Archive for the ‘Movies Unlimited’ Category
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Featured Columns, Home Page Top Story, Latest News, Movies, Movies Unlimited on March 15th, 2010
There are Famous Monsters…and then there are famous monsters.
Both Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre were inspired by the real-life crimes of mass murderer Ed Gein; The Silence of the Lambs, book and film, incorporated character traits of multiple serial killers in the depiction of Jame Gumb, the psychopath hunted by FBI agent Clarice Starling — with a little help from the imprisoned Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, himself a (still-mysterious) amalgam of stranger-than-fiction monsters of past and present.
While the profoundly disturbing thriller Se7en reeked with authentic nihilism, and films like Dawn of the Dead and Hostel took blood-soaked pains to offer satiric commentaries on the sorry state of humanity, there’s an entire genre of films that bypass the more commercial goals of “escapism” in favor of more directly dramatizing the horrific tales we’ve read about in the newspapers, pored over in paperback, or seen described in lurid detail on the television news and the Internet.
Filmmakers surely feel they’re walking an awfully fine line when it comes to mounting productions where the names and places aren’t being changed, or where the events depicted are so thinly disguised as to make those changes irrelevant. The line gets even thinner and more slippery when the films are based on incidents in the not-so-distant past. Remember that horrifying-but-hilarious-because-it’s-true line offered by Alan Alda in the Woody Allen film Crimes and Misdemeanors?
“Comedy is tragedy plus time.”
Alda’s reptilian character — a morally compromised TV producer — was arguing that while no one could make a funny sketch about Lincoln being shot right after it happened, after a sufficient amount of time had passed, that tragedy becomes fair game for laughs, and so it must be with any other outrage ripped from history’s headlines. “Springtime for Hitler,” anyone?
But let’s forget about comedy for a moment — what’s the grace period for serious film productions concerning the stuff of which real-life nightmares are made? Probably limitless, for anyone living and involved somehow with the story in question. Filmmakers can’t be forever bound to creating scripts out of whole cloth, however — any given artist’s nature might compel him (or her) to attempt to make sense of the world through a lifelike representation of a tragic true story.
Degrees of responsibility, matters of decorum, issues of good taste — they’ll always be there, and always be debated, just as the desires for exploration (and yes, exploitation), understanding, and catharsis will always manifest themselves in the hearts of filmmakers and audiences alike, once private tragedies become public knowledge.
What are the finest — let’s not call them “entertaining,” at least in that baser sense — pictures in this difficult-to-navigate genre? Here are my own submissions, in chronological order:
Rope No sooner do I give an admonition (to myself) about including films that are purely “entertaining” than I go ahead and list perhaps one of the most completely enjoyable true-crime thrillers of all, directed by none other than the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. As taken from the stage play by Patrick Hamilton (and adapted by Hume Cronyn), the names and events have been changed, but no one ever had any doubt the plot was an evocation of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case of 1924. In the film, John Dall and Farley Granger make for a truly chilling pair of murderers, carefully choosing a victim to dispatch as their way of demonstrating their superiority over conventional morality. Well known for being filmed in a series of long takes, Rope has been frequently criticized as one of Hitch’s “interesting” failures. I see nothing failed about it, and I find the stylistic conceit only adding to the film’s nail-biting unease. It’s a masterwork of visual choreography and a true showcase for the cast. James Stewart is at his piercing best in a deceptively folksy, darkly humorous role, playing the boys’ former professor who first introduced them to the idea of the Nietzschean “superman” (one who is the master of his own values). Stewart’s focused, gradually more intrusive interrogation of the young murderers — as they attempt to put on a delicately arranged dinner party with the corpse literally under everyone’s noses — eventually leads to an opportunity for Stewart to deliver a powerful climactic monologue that, in lesser hands, could have been supremely hammy. Remaking Hitchcock is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber, but I’d love to see this redone. Today’s technology would permit the action to be staged in a completely continuous take, and I’d put it on live television if it were to land safely in the hands of a producer like George Clooney, who proved with Fail Safe that he knows how to make something a little musty new again.
In Cold Blood Truman Capote’s 1966 book about the 1959 murders of a Kansas farming family was, of course, the perfect candidate for cinematic adaptation, due to its unique status in establishing the genre of the “nonfiction novel” — denoting a work that relates a true story utilizing the narrative techniques associated with fiction. Audiences were well accustomed to seeing their movies in color by 1967, but the decision to film this story in black and white was a bold and effective one, and the Oscar-nominated work done here by Conrad Hall — who three times took the Academy’s top prize for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, American Beauty, and Road to Perdition — is positively marvelous, evoking a bone-chilling realism. Scott Wilson and Robert Blake deliver well-rounded and multidimensional portrayals of the inadequate men who leaned on each other, urging one another forward while possessed by greed and bad information, until they become monsters. Once their planned robbery of the Clutter household proves to be less lucrative than they’d initially believed, the duo engages in heartless acts of violence. As in Rope, one killer maintains a sense of defiant bravado in the aftermath while the other begins to crack from strains of fear and guilt. Richard Brooks received richly deserved Oscar nominations for his adapted script and direction, while music legend Quincy Jones was likewise honored for his score. This movie, filmed in actual locations including the home where the murders took place, is required viewing for those wanting to experience one of cinema’s darkest slices of Americana.
Helter Skelter Whenever Roman Polanski’s back in the news (as he has been recently with his capture overseas, not to mention the recent release of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and his own contemporary thriller, The Ghost Writer), the long shadow of Charles Manson is sadly not far behind. As most true crime (and Polanski) followers know, his then-pregnant wife Sharon Tate was among the victims of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders undertaken at the direction of cult leader Manson—a grotesque series of crimes chronicled in this TV movie, the first adaptation of the book written by Manson’s prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi. The film has long been regarded as one of the most riveting made-for-TV movies in history, due to both its matter-of-fact style and a supremely uncompromising performance by Steve Railsback as Manson, who creates a special brand of charismatic madness rarely seen on screens large or small. Equally compelling is George DiCenzo’s low-key and serious work as Bugliosi (does anyone else consistently confuse DiCenzo here for Powers Boothe? Maybe it’s just always been me. More on Boothe in a moment). Check the winners of Emmy Awards for this year and you’ll run into plenty of titles that have vanished into obscurity, while Helter Skelter continues to live on in legend as one of the best of its kind.
Guyana Tragedy: The Jim Jones Story Has anyone ever accused you of “drinking the Kool-Aid”? If you’re ever on the receiving end of that accusation and are not already familiar with its origin, you’ll want to immediately acquaint yourself with this two-part telefilm about the sad and scary saga of Rev. Jim Jones (Powers Boothe). The Indiana-born Jones was a charismatic leader who began as a minister devoted to the celebration of racially integrated congregations only to devolve into a messianic madman — a womanizing zealot addicted to power, sex, and visions of the apocalypse. After he was rejected by the Christian establishment for his integrationist beliefs, Jones formed The Peoples Temple, and in 1974, established Jonestown — meant to be a “socialist paradise” in the South American state of Guyana. As conditions became strict and the Jonestown commune began to resemble not so much a spiritual Utopia as a sadistic prison camp, defectors reached out to California congressman Leo Ryan, who already had a connection to the group because a friend’s son was an ex-Temple member who was murdered. Jones’ sanctuary came under intense scrutiny, leading to a visit by Ryan, who intended to bring back members who wished to leave but were powerless to escape from Jones’ grasp. Jones then set into motion what he sold to his flock as a “revolutionary suicide,” instructing them to ingest cyanide-laced Flavor Aid (the “Kool-Aid” reference is a common mistake that has long since passed into popular acceptance). Directed by William A. Graham, this film retains its searing power by way of its straightforward approach. A marvelous supporting cast backs up Powers Boothe’s eerie, Emmy Award-winning performance as Jones. Standouts include Veronica Cartwright as Jones’ wife; Randy Quaid as the Peoples Temple business manager; Brad Dourif as a junkie Jones “rescues”; LeVar Burton as a young man who struggles again and again to extricate himself from the cult; and Ned Beatty as Rep. Ryan. Watching it today, it’s impossible to escape its relevance. Figures like Jones convince vulnerable followers that they are their only avenue to the truth; they exhort the like-minded to ignore all other conflicting sources of information and influence; they foment narratives of impending doom and all-encompassing paranoia. Contemporary successors mimicking the leadership style of Jim Jones tell their flocks: They’re out to get you. Listen to me, because following what I tell you is your only hope for salvation. Sound familiar? The movie’s first scene, where Jones stages a mock suicide drill to test the loyalty of his followers, tells us crucially what we need to understand about him—that he is a liar. At Jonestown, a posted placard offered the famous quote from Spanish novelist George Santayana about being condemned to repeat history if you failed to study it. For once, Jim Jones was telling people the truth.
Star 80 One thing the late stage/film director Bob Fosse had in common with Martin Scorsese was an unfailing ability to reveal the infinite capacities men have for pettiness and self-destruction. Such was the case with this mesmerizing film recounting the story of Paul Snider (Eric Roberts), an overly confident small-time hustler who came to court, bed, and manage the career of young Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway), only to find that her successes made him feel even more inadequate and powerless. Growing ever more resentful and jealous when she achieves a measure of fame as a Playboy centerfold model and aspiring (if limited) actress, he moves forward with a plan to kill her. Following the lead of Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood, Fosse lensed the climactic scenes of the movie in the very location where Stratten was murdered in 1980, and otherwise saturates the film with a distinctive and showy seediness that perfectly captures the desperate, flashy world the characters occupy. Roberts’ performance as Snider ranks as one of the great lowlife portrayals, in that although we know well in advance the ugly turn his story will take, we can’t help but feel a tiny — emphasize tiny — amount of empathy for him, as he struggles harder and harder to beat down the self-realization that the priorities of his life have always been grossly misplaced, acting to deny him the life he desires so badly.
Prick Up Your Ears “I don’t understand my life. I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was 20, I was going bald. I’m a homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background, I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint. I was programmed to be a novelist or a playwright. But I’m not…” The rage and despair just pour out of Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina), and he’s certain that his lover, acclaimed British playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman), must somehow be to blame. Much like Paul Snider, Kenneth was a deeply troubled man long before he met Joe, but it wasn’t until he was in such close proximity to true genius that he realized how enormously inadequate his own literary talents were. Kenneth’s dream of being a great writer is a common one. His desire for fame is now the stuff of one reality program after another, but Kenneth wanted a loftier and more enduring brand of acclaim. Perhaps he simply didn’t possess the artistic gifts that would have elevated him beyond simple craftsmanship. Perhaps if he’d been more socially well-adjusted. Perhaps if he hadn’t had such a high opinion of himself and such a low opinion of so many others. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. You don’t hear so very much about director Stephen Frears’ film these days, and it’s too bad, because its insights into a very specific time and place are deeply felt, and its perceptiveness into human frailties is striking.
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills /Paradise Lost 2: Revelations Almost never do I leave a movie theater actually angered by the movie. Well, OK, maybe after Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. As I was saying, it’s a rare occasion that a film inspires anger in me, but that’s exactly how I felt after seeing Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s vital documentaries of the 1993 triple murder case in West Memphis, Arkansas, detailing the speedy trial and conviction of three young men also alleged to be involved in Satanism because they dressed in black, listened to heavy metal music, and were regarded as odd outsiders by the community at large. As the victims were 8-year-old boys, the desire for swift justice was certainly understandable. What beggars comprehension is what follows — what appears to be an appalling lack of genuinely damning evidence that nevertheless convinces a jury to hand down one death sentence and two life sentences for the suspects in custody. The second film doles out even more disturbing elements of the case and its aftermath, and paints a very disconcerting portrait of the adoptive father of one of the young victims. Words like “outrage” and “miscarriage of justice” get tossed around a lot, but they’ve rarely seemed more relevant than in the case chronicled by these films.
Elephant Stephen King said he was glad to see Rage (the 1977 novel he had published under the pen name of Richard Bachman) go out of print, troubled as he was by its potential to inspire disturbed teens to follow the example of its psychotic young protagonist, a high school student who arms himself with a semiautomatic weapon, murders his teacher, and takes an entire classroom hostage while playing sadistic, life-or-death mind games over the intercom with the principal he despises. One wonders, then, what King might think of the availability of Gus Van Sant’s deeply disturbing 2003 film—which, while not using any of the same names or places, is plainly designed to evoke memories of the tragic 1999 school shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School. Maybe some cineastes won’t agree, but in my opinion, it’s well past time to forgive Van Sant the misfire of his 1998 remake of Psycho. After all, when you take an overview of Van Sant’s filmography as a whole, which includes works like Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Paranoid Park, and Milk, it’s hard to argue that the director doesn’t enjoy swinging for the bleachers. Elephant is as tough and uncompromising a film as United 93 would prove to be three years later when addressing the events of 9/11—and, released four years after the massacre at Columbine, it is a testament both to the process of grieving remembrance as well as the apparent senselessness of such horrific events. The first two thirds of the film are a rigidly naturalistic account of a day in the life of various children wandering through the hallways of an Oregon high school, going about their everyday business. What clues us in that the day will be a day like no other is the way in which Van Sant flows effortlessly backwards and forwards in time to repeat the same encounters between students from different perspectives, a year before the Oscar-winning Crash would cement the subgenre of circumstance uniting the fates of disparate characters. The camera lingers in very long takes, focused on what appear to be such mundane behaviors—at once distancing the film from conventional drama and re-creating the intensity with which I would imagine family members of such victims must recall their loved ones. You are given a long time to study their faces, watch them walk across a sunny lawn, smile briefly, confide in one another, enjoy their studies, feel inadequate—and simply live, with no knowledge of what is to come. You find yourself taking in the color of his jacket, the texture of her sweater, the style of his hair, the details that make the children—outwardly, which is how most people see one another—who they are. Drawn in closer and closer, you witness a series of small, casual cruelties, the sorts of things teenagers are made to endure every day. By the time the shootings get underway, we’ve been given precious little in the way of information or revelation about the two troubled boys who commit the heinous acts. Even a scene that revolves around one of the killers-to-be trying to play the piano is so carefully calculated not to give us any phony apologies for or contrived “dimensions” to the assassin’s character. Listen to his playing—it’s routine and uninspired, so measured as to be robotic, and in the end, he renders such a dismissive verdict of the classical music and his playing of it that any “poetry” we were led to believe might be suggested in the scene is thrown coldly and definitively aside. The movie ends before the story is over. Of course it does. It had to, because there were plenty of people whose stories ended prematurely on that April day.
United 93 Shoah filmmaker Claude Lanzmann leveled some fairly direct criticisms at Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Holocaust film, Schindler’s List, referring to it as “kitschy melodrama.” His appraisal of the film is somewhat more nuanced than that microscopic quote suggests (and a simple online search for “Claude Lanzmann” and “Schindler’s List” will quickly yield his writings about it in fuller detail), but it’s fairly clear he disapproves of the film as a whole. My own experience with Spielberg’s picture is that it remains one of my very, very few experiences in moviegoing where I felt I had emerged from the theater a different person. Without going into any further detail than that — and I’m not sure I could put more detail into sensible words — I mention that as a preface to the observation that, of all the films in this posting, United 93’s account of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks fell victim perhaps to the loudest of criticisms that it was “too soon” or simply inappropriate to make a film – any film — about the events, let alone one to be directed by the man behind a moneymaking blockbuster like The Bourne Supremacy, which would mar it with the whiff (however faint) of exploiting an American tragedy for profit. Astute filmgoers who recalled writer/director Paul Greengrass’ 2002 film Bloody Sunday, about the 1972 Irish protest march that ended in bloodshed at the hands of the British, guessed correctly that perhaps he might just be the ideal filmmaker to create an honorable accounting of the tragic heroism involved in the Flight 93 saga. As the first Hollywood theatrical film to directly dramatize the story, it had an enormous burden to bear. The cast is a mixture of professional actors and everyday people, also including some of those who actually lived through and influenced events on the ground, such as FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney. As someone connected to 9/11 only as an American with a friend who worked in Manhattan at the time — no more and no less — I wouldn’t presume to be in a position to decide for anyone whether or not they should watch the movie. I found it to be made with sensitive and deep integrity, upsetting, profound, and above all, an absolutely necessary contribution to the history of relevant filmmaking.
Zodiac Imagine you’ve already helmed what is considered one of the finest movies ever made in the “serial killer” genre. Now, imagine rolling the dice by going back into that very same well, only this time, daring to tackle the story of one of the most infamous — and unsolved — mass murder stories of all time. That’s David Fincher, the director who followed his much-praised thriller Se7en with The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and then this meticulously crafted and measured procedural detailing the hunt for the elusive Zodiac killer, the sadistic maniac who terrorized Northern California by attacking seemingly at random, all the while delivering mocking, coded letters to the press in a bid for widespread media attention — which he received. The film focuses primarily on the men drawn into the search, including detectives David Toschi and William Armstrong (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards), who become obsessed with chasing down every clue left behind at the grisly crime scenes; San Francisco Chronicle police reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.), who covered the story and became a specific target of the killer’s attention; and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), the Chronicle’s ambitious cartoonist, who labored to unlock the Zodiac’s coded correspondence. Can a movie be both ahead of its time and a throwback? Based on the blockbuster account of the case written by Graysmith, Zodiac manages to pull off this seemingly contradictory feat, crafted with the matter-of-fact realism associated with the grittiest TV movies of decades past, the screen stuffed with overwhelming amounts of complex details and the prestigious air of investigative classics like All The President’s Men, while also employing enviably rich digital cinematography that gives the story a wholly modern immediacy. Seamless special effects enhance the wide and deep period landscapes depicted within the frame, with each member of the ensemble cast giving performances of immersive intensity. Zodiac received a good bit of critical praise but underperformed at the box office. I’m predicting with utter confidence that it will not only endure, but emerge to be regarded as a true classic of its kind.
And the next exhaustively researched, sensitively mounted “shocking true story” film waiting to be made? I’d say it’s a definitive movie about the 1981 murder of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner, for which former Black Panther/activist/radio personality Mumia Abu-Jamal has been convicted and sentenced to death. It’s interesting to note that—at least on Wikipedia–the films as yet completed about the case (granted, they’re all documentaries) are neatly divided into the works that are “pro-Mumia” and “anti-Mumia.” Is it truly impossible to make a film that cannot be pigeonholed (and thus, stigmatized) as either of those two things?
If not, does that have more to do with what’s actually known about the case or the political climate in which we now find ourselves?
Scary times, indeed.
George D. Allen performs directing and postproduction duties on “Ghouly Irv” Slifkin’s MovieFrightFare videos, as well as regular podcasts on the Movies Unlimited blog, MovieFanFare, and is currently shooting the scare-packed short Night of the Moonbats.
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Featured Columns, Latest News, Movies, Movies Unlimited on March 8th, 2010
“Ghouly Irv” is back, asking you, his best fiends, to lend him your ears–don’t worry, he’ll give them back! In this installment of MovieFrightFare, your chummy chiller expert selects another decade to study and find some unusual facts about your favorite fear flicks:
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Featured Columns, Latest News, Movies, Movies Unlimited on March 1st, 2010
By George D. Allen
Recently, I wrote an article for the Movies Unlimited home blog, MovieFanFare, offering my quickly selected picks for 10 “desert island” movies, those films which, were I forced to choose, I felt (in those moments writing the article, anyway) I would be carting along with me to enjoy during my eternal vacation/banishment on said remote locale.
Now, monsterfans, wipe those memories of Stephen King’s gruesome short story “Survivor Type” from your mind and assume all of your other creature comforts are as normal as they could possibly be (so that you don’t have to worry about minor concerns like hacking off your own body parts for food!), and pick those 10 masterworks of the horror genre you’re going to be forced to live with for the rest of your days. I completed my own “Rorschach test” in this regard below. It was tough. I’ll probably change my mind on a few of these tomorrow. Maybe even five minutes from now. In fact, I just erased one and substituted another. I’ve got to stop!
Here are my selections, in alphabetical order:
The Black Cat (1934) How to choose from among the numerous classic chillers starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi? I clearly will need to have some Boris and some Bela on the island…so, as painful as it might be to leave behind the Browning Dracula, the Whale Frankensteins, the Freund Mummy, and other memorable shockers where the terror titans enjoyed solo starring status, why not pick their first (and in my opinion, their finest) onscreen collaboration? This decadent thriller helmed by B-movie auteur Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour) follows the nightmarish encounter between a honeymooning couple (David Manners, Julie Bishop) and the brooding Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), who meet onboard a train traveling through Hungary. An accident forces the couple to accompany Werdegast to the home of architect/Satanist Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff), the man he intends to revenge himself upon for dark and mysterious reasons. Soon, it becomes apparent that Poelzig and Werdegast share a disturbing past relationship, and the innocent newlyweds quickly find themselves caught in the creepy crossfire. The film has precious, precious little to do with the Edgar Allan Poe story from which it takes its title, but the atmosphere is rich with unsettling dread that’s very much in the Poe style. Lugosi is at his finest here, given a meaty role affording him some very touching moments along with his usual gestures of exotic menace, and Karloff likewise shines in a role thick with sadistic pleasures. Their final showdown is an unforgettable slice of Grand Guignol greatness.
Dracula (1979) I’d already seen the Lugosi and Lee classics on television, but Universal’s 1979 remake of their vampiric chestnut was the first I’d seen on the big screen (and, if I’m not mistaken, the first R-rated movie I was brought to the theater to watch). It’s only natural, therefore, that I’d have a special affection for this adaptation of the Stoker tale starring Frank Langella as the seductive and sinister Count. Langella delivers a performance that—while literally lacking the teeth that would mark him as a member of the bloodsucking undead—brims with romantic intensity and the underlying capacity for shocking violence. Somewhat stylized to echo artist Edward Gorey’s contributions to the Broadway revival that preceded it (which also starred Langella), the film is lavishly produced and contains one of composer John Williams’ finest film scores. Langella’s talents are matched onscreen by solid supporting turns from Donald Pleasance as Dr. Seward, Kate Nelligan as Lucy (or “Mina,” and you Dracula purists know what I mean by that), and Laurence Olivier as Abraham Van Helsing. Trevor Eve makes for a sturdy (and unsurprisingly impotent) Harker, while Tony Haygarth delivers a subtly satisfying interpretation of the insect-munching madman, Renfield. There’s a genuine departure from Stoker during the climax that I, as a young viewer, had not seen coming at all, and it provided a genuine shock that I remember to this day.
The Exorcist (1973) The last time I watched William Friedkin’s terrifying film, I was sitting in a movie theater for the re-issue dubbed “The Version You’ve Never Seen.” There was a lot of laughing with—or at—the movie done by the audience, and by the time it was over, I felt like calling it The Version I Wish I’d Never Seen. I suppose it’s fair to say that, during these decades subsequent to its original release, that because this film’s most well-known moments have passed into the popular consciousness and are endlessly revisited, ripped off, and ridiculed, the film’s ultimate power has somewhat diminished for today’s audiences. Perhaps its most shocking material is simply no longer shocking. Perhaps an increasingly “rational” public (that is, a public devoted less and less to the mysteries of the religious and the supernatural) finds little to fear from the film’s brutally realized account of a young girl’s demonic possession. Still, I’ve been devoted to the original cut of the film ever since it first creeped me out, and it remains, I think, the finest “serious” horror movie ever made–the best chiller that comes along with pretensions of making some manner of commentary on issues of fear and faith. Linda Blair’s performance is still quite heroic; Ellen Burstyn’s work is a portrait of rage and suffering that brings to mind the work of Ingmar Bergman; and the long, exhausting climax that shows the holy dynamic duo of Max von Sydow (in the title role) and Jason Miller (at his brooding, burning best) battling to force the demon from Blair’s body is yet unrivaled in its sheer audacity.
The Fly (1986) When’s the last time you cried at the end of a horror movie? David Cronenberg’s remake of the 1958 thriller starring Vincent Price really got to me. I saw this one multiple times in the theater, perhaps because it was so riveting to see such bizarre subject matter treated with such an emotional punch. People were actively discussing whether or not Jeff Goldblum would follow in the footsteps of Fredric March and receive an Oscar (as March did for 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) for his charismatic and sensitive performance as the scientist who accidentally blends his genetic material with that of a common housefly. Goldblum wasn’t even nominated, unfortunately, but the film did receive the Academy Award for the incredible makeup work by Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis, which dramatized Goldblum’s gradual disfigurement with a sense of genuinely upsetting realism. The picture’s effectiveness was also greatly enhanced by a grandly tragic score from Cronenberg’s go-to musical wizard, Howard Shore.
The Invisible Man (1933) In Bill Condon’s cheeky and enjoyable James Whale biopic Gods and Monsters, Whale (Ian McKellen) at one point offers up a relatively low opinion of his own horror films to an interviewer probing the gay auteur for some inside information. That may certainly have been an accurate representation of how Whale felt, but he remains best known for his classic shockers, and few filmmakers have ever crafted works of the uncanny as clever or enduring. Whale’s determination was always to mix his chills with some chuckles, the better to take his viewers along on an emotional rollercoaster and keep them decidedly off-balance. He masterfully achieved this mix in The Old Dark House and The Bride of Frankenstein, and this adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel (which arrived in between those two) likewise comes with a fair share of laughs to warm you up after getting the shivers. Perhaps the film’s grandest gamble was placing so much responsibility for the film’s success on the shoulders of neophyte leading man Claude Rains, whose face remains hidden in bandages (or completely unseen when he strips them off) until the film’s final few seconds. Rains’ vocal and physical performance remains a marvel; the effects are still—still!—a sight to behold; and renowned screen “biddy” Una O’Connor has an unforgettable showcase for her shrill gifts during the film’s suspenseful opening sequences.
Jaws (1975) Whenever I go back to rework my “Top 10 Favorite Movies of All Time” lists, Steven Spielberg’s timeless thriller always—always—comes out on top. My parents liked to remind me that they took me (quite a youngster at the time) to see the film first at a drive-in, where I promptly fell asleep. Back we went to see it inside a proper movie theater (some sadistic folks, my mom and dad!), where they waved their hands in front of my bulging eyeballs and got no reaction from me whatsoever. Forget about being afraid to go in the ocean: I was afraid to go in the swimming pool after seeing Jaws. A superb, virile adventure film on top of being one of the just-plain-scariest movies of all time, the picture boasts the terrific trio of Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss, playing the men mad enough to take to unfriendly waters off the shores of the fictitious summer resort island community of Amity in search of a man-and-woman-eating Carcharodon carcharias. John Williams’ title theme for the film has passed into cinematic legend, and in spite of its usage in many parodies (“Land Shark!”), that propulsive two-note motif still manages to conjure up shivers.
Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht (1979) As a monsterfan quite partial to the Dracula legend (so much so I wrote and directed an original musical adaptation of it…quite a while back), I feel the thirst to keep a second film relating the strange saga of the world’s most famous vampire in rotation at my desert island cinematheque, especially when that second selection is visionary director Werner Herzog’s remake of the 1922 silent shocker. Uniquely channeling the charisma of frequent collaborator Klaus Kinski in the title role (properly called Dracula here and not Count Orlok), Herzog offers up a sinister stew of dread, giving viewers both a detailed and loving homage to the F.W. Murnau classic and a full-on parade of staple Herzog conceits: A doomed protagonist seeking that which is ultimately elusive; nature working monstrous and foul wonders, here in the form of rats carrying the plague; and dark humor pervading an atmosphere of unease. Bruno Ganz and Isabelle Adjani make for a potent Harker and Lucy, while Roland Topor delivers a deliciously batty performance as Renfield. The musical score by Popol Vuh is superbly haunting, while the cinematography by Jorg-Schmidt-Reitwein ( also responsible for the moody appeal of Herzog films Heart of Glass and Woyzeck, among others) casts a palpable gloom over the effectively (un)natural locations.
Phantom of the Paradise (1974) What list of desert island monster movies could be complete without a little night music from the Phantom of the Opera…uh, that is, the Paradise? And who better to provide it than songwriter Paul Williams? The diminutive Williams–who went on to compose the score for the junior gangster saga Bugsy Malone as well as The Muppet Movie–also enjoys the honor of portraying the Faustian “benefactor” of Winslow Leach (William Finley), the deformed composer obsessed with a pretty vocalist (Jessica Harper) he wants to see play the starring role in his new rock opera. What sets this “Phantom” adaptation apart is the wildly effective blend of homage, parody, and sincere reinvention that works to perfection here for writer/director Brian De Palma, I’d argue more so than in his many Hitchcock-inspired thrillers. Williams’ original score bristles with black humor, sass, and authentic poignancy. And then, there’s the campy lunacy Gerrit Graham brings to the role of Beef, the lisping egomaniac brought on to star opposite the Phantom’s beautiful muse, unveiled in a humorous nod to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. “I give you…Beef!,” indeed. There’s plenty for fright fans to chew on in this oft-neglected movie.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) It happens for each and every generation of horror fans—there comes a popular film that breaks all the unspoken “rules” and is severely castigated for being so horrific the experience of watching it becomes too unpleasant and offensive, perhaps even torturous, for viewers to endure. Raising the hackles of critics and moviegoers raised on more “innocent” or “morally upright” fare, these films achieve a kind of instant infamy. The critics forget, of course, that many of their best beloved classics were, in their day, also seen as insults to the public good (just ask James Whale). In the ‘70s, what film better represents that outrage than Tobe Hooper’s reinterpretation of the lurid saga of serial killer Ed Gein, the Wisconsin-born madman whose crimes similarly inspired the earlier, then-controversial 1960 release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho? After multiple viewings, I still find this film’s visceral power undiminished. The murderous man-child Leatherface remains one of scare cinema’s most disturbing grotesques, and while barely a drop of blood is actually spilled onscreen—contrary to the impression of many reviewers at the time who mistook the picture’s seedy, overwhelming intensity for the actual presence of blood and gore—the experience of viewing the film continues to provide uncanny impressions of spectacular butchery. Other films including Deranged, The Silence of the Lambs, and American Psycho all have their uniquely unsettling charms, but no film yet has truly supplanted Hooper’s gritty chronicle in the annals of unhinged sadism. Why bring it to the desert island? Less out of “enjoyment,” certainly, than out of pure admiration for the craft.
Sure, it’s cheating to pick an 11th, but I’m going for broke anyway:
Isle of the Dead (1945) I add it just as a cautionary note about the terrible things that can happen to you if you get stuck on an island while Boris Karloff goes frighteningly bonkers. I blogged in much more detail about this Val Lewton-produced classic during the Boris Karloff Blog-a-Thon, and you can find my thoughts about this still-relevant chiller here.
I know, I know. No haunted house movies. Two vampire flicks and no mummies, wolfmen, or creatures from black lagoons? No Carpenters or Cormans? No Michael, Jason, or Freddy? No Hammer Films??? Hey, this isn’t easy! Please share your own choices, monster-lover-to-monster lover.
George D. Allen performs directing and postproduction duties on “Ghouly Irv” Slifkin’s MovieFrightFare videos, as well as regular podcasts on the Movies Unlimited blog, MovieFanFare, and is currently shooting the scare-packed short Night of the Moonbats.
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Latest News, Movies, Movies Unlimited on February 18th, 2010
By Fred Burdsall
I told you about The Brainiac and The Deadly Mantis from my childhood. Now, I’ll tell you about my favorite movie. The one movie that started my absolute love of horror and sci-fi… the 1979 Ridley Scott masterpiece… ALIEN.
By the time I finally got around to seeing it at the movies it was already on its last legs and playing down the street for a dollar. (Does anyone else remember the days of neighborhood theaters?) My friend Brian asked me if I had seen it yet and when I said no he told me, “I’ll meet you there because you HAVE to see this.” (A personal pet peeve is people telling me what I have to see, because it usually sucks). So with my dollar in hand I went in and was told I should sit in the front row of a fairly empty theater, but he refused to tell me why. This turned out to be the best dollar I EVER spent.
(Warning, Monster Kids Who Haven’t Seen Alien—are there any?—spoilers abound ahead!)
The movie starts out with the Nostromo, a salvage freighter on its way back to earth, diverted by the ship’s computers to investigate an unidentified beacon coming from a nearby planet. The crew is brought out of their sleep to investigate, and Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt, one of my favorite actors) takes Kane (John Hurt) and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) down to an extremely uninhabitable planet to investigate while Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) make repairs of the damage incurred on landing. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, in the role that launched her career) stays behind to work on deciphering the repeating message.
On the planet they find a derelict ship housing the remains of a creature that seems to have exploded from the inside. As Ripley begins to realize the message is a warning, Kane discovers a room filled with eggs. When he leans down to get a closer look, the egg opens and a creature leaps out and attaches itself to his face. Once they bring him back, Ripley refuses them entry due to quarantine protocol until Ash (Ian Holm), the ships medical officer, overrides her and let them in.
An attempt to remove it reveals it has acid for blood, which eats through several layers of the ship. It eventually comes off on its own and Kane slowly regains consciousness, seemingly none the worse. Deciding to have one last meal before they hit the “Old Freezerino”, the crew sits down and begins chatting about all the things they are going to do when they get home. As they talk, Kane begins to cough, choke and convulse. They pin him down on the table and try to open his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue when he screams and his shirt becomes stained with blood. Convulsing again, he lets out one more scream and his chest bursts open and a small Alien rises up out of him, teeth bared and ready to fight. Ash tells them all “Don’t touch it” and it turns and scurries quickly out of the room.
To say this scene scared the crap out of me is an understatement. I was already riveted to the screen and jumped the proverbial “foot” out of my chair. Now I knew why he insisted I sit in the front row. I never did thank him for that.
The stunned crew gives Kane a burial in space and decides to find the “little bugger” using motion sensors. After mistaking Jones the Cat for the Alien, Brett goes off to get him and finds the now full-grown Alien instead. The last Parker sees of Brett is the Alien pulling him into the airshaft. Since they now know it’s using the shafts, they plan on closing them all one by one and forcing it into the airlock where they can blow it out into space. Captain Dallas decides to enter the shaft himself where he meets with the same fate as Brett.
With Dallas gone, Ripley is now senior officer and goes in to talk to “Mother,” the ship’s computer, angry over the lack of help or information coming from Ash. She discovers that Ash has orders to bring the Alien back to Earth, regardless of the cost…crew expendable. When she confronts him, he attacks her and Parker saves her by knocking off his head. They find that Ash was a robot planted on this mission by “The Company.” With no options left, Parker, Lambert and Ripley decide to take their chances in the shuttle. Ripley prepares the self-destruct while Parker and Lambert get supplies.
The Alien finds them and kills them, leaving Ripley alone with Jones the Cat. She heads for the shuttle to find the Alien blocking her way, so she returns to reverse the self-destruct, but too late. She heads for the shuttle again, and–seeing no Alien in sight–gets in and makes a narrow escape before the ship explodes. As she begins preparing for stasis she discovers the Alien is on board the shuttle with her. Donning a space suit, she sits in the control chair and forces the Alien out of hiding. When he is virtually on top of her, she opens the hatch and watches as the escaping air pulls the Alien out the door. He grabs the sides and Ripley shoots him with a grappling hook, which gets stuck inside the shuttle as the door closes. The Alien makes for the engine, determined to get back inside. Ripley fires them up, blasting him, once and for all, out into space.
Sigourney Weaver would go on to earn an Oscar nod for the sequel, Aliens, in a role originally written for a man. The original story was written by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett with help from Walter Hill and David Giles and as I said earlier, the movie is my personal favorite. I’ve never seen another film that made me forget I was just watching a movie. A fantastic buildup to a truly terrifying moment that you can never forget, followed by a fast paced race to the finish. I do not scare easily and this movie scared me, and that is why it has become the obsession with me that it has. Books, magazines, action figures, trading cards and a board game (Sorry, Chris. You still can’t have it). Little did I know that a few short months later, I would be introduced to the world of Argento…and that is where I will pick up my story next time.
Watch and enjoy–God knows I did.
Fred Burdsall is an amusement park junkie living with his better half, Allison and their 4 cats. You can find him in the Center City, Philadelphia Borders looking for Doctor Who and Zombie books.
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Movies, Movies Unlimited on February 15th, 2010
By Brian Burkart
James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar may feature photorealistic aliens, but for my money the most magical special effects were created by a single man: Ray Harryhausen. He brought to life some of the most memorable creatures in film history without the assistance of computers.
I was first introduced to Harryhausen’s work in the second grade when I borrowed the picture book Creatures! from my school’s library. The title was part of a book series that featured entries on Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, even King Kong. These books were very popular with the boys in my class and you had to be quick to grab one during our weekly library visit. The photos included in this entry were magnificent and sent my imagination into overdrive. There were pictures of sword wielding skeletons, a Hydra, a dinosaur attacking a rollercoaster, a giant octopus destroying the Golden Gate Bridge, flying saucers destroying Washington, D.C., and the most mind-blowing of all–an alien fighting an elephant!
I felt a primal need to see these films. How could such wondrous images exist and I have yet to see them? I copied the titles from the index and in those pre-home video days would scan the television listings every Sunday hoping against hope that one would appear.
Luckily I didn’t have to wait long as my local UHF channel aired a double feature of Jason and the Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad a few months later. I sat (too close to our console television) totally transfixed as formally static pictures now moved and interacted with real actors. Harryhausen’s creations were things of beauty and horror. The image of the Cyclops cooking
a sailor on a spit over a fire haunted my nightmares for months.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad provided me not only with thrilling creatures and swashbuckling action but was the source of my first crush. Caroline Munro was so beautiful that she almost outshined Harryhausen’s work. My 7-year-old self felt oddly uncomfortable sitting next to his mother. Ms. Munro haunted my dreams as well…but that is another story.
As the years went by, my admiration for Harryhausen only grew as I learned the secrets of stop-motion. He designed, sculpted and animated the creatures himself. I was flabbergasted by the fact that one minute of footage could take days to complete. How could one man have the patience and the skill to animate these fantastic sequences one frame at a time? The man was a complete genius and could do no wrong. I was appalled to learn that none of his films had ever been nominated much less won the Academy Award for Special Effects. In my eyes, this was a greater sin than Hitchcock never winning Best Director. After all, did Hitch ever choreograph a fight between mythological creatures? The Academy did award Harryhausen the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for contributions to the technology of moviemaking in 1992 and I cheered this overdue recognition.
Harryhausen’s films are the fertile field where imaginations grow. Many artists cite one of his creations as the inspiration for their art. The Cyclops fight with the dragon; the statue of Talos coming to life; Jason fighting the many-headed Hydra; the Kraken rising to destroy Jappa; the terrifying Medusa stalking Peruses; the six-armed, sword wielding goddess Kali; the Ymir and numerous others are classic images that transport many of us to our childhood. I’ve purchased these films on VHS, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray and will pay to have them directly downloaded to my brain when that technology comes on the market without regret because they are timeless reminders of what one man can accomplish with creativity and patience.
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Featured Columns, Movies, Movies Unlimited on February 8th, 2010
Monsterfans everywhere are salivating over the upcoming release of The Wolfman, Universal’s big-budget remake of their 1941 classic. Can they live up to the malevolent mastery of the original? With all this excitement in the air, it’s only natural that Ghouly Irv would get all sentimental over the hairy horror gems he’s mooned over in the past. Join him in the crypt for a creepy celebration:
Posted by Movies Unlimited in DVD & Blu-Ray, Latest News, Movies Unlimited on February 1st, 2010
By Fred Burdsall
What makes you a fan?
Whatever your interests, there’s always something specific that gets your attention and won’t let go.
For me, it was movies—horror movies—and the scarier the better. I liked that nervous feeling we all get when something makes us uncomfortable. I liked sitting there and wondering if this is the one that finally makes me turn my head away. To me, it’s the greatest feeling in the world and I owe it all to four specific films.
My mother loves watching horror movies, so it was early on in life I got introduced to Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Soon after I discovered the joys of Corman, Price and Poe, but in the midst of all that there were two that grabbed me like no other.
Tarantula had its spider and Them gave us ants, but my bug of choice was a praying mantis…a Deadly Mantis. With a screenplay by Martin Berkeley from a William Alland story, The Deadly Mantis (1957) dealt with a praying mantis frozen in the Arctic ice in a state of suspended animation until the iceberg it was trapped in breaks apart due to a geologic shift. Once free it attacks and destroys a transport plane leaving a claw fragment behind, which is discovered and sent to Washington for identification. This leads to Dr. Ned Jackson (William Hopper) being sent off with photographer Marge Blaine (Alix Talton) to help the military outpost nearest the plane, headed by Col. Joe Parkman (Craig Stevens).
Continuing on its journey inevitably leads it to the outpost where, attracted by the lights, it touches down. The scene of Marge going about her business while the Mantis looks in the window is one of my favorites. Once she begins screaming he brings the house down…almost literally. His next stop is our nation’s capital, where he lands on the Washington Monument and battles it out with jet fighters before taking off again for New York City, where the wounded mantis makes its way into the Holland Tunnel, where it is gassed to death. Hearing it wailing in pain as it died is something I could never get out of my head, and it’s the main reason this movie stuck with me throughout my life. The movie features some excellent special effects for a movie released in 1957 and fine direction by Nathan Juran.
Next was a Mexican horror film called The Brainiac (1962) directed by Chano Urueta and starring Abel Salazar. It concerns Baron Vitelius on trial by the Inquisition for heresy, witchcraft, necromancy, fortune telling, seducing married women and keeping the Cubs out of the World Series. (OK, the last part I made up, but someone has to be held accountable.) Laughing as they torture him, they eventually burn him at the stake. Before he dies, he spots a passing comet and vows to return with the comet’s next passing.
Forward 300 years and the Baron, true to his word, returns and in no time has sucked the brain out of two hapless victims with a forked tongue, met and befriended Vicki and Ronnie and even managed to rob a bank. While the search continues for the comet, the Baron throws a party to celebrate the purchase of his new home, inviting all the Inquisitors descendants including….Ronnie and Vicki. Memorable here is how he walks over to an urn, in full view of the party guests, and takes a spoonful or two of brains after carefully making sure the entire room wasn’t looking at that particular moment. By the time the party is over the Baron has been cordially invited to visit them all at their homes.
First, he visits Professor Pantoja and his daughter and, after murdering them, sets fire to the house. Next, he visits industrialist Luis Meneses and his wife, murdering her and using his hypnotic power to have Luis hop into the furnace. After a visit from the bumbling police duo, mainly in the film for laughs, he visits the newlyweds and disposes of them, as well. Somehow, the chief finally puts it all together and realizes Ronnie and Vicki are next.
As luck would have it, they are at the Baron’s, where he wishes to give Vicki a gift to celebrate her upcoming wedding. They leave the room and a suspicious Ronnie begins poking around. The Baron confesses his love for Vicki, but tells her as the last descendant she must die. Ronnie finds the jar of brains as Vicki rushes in with the Brainiac in pursuit. Since Ronnie’s ancestor defended the Baron he has no wish to harm him and merely passes through him to where Vicki is now cornered by his butler. This is where the bumbling police show up with…….FLAMETHROWERS?!! The day is saved.
Where to begin? Paper mache meteors, sets that move, hilariously bad dialogue and shamefully bad acting. Put it all together and you get an unforgettable movie that is so bad, it’s good. Most memorable of all is the hairy faced Brainiac with his forked tongue that always seemed to bend away from the person he was trying to kill.
These were the two films from childhood that would have me up at all hours of the morning. (MANY is the time my dad would come home from work at three in the morning and find me sitting in front of the TV watching one or the other) I always knew when they were on. I’ve never forgotten them and I always enjoy revisiting them from time to time. Now, it’s your turn.
Next time we meet I’ll tell you about the two films of my teenage years that cemented my love of horror. Here are hints: “In space, no one can hear you scream” and “the only thing more terrifying than the last 10 minutes of this film are the first 90.”
Watch and enjoy!
Fred Burdsall is an amusement park junkie living with his better half, Allison, and their four cats. You can find him in the Center City, Philadelphia, Borders looking for Doctor Who and zombie books.
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Featured Columns, Latest News, Movies Unlimited on January 25th, 2010
Welcome, fright fans, to the first installment of MovieFrightFare! In our premiere episode, your humble (and thankfully not homicidal) host Ghouly Irv shares some fascinating tidbits about some of our most beloved chiller films. Don’t be afraid! Descend into his dungeon and let him spin his shivery spell…
Posted by Movies Unlimited in Featured Columns, Latest News, Movies Unlimited on January 18th, 2010
Dear FM Kids of All Ages,
Welcome to the Movies Unlimited page on Famous Monsters of Filmland! This exciting partnership between FM and MU is a natural, joining the most celebrated brand in film monster fandom with the world’s oldest and most reliable home video mail order company.
During the daylight hours here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I enjoy the job of producing/directing/editing our regular video podcasts on MovieFanFare, MU’s new blog for movie collectors. At MovieFanFare we cover all genres in every era, offering publishing space to contributors whose knowledge of and devotion to all things movie-related is unmatched.
As for me, I have nourished an undying affection for famous monsters (and Famous Monsters of Filmland) since I was a child hunkered down in front of the television set catching the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of “Mad Theater,” which showcased the charming talents of local stage magician Joe Zawislak—better known as horror host Dr. Shock—as well as an endlessly mesmerizing cycle of the greatest chiller classics.
My enthusiasm for the eerie manifested itself not only through repeated (and repeated) viewings of horror films, but in the “play” I enjoyed that bore a growing resemblance to a full-time job! Organizing a film production group amongst my friends shortly after 
receiving my first Super-8 film camera at the age of 12, I kept myself busy after school and during summers with an anthology series called The Dark Factor—when I learned how eggshells could make great “creepy old lady” eyeballs; how a Black & Decker rotary hand pump came in handy when blood needed to spew from hacked-off limbs (or torn-up faces!); how aspiring actors were willing to endure great discomforts in the service of scaring friends and family; and how watching these homemade horrors in the dark with a (paying!) crowd that laughed, shrieked, and applauded offered natural highs that only shock-related cinema can provide.
While our primary wheelhouse at Movies Unlimited is all things DVD and Blu-ray (and we have one of the most lavishly praised catalogs in the business to prove it!), you can trust that we’ll leave no (tomb)stone unturned when it comes to matters horror, sci-fi, and fantasy related. We love to see our famous monsters in books, comics, on the live stage, in our toyboxes–pretty much anywhere they prowl. It’s said you can’t “do it all”…but why not try?
Be sure to tune in as we launch MovieFrightFare, our series of video podcasts featuring “Ghouly Irv” Slifkin, who will invite you into his crypt for reviews of, news about, and celebrations of the old and new greats of the gruesome variety. Plus, we’ll have contributors sharing their insights about the uncanny in what we hope will prove to be entertaining articles you’ll want to talk about. Sure, we’ve all heard and said some variation of “we love Boris Karloff” (or Bela Lugosi, if you fall on his side of that fairly routine either-or choice that only manages to frustrate the true fan…who loves ‘em both!) countless times—but every writer/fan always has his (or her) own unique voice, and there are always new stars to rave about, new scripts in the pipeline, new creature features to invade our frightmares.
We’re looking forward to being a part of this fang-tastic fan community, and hope you’ll do us the honor of commenting, offering suggestions and ideas, and making MU your home for popular, rare, and hard-to-find genre classics just as FM is your home for celebrating the best of the movie macabre.
Until next time, when MovieFrightFare makes its first appearance on this page…Ghoul-Bye!
George D. Allen writes for the Movies Unlimited DVD Catalog and produces the Movies Unlimited Movie Buzz podcasts. He aspires to one day perform Shakespeare (again) and get a movie project out of Development You-Know-Where; George is currently shooting the scary short Night of the Moonbats. Email him at georgea@moviesunlimited.com
There are Famous Monsters…and then there are famous monsters.
Rope No sooner do I give an admonition (to myself) about including films that are purely “entertaining” than I go ahead and list perhaps one of the most completely enjoyable true-crime thrillers of all, directed by none other than the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. As taken from the stage play by Patrick Hamilton (and adapted by Hume Cronyn), the names and events have been changed, but no one ever had any doubt the plot was an evocation of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case of 1924. In the film, John Dall and Farley Granger make for a truly chilling pair of murderers, carefully choosing a victim to dispatch as their way of demonstrating their superiority over conventional morality. Well known for being filmed in a series of long takes, Rope has been frequently criticized as one of Hitch’s “interesting” failures. I see nothing failed about it, and I find the stylistic conceit only adding to the film’s nail-biting unease. It’s a masterwork of visual choreography and a true showcase for the cast. James Stewart is at his piercing best in a deceptively folksy, darkly humorous role, playing the boys’ former professor who first introduced them to the idea of the Nietzschean “superman” (one who is the master of his own values). Stewart’s focused, gradually more intrusive interrogation of the young murderers — as they attempt to put on a delicately arranged dinner party with the corpse literally under everyone’s noses — eventually leads to an opportunity for Stewart to deliver a powerful climactic monologue that, in lesser hands, could have been supremely hammy. Remaking Hitchcock is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber, but I’d love to see this redone. Today’s technology would permit the action to be staged in a completely continuous take, and I’d put it on live television if it were to land safely in the hands of a producer like George Clooney, who proved with Fail Safe that he knows how to make something a little musty new again.
In Cold Blood Truman Capote’s 1966 book about the 1959 murders of a Kansas farming family was, of course, the perfect candidate for cinematic adaptation, due to its unique status in establishing the genre of the “nonfiction novel” — denoting a work that relates a true story utilizing the narrative techniques associated with fiction. Audiences were well accustomed to seeing their movies in color by 1967, but the decision to film this story in black and white was a bold and effective one, and the Oscar-nominated work done here by Conrad Hall — who three times took the Academy’s top prize for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, American Beauty, and Road to Perdition — is positively marvelous, evoking a bone-chilling realism. Scott Wilson and Robert Blake deliver well-rounded and multidimensional portrayals of the inadequate men who leaned on each other, urging one another forward while possessed by greed and bad information, until they become monsters. Once their planned robbery of the Clutter household proves to be less lucrative than they’d initially believed, the duo engages in heartless acts of violence. As in Rope, one killer maintains a sense of defiant bravado in the aftermath while the other begins to crack from strains of fear and guilt. Richard Brooks received richly deserved Oscar nominations for his adapted script and direction, while music legend Quincy Jones was likewise honored for his score. This movie, filmed in actual locations including the home where the murders took place, is required viewing for those wanting to experience one of cinema’s darkest slices of Americana.
Helter Skelter Whenever Roman Polanski’s back in the news (as he has been recently with his capture overseas, not to mention the recent release of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and his own contemporary thriller, The Ghost Writer), the long shadow of Charles Manson is sadly not far behind. As most true crime (and Polanski) followers know, his then-pregnant wife Sharon Tate was among the victims of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders undertaken at the direction of cult leader Manson—a grotesque series of crimes chronicled in this TV movie, the first adaptation of the book written by Manson’s prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi. The film has long been regarded as one of the most riveting made-for-TV movies in history, due to both its matter-of-fact style and a supremely uncompromising performance by Steve Railsback as Manson, who creates a special brand of charismatic madness rarely seen on screens large or small. Equally compelling is George DiCenzo’s low-key and serious work as Bugliosi (does anyone else consistently confuse DiCenzo here for Powers Boothe? Maybe it’s just always been me. More on Boothe in a moment). Check the winners of Emmy Awards for this year and you’ll run into plenty of titles that have vanished into obscurity, while Helter Skelter continues to live on in legend as one of the best of its kind.
Guyana Tragedy: The Jim Jones Story Has anyone ever accused you of “drinking the Kool-Aid”? If you’re ever on the receiving end of that accusation and are not already familiar with its origin, you’ll want to immediately acquaint yourself with this two-part telefilm about the sad and scary saga of Rev. Jim Jones (Powers Boothe). The Indiana-born Jones was a charismatic leader who began as a minister devoted to the celebration of racially integrated congregations only to devolve into a messianic madman — a womanizing zealot addicted to power, sex, and visions of the apocalypse. After he was rejected by the Christian establishment for his integrationist beliefs, Jones formed The Peoples Temple, and in 1974, established Jonestown — meant to be a “socialist paradise” in the South American state of Guyana. As conditions became strict and the Jonestown commune began to resemble not so much a spiritual Utopia as a sadistic prison camp, defectors reached out to California congressman Leo Ryan, who already had a connection to the group because a friend’s son was an ex-Temple member who was murdered. Jones’ sanctuary came under intense scrutiny, leading to a visit by Ryan, who intended to bring back members who wished to leave but were powerless to escape from Jones’ grasp. Jones then set into motion what he sold to his flock as a “revolutionary suicide,” instructing them to ingest cyanide-laced Flavor Aid (the “Kool-Aid” reference is a common mistake that has long since passed into popular acceptance). Directed by William A. Graham, this film retains its searing power by way of its straightforward approach. A marvelous supporting cast backs up Powers Boothe’s eerie, Emmy Award-winning performance as Jones. Standouts include Veronica Cartwright as Jones’ wife; Randy Quaid as the Peoples Temple business manager; Brad Dourif as a junkie Jones “rescues”; LeVar Burton as a young man who struggles again and again to extricate himself from the cult; and Ned Beatty as Rep. Ryan. Watching it today, it’s impossible to escape its relevance. Figures like Jones convince vulnerable followers that they are their only avenue to the truth; they exhort the like-minded to ignore all other conflicting sources of information and influence; they foment narratives of impending doom and all-encompassing paranoia. Contemporary successors mimicking the leadership style of Jim Jones tell their flocks: They’re out to get you. Listen to me, because following what I tell you is your only hope for salvation. Sound familiar? The movie’s first scene, where Jones stages a mock suicide drill to test the loyalty of his followers, tells us crucially what we need to understand about him—that he is a liar. At Jonestown, a posted placard offered the famous quote from Spanish novelist George Santayana about being condemned to repeat history if you failed to study it. For once, Jim Jones was telling people the truth.
Star 80 One thing the late stage/film director Bob Fosse had in common with Martin Scorsese was an unfailing ability to reveal the infinite capacities men have for pettiness and self-destruction. Such was the case with this mesmerizing film recounting the story of Paul Snider (Eric Roberts), an overly confident small-time hustler who came to court, bed, and manage the career of young Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway), only to find that her successes made him feel even more inadequate and powerless. Growing ever more resentful and jealous when she achieves a measure of fame as a Playboy centerfold model and aspiring (if limited) actress, he moves forward with a plan to kill her. Following the lead of Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood, Fosse lensed the climactic scenes of the movie in the very location where Stratten was murdered in 1980, and otherwise saturates the film with a distinctive and showy seediness that perfectly captures the desperate, flashy world the characters occupy. Roberts’ performance as Snider ranks as one of the great lowlife portrayals, in that although we know well in advance the ugly turn his story will take, we can’t help but feel a tiny — emphasize tiny — amount of empathy for him, as he struggles harder and harder to beat down the self-realization that the priorities of his life have always been grossly misplaced, acting to deny him the life he desires so badly.
Prick Up Your Ears “I don’t understand my life. I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was 20, I was going bald. I’m a homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background, I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint. I was programmed to be a novelist or a playwright. But I’m not…” The rage and despair just pour out of Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina), and he’s certain that his lover, acclaimed British playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman), must somehow be to blame. Much like Paul Snider, Kenneth was a deeply troubled man long before he met Joe, but it wasn’t until he was in such close proximity to true genius that he realized how enormously inadequate his own literary talents were. Kenneth’s dream of being a great writer is a common one. His desire for fame is now the stuff of one reality program after another, but Kenneth wanted a loftier and more enduring brand of acclaim. Perhaps he simply didn’t possess the artistic gifts that would have elevated him beyond simple craftsmanship. Perhaps if he’d been more socially well-adjusted. Perhaps if he hadn’t had such a high opinion of himself and such a low opinion of so many others. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. You don’t hear so very much about director Stephen Frears’ film these days, and it’s too bad, because its insights into a very specific time and place are deeply felt, and its perceptiveness into human frailties is striking.
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills /Paradise Lost 2: Revelations Almost never do I leave a movie theater actually angered by the movie. Well, OK, maybe after Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. As I was saying, it’s a rare occasion that a film inspires anger in me, but that’s exactly how I felt after seeing Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s vital documentaries of the 1993 triple murder case in West Memphis, Arkansas, detailing the speedy trial and conviction of three young men also alleged to be involved in Satanism because they dressed in black, listened to heavy metal music, and were regarded as odd outsiders by the community at large. As the victims were 8-year-old boys, the desire for swift justice was certainly understandable. What beggars comprehension is what follows — what appears to be an appalling lack of genuinely damning evidence that nevertheless convinces a jury to hand down one death sentence and two life sentences for the suspects in custody. The second film doles out even more disturbing elements of the case and its aftermath, and paints a very disconcerting portrait of the adoptive father of one of the young victims. Words like “outrage” and “miscarriage of justice” get tossed around a lot, but they’ve rarely seemed more relevant than in the case chronicled by these films.
Elephant Stephen King said he was glad to see Rage (the 1977 novel he had published under the pen name of Richard Bachman) go out of print, troubled as he was by its potential to inspire disturbed teens to follow the example of its psychotic young protagonist, a high school student who arms himself with a semiautomatic weapon, murders his teacher, and takes an entire classroom hostage while playing sadistic, life-or-death mind games over the intercom with the principal he despises. One wonders, then, what King might think of the availability of Gus Van Sant’s deeply disturbing 2003 film—which, while not using any of the same names or places, is plainly designed to evoke memories of the tragic 1999 school shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School. Maybe some cineastes won’t agree, but in my opinion, it’s well past time to forgive Van Sant the misfire of his 1998 remake of Psycho. After all, when you take an overview of Van Sant’s filmography as a whole, which includes works like Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Paranoid Park, and Milk, it’s hard to argue that the director doesn’t enjoy swinging for the bleachers. Elephant is as tough and uncompromising a film as United 93 would prove to be three years later when addressing the events of 9/11—and, released four years after the massacre at Columbine, it is a testament both to the process of grieving remembrance as well as the apparent senselessness of such horrific events. The first two thirds of the film are a rigidly naturalistic account of a day in the life of various children wandering through the hallways of an Oregon high school, going about their everyday business. What clues us in that the day will be a day like no other is the way in which Van Sant flows effortlessly backwards and forwards in time to repeat the same encounters between students from different perspectives, a year before the Oscar-winning Crash would cement the subgenre of circumstance uniting the fates of disparate characters. The camera lingers in very long takes, focused on what appear to be such mundane behaviors—at once distancing the film from conventional drama and re-creating the intensity with which I would imagine family members of such victims must recall their loved ones. You are given a long time to study their faces, watch them walk across a sunny lawn, smile briefly, confide in one another, enjoy their studies, feel inadequate—and simply live, with no knowledge of what is to come. You find yourself taking in the color of his jacket, the texture of her sweater, the style of his hair, the details that make the children—outwardly, which is how most people see one another—who they are. Drawn in closer and closer, you witness a series of small, casual cruelties, the sorts of things teenagers are made to endure every day. By the time the shootings get underway, we’ve been given precious little in the way of information or revelation about the two troubled boys who commit the heinous acts. Even a scene that revolves around one of the killers-to-be trying to play the piano is so carefully calculated not to give us any phony apologies for or contrived “dimensions” to the assassin’s character. Listen to his playing—it’s routine and uninspired, so measured as to be robotic, and in the end, he renders such a dismissive verdict of the classical music and his playing of it that any “poetry” we were led to believe might be suggested in the scene is thrown coldly and definitively aside. The movie ends before the story is over. Of course it does. It had to, because there were plenty of people whose stories ended prematurely on that April day.
United 93 Shoah filmmaker Claude Lanzmann leveled some fairly direct criticisms at Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Holocaust film, Schindler’s List, referring to it as “kitschy melodrama.” His appraisal of the film is somewhat more nuanced than that microscopic quote suggests (and a simple online search for “Claude Lanzmann” and “Schindler’s List” will quickly yield his writings about it in fuller detail), but it’s fairly clear he disapproves of the film as a whole. My own experience with Spielberg’s picture is that it remains one of my very, very few experiences in moviegoing where I felt I had emerged from the theater a different person. Without going into any further detail than that — and I’m not sure I could put more detail into sensible words — I mention that as a preface to the observation that, of all the films in this posting, United 93’s account of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks fell victim perhaps to the loudest of criticisms that it was “too soon” or simply inappropriate to make a film – any film — about the events, let alone one to be directed by the man behind a moneymaking blockbuster like The Bourne Supremacy, which would mar it with the whiff (however faint) of exploiting an American tragedy for profit. Astute filmgoers who recalled writer/director Paul Greengrass’ 2002 film Bloody Sunday, about the 1972 Irish protest march that ended in bloodshed at the hands of the British, guessed correctly that perhaps he might just be the ideal filmmaker to create an honorable accounting of the tragic heroism involved in the Flight 93 saga. As the first Hollywood theatrical film to directly dramatize the story, it had an enormous burden to bear. The cast is a mixture of professional actors and everyday people, also including some of those who actually lived through and influenced events on the ground, such as FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney. As someone connected to 9/11 only as an American with a friend who worked in Manhattan at the time — no more and no less — I wouldn’t presume to be in a position to decide for anyone whether or not they should watch the movie. I found it to be made with sensitive and deep integrity, upsetting, profound, and above all, an absolutely necessary contribution to the history of relevant filmmaking.
Zodiac Imagine you’ve already helmed what is considered one of the finest movies ever made in the “serial killer” genre. Now, imagine rolling the dice by going back into that very same well, only this time, daring to tackle the story of one of the most infamous — and unsolved — mass murder stories of all time. That’s David Fincher, the director who followed his much-praised thriller Se7en with The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and then this meticulously crafted and measured procedural detailing the hunt for the elusive Zodiac killer, the sadistic maniac who terrorized Northern California by attacking seemingly at random, all the while delivering mocking, coded letters to the press in a bid for widespread media attention — which he received. The film focuses primarily on the men drawn into the search, including detectives David Toschi and William Armstrong (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards), who become obsessed with chasing down every clue left behind at the grisly crime scenes; San Francisco Chronicle police reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.), who covered the story and became a specific target of the killer’s attention; and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), the Chronicle’s ambitious cartoonist, who labored to unlock the Zodiac’s coded correspondence. Can a movie be both ahead of its time and a throwback? Based on the blockbuster account of the case written by Graysmith, Zodiac manages to pull off this seemingly contradictory feat, crafted with the matter-of-fact realism associated with the grittiest TV movies of decades past, the screen stuffed with overwhelming amounts of complex details and the prestigious air of investigative classics like All The President’s Men, while also employing enviably rich digital cinematography that gives the story a wholly modern immediacy. Seamless special effects enhance the wide and deep period landscapes depicted within the frame, with each member of the ensemble cast giving performances of immersive intensity. Zodiac received a good bit of critical praise but underperformed at the box office. I’m predicting with utter confidence that it will not only endure, but emerge to be regarded as a true classic of its kind.
