Midnight Movie of the Week #206 - Dead Ringers

"I've often thought that there should be beauty contests for the insides of bodies." 

 (1988)

Starring: Jeremy Irons, Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold, Heidi von Palleske.

Directed by David Cronenberg

Rated R for being a David Cronenberg movie and lots of vagina talk and implied vaginal mutilation.

Dead Ringers in Six Words:

Twin gynecologists invent tools, spiral downward.

Why You'll Love It:

By some standards, Dead Ringers might be one of David Cronenberg's least weird films of the '70s and '80s. I mean, it's nearly a drama about two unstable identical twins who lose their way in the rough and tumble world of feminine care. But, it's also a movie directed by David Cronenberg, which means that at some point there's going to be mutations of the body and skin eating and people losing their freaking minds. And when Cronenberg's control of that line between what is real and surreal combines with the lead performance(s) of Jeremy Irons as Eliot and Beverley Mantle, the end result is a surprisingly somber but entirely fascinating drama...with dreams about flesh eating and mutations and lots of pointy instruments.

The Highlights:

• Irons is both the first and the second best reason to watch the film, and the range he shows as both brothers is quite impressive. It is at times hard to tell which brother is which, but that's due to Cronenberg's devious plot than and not a flaw of Irons' work.
• The most macabre pieces of the film are probably the bizarre instruments that the brothers develop, which are sure to give anyone with lady parts a few shivers.
• The relationship the brothers have with their first "mutant" lover, played by Genevieve Bujold, leads to the most Cronenberg moment of the film, a dream sequence that belongs right next to his most bizarre scenes from films like Videodrome and The Brood.

Also Worth Knowing:

• The film was set to be titled Twins, but Cronenberg lost an arm-wrestling contest against Arnold Schwarzenegger (because he couldn't get Jeff Goldblum to arm-wrestle in his place) and the title went to Ivan Reitman for that comedy about Arnold and Devito being brothers.
• That last point was not entirely true, as you might have guessed. The film was set to be called Twins, and the title did go to Reitman, but only because Cronenberg had worked with him before and sold him the title.
• The film is based, partially, on a real life pair of twins and is a loose adaptation of a non-fiction book, which was also titled Twins.

Dead Ringers is for fans of...
Drug addiction and depression, codependent siblings who share everything, the terrors of surgery, the terrors of the vagina, mutations that don't make any kind of sense (which is what makes them mutations, naturally), and Jeremy Irons not having his Die Hard with a Vengeance accent.

If you like this, you might also like...
Sisters (1973)
Videodrome (1983)
Raising Cain (1992)
Adaptation. (2002)
American Mary (2013)

Midnight Movie of the Week #189 - Seconds

Long before Davids Cronenberg and Lynch made the bizarre their normal, Hollywood heavyweight John Frankenheimer made one of the most fascinatingly surreal genre-bending movies of all-time. The film is Seconds, released in 1966 to little fanfare and much confusion, in which an old man (John Randolph) decides to escape from his old life and use a radical medical procedure to become a young man (Rock Hudson) with a fresh young life.

The plot sounds relatively simple, like something that would be used for a 30 minute TV show like The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt (both of which did offer  episodes with similar ideas), bur Frankenheimer finds more than enough content to fill this full-length film with bizarre imagery and thought-provoking plot turns.  The film teeters on the edge a few times, and it's easy to see why some viewers lose interest in the fluid narrative of the film, but each time I see it I feel more in tune with Frankenheimer's loopy sci-fi odyssey.

The film opens with the life of Arthur Hamilton, played by Randolph, and quickly makes the viewer feel unease about this man's life without really telling us much. The camera follows him through mundane daily activities and uninteresting conversations with his aging wife, but also dangles a carrot of intrigue in front of him. Hamilton has been receiving late night phone calls from an old friend named Charlie, urging him to visit a secret medical organization which will help him start his life over. It sounds too good to be true, but Hamilton has reason to believe something is going on there, because he has known for sometime that Charlie is dead.

Hamilton makes up his mind rather quickly, which leads him to this company and leads the film into some haunting sequences which challenge the morality of his decision. Some of these are done visually, like a creepy sequence where a seemingly drugged Hamilton enters a room with a young woman in a bed, but others draw their power from the script. One of the best sequences in the film sits Hamilton in the middle of a room and lets a series of employees talk to him about the decision he's making, starting with an insurance man (who manages to say "The question of death selection may be the most important decision in your life." with a straight face) and leading to a devilish old man who seems to literally talk Hamilton into killing himself. Of course, this kind of suicide promises a second chance, but the words of this old man come off as a rather ominous sign of trouble ahead.

Hamilton goes forth with the procedure, assisted further by a bit of blackmail that makes it impossible for him to turn back, and is reborn as Tony Wilson, who is played by Hollywood star Rock Hudson. Hudson was far from being Frankenheimer's top choice for the film, and I too have often thought of him as an actor with less range than some of his contemporaries, but Hudson certainly brings his best to this role. From day one of his new life we can tell that there are some second thoughts, and even a relationship with a young woman doesn't seem to satisfy all of his expectations about being young again. Wilson also ends up finding himself in some strange social situations that become chaotic on screen, which I've often read as a statement about dropping the seemingly introverted Hamilton into an extroverted world as Wilson. Hudson does an excellent job of showing us the unease that occurs in this character as he comes to recognize regrets about his choice, which leads the film back to the company for an unforgettably chilling final act.

From the opening titles - a montage of extreme close-up images put together by the legendary Saul Bass that reminds me of his opening titles for Vertigo - it is obvious that Frankenheimer does not want to viewer to be comfortable watching this character (or is it these characters?) and one of my favorite things about the film is that the camera always seems to be doing something I call "fishbowling" to the characters. You know how when you look at a goldfish in a bowl it either looks really far away or really close to you and huge, depending on the angle you look through the glass? Well, that's how Frankenheimer and cinematographer James Wong Howe - who would receive an Oscar nomination for the film - make Seconds look. There are a lot of shots that are far too close to the character's face, but they're offset with moments where the camera just seems to be lingering at an angle in the opposite corner of a room or hallway. The altered perspective that comes from the camera's eye adds a lot to the mysterious intrigue of the film.

Seconds tries to succeed on a lot of levels - it's a sci-fi film, it's a horror film, it's a parable about life and death - and it is at least interesting in each of these domains. When the solid lead performances (which are buoyed by supporting turns by actors like Jaws' Murray Hamilton and Will Geer as the previously mentioned Old Man) mix with the haunting visual style, the result is a film that will certainly get viewers thinking. Considering its age, Seconds seems like one of the first great cult cinema mindbenders, and it's still worth revisiting as one of the finest nightmares on film I've ever seen.

Midnight Movie of the Week #176 - The Quiet Earth

The "last man On Earth" storyline has been played out a few times in sci-fi history, but rarely with the conviction that lies within The Quiet Earth. Produced in New Zealand in 1985, The Quiet Earth is a powerful sci-fi film that overcomes several faults thanks to an ambitious script and a fantastic performance by co-writer/star Bruno Lawrence. Modern film fans will immediately see some similarities to 28 Days Later (right down to the "guy wakes up totally naked to the camera when we meet him" aspect of each film), but The Quiet Earth is pretty much the tonal opposite of Danny Boyle's horror epic.

Lawrence is Zac Hobson, a scientist working on something called "Project Flashlight" in an underground lab - that is until he wakes up at 6:12 one morning and realizes everyone else has vanished from the world around him. What follows in the film's first act is a collection of Zac's reactions to his newfound status as "the President of the Quiet Earth" - which primarily consist of representations of his changing emotional state and a ton of interesting shots that show how small he is compared to the empty city that surrounds him.

Zac is an interesting character primarily because we can tell that there had to be plenty wrong with his mental state before "the event" that left him to fend for himself in the world. I've no doubt that most of us would go a little mad if we woke up alone in the world, but Zac seems to slip into previously untapped desires and urges very quickly. Part of his journey seems innocent - one of my favorite bits shows Zac admiring a model train set, followed immediately by a grinning Zac taking a full size locomotive for a spin - but it does not take the film long to show Zac slipping away from reality. It takes less than a half hour of screentime for us to find Zac wearing women's clothing and addressing a crowd of cardboard cutouts that includes Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon, and that's gotta be some kind of record.

The character is obviously unhinged, and that's interesting in it's own right. But Lawrence's powerhouse presence really takes the film to a new level during the first act, in which he works to come to terms with his predicament. The commanding presence should remind genre fans of actors like Klaus Kinski who dive into a role and never look back, because Lawrence never seems to waver in his portrayal of a man who is on the edge of extinction. The first 35 or so minutes of the film are gripping and bizarre, and almost all of that is thanks to the man in the lead.  It wouldn't be wise for the film to put this much of a bizarre burden on Lawrence for the entire film, however, which leads us to the film's second and third major life-changing events.

As you might ahve guessed, Zac isn't alone entirely. The film's most touching moment is possibly the one where a female survivor named Joanne (Alison Routledge) finds Zac's location. After a brief standoff, the two instinctively move into a comforting embrace, and the relief that each has to feel the presence of another seems to pour off of the screen. The film follows with a brief reprieve from insanity for Zac and Joanne, but this too is a short lived feeling of peace.

Everything changes for a third time when Api (Peter Smith), an imposing Maori man finds the duo and becomes the third member of what's left of humanity. Two guys and one girl is always a crowd - one that's been exploited by movies of all genres - and tension quickly develops. Zac is also increasingly concerned that another major change is coming thanks to his old project, which leads to a few awkward sequences where the film struggles to balance the sci-fi threat and the desires of these three characters. It seems like the easy way out for the film to go ahead and create a love triangle, but when you think of what's at stake here (the fate of humanity, for example) it makes sense that these people would get caught up in a few petty games. I don't mind the story adding this tension - it's essential in Zac's journey - but it throws a few cogs in the machine as we try to follow what's going on with the experiment that may have ended humanity.

It doesn't seem like I should say that the film goes through another major change - I think I've said enough about the plot thus far - but if there's one thing that becomes completely obvious throughout The Quiet Earth, it's that that Zac Hobson is something of a catalyst for mayhem. There are some pretty fantastic theories out there about what The Quiet Earth actually means (this is one of the rare times when I've actually found intelligent and interesting discussion on an IMDB message board, if that means anything) and the film works as a fantastic "AND THEN...." movie. (Meaning, of course, that every time the movie seems to be slowing down the screenwriters said "and then this happens!" and started the film down a new path.) At the middle of every development is Zac Hobson, and Bruno Lawrence always seems to give him the perfect response to whatever is going on now in the film's twisty universe.

 

It's abstract and it's bizarre, but The Quiet Earth sure knows how to keep a viewer's brain moving in the best way. It's not always profound - that love triangle and the tension that comes from it seems to fill too much of the final 40 minutes - but it always seems to have one more trick up its sleeve. If nothing else, the ambiguous ending is a jaw-dropping addition to the film, and the discussions that can be had after the credits roll are well worth the 91 minutes that precede them. The film's unpredictable nature, beautiful cinematography and fantastic lead performance are all great reasons to seek out The Quiet Earth, which still stands as one of the most unique science-fiction classics of the 1980s.

(If you're up for it, here's the full movie on YouTube. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, go watch the trailer. It spoils everything. This is a movie you must see blind.)

John Dies at the End

(2012, Dir. by Don Coscarelli.)

At this point I've seen John Dies at the End three times in less than four months - and I still struggle to come up with any tangible thoughts to write down about it. That doesn't mean the movie is bad - the fact that I've come back to it twice and left all three viewings with a smile is about all you need to know - it just means that John Dies at the End is one of those movies where any simple description of the film is probably an insult to its complexities.

I might be overemphasizing the film's mysteries - I could say that it's a movie about a universe altering drug and two open-minded slackers who stumble into its path - but I'm pretty sure that I'm not. The film feels like a fully random series of disgusting and ludicrous events at times, with its series of meat monsters and demonic mustaches and journeys to "Eyes Wide Shut World" - but there's always something that kind of ties it all back together. It's hard to see, but there's clearly a method to the film's madness.

The film is directed by Don Coscarelli (of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep fame) and the main characters, David Wong (Chase Williamson) and his titular friend John (Rob Mayes), fit right alongside the everyman heroes of the director's most famous works. David is our narrator and host for the proceedings - which are primarily told via flashbacks as he gives his story to a reporter (the always welcome Paul Giamatti) - and he's also the more sensible and restrained member of the team. John, on the other hand, is the more reckless half of the duo, a hard-rocking kind of guy who doesn't back away from much of anything. The two characters work because they are so simple, even when they're faced with otherworldly events.  Their calm reaction to all the weird events in the film provides a lot of humor and sets the tone for the whole adventure.

Along the way, David and John run into a lot of bizarre yet entertaining predicaments and meet some very memorable side characters.  The highlights of the film, for me, were probably Clancy "The Kurrgan" Brown as the kinda-omniscient mentalist Marconi and Glynn Turman as Police Detective Lawrence Appleton (who happens to share a name with the character from Perfect Strangers and I am not about to give up the dream that Cousin Balki was somewhere in this film too).  Brown's character is integral to the plot - once you get through the splatter and find it - but also functions as a kind of running gag thanks to the goofy presentation of the character and some fantastic one-liners. Turman's detective seems to be more grounded in reality than most of the characters in the film at first, but his transformation into a random force of destruction is a nice twist on just how upside down David and John's world has become. Both actors - along with Giamatti in his relatively thankless role as the interviewer - seem committed to keeping the film feeling important amidst the chaos, which works quite well for Coscarelli's film.

Once the characters are established  and the "soy sauce" is introduced, the film veers in multiple directions, bouncing between the realms of the drug-induced "trip" horror film, the Evil Deadesque splatter film, and the universe hopping sci-fi extravaganza.  It all seems to silly to really add up to anything, but there's something kind of special hidden in the chaotic existence of this film.  Coscarelli manages to make a movie that hits on all these random genre expectations while grounding his story in two accessible leads.  The film never does what you'd expect it to, and a first glance back might make it look like random gruesomeness - but when you closely piece everything together it actually makes a bit of sense.

Well, at least some of it makes sense.  And that eventually makes it more than just a darn fun movie.

 

Cosmopolis

(2012, Dir. by David Cronenberg.)

Yeah, I'll admit it - I kind of put Cosmopolis on the back burner when it came out. Cronenberg's last film, A Dangerous Method, left me a little disappointed, but the main reason I ignored this movie was because it starred that Twilight guy. Look, I'm on the internet a ton and I hear people talk and I've picked up that it's not cool to like Twilight - which is great, because I've never given the series much thought - but I should have poo-pooed that bias and seen Cosmopolis in the first place. 

And so it came to pass that I was in the video store last weekend and looked up at this strange trailer that was playing on one of the TVs in the store and was instantly like "WHOA, what the frank is that crazy looking, good looking movie?"  And the answer was Cosmopolis. And I remembered how good Cronenberg can be when he's good. I'm not saying I made a beeline across the store, but I definitely made it a priority and didn't go home without it. 

(I'm also not gonna lie about one other thing - the moment in that trailer when i went from "I kinda wanna see that crazy looking, good looking movie." to "I GOTTA see that crazy looking, good looking movie!" was when the trailer showed the name of Kevin Durand, known forever to me as 'The Goonest Looking Guy in The World" as one of the stars. That guy is awesome.)

Which brings us to me actually watching Cosmopolis, an experience that quickly became a great one. I'm not necessarily sure I can tell you the movie is a great one - I saw it like four days ago and it's still rolling around my head and bouncing off of questions, usually without finding answers - but I can tell you that it works on a purely bizarre plane of cinema where nothing makes sense and every next scene is a mystery. The plot, in its basest form, follows millionaire businessman Eric Packer (played by Pattinson) who sets off across the city in his bright white limousine to get a haircut. Sounds like a boring plot, no? Well, you're in luck because the city in question is in an unpredictable state of political and financial turmoil, which means there's a metaphorical bullseye on the lead's head - which becomes literal when threats on his life are received by his chief of security (the awesome Durand, who looks as goon as ever, even in a suit) and riots break out throughout the city.

As Packer makes his trip across the city, perched in an eerily throne-like back seat and surrounded by a rotating troupe of associates, doctors, and prostitutes the film occasionally resembles an incoherent crackbaby parented by Ferris Bueller's Day Off and David Fincher's The Game.  Packer interacts with those around him using stunted means of communication, having incredibly personal dialogues with others while using as few words as possible.  We learn a lot about the man - about everything from his business empire to his marriage to his prostate - while never really getting too close to feel like he's much of a human.

As such, the pale and uncomfortable Pattinson is actually a perfect fit for the lead role. The actor seems to be very aware of himself in the role and never flinches despite the bizarre things going on.  Growing up around football coaches, one of the lessons that has always stuck with me was that a consistent commitment to the cause and a "buy in" to the goal at hand is often much more important than talent - and I feel like that's where Cronenberg and Pattinson were working here. I'm sure that Cronenberg - who has had films focused on talents like James Woods, Jeremy Irons, and Viggo Mortenson - could get almost any actor he wanted to play a lead that is on screen for nearly every minute of this film - but the marriage between he and Pattinson is the marriage that the film needed. It's gutsy casting, but I think it pays off.

The film also brings an all-star supporting cast to the table, even if most appear for only one sequence. Notable names like Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti show up for a sequence each, and each brings something useful and interesting to the discussion.  One of the more attention grabbing segments features Emily Hampshire as a business associate who meets with Packer as he's also getting an exam from his doctor, and this early film segment might be the first real clue that this journey is going to go off the rails as the day goes on. The two people who show up alongside Pattinson most often in the film are Durand and Sarah Gadon, who might be the film's most fascinating mystery as Packer's new wife and the object of his desires. She is - not coincidentally - one of the few reasons he ever leaves the controlled environment of the limousine, and the cold of the character when interacting with the equally distant lead character really fits perfectly within the film's odd tone.

I'm not going to sit here and try to make sense of the bizarre film - on one hand it's quite straight forward, on the other it's batcrap insane - because that's a task for someone much smarter and more eloquent than I am. But I am going to recommend Cosmopolis to those who are interested in abstract cinema, because what Cronenberg has put together here is certainly the right kind of cinematic trip. There's some rust around the edges and the film never really becomes profound, but it's ambitious and different and (most importantly) interesting.  This isn't quite Cronenberg at his best, but it's a step in the right direction and a movie that is worth thinking about.

Midnight Movie of the Week #44 - Vice Squad

If you're looking for quality '80s sleaze, you can't do much better than a film in which a pimp named Ramrod brutalizes unfaithful employees while a hooker with a kind heart runs around - backed by the police - giving "golden showers" and fending off borderline necrophiliacs.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, I did just say that.  That film is the 1982 flick Vice Squad; which certainly is the kind of film that "goes around the world" a few times and is filled to the brink with lines like 'Who belongs to these two whores?" and "If beauty was a minute, mama; you'd be an hour!"  (If you're having trouble keeping up with me, don't worry.  One of the cops in the first act gives us a nice little prostitution vocab lesson.)

Season Hubley, then the wife of (the greatest actor who ever lived) Kurt Russell, stars as Princess, the previously mentioned undercover ho.  As they say in the business, Princess is "outlaw" - meaning she answers to no pimp.  Yep, Princess is the prototypical independent woman, using her feminine wiles to get ahead in this world.  (And by feminine wiles, I mean sexing.)

With a young daughter to care for, Princess can't allow herself to end up in jail.  So, she takes up with a kind cop played by Gary Swanson, an actor who seems to exist at the midpoint between Steve McQueen and Michael Moriarty.  The cop, Walsh, has his hands full with a slew of degenerates that are shown in a frantic and awkwardly hilarious scene in the booking area of his L.A. precinct, but the king fish that he needs to find is the maniac cowboy pimp Ramrod who I mentioned in the opening.

Ramrod is played with insane vigor by Wings Hauser, father of actor Cole Hauser who spent some time on the fringe of popular cinema in the early part of the 2000s.  The elder Hauser, with his gigantic chin, curly hair, and wide-eyed Gary Busey expressions, is ridiculously fantastic in the role.  His escape from the backseat of a police vehicle is a solid action set, and the skills he shows while ricocheting his handcuffed body off a parked car are pretty impressive.  Also, if you're a filmmaker wanting to know how to create a psychotic villain, I'd say introducing him through a scene in which he sadistically mutilates a young woman's nether regions is a decent way to go.  (Hauser also sings the song that bookends the film, Neon Slime, which covers the film's perspective on Los Angeles' children of the night, and is posted below.)

I've mentioned a lot of really seedy things that are discussed in Vice Squad, and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the film's depraved mindset.  The police/killer pimp plot is surrounded by Princess' exploits and the sick characters she meets while she's spending a night on the job.  One of the most interesting scenes occurs when she begins trading workplace stories with Officer Walsh, drawing a parallel between the things he faces as an officer of the law and the things she willingly invites into her life.  She shows a tough exterior, wanting the world to know that nothing can get to her, but behind the scenes she struggles to keep up with the world around her.  A mid film scene in which she is hired by a chauffeur to deal with a very particular old man is an incredibly memorable and truly creepy scene, and is probably the high point among the film's oddities.

Vice Squad is directed by Gary A. Sherman, who debuted with previous MMOTW Raw Meat and hit a horror home run with 1981's Dead and Buried (which was written by the great Dan O'Bannon).  Like Raw Meat before it, Sherman's film spends most of its time on the fringe of indecency yet never really shows the goods.  I've mentioned a slew of lewd, pornographic, disturbing behaviors here, and of course none of them actually appear on screen.  The film claims to be based on a composite of events that occurred in Hollywood, but its goal isn't to cause a physical response from the viewer.  Sherman just wants to expose the seedy underbelly of L.A., and he didn't need to invent a clan of underground cannibals to do it.

As improper as it is, Vice Squad surprises me with moments of human decency that help the film become more than a feast of pimps and tricksters.  Hubley's Princess does dirty, nasty things; then meets up with coworkers for a bit of "girl talk".  She lets men ravage her; then smiles nicely as they finish and leaves them wanting more.  It's these little touches - surrounded by a idealist cop and a pimp that has no moral reasoning - that really makes Vice Squad a stand out piece of trash; the kind of trash that I highly recommend.

They're All Gonna Laugh At You...ON BROADWAY!

While I was toiling away at my midday haunt (a.k.a. - "work") today, I came across a copy of Stephen King's famed novel Carrie...with a rather odd exclamation above the title that reminded me of something I once heard the great Joe Bob Briggs talk about on MonsterVision.That's right boys and ghouls...circa 1984, someone out there thought it would be a good idea to turn the coming-of-age-puberty-meets-religion-horror-tale into a full-fledged MUSICAL. How does that work? I'm glad you asked, because I've done a little research.

In the mid-'80s, Lawrence Cohen, who wrote the film adaptation, and the horrorly-named Michael Gore (Note to self: cross that one off of my alias list!) came up with the idea of producing a musical based on King's novel. I'm assuming they got permission somehow, but really...who thought this was a good idea? The writers themselves apparently didn't, as another writer was brought on later, and the production was said to go through "numerous rewrites" even before it made it to Broadway.

When the play did get there, it went through a 4-week preview run, in which numerous songs were added and removed from the production. At the end of that, the actress portraying Carrie's fervent mother was replaced by Betty Buckley...who had played Miss Collins in the 1976 film.

The show made its official Broadway debut, with Buckley and Linzi Hately as the leads, on May 12, 1988. At this point, about 8 MILLION DOLLARS had been put into the production, a pretty large sum for a) Broadway and b) the late '80s. There were some mixed reviews in previews, but things went sour quickly after the official opening, thanks to bad reviews and continuing problems like the fact that pouring fake blood on someone who's supposed to be singing into a microphone kinda messes up the process. How quickly did things go sour? The show lost its backing and closed on May 15, 1988. I'm not a crack mathematician, but that makes it seem like the show only played for FOUR DAYS.

In later years, there have been revivals of the play, off Broadway, of course. Today, there's even a Facebook Page devoted to it! (OMG!) Still, I have a feeling that there aren't many books being printed with the above caption today.

But really, why am I still talking about this? I haven't seen the play, and I don't even know if they managed to turn "I can see your dirty pillows!" into a lyric. Thank golly for YouTube, my dear readers!



So.....that happened. *blink*

The Anniversary

1968, Dir. by Roy Ward Baker

The legendary Hammer Films studio is known primarily for their recreations of Universal's classic monsters, specifically their run of Dracula films from 1958-1974 that usually featured Christopher Lee. What a lot of film fans don't know starting out is that Hammer also produced a slew of other films in genres that range from prehistoric epics to swashbucklers to even the occasional dark comedy starring a Hollywood legend. That would be this one.

The Anniversary stars the legendary Bette Davis as a one-eyed mother of three, much to the dismay of '80s songstress Kim Carnes (you know, who sang Bette Davis Eyes). She's vicious and manipulative, and one heck of twisted blast to behold.

The Plot
Mrs. Taggart (Davis) and her sons run the family carpentry business, despite Mr. Taggart's passing years before. However, things are less than friendly. Her oldest son, Henry, is a pervert who steals women's clothing (but at least leaves money on the clotheslines) for his own pleasure. The middle son, Terry is married with five kids and a sixth on the way, but his tired of his mother's control and plans to move to Canada with the family as an escape. And the youngest, Tom, is a smart-alec who can't wait to show off his new young fiancee to mom, and to do whatever it takes to shut her up.

I know you're probably thinking "Hey, that's an interesting group of characters! I wonder if there's some kind of event that could bring them together for entertainment's sake?". Well, that's why the movie's called The Anniversary. Duh.

The Good
No commentary on this film could possible begin with anything but Davis' turn as Mrs. Taggart. Billed as "the most MERCILESS mother of them all!" in promotional materials, Davis hams it up with glee, taking joy in the fact she's unleashed as such a diabolical character. This was her second tour with Hammer after the known The Nanny three year's earlier, but it's clear that she is having a lot of fun with the comedic evil she shows in this film. She also does a great job of interacting with the rest of the cast, and holds the proceedings together quite nicely.

Thankfully, it's a two way street, and the rest of the cast holds their own against the overbearing matriarch. Sheila Hancock is most effective as Terry's controlling wife who's mother's archnemesis for most of the film, and Elaine Taylor gets in some chops as young Tom's fiancee Shirley. There's an interesting dynamic throughout the film in regard to the female characters taking control of the males in their relationships (in fact, it could be said that Henry's perversion is an effort to compensate for the lack of a controlling woman of his own). This plays heavily in the final act, as Davis' mother pits everyone against each other while watching with glee.

The film is directed by Roy Ward Baker who made a lot of horror for Hammer (including their Kung Fu crossover The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires), but also directed Marilyn Monroe in another dark comedy, Don't Bother to Knock, and the original Titanic epic A Night to Remember. He doesn't get a chance to use his varied skills in this very staged production (which was adapted from a play by master Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster), but he paces the film extremely well. There's a lot going on throughout the day the film takes place in (even fireworks!), and he and Sangster do a great job of bringing it all together without confusion.

The Bad
The biggest complaint I had with The Anniversary came in the final act. As the plot continues to escalate by the mother pitting everyone against each other, there are a few revelations and plot devices that take the film a bit too far over the line that separates dark comedy from twisted psychodrama. Particular alarming are a couple of tricks involving possibly dead children which, while serving their purpose of proving how vile Mother is, come off as incredibly harsh and slightly difficult to stomach. Of course, there's also the question of why these characters would even give such a demanding and inhuman character so much attention, which is not always answered in regard to each character. The film never dwells too much on these faults or lets them get out of hand, thankfully, but it treads close to uncomfortable ground often enough that many viewers could be turned off to the film in general.

Random Moments

• Davis' eyepatch is a crucial plot point in the second act, and I'm partially glad it was explained...but on the other hand, just letting her have an eyepatch should be enough to prove evil exists! (I'm guessing they had to distinguish her from a pirate, hence the explanation).
• Don't miss the strange revelation of the young Shirley's "flaw"...a strange defect that seems kinda cooky...before you consider the rest of the film.
• Also memorable is a short scene in which Terry and Karen's children are shown to be quite scared by Grandma's eccentricities. I wouldn't have gone near her, either.

The Verdict
The Anniversary is about as dark as a comedy of its era could be, and I admire the fearlessness of all involved. With Davis taking the lead and the capable family playing it straight faced, it takes a while for the film to grab ahold of the viewer. Hours after viewing the film, I can't help but shake my head in surprise at a lot of the twists, and smile at the all-out tenacity of Baker's adaptation. The Anniversary is a strange entry into Hammer's canon, but I think it's a welcome addition that I'd recommend to anyone interested in a twisted family tale or a high-cheese star performance.

The Mike's Rating: Prime Choice

The Unknown

1927, Dir. by Tod Browning

(OK. I'm in parentheses.

The reason for this is simple. Today's review is of The Unknown, one of the classic collaborations of Director Tod Browning and Star Lon Chaney, Sr. Since it was made in 1927, and movies with sound were a bit of a luxury then, it's a silent film. Thus, I'm putting my review in parentheses, so it'll be silent too. As an homage, of sorts.

The film in question focuses on Mr. Chaney playing Alonzo, an armless knife-thrower (you read that right) in a circus who's madly in love with the daughter of the proprietor (played by a young Joan Crawford). She's sick of the men that put their hands all over her, especially the local strongman who's after her attention too. But there's a catch, because Alonzo's not what he seems. Tragic and ironic hijinks ensue.

Anyway, I can't say anything about this movie that Chaney couldn't have said himself....without talking. "The Man With 1000 Faces" makes this movie a masterpiece with his face....thus I'm gonna let him cover my review too....

Here's what Lon thinks (and you can click to see his closeups). I think it translates to awesomeness.)

Wild at Heart

1990, Dir. by David Lynch

What would have happened if Elvis and Marilyn were star-crossed lovers on a cross-country road trip to hell? That seems to be the question asked by David Lynch's 1990 film Wild at Heart, but - as we've come to expect from the man behind Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - it's not the only question the film presents. Lynch provides a twisting, twisted ride that grips the viewer with a nightmarish tone; but also seems incomprehensible upon first glance and features some maddeningly overblown and confusing technical and dramatic touches.

The Plot
Despite my first statement, the film is not actually about Mr. Presley and Ms. Monroe, though it's clear throughout (and is acknowledged by all involved) that the characters were modeled after these icons. Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern star as Sailor and Lula, whom me meet on the night of a brawl that ends with Sailor killing a man that attacked the couple during some sort of social function. Sailor is sent away for manslaughter, and we then find him released 7 years later and put on a plane full of other inmates.

Wait - that was a different Nic Cage movie. This is the one where he's sent away for manslaughter and released 2 years later to reunite with Luna. My bad

Moving on, Luna's mother (played by Dern's real mother, Diane Ladd, is furious about her daughter's choice of lifestyle and beau, and takes the next logical step - enlisting both of her boyfriends (a timid crook played by Harry Dean Stanton and a unstable gangster played by J.E. Freeman) to hunt down and dispose of Sailor (which leads to vicious torture scene, another Lynch staple). In the meantime, and without knowing mommie dearest's plan, Sailor and Luna set off for California, meeting odd characters and the hitmen sent to destroy them along the way.

The Good
The most endearing quality of Lynch's film is the mood of the proceedings. The film references pop culture's icons I mentioned (as well as the Wizard of Oz?) often, but the biggest theme is focused on the characters being trapped in a hell they can't escape. There are some frustrating and annoying tricks Lynch uses to achieve this (most notably frequent recurring images of fire and burning, and unecessary and grating "stingers" or screams in the soundtrack), but the film has moments that achieve great tension and haunt the viewer even after the film ends. Most notable is a dreamlike scene in which Sailor and Lula happen upon an automobile accident and find a delirious young woman (the gorgeous Sherilyn Fenn of Twin Peaks and Of Mice and Men) who doesn't realize the situation she's in. There are plenty of great shots that build on this idea and help the viewer believe the characters are actually in some sort of purgatory, they seem undercut by some overly aggressive symbolism by the director.

Cage is admirable in the lead, and Willem Dafoe shows up and adds a delicious sleaze to the proceedings in the final hour. Ladd's performance as the mother was applauded by critics, and even garnered an Oscar nomination, but I found her to be overacting in key scenes, and was not so impressed. Dern had the same problem at times, but I felt her performance as Lula was more acceptable in the long run. Cage and Dern's relate to each other well throughout, and without that the film would probably be near unwatchable. The film relies heavily on Sailor and Lula being "straight" characters trapped in a more confusing universe, and Cage and Dern keep that dynamic alive throughout the film.

The Bad
By now you may have noticed that I'm having trouble finishing a sentence without stating a failure within the movie. Unfortunately, the film is inconsistent in almost every way. There are some great scenes, and there are some equally confusing scenes. There are some interesting psychological insinuations, but there are also some strange scenes that push the film into silly territory. And this goes on in regard to all parts of the film - the acting, the music/sound editing, the dialogue, etc. Lynch never seems to have a full handle on where he wants the film to go from a dramatic standpoint. I'm not sure that's ever been something he has worried about, but from a viewer's standpoint, it's frustrating.

Random Moments (and we've got a lot of 'em)

• Lula's mother randomly cuts her wrist and covers herself in blood at one moment, before calling up her first boyfriend (Stanton) to check on the assassination progress.
• Cage does Presley decently, including performing two songs.
• There's some creepy voodoo stuff, which leads to a torture scene.
• Sheryl Lee, who starred in Lynch's Twin Peaks movie two years later (and who I thus confuse with Sherilyn Fenn, even though the look nothing alike) makes a cameo during the goofy climax.
• What's a good way to introudce a creepy Willem Dafoe? Well according to Lynch and the film, it's to flank him with three 400+ pound naked women. No joke.
• Oh yeah, and King of the Creeps Crispin Glover also appears in a flashback as Lula's crazy cousin.

The Verdict
If I were someone more interested in the art of filmmaking, I might be more impressed with Wild at Heart. As someone just looking for entertainment and a story, I can't help but be disappointed. Lynch shows repeatedly that he can tell a story and make it dramatic, but he seems more interested in taking the viewer for a mental ride that's full of unanswered riddles. I can't completely deny the film's merits, as it does work as a two hour nightmare, but it doesn't do enough to make it as memorable as Lynch's more known films (and I'll still take The Elephant Man over any of 'em) nor enough to make it an enjoyable experience. When it all comes down to the end, the film is wild in too many places than just the heart.

The Mike's Rating: Time Burner