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Cameron’s previous films already bore his signature and put his talent and craftsmanship on display. But The Abyss is the first full-fledged Cameron movie. He was not limited here by budgetary compromises (as in the case of The Terminator) or by a connection to a foreign franchise (as in the case of Aliens). Mainly, however, we already see here the classic attributes of his entire later, personal body of work with simple, almost banal stories about the clearly defined sides of good and evil, his ambition to push the possibilities of what could be done in the medium, and his personal fascination with the underwater world. In addition to that, The Abyss is impressive due to both its well-thought-out female characters, who were very different than the contemporary norms, and their male counterparts. Cameron is a masterful creator of illusions, as he is able to unfold and present to the audience a world that has been thought out to the smallest detail. Though he tells a thoroughly traditional story involving the central couple’s reunion, he succeeds in holding the viewers’ attention all the way to the kitschy climax, thanks to the non-formulaic dynamic of the two central characters and their gripping peripeteias. In a certain respect, the unfairly neglected The Abyss is the absolute pinnacle of Cameron’s filmography. Since computer graphics were still in their infancy at the time, he couldn’t rely on the “crutch” of animation as he has done in his most recent films, where his imagination no longer has any limits, whereas here he made every effort to create the least compromised equivalent of his space visions within the seemingly restrictive boundaries of shooting on film, with live actors and on locations. Thanks to this and his ambitious shooting, The Abyss has a fascinating realistic dimension that no digital technology can convey. The abyssal darkness encompasses the characters on the screen and merges with the darkness of the screening room, thus drawing the viewers in and letting the fascination and ever-present threat of the world beyond our everyday experience take hold of them. Thanks to its brilliant symbiosis of all of film’s means of expression, The Abyss, like Das Boot before it, succeeds in evoking an incredibly claustrophobic atmosphere even in a large screening room with only a handful of viewers. As such, we can say that the whole film actually exists for the purpose of making its climactic sequence work at the highest possible level. That sequence is one of the most dramatic and physically most intense moments in the history of the medium thanks to the fact that all elements, narrative lines and the vision converge within it and are used effectively. Cameron is no Bergman or Tarkovsky, and his descent into the abyss does not reveal any great truths about the human condition or the disturbing recesses of our minds. All of his narratives are entirely simple and actually even naïve, their core consisting of relationships and bonds between people. However, Cameron uses all of his masterful craftsmanship to bring us to our knees and convince us once again of the validity of the concept of love.

Though Godfrey Ho did not directly bring this Frankenstein’s monster to life, as he merely served as the screenwriting Igor to his colleague Charles Lee’s Dr. Frankenstein, the signature of IFD Films & Arts Ltd. clearly remains. Thunder of Gigantic Serpent is another purchased B-movie that was dissected and put back together with passages containing audience potential, a sequence with western faces plus some fight scenes, and the whole thing is given a new soundtrack with dubbing based on the “original” script. Fortunately for lovers of trash, the source material was a hopeless Taiwanese attempt to paraphrase Japanese kaiju films. But instead of Godzilla, the mock-ups of the urban environment are decimated by a genetically enlarged snake, which is befriended by an annoying little girl. The original has rewarding elements, from the blatantly naïve special effects (where it is possible to see the strings being pulled by the central monster’s puppeteer, even in the miserable picture quality) to the exaggerated acting and the insipid action sequences, to minor gems like the fact that the red berets worn by soldiers are adorned with Harley-Davidson patches. By trimming the original’s dialogue passages and adding fight scenes with third-rate martial artist Pierre Kirby, the resulting cake of Joseph Lai’s dog and Betty Chan’s cat is one of the absolute highlights. In this case, the tagline “All power of the imagination!” takes on fantastical, unthinkable and amazing levels.

Fragasso originally wanted a psychosexual giallo flick, but the evil producer then hired the vile Mattei to finish shooting the gore scenes and slasher sequences, which would make it possible for the film to ride on the coattails of the popular Freddy Kruger movies and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To this day, the master is still convinced that this ruined his masterpiece, but let’s just acknowledge that, due to its absurdity, Night Killer wouldn’t have been a functional movie anyway even if it had stuck to the original screenplay. With additional production touches, Night Killer offers a nonstop WTF spectacle. Horrible acting (even more obvious in the numerous sloppy one-shot scenes) is combined with atrocious dialogue. Individual sequences are strung together seemingly at random, partly with the aim of confusing viewers and concealing the final denouement, which most will figure out immediately after all of the characters have been introduced. Despite all of the anti-efforts, the film is pervaded by an aura of perversely twisted misogyny, ensuring that viewers will be disturbed by this thoroughly insipid and frequently ridiculous work.

In a case of shameless plagiarism, Flora Film serves up one rip-off after another as it rolls out a variation on the previous year’s Italian trash flick Phantom Soldiers, which itself is a variation on Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Of course, the team of Drudi, Fragasso and Mattei can’t be satisfied with just one “model of inspiration”, so they throw in a paraphrase of the American film Off Limits. And of course the result not only falls short of the narrative quality and craftsmanship of its inspirations, but it also fails to live up to the promise evoked by the typically bombastic cover art of the video cassette. The overall utilitarianism of the production becomes apparent upon watching a larger number of Mattei’s films (particularly Born to Fight and Strike Commando 2, which were filmed simultaneously with the same actors) and other cheaply and quickly made Italian movies of the time, in which one can identify the exact same shots. This time, however, the filmmakers tried to give the impression of a major production by buying archival news footage from the Vietnam War, which they inserted into each sequence. Nevertheless, the climax ends up being just a load of would-be tough-guy talk and senselessly overwrought twists with characters that no one is interested in. Unlike other films made by the same team, Cop Game unfortunately doesn’t offer much in the way of entertainment, so it is interesting rather as a curious exhibition of Flora Film’s pragmatic practices.

Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi and Franco Gaudenzi, i.e. the four horsemen of the trash apocalypse and musketeers of plagiaristic trickery, set out on their last foray into the Philippine jungle. Compared to their previous works, Born to Fight mostly radiates resigned sloppiness. In their previous projects, a rip-off of Rambo: First Blood Part II in the Strike Commando diptych and especially the goofy Robowar, where they spliced together Predator and Robocop, they still sort of made an effort to reward the unfortunate punters who picked up their works in video rental shops with admittedly dubious but still at least straightforwardly functional attractions and a vague semblance of passionate production. With Born to Fight, however, they didn’t even bother to drag their asses into a real jungle. Instead, they set up a POW camp in a parking lot, populated it with washed-up actors in haphazardly soiled uniforms and filmed all of the chase scenes in the clearing behind the hotel or in the hotel itself. This aspect shines an even brighter light on the basic principles of all of Mattei’s flicks, i.e. an artless lack of consideration that oscillates on the edge of simple naïveté, boyishly unlimited imagination and pragmatic silliness. The execution of the action sequences and partial peripeteias exhibits an almost negative value in terms of ambition to create the slightest semblance of believability and causality. The most creative feat appears to be the premise itself, in which the filmmakers copied the story of Rambo II, or perhaps Missing in Action, but mixed it with parasitic elements of Crocodile Dundee, whose style was “borrowed” for the protagonist and his bickering with a reporter travelling to Vietnam to rescue her father. When we add to this the once-handsome but now shabby Werner Pochath, who as the bad guy makes an attempt to imitate Klaus Kinski, and a truly iconoclastic variation on the Vietcong’s tunnels, Born to Fight provides another spectacular bit of Mattei’s cornball entertainment.

The only film adaptation of the still popular (West) German dime-store sci-fi adventure series was a European co-production made in Italian studios and Spanish exteriors. The production was conceived in the spirit of contemporary Euro-trends apparent in, among other movies, Reinl’s Karl May adaptations, including the casting of a second-rate Hollywood actor in the lead role, who is surrounded by a plethora of distinctive faces gathered together from across Europe. Whereas it was enough to find photogenic exteriors for the May films, however, Rhodan’s literary source material demanded spectacular alien worlds for which the production didn’t have the necessary resources. Therefore, most of the narrative takes place on Earth instead of in outer space and includes elements that are more appropriate for trash crime flicks and spy movies. For viewers unfamiliar with the source material, Operation Stardust is endearingly naïve, old-world sci-fi trash with treacherous villains, stout-hearted heroes, beautiful women and appropriately eye-catching special effects. There is no shortage of mechanically undramatic shootouts, silly peripeteias, undramatic twists and a heap of chauvinistic dominance. However, these elements are not negatives, as they add as much to the campy fun as the enthusiastic fighting, the cardboard sets and the impractically designed “futuristic” costumes. Nevertheless, fans of the book series saw all of this as sacrilege, which led to outright hatred for the film. Despite the massive popularity of the books, the movie therefore ended up being a flop and no further Perry Rhodan film escapades followed.

Stone created an absolutely fascinating and utterly absorbing treatise on The Doors, which many supposedly orthodox and self-appointed guardians of the band’s legacy criticise for not being 100% faithful to the actual events. The band members themselves and several other people have each given their own, peculiarly differing account of what it was like to live alongside Jim Morrison for a while. In his vision, Stone aptly portrays Morrison as an American version of the poetic god who has placed himself among the sinners and succumbed to the mystery of life, the temptations of substances and the allure of death. Many of the aforementioned guardians of the legacy may consider Stone’s gospel to be apocryphal, but as a creative treatise and the work of a master of his medium, The Doors still remains incredible in the way it imprints on both the screen and the viewers the myth of Morrison and the whole ethos of the God of Rock and contemporary culture. Though Stone seemingly composes a conventionally chronological narrative, he did not make an ordinary biopic, but rather a maximally immersive impression not of how specific moments happened, but of the impact that they had or should have had in the context of the Morrison legend. For this purpose, Stone developed his new fragmented impressionistic style of intermingling shots, alternating shooting speeds, deflected camera angles and post-production processing, which he and his court collaborators, cinematographer Robert Richardson and editors David Brenner and Joe Hutshing, subsequently perfected in Natural Born Killers. Like that film, The Doors did not receive the reception that it deserved at the time, but it is thus all the more fascinating and captivating for today’s viewers. And on the big screen, it is an absolutely intense experience that overwhelms, engulfs and drains the audience.

Tear-jerker of the year. The dubious nicecore category got its notional offshoot: the cutementary. This mix of fictional documentary, an endearing narrative about overcoming fear and a treatise on the absurdities and insignificance of online fame stands entirely on the shoulders of the original title character. Marcel, who’s a little shell with shoes, is given life and a soul by the brilliant stop-motion animation, executed with an almost obsessive focus on the bizarre details.

Paul Thomas Anderson has a made an inconspicuously brilliant fresco of the fringes of the show-business world of 1970s L.A., where the glow of the really big names is seen only from a distance, but is thus all the more enticing to all possible bizarre characters comprising washed-up stars, dilettantes, grown-up child actors, fallen showmen and over-aged talent scouts. Thanks to the brilliant directing and meticulous casting, every character gives the sense of a full life lived, even if he or she only flashes by in a single scene or shot. Mainly, however, Licorice Pizza is a perfectly observed ode to the ambivalent relationships and promises of young love.

Some will be lulled by the slow-TV shot of the fireplace, but Casper Kelly, creator of the frantic meta-television short Too Many Cooks, forgot to keep his imagination in check while staring into the flames. Yule Log is a fantastically mercurial comedy with an element of horror and a satirical reflection on contemporary audio-visual work, fittingly made in the environment of Adult Swim’s long-running incubator of bizarre creativity.