So this is the first in a ridiculously long series of reviews where I talk about everything I read and saw this year in random order, until I give up.

The Screwfly Solution
TV movie for Masters of Horror on Showtime
based on the story by Raccoona Sheldon aka James Tiptree, Jr.
directed by Joe Dante, screenplay by Sam Hamm
made, 2006; seen, yesterday

If you don't know, this story is sort of a sacred text in 1970s science fiction, and Tiptree readers have been hoping TV wouldn't fuck it up. It's about a shift in men's sexual wiring so the presence of women (or men, if they're into men) makes them distraught and then homicidally angry; some other writer would've had them turn into a bunch of foaming zombies, and the horror would all be about the killing. But instead, being thinking beings, they make it into a mystical fascist ideology; half of society carries on convincing themselves that they're saving the human race instead of wiping it out, and the horror is that we can use our minds that way.

So: this was an unusually well done adaptation by TV standards, not brilliant but I'm glad it was made. The DVD commentary says these Masters of Horror pieces are done in ten days, for peanuts, with a lot of constraints on casting and locations... so although I wouldn't pick Joe Dante to do this story based on the style of his movies, if you want something to look good on a shoestring it makes sense to get someone who used to work for Roger Corman. And Dante & Hamm really seemed to get the story and respect Tiptree's ideas; Dante was also candid on the DVD about finding the usual Masters of Horror fare a little cheesy, wanting to do something smarter and more disturbing, but giving it enough B-movie trappings to satisfy the producers and the stereotypical horror-geek viewer.

The script ditches the epistolary form and uses a straight-ahead thriller structure: mysterious murder scene, introduce main characters, ominous rumors, local horror at army base, infodump to skeptical officials, horror reaches our heroes, chaos & escape, doom in the wilderness. Most of the invented scenes just expand on stuff Tiptree referred to in passing; apart from losing the South American part because they had to make the whole thing in Vancouver, and adding some clumsy business with the aliens at the end, the content is about as faithful as it could be. The main subversive ideas—that male sexuality is tied to violence already, that men are oblivious to the threats women face in normal life, and that religious systems may be rationalizations for the things we don't know why we do—are presented unapologetically, although they're defused a little by being part of the aforementioned infodump. Nothing was really "updated" from 1977, except a decent little bit where some government guy insists it's only Muslims who have bad ideas about women. The only place I felt like the screenwriter dropped an important ball was when he had the heroine say about her dangerous infected husband, "that's not him any more" or something like that—which would be the foaming-zombie version; the heartbreaking thing there is that it is still him.

The directing is... OK. Dante has no great visual flair, and his handling of the actors is kind of distant (literally—not a lot of close-ups) compared to the very immediate voices of the story. He keeps it moving along and builds tension well, especially in the army base scene and the beginning of Anne's escape. The violent scenes are brief, graphic and appropriately impulsive, even though when the crazies are talking they often come across as smooth movie villains—it loses track of the idea that they're driven by an awful discomfort. Some of the best parts are underplayed little urban encounters where average bad behavior seems creepier in context: angry driver, leering hardhats, etc. Generally the tone is 75% mainstream and 25% Tiptree—I think to really convey her strange mix of passion, cynicism, introversion and epic doom, you'd have to get David Cronenberg to do it—but the story is so strong that it plays weirder than they're playing it.

Jason Priestley was kind of blah. Kerry Norton as Anne I liked a lot. The teenage daughter was probably pretty good, played too dumb though, maybe badly directed. Linda Darlow, a Canadian actor I don't know, has a brief role and steals all her scenes. And I LOVE Elliott Gould and it's about time he got to play a big gay scientist uncle.