A follow-up to the 1964 four-way monster battle Ghidrah – The Three Headed Monster, the venerable Godzilla crew returns with this outer space epic one year later. Astro Monster follows a solid human story, even with a massive logic hole, that’s entertaining enough that the hold off the monster action until the finale. This is one of the best out of the lighter-toned sequels.

Nick Adams heads up a cast of Toho staples, including his love interest, Kumi Mizuno. The film wastes no time in making it to the first special effects shot as two astronauts fly into space to investigate the newly discovered Planet X. Once they landed, human-like aliens, decked out in iconic space wear, welcome the Earth’s ambassadors.

As with nearly every movie involving aliens, there’s a plot to take over the Earth. Yoshio Tscuchiya plays the alien commander (in one of his many giant monster film roles) with an expressionless, pale face that simply feels cold. Their plan is long-winded, if only for the purpose of creating intrigue amongst the Earth people.

In execution, the aliens go through a staggering amount of work for a superior race. Requesting Godzilla and Rodan from Earth to protect their own home world from an invasion by Ghidrah, they transport the monsters with the approval of Earth’s government. While the battle does take place, albeit briefly, it’s not long before the aliens are back on a defenseless Earth controlling all three monsters in a classic Toho rampage.

With their extensive technology, it’s rather obvious that they never needed to make an interstellar trip with multiple monsters in tow, or even communicate with humans. They could have just as easily taken control in a surprise attack, which would have been far more effective.

Gaping plot holes aside, this is still a fun, energetic monster movie. The final three-way monster fight is a classic, loaded with destruction and miniature smashing. Two of the suits are familiar for those who viewed Ghidrah one year prior, though the Godzilla suit has definitely underwent some extensive design alterations. It’s far too baggy, hanging off suit actor Haruo Nakajima instead of sticking to his frame. The holes in the neck are blatantly obvious at times, and tongue flops around whenever the mouth opens.

As the human drama plays out, there’s always a need to go back to it. In other kaiju epics, the dialogue-driven plot ends as the characters become nothing more than onlookers. While that eventually happens here, through most of the struggle, there’s an urgent last-minute attempt to save the planet from the invaders. It cleans up nicely without leaving questions, while still leaving things open for the next sequel.

Also, even with some ridiculous camp sequences (including the sadly famous “jig” Godzilla performs), the story still delivers a sense of dread. When the monster fight turns goofy, it’s not the drastic turn off it would have been without a strong build-up. This is what elevates Invasion of the Astro Monster above the franchises lower-end pieces.

Both Japanese and English versions are contained on the disc. While minor variances of editing are present, the prints used look exactly the same. Color is bright, sharp, and full. While overly soft, there’s still a sense of clarity to the picture. Print damage is non-existent, even during multi-pass special effects shots. Grain is only evident during moments that use stock footage. Compression is wonderfully controlled.

Audio is unremarkable on both films. This basic mono effort preserves the sound clearly. The remastered 5.1 track from the Japanese DVD release has sadly not been included.

Extras begin with a nice narrated look at Tomoyuki Tanaka, the man credited with creating Godzilla. His career and life are discussed at length, and this stands as a nice tribute piece. A photo gallery and trailers for other Classic Media Godzilla DVDs are featured as well.

A full length commentary from Monsters are Attacking Tokyo author Stuart Galbraith IV is mostly a discussion of the actors. He finds notable people who never speak a single line and lets the viewer in on the highlights of their careers, though after a while, it’s tiring. Some more information on the shoot, special effects, or the series would have been a huge help towards making this a successful commentary.

Godzilla’s next foray would be an oddball effort, Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. The script was written for Toho’s adaptation of King Kong, but was switched with almost no changes to the. This leads to a number of oddities in terms of the giant monsters behavior, debatably more off the wall than his dance in Astro Monster.

Matt Paprocki is the reviews editor for Digital Press, a classic video game website which he called home after his fanzine (Gaming Source) published its final issue. The deep game collection which spans nearly 30 systems and 2,000 games line his walls for reasearch purposes. Really. He has also begun writing freelance for the Toledo Free Press.

Betrayed – but this time not by the scriptwriters. This episode reaches emotional depths heretofore unexplored in the series. Note it just doesn't attempt emotional depth, it reaches it.

Events start out innocently – or at least drunkenly – with Maureen, Riley, and Jane out on the town and Maureen, with a glazed shine in her eyes, is sitting, finishing up on a chameleon tattoo. Riley's the cheap drunk and completely wasted and Jane's the responsible one – or at least her ability to recover from body damage might take away the effects and eliminate all hangovers. Hey, now that’s an ability.

We segue from Maureen getting ready for her date with a motorcycle and its rider and Jane helping Riley get in a taxi to her waking up to her alarm.

Wait, that beeping is hospital monitoring equipment and she's sans glitter-red lipstick from the night before. Oh, and she's chained to a bed. No one, not her nurse or German-accented doctor will answer her questions. But she is taken out of her restraints and flexes her unflattering hospital gown-wearing self while sitting inside a big, empty room.

Wait, she has a whole ward to herself?

We see Nurse Wells eavesdropping on doc and another doctor talking about treatments. Expecting another insane patient, she's surprised that Jane was let out of her restraints. Later, she's surprised how much medicine they want to give her – dangerous levels. It's ten large needles full of a drug that she knows should cause huge pain, but doc knows Jane and knows it doesn't matter. He drills into her leg and a few minutes later Nurse Wells goes to clean up the needle entry sites and doesn't see the tracking marks she expected.

Vasco, tired of being cooped up, starts walking the second floor. Her door is unlocked, but most other doors remain locked. A quick change into hospital maintenance staff clothes and she heads for the exit but pauses until she sees Strikeforce Vicodin colleague Dr. Seth Carpenter. He's told by another doctor in the parking lot that she's still unconscious so she decides to surprise him with the news that she's not.

Dr. Seth trumps that surprise by dropping a bombshell and shouting for help. She gawps at him and asks, in so many words, what the fuck? Through a pitying glare, he puts her in her place: "What do you expect Jane? How should we treat you after you killed Riley?"

Wha-haa-haaa? Wow. The weasel one is gone? Of course, he 's one of the few characters with, well, character.

Because this was filmed 11th but is airing eighth, we're not sure if Riley could actually be dead – just like the Joe Waterman character who has completely disappeared from the team without any explanation.

So the crew members make their appearances in the hospital, trying to get an explanation for Riley's death. But none are as devastatingly bastardish, cold, and cruel as McBride. He's all Alec Baldwin and says she was a mistake, and a rude thoughtless little pig. Well, McBride is pissed anyway that she can't remember anything and shoves her blood-stained shirt in her face.

This is where McBride tells her she's neuro positive, or in other words, the same as those the team has been hunting down. The same as the group he said would always choose evil over good. To him now she's just an experiment subject. She's nothing.

That's a pretty good plot twist, and acted entirely convincingly. It's only at the end where you wonder whether anything he said is valid, as it wasn't even McBride saying those things.

He also rambles on about NICO being a failure but even after we find out NICO is – Neuro Internment Center Operations – this is just a throwaway part of the plot — for this episode at least.

Maureen visits and though she starts with a "Hey kiddo, how ya doing" she gets body-cavity deep on some of the questions she's asking and starts questioning McBride's motivations; that maybe he's got her locked up because he doesn't want to reveal that he made a mistake. "It doesn't sound like Andre," Jane says. "No, but killing Riley doesn't sound like you," Mo replies.

Some indeterminate time later, Vasco makes another escape from her room, this time finding a way into the doc's office. Paper, flip, paper, flip. She's reading something about new study breakthroughs to do with neuros – and that they may have been achieved through unethical behaviors, as with Jane, now.

Dr. Seth then visits Connor King who only shows up to say he now wants to kick her ass. All the visits and even Jane finding the NICO is all a part of the manipulation she's in the middle of without knowing.

NOW it's even more like a video game and comic book.

Someone is trying to find their HQ through Jane. Someone with an accent. Somehow these people in the hospital are setting up this elaborate illusion, in a way an extension of the previous episode, "Higher Court."

And suddenly, we see Riley alive. There's some huge manipulation going on and at first, naturally, I think her whole team's been in on it. But as they talk back at Deckard Street HQ it's clear they don't know where she is.

McBride is trying to put the pieces together about what happened after the tattoo parlor. Maureen says Vasco wasn't drunk. "She had a few beers and tequila. A few tequilas."

Back at the hospital Nurse Wells is spilling the beans about what she's seen. She tells Jane she's the only patient in the hospital and what she heard the doctors say. She even says she saw the doctor change from doc to Maureen before entering her room.

And while I think the nurse is part of the act, another greatly timed and executed surprise takes place. The nurse, she’s talking to Patient Vasco, but it’s the doc and he suddenly gets the strangling urge and kills her.

He’s a shape-shifter, which explains why each of the crew visited her separately. It is “Maureen” pushing Vasco in a wheelchair out of the building.

Jane reaches for a security guard's gun – and has to shoot another one. The guy she shot gets back up and shoots Jane in the back as she and Maureen fall out through the lobby window.

Clearly “Maureen” is planning to get herself and Jane to the HQ. The other doctor is looking down through a window, smiling.

There’s just one problem. As she gets into the car, Maureen doesn’t have that bum-crack tat she just got. Seeing that, Jane feeds her a line about a boyfriend she supposedly stole at the academy. “Maureen” just accepts it and Jane is behind the wheel leaving everyone behind in her dust. Wait, nope. I thought she would but the sensible thing – absent from so many shows – doesn’t happen. Instead as they drive, she uses her credit card twice for the same $23.47 amount – and Riley’s got her tracked. Once for gas and once while paying for a snack and leaving a tip to get to that amount.

Jane finally pulls up to where she says is NICO. And Team Vicodin is there waiting. We get the pleasure of watching Maureen chip Maureen.

They jump back to the hospital a little while later but it’s been completely cleared out. Except, nice touch to the end, as they drive away the camera zooms in on something lying on the ground. It’s a pen from the company Vonotek, from the pilot episode.

A reward for the faithful viewer.

When the summer solstice arrived, it found me around the house facing boredom as my constant companion, until I saw The Lot. It is a filmmaking reality show from Fox (Tuesday night) where contestants vie for a one million dollar development deal. I have watched The Lot from day one.

This review concerns the latest episode where the last five of the directors showed their three-minute movie, and Wes Craven served as guest host. Good choice. The two regular hosts, Garry Marshall and Carrie Fisher, are also good. The group started with 15 semi-finalists, hopeful directors, making short films in order to win a million dollar deal under Steven Spielberg. And for three Tuesdays, five directors screened movies that will keep them in the competition, as one is voted off each week.

This week the screening of the last five films remained from contestants Zach, Jessica, Jason, Will, and Mateen. But before this was underway, the loser from last week was revealed — Marty Martin. He had the least number of votes and left the show. Marty had style, but no substance, no storyline to speak of in his film shown last week. He had lots of arrogance, but only style to back it up. Dance With The Devil was just not enough to keep him in the competition he hoped to win.The first film screened was a comedy from Will called Glass Eye. It did not make me laugh. It was a silent, black and white and color film. The story was good and it received good reviews from the three judges, however.

The next film, Blood Born by Jason, was a drama, a moral tale. It was unclear as to the message and made the director seem hypocritical. Why? Because he believed one could avoid sex and violence and still make a good film. Well, he starts his film off with a drug use scene and a menacing phone call from a drug dealer! Then it ends with a looming hit (via drive-by) on the lead actor as victim. All this drama occurs after the character has been told by the doctor that his donated blood had been curing people of their terminal diseases. Who was this guy? Wes Craven said that there needed to be a choice made in order for this tale to not look like gratuitous drugs and violence. Garry Marshall said it was plainly not uplifting — was this man supposed to be Jesus or the second coming or both?Sunshine Girl by Zach (the one to beat) emerged as the judges’ favorite film. A young girl steals the sun for fun because she's afraid of the dark. But it is unclear why she is afraid of the dark. The beginning is a bit muddy and misleading. But the middle creates a nice tension and release at the end, which made this overall a good film. And he got “good job” from all the judges. There was a little bit of dialogue but this was not well done.

The female director in this group, Jessica, did a rather forgettable film, The Orchard. It was supposed to be a horror film — not. Just that day I had to severely prune a diseased tree in my yard. And I am always hoping that the tree gods don’t strike me or hope that my hand does not slip while I am making crucial cuts. So there is tension in this work, and potentially horror. But none of this comes through in this dull drama, with no drama, by Jessica. And it was soundly panned by Carrie Fisher who said the only good thing is that it did not go on any longer. Wes Craven, who put horror films such as Scream on the map, said that “horror was about blood, not sap.” He could not find anything good about it, ditto Garry Marshall.

Finally, the only African American in contention, Mateen, showed his film, Lost.

His script was quite good and mature. Oddly the other films were silent, sans dialogue, but not this one. Mateen’s film was a love story. There was a great deal of room for improvement however. But what surprised this reviewer with all the films this week is the obvious lack of technology that could have been employed to help tell the story.

Lost, for example, would have benefited from the film opening with the woman in the story calling her ex-boyfriend from a cell phone while in front of his house. I would have borrowed a red Mustang and placed her there for the first long shot. This was the judges' main complaint about Mateen’s work — too many (all) tight shots (read: soap-opera material). When the jilted lover asked where she was, he could have then run to the window excitedly and told her that he would be right out. Then he could have run around the house looking for the engagement ring (which was revealed at the end of the film) and put it into his pocket, so that the audience could be in on the secret. This would have created a nice tension in both the beginning and middle of the film, instead of more tight-shot dialogue in a restaurant. For the end, when he went to reach for the ring, she could have then revealed “I got married.” The audience would immediately get the hope lost. The last scene: a long shot, as it began, with her driving off alone in the red Mustang. The judges’ basic critique for Mateen was good dialogue, but no real filmmaking — nothing really happened in the film. This could have been remedied with use of easy-to-obtain technology thrown in, and some good long shots pleasing to the eye, offering a break in the film’s dialogue.

The filmmakers/directors are restricted to short films, varying genres. But there is one thing that seems they have not mastered — tension — a clear tension, to be resolved, in a solid beginning, middle, and end of the storytelling. The tension could be introduced clearly or obscurely. The middle should not be muddy but where the tension has become fully developed. This tension can then be clearly resolved in the end befitting the theme of the film. Overall, this week was a curious conjunction of non-message films. To make matters worse, this was unintended. And the quote from E.B. White that Garry Marshall (who likes to use quotes in his critiques) offered summed up the night: “You should be obscure, clearly.”

Beatrix Potter was born in 1866 and raised in a stuffy Victorian home. Her mother’s greatest ambition for her was that she would make a good marriage match. But Miss Potter was not going to settle down just to please her parents. In a time when women were expected to marry and keep house, she was an author and an artist; she fought for land conservation, worked on a farm, and was a first-rate naturalist. Between the 1890s and 1920s Beatrix Potter published more than a dozen books that sold millions of copies and have come to be loved by children around the world.

Miss Potter, from director Chris Noonan (Babe), is based on her remarkable life. Renée Zellweger does a wonderful job portraying this very modern woman in Victorian England; her performance is heart-wrenching as well as uplifting. Beatrix Potter’s life is shown mostly from her 30s onward although we do get a few flashbacks to her childhood. We get a good sense of the family dynamics before the tests that come later, in which Beatrix struggles to have her parents understand her desire to publish her books.

We follow Beatrix as she talks to a publishing company about her children’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit which was published in 1902. They make her an offer not expecting her book to be anything special and foist her off onto Norman Warne (Ewan McGregor), a young editor just getting started. Norman and Beatrix work very closely together and soon her book is a huge success — a success that her mother is less than happy with.

Beatrix becomes great friends with Norman’s sister Millie (Emily Watson); since both are unmarried and forward thinking for their time, they quickly bond. When Norman proposes it is Millie who encourages Beatrix to choose love over anything else and Beatrix does just that.

Though Beatrix’s parents (Barbara Flynn and Bill Paterson) do not approve, in the end they reluctantly agree to let her marry but with conditions. She may accept Norman’s proposal but they must keep it secret for three months while Beatrix goes on holiday with her parents. Helen Potter hopes that in doing this her daughter will realize the true depth of her emotion and call off the wedding plans.

The film also briefly touches on Beatrix Potter’s fight for land conservation in the Lake District. In a time when farms were being broken up and sold for land development Beatrix bought as much land as she could. There is a delightful scene of Beatrix at a land auction in which she keeps bidding and the price skyrockets but in the end she is successful. When Beatrix Potter died in 1943 she left 4,000 acres to the Trust Foundation; to this day to can go and see Hilltop Farm, the house she lived in, and experience the landscape that was her inspiration.

During the movie Beatrix’s drawings come to life. I was enchanted by the touch of animation and it brought a lovely whimsical element to the story. Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck winking and wriggling around made you realize how important these characters were.

The overall feeling of this film was lightness. There is heartbreaking sorrow in Miss Potter, but by the end you will find yourself with a grin on your face and a strangely light feeling in your heart.

Maureen is the emotionally scarred one in this episode. A guy she's getting close to, Tom Larsen, suddenly walks off the top of the building where she and the guy and 40 or so others are partying — if partying can be considered standing around on a rooftop with drinks in their hands.

Strikeforce Vicodin team leader Andre McBride refuses to believe it's a neuro case, getting quite pen-up-the-ass about it. That is until Painkiller Jane talks to a black guy at the same place, The Sky Bar — where Maureen's friend walked off the roof as casually as breathing. Jane's acquaintance is intense, as only a friend who's been through a lot can be. However, we get no indication of this. Jane gets the same vibes that he might try and walk on air so spends more time trying to protect him, including inviting him back to her place.

Whether he took her up on her offer (or what might have transpired if he did) remains unanswered. But her vibes set the ball rolling on an investigation. The guy who died has no identity, or rather one that should be as obvious as anyone else's. Riley pushes past what he calls the "all signal, no noise" to find the guy's real name — Gene Crowley, a former Mafia accountant.

We get flashes of this dowdy-looking guy in a green room. He has a slight Russian accent and he reads out the name of some other high-flying, BMW-driving suicide. That guy drives of a cliff without so much as a scream. We see him and it's clear he doesn't realize what he's doing. Turns out he's a contract killer.

Later, the neuro rubs his finger over a picture and it looks like the guy's daughter may have been killed, somehow, making him the avenger, but never as suave or playful as John Steed.

Michael Varga, a shoe store owner now, is another person who has turned state's witness and been given a new identity. A total of four have died in a variety of ways, but all suspicious; Kevin Moree, plane, Halle Watson, drowned. Officer Cook walks into the police department, keys jangling, and it looks like he's going to shoot himself, but he doesn't. We linger on Sheila in a cloudy evidence lockup room. Cook and Sheila know each other and swap a little flirtation. Then he gets called away. We suddenly see a blue-tinged hallways get all its colors back. The neuro literally materializes where Sheila is sitting and starts looking, through her eyes, at some case files in a briefcase. The neuro looks like a younger, less smug David Stern (NBA Commissioner).

Maureen – who looks like she has a slimmer face here – realizes the guy who was falling for her was a sleaze so feels better, but the whole team wonders what's going on. Judging by the personal criminal history of the people in charge, Maureen starts to think this neuro is bucking the evil trend (well, except for the old sentimental neuro in "Piece of Mind") and works for the good guys.

Jane tries to convince Maureen that the neuro needs to go behind bars, giving her what the faithful – with the emphasis on faith – have come to know as the responsible, do-the-right-thing, follow-the-rules McBride speech.

Gregory Hazen, currently Monty Lento, and the neuro are in a subway. Hazen keeps stealing glances then gets up at the Water Street … no, Graham Street platform. It changed to our eye, from what Hazen is obviously meant to see to reality. Hazen walks down from the above-ground rail and the neuro creates a whole new landscape around him. This time, though, the new vision hides the four SF Vicodin team members who follow Hazen and see him act strangely. Hazen's vision is the classic car auction he wanted to see, though really it's an empty lot that extends into an abandoned manufacturing plant.

By the way, don't ever try and get a job where this crew hangs out — through all the episodes it's clear, no one makes anything anymore.

The vision is quite complex and involves beautiful models, stroking imaginary cars, and a man Hazen talks to about a 'Vette. But it's clear Hazen is going to get himself ground up in one of these machines. Our team is watching and wondering.

Finally, the guy opens a secure area and flips a switch to reveal a downward pointing cutting laser beam. We see it and Team Vicodin move to turn the switch. Maureen is the one who quickly finds the switch – but she hesitates to turn the laser off because she knows the next victim will have a seedy, criminal past as well. What's wrong with taking out a few bad guys?

And then comes the sweet part of the show – Jane gets hurt. She whips over the fence where Hazen and the laser are about to become. Apparently, but unconvincingly, she can climb over this seven-foot fence and get to him before she can get to Maureen and make her push the OFF button. While it's great to see Jane injured – as this is the purpose of the show – she pushes Hazen out of the way … and then, um, well, why couldn't it stop there? Answer, it could have. Jane didn't need to get in the way.

And while we have watched Maureen struggle for being happy to kill criminals she finds out Hazen was a defense attorney, not a murderer. McBride gets his "I told you so" moment after Maureen says, "I almost let that man die." No, darling, you really did let him die – he just got saved. Hazen lawyered for Robert Grant who murdered his wife and kids. Hazen did his job and got the guy off due to faulty evidence,

Wow, hours after the laser sliced through her back, she's still got scars there. Dr. Carpenter suggests that she was under it so long that her flesh started healing while the laser was still burning. Doc gets to probe Jane, but only in the most clinical of ways. There's coolness and increased sensitivity; she thinks he's pressing hard and he is not.

It's been clinical but sitting there without her shirt on, she pushes an odd sexual moment with the doc and colleague. But it goes nowhere.

Connor King, former prisoner, is gaining access to the witness protection program on some computer somewhere. Riley got him in. The computer he's accessed has all their pictures and a detailed layout of their Deckard Street subway HQ. He rushes back there — and sees a dead Riley and Mcbride, and destroyed equipment. It's obviously an illusion to us but not to him. Perhaps Connor was somehow involved and the neuro wants him to think he's got nothing left to live for?

In fact McBride, Maureen and Riley are standing there trying to get through to Connor but before they do – and brilliantly for the show – he starts firing guns everywhere at the masked gunmen he sees. It seems like he's in a game. He does the arms extended, double-clip drop, Tomb Raider pose. And yesssssss, Painkiller Jane gets shot tons of times.

Bleeding, she's finally gets through to him. "If it wasn't for Jane and her freakazoid healing, I'd a killed all of ya," he say but he's embarrassed to have been fooled.

Riley somehow finds out that their neuro is Ruben Hennessey, whose 19-year-old daughter was killed by a guy who should have been "three strikes and you're out" before he could go for number four. He is disgusted by the criminals AND the system and is "inexacting" his revenge

Team Vicodin lets the news run a completely false report about Connor King successfully shooting them down. It's the first step in a quick and dirty reverse trick on the neuro himself – to make him see what isn't really there. Jane walks in to where he is and is believable as an illusion because she shoots a huge hole in her hand and holds it up to him. It's where he works, which they just found out, though a first thought is, "If it was so easy to find him why didn't they before?"

Stunned by the action, Jane walks up. Boom, he's chipped and left to wonder what hit him. She does feel pain though and her hand is killing her, her blood is left on the wall.

THERE WE GO! Instantly the best one because she's doing what she's supposed to be doing — getting hurt a lot to save the day.

As a sly aside at the end, McBride and Vasco drive up to a prison – and we find out the captured neuros usually get taken to this specific detention center to be held. But that may change, though we're not told why.

Because this is airing sixth but was filmed third, I'm putting it in that position of the story arc – and it still wouldn't have fit in, but it's good. This is an episodic show, rather than one that has threads of story weaving together all the episodes. But since we're dealing with a very small cast of characters, that hurts. This small band of thespians has to be able to act to carry that closeness. Not yet, that's for sure, though this one was a cut above the rest, ironically making me see something I want to see.

Next episode, yes, as we have been led to suspect, Painkiller Jane is identified as a neuro, and she goes a little crazy at the thought (though she had perhaps suspected, too?).

Werner Herzog is a nonpareil filmmaker. Yes, one might argue that a Stanley Kubrick or an Ingmar Bergman, a Federico Fellini or an Akira Kurosawa were greater directors of films, but all of them have a more fundamental connection to the central, if not conventional, core of the art of filmmaking. Herzog is farther off into his own cinematic dimension than any other director. If there can be such a thing as instinct into so rigorous an art as filmmaking, then Herzog is as close to a pure beast in that art as one can get.

His hour and fifty minute-long 1974 film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder Für Sich Und Gott Gegen Alle — literally Every Man For Himself And God Against All, a much more apt and poetic title than the English language version), he wrote, produced, and directed himself. It won that year’s Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and is about the infamous case of a wild child who strode into Nuremburg in 1828, with a note proclaiming his name, and a bizarre tale of being raised in a dark cell for perhaps a decade and a half.

The real life case led to decades of articles, books, and a place in Fortean lore. This is one of those films that no other filmmaker could make. Yes, there have been other films that have touched upon the case, but none so viscerally, and of all the post-Nazi German filmmakers (often referred to collectively as the New German Cinema, as opposed to France’s New Wave) Herzog is the most, for lack of a better term, feral; thus the perfect man to bring Hauser’s tale to the screen.

The film is not so much a linear screenplay as a string of moments and images (one great moment concentrates on a stork eating a helpless frog; yet it’s a beautiful death, while a dream sequence shows pilgrims climbing a mountain in Ireland during a fog, as Pachelbel’s Canon plays onscreen) which act as a bildungsroman not only for the lead character of Hauser, played by the mentally deranged Bruno S., but for the characters that inhabit Nuremburg. They have to learn to be more accepting of someone whose origin, life, and entry into their world makes him as close as one could get to an extraterrestrial being without being one. Hauser is not only outside of their experience, but also outside their very realm and conception of difference, and as he learns 19th century Germany’s customs and manners he sees how stilted and absurd many of them are. So does the audience, via Herzog’s ecstatic art beyond analysis.

A number of scenes brilliantly illustrate this, such as when Hauser runs out of a church and describes the congregational singing as ‘howling’, which only ends when the preacher takes to howling. He also questions the absurdity of some clergymen’s claims about God creating the universe from nothingness, as well as exposing the sexism of the era when he asks a female domestic in the home he’s living in what purpose women serve. He sees them only doing household chores and not truly living. But, instead of having the woman uncharacteristically give an answer, she tells him to ask her male employer, a brilliant distillation of that era’s hypocrisy.

There is also a scene where that employer, his caretaker Herr Daumer (Walter Ladengast), tries to explain to Hauser that apples are not thinking creatures, then rolls one down a path. The apple rolls off into the high grass and Hauser declares it did not stop where Daumer wished, as promised, but merely went to hide in the grasses. Daumer then rolls the apple back down the path, toward a parson’s foot, who wants to stop it, but the apple hits a bump, and rolls over the foot and away. Hauser declares the apple is indeed smart, for it knew to jump over the extended foot which sought to stop it, and make its escape.

In other scenes, Hauser learns that a flame can cause pain, yet the tears that roll down his cheek are from eyes still blank of expression. His reaction is autonomic not emotional, and even his worldview, such as it is, has its own internal parameters, such as when he argues with Daumer that the room in the jail tower he was first put in has to be larger than the tower for he could see the room all about him, but the tower disappears from view when he turns around.

But, the most apt scene is one where a teacher tries to play a game of logic with Hauser, by having him imagine two towns; one filled with constant liars and one filled with total truth tellers. He asks Hauser what is the one question that will tell him what town a traveler is from, since both men, if asked which town they are from, will respond that they are not from the town of liars. The would-be logician declares there is only one question that, via deduction, will work, and that is to ask the travelers the question in a double negative form, which will trip up the liar.

However, Hauser has a more primitive logic. He declares there is another query that would reveal the liar and truth teller, thus evincing their hometown as well. He says he would ask both men if they are a tree frog, therefore the liar would claim he is, the truth teller would deny it, and Hauser would have his answer. It is every bit as logical as the logician’s, and even more direct, if something out of a Samuel Beckett play. Yet, the teacher rejects it as being outside logical conventions.

I recall, years ago, taking an IQ test at the behest of a cousin, and being confronted with similarly culturally blindered queries. I was asked which of four things went with a cup — a saucer, a chair, a napkin, or a table. Intellectually and culturally, I knew the answer wanted was a saucer, but I also knew, from experience, that a table was also correct, because children from poorer families only bought and used cups, and were not as acquainted with saucers as middle and upper classes were. So, like Hauser, I went with an answer I knew would be marked wrong, but was every bit as defensible.

In the film, when Hauser’s query is rejected by the teacher, the look on Bruno S.’s face, and his disgust over the stupidity of the teacher is palpable. It’s a brilliant moment, for there are many different ways human beings learn, and A to B to C rote education is a waste to creative people such as a Herzog or myself, or to people like Hauser or Bruno S., at the other extreme.

Yet, its import goes beyond the scene or the film, for it’s not an episode from the real Hauser’s life, as was the scene of him running out of the church, or questioning theology, but one from Herzog’s own mind, which demonstrates his unique ability to craft scenes that are based upon a character’s persona yet which are wholly in touch with the greater ‘truth’, if you will, of the character. This is what Herzog calls an ‘ecstatic truth,’ and is something he does better than any other artist in film.

His visuals only underscore this ‘logic beyond logic,’ from the gauzy opening shots of a boat on a river, which seem like colorized fragments from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, to Kaspar’s abandonment by his captor (Hans Musaus), to the jarring dream images Kaspar has, filmed in a different style — almost like home movies made with an old 8mm camera, which Herzog confirms in the DVD film commentary by stating they were taken by his brother years earlier, on a worldwide trip, and saved from the garbage by Herzog. Given Herzog’s penchant for lying, this may be bogus, though. The scenes are of an imaginary Caucusus mountain to that of a caravan led by a blind man in the Sahara Desert, where he dreams a tale with no end. Few filmmakers have ever truly followed the real dream logic of real dreams as well as Herzog.

Also, Herzog is true to the human spirit, for, although the film is ostensibly a costume period piece, it never has that Merchant-Ivory phoniness to it. The characters’ clothes are not all perfectly tailored, and the people act as unenlightened and ugly as they are today, with some of the townsfolk resenting Hauser, others teasing and mocking him, and others constantly gossiping about him. And, as usual, Herzog uses music in film better than anyone, even if his usual musical scorer, Florian Fricke (from the band Popol Vuh) does not do the score (although he makes a cameo appearance as a blind pianist), in favor of classical music from The Magic Flute, and Pachelbel’s Canon.

The DVD is part of Anchor Bay’s Werner Herzog DVD box set and is in a 1.77:1 aspect ratio. There is a film trailer, a Herzog bio, and the commentary track by Herzog with Anchor Bay’s Norman Hill serving as prod. His comments are brief and innocuous, as Herzog needs no co-commenter, for he is simply one of the best raconteurs around, and his commentaries among the best one can get.

Particularly informative is when Herzog delves into the life history of the film’s lead, Bruno S., who was forty-one and playing a teenager when the film was made. The real Hauser was believed to be no older than sixteen or seventeen when found. Yet, Bruno S. gives one of those performances that some people seem only they were born to play. His vapidity and blankness are not really an act, for he was a mentally ill, vagabond street musician and part-time forklift driver that Herzog spotted in a documentary film. His paranoia was so deep that, even during filming, he felt Herzog and his crew would steal money from him. Herzog claims he was the bastard child of a prostitute, and suffered many abuses on the street and by the state, and goes by the name Bruno S. because he wanted his real name protected.

Yet, despite the age difference and many other factors, Bruno S. is Kaspar Hauser, and it is no act, for their lives were quite similar in trajectory, save that Bruno S. was not murdered, like the real Hauser, five years after his emergence. The proof of Bruno S.’s non-acting is evident when compared with some of the mawkish and condescending performances of the mentally ill that Hollywood indulges in — think Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump or Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

Of course, given Herzog’s past, the whole Bruno S. legend could be just that, for the man did appear in Herzog’s later Stroszek, and other films, hardly the thing someone who did not seek the limelight would do. Regardless, the performance in this film that Bruno S. gives is superb. But a phony past for the lead actor would be in keeping with both the film’s fictive Hauser and the fact that the real Hauser tale has, by most modern experts, been deemed a fraud for the real boy too easily learned human language and other skills whereas other ‘feral children’, who truly were never exposed to language, were incapable of learning it, and most modern studies have shown that human beings deprived of language till the age of six or seven simply cannot learn complex language — the window of opportunity for the malleable brain to pick up the abstractions behind language’s symbology disappears. Plus, Hauser’s murder (or likely real life suicide, a point not taken up by Herzog) in too vivid a red-colored fake blood, seems to point to the fact that there was also a political conspiracy involved, despite Herzog’s claims to the contrary.

The film, however, ends with a great scene, and one which touches upon some of the science behind feral children and language development, or rather spoofs it, and it is based upon the real life autopsy of Hauser. Coroners dissected his brain and found many abnormalities, as well in his liver. One odd man, who was recording the case of Hauser for the town’s records, leaves the autopsy elated with the knowledge of Hauser’s brain’s oddities, and feels this is finally an explanation for Hauser’s enigma, as he walks down a long street. Of course, it is not a real explanation for anything, and says far more of the man and the society which produced him than it does of Hauser, but it’s a great way to end the film, for the only character that seemed to truly understand Hauser was the jailer’s young son, who first taught him words.

Thus, The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser is not a typical ‘outsider tale’, but a film that critiques the inside society that surrounds outsiders, and with its ellipses in time and narrative, one sees how that critique grows steadily harsher and dimmer the more Hauser grows within. He goes from oddity to sideshow freak (where two iconic images from Herzog’s earlier Even Dwarfs Started Small reappear) to ward of the rich to mystery in death.

Yet, as Herzog comments, no person is really a mystery, for we are all here due to fornication. It’s merely another of the many brilliant and sardonic comments Herzog makes about this small but great film of his. Thus, as a purveyor of greatness, he earns the right to crow, when he states, ‘I have never made a mistake in music.’ And, having watched many of his films, I can add that he’s made very few mistakes in any other aspects of filmmaking. Perhaps that’s because, if as he claims, Herzog does not dream at night. Thus, his films are his waking dreams, and, if a man cannot or will not make the most of his dreams, then what are any images for?