Film Review: American Wisper (dir by Russ Emanuel)

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Josiah Wisper (Christian Barber) is a young and successful businessman. He owns a few bars in Harlem. He owns a few New York apartment building and, to his tenants, he’s a familiar site, walking up and down the hallways and making sure that everyone has paid their rent. He and his family have a nice, big house in New Jersey where, not insignificantly, they’re the only black family living in the neighborhood. Josiah is brash and confident and so sure of his future that he’s even hired a videographer to record every aspect of his life. Everywhere he goes, she follows and films.

She films him when he’s at his bar, kicking out a drug dealer. She films him while he’s collecting rent. She films when he’s talking to his parents. She films him when he’s flirting with his mistress. She even films him the night that he returns to New Jersey and discovers that his entire family has been shot to death. She continues to film as Wisper is interrogated by the police, shunned by his neighbors, and finally forced to investigate the murder on his own.

Usually, found footage films get on my last nerve and I have to admit that I was a little bit concerned when American Wisper began with Wisper talking to the camera. However, American Wisper actually makes fairly good use of the gimmick. There’s no shortage of people in the film who are willing to point out how strange it is that Wisper is allowing all of this to be filmed. In fact, once people start to suspect that Wisper committed the murder, many of them specifically claim that his obsession with being filmed proves that there’s something off about him. It’s held up as evidence that Wisper is a narcissist who only cares about himself. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t necessarily dismiss that possibility. As played by Christian Barber, Wisper does come across as a man who is happy to be living in a movie. When we first see him, he’s presiding over his bar and you can tell that he’s a man who loves being the center of attention. Even after the murders, Wisper still often seems to be playing up to the camera, leaving you wondering if maybe it’s possible that there is something that he’s not being honest about. It creates a genuine feel of suspense, which is more than can be said for most found footage films.

I liked American Wisper. It’s a low-budget film, made for under $500,000, but it makes good use of that low budget. When Wisper drives through New York or into New Jersey, he’s not visiting an elaborate Hollywood sound stage. Instead, he’s actually walking down those streets and driving down those roads and it brings an authenticity to the film that it might have lacked with a bigger budget or a more elaborate production. Some of the actors are a bit more convincing than others but Christian Barber does an excellent job in the lead role, making Wisper into a character with whom you sympathize despite his flaws. American Wisper is a murder mystery that’s about more than just a crime. It’s also an examination of race, upward mobility, and fame in America.

American Wisper can currently be viewed on Prime.

Ian Holm, R.I.P.

Posted on June 20, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The British actor Ian Holm passed away yesterday.

When the news was announced, almost every story mentioned that he played Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and it is true that he was a great Bilbo. Even though he didn’t go on the quest, he brought a lot of heart to the film and the character. Though his screen time may have been brief, he made you understand why Frodo and all the other Hobbits would feel such loyalty to him. He was the ideal Hobbit. He final scene in Return of the King brought tears to my eyes. How could you not love him?

Holm, however, was in a lot of other films. He was one of those extremely memorable character actors who, sadly, I think was sometimes taken for granted. He was also one of those actors who seemed so distinguished (at least to American audiences, who tend to have a rather stereotypical view of anyone who first found fame as a Shakespearean actor) that it’s easy to overlook that he could also very funny. Watch him in The Fifth Element. Watch him in Brazil and Time Bandits. It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Ian Holm in those roles.

The other Holm role that many people mentioned when they heard of his passing was his role as the evil android Ash in Alien. Indeed, he was perfectly menacing in Alien. If you believe Ridley Scott, Alien and Blade Runner take place in the same universe, which means that Ian Holm was the first actor to play a Replicant. He did a great job of it.

I want to end this tribute with a picture of Ian Holm and Sigourney Weaver on the set of Alien. I like this picture because they both look like they’re having a lot of fun. Even in his humorous roles, Holm tended to play characters who were, if not outright neurotic, definitely very serious-minded. And Alien is a remarkably grim movie. So, it’s kind of nice to see both Ripley and Ash smiling between takes.

Rest in Peace, Ian Holm.

A Scene That I Love: Daria Nicolodi and David Hemmings in Deep Red

Posted on June 19, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Deep Red (1975, dir by Dario Argento)

Today is Daria Nicolodi’s birthday so what better time than now to share a scene that I love from Dario Argento’s 1975 masterpiece, Deep Red?

Now, this might seem like a strange scene to love but you have to understand it in context of the overall film. (And yes, the scene is in Italian but surely you can figure out that it’s a scene of two people flirting.) Deep Red is often thought as being merely a superior giallo film but it’s also, in its way, a rather sweet love story. David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi may investigate a murder but they also fall in love and the two of them have a very sweet chemistry, which is fully displayed in this scene and which elevates the entire film. Deep Red is a giallo where you care about the characters as much as you care about the murders.

While making this film, Daria Nicolodi and Dario Argento also fell in love and they went on to have a rather tumultuous relationship. Personally, I think that Argento’s most recent films are underrated but it’s still hard to deny that the ones that he made with Nicolodi have a heart to them that is missing from some of his later work.

So, in honor of Daria Nicolodi and her important role in the history of Italian horror, here she is with David Hemmings in Deep Red!

An Offer You Can’t Refuse #14: Contraband (dir by Lucio Fulci)

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1980 film, Contraband, tells a story of the Neapolitan underworld.

Luca Ajello (Fabio Testi) and his older brother, Mickey, have a pretty nice operation going. They pilot boats up and down the coast of Italy, smuggling cigarettes and booze into Naples. It’s given both of them a pretty good life. They own a racehorse. Luca’s got a big house with a beautiful wife (Ivana Monti) and a precocious son. The police are too incompetent to stop them and their disco-loving boss, Perlante (Saverio Marconi), keeps them safe from any interference from the other mob bosses working in Naples.

But then, one night, two men disguised as policeman pull Luca and Mickey over while they’re driving down an isolated road. The fake cops proceed to fire what seems to be over a hundred bullets into Mickey. Luca, having ducked down in his seat, is not spotted by the assassins. Determined to find out who murdered his brother and why, Luca immediately suspects a rival mobster named Scherino but Scherino insists that Mickey’s murder was actually ordered by a mysterious French drug lord known as Il Marsigliese (Marcel Bozzuffi, who also played a French drug smuggler in The French Connection). The French are trying to take over the rackets in Naples and a sudden surge in violence, one which sees nearly every mob boss in Naples murdered on the same day, suggests that Scherino is telling the truth.

Contraband is a brutal Italian crime film, one that is notable for being one of director Lucio Fulci’s final non-horror films. (Contraband was released after Zombi 2 but before City of the Living Dead.) Though the film might not feature any zombies or any talk of “the Beyond,” it’s still unmistakably a Fulci film and some of the film’s brutal violence remains shocking even when seen today. The scene where a duplicitous drug smuggler gets her face melted with a blow torch is nightmarish and it’s followed by a scene where a rival gangster graphically gets the back of his head blown out. (Fulci lingers on the hole in the man’s head, giving us an out-of-focus shot of the people standing behind him.) A later gunfight leads to one gangster dying with a gaping hole in his throat while another has his face shot away, despite the fact that he’s already dead. It’s graphic but it’s also appropriate for the story being told. This is a movie about violent men and, as Fulci himself often pointed out whenever he was challenged about the graphic gore in his films, violence is not pretty. Contraband is not a film that’s going to leave anyone wanting to become a gangster.

The plot is not always easy to follow but, as is typical with a good Fulci film, the striking visuals make up for any narrative incoherence. Fulci’s camera rarely stops moving, creating a sense of unease and pervasive paranoia. Much like the characters in the film, we find ourselves looking in every corner and shadow for a potential threat. A meeting with an informant at a mist-shrouded sulfur pit ends with assassin literally emerging from the mist and stabbing the informant from behind. A later gun battle on a narrow street seems to feature gunmen literally appearing out of thin air. Fabio Testi is ruggedly sympathetic as Luca while Saverio Marconi does a great job as the decadent Perlante. Meanwhile, Marcel Bozzuffi is legitimately frightening in his few scenes as the evil French gangster. He’s a great villain, smug and willing to kill anyone. You don’t have to support organized crime to support the idea of running the French out of Naples.

Contraband is a minor crime classic and proof that there was more to Fulci than just zombies and serial killers. Today would have been Lucio Fulci’s 93rd birthday and it’s also a good day to track down Contraband, an offer that you can’t refuse.

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

6 Shots From 6 Films: Special Lucio Fulci Edition!

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

6 Shots From 6 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 6 Shots From 6 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

93 years ago today, in Rome, Lucio Fulci was born!

Today is a very special day for fans of Italian horror. It’s also a special day for those of us here at the Shattered Lens. Anyone who has been reading this site for a while knows that we’re big Fulci fans at the TSL. So, in honor of the anniversary of his birth, here are….

6 Shots From 6 Films

Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971, dir by Lucio Fulci)

Zombi 2 (1979, dir by Lucio Fulci)

The Beyond (1981, dir by Lucio Fulci)

The House By The Cemetery (1982, dir by Lucio Fulci)

The New York Ripper (1982, dir by Lucio Fulci)

Murder Rock (1984, dir by Lucio Fulci)

Film Review: Cold Turkey (dir by Norman Lear)

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1971 satire, Cold Turkey, is the film that boldly explores just how much into the ground one joke can driven.

It’s a film that imagines what would happen if a big tobacco company decided to try to improve its image by giving people an incentive to quit smoking. In the real world, of course, they ended up funding Truth.org and coming up with anti-smoking commercials that were so lame that they would make viewers want to go out and buy a pack of cigarettes just to spite the self-righteous people lecturing them during the commercial breaks. In the film, however, Marwen Wren (Bob Newhart) comes up with the idea of offering to pay 25 million dollars to any community that can completely stop smoking for 30 days.

Wren figures that no large group of people will be able to just give up smoking for a month. Not in 1971! However, Wren didn’t count on the single-minded determination of the Rev. Clayton Hughes (Dick Van Dyke). Hughes is the stern and self-righteous minister of Eagle Rock Community Church in Eagle Rock, Iowa. He knows that Eagle Rock could really use that money so he sets off on a crusade to convince all 4,006 of the citizens of Eagle Rock to take the pledge to quit smoking.

As I said at the start of this review, Cold Turkey is pretty much a one-joke film. The joke is that everyone in the movie — from the tobacco company execs to the citizens of Eagle Rock to Rev. Hughes — is an asshole. They start the film as a bunch of assholes and, once they try to quit smoking, they become even bigger assholes. Soon, everyone in town is irritable and angry. The only people happy are the people who never smoked in the first place, largely because they’ve been set up as a sort of paramilitary border patrol. Even though his anti-smoking crusade lands him on the cover of Time, Rev. Hughes is also upset because he started smoking right before it was time to quit smoking. He deals with his withdraw pains through sex and frequent glowering.

Wren is concerned that the town of Eagle Rock might actually go for a full 30 days without smoking so he attempts to smuggle a bunch of cigarettes into the town and then runs around with a gigantic lighter that looks like a gun. It’s a storyline that doesn’t really go anywhere but then again, you could say that about almost all of the subplots in Cold Turkey. There’s a lot of characters and there’s a lot of frantic overacting but it doesn’t really add up too much. Storylines begin and are then quickly abandoned. Characters are introduced but then never do anything. For a while, It seems like the film is at least going to examine the Rev. Hughes’s totalitarian impulses but no. Those impulses are clearly there but they’re not really explored.

If I seem somewhat annoyed by this film, it’s because it really did have a lot of potential. This could have been a very sharp and timeless satire but instead, it gets bogged down in its own frantic storytelling and the film’s comedy becomes progressively more and more cartoonish. By the end of the movie, the President shows up in town and so does the military and it all tries to achieve some Dr. Strangelove-style lunacy but the film doesn’t seem to know what it really wants to say. It seems to be setting itself up for some sort of grandly cynical conclusion but instead, it just sort of ends. One gets the feeling that, at the last minute, the filmmakers decided that they couldn’t risk alienating their audience by taking the story to its natural conclusion.

Admittedly, while watching the film, I did find myself comparing Hughes and his bullying mob to the same people who are currently snapping at anyone who suggests that maybe the Coronavirus lockdowns were a bit excessive. It’s easy to think of some modern politicians and media figures who probably would have had a great time in Eagle Rock, ordering people around and shaming anyone who wants a cigarette. But otherwise, Cold Turkey was just too cartoonish and one-note to really work.

An Offer You Can Take or Leave #13: Hoffa (dir by Danny DeVito)

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1992 film, Hoffa, opens in 1975, with two men sitting in the backseat of a station wagon. One of the men is the controversial labor leader, Jimmy Hoffa (Jack Nicholson). The other is his longtime best friend and second-in-command, Bobby Ciaro (Danny DeVito). The two men are parked outside of a roadside diner. They’re waiting for someone who is late. Jimmy complains about being treated with such disrespect and comments that this would have never happened earlier. Jimmy asks Bobby if he has his gun. Bobby reveals that he does. Jimmy asks him if he’s sure that there’s a loaded gun in the diner, as well. Bobby goes to check.

Jimmy Hoffa, of course, was a real person. (Al Pacino just received an Oscar nomination for playing him in The Irishman.) He was a trucker who became a labor leader and who was eventually elected president of the Teamsters Union. He was a prominent opponent of the Kennedys and that infamous footage of him being interrogated by Bobby Kennedy at a Senate hearing seems to sneak its way into almost every documentary ever made about organized crime in the 50s. Hoffa was linked to the Mafia and was eventually sent to prison. He was freed by the Nixon administration, under the condition that he not have anything to do with Teamster business. When he disappeared in 1975, he was 62 years old and it was rumored that he was planning on trying to take over his old union. Everyone from the mob to the CIA has been accused of having had Hoffa killed.

Bobby Ciaro, however, was not a real person. Apparently, he was a composite character who was created by Hoffa’s screenwriter, David Mamet, as a way for the audience to get to know the enigmatic Jimmy Hoffa. Bobby is presented as being Hoffa’s best friend and, for the most part, we experience Jimmy Hoffa through his eyes. We get to know Jimmy as Bobby gets to know him but we still never really feel as if we know the film’s version of Jimmy Hoffa. He yells a lot and he tells Bobby Kennedy (a snarling Kevin Anderson) to go to Hell and he talks a lot about how everything he’s doing is for the working man but we’re never really sure whether he’s being sincere or if he’s just a demagogue who is mostly interested in increasing his own power. Bobby Ciaro is certainly loyal to him and since Bobby is played by the film’s director, it’s hard not to feel that the film expects us to share Bobby’s admiration. But, as a character, Hoffa never really seems to earn anyone’s loyalty. We’re never sure what’s going on inside of Hoffa’s head. Jack Nicholson is always entertaining to watch and it’s interesting to see him play a real person as opposed to just another version of his own persona but his performance in Hoffa is almost totally on the surface. With the exception of a few scenes early in the film, there’s doesn’t seem to be anything going on underneath all of the shouting.

The majority of Hoffa is told via flashback. Scenes of Hoffa and Bobby in the film’s present are mixed with scenes of Hoffa and Bobby first meeting and taking over the Teamsters. Sometimes, the structure of the film is a bit cumbersome but there are a few scenes — especially during the film’s first thirty minutes — that achieve a certain visual poetry. There’s a scene where Hoffa helps to change a man’s flat tire while selling him on the union and the combination of falling snow, the dark city street, and Hoffa talking about the working man makes the scene undeniably effective. The scenes where Hoffa spars with Bobby Kennedy are also effective, with Nicholson projecting an intriguing blue collar arrogance as he belittles the abrasively ivy league Bobby. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to those scenes. By the time Hoffa becomes a rich and influential man, you realize that the film isn’t really sure what it wants to say about Jimmy Hoffa. Does it want to condemn Hoffa for getting seduced by power or does it want to excuse Hoffa’s shady dealings as just being what he had to do to protect the men in his union? The film truly doesn’t seem to know.

Hoffa is definitely not an offer that you shouldn’t refuse but, at the same time, it’s occasionally effective. A few of the scenes are visually appealing and the cast is full of character actors like John C. Reilly, J.T. Walsh, Frank Whaley, and Nicholas Pryor. It’s not a disaster like The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Hoffa is an offer that you can take or leave.

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

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Vilmos Zsigmod Edition

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we pay tribute to the legendary cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond. Born 90 years ago today in Hungary, Zsigmond got his start in the 60s with low-budget films like The Sadist but he went on to become one of the most in-demand cinematographers around. In fact, of all the people who started their career working on a film that starred Arch Hall, Jr., it’s hard to think of any who went on to have the type of success that Zsigmond did.

Zsigmond won one Oscar, for his work on Close Encounters of Third Kind. He was nominated for three more. He also received a BAFTA award for his work on The Deer Hunter and was nominated for an Emmy for his work on Stalin. He’s considered to be one of the most influential cinematographers of all time.

In honor of the memory of Vilmos Zsigmond, here are….

4 Shots From 4 Films

The Long Goodbye (1973, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, dir by Steven Spielberg, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

The Deer Hunter (1978, dir by Michael Cimino, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

Blow Out (1981, dir by Brian DePalma, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)

An Offer You Should Refuse #12: Racket Girls (dir by Robert C. Dertano)

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The other night, I watched the 1951 film Racket Girls with a select group of friends. We get together every Saturday night and watch a movie. Usually, the movie’s pretty bad. (For instance, we watched Disco Beaver From Outer Space one night.) Still, I think Racket Girls might be the worst film we’ve seen to date.

Racket Girls tells the story about how the mob infiltrated the sport of professional wrestling. Umberto Scali (Timothy Farrell) and his little friend Joe (Don Ferrara) make their living managing female wrestlers but it turns out that the wrestling hall is really a front for all of Umberto’s illegal activities. We’re told that there’s a lot of illegal activities going on but we don’t really see many of them. Anyway, Umberto borrows too much money from Mr. Big and then he gets the police mad at him and it looks like it all might lead to a bad end for Umberto and his little friend Joe.

Or maybe not. Who knows? This movie is only a 67 minutes long but it’s next to impossible to actually follow the plot. To be honest, I found the complete lack of background music to be more interesting than the plot itself. It gave the film a strangely existential feel. There’s no music. There’s no entertainment. There’s just a lot of wrestling and bullets.

In fact, I’d say that the film is 75% wrestling, which …. well, I guess whether or not that works depends on whether or not you’re a fan of grainy professional wrestling footage. I’m not a huge fan, though I’ve seen some good wrestling movies that were smart enough to explore the real people behind the outsized personas. In Racket Girls, no one really has a personality and no one has a persona either. There’s a lot of overhead shots of a wrestling ring and we hear what sounds like a crowd cheering even though we never actually see them. It’s actually a bit of an odd effect. It makes the wrestling scenes seem positively surreal. I kept waiting for that strange radiator woman from Eraserhead to step out in the ring and start singing, In Heaven, Everything Is Fine….

Anyway, the film does make a legitimate point about mob’s influence in professional sports. Umberto, it should be noted, doesn’t appear to be a very smart gangster. That’s his downfall. Still, if you enjoy watching movie featuring tough guys in black suits threatening each other …. well, this film probably still isn’t for you. I mean, a few of the actors playing the gangsters have got the look down but no one’s particularly convincing. It’s like a community theater production of The Sopranos or something. It’s like they remade Scarface with Justin Bieber.

As I watched this film, I found myself wondering whether or not Ed Wood was involved because the film just feels like an Ed Wood production. Also, it should be noted that Racket Girls was produced by George Weiss, who produced several of Wood’s films and that star Timothy Farrell appeared in at least 3 Wood-directed films. Ed Wood’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the credit but I swear, this film has his finger prints all over it.

I’m probably making Racket Girls sound more amusing than it actually is. This is an incredibly boring movie. My friends nearly abandoned me about ten minutes into the movie and that hardly ever happens. I had to beg them to stay and watch the rest of the film. (I told them that there was a cartoon coming up that featured the first appearance of Bobba Fett. That was the same line I used to keep them from abandoning me two years ago when we were watching The Star Wars Holiday Special.) This is an offer that you can refuse. In fact, you should refuse it.

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

An Offer You Can’t Refuse: Race Street (dir by Edwin L. Marin)

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1948 film noir, Race Street, tells the story of what happens when the mob comes to San Francisco.

Led by the ruthless Phil Dickson (Frank Faylen, who you might recognize as Ernie the Cab Driver from It’s a Wonderful Life), the mob is looking to move in on San Francisco’s bookmaking rackets. Dickson wants all of the bookies to pay him for protection. Of course, he knows that he’s going to have a hard time convincing some of them to go along with his plans so he comes up with the brilliant idea of making an example of one bookie. He sends two of his men to talk to a small-time bookie named Hal Towers (Harry Morgan). They tell Hal that he can either pay Phil or he can suffer the consequences. Hal says that he’ll suffer the consequences so they promptly through him down a flight of stairs, killing him.

When Hal’s best friend, nightclub owner Dan Gannin (George Raft), discovers what has happened, he swears that he’s going to get revenge. Even after Dickson’s men abduct Dan and give him a brutal beating, Dan remains committed to getting justice for Hal. Lt. Barney Runson (William Bendix), who has been Dan’s best friend since childhood, tries to convince Dan to let the police handle it. He even tries to get Dan’s sister, Elaine (Gale Robbins) and Dan’s mysterious girlfriend, Robbie (Marilyn Maxwell), to convince him to back off but Dan won’t hear of it. Of course, because this is a film noir, Robbie has secret of her own….

Race Street is a low-budget noir that only has a running time of 79 minutes but still somehow finds time to sneak in a few musical performances from Gale Robbins. When the film first started, I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much. George Raft seemed bored with his role and William Bendix’s opening narration didn’t fill me with much confidence. However, it didn’t take long for the film to win me over. Harry Morgan, for instance, brought a lot of wounded dignity to his relatively small role and his monologue before his murder is surprisingly moving. Frank Faylen was cast against type as the evil mobster but it worked. Seeing the normally amiable Faylen threatening to kill people was a good reminder that not all monsters look like monsters. Some of them look like the friendly Bedford Falls cab driver. As befits a film noir, the film is full of ominous shadows and sudden bursts of violence. The scenes where Hal is murdered and Dan is beaten both stand out as being perhaps a bit more brutal than one might expect a film from 1948 to be.

Race Street is a minor noir but aficionados of the genre should enjoy it. This is a short and no-nonsense film that gets the job done. It’s an offer you should not refuse.

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