is standing in for Jesus?

Rutgar Hauer, as the powerful, menacing yet somehow spiritual and sympathetic biorobotic android, Roy Batty.

What's the context?

Blade Runner is the bleak dystopian future to end all the bleak dystopian futures.

Futuristic cop/bounty hunter or, if you prefer, Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is assigned to track down and "retire" (ie: kill) a group of rogue biorobotic androids known as replicants.  The replicants, lead by the creepily charismatic Roy Batty (Hauer) have escaped from what basically amounts to slavery to seek out Dr. Eldon Tyrell. Tyrell is head of the eponymous Tyrell Corporation, creators and manufacturers of the Replicants. That makes Tyrell something of a God figure, at least as far as the replicants are concerned, anyway. As Deckard hunts the replicants, he seems to become increasingly cold and inhuman, even as he becomes romantically involved with a replicant. Meanwhile, the fugitive replicants appear to be gaining more humanity as they come closer and closer to the end of their genetically programmed two year life span.

In the film's climax, Deckard has a dramatic show down with the surviving replicants on a rooftop in the rain. He is tormented physically and psychologically by the increasingly powerful and menacing Batty. As Batty realizes his time is coming to and end and that he is starting to lose control of his physical body, he drives a nail through each of the palms of his hands, in attempt to stop them from shaking. Moments later, after rescuing Ford from falling off the roof and saving his life, Hauer sits down in the rain on the rooftop and declares that it's "time to die.". He droops down into a still position and releases a white dove that he had (for some reason) grabbed a hold of earlier. The dove flies directly up into the air in slow motion as the camera follows it from below.

What makes it a crucifixion scene?

The religious allusions in Blade Runner are a bit more subtle and nuanced than in the other films mentioned in this post. They are one element in a wonderfully multifaceted palate that deals with many themes and concepts, both visual and thematic. They are stylistic, cultural, philosophical and, yes, even theological in nature.
Let's stick to the theological stuff.

Among other things, biblical allusions and references abound in Blade Runner.  Ford in one scene deals with street vendors in outdoor markets that have a strong visual and aural middle eastern biblical vibe to them. He interrogates an exotic dancer who performs with a snake, a biblical symbol of Satan, that in the words of the host of her show, "once corrupted the soul of man".Tyrell is portrayed as a powerful, and, yes, an almost God-like figure who lives in a temple-like skyscraper, the top of which can only be ascended to in a glass elevator that overlooks the city, the sky and the stars.
At the end of the film, Batty performs his own self-crucifixion, then saves Deckard's life and then dies. As he dies, he releases the white dove that flies upwards. A white dove often symbolizes the Holy Spirit, which, coincidentally, also left Christ as he died on the cross (the dove could also be interpreted as symbolic of Batty's soul). The Christ allusions end there ,though. There is no resurrection for Batty. Yet the end of the film suggest that there may be a resurrection, at least thematically, for Deckard.

Of course, director Ridley Scott is not drawing perfect direct lines between Batty and Jesus. Rather, he is playing with these archetypal cultural images to create an impression. By drawing these religious allusions, even they are only perceived subconsciously, Scott is playing with the issue of existentialism vs spirituality. Batty, an artificial being created by humans and the supposed evil villain of the piece becomes a figure of great humanity and redemption as he clings to his final moments of life. The white doves suggests not only possible savior overtones but, on a more basic level, it suggests that this non-human being perhaps did, in fact, have a soul. The world of Blade Runner is one in which humans can create life via their own technology, both human and animal. It's life that, as it turns out, could have more potential for humanity and spiritualism than its creators. The humans of Blade Runner live in a world dominated and even partly destroyed by that same technology that created artificial life.
Is there a God in the midst of all of this bleak, technologically dominated world of the future? Or, in a world where its technology is so powerful, is humanity God?

Like many great films (and even art in general), Blade Runner raises more questions than it answers.

Robocop

1987
Directed by Paul Verhoven

Who's Standing in For Jesus?
Peter Weller as Officer Alex Murphy, soon to become a super cyborg cop, Robocop.


What is the context?
Another dystopian not-too-distant future outing, only this one is just a tad more bleak than The Omega Man and at least as bleak as Blade Runner.
In the crime ridden no man's land that is Detroit of the near future, the police force has -in the ultimate satire of Reagan era politics - been privatized. The Omni Consumer Products Corporation is now in charge of the cops and, boy, have they got some cool ideas for technological upgrades to the force. One of their new innovations involves building unstoppable cyborg super cops. Their first guinea pig for the new law enforcement product line is Officer Alex Murphy. Murphy is selected for the job after he is killed in the line of duty. Killed, I might add, in one of the most brutal killing scenes in cinema history.
Once "legally dead", Murphy is fused with mechanical robot parts and becomes the ultimate law enforcement machine, known simply as Robocop.  Or as the movie poster puts it: "Part Machine. Part Man. All cop." The film is never clear as to whether Murphy was killed and actually brought back from the dead via technology or is just almost killed and given a new lease on life via technology.

Whatever the case, Murphy's death at the hands of some of the most sadomasochistically twisted villains this side of Deliverance, is akin to a crucifixion. In the hands of audacious Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, in his first mainstream Hollywood feature, Murphy's death scene is actually a tad more than just akin to Christ on the cross.

All of Verhoeven's films, from his early art-house European films like The 4th Man to his big mainstream Hollywood movies like Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct and even the much maligned Showgirls, feature some from of thematic crucifixion and/or resurrection, usually centered around the film's central character.

Why makes it a crucifixion scene?
The crucifixion allegories in this movie are bit more subtle than those of Conan The Barbarian or even those of The Omega Man (similar to Blade Runner, though). The imagery may not be immediately consciously obvious to the casual viewer. I've found that calling Murphy's death scene a crucifision allegory is often met with the classic "you're reading to much into it" rebuttal that film symbolism interpretations are often met with. Yet, at the same time, I often also hear people who have just seen Robocop for the first time, bring up the crucifixion angle without prompting.

Take a look at the scene below and you'll see what I mean (warning for the uninitiated, it's pretty violent and disturbing).

In particular, Murphy's hand being blown off with a shot gun at close range is a nail through the palm of the hand taken to the next level. He is "killed" in an outstretched arm position. That crucifixion image is a little less on the nose on account of the fact that the man is missing an arm at the time. Murphy's final bloody head wound is a more brutal version of a crown of thorns. The visual allusions are indirect and subtle, yet still there.
The crucifixion imagery works on an almost subconscious level. It is an excellent example of Verhoevan's unique ability to create audaciously over-the-tip visuals yet still maintain an air of subtlety at the same time.
I actually agree with the "don't read too much into it" argument but not so much in terms of the imagery but more in terms of the conclusions one might make from that imagery.
Sure, Murphy/Robocop goes through his own version of crucifixion and he sees his own version of a resurrection when he is transformed into the savior hero of Robocop. However, even within the film's own terms, Robocop is not Jesus, nor is he meant to be. Verhoeven uses the Christ parallels as a means of creating a deeper and more emotional connection with a larger than life hero (literally, in this case). He does this through the use of deeply rooted, powerful, culturally based iconography. At the same time, he is also using the Jesus allegories as an ironic juxtaposition with a bleak world of violence, social disorder and immorality.
Is Robocop really a savior? Or just a promulgation of more violence, death and disorder? Is a world so mired in crime and corruption even capable of redeeming itself? Is such a world's salvation even within the reach of a savior like Robocop?
Discuss.

Life of Brian
1979 
Directed by Terry Jones

Who's Standing in For Jesus?
Graham Chapman as Brian, but he's more standing near than standing in.

What's the Context?
And now for something completely different....
Brian is this guy, see, who just happened to be born in Bethlehem in the stable next door to the one that Jesus Christ was born in on the same night. He spends most of the rest of his life either being mistaken for or living in the shadow of, the true Messiah.
The premise of Brian gives the legendary British comedy troupe, Monty Python, an opportunity to do some of the best and most irreverent biblical comedy ever.
Many have taken the film to be critical and insulting to Jesus, his teachings and to religon in general. However, really, the film is full of comedy that goes something like this:
Brian (addressing a large crowd, hanging on his every word): "You are all individuals!"
Crowd: (in unison) "We are all individuals."
Pause
Lone voice in the crowd: "I'm not.".
Or the scene in which an organization known as the Judean People's Front talk about they despise their bitter rivals, The People's Front of Judea.
It's quite clear that Python's objects of satire are the institutions, culture and subsequent misinterpretations of Christianity.  It's no wonder that much of the clergy spoke out so strongly against the film.
Life of Brian ends with Brian, as seems to be his lot in life, following in Christ's footsteps and being, you got it, crucified (along with, I might add, all of the rest of the Python troupe in various other roles).


What makes it a crucifixion scene?
Duh.
This being a comedy and all, there is certainly none of the violent imagery of the crucifixion seen in other films on the subject, both allegorical and literal. No hands are nailed to crosses, there is no crown of thorns and no large spears are poked into Brian's side. Still, though, the image of the film's lead character stuck up there on a cross to (unlike the real savior) die for no good reason is just a tad of a heavy note  with which to end a comedy.
Python handles it brilliantly.
Eric Idle, hanging there on a cross just next to Brian, breaks out into song. The song, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" is so inanely happy and optimistic that it puts the final musical numbers of most Disney musicals to shame. The end of Life of Brian is one of the greatest strokes of comedic genius in all of Pythondom (but let's not overstate it).
On the one hand, there is the obvious comedic contrast of a happy musical comedy song (with just a touch of  Python's infamous cynical irony) sung be a group of people about to die the horrific death of crucifixion. It's easy to see how some may consider the scene to be a complete mockery of the crucifixion of Christ and the value and beliefs that all of Christianity stands for, thus making it utterly blasphemous.
It isn't really, though, if you think about it.
Even with all of its ironic cynical satire, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" is an incredibly catchy song that ultimately exudes happiness and optimism in almost every note. Listen to Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn's live cover version of the song and notice the enthusiasm with which the audience sings along. Then try and tell yourself  that is not so. Still not convinced? Try singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" to yourself and see if you're not feeling better after a verse or two.
Happiness, optimism and the belief that much better things are coming, even in the face of the bleak and horrific present; I'm sorry, but, isn't that what Christianity is all about?

Happy Easter, 

Passover,
Greek Orthodox Easter

and 

Spring 

Everybody!

Thought I'd leave you on a pop culture Christ allegory image that really didn't go down so well,
though it was not religious groups who objected, but comic book fans!