They (1974)

Dir-Prod: "Ito" (AKA- Bill Rebane). Scr: Barbara Rebane. Cast: Paul Bentzen, Debbi Pick, Nick Holt 

The film which Mill Creek presents under the generic title They is actually the head-spinning Grade Z masterpiece Invasion from Inner Earth. This movie was the first of the several Wisconsin-lensed fantasy films made by Bill Rebane.

His first foray into feature filmmaking was the early 1960s horror dud, Monster a Go Go. After its commercial failure, Rebane worked as an executive in charge of US productions filmed in Germany, but got tired of travelling abroad, and eventually settled into a farm property near Gleason, Wisconsin. Here is where his next, and most durable, phase of moviemaking began.

Like any regional filmmakers' work, Rebane's oeuvre is certainly evocative of the geographic location which produced it, lending an authenticity for a place and time that simply couldn't be replicated via the Hollywood star system. His movies are unique for their portraits of eccentrics, intellectuals and enterpreneurs cast amidst a bluish landscape of Wisconsin winter, in small towns with neon Pabst signs hanging in the windows. Rebane’s work is often ridiculed for its poor acting, scripting and special effects, but his films do have a unique atmosphere, with a feel for the narratives’ rugged isolated locations, and odd marriages of shifting tones.

The first “official” Bill Rebane feature is a bizarre science-fiction film which began in 1973 as The Selected (perhaps a more appropriate title), released the following year as Invasion of Inner Earth, which he co-produced, co-edited, and also directed under the oft-used pseudonym of “Ito” (to perhaps give the impression that one person didn’t do everything on the film). The script by his wife Barbara attempts thrills and allegory in equal measure, but the result is a mishmash that however has struck a chord with some viewers, this author included.

In the opening of Invasion from Inner Earth, we are bombarded with a pandemonium of images with people running, close-ups of eyeballs, red smoke rising from the swamp, a papier mache UFO, lens flares... what is going on? This question is never satisfactorily answered for the rest of the film. People everywhere are dying of a mysterious plague, however our five protagonists sit around a snowy lodge and talk (and talk!) about what it could be.

The film has a weak introduction to our main characters, as siblings Jake and Sarah Anderson tend to their lodge and see off their scientist guests: rich bitch Andy, stud Eric and bearded funny guy Stan. Jake is also a pilot who flies them back to the mainland, and here is where the movie has potential as a halfway decent thriller. They are shooed away from one hangar by an ill traffic controller, and seek refuge at another runway which is mysteriously deserted. Finally, Jake and the scientists return to the same lodge from which they came.

Meanwhile, they are menaced by a red light that shines on them, and a heavy-handed voice that speaks to them on the CB radio. (The inspiration for this alien menace may have been the monotonal creature that kept saying “You-have-two-seconds-left” in the “Corbomite Maneuver” episode of Star Trek.) Stan is convinced that the voice is of an alien, since it constantly asks for their location. (Wouldn’t the alien already know, if the humans are besieged by the red light?)

To show how global this epidemic is (or to save the viewer from the relentless tedium of seeing these people pontificate forever in the cabin), the Rebanes cut away to more scenes of people running down the city sidewalk, a drunk staggering out of a bar into a red cloud, a DJ ranting and raving, and even a late-night TV talk show that suddenly blacks out during their discussion of UFOs with some local yokels. In between all the talk, however, our protagonists individually get picked off by the red light: Andy when he selfishly tries to escape in the plane, Jake in his benevolent hunting for food, and Eric during their supposed flight to freedom once the survivors realize they’re sitting ducks in the cabin. Then, we cut back to the DJ still sweatily ranting, wondering aloud on the air if he’s the last one alive. Finally, Stan and Sarah walk (and walk and walk) through a snowy small town, and then mysteriously the film changes from its grey wintry locale to a vibrant green meadow in which an adolescent boy and girl hold hands and frolic off into the garden. Fleetingly in the background, we see a UFO. The end.

This mind-blowing conclusion comes out of left field, but in truth it’s no less baffling than most of what precedes it. Despite the way-out theory given by Stan (played by Paul Bentzen, who would soon return to Rebane’s universe) about how Martians are instead invading us from the earth’s core than their own planet, there is really no rhyme or reason given for the film’s strange occurrences. Perhaps Ms. Rebane’s screenplay was intended all along as an existential tome, much like Hitchcock’s The Birds. The conventions of a science fiction invasion story are used as a modern-day Biblical treatise, where the aliens are instead a deity using the plague much like the flood, systematically eradicating humankind so that Stan and Sarah can inherit the earth, as its new Adam and Eve. (Maybe the DJ is the snake.)

The movie fails in the acting and writing departments; the suspense is often drained by the slow pace, gaps of logic, and Rebane's customarily eccentric, juvenile approach to the adult material. This film is especially notorious for the "kid run amuck on a Casio" synthesizer score which lifts the theme from The Good The Bad and the Ugly!

However, this movie also has a strange appeal- I've revisited it several times over the years since my initial viewing of it way back in 1986, on CityTV in an unforgettable twin bill of late night movie badness (shared with the Dave Hewitt-James Flocker jawdropper, The Lucifer Complex.) Despite the incoherence and lethargy, it possesses a unique atmosphere and some fascinating ideas that one wishes were in a better film. Both the Genesis VHS and the Mill Creek DVD transfers are murky and red, however, I still remember the crisp print that City showed all those years ago. One hopes that some day, someone will restore this movie. In spite of its many faults, the film is still worthy of that effort.

MMM Rating: 1/5, or 5/5, depending on your point of view. (It's that kind of movie.)

Located on: Nightmare Worlds. (This movie pack is out of print, but you should have no trouble finding a copy. The film in question is also available by Mill Creek in packs other than the 50-movies.)

The Demons of Ludlow (1983)

Dir-Prod: Bill Rebane

Scr: William Arthur

Cast: Paul Bentzen (credited as Paul von Hausen), Stephanie Cushna,  Carol Perry

This tale of resurrection and revenge is set once again in familiar Bill Rebane territory: a snowy, godforsaken small town in Wisconsin where its eccentric characters battle a monster. The novelty is that the monster comes in the form of a piano!

On the bicentennial of the hamlet of Ludlow (population, 47), a harmonium is presented as a gift to inaugurate the celebration. However, Ludlow native and ambitious young reporter Debra (played by Stephanie Cushna, who is quite good in her only starring role), recognizes that the harmonium comes from a sordid period in the town’s history. This borough got its namesake from a pilgrim named Ludlow who was maimed and killed: his spirit is now planning revenge upon the descendants of his persecutors.

The Demons of Ludlow owes a lot of its inspiration to John Carpenter’s The Fog, with the bicentennial revenge plot, and even a similar character of a preacher who knows that he must pay for the sins of his ancestors. To be certain, it never achieves the level of suspense or atmosphere of Carpenter’s classic. However, it is memorable for its isolated snowy setting (like many of Rebane’s films), and unusual take on the ghostly revenge formula. Instead of pirates from beyond the grave, this scenario offers... well, scenes of pilgrim ghosts dancing in the town hall at night!

Bill Rebane seems to have changed his approach from the typically glacial pacing where the rural characters blend into the bluish snowy backgrounds. The film has more panache with its rapid editing, and attention to unusual sound design, but still, despite the (admittedly minor) scenes of gore, and the unusual ways in which people get killed, the film seems more odd than creepy, which is perhaps the price it pays for attempting something different.

Despite that it is written by one William Arthur (his first of four screenplays for the director), it still has a distinctive Bill Rebane feel, with his economical storytelling (a simple voiceover over some exterior shots explains away a lot of the subplot), and in its slyly funny pokes at small town life (I love how the residents who attend the bicentennial harmonium recital all appear like they’ve been dragged there, and make no effort to disguise their boredom). With its tinny music and cartoon-like performances, once again this movie feels childlike, despite the adult material. Still, I like that for once these small townsfolk aren’t the stereotypical country bumpkins: despite the “down home” middle American demeanour, we are presented with a truly dysfunctional stock of characters (it’s no wonder the town is founded upon bloodshed). The reverend’s wife Sybil is a boozer (and a hottie); Mrs. Schultz the harmonium player has a mentally handicapped daughter Emily who talks to dolls (in one interesting scene, a tear falls down the doll’s porcelain cheek).

The film is also memorable for its low-key special effects, such as the fire poker that attempts to hit the

preacher by itself, and in the neat climax, where after running from house to house for help (only to encounter a ghoul at each front door), Debbie runs down the road and encounters a force field, as electrical bolts emit from her hands when she tries to breach it. (Once more the classic Rebane theme of isolation from the rest of the world takes form.)

The Demons of Ludlow is not a lost classic, but it is certainly better than its unfairly bad reputation. It gets points for attempting to be different from the usual fare that was offered in horror cinema of the time. While many films of the period had an open ending for a sequel to follow, the ambiguous finale of this one is actually troubling: did good win over evil?

MMM Rating: 3/5

Located on: Chilling Classics.

The Alpha Incident (1978)

Dir-Prod: Bill Rebane

Scr: Ingrid Neumayer

Cast: Ralph Meeker, Stafford Morgan, John F. Goff, Carol Irene Newell, George "Buck" Flower, Paul Bentzen, John Alderman.

One of several regional genre films by Wisconsin auteur Bill Rebane (whose work is generously featured in these movie pack sets), this low-budget cousin to The Andromeda Strain and The Petrified Forest  has the old B movie gimmick of top-billing a name actor (Ralph Meeker) who is otherwise given little to do. Instead, the focus is on stalwart leading man Stafford Morgan as Dr. Sorenson, who holds disparate people hostage in a train depot, although the novelty in this scenario is that he’s doing it for their own good.

Sorenson was recruited to supervise a shipment of some micro-organisms from a Martian space probe, to be delivered by train to Denver, Colorado. However, a railroad employee who couldn’t resist snooping, cuts himself on one of the microscope slides containing the cells, and perhaps affects people by touch once the train stops over in Moose Point! Therefore Sorenson must quarantine everyone at this depot while the scientists race to find an antidote.

The snoopy employee Hank is played by George “Buck” Flower, who made a career playing various drunks, bums and hillbillies in the 1970s and 1980s. His sleepy, folksy drawl fits well with the local colour at the depot. The unlikely romantic lead is the beefy, sweaty, bearded Jack Tiller (played by John Goff), who fashions himself as a sex machine to all the chicks. Throughout this scenario, he makes amorous advances to the receptionist Jenny (played by Carol Irene Newell, who would later become a director for theatre). Ralph Meeker is Charlie, the depot manager who has little to do except peer through glasses and smoke.

Despite the appearance of name actors, this movie still feels like a regional production with casting of Goff and Newell, who don’t have conventional matinee looks. (The shaggy Paul Bentzen, the unlikely romantic lead in Rebane's previous Invasion From Inner Earth, also makes an appearance, as one of the men rushing to find a cure.) An attribute of regional films is the casting of local everyday people, lending authenticity that a glossy Hollywood production would not.  This special quality can also be its undoing, if the inexperienced unknowns can't act in front of the camera. As such, this film is neither the best nor the worst example of regional moviemaking.

Plague-themed science fiction films work when they don't feature extraneous extreme close-ups of organisms, scientists peering through microscopes, or weird music, and instead concentrate on the human drama. As such, Ingrid Neumayer’s screenplay is tough going for the first half hour, with far too many scenes of scientists babbling about who knows what, and of Hank spending too much time babbling about who knows what between gulps of booze. However, the film gets in motion once the drama unfolds at the depot.

Once Sorenson learns from his superiors that he and his “hostages” (Hank included) must stay awake until an antidote is found, tensions further ensue, as these sleep-deprived people begin to wear each other down. This genial thriller does have one showstopping moment when Charlie falls asleep, and we witness the effects of the organism: his head shrivels, causing his eyes and brain to pop out!  While Rebane’s direction is nothing special, he cleverly depicts the government soldiers rather mysteriously, as it is unclear whether they are there to rescue or exterminate our protagonists. The surprisingly pessimistic ending leaves a haunting impression with its oblique freeze frame.

Those who dislike Rebane's other Wisconsin-lensed films (Invasion From Inner Earth; The Giant Spider Invasion) usually consider The Alpha Incident his best work. This movie is honourable and inoffensive, but still rather bland.

MMM Rating: 2.5/5

Located on: Chilling Classics.