Only now does it occur to me... MR. WRONG (1996)

Only now does it occur to me... could MR. WRONG, a screwball anti-romantic comedy and notorious box office bomb starring Ellen DeGeneres in her only live-action-feature leading role (to date), directed by longtime John Carpenter crony Nick Castle, and co-written by sci-fi/horror legend Richard Matheson's son Chris and THE MORNING SHOW's showrunner Kerry Ehrin... be as bad as they say? 

The answer: sort of!



This, a project of such aforementioned and bizarre pedigree, is ultimately a delivery system for a series of wacky situations and horrified expressions in the vein of Jerry Lewis (with a messy pixie cut).

 It begins with a Saul Bass-inspired credits sequence



 and ends with a gunfight in Mexico and a ride into the sunset.

In between, a number of events take place. 

Ellen's character Martha is a television producer for a local San Diego morning show

starring Robert Goulet (of Broadway and BEETLEJUICE fame), 

 
 

which seems to weirdly prefigure Ellen's own rise and fall as a daytime TV star as well as co-writer Kerry Ehrin's own involvement with Apple TV's THE MORNING SHOW.

Ellen's character, who is styled exactly as she appears on her own popular sitcom ELLEN (1994-1998), is struggling to find "Mr. Right." 

And that there is a reference to BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE inserted by co-writer Chris Matheson, who also wrote all three BILL AND TED films.


She is aided in her quest by a Best Friend™(the likeable Ellen Cleghorne, of ARMAGEDDON and COYOTE UGLY)

 

who, because it was the 1990s, is contractually obligated to eat Lite yogurt throughout and provide generic encouragement.

Despite her own assistant (John Livingstone, of THE NET and EDTV) clearly being the screenplay's idea of her "perfect match hiding in plain sight," 


Here he is, asking her out to go see Richard Burton in BLUEBEARD (1972), an ignominious film I have reviewed on this very site.

Ellen still goes on the prowl and has an accidental meet-cute with Bill Pullman (who would soon wipe his involvement with this project from the cultural memory with the near-immediate one-two punch of INDEPENDENCE DAY and LOST HIGHWAY).

 

Pullman is depicted as a suave, cowboy-poet who's the heir to an enormous fortune. He seems perfect, at least until she discovers that, wait... he's... Mr. Wrong!

  

The warning signs are not subtle, and the comedy is played as broad as a barn door. There are more understated Pepé le Pew-centric episodes of THE LOONEY TUNES. First, he takes her to a convenience store to shoplift Blatz beers, crushing the empties on his forehead and flinging them from his convertible at bystanders.

 
I fail to understand how this is a red flag tho

Next, he love-bombs her with a bounty of unwanted gifts and comes to her window in the night dressed, inexplicably, as a clown on stilts.

 

This is probably the closest the film comes to overtly referencing HALLOWEEN. As I'm sure you all know, MR. WRONG's director (Nick Castle) played behind-the-mask Michael Myers in 1978's HALLOWEEN. He was also the co-writer of Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.

Just when she thinks it can't get any worse, Ellen is also stalked by Pullman's ex Inga––a zany character played by two-time Oscar nominee Joan Cusack.

 

She probably gets about ten minutes of screentime, but she acquits herself with trashy élan.

This leads Ellen to hire a private eye (fellow Oscar nominee Dean Stockwell of BLUE VELVET, QUANTUM LEAP, and DUNE fame) who uncovers that Inga was involved in a plot to assassinate Stevie Nicks

 

 

which feels like a bizarrely specific detail for this screenplay to concoct. Dean Stockwell also, mostly acquits himself. He, Cusack, and Ellen Cleghorne might be the only ones who do.

Yep, this thing is a slapstick mess. It struggles with tone, and there's zero chemistry between the leads: romantic, comedic, or otherwise. Castle does a slick enough job assembling the picture (there are a few striking Hitchcock-inspired visuals and transitions), but the entire film feels like studio execs were trying force an Ellen-sized peg into a Jim Carrey-shaped hole.

Fourteen months after the release of MR. WRONG, Ellen would go on to give her iconic "Yep, I'm gay" interview to TIME magazine. One can imagine that the ham-handed attempts to mold her into a blandly heteronormative studio asset played some role in this decision. 

Only now does it occur to me... BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980)

Only now does it occur to me... that James Cameron first encountered the "TERMINATOR font" while working for Roger Corman.

What we have here is a John Sayles (!) scripted, low-ish budget sci-fi remake of Akira Kurosawa's THE SEVEN SAMURAI, starring a hodgepodge of affordable actors, from Richard Thomas (THE WALTONS) to Robert Vaughn (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) to John Saxon (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) to Sybil Danning (REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS) to George Peppard (THE A-TEAM). It's more enjoyable than you might expect––slightly better than STARCRASH (1978) or KRULL (1983), but pretty much playing in the same "poor man's STAR WAR" sandbox. I rate it lower than FLASH GORDON (1980), if that says anything.

According to James Cameron (credited as co-art director), he was responsible for most of the film's special effects, which are quite impressive for the budget. For comparison, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK had a $30.5 million budget, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS had a $2 million budget, and there are several spaceships which easily look good enough to be in STAR WARS. (The same cannot be said for the sets, costumes, and makeup effects.)

Anyway, it's notable that this early Cameron effort uses the same font that Cameron would make famous in THE TERMINATOR (I cannot find any interview where this is mentioned––since he had such an outsize role in the art direction, production design, and special effects, it's possible he helped pick out the font.)

It's also where Cameron met composer James Horner,

and the two would go on to collaborate many times before Horner's death––from ALIENS to TITANIC to two AVATAR films. In all, quite a formative experience for the 25-year-old Cameron.

Only now does it occur to me... HELLRAISER VII: DEADER (2005)

Only does it occur to me... wakka wakka wakka. What do you think I'm going to say here? 

Yet another HELLRAISER sequel based off of an unrelated spec script that managed to shoehorn Pinhead into its final draft. Same director (Rick Bota) as HELLRAISER VI: HELLSEEKER, which was the worst one to that point and kinda felt like LAW AND ORDER: CENOBITE CRIMES UNIT. I'm nostalgic for the days when HELLRAISER sequels had CD-flinging DJ Cenobites, meaty roles for Adam Scott, and featured Lament Configuration-inspired spaceships.

With "DEADER," we certainly have a winner for "dumbest HELLRAISER sequel subtitle" among the eleven films (and counting). I guess the Lament Configuration used to just "kill people dead" and send them to S&M hell dimension... now it makes them "deader?" 

 (The title actually comes from the name of a cult within the film, called "The Deaders." No, that does not make it better.)

Basically, this movie half-heartedly tries to answer the question, "what if Pinhead showed up in TRAINSPOTTING?" 

 

 

It also manages to employ Kari Wuhrer, 

a poor man's Craig T. Nelson (Simon Kunz), 

and a knock-off Flea (Marc Warren). 

Wuhrer is fine, though this role clearly should've been Fairuza Balk's.

Weirdly, this thing manages to feel more like a HELLRAISER movie than the prior 2 installments, and to be fair, this thing is a hair better than HELLRAISER VI: HELLSEEKER. I mean, they shot it in Romania, and the city of Bucharest is cool. It's the only cool thing in this movie.

My favorite quote from the Wikipedia page for this movie is, "Production was difficult due to the inability of the Americans in the cast and crew to understand the Romanian set workers and actors." Yep, that tracks. Nice work, HELLRAISER VII!

Only now does it occur to me... HELLRAISER VI: HELLSEEKER (2002)

Only now does it occur to me... that half of these HELLRAISER sequels are basically JACOB'S LADDER fanfic with a Pinhead cameo. 

 

This is mostly because they began as rejected horror spec scripts which found new life while Miramax was kicking the can down the road and legally keeping the rights to HELLRAISER by crapping out a fresh installment every couple of years.

I've been working my way through the canon over the years on this blog, and as far as the JACOB'S LADDER aesthetic goes, this one makes HELLRAISER V: INFERNO look like a David Lynch film or a Hieronymous Bosch painting.

We're treated to simply the most generic Cenobites imaginable, borrowing the "fleshy, restitched pillowcase" look from JACOB'S LADDER, but forgetting that Adrian Lyne used that so effectively with only the briefest of glimpses and freaky, sped-up frame rates.

Pinhead's appearances are the very definition of Contractually Obligated. This is definitely the first HELLRAISER installment where the major creative force was a team of entertainment lawyers.

The fact that the movie dangles the return of Kirsty (Ashley Laurence, heroine of HELLRAISERS I-III) as its main selling point 

and proceeds to give us about three minutes' worth of Kirsty via a weakly-constructed frame story––

 

this is what actively antagonizes the viewer. Supposedly this was done with an actual iota of Clive Barker input, which is surprising. (Hey, take that paycheck, Clive, no shame!) 

But what HELLSEEKER actually delivers is a movie starring "budget Will Patton" (Dean Winters, now most notorious for his appearances as "Mayhem" in Allstate commercials)

who gives us none of the Tim Robbins pathos which could make this work, and instead plays it (as he was directed, I assume) with the nonspecificity of pre-prestige '90s television, as if this is LAW AND ORDER: CENOBITE CRIMES UNIT. Woof!

Only now does it occur to me... THE WRAITH (1986)

Only now does it occur to me... that THE WRAITH is the only opportunity you'll have to see the ghost of Charlie Sheen wearing a faux-H.R. Giger stillsuit 

 

and seeking revenge on a gang of the world's oldest teenagers, a utopian coalition of punks, jocks, nerds, tweakers, and middle-aged bad boys,

 including everyone from Clint Howard with an ERASERHEAD hairdo

to a smug and scenery-devouring Nick Cassavetes.

 

Throw in Randy Quaid as the surly Sheriff and between this Sheen/Cassavetes/Howard/Quaid nexus, you begin realize that almost everybody involved has a significantly more famous relative!

 

This is technically a horror movie, but it has a lot more in common with MAD MAX or HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, as it's a part-sci-fi/part-supernatural/part-Western inflected revenge actioner featuring a vigilante specter driving a cyberpunk murder car around the American Southwest. It's an '80s movie that's drenched in nostalgia for the 1950s; so much so that the inciting incident is "murder by drag race." It's set in Tucson, Arizona (like the '80s Cannon giallo, WHITE OF THE EYE!) so there's plenty of saguaro cacti

 

and roadside charm.

 

Large chunks of the film take place at "Big Kay's Burger," an AMERICAN GRAFFITI-style teen drive-in hangout with roller-skatin' waitresses,

 

 

and at one point there's an extended "Makin' Burgers" montage set to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love"

 

which is a nice reminder that the director (Mike Marvin) also directed the (very real) HAMBURGER: THE MOTION PICTURE.

There are a number of John Carpenter references sprinkled throughout: the supernatural car element certainly speaks to CHRISTINE, at one point someone describes ghost-Charlie Sheen as "weird and pissed off" (referencing a line of dialogue from THE THING), and Randy Quaid's character is named "Loomis," like Donald Pleasence from HALLOWEEN.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention Sherilyn Fenn ("Audrey Horne" from TWIN PEAKS), who is trapped in a love triangle between ghost-Sheen and the man who killed him (Nick Cassavetes). Here, Fenn has none of the stylish charm that defines and elevates her iconic role in TWIN PEAKS (this particular role is severely underwritten, and all of her scenes with Charlie Sheen were rushed into a single day's shoot), and the best part of her performance is probably the parade of terrible/amazing Southwestern '80s outfits they forced her to wear.

 
Lotta fringe  

 
Were there supposed to be pants? 

Spray-tan overdose

Also, word on the street is that Oliver Stone hated THE WRAITH, and believed that Sheen's presence in such a B-movie would make a negative impact on PLATOON's Oscar chances. He didn't need to worry, as he still walked away with a Best Director statue, and PLATOON won Best Picture. (I'd have given it to THE MISSION or A ROOM WITH A VIEW, myself.)