The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Candyman (1992), directed by Bernard Rose

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Helen's Theme" by Philip Glass

       Well well well. Here I thought that the days of having a movie adapted from a Stephen King story and one from Clive Barker were over, but then I decided completely on a whim to do a formal writeup of a film that I watched years and years ago, and it turns out that movie was a Clive Barker story all along! I know pulse-pounding moments like these are common on this blog, which is why the viewer base is so high, but it was still a pleasant surprise. What are the odds, right?

       Anyway,

       Released in 1992, Candyman was written and directed by Bernard Rose and produced by Steve Golin, Sigurjon Sighvatsson and Alan Poul through Propaganda Films, based on the short story “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker. Virginia Madsen plays Helen Lyle, a student from the University of Illinois working on her graduate thesis on the nature and development of urban legends with her friend Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons). During their investigation however, there is one name that keeps coming up: Candyman (Tony Todd), a supernatural serial killer who murders anyone who dares to speak his name into a mirror five times with his big fuck-off meathook (and that’s not a euphemism for his dick). Candyman is said to haunt the Cabrini Green housing projects, and indeed the residents there attribute a rash of murders in the area to him, including a woman named Ruthie Jean who was murdered by a man with a hook who allegedly came in through her bathroom window. Smelling the opportunity to up her thesis game, Helen decides to visit Cabrini Green and dig up some dirt on this whole sordid business. Something which on its own would not be advisable, but then she has to take things a step further and call him up. Now the Candyman has his sights on her, and before he kills her he’s going to make her life a living hell before he finishes her off for good. Also he’s really into bees, so I’m not sure why they didn’t call him Honeyman.

        Let’s start with the cinematography, like Bernard Rose’s love for aerial shots. The movie opens on a top-down view of Chicago, just about every scene that takes place in the university begins with a top-down view of the campus, even Cabrini Green gets it at one point and I’m not exactly sure why beyond that it looks good and Kubrickian. There is some good camera work on the ground too, the shot of Helen peering out of a hole in the wall which has been spray painted to look like Candyman’s open mouth is definitely a visual to sell a movie on. It’s not on the level of a Jodorowsky or anything, but these little touches do help Candyman stand apart a bit from its supernatural horror.

       Another one of those little touches comes from the score, composed by minimalist pioneer Philip Glass. Glass is perhaps best known for his work in avant-garde theater and cinema like Koyaanisqatsi, but over the years he’s sprung up in various film and TV projects, including Candyman’s sequel Farewell to the Flesh. On the whole I think Glass lives up to his reputation, his music really serves to give the film a level of grandiosity that you might not have expected., at least when you get into the film proper. For whatever reason the opening piece of music sounded off to me, more like the theme song to a cheap horror TV show than something by an acclaimed composer. It actually threw me off in the beginning, because I’m familiar with the work of Philip Glass and this wasn’t exactly Einstein on the Beach, but it quickly righted itself.

       Righted itself on the music front at least, unfortunately I can’t say the same for the watchability. As has been made clear from the Rosemary’s Baby review back in the day I find these ‘misery porn’ kind of horror movies, where the protagonist is behind the eight ball for the entire film with no agency whatsoever to be extremely tedious, but I think Rosemary might have actually been more active than Helen in this movie. After the first act it’s like we’re put on rails waiting for the haunted house ride to end. There’s no attempt to investigate Candyman beyond the little backstory we’re given, no real attempt at combating him, she’s just the metaphorical (and at one point literal) punching bag for the rest of the film. That we get some Virginia Madsen sideboob at one point, and a generous amount to boot, does little to soften the blow. Unless you’re into decapitated animals and buckets of blood with it that is, in which case you should probably call a psychiatrist.

        The whole ‘Helen as abuse sponge’ angle might have been tolerable though if our titular character were a Freddy Krueger type of villain, a malicious trickster who can bring a bit of gallows humor to the horror, but unfortunately he’s a retread of Pinhead without the unique visual aesthetic to distract you from him constantly dropping spooky obscure one-liners. Or they could have tied it into his backstory, and yes they are pulling the old Mummy trick by implying that Candyman is targeting Helen because she looks like his lost love (who he wants to psychologically destroy and then murder for some reason), but that’s only at the very end. Honestly it feels like an afterthought even though they telegraph it at the beginning of the movie as that whole past relationship angle is never really delved into at all, so Candyman is just acting like a weird psycho-rapist for no reason, which is on top of somehow being a murder ghost who needs to kill people in order for them to tell his story and thus continue to exist. Tony Todd does put the work in to make an otherwise indistinct villain more engaging, so props to him.

        Ultimately Candyman gets a mild recommendation. It’s always a treat to get some diverse casting in horror movies, and those readers who came out of Hellraiser and Nightbreed wanting will find another scrumptious meal of gruesome imagery and BDSM fetish fuel from the mind of Clive Barker and adapted reasonably well by Bernard Rose. Personally though Candyman feels like a short story stretched just far enough that the cracks in the concept became noticeable, and the misery porn direction the plot went to made the experience tiresome by the end. If you’re looking for scary movies to watch this Halloween and you’ve gone through the big names already then pop Candyman in and see where the night takes you, but I think one viewing is going to be the limit.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Brain Donors (1992), directed by Dennis Dugan

The Trailer

 and

The Appropriate Tune - "Crazy Words, Crazy Tune", by Johnny Marvin

       Cyclical trends. Every year or so it seems that a generation of people rediscover something that was popular with the previous generation and suddenly society is inundated with the stuff. In the 70’s folks were all about the 50’s; They watched Happy Days on their TV sets, went to see Grease and American Graffitti in theaters and attended Elvis Presley concerts in droves. The 90’s saw two Woodstocks and the revival of both swing and lounge music, for some reason. Even in this day and age it’s not difficult to find a song or a movie that’s lifting the 80’s aesthetic or a video game trying to be the next Earthbound or Final Fantasy 6. A common complaint thrown at Hollywood is its insistence on reboots and remakes, but the fact of the matter is that our society in general has been recursive. We’re constantly looking backwards, recycling, repackaging and deconstructing things we’ve done before, even if we don’t really have anything to say.

       Possibly the weirdest example of recursive pop culture are what I would tentatively call

the vaudeville comedy ‘revival’, in quotes because it has to be marginally successful to be considered a revival. Once in a blue moon someone in Hollywood gets it into their head that what the movie-going public wants is some of that Depression-era cinema, a return to those halcyon days where films were more than Kevin Hart screaming at things for 90 minutes. Rather than going the Oscar bait period drama route however, ala Chaplin, they decide to just make one of those movies. Own the rights to Laurel & Hardy but both men have been dead for decades? Well just grab a fat guy and a skinny guy and have them be Laurel & Hardy! Those 3 Stooges rights burning a hole in your pocket? Call up Will Sasso and have him hang out with the cast of Jersey Shore. It doesn’t matter that these were professional actors and comedians who spent their lives perfecting their characters and their act, just have some folks in cosplay do impressions and it’s basically the same thing right? Why book Paul McCartney for your concert when you can just get a Beatles cover band? Even if they ended up being decent movies, I don’t know what the incentive would be to watch them over an actual Laurel & Hardy or 3 Stooges film. More jokes about smartphones, I guess?

Which brings us to today’s film: Brain Donors, written by Pat Proft and directed by Dennis Dugan through Zucker Brothers Productions, back when the Zuckers were known for things like Airplane! and Police Squad rather than Scary Movie 3. Bob Nelson, Mel Smith and John Turturro star as Jacques (the oddball), Rocco (the streetwise conman) and Roland T. Flakfizer (the silver-tongued lawyer), three men who are brought together when the wealthy husband of wealthy philanthropist Lillian Oglethorpe unexpectedly passes. Mr. Oglethorpe’s will sets aside a significant chunk of change for the creation of a ballet company, and long-time toadie Edmund Lazlo is confident that lucrative chairman position belongs to him, only for his schemes to be dashed when Roland (who had sweet-talked his way into being the widow Oglethorpe’s personal solicitor) catches a whiff of easy money and sweet-talks his way into consideration for the job. The winner will obviously be one who provides the greatest boon for the company though, and Edmund has The Great Volare waiting in the wings. If Roland and the boys want that fat paycheck they’re gonna have to think on their feet, which is probably going to make it hard to stand up, and Edmund isn’t going to take it sitting down, although from the look of him he’s got plenty of experience. Tutu troubles and general chaos abound, which would have arguably been a much better title for this film than Brain Donors.

This is certainly an odd one. To say that Brain Donors takes inspiration from the Marx Brothers is like saying Vanilla Ice took inspiration from David Bowie and Queen. Tuturro, Smith and Nelson are slotted into the same roles that Groucho, Chico and Harpo would have been, doing the exact same things the Marx Brothers would have done, it’s got the rich socialite that in the past would have been played by Margaret Dumont, it’s got the tacked on romance subplot, they even name drop A Night at the Opera in the credits. About the only thing they don’t do is musical interlude where one of the leads plays the piano or the harp, which admittedly might have been a bit difficult to fit into a movie that was ostensibly about dancing, but that wouldn’t have stopped the originals.

What sets Brain Donors apart from those revival films though is that while it is essentially a Marx Brothers movie, the three leads are not pretending to be the Marx Brothers. Mel Smith fills the same role as Chico Marx, but Rocco is played as a working-class Brit, rather than an Italian. Bob Nelson is the Harpo of the film but he’s not just rehashing Harpo, he’s even got dialogue. They’re subtle changes sure, but they serve to establish Brain Donors as a loving homage to the work of the Marx Bros., which is a far more palatable option than the straight up copy and paste job of the Laurel & Hardy and 3 Stooges reboot. Turning an eye to what came before without outright cannibalizing it, a novel concept indeed.

Brain Donors also sets itself apart from its influence in the way it utilizes visual comedy. The Marx Brothers were no stranger to that of course, especially Harpo, but it seems far more prevalent and elaborate in this film than it did in those films. The benefits of several decades of filmmaking techniques, but having David and Jerry Zucker in the producer chair very likely had a part in that as well. The scene where Jacques opens up a laptop computer and it extends out in such a way to eventually become a full-sized desktop PC, complete with a desk and a blowup doll definitely feels like something you would have seen in Naked Gun or The Kentucky Fried Movie. 

Unfortunately as the successor to the Marx Brothers filmography suffers from the same issues that one could place on those films, which feel more and more blatant when removed from their original context. The plot is superfluous, an excuse to tackle the Brothers’ favorite subject (high society dipshits), but paper thin as it is they still seem to struggle to make this ballet concept work. They’ve got the tacked on romance subplot as I said, but they’ve taken it a step farther to the point that it is positively anemic. Zeppo at least got a song or two, he shared the screen with his brothers a couple times, he wasn’t the moneymaker but he was still relevant to some degree. By contrast Alan, this movie’s male romantic lead, is just some guy. He dances a couple times, in a movie about dancers it’s bound to happen sooner or later, but he never really interacts with the leads in any meaningful way and to be honest I can barely recall what he looks like. I remember his fiance Lisa a bit better but she also barely has anything to do in this movie. Maybe like 3 minutes of romantic drama that is instantly resolved by the next scene, and having to fend off a rape attempt, because apparently we can’t have a movie without one of those.

       I also can’t let this review go by without mentioning how much I hate the score. Music in cinema has changed over the years, the orchestral score is not as dominant as it once was, but sometimes a film comes along that makes you think maybe we were better off back when all movies sounded the same. Why a movie paying tribute to films from the 30s sounds like a PC adventure game from the 90s I don’t know, but it’s another one of those things that just feels off. Shouldn’t the score be zanier? Some big band swing with lots of brass? Why does the opening song sound like someone plunking away on a toy xylophone? Combined with the rather long claymation sequence at the beginning you’d think you’d accidentally popped in an episode of some obscure European children’s show.

In an ironic twist though, I think Brain Donors’ biggest problem is the exact thing I was praising it for earlier: These guys aren’t the Marx Brothers. They certainly aren’t bad, but they lack the fire that made the Marx Brothers the comedians that they were. John Tuturro is a great actor, but every time I watched him toss off one-liners as Roland it felt like he was trying to be funny, whereas Groucho was funny without really trying. It’s that effortlessness that really made the Marx Brothers what they were as comedians; They were always two steps ahead of anyone else, and every time they opened their mouths or set their sights on someone they proved it. Sometimes Groucho or Chico would drop a line so quickly that it would take a second or two to register, while here they stop the film entirely so they can push out a gag. The Brain Donors cast has the basic act down, they’ve certainly got some good lines, but without the Marx’s chaotic energy it just doesn’t hit the way it should. Brain Donors is certainly wacky but it’s not always funny, if that makes sense.

When Brain Donors hit theaters in 1992 it was not a great success, grossing under a million dollars, and it doesn’t seem to have gained a significant cult following in the years since, in fact I didn’t even know this movie existed until last year. Which makes sense, having now seen it for myself. Fans of obscure 90s video store fodder or screwball superfans might want to give Brain Donors a watch, but I think everyone else would be okay if they skipped it and went for Duck Soup instead. Then maybe later they could watch a Marx Brothers movie.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Cool World (1992), directed by Ralph Bakshi

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Greedy", by Pure

     Of all the directors that I return to time and time again on this blog the biggest surprise of the year is always Ralph Bakshi, because I don’t think he’s a good filmmaker. While his devotion to animation certainly helps him stand out in regards to the animation-unfriendly U.S. film industry (unless your name is Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks), across the several films of his that we’ve covered on this blog and a couple I watched outside of it I can’t think of any that I actually enjoyed. In fact in the case of the last film covered, his so-called landmark film Heavy Traffic, I actively disliked it by the end. As a director of animation he does good work and is super influential, sure, but as a director of film, as a crafter of engaging stories, I’m not impressed. Is it me? Is there something that everyone else sees that I don’t, so I keep throwing him in here in the hopes that one day something will finally click? Or am I just afraid of change and prefer to cling onto something familiar, no matter what it is? Probably the latter.

     Released by Paramount in 1992, Cool World was directed by Ralph Bakshi and written by Michael Grais and Mark Victor, the writers behind Poltergeist. In 1945 Las Vegas newly returned soldier Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) is taking his mom on a leisurely motorcycle ride (as you do) when he is plowed into by a drunk driver. His mom dies, while Frank ends up being transported to Cool World, a dimension populated by living, breathing cartoons known as Doodles. Having nothing left for him back in regular reality Frank decides to settle down in Cool World and become an officer of the law, dedicating his life to preventing ‘Noids’, humans who have been transported to Cool World through dreams or whatever (it’s never really explained) from fraternizing with Doodles. Some Doodles are quite keen on the idea of fraternizing with Noids, particularly the seductive scofflaw Holli Would (Kim Basinger), as an especially biblical fraternization guarantees one a ticket to the human world and all the delights therein (why it does is never really explained). For years Holli has been working marks, trying to score a ticket on the midnight meat train to Humanland, and now in 1992 she’s finally struck gold: Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne), a former prisoner who has used what he thought were dreams of Holli and company to write a famous comic book also known as Cool World. Will Frank manage to keep Holli from humping her way from an ink sack to a meatsack? Also why is a movie that literally hinges on sex rated PG-13? All these questions and many many more if for some reason you decide to watch this movie.

Alright, let’s start with what I liked about this movie. I love the look of Cool World itself, particularly the matte painting backgrounds; The entire city has this rotting, nightmarish quality to it that Tim Burton wishes he could replicate, like the classic noir setting brought to its logical conclusion. I like how Doodle architecture is interpreted in reality, like making the lamp posts 2D cardboard stand ins. I also like that we got some actual voice actors in here, Maurice Lamarche, Charlie Adler, Candi Milo. That’s about it.

Now for what I didn’t like about it...hoo boy. Let’s start with our lead here, Brad Pitt. Now far be it from me to say that Brad Pitt is a bad actor, as he’s had a long enough and storied enough career to prove otherwise, but I will say that this role clearly doesn’t suit him. Not only is he too boyishly handsome in ‘92 to play a grizzled cop and war veteran, but his performance is also noticeably stiff. Which is understandable when he’s interacting with the cartoons, but even when he’s around other human beings he seems really awkward. Not in a ‘this at least 60+ year old man with lingering trauma doesn’t know how to be around people’ way which would fit in with the themes of the film either, more like ‘first year drama student attempting improv’. Even his suit doesn’t seem to fit him right in some scenes, like it’s a size too big for him. I get why they wanted him, if you’re going to be looking at one human face for large chunks of the movie then get one that looks like Brad Pitt, but Bogart as Philip Marlowe this is not.

Then we’ve got our other two major Noids, Kim Basinger as Holli Would and Gabriel Byrne as Jack Deebs. I like Holli enough in the first half, clearly drawn in the femme fatale mould but drawn well, but once she goes human the deviousness becomes more akin to childishness. Understandable in some ways as she’s taking in this new perception of life but we barely see her do anything as a human so we never have a chance to really empathize with her, plus the climax screws over her character something fierce. Jack Deebs you would think would carry about as much weight as a character as Brendan Fraser’s character did in Monkeybone, and he really doesn’t until the moment the movie directly tells us he does, so he’s just kind of there until then.

Of course a poor performance by an actor often comes down to poor direction, and we’ve already covered that point earlier. I’ve heard that this film underwent some executive meddling in order to drop it from a R to a PG-13 rating, likely Paramount’s attempt at grabbing the audience forged by Who Framed Roger Rabbit back in ‘88, but this movie is over two hours long and it feels like it’s missing an extra hour. It’s never explained what the connection is between Cool World and our world, if it’s some kind of limbo area like Monkeybone, and why they would need to build a portal to our world if they’re able to get to Cool World through dreams, or whatever that throwaway line Frank says. It’s also never explained why a Doodle having sex with a human turns them human or how anyone figured that out, beyond that the fact that they needed a convenient excuse to get their own versions of Jessica Rabbit in there, Holli Would and Frank’s love interest Lonette. Over two hours long, and yet by the time we reach the climax it feels like the metaphorical hands were thrown up and they just stumbled into an ending. To call it fulfilling would be like calling a multivitamin and a glass of water a meal.            

That Cool World is meant to be Paramount’s answer to Who Framed Roger Rabbit should go without saying, even though I’ve said as much a couple times. Both noir-inspired adventure films where a human detective with an accent has to interact with living cartoons. Which leads us to the major question of the day: How does the animation of Cool World look compared to that of Roger Rabbit? The answer: About 20 million dollars cheaper. That’s not to say there isn’t good work there obviously; The climax gets pretty wild and Holli and Lonette’s movements are fluid, but not everyone in Cool World can be so lucky. A lot of Doodles that barely look barely a step above doodles if you catch my drift, and move about as well too. Not too bad if they were kept strictly to background shots, but the first half of Cool World is saturated with this constant barrage of noise and motion that it doesn’t allow you to overlook. They’ll even cut away from the story so that they can do these little skits or whatever and it’s like yes, I know that cartoons are wacky and chaotic, you’ve reminded me every two seconds for the past 45 minutes, you got anything else to say? Compare to Roger Rabbit, where you get that craziness when Eddie Valiant visits Toontown and the rest of the movie is Toons interacting with real life people. It works because that visit had been built up across the course of the movie, the still chugs along, and Eddie acts as the audience surrogate dealing with this craziness. Cool World by contrast is obnoxious and immediate, and between 70 year old plank of wood Frank and glorified extra Jack we don’t ever have a proper everyman to help process this world for us.

No, Cool World doesn’t get the recommendation, unless you just finished Monkeybone and were jonesin’ for more flop movies that deal heavily in animation. I must admit though that my overall feelings towards the film lean towards bemusement than outright dislike as has been the case in the past. There’s the core of a good idea there, a man who refuses to confront his feelings of guilt and loss retreats into a fantasy world that resembles the familiar chaos of war and the pop culture of his time who is then forced to return to the real world by circumstance, or an artist creates something so popular that it overshadows them and is then pushed into action against their creation in a literal sense (a bit more like Monkeybone I guess), but it’s pushing so much stuff at you it never gets anything done. If I had to rewatch a Bakshi movie out of the ones we’ve covered thus far, it’d probably be Cool World. Or I’d just play Toonstruck again and save myself the time.