Apocalypse (pt. III)

A Boy and His Dog

Rapture-Palooza

‘Tis the day after Christmas and the second night of Hanukkah, dear readers, and I’m not taking down my xmas decor anytime soon, but I’m still ready to get out with the old and in with the new already. 2024 was an exhausting and illuminating year full of ups and downs and chaos galore, and I am personally eager to bid it adieu. But first we must traverse one final hurdle—that bizarre liminal space in between the holidays and New Years Eve where time moves both too slowly and too quickly, business hours are odd, and the holiday cheer is now running on reserve fumes of the delusional adrenaline of a new year and a clean slate. I’m not unique when I say that this time of year makes me feel emotional, nostalgic, and disoriented, but as 2024 breathes its last breath, I wanted to celebrate and cope with it the only way I know how, which is to watch movies. For some reason during this particularly-peculiar time of the year, I love to indulge in apocalypse movies, and just like last year I wanted to balance out this potentially-triggering theme with a dark apocalypse movie and a light-hearted apocalypse movie. Unsurprisingly, this is not always an easy balance to strike, but I love the idea that the end of the world can be approached in a myriad of ways, with a myriad of tones and senses of humor. Let’s begin with a true classic of post-apocalyptic cinema, one that envisioned a very desolate and cruel version of 2024 (which may not have been too far off), this is L.Q. Jones’ 1975 dystopian adventure A Boy and His Dog. Based on Harlan Ellison’s 1969 short story of the same name, A Boy and His Dog begins with a symphony of explosions and a visual-bombarding of trippy mushroom clouds, all saturated in psychedelic neon colors, as a title card explains that “World War IV lasted five days” and that “Politicians had finally solved the problem of urban blight.” The year is 2024 A.D. and what remains on the earth is dust and isolation between the small handfuls of humans that are left. In this American wasteland we are introduced to Vic (Don Johnson), an 18-year old orphaned scavenger who is rather successful at hiding from other marauders but not so great at finding food or women: his two greatest priorities. He is accompanied by a hyper-intelligent, telepathic dog named Blood (voiced by Tim McIntire) who is full of melancholy and shade for his scoundrel of a teenage companion. As the rats and human scavengers hunt for scraps of food, Blood educates Vic on the four world wars, the former presidents, none of which have to do with women or food so Vic is relatively disinterested. There is seemingly only one communal meeting spot in this corner of this Mad Max-ian sandpit, where somehow porn and popcorn is available, and one night Blood tells Vic that he smells a woman among them. After cornering and almost raping said woman, the entire shanty town is attacked by raiders and mutants, but Vic, Blood, and his new girl-toy named Quilla make it out alive. Vic and Quilla celebrate by having sex for what seems like days, as Blood minds his business but rolls his eyes and says “breeding is an ugly thing.” It would seem that there are so few women in this dystopia, that the few that are around are treated as currency in a crude bartering system. But Quilla isn’t from this sandy wasteland, she’s from “Downunder”, a mysterious underground community of survivors whom Vic and Blood have long-avoided. Vic is too curious, too intrigued, and far too horny to pass up Quilla’s invite to Downunder, so he follows her into a suspicious-looking covered stairwell, and goes down, down, down ladders and spiral staircases until they arrive at an even stranger place than The Bad Batch vibes up above. It’s kind of hard to explain, and it really should be seen for oneself, because this area beneath the surface of the earth—where generations of people have gone without sunlight or free will—is utterly insane and disturbing. It’s as if everyone is just cosplaying living life, the way they imagine it was lived long ago, where pie-baking competitions are held and a marching band plays and picnics are had, but there is no talk of school, of freedom, of love. Everyone is donned in haunting, clown-white face paint with red-rouged cheeks, their bodies dressed in overalls and seersucker dresses—as if the only time period and place they were able to reference was the American South in the early 20th century. There are speakers sprinkled throughout this chilling place, where their leader’s voice bellows with weird homemaking tips and life hacks that seem beyond outdated and reach right into Stepford Wives territory. Those who follow the rules and keep their heads down get to remain in this hellscape, and those who do not, are taken to “the farm”—which seems to just be a half-assed euphemism for government-sanctioned murder. A Boy and His Dog is an ambitious, outrageous, totally cynical yet vibrantly-kooky film that managed to get even darker and more disturbing as it went on. There are times in film(s) where something deeply upsetting or morbid is implied and/or danced around, and A Boy and His Dog is one of those films that actually dares to go there, into that upsetting and morbid place, and the most horrific ideas are materialized. And it makes the horror more effective, in this critic’s opinion (if you can pull it off.) I was very pleasantly surprised by the dark humor and unique depravity of this film, especially because I wasn’t loving all of the casual rape-talk and depressing male loneliness epidemic vibes where it first began. A Boy and His Dog just builds upon its own insanity, in the way that all good apocalyptic movies do, and it somehow even wraps up with a reluctant but happy resolution where the dog doesn’t die! What a twist! Aesthetically, narratively, and humor-wise, I was totally sold on this movie (and Don Johnson’s lil twink ass), enough to make me want to read the original source material. I find it very interesting that this film was so panned upon its release, with a writer at Variety stating that it was, “An amateurish blend of redneck humor, chaotic fight scenes, and dimwitted philosophizing”, and Gene Siskel complaining, “Rather than illuminate the present through a glance at a possible future, (the film) is simply a dim-witted collection of tired sex gags and anti-American imagery.” I find this interesting, not because I think A Boy and His Dog is the best dystopian movie ever made, but because these negative reviews give America and humanity and far more credit than they deserve. It’s hard to see it on such brazen display sometimes, as with uncomfortably-funny movies like Idiocracy and/or Southland Tales, where a version of America is presented in an absurd, outlandish way, that still never even reaches the actual absurdity of living in this place. I’d love to say that America isn’t just a parody of itself at this point, I’d love it if every anti-America joke The Simpsons was exaggerated, but truth is stranger than fiction and things only feel like they’ve gotten more strange. That’s why I would give anything to hear Gene Siskel’s take on tonight’s next film, which was perhaps more crude, but still accurate in its cringey presentation of how ill-equipped humanity is, especially when faced with a crisis, this is Paul Middleditch’s 2013 movie Rapture-Palooza. Just as A Boy and His Dog was unmistakably made in the tumultuously-groovy year of 1975, Rapture-Palooza could’ve only been made in, and indeed reeks of, the year 2013. Anna Kendrick was fresh off of her random success in Pitch Perfect, and was cast in a role that (with all due respect) could’ve been played by truly anybody, and while she was really blowing up at this time, I’d honestly never heard of this movie until tonight. (Perhaps for a good reason.) Rapture-Palooza was written by Bill & Ted creator Chris Matheson, so it does have some hilarious moments, but again, so much of it is so painfully 2013. Anna Kendrick plays Lindsey, one of the handful of non-believers who is left behind after the rapture. Thankfully, her boyfriend Ben (John Francis Daley of Freaks and Geeks fame) has also been left behind, along with Ben’s dad (Rob Corddry.) Lindsey’s parents are also still around—her dad (John Michael Higgins) was never raptured up, but her mom (Ana Gasteyer) was the one rare case of a person who got raptured, only to be returned back to Earth a few days later. No one knows why, exactly, but as her mother explains, “(Heaven) was unprofessional, and it was poorly organized.” Lindsey and Ben seem rather unbothered by half of the human population’s disappearance, but then the torments begin—locusts, blood rain, flaming rocks falling from the sky, and eventually the wraiths show up to cause even more chaos. As if things couldn’t get more bleak, the Antichrist then appears, possessing the body of a politician (of course) played by Craig Robinson. One of the most bizarre but disturbingly-realistic aspects of Rapture-Palooza is the fact that our main characters are desperate for normalcy, clinging onto their idea of starting a sandwich cart in a world where there is no law or order but succeeding in capitalism is still a goal. “You get used to the locusts and the blood rain and the flaming rocks falling from the sky” Lindsey says in a matter-of-fact way that was certainly meant to be received as morbidly funny, not excruciatingly-accurate in this post-and-still-currently-covid world. And while this movie is deeply-unserious and unconcerned with realism, this moment alone encapsulated an eerie sentiment that I’d say most of us could identify with these days, as we become further desensitized to the violence and devastation that is occurring all around us at all times. After enough time passes, it seems that everyone is pretty “used to” the rapture, most of the wraiths are now out of work and only want to smoke weed all day—which Lindsey’s drug-dealing brother Clark (Calum Worthy) is happy to facilitate. But when their sandwich cart is destroyed by a flaming rock, Lindsey and Ben are finally woken up out of their ambivalence and decide to take action. And randomly, strangely, their plan involves pimping Lindsey out to their horny evil overlord, distracting the demon guards with their lawnmower-riding neighbor wraith, and Clark smoking out any leftover henchmen. There is more context as to why this all happens, but that wouldn’t necessarily make any of this make any more sense. As cringey and unfunny and oddly bleak as Rapture-Palooza was, I couldn’t help enjoying myself. And that’s because of this film’s outrageously-stacked cast, where pretty much every single member is a truly, dearly, beloved character actor (of mine.). I could brave the tinny voice of Anna Kendrick, the mopey-ness of John Francis Daley, and the unending sex puns of Craig Robinson because of the iconic appearances from actors like Ken Jeong, Thomas Lennon, Paul Scheer, Tyler Labine, Rob Huebel, Rob Corddry, Ana Gasteyer, and John Michael Higgins. I have always loved character actors and I love a movie that utilizes them properly, so it was just delightful to watch a film where they got to shine so brightly and so stupidly. I would never defend a film like Rapture-Palooza, nor would I suggest it to just anyone to watch, but if you know me, and if you know my supreme appreciation of the dumb, naive bro humor of yesteryear, you’ll understand why I had a semblance of appreciation for this movie—especially when Craig Robinson says stuff like, “I kick so much ass my feet need condoms” and when he calls John Francis Daley “Frodo”, “Jimmy Neutron”, and “Peter Brady” all within the span of a minute. And as inane and moronic as a film like this is, I do think it effectively-captured an American brand of apathy and religion-based fear that persists to this day, which not every dystopian movie can do successfully *cough cough Alex Garland’s Civil War.* Well, dear reader, you’ve already survived Christmas and you’ve survived spending it with family or by yourself (equally-daunting) so to take on an apocalypse seems pretty do-able in comparison. We’ve just gotta make it through to the new year, then it’s just one day at a time, from one Nicole Kidman movie to the next. I’m not sure if I believe in the rapture but I do believe in the power of movies, and I believe in you! Talk to you next year! ;)