This film, which features Vanessa Hudgens in a change-of-pace role, looks good and life-affirming. However, there are two reasons for concern.
First off, the movie is being released in January, which is traditionally the time of year that all of the really bad movies are released.
Secondly, the trailer features three quotes praising the film but they’re all from the same review.
Hopefully, Gimme Shelter will beat the odds.
For today’s entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, I want to take a look at Police, Adjective, a Romanian film from 2009.
Alex (Alexandru Sabadac) is a teenager who has recently been accused of being a drug dealer by a police informant. Burned-out detective Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is assigned to follow Alex and keep him under surveillance and, ultimately, gather enough evidence to send Alex to prison.
However, Cristi quickly realizes that Alex is just a bored kid who likes to smoke weed with his friends. Cristi realizes that Alex isn’t a threat to anyone and, that by doing his job, Critsi will essentially be ruining Alex’s life. As well, Cristi feels that the informant is a bigger threat than Alex but he’s told that the informant is the son of a powerful man and therefore, won’t be prosecuted.
After spending the majority of the film watching Alex and dealing with the drudgery of the never-ending police bureaucracy, Cristi has a meeting with his superior, Anglehache (played, with a subtle brilliance, by Vlad Ivanov). Cristi argues that there’s no reason to arrest Alex and send him to prison for seven years. Anglehache responds by opening a dictionary, forcing Cristi to read the definition of the word “police,” and then explaining why the law must be rigidly enforced regardless of logic. It’s now up to Cristi to decide what’s more important, his conscience or the demands of the state.
I can still remember the Saturday afternoon that I spent watching Police, Adjective. My reason for wanting to see the film was simple: I had never seen a Romanian film before and, living in Texas, there was a pretty good chance that Police, Adjective would be my only opportunity to do so. I approached all of my friends and every member of my family and I said, “We have to see this movie! It’s from Romania!” I could tell by their reactions that they weren’t quite as enthusiastic as I was. “Fine!” I declared, “I’ll see it by myself!” And that’s exactly what I did. Early in the morning, I went down to the Dallas Angelika and I saw Police, Adjective.
When the film started, there were 7 other people sitting in theater. The first two walked out after 15 minutes. The next one left at the 30 minute mark. As the rest of the film played out, I was aware of the other four viewers getting frustrated. I could hear them impatiently rattling their popcorn bags. I could hear a few of them demanding, under their breath, to know how The Dallas Morning News could have possibly given this film a good review. I could hear them as, one-by-one, they stood up and walked out of the theater. By then end of the movie, I was the only one left.
Now, you should understand that Police, Adjective features no violence, no profanity, no nudity, and no mention of religion. In short, the audience didn’t leave because it was offended by anything it had seen. Instead, they left because Police, Adjective is quite literally one of the slowest films ever made. It’s a police film that features no action but instead emphasizes the drudgery of both the work and existence in general. For 90 minutes, we watch as Cristi secretly follows and observes Alex. During that time, Alex pretty much does nothing. Then eventually, Cristi goes back to a depressingly shoddy-looking police station, questions whether the law is worth enforcing, and gets a lecture from a guy with a dictionary.
Exciting stuff, no?
Well, in its own way, it is. Police, Adjective is a film about ideas and, despite what some filmmakers seem to believe, ideas can very exciting. By emphasizing the drudgery of Cristi’s job and rejecting the clichés that audiences have been conditioned to expect when it comes to police films, Police, Adjective invites the viewer to consider their own attitude towards the law. Why do we have laws and do we really need them? Cristi is forced to consider whether his superior’s attitude — that the law must be obeyed just because of the fact that is the law — is correct or if it’s just another excuse to justify the power of the state at the expense of the rights of the individual.
Not only is it a good question but it’s a question that not many films have the courage to ask.
Fortunately, Police, Adjective does.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Traditionally here in the States, Thanksgiving is the forgotten holiday that sits between Halloween and Christmas. This is the time of year that those of us in the States are supposed to think about what we are thankful for. According to the people in Washington, this year we’re also supposed to talk to all of the members of our family about politics. They’ve even made talking points available, just in case you have a relative who isn’t crazy about your personal ideology. To me, though, that seems kind of foolish. Why would you ruin a perfectly good Thanksgiving with politics when you could spend your time thinking, talking, and arguing about movies and television?
After all, Presidents are only around for, at the most, eight years. Movies are forever.
With that in mind, here are twelve random things that I am thankful for in 2013.
1) I’m thankful that there are still visionaries like Shane Carruth who can make films like Upstream Color.
2) I’m thankful for actors, like Robert Downey, Jr., who are capable of making mainstream films, like Iron Man 3, memorable.
3) I’m thankful that a show like Breaking Bad got a chance to remind us of just how good television can be.
4) I’m thankful for Blue Is The Warmest Color.
5) I’m thankful that at least some people understand that The Counselor is one of the best films of 2013.
6) I’m thankful that this October was this site’s most succesful horror month yet!
7) I’m thankful that, in 2013, we can still watch movies like The Passion of Joan of Arc.
8) I’m thankful that I actually saw Tyler Perry’s Temptation because, otherwise, I would not believe that such an inept and deeply offensive film could have been made.
9) I am thankful for Icona Pop’s I Love It, which is currently my favorite song to play while I’m dancing around the house in my underwear.
10) I am thankful that the series finale of The Office was everything that it should have been.
11) I am thankful that Dexter finally ended because, seriously, the show was getting so bad that it was running the risk of overshadowing how good the first few seasons actually were.
12) Finally, and most importantly, I am thankful for our readers and for our subscribers. Y’all are the ones who make all of this worthwhile. Thank you!
For today’s entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, we take a look at one of the most underappreciated films of all time, Roger Corman’s 1962 look at race relations, The Intruder.
Despite the fact that he’s regularly cited as being one of the most important figures in the development of American cinema, Roger Corman remains an underrated director. Many critics tend to focus more on the filmmakers that got their start working for Corman than on Corman himself. When they talk about Roger Corman, they praise him for knowing how to exploit trends. They praise him as a marketer but, at the same time, they tend to dismiss him as a director.
I would suggest that those critics see The Intruder before they presume to say another word about Roger Corman.
The Intruder opens with a young, handsome man named Adam Cramer sitting on a bus. The first thing that we notice about Cramer is that he’s wearing an immaculate white suit. The second thing we notice is that he’s being played by a very young (and, it must be said, rather fit) William Shatner.
I know that many people will probably be inclined to dismiss The Intruder from the minute they hear that it stars William Shatner. Based simply on Shatner’s presence, they’ll assume that this film must be very campy, very Canadian, or both. Well, they’re wrong. Shatner gives an excellent performance in this film, bringing to life one of the most evil characters ever to appear on-screen.
Adam Cramer, you see, is a representative on a Northern organization known as the Patrick Henry Society and he’s riding the bus because he’s heading to a small Southern town. The high school in that town has just recently been desegregated and Cramer’s goal is to make sure that no black students attend class. As Cramer explains it, he’s a “social worker” and his goal is to help preserve Southern society.
To achieve this goal, Cramer partners up with the richest man in town, Verne Shipman (who is played, rather chillingly, by Robert Emhardt). With Verne’s sponsorship, Cramer gives an inflammatory speech in the town square and then later returns with a group of Klansmen. As opposed to recent films like Django Unchained (which scored easy laughs by casting Jonah Hill as a Klansman and playing up the group’s ignorance), The Intruder presents the Klan as figures that have stepped straight out of a nightmare, making them into literal demons who appear at night and disappear during the day. In a genuinely disturbing scene, the Klansmen set a huge cross on fire. As the flames burn behind him, Cramer seduces the wife of a local salesman.
After Cramer delivers his speech, the local black church is blown up and a clergyman is killed. The editor of the town newspaper — who, before Cramer showed up, was opposed to desegregation — changes his mind and publishes an editorial strongly condemning Cramer. Cramer’s mob reacts by nearly beating the editor to death. Realizing that he’s losing the power to control the mob that he created, Cramer frames a black student for rape which leads the film to its powerful and disturbing conclusion.
Particularly when compared to other films that attempted to deal with race relations in 1962, The Intruder remains a powerful and searing indictment of intolerance and a portrait of how demagogues like Adam Cramer will always use fear, resentment, and ignorance to build their own power. Corman filmed The Intruder on location in Missouri and used a lot of locals in the cast. Judging from the disturbing authenticity of some of the performances that Corman got from some of these nonprofessionals, it’s not unreasonable to assume that quite a few of them agreed with everything that Adam Cramer was saying.
As opposed to most films made about the civil rights era in America, The Intruder doesn’t shy away from showing the ugliness of racism. The Intruder casually tosses around the N word (and yes, it is shocking to not only hear Shatner use it but to see him smile as he does so) but, unlike a lot of contemporary films, it does so not just to shock but to show us just how naturally racism comes to the film’s characters. The scene in which Verne repeatedly strikes a black teenager who failed to call him sir is also shocking, not just for the violence but because of how nobody seems to be particularly surprised by it. As a result, The Intruder is not necessarily an easy film to watch but then again, that’s the point. The hate on display in The Intruder should never be easy to watch.
The Intruder was written by Charles Beaumont, who also wrote several classic episodes of The Twilight Zone. I think it can be argued that The Intruder represents the best work of Beaumont, Corman, and Shatner. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, The Intruder was the only film directed by Roger Corman to not be a box office success.
However, in a world where people are patting themselves on the back for sitting through The Butler, The Intruder is an important film that deserves to be seen now more than ever.
With Thanksgiving late but approaching, what better time to offer up another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers?
Enjoy!
1) The Great Texas Dynamite Case (1976)
2) Unholy Rollers (1974)
3) Eat My Dust (1976)
4) Stingray (1978)
5) The Explosive Generation (1961)
6) Skatetown USA (1979)
(Yes, I’ve shared this one before but I just happen to like it.)
What do you think, Trailer Kitty?
The nominees for the 2014 Independent Spirit Awards were announced earlier today. While the Spirit noms aren’t exactly the most accurate of Oscar precursors (and the rules of Indie Spirit Awards are pretty much specifically designed to honor the type of low-budget films that are often ignored by the Academy), more than a few of the Spirit nominees are usually remembered when the Oscar nominations are announced.
The winners will be announced, by Patton Oswalt, on March 1st.
Myself, I’m just happy to see Frances Ha and Upstream Color’s Shane Carruth nominated.
Best Feature:
“12 Years a Slave”
“All Is Lost”
“Frances Ha”
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Nebraska”
Best Director:
Shane Carruth, “Upstream Color”
J.C. Chandor, “All is Lost”
Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave”
Jeff Nichols, “Mud”
Alexander Payne, “Nebraska”
Best Screenplay:
Woody Allen, “Blue Jasmine”
Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater, “Before Midnight”
Nicole Holofcener, “Enough Said”
Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, “The Spectacular Now”
John Ridley, “12 Years a Slave”
Best Female Lead:
Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine”
Julie Delpy, “Before Midnight”
Gaby Hoffman, “Crystal Fairy”
Brie Larson, “Short Term 12″
Shailene Woodley, “The Spectacular Now”
Best Male Lead:
Bruce Dern, “Nebraska”
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”
Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Michael B. Jordan, “Fruitvale Station”
Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”
Robert Redford, “All Is Lost”
Best Supporting Female:
Melonie Diaz, “Fruitvale Station”
Sally Hawkins, “Blue Jasmine”
Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave”
Yolonda Ross, “Go for Sisters”
June Squibb, “Nebraska”
Best Supporting Male:
Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave”
Will Forte, “Nebraska”
James Gandolfini, “Enough Said”
Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”
Keith Stanfield, “Short Term 12”
Best First Feature:
“Blue Caprice”
“Concussion”
“Fruitvale Station”
“Una Noche”
“Wadjda”
Best First Screenplay:
“In a World,” Lake Bell
“Don Jon,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt
“Nebraska,” Bob Nelson
“Afternoon Delight,” Jill Soloway
“The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete,” Michael Starrbury
John Cassavetes Award:
“Computer Chess”
“Crystal Fairy”
“Museum Hours”
“Pit Stop”
“This Is Martin Bonner”
Best Cinematography:
Sean Bobbit, “12 Years a Slave”
Benoit Debie, “Spring Breakers”
Bruno Delbonnel, “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Frank G. DeMarco, “All Is Lost”
Matthias Grunsky, “Computer Chess”
Best Editing:
Shane Carruth & David Lowery, “Upstream Color”
Jem Cohen & Marc Vives, “Museum Hours”
Jennifer Lame, “Frances Ha”
Cindy Lee, “Una Noche”
Nat Sanders, “Short Term 12”
Best Documentary:
“20 Feet From Stardom”
“After Tiller”
“Gideon’s Army”
“The Act of Killing”
“The Square”
Best International Film:
“A Touch of Sin”
“Blue Is the Warmest Color”
“Gloria”
“The Great Beauty”
“The Hunt”
Robert Altman Award (given to a film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast)
“Mud”
Piaget Producers Award:
Toby Halbrooks & James M. Johnston
Jacob Jaffke
Andrea Roa
Frederick Thornton
Someone to Watch Award:
“My Sister’s Quinceanera,” Aaron Douglas Johnston
“Newlyweeds,” Shake King
“The Foxy Merkins,” Madeline Olnek
Truer Than Fiction Award:
“A River Changes Course,” Kalvanee Mam
“Let the Fire Burn,” Jason Osder
“Manakamana,” Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez
When I started the 44 Days of Paranoia, I said that I was going to not only look at some of the best conspiracy-themed films but some of the worst as well. With that promise in mind, today’s film is 1963’s They Saved Hitler’s Brain.
Beyond what’s obvious from the film’s title, what exactly is They Saved Hitler’s Brain about?
Your guess is as good as mine.
The film starts with a Mr. Van Pelt, who is a top official at the Central Intelligence Division. It turns out that Mr. Van Pelt is also a part of a shadowy conspiracy that operates out of the South American country of Mandoras. The conspiracy is developing a poison named as “G-gas” but a scientist named Dr. Bernard has developed an antidote to G-gas. So Van Pelt orders his henchmen to blow up Dr. Bernard in his car.
Van Pelt then assigns two CID agents to investigate Dr. Bernard’s death. Vic Gilbert is a real man’s man who is upset at having to work with a woman. Toni Gordon wears an extremely short miniskirt, demands to be taken seriously as a CID agent, and — well, that’s about the extent of her characterization. Anyway, Vic and Toni spend some time exchanging some cutesy dialogue and reading a lengthy dossier about Mandoras. It turns out that Mandoras is full of Nazi war criminals which, of course, brings us back to the film’s title.
Also, it turns out that Dr. Bernard told his colleague, Dr. Coleman, about the antidote. So, Van Pelt sends his henchmen to kidnap Coleman but fortunately, Toni just happens to be driving by at the same time that Coleman is kidnapped. Toni follows the henchmen and Coleman to Van Pelt’s secret hideout. The henchmen spot Toni and end up shooting her as she flees to a phone booth but not before Toni manages to call Vic.
Vic then shows up and discovers that Van Pelt is a traitor. Fortunately, Toni isn’t quite dead yet so she manages to shoot Van Pelt before she expires but then Vic dies anyway, the result of driving his car into a power station.
And then, suddenly, an entirely new movie begins!
That’s right — They Saved Hitler’s Brain is one of those films that was essentially created by editing two unrelated movies together. All of the Vic and Toni footage was apparently filmed in the late 60s by a bunch of students at UCLA who were hired by the film’s distributor to lengthen the original 1963 film so that it could be sold into television syndication. Considering that the original film (which was titled Madmen of Mandoras) was a thorough mess, the addition of the equally confusing prologue serves to make They Saved Hitler’s Brain into one of the most completely incoherent films ever made.
Anyway, the “second” part of They Saved Hitler’s Brain deals with Coleman’s daughter and her boyfriend (who, we find out, is yet another CID agent) going down to Mandoras and searching for her father. It turns out that the government of Mandoras has been secretly taken over by a bunch of Nazi war criminals who take their order from — wait for it — Hitler’s Brain!
It turns out that Hitler’s head has been preserved in a jar and, despite no longer having a body, he’s still capable of plotting, ordering people about, and dramatically rolling his eyes. From his hiding place in Mandoras, he’s come up with Plan G, a scheme that will allow him to conquer the world. Unless, of course, the CID can stop him…
(Were the filmmakers worried about getting sued by the CIA? Seriously, CID just doesn’t have the same ring to it…)
Now, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for terrible films like They Saved Hitler’s Brain. There are a lot of bad movies out there but there are only a few movies that are so bad that they’ve managed to become classics of ineptitude. To the filmmakers behind movies like They Saved Hitler’s Brain, I would say that if you can’t take pride in making one of the best films ever made, why not take some pride in making one of the worst?
You can judge for yourself below.
When I first decided that I wanted to do the 44 Days of Paranoia, I went on Facebook and I asked my movie-loving friends to name some of their favorite conspiracy-themed films. As the replies came flooding in, one thing that I quickly noticed was that a lot of them were naming films that had been made in the 1970s.
Usually, when I think about the 70s, I tend to assume that everyone in Texas was smoking weed in a high school parking lot, everyone in New York was snorting cocaine in Studio 54, and everyone in America was dancing nonstop. And, to be honest, that doesn’t sound too bad to me. If the 70s were just ten years straight of Dazed and Confused and Saturday Night Fever, then I would be the first one to hook up with anyone who could build a time machine.
However, the 70s were apparently also a very paranoid time. When one looks over the most acclaimed and best-remembered films of the 70s, one is struck by the feeling that nobody trusted anyone and all official institutions were suspect.
Case in point: 1975’s Three Days of the Condor.
Robert Redford plays Joe Turner, a mild-mannered guy who works for the American Literary Historical Society in New York City. The Society, however, is a CIA front and Turner’s job is to read cheap spy novels and analyze them to see if any real intelligence leaks might be found between the lines. As the film opens, Turner arrives late for work. He jokes with the chain-smoking secretary, shares a few curt words with his superior Martin, and flirts with fellow researcher Janice. Then, Joe goes to lunch and, while he’s gone, Max Von Sydow shows up with a bunch of killers and guns down everyone else at the safe house.
Max Von Sydow’s courtly killer
The scene in which Von Sydow calmly kills all of Joe’s co-workers is one of the most disturbing that I’ve ever seen. As directed by Sydney Pollack, the film’s violence comes in short, brutal bursts that are all the more nightmarish for lacking any of the flashy choreography that we, as viewers, have been conditioned to expect whenever we’re confronted by violent death on-screen. Pollack also makes good use of Von Sydow’s kindly eyes and courtly manner, letting us know that, for him, murder is just a job. Even though we’ve only spent a few minutes with Joe’s co-workers, we’ve still grown to like them and that makes Von Sydow’s matter-of-fact attitude all the more disturbing.
(It’s been a few days since I saw the film and I have to admit that I’m still haunted by the close-up of the burning cigarette still held in the dead secretary’s hand or the way that Martin’s toupee falls off his head after he’s shot. Small as these details may seem, they stick in the mind and create a sickening feeling of life interrupted.)
When Joe returns from lunch, he finds all of his co-workers dead. Fleeing the safe house, Joe calls the New York regional director of the CIA, Higgins (Cliff Robertson). Higgins arranges for Joe to meet up with another agent and to be taken to safety. However, when Joe arrives for the meeting, the other agent attempts to kill him.
Realizing now that the CIA specifically hit its own safe house and is now looking to kill him, Joe ends up kidnapping Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway), a neurotic photographer, and forcing her to hide him while he desperately tries to figure out why he’s been targeted.
Thanks largely to Sydney Pollack’s thoughtful direction, Three Days of the Condor is an excellent, exciting, and thought-provoking thriller and, despite having been released close to 40 years ago, it features one major plot that’s probably even more relevant today than when the film was first released. Redford and Dunaway both give excellent performances but the film really belongs to Max Von Sydow’s menacing and charming assassin. Most of today’s “action” filmmakers could learn a lot from watching Three Days of the Condor.
Aleta Rafton is an award-winning book cover artist, who has illustrated hundreds of books in the fantasy and romance genre. More of her work can be seen here.
While I was researching The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald last week, I came across another film directed by Larry Buchanan. Beyond the Doors (also known as Down On Us) sounded like one of those truly odd films that I simply had to see for myself. Fortunately, it turned out that this rare and hard-to-find movie was available (in 13 parts!) on YouTube.
First released in either 1983 or 1984 (sources vary), Beyond the Doors tells the story of a FBI agent who, as the film begins, is out hunting with two friends who proceed to gun him down. Staring down at the agent’s dead body, one of the assassins sneers, “Rock and Roll is dead. Long live Rock and Roll.” The agent’s son then goes through his father’s files and discovers that, during the late 1960s and early 70s, his father was responsible for murdering “the three pied pipers of rock and roll” — Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. The film then enters into flashback mode and we discover both why the U.S. government was determined to kill Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison and how exactly they attempted to do it.
What can I say about Beyond the Doors? If The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald seemed oddly respectable for a Larry Buchanan film, Beyond the Doors reminds us of why Larry Buchanan remains a cult figure for bad film lovers. Everything that Buchanan is known for is present in this film: unknown actors playing real-life characters, melodramatic dialogue, one set continually redecorated to look like a dozen different rooms, and plenty of conspiracy theories. As is typical of a Larry Buchanan film, it was shot with a lot of ambition but next to no money or actual talent. Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin are played by lookalikes who give performances that don’t so much resemble their real-life counterparts as much as they seem to literally be Wikipedia entries brought to life. Hendrix worries that he’s sold out to the man, Joplin questions what fame’s all about, and Morrison makes pretentious observations. Buchanan couldn’t actually afford the rights to any songs from Joplin, Hendrix, or the Doors so instead, the soundtrack is full of music that’s designed to sound as if it could have been written by one of the “three pied pipers of rock and roll” even though it wasn’t. (And yes, the end result is just as silly as it sounds.) In short, Beyond the Doors is one of those films (much like Tommy Wiseau’s The Room) that is so amazingly bad and misguided that it becomes perversely fascinating.
In short, it’s a film that, like me, you simply have to see for yourself.
Through the Shattered Lens 