Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #7: Rolling Thunder (dir by John Flynn)

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m currently in the process of watching the 36 films that I’ve recorded on my DVR since March. Last night, I was extremely excited as I looked up the 7th film on the DVR and I discovered that I was about to watch the 1977 revenge classic, Rolling Thunder!

Among those of us who love old grindhouse and exploitation film, Rolling Thunder has achieved legendary status. Based on a script by Paul Schrader (though I should point out that Schrader’s script was rewritten by Heywood Gould and Schrader himself has been very critical of the actual film) and directed by John Flynn, Rolling Thunder is quite literally one of the best revenge films ever made. It’s also a great Texas film, taking place and filmed in San Antonio. Quentin Tarantino has frequently cited Rolling Thunder as being one of his favorite films and he even used the name for his short-lived distribution company, Rolling Thunder Pictures.

Rolling Thunder also has one of the greatest trailers of all time. In fact, if not for the trailer, I probably would never have set the DVR to record it off of Retroplex on March 25th. The Rolling Thunder trailer is included in one of the 42nd Street Forever compilation DVDs and, from the minute I first watched it, I knew that Rolling Thunder was a film that I had to see.

Watch the trailer below:

Everything about that trailer — from the somewhat portentous narration at the beginning to the way that Tommy Lee Jones calmly says, “I’ll get my gear,” at the end, is pure genius.

But what about the film itself? Well, having finally seen the film, I can say that Rolling Thunder is indeed a classic. It’s also one of the most brutal films that I’ve ever seen, containing scenes of truly shocking and jarring violence. In fact, the violence is so shocking that it’s also, at times, rather overwhelming. This is one of those films that you will probably remember as being far more violent than it actually is. Because, while Rolling Thunder features its share of shoot-outs and garbage disposal limb manglings, it’s actually a very deliberately paced character study.

When we first meet Maj. Charles Rane (William Devane), he’s sitting on a plane and looking down on San Antonio. He’s in full military dress uniform. Setting across from him, also in uniform, is John Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones). The year is 1973 and Rane and Vohden have both just spent the past seven years as prisoners in a Vietnamese camp. While they were prisoners, they were tortured every day. Now, they’re returning home and neither one of them is quite sure what’s going to be waiting for them.

Over the imdb, you can find a few complaints from people who feel that Rolling Thunder gets off to a slow start. And it’s true that it takes over 30 minutes to get to the pivotal scene where Maj. Rane loses both his hand and his family. But that deliberate pace is what makes Rolling Thunder more than just a revenge flick with a kickass name. That first half-hour may seem to meander but what it’s actually doing is setting both Rane and Vohden up as strangers in their own country.

The film gets a lot of mileage out of comparing Rane to Vohden. Rane is good with words. When he gets off the plane, he gives a perfect (and perfectly empty) speech about how the whole war experience has made a better American out of him. Rane knows how to fool people but it quickly becomes apparent that, on the inside, Rane feels empty.

Vohden, meanwhile, is not an articulate man. He’s not invited to give a speech when the plane lands. Vohden cannot fake the emotions that he does not feel. At first, Rane and Vohden seem to be complete opposites (and the film wisely contrasts Jones’s trademark taciturn style of acting with Devane’s more expressive technique) but eventually, we learn that they’re actually two sides of the same coin. Both of them have been left empty as a result of their wartime experiences and, in the end, Vohden is the only one who can truly understand what’s going on in Rane’s head while Rane is the only one who can understand Vohden. When Rane needs help getting revenge, Vohden is the one that he turns to. It’s not just because Vohden knows how to kill. It’s also because John Vodhen is literally the only man to whom Charles Rane can relate.

Why does Rane need revenge? After the local bank awards him with 2,000 silver dollars (“One silver dollar for every day you spent in the Hell of Hanoi!,” he is told at the presentation), Rane returns home to discover that a group of men have broken into his house. One of them, known as the Texan (an absolutely chilling performance from James Best), demands that Rane tell them where the silver dollars are hidden. When Rane responds by giving only his name, rank, and serial number, Slim (Luke Askew) reacts by forcing Rane’s arm into the kitchen sink and then turning on the garbage disposal. (A scene was apparently shot that literally showed Rane’s hand getting ripped off by the garbage disposal but it was judged to be too graphic even for this grim little movie.) Even as the disposal mangles Rane’s arm, Rane refuses to tell them where the money is. Instead, he just flashes back to being tortured at the camp and we realize that Rane’s experiences have left him immune to pain.

Of course, the Texan doesn’t realize this. Instead, he glares at Rane and mocks him by declaring him to be “one macho motherfucker.”

When Rane’s wife and son walk in on the men, Slim and the Texan murder them and leave Rane for dead. However, Charles Rane isn’t dead. He survives but he claims that he can’t remember anything about the men who attacked him. It’s only after Rane is released from the hospital and starts to practice firing a shotgun with the hook that has replaced his hand that we realize that Rane does remember. Recruiting a local waitress who also happens to be an amateur beauty queen (Linda Haynes, giving the type of great performance that makes me wonder why I’ve never seen her in any move other than Rolling Thunder) to help, Rane sets out to track down “the men who killed my boy.”

Linda Hayes in Rolling Thunder, giving a great performance in a somewhat underdeveloped role

It’s very telling that Rane continually says that he’s after the men who “killed my boy” but he never mentions his wife. When Rane first arrived home, he had one conversation with his wife. He complained that she had changed her hair and that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Nobody wears them anymore,” She replied before telling him that, during his seven year absence, she had fallen in love with another man, Cliff (Lawrason Driscoll). And, up until she’s murdered by the Texan, that’s the last conversation that we see Rane have with his wife. Rane still lives in the house and he still tries to talk to his son (even though his son seems more comfortable around Cliff than around Rane) but Rane becomes a stranger to his family. While his wife sleeps in the house, Rane insists on staying out in the garage and continuing to go through the daily routine of calisthenics that he used to maintain his sanity while he was a prisoner.

(When Cliff asks Rane what it was like to be tortured, Rane literally forces Cliff to pull back on his arms in the same way that his Vietnamese captors had to. As I watched these scenes, I was reminded that 2008 presidential candidate John McCain cannot lift his arms above his shoulders as a result of the torture he suffered while a POW.)

When Rane goes to El Paso to recruit Vohden for his mission of revenge, we notice that Vohden also appears to be incapable of speaking to his wife. When Vohden leaves, he says goodbye to his father but not his wife. It’s probably not a coincidence that, when Vohden and Rane find Slim and the Texan, they’re at a brothel, a place where men are in charge, women are subservient, and primal needs are satisfied without the risk of emotional attachment. (It’s also probably not a coincidence that Slim is also identified as having recently returned from Vietnam. He complains that, unlike Rane and Vohden, he was never captured by the enemy and, as a result, he didn’t get a parade when he came back home.) Rolling Thunder is a film about emotionally stunted men who are incapable of interacting in any way other than violence. By the end of the film, you’re left wondering whether Rane’s mission was about revenge or about his own need to destroy.

And what an ending! When I say that the violence in Rolling Thunder is overwhelming, I’m talking about two scenes in particular. There’s the scene where Rane loses his hand and watches as The Texan casually executes his wife and son. And then there’s the ending. The final shootout was quick but it was also so brutal that I was literally shaking by the end of it.

(The scenes leading up the final shootout also featured one of the few humorous moments to be found in this otherwise grim film. When Vohden — who is inside the brothel with a prostitute — starts to put his rifle together, the prostitute asks him what he’s doing. “Oh,” Vohden says, in that perfectly weary way that only Tommy Lee Jones can do, “just going to kill a bunch of folks.”)

I mentioned earlier that Paul Schrader is reportedly not a fan of Rolling Thunder. Apparently, in his original script, Charles Rane was portrayed as being a poorly educated racist, a bit of a prototype for the character that Robert De Niro played in Taxi Driver. Ranes’s final rampage was meant to be an example of the war in Vietnam coming home and it was made much clearer that Rane’s violence was as much fueled by his own racism as by a desire for revenge. Schrader has said that his anti-fascist script was turned into a fascist movie.

A scene from Paul Schrader’s original script

With all due respect to Mr. Schrader (who I think is a very underrated filmmaker), Rolling Thunder is anything but a fascist movie. Instead, it’s a brutal and somewhat disturbing character study of a man who will never truly escape the war in which he fought. The fact that Rane is played by super smooth William Devane (as opposed to the redneck that Schrader apparently envisioned) only serves to make the film’s critique of hyper masculinity all the more disturbing. It’s interesting to note that, on their own, Rane and Vohden are never presented as being particularly likable or heroic. Instead, we root for them because the people who have hurt them are even worse.

This was how Schrader envisioned Johnny and Rane.

Though it may be far different from what Paul Schrader originally envisioned, John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder is a film that works on every level. It is both a visceral revenge film and a character study of a disturbed man. It’s a powerful film that will leave you shaken and it’s one that I will probably never erase from my DVR.

There are some movies that you just don’t dare delete.

Rolling Thunder is one of those movies.

Horror Film Review: Cat People (dir by Paul Schrader)

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before I get around to actually reviewing Paul Schrader’s 1982 reimagining of Cat People, I’m going to suggest that you take a few minutes to watch the film’s opening credits. Say what you will about Schrader’s Cat People, it has a great opening, one that perfectly sets up the rest of the film.

In this version of Cat People, Irena (Natassja Kinski) is a naive young woman (and virgin) who, after the death of her parents, has spent most of her previous life in foster care. Irena travels to New Orleans, where she reconnects with her older brother, Paul (Malcolm McDowell). From the minute that Irena meets her brother and his housekeeper (Ruby Dee), it’s obvious that something is off. When Paul looks at her, he does so with an unsettling intensity. At night, while Irena sleeps, Paul wanders the dark streets of New Orleans.

One morning, Irena wakes up to discover that Paul is missing. Having nothing else to do, Irena wanders around New Orleans. When she visits the zoo, she feels an immediate connection to a caged panther who stares at her with a familiar intensity. It turns out that the panther was captured the previous night, after he mysteriously appeared in a sleazy motel and mauled a prostitute.

It’s at the zoo that Irena meets zookeeper Oliver Yates (John Heard). Oliver gets Irena a job working at the zoo gift shop. where Irena is befriended by Oliver’s co-worker, Alice (Annette O’Toole). One day, Irena witnesses the panther kill another zookeeper before it then escapes from its cage.

That night, Paul suddenly shows up in Irena’s bedroom. He explains to her that they are a cursed species. Having sex causes them to turn into panthers and the only way to avoid the curse is through incest. A terrified Irena flees her brother and soon finds herself living with and falling in love with the increasingly obsessive Oliver, all the while knowing that giving herself to him physically will lead to her transformation.

From the very first second of the film. Schrader’s Cat People is an exercise in pure style. If the original Cat People was largely distinguished by its restraint, Schrader’s version is all about excess. Everything that was merely suggested in the original is made explicit in this version. As tempting as it may be to try, it’s somewhat pointless to try to compare these two versions. Though they may both be about a woman who turns into a panther when she has sex, they are two very different films.

Schrader’s Cat People walks a very fine line between moodiness and absurdity, which is perhaps why I enjoyed it. Making great use of both the sultry New Orleans setting and Giorgio Moroder’s atmospheric score, Cat People is compulsively dream-like and enjoyably over-the-top. Cat People is often described as being an example of a movie that could have only been made in the coked up 80s and truly, this is one of those films that’s so excessive that it’s becomes fascinating to watch.

(I think that often we are too quick to assume that excess is necessarily a bad thing. If you can’t be excessive when you’ve got Malcolm McDowell playing an incest-minded cat person in New Orleans, when can you be excessive?)

Schrader’s Cat People may not have much in common with the original version but the film’s best scene is the only one that is a direct recreation of a scene from the original. In fact, in recreating the scene where Alice is menaced while swimming in a public pool, Schrader actually improves on the original. Brilliantly performed by both Annette O’Toole and Natassja Kinski (whose cat-like features made her perfect for the role of Irena), it’s the only scene in the film that can truly be called scary. Starting with a tracking shock that follows Alice as she jogs, the stalking scene is practically a master class in effective horror cinema. If nothing else, you should see Cat People for that one scene.

And you should also see it for the wonderful soundtrack! Let’s end this review with David Bowie’s theme song, which you may also remember from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #63: American Gigolo (dir by Paul Schrader)

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, here we are! A month and two days ago, I announced the start of Embracing the Melodrama Part II, a 126-film series of reviews. At the time, I somewhat foolishly declared that I would manage to review all of these films in just three weeks! Four weeks later and we have finally reached the halfway point.

So yeah…

Anyway! We started this series of reviews with 1927’s Sunrise and we have worked our way through the films of the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s. And now, as we hit the halfway point, it’s appropriate that we start a new cinematic decade.

In other words, welcome to the 80s!

Let’s start the 80s off with the 1980 film, American Gigolo. Directed by Paul Schrader, American Gigolo is — much like Schrader’s Hardcore and The Canyons — a look at the sleazier side of life in California. Julian Kaye (Richard Gere) is the most successful male escort in Los Angeles. He’s handsome, he’s confident, he speaks multiple languages, and he maintains a proper emotional distance from … well, from everyone. He’s got a fast car, expensive clothes, a great apartment, and — because it is the 80s after all — a small mirror that is perpetually coated in cocaine residue.

We don’t really learn much about Julian’s past. We don’t know much about who he was before he became the American Gigolo. (If this movie were made today, American Gigolo would be a part of the MCU and would end up joining The Avengers.) However, the film is littered with clues. For instance, we know that he used to work exclusively for Anne (Nina Van Pallandt) but he’s become so successful that Anne has lost her hold over him. Before Julian worked for Anne, he worked for Leon (Bill Duke), a gay pimp.

Julian’s sexuality is a big question mark throughout the entire film. Though all of his current clients are female and Julian brags about his ability to leave a woman feeling sexually satisifed, the film leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not he actually likes women. (It’s suggested — though never explicitly stated — that Julian slept with men while he was working for Leon.) Ultimately, for someone who has sex for a living, Julian seems oddly asexual. It’s hard not to feel that Julian is only truly capable of desiring his own carefully constructed image.

Is Julian capable of love? That’s the question that Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton) has to consider. Michelle is unhappily married to a member of the U.S. Senate but she’s having an affair with Julian.

Michelle’s relationship with Julian is tested when Julian is accused of murdering one of his clients. While Julian begs both his clients and his business associated to provide him with an alibi, he discovers that he’s basically alone. Convinced that someone’s trying to frame him, Julian destroys his apartment and his car searching for clues. As he grows more and more paranoid, his perfect image starts to crack and Michelle has to decide whether or not to sacrifice her marriage to protect him.

American Gigolo is technically a murder mystery but the murder doesn’t really matter. Instead, it’s a character study of a man who is empty inside until, in Job-like fashion, he loses everything. It’s also a very watchable exercise in pure, sleek, and probably cocaine-fueled style. Richard Gere has always been an oddly hollow actor (and that’s not necessarily meant as a criticism) and that suggestion of inner emptiness makes him the perfect choice for the role of Julian Kaye.

American Gigolo is making the premium cable rounds right now. Keep an eye out for it and don’t be surprised if you find yourself singing Call Me afterwards.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #59: Hardcore (dir by Paul Schrader)

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Turn it off…turn it off…turn it off…TURN IT OFF!” — Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott) in Hardcore (1979)

Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott) is a businessman who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He’s a deeply religious man, a sincere believer in predestination and the idea that only an elite few has been prelected to go to Heaven. Jake is divorced (though he occasionally tells people that his wife died) and is the father of a teenage girl named Kristen (Ilah Davis).

One of the first things that we notice about Jake is that there appears to be something off about his smile. There’s no warmth or genuine good feeling behind it. Instead, whenever Jake smile, it’s obvious that it’s something he does because that what he’s supposed to do. Indeed, everything Jake does is what he’s supposed to do and he expects his daughter to do the same.

When Kristen goes to a church camp in California, she soon disappears. Jake and his brother-in-law, Wes (Dick Sargent), fly down to Los Angeles and hire a sleazy private investigator, Andy Mast (Peter Boyle), to look for her. A few weeks later, Andy shows Jake a pornographic film. The star? Kristen.

Jake is convinced that Kristen has been kidnapped and is being held captive. Wes tells Jake that he should just accept that this is God’s will. Andy tells Jake that, even if he does find Kristen, Jake might not want her back. Finally, Jake tells off Wes, fires Andy, and ends up in Los Angeles himself. Pretending to be a film producer and recruiting a prostitute named Nikki (Season Hubley) to serve as a guide, Jake searches for his daughter.

The relationship between Jake and Nikki is really the heart of the film. For Jake, Nikki becomes a temporary replacement for his own daughter. For Nikki, Jake appears to be the only man in the world who doesn’t want to use her sexually. But, as Jake gets closer and closer to finding his daughter, Nikki realizes that she’s getting closer and closer to being abandoned.

Hardcore is a pretty good film, one that was shot in location in some of the sleaziest parts of 70s Los Angeles. Plotwise, the film is fairly predictable but George C. Scott, Season Hubley, and Peter Boyle all give excellent performances. (The scenes were Scott pretends to be a porn producer are especially memorable, with Scott perfectly capturing Jake’s discomfort while also subtly suggesting that Jake is enjoying himself more than he wants to admit.) And, even if you see it coming from miles away, the film’s ending will stick with you.

Film Review: The Canyons (dir by Paul Schrader)

Posted on December 25, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Do you remember that YouTube video of Chris Crocker screaming, “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” while tears and eye liner ran down his face?

That’s often the way that I feel about Lindsay Lohan, a talented actress and a fellow redhead whose career has been destroyed not so much by her own mistakes but by the fact that the tabloids refuse to allow her to move on from those mistakes. It seems that, regardless of what Lindsay Lohan does, not a single story will be written about her that doesn’t mention that she’s spent time in rehab and jail or that doesn’t offer up some sort of tawdry speculation about her private life.

And that’s unfortunate because, regardless of what the tabloids may say, Lindsay Lohan remains an excellent actress who is capable of doing a lot more than parodying her own image in Scary Movie 5.

Consider, for instance, her performance in The Canyons.

In The Canyons, Lohan plays Tara, the world-weary girlfriend of a wealthy sociopath named Christian (James Deen, who may not be a great actor but still projects a proper mix of charm and menace). Christian is a film producer whose need to control and dominate is demonstrated in both the way he manipulates actor Ryan (Nolan Funk) and the way he arranges for Tara to have sex with strangers while he films the action.

Tara and Christian live a life that epitomizes empty luxury, an existence defined of ennui where casual cruelty is the norm. However, when he discovers that Tara is secretly having an affair with Ryan, Christian’s carefully constructed facade of control starts to fade away. Perhaps not surprisingly, Christian’s obsessiveness and manipulative mind games eventually lead to a brutal act of violence…

When it was released earlier this year, The Canyons got terrible reviews and the film is definitely uneven. Bret Easton Ellis’s script is predictable and, while director Paul Schrader captures some haunting images of Los Angeles at its most languid, the film also is a bit too slow for its own good. Schrader takes Ellis’s pulpy script and attempts to use it to craft an existential portrait of American culture and he doesn’t quite succeed.

However, to a large extent, The Canyons is redeemed by Lohan’s excellent performance. In Lohan’s hands, Tara becomes a survivor who has sacrificed her innocence but still has yet to develop the hardness that one needs to survive in Ellis and Schrader’s Los Angeles. As cynical and decadent a character as Tara may be, Lohan plays her with just enough hints of optimism that it’s impossible not to regret the loss of who she was before she met Christian.

It’s a performance that manages to redeem a film that, without Lohan, would have been one of the worst films of 2013.

For that reason alone, perhaps it’s time to leave Lindsay alone and she what she’s capable of doing when she’s simply allowed to act.