The Yakuza (1975)
Michigan’s own Paul Schrader set a Hollywood record by selling the script for this neo-noir for a cool $325,000, a record at the time. Tough guy Robert Mitchum plays Harry Kilmer, a retired detective who heads to Japan to rescue the daughter of an old friend, who has gotten caught up in the Yakuza aka the Japanese Mafia. This is a tough flick that features some pretty heavy and complex themes but doesn’t skimp on the action. The finale featuring Mitchum storming a dojo full of sword-wielding henchmen with a shotgun in one hand and a revolver in the other is the stuff that pulp fiction is made of.
The Plague Dogs (1985)
From the makers of that Watership Down cartoon that creeped you out as a kid, comes another weighty and disturbing animated film about the politics of the animal kingdom. Rowf and Snitter are two dogs who escape from an animal research facility only to find themselves not only ill-prepared and shell-shocked by the realities of nature but hunted by their former captors as well. This is a film that opens with a dog drowning during some macabre experiment so that sets the tone right there. As depressing as it is, The Plague Dogs is an emotional and fascinating movie. It’s interesting to see animation used to tell a truly adult story (and not in a Ralph Bakshi adult way). The sullen voice work by the likes of John Hurt only adds to the somber tone. Be sure to give your dog a couple of extra hugs after watching this one.
Zardoz (1974)
Have you heard of this before? I can’t say I truly recommend this movie, but you have to see it!
John Boorman followed up his Deliverance (1972) success with this bizarre and off-putting sci-fi flick. In the post-apocalyptic future (of course), life is fairly primitive and Zardoz, a large stone head that floats through the air, preaches his own updated gospel, which goes a little something like this:
The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth . . . and kill!
You know you want to click and see the full-size image
Anyway, Sean Connery runs around the whole film in a red diaper and a ponytail and the film gets more and more incomprehensible as it goes along. And it’s all so damn serious! This one is seriously strange and it’s hard to believe that Connery or Boorman could have done this with a straight face. This is alcohol-required viewing.
Bronson (2008): Two years before he was a bad-ass in Inception (2010), Tom Hardy was a bad-ass in Bronson. Hardy gives a fearless and remarkable performance as the titular character, Britain’s most notorious prisoner. Charlie Bronson has spent 35 years behind bars, at least 30 of which were in solitary confinement. Bronson is such a fascinating character and Hardy plays him with such gusto that you are liable to get as lost in the character as Hardy does. It’s a raw and harsh flick and not for the squeamish but Hardy is a revelation here.
Centurion (2010): Neil Marshall follows up The Descent (2005) and Doomsday (2008) with another adrenaline-fueled flick that’s filled to the brim with testosterone. In Ancient Rome, the famed Ninth Legion finds itself decimated after an ambush by enemy forces, leaving only a few survivors trapped deep behind enemy lines. Think of it as The Warriors in ancient Rome as the ragtag group desperately try to make it home. There are more beheadings, slit throats, and dismemberments than Gladiator and Braveheart combined (if you’re into that sort of thing—and I know I am!) and the brisk pace and solid production values make this one exciting flick.
If they gave certificates for such things, Lee Marvin would most certainly be a “Certified Bad-ass”. Though he died at age 63 in 1987, Marvin is one of those guys who had always looked old, and made it work for him. Not unlike his contemporary, Charles Bronson, Marvin was a true man’s man. Tough when he has to be, sweet when he needs to be, Marvin could melt a woman’s heart and break a man’s face; all at the same time if the occasion called for it. Throughout his 35-year career Lee Marvin portrayed a number of memorable bad-asses like Major John Reisman in The Dirty Dozen or Walker in Point Blank. For me, his most memorable bad-ass role is perhaps Nick Devlin in the criminally under-seen Prime Cut (1972).
Prime Cut opened in June 1972 to little fanfare and inevitable obscurity. Lee Marvin portrays the aforementioned Nick Devlin, an enforcer for the Chicago mob who is sent to the farmlands of Kansas to collect a debt from Mary Ann, a gangster who runs his operation out of a slaughterhouse and specializes in human slavery. Mary Ann is a tricky individual and Devlin finds himself stalking his prey through barns, county fairs and cornfields. Did I mention that Mary Ann is male and is played by the one and only Gene Hackman? Prime Cut is not your average crime thriller to be sure.
Halfway through the film, Nick Devlin finds himself chased through a cornfield by Mary Ann’s goons and a harvester. In a moment slyly reminiscent of North by Northwest, we see Devlin desperately attempting to outrun the harvester, which looms ominously in the background, much like the plane that attempted to dive-bomb Cary Grant. Just in the nick of time, one of Devlin’s men runs a car into the thresher leaving the machine to digest the car in bales of twisted metal and glass. Later, following a shoot-out in a field of sunflowers, Devlin commandeers a truck and drives it straight through one of Mary Ann’s giant greenhouses, collapsing the entire thing.
What sets apart Prime Cut from your typical crime film is its colorful characters and refreshing change of scenery. Devlin is a fish out of water, a hardened man lost in the innocence of back-country Kansas cornfields. While he’s an enforcer for a criminal empire, he is a man of heart, as evidenced by woman he saves from Mary Ann’s slave trade and uses as “collateral.” Mary Ann, on the other hand, is a tough, brooding figure who uses the unassuming back country as his playground. For him, the human body is a currency in and of itself. He holes women up in cattle cages and auctions off their bodies to the highest bidders. He grinds a man’s flesh into sausage—literally sausage—and sends it to a rival as a message. Lee Marvin is certainly not alone in being a “Certified Bad-ass.” Charles Bronson, Yul Brenner, and Warren Oates hold similar status and Gene Hackman most assuredly reaches it in Prime Cut.
I look at today’s roster of actors and film fans, we have a severe lack of “Certified Bad-asses” in our day and age. The traditional action star is long gone. I’m interested to know who you think would rank as a “Certified Bad-ass” today. For me, guys like Jason Statham and Jet Li certainly have their moments of Bad-assery but don’t have that full package that guys like Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson had. So let’s hear it. Who is a “Certified Bad-ass”?
]]>Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: “When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.”
For you Siddhartha Gautama fans don’t bother sourcing that quote; he didn’t say it. It was actually made up by Jean-Pierre Melville, a French filmmaker, and it opens his 1970 French crime classic Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle). Why Melville chose to attribute a quote to Buddha that he in fact made up is a mystery, but it’s what’s behind the quote that matters.
Le Cercle Rouge tells the story of a small group of men on both sides of the law whose fates, like it or not, will intertwine. There’s Corey, the cool-as-a-cucumber thief who is fresh out of prison and finds out that his boss has stolen his girl and his money. There’s Vogel, a daring criminal who makes an audacious escape from a moving train and finds himself falling effortlessly back into the world of crime. There’s Jansen, the alcoholic ex-cop who can barely escape his own delusions long enough to get back in the game. Finally, there’s Mattei, the dedicated Inspector who will hunt them all.
These are lonely men. They need each other; friend or foe. Corey has found himself out in society all alone. He has no girl and no money but he is armed with a tip (from a prison guard no less) about a jewelry store’s security system. Vogel is on the lam and alone in the wild. He clings to Corey not just because of his casual coolness but because Vogel is a follower, not a leader. Jansen needs the companionship of other people to save himself from the demons he’s unleashed with his alcoholism. Mattei needs the pursuit not just because of his sense of failure in having Vogel escape under his watch, but because the pursuit is all he has. Mattei is not a family man; his only companions are his many cats. The pursuit gives him power and purpose.
The modern crime film undoubtedly owes a debt to Le Cercle Rouge. Michael Mann’s cold and methodical crime films are a great example. The crime is not the highlight of the film. It’s about the men behind the crime and the planning and preparation that go into the deed. It’s about how sometimes, men like this don’t have a choice, they must be who they are. I love the scene in Heat where DeNiro and Pacino, the hunter and the hunted, just talk over coffee. Just talk. It’s not a conversation between a cop and a criminal; it’s a conversation between two professionals. The most potent exchange is:
Vincent Hanna: I don’t know how to do anything else.
Neil McCauley: Neither do I.
Vincent Hanna: I don’t much want to either.
Neil McCauley: Neither do I.
I’m sure Quentin Tarantino lists Le Cercle Rouge as source of inspiration. As a connoisseur of cinema, 70’s cinema especially, it seems highly unlikely that Tarantino has not seen one of the best movies of that decade, let alone the best crime film ever made (in my humble opinion). He obviously, however, did not take note of the film’s economical style. Corey is a character who takes inventory of his words and emotions. Even his facial expressions seem to be expertly disciplined. He talks when he must, not because the plot dictates it; this is a film which everyone and everything is understated. Everything just flows, nothing feels contrived, nothing feels out of place. The centerpiece of the film, an elaborate jewelry store heist, is a virtuoso sequence in which not a word is uttered for nearly a half an hour. It’s sequences like that (or Vogel’s heart-stopping escape from captivity from the aforementioned moving train) and characters like Corey who ooze cool that make Le Cercle Rouge a classic. There are very few films that I can say I fell in love with upon first viewing and Le Cercle Rouge is one of them. For anyone who considers themselves a fan of the crime genre (Heat, Reservoir Dogs, The Town, Scarface, etc.), this is required viewing.
Two remakes that improved on their source material came out well before the remake train left the station. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) are less remakes as they are re-imaginings. They take the original’s themes and ideas and twist and craft them into something completely unique. These are not only great remakes, these are both horror classics. If you haven’t seen either of them, check them out immediately. In 1990, George Romero wrote and produced a remake of his own Night of the Living Dead which certainly isn’t in the same league as its predecessor but stands as a competent, fun remake.
The current remake trend really got off the ground with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003). Produced by Michael Bay, Chainsaw looks great and it cut together into one hell of a trailer but the glitz and gloss of the production takes away from the gritty, documentary feel of the 1973 original. It’s a great example of a film’s bigger budget working against it. Bay’s company, Platinum Dunes, is a factory of remakes. Save for one original film, they’ve remade The Amityville Horror (2005), The Hitcher (2007), Friday the 13th (2009), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) to mostly dismal results. Not a single one of these remakes has anything to add to the story. The Hitcher, for example, is almost a shot-for-shot recreation of the little-seen 1986 original. This year’s Elm Street remake managed to take the ingenious casting of Jackie Earl Haley as Freddy Kruger and turn him into a bland, uninteresting villain. The best of their remakes is perhaps Friday, since the originals weren’t all that great to begin with. That one, like the others, does nothing to up the ante.
Other non-Platinum Dunes remakes like The Fog (2005), Black Christmas (2006), The Omen (2006), When a Stranger Calls (2008), Prom Night (2009), The Stepfather (2009), Last House on the Left (2009) are all failures as well. If you don’t know of any of these films beyond their remakes or didn’t know they were remakes at all, please seek out the originals. With the exception of Prom Night (1980), a rather silly slasher, these are all classics in their own right and every single one of them puts the remake to shame. Black Christmas (1974) in particular is a criminally under-seen slasher that Halloween (1978) owes a lot to. Speaking of Halloween, Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007) is perhaps my most hated of all the recent horror remakes. Here is a film that is so woefully out of touch with what made the original film so good: The mood, the suspense, and the subtlety. Zombie’s film is an exercise in Blunt Force Trauma filmmaking that succeeds only in completely stripping the mystique from Michael Myers. Everything is over the top. There’s a case to be make that Zombie did a re-imagining and did his own thing here; trying to eclipse a classic is hard to do. I’d agree that Zombie’s take on Halloween is his and his alone, it just. . . sucks. There’s really no other way to put it. Unsurprisingly, I have yet to tackle Zombie’s Halloween II (2009).
There are a couple of current remakes that are actually quite successful. Dawn of the Dead (2004) is an example of a remake that really did its own thing. Let’s get this out of the way: The original is a masterpiece and one of my all-time favorites. I was pre-disposed to hate this movie but Zack Snyder is such a visually compelling filmmaker and it feels so outside of what the original was doing, that it’s hard not to get swept up here. Add to that some great special FX, a snappy script, and a cool cast and the new Dawn is one of the best horror movies of the last few years.
The Hills Have Eyes (2006) is one of the most raw and intense horror films of the decade. A true re-imagining in every sense of the word, Hills has enough of the familiar beats of the original and then amps everything up. Like Dawn, this remake has a skilled filmmaker, great cast, great FX, and music. The mutants are vile and when they get their comeuppance, we are right there cheering for their demise. I like the 1977 original, but the 2006 version stands with The Thing and The Fly as a remake that improves upon its source material. Feel free to skip the 2007 sequel.
Perhaps twenty or thirty years down the road these films will be remade once again. Most likely, we’ll see the break-out horror successes of this decade remade as well. With the supposed “Final Chapter” hitting theaters next week, it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable Saw remake. And if you’re saying to yourself, “Hey, Hellraiser hasn’t been remade yet”, never fear. A director was just announced for the remake today.
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Freddy Kreuger
Location: Springwood, IL
Number of Appearances: 8 + 1 remake
Memorable Line: “Welcome to Prime Time, Bitch!”
Best of the Series: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). No contest there, but Part 3 is pretty good too.
Worst of the Series: Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
Former school janitor turned full-time child rapist. Krueger was burned alive by the angry parents of Springwood and returned (for reasons never really explained) to haunt their children, slaughtering them in their dreams. Using his home-made claw-glove (patent pending) and razor sharp wit, Freddy seems to have fun with his terrorizing, by turning teens into human cockroaches, using their veins to control them like a marionette, or controlling them like characters in a macabre Nintendo game. Freddy was finally felled by his daughter in the unfortunate Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) though he made a return appearance in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and Freddy vs. Jason (2003) and just this year in a disappointing remake from Michael Bay. You just can’t keep a good child rapist down apparently.
Jason Voorhees
Location: Crystal Lake, NJ
Number of Appearances: 11 + 1 remake
Memorable Line: Jason has never uttered a word
Best of the series: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). Corey Feldman. Crispin Glover. Enough said.
Worst of the Series: Jason X (2002). Go figure, sending Jason to space was a bad idea.
Jason’s mythology has never been truly explained. Apparently he drowned in Crystal Lake in the mid-50’s while teenage camp counselors were off “necking.” His mother flew off into a rage and terrorized the camp until June 1980 when, after killing a dozen or so counselors attempting to re-open Camp Crystal Lake, she lost her head. . . literally. One year later, a full-grown Jason, slaughtered another group of teens and has basically been doing that ever since. The man likes to stay busy I guess. Why Jason survived the drowning and how his mother either didn’t know or was so off-her-rocker didn’t care, is a mystery. Jason slaughtered his way through 11 movies that took him from Camp Crystal Lake, to Manhattan, to Hell, to Space! Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) attempted to add some back-story to Jason to ridiculous effect. Apparently, “through a Voorhees he was born and only through a Voorhees can he be killed.” Why? Because the movie said so.
Michael Myers
Location: Haddonfield, IL
Number of Appearances: 7 + 2 remakes
Memorable Line: Like Jason, Michael Myers is more the quiet, stoic type.
Best of the Series: Halloween (1978). Can’t beat the original.
Worst of the Series: Halloween: Resurrection (2002). Don’t even get me started on that one.
Michael Myers was an unhappy kid. After catching his teenage sister fooling around, he donned a mask and killed her. After spending the better part of his adolescence and teenage years in a sanitarium, he escaped on Halloween 1978 and returned to Haddonfield to finish what he started. Apparently Michael has a beef with any member of his bloodline. He tried killing his sister—twice&madsh;as well as his niece in subsequent sequels. Myers is another villain with a fuzzy mythology. He’s obviously impervious to bullets and fire but we never find out why. The sixth entry in the series, The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) attempted to lay out a mythology involving Druids and Ruin Stones that was even more confusing and unsatisfying.
Pinhead
Location: Hell
Number of Appearances: 8, with another one in production now
Memorable Line: “Your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell!”
Best of the Series: Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) has always been a personal favorite of mine
Worst of the Series: Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002), though I admittedly have not seen the next two entries, Deader and Hellworld.
Pinhead is arguably the most complex of the Heavyweights you’ll see here. Once a soldier in WW2, Pinhead’s human counterpart was sent to hell after solving the “Lament Configuration,” a strange puzzle box that opens the gate to hell and brings forth demons called Cenobites. The original film and its sequel are strange and creepy, though the following sequels took Pinhead into wisecracking horror villain territory. By the time we got to Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Pinhead was pretty undistinguishable from Freddy, which is a shame since the first two films are genuinely interesting (though disgusting) flicks.
Leatherface
Location: Texas
Number of Appearances: 4 + 2 remakes
Memorable Line: Leatherface likes to grunt and groan but he doesn’t use his words.
Best of the Series: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973)
Worst of the Series: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)
You’ve got to give Leatherface credit; he’s a family man at heart. Living in the backwoods of Texas with his decidedly unconventional and dysfunctional family, Leatherface trolls around looking for food, i.e. you and me. Leatherface kills for the good of the family and to put food on the table, which make his reasons for killing better than any of the other Heavyweights. Part 2 shows Leatherface and the clan entering Chili cook-offs with their “secret recipe” and living beneath an abandoned amusement park. The following sequels brought Leatherface and the clan back to the woods and doing what they do best.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Jason and the Friday the 13th series, though he is admittedly the most low-brow of the Heavyweights listed and the films are more one-note than even the usual slasher fare. There’s something about the music, the FX, and the iconography in general that appealed to me as a kid and, nostalgically, still does today. Who’s your favorite?
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In the annals of horror sequeldom, few sequels are as reviled as Halloween III: Season of the Witch. On the surface, it’s not hard to see why. The original Halloween hit the horror and independent film scene in 1978 with a chorus of critical praise and audience screams. The saga of Michael Myers continued a few years later in 1981 with Halloween II, which picks up at the exact second the original ended. That film was also a success commercially (though not so much critically) and Michael Myers looked poised to become the first major horror icon (Jason had just made his first solo appearance in Friday the 13th, Part 2 that same year). The brains behind Michael Myers, John Carpenter and Debra Hill, felt pressured by the studio to provide a third entry for October 1982 but they had a different idea. Halloween II ended with Michael Myers burnt to a crisp, after all, so why continue that storyline? Carpenter and Hill liked the idea of a horror film series centered on the idea of Halloween but having storylines independent of each other. Thus, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was born. Audiences must have felt perplexed and deceived by this in-name-only sequel and the result was an interesting, albeit brief, experiment in taking the series in a new direction. Michael Myers would return to the series 6 years later with the aptly titled, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers but the wounds from Season of the Witch still haven’t healed even though my opinion is that it’s a fun and unfairly maligned film.
Season of the Witch introduces us to Dr. Dan Challis, a divorced father of two who is flirting with full-blown alcoholism. One quiet night, an old man rushes into the ER clutching a Halloween mask and raving, “They’ll kill us all!” Dr. Challis sedates him but in the middle of the night, our paranoid patient is brutally murdered. When Dr. Challis chases the assailant to the parking lot, he is shocked to find the assassin setting himself on fire. If that weren’t weird enough, an analysis of the assassin’s remains yields odd results, namely that he may have been more machine than human. Dr. Challis decides to investigate using the one piece of evidence he has: the Halloween mask. It’s made by Silver Shamrock Novelties, whose infectious commercial jingles (I already can’t get them out of my head) rally children in front of their TVs and urge them to be there on Halloween night for “The Big Giveaway.” The Silver Shamrock trail leads Dr. Challis to the sleepy town of Santa Mira. A picturesque burg out of a Northern California travelogue, Santa Mira is ruled by Silver Shamrock. A curfew beckons residents to their homes and cameras line the streets, detailing their every move while the massive manufacturing plant looms ominously in the hills. Eventually, Dr. Challis works his way into the Silver Shamrock plant and meets its enigmatic CEO, Conal Cochran. Cochran is a man with a plan and he seeks to change the face of Halloween forever. Through Silver Shamrock masks, each implanted with pieces of Stonehenge (just go with it), Cochran seeks to offer a mass sacrifice of all the children, whose masks will explode while worn during “The Big Giveaway.” If that weren’t enough for you, laser beams, robots, and hordes of insects and snakes all come into play as well.
This is a goofy film to be sure. It does not go for the visceral scares that the first two films. Season of the Witch has more of a sci-fi Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe to it and that’s part of what makes it so fun. Tom Atkins of The Fog and Night of the Creeps fame delivers a performance that walks the delicate balance of being serious and being in on the joke. He’s a reputable part of any B-Movie cast. Similarly, John Carpenter’s pulsing synth-driven score gives the film a classic 80’s Carpenter vibe not unlike The Fog or Escape From New York and the special FX sequences featuring broken jaws, crushed heads, and self-immolations are unique, fun, and well-executed.
For anyone looking for a new Halloween seasonal favorite, give Halloween III: Season of the Witch a chance, and for those of you who may have seen it years ago and still have a bad taste in your mouth, give it another shot. It won’t make any “Best Of” lists but I’m surprised at the hate that still exists for this film. Surely it’s better than Exorcist 2: The Heretic! Alas, that’s an entirely different column. Now if I could just get that damn jingle out of my head.
]]>Inchon (1982)
Never heard of it? I’m not surprised. This rendition of General Douglas MacArthur’s 1950 invasion of Inchon during the Korean War barely escaped into cinemas in September of 1982. Budgeted at a whopping $46 million the film was laughed off screens and barely grossed $5 million at the box office. To this day it’s never been given an official video release. It’s not hard to see where this one went wrong. Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church financed almost the entire thing, unbeknownst to the cast and crew. Director Terrance Young, a Bond film veteran, claimed the film was turned into a “Korean propaganda film” and Sir Laurence Olivier, who certainly gives one of his worst performances as MacArthur, was open about appearing in the film strictly for his $1 million salary. I’ve actually seen Inchon and while it’s impressively staged, it’s the worst kind of bad: humorless, boring, and lifeless.
The Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)
It’s no shock that the Exorcist franchise has fallen apart since the original film (though “Part III” is not bad) – it’s a tough act to follow. Development on a prequel following Father Merrin’s (Max Von Sydow in the original film) first encounter with the Devil began with veteran director John Frankenheimer (Ronin) in the director’s chair. When he bowed out due to illness, the reigns were handed to Michigan native Paul Schrader who has written a couple films you might know, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Stellan Skarsgård took over the Father Merrin role and cameras started rolling in late 2002. After Schrader turned in his cut, producers were shocked to find a more “cerebral” film that lacked the gore and shock FX that bring out a teenage audience on opening weekend. In the edit room it was decided that the film the producers wanted did not exist. Thus, Schrader was removed, a new script was written, and Renny Harlin took over the director’s chair. Harlin has done a few films you may know too, like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Cutthroat Island. Stellan Skarsgard retained the Father Merrin role and 90% of the film was reshot with a new cast and crew. The resulting film had all the blood and gore the producers could want and they got their opening weekend (it took first place, nabbing $18 million). In 2005, Schrader’s cut was released to video under the title Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist. The verdict: They both suck! Harlin’s version is a violent, ugly, and trashy film; it couldn’t be further removed from the original’s sense of dread and terror. Schrader’s version is just plain boring. There’s no atmosphere, no suspense, and no momentum. It’s easy to see why the producers were fearful of turning off audiences. I say shoot the damn thing one more time. Third time’s the charm, right?
Cursed (2004)
Rarely does a film live up to its title like Cursed does. A re-teaming of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, it was meant to re-capture some of the Scream magic. Epic fail. The film originally told the story of three strangers who find themselves drawn together following a werewolf attack. Skeet Ulrich, Illeana Douglas, Heather Langenkamp, Scott Foley, Omar Epps, Robert Forster, James Brolin, Corey Feldman, and Mandy Moore all had roles which were filmed before the producers (the ubiquitous Weinsteins) decided that the script wasn’t working. Production shut down and ramped up again months later with a new script that re-tooled the plot so completely that every cast member listed above is absent from the finished film. Cursed came out in February 2005 to tepid reviews and box office. The original version of the film has never been released and it’s doubtful it will ever see the light of day. It can’t be any worse than the version of Cursed we have now, which easily sits at the bottom of Wes Craven’s filmography (right below Vampire in Brooklyn).
The Day the Clown Cried (1972)
Perhaps the most infamous film on this list. Jerry Lewis starred in and directed this controversial drama (comedy?) about a down-and-out circus clown (named Helmut Doork!) in WW2 who gets imprisoned by the Nazis and finds himself entertaining children at a concentration camp, keeping them occupied as they are led to the gas chamber. Behind-the-scenes legal battles kept the film from being completed, even though principal photography was finished, and nearly 40 years later, the film remains unreleased and unseen by all but a few. Reportedly, Lewis has the only known copy of the film in a vault in his office. Over the years a lucky few have seen it, including Harry Shearer (of This is Spinal Tap fame) who said, ”This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. ‘Oh My God!’ — that’s all you can say.” Lewis hasn’t spoken about the film in years and, when recently asked about an eventual release, responded curtly, “None of your goddamn business!”
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I was probably about 12 when I first heard of Caligula. That applies to both the movie and the Roman Emperor for which it is named. As young movie fan with a ravenous appetite for discovering new things, I liked to peruse movie review books and the description for Caligula sounded like a goldmine. A biopic on an infamously insane Emperor, it was described as a “$17 million dollar porn extravaganza” but with recognizable actors in the cast: Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell. You have to remember that this was before the internet. Information was not easy to come by. The only information I could gather came from these review books. They all agreed that Caligula was sexually explicit, graphically violent and frankly, not very good. Roger Ebert broke it down in the first sentence of his review:
“Caligula is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.”
Now I really had to see it.
Caligula was not the kind of movie you found in the “Drama” section of your local video store. It was an “Adult” film but it was also a 2.5 hour historical epic so it was sparsely stocked on shelves. Every once in a while I’d stumble across a photo of the film, giving me a rare glimpse at the enigma that was Caligula. As the years passed, the internet evolved into a new avenue to pursue information but would I ever get to see what was perhaps the ultimate cult classic?
Every May the Novi Expo Center hosts the “Motor City Comic Con.” It’s a gathering of geeks, most of who are in rare form. As a geek myself, one fateful year, I strapped on my camera, filled my wallet, and headed to the Con with dreams of buying some sort of action figure that I’d likely never remove from the box. After my usual perusing of vendors, I found myself at one of the booths selling VHS tapes. I scanned the table looking for nothing in particular. Caligula wasn’t even on my mind. I’ll never forget when I spied the box. Nestled in line with all the other tapes, it had unassuming cover art; it could have easily passed me by. I felt like my heart had stopped. I couldn’t believe it. After all these years, this was my chance. I was actually going to see Caligula. I paid twenty dollars for the tape and eagerly headed home. The ride had never seemed longer.
Production on Caligula began in late July of 1976 at Dearwood Studios in Rome. The production was as opulent as the titular Emperor with 3592 costumes, 5000 hand-crafted boots and sandals, a set the size of 3 football fields, and the largest prop ever built at the time: A full-scale Roman vessel over 175 feet long and 30 feet high with 120 hand-carved oars. It is estimated that it took over 2500 people to mount the production. Budgeted around $17 million, the film was fully bankrolled by Bob Guccionne, the owner of Penthouse Magazine, who also bankrolled Roman Polanski’s MacBeth in 1971, to classier results. Noted historical novelist Gore Vidal wrote the script and his name coupled with the ample budget drew mainstream actors to the film. The director, an Italian named Tinto Brass, was hand-picked by Guccione. Shortly after production began Rome was awhirl with rumors about Caligula. Security on the set was tight so the press could do nothing but speculate. Reports of bestiality and orgies were not uncommon (or unfounded once you see the film). The difficulties that Caligula faced during and after production sent the press into a fever pitch. Gore Vidal sued to get his name taken off the film after believing that director Brass had mutilated his script. Later, Brass sued after Guccione wrestled control of the edit from him. Feeling it wasn’t sexy enough, Guccione and a skeleton crew sneaked back into Dearwood Studios in December 1976 and filmed 6 minutes of hardcore pornographic footage. The film finally premiered in February 1980 where it made headlines for its raunchy subject matter and inflated ticket prices ($7.50 when the average ticket was going for $3.50).
All the information that I had learned about Caligula ran through my head as I rushed home. I ran upstairs to my room, pulled out the tape and popped it into the VCR. I could barely stand the excitement. Even before the opening credits, Caligula treated the viewer to nudity. This was a film that knew how to capture an audience! But as I kept watching, a funny thing happened: I got bored. Here was a film with so much nudity that even I grew numb to it – a 16 year-old boy! I’ve often thought a funny drinking game would be to have a drink whenever a bare ass appears on screen. You’d be drunk within minutes. Caligula was everything I had heard it to be. It was sexually explicit (6 minutes of hardcore? Funny, it felt longer). It was graphically violent (If you’ve ever wanted to see 2 dogs fight over a severed penis…) and it was bad (at 156 minutes, a whole lot of bad). The cinematography was muddy and the camera never seemed sure where the action was. Sequences seemed to be placed in random order and scenes often ended obscurely, leaving the viewer perplexed. Save for the impressive sets and the costumes, Caligula was a pretty bold failure but it fascinates me to this day. I’ve since upgraded my VHS to a DVD (it’s even on Blu-Ray now!) and I like having it around to show to friends. I sometimes dream about being present on the set of this madness. I can only imagine the craziness that went on behind the scenes. I’ve seriously only scratched the surface on the depravity and decadence of this film. I’ll leave you with this: If anything you’ve read here about Caligula piques your interest, seek it out. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you…
For horror fans, few films are as influential as 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Visceral. Atmospheric. Grotesque. It’s a living nightmare.
Only 30 years old, director Tobe Hooper had announced himself as force to be reckoned with. The beginnings of a long and illustrious career had begun to take shape. 8 years later Hooper would work alongside one of the behemoths of the industry, Steven Spielberg, directing an original script by Spielberg himself. That was 1982 and the film was Poltergeist, another horror classic. The stars seemed to align for Hooper but in fact, Poltergeist would be the director’s death rattle.
Following Chainsaw, Tobe Hooper closed out the 70’s and rang in the 80’s with varying degrees of success. As a newbie to the Hollywood machine, he was finding his footing. His follow-up to Chainsaw entitled Eaten Alive was another low-budget exercise in backwoods horror but the production was racked with behind the scenes drama and Hooper was reportedly dismissed from the film before production ended. He rebounded nicely though with Salem’s Lot, a CBS mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s acclaimed vampire novel. It was a ratings smash (and damn creepy in its own right). His next flick, The Funhouse (1981), is atmospheric, suspenseful, and just outrageous enough; a great fit for Hooper’s offbeat sensibilities. The film was a mild success commercially.
And here we are at September 1981. Tobe Hooper had been picked by Steven Spielberg to helm Poltergeist. Spielberg had always wanted to do ghost story and would’ve directed it himself had he not been in pre-production on E.T. Both films were slated for a June 1982 release and Spielberg’s contract prevented him from directing both films concurrently. He would need a surrogate director. Enter Tobe Hooper: young, energetic, and talented. Believe it or not, Spielberg was a Chainsaw fan, but the Producer-Director relationship between Spielberg and Hooper was controversial. Spielberg had storyboarded the film, cast it, was on-set almost every day, and oversaw post production on his own. Rumors started swirling almost immediately that Hooper was nothing more than a “ghost” director that could help Spielberg duck the rules. It’s a plausible theory. Spielberg picks a talented but green (in terms of big-budget moviemaking) director that he can control. Spielberg himself seemed to claim that he was the driving force in the partnership:
“Tobe isn’t… a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, I’d jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that become the process of collaboration.”
Curiously, a 10-minute “Making Of” special created to promote the film features plenty of interviews and on-set footage of Spielberg but Hooper is almost entirely absent. Cast and crew recollections differ somewhat as to how much participation Hooper had but one opinion is universal: Spielberg had final say. Upon Poltergeist’s release, controversy grew so much that Spielberg wrote an open letter to Hooper in The Hollywood Reporter apologizing for the bad press and thanking him for their “unique” relationship.
Hollywood wasn’t banging down Tobe Hooper’s door after Poltergeist’s successful release. You’d think that the director of the 8th highest grossing film of the year would get a few offers. You’d be wrong. Hollywood is a town of talkers. Word gets around. Hooper allegedly had a substance abuse problem at the time which likely led to his dismissal from The Dark and 1982’s killer snake opus, Venom. Some reports say that Hooper entered an in-patient rehab facility immediately following Poltergeist. Whatever the facts are, it would be 3 years before Tobe Hooper made another movie and his career never really recovered.
June 1985 saw the release of one of the decade’s most expensive movies: Lifeforce. A $25 million sci-fi epic about naked space vampires invading London by way of Haley’s Comet, it was the first in a 3-picture deal with Cannon Films, a prolific B-movie factory that kept Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris gainfully employed throughout the 80’s. The film performed miserably, despite its flashy special effects and gratuitous nudity. It’s one of the craziest movies of the 80’s, undeniably cheesy and irresistibly stupid, though commercial prospects should have been questioned well before production began. Invaders From Mars, a remake of the 50’s classic, was another big-budget failure for Hooper and Cannon, barely grossing $4 million in summer 1986. It’s not a bad film—it actually scared me as a kid—it’s just an unremarkable one. The one-two punch of those failures forced Hooper into directing the long-awaited sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, a film he initially intended only on producing. Armed with a budget of $4 million, Hooper delivered a grossly outrageous film. Reviews were mostly negative but Chainsaw 2 performed decently, grossing $8 million in August 1986. All in all, Hooper’s three picture deal with Cannon yielded $23 million in box office receipts on $41 million in budgets. Not so impressive. Chainsaw 2 would be the last time that Hooper would have a film in wide theatrical release. Hooper’s post-1986 career has been unremarkable. He’s bounced between television and direct-to-video movies with mostly dismal results.
I believe that Tobe Hooper has at least one more good movie in him. He’s not a bad director. There are some good movies in his filmography. The Funhouse and Lifeforce are two great examples and I suggest you seek them out. The tide also seems to have changed on Chainsaw 2 which has undergone a rediscovery of sorts over the last decade. I can’t wait to be able to look forward to a Tobe Hooper film again but as I write this I’m watching his The Toolbox Murders (2004) which I’d never seen before. Unfortunately, I think it’s safe to keep waiting. . .
]]>Films are time capsules. They reflect the trends of the era: The fashion, the cars, and the political climate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the films of the 70s. Just as film was evolving, we were evolving as a nation. Presidential scandals are fairly commonplace now but in 1972 the nation was rocked by Watergate. That, coupled with the growing dissatisfaction with the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, created a climate of unrest and mistrust with the government and it wasn’t long before those feelings translated to film. Thus, a niche genre was created in 1974 that had a healthy life throughout the decade: The paranoid thriller.
In a paranoid thriller you don’t know who to trust. You don’t trust your friends, you don’t trust your government and you certainly don’t trust your lover. Your home isn’t safe. Maybe it’s been bugged. You don’t go to the police. Maybe they’re in on it. The goal is for the audience to share the paranoia and confusion of the main character.
The Conversation
The Parallax View
Three Days of the Condor
Other notable paranoid thrillers of the 70s include Marathon Man (1976), the little seen Winter Kills (1979) and, to a more abstract degree, the critically lauded Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). These films are fun relics of their era and every film listed here is a skillful thriller in its own right. For fans of 70s cinema, these are required viewing but for those interested in broadening their film palette, I suggest you take a walk through this brief but memorable sub-genre. Just make sure you’re watching with someone you trust…
Trailers:
The Conversation (1974)
The Parallax View (1974)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
All the President’s Men (1976)
Marathon Man (1976)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Winter Kills (1979)