"Deadly Harvest": Part One
Mar. 12th, 2005 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosWell, it was somebody's genius idea to only divide this sucker into six chapters on the DVD, and it was also my genius idea to start doing this the same weekend I'm trying to pound out five chapters worth of book. In any event, I had booze and sugar, so I started already, one chapter at a time. ;)
Okay, before I go any further, I should point out that Deadly Harvest was apparently a TV movie in 1977. Now, I am the last person who should be talking about the year 1977, since all I know about it is that Elvis died during it and that I spent three-quarters of it as a fetus. But through the wonders of modern technology, otherwise known as IMDB, I discovered that 1977 was the year where Star Wars and Annie Hall shared the top ten at the box office with Oh God! and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. Honestly, this does not bode well for the film. (Or humanity in general, for that matter.) Between that, the world's worst airplane disaster that wasn't September 11th, Australia's worst railway accident, a flood in Johnstown, an earthquake in Europe, the New York City blackout, and the only time in recorded history that snow has fallen in Miami, I find myself amazed that nobody took those as a sign of my impending arrival and behaved accordingly. You know, the usual ... exorcists, wooden stakes, gallons of holy water. And yet, here I am.
In any event, the movie. (Okay, after I went through the Trivia section on the DVD. Dude, did you know that the guy who played the father on The Waltons made raising all of the plants that are mentioned in the works of Shakespeare his hobby? That's both cool and screwed-up.)
The first thing we see, aside from a terribly filmed shot that shows that this movie will be shown in beautiful Camera-Uncle-Butch-Gave-Me-For-Christmas-In-1966-O-Vision, is fields covered in a light dusting of snow. This isn't helping with the mental image I got when I first saw the title, which was of a gigantic walking ear of corn with a machete and a bloody hockey mask. "To most of us, it came as a surprise," a disembodied voice says. Holy crap! The walking ear of corn has come for me! "Not many understood. Too few cared enough to stop it." More flying over the snow-dusted ground, under which the homicidal wheat waits to kill us all.
And now we focus on a farmhouse, because sooner or later, we were going to have to focus on something. Then we spin around the house. Wait, is this a realtor's video or a movie? Well, it turns out Daddy is leaving the barn, and his little girl is trailing after him, begging him not to kill her pet cow. Oh, you're kidding me. You know, one part of me knows that this is a farm and this kid is raising it for 4-H and the point is supposed to be that now they even have to slaughter the pets. The other part of me wants to ask why they can't kill the little girl and feed it to the cow, Dad. Also, Dad has a GINORMOUS mustache, which I mention because for the rest of the movie when everyone else is starving, I'm going to have to restrain myself from asking if anybody's thought of digging through that sucker for lost loaves of bread and whole baked hams.
So then Dad goes on to list pretty much everybody in the cast and how they all have to eat to survive, and what they have to eat to survive is her helfer. So the little girl says, "Fuck you and your ham-hoarding mustache, Dad." Oh, she does not. But her bulky red wool hat might have.
Dad goes over to talk to his son, who's bent over the engine to the tractor and OMG THAT'S GERAINT WYN DAVIES WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO HIS HAIR? Was this what was happening in men's haircuts when I was in the womb?! For that three days past her due date alone, I need to send my mother a thank-you card. And some roses. And a new kitten. The haircut, by the way, is halfway between a pageboy and a bowl cut. It doesn't help that Geraint Wyn Davies looks like he's twelve. Okay, twelve on Mercury, maybe. It looks like a lhasa apso is swallowing his head. By the way, Dad's going to need that tractor for "the project", whatever the hell that is.
Meanwhile, Wool Hat is leading her cow out of the barn. Oh, no, they're making a break for it! Boooooooorn freeeeeee! Run, Bessie, run like the wind!
Oh, good Lord, she really is running away with the cow. Well, hell, maybe she'll get lucky, make a wrong turn, and end up in Star Wars.
Dad walks out of the house carting his rifle, and Geraint Wyn Davies stops him. "Where you going with that, Dad?" Why, Dad's going to kill the cow, Geraint Wyn Davies. You know, the one you just saw being led away. Keep up, kid. Geraint Wyn Davies and his full, pouty lips get pissed off because Dad plans to share that meat with his sister and her annoying fiance from the city. The sister, by the way, will be played by Kim Cattrall. (Now, there are two kinds of people -- those who think she was better on Sex and the City, and those who think she was better in Mannequin. If I have to tell you which camp I'm in, you haven't been reading this journal long enough. Also, I liked Mannequin 2: On The Move. I know it was awful. Shut up. I have to express my masochistic tendencies somehow.)
Anyway, this is when GWD mentions that Wool Hat took her pet and ran away to join the circus. Dad understandably flips out.
Meanwhile, three hunters drive around in a van looking for prey. You can tell they're evil hunters because suddenly the synthesizer goes fucking batshit insane. They spot Wool Hat and her trick cow walking through a field, drive off the road, and skid around the two of them in their ominous Van of Doooooom. So they're really bad hunters, I guess. And of course, they yank away Wool Hat and blow the cow's brains out right in front of her. Welcome to Complete Lack of Conscience Theater, ladies and gentlemen. As they drive off, Dad shows up. Good timing, Dad's mustache.
The hunters drive off singing "Old MacDonald Had a Cow". Because they're assholes, see. They laugh in that way that would make you positive they're going to get crushed in the earthquake or drowned in the flood, if this weren't a movie about starvation. Maybe their fate is to be eaten by Sally Struthers? A bad case of scurvy? Hell, I don't know.
Back at the farmhouse, Mom cleans Wool Hat's festuring wounds of guilt and remorse ... no, wait, I'm sorry, those are just brush burns from struggling with the hunters. Everybody turns to Dad and says, "What the hell are we going to do now?" Dad stuffs his hands in his pockets, says he'll take care of them, and lets a bushel of apples fall from his mustache into his gaping maw. GWD argues that they should ... I don't know, chase after the hunters with pitchforks and a jaunty angry mob tune. Dad will have none of that. Their respective hair-grooming mistakes have no comment.
GWD storms off the cardboard kitchen set in anger. Mom laments that it's August and it's winter. Lady, I feel yourcold pain. Well, except you're hungry and I'm drinking Smirnoff and eating Bottlecaps.
Meanwhile, GWD is off playing Kid Detective with the blood-spattered torn-up field where the hunters were. Dude, how many times do I have to say this? You don't get the superpowers until after you've played the role.
We cut from GWD to a skyscraper. Inside is another man with ... oh, God, these bad haircuts are everywhere, aren't they? I don't know who the hell this guy is, but his father comes into the office he's working in and gleefully announces "we're down to 30% rationing." Somebody read the script wrong if "gleeful" is the only way I can describe that line reading. This father whips out a folder full of papers and says he's done a bunch of figuring, the government's lying to them, and he should run those numbers through the computer. And I know they had computers back then, but my mental image of this involves him literally running through a gigantic computer to check this info, probably by feeding it to giant hamsters in exercise wheels.
Charles (the guy with the "No, I don't wear a hairpiece, I just wanted it to look that way" haircut) gets a phone call from his wife, because apparently the grocery store ran out of food. I'm probably supposed to feel sorry for these people, and yet I still keep eating my Bottlecaps. Go figure. Anyway, Gleeful Dad suggest they go into the country and bug some farmers for their food. After a little dithering, Charles relents. Excuse me while I take a five-minute break after that action-packed scene.
Wool Hat is helping Dad fix the tractor. Hey, Dad, that suggestion to use the daughter for food still stands. She's annoying the piss out of me. Like now, when she asks if she'll be going to school in September. To my disappointment, Dad doesn't respond, "No, honey, you have to starve to death at home."
Kim Cattrall (and holy crap, not only does she have brown hair, but she has Geraint Wyn Davies's haircut in brown) shows up on a motorbike with her dorky fiance. Kim Cattrall and Wool Hat run off to get fitted for wedding stuff. Dorky Fiance stays behind to find out that part of Trick Cow was meant for them as a wedding present ("Ground chuck? You shouldn't have!") and that Dad's ingenious hydroponics plan got shafted by the government.
Next up: Geraint Wyn Davies needs help. Because he's worth it. *twirly spin, shows off the hair*
Okay, before I go any further, I should point out that Deadly Harvest was apparently a TV movie in 1977. Now, I am the last person who should be talking about the year 1977, since all I know about it is that Elvis died during it and that I spent three-quarters of it as a fetus. But through the wonders of modern technology, otherwise known as IMDB, I discovered that 1977 was the year where Star Wars and Annie Hall shared the top ten at the box office with Oh God! and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. Honestly, this does not bode well for the film. (Or humanity in general, for that matter.) Between that, the world's worst airplane disaster that wasn't September 11th, Australia's worst railway accident, a flood in Johnstown, an earthquake in Europe, the New York City blackout, and the only time in recorded history that snow has fallen in Miami, I find myself amazed that nobody took those as a sign of my impending arrival and behaved accordingly. You know, the usual ... exorcists, wooden stakes, gallons of holy water. And yet, here I am.
In any event, the movie. (Okay, after I went through the Trivia section on the DVD. Dude, did you know that the guy who played the father on The Waltons made raising all of the plants that are mentioned in the works of Shakespeare his hobby? That's both cool and screwed-up.)
The first thing we see, aside from a terribly filmed shot that shows that this movie will be shown in beautiful Camera-Uncle-Butch-Gave-Me-For-Christmas-In-1966-O-Vision, is fields covered in a light dusting of snow. This isn't helping with the mental image I got when I first saw the title, which was of a gigantic walking ear of corn with a machete and a bloody hockey mask. "To most of us, it came as a surprise," a disembodied voice says. Holy crap! The walking ear of corn has come for me! "Not many understood. Too few cared enough to stop it." More flying over the snow-dusted ground, under which the homicidal wheat waits to kill us all.
And now we focus on a farmhouse, because sooner or later, we were going to have to focus on something. Then we spin around the house. Wait, is this a realtor's video or a movie? Well, it turns out Daddy is leaving the barn, and his little girl is trailing after him, begging him not to kill her pet cow. Oh, you're kidding me. You know, one part of me knows that this is a farm and this kid is raising it for 4-H and the point is supposed to be that now they even have to slaughter the pets. The other part of me wants to ask why they can't kill the little girl and feed it to the cow, Dad. Also, Dad has a GINORMOUS mustache, which I mention because for the rest of the movie when everyone else is starving, I'm going to have to restrain myself from asking if anybody's thought of digging through that sucker for lost loaves of bread and whole baked hams.
So then Dad goes on to list pretty much everybody in the cast and how they all have to eat to survive, and what they have to eat to survive is her helfer. So the little girl says, "Fuck you and your ham-hoarding mustache, Dad." Oh, she does not. But her bulky red wool hat might have.
Dad goes over to talk to his son, who's bent over the engine to the tractor and OMG THAT'S GERAINT WYN DAVIES WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO HIS HAIR? Was this what was happening in men's haircuts when I was in the womb?! For that three days past her due date alone, I need to send my mother a thank-you card. And some roses. And a new kitten. The haircut, by the way, is halfway between a pageboy and a bowl cut. It doesn't help that Geraint Wyn Davies looks like he's twelve. Okay, twelve on Mercury, maybe. It looks like a lhasa apso is swallowing his head. By the way, Dad's going to need that tractor for "the project", whatever the hell that is.
Meanwhile, Wool Hat is leading her cow out of the barn. Oh, no, they're making a break for it! Boooooooorn freeeeeee! Run, Bessie, run like the wind!
Oh, good Lord, she really is running away with the cow. Well, hell, maybe she'll get lucky, make a wrong turn, and end up in Star Wars.
Dad walks out of the house carting his rifle, and Geraint Wyn Davies stops him. "Where you going with that, Dad?" Why, Dad's going to kill the cow, Geraint Wyn Davies. You know, the one you just saw being led away. Keep up, kid. Geraint Wyn Davies and his full, pouty lips get pissed off because Dad plans to share that meat with his sister and her annoying fiance from the city. The sister, by the way, will be played by Kim Cattrall. (Now, there are two kinds of people -- those who think she was better on Sex and the City, and those who think she was better in Mannequin. If I have to tell you which camp I'm in, you haven't been reading this journal long enough. Also, I liked Mannequin 2: On The Move. I know it was awful. Shut up. I have to express my masochistic tendencies somehow.)
Anyway, this is when GWD mentions that Wool Hat took her pet and ran away to join the circus. Dad understandably flips out.
Meanwhile, three hunters drive around in a van looking for prey. You can tell they're evil hunters because suddenly the synthesizer goes fucking batshit insane. They spot Wool Hat and her trick cow walking through a field, drive off the road, and skid around the two of them in their ominous Van of Doooooom. So they're really bad hunters, I guess. And of course, they yank away Wool Hat and blow the cow's brains out right in front of her. Welcome to Complete Lack of Conscience Theater, ladies and gentlemen. As they drive off, Dad shows up. Good timing, Dad's mustache.
The hunters drive off singing "Old MacDonald Had a Cow". Because they're assholes, see. They laugh in that way that would make you positive they're going to get crushed in the earthquake or drowned in the flood, if this weren't a movie about starvation. Maybe their fate is to be eaten by Sally Struthers? A bad case of scurvy? Hell, I don't know.
Back at the farmhouse, Mom cleans Wool Hat's festuring wounds of guilt and remorse ... no, wait, I'm sorry, those are just brush burns from struggling with the hunters. Everybody turns to Dad and says, "What the hell are we going to do now?" Dad stuffs his hands in his pockets, says he'll take care of them, and lets a bushel of apples fall from his mustache into his gaping maw. GWD argues that they should ... I don't know, chase after the hunters with pitchforks and a jaunty angry mob tune. Dad will have none of that. Their respective hair-grooming mistakes have no comment.
GWD storms off the cardboard kitchen set in anger. Mom laments that it's August and it's winter. Lady, I feel your
Meanwhile, GWD is off playing Kid Detective with the blood-spattered torn-up field where the hunters were. Dude, how many times do I have to say this? You don't get the superpowers until after you've played the role.
We cut from GWD to a skyscraper. Inside is another man with ... oh, God, these bad haircuts are everywhere, aren't they? I don't know who the hell this guy is, but his father comes into the office he's working in and gleefully announces "we're down to 30% rationing." Somebody read the script wrong if "gleeful" is the only way I can describe that line reading. This father whips out a folder full of papers and says he's done a bunch of figuring, the government's lying to them, and he should run those numbers through the computer. And I know they had computers back then, but my mental image of this involves him literally running through a gigantic computer to check this info, probably by feeding it to giant hamsters in exercise wheels.
Charles (the guy with the "No, I don't wear a hairpiece, I just wanted it to look that way" haircut) gets a phone call from his wife, because apparently the grocery store ran out of food. I'm probably supposed to feel sorry for these people, and yet I still keep eating my Bottlecaps. Go figure. Anyway, Gleeful Dad suggest they go into the country and bug some farmers for their food. After a little dithering, Charles relents. Excuse me while I take a five-minute break after that action-packed scene.
Wool Hat is helping Dad fix the tractor. Hey, Dad, that suggestion to use the daughter for food still stands. She's annoying the piss out of me. Like now, when she asks if she'll be going to school in September. To my disappointment, Dad doesn't respond, "No, honey, you have to starve to death at home."
Kim Cattrall (and holy crap, not only does she have brown hair, but she has Geraint Wyn Davies's haircut in brown) shows up on a motorbike with her dorky fiance. Kim Cattrall and Wool Hat run off to get fitted for wedding stuff. Dorky Fiance stays behind to find out that part of Trick Cow was meant for them as a wedding present ("Ground chuck? You shouldn't have!") and that Dad's ingenious hydroponics plan got shafted by the government.
Next up: Geraint Wyn Davies needs help. Because he's worth it. *twirly spin, shows off the hair*
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Date: 2005-03-14 02:03 am (UTC)