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Dir. Tony Luke
United Kingdom
Film #25 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema
There’s no point attempting to
explain this film, the first all-CGI animated movie to be made in Britain. Just
watch this extended clip...
Everything that I needed to
explain about this Dominator is in
that clip. Everything. I was masochistic to view it all the way through the
first time, and I was masochistic enough to see it again years later just for this review. It’s catharsis for one of
the worst films I’ve seen. It’s sad to say this because I should adore the
ridiculously cheap looking animation, and get a goofy laugh from its heavy
metal stereotypes. I feel guilt because, researching what little is available
about the film, its director had just hastily recovered from lung cancer when
he was working on it. But I cannot hide the pain I felt.
When the three daughters of Dr.
Payne (Doug Bradley) play the
contents of one of his occult books, The Lost Cord, they bring into the world
the Dark Lord of Sonic Hell Dominator (Dani
Filth from the band Cradle of Filth)
but also leave open the gate to Hell for the individuals after him for a key,
one which if returned to their leader Lord Desercater (sic) (Doug Bradley again) will help him take
over the known cosmos as well as Hell. It is supposed to be as ridiculous as
possible. With its rudimentary look, it is impossible to take it seriously
beyond every cliché of heavy metal iconography put together in a work that is
clearly influenced by the tone of Japanese anime. This is of importance as,
surprisingly, the original source, a comic strip in Metal Hammer magazine, was readapted into a quite popular comic in
Japan, one of the few cases where a Western creator, and probably the only case
involving a British artist, created work for a solely Japanese market as actual
manga. My problem with the film is not its look, or animation, as I should have
fallen in love with this. It’s the story and ideas themselves behind them.
As a heavy metal fan, I can
except and enjoy immensely all the clichés that are usually derided in its
imagery – the obsession with Satan, motorbikes, skulls, and ridiculous large
shoulder spikes – but I also find most of it embarrassing and unoriginal. Dominator is cringe worthy in how it trivialises
heavy metal as much as it does, where character names like Dominator,
Decimator, Hellkatt etc. are acceptable even in the context of a goofy
animation or for the names of demons. The character designs and the look of the
film is aborrant because of the tackiest heavy metal album designs and
promotional images it brings up, of skulls on everything and random tentacles
and spikes coming from everywhere. The only interesting looking character, in
the clip above, that’s not a mess of adolescent metal cover designs or stock
character models, is the awfully named Lady Violator, taking the fetish,
almost-completely-naked-but-part-machine-in-cock-teasing-places design to
ridiculous limits, and with the late Hammer horror icon Ingrid Pitt voicing her, but she was created specifically by
another person in the production team. And
that this has such individuals like Doug
Bradley, Pitt, and in another
role the director Alex Cox staring in
it is worse. This will not be said of for extreme metal singer Dani Filth. His main character Dominator
is all the worst ideas of how an antihero should be – those repeatedly
mentioned spikes everywhere on him, face masked all the time, and no charisma except
wanting to shag all of Payne’s daughters, and any other women in the vicinity,
at the same time like a horndog – and is made even more embarrassing by Filth’s voicing of him. Using his same
raspy growl from his band Cradle of Filth’s
music, you cannot take him serious even if its self deprecating as the attempt
to sound cool and demonic is so forced. I feel pity for him if it wasn’t for
the terrible feeling that, as is the whole problem with the film and large
swaths of heavy metal and alternative culture, he is taking himself seriously
for something that is childish in an empty way and marketed for anyone who
wants to wear designer brand pentagram t-shirts and black hair dye without
actually taking in the cultural and pop mythology heavy metal draws from. Two of
my favourite metal groups, not taking account of the various sub-genres, are Rammstein and Mastodon. The former is known for their insane pyrotechnics and
songs about sex, but have a political edge from their East German heritage mixed
with songs drawing from fairy tales and literature, a melancholy to their
slower songs, and a wicked sense of humour that goes against every stereotype
of German culture. The later have made a concept album about a wolf man going
up a mountain and fighting monsters, but not only melded it with a unique personality
and an obsession with prog rock, but made it a follow up to a concept album
about the novel Moby Dick. Some great
songs and bands delve into the clichés of heavy metal, but as far back as Black Sabbath, they distance themselves
from the limited, adolescent mindset by their other musical interests that influence
their work, their interests in other art forms and their unique quirks.
What makes this even more worse
with Dominator is that, as a British
work viewed by someone born in the country, a bad British film is truly unbearable
and drags into it talented people who should know better. In cinema, the
British have been repeated kicked to the curb despite being the birthplace of
director like Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell, not just from the bias
of François Truffaut, and it is quite
justifiable at times. We as a country champion laziness and lameness over
quality as virtues when such ideas should be burn with fire. I get the feeling
that Dominator was made with
everyone involved having ‘fun’, words that now are dread inducing for me thanks
to this film because it means that a movie like this is made, with a script full
of pointless swearing and references only the British viewer could get without
any meaning to them, and everyone calls it a day. It is a lack of quality control
in favour of ‘enjoying’ oneself that makes this impossible for me to enjoy too.
The only thing close to a salvation were the characters Decimator and
Extricator (sic again), played by radio personalities Marc ‘Lard’ Riley and Mark
Radcliffe, their lame and terrible humour actually amusing, and in a film
which turns centuries and decades of mythology, rock music culture and Christian
theology into a teenager’s lacking mindset without any sense of thrill or titillation
to it all, they’re almost a demonic Greek chorus ripping into the awful film by
not participating in the plot at all and being more interested in getting drunk
instead.
That I returned to this film
under the glib idea of reviewing it for a ‘Worst Of’ series is shameful on my
part, but it becomes clear that it should be pulled up from the grave of mass
obscurity as a warning of how this film’s mentality plagues pop culture. This lame,
bastardisation of Christian mythology and alternative culture is still infecting
heavy metal music, and will never create a song as great as Black Sabbath’s N.I.B. or Heaven or Hell,
and for every good British film, or comic book, or TV series, or other cultural
item except music or literature, which have grand canons of great artists to
rest upon, there are too many creations which were made ‘for fun’ and make
country look bad to myself and others, a cultural malaise that should have died
long before I was born. Dominator is
one of the worst films I’ve seen, but it’s also a tragic mirror to how bad
British culture can be.
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