Hyde Park Picture House’s Creatures of the Night: Fantastic Planet Review

 Creatures was back in full flow last weekend, with the start-up of a loyalty card bringing the sci-fi great and good out of their time machines to watch this week’s Cannes Prize winning animation.

The audience was transported to the savage planet of Ygam. A world where forty to one hundred foot (estimates vary) blue humanoid giants with crustacean ears lord it over a race of humans ‘Om’s’ – It’s a French joke. The Om’s use their human cunning to break free of their oppressors, eventually founding a civilisation on an artificial planetoid called the Fantastic Planet.

This film waves the brave flag of European animation. There’s not much of it, at least compared to the States (Disney) and Japan (Anime). Fantastic Planet puts up a good fight. I have never seen animation quite like this; it’s as if Philip K. Dick and Hieronymus Bosch had a talented baby together and this is the outcome. This is an important film for animation buffs. Instead of the traditional animation technique of drawing on acetate, the creators of this French-Czech film sketched on cut-out and hinged paper. This lends laborious rigour to the film, conveying a sense of epic struggle and Bible like fable. Animation of this length is a real labour of creative love, and every few seconds there is something – a shadow or an object – which is different, interesting, and the product of an interesting artist.

Adapted by Rene Laloux from Stefan Wul’s Ome En Serie  - a sci-fi novel written during the quiet times at his dentist surgery – Fantastic Planet offers the best of sci-fi animation; it even stood up to a re-watch in the cold light of Sunday morning. Part of the films charm comes from its inventiveness. The landscape, and the creatures that inhabit it, really are fantastic. The backdrop is spikey, phallic and hostile. Shades of red are laid out under an ominous grey sky. Monsters abound, ranging from strange little silk weavers, to armless T-rex’s used for gladiatorial combat. The animation is less frantic than Disney or Anime, and is special for it. The picture slides over panoramic stillness of human emotion, the overarching theme of this film.

The film opens with a bare breasted (don’t worry, it’s tasteful) female Om running for her life. She is clutching a baby – turns out he’s the protagonist – and appears terrified. The cause of her distress becomes apparent when a huge hand crashes down and flicks her. A few flicks later and she dies. A kind hearted Draag –that’s the 40/100 foot blue giants – takes pity on the baby and raises him as a pet, calling him Terre. (it’s another French joke) She controls Terre by means of a space-age collar which drags him back to her whenever she chooses. The Draag gets so attached to Terre that she starts taking him to her lessons; information he later uses to get one up on her race.

As the plot unfolds Terre escapes, shedding his collar with the help of a beautiful savage Om – again bare breasted. Terre quickly becomes an important figure in the Big Tree Tribe, who has settled in a little used park. The tribe is sworn enemies with the Hollow Log Bandits, a tribe of rival Oms who inhabit another section of the park. The tribes are united, however, against the Dragg threat, which comes in the form of a deOminisation. The Om’s are gassed by cannon like robots in a genocide which is as evocative as it is matter of fact.  

Despite this, we are not led to see the Om’s as total victims. Moments before the deOminisation the Om’s kill a hippogriff like creature which strays too close to their tree. The killing is reminiscent of cave paintings which depict a buffalo hunt. As the chief Dragg says ‘We were wrong to consider Oms as simple harmless animals. I fear we have committed an error fraught with the most grievous consequences.’

Turns out they have, and the Oms fight long and hard enough to set up their own civilisation on a planet in space ‘where they now exist in vast cities.’ The call this planet Terre, as homage to their leader. This gives the mythology of the film a circular sense. Perhaps we are sitting here blissfully unaware of the next Draag invasion.

This epic action is set against a haunting techno score by pianist Alain Goraguer. The music, unfortunately, may remind you of Pizza Express style background tinkles. It would, however, be the most cinematic pizza of your life.  The music makes the film surreal as opposed to just plain weird.

 This is a film that will stay with the Creatures… audience a long time. I, for one, will be practicing my armless T-Rex fighting and watching the skies for signs of the Draggs. All we can do is remain vigilant. 

Creatures of the Night: Altered States Review

A walk through certain sections of Leeds city centre on Saturday night, I’m sure you’ll agree, is scary enough. The punters, lovely in the week no doubt, turn feral. As a student myself, I usually enjoy aping with the best of them. However, attempting to bust out of being a creature of habit, I turned away from town last Saturday. Instead of partaking in animal antics I went to watch Altered States instead.

Altered States is part of the Hyde Park Picture House’s Creatures of the Night festival, which sees late night movie screenings of cult classics, forgotten masterpieces, oddball documentaries and the best worst films ever made. 

Last weekend’s film was a science fiction horror directed by Ken Russell, which sees Harvard scientist Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) submitting himself to psychological tests and drug use in an attempt to define man’s true role in the universe. As a result of his endeavours he is devolved into a missing link figure, and runs amok, Saturday night Leeds style, through the streets of Boston.  His wife Emily (Blair Brown) stages a physical intervention and by the end of the film Eddie starts to value those things that make him human.

Undeniably, this film has character. The special effects have a hallucinogenic quality as you’d expect from a 80s sci-fi. Guest appearances from inquisitive rhinos and miffed elephants were greeted with laughter in the auditorium, and the film met with applause when the lights came on.  

The film is made more charming by the lack of care Russell takes with those things that just don’t matter. Bizarre plot twists are met as matter of fact, making the film wonderfully facetious.  Dialogue from the herd of scientists is often jargon based, - ‘I want to get a look at those E.E.G trexics’ - and even overlapping, meaning that it takes a back seat. 

In many ways the protagonist, Eddie, personifies the qualities of the film. The narrative opens with him floating in a tank, garbed in what can only be compared to an astronauts get up, ordering fellow scientist and minion Arthur Rosenburg (Bob Balaban) to get him out. Rosenburg is one of the most likable characters in the film, a constant stooge; he is always there to sweep up the pieces after Eddie’s Mr. Hyde like rampages.

 

Russell’s representation of Eddie’s psychedelic trips has to be seen to be believed. Safe to say the montage-cocktail of geometric shapes, Jesus, fiery fluids, goat man sex and lady lizards still has the ability to raise an eyebrow, even in these liberated times 30 years on from the movie’s release.

Eddie with Ram's head as Jesus.

The mad foray into Eddie’s subconscious is countered by the sketchy details of the external Eddie. Major life events, marriage, kids, divorce, are leapfrogged in a single camera shot. The tongue in cheek nature of the difference between his mind and reality sometimes makes for dull viewing; this is certainly a film of highs and lows.

One of these lows is the representation of Emily, Eddie’s wife. The audience meets her as she chomps suggestively on a carrot. In addition to this as she is ‘sweating out her dissertation’ on anthropology. Unfortunately it is the carrot chomping Emily that takes priority. She has ‘gut feelings’ contrasting to the terrifying rationality of the male scientists, and this does enforce a gender stereotype.

This has not impacted upon the films cult status, which would make an exciting movie itself, the production process was fraught with difficulty, including a transfer from Columbia to Warner’s as the budget his $15 million. The script is based on Paddy Chayefsky’s novel. Chayefksy disliked the story so much that he disowned it, and the film is now credited to his pseudonym, Sidney Aaron.

Eddie in psychedelia. (He hasn't just forgotten his keys,) 

Another reason the film has achieved cult status was the fleeting appearance of Drew Barrymore in her debut role as Eddie’s daughter.

This is a film that deserves its cult status, a film that never quite made it; coming runner up at the Oscars to Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back in the sound category. The film is suitable material for Creatures of the Night. At times tacky, at times brilliant, this is one of the best worst films ever made.

Next week sees the Pink Flamingos coming to the Picture House, a journey into drug dealing, journalist chasing, furniture licking and of course, pink flamingos.  

You can watch the first section of the film (from youtube) here.