I'm really disappointed. The previews made this seem like it was going to be a fun knock-off clone/spoof of Army of Darkness with a hero fighting Harpies instead of Deadites, boy what a let down. I tried, I really tried, to watch Stan Lee's Harpies but by the 45 minute mark I was already well into the Buck Roger's episode Planet of the Slave Girls. :D
It's not that Harpies rubbed me the wrong way by starting off exuding a we're using "Stargate SG-1 set rejects" to make a cheap knock-off of Army of Darkness vibe, that a strangely similar story and setting (see the SG-1 episode 'Bad Guys') was done (and better) on that now canceled series, or even that Stephen Baldwin and a (unknown to me) woman playing a pig keeper seemed to be the most competent actors seen in those first 40 some odd minutes. Rather Harpies was just, ugh, deadly dull boring.
Was it just me? Did anyone else bother to tune in?
I can forgive a lot in a B-movie be it bad acting, infantile dialogue, anachronisms, overacting (the guy playing the sorcerer actually takes this to a new level), plot inconsistency, and even sequels that have no relationship to the original movie. However tedious dullness is an unforgivable cinematic sin.
To put this in perspective by the time the titular CGI monsters made an appearance I was already thinking about getting out my Buck Roger's DVD set, which I only recently picked up after finding it on sale, and giving up on this weak sciffy produced turd. But to be perfectly honest I'm not sure which pushed me over the edge, the utter s**te CGI harpies (which the editors of this movie at least realized were utter s**te so didn't show close-ups of) or the utter s**te costuming and make-up effects for the harpies that seemed to involve a lot of smeared mascara and a white shift.
Either way this is a cinematic abortion that never should have been made. Shame on Stan Lee for putting his name on this garbage! Then again this is from the same guy who thought it would be a good idea to do a faux reality series about lunatics off their meds who want to be superheroes.
What's next Stan Lee's Attack of the Turd Monsters? :bouncegiggle:
Troma is dead. Long live Sciffy, the new Troma!
I was sort of thinking of watching that, but the Ultimate Fighter season 5 finale was on at the same time. Besides, Stephen Baldwin is such an incredibly weak actor, he makes me yearn for the good old days when Casper Van Diem and Dean Cain used to star in those things.
I actually stopped playing Metroid Echoes to view this film, feel asleep after about 30 minutes or so, woke up about 15 minutes later and then went back to Metroid. This movie is awful, I doubt that even Bruce Campbell or Sam Raimi could save it.
Quote from: Kester Pelagius on June 23, 2007, 11:10:50 PMWas it just me? Did anyone else bother to tune in?
I saw most of it, although it was kinda running in the background as I made dinner. It was like someone at SciFi said, "Let's see if we can hit a new low with a SciFi original movie."
Who did they get to do the harpy effects? Those were criminal.
I didn't drink nearly enough to be watching that.
I am possibly one of the biggest Comic book fans ever and i know I owe a lot to the man, but he has succumbed to the same disease as george Lucas, everybody telling that you are the greatest untill you don't question yourself anymore.
I loved what the man did for us but experience showed me that he is can't reach this top any more.
I think he works best with a good partner ( steve ditko esspecially) and he doen't have one of those in film Buisness .
Quote from: Ted C on June 25, 2007, 12:24:13 PMWho did they get to do the harpy effects? Those were criminal.
I've seen better looking critters in demos for freeware MMORPG's.
BTB,
Sadly the problem isn't one purely of arrogance but, and this is just my opinion, a matter of wanting to cash in while the man is still around to enjoy spending the money without really caring what he was lending his name too.
Someone posted remarks made by the Director of Harpies (look here (http://www.beckerfilms.com/post.html) for the original comments in context) over in the IMDB forums and, wow, I don't even know where to begin. So, first and foremost, to the director I'd just like to say I hope you asked for money up front and that your check cleared for the work done on this turd because I don't think it's going to turn much of a profit! ;)
That said some of the remarks regarding this project are just baffling. Maybe it's me. I don't know but. .
Josh Becker: I really and truly don't like to make excuses for my work, and I believe that I generally don't, but in this case IT'S NOT MY FAULT!
There's no date on when that was posted but it seems to have been well in advance of the film being completed in post. At least that's what I get from the comment immediately following:
Josh Becker: I think this could have been a perfectly okay SciFi movie had the executive producer put more than five cents into the special effects. I haven't seen the finished film.
I initially felt really bad calling Harpies a "cinematic abortion" but, after reading those remarks, it looks like that may have been an understatement. Yet the lack of budget and SFX never hindered producers like Roger Corman or Harry Novak, in fact the latter actually managed to produce some cult classics. Granted they weren't quite on par with those produced by major Hollywood studios but they were respectable in their own way. Yet even the movies that Mr. Novak produced which were utter crap showed better production values than Harpies!
Just look at Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman or Please Don't Eat My Mother. Harry Novak may have produced them but each was made by different directors, and if you glance at their IMDB filmographies you'll see that at least one of them went on to do quite a few other films. But aren't these films, good or bad, really the product of the directors that actually did the filming?
I am baffled by Mr. Becker's comments. Comments such as. .
Josh Becker: There was no FX supervisor/designer of the film, so therefore there was no design or approach to the effects. No one knew what was going on, and no one could believe that girls in cheap nightgowns with black circles around their eyes (we referred to them as "flying crack whores") would remain in the movie. I and everyone else could only believe that the girls would either be didgitally (sic) removed, or substantially changed at some point in post-production, which of course never occurred.
How can you get a movie green lighted without having your proverbial sh!t together? Doesn't anyone at the Sci-Fi channel preview the movies/keep tabs on productions? I really don't understand the process. Maybe the industry has total and utter contempt for genre film making and figure any kind of crap will do. I just don't know.
On the other hand blaming everything on the lack of a FX supervisor/designer, the producer, and post production staff seems pretty lame. Isn't it a director's responsibility to make sure the movie is going to work? Isn't providing guidance, management, and direction- in short breathing life into a script and creating a vibrant cinematic vision by making sure everything is going to work- part of a directors job duties?
But wait there's the following comments (continuing from the previous) to consider. .
Josh Becker: This is what happens when the executive producer decides to not put one penny into the special effects, then attempts to bail them out later with ten cents. Part of what happened in post was that they tried to cut out as much of the FX scenes as possible, leaving only bits and pieces that no longer went together properly. Yes, some of the FX scenes were completely digital, and they looked worse than the live action stuff.
I'm confused. If there's no FX supervisor/designer and, as Mr. Becker claims the producers weren't willing to put money into the FX, then why shoot scenes framing them as if there will be FX work done in post? For that matter if there's no money for SFX why would any director, even in their wildest fever induced delusional fantasies, assume there's a post production budget to cover CGI replacement of characters?
The claim is absurd. I'm not sure which is worse, the fact the director is trying to disassociate himself from responsibility for the disastrous end product he helped create or that, after (one presumes) seeing those end results, both Stan Lee and the Sci-Fi channel went ahead and put their names on this piece of garbage. I just don't understand any of this. What's next will Stan Lee be apologizing for Harpies by saying it's not his fault because all he did was write an idea on toilet paper and sell it to fools?
To be fair when read in context the director's comments really don't sound as bad as reading them cold, though it still sounds rather lame to blame everyone else for the movie being a piece of foetid fecal matter. However what's really telling is the following remark. .
Josh Becker: What's sort of amusing, I think, is that when I warn anyone around here that "Harpies" will most definitely be dreadful, they respond like I'm just being humble or coy or something, saying things like, "Oh, I'm sure it's fine." Well, I'm not being humble (although I have plenty to be humble about), and the film will be dreadful. I apologize in advance. From my perspective, the reason I haven't disowned the whole thing is that I was put into a totally untenable situation ("Sorry, we're not spending one cent on special effects"), with a non-English-speaking crew, in a land far, far away, and I brought it in on time and an on budget. As a director-for-hire, that's all I can do.
Even if, as Mr. Becker put it, he's just a "director-for-hire" isn't leadership and direction expected from a director? Isn't that a director's job? It certainly seems to be intimated in the job title.
You do what you have to do, right? If you have language problems then pantomime your instructions, draw stick figures if your actors are illiterate, visit the local goodwill if you don't have much of a costume budget, and, above all else, don't shoot your movie expecting post production to fix it if you know there's no money for SFX!
Is making a good movie on a limited budget really so hard? I think producer/directors like Roger Corman, Harry Novak, Fred Olen Ray, Jess Franco, and Al Adamson would say no. Probably with a lot of caveats but they seemed to be able to get the job done, and without some lame excuse that they thought post production was going to magically turn a turd into gold. Alas low budget filmmaking seems to be a dying art form.
Still the mind boggles, most especially about sciffy. Granted I know what you film is going to be a reflection back on you and your skill, regardless of the problems involved, especially when you leave your name on said film, but even Mr. Becker seems to indicate he knew this was gobs**te and was really just there to collect a wage. If that's how this production was approached by sciffy it's very telling about their level of respect, or lack thereof, for genre filmmaking. I'm not sure it entirely absolves Mr. Becker but it at least makes it easier to understand the process that led to the garbage sciffy aired.
Very sad. Very disappointing. Very, well, something about all this just seems very wrong. What am I missing?
Them there special effects are fantastic ...
Chalk up another winner for the SciFi Channel.
I made it through the first half hour last night. It was just sort of a boring Army of Darkness type movie, with the usual bad acting you get with Sci-Fi originals filmed in a non-English speaking country, like that Bruce Campbell movie with the alien termites. Got a chuckle out of the bad guy at the beginning, he was sort of a suave wise-cracker, but then five minutes later he's acting completely differently. The special effects were laughable, but not all that much worse than anything else about the film.
I managed to catch a little when I was going off to bed. It looked amusing. It looked like they filmed it in somebody's backyard. The only question is how did they manage to afford Baldwin? I know he comes pretty cheap, but he's still SAG, right?
Thanks, guys- tor letting me know I managed to steer clear of another accident on film at Scifi... Trust me, Ted, they're is NO BOTTOM when it comes to their movies...