Xanadu (1980), Barbarella (1968), Night of the Creeps (1986)

Today we will be taking a look at some films that are interesting artifacts of their times, coming close in some ways to embodying their pop culture zeitgeists.

Xandau

Romantic fantasy film I have a hard time imagining would have been made at any other time. I don't know the bizarre amalgamation of causes that brought this film about but surely they can't be replicated. Featuring songs written for, and noticeably not by, star Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra, I liked most of the musical numbers though I'm kind of embarrassed that I did. The plot is odd and lose and is really only there to string the music together in something approaching logic. There's Greek Goddess, Don Bluth does an animation sequence, lots of day glow, Gene Kelly's here to somewhat ground this in the musical tradition of an earlier era, and there's roller skating. It's really a mess, and with a woodnish lead Michael Beck getting so much screen time it really shouldn't work, but some how it does, with much credit for this going to Ms. Newton-John at the height of her loveliness. I think my six year old niece might really like this movie. **1/2

Barbarella

Star Jane Fonda made this film for her then husband Roger Vadim, who was a Frenchman, which kind of explains some of this. Barbarella is based on comics of the same name created by another Frenchman, Jean-Claude Forest. This movie is like a weird combination of a 1930's movie serial, the original Star Trek, Dadaism and soft core porn. Barbarella (Fonda) is a 41st Century space aviatrix sent by the President of the Republic of Earth (Claude Dauphin) to the planet Tau Ceti to track down missing scientist Durand Durand (Milo O'Shea) who has diapered with his dangerous positronic ray, which if it were to fall into the wrong hands could threaten the stability of the rest of the peace loving galaxy. Tau Ceit of course is ruled by an evil tyrant (Anita Pallenberg) who lives it up in Sogo the City of the Night with her fellow evil lovers while banishing all the good people of the planet to a prison like labyrinth with Marcel Marceau and a blind angel (John Phillip Law). So much for the plot, such as it is. It's an odd picture, visually and otherwise, and must have really hit on the confusing/shocking end of the spectrum for American audience when it came out, just fifteen years after the effective death of the production code. This whole thing felt like it had a 14 year old boy behind, still a reasonably clever 14 year old boy. **

Night of the Creeps

This is easily my favorite of the three movies examined tonight. A very well constructed example of, and homage to, the B-movie genera (many of the characters last names are shared with important B movie directors). An alien experiment gets dislodged from a space ship and lands on earth in the year 1959 near a college campus at the same time an axe wielding maniac is on the lose. After a brief prolog which conveys this information we flash forward to the present day (1986) and college pledge week, where the somewhat geeky Chris Romero (Jason Lively, whose eyes seem just a little to far apart) falls for the lovely Cynthia Cronenberg (the crush worthy Jill Whitlow) who unfortunately is dating (surprise) a big jerk named Brad (Allan Kayser) of the stuck up Beta Fraternity, Chris also has a wise cracking crippled best friend name C. J. Well Chris and C.J. are put up to a prank by Brad and the Beta's to steal a corpse from the campus morg (yep) and leave it on the grounds of a rival frat. The two eventually chicken out but not until after they have revived from a cryo-statis lab a victim of the alien experiment 27 years back. The re-animated corpse is of course a zombie, only the zombies purpose is for its brain to serve as an incubator for leach-like alien parasites who enter through a victims mouth, and whose progeny are released when the victims head gets too full and explodes, a fate which quickly befalls research scientist David Paymer. This movie is surprisingly smart and well written, with Tom Atkins detective Ray Cameron the stand out character, "Thrill me." I had a fun time with this movie. ***