Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (Liam Lynch, 2006, USA) May 29, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 2000s, Film reviews, Action/Adventure , 2 commentsDir. Liam Lynch; screenplay by Jack Black & Kyle Gass; starring Jack Black, Kyle Gass, Jason Reed, Ronnie James Dio, Tim Robbins, Dave Grohl, Ben Stiller
Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny is a film aimed primarily at their fans. It’s also targeted, unfortunately, at those who enjoyed This Is Spinal Tap, the Beatles in Yellow Submarine, rock opus Tommy, or Eric Idle in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. But beyond its novelty, it pales in comparison.
At times, the film seems more concerned conforming to rock and roll conventions like the psychedelic hallucinations brought on by a rampant overindulgence with acid that made Yellow Submarine so unique but ultimately completely rubbish. The Beatles movie might have been a strange affair with little merit, but at least it was honest. The Pick of Destiny wants to be the Yellow Submarine of the MTV-generation, it wants to celebrate music like Tommy, and it desperately wants to be as funny as This Is Spinal Tap, but it’s nothing more than a poorly-scripted set of sketches (Black and Gass are much more suited to their television work and comedy sketches seen on The Complete Masterworks).
Jack Black tries his level best to make it work, and has some amusing moments, but he’s not helped by Kyle Gass who reminds me of a middle-aged man at a wedding party trying to score with the twenty year old bridesmaids. Gass is a master of the guitar but he’s a terrible actor.
Apart from a beautiful transition for the opening credits when electric guitar-driven music is seamlessly dissolved into an orchestral score (this is right about the time when you’ve still got high hopes for the film), it’s incoherent, messy, and seriously lacking in laughs. I’m both a fan of Tenacious D and Jack Black, but this isn’t a celebration of rock n roll, it’s a feature-length promotion for a sub-par rock album that won’t sell very well.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Déjà Vu (Tony Scott, 2006, USA) May 22, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Uncategorized, 2000s, Film reviews, Action/Adventure, Thriller/Suspense, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Crime , 6 commentsDir. Tony Scott; screenplay by Bill Marsilii, Terry Rossio; starring Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Val Kilmer, Jim Caviezel, Adam Goldberg, Elden Henson, Bruce Greenwood
As the closing credits begin at the end of Déjà Vu, a title appears commemorating the people of New Orleans for their ‘strength and enduring spirit.’ Clearly, the film alludes to those who lost their lives, and the many that tried to save life, after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Yet, the film has more close ties to the unnatural disaster that appeared in New York on the 11th of September 2001, and that eternal question of ‘what if’. What if you could go back in time and stop those planes from taking off? The film shares the sentiments of other time travel movies such as Back To The Future, and more recently, Frequency and Timecop, but at its heart, it’s a quintessential American hero movie. It’s about facing adversity and challenging all the one holds sacred.
After a bomb explodes on a boat in New Orleans, ATF agent Doug Carlin (Washington) begins to investigate, finding some unexplainable ties between himself and one of the female victims. When he learns that she was found dead an hour before the explosion he begins to question the line of enquiry and the FBI invite him to help with their enquiries. He’s introduced to a new piece of technology that allows its viewers to see events as they occurred four and a half days prior. However, they can’t pause or rewind the footage and they can only view events four and a half days before the present day. Therefore, they have to wait until they can watch the footage of the exploding boat. Their job in the mean time is to decide where to look on the boat, and who to look for, as they only get one chance to get it right. But when Carlin realises they can influence the events in the past, stopping the tragedy before it happens becomes his prime objective.
There’s was a moment around the fifty minute mark where I felt the film was being far too complicated for its own good. Scott takes the influences of big brother, CCTV, and government spy satellites one step further from his own 1998 film Enemy Of The State. Here he depicts a way of seeing into the past and uses very specific scientific details to tell us just exactly how it works. However, the threat of total invasion of privacy is quite apparent in Enemy Of The State, the way the government watches the world is believable and based on fact. Déjà Vu bends the rules slightly, taking fact and adding quite a lot of fiction. Certainly when the film really gets going, it’s a roller-coaster of adventurism, explosions, bad guys, and car chases, but Scott never really sets his audience up for the fantasy aspect of his story. Suddenly we are asked to stretch are imagination from a hard-nosed police investigation (with the psychological angle of a cop seemingly breaking down) and a mysterious terrorist threat, to a time-travel fantasy about folding the space-time continuum, Einstein-Rosen bridges, worm holes, Wheeler Boundaries, and EM pulses. When Carlin asks, ‘What if there’s more than physics’, I’m pleading there isn’t. The problem is that it comes out of nowhere, and while it is a twist in the tale, the surprise element is extinguished my confusing science and the attempt to fuse reality with unreality. It’s fundamental storytelling – take for example, Jurassic Park which, setting aside all the marketing campaigns, began by showing us a caged beast attacking game keepers. It set-up what was to come. In Back To The Future, Robert Zemeckis filled the early part of the movie with ‘time’ metaphors, and in Frequency we are introduced to the mystical qualities of the Aurora Borealis and hearing old radio broadcasts. In Déjà Vu, Scott throws in a few red-herrings (the film’s title is a clue, as is Carlin finding a voice recording left by himself, finger prints in a building he never knowingly went to, and a message seemingly addressed to himself) but doesn’t completely set-up the big, time-traveling jolt to the system, and even then, behind all the science, he can’t hide the odd plot hole. While you could argue the plot intricacies make for a more fulfilling second viewing, and in effect, directly set-up what is to come, the film simply does not prepare the viewer for its change of direction. Essentially, I wasn’t ready to suspend my disbelief so suddenly, and it takes some time for everything to position itself back into place.
However, when the movie settles back down, and you take on-board that essentially the film is about influencing events that happened four and half days ago in order to prevent tragedies in the future, there’s enough high-octane thrills to make you forget about any problems you might have with the film’s plot logic. Indeed, while I have reservations about the middle part of the film, the first fifty minutes is intriguing, while the last half hour is thrillingly eventful. A lot of the thanks have to go to Denzel Washington who provides another powerhouse performance, and beautifully grounds the fantastical with a very raw representation of a man desperate to save life.
Déjà Vu might not be as polished as Scott’s Enemy Of The State, or as well-orchestrated as the director’s other collaboration with Washington on Man On Fire, but it’s frequently more enjoyable than Spy Game and Domino. It is at times a little over-complicated with a messy plot but it’s an entertaining action movie that never outstays its welcome.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Strange Conversation - Issue 1 - April 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Strange Conversation Back Issue Archive , add a comment
Table of Contents: Issue 1, April 2007 (Click on title to read article)
1. Classics 80s: Vol. 1 - Withnail and I
2. Remembering Black Christmas: Bob Clark 1941 - 2007
3. Oh, shallow Queen: Stephen Frears’ Oscar winning film
4. Alien in the monstrous grasp of womankind: Critiquing the work of feminist writers Creed & Mulvey
5. Love Film: Saving space for the DVD Collector
6. What’s the formula of the High-Concept movie?
7. Film Review: Tequila Sunrise (Robert Towne, 1988)
8. Film Review: Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
9. Film Review: City Of God (Fernando Meirelles/Katia Lund, 2002)
Strange Conversation’s SCENE OF THE MONTH
An American Werewolf In London (John Landis, 1981, USA)
In John Landis’ delightful comedy-horror, David Kessler’s very dead best friend returns from the grave to tell him at the next full moon he’ll turn into one hell of a hungry werewolf.
Strange Conversation’s SHOT OF THE MONTH
Say Anything (Cameron Crowe, 1989, USA)
The iconic image of Lloyd Dobler trying to win his girlfriend back by playing ‘their’ song on his Ghetto Blaster.
Jason X (James Isaac, 2001, USA) May 20, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Uncategorized, Horror, 2000s, Film reviews, Sci-fi/Fantasy , 1 comment so farDir. James Isaac; screenplay by Todd Farmer; starring Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Chuck Campbell
The beauty to watching a film you have zero expectations of is that when it delivers, in the smallest, almost insignificant way, it can be a thrilling event. Jason X might be yet another addition in the Friday The 13th franchise but its way better than some of the awful later sequels. You can tell it’s post-Scream with its self-reflexive attitudes but unlike many of the slasher films that appeared after 1997, director Isaac puts most of his effort into playful use of the character and to not taking itself too seriously. The film is silly and at times quite funny, but it doesn’t insult its audience by trying to be something that it’s not. Isaac knows his limitations and runs with what he’s got. It makes for a frequently enjoyable entry in the series.
After the federal government fail to kill Jason through various executions including hanging and electrocution, they decide, because of his ability to regenerate dead tissue (oh, that’s how he keeps coming back to life is it!) that he needs to be experimented on. However, he escapes when they try to move him to a new facility and Rowan (Lexa Doig), a government official sent to make sure he stays locked up, gets killed trying to get Jason in the cryogenic freezer. Four-hundred years later, a group of students and their teachers, find the perfectly preserved bodies of both Jason and Rowan. Taking the bodies back to their spaceship, they manage to revive Rowan, but by the time she’s told them about Jason’s destructive capabilities, it’s too late and the killer is running a deadly rampage aboard the ship.
It would be foolish of me to continue singing the praises of Jason X without clarifying that it isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a very good movie. The production design is awful, and the plot is a cobbled together mismatch of all the Alien movies. In fact, you can make up the whole story from each of the Alien films. For instance, scientists find the cryogenically preserved body of a woman who defeated an unstoppable killer (the beginning of James Cameron’s Aliens), and then bring her and the killer aboard their spaceship which docks with a larger mother ship (the set-up in Ridley Scott’s Alien). We then see the scientists and students not heeding Rowan’s warning about Jason (David Fincher’s Alien 3), before the unscrupulous Professor Lowe decides he can use Jason for his own monetary gain (a plot thread that runs through Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection). There’s also the whole idea that Jason can be used for military purposes which is a prominent idea that features in all the Alien movies, and when Jason does start to reek havoc onboard the spaceship we see a group of gun-toting mercenaries trying to bring him down (seen also in Jeunet’s film, as well as Cameron’s first sequel).
Yet, the film works because it’s a crazy confectionary of outlandish ideas hinged on a tried and trusted plot, and generic conventions. As a slasher film it’s a rather turgid and hardly frightening experience, but the playful use of Jason as an entity certainly makes it a worthwhile viewing for the post-Scream generation. For fans of the original film, it rather makes a mockery of the heritage with Jason, just like Freddy Krueger and Micheal Myers, becoming a comic freak show that a paying public can throw things at. But, it’s an enjoyable mishmash of teen slasher cliché and science-fiction intrigue. The whole last twenty minutes has to be seen to be believed.
Rating: 2 our of 5
The Friday the 13th Series so far:
Friday The 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980, USA) - The raw and bloody original was a lot less influential than people think. It was massively inspired by John Carpenter’s Halloween and not nearly as good. Rating: 3 out of 5
Friday The 13th - Part II (Steve Miner, 1981, USA) - The second film is the first where Jason actually is the killer. It’s more enjoyable than the original film but far too similar. Rating: 2 out of 5
Friday The 13th - Part III (Steve Miner, 1982, USA) - It’s exactly the same film as the previous two, with the unfortunate bonus of 3-D. Rating: 2 out of 5
Friday The 13th - The Final Chapter (Part IV) (Joseph Zito, 1984, USA) - The film stars a young Corey Feldman who has to come to his older sister’s aid when Jason takes a fancy to her. This is silly fun and follows a very similar path to the films that proceeded it. However, it’s a better film than Part III and the most enjoyable of the sequels. Rating: 3 out of 5
Friday The 13th - A New Beginning (Part V) (Danny Steinmann, 1985, USA) - The best sequel is followed by the worst. A plotless mess and the worst Jason Voorhees film in the franchise. The fifth film tries to reignite the series after Jason is seemingly killed for good, but it fails to do a good job, simply stringing together bloody deaths for the sake of showing off the latest prosthetic and make-up effects. Waste of time. Rating: 1 out of 5
Jason Lives: Friday The 13th Part IV (Tom McLoughlin, 1986, USA) - A coherent plot helps Part IV be one of the better sequels. Rating: 3 out of 5
Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (John Buechler, 1988, USA) - A nice premise that sees a sort of Carrie V Jason battle is sadly under-developed. However, it makes for some fun sequences and a little inventiveness to what had, by this time, become a rather dull retread of the same plot line. Rating: 2 out of 5
Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Rob Heddon, 1989, USA) - A terrible mess that lacks any sort of plot. There’s some nice special-effects towards the end but you’d have fallen asleep by the time you get to them. Rating: 1 out of 5
Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (Adam Marcus, 1993, USA) - Jason gets killed at the beginning which is about the only decent bit of the movie. Rating: 1 out of 5
Freddy Versus Jason (Ronny Yu, 2003, USA) - A gimmicky piece of rubbish seeing Freddy Krueger battling Jason Voorhees. On paper it seems like a crowd-pleaser but it’s bad filmmaking 101, and isn’t as fun as Jason X. Rating: 1 out of 5
Doom (Andrzej Bartkowiak, 2005, USA) May 18, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Uncategorized, Horror, 2000s, Film reviews, Action/Adventure, Sci-fi/Fantasy , 6 commentsDir. Andrzej Bartkowiak; screenplay by Dave Callahan & Wesley Strick; starring The Rock, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Ben Daniels
In one of the great self-reflexive moments that Kevin Smith does so well, Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, ‘you gotta do a safe picture, then you can do an art picture. But then sometimes you gotta do the paycheck picture because your friend says you owe him.’ It’s a great little moment in a great little movie, and fittingly, describes the sentiments of Rosamund Pike who turns up in Doom surely because she either has bills to pay or she owes a friend. The Libertine, Pride And Prejudice, and the Devil You Know actress surely knew what a mess she was getting herself into when she read Callahan and Strick’s script. I’ll just backtrack for a second – did I just say it took two people to write this awful film – I think I did.
Essentially, Doom is like a high-budget TV movie with nothing resembling conflict, characterisation, or originality. Any videogame conversion to the big-screen can be forgiven for a lack of original material but the film struggles to find any conflict within its rocket-scientist mumbo-jumbo and over-complicated plotting. For a film that concerns a group of combat marines going into battle (after a distant planet issues a distress call), you’d expect a certain amount of tension, but director Bartkowiak seems either unable or unwilling. There’s a silly moment when The Rock tells his marines it’s ‘game time’ as they exit a helicopter to go into a building. The marines check the area for danger as an elevator opens with the audience half expecting something nasty to appear. Alas, it doesn’t and the men enter the elevator. Danger must surely be close? Not exactly, as the marines find their floor, we learn they’ve entered a building that acts, much like an airport, and transports them to the planet that needs their assistance. Essentially, they’re at a futuristic airport. So, we wonder, why all the gun-ready, macho-posturing as they first got into the elevator, because there was no danger whatsoever. Retrospectively, it’s laughable, as you could see the Wayans brothers or the Zucker’s using such a gag as parody, not serious, supposedly tension-building drama. In fact, I countered at least three false starts for The Rock and his gang of idiots before they face any real danger. By then, I’d switched off and started self-palm reading, something that was difficult because it was far too dark to do it properly, and secondly, I have absolutely no idea how to palm read.
Fundamentally, Doom is a complete failure because it doesn’t do the one thing it should. That is, to offer exciting and dramatic action, underscored by a relevant and overpowering threat. You think about the films it wants to be - Aliens and Predator - and they both had what was required in abundance. In Aliens, even before the marines face any direct threat, tension is created because they go to a planet they and the audience know could be populated by evil, unstoppable monsters. The fact that when they initially get there, everyone on the planet has disappeared, heightens this level of suspense (what happened? Why? Where are all the people?). The soldiers are faced with desolate corridors, artificial lighting beginning to fade, and the obvious signs of struggle, a last stand. Likewise, in Predator, when the soldiers find another slain group of marines, they begin to question what exactly they are up against. Can they defeat it, where another group of soldiers failed? Both these scenes appear well before any proper combat and yet the audience is left excited in anticipation. Doom is far too confused in its build-up, pedestrian-paced, and makes the cardinal sin of paying homage to films far better than itself.
Perhaps, the film’s main problem is Bartkowiak, a cinematographer-turned-director, whose credits at the helm include Romeo Must Die and the Steven Seagal film Exit Wounds. He paints Doom in stylish blacks and greys, with futuristic colour flourishes, and doesn’t allow himself to show too much of the excellent production design, wisely keeping it in shadow. Yet, his control of off-screen space is less refined. He struggles to focus our attention as the messy plot that features caricature, paper-thin characters has them scattering all over the place. Bartkowiak doesn’t know whether to stick or twist, and we’re left with a languid pace that meanders on a very confused course. He draws too much on what other filmmakers have done before, and can’t overcome the clichéd script with its uninventive plot and awful dialogue. The film is also devoid of humour, something that has certainly helped other videogame and especially comic book adaptations.
Maybe I went into the film with higher expectations than I should have had. I didn’t expect an especially great action film, but I did expect a sense of adventure. When Bartkowiak goes to Doom-vision (filming the shot in much the same way as the game is played in first person perspective) I felt it was inspired. At the very least it celebrated the film’s roots, and gave the videogame fans something intrinsic to enjoy. It was also a very good piece of filmmaking (but arrives far too late in the movie), probably attributed to Bartkowiak’s cinematographic background, as he uses fast-paced edits and a claustrophobic mise-en-scene to place the audience directly into the action with danger all around. Yet, unfortunately, it’s one bright spot in a great expanse of humourless, tensionless black. Doom is uninspired, big-budget Hollywood. Where have we heard that before?
Rating: 1 out of 5
Into The Psyche of a Broken Man…revisiting John Landis’ Into The Night May 16, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 1980s, Desert Island Films, Drama, After Hours at Cafe 80s, Film reviews, Action/Adventure, Crime , 7 commentsInto The Night (John Landis, 1985, USA)
Dir. John Landis; screenplay by Ron Koslow; starring Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dan Aykroyd, John Landis, Bruce McGill, David Bowie, Richard Farnsworth, Clu Gulager
John Landis might be remembered for Trading Places, Blues Brothers, and An American Werewolf In London. He might also be remembered by his detractors for the unfortunate incidences that occurred during the filming of The Twilight Zone, but for me, his career should almost be defined by his 1985 masterpiece Into The Night.
The film, starring Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer, is a little seen gem (not unlike his vampire flick Innocent Blood) that sheds the genre trappings of say An American Werewolf and the iconic prominence of stars and celebrity in, for example, Trading Places, Blues Brothers, or Coming To America. It’s a film that focuses on character, very much inspired by its time, with Landis not having to worry about special-effects (ala man changing into werewolf) or eccentric spectacle (look no further than The Blues Brothers or Animal House). It’s Landis’ most assured piece of filmmaking, and debatably, his greatest ever achievement.
The film is also prominent because it was the first Landis made after the tragedy of 1982 when Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were killed when a helicopter stunt went wrong. Landis and other production crew were initially blamed and charged with manslaughter. Many people still hold Landis responsible for the deaths but the fact remains that after a long trial, Landis and the other crew members were acquitted in a court of law. The director was clearly deeply affected by the terrible deaths – more than many give him credit for – and this can be seen in Into The Night. His vision is pessimistic and bleak. He shows a disregard for commercialism and a materialistic world, and uses Los Angeles (the most fictionally abused city by American cinema, where dreams are made and broken) as his backdrop. His main character is confused, alone, miserable. He can’t sleep, almost an indication he has to spend more waking moments in his misery than those who can sleep. The film is very a much an investigation into what happens when conventional life loses its boundaries and suddenly a cavernous space opens up with infinite possibility. It’s about a frightening reality that isn’t governed by pop-culture, television adverts, or consumerism. Landis depicts a world where we have to make choices – not always the right ones – but choices that aren’t necessarily straight-forward. Ed, the main character, learns what he wanted by the end of the movie but can’t fathom what it is at the beginning. The choice, therefore, isn’t always in front of us, and we might never know what it really is, but it exists.
Retrospectively, it is wonderful how director John Landis has actor Jeff Goldblum working in a plain office doing a job that needs no other distinction than appearing awfully boring, and probably requiring its workers to turn-up nine to five, five days a week. His job description is not required, the only thing worth noting the fact it has something to do with the machination of technology. It’s an idea that extends to his life in that he is so bored with the everyday machination of his being (like in the board meeting when his turn to speak interrupts the flow because he isn’t doing his work properly), he’s inadvertently trying to break down the boundaries of the familiar conventions that bind him. It’s almost as if he wants to breakout but he can’t bring himself to do it - a fear of the unknown, of what isn’t conventionally part of his life - preventing his desperation to break free. The fact he has insomnia signals that inadvertent rebellion. Coming home one day to hear his wife screaming in orgasmic pleasure with an anonymous stranger triggers his pursuit of change – his pursuit for adventure.
Into The Night shares some similarity to Scorsese’s After Hours - two films that flirt with the idea of ‘ordinary’ thirty-something men working in jobs that appear to trap them, both looking for the catalyst that opens new territory and new ideas. They share the femme fatale and both are primarily set at night, but these films are not about a lewd concourse between a man and a woman, they’re about musing about life outside of one’s own and finding adventure when the walls of the American dream have broken down.
Into The Night begins with a plane landing, followed by shots of corporate Americana before gently moving towards a quiet suburb, entering the bedroom of a house owned by Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum). He sits in bed, wide awake, next to his sleeping wife. Ed has insomnia. He tells his friend Herb (Dan Aykroyd) who recommends he uses it to his advantage and should take the late flight to Las Vegas. He’s unsure at first but when he comes home to find his wife having an affair, he heads to the airport. Parking the car, Ed takes a moment to survey his predicament, but his attention is quickly removed to a distraught young woman who gets in the car and begs him to drive away. Four armed men chase the vehicle out of the parking lot but Ed is able to escape. The girl tells him her name is Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer), and that she doesn’t know why the SAVAK (Iranian secret police) are following her, but they murdered her friend as they got off the plane. Ed probes her for information that she isn’t willing to provide, she just asks him to take her home. However, Ed is about to get more than he bargained for as an already long night begins to throw up more mystery, more murder, and a lot more intrigue, as he inadvertently becomes another player in a dangerous cat and mouse adventure, set against the backdrop of a cold Los Angeles night.
Essentially, Into The Night is about superficiality, in that life is based on false pretences. If we live our lives by pre-conditions what will happen if we are faced with a series of unconditional, uncertain avenues? Ed Okin is told that Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) has nothing of her own, that she has only what is given or what she takes. This is mirrored in him because his own life is simply based on what has been given to him such as the conventions of getting married, having a steady job, a car and a house – all things that are supposed to equate to happiness (in both the conventional sense of the word, and the way such life choices are viewed by common American values) but there’s something distinctly missing in his life. He’s accepted all these things because he knows of no other way but if they are supposed to make you happy, then why isn’t he? Director Landis continually abuses our senses with the superficial world that surrounds us – Diana is a model for instance, and Ed examines the stylised photos at her apartment. Her brother idolises Elvis and tries to live like the man himself, driving around in a car that proclaims ‘The King Lives’. Indeed, when Ed and Diana visit a film set in search of her friend, it is the artificial props that cause Ed a problem as he leans against a false wall and falls through it, and sits on a papier-mâché rock crumpling it to a pulp. When he tries to make a call from a payphone two prop engineers look at him questioningly as they pick up the prop and take the phone from his ear.
It’s interesting that the men that chase Ed and Diana around the city destroy every place they visit looking for clues to their whereabouts, as they put to the scrap heap the very physical embodiments of the superficiality that bind us. They break a film director’s awards, smash televisions, vinyl records and stereos. In essence, Landis reverses the narrative psychology of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ character roles, in that what the corrupt, and potentially evil SAVAK are doing is the very thing Ed needs to save himself. The SAVAK agents are not content with what is given to them, they are chasing the riches. When Ed and Diana meet, it’s at the airport and Diana asks Ed why he is there. He tells her that his life isn’t working out somehow, but Diana wonders why he is drawn to the airport. He has no answer, but it seems to lead to the idea that he inadvertently tries to chase the riches, like his insomnia being an inadvertent rebellion to life’s constraints. The airport signifies a place of relatively infinite possibilities with its key to the world – other countries, other cultures, other people. Finally, when cornered by the Iranian secret police and questioned Ed starts to fictionalise his reason for being caught up in the situation – ‘I’m on her majesty’s secret service, we’ve got the place surrounded’. Shrugging he says, ‘I’m really from immigration, we thought you had some illegal aliens working around here.’ Ed begins to breakdown the superficiality that binds him, embracing it, consciously fictionalising his predicament into a fantasy world that holds no such boundaries, conventions or constraints.
Landis paints Ed’s adventure much like a dream, Goldblum’s forlorn facial expression indicating he can’t remember the last time he slept. He allows bits of information to come through but Landis captivates the viewer by a languid narrative that is part road-movie, part mystery, which seems at times as rebellious to convention as Ed wants to be. Landis takes the film on quite unique tangents, his unhurried pace a sign of Ed’s tired insomniac. In between quips about American consumerism, he keeps Ed and the audience in the dark, much like the night that surrounds them, and through following a rather arbitrary plot direction Landis is able to instill the indistinctive, incomprehension of a nightmare that bares no outcome. Indeed, the film could be seen as Ed’s dream played-out in reality, though it takes the form of a nightmare because that is how he sees his life. It’s ironic then, that to learn from a nightmare you have to stay awake all the way through it, but that again is another example of the film’s rebellion of constraints that bind society.
Whether Into The Night is an interpretation of Ed’s dream or reality itself, it’s quite unforgiving in its bleak outlook. Landis depicts a world of corrupt excess and pessimism rooted in big business capitalism that permeates from characters that are seemingly miserable in their riches, or chasing such riches within the confines of violent, greed-ridden crime. The SAVAK want Diana’s diamonds and are willing to kill anyone that gets in their way, while a mysterious French entrepreneur with a British henchman also wants to get their hands on the loot (Landis using their very different nationalities to suggest that the problem is hardly local, perhaps a rather haphazard criticism of globalisation), all manoeuvring in the criminal underworld. Yet the ones that have riches fair no better as Diana’s ex-sugar Daddy is a dying cripple who hates his wife, and whose many expensive cars lay soullessly in an oversized driveway. Similarly, a Hollywood producer is more dismayed at his film awards being smashed than the well-being of his trophy-girlfriend. When the police ask he claims he doesn’t know what happened to her even though her dead body lays a hundred yards away on the beach, his preoccupations going no further than his broken living room. Landis provides a quite horrid sense of life based on commercialised excess to the point of it being an epidemic that breeds through a weakened, consumerist society. This is beautifully depicted in Diana’s brother whose fascinated, idolisation of Elvis Presley has turned him into a social misfit who struggles to even afford a downtrodden, one bedroom apartment. In a sense, it isn’t apparent what Ed really wants, but he doesn’t know himself, because his life has become alien to him. When a gun is held against Diana’s head and he’s facing the possibility of his own death, he says: ‘Let me ask you something, maybe you can help me. What’s wrong with my life? Why is my wife sleeping with someone else? Why can’t I sleep?’. This is a haunting reminder that the answers are a little hard to come by when the reassuring conventions that govern one’s life have broken and you’re looking beyond the profit-margins and collector’s items, the adverts for cheap dinners and the fast cars that guarantee the trophy-blonde.
Into The Night has been criticised for being overly self-referential and it would be unwise to overlook Landis’ constant use of cameos in the form of ‘director’ friends that show-up constantly in the movie (from Lawrence Kasdan, David Cronenberg and Landis himself, to Amy Heckerling, Jonathan Lynn, Paul Mazursky, and Don Siegel, plus many more), and his homage to one of the first films that could be termed post-modern - Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein - which is shown within the film. In many ways, Into The Night acknowledges itself as an entity apart from the ‘real’ world, much like the nineties vogue kick-started by Wes Craven with New Nightmare and continued through Scream and its sequels. Here were movies where the characters acknowledged their existence within a film, their lives governed by conventions set out in fictionalised accounts within previous films. It’s certainly an idea that examples Landis’ love of movies, but also shows how popular culture governs cultural identity as reality and fiction blur, so that they are hardly separate entities at all. Taken at face value, this is as superficial as the phony-reality the film criticises, but at its root it’s a post-modern fear of mass cultural identity disappearing into itself, so that Ed’s question of ‘what’s wrong with my life’ becomes the rather more complex ‘what is life itself?’
Landis has certainly concocted an enjoyable journey into the enclosed, urban expanse of inner-city Los Angeles - an ‘island’ surrounded by the build-up of its own excesses. Ed’s adventure is frequently amusing, largely through Goldblum’s laconic, deadpan performance but Landis juxtaposes the humour (the SAVAK’s pursuit painted in cartoon-like styling as if they are bumbling bad guys following a treasure map) with reasonably graphic violence (when a girl is drowned, and when David Bowie’s psychotic Englishman kills some people who offered to help Diana). The film takes no half-measures right down to a genuine fear of the upper classes, and a lack of confidence in an evidently corrupt police force. Yet the film’s sense of ambiguity (both in Ed’s character whose core is born out of an existentialism that is suggested by the world that surrounds him, and in the mystery of Diana’s femme-fatale) is what holds everything together. The film’s episodic nature is far more fulfilling than the term might suggest, each segment offering another clue to Ed’s predicament and his world, rather than a narrative cog for the plot to move forward. Landis is far more concerned with Ed’s life than Diana’s survival, that everything that happens is simply a clue to where ‘X’ marks the spot, not in terms of hidden treasure but in Ed himself. For Ed, the ‘gold’ is the answer to his question ‘what’s wrong with my life’, and for Landis, it is the utterly brilliant premise for us to find out. This is a true, underrated, eighties classic.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Click HERE for further information on Into The Night
A Cock and Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom, UK, 2005) May 12, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 2000s, Drama, Film reviews , add a commentDir. Michael Winterbottom; screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce; starring Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Dylan Moran, Jeremy Northam, David Walliams, Gillian Anderson, Kelly MacDonald
Said to be an un-filmable novel (and probably rightly so), approaching the movie adaptation of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy you’d be forgiven in wondering just how the hell director Michael Winterbottom pulled it off. Well, he didn’t, exactly. It isn’t that the film doesn’t look at both the ‘life’ and the ‘opinions’ of Laurence Sterne’s titular character, it’s more that it rolls it all up into a bite size bundle of non-linear narrative, film within a film within a film inventiveness, and wry satirical asides which celebrate the originality, humour and post-modern techniques of the original literature. So how do you adapt a selection of books that cannot be cinematised – you don’t. You use the books as inspiration for a film that is as unique, as weird, and as funny for a 21st century audience as the books were to18th century readers.
You’ve got to praise Michael Winterbottom if only for his willingness to take chances. You’ve also got to thank him for giving the British film industry an injection of vitality, always producing edgy films that flirt between mainstream and niche, art house cinema. In many ways, he’s a modern day auteur, one who works within his own constraints, unhindered by Hollywood sensibilities. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work (9 Songs), often it does (24 Hour Party People, Road To Guantanomo), but rarely is Winterbottom’s dark, cynical outlook portrayed without style and intelligence.
For A Cock and Bull Story the director takes Tristram Shandy’s difficulty in finding meaning in his life, or ability to articulate his feelings in a linear form, and weaves them round Steve Coogan’s attempts to portray the character on film. This is all going on while Coogan has to deal with his off-screen relationship issues and the birth of his first child. The film seemingly taps into the rampant market of reality television, providing its audience with a behind-the-scenes look at art imitating life imitating art, with the awkward, surreal comedy of Charlie Kaufmann. Indeed, the film isn’t a far cry from Kaufmann’s own Adapation - a film he wrote for director Spike Jonze about the writer’s struggles to adapt Susan Orleans’ The Orchid Thief.
Coogan’s portrayal of Shandy is intermittently interspersed throughout the movie as he both plays the character and acts as narrator. Fans of the books the film is inspired by shouldn’t see the movie expecting a glorious, Peter Jackson-telling of an age-old story. Indeed, there isn’t much of the page that reaches the screen. This becomes a nicely implemented sub-plot with the characters squabbling about what should and should not be in the movie. But it’s Winterbottom’s use of the literature to mirror that of a modern story, where Coogan’s fictional representation of himself struggles to come to terms with the birth of his baby, and can’t find time for his ‘girlfriend’ (not his wife as he likes to remind people), that is the main draw. There’s an absurd but brilliant moment when Coogan, playing Shandy, is entombed in a freestanding womb as the other characters mock him. It both works as a representation of Shandy’s obsession with his own birth and insecurities, with Coogan’s feeling of entrapment as an actor, a father, and a public figure.
But the greatest attribute of the film is its two leads. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are superb. Friends in real life, the two British actors play off each other with a comic ease that cannot be manufactured. Brydon’s brilliant impression of Coogan’s television character Alan Partridge is one of the film’s funniest moments, showcasing in all its glory the self-reflexive attributes of the movie. In many ways, it’s this self-reflexive, knowingly-cynical, satire that makes the film so appealing. The movie opens with Brydon and Coogan playing themselves in the make-up room as Brydon muses over the colour of his teeth. Later, Coogan complains about the size of heal on his shoes, and while wearing a rather bent latex nose, asks his girlfriend if she would have had a baby with him if he looked like this in real life. The glorious self-mocking comedy is a staple of both Brydon and Coogan’s comic brand, totally lacking in pretension, and works so well in much of their improvised scenes within the movie as well as underlying the difficulty in bringing such literature to the big screen. In a sense, their self-mocking behaviour is indicative of the film’s irresistible approach to adapting the books – if you can’t do them justice, make fun of your failed attempts in doing so. It’s unique, it’s funny, and it’s rather charming.
If anything the film can be too clever for its own good. The non-linear narration of Shandy’s story disjoints the linear ‘making-of’ sections which takes something away from the overall effect. Indeed, Winterbottom’s approach might be too left-field for those wanting a serious adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s work. However, it isn’t as if the director doesn’t take the source material seriously, because the film’s inspired humour and style are clearly influenced by Sterne’s wayward thinking. Further, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the component parts of the movie add up to a whole that is as weird and interesting as Tristram Shandy himself, and rather than mocking the literature, mocks the filmmakers attempts to adapt it for the big screen. Evidently, as the film is as digressive as the novel, what can only be described as a loose cinematic version of ‘The Life and Opinions’, is in fact, a celebration of the books, the forward-thinking technique, and of Sterne himself.
In many ways, Winterbottom couldn’t have made a better stab at it. He’s not only made a very competent movie that is both funny and endearing, he’s made a story for a new audience. Perhaps that oft-used word ‘adaptation’ should really be ‘adaptability’. A Cock and Bull Story is adaptable for an audience pruned on high-concept Hollywood exports. In taking care of that unfortunate problem he’s made sure Sterne’s inventive 18th Century writing isn’t an excluded niche that doesn’t fit the mainstream. That, for me, is the film’s lasting and most important attribute.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Top 10 Horror Films of the 1980s May 7, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, Top 10s, Artfully Deranged, Genre, The Film Industry, Audience , 52 commentsWhere there is no imagination there is no horror.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I vaguely remember my introduction to the horror film. My cousin was visiting, the curtains had been drawn on a sunny afternoon, and John Landis’ An American Werewolf In London had been placed in the VCR. I was seven years old. I recollect that evening, and for many nights consequently, I hardly slept. There was something under my bed, and there was even something in the closet, I knew it too well. Of course, it was easy to see since I’d cry bloody Mary if anyone tried to turn my light off. Could I keep my eyes open? It was becoming more difficult, all I could see were those green hills shrouded in the black cloak of night, and the warning: ‘Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors,’ delivered in that Yorkshire twang. Bryan Glover’s short, controlled outburst – probably his unusual form of goodbye – ‘Beware the moon, lads.’ Then our hero David and best friend Jack are stranded. They’ve wandered off the path, there are no lights around, no one to help. They hear a sound, distant at first but growing louder. Could it be a dog, no, it sounds much bigger. Then the screams, the tearing of flesh, the quick cuts and extreme close-ups; we see a gun fire, all goes silent, and the darkness pervades.
I grew up as part of the video generation. Cinema was changing again – attendances were down and people were far happier watching videos or catching re-runs on television than they were venturing from the comfort of their own home. By the early 1990s, eighties babies were beginning to enjoy cinema beyond family movies, cartoons and the Wizard of Oz. In Britain, this audience - post-1984 Video Recordings Act - wanted to find their niche and what better place to start than the forsaken shelves of the video nasty. Bootleg, grainy copies of The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tormented young minds, while the horror film cemented its place firmly in cult circles. This fervent popularity from both adults and teenagers for the horror film encouraged the industry (especially Hollywood) to produce some wonderfully surreal, engaging and stylish pieces of cinema. We saw the rampant emergence of the ‘Slasher’ movie from Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham, gore and special-effects from Tom Savini, the body horror of David Cronenberg, the dreams and nightmares of Clive Barker, the cross genre comedy-horror from John Landis, Tom Holland, and Dan O’Bannon. There was franchised sequels, villains-as-heroes, gothic homage, iconic theme music, lunch boxes, action figures and other cross-promotion. Indeed, the horror film was as much derided as it was loved. But the eighties produced some of the greatest examples of the genre following, and certainly inspired by, the fears and trend-setting new traditions of the new-age horror from the seventies.
The genre has failed for years to get recognition from a critical standpoint. Much of the recognition it did receive was negative – throughout the 1930s and 1940s, horror movies were thought to be harmful to society and many local authorities banned films they deemed unsuitable. During the 1950s, Hammer Studios used negative press and liberal scare tactics to promote their films, and it was as much the backlash from politicians and critics that helped cultivate underground following for the genre. However, by the late 1960s, there was a trend beginning in France that saw critics warming to the genre, and by the time Carlos Clarens and Ivan Butler’s books were released, there was a new feeling that looked at the films as serious art forms. Instead of lambasting horror movies as detrimental, even dangerous, to society, writers were beginning to look at the long literary traditions that had first inspired these films. And they also investigated the history and transformation of the genre since the first examples were seen in such German expressionism as Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. By the 1970s every critic who wanted a name for themselves had written about the horror movie, whether their point of view was positive, negative, or indifferent. Most importantly, horror had become a mainstream commodity with the obvious example being Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. It isn’t surprising that the seventies produced the best and most influential films of the genre (The Exorcist, Halloween, The Wicker Man, Dawn Of The Dead), with audiences, the art form, and the industry all benefiting from this budding type of film.
Yet, the eighties was a period not far behind the previous decade in terms of quality output. Certainly, the genre was much more diverse with self-reference, parody, and hybrids such as Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliant Near Dark, showing what could be done. On top of that you had some lovely original pieces of cinema with such films as Dan O’Bannon’s special-effects homage to Romero The Return of the Living Dead, Joel Schumacher’s coming-of-age vampire flick The Lost Boys, and beyond Hollywood with the Dutch/French production The Vanishing, and stylistic Italian director Dario Argento’s Tenebre and Inferno. Indeed, the vibrancy for the genre in the 1980s came from films which embraced and celebrated horror. Prime examples would be the self-referential Fright Night, gore-fest The Evil Dead, Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, and Brian De Palma’s Hitchcock-inspired Dressed To Kill. It has been said the eighties was, much like very early film, the cinema of attractions. It pushed the boundaries of the medium to new frontiers, backed by Reagan’s forward-thinking plans. Director’s thought visually, and nothing held their creative minds back. It was the period where dreams and nightmares were displayed on screen more realistically than had ever been seen. In effect, there appeared no better time for horror (much like science-fiction during the same period) – with its otherworldly themes – to prosper on a grand scale. In a sense you’ve got to thank George Lucas because with Star Wars he reintroduced audiences to escapism, which had somewhat been lost during the dominance of social-issue and character studies of the seventies.
The genre, which would continue to diversify into the nineties (postmodernism in A New Nightmare in 1994, which led to Scream and the revitalisation of the Slasher film; and the digital video revolution and use of new media with Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s masterful manipulation of the audience with The Blair Witch Project), still retained a very distinct set of conventions that primarily challenged normality and distanced the real from the unreal. Reading many different theorists views about how the horror film works makes for wide reaching, and often, very politically motivated ideologies, but it’s interesting nonetheless. There’s a school that believes American horror is dominated by the struggles created by consumerism, patriarchal social relations, and family struggle, and that the location of the horror is in the home and our way of life. Others believe the monsters prevalent in horror films represent institutional fears, like the affect the church, government, or the police can have on breaking or changing familial tradition, while some writers look at the way the audience is manipulated through the aesthetics of the films by the way they play on the insecurities that defy rational explanation. There are also people such as Stephen Neale who believe the genre satisfies a fetish for violence and terror that is inherited by the society and cultural structure we live in, while feminist theorists argue the genre is dominated by misogyny and the ‘female’ as victim.
Whether you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing, the fact remains that the horror film is, and has been, a very popular genre for audiences. Despite its early critical backlash, the genre has been important as far back as the 1930s when Universal produced Dracula and Frankenstein amongst others, which were so well received by audiences, it enabled the company to become a major Hollywood studio. In the 1940s RKO created many films including Cat People, which pioneered a style which would be imitated by filmmakers for years to come. Instead of showing the monster, filmmakers used off-screen space, sound, lighting and deep shadows, character reaction, and the ambiguity of the audience’s imagination to produce stylish and emotionally impacting movies. Independent production prospered in the 1960s with the most influential film being George A. Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead, which led to a new respectability with Roman Polanski’s mesmerising Rosemary’s Baby, and the best film the genre ever created, William Friedkin’s terrifying The Exorcist.
For me, the best decade for horror was the 1980s and that’s why I present my top 10. Below, you’ll also find my Top five favourite moments:
10. Fright Night (Tom Holland, 1985, USA)
‘’Apparently your generation doesn’t want to see vampire killers anymore, nor vampires either. All they want to see slashers running around in ski masks, hacking up young virgins.'’
Top 10, why?: Tom Holland’s superb self-referential horror-comedy is both delightfully funny and darkly sadistic, wryly telling the story of a teenager who knows a Vampire has moved in next door but no one believes him. A standout performance from Roddy McDowell is the centre point of a film that simultaneously celebrates and parodies the genre. This unique film inspired a lot of the post-modern sentiment later seen in the 1990s.
Critic quote: ‘…it’s hard to get into this movie and not have a little fun…’ (Nadd Yapp)
External review: Absolute Horror
9. Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987, UK)
‘’We will tear your soul apart'’
Top 10, why?: The film embodies the idea of nightmares displayed on screen as Clive Barker creates a terrifying vision of hell on earth.
Critic Quote: ‘I have seen the future of the horror genre, and his name is Clive Barker.’ (Stephen King)
External Reviews: British Horror Films, Blog of the Rotting Dead
8. The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988, Holland)
‘’The only way to tell you, is to make you share the exact same experience'’
Top 10, why?: Sluizer’s film is about pacing and atmosphere. He plays with audience expectation (even telling us who the killer is half way through) and concludes the film with one of the best and most devastating conclusions to any horror film ever made.
Critic Quote: Sounds like an overworked premise for Alfred Hitchcock (The Lady Vanishes), Roman Polanski (Frantic), or Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown), but The Vanishing quickly veers into new and intriguing territories. (Matthew Kennedy)
External reviews: Bright Lights Film Journal, Combustible Celluloid
7. The Return Of The Living Dead (Dan O’Bannon, 1985, USA)
‘’Did you see that movie, “Night of the Living Dead”?'’
Top 10, why?: Dan O’Bannon’s homage to Romero is fun, pacy and full of great production design and prosthetic effects. The film was essentially fighting against Sam Raimi’s excellent sequel to The Evil Dead, but I decided to go with O’Bannon’s effort because it’s a more polished affair with several good performances.
Critic Quote: ‘It’s kind of a sensation-machine, made out of the usual ingredients, and the real question is whether it’s done with style. It is.’ (Roger Ebert)
External Reviews: Dr. Gore, Apollo Movie Guide, Club IGN
6. The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986, USA)
‘’What am I working on? Uhh… I’m working on something that will change the world, and human life as we know it.'’
Top 10, why?: Anchored by a brilliant performance from Jeff Goldblum, director David Cronenberg continues his investigation into the renowned body-horror, as Goldbum’s Seth Brundle attempts metamorphosis but it all goes wrong when a house fly gets caught up in the machine. As Brundle struggles to find a cure to his problem, he falls deeper in love with Geena Davis’ concerned Veronica. When he learns that his body structure is becoming that of a fly, the fruits of his new powers soon challenge his own sanity, and his own survival. The Fly is one of several great horror films made in the eighties by Cronenberg but it stands out because it his most accessible, and probably most accomplished piece of work.
Critic Quote: ‘It’s hard to watch; not only because it takes a strong stomach to cope with the necessarily gruesome special effects but because the emotions depicted are so honest and direct that they eventually becomes overwhelming.’ (Mike Sutton)
External Reviews: Reel.com
5. Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987, USA)
‘’We keep odd hours…'’
Top 10, why?: Near Dark has always fascinated me because it’s a horror film that only really works within the constraints of the genre based on the audiences expectation and understanding of the gothic, and of past vampire films. It’s almost a western love story, with the premise setting the scene for two star-crossed lovers from distinct families that cannot mix. It’s the Romeo and Juliet of the vampire world. The film features half the main cast from James Cameron’s Aliens, with Lance Henrikson, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein all working together again, and Paxton and Henrikson are superb in their roles as rogue bloodsuckers. This small-budget film was a given an awful marketing campaign that saw it fail at the box office, and also saw Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys become the remembered vampire film of 1987. However, Bigelow’s beautifully paced tale is a fantastic film because it was the most unique horror movie of the 1980s, and looked at the gothic story from a completely different point of view than had been seen before.
Critic Quote: ‘Near Dark is the best vampire movie you’ve never heard of…’ (Rod Armstrong)
External Reviews: My full review, Horror Movies.com, Alex Jackson, My New Plaid Pants (for an interesting take on the film), Grave Robber
4. A Nightmare On Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984, USA)
‘’Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.'’
Top 10, why?: It says a lot that this is the only teen slasher film to make the top ten. Wes Craven’s excellent film, much like Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, embodies the idea of a nightmare on screen. It’s also backed by a brilliant premise that has a killer who can only hurt you while you sleep. Fantastic!
Critic Quote: ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street is tailor made for those who like their gore leavened with thought-provoking ideas - something that is a rarity in this genre.’ (James Berardinelli)
External Reviews: Alex Jackson
3. An American Werewolf In London (John Landis, 1981, USA)
‘’A naked American man stole my balloons'’
Top 10, why?: John Landis’ 1981 classic was an easy choice for a top ten spot because it’s one of my all time favourite films. It’s also a horror film that Roger Ebert absolutely hates, which means it has to be one of the best films ever made. Not that I’m trying to have a dig at the renowned critic (I’ve used one of his quotes for Return Of The Living Dead), but I do believe he simply doesn’t get Landis’ film. He seems to believe horror and comedy have lived seamlessly for years, but not like this they haven’t. An American Werewolf In London is equally funny and frightening, and Landis is one of only a few directors to actually make it work. Ebert, while celebrating special-effects maestro Rick Baker’s work on the film, merely disassociates that quality for his overall appreciation of the film. Baker’s werewolf transformation was not only one of the most realistic special-effects ever to be put to celluloid at the time, but it was underpinned by Landis’ superb use of music (the brilliant irony of classic Blue Moon). It works so perfectly because it flirts between a line that doesn’t tell the audience to laugh or cry, and by breaking convention, the audience is left not knowing what might happen next. The sequence makes for the best werewolf transformation ever put on screen, and is one of the primary reasons the film has such a cult following and is regarded by horror fans as one of the best examples of the genre ever made.
Critic Quote: ‘…in the summer of 1981 came John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, which has, in many ways, set the standard for the modern werewolf movie.’ (James Birardinelli)
External Reviews: DVD Times, Jeffrey Wachs, Chrissy Deberyshire, Darth Jamyz
2. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982, USA)
‘’I dunno what the hell’s in there, but it’s weird and pissed off, whatever it is.'’
Top 10, why?: Much like The Fly, I’d have to question whether to put this in the horror or science-fiction category but essentially they are both horror movies at the most primitive level. The Thing was John Carpenter’s sixth major feature production, and for me, it’s a work that he has never surpassed before or since. He made many excellent movies within the genre through the eighties, but the sense of paranoia amongst his ensemble cast in The Thing makes for wonderful, suspenseful viewing. The blood test sequence in the middle of the film is one of the best scene’s in horror cinema ever put to celluloid.
Critic Quote: ‘John Carpenter may be better known for Halloween or Escape from New York, but The Thing is easily the famed horror director’s best film.’ (Evan Pulgino)
External Reviews: James Berardinelli
1. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980, USA)
‘’Here’s Johnny…!'’
Top 10, why?: This was an easy choice for number one. It’s Kubrick’s best film and one of the greatest films ever made, no matter what genre. What I love about the movie is that it gets better with every viewing, and I know the next time I watch it I’ll enjoy it more than the last.
Critic quote: ‘Stanley Kubrick doesn’t anything by halves. What this die-hard perfectionist has created, during the years of post-production work that went on while tucked away in a British film studio, are exemplary pieces of artistic refinement: 2001, A Space Odyssey was a masterpiece in science-fiction, Barry Lyndon set a new standard for historical epics and The Shining redefined the meaning of horror altogether.’ (Der Spiegel)
External Reviews: Alex Jackson, Chris Justice, Robert Castle
Round up
There’s obviously many great films that didn’t make my top ten, notably the Evil Dead’s, Dressed To Kill, The Lost Boys, Innocent Blood, The Howling, The Fog, Christine, Prince Of Darkness, a whole heap of teen slasher movies, Dead and Buried, Manhunter, Tenebre and other European independent films, Bad Taste, Cannibal Holocaust and a lot of exploitative filth, Critters, Gremlins (but I always enjoyed the sequel more), The Hitcher, Scanners, Re-animator, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Silver Bullet, Child’s Play, the list goes on.
I probably realised this before making my top ten, but it confirms that I don’t like sadistic horror films that set out to repulse the audience. You may notice that I’ve chosen mainly mainstream horror films. It’s all well and good making social comments like Wes Craven’s The Last House On The Left, but when a film becomes the director’s perverted wet dream, it isn’t fun anymore. For all that the horror genre does to its audience it should always be fun and entertaining, leaving the viewer with a feeling of adrenaline, not sickness. For that reason, I think the eighties produced some of the best films from the genre (and don’t get me wrong, it also produced some of the worst). They were and still are entertaining movies. The improvement of special-effects may date the films now but the nostalgic feeling of watching them again makes up for that.
Top Five Moments from 1980s Horror
1. An American Werewolf In London – The Transformation
David Kessler tries to keep himself occupied in Nurse Alex’s house when she leaves him to go to work. As night falls, and the full moon comes out, he feels a terrible pain in his chest. His skin begins to burn, and his bones begin to crack, as his body changes into that of a werewolf. The great thing director John Landis does here is to make the whole scene painful to watch and clearly painful for David. This isn’t the easy transformation that had been seen in cinema before. This was bones, and flesh, moulding and changing; it hurt. The scene is very realistic, and the prosthetic make-up effects look better than any CGI would today. Landis beautifully underpins the scene with the blues classic Blue Moon which is sadistically ironic.
2. The Thing – Blood Test
Working out that alien and human blood react to each other, the surviving group conduct a blood test to work out which, if any of them, are alien. Carpenter infuses the scene with paranoia, creating a level of suspense he hangs on to for several minutes as the scene plays out.
3. Evil Dead II – Ash battles his own hand
When Ash’s hand gets possessed, he’s forced to cut it off. However, after the gruelling dismemberment, the severed hand (clearly pissed off at such an action), comes after him in one of the great comedic horror moments.
4. The Vanishing – The final twist and devastating conclusion
The film leaves both the viewer and main character Rex in completely darkness over the fate of his girlfriend. Although, we meet the man who abducted her, we are still unsure whether she is dead or alive. When Rex agrees to take a sleeping pill in order to find out what really happened, he awakens to have all his questions answered. This is one of the best endings to any horror film from the eighties. It’s both devastatingly affecting and cruelly ironic.
5. The Hitcher – They thought it was all over…it wasn’t.
The audience, and the characters, are left thinking the terror might be all over…but it isn’t. Jim leaves his hotel room to find Nash (the girl he had fallen for over the course of the film) tied between a truck and its trailer. If the police shoot the driver, his foot will leave the clutch and the truck will roll forward, ripping Nash in half. In order to save her, Jim gets into the truck with the driver to talk him out of it. He doesn’t succeed.
FURTHER READING:
Inside Out: Body Horror, Films of the 1980s
Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror
Everything I need to know, I learned from 1980s Horror Films
Happy Endings (Don Roos, 2005, USA)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, Comedy, 2000s, Drama, Film reviews , add a commentDir. Don Roos; screenplay by Don Roos; starring Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold, David Sutcliffe, Laura Dern
Counting how many movies writer/director Don Roos was trying to make with Happy Endings is about as difficult as deciphering Steve Coogan’s unusual pseudo-American accent. Not that I’m saying Coogan is bad in the film. I clocked he was gay from a screen shot of the film based on his feminine poise, which indicates he’s believable in his role as he does indeed play a gay character. Yet, Coogan, like so much else in this film, is wasted. The British comic’s talent is much more akin to the sort of offbeat niches seen in A Cock and Bull Story, 24 Hour Party People and his television roles. He actually suited an American-style character in The Alibi much more because it served his awkward humour, giving him a character on the wrong side of weird. In Happy Endings, anything Coogan brings to the film is lost with everything else Roos is trying to achieve as he can’t find the sum for all his parts. The film is full of quirky story arcs and possibly interesting characters, but the switching from story to story, character to character, makes it very difficult for an audience to keep up. Tarantino was able to make it work in Pulp Fiction with brilliant dialogue and sensationalised stories. Roos, in trying to keep attention on his characters, tries to work the interlocking element of their lives into a coherent narrative but he misses Tarantino’s trick. Instead of the interlocking nature of the plot being a sort of negligible oddity, Happy Endings’ is contrived and predictable.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Reeker (Dave Payne, 2005, USA) May 4, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, 2000s, Film reviews, Thriller/Suspense , add a commentDir. Dave Payne; screenplay by Dave Payne; starring Devon Gummersall, Derek Richardson, Tina Illman
Forgive me for paraphrasing but I believe it was Francis Ford Coppola who said in the documentary A Decade Under The Influence that after Jaws and Star Wars the film industry began to take less risks and simply reproduced the stars, the plot lines, and the theme’s of movies that had made a lot of money. There’s nothing profound in his reasoning, the obvious fact was that the industry had to make money and the easiest way possible was always going to become prevalent. However, it is disconcerting when trash like E.T. cash-in Mac and Me and its ilk dominate the market. The Star Wars-inspired The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator, Enemy Mine, and Battle Beyond the Stars are all enjoyable little movies but the lack of fresh ideas is only detrimental to the medium. You just have to look at how heavily Wes Craven’s Scream influenced the industry with the overbearing number of teen-inspired horror flicks. Did we really need Valentine, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Cherry Falls, and useless remakes of Black Christmas and When A Stranger Calls? I find it hard to say, sad almost, that I enjoyed Cherry Falls immensely, so perhaps I’m helping feed the frenzy, but the others were poor at best.
That brings me to Reeker - a film that might make you think people die from a killer who uses flatulence as his weapon of choice. You’d be wrong, but it’s a rather funny presumption. The film concerns five college students who end up driving down a very lonely, desolate road and run out of petrol at a deserted Motel (stop me if you’ve heard this before). Then as night begins to fall, things start to go bump. People have sex, or at least they try to, and others decide to camp outside in a tent (are you kidding me!). It is amusing how, with all the self-reflexive, post-modern horror films we see today, characters still act like they’ve never seen one. Am I being over-paranoid - even I check to see if an axe-wielding madman is in the back of my car when I’m driving at night. No matter what happens, horror film characters still go wandering alone, say ‘I’ll be right back’, and pretty much ask to get murdered in the most horrific ways possible. Alas, you have to admit that’s part of what makes a horror film so enjoyable, but the great thing about Scream was the way it reversed those conventions and it goes back to originality, something that is all too commonly lacking. And it’s originality that is seriously A.W.O.L. in Reeker which at first glance is influence by The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As you watch the story unfold you see that it is more heavily influence by the recent films Identity and Dead End to the point it’s almost a direct copy. The film basically takes Dead End’s beginning and ending, and attaches it to Identity’s middle. If you’ve seen Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa’s excellent Dead End you’ll recognise Reeker’s stench a mile off, and you’ll have no problem predicting the twist.
Reeker is in many ways the embodiment of what Coppola was talking about when referencing trend changes during the late seventies and eighties. It shows little artistic merit or skill with a script that is nothing more than derivative and direction that lacks any flair. Indeed, director Payne struggles to create tension. His killer is too ambivalent, and the ambiguity at the source of the ‘evil’ is underdeveloped. He looks very much like a man in-at-ease with (comparatively) big-budget, big-studio constraints, and with his back catalogue of rubbish like Alien Avengers II, Alien Terminator, Showgirl Murders, and Addams Family Reunion, you know you’re seeing a film by an under-skilled, awfully average director. He even completely fails to capitalise on an interesting dynamic with one of the characters who is blind. I found it intriguing to have a character which couldn’t see and used his working senses to control his environment. It crossed my mind how the suspense might have an added angle if a character couldn’t see his or her attacker. After all, the likes of Micheal Myers and Jason Voorhees in Halloween and Friday The 13th (well, the second movie onward) didn’t rush on their prey, using slow and controlled methods of capture. But, as victims saw their fate, they tried desperately to escape. Taking away the ability to see seems to me like an interesting set-up, and other directors have exploited disabled characters in the past (see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th: Part II, Friday the 13th: Part V, and Leprechaun) but Payne seems less concerned, simply using the disability as a cheap red-herring as if blind people automatically have something to hide.
If the film had any merits they’d be thrown out in a court of law because it’s all a big con anyway. It’s like sending your car in for a service and getting something back that looks and feels like your car, but is actually an imitation, made from cheap parts, dodgy oil, and wheels that look half on, half off. Even the acting is uninspired. These young actors look desperate for parts and as such took the opportunity to star in this tripe. It all adds up to a nightmare of gigantic proportions, and sadly, it’s for all the wrong reasons.
Rating: 1 out of 5