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10/14/15 (Part Two): The Devil’s Dance Floor

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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31 Days of Halloween, Alida Valli, auteur theory, ballet, Barbara Magnolfi, cinema, classic films, co-writers, cult classic, dance academy, Daria Nicolodi, Dario Argento, dog attacks, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Flavio Bucci, foreign films, Goblin, Helena Markos, horror films, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, Italian horror films, Jacopo Mariani, Jessica Harper, Joan Bennett, Luciano Tovoli, Movies, opening narrator, Renato Scarpa, Stefania Casini, stylish films, supernatural, Suspiria, Suzy Bannion, Udo Kier, violent films, witches, writer-director

suspiria-movie-poster-1977-1020491580

There’s absolutely nothing subtle about Italian giallo-maestro Dario Argento’s classic supernatural shocker Suspiria (1977)…and there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever, thank you very much. From the opening drum crash that cues Goblin’s iconic prog-rock score to the over-the-top murder setpieces to the near constant use of dramatic colored lighting to heighten mood, Suspiria is one of the all-time great cinematic mood pieces, a ferocious nightmare that has all of the narrative continuity of a fever-dream and is so unabashedly beautiful as to be almost hypnotic. In a 40+ year career filled with more ups and downs than a bakers’ dozen of filmmakers, Suspiria will always stand as not only Argento’s magnum opus but also one of the single most original, visually stunning films in the history of the cinema.

As befits Argento’s supernatural films (of which this was the first), Suspiria only makes as much narrative sense as it absolutely has to. If anything, the film is much more concerned with establishing and maintaining a haunted, skewed fairy-tale atmosphere than it is with ticking off plot points on a sheet of paper. Suffice to say that the plot can be boiled down rather succinctly to the following: Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), a naive, young American ballet student, has just arrived at a mysterious dance academy in Germany that may or may not actually be the front for an ancient coven of witches. As Suzy witnesses one strange incident after the other, beginning with the dark and stormy night when she first arrives, it becomes more and more difficult to figure out what’s real and what she might be imagining due to a good, old-fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies. As she continues her investigation, Suzy will gradually come to learn the truth about Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett) and the sinister, unseen Helena Markos, who may (or may not) be the ancient, Satanic evil known as The Black Queen.

While Suspiria isn’t necessarily concerned with connecting the dots from Point A to Point Z, it is absolutely, thoroughly dedicated to immersing the viewer into a completely surreal, eye-popping, nightmarish environment. Argento accomplishes this suffocating sense of atmosphere in many ways, although some of the most notable are the extensive use of colored lighting, tricky camera angles and the near constant, moody score. As mentioned earlier, Suspiria is a gorgeous film, thanks in no small part to the evocative cinematography of veteran DP Luciano Tovoli: there’s one scene in the film, lit with a green light and shot through a light-bulb that is absolutely stunning…it’s doubtful that even Peter Greenaway has been responsible for an image this lovely, which gives some (small) idea how massively impressive Suspiria’s visuals truly are.

As with almost all of Argento’s films, Suspiria is built around a series of escalating, over-the-top set-pieces, sort of like individual rides in one, large amusement park: the opening murder involving multiple stabbings and a stained-glass window…the maggot rain…blind Daniel (Flavio Bucci) and his terrible death at the jaws of his own dog…the extraordinary, red-lit scene where the practice hall is turned into a dormitory and Helena Markos makes her first “appearance”…the stylishly weird scene where the housekeeper and ultra-creepy Albert (Jacopo Mariani) appear to hypnotize Suzy…Sara’s (Stefania Casini) horrible demise via a room full of razor-wire…rather than feeling disjointed or episodic, Suspiria ends up feeling genuinely odd and unsettling. It’s almost as if we’ve been invited to peel back someone’s skull and peer right into the deepest, darkest corners of their fevered imagination.

Those new to the world of ’70s-’80s Italian horror will, undoubtedly, find some of Suspiria’s quirks to be a little off-putting, although they’re nothing if not endemic to that particular style of filmmaking. Some of the performances can come off on the wrong-side of stagey (the excruciating “fight” between Sara and Olga (Barbara Magnolfi) that consists of them sticking out their tongues and hissing at each seems to last for at least a month, if not longer) and some of the dubbing is a little suspect. In one of the most head-scratching moments, the evil Helena Markos is voiced by someone who appears to be channeling a stereotypical street thug by way of Cloris Leachman: it’s a strange, silly choice and has the unfortunate effect of taking you out of the movie, if only for a moment. Again, these aren’t issues that should be new to anyone who’s seen their fair share of Italian horror films but neophytes would be advised to exercise patience with some of the film’s “sillier” contrivances.

Make no bones about it, however: Suspiria is a vicious, hard-hitting film that’s managed to lose none of its power in the 37 years since its release. If I’ve seen the film once, I’ve probably seen it at least a dozen times, but it never fails to pull me in from the very first frame: hell, I get a practically Pavlovian response whenever I hear the score, similar to my extreme love for John Carpenter’s oeuvre. This time around, I tried to view the film as critically as possible, with an eye towards determining whether the film was actually “scary,” at least by modern terms. I may be a little biased here, since I’ve always been in love with the film, but I think that it still possesses all of its feral power, even for a generation that’s become jaded on every sort of cinematic atrocity imaginable. Make no bones about it: the violence in Suspiria is sudden, shocking and extreme, made even more disturbing by the fact that Argento frames everything in such lovely, stunning visuals. Even though the copious blood never manages to look like anything less than thick, red paint, the suspension of disbelief in the film is absolute: Argento, at the height of his power, was (arguably) the greatest European horror writer/director ever (which, of course, makes his fall from grace of the past couple decades even more depressing).

Horror fans tend to be a fairly fickle bunch but there are a few films that appear to be universally respected: Suspiria is certainly one of those. Although Argento would go on to make several exceptional films after Suspiria (very few filmmakers have had a string of quality films like Argento experienced with Profondo Rosso (1975), Suspiria, Inferno (1980), Tenebre (1982), Phenomena (1985) and Opera (1987)), this will always stand as the unholy height of considerable abilities. One of the greatest compliments that I can give the film is to say how completely and utterly jealous I am of anyone who gets to experience this for the first time: believe me when I say that, in all likelihood, it will open your eyes. October just wouldn’t be the same without Argento’s infamous “witch academy” and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

10/3/14: Facehugging For Fun and Profit

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Alien, auteur theory, chest-bursters, cinema, classic films, cult classic, Dan O'Bannon, facehuggers, favorite films, Film auteurs, film franchise, film reviews, films, Harry Dean Stanton, horror, horror films, horror franchises, Ian Holm, iconic film scores, isolation, James Cameron, Jerry Goldsmith, John Hurt, Movies, Nostromo, outer space, Ridley Scott, sci-fi-horror, Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Xenomorphs, Yaphet Kotto

Alien-1979-Original

There are certain films that have been burned into my brain from the very first time that I saw them: Ridley Scott’s incomparable Alien (1979) is one of those movies. I don’t remember how old I was at the time but I do remember that Alien scared the ever-loving shit out of me. This wasn’t one of those “keep the lights on for the night”-frights…this was fundamental, soul-shattering terror precipitated by the idea that Star Trek had lied right to my face: the far-reaches of space weren’t filled with colorful, planet-hopping, humanoid aliens that were more than willing to exchange the cure for cancer for a few Clark bars…deep space was actually filled with terrifying, insectile, organ-devouring monstrosities that owed more to Lovecraft’s Old Gods than the golden age of Hollywood makeup. Like I said: I don’t remember how old I was the first time I saw Alien but I do remember that it fundamentally changed me, modified my DNA just a tad, as it were. Suffice to say, I’ve been hooked on the movie (and auteur Ridley Scott) ever since.

Over the years since that first screening, I’ve become a bit of an Alien fanatic: I’ve seen edited versions, the “classic” version, the more recent “director’s version” and every sequel currently on the market. I’ve studied production notes, drooled over set pictures and H.R. Giger’s amazing creature design and made up my own mythos for the “space jockey.” In other words, I felt like I knew Alien inside and out: when you can not only quote a film’s most memorable dialogue but also random shots, you might be a little obsessed.

When it came time to put together this year’s October screenings, however, I was left with a similar situation as with my screenings of Halloween (1978) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): how does one go about discussing a film that’s not only vitally important to them, but also so familiar? By this point in time, I’ve been talking about Scott’s sci-fi/horror game-changer for a few decades: what more could I possibly have to say about it? In that spirit, I decided to take several steps back (or try to, at least) and see if I could figure out why, exactly, Alien is such an amazing, terrifying film. Why is Alien so powerful when similar films either come off as cheesy, old-fashioned or ineffective nowadays? What is it about this film that not only struck a chord with me but managed to have enough cultural resonance to implant itself with the collective unconsciousness? In a nutshell: what makes Alien…well…Alien?

Right off the bat, I think that one thing that really sets Alien aside is its inherent simplicity: despite its setting and some pretty cutting-edge visuals, there’s nothing particularly flashy about the film. Throughout, Scott’s emphasis remains pretty singular: he wants to establish and maintain an atmosphere of sustained doom and every aspect of the film, essentially, exists to drive this emphasis home. Hell, the proof is right there in the title: Alien. Nothing flashy, evocative, leading, intriguing…just Alien. It’s as if Scott makes his mission statement clear before the first reel even begins: nothing in this film will come between you and your deep, unshakable feeling of dread, including the title of the film. There is no escape or hiding for the audience, just as there’s no escape for the characters.

The story, as with everything else in the film, is pure simplicity, more a modernization of a timeless fairy tale than any kind of futuristic thought piece. In the future, a commercial towing ship named Nostromo receives a mysterious distress call from a largely unexplored section of the galaxy. The ship’s computer mainframe, Mother (sort of a kinder, gentler HAL), reroutes the ship, which was returning to earth after a seven-year mission and sends the crew to check out the signal. None of the seven member crew are especially happy about this, particularly the spaceship’s two engineers, Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and Parker (Yaphet Kotto), but failure to participate will lead to them forfeiting their salaries for the trip, resulting in seven years of free labor.

Once at the source of the signal, a small crew is dispatched to check out the strange planet: Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), chief navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) and officer Kane (John Hurt) scour the surface of the planet, while Brett, Parker, security chief Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and science officer Ash (Ian Holm) hold down the fort back on the Nostromo. The exploration team tracks the signal to a wholly impressive derelict space craft, an intensely alien creation that appears to have crashed head-on into the planet’s surface. Upon entering the ship, the team finds evidence of some sort of intelligent but unknown alien life, including what appears to be some sort of alien remains. As they continue to explore, Kane discovers a room full of leathery “eggs,” the contents of which will kickstart the film’s transition from sci-fi spectacle to full-bore horror film. Despite the fact that I find it impossible to believe that anyone is unfamiliar with the specifics of Alien, in this day and age, I’ll refrain from spoiling any of the film’s surprises. Suffice to say that the crew ends up bringing something back with them to the Nostromo, something which appears to have the capability to not only destroy the whole crew but the entirety of humanity, as well. As the body count rises, Lt. Ripley must face her own fears and go head-to-head against a monster that appears to rival the shark for sheer purity of purpose: eat, breed, repeat.

As I said, I firmly believe that one of Alien’s greatest assets is the streamlined simplicity of its storyline and action: the film is just under two hours in length yet moves so quickly that it feels, in reality, like a much shorter film than that. The film is also deadly serious throughout, which aids immeasurably with the suffocating atmosphere: once the film kicks into high gear, there are precious few respites or “down-time.” Despite this sense of continuous action, the film is not frantically paced: Scott is just as liable to allow a scare to gradually unfold, such as the numerous appearances of the Xenomorph, which always seems to be unfolding and uncoiling itself from some confined space, as he is to rush through something. The editing is never overly frantic, either, allowing the film’s truly astounding visuals plenty of opportunity to breathe and resonate.

The “simplicity” I note also extends to the “info dumps” that are usually symptomatic of sci-fi films: the backstory behind the Xenomorphs is kept purposefully vague, with only hints, assumptions and suppositions that are more common to horror films than “hard science” films. We’re shown the amazing sight of the gargantuan, dead “space jockey” but given no details past that. The exploration team passes through what appear to be massive skeletons as they explore the planet but we’re told nothing about them. The Nostromo’s crew can’t tell us anything about the Xenomorphs because they don’t know anything: this isn’t like Van Helsing telling us the best way to stake a vampire…this is like a bunch of kids flipping over a rock and staring in open-mouthed amazement at the squishy, black, scorpion-spider-centipede thingy that slithers out. Thinking back on it, I’m sure that this sense of the unknown is what fueled not only my fear over the film but also my obsession with it: the very notion that there might be something like this, on some distant planet, just waiting for idiotic humans to stumble on, is pretty terrifying, especially in an age when we’ve begun to discuss making longer interstellar voyages. We haven’t found anything like this yet…but we might, if we look hard enough.

When I watched Alien this time around, I also focused on the craft behind the film, trying to put myself into the mind of someone seeing the film for the first time. In the past, I’ve taken much of the film for granted since I’ve been so familiar with it. This time around, I forced myself to pay attention to every shot, every musical cue, every cut: I know how much I love the film but does that really make it a great film? In this case, it absolutely does. From the iconic opening credits that gradually reveals the film’s title, a piece at a time, to the amazing final shot that transitions from Ripley’s peacefully sleeping face to the vast emptiness of space, the film is an absolute marvel. Not only does it consistently look great (take a good look at the visuals and tell me that Scott’s film doesn’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a little movie called 2001 (1968), especially concerning the Nostromo’s interior) but Jerry Goldsmith’s score is a real thing of beauty, too.

Reading like a veritable who’s-who of exceptional character actors (Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton as best buddies? John Hurt, Ian Holm, Veronica Cartwright and Tom Skerritt as crew mates? Sigourney Weaver kicking ass and taking names? All of the above, please!), every member of the cast pulls his/her own weight, making this easily one of the best-performed sci-fi films ever: ribcages may explode but the actors never chew the scenery, which gives everything a much more realistic quality, a realism which, ironically, helps to play up the film’s more nightmarish qualities.

And nightmarish qualities it has, in abundance. The chestburster…the facehugger…the attempted asphyxiation by rolled-up porno mag…the dripping, hissing monstrosity that is the Xenomorph, years before it would become a theme-park attraction…unlike James Cameron’s exceptional, if vastly different, sequel, Aliens (1986), Scott’s film is a horror movie through and through: transpose the action to earth and you would still have a story about a bunch of people getting chased by a hungry monster. In other words, the perfect horror film.

Is Alien a perfect film? Not at all. In fact, this most recent viewing of the film brought up the same issue I have every time I watch it, namely that there’s absolutely no reason for Ripley to strip down to her underwear at the end of the film. Scott resists the urge to sexualize Weaver throughout the rest of the film so it’s always disappointed me that she begins her final fight wearing only a skimpy pair of panties (all the better for some buttcrack shots) and a tiny, see-thru undershirt. I also found Cartwright’s depiction of Lambert to be rather annoying by the later half of the film, since she seems to exist solely to complain, scream, whine and race about like an idiot: basically, all of the things that much dumber films than Alien traffic in.

Despite these minor quibbles, however, Alien is an absolute masterpiece, a towering achievement that still stands as my all-time favorite sci-fi flick (I might lose my cinephile card over this but Alien has always hit me harder than 2001…sorry, folks). Even though I assumed there was nothing else I could learn from re-watching one of my favorite films, I actually found myself with a new revelation by the conclusion: there was absolutely no need for any of the other films in the series, including Aliens, which has always been another of my favorite films. As good a film as Aliens is, it only serves to water down the original film’s mythology and attempt to give answers where non are required. The less we know about the incidents from Alien, the scarier they are. By the time we know everything about the Xenomorphs, they’ve become just another predator (or Predator, really), which significantly reduces the fear factor. By the time the Xenomorphs are facing off against the Predators, in Alien vs Predator (2004), any and all mystery is officially gone.

Regardless of anything that followed, however, Alien is without peer. There may be films that make better use of modern CGI and effects, have bigger stars or larger budgets but there will never be anything that has the raw, feral power that this film possesses. While I’ve gone on to enjoy many of Scott’s films, I’ve never held any of them in the esteem that I’ve reserved for Alien. The film has given me an untold amount of joy over the years but it’s also provided me something much more fundamental: I may always be fascinated by the immensity of space but I’ll also always view it with no small amount of inherent fear. After all: the galaxy may very well be filled with all manner of polite, helpful ETs but I’ll always be convinced that, somewhere out there, something very mean and hungry is also biding its time, waiting for that day when humans throw off their earthly bonds and take our place in the galactic food chain.

10/2/14 (Part One): The Reason For the Season

03 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, auteur theory, babysitters, Brian Andrews, Charles Cyphers, classic films, co-writers, cult classic, dead teenagers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, favorite films, Film auteurs, Haddonfield, Halloween, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, iconic film scores, independent film, insane asylums, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter, John Michael Graham, Kyle Richards, Michael Myers, Nancy Kyes, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Sam Loomis, set in the 1970s, slasher films, small town life, writer-director

halloween1

Apparently, I owe John Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1978) an apology. Despite regarding the film as one of my favorites for more years than I can remember and revisiting it at least once a year, it seems that I’ve been taking it for granted. Call me “lazy” or “too comfortable” but I’ve been treating the film as background noise for far too long now: something to have on while serving up gift-wrapped sugar treats for the young’uns or to zone out to after a particularly long day at work. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’ve seen the film so many times, kind of like how we all used to get burnt out on big radio singles back when there was radio. I’ve been looking at the movie for years but I haven’t really been “watching” it for some time now. Obviously, this was a situation that needed to be rectified.

For this year’s screening of the seasonal chiller, I decided to give it my complete and undivided attention: rather than just put it on, I wanted to try to view it (if possible) through unbiased eyes. Essentially, I had a question: if I were viewing this for the first time today, would it still have the same impact on me that it did when I was a kid? It’s a flawed experiment, obviously, since there are so many other factors to consider, not the least of which is that at the time I saw the film, I didn’t really have much to compare it to: by this point, I’ve seen more horror films than I probably thought could ever exist back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Nonetheless, I wanted to see if the film could actually still affect me: I’ve been hearing stories lately about young people laughing their way through recent screenings of the film and wanted to see if this forefather to the slasher film still had any of its raw power left. As it stands, I found out two separate things: the film hasn’t lost any of its power over the 36 years since its release…and it’s entirely possible that modern audiences have rocks in their head. I’ll try to prove the former but you’re just gonna have to take my word on the latter.

Since I find it nearly impossible to believe that there are any film fans out there who aren’t at least familiar with Carpenter’s masterpiece (or Rob Zombie’s brain-dead remakes, if that floats yer boat), I’ll just give this the Cliff Notes synopsis: 15 years ago, young Michael Myers (Will Sandin) brutally stabbed his sister to death and was sentenced to an insane asylum. Dedicated psychiatrist Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) spends the next eight years trying to cure and the seven years after that trying to keep him locked away. When Michael escapes from the asylum on the day before Halloween, Loomis tracks him back to his boyhood home, the small town of Haddonfield. Michael arrives in the town on Halloween, steals some supplies (knives and a William Shatner Halloween mask) and quickly sets his sights on decimating the town’s supply of teenagers, in particular Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles). As day gives way to night, Michael skulks about, picking one person off after the other. Loomis is on the case, however, and has been scouring the town from top to bottom, hunting for any sign of his elusive ward. As Michael closes the distance between Laurie and her two young charges, Tommy (Brian Andrews) and Lindsey (Kyle Richards), will Loomis get there in time or will the resourceful babysitter be forced into a fight for her life against a silent, inhuman monster?

But back to that earlier question: did the film have any impact on me this time around or did I find myself re-evaluating my lifelong love for the film, ala Kevin Smith’s now odious Clerks (1994)? As it turns out, the film is still just as impactful (to me, at least) today as it was a couple of decades ago: despite knowing every twist, turn and plot development, I was still glued to the screen and even caught myself reacting to a few setpieces that I was sure would be old hat by this time. Now that the “Is it still effective?” question is answered, time to think about the “Why?” part. Why is Halloween still such an effective horror, even as it rapidly approaches its 40 anniversary?

The easy answer, of course, is that Halloween is still so damn effective because it’s such a well-made film. Yeah, that’s a bit of a cop-out but let’s increase the magnification to 1000x, shall we? First off, Carpenter is an absolute master filmmaker: that’s no hyperbole, rather one of those accepted scientific facts. By the time of Halloween, he already had a massively entertaining sci-fi epic under his belt (Dark Star (1974), as well as one of the most undisputed badass films in the history of popular cinema: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). I’ve already written extensively about Assault on Precinct 13 in another blog but here’s the recap: Assault is one of those raw, primal films that sprung fully formed into the world, like Athena out of Zeus’ head, and proceeded to rewrite the rule book on what low-budget action films were capable enough. Suffice to say that Assault on Precinct 13 would be a feather in anyone’s cap: for Carpenter, he just called it his sophomore film.

But back to Halloween. So we’ve got a master director who’s just taken his first baby steps towards on helluva career. What else do we have? How about that iconic electronic music score? Short of the Jaws (1975) theme song (and maybe Jurassic Park (1993), come to think of it), I’m hard-pressed to recall another film’s instrumental score that’s so easily recognized and functions so Pavlovian among genre fans. The responsible party? That’d be our man John, again, who also wrote the instantly memorable score for Assault. So we have a master director and an amazing musical score…what else we got? Well, we’ve also got a pretty impressive cast, even if they’re mostly unknowns (with the exception of the legendary Donald Pleasence, of course). Despite appearing in a few TV shows prior to this, Halloween was also the big-screen debut of Jamie Lee Curtis, which also adds a few feathers to its cap: film fans, genre or otherwise, know Curtis as being one of the most dependable, strong and fun performers to tread the boards in this modern film era. Curtis’ performance as Laurie is a true watershed moment in horror, since it introduced the horror world to the notion of a strong female lead. While Laurie might not be quite in Lt. Ripley territory, her character is anything but a damsel in distress: Loomis may shoot Michael several times from a safe distance but Laurie goes mano a mano with the fucker, employing hangers, knitting needles, knives and whatever else she can get her hands on to inflict maximum damage. Loomis may be the guy who gets in the final shots (for all the good that does) but Laurie’s the one who softened up the devil, in the first place.

Unlike the scads of “dead teenager movies” that followed in its wake, the “victims” in Halloween are not a clichéd, unlikable bunch of cannon fodder: they might not be fully developed characters in the way that characters in The Godfather (1972) are, for example, but they’re also a light year away from the “horny/stupid/asshole” stereotypes that would pop up in just about every other slasher film ever made. Laurie and her friends may not quite look like teenagers but they definitely sound like them and it’s pretty impossible (for me, at least) to not feel empathy for them. Contrast this to something like Hatchet (2006), which delights in introducing super-shitty characters so that audiences will cheer when they get fed into a wood chipper: it’s a subtle but big difference.

Alright…so far, we have a film with a master director, excellent musical score, effective acting and sympathetic characters. What else does it have going on? Well, it’s got an exceptionally tight script, for one thing, a script which manages to dole out just enough information to get us intrigued but not enough to make us glaze over (I’m absolutely looking at you, Rob Z). It also has some pretty astounding cinematography, courtesy of Dean Cundey, the man with the camera who shot everything from Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976) to most of Carpenter’s catalog (including The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Jurassic Park (to name but a very few out of a very impressive career). Cundey uses plenty of gorgeous wide shots in the film, along with that (by now clichéd) “killer’s POV” that’s name-checked in just about 99.9% of slasher films. If you watch Halloween and think, “Gee, this stuff is so cliché,” ponder this, Poindexter: this was the film that pretty much wrote the rulebook on this kind of stuff (if you held up your hand and said, “Bay of Blood (1971)!,” you get points for that, too).

So all that stuff’s thrown into the mix, which should go a long way towards answering the question, “Is Halloween actually a good film?” (Short answer: Of course.) The deeper question, however, is why is Carpenter’s film still so effective despite all the films that have come and gone since? There have been plenty of bloodier, rawer, more frantic, more hopeless and more eye-popping films over the years, no two ways about it. How, then, could I stand on my apple-box and bend your ears about this old dinosaur? Well, folks, there’s a pretty simple answer: like Hitchcock before him, Carpenter is an absolute wizard at creating tension so thick that you could cut it with a knife. From the opening credit sequence (and let’s be honest: it’s one of the coolest, if simplest, credit sequences in the history of the medium) to the final shot, Halloween is nothing short of a barely concealed live wire. Much of the credit for this impenetrable mood is due to Carpenter’s amazing score: rarely have there been musical tones that seem more suited for reaching into someone’s chest and squeezing their heart into strawberry jam. The film also has a deadly serious tone (despite some welcome comic relief via the ultra-snarky Annie), which helps with the oppressive atmosphere. Digging deeper, however, there’s another reason for this: Carpenter has purposefully crafted a world that oozes menace and threat from every pore, regardless of the time of day, the characters involved or the storyline.

Despite seeming the obvious way to go, the majority of Halloween’s narrative doesn’t take place during the evening: some of the flat-out creepiest shit happens right out in broad daylight. Carpenter does something so simple, yet devious, that I’m surprised no one else has really figured this out yet: he lets his monster just walk around among the unsuspecting sheep. During the lead-up to the night-time festivities, Carpenter manages to stick Michael into the corners or margins of just about every shot. Laurie notices Michael watching her from across the street, while she’s in school…Laurie notices Michael hanging out on a sidewalk, in her neighborhood…Michael is just driving a car around through the streets of Haddonfield, as natural as if he were cruising on a Saturday night. Unlike other cinematic monsters, Michael doesn’t seem to strictly a “creature of the night,” as it were. The majority of the kills occur after dark, but the stalking is pretty-much a 24-7 deal.

There’s a reason this works so beautifully and it has to do with that old chestnut of Hitchcock’s regarding showing the bomb: if a couple are sitting at a table and suddenly blow up, the audience is surprised and shocked but only momentarily. If the audience witnesses someone place a bomb under the table, set the timer and leave, however, than we suddenly have a whole other animal…we have suspense. The characters might not know about the bomb but we do, which has the natural effect of keeping us on the edge of our seats: we keep yelling at the screen, telling the idiots to get the hell away from the table but they, of course, won’t listen.

Carpenter’s bomb, so to speak, is Michael. In many ways, he’s like a living ghost that haunts Haddonfield. Since we already know who and what he is, thanks to the opening, Loomis’ description and the harrowing asylum escape, we already know what he’s capable of once he shows up among the “normal” folks. Laurie and her friends might not know who the goony guy in the Shatner mask is but we do and that makes all the difference. Since Michael is an omnipresent force in the film, we never reach a point where he’s not on our minds: we might temporarily forget him, as we get caught up in some bit of teenage minutiae but he’s always right around the corner to remind us. Once the killing begins in earnest and Michael becomes an unstoppable force, it’s almost like our fears have been confirmed: if only those idiots would have listened to us about the bomb, none of this shit would be happening. Thanks to this technique, Halloween has about a million times more resonance and power than generic slashers that merely set up a group of people, establish a threat, wait until dark and kill ’em all.

These are all great reasons to love Halloween, as far as I’m concerned, but there are plenty of other reasons. Nick Castle’s performance as Michael may be mute but he manages to instill no small amount of characterization, none the less: one of my favorite scenes in any horror movie, ever, is the bit where Michael lifts Bob (John Michael Graham) off the floor, nails him to the wall with a knife and proceeds to stare at him, slowly cocking his head to the side as if he were a dog watching a caterpillar. It’s a terrifying moment precisely because it’s such an innocent, human expression: we don’t expect this emotionless monstrosity to express curiosity, after all, since that makes him more uncomfortably human than we’d like. There’s another fantastic scene (in the same part of the film, ironically enough) where Michael puts on a sheet and Michael’s glasses and goes to see Lynda. She expects Bob while we know it’s Michael under the sheet: her goofing around turns to frustration when Bob won’t end the joke, while our hearts jump from our chest to our throat like a strongman test at the carnival. There are about a million ways this scene could have been played out but only one that achieves maximum chills and Carpenter nails it.

And there, in a pretty huge nutshell, you have it: my rationalization for why Halloween should still be considered not only a forefather to modern horror films but also one of the best examples of the genre that we’ll probably ever see. Like Hooper’s landmark The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the original Halloween is surprisingly light on actual gore: there are plenty of strangulations and off-screen killing but this is about the furthest thing from something like Friday the 13th (1980) that you can get. This, of course, makes the numerous (and increasingly violent) sequels seem even more half-baked than the numerous TCM sequels: while there was some (small) precedent for graphic violence in Hooper’s film, there’s virtually none in Carpenter’s, despite the subject matter.

Despite not really thinking about Halloween in any meaningful way for years, all it took was one good, close viewing to remind me of all the reasons that this film was always one of my favorites. Like eating comfort foods, there’s just something about watching Halloween that seems natural and…well…good, to me. In a day and age where one-upmanship is the name of the game and jaded viewers have seen just about everything short of actual snuff films, it’s refreshing to return to something like Halloween and remember a time when it was possible for a horror film to make you think and feel without battering you into submission. Watching Halloween in this way has only reaffirmed my earlier love for the film: horror films wouldn’t be the same without Carpenter and Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without…well…Halloween.

6/14/14 (Part One): That Sparkling Film of Gold

24 Thursday Jul 2014

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1960's films, Arthur Hunnicutt, auteur theory, based on a book, Charlene Holt, Christopher George, cinema, classic films, Cole Thornton, drunk sheriff, Ed Asner, El Dorado, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, friendships, George Alexander and the Mellomen, gunfighters, Harold Rosson, Howard Hawks, iconic film scores, James Caan, John Wayne, Leigh Brackett, male friendships, Michele Carey, Mississippi, Movies, Nelse McLeod, Nelson Riddle, ranchers, Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, Robert Mitchum, romance, Sheriff Harrah, The Big Sleep, The Empire Strikes Back, The Long Goodbye, the myth of the Old West, the Old West, the Wild West, The Wizard of Oz, theme songs, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, water rights, Westerns

20140320093130!El_Dorado_(John_Wayne_movie_poster)

If you’re anything like me, selecting one film as your “favorite” is probably a pretty impossible task. My likes can change based on mood, time of day, the weather outside, research I’ve done, other films I’ve seen and conversations I’ve had with other cinephiles. If 100 different people were to ask me the same question, they might receive any of seven or eight different answers, depending on any of the above. Rankings, of course, are a strictly arbitrary construction: if it seems difficult to select your favorite film of all time, try choosing your fourth favorite film of all time…at some point, it all just comes down to a question of personal preference. Truth be told, I don’t know that I could ever come up with a definitive answer to the question, although I’ll make damn sure to take a stab at it on my deathbed. By that time, hopefully, I’ll have been able to make up my mind a little better.

While it may be all but impossible for me to ever choose a “favorite” film, however, it’s a whole lot easier to choose the possible candidates. From my childhood all the way up to the present day, there have been some films that just get more attention from me than others. This group of films (more than five but less than ten…I think) still gets watched on a regular basis, at least once a year if not more often, despite my ever-present desire to continue to see as many new and previously unseen films as humanly possible. Some of this group of films tends to be seasonal (Carpenter’s original Halloween (1978) and Dougherty’s neo-classic Trick ‘r Treat (2007)), whereas others are good to go anytime, anywhere (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Goodfellas (1990)). The one common thread that all of these films share is that I never get tired of them, regardless of how many times I’ve seen them. Each viewing of these favorites bring me some deeper understanding of the films and solidifies my notion that these films are, for better or worse, the very best (at least as far as I’m concerned). If you’ve spent nearly 30 years watching the same film and aren’t tired of it, I think you can pretty much assume you never will be. In this vein, Howard Hawks’ legendary El Dorado (1966) must surely take a position of honor in my list: I first saw the film when I was a little boy and have loved it unconditionally ever since. After 30-odd years, El Dorado is still as fresh, fun, thrilling and fist-raising as it ever was.

I like to think that I’m able to view films with a particularly critical eye but there are still certain movies that produce an almost Pavlovian response in me: Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) get me with their scores, The Man With No Name trilogy and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre get me with their openings and Dirty Harry (1971) gets me pretty much every damn time Eastwood is on-screen. With El Dorado, my adrenaline starts pumping the second the opening kicks in and that glorious theme song, performed so perfectly by George Alexander and the Mellomen, begins. For my money, El Dorado may just have one of the most perfect opening credit sequences in the history of film: as Alexander’s tuneful baritone begins the tune by referencing Edgar Allen Poe’s eponymous poem, we get a series of old-fashioned oil-color paintings that depict various mainstays of the Old West: the range-riding cowboy, covered-wagon riding settlers, stampeding herds of mustangs and dusty twilight landscapes. Alexander’s mellifluous voice continues to rise, creating a truly cinematic moment: you feel not only the history and “reality” of the Old West but you feel the myth and legend, as well. Never mind that the song is absolutely brilliant, perhaps the best Western theme song ever: when combined when the paintings, the tune manages to not only tell a story (in some ways, the whole of the film is in there, writ small) but to flood the viewer with the notion that what we’re about to see is just as much glorious make-believe as it is reference to a real era. Regardless of my mood on any given day, just watching the opening credit sequence for El Dorado is enough to put a smile on my face and keep me humming along for the next 24 hours.

We begin with Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), the sardonic, dead-eye sheriff of the frontier town of El Dorado. Harrah’s best friend, the plain-talking hired gun Cole Thornton (John Wayne), has come through town in order to go see land baron Bart Jason (Ed Asner) about a potential job. Turns out that Jason wants to use Thornton to help steal water from the MacDonald family, in order to help with his own developments. Harrah talks Thornton out of taking the job and Cole hits the road, leaving behind his “best girl” Maudie (Charlene Holt) and Sheriff Harrah to keep the peace. On the road, Cole is forced to gut-shoot Luke MacDonald (Johnny Crawford) after the startled lookout starts shooting at the gunslinger. After the boy ends up taking his own life, Cole brings the body back to the MacDonald ranch: “Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” he tells the elder MacDonald and he’s right. So right, in fact, that MacDonald’s fiery, take-no-shit daughter Joey (Michele Carey) decides to head-out and wait for Thornton on the road. While her ambush doesn’t kill Cole, as planned, it does leave him with a bullet in his back and plenty of residual pain.

Seven months later, Cole returns to El Dorado and finds the place in a bit of an uproar: Sheriff Harrah has turned into the town drunk (and laughing-stock) thanks to a bad relationship and Bart Jason rules everything with an iron fist. He’s brought in a ruthless gunslinger, Nelse McLeod (Christopher George), to finish the job that he tried to start with Cole. Things aren’t looking too good for Cole, who’s still experiencing pain and loss of feeling from the bullet which is still lodged near his spine. Things get a whole lot better when Cole happens to meet young Mississippi (James Caan), however: Mississippi is a bit of a hot head and is completely wet-behind-the-ears but he’s also whip-smart, fiercely loyal and absolutely lethal with a hunting knife. If he can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a sixgun…well…that shouldn’t be too much of a problem: as Cole points out, you don’t need to aim with a sawed-off shotgun…you just gotta point and shoot. After cleaning up the sloshed sheriff, Cole, Mississippi and Harrah join forces with Harrah’s deputy, former “Indian fighter” Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt), in order to bring down the villainous Bart Jason. The bullets are gonna fly as Cole and his friends seek to bring peace to El Dorado one way or another.

In many ways, El Dorado functions as a remake of Hawks’ own Rio Bravo (1959): the basic plot is the same and many of the characters in El Dorado seem to be slight variations on the characters from Rio Bravo. John Wayne plays, essentially, the same character in both films, while Robert Mitchum, James Caan and Arthur Hunnicutt are just variations on the characters that Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan first established in Rio Bravo. That being said, however, El Dorado is anything but a pale imitation of Hawks’ earlier film. For one thing, Mitchum is miles above Dean Martin as far as acting goes: sorry, Dino, but them’s the facts. When Mitchum was on point, he was pretty much invincible and Sheriff J.P. Harrah might be his best role besides Night of the Hunter (1955). I’ve also got nothing against Ricky Nelson, whose Colorado Ryan is a nice addition to the “naive, wet-behind-the-ears gunfighter” club but compared to James Caan? Sorry, Ricky…lights out on this one. Caan is absolutely fantastic in El Dorado, striking a perfect synthesis of “newbie jitters” and ridiculously self-assured braggadocio.  His plain-spoken, painfully honest declarations would be the highlight of any lesser film but, here, are just another brick in a pretty amazing wall. And as for Brennan versus Hunnicutt? This is a tougher call but c’mon: Bull is such a kickass character that Hunnicutt almost wins by default.

On top of those stellar four, we get a virtual constellation of glittering stars to support them. Ed Asner does villainy up right with the merciless Bart Jason but Christopher George is a revelation as Nelse McLeod, the second-best gunfighter in the area (after Cole Thornton, of course). Coming off as a more handsome, if no less nutty, Willem Dafoe, George is able to make McLeod more than a worthy adversary for Wayne’s Thornton. One of the best moments in the film is the part where McLeod watches in curiosity (and admiration) as the “unarmed” Mississippi steps up to one of McLeod’s men and demands retribution for a previous killing. George could have played the scene any number of ways but the quiet, slightly amused tone to his delivery and his obvious interest in seeing the outcome of the skirmish mark him as a much more complicated villain than simply another “black hat.” Likewise, the part where McLeod tells Thornton that “with two like us in the same batch, sooner or later we’d have to find out who’s faster” is a masterpiece of economy, giving us not only a little good old-fashioned foreshadowing but some great character development, as well. McLeod’s laid-back, if ruthless, attitude also leads to one of the film’s funniest, most tense moments as Thornton has McLeod exit the saloon first, in order to foil Pedro (John Gabriel) and Milt’s (Robert Donner) ambush attempt. His arch, slightly bemused delivery is pitch-perfect, going miles towards establishing his begrudging respect for Thornton.

Phenomenal acting aside, El Dorado is a marvel of filmmaking craft, which shouldn’t be surprising considering that Hawks produced and directed the film. A true film auteur in every sense of the word, Hawks was an amazingly adept filmmaker who, along with John Ford and Sergio Leone (go ahead and shoot me but I’ll be damned if Leone isn’t at least as responsible for the modern Western as his American counterparts) was pretty much responsible for the entire world’s view of the American West during the Golden Age of cinema. Here, Hawks is pretty much flawless: working with legendary cinematographer Harold Rosson, he’s created perhaps one of the finest evocations of the “mythical Wild West” ever put to film. El Dorado would actually be Rosson’s last film, capping off an astounding 51 year career that included such mainstays as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Duel in the Sun (1946), The Asphalt Jungle (1951), Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and The Bad Seed (1956). While the photography in El Dorado is absolutely gorgeous, full of bright, vibrant and crystal-clear images, Rosson’s use of lighting really makes everything stand out. Favoring hard, directional lighting, Rosson often produces shots that resemble German Expressionism which, when combined with the beautifully artificial sets, tends to create a real fairy tale atmosphere. It’s heady stuff and none more so than towards the end of the film, where Thornton, Harrah and Mississippi stalk the deserted streets of El Dorado, picking off McLeod’s men one by one.

One aspect of El Dorado that can’t be lauded enough is the excellent, witty script, courtesy of screenwriter Leigh Brackett (Rio Bravo, Hatari! (1961), Rio Lobo (1970), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980)). The script is tight and filler-free (at slightly over two hours long, it actually feels like about 90 minutes), full of great dialogue, one-liners and asides. One of my favorite parts of the movie is the scene where Mississippi finally meets Maudie, Cole’s kind-of/sort-of girlfriend. Up to that point, Cole had been pretty tight-lipped about his past, frustrating his young partner’s attempts to get to know him. After laying eyes on the comely Maudie, Mississippi lets out a low whistle: “Well, I found one thing out,” he tells Cole. “What’s that,” the laconic gunslinger snaps back. “You know a girl,” Mississippi replies, without missing a beat. It’s a great moment between Caan and Wayne and but one example of an exceedingly fun script.

In all honesty, I really can’t find enough good things to say about El Dorado: it’s been one of my all-time favorite films since I was a boy (this and Clint Eastwood’s Westerns were the only ones I truly loved, as a boy, and I really couldn’t stand John Wayne until I was much older) and my love and appreciation for the film have never waned. Not only is it my favorite Howard Hawks film, it’s also my favorite John Wayne film and one of my favorite Mitchum and Caan films, which actually says alot. When I went to re-watch the film for purposes of my recent “film festival,” I went into it with the goal of being as critical as possible: it’s often too easy for us to simply accept our childhood loves unconditionally, without giving them proper critical consideration. I was ready to tear the film to pieces: after all, I used to love Clerks (1994) and find it to be absolutely pointless as I approach forty years on Earth.

But then, of course, a funny thing happened: the more critical I became, the better the film held up. The movie looks and sounds gorgeous, is filled with instantly memorable characters, has tons of iconic set-pieces (like Mitchum and his crippled quarry in the saloon) and has some really insightful points to make about friendship and duty. Wayne, Mitchum, Caan and Hunnicut make a perfect team, Asner and George make perfect villains and Michele Carey is one of the most amazing spitfires to ever grace the silver screen. In short, El Dorado is an absolutely perfect film. If I had my way, everyone would be required to see it at least once, regardless of their feelings about Westerns, in general. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. If you’ve seen it in the past, go ahead and watch it again. In many ways, El Dorado represents the very best that “film as entertainment” has to offer: it might not change your life but it may just make it a whole lot happier.

6/2/14 (Part One): Taking Back the Cities

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

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'70s films, '70s-era, 1970's cinema, actor's debut, based on a book, Charles Bronson, cinema, crime film, cult classic, Death Wish, debut acting role, drama, electronic score, film franchise, film reviews, film series, films, gang rape, Herbie Hancock, Hope Lange, iconic film scores, Jeff Goldblum, Kathleen Tolan, liberals vs conservatives, Michael Winner, Movies, muggers, New York City, Paul Kersey, rape, Robert Kya-Hill, Steven Keats, Stuart Margolin, vigilante, Vincent Gardenia, violence against women, William Redfield

death-wish

A middle-aged husband and wife frolic on a tropical beach, very much in love and having a blast. As they fall into each others’ arms, the wife asks her husband if he’d like to go back to their hotel room. “What about right here?”, he slyly asks. She rebuffs hims gently, reminding him that they’re “civilized now.” With a small sigh, the husband responds: “I remember when we weren’t.” Far from being just a wistful rumination on the trials of aging and the permanence of love, however, this reminder of our civilization has a far different meaning: we are civilized now…but at what price? For, you see, this isn’t just any tale of love (whether found, lost or unrequited). This, after all, is Michael Winner’s incendiary, though-provoking Death Wish (1974), one of the most popular, bracing meditations on vigilantism ever brought to the big screen. While it may have eventually turned into a rather silly action franchise, the original film is powerful, painful and asks the kind of questions that we, as a society, don’t usually like to ask: How far would you go to protect your loved ones? How many would you kill to avenge them?

The husband in the opening, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), is a loving family man, architect and “bleeding heart liberal,” at least as far as his co-workers are concerned. He shares a modest little home with his wife, Joanna (Hope Lange), and has a grown daughter, Carol (Kathleen Tolan), who’s happily married to Jack (Steven Keats). In most ways, Paul is living the American dream. He’s also living in New York City in the mid-’70s, however, several decades before Times Square morphed into a family-friendly playground. As his co-worker, Sam (William Redfield), is only too happy to point out, there were 15 murders in the city while Paul was on vacation: if it were up to Sam, he’d “put all of the underprivileged into concentration camps.” It’s a war-zone and they need more cops…but no one will pay for them. Paul brushes it all off, knowing in his heart that punishment and confinement won’t do anything to stem the tide: you need to attack the core problems, deal with the crushing poverty, disenfranchisement and isolation that lead desperate people to commit crimes. For Paul, there are no lost causes, just people who have given up the fight.

Paul receives the ultimate test of his convictions, however, when his wife and daughter become the victims of terrible crimes within the “safety” of his own home: after a vicious gang of punks (led by a very young Jeff Goldblum, in his first acting role, wearing a ridiculous Jughead hat) follow her and Carol back their place, the monsters beat Joanna and brutally gang-rape Carol. When Joanna ends up dying from her injuries and Carol is reduced to a catatonic state, Paul sees his entire world (and everything he believes in) come crashing to the ground. When the police tell him that there’s “always a chance” that they’ll catch the animals responsible for the crimes but “just a chance,” the message is loud and clear: in this world, you really are on your own. Paul decides to head out into the night, wielding a roll of quarters in a sock. After a would-be mugger receives a sockful of quarters to the face and flees (his expression is priceless), Paul suddenly feels like a million bucks: he’s been reborn, reconnected with his “primitive roots” and rampages about his home like a frat boy on a bender. Taking charge of your life, as we see, is a helluva drug.

After Paul’s company sends him to Tucson, Arizona, to work on a project, the next step in his “evolution” begins. Paul meets Aimes Jainchill (Stuart Margolin), a well-spoken, folksy and intelligent local land developer who’s a study in contrasts. He’s an uber-wealthy individual who wants to keep as much of the desert intact as possible, even if it means cutting into his profit margin. He’s a plain-spoken, quiet man who becomes a friend (and father-figure) to Paul. He’s also, perhaps most importantly, an outspoken supporter of the NRA and a gun enthusiast. After taking his “citified” friend to a shooting range, Aimes is surprised and delighted to discover that Paul is actually a crack-shot: he did grow up a hunter, after all, even if he hasn’t touched a gun since his father was killed in a hunting accident. “Somebody once said he never looked back, because something was gaining on him. What’s gaining on you, Paul?,” Aimes asks, although we already know: Paul’s primal self is gaining on him…and looks set to take the lead.

Upon returning home, Paul opens a mysterious wrapped package from Aimes and discovers that his friend has given him a gun: time to hit the streets and take back the city. As Paul walks his own nightly beat of the city, baiting and gunning down the muggers, creeps and thugs who rule the night, the NYPD finds themselves with a bit of a problem: they seem to have a vigilante on their hands…and the locals love it. Soon, Lt. Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) is in a bit of a bind: the crime rate is plummeting, civilians have become emboldened to take matters into their own hands (whether a hat-pin wielding granny or a mob of irate construction workers) and the unknown vigilante is becoming a bit of a folk hero. As the Police Commissioner (Stephen Elliot) and District Attorney (Fred Scollay) pressure Lt. Ochoa to “deal with” the issue, Paul goes deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, putting his own life (and freedom) in jeopardy, all in his desperate quest to clean up his city and bring some meaning to the pointless death of his wife and abuse of his daughter.

In a way, Death Wish and Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971) are a matched-set: both came around early in the ’70s, when the crime rate in metropolitan cities was on the rise; both films spawned franchises that became, over time, increasingly silly and action-oriented; both films take extremely black-and-white views on criminals (spoiler: they all suck); and both films see pacifism and anything short of Draconian law enforcement techniques as wins for the “bad guys.” In many ways, however, Death Wish is the much more subtle and intriguing of the two (although I’ll go to the grave calling Dirty Harry one of the single best films in the convoluted history of cinema), mostly because Bronson’s Paul Kersey is much more sympathetic and “relatable” than Eastwood’s “Dirty” Harry Callahan. While Dirty Harry is, for all intents and purposes, an “action hero,” Paul Kersey is a broken, sad man who’s attempting to regain control of his life. Whereas Dirty Harry comes into everything with a cynical attitude (when we first meet him, he’s got a sneer on his lips and an implied eye-roll that most teens would kill for), Paul actually begins in a place of love and acceptance, before being hardened and made “feral” by the evils of the world. At the beginning, there is no joy for Paul in killing the muggers: he celebrates clocking the first guy with his “club” but pukes his guts out when he actually shoots his first bad-guy.

Despite Paul’s initial reluctance to kill, however, it’s important to note one thing: at no point in time do the filmmakers ever hedge their bets or waffle on their initial premise. Death Wish is very much about what happens when “civilization” fails and “good people” are forced to resort to brutal tactics. Although the police are usually depicted as being fairly benevolent in the film (especially the character of Lt. Ochoa), they’re never portrayed as particularly effective. In this case, the message is pretty clear: buy into the fantasy about “law and order/punishment/rehabilitation” and get wasted or take matters into your own hands and survive. At the beginning, Sam’s hardcore conservative bent seems to be played for laughs (this is the guy who advocates putting the “less fortunate” into concentration camps, after all, which seems kinda…well…bat-shit crazy) but we’re later given a much more reasonable, well-spoken advocate for a similarly hard-line approach: Aimes Jainchill. Not only is Aimes one of the most well-spoken, charismatic characters in the film, he’s also an avowed gun enthusiast and avid supporter of the NRA. In one of the film’s least subtle scenes, Aimes takes Paul to an Old West gunfight re-enactment, where we get the necessary reinforcement about law and order back in the “good ol’ days.” As Aimes explains to Paul, the West is much safer than New York City: out here, you can just carry a gun and blow away the bad guys, before they get a chance to harm you.

This, then, becomes the true focus for the film: when society has degraded to the point where the traditional mechanisms of law and order no longer work, men and women must take the law into their own hands. At one point, Paul argues with his incredibly ineffectual son-in-law about the ramifications of self-defense versus “cutting and running.” “If we’re not pioneers, what have we become? What do you call people who, when faced with a condition of fear, run and hide?” “Civilized?,” Jack responds. Paul snorts, derisively, shaking his head: “No.” The point is clear: you can only back away for so long before you get pushed into a corner. Paul has decided to be pro-active and shoot his way out of the corner.

While the film does nothing to obscure its ultimate premise, it actually functions as a more thought-provoking than didactic. For one, the film is quite clear to spell out the inherent limitations of revenge/vigilantism: namely, people are humans and humans make lots and lots of mistakes. It’s not difficult to cheer on the old lady who wards off a would-be mugger with a hat-pin but it becomes a little fuzzier when we get to the construction crew that chases down and enthusiastically “subdues” a would-be purse-snatcher. This, of course, is the gray line between legitimate “policing” and “retribution.” It’s quite interesting to note, in addition, that Paul never actually gets to kill the punks who destroyed his family: he shoots several people in the course of the film but we never get to see him take revenge on those particular individuals. In a way, perhaps this is the film’s most subtle critique against vigilantism: ultimately, it can do nothing to bring back the dead.

Craftwise, Death Wish is gritty, tightly paced and well-acted. Bronson, obviously, is one of the chief draws here and he manages to blend just the right amount of “average, everyday Joe” with “steel-eyed, flinty killer.” There’s a reason why Bronson has always been considered one of the “old guard” of classic cinematic tough guys, along with Clint Eastwood: there’s a vulnerability to him that’s never completely subsumed by the fire inside. He’s the epitome of the retired gunslinger, called back into battle for “one last fight,” and his world-weariness marks a potent contrast to wise-cracking action heroes like Bruce Willis or Ahnald. The rest of the cast provides able support, with Vincent Gardenia being nearly a match for Bronson, as the equally world-weary but much more cynical Lt. Ochoa. His police-station address to his officers as the vigilante story blows up across the city is great (“We want to tell the American public that we’re looking for this vigilante and have definite clues…we just don’t want to tell them that we have about a thousand definite clues.”) and Gardenia goes a long way towards putting a human face on the issue of law enforcement.

Unlike many popular “action” films, there’s a dark, disagreeable heart that beats deep within Death Wish. The film is not simply one visceral thwarted mugging after another and, on occasion, can be downright difficult to watch. In particular, the scene where the punks bust into the apartment and attack Joanna and Carol is almost impossible to sit through: the rape scene is just as terrible, violent and graphic as any that came before or after (in particular, I was reminded of the rape in Irreversible (2002) and the pain and fear is almost too “real” for a fictional film. Similarly, many of the scenes where Paul “defends” himself are skewed to be more about chaotic activity than cinematic “badassery” – Paul is no trained killer, after all, but just your average dude.

For all of its lasting power, there are still several issues that I have with Death Wish. While the film is always careful to take a more even-handed approach, there really aren’t any viable viewpoints on display, save the call for vigilantism. The police are never portrayed as effective (at one point, they seem to send a whole squad-room to tail Paul, which seems a little stupid since, you know, there’s all that other increased crime to deal with) and any arguments for pacifism pretty much begin and end with the cowardly Jack, one of the most simpering creations in modern cinema. There’s also no blurring of the line regarding Paul’s actions: even if he baits his victims, each and every one of them obviously has it coming. At one point, Paul even steps in to prevent a group of men from assaulting another: his vigilantism is always more effective than law-and-order, mostly because the argument in the film is so one-sided.

From a filmmaking perspective, I found the film’s score (composed, conducted and performed by Herbie Hancock) to be rather underwhelming and, occasionally, completely baffling. Whereas something moody and bluesy, like the score for Dirty Harry, would have helped to pull out the emotion, Hancock’s score is too often experimental and propulsive, sort of like discordant cocktail jazz. While I have nothing but respect for Hancock, I can’t help but feeling this wasn’t his finest hour. There were also a number of scenes (in particular the repellent rape scene and the Old West shootout) that seemed to go on forever: whereas there’s probably a spurious claim to be made regarding the overall impact of the rape scene, the shootout scene makes its point early and then beats it into the ground for what seems like an hour. It went on for so long, in fact, that my mind wandered from the actual film and began to consider the intense irony of veteran Western actor Bronson appearing in a film where he played a modern man watching an Old West gunfight. As a rule, the scene’s not working if you have the opportunity to ponder the metaphysics of the actor involved, rather than the actual scene, itself.

Ultimately, Death Wish is one of those rare films that’s managed to lose very little of its original power as the passage of time puts it more and more in the rear-view mirror of life. Unlike the increasingly insipid (if much more action-packed) sequels, the original Death Wish is a film that asks some very serious questions (In an increasingly “civilized” world, what happens when you need to become “uncivilized”? When does “retribution” become murder? If the police can’t protect you, does that mean you get to do whatever it takes to protect yourself? Can criminals be rehabilitated or is a bullet to the brain the best we can hope for?). If the movie already has its answers lined up (the film makes no bones about the fact that it is, in some ways, a love letter to the NRA), it at least has the courage to ask them in the first place. If you’re one of the people who grew up thinking that Death Wish was simply a one-dimensional, gunpowder-scented, revenge fantasy, you owe it to the film to give it another look. Regardless of which side of the law-and-order debate you land on, Death Wish has been fostering conversations and discussions for the past 40 years: as our “civilized” society keeps evolving, I can only imagine that it will continue to be relevant for the next 40 years, as well.

5/31/14 (Part Four): The Boys Are Back in Town

26 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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1960's films, A Fistful of Dollars, bounty hunters, cinema, Clint Eastwood, Col. Douglas Mortimer, cult classic, El Indio, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, film reviews, films, flashbacks, For a Few Dollars More, Gian Maria Volonte, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, James Bond, Klaus Kinski, Lee Van Cleef, Mario Brega, Monco, Movies, Sergio Leone, spaghetti Westerns, The Bad and The Ugly, The Good, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, the Man with No Name, the myth of the Old West, the Wild West, trilogies, Westerns

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Crafting a sequel to a successful, popular film is no easy feat. If the followup is too much like its predecessor, it has no individual identity, seeking only to remind audiences of the original material, usually in a watered down manner. If the sequel is nothing like the original film, however, either in content or tone, then filmmakers run the risk of losing their crossover audience: audiences who flocked to see dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) might not have been so eager to see the followup if it featured kittens instead of velociraptors. The key, then, is to make the new film work for the same reasons the old one did: if you can tap back into an audiences’ emotions, you can produce a new film that will be just as successful, in its own way.

In many cases, the most successful sequels that don’t directly continue a larger storyline (The Godfather, etc.) are the ones that make subtle tweaks to the original property, while still maintaining the core feel/vibe. One of the best examples of this is the difference between Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens (1986). Both films are very good at what they do, for very different reasons. Scott’s film is a claustrophobic horror film that is equal parts “haunted house in space” and savage childbirth nightmare, whereas Cameron’s film is a fast-paced, tense and adrenaline-soaked action film about space marines destroying the living shit out of vicious alien foes. Two very different films but each wildly successful, in its own way and for its own reasons. In this spirit, then, we can see For a Few Dollars More (1965), Sergio Leone’s sequel to his iconic A Fistful of Dollars (1964), as being a wildly successful attempt to tweak the formula from the first film. While A Fistful of Dollars was a small film about one man and his interactions with a particularly lethal town, For a Few Dollars More is a much bigger, more epic story, prefiguring the Civil War epic that is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), Leone’s magnum opus. It also ends up being a surprisingly big-hearted buddy picture, albeit one where Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef end up being the buddies. Huzzah!

The film begins with a nifty opening sequence that features someone on horseback getting gunned down in an extreme long shot, before another classic Ennio Morricone score kicks in. While the opening sequence isn’t quite as dynamic as the black-and-red James Bond nod of the first film, the song, itself, is pure gold, hinting at the titanic awesomeness that would arrive the following year with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. An inter-title introduces us to the concept of the bounty killer (“Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price”) and we’re off to the races. Right off the bat, For a Few Dollars More has a larger, more expansive feel than its predecessor: Leone has a few more things to say, this time around, and he’s going to make damn sure we’re listening.

In short order, we meet Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), a man so completely badass that he makes his own railway schedule: “This train doesn’t stop in Tucumcari,” a nervous agent tells Mortimer. “This train’ll stop in Tucumcari,” Mortimer drolls back. And he’s right, of course, because he’s Lee Van Cleef: you try arguing with the dude. We then see Mortimer, as unhurried and cold as the Angel of Death himself, take out a bounty with a specially modified rifle. This guy, we see, is not the kind of fella you want to fuck with. As Mortimer gets a lead on his next bounty, he learns that someone else has been asking after the reward…some guy named Monco…some guy that we’d probably recognize better as…The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood). And now, kids, we’re really off to the races.

After we see Eastwood handily collect his bounty via well-timed karate chops and a blazingly fast six-gun, we also get to see him practice a little good ol’ fashioned frontier justice. Approaching the worthless sheriff who did nothing to either capture the fugitive outlaw or prevent his gang from attempting to shoot him in the back, Monco looks the guy in the eye and deadpans, “Aren’t you supposed to be courageous and, above all, honest?” Without looking him in the eye, the sheriff responds back in the affirmative. Eastwood then takes the star off the sheriff’s chest, tosses it to a couple of guys hanging around outside, says “You need a new sheriff,” and rides out of town. In a word: badass.

At this point, with our principals firmly established, we meet the third point to this triangle: the vicious, blood-thirsty El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte). El Indio is a monstrous figure, a villain whose modus operandi involves gunning down people after his pocket watch has finished playing its delicate melody. Through a series of flashbacks, we get a gradual sense of the backstory behind the watch, leading to a pretty huge revelation in the final act. Indio is a complex man, equal parts brutish thug, calculating schemer and charming leader. He also has a $10000 bounty on his head, a reward which both Col. Mortimer and Monco have their eyes on.

After dancing around each other for a bit, Mortimer and Monco gradually settle into an uneasy partnership, one defined by an almost student/teacher relationship: Mortimer is the old-guard and Monco is the upstart young guy who will, eventually, take his place in the history books. There’s a genuine depth to Mortimer and Monco’s relationship that pays off in some surprisingly emotional ways throughout the film, while still allowing the titanic actors behind the performances to have their respective field days. It’s like a spaghetti Western version of Godzilla vs Monster Zero (1965), with Eastwood and Van Cleef subbing in for Godzilla and Rodan.

After Monco is “convinced” to infiltrate Indio’s gang (“One of us will have to join Indio’s band.” “Why are you looking at me when you say ‘one of us’?”), the two come up with a plan to take down Indio and his gang, including Klaus Kinski as a notoriously bad-tempered hunchback named Juan Wild. Things don’t go according to plan, of course, and Mortimer and Monco end things the way they began them: with steel reserve, a sneer and a whole lot of hot lead.

Right off the bat, For a Few Dollars More exists in a much more expansive universe than the first film. For one thing, we actually get to travel around a bit and see more of the Wild West than the dusty town of San Miguel. As Mortimer, Monco and El Indio continue their deadly game, audiences get to experience a much fuller dose of Leone’s vision of the West, a vision that’s every bit as interesting as John Ford’s, as far as I’m concerned. Leone’s vision is a romantic, fantastical one, informed as much by tall-tales and campfire stories as it is by actual historical precedent. At one point, as we get our first glimpse of the “impenetrable” El Paso bank, I found myself wondering if actual Old West banks bore any resemblance to the eye-popping, baroque edifice that Leone portrays in the film. I’m pretty sure they didn’t but I sure do like Leone’s idea better.

While A Fistful of Dollars was full of great one-liners and some truly ironic moments, For a Few Dollars More is a much more intentionally funny, “good-natured” film. At one point, a young boy tries to entice Monco into staying at a particular hotel by telling him that an attractive landlady runs the place. When Monco asks if she’s married, the boy shrugs and says, “Yeah, but she don’t care.” The initially throwaway bit pays off, later, when we see the landlady swooning over Monco. “He’s tall,” she says dreamily, which produces a nice moment when her husband storms off, in a huff, revealing him to be exceptionally short. It’s a pretty great gag and seamlessly integrated into the film. There’s another truly funny scene where Mortimer and Monco try to exert authority over each other by shooting their respective hats down the street: the two titans are so evenly matched that they eventually give up and just go have a drink. If only all conflicts could be resolved this way, eh?

Like the first film, For a Few Dollars more looks and sounds beautiful: the wide-open vistas are as stunning as ever and Morricone’s score is phenomenal, leaps and bounds above the already notable Fistful of Dollars score. Leone uses the score to much greater effect in the followup, culminating in one of the greatest scenes ever committed to celluloid. When Indio is broken out of jail, he gets revenge on the man who ratted him out by having his wife and baby killed right before his eyes. As is usual for Indio, he offers the poor guy a “chance” to fight him: when the music from his pocket watch stops, they can both come out blazing. In a fantastic use of sound, the music from the watch starts off as tinny and diegetic before becoming part of the score, where the music warps into a massive, Gothic processional, drenched in church organs, before returning to tinny and diegetic as the music stops and El Indio blasts his victim straight to Hell. It’s a massively impressive scene, one that didn’t really have any precedents in A Fistful of Dollars but will have plenty of competition in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Acting-wise, this is another home-run, featuring typically iconic performances from Eastwood and Van Cleef and another great turn from Volonte. Whereas Volonte’s Ramon Rojo, in A Fistful of Dollars, was akin to a rabid dog, his performance as El Indio is much fuller and more subtle. In many ways, Indio comes across as a really good Bond villain, sort of an Old West Blofeld. In fact, the James Bond parallels from the first film really come home to roost in this one, especially during the bit where Indio and his second-in-command, Nino (Mario Brega) prepare to doublecross their own gang. There’s one moment where Indio says, “It’s done now: prepare to get out of here” where I fully expected to see SPECTRE baddies running around while their lair collapsed. If this sounds like some kind of faint praise, believe me: it’s not.

Ultimately, For a Few Dollars More is that rare sequel that actually manages to expand on and improve on its predecessor. While I’ll always love the smaller, more intimate feel of A Fistful of Dollars, there no way I can deny how much fun it is to see Leone playing in a larger sandbox. The second film in the trilogy leads us perfectly into the last, where everything becomes much bigger, more epic and more badass. While there’s an undeniable joy in seeing Eastwood and Van Cleef face-off in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, there’s something just as cool about seeing them team-up to administer a little good, ol’ fashioned ass-kicking. You can keep The Expendables (2010): who needs a whole team when you have the two biggest badasses in the universe?

5/31/14 (Part Three): Better Make it Three Coffins

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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1960's films, A Fistful of Dollars, Akira Kurosawa, cinema, Clint Eastwood, cult films, Eastwood, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, feuding families, film reviews, films, foreign films, Gian Maria Volonte, gunfighters, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, James Bond, John Wayne, Marianne Koch, Movies, Ramon Rojo, Sergio Leone, Shakespearean, spaghetti Westerns, the Man with No Name, the myth of the Old West, the Wild West, trilogies, Westerns, Wolfgang Lukschy, Yojimbo

fistful

As a kid, I was raised on a pretty steady diet of movies…I can’t really recall a time when we were at home and not watching something, to be honest. My parents had fairly wide-ranging tastes, although certain things were pretty sacrosanct: Westerns, musicals and crime films always ruled the roost in our little castle. In particular, my parents loved John Wayne and Clint Eastwood films. Growing up, I was never particularly into Wayne: I’d seen almost all of his films by the time I was a teenager, I believe, but very few aside from El Dorado (1966) and North to Alaska (1960) ever stuck out for me. As I get older, I find myself with a little more appreciation for his body of work, although he’ll never be close to my favorite Western star. Eastwood, however…Eastwood was a different story.

To not put too fine a point on it, I absolutely idolized Clint Eastwood growing up. Not just enjoyed his films, mind you, but voraciously devoured them, sometimes watching the same movies over and over again to the point of rote memorization. There was a certain inherent badassness to Eastwood that always hit me right in the primal center of my brain: I didn’t just love his movies…I wanted to be this dude! It didn’t matter what the films were…Westerns, war movies, cop thrillers, chimpanzee road movies…I loved ’em all, man. The Dirty Harry series will always have a special place in my heart but, for my money, Eastwood was the most unstoppable during his classic run of mid-’60s-’70s Westerns. To this day, I can watch any or all of these at the drop of a hat: A Fistful of Dollars (1964); For a Few Dollars More (1965); The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); Hang ‘Em High (1968); Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970); Joe Kidd (1972); High Plains Drifter (1973); and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). For this decade+ timeframe, beginning with Sergio Leone’s unbeatable Dollars trilogy, Eastwood, as far as I’m concerned, was the single greatest action star in the world. But it all began with a humble little spaghetti Western called A Fistful of Dollars.

The setup for A Fistful of Dollars is almost Shakespearean in its simplicity: a mysterious, nameless man (Clint Eastwood) wanders into a lawless town and ends up in the middle of a seemingly eternal struggle between two feuding families. In this case, the town is San Miguel and the families are the Baxters and Rojos and each one controls a vital aspect of the town – the Baxters run all of the guns and the Rojos take care of the liquor. As The Man With No Name knows, any town with liquor and guns has got money…and he wants in on the action. Soon, the stranger is pulling strings every which way, inching both clans towards a fiery Armageddon that will see him sop up the remains like soup from the bottom of a bowl. Caught between Sheriff John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) on one end and the feral Ramon Rojo (Gian Maria Volonte) on the other, the stranger is able to find a friend in the enigmatic saloon-keeper, Silvanito (Jose Calvo)…always a good thing when you need someone to watch your back. He even finds a cause, in a way, as the stranger seeks to reunite Ramon’s captive Marisol (Marianne Koch) with her husband and young son. It’s just business as usual in San Miguel, where a man can either get rich…or dead.

Right off the bat, astute viewers will note that the plot of A Fistful of Dollars bears a striking resemblance to Akira Kurosawa’s iconic Yojimbo (1961). While this is pretty obvious, I’ll go a little further out on the branch and suggest another possible influence: the James Bond films, which began with Dr. No (1962). While this may seem a bit odd, think about it for a minute. Consider the highly stylized credit sequence, which features stark red and black silhouettes. Compare The Man with No Name’s offhand, cool demeanor and way with a (subtle) wisecrack to Sean Connery’s portrayal of the British super-spy. Think about the effortless way in which the stranger executes highly complex plans, sort of like Rube Goldberg devices minus the bowling balls. While the James Bond similarities will really come to the forefront in the followup, For a Few Dollars More, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point them out in this one. Truth be told, I’ve been a gonzo fan of both the original Bond films and the Dollars Trilogy for so long, by this point, that I’m a little surprised I didn’t make the connection earlier.

New revelation aside, my biggest takeaway from yet another viewing of A Fistful of Dollars is how really unbeatable the film is. In fact, the only Western that might be better than this is For a Few Dollars More. And, of course, the only one better than that would have to be The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (RIP Mr. Wallach), which looks down on most films from a godly height, Western or otherwise. There isn’t really any aspect of Leone’s classic film that doesn’t work splendidly well, as far as I’m concerned. Eastwood is the perfect hero/anti-hero (although his actions to help Marisol and her family seem to tip him more in the “hero” direction for this outing). The story is streamlined and quick-paced, full of lots of natural wit and some truly funny moments, much of it thanks to Eastwood’s spot-on delivery of some pretty classic quips. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, full of the huge, wide-open vistas that would make The Good, The Bad and The Ugly such an epic film. And that score…yeesh, who could ever forget about Ennio Morricone? Although he’ll always be best known for the iconic score for the final Dollars film (wah wah….wa wa waaaah…), the threads are here and they’re pretty damn glorious.

When all of the elements come together (that amazingly vibrant cinematography, the stirring score, the sight of Clint squinting, cheroot in mouth, finger itching to pull the trigger), they create a sensation that I can best describe as a purely cinematic experience. My adrenaline starts to pump, I mutter things at the screen and, before long, I’m throwing my fists in the air like it was an Iron Maiden concert: I’ve had the same, basic experience when watching these films for the best 30 or so years, without fail. Unlike other beloved films from my childhood that currently have as much relevance as month-old milk (I’m thinking specifically of Clerks (1994), which I can’t even sit through nowadays), my opinion on A Fistful of Dollars (and the Trilogy, in general) has never changed. I loved the film back then and I still love it now. Although I’m able to articulate my feelings a little more eloquently these days (“Clint Eastwood kicks ass!” has been replaced by examinations of the cinematography, dialogue and musical score), I still arrive at the same conclusion: this film kicks ass.

While it’s impossible to completely quantify what works so well about A Fistful of Dollars, I’ll close with one of my favorite moments in the film. Towards the end, as we near the final shootout, Silvanito has been taken hostage by the Rojos and severely beaten. There’s little hope of rescue for him: after all, it’s not like him and the stranger are comrades…they’re just a couple of guys who don’t have any reason to kill each other. Silvanito has no reason to believe the stranger will come to save him, even though he’s kept his mouth shut and given the Rojos nothing regarding the Man with No Name. Suddenly, the stranger appears in the street, stepping from behind a plume of dynamite smoke. Eastwood stands there, wearing that classic serape and hat, a cheroot between his teeth and steel flint in his eyes. Silvanito looks up, just then, squinting to see through swollen eyes. He sees Eastwood and a small smile creases his weary face: help has arrived after all…all hope is not lost. As Eastwood strides forward, my heart soars, like it always does. There is about to be a stomping and it’s going to be an especially righteous one.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what movies are all about. You could argue, of course, but you would be wrong. So very, very wrong.

2/17/14: These are Mean Times

15 Saturday Mar 2014

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action films, Assault on Precinct 13, Austin Stoker, auteur theory, B-movies, child killing, cinema, classic movies, claustrophic, Darwin Joston, Douglas Knapp, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, gang members, Halloween, iconic film scores, John Carpenter, Lalo Schifrin, low-budget films, Movies, Napoleon Wilson, police station, score, siege, synth scores, working together

Assault_on_Precinct_13_Mondo_Poster_2011

Anyone who knows me well knows that pinning me down on my favorite anything can be an exercise in frustration: my specific lists of favorite films, music, TV shows, food, etc…tend to change not so much on a regular basis but on a moment-to-moment basis. Stick around long enough and, chances are, you’ll hear me call at least two separate things “the greatest ______ ever,” if not five separate things. This isn’t to say that I’m necessarily fickle with my entertainment loves: rather, I try to constantly expose myself to new films, music, etc, which often has the effect of displacing some of my previous loves.

That being said, however, there are still a few films that never quite leave the “Best of…” list, even if their ultimate position in said list tends to be constantly changing. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is one of those films, as is The Godfather and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Goodfellas and Taxi Driver are both on there, of course, because I can’t have a  favorites list without some Scorcese. It goes without saying that John Carpenter’s seminal Halloween is on the list but there’s another Carpenter film that, for me, is even more of a no-brainer for inclusion. This is a film so perfect that I ceased looking for flaws at least a decade ago and have simply accepted its place in the ultimate list of my life: somewhere right around the top, maybe bumping shoulders with Faith No More, Travis Bickle and Leatherface. It’s a movie that, if I’m being honest with myself, I actually like more than Halloween. The film? Assault on Precinct 13. Why do I love it so much? Let me count the ways.

Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 is one of those cases where the individual parts of a movie, while mighty on their own, come together to form something akin to the Voltron of exploitation cinema. We start with Carpenter’s iconic synth score, including that mammoth theme song. For me, this provokes a near Pavlovian response, similar to the one I get from Morricone’s essential score for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: every time I hear that series of terse, clipped notes, followed by that simmering synth stab, I get a little adrenaline rush, a little tickle in the back of my reptile brain. This is the “ass-kicking” cortex getting stimulated and the Assault on Precinct 13 theme is its cellphone ringer. Pair this theme with the stark red letters on black screen opening credits and the film seems classic before it even properly begins.

Carpenter’s score is a whole lot more than just that jagged, robotic call-to-arms, however. There’s a moody piece in the score that plays during Bishop’s arrival at Precinct 13 (as well as the aftermath of the “shoot-in”) that ranks as one of my favorite pieces of film music ever, including such luminous peers as the sweeping Godfather score and Morricone’s aforementioned Good, Bad, Ugly score. It’s a melancholy, nearly bluesy bit that reminds me of Lalo Schifrin’s score for Dirty Harry (another of my all-time favorite film/score combos) and is so perfectly evocative that it almost tells a story on its own. It’s a pensive piece that neatly serves as a theme for Bishop’s thoughtful, quiet leadership style.

The score, by turns ominous and melancholy, perfectly underscores the film’s themes and walks hand-in-hand with the stark, gritty visuals. Shot by Carpenter’s Dark Star cinematographer Douglas Knapp (on what would end up being his last feature film work, to date), Assault on Precinct 13 has a washed-out, sun-bleached look that recalls Dirty Harry, yet manages to incorporate the deep-focus elements that would become so familiar when Halloween rampaged across movie screens two years later. As in Halloween, there’s a lot in Assault on Precinct 13 that occurs on the edges of the frame: figures skulking about, the sudden appearance (or disappearance) of a character. The tight framing handily evokes a constant, sustained feeling of claustrophobia throughout the film, while the washed-out color palette gives everything a subtly doomed feel.

As with everything else in the film, Assault on Precinct 13th’s plot is lean, mean and fat-free: on the eve that a small, isolated police station in one of the worst parts of the city is about to be shuttered, a tiny skeleton crew of officers and prisoners must make a desperate stand against a seemingly endless army of blood-thirsty, armed-to-the-teeth gang members. With no hope of rescue or reinforcements until the wee hours of the morning, Lt. Bishop (Austin Stoker), Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) and notorious convict Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) must use their wits, resolve and whatever weapons they can scrounge together to keep from becoming more casualties of the mean streets.

And that’s it, folks: no meandering B and C stories…no unnecessary romantic subplots…no drifting off into tangents that dilute the overall impact…just 90 minutes of pure survival. This isn’t to say that there isn’t any character development or that everyone is flat: far from it. Rather, Carpenter has written an excellent, tight script that allows characters to develop organically, rather than exist merely as convenient genre stereotypes. Bishop and Wilson, on their own, are two of the most fascinating genre creations to ever grace the silver screen: neither one comes across as clichéd and I’ve always found myself wondering what happened to the characters after the film ended. Hell, I often find myself wondering what happened to the characters before the movie started and I’m a guy that pretty much abhors prequels. In this case, however, I’ve always been dying to know what Napoleon did that was so terrible and what happened to Lt. Bishop as a young man. It’s a testament to Carpenter’s writing that he’s left me wanting more, just like a good book.

All of these elements add up to a lot but they wouldn’t add up to a righteously kick-ass action film without some righteously kick-ass action sequences, now would they? Fear not, friends and neighbors: Assault on Precinct 13th has this covered. From the Western-esque scene where about one million gang members shoot approximately 4 billion bullets into the station house to the edge-of-the-seat finale where Bishop and Wilson hold off a snarling, feral mob in a narrow corridor from behind the world’s tiniest barricade, Assault on Precinct 13 very rarely comes up for air. In fact, the film is so tense that the pressure kicks on in the first frames (thanks to that epic theme) and is ratcheted up before we even get to the police station: by that point, the film is ready to explode…and does.

The acting, like everything else in Assault on Precinct 13, is impeccable. Although the cast is filled with unfamiliar faces and lacks the recognizable appeal of a Donald Pleasence, they work together quite beautifully. In particular, special recognition must be given to the two leads: Austin Stoker and Darwin Joston.

Stoker brings a real sense of quiet dignity and resolve to Lt. Bishop, qualities that almost bring him more in line with traditional Western heroes than with law enforcement ones. Joston, on the other hand, plays Napoleon Wilson with just the right amount of Southern charm, self-deprecation and quiet menace. Stoker and Joston have real chemistry together and I’ve always wished that the two could have gone on to do other “buddy”-type films. Missed opportunities notwithstanding, the friendship between the black police officer and the white, Southern convict brings some emotional heft to the story and makes the ending genuinely powerful: as Bishop and Wilson stand in the debris, a “rescuing” officer attempts to grab the prisoner, only to be violently shoved away by Lt. Bishop. After staring down the over-eager officer, Bishop walks Wilson out with the dignity and respect that he’s earned over the course of the siege. It’s a big, powerful moment and it never fails to get me in the gut every time: follow that with a quick cut back to the red text/black background with the theme playing and I stand and salute every single damn time.

At the end of the day, I have a lot of concrete reasons for loving Assault on Precinct 13: the acting is fantastic, the cinematography is moody and claustrophobic, the script is smart, the dialogue cracks, the relationship between Bishop and Wilson feels completely genuine and the score is absolutely superb. For me, these all seem like ingredients in a sure-fire formula for a perfect film. More than anything, however, there’s a feeling I get from watching this film that’s hard to quite explain. I’ll never stop watching Halloween or The Thing but there’s just something about Assault on Precinct 13 that really gets to me on a primal level. Perhaps it’s because we live in such a hard world and it seems like the streets of the Anderson Precinct could become a reality at any time. Perhaps it’s because the film so gloriously upholds that most human and beautiful of beliefs: as long as you can breathe, you can keep fighting.

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