Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Morons from Outer Space (1985)

Some time ago I watched a virtually unknown movie by Mike Hodges, the director of such masterpieces as Get Carter and Flash Gordon. Now I watched another one, but of this I'd heard before. Morons from Outer Space (1985) was shown in Finnish cinemas, so I'd seen ads of it and I even remember a friend of mine discussing it.

I bought the now rare movie on VHS and my viewing of it may not have been the best quality, but I still think I got a good picture of what the film was doing and how well it was accomplished. The morons of the title are four foul creatures travelling somewhere in space and somehow ending up on Earth. One of them is played by Mel Smith, amiable comedian, who performed a lot with Griff Rhys-Jones, who plays a reporter in the film. Jimmy Nail merits a special mention as one of the aliens. Morons from Outer Space aims for parody (there are references to 2001, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and even One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and satire - the space morons end up being celebrities, though they don't know or even understand a lot. They do speak good English, though, which is a joke unto itself. The film is a bit wacky and a bit quirky, but never funny enough. Not enough good jokes, not enough crazy slapstick comedy, not enough witty ideas. The satire is also a bit obvious, maybe dated.

The film bombed at the box office and probably made sure Mike Hodges's career will never rise to the heights of Get Carter and Flash Gordon. Mind you, though, Croupier from 1998 is a pretty good neo-noir, and Black Rainbow, made in 1989, was occasionally very good (see the link above). He made some TV stuff between those two, but his film career has been erratic and very mixed.

More Overlooked Films here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Black Rainbow (1989)

I watched this unknown gem from a VHS cassette I bought from a thrift store. The quality of the cassette was better than could be expected, no one had probably watched the film before me, which kind of makes me sad.

Black Rainbow tells about a medium (Rosanna Arquette) and her alcoholic father (Jason Robards), who travel somewhere in the forgotten parts of the United States, and put up shows where Arquette takes contact with the dead people, normally the loved ones of the members of the audience. Two things take place: Arquette starts talking with the dead persons who are not yet dead, and someone starts killing them at the same time. The premise is clever and it's pretty well developed, taking the story to directions one wouldn't easily guess. There are some very good scenes between Arquette and Robards, and some of the scenes from the clairvoyance show are silently thrilling, getting close to horror. Tom Hulce plays a reporter, who suddenly starts to believe in Arquette's powers. The main actors are believable.

Black Rainbow was directed by the English Mike Hodges. Hodges has done some very good films, like Get Carter and Croupier. Then he has done some outrageous camp classics, such as Flash Gordon (though it was done intentionally, I'm sure). Black Rainbow is surely one of his better films, a serious look at abuse and exploitation, not only at the clairvoyance shows, but also on a larger scale. It's a pity the film is not better known, as it didn't get a proper release at the time (Hodges seems to be suffering from this even now, since the same thing happened to Croupier). The film has been released on DVD, but some of the editions are no better than a VHS cassette.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here (as soon as he gets the post done, I'm sure).