Night of the Comet took advantage of the return of Halley’s Comet hype which ran through nation and pretty much most of the world throughout most of 1984 and into 1985. Hollywood being the opportunist industry that it was (and still is) were quick to produce and release a movie about the return of Halley’s Comet over the planet as soon as possible. The 1980’s was a good decade for the low to mid-budgeted horror and sci-fi movies which had a quick death at the box-office but which gained success and cult status in the many displays racks of the tens of thousands of video rental places. 1984’s Night of the Comet was one of these films and it typifies the cheesiness that was 1980’s scifi horror.
The film opens up with everyone partying the arrival of Halley’s Comet which could be seen in the night sky every 75-76 years. This time around the planet will pass through the comet’s tail which has only happened once and that was 65 million years in the past. People are out on the streets as night falls celebrating the Comet’s arrival and we meet two of the main characters in the film in the form of Regina (80’s genre icon Catherine Mary Stewart) and Samantha (Kelli Maroney). Two sisters who truly epitomizes the mall and valley culture of 1980’s Southern California, Regina and Samantha are not enjoying the night of the comet as Regina ends up working the night shift at the local theater she works at and Samantha is stuck at home with her stepmother and all the partygoers attending her stepmom’s party. In the span of a few sequences both Regina and Samantha end up locking themselves up somewhere quiet and safe to get away from the party going on around them.
While they stew in their own little, steel-lined hideaways the comet makes its pass over the planet with everyone who can see looking up to take a peek of the returning comet. What happens next sets up the rest of the movie. The comet seem to have turned anyone not protected behind heavy steel structures into red dust and those only half-protected end up turning into zombie-like creatures. Luckily for the two sisters they were inside such heavy steel structures when the comet did its pass over and were well-protected. The rest of the movie deals with Regina and Samantha dealing with the possibility that they may be the last people on the planet (though this soon get shotdown with the arrival of Commander Chakotay of Star Trek Voyager…I mean Robert Beltran) and trying to keep themselves from being eaten by the zombie survivors and being tested upon by shady, secret government scientists.
Night of the Comet won’t win any awards even from horror and science-fiction groups, but it will entertain to a point. For those who grew up during the 80’s the movie will bring back fond, if painful memories of just how cheesy that decade was in terms of pop culture. Catherine Mary Stewart as Regina would be seen in more cheesy horror flicks of the era. In fact, she pretty much became the PG-13 version of 80’s Scream Queen Linnea Quigley. Where Ms. Quigley wasn’t against gratuitious nudity and sex in the movies she was in, Ms. Stewart was very chaste and very girl next door in her roles.
Would I recommend this movie to people? Yes, I would but buying the dvd might be more for the hardcore horror and scifi completist since one can easily see Night of the Comet on regular and cable TV. In the end, the movie is a fun romp back through time to a weird and different era. The movie is not great, but it’s not bad either.
So, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got a love for film trivia in general and Oscar trivia in particular. I also love to make lists. Last night, these twin loves led to me staying up way too late making a list of every single film ever nominated for best picture. As I looked down at that list, I thought to myself, “That’s not even a 1,000 movies. Why it would only take a few years for me to see and then review every single film ever nominated.” So, I am now a woman on a mission. Well, actually, I’m on several missions but this is definitely one of them.
Unfortunately, there is one nominee that its doubtful that I — or anyone else will ever see — and that is 1928’s The Patriot. Not only was it the last silent film to be nominated for best picture but it’s also the only nominee to subsequently become a “lost” film. With the exception of a few publicity stills and the film’s trailer, all trace of The Patriot has vanished. Maybe there’s a copy of it sitting in the corner of someone’s attic. It has happened in the past, after all. More likely though, the Patriot is simply gone.
Here’s the trailer:
The Patriot was based on the 1801 assassination of Tsar Paul I of Russia. Paul was played by Emil Jannings who, the previous year, had won the very first Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Last Command. Paul’s assassin — the patriot of the title — was played by character actor Lewis Stone who later played almost everyone’s father in the 1930s. Director Lubitsch was, like Jannings, a relatively recent arrival from Germany.
The Patriot was an expensive, “prestige” presentation that was pretty much doomed the moment that Al Jolson spoke in The Jazz Singer. With audiences now obsessed with “talking pictures,” the silent Patriot was a box office bomb. Paramount hastily withdrew the film from circulation, added a few sound effects (though no dialogue because of Jannings’s thick German accent), and then re-released the film with the little success. The Patriot — the last silent film nominated — lost to the first sound film to win Best Picture, Broadway Melody.
The box office failure of The Patriot pretty much drove the last nail into the coffin of the silent film era. Jannings reacted to the coming of sound by returning to his native Germany and continuing his film career there. He co-starred with Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel. As Germany’s most distinguished actor, Jannings was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and he appeared in several Nazi propaganda films during World War II. In 1945, following the fall of the Third Reich, Jannings reportedly carried his Oscar with him as he walked through the streets of Berlin. He died in Austria in 1950 at the age of 65.
Lewis Stone, meanwhile, prospered in sound films and was a busy character actor until he died of a heart attack in 1953. Reportedly, he dropped dead while chasing some neighborhood children who had been throwing rocks at his garage.
Ernest Lubitsch also had a very succesful career in Hollywood and specialized in sophisticated romantic comedies and musicals. While Jannings was making propaganda films for Hitler, Lubitsch was directing the anti-Nazi comedy, To Be Or Not To Be. He died of a heart attack in 1947, reportedly while having sex with a starlet who was auditioning for a role in his latest film.
The other night, I watched an old Patrick Swayze movie called Road House. The movie was on Channel 64, which is also known as the Ion Network. Anyway, the movie started at 8:00 and I was really, really tired for some reason so, as the movie started, I made the mistake of grabbing a pillow and curling up on the couch with the cat and, no offense to the memory of Patrick Swayze but, as soon as he showed up on my TV screen, my eye lid started to get so heavy. My sister Erin sat down beside me and said, “Are you falling asleep?” “No,” I said and then I was out like a light.
Luckily, Erin turned on the DVR as soon as she heard the sound of my asthmatic wheeze of a snore so when I woke up at 3 in the morning, I sat up and proceeded to watch the final 80 minutes of Road House.
Why Was I Watching It?
Because almost every guy I know seems to be in love with this movie. When Patrick Swayze died, I though about Dirty Dancing and Donnie Darko. But almost every guy I know — from my friend Jeff to my cousins in Arkansas to my boss at work to my online friends on twitter — was going, “Road House!” So, I watched it to see if I could maybe understand what makes the male mind tick. Plus, I was bored and really, really tired. And I couldn’t find the remote to change the channel. (Turns out it was actually underneath me, lost in the cushions of the couch.)
What’s It About
Patrick Swayze plays Dalton, who is apparently a legendary “cooler,” which apparently is what you call a bouncer who thinks he’s too good to be called a bouncer. He get hired to be a boun–oh, sorry, a cooler — at a bar called the Double Deuce that is located down in Jasper, Missouri. So, Swayze goes down there and starts cleaning the place up and then it turns out that the entire town is controlled by Brad Wesley (played with a true joie de vivre by Ben Gazzara) and Wesley wants…well, I’m not sure what he wants, to be honest. I mean, seriously, I was so tired when I started watching this movie. I’m sure I missed all sorts of nuance and such. But anyway, Gazzara wants something and Swayze won’t let him have it so there’s a lot of fights at the road house and a car dealer ship gets destroyed and a barn blows up and then eventually Patrick Swayze rips out some guy’s throat with his bare hands.
In between all of this, Swayze recruits his mentor (Sam Elliott) to come down and help out. This leads to Elliott getting murdered but nobody ever thinks to say, “Hey, Patrick — maybe if you had just let Gazzara do his thing, Sam Elliott would still be alive today.” Also, Swayze romances a local doctor played by Kelly Lynch. She used to be Gazzara’s girlfriend and she gets upset after seeing Swayze rip out someone’s throat with his bare hands. But then she ends up skinny dipping with him about fifteen minutes later so I guess she got over it.
Did I mention that Patrick Swayze rips out someone’s throat with his bare hands?
What Worked
Road House is one of those “so-bad-its-good” type films. This is a film that sets out to be manly and ends up being so manly that it becomes ludicrous. But guys are almost always fun to watch when they’re trying to be all guy-like. (Though not always, as will be discussed under the heading of What Didn’t Work.)
Ben Gazzara is a lot of fun in the role of Brad Wesley. Seriously, he looks like he had so much fun playing the part. Usually, it annoys me when a film’s main female character is revealed to be the ex of a total and complete psycho (and I’m looking at you, Love and Other Drugs) but it totally works here because seriously, Ben Gazzara is the man.
And Sam Elliott provides all sorts of grizzled, beer-soaked, chain-smoking, unwashed sexiness.
The film features a lot of countryside that doesn’t look much like Missouri but it’s still really pretty. (Missouri’s really pretty too. You rock, Missouri!)
Since this film was being shown on television, all of the bare asses and visible nipples were edited out as were all the four-letter words. However, it was that really weird, half-ass style of editing where you hear Patrick Swayze yelling, “FU—-CK YOU, WESLEY!” Also, whenever anyone said the F-word, a big blurry dot suddenly appeared over their mouth. That may not sound like much but at 3 in the morning, it really can cause you to giggle.
At one point, one of the bad guys grabs Patrick Swayze from behind and goes, “I used to FU—-CK Guys like you in prison!” That line made me laugh way too much. Plus, the guy saying it was really hot but then Patrick Swayze used his bare hands to rip out of the guy’s throat and that kind of ruined the whole mood.
What Didn’t Work
Well, technically, the entire film didn’t work but that’s kind of the whole point. Still, for a film that’s supposed to be so bad that it’s good, Road House is still not that good. It never quite reaches the level of Troll 2 or The Room. Quite frankly, there’s waaaaaaaaaay too much testosterone rampaging through this movie and the whole time I watched, I kept on thinking about the violence that seems to define day-to-day existence for far too many people.
Add to that, all of the men seemed to be beating each other up mainly because they were all actually in love with each other but refused to be honest with themselves about it. Seriously, this movie has some issues.
Plus, Ben Gazzara ends up dead at the end of the film which really upset me because he’s the most likable character in the entire film! At the very least, he’s got a really nice house.
Both Swayze and Elliott are apparently meant to be legendary bouncers. They’re so legendary that apparently everyone on the entire planet knows who they are. Now, I’m curious — are there really legendary bouncers? I mean, is there like an in-house magazine that all the coolers and bouncers and barmaids subscribe to? Maybe Patrick Swayze’s character was on the cover a few times. I mean, I can accept that maybe Swayze would be legendary in a few cities were he had worked but would the citizens of Jasper, Missouri really have the slightest idea who he is?
“Oh My God! Just like me!” Moments
Uhmmm…I’m thinking. There really weren’t any moments that made me go, “Oh my God! Just like me!” I mean, I don’t know Tae Kwon Do, I don’t really drink all that much, I’ve never ripped out anyone’s throat with my bare hands, I’ve never fired a shotgun at Ben Gazzara, and I don’t cover myself in body oil before going outside shirtless and practicing Tai Chi.
Oh, wait a minute! Much like Kelly Lynch in this movie, I would probably totally freak out if my boyfriend ripped out some guy’s throat. In fact, I would probably freak out even more than she did. I mean, even if — like Patrick Swayze in this movie — he made things right by dumping the corpse in a lake and then screaming, “FUCK YOU!” at Ben Gazzara, there’s no way you’d get me to go skinny dipping with him after all of that. Because the whole time, I would just be like, “That’s great you got everyone to kill Ben Gazzara, sweetie but seriously, I saw you rip someone’s larynx out of their freaking throat. So, just stand six feet away and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Agck! Now, I’m kinda freaking out about my own throat. I mean, is it that easy to do? *Shudder* I probably never should have given this that much thought…
Lessons Learned:
Protect your throat at all times. Seriously, I’m going to start wearing a stainless steel choker every time I leave the house.
The Company Men is the first film to be directed by veteran television producer and writer John Wells. Previously, Wells worked on ER, The West Wing, Southland, Third Watch, and a whole host of other shows that I’d rather die than ever have to actually sit through. With The Company Men, Wells attempts to tell the story of the current economic recession and what its like to go from being a high-paid executive to just another unemployed statistic. The end result is a deeply uneven film that comes so very close to succeeding but ultimately fails.
The film opens in 2008 and indeed, most of the film takes place in ’08. It always amuses me how any film that comes out now that deals with either the economy or the wars in the Middle East (the Hurt Locker being an obvious example), the filmmakers always go out of their way to let us know that their movie is taking place during the Bush administration and not the Obama Administration. Some people would call that “ass kissing” but I just find it to be amusing.
Anyway, getting back on track here, the films follows three corporate executives who all work for a fictional company called GTX. There’s a rich, white guy played by Ben Affleck. And then there’s a richer, white guy played by Chris Cooper. And then finally, I guess to add some variety to the mix, there’s a white guy who is really, really rich and he’s played by Tommy Lee Jones. Anyway, Affleck, Cooper, and Jones are all cheerfully doing their thing until one day, the recession hits and boom! Suddenly, Affleck is told that he has become “redundant.” He’s given a severance package and sent off on his merry way. Meanwhile, Cooper worries that he’s about to face the same fate while Jones — who is one of the company’s vice presidents — tries to keep GTX’s satanic CEO from putting anyone else out of work.
It’s Affleck and his story that commands most of the film’s running time and, to his credit, Affleck actually gives a surprisingly good performance here as he starts out as smug and self-centered before eventually becoming desperate and insecure until finally, by the end of the film, he’s reached a state of acceptance. A lot of this has to do with the fact that he finally humbles himself into accepting a job with his blue-collar brother-in-law, a homebuilder played by Kevin Costner.
A word about Kevin Costner in this film: I could have done without him. First off, I understand his character is supposed to be a blue-collar, plain-spoken, salt-of-the-Earth type but honestly, he just comes across like a overlymacho asshole who probably voted for Lyndon LaRouche at some point in the past. I guess he’s supposed to be John Wells’ version of the noble savage or something.
But with that one glaring exception, The Company Men is a remarkably well-acted film. Even though Jones and Cooper are saddled playing predictable characters, they both bring a real unexpected poignancy to their portrayals. Cooper, especially, is strong and always sympathetic even though you know everything that’s going to happen to him from the minute he first shows up on-screen. Rosemarie DeWitt has the rather thankless role of being Affleck’s wife but she brings a lot of strength to a thinly written character and she and Affleck have a real chemistry. When they’re on-screen together, you believe in their marriage which is more than you can say for most screen couples.
The cast of The Company Men is such a strong ensemblethat you really find yourself hoping (and sometimes even believing) that the overall film will succeed as well. But, alas, the film fails and it manages to fail for all the obvious reasons. John Wells is best known for his work in television and The Company Men never really shakes that made-for-TV feeling. For every scene that offers up an unexpected insight or a subtle piece of characterization, there’s a hundred more that feel glib, smug, and ultimately forced. For every honest note, there’s a false one waiting right around the corner to pounce on it and beat it into submission. This is the type of movie where Tommy Lee Jones walks around a deserted shipyard and delivers a monologue about the way things use to be to a character who has absolutely no logical reason for being there beyond the fact that Wells needed to find an excuse for Jones to deliver the whole long speech to begin with. Don’t get me wrong — Jones delivers the words beautifully but so what? The scene still feels safe, predictable, and ultimately false.
And what’s the deal with Maria Bello in this film? She plays Sally Wilcox who is apparently in charge of “downsizing” at GTX. She’s also having an adulterous affair with Tommy Lee Jones despite the fact that all Jones ever does is criticize her for even existing. Never mind the fact, of course, that Jones is a part of the entire corporate culture that’s responsible for the Sally Wilcoxes of the world to begin with. It’s hard not to feel that her character is there to largely let Jones off the hook. It’s not Jones’s fault that everyone who works under him ends up unemployed and, in one really obvious plot development, dead. No, it’s that evil Sally Wilcox with her blonde hair and black lingerie. And what you can’t blame on Sally, put the blame on Jones’s wife and toss Cooper’s wife in there as well since they’re both portrayed as being heartless wenches (as opposed to DeWitt who is a good wife because she supports Affleck no matter what). The Company Men is full of sympathy for depressed, self-pitying white guys but it has next to none for the women who have to live with them.
Wells is obviously trying to say something about the Recession but what? Obviously, he lays a lot of the blame at the doorstep of greedy CEOs like the one played, in this film, by Craig T. Nelson. Unfortunately, you get the feeling that Wells seems to think that he’s the only person in the world who has managed to figure out that excessive corporate greed can be a bad thing. He may think that he’s educating but really all he’s doing is preaching and the only ones listening are the choir.
So, a few weeks ago, some of my fellow pop culturally inclined writers were talking about the worst movies of 2010. I had, earlier, declared Love and Other Drugs to be the worst film of 2010 and I was told to hold off on making that judgment until I saw Sofia Coppola’s latest film, Somewhere. At this point, another writer chimed in to let me know that he hadn’t heard one good word about Somewhere.
At that point, I made a prediction. Simply based on the movie’s trailer (which played at Plano Angelika for 5 months before it actually opened in Dallas last week) and the fact that so many people seemed to hate this film with such a passion, I predicted that Somewhere would probably turn out to be one of my favorite films of the year.
I saw the film last Saturday and it turns out I was correct. I absolutely loved Somewhere.
In many ways, Somewhere feels like a prequel to Coppola’s Lost In Translation. Somewhere tells the story of Hollywood actor Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) who, despite being a film star — if not, its implied, a particularly respected actor — spends his days wandering through life in a haze of ennui. At the start of the film, he drunkenly breaks his arm and, when not promoting an upcoming action film, he spends his days recovering at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. He smokes a lot of cigarettes, drinks a lot of beer, and languidly lies in bed while twin pole dancers do their routines in front of him. The first fourth of the film is devoted to establishing Johnny’s shallow daily routine with the only excitement coming from insulting text messages that he occasionally receives. Right when you’re wondering how much more of Johnny Marco’s existential crisis you can handle, his 11 year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning, who gives a surprisingly mature performance) shows up and both Johnny and the movie suddenly spring to life.
Cleo’s mother has basically abandoned her daughter, calling up Johnny and explaining that she needs “to find” herself. Until Cleo is scheduled to start at summer camp, she tags along with Johnny on his day-to-day life. They go to Italy where Johnny promotes his latest film and answers vapid questions at a hilariously awkward press conference and then accepts an award during a televised ceremony even though he’s not quite sure what the award is for. Back in the states, Cleo and Johnny hang out at the hotel, discuss the plot of Twilight, and finally — on the way to summer camp — Johnny takes her to Vegas.
With the exception of one scene, Cleo and Johnny never discuss why he’s no longer with her mother nor do they address the issue that both of her parents are essentially abandoning Cleo. However, even though it’s never addressed directly, the movie is full of clues for those who are willing to pay attention. We actually learn very little about why Johnny is the way he is but, again, Coppola fills every scene with hints and then allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions. None of the film’s mysteries are directly explained — we never learn who is sending Johnny the angry text messages nor do we ever learn the full significance of a phone call Johnny makes to an unseen woman named Layla — but the explanations are there and, in Coppola’s assured and subtle hands, the search for those explanations ultimately turns into a portrait of a society full of lost human beings who have lost the ability to connect.
Admittedly, one reason why I loved this film is because the relationship between Johnny and Cleo reminded me a good deal of my relationship with my own dad. So much of the film rang painfully true to me that I was thankful for the many moments where Cleo and Johnny were just allowed to be a normal father and daughter. I’m thinking of the moments were Cleo explains to plot of Twilight or where, during their trip to Italy, Cleo sits in the hotel lobby and concentrates on Sudoku. It was moments like this that rang so true to me and it’s these moments that made Somewhere one of my favorite movies of 2010.
And I would! For an overweight, kinda disheveled guy who gives off a definite fear-of-intimacy type of vibe, Seth Rogen has a definite charisma and appeal to him. But, is he believable as a super hero? That’s the question posed by the new film, the Green Hornet.
In The Green Hornet, Rogen plays Britt Reid, the son of a wealthy Los Angeles newspaper publisher. Britt has a difficult relationship with his dad (played by the great Tom Wilkinson). His dad constantly reminds Britt that he’s wasting his potential and Britt responds by holding wild parties and throwing TVs off of balconies. (I’ve always wondered what the children of rich people do whenever their favorite show comes on since they always seem to be destroying any nearby televisions.) Anyway, Britt’s dad suddenly dies and just as suddenly, Britt inherits both his dad’s newspaper and one of his dad’s mechanics, Kato (Jay Chou). It turns out that Kato is something of a genius who spends his spare time sketching women, bullet-proofing cars, and making weapons. Kato’s also a skilled martial artist. Well, of course, what else can Britt do but fight crime with Kato as his loyal sidekick? Of course, fighting crime means coming into conflict with the biggest crime lord in Los Angeles, a paranoid Russian mobster (Inglorious Basterd’s Christoph Waltz) who is having a rather bloody midlife crisis. Along the way, Rogen also hires Cameron Diaz to work at the newspaper and soon finds himself competing with Kato for her affections. (I can’t remember, off the top of my head, the name of the character that Diaz plays but it doesn’t really matter. Much like Gwynneth Paltrow in the Iron Man movies, Diaz is mostly there to be herself.)
So, is Rogen a convincing super hero? No, not really. But that’s kind of the point of the entire movie. If The Dark Knight was the first truly postmodern comic book movie than The Green Hornet is the first mumblecore one. If The Dark Knight was the first movie to question what the deeper meaning of comic book heroism might be, The Green Hornet is the first movie to confidently answer with “there are none.” As played by Rogen, Britt becomes a super hero because there is literally nothing else to do. Kato becomes his sidekick for much the same reason while the film’s villain spends most of his time agonizing over what his evil catchphrase should be. That’s the genius of a The Green Hornet: it’s a super hero film about people who seem to understand that they’re characters in a super hero film and therefore, they have to act accordingly even while they comment on the absurdity of it all.
There is a plot to The Green Hornet but it’s really not that important. Ultimately, this film is all about Britt’s relationship with Kato. Kato is upset to constantly find himself being referred to as being the Green Hornet’s sidekick. Britt, meanwhile, is painfully aware of the fact that he contributes next to nothing to the team. Both of them find themselves competing for the affections of Diaz who doesn’t appear to have feelings for either of them. At first, Britt and Kato do the whole male bonding thing and then, after Waltz comes after them, they end up going their separate ways only to reunite in time for the film’s conclusion. This is a bromance disguised as an action movie but, fortunately, Chou and Rogen are both engaging and likable and they have a definite chemistry together that makes them fun to watch.
That’s probably the best way to sum up The Green Hornet. It’s a likable, entertaining, and frequently very funny movie that has a few memorable moments and, in this case, that’s more than good enough.
I can’t believe I haven’t featured the trailer from the infamous Caligula yet. There’s actually several trailers to choose from as this film was released in so many different versions. I’m going with this one because Bob Guccione’s pompous voice over manages to be amusing, annoying, and yet oddly charming.
One of the lesser known facts about Caligula is that, while Caligula was being filmed, Italian director Joe D’Amato decided to get in on all the publicity by making his own low-budget rip-off, this one co-starring his frequent muse Laura Gemser (who had previously starred in the Black Emanuelle series and would later design the goblin costumes in Troll 2). With all the drama around the production of Caligula, Caligula: The Untold Story actually ended up being released first.
I don’t really love this trailer, to be honest. It’s actually a bit dull and it doesn’t even allow us to hear the guy with the glasses go, “Oh my Godddddddddd!” But I’m including it anyway because how can you not include Troll 2? Plus, I also rewatched the documentary Best Worst Movie a few days ago so I’ve got Troll 2 on the mind.
Now, this is a trailer! It’s interesting that Troll 2 is a bizarre and busy film with a boring trailer whereas the original Troll is a boring film with a bizarre and busy trailer. Also, listen carefully to the trailer’s narrator because you don’t want to miss the prophetic Harry Potter reference…
“El Topo is bloody…El Topo is sexual…” It’s also widely cited as being the first midnight cult film. It’s also one that I’ve been meaning to review on this site for a while. However, until then, here’s the trailer. (By the way, some might debate whether El Topo should be included here. What they’re forgetting is that a good deal of the 70s Grindhouse fare were actually misunderstood art films. Plus, El Topo did play almost exclusively in grindhouse theaters until John Lennon saw it and declared it his favorite film of all time.)
A week ago, I had a very odd dream, one that was more disturbing than frightening. I saw myself walking down a fog-covered street in London. Simply by the way I was dressed and the distant sounds of horses crossing cobblestone streets, I knew that this was towards the end of the 19th century. I walked down the street, aware that there were people near me who I could hear but couldn’t see because of the thick fog. Finally, I reached a shabby-looking boarding house. As I watched myself starting to open the front door, I realized that, in my dream, I was Mary Kelley, the final victim of Jack the Ripper. And, by stepping into that boarding house, I was heading towards my own death. That’s when I woke up.
Over on my twitter profile, I describe myself as being a “sweet little thing with morbid thoughts.” I guess my fascination with the mystery of Jack the Ripper is an example of those morbid thoughts. Out of all of the Ripper’s victims, Mary Kelley has always been the one that I’ve felt “closest” to. She was murdered on November 9th, 1888. I was born on November 9th, 1985. Like me, she was a fallen Irish Catholic. Like me, she had red hair. While the other Ripper victims were all in their 40s, Kelley was only 25 years old and, for the longest time, I believed I was destined to die between my 25th and 26th birthdays. (I’m 25 years old so hopefully, that was just my imagination working overtime.) I think what truly made Kelly’s murder stand out in my mind is that she was killed in her own room, probably attacked while she was either asleep or passed out. Being attacked while asleep has always been one of my phobias, one of the reasons why I’m often happier with insomnia than sleep.
Still, until my dream, I had given much thought to Jack the Ripper or any of his victims for quite some time. After the dream, I ordered a copy of The Jack The Ripper Encyclopedia from Amazon and then I rewatched my personal favorite of all the Jack the Ripper films, Bob Clark’s Murder By Decree.
Released in 1979, Murder by Decree mixes the facts of the Ripper case and the fictional characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson with the same Royal Conspiracy theory that lies at the heart of the better known film From Hell. Unlike From Hell, Murder By Decree is an almost bloodless film. Instead of emphasizing the savagery of the Ripper murders, Clark chose to focus on creating an oppresively grim and paranoid atmosphere. Whether it’s the ominous image of the Ripper’s carriage slowly moving through the London fog or Holmes’ visit to a nightmarish insane asylum, Clark’s London is a grim and forbidding dreamscape that almost seems to have sprung from some lost example of German expressionism.
Into this dark and oppressive atmosphere, Murder By Decree drops the familiar and comforting characters of Holmes and Watson (played, respectively, by Christopher Plummer and James Mason). I have to admit that I’ve never actually been able to bring myself to read any of the Holmes stories (though I’ve tried) but the characters are both so iconic that I feel as if I had. Both Holmes and Jack the Ripper are characters that everyone feels they knew about even if they’re not sure when they first heard of them. Though this might sound rather gimmicky to have these two characters meet, a good deal of the film’s strength comes from the contrast between the nostalgic innocence of Holmes and Watson and the harsh reality of Jack the Ripper’s London. By the end of the film, when Holmes’ voice cracks as he describes the conspiracy behind the Ripper movies, he’s gone from being an icon to being a stand-in for everyone who has ever been disillusioned by what they previously believed in.
Plummer makes for a surprisingly physical Holmes but he does a good job with the role, bringing a surprising vulnerability to the detective. James Mason, meanwhile, makes for a perfect sidekick and he and Plummer both have the type of chemistry that Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law could only dream about. The rest of the cast is made up of familiar English and Canadian character actors and they all give memorable performances. Donald Sutherland is excellent as a haunted psychic but my favorite supporting performance probably comes from David Hemmings who plays a shadowy police inspector. This is because every time I see Hemmings on-screen, I’m reminded of Dario Argento’s Deep Red.
If I do have any issues with this film, it’s that it promotes the long discredited Royal/Masonic Conspiracy as a solution. (This theory will be familiar to anyone who has seen or read From Hell.) However, of all the various solutions that have been offered up in an attempt to explain and understand Jack the Ripper, the whole political conspiracy angle is undoubtedly the most cinematic and Clark makes good use of it here. This is a film in which a growing sense of paranoia and unease seems to pervasively fill every scene just as surely as the London fog. The viewer, in the end, is thankful to actually have the familiar characters of Holmes and Watson to identify with because otherwise, the worldview of Murder By Decree is almost unbearably dark.
By the way, the role of Mary Kelley in this film is played by a fellow redhead, the Canadian actress Susan Clark who tended to show up in a lot of low-budget, Canadian movies in the 70s. Though she doesn’t have many scenes, she is sympathetic presence and Plummer’s reaction to his inability to save her from Jack the Ripper is a scene that has haunted me since the first time I watched this movie and every time since.
I was so happy today and it didn’t even have anything to do with the movies, either! Early this afternoon, I was watching my cat twitch in his sleep (he has very violent dreams, apparently) when I happened to look out my bedroom window and you know what I saw? Snow! “Yay!” I yelled, waking up the cat.
Now, I know that everyone else in the country gets a blizzard every other month but I live in Texas so snow is kind of a big deal to me. I jumped off my bed, threw my Hello Kitty robe on, and went running down stairs. I threw open the door, ran out to the front porch, and then slipped and fell right on my backside.
My neighbor stared at me from his yard. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yay!” I replied, “it’s snowing!”
He nodded and then went, “Better hope those power lines don’t ice over or we might be without electricity.”
At that point, I resolved to never speak to my neighbor again.
So, I was very, very happy but now, the snow’s gone. It’s moved along to Arkansas and Mississippi. Now, the only thing falling rom the sky is freezing rain and the roads will probably be really icy and scary when I’m going to work tomorrow. So, as I sit here all kinds of pantsless with a big purple bruise on my ass, I’m cheering myself up by putting together the latest installment of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers.
From 1970: Dean Stockwell kidnaps and brainwashes Sandra Dee and he’s doing it all in the name of all mighty Cthulhu. This is actually kind of a fun film as long as you can get the image of H.P. Lovecraft spinning in his grave out of your mind.
I’ve never seen this 80s slasher film but I’ve read about its troubled production on various web sites. I’m kinda embarrassed to admit it but I actually get scared when I see this trailer. First off, that mask is disturbing. And secondly, that doll…
Fortunately, even if this world does occasionally give us a demon doll, it can also give us a Black Belt Jones. I loved the trailer as soon as I saw Gloria Hendry shooting the dishes…
Jess Franco has directed close to a thousand films and approximately 12 of them are worth watching. This is one of the lucky dozen, a remake of Eyes Without A Face. The film gave Brigitte LaHaie her best role outside of the films of Jean Rollin and it also co-stars the great Caroline Munro. And since it’s a Franco film, Howard Vernon plays a character named Dr. Orloff. Plus, its got that cute little panther animation at the start of the trailer.
Finally, it’s up to Robert Blake to restore some order. This is actually a fairly interesting little movie as long as you realize that it’s such a 70s film, it might as well be wearing a suit with lapels stretching all the way to the end of the shoulders.
2003 marked a sort of a small comeback for Kevin Costner both as a director and as an actor. The work in question was the very well-done Western, Open Range. Open Range was a moderately budgeted film which has more in common with Costner’s first directorial work, Dances with Wolves than his last big-budget flop, The Postman.
The film was an adaptation of the Lauran Paine novel, The Open Range Men, and it captures much of the themes found in the novel. This was probably due to the fact that screenwriter Craig Storper didn’t deviate from the novel’s basic story. There were no superfluous action sequences and gunfights to ratchet up the action. Everything about Open Range was about the gradual and inevitable final confrontation between the “free-grazers” and the “barbed-wire” men. The free-grazers were played by Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall as Charles Waite and Boss Spearman, respectively. On the other side of the conflict was Michael Gambon playing Denton Baxter, the ruthless land-baron whose attempt to keep the free-grazers from grazing on his land also hides another agenda. Caught in-between these two strong-willed groups were the people in the town Baxter pretty much controls through his “town marshal” (played with fake bravado by James Russo) and the herd helpers under Boss Spearman’s employ.
The theme of freedom to roam the open country versus the rights of a landowner echoes throughout the film. Set in the latter end of the 19th-century, Open Range shows the clash of the more natural ways of the Old West slowly eroding to be replaced by the more industrial, monopolistic practices that became prevalent during the 1880’s, also known in US History as the Gilded Age. Even the personalities of the conflicting characters mirror this theme as the free-grazers only want to use the land as it has been used for years upon years and thats sharing between all men of the West. The land-baron has other ideas in mind and everything boils down to him owning everything around him, even if it means using ruthless tactics to gather even more property.
Open Range also has a bit of modernism in its subplot of Charley Waite’s growing attraction to the sister of the town doctor and the same sister’s well-rounded characterization. It’s not often that a traditional Western shows women in a very positive light instead of the usual submissive and stay-at-home characters of Western’s past. This could also be attributed to the wonderful, underrated performance by Annette Bening who plays Sue Barlow, the doctor’s sister and Charley Waite’s love interest. Bening doesn’t play Sue as the traditional Western female. She also doesn’t go overboard and turn Sue into a 20th-century feminist. She instead plays the character as someone who knows her place in the world, but also one who is strong-willed and willing to stand for what is right.
Open Range was a wonderful throwback to what made such modern Westerns like Unforgiven and Tombstone such a success both for traditionalists and new fans. Kevin Costner’s direction was very low-key. Allowing the story to tell itself at its own pace until the final confrontation. The final gunfight in the end gets a lot of well-earned attention from critics and fans. The entire sequence takes at least 10-15 minutes from start to finish. The fight itself was done in a realistic fashion. There was no sharpshooter dead-eyes in this film, but individuals who had skill but still missed. It was a fight where it wasn’t who was the fastest, but who was the calmest under fire. There’s also a suddenness to the brutality in the final gunfight that demystifies the old-style Western shootouts of past. Some complained that the film was very slow and took too long to get to the “good stuff”, but I actually thought the gradual pacing of most of the film’s length gave the final confrontation even more impact. Costner seem to have learned the lesson all good directors know: less means more.
Open Range won’t go down as a great piece of film making. It surely won’t go down as one of the best in history. What Open Range did accomplish was putting the Western back to its epic and majestic roots, but at the same time keeping the intimacy of a character-driven story. In time, Open Range would probably go down as one of the underrated gems of the last decade and find a place next to its closest comparison, Unforgiven, as one of the best Westerns of the new era.
