10/7/14 (Part Two): No Laughing Matter

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, actor-director, Andrew Prine, based on a true story, Ben Johnson, Captain J.D. Morales, Charles B. Pierce, cinema, Dawn Wells, deadly trombones, Deputy Sheriff Norman Ramsey, film reviews, films, Friday the 13th Part 2, hooded killer, horror, horror films, influential films, isolated communities, Jim Citty, Jimmy Clem, Lovers' Lane, Movies, period-piece, Robert Aquino, serial killer, set in the 1940s, slasher films, small town life, Texarkana, Texas Ranger, the Phantom Killer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Town That Dreaded Sundown, true crime

Falling chronologically between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978), Charles B. Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) is something of a proto-slasher: it uses many of the tropes of slasher films (masked maniac, creative kill scenes, stalking scenarios) but welds them to a more traditional true-crime format. The finished product ends up being a little like a pseudo-documentary, complete with voice-over narrator, but maintains enough horror film qualities to appeal to fans. By comparing the look of the Phantom Killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown with Jason’s first appearance, Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), it’s also plain to see how influential the film would be on the genre movies that would follow. Although Pierce’s film would, ultimately, be less influential than either of the landmarks that surrounded it, it’s still a fairly well-made, tense little picture that’s wholly deserving of a resurgence among modern audiences. With a new remake set to open next week, it appears that horror audiences may finally be ready to focus on Texarkana and its mysterious, hooded madman once again.

Based on a true story, The Town That Dreaded Sundown takes place over several months in 1946 and deals with the activities of a serial killer in Texarkana, Arkansas. Beginning with young couples on Lovers’ Lane, the hooded killer would graduate to attacking people in the safety of their own homes before seeming to vanish into thin air. As the attacks increase in sheer viciousness, the citizens of the 40K-strong town begin to hide in their homes, avoiding the nighttime hours like the plague. At first, Deputy Sheriff Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine) does the best he can to catch the elusive maniac but he’s soon forced to hand the case over to a living legend: Captain J.D. Morales (Ben Johnson), widely renowned as the greatest Texas Ranger to walk the earth. Together, Ramsey and Morales try to run to ground a sinister, vicious killer who seems to appear out of nowhere and vanish just as quickly. As the body count rises, the town of Texarkana is left to wonder if they’ll ever know peace and safety again.

In many ways, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a tale of two films (three, actually, but we’ll get to that shortly): a true-crime investigation and a serial killer/slasher film. While the true-crime stuff is interesting, if a little old-fashioned, the serial killer/slasher element is particularly well-done. From his very first attack, where the killer disables a couple’s car while they sit there in stunned fear, to the climatic scene where Ramsey and Morales chase him by the railroad tracks, the Phantom Killer (Bud Davis) is one helluva great bad guy. While his initial attacks involve firearms, the killer really gets creative when he ties a knife to the end of a trombone and proceeds to “play” the instrument, repeatedly jabbing the knife into his victim’s back: it’s a nasty, thoroughly gratuitous scene but it’s also pretty genius and well-staged, inexplicably reminding of the similar method of murder in Michael Powell’s legendary Peeping Tom (1960). Like the best horror/slasher villains, the Phantom Killer is a mute, absolutely menacing presence: it’s pretty easy to take one look at the character and see the direct line of inspiration to the appearance of Jason Voorhees in the second Friday the 13th film, although elements of the Phantom Killer’s appearance and behavior can be found in at least a bakers’ dozen other horror films.

On the “good guy” side, Andrew Prine does a great job as the hard-charging Deputy, although I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed by Johnson’s characteristically gruff performance: there isn’t much shade or nuance to Captain Morales, although not being familiar with the actual person probably makes the case a little moot…after all, it’s quite possible that Morales was exactly as Johnson portrayed him. Nonetheless, I found myself gravitating towards Prine much more than I did to Johnson’s throwback “old school lawman.” The rest of the cast is decent, if a bit anonymous, although many of the supporting roles have a decidedly amateurish tinge to them that pretty synonymous with low-budget films of that era.

The single biggest problem with the film, minor quibbles aside, comes from any of the scenes involving director Charles B. Pierce, who plays police office A.C. Benson. While it’s always a bit problematic having the director pop up in his own film (actors directing themselves, ala Eastwood, Gibson or the like, are entirely different scenarios), it’s made even worse when the character is obnoxious and unnecessary. In a nutshell, the character of Benson exists solely to provide the comic relief that the film so desperately does not need: any scene featuring Pierce is pitched at absolutely screwball levels and sits at odds with anything else in the movie. Without the Benson/Pierce scenes, The Town That Dreaded Sundown plays as an effective, straight-faced thriller. With the scenes, however, the film often takes on the quality of a farce, which has the unintended effect of making the rest of the material seem slight and silly. In a way, it’s similar to the big complaint I have from the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): the cheesy wraparound storyline, added later, severely dilutes the impact of the rest of the film. Similarly, the goofy comedy scenes not only don’t add anything to the film, they actually take away much of the film’s sustained mood and impact, at the very least scuttling any of the serious scenes that directly lead-in to or follow the Benson scenes. In the case of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, at least we can blame the studio for unnecessarily interfering: the tampering in Pierce’s film appears to be solely his fault. Regardless of the ultimate reason behind it, Pierce’s performance as Benson ends up being the film’s biggest problem and serves as a pretty substantial black eye.

It’s a shame, too, because the film that surrounds the absurd comic scenes is actually quite good, if somewhat less than relevatory. The setting and mood are strong, for the most part, the action is tense, the killer is frightening and the setpieces are well-staged. While I’m not normally a fan of remakes, finding them to be largely unnecessary, I can’t help but feel that the upcoming remake of Pierce’s film might not be such a bad idea. There’s a really intriguing, frightening idea to be found here: a film that focuses solely on the darker aspects and jettisons the buffoonish comic relief certainly stands a chance of being successful…tonal consistency would, at the very least, be a significant improvement over the original. If you can look past the film’s poorly executed attempts at levity, however, much of it possesses a raw, feral power that should certainly appeal to fans of “classic” slasher” films, as well as true-crime buffs. If only Pierce could have stayed behind the camera, this might have ended up as an unmitigated classic instead of a near miss: nonetheless, this is one film that you definitely shouldn’t dread.

7/29/14 (Part One): A Totally Wack Experience

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Andrea Runge, ax murders, bad movies, based on a true story, Billy Campbell, Christina Ricci, Clea DuVall, dysfunctional family, famous trials, Gregg Henry, historical drama, Lifetime Channel, Lizzie Borden, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax, murder, Nick Gomez, patricide, period-piece, set in the 1890s, Shawn Doyle, sisters, Stephen McHattie, true crime, TV movie

You’d think that making a film about the murder trial of Lizzie Borden would be kind of a no-brainer: after all, this is a case about a young woman from 1890s Massachusetts who was accused, tried and acquitted of butchering her father and step-mother with an ax. The case is so famous that it even inspired a children’s’ playground rhyme (“Lizzie Borden took an ax / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one.”). In certain ways, the media frenzy surrounding the case could be seen as a precursor to modern-day murder trials like Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias: young women who were all considered unlikely murder suspects thanks to their ages, looks and social statuses.

You would think that making a film about a fascinating, real-life case like this would be simple: judging by Nick Gomez’s truly terrible Lizzie Borden Took An Ax (2014), however, you would be wrong…dead wrong, as it were. While the film comes with a fairly huge handicap (it was a “Lifetime Channel original film”, which carries about as much artistic weight as do the terms “Syfy original” or “Asylum exclusive”), the problems (almost too numerous to count) go far and beyond the film’s place of birth. Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is a film that manages to get almost nothing right, managing to be simultaneously over-wrought, lackadaisical, over-the-top and duller than dishwater: no mean feat considering that the film whiplashes tone so often that one could get seriously motion-sick trying to keep up.

The film begins by sketching out (very skimpily) our major players: we meet the obnoxious Lizzie (Christina Ricci), a sort of 1890s take on Macaulay Culkin’s version of Michael Alig from Party Monster (2003); her supportive but numbingly milquetoast sister, Emma (Clea Duvall); her strict, closed-off father (Stephen McHattie), who’s interest in Lizzie appears to border on the incestuous; and Lizzie’s much hated stepmother (Sara Botsford). As far as characterization goes, that’s just about it. We do get a throwaway bit where a couple of town guys argue with Lizzie’s father, Andrew, about being shorted on payment for services rendered but this is never explored any further: I’d be shocked if the information was ever supposed to be more than a MacGuffin. With these characters, what you see is what you get.

So what do we get? Well, we get a ridiculously modern, stomping hybrid of hip-hop and blues for the musical score, which goes superbly with all of the ridiculous slo-mo shots: there are so many “badass” moments where characters stride in slo-mo down the street, accompanied by the over-the-top score, that I briefly wondered if this was the first ever historical drama completely informed by modern super hero movies. We get a performance from Ricci that ranges wildly between “just rolled out of bed stoned” to “every vein standing out in relief,” although the key connecting tissue is that no part of her performance ever feels accurate or real: it’s difficult to tell whether the odd characterization is Ricci or director Gomez’s fault but either option seems entirely valid. Stephen McHattie, who’s normally an incredibly reliable presence in indie genre films like Pontypool (2008) just looks confused here, as does Clea Duvall: both actors have the bearing of performers who are receiving their scripts a page at a time, just as lost as the audience.

While the story doesn’t veer far from the historical details of the murder, the script (which is as reliably awful as the rest of the film) still manages to throw in a raft of completely unnecessary, underdeveloped bullshit: we get another murder, which may or may not be related, although the film doesn’t care enough to explore it further; we get the suitably ridiculous portrayal of Lizzie as a modern-day party-girl magically transported to turn-of-the-20th-century Massachusetts; a stupid “insane roommate” subplot between Lizzie and her sister (the musical stingers and Ricci’s “crazy eyes” are straight out of Single White Female (1992) and enough over-acting to shame an ancient Greek theater troupe.

Picking a single low-point for the film is almost impossible but one of my favorites has to be the astoundingly stupid scene where Lizzie sneaks out to go to a party. The scene is shot exactly like a similar scene in a modern “wild youth” film might be staged: red-lit, thumping music, wild teens drinking…except it’s a period-piece, so all this takes place while the aforementioned “wild youth” are dressed in their best 1890s finery, dancing politely with each other. We get it: kids have always been kids. This doesn’t make it any less of a stupid affectation, however, although it goes hand-in-hand with that ridiculous musical score.

Essentially, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is completely DOA, flatlining way before we limp in to the inane “twist”ending (spoiler alert: Lizzie did it, after all…duh). Truth be told, there’s virtually nothing to recommend about this film: the cast is pretty bad, including the more established actors like Ricci and McHattie; everything about the storyline is obvious and telegraphed; the score is ludicrous; the acting is too over-the-top, which turns the pulpy dialogue into something resembling film noir for idiots; the courtroom/trial stuff is simultaneously cheesy and boring…truth be told, the only miraculous thing about Gomez’s film is how it manages to be so bad without ever skipping over the line into “so-bad-it’s-good” territory.

If one is so inclined, however, there’s a pretty vicious drinking game that can be applied to the film. To whit: every time you get a gratuitous shot of McHattie’s ax-ruined face, take a drink. Since this happens at a ratio of at least once a minute for the first 30 minutes or so (including a hilarious bit where his face is covered…only for the cloth to be dramatically whipped away, revealing that damn bloody face again…take that!), you’ll either be toes-up drunk by the mid-point or completely unconscious: either way, you win.

7/7/14: Sometimes Truth is Better Than Fiction

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Alessandro Nivola, Arkansas, Atom Egoyan, based on a book, based on a true story, child killing, cinema, Colin Firth, Damien Echols, Dane DeHaan, Devil's Knot, drama, false accusations, film reviews, films, James Hamrick, Jason Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley, Joe Berlinger, Kevin Durand, Kris Higgins, Mireille Enos, Movies, murdered children, Pam Hobbs, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Reese Witherspoon, Satanic panic, Scott Derrickson, Seth Meriwether, small town life, true crime, West Memphis, West Memphis Three

Sometimes, there’s only so often you can replow the same ground before you have to let it fallow. Farmers know this but, unfortunately, it’s a fact of life that many filmmakers have yet to fully grasp. This can be applied to remakes and “reimaginings” (my personal pet peeves) but it’s just as valid when discussing multiple films made about the same subject. This problem becomes more pronounced when there’s already a “definitive” work on the particular subject, since anything that follows will either seem lesser, by comparison, or will borrow too much from its predecessor in order to capture some of that lightning twice. Such, unfortunately, is the case with Atom Egoyan’s recent crime-drama, Devil’s Knot (2013), which attempts to put a “slightly fictionalized” spin on the true-life story of the West Memphis Three. The problem, of course, is that the same story was already told in a much more definitive way with Joe Berlinger and Sinofsky’s excellent documentary Paradise Lost (1996). When you already have a film (and two follow-up documentaries) that have already examined the subject in great detail, what more could a fictionalized account of the same incident bring? In the case of Devil’s Knot, the answer is a resounding “Not much at all.”

For those not familiar with the circumstances behind the case, here it is, in a nutshell: In 1993, the bound and tortured bodies of three 8-year-old boys were found in the woods outside of West Memphis, Arkansas. Due to the intense interrogation of teenage suspect Jessie Misskelley (who just happened to be mentally handicapped), two other local teens were arrested: Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin. Due to the three boys’ interest in heavy metal, along with Echol’s interest in witchcraft and Aleister Crowley, the small town immediately suspected Satanic influence and the trio were tried and convicted with remarkably little actual evidence: Misskelley and Baldwin were sentenced to life in prison, whereas Echols, seen as the “ringleader,” was sentenced to death. After filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky began poking around in the case, they began to find lots of discrepancies, along with plenty of other potential suspects (including some from the various boys’ families). The whole thing began to seem like a witch-hunt and the filmmakers’ resulting documentary, Paradise Lost, became a huge hit and initiated a groundswell of support for the trio, including some rather famous folks like Eddie Vedder and Henry Rollins. After new evidence finally surfaced, the three were released from prison in 2011: to this point, no one else has been officially charged in the murders, leaving the whole thing as a tragic, unsolved mystery.

Egoyan’s film, then, takes all of the basic facts from the case (and Paradise Lost) and gives everything a melodramatic sheen, choosing to focus in on the character of Pam Hobbs (Reese Witherspoon), the mother of one of the murdered boys. We begin with a few bits of small-town life before getting right to the terrible crime, as the bodies of the missing boys are found in the woods. After the police lean hard on Jessie (Kris Higgins), he gives up his two “friends,” Damien (James Hamrick) and Jason (Seth Meriwether, looking so much like a teenage Geddy Lee that it became distracting): all three boys have a reputation as misfits and loners which, along with Damien’s penchant for listening to Slayer and carving his girlfriend’s name into his arm, leads the town to make all the connections they need to. This is, of course, despite the fact that we see plenty of other odd occurences going on: a mysterious muddy and bloody man washes up in a local fast-food bathroom, while local ice-cream truck driver, Chris Morgan (Dane DeHaan), acts so strange that it seems impossible to think he’s not guilty of something. There’s also the highly suspicious behavior of one of the boys’ fathers, Mark Byers (Kevin Duran), and local woman, Vicki Hutchenson (The Killing’s Mireille Enos), who seems to be sexually obsessed with Nichols and openly lies about being taken to a “witches’ coven” by the teen.

A “white knight,” such as it were, emerges in the form of Ron Lax (Colin Firth), the highfalutin’ big city lawyer who takes on the trio’s case, pro bono, in the interests of serving justice. He faces plenty of opposition, obviously, not the least of which comes from Pam’s angry husband, Terry (Alessandro Nivola) and Mark Byers. In time, however, Ron begins to chip away at Pam’s resolve regarding the guilt of the trio: at first, she’s positive that they’re guilty but the facts just don’t add up for her and she comes to believe that the three might be innocent, after all. Worst of all, however, Pam begins to suspect that the real killer might be someone close to her…maybe even her own husband.

Right off the bat, Devil’s Knot suffers from one massive problem: it’s telling the exact same story as Paradise Lost but without the benefit of real-life footage. In Paradise Lost, we meet the real Pam and Terry Hobbs, as well as the real Mark and Melissa Myers, which is a much different ballgame than getting their characters filtered through actors like Witherspoon, Nivola and Duran. In Devil’s Knot, we get everything filtered through a distinct layer of melodrama that gives the situation as much gravitas as a made-for-TV movie. In particular, Witherspoon turns in a wildly dramatic performance, highlighted by scenes like the one where she pulls at her hair (after someone asks for a sample, she responds, “Take it all!”) or goes into her dead son’s classroom in order to drop off his last homework assignment and ends up getting hugged by a mob of his classmates. Couple this with her dead son’s propensity to reappear in flashbacks, singing the same Elvis Presley song, ad nauseam, and it’s pretty clear Egoyan and writer Scott Derrickson (himself the director of films like The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Sinister (2012) and Deliver Us From Evil (2014)) are much more interested in tugging at the heart-strings than actually exploring the ins-and-outs of this particular tragedy.

There are also issues with the way in which the film introduces certain plot elements (the mysterious man at the fast-food restaurant, the bit about young Stevie Hobbs’ pocketknife, Chris Morgan) without ever fully developing them: it’s as if Egoyan and Derrickson wanted to touch on everything but couldn’t be bothered to tie it all into a cohesive whole. Since Devil’s Knot has the benefit of being released after the trio were set free, it would seem to have access to more information, not less, than the preceding Paradise Lost. Despite this, however, the film feels unbelievably slight, like a Cliff Notes-version of the events. We spend so much time with Pam and Ron that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley kind of fade into the background: the film seems to want to focus on the victims and their families, yet basically allows Pam Hobbs to just sub-in for all of them. In many ways, this is the story of how she comes to grips with what happened, which ends up marginalizing everyone else’s struggles (including those of the other grieving parents, who are rarely seen).

There’s no denying that the film is well-made: Egoyan has a way of staging everything that can make even the most “innocent” things see ominous and portentous, which is especially evident at the beginning of the film, which is shot almost like a horror movie. While I found the acting to be frequently over-the-top and too “stagey” (Enos is particularly awful, which is strange considering how great she is in The Killing), I was really taken by Firth’s performance: he disappears so completely into the role of the “crusading American lawyer” that it reminded me (fondly) of Hugh Laurie’s performance as the cynical House. Firth ends up being one of the few characters in the film that comes across as genuine, although it’s certainly a case of “too little, too late.”

Ultimately, I’m not sure who Devil’s Knot is supposed to appeal to. Anyone who’s interested in the actual facts of the case would be much better served seeking out Berlinger and Sinofsky’s original film, along with its two sequels, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000) and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011): between those three documentaries, just about everything gets laid bare. Fans of true-crime dramas, on the other hand, would be much better suited seeking something that wasn’t so melodramatic and narrowly focused: if one were to remove the West Memphis Three angle, Devil’s Knot is revealed to be a fairly turgid, if well-made, pot-boiler. All in all, Devil’s Knot ends up being a rather out-of-place creation, a film that’s forever doomed to live in the shadow of a much better, more definitive work.