Genre: Psychological Thriller
Writer and Director: Robert Parigi
Page at IMDb
One could almost classify this movie as a romance with a twisted love triangle: one between a young man, a lovely young coworker, and a sex doll designed to look like the lovely young coworker. Some might go so far as to call this a black comedy, which I could completely understand. I'm not entirely certain what to call it, so I listed the genre as "psychological thriller" in the hopes that such a title is at least a little agreeable. This movie is an off-beat independent film created by a first-time film maker (to date, Love Object is Parigi's only movie), and some significant lines are being crossed in terms of genre.
The action of the movie follows an uptight office worker named Kenneth Winslow (Desmond Harrington), who was recently given a major project by his stuffy boss Novak (the amazing Rip Torn). Kenneth writes instruction manuals for a living, and when handed this project, he is also assigned assistance in the form of a hot little temp, Lisa Bellmer (Melissa Sagemiller). The pairing awakens some sort of hopelessly repressed sexuality in Kenneth, and he starts obsessing over Lisa.
About the same time, a couple of Kenneth's slacker coworkers introduce him to an online company that will create a customized sex doll for ten thousand dollars. Despite the cost, as Kenneth's sexual needs slow him down at work, he decides, on a late-night whim, to order one of these sex dolls, customizing it to look like Lisa. He overdraws his account, but Kenneth is confident he'll be promoted at work very soon. When the sex doll arrives, he excitedly has his way with it, and immediately afterwards attempts to have it returned. Naturally, a sex doll company is not going to accept back a doll that's been deflowered.
Kenneth, because of his job, knows how to take the time to read any and all instructions that come with his purchases. So instead of wallowing in buyer's remorse, he starts reading up on how to get the full effect of a life-sized sex doll. This leads him to learning how to dance, buying the doll nice clothes, and basically "dating" it/her to fulfill the fantasy of owning one of these devices. The experience has its good points: Kenneth is better motivated at work, and finally starts working on his major project with success. Unfortunately, the instructions for the doll suggest that Kenneth treat the doll like someone he knows, and he decides to do this--with Lisa, his temporary assistant. To help fuel his fantasy, he starts taking things off of her desk and learning about her own likes and dislikes, all of which is intended to heighten his experience with his new sex doll, whom has been named Nikki.
Meanwhile, Mr. Novak has decided to fire Lisa for incompetence and being an emotional wreck. Fearing that his inspiration for his current man-on-doll relationship with Nikki may be in danger, Kenneth talks Mr. Novak out of firing Lisa. Following this, Kenneth decides to assist with Lisa's job training, and the project starts to flourish. Kenneth and Lisa start getting comfortable around each other and getting to know each other, and Kenneth's relationship with Nikki starts getting weirder.
A bondage element is added to Kenneth's relationship with Nikki, and he starts developing interests in the kinkier side of sex. While this goes on, Kenneth starts seeing an opportunity with Lisa to develop a real-life relationship, and he starts thinking about leaving his doll and pursuing his interest in a coworker. At this point, it becomes apparent that Kenneth views Nikki as a real personality, and his activities with this doll leaves the audience wondering whether Kenneth has lost his mind, or if Nikki has become a living thing.
The answer is, in this case, that Kenneth has gone insane. As expected, this isn't real-life insane, this is movie insane--and there is a big difference. Kenneth believes that Nikki is alive, and trying to dominate his life when he starts trying to pursue Lisa. Although he does get lucky with Lisa, it proves unsatisfying when he starts to notice that Lisa is, underneath what he could see, a very different person than he had fantasized through Nikki. He gets angry, and blames Nikki. After a fight (he has one-sided fights with the doll more than once), he chops up Nikki's body and disposes of the remains. When he does this, his nosy neighbor and apartment manager, Radley (the great Udo Kier) overhears the argument and the electric carving knife he uses to tear apart Nikki.
I've probably said more about this movie than I rightfully should, but I do rather like the way this movie ends. When I first watched this movie, it was a conclusion that I didn't see coming, although there are plenty of fourteen-year-old pseudo-intellectuals out there who will claim to have saw the ending fifteen minutes into the movie. But I digress....
What sold this movie for me was the overall tone and design, along with a really nice performance by Desmond Harrington. From what I've read from others who have seen Love Object, there is something exceptionally twisted about this movie, particularly the way it builds to a head and comes to an unexpected end.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Bone (1972)
Genre: Black Comedy (Exploitation/Grindhouse Flick)
Director and Writer: Larry Cohen
Page on IMDb
Bone (subtitled A Bad Day in Beverly Hills), to me, is a rare gem of a movie, one of those super-obscure titles that was almost completely forgotten and yet...and yet, virtually every review I've ever read of it can't stop talking about how wonderful it is. I bought this movie online, sight-unseen, based solely on the fact that it's Larry Cohen's directorial debut and its receipt of glowing online reviews, what few there were.
For those unfamiliar with Larry Cohen, he got his start as a film maker back in the early 70's with this movie, moving quickly along to directing "blaxploitation" movies with Black Caesar (1973) and Hell Up In Harlem (1973). After this, Cohen started creating horror movies, beginning with the very low-budget and bizarre killer baby flick It's Alive (1974) and its sequel, It Lives Again (1978). I knew him best for The Stuff (1985), one of those slime-covered, blood splattered, violence-heavy 80's horror flicks with less-than-subtle social commentary. While Cohen isn't the most skilled of film makers--his use of special effects are weak, even compared to those available at the time--his work is, nevertheless, interesting to watch.
I am a little reluctant to talk this movie up too much, as I'm afraid that if expectations are too high, potential viewers may not look past the flaws. There are plenty of flaws, too: particularly with some of the editing choices (for example, there's at least one blooper shot that made it into the final print). Fortunately, Bone doesn't really incorporate any special effects outside of the one scene that used a little Vaseline on the lens; the entire plot is very character-driven.
It should also be noted that this movie does have nudity, swearing, interracial sex, and a near-rape scene. I call it "near-rape" because none of the characters actually rape or get raped, but it gets close. Maybe I should just try to explain the plot:
Bill and Bernadette (Andrew Duggan and Joyce Van Patten, respectively) are a wealthy middle-aged couple living in Beverly Hills. Bill complains about how the world is falling apart because of foreigners and under-represented ethnic groups, and Bernadette spends her days just being a rich housewife. While lounging about their swimming pool one day, Bill dives in and finds himself eye-to-eye with a rat that has been sucked into one of the pool's filters. When told about the rat, Bernadette freaks out and demands Bill call an exterminator and a pool cleaning service. Just as he gets someone on the phone, Bill looks up and there stands Bone (Yaphet Kotto), a young, muscular black man whom they assume works for the pool service. Bone plays along for a brief period, even going so far as to pull the rat out of the pool filter and throw it into a neighbor's yard. It quickly becomes clear that Bone intends to rob the couple.
With Bill and Bernadette in hand, Bone trashes their house in search of money while Bernadette talks about the history of the house and its furnishings. Bone becomes frustrated when he discovers that no money is to be found, and it becomes apparent that Bill's financial situation is much worse than the audience was led to believe. Bone then discovers a secret bank account that Bernadette was unaware of, and sends Bill into town to close the account and bring back the money to him. Bill is given a short amount of time to complete this task, and Bone threatens to rape Bernadette and cut her throat if he fails to return with the cash.
When Bill gets into town, however, his banker talks him out of closing the account, and he decides to kill some time while considering his options. Unfortunately for Burnadette, he takes too much time and Bone decides to make good on his threat. After attempting to rape Bernadette, Bone has a change of heart. Soon Burnadette forces Bone to open up, the two begin talking, and a new friendship--and sexual relationship--develops from this unlikely scenario.
From there, the movie gets even more surreal and absolutely nothing goes as planned. While the movie is titled Bone, the story seems to be more about Bernadette than anyone (one of the early titles of this movie was The Housewife). Themes include racism and rape, and this movie handles those two volatile subjects with honesty, avoiding the modern tendencies of political correctness while not being blatantly offensive, either. There's also plenty about the Vietnam War, something mentioned in the movie's initial title plate, and at least one somewhat ironic mention about the legalization of marijuana is made. Events are so bizarre in some cases that one almost wonders just how much of the social commentary in this movie was deliberate.
Honestly, this is one of those movies that is interesting enough to safely recommend to others. Despite its age, there are a lot of timeless elements to Bone, and thus far, the handful of people I've shown this to have enjoyed it enough to sit through the whole thing, something I can't say for all of the movies in my collection. As far as I know, it is available on netflix and definitely worth checking out for lovers of obscure movies.
Director and Writer: Larry Cohen
Page on IMDb
Bone (subtitled A Bad Day in Beverly Hills), to me, is a rare gem of a movie, one of those super-obscure titles that was almost completely forgotten and yet...and yet, virtually every review I've ever read of it can't stop talking about how wonderful it is. I bought this movie online, sight-unseen, based solely on the fact that it's Larry Cohen's directorial debut and its receipt of glowing online reviews, what few there were.
For those unfamiliar with Larry Cohen, he got his start as a film maker back in the early 70's with this movie, moving quickly along to directing "blaxploitation" movies with Black Caesar (1973) and Hell Up In Harlem (1973). After this, Cohen started creating horror movies, beginning with the very low-budget and bizarre killer baby flick It's Alive (1974) and its sequel, It Lives Again (1978). I knew him best for The Stuff (1985), one of those slime-covered, blood splattered, violence-heavy 80's horror flicks with less-than-subtle social commentary. While Cohen isn't the most skilled of film makers--his use of special effects are weak, even compared to those available at the time--his work is, nevertheless, interesting to watch.
I am a little reluctant to talk this movie up too much, as I'm afraid that if expectations are too high, potential viewers may not look past the flaws. There are plenty of flaws, too: particularly with some of the editing choices (for example, there's at least one blooper shot that made it into the final print). Fortunately, Bone doesn't really incorporate any special effects outside of the one scene that used a little Vaseline on the lens; the entire plot is very character-driven.
It should also be noted that this movie does have nudity, swearing, interracial sex, and a near-rape scene. I call it "near-rape" because none of the characters actually rape or get raped, but it gets close. Maybe I should just try to explain the plot:
Bill and Bernadette (Andrew Duggan and Joyce Van Patten, respectively) are a wealthy middle-aged couple living in Beverly Hills. Bill complains about how the world is falling apart because of foreigners and under-represented ethnic groups, and Bernadette spends her days just being a rich housewife. While lounging about their swimming pool one day, Bill dives in and finds himself eye-to-eye with a rat that has been sucked into one of the pool's filters. When told about the rat, Bernadette freaks out and demands Bill call an exterminator and a pool cleaning service. Just as he gets someone on the phone, Bill looks up and there stands Bone (Yaphet Kotto), a young, muscular black man whom they assume works for the pool service. Bone plays along for a brief period, even going so far as to pull the rat out of the pool filter and throw it into a neighbor's yard. It quickly becomes clear that Bone intends to rob the couple.
With Bill and Bernadette in hand, Bone trashes their house in search of money while Bernadette talks about the history of the house and its furnishings. Bone becomes frustrated when he discovers that no money is to be found, and it becomes apparent that Bill's financial situation is much worse than the audience was led to believe. Bone then discovers a secret bank account that Bernadette was unaware of, and sends Bill into town to close the account and bring back the money to him. Bill is given a short amount of time to complete this task, and Bone threatens to rape Bernadette and cut her throat if he fails to return with the cash.
When Bill gets into town, however, his banker talks him out of closing the account, and he decides to kill some time while considering his options. Unfortunately for Burnadette, he takes too much time and Bone decides to make good on his threat. After attempting to rape Bernadette, Bone has a change of heart. Soon Burnadette forces Bone to open up, the two begin talking, and a new friendship--and sexual relationship--develops from this unlikely scenario.
From there, the movie gets even more surreal and absolutely nothing goes as planned. While the movie is titled Bone, the story seems to be more about Bernadette than anyone (one of the early titles of this movie was The Housewife). Themes include racism and rape, and this movie handles those two volatile subjects with honesty, avoiding the modern tendencies of political correctness while not being blatantly offensive, either. There's also plenty about the Vietnam War, something mentioned in the movie's initial title plate, and at least one somewhat ironic mention about the legalization of marijuana is made. Events are so bizarre in some cases that one almost wonders just how much of the social commentary in this movie was deliberate.
Honestly, this is one of those movies that is interesting enough to safely recommend to others. Despite its age, there are a lot of timeless elements to Bone, and thus far, the handful of people I've shown this to have enjoyed it enough to sit through the whole thing, something I can't say for all of the movies in my collection. As far as I know, it is available on netflix and definitely worth checking out for lovers of obscure movies.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Blood Simple. (1984)
Genre: Crime Drama
Director: Joel Coen
Writers: Joel and Ethan Coen
At this point in time, there are plenty of people familiar with the work of the Coen brothers. Recently, they've gained widespread popularity with No Country for Old Men (2007) and Burn After Reading (2008), and were best known in the 1990's for Fargo (1996) and, one of my personal favorites, The Big Lebowski (1998). The Coens have done some damned entertaining work in their time, having started as associates of several major names in the business, including the Raimi brothers (Sam, Ted and Ivan), Bruce Campbell, Holly Hunter, and Francis McDormand. Their first work, Blood Simple., apparently started as a teaser trailer featuring Bruce Campbell in the role that would eventually be performed by Dan Hedaya.
The plot of Blood Simple. is pretty strait forward, although the Coens' specific method of storytelling initially left me (and probably much of their audience) wondering what was going on for a period of time. As with most of their movies, most of us will have to watch them more than once just to figure out what's going on; it's not uncommon to watch the first half hour of a Coen brothers flick wondering when the plot is going to start. I remember feeling a little bewildered when I first saw No Country for Old Men, waiting a good twenty minutes before realizing that there was a story unfolding right in front of me. I guess the Coens are just that good at subtlety.
This movie begins with an affair between bartender Ray (John Getz) and the wife of the bar owner, Abby (Francis McDormand). Well, sort of. The movie actually begins with some Texas landscape shots and a voice-over (similar to the beginning of No Country for Old Men), followed up by Ray and Abby driving down the highway in the rain. The aforementioned bar owner, Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya), suspects something is going on, so he hires private investigator Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to follow them and take pictures--Visser is actually trailing Ray and Abby in the opening scene while they drive down that dark highway. After discovering his wife's infidelity, Marty is angered to the point of embezzling money from his own business to pay Loren Visser to murder the young adulterous couple. Visser, however, has plans of his own, and instead decides to rip off Marty and try to get away scott-free. As is the way in a Coen brothers movie, nothing goes as planned.
For those unfamiliar with the other works of the Coen brothers, it should be known that their movies make heavy use of dramatic irony. Their characters suffer from tragic flaws that prompt them to do the kinds of idiotic things that make some movie watchers stand and scream at the screen. Items are shown not because their presence is significant, but because their absence is significant. The Coen brothers also tend leave entire plot threads unresolved, which is probably why the message boards at imdb.com are filled with threads reading "I don't get it" or "What's the point of this movie?", along with other varied inanities. Blood Simple. actually wraps everything up fairly well compared to some of the Coens' flicks, but like I said: it really needs to be watched more than once, if only to have a full understanding of the basic mechanics of the plot.
I listed the genre of Blood Simple. as "crime drama" because that is what is listed on imdb.com. The more pretentious film-goers would call this film noir or neo-noir. Film noir, if you are not familiar with the term, refers to a number of the crime dramas from the 1940's into the 1960's, in which the term "noir" (dark or black) is in reference to everything from the characters, the tone, and the lighting (think Humphrey Bogart). Really, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference when it comes down to whether or not a person can enjoy this movie. One need not be an arrogant film snot to understand that interesting choices were made in lighting, photography, plot development, and character motivation, just as one need not be a wine connoisseur to enjoy a good drunken buzz.
Director: Joel Coen
Writers: Joel and Ethan Coen
At this point in time, there are plenty of people familiar with the work of the Coen brothers. Recently, they've gained widespread popularity with No Country for Old Men (2007) and Burn After Reading (2008), and were best known in the 1990's for Fargo (1996) and, one of my personal favorites, The Big Lebowski (1998). The Coens have done some damned entertaining work in their time, having started as associates of several major names in the business, including the Raimi brothers (Sam, Ted and Ivan), Bruce Campbell, Holly Hunter, and Francis McDormand. Their first work, Blood Simple., apparently started as a teaser trailer featuring Bruce Campbell in the role that would eventually be performed by Dan Hedaya.
The plot of Blood Simple. is pretty strait forward, although the Coens' specific method of storytelling initially left me (and probably much of their audience) wondering what was going on for a period of time. As with most of their movies, most of us will have to watch them more than once just to figure out what's going on; it's not uncommon to watch the first half hour of a Coen brothers flick wondering when the plot is going to start. I remember feeling a little bewildered when I first saw No Country for Old Men, waiting a good twenty minutes before realizing that there was a story unfolding right in front of me. I guess the Coens are just that good at subtlety.
This movie begins with an affair between bartender Ray (John Getz) and the wife of the bar owner, Abby (Francis McDormand). Well, sort of. The movie actually begins with some Texas landscape shots and a voice-over (similar to the beginning of No Country for Old Men), followed up by Ray and Abby driving down the highway in the rain. The aforementioned bar owner, Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya), suspects something is going on, so he hires private investigator Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to follow them and take pictures--Visser is actually trailing Ray and Abby in the opening scene while they drive down that dark highway. After discovering his wife's infidelity, Marty is angered to the point of embezzling money from his own business to pay Loren Visser to murder the young adulterous couple. Visser, however, has plans of his own, and instead decides to rip off Marty and try to get away scott-free. As is the way in a Coen brothers movie, nothing goes as planned.
For those unfamiliar with the other works of the Coen brothers, it should be known that their movies make heavy use of dramatic irony. Their characters suffer from tragic flaws that prompt them to do the kinds of idiotic things that make some movie watchers stand and scream at the screen. Items are shown not because their presence is significant, but because their absence is significant. The Coen brothers also tend leave entire plot threads unresolved, which is probably why the message boards at imdb.com are filled with threads reading "I don't get it" or "What's the point of this movie?", along with other varied inanities. Blood Simple. actually wraps everything up fairly well compared to some of the Coens' flicks, but like I said: it really needs to be watched more than once, if only to have a full understanding of the basic mechanics of the plot.
I listed the genre of Blood Simple. as "crime drama" because that is what is listed on imdb.com. The more pretentious film-goers would call this film noir or neo-noir. Film noir, if you are not familiar with the term, refers to a number of the crime dramas from the 1940's into the 1960's, in which the term "noir" (dark or black) is in reference to everything from the characters, the tone, and the lighting (think Humphrey Bogart). Really, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference when it comes down to whether or not a person can enjoy this movie. One need not be an arrogant film snot to understand that interesting choices were made in lighting, photography, plot development, and character motivation, just as one need not be a wine connoisseur to enjoy a good drunken buzz.
Friday, March 6, 2009
The Thing (1982)
Genre: Horror (alien/monster)
Director: John Carpenter
Writer: Bill Lancaster, based on the short story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Director, writer, and musician John Carpenter has done some very memorable work. He co-wrote and directed the original Halloween (1978); the campy adventure Escape From New York (1981); one of my personal favorites, Big Trouble in Little China (1986); and the paranoid, Orwellian science fiction flick They Live (1988). These are, in my opinion, some of his best works, and this is a small sample of his resume. I can honestly say that Carpenter is one of my favorite directors, although I still haven't seen all of his works.
Perhaps his most beloved film is The Thing, more-or-less a remake of The Thing From Another World (1951), which I have not seen. I say "more-or-less" in that both movies are based on the same short story, and Carpenter's vision for his movie evidently took more from the original source than it did from the first movie. Given that we now live during a time when movie remakes are very popular, I've noticed a number of people get rather touchy when it comes to defining what, specifically, a "remake" is in cinema.
The opening credits are preceded by a shot of a flying saucer falling into Earth's orbit and apparently crash landing somewhere on the planet. After this, the movie opens in Antarctica, near an American research outpost where a group of men are stationed for the winter. A helicopter is seen flying over the horizon, in pursuit of what appears to be an ordinary dog--a husky-wolf mix, to be exact. In its pursuit, the helicopter lands near the American outpost, where the dog finds refuge. Two men, both Norwegian, exit the craft and attempt first to lob a grenade at the dog--an effort that gets one of them and the helicopter blown up. The other man chases the dog into the outpost and fires wildly at it with a rifle. In his efforts, he accidentally shoots one of the Americans, and Garry (Donald Moffat), the highest authority in the outpost, returns fire with a pistol, killing the frantic Norwegian with one shot. Now the men at the outpost are left wondering what happened.
Two of the men, including the main character MacReady (the bushy-bearded Kurt Russell), travel by helicopter to the Norwegian outpost to check things out. They find that the outpost has been virtually destroyed, with many signs of a battle within. Among the debris and carnage is a burned corpse of what looks like a bizarre and twisted human being; they bring the corpse back to their own outpost for study.
As it turns out, the corpse and the dog are both incarnations of a strange alien life form that was discovered in the ice by the Norwegians. This life form--the Thing--is a shape shifter, capable of infecting and taking over other lifeforms. Once it takes over another being, it mimics it "perfectly." Throughout the film, there are many, many unanswerable questions regarding whom it has dominated and when. This leads into the central plot: a group of intelligent, educated men trying to survive against an enemy that can be any single one of them at any time. As Dr. Blair (Wilfred Brimley) later discovers, the Thing is capable of assimilating all life on the planet within a fairly short matter of time. This movie isn't just about these men's fight to survive, it's about their fight to prevent the end of all indiginous life on Earth.
One of the elements of the best horror movies out there is not the monster, alien or supernatural being that the protagonists are pitted against. It is the human element--the exploration of how people behave under bizarre and even impossible circumstances in their struggle to survive. In this movie, the dominant theme is that of paranoia. Once the men realize what it is they are up against, they become uncooperative, hysterical, even homicidal. It is the drama created by these behaviors that makes this movie one of Carpenter's strongest works, considered a masterpiece by many fans of the genre. Unlike many of the horror movies of the time, this movie stood out in that it did not feature a bunch of stupid teenagers too drunk and horny to notice a masked killer picking them off one by one until it is too late.
The special effects are also very well done, even by contemporary standards--the specific designs for the Thing itself had to have been some of the most disturbing and eldritch cinematic creations of their time. Like From Beyond (1986), from an earlier entry, The Thing features some very interesting latex prosthetics and plenty of slimy, icky stuff to keep the gore fans happy. I do appreciate a good campy movie as much as anyone, but any such campiness in this film is the result of being almost thirty years old, not goofy writing. Carpenter plays up the suspense almost perfectly, so the special effects serve as a welcome enhancement to the plot--the story does not rely entirely upon them.
Like many other well done horror movies, The Thing also leaves a number of questions completely unanswered. We never do discover all of the "rules" for battling the creature, we never discover exactly where it came from or what it was doing on the space ship during the prologue, and we never know who has been conquered by the Thing and who is still human at any point in time. It is a necessity of the genre that certain questions are left open to interpretation--one of our most basic fears as human beings is the fear of the unknown, and this movie takes full advantage of that.
While I do strongly recommend The Thing for all fans of the horror genre, I should point out that this is very much a guy's movie. The entire cast (and, actually, the crew) is made up of men. Plus, it stars Kurt Russell and Keith David, what more can a man ask for, huh?
Director: John Carpenter
Writer: Bill Lancaster, based on the short story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Director, writer, and musician John Carpenter has done some very memorable work. He co-wrote and directed the original Halloween (1978); the campy adventure Escape From New York (1981); one of my personal favorites, Big Trouble in Little China (1986); and the paranoid, Orwellian science fiction flick They Live (1988). These are, in my opinion, some of his best works, and this is a small sample of his resume. I can honestly say that Carpenter is one of my favorite directors, although I still haven't seen all of his works.
Perhaps his most beloved film is The Thing, more-or-less a remake of The Thing From Another World (1951), which I have not seen. I say "more-or-less" in that both movies are based on the same short story, and Carpenter's vision for his movie evidently took more from the original source than it did from the first movie. Given that we now live during a time when movie remakes are very popular, I've noticed a number of people get rather touchy when it comes to defining what, specifically, a "remake" is in cinema.
The opening credits are preceded by a shot of a flying saucer falling into Earth's orbit and apparently crash landing somewhere on the planet. After this, the movie opens in Antarctica, near an American research outpost where a group of men are stationed for the winter. A helicopter is seen flying over the horizon, in pursuit of what appears to be an ordinary dog--a husky-wolf mix, to be exact. In its pursuit, the helicopter lands near the American outpost, where the dog finds refuge. Two men, both Norwegian, exit the craft and attempt first to lob a grenade at the dog--an effort that gets one of them and the helicopter blown up. The other man chases the dog into the outpost and fires wildly at it with a rifle. In his efforts, he accidentally shoots one of the Americans, and Garry (Donald Moffat), the highest authority in the outpost, returns fire with a pistol, killing the frantic Norwegian with one shot. Now the men at the outpost are left wondering what happened.
Two of the men, including the main character MacReady (the bushy-bearded Kurt Russell), travel by helicopter to the Norwegian outpost to check things out. They find that the outpost has been virtually destroyed, with many signs of a battle within. Among the debris and carnage is a burned corpse of what looks like a bizarre and twisted human being; they bring the corpse back to their own outpost for study.
As it turns out, the corpse and the dog are both incarnations of a strange alien life form that was discovered in the ice by the Norwegians. This life form--the Thing--is a shape shifter, capable of infecting and taking over other lifeforms. Once it takes over another being, it mimics it "perfectly." Throughout the film, there are many, many unanswerable questions regarding whom it has dominated and when. This leads into the central plot: a group of intelligent, educated men trying to survive against an enemy that can be any single one of them at any time. As Dr. Blair (Wilfred Brimley) later discovers, the Thing is capable of assimilating all life on the planet within a fairly short matter of time. This movie isn't just about these men's fight to survive, it's about their fight to prevent the end of all indiginous life on Earth.
One of the elements of the best horror movies out there is not the monster, alien or supernatural being that the protagonists are pitted against. It is the human element--the exploration of how people behave under bizarre and even impossible circumstances in their struggle to survive. In this movie, the dominant theme is that of paranoia. Once the men realize what it is they are up against, they become uncooperative, hysterical, even homicidal. It is the drama created by these behaviors that makes this movie one of Carpenter's strongest works, considered a masterpiece by many fans of the genre. Unlike many of the horror movies of the time, this movie stood out in that it did not feature a bunch of stupid teenagers too drunk and horny to notice a masked killer picking them off one by one until it is too late.
The special effects are also very well done, even by contemporary standards--the specific designs for the Thing itself had to have been some of the most disturbing and eldritch cinematic creations of their time. Like From Beyond (1986), from an earlier entry, The Thing features some very interesting latex prosthetics and plenty of slimy, icky stuff to keep the gore fans happy. I do appreciate a good campy movie as much as anyone, but any such campiness in this film is the result of being almost thirty years old, not goofy writing. Carpenter plays up the suspense almost perfectly, so the special effects serve as a welcome enhancement to the plot--the story does not rely entirely upon them.
Like many other well done horror movies, The Thing also leaves a number of questions completely unanswered. We never do discover all of the "rules" for battling the creature, we never discover exactly where it came from or what it was doing on the space ship during the prologue, and we never know who has been conquered by the Thing and who is still human at any point in time. It is a necessity of the genre that certain questions are left open to interpretation--one of our most basic fears as human beings is the fear of the unknown, and this movie takes full advantage of that.
While I do strongly recommend The Thing for all fans of the horror genre, I should point out that this is very much a guy's movie. The entire cast (and, actually, the crew) is made up of men. Plus, it stars Kurt Russell and Keith David, what more can a man ask for, huh?
Thursday, March 5, 2009
UHF (1989)
Genre: Comedy (spoof)
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Writers: Jay Levey and "Weird Al" Yankovic
Director: Jay Levey
The choice to do my next entry on the movie UHF was, specifically, because I already had a number of screencaps on my drive from it and I was considering adding pictures to this blog. I have no idea how this is going to translate when it does its magic movement to my facebook notes. So this may be the dawning of a new age for whatever it is I'm doing here. Either that, or this will be the entry that I'll eventually rewrite in its entirety.
I do recall, with great fondness, when this movie was released. I also recall that the only element of this movie available in the little town I grew up in was the soundtrack album, as the film itself was never released to our tiny rinky-dink movie theatre. I had to wait for it to get released on VHS. This was tricky on a lot of levels, because in 1989, "Weird Al" Yankovic was probably the only musician I really cared about. This was, of course, before grunge and alternative music had become mainstream enough for those of us growing up in tiny South Dakota towns to have ever heard of it. Even though UHF did very poorly in the box office, it never failed to disappoint me. But then, I understood Yankovic's sense of style fairly well. Mainstream America, in spite of its general acceptance of Yankovic as a comedy musician, was not ready to embrace him as an actor. Come to think of it, mainstream America never really figured out if he was supposed to be a comedian or a musician. "Weird Al" Yankovic has always been an oddity in the entertainment industry. He is our world's Aristophanes.
While this isn't the first cinematic effort of "Weird Al" Yankovic--there was a direct-to-video release a few years prior called The Compleat Al (1985) that made its way through a run on Showtime or Cinemax, maybe both--it is the only major movie release with Yankovic's name attached, not including brief cameos here and there. For example, some might remember Yankovic's appearance in the Zucker brothers spoof The Naked Gun (1988). There is probably a good reason for that; starting with the fact that, while Yankovic may be an excellent performer, he is not much of an actor.
The director and co-writer of UHF is Jay Levey, and to my knowledge, this is the only feature-length film he ever directed. Levey is actually Yankovic's manager, and has been since the early 1980's; he also plays Gandhi in the trailer for Gandhi II. This is all I know about him.
The movie itself is a comedy, something I would personally call a spoof. To me, the word spoof brings to mind many works of the Zucker brothers, such as Airplane! (1980), Top Secret! (1984), and the aforementioned The Naked Gun. I took the time to look up the word, and I found that it is sometimes considered a synonym of the word parody. Since this is a movie starring "Weird Al" Yankovic, perhaps the most well-known parody artist of the modern music industry, calling it a spoof seems appropriate. Part of me wants to talk about the more recent concept of the movie spoof, but it would mostly be a rant on how incredibly bad it has gotten. For the younger people reading this, there is no requirement that states that all spoofs must have the word "movie" in the title.
UHF opens with a parody (of course) of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with Al himself playing the hero. This eventually fades into a fast food burger joint, where George Newman ("Weird Al" Yankovic) and his friend Bob (David Bowe) work. They are almost immediately fired by the manager, a very mean-looking woman known as Big Edna (Nancy Johnson, although we only see her once). It is quickly revealed that George cannot focus on anything because he's always daydreaming, which leads to him getting fired quite frequently. He also has a girlfriend, Teri (played by SNL alumnus Victoria Jackson), and she often gets mad at him because he always forgets their dates. In short, George Newman has a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder that was never diagnosed. I'm not sure what Bob's excuse is--he's supposed to be the responsible one of the pair, but for some unseen reason, he gets fired right along with George every single time.
Before George and Bob can begin their job hunt, George's uncle, Harvey Bilchik (Stanley Brock) wins a television station during a poker game and his wife Esther (Sue Ane Langdon) talks him in to letting George manage it. The television station is a UHF station (get it?) that broadcasts locally on Channel 62. While things go badly in the beginning, eventually the station becomes outrageously popular, thanks to the help of the mildly brain damaged janitor, Stanley Spadowski (Michael Richards), who is an apparent savant when it comes to hosting a children's television program.
Meanwhile, the local network affiliate, Channel 8, is the local competition. It's run by an over-the-top corporate villain, R. J. Fletcher (Kevin McCarthy), who even has his own Italian mafia-like gang of thugs. Among his personal bootlicks is his own son, Richard (John Paragon), who reminds me of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho (2000) for some reason. Perhaps he's Bateman's older, tackier and less successful half-brother or something.
What makes this movie fun to watch is the constant bombardment of movie parodies and oddball television programs being played on Channel 62. Some of the most memorable include "Secrets of the Universe," in which the station's resident mad scientist will show the viewers how to make plutonium from common household items, and "Raul's Wild Kingdom," where Raul unsuccessfully teaches poodles how to fly. One of my personal favorites, "Wheel of Fish," almost demands a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KezvwARhBIc
Is this brilliant filmmaking? Not even close. If you've ever seen one of Yankovic's music videos, though, you should have a pretty good idea of what this movie has to offer.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
From Beyond (1986)
Genre: Horror (monster/mad scientist)
Writer: Brian Yuzna, based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft
Director: Stuart Gordon
As a majority of the movies in my home collection are horror flicks, I figured it was about time I discussed one. I selected From Beyond, one of two 80's horror movies to star both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Combs and Crampton had just worked opposite each other in another Stuart Gordon movie the year prior, one of my personal favorites, Re-Animator (1985). From Beyond also co-stars veteran horror actor Ken Foree, whom many may remember from the original Dawn of the Dead (1978). Fans of Barbara Crampton, if any exist amongst my two-or-three person readership, should especially love this movie, as it is easily the sexiest that Ms. Crampton has ever been seen on screen. She also gets a sex scene with a big slimy rubber monster thing that is easily as weird, though not quite as explicit, as the near-cunnilingus from a severed zombie head scene in Re-Animator. So I don't sound like I'm forgetting any possible female readership, I'll also mention this movie features a shot or two of Ken Foree and his package running down the stairs in a speedo.
From Beyond is loosely based on a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. "Loosely," of course, means exactly that: I read the short story once upon a time, and if I recall, it was only three pages long. Any resemblance to the original source ends by the time the opening credits take place. After that, it's pure 80's horror insanity. A large part of this movie's budget went into lighting gels, latex, and some sort of jelly slime stuff, plus a crazy little machine with lots of outlets and tuning forks.
Here's the setup: Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) is a brilliant but mad scientist who is creating a machine they refer to as "the resonator." According to the movie (and the original source), there are weird creatures that float around us in the air, all of the time, but we can't contact them or detect them because they exist in another dimension. The resonator makes it possible for these things to see and touch us, and vice-verse. It also causes the human pineal gland to grow--the pineal gland being a small organ in the base of the brain (I think) that often functions as a "third eye" or some other evolutionary device in science fiction stories and pop psychology. Since no mad scientist is complete without a young assistant, he has Crawford Tillingast (Jeffrey Combs) to do some of the late-night work while Dr. Pretorius is playing is bondage games in the other room--with prostitutes, I assume.
Crawford Tillingast successfully gets the resonator working in the opening scene, which causes some glowing eel-like things to appear hovering in the air. They attack Crawford, causing him to shut down the machine and spend the rest of the movie with a bite on his cheek. When Crawford informs Dr. Pretorius, the good doctor turns the machine on and gets attacked by some sort of extra dimensional god thing, that twists off his head and swallows it whole. Crawford attacks the machine with an axe, then flees the house and gets himself arrested.
Naturally, Crawford is completely honest with the police regarding what happened to Dr. Pretorius, so they ship him to a mental hospital and lock him up in a padded room. This brings into the story Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), a psychological researcher fresh out of grad school and familiar with Dr. Pretorius' work. She is allowed to meet with Crawford, which leads to a great example of Jeffrey Combs' intense overacting in this flick: he says, in a restrained panic, "It ate him...BIT his head off..." --dramatic pause to get closer to the camera-- "...like a gingerbread man!"
The person in charge of Crawford's care, an older woman named Dr. Bloch (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, the director's wife and another actor from Re-Animator), thinks it best that he be locked away as insane. Katherine, on the other hand, is young and curious, and thinks Crawford may be telling the truth about the resonator, after a CAT scan reveals that Crawford's pineal gland appears to be growing. She convinces the police to let Crawford repeat the experiment under her care, and the two return to the house where it all happened, along with Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), a cop assigned to watch over them.
That, of course, is just a brief description of the first act. From here, the movie gets even stranger. After the trio is able to reactivate the resonator, Dr. Pretorius appears out of nowhere--which does, at least, prove that Crawford didn't kill him. The good doctor tells them that he has merged with the being they keep calling "It." He then tells them that he wants to merge with the rest of them, too. There is something oddly perverted about this whole setup and Pretorius' obsession with merging with everyone.
They manage to shut off the machine before he can do too much damage, but as the story progresses, Dr. Pretorius/It gets better at forcing the machine to operate itself. By the end of the second act, everything has gone haywire, Katherine is wearing a skimpy leather outfit, Crawford has a snake-like appendage sticking out of his now-protruding forehead, and Bubba is dead. Oh, uh, *spoilers.* (Actually, the best part isn't the fact that Bubba dies, but the specific way in which he does--it's just as strange and inconsistent as the rest of this flick.)
After this, there's a lot of scenes featuring the bald Crawford Tillingast covered in blood and sucking peoples' brains out through their eye sockets. There's one particularly great scene with Crawford munching away at a human brain that he found at the hospital (they leave them laying around), his only comment when caught being "Mmm...good." This eventually leads to a latex-and-slime covered climax and the obligatory gigantic explosion. I don't think that should spoil anything for anyone, as most movies of this type end with a gigantic explosion.
For fans of 80's horror movies, From Beyond is definitely worth watching. It has plenty of crazy latex creature effects and odd puppetry, lots of slime and blood (and some brains), and some damned insane dialogue delivered with absolute severity. The special effects are cheesy--it was the 80's, after all--but entertaining. And, if you don't know who Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and Ken Foree are, this would be a good introduction--right after Re-Animator, of course.
Writer: Brian Yuzna, based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft
Director: Stuart Gordon
As a majority of the movies in my home collection are horror flicks, I figured it was about time I discussed one. I selected From Beyond, one of two 80's horror movies to star both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Combs and Crampton had just worked opposite each other in another Stuart Gordon movie the year prior, one of my personal favorites, Re-Animator (1985). From Beyond also co-stars veteran horror actor Ken Foree, whom many may remember from the original Dawn of the Dead (1978). Fans of Barbara Crampton, if any exist amongst my two-or-three person readership, should especially love this movie, as it is easily the sexiest that Ms. Crampton has ever been seen on screen. She also gets a sex scene with a big slimy rubber monster thing that is easily as weird, though not quite as explicit, as the near-cunnilingus from a severed zombie head scene in Re-Animator. So I don't sound like I'm forgetting any possible female readership, I'll also mention this movie features a shot or two of Ken Foree and his package running down the stairs in a speedo.
From Beyond is loosely based on a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. "Loosely," of course, means exactly that: I read the short story once upon a time, and if I recall, it was only three pages long. Any resemblance to the original source ends by the time the opening credits take place. After that, it's pure 80's horror insanity. A large part of this movie's budget went into lighting gels, latex, and some sort of jelly slime stuff, plus a crazy little machine with lots of outlets and tuning forks.
Here's the setup: Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) is a brilliant but mad scientist who is creating a machine they refer to as "the resonator." According to the movie (and the original source), there are weird creatures that float around us in the air, all of the time, but we can't contact them or detect them because they exist in another dimension. The resonator makes it possible for these things to see and touch us, and vice-verse. It also causes the human pineal gland to grow--the pineal gland being a small organ in the base of the brain (I think) that often functions as a "third eye" or some other evolutionary device in science fiction stories and pop psychology. Since no mad scientist is complete without a young assistant, he has Crawford Tillingast (Jeffrey Combs) to do some of the late-night work while Dr. Pretorius is playing is bondage games in the other room--with prostitutes, I assume.
Crawford Tillingast successfully gets the resonator working in the opening scene, which causes some glowing eel-like things to appear hovering in the air. They attack Crawford, causing him to shut down the machine and spend the rest of the movie with a bite on his cheek. When Crawford informs Dr. Pretorius, the good doctor turns the machine on and gets attacked by some sort of extra dimensional god thing, that twists off his head and swallows it whole. Crawford attacks the machine with an axe, then flees the house and gets himself arrested.
Naturally, Crawford is completely honest with the police regarding what happened to Dr. Pretorius, so they ship him to a mental hospital and lock him up in a padded room. This brings into the story Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), a psychological researcher fresh out of grad school and familiar with Dr. Pretorius' work. She is allowed to meet with Crawford, which leads to a great example of Jeffrey Combs' intense overacting in this flick: he says, in a restrained panic, "It ate him...BIT his head off..." --dramatic pause to get closer to the camera-- "...like a gingerbread man!"
The person in charge of Crawford's care, an older woman named Dr. Bloch (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, the director's wife and another actor from Re-Animator), thinks it best that he be locked away as insane. Katherine, on the other hand, is young and curious, and thinks Crawford may be telling the truth about the resonator, after a CAT scan reveals that Crawford's pineal gland appears to be growing. She convinces the police to let Crawford repeat the experiment under her care, and the two return to the house where it all happened, along with Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), a cop assigned to watch over them.
That, of course, is just a brief description of the first act. From here, the movie gets even stranger. After the trio is able to reactivate the resonator, Dr. Pretorius appears out of nowhere--which does, at least, prove that Crawford didn't kill him. The good doctor tells them that he has merged with the being they keep calling "It." He then tells them that he wants to merge with the rest of them, too. There is something oddly perverted about this whole setup and Pretorius' obsession with merging with everyone.
They manage to shut off the machine before he can do too much damage, but as the story progresses, Dr. Pretorius/It gets better at forcing the machine to operate itself. By the end of the second act, everything has gone haywire, Katherine is wearing a skimpy leather outfit, Crawford has a snake-like appendage sticking out of his now-protruding forehead, and Bubba is dead. Oh, uh, *spoilers.* (Actually, the best part isn't the fact that Bubba dies, but the specific way in which he does--it's just as strange and inconsistent as the rest of this flick.)
After this, there's a lot of scenes featuring the bald Crawford Tillingast covered in blood and sucking peoples' brains out through their eye sockets. There's one particularly great scene with Crawford munching away at a human brain that he found at the hospital (they leave them laying around), his only comment when caught being "Mmm...good." This eventually leads to a latex-and-slime covered climax and the obligatory gigantic explosion. I don't think that should spoil anything for anyone, as most movies of this type end with a gigantic explosion.
For fans of 80's horror movies, From Beyond is definitely worth watching. It has plenty of crazy latex creature effects and odd puppetry, lots of slime and blood (and some brains), and some damned insane dialogue delivered with absolute severity. The special effects are cheesy--it was the 80's, after all--but entertaining. And, if you don't know who Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and Ken Foree are, this would be a good introduction--right after Re-Animator, of course.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Darkman (1990)
Writer/Director: Sam Raimi
Genre: Action (superhero)
Although I still haven't quite figured out exactly what I'm doing with this blog thing, it seems to be getting me into the habit of writing without pain, so I'm going to keep going with it. Idiocracy was, I felt, the best movie to start with. Now I'm switching from Mike Judge to Sam Raimi.
For fans of the horror genre, Sam Raimi is a name synonymous with legend. Armed with little more than a handful of money and tons of obsessive desire, Raimi and a number of young crew members and actors set out to create The Evil Dead (1981), one of the most intense horror movies widely available at the time. From there, he became part of the horror community, following up with the far more comedic Evil Dead II (1987). Through these two movies, actor Bruce Campbell's shotgun-wielding, chainsaw-handed character Ash became an icon of 80's horror.
The Evil Dead movies eventually became a trilogy when Raimi gave us Army of Darkness (1992), but before that, he created a fairly obscure entry in the superhero genre, titled Darkman. Apparently Raimi had originally wanted to do a movie based on "The Shadow" radio program, but could not get the rights so he created his own character and designed it to look like a comic book adaptation, in a manner not explicitly similar to the more recent Milla Jovovich movie Ultraviolet (2006). Darkman is, I'm sure, one of those movies that helped win Raimi the job of director for Spider-Man (2002) and its sequels.
The easiest way to describe the setup with Darkman is to break it apart like any other comic book superhero storyline.
The (Anti-) Hero: Darkman, real name Dr. Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson). Before his tragic event, he was a successful scientist working on a new formula for artificial skin, and he was engaged to hot young lawyer Julie Hastings.
The Villains: The villainy in this movie takes the form of a business partnership between a crooked real estate developer named Louis Strack, Jr. (Colin Friels) who works alongside badass mob boss Robert Durant (Larry Drake). Durant's gang is full of colorful characters, including Durant's own intern/implied gay lover Rick (Ted Raimi, the younger brother of Sam who makes frequent appearances in his movies).
The Damsel: Julie Hastings (Francis McDormand), a young blond lawyer who is getting ahead in life and about to be engaged to our hero, Peyton. Unfortunately for her, she also works for Louis Strack, and she has the misfortune of discovering a series of bribes being given from Strack Enterprises to the notorious Robert Durant, an action that leads into the tragic event.
The Tragic Event: Some important evidence of illegal activity within Strack Enterprises vanishes, so Louis Strack sends out Robert Durant and his gang to find it and eliminate any witnesses. Suspecting Dr. Westlake may have the information in his possession, Durant and company pay him a visit. The gang attacks, burn Peyton's hands, and kill his assistant. After smashing the place up, they leave behind a bomb that destroys the lab and all of the evidence, sending Peyton's severely burned body flying into a nearby river. Later, he is presumed dead, and a funeral is held in his honor. Julie goes into mourning.
The Aftermath: Peyton's body is found near the river, and he is assumed to be a homeless person. His body is horribly burned, and his face is near unrecognizable. The hospital uses him for some experimental surgery to try to ease his suffering, the result of which is Peyton's inability to feel pain. Additionally, his condition gives him a degree of superhuman strength because his body is constantly producing adrenaline. After regaining consciousness, Peyton breaks out of the hospital, finds some tattered robes and a dirty fedora, and manages to set up an advanced laboratory in an abandoned warehouse. From here, he continues his research on artificial skin and attempts to permanently cure his own near-skinless condition.
Abilities and Weaknesses: In addition to superhuman strength and feeling no pain, Darkman can create synthetic skin to allow him to look like virtually anyone, given enough preparation time. Unfortunately, the formula for the synthetic skin has a problem: it is extremely photosensitive, meaning that when exposed to light, the skin melts into formless goo after 99 minutes. As a further result of the explosion and his subsequent surgery, Peyton also experiences heightened emotions far more easily. As the movie progresses, he starts killing off members of Durant's gang, loosing another piece of his humanity with each execution.
One by one, Darkman takes out Durant's gang and Strack's business and prevents Julie from getting killed in the crossfire. While the major conflict with the villains is apparently resolved by the end of the movie, the life that Peyton Westlake lost when he became Darkman remains lost. This does, of course, set up the movie to either a serial or a series of sequels, the latter of which it did get. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1994) and Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996) were released direct-to-video and produced by Sam Raimi, with actor Arnold Vosloo taking on the title role in Liam Neeson's absence. I have personally never seen either of these movies, as I like the way the story ends with the original.
Those of us who remember this movie when it was new recall how awesome it was for its own time. Although we could clearly see that a number of the special effects were more stylized than realistic, it was the action that made this movie a hit, along with Raimi's trademark stop-motion animation, colorful lighting and use of stock footage, all of which gave Darkman a genuine comic book feel. Neeson and Drake, playing hero and villain respectively, both give their characters an intense badassery (yes, that is a word now), something that was starting to fade from cinema when the 80's started becoming the 90's and big name action heroes, such as the iconic Arnold Schwartzenegger, were starting to shift from action movies to comedies.
Of course, Darkman doesn't have the special computer effects that have caused the explosion in the superhero genre this past decade, so for some audiences, it won't stand up as a good movie to modern scrutiny. As Sam Raimi was known for at the time, he heavily stylized the action scenes in this movie instead of trying to gain the level of realism seen in his Spider-Man movies, something that wasn't possible in 1990. Personally, I think Darkman was easily one of the best superhero movies available at the time, and it still stands out as a dramatic and intriguing work of cinema.
Genre: Action (superhero)
Although I still haven't quite figured out exactly what I'm doing with this blog thing, it seems to be getting me into the habit of writing without pain, so I'm going to keep going with it. Idiocracy was, I felt, the best movie to start with. Now I'm switching from Mike Judge to Sam Raimi.
For fans of the horror genre, Sam Raimi is a name synonymous with legend. Armed with little more than a handful of money and tons of obsessive desire, Raimi and a number of young crew members and actors set out to create The Evil Dead (1981), one of the most intense horror movies widely available at the time. From there, he became part of the horror community, following up with the far more comedic Evil Dead II (1987). Through these two movies, actor Bruce Campbell's shotgun-wielding, chainsaw-handed character Ash became an icon of 80's horror.
The Evil Dead movies eventually became a trilogy when Raimi gave us Army of Darkness (1992), but before that, he created a fairly obscure entry in the superhero genre, titled Darkman. Apparently Raimi had originally wanted to do a movie based on "The Shadow" radio program, but could not get the rights so he created his own character and designed it to look like a comic book adaptation, in a manner not explicitly similar to the more recent Milla Jovovich movie Ultraviolet (2006). Darkman is, I'm sure, one of those movies that helped win Raimi the job of director for Spider-Man (2002) and its sequels.
The easiest way to describe the setup with Darkman is to break it apart like any other comic book superhero storyline.
The (Anti-) Hero: Darkman, real name Dr. Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson). Before his tragic event, he was a successful scientist working on a new formula for artificial skin, and he was engaged to hot young lawyer Julie Hastings.
The Villains: The villainy in this movie takes the form of a business partnership between a crooked real estate developer named Louis Strack, Jr. (Colin Friels) who works alongside badass mob boss Robert Durant (Larry Drake). Durant's gang is full of colorful characters, including Durant's own intern/implied gay lover Rick (Ted Raimi, the younger brother of Sam who makes frequent appearances in his movies).
The Damsel: Julie Hastings (Francis McDormand), a young blond lawyer who is getting ahead in life and about to be engaged to our hero, Peyton. Unfortunately for her, she also works for Louis Strack, and she has the misfortune of discovering a series of bribes being given from Strack Enterprises to the notorious Robert Durant, an action that leads into the tragic event.
The Tragic Event: Some important evidence of illegal activity within Strack Enterprises vanishes, so Louis Strack sends out Robert Durant and his gang to find it and eliminate any witnesses. Suspecting Dr. Westlake may have the information in his possession, Durant and company pay him a visit. The gang attacks, burn Peyton's hands, and kill his assistant. After smashing the place up, they leave behind a bomb that destroys the lab and all of the evidence, sending Peyton's severely burned body flying into a nearby river. Later, he is presumed dead, and a funeral is held in his honor. Julie goes into mourning.
The Aftermath: Peyton's body is found near the river, and he is assumed to be a homeless person. His body is horribly burned, and his face is near unrecognizable. The hospital uses him for some experimental surgery to try to ease his suffering, the result of which is Peyton's inability to feel pain. Additionally, his condition gives him a degree of superhuman strength because his body is constantly producing adrenaline. After regaining consciousness, Peyton breaks out of the hospital, finds some tattered robes and a dirty fedora, and manages to set up an advanced laboratory in an abandoned warehouse. From here, he continues his research on artificial skin and attempts to permanently cure his own near-skinless condition.
Abilities and Weaknesses: In addition to superhuman strength and feeling no pain, Darkman can create synthetic skin to allow him to look like virtually anyone, given enough preparation time. Unfortunately, the formula for the synthetic skin has a problem: it is extremely photosensitive, meaning that when exposed to light, the skin melts into formless goo after 99 minutes. As a further result of the explosion and his subsequent surgery, Peyton also experiences heightened emotions far more easily. As the movie progresses, he starts killing off members of Durant's gang, loosing another piece of his humanity with each execution.
One by one, Darkman takes out Durant's gang and Strack's business and prevents Julie from getting killed in the crossfire. While the major conflict with the villains is apparently resolved by the end of the movie, the life that Peyton Westlake lost when he became Darkman remains lost. This does, of course, set up the movie to either a serial or a series of sequels, the latter of which it did get. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1994) and Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996) were released direct-to-video and produced by Sam Raimi, with actor Arnold Vosloo taking on the title role in Liam Neeson's absence. I have personally never seen either of these movies, as I like the way the story ends with the original.
Those of us who remember this movie when it was new recall how awesome it was for its own time. Although we could clearly see that a number of the special effects were more stylized than realistic, it was the action that made this movie a hit, along with Raimi's trademark stop-motion animation, colorful lighting and use of stock footage, all of which gave Darkman a genuine comic book feel. Neeson and Drake, playing hero and villain respectively, both give their characters an intense badassery (yes, that is a word now), something that was starting to fade from cinema when the 80's started becoming the 90's and big name action heroes, such as the iconic Arnold Schwartzenegger, were starting to shift from action movies to comedies.
Of course, Darkman doesn't have the special computer effects that have caused the explosion in the superhero genre this past decade, so for some audiences, it won't stand up as a good movie to modern scrutiny. As Sam Raimi was known for at the time, he heavily stylized the action scenes in this movie instead of trying to gain the level of realism seen in his Spider-Man movies, something that wasn't possible in 1990. Personally, I think Darkman was easily one of the best superhero movies available at the time, and it still stands out as a dramatic and intriguing work of cinema.
Idiocracy (2006)
Writer and Director: Mike Judge
Genre: Comedy (low-brow satire)
Remember Beavis and Butt-Head? Well, the man behind that duo, Mike Judge, went on to become quite successful, later creating the television series "King of the Hill" and writing and directing the movie Office Space. No doubt at least some of the people reading this have seen some of Judge's work, especially considering the cultural impact that Beavis and Butt-Head had during the early 1990's.
The Mike Judge project that many people have not heard of was the science fiction comedy Idiocracy, starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph and Dax Shepard. As far as I can tell, this movie had a reasonably impressive budget behind it (although not quite the same amount seen in, say, summer movie blockbusters) and, for some reason, 20th Century Fox only released it in a handful of theatres nationwide and gave it almost no advertising. The exact reasons for this are anyone's guess, although one might speculate that the movie's on-the-nose satire of corporate and consumer culture had something to do with it.
Idiocracy follows the character Joe Bauer (Luke Wilson), a slacker in the military who is, as is quickly revealed, an incredibly average individual in almost every way. His first assignment is to participate in a top-secret army experiment in human stasis; he and a prostitute, Rita (Maya Rudolph), are placed in large electronic pods, the plan being that they would be left in suspended animation for one year and released. Unfortunately, the entire project is scrapped before the year is over due to a massive prostitution scandal, and the two pods that contained Joe and Rita's suspended bodies are forgotten and wind up on a junk heap.
Five hundred years pass.
Joe and Rita are both released from their pods shortly after an enormous garbage avalanche, and find themselves in a world that has become a shell of what it once was. While one might have predicted that the human species would, over time, get progressively more intelligent, it has instead done exactly the opposite: people have gotten dumber and dumber over the years. What's more, it turns out that Joe (later given the nomenclature Not Sure) and Rita are now the smartest people in the world. Take into consideration that neither of them were very smart to begin with, and what we're left with is a movie about an exceptionally low-brow dystopia.
A number of people dismiss this movie for the same reason they dismiss most of Mike Judge's work: because he uses a lot of brainless, scatological humor. I, however, prefer to think of Judge as a master of low-brow satire, making countless jabs at not only consumerism and corporate control, but also the incredible inadequacies plaguing the masses in communication and critical thinking. In this future, the English language has completely degenerated into a mixture of "hillbilly, inner-city slang, valley girl, and various grunts;" the only thing missing was the use of Internet acronyms. When Joe tries to communicate with others, they only laugh at him and tell him to shut up; to them, he "talks like a fag" and comes off as pompous. One of the things that multiple watchings of this movie reveal are repeated grammatical errors and unusual product-related alterations in language--for example, the word "sympathize" has apparently been replaced with the word "supersize."
The satire on consumerism and corporations is easy to see in Idiocracy. For one, advertising is absolutely everywhere--people even wear disposable clothing covered in product ads. Advertising has also become a great deal more aggressive in the future: the slogan for Carl's Jr. is now "Fuck you, I'm eating!" One of the central plot lines in this movie is that, in the future, a sports drink company called Brawndo (Judge's take on Gatorade) had become so large that it was able to actually purchase the FDA and the FCC. This resulted in water being almost entirely replaced throughout the country by Brawndo, a product now being used in drinking fountains, to bottle-feed infants, to give to livestock, and to saturate the crops ("Brawndo: It's Got What Plants Crave!"). Water, in this future, is designated solely to use in toilets.
While this movie may have never gotten the publicity that it deserved, there are plenty of reasons why people should see Idiocracy. I personally think this movie is an absolute gem and a perfect example of Mike Judge's observational skill and sheer brilliance, and every bit deserving of cult status as Office Space is.
Genre: Comedy (low-brow satire)
Remember Beavis and Butt-Head? Well, the man behind that duo, Mike Judge, went on to become quite successful, later creating the television series "King of the Hill" and writing and directing the movie Office Space. No doubt at least some of the people reading this have seen some of Judge's work, especially considering the cultural impact that Beavis and Butt-Head had during the early 1990's.
The Mike Judge project that many people have not heard of was the science fiction comedy Idiocracy, starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph and Dax Shepard. As far as I can tell, this movie had a reasonably impressive budget behind it (although not quite the same amount seen in, say, summer movie blockbusters) and, for some reason, 20th Century Fox only released it in a handful of theatres nationwide and gave it almost no advertising. The exact reasons for this are anyone's guess, although one might speculate that the movie's on-the-nose satire of corporate and consumer culture had something to do with it.
Idiocracy follows the character Joe Bauer (Luke Wilson), a slacker in the military who is, as is quickly revealed, an incredibly average individual in almost every way. His first assignment is to participate in a top-secret army experiment in human stasis; he and a prostitute, Rita (Maya Rudolph), are placed in large electronic pods, the plan being that they would be left in suspended animation for one year and released. Unfortunately, the entire project is scrapped before the year is over due to a massive prostitution scandal, and the two pods that contained Joe and Rita's suspended bodies are forgotten and wind up on a junk heap.
Five hundred years pass.
Joe and Rita are both released from their pods shortly after an enormous garbage avalanche, and find themselves in a world that has become a shell of what it once was. While one might have predicted that the human species would, over time, get progressively more intelligent, it has instead done exactly the opposite: people have gotten dumber and dumber over the years. What's more, it turns out that Joe (later given the nomenclature Not Sure) and Rita are now the smartest people in the world. Take into consideration that neither of them were very smart to begin with, and what we're left with is a movie about an exceptionally low-brow dystopia.
A number of people dismiss this movie for the same reason they dismiss most of Mike Judge's work: because he uses a lot of brainless, scatological humor. I, however, prefer to think of Judge as a master of low-brow satire, making countless jabs at not only consumerism and corporate control, but also the incredible inadequacies plaguing the masses in communication and critical thinking. In this future, the English language has completely degenerated into a mixture of "hillbilly, inner-city slang, valley girl, and various grunts;" the only thing missing was the use of Internet acronyms. When Joe tries to communicate with others, they only laugh at him and tell him to shut up; to them, he "talks like a fag" and comes off as pompous. One of the things that multiple watchings of this movie reveal are repeated grammatical errors and unusual product-related alterations in language--for example, the word "sympathize" has apparently been replaced with the word "supersize."
The satire on consumerism and corporations is easy to see in Idiocracy. For one, advertising is absolutely everywhere--people even wear disposable clothing covered in product ads. Advertising has also become a great deal more aggressive in the future: the slogan for Carl's Jr. is now "Fuck you, I'm eating!" One of the central plot lines in this movie is that, in the future, a sports drink company called Brawndo (Judge's take on Gatorade) had become so large that it was able to actually purchase the FDA and the FCC. This resulted in water being almost entirely replaced throughout the country by Brawndo, a product now being used in drinking fountains, to bottle-feed infants, to give to livestock, and to saturate the crops ("Brawndo: It's Got What Plants Crave!"). Water, in this future, is designated solely to use in toilets.
While this movie may have never gotten the publicity that it deserved, there are plenty of reasons why people should see Idiocracy. I personally think this movie is an absolute gem and a perfect example of Mike Judge's observational skill and sheer brilliance, and every bit deserving of cult status as Office Space is.
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