Film Review: LOOSE CANNONS (1990, Bob Clark)

Stars: ? of 5.
Running Time: 94 minutes.
Tag-line: "A comedy with personality... lots of them."
Notable Cast or Crew: Gene Hackman (THE CONVERSATION, UNFORGIVEN), Dan Aykroyd (DOCTOR DETROIT, GHOSTBUSTERS, DRIVING MISS DAISY), Dom DeLuise (THE CANNONBALL RUN, MUNCHIE), Ronny Cox (ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL, DELIVERANCE), Robert Prosky (CHRISTINE, LAST ACTION HERO, GREMLINS 2), Paul Koslo (VANISHING POINT, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN, ROBOT JOX), Leon Rippy (STARGATE, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER), David Alan Grier (IN LIVING COLOR, JUMANJI), Tobin Bell ("Jigsaw" in the SAW movies), Bill Fagerbakke (Mick Garris' THE STAND, SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS).  Music by Paul Zaza (PROM NIGHT, PORKY'S).  Written by Richard Matheson (THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, I AM LEGEND, THE TWILIGHT ZONE), Richard Christian Matheson (THREE O' CLOCK HIGH, AMAZING STORIES), and Bob Clark (BLACK CHRISTMAS, A CHRISTMAS STORY, PORKY'S).
Best One-liner: "Humpty Dumpty's back on the wall!"

How do we imagine our art will be digested?  At the perfect time and place, by the perfect audience?  When I was eleven years old, I watched AMERICAN GRAFFITI, because I loved George Lucas and his STAR WARS.  I liked it, but didn't really get it.  I wasn't old enough.  Saw it again when I was nineteen.  I was beginning to understand.  Take Noah Baumbach's KICKING AND SCREAMING: it's a film about listless college graduates entering the real world.  I rented it with my friends, on VHS, the last week of college before commencement.  We loved it, but I didn't realize how hard it could hit until I watched it four months later, scraping along in a dirty, rented room.  I don't think they should assign THE GREAT GATSBY to high school kids.  I don't think you can properly unravel it until you've had a dream and tried to chase it.
Naturally, all of this begs the question: when is the proper time to watch LOOSE CANNONS?

LOOSE CANNONS purports to be a loose and zany collection of scenes arranged into a buddy cop comedy involving split personalities.

Indeed, the film itself suffers from multiple personality disorder: it is produced by Aaron Spelling and René Dupont; the former built a television empire founded on garish, bourgeois romantic fantasy (THE LOVE BOAT, MELROSE PLACE, DYNASTY, BEVERLY HILLS 90210, SUNSET BEACH, etc.) and the latter produced films for Charles Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick (A KING IN NEW YORK and LOLITA, respectively).  It is written by horror/sci-fi legend Richard Matheson (who wrote some of the best TWILIGHT ZONES and serious novels like SOMEWHERE IN TIME and WHAT DREAMS MAY COME) and his son, Richard Christian Matheson.  It is directed and co-written by Bob Clark, who brought us family fare like A CHRISTMAS STORY, teen sex comedies like PORKY'S, holiday slashers like BLACK CHRISTMAS, and indescribable musical trainwrecks like RHINESTONE.  It stars an A-list dramatic actor (Gene Hackman) and a (then) A-list comedic actor (Dan Aykroyd).

It co-stars Dom DeLuise and an entire battery of "that guy!" character actors from gritty crime flicks of the 70s and 80s.  It features a soundtrack from Paul Zaza, who oversaw the horror-disco-sanity of PROM NIGHT.  The plot involves Nazi sex tapes and S&M and one-liners and mental illness––hey, what is this, anyway?  Who was this made for?  Who was meant to digest it? And when? 

In 1990, Siskel and Ebert described it as "the cop-buddy comedy that hits new lows in an undisputed field."  It was a financial failure, recouping only $5 million of a $15 million budget.  In 2015, it holds a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.  As far as I know, it has not secured a cult following in the interim, even among bad movie aficionados.  For twenty-five years, unmoored, adrift, LOOSE CANNONS has not found its audience.  It has not yet discovered its proper time and place.  How does one judge such a film?  I'm not even quite sure it is a film; it may very well be a ghost on the haunt.

Gene Hackman's cat is named "Camus."  Dan Aykroyd is afraid to go to an S&M club, "not that I'm a Trudy Prudy or anything like that."

Do we blame this for EXIT TO EDEN? 

The club has go-go dancers wearing KISS-style body paint and this is distressing to Dan Aykroyd.

Aykroyd says "I always annoy people.  I don't mean to."  It is something of an understatement.

At different points throughout the film, Aykroyd "becomes" The Road Runner, Scotty for STAR TREK, The Cowardly Lion, and The Wicked Witch.  It is explained that he is only this way because he was tortured by a Columbian named "Armando."

We, however, were tortured by a Canadian named Aykroyd?

Aykroyd and Hackman drive around in a battered old station wagon full of kitty litter.

 "I have a hole in my ass."  ––"That's why they call you an asshole!"
 
Later, the station wagon smashes into a stack of crates filled with chickens.

 Gene Hackman wields a blunderbuss.
 
Dom DeLuise appears, looking like latter-day Orson Welles, wearing a King of Hearts costume

and, later, vests made from the upholstery of grandmothers' couches.

He exclaims "They're fucking with the wrong Jew this time!"

This is because he's involved in a international conspiracy searching for a snuff/pornographic/ritual sex-suicide film starring Adolf Hitler and the guy (Robert Prosky) who's going to be the next German chancellor.


"I saw a movie, XXX-style, only this one starred Hitler and a couple of other guys!" 

Paul Koslo plays a Nazi, who waves a gun around and does Nazi things.

Ronny Cox plays an FBI handler, who sure has his hands full with these two.

David Alan Grier shows up and tries to pretend he's not actually in the movie.

"How do you know the killer's German," asks Gene Hackman.  "Because there's no peepee hole on the boxers," says Dan Aykroyd.

Dom DeLuise is rolled around in a wheelchair.  This is supposed to make us smile because he is a fat man.  It actually makes us smile because Dom DeLuise is a warm and sympathetic human being who inspires warm feelings everywhere he goes.

We begin to wonder if GHOSTBUSTERS would have been insufferable if it didn't also have Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson.

"Let me know if you ever find yourself, kid, cause I'd love to meet you," says Gene Hackman.

And somewhere between it's first and ninety-fourth minute, the film ends.  What was it?  I 'm not sure.  It all happened so fast, officer...

So when and where was LOOSE CANNONS' proper time and place?  If I had watched it on some other evening, at some other point in my life, would it have really "clicked" with me?  For all I know, this film is a triggering device for some as-of-yet-unhatched MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE-style plot, and that's it's proper time and place.  Or perhaps it was Calgary in 2013, when frames from a discarded reel of LOOSE CANNONS were discovered in a Canadian landfill, prompting an employee to believe he'd stumbled upon the remains of an actual snuff film.  It was finally determined to be a staged murder when Calgary police realized the man doing the murdering was Dan Aykroyd.

His name cleared, Aykroyd said "The movie should have been left in the landfill where it belongs."

Perhaps that is it's time and place.  This impossible confluence of writers, actors, and producers––arthouse, grindhouse, and studio system alike––converging on a genre that was mostly played out by 1990, on a film that was seen and loved by almost no one.  Rotting away, unseen, unsung...  Perhaps this landfill copy of LOOSE CANNONS, this temporary piece of crime scene evidence, ought to be screened as-is, DECASIA-style, as an art installation piece reminding us of this fine line between fiction and non-fiction, between sanity and madness.  What's the half-life of celluloid?  We'd better screen it while there's still something left, before we can no longer properly loop the reel across the spools and project.  Maybe the cannons are loose, not because they're a hot-doggin' cop and his mentally ill partner; maybe they're loose because the cannons are fleeting, life is fleeting, the cannons are slip, slipping away.

LOOSE CANNONS, ladies and gentlemen.

–Sean Gill

Film Review: INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984, Steven Spielberg)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 118 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri, Roy Chiao, Dan Aykroyd, Pat Roach. Music by John Williams. Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe. Sound design by Ben Burtt.
Tag-line: " If adventure has a name... it must be Indiana Jones."
Best one-liner: " I suggest you give me what you owe me... or 'Anything Goes!'" or maybe just "You betrayed Shiva!"

I've got something special for you all today. A review of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (you can read my review of RAIDERS here), a discussion of my favorite minutiae from the film, and a rehash of a debate that was of the utmost importance when I was eleven years old. First, the review:

Remember when skittish featherweights didn't entirely run the film industry? When people knew that kiddies deserved immaculately-crafted works of morbid exuberance that were, in part, designed expressly for them? Today, the 10 year-old looking for some cheap n' scary thrills has to bring some 'adult' type to the movies with them to get into the PG-13 stuff, which is totally killin' my theoretical 10 year-old's buzz. So he sticks around at home, watches his older brother's copy of SAW 6, and gets scarred for life––and not even in a good, artsy way, like if it was THE SHINING. Anyway, my point is that a healthy dose of the macabre is essential to a kid's creative development.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM is all about matte paintings, miniatures, fearless stuntmen, trick photography- ideas that originated in artists' minds and were executed with their hands.

This is, in fact, a kickass matte painting.

This is a film of impeccable choreography (and I'm speaking beyond the sparkly, Busby Berkeley inspired "Anything Goes" opening) hearkening back to the likes of Buster Keaton, Howard Hawks, or George Stevens: observe the rhythm in the editing, the visual storytelling, the way that one thing leads to another and to another... Look at the beautifully orchestrated urgency in the madcap nightclub riot, where a crucial antidote and a priceless diamond are breathlessly sought in the midst of carefully concocted chaos:




the "nocturnal activities" scene, where silly sexual innuendos give way to sight gags, which give way to life-or-death situations, the John Williams score elegantly taking us from point A to B to C in the grand tradition of old Hollywood:





or the painstakingly devised sacrifice sequence, where Willie travels toward and away from the lava pit over and over again as increasingly preposterous events take place up on the surface.

This is how you spin an adventure yarn– the old-fashioned way. Five stars.

And now, my top ten favorite TEMPLE OF DOOM minutiae:

#1. Silly kid on kid violence.


I love it. You love it. Maybe you won't admit that you love it, but you do. I mean, you can't watch something like this (from REVENGE OF THE NINJA) and not have a dumb grin plastered on your face. Well, the same goes for the long awaited kiddie duel between the (brainwashed) Maharajah and Short Round.

#2. Roy Orbison.


Is that him, hidden amongst Lao Che's henchmen?

#3. These alligators are hungry. Hungry for clothes.

Well, the fact that there are Florida alligators in India is beside the point. You hear the screams of the unlucky henchmen, but I guess they're screaming because the alligators are voraciously devouring their clothes?

#4. Evil Indy.

Harrison Ford doesn't get to do evil very often, and apparently he loves it. After convulsing about like he's trying to kick heroin, Harrison sits up and delivers this utterly macabre smile which curdled the blood and tingled the spines of millions upon millions of easily frightened youngsters.

#5. Bugs, bugs, bugs!

For those of you who have not, in fact, experienced the miracle of cockroach birth in your shower as you're about to step in while you're completely naked and you forgot to wear your sandals––this scene is kinda what it's like.

#6. God bless Ben Burtt.

The whirring, undulating metallic plink-plink-plunk as machine gun fire (directed at Indy) instead hits a giant, rotating, runaway gong/makeshift shield is the stuff that sound designer's dreams are made of.

#7. Blocking the main title.

Since IMDB is always fiercely protective of the title exactly as it appears in the opening credits instead of common or poster usage (i.e., BEETLE JUICE or GHOST BUSTERS or Olivier's THE CHRONICLE HISTORY OF KING HENRY THE FIFT WITH HIS BATTELL FOUGHT AT AGINCOURT IN FRANCE which is really just HENRY V for fuck's sake), I think they should change the listing for this to INDIAIA JONES AND THE TEMPLE DOOM. It would be more accurate. Regardless, it takes balls to block your own title. And it takes even bigger balls to make it look aesthetically pleasing. And besides, I think that everybody watching this already knows the title, so who cares. Anything goes, indeed!

#8. Indy's frustration during the spike room scene.


WE are GOING to DIIIIIE-YUH!

I mean, you'd be frustrated, too, if your survival were dependent on an insect-encrusted Kate Capshaw, but the way Harrison plays it (even thrusting his fist through the hole in exasperation) is pitch-perfect. This is exactly the sort of scene that Tom Selleck wouldn't have been able to pull off.

#9. This fantastic plummet.

And all done without CGI.

And #10, which became something of a playground argument circa the fifth grade: Indiana Jones vs. The Chief Guard (played by Pat Roach, who played a Giant Sherpa and the Hulking Nazi Mechanic in RAIDERS and a bit part as a Gestapo in LAST CRUSADE, not to mention General Kael in WILLOW, Man-Ape and Toth-Amon in CONAN THE DESTROYER, Hephaestus in CLASH OF THE TITANS, and a bouncer in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE). Anyway, Indy and the Chief Guard are in the midst of some serious brawlin', and they are beating the hell out of one another. They're playin' for keeps. The fisticuffs lead to a conveyor belt, where an enormous stone grinder is smashing rocks and such. After an excruciatingly long descent, they're at the grinder. Indy turns the tables, and next thing you know, the Chief Guard's clothes are stuck in the machine.


The guard looks to Indy in horror, and grabs a rope affixed to a pulley.

Indy grabs the other end, but the force exerted by the apparatus is stronger than Indy, and Indy is hoisted upward to a catwalk as the Guard is dragged to a grisly death.


Now, the argument was thus: I posited that Indy, despite the life-or-death struggle, was overwhelmed with empathy and at the last moment actually tried to save the Guard's life, despite the fact that this conflicted with prior behavioral patterns (for example, during the truck chase in RAIDERS, Indy briefly bonds with the driver as they survive a ludicrous aqueduct crash––they share a 'Holy shit that was a close one!" smile, but Indy immediately thereafter punches him in the face and flings him from the truck). So my friends argued that Indy merely was taking advantage of the Guard's plight just to get a free ride up to the catwalk. Now, Indiana Jones is a dick, to be sure, but I don't think he's that big of a dick, to––in the midst of incredible human suffering––think, 'Wow- I can totally leverage this into a free ride up to this catwalk up there- niiiice!' But, then again, maybe he can. Rewatching it, I still stand by my prior position, but I can certainly see the other side of it as well. You are free to resuscitate this age-old playground dispute in the comments section.

-Sean Gill