Teens in the Universe (Russia, 1975)

I was hampered in my efforts to get you up to speed on the adventures of Moscow Casiopea’s crew of teenage cosmonauts by the fact that that film’s sequel, Teen in the Universe, came to me without the benefit of English subtitles. This was not as much of an impediment as you might think, however, because Teens, compared to it’s predecessor--which was a solemn chronicle of heroism and sacrifice in the face of the unknown--is markedly sillier and more dependent on timeworn space opera tropes—tropes that George Lucas would make even more timeworn just a couple of years later.

The film begins with the family of space-borne adolescent Sereda (Misha Yershov) celebrating his 40th birthday in absentia. This slightly awkward fete is intruded upon by I.O.O. (Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy), a character of vaguely defined magical abilities whom the first film taught us to view as a Willy Wonka-type figure with ambiguous morals and motives. I.O.O. proceeds to disgorge a veritable K2 of dialog that I presumed was meant to recap the first film while at the same time explaining the time-space paradox that required a sextet of middle schoolers to be blasted into space in the first place.

Meanwhile, back on the spaceship, we find that Sereda and his crew, though close to their destination planet Alpha Cassiopea, are in fact celebrating his 14th birthday. This is due to a mishap by stowaway Lobanov (Vladimir Boson) that caused the ship to travel at hyperspeed and get to Alpha Cassiopea much sooner than planned. This begs the question of why the powers-that-be, given they were already sending these kids on a probable suicide mission, didn’t have them travel at hyperspeed in the first place. It would be hard to argue that it was out of an abundance of adult concern.

Here I have to confess to having had a bit of trouble telling the young actors in Teens in the Universe apart. This is largely due to the two male leads looking virtually identical. Some intensive Google imaging eventually led me to understand that the one of these who was not Misha Yershov was Vladimir Savin, who plays Misha, the other square-jawed hunk at the command console. Vladimir Boson, who plays Lobanov, was easier to keep track of, given he is blond, gangly, and ruddy of complexion. The girls were an even easier matter: Varya, played by Olga Bityukova, is the icy blonde; Katya, played by Irina Savina, wears a pigtail and an expression of perpetual astonishment; and Yulia, played by Nadazhda Ovcharova, reminds me of the cartoon character Daria.

Making those identifications was crucial, because they now enable me to tell you that Sereda, Lobanov, and Varya head off in the ship’s shuttle toward Alpha, leaving Misha, Katya and Yulia in the plush, earthtone-leather-upholstered confines of the ship’s control room. They arrive on the planet to find it a sureal wasteland with odd, futuristic towers placed randomly along the horizon, and a peripheral herd of squeaking, bubble-like creatures that look like Rover from The Prisoner.

Finally they find a narrow white column from which a pair of odd, mime-like robots emerges. These wear tight, flare-legged jumpsuits and move with an exaggerated pimp walk , as if they were Tony Manero triumphantly stepping out onto the dance floor. After attuning their translating machines to the robots' language, which consists solely of whistling, the cosmonauts find themselves charmed by them enough to accompany them into their subterranean home. This, of course, turns out to be a really stupid thing to do.

Meanwhile, the remaining ship’s crew has encountered the noble, purple-haired original inhabitants of Alpha, who have been driven away by the robots and now live in a giant orbiting space station. Apparently, the robots have turned those inhabitants who stayed behind into robots whom they force into working in their robot factories--because that's how capitalism works in space. Sympathizing with their plight, Misha, Katya and Yulia take charge of another shuttle and take off for Alpha. Joining them is a bald headed dude whom I have to assume is some kind of soldier.

Once this team hits ground, all those old space opera cliches really come into play. First of all, Lobanov and Misha learn to disable the robots by addressing them with paradoxical statements (basically the Russian version of “everything I say is a lie.”) This, as you’ve probably already guessed, causes smoke to shoot out of the robots’ ears, after which they completely disintegrate, which is a nice touch. This leaves behind the robots’ helmets and sweet jumpsuits, which Misha and Lobanov don in order to infiltrate the factory, where they repeatedly escape discovery by the skin of their backs.

As for the other members of the crew, they don’t seem to be feeling too much pain, as they’ve been confined to a spacious and well appointed cell where the robots keep them soused on an endless supply of intoxicating libations. That is, until the robots reveal their plan to turn the girls into lady robots, kicking off a breathless race-against-time climax that somehow makes it seem as if the makers of Teens in the Universe were trying to make money.

That climax commences when Misha and company encounter a pair of errant domestic robots, one of whom seems to have been inspired by Rosy on The Jetsons (the implication here being that the robots rose up against their human masters; George's protestations of "stop this crazy thing" apparently went unheeded. ) These provide a way for them to enter the robots’ subterranean world, where the ass kicking begins in earnest. It is however, a very family friendly form of ass kicking, given our heroes’ opponents are machines, which means that smoke and sparks stand in for bloodshed.

Teens in the Universe is a fun, if hokey, movie—especially if you are a fan of that vision of the future peculiar to the 70s in which everything is made of white plastic and improbably spotless. This description excepts that fabulous leather upholstered control room, which is just one of the films’ many stirring design elements. The music, by Vladimir Chernyshyov, is also a delight, ranging from glacial strings in the style of John Barry to the kind of dopey Italianate scat singing (“dooba dooba do woww”) on which Pierro Umiliani would make his fortune. At a very reasonable 84 minutes, it is fast paced and easy going down, with all of those familiar plot gimmicks--which would be just as at home in an episode of Star Trek or Lost in Space—reeling out like a greatest hits collection

While by no means original or unique, Teens in the Universe resorts to outright pilfering in only one instance, which is almost absurd in its blink-or-you’ll-miss-it obscurity. During a final scene, as the repatriated Alphans emerge from a matte painting of a giant space ship in the background, a portal opens in the upper portion of the ship and the Voyager submarine from the movie Fantastic Voyage emerges and flies off to the left. This event, occurring as it does during a scene focusing on the foregrounded actors, is so pointless and unlikely to be seen that I can only view it as some kind of an in-joke among the film’s special effects crew-- especially since, given the rough compositing involved, it is probably the worst effect in the entire film.

Both Moscow Cassiopea and Teens in the Universe were popular films in their day—and apparently indicative of a consequent wave of kids-in-space movies, as a very similar sounding film, Bolshoe Kosmicheskoe Puteshevkie, aka The Great Space Journey, was released the same year. It’s easy to see why. There is enough evidence of good humor between the two films to indicate that, in the waining days of the space race, the Soviets—or their filmmakers, at least-- were not taking the whole project entirely as seriously as they once did. For a Russian populace beleaguered by the stagnation and scarcity of the Breshnev era, it’s hard to imagine such a relaxed stance not being a breath of fresh air.

Moscow - Cassiopeia (Russia, 1974)

Sending teenagers on a lifelong journey into space is an idea many parents would endorse, as well as, I’m sure, more than a few teenagers. Judging by Moscow – Cassiopeia and its immediate sequel, Teens in the Universe, it was also an idea that had some purchase in mid-70s Russia, where the (deep breath) Maxim Gorky Central Movie Studio For Children and Youth Films produced them with the presumed goal of turning teens libidinal energies toward the exploration of space and other science-y stuff.

Like virtually every Soviet sci-fi film, Moscow – Cassiopeia begins with the receipt of a mysterious distress signal from somewhere deep in space. This trope is so prevalent that there must be a concrete reason for it. My guess is that the Soviets were eager to present their interests in space as altruistic rather than imperialistic--unlike you know who. I mean, I guess it’s conceivable that the U.S. might spend billions of dollars in order to respond to an anonymous call for help from billions of miles away, but would you want to tell the ghost of Kitty Genovese that? (Google it.)

It is eventually determined that the signal comes from the planet Alpha in the remote star system of Cassiopeia. This leads into a conference at which teenage scientist Sereda (Misha Yershov) presents his plan to build a rocket with engines that work on the principle of “annihilation” (which is somehow supposed to be less polluting than a normal engine.) This rocket could travel the distance necessary to investigate the signal, although such a trip would take 27 years. For this reason, Sereda suggests a teenaged crew be selected for the mission. This way they will be young enough upon their arrival not to be soaked in their own incontinence.

If this was a Japanese sci-fi movie, Sereda would be ten and clothed in disturbingly snug micro-shorts, and the adult authorities would nonetheless endorse his plan without question—as the Soviet authorities do the plan of the less alluringly garbed Sereda. Thus is a mission team selected that is comprised of three dashing young boys and three winsome young girls. These all present as ideal Soviet youths by virtue of being perpetually grim faced and task-bound—except when their captive sexual tension results in some jealousy-fueled tussling. This, I think, is supposed to be funny, as are some other ostensible comedic moments in the film that are as impenetrably mysterious as the signal itself. At certain points, everyone starts laughing and whimsical music plays on the soundtrack, and you will just be like “…what?” This includes a lot of the putative antics surrounding Sereda’s attempts to find the author of an anonymous mash note he has received.

Also on board is the accident-prone Lobna, who is played by future TV director Vladimir Basov Ml. in his first film appearance. As a mischievous stowaway, Basov essentially plays the Dr. Smith role in this film, although without being a hysterical gay caricature. It is Lobna's combined inquisitiveness and gracelessness that ends up causing the ship to accidentally go into light speed and reach Alpha well ahead of schedule. This is fortuitous, because there's no novelty in seeing a bunch of forty-somethings farting around on an alien planet set. Unfortunately, we have to wait until the next film, Teens in the Universe, to see the sexier alternative.

Another character I should mention is a mysterious older gentleman, played by Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, who refers to himself as "I.O.O.", which stands for "Executorial Official of Elucidation." I'm tempted to see that title as a satirical jab at Russian bureaucracy by some upstart screenwriter, but then I might just be projecting. Anyway, this figure provides our introduction to the film, speaking to us directly as he informs us that the story we are about to see is true, although it took place in the future--a statement seemingly designed to explode the mind of a teenage pothead. From there, he pops up throughout the narrative and at times seems to be controlling events through some unknown means (communism, perhaps?), something that the sequel will hopefully shed some light upon.

And will I watch the sequel to Moscow - Cassiopeia, you may ask? Of course, I will--as will I report upon it to you. I found the film engaging and thoroughly charming. The young cast is appealing, the soundtrack--a mix of bleep-bloop electronic music, Russian folk songs, and swinging 70s soft rock--is awesome, and the 70s sci-fi set design is enough to please any fan of Space: 1999, Logan's Run, or any other entertainment in which future people appear to be living inside a pricey refrigerator. Simply stay tuned to this frequency for my next mysterious transmission.

Novyy Gulliver, aka New Gulliver (Russia, 1935)

Director Aleksandr Ptushko’s Novyy Gulliver was Russian cinema’s first feature length film to combine live action and stop motion animation. Of course, Russia was a few years behind Hollywood in performing that feat, as special effects pioneer Willis O’Brien had accomplished it as early as 1925 with The Lost World and would repeat it in 1933 with King Kong. Neither of those films, however, could be said to present as clear a condemnation of the exploitation of the proletariat as Novyy Gulliver does—which is of course what you would want from such a film.

Ptushko began his film career at Moscow’s Mosfilm Studios, where he started out sculpting puppets for use in other animators’ films. He quickly moved into making films of his own, starting out with a series of animated shorts featuring a character called Bratishkin. More shorts followed and, by 1933, he had assembled a large enough team to begin work on the ambitious Novyy Gulliver.

The film concerns an upstanding Russian youth named Petya (played by 15 year old actor Vladimir Konstantinon) who, while on an outing with his communist youth group, falls asleep during a reading of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. As he sleeps, Petya sees the novel play out in his mind, but, because his head is so full of communism, it turns into a weird Marxist parable. This is not too surprising, as, when we meet Petya, he and his fellow scouts are marching in lockstep while singing a jaunty song about the joys of labor in which they call themselves "flying Leninists.”

Now inhabiting the role of Gulliver, Petya awakes to find himself prisoner of the tiny Liliputians—or, more specifically, of the Liliputian royals. In depicting Liliput’s ruling class, Ptushko draws heavily upon the court of Louis XIV. There is no mistaking this rogue’s gallery for what they are: a collection of spoiled libertines who are living lives of idle extravagance at the expense of the common folk. The king is clearly a simpering idiot, and can only address his public by lip synching to pre-recorded speeches. The real power in the kingdom is held by the King’s chief of police, who uses the military to keep the laborers and general populace in line.

The Chief’s leadership style is, of course, a paranoid one, and so his greatest concern, upon the arrival of Gulliver, is that Gulliver will side with the workers. His answer to this is to recruit Gulliver, whom he refers to as a “human mountain”, to the capitalist cause. This works only until Gulliver sees the chief whipping one of the laborers, at which point he rises to his full, enormous height and regales the crowd with a booming version of the happy working song from the beginning of the film. It is at this point that the Chief determines that this meddling Socialist giant must be killed, but his initial attempts are foiled by the wily Gulliver.

It could be said that Novyy Gulliver‘s combination of live action and animation is more sequential than it is simultaneous. After a live action prologue, it is with the introduction of the Liliputians that the film’s employment of stop motion animation begins, and that it indeed starts to consist of almost nothing but. Ptushko and his crew take a lot of editorial license with the puppet sculpts, making the royals a grotesque lot with bulbous eyes and tremulous, gaping mouths. On the other hand, the workers are portrayed as colorless and almost identical in appearance, like a bunch of green plastic army men given life.

The craft evident in Novyy Gulliver’s execution may be its best argument for the virtues of collective labor. Employing many hundreds of puppets--some with as many as a hundred or more different heads to portray different expressions--it was clearly a massive undertaking. Even more so given that few of these puppets were allowed to remain idle, as Ptushko and his crew took pains to create movement in every corner of the frame. As many of the scenes in the film are crowd scenes, that amounts to hundreds of tiny manipulations per frame. It is perhaps for this reason that, when Vladimir Konstantinon is required to act in close proximity to one of the Liliputians, the filmmakers give themselves a break and use an actual doll or hand operated puppet.

The gears of the royal’s downfall are set in motion when the Chief puts the laborers to the task of building a weapon that will kill Gulliver. Unknown to him, the workers have decided to throw their lot in with Gulliver and stage a revolt in the weapons factory, killing the foreman in the process. This scene, which owes a heavy debt to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, is aided immeasurably by a nightmarishly phantasmagorical miniature set in which the bizarre looking factory machinery looms over the workers like malevolent giant insects. More clever staging is employed by the climax that follows, a spectacular puppet battle royal that sees more toy tanks blowing up than a Showa era Godzilla movie.

One of the most fascinating things about Novyy Gulliver is how it employs a medium so often used toward more whimsical ends to depict the grim, life-and-death stakes of class war. In other words, Baby New Year this is not: if all the caricatured puppets and cartoon sound effects lull you into thinking that the end that awaits the King and his chief of police will be in any way pretty, you have another think coming.

Then again, at the end, all of Novyy Gulliver's events turns out to have been a dream—and we are returned to a world where militarized children sing about how awesome it is to work in a factory.

Celebrate Halloween the 4DK way!

Halloween movie lists have become a staple of the season. But one has to admit that there's a numbing amount of overlap between them. I mean, does one really need to cram that much Vincent Price into their cinematic diet all in one go? In response, I have called shenanigans, emerged from my sharecropper's cabin, stumbled down the hill and perched myself in front of the community center's battered old Mac to do something that I should have done long ago. Below is a list of movies that, if you can find them, will guarantee you a Halloween like no other. (Please note that, where I have provided links, they are, in most cases, to unsubtitled versions of the films).

Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay, aka Cat Beast (Pakistan, 1997)

One owes it to oneself to, at least once in their life, watch a Pashto language horror film... before, of course, solemnly swearing to never watch one again. Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay has all of the hallmarks: fat ladies twerking in wet spandex; sound effects that are as incongruous as they are deafeningly loud, men with echoplexed voices pointing and shouting at each other. The works.
READ MY REVIEW

Plenilunio (Uruguay, 1993)

Uruguay comes through with that rarest of cinematic unicorns: a shot-on-video horror film that is not only well directed, well written and well acted, but that also provides some genuine scares... even if its creature effects are as ridiculous as they come. READ MY REVIEW

Sumpah Orang Minyak (Singapore, 1958)

The Oily Man rises from the swamp of Southeast Asian folklore to provide, not only an exotic addition to the usual cast of Halloween creatures, but also a simple and easy costume idea. All you need is a body stocking and a can of STP. READ MY REVIEW

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

The Savage Hunt of King Stakh (USSR, 1979)

Highly recommended by a well-meaning idiot who wrote: "The Savage Hunt of King Stakh luxuriates in gothic atmosphere, putting it in good company with the Italian thrillers of Margheritti et al, the AIP Poe films, and Hammer’s horror friendly take on The Hound of the Baskervilles. In contrast to those, however, it also boasts elements of stark modernism." READ MY REVIEW

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

Nyi Blorong, aka Snake Queen (Indonesia, 1982)

What would a 4DK Halloween be without Suzzanna, the queen of Indonesian horror?--here seen in one of her most iconic roles. As an added bonus for the ladies, we also get a shirtless Barry Prima. READ MY REVIEW

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

Ghost of Guts Eater (Thailand, 1973)

What? You say your seasonal gallery of ghouls does not include an entrails-trailing flying severed head? You are obviously a racist. READ MY REVIEW

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

Haram Alek, aka Ismail Yassin meets Frankenstein (Egypt, 1954)

That oldies-loving friend of yours insisting on yet another Halloween viewing of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein? Why not shake things up and switch it out with this charming Egyptian remake. READ MY REVIEW

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE (WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES!)

And finally...

Pyasa Shaitan (India, 1995)

...if watching all of the above in short order does not completely blow your mind,  here you go. The film that will spontaneously give you the ability to spout "WHAT THE FUCK, JOGINDER?" in flawless Tamil, not to mention every other language spoken by sane, decent minded human beings. READ MY REVIEW

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

The Savage Hunt of King Stakh (USSR, 1979)

The Wild Hunt is a component of Western folklore that dates back as far as ancient times and spans most of the European continent. While its details change from region to region, its broad outline remains the same: A horrific procession of ghostly, mounted huntsmen -- a collection of restless spirits lead, in most cases, by a fearsome figure from either local legend or history -- that charges across a stormy night’s sky as a harbinger of coming catastrophe. Its influence can even be seen stateside in tales such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky”. Just how far it penetrated into Eastern Europe I can’t say, but it was clearly enough to influence Belarusian author Vladzimir Karatkievich’s popular 1964 novel King Stakh’s Wild Hunt, which Karatkievich and director Valeri Rubinchik would later adapt into the film The Savage Hunt of King Stakh.

King Stakh begins just as any gothic thriller wanting to put its best foot forward should: with a stranger seeking shelter from the storm at a gloomy estate whose inhabitants all seem to have a chronic case of the heebie jeebies. Said stranger is Bielarecki (Boris Plotnikov), a young academic who has come to the remote northwestern region of Belarus to study its local legends, and said estate, we learn, is called Marsh Firs. The mistress of the estate is Nadzieja Janowska, who, were this an Antonio Margheritti joint, would be played by Barbara Steele, but who instead is played by the lovely Elena Dimitrova. Much to the consternation of the estate’s manager, Gacievic (Albert Filozov, I think?), Nadzieja tells Bielarecki that, if it’s bogeys he’s looking for, he’s hit the jackpot with Marsh Firs, where, according to her, “there are more ghosts than live people”.

And just as she says, it turns out the estate is troubled by a host of spectral entities, including a ghostly lady in blue and something they call “The Little Man”. But by far the worst of these is King Stakh’s hunt. Stakh, we’re told, was a despot who ruled over the region during the 17th century who was assassinated by an ancestor of the Janowski’s while out on a hunt. That ancestor then strapped the corpses of Stakh and his hunting party to their horses and sent them galloping off into the marsh. Stakh, however, still had enough life left in him to proclaim a curse on the man and all of his descendants. As a result, the ensuing years have seen the Janowskis visited by calamity after calamity, all heralded by the sight of the King’s macabre posse. Such has been the toll that today the only remaining heirs to Marsh Firs are Nadzieja, her uncle Dubotowk, his ward Vardna (lauded Russian stage and screen star Boris Khmelnitsky), and Nadzieja’s widowed aunt, Mrs. Kulsa (a laudably creepy Valentina Shendrikova), who has been driven mad with fear by the ordeal. It also explains the presence in the mansion of an old crone who, when we first see her, appears to be attempting some kind of an exorcism on Nadzieja.

Bielarecki, of course, is a man of science, and initially scoffs at the notion of such apparitions in “the age of steam and electricity”. Yet, once the inhabitants of the mansion start to turn up murdered -- and the local constabulary prove all too eager to write it off to mundane causes -- he becomes obsessed with figuring out just what exactly it is that the Janowskis are really seeing. He becomes even more deeply fixated once he himself starts to experience otherworldly phenomena, speaking of wanting to “feel ghosts with his hands”, and finally, upon personally being chased through the bog by the King and his coterie of mounted phantoms, becomes just as freaked out as everyone else.

As directed by Rubinchik and lensed by Tatyana Loginova, The Savage Hunt of King Stakh luxuriates in gothic atmosphere, putting it in good company with the aforementioned Italian thrillers of Margheritti et al, the AIP Poe films, and Hammer’s horror friendly take on The Hound of the Baskervilles. In contrast to those, however, it also boasts elements of stark modernism. A good example of this can be found in Yevgeni Glebov’s musical score, which alternates between lush romantic themes and an almost industrial minimalism -- while some of the film’s most frightening scenes conspicuously forego any accompaniment at all. The film also shows an affinity with traditional Russian fantasy cinema by embracing a kind of gauzy surrealism, lending the events a dreamy, oft times eroticized quality that’s well suited to the fog enshrouded marshland setting.

All of the above makes King Stakh a film that is, if not especially terrifying, nonetheless unsettling and darkly compelling. The cast, most of whom are charged with presenting varying levels of perturbation, do as fine a job as you’d expect from such a typically staunch ensemble of theater-trained Soviet thespians, taking things just enough over the top to add spark without plunging us over the precipice into camp. If you are a fan of haunted looks -- either giving of receiving them -- this is definitely one worth settling your troubled gaze upon.