Rating “Cyberfilms”

Cyberfilms is one of those books that I bought on a whim. It might have been during a late-night Readers’ Books run with Victoria. The book might even have been in the bargin bin – the cover isn’t all that attractive, but the description sounded interesting enough. Cyberfilms is a collection of sci-fi stories that were adapted into movies. The cover boldly proclaims that “You’ve seen the movies – now read the stories they were based on!”, but that might be overstating it a bit. Of the 11 stories on the book, only three or four (depending on your accounting) became major motion pictures. The remaining eight were turned into B or made-for-TV movies.

But even with over half of this book’s stories turning into somewhat obscure sci-fi movies, I was surprised (if not to say ashamed) to find that I had only seen one of the actual movies: Total Recall. That’s quite a wake-up call: I never watched Candyman! Or Mimic. Not even Johnny Mnemonic… or Reaminator! I’m not sure what I was doing in my teenage years, when you were supposed to watch these campy horror classics. I wasn’t keeping up with the times, that’s for sure.

This is a cultural shortcoming I will have to rectify in the future. But for this review, not having seen the movies might actually be an advantage: I can review the stories, and their potential for screen-worthiness, on their own merits. There’s 11 stories in the book. Following are my impressions of the first three, with the remaining reviews to follow later this week. Beware that there might be spoilers ahead that aren’t specially marked! I tried to not give away every secret – but I wanted to be able to talk about each story comprehensively, too.

Mimic (Donald A. Wollheim)
1942
Score: D-

This story was the base for Mimic, written by Matthew Robbins & Guillermo del Toro, directed by Guillermo del Toro, and starring Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam.

Not a very good beginning. Mimic just isn’t very nourishing affair. It’s a scant 5 pages, and as a foundation for a screenplay, this isn’t much more than a sketch. A premise, if you will.

The narrator of this story lives in New York City, and recalls a weird and taciturn (but otherwise harmless) neighbor of many years, who always tried to hide his face and who always wore a long, black trench coat. Turns out that this neighbor wasn’t a person at all. He (she?) was some kind of huge, disguised insect, which used the human environment to create a nesting place for its young. The ‘neighbor’ is dead, as are several of the good NYC citizens that served as food – but the narrator and the police only discover this after it’s too late.

I guess in 1946, when similar stories hadn’t been brought to the screen yet, this idea was kind of visionary. But it’s 2008, and there is nothing novel or shocking about the tale. The writing is agreeable, but not particular inspiring. The final reveal isn’t described in the sort of detail that would set my mind spinning.

Ultimately, Wollheim’s Mimic serves more as an FYI than an “Aha!” moment. It’s an unassuming read, largely forgettable. Whatever the final movie became, I can’t image that it took much material from the source.

Second Variety (Phillip K. Dick)
1953
Score: B

This story was turned into the 1995 movie Screamers, written by Dan O’Bannon, directed by Christian Duguay, and starring Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis and Jennifer Rubin.

Phillip K Dick is a household name for most sci-fi fans. He wrote the source material for popular movies like Blade Runner and Total Recall. But for all of his notoriety, this is the first of Dick’s story that I’ve actually read.

In the seemingly near future, a war between the US and the USSR has turned all of Earth into a nuclear wasteland. Sides had been evenly matched until the Americans created semi-intelligent hunter/killer machines (so-called “claws” – the word “screamer” is never used in the story), which turned the tide of the war in favor of the US. The problem is that these claws don’t distinguish between friend and foe (the Americans only hold them at bay with radiation bracelets). And then the claws start developing a mind and reproductive drive of their own, creating a new generation of models that are virtually indistinguishable from human beings and are immune to the radiation bracelets…

Second Variety reads as a familiar survival/paranoia/infiltration tale in the vein of Carpenter’s The Thing.  Hendricks, an American major, bands together with a small group of Russian survivors and tries to alert the headquarters on both sides about the imminent danger posed by the doppelganger claws. There’s four claw varieties, one of which (the “second variety” remains to be identified until the very end of the story – and that model seems to be hiding inside the group of survivors.

Originally published in 1964, Second Variety has aged better than Mimic. The subject matter still is topical. Dick keeps a level of suspense going throughout the story, and keeps the reader guessing as to who might be the claw traitor. There’s many sequences and characters that lend themselves to a movie. All in all, not a bad introduction to Phillip K Dick at all.

Amanda And The Alien (Robert Silverberg)
1983
Score: A-

This story turned into the 1995 made-for-TV movie of the same name, written/directed by Jon Kroll and starring Nicole Eggert, Alex Meneses, Stacey Keach and Michael Dorn.

Amanda had great weekend plans with her boyfriend, but the selfish bastard just canceled on her to hang out with that hot little cousin of his. This could have been every teenage girl’s worst nightmare, but luckily Amanda – royally ticked off and looking for something else to do – spots an alien in front of a video store just in time. With nothing else to do, Amanda decides to help out this people-absorbing alien (which just escaped from a federal incarceration facility by assuming the form of a Latina guard) for a while.

I love this story. It’s fun and evil at the same time, with a matter-of-factness that keeps everything real. Amanda is a deliciously selfish little bitch (to not mince words). She’s self-confident, oblivious to the danger that this body-absorbing alien monster is posing, and happily uses the alien to achieve her own means. By the end of the story, Amanda’s actual boyfriend is dead (absorbed by the shape-shifting alien), she has had sex with her replacement boy toy, and has discarded of the alien when she starts growing bored of it. Of course we’re left with the question who the real monster in this story is – although we don’t quite hate Amanda, either.

Amanda And The Alien is fun. Right up my alley. The story could have turned out cheesy or ludicrous easily, but Silverberg manages to hit the right tone. It actually feels like Silverberg got bored with his story around the halfway mark, it ends rather quickly. But that boredom only serves to reinforce Amanda’s character.

I would love to see a faithful adaptation of this story in movie form. I have no idea how much the actual movie retained the twisted yet whimsical atmosphere of this story. But reading the DVD cover doesn’t give me too much hope – all the main elements are mentioned, but Amanda supposedly “falls in love” with the alien? That not the self-centered teenage girl I read about at all.

Look for the second round of impressions sometime this week, featuring “Sandkings” and “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”.