Film Review: RED DAWN (1984, John Milius)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 114 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Directed by John Milius (writer of APOCALYPSE NOW, EXTREME PREJUDICE, parts of DIRTY HARRY; director of BIG WEDNESDAY, DILLINGER, CONAN THE BARBARIAN). Starring Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, C. Thomas Howell, Harry Dean Stanton, Powers Boothe, Ben Johnson (DILLINGER), Darren Dalton (THE OUTSIDERS), Brad Savage (SALEM'S LOT), Vladek Sheybal (Mr. Boogalow in THE APPLE). Cinematography by Ric Waite (THE LONG RIDERS, COBRA). I must note that about half the cast had just 'graduated' from working with Francis Ford Coppola (on the OUTSIDERS), and, likely as a result, are completely 'on' and connected to the material. Harry Dean Stanton manages to emit more pathos in a few minutes of screen time than most can aspire to in an entire career. Powers Boothe's brief appearance is similarly weighty.
Tag-line: "A full scale military invasion by foreign troops begins. Total surprise. Almost total success . . . ."
Best exchange: "What about Europe?" –"I guess they figured twice in one century was enough. They're sitting this one out."

Outside a rural classroom window, paratroopers gracefully drift down from between the clouds. A schoolteacher, hypnotized by the sight, staggers outside- and the cracks of rifles rudely interrupt the reverie.

RED DAWN has entrancing imagery, worthy of Ford or Malick: children huddled on rocky crags, eating canned beans and evading capture; a world of rape, occupation, fathers in cages. You can choose to see this film through many lenses- a student's survivalist daydream, a cautionary tale for a country gone soft, THE BREAKFAST CLUB meets SALVADOR, or a parallel dimension where the Cold War plays out like Philip K. Dick's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

It's a film that focuses on teenage awkwardness- not at sex, but at war. Like WARGAMES, released the previous year, it features marketable young actors forced to accept our world's destructive horrors. But while WARGAMES' terror was confined to one side of a computer monitor, RED DAWN buries your face in the dust and forces you to watch your neighbors as they're shot in the street like dogs.

It puts you in the shoes of an insurgency and in the beleaguered minds of the occupying force. Jingoists can claim that the film gives legitimacy to Reagan, the Military Industrial Complex, Red-Baiting, or what-have-you, but instead, it only demonstrates the impotence of a System that promises safety but has never experienced true loss.

If a situation such as the one in RED DAWN were to arise, the saviors would not be those who wear flag pins and shit-eating grins, nor the blue blood a-holes who, in the film, roll over like so many Rocky Mountain Pétains. It will be the downtrodden, those who have lost the most, those who have witnessed injustice and nurtured their righteous anger like a precious resource.

Che was a medical student, Georges Bidault (of the Free French) was a history teacher, Lech Walesa worked in a shipyard, Nelson Mandela was a clerk at a law firm, and here, the Wolverines were just some high school students in Anywhere, U.S.A...

Five stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: MESSENGER OF DEATH (1988, J. Lee Thompson)

Stars: 2.5 of 5.
Running Time: 91 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Charles Bronson, Laurence Luckinbill. Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Directed by J. Lee Thompson (DEATH WISH 4, ST. IVES, CAPE FEAR, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE).
Tag-line: "What the cops can't do, he will." (But they don't say that he'll do it by asking questions and publishing articles, not by gunning down an army of break-dancers.)
Best one-liner: "Bastard child killer!"

MESSENGER OF DEATH is kinda like when all you've got is a warm Schlitz. You like it 'in theory,' you consume it because you feel you have to, and when it's done, you find solace in saying 'well, that wasn't the worst thing ever.'

Bronson: a real trouper.

Still, this is one of the weakest Cannon/Bronson collaborations. Let's get down to brass tacks: BRONSON DOES NOT KILL ANYONE IN THIS MOVIE. Whoa-whoa-whoa! It's okay, take a minute if you have to. Breathe deeply. Look, I can just stop telling you about it if you're gonna flip out. Shall I go on? Okay. He's a newspaper reporter, not a vigilante. The plot involves polygamist compounds, intra-family rivalries, and corporate interests. It's more like a MURDER, SHE WROTE episode than DEATH WISH III. (And though it doesn't really possess any degree of 'quality,' it's clear that the producers of HBO's excellent BIG LOVE watched this at least once.) Bronson picks up a gun, but it's just to shoot an empty coffin.

All of the promotional materials were based around this 10 second scene.

He at one point waves a white flag of surrender.

Bronson gets a little classy with a tux a couple times, but this ain't even ST. IVES.

There's a plot offshoot with Laurence Luckinbill (THE BOYS IN THE BAND) as a glad-handing a-hole politico.

Maybe I've just been spoiled by Bronson mowing down legions of punks with a Browning machine gun. He doesn't even beat anyone up until the last 15 minutes,


though he does smack a guy out of a window with a garbage can (thus fulfilling the 'guy flung out of window' requirement- see also: THE STONE KILLER, ST. IVES, DEATH WISH 2, 3, and 4), and nonchalantly kicks the same guy down some stairs later.


Note the limp wrists of the defeated henchman.

He also yells "Bastard child killer!" without a pause or an emphasis,

so it's unclear if he's calling the killer himself a bastard, or if he's calling the polygamist children he killed 'bastards,' because technically they would be, under official Utah law or whatever. Whew. Anyway, this late in the game Bronson violence leaves you with a slightly better taste in your mouth than you'd have otherwise from the rest of the film, so here's almost three stars, I guess.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: PRIVATE PARTS (1972, Paul Bartel)

Stars: 4 of 5. Running Time: 87 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: Paul Bartel, Andrew Davis, Laurie Main (WINNIE THE POOH narrator), Lucille Benson (DUEL, HALLOWEEN II), Ayn Ruymen (some guest spots on 70's and 80's TV like QUINCY and HAWAII 5-0). Tag-line: "A most bizarre voyage into the psycho sexual!" Best one-liner: "Cheryl dear, when you're older, you'll realize that the body is a prison that traps and bends the natural spirit to its will. It makes us weak or sick or ugly, it makes us into men or women or whatever it likes, whether we like it or not." PRIVATE PARTS is cult legend Paul Bartel's feature film debut, and he manages, even at this early stage, to provide the perfect blend of black comedic timing, jaw-dropping shock, and art house flavor- it's a work that remains as fresh today as I'm sure it was back in 1972. In form and aesthetics, the film owes a great deal to the works of Alfred Hitchcock (VERTIGO, PSYCHO), Mario Bava (BLOOD AND BLACK LACE), and Michelangelo Antonioni (BLOW-UP), but that is not to say that Bartel didn't leave his own peculiar artistic stamp on the proceedings.

 

  

I picture this as Paul Bartel's ALICE IN WONDERLAND: our heroine Cheryl (or, as everyone says, "Chair-yl") chases her innocence 'through the peep-hole,' so to speak, and she meets all variety of colorful characters, leather-daddy priests, wackos, and pervs (look for a Bartel cameo as 'Man in the Park at Night').

 

   

The labyrinthine, mod-Gothic visuals are photographed by future director Andrew Davis (UNDER SIEGE, THE FUGITIVE), with each space captured as a distinct, painstakingly-crafted diorama, not unlike the colored rooms in Corman and Roeg's MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.

 

  

 

There are moments of genuine terror: everything involving the psychosexual trauma of the freakish, watery blow-up doll is handled expertly: it's strange, outrageous, unsettling, and provides one of the most eerie images ever committed to celluloid. Other elements, like a photograph of a nipple in the photographer's apartment blown up to grotesque proportions, provide an excellent visual metaphor for the delicate balance between taboo and normalcy. But this movie is also hilarious, and it ends, like most Bartel films (from DEATH RACE 2000 to EATING RAOUL) on a barrage of perfectly set-up zingers. 

 

 

Four stars, and a fitting start to a career that frequently toed the fine line between the monstrous and the inane, and managed to celebrate human eccentricity and nonconformity in forms both delightful and chilling.

Film Review: THE OFFENCE (1972, Sidney Lumet)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 112 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Directed by Sidney Lumet (DOG DAY AFTERNOON, Q&A, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, FAIL-SAFE, FIND ME GUILTY). Starring Sean Connery, Trevor Howard (BRIEF ENCOUNTER, an elder in SUPERMAN), Ian Bannen (nominated for an Oscar for FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, in Castellari's INGLORIOUS BASTARDS and Gibson's BRAVEHEART), Vivien Merchant (FRENZY). Based on the play and written by John Hopkins (THUNDERBALL).
Tag-line: "After 20 years what Detective-Sergeant Johnson has seen and done is destroying him."

Inside the man, there is another man. This is the issue at the heart of John Hopkins' masterful play, THIS STORY OF YOURS, which was adapted to film by the legendary Sidney Lumet (12 ANGRY MEN, THE HILL). One of the best, frequently overlooked, director/actor collaborations (which in my mind can stand tall beside the likes of Scorsese/De Niro or von Sternberg/Dietrich) is that between Lumet and Sean Connery (who was allowed to make his "little art film" as part of a deal with UA for playing Bond once more). He transforms 'Detective Sgt. Johnson' into perhaps his greatest role, and it's one of the great tortured souls in cinema, alongside Lorre in M and Milland in THE LOST WEEKEND.

Johnson finds himself in a terrible place, completely unsure of how he got there- his home life is a war of attrition between himself and the missus; his work life is a barrage of banality, bureaucracy, and brutality; and his inner life is an endless horrorshow- thousands and thousands of pictures and urges and compulsions that won't stop, that won't stop, no matter how hard he concentrates, no matter how hard he tries to extinguish them.

While interrogating an accused child molester, he subconsciously sees a chance for punishment, confession, perhaps even Tabula rasa, a clean slate. We delve deep, past the oppressive glow of the overhead lamp, into the darkest abyss... Perhaps the quotidian horror of it all can be best illustrated by a brief shot of a policeman, vacantly, aimlessly stabbing a pond with a stick, trying to find a child's corpse. As the suspect, Ian Bannen is absolutely brilliant- slimy, otherworldly, compelling:

As Johnson's higher-up, Trevor Howard brings his wise, lionhearted presence to the first character to stand up to Johnson's bullishness:

Visually, the film recalls the best of Melville and Roeg: fishbowl lenses, muted landscapes, entrancing slow motion, and fractured editing, which combine to build the perfect unsettling atmosphere. Truly one of the great films.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: MANIAC COP 2 (1990, William Lustig)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 90 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Written by Larry Cohen. Music by Jay Chattaway. Starring Robert Z'Dar (Face in TANGO & CASH), Robert Davi (THE GOONIES), Clarence Williams III (52 PICK-UP, TWIN PEAKS), Charles Napier (SOMETHING WILD, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), Bruce Campbell, Danny Trejo, Michael Lerner (BARTON FINK, THE CANDIDATE), Claudia Christian (A GNOME NAMED GNORM), and Leo Rossi (RIVER'S EDGE, LEONARD PT. 6).

Tag-line: "You Have The Right To Remain Silent...Forever!"
Best one-liner: "There's a piece of Cordell in every cop. Every time arresting some mutt isn't enough, because we know they'll be back on the streets before we even do the paperwork. Every time we pull a trigger and it feels good, because no lawyers can reverse that. It all comes down to justice and pressure. There's only that much difference between a cop and a maniac cop."

I had fairly low expectations for MANIAC COP 2, but somehow ended up liking it better than the first. Though parts of it lag, writer Larry Cohen (ITS ALIVE, Q) and director Bill Lustig (VIGILANTE, MANIAC) punctuate the film with visually inventive and darkly humorous setpieces. The main title is accompanied by a cacophony of slice n' dice sound effects, and the opening involves a bodega robbery where a psycho, upon learning there's no cash, forces the clerk to start scratching off instant lotto tickets. The sequence is played for frenetic laughs, but the genuine deranged quality of the robber and some effective mood lighting make the scene quite eerie and artistic, and far better than it ought to be- a sentiment that could be applied to the film as a whole.

The Maniac Cop teams up with a Times Square slasher (who was meant to be played by Joe Spinell, R.I.P., the original MANIAC) and protagonist duties fall upon the bland but serviceable Claudia Christian (THE HIDDEN) and Robert Davi (THE GOONIES, DIE HARD), who delivers another excellent method performance as Robert Davi.


Jaw-dropping highlights include the Maniac Cop's TERMINATOR-style assault on a police station, which begins with a shooting range (that shoots back!) and ends with the truly macabre imagery of the Cop casually walking through layers of plate glass as if they were cobwebs.

There're amusing bit parts by Danny Trejo and Clarence Williams III as incredulous prisoners, and it leads to a ludicrous asbestos suit finale at the Maniac Cop's former penitentiary.

Now, Lustig is a true aficionado of bodies flung from buildings (he included THE STONE KILLER in one of his annual 'Bill Lustig presents' NYC screening series!), and the mind-blowing sight he posits here (two flaming bodies spiraling downward in slow mo) may just take the cake!


It all ends with a rap that's somehow a cross between the verse of 'Rico Suave' and the whistling melodies of Ennio Morricone. "Set 'im on fire, or shoot 'im with an Uzi/ But he'll still show up in your Jacuzzi. They killed him once/ but he came back/ he's the m-m-m-m-m-m-maniac! I know it sounds like jive/ we're not sure if he's dead or alive." Bravo.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: LEVIATHAN (1989, George P. Cosmatos)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 98 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Written by David Webb Peoples (UNFORGIVEN, SOLDIER, BLADE RUNNER). Starring Peter Weller (BUCKAROO BANZAI, NAKED LUNCH, ROBOCOP), Ernie Hudson (THE SUBSTITUTE, GHOSTBUSTERS), Richard Crenna (RAMBO, UN FLIC), Amanda Pays (MAX HEADROOM), Daniel Stern (HOME ALONE, narrator on THE WONDER YEARS), Hector Elizando (PRETTY WOMAN, AMERICAN GIGOLO), Meg Foster (THEY LIVE, STEPFATHER II). Music by Jerry Goldsmith (CHINATOWN, ALIEN, RAMBO). Special effects by Stan Winston (PREDATOR, THE TERMINATOR, JURASSIC PARK).
Tag-line: "Welcome to your worst nightmare, welcome to Leviathan." (...Butt-horn?)
Best one-liner: "Say 'Ahhh,' motherfucker!"

"That's JUST great! You tellin' me we got a god damn Dracula in here with us?" Like its human-absorbing, hybrid fish-creature star, LEVIATHAN is a film built entirely from pre-existing components. Everything here, we've seen before, be it in THE THING or ALIEN or THE ABYSS. We've already seen Peter Weller (ROBOCOP) and Ernie Hudson (GHOSTBUSTERS) hoist gigantic futuristic weapons around.

Daniel Stern (HOME ALONE) opens soda cans with his mouth and is always talkin' about how much he'd like the female crew members to sit on his face. There's the British woman (Amanda Pays) who requires no character development, because her accent already tells us that she's a quick-witted expert of some kind. We got Richard Crenna (FIRST BLOOD) sitting in front of an ancient monitor, shaking his head at some statistics, EXACTLY like Wilford Brimley does in THE THING.


The creature even drains the blood supply! We've got a nefarious corporate master played by the evil chick from THEY LIVE.

And it's a cautionary tale: the chain of events (that causes slavering, mutating monsters to emerge) all starts with a practical joke and some purloined booze. Somehow that's even worse than the Jason movies, where sex begets death. Jokin' around equals death? Jeez! Cut us some slack!

Anyway, I don't think I've yet mentioned that I really enjoyed this movie. Like ACTION JACKSON or UNDER SIEGE, you don't really care that it's completely unoriginal. Plus our eel-man comes courtesy of FX master Stan Winston, and the screenplay's by David Webb Peoples (BLADE RUNNER, UNFORGIVEN, TWELVE MONKEYS), so clearly this isn't really catering to the least common denominator. And Weller is great.

Wearing a hot pink and blue trucker hat, he exudes layers of 'performance' (as an actor in the film, and pretending to be a 'tough as nails captain-type' for the benefit of his crew), and ends the film by punching a woman in the face. Only you can get away with that kinda thing, Pete. Four stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: JOHNNY HANDSOME (1989, Walter Hill)

Stars: 3 of 5.
Running Time: 94 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Lance Henriksen, Morgan Freeman, Forest Whitaker, Elizabeth McGovern, Carpenter-fave Peter Jason, Scott Wilson (IN COLD BLOOD, THE GREAT GATSBY). Music by Ry Cooder. Based on a novel by John Godey.
Tag-line: "Revenge has a new face."
Best one-liner: "GEEK!"

Ah, Mickey Rourke. You gotta love a guy who frequently compared his party-heavy personal life in the 80's to HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. Not 'HALLOWEEN,' not the 'HALLOWEEN series.' HALLOWEEN III. (That's the one where Irishmen, who have stolen part of Stonehenge, orchestrate a sinister plan to kill trick-or-treaters via evil, transformative masks.)

I like to think a little of that comes through, especially here in JOHNNY HANDSOME, one in a slew of masterful Rourke performances from the 80's. Rourke dives headfirst into a role that has him in turns channeling the disfigured John Hurt role in THE ELEPHANT MAN, the 'hood with a new face' Humphrey Bogart role in DARK PASSAGE, and the 'psychologically reformed' criminal Malcolm McDowell role in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.


Directed by action maestro Walter Hill (fresh off RED HEAT and EXTREME PREJUDICE); and co-starring sleazy cop Morgan Freeman, fresh-faced surgeon Forest Whitaker, Ellen Barkin (channeling a homicidal, Louisianian Cyndi Lauper),

and stone cold psycho Lance Henriksen (wearing sleeveless cowboy shirts and a giant earring), I feel like this should have been a masterpiece. But it's not. It's enjoyable enough, but it's difficult to enumerate exactly why Hill can't pull it off. It LOOKS great. DP Matthew F. Leonetti (POLTERGEIST, WEIRD SCIENCE) frames many shots wonderfully with neon, foreground elements, and shadows; recalling imagery of bandages being unpeeled from one's eyes. Ry Cooder (PARIS TEXAS, SOUTHERN COMFORT) delivers a solid, if not entirely appropriate, score. The story's sound, too, based on a novel by John Godey (THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1, 2, 3). But something fails in the pacing, and the story fails to truly congeal: by the end, you don't really care about the characters, and it's certainly not the fault of the actors. It's a solid enough little movie, but you can't help but feel that it had the potential to be a classic. Three stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983, Sam Firstenberg)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 90 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Sho Kosugi (ENTER THE NINJA), Sho's son Kane Kosugi (9 DEATHS OF THE NINJA), Arthur Roberts (CHOPPING MALL, TRANSYLVANIA TWIST), Professor Toru Tanaka (PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, THE RUNNING MAN), director Sam Firstenberg (BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, AMERICAN NINJA), writer James R. Silke (KING SOLOMON'S MINES, THE BARBARIAN BROTHERS MOVIE).
Tag-line: "400 years of training in the art of sudden death... unleashed on 20th century America."
Best one-liner: "Only a ninja can stop a ninja."

My mind's been blown, my sternum's been broken in nine different places, and a bunch of spikes have been spat in my face- we are talkin' cream of the crop Cannon here. This is DEATH WISH 3 good. REVENGE OF THE NINJA promises, then delivers, incompetent ninja action. Is there any other kind of ninja action that you need? This movie is all about takin' a leak in some dingy bathroom, an eyeliner-wearin' ninja sneaks up behind you, you spin around and say "What the fuck is this, Halloween?," and then you get stabbed with like 8 different ninja implements. Before I proceed with "MYTH VS. FACT- REVENGE OF THE NINJA EDITION," allow me to share a few things I learned from this movie.

#1. A ninja can be very dangerous, even in doll form. Note the finger wound:


#2.


#3. This is the proper way to travel between buildings.


#4.


#5. All of these guys hang out together at the playground on a Saturday afternoon.

Is that Robert Duvall from APOCALYPSE NOW?

#6. This is how a ninja bleeds.


#7. If you're going to work out, you're going to need pants.


#8. Forgetting your pants to your workout is a fantastic way to let Sho Kosugi know that you're interested, romantically.


#9. "What the shit is this?" is the proper response to seeing a homeless man killed with a throwing star.


#10. Generic police forces who don't answer to any particular jurisdiction are the ones who investigate ninja related crimes.


Alright, now that we've all learned a few things, allow me to tackle a few common misconceptions:

MYTH: You can defeat a ninja with something besides another ninja.

FACT: No.

MYTH: Golan and Globus found a way to make a hot tub integral to the plot of this movie.
FACT: Golan and Globus found a way to make three SEPARATE hot tubs integral to the plot of this movie.

MYTH: Real ninja don't carry around fiberglass dummies of themselves.
FACT: It's an essential tool in the ninja arsenal, and it totally buys you like, 10 seconds.

MYTH: The ninja were all evil.

FACT: No.

MYTH: Gangs are generally divided amongst racial lines.

FACT: The henchmen and gangs here are extremely integrated. So the movie wouldn't be racist. We get, for example, a Native American named "Chief" who threatens to scalp people. I'm surprised the gang didn't have a wheelchair-using Pacific Islander.



MYTH: Depicting violence against children as cathartic is 'taboo.'



FACT: The kid is hot tonite! Kane Kosugi (Sho's son, 9) gets some vicious action sequences. Watch him kick the shit out of a gang of bullies. So satisfying. Watch him get slapped in the face, thrown, smacked with a pole, tied up, and punched. Watch another kid take a throwing star in the FACE. This movie is brutal.

MYTH: You can never have too much Professor Toru Tanaka.

FACT: A semi-nude Tanaka rape scene is too much Tanaka.

MYTH: The greatest thing to ever take place in a Cannon film involves breakdancing and/or Charles Bronson.

FACT: Add "Sho Kosugi slicing a dude's 'stache in half with a razor fan" to the short list.

Five (ninja) stars, and top-tier Golan-Globus. Nice work, gentlemen.

-Sean Gill