The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Escape from New York (1981), directed by John Carpenter

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Escape from New York Theme", by John Carpenter

      Although I often mention name-dropping certain directors all the time in these reviews, I do feel a little bad when I fill a slot or two with directors I’ve covered numerous times before. There are a lot of movies out there after all, and I’m potentially denying myself a great experience with a new film and/or director, maybe even a great review, by filling space with things that I was probably going to like either way. Today however I had to make an exception, because no other film has been an also-ran on this blog longer than Escape from New York. For years and years Escape had been waiting in the wings, the first name on the list, just waiting for the call-up, and yet every year it ended up pushed aside for something else. Even when I was set on covering a film by John Carpenter, Escape from New York was a victim to my capricious nature. I mean, Village of the Damned? Really? Well no more! The cycle must be broken, and it’s breaking now! Escape from New York baby! 

      Released in 1981, directed by, co-written by (with Nick Castle), and with music by  John Carpenter, Escape from New York was Carpenter’s fifth feature film and the second released during what would turn out to be his most prolific creative period, the 1980s. In an alternate, slightly more dystopian 1988, the crime rate had risen so high that rather than do something crazy like social or legal reforms, the United States decided instead to wall off the entirety of Manhattan Island into a supermax prison, or more accurately a horrific fusion of Lord of the Flies and the Warsaw ghetto where those convicted of a crime are sent to rot with no access to food, water, medical supplies or the possibility of parole or escape. Now the year is 1997; the Cold War has transitioned to World War III, and a hijacking of Airforce One has left the President stranded in the city, and soon after that kidnapped. With only 24 hours to go before a major diplomatic conference, police chief Hauk makes a gamble and brings in Snake Plissken, former soldier and current criminal. If Snake can get into New York City, rescue the President and get him out by showtime, then he’ll be a free man. If he can’t, not only will the survival of the human race be at risk, but the micro bombs that were implanted in his neck will go off. No pressure though.

      It makes sense that Escape from New York would come out the same year as another film that took an oddly long time to actually review, that being Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. In fact, prior to looking up the release dates I would have thought Escape was directly influenced by Mad Max 2, given their similarities. Both films center around ‘post-collapse’ scenarios, where society has been forced to reorganize itself into a more primitive form but retains vestiges of modernity, such as the use of automobiles or using trash cans as shields. Both films also take that concept, which on its own can be sobering and even terrifying to consider, and turns it up just enough to push things into surreality. Mad Max’s desert wasteland is populated by leather-clad weirdos with names like Lord Humongous, while Escape from New York has its sewer cannibals and warlords who staple chandeliers on their cars as a status symbol. Even our protagonist is something of a cartoon character, with his eyepatch and his gruff mannerisms, walking around with a name like Snake Plissken like it’s totally normal. You see Snake in this movie and suddenly all those stereotypical badass characters you’ve seen in every other science fiction thing you’ve ever seen, Metal Gear Solid or otherwise, suddenly have a common origin. Suddenly, making Escape from L.A. into a more comedic film makes sense, because he’s such a personification of the stoic badass that contrasting it with more and more ridiculous situations seems a natural fit. Not to mention going the completely opposite route for a protagonist in the case of Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China.

      Yet in spite of Snake being the archetypal badass action hero, and Escape being an ‘action’ film, there’s very little of the two-fisted, explode ‘em up fare that we associate with action movies of the 80s, Commando and Aliens and what have you. Rather, Carpenter’s emphasis on stealth and building suspense through the avoidance of combat feels more in line with Die Hard and maybe even post-Vietnam war films like Apocalypse Now. Yes, and with the Metal Gear series as well, although even the first Metal Gear Solid we see Solid Snake have far more in common with Pierce Brosnan in his Bond films or Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible than he ever did with his namesake.

      Going into this film blind, I was quite surprised at just how stacked the cast was. Of course you’ve got Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, right in the middle of his landmark collab with Carpenter, but then you’ve got B-movie and western star Lee Van Cleef as Chief Hauk, Halloween staple Donald Pleasance attempting a Southern drawl as the President, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine, hell they even got future Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Night of the Creeps star Tom Atkins in on her as well. Very few of those names mean anything to the casual movie goer, but for a guy who has immersed himself in genre film for years now this is the most stacked cast I’ve seen in awhile. Certainly of the Carpenter films that I’ve already covered, although the lack of any Keith David does lose it some points in the final tally.

      Of course I couldn’t talk about a John Carpenter movie without bringing up the music, in the case of Escape composed by Carpenter and Alan Howarth. There’s something about that minimalist synth that not only matches perfectly with the vibe of Escape from New York, which in spite of the weirdo characters is a very grounded film, but matches the 80s. You talk about 80s cinema, this is the kind of music that pops into my head. There’s nothing I would say is as iconic as the Halloween theme, then again getting lightning to strike twice isn’t exactly easy, but the opening track is a bit of a banger and it does the job of pulling you into the right headspace for the story they’re telling. 

      As a rebuttal to that however, I will say that it felt like I was observing a story rather than engaging with a story. Escape from New York has this great cast and there’s nothing bad about their performances, and yet I found it difficult to feel invested in anything. Certainly not in Hauk’s mission and the search for the President, because anybody who would have okayed building such a place or support it don’t have my sympathy and never will. The Duke is one note as an antagonist, which is a huge missed opportunity for a character that is simultaneously a villain and a victim. Even our protagonist Snake has some problems. He’s certainly likable on an aesthetic level, but there’s never really an arc per se, never that moment where it feels like Snake comes out a different person than he was when he went in. Which might be seen as a non-issue because Snake is such an outwardly cool character, but it messes with the dramatic stakes. Because if I already don’t care about this mission in the first place, then do I really care if Snake fails? I may feel sympathetic towards him because he’s been forced into a suicide mission, but I’m also not squirming in anticipation to see if he succeeds. Especially since the world’s been fucked over by nuclear war at this point, so whether anyone lives or dies or escapes or not really seems like a moot point.

      That being said, I’m going to give Escape from New York the recommendation. Compared to the rest of Carpenter’s films I’ve covered I’d say it's about a C-grade, better than Village of the Damned at the very least, but I think if you like the sound of your science fiction movies having a low-budget, grindhouse flair then you’ll have a good time with this one. Maybe pair it up with The Warriors and a nice pizza pie, get that full on dirty ass New York experience. Save me a slice though, watching all these movies makes me hungry.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), directed by Michael Anderson

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "The Bronze", by Queens of the Stone Age

      Years before the world knew the names Superman or Batman, people sought their heroes in the form of the pulps: cheap paperback books packed with all manner of genre stories, from the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft to the ham-fisted action of Mickey Spillane, and everything else that struggling authors thought might help pay the rent. Of this forgotten age of literature, there are few characters that were as popular or as successful as Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze. Created by Henry Ralston and John Nanovic and primarily written by Lester Dent under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson for the Street & Smith publishing company in 1933, Clark ‘Doc’ Savage Jr. was the very model of modern major adventurer; Not only was he a perfect physical specimen thanks a special exercise regiment, but he was also a scientific genius of ust about every discipline you could think of, capable of building technology that surpassed that of your typical 1930s crowd. Along with his five quirky associates -- chemist Andrew ‘Monk’ Mayfair, lawyer Theodore ‘Ham’ Brooks, construction engineer John ‘Renny’ Renwick, electrical engineer Thomas ‘Long Tom’ Roberts, and archeologist/geologist William ‘Johnny’ Littlejohn, Doc would travel across the globe, foiling the plots of wicked men and defending justice wherever it was threatened. Also performing experimental brain surgery on prisoners in order to modify their personalities and behaviors without their consent on multiple occasions, but hey, it was 1933. Give it a few years and it turns out people could do even more heinous shit to each other.

      Savage’s star would eventually fade with the rise of superheros and television, but as the 1970’s wore on suddenly there came an interest in reviving The Man of Bronze for then-modern audiences. Award-winning science fiction writer and mythographer par excellence Phillip Josè Farmer wrote a fictional biography of the man, as he would do for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ legendary creation Tarzan, entitled “Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life”. Marvel Comics even gave him two series: A short-lived run with Marvel proper, and then later on an equally short-lived run through their imprint Curtis Magazines, which was the original home of the Savage Sword of Conan. If that had been the end of the matter, a book here and there, some comics, then perhaps Doc would have been okay. Not as big as he once was, but still novel enough that it’d be a treat whenever he finally got that spotlight again. Like a professional wrestler coming out of retirement for one last match.

      So they made a movie instead, obviously.

      Released in 1975, directed by Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run) and written by Joe Morhaim and George Pal, who was also the producer. The year is 1936 and Doc Savage has returned from his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic (yes, they literally call it the Fortress of Solitude) to learn that his father, Clark ‘Dad’ Savage Snr., has died in the South American country of Hidalgo from some tropical disease. Which is immediately shown to be suspect when someone tries to put a bullet through Doc’s brain and later destroys Dad Savage’s documents. Doc and the Fabulous Five set out for Hidalgo to learn the truth, which is exactly what resident evil business tycoon Captain Seas didn’t want to happen, although he didn’t exactly try all that hard. What could the secret of Hidalgo be, that Captain Seas is willing to kill for it, and that Dad Savage could die because of it? That’s what The Man of Bronze intends to find out.

      ...Hoo boy, trying to write this review has been a chore to get through, not only because there was a several hour long power outage at my home during it, but because trying to find the right words to describe my feelings has been an ongoing struggle. I’ll give it my best to explain:

      A while back I was reading a collection of film criticism by the late novelist Harlan Ellison, and I recall him giving one of his infamous verbal beatdowns to the Mike Hodges’ 1980 adaptation of Flash Gordon, essentially calling it a besmirchment of a once great character. While I don’t follow Mr. Ellison’s opinion lockstep by any means, he eviscerated several movies back in the day for reasons that still baffle me, but during this particular instance I could see where he was coming from. Flash Gordon is, after all, a silly movie. The characters were dumb, the art design was gaudy, the special effects seem dated even for the era, and the only thing that people actually remember about the movie is the soundtrack by Queen and Brian Blessed. It’s a good thing movies based on comics slowly started to improve after this, otherwise MCU fans would be crying in their Cheerios.

      Here’s the thing about Flash Gordon though, and if Ellison were still alive he’d probably rip me a new one over it: It was fun. As silly as it was, it embraced the weirdness of the concept and took it seriously. You might have thought it was stupid, but it never insulted your intelligence as it sucked the life from your soul like Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. A movie meant to be an origin story, to reintroduce the concept to then-modern audiences, but almost immediately descends into such awful attempts at campy humor that it’s like watching Adam West’s Batman hang himself. ‘Oh look, this minor antagonist sleeps in a giant baby crib for some reason!’ ‘Wowwee, this waiter thought Doc and the Fabulous Five were going to order alcoholic beverages, but they actually ordered nonalcoholic beverages!’ ‘Try to hold the guffaws in when the final battle between Seas and Savage is the same shitty gag repeated five or six times in a row!’ Just remembering the scenes as I write this article is pissing me off a bit, like if you could punch a movie in the mouth I’d take a swing at it. I mean what have I got to lose, right? I’ve already been through 140 minutes of cinematic waterboarding, a fight would be a nice change of pace.

      Which isn’t to say that you can’t play around with the source material from time to time, but this movie feels more like a segment from The Kentucky Fried Movie stretched across an hour and a half. Doc Savage is constantly treated as this amazingly charismatic guy, going so far as to add in really obvious eye twinkle effects, despite the fact that he’s got about as much personality as warm mayonnaise. The Fabulous Five come across as less trained soldiers and peers of Savage and more a quintet of bumbling sycophants who can accomplish pretty much nothing on their own except being captured. Captain Seas looks like if your high school music teacher became a Bond villain, and is about as effective an antagonist as that would be too. There’s never a real sense of danger for the protagonists, they spend more time in traveling montages then they do overcoming obstacles, and the ‘mystery’ that kick starts this whole sad affair can be sussed out by the first act. You go into this film wondering just what it was about this character that so fascinated people years before, and what this movie tells you is that Doc Savage is vapid nonsense that looks as cheap as the paper it was printed on, and that it was better off in that bygone era where people were apparently stupid enough to think it was worth reading. Which is not the sentiment you want people to have if you’re planning on a sequel.

      Then there’s the music, the fucking music. Soaring outside the bounds of common sense, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze decides against a traditional orchestra score in favor of the works of John Philip Sousa, complete with a needlessly expository and clunky theme song. An idea that could work once, in order to replicate the feel of an old-time radio show, but then of course it keeps getting shoved in everywhere. Any sense of tension, any sense of emotional depth is crushed under the feet of the least subtle man in music history as he stumbles across the scene like a drunken bull to the tunes, and the movie devolves into total farce. If John Williams’ Superman score evokes feelings of triumphant joy and courage, The Man of Bronze evokes memories of awkward days in the school marching band. Really gets you in the mood for an adventure, huh?

      Unsurprisingly, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (Except He Doesn’t Even Have a Tan) does not get the recommendation. Don’t take my vitriol as a sign that this is some prime rifftrax fodder either, as the work it would take to make fun of it is more attention than it really deserves. If you want to see the concept done better, try Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, another movie which I liked and Harlan Ellison hated (probably because it does rip off Savage a lot). Or perhaps you could read Alan Moore’s Tom Strong series, which also borrows heavily from Doc. Or you could just wait for that new Doc Savage movie that’s in development, the one that’s supposed to have Dwayne Johnson in the title role. Even if it never ends up going into production, you’ll still have more fun waiting for that movie than watching this movie. And if I were saying this live, this is where I would drop the mic.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), directed by Terence Fisher

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Frankenstein", by New York Dolls

      Universal Studios. Not only are they responsible for producing and distributing films which laid down the foundation for horror in cinema, but they also made sure it would always be seen as cheaply made pablum thrown out for a quick buck. Yes, decades before films like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street would be mocked and parodied for the seemingly endless additions to its canon, it was actually Universal that wrote the book on horror ‘franchises’. Dracula suddenly had a daughter crawl out of the woodwork, and later a son. The Invisible Man gave way to The Invisible Woman, and later another man (although this one was an agent) before he got his revenge. The Mummy got into a whole mess of trouble, and even The Creature from the Black Lagoon had a few adventures before the curtains closed. No, not all of them followed established continuity or feature the same actors, but that wasn’t the point. You remembered Universal’s Dracula, so maybe if we put his name on this film it’d sell a couple more tickets, and so on and on. Didn’t matter if the movie was good, as long as it could make money. Which is why movie studios nowadays get straight to the point and just remake films and give them the exact same name, Halloween (1979), Halloween (2007) and Halloween (2018) for example, no matter how confusing that might be for the movie-going audience. Thanks Universal!

Of the Universal Monster line, Frankenstein had it a bit better than most. Four years after the whirlwind success of the original Frankenstein in 1931 we’d see a sequel in Bride of Frankenstein; James Whale would return to the director’s chair, Boris Karloff would return as The Monster, and aside from being a good film it’s introduction of The Bride into pop culture would go on to ensure its status as a classic and fixture of shitty film blogs on the internet. Four years after that Universal would close out the decade with Son of Frankenstein; James Whale was out in favor of Rowland Lee and Karloff would make his final appearance in his famous role, but the inclusion of Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi as a hunchback by the name of Ygor (bet that’ll never come up again) ends up pushing it into recommended viewing territory, at least it did when I reviewed it. After that...eh. There was The Ghost of Frankenstein, which saw Lugosi return but didn’t really drive me to do the same. After that would be Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, also known as one of the biggest cockblocks in horror cinema history, and then House of Frankenstein, which was actually a sequel to one of the biggest cockblocks in horror cinema history (also Son of Dracula). Finally in ‘48, and I do mean final because there were only 5 movies after this, we got Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which was actually pretty good and a movie that I might return to in a review someday, but it does seem a rather ignominious end. Once a menace to movie-goers, now reduced to a walking parody used to spook comedians. Jeez, you’d think everyone had just come off of a worldwide war or something.

Anyway, forget about Universal. It’s Hammer time.

Released in 1957, The Curse of Frankenstein was the first of three movies directed by Terence Fisher upon which the name of Hammer Horror would be built, followed subsequently by The Horror of Dracula and The Mummy. Peter Cushing stars as the titular Baron Victor Frankenstein, a man possessed with an intelligence as great as his arrogance. Ever since he was a baby baron Victor had explored the mysteries of the life, spending his adolescence in research and study with his friend and tutor Paul Kemper (Robert Urquhart). Then one day, a breakthrough: they manage to take a dog that was dead and bring it back to life, in complete defiance of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The greatest medical discovery the world has ever known, if you let the world know that is, and yet Victor hesitates. Bringing life back to something that was previously dead is certainly an amazing feat, but wouldn’t it be even more amazing to bring life to something that had never lived at all? To create life, in a way humanity has never seen before? Then you’d not just be the most important scientist of your generation, you’d be the most important human being that’s ever lived. For a prize like that Victor’d be willing to do just about anything. Maybe even...murder?

Even though Universal’s Frankenstein and Hammer’s Frankenstein films were released 26 years apart, you get the sense that Fisher and Hammer wanted to be as different as possible from that earlier. The Monster (played by Christopher Lee) is not the sympathetic creature that Karloff’s Monster was nor is he given that much focus, he’s just a monster who doubles as a plot device. Similarly Victor Frankenstein is not the repentant figure driven to undo his own grisly work, as it was in the ‘31 film and the original novel, he is out and out the villain of the film. Curse of Frankenstein doesn’t even have a mob of angry villagers wielding pitchforks and torches, although it is teased at one point. ‘This wasn’t your daddy’s Frankenstein’, it all seems to say, and it was the same philosophy that seemed to carry over as Hammer went on. Dracula would turn up the sleaze as much as late 50’s British society could stand, The Mummy...well, he’s basically The Monster with a tragic backstory. Even Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde got its own little Hammer twist, although in that case I doubt the Paramount movie was much of a factor in the decision.

Not only did this film kickstart Hammer as the gold standard in horror cinema for a while, it also established Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as staples of genre cinema for the rest of the careers. Not quite as much for Lee, who as I said is far less of a character than Karloff’s Monster was, but Cushing is far and away the highlight of the film. His portrayal of Frankenstein is fantastic, the very model of a gentleman on the surface but willing and able to throw away ethics and human decency when it benefits him or his work. The living embodiment of that ‘you thought so much about whether or not you could you didn’t think about whether or not you should’ line from Jurassic Park (a version of which even makes it way here). He reminds me a bit of ol’ Herbert West from one of my favorite horror movies actually, Re-Animator, except even worse if you can believe it. Herbert was a contemptible person, true, but he really presents himself as anything else. Victor on the other hand, while it seems like he’s capable of empathy at certain points, you’re never sure whether he’s being sincere or whether he’s being plainly manipulative. Occasionally it feels like they are trying a bit too hard to make him the bad, like stealing human body parts so he can stitch them together into some hideous flesh ogre wasn’t bad enough, but Cushing is so damn good at being a sociopath it’s not hard to see why Hammer revisited the character several more times over the years.

I also really like the art direction in Curse of Frankenstein. While the Universal monster films had that mix of Expressionism, the then-modern era and the era of the source material (at least the early ones), CoF is much more grounded and period-appropriate. Which might seem contradictory, given how often I’ve praised weird aesthetics in film, but there’s something about this slightly grimy, yet almost color saturated Georgian design that I find appealing. Especially when it comes to Frankenstein’s laboratory, as I’ve loved the concept of steampunk and otherwise ‘old’ technology ever since I first read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Time Machine. Again it doesn’t match the iconic look of Universal’s spark-spitting dynamos and what have you, but I think Curse of Frankenstein’s collection of bubbling beakers and tubs of strange liquids lends itself more to the idea of Frankenstein being this medical genius who has bridged the worlds of science and alchemy rather than just some guy who stuck some body parts together and shocked it a couple times. Curse of Frankenstein feels ‘real’, I guess, and the easier it is to suspend your disbelief when you’re watching genre films, the better off you are.

Unfortunately Curse of Frankenstein does suffer from a bit of ‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ syndrome, by which I mean it was a small production (270,000 dollar budget) and it feels like it. As nice as Castle Frankenstein looks on the inside, the fact that we spend so much time there makes things feel claustrophobic, especially when it’s the same four people talking to each other as well. You do get the occasional scene outside, but the way they’re shot is usually locked in on the characters so you don’t get much of a sense of space. It would make sense in context, since this is Frankenstein telling his story, but since there are moments that happen that he couldn’t possibly have known about, there’s not an excuse beyond ‘we’ve got no money’.

We’ve also got a small cast, and like I said, Peter Cushing is the reason you watch this movie. Robert Urquhart is okay as Paul Kremper, but like 80 percent of this movie is entering a room and complaining about something, and it feels like they subtly try to push a romance between him and Elizabeth despite him looking like he was in his early 30s when she was like 6, which is just fucking creepy. Hazel Court as Elizabeth Frankenstein, is...there. That’s not meant as a slight against the actress, she’s literally a Chekov’s Gun to build tension for the climax, otherwise it makes no sense that if Paul was so disturbed by Victor’s experiments that he was worried for her life that he wouldn’t have told her in the scene when he tried to get her to leave. Or later on, when they basically redo the scene and Paul has even more reason to want her to leave. Maybe if they actually pushed that romance angle, despite my reservations about it, there could have been some drama there, but they don’t, so she’s just...there. Waiting.

While she’s waiting, I’m going to go ahead and give The Curse of Frankenstein the recommendation. Putting aside all the smoke I’ve blown up Hammer’s ass, it really is an intriguing adaptation of Mary Shelley’s work, not all that accurate to the novel but it approaches the concept from a perspective that I haven’t seen a Frankenstein adaptation really do since then, which is a shame. If I were looking to be controversial I’d say Horror of Dracula and The Mummy suck so just watch this, but I do think if you’re a rookie looking into Hammer Horror or older horror movies, this is a good place to start. A bit like a mild cheddar cheese: It’s got a little bit of a bite, but it goes down smooth.

Don’t ask me what Frankenstein has to do with cheese. It should be obvious.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Big Hit (1998), directed by Kirk Wong

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Don't Sleep", by Mark Wahlberg

      You can thank the youtube channel Rebeltaxi for today’s entry in the Marathon. Normally I don’t like covering films that I’ve seen covered by someone else, preferring to go in as fresh as possible, but I was so intrigued by what I saw that eventually I just had to see it for myself. Plus the Marathon feels a bit more mellow this year, and I wanted to spice things up with some action. So yeah, give Rebeltaxi some love if you’ve got the time, even though he’s already way more popular than I’ll ever be. Dude mainly covers Western animation, and I think he’s got a podcast or some shit.

      Released in 1998, or Lebowski’s Year as it’s known in the Thunderbird household, The Big Hit was the brainchild of Hong Kong director Che-Kirk Wong and writer Ben Ramsey. Marky Mark Wahlberg stars as Melvin Smiley, a man with a Dangerfield-esque respect deficiency. He’s got a secret girlfriend milking him for cash, a fiance that’s got some rather overbearing parents, tumultuous tummy troubles, his criminal buddies treat him like a pushover (oh, Melvin’s a contract killer by the way) and worst of all, he’s being hounded by the local video rental place over an overdue tape. Not exactly living the life of Riley, but when his buddy Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips) comes to him with a little side hustle, the illusion of happiness might be able to last a little longer. Seems like a simple enough job; kidnap Keiko Nishi, daughter of local Japanese business magnate Jiro Nishi, ransom her off for a million dollars, and that’s that. As long as something didn’t come up, like Jiro going bankrupt immediately prior this or him being personal friends with their boss, then they’re good. But what are the odds of that?

      Making a quick return to Rodney Dangerfield, remember that scene in Back to School where he’s at a party and he makes a sandwich by cutting a baguette in half  dumping a tray of hors d'oeuvres in it? That’s kind of what The Big Hit feels like to me. You’ve got some Tarantino in there, with its quirky, conversational criminals. There’s the frenetic energy of Hong Kong action films, made even more legitimate with that John Woo executive producer credit. You’ve got some screwball comedy in there (complete with cartoon sound effects), a touch of grindhouse cinema, all wrapped up with a soundtrack that sounds like it came from some lost edition of Tony Hawk Pro Skater. There are a lot of films where you’ll see the words ‘rollercoaster ride of excitement’ used to describe them, but I don’t know if I’ve seen a movie recently that lives that gimmick as much as The Big Hit. Like I’m craving corn dogs and cotton candy right now thinking about it. 

      It helps that they’ve got a great cast to work with. No one does slack-jawed schlub better than Mark Walhberg, but it turns out that he’s pretty good at the action hero thing as well. Lou Diamond Phillips as Cisco was also a great casting choice, deftly walking this fine line between sleazeball, buffoon and psycho killer. Then you’ve got Christina Applegate as Pam the blonde Fran Drescher, Bokeem Woodbine as Crunch the local masturbation expert, Avery “The Sisko” Brooks as Paris the syndicate leader, and so on. Over-the-top and goofy, but there was never a moment where anyone slipped into full blown obnoxious territory for me, as it sometimes happens with me. Maybe the stuttering Malibu’s Most Wanted prototype, but he’s never on screen or in the film long enough for me to really dislike him. 

        The Big Hit’s greatest strengths, then, could also be considered its weakness. It’s a wacky action movie, so when it attempts to pull off romance (even though China Chow and Walhberg are capable of making it work) or anything with emotional depth it comes across as more satirical then it might have been intended. Similarly, someone used to slower pacing could find this movie exhausting; and the editing, while not as egregious as some modern action films, does have its hyperactive moments. Machine-gun cutting, if you will. Essentially this movie is going 75 on a 50 mph road, so if you’re not willing or able to match it, it’s going to leave you in the dust. 

      Ultimately I’m giving The Big Hit the recommendation. At first I thought it was going to be one of those 90s movies that folks rag on so much that they get a cult following, like Demolition Man (Wesley Snipes a producer on this film, by the by) or something, but it was actually just a straight-up enjoyable film with some damn good action sequences. If you liked films such as From Dusk Till Dawn or Baby Driver, then The Big Hit might be right up your alley. Pour yourself a nice cold glass of prune juice and enjoy.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Invisible Man (1933), directed by James Whale

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Invisible Man", by The Breeders

      This is something of a weird confession, but I don’t think I’ve ever read “The Invisible Man”. No, not the book by Ralph Ellison, although I should probably read that one too, but the work by British novelist and science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells. I was a pretty big fan of Wells’ work when I was a kid, readily absorbing works like “War of the Worlds” and “The Time Machine”, but I’m fairly certain I’ve only touched the first paragraph, first chapter at most, of his third most famous work. “The Stolen Bacillus” got in before “The Invisible Man”, to give some idea to those three people who get that reference, and to give some clarification to how weird one’s priorities can be at times. Does that work as an opening paragraph? I dunno.

      I say that partially to undercut my own credibility and also to lead into the remark that it seems like I’m not the only one who hasn’t read it. “The Invisible Man” is certainly known, but it seems like pop culture is more infatuated with the concept rather than the story. The Hollow Man franchise, Memoirs of an Invisible Man starring Chevy Chase, that one TV show in the 90s with the liquid metal effect, even Alan Moore uses an original character in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as a serial rapist who is himself brutally raped to death (because how could you take him seriously as a writer if he didn’t sprinkle rape into every story he could). Not much at all in the way of proper adaptations compared to The Time Machine or Island of Dr. Moreau, although calling Marlon Brando’s interpretation of Moreau ‘proper’ might be doing a disservice to everyone’s favorite vivisectionist. So why not throw Herbert’s baby boy a bone and completely avoid the Invisible Man movie that’s supposed to be out this year to instead talk about a movie that’s almost 90 years old instead? If this blog is anything, it’s timely and relevant with its content.

      Released in 1933, with a screenplay by R.C. Sheriff and directed by blog patriarch James Whale, The Invisible Man was one of the earlier additions to Universal’s catalogue of genre-defining horror films. On a dark and snowy night in the sleepy town of Iping, a mysterious man enters the Lion-Head inn and tavern and rents a room, sparking a flurry of rumours from the townsfolk. This man, played/voiced by Claude Rains, is revealed in a roundabout way to be Jack Griffin, your average chemist’s assistant who disappeared under mysterious circumstances a few weeks prior. ‘Disappeared’ being the choice word here, as through the wonders of 1930s science Griffin has rendered himself completely invisible, and he’s having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to make himself un-invisible. It’s enough to drive someone absolutely insane, and as they always say, it’s the naked crazy guys that you can’t see that are the problem.

      The Invisible Man is a film of two minds. On one hand scenes like the ones in Iping, or where people are throwing around questions about how Griffin’s invisibility works, a lot of the more comedic moments feels in line with what you’d expect from the Wells story, but the rest feels like Universal trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole. Flora’s entire character feels like the most blatant example of a studio mandate I’ve seen lately, for example, that movies like this need some eye-candy to flaunt around so Invisible Man must have it too damn it. Except the women in those films were generally relevant to the plot, if only as cliche ‘damsels in distress’, and Flora isn’t even that. I have to assume that she was supposed to be this humanizing moment for Griffin, to show the man he once was and how far he’d fallen, but it never really feels legitimate because she has one conversation with the fucker in the whole movie. They even have the possibility of setting up a love triangle between her, Griffin and other assistant Kemp, but they completely sidestep that angle to make sure that you could completely excise those characters and that attempt at backstory and nothing would change. Considering that Dracula and Frankenstein weren’t 1:1 adaptations either, there’s really no excuse.

      There’s also some things on the technical side that are just weird. For example, there’s a scene early on in the film where a distraught Flora walks into another to moan about Griffin, and the Kemp comes in to be a creep. Rather than do something like have Flora rush offscreen, you hear a door slam, and then cut to the room with Kemp coming in, instead they do this one shot where they show Flora move into the room and Kemp follows her, but the camera is pulled back so far that you can see where the wall ends. I don’t know if that was supposed to be the architectural style of the time or if it’s something that came out in the transfer of the film to different aspect ratios, like how in the ‘remastered’ editions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer you can see the cameras and such, but for whatever reason it’s so distracting to me. Then later on in that same scene, we’re focused on Kemp and in your head your head you think it’s going to do a closeup on his face, maybe in frame with a flower for symbolic reasons, but instead the camera backs away until the scene ends with Kemp’s head peeking out of a large bush. It’s so weird looking! The rest of the movie is fine, so I don’t know if James Whale was sick that day or what, but man did they hit hard and heavy.

      Ultimately though, Universal movies live or die by their monster, and Claude Rains does not disappoint. He doesn’t have the iconic accent like Lugosi and Karloff, but he makes up for it with this overwhelming presence that makes you sit up and take notice. Doesn’t matter if he’s singing nursery rhymes or making megalomaniacal speeches, you believe in him completely. Honestly he’s almost too good for the part, like he should be running SPECTRE or fighting Superman, not berating middle-aged Irish women over unpaid rent. Not much else to say, it’s just a damn good voice.

      So Claude Rains, the small-town Brit silliness, and seeing the novel ways in which James Whale and crew tackle the ‘invisible man’ problem… I’d say that’s enough to warrant a recommendation. I wouldn’t say it’s a priority, if you’re only passing familiar with the Universal horror there are films you’ll want to check out first, but if you’re intrigued it’s barely over an hour long so no worries about a big time investment. Throw in Erle C. Kenton’s Island of Lost Souls and this year the H in H.G. Wells might just stand for Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Call of Cthulu (2005), directed by Andrew Leman

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "The Call of Ktulu", by Metallica

       Much like a one-hit wonder band will resent having to play that one song at every show concert they have, one wonders if H.P. Lovecraft’s mouldy ass were still alive if he would feel the same way about good ol’ Klooloo. Lovecraft had a large body of work after all, poems, short stories, none of which brought him any sort of critical and commercial appeal during his lifetime, and yet nowadays his entire being is now irrevocably caught up in some big green guy with an octopus for a head. Pretty wild for a monster whose sole appearance in the original canon was made up of one short story and a couple name drops in others, a throwaway character Lovecraft came up with as he churned out his weirdo potboilers. You never can tell what about your art people are going to latch onto, but as long as they latch onto it at all I suppose.

Cthulhu has appeared in comic books, video games, tabletop games, cartoons, anime, and even a song by Metallica, yet everyone’s favorite deathless octo-priest has been largely absent in the world of cinema. There was a film released in 2007 called Cthulhu, directed by Dan Gildark, and yet it seems to have been based on Lovecraft’s story the Shadow over Innsmouth, which doesn’t mention him at all as far as I can recall. For an actual Ktulu movie, not a movie where’s he referenced or name dropped but an actual (and as far as I know the only) film adaptation of the 1928 short story it seems the only game in town is The Call of Cthulhu, an indie film directed by Andrew Leman, written by Sean Banney and released in 2005. How an indie film managed to get on the ground floor of this before any of the major studios is beyond me, probably some intercompany dick measuring contest that I have no interest in, but it did and now here we are. Also, I didn’t feel like sitting through a big movie and this was only 46 minutes long, so let’s get started then.

If you’ve never actually read The Call of Cthulhu, which I assume is inversely proportional to the amount of people who’ve heard of Cthulhu, there’s not much to it. A man, we are not given his name, reveals to another man in conversation that he is dying, and that he wants the notes and paper’s he brought with him burned upon his passing. This collection of news articles, journals, and testimonials had been compiled by his recently deceased great uncle, following a meeting with Henry Wilcox, a young artist who had been plagued with bizarre, terrifying dreams. As the great-uncle, and by extension the man, and by greater extension the audience soon discover that this incident with Wilcox is only the tip of the iceberg. Horrific events seem to be cropping up all over the world, disasters, mass murders, human sacrifices by cults, and the two common elements to them all is a bestial idol and an equally hideous name: Cthulhu. In the sunken city of R'lyeh he sleeps, waiting for the day that he will wake and engulf humanity in a maelstrom of death and madness. Or has that day already arrived?

The main draw of The Call of Cthulhu is arguably the art direction, not only adapting the story but presenting it as a black & white silent era film, with those now all-too-familiar touches of German Expressionism. I’ve made mention of my fascination with silent films several times on this blog, most notably Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, but beyond my personal interest it’s an aesthetic that captures the feel of Lovecraft’s stories more than any other. After all, so much of the content of his work is rooted in that era, World War I, the popularity of scientific studies like Egyptology and paleontology and the rapid progress in technology, that even though Lovecraft himself didn’t care for the cinema (if being a colossal bigot didn’t tip you off that this guy wasn’t a laugh-riot) the dour, dreamlike atmosphere that we associate with silent films today is the exact same as that encapsulated by Nyarlathotep or The Color Out of Space. It is more ‘real’ because it feels ‘unreal’, in a manner of speaking.

      It is there, however, that we find my biggest issues with The Call of Cthulhu. In the excellent book Hitchcock/Truffaut director Alfred Htichcock lamented to some degree the introduction of sound in cinema because it irrevocably altered the nature of filmmaking. Not just in how we watch films, but in the way films themselves are constructed -- the way scenes are directed, the way narratives are written, whether they have a character talk or not, the spectre of sound still lingers somewhere in the corner of their mind. Such is the case with Call of Cthulhu, which clothes itself in the garb of a silent era film but is still steeped in modernity. Certain camera techniques, the abundance of cuts to dialogue boxes, things which a movie audience nowadays might not know or care about but become increasingly apparent. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was trying to tell a story, The Call of Cthulhu is trying to be Dr. Caligari on a budget, basically. Whether that was the intent of the filmmakers I can’t say, but that’s the impression I get.

      Of course the $25,000 question is: What did they do about Cthulhu? Is he in fact a squid, or rather a kid? Well, I’d say it’s so-so. I liked the build-up to his appearance, the island is both unsettling and grandiose on a scale the movie hadn't really been up to that point, and the score devolving into ambient and almost whispered screams was  a nice touch, but when he finally got on screen…? It was a novel way to do it, I’ll give them credit for that, but it’s also not scary. The line that always comes up when it comes to adapting Lovecraft is how are you supposed to depict a creature on screen that in the text is indescribable and drives you insane by looking at it, and the answer is that you don’t/can’t really, you just make something that an audience can believe would freak them out if they saw it in real life. Carpenter’s The Thing did it, the Silent Hill series of games did it, and there are ways that Call of Cthulhu could have done it that would have been far simpler and far less silly than what they ended up doing. It undercuts any tension that might have been built up and shatters the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because ‘anyone who is afraid of this thing must be a dipshit!’ Which might seem overly harsh, given the amont of movie monsters that look dumb as hell, but remember that we aren’t exactly swimming in Lovecraft movies. The Call of Cthulhu is the movie adaptation of the story at the moment, and as the pioneer I think there are certain expectations that come with that. Universal’s Dracula wasn’t 1:1 with the book, but when Bela Lugosi showed up you could feel it. You felt it when the Color showed up in The Color Out of Space in last year’s Marathon. Not so with Cthulhu, and when the name of the movie is The Call of Cthulhu, you’ve got a problem.

      With thoughts of the bustling cityscape of Metropolis or the orgiastic black sabbath in Haxan, I’m probably judging a little indie film with a gimmick a bit harshly. Because the source material is intriguing and said gimmick has such potential that the fact it misses the bar compared to what could have been hits so much harder than it might have otherwise. It doesn’t get the recommendation from me, but as I said it’s only 46 minutes, so if you do it’s not a huge investment. Much like real estate down in R’lyeh, I’d imagine.

Reelin' In the Years -- To Be or Not to Be (1942), directed by Ernst Lubitsch

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Polish Girl", by Neon Indian

       They often say that sequels can never hope to match the original, but then along came World War II. In terms of culture destroyed, of lives lost, of atrocities inflicted upon human beings WWII surpasses the ‘Great’ War in just about every way, not to mention the helmets looked a lot better. It was also the only war the United States has ever participated in that was morally justifiable, besides the one it had with itself to keep people from owning human beings as cattle, which is why it loves to bring it up so much. In literature, comic books, video games, music, theater, movies popular culture is brimming with stories taking place at or around World War II, both European and Pacific Theaters. The U.S. loves talking about how great they are for winning World War II that one wonders why it took them until several years after the war had begun before joining in. Maybe it had something to do with those American business tycoons that had to be stopped by law from collaborating with Nazis, a situation that I’m sure would never come up again in the future. Just spitballing here.

       There were films related to the war in one way or another since the war started, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator for example. However I didn’t want this block of movies completely centered around World War II, nor did I want to gloss over such a monumental event in history. So after many revisions, every year on this list has been changed at least once, I decided that 1942 would be as good a year as any. Potential inductees for this year included Hitchcock’s Saboteur, Orson Welles’ infamously butchered masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons, Disney classic Bambi, and the Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride of the Yankees. When it came to films related to the war though, there were three possible choices: Casablanca, William Wyler’s drama Mrs. Miniver, and something a little more light-hearted. I wonder which one I picked?

       Released in 1942 through United Artists, To Be or Not to Be was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by Melchior Lengyel and Edwin Justus Mayer. It’s 1939, and Adolf Hitler is walking the streets of Warsaw, Poland! Well not really, it’s just an actor from the Theater Polski acting troupe trying to prove a point. Yes, that Theater Polski, home to that famous actress Maria Tura (Carole Lombard), and her husband Joseph (Jack Benny) too I guess. A truer love you have never seen, but that doesn’t stop Maria from entertaining gentlemen callers like pilot Stanislav Sobinski (an incredibly young Robert Stack). Especially when it’s right in the middle of Joe’s big soliloquy in Hamlet. You know the one, ‘To Be or Not to Be’. 

     Before Sobinski can reveal the good news to Joseph however (to Maria’s chagrin), Germany decides some of Europe just isn’t enough and invades Poland, bombing Warsaw to the ground and placing Colonel Ehrhardt in control of the occupation. Some time later, Sobinski is a member of the Polish Squadron of the RAF when he uncovers a plot by Nazi spy Professor Siletsky to transfer military secrets to the Gestapo in Warsaw that could threaten the underground resistance movement in Poland and the entirety of Europe. Sobinski parachutes into occupied Warsaw in an attempt to stop Selitsky, but when the Turas get involved, suddenly things become far, far more complicated. Not to mention madcap.

       While largely unknown these days outside of the professional cinema fan, at one point in time Ernst Lubitsch was one of the biggest names in Hollywood. At a time when film discourse centered primarily around studios, Lubitsch was one of the people to establish the director as a unique creative voice in the filmmaking process. There was even a term coined for it, “The Lubitsch Touch”, in reference to the visual elegance he imparted to his films, in case you’re too lazy to check wikipedia. When Andrew Sarris was positing his Auteur Theory in regards to film, it was directors like Ernst Lubitsch that formed the basis for that theory.

       That ‘Lubitsch Touch’ is in full swing in To Be or Not to Be. You may not notice it at first, but the more you watch the more you realize the film looks good, in terms of set design and shot composition. Like you’ll have a scene outside and the piles of snow will be lit in just the right way, and the tree branches will bunch up just enough to provide the feeling of cover without obscuring the character, and the soldiers marching past on the right will coincide perfectly with the resistance fighter moving away on the left and the music rises and falls with what’s running through their mind and so on and on, Lubitsch’s visual language is so on point. Even the scenes showing Warsaw in ruins look beautiful, as if they were as lovingly crafted as the buildings they came from. It’s a film built around the theater, where fantasy and reality mix in unpredictable ways, and it seems to me like Lubitsch has taken that to its Shakespearean conclusion and made the world a stage for his characters to act upon. A reality that is purposefully not natural, it reminds me a bit of what Wes Anderson seeks to achieve in his films.

       Elegance visually is aided by a tight script and excellent performances by the cast. These people hit their lines so smooth you’d think they’ve been taking this show on the road in between takes. Stylistically I’d probably compare it to what Mel Brooks did decades later, although Brooks tended to be more broad, more about highlighting the gags rather than telling a story, whereas To Be gets most of its humor out through dialogue. Just about every member of the cast has a chance to throw out a handful of zingers or do a couple of skits, and they land much more often than they miss. Of all the comedy films we’ve covered up to this point I think this might be the one where the comedy has held up the best, it’s surprisingly fresh for the modern palate.

        In particular I’ve gotta give it up to Carole Lombard as Maria Tura. While Jack Benny is definitely the most direct comic actor in the film, Lombard indirectly is his equal.There are several times in the film where she’ll quickly slip in a line or use an certain inflection and it won’t even hit you until a second later just how good it was. Unfortunately her career was stunted by being typecast as a comedic actor, cemented by her tragic death (she died the year this movie released), but based on her performance here she deserves some respect on her name. After watching this film, she’s definitely one of those actors, like Grace Kelly, where I can 100% see where folks were coming from with that ‘Hollywood starlet’ label.

       If there were any criticism to be had, I suppose one could question the ‘cheeziness’ of the film, or the act of making jokes about the war during the war, and yeah there’s no way you’re going to confuse Jack Benny any of these folk as Polish, but honestly that cheeze is part of this film’s charm. The combination of this simple, storybook kind of sentimentality set against the often macabre is one I haven’t seen often, certainly not in the era of the absurdist post-war comedies of Catch-22 and Kurt Vonnegut. To Be mocks the Nazis, paints them as clowns, but it never fails to recognize that those who oppose Nazis are right and those who support them are wrong, and it never downplays the necessity of fighting them. Even Joseph Tura, who throughout the film is painted as something of a bumbler and a primadonna, steps up immediately to thwart Siletsky’s aims, and he refuses to rat out his friends even under the threat of death. They may back bite each other, they may toss a bit of gallows humor in from time to time, but there’s a optimistic core, a straight-forward morality that helps lift it up to something truly enjoyable, and if that’s considered ‘cheezy’ or sentimental then sign me up for more, because this world where everyone is mired in shit is dull as hell.

       This might be one of those cases where it seems like I’m blowing smoke up a movie’s ass, but I came into To Be or Not to Be with little to no expectations and I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed it. Maybe the stress of current events was affecting me more than I realized and watching this took a load off my mind or something to that effect. Either way it’s strongly recommended, and it’s gotten me interested in seeing more films that have the “Lubitsch Touch” in the future. Next stop on our tour we’re continuing our trip through the 1940s, and someone will finally be stepping out of the shadows and getting the attention they deserve.