Film Review: I, MADMAN (1989, Tibor Takács)

Stars: 3.8 of 5.
Running Time: 89 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Starring Jenny Wright (NEAR DARK, ST. ELMO'S FIRE), Clayton Rohner (APRIL FOOL'S DAY, JUST ONE OF THE GUYS), Stephanie Hodge (BIG TOP PEE-WEE, EVOLUTION), and Randall William Cook (who also did the visual effects and stop motion on HIGHWAY TO HELL, GHOSTBUSTERS, FRIGHT NIGHT, Q: THE WINGED SERPENT and won three Oscars for Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS). Written by David Chaskin (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE, THE CURSE). Directed by Tibor Takács (Hungarian-born director of THE GATE, METAL MESSIAH, and the SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH TV movie).
Tag-line: "Spend the night with a madman."
Best one-liner: "It makes Stephen King read like Mother Goose!"

When you've been a horror fan as long as I have, it can become difficult to find vintage gems you haven't already seen. You sift through a lot of straight-to-video nonsense, and, sadly, it's often not even "so-bad-it's-good." You make it through a lot of movies that not only lack star power, they even lack "character-actor-power." While reading about visual effects legend Randall William Cook (because of the excellent HIGHWAY TO HELL), I decided to take a chance on I, MADMAN, where he not only did the visual effects, he stars as the villain (!).

I, MADMAN was pitched to me as the story of a bookworm whose voracious consumption of horror novels leads to a blurring of reality (sort of a proto-IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, at least in the abstract), as the villain of these books begins to pursue her in real life.

It sounded intriguing, self-reflexive, and artistic, but also a bit like a feature-length episode TALES FROM THE CRYPT (which is not a bad thing, necessarily). And it's my pleasure to report that this is while it's not quite a masterpiece, it certainly lives up to its pitch.

Jenny Wright (of NEAR DARK) plays Virginia, our heroine. She has a Joan Cusack/Gillian Anderson vibe and was fairly ubiquitous throughout the 1980s, though she hasn't appeared in much at all since 1992's THE LAWNMOWER MAN. As a bookstore employee who loves scary novels, her performance taps into the nostalgia/cozy feeling of curling up with a good book and entering another world, like THE NEVERENDING STORY (for horror fans).

All of the scenes set at her bookstore also feel nostalgic and extremely lived-in, 

 

and her co-worker (played by the hilarious Stephanie Hodge)

does her best to steal every scene she's in.

The director, Budapest's own Tibor Takács, imbues the film with true style. He views Los Angeles through a very European lens, romanticizing all the rundown 1950s apartment buildings and decor, and presenting an extremely stylized vision that, in my opinion, owes a great deal to the films of David Lynch, particularly BLUE VELVET.

This could easily be a screencap from BLUE VELVET, or RABBITS



WILD AT HEART hadn't even been released yet, nor BARTON FINK, if we want to include the Coens

Fetishized vintage lamps, peeling wallpaper, creepy bellhops, flickering lights, beckoning darkness... it's all here!

As the books begin to bleed into reality, we have the aforementioned Randall William Cook playing a character who's equal parts Dr. Moreau, Jack the Ripper, Darkman, and The Shadow... and he embarks on a series of giallo-style murders

across this David Lynch-ian/Edward Hopper-verse. They're formally very effective, employing vivid lighting, surprising visuals, and Sam Raimi-style camerawork. 

There's a track-zoom down this hallway that feels straight out of EVIL DEAD

 

Virginia's policeman boyfriend, "Richard" (Clayton Rohner, a real Jeff Fahey-type)

becomes more instrumental to the plot at this point, though, thankfully, it never truly veers into a police procedural. I won't reveal how it proceeds from here, though I will say there is some unexpected creature work from Randall William Cook (very similar to his FRIGHT NIGHT monsters)

 

 

with that dreamlike, uncanny feel that can only be achieved by a stop-motion master.

 

In a weird bit of trivia, the legendary author and screenwriter Bruce Wagner has a cameo as a sinister piano player, only glimpsed from afar (again, very Edward Hopper via REAR WINDOW), who always plays late into the night.

(You've probably seen some of Wagner's films––MAPS TO THE STARS, WILD PALMS, SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS, or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS––but I also must shout out his novels, like I'M LOSING YOU or THE CHRYSANTHEMUM PALACE; he has a spiritually twisted vision of Hollywood/L.A. as a perverse, feudal New Age cult dystopia and he always manages to shock and engage his audiences.)

 

Finally, I must address one of my longstanding cinematic rules: I've often said "it's not an action movie unless they blow up a gas station," and "it's not a horror movie until you're in the microfiche room," and I'm happy to report that by the latter criterion, this is indeed a horror movie. 

Film Review: NEAR DARK (1987, Kathryn Bigelow)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 94 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (THE LOVELESS, THE HURT LOCKER, POINT BREAK). Written by Bigelow and Eric Red (THE HITCHER, BODY PARTS). Music by Tangerine Dream. Starring Adrian Pasdar (SOLARBABIES, TOP GUN), Jenny Wright (PINK FLOYD'S THE WALL; I, MADMAN), Lance Henriksen (ALIENS, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM), Bill Paxton (TRUE LIES, ALIENS), Tim Thomerson (DOLLMAN, TRANCERS), Joshua John Miller (TEEN WITCH, RIVER'S EDGE). Cinematography by Adam Greenberg (THE TERMINATOR, 10 TO MIDNIGHT, 3 MEN AND A BABY).
Tag-line: "Killing you would be easy, they'd rather terrify you...forever."
Best one-liner: "Caleb, those people back there, they wasn't normal. Normal folks, they don't spit out bullets when you shoot 'em, no sir." (Later paraphrased in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.)

I'm sure a fair amount of you have seen NEAR DARK. For those who haven't, it's a two-fisted, shit-kickin' vampire Western that sort of combines all of my favorite things about THE LOST BOYS, Carpenter's VAMPIRES, and POINT BREAK. It slits your throat with a sharpened spur, sears your skin, and explodes in a grotesque display of vampiric immolation. Now, with that in mind, take a gander at the DVD re-release cover:

Sweet God- my worst fears realized- NEAR DARK appropriated by the lily-livered aficionados of TWILIGHT, CGI, and unbridled airbrushing! But it doesn't matter– here's nine reasons why, even if it's remade and/or commandeered by these knuckleheads, NEAR DARK will still live on as an 80's genre classic:

#1. The vampires' mode of travel: a beat-up, nasty old Recreational Vehicle.

There's no sugar-coating their nomadic, hand-to-fang, poverty-stricken existence. They cruise around in a pedophile-mobile with blacked-out windows cause they've got no other choice. No Gothic mansions, no Ann Ricey-TWILIGHTY-romanticized shenanigans- it's a daily struggle for survival that's closer to Buñuel's LAND WITHOUT BREAD or Marc Singer's DARK DAYS than some TRUE BLOOD wankfest. And the RV says it all.

#2. Hey, look, it's a James LeGros cameo!

If you can't appreciate the simple joy of an unexpected LeGros appearance, maybe you don't deserve to enjoy NEAR DARK. And Bigelow even spares him in the midst of a vampire rampage, thus continuing to prove my theory that anybody and everybody worth their salt has a soft spot for LeGros.

#3. The Tangerine Dream score. While on the whole it's not one of their very best scores (like their work on THIEF, FLASHPOINT, or THE PARK IS MINE), certain tracks- like "Bus Station"- possess a certain, fleeting atmospheric quality, like an entrancing invitation to a dangerous fairy-tale world. In short, it's the kind of music that, even though it's looping endlessly on the DVD menu, oddly, it doesn't bother you. In fact, you're looking for an excuse not to start the movie, cause you'd kind of like to listen to Tangerine Dream for just a little longer if ya don't mind.

#4. Tim Thomerson. Undervalued. Underused. Under-recognized.

And here in the kind of mainstream, stalwart, square-jawed, all-American farmer role he should have been booking more often. He's likeable, believable, and deserves to be a household name. And not just in Charles Band's household. Perhaps I exaggerate, but come on, let's hear it for Thomerson.

#5. Bill Paxton is loopier than a corkscrew.

I think that the critical acclaim for a show such as BIG LOVE has made the world, to some
extent, forget that Paxton made his name as one of the zaniest hombres this side of the Marx Brothers.

"I hate 'em when they ain't been shaved!" he laments (as he slurps the blood from an unkempt, hirsute biker). He dances, he prances, he lacerates necks with a sharpened spur. He blows air kisses, blows people away with a six-gun, and shouts "Bullseye!" afterwards. Why a vampire would need to resort to firearms is anybody's guess, but Paxton makes it so you don't really care so long as he keeps twirlin' em and verbalizin' his smart-assed remarks.

Something to ponder: are these the same pleather pants that reappear in BOXING HELENA?

"Finger-lickin' good!" he declares after a particularly fiendish bout of blood-drinking.

Bravo, Paxton. Bravo.

#6. Joshua John Miller. AKA 'The Creepy Kid from RIVER'S EDGE and TEEN WITCH. Other than David Bennent, I'm unsure I can think of anyone more qualified to play the role of 'irascible, centuries old vampire trapped in a child's body.'

#7. Adam Greenberg's cinematography.

Bigelow- via her then-paramour, James Cameron- had already got her hands on Paxton and Henriksen, so why not raid his DP, as well? Bigelow, originally a painter, has always been able to extract striking images from her cinematographers, and the magnificent visuals here are dusty, weather-beaten, and severe. And since I already mentioned that Bigelow was a painter, I'll also mention that her first studio was in an Off-Track Betting building. That's what NEAR DARK is, in a nutshell. Crude yet painterly visions transmitted directly from the scrap-paper and cigarette-butt strewn floors of an OTB. Print that in the paper.

#8. The way the vamps burn.

More like the spontaneous combustion of a back-alley wino than a poetic end to an aristocratic villain, the slow-motion searing and flaying of skin and the blackening of their shabby, smoldering rags makes for quite a memorable, mesmerizing visual despite the grotesquery, even though I'm not sure if grotesquery is, in fact, a real word.

#9. Lance Henriksen.

Gaunt, heavily scarred, possessing a wicked rat-tail, and at one point explaining that he's a Civil War veteran ("I fought for the South. We lost."), Henriksen is, as always, scary good. "Your skin is as soft as a preacher's belly," he can be heard to declare with the sort of impassive malevolence that defines his performance. His character, Jesse Hooker, is a sort of 'bottom line' kinda guy. He's not evil per se (although, uh, it is insinuated that he set the Great Chicago Fire of 1871), he just happens to look out for number one in such a way that he leaves a trail of massacred innocents and general sleazy vampire wreckage in his wake, wherever he goes, whenever he goes. He also cheekily spits up the bullets he's been shot with and uses them to taunt his adversaries.

Lance Henriksen: certainly deserving a place in the vampire hall-of-fame.

Four stars.

-Sean Gill