Trapped with strangers

It used to be quite rare to see movies that focussed solely on a group of strangers trapped in a small space with one another. There was a time when Henry Fonda trying to deliberate with a bunch of knee-jerk, jury members in 12 Angry Men (1957) was one of the only choices a viewer had.

But recent years have seen the release of a growing number of these group isolation, bottle show films. Many of which are set in far more extreme scenarios than the backroom of a courthouse on a hot day. In fact there are so many of these movies – usually falling into the horror genre, but often including sci-fi elements – that they've pretty much formed a little sub-category all of their own.

At the risk of blowing all the plots, for some reason a fair few seem to end in mass murder. But the best films dealing with the subject make their extreme resolutions almost completely believable, and even inevitable. So think twice next time you get in a lift with people you don't know.

Here are ten movies where the stakes are high, the doors are locked, the claustrophobia is palpable and the clock is ticking.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
I've included George A. Romero's classic horror film mainly for its historical significance. Not only is it commonly hailed as having invented the zombie movie (although the film refers to them as ghouls, and they are able to use rudimentary hand weapons), but I think it may also be the first of the movement discussed here. A group of strangers trapped in a small location, trying to keep their sphincters closed at squeaky bum time, while all around them something utterly horrific is threatening to take their lives in a really nasty and imaginative way. The film starts a little slow, but once it gets going all the hallmarks of both zombie and group isolation movies are there to be enjoyed and/or abhorred. It's also well worth watching the arguably superior, yet slightly less isolated, second instalment in Romero's sequence, Dawn of the Dead (1978).

Cube (1997)

A group of strangers wake up in a cube shaped room that appears to be part of a labyrinth. But the labyrinth is full of deadly traps and ingenious clues. It's another low budget movie from the previous century, but the intriguing predicament and ambitious visual effects will keep you engrossed from start to finish.

Identity (2003)
I nearly didn't include this film because the characters are trapped in a motel – a much larger space than I felt was appropriate. Where do you draw the line? We're all caught on this little blue-green planet, right? But this murder mystery movie still manages to make you feel the confinement, while at the same time its whodunit plot unfolds in a unique and unexpected direction. It also gets bonus points for being packed to the motel's rafters with recognisable faces.

Saw (2004)
When I say Saw, what I really mean is the Saw franchise. There are so many of these films now that it's hard to keep track. And although I probably haven't seen them all, I've seen enough to know that they're well made, engaging and engrossing. (Or if torture porn isn't your thing then perhaps just plain gross.) The original had a slightly different flavour to the sequels, but it's hard to say which is the best of the lot. Purists will obviously go for the first*, but for me the sheer inventiveness of the traps from the later films, not to mention the franchise's developing aesthetic, further muddies this question's already blood-soaked waters**.

House of 9 (2005)
This was one of the first Saw-a-like movies to be released***, and probably one of the best. Nine people wake up in a locked mansion and are told that only one can survive. Clearly inspired by Saw, it's still easily fresh enough to deserve its place here. And besides, its strangers-trapped-in-a-house-and-forced-to-kill-each-other plot bears a lot more resemblance to Saw II than the original. And if my timelines are right, House of 9 was released before Saw II hit the theatres, so who's copying who?

Fermat's Room (2007)
This Spanish film is another one set in a giant trap. But it's the clever incorporation of mind games and mathematical puzzles which elevates it to a position on this list. It means it gets inside your head in a less literal way than, say, cutting out your own eyeball to remove a surgically implanted key (Saw II again). Although that's not to say Fermat's Room is a picnic – lives are definitely at risk here.

Exam (2009)
This is what might happen if, during a job interview, you were put up against the other candidates in a more exaggerated manner. If all the applicants were stuck in a single room and encouraged to really let loose on one another. Say, for example, someone offered to pay the legal fees for anyone who punched another candidate in the face. Kind of like what could happen if Donald Trump was in charge of The Apprentice. Oh, wait...

Devil (2010)
Everyone thought that M. Night Shyamalan only made a couple of good films, and that he only had one trick. And if it weren't for Devil, perhaps they'd be right. But this low-key movie, written by him, set almost entirely in an elevator car, was exciting, claustrophobic and suspenseful, and makes for a very worthy entry on this list.

The Divide (2011)
Don't be fooled by any of the promotional images for this film. It is not set in a crumbling post-apocalyptic New York landscape, filled with characters in teched-up Hazmat suits. Or, rather it is, but that's not the focus, and we hardly see any of it. Instead this chilling film details the collapse of a microcosmic society as a handful of survivors are trapped in a basement for what may well be the rest of their lives. Relentlessly captivating, yet bleak and disturbing, don't expect too many laughs.

Circle (2015)
By including Cube, back near the top of the list, it would be remiss of me not to mention Circle. You can certainly draw a very straight line between the two movies. But that's a tangent. What I'm saying is both films share similar names and storylines. A whole bunch of people wake up in an unknown sci-fi-esque location and have to work out how to stay alive. Except, in Circle if they move they die. And they're gonna keep dying, every two minutes, unless they are able to collectively work out a plan.

When thinking about the above films it became apparent that, like many genres, collections and categories, the exact parameters are hard to define. A whole tonne of movies follow groups of stranded strangers trying to deal with unexpected situations. It's not just a convenient way of keeping production costs under control, but a rich vein for drama. Films such as Alien (1979), The Evil Dead (1981), The Thing (1982), Event Horizon (1997), Battle Royale (2000), Cabin Fever (2002), The Descent (2005), Sunshine (2007), [Rec] (2007), The Mist (2007), and no doubt many hundreds of others, all have a close affinity with this movement, but narrowly miss out on fully-fledged membership. In most of these movies either the locations are still a little too large, offering the chance for too much unrestricted movement, and negating the claustrophobia, or the characters already know each other, and as such miss out on the shifting group dynamics and plays for power, or they simply don't spend enough of the film trapped. In my mind, for films to classify, the isolated characters should show development as a direct result of their incarceration, which in turn should lead the story into its eventual resolution.

Do you disagree? Have I missed your favourite film? Is there something else you'd like to add? As usual, any comment or complaint can be aired below.****

*Is there really such a thing as a Saw purist?

**I’ve just realised that out of the first four films on the list, I’ve kinda suggested that two of them have sequels that might be better than the original. That’s both rare and controversial, so would probably make a good subject for a later blog post...

***See also Aquarium (2004), Are You Scared? (2006), Unknown (2006), Captivity (2007), Breathing Room (2008), Nine Dead (2010), Death Tube (2010), Vile (2011) and probably quite a few more.
****Although when I say any, I mean related to this post. This probably isn't the place to discuss that embarrassing rash, your late-night-guitar-playing neighbours or the fact that it's raining.

Motorcycle justice

You thought I'd forgotten about my 'Judge Dredd' style Arbites Enforcers project, right? I know. I get it. It's totally understandable. But to tell you the truth that's just not the case. I haven't forgotten about them. Quite the opposite. The project has been on my mind for months. Eating away at me, when I should be focussing on other things. I think about it when I'm trying to get off to sleep. I think about it when I'm at work. I think about it when I'm playing with the kids. I'm thinking about it now.

So I've done a lot of thinking.

But sadly, I haven't made much progress. Two things have blocked my flow. The riot gear Judges and the two motorcycle Judges. The riot shields and batons have been sitting on my desk looking a lot less fun to build than pretty much every other unconstructed toy in the vicinity, and the bikes have simply had me stumped, not sure how to proceed.

But after all that thinking there are, at least, a few thoughts I can share.

My Arbites/Judges take their look from the Karl Urban film, but I wasn't in love with its version of the Lawmasters (or, for that matter, the ones from the old Stallone movie). So I had to look elsewhere, and the comic was the obvious place to start.

Over the last couple of years a new mark of Lawmaster has appeared in the Judge Dredd strip, and I've gotta say I'm rather taken with it.

Because it's full of badassery

Artist Ben Willsher seems to be the man behind the new design. In this page from the Day of Chaos saga he compares it to one of the original Lawmasters

I struggled to find any different angles of this machine, but fortunately, Mezco Toys have a model based on it, due for release next month, as part of their One:12 Collective range.

Exactly the design I'll never be able to achieve

But let's not stop just yet. There are a few other designs that have also caught my eye. The next two share similarities with the above, and the third is the old school original Lawmaster in all its glory. I'll probably try to draw some inspiration from all of them, so at this point I'm imagining that my finished bikes will be based mainly on the Lawmaster above, but will also incorporate influences from the three directly below.

Fan art from Dan Cornwell (find him on Deviant Art here)

Jon Davis-Hunt's excellent new style Lawmaster with the old style lights 

Mike McMahon's take on the classic Lawmaster

Now, I have absolutely zero intention of completely scratch-building two identical bikes, so the next thing I need to know is which existing model kit to base them on. There were three that sprung out at me.

Forge World's Heresy era Legion Outrider bike

Titan Forge's Terra bikes

Games Workshop's Space Marine Scout bike

The final choice was made easy, not just by way of price, flexibility and availability, but also by the simple fact that it comes with rider's legs from the same range I've been using for the rest of my Arbites. So, although the bike will probably require more work than the others, it's the bottom one, the Space Marine Scout.

But that's not to say the other two images are useless. On the contrary they both offer a tonne of inspiration for this project. There's a lot of tough, riveted armour and sleek, dangerous curves on those bikes, all of which feels very in keeping with how I envisage Lawmasters to look in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

So there's the thinking. Now I just need to do the difficult bit. Can I replicate any of these ideas, twice, on the model bikes I promised to build? Only some serious work will tell. A little less conversation a little more action.

Some words that kinda mean their opposite

I’m aware that this blog doesn’t really stick very closely to it’s science-fiction subject matter. It roams freely, choosing whatever loosely-related subject happens to be interesting to me at the time.

Well that’s about to stop.

Unfortunately that’s because this next post is going to be not-at-all-related.

You see what I did there? Language can be so misleading at times.

So with that in mind here are a few words that I’ve always found particularly confounding, and that may even mean the opposite of what you think.

Aryan

Let’s start with some Twentieth Century racism. The Nazis famously wanted to kickstart the Aryan race. They saw this as a master race of white Nordics. You know the type, the kind of tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed bad guys that Indiana Jones would come up against. But as an ethnic term, Aryan actually means Indo-Iranians. Meaning much darker tones than old Adolf was suggesting. Just as well he tainted the whole thing out of common usage.

Not so Aryan now, are you, mein Freund?

Factoid

We think of a factoid as a little or quick fact. As in “here’s a quick factoid for you: Indiana Jones’ first name was actually Henry.” But its true meaning is pretty much the opposite thing: an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact. The suffix ‘-oid’ usually means resembling but not actually the same. As in planetoid. Thus a factoid is an untruth.

Dr. Henry Jones Junior. Fact

Defence

When the government or military talk about defence, what they are usually discussing is offence. Thus in the early 1940s, a wise SS would have set aside money in their defence budget for actively hunting down American archeologists.

Emasculate

This next one is more to do with my personal ignorance than common misconception. As such it takes a little setting up. Let’s start with the words feminine and masculine. Feminine: having characteristics typical of a woman. Masculine: having characteristics typical of a man. When we add some extra sounds at the beginning and the end of each word we get effeminate and emasculate. Effeminate is the adjective used to describe something male that displays feminine characteristics. Surely then emasculate is some kind of opposite. Is it the adjective for when a female displays male characteristics (perhaps like Indy’s one time girlfriend, the hard-drinking Marion Ravenwood)? Or is it the word used to describe something male that’s particularly masculine (like our matinée hero himself)? Of course not. After a lifetime of using this word in completely the wrong context, I found out what it really means. Who makes this stuff up?

But it's irrelevant anyway, nothing can emasculate Indy. (Let's not talk about snakes)

Raze
If you were standing in a cellar or underground parking lot and someone was talking about being razed to the ground, you could be forgiven for thinking you were about to step into the lift (or elevator). Whereas instead you should have been thinking that the person was going to burn the whole place down, in the manner of Gestapo agents looking for the headpiece to the Staff of Ra in Marion Ravenwood’s Nepalese tavern.

I know. That last reference was a little too much

Moot Point

But you don’t care anyway, do you? The whole thing is a moot point, because to you it’s a matter of no importance, right? Wrong. The original meaning of moot point is a hypothetical idea created specifically to be talked about. Perhaps a bit like George Lucas saying to Steven Spielberg “what if we took the Charleton Heston film Secret of the Incas, and remade it with a nicer good guy and a bunch of Nazis.”

Nah, it'll never work. He looks all wrong

Awful

Anyway enough of this awful article and its attempts to cram an Indiana Jones reference into every paragraph. Awful you say? Why, thank you very much. The word originally meant inspiring wonder. Literally full of awe.

The Giant Robo Alphabot, part six

In one of the previous posts about my Robo Alphabot project I mentioned my surprise at how difficult it was to find satisfactory entries for some of the letters that you'd imagine would lend themselves quite easily to the names of sentient electronic devices. Letters such as X, Y and Z. I had naively imagined that every other fictional robot out there would probably begin with one of these letters. I figured names like XZ271 or Zardo the Destroyer would be a staple of the genre and there would be all kinds of cool-looking mechs to choose from.

As it turns out, not for the first time in my life, I was completely wrong.

In fact it became quite a struggle to get decent looking machines, that fit my personal aesthetic, and weren't all simply drawn from the Warhammer 40,000 universe (I'm mostly looking at you, Tau).

So below are the ones that I finally settled upon for the last three letters of the alphabet. If you're not sure who they are, or where they are from, then the individual descriptions on each design should help shed some light.

Lo-fi sci-fi

Over the last few years there has been a slew of low-budget films making it into mainstream cinema. With shared characteristics such as improvised scripts, use of locations instead of sets and an emphasis on personal relationships over plot, these movies have been pigeonholed more by their film-making techniques than their subject matter. The exact edges of the movement are hard to define, but this somewhat generalised sub-genre of independent film has come to be known as mumblecore.

Although some pointers exist to help with identifying these movies, I find the simplest way to know a mumblecore film is to see if Mark Duplass is in it.

In some States in America it is probably illegal to make mumblecore without this guy

But this is predominately a sci-fi blog so it's neither Mr. Duplass nor mumblecore that I want to discuss. It's the science-fiction offshoot of the genre, often referred to as lo-fi sci-fi, that is of real interest to me. (The horror sub-genre, containing films like V/H/S (2012) and, arguably, The Blair Witch Project (1999) is known as mumblegore.)

But the term lo-fi sci-fi is still somewhat misleading. Not just because some of the traits that most characterise the mumblecore parent genre, such as the improvised scripts and lack of real plot, can be absent from the often tightly vectored science-fiction counterparts, but also because the term 'lo-fi' has a tendency to be used interchangeably with 'low budget', thus opening up a wealth of movies that I would argue do not belong.

Nonetheless the genre is definitely out there, and no matter where you draw your demarkation lines it appears to be growing. Here are five films, well worth watching, which characterise the movement most accurately for me, eschewing the heavy use of special effects, set pieces, alien invasions and outer space, and instead relying on what it would actually feel like to be immersed in the chosen science-fiction conceit. 

I, Origins (2014)
If you see one film off this list, etc. etc. That's why I put it first. (Though don't be fooled into thinking the other four on the list are in some kind of order. I'm just not that organised.) A beautiful film that covers a range of fascinating themes, but is ultimately centred on a scientific discovery (to do with eyeballs) that would cause a paradigm shift in the way we think.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)
Mark Duplass is in it, so it absolutely must be mumblecore. Based on a perplexing, real-life classified ad that appeared in the US a few years before the new millennium, this film follows a group of fictional journalists as they try to uncover the truth behind the ad's time travel claim.

The One I Love (2014)
Mark Duplass is in this one too. Twice. This list is practically writing itself. A couple, struggling through a breakdown in their relationship, go on holiday together to a mysterious country retreat. But is what they discover there a type of ground-breaking therapy or something much darker?

Primer (2004)
Primer is kind of the dad of this genre. Or mum if you prefer (though its distinct focus on male characters makes me want to go down the masculine route). Like The Blair Witch Project it's probably a little too old to be true mumblecore, but all the hallmarks are there (low budget, real locations instead of sets, naturalistic dialogue etc.). In attempting to build a computer in their garage, four friends accidentally create a time travel device. A cursory glance at almost any other movie made about this subject would tell you never to mess with time travel, but clearly these guys didn't have time to watch too many films. Wouldn't be much of a story if they did. The resultant chaos is so confusing it will hurt your head and have you looking for charts like these on the internet, but that just makes it even more compelling.

Coherence (2013)
What could possibly go wrong at a dinner party among close friends? Now that I think about it, quite a lot. But what happens in this intriguing and suspenseful film is probably not what you'd expect. This highly rated movie is a testament to what can be achieved with a minuscule budget and just a few days of shooting.

Chaos through the ages

Not just years ago, not just decades ago, not even in just the last century, but in the last millennium, when as a child I was first made aware of Games Workshop products, I became captivated by Citadel Miniature's Chaos Warriors range. I say range, but back then it was mainly comprised of a handful of different foot soldiers that had very little in common outside of being supplied with slightly larger bases than the good guys.

One of my earliest miniatures, circa 1985, can be seen below. When I repainted him (somewhere between ten and fifteen years ago) I took the opportunity to swap his weapon for something bigger, add a skull-faced shoulder pad, and sculpt some fur on his cloak.

I always preferred the warriors that had chunkier armour and scary-looking, yet relatively simple head gear, so I went about collecting as many of them as my meagre pocket money would allow. Fortunately for me, but less so for my financial situation, my preferred 'look' started to become more popular. The warrior below is from the late 80s (with the extra banner poles added by me at a later date) and was one of a handful of releases (most likely designed by Jes Goodwin) that really helped to define the range. For roughly the next ten years Chaos Warriors were represented by metal miniatures clad in heavy armour and draped in furs.

Somewhere around 1998 the first plastic Chaos Warrior boxset was released. For collectors like myself it was an exciting time. Finally we could build the warriors we wanted. Except there was a slight problem. Once constructed, the plastic miniatures in the box all ended up hunchbacked, deformed and rather awkward looking. The trick to combatting that was to reposition the head on top of the torso and try to cover the old neck join (now in the middle of the chest).  But while doing all this work I decided I may as well go a step further.

For some time I'd been wondering what the people wearing all this armour might look like underneath - their faces, skin tones etc. So with a plastic kit, that I was already committed to chopping up, mixing it with parts from other sprues seemed something of a no-brainer.

At around this time the decent metal releases pretty much dried up. Thus if you wanted some warriors that weren't simply based on the clumsy plastic boxset you had to look elsewhere. Other manufacturers were beginning to emerge, and quite a few of them had some pretty decent stand-ins for Chaos Warriors. The character below is by Heresy Miniatures. All I did was sculpt the iconic closed faceplate with a bit of greenstuff, and stick a shield on his back.

And I didn't always feel the need to look that far afield. I began raiding my own collection of unpainted Citadel Miniatures. Models that had been released as part of different ranges, that I'd never got round to painting. The guy below is a Thrud the Barbarian limited edition. I gave him a weapon swap, a head from the old plastic Chaos Warrior set, and a cloak from an elf. I reckon he makes a pretty good Marauder champion. He's quite a big fella, so he's probably been blessed by his God. Maybe he's the brother of that character I converted a few weeks back.

The next major release was the excellent Warriors of Chaos Regiment (which I'm pretty sure was predominantly designed by Brian Nelson). These guys still form the core of most Chaos armies today.

Although a bit limited in their variety of poses, there are so many spare parts in the box it's an absolute gift to a Chaos Warrior collector. And of course the beautiful basic models can always be chopped up and combined with other parts to add some variety.

Pretty much every model in my Chaos Warrior army fits in one of the above 5 categories. Very few have escaped my meddling hand completely untouched. As a result, for better or for worse, the army is now comprised almost exclusively of bespoke, and suitably disparate infantry, and includes models that stretch from the most recent releases almost all the way back to Games Workshop's roots. I'll share some of the other models in the future.

Who does all the work around here? Part two

Last summer, when I first started writing this blog, one of my earliest entries featured a handful of servitors that I'd converted and painted. They weren't meant to be auxiliaries to an Astartes force or menials in a Militarum regiment. They weren't meant to be a team of any kind of combatants. Or even a team. I just wanted to build some random servitors that would typify the kind of slaves you would find in the service of the Imperium.

Some would, therefore, be armed – the Imperium is, after all, an overwhelmingly martial place – but many would be designed for general work or more specific, non-combat duties. After I'd finished them I realised that a few may not even be servitors, but citizens sporting implants and prosthetics. Rather than work out who was what and what was who, I just called the whole bunch denizens.

In that earlier post I also mentioned there were a few other conversions that I'd finished, but hadn't yet painted. A few weeks ago I finished this guy and it gave me the taste for painting again so I decided to crack on with the next four denizens.

The first of the above characters is Druuschan Jotun #2 from Hasslefree, with a custom built weapon swap on his right arm, (based on a really old, shoulder-mounted Space Marine lascannon). The other three characters are all out-of-print Confrontation miniatures with their arms swapped for prosthetics (including part of an old metal Space Wolf Scout backpack attached to an original Necron arm, 3 Space Marine power fists and a hook from a Chaos banner). Wherever possible I also crammed in additional vents, exhausts, wires and pistons.

There are still a few more of my servitor/denizens that need finishing – these aren't the last of them yet – but with a little luck it will be less than another nine months before I get round to it.