Television Review: YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS (1991, Charles Jarrott)

Stars: 2.5 of 5.
Running Time: 95 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Richard Thomas (STEPHEN KING'S IT '90, WONDER BOYS, THE WALTONS), Charles Bronson (DEATH WISH 3, Mandom spokesman), Ed Asner (THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, LOU GRANT, JFK), Colleen Winton (THE X-FILES, BIG EYES), Katharine Isabelle (FREDDY VS. JASON, GINGER SNAPS), Frank C. Turner (UNFORGIVEN, multiple AIR BUD movies, Bev Marsh's creepy dad in IT '90).
Tag-line: None.
Best one-liner: "Aw, Frank, even you were a kid once."
–"Yeah, heh, it took me a lot of years to get over it.
"Nobody ever gets over it."

In a familiar, darkened alleyway:

"At last, we're going to spend Christmas the right way."

–"What do you mean? We've had plenty of good Christmas fare over the years. French survival horror, Arnold Schwarzenegger-directed romantic comedies, Arnold Schwarzenegger cold cocking reindeer, Grace Jones accidentally mailed to Pee-Wee Herman in a box, Nakatomi Plaza holiday celebrations, Vincent Schiavelli commandeering a life-sized toy choo-choo train of kidnapping and child murder, Tim Curry's shit-eating grin, Bob Mitchum and John Glover as scene partners, a John Waters Christmas, Grizzly Adams taking on Nazi elves, and my personal favorite, Gary Sinise using Ben Affleck as a dartboard."

"Ah, I don't believe, however, that you said 'Charles Bronson' anywhere on that list."

–"If there was a good Charles Bronson Christmas movie, we would have seen it already, right?"

"Wrong. Er––half wrong. What we've got here is YES, VIRGINIA THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS, a TV movie from 1991."

–"1991?! The same year as THE INDIAN RUNNER? Don't tell me you've brought me more 'stacheless Bronson!"

"No, no, there's Bronson 'stache here, no need to worry."

–"Is he playing with a baby rattle? What the hell is this movie about?"

"It's only about the most famous editorial in American newspaper history––Francis Pharcellus Church's 1897 reply to an eight-year-old girl named Virginia who asked if Santa Claus was real. Only he turned his response into a meditation on faith, fancy, romance, poetry, love, beauty, and childlike joy."

–Okay, I'm not sure where Charles Bronson is going to fit in here. Does he say 'Santa's good, I like Santa?' Does Santa try to steal his car? Does he shoot Santa?"

"No. Try and get into the Christmas spirit. He says, 'No Santa Claus?! Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.'"

–"Ha ha ha, that's pretty good, but I think his numbers are a little off. If he manages to flee the North Pole in time, Santa'll be lucky if he gets a hundred, maybe two hundred years. But I guess they didn't know about climate change back then."

"Will you stop it? It's Christmas!"

–"I just don't see how they turn this into a movie. What you just described is a ten minute vignette, tops. Girl writes Bronson; Bronson writes girl. Girl's heart is warmed. The end."

"Well, they do pad it a little. She doesn't even write Bronson till forty-five minutes into a ninety minute movie."

–"As long as they pad it with nonstop Bronson action, I'm all good."

"Well..."

–"Okay. Why don't you tell me what they actually pad it with."

"So... Richard Thomas is Virginia's dad."

–"'John Boy,' from THE WALTONS? 'Stuttering Bill' from the original IT?"

"The very same. Anyway, he plays an Irish dockworker (with a spotty accent) who loses his job due to racism

Ethnically motivated fistfights at the docks! What every kid loves in a Christmas movie.

and, despite being completely broke, is trying to scrape together enough to buy presents for his five-member family on Christmas."

–"That looks like some Bob Cratchit-y bullshit, and I don't have any patience for that. Hey, maybe he should've scraped together enough to buy some condoms instead."

"Whoa, will you stop it!"

–"Maybe the movie should be about Virginia? Isn't she in the one in the title?"

"Nah, it's a man's world, bub. Obviously this movie wasn't geared toward kids, or else the main characters probably wouldn't be cigar-chomping dudes who are about four hundred years old."

–"Is that Ed Asner?"

"Yep. And he's basically playing the exact character he played on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, and later, LOU GRANT: he's a gruff, hard-boiled, bossy newspaperman with a corner office and an (eventual) heart of gold."

–"Nice. So tell me about Bronson."

"As a semi-fictionalized version of the historical Francis Church, he's an alcoholic writer who used to be great, a muck-raking journalist who brought the fight to the robber barons. Asner tolerates him because, even completely soused, his pages are better than most of the other reporters. There are skeptics, however: there's a subplot where some pud named Cornelius (John Novak) busts his balls every time he's at the bar.

Obviously, this leads to a solid payoff where Bronson punches him in the face.

And I'm not gonna lie to you: this is where the movie peaks. Most everybody is trying their best––Bronson and Asner included––but I'm not sure how 'directed' they were. But I can't be too hard on it: it's a TV movie from 1991."

–"Wait, why is Bronson's character such a drunk?"

"Prepare yourself: here's the one truly affecting part of the movie. Francis Church is a mess because his wife recently died. Just like Charles Bronson's real-life wife, Jill Ireland, who succumbed to cancer a year before they filmed this. All of the graveyard scenes––in stark contrast with 95% of the movie––have a genuine poignancy."

–"Man, that's heavy. So how does drunken Francis turn it all around and become an inspirational figure?"

"This is where the teleplay writers get lazy. They have him get the assignment and then he walks around town. He, uh, sees some Christmas-y things on his walk and decides to, uh, throw the bottle away and write his historic editorial."

–"He must've seen some serious shit, then, huh?"

"He saw a toy drive..."

–"Uh huh..."

"And then he saw a cop about to beat a homeless man who looked like Santa..."

–"Uh huh..."

"And then Bronson looked concerned..."

–"Uh huh..."

"And then the cop didn't actually beat the homeless man."

–"Uh huh..."

"And that's about it."

–"Uh huh."

"Hey man, this ain't ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, nor is it supposed to be. In the end, Virginia's editorial is answered, 

 

Richard Thomas gets a job as a cop, and a bunch of other people get jobs as cops, too, including his stock Italian immigrant pal who I forgot to mention.

 Basically, everybody becomes a cop."

–"So...are they gonna hunt Paul Kersey, New York vigilante?"

"Stop trying to bring DEATH WISH into this. It's a sweet holiday movie, where John Boy says things like 'what a bright goose of a boy.'"

–"Now that is some of that Bob Cratchit-y bullshit I was talking about."

"Don't be such a bastard. Can't you derive any pleasure in the fact that Bronson was in a 'Christmas movie period piece?'"

 –"Eh, I guess."

"Oh yeah, one last thing: so Virginia––who never interacts with Bronson 'in-scene,' and is a supporting character in her own story––is played by Katharine Isabelle, who went on to become a minor horror icon. She's a lead in multiple GINGER SNAPS movies, and appears in THE X-FILES, FREDDY VS. JASON, GOOSEBUMPS, THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER, a 30 DAYS OF NIGHT sequel, and Bryan Fuller's HANNIBAL. Here she is interacting with a produce vendor, played by fellow minor horror icon Frank C. Turner (NEEDFUL THINGS, THE FLY II, ALONE IN THE DARK, THE HITCHHIKER, WATCHERS, THE X-FILES, the new TWILIGHT ZONE, and, most notably, as Bev's creepy dad in the original IT)!"

–"Uh. Cool."

Television Review: ZUMA BEACH (1978, Lee H. Katzin)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Suzanne Somers (THREE'S COMPANY, SERIAL MOM), Michael Biehn (ALIENS, TOMBSTONE, THE TERMINATOR), Rosanna Arquette (PULP FICTION, AFTER HOURS, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN), P.J. Soles (HALLOWEEN, ROCK N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, CARRIE), Tanya Roberts (THE BEASTMASTER, A VIEW TO A KILL), Steven Keats (DEATH WISH, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE), Mark Wheeler (THE CONVERSATION, APOLLO 13), Gary Imhoff (SUMMER SCHOOL, THE GREEN MILE), Delta Burke (DESIGNING WOMEN, WHAT WOMEN WANT), Kimberly Beck (ROLLER BOOGIE, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER).
Tagline: "Her life had suddenly become a long drive to nowhere... so what better place to get it all together than her old stomping grounds, Zuma Beach! Let's get it together with a batch of beach boys and their golden girls... frolic with Suzanne Somers on Zuma Beach!"
Best one-liner: "Have some confidence in yourself." –"I can't. It's 9:30, and the stores stop selling confidence at five o'clock. And tomorrow is a holiday."

"I wrote that for a producer who just said he wanted a beach movie. He ended up selling it to Warner Bros., and soon Suzanne Somers was starring in it. I was going to direct it––for about ten seconds––but one of my mentors, Richard Kobritz, who later produced Christine, helped me see I didn’t want to do it. It was vastly rewritten, so I really shouldn’t have taken credit for it, but I was a little asshole in those days."

–John Carpenter, when asked about ZUMA BEACH by Fangoria in 2013 

 

Almost ten years ago, I did a "Poor Man's Carpy" series on this blog, devoted to John Carpenter marginalia like the co-scripted TV movie SILENT PREDATORS, the Tommy Lee Wallace-helmed VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS, trashy Hallo-sequels HALLOWEEN 666 and RESURRECTION, and the Dennis Etchison novelizations of THE FOG and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. One which slipped under the radar was ZUMA BEACH. So here we are, in the dog days of summer, finally taking a look at this forgotten CBS Late Movie "sort of" written by Carpenter and three other guys.

What can we learn about John Carpenter from ZUMA BEACH? Very little, I'm sure, given his above quote, but I think it's worth looking into. (Says the guy who did a two-part deep dive into John Carpenter's filmmaker-buddy-garage band, The Coupe de Villes.)

It's a straightforward slice of life, giggle and jiggle flick designed to eliminate two hours on a lazy, hazy summer evening. Though it ends with a volleyball game, it never even possesses stakes as high as in SIDE OUT. 

 Suzanne Somers plays a pop star (whose big hit is the fictitious "Silent Whisper"), and she's having a mid-career crisis. 

In need of a reset, she clears her head at Zuma Beach, where she once enjoyed poetry and sand castles as a child. Zuma Beach is populated with a rogue's gallery of horny teens, pre-makeover nerds, beach bums, surfers, football jerks, hot dog enthusiasts, kite fliers, windjammers, cool visor-dudes and the like.

Somers becomes something of a beach elder here, primarily because it's a teenage hotspot. She dispenses wisdom, smiles pensively, and takes in some rays. 

 

Bullies vaguely receive their comeuppance, romances spark and fizzle, and everyone more or less fritters the summer away. This is ZUMA BEACH, ladies and gentlemen. It's so dedicated to its quotidian ensemble that if it were better written and had more interesting characters, it might even feel like an Altman or Linklater flick. As is, it's merely a pleasant time-waster filled with bright 1970s colors and some amusing and unexpected performances. For reference, the real Zuma Beach is in Malibu, about a 70 minute drive from the PRINCE OF DARKNESS church.

If I were trying to draw a real John Carpenter connection, I'd probably compare it to THE FOG, which also sees a strong woman adjacent to the music industry (Adrienne Barbeau as "DJ Stevie Wayne") finding her footing in a California beach community. There are even times that ZUMA BEACH feels like "a Carpenter horror movie, but before the horror begins."

The image of a child playing with his dog in the surf... recalls Stevie Wayne's son finding a plank from the Elizabeth Dane in THE FOG? C'mon, I'm trying here.

Oh, and there is a lot of feathered hair in this movie. Might I remind you that it was shot in 1978.

Mark Wheeler's elaborate feathered coiffure helmet puts Mark Hamill's to shame

With such a bare bones plot, you start focusing on strange details. Like Suzanne Somers' suntan oil, which looks like it's being dispensed from an Elmer's glue bottle.

We have young, Toto-era Rosanna Arquette as a character who tokes a lot of reefer. She's doing that quirky comedic 'Rosanna Arquette thing,' mostly indistinguishable from her performances in AFTER HOURS and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, which is okay!

You have to admire (pre-Reagan) CBS Standards & Practices allowing such casual drug use to slip by without dramaturgical rebuke. 

Michael Biehn pops up, also in one of his very first roles, as a crazy-eyed, eyebrow-indicating lifeguard who uses his lifeguard tower as a bachelor pad.

Here, he's trying to pressure HALLOWEEN's own P.J. Soles into pre-marital sex. It's a good thing Michael Myers isn't around!

HALLOWEEN was released October 25, 1978; ZUMA BEACH debuted September 27, 1978. HALLOWEEN was filmed in May, and based on the look and general disposability of ZUMA BEACH, I have to imagine it was filmed that summer. It's quite possible that P.J. appears here as part of some John Carpenter favor; but given his disconnect to this movie, it's equally plausible that it's pure coincidence. I at least have to hope that John Carpenter was not responsible for a line of dialogue about "extracurricular sex-tivity."

Soles: "I have six pigtails"

As usual, P.J. Soles is a hilarious delight. And she has six pigtails. Count 'em––six! Why would anybody need six pigtails? Maybe she's choosing to pull focus by-way-of ridiculous hair/costume accoutrement––she does has a history of that. You may recall that in Brian De Palma's CARRIE, she established herself as the Queen of Pulling Focus with her big 'ol red rainbow ballcap. Bless.

There are some terrible, copyright-skirting faux-Beach Boys songs which play throughout, Tanya Roberts and Delta Burke wander through the frame, and Michael Biehn gets sand kicked in his face: a sobering experience for Zuma Beach's resident bully/Casanova.

There's a volleyball game and a riding-men-by-the-shoulders race,

and that's all she wrote. Er, rather, that's all John Carpenter and (at least) three other guys wrote. Do you feel like know all you need to about the ZUMA BEACH experience? I hope so.

Film Review: SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993, Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton)

Yoshi Eggs: 2.5 of 5?
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Bob Hoskins (THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, MONA LISA, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT), John Leguizamo (ROMEO + JULIET, CARLITO'S WAY, ENCANTO), Dennis Hopper (BLUE VELVET, WATERWORLD, EASY RIDER), Samantha Mathis (BROKEN ARROW, PUMP UP THE VOLUME, AMERICAN PSYCHO), Fiona Shaw (MY LEFT FOOT, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, the HARRY POTTER saga), Fisher Stevens (MY SCIENCE PROJECT, HACKERS, SHORT CIRCUIT), Richard Edson (DO THE RIGHT THING, STRANGE DAYS), Lance Henriksen (ALIENS, HARD TARGET, NEAR DARK), Don Lake (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, POLICE ACADEMY, BEST IN SHOW), Francesca P. Roberts (HARD TO KILL, INSIDE MOVES). Music by Alan Silvestri (BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE AVENGERS, MAC AND ME). Cinematography by Dean Semler (THE ROAD WARRIOR, APOCALYPTO, COCKTAIL, XXX, YOUNG GUNS). Edited by Mark Goldblatt (TERMINATOR 2, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, HALLOWEEN II, PREDATOR 2, BAD BOYS 2, XXX 2: STATE OF THE UNION).
Tag-line: "This ain't no game."
Best one-liner:  "Remember, trust the fungus!"

For this particular film––from the directors of MAX HEADROOM and many a "Rush" music video, and in which stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo allegedly drank themselves into a stupor between takes––I feel that my review is best delivered as a series of questions to which there are (likely?) no answers. As it were, a sober philosophical inquiry.

Why did they feel the need to invent an entirely new mythology for the Super Mario universe, one which involves a parallel dinosaur dimension caused by the extinction asteroid event and called "Dinohattan?"

Could there possibly be a more '90s tableau than a recumbent "Luigi" Leguizamo in acid-washed jeans, a sideways ballcap, a generic "flaming yin-yang" tee, and while playing with a Pin Art executive toy?

Is it now official canon that the Mario brothers are so called because their actual names are "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario?" Is it canon that they are half-brothers separated by twenty-two years of age? How did they manage to shoehorn in "Manhattan land developer villains" in a movie which takes place largely in the SF&F hellscape of "Dinohattan?"

Are all of the dinosaurs here because of Yoshi's popularity, or because of JURASSIC PARK's? How many dinosaur bones are under the Brooklyn Bridge anyway?

How strange is it that the "portal to another dimension" plot feels nothing like the SUPER MARIO BROS. games, or even anything like the formative "magic gateway" genre classics (ALICE IN WONDERLAND, WIZARD OF OZ, THE LION, THE WITCH, et al.), but in fact most resembles the Cannon Films/Kathy Ireland classic ALIEN IN L.A.?

Is it wrong that I like the sprawling, chaotic, teenage mutant "Albert Pyun"-itude of it all, and way more than I should? 

Here's a question I can answer: is it because the production designer is the Oscar-nominated David L. Snyder, who worked on BLADE RUNNER, DEMOLITION MAN, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, and BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY? Yes, yes it is.

Is it wrong that it feels so strange to see Samantha Mathis (the egg-hatched-and-raised-by-nuns Princess Daisy, here) in an early '90s movie without Christian Slater?

Do you think Slater/Mathis were more of an early '90s Tracy/Hepburn, or more of a Bartel/Woronov?

Do the creators of "Dinohattan" regret including the now-chilling image of a crumbling World Trade Center?

(The movie was released fewer than three months after the 1993 WTC bombing. See also: DOWN/THE SHAFT.)

Did the producers realize that one of their trendiest resources was not, in fact, Was (Not Was)' "Everybody Walk the Dinosaur," but having Sonic Youth's Richard Edson and Naked Angels Theater Company co-founder Fisher Stevens as rando Dinohattan henchmen?

Is the greatest moment of Fisher Stevens' life when he said "Sayonara, dicknose!" in MY SCIENCE PROJECT or was it his Grand Skateboard Entrance in HACKERS?

Was it a mistake to reimagine King Koopa as a "germaphobe Frank Booth" with weird Maggie Simpson cornrows and a bitchin' snakeskin jacket?

In which of his '90s villains does Dennis Hopper channel BLUE VELVET the hardest? Is it his work in WATERWORLD, SPEED, CHASERS, RED ROCK WEST, or SUPER MARIO BROS.? (Eh, I actually think it's SPEED.)

Who is "Lena" meant to be in the wider SUPER MARIO mythos? Does it matter when it's essentially the great Fiona Shaw playing, um, a live-action Disney villain?

Is the Yoshi puppet actually.... really impressive? I swear, it's one of the better puppet/animatronics of the CGI era and pretty much equal to anything in JURASSIC PARK. How 'bout that?

Why does the film take such a hard turn into a Terry Gilliam-influenced Kafka nightmare, complete with Rube Goldberg torture devices and Soviet gulag ambience?

Is it a "fun" gag when the Mario Brothers are nearly executed at a Lavrentiy Beria-style tribunal which resembles Goya's painting "The Third of May 1808?"

Is John Leguizamo even acting at this point, or has he surrendered to the existential horror of appearing in this film?

Is a tableau such as this what the kiddies are hoping for in their SUPER MARIO popcorn fare, an extrajudicial political prison to contain their favorite 16-bit heroes?

I mean, this would be at home in an Andrzej Żuławski film, or maybe an early Lars Trier joint, but...

 

maybe they've stumbled onto something good here, with this conceit of the "De-evolution" chamber––can finally the disparate worlds of MAX HEADROOM and IN THE PENAL COLONY co-exist? Do you receive a similar religious epiphany when you Devolve as you do when your crimes are carved onto your flesh with Kafka's Machine?

What was the impetus behind reimagining the "goombas"––tiny villainous mushrooms, in the game––as BEETLEJUICE-shrunken-headed dinosaur monsters?

Can Dennis Hopper explain it to us? (The answer? "Partially.")

Should the entire movie instead have been refashioned to center on Francesca P. Roberts' character, "Bertha," who has rocket boots and the best fashion sense in the film (courtesy of THE MANDALORIAN and NEAR DARK's costume designer Joseph A. Porro)? (Undoubtedly, the answer to this one is, "yes.") 

Why does the sequence of the movie which seems most directly based on a video game––featuring Bob Hoskins dodging traffic––

 take its inspiration not from SUPER MARIO BROS., but from the arcade classic FROGGER?

Why does the final showdown with Dennis Hopper/King Koopa center entirely around gunplay, when guns and first-person-shooting are have never been associated with the sort of games released under the SUPER MARIO umbrella?

 

And are you going to tell me that, ackshually it's kosher because those are SNES "Super Scope" guns, which technically were a Nintendo product compatible with exactly one game in the SUPER MARIO-verse, the mostly forgotten YOSHI'S SAFARI (1993), which, again, represents only one of forty-nine (!) MARIO-adjacent titles and is only representative of the series at large if you are a big ol' nerdy nerd?

So why does Lance muthafuckin' Henriksen play King Reznor, who, now that Dennis Hopper has been defeated, is no longer a giant fungus installation piece, and... er... who is King Reznor anyway? Trent's dad?

Is a fitting finale to have Lance Henriksen sit up in a golden throne and exclaim, "I'm back!––I love those plumbers!"

Perhaps it is.  

Then there is a post-credits scene which tries to imagine that this film is simply the ur-text from which Japanese game developers adapted the games. Okay!

What's the worst thing Bob Hoskins ever did? Wait... I'm being told we have an answer for this one!

"The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."

–Bob Hoskins, as told to The Guardian in 2007

Well, there ya have it folks. SUPER MARIO BROS. 

To quote this film's version of "May the Force Be With You," I'll leave you with this benediction: "Trust the Fungus."