Sunday, March 25, 2018

Buffalo Rider (1978)


Charles Jones was born in 1844.  He was known for being one of the cofounders of Garden City, Kansas, as well as being one of the main protectors of buffalo during his lifetime.  He captured many of the wild creatures in order to prevent their death and impending extinction.  When he passed away in 1919 at the age of 75, he left behind a legacy of fighting for the lives of animals.

This legacy was captured in the 1978 film Buffalo Rider, which might not have been the most realistic depiction of the man, but showed his caring nature for buffalo.  Jake Jones (Rick Guinn) was a frontiersman who encountered an endangered baby buffalo.  He captured it and raised it, eventually learning how to ride the buffalo.  He even named it Samson.  Together, they took down the hunters who were causing the extinction of the buffalo, and cleaned up the frontier.

The story of Buffalo Rider might seem like it could be a good western.  There’s certainly a way in which it could become one of the classics.  The 1978 adaptation of the story was not a successful attempt.  There were too many bits and pieces that felt long, pointless, or dangerous in unnecessary ways.  A vast improvement would be necessary to make Buffalo Rider into a classic that people would want to watch.  As it is now, it’s a ridiculous movie filled with crazy pieces that never gelled together.  Let’s take a look at some of these moments.
The Narration
Narration, when used properly, can be an important part of building a world or characters.  It can set up events that happened prior to the story unfolding.  It can also be used to let the audience in on the thoughts of the characters.  These two things make narration essential to some movies.  That’s not what happened in the case of Buffalo Rider.

The narration in Buffalo Rider was on the more irritating side of things.  There’s a saying in film that goes something like “show, don’t tell.”  Buffalo Rider did show the things that needed to be shown, but it also told those same things.  The narration doubled up on the story, telling the audience exactly what was happening.  It was a redundancy that took away from the story.

The other downfall of the narration was that it frequently took place of the dialogue.  The narrator would say what the characters were saying, and the characters wouldn’t say it.  Maybe they didn’t have the proper audio equipment and couldn’t record the dialogue.  But if they had time for the narration recording, they could have done some ADR work.  That would have been only the smallest bit more difficult than recording the narrator talking about those scenes.

It all felt like there was no focus on the audio work.  They didn’t care enough to have the characters speak their dialogue and thought the narration would be a better way to do it.  It wasn’t.  It took away from what Buffalo Rider could have been, making the movie less entertaining.  Nobody wants a movie of all narration, unless it’s a documentary.
Animal Violence
For whatever reason, there was a lot of animal violence throughout Buffalo Rider.  1978 was a different time for movies, though I would have thought that there had already been a crackdown on animal violence.  It’s weird to see this sort of cruelty depicted on screen.  Death and mauling done to animals is something that should not be shown in films that aren’t documentaries.  There are other ways to go about this sort of thing in narrative films that doesn’t involve actual animals being harmed.  Alas, there were many animals harmed in the making of Buffalo Rider.

Violent acts began early as the hunters were introduced in the first few minutes.  They were shown hunting buffalo and shooting them for skins.  That could be any movie, though.  The difference was that they were actually shooting the buffalo.  At least, it sure looked like it.  They were shooting from a distance with rifles and the buffalo were falling over as if they had been shot.  It was either real shooting and killing, or exceptional acting buffalo that have never existed.

Animal violence would continue throughout Buffalo Rider in different forms.  A cougar attacked a raccoon and threw it into the river before the raccoon floated downstream in a flood.  A cougar attacked the main character and mauled the actor’s shoulders.  The buffalo kicked a wolf in the head.  In the biggest fight of them all, a bear attacked a man, leaving him for dead on the ground while fighting with another bear over their meal.  Buffalo Jones then showed up to shoot his pistol at both bears while they fought.  There was animal on human violence, human on animal violence, and animal on animal violence filling out the hour and a half runtime.
Child Endangerment
Just as worrisome as the animal violence, there was some major child endangerment in Buffalo Rider.  Partway through the movie, Buffalo Jones and Samson came across a baby whose family had been killed.  They took up the baby and began travelling.  At one point, Jake Jones and his buffalo came to a river that they had to cross.  It was too deep to walk across, so Buffalo Jones took the baby in his hand and began swimming.  The baby’s head bobbed up and down in the water, a dangerous situation for the child.  How they thought that this was a scene that needed to be included is something that will never be answered.  It’s baffling that they would risk the life of a baby like this.
The Song
Some movies feature significant songs on their soundtracks.  These songs could be famous songs retrofitted to the movie because they either go with the action, or the filmmakers want to connect their audience to the movie a little bit more.  The more interesting examples are when the movies commission an original song as part of their soundtrack.  The songs become popular and the movie is forever connected to them.

There was a theme song to Buffalo Rider.  It wasn’t a piece of score that was composed as the main character’s theme song.  It was a full, lyrical song that played during the movie all about Buffalo Jones.  The song was also the backing track for the movie’s trailer.  It was a slow 1970s country style song with hints of rock to it, and may have ended up being the best part of the entire mess of a movie.
The Saloon
One moment stood out above the others.  There was an image of the outside of a saloon.  Buffalo Jones and Samson walked up to it, then they ran in the door.  They stomped around the saloon shooting the bad guys who were inside.  It was a ridiculous action scene involving a giant buffalo in a small space destroying furniture while the guy riding it killed the hunters from the beginning of the movie.  Aside from the chase at the end, and the animal fighting, this was THE action set piece of the movie.
Buffalo Rider was one of the strangest movies to be included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in quite some time.  Where others might be weird, they seem to have reason for being as weird as they are.  This one seemed to have no rhyme or reason to the creative choices made by the trio of directors.  There was no reason to show so much animal violence or to endanger a baby.  The narration didn’t need to be what drove the story forward.  That should have been left to what was on screen.  Everything about the movie was baffling.

This was not a true representation of Charles Jones.  Why did they change his name to Jake?  There was no reason.  There was also no reason to leave out how much he did for buffalo as a species.  He saved more than one, and he wasn’t known so much for riding them.  This was like a movie made by The Asylum long before The Asylum started making movies.

1978 saw the release of Buffalo Rider.  No other year can make that claim.  The movie showed a fictionalized story of Buffalo Jones, yet made it out to be factual.  It played like a documentary, but with an obviously narrative script.  It’s not that watchable.  It’s not that entertaining.  It’s more mind-boggling than anything, leaving more questions than answers, and there wasn’t that much to answer.  There’s a reason that people think Buffalo Rider is a bad movie.  The reason is that it is bad.
Now for some notes:

  • Buffalo Rider was suggested by @thenickisaac, who previously suggested D.E.B.S. (week 111), Drop Zone (week 132), Mom and Dad Save the World (week 186), Remote Control (week 246), and American Ultra (week 261).
  • I mentioned The Asylum.  A few of their movies that have been featured in the blog include The Da Vinci Treasure (week 268), The Beast of Bray Road (week 176), Bermuda Tentacles (week 96), and The Coed and the Zombie Stoner (week 102).
  • Have you seen Buffalo Rider?  What did you think about it?  Are there any comparable movies to it?  Let me know in the comments.
  • You can also use the comments to leave me a suggestion for what I should watch.  Maybe you can be the next @thenickisaac.  If you don’t want to leave a comment, find me on Twitter.
  • Snapchat is another place to find me (jurassicgriffin).  I put up clips of bad movies, sometimes, and other times share other things.
  • Next up, we dive into the 1980s with my favourite (for some reason) year to cover in that decade, 1986.  The movie on deck is Slaughter High, which I can only assume is a slasher movie set in a high school.  I might be wrong, but I’m still looking forward to it.  We’ll see how I feel in a week.  See you then.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

The Ugly Duckling and Me (2006) and Travel Movies


A story isn’t always about the destination.  The journey is what guides people through the events unfolding.  The journey is the important part to keep people invested in the characters and what they are experiencing.  That’s why so many movies involve road trips.  Whether a movie is about driving somewhere, about flying somewhere, or about walking somewhere, that journey can be as captivating as having the characters reach their goal.

The Ugly Duckling and Me! was about the journey of Ratso (Morgan C. Jones), a rat with dreams of stardom.  He wanted to make his way to a carnival where he would be able to put on a stageshow to wow audiences.  Along the way, he became the surrogate father to a bird named Ugly (Kim Larney, Justin Gregg).  All the while, a pack of rats tried to track down Ratso to get their revenge on the sneaky rat.

The journey shown in The Ugly Duckling and Me! was threefold.  One was the literal journey of Ratso as he traveled from the city to the carnival.  It was a journey of physical travel, from one location on a map to another.  Then there was the journey of the relationship between Ratso and Ugly.  The third journey was a more emotional one.  It was Ratso taking a trip from being a money hungry, selfish rat to opening up and realizing that he could care for other characters and their emotions.  It was his psychological journey, and it’s this kind of journey that becomes the one that people get attached to.  Audiences enjoy watching characters change as people, animals, or other living beings.
There have been many stories told this way that people might recognize.  Planes, Trains & Automobiles became a Thanksgiving classic due to the journey of the two characters trying to get home to Chicago for the family holiday.  Lord of the Rings was known for how much walking it contained, but the walking showed the growth of the characters as much as their quest to get rid of the ring.  The Warriors was about a bunch of characters getting across a city without getting killed by rival gangs.  Each movie was about a journey, both of the body and of the mind.  The Ugly Duckling and Me!, though not necessarily to the same quality as those, fit right into that template.

On the surface, the story was much the same as any other journey movie.  There was a starting point, a destination, and a goal.  Any good travel movie has those elements.  The Ugly Duckling and Me! began in the city.  Ratso was chased out of the city and began his journey to the final destination, the carnival.  His goal was stardom, which he thought would be found at the carnival.  It was the basic structure that each of the movies had.  Planes, Trains & Automobiles was about a guy stranded in an airport (his starting point), going home to Chicago (his end point) to see his family on Thanksgiving (his goal).  It’s the same basic surface structure with the specifics slightly changed.

After this basic story, things get a little deeper.  The next level down is when you see the companions themselves.  There has to be some sort of struggle between the characters who travel together.  Most of the time, they don’t get along when things begin.  They fight over the smallest things.  One of them tries to leave the other so he can continue onward in peace.  There have been many, many movies that had this piece of the story included in them.  The Ugly Duckling and Me! had this relationship between Ratso and Ugly, when they first encountered each other.  Ratso wanted to get back to his worm friend and go to the carnival.  He later turned around on that decision when he realized how much money he could make off of Ugly.  Further into the movie, a character named Jessie (Aileen Mythen) joined their party and Ratso had the same apprehension against her.  He thought she was taking Ugly’s mind off of the carnival.  By the end, everyone was friends, which is how this level tends to work out in every movie.  The Warriors featured something like this.  A woman began hanging around with the gang, and they didn’t get along with her.  She irritated them, especially Swan, the interim leader.  He would grow to appreciate her presence by the end of the movie, with her basically becoming a member of their gang.

Going even deeper into the story, you have the characters’ individual journeys.  These aren’t them going from one physical location to another.  These aren’t their connection with the other character that they are traveling with.  This is the part of the story where the character changes as a person.  The character must go through some sort of a transition.  In the case of The Ugly Duckling and Me!, the change within Ratso was that he became a more caring character.  This might seem similar to the whole becoming friends with his travelling companions part, but it’s slightly different.  Ratso was a selfish character in the beginning.  He thought solely about what could make him money.  He didn’t care if that hurt the “people” around him.  As long as he was making money, that was all that mattered.  By the end, he was risking his well-being to save the characters he cared about.  He left his greed behind, fleeing the carnival to insure that Ugly would not be harmed.  This selfless deed showed how much Ratso had changed.  This could be compared to Merry and Pippin from Lord of the Rings.  The two characters were introduced as goofballs living in The Shire.  Over the course of the three movies, they matured and travelled away from home.  No longer were they goofing off.  They were fighting to protect Middle Earth from the forces of Mordor.  The maturity was how they changed.
The basic blueprint for any travel movie can be split into those three story levels.  Of course, there are exceptions, but this template can fit the vast majority.  Level one is the trip itself.  Level two is the relationship between the characters as they travel.  Level three is how the characters change as “people” while they travel and connect with one another.  The three of them together make a satisfying story that people will want to watch.

The Ugly Duckling and Me! might not be the best version of this type of storytelling.  It is, however, a good example of how this storytelling works.  It fit the template pretty well.  It had characters travelling together, bonding, and changing throughout the runtime.  Ratso became more compassionate.  He bonded with Ugly.  They went to the carnival.  It was all there.

A story isn’t always about the destination.  It’s more often about how the characters get there.  It’s about what happens to them along the way.  Whether you’re looking at The Ugly Duckling and Me!, Lord of the Rings, The Warriors, or Planes, Trains & Automobiles, there are more to the movies than the start and the end.  There’s a journey in between.  That is what an audience wanted to see.  They want the starting point and the destination, but they also want the journey.  It’s the best part.  The destination is just the cherry on top.
The cherry on top of this post is this list of notes:

  • Other travel movies that have been a part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies include The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure (week 39), Anaconda (week 80), The Time Machine (I Found at a Yard Sale) (week 113), The Hero of Color City (week 114), The Happening (week 185), The Da Vinci Treasure (week 268), and Tarzan the Ape Man (week 273).
  • The reason I know about The Ugly Duckling and Me! is the DVD that includes A Car’s Life (week 2) and An Ant’s Life (week 122).
  • Have you seen The Ugly Duckling and Me!?  What are your thoughts about it?  What are your thoughts about travel movies?  Let me know in the comments.
  • The comments and Twitter are two places where you can find me to let me know about movies that I should check out for this blog.  New, old, or anywhere in between.  I’m open to any and all suggestions and will take them into account when building my schedule.
  • Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I share bits and pieces of them on Snapchat.  If that sounds like something you want to experience, add me (jurassicgriffin).
  • Another @thenickisaac suggestion will be coming up next week as I sit down to watch Buffalo Rider.  There’s not a lot that I know about this movie, but I’m looking forward to putting another post together for you guys.  I’ll see you in seven days with whatever I’ve written.