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!]

"The Marked Book" Chosen as a 2022 Lascaux Prize Finalist

The Lascaux Review has just announced that my short story, "The Marked Book," has been chosen as a finalist for their 2022 Prize in Flash Fiction. It will appear in print in their next volume, The Lascaux Prize Anthology.

Television Review: ZUMA BEACH (1978, Lee H. Katzin)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Suzanne Somers (THREE'S COMPANY, SERIAL MOM), Michael Biehn (ALIENS, TOMBSTONE, THE TERMINATOR), Rosanna Arquette (PULP FICTION, AFTER HOURS, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN), P.J. Soles (HALLOWEEN, ROCK N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, CARRIE), Tanya Roberts (THE BEASTMASTER, A VIEW TO A KILL), Steven Keats (DEATH WISH, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE), Mark Wheeler (THE CONVERSATION, APOLLO 13), Gary Imhoff (SUMMER SCHOOL, THE GREEN MILE), Delta Burke (DESIGNING WOMEN, WHAT WOMEN WANT), Kimberly Beck (ROLLER BOOGIE, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER).
Tagline: "Her life had suddenly become a long drive to nowhere... so what better place to get it all together than her old stomping grounds, Zuma Beach! Let's get it together with a batch of beach boys and their golden girls... frolic with Suzanne Somers on Zuma Beach!"
Best one-liner: "Have some confidence in yourself." –"I can't. It's 9:30, and the stores stop selling confidence at five o'clock. And tomorrow is a holiday."

"I wrote that for a producer who just said he wanted a beach movie. He ended up selling it to Warner Bros., and soon Suzanne Somers was starring in it. I was going to direct it––for about ten seconds––but one of my mentors, Richard Kobritz, who later produced Christine, helped me see I didn’t want to do it. It was vastly rewritten, so I really shouldn’t have taken credit for it, but I was a little asshole in those days."

–John Carpenter, when asked about ZUMA BEACH by Fangoria in 2013 

 

Almost ten years ago, I did a "Poor Man's Carpy" series on this blog, devoted to John Carpenter marginalia like the co-scripted TV movie SILENT PREDATORS, the Tommy Lee Wallace-helmed VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS, trashy Hallo-sequels HALLOWEEN 666 and RESURRECTION, and the Dennis Etchison novelizations of THE FOG and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. One which slipped under the radar was ZUMA BEACH. So here we are, in the dog days of summer, finally taking a look at this forgotten CBS Late Movie "sort of" written by Carpenter and three other guys.

What can we learn about John Carpenter from ZUMA BEACH? Very little, I'm sure, given his above quote, but I think it's worth looking into. (Says the guy who did a two-part deep dive into John Carpenter's filmmaker-buddy-garage band, The Coupe de Villes.)

It's a straightforward slice of life, giggle and jiggle flick designed to eliminate two hours on a lazy, hazy summer evening. Though it ends with a volleyball game, it never even possesses stakes as high as in SIDE OUT. 

 Suzanne Somers plays a pop star (whose big hit is the fictitious "Silent Whisper"), and she's having a mid-career crisis. 

In need of a reset, she clears her head at Zuma Beach, where she once enjoyed poetry and sand castles as a child. Zuma Beach is populated with a rogue's gallery of horny teens, pre-makeover nerds, beach bums, surfers, football jerks, hot dog enthusiasts, kite fliers, windjammers, cool visor-dudes and the like.

Somers becomes something of a beach elder here, primarily because it's a teenage hotspot. She dispenses wisdom, smiles pensively, and takes in some rays. 

 

Bullies vaguely receive their comeuppance, romances spark and fizzle, and everyone more or less fritters the summer away. This is ZUMA BEACH, ladies and gentlemen. It's so dedicated to its quotidian ensemble that if it were better written and had more interesting characters, it might even feel like an Altman or Linklater flick. As is, it's merely a pleasant time-waster filled with bright 1970s colors and some amusing and unexpected performances. For reference, the real Zuma Beach is in Malibu, about a 70 minute drive from the PRINCE OF DARKNESS church.

If I were trying to draw a real John Carpenter connection, I'd probably compare it to THE FOG, which also sees a strong woman adjacent to the music industry (Adrienne Barbeau as "DJ Stevie Wayne") finding her footing in a California beach community. There are even times that ZUMA BEACH feels like "a Carpenter horror movie, but before the horror begins."

The image of a child playing with his dog in the surf... recalls Stevie Wayne's son finding a plank from the Elizabeth Dane in THE FOG? C'mon, I'm trying here.

Oh, and there is a lot of feathered hair in this movie. Might I remind you that it was shot in 1978.

Mark Wheeler's elaborate feathered coiffure helmet puts Mark Hamill's to shame

With such a bare bones plot, you start focusing on strange details. Like Suzanne Somers' suntan oil, which looks like it's being dispensed from an Elmer's glue bottle.

We have young, Toto-era Rosanna Arquette as a character who tokes a lot of reefer. She's doing that quirky comedic 'Rosanna Arquette thing,' mostly indistinguishable from her performances in AFTER HOURS and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, which is okay!

You have to admire (pre-Reagan) CBS Standards & Practices allowing such casual drug use to slip by without dramaturgical rebuke. 

Michael Biehn pops up, also in one of his very first roles, as a crazy-eyed, eyebrow-indicating lifeguard who uses his lifeguard tower as a bachelor pad.

Here, he's trying to pressure HALLOWEEN's own P.J. Soles into pre-marital sex. It's a good thing Michael Myers isn't around!

HALLOWEEN was released October 25, 1978; ZUMA BEACH debuted September 27, 1978. HALLOWEEN was filmed in May, and based on the look and general disposability of ZUMA BEACH, I have to imagine it was filmed that summer. It's quite possible that P.J. appears here as part of some John Carpenter favor; but given his disconnect to this movie, it's equally plausible that it's pure coincidence. I at least have to hope that John Carpenter was not responsible for a line of dialogue about "extracurricular sex-tivity."

Soles: "I have six pigtails"

As usual, P.J. Soles is a hilarious delight. And she has six pigtails. Count 'em––six! Why would anybody need six pigtails? Maybe she's choosing to pull focus by-way-of ridiculous hair/costume accoutrement––she does has a history of that. You may recall that in Brian De Palma's CARRIE, she established herself as the Queen of Pulling Focus with her big 'ol red rainbow ballcap. Bless.

There are some terrible, copyright-skirting faux-Beach Boys songs which play throughout, Tanya Roberts and Delta Burke wander through the frame, and Michael Biehn gets sand kicked in his face: a sobering experience for Zuma Beach's resident bully/Casanova.

There's a volleyball game and a riding-men-by-the-shoulders race,

and that's all she wrote. Er, rather, that's all John Carpenter and (at least) three other guys wrote. Do you feel like know all you need to about the ZUMA BEACH experience? I hope so.

R.I.P., Clu Gulager

This one hurts. Clu first came to my attention as "Lee" in Don Siegel's THE KILLERS, where his vicious calm and truly inspired acting choices made such an impression that I was compelled to seek out as many of his films as I could get my hands on. 

First, it was the easiest ones to find––like THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE, WINNING, or MCQ; and then it was the rarities––staying up late to catch IRONSIDE, WALKER, TEXAS RANGER, and MURDER, SHE WROTE reruns, or buying old dog-eared videocassettes of WONDERLAND COVE/a.k.a. STICKIN' TOGETHER and THE WILLIES and HUNTER'S BLOOD and THE INITIATION. Recently, I'd been overjoyed to see him reaching new audiences with bit parts in Sean Baker's TANGERINE and Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.

His work is magnificent, no matter the context; in turns it can be morbid, melancholy, rugged, or hilarious. I saw him sow deep, satisfying empathy across a rogues' gallery of murderers, abusers (THE GAMBLER, among others!), and perverts (TAPEHEADS, among others!). There's his wonderfully macabre work with his departed wife Miriam Byrd-Nethery in FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM, creating a very human monster who bleeds pathos and induces in the viewer something approaching a somber state of agony. In each role he is intensely connected achieves a shocking level of intimacy; in each role he captures something that is true. Even in the films where he given nearly nothing to work with, like COMPANY OF KILLERS.

Then, I discovered Clu as a filmmaker. I saw the haunting and poetic A DAY WITH THE BOYS (available on the Criterion edition of GEORGE WASHINGTON and nominated for the short film Palm d'Or at Cannes), a film that wrests the viewer from reality and into a dream-space, one that's frightening and powerful. I saw several of the shorts he collaborated on with his family for their legendary acting workshops, read about the struggles of FUCKING TULSA (an incomplete film I dearly hope to have the opportunity to see one day), and got many kick from his son John Gulager's lovably demented horror features from the past decade (which are truly Gulager family affairs––films like the FEAST trilogy and PIRANHA 3DD). The entire family's work is infused with a fearless Grand Guignol sensibility and an infectiously gleeful streak of sadism, but it grapples with something larger and darker and more mysterious. In their incredible story, I see the anguish of life's stumbling blocks and I see the joy of what compels human beings to create. Clu and his family are soldiers of cinema, in the Herzogian sense.

PS–– For more context, I also highly recommend this piece about the Gulager clan (Clu, his wife Miram Byrd-Nethery (R.I.P.), his sons Tom and John, and daughter-in-law Diane Ayala) which first appeared in L.A. Weekly in 1997.

R.I.P., David Warner

R.I.P. to David Warner: glorious Shakespeare actor, genre movie standby, and, for a VHS enthusiast, one of the most recognizable faces of all time. Best known to children of the '80s as the villain in TRON and TIME BANDITS, and best known to '70s horror fans from THE OMEN and TIME AFTER TIME. Maybe he'll be remembered by a new generation from his appearance in 2018's MARY POPPINS RETURNS.

At Junta Juleil, we've seen him suffer through the courtroom clichés of MR. NORTH and the peasant blouse nonsense of Cannon Films' HANSEL AND GRETEL.

In TITANIC, he was Billy Zane's henchman, and in his finest moment shot a disapproving look after catching Leo and Kate doing some unauthorized folk-dancing hanky-pankery.

He stopped by as a drama professor in SCREAM 2, a human in STAR TREK V, a Klingon in STAR TREK VI, and a dad in THE COMPANY OF WOLVES.

On TV, he effortlessly jumped between fare like TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW, and CAPTAIN PLANET. He improved some of the roughest patches of TWIN PEAKS Season 2 by his mere presence, and delivered a lot of pathos in the TWIN PEAKS-adjacent WILD PALMS.

He had fun as Van Helsing in MY BEST FRIEND IS A VAMPIRE and hammed it up as an evil wax museum impresario in WAXWORK.

He collaborated twice with John Carpenter, playing members of the medical profession in BODY BAGS and  IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. He collaborated thrice with Sam Peckinpah, playing a reverend, a rapist, and a Nazi, respectively, in THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, STRAW DOGS, and CROSS OF IRON.

He rocked out––so hard––to the music of Vanilla Ice in TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE, and made us believe it. He exuded dignity no matter where he ended up.

R.I.P.

Only now does it occur to me... SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (1991)

Only now does it occur to me... that SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO––a film by action master Mark L. Lester, director of COMMANDO and CLASS OF 1984––functions as a true culmination of his favorite thematic obsessions: brilliant/groan-inducing action one-liners, explosions, and male musculature.

From my understanding, this film was butchered by the studio during the edit, but I think the general sensibility of Lester's vision still shines through. For instance, the man who brought us the lingering closeup of Arnold's jiggling pecs during a machine gun battle in COMMANDO begins SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO with what feels like a formalist experiment: male musculature––covered in full-body irezumi (yakuza tattoos) is drenched in, alternatively, light and shadow.

It's the early 1990s action equivalent of Hollis Frampton's experimental 1969 short LEMON, whereupon a static shot of a lemon is subjected to different lighting techniques, revealing something 'profound' about the nature of darkness. Anyway, Lester and Frampton both pare the narrative to the bare essentials: in this case, pectoral muscles, and the different and dramatic ways in which one can view them.

Also, this movie––and those pecs, by extension––were shot by David Cronenberg's resident cinematographer Mark Irwin (SCANNERS, VIDEODROME, THE FLY, etc.). How 'bout that!

What is this movie about? You may be wondering. I've already told you. But if you insist on labels, it's about two tuff cops: Dolph Lundgren

 

 and Brandon Lee.

It's set in Los Angeles' (apparently) yakuza-ravaged Little Tokyo, and its premise is firmly rooted in 1991. You see, Dolph's Aryan-looking buddy cop is fluent in Japanese and was raised in Japan. Whereas Brandon's Asian American buddy cop was raised in the Valley and apparently has never even heard of Japan. This creates what we call dramatic tension. 

 

Acting-wise, as "the straight man," Dolph is basically doing That Thing that Dolph does, and Brandon, as the "funny one," is kind of doing a less cartoonish Bruce Campbell shtick. My wife and I are pretty sure that Brandon Lee took some acting classes before appearing in THE CROW.

Tia Carrere (WAYNE'S WORLD) is in here, too, as a singing gangster's moll who eventually is swept up in a (chemistry-challenged) romantic subplot with Dolph. The tracks she sings sound very "Olivia Newton John."

The villain is yakuza boss Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (MORTAL KOMBAT, THE PHANTOM, VAMPIRES, LICENSE TO KILL) who, as usual, treats us to some solid scenery chewing throughout.

The music, by David Michael Frank (THE MASK, OUT FOR JUSTICE), is, like the pecs, majestically pared down to the basics. There are essentially two tracks here, a "danger" track––used for all the action/peril scenes––and an "ambient" track, for everything else. The ambient track sounds a lot like the rootin-tootin electro-nonsense in THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS: THE MOVIE. All of this is intended as a compliment. 

The one-liners are amazing. COMMANDO brought us "Don't disturb my friend, he's dead tired" and "Remember Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied." SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO gives us "You have the right to remain... dead!," "It's kinda like one of those video games... you just defeated the first wave," and "We're gonna nail this guy, and when we get done, we're gonna go eat fish off those naked chicks!" The latter refers to a yakuza restaurant featuring the klassy combination of nude women and sushi, and is immediately followed up by this manly hand clasp, straight out of PREDATOR.

Speaking of gender politics, SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO objectifies the male and female form with relative and trashy equivalency.

Of course, we have to give the advantage to the male form, so celebrated in this film that I'm pretty sure both Dolph and Cary-Hiroyuki spend more time in various states of undress than they do clothed.

 

The highlight (lowlight?) may be when Brandon Lee's character tells Dolph, apropos of nothing, "Kenner, just in case we get killed, I wanted to tell you, you have the biggest dick I've ever seen on a man." That being said, I am certain there is nothing in this film that can match the poetry of the final battle in COMMANDO.

In the end, I would categorize this as second-tier Lester and a damn fun time. Also, I'm pretty sure Tarantino is a fan, since A. It stars Dolph Lundgren, and one of Tarantino's first jobs was working as a P.A. on the Dolph Lundgren workout video, MAXIMUM POTENTIAL; B. it stars Brandon Lee, and Tarantino is a Bruce Lee obsessive (and a "children-of-Hollywood-stars" obsessive); and C., Dolph's character's backstory is very similar to O-ren Ishii's in KILL BILL (as a child, his parents were murdered in front of him by yakuza, in their bedroom).

Finally, I must point out that one Little Tokyo filming location––a crime scene exterior––is shot outside the church from John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS! (Which is now the Union Center of the Arts.)

(Also note, far left: Vernee Watson, a.k.a., "Viola 'Aunt Vy' Smith" from THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR.)

Only now does it occur to me... SIDE OUT (1990)

Only now does it occur to me... that there's only one movie where you can witness a neon-candy-colored Jose Cuervo-sponsored volleyball Kumite. And that movie is SIDE OUT.

So what is a "side out?" It seems to be an arcane bit of volleyball jargon which is, as far as I remember, never defined by the film itself. As to the question of what is "SIDE OUT," the movie? we can creep a little closer to clarity.

So what we have here is C. Thomas Howell (THE OUTSIDERS, THE HITCHER, RED DAWN). He's playing a law student on summer break. (Can we thank our lucky stars that it's not his blackface-wearing law student from SOUL MAN?) He's picked up at the airport by volleyball-enthusiast/hearse-driving buddy Christopher Rydell (best known to readers of this site for starring in Dario Argento's TRAUMA). Rydell immediately ingratiates himself to the viewer by forcing a weird Freddy Krueger reference

which sort of implies that he deserves primo airport parking because he's picking up... a burn victim child murderer? (C. Thomas Howell does not play a burn victim in this movie, not even if we're counting sunburn.)

Rydell has rad vanity plates, too, because this is a movie made in 1990.

Anyway, C. Tom Howell is really here on the West Coast to do the bidding of his evil uncle (Terry Kiser, of WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S)

who is absolutely just reprising "Bernie" from WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S. It's basically a prequel. He's a real estate lawyer who puts poor C. Tom up to some white-collar repo man antics, evicting poor people and gathering materials to help dastardly land developers (again, this is a movie made in 1990).

Kathy Ireland is here, playing the evil uncle's paralegal, or something. 

 

She's in the movie for such a brief span, I have to imagine she had other scenes which were deleted. Which is a shame, because Cannon Films' ALIEN FROM L.A. revealed that she has better acting chops than you might expect.

Anyway, C. Tom finds out that obeying corporate masters is much lamer than jus' hangin' out and playin' beach volleyball all day.

 

So Rydell makes him an offer he can't refuse.

And C. Tom gets a girlfriend along the way: Courtney Thorne-Smith (MELROSE PLACE, ALLEY MCBEAL, SUMMER SCHOOL), a waitress at the local volleyball-themed watering hole.

 Check out that totally tubular neon sign out front, of a volleyball getting swatted back and forth:

And can we talk about Courtney Thorne-Smith's blouse for a minute? The costumers were up to some wacky shit here––obviously neon pink was a staple of a 1990 beach fashion ensemble, but when we finally get a reverse shot, it reveals a heretofore unseen transparent plastic back panel

which is practically some outré, cyberpunk, "Zhora in BLADE RUNNER" type-stuff. (There will be more on this neon fashion manifesto later, that's a promise.)

Anyway, she is the romantic lead, and she is mostly defined by her blondeness and physical proximity to C. Thomas Howell. I'm pretty sure this doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, but you already knew that.

So C. Tom is living his best life, and participating in volleyball tournaments which are far more plentiful and higher paid in the SIDE OUT universe than in ours. Oh, look––C. Tom and Christopher Rydell are doing the crane kick from THE KARATE KID, a playful reference to a film starring C. Tom's OUTSIDERS cast buddy, Ralph Macchio:

Anyway, Christopher Rydell is tragically injured during this match, and C. Tom must join forces with crusty volleyball veteran Peter Horton (CHILDREN OF THE CORN, THIRTYSOMETHING), who is absolutely the poor man's Steven Weber. Think about those implications.

Through many montages, the two learn to work past their differences and become an awesome volleyball team. Also, C. Tom helps him out with some real estate difficulties, and really sticks it to the man (his uncle "Bernie"). Whew.

A good drinking game you could play with this movie is, "drink every time C. Thomas Howell takes his shirt off."

Eventually, it's time for the big tourney, the Jose Cuervo-hosted volleyball kumite with a $100,000 prize.

If you've seen ROCKY IV, you can probably predict exactly how this goes, point by point,

even if you don't predict the use of the rad 1990 insult "cheese dick."

The movie ends the instant they win "the big game," without any additional character development/reaction/resolution, because the movie knows itself well enough to know that would be completely unnecessary. 

What I don't understand is this: why isn't this just called VOLLEYBALL: THE MOVIE? If you polled a thousand people at the mall and asked them what sport a "side out" is from, how many would guess volleyball? This movie's entire raison d'être is the Kenny Loggins volleyball montage in TOP GUN, and they're even brazen enough to recycle "Playing With the Boys" for it's biggest volleyball montage.

One final thought. At a fashion-show-within-a-volleyball-tournament they actually spell out the formal aesthetics of this movement. It's practically a manifesto. I thought this sort of rigorous self-definition went out of style with the Dadaists, Surrealists, and the Cubists, but here it is, veritably thriving in 1990!

 

 

Volleyball fashion is an ethos, really. Also, there are women in that crowd, and that woman is talking about a fashion manifesto––so I guess this sorta passes the Bechdel test? 

SIDE OUT, ladies and gentlemen.