Only now does it occur to me... PHANTASM (1979)

Only now does it occur to me...  I've written a little about PHANTASM (1979) a few times before. It's a surrealistic indie melancholy horror which owes more to Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau (and a little Ray Bradbury) than, say, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or the Universal horror classics.

Fred Myrow's spooky-rockin' soundtrack. The yellow blood. The Jawa-men. The box of pain (a DUNE homage?). That sleazy lean-to shack-bar that looks like a stiff wind could blow it over. The noiseless, alabaster-white corridors of the mausoleum. The angry red sky of the other dimension. The phantasm balls, and their hidden secrets. The Tall Man. "BOYYYYYYYYY!"

Few films build such a wonderful impression of the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Ultimately, it's a grim coming-of-age, and minus the supernatural elements, I think that its honesty and sheer quality should have even made the establishment critics take notice. In fact, Coscarelli's first two films were slice-of-life coming-of-age pictures played straight (the excellent KENNY & CO. and JIM, THE WORLD'S GREATEST). But let the establishment have their films, and let genre fans have PHANTASM. 

And despite all of its wonderful bells (and balls) and whistles, it all really comes down to a feeling, an emptiness, a melancholy born of grieving. That secret urge to wander the graveyard on an overcast day, and see what you can see...

 

I also once wrote about THE OTHER (1972) as the missing link between SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES and PHANTASM, but I'd like to add a few new observations as well. 

First, that it's incredible how deeply PHANTASM aligns––more psychically than literally––with STAR WARS. Both take deep inspiration from DUNE (STAR WARS with Tatooine, the Tusken Raiders, spice-running, Jedi spirituality, and the Butlerian jihad reflected in "we don't serve their kind here," etc.; PHANTASM with the faux-Bene Gesserit "put your hand in the box/fear is the mind killer" scene, 

 

a hostile wasteland planet, and "Dune's Cantina"), 

 

and both feature little people in desert robes (in STAR WARS, the iconic Jawas; in PHANTASM, the compressed bodies of the dead... reanimated by the Tall Man and used as interdimensional minions). 

Director Don Coscarelli has described this as a coincidence. He was apparently midway through production on PHANTASM when a friend told him he had seen "a trailer for this new movie Star Wars and your characters, the little brown dwarf guys, are in it." Later, STAR WARS fan and THE FORCE AWAKENS director J.J. Abrams helped restore the original print of PHANTASM and named Gwendoline Christie's shiny chrome STAR WARS character "Phasma" as a tribute.

Anyway, PHANTASM is great. It's meandering and dreamlike and a true indie, with bold editorial choices and stunning visuals. It's a little rough around the edges, and the performances (aside from A. Michael Baldwin's lead (child) performance and Angus Scrimm's elementally terrifying Tall Man) are uneven, but it's spooky, charming, and in a class of its own. 

 

It makes the time for multiple Reggie the Ice Cream Man (Reggie Bannister) guitar jam sessions

 

and definitely is not a screenplay they're going to teach in SAVE THE CAT or Robert McKee-inspired film schools. This gives it time to develop its potently weird dream energy, like a more adult ALICE IN WONDERLAND (or like VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS or LEMORA: A CHILD'S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL).

 

 Like most melancholy horror films, it's about grief, abandonment, and fear of the unknown.

A strong recommend if you've never seen it, especially in its gorgeous new restoration.

Only now does it occur to me... KAGERO-ZA (1981)

Only now does it occur to me... that I have to say a few words in praise of KAGERO-ZA (1981), the second film in the Japanese director Seijun Suzuki's trilogy of Taishō-set, literary-supernatural Gothic romances. KAGERO-ZA is the middle film, bookended themetically by ZIGEUNERWEISEN (1980) and YUMEJI (1991), and it's my favorite of the three. 

Suzuki was best known for his anarchic, jazzy, classy crime flicks he made for Nikkatsu in the 1960s [BRANDED TO KILL (1967), TOKYO DRIFTER (1966), and YOUTH OF THE BEAST (1963)], which careen to and fro with psychedelic, pop-art cool, like Jean-Pierre Melville collaborating with the Looney Tunes. They were an influence on filmmakers from Jim Jarmusch to Sam Raimi to George Miller to Quentin Tarantino. Eventually, Suzuki fell out of favor at Nikkatsu, was fired in 1968, and reemerged a decade later, making films at a slower rhythm, though still with an eye for astounding visuals. 

The ZIGEUNERWEISEN trilogy probably qualifies as "slow cinema"––less appealing for those who want his tried and true bursts of arthouse adrenaline. But these were very well-received in Japan, where they were heavily nominated and honored at the Japanese Academy Awards. 

 

 

 

About KAGERO-ZA, specifically: I suppose I'll tell you it's the story of a playwright during that hinge point of history known as the Taishō era, when liberal democracy crept into Japanese society between 1912 and 1926 (a sort of Weimar moment before the imperial ambitions of the Shōwa era fully formed). It has much to say about this, and love, and theater, and of Faustian bargains,

 

 

 

 

 
and it says it with such superlative and carefully crafted visuals.

Only now does it occur to me... DANIELLE STEEL'S FAMILY ALBUM (1994)

Only now does it occur to me... to say a few words about the 1994 NBC miniseries DANIELLE STEEL'S FAMILY ALBUM. I must admit that I sought this out entirely to explore John Waters' role as "Vincent," an appearance so apparently obscure that I could not find a single image to prove the existence of his involvement on the entire internet. Not a one! He mentioned the project by name in a few interviews, but to me, it became one of the most intriguing omissions in his filmography. (Worry not, in the end, I shall provide you with a video of his entire performance.) But first, what even is this thing?

FAMILY ALBUM is adapted from the 1985 Danielle Steel novel of the same name (one of over 140 novels she has written), and it tells the epic, four-decade saga of a 1950s Hollywood actress who decides to break the mold and become a film director. In the process, it basically tells a fictionalized version of the life of Ida Lupino.

Our Lupino stand-in is CHARLIE'S ANGELS' own Jaclyn Smith as "Faye Price":

 

and her brow-furrowing husband, "Ward Thayer," is played by TWIN PEAKS' own Michael Ontkean:

 

Honestly, this is all a little better than it should be, though it's still a pretty long three hours and twenty minutes and very indicative of pre-prestige 1990s soapy network "two evening event"-style television.

Where does John Waters fit in? Well, Faye's daughter (played by Leslie Horan) is trying to break into the movies without using any of her mother's connections. She finds an "in" with a horror filmmaker who is sort of a sleazier William Castle/Tobe Hooper/Wes Craven-type making a CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON/SWAMP THING-inflected movie in the 1970s. This filmmaker, "Vincent"––surely named for Vincent Price, given who's playing him––is portrayed by John Waters. He spends his single minute of screentime attempting to pressure his leading lady into doing nudity in the picture ("What's the big deal about showing some skin, it's an art film, it could go to Cannes, it's my best work!").

So there you have it. Mystery solved! John Waters in DANIELLE STEEL'S FAMILY ALBUM, ladies and gentlemen:

Only now does it occur to me... SNIPER (1993)

Only now does it occur to me...  that SNIPER (1993) might be the live action movie with the most sequels (eight, and counting!) of which I had never before seen a single installment (discounting, perhaps, some Republic serials from the '40s or the deepest cuts from the Full Moon catalogue).

 

Instead of the dopey, straight-to-video-style shoot-em-up I expected, the tone is much more dignified and even has designs of being a moody and artistic "two in the chamber" piece about a morally grey veteran sniper (Tom Berenger––excellent, as usual) who has seen too much death, and his new, underprepared civilian partner.

 

It's about stolen valor, PTSD, indiscriminate killing, civilian blowback, Herzogian madness, and disastrous foreign policy. In essence, it's trying to be more APOCALYPSE NOW than RAMBO III––a point driven home by Berenger looking with disdain at a bus with a RAMBO III mural on it.

 

 

Does it live up to these lofty goals? Well, not exactly. But it's a hell of a lot better than you'd expect. The first five minutes alone are of higher quality than any scene in Clint Eastwood's laughable, fake-baby-wielding Oscar bait, AMERICAN SNIPER (2014).

 

The film's Peruvian director, Luis Llosa, makes a few off-handed critiques about covert CIA military obtrusions in Central and South America,

mostly by using J.T. Walsh as a glib politico-military operator named "Chester Van Damme" (!), but in the end, the film flattens a bit and sides fully with the snipers who are facing off against nuance-lacking, mustache-twirling Noriega and Escobar-style heavies. 

 

Slick and stylish cinematography by Bill Butler (JAWS, GREASE, ROCKY IV) and rousing music by Gary Chang (UNDER SIEGE, MIAMI BLUES) & Hans Zimmer (credited as "additional music by") make this seem much more like a prestige project than its budget and theatrical poster ("One shot... one kill... no exceptions") would imply.

 

To put it in context, it was semi-buried among January 1993 junk like BODY OF EVIDENCE and NOWHERE TO RUN, in a year whose box office headliners would be JURASSIC PARK, CLIFFHANGER, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, FREE WILLY, and THE FIRM.

But there's one element in particular which really takes this movie over the top. This element is an actor, the one playing Berenger's aforementioned and underprepared partner on this mission––an Olympic sharpshooter who has never been involved in a military operation. Someone whom the Toledo Blade might describe as a... "psycho hunk."

That's right––to my ama-Zane-ment, this movie features meaty roles for both Billy Zane and his  withering gaze. Before THE PHANTOM let us know there was no smoking in the Skull Cave, and before his expressive, Svengali-ish, and immaculately waxed eyebrows let us know who was really the "king of the world" in TITANIC, Billy Zane served bitch from the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.

"If looks could kill..."

to the jungles of Panama.
 

"...You'd be lyin' on the floor"

If you think we don't get an extended scene of Billy Zane carefully applying Max Factor camo makeup to the true stars of this movie, you've got another thing coming.

They must've blown their lace-front wig budget in the opening D.C. scenes, because for the rest of the movie it's all hats and Little Edie headscarves.

"Completely covert?"... except for that eyebrow action, maybe

"I'm scared to death of doors, locks, people roaming around in the background, under the trees, in the bushes, I'm absolutely terrified."  ––"Little Edie" Bouvier Beale in GREY GARDENS

Yep, Billy Zane gonna smolder all over this thing. There's an incredible scene when Tom Berenger calls him out for having designer camouflage called... wait for it...

..."Gucciflage." (What is this, the Berlusconi-produced, Zane-starring, spaghetti soap opera, MILLIONS?)

Anyway. Come for the sniper scope... stay for the Psycho Hunk™lookin' through it?

R.I.P, Glenda Jackson

One of the greats is gone. A two-time Oscar winner, the fire that fueled several of Ken Russell's greatest films (THE MUSIC LOVERS, WOMEN IN LOVE), host of THE MUPPET SHOW, a member of parliament. I'm so glad I got to see her live as KING LEAR in 2019. It's no exaggeration to say she was one of the most fearless and talented performers of all time.

Only now does it occur to me... SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL (1997)

Only now does it occur to me... that they should've named this picture after a phrase which appears on screen about an hour and twenty minutes in:

"SPEED 2: SPEED MALFUNCTION."

Yes, despite Jan de Bont's workmanlike direction (you likely know him best as Paul Verhoeven's and John McTiernan's cinematographer), a denouement involving a $25 million setpiece with a cruise ship crashing into Saint Martin ("the most expensive stunt ever filmed"),

 

 and Willem Dafoe's finest crazyface (throughout),

this thing is the mess that everyone says it is. Witness my disdain by enjoying these screen captures taken from a VHS, which I photographed off of my television set. 

Anyway, SPEED 2 follows two of my ironclad 1990s rules: one of which is It Takes Place on a Boat, and the other being "if it's a SPEED movie, it must star a David Lynch villain as the Big Bad." In this instance, obviously, it's WILD AT HEART's Willem Dafoe gobbling the scenery. He plays a computer hacking leech enthusiast

with a caddy bag full of golf club bombs

and a nefarious plan to throw Bo Svenson overboard, steal some jewels (?), and ram a cruise ship into an oil tanker. When you first lay eyes on the shopping mall aboard this cruise ship, you find yourself rooting for Dafoe.

Anyway, Keanu Reeves has been replaced by Jason Patric (THE LOST BOYS, SOLARBABIES), 

and if Sandra Bullock wasn't in it (seen here wielding a chainsaw in her only moment of agency), you would have no reason to believe this was a SPEED film. The supporting cast is of a shockingly high pedigree: Temuera Morrison (ONCE WERE WARRIORS, THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT)

Please, sir, I beg you, watch ONCE WERE WARRIORS instead

the aforementioned Bo Svenson (THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, KILL BILL VOL. 2),  Colleen Camp (CLUE, WAYNE'S WORLD, POLICE ACADEMY 2), Joe Morton (THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, "Miles Dyson" in TERMINATOR 2), Glenn Plummer (SHOWGIRLS, MENACE II SOCIETY), and Kimmy Robertson (Lucy from TWIN PEAKS, LEPRECHAUN 2) as "Liza the Cruise Director."

Which is probably a bizarre enough note to end this on. Anyway. SPEED 2.