Inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, Spielberg’s 1975 iconographic movie of the predatory Great White terrorizing the fictional northeastern Amity Island (filmed at Martha’s Vineyard) was adapted from Peter Benchley’s novel. Ironically, Benchley has said if he’d known a bit more about the behavior of Great Whites, he’d not have written the book as it was. Although, when approached by Doubleday, the writer was told that what they wanted wasn’t non-fiction. They wanted a story about a shark terrorizing a town. For once the Creature Feature was enormously successful (rated among the top 250 of IMDB) and only slightly corny (the obvious moments when on-screen actors are dealing with difficult, animatronic puppet). Despite the intensity and suspense that establishes Jaws as one of the greatest horror movies (or maybe plain old thriller is a better genre heading), it was followed by several sequels, a shitty NES game, and one incredibly ridiculous cheesy theme park ride that only nominally have anything in common with their predecessor film (they were definitely “some bad hat, harry!”).
In a nutshell, the plot centers on the newly ordained Amity Police Chief, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) who inherits a major dilemma in his initial service – a string of shark attacks during the Island tourist town’s busiest season. Initially met with stupid, yet understandable political and economic pressures bearing down on him as to whether the beaches should be shut down, a few deaths has the small town eager for a quick solution like taking row boats out and a hanging a slab of meat on a fish hook, waiting to throw a handful of dynamite in a hungry shark’s mouth. But, Brody, ever the pragmatist, solicits the help of a university-trained marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a wry traditionalist boat captain (Robert Shaw, who also starred in The Deep, another sea-side Benchley adaptation) to put an end to the town’s crippling threat – a great white shark.
Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies…
In part, the movie has survived the test of time because of the cool of its leading late actors, Roy Scheider (Brody) and Englishman Robert Shaw (Quinn). But, it also survives as an example of effective elements in suspense that went beyond the transparent thrills and scare tactics that have saturated most modern American horror. Jaws manages to bring all of its nervous development to a claustrophobic climax rigged with intense doubt – will three desperate men aboard a rather small boat managed to finally put an end to the small town’s persistent terror?
Talk about claustrophobic settings… Alien’s tensions are brilliant invoked before the movie even begins. Just look at the isolation of the glowing egg encompassed by the black background on the promotional material.
Alien centers around the crew of a commercial spaceship returning to Earth who’s mission quickly turns into tragedy. Ordered by their corporate employers to investigate the unidentified signals coming from something like a mini-planet, they destroy parts of the ship in the process and unknowingly transport the seeds of a vicious alien.
Alien was penned by two guys who made their early career in alien-based science fiction and initially pitched it as “Jaws in space.” In all, it was shopped around nearly ten years before getting the greenlight. Dan O’Bannon was involved in the early stages of Dune(as was director Ridley Scott, who later abandoned the option to direct the project in order to work on Blade Runner) and Ronald Shusett would later work on Total Recall. British director Scott lead a fairly prominent cast for the first of the (so-far) five film Franchise. By 1986, James Cameron took over for Aliens, followed by David Fincher for Alien3.
The notoriously meticulous Scott had been trained in advertising and his early work was as a director of commercials before moving into directing episodes of various series. Alien was only his second feature film, following The Duelists, but really, his first major one, and, as a major commercial success with lasting cult popularity, he quickly earned a spot among sought out Hollywood elite. The funny history is that, in bout 10 years of shopping around the script for financing, Roger Corman’s studios nearly picked up the film. In the end, 20th Century Fox signed on.
The beauty of Alien, too, is its visuals; the chilling environment modeled on the imagination of then-obscure surreal artist, H.R. Geiger, distinguishing it as a Gothic horror film. But of course, what audiences remember most and what eventually lead to winning an Academy Award was the special effects, especially those few moments so frequently highlighted in horror homage clip show productions like the oft-spoofed (Spaceballs) alien bursting out of John Heard’s chest and the face-to-face encounter between Harry Dean Stanton and the heavily salivating alien, Mother. Outside of a few questionable haircuts and obsolete catchphrases, the film manages to avoid looking too dated (which, hopefully means, suggestions for remakes are quickly dismissed!). Though, what might it look like had Roger Corman’s team actually succeeded a contract to fund the project?
Noticing the trend of creature features in (eventual) isolated settings?
The Thing is a remake of the Christian Nyby’s 1951 science fiction horror of the same name, arguably a better adaption of its novella source: John Campbell, Jr.’s “Who Goes There?” Directed by John Carpenter and released in 1982, The Thing expands on the general plot of Alien: greater odds against the heroes. Here, a Norwegian helicopter carrying the seed of a predatory alien with the ability to mimic its prey is shot down in the Arctic region where a small group of American scientists are stationed. Alien was more political – the fate of the crew was in part, caused by the betrayal of their employers. On the other hand, The Thing, is stripped down to pure psychological play. Uncertain of who can be trusted when the victims can distinguish between human and alien, tensions rise and morals are tested: some prefer the survivalist credo of every man for himself.
Like Alien, the movie doesn’t bend entirely to the expectations of a neat resolution, among other genre standards (finally, the black guy doesn’t die first!) Film editor Todd Ramsay had suggested to Carpenter that the film have a “happy ending,” and an alternative ending was shot in which MacReady (Kurt Russel) is the lone victim to be rescued and, following a blood test, is shown to be human rather than the alien replica. However, this was never actually shown to test audiences in either of the two endings that were screened. Although, The Thing has appeared in “Best Of” lists (including IMDB’s user-rated Top 250 movie list) and archived in the clip-show styled homage Terror in the Aisles, the movie was hardly considered successful in the opening weekend. Carpenter had blamed this on the competing release of Spielberg’s E.T., which of course was a positive, family-oriented view of alien visitors (and Carpenter’s 1984 romantic sci-fi Starmanwould be kinder, too) whereas The Thing was bleak and, for critics, the tremendously detailed special effects, were rightfully described as just being too gross (especially a scene in which the doctor has his forearms bitten off while he’s got his hands in a chest cavity).
“I am the Nexus One, yeah! I want more like, fucker I ain’t done!” White Zombie – More Human Than Human
Blade Runner is one of the best films of dystopic future (and Paul Sammon’s book gives the best history of the film from inception to release). It was never well-received and not surprisingly survives as a cult classic because it is quite technical, moody, slow, and artistic science fiction. But, the best features is that visually, it’s beautiful; a painstaking construction of what dismal, over-populated Los Angeles might look like in 2019. Director Ridley Scott’s meticulousness and close guard over the craftsmanship is evident and the product is so pristine and perfect for the high-definition home theater luxuries these days. (Scott’s meticulousness, too, is also responsible for some of the off-screen rivalries with the crew and studio).
Scott directed Blade Runner after completing Alien, although initially he was supposed to direct Dune. According to Scott, however, he needed to keep himself busy following the sudden death of his eldest brother and with production on Initially, the next project not expected to begin for another year, he accepted the invitation to direct this.
It took a long time for Blade Runner to even get studio backing. Hampton Fancher, a book-smart, former child actor was the second to approach the eccentric Phillip K. Kick to option the rights to his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (The title Blade Runner came from a William Burroughs novel). Dick was never quite satisfied with Fancher’s screenplay version, once calling it too simple. Although, he never seemed too happy with Scott’s version, either, eventually going to lengths to publicly express his disapproval. And when the initially small production team tried to find financing for the film, studios continuously doubted there would even be a significant audience for the film. The novel, too, was always said to be hard to translate to film, anyways.
Blade Runner is a variation of Frankenstein. Man has created a destructive lifeform that ultimately must be destroyed for reasons beyond the creature’s own understanding; means beyond its control. In Blade Runner, when Earth became so over-populated and pollution, the humans looked to inhabit other planets. Replicants – nearly perfect synthetic simulations of humans built to expire in four years – were created for the colonization of other planets, first to fight in the wars, then to be used as slave labor. The movie went beyond the obsolete notion of androids – there was nothing that appeared artificial to the naked eye. Even memories were implanted. A special machine that used an iris-scan while the tester asked a series of mood-altering questions was the only way to really tell.But even this method wasn’t fool proof.
When the Nexus 6 androids staged a violent revolt, replicants were declared illegal on Earth. Blade Runners are the agents hired to kill them. With word that there had been a group in the desolate Los Angeles city looking for their maker – the Tyrell Corporation, Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford) a pathetic looking blade runner (who seemed even more pathetic and jaded in the book) had been forced out of retirement to track them down. With the exception of a chase sequence and the battle-to-the-death-style finale, Blade Runner isn’t really an action movie. It had long been described as noir science fiction. Deckard is a detective asked to solve a mystery with a moral dilemma. He’s on a trail of clues that will eventually lead him to the replicants he’s been hired to kill.
Deckard isn’t really as interesting as a the replicants. He’s like a very drained Sam Marlowe. But, replicants are dynamic, sympathetic creatures, particularly Deckard’s love interest, Rachel (Sean Young, who claimed, ironically, that Harrison Ford would not speak to her much off-screen), and the ringleader Roy Batty. They merely desire a solution to their plight: stalling the clock on their limetd lifespan. While the replicants are a simulation, the question is, “what does it mean to be human?” There was a particularly heartbreaking exchange between Roy Batty and Richard Deckard during the final showdown:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”
Cheech & Chong were a great team; masters of the weedsploitation drama, although with the duo’s film debut, Up in Smoke, released in 1978, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong started on a high (literally and figuratively) and would gradually end on a low by the final film in the franchise. Other than Nice Dreams, few of their other films were worth much note.
The Cheech & Chong films were borne out of the duo’s stand-up comedy of the 70s and 80s. Up in Smoke was brilliant, improvised silliness and came out of the old days of riskier ventures. Given Lou Adler’s commentary on the DVD, it seemed like the film’s director and producer knew the comedy pair, or their potential, and, with a scant idea of what it should be, had the money to finance a goofy venture. But, they had trouble advertising the movie through traditional means. There was the obvious liability and public relations crisis expected when it comes to promoting a pothead movie to the mainstream… although it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem these days, given the mainstream successes of movies like Half Bakedand Pineapple Express. Cheech and Chong was a novelty, too, in that they were also a musical duo, something they did in their stage shows and might have inspired the Flight of the Conchords duo. Cheech and Chong performed some of the songs on their film’s soundtracks and are seen in Up in Smoke actually performing against a handful of self-indulgent punk bands at the Battle of the Bands show. So, the film was advertised in comic strips and left on bus benches. Weirdly enough, it was successful. Released by Paramount, the movie grossed over $40 million and was the 12th highest grossing film of 1978.
There’s a wonderful scene towards the opening of the film where Anthony Stoner (Tommy Chong), hitchhiking, dresses as a woman (including the added detail of fake hooters) in order to get someone to stop and give him a ride. Pedro (Cheech), cruising the strip in his polished boat (this was really Jack Nicholson’s car), catches a glimpse of the hitchhiking woman and the brain to response connection is clear when his his widen and he cries out, “She’s hitchhiker!!. And finally, the center of attention were two non-white guys! Chong had absconded from his rich, nagging white adopted parents who basically yell at him to make something of himself. Cheech is a sort of stereotypical Mexican from the Southern California barrio. Chong befriends Cheech and joins his mariachi band as the drummer. Cheech has the idea that they should compete in the up-coming battle of the bands and in between the journey to finally score some weed and make it to the competition, the oblivious duo is always, and inadvertently two steps ahead of the bumbling drug agents and their frustrated supervising seargent (played wonderfully by Stacy Keach who has the great line: “To think of the time and money I’ve wasted on your training…”).
Nice Dreams came along in 1981, the third in the franchise. But, it somewhat continues the adventures of Up in Smoke. Bumbling drug agents are once again trying to track down the once-again oblivious Cheech and Chong’s successful, covert weed operation, “Nice Dreams.” But this time, Stacey Keach’s character, who has taken an unquestioned desk job where he basically smokes a pretty potent brand of weed, gradually transforms into an iguana. Needless to say, Nice Dreams is more of a surreal comedy (and appropriately so, given the weedsploitation context) than it’s predecessor, Up in Smoke.
For people of the video-cassette age (and I suppose, of the DVD age, as well, though it’s fairly newer), there is that one movie they’ve watched so often, especially as kids, that they’ve ruined the tape it came on. For my brother and I, that movie was the 1984 technophobic sci-fi, Terminator. The hyperactive kid that my brother was, this would surely set him off for invisible combat and inevitably led to us getting on our folks’ nerves and being ordered to go outside and play.
And despite the gaping plot hole (a soldier fighting in the cyber wars of the future volunteers to go back in time to protect the mother of the future hero he will eventually help conceive), the corny dialogue, and the financial glut of the movies to follow in the never-ending franchise (including a television series and theme park attraction), it will always be one of my favorite science fiction films. The first Terminator took place in gritty, punky Los Angeles, and the urban wasteland served as a proper prologue environment to the violent future predicted by Sara Conner. By the first sequel, Terminator 2, studios shelled out millions for the Hollywood polish. By comparison, the first movie was made on a surprising budget of less than $7 million (which might mean that this was not an expensive cast) and obviously, continues to gross well over the double-digit million dollar mark (it too, holds a user-rated ranking in the Top 250 films on IMDB). Gritty as the first one, though, that’s not to say it was a cheaply done production. That’s just not James Cameron’s style even with just $7 million. And the budget was probably largely allotted for special effects. There’s plenty of explosions, construction of active futuristic battleground, stop-motion Terminator animation, and the terrific scene of The Terminator chipping away at the fleshy disguise to reveal the functioning exoskeleton.
Throughout the Terminator franchise, the demise of the future is blamed on the Skynet corporation. Like Blade Runner, the artificial intelligence embodied in creepy chrome exoskeletons created by the corporations defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems, became self-aware and took over military hardware, declaring war on the humans. This plot point doesn’t really become more fully developed until the sequel, Terminator 2, when a now beefed-up Sarah Connor tracks down Skynet engineer Miles Dyson, the man behind the machines. The Terminator 2 3-D attraction at Universal Studios in Orlando introduces the movie with a brief propaganda film from Skynet and its defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems before Sarah and John Connor looking like two butch lesbians, hack into the system to override the video and warn audiences to get out of the building.
What the hell? Goddamn son of a bitch…
Like Blade Runner and a host of other 1980s technophobic science fiction films, The Terminator opens in Los Angeles. In 2029, it’s buried in rubble and destroyed by the hopeless war between Man, a resistance force led by the heroic John Connor, and Machines, who decide to assassinate him preemptively by going back in time to gritty 1984 Los Angeles and disguised as human, kill his mother, Sarah Connor. Sarah was played by director/co-writer James Cameron’s then-wife Linda Hamilton. The movie also introduced Austrian bodybuilding celebrity, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Terminator was a formidable villain because he was an indiscriminate killer, and one didn’t feel emotion. His method for finding Sarah Connor, initially, is thumbing through the phone book and killing all the Sarah Connors in the county, it didn’t matter which was the right one, as long as one was in fact the future mother of John. (Imagine how doomed the mission would be if she wasn’t listed!) The beauty of the villain was also that it was immune to pain, and the chrome skeleton under the normal wear of human flesh made regular weaponry ineffective, though the T-1000, the liquid metal villain of Terminator 2, was more challenging.
Initially, the Terminator was envisioned to be more inconspicuous rather than the intimidating build, something followed through on in the sequel when the athletic and speedy Robert Patrick was cast as the T-1000. B-movie king Lance Henriksen was considered for the role of the Terminator, but instead was cast as one of the investigating detectives alongside the late, humorously wry Paul Winfield. Michael Biehn was considered, too, but instead played played Kyle Reese, the noble resistance soldier from the future who volunteers to go back in time and protect Sarah Connor. It’s a suicide mission, since the time portal wouldn’t open again to allow him to travel back. This is where the inevitable problem of time traveling tales occur as Kyle Reese is eventually shown to be the father of John Connor, although previously, he’d never met Sarah Connor before.
Sarah Connor… mother of the future resistance leader was supposed to be a mere 19 year old at the time working a thankless job as a waitress and sharing an apartment with an iguana and a spunky roommate named Ginger. Of course, after become enlightened by Reese about the future, she undergoes a complete 180 and turns into the short-tempered, premature resistance fighter with visions of a fatal future. Of course, it’s that kind of babbling that gets her thrown into a mental institution, as seen in the beginning of Terminator 2.
Christian Bale is the latest to be cast as John Connor in the fourth installment, Terminator: Salvation, which, at least suggested by the previews, is that the movie has taken a new direction altogether. Now in the aftermath of Skynet’s nuclear Holocaust and further fighting against the machines, the movie, directed by the American television director rather pretentiously known only as “McG,” transforms into more of a combat movie than the computers-and-bytes kind of science fiction movie it first started as.
If I had to pick between Richard Donner’s The Omen(released in 1976) or William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (released in 1973 and adapted from William Blatty’s 1971 novel) in terms of movies about demonic children, I would prefer The Exorcist. (I discuss both films here because of the similar theme). My brother has long been a fan of both films (though surprisingly, not of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby). I’ve always found The Omen to be excessively cheesy in parts, using the glassy effects and dramatic strings music (not Jerry Goldsmith’s “Ave Satan”, the one it’s most famous for) in the saccharine portrayal of the American couple played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick welcoming their first child in contrast, of course, to the devilish threat he’d become. (Liev Schreiber’s remake, released in 2006, was only slightly better since it avoided doing that. But, while visually stunning, it substituted cheesy for bland).
On the other hand, while Linda Blair’s character, Regan, in The Exorcist was a complete nerd, Friedkin manages to mostly stick to the point – the transformation of the darling nerd into the vessel of Satan. (Blair was far from desired for the role of Regan, and one person seriously considered for the part was Denise Nickerson, who is better remembered as Violet in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, since her parents pulled her from the production because of the vulgarity of the material). But then again, there’s a unique regional difference between the two films: The Omen is very English; The Exorcist isan American production. While The Omen was fairly simple, The Exorcist was a little more complex. The film begins with an archeological excavation, and along with this, integrates the story of Father Damien (Jason Miller) who doubts his faith, and the actress mother who needs more than medical help for the disturbing and mysterious symptoms showing in her pre-teen daughter in Georgetown.
The bulk of the movie was filmed on and around the Georgetown University campus. The building that housed the graduate schools of business, public policy, and my former graduate program buttress the infamous steep stairs that in the film, were an instrument in the demise of a priest. Runners tend to make two or three incredible laps up and down that thing. Passerbys have scrawled on the wall things like “the power of Christ compels you” and so-and-so “conquered the Exorcist stairs.
The Omen anniversary DVDs released recently contain the 2005 documentary regarding the weird occurrences during production like lightning hitting planes, lions devouring crew, and dobermans attacking the trainers, not that The Exorcist was without its own rumors of strange occurrences during production, though I wonder how many had to do with William Friedkin’s method directing. TheExorcist carries a lot of possibly dubious reports about how audiences reacted when they first saw it in the theater, vomiting and being dramatic. The movie certainly was stark enough, and sometimes vulgar enough to get some kind of reaction to audiences not yet jaded by horror films like today. The Exorcist was also one of the highest grossing horror films of all time and earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress (Burstyn), Best Supporting Actress (Blair, who really wasn’t supporting at all, though I suspect “supporting” is sometimes a limitation made on the basis of age), Best Supporting Actor (Jason Miller), Best Director (even though he was chosen to direct only after the success of The French Connection), and Best Picture.
Unfortunately, both were followed by a few sequels that never made much note. Damien was followed into adulthood (oops, spoilers!) and Regan became like the spokesman for chronic demonic possession.
Dead Calm is a rather obscure, three-character thriller released in 1989. It was a great little suspense film, winding up on cable every once in a while and more recently, on Netflix’s Instant Demand. Based on Charles Williams’s thriller novel of a bi-polar shipwreck survivor who terrorizes a young couple that invite him aboard their boat, it was actually the second time the book was attempted to be translated into film. Orson Wells never finished his film, The Deep, filmed between 1967 and 1969 but abandoned when the film’s star, Laurence Harvey, died. (There were rumors that Wells’s widow was trying to get the incomplete film cut and released in 1997). Australian director, Phillip Noyce, directed the 1989 version, which was a dramatically pared down version of the novel – it only centered on three of the characters: John (Sam Neill) and Rae (Nicole Kidman) Ingram and their tormenting visitor, Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane).
In the novel, Hugie’s wife and the surviving half of another couple aboard their yacht–the husband–were central to John’s survival when, doubting Hughie’s version of what happened to the other crew aboard the sinking vessel, swims over to investigate. We learn that Hughie was a good-looking young guy, in his early 20s. He’d been an aspiring painter and the financing for his work often came from rich women who selfishly sought his company more than admired the brilliance of his work. He’d become habitually spoiled and always flirted with the women who never denied him what he wanted. It’s speculated in the book that, when Hughie and the wife of the other couple are swimming and accidentally left behind, he drowned her in an effort to save himself. When Hughie’s wife an the husband finally figure out that they’ve left their passengers behind, return two hours later to find only one has survived – Hughie, who in a panic, claims that the wife died of a shark attack. When the boat begun going down, already in disrepair and being navigated by an inexperienced crew, Hughie’s wife and the husband of the other couple were locked in the cabin. Hughie had left to save himself, climbing aboard the Ingram’s boat with a story that the rest of the crew had died of food poisoning.
In the novel, John and Rae Ingram are honeymooning. Rae seems like more shrewd character, more outspoken and meets John when he is first suspect to having stolen her yacht, but then, because of the former naval officer’s nautical expertise, helps the widow track down the boat. Had the movie been made closer to the book, it would’ve called for someone a little older than the milky white Nicole Kidman. Maybe Angelica Houston. Or Joanna Cassidy. But when the backstory changed to an instant tragedy explaining the couple’s voyage – a therapeutic trip following the death of their toddler son – Kidman’s cherubic appearance fit.
In both the novel and movie, John swims over to check the condition of the boat and the holes in Hughie’s story of what happened to the other passengers, when Hughie, in retaliation, leaves with the Ingram’s boat, and Rae still on board. John is stuck on a sinking ship and Rae can’t easily convince Hughie to turn back and rescue him. Billy Zane was perfect for the role of the villain – the baby-faced young man who was a total weirdo, abruptly shifting between empty good moods and a violent temper, much to the confusion and frustration of Rae (Kidman) who in the end, had to figure out how, if not by herself, then with Hughie’s cooperation, she was going to get back to John before time ran out. Luckily, neither Rae nor John were dumb characters. One of the great tactics here was pacing: the never really slows, and with it, neither does the suspense. Stripping down the number of characters and the details of Hughie’s past (not to mention the author Williams’s reliance on too much nautical terminology) obviously makes it much easier for the filmmaker to translate the nail-biting tension into a 96 minute movie.
In the summer of 1993, the year of Jurassic Park’s release, I had spent several weekends seeing the movie with my brother. Admission was a dollar, so this was easy to do. It was one of the rare moments that a film should run more than a month, and that it should still serve packed audiences after weeks of being there. Priority movies were shown on one of two of the theater’s largest screens. As weeks progressed, and the audience size waned, they moved the movies down the hall, to smaller and smaller theaters. We watched the movie in several.
There seems to be a puzzling trend lately of non-fiction authors in their 40s publishing defenses of “The Greatest Generation.” But, contrary to the presumption that this title refers to those of the World War II era, as it commonly has before, the new (self-)decried honor instead refers to Gen Xers, although these authors frequently lament over the validity of the title, or any title at all. These defenses are similar in their reporting of the history: Baby Boomers are a selfish lot, incessantly urging credit for influencing some kind of revolution. But that by the 1980s, this wave of liberalism was instead replaced by the one-track capitalist ambition of the Yuppie. The “revolutionaries” getting their pictures in the paper for their part in a protest are now driving the kids to soccer practice in a minivan. But the demand for credit never ceased, and continually intrude to remind or altogether impose their values and ideas on the generations of youth to follow.
By the 1990s, with college graduates facing one of the most hopeless periods in the job market, the overhyped myths of the Boomers fell on deaf ears in a way that mirrored the brief punk boom in the late 1970s, with its snarling recognition (and acceptance) of a cultural, social and economic apocalypse. (Compare Leggs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s oral history of punk, Please Kill Me to Michael Azzerand’s Our Band Could Be Your Life). The Gen Xers penning these books proclaim their generation to be the smartest and the most creative (spawning a major transformation with YouTube, MySpace and Google). Although, puzzling enough, the examples always stem from a limiting and definitive Holy Trinity: director Richard Linklater (Slacker), author Douglas Coupeland (Generation X), and Nirvana. The Generation X histories remind their audience that the lifespan of Gen X was brief, and their contributions are frequently masked by the Boomers who refuse to acknowledge their irrelevance. Ironically, these histories also skip over any mention of a Generation Y to chastise the Millenials as a worrisome return to everything the Gen Xers had declared as wrong: self-absorption, obsession with celebrity, mass obedience, and worst of all, insatiable material pursuit.
This shaping of Gen X’s mark on humanity was already told years ago during its brief existence, although in the medium of film, the Gen X biographies were frequently shaped by Hollywood Hands, no matter how attractive it was to call something a product of the Alternative or Grunge Era. In particular, there were three histories that survive memory. One was writer/director Cameron Crowe’s 1992 romance dramedy, Singles. The second is Linklater’s improvised vignettes, Slacker, a favorite in the cult circuit released in 1991. And the third is, Reality Bites, marking Ben Stiller’s directorial debut (written by Helen Childress), followed two years later.
While Singles served as a time capsule of the Gen X lifestyle, it is really only ancillary to it’s primary focus on the romantic relationships of its various characters. It was something of a bust at the box office. Slacker has dominated the discussion when it comes to Gen X films, but Reality Bites deserves some spotlight in the analysis of life as a twenty-something in the early 90s – fresh out of college, full of ambition, jaded, and about to cement their cynicism. (“The script was initially turned down by all the Hollywood studios because it tried to capture the Generation X market like Singles and that film was not a box office success.” 1)
It is worth noting that the application of generational titles, although always marked by some range of birth dates, is that it’s usually not all inclusive of it. There’s always the unspoken distinction in demographic, or socio-economic status, or some other variable. Though Generation X is said to refer to anyone born between 1965 and 1981, its histories really tend to be dominated by whites that met this criteria. And more specifically, college educated whites. For those outside of that demographic, but born within that time, does Generation X even have the same meaning? Does it even apply?
Reality Bites frames Gen Xers in the same way as the Gen X histories do today (though it’s more first-hand than the material coming out now), doing so through a variety of themes: romantic relationships (obviously), commercialism of art, contempt for parental values, overeducated and underemployed graduates, AIDS, homosexuality, and so forth. The movie centers on the dynamics of four college friends (three having just graduated and one having dropped out) sharing a house in Texas. Lelaina (Winona Ryder), one of the film’s major characters, works a thankless job as a production assistant for an arrogant morning talkshow host (John Mahoney). The documentary filmmaker assumes her art will be her escape, though it never seems likely to get off the ground until she befriends an entertainment executive (Ben Stiller). Troy (Ethan Hawke), the other central character, is extremely smart, jaded, and both frequently unemployed and aloof. (The real Troy Dyer is reported to be a financial planner these days). The witty Vicky (Janeane Garofolo), rarely finding herself in positions of responsibility in her career and relationships, starts to turn this around. And the least seen, Michael (Steven Zahn), is a homosexual who eventually, though anti-climatically, comes out to his friends.
The linear history of Reality Bites is nearly identical to the celebratory histories released of late, even opening with the impetus for the principals of Generation X. Valedictorian Lelaina (Winona Ryder), addressing her graduating peers, has no advice about their post-college futures, as even she is uncertain what direction is best. But one thing she is adamant about: criticizing their parents’ promise of revolution, but despicably trading it for material ambition. The claims of perfect families and perfect lives that really weren’t, a statement supported by quick cut scenes from Lelaina’s documentary which features clips of her friends describing their parents. Divorces for some and indifferent marriages for parents of Lelaina’s friends that did stay together. Which leads to the construction of their ultimate dogma: avoid everything your parents did. For that reason, Reality Bites, whether just in retrospect or even when it was released, makes the Generation X crowd seem like the bubbly hippies they criticize.
The self-proclomations of the generational revolution, like those before it, once again settled as an embraceable myth. But, although the recent biographies of Generation X doesn’t just claim this to be the Generation’s defining principal, but it’s most admirable one (at least where it worked out without much flaw in retrospect), this blanket rebellion seems naively inflexible, fruitless, and excessive. Something, in other words, to hail at a young age, until reality kicks in after enduring the more difficult trials and error of life. The philosophy is embodied in particular in someone like the stereotypical Troy (Ethan Hawke), often simply characterized as the rebel philosopher, one with equal parts intelligence and cynicism coupled with zero motivation. Says Lelaina to Troy in one scene: “I have to work around here, and unfortunately Troy, you are a master at the art of time suckage.” Lelaina’s staunch refusal to let her artistic integrity be compromised is another example. She is appalled that her documentary is given a demeaning Mtv revamp once executives get a hold of it, illustrating the great fear of Generation X culture was the dreaded act of selling out.
While it is urged by some not to be taken as a serious portrait of the early 90s, though it should not be entirely dismissed as a falsehood of the times. Just like a lot of movies about the rise through adulthood (Lelaina: “I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23″), whether the it’s twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings (The Last Kissis a recent example), there’s this eventual realization that the difficulties that started with adolescence never conclude just because you leave your teens. The confusion of growing up is consistent.
Fans of the quirky road-trip and post-apocalyptic films like Repo Man(1984), Bagdad Cafe (1987) and Six String Samurai (1998)– something which often finds a niche in limited surrealism with its quirky and sometimes, indiscernible storytelling and kitsch settings– will likely enjoy the cult black comedy, Motorama(1991), although reaching more than the loyal fans who remember seeing it long ago would require rethinking the idiotic marketing campaign that seemed to dent its transition to DVD. The promotional materials years ago simply featured its cynical star, Gus (played by Jordan Christopher Michael) brazenly posing atop the stole red vintage convertible dressed in his red jacket and curious eye patch. The title of the film above him spell out like the game cards he collects in the film… M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. But, writers beguiled prospective audiences, repackaging the film as a young love story, one in which Drew Barrymore, now featured on the DVD promos as a large, floating face in the background behind Gus, looking childishly seductive; her platinum blond hair decorated with a flower. The tagline now deceptively implies romance: “There’s only one way to win the girl of your dreams: floor it!” Obviously, the goal is to move units by promoting the most well-known star in a cast otherwise filled with b-movie cult regulars like Dick Miller and Mary Woronov. But trying to pitch a new narrative will only disappoint the audiences expending a love story involving the questionable (if not, improbable) chemistry of rugged Gus and the presumably dazzling dreamgirl. And others, who might be attracted to oddball niche comedies such as these (except where they are likewise 80s loyalists), might ignore it entirely.
Motorama is directed by Barry Shils (who usually produces rather than directs) and written by Joseph Minion, who also wrote the 1985 Scorcese comedy (yes, Martin Scorcese directed comedy) After Hoursand later, the creepy 1989 black comedy, Vampires Kiss. Jordan Christopher Michael plays ten-year old Gus, who, long before the days of Josh and S.A.M. (1993) casually takes to the long winding highways of fictional states in a stolen red Mustang, leaving behind his abusive, neglecting parents (despite a great performance, it would be one of the few roles of Michael’s short film and television career, though unverified rumors claim he’s become a producer and director) and his path, in road-trip and semi-surreal comedy form is paved with unusual characters. This so far might hint a movie about a carefree kid getting mixed up in the inevitable hijinks.
Um… The Wizard (1989) it is not. In an interesting tale of temptation and redemption, Gus begins picking up game cards at gas stations. Find the letters that spell Motorama and win $500 million dollars from the Chimera Gas Company! But, once Gus has a few successes with the game cards he receives from gas stations along his impromptu route, he becomes obsessed with finding the rest that will earn him the prize and his encounters along the way reflect the transition from understandably cynical 10-year old runaway explaining the relative innocence of his actions to the “enlightened” gas station attendant named Phil, to a deceptive gambler who happily hustles an overconfident father. Somehow a brief adolescent daydream fills Gus’s head; the dream girl of course, played by young Barrymore. But by the end of the film, the 10-year appears noticeably aged and run down–after dodging an explosion his hair appears to have grayed. He wears an eye patch to conceal injuries received when getting caught trying to siphon gas from a seedy couple (which includes Mary Woronov). And strangely, he is eventually trying to rescue an older version of himself before future tense Gus drives off the road while, in a panic, trying to find that one last letter to claim his award money, loses control of his car.
Although this kind of tale might be off-putting or just simply confusing to the viewer not typically accustomed to movies like these, the narrative construction is the interesting element — the circular storytelling of character reflection. That is uses a 10-year old as its central character is perhaps its most distinctive draw. Unfortunately, while making the transition to DVD faster than probably more well-known cult films (The Monster Squad and Night of the Creeps come to mind), it is a film that remains woefully absent in background information of any kind (considered bonus materials for the DVD, all that is included is a trailer of Motorama and a mismatched companion trailer for the idiotic David Spade comedy, Joe Dirt).
Freaked is a case study of studio executives interfering with a decent idea.
Once an unknown VHS sitting on a video shelf in a small Central Florida store next to Tank Girl (1995) in a section of “Oddball Gen-X Comedies,” the 1993 comedy Freaked (which underwent several name changes because of several trademarks held by the rights holders of Freaks) finally made the transition to DVD in 2005 thanks to adamant cult fans and on-line petitions, the same which encouraged the eventual release of Monster Squad (1987) and the entirety of the short-lived series, Freaks and Geeks (1999). Directors Alex Winter (better known as Bill S. Preston, Esq. of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and Tom Sterns who share the writing credits with Tim Burns, were classmates at NYU film school. Judging by the stop-motion animation shorts included on the stacked DVD package (which also features the entire screen test), the duo found a niche in strange comedies like these. Prior to Freaked, which was originally intended as a low-budget horror vehicle for the Butthole Surfers called Hideous Mutant Freakz before being optioned (and re-written) by 20th Century Fox, Winter and Stearns directed a short-lived variety show for Mtv in the early 90s called Idiot Box, which was based on similar absurdist humor and slapstick.
Alex Winter takes the leading role as arrogant pretty boy actor Ricky Coogan, who’s been chosen (or rather, bribed) to be the celebrity spokesman for the Everything Except Shoes (EES) Company’s toxic fertilizer, Zygrot-27. William Stadtler, who brilliantly played the Grim Reaper alongside Winter and Keanu Reeves in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, is perfect as the sleazy head of EES (and stockholder puppeteer), Dick Brain. While Ricky is in Santa Flan–”named for the patron saint of creamy desserts”–with his chauvinist friend Ernie (Michael Stayanov who audiences might better recognize as Tony from the NBC sitcom Blossom) to promote the product, they ironically befriend Julie (Megan Ward), an idealistic but temperamental environmentalist protester while trying to subvert the rallying crowd’s attention. Joining in their escape, she convinces them to stop at Freekland, which is much more than the roadside freakshow attraction. Owner Elijah C. Skuggs, played by a well-tanned Randy Quaid, is a parody of Dr. Moreau, except that he’s not fusing mismatched species with a needle and thread. His distortion magic is Zygrot-27. But, while his freakish creations are something of a hobby to his point, Skuggs has a dastardly plan to use the fertilizer to make the ultimate freak!
The story is told in flashback. Coogan narrates to talk show host Skye Daley (Brooke Shields) his “awful ordeal” of how Skuggs turned he and his friends into hideous mutant freaks! Cast into the shadows the Freekland underworld, the newly distorted newcomers are introduced to Skuggs’ other creations, including Ortiz the Dogboy (Reeves in an uncredited role for which he was paid $1 million), The Eternal Flame (Lee Arenberg), Sockhead (Bobcat Goldwaith), The Bearded Lady (Mr. T), the Worm, Zippy the Pinhead, Nosey, Cowboy and Frogman. Shallow Coogan, unwilling to accept life as a freak despite the others’ suggestion that it’s not so bad once you get used to it, he encourages mutiny against Skuggs and search for an antidote. Except, with Skuggs’ goons, Toad and the automatic-weapons carrying Rastafarian eyeballs Eye and N. Eye on the prowl, Coogan must reluctantly accept the help of his extremely whiny #1 Fan, young Stuey Gluck (Alex Zuckerman).
Freaked marks the directing duo’s first major film production, but in the end, it wasn’t well-received by test audiences and Winter, Stearns and Burns, as humorously recounted in the DVD commentary, had to bend to a lot of the Studio’s demands in order to even get the movie made. Joe Roth, who was the original producer at Fox, was fired afterwards (for “making too many weird movies” according to Winter) and was subsequently replaced with Peter Chernin who didn’t like the idea of basically two inexperienced directors being given $12 million to make a movie, which meant that not only was the special effects budget significantly cut (and a demo recorded by Iggy Pop for the closing credits eliminated altogether), but the advertising budget was almost non-existent. Opening on only two screens in the United States, it only grossed around $6,000 dollars and less than $30,000 when released to video.
But in retrospect, the movie really isn’t that weird, or at least not in the bizarre surrealistic sense. Of course, audiences might want to skip the seizure-inducing opening credits. Special effects artist Screaming Mad George’s strobe light and melted claymation morphing cacophony–something that looks to channel the old commercials of Twizzler, Caramello and Bubbletape as well as Peter Gabriel music videos on mescaline–are accompanied by Henry Rollins and Blind Idiot God’s raging “Freaked.” (Most of the budget was spent on special effects). Nor is the movie any kind of extreme in its crudeness, although the script was toned down to satisfy the censors of the MPAA.
Thus, what was hindered by the studio and rejected by test audiences naturally found a strong cult following.
This shaping of Gen X’s mark on humanity was already told years ago during its brief existence, although in the medium of film, the Gen X biographies were frequently shaped by Hollywood Hands, no matter how attractive it was to call something a product of the Alternative or Grunge Era. In particular, there were three histories that survive memory. One was writer/director Cameron Crowe’s 1992 romance dramedy, Singles. The second is Linklater’s improvised vignettes, Slacker, a favorite in the cult circuit released in 1991. And the third is, Reality Bites, marking Ben Stiller’s directorial debut (written by Helen Childress), followed two years later.
simply featured its cynical star, Gus (played by Jordan Christopher Michael) brazenly posing atop the stole red vintage convertible dressed in his red jacket and curious eye patch. The title of the film above him spell out like the game cards he collects in the film… M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. But, writers beguiled prospective audiences, repackaging the film as a young love story, one in which Drew Barrymore, now featured on the DVD promos as a large, floating face in the background behind Gus, looking childishly seductive; her platinum blond hair decorated with a flower. The tagline now deceptively implies romance: “There’s only one way to win the girl of your dreams: floor it!” Obviously, the goal is to move units by promoting the most well-known star in a cast otherwise filled with b-movie cult regulars like Dick Miller and Mary Woronov. But trying to pitch a new narrative will only disappoint the audiences expending a love story involving the questionable (if not, improbable) chemistry of rugged Gus and the presumably dazzling dreamgirl. And others, who might be attracted to oddball niche comedies such as these (except where they are likewise 80s loyalists), might ignore it entirely.
and on-line petitions, the same which encouraged the eventual release of 
for an antidote. Except, with Skuggs’ goons, Toad and the automatic-weapons carrying Rastafarian eyeballs Eye and N. Eye on the prowl, Coogan must reluctantly accept the help of his extremely whiny #1 Fan, young Stuey Gluck (Alex Zuckerman).
One For My Brother: A ‘Best Of’ List
January 2, 2009(DRAFT) Anecdotes and commentary on Gilroy Drastik’s Top 10 favorite movies… (as hard as it was to limit the list to just 10)…
Jaws.
Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women!
Inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, Spielberg’s 1975 iconographic movie of the predatory Great White terrorizing the fictional northeastern Amity Island (filmed at Martha’s Vineyard) was adapted from Peter Benchley’s novel. Ironically, Benchley has said if he’d known a bit more about the behavior of Great Whites, he’d not have written the book as it was. Although, when approached by Doubleday, the writer was told that what they wanted wasn’t non-fiction. They wanted a story about a shark terrorizing a town. For once the Creature Feature was enormously successful (rated among the top 250 of IMDB) and only slightly corny (the obvious moments when on-screen actors are dealing with difficult, animatronic puppet). Despite the intensity and suspense that establishes Jaws as one of the greatest horror movies (or maybe plain old thriller is a better genre heading), it was followed by several sequels, a shitty NES game, and one incredibly ridiculous cheesy theme park ride that only nominally have anything in common with their predecessor film (they were definitely “some bad hat, harry!”).
In a nutshell, the plot centers on the newly ordained Amity Police Chief, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) who inherits a major dilemma in his initial service – a string of shark attacks during the Island tourist town’s busiest season. Initially met with stupid, yet understandable political and economic pressures bearing down on him as to whether the beaches should be shut down, a few deaths has the small town eager for a quick solution like taking row boats out and a hanging a slab of meat on a fish hook, waiting to throw a handful of dynamite in a hungry shark’s mouth. But, Brody, ever the pragmatist, solicits the help of a university-trained marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a wry traditionalist boat captain (Robert Shaw, who also starred in The Deep, another sea-side Benchley adaptation) to put an end to the town’s crippling threat – a great white shark.
Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies…
In part, the movie has survived the test of time because of the cool of its leading late actors, Roy Scheider (Brody) and Englishman Robert Shaw (Quinn). But, it also survives as an example of effective elements in suspense that went beyond the transparent thrills and scare tactics that have saturated most modern American horror. Jaws manages to bring all of its nervous development to a claustrophobic climax rigged with intense doubt – will three desperate men aboard a rather small boat managed to finally put an end to the small town’s persistent terror?
It’s been said that the beach population was significantly down in the year of Jaws’s release, something understandable where audiences were just as unfamiliar with shark behavior as the author of its source material.
Alien.
In space, no one can hear you scream.
Talk about claustrophobic settings… Alien’s tensions are brilliant invoked before the movie even begins. Just look at the isolation of the glowing egg encompassed by the black background on the promotional material.
Alien centers around the crew of a commercial spaceship returning to Earth who’s mission quickly turns into tragedy. Ordered by their corporate employers to investigate the unidentified signals coming from something like a mini-planet, they destroy parts of the ship in the process and unknowingly transport the seeds of a vicious alien.
Alien was penned by two guys who made their early career in alien-based science fiction and initially pitched it as “Jaws in space.” In all, it was shopped around nearly ten years before getting the greenlight. Dan O’Bannon was involved in the early stages of Dune (as was director Ridley Scott, who later abandoned the option to direct the project in order to work on Blade Runner) and Ronald Shusett would later work on Total Recall. British director Scott lead a fairly prominent cast for the first of the (so-far) five film Franchise. By 1986, James Cameron took over for Aliens, followed by David Fincher for Alien3.
The notoriously meticulous Scott had been trained in advertising and his early work was as a director of commercials before moving into directing episodes of various series. Alien was only his second feature film, following The Duelists, but really, his first major one, and, as a major commercial success with lasting cult popularity, he quickly earned a spot among sought out Hollywood elite. The funny history is that, in bout 10 years of shopping around the script for financing, Roger Corman’s studios nearly picked up the film. In the end, 20th Century Fox signed on.
The beauty of Alien, too, is its visuals; the chilling environment modeled on the imagination of then-obscure surreal artist, H.R. Geiger, distinguishing it as a Gothic horror film. But of course, what audiences remember most and what eventually lead to winning an Academy Award was the special effects, especially those few moments so frequently highlighted in horror homage clip show productions like the oft-spoofed (Spaceballs) alien bursting out of John Heard’s chest and the face-to-face encounter between Harry Dean Stanton and the heavily salivating alien, Mother. Outside of a few questionable haircuts and obsolete catchphrases, the film manages to avoid looking too dated (which, hopefully means, suggestions for remakes are quickly dismissed!). Though, what might it look like had Roger Corman’s team actually succeeded a contract to fund the project?
The Thing.
Noticing the trend of creature features in (eventual) isolated settings?
The Thing is a remake of the Christian Nyby’s 1951 science fiction horror of the same name, arguably a better adaption of its novella source: John Campbell, Jr.’s “Who Goes There?” Directed by John Carpenter and released in 1982, The Thing expands on the general plot of Alien: greater odds against the heroes. Here, a Norwegian helicopter carrying the seed of a predatory alien with the ability to mimic its prey is shot down in the Arctic region where a small group of American scientists are stationed. Alien was more political – the fate of the crew was in part, caused by the betrayal of their employers. On the other hand, The Thing, is stripped down to pure psychological play. Uncertain of who can be trusted when the victims can distinguish between human and alien, tensions rise and morals are tested: some prefer the survivalist credo of every man for himself.
Like Alien, the movie doesn’t bend entirely to the expectations of a neat resolution, among other genre standards (finally, the black guy doesn’t die first!) Film editor Todd Ramsay had suggested to Carpenter that the film have a “happy ending,” and an alternative ending was shot in which MacReady (Kurt Russel) is the lone victim to be rescued and, following a blood test, is shown to be human rather than the alien replica. However, this was never actually shown to test audiences in either of the two endings that were screened. Although, The Thing has appeared in “Best Of” lists (including IMDB’s user-rated Top 250 movie list) and archived in the clip-show styled homage Terror in the Aisles, the movie was hardly considered successful in the opening weekend. Carpenter had blamed this on the competing release of Spielberg’s E.T., which of course was a positive, family-oriented view of alien visitors (and Carpenter’s 1984 romantic sci-fi Starman would be kinder, too) whereas The Thing was bleak and, for critics, the tremendously detailed special effects, were rightfully described as just being too gross (especially a scene in which the doctor has his forearms bitten off while he’s got his hands in a chest cavity).
Blade Runner.
“I am the Nexus One, yeah! I want more like, fucker I ain’t done!” White Zombie – More Human Than Human
Blade Runner is one of the best films of dystopic future (and Paul Sammon’s book gives the best history of the film from inception to release). It was never well-received and not surprisingly survives as a cult classic because it is quite technical, moody, slow, and artistic science fiction. But, the best features is that visually, it’s beautiful; a painstaking construction of what dismal, over-populated Los Angeles might look like in 2019. Director Ridley Scott’s meticulousness and close guard over the craftsmanship is evident and the product is so pristine and perfect for the high-definition home theater luxuries these days. (Scott’s meticulousness, too, is also responsible for some of the off-screen rivalries with the crew and studio).
Scott directed Blade Runner after completing Alien, although initially he was supposed to direct Dune. According to Scott, however, he needed to keep himself busy following the sudden death of his eldest brother and with production on Initially, the next project not expected to begin for another year, he accepted the invitation to direct this.
It took a long time for Blade Runner to even get studio backing. Hampton Fancher, a book-smart, former child actor was the second to approach the eccentric Phillip K. Kick to option the rights to his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (The title Blade Runner came from a William Burroughs novel). Dick was never quite satisfied with Fancher’s screenplay version, once calling it too simple. Although, he never seemed too happy with Scott’s version, either, eventually going to lengths to publicly express his disapproval. And when the initially small production team tried to find financing for the film, studios continuously doubted there would even be a significant audience for the film. The novel, too, was always said to be hard to translate to film, anyways.
Blade Runner is a variation of Frankenstein. Man has created a destructive lifeform that ultimately must be destroyed for reasons beyond the creature’s own understanding; means beyond its control. In Blade Runner, when Earth became so over-populated and pollution, the humans looked to inhabit other planets. Replicants – nearly perfect synthetic simulations of humans built to expire in four years – were created for the colonization of other planets, first to fight in the wars, then to be used as slave labor. The movie went beyond the obsolete notion of androids – there was nothing that appeared artificial to the naked eye. Even memories were implanted. A special machine that used an iris-scan while the tester asked a series of mood-altering questions was the only way to really tell.But even this method wasn’t fool proof.
When the Nexus 6 androids staged a violent revolt, replicants were declared illegal on Earth. Blade Runners are the agents hired to kill them. With word that there had been a group in the desolate Los Angeles city looking for their maker – the Tyrell Corporation, Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford) a pathetic looking blade runner (who seemed even more pathetic and jaded in the book) had been forced out of retirement to track them down. With the exception of a chase sequence and the battle-to-the-death-style finale, Blade Runner isn’t really an action movie. It had long been described as noir science fiction. Deckard is a detective asked to solve a mystery with a moral dilemma. He’s on a trail of clues that will eventually lead him to the replicants he’s been hired to kill.
Deckard isn’t really as interesting as a the replicants. He’s like a very drained Sam Marlowe. But, replicants are dynamic, sympathetic creatures, particularly Deckard’s love interest, Rachel (Sean Young, who claimed, ironically, that Harrison Ford would not speak to her much off-screen), and the ringleader Roy Batty. They merely desire a solution to their plight: stalling the clock on their limetd lifespan. While the replicants are a simulation, the question is, “what does it mean to be human?” There was a particularly heartbreaking exchange between Roy Batty and Richard Deckard during the final showdown:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”
Cheech & Chong: Up in Smoke.
“You wanna get high man?”
Cheech & Chong were a great team; masters of the weedsploitation drama, although with the duo’s film debut, Up in Smoke, released in 1978, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong started on a high (literally and figuratively) and would gradually end on a low by the final film in the franchise. Other than Nice Dreams, few of their other films were worth much note.
The Cheech & Chong films were borne out of the duo’s stand-up comedy of the 70s and 80s. Up in Smoke was brilliant, improvised silliness and came out of the old days of riskier ventures. Given Lou Adler’s commentary on the DVD, it seemed like the film’s director and producer knew the comedy pair, or their potential, and, with a scant idea of what it should be, had the money to finance a goofy venture. But, they had trouble advertising the movie through traditional means. There was the obvious liability and public relations crisis expected when it comes to promoting a pothead movie to the mainstream… although it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem these days, given the mainstream successes of movies like Half Baked and Pineapple Express. Cheech and Chong was a novelty, too, in that they were also a musical duo, something they did in their stage shows and might have inspired the Flight of the Conchords duo. Cheech and Chong performed some of the songs on their film’s soundtracks and are seen in Up in Smoke actually performing against a handful of self-indulgent punk bands at the Battle of the Bands show. So, the film was advertised in comic strips and left on bus benches. Weirdly enough, it was successful. Released by Paramount, the movie grossed over $40 million and was the 12th highest grossing film of 1978.
There’s a wonderful scene towards the opening of the film where Anthony Stoner (Tommy Chong), hitchhiking, dresses as a woman (including the added detail of fake hooters) in order to get someone to stop and give him a ride. Pedro (Cheech), cruising the strip in his polished boat (this was really Jack Nicholson’s car), catches a glimpse of the hitchhiking woman and the brain to response connection is clear when his his widen and he cries out, “She’s hitchhiker!!. And finally, the center of attention were two non-white guys! Chong had absconded from his rich, nagging white adopted parents who basically yell at him to make something of himself. Cheech is a sort of stereotypical Mexican from the Southern California barrio. Chong befriends Cheech and joins his mariachi band as the drummer. Cheech has the idea that they should compete in the up-coming battle of the bands and in between the journey to finally score some weed and make it to the competition, the oblivious duo is always, and inadvertently two steps ahead of the bumbling drug agents and their frustrated supervising seargent (played wonderfully by Stacy Keach who has the great line: “To think of the time and money I’ve wasted on your training…”).
Nice Dreams came along in 1981, the third in the franchise. But, it somewhat continues the adventures of Up in Smoke. Bumbling drug agents are once again trying to track down the once-again oblivious Cheech and Chong’s successful, covert weed operation, “Nice Dreams.” But this time, Stacey Keach’s character, who has taken an unquestioned desk job where he basically smokes a pretty potent brand of weed, gradually transforms into an iguana. Needless to say, Nice Dreams is more of a surreal comedy (and appropriately so, given the weedsploitation context) than it’s predecessor, Up in Smoke.
The Terminator.
Intimacy. Intimacy. Ya ya ya ya….
For people of the video-cassette age (and I suppose, of the DVD age, as well, though it’s fairly newer), there is that one movie they’ve watched so often, especially as kids, that they’ve ruined the tape it came on. For my brother and I, that movie was the 1984 technophobic sci-fi, Terminator. The hyperactive kid that my brother was, this would surely set him off for invisible combat and inevitably led to us getting on our folks’ nerves and being ordered to go outside and play.
And despite the gaping plot hole (a soldier fighting in the cyber wars of the future volunteers to go back in time to protect the mother of the future hero he will eventually help conceive), the corny dialogue, and the financial glut of the movies to follow in the never-ending franchise (including a television series and theme park attraction), it will always be one of my favorite science fiction films. The first Terminator took place in gritty, punky Los Angeles, and the urban wasteland served as a proper prologue environment to the violent future predicted by Sara Conner. By the first sequel, Terminator 2, studios shelled out millions for the Hollywood polish. By comparison, the first movie was made on a surprising budget of less than $7 million (which might mean that this was not an expensive cast) and obviously, continues to gross well over the double-digit million dollar mark (it too, holds a user-rated ranking in the Top 250 films on IMDB). Gritty as the first one, though, that’s not to say it was a cheaply done production. That’s just not James Cameron’s style even with just $7 million. And the budget was probably largely allotted for special effects. There’s plenty of explosions, construction of active futuristic battleground, stop-motion Terminator animation, and the terrific scene of The Terminator chipping away at the fleshy disguise to reveal the functioning exoskeleton.
Throughout the Terminator franchise, the demise of the future is blamed on the Skynet corporation. Like Blade Runner, the artificial intelligence embodied in creepy chrome exoskeletons created by the corporations defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems, became self-aware and took over military hardware, declaring war on the humans. This plot point doesn’t really become more fully developed until the sequel, Terminator 2, when a now beefed-up Sarah Connor tracks down Skynet engineer Miles Dyson, the man behind the machines. The Terminator 2 3-D attraction at Universal Studios in Orlando introduces the movie with a brief propaganda film from Skynet and its defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems before Sarah and John Connor looking like two butch lesbians, hack into the system to override the video and warn audiences to get out of the building.
What the hell? Goddamn son of a bitch…
Like Blade Runner and a host of other 1980s technophobic science fiction films, The Terminator opens in Los Angeles. In 2029, it’s buried in rubble and destroyed by the hopeless war between Man, a resistance force led by the heroic John Connor, and Machines, who decide to assassinate him preemptively by going back in time to gritty 1984 Los Angeles and disguised as human, kill his mother, Sarah Connor. Sarah was played by director/co-writer James Cameron’s then-wife Linda Hamilton. The movie also introduced Austrian bodybuilding celebrity, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Terminator was a formidable villain because he was an indiscriminate killer, and one didn’t feel emotion. His method for finding Sarah Connor, initially, is thumbing through the phone book and killing all the Sarah Connors in the county, it didn’t matter which was the right one, as long as one was in fact the future mother of John. (Imagine how doomed the mission would be if she wasn’t listed!) The beauty of the villain was also that it was immune to pain, and the chrome skeleton under the normal wear of human flesh made regular weaponry ineffective, though the T-1000, the liquid metal villain of Terminator 2, was more challenging.
Initially, the Terminator was envisioned to be more inconspicuous rather than the intimidating build, something followed through on in the sequel when the athletic and speedy Robert Patrick was cast as the T-1000. B-movie king Lance Henriksen was considered for the role of the Terminator, but instead was cast as one of the investigating detectives alongside the late, humorously wry Paul Winfield. Michael Biehn was considered, too, but instead played played Kyle Reese, the noble resistance soldier from the future who volunteers to go back in time and protect Sarah Connor. It’s a suicide mission, since the time portal wouldn’t open again to allow him to travel back. This is where the inevitable problem of time traveling tales occur as Kyle Reese is eventually shown to be the father of John Connor, although previously, he’d never met Sarah Connor before.
Sarah Connor… mother of the future resistance leader was supposed to be a mere 19 year old at the time working a thankless job as a waitress and sharing an apartment with an iguana and a spunky roommate named Ginger. Of course, after become enlightened by Reese about the future, she undergoes a complete 180 and turns into the short-tempered, premature resistance fighter with visions of a fatal future. Of course, it’s that kind of babbling that gets her thrown into a mental institution, as seen in the beginning of Terminator 2.
Christian Bale is the latest to be cast as John Connor in the fourth installment, Terminator: Salvation, which, at least suggested by the previews, is that the movie has taken a new direction altogether. Now in the aftermath of Skynet’s nuclear Holocaust and further fighting against the machines, the movie, directed by the American television director rather pretentiously known only as “McG,” transforms into more of a combat movie than the computers-and-bytes kind of science fiction movie it first started as.
The Omen and The Exorcist.
If I had to pick between Richard Donner’s The Omen (released in 1976) or William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (released in 1973 and adapted from William Blatty’s 1971 novel) in terms of movies about demonic children, I would prefer The Exorcist. (I discuss both films here because of the similar theme). My brother has long been a fan of both films (though surprisingly, not of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby). I’ve always found The Omen to be excessively cheesy in parts, using the glassy effects and dramatic strings music (not Jerry Goldsmith’s “Ave Satan”, the one it’s most famous for) in the saccharine portrayal of the American couple played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick welcoming their first child in contrast, of course, to the devilish threat he’d become. (Liev Schreiber’s remake, released in 2006, was only slightly better since it avoided doing that. But, while visually stunning, it substituted cheesy for bland).
On the other hand, while Linda Blair’s character, Regan, in The Exorcist was a complete nerd, Friedkin manages to mostly stick to the point – the transformation of the darling nerd into the vessel of Satan. (Blair was far from desired for the role of Regan, and one person seriously considered for the part was Denise Nickerson, who is better remembered as Violet in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, since her parents pulled her from the production because of the vulgarity of the material). But then again, there’s a unique regional difference between the two films: The Omen is very English; The Exorcist is an American production. While The Omen was fairly simple, The Exorcist was a little more complex. The film begins with an archeological excavation, and along with this, integrates the story of Father Damien (Jason Miller) who doubts his faith, and the actress mother who needs more than medical help for the disturbing and mysterious symptoms showing in her pre-teen daughter in Georgetown.
The bulk of the movie was filmed on and around the Georgetown University campus. The building that housed the graduate schools of business, public policy, and my former graduate program buttress the infamous steep stairs that in the film, were an instrument in the demise of a priest. Runners tend to make two or three incredible laps up and down that thing. Passerbys have scrawled on the wall things like “the power of Christ compels you” and so-and-so “conquered the Exorcist stairs.
The Omen anniversary DVDs released recently contain the 2005 documentary regarding the weird occurrences during production like lightning hitting planes, lions devouring crew, and dobermans attacking the trainers, not that The Exorcist was without its own rumors of strange occurrences during production, though I wonder how many had to do with William Friedkin’s method directing. The Exorcist carries a lot of possibly dubious reports about how audiences reacted when they first saw it in the theater, vomiting and being dramatic. The movie certainly was stark enough, and sometimes vulgar enough to get some kind of reaction to audiences not yet jaded by horror films like today. The Exorcist was also one of the highest grossing horror films of all time and earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress (Burstyn), Best Supporting Actress (Blair, who really wasn’t supporting at all, though I suspect “supporting” is sometimes a limitation made on the basis of age), Best Supporting Actor (Jason Miller), Best Director (even though he was chosen to direct only after the success of The French Connection), and Best Picture.
Unfortunately, both were followed by a few sequels that never made much note. Damien was followed into adulthood (oops, spoilers!) and Regan became like the spokesman for chronic demonic possession.
Dead Calm.
Dead Calm is a rather obscure, three-character thriller released in 1989. It was a great little suspense film, winding up on cable every once in a while and more recently, on Netflix’s Instant Demand. Based on Charles Williams’s thriller novel of a bi-polar shipwreck survivor who terrorizes a young couple that invite him aboard their boat, it was actually the second time the book was attempted to be translated into film. Orson Wells never finished his film, The Deep, filmed between 1967 and 1969 but abandoned when the film’s star, Laurence Harvey, died. (There were rumors that Wells’s widow was trying to get the incomplete film cut and released in 1997). Australian director, Phillip Noyce, directed the 1989 version, which was a dramatically pared down version of the novel – it only centered on three of the characters: John (Sam Neill) and Rae (Nicole Kidman) Ingram and their tormenting visitor, Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane).
In the novel, Hugie’s wife and the surviving half of another couple aboard their yacht–the husband–were central to John’s survival when, doubting Hughie’s version of what happened to the other crew aboard the sinking vessel, swims over to investigate. We learn that Hughie was a good-looking young guy, in his early 20s. He’d been an aspiring painter and the financing for his work often came from rich women who selfishly sought his company more than admired the brilliance of his work. He’d become habitually spoiled and always flirted with the women who never denied him what he wanted. It’s speculated in the book that, when Hughie and the wife of the other couple are swimming and accidentally left behind, he drowned her in an effort to save himself. When Hughie’s wife an the husband finally figure out that they’ve left their passengers behind, return two hours later to find only one has survived – Hughie, who in a panic, claims that the wife died of a shark attack. When the boat begun going down, already in disrepair and being navigated by an inexperienced crew, Hughie’s wife and the husband of the other couple were locked in the cabin. Hughie had left to save himself, climbing aboard the Ingram’s boat with a story that the rest of the crew had died of food poisoning.
In the novel, John and Rae Ingram are honeymooning. Rae seems like more shrewd character, more outspoken and meets John when he is first suspect to having stolen her yacht, but then, because of the former naval officer’s nautical expertise, helps the widow track down the boat. Had the movie been made closer to the book, it would’ve called for someone a little older than the milky white Nicole Kidman. Maybe Angelica Houston. Or Joanna Cassidy. But when the backstory changed to an instant tragedy explaining the couple’s voyage – a therapeutic trip following the death of their toddler son – Kidman’s cherubic appearance fit.
In both the novel and movie, John swims over to check the condition of the boat and the holes in Hughie’s story of what happened to the other passengers, when Hughie, in retaliation, leaves with the Ingram’s boat, and Rae still on board. John is stuck on a sinking ship and Rae can’t easily convince Hughie to turn back and rescue him. Billy Zane was perfect for the role of the villain – the baby-faced young man who was a total weirdo, abruptly shifting between empty good moods and a violent temper, much to the confusion and frustration of Rae (Kidman) who in the end, had to figure out how, if not by herself, then with Hughie’s cooperation, she was going to get back to John before time ran out. Luckily, neither Rae nor John were dumb characters. One of the great tactics here was pacing: the never really slows, and with it, neither does the suspense. Stripping down the number of characters and the details of Hughie’s past (not to mention the author Williams’s reliance on too much nautical terminology) obviously makes it much easier for the filmmaker to translate the nail-biting tension into a 96 minute movie.
Jurassic Park.
In the summer of 1993, the year of Jurassic Park’s release, I had spent several weekends seeing the movie with my brother. Admission was a dollar, so this was easy to do. It was one of the rare moments that a film should run more than a month, and that it should still serve packed audiences after weeks of being there. Priority movies were shown on one of two of the theater’s largest screens. As weeks progressed, and the audience size waned, they moved the movies down the hall, to smaller and smaller theaters. We watched the movie in several.
Posted in 80s movies, 90s movies, before the 80s, blowouts and shoot 'em ups, comedy, commentary, cult flicks and obscure picks, monsters and motherships | Tagged Alien, Blade Runner, Charles Williams, Cheech & Chong, Cheech and Chong Up in Smoke, Dead Calm, Gilroy Drastik, Half Baked, IMDb Top 250, James Cameron, Jaws, John Carpenter, Jurrassic Park, Peter Benchley, Pineapple Express, Richard Donner, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Terror in the Aisles, The Deep, The Exorcist, The Omen, The Terminator, William Blatty, William Friedkin | Leave a Comment »