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.

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... ALIENS: GENOCIDE (1992)

 Only now does it occur to me... that ranking the best ALIEN-related media goes something like this:

#1. ALIEN (1979)

#2. ALIENS (1986)

#3. That ALIEN comic book where a space marine throws a saxophone at a Xenomorph

 

and after the space marines leave, said Xenomorph thinks about learning to play it. Objectively, this rules.

 

 

[For the curious, the comic in question is Dark Horse's ALIENS: GENOCIDE (1991-1992). I've only read the first two of six ALIEN omnibuses and they are extremely hit or miss. Some are excellent and carry novel concepts into the ALIEN universe (humans worshipping Xenomorphs in a death cult) or offer closure that ALIEN 3 denied us (the continued adventures of Newt and Hicks––renamed "Billie and Wilks" so as not to bruise the egos of the makers of ALIEN 3?). Others are hot garbage, basically deadline slapdash. Your mileage may vary!]

Only now does it occur to me... LOST IN AMERICA (1985)

Only now does it occur to me... that a throwaway line in Albert Brooks' road-trip satire may have influenced the TERMINATOR franchise.

During a brief exchange between Brooks, Julie Hagerty, and a motorcycle cop (that ends with a ticket being avoided due to a mutual appreciation of EASY RIDER), Brooks says:

"Did you see THE TERMINATOR?" 



–"No, I didn't. Heard about it, though."


"You should see it. You look like him."


"Thank you."

Now, since LOST IN AMERICA was made in 1985, Brooks must be referring to Cameron's original TERMINATOR (from 1984), drawing a humorous comparison based on the cop's demeanor and sunglasses, comparing him to Arnold Schwarzenegger's titular character. However, while the cop doesn't actually resemble Arnold in any meaningful way, he is a dead ringer for Robert Patrick's motorcycle cop-impersonating T-1000 in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY...

...which was not released until six years later, in 1991. So maybe James Cameron was watching LOST IN AMERICA when he decided he needed a motorcycle cop Terminator? Or perhaps Brooks is referring to Patrick, whom he glimpsed in a time-traveling VHS copy of TERMINATOR 2. (Which must have been the splitting point for the Berenstain Bears parallel universe.)

Only now does it occur to me... HELLRAISER IV: BLOODLINE (1996)

Only now does it occur to me... that HELLRAISER IV: BLOODLINE wants to have its cake and eat it, too.  Particularly, it wants to have its "Let them eat cake"-cake, with extended 18th Century flashbacks that kinda feel like the ones in ANGEL, questionable accents and all:

Yes, that is PARKS & RECREATION's Adam Scott on the left.

It wants to have its James Cameron cake, too, with a frame story taking place in 2127 on a space-station shaped like a deconstructed Lament Configuration:


In case we didn't get the Cameron vibe completely, there are Space Marines:

T-800-lookin' robots:

and twin security guards, just like in TERMINATOR 2 (albeit under different circumstances):

HELLRAISER IV versus....

TERMINATOR 2.

It wants to have its Brian de Palma cake:

Again, that's Adam Scott on the right-hand side of this De Palma shot, only now he's been transformed into a 90s yuppie.

Its "corporate thriller" cake":

Yes, that is a catered dinner in the lobby of a skyscraper that's been decorated to look like an enormous Lament Configuration.

Not to mention its John Carpenter cake:

(I can't believe they profaned Carpenter's favorite (Albertus) font with the Alan Smithee name!)


A lot of this schizophrenia probably has to do with the fact that Clive Barker's concept was gutted by studio budget cuts, and horror maestro Stuart Gordon dropped out. He was replaced by TALES FROM THE CRYPT's Kevin Yagher, who presided over what was supposedly a clusterfuck of a shoot, and then HALLOWEEN 666's Joe Chapelle was brought in to do studio ordered, Pinhead-centric reshoots after Yagher refused. (All of which ended with Yagher choosing to be credited as the infamous "Alan Smithee.")

In all, this is not a great movie––and it doesn't even have a song by Motörhead or a CD Cenobite, like in HELLRAISER III. Though I do appreciate the "in space!" aspect, also seen in JASON X, CRITTERS 4: THEY'RE INVADING YOUR SPACE, or LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE.
 
 Doug Bradley, who'd rather be doing RICHARD III.


Christine Harnos, who you may remember from DAZED AND CONFUSED and as "Mark Greene's first wife" from ER.

Bruce Ramsay, who kinda looks like Jean-Claude Van Damme. But remember: there can only be one Jean-Claude Faux Damme!

Additionally, this was the last HELLRAISER film to be released theatrically, and I feel as if I've made an accurate assessment of its quality. Note: there are five more after this. And another one supposedly coming out next year. Whew!

Only now does it occur to me... TITANIC

Only now does it occur to me...  that the true enduring star of TITANIC is not Celine Dion, Kate Winslet's boobs

or Bill Paxton's wicked, pirate-y earring.

No, the true stars are the expressive, Svengali-ish, and immaculately waxed eyebrows of one William G. Zane, Esquire:

Now I hadn't seen TITANIC since in theaters way back in '97, and because my interest in The Zane Factor had been so amply reawakened by TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT, I decided to give it another go.  As "Caledon Hockley," the moneyed gadabout in pursuit of villainy and a loveless marriage to Kate Winslet, Billy Zane gives one of the bitchiest, most cattily malevolent performances ever to grace a mainstream film that didn't star Joan Crawford or Faye Dunaway.  

Here he is using the whites of Kate's eyes to admire his own reflection:

  

 I dare you to prove me wrong.  That's totally what he's doing:

 

He dismisses Monet and Picasso as "fingerpainters":

Tries to buy off the man (DiCaprio) who saved his wife-to-be with a crisp twenty-dollar bill:

He judges you with judgey eyebrows:

 

Offers smarm-infused false comfort as the ship goes down:

 

 Goes full "Tim Curry" for a segment where he's a gun-toting madman:

 

Steals babies to get on lifeboats:

 

He steals scenes he's not even really in:

 

[And somewhere amongst all this Zanery (hey, "zaniness" was already taken) apparently there's an epic romance and a sinking ship, but that's really more of a subplot.]

He's even got one of the all-time great villains and fellow TWIN PEAKS alum David Warner (TIME BANDITS, TRON, STRAW DOGS, TIME AFTER TIME, MY BEST FRIEND IS A VAMPIRE) as his henchman.  When David Warner is playing second fiddle to you– goddamn, you're doing something right!  One of my favorite moments is this wonderful bit where Warner catches Leo and Kate doing some unauthorized folk-dancing hanky-pankery:

His disapproving look is worth at least three AVATARS.  

BONUS!:  Also of note to Cameron aficionados– there's two great ALIENS references.

1.   Legendary badass Space Marine Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) shows up as an immigrant mother from the lower decks

comforting small and adorable children (instead of using a swivel-mounted minigun to rain death and destruction on those blocking her access to the lifeboats).

2.  When Kate Winslet gives Billy Zane the ole' spit-in-the-eye treatment, instead of saliva, they used K-Y Jelly:

 

 

Incidentally, they also used K-Y in ALIENS to make the Alien Queen look like the world's most terrifying, lacquered sex toy.  To hear Zane talk about it (and the 27 traumatic takes therein) on OPRAH, go here, to the eleven minute mark.