And what was interesting to me about watching that film, particularly with an audience nearly forty years removed from its release, is that it plays as a
schlocky action crime drama.
In a world where aging rock stars receive MBE awards, knighthoods from Queen Elizabeth and even appear as panelists on
schlocky TV 'talent' programs, one should not be surprised by rock musicians appearing with the highest pillars of the Establishment.
If the specific pieces often boiled down to vehicles for low-ambition, knowingly
schlocky gags--a biology lab set up to grow poppies for the cultivation of opium on Mars rejiggered, "due to federal law restrictions," to produce " 'soapium,' a Dial soap-based substitute"; a Winnebago RV fashioned into a "mobile quarantine facility" for returning astronauts, stocked with copious amounts of top-shelf booze--the conceptual coup de grace of the larger project was the way it cheerfully strong-armed visitors into playing along with its central conceit.
I would answer not, and therein lies the distinction." If Atwood fails to convincingly counter the charge that she doesn't hold a particularly high opinion of science fiction, this is because she doesn't, repeatedly referring to the genre's golden age incarnation as a
schlocky catalog of bug-eyed monsters and busty damsels in distress: "It's too bad that one term--science fiction--has served for so many variants, and too bad that this term has acquired a dubious if not downright sluttish reputation....
Other times, the characters' dialogue teeters between the profound and
schlocky. But as Henry smartly suggests, "Language is like drinking from one's own reflection in still water.
do we want to be a
schlocky outfit that takes ads in exchange for editorial coverage?
Eugenics underpins the sleek society in "Gattaca" (1997), the bare minimalistic spaces of "THX 1138" (1971), and the
schlocky landscape in "ZPG" (1972), in which child-bearing among certain groups is illegal.
Expect plenty of audience participation, dressing up, and singing along to Richard O'Brien's
schlocky horror hits including I Can Make You a Man, Dammit Janet, and of course, The Time Warp.
Clement, from TV's Flight of the Conchords, is great as the pompous sci-fi writer who has no qualms about stealing Benjamin's
schlocky story.
Events include spine-tingling
Schlocky Horror movies at The Muni Arts Centre Pontypridd, Literary Classics at The Coliseum Theatre, Aberdare, and both Children's Favourites and Contemporary Classics at The Park & Dare Treorchy.
Teeth is a darkly weird, witty blend of
schlocky 1950s horror, bizarre 1980s sex-comedy, and an urban legend told by an excited 12-year-old schoolboy to his mates.
Traditionally, the songs in vintage exploitation flicks and straight-to-drive-in spectaculars were as
schlocky as the films that spawned them.
But the traits of these
schlocky ideas can be co-opted and used to help spread true, useful ideas.
Take this couplet from the song "Wounded Knee '73," a
schlocky folk number memorializing the siege that year of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation: "The White House smoked a pipe/Love and peace were ripe." Or this bathetic tribute to the South Vietnamese communists: "Freedom ...
Likewise, the
schlocky, fairytale ending feels like a cop-out and in no way does justice to the savagery that has gone before.
