Cinema Dredge

This is a film that you have to either go into blind and alone or with enough information to realise what you're getting into. If the extent of your knowledge is that The Sky Crawlers somehow involves aeroplanes then go, watch it, and come back here later. If you're not planning to see it or you've already been spoiled, read on.

So, okay, it's called Sky Crawlers, the case features bullets and fire and swooshing hair, this movie is lying to you from the very first. Despite the title's implication there is a sad lack of vast Eldritchian insects tearing through the stratosphere (darn.) and the violent, frantic tone set by the opening is... misleading.

We start off with a dogfight that hammers home Sky Crawlers' main quality. This thing is beautiful.

I mean, astoundingly, ethereally gorgeous.

The visual style is a jarring blend of highly rendered CGI props and landscapes

with soft, simple, understating and pastel-coloured character design.

Unlike Steamboy, it doesn't even attempt to blend these disparate elements and sets a precedent for the "feel" of the story as a whole. We're following Yuichi, a boy (as in child, which I'll get to later) inheriting his predecessor's fighter jet, and the newest addition to this odd little group of pilots.

He asks a few questions, especially about the status of the pilot he's replacing, Jinro, and makes little headway. Everyone is quiet and cryptic. One of his new partners, the friendly Naofumi, shows him the sights. The sights include a diner that makes good meat pies and... a brothel. Huh.

The pair of prostitutes are no less enthusiastic when it comes to reinforcing the vague-and-mysterious theme. Yuichi retires with the darker and more tattooed of the two, who intimates to him that Jinro used to visit her, and that Yuichi reminds her of him.

The rest of the tale develops slowly and strangely, punctuated by aerial battles. Yuichi tries to question his superior officer, Suito Kusanagi, but only gets his information in snippets. Everyone stares, everything is awkward, the soundtrack hasn't graced us with its presence since the opening and only resurfaces later in the form of Kusanagi's giant, slightly terrifying music box.

All the while, our characters are going off to fight faceless enemies and occasionally they don't come back. Kusanagi seems to be the only one with a real reaction to this. Tourist groups pose for pictures with the aircrafts, the fights are all blithely broadcast on the news... it's all a very calm kind of war.

In order to skip all this vague description, allow me to spoil the whole twist right now.

The pilots are synthetic people called "Kildren". They are immortal unless outright killed. They are being used to act out a sort of mock war, a play put on for a warless world to remind the populace of how important peace really is. A real, immediate reminder of conflict with real (albeit disposable and inhuman) casualties. When they die, they are reincarnated with simple false memories, retaining their use as pilots in an unending cycle.

The revelation if this is an unwinding, letting us in on small implications before it confirms anything. I like this setup.

And I would have liked it better if it hadn't been WRITTEN OF THE BACK OF THE VIDEO CASE.

Oh, wow, that's nice. I didn't want to wait for any of that, just go ahead and tell me in that stilted, preview-narrator way of yours. Thanks.

Okay, so that sort of wrecked my first viewing. With the knowledge that: 1. Kildren are immortal child-things. 2. They are fighting an endless war. And 3. Something weird happened to the pilot Yuichi is replacing I expected the rest of the film to be a big science fiction spectacle with mysteries solved and deaths avenged and conspiracies unveiled and all that good stuff. The idea of watching a character make surreal, existantial discoveries becomes a lot more appealing when we are not told the results before we hit play.

When I finished watching Sky Crawlers the first time around, I was annoyed. I'm glad, however, that I took the time to go through it a second time and really look at it, pay attention to it, and understand what it had to offer. Planes explode and guns are brandished, but this is not an action adventure. It's set in an alternate world of manufactured child-soldiers, but it's not a sci-fi fantasy. I wouldn't even call it a regular "commentary" piece, despite its lapses out of subtlety. It's just about watching these characters act and interact. Experiencing with them the disconnected, vague, dreamlike quality of a world full of endless repetitions and forgettings. If anything, it reminds me a bit of Stalker, and has crept its way into my list of favourite films. One I'll definitely be watching again.

That said, this is far from perfect. The most interesting problem I found was with our smoking, drinking, occasionally sexual main characters. I get what the idea is, constantly confronting us with the debauchery of "children" who might die tomorrow and are unaffected by normal societal rules. The thing is... with the anime aesthetic, even with this more grounded style, how much of a visual difference is there between a thirteen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old? The characters have low, mature voices, some have tired lines around their eyes... there isn't enough to distinguish them as intentionally children and not just young people. It makes it a little confusing if you don't know what you're supposed to be seeing.

A final note before I finish this up; part of what bumped this into the territory of real re-watch value. I really like the relationship between Yuichi and Suito.

What we eventually get explained is that Suito and Jinro were lovers. Suito, having lived a fair bit longer than the other Kildren and caught on to the cycle of repetition, kills Jinro at his behest to "release" him. Only to have him come back as Yuichi. The clashing of Yuichi's hazy, apathetic calm and Suito's increasingly desperate and destructive recklessness is interesting to watch.

It feels heavy and real, and it caught my attention more than I had expected.

In conclusion, give this a watch if you like fabulous animation and aren't afraid of a story that tries to hypnotise rather than entertain you. Preferably watched without any distractions.

I must have activated some kind of minor curse, dear readers, because no sooner did I profess my avid film-watching life-style than did my patience for such things fall in a crumpled wreck. I would look listlessly toward my little television and sure, sure I could watch a movie... I could get around to my copy of Destroy All Planets, or maybe even Assignment Outer Space... I could get to work on that Phantom of the Opera multi-review that I'd been planning since I started this thing... I could just watch Brick again and get myself in the reviewing mood...

Or I could paint, sketch, work on my script, go for a walk, invent some horrible new beverage and inevitably I would end up doing one of the latter. Things being as they were, my cinematic highlight for the past while consisted of watching Battle: L.A. in theatres (It was amazing and don't let anyone tell you otherwise).

So entrenched was I in my reviewer's ennui that it didn't even bother me anyone. Who cares? It's not as if I have a clamouring readership... maybe it's fine if I just let this project slide right off into its inevitable grave in Internet oblivion...

But oh.

Oh, my darlings.

A light did shine suddenly from the heavens and lo did I find the strength to type, for who, who, I ask you, could resist the masterpiece that came across my proverbial desk?

And so it is without further ado that I present today's dish:

John Brahm's Hot Rods To Hell.

This 1967 picture purports to be a "thriller", a "one way ride to excitement", even, but I'm fairly sure that the only demographic to find this "thrilling" would be sociology students. Everything about this movie smacks of the silly youth-phobic tales that have always been popular. Any chance the characters have to throw in an Aesop about "TEENS" and their "WILD, OUT OF CONTROL" antics, they take with gusto.

Anyway. The story starts on Christmas with our protagonist, Tom Phillips, calling up his family to confirm their gift requests, and- oh, OHO. We have KOOKY SIBLING ANTICS HERE, EVERYBODY!

Yeah, rundown: Jamie is Generic Young Boy, Tina is Generic Teenage Girl and Peg is an idiot. After this charming introduction, Tom starts to drive home and is promptly run off the road, suffering the injury that will drive our plot whether you want it to or not by golly.

We skip some time ahead and Tom is back on his feet, finally coming home after an extended hospital stay. Peg and her brother-in-law discuss whether this is the right time to ask Tom about "THEIR PLANS", and whether "THEIR PLANS" are even the best course of action and how "THEIR PLANS" might affec- look, they want to buy a motel in the desert for Tom to run. I don't know why they were making such a big deal about it even if it is a weird, weird damn plan. I mean, his back is shot and he can't go back to his old job and your solution is to sell everything and move immediately into the middle of a desert? Doesn't that seem just a wee bit... drastic?

At any rate, they break the idea to Tom, who wants to think about it for a while. Tina is quite unhappy about the whole thing and Jamie might as well not exist.

After being awoken in the night by his Post Car Accident Stress Disorder, Tom decides that the motel is their best option and they should make with the road-tripping post haste.

Wait.

Okay. Hot Rods To Hell went to a fair bit of trouble to rub in just how much the collision affected Tom. He worries, he's over-cautious, he wakes up in cold sweats after car-accident flashbacks, when he accepts the idea of running the motel, he does so in the context that he needs to "get as far away from this place as possible". The guy has some problems. He needs some help.

Why, then,

Why in the name of all that is an appropriate car-related pun,

Did they think that the best way to get to their new home was via FLIPPING LONG DISTANCE DRIVING?

Lord knows that if I have problems with cars in general the first thing I'd want to do is combine highway speeds and sleep deprivation. That's just an amazing idea.

At least Peg is driving. Yeah, that helps.

Cue our first encounter with those CRAZY TEENAGERS, racing down the highway and forcing our bushel of protagonists off the road. Shaken, they decide that it's best to take a break and stretch their legs. One of the teen-mobiles passes by again on the way back and Gloria, our soon-to-be-introduced Bad Girl throws a beer can at the family,

whereupon Tina, amidst the complaints of her companions, exclaims "Man, she's way out!",

and I had to pause to clear the popcorn on which I had suddenly choked.

We quickly meet the rest of the Way Out group which consists of Duke, Gloria's apparent boyfriend and clearly the baddest of the bunch, and Ernie, apparently a third wheel.

Duke and Gloria pause to have completely uninteresting sex and tell Ernie to hoof it to the Nearby Gas Station. Nice friends you got there, boyo. But then I guess that's the way it is among those NO GOOD TEENS.

All right, all right... I'm done with the "teen" thing.

Meanwhile, our protagonist family gets going again, immediately bursts a tire and stops at that convenient Nearby Gas Station to get it changed. There they meet Ernie, and Tom engages in a hilarious battle of intimidation, completely losing his American accent for a few lines.

Long story short: The family gets back on the road (with Tom behind the wheel! Gasp! Shock!) and the hooligans find out that Tom has bought the motel, thus giving us our main conflict of the film. You see, the motel has always been their Hangout, their place to Cut Loose, Get Wild, and all those other cute phrases. But now, it'll be owned by that "Square" and that's just No Good. So the obvious solution is to call up all of their compatriots in delinquency (who are thankfully all close to their landlines)

and implement a plan that involves just kinda driving around the protagonist-mobile a lot until, presumably, their nerves can't handle it and they see the error of their motel-buying ways.

I admit, I was sceptical of this plan, but I did not know then that we were dealing with the most overdramatic family on the face of the earth.

The screaming! The gasping! The wild eyes and panicked exclamations! The fact that everyone seems to think it's all right to actively molest the shoulders of the driver during a chase.

Anyway... they decide to turn off into a camp ground in hopes that there will be enough people there to dissuade their dogged pursuers. Sure enough, the place is lively with ridiculous and unnecessary characters! We have the hilariously arguing middle-aged couple, another family composed entirely of failed comic relief... why, this was just a great idea! Jamie runs off to play with comic-relief-boy (voiced by a cartoon mouse), and Tina is eventually persuaded to go look at the lake, promising to hate every second of it.

At some point, Duke decides that the best way to convince Tom to renege on his deal is to attempt sexual assault on Tina. That, or he felt compelled to do so by her violently pink polyester clothing.

It's all appropriately stupid and uncomfortable. By which I mean both the rapey goodness and Tina's outfit.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, we witness what appears to be an entirely unnecessary aside involving comic-relief-dad driving too fast and receiving a ticket from...

Oh, be still my heart!

Could this, the over-serious unironically sermonising police officer wearing a shiny golden helmet for no reason finally fill the emotional void left by my lost love?

It's too soon to tell...

It looks like his vast charm is enough for Tom, though. For he immediately tells Officer Serious-Face about their trouble with the young rascals on the highway. He promises whatever help he can before vanishing mysteriously into the sunset.

Right on time, Tina shambles back into the scene, looking shaken. Unfortunately, her response to her parents' questions in regards to her well-being got caught in my automatic brain filter for completely insufferable whining, and will not be appearing in this review.

They all get back on the road after dark under the brilliant logic that combining sleep-deprivation and highway speeds AT NIGHT will give them a better chance at escaping. We don't get to see that, of course, because now it's time to finally see this motel everyone's fussing about! We're introduced to the previous owner, Lank Dailey (wait, is that a disgusting pun?) and to his collection of horrible printed button-downs,

while Duke and his posse-of-two interrogate him about leaving the motel in the hands of that most Square of Squares. Dailey is not to be moved, and leaves the bunch to give his beloved motel a final visit.

And boy, if it isn't the grooviest place that ever did swing! The dead-eyed musicians playing the same song for ten minutes (except in the outdoor shots)!

The awkward listless dancing! The sexy, sexy club-wear!

Truly the loss of such a far-out, off the hook social hub would irrevocably damage the high-octane lifestyle of thrill seekers everywhere.

Outside, Tom and the family roll in. After some small talk with Dailey, they're shown to their illustrious abode and turn in for the night.

But wait! Tina feels the allure of the sheer sex appeal emanating from the club next door, and steals away into the night!

Inside, she bumps into Gloria, who accuses her of being a man-stealing strumpet. I'm on Gloria's side here, only I accuse Tina of being a plain old incurably stupid strumpet.

Duke arrives at just this moment and brushes Gloria off in favour of Tina's blank-eyed rohypnol charm.

They proceed to dance in a way that would turn off even the most dedicated breeder, and Tina agrees to "take it outside" because she is, as I stated, several knives shy of a full block.

Meanwhile, Jamie runs in to tell his parents that Tina is stuck in a well! I mean missing! And Tom runs out to see what she's gotten into.

He finds her half-enthralled in Duke's sweaty, unpleasant embrace and, in the first rational act of this movie, attempts to beat Duke to death.

Dailey intervenes and Tom tells him that the deal is off, taking his family and rushing back to the highway with the intention of reaching his brother's house before morning. Shortly after starting off, they come across the scene of an accident, where- oh no! Comic-relief-dad's reckless driving caused their car to flip, thus bringing their story full circle and allowing Officer Serious-Face to caution the consequences of such foolery!

With that bit of shoe-horned plot out of the way, the protagonists continue, but by now Duke and Ernie are in pursuit, determined to keep Tom from reaching the police! They play repeated rounds of "chicken" with the car, in hopes that this will somehow convince Tom that reporting them is a bad idea. In order to pad out the film, our hero stops at a twenty-four-hour convenience store, only to find it boarded up and the phone line cut. This doesn't serve any purpose and my eyes are beginning to glaze over. More driving, more dramatic wailing, more would you stop grabbing him while he drives do you want to get killed, more driving.... Finally Tom has Had Enough and he sets up a weird sort of trap for Duke and Ernie, forcing them to flip their car and die horrible, agonising deaths.

Nah, they live and Tom regains his self confidence, refusing to report the two when Officer Serious-Face drives by and sees the accident. He gets back in the car with his family and they head to the motel, determined to make it work now that Tom has discovered his willingness and ability to kill his fellow man in cold blood.

Roll credits.

Now, I think that this movie's primary problem among many, many problems is that it's not sure what plot it wants to follow. All these weird little sub-stories show up only to vanish entirely. Gloria's chaotic lifestyle coupled with her desire to escape the town she so hates? Dropped. The tension between Duke having spurned Gloria's affections and Ernie having been chosen as a replacement romance despite seeming to have little interest in Gloria's wiles? Dropped. Officer Killjoy lurking in clubs and acting as a defender of underage sobriety? Dropped like a hot brick.

The main focus of the tale is, seemingly, Tom's loss and subsequent renewal of his Man Card. My favourite scene for its sheer absurdity occurs just after Tina fails once again to get herself raped but before they all take to the highway again. Peg condemns her daughter's recklessness, asking how far she would have gone with the likes of Duke. Tina, being, to my observation, clinically brain-damaged, wails that any girl would like Duke and that Peg is only concerned that she get married! (something that heretofore has not been mentioned) What if she does get married? She continues. And what if her husband ends up like dad?!

My notes at this point read "AW YEAH BITCHSLAP", as Peg gives her daughter a whack for her insolence.

So, here's the issue with this whole "failed utterly as a man" thing that the film so lovingly swings around;

Tom hurt his back.

He injured his back in such a way that it causes him inconvenience from time to time.

He didn't lose any limbs, all his senses are in perfect working order, and yet his entire family is behaving as if he has been so utterly crippled that it's forced them to accommodate his vastly increased needs.

I find this all mighty hilarious. The overdrama required to even make this into a plot point is an amazing testament to how little the writers cared.

And the entertainment value? Well, look, this thing is an absolute riot, but when it's not completely overflowing with campy goodness it is boring. The last few scenes made this into one of the longer hundred-minute stretches I have spent in my life. A veritable whiplash from hysterical fun to drooling apathy and back again.

One special exception is the dialogue. It is amazing and I cannot do it justice. I'm fairly sure that it was written in Italian or something and then poorly translated and no one noticed.

Another demographic for whom this may qualify as "Thrilling" would be car enthusiasts. The vehicles are actually pretty nice, when they bother to show more than one.