Nature of Caltiki the Immortal Monster Shame: Unwatched Arrow Blu-ray
Hoop-tober Challenge Checklist: Decade: 1950’s Before 1970’s
#1. Caltiki the Immortal Monster
So I’m creeping off the starting gates in the 2017. One might suggest I’m creeping into this Cinema Shame/Hoop-Tober challenge like a slightly animated infinity scarf permeating a 1/10th scale model Italian chateau.
I blind bought the Arrow Blu-ray package for Caltiki the Immortal Monster because I couldn’t resist the allure of a 1959 sci-fi monster movie with special effects by a young Mario Bava in a spiffy Arrow package. (Bava shares directorial credit with Riccardo Freda.) Mostly I wondered “Why exactly?” But those “why exactly” wonders often provide more than enough impetus for a viewing.
I snuck this one in on the first day of viewing (September 16th) while the wife indulged in a documentary on ballet dancers — which was oddly, based on the few minutes I watched, more horrific that Caltiki the Immortal Monster. (And she’s the one that says she doesn’t watch horror!) The expedient runtime, therefore, made Caltiki the ideal opening volley in the Cinema Shame/Hoop-Tober Watchpile Shame-a-thon 2017. Consider the cannons fired.
As special effects coordinator, Mario Bava does remarkable work in transforming a limp rag into an all consuming monster millions of in the offing. Caltiki reportedly offed the Mayans so it’s good at the offing business. This reworking of 1958’s The Blob via Universal’s The Mummy, transports the viewer to Mexico/Central America where scientists have travelled to study reasons for the demise of the Mayan civilization. (So the Blob with a sombrero, mostly. I kid.)
While exploring a cave featuring an entrance to a unique lake/reservoir, one of the scientists disappears and another returns, raving and ranting himself to death. In the 1950’s, we were certainly desensitized to scientists literally dying from the things they’d witnessed. There just seemed to be a lot of that going around.
A return trip to the cave claims one more explorer and a piece of another but our fearless band of trespassers manages to isolate a piece of the monster to take back for study. The pulsing rag of a monster devours flesh, consumes psyches and feeds on radiation — all the qualities you need for a ripping monster movie.
Audio/Visual notes:
As I’ve never seen Caltiki the Immortal Monster before this Blu-ray release, I can’t speak to the original state of the film, but the version presented here by Arrow films shows remarkable detail and clarity for a 1950’s Italian production. If anything, the disc’s clarity calls attention to the scale models used for scenes after Caltiki grows to tidal wave size. Depending upon your viewing mentality this might prove to be a Bava-licious treat or it might take you right out of the film. However, if you’ve singled out something as relatively obscure as Caltiki for viewing, it’s my guess that you belong to the former group. You’ll also be well served to view the film with commentary because it offers some nice details about the production.
When scarves attack.
Final Thoughts:
Comparing Caltiki directly to The Blob, which predated this film by a year, you’ll notice a couple scenes of relative and surprising shock value. When Caltiki devours its first victim and then reveals a bloody, pulpy skeleton, like discarded chicken bones, it took me by surprise to see such grue in what up until that point had been a pretty run-of-the-mill 1950’s monster flick.
Definitely worth a viewing for fans of Bava and 1950’s horror. It’s interesting to view the film as a bridge directly to the 1960’s when horror films began to take more bloody liberties. Caltiki offers some wonderful old-fashioned chiaroscuro and considered composition. It’s a well-shot movie considering its genre origins. Caltiki serves up exotic variations on established horror films and tropes. Bava works SFX magic during the film’s final ten minutes.
30Hz Movie Rating:
Availability:
The recent Arrow Films Blu-ray release is widely available, an essential acquisition for classic monster fans and/or Bava completists.
Released: August 1990 by Realtime Associates on the NES and Sega Genesis. Gameboy and Sega Master System in 1991.
David Warhol founded Realtime Associates in 1986 with a group of ex-Mattel Electronics employees with the intention of developing games for the Intellivision game system. Most recently they released the Intellivision Lives! compilation titles for XBox, Nintendo Gamecube and Playstation 2 consoles.
Realtime has been responsible for a large number of forgettable and memorably miserable licensed game titles. We’ll revisit their ability to “craft” “classic” video games when we get to The Rocketeer (NES) and hopefully even the spinoff from the Warlock (Genesis) films. The latter of which is news to me. These totally overlooked titles based on films completely unworthy of adaptation always intrigue me.
Dick Tracy’s August 1990
The U.S. commits naval forces to Iraq, and Operation Desert Shield formerly begins
Mike Tyson charged with sexual harassment.
George Steinbrenner steps down as Yankee owner.
East and West Germany announced that they would unite on October 3rd.
Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love” rules over the Billboard chart for the entire month.
Ghost reclaimed the top spot at the box office on August 5th in its 4th week in release. It would regain the top spot in its 8th week of release on September 3rd.
The “Original”
Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters
Since the game wasn’t sold to capitalize on the sudden success of the 1931 comic strip or 1937 serial with prepubescent boys of the late 20th century, we’ll call the 1990 film “the original” and carry on with our conversation, ignoring the cries of purists.
Dick Tracy‘s winding path to cinemas began in the early 1980’s when Top Gun scribes Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. began the adaptation of the 1930’s comic serial. Before Warren Beatty became the shepherd of the project, names such as Steven Spielberg, John Landis and even Walter Hill had been attached to direct. Let’s all take a few moments to consider a Walter Hill version of Dick Tracy.
Before Beatty’s Dick Tracy hit theaters in June of 1990, the movie’s promotional campaign suffocated us all with top-of-mind awareness. Anyone remember the following MTV “Be Dick Tracy” contest? How about the Dick Tracy Crimestopper Game at McDonald’s that turned us all into scratch-off addicts. Disney’s MGM Studios even had a musical stage show based on the character called the Diamond Double Cross. Somewhere I’m sure Al Pacino popped out of a Happy Meal having already eaten all of your fries. Insert some line about saying hello to his little friend here.
Disney foisted Dick Tracy up as the tentpole movie of the summer. This, of course, coming on the heels of the success of Tim Burton’s Batman the prior year. The wave of cinematic comic-book adaptations in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s seems downright quaint compared to the times in which we’re currently living where every blockbuster has its roots in comics or graphic novels.
The most interesting aspect of this 1990’s comic-book takeover was that Batman‘s box office didn’t kickstart a superhero trend; it inspired a reconsideration and reconstitution of all manner of graphic idols. In addition to Dick Tracy, properties such as The Shadow, The Crow, The Mask, Tank Girl, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all made their theatrical debuts in the first half of the 1990’s.
It wasn’t until my recent rewatch of Dick Tracy for this column that I recognized how heavily the film leans on Batman. At one point our titular hero falls through a skylight, and Beatty orients the scene in such a way that recalls the Caped Crusader’s plunge into the Flugelheim Museum to rescue Vicki Vale. Tracy leaps onto lampposts and scales buildings — very Batman activities, just without any style or grace. Even Beatty’s stuntman seems to labor during long distance running shots just to make his performance, relative to the less-than-nimble Beatty, more believable.
In case you missed it, this is not Dick Tracy.
Beatty also tabbed Danny Elfman to score his film. Elfman’s Batman score — now iconic — overlaps his work on Dick Tracy. A close listen will have you wondering if these were merely excerpts of the former score. Naturally, the close artistic proximity of the two compositions will lend echoes of similarity, but close your eyes and in the absence of Tracy‘s garish primary colors you might just visualize Michael Keaton busting Gotham goons.
All this is rather comical (pun absolutely intended) since the original Dick Tracy strip heavily influenced Batman. Batman borrowed the grotesque lineup of villains, the looming and dangerous city as central character, and the vigilante crime fighter character.
Overall, Beatty’s Dick Tracy is a weightless, but beautiful reimagining of the original comics. In many ways it feels like a lesser Batman/Who Framed Roger Rabbit hybrid. I wasn’t drawn at all to the Tracy character — Tracy by nature is a pure-as-snow, goody-two-shoes detective, and Beatty’s representation offers no further shading. I was more drawn to the grey areas of Madonna’s nightclub singer Breathless Mahoney. Sidenote: Did anyone else recall that this PG-rated film revealed Madonna’s nipples? Because I’m pretty sure 12-year-old me would have remembered that.
Looking back on the film from 2017, you’ll spend your time admiring the gorgeous matte paintings and makeup prosthetics and less time caring about the blandly two-dimensional narrative. That said, the visual artistry and bold color palette compensate for many shortcomings, and Beatty’s movie remains a testament to the lasting potency of old-school practical filmmaking in the modern era. If only he’d allowed the character more room to breathe away from the comic-page window-frame.
Dick Tracy Gameplay
Unlike Days of Thunder, I recall having firsthand experience with the licensed video game product known as Dick Tracy. Before I get into my contemporary experience with the game, let’s revisit my feelings from 1990.
Warren Beatty in Shampoo best summarizes the dead look in my eye after renting Dick Tracy for the NES.
By this point in 1990, Sega had already released its 16-bit, next generation console. (Nintendo’s 16-bit console would not arrive until 1991.) By the end of the year, I’d turned my attention away from buying new NES games because I’d begun scrimping and saving to purchase the Sega Genesis. (That was a lot of mowed lawns in 1990 dollars.) I rented rather than bought most games at this point. The late-era NES decline in overall quality began as developers turned their attention toward the 16-bit future.
So I rented Dick Tracy. I returned it before it was due back at the video store.
Dick Tracy belongs to that thankfully forgotten variety of games called “unnecessarily hard as balls,” or #UHAB for short. You begin as comic book Dick Tracy, not as Warren Beatty Dick Tracy. This happened for a couple of reasons. In order for the game to immediately capitalize on the film’s expected box office supremacy, it would have been in development long before story or script availability. Second, can you imagine a game in which you control an 8-bit Warren Beatty? This opens up a world of possibilities. 8-bit John Reed from Reds. 8-bit John McCabe from McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Bud Stamper from Splendor in the Grass.
As Dick Tracy, you must solve crimes. You receive one clue and then you must drive out into the city, avoiding rooftop snipers and other cars, in order to follow up on said clues. Now, since this is a #UHAB game, you only get one life, and each sniper bullet or contact with another car takes you down a 1/2 health star. Did I mention that there are snipers on just about every other rooftop and your car does nothing to protect you? Sure, the car shoots, but it only shoots straight ahead (where there’s — with one exception — nothing at which to shoot) and all the snipers shoot at 45-degree angles! I admire Dick’s steadfast determination to solve these crimes, but maybe his time would have been better spent ridding the city of its rampant sniper infestation.
If you avoid the snipers (and oncoming traffic) long enough to find the next clue (without a map screen or reasonable sense of direction), you’ll enter a building and begin the side-scrolling portion of the game. Here you’ll realize that while Dick Tracy might have a nimble mind, he’s largely incapable of avoiding oncoming fire because of his lethargic movement, which makes sense in real life, but makes a platform game intolerable. Your best tactic is to run straight at every goon, fists flailing, and hope for the best.
You have a gun. That’s nice for awhile, but of course you’ll run out of bullets. Plus, it’s far more fun to punch people so that they bounce around the screen like a pinball with the super punch power-up. And because you’re goody-two-shoes Dick Tracy if you shoot an unarmed goon, you also lose some life! Yeah! You have to wait until they shoot you to know if they’ve got a gun or not. DID I MENTION YOU ONLY HAVE 4 STARS OF LIFE?!
When you run out of stars, OOPS! No continues. No more lives. You have to get all 4 clues without dying. There are life-restoring power ups, but they’re rare and it’s not obvious how to use them. Also, apparently you can restore stars by going back to the police station. SURE! If you can get past the snipers to get there on 1/2 star!
Some games are fun by virtue of their difficulty. They reward with fair obstacles and continued progress through the game. Not so with Dick. The game mechanics — the poor driving, the awkward side-scrolling platform gameplay, the inability to continue — all contribute to my visceral and lasting memory of Dick Tracy the NES game as a complete and worthless pain in the ass.
With infinite patience you could theoretically pick off each sniper by getting out of the car and shooting them on foot. You could. They don’t respawn, but this would take ages. And keep in mind there are four more mysteries/levels to solve in order to beat this game. With another round of infinite patience, you could learn the patterns of attack in the platform segments and eventually track down all four clues and finally arrest your target suspect.
On the other hand, you could also just give it to some annoying kid that you really hate and hope they suffer as much as you did.
My Gameplay Video:
I stepped up my gameplay videography this time around and added a little commentary. I really didn’t want to do one of those angry gameplay videos, because “rage” seem to be the default setting for terrible retro game design. Since we’re dealing strictly with licensed game properties, we already know the gameplay’s going to be questionable. There’s no surprises, so let’s just play it as it lies.
Difficulty
Days of Thunder was hard, but generally mindless racetrack circling. Dick Tracy is one of the quintessential UHABs, a legendary time suck that rewards only with blinding, white-hot rage and frustration.
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Innovation
It sounds pretty good to find clues and investigate crimes like a real detective! Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego with platform elements. Appearances can be deceiving, however, especially in the world of licensed games. Consider 2011’s L.A. Noire the evolution of this brand of gaming. Even that merely provided the illusion of an open-world detective procedural.
The Modern and Wisened 30Hz Judgment
An improved version of Dick Tracy emerged for the Sega Genesis in 1991. The 16-bit visuals certainly helped make the game’s (although lesser) difficulty tolerable. Suggesting that the Genesis iteration was much improved probably won’t sell anyone on its 2017 playability, but if you had a hankering to revisit Dick Tracy, definitely go straight for the Genesis and the ability to use the tommy gun on a bunch of thugs that had it coming.
As far as the NES version goes, well… if you must play it, like someone’s quite literally got a gun to your head, holding your children hostage, you must play this to save their life… take a Xanax and settle in for lazy gameplay mechanics and impossible frustration. Enjoy!
Verdict:
Children of today will wonder what the hell we were all thinking when 1930’s serial detective Dick Tracy was suddenly all over the place during the summer of 1990. Were we blinded by the yellow jacket? Swayed by omnipresent marketing? Wooed by intense primary colors? Probably. And it was fun while it lasted, though it lasted little more than a few months and enthusiasm had likely already waned by the release of the NES game.
Disney flat out overestimated the market for a new iteration of Dick Tracy, which had been wholly dormant since a terrible Saturday-morning cartoon in the 1960’s. Batman, meanwhile, had remained a pop-culture icon despite his theatrical hiatus.
Looking back on that summer, the would-be Dick Tracy takeover never really happened. The Hollywood marketing machine manufactured a paper zeitgeist. The film received a mixed reception and a lower than expected box office tally. It’s $167 million fell well short of Batman‘s $250 million. And though talks of a Dick Tracy 2 simmered, Beatty claims that the sequel never happened because of a Tribune Media lawsuit.
Revisiting Beatty’s film I gained a new appreciation for the technically magnificent rendering of a live action comic-book world. I recommend giving the film another look. Leave the rest of the hype, game included, for archaeologists to study when they uncover the 1990’s archives and wonder what the hell we were all doing with our lives in the thoroughly confused year of 1990.
Based on conversations I’ve had during the last week, the movie remains a nostalgic benchmark. The film (and Disney’s marketing) imprinted on all of us. As kids of a certain age we’d quite literally never seen anything like it in 1990.
Now that I’ve tossed DICK TRACY aside, what dastardly title should I tackle in next LICENSED TO KILL retro-video game & nostalgia column?
Licensed to Kill returns in a couple of weeks when I once again consider the merits of a game that should have been forgotten. For each LICENSED TO KILL column, I’ll play another licensed game and revisit the corresponding film or source material. I’ll play the game for a minimum of an hour — no matter how excruciating that experience might be. You vote on the titles I play. I suffer the consequences.
Halloween brings out the best and the worst of us as obsessive moviewatchers. I can only speak for myself, but I imagine my experience mirrors many of yours. When October rolls around (now mid-September because the 31 horror movies in 31 days doesn’t jive with adult schedules), horror movies dominate all channels. The wife shrugs her shoulders. Hide the more explicit DVD cases from the kids. You start arguing about sequels and franchises and Argento vs. Bava vs. Fulci.
My wife joins in when I can find a nice, palatable mid-grade horror film. In recent years, she’s joined me for films like Tremors and The Fog and comedies like The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. (Though, she still tells me she’s nervously scanning the mist for ghost pirates whenever a nice fog rolls through the Pittsburgh hills.)
Each year for the past four years, I’ve embarked upon the journey to watch at least 31 horror movies by the end of October. Last year I joined @ElCinemonster’s Hoop-Tober challenge on Letterboxd.com. Each year he lays down a few challenges to help guide the viewing of his monstrous minions. This year I’m again combining my Cinema Shame Horror Shame-a-thon with the Hoop-Tober Challenge 4.0 to perpetuate the most unwieldy title in the history of movie blogging and watching.
Welcome to the @CinemaShame/Hoop-Tober Watchpile/Shame-a-thon 31 Days of Horror 2017
Let’s lay down some rules for any lunatics that might want to play the home version of the 31 Days of Horror 2017.
Pick 31 never-before-seen (or unwatched DVD purchases) horror movies — “horror” is broadly defined as anything containing elements of the horror genre. So, for example, I’ve count the Abbott & Costello monster films in the past because of the classic movie monsters. Watch as many as you can stomach during your “month” of October.
I’m air-quoting “month” because, as I mentioned earlier, I’m borrowing @ElCinemonster’s notion that we’re busy goddamn people and 31 days is just not a reasonable duration for busy people to watch 31 horror movies. He’s beginning his “month” on September 15th. I plan to do the same. I hit 33 last year(!) and while I don’t expect to top that total I aim to match.
I’m going to pluck as many movies as possible from my Watch Pile (any film I already own that hasn’t been watched). I’ve been making a more concerted effort to watch more movies than I buy. The worthy remain. The ones I don’t see myself watching again hit eBay. I’ll note the outcome of each disc in my blurb.
And speaking of blurbs… after each movie, I’ll toss up a mini-review and a 30Hz rating that will correspond to my review on Letterboxd.com. The review may or may not contain any actual insight. The reviews are the part of this project that will leave you a quivering pile of bloody goo. And now for the more specific Hoop-Tober demonic hurdles, courtesy of @ElCinemonster.
6 sequels (mix-and-match. 6 total)
6 countries
6 decades
6 films from before 1970
6 films from the following: Carpenter, Raimi, Whale, Browning, Craven, Tom Holland (mix-and-match, or all one)
3 people eating people (non-zombie)
1 Hammer Film
1 Romero film
1 terrible oversight aka OVERT SHAME! (use this link, filter out the films you’ve seen and picked the highest rated film from the list that you can get ahold of)
And 2 Tobe Hooper Films (There must ALWAYS be a Hooper film)
-review them all.(eek)
Clearly one film can satisfy multiple criteria. Viewing and reviewing will begin at 12:01am CST on Sept 15th.
I plan to call some audibles when spur-of-the-moment cravings strike, but here’s my blueprint for the 2017 31 Days Of Horror CinemaShame/Hoop-Tober Watch Pile Shame-a-Thon.
What’s your list? What’s your plan for horror movie watching this year? If you’re keeping a list or participating in the Hoop-Tober challenge, I’ll link you in the header for my posts. Just leave a note with a link in the comments. Together we shall overcome… or we’ll be the loser pumped off in the first act to establish indomitable menace. It’s more comforting to know you’re not doing this alone.
Dick Tracy (NES)
