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By Todd Garbarini

Some of the best literary achievements and their respective motion picture counterparts had their genesis in real-life. Robert Bloch made the grave-robber and necrophiliac Ed Gein into the motel manager Norman Bates in Psycho (1960); William Peter Blatty took the ostensibly possessed boy in Cottage City, MD and gave him the identity of Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (1973); and Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek breathed celluloid life into Kit and Holly respectively in Badlands (1973), based upon Waste Land: The Savage Odyssey of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. Smooth Talk, Joyce Chopra’s brilliant 1985 film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s equally excellent 1966 short story “Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going?", is no exception. While it may seem odd to begin this review of what is on the surface, and for all intents and purposes, a story of a teen-age girl’s sexual awakening,...

One of the great, perhaps overlooked movies of the ’80s, Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk is poised to be rediscovered with a new 4K restoration. Starring Laura Dern––in one of her earliest, most impressive roles––Smooth Talk is based on a Joyce Carol Oates short story about a young girl who comes into the orbit of a mysterious, dangerous older man (Treat Williams). As Dern’s Connie becomes more and more entangled with this strange man, Smooth Talk becomes an unforgettable commentary on sexual politics and a young woman’s coming of age.

Co-starring Mary Kay Place, Margaret Welsh, and Levon Helm, while Smooth Talk opened to critical acclaim at the time (it won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival), it also feels perfect for rediscovery today for its uncompromising exploration of female sexuality and the career ascendency of Laura Dern. Get a preview of the 4K restoration by Janus Films,...

Joyce Carol Oates on Smooth Talk: “Our species is so impressionable, we’re very vulnerable to any kind of mesmerising person …”

Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk, starring Laura Dern with Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place (Diane in Kent Jones’s award-winning début feature Diane), Levon Helm, Elizabeth Berridge, Margaret Welsh, Sara Inglis, and Geoff Hoyle, is a highlight in the Revivals programme of the 58th New York Film Festival. The screenplay by Tom Cole is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Dern’s Connie, a giggly 16-year old when out at the beach or the mall with her girlfriends Laura (Margaret Welsh) and Jill (Sara Inglis), is more sombre and a different kind of unruly at home with her parents and well-behaved sister June (Elizabeth Berridge).

Joyce Carol Oates: “I think also the movie is a brilliant, poetic work of...

Joyce Carol Oates published her short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? in 1966, the year before Laura Dern, star of Joyce Chopra’s 1985 film adaptation, was born. Watching Smooth Talk (screenplay by Tom Cole) in the Revivals programme of the 2020 New York Film Festival adds yet another turn of the temporal screw to this tale of a teenage girl and her encounter with a recondite man named Arnold Friend (Treat Williams).

Dern’s Connie, a giggly 16-year old when out at the beach or the mall with her girlfriends Laura (Margaret Welsh) and Jill (Sara Inglis), is more sombre and a different kind of unruly at home with her parents and well-behaved sister June (Elizabeth Berridge). This is rural America...

Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock heroine (image: Joseph Cotten about to strangle Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt') (See preceding article: "Teresa Wright Movies: Actress Made Oscar History.") After scoring with The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and The Pride of the Yankees, Teresa Wright was loaned to Universal – once initial choices Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland became unavailable – to play the small-town heroine in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. (Check out video below: Teresa Wright reminiscing about the making of Shadow of a Doubt.) Co-written by Thornton Wilder, whose Our Town had provided Wright with her first chance on Broadway and who had suggested her to Hitchcock; Meet Me in St. Louis and Junior Miss author Sally Benson; and Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, Shadow of a Doubt was based on "Uncle Charlie," a story outline by Gordon McDonell – itself based on actual events.

In a lovely but definitely not lonely place -- Nantucket Island -- a hack screenwriter gets lucky and finds another guy's work to rip off with murky "neo-noir" consequences in John S. Johnson's overwrought independent feature.

The atmosphere of repressed violence and kinky sex is thick in Johnson's slow-moving scenario, which takes off when one-hit wonderboy Elliott Callahan (Tom Gilroy) ducks out of Hollywood to make one last stand with the help of his agent. The parallels to Tarantino are obvious -- Elliott's only big hit is a violent action film bearing resemblance to a prior Hong Kong movie -- but "Ratchet" takes a promising premise and devolves into a preposterous thriller.

A drinker and always available, Elliott has to deliver a new script or go to court. He's a loner and not talented -- and easily distracted once he's settled near the beach. Not to worry. There are two femme fatales, an old Hollywood chum who's now a jealous maniac, a greasy tough guy with a script and a perverted police chief to bounce ideas off.

Art is worked into the proceedings with the character of Julia (Murit Koppel), whose painting about her sister's rape and murder catches the eye of attentive Elliott when she shows him her lair. Alas, she's somehow involved with scary Carver (Matthew Dixon), an intense but crude local who recognizes Elliott and immediately throws him a copy of his own opus.

All about bondage and voyeurism and told from a murderer's point of view, Elliott loves Carver's script so much that he types it into his computer and phones L.A. with the good news. He's got something, and there's still time to get involved with the flirtatious real estate lady (Margaret Welsh) who drives by occasionally.

Carver discovers the theft, and Elliott shoots him. He then seems to get away with it when the body disappears. Credibility and coherence disappear soon after as the uncharismatic lead cruises through an obstacle course of sin-city encounters in a bucolic setting.

Johnson's direction is routine, and the performances range from lazy to catastrophic. Starting with the script, "Ratchet" is an unsatisfying potboiler.

RATCHET

Phaedra Cinema

Ratchet Prods.

in association with Altar Rocks Films

Writer-director John S. Johnson

Producers George Belshaw, John S. Johnson

Executive producer Hank Blumenthal

Director of photography Joaquin Baca-Asay

Production designer Debbie Devilla

Costume designer Jana Rosenblatt

Music Paul Schwartz

Editors James Lyons, Keith Remaer

Casting Susan Shopmaker

Color/stereo

Cast:

Elliott Callahan Tom Gilroy

Catherine Ripley Margaret Welsh

Tim Greenleaf Mitchell Lichtenstein

Julia Webb Murit Koppel

Henry Carver Matthew Dixon

Chief Groves John A. Mackay

Running time -- 114 minutes

No MPAA rating...