R.I.P., David Warner

R.I.P. to David Warner: glorious Shakespeare actor, genre movie standby, and, for a VHS enthusiast, one of the most recognizable faces of all time. Best known to children of the '80s as the villain in TRON and TIME BANDITS, and best known to '70s horror fans from THE OMEN and TIME AFTER TIME. Maybe he'll be remembered by a new generation from his appearance in 2018's MARY POPPINS RETURNS.

At Junta Juleil, we've seen him suffer through the courtroom clichés of MR. NORTH and the peasant blouse nonsense of Cannon Films' HANSEL AND GRETEL.

In TITANIC, he was Billy Zane's henchman, and in his finest moment shot a disapproving look after catching Leo and Kate doing some unauthorized folk-dancing hanky-pankery.

He stopped by as a drama professor in SCREAM 2, a human in STAR TREK V, a Klingon in STAR TREK VI, and a dad in THE COMPANY OF WOLVES.

On TV, he effortlessly jumped between fare like TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW, and CAPTAIN PLANET. He improved some of the roughest patches of TWIN PEAKS Season 2 by his mere presence, and delivered a lot of pathos in the TWIN PEAKS-adjacent WILD PALMS.

He had fun as Van Helsing in MY BEST FRIEND IS A VAMPIRE and hammed it up as an evil wax museum impresario in WAXWORK.

He collaborated twice with John Carpenter, playing members of the medical profession in BODY BAGS and  IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. He collaborated thrice with Sam Peckinpah, playing a reverend, a rapist, and a Nazi, respectively, in THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, STRAW DOGS, and CROSS OF IRON.

He rocked out––so hard––to the music of Vanilla Ice in TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE, and made us believe it. He exuded dignity no matter where he ended up.

R.I.P.

Only now does it occur to me... HANSEL AND GRETEL (1987)

Only now does it occur to me... how much narrative padding has to go into HANSEL AND GRETEL to make it feature-length. Let's be honest, the bullet points are these: mom and dad are struggling; Hansel and Gretel go into the woods on an errand (or are abandoned there by their parents, depending on the telling), find the witch's candy house, almost get eaten by the witch, and then they shove her into the oven. There's a reason why the best film version (Tim Burton's) runs about 35 minutes. But this is not early Tim Burton––it's a Cannon MovieTale.

That's right: the children's movie/fairy tale offshoot of Cannon Films (probably only created to get a tax break or something), the same one that brought us Christopher Walken as PUSS IN BOOTS. And, hoo boy, this thing is a mess. As the parents, we have David Warner (TIME BANDITS, TRON, TITANIC, TWIN PEAKS) and Emily Richards (EMPIRE OF THE SUN, ENEMY AT THE DOOR), who clearly deserve better. There's a lot of dignity up for grabs here. Look at Emily Richards, she's so upset she can barely stand up by herself. For starters, she's dressed like an Oktoberfest wench at a knock-off Disneyland.

And poor David Warner. He's trying his best. He's wearing a community theater peasant blouse they stole from a production of THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE. They didn't even launder it first.

They pad this shit with 44 minutes of family drama before we even see the candy house. Lotta Aryan-types moping and puttering around a medieval cabin. It's like the world's worst Ingmar Bergman film. 

Finally, the candy house. You'd have to imagine this would be a holy grail for a production designer––you could really go nuts with it. Instead we get this sad sack shit.
They thought they could jazz it up with some half-assed star bows from the Dollar Store that were lying around in somebody's junk drawer. A child would have done a better job.

You'd think you couldn't get any more depressed. Maybe if they shoehorned in an Oscar-winning actress who deserves a lot better? Somebody like Cloris motherfuckin' Leachman (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, DILLINGER, DAISY MILLER, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN)?

At least she has fun with it. You can tell she wasn't directed at all. None of this movie was. Half of her shots have her leering and extending her fingernails like she was told to "act witchy" and then they forgot to say "Cut!" She gets to go full-HOCUS POCUS soon enough, and in one of the film's two stylistic decisions, they give her some SUSPIRIA-style Argento lighting. 

 

So there's that, at least. She just keeps going, though, cause, like I said, they totally forgot to say "Cut!"

She captures the kiddies and we get a few iconic images.

I recommend singing aloud––to the tune of Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog"––"Now you're messin' with a... Leach-man wiii-iiitch! Now you're messin' with a Leachman witch!"

We even learn that her grounds are populated with the still-living bodies of her victims, children who have been entombed within weeping gingerbread men:

"If you look closely, you can see the tears." Hell, that shoulda been the tag-line to this movie. Speaking of which, throughout, all of this is crosscut with David Warner wandering in the woods, looking for his kids.

It's very post-Beckett, and we return to it a comical number of times. Yep, time to check in on Warner again. No dialogue. Just fruitless searching. And disappointment. It's sweaty out there. If you look closely, you can see the tears.

He's giving us some real "I need to fire my agent" vibes. It's great.

They try to make it a plot point that the witch can't see without her magical, enchanted magnifying glass

but it's totally one of those plastic magnifying glasses that you get as a prize from a cereal box. It doesn't even have glass as a lens, only thickened plastic. Tough to sell it as a magic totem, is what I'm saying. Anyway, the kids lower her into a subterranean oven with a rope (which is much less satisfying than shoving her into a more conventional stove)

 

but then comes the coup de grâce, and the second creative stylistic decision the filmmakers made. That's right, the house explodes in a SHINING-style ejaculation of foamy Leachman blood: 

And it just

keeps

gushing!

The other kiddies break out of their gingerbread prisons

and, mercifully, it's over. This has been a Cannon MovieTale.

Film Review: STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991, Nicholas Meyer)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 113 minutes.

Tag-line: "The battle for peace has begun."

Notable Cast or Crew: William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, David Warner (TITANIC, TRON, TIME BANDITS), Kim Cattrall (BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, POLICE ACADEMY), Mark Lenard (STAR TREK III, STAR TREK IV), Grace Lee Whitney ("Janice" from the original STAR TREK series), Brock Peters (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, SOYLENT GREEN), Kurtwood Smith (THAT '70S SHOW, ROBOCOP), Christopher Plummer (THE SOUND OF MUSIC, STARCRASH), Christian Slater (KUFFS, TRUE ROMANCE), Iman (David Bowie's wife, HOUSE PARTY 2), Rene Auberjonois (MY BEST FRIEND IS A VAMPIRE, EYES OF LAURA MARS).

Best One-liner:  "To be... OR NOT TO BE!"

STAR TREK VI is the only film in the series that I saw on the big screen, and I hadn't yet seen it again in the intervening twenty-three years... until now.  And it's good!  It's very good.  It's more of a murder mystery/political thriller than a sci-fi film, and timely, too (for 1991), given that its about the ensuing mistrust between two (Cold) warring cultures as they draw back the Iron Curtain and see what happens.

I remember thinking the movie was pretty solid but had no memory as to why, except for a vague remembrance of Captain Kirk being on an ice planet and kicking an alien in the knees, only to discover he'd kicked it in its (alien) nuts.



Now that's the sort of artistic expression worth remembering!


So here are my Fourteen Favorite Things about STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY that I did not fully appreciate as a kid:

#14.  Captain Sulu (George Takei).  He finally got that promotion!

This leads to some great moments where his new ship can team up with the Enterprise and he and Kirk can take turns screaming "Fire!" as they zap the bad guys with space lasers.  Unfortunately, they're on different ships, though, so they can't high-five afterward.

#13.  Janice is back!

Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney)– star of many TREK episodes from the original series, best known for her occasional near-romances with Kirk and her bitchin' beehive hairdo– shows up on Sulu's crew.  It's been a while, Janice, good to see ya!  Who else do they have room for on that zany crew?

#12.  ...Yes, who do they have whose job it is to wake up Sulu in the middle of the night and give him somewhat unnecessary status reports?  Who could it be...?

 Why, Christian Slater, of course!
 
 Slater, veiled in shadow, in a failed attempt to diminish The Slater Factor.

This, naturally, has nothing to do with the fact that the casting director was his mother, and everything to do with his claim that his Jack Nicholson-style arched eyebrows were the ill-fated result of shaving them to be Spock for Halloween once.

 #11.  Legendary character actor Kurtwood Smith as the "President of the Federation"

complete with wicked Fu Manchu mustache and Wild West sunglasses.  Wait, WHAT?!

#10.  The return of David Warner.  Here, he plays the actual Klingon ambassador, instead of a human associate of the Klingon ambassador, like in Part V.  Weird.
 
But I can always use some Warner, especially when his acting talents are put to use, lending pathos to a leader of a belligerent race of aliens.  Also, that is an incredible jacket you've got on there, David.  Who got to keep that thing when filming wrapped?  Somewhere, is David Warner at home, lounging in that jacket, listening to– I don't know– an Iron Maiden album?  Inquiring minds want to know.
 
Anyway, he gives a great toast with Romulan Ale (not to be confused with blue Kool-Aid) where he quotes Shakespeare ("...the undiscover'd country") and then insists that "You haven't experienced Shakespeare until you have read it in the original Klingon," a humorous line that prompted a thousand nerds to pull out their Klingon-English dictionaries and almost causes a Shatner spit-take.
 
Nobody claims false ownership of the Bard on the Shat's watch!

#9.  Spock's rockin' bachelor pad.

Sure, he doesn't really put it to use, but this is truly a Spock for the 90s, lounging around in a luxurious robe and surrounded by altogether too many candles and silken sheets.  (I'm sure it serves some Vulcan meditative purpose.)  All we need is some sexy saxophone and a 90s babe, like Demi Moore or Madonna or Sharon Stone or Kim Cattrall...

#8. Kim Cattrall?

Well-played, STAR TREK VI.  I like what you've done there, with the Spock-ears and the haircut and the futuristic headband.  And all nerdery aside, she does a pretty good job!

#7.  Poor McCoy (DeForest Kelley).  He gets put through a lot in this movie.  All he ever wanted was a drink.  And not just blue Kool-Aid.

I go back and forth on my favorite STAR TREK characters, but I think the good Doctor might be my favorite, with his curious blend of indefatigable humanism and curmudgeonly fatalism.  Age has only made him more of a badass– and more of a terrific crab. 

#6.  The hilarious globules of purple CGI Klingon blood as the delegation is murdered by the guys from Daft Punk.


This shoulda been in 3-D!

#5.  Sherlock Holmes.

STAR TREK VI being a bit of a murder mystery, the game is soon afoot and Spock takes over, putting on his theoretical deerstalker cap– and even insinuating that the original Holmes is a distant ancestor! 

This is the doing of director/writer Nicholas Meyer, Holmes aficionado and author of three Holmes novels (THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION, THE WEST END HORROR, and THE CANARY TRAINER), all of which transcend the trappings of fan-fiction, becoming labyrinthine literary pastiches that are genuinely great novels in their own right.  Good show.


#4.  Shapeshiftin', cigar-chompin' Iman!
 
High fashion model, David Bowie missus, and cosmetics tycoon Iman shows up on a Klingon Ice Prison-planet as a cell mate of Doctor McCoy and the good Captain Kirk.  It's not long before the latter works his charms on her:

She always did go for those those Major Tom-types.

Although I wish she'd waited to make out with The Shat till she had transformed into him, as depicted in the following, well-acted screen grabs:


I think a Shat-on-Shat makeout 'sesh would have been more to his (ego's) liking, and it might've really pushed this movie over the edge.  A bit of a missed opportunity, there.


#3.  And seriously, when are they going to put seat belts on the Enterprise?

WHOAAA

One errant laser and everybody's flying around willy-nilly.  The Bureau of Worker's Comp at Federation Headquarters must have their hands full.


#2.  Shakespeare slummer Christopher Plummer!

Spoilers to follow:

The final space battle is a three-way between George Takei, The Shat, and powermad Klingon-in-pursuit-of-an-acting-paycheck, Christopher Plummer.  What follows is the most insane and spectacular use of Shakespeare quotes as one-liners since Vincent Price in HIS KIND OF WOMAN or THEATER OF BLOOD.

 
 
 It's absolutely bananas, and I love it beyond words.  Of course they save the best for last:
 
 "TO BE...

 "...OR NOT..."


"...TO BE?"

FOOOOSH


#1.  Because of course it all ends with a slow clap, like in ROCKY IV.  (I feel like I mention ROCKY IV at least once in every review.)  I believe that the slow clap has become the only way to resolve a movie about Cold Wars or diplomatic détante.

 This is truly the 'It's a Small World' of the Star Trek universe.


The Klingons are clearly half-assing their slow clap.


Conversely, those dudes on the far right are kind of overdoing it.

Who the hell are these guys?  Aliens?  Humans with cargo net mesh draped over their hockey masks?

Don't stop clapping.  Don't ever stop. 


In closing, this is a fine send-off for the original cast, and one of the better films in the series.  Four stars.

–Sean Gill


P.S.– I also see that this is the 1,000th post here at Junta Juleil.  I wish I could've done a Carpy or a Bronson or a Van Damme review, but these things just sneak up on you, I guess.  Thanks to all of my readers who have stuck around!