Shocktober Revisited: The Shining

 This is the first part of a three part series posted earlier this year. Parts two and three, devoted to Room 237 and Kubrick's shorter cut of the film - released internationally - will be posted tomorrow.

 I've been slowly working my way through Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, which is much better than I expected it to be (his recent output has been hit-or-miss). For those of you who managed to miss out on the hoopla surrounding its release, Doctor Sleep is a sequel (of sorts) to The Shining, one that centers on a grown Dan Torrance who crosses paths with a roaming "family" that feeds on people with the "shine." In a lot of ways, King is doubling down on the differences between his book The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's loose adaptation, which has come to dominate popular culture. When people think of The Shining now, they predominant image in their minds is going to be Jack Nicholson.

 Since I'm not done with Doctor Sleep yet, it wouldn't really be fair to compare the book(s) with the film, although I'd recommend you read The Shining before you read Doctor Sleep (people coming to King's sequel with only the knowledge of what happens in the film are going to be very confused by the immediate appearance of a character that dies in the movie). Reading the book did put me in a mood to watch The Shining again, and since Room 237 arrived from Netflix, that seemed like a good time to revisit the film. (I'll look at Room 237 separately tomorrow).

 At this point in time, The Shining is such a part of our cultural zeitgeist that even people who haven't seen the film know about it. "Here's Johnny!" is nearly as universally recognized as the shower scene from Psycho, and whether people have seen The Shining or not, it feels like we know the basic beats of the film: Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the caretaker of The Overlook Hotel while it's closed from November to May, and brings along his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Never mind that the solitude drove Delbert Grady (Philip Stone) mad enough to murder his wife and children with an axe, and then kill himself. Or the fact that Jack seems.. maybe a little unstable and has issues with his wife and son. They'll be fine. And everything is going, let's say pretty well until a snowstorm comes through, and they're stuck inside. But it isn't the solitude that gets to them. Nope. Something is... off about the hotel, and after a series of potentially ghostly encounters, Jack loses it and tries to kill his family. Danny has "the shine," which gives him visions and allows him to reach out to Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), the Overlook's cook, but can her arrive in time to help?

 What people tend to forget - or simply don't know because they haven't seen it - is how deliberately paced The Shining is to keep audiences off kilter. It's not simply that Danny's imaginary friend "Tony" has an inherently creepy voice, or that the film is punctuated with slow push-ins on Nicholson staring, often ending in smash cuts to title screens, but the overall atmosphere of The Shining is one of discomfort. Before it's even clear that the Torrance family has serious issues, the film exudes a sense of foreboding doom, one that builds to a fever pitch well before Jack finally snaps.

 At the same time, Kubrick is careful to never explicitly acknowledge whether The Overlook is haunted or if Jack is simply feeding off of the isolation to finally abandon his façade of being a good husband and father. (SPOILERS AHEAD) In every shot involving Jack talking a ghost, you'll notice that there's also a mirror, save for the scene where Grady unlocks the storage closet and let's him out. It is, aside from Wendy's journey through the hotel at the end, the only time the dead patrons of The Overlook go from phantoms to active participants in the madness. Danny's visions of Grady's daughters and the blood flowing from the elevator can, one could argue, simply be a reflection of his "shining." This doesn't necessarily explain who opened room 237, although Wendy never sees it, and she's the closest thing we have to a "reliable" protagonist in the film.

 The Shining has a strong undercurrent of "is this happening or isn't it," and is punctuated with lots of odd details you might take for granted the first time you watch it, but with repeated viewings become more and more obvious. Danny and Wendy are watching a television that isn't plugged in. Jack's typewriter abruptly changes during the course of the movie. The layout of the hotel doesn't seem to match where the characters are at the end of the film (pay close attention to where the Torrance's room is in relation to the front of The Overlook when Dick arrives compared to the paths Jack and Wendy take to get to the lobby). Every moment, every scene, is slightly off kilter, designed to keep audiences from ever settling in. The Shining is a masterful example of a horror film where very little actual horror occurs, but where the viewer is terrified of what will happen.

 Remember, Jack only kills one person in the film. That's it. He threatens Wendy and chases Danny through the hedge maze, but the only person who is murdered on camera in The Shining is Dick. We only see Jack after he's frozen to death, right before the final shot, the ambiguous extension of Jack visiting The Gold Room of the 1920s. Grady tells him earlier in the film that "you have always been the caretaker," so how much of what happens in The Shining really did happen?

 After the film premiered in the United States, Kubrick insisted that projectionists remove a two minute coda where Ullman visits Wendy and Danny in the hospital. He tells them there's no trace of Jack's body, but then gives Danny his father's tennis ball, and laughs. It's certainly a more conspiratorial ending, and I can understand why he dropped it, but that's not the only change Kubrick made to The Shining.

 I'm not sure how many American fans of the film are aware of this, but as a result of the critical reaction to The Shining (it was, in case you didn't know, nominated for two Razzies*), Kubrick recut the film for international release, removing thirty minutes. There's an ongoing debate about which version is his "preferred" cut, with many insisting the shorter version is, in fact, the one Kubrick intended to be "his" cut. The person who wrote IMDB's "Alternate Versions" page claims "the144 minute 'US version' is often erroneously called the Director's Cut when in fact director Kubrick regarded the 113 minute version as the superior cut of the film" but somehow the longer American cut is still primarily the one available on home video. I only bring this up because the original Stanley Kubrick collection released on DVD in 2000 was approved by Kubrick (before his death) using masters from 1989, giving him plenty of time to decide which cut of The Shining to use.

 While I am waiting to watch this shorter, 119 minute version (the disc should be arriving soon), the list of scenes removed makes the film seem more overtly supernatural: much of what's cut involves the strong hints of marital and familial discord in the Torrance household, including the examination of Danny after he passes out and the subsequent conversation between Wendy and Danny's pediatrician about the dislocated shoulder incident, or half of Jack's interview (the part specifically about him being a teacher and looking forward to the solitude). Parts of the tour of the Overlook are missing, including the explanation that there's no alcohol, and Danny and Dick's discussion about parts of the hotel being able to "shine" are gone, as are parts of scenes with Jack and Lloyd the bartender. The "skeleton" scene with Wendy has been removed, as are Hallorann's attempts to contact the Overlook before he flies from Miami to Colorado.

 All told, it sounds like serious tonal shifts in the film, and some of the transitions have been described as jarring, so I'm looking forward to seeing this shorter version. As it is, the 144 minute version of The Shining has an ominous, hypnotic quality to it, one that feels designed into keeping you off balance and unnerved. I'm curious to see the effect of dropping so much of the secondary details about Jack, Wendy, and Danny on the film. Expect a supplementary review after it arrives and the Cap'n has had time to digest it.

 As it is, I'm still continually evolving on The Shining: it's a film so layered with details, with apparent contradictions within the story, that I can forgive abandoning much of what King wrote in favor of a more ambiguity. Yes, it's impossible not to see Jack Nicholson and know that he's unbalanced from the first interview, and yes, Shelley Duvall's Wendy is already teetering on the brink of a mental collapse before the family leaves Colorado (due, in large part, to Kubrick's deliberate cruelty to the actress during the nearly year-long production). It's up for debate to how much of the long shoot contributed to what could be continuity errors and what might be deliberate (as we'll discuss in the Room 237 review), but I suspect many of those will go largely unnoticed until you've seen The Shining many times. For a first time viewer, it adds to the sense of unease about the world being presented to you in the film. While The Shining might not be my all time favorite horror movie, I certainly contend that it does a damn fine job of creeping me out.


* Worst Director and Worst Actress, if you can believe it.

Blogorium Review: The Shining

 I've been slowly working my way through Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, which is much better than I expected it to be (his recent output has been hit-or-miss). For those of you who managed to miss out on the hoopla surrounding its release, Doctor Sleep is a sequel (of sorts) to The Shining, one that centers on a grown Dan Torrance who crosses paths with a roaming "family" that feeds on people with the "shine." In a lot of ways, King is doubling down on the differences between his book The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's loose adaptation, which has come to dominate popular culture. When people think of The Shining now, they predominant image in their minds is going to be Jack Nicholson.

 Since I'm not done with Doctor Sleep yet, it wouldn't really be fair to compare the book(s) with the film, although I'd recommend you read The Shining before you read Doctor Sleep (people coming to King's sequel with only the knowledge of what happens in the film are going to be very confused by the immediate appearance of a character that dies in the movie). Reading the book did put me in a mood to watch The Shining again, and since Room 237 arrived from Netflix, that seemed like a good time to revisit the film. (I'll look at Room 237 separately in a few days).

 At this point in time, The Shining is such a part of our cultural zeitgeist that even people who haven't seen the film know about it. "Here's Johnny!" is nearly as universally recognized as the shower scene from Psycho, and whether people have seen The Shining or not, it feels like we know the basic beats of the film: Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the caretaker of The Overlook Hotel while it's closed from November to May, and brings along his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Never mind that the solitude drove Delbert Grady (Philip Stone) mad enough to murder his wife and children with an axe, and then kill himself. Or the fact that Jack seems.. maybe a little unstable and has issues with his wife and son. They'll be fine. And everything is going, let's say pretty well until a snowstorm comes through, and they're stuck inside. But it isn't the solitude that gets to them. Nope. Something is... off about the hotel, and after a series of potentially ghostly encounters, Jack loses it and tries to kill his family. Danny has "the shine," which gives him visions and allows him to reach out to Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), the Overlook's cook, but can her arrive in time to help?

 What people tend to forget - or simply don't know because they haven't seen it - is how deliberately paced The Shining is to keep audiences off kilter. It's not simply that Danny's imaginary friend "Tony" has an inherently creepy voice, or that the film is punctuated with slow push-ins on Nicholson staring, often ending in smash cuts to title screens, but the overall atmosphere of The Shining is one of discomfort. Before it's even clear that the Torrance family has serious issues, the film exudes a sense of foreboding doom, one that builds to a fever pitch well before Jack finally snaps.

 At the same time, Kubrick is careful to never explicitly acknowledge whether The Overlook is haunted or if Jack is simply feeding off of the isolation to finally abandon his façade of being a good husband and father. (SPOILERS AHEAD) In every shot involving Jack talking a ghost, you'll notice that there's also a mirror, save for the scene where Grady unlocks the storage closet and let's him out. It is, aside from Wendy's journey through the hotel at the end, the only time the dead patrons of The Overlook go from phantoms to active participants in the madness. Danny's visions of Grady's daughters and the blood flowing from the elevator can, one could argue, simply be a reflection of his "shining." This doesn't necessarily explain who opened room 237, although Wendy never sees it, and she's the closest thing we have to a "reliable" protagonist in the film.

 The Shining has a strong undercurrent of "is this happening or isn't it," and is punctuated with lots of odd details you might take for granted the first time you watch it, but with repeated viewings become more and more obvious. Danny and Wendy are watching a television that isn't plugged in. Jack's typewriter abruptly changes during the course of the movie. The layout of the hotel doesn't seem to match where the characters are at the end of the film (pay close attention to where the Torrance's room is in relation to the front of The Overlook when Dick arrives compared to the paths Jack and Wendy take to get to the lobby). Every moment, every scene, is slightly off kilter, designed to keep audiences from ever settling in. The Shining is a masterful example of a horror film where very little actual horror occurs, but where the viewer is terrified of what will happen.

 Remember, Jack only kills one person in the film. That's it. He threatens Wendy and chases Danny through the hedge maze, but the only person who is murdered on camera in The Shining is Dick. We only see Jack after he's frozen to death, right before the final shot, the ambiguous extension of Jack visiting The Gold Room of the 1920s. Grady tells him earlier in the film that "you have always been the caretaker," so how much of what happens in The Shining really did happen?

 After the film premiered in the United States, Kubrick insisted that projectionists remove a two minute coda where Ullman visits Wendy and Danny in the hospital. He tells them there's no trace of Jack's body, but then gives Danny his father's tennis ball, and laughs. It's certainly a more conspiratorial ending, and I can understand why he dropped it, but that's not the only change Kubrick made to The Shining.

 I'm not sure how many American fans of the film are aware of this, but as a result of the critical reaction to The Shining (it was, in case you didn't know, nominated for two Razzies*), Kubrick recut the film for international release, removing thirty minutes. There's an ongoing debate about which version is his "preferred" cut, with many insisting the shorter version is, in fact, the one Kubrick intended to be "his" cut. The person who wrote IMDB's "Alternate Versions" page claims "the144 minute 'US version' is often erroneously called the Director's Cut when in fact director Kubrick regarded the 113 minute version as the superior cut of the film" but somehow the longer American cut is still primarily the one available on home video. I only bring this up because the original Stanley Kubrick collection released on DVD in 2000 was approved by Kubrick (before his death) using masters from 1989, giving him plenty of time to decide which cut of The Shining to use.

 While I am waiting to watch this shorter, 119 minute version (the disc should be arriving soon), the list of scenes removed makes the film seem more overtly supernatural: much of what's cut involves the strong hints of marital and familial discord in the Torrance household, including the examination of Danny after he passes out and the subsequent conversation between Wendy and Danny's pediatrician about the dislocated shoulder incident, or half of Jack's interview (the part specifically about him being a teacher and looking forward to the solitude). Parts of the tour of the Overlook are missing, including the explanation that there's no alcohol, and Danny and Dick's discussion about parts of the hotel being able to "shine" are gone, as are parts of scenes with Jack and Lloyd the bartender. The "skeleton" scene with Wendy has been removed, as are Hallorann's attempts to contact the Overlook before he flies from Miami to Colorado.

 All told, it sounds like serious tonal shifts in the film, and some of the transitions have been described as jarring, so I'm looking forward to seeing this shorter version. As it is, the 144 minute version of The Shining has an ominous, hypnotic quality to it, one that feels designed into keeping you off balance and unnerved. I'm curious to see the effect of dropping so much of the secondary details about Jack, Wendy, and Danny on the film. Expect a supplementary review after it arrives and the Cap'n has had time to digest it.

 As it is, I'm still continually evolving on The Shining: it's a film so layered with details, with apparent contradictions within the story, that I can forgive abandoning much of what King wrote in favor of a more ambiguity. Yes, it's impossible not to see Jack Nicholson and know that he's unbalanced from the first interview, and yes, Shelley Duvall's Wendy is already teetering on the brink of a mental collapse before the family leaves Colorado (due, in large part, to Kubrick's deliberate cruelty to the actress during the nearly year-long production). It's up for debate to how much of the long shoot contributed to what could be continuity errors and what might be deliberate (as we'll discuss in the Room 237 review), but I suspect many of those will go largely unnoticed until you've seen The Shining many times. For a first time viewer, it adds to the sense of unease about the world being presented to you in the film. While The Shining might not be my all time favorite horror movie, I certainly contend that it does a damn fine job of creeping me out.


* Worst Director and Worst Actress, if you can believe it.

Retro Review: Batman (1989)

 Independently of the impending release of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, I had the urge to watch Tim Burton's 1989 reinvention of Batman last week. It's been a while since I watched what amounted to the first major re-launch of the Dark Knight on screens since the 1960s, and despite the fact that I've written at some length about Batman Returns (here, for example), there were certain lingering assumptions I'd made about the film that I wanted to test.

 One of the arguments I've long held (and one that appears in the Batman Returns review) is that Burton's first go-round with Bruce Wayne was filtered by studio involvement, including the prominence of a Prince-heavy soundtrack that doesn't really match Danny Elfman's score. I also contended that Michael Keaton was overshadowed throughout most of the film by Jack Nicholson's iconic take on the Joker, and that as a result the sequel represented a more "pure" expression of director and material. It's an easy position to take when you haven't watched Batman in its entirety for several years, so does that judgment hold up after revisiting the film?

 Well, I think I let memory dictate a lot of what I thought to be true about Batman. It is true that making Jack Napier (and by extension, the Joker) the killer of Bruce Wayne's parents elevates his role in Batman's origin story (thus allowing a "you created me, I created you" motif), and that Nicholson dominates every scene he's in, even ones with legendary scenery chewer Jack Palance ("You... are my numbah one guy!"). However, I allowed memory to disproportionately increase Nicholson's screen time, so it was a bit surprising how much of the first half of the film is devoted to Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) and Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) trying in vain to track down something, anything about the mysterious Batman. We're introduced to Bruce Wayne through them, accidentally at that, and in more than one way - they go to Wayne Manor in order to track down Commissioner Gordon (Pat Hingle), District Attorney Harvey Dent (Billy Dee Williams), the Mayor (Lee Wallace) and get them on the record about the vigilante terrorizing criminals.

 What's interesting is that Burton and screenwriters Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren set up Batman as the more important component of the Wayne / Dark Knight dynamic, but then devote most of the screen time to Michael Keaton with the mask off. Yes, the film begins with Batman in action (after a clever misdirection regarding whether we're starting with the origin story up front) and then shifts largely to Wayne and Vale, interrupted by the Joker's romantic advances. Unless you count the final showdown in Gotham Cathedral, the interactions between this unorthodox love triangle are split evenly between Batman (in the art museum) and Bruce (in Vale's apartment). While the art museum sequence is more visually dynamic, the Wayne / Joker showdown has more character resonance.

 The museum sequence is, for the record, the first of two (and only two, unless you count the closing credits) Prince songs that appear in the film. Despite my lingering memories of "Batdance," "Party Man" and "Trust" are the only songs featured in Batman in their entirety, and both are linked to the Joker, who dances along, making them diegetic to the world. So let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Joker is a big Prince fan. So much so that he has Prince songs you've never heard before that are, in one form or fashion, very appropriate in the scenes they appear. If we accept that the Danny Elfman score represents Bruce Wayne / Batman and the Prince songs are expressions of the Joker, I can overlook the apparent clash of styles. Also, while I don't love the way Nicholson gyrates to "Trust" in particular, it is a good fit for his attitude and style.

 I also found myself more fond of Keaton as Batman than as Wayne (even though the lack of a strong chin and smaller frame make him look like a skinny guy in a suit). Maybe it's that Wayne, while being in a LOT of the movie, doesn't register much as a character until the inevitable flashback to the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne (which happens more than an hour into the film). In fact, Bruce Wayne doesn't have much to do other than look intense or deep in thought between his charming introduction to Knox and Vale and when he unleashes on the Joker ("You want to get nuts? Let's get nuts!") and is blindsided by the clown's reply ("You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?").

 But watching the film again, Batman himself isn't all that interesting - he's not a lot more than the sum of his "wonderful toys." The fight scenes aren't very memorably, his movement is a little awkward (watch him sneaking around Axis Chemicals or even when he lands on the rooftop in the beginning of the film) and without his grappling hook, Batman doesn't even defeat the Joker or save Vicki Vale at the end of the film. He's thwarted by his nemesis and left dangling as the Clown Prince of Crime escapes in a helicopter. The most impressive detective work done by the Dark Knight happens offscreen, as Wayne and Alfred crack the secret chemical reaction that causes Gotham's beauty products to become lethal (and effectively so - those frozen death grins stick with you).

 Additionally, I like how Billy Dee William's Harvey Dent is introduced in such a way that never indicates he'll ever become Two Face. He's just the District Attorney of Gotham City, trying to nail Carl Grissom and to contend with the new threat of the Joker.

 Still, Batman is not particularly the ineffective setup to a better sequel for Burton and Keaton. I found myself frequently engrossed by the film, by the world and art design of Anton Furst, and it was a strong reminder of when a Danny Elfman theme really stuck with you. I've been trying not to compare Burton's Batman to the Nolan films (in particular Nicholson to Ledger), but I do think that Batman is more successful in relaunching Batman the icon than Batman Begins is. Batman Begins is a great Bruce Wayne story, but Batman does a better job at balancing the necessity of the myth that Wayne must become. It doesn't always balance the two as well, but then again neither does Batman Begins. I can't help but wonder what Batman would be like if the necessity of linking Wayne to Napier hadn't been in place, or if the film had focused more on characters on the outside experiencing the vigilante (as much of the first forty five minutes is), but the film still works. It still entertains, and I'm amazed how dark this "family friendly" movie is, considering I saw it when I was ten.

Blogorium Review: Corman's World - Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

 I may be totally wrong about this, but one of the points made in Alex Stapleton's fine documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel is that the average "twenty year old film buff" doesn't know who Roger Corman is. During an interview late in the film, Martin Scorsese (who made Boxcar Bertha for Corman) says "I think it's very important to let the generation of today know who he is, and we all, we knew it almost forty years ago, so it's time to reintroduce him as a director, but also what he represented to American entertainment." It's probably true that the average moviegoer doesn't know who Corman is, and I don't totally disagree with Scorsese or Penelope Spheeris (who makes the earlier point about his obscurity), I would argue among film buffs that the prolific exploitation director / producer is not only well known, he's revered.

 Roger Corman is credited with producing over 400 films, most of which are some variety of exploitation if not outright schlock. He's known for making films on a shoestring budget, sometimes in less than a week, and for providing many writers, directors, actors, and producers their first "break" in Hollywood. That list includes Jack Nicholson, Joe Dante, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, John Sayles, Pam Grier, Dick Miller, Johnathan Demme, Spheeris, Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Arkush, William Shatner, David Carradine, Robert DeNiro, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Ron Howard (who directed his first film, Grand Theft Auto, for Corman). Many of these "Corman School" graduates appear in Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, to help tell the story of a fiercely independent filmmaker.

 Corman started his career as a script reader at 20th Century Fox, but when the story editor took his notes for The Gunfighter and took credit for it, he decided to go at it alone. He produced and assistant directed Monster from the Ocean Floor, then The Fast and the Furious (using borrowed sports cars from dealerships), and learned the keys to making films cheap in order to always turn a profit. He teamed up with American International Pictures and produced and directed a string of no-budget films (Dick Miller points out a scene in Apache Woman where he, as a cowboy, kills himself as an Indian).

 Corman's World breathlessly covers his stock actors, his period at AIP, the success Corman had producing a series of Edgar Allan Poe stories with Vincent Price, and the development of "teenage" pictures with Nicholson. The influence of The Wild Angels on Easy Rider (a film that AIP refused to make with Hopper as director and accordingly lost Corman a producer's credit), the decision by Corman to take LSD before The Trip, and the only Corman movie that ever lost money, The Intruder, are covered in some degree. Jack Nicholson makes his case why The Terror doesn't make any sense (the film had at least four directors, one of which Corman can't remember), and Scorsese used the "no-frills" schedule on Boxcar Bertha to make Mean Streets (which, had Corman produced the film, would have been changed to Blaxploitation!)

 The Intruder, in fact, may be the surprise for many people who only know Corman for films like Attack of the Crab Monsters or Little Shop of Horrors. Made in 1962 by Roger and his brother Gene and based on the novel by Charles Beaumont (who also wrote the screenplay), the film is a condemnation of the segregated South, told through the perspective of a racist rabble rouser named Adam Cramer (William Shatner), who arrives in the fictional southern town of Caxton to incite riots as a result of court-ordered integration of schools. The film, which is surprisingly un-exploitative, reflects Corman's own view of racial tensions, but was met with hostility when released. When he lost money on the film, Corman opted to go back to the formula that worked, and The Intruder, while highly regarded, remains unseen by many of his exploitation devotees.

 The documentary uses a wide cross section of Corman's output, from the monster flicks to biker films, women in prison films, blaxploitation films, and science fiction cheapies, and once the rating system came into being, the gore and gratuitous nudity required every few minutes. Stapleton also includes the tidbit that when Corman left AIP to form New World Pictures, he not only distributed his own films, but also provided US releases for Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Fellini's Amarcord, Laloux's Fantastic Planet, Fassbinder's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum, and Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala. The desire to distribute foreign films when no one else would and, in some instances, play them in drive ins, reflected Corman's actual taste in films, despite his reputation.

 Also appearing in the film are Corman's wife Julie, herself a producer, director Eli Roth and Paul W.S. Anderson, the latter a director of the remake / sequel Death Race. At the beginning and near the end of the film, Corman's World shifts to the production of Dinoshark, one of the new films Corman is producing in a partnership with the Syfy Channel (you might have seen Sharktopus, another entry last year). It's star, Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) talks about the guerrilla filmmaking techniques employed and general cost saving techniques that can make shooting the film difficult (including walkie talkies that don't work because they were made for children to play with).

 It's not too far away from the experiences of Corman's previous collaborators, who made do with too few extras, too little time, and not enough money. Bogdanovich's first "job" for Corman was taking a Russian science fiction film and turning it into The Gill Women of Venus, despite the fact that there were no women in the original film. He shot footage with Mamie Van Doren and other scantily clad women on the beach, and was told to shoot it with no sound. Once he delivered the footage, Corman decided that it needed dialogue, so the silent footage was overdubbed even though no one was speaking. Because he delivered the film in time and under budget, Bogdanovich had the opportunity to use an extra day of shooting from The Terror and made Targets. Corman may be fiercely independent and incredibly cheap (Nicholson mentions this repeatedly), but he knows how to spot talent and nuture it. Arkush and Dante started their careers as trailer editors for Corman before going on to make their own films.

 Corman's World manages to be both breezy and thorough in most points of Corman's career, but there are a few points of contention the film raises when dealing with his period running New World pictures. There's a distinct lack of coverage for the films Corman produced at New World (they instead focus on the distribution of respected foreign directors). The reason, at least one might argue, is that those films directly contradict an argument that Corman and Eli Roth make: in the wake of Jaws and Star Wars, Hollywood figured out the "Corman formula" and beat the schlockmeister at his own game. Accordingly, Corman couldn't compete with the major studios.

 What the film glosses over is the fact that a great deal of Corman's New World Pictures were ripoffs of the Hollywood films he claims beat him at his own game. It explains why Joe Dante's Piranha is moved around in such a way that the fact it was designed to cash in on Jaws never seems to come up, and other pictures like Battle Beyond the Stars (Star Wars), Forbidden World (Alien), and Galaxy of Terror (also Alien) aren't mentioned at all. Corman also claims he had no interest in slasher films, even though he put his name on a boxed set of the Slumber Party Massacre films (he produced parts 2 and 3) and The Sorority House Massacre parts one and two.

 It's not a serious problem, but Corman's World does gloss over a lot of the 1980s and 90s in favor of leaping forward into his work with the Syfy Channel (specifically Dinoshark). The "New World Pictures" section of the film is more devoted to footage from an earlier documentary about Roger Corman explaining his interest in distributing foreign films and also including interviews with director Jonathan Kaplan (Night Call Nurses) the late Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul). While it may be an odd omission, Stapleton's chronology does smoothly transition from the birth of the blockbuster to the death of the independent film (including a pointed comment from Nicholson to that effect) to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences awarding Corman a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. At the ceremony, many of the faces we've seen during Corman's World are in attendance, as well as Quentin Tarantino, an acolyte of the Corman style. The section caps the story nicely, although it is clear that Roger Corman is far from done producing exploitation films.

 And folks, that's not a bad thing. Even if it is the Syfy Channel.

Blogorium Review: The Last Detail

Every now and then a film comes along and catches you off guard, reminding a sometimes beleaguered reviewer like the Cap'n that even simplicity can be enthralling in the right hands. Hal Ashby's The Last Detail is a character study unburdened by superfluous plot machinations, twists, or a desire to "out think" the audience. I had heard about The Last Detail, always as a second thought, of a film you hear is good but don't seem to know many people who have seen it. Over the years I've very nearly turned it on, but then decided on something else. How foolish those decisions were.

Ashby and screenwriter Robert Towne (adapting Darryl Ponicsan's novel) introduce us to Navy Signalman Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Gunner's Mate Mulhall (Otis Young), two officers assigned to escort Seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) from Norfolk Virginia to Portsmouth New Hampshire. Meadows, a kleptomaniac, tried to lift $40 from the wrong collection box and is sentenced to 8 years in the brig with Dishonorable Discharge. "Badass" Buddusky and "Mule" Mulhall have more time than they need to get Meadows to the Naval Penitentiary, so they decide to drop him off quickly and enjoy some R&R with the remaining time off.

That is, until they start talking to Meadows - a kid too young to drink, stand up to anyone, or to have experienced life in any capacity - and Buddusky takes pity on him. "Badass," like "Mule," is a career Navy man, but unlike his partner on this "chickenshit detail" Buddusky has a wild streak, a desire to lash out whenever and wherever possible. The men decide to show Meadows the time of his life before they leave, but the kid just can't seem to loosen up.

If you've seen any "road" movie or "buddy" picture, like Rain Man or Last Holdiay, what happens next should be easy to guess - a series of episodic adventures involving bartenders, prostitutes, a visit home, attempted escapes, a brush with religion, and why not a good old fashioned fight with some Marines at a train station in Boston? Even in 1973, this would appear to be well worn territory rife for deconstructing, but Towne and Ashby instead carry us through these familiar beats by focusing on the clash of personalities: Mulhall's rebel with a sense of his place in the world, Buddusky's anti-authoritarian streak, and Meadows' blank slate.

The more Buddusky and Mulhall learn about Larry, the more clearly their differences become apparent. Meadows only joined the Navy to avoid a life of constantly being harangued for shoplifting, but he never found a purpose in the service to keep him from resorting to old tricks, and now he's about to lose his twenties to the brig. (Ironically, he discovers that he's very good at signaling during a drunken practice with Buddusky.)

Ashby wisely chooses never to leave the perspective of his three protagonists, so that every encounter with the possibility to be "wacky" in lesser hands is filtered through the jaded, foul-mouthed perspective of Meadows' escorts. Meadows picks up on a Nichiren Shoshu prayer circle, and takes to it, winning over a local girl Donna (Luana Anders) while Buddusky and Mulhall stick out like sore thumbs at a hippie / activist house party. Buddusky's antics, an attempt to prove to Larry that being a loose cannon is important even to "lifers" pushes Mulhall past the point of sympathizing with Meadows - he is, after all, their prisoner, not their pupil.

If nothing else, I heard great things about Jack Nicholson, whose Buddusky could very easily go over the top but doesn't (it provides a template of sorts for his McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), but I was unprepared for Otis Young's understated Mulhall, a slow burning character with more arc than Buddusky or Meadows. Randy Quaid (who looks like a young John Cusack in the film) is bright eyed and bushy tailed as Larry when he needs to be, but underneath is a sense of failure, of inevitability that taints his misadventures on the way up north, and there's a scene at his mother's house where Quaid is devastating without saying a word.

The Last Detail is also littered with cameos from the likes of Nancy Allen (Dressed to Kill, Robocop), Michael Moriarty (Pale Rider, Q), Carol Kane (Scrooged, Trees Lounge), Clifton James (Cool Hand Luke, Live and Let Die), and a pre-Saturday Night Live appearance by Gilda Radner as one of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists.

The temptation to stray narrative-ly rears its head once or twice, and I nearly thought the film was going down a very different (if comparably predictable path), but The Last Detail is less about tricking you with twists and turns and more about staying true to the characters, right up to the end - with a coda I can almost guarantee you won't see coming, but is the perfect note to end this film on. No spare detail is wasted; no minor plot development insignificant - everything builds to a frozen picnic outside, and seemingly "cute" character moments pay off in unexpected ways.

A word of warning: The Last Detail, while a fantastic character study, is the cinematic epitome of the phrase "curse like a sailor." If you have issues with profanity, know that the script for the film sat on a shelf for three years because Robert Towne refused to remove any of the language The Last Detail is littered with. It might not go as far as a Clerks or a Pulp Fiction, but The Last Detail's verisimilitude - a hallmark of early 70s cinema - comes from its frank dialogue, and the easily offended may not want to watch it, especially with kids around. One might consider it very much to be a "guy's" movie, so bear that in mind.

To all others, seek this out immediately.