Film Review: Quentin Dupieux's Wrong

If, by chance, any of you fine folks out there, saw, and liked, Parisian-born, electronic musician turned filmmaker Quentin Dupieux's last film, titled Rubber, a film ostensibly centered around an abandoned car tire that somehow attains sentience, and goes on a killing spree in the deserts of the southwest, murdering people with, what seems to be telekinesis, then it is a pretty good bet that you might just like the director's new film as well.  But, if you are one of those who thought Rubber was a, let's say, steaming pile of dog shit - and there are probably more of the latter than the former - then it is an equally good bet that you should probably avoid this new film like one would avoid the veritable plague.  Lucky for me, I am in the former group, so Dupieux's simply titled, Wrong, though not as flat-out enjoyable as Rubber (less frantic but more cerebral indeed), is just my so-called cup of tea.  Granted, this tea may very well have been laced with something (think David Lynch meets Charlie Kaufman), but it still tastes pretty darn good to me.    

Now, to set up the plot of this film for the non-initiated, may be a little difficult.  Sure, I can tell you that the film is about a man named Dolph, who loses his dog, Paul.  I can let you know that in actuality, Paul has been kidnapped by a a mysterious self help guru who goes by the name of Mr. Chang.  I could also mention that there may be man/dog telepathy involved, as well as mind control, matter-of-fact returns from the dead, odd occurrences, such as a palm tree suddenly becoming a pine tree, or a torrential downpour inside an office building, that is never even questioned (much like the ever-burning house in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York), and to top it all off, time itself may have no meaning whatsoever.  Oh yeah, and we get to see the inner thoughts of a dog turd as well.  And, these things are merely the tip of the batshitcrazy iceberg that is Quentin Dupieux's aptly titled, Wrong.  Trust me, once you experience the film's opening shot, you will know whether you are in the rightest of places or in the the wrongest - all depending on which side of the fence you were on with Rubber.

Overall, the film is not as purely enjoyable as Rubber, a film that abandoned all rights of narrative and acted as pure, unadulterated pulp kitsch, but it is still a decidedly fun film to watch.  I mentioned David Lynch earlier, and any Lynchian worth their salt can see how influenced by the Maestro of Missoula, M. Dupieux obviously is.   For those who would rather eat a sentient sociopathic rubber tire, than sit through anything even remotely similar to Rubber (though Wrong is quite different), all this ranting and raving and general hoopla over the director's new film, is probably all for naught, but what the hell.  Really though, rant and rave is really all I can do, for fear of giving some plot twist away.  Hell, even the twists that are seen coming, are better left to be seen than read.  Outside of generalizations and hints at what is going down (did I mention the dog turd thing?) this is a film that you must see to believe.  Being rather an odd duck myself (I did not think Rubber was really all that out there, nor did I find the aforementioned David Lynch or Charlie Kaufman to be all that out there either), Wrong does not come off all that...er, um...wrong, but I am sure there are those out there - those damn Rubber haters - that would think the whole shebang just downright wrong.  Oh well, their loss.

Susan George Ooh LaLa's Herself Around the Giddily Exploitative Motifs of Pete Walker's Immensly Fun Die Screaming, Marianne

When a film, after already spending an almost ten minute long prologue fixated on the scantily-garbed protagonist, the titular screaming Marianne, running from the bed she shared with a hapless sailor who, like a post-coitus satisfied puppy, happily goes along with the masters-at-arms when he is arrested for going awol, to the speeding sports car of a stranger, has an opening credit sequence involving star Susan George, now dressed in nothing but an appropriately alluring string bikini, gogo dancing to Kathe Green's haunting song, Marianne, you know you have hit the veritable jackpot of any self-respecting expoitation/grindhouse junky, such as I.   In fact, it is the kind of film that, when you look at the newly released blu-ray case (wonderfully done by Kino Lorber's Redemption label, but more on that a bit later), you are surprised to not find the words "Quentin Tarantino Presents" scrawled across the top.

Okay, okay, maybe everyone isn't as into this style of filmmaking as QT and I are, but really, even those unfamiliar with such "low brow" art as this, would probably, at the very least, get a kick out of Die Screaming, Marianne.  Right?  Okay, probably not, but for those horror/thriller fans, those Pete Walker fans, those denizens of the dark cellars of underground cinema, this is truly a great joy to watch.  The needless running about of beautiful women, flauntin' what god gave 'em; the cheap language and, let's face it, pretty awful dialogue and acting; the giddy split-screening moments; the swelling music and genre-specific luridness.  All of it equates to, not art cinema, not mainstream cinema, but the trash of the film world.  But oh darlin', what fun and alluring trash it is.  And yes, as I am a shining example of, one can like the so-called higher art of cinema - you know, the canonical stuff that always makes those greatest films list (many of which adorn my own favourites list) - and still get the biggest kick out of what many would call trash cinema.  

Pauline Kael, a critic from whom a generation of acolytic Paulettes, myself included, have been born, said of such things, "Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them."  I don't know if I agree with such a statement, at least not fully, but it does have some merit indeed.  Kael also spoke of such trashy ideas, when she wrote, "When you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The wellspring of their art, their greatness, is in not being respectable."  Again, not something I would totally stand behind - I like Citizen Kane as much as the next film snob - but one sees where she is going with such talk.  The staid academic flavour of an Antonioni or a Tarkovsky, even if they are creating solid pieces of cinema, or the pedestrian manner of all those high-falutin' arthouse pics that try to be something they just are not, the kind of films that the enfants terribles of the Nouvelle Vague were rebelling against, or the achingly middle-of-the-road fodder that spews forth from Hollywood at a ratio of about 100 to 1 against that auspicious creature, that rare mainstream work of art.  All of these beasts can make way any day, for what Kael calls trash cinema.  Sure, it is great to play the cinematic intellectual - and god knows I can play the film snob with the best of 'em - but it is just as fun to wallow in the so-called trash of the film world, and even though visually, Die Screaming, Marianne is quite the work (can a film this obscure be this influential, or is it just that this film is influenced by  the obvious usual suspects), it surely is pure trash cinema - and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

But enough of this trash talk (see what I did there), let's move on to exactly what all this trash is about, shall we?  Die Screaming, Marianne was the third of what would eventually be fifteen films, by English writer/director Pete Walker.  Walker specialized in horror and exploitation films throughout his career, and even amongst that crowd, which included such directors as Mario Bava and Jess Franco, he was one of the lesser known quantities.   Never getting much respect at all, often derided by contemporary critics, Walker made movies for the sheer fun of it.   The filmmaker is credited as having said, "I was the uninvited guest to the British film industry. Nobody wanted to know me. I knew I wanted to make films, but I would see these serious-looking guys going around with scripts under their arm, spending three or four years trying to get their films made. I couldn't be like that - I had to make a living and I wanted to get behind a camera and shout "action". So I would go out and shoot something like School for Sex - God, that was a terrible film - and a few weeks later every cinema in the country would be showing it."  Walker would kind of denounce his own self-criticism later by saying, "But recently I had to record commentary for the DVD releases, so I saw the films for the first time since making them, and you know what? They're not as bad as I thought. But searching for hidden meaning . . . they were just films. All I wanted to do was create a bit of mischief."  Granted, Die Screaming, Marianne is the first, and so far only, Pete Walker film this critic has seen, but it is more than enough of a whistle-wetting, to make me search out the director's other works.

The basic gist of the film, is this: twenty year old Marianne is first seen running from the hoodlums sent after her by her sadistic ex-judge father.  We find out that upon Marianne's mothers disappearance/death, the young girl was given the number to a Swiss bank account that held several hundred thousand dollars, as well as papers that would put her father away for life.  And all this will be hers upon her twenty-first birthday.  Of course, her evil dad, and even more evil half sister, want that number, and will do anything to get it.  There is a lot more twisting and turning in the film, but this is the basic storyline.  Full of sex, violence, torture, and even a hint of incest thrown in for good measure, Die Screaming, Marianne, is a perfect example of the great trash that Kael spoke so fondly of.  Influenced, judging from the artistry of Walker's style here, by the Italian Giallo genre, it is far from a great film - one may be able to associate his love of cheap cinema with someone like Ed Wood, but his talent, at least judging from this one film, is far superior - it is however quite a lot of fun, and actually, as I just more than alluded to, quite artistic in its style, camerawork and overall mood, but the thing that makes the film go splash-and-a-half, is the aforementioned screaming mimi in a string bikini, Miss Susan George. 

The film was made and released in 1971, the very pinnacle of George's rather brief rise to the upper echelon of acting.  Out around the same time as Sam Peckinpah's subversive yet  influential Straw Dogs, George was the very epitome of raw sexual desire, and directors used that to their best advantage.  George would only make a handful of films of any note (Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and the oft-overlooked Mandingo among them), and would eventually semi-retire from the movies, doing the occasional British TV show, and raise Arabian horses on her stud farm, but that raw sexuality, even if it was inside someone who really was never the greatest of thespians, is more than enough to get the home town thugs of Straw Dogs all riled up, and it is most certainly enough also to get pretty much everyone, even a father, in a tizzy right here in Die Screaming, Marianne.  But truly, the film is a fun creature indeed, and its new release on blu-ray, via Kino Lorber's enigmatic Redemption label (see, I told you I was going to get back to this in a bit) is a godsend for any genre fans out there.  As clean and as crisp as one can expect from such a low budget, and let's face it, mostly ignored, and therefore probably not cared for like a classic film would and should be, the bluray transfer is quite good.  It really is a rather intriguing piece of work from Pete Walker, and I cannot wait to check out his other work.

Some Idle, Fresh-From-Viewing Thoughts on Quentin Dupieux's Absurdist Film, Wrong, Follow-up to That Murderous Tire Movie

If, by chance, any of you fine folks out there, saw, and liked, Parisian-born, electronic musician turned filmmaker Quentin Dupieux's last film, titled Rubber, and ostensibly centered around an abandoned car tire that somehow attains sentience, and goes on a killing spree, murdering people with, what seems to be telekinesis, then it is a pretty good bet that you might just like the director's new film as well.  But, if you are one of those who thought Rubber was a, let's say, steaming pile of dog shit, then it is an equally good bet that you should probably avoid this new film like the veritable plague.  Lucky for me, I am in the former group, and not the latter, so Dupieux's simply titled, Wrong, though not as flat-out enjoyable as Rubber (less frantic but more cerebral indeed), is just my so-called cup of tea.  Granted, this tea may very well have been laced with something (think David Lynch meets Charlie Kaufman), but it still tastes pretty darn good to me.    

Now, to set up the plot of this film for the non-initiated, may be a little difficult.  Sure, I can tell you that the film is about a man named Dolph, who loses his dog, Paul.  I can let you know that in actuality, Paul has been kidnapped by a a mysterious self help guru who goes by the name of Mr. Chang.  I could also mention that there may be man/dog telepathy involved, as well as mind control, matter-of-fact returns from the dead, odd occurrences, such as a palm tree suddenly becoming a pine tree, or a torrential downpour inside an office building, that is never even questioned (much like the ever-burning house in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York), and to top it all off, time itself may have no meaning whatsoever.  Oh yeah, and we get to see the inner thoughts of a dog turd as well.  And, these things are merely the tip of the batshitcrazy iceberg that is Quentin Dupieux's aptly titled, Wrong.  Trust me, once you experience the film's opening shot, you will know whether you are in the rightest of places or in the the wrongest - all depending on which side of the fence you were on with Rubber.

Wrong will be available on VOD come February 1st, and will hit theaters (in NY/LA at least, and probably not any farther) on March 29th.  A full review of all the insanity will come sometime in between those two dates.  Until then, perhaps you want to take the chance and check out this film.  Then again, perhaps you do not.  

Retro Review: Troll Hunter (André Øvredal, 2010)

The following is part of a series where I bring back some of my "older" reviews (those written during my 2004-2011 tenure at the now mostly defunct The Cinematheque) and offer them up to a "newer" generation.

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Due to how the film is shown in a first person documentary style (almost a mockumentary style) by three students trailing the title huntsman with constant camera in tow, its image seen only through such a lens, the film has been inevitably compared to The Blair Witch Project and/or Cloverfield (though often despairingly so, which should not be the case), but still, André Øvredal's Troll Hunter, the Norwegian answer to our vampire/werewolf obsession perhaps, is a whimsical, satiric romp that starts off innocently enough before turning itself on its own head midway through and eventually driving itself into the most giddy of monster movies by the time its quite abrupt ending and subsequent end credits arrive - all too soon in my opinion.  Okay, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, the film is called Troll Hunter after all, but when the titular woodsman comes running toward the aforementioned omnipresent camera and yells "Troll!!” you know right there that you are in for a fun ride - and what a fun ride indeed.

It is a very basic story.  Trolls, giant ones, some as tall as 100 feet, roam the fjords and forests of Norway and it is the troll hunter's job to keep their population wrangled and out of sight of the Norwegian populace.   Kept on reservations of sorts, these trolls (more beast than man we are told by the titular zookeeper) come to symbolize the multitudes of oppressed throughout history while at the same time being shown as mere stupid mammals who need to be controlled or at the sympathetic least, be put out of their own misery.  It is a government job so of course you know there are going to be some bureaucratic entanglements as well as your typical giant-ass monster problems - and this is where the socio-political satire comes even more into play.  Still though, satiric prose aside, what we get in Troll Hunter at its most basic level is a fun monster movie that perhaps never reaches the heights of which it has the potential, still happily harkens back to a simpler time of moviemaking - even if it does all get captured on the very modern technique of digital filmmaking and is shown through the tech-savvy eyes of a younger, more jaded generation.

Following around this somewhat loony government-sanctioned (but not government-controlled we are happy to learn) monster hunter, our three intrepid college student filmmakers are used as the skeptical eyes of the average person and are given such fun (and funny) instructions as bathing with "troll-smell" and making sure they had none of that dirty Christianity left inside of them (apparently trolls can smell Christian blood, and believe me they sure do like to devour them first).  This band of “warriors” goes about their business (one hunting trolls, the others documenting whatever they see) with a smooth efficiency and of course inevitable tragedy.  Full of beautiful scenery of the Norwegian countryside and a full array of surprisingly good special effects of the monsters themselves, and with an acerbic tongue-in-cheek attitude toward storytelling, Troll Hunter is a cool blend of pop moviemaking and dark-humoured satire (of both the genre and of society itself) that works pleasingly as a peach as pure entertainment.  Of course now we are inevitably left with a palpable sense of dread as the American remake (rights already procured) is soon on its way.  

[Originally published at The Cinematheque on 06/26/11]

My Ten Favourite Things About Breathless (No, Not That One, the Other One, the Kinda Sleazy One from the 1980's)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, or À Bout de Souffle if you will (damn dirty translators), is one of the finest achievements of cinema in the whole damn history of cinema - and yes, the film, and its director, along with his Nouvelle Vague compatriots and their earliest films, pretty much changed the way cinema is made and seen lo these past fifty years or so.  Real important stuff indeed.  I personally rank the groundbreaking 1960 film in my twenty favourite films of all time, and place it as one of the greatest French films second only to Renoir's Rules of the Game.  So yes, Godard's Breathless is both an important film and great film, and a personal favourite of mine.  But alas, this particular subject has been kind of talked to death by now (including from yours truly) so why add to the muddle.  No siree!  Not gonna do it.

We are here today to talk about that other Breathless.  You know, the oft-maligned (and sometimes quite viciously) American remake version of 1983.  Yeah, that one.  Well guess what?  I like the damn thing.  I went many years refusing to see the movie - mainly due to my love of Godard's original masterpiece - but then, after hearing so much praise from one of my favourite current filmmakers (see number one below), I finally gave in and watched the thing up on the big screen at my cinema.  Now I am not about to say it is anywhere near as good as Godard's film, nor would I ever place it in my own top 100, let alone top twenty (though if I were to stretch my favourites list to 200, who knows what strange and unusual things might occur) but damn if it isn't entertaining as hell.  With that exclamation made, let us move on to exactly why I find it so damn entertaining - in seven and a half reasons or less.

1) Quentin Tarantino and His (Questionable) Taste in Film - Usually included in the same breath (yeah, that was a purposeful pun) as films like Taxi Driver, Rio Bravo and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, QT has been pretty consistent in his adoration for Jim McBride's quite unnecessary but quite fun remake.  A die-hard cinephile, who puts every once of his vast film knowledge into every moment of cinematic homage he puts on screen, how could I say no to his (imagined?) pleading for me to watch the damn film already.  Now granted, Tarantino does have a penchant for such low brow fare as women in prison movies and 1970's kung-fu films, so perhaps one should take a recommendation from the auteur with a proverbial grain of salt.  Then again, the other three aforementioned favourite films are all favourites of mine, so what the hell, I said to myself, I am going to watch this damn thing.  And watch it I did - projected up on the big screen at my cinema.  The rest, as they say (whomever they may be) is history.

2) Richard Gere's Final Shot - Now normally, considering it is the, duh...final shot of the film, I would place this as the last "thing" to like about a film, but since this one is so ridiculously great - ie, silly as all fuck - it needed to be talked about before we get to the end ourselves.  Breaking the fourth wall in a way (just like little Jean Seberg does at the end of the 1960 original, though to a less devastatingly tragic, more unbelievably comi-tragic way here) Gere looks right into the camera like some deranged, hipster clad Mr. Roper (those in the know get that reference) and yells Breathless.  Gotta admit, pretty fun stuff indeed.  Fun stuff that only a guy like Gere, at a time like 1983 (having just given such over-the-top performances as he had in American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentlemen the prior couple of years) could have pulled off as well as he did.  He did pull it off, right?  Anyway, I digress.

3) How the Film Resembles an Homage Made by a Shiny Guy Named Vince Who Hangs Out at Strip Clubs at Two O'clock on a Tuesday Afternoon - Now I am not saying director Jim McBride is actually a shiny guy named Vince who hangs out at strip clubs at two in the afternoon (though he may be, who knows), but let's face it, this film does look like it was made by such a guy.  That creepy guy drinking scotch and sodas, pinky ring extended so all can see, while getting a lap dance from somewhat bruised, drugged-out woman who goes by the name of Brandi but whose real name is Tina, and who says she is just doing "this" so she can feed her two year old son Tyler, who stays with his chain-smoking grandma while Tina/Brandi is hook...er, I mean stripping, but who in reality is actually doing "this" so she can feed her meth habit and pay for all the beers consumed by her boyfriend Gill, who beats her on a regular basis, but whom she cannot leave because she "loves" him....okay, perhaps this is dragging on too long, and maybe this really has nothing whatsoever to do with the film, and in essence is merely just a space filler because I could not come up with enough things I liked about Breathless to make up a respectably long enough post.  But yeah, this is the kind of guy one would expect to have made this ridiculous but quite entertaining little film.

4) How Film Snobs Look Down Upon the Whole Thing - You know what grinds my gears?  All those so-called film snobs, those who look down on any film that is not a pseudo-serious art film by Antonioni or Bergman (two directors I personally love, so this is not meant as a dig on them so much as on the aforementioned film snobs).  All those snooty bastards genuflect to anything and everything from someone like Tarkovsky or Fellini (again, two filmmakers I like) but toss aside most of the oeuvre of a Nick Ray or Sam Fuller (two more filmmakers I quite like) because they may not take themselves seriously enough.  All those narrow-minded cinephiles who cannot get past Citizen Kane being the greatest film of all-time (and once again, this is a film that I truly love and adore, but a film that I can see past to see other, somewhat non-canonical works to fill a best of list with).  Yeah, I hate 'em.  Now me on the other hand, I tend to lean toward the so-called film geek side of things.  That group that includes people like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich and Quentin "There is That Name Again" Tarantino.  Ones that can appreciate the finer things in cinema (the Bergman's, the Fellini's, the Antonioni's) while also taking great pleasure in the, for lack of a better term, seedier side of cinema (that would be your Polanski's, your Powell, Pressburger's, your, and here is the zinger, your Jean-Luc Godard's).  These aforementioned film snobs are the ones who will not even mention this film when talking about cinema other than to degrade it for their own wicked, self-serving purposes.  This was me for a while, but then, thanks to that Tarantino fella, I have now seen the goddamn light.  Hallelujah!

5) Sometimes It is All About the Music Baby - Now one would think, with me being born in 1967 and ostensibly growing up in what was the mid seventies and into the early eighties, my musical tastes would run somewhere in either the glam rock, disco, punk or new wave realms - and yes, to varying degrees, I do like most of those genres and their ilk - but thanks to my Elvis fanatic mom, my tastes go back a bit further than that.  My early introduction to the likes of Del Shannon and Frankie Lyman and Sam Cooke, and such long lost groups as the Diamonds and The Fleetwoods and The Crests, as well as Presley and Jerry-Lee and Bill Haley and the Comets, kinda makes me quite predisposed to the soundtrack that McBride puts together for this film.  Now granted, there is more modern music in here - Brian Eno, Phillip Glass, X, even a Dexy's Midnight Runners song can be heard at one point - but Gere's bad boy Jesse and his obvious love for the music of Jerry Lee Lewis (not to mention his wardrobe, which we will get to in a bit) send the feel of this film right back to those days that are so often called the days of old time rock and roll.

6) Gere Perfectly Cast as a Last Days of Disco era Belmondo - Perhaps Gere's coolness as an actor is not the same kind of coolness shown by Belmondo in his younger days (think Richard Widmark cool versus Humphrey Bogart cool) but there is no denying, as I more than alluded to way back at number two, that Gere in this time and this place - the Looking For Mr. Goodbar/American Gigolo Gere, not the Pretty Woman era Gere, though when you really look at it, he was pretty sleazy there as well - is perfectly cast to play cad cop killer Jesse Lujack.  And those eyes are so dreamy too.

7) Valérie Kaprisky, From Porn to Breathless, and then Into Obscurity - Let's face it, French actress Valérie Kaprisky, having starred in a few soft-core films in the early eighties (think French Skinemax), was not hired here for her great thespianic endowments.  Even Gere said he told McBride to cast her because she looked like someone who could make love to - a thing that was reputedly going on during the time of filming, and a thing the actress said was the most thrilling thing about filming her scenes ("It was half real" she said) though Kaprsiky has since denied such stories.  No siree, even though she would garbner a César nomination the year after Breathless (for La femme publique), Ms. Kaprisky was definitely hired for a different set of endowments than acting.

8) To Paraphrase a Famous Saying by Alfred Hitchcock and Twist it Around so it Sounds Like it Was Coming from Edith Head, Wardrobe Wardrobe Wardrobe - I told you I would get around to talking about the clothes in this film.  Gere's bad boy, like Belmondo's own bad boy, is dressed like someone on the edge of society.  In Belmondo's case it is a lot less noticeable due to men still having a rather sophisticated style in 1960, but in 1983 L.A., after the advent of the hippies and hipsters and punk and glam rockers, Gere's wardrobe shows how his character is not someone that you would trust to walk your dog...or your girl.  In fact he resembles what one would imagine Charlie Sheen to look like when he goes out on one of his strip club nights.  Hey, lookie there, we came back around to the stripper motif once again.

9) On Meeting Kit Carson, the Guy Who Wrote the Damn Thing - I suppose talking about meeting screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson is not really a "thing to like" about the movie -and let's be honest, his actual screenplay really is not either - but it was fun to have the man who gave Gere his howl, as a guest of our cinema.  For those of you who are unaware (and really, why aren't you paying better attention to my life dammit), my lovely wife and I run a three screen arthouse cinema in Harrisburg Pa.  Last year, during our capital city's film festival, we hosted a screening of Jim McBride's 1967 film David Holzman's Diary.  The film starred the aforementioned Kit Carson, so somehow (he is such a big star after all) we managed to get him to come and do a Q&A after the film.  He seemed like a pretty fun guy while he was here - and he even signed the leg cast of one of our cinema employees.  Carson would later go on to write the screenplay for the modern classic Paris, Texas, as well as for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.  His screenplay for Breathless?  Certainly not great, but once again, a damn entertaining film.

10) Behold the Sentinel of the Spaceways, Norrin Radd, the Spectacular Silver Surfer - Being a comic book nerd from long ago, it should not surprise me that one of my favourite things about this particular film is Gere's character's obsession with that classic Sentinel of the Spaceways, the former herald of the Mighty World Devourer Galactus, and friend and ally to The Fantastic Four and belated founding member of the non-group super hero team The Defenders.  Yeah, I'm a nerd.  What's it to ya?  But I digress once again.  One of my favourite things about this version of Breathless, is how Gere's bad boy identifies with the loner Marvel super hero Silver Surfer.  This also brings us all the way back around to Quentin Tarantino, as we see Jesse's obsession with the Surfer copied in Reservoir Dogs, with a strategically placed Surfer poster in Freddy's (Tim Roth's Mr. Orange) apartment.  See, everything goes back to QT (and he likes strip clubs too), which is why you should listen to the man and watch this damn film.  So there.  Breathless!!

Battle Royale #4: Battle of the Horror Movie Giants

Welcome to the fourth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar.

With our fourth edition of the popular Battle Royale, we are going to get a little scary.  I remember first seeing many of these two great actor's films on late night television.  Back when I was growing up - that would be the 1970's and early 1980's if you are keeping score at home - before there was constant 24/7 TV broadcasting, there was a thing called the late show.  These late shows, or sometimes, late late shows, were where I first saw such classic horror movies as Dracula and Frankenstein and The Black Cat and King Kong and The Wolf Man and The Creature From the Black Lagoon and many many more.  These films had stars such as Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Lionel Atwill, John Carradine, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Lon Chaney, Sr. and Jr. - not to mention Julie Adams in that white bathing suit in The Creature From the Black Lagoon.  But none of these great stars were a match for the two that are invariably numbers one and two on any self-respecting classic horror movie star list - Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Béla Ferenc Deszo Blascó was born in 1882 in the town of Lugos, in what then was called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is now called Romania.  After changing his name to Bela Lugosi (taking his stage name from his hometown), the great actor became famous for portraying Bram Stoker's legendary Count Dracula on both stage and screen.  Meanwhile, William Henry Pratt, born in 1887 in London England, and going by the name of Boris Karloff, became equally as famous as Mary Shelley's creation, Frankenstein's Monster.  Always rivals (Lugosi was the first choice to play the monster in James Whale's film) but also always friendly and cordial to each other, Karloff and Lugosi were the kings of Universal Horror in the hey days of the 1930's.  When the horror craze began to wear down (it would speed back up again then in the 50's) it was Lugosi's career that would be damaged the most.  He would end said career with a series of films with the notoriously terrible director Ed Wood.  Meanwhile, Karloff's career (and the actor would not get typecast as badly as his rival, able to make some non-horror films as well) would pick back up again, albeit in the most b-picture manner, until one of his final roles as Byron Orlok, a not so thinly disguised version of himself, in Peter Bogdanovich's 1968 debut masterpiece Targets.

So you must ask yourself, is it Lugosi's creepy charm or Karloff's wicked charisma that gets your vote?  Do you go for the guy who was buried in one of his Dracula capes (at his son and widow's bequest, not his own as is commonly believed) or the man who gave voice to that mean one, Mr. Grinch?  The man who gave blood sucking its original debonair style (long before today's glittering fops turned such a thing into a running joke) or the man who bitch slaps a lone gunman into submission at the end of Targets?  The man who scared the bejeezus out of poor Lou Costello or the man that scared the bejeezus out of poor Lou...oh, yeah, they both did that.  Anyway, it is time to pick your favourite of the horror movie giants.  Karloff or Lugosi.  All you need do is go on over to the poll sitting up there at the top of the sidebar, and make your choice.  You can make as many comments as you wish on this post (and please do just that) but for your vote to count, you must vote in the poll in the sidebar.  You will have three weeks to get your vote in, at which time we will announce the scary victor of our fourth Battle Royale.  And also, if you have any ideas for future battles (preferably in the classic cinema mold), please let me know.  And let's try to get into the triple digits in voter turnout this time around.

Film Review: John Carter

Walt Disney's latest sci-fi adventure film, John Carter, is based on "The Princess of Mars", the first in an eleven volume series written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, about the trials and tribulations of John Carter of Mars, a Confederate Army Captain who is mysteriously transported to Mars (or Barsoom as the natives call the red planet) and forced to fight for not only his life, but the life of the entire planet.  This year marks the centennial of the book's original publication, so I suppose this is as good a time as any to release a movie on the subject.  Apparently though, while in production, the so-called genius marketing gurus at Disney found out, through agonizingly painstaking demographic research, that people are less likely to see a movie with Mars in the title than one without.  Now this probably has less to do with Mars itself than with the inability to make a good movie about the damned planet.   Though I stand behind both Robinson Crusoe of Mars and, believe it or not, Mars Attacks!, I think Mission to Mars and Ghosts of Mars should be enough relatively recent activity to authenticate such a theory.  But I digress.

So, with Mars successfully out of the title, let us look at the movie itself.  The film, directed by first time live action director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E), has been getting a lot of critical flack in the weeks before its release, but I really do not see anything majorly wrong with the film.  Sure, it has its cheezy, quite kitschy elements, but how could a film set on Mars (or Barsoom if you will) and featuring seven and a half feet tall green men with horns and four arms apiece, not be as kitschy as it is?  So kitschy in fact that they cast a man named Taylor Kitsch to play the titular man of Mars.  Kitsch, who incidentally was the man who made this comic book head from long ago quite angry with his quite lame portrayal of Gambit in the all-around quite lame X-Men Origins: Wolverine, gives a gusto-filled performance that is good enough for such a genre as this.  Add to this the sexy warrior princess of the original book's title, played with her own certain gusto (of the ooh la la variety) by Lynn Collins of True Blood, and the aforementioned not-so-jolly green giants (voiced by, among others, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton and Thomas Haden Church), and you have yourself a solid, if not more than a bit kitschy, sci-fi adventure film.

It obviously would be quite ridiculous to call a picture that cost upwards of $250 Million a B-Picture, but nonetheless, style-wise that is exactly what John Carter (with or with Mars attached) is.  With an aesthetic that reminds one of those cheesy Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers serials of yesteryear (thanks to CGI, no strings attached when it comes to special effects), as well as having an effect on Star Wars (Lucas names Edgar Rice as a big influence), John Carter is the epitome of the B-Pic mentality, and taking it in this manner, instead of the apparent seriousness some of my fellow critical compatriots have taken it, one cannot help but become enthralled with its wild and crazy goings-on.  Though it costs more (and shows it) John Carter closes relative seems to be the 1980 camp cult classic version of Flash Gordon.  From its reluctant Earth- born hero to its warring factions to its crazed native populations to its hot battle-ready princess to its maniacal despot to its last minute dreaded wedding rescue finale, one cannot help but see the abundant similarities, and this too highlights its kitschy camp qualities.  Sure, this may not be a great action epic that will go down in the annals of film history, but for what it's worth, it is quite an enjoyable picture indeed.

Retro Review: Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007)

The following is part of a series where I bring back some of my "older" reviews (those written during my 2004-2011 tenure at the now mostly defunct The Cinematheque) and offer them up to a "newer" generation.

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Teeth is a giddy mish-mash of genre monikers, from female empowerment movie to coming-of-age saga to black comedy-horror to rape and revenge drama to Lynchian suburban melodrama. Pop artist fil Mitchell Lichtenstein gives us the story of Dawn, a white picket fence pretty young girl coping with growing up "pure and virginal" in a world obsessed with sexual innuendo around each and every corner. This includes her own house as her lecherous big bad wolf epitome'd stepbrother sniffs after her with tongue a-flicking. After a date gone horribly, horribly awry, Dawn finds out that she is cursed with the mythical mutation known as "vaginal dentata" - aka she's got razor sharp teeth in her pussy, yo!  The result is that Teeth ends up being a quirky (how could it not be?), sunnily macabre work of neo-candy pop gyno-horror that can in no way whatsoever be watched by anyone of the male gender without constant squirming and shuffling about in what are suddenly very uncomfortable seats.

Opening in the suburban shadow of a nuclear power plant with towers billowing grey choke from their own gritty teeth, as if a nod-and-a-wink absurdist homage to The Simpsons.  Teeth struts out with a creeping small town menace overlying everything, and proceeds down a road of desperate reciprocatory acts of the most bizarre nature.  With the perils of male violence festooned within every darting-eyed nook and cranny moment, Teeth takes place in a world completely ensconced within one of those old sex ed filmstrips made to keep junior high school girls legs clamped shut until their wedding night - and first-time director Lichtenstein tosses this all at us with the sincerest kind of camp style.

Dawn, played with a scared forest animal comic frenzy by Jess Weixler, looking every bit the girl next door on the verge of bad girl in the basement is spokesperson for a promise ring wearing teenage purity movement - a movement lampooned on Family Guy but given real "teeth" here. Dawn is seen as the ultimate sexual goal-cum-prize by just about every male classmate in her school, as if every teenage boy is some sort of licentious lycanthrope ready to pounce and deflower every pretty girl they come across at the drop of a hat - or any article of clothing. Dawn sees herself as such too and fights even her own naturally budding urges (a scene showing our intrepid heroine in bed "thinking" about a boy she longs for attests to such) to keep her vow of chastity upright. That is until one fateful swimmin' hole romp that ends with the lake being dredged for the body of Dawn's unfortunate date sans one pretty important body part.

Once the newly deflowered Dawn throws away the moniker of cursed hoo-hah and looks upon her mutation as a rightful empowerment to avenge her becoming the victim of the seemingly rampant male violence of this strange new world the film goes from anti-sexual to proto-sexual. With Dawn going from Little Red Riding Hood to the Big Bad Wold herself, the film here turns from strangely charming fantasy to something straight out of a seedy dogeared pulp fiction paperback. It is at this point that Teeth philosophically joins in with such rape & revenge films as Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 and its more recent counterpart The Brave One from Neil Jordan. Teeth though is a much less mature, more light-hearted film that the aforementioned. After all, horror-edged or not, Lichtenstein is going for laughs here. Leaving a hilarious slew of severed penii (as well as four fingers of a rather over-amorous gynecologist) in her wake, Dawn strews her victims "better halves" across the landscape like discarded cigarette butts in the early dusky morning after a concert in the park.

One scene, inevitably choreographed, involves Dawn's salacious step-brother (played with a grim concupiscence by snarky Nip/Tuck regular John Hensley), his pet rottweiler and his freshly decapitated member half eaten with its pierced tip discarded like so much gristle. Though obvious in its outcome, this scene is certainly the pièce de résistance of this giddily twisted fairy tale of female empowerment overtaking a male dominated society of sexual despotism. On a whole, Teeth is funny, though a little bit crotch-writhing for those of us so engendered. Lichtenstein's film is a delight of, albeit stereotyped caricatures, fumbling their way through a darkish suburban nightmarescape that combines the punchy humor of a youthful Almódovar with the clean efficiently disturbed Middle America of a budding David Lynch. This critic for one, looks forward to what will come next. 

[Originally published as a DVD review at Plume Noire on 02/04/09]

Criterion Critiques w/ Alex DeLarge

What follows is part of a regular series of reviews on the always wonderful, and quite indispensable Criterion Collection, written by our special guest reviewer Alex DeLarge of the Korova Theatre. 

GODZILLA (Ishiro Honda, 1954)

Released on Criterion Blu-ray 01/24/2012; Spine #594

Caveat: This is the original uncut Japanese version. To fully appreciate this film, you must understand it on its own terms; you must put to rest the campy films spawned by this classic. Godzilla is a parable of the atomic age, a monster awakened by science tainted with moral lassitude; a destructive and dire warning that mankind stalks the nightmare’s abyss.

 

The giant Jurassic creature stirs from its millennial slumber because the United States is testing atomic bombs in the Pacific Ocean: this beast the rises from the murky depths and ravages Odo Island before advancing upon mainland Japan…and laying Tokyo to ruin. It is also a metaphor concerning science run amok: Dr. Serizawa fears that his volatile creation the Oxygen Destroyer, though it will kill Godzilla, will be used as a weapon to escalate the arms race and obliterate mankind, he laments “Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all. As a scientist-no, as a human being-I cannot allow that to happen”.

 

Dr. Yamane (superbly portrayed by Takashi Shimura!) believes that this creature should be captured alive and studied, even at the risk of total catastrophe: knowledge is more important that human life. While the debate rages, so does Godzilla as millions die in the ensuing firestorm of Tokyo, eerily reminiscent of the Allied firebombing of Japan only a few years earlier. When one woman on a train compares this war with her survival at Nagasaki, the chilling catharsis is finally revealed.

 

The film is deftly directed by Ishiro Honda and focuses upon the characters and their moral dilemmas…not a rubber-suited monster amid crushed dioramas. When Godzilla is filmed in medium and long shot, the towering silhouette is reminiscent of a rising mushroom cloud as the cities fiery tendrils rake the darkening sky. The creature’s nightmarish roar is like Munch’s scream, a discordant reverberation as nature fights back to reclaim the world. But science does not fail us: Dr. Serizawa burns his research and utilizes his desperate weapon to kill the Beast and makes the ultimate sacrifice for Japan…and the whole damned human race. He takes his secrets to his watery grave. But if these nuclear tests continue, Dr. Yamane asks, will another Godzilla awaken? Or something worse?

 

Final Grade: (A)

 

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About Alex: "To state things plainly is the function of journalism; Alex writes fugitive reviews, allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and allegory, and by leaving things out, he allows the reader the privilege of creating along with him." Alex can be found hidden deep within the dark confines of his home theatre watching films, organizing his blu-ray and dvd collection and updating his blogs. Please visit the Korova Theatre and Hammer & Thongs to see what’s on his mind.

 

Criterion Critiques w/ Alex DeLarge

What follows is part of a regular series of reviews on the always wonderful, and quite indispensable Criterion Collection, written by our special guest reviewer Alex DeLarge of the Korova Theatre.

ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier, 2009)

Released on Criterion Blu-ray 11/09/2010; Spine #542

“So the green field To oblivion falls,
Overgrown, flowering,
With incense and weeds
And the cruel noise
Of dirty flies.”
-A Season In Hell, Arthur Rimbaud

Man succumbs to the deviltry of his antithesis, his masculinity replaced by emotional impotency, both victim and abuser of Mother Nature. Lars von Trier’s season in hell exorcizes his own personal demons through the dark glassily; the nameless characters avatars of human conceit, both lost amid their own secret gardens.

The film begins in a monochrome snowfall, the couple making love while their son tumbles like spun clothes. Cut to color and a month later where the woman is hospitalized in a deep depression and her husband is revealed to be a psychologist, a man who seems cold like a hard rain and just as expressionless. He begins aversion therapy with his wife, discovering her atypical fear and confronting it, his relentless ego a brooding shadow upon her senses. She is inexplicably afraid of their summer cottage named Eden, where the previous summer she gave up working on her thesis about the Salem witch hunts. He forces her to confront each aspect of this wicked landscape and it soon subsumes her…and him.

Trier’s maddening narrative remains elusive in meaning and ripe in interpretation: is she suffering from the trauma of her lost son? Does she become possessed by some feminine malignancy represented by Nature? Cause and effect has been erased and reversed blurring the lines between external horror and internal conflict: in this storm only chaos reigns (rains). We begin to suspect that she has loathed her husband for some time, and had begun torturing their son the summer before. In a revisionist flashback, we see her cruel eyes focus upon their son moments before his fall from grace as if she could have saved him…but chose not to. Her passion has transformed into hatred, and sex becomes a violent weapon whose edge cuts both ways.

The lush cinematography imbues this world with a vibrant realism underscored by a damnable crescendo of entropy. The violence is brutal and anarchic, the comfortless man suffering the trials of 17th century women while his wife becomes tormentor. Their roles reversed, she is consumed by her masochistic behavior while his lament blossoms into a spiritual awakening: he is finally embraced by the ghosts of woman past, and becomes a daughter of the dust.

Final Grade: (B+)


To toss my own hat in the ring of this guest review, here is my take on Antichrist.

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About Alex: "To state things plainly is the function of journalism; Alex writes fugitive reviews, allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and allegory, and by leaving things out, he allows the reader the privilege of creating along with him." Alex can be found hidden deep within the dark confines of his home theatre watching films, organizing his blu-ray and dvd collection and updating his blogs. Please visit the Korova Theatre and Hammer & Thongs to see what’s on his mind.

David Cronenberg and His Rather Disgusting Cinematic Art and Psychosis of Bodily Mutilation and Transmogrification

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #19: David Cronenberg.  And as a warning, there are probably some spoilers ahead, so if that is a concern of yours, ye have been warned.

He made people's heads explode in Scanners.  He turned James Woods into a living breathing VCR in Videodrome by putting the most vaginal of openings in his belly.  He shoved bio-mechanical USB cords into slimy, fleshy spinal holes of his gamers in eXistenZ.  He put parasitic venereal diseases into promiscuous young women in Shivers.  He gave erotic pleasure to mutilated auto accident victims in Crash.  He gave a woman an oozing phallic underarm stinger in Rabid.  He made emotional states dictate how your body would deform in The Brood.  He had a demented, drug-fueled Jeremy Irons go to town on women with the most medieval of gynecological contraptions in Dead Ringers.   He gave grotesque physical life to the warped creatures in William Burroughs' head in his adaptation of Naked Lunch.  He transformed Jeff Goldblum into a freakin' fly for crying out loud - a filthy, disgusting, pus-covered freakin' fly. 

Now I have a rather strong stomach and can take pretty much anything in stride, but let's face it, David Cronenberg isn't the kind of director you go see with lots of snacks in hand.   The images that are brought to mind from the above-mentioned cinematic moments are merely the tip of the proverbial (and quite repugnant) iceberg of what can be called Cronenbergian cinema.  What I am trying to say is that the career of Cronenberg, one-time master of the genre known as body horror (yes, every genre has a name), has been strewn with the most repulsive, oft-times horrific images of body mutilation ever put on film.  Other directors have tried their respective hands at the genre (Lynch with Eraserhead, Carpenter with his remake of The Thing, del Toro with Cronos) but it is Cronenberg who has made a lifetime commitment out of the whole grotesque affair.   It is Cronenberg that has come to nearly perfect a certain type of Grand Guignol filmmaking style that at once titillates and repulses.   Like his characters in Crash, an erotic turn-on in the midst of death and destruction and mangled human flesh.  Guns and flesh becoming one in revolting nightmarish style.  Pulsating, talking typewriters that resembles melting assholes.  Goldblum's transmogrifying insectoid vomiting up his own food.  Nauseating, offensive, turns-one's-stomach kind of stuff.

Now I am not saying any of this as a negative critical reaction to the filmmaker and his work - his films feature repugnant imagery and that is just what they are meant to do.  Cronenberg's oeuvre has ranged from the awful to the spectacular (leaning perhaps more toward the latter than the former) but it has always been the outrageous ick factor (for better and for worse) that has given the director his auteurial signature.   As of late though, this ick factor has gone by the wayside, to be replaced with a more strictly psychological bent.  Still a horror-based psychological bent when all is said and done (or at least a horror-based undercurrent) but still a more thinking than seeing kind of horror.  Granted, even Cronenberg's earlier, more pure horror (or more precisely, 'body horror') films were of course laced with a certain type of demented psychology, but as the man has grown as a director, his films too have grown - grown into multi-headed beasts - and Cronenberg has grown into a more mature, and more multi-faceted filmmaker.

This transformation came not abruptly, but over a matter of time and a matter of films.  Beginning with Dead Ringers in 1988 and working through Naked Lunch in 1991, Crash in 1996, and eXistenZ in 1999, his work would eventually lead to films like Spider in 2002, A History of Violence in 2005, Eastern Promises in 2007 and to his latest work, A Dangerous Method coming to US theaters later this year.  The director's more recent works look more at the mind than the body (although the body is still a large part of his oeuvre, and shows in these films) and delve into subjects of hallucinations, dreams and the ideas of sex and violence on humanity.  Still though, even as Cronenberg transforms his cinema from the outside to the inside, he still manages to creep his audience out - he has now just invented new ways to do so.  But then Cronenberg has always been inside our heads, just as his imagery has come out of his own - and sometimes his own life as well.  In his 1992 book Cronenberg on Cronenberg, the director revealed that The Brood was inspired by events that occurred during the unraveling of his first marriage, which caused both Cronenberg and his daughter Cassandra a great deal of turmoil. The character of Nola Carveth, mother of the brood, is based on Cassandra's mother. Cronenberg said that he found the shooting of the climactic scene, in which Nola was strangled by her husband, to be "very satisfying".  Now how's that for some inner turmoil bubbling to the surface?

If You See Just One Production Code Era Women in Prison Movie, Make it John Cromwell's Caged w/ Sweet Meat Eleanor Parker

Back in 1950, the Hollywood production code was still in full force and would not even begin to crack and decay for another few years.  With this heavy censorship going on in the movie industry, a film about women in prison would not and could not be made in the same quite over-the-top manner as this sub-genre would and could be made in the hey day of Grindhouse cinema in the 1970's.  Now Quentin Tarantino's lustful cinematic desires aside (the audacious auteur counts women in prison movies as his favourite genre - for some rather obvious reasons) these more modern tales of feminine behind bars mayhem, replete with their hair-pulling, ass-smacking, bitch-slapping, fellatio-heavy ways, are pure unadulterated B-grade schlock and soft core (sometimes hard core) porn, made merely to get lonely guys off in the dark.

Now nothing against such self-realized, paradigm-switching cinematic endeavors (to each his own I suppose / they do have their purpose) but to this critic, perhaps sometimes less is more.   Of course with the production code, the "less" we see in the 1950 produced Caged is a forced necessity - but it works to instill not only a heightened sense of tension but also a heightened sexuality as well.  In these golden olden days of Hollywood, many a wily director knew how to subtly get around the censorship (which in turn would help lead to the erosion and eventual breakdown of said system throughout the next two decades) but even they could only go so far in 1950 America.  Nowhere could director John Cromwell nor screenwriter Virginia Kellogg show the actual events that were obviously going on behind what we did see on the screen, but it was this forced censorship of sexuality that makes the film so much sexier (albeit in a most disturbing manner) than if the same film were made in this day and age where nothing whatsoever is left to the oh so hungry imagination.

I suppose we should talk somewhat about the actual story of Caged so you the reader can see just what is shown and what is not.  Based on a short story entitled "Women Without Men" by Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld and released by Warner Brothers (the more daring studio if one were to make comparisons) in 1950, Caged is the story of a nineteen year old newlywed who is sentenced to 1 to 15 years in prison for her part as a naive accomplice in the armed robbery that her husband was killed during.  The timid and scared Marie Allen, played by pretty Eleanor Parker (more of which shall be said of her later in this article), is thrust into a world of hardened cut throat criminals and demanding monstrous prison matrons - her world and her youth unraveling around her.  Marie learns fast and quick that she must adapt in order to survive - even if that means doing things she would have never even imagined doing in the outside world.

Falling in with some surprisingly friendly fellow inmates, including a stupid but good-hearted prostitute named Sweetie and a tough-as-nails con named Kitty, Marie learns to adapt, but even in this she still brushes off Kitty's offer to pull some strings to get her out early in exchange for becoming a thief in the gang she has on the outside.  Now there is really no denying that Kitty is a lesbian and wants a lot more from the young nubile and quite naive Marie than just a con job on the outside, but never is this mentioned due to the production code.  Alluded to yes (you would have to be even more naive than Marie to not pick up on this) but never actually shown or spoken of.  Much the same relationship can be construed in that between Marie and Evelyn Harper, the prison matron (played with a beastly bravura by 6' 2" Hope Emerson who incidentally was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this role) that takes every opportunity to inflict harm on her girls - except for those that bribe her of course, which again, these means of bribes are only alluded to, even tossed off as gift-giving.

As her time drags on in prison, Marie becomes more and more hardened.  Giving birth in prison and having the baby taken away by the state, her head shaved and shut up in solitary for three days, having her parole denied due to her inability to procure a home on the outside (her mother's new husband refuses to have her in his home) - all these things add up to Marie losing her innocence and becoming just as jaded and hardened as the women who are doing their third or fourth or fifth stretch.  By the end, as Marie must decide if she wants to give in to another inmate (the new queen cock of the walk so to speak) in order to have strings pulled and get released into a new life of crime - a life she promised herself and the warden she would do anything to stop from happening.  Of course in the film, Marie need only accept a gift of jewelry from this inmate in order to show her allegiance but of course we know that this pretty young thing would have to do much more than that to win her freedom.  Will she or won't she (I won't give away the ending here) is the question that permeates the final act of the film.

Now as for the cast, it is highlighted by that oh so sweet piece of meat jokingly mentioned in the title, Eleanor Parker.  Parker may not be the great beauty that some of her contemporary fellow actresses were nor is she the lustful vamp shaking her hips for her supper, but she, much like compatriot Susan Hayward, is that wonderful combination of cute meets sexy.  An innocence that could also play as sultry if she so wished it, yet still able to keep the needed vulnerability (the emotion that truly makes the portrayal work as well as it does) even in those moments where Marie seems to take charge of her situation, worked wonders in a role such as Marie Allen.  Looked upon as that proverbial sweet meat by the older, cagier inmates, Parker's Marie was like a pretty little lamb ready for the slaughter - and the actress plays it beautifully.  Garnering the first of her three Best Actress Oscar nominations for this role (Parker is probably most well known for her role as Baroness Elsa Schraeder, the second female lead in the 1965 Oscar-winning smash hit The Sound of Music) Parker had a flair for the dramatic, and she more than proves it here.  Lurid or only alluded to, Caged is quite the amazing film - and it is sweet meat Parker's naive allure that makes both her fellow inmates and this critic swoon with a fully rested imagination to go with.

Why John Carpenter's Subversive & Brilliant Assault on Precinct 13 is One of the Best Pictures Ever Made

Warning dear readers and true believers: There are sure to be some spoilers ahead, so if you have not seen the film in question and you are one who worries about such things - ye have been warned.

There is a moment, about a third of the way through John Carpenter's 1976 sophomore effort, Assault on Precinct 13, where gang members are beating (and about to kill) an ice cream truck driver somewhere in one of the worst areas of L.A. and a little girl, about 8 or 9, blonde hair in appropriately precocious Cindy Brady pigtails, and holding a vanilla ice cream cone, her lost father frantically on a payphone down the street trying to get them out of this neighbourhood - and here we are, the viewer, thinking to ourselves, "does Carpenter actually have the balls to kill this little girl?"  Well apparently he does, and not only does he have such balls, they are big enough to not have this matter-of-fact killing play off-screen and then cut to the dead little girl lying on the ground.  No sirree - Carpenter shows us front and center and framed to perfection almost as if he were Stanley 'fucking' Kubrick.  Blam!  The bullet goes through ice cream cone and her dress is splattered in blood - and she drops down dead as anything.  Now those are some balls.

The MPAA threatened to give the film an X rating if this scene was not cut from the picture.  Carpenter relented, took the scene out and gave it to the censor board who in turn gave it an R rating.  Of course, with balls like Carpenter's, the director took the movie, re-inserted the scene back into the film and released it uncut with the R rating.  Whether Carpenter or his distributor (who incidentally urged the director to play this sleight-of-hand trick on the MPAA) ever got into trouble for this I do not know, but it is another story on just how big of balls John Carpenter has.  But enough about Carpenter and his enormous balls - it's getting kinda creepy coming back to this allusion again and again - let us discuss the film we came here to discuss - Assault on Precinct 13.

Playing at being a remake of sorts of Howard Hawks' classic Rio Bravo as well as an artistic homage to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Carpenter's unique talent as a filmmaker was just coming into view with Precinct 13.  An obvious cinephile, Carpenter has made a career out of being a latter day master of horror, but no matter what grotesquery he happens to put up there on the screen - be it a slimy, slithery alien spider formed out of a human head or a mask-wearing, machete-wielding maniac out for bloody revenge on All Hallows Eve - the director will always show his love of the western in the way he puts his films together.  With his first film, not only does he take the basic storyline of the aforementioned Hawks classic (one of Carpenter's all-time favourites and one of this critic's as well) but he does it with the archetype characters of the genre.  Of course he also brings in his love of horror with the seeming never-ending waves of gang members (much like the walking dead in Romero's flicks) and the ever-diminishing array of good guys.

The basic story (in case you are unaware) is about a standoff between that seemingly endless wave of gang members and the handful of trapped wouldbe survivors inside a now abandoned police station in one of the worst areas of Los Angeles.  This band of intrepid heroes consist of a black police lieutenant (his colour being a major casting choice in 1976), a pair of police secretaries (one of which, played by the alluring and mysterious former actress Laurie Zimmer, much like Angie Dickinson in the aforementioned Hawks' classic, more than holds her own against these unstoppable forces), a pair of convicts on their way to a maximum security prison and a catatonic man who has run in for help after seeing his daughter murdered beside an ice cream truck.  Since they are in a closed station and well away from any residents who might call for help, this band of forced renegades must fight these impossible odds without any hope for any proverbial cavalry swooshing in at the last minute and saving everyone.

Carpenter's brand of hopeless justice (as seen in most of his films) lends its hand to the type of storytelling the director has become famous for.  No survivors, few survivors, hopes dwindling as the odds take on the inevitable unfavourable turn it always does in Carpenter's films (who can stand against monsters like Michael Myers or the Thing when one has no hope of permanently destroying them!?) -- this is all part of the director's hopeless justice brand of moviemaking.  In Precinct 13, this hopelessness perverts everything in the film.  Daring to brutally and daringly murder children with ice cream cones just as easily as gang members with weapons.  His never-ending brutality to go with his undead-esque gang members (to show even deeper homage to Romero, none of Carpenter's gang members ever speak a word) beat beat beat down our heroes, and I suppose, our anti-heroes, until we are left with the explosive finale Carpenter gleefully gives us.  The final image of said battle, as the smoke clears, is the perfect ending (well, penultimate ending one might say) and the only way it could have ended - not to mention the best single shot in (that doesn't involve a human head being transformed into a slimy spider-like alien creature) the whole of Carpenter's multi-layered oeuvre.

The Cinematheque Reviews: Hobo With A Shotgun

"Delivering justice, one shell at a time..."  This is the tagline that accompanies the quite fun new revenge-action flick, Hobo With A Shotgun (can we call this neo-grindhouse? -- of course we can! -- and I do in my review as a matter-of-fact).  This tagline, along with its outrageously pinpoint title, pretty much sums the film up rather nicely.  Sure the film is purposely over the top (can you believe this is a major critical concern for some!?) and the gore flies with a giddy and quite gruesome bravura (as it damn well should in such a genre) which scares many of the weaker set off, but in the end (and what a Grand Guignol ending it happens to be) Hobo With A Shotgun is a (pun very much intended) blast to watch. My review of said blast of a film is up and running over at The Cinematheque.  Read it at your own risk.

Read my review of Hobo With A Shotgun at The Cinematheque.

Them! Them!! Them!!! or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Giant Mutant Killer Ants

The following is my contribution to Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear's Monster Movie Mania Blogathon.

The police find a little girl, just 5 or 6 years old, wandering through the New Mexico desert near White Sands Proving Ground (the testing area for the first nuclear bombs, a piece of historical fact that ends up being the narrative crux of the story).  She is in shock, unable to speak or even react to the officer's pleas.  Later on, this same girl, still in the same state, is visited at the hospital by one of the aforementioned police officers, an FBI agent and a pair of father/daughter scientists.  When she is given a sort of smelling salts by the elder scientist, her eyes open wide and with a look of disturbing horror twisting across her once eerily serene face, she screams "Them! Them! Them!" and runs for the corner of the room.  Until this moment, about twenty minutes in, we are given a feeling of piling dread, after this we are in full-on panic mode.  Who or what are Them!, and why is this little girl so scared of Them!?

Yes, of course we all know just what Them! are - even 1954 moviegoers would have known going in since those gigantic radiated mutant ants are front and center on the poster - but still, knowing or not, the fear in this little girl's face is palpable enough to get even the most jaded of modern hearts a-flutterin'.   The real thrill of watching Them! is as basic as basic primal urges can be - we want to see giant mutant ants eating people.  Seriously though, director Gordon Douglas (he would go on to direct the best of the Rat Pack films, Robin and the 7 Hoods and then direct Sinatra in one of his best films, Detective) takes the idea of nuclear testing (a popular topic at the height of the Cold War) and creates one of the best damn monster movies ever made.

The first in a series of "big bug" films (as paranoia swept across the nation, everyone was afraid of nuclear attack at this point in history and this fear was exploited by those in Hollywood) and certainly the best, Them! tells the story of a small New Mexico community that is besieged by an unknown killer or killers - the high pitched screams and screeches (the film showcases one of the earliest uses of the patented Wilhelm Scream) echo through the desert like mysterious impending doom - and the state trooper, FBI agent, requisite old professor and even more requisite hot professor's daughter who must find and destroy this mysterious assailant(s).   Of course these assailants are giant freakin' ants, cursed mandibles snatching their prey at will, and James Arness (the aforementioned fed) and his gang must stop these creatures before they devour the world.

With surprisingly realistic (and Oscar nominated) special effects for the time period (watch a contemporaneous film like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman in comparison) Them! is more than just a fun romp and fodder for the MST3K crowd - it is a giddily disturbing look at the paranoia rampant during this era and the dangers of nuclear warfare on nature (Douglas' film predates the first Godzilla by nearly five months).  Originally meant to cash in on the 3D boom, the film would eventually play as just 2D (some shots, including the titles remain 3D-ready) and be made in black and white (titles are done in colour as was also the original intent of the entire film) and would become a moderate hit at the box office.  Its reputation now is as one of the best of the 1950's sci-fi films (the best in the high point of the genre) and that is a well-deserved reputation indeed.

Another bit of interest can be found at Anomalous Material.  My weekly feature this week is "10 Best 1950's Sci-Fi Films".