The Evictors (1979)

If you have been reading my reviews for any length of time (and a big thank you to all five of you who have remained stalwart in that capacity), then you know of my distaste for the great outdoors in general and the less civilized areas of same in particular (the size and amount of which are expanding exponentially, especially in more populated areas, in my humble opinion).  Even so, swamps and bayous fascinate me.  It’s not that I have any desire to ever visit one and get eaten alive by any of a cavalcade of animals either predatory or parasitic, but they do have a particularly beautiful look to them, don’t you agree?  They can be as alluring as they are forbidding.  Like the angler fish or the pitcher plant, it would be easy to be lured into a fen just by following your sense of wonder for nature (not necessarily because a swamp smells good enough to eat, though, I’d wager) only to have the deadly trap sprung faster than you can say “gator bait” and wind up as bulk in some animal’s stool.  I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility that you could be rescued by, say, Swamp Thing or Man-Thing, and many people have proven that one could even live and thrive in marshland, but I tend to think my luck wouldn’t hold out.  It’s the optimist in me.

The late Charles B Pierce’s The Evictors (aka Leadsville Nights) opens in 1928 in Shreveport, Louisiana, as the Monroe clan is (not so ironically enough) being evicted from their home.  Naturally, the Monroe’s disagree with the bank’s claim, and they open fire on the banker (Jesse Cagle), G-Men (Owen Guthrie, Thomas Ham, Ron White), and assorted deputies who are there to enforce the eviction notice.  Needless to say, things don’t exactly pan out for the Monroes.  Fast forward to 1942, as local realtor Jake Rudd (Vic Morrow) accompanies young couple Ruth and Ben Watkins (Jessica Harper and Michael Parks, respectively) as they begin the process of moving into the old Monroe house.  Soon, a creeper who looks suspiciously like Dwayne Monroe (Glen Roberts) starts popping up and menacing Ruth, and not even wheelchair-bound neighbor Olie Gibson (Sue Ane Langdon) may be able to help.

 Much like Mr. Pierce’s more famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) films, The Legend Of Boggy Creek, Boggy Creek 2: And The Legend Continues, and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, this one starts off with the claim (or disclaimer?) that the events depicted are based on a true story.  Leapfrogging off the Docudrama genre, The Evictors emphasizes the idea of storytelling, itself.  As the plot trots along, we are treated to multiple flashbacks detailing the history of the Watkins’s new house since the Monroes were ousted.  This device performs multiple duties.  One, it gives us some exposition to try to piece together just what’s going on (though, honestly, there is very little mystery in the film to be sussed out).  Two, it gives us foreshadowing and builds some tension as to what is waiting in the wings for Ruth and Ben.  Three, it gives us a little bit of action and violence to hold over the more bloodthirsty in the audience (though, honestly, there is very little [if any] bloodshed on screen to be ogled).  

Of course, like any story told enough times, the details are bound to change, the original meaning muddied or lost altogether.  Pierce allows the flashbacks to play out but is always sure to remind us that what we have been seeing is being related by other characters who should not have been present to witness the scenes described and (we assume) were told these stories by someone else who was also not present when they took place, in all likelihood.  Aside from the fact that other owners of the house died, we cannot necessarily assume that they were killed by one of the Monroes (though the implication is definitely there).  By that same token, we can also make the assumption that there is a chance that not only are the flashbacks truthful but also could possibly be giving us more information than is present in the stories as told around the town.  In this way, then, they are fact and fiction, historical truth and urban legend.

The film also deals to some degree with the notion of the American Dream becoming the American Nightmare.  The Monroes owned their house, surely a component of their own dream.  Yet, for whatever reason, this dream becomes a nightmare when they are evicted.  Not only do they lose the house, but they come to physical harm when they fight against their eviction.  Likewise, the couples who inhabit the house after the Monroes are also starting from the perspective of the American Dream (and let’s just take it as given that owning one’s own house is part of the American Dream or at the absolute least was some years back).  And they all meet their deaths for stealing someone else’s dream, turning their own to nightmares.  There is also a facet at work that the house itself may be haunted and stands on cursed earth, though it’s never really explored, just sort of mentioned.

The Evictors plays with themes about the corruption of traditional values as embodied predominantly in the character of Ruth Watkins.  She and Ben are seemingly the perfect couple.  They are young, hard-working, honest, and pleasant.  Outwardly, there is no reason whatsoever given by the filmmakers to not like these two.  Yet, they are abjured by just about all the local townsfolk.  The audience knows there is no reason for such treatment, so the problem must be with the locals, not Ruth and Ben.  That the couple desires to be accepted by the people who are signified as having the actual problem is exactly what will pollute the Watkins’s values and drag them down.  Ben is offered draft deferment and a large bonus in return for working long hours, in some capacity turning away from the idea of service to his country in a time of war to further his personal gain and by extension neglecting his wife and leaving her vulnerable to dangers both emotional and physical.  Ruth learns to shoot a gun, a trait which she takes to like a duck to water but which  is a non-traditional proficiency for a woman (at least for the time the film is set and for the sort of background Ruth seems to come from but not necessarily for the story’s location or for all women, certainly).  These factors add up over the course of the film, culminating in a conclusion perhaps best described as mildly apocryphal.

With that in mind, I need to get something off my chest in regards to this film.  When everything is finally revealed, the effect was not one of discovery for me, it was instead one of indifference.  None of what goes on in the film is anything other than what it appears to be.  We know within just a few minutes of screentime how the entirety of the story will play out, what twists are going to pop up, and when they will do so.  The only two reasons I stuck around were to find out if I could possibly be wrong and receive a pleasant surprise (which didn’t happen) and because the technical level of filmmaking is indeed quite accomplished.  It’s like finding out that the woman you dig has inexplicably taken up with some chump you know for a stone fact is worthless, but there is nothing you can do, because the choices made that created the situation were not yours to make.  Your choice is how to react (or not react, which as we all know is also a reaction, anyway) afterward. 

MVT:  The acting in the film from the main performers is spot-on, and the players appeared to care about the material (and if they didn’t I perceived no indication, thus reinforcing my claim that the acting in the film is very good).  

Make Or Break:  The Break for me is the big disclosure scene, and that’s because there is decidedly nothing in the least disclosed that I didn’t already know.  There is no surprise in this surprise, and it doesn’t even add a little bit of color to make the non-reveals vary even slightly from what I knew was going to be revealed. 

Score:  6/10

The Nesting (1980)

I hate the outdoors. No, wait, let me restate that. I loathe the outdoors. Don't misunderstand me, I find nature to be wonderful to look at. I recognize its importance in the ecological balance of the planet. I like animals. But I don't like being out in nature. I used to, when I was young and even into early adulthood. But I think that my love for the woods ended around the same time I stopped imbibing large quantities of hard liquor on a regular basis (the prospect of waking up on a clump of odd-smelling dirt had lost its shine, somehow). Now mosquitoes and flying, blood-sucking pests of every stripe find me to be something of a delicacy. I can cover myself head-to-toe in Deet-formulated repellants, but I think to insects (in relation to me, at any rate) it's like A-1 on a steak. I burn in minute amounts of sunlight. Some would say that's because I don't go outside to begin with. I would say that's one of the reasons I don't go outside. Heat is not my friend, and most people who want to be out in the woods for any length of time typically want to do so on nice, muggy, sweltering days. I start sweating at about sixty-five degrees and up. I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of all things out-of-doors; I simply don't partake in them. I certainly do not suffer from agoraphobia like Robin Groves' character in Armand Weston's The Nesting (aka Massacre Mansion, aka Phobia). I just prefer air-conditioning. 

Suffering from the aforementioned malady, author Lauren Cochran (Groves) can hardly make it out of her New York City apartment for more than a few minutes at a time, and she has a horrible (but not too horrible) fear of men. Trying everything from New Age meditation to seeing a shrink, Dr. Webb (Patrick Farrelly), Lauren decides that she needs to get out of the city to reduce her stress level. Accompanied by her unrequited would-be-suitor, Mark (Christopher Loomis), Lauren comes upon a rundown mansion, which she has never seen before, but she described vividly in her titular novel. She convinces weird old coot, Colonel LeBrun (John Carradine), and his physicist son, Daniel (Michael David Lally), to rent the place to her. Soon thereafter, Lauren has visions of "painted ladies" and phantoms moving about the place, and strange, deadly occurrences start taking place.

The late Armand Weston was a writer/director of porn movies before he made his only attempt at a "legit" film with this piece (according to IMDB, he was fired from Dawn Of The Mummy). And while the film does bear some mild adult influences (the brothel scenes, Lauren's self-caressing scene, the obligatory love scene, etcetera), it is also indicative of the adult industry of the time. By that I mean it is not strictly utilitarian in its technical aspects. The porn directors of the 1970s were often people trying to make real movies that happened to contain scenes of explicit sex in them. In this film, there are two ways that this mindset is in evidence. The first is in Weston's depiction of Lauren's ailment. When she goes outside and has an anxiety attack, he uses POV handheld camerawork with a fish-eye lens to accentuate the disorientation and menace felt by the character. The second is when Lauren imagines an out-of-body experience. Weston here employs a double-exposed ghost image of Lauren rising up from her prone physical form and moving about. It's an old school technique, but it is effective, and it helps the audience form some type of bond with the lead character (though this bond is tenuous and will be undone by the film itself later).

Films have utilized the defective lead/POV character for years. Just look at Harry Caul in The Conversation, the eponymous Barton Fink, or Mabel Longhetti of A Woman Under The Influence. What they do, essentially, is provide the story with an unreliable narrator, so that the audience can freely question almost everything it sees and hears; Was there a dead body in the truck, or was it all in her mind? You get the idea. For the sort of supernatural mystery that Weston has set-up here, it starts off on the right foot. Unfortunately, he also makes the mistake of not leaving the mystery to play out in the viewer's imagination (and, thus, question the film's reality). He explicitly answers the question of whether or not the house is haunted with a resounding "yes," which robs the story of much of its potential impact. When handyman, Frank (Bill Rowley), starts floating awkwardly in the middle of the living room, any sense of nuance goes out the window. There is a reason why Robert Wise didn't show anything unequivocally in his superlative The Haunting, and Weston would have done well to learn from that veteran director's work.

The film also deals with the divide between the heart and the mind through the supernatural elements. Lauren's psychiatrist believes that she is making connections in her mind that don't exist. Daniel believes in the possibility of the unknown, but his faith in science is stronger. By contrast, Lauren is an artist (a tortured one, to be sure) and accepts, even runs toward the embrace of the otherworldly. The first time she sees the house, she has to rent it. She follows furtive specters, no matter where they lead her (and they lead her to some odd places). Since we see all of the things happening to and around Lauren (even when she does not witness them directly), we side with her, and consequently we side with emotion. Yet again, the filmmakers try to marry the two together by the time the finale rolls around in a confused, rather hamfisted way. And it's this mash-up of the two that ultimately makes the film so unsatisfying. Rather than choose one side or the other (and actually develop it), they opt for both, and the audience therefore cares about neither. What's worse is that this attempted merger comes so late in the film, it feels like some egregious afterthought to the flat, blasé, exposition-laden info-dump that makes up the film's ending. Much like the matryoshka dolls the filmmakers almost certainly had in mind as a clever metaphor for the film's themes (nesting, get it?), it instead mirrors the observer's enjoyment, as each piece of the film opens to reveal smaller and smaller ideas, until there's not much left at all.

MVT: The best thing the filmmakers did for the film was trying to imbue it with a Southern Gothic feel, and it works when they care enough to try maintaining it. They just didn't try maintaining it for the entire runtime.

Make Or Break: The GGTMCers out there who enjoy watching unbelievably bad cinematic moments will revel in the scene where Lauren meets the slovenly Abner Wells (David Tabor, winner of this week's BEM Award). Seeing him pound on a car's windshield, his face a caricatured grimace, and his pants split down the crack of his ass is a moment you won't soon forget (no matter how much you'd like to).

Score: 5.75/10

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