I will tell you up front, especially if you are new to this site, I love musicals. The form is not as popular as it once was, but the ones that manage to make it to the screen are usually going to get some attention from me, even if I have reservations about the subject or director. Hell, if Ari Aster or Robert Eggers did a musical, I’d bother to see it. Fortunately, I don’t have those reservations about this particular film. I generally trust Bill Condon as a director and, although I never read the original novel, I am a big fan of the 1985 film that was based on it. William Hurt won the Academy Award for his performance as Luis Molina, and the film played the story straight as a political drama, with tragic outcomes.
When the story was converted to a Broadway Musical, I was frankly confused. I could not quite imagine how this bleak story of two prisoners in a South American hellhole, would work as fodder for tourists visiting New York City. Even with the fantasy sequences extended, it seemed like a longshot at best. I never saw the musical version, which was quite successful, until now. It works really well as a film, and I would be interested in seeing a stage production so I could compare the way they transition between the two worlds presented in the story.
There will be some comparisons here to the 1985 film, since that is my original experience. I actually purchased a Laser Disc copy in the last year because I did not own it in any other form, and the cover art is really nice. I rewatched the film and confirmed my impression from 1985, this was one of the best films of the year. So now it comes time to see the musical version in a screen format, and I have to say I was nicely impressed. The tone is a little old fashioned, but that’s ok, so am I.
There are three things that are important to talk about here, the music sequences, the original story premise and the performances. The thing that I liked the most about the musical sequences is that they remind me of the dance numbers and songs from the 30s and 40s era films that inspired them. The camerawork is not ostentatious, it is just clever enough to give us some interesting views of the action taking place. For the most part, the scenes are shown in full screen shots with very limited edits. I’m not an expert, but I would be willing to believe that some of them were done in single takes from start to finish 9if not, then a nod to the editors who made it appear seamless). The settings are often elaborate in the way a musical from bygone times would be. There are extravagant costumes, interesting backgrounds, and colors that pop every time we go to the musical fantasies. Unlike some contemporary music, you could actually follow a melody in most of the songs. This was not a Sondheim tonal fest, but a throwback to films like “Cabaret” or “Chicago”. I wasn’t humming the tunes as I left the theater, but I could if I listened to them a little more.
Bill Condon has stayed true to the political story, but there is one significant change. Molina, the persecuted homosexual that is cellmates with Valentin, the political prisoner, is revealed much earlier in the story as an informer for the warden. That limited my ability to build the requisite sympathy for the character for a lot longer time than in the 1985 film. The prison sequences are fairly grueling, and I was happy there there was no dance number to accompany the food poisoning diarrhea scene. The story is also set more clearly in the Argentina of the 1970s. The timing of events in Argentina are closely tied to the ending of the musical, where they were not as important in the 85 film.
A Crappy Movie Poster Does Not Help
There are several changes in the story of the old film that Molina is recounting from his memory. Those allow the fantasy character played by Jennifer Lopez, much more of a role than Sonia Braga got. Lopez continues to be beautiful on screen and her singing performance is very good, with eight or so songs to perform, including the climax title song. She has the most impressive of the musical elements in the film. Her two costars, get something that the two stars of the 1985 movie don’t get, they have dual roles not only as the prisoners but as characters in the fantasy of the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman” as Molina is telling it. Diego Luna has the heavier role in the musical sequences as the romantic interest of the star Ingrid Luna (Lopez). Tonatiuh, the actor playing Molina, has the stronger role in the prison scenes. Both of the men are quite good in the jail set scenes. Tonatiuh plays Molina with less obvious femininity than Hurt did, and the more subdued reading of the character might be better for the story, but it will probably not sustain the attention that Hurt’s performance did. This may be a case where the authentic casting works against the need for the audience to suspend it’s disbelief.
So, the movie is old fashioned, put together professionally, does right by it’s socially important political story and the music scenes all work. So why is this film going nowhere fast with audiences? I guess it is just a different world. This movie could have been platform released thirty years ago, starting in prestige locations and then getting a wider release as interest grew. That is not the world we live in anymore, and the success of the movie suffers for it. If you can find it on the big screen, go for it, but my guess is that it will be PPV this week and streaming on a service next month. Too bad, because it would bring back some old fashioned glamour to a movie going experience.
One of the greatest films of the 1970s is also one that is largely forgotten. The reasons for this are complex but include the fact that this film came out in the wake of Star Wars, replaced that film on the Chinese Theater screen for only a week, and then was replaced itself by Star Wars. This was the film that no one knew what to do with, it’s an action adventure film with protagonists who are all loathsome in some way. Their heroic actions are always mitigated by the fact that they are criminals, terrorists, fraudsters, and murderers. When your rooting interest is someone that you would avoid if you cross paths with them on the street, it’s not hard to imagine that a film is going to struggle to find an audience.
“Sorcerer”, may be William Friedkin’s best film, and he made “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection”. This sweat-laden, rain soaked, mud encrusted thriller, will not leave you with a warm feeling, but it will leave you with deep admiration for the director’s skill at building tension and following characters through their true natures.
This was my first time seeing the film on the big screen. I only caught up with it on cable years later, and then finally when the remastered Blu-ray came out about a decade ago, I Revisited it andI appreciated the story. Seeing it in a theater however, is truly a great experience. There are sequences in this film that are so fraught with tension that I felt like sweating myself. Those of you not familiar, the main part of the story focuses on four displaced men, struggling in a poverty stricken Village in the nameless South American country, who take on the job of transporting volatile explosives 200 miles across the jungle.
The first half hour of the movie however, has nothing to do with the main adventure, it simply details what these four men were like before they came together in this anonymous part of the world. Each of their stories has a degree of vibrancy to it that makes their subsequent activities feel more important. Roy Scheider plays the displaced American, a gangster who is wanted by other gangsters for a crime back in the States. There is also a Palestinian terrorist, a French financier, guilty of a massive fraud, and a professional assassin as part of this team of drivers taking on this hellish task because they are desperate.
Perhaps the most amazing part of this film is that it was shot without CGI, or in a studio. The road that this group has to travel is filled with dangerous sinkholes, impossible to pass barriers, and a raging river with a rickety bridge that will give you nightmares. All of it is on screen and all of it is real to some degree. Of course some of the biggest threats come not from nature but from other men. There is revolution in the air, and there are criminal elements who take advantage of the Revolutionary impulses of others, to steal and kill.
Although we got backstories for all four of the drivers, Scheider remains our main protagonist, and our link to the civilization that seems largely out of reach In this jungle locale. As is typical in 1970s films, the ending of the story is downbeat, but not at all in a manner in which you expect. The inevitability of our guilt catching up with us is one of the main themes of the story. I’m not sure if that’s a part of the original film this movie is based on. I have seen that movie, but it has been a long time and I didn’t have the context of this film to compare it to at the time.
So if you want to feel your sphincter tighten, and have your sympathies be conflicted, then you should make it a point to see this film. And of course if you get a chance to see it on the big screen you need to put your money down and go.
Monday Night we returned to our summer house, the Paramount Theater in Austin Texas, to enjoy a 35mm screening of “Sunset Blvd”, from writer/director Billy Wilder. This poison pen love letter to Hollywood is suspenseful and reflective of the cutthroat nature of the film business. The industry has changed a lot since 1950, but some things remain the same. Writers are neglected by audiences as part of the film making process, in spite of the fact they are essential. Older stars are abandoned with indifferent cruelty, after all, who wants to see the elderly in a romantic clinch? And finally, the grasping secondary people will sell off their self respect to make it in the world.
Norma Desmond is a rich but washed up silent movie star, who clings to a dream of being relevant and being adored by an audience. Gloria Swanson does a magnificent job of conveying her delusional self image while also grasping at the desperate attempts she makes at holding onto the dream. William Holden is cynical and callous enough as the down on his luck screenwriter, who allows himself to be snagged like a fly in Norma’s web. He is not guilt free, but we can empathize with every character in the movie, and he is our main protagonist.
The black and white photography, the dark themes and a femme fatale all qualify “Sunset Blvd” as a Noir film. The floating body of the protagonist at the start of the film does the same in spades. The behind the scenes views of Hollywood in the golden age also make this film, unlike any other movie of the era. The below the line talent hangs out at Schwab’s drugstore, they part like normal people on New Years Eve and they are malleable to circumstances like everyone else. Betty Schaffer may be an innocent run over by the system in pursuit of stepping up in class, but she was also willing to abandon her love interest for a more promising prospect, at least until she found out who he really was.
When my daughter was still in school at USC with a minor in film, we took in a screening of “Sunset Blvd” at the Arclight Theater in Hollywood. Just to show her how steeped in film the whole town was and is, I drove straight up the street that we turned out of the parking garage on, and drove four blocks up to Joe Gillis apartment. It is still there, exactly where he said it was in the opening of the film. That is a pleasant memory of Hollywood, “Sunset Blvd” reminds us all, that the fantasy comes at a price.
Our third day of the TCM Film Festival started off with a science fiction classic from the 1950s featuring Special Effects by the great Ray Harryhausen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this film before “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”. The morning’s presentation was introduced by Joe Dante a director that I’ve admired for almost 50 years. Just as a side note that behind him at the screening of the Bruce Willis film “Sunset” in the Cinerama Dome.
Earth versus the flying saucers is a straightforward fifties sci-fi film, which means that it features military types who are hysterical about contact with new species, and weapons that we have not encountered before which will require a sudden development of Technology that we haven’t used before. Many times the aliens in these movies are standings for communism, the idea that a totalitarian race wants to dominate us and control our resources and lives sounds like it’s a pretty straightforward interpretation of the Soviet Union, only with cool space suits.
I’m sure I’ve seen actor Hugh Marlow in something else but at the moment I can’t remember what it would be. Many of the actors portraying generals looked quite familiar, I suspect they probably worked regularly in the 1950s playing military types. The highlight of these films is usually the special effects and in this particular case it’s the flying saucers and the Damage they cause Washington DC. Ray Harryhausen he’s always been one of my favorite producers, who’s specialty is stop motion animation, that he did mostly on his own. The effects look really cool on the screen, although in this particular film they were a little repetitive until we got to the attack on DC.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Our second film of the day was one that I was looking forward to from the moment I first saw the schedule. In the decade Plus that I have attended the TCM Film Festival, I’ve made sure to see the presentations from Craig Barron and Ben Burtt. These two gentlemen have extensive background in sound and special effects, receiving multiple Academy Awards, and having a clear knowledge of the history of their own disciplines. The very first film I saw at one of these festivals was my favorite, “The Adventures of Robin Hood” with Errol Flynn. Barron and Burtt were the presenters for that screening and they had such interesting detail and background history on the movie that I resolved never to miss an opportunity when they were speaking again.
The film they were working on this day, was “Colossus: The Forbin Project”, from 1970. While not the most well-known science fiction film of its ilk, Colossus is a forerunner of some of the most prescient films of the last 50 years. James Cameron was clearly influenced by exposure to this movie because the whole concept of Skynet is stolen from this film. The premise of the film is simple, we have created an artificial intelligence to run our defense systems, and the worst things that can happen do.
I was a little surprised that this was the film that these two gentlemen were working on for the festival, because I didn’t remember that there were extensive effect shots. Of course I forget sometimes that matte paintings and sound design are a big part of how a movie like this manage to impress. The opening shots of Dr Forbin, walking through the Colossus computer as it is being booted up, require some difficult matte paintings that were done by the great Albert Whitlock. The descriptions that the speakers provided impressively explained why we should take note of this subtle work.
I also found it quite interesting, that the sound of colossus’s voice in the television interface that originated at the World’s Fair in 1939, was classified during World War II. The sound technology was used for the direct communication line between Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Winston Churchill. It was a nice simulation of what their call would have sounded like using the encryption sound technology that was later used for this movie. Once again one of my favorite things at the TCM Film Festival was a presentation by Craig Barron and Ben Bert. As an added bonus the star of the film Eric Braeden made an appearance. He did a brief introduction before the movie, and then participated in a little Q&A
Brigadoon
The third film for the day had us returning to the Egyptian Theater for the first time since last year. Although I love the Chinese IMAX I have to say that the Egyptian is my favorite venue for the festival. When I lived in Southern California I was a member of the American Cinematique, who operated the Egyptian. It is since traded hands and is now a Netflix venue, and while that may not be something I think is great, they have done a fantastic job updating the theater while still maintaining it’s historical ambience. Such ambience seemed particularly important for this film, a 1950s Musical that I have never seen before Brigadoon.
I’m a fan of musicals and of Gene Kelly, so it’s a little surprising that I hadn’t seen this for myself at some point in the past. I don’t know that it has the best reputation in the world of musicals, after all I’m not sure there’s a song in it that was a hit. The film however it does have a number of charms, and it’s a good reminder of how the studio system of the golden age of Hollywood could produce a film on sound stages that made you feel like you were in Scotland. In case you are not aware Brigadoon is a village that is either cursed or blessed depending upon your point of view. It’s residents appear to be living nearly forever, because the village is only active for a few days every hundred years. Of course when Gene Kelly and Van Johnson stumble upon the village, complications ensue, but so do some wonderful dance sequences. I was not aware that Van Johnson danced in any films, but he did a pretty credible job with one number in this movie.
The real dancers in the film however were represented at the screening today by two of their own, Barrie Chase and George Chakiris. Both of these actors/dancers are well into their 80s, and they occasionally scratch their heads trying to remember some details about the particular film. They certainly gave us some insight into the way that dancers in those days found jobs or auditioned. I got the definite impression that Barry Chase lost a few opportunities because she would not submit to Arthur Freed . The casting couch was alive and well in those days.
While most of the film looked pretty good there were some sequences that probably needed to be remastered. I was happy to catch up on this classic and enjoy the look of the film even if the story is a little slight, and inconsistent on its own world building. After all it’s really a musical not a science fiction fantasy film interested in creating its own universe.
JAWS
When we left the theater after Brigadoon we immediately got a new cue card and got in line to get back into the Egyptian for the most important film of our at TCM. This year is the 50th anniversary of the greatest film of the second half of the 20th century. Jaws is influential, groundbreaking, and once again in my opinion the best film that Steven Spielberg has ever made.
I am not sure that there is another movie that I have seen in a theater as often as I have Jaws. It made me very nostalgic to be seeing it here at TCM in the Egyptian Theater, since at least a half dozen of my earlier screenings also took place at this iconic venue. Anybody reading this can find more than a dozen posts about the movie Jaws on this blog site. I’m not going to recap the story or the significance of the movie on this day. Instead, main thing I want to talk about is the guest Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody in the film.
She was married to Sid Steinberg, who at the time was the chief at Universal Studios and Steven Spielberg’s mentor. This is the part that she will be remembered for, all of her other roles were primarily supporting TV characters. Frankly she’s terrific in the movie, although she disappears from the film entirely in the third Act. Advanced age of 88 she had No Reservations about being honest concerning her co-workers. She was dismissive of Richard Dreyfuss, without giving any details of why she didn’t care for him. She also expressed the opinion that Roy Scheider was it somewhat mean co-star, and she didn’t have any warm memories of working with him. She did however confess to having a crush on Robert Shaw, which I find completely Charming and ironic given their parts in the film.
The print of the film that was screened for us came from the British Film Institute, and had been preserved since a 1981 presentation on the BBC. The color dyes in this print are probably as close to the original version of the film from 1975, as we are likely to ever see. The film looked magnificent. It was surprising when Ben Mankowitz ask for a show of hands of people who had never seen the movie, that there were dozens of hands in the air. Listening to the audience during the film I had no trouble believing that those people were being honest, because you could hear the intake of breath, the shots of surprise, and the Applause of delight for all those little things that make Jaws the quintessential Blockbuster in one of my favorite films.
Blade Runner
We repeated the process at the end of this film walking out of the theater getting in line immediately to get a new cue card to go back in and see our final film for the evening. Although it was not a financial success in 1982 when it was first released, Blade Runner has been a critical success and a cult favorite for more than 40 years.
One of the first Criterion Collection laserdiscs that I purchased was Blade Runner, back in the 1990s. That version does not include the director’s cut in the Final Cut, but there is discussion of some of the things that would later be included in revised editions of the film. The version we saw appears to have been the Final Cut, so there is no narration in the ending is slightly different, although to be honest we only stayed through the first hour of the film. As I’ve already mentioned we were staying at the house in Glendora so we had a 45 minute ride home, if we stayed for the whole film we would not have been in bed until 1: 30, and we needed to get up at 5: 30 to make Sunday.
The special guests for this film was the female co-star Sean Young, who was only 19 when the film was made and who was making her debut as a film actress with this movie. Miss Young has always been known as an outspoken and opinionated actress and nothing has changed even if she is aged the way I have. She spoke about working with Harrison Ford, the rigors of the makeup chair, and generally working in Hollywood. Her talk was not limited to Blade Runner though, as she made brief comments about several films and actors that she had worked with. She seemed fond of the late Gene Hackman when she worked with in no way out, but never seem to get very close to Kevin Costner who was her leading man. She did say that Blade Runner was the favorite film that she made, but the bigger reaction from the audience was to her second favorite film which was Ace Ventura.
Watching Blade Runner at home on Blu-ray, streaming, or even my beloved LaserDisc, cannot do it justice. Seeing it on the big screen and listening to the score and the sound design of the film in the theater like the Egyptian is one of those things that everybody should experience. We only stayed through the scene where James Hong meets his demise, but I can tell you everything up to that point looked and sounded spectacular on the big screen.
At one time it had been my hope to make a couple of the midnight movies, and “Wild at Heart” would have been another film at the Egyptian had we not been so tired. So we ended our day with the fun talk from Sean Young and the brilliant vision of Ridley Scott.
We got a chance to see this fun little horror film, a little early, as it was being presented in a promotional screening that included streaming Q&A from two of the Stars who also happen to be the writers and directors of the film. Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, are our young actors who have come up with a script and somehow got the green light to make the movie. Wolfhard would be familiar to most of you as Mike from “Stranger Things”. The youngsters have been watching their ’80s horror movies and they have a pretty good grasp of the tropes that they want to take advantage of in their little concoction.
The movie is set at a summer camp, had a remote location, with the camp counselors arriving early in preparation for this season’s Camp session. One of the counselors is returning for the 6th time as a counselor, at the age of 24 is a little old be working this as a summer job, but it appears to be his dream, and he loves what he’s doing. The character is Jason, as if that is not a tribute to earlier horror films, and he is a nebbish but sincere guy who just wants to have the best summer ever. The younger counselors, come from a slightly different generation, and they have a hard time understanding Jason and his enthusiasm for outdoor activities.
The film is a comedy, but it takes the murders fairly seriously. The only time one of the deaths has a cartoon quality to it is in the opening scene, when a guitar is used as a grizzly marker for murder. Other than that tuneful moment, the deaths themselves, even as they pile up, are treated as real murders and not as the punchline to an elaborate joke where the death of a teenager is supposed to be laughed at. So the film is very much in keeping with the tone of the early Friday the 13th or Halloween movies.
Most of the humor occurs when the counselors panic about how to respond to all of the death, and they false the accused Jason of being the murderer. They’re attempted solution to the problem offers lots of opportunities for us to laugh at the callousness and the cluelessness of this new generation of campers. The two step brothers, who also happen to be the writers and directors of the film, also offer us a lot of humorous moments as they bicker like siblings might, over little things such as who gets to sit in the front seat of the car. They did a pretty good job letting us know something about the characters in the film, so that we care a bit about the outcome. There are one or two small Clues as to who is responsible for the killings, those come early on and if you are not paying attention it would be easy to miss them and have to wait for the reveal when it shows up. I’m perfectly willing to say that I miss them the first time around, but I appreciate it that the screenwriters made an effort to give us a chance to honestly solve the puzzle before they do.
In addition to the humor, the main draw of the film will be the Practical effects that are used to present the deaths. There is solid work done by the makeup team, but they don’t go overboard and try to make things so gross that we are reacting to just the physical image more than the concept of what’s been done to these poor kids. The character of Jason is also a rich source of humor in the film, since he wants to be at the camp at all, and eventually wants to take on the role of hero, in spite of being accused by and tied up by the other counselors.
Maybe it takes a while to get things started after we had those initial kills, but I just thought that that was good storytelling. I have no objection to a slow burn as long as it pays off, and I think hell of a summer paid off pretty well. It’s a solid first part of the Apple for the two aspiring filmmakers, and it should satisfy people who have a love for horror movies rooted in the 1980s.
This is a rare film that actually did better at the box office it’s second week rather than the first week of release. There is only one reason for that, the tie in to Valentine’s Day. In fact February 14th was the highest grossing day for the film, almost double the take from the Friday before. People must be desperate for a film that they can share on Valentine’s Day, if this is the thing they committed their romantic holiday to. It is not very good. The level of stupidity can be offset just a little bit by attractive casting.
“Heart Eyes” is a romantic comedy that morphs into a slasher film, in spite of the fact that it starts with a couple of gruesome murders. That is because the murders are so disconnected from anything that we know about this world. The initial couple that we see killed are trying to produce the perfect tick tock video proposal, and you will dislike them immediately. They are self absorbed and controlling, but that doesn’t mean they should be murdered or that we should care that they are. The real story starts with a young ad executive who has miscalculated how to promote romance and engagement jewelry, at the wrong time and in the wrong way. We are supposed to see immediately that she is a darling who has just made a mistake and is uncomfortable with her tasks. I see a stereotypical female romantic lead, who is portrayed as clever but makes every silly mistake you can imagine in the first two acts. The meet cute with her rom-com counterpart is actually a nice play on the trope and he is attractively packaged.
The problem is that the psycho killer is stalking couples and they accidentally become one that the killer is focusing on. Because we know nothing about the killer, other than their costume, we have no idea what the motive is or how the killer thinks. We are getting less than half of the usual slasher film here and the romantic comedy stuff gets run over by the repeated attempts on the lives of our two “non-lovers”. Once in a while that pays off with a funny bit of business but not consistently.
If the reveal of the killer feels like an anticlimax, that’s because it is. There is more to it and we get a stapled on ending in the third act. If you don’t feel cheated by the preposterous new reveal, then all I can say to you is I have an extremely rare copy of “Speed” on Laserdisc that I will let go for $200. Look, I’m a horror fan and I forgive a lot of bad storytelling to allow a fright film room to operate in, but this film expects too much of us simply because it centers around a holiday.
The best “kills” are revealed in the trailer, so save yourself some time, watch that and get your gore fix. Now put on your LED lit goggles and go out and find somebody to share a real movie with.
This movie is not good. There is something cringy about most of the Sony films that have tried to spin off Spider-Man characters into their own films. They just feel inauthentic entirely. The “Venom” films work in part because the film makers lean into the stupidity of the premise and they get that the films are commercial junk. “Kraven” is commercial junk that takes itself seriously an is laughable as a result. The opening sequences are really good, but then we get an origin story that is so preposterous, I was laughing at it as it was being played out.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson looks great in the part, it’s just that the part is ridiculous. The child of a Russian mob figure acquires supernatural powers from a dead animal at a safari hunt with the assistance of a voodoo elixir that comes to him through a civilized girl who is visiting her grandmother’s primitive culture. If chiseled abs were enough to make a movie work, then Taylor -Johnson would have this sewn up. You also need dialogue and story for a movie to work, this film has some very stupid dialogue and some equally stupid story telling.
By the time we get to the CGI climax, I just did not care anymore. The only person who gets out of this unscathed is Russell Crowe, who plays the mob boss father with a heavy accent and a sociopath personality. It’s as if he doesn’t give a crap and just leans into the dumb mess of a film he is in. The film is set up for a sequel, but with the box office returns, I don’t expect anyone is jumping abord for another film in this series.
I have fallen behind on films that I have seen in the theater here in December, so I am going to keep this short. There was not much to talk about anyway. I will probably turn my derision toward another film that came out more recently. Aaron, wipe your feet thoroughly before you try on James Bond’s shoes. I think you might be great for that series, but you stepped in some pooh here.
The circumstances that gave rise to the aesthetics of this movie are long gone. Punk attitudes rose and fell in the 80s, and in the forty years since this came out, new attitudes of entitlement, resentment and envy have replaced the punk ethos. The contempt for normative lifestyles continues but it is much less interesting now than it was in 1984. If we set aside the angry young man motif of the film, there still remains an off beat story about losers, struggling to make it in the world, and the complications that arise when they cross paths with society. In other words, this is still a punk movie, it just has lost it’s cause.
No characters in the movie are particularly likeable. Otto, the main protagonist played by Emilio Estevez, is an angry, self centered punk, with no respect for women, who feels entitled to something more, but he doesn’t quite know what. He does seem to have some ethics, but those morals are constantly undermined by his associates, both the professionals he takes up with, and the girl he supposedly cares about. It may be understandable why he has such attitudes, everyone he interacts with lets him down in some way. Bud, the Harry Dean Stanton character, is his mentor, but also an antagonist who second guesses and manipulates Otto from the start. Thankfully, their story does get a more satisfactory conclusion than that of Leila, the girl who betrays him after he has rescued her a couple of times.
The great Tracey Walter, plays Miller , a non-driving cog in the repo man world, who passes out wisdom like candy at Halloween. The only problem is, when you look in your bag, it is full of those circus peanut candies that are disgusting. Nothing Miller says means much, and most of the time it is simply designed to provoke those around him. His commentary on John Wayne is a good example of that. Lite, is another repo man that Otto works with and his philosophy is at complete odds with the one Bud has been espousing. There is not a homogenous set of opinions in this culture. The Rodriguez brothers, who are set up as antagonists early in the film, turn out to be not so bad in the end. The UFO group that seeks the McGuffin, are not heroic revolutionaries but jaded outsiders who are indifferent to their own benefactor .
There is a ton of stuff to laugh about in the film. The banality of normal life is lampooned by the use of the “generic” products of the era. Otto’s parents are hypnotized by the television and a preacher that they are sending all their money too. The customers who are losing their cars are often nitwits or trying to pull a fast one themselves. The former friends of Otto, who have become stick up artists, are the most inept of all, suggesting that writer/director Alex Cox is is not all that sympathetic to the youth in the picture at all. My favorite moment in the film is an exchange between two of Alex former friends,
Debbi: Duke, let’s go do some crimes.
Duke: Yeah. Let’s go get sushi and not pay.
I wrote about this movie originally on my 30 Years On Project, saluting the films I saw in 1984. This Screening at the Paramount was the first time I have seen the movie in a theater since 1984. It really holds up well. Just as a side note, the Chevy Impala that Bud drives in the movie, had a parking decal on the bumper from Fullerton College, which was a duplicate of the one I had on my car because I was teaching there in 1984.
David Cronenberg films are an acquired taste. They often have a cult status to them that may be off putting to those who are not familiar with his aesthetic. So it makes perfect sense that the presentation of this film as part of the Paramount Summer Classic film Series, is presented by the Hyperreal Film Club. Their film choices are often off center or feature some esoteric element that makes the movie distinctive. This seems like a perfect match for them. The guest host from the club spent a good deal of time, warning the audience about some of the extreme elements of the picture. They also suggested a number of themes that you could look for in the story to help make it a more insightful experience. There was a little drift in the intro when the film’s star came in for a bit of criticism that was not based on the movie and made some presuppositions that were never justified, but that is a minor point.
“Videodrome” takes place in a different cultural time and the technology will seem quaint to an audience forty years from it’s origins, but the themes are still relevant, and if we adapt our assumptions from television to the internet, they actually seem more vibrant than ever. At the center of the story is a conspiracy to modify the view of the world for those who consume this product. The hypnotic effects results in fantasy sequences of body horror and violence, or are they fantasies? Cronenberg seems to be having it both ways, the images we are seeing are real and they are imagined. This is also a theme of the film, what is reality?
Debbie Harry is listed as one of the stars, and she is featured, but her role is definitely a supporting character. After the first act, she is seen only in brief hallucinogenic moments by the protagonist played by James Woods. Max Ren, is a cable TV producer, who has a knack for finding disturbing material that his customers can’t take their eyes off of. He is a sleazy character who is primarily motivated by money, but although he does not appear to have a clear ethos, there are lines that he begins to see should not be crossed. Woods appropriately plays him as both hero and victim because that is what Max is. He is heroically, but futilely resisting the Videodrome technology, while at the same time succumbing to the seduction. In what amounts to the first virtual character in a film, Professor Brian O’Blivion , turns out to be the real hero of the film story, although be is never seen except on TV.
This is one of those mind f*** movies that puts the audience in the position of trying to figure out what is really going on and whether or not they are a part of it. One of the things that makes it disgustingly compelling, is the terrific special effects make-up created by the great Rick Baker. Baker is one of my unsung movie heroes although unsung is hardly the truth, he does have seven Academy Awards to his name. It’s just that make-up is often overlooked in the success of a film, but in this case it is essential. Max has physical changes that are revolting to think about, but fascinating to watch on the screen. I do like the trivia that the video tapes used in the film are BetaMax tapes, because VHS was too large for the effect that they created. I think it is also appropriate that they are “Beta” MAX, given out central character.
The Hyperreal Film Club also presents a short film from one of their members as part of this series. It will supposedly be available later this year on-line. I was quite entertained by “We Joined a Cult”, and when it is available, you will get four minutes of gruesome laughs yourself.
This is a movie that would have worked so much better if the premise had not been given away in all of the advertising and the trailer. What starts off as a tense kidnapping story, takes a turn a quarter of the way into the movie, and it’s a very clever twist. The problem is that we all knew it was coming, which undermines a lot of the stuff they get set up at the start of the film. That said, there is still fun to be had here because when it hits the fan, there’s a glorious amount of Gore, violence, and ironic comedy.
Basically this is a variation of 100 other horror stories over the years. 10 Little Indians, Alien, The House on Haunted Hill, and dozens of other movies where a group of people are trapped in a situation where they will be picked off one at a time. Will they be able to figure out a solution? Will the antagonist reveal a motive? Is there any point to the story? The answers to these and other questions will come if you stay to the end of the movie. As in a lot of contemporary films, the people involved are not particularly pleasant, and we may very well feel that as things go along that some of them are getting what they deserved. Let’s face it, everybody in this house was there because they were kidnapping a little girl. Maybe some of them are worse than others, and maybe there is possible redemption, but we’re going to have to get a lot of dead bodies before we get to the point where we’re glad that anybody is surviving.
Imagine if you were Claudia from the film “Interview with the Vampire”, and you had to spend your eternal life as a child. What kinds of amusements could you come up with to keep you interested and at the same time allow you to continue your cover as an innocent child? Well that’s basically what this film attempts to answer. The fact that the house it’s full of booby traps, secret passages, and dark foreboding images adds to the fun. Characters betray one another and sometimes they actually support one another, but we’re never sure of which outcome we’re going to get before the events play out. This is where some of the fun comes in. This movie is not quite as engaging as “Ready or Not“, the film from the directors that preceded this, but it’s unlikely that you’ll feel ripped off by watching it. Especially if you enjoy over the top monster action that results in blood splattered all over the screen on the set.
Actor Kevin Durant is a Canadian performer that I have seen in movies since the late 1990s. He’s a big guy with a distinctive face and I’ve enjoyed most of his performances. This week, after not having seen him in films for several years because he was working regularly on on several television series, he turns up in two movies that I saw back to back. In “Abigail” he is the muscle on the team of kidnappers, and in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”, he performs and voices the King, Proximo. It’s strange sometimes how little things line up and create interesting coincidences. He’s actually very good in this film trying to be a sympathetic monster of a human when faced with a real life monster it’s even more evil than he is.
It’s true that in most survival stories, the participants are going to be faced with choices that they have to make which involve moral dilemmas. It’s also true that we can probably pick out some of the characters who will not have any moral qualms about stabbing their fellow survivors in the back in order to be the ones who are still standing at the end of the story. We got a couple of those in this film, Complicated by some storytelling that is a little shaky. The resolutions come however they’re kind of satisfying.
Don’t be too panicked, the people who deserve to go will. Some people who don’t deserve to die will. And logic will go out the window pretty quickly, actually just as fast as the windows are shut to close people into the house. Then all bets are off and you should just enjoy the bloody Mayhem.
Kirkham A Movie A Day 