Lovely Ladies of the Asylum vol. 3

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observation notes: 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Another stand-alone sci-fi thriller from The Asylum, this one a re-imagining of Jules Verne's classic sea-faring tale, the big change being that now the Nautilus is both mechanical marvel and monster, able to launch robot squids to inflict its altruistic terrorism on military, capitalistic and environmentally offensive targets (also, it takes places 10 leagues deeper than the novel, so, you know, it's more extreme).

When one of these targets - a US nuclear submarine - gets off a rescue buoy before going down in the Marianas Trench, the authorities are alerted to the fact that something fishy's going on (rimshot)(couldn't help myself), and enlist the services of Lieutenant Michael Aronnaux (Lorenzo Lamas), a Navy recovery specialist, and his team to recover, naturally, the missing sub's crew, if alive, and its nuclear stores, no matter what. What makes this team so adept at such a deep water recovery? you might be asking, if such aspects of marine technology interest you. Well, friends, it's something The Asylum whipped up called an "oxygenator," basically the opposite of the goo in The Abyss, some thing or another with the alchemical powers to transform sea water into breathable oxygen. Handy device, that.

Anywho, further complications arise when it turns out it won't be Lorenzo leading the recovery mission, though he's the most seasoned man on board. The key word here is "man." The mission will instead be lead by Lt. Cmdr. Lucille Conciel (Natalie Stone), a British woman inexplicably high-ranking in the US Navy, and, coincidentally, unless it's an Asylum film, Lorenzo's ex-wife.

Long story short, the recovery mission descends and is captured by Nemo, a brilliant but lunatic scientist who's built a submarine city deep below the surface and who's intent on stealing the oxygenator to help him resurrect and restore...wait for it...fucking Atlantis!!! Huzzah!!!

(oh, and he wants the warheads too, something about annihilating the surface world and all us filthy land-lubbers before he brings his precious utopia back to life. whatevs.)

The rest is spoilers.

Overall, 30K holds to the original conceit of the novel - one brilliant man pushed too far attempting to remedy an irredeemable society - while successfully giving it a palpable dose of 21st century fanaticism. The result is a suspenseful, thrilling, inventive sci-fi drama that lives up to it's legacy. Jules Verne would have been intrigued. Despite its hard, technical exterior, the film is driven by it's soft, character-oriented heart, a nice change from some similar Asylum films where explanation can dominate characterization. Not to say the technical aspects are lacking - especially the visual effects, robo-squids specifically, courtesy once again of the wizards at Tiny Juggernaut - but the true strength here lies in the strong, deft, well-paced script by Asylum staple Eric Forsberg (Mega Piranha, Snakes on a Train), and an array of solid performances.

Lorenzo Lamas (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus) plays it suave and slick, boasting a stern yet restrained aggression, more "Falcon Crest" than "Renegade," i.e. a little phoned-in, but hey, what were you expecting? His ex-wife is played with harsh, taut and chilled vulnerability, like a dominatrix with her own safe word, by Ms. Stone (Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls), whose lips aren't nearly as inflated and thus not nearly as distracting as in the parenthetical film.

Sean Lawlor (MSvGO), the ninth man to play Captain Nemo onscreen, does so with bravado, whimsy and resolved, stoic insanity. He's believable believing his radical plans as practical and pragmatic solutions to a decaying civilization, and while his intelligence is never called into question, his sanity is never called out. Other Asylum regulars round out the cast, including Michael Tower (Invasion of the Pod People, Surpercroc, Dracula's Curse), Damien Puckler (Death Racers, 666: The Beast, Journey to the Center of the Earth), and Kim Little (Countdown: Jerusalem, The Apocalypse, The 9/11 Commission Report), who displays youthful exuberance as Lorenzo's doting technician.

Jules Verne is a Phillip K. Dick figure in sci-fi (it's the other way around, truthfully, but for my purposes i'm ordering it as such) in that nearly every idea the man ever had has been mined and re-mined and will be inevitably mined more in the future than it's been even to date. However, this one is nowhere near as hackneyed or contrived, or even derivative, as many of the other entries. 30K is, as I said, inventive, pertinent and fantastic, everything Verne himself wanted the story to be.

Another undisputed success, here, as far as this inmate's concerned.

977's Unsolicited Yet Copyrighted Pitch #2: THE FORGOTTEN CITY

So sometime in 2012 - hopefully before the world ends - Brad Pitt has a film coming out with director James Gray (The Yards, We Own The Night) based on the book "The Lost City of Z," which in turn is based on the real-life story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared into the uncharted jungles of Brazil in 1925 with a team that included his own son, all in pursuit of a renowned lost city of lore, a quest that had already killed 100 men before Fawcett ever set foot in the Amazon basin. Brad Pitt plays Fawcett, and such is the reason, it is suspected, for that crazy ass goatee he was sporting for a while.

With that as the basic premise - an explorer goes on a dangerous, obsessive quest for a mythical city hidden somewhere in an unmapped jungle - I humbly present a tie-in, The Forgotten City, a blend of this story, Saul Bellow's novel "Henderson the Rain King." and a dash of King Solomon's Mines.

Richard Dancy is a cartographer - map-maker to the layman - in 1920's Britain, a man in his mid-30's, single and coldly academic. This is the result of his harsh upbringing by a famous explorer and therefore an often absent father, the revered Reginald Dancy, with whom Richard has a strained relationship at best. One day a triumvirate of members from the Royal Academy of Exploration comes with some rather foreboding news for Richard: his father has disappeared during his latest expedition, it has been six months since he was last heard from. Richard knows his father is had mounted his third expedition for the Forgotten City of Kuikugu (kwee-coo-joo), a mythical civilization hidden somewhere in the deepest reaches of the Amazon basin in western Brazil, a place no other civilization exists even today, one of the last entirely unknown regions of the planet. The triumvirate implores Dancy the Younger to lead a rescue mission - since he knows both the maps and the region, having been on the second expedition with his father, a source of their falling out - of himself, two soldiers in the British army, a local guide and an associate cartographer assigned by the academy who just happens to be a woman. Hesitantly, and perhaps at the behest of his estranged-by-association mother, Richard agrees and the film shifts to the jungles of Brazil.


I don't want to give too many twists or turns away, but needless to say the journey through the jungle - using copies of older Dancy's maps, extrapolated from by the son based on what he knows of his father's cartography mindset, the father having taught the son - is arduous at best, beset with danger floral, faunal, native and from within. But I will tell you this: they do find the city, and they do find a culture still living there, ruled by a god in flesh, as far as the natives are concerned. And this god? None other than Reginald Dancy. (this is where the "Henderson" comes in)


The rest amounts to this: the father has discovered the most significant archaeological and sociological discovery of the century, perhaps ever, and in the process he has been mistaken for a god by the primitive inhabitants here, a role he was only eager to play. He's gone mad with power, and instead of sharing this discovery with the world, he wants to horde over it, command it where it is, create a world, a society, a civilization, all of his own. Son wants to bring him back. He won't go. Son wants to go back, then, let people know Reginald is alive, let them know what he's discovered. Reginald won't be having any of that, either, because if the world knows, the world will come, and his idyllic kingdom will be destroyed. So he can't let his son leave. But his son won't stay. So...turmoil! 


The third act I'll keep to myself but to say it's awesome. As for casting, I'm seeing Brian Krause (2012 Supernova) as Dancy younger, maybe Jonny Lee Miller, if they can get him, but definitely John Rhys-Davies as Darcy the elder. The woman I think would be best suited for Natalie Stone (30,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls), and as far as the soldiers go, I'm happy so long as one of them is Geoff Meed (6 Guns, Airline Disaster).


Here's your tag line: "A lost civilization...that will do anything to remain that way."

And if this idea doesn't float your boat, but the idea of tying-in to Lost City... does, you could always just do a supernatural-action adaptation of the story of Hiram Bingham III, the American explorer who rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911. Brian Krause would definitely be suited for that role.


I'm just sayin'.

observation notes: Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg could have learned a lot from this one; when trying to breathe new life into an old character, sometimes it's better to go back to the basics instead of stretching into foreign, bizarre, insulting and childhood-ruining territory. Released to coincide with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls (that's a lot of italics) returned to the source, the H. R. Haggard character Indiana Jones was based upon, Allan Quatermain, for this latest version of the classic King Solomon's Mines.

Twice before this novel has been adapted: in 1950 starring Stewart Granger as the adventurer and the ravishing Deborah Kerr as the client, and again in 1985 as a reaction to the popularity of Raiders of the Lost Ark, this time starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. The Asylum's version falls solidly between the two: not quite as good as the 1950 version (which, incidentally, is one of my favorite films of all time) but markedly better than the 1985 version.

The story's pretty simple: guy finds a map for a treasure hidden in the little explored interior of Africa (this is the late 19th century, give or take); he goes looking for said treasure; he never returns; his faithful sister comes looking for him, engages a famous hunter-tracker-adventurer to aid in her search. And that's where the story really begins, a picaresque expedition on the trail of either great treasure, or great peril.

I'm having trouble thinking what to say next. I have notes about the competent performances, the pacing, the action scenes, this tribal-decapitation-claw thing a native uses on a dude , but truthfully I'm not feeling a lot of enthusiasm toward those things now, the next day. The movie was fine. But that's it. And it's not because it was poorly written or directed or performed; none of these elements were lacking. It was certainly more enjoyable than that soulless ass-rape of a film the franchise guys put out. Thing is, I just didn't care. And remember, this is coming from a guy already biased toward the story. The 1950 version, as I said, is truly one of my favorites, I re-visit it at least twice a year. But thinking about it now, I think it's because that version of the film, like the story, is dated. This version, the 2008 version, though still set in the original era, looked modern - the actors, the action, the effects - and as such felt tepid, tame, because by modern standards the source story doesn't quite hold up to the adrenaline-fueled, high-octane, apocalyptic action films of this era. I mean, Roland Emmerich totally fucked up the entire planet on screen last year; I can't really get it up for a steam engine/truck chase anymore, unless that's the best the era could offer.

Perhaps if The Asylum had gone with an update of the source material, like they did with War of the Worlds, 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea or the upcoming Moby-Dick, I would have been left with a better taste in my mouth. Or perhaps I'm just a cranky jerk today, and taking it out on A.Q.a.t.T.o.S., which really is an entertaining film, if you're into rollicking yarns of yesteryear.

The film stars Sean Cameron Michael (Supernova) as the titular adventurer and Natalie Stone (30,000 Leagues Under the Sea) as the saucy, pouty-lipped sister. Also worth noting that director Mark Atkins edited the film as well, as well as doing his own cinematography. See his inmate profile below for more info.