The Lost Room (2006)

Police detective Joe Miller (Peter Krause) becomes involved with a very strange case of murder that sees the victims fused with their environment. The investigation leads him to a motel room key that is able to open every door, with said door then leading into a strange, very 60s motel room, and from there, through every door in existence. Miller soon learns this key is only one of a number of seemingly quotidian Objects (they really earn that capital letter), each of which carries its own, reality-bending power.

There’s a whole sub-culture surrounding these Objects, with a faction out to destroy them because they leave a trace of destruction and madness in their wake (mostly represented by a character played by Julianna Margulies), a cult that believes bringing all of the objects together will bring them into contact with the mind of God (that one wouldn’t be one I’d want to meet, personally), a millionaire (Kevin Pollak) trying to get certain objects together for a personal reason, as well as various criminals and sad and broken people fixating on the magical/cursed things. Miller has to get rather involved into these people’s business, and the mysteries of the Objects, for his little daughter Anna (Elle Fanning in her secret origin) disappears in the room; he’s also framed for murder.

This three part TV movie (that is actually structure like six regular episodes paired up) made for SyFy, written by Laura Harkcom, Christopher Leone and Paul Workman (a trio whose major achievement this has been until now) and directed by TV vets Craig R. Baxley and Michael Watkins, is a surprisingly wonderful little thing. Sure, its plotting, as well as the way our protagonist is written and motivated, is very much competent standard TV writing of the early Oughts, as is the direction, so in this regard, it doesn’t seem to be terribly special.

However, this relative blandness of some elements fits the series nicely, providing an effective contrast to the surprising number of Weird concepts it uses, and grounding the strangeness of the Objects and the Motel Room in the consensus reality of network-style television. And make no mistake: the show’s writer’s clearly understand they are telling the story of a rift (or rather, several little ones) in the world through which the numinous/terrible gets in, touching various people in ways only something truly outside of human comprehension and understanding can, and apply themselves accordingly. Which is a fine trick to pull off particularly since most of the Objects’ powers aren’t spectacular. The way their owners react to them sells the strangeness here more than anything, with most of them clearly at least slightly unstable, perhaps teetering on the edge of becoming unhinged completely, obsessing over the Objects – theirs and others. It’s particularly telling and effective how often the films have the Object owners saying these things are the only thing they have left, portraying them as unfit for the normal world once they have been touched by a different one. In a particularly clever move, the films never outright state or explain if the Objects seek out or draw people with bad lives and a tendency to obsess or if owning them and using them breaks people in ye olde cosmic horror style of corruption via insight into the true nature of the universe. Basically, it is never quite clear if it is the Objects or us that’s wrong.

In general, the films have a good idea of how much they can explain about the nature of the Room and the Objects without destroying the sense of true Weirdness, so we never learn what bit of the world broke and how it did, but we do learn where it is centred. The rest is a mystery, and it works better staying one.

The films have a lot of other cleverness in them too, as for example demonstrated in the imagination they show when it comes to the way Objects with minor powers might be used, or in a couple of really strange suspense scenes, like the one that is based on our hero’s ability to build a lock into a door faster than someone else can break through security glass and get to him.


The whole thing – Weird reality grounded in the quotidian, cabals that develop around the Weird, the pressures of unreality on human minds, the whole concept and execution suggesting the RPG “Unknown Armies” or mid-period Tim Powers – is pretty much catnip to me, turning a solidly made TV miniseries into something rather special.

Action Jackson (1988)

Detroit cop Jericho “Action” Jackson (Carl Weathers) has been having a rather quiet two years. After a bit of police brutality towards the – rapist – son of a very rich man, he was demoted from Lieutenant to Sergeant, lost the right to wear a gun, and consequently landed himself a desk job. Jackson’s life is going to become rather more interesting again in the next few days, because a series of men working in the same worker’s union all happen to die rather explosive deaths. Jackson’s colleagues don’t seem to bother much about this sort of thing. The script doesn’t make clear if they actually believe a guy who had a grenade shot into his chest and exploded died in an accident, though they will later pretend a different guy getting shot into his chest from a few feet distance with a gun that didn’t belong to him committed suicide. At least, nobody does much investigating or other nonsense. The audience does of course already know there’s a group of supposedly sneaky and competent, but actually loud and silly, assassins making the union rounds.

Fortunately, an old college buddy of Jackson, one Tony (Robert Davi in a short but sweaty appearance), asks our hero for help because he’s convinced he’s the next on the list of the killers; and he’s absolutely right. Tony can even point Jackson to the man he is pretty sure to be responsible – rich asshole Peter Dellaplane (Craig T. Nelson). Dellaplane just happens to be exactly the same rich asshole whose son Jackson beat up (or mutilated, the dialogue’s a bit vague here) and got into prison, and who then did his best to ruin Jackson’s career. One might believe that’s a bit of an additional motivating factor, so it won’t come as too much of a surprise that Jackson soon finds himself sniffing around Dellaplane’s (evil) business, perhaps finding allies in Dellaplane’s wife Patrice (Sharon Stone before she was famous) and his junkie singer mistress Sydney Ash (Vanity when she was sort of famous). Explosions are soon too follow, as are absurd attempts at framing Jackson for murder that of course cut it with his brain dead colleagues.

Action Jackson is a rather likeable attempt to turn Carl Weathers into a black American action hero, kinda like a Schwarzenegger who can act and doesn’t look horrifying. In an interesting turn of events, the film doesn’t nod in the direction of classic blaxploitation flicks at all, and focuses on late 80s style US action movie tropes, treating its hero’s blackness with casualness. Given the comparative lack of other action vehicles starring Weathers, it can’t have been terribly successful at the box office, though it’s a rather entertaining film if you’re willing and able to at least ignore the typical flaws of US action cinema of this point in time. So please don’t think about the cartoonish incompetence of a movie police force that makes even the worst real world one (and boy, they do get pretty terrible, don’t they?) look like a band of geniuses and heroes; ignore the fact that the bad guy’s plan – he apparently murders lots of people to control the union so he can then use its influence to some time in the vague future become the power behind the throne of an as of now imaginary president – makes not a lick of sense; and please, don’t even try to find connections between anything in the film’s world and the real one.

Ideally, in an action movie of this style, these flaws shouldn’t just be things to be tolerated. As a matter of fact, they are supposed to be enjoyed, and boy, is Action Jackson enjoyable. Craig T. Nelson is awesome as the ultra-violent rich slime ball, his plan is pretty damn funny, his goons are clearly supposed to be cool but are very desperately not, so they are ideally positioned to be shouted at, be-one-linered and murdered by a hero who really needs to get creative with his own violence because he has to survive much of the film without a gun (he’s obviously taking the bit where he’s not allowed to be armed seriously even once people start and try to murder him). Weathers is very fun to watch as Jackson, giving the typical US macho hero some human traits, even making him pretty likeable. It helps that the man’s dignity seems undisturbed by even the cheesiest and most nonsensical one-liner (my personal favourite is “Chill out!”, before he burns a guy to death), nor by the film’s sudden bursts of what I surmise is humour. And if you’re interested in the baser things, Stone and Vanity both have a bit of nudity in here; though we actually see much more of shirtless Weathers, so there’s hopefully something for everyone here.

The whole bag of lovable nonsense was directed by Craig R. Baxley. Baxley has an extensive list of credits in stunt teams for film and TV, is credited just as extensively with various second unit directing jobs, directed a few episodes of The A-Team, and then – starting with the film at hand – made three well liked – well, by people like me who enjoy this sort of thing – action movies before he trotted off to become a dependable and solid TV director. His stunt background certainly shows in the quality of the stunt work here, with every bit of carnage and violence shot to full effect, Baxley clearly operating on the directorial basis that the audience wants to get as good a look at possible at what he has to offer here. In other words, there’s not boring action scene here. Even better, Baxley does know how to stage an entertaining dialogue sequence too, providing his actors with many an opportunity to chew the scenery or to have fun with the general absurdity of things.


As a matter of fact, I think Action Jackson is much better – and definitely more entertainingly – directed than most of the more mainstream US action movies of its era that for my tastes tend to be not terribly well paced – the works of Harlin and McTiernan obviously excluded. I certainly prefer Weathers to Schwarzenegger, too, so clearly, I judge this film “better than Commando”.

Three Films Make A Post: Don't Forget You're Lunch

Lost Voyage (2001): Ah, the early years of SyFy/Sci Fi movies, when there wasn't a little ecosystem of companies producing movies just for the Channel, and they mostly just bought independent productions that would otherwise have landed somewhere on the farthest shelves of video stores (remember those?).
Christian McIntire's film is one of the better outings of that era, telling its conventional story about a ghost ship in the Bermuda Triangle and the fools entering it for news, redemption, or salvage with the bare minimum of mood you can hope for.

It also features Judd Nelson as a parapsychologist making surprised bug eyes at everything and Lance Henriksen being perfectly wonderful, as is his wont. There's little else to say about this one. It's the sort of thing you can watch and feel mildly entertained by, and that's about all it aspires to as well as all it is good for.

Death Race (2008): I was all up and ready to hate Paul W.S. Anderson's remake of the much superior Death Race 2000 but once I had accepted that this is a much less politically interesting, less funny, and less imaginative film, and took it as the more normal kind of cheesy low budget action fodder it was meant to be, I started to enjoy myself quite a bit. There are some nice supporting performances, particularly Joan Allen's version of the "evil woman in a business suite" cliché, Jason Statham is as dependable for this kind of role as expected, and the writing, even though (or because) it is steeped in cheese and stupid conspiracy theories, does provide a nice forward moving piece of nonsense.

Ironically, the film's weakest point are the car racing scenes, which, though exciting in a videogame-y way, use way too much shaky-cam, random zooming, and quick editing. It's always a bit of a shame when you can't actually see the stunt work that presumably goes on. Still, I had a lot of fun with this one, and at least Anderson didn't show any of the races in backwards slow-motion.

Dark Angel aka I Come In Peace (1990): Speaking of films that are dumb but fun, this Dolph Lundgren vehicle directed by Craig R. Baxley during the height of the horror that is that buddy cop genre comes to mind. Dolph is of course the rule-breaking cop (who in these films are always right, because fuck cops who respect the law), while Brian Benben gives an uptight FBI agent. Together they fight crime in form of an alien drug dealer harvesting endorphin, and killing people with a flying CD despite owning an explodo gun, and in form of the FBI trying to harvest an alien.

It's worthwhile in that typical late 80s/early 90s US action cheese way, with many an explosion, decent stunts, and one-liners and "quips" always trying to out-stupid the earlier ones. The film's a lot like a hamburger, really: dumb, fattening, and a sign of all kinds of cultural deficits, but also pretty satisfying before it kills your digestion.

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