The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Kamikaze 1989 (1982), directed by Wolf Gremm

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: 'White Eagle' by Tangerine Dream

       Originally this spot was going to go to a film by Werner Herzog, but in terms of this blog he’s in much the same predicament as Dario Argento. Arguably even worse, as Argento is known primarily for his horror films, while most of the Herzog films I’ve covered on this blog have a loose connection to genre films, if at all. Still we’ve still got a couple of his films to go before I consider retiring him, I definitely want to see Fitzcarraldo at some point, so in the meantime I’m going to tackle another German film that I’ve had my eye on for a few years now.

       Released in 1982, Kamikaze 1989 was directed by Wolf Gremm, written by Gremm and Robert Katz, and produced by Regina Ziegler, based on the 1964 novel “Murder on the Thirty-First Floor” by Swedish author Per Wahloo. It is the far-flung year of 1989, and West Germany is the richest country in the world. There’s no energy crisis, no pollution, no poverty, and all forms of media and entertainment are concentrated into a single place, known as the combine. A place that’s just received a bomb threat, threatening over 4000 employees. Enter Lieutenant Jansen (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), a loose cannon cop on the edge who never fails to get his man. Only there’s no man to get, the threat was just that. Or was it? As Jansen delves deeper into the mystery of this would-be bomber, the weeds just grow thicker and thicker. Assassination attempts, state secrets, underground comic books, and a secret 31st floor of the combine that may or may not exist. It can never just be a bomb threat, can it?

       A better writer than me could probably write about this film without making comparisons to Blade Runner, so I’ll go ahead and do it. Both films released in ‘82, both science-fiction films taking place in a futuristic dystopia (disguised as a utopia in Kamikaze’s case), both plots involving corporate greed and corruption, both protagonists being police officers, both have synth-heavy soundtracks you can see where I’m coming from right? However, while Blade Runner is a classic, at least the versions after the theatrical cut, Kamikaze 1989 doesn’t elicit the same kind of feelings. Rather its schizophrenic tone prevents me from taking any attempt at serious pathos seriously, and I’m finding it difficult to piece together what exactly the whole mystery and conspiracy was even about in the first place. An endorsement for multiple viewings I suppose, but if I didn’t like the egg salad the first time then I’m not going to order it for lunch the next day just to give the mayo a fair shake.

       I will give props to the world building and visual design, which like many sci-fi films is charming in the way that it covers for its shortcomings. The bizarre outfits like Jansen’s leopard-print suit, disturbing TV shows like a laughter competition that feels like a precursor to Robocop, the symbol of the police being a thumbs-up, it all speaks to a world that that has spread a thin veneer of progressiveness over a facist hellscape. There may be no pollution but no one really seems happy, so much as they are putting on an act of happiness. The opposite of Blade Runner in that regard, which was a world that looked miserable and had the population to match. A loud world filled with quiet desperation is Kamikaze 1989, a world that would make for a great running segment in 2000AD or Heavy Metal.

       Ultimately though I’m not giving Kamikaze 1989 the recommendation. I’ll concede that this could be a movie that gets better on repeated viewings, but it took me a while just to get through the one. Watch at your own discretion, but if you do be sure to take some notes. There’s definitely some kick-ass Halloween costumes sprinkled throughout.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Blade Runner Blues' by Vangelis

      Speaking of science fiction films that were panned at first but went on to become pop culture touchstones, we have Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. When it was first released in 1982 it was lambasted by critics (Siskel and Ebert to be specific), thanks in large part to an abysmal theatrical cut which featured narration by a bored Harrison Ford. Years later with the advent of director’s cuts Blade Runner was reevaluated, and the trend of opinion made a complete 180. Not only was it one of the top science fiction films of the decade, but it was also the definitive cyberpunk movie; The visual blueprint which inspired hundreds of movies, TV shows, games and so on, almost as much as the actual cyberpunk novels by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. So much like The Thing, a review feels like a formality more than anything, but sometimes you want to watch something you’ll know you like.

       Released in 1982, Blade Runner was directed by Ridley Scott, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples and produced by Michael Deeley through The Ladd Company, Shaw Brothers and the Blade Runner Partnership, based on the story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick. It’s the far-flung year of 2019, and Los Angeles is a fetid, shambolic mess of steel and concrete, but slightly more Japanese iconography than usual. Humanity has made it to the stars thanks in large part to the Tyrell Corporation and their Nexus 6 Replicants: bioengineered robots that are stronger, faster, and just as intelligent as human beings. The perfect tools, at least until they decide they don’t want to be tools anymore and start killing folk, which is probably why they aren’t allowed on Earth anymore. Although from the look of things they aren’t missing much.

       Enter Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former member of a special police unit known as Blade Runners, whose mission was to identify, track and ‘retire’ Replicants that had snuck onto the planet. Formerly former that is, as he is dragged back to the station for a new case. Six Replicants recently hijacked a transport ship and killed its crew in an attempt to reach Earth. Two perished, but the remaining four, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Pris (Daryl Hannah), Leon (Brion James) and Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) made it through and are now somewhere in Los Angeles. Deckard, as the best Runner in the game, is tasked with the job of retiring these rogue robots, but finding four people who don’t want to be found in a city of millions isn’t exactly an easy task. Especially when he meets Tyrell’s secretary Rachel, also a Replicant, and begins to question just where the line of humanity is drawn.

       Blade Runner is at its core a film noir, complete with a jaded cop protagonist in a gritty depiction of Los Angeles. As neon-drenched as this world is, it's still in shades of gray. Our lead is not only a cop but has returned to the job’s primordial essence as a slave catcher. The Replicants are slaves, human but ‘inhuman’ at the same time, so even when Roy and his group kill it’s not hard to empathize with them. The world of Blade Runner is not one of heroes after all, but one of victims and victimizers, where brutality is the only way to ensure some measure of justice (so basically just our world but with flying cars). Just as the cyberpunk literature of the time was taking cues from the violent, alienated world of hardboiled pulp writers like Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane it makes sense that the prototypical cyberpunk would take cues from the cinematic equivalent, and it makes sense for Scott, who had just a few years prior introduced science-fiction elements to a slasher film to great success. Film noir, like slasher horror, has beats and character archetypes that are easily digestible and recognizable for the audience. 

       As a film, Blade Runner’s biggest contribution to cyberpunk is, naturally, visual. The late 1970’s saw the rise of ‘lived-in’ worlds in science fiction, popularized by Star Wars and Alien, but none capture that quality quite like Blade Runner. Ridley Scott’s depiction of the future is positively nightmarish: Monolithic skyscrapers and corporate ziggurats which tower over ruined rain-soaked streets that are stuffed full to bursting with people and animals and probably more than a little fecal matter, as gigantic billboards float above the city droning out advertisements. The advancement of technology, long promised to be the liberator of mankind, take on a different guise in the context of the capitalist society: maintaining the power of the State (the flying car of the LAPD), expanding corporate profits and influence (the Replicants) and luxury goods (the artificial animals). And while there would certainly be other dystopian depictions of society in later sci-fi films, it is the surreal decay of Blade Runner that seems to have persisted in RPG’s, comics, and so on. Even things that aren’t quite science-fiction seem to have picked up some cues; While Batman: The Animated Series obviously had its origins in Tim Burton’s films, one can’t see that depiction of Gotham without being reminded of Ridley Scott’s 21st century Los Angeles.

       Onto the casting, and once again we have Harrison Ford as the leading man playing against type. The late 70’s and early 80s had seen Ford rocket into upper echelons of Hollywood by portraying roguish daredevils like Han Solo and Indiana Jones, but in Blade Runner he’s gone the completely opposite direction. Far from charismatic, Rick Deckard is a sullen, burn-out detective, positively robotic when compared to his quarry (no doubt intentional). Speaking of quarry we have Rutger Hauer as the Replicant leader Roy Batty, having had his Hollywood debut the previous year with the film Nighthawks, and despite not featuring in the film all that much until the end he quickly becomes the most engaging character in the entire story. Sean Young does some great work as Rachael despite getting shafted a bit on the story side of things, she easily has one of the more engaging arcs as someone whose entire life turned out to be a lie based on someone else’s life, but she ends up being more of a prop for Deckard’s story, which is a bit disappointing. We’ve also got Edward James Olmos as the enigmatic Gaff, M. Emmet Walsh, Brion James, James Hong, there’s some solid talent both behind and in front of the camera.

       On the score front, we had the legendary Ennio Morricone on the music for The Thing, and now for Blade Runner we have Greek composer Vangelis, who had previously done the composing for Chariots of Fire. The music of Blade Runner is split into three categories: the blocky 80s synth, the noir jazz, and a combination of the two that you could call tech-noir, which fade out of and into each other as the scenes change. As a fan of both blocky synth and noir jazz this is right up my alley, and while EDM and industrial would make up a major part of the ‘sound of cyberpunk’ later on, the tech noir of Vangelis helps to sell the world of Blade Runner as much as Ridley Scott’s directing.

       By the way, this review is based on The Final Cut edition of Blade Runner, which is the copy I own and which is currently on netflix as of this time of this writing. Having not seen the theatrical version I can’t tell you what all has been changed, aside from the removal of Deckard’s narration and most likely updated graphics, but aside from a couple weird editing choices that feel a bit forced, it looks and plays fine. I also don’t know how prevalent the other cuts are, but if you’ve gotta make a choice I’d say you’ll be fine with The Final Cut.

       Blade Runner gets the recommendation. Putting aside how influential it would become, at its core it’s just an interesting film. Interesting world, interesting characters, wrapped up in questions about what defines a human and the value of life. If you actually read this blog for some reason chances are you’ve already seen it, but if for whatever reason you haven't then put Blade Runner on the top of your queue immediately. And if you have seen it, watch it again. Not like you need an excuse to watch a good movie.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: The Thing (1982), directed by John Carpenter

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Who Goes There' by nARK

       This is the start of a little run that I like to call ‘Thunderbird takes the easy route’. Everyone knows about The Thing, everyone has talked about The Thing, so writing a review about The Thing is about as pointless as a circle drawn with a dull pencil. What can I say? That I was feeling a little bit nostalgic, that I wanted to get more horror in the Halloween marathon, that if I wanted to get a Carpenter film in this year that fit the theme it was between this and Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and that I wasn’t looking forward to stepping into the minefield of quality that is Chevy Chase’s later films? All of these things are true to some degree, and sometimes you just feel like watching a movie you know you’re going to enjoy. Not to mention that this gives me a great excuse to do Prince of Darkness next year, rounding out Carpenter’s loose ‘Apocalypse trilogy’, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. So here….we……go!

       Released in 1982, The Thing was written by Bill Lancaster, directed by John Carpenter and produced by David Foster and Lawrence Turman through The Turman-Foster Company, based on the novel “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell Jr. as well as the 50’s film The Thing from Another World. It’s the first week of winter in Antartica, 1982, and the staff of U.S. Science Station 4 are treated to quite the surprise when two members of the nearby Norwegian camp burst in, ultimately getting themselves killed in an attempt to kill a dog. A touch of snow madness perhaps, but a visit to the Norwegian camp soon sheds light on the matter: some time ago the Nords discovered an alien spacecraft buried in the ice, and with it an alien lifeform. With thoughts of immortality in the annals of science history they brought the alien to their camp, but this proved to be a mistake. You see this wasn’t a preserved specimen but a living creature in hibernation; An almost parasitic being which assimilates other living creatures and perfectly mimics not only their forms but their behavior as well, like some sort of hideous combination of the Predator and the Borg. The thought of such an abomination lurking with Station 4, murdering and then masquerading as friends and colleagues is bad, but not as bad as that creature making it to civilization. MacReady (Kurt Russell), Childs (Keith David) and the rest have to stop it here, but when anyone could be the Thing, then who can you trust?

       Easy. You don’t trust anyone.

       Watching The Thing again after a couple years I can sort of understand why it wasn’t a big hit in theaters, as it’s not a very ‘fun’ movie. There’s no attractive ladies, there’s no maretable mascot antagonist, no goofy, over-the-top deaths, the things that would come to define horror in the 80’s. It’s a dour story of isolation and paranoia which preys upon our very nature as group animals, and while the special effects are iconic in their complexity the actual violence tends to be quick and brutal. While there had been ‘downer’ science fiction movies before, Planet of the Apes comes to mind, as well as Soylent Green, neither of those films feel as aggressively fatalistic as The Thing. Even Alien, sci-fi’s slasher flick, gave the audience hope in the form of Ripley. Not so in the case of The Thing, where even in the earliest scenes there’s this sense of doom hanging in the air, that we’re seeing the Titanic five minutes before the iceberg.

       The term ‘Locevraftian’ gets tossed around a lot when taling about The Thing, and yeah, that fits. Beyond the shape shifting alien horror, the ethos of Lovecraft’s fiction was the insignificance of humanity in the face of the universe, and that’s the main thrust of the film. These aren’t Ridley Scott’s space truckers, they are scientists and g-men, men of intelligence and discipline, and none of it matters. They are out-maneuvered and outclassed at every turn by something that they can only barely understand, and they are fully aware of that fact. Whichmight be even more terrifying than the ‘confidence which shatters against the threat’ angle seen in films like Aliens. Confidence breeds hope, and these guys are just smart enough to know that they have none.

       Speaking of these guys, John Carpenter knows how to build a solid genre movie cast. Kurt Russell follows up his career defining role as Snake Plissken in Escape from New York with another career defining role as the no gimmicks needed chopper pilot MacReady, Keith David gets a career defining role in his second ever film appearance as Childs, and Wilford Brimley shows the world what he looks like without a mustache. The rest of the cast aren’t as well known, some successful TV and stage actors, but they do stand out without being distracting, and their visual distinctiveness helps to underscore the film’s question of ‘is this person real or is he the Thing?’ I wouldn’t trade anyone out.

       We also have the legendary Ennio Morricone on music, and who better to score scenes of barren lifeless tundra than the guy who scored scenes of barren lifeless desert? What I love most about Morricone’s work on this movie though is the slow shift in tone. The beginning is fairly standard, you got the strings, you got some synth, but as the film goes on and things grow more dire those strings pull back and the synth pushes forward, until it feels like the only thing you can hear is that pounding synth like the movie’s heart is in your ears. Synth-centric soundtracks weren’t uncommon in 80’s films, you could easily say that they were overused, but when they hit they hit, and the The Thing’s score was definitely a hit.

       Of course you can’t talk about The Thing without talking about the special effects, the brain-child of Carpenter collaborateur Rob Bottin with help from Stan Winston, among many other talented folk. It is the primordial ooze from which Cronenberg and the bulk of the body horror spawned from, and is arguably one of the few films with the label ‘Lovecraftian’ which from a visual standpoint actually lives up to that title. Overall I’d say those effects hold up, although there are definitely bits which look better than others. The scene where Windows is attacked in the rec room very quickly shifts from chilling to goofy as you watch the Thing puppet flop around like Kermit the Frog, and the head spider waddling around on the floor doesn’t strike fear into my heart like it used to in years past. In spite of the limitations however it’s the visceral quality of those practical effects that grounds The Thing in the real world, making it all the more disturbing for the audience, and while the puppetry can come across as goofy I prefer their dynamic energy when compared to the glacial stuff we would see years later with In the Mouth of Madness. I enjoy that movie but I think even Carpenter was aware of how bad those monsters were which is why you barely see them in the film proper.

       John Carpenter’s The Thing is an obvious recommendation. If you’re even slightly interested in science fiction and horror films, which I assume you are because you’re reading a genre movie blog, then you’ve already seen this movie, but if you somehow haven’t then it should immediately go to the top of the queue. Carpenter occasionally had problems pushing unique concepts without falling into the realm of camp, but The Thing rides that edge beautifully and as such is the most effective film of his boom period. Aside from Halloween maybe, but that’s a review for another year. Until then, watch The Thing, but be sure to avoid The Thing. The Thing sucks compared to The Thing.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Creepshow (1982), directed by George A. Romero

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Creep", by TLC

      We might have touched upon this before, but in spite of superheros being around since the inception of comic books, they were not always the sole interest of the medium. Indeed, there was a time not too long after what is called the ‘Golden Age’ of comics that superheros were barely worth the cheap paper it took to print them, and newspaper stands (back when they were still newspapers and comic books were still sold outside of comic shops) were packed instead with issues of Archie and Young Romance. Yet of all these other genre comics, the leader of the pack were the horror comics. House of Mystery, Vault of Horror, Chamber of Chills, these 4 color compilations of gruesome death and grisly murders in sharp detail shocked audiences across the country in the early 1950s, all the while raking in the cash. In fact they were too shocking: That whole ‘Seduction of the Innocent’ business, where that dude wrote a book about how Batman was trying to fuck Robin, wasn’t really about superheroes so much as it was about those horror comics, and so when comic companies adopted the Comics Code Authority in response horror comics kinda died off. You’d still see horror-based comics made afterwards of course, it’s not like the CCA was legally binding, but with this drive towards kid-friendly content came the introduction of the Silver Age, and that largely meant the financial end of anything that wasn’t wearing spandex or had magic alien powers. Or Uncle Scrooge I guess, people love that old fucking duck.

      While DC and Marvel had their own line of horror comics at the time, when talking about that period you have to mention EC Comics. EC was the home of Tales From the Crypt after all, which was revived as a film (which has been covered in a previous Marathon) and later became its very own multi-media franchise. Beyond that though, their comics just hit differently than other comics of the time; They looked better, went farther, said more than other companies did at the time. Which is probably why they basically collapsed after the CCA thing, but it’s that drive beyond simply selling funny books that can often resonate with readers. Perhaps even inspire someone to make a movie some thirty odd years later, which would inspire some weirdo on the internet to write a review about a couple more decades after that. Funny how things work out sometimes.

      Released in 1982, Creepshow was directed by George A. Romero (who made a couple zombie movies I doubt anyone has heard of) with a screenplay by horror maestro Stephen King, thus fulfilling our anthology and based-on-a-novel-by-Stephen-King movie quotas for the year. With a framing device centered around the guy from Night of the Creeps beating a child over a comic book, we then get a glimpse of the horror within: “Father’s Day”, a tale of familiar abuse and baked goods; “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”, in which a bumbling farmer stumbles across a bizarre meteor; “Something to Tide You Over”, a story about sandy beaches and psychotic ex-husbands; “The Crate”, a narrative detailing marital problems and mysterious boxes under the stairs; Capping off with “They’re Creeping Up On You!”, where a rich asshole/paranoid germaphobe receives a six-legged surprise. Each tale is more grim and ghastly than the last, each one a dagger of terror ready to pierce your heart at a moment’s notice. What more could you expect from a Creepshow?

      When it comes to anthology movies I think a lot of stock is placed in how much they push the overall theme. Tales From the Hood featured stories that dealt with issues relevant to those from ‘the hood’, it featured characters from ‘the hood’, it featured music people listened to in ‘the hood’, everything in that movie was built around that central theme. Spirits of the Dead on the other hand was an adaptation of Poe stories, but other than that there wasn’t really anything that connected the stories together beyond that, and I doubt the directors would have been interested in doing that anyway. In the case of Creepshow the idea is that it is an EC  horror comic brought to life, and that’s exactly what it tries to replicate. Lots of color saturation, scene transitions made to look like the panel layout of a comic, even incorporating some animation to go the extra mile. If you have never read a horror comic from EC Comics before, Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt, what have you, then this movie does a great job at showing you what made those comics so popular in the first place. Which might make it one of the better comic book movies ever made, admittedly not a great feat, but they did it.

      Of course you can’t have a horror film, especially one based on EC Comics (we’re close to drinking game levels of repetition here) without some proper make-up and special effects, and we’re in luck, because getting George Romero behind the camera means we also get Tom Savini, gore extraordinaire. You’ve got decomposing corpses, horrific monsters, bodies getting ripped apart, and buckets and buckets of fake blood. Originally I was going to criticize it for being a little too on the nose, like they don’t even try to hide the fact that this is shit is happening to a rubber-faced mannequin rather than a human being, but upon reflection I’ve come around to it. In Romero’s Dead films it made sense to treat the gore more realistically because the world it took place in was meant to be taken seriously (in spite of the satirical elements), but Creepshow is a movie based around comics books from the 50s, so having things come across as a tad goofy makes sense in the context that Romero and company are dealing in. 

      If a movie directed by George Romero and written by Stephen King wasn’t enough for audiences in 1982 though, they did folks a favor by throwing recognizable names up on the marquee. Not as big as the cast for Twilight Zone: The Movie a year later, but not a bad haul if you’re a fan of cult films: Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Neilsen, Ted Danson, Fritz Weaver, Tom Atkins, Ed Harris, Stephen King himself, even the kid who played Billy ended up becoming famous author Joe Hill. The best surprise of the bunch personally was Leslie Neilsen, who plays the psychotic ex-husband Richard in “Tide”. I know that he spent the bulk of his career doing dramatic work before moving onto comedy with Airplane!, but it still feels like a treat to see him drop the zaniness and get serious. I also have yet to see anything that Fritz Weaver was in that I didn’t like, there’s just something about his gaunt features and imposing stage presence that draws my eye to him.

      Speaking of Twilight Zone: The Movie, a common complaint that appears with that movie is also one that could apply to Creepshow, which is the choices of stories that were covered. There’s no cogent examination on the nature of man and our place in the universe when it comes to Creepshow, it’s all ironic deaths which may or may not include a monster. Which isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s a foundation of horror fiction, but it’s not until “Tide” that the film finds a good footing in that regard. “Father’s Day” goes for that shocker ending to draw you in but since I never had the time or inclination to care about the characters for that ending to really affect me. The second segment “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” ends strong, but mostly acts as Stephen King’s demo tape for Hee Haw. Had these two been spaced out I doubt there’d be an issue, but because they run right after the other it ends up grinding your gears. Not only thoughts of ‘man, is the entire movie going to be this ephemeral?’ running through your head, but ‘why didn’t they cut one of these out to beef up the other segments?’. Although the three main segments work well enough as they are, the fact that it is Stephen King writing the screenplay does lead to assumptions that the writing must be of a certain level of quality. I guess you could blame George a bit too, since he’s likely the one that organized the segments, but that doesn’t really factor into the stories the segments told, which is all King.

      As for the best segment, as I said I have a fondness for Leslie Neilsen and therefore I have a fondness for “Tide”, the inclusion of Ted Danson being the icing on the cake. “The Crate” is the most well-written; It has the set-up, the suspense, the gore, it’s allotted a certain amount of time and it fills it out expertly. “They’re Creeping Up On You” is pretty good as well, built around a solid performance by E.G. Marshall, but it pulled off something not too dissimilar to “Father’s Day” that soured the ending for me. If this story was adapted from an actual comic book, it literally felt like they tacked on a ‘this ain’t your daddy’s EC Comics!’ stinger at the end. I dunno, it might seem contradictory when I was just praising excessive 80’s gore effects a couple paragraphs up, but if the story you’re telling doesn’t have a place for it then don’t shoe-horn it in there for kicks.

      If you’re looking into anthology horror movies the first title out of my mouth is still going to be Tales From the Hood, but second place would go to Creepshow. While 80’s directors revisiting stuff from the 50s wasn’t exactly uncommon, in fact this film shares a release year with a rather famous remake by John Carpenter, to their credit Romero and King don’t try and reinvent the wheel, they just have fun with it. If you’re a fan of the Tales From the Crypt TV series from back in the day, Creepshow is the prototype of all that mess. Those who need their horror strictly business however, or who want to find out what all the Stephen King hype is about might want to look elsewhere. Maybe Locke & Key, now available on netflix?

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), directed by Peter Greenaway

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "If love's a sweet passion" by Henry Purcell

      Sometimes I think people have a way of dehumanizing the past. By that I mean we take a look at history and forget that those who made that history were human beings too, with the same kinds of wants and desires that we have today. Their outfits may have been a bit weirder and their pictures of naked women were more elaborate, but they were human beings. They love and hate and fight and fuck just like the rest of us, and sometimes they just fuck and fight. Which isn’t cool on a social level, but it does make good material for a movie, so here we are. Not the best intro paragraph, but it’s five in the morning right now and I’m spacing out.

      Released in 1982, The Draughtsman’s Contract was written and directed by Peter Greenaway, who had previously directed a number of short films before breaking into the feature-length game with The Falls two years previously. Anthony Higgins plays Mr. Neville, a draughtsman (as in architectural drawing) of some renown who is contracted by a Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) to compose a series of 12 drawings of her husband’s estate while he is on a two-week trip to Southampton. Initially reluctant, Neville is eventually convinced when he learns that part of the deal including enjoying Mrs. Herbert’s ‘company’. So he moves onto the estate and gets to work, crafting pictures of the world, throwing shade on the Herberts’ obnoxious son-in-law Mr. Talmann, enjoying some ‘company’, and it all seems to be working out (for Mr. Neville at least). However at a certain point things start to feel a bit... off. As Neville drafts these pictures, certain things here and there in the various locations begin to stand out. Objects which might otherwise not draw any attention, yet in the context of the drawing might lead a viewer to certain conclusions. Conclusions like perhaps the irascible Mr. Herbert never quite made it to Southampton, and that perhaps one of the residents was responsible. Which might not be the smartest thing to do when you’re stuck in a house miles away from anything or anybody else.

      It should come as no surprise that besides being a filmmaker, Peter Greenaway is an artist as well as an art fan, particularly of the Flemish period. The most obvious sign of that is in the set & costume design, where great care has been made to recreate the look and feel of the English aristocracy in the 1700s, warts and all. Yet in the grander sense the film is also about art; the depiction of things that at once seem simple yet give rise to deeper feelings. Even the dialogue feels that way, characters dancing around each other using simile, metaphor and innuendo as the crux, the context of their conversations bubbles under the surface. What matters isn’t reality, the intention of the artist, but rather what the observer decides the meaning is. Which definitely has no relevance in our modren society.

      The Draughtsman’s Contract certainly deals in concepts that we’re familiar with. Murder, revenge, machinations and maneuvering, all of which would fit right in with your average thriller but with a powdered wig thrown on it. Yet I think that wig weighs heavier on this film than it realizes, forming a barrier which insulates the film from its audience. There’s an overwhelming Englishness to the film, a choking miasma of Britishness that irritates the lungs of anyone not of Albion descent. Like if you’re from Surrey or something I’m sure you’ll hear them name drop William of Orange and nod your head in knowing satisfaction, but as someone born in the boorish, degenerate United States these overt cultural references go right over my head. I like Blackadder as much as the next guy, but I could also see this being a bit excessive.

      Excessive...I guess that’s why my mind tends to wander when writing about this movie. It looks nice certainly, the acting is fine, I understand the message it’s trying to convey (or at least the message I interpret from it), but it’s just tiring. It seems to take so long to really get anywhere, and all the while you’re untangling the gordian knot of syllables that they’re tossing at each other, that once things start moving forward it doesn’t hit as hard as it could have. Not to mention that Neville is kind of an ass, the Herberts are assholes, and I find that I don’t care who these pompous aristocrats fuck or kill. Wicker Man this is not. As long as the naked dude is fine, nothing else matters.

      There’s enjoyment to be had with The Draughtsman’s Contract, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to recommend it. Art is subjective though, so movies about art must be super subjective, and if you tend to be on the same wavelength as me when it comes to movies then an Edwardian period piece erotic thriller will probably appeal to you. Personally, I’m fine with modern day erotic thrillers.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Chan Is Missing (1982), directed by Wayne Wang

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Cantonese Boy", by Japan

      The relationship between Hollywood and Asian people over the years has been, unsurprisingly, about as rocky as it has been for every other ethnic minority that has resided in this country since the invention of film. Kowtowing servants speaking broken English, mysterious villains (epitomized by Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and parodied by John Carpenter’s Lo Pan) and ancient masters of the martial arts, with the added possibility of being the exotic love interest for our red-blooded American hero if you were an attractive enough woman, that was about the extent of what you could expect as an Asian actor back in those days. Hell, they weren’t even allowed to play characters where the whole gimmick was being of Asian descent! Charlie Chan? Played by longtime Swede Warner Oland, who also played the mystical Fu Manchu in three films for Paramount. Mr. Moto? Peter Lorre. Mr. Wong? Why that’s Mr. Frankenstein himself Boris Karloff, who also played Fu Manchu in 1932’s The Mask of Fu Manchu and General Wu Yen Fang in 1937’s West of Shanghai! I know that people of a certain ethnicity playing people of other ethnicities isn’t exactly uncommon in cinema history, in ways that range from the innocent to the blatantly offensive, but it’s still kind of strange to me that ‘white guy playing East Asian detective’ was its own subgenre for a hot minute there. It’s such a bizarrely specific thing for folks to have latched onto for a while, I can’t think of an equivalent.

      Which brings us right around to Chan Is Missing, directed by Wayne Wang and written by Terrel Seltzer, which I believe I found out about from an old Siskel & Ebert video. Wood Moy stars as Jo, a Chinese-American guy living in the heart of San Francisco’s famous Chinatown district. One day, in a bid for more cash and independence, Jo and his buddy Steve lend some money to their mutual friend Chan Hung so that he can get them a cab driver’s license. Several days later however, and Chan has gone missing. He had gotten into a car accident a few days prior, and ever since then he had completely vanished, seemingly without a trace. For varied reasons, not the least of which is getting back that money, but they soon discover that tracking Chan down is going to be a lot more difficult than they realized. It turns out that Chan Hung knew a lot of people, and he was a lot of different things to those different people. An eccentric, a struggling immigrant, a failure, a political agitator. Maybe even a murder suspect? A lot questions and not too many answers as Jo and Steve work their way through the briarpatch that is their friend’s life, about themselves and their own identity, as they try to figure out why Chan is missing.

      This probably goes without saying, but Chan Is Missing is not a Charlie Chan or a Mr. Wong movie, where the Asian protagonist spouts off some vaguely philosophical one-liners while someone rings a gong in the background. This is a film that takes place in Chinatown, made by and with Chinese-Americans, and it deals in issues that affected Chinese-Americans at the time, and still do today. Issues like racism, certainly, but also that of immigration, the difficulties of cultural assimilation, the tension between supporters of the PRC and Taiwan, and ultimately what it means to be a Chinese-American. Heavy stuff, and yet Chan never feels like a particularly heavy film. Even as we delve deeper into the mystery of Chan Hung’s disappearance and all the things that it dredges up it feels less like we’re falling into a pit and more that we’re walking through a foggy marsh, where detail and definition fades into the haze. What is the truth? What is the answer? They’re there, you can find them, but everything’s so hazy you might find yourself walking in circles.

      Stylistically then Chan Is Missing fits right in with film noir standards like The Third Man or what have you, with a couple of touches, a POV shot here and there, that pushes things more firmly the experimentation of the French New Wave directors like Godard. Whether or not it all works is probably an arguable point, I think the film is at its best when it blends this kind of grounded, proto-Clerks realism with touches of film noir, and the moments when Wayne Wang decides to change things up a bit can feel a bit forced. He doesn’t go to that well that often, which is why it’s a bit weird when they do show up, but I wouldn’t say it detracts from the viewing experience.

      Anything else I want to mention…? I liked the choice of songs here, especially the Chinese-language covers of rock songs. I thought the acting was good, the actors drew you into their world quite naturally. Both Wood Moy (who played Jo) and Marc Hayashi (who played Steve) didn’t really have a long career in film, appearing in only a handful of movies, but I think they do a good job as leading men here. I also like how they’re both dressed like they’re 60 year old male truckers, but that might have been the style of the time. Oh, and I 100 percent want that Samurai Night Fever T-shirt they show off too. That looked cool as hell.

      Ultimately, I’m giving Chan Is Missing the recommendation. It’s certainly rough around the edges, which should be expected with a lack of budget and a relatively inexperienced production (this was Wayne Wang’s second ever film, released seven years after his debut), but it is unique not only in its presentation but in its cultural perspective, so I’d say it deserves some time in the spotlight. While I’ve covered several Chinese films before, this is the first time I’ve seen a Chinese-American film, and it’s made me interested in more. After watching Chan Is Missing, maybe you’ll feel that way too.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Tenebrae (1982), directed by Dario Argento

  The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Tenebrae", by Goblin   

     Italy is a country with a lot of problems. The government is rife with political corruption, organized crime has a stranglehold on the economy and key business leaders, their army has only been occasionally successful in their short history (not successful enough to prevent several invasions on their own soil, regional attitudes have been consistently poor since the country’s rather haphazard creation, and they kind of invented fascism. Not what you might call the best track record, but as bad as Italy can and has been, the numerous contributions to the arts and sciences that have come from that region is undeniable. In the past it was artists like Michelangelo and Da Vinci, and in the modern age it is directors like Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone, with a fine collection of artists, musicians, authors and actors in between. I don’t know what it is about shitty places to live, but they always seem to produce the most interesting stuff. Look at New York in the 70s, or San Francisco at any point in history. The shittier your living conditions, the more people will like your art.

      Italy is no stranger to the horror genre, whether in film or otherwise. In fact the horror subgenre of giallo in Italian film was originally a literary genre, sort of like the pulp fiction novels of the American past, characterized by spicing up your normal mystery story with sex and horror. There have been many great giallo directors over the years, like Lucio Fulci (Zombie, The Black Cat) and Mario Bava (Black Sunday, Baron Blood), but for the purposes of the marathon I’ve decided to go with one of the most popular Italian horror directors, Dario Argento. Although his success in American theaters has been spotty at best, Argento forged a cult following through his frequent use of explosive violence and explicit sexuality in films that blurred the line between camp and horror. Plus he packed his soundtracks with Italian prog rock, which should be enough to get any music hipster at least marginally interested. You’d never see Cronenberg putting YYZ in one of his movies.

      A plane touches down in Rome. On it is Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa), a popular mystery novelist, whose latest book Tenebre was released a fews weeks previous and has been quite successful. The plan, according to his agent (John Saxon) and his personal assistant, is to do the talk show circuit as is expected and generally try to get some rest & relaxation in a foreign land. However, when a series of murders start occuring that fit the murders in Tenebre, every victim a young woman, throat slashed with a straight razor, Peter Neal is the first suspect. While a vicious killer stalks the streets of Rome for fresh victims, Peter Neal decides to start his own investigation to find out the answers on his own. Sometimes though, you’re better off in ignorance…

      Tenebre kind of feels like the Stephen King story that never was (although I guess there is a King book turned movie called The Dark Half which is sort of like this, so whatever), it’s suspenseful but still feels a bit too cheesy to take seriously at the same time.  That being said, Argento still managed to hold my attention throughout by crafting a mystery just bizarre enough that you wonder where’s he going next. The nudity and ultraviolence doesn’t hurt either. If you’re looking for a reason to avoid traveling to Rome this Halloween, why not try out some of Tenebre?

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Conan the Barbarian (1982), directed by John Milius

     

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "An Age Undreamed Of", by Basil Poledouris

     A few months back, on the suggestion of a friend, I decided to watch a documentary that’s currently floating around on Netflix. The documentary, Milius for those potentially interested in seeing it for themselves, details the life and career of writer & director John Milius, from the beginning of his career in the 70s to the present. Although Milius is not what you might call a ‘household name’, his body of work speaks for itself. Dirty Harry, Dillinger, Red Dawn, Jaws, The Hunt for Red October and most famously Apocalypse Now, all films that John Milius had a hand in, whether it was through writing, directing or both. Unfortunately, his controversial attitude and unwillingness to compromise, unlike his friends Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, eventually lead to his ostracization from Hollywood and the burying of his legacy. At least we can still watch the movies he did get to make, and in doing so honor the man’s work. It’s the ultimate honor for a director I suppose.

      You can tell a lot about a man from the movies he makes, and John Milius is no exception. He’s an American classicist to coin a phrase, a devotee of the idealized man popularized by figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway in the early 20th century. A old-school type of conservative, who envisions an absolutist world not judged in terms of good vs evil, but ‘me vs the world’. Often this took the form of gun-toting vigilantes, such as Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry or the Wolverines in Red Dawn, but there was an occasion when Milius went beyond gangsters or soldiers and settled firmly into the realms of fantasy. It was a blockbuster, and the first film to establish Arnold Schwarzenegger as an action star. It’s the days of high adventure, and the film is Conan the Barbarian.

      Based on the pulp novels of Robert E. Howard (a pen pal of H.P. Lovecraft, by the way), Conan the Barbarian tells the tale of Conan of Cimmeria,  a frozen land on the ancient continent of Hyperborea. When he is but a child, young Conan sees his parents and his village killed before his eyes by black-cloaked raiders, whose leader had piercing eyes and a pendent of intertwining serpents. Growing up as a slave, Conan is forged by back-breaking labor and mortal kombat into a warrior unmatched in the martial arts. After escaping from his captors, the now adult Conan forges his own path, searching for the raider who killed his people and his parents. The raider, as it turns out, is the mystical Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), leader of the nihilistic snake cult that is infesting the land like a plague. The legend of Conan the Barbarian shall be written in blood, and his inevitable clash with Thulsa Doom shall be its first chapter. So it is said, so shall it be.

     Much like the world of his friend George Lucas’ Star Wars, the world of Milius’ Conan is enormous and teeming with life. It’s a world from out of time, a world of kings and wizards, where evil spirits stalk the night and the only thing you can rely on are your wits and your blade. It’s Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Siegfried, the updated model of the old heroic myth. Well maybe it isn’t as big as all that, but it is a pretty good movie, and if you like bloody tales of revenge in an ancient mystical land, try putting on Conan the Barbarian this Halloween. You just might like it.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), directed by Nicholas Meyer

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Difference Between Us", by Leonard Nimoy

     So the last time we discussed Star Trek in the Marathon, which was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I believe I said something along the lines of not being sure whether or not I was really a Trek fan. After all, I was a fan of The Next Generation and mostly of TOS (still am), but I never really felt much of a desire to explore much beyond that. I wasn’t very interested in the games or the expanded universe, I didn’t really feel a need to watch the films beyond the first,and I had read enough bad press about Enterprise and Voyager that I was probably better off marathoning the last two season of Sliders instead (don’t try that at home folks). I dunno, is it just a symptom of our modern times that to be a fan of something, you must absorb all the media connected to that thing? Is sitting through Voyager some kind of test to prove my opinion is worthwhile, even if I would ultimately regret the experience? Is my enjoyment of Trek invalid, am I a lesser person because I work within a certain amount of material and content to leave things at that? The answer would generally be no, but you never can tell in these modern times. You either love it or you hate it, and no one is allowed to hear the end of it until everyone is sick of it.

     Still, since I’m close to finishing up Deep Space 9 and thus closing the book on Star Trek for the time being, I decided to try out what is probably the most well-regarded film in the series: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer, who also directed Time After Time earlier on this list. Normally I try to avoid things like that, having multiple films by the same director on the same list, but it is the unexpected bits of whimsy that make the days bearable, am I right?

     In the entire Federation of Planets, there are few names that are respected as highly as that of James Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise. It’s been years since those halcyon days however, and the aging Admiral can’t help but wonder if the advancement of his career was worth giving up command of a starship, of the Enterprise for the safety of a desk. This realization happens to coincide with the discovery of a blast from Kirk’s past: Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically-engineered megalomaniac from Earth’s past (1996, to be precise) who had been thawed out by the Enterprise crew, defeated, and left on a deserted planet to make do with what he could find. Which might have worked, if only the planet next door hadn’t exploded and turned Khan’s planet into a wasteland, which ultimately lead to his wife’s death. Khan is not a forgive and forget kind of guy, and it doesn't take long before he procures a ship and starts on his path of vengeance. A path that involves a mysterious device known as Project Genesis, a fantastical that would be able to bring life to dead worlds and death to living ones. It’s up to Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise to stop Khan, get back Project Genesis and save the known galaxy one more time. It’s not like they aren’t used to it by now.

     Although they are both Trek films, in many ways Wrath of Khan is a sharp contrast to its predecessor, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Whereas TMP could be considered a more traditionally minded science fiction film, heavily influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey and Golden Age sci-fi, WoK is very much an action movie, packed full of all the explosions and starship combat (which is remarkably like fighting in a submarine) that you might have missed. Similarly, the story in Khan is also far more streamlined and far more direct than it was in the original, which was much more slower-paced and interested in building atmosphere. Simplifying the ploy and focusing on action makes Khan a relatively easier film to get into than TMP, and I can see why pop culture would gravitate towards it as the ‘first good Trek film’, even if I don’t quite agree with it. Personally, I see Wrath of Khan as more of a companion piece: Star Trek: The Motion Picture represents the wonder of discovery, the drive for knowledge and understanding that has pushed humanity to progress further and become better (hopefully) as the years go by. Wrath of Khan looks back at our past, a history of war and hatred and self-destruction that needs to be overcome for us before life can begin to move forward (or so I theorize). The metaphysical(some might say spiritual) and the corporeal, both channeled through Gene Roddenberry’s idealistic vision in the potential of mankind, and the importance of working for the future. And maybe I’m at optimist at heart, because that’s how I like to view it, instead of believing they dumbed things down in order to sell more tickets.

     Wrath of Khan has its flaws, of course. The titular Khan has a tendency to come off as a bit of a dunce despite being a genetically enhanced super-genius (that’s called situational irony folks) and it doesn’t really feel like they make full use of the TOS cast aside from Kirk. Even Spock, despite being one of the most important characters in the film, feels far more ephemeral than you might expect given what happens. Maybe they didn’t really feel the need to do anything like that, because just getting to see the original cast was enough? I dunno, it’s not really a damning criticism, but it was obvious enough that I noticed it.

     If you’re looking for a film that captures that unique beauty of the late 70s/early 80s sci-fi aesthetic without getting bogged down too many messages and themes, then it’s hard to go wrong with Wrath of Khan. You don’t even have to watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture if you don’t want to, since there’s nothing that carries over plot wise as far as I can recall, so there’s no excuse not to see it. Unless you have an extreme phobia of insects crawling into your ear canal, but that only happens a couple times, and they only linger on it squirming into a person’s brain for a couple seconds at most. It’s fine.

     Totally fine.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: The Dark Crystal (1982), directed by Jim Henson & Frank Oz

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "The Dark Crystal Overture", by Trevor Jones

     What with all the science fiction movies I tend to highlight, both in the Marathon and otherwise, you might think I have a problem with it’s sister genre fantasy. It’s true that I’m generally not a fantasy guy, but it doesn’t mean I’m unfamiliar with it. I’ve read Lord of the Rings, Earthsea, The Black Cauldron, Dragonriders of Pern, and even modern fantasy stories like Harry Potter and the Dresden Files. So I know all about high elves, low dwarves and middle men, all right? The ways of wizardry are not foreign to me. I just prefer science fiction, and since sci-fi and horror tend to be so closely linked, that’s usually where my loyalties lie. 

     The 1980s, aside from being a great time for sci-fi movies, was also pretty awesome for fantasy movies too. The Princess Bride, Legend, Willow, Labyrinth, Conan the Barbarian..if you could dress up a few dudes in robes and swords, rotoscope some lightning effects and film it in the woods or some dank ass castle, then you had a fantasy film on your hands. The sky was the limit really, because at the time investing in a movie didn’t run the risk of bankrupting the entire film industry. Want to do some Lord of the Rings ripoff? Go ahead. Want to do a mind-bending child’s dream like Time Bandits? Why not? Throw as much crap on the wall and see what sticks. Hollywood gets some breathing and keep that hunger for improvement and we, the consumers, get a variety of things to choose from. Which is exactly what I like, and it’s what’s best for business in my opinion.

     Case in point: The Dark Crystal, the brainchild of Jim Henson, who you might recognize as the guy responsible for the Muppets and Sesame Street, otherwise known as the foundations of your educational development. Here we an example of high fantasy at its most blatant: a fantastical world filled with inhuman creatures (including the short unassuming creatures that you would never expect to be the heroes that turn out to be the heroes), some kind of mystical MacGuffin that somehow keeps the world from shitting itself that the hero must journey to find, and the horrible evil force that would be the obstacles for our hero to overcome (in this case the Skeksis, the despicable vulture-like counterparts to the wise and noble Mystics). Pretty basic stuff really, except every single character, every single creature in fact, is a puppet. Which may not seem like a big deal, in this world of computer generated images, but it’s really only a film that could have been made then. No studio in Hollywood today would even consider throwing money at a movie that features no actual humans in it, and certainly not enough to really do it justice. In the wild & wonderful 80s however, it was totally possible, and it looks pretty damn impressive. Not perfect, Jen and Kira in particular seem rather unexpressive compared to the rest of the cast, but still a level of craft that defines why Jim Henson, Frank Oz and the rest are considered masters of their craft.

     If you were a kid who grew up with the fantasy movies of the past, like The Neverending Story, The Black Cauldron or even the Bakshi Lord of the Rings and you haven’t seen it already, then you should place it on your queue. If you’ve got kids (very kid-friendly Marathon this year, I guess), then this is prime material for expanding their horizons. And if you don’t fit either category, watch it anyway. It’s really cool.