1980 Week: Home Movies

Brian De Palma took a break from his successful career as a Hollywood director to teach filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College, where he’d done graduate work in theater, and this project resulted from student exercises. Despite the involvement of marquee names including Kirk Douglas, who has a small recurring role, the smart move would have been to let Home Movies linger in the relative obscurity of academia, because it’s an embarrassment. Not only is Home Movies amateurish and silly, but it’s suffused with crass elements including scenes during which the white leading character wears blackface as a disguise. Credited to seven writers, including De Palma, the narrative follows Denis Byrd (Keith Gordon), a young man who takes a filmmaking course from “The Maestro” (Douglas). Egomaniacal and overbearing, “The Maestro” encourages Denis to use his eccentric family as fodder for a class project, so Denis tracks his philandering father (Vincent Gardenia) and his older brother, James (Gerrit Graham), an insufferable college professor who pummels his fiancée, Kristina (Nancy Allen), with absurd rules about abstinence, diet, and exercise. Somehow this resolves into Denis surreptitiously filming people having sex. The story is coherent, but the events are pointless and random and tacky. James throwing food at Kristina because she broke a rule. Denis rescuing a lingerie-clad Kristina from a rapist. “The Maestro” climbing a tree to shame Denis for doing exactly what “The Maestro” asked, filming real life. Wasted are Allen’s girl-next-door charm, Gardenia’s impeccable comic timing, and Graham’s intense weirdness. Plus, seeing as how De Palma extrapolated many story elements from his own life experiences, the odor of self-indulgence permeates.

Home Movies: LAME

Dionysus in ’69 (1970)

          Experimental theater being what it is, any document of this offbeat genre is sure to divide audiences. As such, something like Dionysus in ’69 can’t be appraised in only one way. Those with adventurous spirits and an eagerness to see postmodern rethinks of longstanding storytelling conventions will be able to appreciate Dionysus in ’69 as a form of artistic exploration. Concurrently, those who enjoy understanding what the hell they’re watching will lose patience quickly. Even those who seek out Dionysus in ’69 because of Brian De Palma’s involvement are likely to be confounded. The picture has a couple of significant connections to the director’s later work, but he didn’t conceive or singlehandedly helm the piece, at the execution is avant-garde in the extreme.

          Shot in 1968, while De Palma was a film student at NYU, the film captures a presentation by experimental-theater ensemble the Performance Group. Based on the ancient Euripides play, Dionysus in ’69 ostensibly tells the story of a conflict between gods, and layered upon the original text is a postmodern freakout written by William Arrowsmith. Actors strip down to jockstraps (or less) while creating sexualized tableaux onstage, up to and including a pair of lengthy and semi-explicit orgy scenes. In some scgments, actor William Finley (who plays both Dionysus and the role of actor William Finley) speaks in modern language, while his costar, Will Shepherd (who plays both Pentheus and the role of actor Will Shepherd), communicates largely in stilted "classical" vernacular. (FYI, Finley later starred in De Palma’s 1976 rock musical Phantom of the Paradise.) The live audience beholding the filmed performance of Dionysus in’69 becomes involved in the show, as well. Seated on the floor, in chairs, and on scaffolds surrounding the intimate performance space, audience members participate in dance scenes and receive dialogue and physical contact from the actors. All of this serves the familiar experimental-theater concept of transforming a play into an active experience rather than a passive one.

          De Palma, who shares an “a film by” credit with fellow NYU students Bruce Joel Rubin (later on Oscar winner for writing the 1990 hit Ghost) and Robert Fiore, employs one of his favorite cinematic devices, split-screen photography. Therefore, the entire 85-minute film comprises two angles of grungy-looking black-and-white images projected side-by-side. As with everything else about Dionysus in ’69, the split-screen effect is as headache-inducing as it is mind-expanding. Incidentally, Dionysus in ’69 received an X-rating during its original release, though its edgiest elements are full-frontal nudity, rough language, and simulated sex.

Dionysus in ’69: FUNKY

Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972)

          Representing not only a feeble attempt at absurdist humor but also a disastrous moment in the careers of two Hollywood luminaries, Get to Know Your Rabbit is such a misfire that it spent two years on the shelf at Warner Bros. before the studio finally arranged a half-hearted release. The picture was Brian De Palma’s first studio assignment, and his involvement ended when he was fired during principal photography. Similarly, the movie was TV funnyman Tom Smothers’ first and last starring role in a major movie. Written by Jordan Crittenden, Get to Know Your Rabbit tries for outlandish satire about the dehumanizing aspects of corporate culture. Marketing executive Donald (Smothers) quits his job the day terrorists explode a bomb at his office—a random event that neither makes sense nor adds anything to the story. Seeking a more fulfilling lifestyle, Donald studies with the eccentric Delasandro (Orson Welles) and becomes a tap-dancing magician. Then Donald goes on tour, enlisting his former boss, an alcoholic named Paul (John Astin), to serve as his manager. While Donald performs in seedy nightclubs across America and romances a young woman identified only as Terrific-Looking Girl (Katharine Ross), Paul creates a corporate empire called TDM—as in Tap Dancing Musicians.

          Yes, the supposedly high-larious central joke of the movie is that so many people hate their jobs, just like Donald did, that thousands of them happily quit the 9-to-5 world in order to become kitschy entertainers. The tone of the movie is as much of a mess as the story. Characters who should seem eccentric instead come across as insane, jokes fall flat in nearly every scene, and the hyperactive music score tries to pump life into unresponsive footage. As for the would-be wacky dialogue? Consider this exchange between Donald and a floozy named Susan (Samantha Jones). Donald: “I don’t know exactly how to ask you this, but how long have you been a cheap broad?” Susan: “Oh, it’s an off and on thing.” De Palma’s signature overhead shots, split-screen gimmicks, and topless scenes merely add to the overall confusion, and Smothers’ performance runs the short gamut from nasty to nonexistent. Meanwhile, costars Astin, Allen Garfield, and Ross play their roles well, though each seems to exist in a different movie than the rest of the cast. Some cinematic train wrecks are fascinating, but Get to Know Your Rabbit is not one of them.

Get to Know Your Rabbit: LAME

Hi, Mom! (1970)

          With the exception of Phantom of the Paradise (1974), a cult-fave rock musical that some people find quite droll, director Brian De Palma has delivered only middling results when making comedies. In fact, some of his worst flops, including The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), were supposed to make people laugh. So it’s mildly interesting that several of De Palma’s earliest features are comedies, since he didn’t find his sweet spot of sexualized horror until Sisters (1973). Anyway, De Palma’s fourth feature—also his first of the ’70s—is the eclectic Hi, Mom!, which uses a loose storyline about an ambitious young filmmaker to frame sketches about art, class, race, and sex. The picture is a sequel to De Palma’s earlier film Greetings (1968), and Robert De Niro stars in both pictures as edgy New Yorker Jon Rubin.

          When we meet the character in Hi, Mom!, Jon is a struggling filmmaker who uses a telescope to peer into neighbors’ windows, then persuades a skin-flick producer, Joe Banner (Allen Garfield), to fund a porno movie shot in the peeping-tom style. Later, Jon spots a cute woman named Judy Bishop (Jennifer Salt), who lives in the building across the street, and seduces her by pretending to be an insurance salesman. (Classy ulterior motive: Filming their sexual encounters without her permission for use in porn.) Also thrown into the mix is a group of black-power activists, because Jon makes grungy black-and-white verité-style short films in which the activists confront white New Yorkers with performance art challenging widespread attitudes toward African-Americans.

          Stylistically, Hi, Mom! is a mess. Some scenes are played for broad humor, some are politically provocative, some are sleazy, and some are nearly frightening because of their intensity. One gets the sense that De Palma, who cowrote the picture with Charles Hirsch, either made the story up as he went along, or that the filmmakers created a laundry list of hip topics without giving much consideration to how things might (or might not) cohere. Bits of the movie are interesting (although not particularly funny), especially the man-0n-the-street vignettes that De Palma seems to have captured with hidden cameras. Yet the lack of an organizing aesthetic makes the overall experience rather boring. It doesn’t help that rock musician Eric Kaz contributed an inanely upbeat score complete with a clumsy theme song, or that De Niro is woefully out of his element. The actor didn’t find his sense of humor till much later in life, and he only really catches fire during a scene in which Jon auditions to play an abusive policeman.

Hi, Mom!: FUNKY

1980 Week: Dressed to Kill

          Two of the least admirable qualities of Brian De Palma’s directorial style coalesced in this quasi-controversial thriller—his atrocious onscreen treatment of women and his shameless borrowings from Alfred Hitchcock’s bag of cinematic tricks. Beyond transposing a number of key elements from Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Dressed to Kill is so hyper-sexualized that the picture’s extremes overshadow its meritorious elements. At its best, Dressed to Kill is pure cinema, with De Palma using only images, music, and sound effects for long stretches of screen time. These dialogue-free passages have a certain allure, even though the nonverbal bits are so simplistic that the film occasionally seems designed to communicate to children—that is, if children could watch a hard-R thriller with close-ups of razor blades slicing flesh, as well as nearly pornographic images of female masturbation. Yet that’s De Palma in full bloom, placing sophisticated techniques in the service of puerile subject matter.

          Dressed to Kill begins with Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson), an unappreciated housewife living outside New York City. Desperately lonely, she comes on to her shrink, Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), who politely and professionally refuses the advance. Then Kate meets a handsome stranger and has a hot tryst with a tragic outcome—walking away from her lover’s apartment, Kate gets assaulted and killed by a mysterious assailant. The only witness to the murder is prostitute Liz Blake (Nancy Allen), who teams up with Kate’s teenaged son, Peter (Keith Gordon), to find the killer. Dr. Elliott gets dragged into the mix when it becomes apparent the murderer might be a patient.

          One of several movies that De Palma wrote in addition to directing, Dressed to Kill works fairly well as a whodunit, thanks to clever misdirection on De Palma’s part, but it fails in many regards as entertainment. Succumbing to a characteristic weakness, De Palma loses control of the story for long periods by indulging in visual excess, whether it’s the “shocking” opening sequence of Kate pleasuring herself or the endless scene of Kate and her would-be lover pursuing each other in a museum. With Ralf D. Bode’s gauzy cinematography and Pino Donaggio’s string-driven score creating a cottony milieu, De Palma generates something that walks a fine line between mainstream moviemaking and soft-core porn. The movie also suffers from a severe Caine shortage—the top-billed player isn’t in the movie all that much, and he sleepwalks through his scenes. Dickinson approaches her raunchy role with great verve, and Allen’s streetwise sexiness is appealing, but there’s a vacuum at the center of the movie. Nonetheless, Dressed to Kill is an important part of De Palma’s Hitchcock-tribute cycle; while his next Hitch homage, Blow Out (1981), is a much better movie, Dressed to Kill is a pure statement of impure thoughts.

Dressed to Kill: FUNKY

The Fury (1978)

          Apparently hopeful that lighting would strike twice in terms of creative inspiration and box-office returns, director Brian De Palma followed up his breakthrough movie, the 1976 supernatural shocker Carrie, with another horror flick about killer psychics. Yet while The Fury has bigger stars and glossier production values than its predecessor, it’s so far-fetched and gruesome that it lacks anything resembling the emotional gut-punch of Carrie. That’s not to say The Fury is devoid of entertainment value—it’s just that De Palma badly overreached in his attempt to blend elements of the conspiracy, horror, and supernatural genres into a sensationalistic new hybrid. Written for the screen by John Farris, who adapted his own novel, the convoluted movie pits former friends Ben (John Cassavetes) and Peter (Kirk Douglas) against each other. They’re both secret-agent types, and Ben is exploring the possible use of psychics as trained killers. One of Ben’s star pupils is Peter’s adult son, Robin (Andrew Stevens), although Ben expects even greater things from Gillian (Amy Irving), a gifted but troubled woman Robin’s age.
          You can probably guess where this goes—the young psychics fall in love even as they realize they’re being manipulated, Peter tries to rescue his son, and corpses hit the floor when the psychics get pushed too far.

          This being a De Palma picture, one is unwise to expect restraint on the part of the filmmaker, and, indeed, the movie’s finale involves a human body exploding. Moreover, despite the sophisticated contributions of cinematographer Richard H. Kline and composer John Williams, nearly every scene in The Fury ends with the cinematic equivalent of an exclamation point. Hell, the picture even features two performances (provided by Douglas and Stevens) distinguished by actors indicating intensity by flaring their nostrils. Regarding the other leads, Cassavetes sleepwalks through a paycheck gig as per the norm, and Irving elevates her scenes with the delicate sensitivity that distinguishes most of her work. None of the major performances is particularly good, per se, but each is lively in a different way, so at least De Palma achieves a certain overcaffeinated tonal consistency. Considering its assertive direction, colorful cast, and outlandish storyline, The Fury should be memorable in a comic-book sort of way, but ultimately, the picture is as anonymous as the silhouetted models featured on the poster—instead of delivering unique jolts, it’s Carrie Lite.

The Fury: FUNKY

Obsession (1976)

          Director Brian De Palma borrowed heavily from Alfred Hitchcock’s filmmaking style for Sisters (1973), a perverse story about murderous twins that featured a score by Hitchcock’s best composer, Bernard Hermann. So it was no surprise that a few years later, after the box-office failure of De Palma’s audacious musical fantasy Phantom of the Paradise, the director returned to the crowd-pleasing milieu of Hitchcockian suspense. In fact, De Palma took homage even further with Obsession, which borrows key themes from the Hitchcock masterpiece Vertigo (1958). So, by the time De Palma layered in old-school glamour photography (by the great Vilmos Zsigmond) and another moody score by Hermann, Obsession became a virtual copy of Hitchcock’s style, updated for the ’70s with a heightened level of sexual transgression and technical sophistication. Thus, while Obsession is an arresting movie, any appraisal must be somewhat muted given its overtly derivative nature—it’s merely a fine achievement in emulation.

          Written by the formidable Paul Schrader (from an original story he and De Palma concocted together), Obsession tells the tragic tale of New Orleans businessman Michael Courtland (Cliff Roberts0n). During a harrowing prologue set in 1958, Courtland’s wife and daughter are kidnapped and held for ransom. Bending to advice from police, Courtland delivers blank paper instead of the cash the kidnappers requested, so the kidnappers flee with Courtland’s loved ones. A police chase ensues, at the end of which the hostages and the kidnappers are killed. The story then cuts to the present day, when Courtland has rebuilt his life but never forgotten the traumas of the past—quite to the contrary, as the movie’s title suggests, Courtland is preoccupied with his dead wife and child. So when he encounters a young woman named Sandra (Geneviève Bujold) who is a living replica of his dead wife, Courtland seizes a chance at reclaiming happiness—he woos Sandra and tries to mold her in the image of the wife he lost. Alas, history repeats when Sandra is kidnapped under circumstances recalling the earlier crime. How Courtland responds to this crisis, and what he discovers while doing so, takes the story down a path only De Palma and Schrader would be nervy enough to explore.

          As in most twisty thrillers, the plotting of Obsession isn’t necessarily the strong suit—the storyline is predicated on people making foolish decisions, after all—so what makes the picture effective is its insidious mood. Zsigmond imbues images with haze and shadows that embody the story’s psychological implications, and nobody uses music to create a menacing environment better than Hermann. De Palma contributes elements including elegantly probing camera moves and an appropriately suffocating degree of nonstop intensity. (De Palma also showcases supporting player John Lithgow, in one of his first major film roles.) Bujold and Robertson wisely underplay early scenes depicting their characters’ modern-day courtship, since each character hides dark secrets, and later, they both do well portraying people subject to the cruel vicissitudes of fate. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

Obsession: GROOVY

Carrie (1976)

          It might be exaggerating to call Carrie a good film, since it’s unabashedly campy and lurid, but there’s no arguing with results—among other things, the movie earned two Oscar nominations, elevated director Brian De Palma to A-list status, turned leading lady Sissy Spacek into a star, initiated an epic relationship between Hollywood and novelist Stephen King, and became one of the most popular horror movies of the ’70s. Considering that the flick is so trashy it features beaver shots beneath the opening credits and culminates with a blood-soaked teenager using telekinesis to slaughter her classmates, that’s quite a list of accolades.

          Based on King’s first novel, Carrie tells the sad story of Carrie White (Spacek), a misfit American teenager so ignorant to the ways of the world that she freaks out upon getting her first period while showering in the school gym. Her vicious classmates, led by instigator Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), taunt Carrie mercilessly, pelting her with sanitary napkins, so Carrie is excused from school for the rest of the day. Once she returns home, we discover the source of Carrie’s troubles—her lunatic mother, Margaret White (Piper Laurie), is a Bible-thumping abuser who considers sexual development sinful and tortures Carrie with long imprisonments in a closet.

          As Carrie reels from the shower incident and her troubles at home, she discovers the ability to move objects with her mind. Meanwhile, Chris is banned from the upcoming prom—indirect punishment for tormenting Carrie—so she plans grotesque revenge. Adding a final thread to the story is Carrie’s sympathetic classmate Sue (Amy Irving), who persuades her dreamboat boyfriend, Tommy (William Katt), to take Carrie to the prom. One bucket of pig blood later, it all goes to hell.

          De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen took relatively few liberties with King’s narrative, so they delivered his signature combination of gore and pathos intact, and Carrie zooms along at tremendous speed. Excepting two ill-conceived comedic sequences (both of which feature cringe-inducing music), Carrie is laser-focused on developing empathy for the protagonist and setting up a Grand Guignol climax. Generally speaking, Carrie is an efficient movie, and some of the picture’s elements exist on an elevated plane. De Palma’s trademark tracking shots manifest in full force, for instance (though the shots are akin to guitar solos in overwrought hard-rock songs, flamboyance for the sake of flamboyance). Additionally, De Palma uses the supporting cast like an orchestra, getting exactly the right single note each from Allen, Irving, Katt, Laurie, and others (including Betty Buckley and John Travolta).

          Spacek’s Oscar-nominated performance holds Carrie together, since her character’s emotional journey drives the story. As played by Spacek, Carrie is fragile during early scenes, ferocious when assaulting her enemies, and poignant once she realizes the tragic fate to which she has been consigned. De Palma’s ending represents his biggest departure from King’s book, and while the film’s concise denouement is more cinematic than the protracted conclusion of King’s narrative, it’s a bit much, right up to the notorious “gotcha” coda. Once again, however, there’s no arguing with results; Carrie made such an impression that it earned a Broadway adaptation in 1988, a low-budget movie sequel in 1999, and big-budget movie remakes in 2002 and 2013.

Carrie: GROOVY

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

          A year before The Rocky Horror Picture Show flopped on movie screens in the first step of its journey toward becoming a cult classic, another rock-and-roll musical did the exact same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. Written and directed by Brian De Palma, whose work on the picture bridges his early efforts at counterculture-themed satire with his future identity as a suspense maven, Phantom of the Paradise is an intentionally funny but still deeply weird morality tale about the inevitable problems that arise when art gets into bed with big business.

          William Finley, a gangly and bug-eyed college chum of De Palma’s whose film career mostly consists of strange characterizations in his friend’s movies, stars as Winslow, a sensitive composer finishing his masterpiece, a rock cantata adapted from Goerthe’s Faust. Winslow’s music catches the ear of megalomaniacal producer/executive Swan (Paul Williams), who steals Winslow’s magnum opus. Winslow seeks revenge, which triggers an insane series of events that leave Winslow disfigured and presumed dead.

          Thus, Winslow becomes a masked maniac called the Phantom, wreaking bloody havoc on Swan’s lavish new theater, the Paradise. Undaunted, Swan strikes a deal with his nemesis, because it turns out Swan’s in league with supernatural forces—and not above manipulating poor Winslow by threatening the life of the pretty young singer Winslow loves, Phoenix (Jessica Harper). To say that all of this comes to a bad end isn’t giving anything away, since violent climaxes are in the nature of these things, but the devil, pun intended, is in the details.

          De Palma fills the screen with bizarre costumes, sets, and props that blend everything from futurism to leather fetishism to pop art to transvestitism, so Phantom’s visuals are a crazy quilt of flamboyant signifiers. The Phantom’s guise, for instance, includes a strange biker helmet with some sort of bird-beak protrusion over the face and a gigantic eyehole that accentuates one of Finley’s abnormally large orbs. And then there’s the offbeat look of the movie’s real villain, Swan.

          Diminutive singer-songwriter Williams, of “Evergreen” fame, was often cast in ’70s films and TV shows as freaky characters because his tiny body and long blonde hair lent him a childlike look that he undercut by portraying creeps. In Phantom, Williams’ appearance is exploited in an especially playful fashion: His character is sexual catnip to every woman in sight. Yes, Phantom really does include (chaste) orgy scenes in which beautiful women writhe in ecstasy at the thought of bedding Paul Williams.

          The picture gets more outré when priceless B-movie actor Gerrit Graham shows up as Beef, a muscular glam-rock singer who’s a macho monster onstage and a prissy queen offstage; Graham is hysterical, the movie’s energy flags the minute he leaves the story, especially since his exit is such an outrageous high point.

          Despite being a quasi-horror picture, Phantom of the Paradise isn’t scary. It’s so over-the-top ironic that it’s impossible to take anything seriously, and in fact the picture’s incessant wink-wink strangeness makes the whole thing feel like a did-I-really-just-see-that dream. However, thanks to a breathless pace, nonstop cartoonish imagery, and the peculiar potency of Williams’ music (he composed the tunes himself, and shared an Oscar nomination for the background score with George Aliceson Tipton), Phantom of the Paradise is never boring.

 

Phantom of the Paradise: FREAKY

Sisters (1973)

          After cutting his teeth with a series of irreverent comedies that received marginal releases, director Brian De Palma found his calling as a fearmaker—and his first significant box-office success—by merging his lurid fixations with a cinematic style borrowed from Hollywood’s master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. An unnerving thriller about a reporter who believes she’s discovered that her docile neighbor has a homicidal twin sister, Sisters owes a huge debt to Hitch (right down to the use of composer Bernard Hermann), but it’s also an impressive demonstration of De Palma’s storytelling gifts. As the author of the film’s original story and the co-writer of its script, De Palma has his fingerprints all over this movie, and Sisters sets the template for his many subsequent sexually charged suspense flicks.

          The story is simple: Staten Island-based investigative reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) happens to look across the street during a frenzied murder in the apartment of French-Canadian model Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder). Collier calls the police, but after a skeptical cop (Dolph Sweet) fails to discover any evidence, Collier enlists a private detective (Charles Durning) to continue the investigation. The deeper Collier goes down the rabbit hole of her neighbor’s strange world, however, the more danger Collier invites. As in all of De Palma’s suspense flicks, the story is less important than mood and theme. With Hermann’s effectively bombastic score creating uncomfortable degrees of tension, De Palma sketches a world of biological abnormalities, dysfunctional sexuality, and rampant conspiracies; he also carefully sets the stage so Collier exists in a milieu of logic and rationality until circumstances quite literally land her in an insane asylum.

          Produced for drive-in suppliers American International, Sisters is brisk and sensationalistic, with plenty of gore and a smattering of nudity, yet it’s also finely crafted inasmuch as De Palma designs each frame with an architect’s precision. Despite dodgy cinematography and set decoration (De Palma later benefited from larger budgets and longer shooting schedules), editor Paul Hirsch’s wonderfully methodical pacing makes the most of the footage. So even though De Palma’s later suspense pictures are more visually impressive, few of them can match the no-nonsense economy of Sisters.

Sisters: GROOVY