The Cremators

Rating:
Summary: Toasted cheese - 70's style!
Review: Well, first of all, forget the lurid cover. The movies is based on Julain May's 1951 heavily-anthologized short story "Dune Roller". And you know, someone in the movie actually SAYS "dune roller". That's about the closest the story and film resemble each other, though.

The disc starts with a "drive-in" theme, but don't expect the full "Something Weird" treatment. All you'll get here is some half-nekkid gals swarming over a car collecting "admission", and then some pointless commentary (complete with really bad jokes) before the film actually begins. That's it (thank goodness!) Taking his cue from Ed Wood, anti-auteur Harry Essex has a super-somber narrator voice-over, "There were two witnesses to the fall of the meteor". The first, a generic "Indian", is incinerated into powder. "The second was a fish", more specifically, a hammerhead shark, who seems to have picked the wrong time to wander into Lake Michigan. Yes, that's right - this is SUPPOSED to be on the shores of Lake Michigan. How can you tell? Besides the fact that's where the original story is set, the characters keep making ridiculous references to things like "busy as Main Street in Muskegon". Apparently Mr. Essex (whose previous movie was "Octaman", if you wanted to know) had never been to my home state. The characters all talk as if they are from either the Deep South or from Maine. The shores of the lake vary from 300-foot cliffs to vast, level, sandy beaches, usually within the same scene. The setting itself is sort of left up to the viewer - no one actually comes out and SAYS "here on the shores of Lake Michigan", but oh, well, why bother?

Our protagonist is sporting the longish hair and black turtleneck that were de rigueur for the early 70's intellectual, especially one who is devoted to getting the word "ecology" into the common vocabulary. He finds an unusual-looking rock in a pool (PLEASE tell me that isn't a "tide pool"....) and decides to send it off to Ann Arbor (see, told ya so) for analysis. As it turns out, the unusual-looking rocks are part of the giant ball of fire we saw toasting the "Indian". And for whatever reason, that ball is now on the rampage, looking for it's scattered remains and burning up who- or what-ever gets between it and it's....offspring? That's not enough - apparently it has a personality - it can get angry or remain apathetic. (Great - a giant ball of fire with mood swings....) As you can readily predict, there's going to be more than a couple of folks turned into the equivalent of a full ashtray before the....momma-ball? daddy-ball? is satisfied. The film's composer shows an unusual amount of exposure to classical music - about halfway through, he begins ripping off Shostakovich shamelessly, and for the last two minutes of the movie, he just plain settles for Holst's "Mars".

The leading lady is played by Maria de Aragon, who gets a 10-minute interview after the movie. Why her, and not "star" Marvin Howard? Probably because Howard wanted to crawl under a rock and never be seen again. Ms. de Aragon, on the other hand, was actually in the original "Star Wars"! Huh? you say? Where? Why, she was.......Greedo! (Boy, and she'll let you know it, too - she even has a web site selling autographed pics of "Greedo" and autograped copies of this classic.)

Overall impression - pretty dull stuff, considering the plot. Ms. Aragon says the entire flick cost $50,000. I'm surprised it was THAT much. Nowhere NEAR as fun as most of Ed Wood's stuff, but NOT as painful as, say, Francis Coleman or one of the Dr. Orloff euro-trash flicks. Save this one for when you want to chase away relatives who've hung around after Christmas too long.