Cuparia

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) achieves a level of ineptitude that places it squarely within the province of MST3K mockery, for which it is eminently suited. I’ll not bother to dissect this movie, (a task that has been well accomplished by the review posted on The Invisible Sc-Fi ’50s Page). I’ll simply add my observation that the use to which 3-D was put in this movie was about as effective as, no, less effective than a 3-D rendering of 12 Angry Men. Let us marvel at a man looking with concern at his wristwatch… in 3-D! We are astounded by a close-up of the watch… in 3-D! (It gets better.) Look! A shadow on a flat, featureless wall… in 3-D!

In the version I saw (a VHS tape released by Rhino), the 3-D scenes were not only oddly selected, but they were oddly rendered, too. Actors invariably had two sets of eyes and two sets of mouths, and nothing so much leapt out at the viewer as appeared blurry and headache-inducing.

My favorite part of the movie (yes, there is a favorite part) is the scene where crewman Doug Smith is getting to know Cat-woman Lambda a little better:

SMITH: Or on Saturday nights you can go out on the town. Dance, drink, just laughing too hard.
LAMBDA: I’d like the driving down to the beach best. Stretching out on the sand… Just a boy and a girl together… and… and maybe what you call a… a Coke.
SMITH: You would? That’s what I like best, too. With the right girl, of course.

Yes, sounds like perfectly plausible first contact dialogue to me. Cat-Women of the Moon has all the right bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, and hilariously bad special effects to make a first rate MST3K experiment. I don’t know if it was ever used, but if it wasn’t, it’s a crime. At any rate, it ought to meet anyone’s needs… if one’s needs consist of a truly horrible movie ripe for mocking.

Overall Rating: Terrible
Mockery Potential: Superb

Transformers (2007) leaves me ambivalent. On the one hand, it is a live-action movie about giant robots, and I am partial to fictional robots, giant or otherwise. This is a movie I would be inclined to watch for absolutely no other reason than the sheer joy of seeing robots depicted on the screen. The fact that they are rendered so incredibly well is a bonus. The fact that there are some good human characters is also a bonus. The fact that there is some genuinely entertaining dialogue beyond a few action movie one-liners is a very pleasant bonus and certainly a surprising one. In short, the movie exceeded my expectations.

The fact that it exceeded some of my expectations does not mean that it exceeded them all. In a number of ways, it settled quite unambitiously at exactly the level of my expectations, which were not especially high. Special effects can be a wonderful thing when used in moderation. Even in a special effects extravaganza, which Transformers certainly is, it can sometimes be beneficial to withhold some of it from the audience. Tease them, appease them even, but never bore them. At the beginning of the movie, as with the trailers, my eyes were wide open to appreciate every glimpse of the robots in motion. Three-fourths of the way into the movie, however, I found myself wondering just how long this movie was supposed to be.

Special effects overdosing is not the only culprit. It is a common problem with many action movies that there comes a point when the action doesn’t seem so much like action as background noise. It becomes some sort of ambient annoyance like the distraction caused by a minor headache. Events may be rapidly rushing to a head and characters may be having their moments of truth, but by that point the pleasure of the movie is in the past, the imminent tying of loose ends is predictable and not especially interesting, and one finds oneself wishing the movie had ended a little earlier, preferably around the 90 minute mark. Not all good movies profit from being longer. Sometimes one of the best and most effective tricks in the book is the old adage, “Always leave them wanting more.” The original Star Wars was like that. Transformers could have been like that, too, and then I might have had a desire to see it more than once.

• Writing: Fair (Good dialogue, but Mediocre otherwise)
• Directing: Good
• Acting: Good
• Cinematography: Fair
• Special Effects: Great

Overall Rating: Good