With the release of the new American reboot/remake/sequel of the classic 1954 Godzilla by Ishirō Honda, I thought it was high time I shared one of my guiltiest of all film pleasures growing up.
Godzilla and everything kaiju I ate up as a wee lad growing up during the 80’s. There really wasn’t anything on Saturday morning and afternoon tv other than reruns of badly dubbed Japanese monsters flicks and anime. One such film was Ishirō Honda’s very own King Kong vs. Godzilla. Yes, you read that correctly. The King of All Monsters fought the Eight Wonder of the World to decide once and for all who was the greatest giant monster of all-time.
The film itself wasn’t that great when I look back on it. Hell, even I had a sort of understanding even as an 8-year old kid that King Kong vs. Godzilla was a pretty bad film, but I still had a blast watching it. The film lacked in coherent storyline and important themes of man vs. nature and the psychological impact of the two atomic bombings of the US on Japan to end World War II wasn’t at all evident in this monster mash-up.
What the film had was King Kong fighting Godzilla. It was like watching two of the greatest icons of youths of my generation duking it out for our pleasure. It didn’t need to have a story or worry about whether it’s depiction of the natives on King Kong’s island was even remotely racist (it was so racist). All it needed to do was show everyone the very fight they’ve been waiting for. Fans of both monster wouldn’t have to wait forever to see the fight happen. This wasn’t going to be a dream fight never to happen like Mayweather vs. Pacquiao.
So, while King Kong vs. Godzilla was never one of the good entries in the Godzilla filmography (I think it was probably the worst) it more than made up for being one of the most campiest and entertaining entries in the Big Guy’s decades long history.
If there ever was a film from my youth that needs to be remade it would be King Kong vs. Godzilla and only Guillermo Del Toro should be chosen to direct it.
If you’ve watched Encore over the last few month, you may have come across a 2001 film called Tart. I did and, despite some pretty glaring flaws, I enjoyed the film. However, I then checked out a few of the reviews that have been posted online and I discovered that I may very well be the only person in the world who doesn’t hate this movie.
Tart is a coming-of-age story. Teenage Cat (Dominique Swain) lives in Manhattan with her divorced mother and her bratty younger brother. Cat attends an exclusive private school with her best friend Delilah (Bijou Phillips) and has a huge crush on William (Brad Renfro). After Delilah is expelled from school, Cat befriends the snobby Gracie (Mischa Barton) and starts to reinvent herself as one of the popular kids. Along with being popular comes drugs, sex, and, eventually, violence.
There’s no telling how many dirty old men were shocked to discover that DVD cover art is often misleading.
I will be the first to admit that a lot of the negative criticism of Tart is justified.
Is the film largely plotless? It is indeed but so is life.
Are all of the film’s adults presented as being one-dimensional jerks? Yes but then again, we are seeing them and their actions through the eyes of a teenage girl and, when you’re a teenager, most adults do seem to be jerks.
Does the film get a bit heavy-handed when it comes to dealing with casual anti-Semitism? It sure does but then again, anyone who thinks that anti-Semitism isn’t on the rise in this country obviously hasn’t been paying attention to the news.
Does the film’s melodramatic conclusion seem to come out of nowhere? Yes, it does. However, when you’re a teenager, everything eventually becomes a melodrama.
Does Brad Renfro seem to spend the entire film wishing he was somewhere else? Yes, he does. In many ways, his performance is painful to watch, both because his character is fighting the same battle with drugs that would ultimately cost Brad his life and the fact that he doesn’t appear to be all that invested in his performance. Watching the film, you’re struck by just how detached Renfro is from the material. It’s easy to criticize the lack of chemistry between Brad Renfro and Dominique Swain but then again, who hasn’t had a crush on a self-destructive bad boy? Who hasn’t thought that she — and she alone — could see something hidden away inside a damaged soul that only she could understand? Who hasn’t dreamed of understanding (and saving) an enigma? Sometimes, detachment is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Does Bijou Phillips play the same role that she seems to play every time she shows up on screen? Yes, she is playing another wild best friend here but then again, she plays the role well and who hasn’t had a friend who refused to conform?
Does Mischa Barton give a rather broad and over-the-top performance in this film? Yes, she does but then again …. well, sorry. I can’t really think of any way to turn that into a positive.
Shoplifting is fun!
And yet, despite all of the film’s many flaws, I couldn’t dislike Tart. Tart is one of those films that totally misses the big picture and but manages to get so many of the small details right that I couldn’t help but relate to Dominique Swain’s character.
It was the little scenes that worked for me, like the scene where Cat shoplifts for the first time and runs out of the store knowing she’s done something wrong and yet still feeling exhilarated to have gotten away with something or the painfully (for this viewer, at least) accurate scenes of Cat waiting for her father to call on her birthday and then spitefully lashing out at her mother when he doesn’t. I’ve had best friends like Delilah and it was impossible for me not to wince a little at the scenes where Cat and Delilah argue over Cat’s new friends because, seriously, I’ve been there. Even the scene during the opening credits, in which Cat’s skirt is blown upward just as she happens to walk by the boy she likes, felt painfully familiar. Who hasn’t been embarrassed in front of a crush?
It’s the little details that allowed me to relate to this massively flawed film. It’s the little details that make Tart a guilty pleasure.
I sincerely hope that Lisa Marie Bowman will forgive me for muscling in on her (I assume, at any rate) recently-completed “44 Days Of Paranoia” series here at TTSL, but I just couldn’t let it wind up without drawing attention to what is (hopefully) the single-most paranoid flick ever made, namely Ron Ormond’s 1971 Red Scare/Come-To-Jesus religious exploitation number If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?
Ormond was a veteran of the B-movie scene who’s probably best remembered for Mesa Of Lost Women, but at some point in the late ’60s he got scared to death of the emerging youth/anti-war culture and underwent a religious conversion of the “hard turn to the right” variety. Withdrawing from “the business” to his home in Nashville, Tennessee, he founded an outfit known, ever-so-modestly, as “The Ormond Organization,” and set about making evangelical films with his brother and wife as his principal “employees.” The war for our nation’s souls was on, and the Ormonds were determined to do their part by spreading the celluloid gospel.
Enter the Reverned Estus W. Pirkle, hailing from , as you’d probably expect with a name like that, the one-horse town of New Albany, Mississippi. Pirkle was an old-school preacher of the “fire and brimstone” variety who was dismayed by all those pesky civil rights “agitators” who were showing up and disrupting God’s plan for a racially segregated South. He was also worried to pieces about the so-called “Red Menace” He found a way to amalgamate all of his various paranoias into one succinct little book, the title of which you can probably already guess being that this film is based on it, and became a big hit on the traveling revival circuit and at Southern Baptist churches throughout the Bible Belt.
Obviously, when you team up the “talents” of an Ormond and a Pirkle, the end result is going to be a pretty combustible mix, indeed. But you can’t know just how combustible until you see the fruit their collaboration wrought.
The film version of If Footmen tire You What Will Horses Do? takes the form of an extended screed from Pirkle to us lowly mortals in the audience from his position in the pulpit, and, using a “lost soul” teenager named Judy (played by one Judy Creech) as our “point of entry,” shows how Godlessness and moral corruption have wreaked havoc on the lives of our young. What Judy’s doing that’s so wrong is never made clear, mind you, but hey — we know that she does have a boyfriend.
Judy looks especially forlorn when Pirkle talks about the evils of liquor, dancing, and television (he avoids calling out civil rights and anti-war demonstrators by name, but he does inveigh against “riots on campus” and “unwholesome” ideas taking root in the minds of our young), but she’s been unaware of the larger plot that her morally fast-and-loose ways have been playing into — the Communist takeover of these United States.
A lame series of “documented” re-enactments of scenes that “took place in other countries” (where everybody’s got a southern accent) show us what will happen after the dastardly Reds conquer America in, according to Pirkle’s estimation, 16 minutes flat — you can count on, among other atrocities : Commie soldiers breaking into your home to have their way with your wife; kids being forced to pray to Fidel Castro in the public schools in exchange for candy; Christians being shot in the streets and their bodies being left to rot in the baking sun; sons being forced to kill their own mothers if they won’t renounce Christ; and, perhaps most insidious of all, 12-to-16-hour work days, seven days a week, 363 days a year (funny, but that sounds more like a union-busting capitalist’s wet dream than a Communist one).
Dead kids are a mainstay throughout If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?, and when Ormond and company run out of youngsters volunteered by their parents to lay down, pretend not to be breathing, and get splattered with Red Karo syrup, they often resort to using shop mannequins as stand-ins to pad their “mass slaughter” numbers. One scene where no plastic dummies are used, however, is perhaps the film’s most disturbing : a struggling young boy has his eardrums pierced with a bamboo stick so “he can no longer hear the word of Christ” and pukes all over himself while fake blood gushes out of his ears in rivers. Yeah, I know the red stuff’s not real, but the vomit most certainly is, and if the evangelical blow-hards who made this propaganda had any sense of shame they’d at the very least blush for resorting to on-screen, and very real, child abuse in the furtherance of their “holy” cause.
And that’s where Ormond, Pirkle, and the rest of the Holy Rollers who participated in this thing lose me. On the one hand their film can easily be dismissed as the delusional ramblings of the truly insane, but the scary thing is that this is just a celluloid reflection of what many Americans truly felt at the time (and feel now, with Muslims taking the place of Communists), and they were willing to do real harm to a kid in order to dramatize their dipshit point of view. Without that one scene I could have easily laughed my way through If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?, but that single, solitary instance shows that there was, indeed, genuine evil at work here — and those pesky Reds weren’t the source of it.
Look, let’s not kid ourselves — Communism didn’t work out too well anywhere it was put into practice (although Cuba is far from the dictatorial hell-hole that most right-wingers are still trying to convince us it is), and Stalin and the like were, indeed, responsible for countless atrocities. But it’s not like anti-Communism necessarily has clean hands, either. Just ask the people of Vietnam. Or Nicaragua. Or El Salvador. Or Laos. Or Bolivia. Or — the list goes on and on. And we definitely lose any sort of moral high ground we might claim over our purported “enemies” when we resort to the very same tactics in combating them that we accuse them of utilizing.
If Footmen tire You What Will Horses Do? offers a pretty good example, in microcosm, of exactly what I’m talking about. It’s propagandistic nonsense born out of irrational fear that has no basis in factual reality whatsoever and is willing to make a kid throw up on himself just to add an exclamation point to its absurd claims. It could have been fun, hokey, stupid shit — and most of the time it is — but the sick minds of Ormond and Pirkle took it seriously enough, and were willing to traumatize and harm one of the young souls they were supposedly out to “save” in order to prove just how serious they were.
This flick was largely played on 16mm projectors at churches and revival halls, where it was presented as, of course, God’s honest truth. And while all that may seem hokey today, the audiences who watched it at the time lapped it up. In fact, an entire generation was raised on this horseshit. So next time you hear one of the blowhards on Fox “news” or right-wing talk radio blathering on about the “evils” of Communist, Socialist, Islamic, etc. propaganda, consider how far the “good guys” have been willing to go when it comes to brainwashing their own youth. Here’s a YouTube link to the full movie so you can make up your own mind:
First released in 2002, Drumline attempts to do for the marching band what the Bring It On films did for cheerleading. Nick Cannon plays a cocky teenage drummer who, after graduating from high school in New York, attends Atlanta A&T University, a fictional historically black college in Georgia. Cannon is attending school on a band scholarship but, despite his obvious talent, he finds himself in conflict with both the band director (Orlando Jones) and the leader of the drumline (played by Leonard Roberts). All in all, it’s a very predictable but likable film. Cannon, Jones, and Roberts all give good performances and director Charles Stone keeps things moving at such a fast pace that you don’t have time to think about how familiar it all seems.
As you can probably already guess, Drumline ends with a big band competition where Atlanta A&T faces off against their arch rival, Morris Brown College. This is definitely the best scene in Drumline. It’s at this moment that the film manages to transcend both its predictable plot and the fact that I never cared much about the marching band in either college or high school. (In fact, one of my frenemies in high school was in the marching band and oh my God, the way she went on and on about it…but that’s another story.) I can’t really say whether this is a realistic portrait of a band competition but it’s definitely exciting to watch.
Since I realized I wasn’t going to get any sleep, I decided I might as well watch a random movie via Encore On Demand. That movie turned out to be Class, a dramedy from 1983. (I love dramedies, especially when I’ve got insomnia.) I just finished watching it about 30 minutes ago and what can I say? If there’s any film that deserves to be known as a guilty pleasure, it’s Class.
Class tells the story of two prep school roommates. Skip (Rob Lowe) is rich and spoiled. Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) is poor but brilliant. As the result of getting a perfect score on his SAT, Jonathan has already received a scholarship to Harvard. Their friendship gets off on a rocky start. Skip locks Jonathan outside while Jonathan is wearing black lingerie. Jonathan responds with a fake suicide. (Boys are so weird.) Not surprisingly, Jonathan and Skip become best friends and even share their darkest secrets. Skip admits to killing a man. Jonathan confesses to cheating on his SAT. One of the two friends is lying. Try to guess which one.
When Skip also discovers that Jonathan is a virgin, Skip makes it his mission to help his friend get laid. Skip pays for Jonathan to spend a weekend in Chicago. While there, Jonathan meets an older woman named Ellen (Jacqueline Bisset). Soon, Jonathan and Ellen are having a torrid affair.
Once Christmas break arrives, Skip takes Jonathan home with him. Jonathan meets Skip’s parents. Guess who turns out to be Skip’s mom.
Meanwhile, an officious investigator (Stuart Margolin) has shown up on campus. What is he investigating? SAT fraud, of course.
Class is a weirdly disjointed movie. On the one hand, it attempts to tell a rather melancholic coming-of-age tale, in which a naive young man learns about love from a beautiful but sad older woman. (This part of the film perhaps would have been more effective if there had been a single spark of chemistry between Andrew McCarthy and Jacqueline Bisset.) On the other hand, it also wants to be a heartfelt comedy about two best friends who come from opposite worlds. And then, on the third hand (that’s right — this movie has three hands!), it wants to be a raunchy teen comedy, complete with a stuffy headmaster, misogynistic dialogue, gratuitous nudity, and a lengthy scene where all of the students attempt to get rid of all of their weed and pills because they’ve been incorrectly told that there’s a narc on campus. That’s three different movies being crammed into a 90-minute film. Not surprisingly, the end result is an uneven mishmash of different themes and styles.
And yet, as uneven as the film may be, I still enjoyed it. As I watched, I knew that I should have been far more critical and nitpicky about the film’s many flaws but the movie itself is just so damn likable that I found myself enjoying it despite myself. Ultimately — like many guilty pleasures — Class is a film that is best appreciated as a portrait of the time it was made. Everything from the questionable fashion choices of the characters to the film’s not-so-subtle celebration of wealth and narcissism, serves to remind the viewer that Class was made in the 80s.
Finally, Class should be seen just for its cast. It’s undeniably odd to see an impossibly young and goofy-looking John Cusack making his film debut here as a rather snotty student named Roscoe. While Andrew McCarthy doesn’t have much chemistry with Jacqueline Bisset, he still gives a good performance and is simply adorable with his messy hair and glasses. And finally, who can resist young Rob Lowe, who was just as handsome in Class as he would be 30 years later in Parks and Recreation?
It’s been a while since I shared any of those wonderfully dramatic Sid Davis educational films that were designed to encourage our parents to stay in school, stay healthy, and stay American.
With that in mind, here’s Keep Off The Grass. Initially filmed in 1969, Keep Off The Grass tells the story of what happens when Tom’s parents find out that Tom thinks that marijuana is no big deal. At both the insistence of his father and the local cops, Tom takes a serious look at his stoner friends and discovers that they’re all a bunch of losers. As is typical of a Sid Davis educational film, there’s a disapproving narrator who is quick to make sure we all know that all of Tom’s friends kinda sorta suck.
This weekend, I watched the Lifetime original movie Flowers in the Attic.
Why Was I Watching It?
How could I not watch it? From the minute Lifetime first started to air commercials for it back in November, I knew I was going to watch Flowers in the Attic. What especially captured my attention was the way Flowers in The Attic was referred to as being “the book you weren’t allowed to read.” Even though I hadn’t even heard of the book before I saw the commercials, that tag line hooked me. The forbidden is always so inviting.
Add to that, every time I mentioned Flowers in the Attic on Twitter, Mason Dye (who played Christopher in the film) always favorited my tweet. That was so sweet that there was no way I couldn’t watch the movie.
What Was It About?
The time is the 1950s. The recently widowed Corrine (Heather Graham) returns to her childhood home in Virginia. As Corrine explains to her children, she comes from a rich family but was disowned when she left home. Now, her plan is to make up with her disapproving father and inherit his fortune once he dies. Corrine also claims that the only way for her to win back her father’s love is for her to keep the existence of her children a secret.
Hence, Corrine’s children — teenagers Cathy (Kierna Shipka) and Christopher (Mason Dye) and twins Carrie and Cory — are forced to hide in the attic while Corrine charms her father. The children are watched over by their ultra-religious, abusive grandmother (Ellen Burstyn).
Once in the attic, the children soon realize that Corrine doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to win their freedom. While Cathy and Christopher struggle to come of age without any adult supervision, Grandma occasionally brings up mysterious powdered donuts. Soon, Cathy and Christopher are exploring their desires and the twins are falling ill…
What Worked?
It all worked. This was Lifetime at its absolute best: entertaining, fun, and wonderfully melodramatic. Along with being full of wonderfully gothic Southern atmosphere, Flowers in the Attic featured great performances from Heather Graham, Mason Dye, and Kiernan Shipka. Best of all was veteran actress Ellen Burstyn, who made Grandma into a wonderfully over-the-top monster.
What Did Not Work?
If I have any complaints, it’s that the film’s conclusion felt a bit abrupt. However, a sequel to Flowers is already in production so that ending was actually a perfect set-up for part two of the story.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
Cathy was into ballet, just like me! If I ever found myself locked in an attic for a year and a half, I’d probably use the time to do some pointe work as well.
For the past two months or so, Cocktail, a 1988 film that stars Tom Cruise as a bartender with big dreams, has been on an almost daily cable rotation. A few nights ago, my sister Megan and I sat down and watched the film from beginning to end and we laughed ourselves silly.
Seriously, if there’s ever been a film that deserves to be known as a guilty pleasure, it’s Cocktail.
Cocktail tells the story of Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise), an apparent sociopath who, having just gotten out of the army, is now determined to become a millionaire. During the day, he takes business classes but at night, he and his mentor Doug (Bryan Brown) are dancing bartenders. While customers wait for drinks, Brian and Doug do the hippy hippy shake and toss bottles up in the air. The crowd loves them and Doug educates Brian on how to be a cynical, opportunistic bastard. (Myself, I didn’t think Brian needed any lessons but the film insists that he did.)
When Brian and Doug get into a fight over Gina Gershon, Brian ends up in Jamaica where he eventually meets both Jordan (Elisabeth Shue) and Bonnie (Lisa Banes) and has to choose between love and money. (Guess which one he goes for…) Gee, if only there was a way that Brian could get both love and money…
Why is Cocktail such a guilty pleasure? Just consider the following:
1. Cocktail is an example of one of my favorite guilty pleasure genres. It’s a film that attempts to give an almost religious significance to a profession or activity that, in the grand scheme of things, just isn’t that important. Hence, Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown aren’t just bartenders. No, instead, they are the linchpin that New York nightlight revolves around. If not for the talents of Cruise and Brown, we’re told, thousands of people wouldn’t have a good night. And then who knows what might happen. They might go to a different bar and they might get served by less rhythmic bartenders. Chaos and anarchy might be break out. The living would envy the dead. Fortunately, the super bartenders are there to save the day. (Just consider the film’s tagline: “When he pours, he reigns!” Really?)
2. In the pivotal role of Brian Flanagan, Tom Cruise gives a performance that seems to hint that the character might be a sociopath. Whenever he speaks to anyone, he flashes the same dazzling but ultimately empty smile. Whenever he feels that anyone is failing to treat him with the respect that he deserves, he responds with child-like violence. When he drags Elisabeth Shue out of her apartment, he looks over at Shue’s father and snaps, “It didn’t have to be like this!” It’s a line that makes next to no sense unless you consider that Brian is a pathological narcissist who is incapable of empathy. “It didn’t have to be like this,” Brian is saying, “except you dared to question me so now I’m going to kidnap your daughter…”
3. In the role of Doug, Brian’s mentor, Bryan Brown gives perhaps one of the most openly cynical performances in film history. While everyone else is earnestly reciting the script’s platitudes and trying their best to sound sincere, Brown delivers every line with a hint of resignation and an ironic twinkle in his eye. It’s as if Brown is letting us know that, of the entire cast, he alone knows how bad this film is and he’s inviting us to share in his embarrassment. But Bryan Brown need not worry! The movie may be bad but it’s also a lot of fun.
4. Brian and Doug become New York nightlife sensations by doing an elaborately choreographed dance as they mix their drinks. The other people in the bar absolutely love this, despite the fact that it seems like all the dancing would mean that it would take forever for anyone to actually get a drink.
5. While bartending, Brian also takes a business class that is taught by one of those insanely elitist professors who always seem to show up in movies like this. When he returns student papers, he doesn’t just pass them out. Instead, he literally tosses them at the students while offering up a few pithy words of dismissal. Seriously, this guy has to be the worst teacher ever. No wonder Brian would rather be a bartender than a student!
6. After having a fight with Doug, Brian somehow ends up working as a bartender in Jamaica where he suddenly starts speaking with a very fake Irish accent. The Jamaica scenes serve to remind us that — despite the fact his great-great-great grandfather did come from Dublin — Tom Cruise is one of the least convincing Irishmen in the history of film.
7. In Jamaica, Brian meets and falls in love with Jordan (Elisabeth Shue) but, because he’s a sociopath, Brian cheats on her with Bonnie (Lisa Banes), who is a wealthy TV executive. Bonnie brings Brian back to New York with her but, unfortunately, it turns out that Bonnie and Brian don’t have much in common beyond Bonnie wanting a young lover, Brian being young, Brian wanting a rich woman to take care of him, and Bonnie being rich. What’s particularly interesting about these scenes is that the film doesn’t seem to understand that Brian is essentially coming across like the world’s biggest asshole here. I think we’re meant to feel sorry for him but all we can really think about is how Bonnie could do so much better.
8. Around this time, Bonnie drags Brian to a museum where Brian ends up getting into a physical altercation with a condescending artist. It’s at this point that the audience is justified in wondering if Brian has ever met anyone who didn’t eventually end up taking a swing at.
9. But guess what! It turns out that not only does Jordan live in New York but she’s actually rich as well! And she’s willing to forgive Brian for being a sociopathic jerk. Unfortunately, Jordan’s father objects to his daughter running off with a sociopathic bartender so Brian — as usual — reacts by beating up a doorman and then literally dragging Jordan out of her apartment. One scene later and Brian and Jordan are suddenly married and Brian owns a bar of his own. Where did Brian get the money to open up his own bar? Who knows!? At this point, all that’s important is that the movie is nearly over and, in order for there to be a happy ending, Brian must both be married and a bar owner. That seems to be the film’s message: “Just stay alive for two hours and the film’s script will be obligated to give you a happy ending whether it makes sense or not.”
10. Brian is not only a bartender, he’s a poet! And, amazingly enough, bar patrons are willing to put aside their desire to get a drink so they can listen to their bartender recite poems like this:
” I am the last barman poet / I see America drinking the fabulous cocktails I make / Americans getting stinky on something I stir or shake / The sex on the beach / The schnapps made from peach / The velvet hammer / The Alabama slammer. / I make things with juice and froth / The pink squirrel / The three-toed sloth. / I make drinks so sweet and snazzy / The iced tea / The kamakazi / The orgasm / The death spasm / The Singapore sling / The dingaling. / America you’ve just been devoted to every flavor I got / But if you want to got loaded / Why don’t you just order a shot? / Bar is open.”
Seriously, how can you not enjoy a film like Cocktail? It’s just so totally ludicrous and melodramatic and, best of all, it seems to have absolutely no idea just how over-the-top and silly it really is. Both Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue seem to take their roles so seriously that you seriously have to wonder what film they thought they were making.
After I wrote my review of Horror of Dracula, I started thinking about all of the cinematic bad boys that I have known and loved. There’s just something undeniably exciting about having a good-looking psycho obsessing over you!
That leads us to today’s guilty pleasure. First released in 1996 and a mainstay on cable, Fear is one of the ultimate bad boy psycho films.
Fear tells the story of what happens when 16 year-old Nicole (played by Reese Witherspoon) meets and falls for David (Mark Wahlberg), a polite young man who happens to be crazy.
The first half of the film actually makes a pretty good case for hooking up with a bad boy. David treats Nicole like a princess, encourages her to break curfew, fingerfucks her on a roller coaster in a scene that makes fingerfucking seem as romantic as anything you’ll find in a Nicholas Sparks novel, and finally sneaks into her house so he can take her virginity.
These scenes capture the appeal of a bad boy — the feeling of danger, the thrill of rebellion, and, most poignantly, that feeling that only you can truly understand what a prince you have discovered. Witherspoon and Wahlberg are especially good in these scenes, with Witherspoon perfectly capturing the wide-eyed thrill of being in love while Wahlberg is the epitome of every guy in high school that I should not have dated but did.
There’s one small moment that hints at what is going to come. While talking to Nicole’s dad, Steven (played, with characteristic intensity, by William Petersen), David orders Nicole to get him a drink, causing the overprotective Stephen to glance up with a look of sudden suspicion. It’s a well-acted and subtle scene, one that will feel painfully real to anyone who has ever been in a similar situation.
It’s shortly after that scene that the entire film basically goes crazy.
After David catches Nicole’s best friend giving her an innocent hug, David responds by going crazy and beating him up. Nicole dumps David but then, largely as a response to her father being overprotective, she decides to give him a second chance.
Steven confronts David and orders him to stay away from his daughter. In an oddly hilarious scene, David responded by robotically beating his chest until he’s apparently covered with bruises. It’s a totally over-the-top scene that pretty much lets us know that Fear is no longer interested in being a realistic portrait of a naive girl dating an abusive guy.
Suddenly, we discover that David isn’t just a jerk with anger issues. Instead, he’s some sort of teenage crime lord, who lives in a dilapidated mansion with his equally low-life friends. While Nicole is busy writing Nicole Luvs David on her notebook, David is selling crack and having sex with her best friend Margo (played by, believe it or not, Alyssa Milano).
But that’s not all! When Nicole dumps David for a second time, David responds by tattooing her name on his chest and then gathering together his minions so that they can lay siege to Steven’s mountainside home.
“Don’t worry,” Steven tells his wife (Amy Brenneman), “I’m not going to let anyone get in here.”
And so, in that moment, Fear goes from being every girl’s fantasy of finding her misunderstood prince to being every parent’s fantasy — not only is Steven proven right about his daughter’s boyfriend but he also gets to kick his ass.
Watching Fear is an odd experience. The film starts out being romantic, well-acted, and, at times, even achingly poignant until, suddenly, it turns into one of the most over-the-top home invasion films ever made. It makes for an oddly schizophrenic viewing experience and it also makes this film into a true guilty pleasure.
Today’s horror movie on the Shattered Lens is 2004’s Suburban Sasquatch.
Suburban Sasquatch (and, it must be admitted, that is a great freaking title) tells the story of a sasquatch who invades the suburbs. Well, we assume he’s a sasquatch. To be honest, the creature actually looks like some guy wandering around in a bear suit but no matter. Once the so-called sasquatch reaches the suburbs, he goes on a killing spree and … well, that’s pretty much it.
Okay, so obviously, Suburban Sasquatch isn’t a very good movie. In fact, it’s probably one of the worst movies ever made. The monster looks ridiculous, the acting is terrible, and the special effects … well, it’s debatable whether or not there are any special effects. However, Suburban Sasquatch is one of those movies — much like Manos, the Hands of Fate — that is watchable precisely because it is so unbelievably bad.
Also, Joel McHale once said that Suburban Sasquatch was his favorite movie of all time.
Through the Shattered Lens 