A Mellow Mass Hysteria

I have fond memories of seeing A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS and FRIGHT NIGHT in the theater, both coming pretty early in my own interest in horror films. WARRIORS was the first ELM STREET I saw theatrically—I suspect that my have been the case for a lot of kids at the time—and I wouldn’t have seen FRIGHT NIGHT at all if it hadn’t been for my dad, of all people, recommending it after going himself. Having grown up in the 80s, there are plenty of movies from that decade which make me want to jump out the nearest window if I catch twenty seconds on TBS but these two have held up pretty well and my fondness for them remains. I guess Diablo Cody likes them too since she programmed the pair for her series at the New Beverly and with a few very special guests announced, there was no way I was going to miss it. THE DARK KNIGHT could wait. Both films were preceded by various trailers for horror films from back in the day, some that I never need to remember (that would be DR. GIGGLES) but fortunately we were also shown that great MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE trailer featuring director Stephen King pointing at us saying, “I’m gonna scare the hell out of you!” And we all know how that turned out.


DREAM WARRIORS was of course the movie that burst the NIGHTMARE series into the mainstream, moving away from the hard-nosed scares of the first film, justly forgetting the second movie entirely and bringing in a more fantastical approach to the nightmares. This isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes you revisit an older film you remember and are surprised at how slow it sometimes moves. That is very much the case here. Fortunately, this does allow us to get to know some of the characters more than we otherwise would. It’s hard to imagine that a genre film would ever allow a plot point like teen suicide, even if it is minor, to be used today. And even though the teen characters are all obvious Freddy fodder, the sensitive way they are presented, comic relief aside, makes them more likable than the cardboard caricatures who populate the later sequels and it’s still kind of a bummer when a few of them are killed off. If the film has a flaw it’s that the script can’t seem to make up its mind if the lead character is Patricia Arquette’s Kristen, Craig Wasson’s sympathetic doctor or the returning Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy. It’s not a deal breaker but it does make it feel like finished film isn’t as tight and focused as it could be. Wasson, who doesn’t seem at all different from his BODY DOUBLE character—not that it bothers me and more on that in a minute—is immediately likable while Langenkamp, it has to be said, isn’t much of an actress and the wardrobe she’s given to presumably make her look older than she really is just comes off as awkward. Fortunately, the kids (some of whom she’s probably the same age as) pick up some of the slack, especially Arquette in her first film and Jennifer Rubin, who I’ve always had a fondness for, also in her debut as tough chick Taryn. Laurence Fishburne, still credited as ‘Larry’ and billed third, manages to make something out of his nothing role as Max the orderly and John Saxon, reprising his role as Nancy’s father in an extended cameo, pretty much kills in his brief screen time. And yeah, there’s the Dokken song over the end credits and I could hear people singing along with the lyrics. At least, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t just me.


The post-film Q&A was with co-writer Frank Darabont and, unannounced but very welcome, co-writer and director Chuck Russell. The two men, laughing as in disbelief about being asked about this movie but clearly loving every minute of it, talked about how they rewrote the script together up in Big Bear in eleven days, with Russell suffering from a 104 degree temperature part of the time. Apparently during this fever Russell came up with the famous line, “The bastard son of a hundred maniacs,” with Darabont figuring that it was either the best or worst line anybody had ever written. Of course, it was a little of both. Russell also seemed to agree with the slow pace, saying he felt he could easily cut it down to eighty minutes. He may be right but even if the film may not be the best of the series, for me it’s the most endearing. Easily the best part of the session was the revelation that the Edgar Allen Poe quote which opens the film—“Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them.”—is complete bullshit. Chuck Russell made it up. Sadly, I didn’t get to ask my own question about the movie, which was the story behind Craig Wasson briefly being buried alive, an odd little BODY DOUBLE homage which happens during the climax.


FRIGHT NIGHT may be a slick studio film in comparison, but it’s a pretty modest studio film, with much of it taking place on a street that is an obvious backlot with a cast that consists of a mere handful of characters. Maybe it’s part of this modest, yet focused, scope that allows it to hold up extremely well, with a tight script and the line between comedy and horror correctly balanced. William Ragsdale and Amanda Bearse are sort of the Zach Galligan-Phoebe Cates equivalents, both likable while letting the others have the showier roles. Chris Sarandon is so good as Jerry Dandridge that it’s surprising that he didn’t appear in more things even at the time. When he offers to give Ragsdale “something I don’t have—a choice” it’s a nice inkling of depth which automatically keeps him from being just a one-note bad guy. Maybe this was just the great role in the 80s he was meant to have. Roddy McDowall and Stephen Geoffreys are both extremely memorable in their roles which seem designed to be scene-stealers and the movie fortunately never lets them be simply comic relief. I suppose I’m thinking of the one big scene the two have together late in the film and it’s that sort of odd emotional touch which is probably one of the reasons the film has always resonated for some people, making it more than just a horror-comedy. And the exciting climax, from the fantastic effects work to moments like McDowall expectantly proclaiming “You’re out of time,” seems to do everything right which is refreshing after seeing so many finales that make me want to zone out. It’s a terrific movie.


As a contrast to Russell & Darabont, who remembered their film as a total blast, Tom Holland earnestly expressed how he always regarded FRIGHT NIGHT as an expression of his own love for the genre. The genesis of the film came from his own script for the 1984 CLOAK & DAGGER, a remake of THE WINDOW. Thinking about its relation to Cornell Woolrich’s REAR WINDOW Holland tried to develop a similar idea about someone living next door to a serial killer, but couldn’t crack the idea (“And then last year they made DISTUBIA,” he added. Good to know I’m not the only one who saw the FRIGHT NIGHT resemblance) until he hit upon the notion of instead doing it with a vampire—a story idea he still couldn’t solve, until he hit upon the concept of the Peter Vincent character. He was fortunate to have very little interference from Columbia, since they were mostly preoccupied with what was expected to be their big summer movie, PERFECT. When asked about Sarandon’s habit of eating apples in scenes, Holland said that it was a touch Sarandon came up with, also offering the rationale that the character was “cleaning his fangs”. As for Geoffreys, Holland said that all the lines were on the page, but everything Geoffreys did with them was the actor. Holland revealed that the late screenwriter Colin Higgins took part in a surprisingly long two-week rehearsal period (“We could have done it as a play,” said Holland) and tried to convince him to reign Geoffreys in. Happily, the director didn’t listen to that piece of advice. Holland stressed that he was constantly trying to add subtext to every scene, whether it be losing one’s virginity or the homoeroticism element and while it could be argued that trying to toss anything into the mix makes the movie feel a little all over the place, it does give it a lot of the meat that it has, one of the reasons it still plays pretty damn good today.


Only one of these two films, FRIGHT NIGHT, actually played during the summer, but the double bill was a nice reminder when summer movies seemed more fun and less like, well, ordeals. It’s a credit to the people involved that they are still so enjoyable. And it’s great that Diablo Cody recognizes this in them and was able to engineer such a terrific night. Maybe if I go again I’ll have to tell her this.

A Double Coffin For Double Deaths

The American Cinematheque ran Dario Argento’s 1971 giallo FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET a few years ago which was my first viewing of this impossible-to-see film. I was unimpressed. I can’t exactly remember my thoughts at the time but maybe the thriller element seemed a little too light in tone for my tastes. Why I thought this I couldn’t really say. Fortunately, I decided to give it another try at the Egyptian this past Saturday night as part of their Italian Grindhouse series and with this viewing I found myself thoroughly enjoying the movie. Go figure. I’m not sure why and I know it wasn’t my mood but this time it wound up clicking for me. Yes, I’ve taken a look at more giallos in the past few years but this film feels considerably different than many others so it can’t be due to an increased familiarity with the form. I suppose it’s possible that I just found myself more open to the uniquely idiosyncratic tone it projects throughout. Maybe you always need to remember to keep an open mind.


Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon), a drummer in a rock band, begins to notice a strange man following him everywhere he goes. One night after a recording session he spots the man again and after he chases him down into an abandoned theater, a struggle between the two men results in the stranger being stabbed to death by his own switchblade. At this point he realizes he is being watched by a mysterious masked individual who has photographed the entire incident. Keeping the secret from his wife Nina (Mimsy Farmer), Roberto, who begins to experience a recurring nightmare about decapitation, soon finds himself terrorized by the masked stranger as people around him begin to turn up dead.


It’s certainly one of Argento’s most eccentric films, populated by an array of individuals who seem oddball even for him. It’s a strange character to have as a lead since his feelings about killing somebody, even accidentally, don’t extend much further than worrying whether the police will learn about what happened (some of this gets explained, some of it doesn't, but I'm delibertately avoiding spoilers). Many of the people on-camera come off as off-kilter, particularly the ones who seem to be continually invading Roberto and Nina’s swank pad for their endless parties, but few of them seem all that compelling. They’re just slightly sleazy in that good old seventies way. It’s how these bland characters are framed by Argento’s eye which makes them as interesting as they get to be. The strong stylization in the Techniscope imagery indicates a great deal of confidence on Argento’s part with this film, moreso than even his classic directorial debut THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, which screened second (hey, I’d only seen it 27 times before so I stuck around to see that as well). PLUMAGE is more successful and has the stronger story of the two, but in that film Argento’s use of the camera still feels like its being developed. Here, the plot has its strong points, but is still a little hazily constructed at times—someone suggests to Roberto that he go see a private detective and he does…about twenty minutes later. Maybe more than any of his other films, it’s the extremely striking suspense sequences throughout which manage to attain a true sense of a nightmare in their essential illogic. At times they make extremely little rational sense but in the context of this film it somehow winds up making them more effective (I noticed that this isn’t the first time that an Argento character is seen sitting on a bench, observing daily life, only to soon meet a bad end). Frankly, some of these sections are so good that it really makes me wonder what I was thinking a few years ago. That being said, it is still at times a strange movie tonally. It’s hard for me not to wonder about the English dub job with at times a total-lack of any real ambient sound, extreme even for one of these dub jobs, only adding to the genuinely unusual feel. Is this intentional? Is there another version of the film in the world where the soundtrack is altered to the point where it could feel like a considerably different experience?


Part of the interest around FOUR FLIES has been its near-lack of availability. Released by Paramount here in the States and by others elsewhere in the world, the film has never been released on video (again, at least here in the states) and certainly isn’t available on DVD, at least not legally. The fact that this seems to be a worldwide issue makes me think there’s more than just disinterest on Paramount’s part going on, but that’s just guesswork. At the least, the fact that the print screened by the Egyptian contained a British rating certificate at the top indicates that maybe Paramount doesn’t even have any 35mm prints of the title readily available. Happily, there was a big crowd at the Egyptian for the screening and the amount of applause that was heard during the explanation for the film’s title (You know, the old last-image-a-person-sees-before-death-caught-in-their-retina trick. Makes sense to me) indicated to me that this was an audience of the faithful. Maybe not everyone there had seen it, but they knew what they were there to see.


The bulk of the cast is a little too colorless, although Mimsy Farmer does have a genuinely interesting screen presence. Francine Racette as Cousin Dalia is pretty fetching as well (love that bathtub scene). But the most memorable performance in the film easily comes from Jean-Pierre Marielle as private detective Gianni Arrosio. Introduced to surprise the lead that the detective he’s hiring is a homosexual, Arrosio is a mincing stereotype (“You’re thinking that this fairy is going to jump on a chair and scream bloody murder if he sees a mouse”) who knows he’s a mincing stereotype. It’s one of the surprises of the film that the character, who tells our hero that out of 84 cases he hasn’t solved a single one, proves to be more capable than he lets on and in doing so turns out to be the most human individual in the entire film. It occurs to me that structurally the character might be inspired by the detective played by Walter Matthau in MIRAGE but in this film it feels like one of those occasional characters in Argento films who, in how the actor clearly does more with the part than what is on the page, turns into something genuinely unexpected. This might be one of the best examples of that.


What’s interesting is how maybe the last time I was turned off by some of the more comic elements of the film—the running gag with the mailman, the scenes with Roberto’s vagrant buddy “God” played by Bud Spencer—and true, some of these bits don’t work so well. But this time it occurred to me that FOUR FLIES may work best as a very dark comedy of manners, an examination of the near-impossibility of communicating with others, even those who are closest to you. The more I think about it, the movie seems very personal, possibly indicated in how much lead actor Brandon actually resembles Argento. I was struck by the black humor of the exposition scene set for no obvious reason at some sort of funeral convention with many different coffins on display. One salesman hawks a special one for two, saying that it’s “a double coffin for double deaths”. Within the eccentricities of the film I get the feeling that Argento is trying to ask if it’s really possible to know and connect with a person you want to love. The final moments set to that haunting Ennio Morricone music seem touching to me because of this notion, not because of how it affects the plot, but because of what it possibly says about the film’s director. The shocking method of how the final scene prolongs what is inevitable seems to acknowledge this impossibility. Ultimately, there’s nothing that can be done about those feelings and maybe that’s the film’s ultimate position on such relationships. Or maybe I’m just in a mood these days. Either way, I find myself thinking about this film, this badly dubbed, freakishly plotted Argento film from the seventies more than I ever thought I would when I walked into the Egyptian for this second viewing. There’s something great about that.


You have just read the Mr. Peel’s Sardine Liqueur review of FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET.

Invading Czechoslovakia

A number of years ago I worked on a DVD project related to a film produced by Ivan Reitman. The interviews conducted included one with Reitman associate Danny Goldberg and at one point he made a comment that they had been working on the film we were talking to him about “at the same time we were writing STRIPES.” At that point all I could think was, “I’m in the same room as one of the guys who wrote STRIPES?” For some reason, the moment had a particular effect on me. Danny Goldberg seemed like a great guy, a true mensch…and he wrote STRIPES. Some films just cause you to stop in your tracks that way.

Opening night of Diablo Cody’s Mondo Diablo festival at the New Beverly, where STRIPES was showing with Jason Reitman’s THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, kicked off in a rambling style. A few minutes late, Diablo made her introductions, told us there would be a Q&A after STRIPES (SMOKING was scheduled to run first), then after several comedy trailers from another time (WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S, COMING TO AMERICA, PARENHOOD and Reitman Sr.’s DAVE) THANK YOU FOR SMOKING began. About two minutes into the credits, the film stopped and we were informed that STRIPES really was going to run first. Fine with me, since that was the one I really wanted to see anyway. It was my first theatrical viewing of the film and the 35mm print looked beautiful.


STRIPES feels like the talents involved are still being developed. The narrative isn’t much to comment on, it peaks too soon and the whole thing feels choppy, as if it was cut to the laughs, which it probably was. None of that matters. STRIPES is still a hysterically funny movie, one of Bill Murray’s best “Bill Murray” performances and at its best remains scrappy, likable and never forgets how funny it’s supposed to be. Yes, the whole third act where they take the souped-up EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle to invade Czechoslovakia is forgettable to the point that you almost forget about it while it’s happening, but you can’t help but feel good as the soldiers march off, singing “Doo Wah Diddy” one more time as the credits roll. Elmer Bernstein’s score, easily the best of all the ones he did for eighties comedies, adds to this likability a great deal and in many ways acts as the glue holding the film together more than anything.


Bill Murray really is a force of nature here and there’s no point in listing all his best moments in the film but his pep talk to his fellow soldiers (“We’re American soldiers. We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years—we’re ten and one!”), while obviously this film’s version of the “It just doesn’t matter!” speech from MEATBALLS, is right up there. Some of the other actors, like Harold Ramis and John Larroquette, still feel like they’re developing their comic styles but it’s consistently enjoyable to see Ramis amusing himself at the edges of the frame and Larroquette blurting out “Where the fuck’s my truck?” makes me laugh out loud. John Candy’s comic persona, in comparison, already feels fully formed and he gets laughs from his very first moment onscreen (“Stewardess, is there a movie on this flight?”) which is just the start of how much his presence makes the movie even funnier than it already is. Also managing to stick out in the large cast with a fully-drawn character is John Diehl as the idiot Cruiser, who gets some great bits with Candy. P.J. Soles and Sean Young may not be very believable as Military Police, but considering how cute they are, who cares. Ramis and Young have particularly good chemistry, making me think that someone should cast them as husband and wife in something now. Warren Oates, as Sgt. Hulka (“Lighten up, Francis”), is a great rock to have at the center of the movie and it’s to Reitman’s credit that he resisted making the character a simple cardboard bad guy. Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty have cameos, a very young Timothy Busfield is “Soldier with mortar” and according to the credits Bill Paxton is in there somewhere as a soldier but I haven’t spotted him.


The film was followed by a Q&A with Diablo Cody and Ivan Reitman, with Jason Reitman hanging out off to the side for no particular reason. Along with discussing the challenges of directing Bill Murray, Reitman Sr. talked about how the film began life as a Cheech & Chong vehicle, but their manager made ridiculous financial demands and Cheech apparently never knew about it until years later. Much of the drug humor written for that version survived in the form of Judge Reinhold’s stoner character, but a lot of what they shot for him wound up getting cut out. Most of the film, including all the European stuff, was shot in Kentucky with some additional photography in L.A. Reitman also acknowledged the film’s structural problem in that it really climaxes with the graduation ceremony and what follows isn’t as good as the first half. This was something they were aware of even while they were writing the screenplay and he said that based on this issue, for years afterward when in developing the scripts for his films, he would always allude to STRIPES in terms of trying to plot out the climax by saying “How are we going to invade Czechoslovakia?” I guess it’s this line of thinking that leads to Stay-Puft Marshmallow Men. Of course, the subject of the amount of casual topless nudity came up as well. For his part, Jason offered that his earliest memory is being on the scoring stage for the movie as Elmer Bernstein worked and pointed out something that actually occurred to me while watching the film, which was a very slight structural similarity to FULL METAL JACKET, then still six years in the future.

I didn’t stay for THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and I also didn’t try to go up to Diablo Cody but at one point I did find myself standing next to Edgar Wright and I brought up his recent VENOM commentary at the Trailers From Hell site (I could have mentioned fifty other things to Wright, but this was what came to mind. Hey, at least it was current). After talking about VENOM with him for a few minutes I ended by saying that SHAUN OF THE DEAD is the best film of the decade. He waved that off dismissively but, well, it is. I’ll probably wind up saying it if he find myself talking to him again. Which, considering how many times I’ve already seen Edgar Wright at the New Beverly, could be very soon. To quote a character from another well-known Ivan Reitman film, I love this town.

More Hate Than Love

By my count, THE LAST MISTRESS is the third Asia Argento film to get a release in U.S. theaters in 2008. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not nearly enough. Still, there is at least hope in that there looks like a few other titles stacked up waiting to possibly come out at some point. For now, at least, there is THE LAST MISTRESS and appropriately for a movie starring Asia Argento, it seems to be mostly about being fascinated by Asia Argento, in whatever form that fascination may occur. Being frightened by her, being obsessed by her. Either way, it has very little interest in taking its eyes off her.

Paris, 1835: Ryno de Marigny (newcomer Fu'ad Ait Aatou) is soon to marry wealthy Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida). After a “final” visit with his mistress, the notorious Madame Vellini (Argento), the somewhat older, “illegitimate daughter of an Italian countess and a Spanish bullfighter” where he tells her they can never see her again, de Marigny is summoned by Hermangarde’s grandmother who insists on discussing the young man’s decade-long affair before she will give her blessing. Knowing what has been going on, she demands total honesty.


Shot and framed in a staid fashion, almost as if some of the compositions are derived from paintings, the passion in THE LAST MISTRESS comes not from its visuals—the colors are actually surprisingly flat at times. Instead, that passion comes from the animal-like ferocity of its female lead. At first de Marigny refers to Vellini as an “ugly mutt”. The ugly part is a reach, but there is something immediately unusual and well, maybe a little mutt-like, about her look and the age difference is apparent. He then realizes he has spoken with her nearby and when he sees the look of raw hatred she gives which resembles a look of a ferocity which might not be possible coming from anyone else on the planet…well, that’s it. There’s no going back. It’s a film about how there is no going back. And as it moves from that hate to a passion of another kind, which goes beyond calling it love or even simple lust, at one point involving the literal sucking of blood, it’s hard to imagine anyone else on the planet playing this role. “I hate anything feminine, except men,” she mentions at one point and this woman who smokes cigars and dares you to return her devastating gaze really is the male of the relationship, driving the desires of the more feminine Aattou. He’s boring, but even that seems appropriate. Anyone would be boring next to her anyway. The performances by Argento in this film and also in BOARDING GATE from a few months ago is the type of work usually frowned upon—they’re not about realism, they’re not about histrionics, they’re about the primal force she brings to them, which is purely sexual and purely cinematic. There’s no other actress these days who does that to such an extent.


The frankness of its sexuality, even down to how the older characters acknowledge it, set it apart from what you would expect from such a film, making it more honest than the typical ‘unrequited love’ path these sort of period pieces usually go down. That makes the time it is set in almost incidental, refreshingly so. And it correctly admits to the near-impossibility of these feelings ever reaching some form of closure. The other day I was driving through Silverlake and saw a certain someone I knew sitting at a café, laughing at something that was being said. It was one of those moments where all time seemed to stop and the only thing that meant anything in the universe was seeing her there. Even now, I can see how she looked as she was laughing. She didn’t know I was driving past. She didn’t know what I was thinking just then. She doesn’t know I’m writing this now. And there’s nothing I can do about that. There’s an unresolved element to the end of THE LAST MISTRESS which seems slightly unsatisfying. From experience, that seems entirely appropriate.

Mixing Business With Pleasure

You get used to some things, you wind up missing them when they’re gone. And I miss John Landis films. Within that nasty dark humor and DRAGNET-aesthetic of his visuals was always a unique comic tone, from NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE to SPIES LIKE US and also INTO THE NIGHT, maybe my favorite film of his. Even if he hasn’t had new films released in theaters for several years now, he’s certainly been active doing various things for TV as well as directing the terrific Don Rickles documentary MR. WARMTH. His last feature (“to date”, I’ll hopefully add) has been 1998’s SUSAN’S PLAN, a low-budget film which the director also scripted. Unfortunately, it wound up getting no theatrical release here in the States. It did eventually turn up on video as DYING TO GET RICH, a lousy title, especially since “Susan’s Plan” is actually spoken in dialogue a number of times. Short, slight and more than a little mean, it might not be accurate to call SUSAN’S PLAN a good movie. Maybe it’s not supposed to be. Maybe it’s not even a movie. Maybe it’s an anti-movie. At least it’s slightly unique.


Susan Holland (Nastassja Kinski) convinces lover Sam Myers (Billy Zane) to arrange to have her ex-husband Paul (Adrian Paul) killed so she can collect the insurance. Sam hires two idiots (Rob Schneider and Michael Biehn) for the job which they naturally screw up—even though they shoot Paul several times, they somehow manage to not kill him. As Paul lies in the hospital recovering, Police Detective Scott (Bill Duke) begins to investigate the shooting. Also mixed up in the plot is hairdresser Betty (Lara Flynn Boyle) who most of the men in the movie are completely obsessed with, Sam’s ex-wife and boss Penny (Lisa Edelstein, dressed like she’s going to play the Hildy Johnson role in a HIS GIRL FRIDAY remake) who pieces together what’s going on and tough biker Bob (Dan Ackroyd) who is enlisted to take care of Paul once the shooting goes wrong.


It’s not much of a plot, which the movie makes little effort to disguise. The basic message of SUSAN’S PLAN is that everyone in the world is pretty much just a schmuck and whether working a normal job or arranging the intricacies of a murder plot, everyone still has to get through the daily grind of eating, drinking, screwing, money worries and dealings with minor bureaucracies. Set in Los Angeles with plenty of shots of Hollywood landmarks, about as much emphasis is placed on what food and drink characters order throughout as anything having to do with the plot. More importantly, the film continually pauses throughout the running time for dream sequences (and, occasionally, dreams within dreams) of various characters imagining the myriad of ways that Susan’s plan could go wrong. Part of this has to do with Landis employing Bunuel-type mindgames (probably inspired by THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOUISE). Of course, Landis’s own AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON made use of this method but in that case, the dreams were employed to emphasize the horror and paranoia the lead character was going though within the plot. In the case of SUSAN’S PLAN, the dreams ARE the entire plot to the point where it’s irrelevant to complain about them. You can’t say that they disguise the fact that there isn’t much of a story because, in many ways, they are the story. It’s hard not to wish that there was a little more going on storywise but maybe the minimalism is the point. Some of it is funny, especially the nit-picky nature of the dialogue (“Crucified. Like a deer caught in the headlights.”), some of it not so much (several fart jokes). Ultimately, it’s a nasty, little movie about nasty, little people with nothing redeeming about any of them but there is a strange sort of pureness about the whole thing. It’s almost as if, more than any other of his films, this encapsulates John Landis’s world view. Does he really like any of these people? Does he identify with them? Does he find them reprehensible? Does he think they’re no different from anyone else? Maybe the answer is all of the above.


Kinski honestly seems miscast to me—she just doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would engineer such a plot. Boyle, in the sexpot role that seems designed to “steal” the movie, feels too mannered. Fortunately, most of the other actors are very good, each hitting what feels like the right comic notes. Michael Biehn is a nice surprise in a different sort of role for him. Even Billy Zane, never anyone’s favorite actor, is very funny. Hell, even Rob Schneider is actually very good. Future Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church, playing a doctor, gets a laugh at one point simply out of replying “What?” to a question someone asks him. Lisa Edelstein, my future wife, is extremely good as Sam’s ex, bringing a level of comic intelligence to her performance which feels so sharp that I wish that her character was the one the film focused on. Not that I have any extra interest in Lisa Edelstein or anything. Bill Duke plays the one voice of sanity in this world as the cop—actually kind of a familiar sort of character in the years after Frances McDormand in FARGO. He’s just about the toughest-looking guy in movies but here all he wants is to listen to more than a few seconds of “The Blue Danube” without getting a phone call interrupting those few second of peace. He never gets the chance. Since it’s a John Landis film, there are cameo appearances by a few directors, namely Randal Kleiser, Stuart Gordon, Adam Rifkin and (now familiar as an actor) Danny Huston. Unfortunately, “See You Next Wednesday” never turns up and in the one elevator scene the muzak heard is not “The Girl From Ipenema” but a Jake Steinfeld infomercial seems to be on every time a TV is seen. Jeff Morris, Bob of Bob’s Country Bunker in THE BLUES BROTHERS, has one short amusing scene with Ackroyd at Boardner’s in Hollywood explaining that his name is “Larry Cooper.” It ends quickly and has nothing to do with anything else we ever see. Which, come to think of it, kind of describes the entire film.


If anything can be said about SUSAN’S PLAN it’s that every frame feels like the work of John Landis, for better and also for worse, and I could believe that the process of making it was possibly somewhat freeing after being involved with so many big-budget studio comedies. In some ways it would probably be a good idea for more directors to make such a small film which was this much a distillation of that particular person’s mindset and filmic style. They might not all work—hell, I’m not sure SUSAN’S PLAN qualifies as a movie that “works”—but the results would at least be interesting.

When I started this blog I never thought that if I made it to 200 posts I was going to write about SUSAN’S PLAN. But it seemed as logical a choice as any to mark the occasion. Plus I kind of had to see it again this week. I’d rather not explain.

Abusing the Privilege

It was during the Fourth of July weekend twenty-five years ago that I was taken by my parents to my first R-rated film in the theater. Of course, we’d already had cable for a while which means that it wasn’t the first R-rated film I’d ever seen. Why it took them even longer to let me actually go to see one in the theater is a mystery that will probably never be solved. Meanwhile, at a multiplex somewhere right now I’m sure a kid in preschool is going to see WANTED. But anyway, the film I was taken to see at the late, lamented Scarsdale Plaza at that time was John Badham’s helicopter epic BLUE THUNDER. Remembering this anniversary caused me to take another look at the film. It never really seems to follow through on some of the serious themes it brings up but all things considered it hasn’t aged that badly.


After a portentous title card (THE HARDWARE, WEAPONRY AND SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS DEPICTED IN THIS FILM ARE REAL AND IN USE IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY.) setting us up for a serious examination of technology’s role in modern society we meet Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) a police helicopter pilot in L.A. who is a bit of a loose cannon, continually monitoring his own sanity which is clearly connected to his own Vietnam flashbacks (Didn’t Clint Eastwood’s FIREFOX have a similar character trait for the lead?) After following him on a shift with new partner Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern) where, after the pair spies on a young woman doing yoga in the nude--something I probably enjoyed back then but now just seems creepy--a routine call leads to an attack and ultimate murder of a prominent city councilwoman, Murphy is selected to pilot the prototype for Blue Thunder, a military-style super helicopter to be used for survailance and in case of terrorist activity (the then-upcoming ’84 Olympics are referred to). The military man in charge of Blue Thunder, Col. Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell) is actually Murphy’s old nemesis from the war (and I know that I hate when I have to deal with my old nemesis) and Murphy soon becomes suspicious what Blue Thunder’s real purpose may be.


BLUE THUNDER, screenplay credited to Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby, moves along at such a fast clip that it’s easy to forget that some of its issues are pretty much glossed over in favor of the helicopter stuff. Not that I’m complaining that much. Some of the aerial footage is genuinely dynamic and there’s some pretty good action too. However, it does seem like the movie is caught between the grittier, conspiracy-minded films of the 70s and the spectacular, throw-logic-out-the-window mindset of the eighties—the footage of helicopters flying through Century City in DIE HARD came to mind. The movie deals with racial relations, government conspiracy, post-traumatic stress disorder, even a mention of the Munich massacre (I’m sure that sailed over my head back then) and it blends a little uneasily with elements which, frankly, I suppose were designed to appeal to me at the time. There’s no other way to explain the amount of time spent on things like Candy Clark’s car chase antics, something it feels like the movie is ultimately more interested in than in clarifying the more serious elements of what the bad guys are up to. The amount of destruction which occurs in downtown L.A. is so huge that it’s hard to imagine that no one was killed in the climax but the film does its best to imply otherwise. Hey, if they say so. The Get-the-tape-to-the-media subplot feels left over from the PARALLAX-type paranoia of the 70s as well, but things definitely turn out better here than they did in BLOW OUT.


It’s also interesting as an L.A. movie, which some pretty amazing aerial photography of the city (especially when compared to similar stuff in HANCOCK which, well, doesn’t compare—why does a movie like that look so ugly in comparison?). The cinematography by the late, great John Alonzo uses a lot of colors available in the various dusk shots of the skyline whether they make sense or not. There’s a lot of detail seen throughout, making it enjoyable to figure out what part of the city they were flying over. I kept looking out to see if my own building would make an appearance, but no luck. Geography is a little wonky though—at one point Scheider and Stern are patrolling over Westwood (looks like MOMMIE DEAREST is playing) when they are called to an armed robbery at Circus Liquor in North Hollywood (address correctly given as Burbank and Vineland). I know they’re in a helicopter, but wasn’t anyone closer? The long gone Pickwick Drive-In also turns up (address incorrectly given as Riverside and Victory—how would it have ever fit there?) making me wish that a drive-in still existed in the valley.


It’s easy to imagine that Roy Scheider took on this role because of the character, not realizing at first just how much he would be overshadowed by the technology. But the fact that he always seems like a human being who can feel genuine pain makes him an ideal counterpoint. Because of this, Scheider almost manages to make us believe it at the end when he--well, I guess I shouldn't give it away. It's ridiculous, but it's still pretty cool. And is the final shot an intentional echo of the end of THE SEVEN-UPS? Either way, it's an ideal beat to end on. After everything that's happened, the actor has earned the way he takes back the frame in that final image. Warren Oates, who died before the movie was released, gets all the best lines, fully expressing how all this newfangled technology means dick to him. “You’re supposed to be stupid,” he tells Daniel Stern when the rookie tries to take the blame for something. “Don’t abuse the privilege.” Malcolm McDowell is pretty bad but in fairness it’s a pretty terribly written, thinly drawn bad guy role anyway. His one good moment comes when he has to radio in after a helicopter has gone down and dryly intones, “It seems we have a ship down somewhere in the Watts area.” Every now and then I got the feeling McDowell was trying to add little bits to amuse himself, but there’s only so much you can do with repeating “Catch ya later!” ad nauseum. Gee, what do you think the kiss-off at the end of the movie’s gonna be? On the other hand, you could probably find somebody who hasn’t seen this movie for twenty years and I’ll bet “Catch ya later!” might be the only thing they remember, so there’s something to be said for that. Daniel Stern has the Daniel Stern role as Scheider’s gawky partner, Candy Clark is Scheider’s on-off girlfriend who at least gets something to do and Joe Santos plays another helicopter cop, maybe to try and convince us that we’re actually watching an episode of THE ROCKFORD FILES.

Ultimately, the movie seems to exist for the thrill of the helicopter chases so while I could complain that the more serious elements wind up half-baked there’s no denying how much the action is pretty damn cool--it's well-staged, well-cut and does all the right things to make this an ideal popcorn movie. Those are actual helicopters flying over L.A. and even if there is some use of miniatures it all works just great. The movie resists extensive comment partly because it ultimately becomes more about the hardware than what that hardware represents. But there are far, far worse things in this world than a genuinely exciting movie with helicopter battles. That sort of thing worked for me as a kid and it still works for me now.

“Catch ya later…”

Dreaming

In some ways the ideal person to view Jacques Demy’s 1969 film MODEL SHOP would be somebody who has already seen his first feature LOLA, loves it, then watches MODEL SHOP with no awareness whatsoever that the lead character from the earlier film is going to turn up once again. The first moment Lola appears in the Los Angeles set-film, a million miles away from the small town of Nantes where we last saw her, would be a wonderful surprise for someone who wasn’t expecting it. When Anouk Aimée makes that initial appearance in MODEL SHOP it’s hard not to think of seeing someone you loved long ago for the first time in years. It gives us a Lola who is older, much more world-weary yet still beautiful beyond words. The film never reaches the rapturous heights of LOLA but it is automatically special in that gives us another look at Aimée in the role, which makes it a little frustrating when we don’t get to spend more time with her. But in a way that frustration, that feeling of being so close to what you desire to you can almost touch it, is what the film is about. It’s what L.A. can be like as well. And, unfortunately, it’s the ultimate feeling one has after seeing the movie which makes it slightly frustrating.

I return to the films of Jacques Demy often, finding myself exhilarated by how the stories are told but also in its expressions of both the hope in searching for and the impossibility of romance. On the surface they can seem light but something in them speaks to the messiness of relationships, how you can’t ever assume you will end up with the one you want to. His earlier films were set in provincial towns in France. People meet and fall in love with each other on the streets, in shops, in cafes and those movies feel alive like few others do to me. At a certain point in the sixties Demy came to Hollywood to explore making films here. MODEL SHOP is the one film he ever made for a studio, Columbia to be precise, and it feels like a response to his own perceptions of Los Angeles. There’s very little walking, for one thing. There is, however, a lot of driving as a result and he seems to see this not as a bad thing but simply an alternative way to perceive your surroundings. I don’t love this film the way I do some of his others—there are enough things wrong with it which prevent it from reaching such heights—but it remains special to me because within his worldview of romance is a setting that I know better and feel like I can relate to more than his earlier works. The way this town sometimes works means that you can find yourself in the middle of the night having the most fascinating conversation with a beautiful girl who you’ve never met before. And you will possibly never see her again. It can be part of the trap of Los Angeles, in how it gives you a glimpse of everything you think you could possibly want but then just as quickly pulls it right back again. Somehow I suspect that Jacques Demy understood that.


Twenty-six year-old George Matthews (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’s Gary Lockwood) lives in a tiny house at the edge of Venice with girlfriend Gloria (SKIDOO’S Alexandra Hay). Their aimless relationship is at its breaking point just as George is informed that he has one day to come up with the money to prevent his snazzy sports car from being repossessed. As he drives around town trying to raise money to deal with this Joe Gillis-like situation, he encounters a mysterious woman who he will eventually learn is referred to as Lola (Aimée). He follows her into a Model Shop, a tiny studio where customers can rent out girls to take pictures of them, where he learns she works. After paying for a session, George is soon informed about his draft notice, leading him to seek Lola out again, searching for some sort of connection as he tries to express his feelings to her.


MODEL SHOP is known by very few people today outside of fans of Jacques Demy and possibly the band Spirit who composed the music and makes a cameo as well (it’s a very good album). I first saw the film several years ago at the American Cinematheque following a screening of Michael Sarne’s JOANNA. The q&a for the first film ran long, causing the start for MODEL SHOP to be held up until close to midnight. It’s not really the sort of film to view that late at night and at a certain point the people I had come with bailed, deciding that they couldn’t take more of Gary Lockwood driving aimlessly around L.A. Make no mistake, a great deal of MODEL SHOP consists of him driving around. Driving, parking, stopping at traffic lights, turing, driving some more. Long chunks go by without much of anything happening. It never occurred to me to leave because of this. In fact, I kind of loved it. The second viewing was a few years later, again at the Egyptian, on a double bill with B.W.L. Norton’s CISCO PIKE, another film with a lead character wandering aimlessly around Los Angeles. And this past weekend I was driving across town myself to the Aero in Santa Monica to see MODEL SHOP once again, if for no other reason than to try to figure out why I was driving across town to see it again. Even on that first viewing I found the extended driving sequences somehow moving and to me they still are. There are few other films which pause to look around this city as much as this one does and at certain points it is genuinely striking to recognize certain sections of the city to see how much it has changed and what is still there (how long has that Midas on Sunset across from KTLA been around?). Though George lives in Venice, illogically most of what we see of him driving is in the Hollywood area. It doesn’t make much sense, but then again driving in L.A. never makes much sense anyway. Unlike Antonioni’s ZABRISKIE POINT, which seems to use Los Angeles as a symbol for everything that is wrong with modern culture, it’s very clear that Demy is taking these pauses to notice everything he feels is beautiful about the place. He even has several characters mention how much they love the city in spite of what they say everyone else thinks, with George at one point saying how he considers it to be “pure poetry.” Made and released before the Tate-LaBianca murders, MODEL SHOP presents a city relaxed enough where George, driving around the Hollywood Hills, picks up a cute young hitchhiker who expresses her thanks by giving him a joint. The carefree atmosphere of the time dissipated long ago but every now and then the traffic breaks and you have one of those moments where that feeling is still there.


“You were dreaming,” Gloria tells George in the first line of the film, saying that she heard him mutter only the single word “love” while he was asleep. Only he doesn’t remember what the dream was. Right from the beginning he is made to be a kindred spirit to the male leads in various other Demy films. More specifically, in many ways George is simply another version of the character Roland Cassard, the male lead of LOLA who was memorably played by Marc Michel. Both men are introduced at a point where they are going nowhere in their lives. Roland is fired just at the beginning of LOLA and when we meet George is MODEL SHOP he has already left his job at an architectural firm (“Are you still at Hastings?” half the people he meets asks, all they seem to know about him). He still likes architecture, or at least he says so, he just has no interest in spending years working so he can design nothing but service stations and motels. George wants to create something more than that, he just has no idea what it might be. As it is, he seems to have very little ambition except for driving around L.A. Both Roland and George are looking for something to break up the monotony of their lives and the vision that is Lola turns up for them at just the right time.


MODEL SHOP was shown on a double bill at the Aero with Demy’s 1963 film BAY OF ANGELS, which stars Claude Mann as a young man who gets immersed into the world of gambling and in doing so becomes involved with a woman named Jackie Demaistre played by Jeanne Moreau. It seemed slightly unusual that these would be the two films paired together—after all, why not show MODEL SHOP with LOLA? But as it turned out they both have certain unexpected similarities in how they both portray aimless young men becoming involved with enigmatic, slightly older women who are first introduced dressed in white. Certain recurring beats and rhythms in the films become more noticeable than they would otherwise as well. And when late in MODEL SHOP, which was shown second, Lola speaks of how her husband ran off with a gambler named Jackie Demaistre, it provoked an unusual wave of laughter through the audience, just about the only audible response that occurred during the showing. It was as if the movie we had already seen was somehow suddenly intruding on the one we were now watching, surprisingly affecting the plots of both films as a result. Of course, this is not unusual in Demy’s universe. Roland Cassard, once again played by Marc Michel, shows up in a key role in THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, at one point singing of a woman he once loved named Lola who “didn’t love me”. In MODEL SHOP Lola looks at a photo album and talks about some of the people in her life who we remember from the earlier film as well. We even spot some photos of Roland Cassard as she turns the pages but he frustratingly isn’t referred to.


This definitely lends an extra level to MODEL SHOP but it’s only going to be apparent to people familiar with the director’s other films. It really can only partly be considered a sequel to LOLA since to viewers walking in unaware Lola is going to seem as mysterious to them as she ultimately does to George. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that—it’s actually interesting that the film could play so different to two sets of people. But what unfortunately what makes MODEL SHOP so frustrating is in how some of these elements never really come together. Demy’s earlier films—LOLA, BAY OF ANGELS, THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—move like a rocket through their narratives as the camera seems to glide around effortlessly but MODEL SHOP instead lingers in an extremely slow fashion and winds up feeling somewhat stagnant in comparison. Along with the numerous driving scenes the sections that stick in the mind are mostly silent—being led down the corridor as Lockwood enters the Model Shop for the first time, the actor walking close behind Lola following her down the street, even when he glances around at his surroundings at a tiny burger joint at the corner of Fairfax and Santa Monica. Many of the dialogue scenes, the ones without Lola anyway, such as the arguments between George and Gloria or the numerous scenes of George talking with friends as he tries to borrow money wind up falling flat. Part of this could be an issue of it being directed by someone for whom English is not their first language and might be unable to deal with certain nuances in the performances. Gary Lockwood’s character is difficult to pin down because he’s never as likable as we want him to be. Continually as we’re about to be on his side he says something which makes him out to be a jerk—Roland Cassard in LOLA had issues in his own sadness but even when his actions were questionable it never causes us to wonder why we’re following this guy around. Maybe there is something about Michel which causes us to immediately identify with him and always understand his actions. Lockwood seems somewhat naturally cold as a personality, which may be why he was ideal in the role of Frank Poole, but doesn’t help when he needs to be relatable in at least some small way. George seems to step over the line a few times too many in things he says to Lola and it winds up making him seem like kind of a creep. Ultimately, it becomes a little hard to swallow that Lola would choose him, out of all the men she probably meets, to open up to. Alexandra Hay, a Goldie Hawn-type who passed away in 1993, seems unsure of herself at times, with occasional flashes of over-dramatic mannerisms. While seeing THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT the next night (on a double-bill with THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG and that was a wonderful night as well) I was reminded of this at points during Francoise Dorleac’s performance except in that case it was played as someone who seemed to be appropriately behaving that way in the fantastical world of that musical. In MODEL SHOP, it seems like someone overdoing it and not knowing how to overdo it correctly because the direction is being mishandled.


This problem doesn’t arise with Anouk Aimée as Lola who is a true vision and it’s not at all hard to believe that George would become fascinated by her instantly. She doesn’t seem remotely like any other woman who would be encountered in all of Los Angeles. It’s particularly interesting to compare what she does here to her performance in the earlier film. We can see how the character has changed as well as how she remains the same—she seems quieter, sadder now—at one point in LOLA she says “Life’s great, isn’t it?” out of nowhere during a serious conversation and we believe that she believes it, but it’s impossible to imagine this older version of the character expressing such a thought. Still, a few comments she makes about how she has never gotten over someone in her life definitely recalls what she spoke of back in Nantes eight years earlier. After all, some people never really change. It’s one of the most successful examples I’ve ever seen of a years-after-the-fact follow-up performance. She rightly doesn’t play it as she did in 1961 and still manages to believably seem like the same person. Much of this is personal, yes, but I find some moments of her throughout extremely beautiful and sad at the same time. I wish I could have met Aimée as she appears in this film.

Almost more interesting is who didn’t wind up in the movie. Looking for an unknown for the role of George, Demy found a young actor he wished to cast by the name of Harrison Ford. Unfortunately, the studio reportedly decided that Harrison Ford had no future in show business and Gary Lockwood, then hot off 2001, got the lead role. It’s hard not to imagine what that film would have been like, although possibly some of the script and direction issues would have remained even with Ford playing the part. Or maybe the younger Ford, who always seems very boyish in tiny appearances from around this time, could have found a way to make the character more sympathetic. One familiar face who does turn up, surprisingly, is Fred Willard playing the role of a gas station attendant. He doesn’t really do anything and is only onscreen for a minute, but it’s impossible to miss him.


It’s difficult to talk about this movie because my response to it is so personal. There’s something about it which captures not only the aimless feeling of driving around Los Angeles but also what happens when you try to express yourself to such unattainable and, ultimately, unknowable women as Lola. The film displays that unfulfilling feeling of reaching, but missing, what you want in this town like few other films I can think of but unfortunately, the inert effect it gives off translates to the dramatic effect it has as well. “Always try” is what George seems to wind up with and that bit of optimism recalls Roland Cassard saying “There’s a bit of happiness in wanting happiness” at the end of LOLA. The problem is that the overall joyful effect LOLA gives off allows us to believe Cassard. Here, it feels like a death knell being stated by someone who is giving up. It’s hard to ignore the different feeling in Demy’s universe this time out, one that feels ultimately depressing. Maybe he was affected by world events of the time, maybe it was the unfortunate critical response to YOUNG GIRLS and the premature death of star Francoise Dorléac. Maybe I’m overreaching with all this and it’s simply the result of the narrative becoming muddled in his dealings with Columbia Pictures which apparently didn’t go so well. Whatever it is, it seems to result in MODEL SHOP feeling somewhat incomplete, like it’s missing those moments in the earlier films where all the elements seem to combine to provide that feeling of ultimate cinematic rapture. We never get it here and in some ways the end leaves us wanting. And yet, I find myself driving all the way across town to see it yet again when it plays. Or I’ll just have to live my life here in Los Angeles, which sometimes has a tendency to feel like MODEL SHOP more than I care to admit.

An Itemized Account

One good thing about the new DIRTY HARRY DVD box set is that it gave me the chance to finally see THE ENFORCER, the third film in the series. I don’t know why I’d never seen it, but I liked the fact that in not seeing it I somehow still had a Dirty Harry film to look forward to. So that’s been taken care of now. I wasn’t expecting greatness from it but I was hoping for some seventies action so it's safe to say that it was exactly what I expected.

Like its immediate predecessor MAGNUM FORCE the 1976 THE ENFORCER, directed by James Fargo, doesn’t feel like a sequel as much as it resembles a two-part episode of a Dirty Harry tv show, albeit one that still stars Clint, is rated R and shot in Panavision. The plot has Harry Callahan going up against an SLA-type group called The People’s Revolutionary Strike Force who are engaged in a crime spree to---well, it’s never very clear what their plan is besides “blowing things up” and the fact that there’s a wikipedia page devoted to the group indicates that somebody out there has given more thought to them than the movie ever does. There’s a mention of at least the ringleader being a Vietnam vet discarged on a section eight but the movie never seems to bother trying to have an interesting take on them. They’re certainly the least sociologically interesting villains of the run of the series (I’ll make sure to write about THE DEAD POOL soon enough).


The genuinely interesting aspect of the movie might also be its most dated: Harry’s partner this time around is a woman, played by Tyne Daly. (Harry’s told he has a new partner. Cue the door being opened to reveal her. Harry: “Oh, shit.”) Even if this strands the politics of the movie back in the seventies, it does provide Eastwood with one of his numerous female co-stars designed to challenge him and thereby make his own screen persona more interesting. Actresses like Daly probably weren’t given lead roles in movies like this very much even back in the seventies and she’s very good. She has to be—aside from the interplay between Clint and her there’s not much else to the movie. It’s enjoyable in its seventies way, but Clint’s THE GAUNTLET from the next year is a lot more fun even if it is much more outlandish. The action highlight here is a foot chase that comes at about the midpoint—it’s not great and doesn’t seem to pay much attention to geography but it is fun and scored by Jerry Fielding like a full, funked-out jazz piece. I’d have loved to have seen this performed live as it was being recorded for the movie. By a certain point the chase seems to be going on to allow this music to continue, like it’s existing purely for its own sake. At one point the music is interrupted when the bad guy crashes through a skylight and lands right in the middle of a porn shoot. Which proves that sometimes the seventies really were more fun. This was the only entry in the series not scored by Lalo Schifrin and maybe some of it is more up tempo than he would have allowed but some of it’s so fun that I have no complaints.

Surprisingly, considering how many familiar faces turned up in MAGNUM FORCE in early roles, the cast of THE ENFORCER is pretty nondescript in comparison. Harry Guardino, the Lieutenant in the first film, appears again this time and Bradford Dillman plays the obligatory prick superior who has to spend multiple scenes yelling at Harry about whatever sort of messes he’s getting into. John Crawford plays the Mayor so we unfortunately don’t get to see John Vernon make a return appearance. Albert Popwell, the “Do you feel lucky?” robber from the first film, plays the head of a black militant organization. The villains don’t make much of an impression but familiar character actor Michael Cavanaugh who plays Lalo (maybe in tribute to the absent Schifrin) also turned up in THE GAUNTLET the following year. Supposedly Rob Reiner is an extra who gets bumped into during the chase scene, but after looking at it I’m unconvinced. If anyone out there knows Rob Reiner, feel free to ask.


The climax is set on Alcatraz, not that you’d really notice it. Without getting into spoilers, the film winds up more interested in the plot than in staging an elaborate action scene but I suppose Clint would more than make up for it when he starred in ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ for Don Siegel. That it seems to pass up the chance at such a memorable climax underscores how THE ENFORCER is efficient and provides some of what you want from Clint in the mid-70s, but doesn’t exert itself too much otherwise. The fact that there are four credited writers indicates that the movie was stitched together from various story parts so while it cruises along it never tries to do much more than that. There is some enjoyable dialogue here and there (“Personnel? That’s for assholes!” “I was in personnel for ten years!”) but nothing that quite measures up to “A man’s got to know his limitations.” It’s not as enjoyably goofy as THE DEAD POOL and certainly never aspires to the serious level of SUDDEN IMPACT. It does have the interplay with Clint & Tyne Daly and it is a Dirty Harry movie with the action, gunplay and other various elements which that promises. And it was worth finally getting to see it.

Unintended Diane Arbus Subtext

If you were in L.A. this past weekend, you know how hot it was. Determined to not be trapped in the heat on Sunday, I decided to go to the Arclight. It was the perfect day to plant myself where I knew there would be air conditioning which made it ideal to see something which I already knew was going to be very long. That’s right, I went to see SEX AND THE CITY. Am I going to lose the respect of everyone reading this now? Do I lose my membership in the he-man woman haters club? To give a little history, I went through a period a few years ago when I watched the reruns on TBS. I think I got to see a fair chunk of the run, although looking over the episode guide in a recent Entertainment Weekly it struck me that there were a lot of episodes which, while I knew I had seen, I remembered next to nothing about. And I didn’t particularly have much of a desire to refresh my memory. But it’s not like I’m opposed to movies with women in them. I like women. I like women in movies. If THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA is playing on HBO, I’ll stay there and watch it. If I’d been writing this thing in ’05 then you’d know I thought that IN HER SHOES was the best film of that year. So even though I had avoided the crowds that swarmed the Arclight and other theaters on opening weekend I wasn’t dreading SEX AND THE CITY: THE MOTION PICTURE. The show was always kind of zippy and peppy, so there was no reason to think the movie wouldn’t be.

Reviews which describe the film as being five episodes of the show crammed together are incorrect. It would be more accurate to describe SEX AND THE CITY: THE MOVIE as having a narrative arc of a twelve-episode season of the show. In doing this it dispenses with all the stuff which would be the episodic plotlines, the nit-picky stuff that Carrie Bradshaw would try to figure out every week. You know, the parts that were funny and entertaining. For whatever reason, the makers of SEX AND THE CITY: LE FILM (specifically writer/director Michael Patrick King) decided to make a film which focused almost exclusively on the soapy stuff at the expense of the laughs and fun. And since it clocks in at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it’s a long, long sludge. For once I didn’t mind being in an air-conditioned theater for a very long time but for a movie with a narrative that seems to span close to a year, it did feel like I had been in there about that long.


But more than not being a fun movie, SEX AND THE CITY: THE QUICKENING isn’t in anyway a particularly good movie. You could almost say that it’s not really a movie at all. There’s no attempt whatsoever to bring any sort of visual pizzazz to spotlight how these characters have entered a new world onto the silver screen. If this is supposed to be a movie about materialism, great clothes, shoes, hair, all that stuff, what was needed was someone to bring a twenty-first century Sirk/Minnelli vibe to the whole thing to make it as over-the-top as the lives the characters are living. Unfortunately, King has zero eye for this sort of thing. It’s a surprisingly flat-looking movie to the point that some shots even seem badly framed. When STAR TREK:GENERATIONS was made, the first Trek film with the Next Generation cast, they used one of the show directors but knew enough to bring in legendary cinematographer John Alonzo to bring a new, more textured look to it and it’s still one of the best-looking of the series (even if the film isn’t very good). Here, they had the director of photography from the show do the job (John Thomas, who according to the imdb shot Whit Stillman’s THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, a much, much better movie about relationships among the New York nightlife) and with this harsh, ugly look magnified to such an extent it winds up looking cheaper and less interesting than the show ever did. Couldn’t they have shot it in Scope? Couldn’t there have been some energy brought to the numerous scenes of characters doing nothing but sitting and talking? Shouldn’t the movie have looked brighter and more colorful? If it had embraced that artificiality than maybe the characters wouldn’t have seemed quite so shallow and reprehensible. I would have just been able to accept them as part of this larger-than-life New York. Somehow, in the lightning-fast pace of the series this never seemed like an issue but watching it just reminded me how much I never want to meet any woman remotely like any of them. The film’s idea of enlarging its premise for the big-screen seems to be to take the standard montage of characters looking troubled while sad music plays and makes it at least twice as long as it would be on the show. Maybe three times as long.


For those who love the movie, you don’t need me saying how the actors are. I won’t even make cracks about their age, since that’s not my issue with the thing. If Kim Cattrall were playing her character from BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA at this age, that would be fantastic. But they’re playing who they’re playing and they’re exactly what you expect. I always kinda liked Kristin Davis but for some reason she doesn’t get to have her own storyline as much as things just seem to happen to her. She does get to be the recipient of the one big scatological joke, which everyone onscreen seems to think is hilarious. Whatever. Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie Bradshaw’s new assistant, clearly isn’t an actress but the fact that she seems slightly out of place in this context makes her seem more genuine than anyone. Because of this, when she coos over an expensive purse she’s given as a present, it’s like seeing her depart the human race. The familiar recurring characters are pretty much tossed away. Willie Garson and Mario Cantone get to do less than Sulu and Chekov in the average STAR TREK movie. Candice Bergen has great billing for one small, dull scene in which she at least has a good line about Diane Arbus. The various male leads never get much of a chance to be as interesting as they were on the series. Evan Handler in particular has extremely little screen time but he does at least have one moment late in the film where he gets to be particularly menschy. It wasn’t much but there was something about how human it seemed that it just stood out to me and made me interested for about a minute. Of all the people in the movie he’s the only one I’d want to have an actual conversation with.


I know, I know. The movie wasn’t made for me. The movie was made for all those who are extremely invested in these characters to the point of tears and are ecstatic during every second of every montage of the women trying on clothes. During one Sarah Jessica Parker tries on the dress from the opening credits of the TV show and every character coos, maybe because they’ve seen the show as well. It’s kind of like when the marching band plays the Rocky Theme in ROCKY III. At one point Parker bemoans how she can’t get a 917 number for her new cell phone, commenting how 917 is “old New York”. Which makes me ponder how long it’s been since I spent any real time there. I can remember when there was the 8th Street Playhouse, Tower Records and no Starbucks on every corner. But I guess time goes by. Is this the New York that I’m missing? What I’m trying to say is that I’m fully aware that I’m not the target audience for BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF SEX AND THE CITY. But that still doesn’t prevent me from thinking that it couldn’t have been better on its own terms. I thought it would be a funny, sexy movie and the most surprising thing is that it isn’t one at all. I just trust that writing this won’t make me seem like any less of a man to anyone. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go watch the new DIRTY HARRY DVD box set.