The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), directed by Robert Zemeckis

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down' by Eddy Duchin

       People have been combining animation with live action for about as long as animation. Animation is a very costly process after all, and if you can cut down on the amount of animation by sticking some dude next to a cartoon mouse you can save a lot of cash. Of course the problem with that is the same problem we see with the advent of CGI, in that it can be really fucking hard for an actor to give a decent performance acting across from something that doesn’t exist, or a director to get you to believe that this thing that doesn’t exist is interacting with the real world. Some people don’t bother putting in the work, and are fine with stopping at the illusion. This isn’t about those people.

       Released in 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman and produced by Frank Marshall and Robert Watts through Touchstone Pictures, Amblin Entertainment and Silver Screen Partners, based on the novel “Who Censored Roger Rabbit?” by Gary K. Wolf. It’s the year 1947 and in this Golden Age of Hollywood there’s nothing hotter than cartoons, especially since Toons are living, breathing things in this world. One of the big names in the biz is Maroon Studios, home of the famous Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer), except lately Roger’s home life has been affecting his work, and therefore Maroon’s bottom line. The owner, R. K. Maroon, hires private investigator and Toon hater Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to dig up dirt on Roger’s wife Jessica, and dig it up he does, capturing her in the act with cartoon bigwig Marvin Acme. There, job done, only the next day Eddie learns that Acme has been murdered (the ol’ safe to the head gag) and that Roger is the prime subject, only Roger claims that he had nothing to do with Acme’s death. Toons loved Acme and Acme loved Toons after all, so much so that in his will he left the ownership of Toontown to them, a will that has since gone missing. So now Eddie has to find the will and unravel this jumbled mess of a mystery, all the while dodging Toontown’s personal gestapo Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) and his Toon Patrol, who have a strict ‘kill first and don’t ask questions’ policy. It’s the kind of thing that’ll make you take up drinking, so it’s a good thing Eddie’s already an alcoholic.

        As I wrote before, combining animation and live action had been a thing for a while, as had the idea of cartoon characters being actors (particularly by the Looney Tunes), but Roger Rabbit takes it a step further. This isn’t just a world where a person might interact with a cartoon character under special circumstances, this is the real world but with Toons in it. They have their own neighborhood, they have jobs outside of show business, they have relationships with themselves and with humans, they have the capacity for good acts as well as evil ones, essentially it’s like if Los Angeles had a prominent ethnic minority that also happen to be nigh-immortal chaotic demigods. Although the ethical and moral questions of the Toon’s status as a minority aren't really touched upon in the film, this melding of the fantastical with the modern would prove to be a popular combination as time went on, as shows like Bojack Horseman would prove. The particular blend of cartoon innocence with the sex-and-violence grit of noir that we see in Roger Rabbit however still feels unlike anything else going on. Except for Cool World, but that movie sucked ass.

       It’s not just that you’ve got people and cartoons interacting that makes Roger Rabbit work, it’s how the cartoons interact with the real world. When a Toon is in an area with low light he’s shadowed just like a real person would be, when they grab a dusty chair they leave a handprint, when they rush through a room objects are pushed out of the way. You wouldn’t think it would be that big of a deal but that, plus the fantastic work by the cast, goes a long way in giving the cartoons a physical weight and legitimizing the premise. Although it’s not as flashy as the special effects as Star Wars or Dune, the amount of work Zemeckis, his team, and especially the animators put into making it look as good as it does must have been staggering.

       Another thing that Roger Rabbit has over Cool World? Name recognition. One of the wildest things about this movie is how it is absolutely stacked with famous cartoons. Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, and a cavalcade of characters from Disney and Warner Brothers, with A-listers like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny sharing the screen for the first time. While most of these amount to little more than glorified cameos, having them around at all gives the film an air of legitimacy that just couldn’t have been achieved with original characters. Like if you were making a movie set in 40’s Hollywood and had a chance to get Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable as they looked then to appear in your film you’d jump at the chance, and getting a bunch of drawings is way easier than that. Bakshi knew enough to get his own version of Jessica Rabbit in Cool World to appeal to…certain audiences, but when Zemeckis can have his characters feeding Dumbo peanuts or watching Donald and Daffy Duck on dueling pianos, the fact that they’re there, blows anything Bakshi could try completely out of the water.

       As for the human cast, this might have been my first exposure to Bob Hoskins as a kid, that or the Mario Bros. movie, and it’s still crazy to me that the man was from the U.K. He so completely embodies the idea of a hardboiled American P.I. you’d think he was a husky, surprisingly mobile Sam Spade. Christopher Lloyd, who was on a genre film hot streak in the latter half of the 80’s after appearing in Back to the Future, Star Trek III, Clue, and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, puts on yet another amazing performance as Judge Doom. Going from the lovable wacky Doc Brown to the ghoulish, almost demonic Doom would seem like it’d be a hard sell, but Lloyd has this particular presence about him that makes the transition from serious to silly characters a lot easier than it is for others. Also I didn’t realize this until just now, but Eddie’s love interest Dolores is played by Joana Cassidy, who we saw previously as Zhora in Blade Runner. Small world, am I right?

       As for criticisms, would it be weird to say that I don’t have any? Not that Roger Rabbit, or any movie really could be considered ‘perfect’, but having seen this movie several times by this point there’s nothing that really stands out to me in that regard. Yeah the full mystery after it is revealed is a bit silly, but it’s a movie where the prime suspect in a murder is a talking cartoon rabbit, I wasn’t expecting Chinatown. Yeah there’s a lot of telling and not showing in the latter half, but they include enough action and suspense to keep the audience invested. Yeah they don’t explain how Toons exist in this world the way they do, how long they’ve been around, or much of anything about them, but it never really needed to in the first place. It’s a detective story with cartoons in it not the Silmarillion, as long as you can accept the premise any amount of worldbuilding they do is just icing on the cake.

       Who Framed Roger Rabbit gets an easy recommendation. As a young cartoon fan the film was mind blowing (the whole thing, not just the parts with Jessica), and as an adult cartoon fan I can appreciate the craftsmanship and how Zemeckis maintains the balance between two disparate parts of the movie world, and I imagine most in a similar position would feel the same. Those with young children might find it a bit raunchy, but otherwise it makes for a perfect family film for Halloween. Pour everyone a glass of scotch and have a great time.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), directed by Tony Randel

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "She's A Killer" by Alien Sex Fiend

       The story of Clive Barker, as I’ve written on this blog several times, is one of dichotomy. When it comes to the world of literature he was and is an obvious success, establishing himself almost immediately as one of the premier horror writers of the 80’s, a decade infested with weirdos from Britain, especially if you read comics. Yet when it came to film, the gambling den of writers everywhere, that success seems to have fizzled out. Clive Barker has worked on over a dozen films over the years, written, produced, even directed, the man has been more involved in the creative process of cinema than most writers, but ask the regular movie goer about a Clive Barker film and you’ll be lucky to get three. Again, more than what a lot of writers can say, but absolutely abysmal when compared with the behemoth known as Stephen King, a comparison that I make almost as often as I reference the fact that I make this comparison. 

       I’ve covered several of Barker’s films so far on this blog, and the end results have been hit or miss. Rawhead Rex was lackluster, a goofy monster compared with an psychosexual storyline that probably reads better than it plays, but no one is gonna play it because the name ‘Rawhead Rex’ sounds stupid as hell. Nightbreed was pretty good, a film that probably could’ve been bigger had it been made during the peak of the Twilight years. Candyman I’ve already gone over in this year’s Marathon, suffice to say that my criticisms then are still my criticisms now. Not unmemorable films per se, but not really transcending the limitations and the stigma of genre films.

       Then there’s Hellraiser. Released in 1987, a year after the mediocre Rawhead Rex, Hellraiser was the embodiment of everything that defined Clive Barker as an artist (probably helped that it was directed by the man himself): grotesque gore, an exploration of sexual themes that went beyond what audiences were likely used to at the time, all of which feels darkly surreal in this otherwise mundane world. Watching Hellraiser you can see immediately why it became a hit, and why it faltered when it transitioned into a franchise; It’s Clive Barker’s vision that made the idea work, and when placed in the hands of people who don’t ‘get it’, it becomes just another horror movie but with a love for leather goods. Still most horror franchises have enough steam for at least one more decent movie, and since I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to it during next year’s Marathon, I decided to check it out now.

       Released in 1988, Hellbound: Hellraiser II was written by Peter Atkins, directed by Tony Randel and produced by Christopher Figg and David Barron through Film Futures and Troopstar. Taking place almost immediately after the events of the first film, Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) has been transferred to the local mental institution in order to recuperate from the trauma, although no one seems to believe her about the whole ‘puzzle box unleashing demons and my rapey uncle wearing my dad as a skin suit’ thing. Everyone except the head doctor of the facility Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham), who just so happens to be something of an occultist; So much so that not only does he have a handful of puzzle boxes but he also has the know-how to bring the Queen of Hags herself Julia (Clare Higgins) back to ‘life’. Meanwhile, Kirsty is having visions of her father, who seems to have gotten stuck in hell after the whole skinned alive thing and is now stuck there. Everyone needs to get to hell today, so someone better get to work on that souped-up rubix cube.

       Hellbound is a film with a foundation built on convenience. Kirsty just so happens to be sent to a hospital where the main doctor conveniently knows everything about the puzzle box, conveniently knows how to revive Julia despite there being no reason why he would, conveniently has a character (Tiffany) whose whole thing is solving puzzles, it speaks to a movie in desperate need for a story rather than in desperate need to be told. Now if Kirsty had been a patient for months, constantly dropping hints of the Cenobites and we could see Channard playing 4-D chess, putting all the pieces together for his master plan then it’d be fine, but the way the film is laid out it feels like the whole thing takes place over the weekend, and half of it is just rehashing stuff from the first movie. Other films are a slow burn, Hellraiser 2 is trying to cook with M-80s.

       Until the characters get to hell that is, where things become a lot more interesting. Hell in the Hellraiser universe is not the popular conception of hell, with lakes of fire and brimstone, but an Escher-like collection of labyrinthine corridors that stretch on for infinity, presided over not by a horned guy with a pitchfork but by an enormous floating object known as Leviathan. It’s an alien, dare I say Lovecraftian vision of the afterlife that helps Hellbound stand apart from its peers. Tony Randel loves reusing this shot of characters, barely specks on the screen, walking on top of one of the infinite labyrinth as Leviathan hangs above, sweeping the land like some horrific lighthouse, and I mean I would too because it’s an amazing visual and a terrific matte painting. 80’s genre films had a thing about depicting otherworldly places as cloudy grey voids, but here it works in Hellbound’s favor. As with most of these types of movies you end up wishing that the film explored more of the weirder stuff, like what’s the deal with the whole hell circus thing, but what we do get is arguably the best addition of lore any of these horror franchises have ever gotten. Set it up against the Thorn Cult debacle in the Halloween series and Hellbound blows it out of the water.

       It’s also interesting how the Cenobites are utilized across the two films. In the first Hellraiser they were the secret final boss of the story, while rapey uncle Frank and Julia took the role as the primary antagonists. A little switcheroo for the sequel, Julia is in Frank’s position and we’ve got Channard now, but the Cenobites are strikingly less antagonistic than they were before. They still go on about torture and what not, standard BDSM monster stuff, but their place in the story is less outright villainous and more Cheshire Cat, taunting Kirsty as she traverses hell. By the end they actually achieve a manner of depth, which I wasn’t expecting at all. Clive Barker does seem like one of those people who are super into the whole ‘actually monsters are the good guys’ angle, the Transatlantic Tim Burton if you will, but only Nightbreed and this film actually dabbled in it. Dabbled being the operative word here, this is Hellraiser 2 we’re talking about here not Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, but it is a bit of development that will unfortunately be cast aside as the franchise rolls on and Pinhead loses two of his dimensions.

       As far as special effects go Hellbound maintains the standard set by the first film, and in some cases moves beyond it, as sequels ought to do. There’s the nasty shit for all the gorehounds out there, the excellent matte paintings and cinematography, there’s even some experimenting with (admittedly janky) stop-motion, really helps you to forget how many musty hallways there are in the film. In particular the scene in which Channard allows a patient, believing himself to be infested with maggots, to mutilate his body with a razor blade is the most grotesque scene since Frank’s bloody skeleton pulled himself out of the floor in the first Hellraiser, lasting just long enough to become really uncomfortable. 

       In regards to any ‘flaws’, it definitely seems like they were pushing for Tiffany to have more plot relevancy, given the whole hell circus scene and the implications behind her trauma, that are left on the table, and the Kirsty/Tiffany bond they try to push later on feels thrown together considering the two barely interact in or out of hell until the very end. Channard is also a bit of a letdown; Here we have an psychopathic doctor, a man who is perfectly fine with abusing and sacrificing the people under his care for his own ends, an actual defined villain unlike random dude Frank, and he’s just kind of there. Making confused faces and playing second banana until the film decides he’s relevant again. “Really?”, You think to yourself. “THIS guy is supposed to be the antagonist”? Cranham isn’t a poor actor, but in a series that is extreme to the point of ridiculousness he almost kills the momentum.

       Hellbound: Hellraiser II gets the recommendation. While the creative decisions Tony Randel and company made might have pushed the series closer to dark fantasy than out and out horror, those same decisions defined the world of Hellraiser beyond just weird puzzle boxes and that one Cenobite that looks like a thumb with sunglasses. It’s also a good place to stop; Kirsty’s story is wrapped up, the day is saved and in spite of any sequel bait that appears by the time the credits rolled I felt a sense of satisfaction. We’ve been to hell and back, the characters had their arcs, there’s nothing left to say, and the reception to the later Hellraiser films would seem to agree. Maybe that Hellraiser reboot that’s supposed to be coming out will freshen things up, unlike the Friday the 13th reboot or the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot or the Leprechaun reboot. Until then, Hellraiser and Hellbound make for a fine double feature. Grab a bowl of popcorn and your favorite skin suit and enjoy. 

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Alice (1988), directed by Jan Švankmajer

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "White Rabbit", by Jefferson Airplane

       When it comes to children’s literature, there aren’t many that come close to Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. Sure you’ve got your Peter Pan’s and your Wizards of Oz and Little Nemos that have carved out their own little slice of the pie, but it’s hard to compare to the massive level of Alice-based media that continually poured from the minds of pop culture since then. We’re talking video games, comic books, spin-off novels, fashion, hit singles by Jefferson Airplane, enough to amuse any Wonderfan for a not-insignificant amount of time. Of course this also includes films, and since the closest we’ve ever gotten to Wonderland as far as I recall is Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (which has nothing to do with the classic nonsense poem aside from the fact that the protagonist fights a creature called the Jabberwocky), I figured it was finally time to jump onto the bandwagon. And wouldn’t you know it, it fits the theme too!

       The first feature length film by Czech director Jan Švankmajer (he had built his career on short films before this), Alice, or Něco z Alenky as it’s known in the original tongue, tells the story that most of you are probably familiar with. Alice, a young girl wrapped up in the duties a young girl is required of her, playing with dolls and schoolwork, one day comes a talking white rabbit with a fancy wardrobe and an obsession with punctuality. An intensely curious child, Alice decides to chase after the rabbit, and ends up in Wonderland, a bizarre world populated by even more bizarre residents. Determined to find that white rabbit, Alice goes on an absurd journey through this nonsense country, interacting with all manor of unbelievable creature. Will she ever find the White Rabbit? Will she ever find her way home again? Only time will tell, and there seems to be a shortage of that in Wonderland.

       However, things were a little different when Jan decided to get behind the camera. You see he wasn’t a fan of the Alice adaptations that had been released up to then, believing they had made Wonderland come off as too much of a fairy tale. To him Lewis Carroll’s book was more like an amoral dream, and so that’s the kind of movie he decided to make. An intensely surreal film, where an almost entirely mute Alice (almost all dialogue is given to us by a narrator of sorts, Camilla Power in this case) travels about a nonsense world that’s made up of locations in or around her home, interacting with things that are made up of the things in her home. The White Rabbit’s home is a hutch surrounded by building blocks for example. It seems rather low-key compared to elaborate fantasy worlds of Disney and the like, but I actually really appreciate the idea. For children like Alice their home is their entire world, so it makes sense that their unconscious minds would reflect that. 

       That being said, apparently when Jan decided he wasn’t going to be doing a fairy tale interpretation of ‘Adventures in Wonderland’, that meant he had to go a complete 180 degrees and make it a total nightmare instead. Alice no longer lives in a normal house anymore, but instead some kind of Silent Hill-style post-industrial slum with nothing but dead bugs and jars of various things to keep her company. The White Rabbit is some kind of taxidermy monstrosity with bulging glass eyes and an open chest cavity where sawdust continually pours out, and he’s probably one of the lesser horrific ones. The film also uses extensive stop-motion animation, so when that living sock crawls up out of the floor and absorbs the glass eyes and dentures into itself to form a face, it’s looks as real as they can make it. Despite being a children’s book written specifically for a child, I cannot fathom this being a movie that you’d actually want your child to watch. Maybe kids in the Czech Republic have a better tolerance for this sort of stuff, but I think kid me would have gained two or three mental scars from this movie easy. If you ever wondered what Puppet Master would be like if it was actually scary, here it is.

       Nightmare fuel aside, I’d say my biggest issue with Alice is one of pacing. Now I know that this is meant to be a ‘dream’, which means lots of lingering shots on weird stuff, but with this movie it feels like every scene lingers on a minute or two longer than it probably should. The scene where Alice takes the shrinking drink and the growing tarts for example, feels like it takes up half the film, and the movie had barely started by that point. Which wouldn’t be a problem, necessarily, but when your movie is centered around a child entering and leavings rooms, constantly returning to the same bureau gag, and generally not doing much of anything in particular, you start to become overwhelmingly aware of the passage of time.

        The fact that this is a loose adaptation also becomes quite clear when you notice how sparse Wonderland has become. Alice manages to capture a couple of the set pieces from the novel, the room with the tiny door, the Caterpillar, the Mad Tea Party, even the baby that turns into a pig, but a lot of the things that would otherwise might seem standard going for a Wonderland movie are missing. There’s no Cheshire Cat for instance, a character that’s become as popular as Alice herself in the years since the novel’s release, nor will you find the Dodo, the Mock Turtle, the Duchess (weird to have the baby but not the baby’s mother) and many others. I’m sure it comes down to issues of time and budget, animating a dozen more characters would probably add up, but it does serve to make Wonderland seem a tad less wondrous, and the rampant mildew infestation on every wall in the film had already taken care of that within the first couple of minutes. 

       To me, the appeal of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is that it is a story about a very proper, very bright girl who is placed into a world that’s like a funhouse mirror version of her own, where everything she knows is wrong and everything wrong is right. Jan Švankmajer’s Alice certainly captures the illogic of Carroll’s world visually but that satirical aspect, the Victorian-era Stranger in a Strange Land is missing, and so too the main point of interest of the story in my opinion. Who is Alice in this film? What are her interests, what is her motivation, beyond the obsession with the White Rabbit? You can’t really tell, and if that’s the case then why do I care about her or what she’s doing? Does this movie work without the audience already knowing the Wonderland stories and being able to fill in the blanks? I dunno.

       While I wouldn’t claim it’s the definitive adaptation, if such a thing even exists, from a visual standpoint Alice earns a recommendation. It’s not a movie I’d pick up for family movie night, but considering the popularity of ‘dark’ versions of otherwise benign children’s stories I think finding a willing audience wouldn’t be all that difficult. Whether it’s for Halloween or a loved one’s Un-birthday, Alice just might be the film for you. Try it out, or you might end up losing your head.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Pumpkinhead (1988), directed by Stan Winston

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead", by XTC

     The life of a horror movie franchise mascot can be a long and treacherous. Sometimes it takes years for filmmakers to nail things down, like Friday the 13th (not a trace of hockey masks until at least 3 movies in). Other times they figure it out right away but end up running out of material to pack it with, like we saw with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Sometimes you’re Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and in hindsight you were way better off not being a franchise at all. The point is that movies in general are hit-or-miss, and the chances of hitting upon a concept with some serious staying power is like winning the lottery. Even in horror, the genre that is infamous for endless sequels, true immortals are a rare breed. For every A-lister that’s been spawned since the dawn of horror cinema, there an endless amount of has-beens, never-weres and also-rans. For every Michael Myers, there are 2 or 3 Evil Bongs collecting dust in the bargain.

     And then there’s Pumpkinhead.

     There’s some parts of America that seem to have been untouched by the hand of modernity. Places where a middle-aged single dad like Ed Harley (played by Lance Henriksen of all people) can raise a son entirely on the proceeds of a single run-down general store in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere. Of course this is a horror movie, and we all know that the boonies are like catnip to irresponsible white yuppies who are looking to screw around and get wasted. However, when that irresponsibility ultimately leads to deadly consequences and avoided responsibility, there is a debt that needs to be repaid. You see when a man is wronged by another man in such a dire way, you don’t go to a sheriff to seek justice, you don’t look for a court to deliberate on laws. You grab yourself a shovel, go digging around in an old pumpkin patch/defiled graveyard, and get a hillbilly swamp witch to revive a demon from the depths of hell to go on a killing spree of those that have been marked for death (in the Catskills at least, Rocky Mountains might be a bit different). Which is exactly what Ed Harley does, but how does buyer’s remorse work when it comes to Pumpkinhead? How do you stop vengeance birthed from the pit and fed by the blood of the wronged? Hopefully swamp witches accept returns with a valid receipt, for all of our sakes.

     Unlike films like Halloween or Friday the 13th, which got a lot of mileage out of quiet dudes with masks, the folks over at Pumpkinhead decided to bet it all on black and dropped the budget on the titular monster. This decision is a mixed success. While Pumpkinhead does indeed look incredibly fucking cool (if you ever wanted to know what a fusion dance between a Xenomorph and the Eraserhead baby here’s your chance), with an impressive level of facial articulation, but it seems to come at the cost of almost everything else. Pumpkinhead doesn’t like to move and he doesn’t like to interact with things if he doesn’t have to, and while that’s understandable given the circumstances, it does mean the film is unfortunately relegated more to implied violence rather than actually showing it. Aside from a juicy scene involving a steel rod I believe, most of the action of this movie is dedicated to unseen hands dragging a character offscreen, and the deaths just sort of happen. It’s something you don’t really notice in similar movies, like An American Werewolf in London or Alien, but is really noticeable here. Pumpkinhead seems less like the anchor for a horror movie and more like a museum exhibit.

     Of course, the reason why we don’t notice these things about Alien and do with Pumpkinhead is because Alien has a good movie wrapped around it, and P-head really does not. Far be it from me to decry a horror movie for a predictable plot, but that doesn’t earn it any points either, and neither does its flat characters and its so-so acting. There’s definitely a certain novelty in seeing Bishop from Aliens affecting a southern drawl, and the locations they got are beautiful (even if Stan Winston apparently believes that they’re literally still filled with people from the 1920s), but that novelty isn’t enough to carry a whole movie. Especially if they’re not even going to bother giving us the Lance Henriksen dueling banjos scene that we all dreamed about.

Pumpkinhead is a resounding shrug of a movie. There’s some potential hidden in there, especially if you have a phobia of things that look like an oiled up fetus, but by 1988 there was a ton of movies that did things better than Pumpkinhead, and that number has only increased with time. I’m not gonna say that there’s no enjoyment to be had with this one, but it’s probably not going to be the highlight of your scary movie night.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), directed by Terry Gilliam

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Vulcan and Venus", by Michael Kamen

     You know, I consume a lot of media in my life. Lots of movies, comic books, TV shows, etc. So much so that I often forget why it is that I do it. It is just something I do out of habit, having done it since I was a kid? Something I do to distract myself from my inevitable death, and with the kind of brain I have that’s a necessity? Or is it that each time I watch or read something new, it’s done with the hope I’ll stumble onto something truly great? A story which envelopes me completely within its world, bringing me into a place where all the hardships and bigotry and misery of life melt away and I am able to see it as it truly should be, full of heroes and villains and monsters and high adventure. A world where the good guys always win, where there’s a smile on every face and death is never the end. Something that makes me feel as free and happy as a child, like I never could when I was that age.

     There’s been a several films over the years that have been able to elicit those emotions, and even fewer directors, but one of the most consistent is Terry Gilliam. A couple Marathons ago I covered his 1981 film Time Bandits, in which a young boy joins a troupe of time traveling dwarves as they used a map of the universe to commit robberies, and Sean Connery is a Roman for some reason. Since then I haven’t touched another Gilliam movie, although I have watched a couple episodes of the surprisingly decent 12 Monkeys TV series (not to mention the Gilliamesque Erik the Viking), so it’s time to dip my toes back into those waters. Back to the 80s, the age of Time Bandits, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

     In the late 18th century, during the Austro-Turkish War (the other late 18th century Turkish War), a small seaside city is being besieged not only by the Turks, but by oppressive and arrogant government officials. Their only source of entertainment in these trying times are an acting troupe known as The Henry Salt and Son (who is actually a daughter known as Sally) Players, who are performing a play known as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, detailing the fantastical and absurd tales of the titular Baron. At least they are until an elderly man arrives at the theater, waving a sword about and interrupting the performance. The man claims that he, in fact, is Baron Munchausen, that all of these stories did, in fact, happen, and that apparently he isn’t much of a theater fan. The Baron explains that it was he, along with his servants the quick Bertholt, the strong Ulbrecht, the keen-eyed Adolphus and the blustery Gustavus, that embarrassed the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and thus lead to this war, but he doesn’t get very far. He’s just a old man spouting fairy tales, and there’s no room in this Enlightened world of laws and logic for someone like him.

     Sally isn’t content with either the war or seeing the Baron lay down and die however, and after running off to the battlements to berate the soldiers, an uncanny situation with cannon balls reveals that the old man wasn’t lying after all: He really is Baron Munchausen, capable of derring-do beyond the realms of mortal men. Sally (and some beautiful women) convince the Baron to help end the war, and after constructing an airship out of women’s underwear he (and Sally) escape the city and go off to find the Baron’s servant so they can finally defeat the Sultan and his army, and perhaps even Death. A journey that will take them beyond Austria, beyond Earth, beyond the limits of time and space itself.

     As a film, Munchausen bears a couple similarities to Gilliam’s previous fantasy film, Time Bandits. Both movies feature a child wise beyond their years (Sally is more savvy but gets less focus than Bandits protag, but still) who joins a group of adults who act far more childish than the actual child on a magical and bizarre journey. However, where Time Bandits is almost a satirization of a fairy tale, even throwing in an unhappy ending, Munchausen is the opposite. Munchausen deals in big ideas; Big characters, big locations, big villains, it’s that gloriously wide scope that all the great stories of old dealt in, like the Odyssey and the Voyage of Sinbad. Yet it never loses its warmth or its sense of humor, both visual and otherwise (the benefits of having a Python behind the camera), and it’s what really makes this film. You just feel happy watching it, and I rarely feel good doing anything.

     The cast is great. John Neville is about the best looking Baron you could ask for, possessing a wizened charm and childlike vitality that resembles classic literary character Don Quixote. Eric Idle and Jonathan Pryce put in good work, Robin Williams does some classic Robin Williams antics, Uma Thurman seems incredibly well suited to be a love goddess, and so on. Even the kid who plays Sally ends up coming across as endearing more often than not, and that can be a make or break moment for movies that rely so much on child characters. Not every movie can be Stand By Me.

     The Adventures of Baron Munchausen hits pretty much every mark for me. I love the combination of the modern and the antique, I love the grimy beauty of the sets, it all fills me with the same passion and excitement that filled me when I watched my first Disney movie, or cracked open my first copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. A time of possibilites. Anyway, strong recommendation from me for this Halloween, if you’re anything like me at all in your movie tastes, this is definitely one to check out.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - Child's Play (1988), directed by Tom Holland

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Under My Voodoo", by Sublime

     So far on the Marathon we’ve covered such spooky topics as alien parasites, vampires, Frankenstein monsters, some haunted things and at least a couple plain old killers, because the greatest monster of all is man or some such thing. A pretty good spread of classic and modern fare if I do say so myself, but if you really wanted to get down to brass tacks, really find out what monster the kids are talking about while browsing the memeosphere, then look no future than the animate inanimate humanoid object. AKA the killer mannequin. AKA the demon doll. AKA the monster puppet. AKA you get the drift.

     Nowadays you can’t search for a video on youtube without finding some shrill-voiced gamer making funny faces and screaming into a camera as animatronic animals try to play peek-a-boo with them, but puppets and their ilk have a long history in the horror genre. In television puppets have popped up every now and then since the days of the Twilight Zone, comics have been menaced by such criminals as Rag Doll, the Dummy and The Ventriloquist, and films like Puppet Master and The Demonic Toys have managed to become multi-film franchises in spite of the fact that they really aren’t all that good (although I love the original Puppet Master). Oh, and there was also Small Soldiers that one time. However, when you’re talking about horror movies with killer puppets, there’s really one that managed to not only make a successful transition to a franchise but snag a place amongst the annals of horror icons. I’m talking about Chucky, and the movie I’m going to talk about is Child’s Play.

     For as famous a horror icon as Chucky eventually became, Child’s Play is kind of...weird. It opens with Charles Lee Ray, a murderer known as The Strangler, running away from a single cop (Mark Norris, played by Chris Sarandon) down a empty city street at night. Why a police officer would be chasing an infamous criminal on his own and the streets in the middle of a city would be completely empty I can’t say. After being abandoned by his partner (why a guy known as ‘The Strangler’ has a wheelman I also don’t know), Ray sneaks into a toy store, engaging into a gunfight with Norris. Ray is shot through the chest, and after laying down a heavy deathbed curse on his partner and on Norris, he pulls out some fucking VOODOO MAGIC out of nowhere to transfer his soul into the form of a popular children’s toy known as Good Guys. Which causes the store to explode, I guess because of all the magic. Which begs the question of why Voodoo isn’t this world’s major religion considering magic is fucking real and reproducible. You’d think colonization of the Caribbean would have gone way differently, at the very least.

     Eventually the doll containing Ray’s soul comes into the possession of young Andy Barkley as a birthday present (his mom bought it for him off of a hobo), and the newly christened ‘Chucky’ begins his quest for bloody revenge. After the babysitter takes a tumble into a station wagon, Andy himself is under suspicion of being a psycho murderer himself. Will the Barkley family be able to clear Andy’s name, and end Chuck’s reign of terror once and for all, or do the fates have something far more sinister in mind for this terrorized single-parent household?

     Unfortunately, I don’t know if Child’s Play ever breaks out of that weirdness to become a good movie. Aside from the major plot contrivances, like why any sane adult would just let a elementary age kid leave school or get onto a bus to the projects completely unattended, the standard slasher movie ‘no one believes anyone about anything ever’ trope or why a kid would hear the sounds of gunshots in a nearby house and RUN TOWARDS IT, the entire voodoo thing is ridiculous and is ultimately unnecessary. In a better crafted film, you would have had just die near the dolls so that when the murders start to happen you could actually introduce some doubt over whether Andy is actually crazy or if he’s being influenced by the doll, and the fact that the murderer is in fact Chucky becomes a pretty entertaining twist. You don’t even need the ‘transfer his soul into Andy’ plot really, which is where the voodoo thing actually comes into relevance, or the ‘Chucky is becoming human’ crap, which doesn’t even make sense. Chucky would be going after Andy because he’s a murderous psychopath, and you’d keep killing him until he’s dead just like you do with Christine and Michael Myers and all those other movie monsters. Nothing important would change, and with the time originally spent setting up the dumb conclusion it might be spent on the actual characters, maybe build the relationship between Norris and Karen (the mom) up a little, since they spend most of the second half together and barely beyond bickering and advancing the plot. The way it is now, Chucky being alive is telepgraphed from the first five minutes, and then you’re stuck waiting the entire movie for the cast to play catchup and figure out what the audience has known for ages. It’s annoying.

     That being said, the kills themselves are entertaining and take advantage of Chucky’s attributes, and by the time Chucky really gets into monster mode (conveniently at the end of the film) he’s quite fun. Not to mention the great voice work from Brad Dourif, who brings the character to life even more than the special effects crew in some ways. He’s not as charismatic as then-horror veteran Freddy Krueger, but there’s a strong foundation laid here for the rest of the Child’s Play series to build upon. For all of Child’s Play’s faults, Chucky himself is not one of them.

     When it comes to mascot horror movies, Child’s Play gets just about average. Not as demented as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not as inventive as Nightmare on Elm Street, not as violent as Hellraiser, but does just enough to satiate your appetite. If you’re a horror newbie I think that Child’s Play will probably be just the right thing for you this Halloween, it’s just the right mix of scary and stupid to keep you and your friends from getting freaked out. As long as you’re not deathly afraid of dolls and/or redheads, it’ll be a fun night.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Akira (1988), directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Kaneda", by Geinoh Yamashirogumi

     As much as Japan has been connected to animation over the years, and despite the vastly differing amounts of diversity and content that medium is given when compared to the West, that’s not to say that Japan has a peerless record on the subject. Indeed, the Land of the Rising Sun can be just as bull-headed and destructive to the creative process as any other country in the industry. Whether it’s putting the animators on a shoestring budget, thus reducing the animation quality (you’ve probably seen enough slideshow animes to know what I mean), or just outright refusing to give people credit for their work, the fact is that artistic integrity doesn’t matter half as much as getting the product on the shelves. It makes a certain degree of sense, when you’ve got a dedicated demographic that doesn’t mind shelling out 50 bucks a pop for a blu-ray, then you probably want to put out as many blu-rays as you can. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t good shows and movies being putting out, but it does mean dealing with a mountain of shovelware, and that this dedication to immediacy can hurt even a good show.

     Still, establishing a legacy through animation is entirely possible. Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli is probably the most famous example, at least when it comes to Western audiences. Shinichiro Watanabe, creator of Cowboy Bebop (the one anime everyone can agree is good), Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy. And, as you might expect from this article, mangaka and filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo. Although his work in the field seems limited (around half of his work in film seems to be focused on screenwriting), that observation doesn’t seem to matter much when his feature-length directorial debut was 1988’s Akira, based on his 1984 manga of the same name. Akira, a movie that, like Alan Moore’s “Watchmen”, inspired legions of imitators and very few peers.. Akira, a film that managed to carve itself out a spot in Western pop culture in an era when people still called it japanimation and Dragonball Z was still a dot on the horizon. Akira, the film that took the bar set by Cronenberg and Carpenter and raised it as far as it could reach.

     Akira, it’s a movie.

     The year is 2019. 31 years ago, Tokyo was almost completely obliterated in a massive explosion. Upon its ashes Neo-Tokyo was built, yet this new city failed to live up to the reputation of the original. Rampant crime and drug abuse, crippling poverty and severe economic depression, daily protests that threaten to erupt into terrorist attacks or military oppression. Could this be it? Is this how the world ends, with civilization slowly rotting and decaying until it finally collapses in upon itself? At the very least, Japan seems destined to end with a whimper rather than a bang.

     For teenagers Kaneda and Tetsuo, worrying about how shitty the future is going to be doesn’t matter as much as living in the now. They and the other members of their gang spend their days popping pills, trying to get laid, riding around on their motorcycles and beating the hell out of other gangs. School? Finding a job? Fuck that mess man, why bother contributing to a broken system? Biker punks for life bro!

     Or so it would seem, until one night a mysterious boy who looks like an elderly man appears and somehow causes Tetsuo to crash his bike. Before Kaneda and his friends can get help, the military arrives and takes not only the boy, but Tetsuo as well. Who is this mysterious boy? Who is the mysterious girl that seems to be connected to the boy? Why does the military need this boy and Tetsuo? Kaneda is going to find out, but the answer might not be something anyone wants to hear. Because Akira, the ultimate energy, is getting ready to awaken once again. And when he does, no one is going to be safe.

     Leave it to the man with years of experience in sequential art to know how to put a movie together. Akira in motion is a beautiful thing, & Otomo has a gift for crafting scenes manage to stick themselves into your mind. The infamous ‘bike braking’ moment that’s been referenced so many times since, the battle with the military, the climax...hell, every time someone shoots a gun it ends up looking amazing. I dunno, it’s the fluidity of those action that’s most appealing I guess. The smoothness of it. It feels more natural, as if you’re seeing something real rather than animated. One of those you have to experience to understand.

     It’s also not a film that shies away from uncomfortable scenes. Lots of blood, lots of scenes where people get blown away with bullets (and a couple that are pretty much pulped) and of course the end of the film where things upgrade to full-on body horror. Of course this isn’t quite like The Fly or Tetsuo the Iron Man, where we as the audience are forced to watch a man decay in front of our eyes. It’s more like standing up after a long period of drinking or substance use and feeling the world drop out from under you. Suddenly the rules don’t exist anymore, and reality itself descends into utter chaos. Rather similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey in that respect, although I’d say Akira might take the points in the pure bizarre. Which is probably what keeps it from being a truly scary movie, unless you have a low tolerance for things like this. You spend less time being scared and more time watching to see what weird crap they come up with next.

     If you’re a gorehound, an animation fan or if you’re interested in getting into the anime scene, this is just one of those movies you need under your belt. English dub, original Japanese, Neutral Spanish dub, whatever you want to use, it’s (probably) all good. The West may not respect the field of animation as much of animation as much as we could, but we should at least love the gems that we got.

     One more left.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: They Live (1988), directed by John Carpenter

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Know Your Enemy", by Rage Against the Machine

     How much are we influenced by our entertainment? Does pop culture prevent us from recognizing and addressing the problems of our society? Ever since the birth of capitalism and the advent of advertising, artists of all shapes and sizes have played with the idea that the Earth (or at least the First World parts) has become one big Island of the Lotus-Eaters, blinded by a soporific haze of mindless consumerism and hedonistic pleasure that prevents us from kicking up a fuss when we inevitably end up being exploited for whatever reason. It’s been covered in novels (Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451), music (The Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket”, Crass’ entire discography) art (that one Andy Warhol painting with the soup cans), and of course film. Despite being the most expensive and consumer-friendly form of popular media, cinema has quite the track record in scolding people for the blind consumption of entertainment and not paying attention to the world around us. Robocop, Brazil, Videodrome, Catch-22, etc., etc., etc. 

     But since I’ve already watched those movies, let’s talk about They Live instead.

     Released in 1988, who those true Americans in the audience reading this will recognize as the year Van Halen released their landmark album OU812, They Live was directed by John Carpenter in what I tend to consider the tail end of his ‘golden age’, which lasted from the late 70s to around the mid 90s. So many interesting films to come out of that period of time: Halloween I & II, The Thing, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, Starman if you pretend it’s a film about Jack Knight and not a romantic drama, just a nice gooey chunk of goodness for your brain to enjoy. Maybe not all of them are what you might call the pinnacle of film, but they were inventive and innovative in an era of increasingly worthwhile science-fiction, horror and action films, and that’s where my interests lie.

     In a city that is probably San Francisco, a man known only as Nada (professional wrestler and kilt enthusiast Rowdy Roddy Piper) arrives in town looking for work. With only the clothes on his back and a backpack full of tools, Nada ends up staying in the local shantytown, doing manual labor at the local construction site. It’s not glamorous work or work that allows you to afford the basic cost of living apparently, but it’s honest work, jobs that Nada and his new friend Frank (Keith David) are willing to do in these tough and troubled times.

     All that changes when Nada comes across some unusual sunglasses, left behind by some shifty people taking up residence in a nearby church. When worn, they reveal to Nada a vision of the world that he never thought possible. Everything around him; billboards, magazines, television, is in fact subliminal propaganda designed to keep humanity docile and unaware of their environment. Not to mention the fact that some people, especially cops, politicians and news reporters, aren’t even people at all, but are in fact god damn aliens. Nada quickly finds himself caught up in the guerilla war between these god damn aliens and the paltry amount of humans with access to the special sunglasses, which apparently makes up the entirety of the resistance movement as far as we know. Throw in copious amounts of gunplay, a bit of romance and the longest fight scene to ever take place in a parking lot and you got yourself a movie.

     Although They Live came out in the late 80s, a time when we thought Guns N’ Roses was the greatest band in human history, it feels much more like a sci-fi film from the pre-Star Wars 70s, like a Westworld or Soylent Green. Aside from literally naming the protagonist ‘nothing’, which sounds like something pulled from a Frederik Pohl paperback, and the most blatantly obvious moral lesson since Reefer Madness, there’s a distinct feeling of ‘old school’ that runs throughout the film. Whether it’s the bizarrely low budget looking aliens (creepy, but nowhere near what Carpenter had accomplished in The Thing or Big Trouble in Little China) or the way the characters exist more as set pieces than people. Which sounds like an insult, and maybe it is for those types of films, but with They Live it seems like the point was to make that kind. It would make sense, seeing as two years previous he directed Big Trouble out of a desire to make a kung-fu movie, a genre that also saw its greatest prominence in the 70s. Maybe the late 80s were the John Carpenter equivalent of a Throwback Thursday? Who can say for sure?

     It’s a little bit goofy, to be honest. Piper tries to go for some Arnie-esque one liners that make him less like a badass freedom fighter and more like he’s trying to troll Hulk Hogan on Saturday Night’s Main Event. The whole movie in general is full of weird dialogue, weird scenes that may or may not be intentional though, so it’s actually kind of a plus I guess? I don’t know man, the concept is cool, there’s plenty of action, and it’s just stupid enough that you can have fun with it. Try it out this Halloween.

Scrooged (1988), directed by Richard Donner

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Christmas Must Be Tonight", by The Band

     I’m not totally up to snuff, or I’m suffering from writer’s block, or my hands have finally caught up to the crap my brain has come up with, so here’s a short article I managed to come up with as my gift to all of you you. No, you can’t return it.

     Well it’s that time of year again folks: Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice/Festivus. A time of festivity and joy, where families and friends gather together to enjoy fine foods, exchange gifts with one another, bask in the glow of each other’s company and attempt to not be utterly rancid dicks to each other for at least 24 hours. Or, if you’re the kind of miserable dick that I sometimes tend to be, it’s a disgusting display of consumerism and greed that long since killed any sense of goodwill that the season originally had and replaced it with high suicide rates and naked opportunism. Mostly however, I tend to see Christmas and the assorted other holidays much in the same way I see the life of Batman: Full of childhood trauma, often times drifts into dark places, but ultimately a force for good. If you see any clowns at your Christmas party though, you get the fuck out of there. No good can come of it.

     Speaking of movies, Christmas is the one holiday (aside from Halloween) big enough to have it’s own film hype train surrounding it, like a festive Flava Flav. Most of them are, of course, schmaltzy three dollar productions shat out by the Hallmark Channel or ABC to appease moms and people with a high saccharine tolerance, but there are a few gems that really justify the concept of a Christmas movie. The most famous is easily It’s A Wonderful Life (which actually helped to destroy Frank Capra’s film career), but you also have A Miracle on 34th Street, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Nightmare Before Christmas, Home Alone, Rudolf and the other Rankin-Bass animated films, A Christmas Story and probably others that I’ve forgotten or that you the reader care more about. It’s no easy task creating an iconic Christmas movie, and I’m not talking about a movie that is just set on Christmas either. You have to take that same message of peace and love that every other X-mas movie out there is trying to push and twist it just enough that it stands apart from the others without alienating itself from the message it’s meant to represent. Many have tried to create a Christmas movie that will be remembered throughout the ages, and they all been washed away into the great yuletide sea. Does Scrooged, the film I’ve decided to write about this time, share a similar fate to it’s brethren? We shall see.

     We shall see.

     Directed by one Mr. Richard Donner, whom you might recall from such films as Superman, The Goonies, The Omen and the Lethal Weapon series, Scrooged is a slick 80s take on the classic Christmas Carol story by Charles Dickens, which was about a old rich bastard who is tortured by three ghosts on Christmas Eve into being charitable in case you can’t check wikipedia for some reason. SNL alum and comedic legend Bill Murray plays Francis Xavier Cross, a rich young bastard who just so happens to be the president of the IBC television network, which is about to broadcast an international extravaganza edition of ‘Scrooge’, as they call it. Frank is a miserable dick, as you might expect, whose relentless drive upwards has alienated himself from everyone around him, including his brother James, assistant Grace (with requisite ailing child, although he’s not so much dying of some sort of super-polio as he is the strong silent type), and his former lover and love interest, Claire Phillips. One night, Frank is visited by his old business partner Lou Hayward, who warns him of continuing down the path he’s made for himself so far, and drops the truth bomb: Frank will be visited by three ghosts, who will attempt to show him the error of his ways, or else. You can probably guess what happens from there.

     Predictable though it may be, there are a lot of good points to Scrooged. It’s funny for one, as you might expect from a film that counts Bill Murray, Bobcat Goldthwait amongst it cast. Not quite laugh out funny in my opinion, except for perhaps a few moments with in Ghost of Christmas Present, but there’s a low simmering humour that persists throughout the film. I also quite like the special effects, especially the Ghost of Christmas Future moments (is this always where the budget goes in these types of stories?), which are fantastical without being overblown. It’s something that I’ve always enjoyed about the Donner films that I’ve seen; they’re fantastical without being full-on fantasy, grounded without mulling about in hard-nosed reality. Scrooged is a bit too goofy to work out as well as Superman in that regard, but it also feels like a film that is having fun being a film, and isn’t that what we as an audience like to see? I mean, that’s why Guardians of the Galaxy made 80 trillion dollars right? Because it was fun?

     Hopefully that was one coherent paragraph.

     The major complaint I have with this movie also happens to be its major strength: that of it’s lead actor, Bill Murray. Now I love Bill Murray as much as the next guy, and he’s been in plenty of films that I consider the pinnacle of comedy, but that’s kind of the problem. Frank Cross is supposed to be this caustic, self-serving prick, the Ebenezer Scrooge of Scrooged and I can’t see Bill Murray in that role. A smug jerk sure, the sarcastic asshole that you can’t help but like, but a Dickensian heel? No. In fact, whenever you see Bill Murray trying to lay down the Scrooge, it just comes off as forced and unnatural, like he’s trying to take the piss out the role. Which is fine on some levels of course, you know what you were buying into with Murray in the 80s, but it undercuts the more dramatic moments of the film and (once again) makes those scenes come off as unnatural. Even if I had never seen a Murray-centric film before, I can’t buy him as an evil boss, or really anything other than a guy who has mastered the art of the snark. Which is probably why he did The Razor’s Edge and all those Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch movies, to prove he had acting chops and shut fuckers like me up.

     So is Scrooged worthy of being considered a Christmas classic? Eh, could be. It’s got enough black humor and jokes for the adults while not being too dark for kids to enjoy, much like The Goonies, which I would guess classifies it as ‘fun for the whole family’. It’s got a little bit of happy, a dash of sad, and it ends on the positive message that you want out of a Christmas movie. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but I certainly wouldn’t have a problem placing it within the Christmas movie rotation next time winter rolls around. Try it out for yourself, maybe you’ll feel the same way.

Result: Recommended

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! See you all next year!