You Let The Moment Fly

As anyone who knows the film well might realize, the idea of a special screening of Robert Altman’s masterpiece THE LONG GOODBYE at the Hammer Museum in Westwood Village was very appropriate if only because the museum is located by the corner of Wilshire & Westwood, situated exactly where Elliott Gould’s Phillip Marlowe chases after the Mercedes driven by Nina van Pallandt’s Eileen Wade late in the film. No was I going to pass that up. The screening seems to have been held in conjunction with a recent donation from Altman’s family to UCLA including the very print were seeing that evening. I suppose there was a function held before the screening which I did not attend but did see several people who seem to have come from there. Soon after I arrived and waiting to be let in I spotted Elliott Gould, there for a post-film discussion, lurking around near the edges of the Hammer’s courtyard almost unnoticed. All I could think was, there’s Phillip Marlowe, right there. I chose not to disturb him. Incidentally, the actor just guest-starred on LAW & ORDER and it was kind of nice seeing NBC trumpet him in the promos. Once inside the Billy Wilder Theater, I soon realized that the great Vilmos Zsigmond, the legendary cinematographer on the film, was sitting right behind me. Sitting behind him was Paul Dooley, familiar from a million things, and I could hear him chatting with Zsigmond about the Robert Altman films he had appeared in—When I heard, “We were there for six months, we had Fellini’s crew,” it was easy to figure that he was talking about POPEYE. A number of other familiar people were there and I have a feeling I missed a few but Lauren Hutton was somewhere in the row in front of me and shortly before the film started I spotted Sally Kellerman walking around the packed theater looking for an open seat, a sight which seemed rather…Altmanesque. The film started soon enough (and I noticed she had indeed found a seat) and we were treated to a beautiful-looking print of a film that I’ve already seen numerous times and still can never get enough of. I might watch my DVD again before the night is through.


What exactly is it about THE LONG GOODBYE? It was somewhat notoriously hated at the time of release, trashed by fans of the detective genre with the Maltin book proclaiming that “Altman’s attitude toward the genre borders on contempt,” in terms of the film's unorthodox approach to adapting Raymond Chandler's novel. But by this point in time the film has achieved acclaim as at least a minor classic and to some people something considerably more, one that they are genuinely attached to. I know I am. The audience in the Billy Wilder Theater was clearly at least partly made up of the faithful, judging from the laughter heard right at the start as Marlowe lit his first cigarette of the movie, of course the first of many. The feeling was that everyone was settling in, ready to follow this version of the character through his travails one more time as he navigates this early 70s version of Los Angeles. Over 35 years after it was made, it seems as mysterious to the stranded-from-the-40s Phillip Marlowe as 2009 Los Angeles can seem to anyone who finds themselves there and wonders how they’re supposed to be acting from day to day. The film seems designed for anyone who has found themselves at a party like the (admittedly pretty groovy looking) beachfront barbecue that the Wades are throwing for their presumed friends who have turned up from I don’t know where. Marlowe has nothing to say to any of them, they take no interest in him and the only one who does show any interest is the dog who never stops barking in his direction—he must know something about the cat.


I’ve seen the film enough times by now that I don’t need to spend too much time thinking about the plot so instead I pay attention to various moments that make that much more of an impression when seen on the big screen. Marlowe’s reaction to the dried apricot Eileen Wade tosses him, Henry Gibson’s Dr. Verringer laying the slap on Sterling Hayden at the third “Write the CHECK, Roger,” Jack Riley’s careful rehearsing on the piano in the bar and that almost unspeakably horrific look on Nina van Pallandt’s face just before Sterling Hayden shouts “BALLS!” at her. Not to mention the continued rewards at studying Elliott Gould’s face throughout, wondering how much he’s actually revealing to someone he’s talking to, wondering how much things really are ok with him as he always says. As well as every conceivable version of the main theme famously heard at every possible point during the film (favorite unheralded version: the one heard on sitar wafting over from the girls next door outside of Marlowe’s pad, but the rendering performed by the marching band down in Mexico is strangely haunting), that one song that sticks in your head in this town, just like that girl that you never seem to forget even years after the first time you spend a few minutes desperately trying to just talk to her. Although one or two things still bug me a little even now: when we jump from the late night crime scene at the beach to Marlowe being dragged into Marty Augustine’s office, how much time has passed? An hour? A day? A week? It doesn’t matter, I suppose.


I read the Chandler book maybe over ten years ago so memories are vague but the basic plot of the novel is in the film and structure wise the changes made aren’t necessarily any greater from how most 379 page books are ever adapted down to a two hour running time. It makes me think that screenwriter Leigh Brackett, the legend who had worked with Howard Hawks on THE BIG SLEEP and RIO BRAVO, deserves more credit than she has ever received for her work here and even if the actors tossed out the script (or used it as a loose outline in a way that maybe something like CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM is now put together) it feels like Altman always had it in mind—if he was going to verge from it, he at least knew what he was verging from. It could be one reason why this film is so much stronger than certain other Altman films which don’t already have such a strong spine in place (I guess something like PRET-A-PORTER comes to mind). And it’s all in the service of not the two mysteries that Phillip Marlowe stumbles into which become one but the greater meaning of what it all means in the end. Friends betray you (“That’s what friends are for,” as someone says near the very end), women toss you aside as they drive off with “LOV YOU” on their license plate and you’re left with that memory with them still lingering in the air as you wonder what happened—the long goodbye.


And I find myself looking forward to the performances of everyone in front of the camera caught by the eye of Altman and Zsigmond, whether Sterling Hayden and Nina van Pallandt in their scenes with Gould or David Arkin muttering “I remember when people just had jobs,” Mark Rydell’s ferocious pragmatism as Marty Augustine, Ken Samson’s guard at the gate of the Malibu Colony (“I just don’t understand why I don’t understand,”) or Jo Ann Brody’s ultra-innocent Sharon Tate-ness as Augustine’s girl who has no idea what she’s in for as she asks for a Coke. Naturally, there was audience laughter at the Billy Wilder Theater as Arnold Schwarzenegger made his silent appearance as one of the goons (Altman’s proud declaration on the DVD that “Arnold never speaks of this film” was proven untrue when our Governor did just that in the official statement released at the time of the director’s death). And instead of going on for pages about the work of the lead actor here, in his first film after returning from working for Bergman, I’ll simply say that almost more so than any other screen work by an actor that I’ve ever seen, Elliott Gould gives the performance of a free man and the only example that ever needs to be offered of how good he was. I wish I could somehow be this free.


The post-film discussion with the star and Mitchell Zukoff, author of the recent “Robert Altman – An Oral Biography” (recommended) got into how Gould got involved with the film and also touched on his starring roles MASH and CALIFORNIA SPLIT (the only other times Altman and Gould worked together, not counting a few cameos). Gould talked about specifics of the production a little bit, including how he almost drowned while shooting the late night scene out in the Malibu surf and then after that they did two more takes. The talk perhaps revealed how for Gould it seems to sometimes be difficult to put the improvisatory nature of the specifics of working with Altman into words but enough of the feeling got across and more importantly he was able to express what Altman who he referred to as a “force of nature” and how he was able to provide all the creative people he worked with “life”. As a sort of summation late in the evening when trying to express how they worked together Gould simply stated, “Bob deserves all the credit.” Not much else needed to be said after that.


This is all rambling, I know, maybe kind of like the film. Maybe there’s no way to fully put into words what the work of Robert Altman and Elliott Gould here means to me and all I can do is look forward to someday getting the chance to express that by showing it to someone who’s never seen it. And I hope she likes it too. After a lousy day earlier this week all I could really do at the end was let that Williams/Mercer theme song into my head and say to myself, “It’s ok with me,” as I walked off from the day alone, imagining myself in my own homage to the end of THE THIRD MAN. No one was around to hear me when I said that, but that doesn’t really matter. When it comes right down to it, I think I love this film so much that I don’t even want to tell you. And, let it always be said, Hooray For Hollywood.

The Power Of A Demonstration

Released in November 1983, William Friedkin’s DEAL OF THE CENTURY doesn’t seem to have the support of even the most die-hard fans of the director out there. I think THE GUARDIAN actually has more admirers and I’d be happy to say something nice about THE HUNTED (sadly, I have never seen THE BRINK’S JOB, which seems to be unreleased on DVD in the U.S.). But as for this Chevy Chase vehicle, it’s possible that Friedkin-philes don’t remember that DEAL even exists…or at least that Friedkin directed it. It’s tough to figure out even why he did. At this point it was a long three years after CRUSING, so maybe he was hurting for offers, maybe he needed the cash, maybe he was just looking for something to do. For the most part, it doesn’t even really seem like one of his movies. Shot in a way that could have come from some other director, it looks like any number of brightly lit comedies of the time and while it goes for the feel of dark satire, none of that really holds. Those who were around then might remember that it was sold just as a crazy Chevy Chase comedy and coming just a few months after the release of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION, the film actually could fall in the category of comedians who were trying new things around this period, darker satires to fall in with the unease of Reagan’s recession-era first term coming out of the end of the 70s—things like John Avildsen’s NEIGHBORS and Michael Ritchie’s THE SURVIVORS certainly come to mind. There’s Richard Brooks’s own unsuccessful arms race satire WRONG IS RIGHT as well.


Chevy Chase has plenty of bad movies to his credit but whatever the quality this seems like one of the few times he tried something genuinely different--more so than UNDER THE RAINBOW and MODERN PROBLEMS, anyway. Since it’s long since forgotten it doesn’t seem to have affected his subsequent career trajectory much at all. It’s a curious film, but not very good on any level. Maybe worst of all for Friedkin, it’s simply not out there enough—it’s just too average in its mediocrity. And if there’s no level of insanity to be found in a Friedkin film, however misplaced it might turn out to be, the result comes off like there was no reason for him to show up on the set. Of course, this brings up the issue of the pure oddness of William Friedkin directing any sort of comedy, dark or light. Does he actually have any sort of sense of humor? It really just feels like an unfortunate clashing of different individuals and when it was all put together there was nothing for the studio to do but release it since there wasn’t going to be any fixing the thing.


Not to try to spend to much time on the plot, since it isn’t very much of one, DEAL focuses on Eddie Muntz (Chevy Chase) arms dealer who travels the globe and while working over Christmas down in some Central American hellhole an ambush results in him losing all his money and being shot in the foot but his luck turns around when an encounter with Harold DeVoto (Wallace Shawn) also down there working on a deal causes him to luck into an opportunity of selling a new pilotless weapon from Luckup Industries called the Peacemaker. The circumstances causes Luckup head Frank Stryker (Vince Edwards), desperate to unload the faulty device, to want to make use of Muntz’s talents and expertise but DeVoto’s beautiful wife Catherine (Sigourney Weaver) takes an interest in the deal as well and there’s still the issue of Muntz’s partner Ray Kasternak (Gregory Hines) undergoing his own breakdown/religious conversion to deal with.


As Vincent Canby said in his New York Times review, DEAL OF THE CENTURY “fails as a satire, partly because it seems to think that all it has to do to win an audience is to announce its good intentions, and partly because it's terrible.” That’s about says it all. There’s no consistent tone and, frankly, there’s no consistent anything through the running time and frankly it’s tough to know exactly what the point of DEAL OF THE CENTURY is. The darkly funny idea of weapons being offered in such a manner is hammered in pretty early on with Chase spending scenes selling weaponry like used cars which really is the one joke the film seems to have. Even when it’s told in a more elaborate way during demonstrations of the Peacekeeper it feels like we’re hearing the same punchline again and again. The pacing at least feels like Friedkin’s style in the editing (Bud S. Smith, who also cut SORCERER and CRUSING, is credited), as if stripping away the story down to its essentials, whatever that story is, but it doesn’t seem like the correct way to structure a comedy. Narration by Chase begins at his first appearance around eight minutes in, after several scenes have already occurred and it just makes things feel lopsided—why aren’t things starting there if he’s the one telling this story? It’s tough to tell from watching it if the narration was always part of the picture—maybe not and I couldn’t help but notice when the end credits rolled that Bud Yorkin was listed as producer and certainly the previous year he had been a producer on BLADE RUNNER, which itself had famous problems with a voiceover.


Ultimately, there’s not very much good I can say about it—it’s not funny or subversive in any way that sustains interest, the characters aren’t likable (or even appealingly unlikable) and there’s no real story to latch onto. If the script by Paul Brickman (RISKY BUSINESS) had one, I can’t get a hold on it and all I feel left with is the unusual site of a lead character who spends most of the film with his leg in a cast. There is an idea there in how both Muntz and Kasternak discover in their own ways how to save their soul but the film doesn’t seem to be aware of it. Even the section that work relatively well don’t have much of an effect--cutting from a ceremonial plane launch to the guys in the control booth taking the place apart as they try to fix a problem (caused by washing the plane the night before) has some twisted appeal and it’s not a bad sequence even if the effects aren’t that great—I like the appearance by the star of the hit sitcom “One’s a Crowd”—but it’s too isolated from the rest of the movie, so no momentum ever comes from it. Every now and then there’s a glimmer of imtelligence but it’s always too isolated to know what to do with it. Any darkly comic film that chooses to roll the credits with the Chipmunks playing has to make it clear what it’s about. Maybe Friedkin just thought that it would signify something, even if now one would ever be sure what.


Since we’re a number of years past Chevy Chase being a bankable movie star it seems safe to say that his biggest hits were mostly in Chevy Chase-type roles with people he was comfortable working with. Here, he feels too much out of his comfort zone, maybe an indication that he was never going to be able to move into character roles in a Murray or Aykroyd kind of way. Throughout the film Chase seems miscast, vaguely uncomfortable and he doesn’t even look very good, with a pasty, pale face and bad haircut, all things that seems to have more to do with him than the character he’s playing. Sigourney Weaver, by contrast, does look pretty great (and, for the record, at times she looks amazing and Chase looks terrible in the same shot—Richard Kline was cinematographer—so it’s fitting that they have little chemistry) but she doesn’t seem to have received much direction with a character who never really registers—they go from her pulling a gun on Chase to them being a couple in short order but we never can tell why, beyond that they’re the two lead. The film doesn’t seem to have a very high opinion of her character either based on one sequence in particular and it feels like some punches were pulled in editing to soften some of this. She does have one great moment out on the dance floor at the Arms For Peace trade show that allows her to finally cut loose and for a few seconds it almost feels as if everything is about to come alive. Gregory Hines seems to have a handle on his character somewhat better, making me believe his interest in planes and coming off as likeably cracked, battling with his own demons culminating in a scene involving a minor fender bender and a flamethrower. It’s a scene that partly because of how he plays it goes to a dark place the rest of the film seems unable to but sadly doesn’t resonate because nothing around it does. Vince Edwards is nicely oily, but Wallace Shawn is pretty damn near brilliant in his one scene, nailing the tone of the hoped-for dark satire better than anyone. Robert Cornthwaite from the original THE THING has a great moment as a General giving a speech explaining how the United States can survive a first strike from the Soviets “and retaliate, inflicting more damage on them than they inflict on us,” adding V.P. Bush has said that “far more than five percent of our population will survive.” It looks to me like that Tracey Walter is in there playing a computer technician as well even though he’s not listed in the credits. We even get a few shots of Reagan seen on TV sets (hey, just like SPIES LIKE US!) including one point which seems particularly pertinent that looks like it comes from at least several years earlier.


There seems to be considerable research involved with the weaponry which seems a little like the Friedkin approach. He probably did a lot of work on that but there has to be something more to the joke of the sickness of all this and we never get it. It just becomes a bunch of scenes of either people shouting at each other or, in the case of Chase & Weaver, simply leering at each other. Just about the funniest thing about the film is that three years after its release, when the Iran-Contra scandal was beginning to heat up, CBS scrapped a planned airing of the film due to “its relation to recent news events.” I kind of doubt anyone would have cared. DEAL OF THE CENTURY seems to acknowledge the seriousness of its subject but it has no idea how to navigate the perversity of all that for comedy. If there are any Friedkin fans who want to defend the thing, by all means go for it. But if anyone does, frankly, I’d be surprised.

A Broken Nose Ain't Gonna Kill You

I’ve been feeling a little listless lately, wondering about a lot of things that I won’t go into here. With this in mind I happened to pop Jonathan Demme’s 1986 film SOMETHING WILD into the DVD player for my first full viewing in quite some time. It’s interesting how the opening title sequence consists of views of Manhattan—funkier, more low-level shots of the island than you’d get in most films (with the World Trade Center seen a few times) but it’s still surprising how little of the film actually takes place there since in memory it almost seems like one of the key New York films of the period. Maybe that’s my memory of seeing it and how it affected me at the time. One of the few lower Manhattan locations it actually uses, the small restaurant at the beginning, is located at an intersection that I can remember being right around where the old Film Forum, quickly visible in one shot, used to be. This really has nothing to do with SOMETHING WILD itself except that maybe everything about the film is a reminder of a time where there was a greater energy in the air, more of a sense of possibility. The thrill, the pop of walking down the streets of lower Manhattan in 1986, the notion that everything in the world could be right in front of you. The possibility that maybe you really would meet a girl all in black named Lulu with a Louise Brooks haircut. The idea of winding up with her in a cheap motel in Jersey just a little while later wasn’t really considered by me, but still. Looking back on it now, I’m sure that I didn’t know how good we had it in Manhattan way back then. It’s an energy that Jonathan Demme brought to his films at his best and it’s displayed here in a way as good as it ever was. It’s maybe something that was a recognizable element of films that came from Orion, one of the few byproducts of the dreaded 80s that really is missed, and its freewheeling nature could almost be as purely representative of any film which ever came from that studio. Let me put it this way: returning to it after a number of years, I found myself loving SOMETHING WILD and being extremely moved by its portrayal of possibilities, the idea of breaking off from your set routine. Maybe watching it again made me want to somehow will that feeling into existing once again.


When strait-laced financial advisor Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) suddenly skips out on his lunch check while leaving a funky café in lower Manhattan, he’s caught by free spirit Lulu (Melanie Griffith) who instantly pegs this boring looking guy as “a closet rebel” and whisks him away in her car, not back to work like she offers, but towards the Lincoln Tunnel and off to adventure. Things proceed in a manner that is unexpected but not disliked by Charlie, including a romp in a Jersey motel but then as they drive further away from the city towards Pennsylvania, secrets about each of them are gradually revealed not least of which is Lulu’s real identity as Audrey Hankel but also the sudden appearance of ex-husband Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta) who moves things in a direction Charlie never imagined.


With a screenplay by E. Max Frye which is continually surprising in all the right ways, the shock of SOMETHING WILD’S tone shift at the midway point could never be felt now the way it was back in ‘86, but it does certainly place it as coming after the previous year’s INTO THE NIGHT and AFTER HOURS, two other films about Reagan-era yuppies suddenly thrown into an expected darkly comic nightmare. Less surreal than AFTER HOURS, this film seems to be more merciless about the tone shift and completely acknowledging the danger at hand. This dark side was certainly comparable to David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET which had only opened six weeks before and the two could easily make an ideal double bill of the dark side hiding under Reagan’s America circa 1986. The freewheeling nature of the first half also feels more like a product of the seventies and it could easily be read as detailing how one era lead into the other—what was once innocent and not-so-innocent fun (even if it does include larceny and drunk driving) leads into something not too dissimilar (the hellish motel Ray is staying in compared with all others seen through the film), but still very nasty. But these things may only really matter on an academic level as time goes on. More important could be how the film fits in with Jonathan Demme’s continued growth as a director, fully taking control of his directorial style with a presentation of Americana, the sights and sounds that can be found on every corner, music which doesn’t represent the characters so much as this amazing world around them. Not to mention the bit players throughout that pop, many of whom certainly aren’t professional actors but they each bring such a level of humanity to their individual moments that the cumulative effect becomes rather beautiful. Almost no one is a joke in the film including Dana Preu as Audrey’s mother Peaches and familiar face Jack Gilpin as Charlie’s co-worker who takes what could be a stereotypical dweeb and makes him somehow decent (I also like how he quietly makes an appearance in the film long before actually being introduced).


And Jonathan Demme clearly loves his two leads, he loves them for all their immense quirks and foibles and it’s a credit to the script as well how it reveals their layers and what they’re willing to do, how far they’re willing to break away from what’s expected (like Charlie’s gradually changing relationship with his credit cards) more as it goes on. Demme’s perfectly happy to stop the whole film midway through for a few minutes just to let them dance and enjoy themselves as The Feelies perform Bowie’s “Fame” in a kind of peak moment, just before things suddenly change right in the middle of a shot. But more than that the film still has a relevance to me, to what the idea of being an individual can mean in the world at large. You can say you’re a rebel but what really matters is what happens when somebody calls you on it and in that you can discover how much of that rebel, that individual, you truly have in you. Ray is in many ways the opposite number of Charlie, his submerged dark half come to life in a way he never imagined (“You’re like me,” said Frank Booth to Jeffrey Beaumont in that other Fall ’86 film), just as Audrey seems to be an opposite of Lulu. She’s someone who when the truth about Charlie (to use the name of a later, lesser Demme work) comes out it reveals itself to be as much of a lie as her Lulu persona and she doesn’t like it. Of course, that doesn’t put her into the clear and even up to the end the impression given is that you never really fully get her…but as I’ve learned over the years with certain women that’s par for the course anyway. Keeping all this in mind with how we ultimately feel about Audrey/Lulu in the end, I freely admit that I’m still not entirely sure how to feel about the implications of the final shot (not counting the part involving Sister Carol, of course). Do we want Lulu back? After everything that’s happened, can we even get Lulu back?


I’ve been light on discussing the plot here, but if you’ve never seen the film it deserves to be experienced as fresh as possible. Coming in the year when TOP GUN was the biggest box-office hit, SOMETHING WILD remains a work about individuals, an act of defiance in the middle of a decade where things were beginning to get away from that concept a little too fast. It doesn’t seem to have all the answers and it does fall short of perfection—the director’s staging of the climax isn’t as expert as he might have pulled it off a few years later and that final beat involving the lead characters comes close to being a letdown, but by this point the film has done so many things right that these feel like minor points. Watching it again not only made me happy, it made me feel a little hope, a desire to wish for the possibilities that don’t always seem to be out there. I’m not sure if it’s the best film Jonathan Demme has ever made (of course, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS looms large) but it may very well be the most purely Demme of all of them, the one that is most in love with not only the idea of getting this film made, but the hope and pleasure of what could still be out there to discover.


Under Demme’s direction, the two leads do what remains some of their best work. Daniels gets you to believe that his guy in a suit really would drop everything in his life to take off for the weekend and Griffith fully sells both sides of her character—at least, the two sides that we actually get to see. Liotta is dynamite, taking control of everything around him the minute he interrupts the movie right in the middle of an extended shot of the leads dancing at the reunion. He comes off not only as genuinely dangerous, he manages to make his cackling question, “You don’t want me to tell Charlie how you spend your free periods, do you?” sound shockingly filthy. Margaret Colin is provocative and looks great in her dress as Ray’s date at the reunion, musician Su Tissue in her only acting appearance as Gilpin’s wife Peggy makes me wonder what exactly her high school memories of Ray Sinclair are and the always interesting Anna Levine from DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN and UNFORGIVEN is The Girl In 3F. Demme regulars such as Robert Ridgely, Charles Napier and Tracey Walter are in there as well as John Waters and John Sayles. ‘Sister’ Carol East makes an appearance near the end that once you’ve seen you’ll remember for the rest of your days with a smile.


The world may not still be as enjoyable funky as it is presented here but very little that’s seen actually dates it (well, maybe those Baby on Board tags). I still love much of the music throughout and even the wardrobe choices throughout haven’t dated all that much, with the exception of something Daniels is seen wearing near the end—and hey, I know that if I saw a girl looking like Lulu on the street, she’d definitely catch my eye. It might be a product of its decade, but SOMETHING WILD has held up beautifully and in a strange sort of way I found revisiting it rather moving. More than anything this was because of the cumulative effect it gave off in displaying how those possibilities might still be out there, how in realizing that ‘it’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion’ you really do need to keep moving, to maintain the willingness to be at least a little wild.

A Man Has To Have Some Vices

The Cannon Films logo isn’t anywhere on DEATH WISH II but the names of Golan and Globus as producers are prominently featured, which is almost the same thing. The logo probably wasn't in use yet by them but if it were there it would make perfect sense. Coming in 1982, the film pretty much marked the beginning of the run through that decade of Charles Bronson churning out what seemed like countless vehicles for the company. DEATH WISH II has him returning to his famous role of Paul Kersey but around this time all the characters began to be the same anyway, one time after the other of Bronson gunning down as much scum as he could find. Directed by Michael Winner, who also called the shots on the first film, DEATH WISH II does have a slightly similar feel but not as much immediacy, no real point of any kind beyond the gunplay. The first was iconic, this is just kind of a Charles Bronson vehicle. And not one of the better ones. Of course, once we hit 1980 it’s safe to say that no Charles Bronson vehicle can seriously be considered one of “the better ones”. And I say that as someone who sheds a small tear every time he sees a film that opens with the Cannon logo.


Several years after the events of DEATH WISH (either two, four or five depending on conflicting dialogue that we hear), Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is now living in Los Angeles, still working as an architect, taking care of his still semi-catatonic daughter (now played by Robin Sherwood) and dating beautiful news radio reporter Geri Nichols (Jill Ireland—who else is going to play his love interest?). Kersey is now living a life of peace, without any of the violence he experienced in the first DEATH WISH…but then we hit the five minute mark of the sequel and it all goes to hell. Kersey runs afoul of a multi-ethnic group of muggers (including one “Laurence Fishburne III” as well as Kevyn Major Howard, later in FULL METAL JACKET) and when he tries to fight back after they get his wallet they use his drivers license to fight back…invading his home in a genuinely shocking, extremely unpleasant sequence of events that results in both his housekeeper and poor daughter, who still can barely speak, both raped and ultimately killed. Kersey insists to the police that he never got a good look at the gang to make any identification but we know the truth and soon enough Kersey is pulling a gun out of hiding and preparing to track down the toughs on the mean skid row streets by himself and once the Los Angeles police is investigating the vigilante shootings they’re bringing in New York Police Detective Frank Ochoa (the returning Vincent Gardenia) as a consultant and it doesn’t take him long to figure out what’s going on.


The original DEATH WISH was set on the mean streets of New York and even if it was a piece of big ol’ hackwork there was a certain primal power to it that anyone could identify with. Certainly the image of what that city became by then was a part of it as well along with just the simple idea of the terrors of going for a walk in Central Park late at night. DEATH WISH II moves things to Los Angeles and it’s not like this city has ever been crime free but it’s just not the same thing and considering how it’s portrayed it doesn’t seem to matter where they set it anyway—it feels like they only shot the movie here because no one felt like going anywhere else. Unlike the first film in which the hoodlums were never seen again after the initial attack, this film features Kersey, who knows their faces, on the hunt for them (gee, kind of like THE BRAVE ONE) but there’s no real plotting to any of it. He just goes out into the streets (completely different parts of the city at times) and stumbles into them (not to mention helping out an innocent married couple being brutalized themselves). The first film had the gritty 70s New York atmosphere but this one just feels like a cop show of the time that got way out of hand with lots of violence and sleaze—even the actors are mostly blah L.A. types as opposed to the interesting 70s New York personalities in the first film. Unlike just seeing the characters walk out into the potentially deadly streets, it’s just not going to be the same thing seeing Paul Kersey get in his car and drive around looking for muggers. Or taking the bus or heading out of the way down to skid row for that matter, changing into different clothes (so he won’t stand out like a sore thumb in his jacket and tie) like he’s some very low-rent version of Batman or something. The location work isn’t all that special (the geography’s pretty bad as well) though we do see various points downtown and on Hollywood Boulevard, although none of it’s shot in a particularly interesting way. Worse, they don’t show enough movie theater marquees, always a bonus in these things, although we do get to see that EXCALIBUR is playing at the Chinese.


The film has the same slammed-together feel that the first film has but considerably sloppier as if Michael Winner held a contest to see which aspiring editor could bring a two-hour cut down to under 90 minutes. As a result we have plenty of scenes of people making a big deal about heading out to a nice dinner, as if it mattered, then we never get to see that scene. Other extraneous bits of dialogue occur throughout where actors say things as if they mattered (a radio station manager taking a minute of screen time to complain about ratings, for example) but they never do. Some of Kersey’s architectural work is dwelled on as if it contained some thematic significance (there was some dialogue along these lines in the first film as well) but I’m at a loss to guess what that could be. There’s very little reason to expect elegant plotting or substance from DEATH WISH II but it’s as if the film is daring people to point out how sloppy all this is, even featuring out of place comic bits like Gardenia arguing with a cab driver. It’s so fast moving that it’s never in any way boring but there’s nothing particularly exciting about any of it. As much as they’re built up, the bad guys who Kersey picks off throughout are so cartoonish (has Fishburne ever commented on his role?) that there’s no real satisfaction to let us identify with any of it so it’s all just a big whatever of a movie.


Unlike the first film and of course the source novel by Brian Garfield (who actually wrote his own sequel entitled DEATH SENTENCE which was finally filmed a few years ago) the script by David Engelbach makes no attempt to broach the seriousness of the subject in even a half-ass way. At least the first film raised these issues even if it discard them quickly—it’s like that one was set in a bad-movie version of the real world, but this can’t even try for that amount of credibility. It’s just Charles Bronson picking up his gun and heading out for the kill, with no further though given to what he’s doing other than what affects the lame plot.


There’s not much to say about the actors. Bronson is more Bronson rather than any attempt to recreate the character of Paul Kersey and not much dialogue ever emerges from his lips. Jill Ireland seems sweet as she always did even if she was never actually very good (her character is never placed in any sort of jeopardy which makes me wonder if it was a demand by Bronson to keep her from being in such unpleasant scenes). Vincent Gardenia’s character gets a cold as soon as he arrives in L.A. which at least feels like an attempt at some kind of business to play but he never possesses the same amount of credibility he had last time around. Really, none of the actors feel like they’re overexerting themselves. Anthony Franciosa gets great billing for some reason in a tiny role as the Police Commissioner who never has any bearing on the plot. Henny Youngman is seen on a TV for a few seconds and gets screen credit for it. The music is by Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page? Really? It’s at least energetic, probably the only element of the film that really is.


At least it ended soon enough and, like I said, I was never bored. It was certainly over fast enough. I had little reason to actually sit down and watch this thing and it only made matters worse to have the MGM DVD that arrived from Netflix turn out to be full frame. I highly doubt much was lost in the framing but really, doesn’t anyone have any pride when it comes to these things? The packaging even includes a 2 in the title instead of a II. Of course, all this is appropriate considering the job Michael Winner did with the movie anyway. It’s unpleasant and sloppily made but really, should it be any other way? Hey, I own a Cannon films t-shirt so that should say something about where I’m coming from. There was no joy to be found in finally sitting through DEATH WISH II both because of the nastiness onscreen and because of how lousy it was. But it had to be done. That’s all there was to it.

Without Any Batteries In Him

The now-legendary Chucky, the killer doll who was first introduced in CHILD’S PLAY is pretty much ingrained in pop culture now and because of that, combined with how much more overtly comical the film’s follow-ups progressively became, it’s almost hard to remember that the original really is a crackerjack, tightly paced film which sustains its tension extremely well and, maybe best of all, offers a surprising amount of actual scares. It probably says something about how I view these things that when the more recent sequels which capitalized on the character’s comic potential came out I remember calling a friend and asking, “Did I not get the memo? When did Chucky films become this camp thing?” But look, that’s just my own take on matters like this (and it’s not like I didn’t get some enjoyment out of those films). Released on November 9, 1988, he original film was pretty straight-faced about its approach, going pretty far with the child-in-jeopardy concept--I’m tempted to say if made today it wouldn’t go quite as far but this past summer’s ORPHAN involved kids in scenes that were pretty nasty so it can still happen (I can see how this sort of thing might be problematic but, like most things, it usually depends on the approach a particular film takes). I could, however, believe that any version of CHILD’S PLAY done today would not be as tightly constructed, well-directed and well-played by actors who seem to be defiantly performing all this as real as possible. I liked it at the time and now, long after I’ve become used to things from long ago not holding up so well, I’m almost more impressed by how cleverly executed much of it really is.


If you’re reading this you probably know the plot but just in case: during one final standoff with police in a toy store just before dying, Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) better known as The Lakeshore Strangler, uses a voodoo ritual that he has learned to transfer his soul into the body of a nearby Good Guy Doll, part of a craze that is currently sweeping the nation. Somehow lost in the aftermath of the ensuing explosion, the doll in question is soon sold by a street peddler (well, homeless guy) to single mother Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) who desperately wants the doll for a son Andy’s (Alex Vincent) birthday. Andy of course loves the doll whose name is apparently “Chucky” although when a tragic accident happens soon after Andy insists that “Chucky did it” which no one believes. On the case is Police Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) who just happens to be the one who killed Charles Lee Ray and is in no mood to listen to this kind of nonsense. Of course, we know the truth just like Andy does and Chucky will stop at nothing to get his soul into a human body once again.


Forgoing a more comical or satirical take which could plausibly be pulled from the basic premise (maybe a little like GREMLINS), the path taken by director Todd Holland (FRIGHT NIGHT) in shooting the screenplay by Don Mancini and John Lafia and Tom Holland (story by Mancini) was clearly to take the straight ahead dramatic approach, gritty enough that you could call it a thriller without sounding like you’re trying to avoid calling it a horror film, but pretty much unflinching when it comes to the horror aspects. Considering how ludicrous all this could very easily come across, the careful balance CHILD’S PLAY maintains is genuinely impressive. As tightly paced as it is (87 minutes and not a dull moment), the film succeeds in doing a very nice slow burn for an extended period through an initial suspense sequence involving Karen’s best friend played by Dinah Manoff as the film cleverly drops in clues as to what exactly is going on. There’s not much of an attempt by the film in convincing us that the killer is Andy—Alex Vincent is too cute for that—but it does hold back in revealing Chucky to us in any way other than simply as a doll. This gambit finally culminates in a terrific moment where Chucky finally shows his true face to Catherine Hicks--I can vividly remember the shock of this scene when I saw the film way back then and it still plays like gangbusters now. Photographed by Bill Butler (JAWS) the film makes very good use of how much of it seems to actually be shot on city streets, making very good use of the Chicago locations it was shot in—you can almost feel how cold it is, as well as how grimy these inner city streets are--seeing Alex Vincent innocently wander through some of these places carrying Chucky is a little unnerving all by itself.


Looking at the film for the first time I several years at a recent screening at UCLA I realized that everything doesn’t have quite the punch I remembered—mostly sections of the second act where characters are scrambling around looking for each other which feel like they could have used a little more finesse in the staging. Part of this is my own familiarity with the film, part of it is a sense every now and then that things could have even more punch than they already did. But once we move back to the apartment for the climax, I freely admit that I was hugely impressed at the skill displayed in how well this held up in staging, pacing, everything (the film editors were Roy E. Peterson and Edward Warschilka). It’s a terrific sustained work of suspense and at its best it’s still pretty scary, something I was certainly reminded of listening to the reactions of the girls sitting behind me that night at UCLA (they were cute, too. Oh well). I can believe that much of the box-office success of CHILD’S PLAY was due to not just people responding to Chucky but to how well the climax works—the series of shots as Chucky stabs through the door as Catherine Hicks tries to keep it closed is a beauty and the sequence it totally delivers in what it’s supposed to do.


As much as everyone remembers Chucky (and, of course, the voice provided by Brad Dourif) it should be noted that the film has some expert work done by the actors. Chris Sarandon (also in Holland’s FRIGHT NIGHT) correctly plays the first half of the film more as annoyed than anything else, slamming files down on desks at every opportunity and seemingly having no idea that he’s playing a cop in a killer doll movie, and brings a great deal of authority to his understandable skepticism. Catherine Hicks also plays things as totally genuine and once things begin to get shockingly serious there’s really not a false or overdone note from her the whole time (compared to her work in STAR TREK IV two years earlier where, looking at it recently, she does seem to be overdoing things). Alex Vincent as Andy is almost unnervingly good, believably cute during the normal scenes then later when his reactions go from puzzled to nervous to flat-out terrified he becomes shockingly real, almost uncomfortably so during a few moments. Even Dinah Manoff, who doesn’t get to do much as best friend Maggie Peterson, has a refreshing amount of quirk and normalcy in her performance, an indication that the film was trying to set its premise in as believably played a world as possible.


The post-film discussion at UCLA included screenwriter Don Mancini, producer David Kirschner, Chucky Designer Kevin Yagher and star Catherine Hicks (a few Chucky models were on display as well). Among the subjects brought up were the origins of the script when Mancini was still a student at that school and how he got hooked up with Kirschner. Catherine Hicks (who incidentally, looks great) talked about the problems with bonding with Alex Vincent at first as well as how she first met Yagher on the film--the two have been married since 1990 and have a daughter. The extremely real performance of Alex Vincent was discussed and the issue of how director Holland was able to get such a convincing performance when Andy thinks Chucky is coming to kill him during the mental asylum sequence was only lightly alluded to…but everyone insisted that the boy’s mother and acting coach was always on set with him through all this. We were also told that Dourif wasn’t always going to automatically provide the voice of Chucky as well—at one point director of Holland decided to experiment with a masculine-sounding female voice like the demon in THE EXORCIST and brought in PLAY MISTY FOR ME’S Jessica Walter as a possibility. Clearly, the right choice was made in the end. When asked to give an idea of what he had planned for an upcoming Chucky reboot, Mancini simply answered, “No.”


The film was actually screened on a Blu-Ray DVD which was slightly unfortunate (there aren’t any 35mm prints of CHILD’S PLAY out there?) but watching it with an energetic audience, like those cute girls, was a reminder of how effective a thriller CHILD’S PLAY really is. And I say thriller as opposed to horror movie, with all due respect, because it feels like that’s what the film really is, an extremely well-done genre piece in which the horror elements only reveal themselves when they absolutely have to. We didn’t know the character at this point so Chucky was still able to scare us and in presenting him with such expert skill the best moments throughout CHILD’S PLAY are as effective as many such films wish they could be.

Attention To Detail

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH was, is and always will be totally insane. I can’t in any way call it a good movie but I’m still glad that we have this thing around. Weirdly, I haven’t even seen the movie that many times. Up until relatively recently I hadn’t even seen it since I was a kid but even though I didn’t even like it much then (yeah, even then I was already trying to be critical about things) certain moments of this lunatic piece of work always stuck with me. It never hurt that one of the main components of the film has always been a certain song which, appropriate considering it’s supposed to be from a television commercial, is virtually impossible to get out of your head once you’ve heard it. Fortunately, the film makes sure that you hear it many, many more times than just once. Somewhat infamous as the non-Michael Myers entry of the HALLOWEEN series which, considering it’s sandwiched in between all the others, only adds to the weirdness and maybe any cult following the thing has is partly due to people at the time wondering, what the hell is this thing anyway? I guess the idea was, instead of continuing with the Myers storyline, to do a continuing anthology of Halloween-related tales. I can’t defend it. I don’t want to defend it. I’m not going to try to defend it. Why the hell am I watching it again?


Just over a week before Halloween, Dr. Dan Chalis (Tom Atkins of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and NIGHT OF THE CREEPS) a hard-drinking, alimony-paying deadbeat dad is called to his hospital to treat a man who has turned up, clutching a mask and murmuring “They’re gonna kill us all.” When a mysterious individual turns up, kills the man and then proceeds to blow himself up in a car, Dr. Chalis is appropriately spooked, but doesn’t know what to do about it. Several days later, the man’s daughter Ellie Grimbridge (GET CRAZY’S Stacy Nelkin) tracks Chalis down in a bar and when the two exchange notes they determine that the last place he was headed to before being taken to the hospital was the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory located in the small northern California town of Santa Mira (for all you INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS fans). Run by Conal Cochran (the great Dan O’Herlihy) Silver Shamrock, as anyone in the film knows (except for our lead character, who is first seen trying to give his kids a few crappy non-Silver Shamrock masks as presents), is the biggest producer of Halloween masks around and their incessant advertising (“Eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…”) of their three big masks suggests a national craze with each of the annoying commercials trumpeting ‘The Big Giveaway’ set to take place on Halloween night. Dan and Ellie head for Santa Mira to investigate and once they hit the mysterious town are determined to get to the bottom of things. But first, Dan needs a drink and Ellie is more than willing to get to know him a little better while they’re stuck in that motel.


Carpenter had moved on to direct other films by this point but he was certainly involved and though written & directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Nigel Kneale reportedly wrote the first drafts, then later insisted on having his name removed) it certainly has a number of elements that makes it feel like a John Carpenter film—a conspiracy-laden storyline, roving camerawork by Dean Cundey, the steady drone of the Carpenter-Allan Howarth score, as well as the undeniable wideness of the compositions which really does make it pleasing to look at—but something about it feels slightly dumber than it all needs to be. It’s not exactly a credible storyline and the film seems intent on ratcheting things up on a very broad level—some of the supporting characters seem much more crassly played than they need to be (mostly the others staying at the motel) and Atkins’ doctor, usually in search of another drink, is a pretty unlikable lead to follow through a film. Still, I’ll freely admit that a lead character flawed to this degree actually comes off as refreshing in this day and age. The plot point of a piece of Stonehenge being stolen is one of the great screenwriting toss-offs of all time in how they don’t even attempt to explain the plausibility--fortunately, the film has an actor in Dan O’Herlihy who in giving the non-explanation “We had a time getting it here. You wouldn’t believe how we did it!” actually makes you swallow the moment due to his pure enjoyment of the situation. There’s an undeniable grossness to some of the imagery but very little of it can be called realistic, even when someone’s head is being ripped off. It’s just…bizarre and this translates to the overall tone as well.


Calling the town Santa Mira is very clever in bringing a BODY SNATCHERS vibe to things (much of the plot certainly seems like a nod in that direction) and when the two leads check into the motel things feel like a slight PSYCHO riff for a few minutes as well (since they already used the name Loomis in the first film, that’s a nice tradition to continue) and these nods to the past are cleverly woven into things. But when you think about it, have you ever been in a situation where you were staying in a motel and everyone was introducing themselves to you? When does that happen? It all feels like a fourteen year-old mentality as if it never occurred to someone to think this whole plot through. And then there’s the one from the list of biggest plot holes of all time—the movie never considers the idea of time zones in relation to the plot which leads me to believe that on the Earth it’s set on (slightly dumber and sleazier than our Earth) all of America has only one time zone. Not to mention, I want to know who Tom Atkins is calling in the last scene. But when the whole ballgame is laid out by Dan O’Herlihy, not to mention when we get to see what’s going to happen take place in one of his test rooms, the whole thing is just so nutso in every possible way it’s hard not to admire the film for its audaciousness, being willing to approach things from such a satirical and horror angle at the same time. Of course it earns its R rating but it seems designed for kids who want to see an R Rated film, to see the best possible ‘trick’ that the holiday could ever offer. There are elements throughout that I genuinely like such as the easy-listening muzak that drones on from a radio after a particularly nasty murder takes place or how the score from the original ‘immortal classic’ HALLOWEEN, playing on TV as the lead-up to the ‘Big Giveaway’, even gets to be used at one point. The main set housing the Stonehenge piece is a nicely austere bit of design as well. But, like a fourteen year-old boy, the movie seems more interested in how potentially nasty things can get instead. Part of what makes it so dumb is what makes it so weird too (I’m still not sure if I hate the design of these masks or love them, which seems like part of the point). Maybe I don’t even want a more normal version of this film. After all, what fun would that be?


If there’s any charm to be found, the lead actors certainly help. Tom Atkins is given an unpleasant character who seems too beat down in life to do much more than hang out at a bar in the middle of the day but he somehow manages to make the guy determined and likable with all of his flaws. His best moment might come when he’s sitting in that bar by himself and trying to comprehend the silly cartoon that is for some reason playing on the TV in front of him. But really, Tom Atkins is the coolest. Stacy Nelkin doesn’t get much of a part to play—and really, what is up with the romance between these two?—but she is cute and appealing, which certainly goes a long way. Dan O’Herlihy steals the movie, no question about it. He attacks his big scene with a massive amount of relish, bringing a huge amount of clarity to something which can never make any sense. His final moment, both nonsensical and consistent with everything his character has said, is a thing of beauty. According to some sources, that’s Jamie Lee Curtis as the voice of the town curfew announcer and telephone operator. It certainly sounds like her.


Did I mention that it really isn’t that good? Sure, it’s memorable and there’s definitely a reason why it stuck in my brain for so many years, but that doesn’t make it good. It needed someone in charge to really solidify the tone in order to help that happen. If Carpenter had been in charge that might have helped matters, but his films don’t display much of an interest in satirizing the consumerist culture of Reagan-era America with the happy exception of THEY LIVE, of course. So if the insane version of HALLOWEEN III:SEASON OF THE WITCH is what we’re always going to have to watch, maybe that’s for the best. Commercially speaking, they probably shouldn’t have given it the title of a HALLOWEEN sequel; maybe going for a “HALLOWEEN presents” kind of thing would have worked better. I don’t know what the answer is. I’m sure John Carpenter and Tommy Lee Wallace stopped wondering about this long ago. The series returned to the Michael Myers storyline in 1988 and Carpenter was no longer involved. Meanwhile, this film lives on, leaving the rest of us out there with that damned Silver Shamrock jingle running through our heads over and over again for all the Halloweens to come. Which just leads me to think that maybe in some ways, Conal Cochran’s plan really did come true.

“And…Happy Halloween.”

All That We Can See Is The Brain

Sometimes in films the things that are scary to us, the most effective moments, turn out to be this way because they go beyond what we’re expecting for our own reasons. As a person gets older they might find themselves giving more thought to the actual behavior, as well as the responses to that behavior, that certain characters in films may have. And we might find that this happens even in films where those elements might not seem at first to be particularly important. This occurred to me recently during a Halloween season viewing of Terence Fisher’s FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED. Considered to be one of the very best (if not the best) of all films produced by Hammer, the 1969 film still plays extremely well today and while a few flaws may have occurred to me this time around what stood out for me the most was just how absolutely, positively bleak the film was. And more to the point, I found myself feeling great sorrow for female lead Anna Spengler as played by the lovely Veronica Carlson, one of the most purely beautiful of all the Hammer heroines. Yes, she and boyfriend Karl as played by Simon Ward are trafficking in a little cocaine for some badly-needed funds but not for any insidious gain--it’s simply to help out her mother who’s off in a hospital, which seems about as noble a reason as you could get (“It’s dreadful that you have to buy a life,” offers Karl in a line that still makes sense today). And it’s this one tiny flaw of theirs which allows Baron Victor Frankenstein, played once again by Peter Cushing, to take advantage of the situation, taking over their lives so that they will do everything he needs to aid in his experiments. Everything. It turns out to be a punishment which far outweighs their modest crime, certainly a greater one that they would have received if the law had gotten involved. Carlson seems to play the character as undergoing a gradual implosion through the course of the film and many have said that the film goes too far in what happens to her. I don’t know if that’s the case, but the end result is certainly an experience in which the horror is felt more than usual.


Awareness of the previous four entries is not really necessary, outside of knowing that Peter Cushing plays Baron Victor Frankenstein, continually in the search of the means to create life. By the time of this entry he is living under a pseudonym, continuing his experiments in secret. He takes a room in a boarding house run by Anna Spengler (Carlson) and once he has a piece of information about she and her boyfriend Karl (Ward) he is able to use to his advantage Karl’s position in the local insane asylum. Frankenstein, you see, is very interested in the brain of Dr. Frederick Brandt, who before he went insane, believed to have solved some of the problems that have been plaguing Dr. Frankenstein through his years of experimentation. As the young couple quickly and separately learns, Frankenstein will go to any extreme to fulfill his ultimate goal.


The characters in this particular film are drawn more vividly than they often can be in other Hammer entries and the story is stronger as well—at around 100 minutes it’s allowed to breathe a little more than those that seem locked into the 90 minute running time come hell or high water and seem to stop abruptly after a perfunctory finish. It might not be the classic Hammer of HORROR OF DRACULA but it is one of the best examples of storytelling to ever come from the studio. The screenplay is credited to Bert Batt (story by Batt and Anthony Nelson Keys) who mostly worked as an assistant director and since he has no other screenplay credits it makes the quality of this particular entry even more of a mystery but there’s definitely a force brought to it all by director Terence Fisher that is undeniable. It’s as if the best elements of previous Frankenstein entries (and other films from the studio that Fisher and Cushing were involved in, for that matter) all culminated with this one big blow-out, possibly the last one from Hammer which could be placed anywhere in shouting position of the word great. It pushes boundaries in a way that you wouldn’t expect from the fifth entry in any series and it makes you wish that films from the company could have risen to such an occasion more often.


If anything, it’s one of those films which I look at now and think that as good as it is a few of the story points could have been pushed even further. If they’d done one more rewrite by an expert hand, maybe someone who wasn’t so locked into the Hammer formula, a few of the plot developments in the home stretch might not have seemed so half baked (actually, I’ll be more generous than that—three-quarters baked). As it is, it’s like something that might have been a true genre classic but doesn’t quite get there, even if where it does wind up is pretty close. The threads in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED do lead to a satisfying finish (one that could have concluded the series though Cushing did play the role one more time) but a number of pieces never do feel fully resolved—the cops drop out of the picture, the mother we hear about that gets the plot rolling is never seen or referred to past a certain point and the end involving the Brandts—touchingly played by DUNE’s Freddie Jones and Maxine Audley—never gets a satisfying conclusion on its own.


But it’s the pure, irredeemable nastiness of the Frankenstein character goes a long way towards making the film work so well—as presented here, the character may be the biggest bastard that Cushing ever played (“Pack! We’re leaving.”) and, yes, that includes the time that he ordered the destruction of Alderaan. Part of this has to do with the utter coldness that Cushing fearlessly brings to the role, but part of it also has to do with the character trajectory of Anna Spengler as played by Veronica Carlson. It’s her section of the plot that stays with me and her tragedy, combined with Fisher’s insistence on portraying the character of Frankenstein at his most vicious, seems to move the film as close towards greatness as it can get. It’s surprising to look at the actress’s filmography today and see how few films she really did appear in. Of course, the only ones that anyone cares about are this film, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE and the non-Cushing entry HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN. Extremely beautiful, she’s not only very effecting here, but what the character of Frankenstein seems to do to destroy her very spirit almost instantly—I always remember the way she just stands there, silent, as her former boarders protest being ejected from the house—strikes me as just so damn sad.


The most controversial element involving Carlson is, as anyone who's seen it knows, the Baron’s genuinely shocking rape of Anna. Reports have the scene being added very late in the shooting, at the protest of the two actors involved, because the powers that be at Hammer decided the film was lacking in sex—so a rape scene presumably took care of that, unfortunate as that may be. I’m not sure that the scene (which apparently was not included during the film's original U.S. release) is necessary either for any number of reasons but it does somewhat unintentionally help to bridge this film between earlier Hammer and the somewhat more adult (read: copious amounts of nudity) entries from the studio that would begin a few years later. That the scene was added so late reportedly upset the actors in question, who felt that scenes occurring later would have been played differently by them (not the mention their dislike of including a rape scene in the first place) but even though it’s never referenced in dialogue it is consistent with Anna’s behavior at some points and really does make her continued psychological collapse more believable---not to mention, more tragic. Even her exit from the picture—sooner than we expect and definitely sooner than the character deserves—feels in line with this. It feels like a number of elements involved—to give Karl a real motivation for revenge (which itself isn’t fully dealt with), to be able to spend more time with the Brandt’s in their storyline and maybe just rewrite issues that were possibly occuring in general. But the fact is that the sadness of her face, so prevalent throughout much of the film, is what stays with me more than anything. The inferno of the climax is fairly well-staged but even with the extra running time it still feels like the very end comes in a “Well, I guess that’s it,” kind of way that was fairly common with films from Hammer which even James Bernard’s majestic score can’t fully help. I still wish that it were a little better than it is, but there’s no denying how effective it remains to this day and it continues to be rewarding to return to. I don’t know if it’s the best Hammer film that I’ve ever seen—I could say that and easily change my mind tomorrow—but it is one of the very best examples of what they were capable of.


The attention-getting fake-out opening of FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED features what we take to be some sort of monster…who is then revealed to be a normal-looking human being underneath that mask. This person in question is eventually revealed to be the greatest monster of all, much more so than the one who has his brain placed into another body ever is—as Freddie Jones portrays that creation here, when he steps forward gently saying “I mean you know harm,” it’s a moment that deserves to be remembered among the very best of the creations by all of the Frankensteins ever portrayed on film. The vivid portrayal of that evil by Peter Cushing makes what happens to Veronica Carlson’s character in the film all the more tragic—someone without a selfish bone in her body wiped out by someone who cares about her as much as he does about a fly he just swatted. It kind of kills the idea of watching this film as an enjoyable Halloween viewing experience but it does certainly remind me of the evil that can be found in people who appear to be normal—even when they’re in 60s horror films which are sometimes thought of as camp or laughable. It’s not really right that they should be remembered that way—just as what happens to Anna Spengler isn’t at all deserved. But as time goes on, I realize that few things that happen are ever really deserved anyway.

Mind The Doors

The most fondly remembered British horror films of the late 60s and early 70s are usually period pieces, often from Hammer, sometimes from other places. It could be a question of why there weren’t more films set in present-day England but when Hammer began making things like STRAIGHT ON ‘TIL MORNING and DRACULA A.D. 1972 it was easy to see why (not that I don’t love A.D. 1972 in its own ridiculous way). Maybe the powers that be just didn’t know how to approach a version of the real world with the horror that they excelled at. Non-Hammer titles like CORRUPTION with Peter Cushing are problematic as well, but at least that one is slightly insane. It took Alfred Hitchcock to do something considerably more interesting with the London landscape in 1972’s FRENZY and among any other hidden gems out there would have to be Gary Sherman’s RAW MEAT (aka DEATH LINE, as it was known in England) a fairly bold, unnerving film which at the very least is considerably better than any film with the title RAW MEAT would be presumed to be. With a number of different elements at play it feels like the movie is trying a few things too many to be the genre-shattering experiment it may want to be, but maybe that feel of uncertainty is part of the point. It’s part late-show mystery, part grindhouse picture and part stylistic exercise that tries to combine different tones and defy some of the conventions that can be found in those films, resulting in a sharp turn into something bolder, more ambitious. The whole may not be as successful as some of it parts but at least it attempts to put us in a sense of genuine unease, never letting us to get too comfortable as we’re watching it.


After trolling the red light district of London, the otherwise distinguished James Manfred, OBE (THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN’s James Cossin) is attacked in an Underground station and soon after his unconscious body is discovered by young couple Alex Campbell (David Ladd), an American, and Patricia Wilson (Sharon Gurney), who insists that they go get help. He reluctantly agrees (he’s seen plenty of people lying around on the subways back home; “In New York you walk over these guys!”) but by the time they get back Manfred’s body has disappeared, with no possible way he could have gotten out. Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) of the London police soon gets wind and begins to investigate. Though he is warned off the case by MI5 (in the person of Christopher Lee in a cameo) it soon becomes clear that what’s happening down in the Underground is worse than anyone feared, possibly being linked to the long ago cover-up of workers left to die in the construction of the station.


RAW MEAT makes its audaciousness known fairly early on when, after an introductory set of sequences that are enjoyable even if nothing unique, it suddenly takes a sharp left turn with the introduction of its main threat in a virtuoso seven-minute shot (the cinematographer was Alex Thomson) which is not only strikingly well-done, even with one or two apparently invisible edits, but contains some genuinely repulsive imagery as well (good thing I ordered in some Chinese food to watch the movie with). It also introduces us to one of the great, truly pitiful movie ‘monsters’ (played by Hugh Armstrong) an individual whose only words he knows to speak is the simple phrase ‘Mind the doors’ over and over, no doubt from hearing it from nearby train conductors (which we’ve actually heard as the first bit of dialogue at the start). Even within its modest scale the movie does a very good job of making the characters surprisingly layered—I couldn’t help but be surprised at the earnestness of Gurney’s character’s concern for the missing man and it contrasted nicely with the equally shocking nature of the underground dweller’s despair at losing his loved one. Even its portrayal of the British political system at work comes of as slightly more complex than would be expected and the minor involvement of MI5 in the context of this period reminded me of the machinations in last year’s very good THE BANK JOB, so it was surprising when one of the key players in the real-life version of that story turned up in a headline seen on a newspaper in one scene. The plotting isn’t quite as complex as it seems like it might be at one point--there is a certain amount of thinness to the story and that combined with the ambitiously long dialogue-free stretches makes it seem like the script couldn’t have been longer than 70 pages. It’s possible that some of this was done to stretch things out to feature length, like the prolonged opening credits with its jazzy main theme by Wil Malone and Jeremy Rose along with how one long shot near the very end drags out a scene of policemen walking a long, dark corridor but this steady feeling of gradualness the film has manages to somehow work.


Directed by Gary Sherman (probably best known for helming POLTERGEIST III but let's not dwell on that) and with a screenplay by Ceri Jones from Sherman’s story, RAW MEAT keeps its ambition in check, never seeming to want to expand things too much beyond its budgetary means but the structural nature of things also keeps it from breaking out too far beyond what the ambitions were. By a certain point it almost feels kind of like an extended demo reel for the director to display what he could do with actors, his camera, settings and pacing more than a full story that’s been put together. But even with this slight drawback RAW MEAT contains scenes which are genuinely startling as well as containing some pretty surprising gore for the time. Sherman is from Chicago (possibly making Ladd’s character a surrogate for him) and he makes very good use of London as well as the essential Britishness of some of the characters (such as Pleasance’s displeasure at learning his tea will now be served in bags). Looking forward to what John Landis would do in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, the Underground is used very well, which reminds me of how another film, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (more science fiction than horror) used the setting as well. The issue of the main plot representing what the monarchy of England is kept buried for so many years down to the more working class Inspector Calhoun drunkenly ranting about the state of things makes it feel like the film is trying to be about the state of England and its past when this film was released. I’d be the wrong guy to offer a take on all this but it does give the feel of RAW MEAT being more than ‘just’ a horror film, even one that succeeds in consistently keeping us on edge.


Playing his part as if in some dryly comic BBC series that sadly doesn’t really exist, Donald Pleasence is amazingly funny and enjoyable as he continually gets flustered with having to deal with anyone who crosses his path (as he shouts at young student Ladd, “Hurry back to school, there might be a protest march for you to join!” He makes the film about his character more than it would have been otherwise and it’s hard not to wish he’d played the role again in other films. The pairing of Ladd and Gurney comes off as slightly bland in comparison, even with the girl’s sensitivity, but it feels intentional in how it feels like there’s believably not much to them. Their lack of uniqueness makes them seem much more genuine that the leads in various giallos that were made around this time and I like a few of their tiny exchanges like when he asks her if she wants to go see THE FRENCH CONNECTION. Christopher Lee gets some good dialogue in his single scene playing against Pleasence but it’s awkwardly staged as if the production couldn’t spend much time getting the two actors in the frame together. It doesn’t even feel like Lee worked a day on the film, it feels like he worked a half-day.


RAW MEAT isn’t very well-known and while the various pieces don’t always connect together in ways that make it a minor classic, the best things in it (Pleasence, the camerawork, the very sober tone) are extremely good, making it absolutely worth a look. The approach to its story means that any climactic action isn’t necessarily going to make everything better and the ending keeps a certain sense of dread hanging enough so I didn’t feel much of a sense of relief when the end credits rolled—almost at a point in a shot where they were slightly unexpected, which seemed to add to that feel. But it’s to the film’s credit that it didn’t try to convince anyone watching that everything was going to be all right. With films like this, you sometimes feel strangely reassured in knowing that the opposite is going to be the case. That’s one of the reasons we watch movies like this anyway.

Under The Soles Of Your Shoes

The first image we see in Dario Argento’s INFERNO is a giant close-up of a large knife. Considering what is to come over the next few hours, this is not so surprising. But slightly unexpected in this context is its initial use, to assist in carefully moving through the pages of a certain very old book. Of course, what results from reading this book, moving through a history that is in the process of being uncovered, pretty much has the same result. The second entry in its director’s famed Three Mothers trilogy, INFERNO, which was made in 1980, has never been an easy film to pin down. Not so much a sequel to the previous entry SUSPIRIA, which it shares no main characters with, but an alternate take on several of its themes, in some ways a retelling of the earlier film but in a harsher, more minor key. While that film has the completely human presence of star Jessica Harper and its one key location of the Dance Academy for us to focus on, INFERNO hops around the map a little more, as well as seemingly experimenting with how long it can go on without actually starting the narrative we expect, as well as giving us a character who we believe will be the lead. This does eventually happen, almost by default, and it’s not necessarily the person we would have chosen. The key has to be to accept INFERNO for what it is, if only for the effect it ultimately has on us. There is art in this madness of Argento’s but he doesn’t always make it easy on us to take it in.


I could attempt a brief synopsis of the plot, but it wouldn’t be easy. While SUSPIRIA, set in Germany, told of Mater Suspiriorium, the Mother of Sighs, INFERNO moves things to New York to focus on Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness. In New York, Rose (Irene Miracle), a young poet who after reading a book by Varelli on The Three Mothers which she purchased from a nearby antiques dealer begins to suspect that her building is actually the dwelling of the Mother of Darkness and writes to her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey), a music student in Rome, of her suspicions and fears. Both of them, as well as a number of people around them, find themselves strangely drawn to learning more about whatever is going on, leading to much carnage as one of the characters begins to become closer to the roots of this mystery.


Even less than SUSPIRIA, possibly less than any other film Argento has made, the story being told is not important. The imagery, the mood, the undeniable sense of something truly other, is. The story we expect to receive becomes delayed in starting as we follow several different characters into their own corners of the tale, leading to horrible ends that are often punctuated by fade outs which always seem reminiscent of the end of the Arbogast murder in PSYCHO. In some ways INFERNO could be looked at as a PSYCHO-type of experience if we were introduced continually to other potential lead characters after Janet Leigh who met horrible unexpected ends as well, stretching our ideas of what this narrative should be to the absolute breaking point. To say that the film makes little sense is like saying it’s also in color—an appropriate way to look at it considering how beautiful those colors are. It’s a cold, harsh film, one that barely qualifies as having any sort of sense or humanity. The logic is one of a nightmare, where a major character thinks nothing of lowering herself into some bizarre flooded ballroom in a setpiece which makes no sense in several different ways, yet is undeniably beautiful in just as many. Imagery seen throughout is left unexplained on any level but nevertheless always manages to serve as a warning that evil is definitely nearby. The lack of a real sense of place certainly ties into that. Some of the film was actually shot in New York (just like other Italian genre films from this period, usually in an interesting way) but really very little. Of course, it isn’t set in the real New York that we know (or the real Rome in those scenes, for that matter). It’s another type of reality, a world where looking for the world of the past can lead to horrible results—in some ways, the past and the supernatural could almost mean the same thing in this context and every time somebody looks for one the other gets unavoidably intertwined.


Whereas the setup and logic of SUSPIRIA could be compared to that of a fairy tale (Imagine: “Once upon a time there was a young girl who went to a strange dance school…”) INFERNO is considerably more labyrinthine in its approach (Such as, “Once upon a time there was a young woman who lived in a strange building. Oh, and she had a brother. Oh, and he…”) which muddies things a bit and taking this sort of opposite approach is a bold step that doesn’t always work (the prolonged nighttime Central Park sequence always begins to lose me a bit). Jessica Harper was such a crucially believable presence amidst all the madness of that film and the women who might possibly have had such a sensuous effect here (namely Irene Miracle and Elonora Georgi as Mark’s girlfriend in Rome) seem deliberately not given the chance to have such an effect. Instead we get Leigh McCloskey who makes next to no impression at all and it is this coldness that always makes INFERNO more of a schematic experience than anything, even as densely layered as it feels much of the time. That we have to follow him through the film means that our ultimate destination isn’t going to be completely satisfying—of course, the climax of SUSPIRIA wasn’t the strongest part of that film either but that was for different reasons(at least the lead of this film gets to actually confront somebody). INFERNO is a fascinating and, in some ways, daring work by its director but at times maybe too disjointed to entirely connect to any sort of emotional state. Still, it’s hard to deny how much the very best moments really do linger in the brain long after it concludes and at its best there is a genuine power in there.


As a way that makes it slightly frustrating, it’s also hard not to think of it as very consciously the middle chapter in a trilogy which may have been concluded at that time. There are elements (some set design, uses of color, actor Fulvio Mingozzi playing a cab driver in both films) which provide deliberate, almost subliminal echoes of SUSPIRIA, as well as tantalizing hints of what may have been yet to come of Argento had proceeded with a third entry soon after in Ania Pieroni’s brief unexplained appearance as a character listed in the credits merely as “music student” but who no doubt is supposed to be the mysterious Mother of Tears, not quite ready to take center stage. Of course, Argento finally concluded his trilogy within the past few years with MOTHER OF TEARS which I’ll admit I enjoyed more than a lot of people did but I’ll certainly admit that when compared to the first two films, coming so many years later, it just wasn’t the same.


Unlike SUSPIRIA, INFERNO never received a real theatrical release in the U.S. by Twentieth-Century Fox and didn’t play New York until a brief engagement at the Thalia in August 1986, when it received a bemused review in The New York Times. (“shot in vivid colors, with some striking angles…but the script and acting are largely routine.” They may be ineffectual, but I don’t know if ‘routine’ is really the issue here.) But as the cult of Argento has grown over here the film has achieved its own small following, evident by the packed house at the New Beverly for the midnight show on Saturday October 17th. Helping with the special night was the appearance of star Irene Miracle, Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer who composed the film’s remarkable score (my favorite use of music in the film may me the conclusion of the Central Park sequence which, with its shots of the city skyline, comes off as some sort of perverse Gershwin moment). Also at the theater, in from Cincinnati, was Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas who is also the author of the truly astonishing Mario Bava biography All the Colors of the Dark. Bava, as it is known, was responsible for some of INFERNO’s key special effects in what turned out to be the last film he ever worked on. Despite being claimed in the past by various sources, he did not work on the famed underwater sequence, but was responsible for some of the more subtle effects of the film, such as the continuous shots of the moon, which Lucas deemed as sort of Greek Chorus to what we might perceive as the narrative. The lovely Irene Miracle, clearly enjoying herself immensely, talked about how she basically took the part for the money and that due to Argento’s health problems he wasn’t even on set at times, essentially directing by proxy. She also explained some of what might be termed the abruptness of her part’s length by saying that while she was cast thinking she had a much larger part, her own health issues at the time may have led to it being cut down. More surprisingly, she spoke of how she shot numerous scenes that did not appear in the film including “discovering a body in Central Park” which indicates that there was possibly a good deal of restructuring going on both during the shooting and the cutting (could Daria Nicolodi’s character have been expanded because of this?). Keith Emerson spoke with great enthusiasm of the process of scoring the film, including screening all of Argento’s previous films just after arriving in Rome while suffering jet lag as well as how his up tempo version of the selection from Verdi’s Nabucco that we hear during the cab ride was meant to simulate the rickety nature of riding in cabs in Rome! All three people were immensely enjoyable to listen to and afterwards most people seemed to agree that it was one of the best q&a’s that we’d ever seen at the New Beverly (You’d think it would have turned up on Youtube by now).


What we were then treated to was an absolutely gorgeous print of the film, making it clear that INFERNO is one of those films where, no matter how good the DVD looks, somehow needs to be seen in a theater, both for the dark clarity of the print, but also because it provides you with less of an escape. Even without a strong narrative, the film can be a pummeling experience, both in the immense degree of gore and in how it refuses to make it easy on how to say exactly what the hell is going to go on, if the story has already begun, if it’s ever going to begin. It feels slightly longer than it needs to be. Maybe some cutting to move a few sections along faster wouldn’t have been a terrible thing but even this feels intentional in a way to get the rhythm of the film such that it wants to stretch out certain sections to an almost agonizing degree.


The night went late, but it was a wonderful screening with the film playing just great for the packed house. As it turned out, when we emerged from the theater in what was by then close to the middle of the night a heavy fog had come down up on the city, making driving home a somewhat treacherous experience. At that late hour, you could almost believe that you would have been driving off into some strange unexpected encounter, a strange force from the past. But nothing of the sort happened and as I left that screening where I got to express my admiration to Tim Lucas for all his work over the years the power of INFERNO was undeniable. When a skeptical minor character in the film is asked what he believes he replies, “In whatever I can see and touch.” It’s a clumsy line in how it comes across and he’s off the screen soon enough, presumably as a punishment for saying it. But even though such a idea goes against what the movie ultimately tells us, the line stays with me as a reminder of such a rational belief in the face of such madness. And besides, nights like this one at the New Beverly, made so enjoyable because of the film shown as well as the people there with a tangible connection to it reveal the statement to be true.

Not At All What We Had In Mind

For John Carpenter fans, 1987’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS probably falls somewhere in the middle of the pack. It doesn’t have the cult status of something like THEY LIVE and it probably shouldn’t be ranked among his very best which would obviously include HALLOWEEN and THE THING. Since the New Beverly ran it on a double bill with THE THING several weeks ago, there was really no question as to which film shown that night was the masterpiece. But in truth I liked PRINCE OF DARKNESS back when it was first released and revisiting it now I felt that it has held up extremely well, coming off at times as genuinely dark and chilling. This new print struck by Universal (the one which was going to be shown at the theater in mid-‘08 was destroyed in the fire on the lot at the time) turned out to be truly beautiful, fitting for a film that is more deserving of praise than it has received in the past. Released the year after the unfortunate and undeserved box-office failure of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS was a slight regrouping for the director at the time, an attempt to make a low-budget film without too much riding on it. With an overriding sense of seriousness in how it approaches its subject matter it feels like one of the most genuine attempts at encroaching dread that he ever went for.


Soon after discovering a mysterious cylinder in an old, nearly abandoned church in downtown Los Angeles, a Priest (Donald Pleasance) consults with former colleague Dr. Howard Birack (Victor Wong) a famed physics professor. To further study the mass inside the cylinder, Dr. Birack recruits several students, including David Marsh (Jameson Parker) and new potential girlfriend Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount) to spend the weekend in the church but as they soon begin to discover the potential power of the liquid, the students find themselves trapped, under siege from the homeless people surrounding the church and find themselves in danger from what is both inside and outside. A recurring dream the students have when asleep (“This is not a dream…”) which features a mysterious figure at the front of the church appears to be a warning sent back from somebody in the year “one-nine-nine-nine” and they soon are forced to deal with the realization that what they are faced with is the genuine possibility of what one of them calls “old scratch knocking at the door”.


With a script credited to one Martin Quatermass (actually a pseudonym for Carpenter, paying very deliberate tribute to the Nigel Kneale character Bernard Quatermass), the overwhelming feeling of true unease in PRINCE OF DARKNESS begins immediately and doesn’t let up, complete with a continually roving camera and an incessant tub-thump to the music by Carpenter. There isn’t necessarily a real theme to the score but it also seemingly won’t stop at any point during the running time, burrowing its way into our brain, just what the movie wants to do. Setting it slightly apart from other horror films, the narrative is populated with intelligent characters, graduate students no less, who stumble into this situation even as all the signs around them say something is wrong—the numerous homeless people who are gathering (led by Alice Cooper, actually), not to mention the growing amount of worms covering a window that give the impression the building is rotting all around them. Using rational thought, they don’t notice the true danger of such things until it’s too late and all of these elements combined gradually give the film the feel of a nightmare that you just can’t wake up from. Everything in PRINCE OF DARKNESS probably shouldn’t work as well as it does—some of it would come off as downright silly in other hands—but it somehow does because of the expert pacing and mood that Carpenter maintains. Within the context of this basic scenario that the director has, after all, done before he manages to bring some unexpected elements into the mix such as how all isn’t resolved the instant the sun comes up at the end of the long night. Daytime doesn’t send the evil away and the onslaught continues, with no one coming to rescue them. And when the very nature of ‘old scratch’ comes into play in moments such as when someone is standing outside the window proclaiming, “I have a message for you and you’re not going to like it…” the scene is presented with such deadly seriousness in a yes-we-really-mean-this kind of way it’s hard not to admire the film for that audaciousness.


With Carpenter’s staging displaying a consistently well-utilized sense of space throughout the building (damn, I just love the way the Scope frame is used here), it proceeds with a careful, steady mood of dread that looking at it now feels influenced by Fulci—there’s a similarity in how the pacing seems to proceed with the gradual clicking of a metronome. That feeling of dread is what stays with you about the film more than anything, but there is humor at various points and at times a likable interplay between the characters and even some goofiness on occasion—although the Tom & Jerry cartoon featuring the devil that is briefly seen feels more like a beat out of Dante than Carpenter, although it does play like an indication that maybe we shouldn’t be taking all this too seriously, even if there is a great deal of discussion of physics.


There’s a fair amount of Hawksian camaraderie between the actors and maybe even more humor than I remembered but combined with the extensive discussion of the battle between science and religion leading to how they relate to the plot (which certainly makes this film somewhat unique) it’s also a restating of the trapped-in-a single-location RIO BRAVO/NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD device that Carpenter used as far back as ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and maybe an attempt to see just how far he could take this concept. The opening credits to the film have always been slightly infamous in how they just won’t stop (I can still remember the groans heard on opening night every time they continued) and that lack of release, the attempt at a lack of release could be looked at as a prime component of the film itself, right up until the very end. It’s as if it’s saying the part of dread is not giving you any sense of relief—you can’t ever know if the dread is really passed or not. It’s not his best film, but Carpenter’s filmography would feel incomplete without it.


It’s tempting to say that the characters are all written and played in a colorless way but there is humanity in there, with some humor as well (“Have you seen Susan? Radiologist, glasses?”). This dry nature of the actors is somewhat appropriate and making any of them a ‘star’ role seems deliberately avoided—Jameson Parker is more or less the lead and is kept very low-key but his basic earnestness does make him likable. Top-billed Pleasence is mostly kept separate from the younger cast and plays his role as a more introverted Dr. Loomis, as if knowing that no ranting and raving will prevent the worst from happening. Dennis Dun and Victor Wong were both also in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA—Dun is as close to comic relief as the film allows (he’s funny in a believable way, not as strict comic relief which is an important difference) and Wong proves that he can spit out all kinds of exposition, still making it somehow fascinating. Lisa Blount, in many ways the real soul of the film as the love interest and she has a very sensuousness presence as if something horrible but unspoken in her past is affecting everything she does. Character actor Peter Jason, in his first of several films for Carpenter (he’s also worked for Walter Hill numerous times), brings a sharp sense of timing and interest to his stock role and at times there’s the feeling that his director just let him do whatever he wanted when the cameras rolled, making for some nice little moments. Not all of the actors in small roles make good impressions but even in some of the stilted line readings is a sort of naturalism that makes the ongoing threat seem even more potent. Nothing about it is very slick, but it never tries to be. It’s an attempt to siphon his filmmaking style to its pure essentials—all he needs is a building, a Panavision lens, his keyboard, maybe a few actors he likes—and from that he has the undeniable talent to produce something truly effective.


“Everybody’s acting like we should really be taking this seriously,” says one skeptic when serious revelations are being discussed. It’s as if the character is speaking for us, just as we wonder how serious we’re supposed to be taking some of these grave, world-changing revelations. Dialogue throughout the film seems to be leading us down the path to help us make up our mind. “Only the corrupt are listened to now and they tell us what we want to hear,” is stated at one point, something which seems more true than it did at the time of the film’s release, which seems appropriate considering we have long since passed the future date that is alluded to within. And since we have passed that date, what does that say about how we should be viewing PRINCE OF DARKNESS? Is it a dream or is it something else? Are our dreams ever our own or are they placed there against our wishes? The film doesn’t tell us, merely offering the blunt acknowledgement that sometimes we reach for a reflection, searching in vain for that answer. And maybe that’s all we can ever do.