Three Films Make A Post: You'll float too.

Drifter (2016): I’m not always a fan of too knowing exploitation movie throwbacks, but Chris von Hoffman’s post-apocalyptic (one assumes) cannibal town trip mostly knows when it’s okay to wink and when to be straight. It’s a very low budget affair, so a prospective viewer should adjust accordingly and cope with a script that sometimes drags a bit, dialogue that isn’t always spot on, and other minor flaws of this kind. On the other hand, the film is much better acted than most films in its bracket, is shot with a lot of style and a great feel for making the most out of the available locations (none of which is one of those damn warehouses), and generally gives the impression of a movie made by people who know what they want and what they are doing. It will probably be not quite a new cult classic for anyone, but I came out of it entertained and with respect for the filmmakers.

Wheelman (2017): Speaking of throwbacks, this Netflix production directed by Jeremy Rush certainly is inspired by crime and car based movies of the 70s, though it does look and feel very much like a slick 2010s production, particularly since Rush opts for the not terribly 70s gimmick of shooting most of the film in the car. That technique could have resulted in strained artiness, but in Rush’s hands, it actually feels like a way to let the audience share the tension of a main character (Frank Grillo still very much in what looks and feels like his unexpected career high to me) completely out of his depth in more than one regard. Plus, the director is playful enough even to have a great moment where the car that audience and character(s) share changes, and knows when to move his camera out of the damn thing, so the story – simple as it may be – doesn’t end up overwhelmed by the way it is told. On the writing side, this is very competent and entertaining genre business, not terribly surprising, but made with too much verve for that to matter terribly much.


Bay Coven (1987): This NBC TV movie about a couple of mostly likeable yuppies – Pamela Sue Martin and Tim Matheson – moving to a strange island community that will turn out to have rather problematic traditions (at least if one values one’s life and one’s sanity), was made in a time when supernatural horror wasn’t really the thing to do on TV anymore. Director Carl Schenkel doesn’t seem to care, though, and tells a merry, American Gothic tale of witchcraft, insanity, and a very peculiar kind of marital trouble most couples won’t encounter in their lifetime with a degree of verve. There are quite few effective spooky moments, as well as some entertainingly silly ones, a proper dramatic climax, and even a director and script (by Tim Kring very early in his career) who realize they are also making a film about female anxieties about alienation from one’s partner, and the secrets and lies in a marriage, and make proper use of the possibilities this offers them.

Buried Alive (1990)

Clint (Tim Matheson) and Joanna (Jennifer Jason Leigh) Goodman are the kind of incompatible couple careers in marriage counselling are built on. He’s a country boy construction businessman who takes the first opportunity to drag his wife out of the city and return to his hometown even though he knows that she’s a city gal with some rather unrealistic ideas of a luxury life by heart and inclination. He wants a baby, she really rather doers not  - though he doesn’t know that. He clearly loves her, but doesn’t know her at all.

To nobody’s surprise but Tim’s, Joanna has an affair. Her lover is the sleazy physician Cort van Owen (William Atherton). Cort is rather keen on Joanna murdering her husband so they can sell his company and found a clinic for the rich and famous in LA with the gains. Or so he says. Cort’s rather pushy about the whole thing too, providing Joanna with pep talks and poison like the ugliest femme fatale you ever put eyes on. Joanna, neither the brightest nor the most stable of persons, dithers a bit, but then decides to go through with the murder. Clint goes down in an unpleasant and obviously painful manner, and things seem to go well for Joanna and Cort. Alas, during her dithering, Joanna has lost enough of the poison to not actually kill Clint but only put him into suspended animation, so Clint can make his way out of his coffin to take vengeance. A vengeance that becomes decidedly cruel once he overhears that Joanna secretly had an abortion, too.

Frank Darabont’s Buried Alive is a surprisingly nasty little film, particularly if you keep in mind it is actually a TV movie. However, if not for the very harmless sexual content and lack of blood, it’d be hard to actually realize this watching it. While the film takes place in only a handful of sets and locations, this doesn’t feel like a film not being as epic in its approach as it wants to be but rather like the sharp focus it is.

The film also doesn’t look like a TV movie, with neither film stock nor visual style of the sort you’d expect. It’s just a tight, focused and nice looking film. Sure, the plot is pretty simple and straightforward (and if you think too much about it, not terribly plausible) but Darabont treats it with so much concentration and clarity this doesn’t feel like a weakness but rather a strength, more as if we were watching an archetypal tale than a clichéd one.

The film does play a bit with its tropes too: a man, Atherton’s van Owen, has the femme (homme) fatale role in the plot, while Leigh’s Joanna is more the patsy usually played by guys like Robert Mitchum who lets herself control by him and doesn’t even stop at murder. There’s also an interesting shift in sympathy going on, with Clint’s revenge going so far it’s difficult not to sympathize with Joanna, particularly since Clint isn’t exactly innocent in the whole situation, though I’m not completely convinced the film is doing this shift on purpose. It might just be pretty damn reactionary towards abortion.

The acting’s as strong as the film deserves, with Leigh providing her role with considerably more weight than you’d expect in this set-up and Matheson unexpectedly shining when he comes back as the rather monstrous avenger, instead of just when he’s doing his usual nice (if stupid) guy bit at the start.

It’s all rather wonderful, really.