I don't think anybody is going to take me to task if I declare this January one of the worst months in a long time for losing major figures in film. The very first day we lost legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, a longtime collaborator of Robert Altman and Michael Cimino, and then in quick succession we were hit with the big news of David Bowie and Alan Rickman dying, both 69 and dead from cancers that were kept secret, and the death of yet another beloved British actor, Brian Bedford, the voice of Disney's Robin Hood. What was lost in all that shuffle was the passing of 89-year-old Lawrence Rory Guy, better known by his stage name Angus Scrimm. Much like fellow Brit William Henry Pratt, Scrimm was a tall, imposing character actor who didn't get their break until well into middle age, in Pratt's case under the stage name Boris Karloff. Scrimm's first role was in L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson's first film, the Roger Corman-produced Sweet Kill (1972, aka The Arousers) when he was in his mid-40's, but his best-remembered role came in '79 in Don Coscarelli's classic Phantasm as the Tall Man. His character was the owner of a funeral home and was at the center of mysterious and evil doings, including being able to carry a full coffin by himself and unleashing a strange weapon on people - a silver ball that flew into people's faces and drilled a hole into their skull, draining their blood. Scrimm's 6'4'' stature, grim face and doomy voice made for a heck of a horror villain on their own, much less one at the heart of an intergalactic human trafficking plot:
While Scrimm never found mainstream success, aside from a recurring side character on Alias, he was beloved by Horror fans and filmmakers and popped up in various franchises such as the Subspecies and Wishmaster series as well as the rest of the Phantasm movies. He kept going well into his 80's, appearing in Glenn McQuaid's Burke and Hare-based comedy I Sell the Dead and Coscarelli's John Dies at the End, and eventually we'll see his final performance in the upcoming Phantasm: Ravager, a movie a lot of people have been waiting a heck of a long time for and hopefully a fitting end to Scrimm's career. In the meantime now's as good a time as any for us to explore the lesser-known entries in his filmography, and my choice is a quirky independent post-apocalyptic film from 2006 called Automatons, a film as inherently interesting as the story of its inception.
It's director, James Felix McKenney, conceived the film due to a funny childhood misunderstanding. When he was a little kid he was watching TV with an uncle and an old Sci-Fi movie was on featuring robots. His uncle said it was like a lot of other movies, so McKenney thought for years that there was a genre of films with robots and monsters fighting each other, like cowboys and Indians, and was disappointed to find out that no such genre existed. I'm pretty disappointed too having read that story, but McKenney went one step further and made a movie in that imaginary genre. Despite being made in 2006 McKenney designed robots and special effects to match cheap '50's Sci-Fi flicks, using dinky, poorly detailed models in shoddy miniature sets, shot the film in black & white and confined most of the action to a single room equipped with TV screens. The aesthetic was called "Robo-monstervision" and the film, produced by indie Horror icon Larry Fessenden, who co-starred in I Sell the Dead and helps out dozens of little Horror flicks, such as The House of the Devil, through his company Glass Eye Pix (and makes a cameo near the end), is akin to if Guy Maddin helmed a Terminator movie, an endearing slice of pessimism from the end of humanity as we know it.
In a lonely bunker, a Girl (Christine Spencer) keeps on guard, waiting for her inevitable plunge into the Robot War. Her info comes from battlefield footage as well as video messages from a Scientist (Angus Scrimm) who foresaw the coming of the war but was powerless to stop it. The Girl has harnessed some robots to help in her survival but has no tangible human companionship, leaving herself a sole force for good in a senseless, seemingly lost war. The war itself is not between robots and humans but rather the last dregs of humanity itself, merely using robots as tools in their own demise, and the leader of the "enemy" taunts her through her TV screens. As the body count rises outside the Girl finds herself among the last humans alive, and the choices she makes once the enemy reaches her door will determine the last day of what is left of humanity.
From the bleak, strobing opening credits to the total doom of the ending, Automatons is a brief, somber dreamscape of what might have happened if the world ended after being overtaken by Flash Gordon. The film's most valuable attribute, the one that keeps it from total disposability, is its seriousness, an oddly noble goal when combined with the absurdity of its gimmick. The retro-'50's conceit could have been overwhelmingly tedious, as a number of snarky indie movies have been in the past (*COUGH* Lost Skeleton of Cadavra *COUGH*) but McKenney manages to keep things sober and minimalistic, at times even static. For example, the opening shot is a long take of a radar display showing a dot far from the center of the screen. The next is a series of shots of a robot slowly retrieving an object and walking. Then the radar screen shows up again with the dot closer to the center, and finally we see the robot reach a door. This is done with simple, repetitive sounds, making the effect nearly hypnotic, showing a patience and sense of atmosphere sorely lacking from films like this, even more remarkable considering how cramped everything feels. Everything, even landscape shots, is shot in closeup, and the grainy fullscreen footage only adds to the effect. The low, stifled resolution was partially to replicate McKenney's experiences watching snow-covered bootlegs of old Doctor Who episodes on cruddy VHS tapes. The robots themselves are as charmingly lame as they come, mostly cardboard trashcans with duct tube arms and legs and maybe a few rivets around the edges, though a couple of rolling plastic whatsits show up now and again.
This combination of desolate B&W footage, droning industrial noise and static pacing is highly reminiscent of Eraserhead, though the closest parallel to Lynch to be had is his one-minute-long short Premonitions Following an Evil Deed, shot on an old Edison camera for the international anthology project Lumière and Company. Another big comparison point is Shock! Shock! Shock! (1987), the absolute best '50's schlock nostalgia flick and a film I've wanted to talk about for a long time. Shot on grainy, smeary Super 8 on the streets of Brooklyn, Shock! Shock! Shock! makes a mad, No Wave dash through hilarious spoofs on superheroes, gangsters, claymation, ancient Mayans, slasher movies and postpunk music, seeing far too little exposure by going straight to video under Rhino's home video label (the guys behind releasing MST3K on DVD before Shout! Factory took over their library). On the other hand, Shock! Shock! Shock! didn't have Angus Scrimm, here a welcome balm to the grinding despair of the rest of the film, showing him as as intelligent and articulate as British actors get. Shame all the dialogue is dubbed in post, though I gather that was part of the feel - it does newbie actor Christine Spencer no favors. Neither do the absurdist kill scenes, complete with piss takes and chopped-off limbs, in the climax. The whole thing feels a little long, too, though at 83 minutes you're not really losing much time. These are minor quibbles, though, and the lo-fi existentialism of Automatons has a self-evident greatness that makes it more than worth your time, even in the face of our own extinction, voluntary or not. And, as always, R.I.P. Angus Scrimm - let's raise a glass and hope you were able to carry your own coffin to the funeral.
~PNK
