This year Sam and I debated about having our yearly Allan Fish Online Film Festival. While it seemed an obvious choice in the positive—kept isolated and largely at home, what better time to hold an online only film festival in honor of our dear friend and esteemed cinephile, the late Allan Fish? A thought furthered when I kept seeing an array of arthouse theaters and actual famous film festivals copping the idea of showing their films to online communities, all in an effort to recoup costs as they hope to survive such a turbulent, uneasy time. But in reality, the second half of that statement was the reason for our trepidation: we wanted to respect the anxiety that so many face on a daily basis. But after some contemplation, we figured recommending films to friends and strangers alike, with the potential for discussion, could at the very least possibly offer a slight break, a diversion, to some. It was, as always, why the venture was started in the first place, to respect the memory of site co-founder Allan Fish, and remember him in a way he’d want, via the cinema.
But what to watch in such a state? I couldn’t decide, so I’ll be honest, I cheated. Perhaps in a way, I sought to honor the site’s other founder in addition to Allan Fish, Sam Juliano. I thought, in honor of a practice we’ve long gently ribbed him about of often presenting a Top 10 with a tie at #10 to get 11 (or sometimes 12!) entries into a ranking, that I’d offer two picks today. Ha!
Plus, there was the practical nature of the idea. You see, given the trying times I wanted to pick my favorite quarantined themed film—or at least the most enjoyable I’ve experienced on the subject since the stay at home orders went into effect a few months ago. But, I’ve also seen people hesitant to watch films with subject matter that hits this close to our current reality. I’m hoping, I suppose, that picking two films, at least one will land in welcoming arms. That and the fact that one is, um, dare I say, slightly unrealistic and can be taken on pure entertainment value alone. Without further ado,
The Satan Bug (John Sturges, 1965 114 m)
From the novelist that brought us such action classics as Where Eagles Dare and Guns of Navarone and director John Sturges, one of the era’s great stagers of thrilling set pieces, comes 1965’s The Satan Bug. A riveting tale of a top secret bioweapon, dubbed ‘Satan Bug’, it can, if in the wrong hands and unleashed from its Southern California desert laboratory home, Station Three, kill every human being on earth within a matter of months. When the lethal germ is stolen by a mad chemist with a ‘messiah complex’ we get just that. But the government (for once) is quick to respond and contain their creation, and we’re in hot pursuit as the pandemic looms to safe the world.
The recent success of the early James Bond films weigh heavily on The Satan Bug, where monomaniacal villain Ainsley offers little motivation to his desire to potential reek global panic, stating that he’s perfectly content to life alone enjoying the globe all to himself. But, it matters little, Sturges keeps the plotting crisp (check out that helicopter shot finale!) and interspersed with just enough subtext (those documentary like overhead shots of the one location the bug has touched are very effective—we linger on the idea that we could be the creator of our own destruction just enough) insuring the films motivational thrust of saving mankind is the chief audience concern. A film where worlds are saved by people barely breaking a sweat or the creases in their skinny lapeled suits, it’s sure to provide a welcome diversion and kick of the 4th annual Allan Fish OFF in grand style.
(The Satan Bug can be watched via YouTube here, or obtained via a recent sparkling Kino Lorber region 1 blu-ray)
The Green Fog (Guy Maddin, 2017 63 m)
My second pick, is similarly California set. In fact, it’s a film about California, specifically San Francisco set films. That’s not where the similarities stop either, there is a kindred sense of enveloping around Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog as well. But where The Satan Bug sought to contain the spread, here, an ominous, all-knowing green haze, a fog as the title implies, begins ensnaring the images that flicker before us. Quickly we understand this is an homage retelling of Hitchcock’s seminal masterpiece (and Maddin favorite) Vertigo, but it only uses pre-existing film clips from films set in San Francisco to do so. It then becomes a marvel of cinema scholarship, weaving its plot in a crisscrossing maze of era, genre and aesthetic. Soon, the mania known to Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie is experienced by the audience via an ever-present, but growing ever more intense, emerald hue.
I’ve previously employed films about films to honor Allan (Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen kicked off the inaugural Festival while The Icicle Thief led the second), I can’t think of anything he loved more than the cinema, and The Green Fog does all that and more.