5/25/15: Zom-Beavers Wander By the Lake

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Al Kaplan, Bill Burr, Brent Briscoe, cabins, cheating boyfriends, cinema, Code Monkeys, Cortney Palm, dark comedies, dark humor, directorial debut, Ed Marx, electronic score, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, girls only weekend, goofy, gory films, horror, horror-comedies, Hutch Dano, isolation, Jake Weary, John Mayer, Jon Kaplan, Jonathan Hall, Jordan Rubin, Lexi Atkins, Movies, multiple writers, Peter Gilroy, Phyllis Katz, practical effects, Rachel Melvin, Rex Linn, Robert R. Shafer, silly films, sorority sisters, toxic waste spill, Troma films, writer-director, Zombeavers, zombie films, zombies

There’s a point in Jordan Rubin’s ridiculously fun Zombeavers (2014) where our hapless heroes need to execute one of those standard “shoring up the defenses” scenes that’s as much a fixture of siege films as the actual siege itself. Working together, the group goes through all the familiar motions: moving dressers against doors, nailing boards across windows, frantically working to keep what’s outside from coming inside their small, isolated cabin. Despite their best efforts, however, it seems to be a losing battle, the gist of which isn’t lost on one of the exasperated survivors: “You do realize that the whole point of a beaver is it chops fucking wood, right?”

It’s an astute observation but, more importantly, it’s a damn good line and pretty much par for the course in a debut feature that’s always more intelligent than it seems, never quite as crass as it means to be and an easy step above similarly goofy horror-comedy fare. Writer-director Rubin comes from a long background as a writer on TV comedies (most notably the crude but effective Crank Yankers and several late night shows, including Craig Kilborn and Carson Daly) and his script (co-written with Al and Jon Kaplan, who also handled the fabulous score, just as they did with the criminally under-rated Code Monkeys) is consistently smart, if constantly silly. The biggest coup? Rubin and company manage to take a fairly dumb concept (zombified beavers) and inject just enough genuine tension and action to keep the whole thing from floating away into the ether. Zombeavers may be the class cut-up but it sure as hell ain’t the class dunce.

Kicking off with a fantastic gag involving a heavily disguised John Mayer and comedian Bill Burr as less than attentive truck drivers, we immediately get the nuts and bolts of the tale: a mysterious barrel falls off the truck, proceeds down a river and winds up at a beaver dam where it’s inspected by a couple of cute beaver puppets. If you grew up in the ’80s, you probably know what mysterious barrels that fall into rivers do and, by Jove, that’s just what happens here: exit the cute, friendly little beavers…enter…the zombeavers!

Our cannon fodder, in this case, consists of a trio of sorority sisters, Mary (Rachel Melvin), Zoe (Cortney Palm) and Jenn (Lexi Atkins), who’ve headed into the woods for a “girls only” weekend. Jenn has just seen a photo of her boyfriend, Sam (Hutch Dano, grandson of Royal), canoodling with a strange girl (or, at least, the back of her head) and Mary and Zoe want to help take her mind off her misery. Or, to be more accurate, Mary does: for her part, Zoe is the kind of amazingly snarky, sarcastic and just plain shitty character who can either make or break a film and she’s a complete blast.

While they settle in, the girls meet a local hunter, Smyth (Rex Linn), who flips the tired, old “leering redneck” cliché on its head by admonishing the young ladies’ skimpy bathing suits and “weird tattoos” rather than wolf-whistling. They also find the beaver dam from the beginning, although it’s now covered in neon-green “beaver piss,” so they keep their distance. As the “friends” play Truth or Dare, a pounding at the door begins as a fright but culminates in that other, great slasher film cliché: the crashing of the girls’ night out by their loutish boyfriends. Seems that ultra horny Zoe can’t go a weekend without screwing her equally horny boyfriend, Buck (Peter Gilroy), so she secretly invited him, along with Mary’s boyfriend, Tommy (Jake Weary) and good, old, cheatin’ Sam.

With our crew assembled, it’s only a matter of time before the zombeavers rear their vicious little heads and, before they know it, our young lovers are knee-deep in ravenous, dead-eyed little dam-builders. When the group is forced to split-up, it seems that tragedy is looming ever nearer over the horizon. As they must deal with not only the very real outside threat but their own internal struggles, a new wrinkle emerges: this is a zombie film, after all, and we all know why it’s a good idea to keep those fellas at arm’s length. Will our plucky heroes be able to pull together and kick beaver ass or have they just been dammed?

On paper, Zombeavers is a thoroughly ridiculous, silly concept, akin to something like Sharknado (2013) or FDR: American Badass (2012): after all, this is a film about zombified beavers…gravitas might seem slightly out-of-place, here. Thanks to a pretty great script, however (it’s probably one of the most quotable newer films I’ve seen), Zombeavers functions as more of a high-concept parody/homage than a lunk-headed bit of SyFy fluff. While it’s not in the same vaunted company as the stellar Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010), Zombeavers is pretty equitable to Mike Mendez’s fun Big Ass Spider! (2013) in that it mixes fun, dumb gags with more clever, subtle marginalia. One of my favorite bits in Zombeavers is a throwaway gag that features a teenage fisherman wearing a “#1 Dad” ball cap: it works on a number of levels but, most importantly, it’s the kind of absurd detail that makes the film’s world feel so much more complete than it could have, something akin to the immersive worlds of Troma films.

Rubin and company throw a lot of schtick at the screen (particularly once we get to the last act “twist” that introduces a whole other, outrageous element to the proceedings) but most of it actually sticks, unlike something like the obnoxious, tone-deaf Sharknado. Part of this has to do with all of the aforementioned nifty little details but the whole thing would collapse if there wasn’t an incredibly game cast propping it up. Luckily, Zombeavers is filled with actors who perfectly understand the razor-thin line between “campy” and “stupid” and manage to (mostly) walk it with ease.

While the central trio of Melvin, Palm and Atkins are set-up as rather feather-headed (particularly Melvin’s Mary), they have tremendous chemistry together: their scenes have such a quick, snappy pace to them that they handily recall films like Mean Girls (2004) or, to a lesser extent, Heathers (1988). While Melvin’s exquisite comedic timing and Atkins’ slightly ethereal bearing fit like a glove, the real standout is Palm’s Zoe. Time after time, Palm manages to swipe the film right from under the others, whether it’s the bit where she gleefully doffs her bikini top only to cover herself up when a bear looks at her or any of her perfectly delivered bon mots (her deadpan rejoinder of “Maybe you should try going down on me more often,” to Buck’s “I’ve never seen a real beaver before” is so perfectly delivered that it hurts).

As befits their characters, the guys are pitched as pretty unrepentant, obnoxious horn-dogs but it works, for the most part, although Dano never seems to connect with his character in any meaningful way: his delivery always seems awkward and slightly off. Although Weary’s Tommy doesn’t get as much to do, Gilroy’s Buck is another highlight, just like his equally churlish girlfriend. While Gilroy’s delivery doesn’t always work (there are some definitively odd things that he does, beat-wise), he almost hits an Andy Kaufman-lite vibe when it does. His “my dick is asleep” bit starts out irritating but becomes oddly amusing (and weirdly charming) but moments like his bizarrely energetic sex scene (screaming “You’re way too hot for me!” as he enthusiastically humps away) or any of his great throwaway lines (“Who the fuck is crying on vacation day?!”…”I’ll see you in the bone zone!”) are all but essential to the film’s overall vibe.

And back to that vibe: one of the most notable things about Zombeavers is that, despite the assumed crudity of the concept and execution, the film is anything but a collection of stupid “beaver” jokes and frat boy humor. If anything, Rubin’s script constantly pushes against those stereotypes, walking a fine line between embracing the clichés and setting them on fire. This isn’t to say that Zombeavers is wholesome family fare (penis-chomping, eye-gouging and Zoe’s boobs abound): it is to say, however, that Rubin and crew are smart and savvy enough to know that raunchy humor doesn’t have to be braindead…there’s nothing in this film that comes close to approximating the inanity of the aforementioned SyFy tripe, no matter how hard they try.

As should be plainly obvious, I was quite taken with Zombeavers: as a directorial debut, it’s even more impressive. While not everything worked, the elements that really worked tended to soar: the last fifteen minutes of the film are so damned perfect that I, literally, cheered. Since the film ends with a direct, clever set-up for a sequel (there are other things in the woods besides beavers, after all), I’m hoping that Rubin can capitalize on what worked here and come roaring out of the gate on the next one. After all: any guy that can see the inherent, soul-shattering evil of those flat-tailed, buck-toothed bastards…well, he’s pretty alright in my book.

3/10/15: Man…What An Animal!

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Aidan Devine, Amy Matysio, bad cops, campy films, cheesy films, cinema, Corinne Conley, film reviews, films, Hobo With a Shotgun, horror-comedies, immortality, Jason Eisener, Jesse Moss, Jonathan Cherry, Leo Fafard, Lou Garou, Lowell Dean, Movies, Ryland Alexander, Sarah Lind, shapeshifters, sins of the fathers, Toxic Avenger, Troma films, werewolves, WolfCop, writer-director

Making an intentionally campy, self-aware film is always a bit of a gamble. When it works, as with Jason Eisener’s peerless Troma-homage Hobo With a Shotgun (2011) or, to a lesser extent, Garrett Brawith’s FDR: American Badass (2012), the effects can best be described as pure, unabashed cinematic joy. These films thrive on a razor-thin separation between “clever” and “stupid,” the unspoken assumption that we’re all in on the same joke but we’re just going with the flow. Broad acting…crude humor…gory SFX…silly story developments…it’s all just part of the plan. These are the kinds of crowd-pleasing popcorn flicks that deserve a large crowd of giddy goofballs, ready to party and shout dialogue back at the screen.

When intentionally campy films don’t work, however, you get things like Sharknado (2013): shrill, cartoonish affairs that flaunt their cheap effects and bad actors with an almost pathological sense of glee. These are the B-movies (or C, in some cases) that tend to clog the feeding trough, making it harder to sift out the truly quality nuggets among the…refuse, shall we say. The bad news? There are a lot of really terrible “bad” films out there. The good news? Lowell Dean’s WolfCop (2014) sure as hell ain’t one of ’em.

The premise behind the film is appropriately lunk-headed, with just the right amount of awesome added, for spice: a ridiculously bad cop, Lou Garou (Leo Fafard), is knocked unconscious while poking around in the woods and wakes up with a pentagram carved in his chest. Since Lou’s the kind of guy who actively avoids busting criminals, drops his gun on a regular basis and shows up to work drunk, it’s probably not surprising that he’s gotten mixed up with some bad shit. When Lou turns into a werewolf (the bravura scene, set in a bar bathroom, really puts the “dick” in detective, shall we say), however, we might be forgiven for raising a few eyebrows.

Partnered up with the earnest, by-the-book Sgt. Tina Walsh (Amy Matysio) and scuzzy, gun enthusiast Willie Higgins (Jonathan Cherry), Lou delves into the mystery of his new “condition” and uncovers a mysterious plot that involves the town elders, an immortality ritual and evil, shapeshifting, lizard people. It’s an impossible case and the odds are impossibly high. Good thing Lou’s not just any old law enforcement officer…he’s WolfCop…and shit is about to get real hairy.

After a rough opening that comes uncomfortably close to bad TV, writer-director Dean’s WolfCop hits a pretty great groove and rides it effortlessly to a pretty satisfying, if silly, conclusion. In many ways, the film is like a kinder, gentler Hobo With a Shotgun or a less Dada take on Kaufman’s classic Toxic Avenger (1984). The acting is always broad (although the principals, particularly Fafard, are consistently good), the action is gory and goofy and subtlety is never one of its strong points. That being said, WolfCop is a relentlessly good time and much smarter than it appears: the film is full of clever background details and wolf imagery that helps drive home the central meaning without ever beating things into the ground.

When the film is firing on all cylinders (pretty much anytime WolfCop is whupping ass nine ways to Sunday), it’s a thing of beauty: Dean is a deft hand with the action sequences and manages to keep everything popping along in a truly kinetic fashion. This isn’t the same vaunted territory as Eisener’s Hobo, mind you (an obvious reference point for WolfCop, especially given the specious nature of each film’s protagonist), but it’s close enough for government work. The numerous transformation scenes…the bit where Lou turns his cop car into a sweet ride…the part where WolfCop rips off a dude’s face and throws it against a windshield, as the faceless guy runs around like…well…a chicken with its face ripped off…the acrobatic “SkiniMax” scene where bartender Jessica (Sarah Lind) has sex with WolfCop…they’re the great, giddy, B-movie moments that really make genre films like this so much fun.

WolfCop ends with an obvious setup for a sequel (on-screen text informs us that WolfCop 2 is coming soon, after all) and the biggest compliment I can offer the film is that I eagerly await said promised sequel. There was plenty of great stuff here and the barest minimum of unnecessary bummers (the numerous flashbacks were intrusive and rather irritating). Leo Fafard shows himself to be perfectly adept with the material, bringing just enough positive qualities to what could have been a pretty reprehensible character: we end up really feeling for Lou, which is a pretty big coup considering where the film started. Matysio makes a good foil for Fafard and there’s some genuine chemistry there: I hope the follow-up plays that up to good effect.

More than anything, I was impressed with the massive restraint that Lowell Dean showed here: there were about a million wrong turns that he could have taken, at any particular moment, but he manages to steer the film into some pretty inventive territory. WolfCop doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it hits cruising speed quickly and stays there: count me Team WolfCop from here on out…something tells me Dean has got plenty of tricks up his sleeve for future goodness.

1/31/15: The Galaxy According to Groot

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Academy Award Nominee, action-adventure, aliens, based on a comic book, Ben Davis, Benicio del Toro, blockbusters, box office success, Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, cinema, co-writers, comic adaptations, comic book films, Dave Bautista, Djimon Hounsou, Drax, ensemble cast, favorite films, film reviews, films, Gamora, Glenn Close, Groot, Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn, John C. Reilly, Josh Brolin, Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Lloyd Kaufman, Marvel comics, Michael Rooker, Movies, Nicole Perlman, Peter Quill, Rocket Raccoon, Ronan, sci-fi, science-fiction, Slither, special-effects extravaganza, Star Wars, Starlord, Super, superheroes, supervillains, Thanos, The Avengers, Troma films, Tyler Bates, Vin Diesel, writer-director, Zoe Saldana

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, writer-director James Gunn was but a lowly scribe pumping out scripts for bad-taste powerhouse Troma Pictures. Almost twenty years from his debut, the “Shakespeare-by-way-of-the-vomitorium” Tromeo and Juliet (1996), Gunn is responsible for Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), one of the biggest, brightest and most successful blockbusters of 2014 and, perhaps, the most “un-Marvel” of all Marvel comic adaptations. It may seem like an impossibly long and outrageously strange journey from Troma to the top of the charts, as it were, but anyone who’s followed Gunn’s career since his directorial debut, Slither (2006), knows that the signs were there all along: it’s just taken everybody else a little longer to figure it out, that’s all.

In many ways, Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy is the perfect antidote to the self-important, uber-serious comic book adaptations that have begun to clog the multiplexes. As comic film storylines continue to get darker, more cynical and more “mature,” ala the Dark Knight series, Avengers, et al, it’s refreshing to watch a big budget, tent-pole action-adventure film that’s indebted to the old days of Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and that largely eschews the self-flagellation, dreary visuals and po-faced acting of modern comic franchises. While GOTG is far from a perfect film, it’s never anything less than a complete blast to watch and handily establishes a new superhero team that promises some really awesome things for the future. Gunn has returned the “fun” to comic movies and, for me, it’s about damn time.

We begin on Earth, in 1988, with young Peter Quill (Wyat Oleff) at the bedside of his dying, cancer-stricken mother. Too upset to take her hand as she fades into nothingness, Peter runs outside and is promptly beamed up into a massive spaceship. 26 years later, Peter (Chris Pratt) is grown up and going by the name “Starlord.” He’s been working with the aliens that “captured” him ever since the incident, a group of scurrilous interstellar scavengers led by the blue-skinned Yondu Udonta (Michael Rooker).

When we first meet the adult Peter, he’s in the middle of recovering some sort of orb artifact for Yondu. After acquiring the artifact, Peter runs afoul of a group of heavily armed thugs, narrowly making his escape: he ends up on the shit-lists of both his former “employer” and the evil Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), your basic, everyday super-villain who wants to use the orb to destroy the planet that he so abjectly hates, Xandar. Ronan is an underling of Thanos (Josh Brolin), a massively powerful, godlike Titan who seeks to rule every galaxy he comes in contact with. Thanos’ “daughters,” Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) work with Ronan and Gamora is dispatched to retrieve the orb from Peter.

Meanwhile, Peter has ended up in the sights of Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel), a pair of intergalactic bounty hunters and one of the funnest “odd couple” teams in some time. Rocket, a motor-mouthed, anthropomorphic and heavily-armed raccoon is the “brains” of the operation, while Groot is some sort of incredibly strong tree-creature who communicates with the sole phrase “I am Groot.” After engaging in a heated battle with Peter and Gamora, all four adventurers end up in the high-tech Xandarian prison known as the Kyln. Once there, the group meets up with Drax (Dave Bautista), a burly, impossibly literal warrior with a burning hatred for both Ronan and Gamora. Forming an uneasy alliance, the group work together to escape the prison. After learning the truth behind the orb and the limitless power it contains, Peter decides that he must keep it from Ronan at all costs. As Ronan’s forces mass against our intrepid heroes, however, and utter devastation gets closer and closer to the defenseless people of Xandar, the Guardians of the Galaxy will find themselves in the fight of their lives. At stake? Nothing less than the fate of all humanity. Are they up for the challenge? Well, they don’t call ’em the Guardians of the Galaxy for nothing, right?

From the early scene where Chris Pratt pops his headphones on and shimmies and bops across the alien temple, all the way to the epic final fight with Ronan, Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy is one ludicrously fun setpiece after another. For two hours, Gunn manages to keep the tone light and sprightly, despite such heavy subjects as massive destruction, individual death and the end of humanity as we know it. Anytime things threaten to get too weighty, Gunn throws in another nifty effects sequence, some funny jibber-jabber with Rocket or another breath-taking fight scene: there might be the occasional furrowed brow, here, but it’s always followed by some sort of fist-raising bit that keeps the dial firmly on the “fun” side.

As mentioned earlier, GOTG is actually more beholden to something like the original Star Wars than it is to any of the modern-day Marvel comic adaptations that it follows. There are certain moments in GOTG that fall within established comic film clichés (the obligatory “hero sacrificing” moment, the rather contrived “moments of doubt” that help bring the group closer together, the decidedly moldy scenes involving the Xandarian government wringing their hands) but the thing is much more a “space opera” than a straight-forward superhero film. If anything, GOTG is much closer in spirit and tone to del Toro’s Hellboy adaptations than The Avengers, etc.

Special-effects-wise, GOTG ranges from the absolutely stunning (some of the backgrounds are so beautiful that they should be framed) to the strangely obvious and slightly awkward (some of the compositing during the space-ship dog-fight scenes is oddly clunky and there are several instances of the CGI looking obviously fake and sterile). Many of the creature effects are achieved with makeup (hence the film’s Oscar nomination for Best Makeup), which is always a nice surprise, and there is certainly a massive amount of variety to the various creatures, aliens, locations and ships. Particularly noteworthy is the awesome Knowhere location, which channels the futuristic slums of Blade Runner (1982), as well as the Kyln, which reminds of things like the space cantina in Star Wars. While the film usually looks amazing, I found myself pulled out of the movie just often enough to wish that the effects-work was more consistent.

The film’s score, by composer Tyler Bates, is your standard-issue heroic space fare but special mention must be made of the oldies-oriented soundtrack, centered around Peter’s “Awesome Mixtape Vol. 1.” There are several scenes where the soundtrack really adds to the film, such as Peter’s opening exploration and the awesome slo-mo bit involving the Runaway’s “Cherry Bomb.” The songs help provide a nice juxtaposition between the film’s high-tech polish and its old-fashioned vibe and shows that Gunn’s attention to detail doesn’t just extend to the film’s visual aspects.

As with any comic film, casting becomes crucially important: as with most other aspects, GOTG is appropriately solid with its casting. While I’m not (quite) ready to crown Pratt as the next matinee hero, I’ll admit to finding him effortlessly likable, sweet and fairly kickass here. I wish that he was able to jettison a bit more of his “Andy-ness” (from Parks and Rec), though: at times, the character of Peter vacillates between seeming like a sweet doofus and a sarcastic, square-jawed hero, ala Han Solo. For my money, the square-jawed hero aspect works much better but this is also Pratt’s first real time in the “hero” seat, so there’s room for growth. Saldana is decent-enough as Gamora, although she doesn’t seem to get a whole lot to do. Ditto Bautista, as Drax, who gets some nice scenes but all too often seems to exist as a lot of background noise. I’ll admit to being less than thrilled with his ultra-literal method of thought/speech, which often feels like it reduces the character so something like an extraterrestrial Tarzan.

By and large, however, Cooper and Diesel handily steal much of the film as the unbeatable team of Rocket and Groot. In particular, Cooper is a revelation as Rocket: I’ll admit to taking almost everything Cooper does with a grain of salt (I am absolutely not ready to crown him one of the greatest actors of our generation, despite what the Academy seems to think) but I was over the moon with his take on the character. Despite being a mo-cap creation, Rocket ends up being (almost) the most realistic, “human” character in the film: I love his quips and snarkiness but the scene where he breaks down and bemoans his unnatural “creation” is a real powerhouse. While given decidedly less to do, at least vocally, Diesel ends up being the real heart of the film as Groot: using his physicality and some choice, if subtle, facial expressions, Diesel manages to make Groot unbelievably sweet, cool and relatable. Even better, Cooper and Diesel work fantastically well as a team: we absolutely buy their friendship and relationship, which adds tremendous emotional resonance to several latter-half plot developments.

On the acting down-side, we get a completely negligible performance from the normally reliable Gillan as Nebula (she’s ridiculously shouty, way too intense and never believable), a bit of a non-starter from Pace as Ronan (the character is interesting but Pace never does much with it and comes across as thoroughly anonymous) and less Rooker than he (and we) probably deserve. I’ll also toss a little shade at Glenn Close, who turns in one of those cookie-cutter performances that seems to come straight from the factory conveyor belt, as well as poor Benicio del Toro, who gets virtually nothing to do as The Collector.

As someone who grew up on Troma films, I’ve followed Gunn’s career from the get-go. While his debut, the gory, goofy, horror-comedy Slither felt like the natural post-Troma move for one of Lloyd Kaufman’s proteges, Gunn really came into his own with the followup, Super (2010). Using Rainn Wilson as an appropriately blank canvas, Gunn came up with a truly ingenious commentary on the superhero genre, one that managed to bleed all of the fantasy and mystique from caped crusaders and reveal the sad, damaged heart at the core of costumed vigilantism. For my money, GOTG absolutely feels like the next logical progression for Gunn: he’s increasingly finding ways to subvert the mainstream, sprinkling that trademark “Troma humor” atop some notably “un-Troma” types of film. There are plenty of examples to be found here but two of my favorites would have to the scene where Peter challenges Ronan to a dance-off (absolutely classic) and the laugh-out-loud bit where John C. Reilly’s Corpsman Dey makes the brilliant comment that he “doesn’t believe that anyone is 100% a dick.” Far from feeling like a neutered version of his earlier films, GOTG feels like Gunn just has a much bigger, more vibrant canvas to work with.

As someone who’s the furthest thing from a comic film fan, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Guardians of the Galaxy before I actually sat down to watch it. While I’m a huge fan of Gunn’s work, I had the feeling that this might amount to “gun for hire” work, coming across as nothing more or less than a glossy waste of time. I’m familiar with the Guardians from my comic-reading youth but I haven’t actually cared about comic books since I was a kid: I’ve always viewed comic films as mindless entertainment, no more or less. I did enjoy The Avengers (2012) for what it was but I certainly don’t attach any measure of importance to it (or other Marvel projects, for that matter). In other words, I’m probably the absolute last person that this film was “made” for.

But you know what? I ended up kind of loving the film, anyway. While it’s not always smooth-sailing, GOTG has a tremendous amount of heart and is never anything less than full-bore entertaining. The cast and storyline are fun, the film is fast-paced and nothing gets bogged-down in undue sentimentality (or, at least, not for very long). Most importantly, nothing wears out its welcome: unlike the jaded, burned-out opinion I have of films like the Avengers series, I was ready for more GOTG as soon as the film ended. Rather than viewing the obligatory sequel with dread (already scheduled for 2017, apparently), I’m actually looking forward to the continued adventures of Starlord and friends. This could all change should the franchise get beaten into the dust, of course, but it all seems fresh and new at this stage: the far reaches of space, as they say, are the limit.

As a longtime fan of Gunn’s, I expected to enjoy aspects of Guardians of the Galaxy but I certainly wasn’t expecting to like the film as much as I did. For my money, GOTG was (probably) the best “spectacle” film of last year (aside from Edge of Tomorrow, perhaps) and yet another movie that made me regret my theatrical embargo: there were scenes and visuals, here, that I bet would have been absolutely mind-blowing on the big screen. Lesson learned, however: when Gunn is ready to get his next installment of Guardians of the Galaxy off the ground, I’ll be waiting at the box office, money in hand. I might not care for superhero films, for the most part, but I’m always ready and willing to watch a great director bring his A-game to an interesting project.

6/2/14 (Part Two): From the Sublime to the Rocket Launcher

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'80s action films, 1980's, action films, Alex Winter, Assault on Precinct 13, bad cops, Charles Bronson, cinema, crime wave, Death Wish, Death Wish 3, Deborah Raffin, Ed Lauter, film franchise, film reviews, films, Fraker, gang rape, gangs of punks, Gavan O'Herlihy, gun enthusiasts, guns, Jimmy Page, Kirk Taylor, liberals vs conservatives, Mad Max, Marina Sirtis, Martin Balsam, Michael Winner, misogyny, Movies, New York City, over-the-top, Paul Kersey, post-apocalyptic wasteland, revenge, rocket launcher, sequel, sequels, set in the 1980's, the Giggler, The Warriors, Tony Spiridakis, Troma films, vengeance, vigilante, vigilantism

As a youth, many of my favorite films tended to be of the ultra-violent action variety. While I watched a lot of different things, there was a certain group of films that seemed to get rewatched endlessly, as if on a loop: Magnum Force (1973), Pale Rider (1985), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Death Wish 3 (1985), RoboCop (1987) and Die Hard (1988). Most of these could probably be chalked up to the fact that Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson were two of my parents’ favorite actors, thereby gaining plenty of airtime in our household. As for RoboCop and Die Hard: what 11-year-old boy wouldn’t love those? As time passes, I find that my opinion on most of them still holds up: for one reason or another, these are all fundamentally solid films.

Of the group, Death Wish 3 is one of the ones I watched the most, while younger, but have revisited the least as time goes on. As part of my personal film festival, I decided to finally revisit the film, pairing it with the original (if I had access to the second film and hadn’t just watched the fourth a few months back, this would have been the whole quadrilogy). As seen in my previous entry, I found that the original Death Wish (1974) still holds up some forty years later, retaining lots of subtle power among the flying bullets. How, then, would one of my formerly favorite films hold up? Journey behind the curtain and let’s find out.

As far as genre franchises go, the Death Wish series actually tells a continual story, give or take the rather large lapses in time between the first and third entries (8 years). In the first, we were introduced to the character of Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), a mild-mannered, pacifistic New York City architect who becomes a vigilante after a gang of punks rape his daughter and kill his wife. The second film continues the storyline as Kersey and his daughter, Carol, move to Los Angeles in order to start a new life. After Carol is once again attacked and ends up killing herself, Paul picks up his revolver and hunts down the creeps responsible. By the end of the film, we see Paul all alone, the last of his family gone: the assumption is that he will continue to hunt the streets, cleaning up the criminal element. Since there ended up being a third (and fourth) film, that assumption would be right on the nose.

After some time has passed, “legendary” vigilante Paul Kersey boards a bus and returns to New York City, the place where it all began. He’s on his way to visit an old war buddy, Charley (Francis Drake), but this isn’t the same New York City from a decade before: this is the ’80s, baby, and shit’s bad…real bad. It seems that roving gangs of punks, similar to the creepazoids from Max Max (1979) or Troma’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), have taken over the city and Paul gets to his friend’s apartment just after the punks have beaten him nearly to death. Charley dies, the cops burst in and Paul is hauled off to the station house for a little good-natured “interrogation.”

Once there, Paul catches the eye of Lt. Shriker (Ed Lauter), who just happened to be a beat cop when Paul went on his initial “cleaning” spree in NYC. Seems that Shriker is fighting a losing battle against the punks on the street and he needs something that his entire police force can’t provide: he needs the “bad guys” to start dying. Shriker knows that Paul used to handle that particular “job” quite handily and offers him a deal: he can return to the streets, killing as many punks, criminals and ’80s metal-heads as he wants, as long as he keeps Shriker in the loop and throws him a few choice busts every so often. When the alternative is a hefty jail sentence, Paul agrees: time to hit the streets, once again.

As Paul wanders the post-Apocalyptic neighborhood outside Charley’s apartment (seriously: the place is like a cross between The Warriors (1979) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) on a bad day), he starts to figure out the hierarchy. Seems that Fraker (Gavan O’Herlihy), the platinum-blonde psycho that Paul briefly encountered in lockup, is the ringleader, ruling everything with an iron fist and really sharp knife. With his gang of goons, including The Giggler (Kirk Taylor), The Cuban (Ricco Ross) and Hermosa (Alex Winter), Fraker has the entire neighborhood terrified and paying protection money in order to stay alive. It’s a bad bunch of dudes…but there’s big trouble coming.

Paul also meets the residents of Charley’s apartment building, including Charley’s best friend and fellow war vet, Bennett (Martin Balsam), Manny and Maria Rodriguez (Joseph Gonzalez, Marina Sirtis), Eli and Erica Kaprov (Leo Kharibian, Hana-Maria Pravda) and Mr. and Mrs. Emil (John Gabriel, Mildred Shay). To complete his merry circle of friends, Paul also becomes romantic with Kathryn Davis (Deborah Raffin), the attractive young public defender that he met at the police station. It would all be so lovely, of course, if Fraker wasn’t so dead-set on running Paul out of the neighborhood, one way or the other. In short order, the place becomes an absolute war-zone and death comes to visit them all: it comes for the punks, of course, because Paul is one helluva shot. It also comes for the innocents, of course, because this wouldn’t be Death Wish without a whole lotta revenge. As the body count rises on both sides of the line, one thing remains clear: Kersey ain’t leaving until he’s either outta ammo…or targets.

Right off the bat, there’s absolutely nothing subtle or subtextual about Death Wish 3 whatsoever: this film is all raging id, rampaging from one extreme to the other. Unlike the basically good but ineffectual cops from the first film, every cop in DW3 comes across as a steroid-addled, trigger-happy goon, particularly the incredibly dastardly Lt. Shriker. Hell, he was technically only one twirled mustache away from a Perils of Pauline-era villain. He bashes Paul around, snarls that he could have him killed at any time and punches him square in the face just because it’s “his” jail.

Whereas the punks from the first film weren’t exactly multi-dimensional (Jeff Goldblum’s sneering mug was about as much character development as we got), the gangs in DW3 are completely over-the-top and cartoonish. Many of them do seem to have been lifted wholesale from The Warriors, right down to the odd matching outfits for certain groups within the gang (Gang subgroups? What nightmare of micro-management is this?!) and by the time we get to the finale, where gang members ride around on motorcycles while hurling grenades willy-nilly, it will be pretty impossible to not expect Mad Max to come zooming over the horizon. Fraker is so evil that he easily surpasses Bond villains, winding up somewhere in the neighborhood devoted to Marvel villains.

In many ways, there’s definitely a consistent through-line from the first film to the third: after all, director Michael Winner was on board for the first three films and the overall message (a good man with a gun trumps a bad man with a gun) is unwavering. Where Death Wish was careful to portray both sides of the issue, even if it obviously only gave credence to one side, DW3 dispenses with this facade completely. Paul isn’t on any kind of journey in DW3: he’s already there. While the first film grappled with the disparity between wanting to defend yourself and taking revenge, there’s no question as to what needs to be done by the time the third film opens. If Death Wish and its first sequel could be seen as drama-suspense hybrids, DW3 is almost entirely an action picture. In the first film, Paul has to deal with both the police (polite society) and the criminals: the police didn’t condone his activities, they just ran him out of the city. In the third film, not only do the police condone Kersey’s vigilantism, they actively push him into it. By the time we get to the finale, where Paul and Shriker run down the street, side by side, merrily gunning down anonymous bad guys (the body count in this thing, for the gangs alone, has to be in the mid-hundreds), DW3 is the furthest thing from the original film it could possibly be. The thought-provoking, gut-quaking violence of the first film has been replaced by a Ren and Stimpy-level of carnage that certainly befits most mid-’80s action sequels but makes it impossible to take anything seriously.

Perhaps the biggest issue with the film, however, and one that continually flew over my head as a kid, is the rampant misogyny. Admittedly, the first and second films were precipitated upon the sexual assault of a young woman but they also featured peripheral female characters: in DW3, every single (good) female character is either assaulted or killed. It’s such an obvious part of the film that it’s hard to believe the filmmakers didn’t intend it but it’s unpleasant, nonetheless. ’80s action films were never known for their progressive gender politics, in the best of situations, but the female characters in DW3 all seem doomed from their introductions. When combined with the over-the-top, testosterone-fueled action sequences, the absolute lack of surviving female characters makes this very much a “boys’ club.” To be honest, it’s probably no wonder that this film appealed to me so much as a kid: this movie was pretty much made for boys in their early teens, rating be damned.

And yet, despite its inherent flaws and ham-fisted politics, there something kind of charming about Death Wish 3. The parts that I remembered loving as a kid (blowing away the purse-snatcher, Paul’s ingenious booby traps, Fraker’s delicious villainy) were just as enjoyable this time around. Sure, the film may be full of holes and uses a disturbing amount of fantasy to glide over the rough patches (the cops are nowhere to be found, while everything is blowing up, until they’re needed for the big finale, at which point they all swoop down, en masse: were they all on break or something?) but it also has a gonzo sense of energy and vitality to it. The film looks pretty great, full of rich, vibrant colors and the soundtrack, by Jimmy Page (yep, that Jimmy Page), is pretty awesome: it’s a keyboard-heavy, funky batch of tunes that perfectly evoke the theme songs to various ’80s cop shows…in the best way possible, mind you).

Unlike Death Wish, which operated in shades of gray, Death Wish 3 is very much a black-and-white film: the bad guys are all absolutely bad, the good guys are all absolutely good. Guns are not only good but absolutely necessary. When the law fails you, take measures into your own hands. There’s no room for dialogue or division here: you’re either standing with Paul, shooting at the creeps, or you’re getting shot at…simple as that. When I want to watch something thought-provoking and visceral, I’ll undoubtedly return to the original. When I want to turn my brain off and root for the white hats, however, there’s no doubt that I’ll be returning to Death Wish 3. After all, any film that features a reverse mohawk, giggling purse-snatcher and death by (close-range) rocket launcher can’t be all bad. It was the ’80s, after all.