The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Stand By Me (1986), directed by Rob Reiner

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Stand By Me' by John Lennon

       It would’ve been pretty ironic if the year I decided to do an all adaptation edition of the Marathon that I just didn’t have Stephen King, huh? Hilarious even. Good thing we didn’t do it then, because this is a mature, adult-oriented blog dedicated to serious film criticism. No jokes should be made, not even unintentionally, or this noble art would be forever tainted. So yet another Stephen King adaptation, but rather than doing something obvious like Lawnmower Man or The Langoliers, how about we cover something a little more obscure?

       Released in 1986, Stand By Me was directed by Rob Reiner, written by Bruce A Evans and Raynold Gideon and produced by Evans, Gideon and Andrew Scheinman through Act III Productions, based on the 1982 novella “The Body” by Stephen King. Gordie Lachance brings us to the town of Castle Rock, Oregon in the year 1959, when he (as played by Wil Wheaton) was 12 years old, and he and his buddies Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Verne (Jerry O’Connell) whiled away the summer days before the big move to junior high. One day Verne arrives at the treehouse and reveals that he had overheard two teenage tough talk about discovering a body in the woods a town or so over while stealing a car, likely that of Ray Brower, a local boy who had recently gone missing. This news excites the boys -- if they were able to locate the body and subsequently report it to the authorities, they’d be hailed as heroes! So that’s exactly what they decide to do, gathering their supplies and making the long journey to the corpse of Ray Brower. A literal journey, with all its trials and tribulations, and one of self-discovery, over the course of one crazy weekend in the summer of 59.

       While nowadays the American 1950’s is almost universally reviled as a period of bigotry, violence and sterile social conformity (which it was, to be fair), in the 1980s the shine had not quite left the rose. Films like American Graffiti and Grease and TV shows like Happy Days had not quite faded from the public consciousness yet, and bands like The Stray Cats were able to find success on the charts thanks to the rise of MTV and the thorough pilfering of the Atomic Age aesthetic. Given that, and the comedic bent to Rob Reiner’s creative work up to this point, a potential viewer might assume that this would also be a comedic nostalgia trip, a prototypical edition of The Sandlot. Although Gordie’s recollection of that time is ultimately positive however and there are definitely moments of humor, it is also made clear that this is in spite of the abuse that the boys go via their parents, other adults, and teenagers like Ace and his gang. They were ‘free’ in a Peter Pan esque way that many kids today couldn’t fathom, able to smoke cigarettes and carry guns and walk around unfettered by the need for supervision, but they did so under an atmosphere of ugly craziness that would become the standard in the 1970’s. Even the soundtrack, filled with the hits of the day by Buddy Holly and The Chordettes, seems almost Lynchian in the way it juxtaposes the saccharine ideal with the harsh reality. All of which would seem to place Stand By Me firmly in the latter category, but I think Stephen King manages to capture the human element that is often dismissed in recreations of the period.

       Stand By Me then is a coming-of-age story in two forms: the literal journey to Ray Brower’s corpse, overcoming the trials and tribulations set before them and so establishing their independence, and the emotional journey where they are forced to confront the trauma in their lives. Such a story requires a strong cast to do it justice and that’s precisely what Rob Reiner did, putting together a cast of kids that I don’t think I’ve ever seen matched in subsequent kids movies. All four leads put in great work here, you can see why they all went on to have some degree of success in Hollywood later on, but I have to give the nod to River Phoenix here. He hadn’t even hit puberty and yet he had such an impressive command of the tragic core of the character; Wise beyond his years, playing the role of best friend, surrogate brother and mentor all at once, but at the end of the day he’s still just a kid, and so those moments when he does show vulnerability, are all the more impactful because of it. So while Stand By Me is about Gordie dealing with the death of his brother, it’s about his relationship with Chris and how vital our bonds with our friends can be, especially when we’re young. 

       As far as directing goes, Stand By Me is simple but effective. Reiner isn’t reinventing the wheel here, but what he does is very direct and evocative, which is what a story like Stand By Me calls for, dealing as it does with memory and the perspective of children. I especially like the train scene: a dangerous set piece in any other film, but from the perspective of children seems downright apocalyptic.

       Stand By Me easily gets the recommendation. Stephen King built his career on horror and the supernatural, and although the macabre premise of ‘children looking for a corpse’ would seem to fit right into his wheelhouse, his exploration of guilt, abusive relationships and its impact on developing minds proved he was more than a genre writer. Similarly Rob Reiner would cement his position in the upper echelon of directors of the period, a streak that would last all the way up the mid 90’s, when North would finally derail his momentum. Kiefer Sutherland also proved he could play a good psycho, which certainly came in handy when he would play a psycho years later on TV. So definitely a film worth putting on this Halloween, but maybe don’t try and pull a double feature with The Goonies or Monster Squad, else the emotional whiplash might hurt something fierce.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Class of Nuke’em High (1986), directed by Richard W. Haines, Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Nuke Em High" by Ethan & The Coup

       It’s been a while since we’ve taken a look into the wacky world of Troma, hasn’t it? Now granted that’s pretty easy to do, given that many of the films associated with Troma Entertainment are Z-grade schlock who try so hard to be camp that it swings back around and becomes embarrassing. I can’t really hate on them though; Besides the fact that shitting on Troma for being cheap garbage is like shitting on the sun for being bright, they were there when a young Thunderbird was on the cusp of my writing-about-movies destiny, and so nostalgia is a definite. Perhaps the genre-centric direction of the blog is because of Troma? Nah, probably not, but in my flurry of movie selection whimsy I decided to rewatch a Troma film that I actually remember being pretty good. Then again anything looks good after you’ve sat through Sgt. Kabukiman, so I guess we’ll see if the memory holds up.

       Released in 1986, Class of Nuke’em High was written by Richard W. Haines, Lloyd Kaufman, Mark Rudnitsky and Stuart Strutin, directed by Haines, Kaufman and Michael Herz, and produced by Herz, Kaufman and James Treadwell. Gil Brenton stars as Warren Brandt, your typical white-meat American teenager just trying to keep his nose clean and maybe get some from his girlfriend Chrissy (Janelle Brady) while attending Tromaville High School. Tromaville High, too, is your typical white-meat American High School; It has its overly-hormonal teenagers, its gangbangers, and it just so happens to be a quarter mile downwind from a nuclear power plant so shoddily maintained they think OSHA is Oprah’s cousin. Sure there’s toxic waste bubbling out of the ground and maybe a kid melted that one time, who can possibly worry about that when there’s parties and unprotected sex to be had? When that nuclear sludge gets into the weed supply however, it sets into motion a chain of events that could spell disaster for the students and faculty of Tromaville High School. More like Nuke’em High, am I right? Yes I am, because that’s the title of the movie.

       There was of course no shortage of high school comedies in the 80’s, that was practically its Golden Age, but of course Troma’s whole gimmick is about giving a 10 when it calls for a 5. You ask for a punk and Nuke’em High gives you the cast of Mad Max, you call for a death scene and Nuke’em High has people getting their heads exploded, and their parties look like something out of a Fellini movie (their words, not mine). Much like its sister film The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke’emHigh has this kind of chaotic screwball energy to it where it never makes the audience wait too long for something to happen, and even in the ancillary scenes there’s usually something going on in the background to keep your eyes busy. If Animal House were written by the folks of Mad Magazine, that’s what this movie feels like.

       The other thing that connects it to The Toxic Avenger and separates it from a lot of the Troma fare is that overall it’s a well made film. While intentionally crude it never fully leaps into the cold waters of bad taste like Kabukiman, and while presenting itself as dumb it manages to skewer the romanticization of high school and nuclear energy policies in a way that hits more than it misses. This is due partly to the material and also the cast, who might not be Oscar-worthy but always feel exactly like the model version of their respective stereotype. I especially liked the late Pat Ryan here as the villainous plant manager Mr. Finley. He played a similar character in The Toxic Avenger a few years before and to me he was as big a part of that movie’s success as Toxie himself. A proper B-movie actor, who also kind of looks like early MadTV era Will Sasso.

       It wouldn’t be a proper B-movie without some of them there special effects, and in true Trome fashion Nuke’em High delivers on that. Gushing pustules of mysterious fluid, distended body parts, exploding heads, all the things you shouldn’t type into a pornhub search bar in a way that looks like actual time and effort was put in. We even get a radioactive semen monster (watch and find out) at the end that I think could stand with any other sci-fi or horror movie of the day. Of course you never actually see the monster do anything besides moving its head, any kills being performed by claws and a tail that conveniently arrive from off screen, but the overall design is solid and shows Troma’s dedication to the absurd despite the film already being ridiculous enough.

       I also unironically love the soundtrack. The Smithereens had released their debut album Especially for You the year this film came out, and it’s surreal to see the group responsible for the proto-’Come As You Are’ ballad ‘Blood and Roses’ having a cameo in a Troma film for some reason. The Nuke’em High theme song is also a banger; It was going on 10 years since I had last seen this film before the review, and yet I still found myself humming the tune from time to time, it’s almost annoying how catchy it is.

       Class of Nuke’em High is schlock. Troma markets it as schlock, and in both form and content its schlock. Yet despite being rough around the edges I never found myself bored at any point. It’s entertaining; the kind of gonzo film that through our modern lens we envision all of 80s pop culture to be, though the truth is a lot more mundane. The Class of Nuke’em High gets the recommendation: it’s definitely not a movie for the kids or the easily offended, but if you have a couple friends and more than a couple beers over one night and pop this in I think you’ll manage to have a good time. As long as you avoid the weed that is.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Labyrinth (1986), directed by Jim Henson

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Magic Dance" by David Bowie

       As a cult movie blog owner, I’ve gone on and on about how good the 1980s was, at least in that small, incredibly niche field. I mean I’ve covered plenty of 80s movies over the years, I haven’t counted in a while but I’d say they cover a significant portion of my total reviews, and I still haven’t even scratched the surface. Even discounting those films that I’ve seen but are so ubiquitous that covering them seems unnecessary, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, there’s still enough there to cover a Marathon on its own. Like shit dude, what about The Neverending Story? What about Wargames? Romancing the Stone? The Breakfast Club? That’s a lot of nonexistent money being left on the table.

       So why not cross one of those 80s also-rans off the list already, before I change my mind and pick some random bullshit instead? Released in 1986, Labyrinth was directed by Muppets master Jim Henson, written by Monty Python member Terry Jones (with assistance by Henson, Laura Phillips, Elaine May and George Lucas), story by Henson and Dennis Lee and produced by Eric Rattray through Henson Associates Inc. and Lucasfilm. Jennifer Connelly plays Sara, a young girl whose dreams of the theater are consistently thwarted by her stepmother and her infant brother Toby. One night, after being saddled with babysitting duty yet again, Sara recalls a line from her favorite story, “The Labyrinth”, and unwittingly wishes for goblins to show up and take Toby away. She immediately regrets that decision when said goblins do show up to take her brother away, and she stands face to face with Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie). Jareth offers Sara gifts in exchange for her brother’s life, but when she refuses he transports her into the mystical world of Labyrinth. If she can reach the Goblin King’s castle at the center of the maze in 12 hours then Toby shall be saved, Jareth says, but if she doesn’t then Toby shall be changed into a goblin and be lost forever. Labyrinth is a bizarre place where tricks and traps lie around every corner, so Sara is going to have to rely on her wits and the help of the friends she makes along the way. Yet Jareth is behind every corner, watching and scheming...

While Jim Henson was and still is firmly connected with the concept of children’s entertainment, the man himself considered his work more universal and so capable of handling something darker in tone. We saw it in The Dark Crystal but Labyrinth is arguably a better example of that idea. Labyrinth is not your typical fairy tale world. It is a decaying mess caught between the medieval and the modern, made up of crumbling ruins, stinking bogs and trash-covered landfills and full of creatures that run the gamut from ugly to sleep paralysis demons. Yet in spite of this nightmarish setting Labyrinth is still in the fairy tale mold; There is danger but not necessarily death, there is risk but it is principally in how Sara goes about overcoming these challenges. Not unlike the novel Alice in Wonderland really, which I believe is a direct influence on this film (and right up Terry Jones’ alley), a story which was literally written for a child but which has gained a significant older following since its publication.

I mentioned The Dark Crystal earlier, and I must say it’s wild how the films apparently had around the same budget and yet Labyrinth looks so much better. The cinematography and set design builds Labyrinth into this distorted, almost German Expressionist dreamland so well, it really feels like Henson and his crew were pushing themselves to try new things, and the amount and variety of  puppetry and practical effects are incredible. Which isn’t to knock Dark Crystal, but one of my contensions with that film was that some of the puppets were simple or non-expressive, particularly in regards to the protagonist. In Labyrinth each creature Sara comes across feels like a unique, living thing. Even the goblins, who are the most generic given their numbers still have a degree of variety to them that makes them stand out. Labyrinth is certainly more Muppets-esque than Dark Crystal, so you might give the latter the point for originality, but I believe Labyrinth accomplishes what it’s trying to do much easier than Dark Crystal. That wall of hands alone might have put it over the top.

        Of course you can’t talk about Labyrinth without talking about David Bowie, there’s a good chance that many people if they know anything about Labyrinth at all it’s because of Bowie’s role as Jareth the Goblin King. That Bowie’s appearance as Jareth has improved the film’s longevity doesn’t make it a good performance. As it was with The Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie playing some kind of glam rock trickster god who plays with glass balls and turns into an owl seems like a natural fit, but he never seems all that comfortable around a camera and it leads to a rather wooden performance. Something which Jennifer Connelly suffers from a tad in the beginning, but I think she manages to mellow out as the film goes on. Jareth is more entertaining  to watch than Bowie’s character in The Man Who Fell to Earth certainly, as you’d expect from the living answer to the question ‘what if Snow White’s wicked stepmother dressed like Khan from Star Trek II?’, but in a one-dimensional type of way. When they do attempt depth, like with the Sara/Jareth romance angle, it just doesn’t take. Not because it’s creepy, which it is, but because Bowie doesn’t sell it at all. He’s stoic or haughty, and that's about it. To say Labyrinth is Bowie’s best film work would be technically accurate, but that’s about all you could say.

       You get somebody like David Bowie in your film and you expect to get some songs, and so it is here, but my feelings on Bowie’s musical contributions to Labyrinth aren’t that much different than his acting ones: the idea of it is cooler than the reality. As someone who prefers Hunky Dory and Young Americans over 90 percent of the rest of Bowie’s catalog I’m biased, but I didn't get anything out of his overwrought 80s ballads on this soundtrack. ‘Dance Magic’ was the only one that stood out to me, a jaunty pop number with a touch of world music to give it some character, which was likely the opinion of the filmmakers as well considering they used it three times. The ‘voodoo’ call and response part of the song is lame as hell though, even when Bowie is singing it with a Muppet it’s still lame as hell. Thumbs up to Trevor  Jones conversely, who composed the score for this film as well as the score for The Dark Crystal, Dark City and Time Bandits. The man puts in solid work. 

       These are the things one must keep in mind when watching Labyrinth, that’s it’s not really about pathos and it’s not really looking to explain how The Labyrinth exists in the real world or anything like that. The darker tone may lead you to believe that it would be, but no, this is a fairy tale where dogs ride other dogs like horses and rather than being killed, folks are dipped into a swamp that smells really bad. It’s absurd, you’d expect nothing less from Terry Jones working with Muppets, but it doesn't go beyond that.Your ability to accept this will determine whether or not you’ll enjoy this movie.

       Labyrinth was not a commercial success upon its release, only making back around half its budget at the box office, which ironically is the exact opposite of what happened 4 years previously with The Dark Crystal. Still it has persisted, and in spite of all the 80s cheeze and pop stars trying to act there’s a fun movie there. You’re also not likely to see a Hollywood movie with this much puppetry ever again in this age of CGI, which is a point in its favor. Labyrinth gets the recommendation. Whether you’re a parent looking for something to watch with their kids this Halloween or some 20-something looking for something to riff on with friends over discord because parties are extinct in this post-covid world, Labyrinth makes a solid addition to the watchlist. As The World Falls Down, why not turn to cinema?

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Gothic (1986), directed by Ken Russell

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "The Devil Is an Englishman" by Thomas Dolby

       In the summer 1816 the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his future wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley traveled with Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont to Lake Geneva in Switzerland to meet with Claire’s lover, poet and novelist Lord Byron. One night after entertaining each other with ghost stories, Byron proposed a friendly contest to see who could write the spookiest story. Byron’s fragment of a story would later be the inspiration for John Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction, and Mary Shelley’s would become known as “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus”, considered one of the originators of the science fiction genre and one of the most important horror novels ever written. I think Mary might have gotten the win here.

The history of this blog is intimately connected with the work of Mary Shelley; We started with a Frankenstein movie god damn it, and Frankenstein-inspired movies have featured in the Marathon for most of its existence. So after years of film based on a book, why not at least one based on the book’s author? Well it just so happens that there was one, and it also just so happens that this was another movie I discovered through the late Harlan Ellison’s film column. He didn’t end up liking this one, so there’s a chance that this might end up film of the year.

Released in 1986, Gothic was written by Stephen Volk, directed by Ken Russell and produced by Penny Corke through Virgin Vision. Natasha Richardson plays the famous Mary not-yet-Shelley, who along with her lover Percy (Julian Sands) and sister Claire (Miriam Cyr) travel to holiday with Claire’s lover, the currently exiled Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) and his friend Dr. Polidori (Timothy Spall). It’s a bit of a rough day, a bit intense for people who don’t work for a living, but things get even weirder that night when Byron breaks out a collection of ghost stories. This proves to be something of an inspiration for the macabre-minded Byron and Percy, who like a couple of 12 year old girls after reading creepypasta convince the others to engage in a ritual to summon up a spirit of fear in order to get into that primal, human mindset. Then things go from weird to advanced weird.

There is a proper story under the surface of Gothic. Mary Shelley and her friends’ lives were indeed marked by tragedy and controversy, and having them confront those anxieties and seeing how it influenced their art is an interesting story, but then there’s all this absurdity shoved haphazardly into things. How about Lord Byron just has a goat? Or life-sized animatronic dolls, including a stripper? Why not throw in a scene where everyone has an orgy? All of which happens before the wild stuff is even supposed to happen, mind you, and some within the first 15 minutes. Movie tickets were a lot cheaper back then but Gothic made sure you got your money’s worth, seems like.

Ken Russell’s biggest virtue as a filmmaker it seems is his sense of daring. He attacks taboos and social mores, especially sex, with a reckless intensity that most of his peers at that time wouldn’t dare attempt, and his adaptation of The Who’s album Tommy was the fountain from which all over-the-top rock operas sprung from. Gothic then is a natural continuation of Russell’s dedication to excess; A fever dream, or rather a nightmare, that flits incessantly through depictions of graphic sex, disturbing violence and horrific surreal imagery (most of which are done with practical effects, which is a plus). One might be tempted to make comparisons with Marathon alum Society, in particular the final act, but Society was generally rather tame; Gothic on the other hand is as disorienting and panic-inducing as a bout of sleep paralysis, uncomfortable on a primal level at times. It’s certainly the primary reason to watch this film, if you chose ro watch it.

Ken Russell’s biggest sin as a director seems to be his lack of restraint. Usually the way it goes is that you establish a baseline, your ‘normal state, and then ramp things up as you move forward. Gothic by contrast has no ‘normal’ -- it starts off in a sprint and just barrels into the plot head first. There are undoubtedly some movies that are able to pull that off, but Gothic is not one of those movies. I ended up feeling burnt out not too long after the movie started to be honest, and so once we got into the meat of the film I viewed the events not with the shock and horror that was Russell’s intent but instead mild annoyance and disconnection. If I can’t determine what is meant to be ‘real’ in this story then what should I care that it’s happening? What are the stakes? Are there stakes, or was Russell more interested in making a 90 minute long music video?

       It also doesn’t help that I hate every character in the movie, who run the gamut from miserable shitheads (Byron) to blood-boilingly obnoxious (Claire, a thousand times Claire), with Mary being the most likable mainly by virtue of being an observer and not an active participant in the plot. History tells us that Lord Byron was certainly not a saint by any means, but he was certainly a more complicated figure than the dour curmudgeon that we see on screen. If I went into this film largely ignorant of the context I would not have any idea who these people even are or why they even matter, which is a disservice to the audience and important figures of English literature. Again it’s a lack of restraint; start these characters off on a high note, show them off as the people they wanted to be, then as pressure mounts let the veneer slip away and let their inner demons out. That slow burn would have cut down on the ‘Byron screwed his sister’ scenes and everyone calling each other a sodomite however, so Russell didn’t bother with it. This is nothing against the actors themselves, Gabriel Byrne is a Marathon mainstay at this point and he put in good regardless of the film’s quality, I think they put in good work, it’s just that the material they were given failed to excite.

       The score also ended up being a disappointment. I wouldn’t consider myself a super fan of Thomas Dolby, but I have enjoyed the songs by him that I’ve heard (really like ‘Hyperactive!’), and given the success of fellow New Wave star Danny Elfman in the world of cinema I was intrigued to see what Dolby would bring to the table. What he ended up bringing was something that sounded like a cross between an orchestral score and the synthwave stuff you’d hear in your bog-standard slasher flick, which as it turns out sounds like an episode of Doctor Who during the lean years. Amadeus had come out two years prior and Marathon alum The Draughtsman’s Contract had come out two years prior to that so going full-on period piece was an option, and it would have been right up Ken Russell’s alley to go the complete opposite route and go completely modern, so we got the worst of both worlds here. I feel bad, because this seems to be the first and last film he scored in his career and I do think he's a talented musician, but you don’t like what you don’t like, and by the very first scene of the film I didn’t like it.

       If you watched Society or Dario Argento’s Phenomena and found yourself desperate for more, then Gothic will likely scratch that itch for you. As I said, it’s a fascinating film in that regard. Shock tactics are certainly good for grabbing someone's interest, however the main thing is to hold onto it, and in the end it felt like Russell had run out of ideas and was retreading old ground (take a shot every time dead kids show up). It does not get the recommendation. Painting your nipples to look like eyeballs however...sounds like a fun Halloween to me.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Little Shop of Horrors (1986), directed by Frank Oz

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Feed Me (Git It)", by Rick Moranis and Levi Stubbs

     The Little Shop of Horrors first appeared in way back in 1960. Directed by B-movie king Roger Corman and featuring a young Jack Nicholson, the film dealt with a young nerd named Seymour who achieved great success in life with the help of a little murder. In 1982, the film was adapted into a musical for the stage, because literally everything in the world can and will be adapted into a musical. In 1986, the musical version of Little Shop of Horrors was adapted into a film by Frank Oz, better known as Yoda in the original Star Wars films and puppeteer to Ms. Piggy and various other Muppet character. The original film is, at least in my opinion, an exercise in complete boredom and not really worth the time to watch aside from the Nicholson appearance. The film we’re here to highlight is the musical.

     Starring Rick Moranis as Seymour, Ellen Greene as Audrey, and featuring John Candy, Steve Martin and Bill Murray, Little Shop of Horrors centers around the life of Seymour, who in the basement of a florist’s in a rundown part of the city known as Skid Row. Seymour is a complete milquetoast, who pines for fellow employee Audrey, who is locked in an abusive relationship with biker/dentist Orin Scrivello (Martin). Seymour’s only dreams in life are to be with Audrey and to escape the prison that is Skid Row, which seems increasingly less possible as time goes on. That is, of course, until he comes across a particularly strange planet from outer space with the voice of one of the Four Tops, an insatiable lust for human blood, and the answers to all his problems (and great puppetry as well, Audrey II looks fucking fantastic in this movie). All he has to do is feed it…

     The closest thing I think of that is similar in tone to LSoH is the cult 70’s musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I doubt very much that it’s a coincidence. Both films are liberal in their use of colour, making each scene seem to burst with energy. Both films take the aesthetic of a previous decade and warp with devilish glee. Both films have a twisted sense of humour, whether it’s Frankenfurter singing about being an alien transvestite or Bill Murray as the masochistic dental patient, it’s all fantastically irreverent. Most importantly of all though, both films have a great soundtrack, with great people performing the songs. So if you’re looking to sate your hunger for musical this Halloween, why not give this a try?

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Star Trek IV: The Journey Home (1986), directed by Leonard Nimoy

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Music to Watch Space Girls By", by Leonard Nimoy

     Another year, another Star Trek movie. It sounds a bit cynical, but actually this was actually one of the films I’ve been looking forward to the most, given the disappointing lack of Trek in my life. I mean I’m still not interested in Discovery, and I doubt that’s going to change soon, which leaves me with the extended universe content of books and games that comes with its own set of infeasibility, so I’m pretty much shit out of luck. I mean I may not have liked most of Voyager or Enterprise, but at least it was a world that I was familiar with that I could relax in for a short while. Hell I can’t even be bothered to finish a season of anything these days, my watch queue is a killing field of dozens of unfinished shows, plotlines left dangling, character arc undeveloped. Shows, even sci-fi shows, just can’t seem to capture my interest the way that Star Trek did. Yes, even Spock’s Brain.

     SPOILERS, just in case.


     Much like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (which Nimoy also directed, by the by) was set directly after the events of Wrath of Khan, The Journey Home deals with the aftermath of Search for Spock. The Enterprise destroyed, Kirk and crew stuck on Vulcan after breaking all of the rules to shove Spock’s soul back in his body, Kirk’s son dead, and the Klingons calling for blood over the Genesis Project. It’s looking like a long trip back to Starfleet HQ and a court martial when an enormous ship emitting bizarre signals enters Federation space. No one can communicate with it, ships and electrical devices all fail in its wake, and when it finally reaches Earth initiates an environmental catastrophe that threatens to kill all human life on the planet. Kirk and crew are the only folks with a working ship, and it is Spock who figures out the truth: The mysterious signal the aliens are sending out is in essence a whale song, specifically that of the humpback whale. Apparently these aliens had visited Earth a long time ago, long before shitty humans showed up, and they really got along well with the whales. Trouble is, because humans are so shitty humpback whales went extinct a long time ago, and now there’s no one to call off the thousand mile wide death machine from shuffling man off of this mortal coil. So obviously the only thing you can do is slingshot around the sun in order to travel through time, grab a couple of humpback whales from wherever, slingshot around the sun again back to the future, drop ‘em off and hope they feel like putting a good word in for humanity. Simple, right?

     As I’ve likely said before, the common line with the Star Trek movies is that the odd-numbered ones are bad and the even-numbered ones are good. It’s a absolutist blanket statement that I don’t find helpful at all, but I will say that the films contrast each other in such a way that you can have a clear division between audiences. For example, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which I believe deserves far more love) is a slow-burn of a film, focusing more on gravitas and the visual spectacle above all else. By contrast, The Wrath of Khan is a tense, explosive action thriller, Das Boot in space you could say, with epic lines and character deaths and everything. Neither are bad movies, in fact they deal with a lot of the same things, like man and mankind’s legacy and dealing with mortality, just one is presented in such a way that it appeals to the Star Wars cult crowd. They compliment each other rather well, actually. Philosophy and action, the two sides of the

     Similarly, while both Star Trek III and IV are both ostensibly stories about death and rebirth, The Journey Home has a much different tone than The Search for Spock (Search is also probably the weakest of the four films, adding fuel to the fire). Where Search for Spock is this climactic, dramatic film, Journey Home is much more of a feel-good romp. While the stakes are technically much higher here than in III it never feels that way, preferring instead to breeze through an adventure packed with hijinks and stranger in a strange land type social satire. It’s like they decided that after all the heavy stuff we’ve been up to over the last three films they decided to step off of the gas a bit and let us cruise for a while. Remind the fans of the good old days, you know?

     If there’s anything overtly negative I can say, it’s that at times things feel a little bit too light and goofy. I mean stuff like the ‘nuclear wessels’ scene is great, and I think Spock in general is on-point the whole time, but then you’ve got things like Kirk being so ignorant of money that he doesn’t understand the concept of ‘exact change’ despite having been to the past several times and overall bumbling about with basic time travel rules that just comes across as lazy and unprofessional for what is supposed to be the finest members of Starfleet around. This goes for the female lead as well, our resident whale biologist Gillian Taylor(a name I had to pick out of the credits because I think they only mentioned it once or twice), who seems to exist only for Kirk to awkwardly hit on her from time to time. Another remnant from the ‘good ol’ days’ perhaps, but otherwise she’s not really all that exciting or compelling a character, to the point that she could have probably been excised completely from the script without too many issues. That’s not to knock the actress, I think she was fine, it’s that she’s essentially the woman guest star from every TOS episode, and thus unfortunately rather one-note.

     If you’ve already come this far into Trekland then you might as well come one more step, but that step is a pretty easy one. The Journey Home is not a mind blowing experience, it’s not going to get you on the edge of your seat like maybe The Wrath of Khan did, but if you’ve got it, a cold drink and a bowl of popcorn you’re going to have an enjoyable evening. Star Trek IV gets the recommendation, and hell, so does Star Trek in general. Maybe this Halloween it’ll bring you as much enjoyment as it has brought me.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Rawhead Rex (1986), directed by George Pavlou

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Turkish Song of the Damned", by The Pogues

     What is it about Clive Barker that’s earned him a recurring spot in the Marathon? I’ve never read any of his books, only briefly seen his face in old Prisoners of Gravity episodes on youtube, and yet he’s managed to squeeze onto this list three times now, an honor that up until now was reserved for weird directors like David Lynch or the annual Star Trek film. It’s not intentional, mind, when I’m compiling the list I always throw in a couple movies that I assume will be switched out as my mood changes, and yet ol’ Clive somehow managed to avoid the chopping block to the very end. Could’ve gone with that new It movie, but instead we’re dealing with Rawhead Rex.

     What a world.

     The story of Rawhead Rex is a simple one, so this’ll probably be a short paragraph. Howard Hallenbeck is a American writer and photographer who has taken his family to a small village in Ireland in order to study ancient neolithic burial sites. At the same time this is happening, a bit of errant yardwork accidentally unleashes an equally-as-ancient demon onto the Earth, a demon known as Rawhead (for some reason). Rawhead immediately goes off to do what demons do best, which is murder people in gruesome ways, and eventually (about an hour or so in maybe), this turns around back to Howard and we get to move on to the climax. That’s about it.

     Rawhead Rex was the second work by Clive Barker to be adapted to film, the first being 85’s Underworld (no vampires or werewolves involved), and apparently Clive was so displeased at the work they did that it drove him to direct the next adaptation of his work, which would turn out to be Hellraiser. Which seems like a bit of an extreme reaction at first, but having watched the film it’s not a wholly undeserved one. I mean Hellraiser was this brutal, bloody psychosexual horror film, Nightbreed was this murder thriller meets Dances With Monsters movie, and then you have Rawhead Rex, which for all but maybe two or three scenes feels like a generic horror film, and not a terribly entertaining one at that. I mean if you’re trying to paint yourself as this master of the macabre, and you’re competing with the guy who got Brian de Palma and Stanley fucking Kubrick on his first couple movies, you probably don’t want your work to look like something from the Roger Corman collection.

     That Corman comparison becomes all too real when you set eyes on the title character of our film, Mr. Rawhead Rex himself, who looks a bit like a knock-off Predator with some fur glued on him. Now far be it from me to cast aspersions, the great horror films often work with low budgets, but it just looks so fucking goofy. Especially during the many scenes where you can tell where the actor's head is directed, so with Rawhead’s big floppy face he looks more like Bojack Horseman than a demon that predates Christianity. There are masks that you can get at a dollar store that are scarier looking than Rawhead Rex.

     Which could be forgiven if it was a good horror film at heart, but it’s really not. Boring main characters acted out by a middling cast, abysmally slow build-up to a disappointing climax, and despite the movie being about a bloodthirsty monster, a frustrating amount of off-screen kills and implied violence. If you’re not going to be going out into left-field then you should at least know your way around the bases I think, and Rawhead Rex is neither experimental enough nor refined enough to maintain my interest. Not in an overpopulated field like monster movies at least.

     No recommendation this time, which seems to be the most common recurring theme this year unfortunately enough. If you’re interested in Clive Barker, you’re better off going with Marathon alum Hellraiser and Nightbreed or maybe Hellraiser 2, which I’ve heard good things about and probably should have watched instead. Or, and this is a wild bit, you could try reading one of his many novels or short story collections. Dude is an author after all, and there’s likely plenty of good stuff just waiting to be discovered. Can you imagine something scarier than reading a book on Halloween? I know I can’t.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - Blue Velvet (1986), directed by David Lynch

So that does it for another Marathon. Maybe even the last one, depending on how this net neutrality thing ends up going. Either way, I'd like to thank everyone out there for reading, whether you were a new visitor or a regular fan it means a lot to know that I'm not just screaming into the void. Leave a comment, spread the word, do whatever you'd like, and I'll try and get more content out more regularly. See ya space cowboys.  

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Blue Velvet", by Bobby Vinton

     As of this writing, third season of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (commonly titled as The Return) has come and gone, possibly closing the book on one of the strangest and most wonderful experiments in television history. When it appeared on television screens in the early 90s there was nothing really like it, serialized storytelling, surrealist filmmaking techniques, a level of sexuality and violence that seemed more suited to HBO than ABC, and it completely rewrote the book on what could be done in the medium. Sure it only lasted two seasons, and the season without Lynch at the helm is spotty at best, but it’s influence on TV cannot be overstated. Without Twin Peaks there would be no X-Files, no Lost or American Horror Story or Legion or Fargo (although give the Coens some credit), or likely any of these weird shows that we all love so much. All because Twin Peaks, a series predicated on the fact that David Lynch really wanted to make fun of soap operas, opened the door.

     David Lynch is certainly no stranger to the blog, in fact I believe he’s overtaken David Cronenberg for most films that I’ve covered. The very first Halloween list on this site, before the Marathon even, featured Eraserhead among its ranks, and since then Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Dune has joined it. Twin Peaks S3 dropped so I knew I was going to cover another of his films and I had already seen his Twin Peaks film Fire Walk With Me, so which one would work? The Elephant Man, Lynch’s studio debut? Inland Empire, his final feature film? A proper writeup of Eraserhead? No, after having my mind blown in the aftermath of Twin Peaks, there was only one film that felt right. A movie that would become the thematic template for David Lynch’s filmography from that day forward. It’s time for a little bit of that Blue Velvet.

     After his father suffers a medical emergency while watering his idyllic suburban lawn, young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle Maclachlan moves back to his idyllic suburban hometown of Lumberton to take over his father’s hardware store. It’s a rough situation, going back to a town that all your friends have left behind, which suddenly takes a turn for the bizarre when he discovers a severed human ear while walking in an abandoned field. He delivers the ear to the police of course, but when he tries to learn more about the circumstances of the case, he is barred by police protocol (this is kind of their wheelhouse after all). So he decides to team up with Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), daughter of the detective working on the case and potential love interest, and start up an investigation of their own. If they were a few years younger, you’d think this was some kind of Stand By Me spinoff.

     Anyway, the clues seem to lead to a woman named Dorothy Vallens, a lounge singer at a local bar called The Slow Club. Jeffrey, riding high on his little detective kick starts taking greater and greater risks to learn more about Dorothy, until eventually he’s resorted to hiding in her closet. Voyeurism has its disadvantages however, as it is in that closet that Jeffrey discovers the terrible truth: The ear belongs to Dorothy’s husband who, along with their son, has been kidnapped by a criminal known as Frank, a violent, drug-addicted psychopath that has been using Dorothy’s family as blackmail to entrap her into horrific sex slavery. Jeff’s a good guy, he wants to help, but as he get involved with Dorothy he finds himself drawn farther away from idyllic Lumberton into a world he doesn’t recognize. A world of corruption and misery, where reason breaks down and the differences between pain and pleasure become indistinguishable. The world of Blue Velvet, and there doesn’t seem to be a way out.

     One of the major themes of Eraserhead was the disconnected, dehumanizing atmosphere that modern post industrial urban society can have on people, and two films later Lynch would revisit that idea and transform that disconnect into a full-blown dichtomy. At first glance Lumberton seems too good to be true, a saccharine-sweet depiction of suburbia straight out of Leave It to Beaver, and yet it is clearly an illusion. A dream that we make up in order to distract us from the real world, which quite often ends up becoming a nightmare. Situations seem unreal, people behave oddly and irrationally, and we as the audience are forced to confront things that we might not want to, much like Jeffrey does as he sinks deeper in Frank’s world. Lynch would double down on this in later works, but Blue Velvet is really the film that defined who David Lynch was as a creator and filmmaker.

     As I’ve said the film is about contrasts, the one between the Lumberton that we believe in and the one that really exists, and the most visceral is that difference between Jeffrey’s relationship with Sandy and the one with Dorothy. With Sandy, Jeffrey is the cooler older man. Their relationship plays out about as sweetly and naively as an old Archie comic, kisses, dates, the whole nine yards. With Dorothy, Jeffrey is the inexperienced one, both in sexuality and worldview. While their relationship is more intimate, it isn’t one of love. Dorothy has been so abused that it is ingrained in her psyche and Jeffrey, while he wants to help her, is completely out of his depth on how, and ends up becoming drawn into the conflict with Frank. When the two worlds eventually collide, as they do in Lynch films, there is chaos. The two worlds, Frank and Jeffrey, Sandy and Dorothy, cannot coexist. They all just fall apart.

     Much like Crash, Blue Velvet is a very sexually-charged film, but unlike Cronenberg Lynch doesn’t really go for eroticism. There is sex in the film, yes, there is nudity, but it always contrasted by this underlying foundation of violence and misery. When Jeffrey and Dorothy are in bed together and she begs him to strike her, it’s not played as some sort of fetish game. This is, in context, real, and rather than possible satisfaction you just feel miserable. This isn’t David Lynch’s only instance of using sex in this manner, one need only look at the history of Laura Palmer, but he really strives to make things as tragic and uncomfortable as they can get in Blue Velvet. If you’re someone who’s been a victim of sexual violence, I’d seriously advise caution before trying this one out.

     If you love Twin Peaks, and it’s one of my favorite TV shows of all time so you know I do, then it’s almost a requirement to try out Blue Velvet. It’s got Kyle Maclachlan as a goody two-shoes crime solver, it’s got Laura Dern, it’s got an Angelo Badalamenti score (his first ever collaboration with Lynch, in fact), all it needs is Bob poking out from behind a counch and you’d think it was a prequel. If you don’t love Twin Peaks but love disturbing psycho-sexual crime thrillers, then this might also be the film for you. Either way if you go for Blue Velvet this Halloween is definitely going to be a wild ride, which hopefully won’t leave you beaten up along the side of the highway. Remember to keep an eye out for robins, and -

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!   

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - Night of the Creeps (1986), directed by Fred Dekker

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Creeping Death", by Metallica

     As I’ve mentioned far, far too many times already, the 1980s were the golden years of horror when it came to the cinema. The state of special effects and make-up advanced to such a point that you could get some pretty amazing looking stuff for relatively little cost, which coincided with a more relaxed, gore-friendly audience, but more importantly, filmmakers were able to have fun with it. Comedy and horror goes as far back as the Abbott & Costello films of course, but what I mean is that the genre had been around long enough that deconstruction and satirization of horror was possible. When people are taking the time to dig into the formula and tropes of your genre, then you know you’ve hit the big time.

     If you’ve followed my Marathon series in the past, then you might recognize the name Fred Dekker from Monster Squad, a fun little film wherein a rambunctious Goonies-style group of kids fight against Golden Age era monsters. He was also involved in the Tales From the Crypt TV show, which was good, Robocop 3, which was crap, and Star Trek: Enterprise, which was meh, so he doesn’t have the most pristine of track records. Still, to make even one good movie is a feat in and of itself, and in the 80s Dekker managed to distill his personal flair for the more comedic side of horror into three films, spread out over 1986 and ‘87: Monster Squad (which I mentioned above), House (not based on the Japanese film, unfortunately) and Night of the Creeps. As Dekker is only credited as a writer for House, I decided to take a look at the latter in order to get a more complete picture of Dekker’s creative vision. Plus it was really convenient, so yeah, it gets a spot.

     As far as plots go, Night of the Creeps follow the example of its influences by not complicating things too much. In 1959 a device containing an alien parasite crash lands on Earth. The leech-like parasite enters the human body through the mouth and lays eggs in the brain, which ultimately leaves the victim a zombie with very high head explosion potential. Hidden away in its first victim, who just so happens to be in cryogenic stasis in a science lab in the exact same college town it landed in 30 years ago, the parasites are accidentally set loose upon the unsuspecting world by students Chris and J.C. in a hazing ritual gone awry. Now it’s up to Chris and Detective Cameron (played by Tom Atkins, who also starred in oft-forgotten B-movie Halloween III:Season of the Witch) to unravel the mystery of these seemingly random deaths and eventually try and save the human race from these creeps. As James Cameron’s Aliens would say, it’s time for a bug hunt.

     Aside from the glaring plothole of how and why the parasite’s first victim has been cryogenically frozen in a college science lab, as even one of those old B-movies Dekker is homaging would have given at least a few lines about it, Night of the Creeps is a enjoyably campy, delightfully gory movie in the vein of such films as Return of the Living Dead and The Stuff. I hesitate to call it good, just as in those old movies the most enjoyment you get out of this one is in the last 20 minutes or so, but those last 30 minutes are fucking amazing. That and there’s just this ever-so-slight undercurrent of cartoonish absurdity that heightens things in just the right places. The Fallout-esque parody of the 50s at the beginning of the film, Detective Cameron’s obsession with film noir and pulp mysteries, Dekker isn’t getting as jokey here as he would be in Monster Squad but you can definitely tell his tongue has touched his cheek here. Oh, and seeing obviously fake heads getting blown up by gunfire is always a treat.

     Of the two Dekker directed films I’ve seen I have to side with Monster Squad, but Night of the Creeps was also a pretty fun. Classic ‘Movie Night With Friends’ material I think, especially if you make it a double feature with James Gunn’s Slither, which takes the basic premise of NotC and tosses in a little bit of The Thing for flavor. Just don’t scream too loudly, you probably don’t want to keep your mouth open for too long.

Double Feature: Manhunter (1986) and Thief (1981), directed by Michael Mann

Originally written for the Tricycle Offense

Well a new year has begun, time has moved inexorably forward another 365 days, leaving us all with another 365 to hopefully get something accomplished for once. 2014 was a bit of a bust for me, what with the job difficulties, friend difficulties, people en masse forgetting my birthday and an ongoing major depression that left me feeling increasingly disconnected with reality, but I suppose there were some good parts as well. I started writing for the Tricycle Offense last year, for example, which has granted me a larger audience than I enjoyed on my oft-neglected film blog (which caused more than its fair share of shame spirals and bitter recriminations, let me tell you). I also got to watch a lot of movies and TV shows, and that probably counts for something to someone somewhere. Also way too much Binding of Isaac, that game is cocaine-levels of addictive.

Anyway…

In honor of aforementioned new year, and all the hope that it implies, I’ve decided to go big and post another special edition of my regular column, the ToC Double Feature.  You might recall that the first Double Feature I wrote was posted in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, and focused on two films by writer/director/playwright/musician/comedian Woody Allen. As amazing and cogent as my analysis might have been, I’ll be the first to admit that the two films I chose to write about were ones that I had on the writing backlog for a while now, and placing them on the DF was an act of ‘cleaning out the closet’, as it were. I was writing from notes and memories, and that isn’t the best way to write about anything, much less movies. So that was a test-run, and the article you’re hopefully about to read is a proper attempt at the idea. Let’s all hope it works out, okay?

This time around I’m/we’re tackling another director on the Double Feature, Chicago native Michael Mann (no relation to either Manfred Mann or his Earth Band, as far as I know). Although Mann’s film career didn’t begin until the early 80’s, his work in the entertainment industry actually began in the mid-70s, acting as a screenwriter for such television programs as Starsky & Hutch and Police Story (he would eventually reach his TV zenith in 1984 as Executive Producer for the hit crime drama Miami Vice). Aside from some notable exceptions, 2001’s Ali and 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans, a cursory glance at his filmography will tell the one thing that Michael Mann loves over any other: Crime. Whether it’s about criminals or the men who pursue them, the man has a great passion for illegal activities of various types and styles. You’d think he would have enough of crime as it is, having been born in the most corrupt, crime-ridden cities in the Union, home of Al Capone and organized crime, but to each his own. For this installment of the ToC Double Feature I decided to pick two movies, both early in his career, that I was personally interested in seeing and that which best exemplified Mann’s obsession with the wrong side of the law: 1981’s Thief and 1986’s Manhunter. Which is worth a view? Which is not? Read on and find out.

Manhunter (1986)

Anyone who has ever talked to me about TV lately (which is nobody, don’t worry), probably knows all too well about my love for Hannibal. Even though it suffers from a bit of modern television melodrama, an unfortunate side-effect of NBC trying to get in on that sweet sweet True Detective dosh, but I’ve found myself pleasantly engaged in its myriads if mindgames and gruesome murders. A lot of that love admittedly comes from their depiction of Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter (played here by Mads Mikkelsen) who brings a quiet, demonic charm to everyone’s favorite serial killer. Hugh Dancy, Laurence Fishburne and the rest of the cast have a certain charm to them of course, but seeing Hannibal subtly manipulating everyone into following his grand design (or eating them, whatever) over the course of season 1 (I haven’t seen season 2 yet, but I bet it’s much of the same) like a mastermind badass, seeing each link fall into place, was a treat to behold. In fact, seeing how great Mikkelsen is in this series makes me wish he hadn’t been wasted as Le Chiffre in the modern adaptation of Casino Royale. It’s not that I don’t like the movie, but Le Chiffre is not what I could call a great and memorable villain. Now if Mikkelsen had gotten the role of Blofeld for instance, that would have been awesome. I’d prefer to see the guy who made a fool of dozens of people and the F.B.I. as the head of a major terrorist organization and the nemesis of the greatest spy in British history, not as a bit player who was killed off by a dropped plotline (remember Quantum? No?). That’s just the way she goes I guess.

Before Mads Mikkelsen rocked the house as Dr. Lecter on NBC, the most popular iteration of the character was portrayed by veteran actor Anthony Hopkins, who first appeared on film in the 1991 Jonathan Demme picture Silence of the Lambs. Lambs, and Hopkins’ Lecter in particular, proved to be enormously successful critically and commercially, to the point that it was able to spawn two sequels, Hannibal in 2001 and Red Dragon in 2002 (both of which were far less successful quality or money-wise as the 91 movie). What with the enormous popularity of Silence of the Lambs, the common assumption might be that it was the natural reaction of a film audience to a new IP, but that assumption would be incorrect. Not only that, but the prequel Red Dragon was also not the first film to be based on Thomas Harris’ 1981 book “Red Dragon”, which the Hannibal series is also based on. No, the first feature film to be based on the work of Thomas Harris appeared 5 years before Clarice, Anthony Hopkins, and Silence of the Lambs, which itself is based on the sequel to “Red Dragon”. It’s an oft-forgotten gem by the name of Manhunter, directed by Michael Mann, and there ain’t no J’onn J’onzz where we’re heading.

Sometime in the slick, modern 1980s two families, the Leeds and the Jacobis, are found brutally murdered and mutilated in their homes in Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia respectively. Due to the graphic nature of the murders as well as the lack of any noticeable leads, FBI agent Jack Crawford decides to call on Will Graham (William Petersen, of CSI fame), a former agent who had worked with Jack some years prior, to join in on the case. Three years ago Will Graham had been instrumental in bringing serial killers Garrett Jacob Hobbs (the so called ‘Minnesota Shrike’ in the tv series) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (or Lektor according to this movie) to justice, but his deductive process -- placing himself within the mindset of the killer in order to discover his identity, had left him with far too many scars, physical and emotional. This would seem to be a major liability, bringing in someone who was clearly unstable in as lead investigator in a major case, especially when said person was traumatized by a serial killer and the case revolves around a serial killer, but of course this a movie AND WE NEED RESULTS DAMMIT!

Emotional trauma aside, we all love the idea of having ‘one last ride’, and so decides to take up Jack on his offer. However, in his investigation of the newly dubbed ‘Tooth Fairy’, so named because of the bite marks he left at the crime scene, Will quickly starts to recall the darkness that had infected his soul those three years ago, the soul-sickness that comes from envisioning the mind of madness. Throw in the devious machinations of Dr. Lecter, and it becomes all too clear that Will has stepped in on a case far larger than he anticipated. Quite soon it becomes clear that it’s no longer about the mutilated corpses of wives and mothers anymore (although that’s important too I guess), it’s about closing the book on Will’s past once and for all. Putting the demons, or red dragons perhaps, to rest. It’s not easy, but then nothing ever is.

The first and biggest questions likely to form in the curious reader’s mind about Manhunter are going to be about Hannibal Lecter, and I suppose it’s a bit of a hit-or-miss situation. First of all, Dr. Lektor in this film is played by Brian Cox, whom you might know from Deadwood, Super Troopers and Scooby Doo and the Samurai Sword. While his performance is not turned-up-to-11 insane as Hopkins or silently malevolent as Mikkelsen’s, his rendition of the criminally insane psychologist who cuts up college coeds is quite good. Second of all, while he does serve much the same purpose as he did in Silence of the Lambs, giving cryptic advice while playing mind games with the investigator, he plays a much smaller role in Manhunter, amounting to not much more than a fairly important secondary character. Since so much of this franchise is about Lecter or is focused on Lecter, it’s refreshing to see a take that places him on the back burner and allow us to look upon the other characters more, like Graham and the Tooth Fairy. On the other hand, Hannibal Lecter has been given so much focus because he’s an intriguing character, and his entry into pop culture allows him to be used in many different ways. Even in his reduced capacity Lecter still manages to be the most captivating man in the room whenever he’s on the screen. Especially when placed against Will Petersen’s Will Graham, who seems absolutely on the nod when set against Hugh Dancy’s positively neurotic depiction of the character. Like I said, hit-or-miss.

Which is probably the big point I could raise against Manhunter actually: the characterization. Aside from Lecter and the Tooth Fairy, there’s not much in the way of compelling characters. Graham has the potential to be be compelling of course, and I suppose it does build up throughout the film, but that’s more in the details rather than the character himself. We know he’s been traumatized by the events of the past, we know he needs to frequently take medication to curb whatever injuries he sustained during that time, but we don’t really get a sense that he, Will Graham, is really on the edge until he suddenly flips a reporter into a car window or something. Once again, maybe I’m being unduly influenced by Hannibal but there’s nothing that sets Graham apart in the film from any other agent in the movie aside from the fact that the camera is aimed at his face most of the time. Maybe that makes it more realistic, but to me it says that Manhunter lacks a strong protagonist.

To counter a negative point with a positive one, although Graham never really stands out to me, the movie around Graham was quite interesting. To reuse a descriptor previously to Petersen’s performance, it’s very toned down. There’s not really much of those high-tension, high action moments so prevalent in its contemporaries (although that climactic final showdown is fucking badass), we start off with a mystery and we gradually build up to its conclusion. I guess you could call it a ‘slow burn’ kind of movie, and while I’ll refrain from calling it ‘realistic’, it does a good job of drawing you into its world without working too hard. Manhunter is great at giving the illusion of reality, I suppose is the best way to put it, far better than any version of “Red Dragon” or the Lecter-verse afterwards, which seemed to make murder into an art project. Sure, I doubt many serial killers are taking blind chicks to go pet tigers, but I bet even less are feeding people parts of their own brain or making totem poles out of human corpses. The Tooth Fairy (or maybe Red Dragon might be more appropriate) seems like the kind of killer who could exist in real life, and that’s what makes him effectively threatening.

Aside from that, Mann really seems to love color, because he paints entire damn scenes in it, and I found myself enjoying it as well. Blue for Will Graham, Green for the killer (even  though you’d expect it to be red, considering how much he talks about the Red Dragon and all), the blinding white of Lecter’s cell, it’s all magnificently evocative. The soundtrack is also quite good, packed as it is with synth-tastic 80s music, including a masterful use of Iron Butterfly’s one hit wonder ‘In-a-Gadda-da-Vida’. The two-hour does seem a bit trying at times, especially when it’s taken up with Petersen trying his hardest not to emote, but that’s part and parcel of what makes the ‘slow-burn’ method work. You need time to let that bastard get to a boil.

If you’re a fan of thrillers and other such crime dramas, as I and millions of other people are, you’ll likely enjoy Manhunter. If you’re just getting into the franchise from the TV series, be advised that although both Hannibal and Manhunter are based on the novel “Red Dragon”, Manhunter is more an adaptation of Harris’s work while the series appropriates characters and events to weave its own unique narrative, and so holds little in the way of similarities. If you’re just a fan of movies in general, give it a watch, because it’s a pretty good one. This winter, you will believe that a mentally ill man can break into your house and cut your children’s throats while you’re sleeping.

RESULT: RECOMMENDED

Thief (1981)

I don’t know how it is in your other, less American countries, but we here in the good ol’ US of A we absolutely love our thieves and murderers. Can’t get enough of ‘em, in fact. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Dillinger, the Zodiac Killer, Bonnie & Clyde, Billy the Kid, the GOP, all on the wrong side of the law and yet still a fire for them all still burns in the hearts of many people. Nowadays of course most mass murderers are just disaffected high-school students and the thieves run multinational corporations, so the majority of our killing and stealing fix comes from the media that we consume, whether it be music, movies, comic books, what have you. I suppose they represent independence on a subconscious level y’know, people who freed themselves from the shackles of society that ensnare the rest of us with its rules and regulations and did as they pleased when they desired. Or maybe it’s the end result of a nation founded by religious wingnuts who think women are roombas with breasts attached to them and that beating men to death is the best way to keep them from having favourable opinions about penises. Hard to say really, it’s a multifaceted issue and I’m no sociology major.

Stepping down off the soapbox for a minute...

At some unknown point of time in the sleek, modern Chicago of the 1980’s, ex-con Frank (James Caan, of The Godfather, Misery) has built up quite the life for himself. He’s a business owner after all, the head of an automotive dealership and a bar called The Green Mile, which caters to a decent collection of alcoholics. He’s also a thief, by the by, specializing in the art of the diamond heist. Along with his partner Barry (Jim Belushi), who works with security, there is no vault that can’t be opened, no treasure that can’t be pinched, etc. etc. etc. When it comes to crime Frank is as business-minded in the office as he is during the act; He steals the goods, he passes it along through his vig, he gets his cut of the profits and he goes along his merry way. No muss,no fuss, a perfect equitable transaction of stolen goods.

Even a life of crime has its disadvantages though.As good a thief as Frank is however, what he truly desires above all else is the thing he’s never been able to have: A normal life. A house, a wife and kids, without the chance to end up stuck in jail again like his good friend Okla (Willie Nelson, and yes, that Willie Nelson). After a diamond deal gone south brings Frank to the attention of Attaglia, the biggest fence in Chicago, the  gangster offers Frank exactly what he’s been hoping and dreaming for all this time, all for the low low price of pulling off the biggest theft in his entire career. The man has a future to think about, he can’t say no, but how well can a man who only works for himself coexist with a system built around kissing ass and paying respect? Not very, as it turns out.

In Manhunter our perspective was that of Will Graham and the F.B.I., the right side of the law, going after the Tooth Fairy, the obvious villain. In Thief our perspective is that of Frank the criminal, who must contend with police and organized crime. Opposite sides of the coin you might say, but I’ll say it’s worth noting that in both films the acts these characters (Frank & the Tooth Fairy) carry out are never treated as anything but ultimately negative. Even here in Thief, where Frank feels no remorse for the things he does and the police are are group of dirty thugs out looking for a cut of the action, the act of theft is treated as a means to an end, and an ultimately self-destructive end. While both glamorize theft and murder to an extent, much as I said in Manhunter, Michael Mann succeeds in presenting a realistic (also to an extent) take on a the subject. The Tooth Fairy is a murderer but he’s also clearly mentally ill, Frank loves his friends and family but he’s also an aggressive jackass who steals and kills on purely selfish basis, moral ambiguity is the name of the game. It’s like film noir but with less lovable drunk detectives.

Michael Mann’s debut film is also where we see his love for hanging shots and pouring color into scenes, one of which I mentioned in Manhunter. There’s one scene in particular in which the camera lingers for a while on Frank standing in front of the bank vault, which itself is inside a strangely symmetrical white room that sticks in my mind, and apparently Mann managed to recycle the exact same shade of green from The Green Mile to use in the Tooth Fairy’s house. It’s not like Thief doubles down on the color, since this was the 80’s and neon flowed through the streets like wine, it’s that Mann manages to use color where it really stands out. And you guys know how much I fucking love color.

Music wise, there are no epic final scenes set to the music of Iron Butterfly, but rest assured the tunes in Thief are as synth-tastic as they are in Manhunter. Interestingly enough, the film’s score/soundtrack is actually composed by one band, ambient group Tangerine Dream. I’m not an especially huge fan of ambient music, and I don’t know if the tone of the music necessarily fits the action presented on the screen, but I found myself enjoying it as a whole. Reminds me a lot of Goblin, who scored several films by Dario Argento, so if you like the music in his films you’ll probably like it here.

If you’re a fan of thrillers, diamonds and bloody vengeance, then I think you’ll probably like Thief. Out of the two chosen films, even though I’m recommending both of them, I think I’ll recommend Thief overall. No Dr. Lektor, but I think it runs a bit smoother than Manhunter and I found Frank, if not a more likable character than Graham, at least more interesting a protagonist. Of course you’re better off just seeing both, since they’re both great movies and all. If one day you happen to have a film-obsessed maniac holding a gun to your head and forcing you to choose one though, be sure to remember some article I wrote on the internet that one time.

It could save your life.

RESULT: RECOMMENDED