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11/14/2024 0 Comments the chronicles of riddick Twenty years after its theatrical release, The Chronicles of Riddick still isn’t a particularly great movie, but it’s become a lot easier to appreciate its bonkers wavelength. A deranged blend of Frank Herbert, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and George Lucas-inspired world-building and myth-making (not unlike what Zack Snyder recently attempted with Rebel Moon), the film in no way feels like a logical successor to Pitch Black… the superb, low-budget sci-fi/horror hybrid that introduced intergalactic lawbreaker Richard B. Riddick and helped catapult Vin Diesel to superstardom. Director David Twohy is one of the medium’s better B-movie storytellers (his last non-Riddick offering was the twisty, under-appreciated 2009 thriller A Perfect Getaway), but Diesel’s meteoric rise as a new breed, 21st-century action star (he quickly scored a pair of major hits in The Fast & the Furious and xXx) afforded him the rare opportunity to work on a 100-million canvas. Say what you will about the spectacularly dorky, S&M-tinged space opera that ensued, but you can’t deny that Twohy takes one hell of an unapologetic swing.
The Necromongers are a fanatical, Borg-like religious sect, led by the Lord Marshal (Colm Feore), on a crusade to assimilate/obliterate all human life en route to an underworld Valhalla known as the Underverse (feel free to consult the official Wiki if you want to see how deliriously deep the rabbit hole goes). The holy man Imam (Keith David) helps flush Riddick out of hiding because the Air Elemental Aereon (Judi Dench, in one of the more jarringly random paycheck jobs you’ll ever encounter) believes he’s actually one of the last descendants of a Spartan-like warrior race known as the Furyans - the only people with the intestinal fortitude to go toe-to-toe with the Necromongers (it also leads to all sorts of amusing retconning - such as the vague implication that Riddick’s reflective eyes are actually the result of his Furyan genetics, rather than surgical penal butchery). But for all of this dopey, sprawling mythology, the film itself proves oddly slight (perhaps because it was conceived as the opening salvo in a trilogy that never actually materialized). Twohy never quite figures out how to rewire Riddick from unrepentant outlaw into bona fide franchise hero; he settles on using the character of Jack - the feisty teenage girl-pretending-to-be-a-boy stowaway from Pitch Black - as a makeshift solution. Riddick, not interested in serving as the universe’s Necromonger-slaying savior, learns that she’s been incarcerated in a triple-max Slam and the movie’s entire second act morphs into a fairly basic prison break thriller. As narrative engines go, this one tends to choke on its own exhaust. The prison, at least, is cool. Set on Crematoria, the facility is located nearly 30 kilometers underground due to the planet’s surface alternating between a scorching 700 degrees during the day and close to 300 degrees below zero at night. Jack, now played by Alexa Davalos, goes by Kira and fills out a tank top quite nicely, her formerly shaved scalp now spouting an impressive mane of Felicity-esque curls. It’s virtually impossible to reconcile the two versions of the character, which makes the whole conceit of Riddick’s rescue mission that much more of a chore to buy into. In Pitch Black, Riddick was a genuinely fascinating character - like an unorthodox integer introduced into a standard genre equation, scrambling the math. He functions much more blandly here, but, as a movie star, Diesel has always had a distinct strain of the peacock about him - he clearly revels in Twohy lensing him with a distended sense of mythologized grandeur. He still cuts an impressive figure on-screen - all bulging biceps and sweat-speckled chrome dome, his trademark goggles a killer accessory - and his gravely charisma remains undiminished... but unlike the curved Ulak blades he likes to wield, the once R-rated edge has been dulled. Riddick may be a reluctant hero, but he’s still been tasked with the crucial art of selling branded merchandise and soda pop to kids. As if The Chronicles of Riddick weren’t already sufficiently and suffocatingly self-serious, Twohy elects to get downright Shakespearean as well. Much of the side drama revolves around the Necromonger Commander Vaako (a painfully stiff Karl Urban, back when Hollywood was attempting to fashion him into a generic action star, having no idea he’s actually one hell of a deft actor) and his wife, played by Thandie Newton in full-blown Lady Macbeth mode. She aspires for him to become the new Lord Marshal and their rote scheming mostly just fills time; perhaps Vaako and Riddick would eventually become worthwhile adversaries, but frankly we’ll never know. One’s attention is better spent admiring the Wagnerian set design and elaborate costumes, which feel like H.R. Giger marrying Arthurian chain mail with BDSM club gear. The film does have genuine visual muscle. But its humorlessness renders it stiff-jointed. Anyone who’s seen the belated, stripped-down 2013 follow-up Riddick will undoubtedly snicker at how baldly Twohy attempts to extricate himself from this movie’s cliffhanger ending and hastily shift out of D&D fantasy and back into Pitch Black territory. The Chronicles of Riddick turned out to be a rather sorry and short-lived chronicle indeed - more of a pamphlet, really. But watching it today, one can at least savor that distinct tang of creative risk.
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7/13/2024 0 Comments american gigolo As an actor, Richard Gere amounts to mostly placid planes and surfaces, which has resulted in a largely weightless body of work (with a few choice exceptions) but also made him uniquely suited to portray Julian Kay, the lead character of Paul Schrader’s 1980 dramatic thriller American Gigolo. As the top male escort in Beverly Hills (the word “gigolo” is never actually used in the movie), Julian specializes in giving women pleasure, but it’s clear Schrader is far less interested in the fantasy than the facade. We’re rarely privy to the intimacy of Julian’s craft - the one time we’re allowed to watch him operate in the bedroom, it’s a “rough trick” that turns sour… his purring seductions compromised by the woman’s husband, foppish and bug-eyed, who orders her to be taken from behind then snarls “Now slap the cunt!”
Schrader has been a relatively vital cinematic voice for the better part of fifty years now, but he’s not exactly known for his subtlety. With the exception of the occasional curveball - such as his deliriously weird remake of Cat People - he’s remained preoccupied unbudgingly on most of the same themes and hang-ups for his entire career. Here he fixates on Julian’s obsessive routine - his Armani threads and collection of fine neckties, his painstaking physical regimen (his body, after all, is literally his stock-in-trade), the way he compulsively dedicates himself 24/7 to the profession, at the expense of any semblance of an interior life or sense of self (it’s no surprise that Bret Easton Ellis has openly admitted what an influence the film was on Patrick Bateman and American Psycho). Schrader has been vocal about how Julian is effectively a product of the same loneliness and alienation as Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, the main difference being that the latter is aggressively nonsexual, whereas the former is the complete opposite. Two events ultimately conspire to unravel Julian’s carefully cultivated existence. First, he meets Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton), the unhappy wife of a prominent California politician, who pursues him out of genuine romantic interest… forcing Julian to grapple with the alien concept of a mutually beneficial relationship with genuine emotional stakes (he’s hardwired to approach sex as purely transactional - he specializes in giving pleasure, but has little frame of reference when it comes to receiving it). And second, he suddenly finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation. The contrived thriller element is forgivable as a necessary means of generating narrative juice… but it proves disappointingly turgid. Julian suspects a frame-up and the notion seems so blindingly obvious it’s hard to believe that a detective as seasoned and savvy as Hector Elizondo’s Joe Sunday doesn’t see straight through the smokescreen. Instead the walls start closing in, but the whiff of conspiracy remains largely one-dimensional. Still, there are visual conceits that pay off robustly… such as when Julian suspects a key piece of evidence has been planted in his apartment and he systematically tears the place apart, the entire scene striped with shadow from the venetian blinds. John Bailey’s cinematography has a heightened, high-gloss appeal; it begins like a sun-kissed magazine spread before tilting into noir-tinted paranoia. Schrader recognizes that Julian’s entire persona amounts to sleek contrivance, a diligently maintained fantasy that he buys into every bit as much as the women he services… yet the film seeks to lay bare a character who has precious little to reveal to us. It amounts to stripping the cover from a book full of blank pages… which is both the brilliance and the limitation of Gere’s performance. It’s rather stunning just how unerotic the movie actually is, but then Schrader has always had a loathing, almost seethingly combative relationship to sex. In his particular brand of cinema - encompassing everything from Hardcore to Auto Focus - it’s routinely depicted as a corrosive and corruptive influence… nothing good ever really comes from the act (Cat People basically literalized it as phantasmagorical animal lust). In retrospect, that probably means Schrader, who’s frequently approached moviemaking as a confessional form of self-flagellation, was all wrong for this particular subject matter (why bother to juxtapose fantasy and reality when it all feels so glumly interchangeable?). The film needed a director capable of fusing De Palma’s self-consciously sordid sensuality with Friedkin’s berserker fearlessness. Schrader’s interest in Julian is strictly anthropological. American Gigolo still grazes profound insights concerning male melancholia and isolation, but its titular portrait never feels fully colored in. Like the film’s visual palette, it ultimately settles for hues of muted gray and blue. 5/27/2024 0 Comments narc Narc is the sort of film that’s so gritty, you almost feel inclined to scrape and scrub the grime off your TV screen after it’s over. The cop thriller throwback - which evokes the unflinching 70s naturalism of Friedkin and Lumet - caused a minor stir upon its release in 2002 (Tom Cruise was such a fan he nearly recruited director Joe Carnahan to helm Mission: Impossible III)… but seems to have largely faded into obscurity in recent years. It is absolutely worth a re-appraisal - especially in comparison to a hammy potboiler such as Training Day, whose similarly themed (and notably inferior) shadow looms unjustly large.
Jason Patric stars as Nick Tellis, an undercover narcotics officer. He bursts from a drug den by way of introduction, frenziedly pursuing a strung-out dealer through the concrete jungle of inner-city Detroit, the jittery camera shaking violently, almost spasmodically - like an addict in the throes of withdrawal. By the time the dealer snatches a kid off the playground, we sense things are about to take a soul-scarring turn… and, in spite of the hint of self-conscious shock value, the sequence packs a wallop. It’s an unnervingly rancid adrenaline rush. 18 months later, Tellis is in a state of professional limbo… angling for a quiet desk job, but unable to secure one unless he agrees to assist in the investigation of murdered undercover officer Michael Calvess, a case that pairs him with the aptly-named Henry Oak (Ray Liotta). “He makes solid collars that make solid cases,” Tellis is told. “But between you and me, he’s not stable. He’s all of that shit a cop just cannot be, not right now.” It’s a conventional setup, and there’s an initial fear that Narc is treading into generic cop territory. Tellis recognizes that he’s been tasked less with ferreting out the truth and more with providing an explanation acceptable enough to ensure the case is filed away in some long forgotten filing cabinet… and he has to figure out a way to navigate the city’s corroded underbelly while somehow keeping the volatile Oak in check. The late Liotta’s career was peppered with all sorts of memorable character work (both leading and supporting), infused with his typical live-wire intensity, but he was rarely ever better than he was in this movie. Packing on extra bulk, with a gray-salted goatee and cobalt stare that could pierce solid steel, he’s like an attack dog who’s slipped his leash. The character is all tightly-coiled aggression and ferocity, which might come off as superficial if Liotta weren’t so good at finding that undercurrent of sorrow between the cracks. Carnahan paints Oak as neither antihero nor villain; he’s a man who’s lost all faith in the system he serves, the lines between right and wrong not so much blurring in his eyes as being rendered completely irrelevant (the most dangerously nihilistic place you can find yourself if you’re a cop). Liotta is completely dialed-in. He was likely picking the scenery from his incisors between takes. The performance is pure horsepower. Narc has you by the throat within moments, but the ride can still be bumpy. The grounded psychology at times feels at odds with Carnahan’s eagerness to flex his stylistic muscle (something Sidney Lumet would certainly never be accused of). At one point a montage of Tellis and Oak’s street legwork is showcased in four-camera split-screen - like surveillance footage with Altman-style overlapping dialogue. But the film grows stronger and more self-assured as it unfolds. Carnahan lenses the bleakness of wintertime Detroit with an authentic, unsentimental eye (he was born in Michigan). It’s a startling piece of work from a director who appeared to be just another Tarantino wannabe when he released his low-budget debut Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane (of course he reverted back to being a Tarantino wannabe with his subsequent feature Smokin’ Aces, so go figure). Carnahan went on to direct some fitfully entertaining studio movies such as The A-Team and The Grey, but one wonders why he never really made good on the marker he laid down with this film. The edges of the picture are too roughly textured, the bruising impact of certain scenes too pointed, the layers of the script too nuanced for this not to have been the effort of a serious filmmaker. At the heart of it all is Jason Patric, an actor who spent years flitting around the edges of stardom without ever becoming an actual star. Most movies you’d see him in, you’d be left with the impression that there was almost certainly someone better who could have played the role. But Narc is the exception. Wearing a vaguely porny handlebar mustache and baggy sweatshirt, he gives a somber and soulful performance (one of the other obvious standouts of his career was the 1991 vehicle Rush, in which he also played an undercover narcotics officer slowly losing his grip, so maybe this was just a very specific wheelhouse for him). Carnahan leans on perhaps one too many frayed looks in the mirror or thousand yard stares into the distance to connote spiritual damage, but Patric plays terrifically off of Liotta - he understands exactly when to push and when to pull back. The film builds to an incendiary climax in which Oak attempts to blunt force trauma the case to its natural conclusion and the harrowing sequence stands with the very best of the genre. But it isn’t until the final moments that Carnahan’s thematic vision truly comes into focus… casting a stark light on the toll being an undercover “narc” takes, the way these officers are dropped behind enemy lines with minimal support and lose themselves in the moral blur. The anger and cynicism of the 70s runs deep in this movie’s veins as Tellis discovers a kinship with the murdered Calvess he wishes he didn’t. And in those closing moments, the notions of heroism and villainy evaporate, leaving only the hazy gray of gun smoke. 2/17/2024 0 Comments Kolobos If you’ve never actually heard of Kolobos, don’t feel bad… the 1999 horror offering represents the deepest of cinematic deep cuts, even for devoted fans of the genre. Attempting to navigate the post-Scream meta-slasher landscape, the film enjoys a kinship of sorts with another ambitiously low-budget feature (also conceived, coincidentally, by an unheralded directing duo) that released that very same year - The Blair Witch Project (albeit with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cultural impact). And yet, in their own way, both movies sought to challenge and redefine the established boundaries of the horror genre… with Kolobos blending reality television and torture porn (think of it as The Real World by way of the Saw franchise) in a way that - looking back now - feels prescient to an almost radical degree.
Kolobos (from the Greek word for “maimed” or “mutilated”) follows five young adults who answer a cryptic advertisement for “progressive minded individuals” to star in an experimental film. The group includes bubbly extrovert Tina (Promise LaMarco), a template for the sort of fame-craving moths routinely drawn towards the reality TV flame; abrasive comic Tom (Donny Terranova); pretentious actress Erica (Nichole Pelerine), whose main claim to fame is the bottom-of-the-barrel slasher series Slaughterhouse Factor; philosophy student (and film crit windbag) Gary (John Fairlie); and fragile, emotionally troubled artist Kyra (future WWE valet Amy Weber), who couldn’t be less suited to the assignment but signs up anyway for… reasons. Nevertheless, the quintet assemble at a mountain retreat wired from top to bottom with cameras; instruction is minimal, the group’s social dynamics allowed to take shape naturally (the setting itself is largely bereft of personality, though the budget allowed for a pool table at least). Eventually they’re thrown a nasty curveball as steel shutters abruptly seal off the doors and windows without warning and the building reveals itself to be rigged with all manner of fiendish booby traps. There will be blood… or so it would seem. Up to this point the film is dogged by a certain amateurish quality - the actors’ charm and commitment far outstrip their actual abilities - and yet directors Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk manage to kindle a faint yet undeniable creative spark… we’re rendered narratively off-balance just enough of a degree that the desire to see what unspools is genuine. Eventually a disfigured, black-gloved killer reveals himself (is he really stalking our leads… or is he simply a product of Kira’s fractured psyche?) and the film treads lightly into the margins of the giallo subgenre (hinted at by a score that evokes Suspiria’s iconic theme rather shamelessly). But Liatowitsch and Ocvirk can only sustain the smoke and mirrors for so long. Eventually their uncertain grasp of the material is laid bare and the story turns to narrative sawdust, collapsing into arbitrary (and worse - dull-edged) incoherence. The more the body count rises, the more the film drains of life. Supposedly Liatowitsch and Ocvirk assembled their initial rough cut and were dismayed to discover it barely spanned an hour… which explains the discordant framing device (filmed separately, after-the-fact) in which a bloody and traumatized woman, muttering the word “kolobos” over and over, is found wandering the streets and taken to a hospital. Arrow (bless its heart) does its level best to sell the film as a tragically overlooked and misunderstood gem, but Kolobos promises a lot more than it actually delivers. For a movie that had its finger on the embryonic pulse of reality TV, the dramatic pinball taking place between the personalities of its five leads is distressingly limp (the fact it was filmed on 35mm - as opposed to the more reality-friendly digital video - also suggests a work at stylistic cross-purposes). Torture porn fans will be disappointed; the traps are elementary and brief, the bloodletting basic. But the late-90s was a contradictory era for horror - revitalized by Scream, yet consequently littered with its knockoffs. It’s hardly surprising that The Blair Witch Project - which felt almost four-dimensional with its beclouded lines between fact and fiction that seeped into the nascent internet age - was the film that ignited the cultural conversation and Kolobos is barely remembered as a footnote. Judging by their subsequent credits (or lack thereof), Liatowitsch and Ocvirk might as well have dropped off the face of the earth in the years that followed, but they attempted to zig while everyone else zagged. It didn’t really pay off, but they can at least take comfort in the fact that they were a step ahead of the 21st century zeitgeist. 1/18/2024 0 Comments contamination Contamination is sort of like what you’d get if David Cronenberg had been born in Italy, honed his craft slightly less assiduously, and elected to make an extra-gooey knock-off of Ridley Scott’s Alien, rather than Videodrome (the original working title was Alien Arrives on Earth, for those who chafe at any hint of mystery in their movie marketing). The 1980 sci-fi/horror hybrid is best described as a liquefied form of cinema; the bodily fluids are so tactile, it feels as if you could run your index finger across the screen and it would come away slightly sticky.
A seemingly abandoned cargo ship drifts into New York Harbor. NYPD Lieutenant Tony Aris (a cheesy Marino Masé, who seems to be playing the character as some sort of winsome ladykiller, but has the exaggerated body language of an Italian Michael Richards) heads aboard with a team of scientists, only to discover a graphically dispatched crew and crates of Colombian coffee filled with pulsating, avocado-like eggs. When the eggs rupture, they belch a gelatinous fluid that means instant death… as we discover when the scientists immediately begin to paint the walls of the ship’s hold with their insides, their chest cavities bursting with impressive chunks of candy-red viscera. At this point one might be sorely tempted to anoint Contamination a masterpiece of low-budget splatter, but this opening sequence generates a tone of gonzo fervor that the rest of the film frankly struggles to live up to. Aris, the lone survivor, is brought before Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), who believes the eggs are extraterrestrial in origin and potentially connected to a recent expedition to Mars. Commander Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch, from Fulci’s Zombi 2) testified to having seen similar-looking eggs in an ice cavern, but when his fellow astronaut Hamilton (Siegfried Rauch) refused to corroborate the story, he was discredited and descended into a haze of alcoholic bitterness. Nonetheless, he reluctantly agrees to accompany Holmes and Aris on a mission to South America, where the cargo shipment’s been traced back to a coffee plantation that requires first-hand investigating. Contamination was directed by Luigi Cozzi (credited under his less ethnically-threatening pseudonym “Lewis Coates”), who knows his way around a derivative piece of shlock. More drawn to science-fiction and fantasy than the graphic slashers that were in particular vogue in Italy during the 1970s, he eventually helmed the low-budget space opera (and rather obvious Star Wars knockoff) Starcrash, which remains his nominal claim-to-fame (a proposed sequel bankrolled by Cannon Films and starring Klaus Kinski failed to materialize). Cozzi’s hilariously blunt assessment of the Italian film industry - suggesting producers only care which successful film you’re aspiring to rip off - speaks volumes. And yet, even though he’s basically subsisting on cinematic scraps compared to his Hollywood brethren, there is a steady pulse of ingenuity to his craft. Having collaborated with Dario Argento early in his career (and having subsequently directed the stylish thriller The Killer Must Kill Again), Cozzi draws on his giallo influences, specifically when a terrified Holmes finds herself trapped in the bathroom with one of the eggs - throbbing like a translucent time bomb… a drawn-out sequence of deliberately calibrated suspense (upraised by a Paleolithic score courtesy of prog-rockers Goblin, because what self-respecting Italian film *didn’t* have a Goblin score back then?). That particular set piece is a stand-out in an otherwise drowsy second act, but Contamination finds its footing with its deliriously gory climax… Cozzi unveiling his pièce de résistance - an alien cyclops that looks an awful lot like a sentient piece of broccoli (it's not exactly ripped from the imagination of HR Giger, but its particular shade of dark green rubber proves strangely reminiscent of the “Beastmonster” hand puppet that came with the Masters of the Universe “Fright Zone” playset, back in 1985). The creature (a not-quite-triumph of animatronics) is using its mental influence to distribute the eggs across the planet, as part of a larger, more insidious plot to wipe out humanity. Cozzi does his best to hold the frayed story together - producer Claudio Mancini reportedly insisted on more of a James Bond-type vibe, which is why the movie never seems to steer as strongly into its sci-fi trappings as it should. The acting is stiff, with McCulloch and Marleau mostly imitating human cardboard. But as was often the case with the Italian splatter subgenre, liberal helpings of exploding guts wallpaper over a lot of narrative cracks. Contamination is no classic, but by god… it does deliver exploding guts. Nobody can take that away from it. 8/2/2023 0 Comments the mutilator 80s slashers are a lot like pizza, or sex - even when they’re bad, they’re still good (actually, there are some 80s slashers that are straight-up unwatchable - this wasn’t a particularly thought-out metaphor). Buddy Cooper’s 1984 contribution to the subgenre, The Mutilator (aka Fall Break), is a cult film of relatively minor (minor) repute… and it’s difficult to argue it warrants any particular fanfare beyond that. Cooper, unfortunately, was unable to build on his budding auteur credentials… it took him close to 40 years to make another movie, which happens to be his literally just-completed sequel The Mutilator 2 (starring friend-of-the-site Eva Hamilton - check her out in Ruin Me on Shudder).
Ed (Matt Mitler) has been asked by his father “Big Ed” to close up the family’s beachfront condo in North Carolina for the winter. Ed’s college friends see it as an opportunity for a few days of alcohol-fueled “fall break” revelry, but - there’s a catch. When he was a kid, Ed attempted to clean his dad’s hunting rifles as a surprise birthday gift, but all he succeeded in doing was accidentally (and fatally) shooting his mother in the backside… which resulted in his father suffering some sort of psychotic break. Suffice it to say, I have questions. Their relationship in the ensuing years is only vaguely established (“The creep just ignores me and now he wants my help,” Ed claims)… but it seems somewhat relevant, since Big Ed lies in wait at the condo and just starts butchering his son’s friends one-by-one. Let’s back up a step. Ed’s crew includes his (sexually inactive) significant other Pam (Ruth Martinez), obnoxious prankster Ralph (Bill Hitchcock), his own eternally patient girlfriend Sue (Connie Rogers), bland Adonis Mike (Morey Lampley), and his foxy squeeze Linda (Frances Raines, niece of Claude - just FYI). None of the cast are particularly good per se (Lampley in particular comes across like an alien poorly imitating a human meat sack), but it’s a decent enough crop of characters by the standards of the genre… and Pam and Sue in particular feel like actual girls you might have hung out with in college, and legitimately enjoyed spending time with (particularly playing Monopoly, because isn't that what everyone did in the 80s when they weren't having sex?). The movie’s main (arguably only) claim to fame are its above average death scenes, with makeup effects courtesy of the great Mark Shostrom (whose genre work includes Videodrome, Evil Dead II, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors). Big Ed is an accomplished fisherman and isn’t shy about utilizing the tools of his trade… hence Mike gets sliced-and-diced with a boat propeller (his drawn-out death spasms are easily the best/funniest shot of the movie), Ralph is stabbed in the throat with a flounder gig, and poor Sue receives a graphic crotch gutting at the receiving end of a fishing gaff (that oversized barbed hook featured on the poster - not pleasant). If you’re going to muster a measure of quality control in at least one creative department, well - it might as well be the violence. Watching The Mutilator, you keep waiting for the plot to evolve in some fashion, for some even rudimentary psychological dimension to take root, but nope. If anything, there’s a sneaking suspicion that the filmmakers don’t actually expect you to put two and two together… and that you’ll simply assume the killer is, like… some random beach drifter, or something. “Jesus Christ, it’s my Daaaaaaaaaaaad!” Ed wails, as if it’s as big a revelation for us as it is for him. By the way, I lied. The movie’s other obvious claim to fame is its bizarrely peppy theme song, which is straight out of an 80s sitcom (“…. and we’re gonna have a good time (GONNA HAVE A GOOD TIME), yeah we’re gonna have a good time!”)… suggesting a satirical self-awareness that the rest of the movie doesn’t really make good on. Oh well. At the end of the day, it’s another 80s slasher - no more, no less. I've seen better, and I've seen worse. Proceed accordingly. 7/12/2023 0 Comments robot jox
If The Dungeonmaster marked the rise of Empire International Pictures, Robot Jox very much represented its twilight. Director Stuart Gordon, having established himself as one of the distribution outfit’s undisputed MVPs (thanks to the likes of Re-Animator, Dolls, and From Beyond), was given the opportunity to helm the company’s most ambitious (and expensive) project to date… a sci-fi action-epic that was clearly inspired by the success of Transformers, but could best be described as a Saturday morning cartoon version of Pacific Rim, infused with the hammy, puffed up Cold War politics of Rocky IV. Unfortunately, Empire proceeded to go bankrupt mid-production (delaying the film’s release by several years), but then some flames are just destined to burn briefly-yet-brightly.
Set fifty years after a nuclear holocaust, the remains of human civilization have effectively been divided between two rival factions - the Market (aka the Americans, or “the West”) and the Confederation (aka the Soviets). Territorial disputes are settled the way God originally intended - via gladiatorial combat between skyscraper-sized robots, operated by special human pilots known as “robot jox.” If you wanted to be a killjoy about it, you could argue that the underlying logic of this premise is fragile at best (where do the supposedly neutral referees originate, for starters?)… and that the world-building contrives the robots onto the battlefield and not a whole lot else (Gordon clearly had little interest engaging with the story’s political ramifications beyond the most perfunctory of surface skims… though it does sound as if screenwriter Joe Haldeman originally harbored deeper ambitions). But who wants to be a killjoy anyway? Robot Jox is the best kind of pulpy 80s lunacy - bursting with bright colors, archetypal characters, and zesty spectacle. Pilots - the de facto rock stars of this futuristic society - are contractually obligated to complete ten fights (another plot point you just sort of shrug and go with)… and the Confederation’s most dominant champion is Alexander (Paul Koslo), his concrete veins coursing with indomitable Iron Curtain zealotry. His Market counterpart is Achilles (Gary Graham), more of a blue-collar everyman, one who maintains a certain lunchpail-type mentality when it comes to the art of robot joxxing. The two are primed to duke it out on the battlefield over Alaskan trade rights, but a catastrophic turn-of-events results in the match being called a draw. Uninterested in a rematch, Achilles declares his contract complete and embraces retirement (ignoring the ensuing cries of cowardice)… forcing the Market to turn to the next generation of genetically engineered jox, with a driven female pilot named Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson) emerging from the fray. Robot Jox’s political and social satire isn’t particularly trenchant (you could argue it isn’t even particularly satirical), but there aren’t a lot of movies that express the literal aura of childhood cartoons within a live action framework quite this purely (even Pacific Rim comes up short in that regard). The visual effects are obviously dated, but the film still manages an appreciable sense of scope and scale. Its particular blend of models, practical effects, and stop-motion animation (think ED-209 in RoboCop) has the sort of weight and tactile quality lacking in modern CGI. There’s a goofy glee to the encounters between these mech goliaths, with Alexander somewhat infamously unveiling a phallic crotch chainsaw during the climactic battle. Unfortunately, it would seem the lion’s share of the budget was funneled directly into the robotic spectacle - unlike some of its Empire Pictures brethren (such as Arena or Trancers) that managed impressive levels of immersion, the world of Robot Jox proves relatively austere outside the battlefield. Beyond the hangars, control rooms, and training facilities, its post-apocalyptic civilization has all the depth of a painted backdrop in a Roadrunner cartoon. Gary Graham (probably best known for playing the lead on the Alien Nation TV series) is the right sort of B-movie actor to drive this type of material - he’s sort of like what you’d get if you started with a base of Harry Hamlin or Peter Gallagher and mixed in a half-dozen or so well-known character actors (a pinch of Miguel Ferrer, a dash of Johnathon Schaech… Paul Koslo, meanwhile, looks like an unhinged cross between John Lithgow and a young Stellan Skarsgard). Graham’s chemistry with Anne-Marie Johnson is just strong enough to give the movie a touch of heat. Stuart Gordon’s career will always remain a bit of a “what if,” given that illness forced him to drop out of directing Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (and his subsequent output never really rivaled his Empire credits)… but he still left behind a bona fide legacy. Staying unapologetically true to its outsized cartoon sensibilities to the very end, Robot Jox gives Rocky IV’s infamous climax a run for its money in terms of sheer emotional absurdity… but its final shot is unbelievably perfect. I can honestly think of few that delight me more. 6/30/2023 0 Comments the dungeonmaster
Arrow’s much-anticipated Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams box set was conceived as an homage to Empire International Pictures - the relatively short-lived but extremely prolific distribution company that pumped out roughly fifty low-budget features over a six-year span in the 1980s. A few of their films are regarded as genuine genre classics (Re-Animator, most notably… but also Trancers, Ghoulies and From Beyond, to name a few others)… but they’re mostly known for stocking shelves with the sort of colorful, B-movie genre fodder that video store junkies feasted on back in the day.
Which, fittingly, is precisely how my friends and I first stumbled across The Dungeonmaster… grabbing it sight unseen off the shelf, based entirely on the video box art. In spite of its rather half-assed attempt to cash in on the recent success of Tron and the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, the film actually offers a rather novel concept. Computer programmer Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron) is the creator of a quasi-sentient PC system called X-CaliBR8 (nicknamed “Cal” for short), which he’s linked to via a neural interface… and which he uses to clear up paper jams at work, change traffic lights while jogging, and withdraw money from the ATM instead of just using his bank card. One night Paul and his aerobics instructor girlfriend Gwen (Leslie Wing) are abruptly transported to a hellish realm by the evil sorcerer Mestema (Richard Moll, best known for playing Bull on Night Court). Mestema sees Paul’s cutting-edge tech as a form of advanced magic and wants to test it in seven trials… each one directed by a different filmmaker, making this an anthology film of sorts, spanning a wide range of genres and settings. Cool, right? Well… given that the end credits are rolling after… let’s be charitable and say 70 minutes, you can probably deduce that the majority of the trials are, shall we say, less-than-epic. Given that The Dungeonmaster was one of Empire’s very first releases, one gets the sense that it was likely conceived as a proof-of-concept in terms of the production values and visual effects (some of which are rather good for the era) as much as anything. Many of the directors showcased here - Peter Manoogian (Eliminators, Arena), Ted Nicolaou (TerrorVision), John Carl Buechler (Cellar Dweller, Troll) - would go on to play an integral role in the company’s creative output over the coming years. The best of the bunch is probably “Slasher” (actually written by Byron), in which Paul must race against the clock to prevent Gwen from becoming a serial killer’s latest victim… mostly due to the novelty of its urban thriller approach, but also because it’s the only entry that shows any sense of pace or dramatic shape. Coming in a close second, however, is “Heavy Metal,” which is basically a glorified W.A.S.P. music video in which the hair metal/shock rock outfit performs their song Tormentor… Paul being left to navigate the big-haired, devil horn-flashing crowd en route to the stage to prevent Gwen from being sacrificed at the hands of lead singer Blackie Lawless (mugging like an absolute lunatic). I mean, there’s probably a reason Lawless was the most prominently featured character on the VHS box - I can’t be the only person disappointed that he wasn’t the actual villain (also worth noting - this entry is one of the few times Cal actually does anything beyond simply firing laser beams from Paul’s wrist like a glorified Star Trek phaser). “Ice Gallery” shows promise, as Paul and Gwen are deposited in an ice cavern containing some of human history’s most notorious villains (Jack the Ripper, Genghis Khan… though also a random werewolf, and Albert Einstein, for some reason)… but it ends before it even really has a chance to get going. “Stone Canyon Giant” is barely even a story (though showcases David Allen’s impressive stop-motion technique with the titular antagonist), while “Desert Pursuit” is a relatively serviceable Mad Max knock-off. Bringing up the rear are “Cave Beast,” in which Paul matches wits with some troll-like creature (there’s a subversive twist of sorts at the end, but don’t get too excited) and “Demons of the Dead,” which is only worth mentioning for the makeup work and the film’s most iconic line - “I reject your reality and I substitute my own!” (Trump would later rephrase it as “Fake News”) The Dungeonmaster isn’t exactly a film designed to be discovered in 2023 - you sort of need to have that 80s video store nostalgia encoded in the bloodstream already. But it’s a vivid curio, if nothing else - steeped undeniably in the personality of its era. Jeffrey Byron is exactly the sort of vanilla-paste-on-plain-toast leading man you tended to get in low-budget efforts such as these, but Richard Moll’s hammy, smirking villainy is a delight. The climax pits the two of them mano a mano and it’s all rather awkward and goofy, but you certainly can’t accuse the movie of overstaying its welcome. The film isn't particularly good, but there's nothing else quite like it - which, in many ways, was the decade's most desirable legacy. For the record, the Arrow set also includes the prerelease cut titled “Ragewar,” which runs five minutes longer… though most of the additional footage comes in the form of a largely nonsensical prologue/dream sequence that nonetheless features full-frontal female nudity (looks like we got the short end of the stick as kids). At least that explains why the first shot of the theatrical version is Paul jerking awake dramatically, which never made much sense. 6/18/2023 0 Comments weird science Few directors have a filmography that feels quite as hallowed as the filmography of John Hughes. His high school comedies in particular - The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles - are virtually untouchable works… consecrated cinema, as it were. The one notable exception is Weird Science - the… if not quite black, then at least darker-hued sheep of Hughes’s coming-of-age oeuvre - whose “horny teen comedy with a sci-fi twist” premise has long felt ripe for a shrewder, more canny remake. Like many 80s classics, it’s cherished mostly on nostalgic principle, even though the movie’s largely indolent approach and lumpy design feel like a missed opportunity more often than not.
Shermer High students Gary and Wyatt (Hughes regular Anthony Michael Hall and 80s trivia footnote Ilan Mitchell-Smith) are dorkus maximus of nonexistent social standing, who decide one evening to program the perfect woman on Wyatt’s computer (there’s no particular narrative catalyst… Gary simply stumbles across an old Frankenstein film within the first five minutes and off we go). Their ambitions are relatively modest at first (Gary plans to ask the simulation all manner of sex-related queries; Wyatt figures they can play chess with her)… but once they begin feeding Playboy pics into the scanner (the bit where Wyatt expands potential breast size beyond the parameters of the monitor is definitely an uproarious gag when you’re eight years old), they decide to hack into a government computer system and the resulting power surge literally brings their creation to life… in the form of the statuesque Kelly LeBrock. This is a fabulous setup with a myriad of narrative possibilities, but Hughes mainly opts for raunchy farce (“So… what would you little maniacs like to do first?” LeBrock’s character - who’s eventually dubbed “Lisa” - asks… cut to the three of them showering together). The fundamental issue baked into the premise is that Lisa - who decides to throw a party-for-the-ages at Wyatt’s house while his parents are away for the weekend - is a literal deus ex machina, capable of solving each and every problem with a snap of her fingers. Wyatt’s uptight grandparents show up unexpectedly and threaten to spoil the fun? Lisa temporarily freezes them and stashes their bodies in the pantry. Lisa is forced to pull a gun because Gary’s conservative parents refuse to let him leave the house? She just wipes their memories five minutes later. Wyatt’s military dipstick of an older brother Chet (Bill Paxton) is being a nuisance? Lisa transforms him into some sort of mutant blob (don’t ask). The house is completely trashed and there happens to be a medium-range ballistic missile jutting through the kitchen floor? It all simply reverts back to normal thirty seconds before Wyatt’s parents return. It's difficult to achieve drama (even in comedic form) when the stakes are purely illusory. The point of the story is obviously Lisa endeavoring to give Gary and Wyatt the self-confidence to reach their full potential… but there’s a certain artificiality to it. Lisa conjuring a cartoonish, Mad Max-style motorcycle gang to show up and make trouble is a contrived impetus for character growth, to say the least. LeBrock is frequently cited as the best thing about the movie, though her bewitching British wiles mostly mask the fact that Lisa isn’t much more three-dimensional than she was when she existed as computer code (it’s a potentially demeaning role that LeBrock, to her credit, never allows to actually become demeaning; she remains resolutely in control throughout). Hall is excellent, as usual; he was arguably more of a muse to Hughes in the 80s than even Molly Ringwald. Mitchell-Smith, however, can barely wipe the smirk off his face half the time… he’s like an SNL cast member who can’t get through a single sketch without breaking. This perhaps conveys a somewhat grim impression of the film as dated and more than a little cringe-worthy… but even though it’s almost certainly the least sincere movie Hughes ever made, it still possesses a loose, off-the-cuff sense of fun appropriate to its era. It provides nostalgic comfort calories. One might wish that the story packed a little more “weird” into the Weird Science, but there is one terrific sequence in which Gary and Wyatt attempt to recreate their experiment for a couple of loutish classmates (Robert Rusler and Robert Downey Jr, back in his early days, when he looked like a Robert Smith clone), causing the party’s entire fabric of reality to unravel into trippy mayhem. If only the entire movie were powered by that same anarchic spark. Still, Hughes had a secret weapon up his sleeve - Oingo Boingo’s title song, which still absolutely slays decades later. Once it kicks in over the opening credits, it feels like 1985 all over again. And you can’t really place a cinematic value on that. 5/22/2023 0 Comments torso Even by the extremely lurid standards of the giallo genre, Torso (also known by its rather fabulous Italian title “The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence”) is noteworthy for its sordid sense of sleaze. Bare breasts are on display literally within seconds of the film starting, a group sex performance ebbing in-and-out of focus against the opening credits (the persistent click of a camera shutter implicating the audience in a form of self-conscious voyeurism that would seem to presage De Palma). This is very much a thriller in which the killer’s blade draws its sharpness from the male gaze.
Set in Perugia, the film follows a fetching group of university coeds who begin turning up dead, strangled to death and subsequently mutilated. With a madman on the loose, Dani (Tina Aumont) invites her friends Katia (Angela Covello), Ursula (Carla Brait), and the American Jane (Suzy Kendall) to lie low at her family villa in the countryside… but the violence soon follows them there. Director Sergio Martino - who’d established his giallo credentials with such Edwige Fenech collaborations as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and the iconic but somewhat overrated Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key - flashes a bit of morbid wit early on, as art history lecturer Franz (John Richardson) notes how the Italian painter Pietro Perugino, constrained by “provincial formalism,” was queasy about incorporating blood into his depictions of martyrdom (“He was a painter, not a butcher” Dani remarks). It is, of course, a criticism that could not possibly be less germane to this particular film, nor to this traditionally gore-soaked genre as a whole. Sex and violence continuously intersect in the seediest ways imaginable (a mud bog murder unfolds with the victim’s shirt ripped open and her breasts on full-blown display the entire time)… but it would be a mistake to dismiss the movie as mindless exploitation (well… sort of), as it actually has a slightly denser thematic center than the average giallo offering. Male voyeurism (and the implicit threat it carries) informs every aspect of the plot - from the impotent, kerchiefed Stefano (Roberto Bisacco) and his obsessive fixation on Dani, to Dani’s Uncle Nino casting a lecherous glance at Jane and his niece from the bedroom doorway, to the locals openly gawking at the ebony-skinned Ursula (one of them comments “Brother, from here you can see the source of the Nile” while leering at her crossed thighs). On-screen nudity (and there is a *lot* of it) is almost always linked to some form of predatory observation, which undercuts the potential titillation… such as when the local cobbler sneaks up to the villa and meets a gruesome fate while trying to catch a sweaty, slavering glimpse of Katia and Ursula’s lesbian canoodling (yes, it's *that* sort of movie). Martino might as well be incriminating male viewers in his misogynistic terrordome; the effect is genuinely unsettling. Under the circumstances, in which virtually every male character reeks of licentiousness and the capacity for physical violence, you’d think the film would have an impressive smorgasbord of suspects… but, oddly enough, it’s rather easy to suss out the killer’s identity. His motivations are the usual psychosexual buffoonery (if you’ve watched enough giallo movies, the payoffs all start to blend together after a while). Torso isn’t quite as taut as the very best of the genre - its grip constricts somewhat fitfully, its script hindered by a certain loose laziness - but the final half hour… in which Jane finds herself trapped in the villa with the hacksaw-wielding killer and the story shifts into cat-and-mouse suspense… gels appreciably (some have even gone so far as to suggest the movie could technically be considered the first slasher ever made). Most of the female characters fail to rise beyond a base level of carnal desire (which undermines Martino’s basic thematic approach, to an extent, as does the retrograde decision to have one of the formerly sketchy male characters swoop in to save the day - though, to be fair, a cheap Italian thriller from 1973 can only be so progressive), but Suzy Kendall at least has a bit of steel about her. If Torso could be viewed as a “proto-slasher,” then she definitely holds her own as a “proto-final girl.” 4/29/2023 0 Comments hired to kill The premise of Hired to Kill is so frankly fabulous, you know going in there’s almost no chance the movie will actually live up to it… because if it did, it would be the stuff of cinematic legend, rather than a pseudo-cult action flick of virtually nonexistent reputation. Brian Thompson - one of the punks from the opening of The Terminator, the villain from Cobra (“I WANT YOUR EYES, PIG!”), and the alien bounty hunter from the early seasons of The X-Files - plays mercenary Frank Ryan, hired by… well, let’s just say “American interests” to topple Michael Bartos (Oliver Reed), corrupt dictator of the fictitious South American island stronghold of Cypra. In order to pull off this particular suicide mission, Ryan poses as renowned homosexual designer “Cecil Thornton,” accompanied by a half-dozen hand-picked female mercenaries (most of whom he found rotting in various hellholes, such as Turkish prison, San Quentin, and a Sardinian asylum) who pretend to be the models for the new fashion line he’s debuting.
Don’t mind me… I’m just over here laughing my ass off. “Nothing is perfect when women are involved,” Ryan grumbles early on. Hired to Kill, which was directed - or maybe co-directed (the Arrow packaging can’t even seem to decide) - by Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis, cobbles together just enough entertainment value to be considered a minor guilty pleasure, but it’s hardly the transcendent action-exploitation classic it might have been. Thompson, a medium-rare ribeye of an actor, certainly fits the part - with a jawline that looks as if it were crudely hammered into shape over a blacksmith’s anvil and a physique that’s so swollen a pinprick might cause it to burst like an overinflated balloon. He was legitimately creepy as the psychotic “Night Slasher” in Cobra (so sweaty and strung out, you could almost see his brain boiling in his skull), but has all the range and screen presence of an oak stump here. Ostensibly, he’s supposed to be playing Thornton as overtly gay… but aside from moussing his hair and tying a sweater around his neck, he adjusts his body language mere fractions of an inch. It’s not exactly Pacino in Cruising. If there’s a sliver of thematic inspiration to be found, it’s the way in which Mastorakis teases the homoerotic subtext of 80s action movies to the surface and renders it literal. In the film’s most oddly pitched yet provocative scene, Bartos attempts to test Ryan’s sexual resolve by baring a woman’s breasts in front of him… only for Ryan to turn the tables by planting an impromptu lip-lock on his clearly unnerved host. Reed, slumming for a paycheck, is a letdown; he’s armed with a magnificent mustache (he looks like former President William Howard Taft crossed with Julius Pringles), but those anticipating some major league scenery chewing are apt to be disappointed. His villainy is largely by-the-numbers. Remarkably, the film somehow wrangled multiple Oscar winners into the cast - George Kennedy (showing just how far basic professionalism and competency goes in a movie like this) as Ryan’s handler, and Jose Ferrer as the incarcerated revolutionary known as “The Brother” who Ryan aims to spring. Go figure. The biggest letdown is the girls themselves… a would-be collection of Inglourious Bitches, thinly sketched - both in terms of character and skillset (much is made of the mute Katrina’s prowess with a blade… so of course she does almost nothing with a blade). “You’re here to look good, move well, and kill quick” Ryan declares, before one of several sexy firearms-and-catwalk montages. The movie blends phony female empowerment and casual misogyny in that particular way only action films from the late-80s/early-90s could. Mastorakis was supposedly working with a much higher budget than he was normally accustomed to, but while the action spectacle is relatively serviceable, the stylistic gloss is largely nonexistent. It’s a visually banal production. At times, the story feels well-attuned to the tittering inanity of its premise (the opening shot is of a slumbering Ryan blowing away his ringing telephone), but the movie is unwilling (or perhaps simply not clever enough) to embrace full-blown lunacy. Arrow, for better or for worse, has never been shy about championing this sort of obscure genre gunk. One goes into a film like Hired to Kill relatively clear-eyed about its prospects, but you can’t help but look at its deluxe Blu-ray special edition and feel as if, on some level, you’re being served cat food while being assured it’s filet mignon. 4/13/2023 2 Comments versus When people first stumbled across Ryuhei Kitamura’s debut feature Versus in 2000, it felt like a film that had cinema by the figurative throat and was boldly leading it into the 21st century. In retrospect that feels a touch hyperbolic for a movie that’s essentially a big-screen version of the IT’SUGAR store - a hyper-caffeinated cartoon Yakuza Evil Dead mash-up that prioritizes style and genre-bending cool over all else (particularly narrative coherence). It’s the cinematic equivalent of dissolving a roll of Sweet Tarts in a can of Red Bull and chasing it with a sour apple Warhead.
Supposedly there are 666 portals on Earth that connect to “the other side” and the 444th resides in a forest in Japan (“The Forest of Resurrection”). A pair of escaped prisoners - including KSC2-303 (Tak Sakaguchi) - rendezvous with a group of Yakuza soldiers… but things take a sharp turn when it’s revealed that they have a girl with them (played by Chieko Misaka) who’s being held against her will. Tensions escalate and one of the Yakuza is killed, resurrecting moments later as a zombie with impressive strength and a stubborn resistance to firepower. Before long KSC2-303 and the girl are fleeing through the forest (pausing to swap his prison jumper for a far cooler black leather trench coat, because it’s just that sort of movie) as the dead continue to rise (it’s rather unfortunate, under the circumstances, that the Yakuza have spent years using the area as their go-to dumping ground). Eventually the Yakuza’s boss (Hideo Sakaki) shows up… and he seems to have a preternatural knowledge of what’s going on, as well as a connection to KSC2-303 and the girl that seemingly spans centuries and prior lifetimes. Versus is both narratively convoluted (grappling with concepts of predestination and reincarnation) and as blissfully simple as a bunch of characters running around a forest and fighting for two hours. If nothing else, the movie stands alongside the likes of El Mariachi in the pantheon of ultra-low-budget ingenuity. Kitamura, cognizant of his limited resources, prioritizes stylistic flair - and one can hardly blame him. The film has a genuine kinetic verve. The roving camera is infused with restless, fidgety energy - it rarely stops moving for long. Scenes often feel as if they were spliced and edited via one of the samurai swords the characters so lovingly wield. The fact that the movie spans a full 120 minutes in spite of its flimsy plot and roadrunner pacing is part of its weird, paradoxical charm; Kitamura’s madcap alchemy somehow manages to hang together in spite of itself. Tak Sakaguchi, in his breakthrough performance, preens and poses more than he actually acts… but his screen presence has a dialed-in coolness that’s not unlike the young Johnny Depp. None of the cast are really playing quote-unquote “characters” though (certainly not with names like “Yakuza Leader with Butterfly Knife,” “Crazy Yakuza with Amulet,” and “Yakuza Zombie in Alligator-Skin Coat”). Some of them - like Kenji Matsuda (as the aforementioned “Butterfly Knife”) - compensate by painting the screen with broad, haphazard strokes of personality. But the movie’s a blended martini of adrenaline and viscera; its circulatory system is designed to deliver constant endorphin hits. That may sound like superficial cinema - and it is - but when Sakaguchi and Sakaki square off in a dizzying dance of martial arts, blades and gunplay, the effect is potent. The film ends with a coda that jumps 99 years into the future and, like most of the movie, it doesn’t make all that much sense… but you definitely feel cool watching it. |
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