Category: Review

A Thousand Words: The Starfighters

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The Starfighters

Generally speaking, to make a good Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, the movie itself has to have some redeeming qualities. Obviously not good qualities, but signs of basic competence and the ability to do something memorable. The Starfighters is the exception to this rule. For it is simultaneously one of the best MST3K episodes and one of the worst movies shown on the program.

The movie can be summed up as “lots of stock footage of F-104s, intercut with terrible stiff acting to fill out the movie.” Famously there are two long scenes of the planes refueling in midair. Which is about as exciting as it sounds. And stock footage of them flying. And stock footage of them bombing, as well as stock footage of them firing AGM-12 Bullpup missiles.

There is one genuinely interesting thing in the movie, and that is a line that accurately shows the 1960s approach to aviation safety. Given the F-104’s infamously high accident rate, it rings even more ironically. Basically, back then the dominant theory was that every crash was the pilot’s fault and the solution basically amounted to “git gud”. Said mindset is blatantly stated in one scene where people discuss the safety of the plane.

But other than that, this is a great mock of a bad, bad, bad movie.

Review: Stealing the Atom Bomb

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Stealing The Atom Bomb: How Deception and Denial Armed Israel:

I want to say that Roger Mattson’s Stealing the Atom Bomb does the story of a critical and underreported part of nuclear history justice. In the mid-1960s, Israeli agents swiped enough highly enriched uranium to make multiple first-generation warheads from an enrichment plant in Pennsylvania. As the subject matter is incredibly secret, Mattson had to wade through a massive jungle to find out more. To his credit, the book is well-researched and detailed.

The problem is that so much of the book is about how the investigations went. That could be interesting in and of itself, but it’s told in such a stilted, dry way. So I regretfully have to say that what could have been a great resource has become a niche topic for nuclear weapons historians.

Review: Shadows of the Empire

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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

In the mid-1990s, an unusual multimedia product occurred. George Lucas and company released Shadows of the Empire, a Star Wars side story set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The results for Steve Perry’s primary novel were… interesting. First off, the book itself is not so bad that it falls into the tier of “horrible tie-ins”, but is nowhere near good enough to overcome the problems which every anime fan would know.

Yes, I said anime fan. Because this is like one of those movies that are based off a sequential anime (which is itself based on a sequential manga). In other words, everything has to be completely self-contained, every loose end has to be either tied up or cut loose, and the status quo for the series overall can’t really change. That every major character introduced in this book is killed off at the end shows the limitations it was working under, and Perry could not write his way past such a major obstacle.

I supposed it works if you just want Star Wars filler, but there’s better choices even in that regard.

A Thousand Words: Eco Fighters

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Eco Fighters

Capcom decided to make an arcade “shmup” with an environmentalist science fiction theme. The result was Eco Fighters, a very well made game with one massive flaw. And no, the massive flaw was not the environmental theme. The massive flaw has to do with how you aim.

See you control a spaceship that has a rotating arm/turret. It sounds good, but in practice it’s a gimmick that’s hard to work and control. This and the fact that you’ll often unavoidably run into a weapon change that you don’t want (which gets rid of something you do) sours it a little.

But only a little. It’s still a good side scrolling spaceship shooter, and the graphics and music are typically excellent for the time period. It just tried something distinct and fell short in that regard.

Review: Black Seas

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Black Seas

TK Blackwood’s 199X Fuldapocalypse (or should I say Yugoslavpocalypse) continues in Black Seas. Not surprisingly given the title, it centers around the biggest missile age naval battle ever. The centerpiece is an alternate history classic: The nuclear Ulyanovsk-class carrier (I’m still debating whether to have them be in All Union or not, btw…)

That alone makes it a guilty pleasure for me (I’m definitely including the slightly similar Kherson-class “Ivan Tarawa” large landing ships in that universe, btw…). It’s certainly able to juggle a ton of plot elements as well as any other successful technothriller. Plus it has an Iowa-Kirov showdown! (A sadly realistic Iowa-Kirov showdown, which is all I’ll say about it, but still)

So yeah, this is a worthy successor to the past entries in the series and a fun WW3 naval showdown in its own right. I highly recommend this.

Review: USS Stonewall Jackson

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USS Stonewall Jackson

The book USS Stonewall Jackson is about a submarine with that name as it battles the North Koreans. Leaving aside issues with the name (which was real ), it’s also a new-build American diesel submarine. (For those rivet-counters, it’s based on the new Soryu-class).

This is basically a run of the mill technothriller, only shortened. Actually, it feels like a minimum viable technothriller, where the plot elements of such a book are stuffed into as small a space as possible (in this case only over slightly a hundred pages). This makes the technothrillery-parts that do take up pages (I’m talking rivet counts, because of course) all the more jarring.

This book basically stands as an example of why you actually need “filler”. While it may seem to be (and often is) unproductive padding, without any of it you get a distorted work like this.

A Thousand Words: King Kong 1976

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King Kong 1976

The 1976 remake of King Kong is often regarded as a horribly dated piece of 1970s kitsch that pales in comparison to the classic 1933 original. And that is completely accurate. But what’s interesting is how, given that the plot structure is more or less the same.

First off, there’s the human cast. Jeff Bridges, who is just about as hairy as King Kong in the film, is the stereotypical Post-Nixon Rebellious Academic, who of course is completely right and accurate. There’s Charles Grodin as the evil human villain, and he does a good job. Finally, there’s Jessica Lange whose performance has to be judge by the fact that her character “Dwan” (real spelling) has to work with a script and direction that Thalia and Melpomene themselves couldn’t do well.

But for the real star of the show, it’s very weird. The various props depicting Kong himself are done as well as could reasonably be for the time period. However, the movie fails completely (and I mean completely ) at effectively integrating them. Enjoy hours of clunky green screen that’s terrible even by the standards of the time! Watch as the dinosaur fight is replaced with a “struggle” against a snake prop! Marvel at the giant gas pump in the finale!

Now while the overall plot is the same, this is a lot more obviously contrived than the original. It’s an oil expedition that, after not finding oil on Kong Island, grabs the ape as a consolation prize. Lange’s character is shipwrecked separately and rescued by the oil ship.

All this adds up to-a horribly dated piece of 1970s kitsch that pales in comparison to the original.

Review: After The Downfall

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After The Downfall

Harry Turtledove’s 2008 After The Downfall is not an alternate history per se. Rather it is an example of the dreaded “isekai” that started with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. A German soldier gets warped from the Battle of Berlin to a fantasy world and then stuff happens. A lot of stuff. A lot of predictable stuff.

This is not one of Turtledove’s better books. Take a ridiculously obvious and unsubtle plot/message, writing that can’t make up for it, and one of the fastest intro-to-sex-scene ratios I’ve ever read. And the “payoff” of that isn’t worth it, trust me.

The best I can say about this is that it’s a sincere attempt at something different and not a series installment stretched out over a long time to get more money. But that doesn’t make the actual book any better.

Review: Freezing Cold Takes

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Freezing Cold Takes: Football Media’s Most Inaccurate Predictions and the Fascinating Stories Behind Them

With both the college and pro football seasons having started, it’s time to look at Fred Segal’s Freezing Cold Takes, a compilation of football media predictions that ended up being extremely wrong as well as the context surrounding them. It’s not the deepest book, but it’s certainly deeper than the fired-off hot takes concerning sports that long predate the internet.

As a fun bit of NFL history, this book is worth a read. You’ll laugh and you just might learn something. While it shouldn’t be the last word, its good as a first one.

A Thousand Words: Under Siege

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Under Siege

Steven Seagal has had a career trajectory that very few artists have duplicated. Imagine a one or two-hit wonder who, next thing you know, is making cheap grindhouse flicks on behalf of a dictator. Well, with Seagal you don’t have to imagine.

Anyway, the lone movie of his that many people like unironically is the cheap thriller Under Siege, AKA Die Hard On A Battleship. The plot is a very simple one and involves villains taking over the USS Missouri and Seagal being the one to stop them. Look, it’s not exactly a deep and intelligent movie, all right?

Thankfully, it is a fun movie. A very fun movie. It has Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey as delightfully crazy and corny supervillains, a chance to see a battleship in action, and takes full advantage of its setting. I think it goes without saying that a warship is one of the better places to set a Die Hard knockoff.