The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Star Trek: First Contact (1996), directed by Jonathan Frakes

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Magic Carpet Ride' by Steppenwolf
 

While there are now more Trek shows in production than there has ever been, for better or worse, the prime time to be a Star Trek fan was the mid-90’s. Star Trek: The Next Generation had not faded in the public consciousness quite yet, Deep Space Nine was hitting its stride, and Voyager was still the hot new thing. Then there was the comic books, the novels, the video games, the themed restaurants, it was a glorious time for nerds who had nothing better to do with their time. As a nerd with a movie blog I’m allowed to say that, to be clear.

As long as you stayed out of the theaters that is, because the waters were a lot more murky there. The TOS films that dominated the 80s were a mixed bag but as a coda to the original show they were ultimately successful, but when the time came to pass the torch the franchise fumbled the ball. The TNG crew, the people who had done most of the legwork in revitalizing the franchise, in their debut film coming out of their final season are relegated to background characters in favor of more Kirk (apparently 6 films and a directing credit weren’t already enough), as Malcolm McDowell tries desperately to be a main antagonist with the scant few minutes of screen time he’s awarded, all wrapped up in a premise that feels woefully underutilized. Not a good first outing is what I’m trying to say, but what about their second time at bat? Purged of the last vestiges of TOS, how does The Next Generation fare at the cinema? Guess we’ll find out.

Released in 1996, Star Trek: First Contact was directed by Jonathan Frakes, written by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, and produced by Peter Lauritson, Rick Berman and Marty Hornstein. The Borg have finally decided that they want to invade Earth again, and rather than doing the smart thing and sending a fleet of ships to overwhelm Starfleet’s defenses they choose to send a single Cube. This Cube is ultimately dispatched thanks to the timely intervention of the Enterprise-E, lead by Captain Jean-Luc Picard and her crew, but not before it spawns an Orb ship, which just so happens to be a time machine. It’s destination? The terrifyingly close year of 2063. It’s mission? To sabotage the mission of Dr. Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell), the man who in the next 24 hours will conduct the first successful warp speed jump, the catalyst for humanity’s first contact with alien life and the genesis of the Federation. The Enterprise follows the Orb and manages to destroy it, but not before they manage to damage Cochrane’s ship and somehow sneak onboard the Enterprise. Thus the mission is two-fold: repair Cochrane’s ship in time for him to make his flight tomorrow, and purge the Borg from the Enterprise before they take it over and use it to assimilate mankind’s past. Neither of which is all that easy, as it turns out.

Theoretically, First Contact stands on much firmer ground than Generations. It’s only natural that the first proper TNG film would utilize the Borg, arguably the show’s biggest contribution to the franchise, and the ‘time travel to ensure First Contact’ is one that falls firmly within Star Trek’s wheelhouse both in premise and in its optimistic tone. Braga, Berman and Moore now have a better idea of how to write for film rather than for TV, and while Jonathan Frakes’ directing experience wasn’t all that different from Dave Carson he obviously had spent enough time with this cast to now how to work with them. That plus the special effects boost that all Star Trek films get on the silver screen and you’ve got yourself a decent picture.  

In practice it’s a bit shakier than that, so let’s start with our main antagonists, the Borg. First Contact is rather infamous amongst Trekkers for introducing the concept/character of the Borg Queen, played here by Alice Krige. Krige plays the role well enough, and on a visual level the Queen looks great, but I'm one of those people who thinks that the idea of a Borg Queen was unnecessary. The big conceit of the Borg was that they were man’s technology taken to its most extreme, so antithetical to our own views of life that they were easily the most ‘alien’ of all of Trek’s alien antagonists. It’s what made Picard’s capture and transformation into Locutus in the series so chilling-- that the beacon of Federation values could be so thoroughly transformed into the face of rapacious, unyielding conquest. That the Borg is not a collective consciousness but subordinate to an individual, and that this was always the case even before Picard’s abduction not only kills the power of that scene but also the mystique of the Borg in general. They go from this near-Lovecraftian vision of artificial intelligence to space bees.

Then we have the First Contact plot, which ironically is treated as almost an afterthought compared to the Borg plot. The arc is fairly obvious, Zephram Cochrane struggling against the weight of his legacy before he finally accepts it and starts to become the man history remembers him as. Most of the scenes involving Cochrane are of him listening to other characters tell him how great he is and him having the same reaction over and over. You’d think there’d be a scene where Troi prompts Cochrane to speak on his imposter syndrome, or Riker setting him straight with a speech about he’s under estimating himself, but that doesn’t happen. Of course the parts with the Borg are going to be the most action-oriented and audiences like action, but they couldn’t do anything more with this near-future post-apocalyptic Earth than using it as a convenient excuse to split up the crew? Star Trek 4 took advantage of its time travel plot better than First Contact does, and that movie was 70 fish out of water jokes and 30 percent whales. 

       The decision to make Patrick Stewart into an action star was another weird one by Berman, Braga and Moore. Putting aside the question of whether Picard’s genocidal Captain Ahab-esque rage would make sense as motivation at this point in canon, after the episode with Hugh I have my doubts, the whole thing seems to be set up in order to make Picard more like Kirk. Except that Picard is not Kirk; His personality, his style of command, his relationship to his crew, the first line under his name in the show bible might as well be ‘NOT KIRK’, so seeing him mowing down drones with a holographic machine gun is a less subtle version of Kirk’s relationship with Klingons. If they were setting up a bit of subversion, where Picard does the action and Riker makes the inspirational speeches they could get away with it, except Riker is barely in the damn movie and he barely does anything in it. There are some other rocky bits of characterization, like Troi’s one scene in the film being drunk and useless and Data stuck in this see-sawing development hell like usual, but action hero Picard is definitely the most tonally dissonant.

       That being said, First Contact is definitely a more entertaining film than Generations. The pitched firefight in the cramped hallways of the Enterprise, Picard and company facing off against the Borg on the hull of the ship, sneaking missions down Borg infested hallways, never knowing if and when they’ll deem the characters a threat and fall upon them. The crew are locked in mortal combat with unkillable zombies, trapped on their own ship, where failure means the complete eradication of everything they’ve ever known. Not quite Cameron’s Aliens mind you, but I think Frakes manages to build an atmosphere of tension really well, and those special effects make the action much more dynamic than Patrick Stewart crawling around a rock 3 or 4 times. Also the Borg are looking really cool, very slimy and corpse-like.

I’m going to give First Contact the recommendation. Maybe my bad memories of Generations are affecting my judgment, but it’s got some neat action set pieces, a classic Picard speech, and it gives everyone on the cast at least some amount of screen time (as well as a cameo from popular side characters like Barclay). There’s too many nits I can pick to call it a must-see classic, which as a franchise film was never going to be the case anyway, but in terms of Star Trek films I’d put it in the upper half of the bell curve. Not quite on the level of 6 or 2, but definitely better than 5, but then a post-Chipotle dump is better than Star Trek 5, so check it if you’re interested. Dare I say it’s made me actually look forward to the next film, to see if they can maintain this momentum. We’ll have to wait until next year to find out though.

On to the Apes!

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie (2006), directed by Mike Clattenburg

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Heavy Metal Love" by Helix

       College is a formative year for many of us. Taking classes in unique subjects in order to broaden our horizons or experimenting zexually or with mind-altering substances in order to expand our consciousness. Personally I ate a lot of sbarros and watched TV, but in my defense it was pretty good TV. Twin Peaks, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, we’re talking primo, netflix-before-it-lost-all-the-good-shit material here. Sure you could say I was wasting my life, but I was doing it while also being fat and depressed, and you can’t put a price on those kinds of memories.

Twin Peaks and all them couldn’t hold a candle to Trailer Park Boys though, at least on a personal level. I watched every episode, every movie, the Christmas special, saw their live show, I even sat through that shitty side project they did where they tried to be Little Britain. When their revival on Netflix began I was initially very excited, I had probably watched the original series in its entirety twice over by that point, but as it went on that eagerness steadily decreased. I was hanging on by a thread when the one-two punch of John Dunsworth (who played Jim Lahey in the series) dying and the fucking F is for Family looking ass cartoon finally killed my interest, and I broke away. I don’t follow what they’re doing now, and I don’t care to know, but because of that original run, and the memories, TPB will always have a place in my heart. And that’s just the way she goes.

So if you’re wondering why I reviewed that weird Trailer Park Boys pseudo-pilot that no one cares about almost a decade ago, it’s because that was the only bit of related media that I hadn’t seen up to that point. As it’s been almost a decade though, and I’m starting to relax my stance on only doing first-impression reviews, and because I didn’t feel like covering a Christmas movie, I decided why not tackle the actual Trailer Park Boys movie? I mean a lot of us spend the holidays drunk and/or high anyway, might as well watch how the professionals do it.

Released in 2006, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie was directed by Mike Clattenburg, written by Clattenburg and Robb Wells, and produced by Clattenburg and Ivan Reitman through Trailer Park Productions and Topsail Entertainment. Robb Wells, John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith star as Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles: career criminals and documentary subjects (Julian’s idea) that reside at Sunnyvale trailer park in Nova Scotia. After their latest get rich quick scheme ends up going south, some destruction of property, robbing a tobacco store, typical stuff, Ricky and Julian are arrested and sentenced to 18 months in the local correctional facility. Not a big problem, Ricky and Julian have been to jail plenty of times, but when the duo get out they find things have changed for the worse. Lucy, Ricky’s on-again off-again girlfriend seems to have moved on, as his daughter Trinity has moved into the lucrative field of stealing barbecue grills. Trailer park supervisor Jim Lahey and his assistant/lover Randy are down their throats, looking for every opportunity to get them out of Sunnyvale and into prison. Not to mention they don't have any money, and you can’t get a proper weed operation going without a sizable investment upfront. What’s a trio of weirdos and crooks to do that doesn’t involve actual work? Common sense might suggest going for petty crimes to avoid the attention of the cops, or you could go for The Big Dirty: one last job with a haul big enough to retire on. Guess which one we go for?

TPB: TM occupies a weird space within the canon of the show. By the time of its release the show was a year away from its original conclusion, but rather than reflecting the ‘world’ as it was at that time, the film is more a reboot of the first season. The setup of Ricky and Julian returning to Sunnyvale after being in prison and Ricky having to rekindle his relationship with Lucy reconnect with his daughter, Julian getting into a relationship with another ex-con etc., with some noticeable differences like giving Bubbles greater prominence (he was only a minor character in S1). But it’s also not a reboot/retelling because they never show Julian hiring the documentary crew, even though they still do the cut-away interviews, and they do those cut-away interviews despite the fact the film isn’t filmed like a documentary whatsoever. I feel that the intent was to capture the essence of the show for moviegoers who had never seen it, which I suppose it does generally speaking, but for those who have seen the show something definitely feels off. Reminds me of Guest House Paradiso, Bottom’s feature film in every way but name. Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson played their characters from Bottom, they did jokes you’d have seen in Bottom, but because it’s removed however slightly from the Bottom formula the whole thing is thrown off-kilter. Looks pretty though.

The cast of the movie are the people from the show, with the notable exception of Trinity who was recast, likely to more closely resemble the character’s age from season 1. Everyone is exactly as you remember them from the show as well, but an extra tip of the hat has to go to Robb Wells. While TPB has always been an ensemble show by this point in its history Ricky was definitely who a lot of the story revolved around, and the film isn’t much different. Ironic though, since season 1 was built around Julian and now in this new version of events he feels like more of an ancillary character than Corey and Trevor. Ricky is a manchild, but he’s the kind of manchild Seth McFarlane wishes he could have written; Unintelligent, boorish, with very little in the way of impulse control, but possessed with a fierce love for his family, friends and community and simple joy de vivre that Thoreau would have appreciated after a joint or two. All of which Wells portrays with a confidence and sincerity that makes him lovable and relatable. You might not want to be Ricky, but I think many of us at one point in our lives wished we had a friend like him. If they could have cut some of Ricky’s screen time to give more lines to J-Roc I wouldn’t have complained.

A theatrical budget doesn’t just mean fancy new camera angles and warmer color grading either, it means a hot soundtrack! All those bands connected with the series make an appearance, Rush, Helix, April Wine, as well as several tracks by Canadian alt-rock band The Tragically Hip. There’s something surreal about watching a scene where the boys are about to start their crime and hearing the first 10 seconds of Spirit of Radio, as the show had conditioned the audience to not expect any music that isn’t pumped through a muffled car speaker. Solid choices though.

It is disappointing that there isn’t a real scheme. One of the thing that became a staple of TPB was the unique get rich quick schemes that the boys would try to pull over the course of a season, like repaving a driveway in hash so that they could hide it in plain sight, or building a large model train track across the Canadian-American border so that they could smuggle drugs across. Considering the characters go on and on about The Big Dirty you’d expect it be more involved, but the actual heist scene takes like 5 minutes. It’s funny I guess, but also a bit anticlimactic given the way the show would descend into chaos at the end of every season. We do get to see some car stunts by the end, courtesy of that movie budget, but it feels like a consolation prize since they couldn’t figure out a good way to get the boys in trouble. Lahey doesn’t go as much off the liquor-fueled deep end either as viewers had grown accustomed to, which was a major source of that chaos in the show. Aside from the naked breasts, and I’m not talking about Randy, everything comes across as very tame. Ricky and Julian don’t even fire their guns I believe, which for a TPB fan tells you everything you need to know about that.

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie is the cliff notes version of Trailer Park Boys: the show. It introduces you to all the characters you need to know, shows what they’re all about, presents a typical kind of plot and then wraps everything up. If you had never seen Trailer Park Boys and didn’t want to dedicate the time to a then 6 season show, then this movie gives you an approximate experience with no muss or fuss. For a seasoned TPB fan however there’s less meat on the bone, beyond the novelty that comes with the silver screen. It likely comes as no surprise that I’m giving it the recommendation, but compared to the original run of the show and the movies afterwards it’s sort of an also-ran, which you should factor into your viewing priorities. Also the amount of liquor, dope, chicken fingers and pepperoni you’re consuming at the time, and whether you have any cigarettes. In any case, Happy Holidays and a Merry New Year to everyone! If I don’t die I’ll see you in October.

Annie Hall (1977), directed by Woody Allen

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "It Seems Like Old Times" by Diane Keaton

       This is a blog dedicated to genre films. Sci-fi, horror, westerns, animation, if it barely made back its budget and has never been within spitting distance of any Oscar that doesn’t have the word Special Effects engraved on it, then in its in my wheelhouse. Still there comes a time in any Z-list movie blogger's life when they need a shakeup. A change of pace to avoid falling into a rut and suffering that most dreaded of all conditions: burnout. It’s something I’ve been all too familiar with over the years, and it’s why the Marathon has taken on so many quirks and gimmicks. Keep yourself engaged and your readers will follow, or they would if I had any readers.

       So if you’re looking for a change of pace from genre films, which by their nature are a niche field, then you go for the most mainstream of all styles of cinema: the romantic comedy. And if you’re going to do a romantic comedy, you can’t just start trawling through the Hallmark Channel like a barbarian, you gotta go for the primo shit. Which is exactly what we’re doing today, as I cross another film off the old bucket list. At this rate I might even cover a Christmas movie this year, the sky's the limit.

       Released in 1977, Annie Hall was written and directed by Woody Allen, and produced by Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe as A Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe Production. Allen plays Alvy Singer, a neurotic comedian (naturally) whose major passions, or rather obsessions in life are death and misery. It comes as no surprise that such a guy hasn’t had the best luck in romance; Married twice, divorced twice, and a sex life that reads like a Bergman film plays. Alvy’s last relationship with a woman named Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) didn’t end up much better, but over the course of the film we see the relationship play out. We see the initial meeting and the awkward first steps, the ups and downs, and ultimately the dissolution. Throw in a couple of jokes here and there and you’ve got yourself a movie, or at least a very long commercial for therapy.

       The 70’s were a period of experimentation and maturation for Woody Allen as a filmmaker. His singular attempt at the science fiction genre, Sleeper, came out during this time, as well as films built around the works of Shakespeare and Tolstoy. From my description it all seems rather straightforward, but in practice Annie Hall is a lot more metatextual. The opening of the film is Alvy breaking the 4th wall to address the audience, and throughout the film he acts as both character and chorus, existing within and outside the story being told. Rather than just tell other characters about his childhood he just brings them into the flashback to see it, and when a noisy guy behind him at the theater starts going on about being an expert on a writer’s work, Alvy literally pulls the writer from offscreen to tell the guy how wrong he was. Allen is no stranger to zany comedy, he built his career on it, and it’s interesting to see this sorts of crossroads between that and this more grounded, realist depiction of relationships. Alvy namedrops Groucho Marx at the film’s opening, and it does feel a bit as if the mustachioed Mar brother somehow wandered into a Fellini film.

       That idea also comes into play in regards to the nonlinear way that Allen depicts the relationship. We start the film with Alvy stating he and Annie have already broken up, then jumping to a point when their relationship was dissolving, then to their early days and so on and on. If we consider the 4th wall breaks as Alvy the storyteller injecting himself into the story to go off on tangents, the way the story is structured is similar to how we as people remember past relationships. The bad times might resurface sooner, especially if you’re someone like Alvy who revels in misery, but as you delve deeper the good times start to shine through as well. We get to see things as Alvy likes to remember them and the way things really were, which can and are two separate things when dealing with romance.

        Annie Hall has a couple of faces you might recognize, Paul Simon, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, but of course the most important are its main actors, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Alvy Singer is exactly how most people imagine every Woody Allen character is like; A man permanently locked inside his own head. Someone supremely confident in his own intelligence, that he’s the smartest guy in the room, but completely unable to confront his own problems. Completely incapable of enjoying life, but addicted with letting people know how much he doesn’t enjoy it. It’s a type of character that can be both exhausting and irritating, and I would be inclined to agree except that we know that this about a relationship failing. This is not a Adam Sandler movie where the main character acts like a screaming toddler for 90 minutes and still ends up with the girl in the end, Alvy’s behavior leads him to taking certain actions and those actions have real consequences. And it’s those real consequences that lead to real growth.  While I wouldn’t say Allen is stepping out of his comfort zone, cue him making a joke about how comfort zones have always made him feel uncomfortable, he obviously knows what he’s trying to get out of the material.

       Then we have Diane Keaton as the titular Annie Hall, and where Allen feels very calculated, very controlled, Keaton instead feels completely natural, as if she had thrown away the script and was just being herself. Annie undergoes the most amount of growth over the course of the film, makes sense, and yet it’s not a radical departure either. Annie is still Annie, just with the confidence to be herself, which is the most engaging part to the audience, while Alvy is stuck largely on the physical and sexual. I believe this was the breakout role for Diane Keaton, and it was a success well earned.

       The moral of Annie Hall then is that things change. People change, feelings change, and therefore relationships change, or in this case end. A relationship doesn’t have to end in hate, or spite, or recriminations, or lying in a dark room listening to Morrissey albums (perish the thought), it can simply be the recognition of change. That you are the same people that you were before, that your feelings aren’t the same as before, that what you need from a relationship is something the other person can’t or won’t provide. So rather than trying to force feelings you don’t have, or clam up and let things fester, it’s okay to just end things as they are. Remember the good times, try to learn from the bad times, and see where the future takes us. Which all seems like a healthy way of looking at it to me, and if it means you’re listening to less Morissey than I’m all for it.

       Annie Hall gets an easy recommendation. While Allen had been a successful filmmaker for a decade at this point, it was the release of Annie Hall that kickstarted a particularly fruitful period of his career. Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days and so on and on, the kind of output to success ratio that other creative types dream of having. So if you are looking for a way into his filmography, this is the film to watch. Of if you’re not looking for an excuse to watch a dozen or so movies and just feel like watching one interesting movie that works too, I mean I won’t judge. Someone asked me to judge a cutest baby contest and by the time I was ready to decide instead of ribbons they asked to pass out social security checks, so believe me when I tell you about judging.

Crimewave (1985), directed by Sam Raimi

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Is It A Crime" by Sade

       Sam Raimi occupies an unenviable position in the world of indie directors that made good. He’s made some critically successful films but nothing as acclaimed as those films by David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino. He’s made some commercially successful films, but he’s not a household name like James Cameron. The awkward middle child of the bunch, although when you’ve got a couple million bucks in the bank that notoriety feels a little overrated.

Obviously I and a lot of people in my age group know Raimi through his adaptation of Spider-Man, but as a big nerd I knew him principally through his cult classic (a proper one this time) Evil Dead trilogy, particularly Army of Darkness as that was one they would play on TV. The blend of gorehound violence, surreal horror and cartoonish slapstick, with the snarky, tortured but utterly badass Bruce Campbell at the center of it all, played perfectly to a kid whose mind had been shaped by Tim Burton and Ren & Stimpy. Those three films, made up the entirety of what Raimi’s career was prior to getting the Spider-Man gig, and it wasn’t until years later when I was reading Bruce Campbell’s book “If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-movie Actor” that I learned about a film that Raimi made in between the release of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. Moreover it was written by a young Joel and Ethan Coen, who had also been extremely influential in developing love of cinema. Prime Marathon material, the kind of film this blog was made for, and yet the years come and go and I always end up finding something new that strikes my interest at the time. So instead of bothering with formalities and all that rigamarole, why don’t I just watch the movie like a normal, non-crazy person, and we can go from there. Sounds good? Good.

Released in 1985, Crimewave was directed by Sam Raimi, written by Raimi, Joel & Ethan Coen, and produced by Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell through Embassy Pictures and Renaissance Pictures. It’s a dark and stormy night in Detroit, and convicted serial killer Vic Ajax (Reed Birney) is set to be executed for his crimes. Vic vigorously maintains his innocence, as you are wont to do, and through flashback tells us his side of the story; Vic was a simple schmuck working for Odegard/Trend security company, installing cameras and striking out with the lovely Nancy (Sheree J. Wilson). Prior to this (although still part of the flashback) Mr. Trend had learned that Mr. Odegard was planning on selling the business out from under him, and in a fit of murderous rage hired a pair of exterminators, Faron Crush (Paul L. Smith) and Arthur Coddish (Brion James), to kill him. Which they do, with panache. Before he can celebrate his gruesome victory however, Trend discovers an important truth: if you hire exterminators to murder a person and they agree, then they’re probably fucking crazy, and when it comes to Crush and Arthur there’s no ‘probably’ about it. As a storm rolls into Detroit the situation immediately deteriorates after Crush and Arthur accidentally murder Trend as well when he comes by the scene of the crime, setting off a chain of events that spells disaster for everyone involved. Vic, Nancy, even an immaculately dressed Bruce Campbell won’t be able to escape the pull of this Crimewave ™ .

Being preoccupied with the Evil Dead trilogy as I was, you might watch Evil Dead II and assume that the decision to incorporate slapstick was a spontaneous one, maybe Raimi was watching some Tex Avery and was inspired. As it turns out, Raimi had already tested the comedy waters a couple years prior. Where ED2 utilized a bit of slapstick to establish the Ash’s degrading sanity and powerlessness against the Deadites, Crimewave starts off bizarre and just gets crazier from there. In the review of The Fugitive I said that the film had a classic Hollywood feel and it sort of rings true here as well, only instead of Hitchcock it’s The 3 Stooges and Don Knotts vehicles from the 60s. Or to go a step further, even just a full on cartoon -- suave Renaldo’s every move is punctuated by a sound effect, Arthur’s shock box for killing rats has a convenient human setting, and Crush and Arthur’s weirdly ADR-ed voices brings to mind the mumbled dialogue of old Popeye toons, there’s even a hallway gag for those needing a Scooby Doo fix. We’ve seen a couple of films on this blog that do something similar, Monkeybone comes to mind, but Crimewave has a dedication to showcasing that absurdity visually that’s impressive.

Crimewave is also the first film of Raimi’s career to have some money behind it, and you can definitely tell. Raimi is blowing up cars, he’s got building miniatures, there’s an elaborate scene involving a chase through a series of doors out of nowhere, and so on and on. This all came back to bite him in the ass when the box office came in and it turns out that they made back 5 thousand bucks off of a 2 million dollar budget, but as a viewer I really appreciate Raimi going all out. One because the rising chaos pairs so well to the film’s absurdist tone that it just couldn’t work without it, but also because it feels like Raimi is having fun. He’s a young hotshot director that has all these new toys to play with, actual sets et cetera, and because you never know if you’ll ever get this opportunity again he’s making the most of it. It’s the same feeling that makes watching the Evil Dead and to a less extent Darkman so fun, that the filmmakers are having fun seeing the kind of wild shit they can get on film.

As far as casting goes, any film that has Bruce Campbell going ham is on the right track. Reed Birney plays the milquetoast well as Vic Ajax, in spite of him constantly reminding me of the judge from Night Court. His chemistry, or more accurately anti-chemistry with Sheree Wilson’s Nancy is a good bit of comedy, her ability to convery the message ‘fuck off nerd’ entirely through body language should be commended. Paul L. Smith and Brion James are exactly how you’d imagine lunatic exterminators would be, a regular Laurel and Hardy if they were born near a toxic waste dump although strangely they never really work together that much in the film, despite being set up as a duo. Anyway, as with the special effects, everything is turned up to 11.

This all should tip you off to the fact that if you go into this film expecting a Coen Brothers movie, then you’re likely going to be disappointed. While there is a thread of the Coens in Crimewave, the common refrain throughout this film of Vic being a decent person and the universe punishing him for it does seem up their alley, the high energy, screwball nature of the thing runs against the more grounded temperament of their later films. Aside from Raising Arizona, which does venture into Tex Avery territory when the bounty hunter enters the picture. Don’t go into it expecting to forge an emotional connection with the characters or learning some universal truth about the human condition and you should be fine.

Going into it as a Raimi film though has its own set of troubles. Despite Bruce Campbell being in the film the film lacks a strong character like Campbell’s Ash to build the story around. Reed Birney plays a good dweeb but not a captivating one, and while the exterminators are fun there’s something about them that just doesn’t click. I’ve referenced the 3 Stooges and Laurel & Hardy and that is definitely the vibe they’re attempting, but it feels surface level. Like they establish Crush as the leader, the Jackie Gleason to Arthur’s Art Carney, but that dynamic is rarely explored. Hell Crush ends up doing most of the legwork in this film, so they should have paired them up more just to give Arthur more shit to do. At the very least it would’ve increased the body count, as this psycho killer comedy made by the Evil Dead guy is barely pushing past PG as it is. How the hell that ended up happening I couldn’t say.

Crimewave is not the highlight of either Sam Raimi or the Coen Bros. career, but as a silly spectacle I was entertained the whole way through, so I’ll give it the recommendation. If you liked The Mask with its big band retro aesthetic you’ll find something familiar here, or you could go down the 80’s horror comedy route and pair it with The Burbs or Fright Night, or even Evil Dead II if you wanted to be weird about it. Guaranteed to be better than death by electrocution!

The Fugitive (1993), directed by Andrew Davis

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "The Fugitive" by Merle Haggard

       The 1990’s were really the last gasp of 1960’s nostalgia, before all of pop culture was subsumed by the 80’s retrovirus. We saw it in fashion, we saw it in music with the rise of jam bands and the return of Woodstock, and it happened in the world of cinema with a legion of 60’s shows being adapted for the big screen. Mission Impossible, The Addams Family, The Brady Bunch, Josie & the Pussycats, The Flintstones, The Wild Wild West, Doctor Who, even Batman took an ill-fated turn towards his Adam West past. While it is the tendency of modern audiences to denounce reboots or revivals of anything, and some of these remakes ended up falling flat on their giant robotic spider faces, several more were great success and were seamlessly absorbed into the pop cultural consciousness, either proving that good stories stand the test of time or justifying major studios pushing out remakes in the first place. Take your pick.

       Of these revival shows, the one that looms the largest is The Fugitive. Ever since I was a kid I have constantly seen this film referenced by other films and TV shows, to the point where (much like Star Wars) I feel like I have a working knowledge of the film through cultural osmosis. Still the desire to see where all the references originated from has lingered in the back of my mind, even if it’s never been in the running for a Marathon entry, and before I get back into the Marathon grind I figured this was a good time to cross it off the queue.

       Released in 1993, The Fugitive was directed by Andrew Davis, written by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy (who you might know from the Riddick films) and produced by Arnold Kopelson through Kopelson Entertainment, based on the TV series by Roy Huggins which ran from 1963-67. Harrison Ford plays Dr. Richard Kimble, a Chicago surgeon who arrives home one night to find his wife Helen dead, murdered by a one armed man. The cops, helpful as ever, decide to arrest him instead, and thanks to an unfortunately vague 911 call from Helen before her death, Kimble is convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. On the bus ride to the big house however, a series of events leads to the bus crashing, and Kimble getting free. Now he’s a fugitive, moving from place to place, sneaking around back alleys and night-fueled streets as he tries to track down the mysterious one armed man. One step behind him is U.S. Marshall Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), the man who will not rest until Kimble is in chains and behind bars, no matter what. The chase is on, and Kimble better run.

       The Fugitive then is a binary story -- One half the murder mystery plot and the other Gerard’s hunt for Kimble. The former could possibly work on its own, but combining Kimble’s hunt with Gerard’s hunt gives the film an enormous boost of energy. By the first 30 minutes we have some of the most out and out action in the film, including the scene at the dam which has been referenced ad nauseum, and every scene after that is suffused with a frantic energy. Any moment a cop could round the corner or a passerby could recognize Kimble’s face, and because we are beside him we share in that tension as it crests and recedes, driven forward by James Newton Howard’s score like a runaway train. Only increasing as Gerard’s net tightens, and the two plots converge more and more towards the explosive climax. Rather than saying that they don’t make films like this anymore, because of course they still make thrillers, but The Fugitive was definitely one of those films from the 80s and 90s that seemed to capture a ‘classic Hollywood’ feeling with a then modern coat of paint. The kind of movie that Hitchcock would have made, although he’d have probably tried to squeeze in a beautiful female love interest in there somewhere.

       The Fugitive is also built around two performances, that of Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble and Tommy Lee Jones as Samuel Gerard. Harrison Ford...is Harrison Ford. The man had spent the last decade playing Hollywood’s most lovable rogues and badasses, so it’s an interesting change of pace to see him behind the 8-ball here, more haggard and weather-beaten than ever before, even if it’s not earth-shattering. For Tommy Lee Jones, this is a career-defining performance. Samuel Gerard is the complete opposite of Richard Kimble: where Kimble is quiet and reserved, Gerard is boisterous and condescending. Where Kimble is alone, Gerard is surrounded by people, or more accurately subordinates. And where Kimble is ultimately a good person, going out of his way to help people even when it puts him in danger, Gerard ultimately isn’t -- driven to capture Kimble not out of any sense of justice but because the law demands it, and everything else a distant second. All of which he conveys with an ease that feels utterly believable. Jones, more so than Ford, is what makes The Fugitive the film that it is, and it’s no wonder he was later picked up for the MIB films. The dude is concentrated lawman in a can.

       My biggest issue with the film actually comes from the film’s most famous scene, the showdown at the dam. Kimble appears to be caught; Behind him Gerard waits, gun drawn, and in front of him a raging waterfall and a  several story drop in the river below. Throwing caution to the wind, Kimble decides to jump into the waterfall...only it’s not Harrison Ford leaping over the edge obviously, but a dummy. It’s so obviously a dummy that it actually took me out of the movie for a moment or two. Considering that earlier in the film we had an action set piece involving a runaway train that looked very well done, it only makes it stand out even more. Unfortunately I don’t think there was a way to make it look good in 1993, they could have used a bluescreen but you’d probably still be able to tell. Plus a bluescreen would have denied the filmmakers the pleasure of chucking a dummy off of a waterfall, and who am I to deny their fun?

       The Fugitive gets an easy recommendation. It takes the core of the original series and boils it down to its essence, managing to update it for moviegoers at the time without losing sight of why the story was successful in the first place. It’s also just a good thriller film on a base level, which doesn’t require any knowledge of the TV show to succeed. So if you like good thriller films, then you should give The Fugitive a try, and if you’re a one armed man, you better watch your ass buddy. We’ve got out eyes on you.

Massacre Mafia Style (1974), directed by Duke Mitchell

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Mambo Italiano" by Dean Martin

       One of the stranger episodes in the saga of Hollywood is the 1952 movie Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. A genre film in the vein of the Abbott and Costello horror crossovers such as Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, the film starred Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, two young comedians who bore a striking resemblance to the duo of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. So much so that Lewis and his manager threatened to sue the ass off of everyone involved with the project, there was even talk selling the negatives so that they could be destroyed, thereby wiping the film from existence. Ultimately though that deal fell through and Brooklyn Gorilla would go on to a life of poor reviews and general obscurity, to the delight of losers like me who talk about weird movies all the time.

       Unfortunately when your debut film is a blatant ripoff of one of the most popular acts in the country at the time it doesn’t bode well for your career, and indeed that was the case for Mitchell and Petrillo, who were hounded by Lewis’ people and essentially blacklisted from the industry up until the dissolution of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’s partnership in ‘56. Patrillo went into film production with a minor in porn while Mitchell had a couple bit parts in a few movies no one remembers before settling into the club circuit in Palm Springs and typically that would be the end of the story, except for the fact that in the mid 70s, over a decade after his last film appearance, Mitchell pulled a Cassavetes and decided to try his hand at making movies independently. He would end up making two films before his death in 1981, Massacre Mafia Style and Gone with the Pope (which had only gotten as far as the workprint stage), and it would be another couple of decades before these films were rediscovered in his son Jeffrey’s garage and given a formal release on home media. Gonzo exploitation films made by a former Dean Martin impersonator sounds right up my reviewing alley, and it just so happens that while I was in the process of uploading Hellraiser 2 I happened to stumble across one of those films while browsing my local streaming service. That’s the kind of opportunity that this blog was built on, so let’s give it a try.

       Released in 1974. Massacre Mafia Style was written, directed and produced by Duke Mitchell, with additional production help by Joseph R. Juliano and Spartan Films. Duke Mitchell stars as Mimi Miceli, son of Don Miceli, the former head of organized crime in America before he was deported back to Sicily. Mimi is tired of living in his father’s shadow however, and he decides to move to Los Angeles to break into the business with his family friend Jolly Rizzo (Vic Caesar). Which they do in the classic fashion, kidnapping some schmuck and mailing his body parts to family members. Crime today is not the same as they were in Pappy Miceli’s time however -- the former lieutenants are now trying to pass themselves off as legit businessmen, and the seedier aspects of the business have been taken over by *gasp* minorities. The respect for tradition, for family, that once supposedly defined the Cosa Nostra, that Mimi learned of at his daddy’s knee. Well fuck that, Mimi wants the cash and he wants the power, and he’s going to show all these guys what it means to be a mobster. Even if he has to massacre them, mafia style.

      With national morale at an all time low, it’s no wonder that the 70’s saw the explosive revival of the crime film. Loose cannon cops, pimps, street punks, con artists, these were who the youth were flocking to rather than John Wayne or Andy Griffith. Of course that classical archetype of criminal syndicates, the Mob, also got a new generation of eyes on it with Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 magnum opus The Godfather. Massacre Mafia Style takes some cues from Godfather obviously, going so far as to say that Coppola’s film is based on the life of Don Miceli, but this is certainly not a sweeping drama. This is an exploitation film, which means that the focus is on the more visceral aspects of gangster life, meaning extreme violence, gratuitous tits, and plenty of naughty language. The kinds of things you don’t want on the screen when your mom walks in the room.

        Of those three, the most screen time is devoted to violence. The first five to ten minutes of the film is literally like a scene from Postal 2 or some forgotten Tarantino picture, walking up to people and blasting them to hell before moving on to the met room. Nothing especially gorey, except for one scene (you’ll know it when you see it), but then this film was made for 12,000, so they worked with what they had, which was a lot of fake blood and prop guns. Quantity over quality, the calling card of grindhouse films, and this film is a prime example of that.

       That lack of quality shines through when you get to the acting, which ranges from decent to more wooden than a lumber mill. Duke himself is one of the better ones, which you’d hope for considering he made the damn thing, but he often suffers from a monotonal cadence which limits his emotional range. It’s good enough in short one-liners but when the dialogue drags on, like the several speeches Duke likes to give he ends up suffering for it. Still this isn’t quite a Tommy Wiseau situation, Mitchell knows how filmmaking works and the acting, while hit or miss, still has a logic behind it that makes sense. Scenes play out as you expect, characters act as you’d expect them to act, et cetera. While it may be a vanity project, there was some care put into its creation.

       I also think it’s prudent to write a little on the film’s approach to race relations here. Now you can say that this was a more loose period, and that these are bad people who do and say bad things, but there comes a point where it goes beyond establishing a character and starts getting uncomfortable. There’s one scene where Jolly is ranting for what feels for several minutes, and it feels like half the words out of his mouth begin with the letter ‘n’ while the other characters in the scene sit in silence. Again maybe if the Black characters gave it as good as they got, or there was some sort of repercussions then there’d at least be a purpose, but there are exactly two Black people in this movie (one of whom is even named a racial epithet) and they only exist to show off how macho the mafia is supposed to be, and nothing that ends up happening to any of these characters is a result of these scenes. And it’s really only Black people who get it too in spite of this multiethnic cast, I think there might be one Japanese guy who gets a slur thrown at them, but considering that particular word hasn’t seen major use since 1945 it doesn’t have quite the same impact. Mitchell was the sole creative voice on this film, so there’s no one else you can raise the eyebrow at. Just really awkward atmosphere in this dumb gangster picture. 

       Oh yeah, and there are naked breasts. Whatever.

       Massacre Mafia Style is a film that wants to be a hard boiled noir but ends up closer to your run-of-the-mill video nasty. It’s violent and occasionally absurd, but I never felt connected to the story so it amounted to nothing. The story felt disjointed as well, with events suddenly popping in with little preamble and plot points that make little sense, all leading up to an ending that I’m sure Mitchell felt was very profound when he was writing the script. Massacre Mafia Style is definitely a cult film -- in the sense that every low budget movie from the 70s and 80s with a little gore and some tits has some kind of following, but calling it a ‘cult classic’ would be going a step too far. The novelty of watching a grindhouse exploitation flick made by the big band equivalent of an Elvis impersonator might be enough to earn a watch for the exceptionally curious, but I can’t give it the recommendation. Gone with the Pope sounds like it might be fun though, maybe one day I’ll get around to it.

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.