1986’s Nomads opens with anthropologist Jean-Charles Pommier being rushed into an emergency room, badly beaten and struggling for his life. Despite the best efforts of Dr. Eileen Flax (Lesley-Anne Down), Pommier dies in the ER. Flax is shocked by Pommier’s death and, naturally, she’s upset that she couldn’t save him. But, at the same time, people die in hospitals. It happens to the best of doctors.
Except soon, Flax is seeing flashes of the events that led to Pommier’s death. Pommier has somehow entered her mind and soon, she’s reliving his investigation into the origins of a group of destructive, urban nomads that Pommier witnessed causing havoc throughout Los Angeles. Pommier often felt like he was the only person who was capable of seeing the nomads and he grew to be tortured by his fear that they were specifically stalking him. We soon learn that there was reason for that….
Now, based on his name, you’re probably assuming that Pommier is meant to be French. And he is! He’s from France, though he considers himself to be a citizen of the world. He’s traveled everywhere, taking pictures of different cultural rituals across the globe. However, in Nomads, the very French Jean-Charles Pommier is played by Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan is, needless to say, not French. He’s Irish, even though a lot of people seem to be shocked when they first learn that. Brosnan normally speaks with an accent that could best be described as a mix of posh London and mid-Atlantic American. Everything about him screams the UK. In short, Pierce Brosnan is one of the least convincing French people ever seen on film and he delivers his lines in an accent that sounds like every accent other than the French accent. Watching this film, I found myself thinking about the Monty Python skit where Terry Jones and Carol Cleveland starred in a French movie. (“I see you have a cabbage.” “Oui.”) Brosnan is not a bad actor and it’s entertaining to watch him overact in Nomads. But there’s nothing French about him and every time that someone referred to him as being French, it totally took me out of the movie.
Which is a shame because Nomads may be narratively incoherent but it’s got some memorably surreal visuals and it does a good job of generating a properly ominous atmosphere. Director John McTiernan (who later went on to do Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt For Red October) makes smart use of slow motion and a handheld camera to keep the audience off-balance. At its best, Nomads achieves a dream-like intensity that makes up for the fact that the story doesn’t make the least bit of sense. The nomads themselves are a memorable and creepy. While Adam Ant plays their leader (and the scene where he smiles as Brosnan attempts to throw him off a building is truly disturbing), the most frightening of the nomads is Mary Woronov as Dancing Mary. Seriously, after I watched this film, I checked all the locks in the house. No urban nomads were going to interrupt me in my sleep!
My suggestion to everyone is to do a Nomads/Nomadlanddouble feature. You’ll never get in another van.
“What is it exactly that you want?” a preacher (Frank Maxwell) asks a congregation of leather-clad bikers.
“We want to get loaded!” Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) replies, “And we want to have a good time!”
And have a good time, they proceed to have. Of course, it’s a good time for them. Everyone else who meets the bikers at the center of 1966’s The Wild Angels are horrified by this collection of rebellious and violent outsiders. Sure, Heavenly Blues might actually be a soulful guy who mistakenly believes that he can control the gang’s more excessive tendencies. His girlfriend, Mike (Nancy Sinatra), actually seems rather reserved and conservative when compared to the rest of the gang. But make no mistake about it, the majority of the members of the gang are into violence for its own sake. They are bullies who couldn’t make the football team so, instead, they hopped on a motorcycle and formed their own society. They’re self-styled rebels but what are they rebelling against? What have you got?
I know, I know. That famous line comes from Marlon Brando and it was uttered in The Wild One. Peter Fonda, to put it lightly, was no Marlon Brando and, as directed by Roger Corman, The Wild Angels doesn’t have the societal concerns that lay at the hear of The Wild One. As Corman was often the first to admit, his main concern when it came to making movies was to make money. Corman wasn’t necessarily against message films. He often stated that, as a director, 1962’s The Intruderwas the film in which he took the most pride. The Intruder took a firm stand against racism and it let everyone know where Corman stood on when it came to the Civil Rights Movement. It was also one of his few films to lose money. The Wild Angels celebrates rebellion but one gets the feeling that celebration is motivated by the fact that younger filmgoers would be happy to pay to see a movie about a bunch of “youngish” people telling the old folks to shut up and get out of the way. The Wild Angels themselves don’t seem to be motivated by any sort of grand ideology. Heavenly Blues preaches about getting loaded and having a good time and celebrating freedom but he also allows the members of the gang to drape a Nazi flag over a casket. What does Heavenly Blues actually believe in?
Heavenly Blues believes in loyalty to his friends. For all the fights and the orgies and the scenes of motorcycles roaring down country roads, this is ultimately just a film about a guy who wants to give his best friend a decent burial. The Loser (Bruce Dern) dies about halfway through the film and one gets the feeling that he probably would have lived if the gang hadn’t kidnapped him from the hospital. Heavenly Blues wants to give The Loser the type of wild funeral that Blues thinks he would have wanted though I think The Loser probably would have been happier not have been killed by the actions of his idiot friends. Diane Ladd, who was married to Bruce Dern at the time and who has said Laura Dern was conceived during the filming of The Wild Angels, is heart-breaking as The Loser’s girlfriend, Gaysh. Gaysh wants to mourn her boyfriend while the rest of the gang is more concerned with figuring out who her next boyfriend is going to be.
Does Heavenly Blues ever realize that he’s traveling with a bunch of animals? He does but one gets the feeling that he’s accepted his fate. There’s no going back. The past can’t change and the future cannot be controlled so Heavenly Blues is content to live in the present. All he can do is try to give his friend a decent burial while the sirens of cops shriek in the distance.
The Wild Angels was a controversial film when it was first released. It also made a lot of money and led to a whole cycle of outlaw biker films, culminating with Easy Rider. Seen today, it’s a portrait of a society coming apart, with the establishment and the bikers not even willing to stop fighting long enough to allow for a simple burial. It’s definitely a time capsule film, one of those productions that epitomizes an era. There’s not much going on underneath the surface and most of the film’s bikers really are awful people but there is something touching about Blues giving it all up just to try to give his friend a decent burial.
Though Corman worked in almost every type of film genre imaginable, he’s probably best remembered for his science fiction and horror films. This was one of the first of them.
2. Bucket of Blood (1959)
In Bucket of Blood, Roger Corman gave Dick Miller a starring role and also mixed comedy and horror in a way that influence many future horror directors.
3. Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Roger Corman famously shot Little Shop of Horrors in just two days. The end result was a mix of comedy and horror that continues to be influential to this day. The musical is very good but I still prefer the cheerful low-budget aesthetic of the Corman original.
4. The Terror (1963)
Corman was famous for his ability to spot new talent. His 1963 film The Terror starred a then unknown actor named Jack Nicholson.
5. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
In the 60s, Corman was also well-known for his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, the majority of which starred Vincent Price. With these colorful and flamboyant films, Corman showed himself to be a pop artist at heart.
6. Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
In the 1970s, Corman retired from directing and instead focused on producing and distributing movies. In 1990, he briefly came out of retirement and gave us his final directorial effort, Frankenstein Unbound.
In 1978’s Death Drug, Philip Michael Thomas plays Jesse Thomas.
Jesse is a plumber with a dream. He wants to be a songwriter, a musician, and most of all, a star. His girlfriend and eventual wife, Carolyn (Vernee Watson-Johnson), stands by him as he sends his music off to record companies and waits for word. When he’s finally given a recording contract, no one is happier for him than Carolyn. Certainly, Jesse’s own father doesn’t seem to care much about his son’s success. “I have no son,” he says, even after Jesse wins a Grammy.
(To be fair, they’ll give just about anyone a Grammy.)
Unfortunately, with success comes temptation. While celebrating at a local club, Jesse is approached by a drug dealer (Frankie Crocker) who gives Jesse a cigarette that is laced with Whack. Whack, as those of us who have seen Disco Godfather can tell you, is PCP. Remember Disco Godfather‘s cry of “We’ve got to attack the whack?” Well, Jesse allows himself to become a victim of whack attack. It starts out simply enough, with a moving painting. Then, before you know it, Jesse’s hairbrush is turning into a hungry alligator and Jesse starts to become convinced that everyone is plotting against him. Even a trip to the grocery store goes wrong as Jesse spots spiders in the produce and zombies in the aisles! Jesse freaks out. He runs outside. He…. well, no spoilers for me. But let’s remember the words of Rudy Ray Moore in Disco Godfather. Put your weight on it! Yes, indeed. Put your weight on it, Jesse.
This is one of those anti-drug films that was probably best enjoyed by people who viewed it while high. It’s a rather short film, which means that Jesse goes from being a hard-working plumber-turned-musician to a ranting and raving maniac in record time. Philip Michael Thomas throws himself into the role, especially the ranting and raving part. I’ve been binging Miami Vice so seeing the usually collected and cool Thomas screaming in terror at things that aren’t there was an interesting experience. Because the film was so short, there’s some filler that’s awkwardly tacked on, presumably to bring the movie up to feature length. We get a news report about a man who went crazy from PCP-usage and had to be taken down by the cops. We get a report about Jesse Thomas’s musical career that features a much-older looking Philip Michael Thomas performing a song that’s more from the 80s than the 70s. (That was inserted into the film when it was re-released in 1985, at the height of Thomas’s Miami Vice success.) There’s a lengthy news report at the end that, hilariously, has a moment where the reporter apologizes for “technical difficulties” that were probably included just to get the movie past the 70-minute mark.
As I mentioned, this film was re-released in 1985. Philip Michael Thomas filmed a special introduction for the film, in which he played pool in his Hollywood mansion and told the viewer that, out of all the roles he had played (“cops, kings….”), none of them meant as much to him as his performance as Jesse Thomas. Philip Michael Thomas is the epitome of 80s cool in that introduction and in a short scene that appears after the end credits. Don’t worry, folks, the film is telling us. Jesse Thomas may have fallen victim to the whack but Philip is still over here putting some weight on it.
In the end, it’s all fairly silly but it does make a nice companion piece to Don Johnson’s Heartbeat. If you’re a success, you really owe it to yourself to have a vanity project. It’s what the people want.
1998’s Soldier starts off with a brilliant seven-minute sequence. We watch as, over the course of 17 years, a child named Todd is raised and trained to be the ultimate soldier. From a young age, he’s learning how to fight. He’s learning discipline. He’s learning to follow orders without question. We follow him as he goes on to fight in conflict after conflict. The name of each conflict in which he fights is tattooed on his muscular arms. Finally, a title card appears that informs us that Todd (now played by Kurt Russell) is “Between wars.”
Captain Church (Gary Busey) insists that Todd and his fellow soldiers are the greatest fighting force in the galaxy. The autocratic Colonel Merkum (Jason Isaacs) disagrees, claiming that his genetically-engineered soldiers are superior and that Todd is now obsolete. After a savage training exercise that leaves Todd unconscious, Merkum orders that Todd be dumped on an abandoned planet.
Of course, it turns out that the planet in question is not actually abandoned. Instead, it’s home to a group of colonists who crash-landed on the planet years ago and who now live a life that is devoid of conflict. When Todd approaches the colony, he is cautiously welcomed. Todd, who rarely speaks, is extremely strong and quick and that pays off when he’s able to save Jimmy (Michael Chiklis) from being pulled into a thrasher. However, Todd is also haunted by PTSD and he’s been bred to fight and that leaves the other colonists cautious about him. Despite the efforts of Mace (Sean Pertwee) and his wife Sandra (Connie Nielsen), the other colonists vote to exile Todd from their colony.
Meanwhile, Merkum and his “superior” soldiers are heading towards the planet, eager to execute the colonists as a part of a training exercise. Todd will have to use all of his training to defeat Merkum’s super soldier, Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee), and help the colonists reach their final destination.
One of the more interesting things about Soldier is that it apparently takes place in the same cinematic universe as Blade Runner. The wreckage of one of Blade Runner‘s flying cars is spotted on the planet and Todd is shown to have fought in some of the same battle that Roy Batty claimed to have witnessed in Ridley Scott’s classic film. For that matter, Ridley Scott himself has said that Blade Runner also takes place in the same cinematic universe as Alien and some people insist that Predator is a part of the universe as well. That’s a rich heritage for Soldier, which is essentially a dumb but entertaining B-movie.
I liked Soldier, almost despite myself. It’s a silly film and there are certain scenes, mostly dealing with day-to-day life in colony, that feel a bit draggy. But I enjoyed Kurt Russell’s performance as the ultimate super soldier. Russell has very little dialogue in the film and his character is bit stunted emotionally but it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, Russell’s natural charisma carries the day and his fight with Caine 607 is genuinely exciting. As usual, Jason Isaacs makes for a wonderfully hissable villain and even Gary Busey gives what is, for him, a rather restrained and ultimately credible performance. As is so often the case with the work of director Paul W.S. Anderson, the film is a cartoon but it’s an entertaining cartoon.
Yes, the 1976 film Dixie Dynamite is supposedly set in Georgia but it’s hard not to notice that all of the hills and mountains in the background look like they’re from California. The story features two sisters, Dixie (Jane Anne Johnston) and Patsy (Kathy McHaley), who go into the moonshine business after their father drives his car off a cliff. Their father was the best moonshiner in the business and they aim to carry on his legacy, despite the efforts of Sheriff Marsh (Christopher George) and banker Charlie White (R.G. Armstrong). Blowing up their stills and threatening to auction off their land isn’t going to stop these two from doing whatever it is exactly that they’re doing in this film. Eventually, the sisters steal a bunch of dynamite and start blowing stuff up. Normally, I’d say “Woo hoo!” but this film even makes random explosions seem as boring as the 4th of July in Canada.
Warren Oates plays Mack, a motocross champion who occasionally helps the daughter’s out. At least, I think he’s helping them. To be honest, it’s not always easy to tell what Mack’s purpose actually is in this story. He tends to show up randomly, usually after all the action has ended. He’s kind of a useless friend, to be honest. Warren Oates brings his rough-hewn charm to the roll and you’re usually glad to see him, if just because the actresses playing the sisters are genuinely lousy, but you’re never quite sure what he’s doing there. Watching the film, one gets the feeling that Oates just dropped by the set whenever he felt like it and filmed a scene or two.
It’s really not that crazy of a possibility. Actor Steve McQueen makes a cameo appearance in this film, riding a motorcycle and challenging Oates. McQueen didn’t make many films in the 70s. Let’s consider some of the films that he turned down: The Great Gatsby, Jaws, Apocalypse Now, The Driver, The French Connection, Sorcerer, and Hard Times. None of those films appealed to McQueen but he was still willing to show up for a day’s worth of shooting on Dixie Dynamite. Of course, McQueen does go uncredited.
This is an odd film, full of slow spots that not even actors like Warren Oates, Christopher George, and R.G. Armstrong can make up for. Director Lee Frost was best-known for his softcore exploitation films and Dixie Dynamite is full of odd transitions and jump cuts, leading me to suspect that the film was originally meant to be a lot more like a typical Frost film before it was decided to go in a PG-direction as well.
Perhaps the oddest part of the film is that the daughter’s final scheme to get revenge on the sheriff and the banker involves stealing two dead bodies from the local morgue. The bodies are made up and dressed to look like Dixie and Patsy so that the sisters can fake their own death. I can understand that and even give them credit for hatching a clever plan. But I still find it weird that the film never really explains how the bodies were stolen or why they were in the morgue in the first place. What are the chances that Patsy and Dixie would head down to the morgue and find two look-alikes?
The film features dynamite, Warren Oates, and corpse-stealing but it’s still incredibly dull. That’s just weird.
I was a bit shocked to discover that I’ve neve actually sat down and written up a real review of 1979’s Mad Max for this site. Considering how much I like this film and all the scenes and shots that I’ve share from Mad Max, you would think that I would have at least written about why I like this violent but intriguing film so much. Today is George Miller’s birthday so let’s talk about the film that launched his career.
Mad Max is often described as being a post-apocalypse film but that’s not quite true. It does take place in a “near future,” one in which there seems to be noticeably less people around. The roads of Australia are dominated by crazed punks who have taken their obsession with their cars and motorcycles to the extreme. (Director George Miller trained as a doctor and has said that this film was partially inspired by the auto crash victims who were brought into the emergency room on a nightly basis.) Civilization is on the verge of collapsing but it is still hanging on by a thread. For every Night Rider (Vincent Gil), ranting as he crashes into people, and for every psycho gang leader like Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), there are people just trying to survive day-to-day. The nightly news is still televised though the news is always so bad that no one seems to pay it much mind anymore. There are still cops, like Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) and Goose Rains (Steve Bisley), who patrol the roads in their cars and who do whatever is necessary to chase down the people who appear to be destined to inherit a world that they very much want to destroy. Society still exists but it’s obviously on its last legs and the attempts to maintain some sort of normalcy — laws, news, vacation homes, sexy saxophone playing — can’t hide the fact that the world is coming to a violent end. Max tries to deny that reality until, finally, he has no choice but to accept both the new world and his place in it.
Whenever I watch Mad Max, I’m always surprised by the fact that Mel Gibson almost seems like a supporting character for the majority of the movie. When the movie starts, Max is tightly wound and in control and he doesn’t show much emotion while he’s on the job. The flamboyant and always joking Goose seems like a much more likable protagonist. He’s the guy that the viewer wants to spend time with and, when he ends up getting burned nearly to death by Toecutter and Toecutter’s protegee, Johnny the Boy (Tim Burns, cast as one of the most loathsome characters ever to appear in a film), it’s a shocking moment. Goose had so much life to him. The attention then shifts to Max’s wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel). When she finds herself being menaced by Toecutter and his gang, it’s alarming because she’s both a mother and she’s eventually isolated from both her family and from Max. We don’t want to see anything bad happen to Jessie. When something bad does happen, we’re more than ready for Max to step up and get some vengeance. And that’s exactly what Max does. One of the film’s most iconic images features Max not even flinching at the sound of an explosion in the distance. He’s gotten his vengeance but at the price of his soul. And, even as the film comes to an end, it’s obvious that nothing can be done to stop society’s collapse. Max has accepted what neither Goose nor Jessie could. There is no safety or society in the new world. There is only the road and the battle to control the remains of the world.
What makes Mad Max such a thrilling film? A lot of it has to do with the stuntwork, which remains truly spectacular to this day. Made in the era before CGI, Mad Max features real cars that are being driven by real people who put themselves into real danger to capture some of the most stunning crashes captured on film. As well, the cast truly brings their characters to life. Tim Burns makes Johnny the Boy into a truly hateful character, one who manages to somehow be both whiny and dangerous at the same time. Joanne Samuel and Steve Bisley are sympathetic as Jessie and Goose. And then you’ve got Mel Gibson, young and on the verge of the superstardom that people now tend to pretend never happened, showing the intensity that would become his trademark as the increasingly unhinged Max. (I love Tom Hardy but, as good as he was in Mad Max: Fury Road, he never came close to capturing the soul-shattering intensity of Gibson’s thousand-yard stare,)
That said, I think the main reason why Mad Max continues to resonate is because it all feels so plausible. One looks at the world of Mad Max and it’s very easy to imagine finding yourself there. Unlike other apocalypse films that often seem to be taking place in an entirely different universe, Mad Max feels like it could be playing out just a few miles away from the closet motorway. For all of the spectacular stunts and flamboyant characters, Mad Max is a film that continues to feel very real. For that, George Miller deserves a lot of credit. Mad Max is a true classic of grindhouse filmmaking, featuring a story that feels more powerful with each passing year.
First released in 1989, Casablanca Express takes place during World War II.
The three leaders of the Allied nations — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill — are scheduled to meet in Casablanca to plan the Allied strategy for the next phase of the war. Churchill insists that he will take a train from Algiers to Casablanca, despite the danger that might put him in. Even though everyone advises him against it, Churchill is determined. He makes it clear that he will be traveling by train.
When Major Valmore (Jean Sorel), Colonel Bats (Donald Pleasence), and Maj. Gen. Williams (Glenn Ford) learn that the Germans are aware that Churchill will be on the train and that they will be sending their own intelligence agents to try to kidnap or even assassinate him, they assign three intelligence agents to travel with Churchill. The agents are Alan Cooper (Jason Connery), Captain Franchetti (Francesco Quinn), and Lt. Lorna Fisher (Jinny Steffan) and they are under orders to do whatever is necessary to protect Churchill’s life. Unfortunately, Cooper gets so busy chasing after a French double agent that he misses the train’s departure time. When Otto van Tiblis (Manfred Lehmann) makes his move to take over the train, it falls to Franchetti and Lorna to stop him. Despite their best efforts, they fail. Now, it appears that Churchill’s only hope is that Cooper will not only be able to reach the train but also defeat the army of Germans who have taken it over.
Directed by Sergio Martino, Casablanca Express is an Italian film that owes quite a bit to the legacy of writers like Ian Fleming and Jack Higgins. The plot to capture Churchill owes more than a bit to The Eagles Has Landed, right down to one of the film’s final twists and Donald Pleasence making a cameo appearance as an authority figure. Alan Cooper is a combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones. He’s just as comfortable in a suit and tie as he is riding a camel across the desert. Sergio Martino was one of the best directors of Italian genre films. He dabbled in everything, from giallo films to Hercules films to crime films to cannibal films to action films like this one. As a filmmaker, he was efficient and quick to get to the point. The action in Casablanca Express moves quickly. In fact, it moves so quickly that the audience often doesn’t have time to consider all of the plot holes. Martino knows better than to worry about authenticity. That’s not the type of film that Casablanca Express is.
The film stars Jason Connery and Francesco Quinn, the sons of Sean Connery and Anthony Quinn. They are both adequate in their roles, even though neither one of them has quite the screen presence of their famous fathers. Jason Connery is handsome and he looks good in a suit and Francesco Quinn looks good throwing a punch. That’s all that’s really required of them. Personally, my favorite character was Lorna Fisher, who fought the Nazis by distracting them with her legs. That would be my strategy as well so I’m glad to see that it worked here.
CasablancaExpress was made at a time when the Italian film industry was going through a down period. Hence, the budget is low and the film can sometimes seem a bit rushed. But, all in all, it’s an entertaining B-action movie.
In the early 70s, Sal Watts, the owner a popular chain of Oakland clothing stores, took a look at the “blaxploitation” films coming out of Hollywood and thought to himself, “I can do better.”
For two years, Watts worked on his film. Originally titled Black Agent Lucky King, the film took place in Oakland and an unnamed Middle Eastern country. When the evil Prince Hassan (Richard Scarro) overthrows the king and takes over the country’s oil fields, Manny King (played by “Little Jamie” Watts) is among the Americans who escape from the country. Accompanying him is Princess Oneeba (Claudia Russo), who I guess is supposed to be Hassan’s sister, though it’s never really made clear in the film.
Who is Solomon King? He’s a businessman. He’s a social activist. He’s a former Green Beret and a semi-retried agent of the CIA. All the women love him. All the men envy him. He’s the coolest guy in Oakland and everyone assumes that he’s the perfect person to keep Oneeba safe. Solomon and Oneeba fall in love. They talk walks along the beach. Oneeba is amazed that you can hear the ocean when you hold a shell up to your ear. The entire time, a man with a high-powered rifle is following Oneeba. Finally, when Oneeba steps out onto the balcony of Solomon’s penthouse, the sniper take his shot. Oneeba falls in slow motion. Solomon holds her as she dies and then, he tries to cry. In this scene, we’re reminded that crying on cue is not as easy as it looks and that Sal Watts was definitely not a trained actor.
Solomon is out for revenge. He wants to take down Prince Hassan and return the king to his throne. He also wants to get back the oil wells that Hassan stole from him and his family. (The film makes it sound like everyone owns an oil well.) The CIA suggests that Solomon should get some of his Green Beret pals together and overthrow Prince Hasan. Sure, why not? I mean, look how well that thinking worked when the CIA and the Mafia tried to invade Cuba!
Eventually, Solomon puts together an army and invades the unnamed Middle Eastern country. Even though the country is supposed to be in the Middle East, it’s hard not to notice that it looks a lot like Oakland. Solomon gets his revenge but nothing can bring Oneeba back to life….
Solomon King was long-considered to be a lost film. A few years ago, a damaged print was discovered and the film was partially resorted. (The original film reportedly ran close to two hours. The restoration clocks in at 85 minutes.) Solomon King is definitely a work of outsider art. What Sal Watts lacked in experience and ability, he tried to make up for with determination. There are a few genuinely well-done shots of Solomon driving his car. (As befits the coolest guy in Oakland, he’s even got a phone in his car!) The soundtrack features an appealing mix of jazz and funk. And there are a few politically-charged lines of dialogue that suggest that Sal Watts had more on his mind than just making another action film. That said, Solomon King is also, even in its shortened version, a rather slow-paced and difficult-to-follow film. The acting is terrible and the fight scenes are haphazardly edited in a way that’s meant to keep you from noticing that no one in the film is actually hitting anyone but which actually has the opposite effect. My favorite moment was when there was a close-up of Solomon kicking out his leg and then an abrupt jump cut of someone falling backwards, trying to look as if they had been kicked. It was so unconvincing that it was actually kind of charming.
Solomon King is proof that anyone can make a film but making a good one is significantly more difficult.
Caligula is a film with a long and storied history. In the mid-1970s, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione wanted to follow the lead of his rival, Hugh Hefner, and get into the movie business. His plan was to make an explicit adult film with high production values, one that could be sold as a mainstream feature film. He decided that the infamously decadent Roman Emperor Caligula would be the subject of his film. In order to give the project some gravitas, he accepted scripts from both Lina Wertmuller and Gore Vidal. Ultimately, he chose to go with Vidal’s script because Vidal’s name had more cultural cachet than Wertmuller’s. It certainly wasn’t because he liked Vidal’s script, which Vidal later said featured a lot of gay sex but only one scene of heterosexual coupling.
With the promise that Caligula would be a classy production that would push the boundaries of cinematic sex without actually being pornographic, Guccione was able to bring together a truly impressive cast of actors. Malcolm McDowell agreed to play Caligula. Helen Mirren was cast as Caligula’s wife, Caesonia. John Gielgud took on the role of Nerva the philosopher while Peter O’Toole was cast as the diseased Emperor Tiberius. Guccione offered directing duties to John Huston and Lina Wertmuller. In the end, no matter how much money he was willing to spend or how distinguished a cast he had assembled, Guccione could not find a prominent, mainstream director who was willing to work with him. Guccione ended up hiring a director he knew little about, an Italian arthouse filmmaker named Tinto Brass.
Brass proceeded to rewrite Vidal’s script. Brass’s version of the film featured more sex and less politics. Guccione was happy about that until he discovered that Brass’s plan was to direct the sex scenes to be grotesque and disturbing. To his horror, Guccione discovered that Brass was essentially parodying the type of film that Guccione wanted him to direct. Even when Guccione insisted that the latest “Penthouse pets” be cast in the film, Brass tried to keep them in the background. As Guccione’s demands grew, Brass responded by refusing to emphasize the ornate and very expensive sets that Guccione had paid to have created. A working ship was built but Brass reportedly chose to put it in a small warehouse so that there would never be room to get a full shot of it. Guccione responded by taking the film away in post-production and inserting several hardcore sex scenes, which upset the members of the cast who did not sign on to appear in a pornographic film.
As for the film itself, it must be said that Caligula is probably one of the most historically accurate portrayals of ancient Rome. The city was said to be a mix of dirty streets and ornate palaces and Caligula certainly captured the mix of beauty and sordid decadence that was the Roman Empire. The film’s plot actually sticks very closely to what was written about Caligula by Roman historians like Suetonius. Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell both give strong performances, even if McDowell later claimed the film ruined his career by typecasting him as a perverse villain. Peter O’Toole is memorably grotesque as Tiberius. Exploitation vets John Steiner and Teresa Ann Savoy also make an impression in their roles and one gets the feeling that they both understood what type of film they were appearing in, even if the bigger names in the cast did not. There are moments of shocking grandeur and visual beauty to be found in Caligula and also moments of such total ugliness that they are difficult to watch. In many ways, Caligula is what Guccione wanted. It’s a big, expensive film that tests boundaries and features explicit sex.
But, Good God, is it ever boring! Seriously, the scene where Caligula visits Tiberius in Capri goes on forever. Despite McDowell’s strong performance, Caligula is not a particularly compelling character. He becomes emperor and then he goes mad. For over two hours, Caligula does one terrible thing after another and there’s only so long that you can watch it before you just want someone to hurry up and kill him. The film suggests that Caligula was rebelling against the Roman establishment but, in the end, who cares? He kills his friends. He has sex with his sister. In the film’s most disturbing scene, he rapes a bride and then fists the groom. It just goes on and on and it gets old pretty quickly.
Still, there’s always been a lot of debate over whether or not it would be possible to make Caligula into a good film. Bob Guccione claimed that he saved the film. Tinto Brass disagreed and his director’s cut, which takes out Guccione’s hardcore inserts, is considerably better-paced than the Guccione version but the nonstop ugliness still gets rather boring.
That brings us to the latest version of Caligula, the Ultimate Cut. Assembled without the input of Tinto Brass or the deceased Bob Guccione, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut played at Cannes in 2023 and was given a limited release by Drafthouse Films in 2024. It was largely assembled out of unused footage and alternate takes. I’ve read that not a single fame from the original version of Caligula is in The Ultimate Cut but I don’t think that’s quite true. (The scene with the giant beheading machine appears to be the same footage that appeared in the original version.) Caligula: The Ultimate Cut removes all of Guccione’s hardcore footage but it also downplays a lot of Brass’s directorial flourishes as well. Instead, The Ultimate Cut is said to much more closely follow Gore Vidal’s vision of the film.
Is the Ultimate Cut any good? It definitely looks better than the previous version of Caligula. The restoration makes Rome into a very colorful city. There’s a bit more humor to McDowell’s performance in the Ultimate Cut. While his version of Caligula still becomes a monster (and the wedding rape is still included in the film), he starts out as a clown whose mission is to humiliate the Roman establishment in much the same way that Tiberius used to humiliate him. In The Ultimate Cut, Caligula is much more of an anarchist. At the same time, the Ultimate Cut features a bit less of John Steiner as the duplicitous Longinus and that’s a shame because Steiner’s performance was one of the best in the original version. As well, Helen Mirren’s performance is stronger in the original version than in The Ultimate Cut. The alternate takes that were used in The Ultimate Cut often seem to favor McDowell over Mirren.
That said, The Ultimate Cut is still a bit of an endurance test. Caligula’s meeting with Tiberius still goes on forever and the nonstop evil of his reign still gets a bit dull after a while. It turns out that Caligula the Anarchist is no more compelling than Caligula the Madman. Brass and even Guccione may have had a point with the original version of Caligula. Caligula is a film that requires a truly sordid and shameless sensibility to be interesting.
In the end, it’s hard not to feel that all of this could have been avoided if Gemellus had been named emperor.
