On Blu-ray/DVD/VOD: DEBT COLLECTORS (2020), ROBERT THE BRUCE (2020) and AGONY (2020)

DEBT COLLECTORS
(US - 2020)

Jesse V. Johnson appears to have supplanted Isaac Florentine as the director of choice for Scott Adkins, still the best-kept secret in action movies even after critics finally appeared to discover his existence with 2019's astonishingly feral AVENGEMENT, an instant cult classic that should've opened on 3000 screens. Johnson's been plugging away in the world of DTV for 20 years, but he's found a niche with fellow workhorse Adkins, and DEBT COLLECTORS marks their sixth collaboration since 2017. These two can blow the doors of the joint with stuff like AVENGEMENT and ACCIDENT MAN, but DEBT COLLECTORS, a sequel to 2018's THE DEBT COLLECTOR, suffers from the same issues as its predecessor: it's trying to be a Shane Black movie but Johnson and co-writer Stu Small's script doesn't quite have the chops to compete. After being mentored in the first film in the ways of debt collection for loan sharks by '80s ninja movie washout Sue (Louis Mandylor), French (Adkins) is sucked back into that world when Sue asks him for a favor: he needs backup for a road trip from L.A. to Vegas to collect three vigs for his boss Big Tommy (Vladimir Kulich, also returning). One of those includes getting $155,000 from ruthless club owner and Sue's pegging-enthusiast ex-flame Mal Reese (Marina Sirtis), but as soon as they collect it, they're nearly ambushed by Mal's own crew trying to get the money back. Then they get $95K from gym owner Estaban Madrid (Cuete Yeska), and pay a visit to obnoxious Cyrus Skinner (Vernon Wells), before all hell breaks loose and people start trying to kill them. It seems Big Tommy's operation has been taken over by Molly X (Louie Ski Carr), the vengeful brother of the dead Barbosa Furiosa, French and Sue's double-crossing nemesis from the first film (where he was played by CANDYMAN's Tony Todd), and he's got scores to settle with all of them.

Johnson and Adkins finally unleash the mayhem in the third act, but too much of DEBT COLLECTORS is just endlessly talky, and once again, the repartee between French and Sue just isn't that snappy or witty. If anything, DEBT COLLECTORS is much darker and more serious than the first film, which makes the crazy action, especially a comically long alley French-Sue alley brawl that's a blatant riff on THEY LIVE, seem at odds with the overtures to real drama. Much of the time, this actually feels like more of a Louis Mandylor loan shark drama than a Scott Adkins actioner, with Mandylor really getting some room to work with Sue talking about his dead daughter and stopping at nothing to display his loyalty to the fatherly Big Tommy. A lot of Adkins fans liked THE DEBT COLLECTOR--with some citing it as a Walter Hill homage--but it just didn't click with me, and DEBT COLLECTORS really didn't either. A couple of nicely-delivered zingers land (Brit French trying to talk some rednecks out of a bar fight, only to be dismissed with a "Fuck off, Harry Styles!") and the action definitely takes center stage by the end, but it's hard to get excited about this when there's both better Johnson/Adkins projects and enough real Shane Black movies that we don't really need another middling imitation of one. (Unrated, 97 mins)



ROBERT THE BRUCE
(US - 2020)

A long-in-the-works passion project for Angus Macfadyen, ROBERT THE BRUCE is an unofficial spinoff of Mel Gibson's 1995 Oscar-winner BRAVEHEART, which featured Macfadyen as Robert the Bruce, the eventual King of Scots from 1306 to his death in 1329. Set not long after the 1305 execution of William Wallace, ROBERT THE BRUCE's title character has been met with one defeat after another, and goes off on his own as some defectors from his army are opting to hunt him down and turn him in for a handsome reward. He's seriously injured and nearly killed by a trio of traitors led by Will (ALMOST FAMOUS' Patrick Fugit), but he makes his way through the snowbound wilderness and takes refuge in a cave near the cottage of the peasant Macfie family, headed by the widow Morag (THE CABIN IN THE WOODS' Anna Hutchison). Morag's late husband and her brother were killed in battle in Robert the Bruce's army, and now she's raising her young son Scott (Gabriel Bateman) and her brother's teenage children, Carney (Brandon Lessard) and Iver (Talitha Bateman, who played Hutchison's daughter in the Nic Cage thriller VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY). It isn't long before the family is visited by Brandubh (DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY's Zach McGowan), Morag's husband's younger brother, who's on the hunt for Robert the Bruce while making his designs on his sister-in-law quite clear ("My brother was a lucky man...until death claimed him"). The family finds Robert the Bruce near death in the woods surrounding the cottage and realize it's their duty to nurse their king back to health, even though young Scott initially resents him and blames him for his father's death. Soon, the entire family bands together to protect and fight alongside the king, even if it means turning against one of their own when Brandubh inevitably tracks the Bruce to the Macfie home.

Supporting actors from beloved '90s classics making their own unofficial "sequels" decades later seems to be a thing this year between this and John Turturro's unwatchable BIG LEBOWSKI offshoot THE JESUS ROLLS. While it's easy to think of it as BRAVEHEART II: THE BRUCE ROLLS, ROBERT THE BRUCE isn't the fiasco you'd be inclined to assume it would be. Macfadyen produced and co-wrote the script, and while it obviously suffers from budget constraints, director Richard Gray keeps things polished and professional, with the snowy mountainous terrain of Montana doing a credible job of filling in for Scotland. It looks better than most DTV-level fare of this sort, and Macfadyen's intent is sincere (considering 25 years have passed since BRAVEHEART and he's still playing the same character at roughly that same age, he doesn't appear that much older, and he obviously hit the gym prior to shooting, looking noticeably slimmer than he has in recent years), but other than a journeyman actor finding a way to reprise his best-known role, what's the point? The story presented here is Robert the Bruce fan fiction, and the battles depicted in the 2018 Netflix film OUTLAW KING (with Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce) are only mentioned yadda-yadda-style in onscreen text before the closing credits, obviously since ROBERT THE BRUCE doesn't have the money to convincingly stage epic battle sequences. For the first hour, Macfadyen almost appears to be on Bruce Willis detail, offscreen for long stretches and periodically dropping in on his own movie to mostly lie in a cave grimacing in pain while we get caught up on the backstory of Morag's family. He almost seems to be erring on the side of caution to avoid the pitfalls of a vanity project--there's a big, rousing speech at the end, and Robert the Bruce isn't even the one delivering it. ROBERT THE BRUCE is far too long at just over two hours, Jared Harris is wasted in a brief cameo as John Comyn, and when MAGNOLIA's Melora Walters shows up as Morag's witch mother, apparently on furlough from a lost Shakespeare play, things get precariously close to IN THE NAME OF THE KING-era Uwe Boll territory. ROBERT THE BRUCE was scheduled for a one-night-only Fathom Events screening at theaters nationwide in April 2020 before that plan was nixed by the coronavirus, resulting in the straight-to-VOD premiere that was its destiny from the very start. All things considered, it's not bad, but perhaps this whole thing should be shut down before Jaimz Woolvett gets any bright ideas about UNFORGIVEN II: THE SCHOFIELD KID. (Unrated, 123 mins)


AGONY
(Italy/US - 2020)

Completed in 2017 and likely shelved in the wake of star Asia Argento's #MeToo scandal involving sexual assault allegations by her HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS co-star Jimmy Bennett, AGONY (originally titled THE EXECUTRIX) looks a lot like a throwback Italian horror film but never quite gets its act together. At least, not in its current version. There's very little information on this thing, and the film logging site Letterboxd didn't even have it listed until two days ago (under the EXECUTRIX title), and as of this writing, I'm the only Letterboxd user who's actually seen it, but it apparently had a running time of 115 minutes at one point. AGONY, on the other hand, starts rolling its closing credits at 75 minutes, and after the director credit for Argento's ex-husband Michele Civetta (they divorced in 2013, but remained professional collaborators), there's an "additional directing" credit for screenwriter Joseph Schuman that's in a different font than the rest. Three additional cinematographers buried in the credits is another sign of a troubled production, but even without seeing that kind of evidence, whole chunks of AGONY seem to be missing in terms of character consistency, motivations, and basic continuity. There's a foundation for an interesting idea here about the dynamics of abuse and how they're sometimes unwittingly handed down from generation to generation, but it gets drowned out by one tired horror cliche after another, culminating in a final reveal that's an infuriating resurrection of the oldest cop-out ending in movies.

It's too bad, because you can see Argento is really throwing herself into this. She stars as Isidora, a New York artist married to Michael (Jonathan Caouette) and with a young daughter, Jordan (Claudia Salerno, who's been unconvincingly dubbed over). Isidora's life is turned upside down when she's notified that her mother has died and left her the executrix of the family estate in a remote area of Tuscany. That's news to Isidora, who's been under the impression that her mother died 30 years ago when her gallery owner father Arthur (Rade Serbedzija) brought her to NYC. It turns out Isidora's mother was insane and tried to kill her, and she was so young at the time that her father thought it best to just get her far away, start over, and hope the memory faded. Off the family goes to Tuscany, where things are weird right from the start, and it's clear that everyone--including prim, proper caretaker Angelica (a nice Alida Valli-esque turn by Monica Guerritore) and affable handyman Rudolfo (long-ago Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli)--is hiding something, and that's even before aristocratic local Carlo (Franco Nero, looking like a rock star with a ponytail and an earring) starts dropping clunky exposition about the area being a haven for heretics and her mother being a witch. There's a good buildup here, and Civetta (or Schuman) tries to go for some Dario Argento colorgasms but it just comes off as cheap, garish, and overly affected, and the crazier Isidora becomes, the more they start piling on disorienting Dutch angles like a Hal Hartley wet dream. There are some good things in AGONY--Argento's increasingly anguished performance is pretty harrowing by the end, the look of the estate, which screams "decaying Visconti," and Davoli's ever-beaming grin, so vital to his Chaplin-esque comic performances for Pasolini, is used in a subversively sinister way here--but it's a structural and tonal disaster. Caouette, a documentary filmmaker (ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES) who acts infrequently, has no chemistry with Argento, young Salerno's revoicing is distractingly bad in a "Bob in THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY" way, and the final shot just destroys any good will AGONY might've been accruing in its favor. And who thought it was a good idea to cast Rade Serbedzija as a guy named "Arthur?" (Unrated, 82 mins)

Retro Review: THE SALAMANDER (1981)

THE SALAMANDER
(UK - 1981; US release 1983)

Directed by Peter Zinner. Written by Robert Katz and Rod Serling. Cast: Franco Nero, Anthony Quinn, Eli Wallach, Martin Balsam, Claudia Cardinale, Sybil Danning, Christopher Lee, Cleavon Little, Paul Smith, John Steiner, Renzo Palmer, Anita Strindberg, Jacques Herlin, Marino Mase, Fortunato Arena, John Stacy, Andre Esterhazy, Nello Pazzafini, Tom Felleghy, Gitte Lee. (R, 101 mins)

Based on the 1973 novel by Morris West, the long-in-the-works conspiracy thriller THE SALAMANDER began life as a screenplay adaptation by TWILIGHT ZONE and NIGHT GALLERY creator Rod Serling, left unfinished following his death in 1975. It languished for several years until Robert Katz (THE CASSANDRA CROSSING, THE SKIN) reworked and completed it. The film finally went into production in 1980, with veteran editor Peter Zinner making his directing debut at 62, fresh off his Oscar win for editing 1978's THE DEER HUNTER. Zinner was a late-blooming hot commodity at the time, as his other credits included 1967's IN COLD BLOOD, 1972's THE GODFATHER and 1974's THE GODFATHER PART II, but he really was a hired gun at heart, as his work on THE DEER HUNTER was sandwiched between esteemed prestige projects like 1977's TINTORERA and 1979's THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH. Shot entirely in scenic locations throughout Italy and featuring an all-star cast, THE SALAMANDER should've been a hit but was a DOA dud worldwide. It was another in a string of flops from Sir Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment, the British company that produced THE MUPPET SHOW and had some hits like THE MUPPET MOVIE, ON GOLDEN POND, and THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER, but lost a ton of money over 1980-81 on expensive bombs like the Village People's CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, the Farrah Fawcett-pursued-by-horny-robot-in-space sci-fi dud SATURN 3, the Clive Cussler adaptation RAISE THE TITANIC!, and the ill-fated THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER. ITC had distribution through various means, whether it was their own Associated Film Distribution or major studios like Universal and 20th Century Fox, but after being released in Europe in 1981, THE SALAMANDER remained unseen in the US until it turned up in one theater in NYC in May 1983 before being bum-rushed off to television and a belated VHS release in 1986. Pathfinder released it on DVD with no fanfare in 2002 but otherwise, it's spent 30 years in relative obscurity despite a cast packed with cult icons and big-screen legends and it's just been resurrected on Blu-ray courtesy of Scorpion Releasing. It's nice that it's available again and in a quality presentation, but it should come as no surprise that THE SALAMANDER isn't exactly an unsung classic waiting for its day in the sun.

The film opens in Rome with the assassination of beloved Gen. Panteleone (Fortunato Arena), a beloved statesman, WWII hero, and champion of democracy in his younger, post-war years. The truth behind his murder is buried and "natural causes" is the reason given to the public. Carabinieri officer Col. Dante Matucci (Franco Nero) is assigned to investigate, along with his big brotherly mentor Capt. Stefanelli (Martin Balsam). Both are stonewalled by everyone, from Panteleone's heir apparent Gen. Leporello (Eli Wallach) to Italy's counterintelligence chief Prince Baldasar (Christopher Lee), and the body count rises as anyone Matucci questions or is about to question turns up dead. After tying Panteleone's death to a decades-long string of assassinations of war criminals staged to look like suicides--pulled off by a hit man known as "The Salamander," the long-retired alter ego of billionaire industrialist Bruno Manzini (Anthony Quinn)--Matucci uncovers a plot to orchestrate a coup d'etat by a renegade group of military officials and high-powered politicos attempting a Make Italy Great Again move by taking the country back to the Mussolini glory days.

Matucci's investigation also involves a momentum-killing romance with Polish spy Lili Anders (Sybil Danning, who had just co-starred with Nero in Enzo G. Castellari's THE DAY OF THE COBRA), some ballbusting with his NATO-based USMC buddy Malinowski (Cleavon Little), and a sadistic and profusely sweaty torturer known as "The Surgeon" (Paul Smith, doing his usual MIDNIGHT EXPRESS stink-eye side-glancing act). Even with the cast and the potentially intriguing story, THE SALAMANDER just never catches fire despite the heroic efforts of a typically excellent score by Jerry Goldsmith that belongs in a more exciting movie. It gets bogged down in sequence after sequence of Matucci going to see someone, interviewing them, and then moving on to the next person. Zinner offers one low-energy car chase in which both cars crash through oddly-placed fruit stands right on cue. Intermittently-deployed voiceover narration by Nero is a clear indication of Zinner scrambling to cover gaps in the narrative, and most of the big names--Quinn, Lee, Little, Wallach, Claudia Cardinale (as Leporello's wife)--have little more than extended cameos. Balsam has one great bit where the camera slowly moves in on his aging face as he delivers a devastating monologue about how he, as a young man during WWII, stepped out for cigars and returned home to find his entire family massacred, but then Zinner ruins it, breaking the spell by inexplicably cutting to a reaction shot from a cat. There's a little oomph offered by some third-act sleaze, with Mrs. Leporello having a torrid affair with her husband's aide-de-camp Roditi (John Steiner, dubbed by Larry Dolgin) and the discovery that Gen. Leporello has a thing for very young girls, plus some unintended hilarity with a torture scene leading to a Franco Nero/Paul Smith brawl, with a hirsute Nero sporting nothing but a jockstrap with his bare ass flailing all over the place and nearly giving Smith a faceful of his taint. THE SALAMANDER is an interesting curio if for no other reason than that cast, all of whom are fine and do what's expected of them (Lee's smug, sinister Baldasur allows him to pull out almost every move in his "pompous prick" arsenal), but it proved to be one-and-done for Zinner as a director. After the film's failure, he returned to his regular job, earning an Oscar nomination for editing 1982's AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and several Emmy nominations for various TV gigs, including the epic 1983 ABC miniseries THE WINDS OF WAR and its 1988 sequel WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, winning for the latter. Zinner died in 2007 at 88.

In Theaters: THE LOST CITY OF Z (2017)

THE LOST CITY OF Z
(US/UK - 2017)

Written and directed by James Gray. Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, Franco Nero, Ian McDiarmid, Edward Ashley, Clive Francis, Pedro Coello, Matthew Sunderland, Johann Myers, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Murray Melvin. (PG-13, 141 mins)

Though he's been at it for nearly 25 years to significant critical acclaim, James Gray is a filmmaker perpetually in search of his big break. The first half of his career was plagued by long stretches of inactivity--his 1994 debut LITTLE ODESSA was followed by Harvey Weinstein shelving THE YARDS for two years before relegating it to a limited release in 2000 and several years passed before he returned with WE OWN THE NIGHT in 2007--while the second half was stalled by Joaquin Phoenix's Andy Kaufman-esque faux-meltdown while hitting the talk shows to plug 2009's TWO LOVERS, and 2014's THE IMMIGRANT was all but personally sabotaged by Harvey Weinstein, who acquired the kind of movie that cleans up during awards season and buried it in a blatant display of score-settling after clashing with Gray on THE YARDS. Gray could be forgiven if he was starting to feel that the entire movie industry was conspiring against him, but he's built a passionate cult of admirers among cineastes with his consistently excellent work over the years. Arguably the best American filmmaker working today that nobody knows about, Gray is an artist who was simply born too late. Influenced by the icons of past generations, from Sidney Lumet to Francis Ford Coppola to Martin Scorsese, Gray would've flourished in the 1970s. His early, gritty films have the distinctly vivid NYC feel that Lumet mastered, and THE IMMIGRANT--Gray's best film thus far--recalled the early 20th century immigrant experience in NYC as effectively as the young Vito Corleone scenes in THE GODFATHER PART II or the whole of Joan Micklin Silver's HESTER STREET.

Coming just three years after THE IMMIGRANT, Gray's latest film is the most radical departure of his career thus far, an adaptation of David Grann's 2009 non-fiction chronicle of British Army Lt. Percy Fawcett's obsession with finding a mythical ancient city deep in Amazonia, eventually disappearing with his son sometime in 1925, never to be seen again. As the film opens in 1905, Fawcett (played here by SONS OF ANARCHY's Charlie Hunnam, in a role originally intended for executive producer Brad Pitt), is a career military man and exemplary officer and marksman who's nonetheless consistently passed over for promotions and commendations as a result of his being the son of a drunken disgrace ("He's been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors," one high-ranking general from the "jolly good, old chap!" school harumphs to another). Fawcett doesn't rock the boat, going wherever he's ordered even if it means being away from his wife Nina (Sienna Miller) and their young son Jack. He's given an unusual opportunity by the Royal Geographical Society to put his cartography skills to use by journeying into Amazonia to map out a border between Bolivia and Brazil, who are ready to declare war over the region's rich rubber plantations. Assembling a small expedition that includes appointed aide-de-camp Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) and fellow officer and friend Arthur Manley (Edward Ashley), Fawcett also traces the source of the Rio Verde river and is hailed a hero when he arrives back in England. But while in the harsh region, Fawcett found traces of the existence of an ancient culture, an indigenous people who left evidence of art, craftsmanship, and language centuries earlier. The Society and its stodgy old-timers are expectedly incredulous, refusing to believe that "savages" are capable of sophisticated, intelligent thought and reason. Fawcett organizes another journey into the region, this time accompanied by James Murray (Angus Macfadyen, BRAVEHEART's Robert the Bruce and CRADLE WILL ROCK's Orson Welles in his best role in years), a veteran Arctic explorer who was second-in-command on the Shackleton expedition. The aging and out-of-shape Murray proves to be dead weight in the heat of the rain forest, growing ill and being sent off on his own with a native guide only to later accuse Fawcett of abandoning and leaving him to die. WWI beckons and Fawcett's explorations are put on hold until years later, when he and his now grown eldest son Jack (Tom Holland, soon to be seen as Peter Parker in the upcoming SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING) set off to find Fawcett's Moby Dick--The Lost City of Z (pronounced "zed")--to prove his theories of the existence of the ancient, yet advanced culture.

Even more ambitious than THE IMMIGRANT, THE LOST CITY OF Z finds Gray embracing the '70s auteur spirit, shooting on 35mm film (again working with IMMIGRANT cinematographer Darius Khondji) and actually taking Hunnam, Pattinson, and the other actors deep into remote regions of Colombia to shoot among the hazardous elements. Likewise, the bulk of the scenes at home in England are shot in actual locations (the scene where Fawcett's ship docks back home is a CGI effect that sticks out like a sore thumb). As a producer, Pitt seems to be someone who, when the opportunity presents itself, gets behind filmmakers drawn the kind of classical '70s aesthetic to which Gray subscribes, as seen in his work with Andrew Dominik (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD and KILLING THEM SOFTLY) and even Angelina Jolie's turgid but very '70s Antonioni-lite BY THE SEA. The use of film and actual places makes you smell the jungle and feel the sweltering humidity, and it gives THE LOST CITY OF Z a sense of texture and the feeling of an adventure saga of old, something David Lean might've made made with Peter O'Toole in the 1960s or Werner Herzog with Klaus Kinski in the 1970s. It's hard not to be reminded of the Herzog/Kinski masterpieces AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and FITZCARRALDO throughout THE LOST CITY OF Z, especially early on when, deep in the heart of the Bolivian jungle, they stumble on an opera house right in the middle of a rubber plantation owned by Baron de Gondoriz (Franco Nero), an actual historical figure whose depiction here is an obvious shout-out to Kinski's Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald in FITZCARRALDO. Comparisons to AGUIRRE come later as Fawcett descends into a certain level of madness, though subtly played, as he and Jack face certain death and he tries to calm his son with a wide-eyed declaration of "Whatever happens...it is our destiny!" But ultimately, the film THE LOST CITY OF Z most resembles is Bob Rafelson's acclaimed and unjustly forgotten 1990 exploration saga MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON--a throwback epic even way back then--which examined the rivalry between Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke's attempts--together and separate--to find the source of the Nile.

THE LOST CITY OF Z works best when it's on the river or in the jungle. It's when Fawcett is back home with his family that things get a little shaky. Gray doesn't do the best job managing the passage of time. It's never quite clear, at least as it's presented here, how he's "been gone for years" when every time he returns home, Nina has an infant child. In actuality, Fawcett mapped the Bolivia/Brazil border and discovered the source of the Rio Verde on two different expeditions. Here, it's presented as happening on the same one. While there were expeditions that lasted a few years, he had to return home to England more than is presented here or else the existence of the two kids can't be explained. At one point, it's flat-out mentioned "You've been gone for years," while Nina is holding what looks like a six-month-old baby. Whether we're supposed to make the leap that yes, he's coming home a lot and leaving again, isn't handled in the smoothest fashion. Hunnam turns in a powerful performance, though it's Pattinson who impresses in the quieter sidekick role. Pattinson never seemed at ease with the blockbuster attention that the TWILIGHT movies gave him, as one can see in his career choices since, which have seen him tackling two ambitious if unsuccessful projects with David Cronenberg (COSMOPOLIS, MAPS TO THE STARS) and David Michod's underrated Australian dystopian revenge drama THE ROVER. By the success of TWILIGHT, you'd think Pattinson would be locked in as the star, but he takes the supporting character and really creates something with it, and the bond that develops between Fawcett and Costin feels richer and more developed than anything involving Fawcett and his wife and kids, and the fact that we don't know a whole lot about Jack makes the father-son bonding  and the final act seem rushed, which ultimately compromises the impact of the closing scenes. Still, despite the hiccups, this is majestic, passionate moviemaking that you really don't see anymore (is it a sad state of affairs when you see an establishing shot of the jungle and feel a sense of relief that you aren't hearing CCR's "Run Through the Jungle" as accompaniment?), and we could always use films like THE LOST CITY OF Z that offer a tangible, organic "reality" that you just don't get with today's overabundance of CGI and greenscreen bullshit. I don't know about you, but I'm willing to go a little easy on some screenplay flaws for some believable scenes of actors in actual risky situations in actual unpleasant conditions.

In Theaters: JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (2017)

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2
(US/China - 2017)

Directed by Chad Stahelski. Written by Derek Kolstad. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Common, Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Franco Nero, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose, Lance Reddick, Bridget Moynahan, Peter Stormare, Claudia Gerini, Peter Serafinowicz, Thomas Sadoski, Tobias Segal, Wass Stevens, Luca Mosca, Chukwudi Iwuji, Simone Spinazze. (R, 122 mins)

A sleeper hit in 2014, JOHN WICK was held in such ambivalent regard by Lionsgate subsidiary Summit that it almost went straight to VOD until someone decided to arrange some test screenings and the audience response was through the roof. An electrifying, non-stop action thriller about a retired assassin--an unstoppable killing machine known to those in his profession as "The Boogeyman" and "Baba Yaga"-- on a mission of vengeance when the son of a Russian crime boss steals his car and kills his dog, JOHN WICK was filled with memorable shootouts, quotable dialogue ("Oh..."), a sly sense of humor, and an almost graphic novel-like sense of imaginative world building. In this world, the assassins have accoutrements like their own gold coin currency and they stay at the Continental, a safe sanctuary where business is conducted and violence forbidden. Friends become foes and back again, and it's understood that it's "just business." But things turned personal for John Wick (Keanu Reeves): on the day after the funeral of his cancer-stricken wife (Bridget Moynahan), his car is stolen and his dog killed by Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), the sniveling brat son of Wick's former boss, Russian crime lord Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). Wick declares war on Tarasov and single-handedly wipes out his entire organization over the course of the film, all while dodging an endless parade of fellow assassins after the bounty placed on his head by Viggo. JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 picks up shortly after where the first film left off, with Viggo's vengeful brother Abram (Peter Stormare) waiting in his secured office as his men try--and fail--to stop Wick, who's arrived at the Tarasov warehouse to reclaim his stolen car. Wick confronts Abram and spares his life, offering him a drink as a mutually agreed peace offering.

Wick's return to retirement is short-lived however, as Italian mobster Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) presents a marker--a blood oath among assassins--demanding Wick pay a debt. D'Antonio helped Wick with the final task for Viggo Tarasov that got him his freedom, and it was under the condition that he stay retired. Since he emerged from civilian life to wipe out Viggo's organization, D'Antonio declares the marker reactivated. His demand is that Wick whack his Rome-based sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini), who represents the Camorra on the international council of assassins, a seat D'Antonio believes he should've inherited from his late father. Wick refuses to acknowledge the marker, prompting D'Antonio to blow up his house. Under advice from Continental manager Winston (Ian McShane), Wick concedes he has no choice but to fulfill the marker if he wants any chance of returning to retirement. He travels to Italy, where he's greeted by Julius (Franco Nero), the manager of the Continental's Rome branch. Once Gianna is eliminated, Wick is double-crossed by D'Antonio, who puts out a $7 million contract on his life to create the appearance that he must avenge his sister's murder (really, Wick should've seen that coming). Once he's back in NYC, the chase is on as Wick spends the entire second half of the movie evading every covert assassin in the city--which is everyone from homeless guys to food truck vendors to street musicians--looking to grab $7 million to take out their most lethal colleague on the planet.

With a body count somewhere between "astronomical" and "fucking ridiculous," JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 exists in a patently unreal world where no cops of any kind are visible. Returning director Chad Stahelski (going solo this time, without the original's uncredited co-director David Leitch, his name left off the film by a DGA snafu) and screenwriter Derek Kolstad go for the same approach as THE RAID 2: it's the same story, just on a significantly larger and much more grandiosely ambitious scale. The set pieces are done with even more intricate, ballet-like precision, whether it's a high-tech hall of mirrors or Gianna's top security detail Cassian (Common) and Wick having a silencer shootout in the middle of a crowded subway station where no one even hears the guns going off around them. Stahelski goes for a much more stylized look this time out, with some tracking shots that serve as some of the best Kubrick homages this side of Nicolas Winding Refn's ONLY GOD FORGIVES. And some garish neon color schemes coupled with the staging of the action end up concocting an unholy visual fusion of Dario Argento, Brian De Palma, and John Woo. There's amusingly bizarre touches like the call center where assassins order contracts being filled with typewriters and analog equipment and looking a lot like a 1940s switchboard exchange straight out of HIS GIRL FRIDAY. This is absolutely exhilarating and gloriously bonkers filmmaking that rewards fans of the first film with numerous callbacks (there's another ominous "Oh..." from someone and we finally get to see Wick kill multiple guys with a pencil, a story that everyone who hears the name "John Wick" seems to reference), but takes everything to a higher level of inspiration and execution. Almost everyone in the cast gets a moment to shine, whether it's Nero's Julius breaking up a THEY LIVE-level brawl between Wick and Cassian, an unusually gregarious Laurence Fishburne (MATRIX reunion!) as the Bowery King, solid turns by returning JOHN WICK vets McShane and Lance Reddick as the Continental concierge, and a silent, scene-stealing performance by Ruby Rose as Ares, a mute, androgynous D'Antonio assassin who gives an almost Oscar-caliber flutter of an eye-wink to reassure her boss that she can handle Wick (spoiler: she can't). An improvement upon an already exemplary predecessor, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 takes its place beside the elite likes of THE RAID 2 and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD among the decade's greatest achievements in action cinema. It's that good.

Retro Review: A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY (1968)

A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY
(Italy/France - 1968; US release 1970)

A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY is a strange and impenetrable supernatural art/horror hybrid from Italian filmmaker Elio Petri that came between his pop Eurocult masterpiece THE 10TH VICTIM (1965) and the Oscar-winning INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (1970). Petri and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY co-writer Luciano Vincenzoni are credited with the screenplay, which also had some input from frequent Michelangelo Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra, and the end result definitely has an Antonioni-gone-horror feel to it, along with some distinctly Mario Bava-esque set pieces and story tropes (cursed houses, buried secrets, etc) that also prefigure the coming rise of the giallo, particularly the more paranormally-charged ones like Dario Argento's DEEP RED (1975). The film was also a likely influence on Pupi Avati's THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS (1976), especially with its immersion in the art world. Unable to focus on his work in Milan, creatively-blocked artist Leonardo Ferri (Franco Nero) decides to get away to the titular location, a villa in a remote rural community that was found by his married lover and primary backer Flavia (Vanessa Redgrave). Already suffering from strange nightmares--the film opens with a psychosexual, S&M fever dream sequence where Flavia is teasing and taunting a restrained Leonardo, who's wearing nothing but a diaper--Leonardo finds the isolation of the villa does little to improve his mental state. He's losing his grip on reality and starts seeing the ghostly apparition of Wanda (Gabriella Grimaldi), a promiscuous 18-year-old local girl who died on the property under mysterious circumstances in 1944. The townspeople obviously know something they aren't revealing, Leonardo's already bizarre behavior grows more erratic by the minute, and it becomes quite clear that Wanda's spirit doesn't like it when Flavia is around.

That plot synopsis makes A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY sound a lot more consistently grounded than it is. Torn between his art film aesthetic and the genre gutter, Petri too often errs on the side of the pretentious cineaste. He seems particularly indebted to Antonioni and 1966's BLOW-UP, from the trippy psychedelia and the obsession of its lead character to the script input of Guerra and the presence of Redgrave who, despite her top billing, really has a supporting role (she and Nero met on the set of 1967's CAMELOT and were a couple at the time, and would eventually marry decades later in 2006). The film takes forever to get going and the tedious first hour is a real slog, but once Petri decides to focus on the horror elements, things improve significantly. The villa--a Cinecitta set seen in many Italian films--is incredibly atmospheric and filled with corners and hidden spaces that have you on edge (there's some terrific cinematography by Luigi Kuveiller and wonderfully fluid camera work by Ubaldo Terzano, Bava's favorite camera operator), and the film features a score by Ennio Morricone that finds the legendary composer in one of his free-jazz freakout moods, occasionally incongruously comedic-sounding, with moans, dissonant percussion, and randomly blaring trumpets. Until a surprisingly grisly finale, Petri keeps things pretty low-key though he does stage one of the more chillingly effective seances you'll ever see in this type of movie. There's a lot to appreciate about A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, a rather obscure Eurocult curiosity that didn't turn up in US theaters until August 1970, just a couple of months before Petri's INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION opened. It infrequently appears on Turner Classic Movies in the vicinity of 3:30 am (with its gore and nudity, this is pretty strong stuff by TCM standards) and was given an manufactured-on-demand DVD release by MGM a few years ago, but it remains a little-remembered relic from its day. Its biggest problem is that Petri non-committally hovers around the line separating "important" and commercial cinema and throughout, he fights the obvious desire to slum it in genre fare. He handled that fusion a bit better with THE 10TH VICTIM, but ultimately, A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY is an intriguing, uneven mess that works best after snapping out of its Antonioni worship and begrudgingly admitting that it's a horror movie. (R, 106 mins)

The Cannon Files: ENTER THE NINJA (1981) and REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983)

ENTER THE NINJA
(US - 1981)

Directed by Menahem Golan. Written by Dick Desmond. Cast: Franco Nero, Susan George, Sho Kosugi, Christopher George, Alex Courtney, Will Hare, Zachi Noy, Constantin de Goguel, Dale Ishimoto, Ken Metcalfe, Joonee Gamboa, Leo Martinez, Jim Gaines, Michael Dudikoff. (R, 100 mins)

The mainstreaming of the ninja in American movies is something that must rank high on Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus' list of accomplishments as the heads of Cannon. Ninjas appeared in American films prior to Cannon's interest in them, most notably 1980's THE OCTAGON, a minor drive-in hit for Chuck Norris, but with the release of 1981's ENTER THE NINJA, ninjas became a ubiquitous pop culture fixture throughout the decade, and proved a very lucrative genre on video and cable. In 1981, the Golan-Globus incarnation of Cannon was still finding its footing and it would be another couple of years before they started to hit their stride as the "contract signed on a cocktail napkin" madmen that cult movie fans find so endearing today. ENTER THE NINJA became a surprise hit when it arrived in theaters in October 1981 but in retrospect, it feels more Roger Corman or Cirio H. Santiago in execution than it does Golan-Globus. This is mostly because it was shot in Manila and uses some familiar locations seen in Filipino action films, not to mention a supporting role for American expat and Santiago regular Ken Metcalfe, who also worked as the film's location manager. While it certainly has higher production values than a Santiago joint, it also appears to be completely looped in post-production, with Italian star Franco Nero's thick accent distractingly dubbed over by what sounds like an American voice actor whose specialty is the narration of workplace instructional videos. Even for viewers who might be unfamiliar with Nero, the dubbing is obvious, as the voice doesn't fit the veteran actor at all. The decision to dub him has remained the primary complaint that fans have about ENTER THE NINJA, and as the actor has become a beloved cult movie icon over the decades, it seems even more egregiously boneheaded now. Nero, 40 when ENTER THE NINJA was made, wasn't an unknown actor--he'd experienced huge success at home starting with DJANGO and was in constant employment between Europe and Hollywood since the mid-1960s--and by this point in his career, headlining a hit movie and having his voice replaced was insulting, to put it mildly.

Nero is Cole, an American ex-mercenary (why couldn't he just be a European mercenary and keep his voice?) traveling the world following a stint serving in the South African Border War. A loner fascinated with Asian culture, Cole has been in Japan studying the art of ninjitsu under Master Komori (Dale Ishomoto). Komori's acceptance of Cole as a ninja angers Hasegawa (Sho Kosugi), a stubborn traditionalist with shogun lineage who doesn't approve of letting outsiders learn their ways. Cole makes his way to Manila to visit his old war buddy Frank Landers (Alex Courtney), now a hopeless, irresponsible drunk whose wife Mary Ann (Susan George) oversees their farm in the outskirts of town. Frank and Mary Ann are routinely hassled and threatened by the flunkies of Charles Venarius (Christopher George), the megalomaniacal CEO of Venarius Enterprises, a corporation that has a serious interest in getting the Landers' land, as Frank and Mary Ann have no idea their farm is directly over a massive oil field. At this point, ENTER THE NINJA essentially becomes a modern-day western, with enigmatic outsider Cole stepping up to defend the Landers' and their workers against the strongarm tactics of the venal Venarius, who even resorts to hiring the embittered Hasegawa to come to Manila and kill Cole.

ENTER THE NINJA was one of the few Cannon releases actually directed by Golan himself. He does a serviceable job behind the camera, though he wisely didn't do it any more often than was necessary (other Cannon titles helmed by Golan include 1980's THE APPLE, 1986's THE DELTA FORCE, and 1987's OVER THE TOP). The film has some decent action scenes, coordinated by martial arts expert Mike Stone, who also gets a story credit (the script is credited to Dick Desmond, which is either a pseudonym or a one-and-done screenwriter, as this the only credit on his IMDb page). Things really come alive in the ENTER THE DRAGON-inspired climax as "white ninja" Cole makes his way through a series of hired killers and warriors, eventually taking out Venarius with a ninja star (Christopher George's performance is ludicrously over-the-top throughout, but the contemplative acceptance he demonstrates in his death scene is the stuff of legend) before his final showdown with Hasegawa, "the black ninja." The biggest problem throughout ENTER THE NINJA is that Golan takes an often too lighthearted tone that doesn't quite gel with the bloodshed on the screen. The score has a TV-show feel to it with a "wacky" cue that's repeated throughout, even when someone's getting their throat slit. There's also the buffoonish antics of the hapless "The Hook" (Zachi Noy), a portly, one-armed Venarius henchman with detachable forearm and hook hand. Cole gives him a beatdown at one point and tosses his hook hand back to him, all accompanied by a "sad trombone" sound effect. "The Hook" turns up again at the end, running away in fright at the sight of Cole, as Nero breaks the fourth wall, turns to the camera and winks. Going lighthearted is one thing, but Golan can't draw the line between lightening the mood and diving into full-on slapstick. It's not a dealbreaker, but indulging that sort-of comedy would be a mistake that Sam Firstenberg wouldn't make in the 1983 semi-sequel REVENGE OF THE NINJA. Indeed, REVENGE OF THE NINJA is hilarious for much different reasons.

REVENGE OF THE NINJA
(US - 1983)

Directed by Sam Firstenberg. Written by James R. Silke. Cast: Sho Kosugi, Keith Vitali, Virgil Frye, Arthur Roberts, Mario Gallo, Ashley Ferrare, Kane Kosugi, Grace Oshita, John LaMotta, Professor Toru Tanaka, Oscar Rowland, Steven Lambert. (R, 90 mins)

Sho Kosugi made such an impression as Hasegawa, the evil "black ninja" in ENTER THE NINJA that he was promoted to star and hero for the sequel-of-sorts, REVENGE OF THE NINJA. The second of a trilogy of films that aren't really direct sequels and can be enjoyed without having seen the others (though why would you deprive yourself of that?), REVENGE OF THE NINJA definitely exhibits more of a vintage '80s Cannon vibe than its predecessor. You can see the Cannon formula coming together now that Golan & Globus were gaining momentum as Hollywood players. Directing duties were assigned to Polish-born, Israeli-raised Sam Firstenberg, a former Golan assistant who attended film school in the US in the early 1970s. After graduating, Firstenberg moved back and forth between Hollywood and Tel Aviv, handling second-unit duties on a number of Israeli Golan productions in the '70s. Firstenberg would settle in America for good when he came to work for his old bosses once more after Golan & Globus set up shop in Hollywood. Though he was an efficient journeyman director who could handle any job he was assigned, including 1984's BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, Golan quickly realized with REVENGE OF THE NINJA that Firstenberg was a natural with action movies. Soon, Firstenberg became Cannon's go-to guy for ninja mayhem, directing 1984's NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, 1985's AMERICAN NINJA, and 1987's AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION. On Kino's new Blu-ray edition of REVENGE OF THE NINJA, the humble and immensely likable director is quick to thank the stunt coordinators and the editors for their work in helping put together the action sequences and rightly so, but there's no denying that Cannon's ninja movies were operating on a different level once Golan unleashed Firstenberg on them.

All of Cannon's ninja films are entertaining to various degrees (think NINJA III: THE DOMINATION with its fusion of a FLASHDANCE-meets-THE EXORCIST story into its ninja plot), but they all take a backseat to REVENGE OF THE NINJA, easily the greatest ninja movie ever made. In a Japan-set prologue, most of ninja Cho Osaki's (Kosugi) family is killed in an attack by enemy ninja. After being persuaded by his American friend and business partner Braden (Arthur Roberts), Cho and the surviving members of his family--son Kane (played, in a real stretch, by Kosugi's son Kane) and his mother (Grace Oshita)--move to Los Angeles where Cho and Braden run a successful gallery that imports high end Japanese dolls. What Cho doesn't know is that Braden is using the gallery as a front to smuggle heroin into L.A. in a side deal with powerful mobster Chifano (Mario Gallo). In his spare time, Braden also dresses up as a silver-masked ninja, taking out members of Chifano's organization and starting a turf war in an attempt to control the heroin trade himself. Chifano unleashes his goons on the gallery, which sets Cho and martial-arts expert cop Dave Hatcher (Keith Vitali) into action against both the mob and the treacherous Braden, who not only tries to kill Kane when the child accidentally breaks a doll and discovers the heroin inside, but also emerges victorious in a battle with Cho's mother, despite Granny Ninja putting up a good fight. Eventually, all parties converge inside Chifano's office building for an orgy of shuriken-hurling ninja carnage, with a final battle between Cho and Braden that's one for the ages, complete with Braden's clown car of a duffel bag somehow containing a robotic decoy ninja arm and a complete dummy ninja in an attempt to fool Cho.

Shot mostly in the very L.A.-like Salt Lake City, REVENGE OF THE NINJA is one of the most sublimely ridiculous action movies ever made. I didn't even mention Braden's eye-glowing powers of hypnosis, as evidenced by his turning his sexy assistant Kathy (Ashley Ferrare) against Cho and Kane and tricking her into trying to kill the boy. Or Cho and Dave's battle with some hilariously-dressed troublemakers in a park and just nonchalantly leaving when it's over. Or a pink-sweatered Kane taking care of some bullies. Or Cho's stealthy ninja-star belt buckle. There's a throwdown between Cho and some Chifano strongarms that turns into an insane van chase, and the final 20 or so minutes inside the skyscraper ranks among the finest set pieces ever seen in a Cannon film, culminating in some SANJURO-level gushing splatter when Cho finally kills Braden. Several of the film's more violent moments were trimmed after the film was originally given an X rating by the MPAA, and that edited, R-rated version is what hit theaters and VHS back in the day. When the film appeared on cable in the mid '80s, it was the uncut, uncensored version, which was eventually released on DVD and remains intact on the new Blu-ray. REVENGE OF THE NINJA was an even bigger hit in theaters than its predecessor. Opening on the slow weekend of September 16, 1983, when the only other new movies in theaters were THE FINAL OPTION and STRANGE INVADERS, neither of which cracked the top ten, REVENGE landed in third place on just 432 screens, with a per screen average of nearly $5000. Small numbers by today's standards, but that weekend's top movie was MR. MOM in its ninth week, on 1300 screens with a $3000 per screen average. It stayed in the top five for two more weeks, and was in the top ten for a month. Though MGM handled the distribution, REVENGE OF THE NINJA was one of the most successful projects undertaken by Golan & Globus and was instrumental in getting the momentum going for Cannon over the next few years.

The Blu-ray features a commentary track with Firstenberg and stunt coordinator Steve Lambert, unfortunately moderated by one-man serial commentary wrecking crew Bill Olsen. Olsen indulges in his usual antics, demonstrating his continued inability to pronounce names correctly (he refers to screenwriter James R. Silke as "James Sikes"), snickering at names he finds funny (he's particularly delighted by one stuntman's name being "Dick Hancock," and giggles about it so much that a clearly unamused Lambert says "Well, his real name is Richard Hancock"), and focusing on things that don't really matter (Olsen seems unusually concerned with why veteran character actor Virgil Frye, as Dave's irate boss Lt. Dime, gets above-the-title billing with Kosugi and Vitali on the poster, and brings it up so many times that Firstenberg finally says "I had nothing to do with the contractual stuff on the poster"). Like many participants on Olsen-moderated commentaries, Firstenberg and Lambert sound audibly annoyed with him and do their best to shut him down, even if Lambert's main contributions are limited to pointing out when he's doubling either Kosugi or Roberts. Olsen's continued presence on these commentaries is baffling, especially when there's so many more knowledgeable film historians out there who won't derail a discussion by snickering like an eight-year-old because a guy has the words "dick" and "cock" in his name. It deserves a better commentary, but make no mistake, for any fan of Cannon and '80s action, REVENGE OF THE NINJA is an essential masterpiece. The insanity continued when Firstenberg, Silke, and Kosugi reunited for NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, with Kosugi as another ninja hero. For more on that classic, and Kosugi's post-Cannon career, click here.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE VISITOR (1979)

THE VISITOR
(Italy - 1979)

Directed by Michael J. Paradise (Giulio Paradisi).  Written by Lou Comici and Robert Mundy.  Cast: Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Joanne Nail, Franco Nero, Sam Peckinpah, Shelley Winters, Paige Conner, Wallace Wilkinson, Elizabeth Turner. (Unrated, 109 mins)

(Note: for a more in-depth review of the film, click here; this is a follow-up piece specifically covering the 2013 re-release by Drafthouse Films and the just-released Blu-ray)

A couple of years back, Drafthouse Films, the distribution offshoot of cinehipster mecca The Alamo Drafthouse, managed to create a legitimate cult movie sensation out of the delirious 1988 martial arts actioner MIAMI CONNECTION (and lest you think they're only showcasing "bad" movies, they also did a fine job of resurrecting the legendary, semi-lost 1971 Outback nightmare WAKE IN FRIGHT).  Late last year, they tried to go for another MIAMI CONNECTION with the original 109-minute uncut version of the insane 1979 Italian horror film THE VISITOR.  While the re-release wasn't greeted with the same level of enthusiasm as MIAMI CONNECTION, it did bring some increased notoriety to an utterly batshit, singularly unique film that's been patiently awaiting its day in the sun.  Released on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit in America in a truncated 90-minute version in 1980, THE VISITOR was quickly consigned to late-night TV and video stores to be discovered by cult movie aficionados, Eurotrash addicts, and insomniacs who, for the most part, kept it to themselves for the next 30 or so years.  With its perfect storm of past-their-prime actors, an incoherent script, and Italian filmmakers ripping off blockbuster American hits like THE OMEN and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, it's the kind of B-movie that only could've happened in the late 1970s.  Perhaps one reason that the re-release of THE VISITOR didn't catch on like MIAMI CONNECTION did was that, while completely bonkers, it's not as MST3K hilarious as MIAMI CONNECTION, and also because it wasn't quite as obscure.  Code Red released a fine DVD special edition of the uncut version (1.85:1 anamorphic) in 2010, with a great transfer and a wealth of extras, including two commentary tracks--one with star Paige Conner, moderated by filmmakers and VISITOR superfans Scott Spiegel (co-writer of EVIL DEAD II) and Jeff Burr (director of LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III), and another with star Joanne Nail, moderated by cult movie expert Marc Edward Heuck.

None of those Code Red-produced extras (which included interviews with Conner, Nail, producer Ovidio Assonitis, and Atlanta location manager and future John Carpenter associate Stratton Leopold) are carried over to the new Drafthouse Blu-ray, so if you bought that DVD in 2010, you better hang on to it.  The Conner and Nail commentaries are essential listening for VISITOR nerds, even if Conner has to repeatedly tell Spiegel and Burr that the movie was shot over the summer and she didn't need permission to be out of school, that Spiegel is incredulous over "no writers being credited," despite a "Written by Lou Comici and Robert Mundy" credit at the beginning of the film, and, in a real whopper, Spiegel declaring "Mel Ferrer and Jose Ferrer are brothers."  Burr: "Are they?"  Spiegel: "They're at least first cousins."  No.  Wrong and wrong.  No relation.  Drafthouse's Blu-ray (again framed at 1.85:1) may not have the extensive bonus features that Code Red offered but it does make itself unique with a great Lance Henriksen interview.  A relative unknown at the time with small roles in DOG DAY AFTERNOON, NETWORK, and DAMIEN: OMEN II under his belt, Henriksen recalls the film as a "hodgepodge...with space babies, birds, and Jesus Christ," and often asked himself "What were they thinking?  Where was the narrative in this thing?  I had no idea what I was doing." He says that shooting was sometimes problematic because director Giulio Paradisi refused to speak English and the dialogue sometimes felt like it hadn't been translated accurately. He doesn't think very highly of the film itself but has fond memories of working with the veteran actors and thought it unusual that Assonitis actually showed up at his agent's office and told him "You're going to sign this contract and you're going to Rome, and you're going have a good time."  Henriksen also recalls dragging a group of his friends to Times Square to see the movie in a 42nd Street grindhouse, where someone in the balcony yelled "I want my money back!"  (Henriksen: "There were 30 people in the audience, and 15 of them were my friends").

 

In addition to a short segment with cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri, where he discusses some locations and visual effects, co-writer Comici is also interviewed and has some even more wild stories.  Initially hired because he spoke both English and Italian, Comici's main responsibility was taking Paradisi's ideas and forming them into a story ("Giulio didn't have a story, he just had scenes").  Paradisi, a former assistant to Federico Fellini who primarily worked in TV commercials and nature documentaries, had some insane ideas (Comici: "He wanted elephants in one scene because he thought people liked elephants..." and "He was always trying to work in scenes of people on the toilet") and was even fired at one point during pre-production before (and Comici stresses that he heard this second-hand) "one of Giulio's relatives put a gun to the producer's head and told him to hire Giulio back."  Comici's involvement in the film ended when he showed up at Assonitis' office with a complete script and handed it to Paradisi who, without even looking at a single page, dismissed it and threw it out of the fourth-story window.

If Comici's memories seem slightly embellished, then wait until you read the Blu-ray's accompanying booklet, written by Zack Carlson, featuring an interview with Assonitis.  Assonitis has been prone to hard-to-swallow statements in the past, like saying he never saw THE EXORCIST before making the blatant EXORCIST ripoff BEYOND THE DOOR, and while it's not impossible to believe that other writers--including Oscar-nominated SERPICO and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER screenwriter Norman Wexler--made some uncredited script contributions, you can't help but question the producer's claim that, upon visiting an ill John Huston a week before his death in 1987, he noticed a VHS copy of THE VISITOR on a table near the cinema icon's sickbed.  Carlson's essay is nicely-done and he obviously displays a great affinity for the film, which he describes as a "distinctly European skull-wrecker," and "disorienting, uncomfortable, misanthropic, and a genuine masterpiece."  Code Red's DVD looked superb and they deserve a significant amount of credit for making this available before the hipsters had the chance to embrace it.  But Drafthouse's Blu-ray, an HD upgrade from the same materials provided by Assonitis, takes it a slight step further, and I'm in favor of anything that makes this one-of-a-kind, looney-tunes mindfuck as accessible as possible, and I have no doubt that anyone who's cherished THE VISITOR for as long as I have finds the idea of this being on Blu-ray almost as nuts as the film itself.

Cult Classics Revisited: THE VISITOR (1980)

THE VISITOR
(Italy - 1979; 1980 US release)

Directed by Michael J. Paradise (Giulio Paradisi).  Written by Lou Comici and Robert Mundy.  Cast: Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Joanne Nail, Franco Nero, Sam Peckinpah, Shelley Winters, Paige Conner, Wallace Wilkinson, Elizabeth Turner, Steve Somers, Neal Boortz. (R, 90 mins/Unrated, 109 mins)

A longtime cult favorite thanks to its constant airings on late-night TV throughout the 1980s, the utterly delirious Italian horror film THE VISITOR is like nothing seen before or since.  For years, the following this film had in America was based on its butchered 90-minute US cut released on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit throughout 1980 and quickly shipped off to TV.  This US edit excised nearly 20 minutes from the original European version, with a good chunk of that being important exposition at the beginning of the film.  Code Red released the uncut version on DVD in an impressive transfer with some great extras in 2010, finally allowing fans to see the intended version and it's a bit of a double-edged sword:  on one hand, the film is still completely looney tunes, filled with confused actors, memorable set pieces, some impressive set designs, some incredibly striking imagery, and what looks like the most dangerous and impractical staircase ever built in a residence, but on the other, the clarification of several major plot points significantly reduces the jawdropping WTF? factor that US fans knew and loved for so many years.  In its intended 109-minute form, THE VISITOR is still completely preposterous, but its preposterous plot elements now make some semblance of sense.  Don't misunderstand me: this is a mandatory piece of head-scratching cinema, but people seeing the uncut version without experiencing the truncated US cut that so many of us were so thoroughly baffled by for so many years might not see what all the fuss is about among the people who love this thing.  The two versions of THE VISITOR provide a rare example where some fans might actually prefer the chopped-down version just for the sentimental value.

Filmed mostly in Atlanta, GA in the summer of 1978, with some interiors (including the memorably-designed house where much of the climactic action takes place) shot in Rome at De Paolis and Cinecitta, THE VISITOR was produced by Italian schlock king Ovidio G. Assonitis, an Egyptian-born producer/director who first gained notoriety a few years earlier with his 1975 Italian EXORCIST ripoff BEYOND THE DOOR, which he directed under the pseudonym "Oliver Hellman."  BEYOND THE DOOR, with Juliet Mills as a pregnant mom who turns into a vile, vomiting, obscenity-spewing hag when her fetus is possessed by Satan, became a surprise box office hit despite a lawsuit by Warner Bros., irate over its similarities to THE EXORCIST (this didn't stop Italian producers from unleashing a flood of EXORCIST ripoffs for the next several years).  Assonitis then produced and may have directed some of 1976's FOREVER EMMANUELLE before ripping off another American blockbuster with 1977's TENTACLES, a JAWS imitation that replaced a great white shark with a mutant octopus stirred from the ocean depths some by illegal drilling done by an oil company whose unscrupulous owner is played by a seriously slumming Henry Fonda.  If you're wondering why Fonda is appearing in an Italian ripoff of JAWS, you might want to ask John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, and Claude Akins the same thing.  And while it's not completely ridiculous to cast Huston (born in 1906) and Winters (born in 1920) as siblings, I have to question what compelled Assonitis to make it a plot point that Huston is the younger one.  It's just that kind of movie.  TENTACLES had an unusually overqualified cast for such a low-grade affair, but if you listen to the commentary track by longtime Assonitis production associate Peter Shepherd on 1986's Assonitis-produced CHOKE CANYON, you'll hear some great stories about Assonitis being the kind of producer who paid well-known but past-their-prime actors duffel bags full of cash that was stored above the ceiling tiles in a rented office.  Fonda shot his three or four TENTACLES scenes--which consist of his character making some angry phone calls that are vague enough ("Why wasn't I told about this?" and "Just take care of it!") that I remain convinced he had no idea he was in a movie about a giant mutant octopus--in one morning at his own dining room table.  That's right:  Assonitis brought a skeleton crew to Fonda's Beverly Hills home, got the shots he needed and Fonda was handed a bag of money.  They worked so quickly that Fonda audibly flubs a line at one point and they just left it in, as I'm sure the Hollywood legend wasn't about to listen to any of this "Let's try that again" bullshit.  With that kind of chicanery in his bag of tricks, it's no wonder that Assonitis was picked to run Cannon in its final days after Menaham Golan and Yoram Globus left and before the plug was mercifully pulled.

Assonitis has always had a reputation for hiring directors just to fire them so he can take over the filming himself, with the most famous example being his Italian-made sequel PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING (1982).  Assonitis asked PIRANHA producer Roger Corman if he had any promising employees he thought might be a good candidate to direct, and Corman gave him special effects technician and art director James Cameron, who had worked behind the scenes on Corman productions like BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980) and GALAXY OF TERROR (1981) and did some matte work on John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981). Cameron and Assonitis butted heads throughout the filming of PIRANHA II, with Cameron, unable to communicate with the all-Italian crew, required to run everything by Assonitis and usually being told no.  Knowing what we know now about Cameron's mercurial, control-freak nature, this was a match made in Hell from the start, and eventually, after catching Cameron sneaking into the editing room to undo his ordered changes, Assonitis fired him and finished the film himself.  Most of what's in PIRANHA II is Cameron's work, and while he went on to fame and fortune two years later with THE TERMINATOR, the "king of the world" still insists PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING is "the greatest flying piranha movie ever made."

Assonitis' paw prints are all over THE VISITOR, a combination ripoff of THE OMEN and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, with much of his usual tech crew present, and TENTACLES alumni Huston and Winters showing up for another bag of that sweet Assonitis cash (some sources erroneously list Henry Fonda among THE VISITOR's cast, but he's not in either version and was never involved, and this likely stems from someone somewhere confusing this with TENTACLES).  But according to co-stars Paige Conner and Joanne Nail (SWITCHBLADE SISTERS) on the DVD extras, Assonitis actually left the directing to the director on THE VISITOR, Giulio Paradisi, a former assistant to Federico Fellini.  Credited as "Michael J. Paradise," Paradisi works with cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri to create some truly vivid, memorable images throughout the film. Some of the visual effects are rudimentary and might've worked a bit better if most of the budget wasn't going to the big-name cast, but there's a stylistic ambition to THE VISITOR that's undeniable and often breathtaking. How much of the film's singularly unique look is Assonitis and how much is Paradisi's time spent with Fellini is up in the air. Yeah, it's a cheesy Italian horror movie, but it's trying its utmost to be the weirdest, most batshit insane Italian horror movie you've ever seen.

The plot centers on eight-year-old Katy Collins (Conner), who lives with her divorced mother Barbara (Nail) and her boyfriend, Raymond Armstead (Lance Henriksen), the owner of the fictional Atlanta Rebels NBA team.  Raymond keeps pressuring Barbara to marry him, but she refuses.  She loves him, but never wants to remarry, and she has a fear that something unnatural within her has been passed on to Katy, a bratty, incredibly self-absorbed child who can be politely described as a sociopath.  Unknown to Barbara, it's no accident that she's met Raymond.  Raymond has sold his soul to a cabal of evil and limitlessly wealthy one-percenters headed by Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer).  Walker and his mystery men (one is played by then-Atlanta-based radio host and future Libertarian talk radio hero Neal Boortz!) have given Raymond financial success with his basketball team in exchange for access to Barbara, the one woman of her generation who possesses the genes of "Sateen," a cosmic demon who needs Barbara to give birth to a son to pair with Katy in order to be reborn through them and rule the universe.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Jerzy (Huston) has been dispatched from an unknown netherworld by a Christ-like figure (Franco Nero) surrounded by bald children to go to Atlanta and prevent Sateen's rebirth.  Jerzy arrives at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (where did he get that connecting flight?) and meets with a group of bald men in jogging suits on top of a downtown building (next to the famous Equitable Building), where he stares off at the Atlanta skyline while they do weird New Age/vogueing moves behind white partitions.  Jerzy starts snooping around the Collins house just as a talking toy bird bought for Katy is somehow replaced with a gun, which accidentally goes off, resulting in Barbara getting shot in the spine and confining her to a wheelchair (Katy's reaction:  a mere shrug).  Skeptical detective Jake Durham (Glenn Ford, with some really distracting dried ointment covering a cold sore on his lower lip) keeps pestering Katy about how the gun got in the house, with his dogged persistence almost immediately resulting in a spectacular OMEN-style demise in an explosive car wreck after getting his eyes pecked out by a bird while behind the wheel (there's an incredible motorcycle stunt in this scene performed by Chuck Norris' brother Aaron).  Along with an annoying, "Shortnin' Bread"-singing housekeeper (Winters), Jerzy ingratiates himself into the Collins house by posing as a sitter from the childcare service, because who wouldn't leave their eight-year-old daughter with a 73-year-old stranger who looks like John Huston?  Considering that this is THE VISITOR, this is actually one of the film's more plausible plot points.  After witnessing her wreak bitchy havoc at an ice skating rink and over a competitive game of Pong (John Huston playing Pong on a huge 1970s projection TV is worth the price of admission, folks), Jerzy lays out the situation for Katy:  that he's there to take her away and destroy the evil part of herself that Sateen needs, and that they have to stop Raymond from fathering a child with her mother.  The inherently evil Katy isn't buying it.  She sneers, sasses, calls him an "old bastard," and essentially says "Game on."

Barbara wants nothing to do with having another child, and when she refuses Raymond's marriage proposal yet again, he's relieved of his duties by Dr. Walker, who tells him that "other measures" are now being taken.  Specifically, Barbara is abducted by a spaceship on a dark highway and impregnated with the child of Sateen and left with no memory of the event (why didn't they just do this in the first place?  Why did they have to buy an NBA team?  Is it just to cram in the exploding basketball sequence that someone concocted?).  When Jerzy finds out Barbara is pregnant, the stage is set for the final battle between good and evil.  Or something like that.

And that's a plot synopsis from the uncut version.  Imagine watching THE VISITOR without any of the "Sateen" stuff mentioned.   All of that material was cut from the US version that was originally set to be released by AIP, but when they folded and became Filmways, THE VISITOR was sold to the short-lived International Picture Show.  As far as the cast is concerned, most of the cuts to the US version affected Ford, Nero, and none other than legendary WILD BUNCH director Sam Peckinpah.  Ford's already small role was even smaller in the American cut (which is a shame because he's really good here), but he gets a couple of crucial additional scenes in the uncut version, especially one unnerving bit where he finds the talking toy bird which repeatedly boasts "I'm a pretty bird."  In the American cut, an uncredited Nero didn't even appear until the very end and had no dialogue.  In the uncut version, he's introduced in the first scene and explains (via someone else's dubbed voice) all of the "Sateen" business and sends Jerzy on his mission.  Also, the opening scene is different in both versions: in the uncut version, Jerzy is shown in some surreal, desolate landscape with a low, flaming sun as a robed, hooded figure walks toward him.  Then, a snowy blizzard hits and the hood flies off to reveal some sort of demon-child underneath.  The US cut opened the same way until the snow hit (with a shortened version of Nero's and Huston's conversation played over the imagery; mind you, we don't see Nero at this point in the US cut).  The snowy part of the sequence was moved to much later in the film, intercut with the aforementioned Pong game as a vision presented to Katy by Jerzy.  Either way works for that, but it's the removal of Nero's character from the opening of the film that completely eliminates any sense of coherence from the very start.  We have no idea who these people are, why Jerzy is in Atlanta, who these bald jogging suit dudes are or why Raymond has these rich assholes prodding him to knock up his girlfriend.  

Peckinpah's participation in THE VISITOR has always been one of its more inexplicable elements. Considered unemployable by Hollywood due to his rampant drug and alcohol abuse (painfully apparent on his 1975 misfire THE KILLER ELITE), he briefly dabbled in acting during this time to keep some money coming in, also appearing in Monte Hellman's Italian/Spanish western CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978), and getting a jokey "Introducing Sam Peckinpah" credit in the US version.  Peckinpah had the biggest commercial success of his career with 1978's trucker blockbuster CONVOY, but rumors have persisted for years that he spent most of the shoot holed up in his trailer on coke binges while friend and second-unit director James Coburn, on the set because he wanted to get a DGA card and needed some experience, actually directed a large chunk of the movie.  In the US cut of THE VISITOR, Peckinpah turns up late in the film as Barbara's doctor, and she consults him about having an abortion.  He's shot mostly in silhouette, you never get a good look at his face, and his voice is dubbed by veteran expat actor Michael Forest.  In the uncut version, he's specifically referred to as "Dr. Collins," and it's revealed that he's Katy's father and Barbara's ex-husband.  Peckinpah and Nail also have an additional scene before that where they acrimoniously catch up--he's still bitter over the divorce--and she begs him for help.  In the uncut version, you get a clear view of Peckinpah, though his behavior reportedly ranged from uncooperative at best to combative at worst during his brief time on the set and the skidding director was too wasted to remember his lines.  Forest's voice doesn't always match Peckinpah's lip movements, and many shots of Peckinpah talking have him turned away from the camera, probably out of necessity.  On the CHOKE CANYON commentary, which serves as more of a walk through every other Assonitis production, Shepherd recalls "I'm not exactly sure how Sam Peckinpah got involved in THE VISITOR, but we were glad when he left."

But it was the unusual cast and that complete lack of coherence that were major parts of THE VISITOR's appeal to impressionable kids and bleary-eyed insomniacs catching this on TV at 2:30 am back in the '80s and wondering the next morning if the entire film was just strange dream they had. You could've chalked it up to being edited for television but nope, that wasn't the problem.  Renting this on VHS proved that it was just as confusing, only with minor additional splatter and some interesting swearing (young Conner telling Ford "Go fuck yourself!" is a keeper).  Assonitis and Paradisi concocted the basic story for THE VISITOR, with the script written by Lou Comici (who went to write for TV shows like SILK STALKINGS and WALKER, TEXAS RANGER) and Robert Mundy, whose only other screenwriting credits are the forgotten Joe Namath/Barbara Eden comedy CHATTANOOGA CHOO-CHOO (1984) and the Bridget Fonda/Russell Crowe bomb ROUGH MAGIC (1995). 

Georgia native Conner acted only sporadically after THE VISITOR.  She had a small role in the Kristy McNichol/Tatum O'Neal hit LITTLE DARLINGS (1980) and briefly appeared (as the girl with the purse full of potential self-defense weapons) in the famous "Natalie gets assaulted" episode of THE FACTS OF LIFE (at 2:50 into that clip) before logging some time as an Atlanta Falcons cheerleader in the '90s. She now owns a luxury beauty salon in Atlanta.  She's an absolute charmer on the DVD commentary track, sharply recalling details of the production 30 years later and sharing warm memories of working with Huston, who took her under his wing, coaching her on her performance and how to control her distinct Southern accent.  Famed animator Bruno Bozzetto contributed some animation to the climactic bird attack that's quite an extraordinary sequence in conjunction with the memorable score by Franco Micalizzi.  Micalizzi's work on THE VISITOR ranks among the great scores in any Italian horror film. It's so loud, so bombastic, and so catchy that I'm shocked Quentin Tarantino hasn't appropriated it for use in one of his own films.  During this time, Italian film crews were regularly shooting in the Atlanta area (films like the Bud Spencer comedy THE SHERIFF AND THE SATELLITE KID and Antonio Margheriti's CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE had extensive location work in the downtown Atlanta area).  Along with Burt Reynolds' SHARKY'S MACHINE, THE VISITOR makes maybe the best use of noteworthy Atlanta locations (the Equitable Building, the now-demolished Omni, the cylindrical, rotating Peachtree Plaza Hotel, Underground Atlanta) from that era.  If you've never experienced THE VISITOR, in either of its two existing forms, then you're depriving yourself of a time-capsule-worthy piece of vital Italian Eurotrash cinema.  This is pretty close to as crazy as it gets.

11-minute fan montage of VISITOR highlights with selections from Micalizzi's score

6 March 2014:
UPDATE:  Click here for a look at the Drafthouse Films Blu-ray release