Mar
31
VCR RIP
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I received my first DVD player as a Christmas gift in the year 2000. Since then, I’ve watched VHS go the route of Betamax and Laserdisc, but that doesn’t mean I’ve thrown away all my tapes or my dusty old VCR. In fact, I’ve picked up a few more videocassettes over the past decade, movies that are out-of-print on DVD (“The Ipcress File”) or movies that never were released on DVD in the first place (“Rolling Thunder”).
Last weekend, I popped in my VHS copy of “Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth” to bone up for my forthcoming Raising Hell review, and my VCR shit the bed. It’s been on its last legs for a few years now, eating tapes like a mother. When I tried watching “Hellraiser III,” the VCR played the flick at the wrong speed, making an already pretty wretched film all the more unwatchable. I tested another movie in hopes that maybe it wasn’t the VCR but the tape. It was the same story.
My VCR was, for all intents and purposes, dead.
I tried to remember how old the machine was. I came to the conclusion that I’ve had it for at least twenty years. Who knows how many movies I’ve watched on it, how many movies I’ve recorded. My use of it has nosedived in the past decade, but until recently, it was fairly reliable whenever I wanted to watch a random VHS title. Now it’s nothing more than an oversized clock.
Back in 2002, I briefly worked at Best Buy, where they were phasing out their VCRs. I deeply regret not picking on up for myself at the time. But I was broke, and my VHS player was working fine then. I tend to hang on to things until they completely crap out on me. For example, my laptop has a burnt-out monitor, so it’s plugged in to my desktop monitor. It ain’t dead until I say it’s dead.
I’ll see if I can’t find a cheap and unused VCR on Amazon or eBay. It’s disappointing that the technology has almost entirely been phased out of our culture, considering that tons of movies have never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray. That said, if “Rolling Thuder” does wind up on Blu, I’ll finally make the leap to the new format. Until then I’ll hang on to my antiquated VHS copy.
-Brad Lohan
Mar
30
Timothy Dalton as James Bond 007
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Some Bond fans lament that George Lazenby only played 007 once in 1969’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Personally, I don’t think Lazenby deserves to carry Sean Connery’s jock, let alone a Bond picture. As far as I’m concerned, the actor I’d've liked to see return for two or three more installments after his brief run as 007 is Timothy Dalton.
Roger Moore vacated the role after 1985’s “A View to a Kill.” Fun fact: Moore is actually older than the mother of Tanya Roberts, the Bond Girl in that film. After Moore’s departure, the filmmakers lined up Timothy Dalton for “The Living Daylights.” It was also around this time that Pierce Brosnan was considered for Bond, but the producers of “Remington Steele” wouldn’t let him out of his contract.
1987’s “The Living Daylights” was Dalton’s first of two turns as Bond. It’s a serviceable entry in the Bond franchise. In the film, Bond helps to smuggle a Russian defector out of East Germany, saving him from a sniper’s bullet and later falling in love with the very same sniper, played by Miriam D’Abo. Bond bounces from Europe to Northern Africa to pre-Taliban Afghanistan — teeming with the Mujahadeen(!) — to shut down an expat arms dealer named Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker). Fun fact: Baker would later return to the Bond franchise, playing opposite Pierce Brosnan as jovial CIA agent Jake Wade, in “Goldeneye” and “Tomorrow Never Dies.”
Dalton’s performance as Bond in “The Living Daylights” is darker and hews closely to the character from the Ian Fleming novels. At this point in the film series, it was a fairly radical departure from Roger Moore’s light-hearted approach to 007. Audiences clearly weren’t prepared for Dalton’s take, although it’s more in the spirit of the source material.
Let it be known that Roger Moore was my point-of-entry into the Bond franchise. I vaguely remember as a small boy seeing part of “Octopussy” on cable, the scene where a henchman with a circular saw yo-yo attacks Bond and Maud Adams’ Octopussy while they’re in bed, carving a pillow in half. That said, I don’t mean to disparage Moore’s work. He carried the torch throughout the turbulent ’70s, where the series saw some of its most bizarre shifts in tone and style (read: “Bond in Space!”). But I digress.
Dalton’s second Bond film was “Licence to Kill.” Yes, the British spelling of the word “license” won out when they decided on a title. This was the first Bond installment that isn’t named after a novel or short story written by Ian Fleming. It borrows one scene from the book “Live and Let Die,” the bit where Bond’s CIA buddy Felix Leiter is fed to a shark. The rest of the film is purely the invention of the screenwriters.
Released in 1989, “Licence to Kill” was clearly influenced by the gritty Joel Silver-produced action films of the late-1980s: “Die Hard,” “Lethal Weapon,” etc. Rather than pitting Bond against a megalomaniacal villain with aspirations of world domination, 007 goes on a revenge mission in this film and chases around Mexico after a drug kingpin named Sanchez (Robert Davi). Fun fact: a young Benicio Del Toro plays one of Sanchez’s henchmen.
“License to Kill” had the misfortune of being released in a crowded summer, competing with the likes of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Ghostbusters II,” “Lethal Weapon 2″ and “Batman.” The film underperformed and the franchise stalled out for six years. Ever since, Bond films have dropped in November or December.
1995 saw the Bond series return to form with Pierce Brosnan as 007 in “Goldeneye.” The film’s a helluva franchise relaunch, repositioning James Bond as a quippy, urbane secret agent, once again saving the world from international terrorism. It also has some of the most elaborate “Bond moments” in the series. Of the four Brosnan entries, only “Goldeneye” and 1997’s “Tomorrow Never Dies” are pretty solid. “The World Is Not Enough” is confusing and uneven, and “Die Another Day” is campy and overstuffed. Brosnan seems bored in the latter two installments as well. Although “Die Another Day” became the highest-grossing Bond film to date, Brosnan’s contract was up, and the series’ future became uncertain once again.
Enter Daniel Craig. 2006’s “Casino Royale” was the first Bond picture in 25 years to be based, albeit loosely, on an Ian Fleming novel. The film outgrossed “Die Another Day” and breathed new life into the long-running franchise. I think much of this has to do with Craig’s portrayal of Bond, which is not unlike Dalton’s take. Craig’s Bond is also a hard-edged, world-weary secret agent. What didn’t work in the touchy-feely late-1980s is pretty much the standard action hero mold today. Dalton was simply ahead of his time.
It’s disappointing that Dalton didn’t knock out at least another two Bond pictures in ‘91 and ‘93 before Brosnan took on the role. His performances are the most faithful to the spirit of the character than any other actor to date; Craig’s Bond doesn’t smoke. Dalton was cursed with middling scripts, and neither of his two entries stands out as particularly noteworthy in the franchise. It’s a shame.
-Brad Lohan
Mar
29
“Please, feel free, explore. We have eternity to know your flesh.”
-Pinhead, “Hellbound: Hellraiser II”
Pinhead’s nothing if not accommodating. When Kirsty and her mute sidekick Tiffany find themselves trapped in a giant matte painting that stands in for hell during the Midpoint of “Hellbound: Hellraiser II,” the heavily-pierced Cenobites let them have the run of the place. I always imagined eternal damnation to be slightly more oppressive. But as I touched upon in my review of “Hellraiser,” the dumbasses in charge don’t keep a very close eye on hell’s denizens, like Uncle Frank as a f’r instance. He slipped out of hell without even trying. You’d think they’d make one wear an ankle bracelet or some shit.
Let’s back up a bit. “Hellbound: Hellraiser II” picks up immediately after the previous film leaves off. Technically, it picks up during the climax to “Hellraiser,” as Kirsty sends the Cenobites back to the matte painting from whence they came. Then there’s a flashback to Pinhead’s previous life as British soldier Captain Elliott Spencer, solving the Lament Configuration and getting the standard meathook treatment. He also has a grid carved into his face and some nails driven into his dome at no additional cost.
(I was explaining to a co-worker the other day that I actually watch horror movies at the end of a long day to unwind. They really do put things into perspective. You think you had a rough day? Pfft, look at this guy here whose head’s all full of nails. That’s a rough day, my friend.)
At any rate, like any good Final Girl in a horror sequel, Kirsty wakes up in a mental hospital, where the police have a hard time buying into all this Cenobite business. And so, the cops are fairly useless when she finds the following message written in blood by her old man: “I AM IN HELL. HELP ME.” It seems like a tall order.
Only the creepy mad scientist named Dr. Channard, who performs experimental brain surgery on patients that are still awake(!), believes Kirsty’s story. He knows from the Lament Configuration and even owns a couple. Going one step further, Channard steals the blood-soaked mattress upon which Julia shuffled the mortal coil in movie one. Then he gives a deeply disturbed mental patient a straight razor, sits him down on the bed and watches the fun begin. Mixing the mental case’s blood with Julia’s somehow brings her back from hell. She doesn’t have any skin, but she and Channard find a work-around. She’s wrapped from head-to-toe in bandages and slipped into an evening dress.
Doing a little detective work, Kirsty goes through Channard’s research materials on the Lament configuration and finds a picture of Captain Spencer before he became Pinhead. The Cenobites apparently have some form of amnesia or simply choose not to remember they were ever human, preferring to live as hideously-deformed sadomasochistic demons from the bowels from hell. They’re much like Tea Partiers in that regard.
Doorways to hell seemingly open and close at random in this movie, and Kirsty and Tiffany ultimately find themselves chasing around this otherworldly labyrinth with the Cenobites, Julia and a newly made-over Dr. Channard on their heels. Julia’s transformed Channard into a Cenobite, one with a giant, undulating umbilical cord plugged into the top of his head. Things start getting really, really arbitrary at this point in the film.
There’s a scene where Julia corners Kirsty and Tiffany at a fork in the maze. Then another door opens for no reason and sucks the three of them into a long corridor. As they’re been pounded with gale force winds — hell’s apparently not depressurized — Julia’s sinewy body is torn from her flesh-suit. Julia’s skin comes into play later when Kirsty puts it on and tricks Dr. Channard into thinking she’s Julia. Derp!
“Hellbound: Hellraiser II” is a worthy follow-up to the original, expanding the canvas, piling on more weirdness. The Cenobites are dealt with a little too easily, but the final moments rather overtly suggest you can’t keep a good demon down. You can, however, trap him in a block of wood. At any rate, with six sequels to go, it’s pretty clear that Pinhead and pals aren’t out of the picture.
Next up is “Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.” I’ve only seen the third installment once before and don’t remember it all that well. I do remember not liking it. It’s a [pin]head and shoulders above “Hellraiser: Bloodline,” but we’ll see if it improves upon a repeat viewing.
-Brad Lohan
Mar
24
Watching “Back to the Future” the other day got me thinking about how they recast the role of Marty’s love interest, Jennifer Parker, in the sequels. Claudia Wells played Jennifer in movie one, but didn’t return for movies two or three. Shot back-to-back, the first and second sequels replaced Ms. Wells with future Academy Award nominee, Elizabeth Shue. I can’t say the filmmakers traded up. As excellent as Ms. Shue is in “Leaving Las Vegas,” her performance as Jennifer Parker is simply off and falls short of the work Ms. Wells did in the original as Marty’s super-hot girlfriend.
To be fair, Jennifer is not the most well-drawn character in the first “Back to the Future.” She’s there at the beginning and again at the end, sharing only a few brief scenes with Marty. Wells plays her as a supportive and high-haired minx. Her delivery of the line, “How ’bout a ride, mister?” in reference to taking a spin in Marty’s 4×4, would make any young man’s pants dance. Still, as an audience, we’re left to fill in the blanks about her character for the most part.
In “Back to the Future, Part II,” Ms. Wells is swapped out with Ms. Shue. Shue’s take on Jennifer borders on camp. She plays the character as a shrill bimbo, who Doc Brown renders unconscious with some flashy-light thing almost immediately after the movie’s underway.
Now, part of what I don’t like about Jennifer in the second film is a failure of the writing. I’m an apologist for “Back to the Future, Part II,” but I don’t deny its flaws. Chief among them is the fact that the second movie begins just as the first film ends. And so, Jennifer joins Doc and Marty on their trip through time. But then Doc promptly knocks Jennifer out and says he only brought her along because she’d seen the time vehicle. Considering that Doc demonstrates the DeLorean’s VTOL after-market upgrade in plain view of everyone in Marty’s neighborhood, not to mention their trip back to the future, it’s an incredibly weak attempt on screenwriter Bob Gale’s part to course-correct the story.
It gets even more bizarre from there. Rather than leaving the unconscious Jennifer in the DeLorean, Marty and Doc dump her in an alley, where the Hill Valley police pick her up and take her home…her home in 2015. Marty and Doc then have to rescue Jennifer before she encounters her future self. Meanwhile, Biff steals the time machine, goes back to 1955 to change history, creates an alternate timeline in which he’s a professional gambler and industrialist, et al. All of this could’ve been avoided had they just left poor Jennifer behind in 1985.
But it’s pointless to suggest what they should’ve done with Jennifer’s character in the second and third films. Instead, we can only acknowledge the missed opportunity of adding a third time-traveler to the mix. That being said, I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed that they sidelined Jennifer again in “Back to the Future, Part II” because of Shue’s hamminess. Had Claudia Wells returned, I’d be sorely disappointed that her role isn’t meatier.
-Brad Lohan
Mar
22
Raising Hell | “Hellraiser” Review
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“We’ll tear your soul apart!”
-Pinhead, “Hellraiser”
Let’s say you want to experience the limits of pleasure or pain in another plane of reality, but think Craigslist is just too creepy. Well, your ticket to heaven, hell or wherever is a little golden puzzle box called the Lament Configuration.
At the beginning of Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser,” the Lament Configuration is purchased from a junk dealer by Frank, a sweaty and wayward traveler. Frank takes the box home, lights some candles in the attic and opens a doorway to somewhere else. Then a bunch of meathooks come shooting out and body pierce him like nobody’s business. It gets better. After the flesh rendering, these creatures known as Cenobites, who look like the board of directors for Hot Topic, take Frank — or what’s left of him — away.
Soon after, Frank’s brother Larry moves his family into the house where all this crazy shit went down. It formerly belonged to their mother who’s since passed on. Larry’s new wife Julia isn’t thrilled with the idea of living in this dusty old place partly because she’s afraid of having a run-in with old Frank. We learn through gauzy flashbacks that the two of them had an affair before the whole meathook/Cenobite/drag-me-to-hell kerfuffle took Frank out of the picture temporarily.
While moving a particularly cumbersome bed up the stairs, Larry cuts his hand on an exposed nail. He goes crying to Julia up in the attic, spills about a pint of red-dyed Karo syrup on the floor and inadvertently resurrects Frank, whose essence has been trapped beneath the floorboards all this time. Hey, it can happen!
Frank returns from wherever the hell he’s been, but not quite fully-formed. In fact, he looks like dog’s breakfast. Worse, even. Frank reveals himself to a horrified Julia and politely asks her to bring him a few individuals that he can feed on. Apparently, he can reconstitute himself by nomming on viscera. And so, Julia begins hitting the bar scene, looking for random lonely hearts she can lure home and serve up to Frank.
It isn’t long before Larry’s daughter, Kirsty, discovers Frank in the attic. At this point, he looks like something out of an anatomy book, but wearing a button-down shirt and slacks for some reason. Kirsty escapes from Frank with the puzzle box and accidentally summons a rubbery, spikey-tailed monster as well as the Cenobites. Pinhead and his crew are ready to take Kirsty with them when she says Uncle Frank escaped their clutches. Evidently, hell is a minimum security institution. She strikes a deal with them: If she leads them to Frank, they’ll let her go.
Kirsty’s going on a lot of faith that people with friggin’ nails in their faces are good to their word.
“Hellraiser” is, in my opinion, one of the stronger splatter flicks of the ’80s. In a period of stalk-and-slash pictures, this film brings a weird kitchen sink domestic drama vibe to the proceedings. Even better, the biggest monsters in the movie are a couple of humans — well, one human and one guy who’s trying to be human again. Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and the gang aren’t in the movie very much and don’t go around randomly killing horny teenagers.
Director Clive Barker’s first film is easily his best. Visually brilliant, it marries the dreary look of modern-day London with the occasional elements of the fantastic. Everything feels authentic and lived-in, not like a sterile, all-CGI digital backlot. Even the super fakey FX work because it’s not like the average person has some frame of reference for what a spikey-tailed rubber monster actually looks like. It seems real because everything around it is real.
So far, we’re off to a good start with “Hellraiser.” Next week, we’ll do a deep dive into the solid first sequel, “Hellbound: Hellraiser II.”
-Brad Lohan
Mar
19
Raising Hell | Introduction
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“No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.”
- Pinhead, “Hellraiser” (1987)
I’ve fallen behind on my blogging of late. This is partly because I’m balancing a full-time job with being a full-time student. Something has to give, and so, my blog has been backburnered. I still try to post something every few days. But, I probably won’t get back to daily blogging until Spring semester ends in early-May. Until then, new updates will come in fits and starts.
One of the major challenges of blogging is coming up with new material to post everyday. I don’t want to bore both of my readers with the same rants about this remake or that reboot. It’s boring for me, too. I’ve also found that it’s incredibly difficult to bait apologists into leaving tons of nasty comments that me for any number of reasons. To be honest, I enjoy all the personal attacks, but they don’t come often enough to justify the effort I put into my angrier postings.
Wait, isn’t this blog supposed to be about “Hellraiser” or something? Yes, it is! I’m coming to that. The most fun blogs to write are film reviews, particularly ones for films that are way, way out there. For some reason, I thought it’d be interesting to tackle the “Hellraiser” franchise, cranking out at least one review per week about ol’ Pinhead and the Cenobites.
Did you know there are eight “Hellraiser” movies? Eight! Four were released theatrically and the next four went DTV. It stands to reason there are human beings, people walking among us, who have seen each chapter in the “Hellraiser” octology. I’ve seen all of the theatrical releases. In fact, I own I-III on home video. There’s a bit of a dropoff in quality after “Hellbound: Hellraiser II,” but it should make for reviews that are all the more entertaining.
This write-up will be the point-of-entry into the “Hellraiser” saga. I won’t specifically review any one film here. Rather, I’ll provide a brief overview of the series and give you some background on what we’re getting into. The first film is based on Clive Barker’s novella, “The Hellbound Heart.” Barker also wrote and directed the first film in the series, retitled “Hellraiser,” which if I remember correctly (a-yup, I read the book!), is a pretty faithful adaptation.
(On a side note, the comic book series “John Constantine: Hellblazer” was originally going to be called “John Constantine: Hellraiser,” but the “Hellraiser” film forced DC/Vertigo to rethink the title. In 2004, “Hellblazer” was then adapted into a shitty Keanu Reeves movie called “Constantine.” I’m perplexed as to why a “Hellraiser vs. Hellblazer” mash-up has yet to materialize. Total missed opportunity.)
The MacGuffin in the “Hellraiser” series is a puzzle box — sort of a golden Rubik’s cube — that summons these BDSM beasties called Cenobites whenever someone solves it. What follows is a grand guignol of psycho-sexual mayhem and janky SFX. The Cenobites are all about mixing pleasure with pain, so they go heavy on the body piercings. Easily the most famous Cenobite is Pinhead, the unofficial leader of the pack, who has nails driven into his skull in a grid-like pattern presumably to piss off his folks.
Next week I’ll post my review of the first flick, “Hellraiser,” one of the more underrated splatter films of the 1980s. It should be the beginning of one helluva ride.
-Brad Lohan
Mar
15
Before I quit reading monthly comics, I started buying old back issues of Marvel’s “What If…?” series. What a fascinating line of books. Each issue of the series changed some important element in a character’s history and then examined the repercussions. The “What If…?” comics harmlessly altered a character in order to explore the storytelling possibilities but left the character’s ongoing book alone. Every book was self-contained and usually exhausted all the ideas of the retcon in 22 pages.
I’d like to apply a similar concept to the movie business and ask what if George Lucas had never written and directed the original “Star Wars.” This blog isn’t intended to rake Lucas over the coals. Rather, I’d like to see how Hollywood would hypothetically be different had one particular movie never been made. But first, here’s a brief history lesson.
Originally conceived as “The Star Wars” while Lucas was working on “American Graffiti,” the plot and characters were more in line with what we saw in “The Phantom Menace” — boring space samurai with oddball names, careering around the cosmos from one loosely connected caper to the next. Lucas labored over his original concept for years until finally it took shape as a modern-day myth about a farmboy from a backwater planet who becomes the savior of the galaxy by embracing an esoteric religion.
No studio wanted to make it. Even Disney turned “Star Wars” down. Lucas finally got financing from 20th Century Fox to do his $8 million film in 1976 and endured a bitch of a shoot in the deserts of Tunisia as well as the soundstages outside London. His crew thought they were making some sort of camp classic. A year was spent developing the SFX for the film, and early effects shots were deemed unusable. Test screenings were a disaster. Director Brian DePalma harangued Lucas’ concept of “The Force of Others,” dubbing it “The Farts of Others;” Lucas ultimately truncated the name of his newfangled religion to simply, “The Force.” Early trailers were met with resounding laughter when shown to audiences.
But surprisingly, the film was released in May of 1977 and became the highest-grossing box office success of its day.
“Star Wars” changed George Lucas’ life forever in more ways than one. He became a victim of his own success, forever shackled to a movie he’d made to simply prove something to Francis Ford Coppola: that he could direct a populist film. Funnily enough, he’d already done that with “American Graffiti,” so I assume “Star Wars” was supposed to be his victory lap.
At any rate, where Anakin Skywalker had ceased to exist and became Darth Vader, the guy who’d made the arty and impenetrable “THX-1138″ turned into the guy who did “Star Wars.” George Lucas would never go back to directing esoteric films. In fact, Lucas didn’t direct anything from ‘77-’99. Making “Star Wars” was so miserable, he relegated himself to an Executive Producer role (and 2nd Unit Director) on “Empire” and “Jedi.” He also Exec Produced the “Indiana Jones” pictures, not to mention middling animated films like “An American Tail” and fantasy clunkers like “Willow.” Two decades later, Lucas would write and direct the “Star Wars” prequels, and we all know how those turned out.
So let’s just say that in the mid-’70s an exasperated Lucas put “The Star Wars” on the shelf when he couldn’t crack the story or that no studio would greenlight the thing. How different would movies and the movie industry be without one “game changer?”
Lucas, for one, would probably have directed “Apocalypse Now” instead of Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas’ approach would’ve been a low-budget, 16mm film, done in the style of the news footage that came out of Vietnam during the war. It wouldn’t have been a bloated and uneven operatic mish-mash that Coppola’s vastly overrated film is. That said, had Lucas directed “Apocalypse Now,” Coppola wouldn’t have lost his goddamn mind on location in the Philippines and perhaps cranked out some other brilliant films going into the 1980s. Lucas, meanwhile, could’ve potentially won that elusive Best Director Oscar and pursued more personal projects.
“Star Wars” is credited with legitimizing the science-fiction and fantasy genres, but I think that would’ve happened regardless. 1977 also saw the release of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” a devastatingly slow, albeit critically acclaimed and financially successful, sci-fi movie directed by Steven Spielberg. The following year, “Superman: The Movie,” directed by Richard Donner, made audiences believe a man can fly. What’s more, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind had the forethought to shoot “Superman: The Movie” and “Superman II” simultaneously. It might be argued that the success of “Star Wars” is what led to “Superman” getting a greenlight, but in fact, “Superman” was in production before “Star Wars” was released.
What movies were directly influenced by “Star Wars” then? Well, “Alien,” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” “Moonraker,” “Flash Gordon,” and so on and so forth might not have happened or have taken a different shape. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon toiled over “Alien” (aka “Star Beast”) prior to May 1977. But it’s doubtful that 20th Century Fox, the same studio that released “Star Wars,” would’ve bought it or that director Ridley Scott would’ve been hired to make it. But it stands to reason that O’Bannon would’ve scraped together the money to do the film himself. “Star Trek” probably would’ve never hit theaters, but rather, returned to the small screen. Attempts to restart the “Trek” franchise on television, minus William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, had been made throughout the 1970s. They were this close to launching a new TV series when “Star Wars” hit and gave Paramount the idea that “Trek” could be a viable film franchise. The gritty “For Your Eyes Only” would’ve come out on the heels of “The Spy Who Loved Me,” not the hokey “Moonraker.” And my favorite “Star Wars” wannabe, “Flash Gordon,” probably wouldn’t have happened at all. Believe it or not, George Lucas originally wanted to make a “Flash Gordon” film, but couldn’t secure the rights. So he made “Star Wars” instead. Its boffo box office lit a fire under Universal to make “Flash Gordon,” which subsequently bombed. Wah-wah… I still love it.
What about career trajectories? Lucas and Spielberg enjoyed a friendly creative rivalry that began with “Jaws.” (To me, “Jaws” is the film that really changed the filmmaking landscape in the ’70s, not “Star Wars.”) Lucas topped “Jaws” at the box office with “Star Wars” in 1977, and “E.T.” topped “Star Wars” at the box office in 1982. The two also collaborated on the wildly successful “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and its subsequent installments. But the character of Indiana Jones first came to Lucas during his development of “Star Wars.” As far as I’m concerned, if “Star Wars” never had happened, then neither did Indy. And if Indy never happened, well, “E.T.” would’ve looked a hell of a lot different. Harrison Ford’s then-wife, Melissa Matheson, wrote “E.T.” after breaking the story with Spielberg on the set of “Raiders.” Spielberg probably still would’ve made his first bomb, “1941,” but not bounced back with the double-whammy of “Raiders” and “E.T.” No, he probably would’ve done the sci-fi thriller “Watch the Skies,” a film about a family menaced by extra-terrestrials. Would it have been a hit, though? Well, both “Poltergeist” (ghost-directed by Spielberg) and “E.T.” are based in part on his original concept for “Watch the Skies,” so it’s very likely the film would’ve at least had the box office take of the former. Spielberg naturally would’ve enjoyed a strong career as director and executive producer without a rivalry or collaboration with Lucas.
When it comes to careers, Harrison Ford suffers the worst here. Without “Star Wars” or Indy, the man would’ve probably disappeared entirely from the acting scene after “American Graffiti” and become a professional carpenter. That sound you hear is my mother fainting.
What about the ancillary market? “Star Wars” wasn’t the first film to have all manner of tie-ins (toys, games, lunchpails, clothing, cereal, etc.), but it hit shortly before programming laws were changed. As such, TV shows aimed at children became 30-minute commercials for action figures. The animated series “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,” a fairly obvious marriage of “Star Wars” and “Conan,” burst onto the scene in 1982 and became a merchandising giant for Mattel. “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero” and “The Transformers” followed shortly thereafter. These same cartoons had “educational” PSAs at the tail end of each episode, but they were chiefly designed to market toys to the same young audience that gobbled up “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” If “Star Wars” hadn’t come out, it’s possible that tie-ins might not have proven themselves to be such a cash cow, and children’s TV may have been vastly different going into the 1980s.
Removing “Star Wars” from the cultural zeitgeist would even change the name of Ronald Reagan’s shitty missile defense shield. The arms race was impacted by a film that no studio thought would get an ROI on an $8 million budget!
In the ’70s, there was a rapid succession of mega-hits: “The Godfather,” “The Exorcist,” “The Godfather, Part II,” “Jaws,” and “Rocky.” Yes, “Star Wars” outgrossed them all, but it didn’t exactly invent the blockbuster. Had it not come out when it did, another film — perhaps Donner’s “Superman” — would’ve filled the vacuum as the science fantasy razzle-dazzle crowd-pleaser of its time. We’ll never know how different cinema would be, but it’s always fun to ask the age-old question, “What if…?”
-Brad Lohan
Mar
11
“The Evil Dead” Review
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Sam Raimi’s debut film, 1981’s “The Evil Dead,” went largely unseen during its initial release. Though championed by horror novelist Stephen King as well as “Fangoria” magazine, gorehounds and general audiences alike passed on the movie, and it disappeared from theaters without much fanfare. The film still made enough green to justify a remake/sequel, 1986’s “Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn,” but that, too, went largely unnoticed due to its X rating for splatstick violence. 1993 saw the release of “Army of Darkness,” the third “Evil Dead” film. Universal Studios, the film’s distributor, had so little faith in the “Evil Dead” brand, it dropped “Evil Dead III” from the film’s title. The first time I saw “Army of Darkness,” I thought it was a standalone horror movie.
In the intervening years, Sam Raimi has directed three mega-successful “Spider-Man” flicks, and Bruce Campbell, star of the “Evil Dead” trilogy, has gone on to become an inimitable genre movie icon. Meanwhile, the “Evil Dead” films have achieved cult status on home video.
Grindhouse Releasing — a distribution house co-owned by Sage Stallone, son of Sylvester! — is taking a brand new print of “The Evil Dead” on the road, so fans who’ve only seen the movie on a beat-to-shit VHS tape or one of the eleventeen crummy DVD versions can experience it in a theater with a couple hundred other enthusiasts. I caught it last Friday at midnight at the Nuart, one of my favorite L.A. venues for all things culty.
What a show. Grindhouse has included trailers for other upcoming films on their release slate. Exploitation movies have some of the best advertising. I didn’t even like “Cannibal Holocaust,” but I’ve got to admit the trailer made me think about giving it another look.
“The Evil Dead” is terrific on the big screen. The matte shot of the full moon is obvious as ever. Raimi’s camerawork, particularly the POV shots of the unseen evil charging through the forest, is endlessly inventive. And the creepier moments work like gangbusters. “The Evil Dead” is first and foremost a horror film. The sequels are played for laughs, but this one delivers the scares.
The film is about five college students on a road trip into the deep Tennessee backwoods. They stay in a ramshackle cabin, where they find an old tape recorder and a gruesome-looking book. Scott, the douchey alpha male of the pack, plays one of the recordings and inadvertently awakens an unstoppable evil force in the woods. One by one, the members of the group are possessed and become Deadites — white-eyed demons that are very tough to kill. Only nice guy Ash (Bruce Campbell) is left standing at the end of the terrifying night.
Raimi’s matured as a filmmaker over the past 30 years, becoming more polished and a more focused storyteller. But “The Evil Dead” showcases his raw talent and ability to make even the most modest budget work for his purposes. The film was independently financed by dentists in the Detroit area. I’ve always thought that cheapjack horror flicks have a more visceral quality to them, a unique and somewhat unseemly verisimilitude that makes them more engaging than the glossy, Platinum Dunes house style that permeates horror remakes of late.
Almost 30 years after its original theatrical run, “The Evil Dead” is now playing to sold-out audiences at midnight screenings across the country. It’s a long overdue reception for a flick that saw the debut of one of the masters of the genre. I’m glad I was finally able to experience “The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror” as so few people did in ‘81.
-Brad Lohan
Mar
8
“Meteor” Review
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With the recent non-news that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs and not HIV-AIDS, I thought I’d watch a forgotten gem of the disaster genre, the 1979 Ronald Neame film, “Meteor.” The film stars Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Martin Landau and Henry Fonda. I know, right. What a cast! This being a disaster picture, most of them go to waste. Landau, however, stands out as the pissed-off general who hates everyone’s ideas. He dies.
“Meteor” not only brought an end to the waning popularity of disaster movies in the ’70s, but its box office failure apparently bankrupted American International Pictures, FTW. As far as I’m concerned, any movie in which Sean Connery delivers this line, “Why don’t you stick a broom up my ass? I can sweep the carpet on the way out,” belongs on a goddamn AFI list for the 100 Best Sean Connery Zingers.
“Meteor,” as you may have guessed, is about a piece of space debris — one about the size of Bruce Willis’ ego (i.e. five miles wide) — that’s on a collision course with the planet Earth. Connery plays Dr. Paul Bradley, a former NASA scientist who developed an orbital platform that can launch nukes at any chunk of rock hurtling towards our planet. However, Dr. Bradley left NASA when his project, dubbed Hercules, was redesigned by the U.S. military, and the missiles were trained on the Soviet Union instead. Now an actual meteor is heading for Earth, and the government desperately needs Dr. Bradley to help them reconfigure Hercules to do what it was originally intended to. Oh, and they need to ask the USSR if they’ll be so kind as to use their own version of Hercules for the same purpose. Uncharacteristically, the U.S. doesn’t have enough nuclear firepower to do the job alone. This is what happens under the Henry Fonda Administration. The country goes straight to hell.
One problem I have with disaster films is that they have so many A-listers and so little time. Natalie Wood shows up incredibly late in the film as a Russian translator and Dr. Bradley’s love interest. (Fun fact: Connery hooked up with Wood’s bosomy sister, Lana, in his penultimate turn as James Bond, 1971’s “Diamonds Are Forever.”) “Meteor” runs less than two hours, so most of the stars aren’t given a hell of a lot of do beyond lending their famous names to an Irwin Allen wannabe. Also, by virtue of the fact that the disaster is impending, the movie is kind of one long waiting game. Splinters of the meteor come crashing down late in the second act, including one that takes out the WTC, but the middle section of the film is a slog. We get lots of scenes of people being curt with one another.
The climax involves Dr. Bradley leading a group of people to safety through what appears to be a mudslide in a NYC subway tunnel after a splinter of meteor crashes down on top of their heads. It’s kind of a weird ending for a movie called “Meteor.” I was hoping we’d get to see Connery dressed up like an astronaut at some point during the proceedings. Rather, we get a mud-caked Connery. Bullshit.
How does “Meteor” stack up against that theatrically-released telefilm, “‘Deep Impact,” and Michael Bay’s theatrically-released commercial for massive-scale destruction, “Armageddon?” Well, all three are weak sauce for different reasons. But only “Meteor” has the broom-up-the-ass line. So it edges out the competition by a whisker.
-Brad Lohan
Mar
2
Where Have All the Tough Guys Gone?
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Driving to work this morning, I saw billboards for “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “She’s Out of My League,” the kind of toothless, sissy-Mary pap that passes for adolescent power fantasies these days. Yeesh, what’s happened to young men? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that adolescence isn’t a phase for males; it’s perpetual. I read the “Kick-Ass” graphic novel last weekend and eagerly anticipate the film. I just finished watching “G.I. Joe” Volume 1.2 and am moving on to Volume 1.3 tonight. So it’s not as though I’m some cultural elitist. I like comic book violence just as much as the next sexually awkward young man with a largely absent father.
But I don’t like weenises. Movie heroes have become too sissified. I’m working on a script for class with a tough guy hero and was trying to think of research materials (i.e. comic books) I could review with a character whose values jibe with my protag. It occurred to me that Jim Steranko’s “Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD” is probably my best bet. And that title was published in the ’60s. Jeesus Kerist! I have to go that far back in time to find flinty heroes for inspiration?
That isn’t to say I think movie heroes should be brutes. Some of my favorite movie characters are deeply troubled. Marty McFly desperately needs to avoid his future mother’s advances and set up his would-be parents before he’s erased from existence in “Back to the Future.” But despite his having to play cupid, he’s still a courageous and resourceful hero, punching out Biff Tannen (who’s twice his size) before leading him on a chase through Hill Valley on a makeshift skateboard. Nowadays, Marty’d probably be some metro candyass who resolves his problems with an elaborate musical number.
John McClane, before he turned into a boring bald-headed killing machine, appears in the first “Die Hard” as a New York cop with a bruised ego. After a long-gestating row with his wife over her career, he has to kill his way through a dozen international terrorists to apologize for not being supportive.
Martin Riggs in “Lethal Weapon I” is a suicidal wreck after the death of his wife. It’s only after befriending his partner, family man Roger Murtaugh (and killing a bunch of ex-CIA drug smugglers), that he is able to move on to the next stage of his bereavement: acceptance.
The Terminator in “T2″ is an unemotional walking tank who learns the value of human life that comes from his interactions of his surrogate son, John Connor.
These are terrific movie heroes because they’re steely sonsabitches, but they’re not completely devoid of inner-conflict. There’s a happy medium between strong and sensitive. I think that’s somehow been lost, and now the cinemas are teeming with mopey, emo dinkuses. It makes for weak sauce cinema. Movie heroes are supposed to be larger than life, not your everyday schmoes.
Anyone who goes to see “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” deserves to get beaten up, and anyone who watches “She’s Out of My League” should die a virgin. It’s time for a tough guy renaissance.
-Brad Lohan