Sep
25
“Rolling Thunder” Review
Filed Under Not on DVD | Leave a Comment
I’ve fallen behind on this column, so I want to bring it back in a big way. That “Rolling Thunder” is not available on DVD is a crime against humanity. John Flynn’s 1977 revenge flick, written by Paul Schrader(!), is a giant of cult cinema. I caught a midnight screening of it at the Nuart a couple years ago. The following Monday, I was trying to explain the film to a female co-worker, and the look on her face told me that, yes, “Rolling Thunder” is definitely a masterpiece.
The film is about Major Charles Rane (William Devane), an ex-POW who returns to his hometown of San Antonio after spending seven years in the Hanoi Hilton. He’s given a hero’s welcome at the airport. Rane gets a new Cadillac and a box of silver dollars, one for every day he was held prisoner, amounting to over $2,000. But Rane feels dislocated. His son doesn’t remember him, and his wife has been having an affair with the local sheriff.
To make matters worse, a group of thugs come to his house looking for his silver dollars. Rane won’t tell them where they’re hidden, so they shove his hand in the garbage disposal and kill his wife and son. They ultimately make off with the loot anyway, leaving a maimed Rane to plot his revenge. He trains himself to load a gun with his prosthetic hook, which he files down to a sharp point. Does he drive the hook through someone else’s hand at some point in the film, you ask? Why, yes, he does indeed.
Clearly, “Rolling Thunder” is the best film imaginable. Quentin Tarantino digs it. He even named his now-defunct film distribution arm Rolling Thunder Pictures. Gene Siskel listed the film as one of the ten best of 1977. The other nine probably don’t have a climactic shootout in a Mexican brothel, so I think “Rolling Thunder” has a distinct advantage.
The film also stars a very young Tommy Lee Jones as one of Rane’s fellow airmen, Johnny Vohden, who joins Rane for the blood-soaked finale. It’s interesting to see Jones play against type. He’s very bottled up and reserved in this film and even more emotionally detached than Rane. For the climax, Vohden even slips back into his dress greens, as though he was going to some sort of event requiring formal attire, not a mass slaughter.
What’s interesting about the film, beyond all the hyperbole I’ve spouted, is the final explosion of violence at the film’s end. Here are two men who’ve been held captive and tortured for nearly a decade. The experience has stripped them of much of their humanity, leaving them unable to readjust to life back in the States. A romantic subplot between Rane and a waitress presents him with the option of moving on with his life after all that’s happened. But Rane can’t forgive everything he’s lost: his family, his hand, seven years of his life. He’s a character who’s physically and psychologically defined by the violence that’s been done to him. And after all the suffering he’s endured, he and Vohden are able to exact their retribution in a gritty and inelegant shootout. The film offers no resolution because there isn’t one. Rane and Vohden have simply returned to the violent world they thought they’d left behind. Roll credits.
(Can anyone tell that I’m back in film school?)
“Rolling Thunder” isn’t an exploitation movie. It might not be “Taxi Driver,” but it does have something to say about repressed violence and impaling people’s hands with prosthetic hooks. And that’s precisely why this mug needs to be on DVD.
-Brad Lohan
Aug
13
For the second installment of my “Not on DVD” review series, I thought I’d tackle the pilot episode of “Freddy’s Nightmares,” entitled “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” “Freddy’s Nightmares” is an anthology TV series that launched in the late-1980s when Freddymania was in full swing. Unlike “Friday the 13th: The Series,” the show actually ties into the film franchise. In fact, the first episode is a prequel of sorts to the original “Nightmare on Elm Street.”
But it still sucks royally.
I popped the tape in last night thinking I was in for a treat. It had come in the mail on my birthday, and being the first item I ever won in an eBay auction (for only $0.99!), my anticipation was at a fever pitch. This was a corner of the “NOES” series I’d yet to explore. What sort of TV-friendly horrors awaited? The fantastical elements of the film series allowed for some leeway with Broadcast Standards and Practices when the movies aired on television. So I imagined there could be all sorts of dreamlike death and dismemberment that skated past the censors. After all, the pilot was directed by Tobe Hooper, the helmer of the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” How could this go wrong?
Oh, it went wrong in a great number of ways, dear readers. First, the episode was shot on video, not film, giving it the production value of a late-night TV spot for a sex hotline or a used car dealership. I could’ve dealt with the crummy picture quality, though, if Hooper displayed any discernible talent for directing a scene. But the direction is so damned amateurish, it’s like watching a bad student film. It’s like watching one of my student films! Don’t get me started on the acting. Horror isn’t known for its brilliant performances — apart from maybe “Silence of the Lambs” and “Jason X” — but the level of non-acting on display here is staggering. Acting is more than just remembering one’s lines, people.
Perhaps what I disliked the most about the episode is its script. “No More Mr. Nice Guy” retcons what we understand about Freddy’s origin. He’s still burned alive by the grieving parents of the children he murdered, but it’s done differently than how Mrs. Thompson recalls the events “NOES.” What’s more, Mrs. Thompson isn’t even in the episode, nor is her ex-huband, Sheriff Thompson. Why in hell did the show runners not invite John Saxon to revisit one of his greatest roles?! Now, I love the concept of the angry mob — a horror film standard — being a group of soccer moms and absent fathers. And it’s a great reversal to have the slasher portrayed as the victim. Even so, “No More Mr. Nice Guy” completely bungles the execution. Freddy welcomes his incineration, and the dim-witted cop who lights him on fire doesn’t even deserve to carry John Saxon’s jock. After all, Freddy got off on a technicality because said cop forgot to read him his Miranda rights. Eff this guy.
Another fatal mistake the pilot makes is shooting around Freddy for the bulk of the episode. It’s as though Robert Englund was unavailable, and they used his stand-in for most scenes. It’s an odd choice, one that I don’t think works all that well. Englund’s a great screen presence. I’d've preferred the episode been about him rather than some dumbass cop who can’t remember to Mirandize a suspect. In the first “NOES,” it’s revealed that Freddy was served with a illegal search warrant. Why they changed that is anybody’s guess.
Pilots are hit-or-miss, but I’m in no hurry to pick up any subsequent episodes of the series on VHS. I am curious as to whether or not the show found its footing. On the other (clawed) hand, I have a hard time believing subsequent episodes are much of an improvement. Since it jettisons so much of the film continity, as far as I’m concerned, the pilot’s non-canon. I have a pretty good idea why Warner Home Video hasn’t bothered to upgrade the series to DVD. The original video masters must’ve deteriorated over time and aren’t worth the effort involved in trying to restore them. I can only imagine it’d be a nightmare.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
28
“Maniac Cop 2″ Review
Filed Under Not on DVD | Leave a Comment
I still own a VCR. It’s almost 20 years old, but it works for the most part. It does eat tapes like a bastard. Unfortunately, not every movie has been “digitally remastered” for the DVD format. There are still tons of films that are only available on VHS. If I were to get rid of my VCR, I’d have no way of viewing such wonderful films as “The Incredible Melting Man.” And so, I thought I’d start a regular column about movies that aren’t on DVD, forgotten gems doomed to exist only on antiquated videotape with bad audio and a panned-and-scanned image. This week’s entry will be the 1990 William Lustig classic, “Maniac Cop 2.”
The “Maniac Cop” trilogy came and went in the late-’80s/early-’90s as the slasher genre was winding down. What’s noteworthy about movies one and two in the series is that they star a very young, very skinny Bruce Campbell as rookie cop Jack Forrest. I haven’t gotten around to seeing part three yet. And since the first film is available on DVD, I’m going to limit my review to the second installment — “The Empire Strikes Back” of the “Maniac Cop” trilogy.
“Maniac Cop 2″ begins with a flashback to the climax of the first film. Undead ex-cop Matt Cordell, played by the mega-chinned actor Robert Z’Dar, has a ship’s mast plunged into his chest before he drives a police van off a pier in what appears to be a rather dangerous looking stunt. Of course, Cordell’s body is never recovered, and he resumes his killing spree, going after the victims of violent crime rather than the criminals themselves. Cordell’s a silent killer in the vein of Jason Voorhees. He wears a police uniform, and his face has been disfigured from his brief stint in prison, where he was believed to have been killed by the very criminals he put away. I have no idea why Cordell’s victims are innocent people and not the corrupt bureaucrats who had him sent up in the first place. The film was written by the highly overrated genre scribe Larry Cohen, who never quite grasped the concept of causality.
But slashers typically have weird motives anyway. I’m willing to go along with it.
Surviving a slasher film is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory. Anyone who makes it through a horror flick will almost assuredly die within the first fifteen minutes of the follow-up. Jack Forrest is no exception, meeting his bitter end at the point of Cordell’s dagger, a dagger he keeps sheathed in his nightstick. “Maniac Cop 2″ is one of the few films that contains a Bruce Campbell comeuppance; “Congo” is another. At any rate, with Forrest dead, it falls on grizzled Det. Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) to track down Cordell with the help of police head-shrinker Susan Reilly (Claudia Christian).
Cordell meanwhile teams up with a serial killer who targets exotic dancers, thereby satisfying the cop movie cliche that all good detective work requires a visit to a strip club. From there, Cordell starts building an army of psychopaths to break back into Sing-Sing and have his revenge. The climax contains one of the longest full-body burns I’ve seen since “Swamp Thing.” But this is definitely that ass-kickingest full-body burn by far. And the “Maniac Cop Rap” over the closing credits is easily the best musical composition 1990 had to offer.
I love the concept behind “Maniac Cop.” It’s “Dirty Harry” meets “Friday the 13th.” I’m astonished no one’s attempted a remake. I don’t think movie two quite lives up to its full potential, but it’s still fun to watch. VHS has a weird sort of quality — or lack thereof — that enhances the experience, like seeing a bad print of a b-movie in a grindhouse theater. The crummy picture and the garbled sound give it a je ne se qua that’d be lost if it had been cleaned up for DVD.
-Brad Lohan