1980 Week: Home Movies

Brian De Palma took a break from his successful career as a Hollywood director to teach filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College, where he’d done graduate work in theater, and this project resulted from student exercises. Despite the involvement of marquee names including Kirk Douglas, who has a small recurring role, the smart move would have been to let Home Movies linger in the relative obscurity of academia, because it’s an embarrassment. Not only is Home Movies amateurish and silly, but it’s suffused with crass elements including scenes during which the white leading character wears blackface as a disguise. Credited to seven writers, including De Palma, the narrative follows Denis Byrd (Keith Gordon), a young man who takes a filmmaking course from “The Maestro” (Douglas). Egomaniacal and overbearing, “The Maestro” encourages Denis to use his eccentric family as fodder for a class project, so Denis tracks his philandering father (Vincent Gardenia) and his older brother, James (Gerrit Graham), an insufferable college professor who pummels his fiancée, Kristina (Nancy Allen), with absurd rules about abstinence, diet, and exercise. Somehow this resolves into Denis surreptitiously filming people having sex. The story is coherent, but the events are pointless and random and tacky. James throwing food at Kristina because she broke a rule. Denis rescuing a lingerie-clad Kristina from a rapist. “The Maestro” climbing a tree to shame Denis for doing exactly what “The Maestro” asked, filming real life. Wasted are Allen’s girl-next-door charm, Gardenia’s impeccable comic timing, and Graham’s intense weirdness. Plus, seeing as how De Palma extrapolated many story elements from his own life experiences, the odor of self-indulgence permeates.

Home Movies: LAME

1980 Week: Dressed to Kill

          Two of the least admirable qualities of Brian De Palma’s directorial style coalesced in this quasi-controversial thriller—his atrocious onscreen treatment of women and his shameless borrowings from Alfred Hitchcock’s bag of cinematic tricks. Beyond transposing a number of key elements from Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Dressed to Kill is so hyper-sexualized that the picture’s extremes overshadow its meritorious elements. At its best, Dressed to Kill is pure cinema, with De Palma using only images, music, and sound effects for long stretches of screen time. These dialogue-free passages have a certain allure, even though the nonverbal bits are so simplistic that the film occasionally seems designed to communicate to children—that is, if children could watch a hard-R thriller with close-ups of razor blades slicing flesh, as well as nearly pornographic images of female masturbation. Yet that’s De Palma in full bloom, placing sophisticated techniques in the service of puerile subject matter.

          Dressed to Kill begins with Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson), an unappreciated housewife living outside New York City. Desperately lonely, she comes on to her shrink, Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), who politely and professionally refuses the advance. Then Kate meets a handsome stranger and has a hot tryst with a tragic outcome—walking away from her lover’s apartment, Kate gets assaulted and killed by a mysterious assailant. The only witness to the murder is prostitute Liz Blake (Nancy Allen), who teams up with Kate’s teenaged son, Peter (Keith Gordon), to find the killer. Dr. Elliott gets dragged into the mix when it becomes apparent the murderer might be a patient.

          One of several movies that De Palma wrote in addition to directing, Dressed to Kill works fairly well as a whodunit, thanks to clever misdirection on De Palma’s part, but it fails in many regards as entertainment. Succumbing to a characteristic weakness, De Palma loses control of the story for long periods by indulging in visual excess, whether it’s the “shocking” opening sequence of Kate pleasuring herself or the endless scene of Kate and her would-be lover pursuing each other in a museum. With Ralf D. Bode’s gauzy cinematography and Pino Donaggio’s string-driven score creating a cottony milieu, De Palma generates something that walks a fine line between mainstream moviemaking and soft-core porn. The movie also suffers from a severe Caine shortage—the top-billed player isn’t in the movie all that much, and he sleepwalks through his scenes. Dickinson approaches her raunchy role with great verve, and Allen’s streetwise sexiness is appealing, but there’s a vacuum at the center of the movie. Nonetheless, Dressed to Kill is an important part of De Palma’s Hitchcock-tribute cycle; while his next Hitch homage, Blow Out (1981), is a much better movie, Dressed to Kill is a pure statement of impure thoughts.

Dressed to Kill: FUNKY

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978)

          Robert Zemeckis’ directorial debut is hard to dislike—every iota of the film’s energy is devoted to stimulating audience engagement—but at the same time it’s unlikely to generate much in the way of passionate adoration. Slight in the extreme, the picture spins a fictional ensemble yarn around the Beatles’ first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in 1964, thus presenting in microcosm the whole scope of the “Beatlemania” phenomenon. First among the problems with this approach is the way the movie dances around the onscreen absence of the real Beatles. The Fab Four licensed more than a dozen of their early songs, so the soundtrack explodes with the joy of “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Please Please Me,” “She Loves You,” and the title song, among others. Yet whenever the Beatles are involved in a scene, Zemeckis uses stand-ins, vocal imitators, and cheat angles that show only backs or legs or such. (Admittedly, his staging of the band’s actual Ed Sullivan performance, footage of which is shown on the monitors of cameras during taping, is highly resourceful.)

          On a deeper level, I Wanna Hold Your Hand suffers from the use of stereotypical characterizations. None of the fictional people in the movie are offensive, per se, but they range from drab to obnoxious, so it’s hard to care what happens to any of them. The main characters are four young women from Jersey. Grace (Theresa Saldana) wants to shoot exclusive photos of the Beatles so she can start a career as a photojournalist; Janis (Susan Kendall Newman) hates the Beatles and plans to picket their appearance; Pam (Nancy Allen) is a nice girl who claims she’s above Beatlemania but, of course, ends up taking crazy risks to get near the lads from Liverpool; and Rosie (Wendie Jo Sperber) is a screaming superfan who’ll do anything to meet Paul McCartney. The guys who take part in the distaff quartet’s adventure are even less dimensional than the ladies. Larry (Marc McClure) is a nebbish who tags along because he’s hot for Grace; Tony (Bobby De Cicco) is an insufferable bad boy who hates the Beatles and therefore serves as a mild sort of antagonist; and Richard (Eddie Deezen) is a borderline-psycho nerd who matches Rosie’s fanaticism.

          As was the case with so many early Zemeckis projects, the story unfolds in a screwball-comedy style, with accidents and coincidences and misunderstandings colliding against each other to create chaos. There’s no question that co-writers Zemeckis and Bob Gale evince tremendous imagination throughout I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and the scribes treat their characters with obvious affection. But, man, after a while, the car chases and pratfalls and shouting matches get awfully loud and repetitive. That said, I Wanna Hold Your Hand marked the arrival of a naturally gifted filmmaker, and it’s impressive how well many scenes work given that the overall movie is so lightweight. Plus, of course, the excitement of the film’s soundtrack is impossible to deny.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand: FUNKY

Carrie (1976)

          It might be exaggerating to call Carrie a good film, since it’s unabashedly campy and lurid, but there’s no arguing with results—among other things, the movie earned two Oscar nominations, elevated director Brian De Palma to A-list status, turned leading lady Sissy Spacek into a star, initiated an epic relationship between Hollywood and novelist Stephen King, and became one of the most popular horror movies of the ’70s. Considering that the flick is so trashy it features beaver shots beneath the opening credits and culminates with a blood-soaked teenager using telekinesis to slaughter her classmates, that’s quite a list of accolades.

          Based on King’s first novel, Carrie tells the sad story of Carrie White (Spacek), a misfit American teenager so ignorant to the ways of the world that she freaks out upon getting her first period while showering in the school gym. Her vicious classmates, led by instigator Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), taunt Carrie mercilessly, pelting her with sanitary napkins, so Carrie is excused from school for the rest of the day. Once she returns home, we discover the source of Carrie’s troubles—her lunatic mother, Margaret White (Piper Laurie), is a Bible-thumping abuser who considers sexual development sinful and tortures Carrie with long imprisonments in a closet.

          As Carrie reels from the shower incident and her troubles at home, she discovers the ability to move objects with her mind. Meanwhile, Chris is banned from the upcoming prom—indirect punishment for tormenting Carrie—so she plans grotesque revenge. Adding a final thread to the story is Carrie’s sympathetic classmate Sue (Amy Irving), who persuades her dreamboat boyfriend, Tommy (William Katt), to take Carrie to the prom. One bucket of pig blood later, it all goes to hell.

          De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen took relatively few liberties with King’s narrative, so they delivered his signature combination of gore and pathos intact, and Carrie zooms along at tremendous speed. Excepting two ill-conceived comedic sequences (both of which feature cringe-inducing music), Carrie is laser-focused on developing empathy for the protagonist and setting up a Grand Guignol climax. Generally speaking, Carrie is an efficient movie, and some of the picture’s elements exist on an elevated plane. De Palma’s trademark tracking shots manifest in full force, for instance (though the shots are akin to guitar solos in overwrought hard-rock songs, flamboyance for the sake of flamboyance). Additionally, De Palma uses the supporting cast like an orchestra, getting exactly the right single note each from Allen, Irving, Katt, Laurie, and others (including Betty Buckley and John Travolta).

          Spacek’s Oscar-nominated performance holds Carrie together, since her character’s emotional journey drives the story. As played by Spacek, Carrie is fragile during early scenes, ferocious when assaulting her enemies, and poignant once she realizes the tragic fate to which she has been consigned. De Palma’s ending represents his biggest departure from King’s book, and while the film’s concise denouement is more cinematic than the protracted conclusion of King’s narrative, it’s a bit much, right up to the notorious “gotcha” coda. Once again, however, there’s no arguing with results; Carrie made such an impression that it earned a Broadway adaptation in 1988, a low-budget movie sequel in 1999, and big-budget movie remakes in 2002 and 2013.

Carrie: GROOVY

1941 (1979)

          After scoring two ginormous hits in the mid-’70s, director Steven Spielberg fumbled with his epic World War II comedy 1941, which was considered a major commercial and critical disappointment upon its initial release. The wildly ambitious (and wildly uneven) film has since gained more public favor thanks to wider exposure on television and video, and that’s all to the good—1941 isn’t a masterpiece, but it isn’t an outright disaster, either. In fact, the picture boasts some of Spielberg’s most audacious filmmaking, from expertly handled miniature effects to outrageously ornate crowd sequences, and it’s also filled with entertaining performances. The whole thing doesn’t hang together, and the film is far too long, but 1941 overflows with beautifully executed episodes.

          Written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis in a madcap style that borrows from the Marx Brothers and Preston Struges, among others, 1941 tackles unique subject matter: the paranoia that gripped America’s West Coast immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the story, civilians and soldiers alike ramp up defensive efforts like placing armed lookouts in the Ferris wheel of the Santa Monica Pier and situating gigantic anti-aircraft guns on the lawns of beachside homes.
          The all-over-the-map script is stuffed with subplots and supporting characters, and some of the threads are more interesting than others. The business of a German U-boat commander (Christopher Lee) and his Japanese counterpart (Toshiro Mifune) incompetently searching for the California coast is very silly, despite the caliber of talent involved, but when the Axis duo captures and interrogates an American redneck (Slim Pickens), enjoyable lowbrow comedy ensues. A wartime romance between a fast-talking soldier (Tim Matheson) and a sexy military secretary (Nancy Allen) is amusing and spicy, especially during an elaborate seduction scene that takes place in a plane that’s still on the tarmac.
          The goofy stuff involving two Saturday Night Live comics is okay, with Dan Aykroyd playing the leader of a buffoonish tank crew and John Belushi mugging as Capt. “Wild” Bill Kelso, a pilot zooming around the West looking for targets. Some of the best material involves a patriotic family headed up by Ward Douglas (Ned Beatty), since this stuff slyly mixes domestic shtick with wartime high jinks. For sheer absurdity, however, it’s hard to beat the scenes with Robert Stack as a dopey general who cries watching the Walt Disney movie Dumbo.

          From start to finish, 1941 is unapologetically excessive, throwing explosions or hundreds of extras at the audience when simpler visuals would have sufficed, and things like narrative momentum and nuance get bludgeoned to death by the opulent production values. Still, the cast is filled with so many gifted actors (in addition to those already mentioned, look for John Candy, Eddie Deezen, Joe Flaherty, Murray Hamilton, Warren Oates, Wendie Jo Sperber, Treat Williams, and more) that even uninspired scenes are performed with consummate skill. The movie also looks amazing: Spielberg’s camerawork is intoxicatingly self-indulgent, since it feels like entire scenes were filmed simply to justify cool visuals, and peerless cinematographer William A. Fraker gives the whole thing a glamorous look. There’s even room for an energetic score by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams.
          1941 is a mess, but it’s also a true spectacle.

1941: FUNKY