Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

A Movie A Day #207: Every Breath (1994, directed by Steve Bing)

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Jimmy (Judd Nelson) is an actor, best known for yelling in a toothpaste commercial.  However, Jimmy is a serious actor and his perfectionist attitude makes it difficult for him to even find work in commercials.  When a wealthy but impotent arms dealer named Richard (Patrick Bachau) offers to pay to watch Jimmy have sex with Richard’s wife, Lauren (Joanna Pacula), Jimmy agrees.  When Jimmy meets Lauren at a party, he introduces himself.  She walks away.  He introduces himself again.  She slaps him.  He follows her to a lesbian bar and ends up getting beaten up outside.  After all of that, he finally gets invited to accompany Lauren back to her mansion.  Suddenly, Richard emerges from the shadows, holding a gun.  He fires at Jimmy.  Jimmy screams but then discovers that the gun was full of blanks.  He has been the victim of an elaborate game, one that Richard and Lauren play every night with a constantly changing cast of victims.

At first, Jimmy is upset and humiliated.  He returns home to his clueless girlfriend (Camille Cooper) and tries to sleep it off.  But he can’t stop thinking about Lauren.  The next day, he returns to Richard and Lauren’s mansion and soon finds himself being dragged back into their games.  What Jimmy does not know is that Richard doesn’t just enjoy humiliating people.  He also likes to kill them.

Every Breath was the first and only movie to be directed by Hollywood real estate mogul, film producer, and political donor Steve Bing.  There are enough weird camera angles, dream sequences, and monologues about love and morality that it is obvious that Bing was going for something more artistic than the typical Judd Nelson direct-to-video production.  For a first time director, Bing’s direction is slick but not slick enough to make up for large plot holes and a lot of half-baked philosophical dialogue.  For all of its pretensions towards being something more, Every Breath is a typical 90s neo-noir with little to distinguish it from something like In The Cold of the Night or Body Chemistry.  As Lauren, Joanna Pacula is sultry and sexy while Patrick Bachau does a good job playing a junior grade Marquis de Sade.  As for Judd, he’s Judd Nelson, which means scenes like this:

Whenever I watch a Judd Nelson movie, I wonder what Burt Reynolds, Judd’s co-star from Shattered If Your Kid’s On Drugs, would think.

On the one hand, Every Breath is a pretentious movie about three unlikable people.

On the other hand, Joanna Pacula.

 

A Movie A Day #206: Conflict of Interest (1993, directed by Gary Davis)

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Conflict of Interest is a by-the-numbers direct-to-video movie about a tough cop named Mickey who is obsessed with taking down a drug dealer and club owner named Gideon.  Mickey is a widower.  Years ago, his wife was gunned down in front of him and his son.  His son is now a teenager with a motorcycle and a mullet.  Gideon hires Mickey’s son to work at one of his clubs and then frames him for murder.  Even though his superiors order him to back off, Mickey is determined to clear his son’s name.

Why should you watch Conflict of Interest?  How about this:

That’s Judd Nelson, going heavy on the sideburns and eyeliner in the role of Gideon.  I am not sure if this movie was filmed before or after the famous “puffy shirt” episode of Seinfeld.

Judd chews up and spits out every piece of scenery that he can get his hands on.  Matching Judd step-for-step is Alyssa Milano, who plays Eve.  She falls in love with Mickey’s son, even though she is already a member of Gideon’s harem.

Mickey is played by Christopher McDonald, who gets a rare lead role in Conflict of Interest.  McDonald may not be a household name but he is one of the great Hey, It’s That Guy actors.  Usually, he plays smarmy businessmen and game show hosts.  He’s a surprisingly good action hero in Conflict of Interest, though his mustache cannot begin to compete with Judd’s sideburns.

About as dumb as dumb can be, Conflict of Interest is enjoyably ridiculous.  Conflict of Interest may have been made in 1993 but it is an 80s film all the way through, the type of movie where almost every chase ends with someone’s car exploding.  Even Gideon’s nightclubs are “heavy metal clubs,” which are populated by people who would not have been out of place in Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

And then there’s the Judd power stare:

As we saw in Shattered If Your Kid’s On Drugs, the Judd power stare has the Burt Reynolds seal of approval:

A Movie A Day #205: Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth (2013, directed by Spike Lee)

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Somewhere in New York, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson stands on a stage, wearing a white suit and talking about his life.

Or, I should say, he talks about parts of his life.  Mike Tyson’s one-man show, which shared the name of his then-just published autobiography, was both insightful and frustrating.  Tyson spends a good deal of time on some topics while skipping over others entirely.  When Tyson talks about his difficult childhood and the experience of literally being adopted by the legendary Cus D’Amato, it provides a rare glimpse into the background of the man who, at his peak, was one of the most fearsome champions in the history of boxing.  When Tyson talks about his fights, especially his battles with Mitch Green, he is as engaging and charismatic as I have ever seen him.  In fact, there are times when Tyson came across as being so likable that I had to remind myself that Tyson is also a convicted rapist who, after returning to the ring, won a series of fights against weak opponents and then bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear.  I was disappointed that Tyson did not devote any time to discussing his fight with Peter McNeeley.  If Tyson has devoted two seconds to every second of the McNeeley fight, that still would have just taken up 3 minutes of screentime.  That’s less time than Iron Mike spent talking about Brad Pitt fucking Robin Givens or doing his Don King impersonation.

I had mixed feelings about Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, largely because I have mixed feelings about Mike Tyson himself.  When it comes to ranking the heavyweight champions, Mike Tyson is definitely a contender for the top spot.  That Tyson was a great boxer cannot be denied and when he throws a few punches during Undisputed Truth, he still looks he could get in the ring and win.  (At least he does until he has to stop to catch his breath.)  Tyson may not be the most articulate speaker but occasionally, he shows some hints that he is smarter than he is given credit for.  He also tells some truly terrible jokes.  Tyson was a great boxer but as a stand-up comedian, he leaves something to be desired.  At the same time, Tyson is open about his emotional and mental difficulties and his history of violence.  Every time I started to like Tyson too much, he would say something that would snap me back to reality.  No sooner had he won my sympathy by talking about how much the death of Cus D’Amato affected him than Tyson lost it by verbally attacking the woman that he was convicted of raping.   By the end of his one man show, Tyson represents both everything good and everything bad about boxing.  Boxing saved Tyson from the streets but it also thrust him into a world that he was not emotionally mature enough to handle.  Tyson was barely 20 years old when he became champion and, with Cus D’Amato having died a year before, Tyson no longer had anyone looking out for his interests and protecting him from those who wanted to take advantage of him.  Toss Don King into the mix and both Tyson’s rise and eventual fall feel predestined.

Undisputed Truth ends with Tyson declaring that he has finally found peace.  I hope he has.

A Movie A Day #204: Tank (1984, directed by Marvin Chomsky)

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If you had just moved to a small town in Georgia and your teenage son was framed for marijuana possession and sentenced to years of hard labor, what would you do?

Would you hire a good lawyer and file appeal after appeal?

Would you go to the media and let them know that the corrupt sheriff and his evil deputy are running a prostitution ring and the only reason your son is in prison is because you dared to call them out on their corruption?

Or would you get in a World War II-era Sherman tank and drive it across Georgia, becoming a folk hero in the process?

If you are Sgt. Zack Carey (James Garner), you take the third option.  Sgt. Carey is only a few months from retirement but he is willing to throw that all away to break his son (C. Thomas Howell) out of prison and expose the truth about Sheriff Buelton (G.D. Spradlin) and Deputy Euclid Baker (James Cromwell, playing a redneck).  Helping Sgt. Carey out are a prostitute (Jenilee Harrison), Carey’s wife (Shirley Jones), and the citizens of Georgia, who lines the road to cheer the tank as it heads for the Georgia/Kentucky border.  It’s just like the O.J. Bronco chase, with James Garner in the role of A.C. Cowlings.

The main thing that Tank has going for it is that tank.  Who has not fantasized about driving across the country in a tank and blowing up police cars along the way?  James Garner is cool, too, even if he is playing a role that would be better suited for someone like Burt Reynolds.  Tank really is Smoky and the Bandit with a tank in the place of that trans am.  Personally, I would rather have the trans am but Tank is still entertaining.  Dumb but entertaining.

One final note, a piece of political trivia: According to the end credits, the governor of Georgia was played by Wallace Willkinson.  At first, I assumed this was the same Wallace Wilkinson who later served as governor of Kentucky.  It’ not.  It turns out that two men shared the same name.  It’s just a coincidence that one played a governor while the other actually became a governor.

A Movie A Day #203: Heartbreak Ridge (1986, directed by Clint Eastwood)

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The year is 1983 and things are looking bad for the Second Marine Division of the U.S. Marine Corps.  The officers are almost all college graduates like Major Powers (Everett McGill) and Lt. Ring (Boyd Gaines), men who have never served in combat but who are convinced that they know what it means to be a Marine in the 80s.  Convinced that they will never have to actually fight in a war, the latest batch of recruits is growing soft and weak.  All of the slackers have been put in the Recon Platoon, where they are so undisciplined that they think that wannabe rock star Cpl. Jones (Mario Van Peebles) is a good Marine.  MARIO VAN PEEBLES!

They haven’t met Sgt. Highway yet.

Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Highway (Clint Eastwood) has seen combat, in both Korea and Vietnam.  He drinks too much.  He fights too much.  He has chased away his wife (Marsha Mason), despite his attempts to understand her by reading Cosmo and Ladies Home Journal.  Major Powers may think that Highway is a relic but Highway knows better than to worry about what a college boy thinks.  The Recon Platoon may think that they can defy him but that haven’t seen Highway throw a punch yet.  Everyone may think it’s a waste of time to learn how to fight but little do they know that America is about to invade Grenada.

Heartbreak Ridge is all about Clint Eastwood.  Without Clint Eastwood, it would just be another basic training film.  With Clint Eastwood, it is a minor masterpiece and a tribute to America’s fighting spirit.  In 1986, no one was better at glaring at a young punk or glowering at a clueless superior officer than Clint Eastwood.  Even the running joke of Highway reading women’s magazines works because it is impossible not to laugh at Clint Eastwood intently studying an issue of Cosmo.   Clint may have been 56 when he directed and starred in Heartbreak Ridge but he was still believable beating up men who were less than half his age.  (Mario Van Peebles thinks he’s going to be able to stand up to Clint Eastwood?  Get outta here!)  There is never any question that Highway is going to able to whip everyone into shape.  The only question is how many terse one-liners are going to be delivered in the process.   By the time Highway and his platoon reach Grenada, everyone is ready to watch Clint put the communists in their place and Clint does not disappoint.

Reportedly, the U.S. Marine Corps. initially supported Heartbreak Ridge but, in case of life imitating art, disowned the finished picture, feeling that the film’s portrayal of The Corps was inaccurate and the sergeant’s “training” methods were too old-fashioned to actually be effective.

Thomas Highway would disagree.

One final note: Bo Svenson has a small role as the man trying to steal Marsha Mason away from Clint.  If you have ever wanted to see Dirty Harry and Buford Pusser fight over the Goodbye Girl, here’s your chance.

A Movie A Day #202: Broken Bars (1995, directed by Tom Neuwirth)

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The streets are being flooded with lousy, synthetic heroin.  Could the source be somewhere inside of Trabuco Federal Prison?  That is what Nick Slater (Ben Maccabee) has been assigned to find out.  Nick is a tough cop but now he is going undercover, pretending to be a tough but incarcerated bank robber.  Nick  discovers that Trabuco is like no other prison out there.  For one thing, Wings Hauser is the warden.  Warden Pitt is a smirking Aryan who forces his prisoners to box for his amusement and who enforces discipline with a CIA-style torture chamber.  (Because the Warden is a boxing fanatic who likes to reward his best fighters, he also regularly brings prostitutes into the prison, which allows the film to reach its quota of B-movie nudity.)  Even worse, Warden Pitt and the head of the Aryan Brotherhood, Jigsaw (Paulo Tocha) are working together.  Only Nick can end Warden Pitt’s reign of terror but he will have to survive prison first.  Fortunately, Ben knows how to throw a punch and deliver kick and he is going to have to do a lot of both if he is going to make it out alive.

Broken Bars is a dumb but entertaining movie, with plenty of action and Wings Hauser villainy.  Ben Maccabee’s a credible 90s style action hero.  He may not be as good an actor as Dolph Lundgren or as fast as Jean-Claude Van Damme but, by the end of Broken Bars, there is no doubt that he could easily knock out Steven Seagal.  It’s no surprise that the best thing about the movie is Wings Hauser.  As anyone who ever watched late night Cinemax in the 90s knows, Wings Hauser was usually the best thing about any movie that he appeared in.  As a character, Warden Pitt is demented even by the standards of Wings Hauser and Hauser obviously had a ball screaming his lines.  B-movie stalwart Joe Estevez also shows up, playing a good guy for once.

Joe Estevez and Wings Hauser in the same movie?  Who cares if it’s any good?  Hauser and Estevez together is just another way of saying, “Must see.”

A Movie A Day #201: L.A. Bounty (1989, directed by Worth Keeter)

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Sybil Danning vs. Wings Hauser?  What could go wrong with that?

Cavanaugh (Wings Hauser) is an insane drug dealer who is also an artist.  When he is not coming up with elaborate ways to kill people, Cavanaugh can be found painting in his warehouse and talking to himself.  Cavanaugh spends a lot of time talking.  Ruger (Sybil Danning) is a former cop turned bounty hunter.  In the tradition of Clint Eastwood, Ruger rarely speaks.  Ruger has good reason to hate Cavanaugh.  When she was a cop, Cavanaugh killed her partner.  Now that Cavanaugh has kidnapped a local politician, Ruger is the obvious choice to track down Cavanaugh, get revenge for her partner, and save the next mayor of Los Angeles.

A typical low-budget late 80s action film, L.A. Bounty is distinguished by the contrast between the ferocious overacting of Wings Hauser and the underacting of Sybil Danning.  This was one of Danning’s final starring roles before she retired from the movies.  (She has recently returned, with cameos in two Rob Zombie productions.)  It is interesting to see Danning in the type of role that would typically go to either Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, or maybe even Chuck Norris.  According to the imdb trivia section for L.A. Bounty, Danning only has 31 lines in the entire movie, which is more than I can remember her saying.  Danning, however, is such a strong physical presence that she does not have to say anything to make her point or show how tough she is.  Hauser, on the other hand, never stops talking, moving, and laughing.  This is one of Hauser’s craziest performances, which is saying something.  From scene to scene, Hauser’s performance is so consistently bizarre that it keeps things entertaining.

L.A. Bounty may not be anything spectacular but fans of Danning and Hauser will not be disappointed.

A Movie A Day #200: A Breed Apart (1984, directed by Philippe Mora)

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Sometimes, the story behind a movie is more interesting than the movie itself.

Rutger Hauer stars in A Breed Apart, playing an eccentric environmentalist named Jim Malden.  Malden loves nature but he hates people, with the exception of a local storekeeper named Stella (Kathleen Turner) and her young son.  The local fishermen (one of whom is played by Hauer’s Blade Runner co-star, Brion James) may hate him but they are no match for Malden’s guerilla tactics.  Recently, a new breed of bald eagle has been discovered and Malden is determined to protect it.  At the top of a cliff, there is a nest full of eagle eggs and Malden will not let anyone near them.

Rich collector J.J. Whittier (Donald Pleasence) is determined to get those eggs for himself.  In order to deal with Malden, Whittier hires famous rock climber, Mike Walker (Powers Boothe).  Disguising himself as a nature photographer, Walker attempts to befriend Malden so that he can get to the eggs.  Even as Malden shows Walker why it is important to protect the environment, Walker falls in love with Stella.

With a cast like this, A Breed Apart should have been far more interesting than it was.  It provides a rare chance to see both Rutger Hauer and Powers Boothe playing heroes but neither seemed to really be into their roles.  Kathleen Turner was sexy but saddled with a terrible accent while Donald Pleasence seemed to be in a different movie.  When I watched A Breed Apart last night, I thought it seemed like a very disjointed movie.  For instance, the movie abruptly jumped from Stella and Walker first meeting to the end of their first date.  There was a random scene of Malden putting on war paint, while remembering the sound of helicopters.  War paint combined with helicopters in an 80s movie usually means that someone is having a Vietnam War flashback but Malden’s military background is never mentioned again.  Even Walker’s conversion to Malden’s cause and rejection of Whittier’s money seemed to happen offscreen.

According to Wikipedia, It turns out that there was a reason for all that.  A Breed Apart was filmed in North Carolina.  After principal filming was completed, four reels of film were sent back to Los Angeles.  However, only three reels ever arrived in California.  One reel disappeared and has never been found.  The footage that actually did make it to Los Angeles was reorganized and edited to try to disguise the fact that a huge part of the movie was missing.

It didn’t work.

(ADDENDUM 9/4/2017: Originally, both myself and a lot of other reviewers, were under the impression that one reel of film went missing and, as a result, the film had to be reedited to make up for the missing footage.  This story is presented as fact on Wikipedia, which is where I and I assume a lot of other people originally got it.  The lesson here is not to use an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit for a primary or even a credible source.  In the comments below, Director Philippe Mora has let me know that there was no lost reel and that, instead, there are several different cuts of the film kicking around, some of which are incomplete and some of which are ok.  Since Mora actually worked on the film, he is a far more credible source than an anonymous Wikipedia article.  I apologize to Mr. Mora for the mistake.)

A Movie A Day #199: Timebomb (1991, directed by Avi Nesher)

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Recall Total Recall?

If you do, Timebomb will seem very familiar.

Michael Biehn is a mild-mannered watchmaker who surprises himself when he fearlessly rushes into a burning building and saves a mother and her baby.  After he shows up on the evening news and is hailed as being a hero, he is attacked by an assassin (martial arts legend Billy Blanks) and discovers that he instinctively know how to defend himself.  When he starts having disturbing nightmares and strange flashbacks, he sees a psychiatrist (Patsy Kensit).  They discover that Biehn’s problems go back to when he was a part of a military brainwashing experiment.  The man behind the experiment (Richard Jordan) now wants Biehn dead.  Pursued by another brainwashed assassin (Tracy Scoggins), Biehn and Kensit go on the run.

Like many action movies from the early 90s, Timebomb has an extremely cool premise but lacks the budget necessary to make the most of it.  After a good start and some surreal moments (including a scene where Biehn and Kensit visit the lab where Biehn was “created”), Timebomb ends up just being another shoot ’em up.

Luckily, Timebomb has a really good cast.  Richard Jordan is an effective villain and old pro Robert Culp has a small role as one of Jordan’s collaborators.  The always underrated Michael Biehn is a great hero, precisely because he’s not some huge, indestructible guy.  He’s not Stallone or Schwarzenegger or even Jean-Claude Van Damme.  (Timebomb was originally envisioned as a Van Damme vehicle.)  In Timebomb, Michael Biehn is the everyman action hero.  Plus, any movie that features Tracy Scoggins as a gun-toting assassin is going to be worth watching.

A Movie A Day #198: Men of Respect (1990, directed by William Reilly)

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That Bill Shakespeare really gets around.

Men of Respect comes to us disguised as a gangster movie but it is actually a modern-day version of MacBeth.  Mike Battaglia (John Turturro) is one of Charlie D’Amico’s (Rod Steiger) top lieutenants but he is upset because D’Amico has announced that his successor will be Bankie Como (Dennis Farina).  When Mike stumbles across a fortune teller, he is told that not only will he soon be in charge of the D’Amico crime family but that he will hold the position until the stars fall from the sky and that he will never be harmed by a “man of woman born.”  At the instigation of his ambitious wife, Ruthie Battaglia (played by Turturro’s real-life wife, Katherine Borowitz), Mike murders Charlie, Bankie, and everyone else who is standing in his way.  Even as D’Amico’s son (Stanley Tucci) starts to recruit soldiers for an all out war, Mike remains confident.  Even when one of this soldiers sees a fireworks show and says, “Jeez, it looks like stars from falling from the sky,” Mike remains cocky.  When his wife starts to complain that she can not get the blood stains (“the spot”) out of the linen, Mike is not concerned.  Why not?  “All these guys were born of a woman,” Mike says, “they can’t do shit to me.”

Turning MacBeth (or any of Shakespeare’s tragedies) into a Mafia film is not a bad idea but Men of Respect‘s attempt to translate Shakespeare’s language to 20th century gangster talk leads to some memorably awkward line readings from an otherwise talented cast.  By the time Matt Duffy (Peter Boyle) announced, in his Noo Yawk accent, that he was delivered via caesarean section, I could not stop laughing.  Even the scenes of gangland mayhem feel like second-rate Scorsese.  The idea behind the film is intriguing and there are a lot of recognizable faces in the cast but Men of Respect gets bogged down as both a Shakespearean adaptation and a gangster film.