Avengers: Infinity War is out, so guess what I watched?

Yep, a movie from 1984 called What Waits Below. It had that guy in it who is the brother of that guy who was in Apocalypse Now that had that puppy. It also had some other people in it. I don’t know if they had siblings in other movies. The lead character wore a black leather jacket even in the jungle. It doesn’t get much cooler than that. He also had my favorite line of the movie.

“It’s time to get in amongst it…”

And then he beat up an underground cave dweller, who perhaps sired Edgar Winter. No mere “let’s do this” for this movie’s hero. He got in amongst it. Not among it. Amongst it. That is infinitely more hardcore than any infinity war.

Plus, now I need to know the difference between among and amongst.

Consulting Google…

Apparently, there is no real difference. Use whichever one makes you sound the coolest.

In a nutshell, What Waits Below was about these army guys who had to put a transmitter into the bowels of a cave so submarine experiments could be conducted somewhere else. Some scientists were also on location. Once they get into the cave, they discover a lost race of albino folks who throw darts, have necklaces made from circuit boards and can scream like banshees. Secondary characters perish. Main characters survive. And we learn that, perhaps, in the end, there is hope to get along with underground cave dwellers.

Besides the line above, What Waits Below also had something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Let me paint a picture…this secondary character wanders off by himself, only to be attacked by wall-snake puppets. They chomp his arm. He is rescued. They take him back to safety and bandage his arm up. The character then wanders off again…and is promptly killed. All this happens in sequence. We follow a character from his rescue, to his healing, to his death. Normally, a character gets rescued and healed. Then they might get killed again later on. I have never seen (I don’t think) a character go from rescue to death that quickly. I’m not sure what the storytellers were thinking. Did they need to kill time in the middle of the movie? Couldn’t they have spread it out a little more? Was it once spread out more and scenes that should have went in between were deleted? It seemed like an incredible waste of run time to do that to a character.

Then again, the sequence got me to have a boggled mind, so it is a case of, perhaps, ineptitude becoming something notable. I’m trying to think of something to compare it to for context. Imagine if you are watching Spider-Man (2002). You remember when Mary Jane wandered into that dark alley and was attacked by the gang? Then Spider-Man saves her and they kiss. Now imagine she walks out of the alley and gets hit by a truck. It just doesn’t jibe with what story-telling has conditioned us to expect from movies. Granted, Mary Jane was a main character, and the character in question in What Waits Below was a secondary character, but the principle is the same.

Maybe this is a good example of how our brains are trained by cinematic story-telling. We are in sync with a movie’s timing because we have watched so many similar movies. Movie formula often operates on a timescale. First act is the first twenty minutes. Second act is the next hour. Climax is the final twenty minutes. Or something to that effect. When we see something that doesn’t jibe with standard movie timescales, our brain takes note. Something isn’t right. We are wedged out of the movie by the missed step.

I suppose it can be used for effect. Consider To Live And Die In LA. The main character abruptly exits that movie before his time via shotgun, and we follow the supporting character to the climax. That also did not jibe in my brain. No Country For Old Men is perhaps another example. I get what they were going for, but the main character’s fate is decidedly unsatisfactory according to movie expectations. But, again, that was one of their points. So I guess it can pay to understand storytelling timescales and when to short circuit them. To Live and Die in LA and No Country For Old Men did it on purpose. I think What Waits Below was just trying its best, and the sequence had no greater point.

Anyway, it is all food for storytelling thoughts. Even a little known picture from 1984 can contain hidden lessons.