Only now does it occur to me... THE GUN IN BETTY LOU'S HANDBAG (1992)

Only now does it occur to me... that there's a good movie, perhaps even a great movie, trapped within this deeply uneven film. 

The premise: Betty Lou, a suburban librarian (Penelope Ann Miller in a BLOSSOM hat),

lives her life in a perpetual state of invisibility; no one in her domestic or professional life will listen to a single word she has to say. She stiltedly passes through her existence with a paralyzing self-consciousness that no one around her even cares enough to notice. It's bleak!

 

 After a mobster on the run (an early role for Stanley Tucci) is murdered at a local motel,

 

Betty Lou stumbles upon the murder weapon while walking her dog and, after being condescended to, decides on the spur of the moment to confess to the murder.

 

It's a powerful premise for what is ostensibly a comedy––a woman feels so imprisoned by her social erasure that she would prefer life in an actual prison, because outrageous transgression (especially at the dawn of the scandal-thirsty '90s) is the only thing that makes her worthy of attention. In this respect, parts of the first act of Grace Cary Bickley's screenplay have shades of THE BELL JAR or THE YELLOW WALLPAPER.

In jail, Betty Lou meets hardened criminal Cathy Moriarty (RAGING BULL, KINDERGARTEN COP), who basically steals the movie with a tough-as-nails, Gena Rowlands-inflected performance. 

 

Betty Lou gets the idea for a makeover to match her new personality (also, to regain the attentions of her police detective husband), in which she gets a haircut and basically SINGLE WHITE FEMALEs her best friend, who is played by Julianne Moore.

 

 
Note Julianne Moore's dismay

But this is a '90s studio comedy, and it's still sort of serviceable because we're not actually expecting Sylvia Plath, but even as the shenanigans pile up, we also have a tone problem. It fails to pick one, and/or to stick with it, a classic symptom of studio script tampering.

Enter: the mobsters––the ones who were hunting Stanley Tucci. They begin to receive heaping amounts of screen-time. They're led by genius character actor William Forsythe (EXTREME PREJUDICE, THE ROCK, RAISING ARIZONA), who has clearly not been informed that he's in a comedy.

 

He delivers this legitimately terrifying performance as a sadistic New Orleans kingpin prone to Joe Pesci-style outbursts of violence. As in this scene, where he makes like he's going to feed Catherine Keener an oyster

in front of her husband, played by... Meat Loaf (!?) 

 and then slashes her cheek open with the blade.

 

What in the world is this doing in this movie? The same movie where a dog gets a wacky reaction shot, or there's an extended montage of Julianne Moore doing drunken solo dancing on a couch.

 

 
Penelope Ann Miller, too, is confused

There was a tendency during this era to give a mobster subplot in a comedy an outsized amount of real estate (THE MASK, MAN OF THE HOUSE, BLANK CHECK, THE PICK-UP ARTIST, THREE MEN AND A BABY, HOUSE GUEST, GETTING EVEN WITH DAD, VICE VERSA, JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE, the list goes on), but here it's at the expense of a resonant premise. This is probably the sort of movie they should actually do a remake of––to explore the existential thesis in a way that doesn't involve too much zany comedy or incongruous violence.

Anyway, the incongruous violence does give us a strange bit of trivia: William Forsythe at one point murders his consigliere Xander Berkeley just to prove to onlookers that he's a Man Not To Be Trifled With. He does this by sliding his knife into his ear when he least expects it. 

  

 
Alfre Woodard, playing Betty Lou's kidnapped lawyer, also clearly did not know she was in a comedy, and her horrified reaction would be no different in a serious gangster drama

This marks two movies made within a two-year span (James Cameron's TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY being the other) where Xander Berkeley's character is killed by someone casually sliding a blade into his head while he's going about his business, unawares.

 

I was going to make an entire Only now does it occur to me post based around this obscure fact, but the unharvested potential of THE GUN IN BETTY LOU'S HANDBAG inspired me to say a little more. Go ahead, Hollywood, remake this thing: perhaps with more pathos and fewer mafiosos.

Theater Review: JIM STEINMAN'S BAT OUT OF HELL––THE MUSICAL (2019, New York City Centre)

Bats: 5 of 5.

Running Time: 165 minutes, including intermission and curtain call.

I don't usually write theater reviews, but I think you'll see why I made an exception for BAT OUT OF HELL––THE MUSICAL.

Sure, there might not actually be bats in this show. Hell, there might not even be Hell. I guess we do get to see a projection of flames after a certain character dies, but I hardly think that counts. Consider this: all I wanted out of this show was to see a motorcycle being swarmed by bats as it was launched out of Satan's lava-spewin' jaws. Remarkably, the show does not deliver on this tableau, and yet it still stirred the depths of my soul. That probably had something to do with it being, essentially, as if Ken Russell and David Lynch had co-directed Samuel Beckett's porn parody adaptation of the "Dancing With Myself" music video. If I didn't know better, I'd think that somebody had been reading my 1990: BRONX WARRIORS / RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3 / ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK fan-fiction.
 
Courtesy of Specular

I don't understand why there haven't been more musicals inspired by Cannon Films' CYBORG (right on down to characters being named for famous guitars). Or why the visual vocabulary of early '80s local access cable, abandoned Eastern Bloc discotheques, cyberpunk rec rooms, and Jersey biker bar parking lots are so rarely combined. Or why more characters named Jaguar don't spell it like "Jagwire." I don't understand critics who are unsatisfied with the answer to every dramaturgical question being: "cocaine... and fever dreams."

Courtesy of Little Fang Photo

Don't walk––hell, don't even run––glide on a slow-moving motorcycle across a fog bank straight to this show. A good drinking game might be every time there is a Peter Pan reference. Or each time someone "offers their throat to the wolf with red roses." Or whenever someone collapses completely, limp in a melodramatic frenzy.

A part of me will be at this show forever. To paraphrase THE GRAPES OF WRATH: "I'll be in the dark. Wherever you look. Wherever there's a futuristic riot cop beatin' up a post-apocalyptic street urchin, I'll be there. I'll be in the way undead (?) kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready at the weird sewer dive bar they hang out at. An' when folks are doing open mic poetry night in the skyscrapers they build––why, I'll be there, too. Wherever there's a plutocrat-with-a-heart-of-gold struggling against the tide to name what part of his body hurts the most, I'll be there. I'll be there during the power ballads, and, um, I guess during the regular ballads, too. Wherever there's a Bridge n' Tunneler in the audience fondly mumbling along to 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light,' I'll be there. And whenever a kid gets so frustrated by their parents' adolescent sexual fumblings that they rip the engine block out of a car and hurl it into the orchestra pit... I will definitely, definitely be there."

Film Review: PELTS (2006, Dario Argento)

Stars: 3.5 of 5.
Running Time: 58 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Meat Loaf, John Saxon (ENTER THE DRAGON, TENEBRE, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET), music by Claudio Simonetti.
Tag-line: "Dario Argento: Director of Suspira, Opera, and Jenifer."

So, after the lackluster CARD PLAYER, the abysmal DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK?, and the pretty good but not-all-that Argentoish JENIFER, a lot of Argento fans didn't know what to expect from PELTS, his second stab at an episode for Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR. Is it good? Debatable. But is it Argento? Unwaveringly yes! John Saxon of early Bava and TENEBRE? Check. Claudio Simonetti of GOBLIN doing the music? Check. Vaguely arthouse sleaze with a slight Eurotrash tinge? Check.

Bright primary colors artfully presented? Check. Love for animals and a belief in animal rights? Oh, my, yes. Check. Over-the-top ridiculous gore, the likes of which you may have never seen? Check, check, and double-check.



To the point of which you won't know whether to laugh or cry. The plot involves poetic justice in its most literal form, as sleazy fur-trapper MEAT LOAF desires some magical raccoon pelts to win the heart of a local stripper. But all who touch said pelts meet their end in fashions relating to the animals' demises or the pelts' conditionings.

So you'll see people's eyes sewn shut, their heads caught in traps, their abdomens gutted, their skulls bashed in, their hands gnawed off, and- in the film's final, epic, unbelievable gore setpiece- their bodies skinned alive. Argento has succeeded in creating the bloodiest, trashiest, most eccentric public service announcement for animal rights the world has ever seen. And I do believe that we're all the better for it. 'Fur Kills,' indeed.

-Sean Gill

2009 Halloween Countdown

31. PROM NIGHT (1980, Paul Lynch)
30. PHENOMENA (1985, Dario Argento)
29. HOUSE OF WAX (1953, André de Toth)
28. SILENT RAGE (1982, Michael Miller)
27. BASKET CASE (1982, Frank Henenlotter)
26. THE DEADLY SPAWN (1983, Douglas McKeown)
25. PELTS (2006, Dario Argento)
24.
...

Film Review: ROADIE (1980, Alan Rudolph)

Stars: 3 of 5.
Running Time: 106 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Director Alan Rudolph (MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, AFTERGLOW). Meat Loaf, Kaki Hunter, Art Carney, Alice Cooper, Roy Orbison, Debbie Harry and Blondie, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Hank Williams Jr., Peter Frampton, Kurtwood Smith (RAMBO III, ROBOCOP, THAT 70's SHOW) in a Security Guard cameo.
Tag-lines: "The story of a boy and his equipment."
Best one-liner: "Well that's a strange and wondrous tale, son, but like everything else, it'll work if you let it." (said by an insane Art Carney).

A meandering, slightly mediocre, BLUES BROTHERS-style, rock 'n roll pileup of a movie that pays the bills by phoning in some car wrecks and barroom brawls, but justifies its cultish appeal via a number of truly, befittingly insane elements.

Hey, at least it's better than MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE.

Meat Loaf plays the eponymous ROADIE, fixing equipment for rock bands across the armadillo-covered roads and byways of Americana. Art Carney plays his dad, who putters and mutters and does all manner of things that I'm sure had some whacked-out rationalization in the screenwriter's mind.

Art Carney: irascible.

By the way, the owner of said screenwriting mind is named "Big Boy" (Medlin). Regardless of its shortcomings, however, ROADIE does have its share of street credentials: Debbie Harry giving surreal advice about the "Age of Specialization," and her band (Blondie) covering Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire;"

The Debbie Harry factor is pretty high.

a character ("The Groupie," played by Kaki Hunter) who wears a different, insanely colored pair of tight pants in nearly every scene; a slew of cameos from Roy Orbison to Hank Williams, Jr. to Peter Frampton; and, as its 'piece de resistance,' a dinner with Alice Cooper that involves a boa constrictor and one of those Martian bug-out stress relievers dressed as Alice himself!

Alice Cooper orders around some security flunkies....including (!) Kurtwood Smith (on the left).

So despite possessing the storytelling aptitude of a tipsy gnat, ROADIE has some pretty rockin' tunes (by the likes of Pat Benatar, Cheap Trick, Styx, The B-52's and a shit-ton of others) and a palpable dive bar rock concert atmosphere. If this sounds up your alley, then I guess you can lose yourself in the ambience, kick back some beer (straight from the pitcher), relax, and enjoy yourself some ROADIE.

-Sean Gill