Craig J. Clark Watches a Lot of Movies
October 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Coleman Francis is Curly Howard in "The Fugitive."
What Cuban film series would be complete without an entry about 1961's ill-thought-out invasion of the Bay of Pigs? Unfortunately, the only movie I have on the subject is Coleman Francis's abysmal Red Zone Cuba, but as it's the MST3K version the pain involved is almost minimal. Written and directed by Francis, who also stars as a gravel-voiced convict who meets a couple of losers played by Anthony Cardoza (who also produced) and Harold Saunders and winds up taking part in the most half-assed invasion cinema audiences have never seen. The movie also features John Carradine as a railroad engineer whose part is clumsily tacked onto the beginning, along with the theme song "Night Train to Mundo Fine" (the original title of the film), which Carradine sings (after a fashion).
Red Zone Cuba was one of three Francis/Cardoza epics that MST3K tackled in its sixth season, the other two being 1961's The Beast of Yucca Flats (starring Tor Johnson) and 1963's The Skydivers. Released in 1966, it was the last film Francis directed, but it was no less ineptly made, and gave Mike and the Bots ample riffing fodder. Here's a sample:Crow: "Well, this film wastes no precious screen time on a plot."
Tom: "Once we get past the character development, this film's bound to pick up."
Mike: "Is it a good idea to invade the Bay of Pigs again so soon after the last time?"
Crow: "This movie has the courage to unabashedly repeat itself."
Mike: "Fortunately, Cuba only has eight guys in it."
Tom: "Is the film grainy or are these guys just kinda grainy?"
Mike: "You know, I still like this movie better than Havana."
Faint praise, indeed. I'll say one thing for this Coleman Francis, though. Unlike those hacks Richard Lester and Mikhail Kalatozov, he actually has Fidel Castro as a character in his film. Sure, his Castro is just a guy in a fake beard (Anthony Cardoza again, according to the IMDb) riding around in a jeep long after he's presumably taken control of the country, but at least he's there.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
What's the point of staying where there is only misery?
Who knew the Swedes had an absurdist streak? I clearly didn't until this afternoon, when I sat down to watch Roy Andersson's mordant portrait of millennial malaise, Songs from the Second Floor. Written, produced and directed by Andersson, the film may have been released in 2000, but it perfectly captures the feeling of helplessness and lack of forward movement that has been endemic in western society ever since. This is metaphorically represented in the film by a massive traffic jam that shows no signs of ever lessening, although it does periodically make way for a parade of flagellants that threads its way through the streets of the city. Nearly everyone in the film looks pale and pasty-faced, and some are in the disconcerting habit of looking directly into the camera right in the middle of Andersson's prolonged, static takes. It's as if they know they're being watched, which makes sense on one level since they're actors, but it's different when they acknowledge that fact.
The film is made up of a loose collection of characters and plot strands, including an executive who fires a longtime employee ("I've been here for 30 years!"), who rather embarrassingly holds onto him for dear life, a magician who saws into an audience member, a doctor stringing his nurse along, and a surplus of patients lining the hallways in a hospital. Then we meet a furniture store owner (Lars Nordh), whose business has literally gone up in smoke, but no one on the subway with him seems to notice. Nordh has more woes than that, though, with one son in a mental hospital (he wrote poetry "until he went nuts") and another who drives a cab and is given to reciting bizarre beatitudes. By the time we get to set pieces about a centenarian former commander-in-chief, a man with his fingers caught in a train door, and a board meeting that seemingly takes its cues from the one in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (complete with moving building), we're so inured to the nonsensical that it seems perfectly natural when the dead start showing up and pursuing Nordh.
Songs from the Second Floor is a film that both demands and rewards patience. In addition to Andersson's penchant for long takes, he also has his characters repeat dialogue and action, frequently because it's never clear whether they're getting through to anyone else. If only the magician had stopped the first time his volunteer cried out, but he kept on sawing. If only Nordh could accept that his older son is incapable of speaking, but he rails against the hospital staff anyway. If only the people at the airport would realize that there's no escape from their predicament, but they continue to drag their heavy luggage trolleys anyway. When the one character who thought he was going to make a buck by selling crucifixes gives up and starts chucking them into a pile (at a crossroads, no less), you know civilization has reached the end of the line. Or a line, at any rate.
Friday, October 3, 2008
There's murder in every intelligent man's heart.
Often cited as the first film noir, 1940's Stranger on the Third Floor is a fairly run-of-the-mill melodrama for most of its running time, but there are a few moments that set it apart. Peter Lorre gets top billing, but the actual main characters are newspaper reporter John McGuire, who is the key witness in a murder trial, and his fiancée Margaret Tallichet, who is disturbed by the defendant's impassioned cries of innocence. McGuire isn't troubled by them, though, until he imagines what would happen if he were suspected of murdering his nosy rooming house neighbor. This leads to an over-the-top dream sequence, which causes McGuire to panic, especially when he discovers that his neighbor really has been killed, but Tallichet convinces him to go to the police. His only lead is that there was a strange man -- Lorre, of course -- hanging around the building that night, but the police don't put too much stock in that theory. Then it's up to Tallichet to exonerate both her sweetheart and the first defendant (who's played by Elisha Cook Jr.). All she has to do is find a man she's never seen before and get him to confess his crimes to the police. Why, that's a cinch!
This is the account of a crisis, and the story behind a presidential commitment
Three years after cinema verité pioneer Robert Drew followed John F. Kennedy around on the campaign trail in Primary, he caught back up with the president during a moment of Crisis -- both for his presidency and for the country at large. The resulting film, which was first shown on October 21, 1963, depicts the confrontation between the White House and Governor George Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama by black students Vivian Malone and James Hood. (By the summer of 1963, Alabama was the only state that had yet to integrate its universities. Somehow this doesn't surprise me.)
Now, it's one thing to read about Wallace standing in the doorway to block their entrance; it's another thing entirely to see it happen on the screen. Before things reach that point, though, Drew and his crew are privy to numerous discussions between President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, as they debate the merits of attempting to push past Wallace or nationalizing the Alabama National Guard in order to get him to voluntarily stand down. At one point Robert even consults with his assistant about the proper tone of voice to use when speaking with Wallace. Clearly they wanted to be ready for anything.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
What kind of person steals from a blind man?
The end of the world in Don McKellar's Last Night is depicted as a quick fade to white that every character experiences at the same exact moment. That's also how the characters describe their sudden loss of sight in Blindness, which McKellar scripted based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago, but in this film it's something that happens on an individual basis, starting with a driver (Yusuke Iseya) who is suddenly struck blind while sitting at a traffic light. From that point on, everyone he comes into contact with (and everyone they come into contact with) becomes infected with what becomes known as "the white sickness," starting with the supposed good Samaritan (McKellar) who comes to the driver's aid, but is really only interested in stealing his car.
Eventually the problem spreads to the entire population of the planet, but at the start the government tries to contain it by quarantining the carriers in a derelict hospital. That's where we get to know our main characters, including eye doctor (and dogged voice of reason) Mark Ruffalo, his wife Julianne Moore (who is miraculously able to see and takes care of as many people as she can), prostitute Alice Braga (who wear sunglasses on doctor's orders, but eventually doesn't need them), Danny Glover (who sports an eye patch), Gael García Bernal (who declares himself king of one of the wards and takes advantage of the situation) and accountant Maury Chaykin (who was born blind, but that doesn't automatically make him a noble person). I also spotted, in smaller roles, Tracy Wright (as the thief's wife) and Sandra Oh (as the Minister of Health), both of whom had been in Last Night.
The film was directed by Fernando Meirelles, whose City of God impressed me very much and whose follow-up, The Constant Gardener, didn't interest me enough to go out and see it. I haven't read any of the reviews for this one, but I know they've varied wildly. (The Philadelphia City Paper recommended it, the Onion AV Club gave it a C+, Roger Ebert gave it one and a half stars.) Truth is, despite the great cast, I might have given this one a miss as well if it hadn't been for Don McKellar's screenplay credit (his first since 2004's Childstar). I like his work in general and this film seemed like a chance for him to play out some of the apocalyptic themes from Last Night on a much larger scale. He's also not above having one of his characters commandeer a public address system and start singing Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You." Even better, though, was during a quiet moment in the film when the sound from an adjoining theater bled into the one I was in. The song that was playing? "I Can See Clearly Now." Some things you just can't make up.
Those rabies shots are killers. Think I'd rather take my chances on getting sick instead.
The attempted quarantine in Blindness reminded me of the barely-contained epidemic in another Canadian film -- David Cronenberg's Rabid. Released in 1977, it features porn star Marilyn Chambers as a motorcycle accident victim who receives an experimental skin graft at an exclusive plastic surgery resort and, when she comes out of her coma, finds that she craves blood, which she extracts from her victims with a phallic growth in her armpit. After a brief incubation period, her victims then start frothing at the mouth and violently attacking other people at random. As soon as this comes to light, martial law is declared in Montreal and "the crazies" as they're called (reminding one of the George A. Romero film of the same name) are rounded up and disposed of. If that seems faintly ludicrous to you, then you haven't seen enough Cronenberg films. Compared to what went on in his previous film, 1975's Shivers, this one verges on naturalistic.
Chambers carries the film and gives a credible performance for her first lead in a mainstream film, which is a good thing because Frank Moore (who had previously appeared in Cronenberg's telefilm The Italian Machine) is kind of weak and ineffectual as her boyfriend. That's mostly due to the way the character is written, though (Cronenberg contrives to keep the couple apart for most of the film's running time), so one can hardly fault Moore on that count. Other Cronenberg mainstays in the cast include businessman Joe Silver (who had previously starred in Shivers), insensitive patient Ronald Mlodzik (who had starred in Cronenberg's first two experimental features, Stereo and Crimes of the Future), truck driver Gary McKeehan (another carryover from The Italian Machine) and Robert A. Silverman (who was just beginning his long association with Cronenberg). One does have to wonder how the film would have turned out if Cronenberg had gotten his first pick for the lead -- Sissy Spacek. It would have been different, to say the least.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
One doesn't often get a second chance. I want to stop being haunted.
One of Hitchcock's most difficult and rewarding films is 1958's Vertigo, which was the fourth and final film he made with James Stewart. It's a film that doesn't so much encourage repeat viewings as it demands them. The first time you watch it, it plays like a straight mystery, with the audience in Stewart's shoes trying to piece together the baffling story surrounding the apparent haunting of an old friend's wife. The second time it plays like a tense psychological drama, only this time you watch helplessly while Stewart falls in love with Kim Novak, who plays the wife in more ways than one, and she with him. Any time you watch it, though, your heart goes out to Barbara Bel Geddes as Stewart's artist friend nursing a lifelong crush on him. There's one scene with her that's particularly heartbreaking -- you'll know it when you see it.
Much has been said about how this is one of Hitchcock's most blatantly autobiographical films, especially in the later scenes where Stewart makes Novak over to look like his ideal woman (icy blond hair, pulled back from her face, severe eyelashes), so I won't go over all that again. Besides, if you haven't seen this film before I don't want to give away too many of its mysteries. Suffice it to say, while it didn't do great box office in 1958 (probably due to the dark subject matter), today it's recognized by critics and audiences alike as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces, along with Rear Window, North by Northwest, Psycho and a half dozen others. It's gratifying to know that a half century on this film is still able to cast its spell.
Monday, October 6, 2008
I came back for one reason, Mike. I came to give you a second chance to prove your love.
Just as it's been many years since I last saw Vertigo, it's also been a long time since I watched Brian De Palma's Obsession, which plays on some of the same themes as Hitchcock's classic. This is the first time I ever viewed them back to back, though, so I wasn't sure how Obsession would hold up in comparison. Surface similarities aside, I'm happy to report that it's very much its own film. Sure, it wouldn't have existed without Vertigo, but this is hardly the first instance of one film being inspired by another.
Written by Paul Schrader (based on a story by De Palma and Schrader), the film starts in 1959 when a New Orleans businessman (Cliff Robertson) is celebrating both his 10th wedding anniversary and a major real estate venture with his business partner (John Lithgow). That night, however, his wife (Genevieve Bujold) and daughter are kidnapped and Robertson has to come up with a $500,000 ransom. The drop goes off as planned, but when the police intervene the deal goes sour and Robertson winds up losing them both. Fast forward 16 years to the present and Robertson is still grieving -- and the only thing that has been erected on the prime real estate he owns is an imposing memorial to his wife and child. Like Madeline in Vertigo when she's possessed by Carlotta, Robertson is a man living in the past.
In an attempt to bring him out of his funk, Lithgow brings Robertson on a business trip to Florence, Italy, which was where he was stationed after the war. There he visits the church where he first met his wife and, to his amazement, sees an art restorer at work who bears an uncanny resemblance to her. (Naturally, she is also played by Bujold.) To reveal any more of the plot would do the film a disservice, but I will say that it has a dreamlike quality thanks to Vilmos Zsigmond's gauzy cinematography, and Bernard Herrmann's masterful score casts a spell of melancholy and regret, tinged with an undercurrent of romantic longing. It's just a shame this was Herrmann's last score for De Palma. As with their earlier collaboration, 1973's Sisters, De Palma's visuals and Herrmann's music fit together like a hand and glove.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Her only crime was falling in love and being afraid.
Ever since I saw Matador and Law of Desire in the Viva Pedro series a couple years back I've been wanting to catch Almodóvar's breakthrough film, 1988's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. I probably could have done so long before now, but this is definitely a case of better late than never. Until 2006's Volver, this was his last film with the radiant Carmen Maura, who plays a TV actress whose lover (Fernando Guillén) has left her just as she's received some life-changing news from her doctor. Maura tries everything she can to reach him before he leaves on a trip with another woman, but circumstances conspire to keep her from him. (Even so, she keeps hearing his voice, both at the studio -- where she's dubbing Joan Crawford's voice to Guillén's Sterling Hayden in Johnny Guitar -- and at home on the messages he leaves on her answering machine.)
Maura isn't the only woman on the verge, though. (If she were, the title would have been singular.) There's also Guillén's mentally ill ex-wife (Julieta Serrano), who is the last person in the world who should ever get hold of a firearm, and Maura's naive young friend (María Barranco), who needs a place to hide out when she finds out she's been shacking up with a Shiite terrorist. That place turns out to be Maura's penthouse apartment, which is also visited in short order by her ex-lover's son (Antonio Banderas) and his bitchy fiancée (Rossy de Palma). It's quite a coincidence that they're apartment hunting and happen to arrive at Maura's place soon after she's decided to sublet it, but Almodóvar isn't worried so much about plausibility in a story like this. If he were, then Maura wouldn't wind up in the same exotic taxi (with blond pompadoured driver) every time she hailed one.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Any man running for the Senate has to want something.
As the election cycle reaches a fever pitch, there are a few more political films that I'd like to catch up with before it's all over and done with. One of them is 1972's The Candidate, which I watched tonight. Directed by Michael Ritchie and written by Jeremy Larner (who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his efforts), it tells the story of an idealistic lawyer, played by Robert Redford, who gets talked into running for the Senate in California against the entrenched Republican incumbent, and how the campaign chips away at his ideals and the purity of vision that he had going into it. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because Robert Altman and Gary Trudeau covered some of the same ground in Tanner '88, but The Candidate got there first -- and it provided the model.
The film co-stars Peter Boyle as Redford's campaign manager, a.k.a. the man who talked him into running in the first place, with Melvyn Douglas as Redford's father, a former governor who sits on the sidelines until he sees that it's politically expedient to come out for his son, Don Porter as the incumbent, who refuses to debate Redford until he starts gaining in the polls, Allen Garfield as Redford's media expert, Michael Lerner as one of his speechwriters, and Natalie Wood (Redford's frequent co-star in the '60s) as herself. It's one of those films that I've known about for years, but never got around to seeing for one reason or another, probably because I never saw it show up on television. Based on its pedigree, I would expect it to more well-known, but as it is I had no idea going in how it was going to turn out. Would Redford win the race? Would he completely sell out his ideals in order to do so? And would he crack under the strain of campaigning? As is the case with a lot of American films of the early '70s, it seems like it could go either way on all those counts all the way up to the end.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
It's not easy being an outlaw in times like these.
The same year that Robert Redford ran for the Senate in California, his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid co-star Paul Newman installed himself as judge in a lawless part of west Texas in the 1972 western comedy The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Directed by John Huston from an original screenplay by John Milius, the film gave Newman a chance to cut loose as the self-appointed judge who sets up shop in a brothel, employs outlaws as marshals and glorifies Lily Langtry at every opportunity. It also features a parade of familiar faces, including Victoria Principal as the Mexican girl he sets up house with, Anthony Perkins as a traveling reverend who performs one burial service (providing Newman with the model for all of the ones to follow) and moves on, Ned Beatty as his faithful bartender, Bill McKinney as one of the outlaws-turned-lawmen, Tab Hunter as one of their first "customers," John Huston as mountain man Grizzly Adams, who bequeaths upon Newman a watch-bear, Stacy Keach as an albino gunslinger, Roddy McDowall as a shady lawyer, Jacqueline Bisset as Newman's daughter (after she grows up), and Ava Gardner as Lily Langtry, who comes through town too late to meet her biggest fan.
As befits a film that takes place over the course of several decades, The Life and Times is extremely episodic, and it even features multiple narrators. (Perkins and Hunter both tell their own stories, after which Beatty picks up the narration, which is helpful when the film skips ahead two decades). It also takes time out in the middle for a song (the Oscar-nominated "Marmalade, Molasses & Honey," which lost to the theme song from The Poseidon Adventure) while Newman and Principal have a day out with their bear (a strange substitute for the bicycle from Butch). Regardless of how well it fared at the box office, Newman and Huston must have enjoyed working together because they did so again the following year on The Mackintosh Man. Take a guess what I'm going to be watching tomorrow night.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Patriotic criminals always get top billing.
Having just finished watching John Huston's 1973 thriller The Mackintosh Man, I have to say I'm very glad I didn't read the description on the Netflix envelope before I popped it in. For one thing, it gives away a key plot point that isn't revealed until about halfway into the film. For another, it reveals who the main villain is, thus depriving the unwary Netflix envelope reader of one of the film's few surprises. (I'm not surprised to find out that Huston didn't think much of the film, but I'm sure he relished the opportunity to shoot on location in Ireland.)
Written for the screen by Walter Hill (who was two years away from making his directorial debut with the Charles Bronson vehicle Hard Times), the film stars Paul Newman as a thief who poses as an Australian (complete with duff accent) to pull off a diamond robbery in London. Harry Andrews plays the man who hires him and Dominique Sanda is his helpful secretary, who comes through for Newman when Andrews is taken out of the picture. (No, that's not the plot twist.) James Mason co-stars as a well-respected member of Parliament who's fond of making speeches about law and order, and he's given ample opportunity to do so after Newman is caught (with Peter Vaughan as the arresting officer), sent to prison and busted out by a sinister organization run by Michael Hordern. (No, he's not the main villain.) I can't really say anything more without giving the whole thing away, but I can certainly say that there are better thrillers out there and much better star vehicles for Newman. (Any one that doesn't require him to do a foreign accent will do.)
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Strong teeth run in my family.
Ever since I first read about the Canadian direct-to-video horror movie Never Cry Werewolf (which premiered on the Sci Fi Channel back in May), I knew it was one that I was eventually going to get around to seeing. As luck would have it, Sci Fi showed it again this afternoon as part of its 31 Days of Halloween, so I didn't even have to waste a rental (or a Netflix slot) on it. Thank heavens for basic cable.
Directed by Brenton Spencer and written by John Sheppard (who is strangely not credited on the movie's IMDb page, even though all ten executive producers are), the film owes a huge (and apparently unacknowledged) debt to Tom Holland's 1985 film Fright Night. That film was about a teenage boy who can't make anyone believe him when a vampire moves in next door. In this film the teenager is a girl and the new neighbor is a werewolf, but otherwise the parallels are unmistakable. There's even a washed-up television star (played by Roddy McDowell in Fright Night and here by Kevin Sorbo) in both that the hero goes to for help. The main difference between them is McDowell is a horror movie host who comes through in the clinch and Sorbo is a self-involved hunter/sportsman who actually gets treed at one point. (No one could ever accuse Sorbo of not having a sense of humor about himself.)
Anyway, enough about Fright Night. What about Never Cry Werewolf? Well, it starts off with an attack on a registered sex offender (never let it be said that werewolves are too concerned about the class of their victims), after which we start to get to know our protagonists. The girl (Nina Dobrev) is a vegetarian who believes something is up almost right away when she finds out their hunky new neighbor (Peter Stebbings) has hair on his palms. Her younger brother (Spencer Van Wyck) is impressed by his Harley, though, and starts hanging out over at his place, helping him with his remodeling. (I'm guessing the sex offender scene may have been added to deflect any speculation that anything else was going on.) The other major character is the dorky guy played by Sean O'Neill, who has a huge crush on Dobrev and gets turned into a werewolf by Stebbings in much the same way that the best friend in Fright Night gets corrupted. (Okay, that's the last Fright Night reference, I promise.)
In the final analysis, Never Cry Werewolf isn't the most original werewolf movie out there and it's fairly cheesy to boot. The special effects aren't very special and the werewolf is mostly shown in extreme closeups or long shots because of how fake it looks when you finally do get a good look at it. It's also very telling that the big transformation takes place entirely offscreen. Still, it's amusing that the film makes up its own mythology and then tries to pass it off as common knowledge. (Werewolves travel with demon familiars that take the form of big, black dogs? Really?) The most overwrought part of the story, though, is Stebbings's belief that Dobrev is the reincarnation of his long lost love, Melissa (who looks like Alyssa Milano in the picture that he carries around with him). At least that's one thing it didn't crib from Fright Night. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)
Sunday, October 12, 2008
That plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops.
It's impossible for me to name just one Hitchcock film as my all-time favorite, but 1959's North by Northwest is definitely in the running for the title. One of the most breezily entertaining films he ever made, it reunited him for the last time with Cary Grant, who was getting a little long in the tooth to be playing the romantic lead, but he still managed to pull it off with aplomb. As Manhattan advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill, who gets mistaken for a nonexistent government spy and hounded by do-badder James Mason, Grant is at his most sardonic and exasperated -- quite frequently in the same scene. He also gets to turn on the charm with Eva Marie Saint, who plays a mysterious woman who gets him out of more than one jam, and into just as many.
The film also features Jessie Royce Landis (who had played Grace Kelly's mother in To Catch a Thief) as Grant's disapproving mother, Leo G. Carroll as the spymaster who sees how useful it can be for their decoy to have a real-life counterpart, and a young Martin Landau as Mason's right-hand man. Some of Hitchcock's key collaborators behind the scenes include writer Ernest Lehman, whose original screenplay was justly nominated for an Academy Award, composer Bernard Herrmann, who contributed one of his most propulsive and memorable scores, and title designer Saul Bass, who had previously done the titles for Vertigo and would subsequently make his mark on Psycho. Theirs was a brief, but very fruitful collaboration.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
I have no fear. I came for a transfusion of blood.
In recent years, Roger Corman has taken to remaking many of the films he produced and directed in the '50s, '60s and '70s. So far there's only one that he's remade thrice, though, and that is 1957's Not of This Earth, which isn't too surprising since it has a most intriguing premise (courtesy of co-writers Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna). Originally released on a double bill with Attack of the Crab Monsters, Not of This Earth actually prefigures The Man Who Fell to Earth (both the novel and the film) in many ways since it's about an alien who comes to Earth in search of a supply of liquid for his dying planet, Davanna. The difference is David Bowie needed water and Paul Birch, who plays the alien in this film, is after blood.
Birch is no ordinary vampire, though. For one thing he has no problem going about during the day, although he does wear sunglasses at all times to hide the fact that his eyes are blank. He's also telepathic and capable of controlling men's minds, but he's susceptible to high-decibel sounds like car horns and telephones -- and blood-curdling screams. Like George A. Romero's Martin, Birch takes his blood intravenously, but he can afford to hire a comely nurse (Corman regular Beverly Garland) to administer his transfusions. The film also features Jonathan Haze as Birch's nosy servant, Dick Miller as a hip vacuum cleaner salesman who regrets pushing him for a demonstration, and an uncredited Tom Graeff (the future writer, director and star of the MST3K classic Teenagers from Outer Space) as a car park attendant. Sadly missing in action on DVD, Not of This Earth is a scarily effective low-budget chiller that is ripe for rediscovery.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The sun is setting and they are going to rise. It's in the order of things.
To follow Not of This Earth, I have gone with a more down-to-earth vampire film, Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers (a.k.a. Dance of the Vampires). Written by Gérard Brach & Polanski, the film is set in a snowbound Transylvania, where eccentric professor Jack MacGowran and his faithful assistant (played by Polanski) have come in search of vampires. At first Jewish innkeeper Alfie Bass is coy about why there is garlic hung up all over the place, but when his daughter Sharon Tate is abducted by the local count (who is played with the proper aristocratic air by Ferdy Mayne) and Bass himself is turned into a creature of the night, MacGowran and Polanski tail him to the vampire's lair and in the hopes of eradicating the scourge at its source (although Polanski is clearly more concerned with rescuing Tate, with whom he is smitten).
I first saw a screening of this film at the William Way Community Center in Philadelphia about a decade back. As the center serves the LGBT community, I expected there to be some gay content and sure enough the count has a fey son (played by Iain Quarrier, who had a supporting role in Cul-de-sac) who takes a liking to Polanski and attempts to put the moves on him. It's a scene that Polanski plays as much for scares as he does for laughs, which sums up his approach to the film as a whole. He wants you to laugh at the pratfalls and fear for the protagonists' lives at the same time you're marveling at the sumptuous production design and stunning snowscapes. (The snow scenes, incidentally, are highly reminiscent of his 1963 short Mammals, which was the first film he made outside of Poland.) Even if he's not entirely successful at synthesizing the film's disparate parts, there's no denying that it is beautiful to look at.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
He's got a nerve looking for a virgin in this day anyway. Who does he think he is?
In 1973, writer/director Paul Morrissey went to Italy to make a pair of horror films back-to-back under the aegis of Andy Warhol. The first to be released was Flesh for Frankenstein, but I was more interested in 1974's Blood for Dracula, which stars Udo Kier as the sickly count, who is finding it more and more difficult as time goes by to find the virgin blood he needs to stay alive. At the urging of his servant Anton (Arno Juerging), Kier leaves Romania and travels to Italy under the mistaken belief that the country's strict Catholicism keeps their young women pure and virginal until they are married. Keeping to small towns, Juerging makes some inquiries on Kier's behalf (and has a run-in in a tavern with an uncredited Roman Polanski after he unwisely flashes some money around) and gets him an invitation to stay at the villa of down-on-his-luck marquis Vittorio De Sica and his wife Maxime McKendry, who all but offer their four daughters up to him on a plate.
Unfortunately for Kier, the first two daughters he's presented with as marriage prospects have already been despoiled by handyman Joe Dallesandro (who is given to spouting socialist dogma and doesn't even attempt to alter his New York accent) and the others aren't far behind. Kier's Dracula (who, incidentally, can go about in the daylight and touch crosses, although he does shun garlic and can't be seen in mirrors) has definitely seen better days and his suffering is great when he goes too long between feedings. Of course, when he drinks the blood of a woman who's not a virgin the results are even worse as he vomits at length each time he's duped. By the time he actually has some success, Dallesandro is on to him and comes after Kier with an axe, leading to the grand guignol finish. Maybe if he hadn't insisted on dragging his coffin along (Dallesandro's first clue that something is amiss), things would have gone a little differently.
Call me crazy, but I wanted at least a taste of heaven before an eternity of hell.
Seeing Udo Kier in Blood for Dracula this afternoon reminded me of his turn as the sinister film collector in John Carpenter's 2005 Masters of Horror episode Cigarette Burns. That episode -- along with Stuart Gordon's Dreams in the Witch-House -- was my first exposure to the series after reading about it for months, so I was glad that it didn't disappoint. And I was especially happy to see Carpenter back behind the camera since his last film had been 2001's Ghosts of Mars (which was something of a disappointment, to say the least). He didn't do the music, though. That job he left to his son Cody (who turned in a main theme that is more than a little reminiscent of his old man's Halloween score).
The episode, which was written by Drew McWeeny & Scott Swan, is about a film programmer (Norman Reedus) in charge of a run-down theater (which is actually pretty nice for one that is described as a "shithole") who specializes in tracking down rare prints. Kier is the decadent millionaire who bankrolls him to the tune of $200,000 to find Le Fin Absolue du Monde, a 1971 film that caused a riot when it was first screened at a festival and has not been publicly shown since. The film is said to produce violent reactions in anyone who sees it and its power is such that it starts to affect Reedus the closer he gets to it. With a build-up like that, when we finally get to see some of Le Fin Absolue it can't help but seem anticlimactic, but Carpenter knows enough to keep the flashes that we do see of it brief and memorable. Even if you don't buy the premise that watching a film once could drive you insane, what's up there on the screen (and happening to the people watching it) is still plenty disturbing.
Friday, October 17, 2008
I have a vampire living next door to me and he's gonna kill me if I don't protect myself.
Since I brought it up so many times in conjunction with Never Cry Werewolf last weekend, it only seemed right for me to revisit Fright Night while I'm in the midst of my vampire cycle. Written and directed by Tom Holland, the 1985 film stars Chris Sarandon as the handsome bloodsucker who moves in next door to teenager William Ragsdale, who sees some strange things out his bedroom window and finds it impossible to make anybody believe his wild stories. Amanda Bearse co-stars as his girlfriend, who gets upset when he gets distracted by what his neighbor is up to, and Stephen Geoffreys plays his nerdy friend, who has a homoerotically charged encounter with Sarandon and goes over to the dark side. (Of course, since everyone calls him by nickname "Evil" throughout, that's not much of a stretch for him.)
As I mentioned repeatedly in my Never Cry Werewolf review, the parallels between the films are numerous and unmistakable, but there are a number of differences. For example, instead of a big, black dog to scare away intruders, Sarandon has a human protector (played by Jonathan Stark). For another, Roddy McDowall may play the part of the down-on-his-luck horror show host with self-deprecating humor, but he never sinks to the same level of parody that Kevin Sorbo does. I have to admit, though, the one plot element that I believed was original to Never Cry Werewolf -- that of the monster's reincarnated lover -- actually is present and accounted for in this film. (It has clearly been a long time since I've seen it.) However, there's nothing in the later film that comes close to the scene in this one where Sarandon seduces Bearse in the middle of a crowded dance floor. And does Never Cry Werewolf have a soundtrack featuring songs by J. Geils Band, Sparks, Autograph and Devo? I didn't think so.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
A corpse must be breathless or it will become mischievous.
Why is it that so many vampire movies start with the sound effect of a wolf howl? I noticed them at the beginning of both The Fearless Vampire Killers and Fright Night and there was one in the film I watched this morning, the Hong Kong action/horror/comedy Mr. Vampire (which I got from Jeff a long, long time ago, but have just now gotten around to watching). Co-written and directed by Ricky Lau, the film was made in 1985 and was followed by three sequels over the next three years (which I suppose makes it the Saw series of its day). What sets this film's vampires apart is the way they hop around, which may sound silly, but it's no less threatening when there's eight of them coming after you. The main plot is set in motion when a family's long-buried ancestor is exhumed and, before it can be reburied, comes back to life and starts causing havoc. And as if vampires and walking corpses aren't enough, the film also throws a beautiful ghost into the mix and a guy in an ape suit. Chock full of genuinely funny comic interludes and well-choreographed fight scenes, Mr. Vampire's 96 minutes all but zip by. Highly recommended for genre fans looking for something a little different.
I was sad, I was starved. It was time to treat myself and I thought, "What about Italian?"
One decade after making the preeminent horror comedy An American Werewolf in London, director John Landis returned to the well and came up with 1992's Innocent Blood, which follows the exploits of a French vampire in Pittsburgh who is very particular about what she eats. Written by Michael Wolk, the film stars Anne Parillaud as the beautiful vamp, who's in need of a new lover at the same time she's targeting hoodlums in the middle of a mob war, Robert Loggia as the psychotic mob boss (in his first scene we get to watch him beat an underling with a toaster oven) she doesn't get to finish off and who comes back stronger and more dangerous than ever, and Anthony LaPaglia as the undercover cop trying to bring Loggia down who finds an unlikely ally -- and love interest -- in Parillaud.
The supporting cast includes Don Rickles as a mob attorney who lives on the Shadyside of town, Chazz Palminteri as an underling who is Parillaud's first victim, Angela Bassett as a U.S. Attorney who browbeats detective Luis Guzmán when he loses LaPaglia, who's supposed to be in protective custody, and the usual array of director cameos. If you know what they look like, as you're watching you can say, "Hey, there's Tom Savini as the newspaper photographer! And Frank Oz as the pathologist! And Forrest J. Ackerman as the man whose car is stolen! And Michael Ritchie as the night watchman! And Sam Raimi as the guy at the meat storage place! And Dario Argento as the paramedic! And scream queen Linnea Quigley as the nurse!" If you're watching this with a friend, though, you might want to keep those observations to yourself.
In addition to his cameos, Landis also sneaks in numerous scenes from classic horror films. Anytime you see a TV it's likely to be playing scenes from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Hammer's Horror of Dracula, Universal's Dracula, Strangers on a Train (including Hitchcock's cameo) and Phantom of the Rue Morgue (which, cleverly enough, is being watched by the security guard at the city morgue). He also includes a shot of a theater marquee that has "See You Next Wednesday" on it. That's one of Landis's standard in-jokes and was even the title of the porno that David sees in American Werewolf. And as a nod to that film's use of songs with the word "moon" in the title, this one features a couple Frank Sinatra tunes on the soundtrack. (Very appropriate considering the subject matter. It's just too bad they probably couldn't afford to use more.)
Sunday, October 19, 2008
You're in the middle of a war that has been raging for the better part of a thousand years.
He's a life-saving surgeon, she's a death-dealing vampire -- can the two of them get along? That's the big question posed by 2003's Underworld. (Actually, that's not strictly true. The real question the filmmakers probably posed was "Hey, wouldn't it be really cool if we made a movie where vampires and werewolves fought each other with guns while there was a Romeo and Juliet thing going on?") I gave Underworld a pass when it was first released, largely because the trailers I saw were chock full of CGI werewolves (my favorite kind, don'tcha know), but I needed a vampire movie from the current decade to complete my series and this one fit the bill. (I would have much rather gone with Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, but that was checked out. Besides, there's nothing like killing two movie monsters with one stone.)
Directed by Len Wiseman, who co-wrote the story with screenwriter Danny McBride and actor Kevin Grevioux (who plays one of the more ferocious werewolves, or Lycans as they're called in this film), Underworld stars Kate Beckinsale as a vampire Death Dealer (i.e. a werewolf hunter) who becomes attached to human Scott Speedman even after he's been bitten by a werewolf and thus fated to become one at the next full moon. The next full moon, incidentally, just so happens to coincide with The Awakening, when the vampire elite is gathering to bring one of their elders out of hibernation. In the meantime, the vampires lounge about in their mansion acting all decadent while the werewolves skulk around their underground lair playing Fight Club. When you get right down to it, the vampire/werewolf war is a class struggle on par with the Autobots vs. the Decepticons -- just don't expect me to watch Transformers anytime soon to back that up.
Anyway, I haven't gotten to the plot yet and there sure is a lot of it. In addition to The Awakening, there's a lot of intrigue surrounding the collusion between the leaders of the two factions, which Beckinsdale attempts to bring to light by waking vampire elder Bill Nighy a century ahead of schedule. And it turns out Speedman is the key to bridging the gap between the two races, but some people would rather see that not happen, hence all the gun battles and people throwing each other around in decrepit subterranean chambers. One has to wonder, though, whether the decision to allow the vampires in the film to be seen in mirrors was made so the filmmakers could stage the final epic battle in a large pool of water without having to worry about erasing the vampires' reflections. Oh, yes. And what tactical advantage is there to the werewolves charging their enemies sideways on the walls? Did the filmmakers go with that simply because it looked cool? My guess would be a resounding yes.
Monday, October 20, 2008
He was interested in the reaction of the nervous system to fear.
I'm giving the vampires a rest this week. Instead, I shall be looking at that ever-popular horror mainstay, the psychotic killer with the sharp cutting instrument. First up: Michael Powell's 1960 cult thriller Peeping Tom, which was released the same year as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but had nowhere near the same impact despite being the more disturbing film. Made independently by Powell after his break with Emeric Pressburger (although he did get permission to use the Archers logo), Peeping Tom was written by Leo Marks and starred Carl Boehm as a disturbed young man who is obsessed with capturing fear on camera. That's a trait he inherited from his father (played by Powell himself), a scientist who subjected him to the most reprehensible experiments when he was a child to see how he would react -- and filmed him the whole time. Anybody being raised under those circumstances would grow up to have problems.
Throughout the film we see Boehm behind the camera in a number of situations: during the day he's the focus puller at a film studio working on a absurdly light comedy, after work he takes pornographic pictures at a corner shop, and on his own time he works on his "documentary," in which he kills beautiful women while he films them. He won't be finished with that last project until he's been caught by the police, which he expects will happen soon, but in the meantime he strikes up a tentative (and, quite frankly, strange) relationship with his downstairs neighbor (Anna Massey), an aspiring children's book author who lives with her blind mother (Maxine Audley). We first spy on her while she's having a rather boisterous birthday party, but it's the present Boehm gives her in the privacy of his room that intrigues her more. The question is how close will he allow himself to get to her and how far will she go to try to understand him?
The film also features an extended cameo by Moira Shearer, who had starred in Powell & Pressburger's The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann, as a stand-in working on the same film as Boehm who stays late one night to play a starring role in his film, little realizing what kind of film he's making. In a nod to their previous collaborations, Powell has Shearer do a dance routine around the studio to "warm up," which makes it all the more shocking when Boehm reveals his true purpose to her -- and us. (We didn't get a good look at the first murder since it was shown from the perspective of Boehm's camera, and we still don't get "the whole picture" until the very end of the film.)
For a film that was raked over the coals by critics when it was first released, Peeping Tom is actually quite restrained in its depictions of violence. While Hammer films were literally painting the screen red, there is nary a drop of blood shed in this one. That's because, like Boehm, Powell isn't interested in the gory details of the killings. (If he was, he wouldn't go into a close-up at the crucial moment.) Rather, it's the reactions of the people watching them that is his primary concern -- and that's exactly what got Powell into hot water. After all, isn't everybody who sits down in a darkened room to watch a movie something of a voyeur?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?
There's a documentary on the Criterion DVD of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom called A Very British Psycho, which seemed like the perfect lead-in to a Very American Psycho, namely Alfred Hitchcock's. Released just three months after Peeping Tom, Psycho met with a similarly icy reaction from the critics, but it was a big hit with audiences and bolstered Hitchcock's reputation as the Master of Suspense. It quickly entered the cultural lexicon, and unfortunately typecast Anthony Perkins for the rest of his career, but it's impossible to imagine anyone else inhabiting the role of Norman Bates as well as he did. (Vince Vaughan in the remake didn't even come close.)
Based on the novel by Robert Bloch and a screenplay by Joseph Stefano, the film puts us in the position of being voyeurs right from the start, with Hitchcock's roving camera homing in on a seedy Phoenix hotel room where lovers Janet Leigh and John Gavin are meeting clandestinely for what Leigh insists will be the last time. Their long-distance relationship seems doomed by their financial straits, so when Leigh sees the chance to make off with $40,000 that her boss has entrusted her with, she takes it and doesn't look back. On her way to be with Gavin in California, though, she stops off at the Bates Motel, where she meets Norman and, after an awkward conversation, decides to go back and try to put things right. Just a quick shower and a good night's sleep and she'll be on her way. The trouble is, after Norman has his own "Peeping Tom" moment, her fate is sealed. Whether Leigh likes it or not, she's going to be checking out early.
I don't know why I'm being coy about this. Even people who have never seen Psycho know about the shower scene. All I have to do is type the phrase "shower scene" and the mind immediately thinks of screeching strings and slashing knives. One scene alone does not a classic make, though, and Hitchcock and Stefano made sure that every scene in Psycho counted (even the one at the end with the psychiatrist). They also populated the film with intriguing supporting players, including Vera Miles as Leigh's sister, who goes looking for her, Martin Balsam as a private investigator also looking into the disappearance, John McIntire as the amiable local sheriff, and Simon Oakland (who would go on to play Darren McGavin's cantankerous boss on Kolchak: The Night Stalker) as the psychiatrist who tries to wrap everything up nice and neat. Hitchcock even cast his daughter Pat as Leigh's co-worker who blithely offers her a tranquilizer when Leigh complains of a headache.
As I hinted in the first paragraph, there was an ill-thought-out attempt at a remake about a decade back with director Gus Van Sant at the helm. Don't know what possessed him to do a shot-for-shot remake of an avowed classic, but I remember being singularly unimpressed when I caught it on television, despite the stellar cast. Not just Vince Vaughn, but Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Robert Forster and Philip Baker Hall all threw their lots in. It may be worth revisiting, but somehow I doubt it has improved with age.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
There's all kinds of ways to get killed in this city -- if you're looking for it.
Two decades after Psycho, writer/director Brian De Palma staked his own claim to the psychotic killer genre with 1980's Dressed to Kill, a film that owes some debts to Hitchcock's classic, but then again so do most psychological thrillers that followed in its wake. The film stars Angie Dickinson as an unhappily married woman who confesses her dissatisfaction to psychiatrist Michael Caine, then goes out and gets picked up by a stranger at an art museum and, on her way home from the tryst, gets slashed to death by a blond in a raincoat and sunglasses. The murder's aftermath is witnessed by high-priced call girl Nancy Allen, who is pressured by police detective Dennis Franz into finding out the identity of the killer (who, naturally, was seen by no one else), and with the help of Dickinson's electronics wizard son Keith Gordon, deduces that the killer may be one of Caine's patients, an unstable transsexual named Bobbi (who's voiced by an uncredited William Finley).
Out of all of De Palma's films, this is probably the one where the style reigns the most supreme. One of its high points is the museum sequence where Dickinson flirts with, pursues and is pursued in turn by a tall, dark stranger, all without any dialogue and with Pino Donaggio's lush score sweeping us along as the Steadicam follows her around. De Palma also makes use of other camera tricks like diopter lenses (which allows different parts of the frame to remain in focus) and his personal favorite, the split-screen (in a sequence that offers the key to the mystery, but also throws out a couple red herrings to keep you guessing). If there's one area where De Palma probably should have deviated from the Psycho template, though, it's the scene where Bobbi's psychiatrist (David Margulies) explains away his condition. At least he knew well enough to get the shower scene out of the way early.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
There's so much more to me than this guy who comes around doing these crazy things. So much more.
Four decades after Alfred Hitchcock made his Very American Psycho, Mary Harron directed an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho. I saw it when it was first released in the spring of 2000 (after a great deal of controversy over its violence and sexual content) and while I found the first half exhilaratingly offbeat and complex, I thought it went off the rails in the second. I suppose that's somewhat appropriate, though, considering the extremes to which vapid Wall Street exec and enthusiastic serial killer Patrick Bateman (chillingly embodied by Christian Bale) goes once he makes a total break with reality. For a while he's able to keep up the pretense of being a normal absurdly high-paid executive, comparing business cards with the likes of Justin Theroux and Jared Leto (who mistakes him for someone else, which isn't hard considering how much all the junior executives look and dress alike) and jockeying for reservations at trendy restaurants where the plates dwarf the food they contain, but this becomes increasingly difficult once private detective Willem Dafoe, who's looking into Leto's disappearance, enters the picture.
Being a stupidly rich and physically attractive Yuppie, Bateman has no shortage of women practically throwing themselves at him. There's his personal secretary Chloe Sevigny, who's harboring a crush on him, his self-styled fiancée Reese Witherspoon, who keeps pushing him to marry her despite the fact that they have nothing in common, and his mistress Samantha Mathis, who is perpetually doped up on something or another. Then there's the sad case of prostitute Cara Seymour, who gets picked up by Bateman once and escapes with only minor injuries, and then is lured back a second time, when she's not so lucky. (At least he keeps his promise that it "won't be like last time." That's because the last time he didn't have his trusty chainsaw with him.)
For a film about alpha male dominance (Bateman stage manages all of his sexual encounters), it's quite telling that Harron chose to write it with lesbian screenwriter Guinevere Turner (who also co-wrote Harron's follow-up, 2005's The Notorious Bettie Page, and, umm, Uwe Boll's BloodRayne). Turner also has a small role as one of Bateman's ill-fated sex partners, who meets her end after enduring one of his pop lectures, this time about Whitney Houston. He also expounds at length about Huey Lewis & the News and the differences between Genesis and Phil Collins's solo work -- and occasionally throws in a puzzling tidbit about some serial killer. Clearly he's been doing some reading up on the subject.
One of the pieces of serial killer trivia Bateman tosses out is that Ted Bundy's first dog was a collie named Lassie. Lassie doesn't put in an appearance in Matthew Bright's 2002 film Ted Bundy, but that's because Bright (who previously wrote and acted in the cult film Forbidden Zone and wrote and directed 1996's Freeway and its sequel) sticks to the years when the charismatic Bundy was actively stalking and killing young women. If Patrick Bateman was a fictional serial killer for the '80s, then Bundy was his all-too-real analogue for the '70s, starting in Seattle in 1974 and going until his capture two years later.
Written by Bright and Stephen Johnston, the film stars Michael Reilly Burke as Bundy, a law school dropout and failing psychology student whose political ambitions don't prevent him from being a compulsive thief and peeping tom. (Funny how these movies keep returning to that theme.) Like Bateman, Bundy tries to keep up the pretense of a normal relationship with single mother Boti Ann Bliss, who is confused by his sudden mood swings and frightened by some of the things he wants to do in bed, but he just can't stop luring young women to their doom. (Some of his methods include wearing a fake cast to gain their sympathy or impersonating a police officer). Eventually the Salt Lake City police catch up with him (and special makeup effects artist Tom Savini gets a nice cameo as the detective who interviews him), but Bundy manages to escape from custody twice and even makes it to Florida the second time, where he rents a room from veteran character actor Tracey Walter and tries to lay low, but it isn't long before his murderous impulses come to the surface once again.
When Bundy is finally apprehended and sentenced to death by electrocution, the film uses a fair bit of television footage of the real protesters outside the prison the morning his execution took place in 1989. Bright also doesn't shy away from depicting the details of the preparations for his electrocution, right on down to the novice guard who stuffs his bowels with cotton so he won't evacuate them when the juice is turned on. Once that's done, there really isn't much to say. After 90 minutes of watching him in action, when one of the characters asks, "Who was Ted Bundy?" it's still very much a fair question.
We figured this would be a great place to start a family of our own.
There's a scene in the published screenplay of American Psycho where Patrick Bateman takes his first murder victim and dissolves his body in a bathtub with quicklime. That didn't make it into the final cut of the film, but it did make me think of John Landis's second Masters of Horror episode Family, in which George Wendt plays a mild-mannered sociopath who uses a similar modus operandi to fulfill his dream of having the perfect family. (Anybody looking for a sign that he's a little touched in the head need look no further than the mantle where he has a photo of Dick Cheney.)
Written by Brent Hanley, Family has the same idyllic suburban setting as Mary Harron's Fear Itself episode "Community" and a similar focus on keeping up appearances. And it also features a couple -- in this case, investigative reporter Meredith Monroe and ER doctor Matt Keeslar -- who have moved to the neighborhood to start their own family. It isn't long, though, before Wendt starts looking at Monroe with an eye toward swapping out his current wife for a newer model. A lot more realistic than Landis's previous Masters of Horror entry Deer Woman, this is the sort of story that you can actually imagine happening in real life. Maybe that's what makes it extra creepy.
Friday, October 24, 2008
If Norman Bates is crazy, there are a whole lot of people around here running him a close second.
I normally avoid the sequels to horror films -- especially if they're made decades after the originals -- but I've long been curious about 1983's Psycho II, so this evening I checked it out, figuring it would be a good capper for my week of knife-wielding psychos. Directed by Richard Franklin, who had previously helmed the Hitchcockian thriller Road Games, and written by Tom Holland, the film catches up with Norman Bates 22 years after the events of the first film. Like Dressed to Kill, Psycho II opens with a shower scene, only this time it's lifted directly from the original (as if people had forgotten just why Norman was put away in the first place). Unfortunately, that opening sets a standard the sequel simply can't match, but at least it tries to tell its own story in its own way, only occasionally giving an obvious nod in the direction of its cinematic forebear.
Anthony Perkins steps right back into the role of Norman as if he'd been playing it all his life (in the intervening years he had reprised it at least once, in a classic sketch on Saturday Night Live), with Vera Miles also returning as Marion Crane's sister, who's incensed that Norman has been set free and is hellbent on making sure he gets locked away again -- for good this time. Newcomers to the saga include Meg Tilly as a waitress at the diner where Norman works after his release who takes a liking to him, but is also wary once she finds out about his past, Robert Loggia as the psychiatrist who cured Norman and is on hand to prevent a relapse into madness, and Dennis Franz as the sleazeball who's been managing the Bates Motel while Norman was away. Once Norman comes home he starts making changes almost immediately, resolving to fix the motel back up and leave the past behind him, but then somebody starts leaving notes from his mother and making phone calls -- and then the killings begin.
One word about the killings: with the exception of the first murder, which takes place at night, all of the others happen during the day, which is an interesting reversal of the usual horror film conventions -- particularly those established by Psycho. This time around the music was by Jerry Goldsmith, who wisely avoided quoting from Bernard Herrmann's iconic score, and the cinematography was by Dean Cundey, who had previously shot many of John Carpenter's films (including the original Halloween, which was itself inspired by Psycho). The film did well enough that another sequel was made just three years later, this time with Anthony Perkins in the director's chair. I'm less interested in that, though, or any of the later ones that were done for television. I'm more than happy to leave this series at entry number two.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Murder's the work of the Devil, whether it's by the hand of man or the hand of a beast.
You know you're in for something different when you're watching a werewolf movie and the first words that pop up on the screen are "BASED ON A TRUE STORY." My expectations weren't very high going into 2005's The Beast of Bray Road (which is apparently based on actual werewolf sightings that took place in rural Wisconsin), but at least it had the good sense not to take itself too seriously. Written, directed and edited by Leigh Scott (whose remake of H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror is apparently coming out this Friday), the film has more than a few parallels with Jaws. For example, star Jeff Denton is the new deputy in town who moved there from the big city for the peace and quiet, with Thomas Downey in the Richard Dreyfuss role as a cryptozoologist working on his Ph.D. who is attracted by internet reports of an unidentified wild beast. (Downey was something of an MVP on the film since he also served as production designer and stunt performer and did the special effects.) There's even a budget-conscious sheriff who's more concerned about selling hunting licenses and the tourist trade than hunting down the creature.
Speaking of the beast, it would probably be more frightening if it didn't look like a guy wearing a collection of throw rugs, which makes it doubly confusing why the director would show it so fully and so early in the film. He also gives the new deputy a seemingly pointless love interest in local roadhouse owner Sarah Lieving (who could probably use a bouncer like Patrick Swayze), which I suppose is meant to heighten the drama at the climax, but it ends up seeming as random as most every other element in the film. Still, if all you're looking for is a cheesy werewolf movie, you could probably do a lot worse than this one -- and cheesy is definitely the word for it. What else would you expect from a film that is "dedicated to the Great State of Wisconsin"?
We've lost the advantage, boy. It's clobbering time.
In all the years that I've been a fan of Stuart Gordon, one film of his that I've studiously avoided seeing so much as a single frame of (until today, that is) is 1990's Robot Jox. Maybe if he had recorded a commentary for the DVD release I would have been compelled to pick it up (that's the main reason why I own Dolls), but as it is, I have made do with the VHS copy at Plan 9. Gordon's highest-budgeted film up to that point, it suffered from poor timing in that it was started before, but not released until after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which made its message about the need for reconciliation between American and Soviet powers somewhat moot. Or maybe it failed because people just didn't want to watch a movie about two guys in giant robot suits hitting each other. Both possibilities are equally probable.
Set 50 years after a nuclear war, when all territorial disputes are decided by high-tech single combat and the Robojox are national heroes, the film stars Gary Graham as the noble warrior who walks away from the competition after a tragedy befalls spectators at his battle with ruthless Confederation champion Paul Koslo. He's also seen the future in the form of genetically engineers fighters, one of whom -- the comely Anne-Marie Johnson -- seems to have a thing for him. But is the feeling mutual? Gordon also wrote the story (which Joe Haldeman converted into screenplay form) and stacked the cast with familiar faces from his past films. These include Robert Sampson (Dean Halsey in Re-Animator) as the commissioner who doesn't take Graham's resignation well, Hilary Mason (the doll-maker's wife in Dolls) as the professor who has high hopes for her Tubies, and more frequent players Jeffrey Combs (as one of the ill-fated bleacher bums) and Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (a.k.a. Mrs. Stuart Gordon) as Graham's sister, who is quite the baby factory (she has six already with one more on the way) with Ian Patrick Williams (who also played her husband in Dolls and had small roles in Re-Animator and King of the Ants). And Gordon himself gets in on the act as a bartender (one of the few times he's stepped in front of the camera).
It's hard to tell exactly who the target audience for this film was supposed to be. Fans who knew Gordon from his horror work would be disappointed by relative absence of blood and gore necessitated by its PG rating. Parents dragged to the theater by their teenage sons would be aghast at the fleeting nudity and the unisex showers (which predate Starship Troopers). And mecha fans would be disappointed by the predominance of scenes of people not in giant robot suits hitting each other. Of course, it's quite telling at the end, when the giant robots have been disabled, that the combatants are reduced to fighting with sticks and stones. There's probably a message there if I chose to ferret one out.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Did you ever see a hundred dollar suit make so many people so happy?
At first glance, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit -- the magic realist tale of a suit that is able to temporarily change the lives of five Latino men who pool their money to buy it -- looks like the odd man out in Stuart Gordon's filmography. However, it's less of an anomaly once you consider that he made Kid Safe: The Video in 1988 and wrote the story for (and was originally set to direct) Honey I Shrunk the Kids for Disney the following year. Written by Ray Bradbury, based on his short story and play, the 1998 film takes place in East L.A. (i.e. the part of town that isn't seen on film too often) and stars Joe Mantegna as a con man who enlists four others who are the same size to buy a blindingly white suit that he saw in a store window. The other men include musician Esai Morales, poet Gregory Sierra, would-be lothario Clifton Collins Jr. and a filthy bum who looks a lot more like Edward James Olmos once he's cleaned up -- and the first night they each get one hour in the suit, which could be all they get if Mantegna hops the bus to El Paso. (Of course, if you believe he actually will, then you clearly haven't seen enough Disney movies.)
It's a very simple story about how people are changed by friendship and confidence, but Bradbury frequently goes overboard on the whimsy and Gordon sometimes allows his actors to mug their way through their reaction shots, which in unfortunate. Two exceptions to that are Sid Caesar and Howard Morris as brothers who run the clothing store (which does better business when it has a "Going Out of Business" sign up) where the five men buy the suit. As performers, Caesar and Morris have a history going back to Caesar's Your Show of Shows in the '50s, so they have a natural chemistry and play off each other beautifully. It also helps that they aren't asked to do any physical comedy, which can be deadly if it's too over-the-top. It's difficult to tell where the line with a film like this is, though, especially since it's geared toward a family audience. There are certainly worse ways to instill the lesson that people can make their dreams a reality by working together.
Monday, October 27, 2008
It wasn't my fault. You should have watched where you were going.
Stuart Gordon's films have a habit of not going into wide release (and they haven't for some time), but his most recent one, Stuck, managed to receive a limited release earlier this year. (In fact, I missed its Philadelphia engagement by only a few weeks.) Now that I've caught up with it (on DVD) I can finally say that I have seen all of his films, which isn't as easy as it sounds, especially with a cult filmmaker like Gordon. I've even managed to catch a few on the big screen (From Beyond and Dagon at a repertory screening and King of the Ants at a film festival), so I know how well his stuff works with an audience. I'm just sorry I didn't get to repeat the experience with this film because it's Gordon at his gory best.
According to the opening title, this film was "Inspired by a true story" (a more credible claim than the one made by The Beast of Bray Road) and it goes to show that people are capable of just about anything when they're backed into a corner. John Strysik's screenplay (which was based on a story by Gordon) thoroughly establishes the two main characters -- Mena Suvari is a nursing home employee up for a promotion and Stephen Rea is a man down on his luck who's been reduced to living on the streets -- before they lives collide in a very dramatic fashion. It's been a very bad day for Rea -- evicted from his squalid apartment, given the bureaucratic runaround at an employment office, forced to vacate a park bench by the police -- but that's nothing compared to what happens when Suvari -- who, it must be said, is not only coming down from an ecstasy high, but also talking on her cell phone -- hits him with her car and he gets stuck in the windshield. Not wanting to jeopardize her promotion -- and clearly not thinking straight -- Suvari drives home, parks the car in her garage and tries to figure a way out of her predicament that doesn't involve calling 911.
The film also features Carolyn Purdy-Gordon as the director of the nursing home where Suvari works (she plays a bitch so well), Rukiya Bernard as her friend and fellow employee, Russell Hornsby as her boyfriend/dealer (or is that dealer/boyfriend?) who promises to help her, Lionel Mark Smith (who had previously played a thug in King of the Ants and a pimp in Edmond) as a bum who befriends Rea (this is before the accident, mind you) and gives him a drink, some advice and some wheels (i.e. a shopping cart), and Jeffrey Combs as a 911 operator who tries to be as helpful as possible under the circumstances. And Gordon brought in frequent composer Bobby Johnston to help ratchet up the tension. (Johnston had previously scored King of the Ants and Edmond and also did the music for his Fear Itself episode "Eater.") As with a lot of Gordon's films, it's probably too grim and uncompromising for a general audience, but I for one am glad that he doesn't hold back. Even if he occasionally comes close to crossing the line (there are a few moments in this film that are excruciating), at least he's brave enough to do so unflinchingly.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
She could be fixed up. She could. Oh, she could be really tough.
Aside from Stuck, I can think of few horror films that focus on death by hit-and-run. Creepshow 2 immediately springs to mind, but that is not one that I'm eager to see again. The Car with James Brolin is another example, but I just can't bring myself to watch that for the first time. I mean, come on. The thing is rated PG for crying out loud. That leaves only one that I know of: John Carpenter's Christine, based on the novel by Stephen King. (Actually, there is one more: King's own Maximum Overdrive, but the less said about that cinematic abomination, the better.)
Released in 1983, at a time when Hollywood seemed to be pushing out King adaptations faster than he could write the original novels (this one actually went into production before the novel was even published), Christine starred Keith Gordon as the perpetually picked-on nerd whose life changes -- and not for the better -- when he buys a beat-up '58 Plymouth Fury and starts devoting all his time to restoring it to its former glory. It isn't long before Christine drives a wedge between Gordon and his best friend, football player John Stockwell, and tries to eliminate her competition, girlfriend Alexandra Paul, but the car really goes off the deep end after a gang of bullies smashes it up.
There's no denying that the special effects in Christine are stellar, especially in the scenes where the car reconstructs itself and when it goes after the bullies. For a 25-year-old film, it holds up amazingly well in that respect. Unfortunately, the human leads aren't half as compelling (although Gordon does his best with a role that requires him to go from ultra-geeky to super-cocky as Christine's possession takes hold). The supporting cast is stocked with some great character actors, though, including Roberts Blossom as the weirdo brother of Christine's prior owner, Robert Prosky as the cantankerous owner of the garage where Gordon keeps Christine, and Harry Dean Stanton as the police detective who starts asking questions when Gordon's enemies start turning up dead. The film is also remarkably light on the blood and gore, probably because Carpenter had had his fill of it the previous year when he made The Thing. Now there's a film with cutting-edge special effects and a memorable cast of characters.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
You know I like things clean and bright. How can I work in a mess like that?
Since I recently watched Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula, it only made sense for me to catch its companion film, Flesh for Frankenstein, which was shot and was released first, in 1973. In fact, the day Morrissey and his crew wrapped Flesh, they broke for lunch and started shooting Blood that afternoon. Unlike Blood, which was filmed mostly on location, Flesh is more studio-bound, having been conceived for 3-D, and it's pitched at a more hysterical level throughout, especially in the scenes between Udo Kier's mad Baron Frankenstein and Arno Juerging as his equally gaga assistant, Otto. In contrast, Joe Dallesandro underplays his role as the lusty peasant whose best friend becomes fodder for the Baron's experiments, but that's probably because Dallesandro never seemed capable of actually emoting. He had no problem with shedding his clothing, though, which he does with great frequency for the Baroness, played by Monique van Vooren, who catches him messing around with the local girls and decides she wants him for herself.
In addition to the extreme blood and gore, Flesh for Frankenstein also breaks a number of taboos on the sexual side of the equation. For example, not only are the Baron and Baroness husband and wife, but also brother and sister, and their union has produced two children -- a boy and a girl -- who will likely grow up to be chips off the old block. The Baroness has since grown accustomed to finding sexual stimulation outside the marriage, though, for as we see in one revolting scene, the Baron is only capable of achieving orgasm while exploring the innards of his female monster's body -- all while his eye-rolling assistant watches, rapt. The capper comes when he expects his creations to come together and procreate, thus establishing a master race. Imagine the Baron's disappointment when he finds that his Serbian peasant with the "perfect nasum" isn't turned on by women. Or don't imagine it; just watch the film and see.
Friday, October 31, 2008
There are bad dreams for those that sleep unwisely.
It's been several years since I first watched Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary. As a matter of fact, that was the first Guy Maddin film I ever saw and it definitely whet my appetite for more. Based on a production of Bram Stoker's Dracula by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet choreographed by Mark Godden and set to the music of Gustav Mahler, the film tells it story using Maddin's usual bag of silent-movie tricks, with just a few modern touches. And it's such a familiar story, it's refreshing to see it stripped down to its bare essentials, with a minimum of intertitles. (Even so, leave it to Maddin to include a line like "A brave man's blood is the best thing for a woman trouble.")
Shot in black and white, the film features striking splashes of color -- red for blood (of course) and the lining of Dracula's cape, green for the mist that heralds his arrival and the money that he keeps in a chest in his castle -- as well as some scenes that are tinted to reflect different moods. The dancers are all first-rate, from the leads (Zhang Wei-Qiang is one of the most sensual Counts I have ever seen) on down to the maids and the winged gargoyles who torment Lucy the night Van Helsing and company close all the windows try to keep Dracula out. And let it not be said that Maddin doesn't put his own stamp on the story. (Would it be a Guy Maddin film if he didn't?) He may not be the first filmmaker to find significance in a group of self-proclaimed vampire hunters thrusting their phallic spears into vampire women, but the implication is unmistakable when his Van Helsing (who may, in fact, be the virgin of the title) spears Drac from behind. Sounds like somebody's been sublimating.
Back to September 2008 -- Onward to November 2008
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