Lifetime Film Review: Adopted in Danger (dir by Craig Goldstein)

Posted on August 1, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

DNA tests are tempting, aren’t they?

I mean, I’ve often been tempted to get one, even though I pretty much know all about my family history. My maternal grandmother was born in Spain while my grandfather’s parents came to this country from Italy. On my father’s side of the family, everyone is pretty much Irish with a little bit of German and French mixed in. Despite the fact that I know all of this, it’s still tempting to do the whole DNA thing because then I’d have percentages to go along with my family history. Percentages make every story better, or so I’ve heard.

Of course, there’s a lot of other people who get DNA tests because they’re hoping that they’ll turn out to have a really badass ancestor or that they’ll find some evidence that they’re actually more interesting than they appear to be. Remember when Elizabeth Warren got that DNA test that proved she had less Native American ancestry than the average American? That’s not a story that you’ll see repeated in a 23andMe commercial but it’s one that I found fascinating as an example of the importance that people put on having interesting ancestors. I mean, technically, what’s wrong with saying, “Yes, my family’s boring but I’m not?” Instead, we all want to say, “I’m interesting and so is everyone who has ever shared my DNA!”

That said, I’ll still probably never get a DNA test. People always assume that DNA tests and ancestry research are going to bring them good news (“and then I discovered that I’m descended from the first person to ever open up a fast food restaurant in the state of Wyoming and it just changed everything….”) but it seems to me like they’re just asking for trouble. Sure, you might be descended from a great and respected historical figure. Then again, you also might discover that the people you thought were your parents stole you from the hospital. You might discover that your father was actually the Goatman or something. (It could happen.) I mean, seriously, why take the risk when you can just take your grandmother’s word that, just because some your ancestors fought with Franco in the Spanish Civil War, that doesn’t mean that they necessarily agreed with him about everything.

In Adopted in Danger, Candace (Allison Paige) actually does have a fairly good reason for wanting to get a DNA test. She’s adopted and she has no idea who her birth parents are. At the very least, she would like to know where she came from just so she can have a complete medical history before she and her husband try to start a family. That certainly seems reasonable but, unfortunately, it turns out to be a lot more trouble than its worth. Candace’s DNA indicates that she’s the daughter of real estate developer Tom Mason (Jason Brooks). However, when Candace goes to see Tom and tells her that he’s her father, Tom refuses to consider the idea. Tom, in fact, accuses her of just being after money and kicks her out of his office.

Why is Tom so adamant that he’s not Candace’s father? That’s something that Candace and her friends investigate, in between drinking a lot of wine. And I do mean a lot of wine. I think this film may have set a record as far as scenes involving friends drinking wine and discussing DNA might be concerned. However, all of that wine cannot stop the murderous schemes of a powerful family with a secret to hold and soon, Candace finds herself and everyone she knows being targeted.

The main problem with Adopted in Danger is that it’s fairly predictable. I kept waiting for a big twist that would reveal that there had been a mix-up with the DNA or that Tom Mason was some sort of imposter or something that would have taken me by surprise but nope. There’s no mix-up with the DNA. Tom Mason is Tom Mason. It’s just he comes from a terrible family and they don’t want anyone to know that Candace is his daughter. Everything plays out the way you would expect it to play out.

That said, if you’re going to solve a mystery, you might as well do it while hanging out with your two BFFs. DNA, in Adopted in Danger, may show where you’re from but but your friendships and your lovers show who you are and that’s not a bad message at all.

Cinemax Friday: Die Watching (1993, directed by Charles Davis)

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Mentally scarred by the night that his mother murdered his father, Michael Terrence (Christopher Atkins) is a video editor who makes his living filming naked models and who deals with his mental issues by then asphyxiating those same models. Michael’s main kink is that he ties his victims up in front of a monitor and then films them as they die, basically forcing them to witness their own murders. In other words, Michael is one sick puppy who has perhaps seen Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom a few too many times.

Despite the fact that dead actresses and models are turning up all over Los Angeles, Detectives Lewis (Tim Thomerson) and Barry (Carlos Palomino) have no idea that Michael is responsible. In fact, no one suspects Michael. His neighbor, an aspiring artist named Nola (Vali Ashton), even hires Michael to help her promote her artwork. Despite the fact that Nola already has a boyfriend, she and Michael fall in love. Falling in love causes Michael to lose his urge to kill but it may already be too late as a video of one of his murders has fallen into the wrong hands.

For some reason, Christopher Atkins was a direct-to-video and Cinemax mainstay in the 90s. I’ve never understood why because he was a terrible actor with absolutely no screen presence. Unlike C. Thomas Howell, who was bland in mainstream films but usually surprisingly good when he did direct-to-video work, Atkins was always forgettable regardless of whether he was appearing in a major studio production or something like Die Watching. For a film like this to work, the film has to convince you that there’s at least a chance the murderer could have been a decent human being if not for his tragic past. Atkins just comes across like a natural born weirdo. Atkins gives a sweaty and nervous performance but he makes Michael so obviously disturbed that it’s impossible to buy that Nola would dump her boyfriend for him. Judd Nelson or, again, C. Thomas Howell probably could have pulled off the role. Christopher Atkins just feels wrong.

Of course, the target audience for this film doesn’t care about the acting or the plot or anything else. They care about the women and those who watch a film like this solely for the nudity won’t be disappointed. Vali Ashton is actually really likable as Nola, though the film is stolen by Erika Nann, who plays Nola’s sex-obsessed roommate and who gets the best lines. (Of course, there’s a difference between getting the best lines in Die Watching and getting the best lines in something like Hamlet.) It’s also good to see Tim Thomerson in practically anything, even when it’s something as dumb as Die Watching.

Die Watching is pretty dire but it does predict the rise of a very specific type of internet culture. When Michael accidentally sends one of his murder tapes to a producer instead of one of his sex tapes, the producer is not disturbed but instead, he’s intrigued by the commercial possibilities. Even Michael knows that’s messed up! If Die Watching were made today, of course, that producer would probably own an adult website and he would be talking about selling the murder videos on the dark web. It just goes to show that the more things chance, the more they remain the same.

The Things You Find On Netflix: Tread (dir by Paul Solet)

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On June 4th, 2004, the small town of Granby, Colorado was briefly the center of the nation’s attention.

On that day, an armor-plated bulldozer rumbled down the streets of Granby. The driver of the bulldozer was a local business owner named Marvin Heemeyer. Heemeyer, who had previously been at the center of a zoning controversy, spent two hours driving the bulldozer through various buildings in Granby. He destroyed the muffler shop that he had once owned. He destroyed a nearby concrete plant. He drove through the Granby City Hall. He smashed the bulldozer through the offices of the local newspaper. He demolished the home of a family who he felt had conspired against him. He took out a hardware store. For two hours, the police chased him, firing their weapons at the bulldozer and discovering that nothing could slow him down. In fact, it wasn’t until one of the bulldozers’ treads dropped into the hardware store’s basement that the rampage stopped, Unable to free the tread, Marvin Heemeyer committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Before he went on his rampage, Heemeyer recorded himself talking about why he was going to do what he did. He mailed those tapes to his brother in South Dakota a few hours before getting in the bulldozer. His brother later turned those tapes over to the FBI. In the tapes, Heemeyer discussed what he felt was years of harassment by the Granby town council and the zoning board. He described himself as being an “American patriot” and he even went so far as to say that he felt his rampage was predestined. He also went on to express amazement that he was able to spend two years openly modifying the bulldozer and turning it into a tank without anyone asking him what was going on. He also made clear that when he entered the bulldozer for the last time, he knew that he was never going to leave it. He truly was going on a suicide mission.

Those tapes are at the center of Tread, a documentary about Marvin Heemeyer and his 2004 rampage. The film alternates between people discussing their memories of Marvin and that day and the taped voice of Marvin himself attempting to explain his motivations. Almost everyone who is interviewed talks about what a friendly and genuinely nice person Marvin seemed to be. Even though Marvin spent two years planning his rampage, no one — not even his girlfriend — appeared to suspect a thing. Even in the weeks directly before his rampage, Marvin was making plans for the summer. One friend of Marvin’s does speculate that Marvin spent “too much time alone.”

As many people interviewed point out, Marvin was, by most measures, a successful businessman. He had a reputation for being the best welder in the county and he opened up a muffler shop in a building that he bought for $44,000. He later sold that building for $400,000. However, as the tapes reveal, Marvin didn’t view selling his shop for a profit as being a success. Instead, he viewed as something that he was forced to do by the town council and their refusal to side with him in a zoning dispute that he had with the manufacturers of a concrete plant. Marvin felt that the town was ruled by one family and that family was conspiring against him and singling him out for harassment.

I’m about as anti-government as they come so my natural instinct, when Tread began, was to be sympathetic to Marvin’s anger, if not his solution. And, having now watched the documentary, I still have no doubt that Marvin probably was, to an extent, targeted by the zoning board and the town council. The fact of the matter is that it’s rare that people don’t let the least amount of power go to their head. That’s especially true when it comes to small towns. There seems to be a natural pettiness that comes along with having power. That’s true regardless of whether you’re the mayor of a small town in Colorado or the governor of a state like …. oh, I don’t know, let’s just say Michigan and New Jersey. At the same time, when you listen to Marvin’s voice on tapes, it’s obvious that there was more going on in Marvin’s head than just anger over the zoning dispute. When Marvin talks about how God obviously wanted him to modify the bulldozer and use it to destroy the town, you realize that, if it hadn’t been the zoning dispute, it probably would have been something else. Marvin comes across as time bomb while the town leaders come across as being the people who unknowingly lit the fuse.

I have to admit that, until I watched this documentary, I had never heard of him but a simple Google search revealed that, in the years following his death, Marvin Heemeyer has gone on to become a hero to certain anti-government activists. Though it’s been 16 years since he unleashed his bulldozer on the town of Granby, his story still feels relevant today. There’s still a lot of angry people out there and, if anything, the people in power have gotten even more heavy-handed and arbitrary in their behavior today than they were in 2004. That said, if you’re looking for a film that either vilifies or blindly celebrates Marvin Heemeyer, Tread is not that film. Overall, Tread portrays Marvin Heemeyer as being a complicated man who, in the town of Granby, found the perfect reason (or, depending on how much sympathy you may or may not have for him, excuse) to strike out.

It’s currently available on Netflix.

Film Review: The Comic (dir by Carl Reiner)

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1969 film, The Comic, details the long and not particularly happy life of silent screen star Billy Bright (played by Dick Van Dyke). Billy Bright tells us his story from beyond the grave. The film opens with his funeral, which is sparsely attended and features the type of self-consciously mawkish eulogies that are usually trotted out whenever a generally unlikable person dies. The only sign of life at the funeral comes when Billy’s oldest friend, Cockeye (Mickey Rooney), throws a pie at one of the speakers. The speaker says that the pie was Billy’s final joke.

Billy Bright was a funny performer but a miserable man. That’s pretty much the entire plot of The Comic. We see the young Billy, performing in silent films and winning laughs through the seemingly impossible contortions through which he puts his body and his face. Off-screen, Billy marries one of his co-stars (Michele Lee) and starts a production company. When she discovers that he’s been cheating on her, their divorce is a major Hollywood scandal.

Even before the coming of the talkies, Billy struggles with alcohol. Once the talkies do come, his career is pretty much over. Billy became a star in silent films and he stubbornly wants to continue to make silent films, despite the fact that there’s no longer an audience for them. Billy quickly goes from being a star to being forgotten. He’s reduced to walking down Hollywood Boulevard with Cockeye and looking at the names under his feet. When he reaches his name, he discovers that someone has dropped their gum on it.

Billy finally does get his comeback in the late 60s but it’s not much of a comeback. He appears on a talk show and it’s hard not to cringe a little as the clearly infirm Billy duplicates some of his silent era pratfalls. He’s reduced to appearing in a rather awkward commercial for a laundry detergent called, I kid you not, White-ee. “That’s White-ee, baby!” his commercial co-star says after a freshly cleaned Billy emerges from a washing machine.

The idea that most funny performers are actually rather serious and depressing off-stage is certainly nothing new. Judd Apatow has basically built an entire career out of making films about how funny people are actually carrying around tons of emotional baggage. The thing distinguishes The Comic from so many other films about angsty comedians is that Billy Bright himself never seems to have a single moment of self-awareness. Usually, films about miserable celebrities will at least have one scene where the main character realizes that his misery is all his fault. Billy Bright is pretty much a jerk from the minute we meet him and he’s still a jerk when the film ends. He’s the type of guy who makes a big deal about picking up his son from school but who still manages to grab the wrong kid because it’s been so long since he’s spent any time with his family that he’s really not sure what his son looks like. Towards the end of the film, we see him watching one of his old films and what we notice is that he doesn’t seem amused at all. Is he thinking about how he lost it all or is it possible that this man who made millions laugh never really had much of sense of humor himself? The film leaves it to you to decide.

The Comic was written and directed by Carl Reiner, who undoubtedly knew quite a few Billy Brights in his life. As such, the film feels authentic in a way that a lot of other films about creative people do not. The Comic is a well-made film. It’s hard not to appreciate the film’s obviously affection for Old Hollywood. That said, Billy Bright is such an unpleasant character that I found the film difficult to enjoy. Van Dyke is genuinely funny whenever he’s doing Billy’s silent film shtick and he’s genuinely tiresome when Billy’s ego gets out of control. It’s a good performance as a generally unlikable character. How you react to The Comic will probably depend on how much sympathy you can summon up for a character who doesn’t really seem to deserve any.

Cave-In! (1983, directed by Georg Fenady)

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Sen. Kate Lassiter (Susan Sullivan) is visiting a cave in order to determine whether it’s safe to leave it open to the public. Giving the senator and her group the grand tour is Gene Pearson (Dennis Cole), who is not only a park ranger but who is also Kate’s ex-boyfriend. The question as to whether or not the cave is safe for the general public is answered by a sudden cave-in, which leaves Kate, Gene, and the others trapped. Now, Gene has to lead the group across often dangerous terrain to safety.

Along with Kate, the group includes a bitter cop named Joe Johnson (Leslie Nielsen!), his wife Liz (Julie Sommars), arrogant Prof. Harrison Soames (Ray Milland), and the professor’s shy daughter, Ann (Sheila Larkin). Joe and Liz are struggling to keep their marriage together. Prof. Soames refuses to allow his daughter to have a life of her own. The six of them are going to have to somehow work together if they’re going to survive this cave-in! Of course, they’re not alone. There’s a seventh person in the cave. Tom Arlen (James Olson) is a dangerous convict who was in the cave hiding out from the police. Now, he’s trapped along with everyone else.

Cave-In is a pretty standard disaster movie. Produced by Irwin Allen, it was originally filmed in 1979 but it didn’t air on NBC until 1983. By that time, Airplane! had pretty much reduced the disaster genre to a joke. Ironically, Leslie Nielsen himself has a starring role in Cave-In, playing exactly the type of character that he parodied in both Airplane! and Police Squad. At the time he filmed Cave-In, Neilsen was still a dramatic actor but by the time the movie aired, his deadpan style was firmly associated with comedy. Even when his dialogue is serious, the natural instinct is to laugh.

Cave-In gets bogged down by flashbacks. Even though everyone should be concentrating on making their way to safety, it instead seems that they’re too busy obsessing on their backstory. Since no one’s backstory is that interesting, the flashbacks don’t do much to liven up the film and, unfortunately, a cave-in just isn’t as compelling as a fire in skyscraper or an upside down boat.

On the plus side, every disaster movie needs an arrogant bastard who makes escape unnecessarily difficult and, in the 70s, no one played a better arrogant bastard Ray Milland. Otherwise, Cave-In is a forgettable entry from the final days of the disaster genre.

Lifetime Film Review: The Baby Monitor Murders (dir by Danny J. Boyle)

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Apple Springs, Washington might seem like a nice little town but appearances can be deceiving. Mallory Raymond has gone missing and no one can find her. The local sheriff seems to suspect that her husband, Glenn (Dustin Lloyd). may have had something to do with it. Meanwhile, Glenn is spending all of his time in the park where Mallory was last seen. Is he searching for his wife or is he searching for another victim?

While Mallory is busy disappearing, Cassie (Natalie Sharp) is busy returning. Cassie grew up in Apple Springs and she’s just returned from college. She thought she was going to get an internship with a music label but that fell through. Now, it looks like like Cassie is going to have to spend the entire summer stuck at her parent’s house. That’s fine with her parents, of course. They’re heading to Paris and they need someone to housesit.

Not wanting to spend another summer working at the local diner, Cassie is very happy when she just happens to run into Chloe Paine (Nicole LaPlaca), a lawyer who is planning on returning to work but who desperately needs someone to look after her daughter, Becca. Chloe asks Cassie if she wants the job and Cassie accepts.

Soon, Cassie is spending hours a day over at the Paine house, taking care of Becca. She gets to know Chloe’s husband, the seemingly friendly Tom Paine (Jon Cor). She also gets to know Glenn, who it turns out just happens to work with Tom. Cassie can’t help but notice that Tom and Glenn seem to always be arguing about something.

Strange things start to happen. One night, Cassie is sure that she’s being watched. Another night, she hears a menacing voice come over the baby monitor but, when she checks out Becca’s room, she doesn’t find anyone there. And then, much like Mallory before her, Chloe disappears!

Where has Chloe gone? Has she been kidnapped? Has she been murdered? And if that’s the case, who’s responsible? Is it Tom, the seemingly perfect husband who seems to have a few secrets hiding underneath the friendly surface? Or is it Glenn, who appears to be obviously unstable but who swears that the only thing he cares about is discovering what happened to his wife? Even though almost everyone tells Cassie that she should just quit her job and stay away from the Paines, Cassie knows that would mean abandoning Beeca and that’s not something that she’s willing to do….

The Baby Monitor Murders, which initially aired way back in January, was originally entitled The Babysitter and really, that’s a better title for the film. While the scene with the voice coming over the baby monitor is an undeniably creepy one, it’s also a rather minor one. The film’s focus is much more on Cassie and her growing realization that she’s found herself in a dangerous and potentially deadly situation. Natalie Sharp gives a good and sympathetic performance as Cassie, making her devotion to Becca feel believable and, as a result, giving this film a bit more emotional depth than the typical Lifetime film. The mystery itself is frequently intriguing and you’ll find yourself going back and forth on whether Glenn or Tom is the one who Cassie should be weary of. All in all, The Baby Monitor Murders is a good Lifetime film that will keep you guessing.

Lifetime Film Review: Engaged To A Psycho (dir by Sam Irvin)

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After dating for a very long time, Deanna (Anna Hutchison) and Karl (Jason-Shane Scott) are finally getting married!

Yay! Everyone loves a big wedding!

And, even before Karl asks Deanna to marry him, he’s purchased a large house for them to live in!

Yay! Everyone loves a big house!

But first, Deanna needs to meet Karl’s family and that means going to an even bigger house!

YAY! EVERYONE LOVES AN EVEN BIGGER HOU….

Wait a minute …. Deanna hasn’t met Karl’s family, yet?

Seriously, everyone, that should be a big red flag. I don’t care how rich your boyfriend is, you don’t accept his marriage proposal before you’ve met his family. After all, his family could be …. well, the could be crazy. Or they might meet you and then decide that they don’t like you or maybe they like you but they still think that their son (or brother or stepbrother) could do better. Or — and this especially happens in Lifetime movie — someone might start murdering all the members of your wedding party.

All of that happens in Engaged To A Psycho. Engaged To A Psycho premiered on the Lifetime Movie Network back in May but, according to the imdb, the film was actually around a while before making it’s official LMN premiere. It played in Canada back in 2018 and then, in 2019, it showed up on television in the UK, Spain, and France. At the time, it was known as Murder at the Mansion. By the time it premiered here in the States, the name had been changed to Engaged To A Psycho. (Lifetime was going through a Psycho cycle. Try saying that six times fast.)

Anyway, regardless of the title, Engaged To A Psycho is a fun little movie. As soon as Deanna shows up at, she meets Karl’s mother, Ivy (Audrey Landers) and his adopted sister, Ruby (Melissa Bolona). Ivy makes it clear that she thinks her son could have done better than Deanna. Ruby, meanwhile, is almost too friendly and seems to be trying way too hard to convince Deanna that Deanna is welcome in the family. It soon becomes obvious, than even though the family is living in a gigantic mansion, the rooms and the hallways are full of secrets, lies, and murder. Soon people are dying all over the place.

One thing I liked about Engaged To A Psycho is that there were plenty of POV shots from the killer’s point of view. It gave the whole a film a sort of giallo feel while also hiding the killer’s identity. It also led to a lot of scenes of people looking straight at the camera and saying stuff like, “I knew it was you! Wait here while I go tell everyone!” Well, needless to say, the killer isn’t big on waiting.

The other thing I liked about Engaged To A Psycho is that it had a sense of humor about itself. Ivy is so extremely unimpressed by Deanna that it actually becomes rather hilarious how dismissive she is. It doesn’t matter how many times Deanna nearly gets killed, Ivy refuses to accept her word that there’s something strange going on.

I liked Engaged to a Psycho. There were a lot of murders, a lot of archly delivered dialogue, and a lot of big houses. What more can you ask for?

Blood River (1991, directed by Mel Damski)

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

In the old west, Jimmy Pearls (Ricky Schroder), a seemingly dissolute young man, kills the three men who he hold responsible for the murder of his parents. Unfortunately for Jimmy, one of those men was the son of powerful rancher Henry Logan (John P. Ryan) and Logan is now determined to track down Jimmy and get some revenge of his own.

Jimmy only his one ally in his attempt to make it to safety and that’s Winston Culler (Wilford Brimley). In his younger days, Culler was a legend. He tamed the frontier and he lived with the Indians and everyone knew better than to get in his way. Now, Winston is older and no one give him the respect that he deserves. Winston allows Jimmy to stay with him but Winston has more than just Jimmy’s safety in mind. Winston has his own reasons for wanting to get revenge on Logan and, despite their constant bickering, he and Jimmy are soon working as a team.

Adrienne Barbeau has a cameo as a madam and, while she’s always a welcome sight in any film, I imagine her casting has to do with the fact that this film was actually written by John Carpenter. Yes, that John Carpenter! Carpenter actually wrote the script for what would become Blood River in 1971. When he wrote it, he pictured John Wayne as Winston and either Elvis Presley or Ron Howard as Jimmy. (The Duke and Elvis in the same film? That would have been something, regardless of how the film itself turned out.) Carpenter sent copies of the script to both John Wayne and director Howard Hawks but neither one responded. It would be 19 years before the script was finally filmed.

Blood River is an amiable western. It was ultimately produced for television and it first aired on CBS. Despite the fact that the film was originally written to be a theatrical film, it plays more like a pilot than a film. You could imagine a weekly series featuring Winston and Jimmy riding from town to town and getting into adventures. The plot is nothing special but Ricky Schroder and Wilford Brimley make for a good team. Brimley is especially ornery, even for him. Blood River may be a simple film but it will be appreciated by those looking for a likable and old-fashioned western.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse #23: Gotti (dir by Kevin Connolly)

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Few recent films have been as misunderstood as Gotti.

When this film was first released in 2018, it was slammed by critics and it flopped at the box office. On Rotten Tomatoes, it managed a score of 0% from the critics. At the same time, the opening day audience score was 80%. (Over subsequent days, the audience score would drop to 46%.) This disparity was blamed on studio employees inflating the audience score, though I think it’s more likely that, after months of negative press about the film’s troubled productions, critics were already looking forward to slamming the film before they even had a chance to see it. At the same time, the buzz on Gotti was so bad that the opening day audience was made up of a combination of John Travolta die-hards (whoever they may be) and people who were expecting such a trainwreck that all Gotti had to do to surpass their expectations was to occasionally be in focus.

Then again, it could be that some members of the audience understood what I instinctively understood when I first watched Gotti. Gotti is not really a film about John Gotti, the flamboyant New York mob boss who ruled the streets with an iron fist and who eventually ended up dying of cancer in prison. Instead, whether it was the filmmaker’s actual intention or not, Gotti is a film about the audience’s fascination with not only gangsters but also the movies that have been made about them.

It’s true that John Travolta may be playing someone namned John Gotti but the film goes out of its way to remind you that he’s not the real John Gotti. The film is full of archival news footage of the real John Gotti, either laughing it up with reporters or smirking while sitting in a courtroom. Every time that we’re shown footage of the real John Gotti, we’re reminded of the fact that, at not point during the film, does Travolta look anything like John Gotti. Add to that, the real Gotti is always smirking whereas Travolta always looks somewhat grim. At the time this film came out, many claimed that this was evidence of lazy filmmaking but I viewed it as being a Brechtian distancing device. Whenever the real Gotti makes an appearance, we’re reminded that we’re just watching a movie and then we’re encouraged to ask ourselves why we would want to watch a movie about such a disreputable figure.

The movie opens with John Travolta standing next to the Brooklyn Bridge and speaking directly to the camera. Though Travolta is meant to be speaking to us as John Gotti, the sight of him standing near a bridge in New York will automatically remind some viewers of a previous Travolta film, Saturday Night Fever. The character that Travolta played in Saturday Night Fever, Tony Manero, has come to epitomize New York in the 70s. The film suggests that, in much the same way, Gotti epitomized New York in the 80s and 90s. Gotti, the film is saying, is as much of an icon of the popular imagination as Tony Manero dancing in a white suit.

Why is Gotti speaking directly to us in that scene? It may seem like a framing device until, a few minutes later, we see a bald and sickly Gotti in a prison meeting room, telling his life story to his son, John, Jr. (Spencer LoFranco). Gotti talking in prison is then established as the narrative’s other framing device. So, why was Gotti speaking to us on the bridge and why did he look so healthy and have a full of head of hair when the film has made it clear that the newly bald Gotti is going to die in prison? When I first saw the film, my initial thought was that the Gotti who speaks directly to the audience was meant to be a ghost. But then it occurred to me that he’s actually not meant to be John Gotti at all. Instead, the Gotti who talks to us on the bridge is meant to be our popular conception of what gangsters like John Gotti as like. He’s what we imagine gangsters to be — i.e., tough-talking, well-dressed, and played by an iconic actor. As such, the film’s narration is not being provided by John Gotti. Instead, it’s being provided by the person that we imagine someone like Gotti to have been.

Is the imprisoned Gotti meant to be the real Gotti? Perhaps. However, it’s hard not to notice that, over the course of the film, Gotti’s son never ages. Though several decades pass, Gotti’s son always looks like he’s in his mid-twenties. When he visits his father in prison and talks about having teenage children of his own, it feels odd because he barely looks old enough to be out of high school. That may seem like lazy filmmaking but again, I would argue that this is a distancing device. It’s a reminder that we’re not watching reality. Instead, we’re choosing to watch actors pretending to be gangsters.

Once you accept that Gotti is a film not about John Gotti but instead about those of us in the audience who are watching, the film makes a lot more sense. The film’s cliches about life in the Mafia are revealed to be not so much the result of an uninspired script as they’re an homage to American folklore. Of course, there’s going to be a scene where Gotti tells his children never to rat on their friends. Of course, there’s going to be random shootings and burly men demanding respect. This is a gangster movie, after all. By populating the cast with people who you normally wouldn’t expect to see playing members of the Mafia — Stacy Keach, Chris Mulkey, Pruitt Taylor Vince — Gotti continually reminds you that you’re watching a movie. The real mafia isn’t like this, Gotti is saying, but the mafia of the popular imagination is. Why are we horrified by real-life crime and yet we flock to movies that claim to recreate it for our entertainment? This is the issue at the heart of Gotti.

Gotti’s flaws are there to remind us that we’re just watching a movie. They’re also there to make us wonder why we’re watching that particular movie. Gotti asks us why audience idolize killers like John Gotti. Why do we turn them into folk heroes? Is it because we imagine them to be characters in films as opposed to actual human beings? Whether or not one feels that the film succeeded in its goal, this is an offer that you cannot refuse.

Previous Offers You Can’t (or Can) Refuse:

The Love War (1970, directed by George McCowan)

Posted on July 28, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Two warring alien races are settling their conflict in California. Two teams of three have been sent down to Earth. Though they may appear to be human, their true form is revealed whenever anyone looks at them while wearing a special pair of glasses. (Yes, just like in They Live.) Kyle (Lloyd Bridges) is the last surviving member of his team but, even if his side has lost two battles, Kyle is still determined to win the war.

After killing one of his opponents in Los Angeles, Kyle hops on a bus and heads to a small town. While he’s on the bus, he’s approached by Sandy (Angie Dickinson). Though Kyle tries to avoid talking to her, Sandy manages to break down his defenses because she’s Angie Dickinson. If 70s era Angie Dickinson started talking to you on a bus, would you be able to ignore her? When Kyle reaches his destination and gets off the bus, Sandy decides to follow him. Even after Kyle explains that he’s an alien and allows her to see his true form, Sandy says that she’s in love with him. Kyle starts to fall in love with her too but what will he do when the other aliens show up in the town, looking to kill him?

Even though this made-for-TV movie’s 70 minute runtime makes it feel more like an extended episode of The Outer Limits than an actual movie, The Love War makes good use of both its intriguing premise and its two lead actors. Lloyd Bridges and Angie Dickinson might not be the first two actors who come to mind you think about who could credibly play an alien and the woman in love with him but they both pull it off. The Love War works because it takes its premise seriously. I can only imagine how audiences in 1970 reacted the film’s ending, which is hardly typical of the type of feel-good stuff that we usually associate with 70s television.

The Love War has never officially been released on DVD but it can be viewed on YouTube.