Shocktober Revisited: Spider Baby

Jack Hill's Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told is one of the more unusual films I think I've ever seen. That has to say something, as the Blogorium has seen its share of the strange and "off the beaten path" cinema. It's more coherent than Death Bead: The Bed That Eats, and less hyperbolic than Blood Car, to be sure, but there's something about the tone of Spider Baby that resonates well after the film ends. Lurid? Yes. Graphically violent? At times. It meets most of the check-marks for "low budget shocker" from the 1960s, but Spider Baby is nothing like the two most famous titles from that era: Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls. It's so weird that the film often makes Freaks look tame by comparison, if only in how nonchalant everyone seems to be about the Merrye family.

 Somewhere in the hills of California (?) is what remains of the Merrye Mansion, a place nobody wants to go anymore. Its only inhabitants are Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), her younger sister Virginia (Jill Banner), and their older brother Ralphie (Sid Haig), under the care of the family chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). Well, there might be a few odd uncles and aunts in the basement, but that's Bruno's business. The Merrye's have a unique affliction: a genetic disorder that causes them to "regress" as they grow older, mentally at first but eventually physically as well. Virginia believes that she's a spider, and eats bugs, along with anything (or anyone) she catches in her "web." Elizabeth dresses and behaves like a child and wants nothing more than for Bruno to hate her sister, to the point that she allows Virginia to kill the mailman (Mantan Moreland) early in the film. Ralphie? Well, it might be better to think of him less as a person and more like a dog - he's in the late stages of "Merrye Syndrome" and is basically feral.

 To Bruno's great dismay, the mailman (who was dead when he got home, to be fair) is delivering notice from the niece and nephew of "The Master" of the Merrye Estate, Emily (Carol Ohmart) and Peter (Quinn Redeker) Howe, who have come to take control of the manor and assume custody of the children. Emily brings along her lawyer, Mr. Schlocker (Karl Schanzer) and his assistant, Ann Morris (Merry Mitchell), with hopes of cashing in on the estate, but what they find is a very different matter indeed. The children trust Bruno and they do their best to appear "normal" for their extended family, but it's only so long before their natural tendencies surface...

 Originally titled Cannibal Orgy, the film begins with a kooky animated credits sequence, accompanied by a song about the story to come, sung by Chaney. If you didn't know what you were getting into, this sets the tone right away, and Mantan Moreland's jittery mailman give a clear sense that Spider Baby teeters on the brink of "camp" territory. Not intentionally, mind you, but the bizarre display of "Merrye Syndrome," and Elizabeth and Virginia in particular are a template for the sorts of characters who populated John Waters films in the 1970s. They just don't know any better - it's how they've always lived, with Bruno keeping a close eye on them and the rest of the world shut out.

 For the Merrye family, it's perfectly normal that Ralphie uses a dumbwaiter between floors of the house, and while Emily is appalled at their lack of "manners," Peter takes it all in stride. He accepts them as they are, a choice that makes Spider Baby all the more unusual; the film doesn't revel in how bizarre the Merrye's are (and they certainly are), but takes them at face value and presents the intruders as the "strange" ones. At no point in the film is the audience ever sympathetic towards Schlocker or Emily, and the emerging romance between Peter and Ann seems to exist so that Virginia's affections toward him go unrequited. That they're family only seems to go noticed by Peter, but he's so accommodating of the girls that in more lurid hands, who knows where the story may have headed...

 I'm almost positive that Spider Baby is a direct influence on Rob Zombies' House of 1000 Corpses, particularly on how the presentation of the Merrye's mirrors the behavior of the Firefly clan. It's not just that Sid Haig is in both films, although that certainly doesn't hurt the case that Zombie has seen Spider Baby and borrows from it (in particular, watch the dinner scene and compare Baby on the couch in Corpses with Virginia and Peter in the "web" scene). The difference that makes a difference between Spider Baby and House of 1000 Corpses is that the former was intentionally designed to be a comedy and the latter resembles a grab-bag of "grindhouse" tropes in the guise of a horror movie. (In the interest of full disclosure, the Cap'n is not a fan of House of 1000 Corpses).

 We're meant to laugh at the arch behavior and the unexpected resolution to the Ralphie / Emily "romance" - if you want to call it that - in the same way that Bruno's admission the family is "vegetarian" at the dinner table. The concession to this rule is that Virginia eats bugs and Ralphie is allowed to eat whatever he "catches," which includes the cooked cat on the table. Only Peter seems interested in partaking, mostly because he assumes it's a fox or something of that nature.

 The distinction that Spider Baby is a comedy - a very, very black comedy at that - is often missed by people who discover the film. Hill, who made his feature debut with Spider Baby, lost the film in a series of tangled rights issues following the producers going bankrupt, delaying its release for the better part of the 1960s. When Cannibal Orgy finally made its way to theaters, it was unusually paired with biker films (Hells Chosen Few) or horror anthologies (Dr. Terror's House of Horrors). Given that sort of pairing, it's understandable that Spider Baby remains largely unknown to this day. I had heard of it, but had never seen a copy of the U.S. DVD, and ultimately came to the film through the Arrow Video Blu-Ray release, which does look fantastic for a 50 year old film that only made it to drive-ins. It existed on the margins of cult cinema for so long that even Jack Hill is surprised by the affinity its fans have for the film. He seems puzzled to be remembered for this over Switchblade Sisters or Foxy Brown, but for a young filmmaker working on a low budget, it's a very assured debut.

 Part of the appeal was seeing a younger Sid Haig, and also Ohlmart (memorable as Vincent Price's venomous wife in House on Haunted Hill), but chiefly I wanted to see Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his better later roles. Unlike Alligator People or Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Chaney wasn't consigned to the "drunken caretaker" role, and is instead the surrogate parent for the Merrye children. He has quite a few tender moments with the girls, particularly when Virginia does something unforgivable and Elizabeth desperately wants him to shun her for it. He tells them that he could never hate them, and does his best to manage an untenable situation when Emily and Peter arrive. His sense of resignation about the real world colliding with the fantasy world of the Merrye "children" keeps Spider Baby from simply being a freak show. Tonally speaking, Chaney is what makes Spider Baby such a strange film, in that he simply refuses (as a character and, presumably, as an actor) to treat this madness as anything other than "par the course."

 The big surprise, at least for me, was Jill Banner as Virginia. I knew almost nothing about her going into the film, and only found out after the fact that she had been developing scripts with Marlon Brando prior to her untimely death (car accident). While Beverly Washburn has the more "camp" performance, Banner is mesmerizing as the titular character, who seems totally disconnected to reality in any form. Her fascination with "Uncle Peter" is both creepy and sweet, although her intentions always lead back to playing "spider" with a pair of kitchen knives for fangs. It's a shame there isn't more of Banner to see on-screen, but as first impressions go, she makes the most of hers.

 (SPOILERS AHEAD) I do have one minor point of contention for the film - the original title, Cannibal Orgy, doesn't actually make much sense until the very end of the movie, when the completely devolved "relatives" in the basement are revealed. To that point, we're only aware that Bruno and the girls put the bodies of the mailman and Schlocker in the dumbwaiter and send them to the basement, but it's not clear that the "uncles" and "aunts" are eating them. Furthermore, it's hard to tell exactly what Elizabeth eats other than moss and mushrooms, and Virginia only eats bugs and cuts up people - she keeps the mailman's ear in a box, but never makes any overtures that she'd eat it. Ralphie eats other animals, and Bruno doesn't appear to have any cannibalistic tendencies. I understand that the title is lurid and grabs your attention, but in this instance Spider Baby may, in fact, be the better choice, even if the opening song specifically references cannibalism.

 It's a minor quibble, I admit: Spider Baby is a film that deserves to be better known than it is, but if you like hunting out on the edges of cult classics, I think you'll find it is every bit as deserving of your attention as Carnival of Souls or Night of the Living Dead. Possibly as influential, albeit to a different group of filmmakers. And don't worry too much about the goofy prologue with Peter that sets up "Merrye Syndrome" - the closing bookend wraps it up well (or does it???).  Spider Baby is the sort of low budget exploitation that sneaks up on you, and continually surprises, confuses, and amuses you. I wish I'd have seen it sooner, but even a Cap'n can be late to the party some times. Come over some time and I'll be happy to show it to you, but do watch out for my web. I get to eat what I catch, you see...

Blogorium Review: Spider Baby

 Jack Hill's Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told is one of the more unusual films I think I've ever seen. That has to say something, as the Blogorium has seen its share of the strange and "off the beaten path" cinema. It's more coherent than Death Bead: The Bed That Eats, and less hyperbolic than Blood Car, to be sure, but there's something about the tone of Spider Baby that resonates well after the film ends. Lurid? Yes. Graphically violent? At times. It meets most of the check-marks for "low budget shocker" from the 1960s, but Spider Baby is nothing like the two most famous titles from that era: Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls. It's so weird that the film often makes Freaks look tame by comparison, if only in how nonchalant everyone seems to be about the Merrye family.

 Somewhere in the hills of California (?) is what remains of the Merrye Mansion, a place nobody wants to go anymore. Its only inhabitants are Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), her younger sister Virginia (Jill Banner), and their older brother Ralphie (Sid Haig), under the care of the family chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). Well, there might be a few odd uncles and aunts in the basement, but that's Bruno's business. The Merrye's have a unique affliction: a genetic disorder that causes them to "regress" as they grow older, mentally at first but eventually physically as well. Virginia believes that she's a spider, and eats bugs, along with anything (or anyone) she catches in her "web." Elizabeth dresses and behaves like a child and wants nothing more than for Bruno to hate her sister, to the point that she allows Virginia to kill the mailman (Mantan Moreland) early in the film. Ralphie? Well, it might be better to think of him less as a person and more like a dog - he's in the late stages of "Merrye Syndrome" and is basically feral.

 To Bruno's great dismay, the mailman (who was dead when he got home, to be fair) is delivering notice from the niece and nephew of "The Master" of the Merrye Estate, Emily (Carol Ohmart) and Peter (Quinn Redeker) Howe, who have come to take control of the manor and assume custody of the children. Emily brings along her lawyer, Mr. Schlocker (Karl Schanzer) and his assistant, Ann Morris (Merry Mitchell), with hopes of cashing in on the estate, but what they find is a very different matter indeed. The children trust Bruno and they do their best to appear "normal" for their extended family, but it's only so long before their natural tendencies surface...

 Originally titled Cannibal Orgy, the film begins with a kooky animated credits sequence, accompanied by a song about the story to come, sung by Chaney. If you didn't know what you were getting into, this sets the tone right away, and Mantan Moreland's jittery mailman give a clear sense that Spider Baby teeters on the brink of "camp" territory. Not intentionally, mind you, but the bizarre display of "Merrye Syndrome," and Elizabeth and Virginia in particular are a template for the sorts of characters who populated John Waters films in the 1970s. They just don't know any better - it's how they've always lived, with Bruno keeping a close eye on them and the rest of the world shut out.

 For the Merrye family, it's perfectly normal that Ralphie uses a dumbwaiter between floors of the house, and while Emily is appalled at their lack of "manners," Peter takes it all in stride. He accepts them as they are, a choice that makes Spider Baby all the more unusual; the film doesn't revel in how bizarre the Merrye's are (and they certainly are), but takes them at face value and presents the intruders as the "strange" ones. At no point in the film is the audience ever sympathetic towards Schlocker or Emily, and the emerging romance between Peter and Ann seems to exist so that Virginia's affections toward him go unrequited. That they're family only seems to go noticed by Peter, but he's so accommodating of the girls that in more lurid hands, who knows where the story may have headed...

 I'm almost positive that Spider Baby is a direct influence on Rob Zombies' House of 1000 Corpses, particularly on how the presentation of the Merrye's mirrors the behavior of the Firefly clan. It's not just that Sid Haig is in both films, although that certainly doesn't hurt the case that Zombie has seen Spider Baby and borrows from it (in particular, watch the dinner scene and compare Baby on the couch in Corpses with Virginia and Peter in the "web" scene). The difference that makes a difference between Spider Baby and House of 1000 Corpses is that the former was intentionally designed to be a comedy and the latter resembles a grab-bag of "grindhouse" tropes in the guise of a horror movie. (In the interest of full disclosure, the Cap'n is not a fan of House of 1000 Corpses).

 We're meant to laugh at the arch behavior and the unexpected resolution to the Ralphie / Emily "romance" - if you want to call it that - in the same way that Bruno's admission the family is "vegetarian" at the dinner table. The concession to this rule is that Virginia eats bugs and Ralphie is allowed to eat whatever he "catches," which includes the cooked cat on the table. Only Peter seems interested in partaking, mostly because he assumes it's a fox or something of that nature.

 The distinction that Spider Baby is a comedy - a very, very black comedy at that - is often missed by people who discover the film. Hill, who made his feature debut with Spider Baby, lost the film in a series of tangled rights issues following the producers going bankrupt, delaying its release for the better part of the 1960s. When Cannibal Orgy finally made its way to theaters, it was unusually paired with biker films (Hells Chosen Few) or horror anthologies (Dr. Terror's House of Horrors). Given that sort of pairing, it's understandable that Spider Baby remains largely unknown to this day. I had heard of it, but had never seen a copy of the U.S. DVD, and ultimately came to the film through the Arrow Video Blu-Ray release, which does look fantastic for a 50 year old film that only made it to drive-ins. It existed on the margins of cult cinema for so long that even Jack Hill is surprised by the affinity its fans have for the film. He seems puzzled to be remembered for this over Switchblade Sisters or Foxy Brown, but for a young filmmaker working on a low budget, it's a very assured debut.

 Part of the appeal was seeing a younger Sid Haig, and also Ohlmart (memorable as Vincent Price's venomous wife in House on Haunted Hill), but chiefly I wanted to see Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his better later roles. Unlike Alligator People or Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Chaney wasn't consigned to the "drunken caretaker" role, and is instead the surrogate parent for the Merrye children. He has quite a few tender moments with the girls, particularly when Virginia does something unforgivable and Elizabeth desperately wants him to shun her for it. He tells them that he could never hate them, and does his best to manage an untenable situation when Emily and Peter arrive. His sense of resignation about the real world colliding with the fantasy world of the Merrye "children" keeps Spider Baby from simply being a freak show. Tonally speaking, Chaney is what makes Spider Baby such a strange film, in that he simply refuses (as a character and, presumably, as an actor) to treat this madness as anything other than "par the course."

 The big surprise, at least for me, was Jill Banner as Virginia. I knew almost nothing about her going into the film, and only found out after the fact that she had been developing scripts with Marlon Brando prior to her untimely death (car accident). While Beverly Washburn has the more "camp" performance, Banner is mesmerizing as the titular character, who seems totally disconnected to reality in any form. Her fascination with "Uncle Peter" is both creepy and sweet, although her intentions always lead back to playing "spider" with a pair of kitchen knives for fangs. It's a shame there isn't more of Banner to see on-screen, but as first impressions go, she makes the most of hers.

 (SPOILERS AHEAD) I do have one minor point of contention for the film - the original title, Cannibal Orgy, doesn't actually make much sense until the very end of the movie, when the completely devolved "relatives" in the basement are revealed. To that point, we're only aware that Bruno and the girls put the bodies of the mailman and Schlocker in the dumbwaiter and send them to the basement, but it's not clear that the "uncles" and "aunts" are eating them. Furthermore, it's hard to tell exactly what Elizabeth eats other than moss and mushrooms, and Virginia only eats bugs and cuts up people - she keeps the mailman's ear in a box, but never makes any overtures that she'd eat it. Ralphie eats other animals, and Bruno doesn't appear to have any cannibalistic tendencies. I understand that the title is lurid and grabs your attention, but in this instance Spider Baby may, in fact, be the better choice, even if the opening song specifically references cannibalism.

 It's a minor quibble, I admit: Spider Baby is a film that deserves to be better known than it is, but if you like hunting out on the edges of cult classics, I think you'll find it is every bit as deserving of your attention as Carnival of Souls or Night of the Living Dead. Possibly as influential, albeit to a different group of filmmakers. And don't worry too much about the goofy prologue with Peter that sets up "Merrye Syndrome" - the closing bookend wraps it up well (or does it???).  Spider Baby is the sort of low budget exploitation that sneaks up on you, and continually surprises, confuses, and amuses you. I wish I'd have seen it sooner, but even a Cap'n can be late to the party some times. Come over some time and I'll be happy to show it to you, but do watch out for my web. I get to eat what I catch, you see...

Blogorium Review: Jackass 3

There is a moment in Jackass 3 (nee 3-D) when, faced with a Tee-Ball to the groin, the question is asked "Ohhhh, why do I have to be Steve-O?", which may be the prevailing theme of this fourth entry* into the Jackass saga. The Jackass crew isn't getting any younger, and the impending damage to their bodies weighs heavier on their minds than in previous outings, both televised and theatrical: more than a few stunts begin with hesitation from members about to do something stupid / decidedly dangerous, and it takes a little bit longer to bounce back from being rammed by buffalo, being kicked in the face by a football, or the aforementioned tee-ball to the junk.

Which is not to say that there isn't still a sense of relish to the proceedings: Johnny Knoxville still cackles with glee when a giant hand smacks unknowing visitors during "High Five." He seems especially pleased that "Danger" Ehren would actually be dumb enough to bring a tray full of soup into the room (and one can actually see him looking around suspiciously with the tray before he gets slammed). Steve-O seems to be having much more fun with "Beehive Tetherball" than Dave England is, in part because the former knows that panicking will only attract more of the Africanized colony. Everyone is on board with hopping around behind a plane engine, or being propelled by bungee rope off a ramp into a flimsy swimming pool (on roller skates, skateboards, boogie boards, and a wheelbarrow), and the sense of maniacal glee that comes with the Super Glue games is infectious.

While many are quick to point to Jackass as being the decline of western civilization on celluloid, I'm going to stick with the John Waters approach that they're carrying the torch of "bad taste" into the next generation. The Cap'n freely admits that Jackass is an acquired tastes, and that for most of you, any interest in today's post ended when you saw the title. Fair enough. It makes me laugh (sometimes causing people to check out what exactly I'm howling at), rarely disappoints, and periodically grosses me out. And while Jackass 3 doesn't go quite as far as the first film did on that count (I'm looking at you, "Yellow Snowcone"), there are a couple gag-out-loud moments in the film. One involves a model train set that you're better off turning away from, and the other involves Preston Lacy exercising in a suit designed to capture his sweat into a cup. You can guess where it goes from there.

Where I'd point out that Jackass is different from other nihilistic, mean-spirited, prank style "guerilla" films like Bumfights is in the sense of fraternity between the gang. Even when subjected to pain, or being the butt of someone else's practical joke, the boys are quick with a smile or to congratulate the prank-er. Lacy goes out of his way to shake the hand of the punt kicker that nails a football into his face; Steve-O, covered in feces after the "Poo Cocktail Supreme" opts to chase Johnny Knoxville and give him a hug; even Bam Margera, faced with his worst fear after falling into a pit with snakes, gives a fist bump to the snake trainer that dumped them on his head. The camaraderie between the Jackass guys keeps spirits high, even when the stunts are cruel; "Danger" Ehren's "Lamborghini Tooth Pull" wouldn't be nearly as palatable if he wasn't so excited at the prospect of doing it.

Jackass 3 looks better (by far) than any previous incarnation, largely because director Jeff Tremaine shot on high definition Phantom cameras with 3-D in mind. I can see where most of the 3-D was supposed to be, but the DVD that came from Netflix was strictly 2-Dimensional. In addition to 3-D trickery, Tremaine also used the Phantom for its high frame rate, allowing for super-clear, super-slo-mo photography, which figures prominently into the opening and closing of the film, allowing audiences to see every blow with crystal clarity (it also makes a recurring segment called "The Rocky" worthwhile).

Like Jackasses before it, the film has its share of cameos: Minnesota Vikings player Jared Allen takes Knoxville down while referee Sean William Scott winces; Spike Jonze returns for another round of "Old Lady" jokes; Will the Farter pops a balloon in Steve-O's ass from, well you can guess; singer/songwriter Will Oldham plays an animal trainer to Chris Pontius' wild gorilla to scare Phil and April Margera; Mike Judge gets back in the action by providing the voices of Beavis and Butt-Head, who introduce the film and explain the wonders of 3-D. Even Finland's The Dudeson's get involved with the boys for tree-related mayhem.

Also like the other Jackass films, there are bits that work and bits that don't: I've mentioned a number of the better gags (and intentionally left out a few really good ones) but many of the "on the street" pranks played unsuspecting folks just don't play like they used to. Jason "Wee Man" Acuña is part of a bar fight designed around "little people"; Knoxville dresses up as an old man and makes out with his "granddaughter" on a public street, and also crashes through a scooter dealership before "stealing" one of the vehicles. At this point the segments are less effective than they used to be, and tend to drag the film down from the wilder, "conceptual" stunts or endangerment. The April and Phil "gorilla" prank is a total bust, as is a much longer than it needed to be segment built around Bam peeing on everyone.

While Jackass 3.5 looms, I somehow doubt there's going to be a Jackass 4; the film certainly is the product of guys who aren't as wild as they used to be, who are far more aware of the mayhem they subject their bodies to. The film closes out on a montage during the credits of each member of the team as a child, in their first appearance on the show, and now, and it's amazing to see how young they were when Jackass premiered on MTV at the turn of the century. Set to Weezer's "Memories," which features the cast singing along, it feels like a fitting close to the series. They might not be as reckless as they were, but you can't blame the Jackass crew for giving it their best on the way out.





* Fourth including Jackass 2.5, and to be followed by Jackass 3.5, the fifth chapter. If we're including the show, then who knows what 3 qualifies as.

Lost Reviews

I found these the other day while I was cleaning out files. I wrote all of them for a radio show I was working on five years ago, and looking at the reviews, I can't imagine why most of them were abandoned. Oh wait, yes I can. You try reading them out loud.

A Dirty Shame2004
Directed by John Waters

Highly touted prior to its release as the first opening NC-17 film to be advertised on television, most people missed A Dirty Shame during a brief theatrical run, and it was largely forgotten. What a shame, because John Waters most recent effort accomplishes something many thought impossible; A Dirty Shame walks the tightrope between his older, more graphic fare (Desperate Living and Pink Flamingos) and his more recent “harmless” films (Hairspray, Cry Baby, and Pecker).

Tracey Ullman heads up the film as the uptight Sylvia Stickles, a woman who is so embarrassed by sexuality that she locks her daughter Ursula Udders (played by Selma Blair) in her room to conceal her outrageously augmented mammaries. Sylvia’s world is turned upside down, however, when she’s struck on the head and becomes a ravenous sexual lunatic, with the guidance of Ray Ray Perkins (played by Johnny Knoxville with all the swagger of a young Elvis Presley.) Ray Ray introduces Sylvia to the underground culture of sexual fetishism in Baltimore, and reveals that she is the prophet sent to them who will usher in the next level of carnal experience.

While it sounds awfully filthy, A Dirty Shame is actually quite funny, and doesn’t dwell on fetishism (which includes dressing up like a baby, smearing food on yourself, or the “bears”) but plays with the notion that sex is unnatural. The film is largely inoffensive, with the exception of a scene where Sylvia picks up a bottle of water using her you know what in a nursing home, but even that is more in the spirit of fun and less about shock value.

Waters peppers the cast with great character actors, including Chris Isaak, the aforementioned Ullman, Blair, and Knoxville, but also uses his regular troupe, among them Patricia Hearst, Mink Stole, and Jean Hill, plus an eleventh hour surprise cameo from a certain Bay Watch veteran.

A Dirty Shame is nothing to be embarrassed about watching; if you’re so inclined, I’m sure there’s a lot you can learn about in this movie, and at 87 minutes it hardly overstays it’s welcome, and anyway, it’s a hoot. A warning to hankie grabbers: the film’s NC-17 rating exists for the same reason Clerks initially got it, which is to say there’s a lot of talk but not much action.

*note – for those not inclined to be seen renting a movie rated NC-17, an R rated cut exists, but director Waters admits it’s entirely made of alternate scenes and is utterly harmless, and therefore maybe too tame.

Primer
2004
Directed by Shane Carruth

What a first glance appears to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of abusing science, Primer is actually the sort of brain-bending science fiction that rewards multiple viewings, and you won’t mind because a) it’s only 77 minutes long, and b) the film grows richer and richer with each reveal.

The film begins in earnest with four engineers trying to get their company up and running with something new and revolutionary to the scientific community. As time passes on, two of them slip out of the picture, and the remaining fellows make a radical discovery; they’ve found a way to transport matter six hour backwards in time. They continue to experiment, and then one of them presents the other with a larger surprise: he’s created one that a person can fit in.

At first they use it to make a small fortune using stock market numbers, and then their plan begins to spiral out of control when their ambition exceeds their conscience. What makes Primer work is that we’re treated to science fiction in a realistic way: none of this seems too implausible or outside the realm of what could happen, and the ensuing chaos and unraveling of layers may be confusing at first, but the more you pay attention to, the more fascinating this film is.

First time director Shane Carruth made Primer on a practically non-existent budget, shooting digitally with available light and casting himself and his friends, and while the low budget is on display insofar as film quality, the movie itself gains a grainy realism that would ring hollow in a major studio production.

This is certainly worth picking up and watching once, and if you like it or just wondered “what the hell happened?” give another sit through. You won’t regret it.

Trees Lounge
1996
Directed by Steve Buscemi

A movie lost in the shuffle of the indie revolution, Steve Buscemi’s directorial debut is a confident, laid back look at a man who has nothing worth living for. Consider Trees Lounge as a counterpart to Buscemi’s role in Ghost World, but imagine that instead of spending his money on arcane jazz records, he went over and over again to wean himself of the teat of the local bar. Every town has one; the watering hole where the same faces sit day in and day out, slightly drunk and ready to tell you about the good ole days.

Trees Lounge is the name of the bar in this particular corner of celluloid America, and Buscemi (who also wrote the film) plays Tommy, a local boy who never grew up. His girlfriend left him for his old boss, and he spends most of his time drifting about in the hours between opening and last call. Eventually, he gets a job as an ice cream truck man, and meets a much younger girl (played by Chloe Sevigny, fresh off her role in Kids) and one thing leads to another, but without such dire consequences. After all, this is a man with little ambition, and the outcomes are as muted as his outlook on life.

This is not to say Trees Lounge is boring; quite the opposite. The film is an amusing dramedy about being adrift and getting ahold of your life, but as opposed to most coming of age stories, this one happens to be about being in your late thirties. Buscemi fills the bar and surrounding town with plenty of familiar character actors, including Seymour Cassel, Mark Boone Junior, Anthony LaPaglia, Debi Mazar, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Don’t go in expecting anything flashy, but Trees Lounge is a fine character study from a character actor who knows what he’s doing.

Coffee and Cigarettes
2004
Director Jim Jarmusch
It isn't difficult to digest this movie. In fact, the title alone tells you everything that can be expected. Jim Jarmusch takes small groups of people (for most of the vingettes, two) and provides them cigarettes and, well, coffee. However, let me clarify something here. This isn't improvised, or at least, most of the conversations aren't. Too many little phrases and moments echo each other to be an accident (in particular, keep an eye out for musicians who double as doctors, nikolai tesla, and the shady nature of celebrity.) While Coffee and Cigarettes is slight, the segments are never too long to grate, and the really good ones make up for the lesser bits.

To wit:

-Cate Blanchett is a standout playing herself and her cousin, as are Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan in the same beat.

-The White Stripes discuss Jack's Tesla coil while Cinque Lee looks on (Lee, having appeared in an earlier segment with his sister Joie and Steve Buscemi)

-Iggy Pop and Tom Waits test each other and discover the diner's jukebox doesn't play either one of them.

-Bill Rice and Taylor Mead muse about the late seventies and champagne
and, in what's probably the most heard about segment, The RZA and The GZA offer Bill Murray helpful tips of losing that smokers cough (they also refer to him exclusively as "Bill Murray".)

See what I mean? There's really not a lot after the movie ends, but it's a pleasant hour and a half, and even if the Tom Waits / Iggy Pop scene goes on for far too long, and Roberto Benigni is almost impossible to understand in his scene with Steven Wright, well, it's entertaining enough. Jarmusch fans should enjoy it well enough, and it may appeal to other cinephiles.

Garden State
2003
Director Zach Braff

If there's one problem with Garden State, it's that the movie is too easy to love. This, understandably, is a minor problem, but waiting a few days between watching it and writing this tone my love of the film considerably.

Don't get it twisted, this is a great movie. Zach Braff put together something truly magic here: We're not just talking Wes Anderson's The Graduate (which, incidentally, is Rushmore), but at the same time, comparisons to Anderson are well made. Braff has a great eye of frame composition. Every shot is full of eye catching detail. And he's got a natural chemistry that makes him easy to relate to.

Admittedly, this isn't the most original idea for a movie, but you really don't mind seeing a movie about finding yourself and true love in the midst of tragedy because of how magnetic the cast is. Along with Braff, Ian Holm brings a subdued, nervous performance of a man who just doesn't understand his son, the always reliable Peter Sarsgard plays the affable loser that wants nothing more to smooth things over so well you tend to forget just how good he is at it. Then there's the revelation: Natalie Portman. I'd been so used to seeing her go half-assed in Star Wars that I forgot that this was the same Natalie Portman that blew everyone away in Leon. She's a force of nature in Garden State, but it's a testament to her talent that she never takes it over the top. This is the type of character that'd tempt some to go way past believable, but you never feel like she isn't a real person (even if that real person is a chronic liar who suffers from siezures. Speaking of which, kudos to Braff for avoiding the easy dramatic device of the free spirit heroine being dragged back to earth with a tragic seizure scene)

Garden State works because everyone involved wants it to, and where most movies would drag or take the easy route, things work so very well because we're invested in the characters.

* I should take a moment to talk about the music. My friend scoffed at my interest in Garden State, calling it "an advertisment for how awesome indie rock is" which, from the tv ads for the soundtrack, isn't that far off base. However, the movie, despite using indie rock as an almost excluse soundtrack, only directly draws attention to the music once. I think it's not as obtrusive as some might expect it to be (think of it as a more subdued version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Graduate" soundtrack)

DiG!

Ondi Timoner’s documentary about The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre was a seven year labour of love, telling the tale of two bands on the rise; one of who makes it to (relative) success, and the other who implodes. The great joy in watching the film is seeing how each band approaches their rises and falls, and what it takes to stay alive inside the belly of the record company beast. While Warhols singer Courtney Taylor narrates the film, equal time is given to the Dandys and Anton Newcombe, the brilliant but unstable leader of the Jonestown Massacre. The bands pick at each other, are envious, and get together every now and then to play (or in one case, to crash the other band’s house for a photo shoot) but it’s not necessary to like The Dandy Warhols or The Brian Jonestown Massacre to enjoy the film. Better still, the dvd contains separate commentary tracks for each band, so we can hear their reaction to the film, how they’re portrayed, and how they saw things as 1996 turned into 2002.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Director Miranda July moves from the world of short films to full length with this confident slice of life dramadey. Well, let’s take a step back, eh? July, who appears in the film, made a film that is at times evocative of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Mary Harron, Sofia Coppola, and Terry Zwigoff, with the themes of a Todd Solondz movie. Yes, that is possible, and Me and You and Everyone We Know is a declaration of emerging talent wrapped up in the overlapping stories of a Short Cuts or Magnolia. A warning to the sensitive: this film deals with burgeoning adolescent sexuality, but not in a perverted way, per se.

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Z Channel was a pay cable station based out of California in the late seventies and early eighties, but it’s what Z Channel and its founder Jerry Harvey were about that makes it so important. Z Channel preceded HBO in a number of ways, but more importantly, Harvey was interested in showing movies that didn’t get a fair shake in theaters; films he loved personally and wanted to share with the world. Z Channel was the first cable station to show movies the way they were shot, in widescreen, and in blocks with similar films for marathons. Directors like Robert Altman, David Cronenberg, and Jim Jarmusch saw their films alongside movies like The Magnificent Ambersons, Heaven’s Gate, and Once Upon a Time in America, premiering for the first time in its original director’s cut. Harvey had a passion for films, and the people interviewed in this film rave about him, the least of which is Quentin Tarantino, who lived outside Z Channel’s broadcast range and only saw it through bootlegged tapes. Harvey’s life was cut short in the mid-eighties when his mental problems drove him to suicide, but the impact of Z Channel on what we know as home video cannot be overlooked, and A Magnificent Obsession is a great way to see that.

The Chumscrubber

The Chumscrubber is a bit like Donnie Darko, but with the sensibilities of I Heart Huckabees. There’s our hero who lives in a semi-permanent prescription stupor, his clueless parents and their clueless friends, and then there’s The Chumscrubber, and omnipresent video game, tv, and comic book character who wanders through post apocalyptic suburbia with his severed head at his side. To tell you any more would take away the fun of seeing it for yourself, but don’t expect another Donnie Darko. Just something distantly related.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Stephen Hopkins cut his teeth in Hollywood making sequels to popular sci-fi and horror movies (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5, Predator 2) but in 2004 he made something quite different for HBO, something that, while critically recognized, never got the attention it deserved, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Based on the book of the same name, Geoffery Rush is Peter Sellers, whoever that is. The film gives us Sellers as a man without any identity of his own, partly the reason he was such a renowned character actor, because he slipped into the roles fully. Jealous to the point of acting childish, Sellers was a fascinating mess of a man and the movie covers his personal and professional life in a way many were never aware of. That and it’s damned good, too. Rush is fantastic as Sellers, who plays the movie as though he’s directing his own life story (and playing all the parts), and there are fine turns by John Lithgow, Stephen Fry, Emily Watson, Charlize Theron, and Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick. A fine post modern biopic in the vein of American Splendor, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a must view.

The Machinist

Brad Anderson’s curious blend of the worlds of David Fincher and David Lynch may be best known for Christian Bale’s stunning weight loss, but it’s a hallucinatory trip down the dark corridors of the mind that keep us watching. Bale, who dropped down to 117 pounds, plays Trevor Reznik, a machinist who hasn’t slept for a year and is haunted by ominous visions of something he may or may not have done. As his sense of reality begins to unravel, he reaches out to the only people he knows, a waitress (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) and a hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who may know him better than he knows himself. If the ending lacks the punch it should have, then at least the journey there was effective enough.

The Jacket

Steven Sodebergh and George Clooney’s production company turned to short filmmaker John Maybury to direct their first major feature, a strange blend of Jacob’s Ladder and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Adrien Brody is a Desert Storm veteran who’s suffering more than a little brain damage from being shot in the head twice, and when the man he’s hitchhiking with kills a police officer, he can’t remember what happened. Assigned to the care of Dr. Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson), Jack Starks is subjected to a horrific series of tests in a mental facility, the worst of which involves being put into a straight jacket and locked in a morgue container under the influence of heavy medication. Starks awakens to find himself in the future, and by accident comes across a young woman (Keira Knightley) whose mother he helped out in 1990. When Starks discovers his death is imminent, his mission is a race against time to find out how he dies and if he can stop it. The Jacket benefits greatly from Maybury’s vision as a director: much of the film’s transitions have a Brakhage like feeling, and he has a fine eye and a great cast to sell the premise.

Wet Hot American Summer

Somewhere between when The State ended it’s run and when Stella began airing on Comedy Central, the central members got together and made a movie about summer camp in the 1980’s. Their bizarre sendup, written by Michael Showalter and directed by David Wain, has all the flourishes of the summer camp film genre, but filtered in such a strange way that we’re almost not sure if it’s funny the first time through. It is. Wet Hot American Summer is the only kind of movie we could expect from The State, a comedy troupe so devoted to the bizarre that it’s no wonder the show didn’t last. In addition to the half of the state that isn’t in Reno 911, Wet Hot American Summer also stars Paul Rudd, Janeane Garafalo, David Hyde Pierce, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, and Christopher Meloni (also known as the guy who looks like Elias Koteas). Don’t be surprised if you find yourself watching it and saying “hey! It’s that guy” more than once, even if you aren’t sure if you like it. Watch it a couple of times and let it sink in.

The Most Dangerous Game

While King Kong was wrapping up shooting and before effects work went underway, RKO decided to put the standing jungle sets to good use and make another movie they could release before Kong, using much of the same cast, crew, and even the same director. Based on Richard Connell’s story of the same name, The Most Dangerous Game is the tale of a trophy hunter who survives a boat capsizing and finds himself of an island owned by the mysterious Count Zaroff, who also enjoys hunting, but in a very different way. Starring Joel McRea, Leslie Banks, and Kong’s Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, the film is a lean 63 minutes, but never runs out of steam. Do yourself a favor and hunt this one down.



Heavenly Creatures

Peter Jackson’s first foray outside the world of horror comedy was the true story of Juliet Hulme, who brutally killed her mother with the help of her best friend Pauline Parker. Though it sounds right up his alley, Heavenly Creatures is more of a drama with the hint of fantasy than an outright suspense film (the murder itself happens at the very end of the film). The movie proper deals with the growing relationship between the shy Hulme (Melanie Lynskey), and the outgoing Parker (Kate Winslet, in her big screen debut), much to the horror of their parents. Jackson displays an adeptness with the young actresses heretofore unseen in his earlier films, and brings the fantasy elements of their dream world (involving butterflies, castles, and clay knights) to the screen in a way that doesn’t feel hokey. Heavenly Creatures was the first indication to many that Jackson had much more in him than Zombie films, but it never got the audience it deserved.

F for Fake

Orson Welles’ free form film essay on the art of sleight of hand, be it magic, forgery, or film illusion is a wild ride that benefits from watching with a skeptic’s eye. While it seems Welles is pointing the camera at Elmyir, a master art forger, perhaps he’s looking at the man’s biographer, who also wrote a biography of Howard Hughes that turned out to be utter fiction. Or perhaps he’s pointing the camera towards his companion Oja Kodar, and her sordid tale involving Pablo Picasso. Maybe he’s pointing at himself and his critics, who chided him for never finishing his films. Maybe. Watch it for yourself and decided, and while you’re checking out Criterion’s first class dvd of F for Fake, put in disc two and watch Orson Welles: One Man Band, a feature length documentary about a number of films Welles began, but for one reason or another, never completed. The master is at work in F for Fake, so go see what he’s up to.

Blogorium ( re-)Review: Midnight Movies

I'm opting to call this a re-review in that the Cap'n "sort of" reviewed Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream almost two years ago. At the time I wrote the following blurb:

I've also been watching Midnight Movies, which is so far a fun documentary about the birth of the "midnight" cult film phenomenon. It begins with Jodorowsky's El Topo (the first "midnight movie"), and also covers Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Eraserhead, with shout outs to Reefer Madness and Bambi Meets Godzilla, among other movies that played at the Elgin in New York and the Orson Welles theatre in L.A*.

The directors are all involved and it's half about how the films came to be and half interviews with theatre owners, distributors, critics, and fans. Interesting tidbit: Roger Ebert gave Night of the Living Dead a harsh review because he watched it with parents who brought their children to the show. Just let that simmer a little bit, and imagine the review you might write after seeing the reactions he did.

I'm not done yet but they've just transitioned from Rocky Horror to Eraserhead, and it's particularly interesting to hear the overlap with people involved. Richard O'Brien talking about watching Eraserhead is almost as interesting as John Waters talking about seeing NotLD first run at a drive-in in Baltimore. For that, this is a definite "must see".

For the most part, this covers my impressions of watching the doc again - as I did last night - but as my motto is increasingly becoming "do your homework before you write a review," it seemed apropos to fill in the considerable gaps in that initial write-up.

The documentary is a condensation of J. Hoberman and Johnathan Rosenbaum's book Midnight Movies, which understandably has more room to work with in order to properly cultivate the inception, release, and second life as a late night attraction (Rosenbaum and Hoberman appear in interviews). While the film adaptation attempts to distill the book, sacrifices are made in order to make the transition: much of the opening history of cult and exploitation films are dropped in order to focus specifically on the period between El Topo (1970) and Eraserhead (1976), centering around Ben Barenholtz's Elgin and Larry Jackson's programming at the Orson Welles Cinema. The depth of coverage for the films vary, but the six central "midnight movies" are El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Eraserhead.

Midnight Movies is a Starz production, which is not to disparage the work of writer / director Stuart Samuel or co-writer Victor Kushmaniuk, but I've noticed a trend with Starz related documentaries: they attempt to cover a considerable amount of information in a minute amount of time (Midnight Movies is 88 minutes long). In this instance, the film covers six films, plus an intro and outro in less than 90 minutes, leaving roughly 15 minutes per film, which needs to cover the making of the film, its entrance into the "midnight movie" circuit, and its lasting cultural impact.

Not all of the films get that, either; Night of the Living Dead's "making of" portion is considerably less in-depth compared to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and is more focused on the social forces at work surrounding Romero's seminal "zombie" picture than the film itself. Romero's segment is topped off by a cynical comment that the film had no copyright and could therefore make money for any distributor who had a print (with text overlays of grosses for Night of the Living Dead in various territories), while the fact that Night's creators saw none of the revenue is left out.

Larry Jackson (who programmed the Orson Welles Cinema) suggests that his choices in "midnight movies" were based on "ironic" movie going casts a dubious shadow over Reefer Madness, Bambi Meets Godzilla, and makes his advocating of The Harder They Come slightly confounding. Jackson appears to be a genuine fan of the film, but the rationale behind midnight programming at the Welles seems counter-intuitive to the Jamaican made, reggae infused crime drama. The Harder They Come actually feels the least explored of the six subjects, with more time devoted to its distribution than the film itself.

Because I had not finished the film when writing about it, I also neglected to mention the more interesting connection between Eraserhead and John Waters: while promoting Desperate Living, Waters was so enthusiastic about Lynch's debut that he devoted most of the interviews to talking up Eraserhead rather than his third feature. The fact that many of these directors intersected thanks to the "midnight movie" phenomenon is in and of itself a component of the documentary worth watching.

While I understand the point that Midnight Movies: from the Margin to the Mainstream makes, the title can be taken two ways, neither of which I completely agree with: the documentary asserts that the subversive elements of "midnight movies" has become the mainstream, and accordingly their impact is dulled by a tendency towards hyper-irony in modern cinema (this is the central reason Roger Ebert appears in the film, albeit in an extremely limited capacity). The other argument one could make is that the "midnight movies" covered in the film have become mainstream in their own way, particularly as their respective directors elevated in stature.

The arguments bleed together in some ways: I strongly suspect that mainstream audiences have never seen The Harder They Come, Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos, or El Topo. They may have some inkling that Eraserhead and Pink Flamingos exist, but it is incredibly unlikely that simply because David Lynch moved on to make The Elephant Man - the film's primary evidence of the "mainstreaming" of the margin - that the cult films have extended as far as Samuel would like us to believe. Waters makes the point that the subject matter of his films hasn't changed, but culture changed to accept the "freaks" he showcases. This is fair, but the argument is not universal across the doc's subjects: Jodorowsky, Henzell, and Romero (to a degree) are still relatively outside of the "mainstream," and while Lynch occasionally taps into the cultural zeitgeist (Twin Peaks), his idiosyncratic filmmaking often scares off the audiences Samuel assumes have come to accept "midnight" culture. I also find the argument that Jaws and Star Wars are "midnight movies" that went mainstream a bit specious - it suggests that there was no precedent for these kinds of film before the "midnight movie" era.

Waters also makes a salient point about the death of "midnight movies": the advent of VHS functionally rendered the midnight experience moot by giving audiences greater access to "cult" films, coupled with the ability to do everything they would do at a late-night theatre in the comfort (and safety) of their own home. In a sense laziness, rather than a shift of values, killed the "midnight movie" (as well as the Drive-In, although that's something I prefer to save for another time).

Accordingly, Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream is a cinematic Hors d'oeuvre, a taste of "cult" cinema that covers six major films in the history of the midnight movement to a relatively satisfying degree. It functions as a primer, designed to interest you in the individual histories of the films covered, and while I may not concur with the assertion it reaches, with the limited running time, it packs in enough valuable morsels of trivia** that film fans will leave the film hungry for more information.



* The Orson Welles Cinema is not in Los Angeles, but Cambridge, Massachusetts.
** George Romero openly refutes a misleading rumor featured in Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue, which is also suggested in Midnight Movies before he corrects it: that Duane Jones was a deliberate casting choice to comment on race relations in the 1960s. Nightmares edits Romero interview footage to suggest that WAS the case, where he directly corrects the misconception in Midnight Movies.

A Few Scattered Thoughts

The Cap'n has a pretty good "Video Daily Double" for you tomorrow, but until then here are some odds and sods.
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Two things I forgot to mention about Black Dynamite:

- I didn't bring up the music at all (which is fantastic), in part because almost every review has a section devoted to it. To be fair, the soundtrack - which is a combination of catalog music from the era and newly recorded songs / score which blend in so well that I daresay it's difficult to choose what's what - is at the heart of keeping Black Dynamite so entertaining. The songs in particular really sell some of the ridiculous plot developments, including the description of Black Dynamite finding Jimmy's apartment broken into as he's walking in. It's reminiscent of the Hard 'N Phirm songs from The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, but more appropriate to the plot and in a much better movie.

Also, you're going to have the "Dy-No-Mite!" refrain stuck in your head for days after you watch Black Dynamite. You've been warned.

- The more I think about it, the best comparison to the kind of parody/satire in Black Dynamite may be Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox story. Black Dynamite really does for Blaxploitation films what Walk Hard does for Music Biopics, which is cleverly spoof the cliches and over-exaggerate the overused tropes to the point that it's clear no one should take them seriously any more. The fact the both movies use the "I'm going to have a great life" speech right before a character dies horribly should give you some idea of what I'm saying.


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"The Big Lebowski is one of those rare movies that rewards repeat viewings. Every time you come back to the film it's possible to notice something that you didn't before." - Herr Doktor

What did I notice this time that I hadn't caught in the many, MANY times I've seen The Big Lebowski since 1998?

Mark Pellegrino, of Dexter and - more recently - of Lost fame (he's Jacob), is the thug Jackie Treehorn sends to The Dude's apartment that doesn't pee on the rug. He's the one dunking the Dude's head into the toilet and saying "where's the money, Lebowski? Bunny says you're good for it!"

Despite the fact that I've clearly seen him in Mullholland Dr, The X-Files, Ellie Parker, Lethal Weapon 3, Twisted, Capote, and National Treasure, for some reason Pellegrino never registered on my radar until last year, and accordingly, I never noticed that he was also in The Big Lebowski. Weird.

Oh, and David Thewlis, which I swear that I had to have known, but also keep forgetting. He's Knox Harrington, the giggly guy in Maude Lebowski's apartment with the shaved head and John Waters moustache.

But I did know that Aimee Mann was the nihilist that lost her toe for the kidnapping scheme.

One of these days I'm going to write up a proper piece on The Big Lebowski that collects all of the reviews from 1998, well before it was the cultural touchstone it is now. Once upon a time the consensus was that The Big Lebowski was "okay, but it's no Fargo..." I swear it.

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Some things I neglected to mention about Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XVII last week:

- The Crawling Eye is episode 101, which means it was the first episode to air outside of KTMA, on what I'm guessing was (at the time) The Comedy Channel, later to become Comedy Central. I have it on a tape somewhere, and while primitive, it is a worthy addition for series fanatics like myself.

- The Final Sacrifice is apparently for Sci-Fi Channel / Mike era Mistie fans what Mitchell is to Comedy Central / Joel era fans. I confess that after a while, I simply lost track of MST3k on the Sci-Fi Channel, and as a result never really "got" the whole Rowsdower phenomenon. I missed most of the 9th and 10th seasons, and while I'm familiar with the shirt, volume XVII will be my first encounter with The Final Sacrifice and Zap Rowsdower. While I consider myself a "Joel" kinda guy, I'm welcome to see what it is the younger generation of fans are so buzzed about.

- One of the extras for this set is a panel discussion with "The Two Crows", Trace Beaulieu and Bill Corbett, which to my knowledge is a first on-camera (unless I'm forgetting some interaction from the 20th anniversary panel). I'm quite looking forward to that, as it marks for me one of the only divides in eras of the show that remains untapped.

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And so we end another day. Back tomorrow with two cracking good videos and some more nonsense.

Three-fer

Wherein the Cap'n briefly touches upon three movies that don't need another full write-up, but bear some revisiting.

Movie The First - Lens Flare: The Motion Picture, er Star Trek (2009)

I'm going to say this again, because despite standing by my earlier review, I am astonished how well Star Trek works without having a plot. It doesn't have a plot! At all! The movie is a greatest hits of Trek novels and ephemera strung together by a GIGANTIC PLOT MECHANISM that exists solely to set the "Reset" button on the series.

Don't get me wrong, Star Trek does two things very well (and neither is Lens Flares):

1. It's one of the few remake-ish movies in the last three years or so that doesn't really abandon canon or tell the old fans to go buzz off ("This isn't your father's Star Trek" aside). It really does embrace the best things about the original series, puts a cast together that somehow manages to evoke the original actors but also put their own stamp on things, and it's trying very hard not to say "we're better and here's why". Putting Leonard Nimoy in the film and setting him up as a recurring character down the line is a good sign that JJ Abrams and company do, in fact, want this to be like your "father's Star Trek". Just with more goddamned lens flares.

2. Like many other Abrams-related projects, Star Trek effortlessly draws you in and sets the stakes up quickly. Despite knowing exactly what happens to the Kelvin the second time I watched the film, I'll be damned if Star Trek didn't suck me in AGAIN! Part of it is the breathless pacing of the film, part of it is that Abrams is really trying to avoid the self-parodic nature of later Original Series movies and anything having to do with Data in the Next Generation movies. It's funny, but not at its own expense. The Red Shirt death is spot on, for example. You laugh, but you also say "holy shit", because no Red Shirt ever got it that bad before. For two hours the movie manages to breeze by and I was still on board.

But there IS NO PLOT! Any movie where it's a requirement to read the prequel graphic novel in order to actually understand why the main villain does anything he's doing or to fill in any of the unanswered questions (many of which are raised in my old review) is fundamentally problematic. If you bother to stop and think about things like "why doesn't Nero say anything to the Captain of the Kelvin?", and there is actually an answer, as long as you listen to the commentary on the deleted scenes, then there's something funky about the movie.

What's funky is that there's no "there" there. The movie has less of a plot than The Phantom Menace, and much larger gaps in logic and credibility. So much of Star Trek happens by sheer coincidence that I can't understand why I liked it as much the second time as the first. This is a testament to the ability of JJ Abrams to overcome basic moviemaking techniques and still craft an entertaining film. Kudos, sir.

But for God's sakes, man: can we lose the lens flares? I mean in every single shot of a starship, there's at least one, and once we're on the Enterprise, yeesh! It's distracting, for crying out loud, and not in the good way that the rest of the movie is.

Movie the Second - Clerks

Sometimes, you raise the right movie at just the right time. Just as I mentioned last night, Clerks is now the same age I was when I first saw the movie. Back when it was the MOST VULGAR COMEDY EVER, or something ridiculous like that. I think John Waters would disagree, and there's been much, much worse since, but in 1994 the big stink was that Clerks almost had an NC17. For talking. That's it.

I watched a vhs copy of the movie, and it began the long on-again / off-again odyssey of my interest in Kevin Smith films, which I've covered so many times that it's not worth getting into again. What's funny is that the day after I mentioned the 15th Anniversary of Clerks, the Blu Ray arrived in my mailbox from Netflix.

Ready for a shocker? It doesn't look any different than it did 15 years ago. Smith makes a joke about it on a new introduction (where he apologizes for making fans buy Clerks yet again and suggests its very existence on Blu Ray is an insult to the medium), but I honestly couldn't tell you Clerks looked any better or worse in High Definition. It looked like it always looks: grainy, kinda soft picture - in essence, an independent movie made for next to nothing in 1994.

That's not damning the film in any way. Clerks is still a funny slice of mid-nineties slacker comedy, and I think it holds up better than any of the other movies he made between 94 and 99. You're just not buying the movie because it's going to knock your socks off or anything. Because tech junkies will be pissing and moaning about this for a while. I get it; you hear "Blu Ray", you expect top of the line, and the price tag is pretty steep ($30).

On top of that, the only really new material you get on the disc is the apology from Smith and an 87 minute making of documentary - for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back*. That's right. All they could find for this new edition of the movie is a standard definition doc for another movie. Is it pretty good? Yeah, I guess so. It's comprehensive and has lots of interview footage with the cast and crew, along with more-interesting-than-you'd-expect behind the scenes stuff.

But I must stress, it's the making of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Not Clerks. So will I buy a copy of Clerks on Blu Ray? Eh. I'm glad I rented it from Netflix, because there's almost no reason to sell the 3-Disc 10th Anniversary set. Aside from putting the First Cut and the Theatrical Cut on one disc, I couldn't tell much of a difference between them. So unless I find it used, probably not, but it is out there for you fanatics with $30 burning a hole in your pocket.


Movie the Third - That Remake of The Third Man with Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio that may or may not happen.

I don't know, you guys. I just don't even know.



* the great irony is that Miramax is using the Clerks and Chasing Amy Blu Rays as an excuse to repackage Jay and Silent Bob in a boxed set, and the J&SBSB BD still has none of the original dvd extras.

Cult Movies, Continued.

editor's note: I woke up to discover this, for some reason, hadn't been posted on Saturday evening when it was written. Apologies.

I was looking through some of the vintage pieces from the Blogorium "vault", and I realized while reading one about what classifies a "cult" movie that I suddenly had a serious problem with my premise.

The issue isn't so much about what is or isn't a "cult" movie but more about the nature of the cult movie phenomenon itself:

Does it still exist?

When I was in high school, in the early days of the internet (when you couldn't actually find anything if you didn't know exactly where to look), I was kinda/sorta doing some student teaching during an "independent study" period, and one of the students came up to me and said "I want to know what 'the list' is."

I wasn't sure what she meant, but it turned out she was talking about "the list" of books you're "supposed" to read that aren't part of the high school curriculum. As recently as ten years ago, this was something that someone brought to you: usually the cool kid who seemed wiser than their years or the outsider or whoever. The list itself had no origin that anybody knew of, existed as a meme or as viral content. One day you didn't know it existed; the next day you did.

Suddenly you knew that you needed to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. You needed to read Catch-22, Brave New World, Naked Lunch, beat poetry, and other subversive-for-its-time literature. You would seek the books out and be able to recognize those who were ready to take a similar journey, but it was never thought of or referred to as "the list". It just was.

(The music industry figured out a way to capitalize and exploit this during the nineties in an all-inclusive banner called "alternative", and many of us drank the Kool-Aid in one form or fashion.)

For movies it was a little trickier, because you really needed someone who worked in a video store to steer you away from renting everything (something I discussed not too long ago). The other helpful method was to have (or read) one of those movie guides cover to cover and be dedicated enough not just to skip over something you didn't recognize. You had to spend a LOT of time getting past the lurid cover art to really discover something worth passing along, and the "list" of cult films was pretty short, even when I was in high school.

It went something like this:

The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Evil Dead trilogy
Eraserhead
Escape from New York
Shaft
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Halloween
A Clockwork Orange
Meet the Feebles
Dead Alive
The Big Lebowski


eventually, in college, it expanded considerably, thanks in part to more access to film fans, video stores, classes, better independent theatres. Notice how few foreign films are on the list of "cult" films as I understood them in high school. Shit, notice how few films there are period, how many classics I'm leaving out (Polyester, for chrissakes!).

As the internet started to grow, and as people became more easily connected, suddenly more and more movies that had been lost in the shuffle got out there, and something changed to the "cult" movie phenomenon: more people new about them. Not only did they know more about them, but they could point you to where they heard about them in a concrete manner. It wasn't Dave at Carbonated Video, it was the Entertainment Weekly list of "Best Cult Films" or Cult Movie Watch*, or Videohound's Guide to Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die.

So I must ask: if almost anyone can tell you they know that Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn exists, and that they or someone they know has seen it, is it a "cult" film anymore? Does the film reach a point where it is so well recognized because of its presence online that it ceases to be something unknown and "discovered"?

I suppose then the followup question is "would that be such a bad thing?" Do we need to have the sense of discovering something to really enjoy it? When I saw Donnie Darko for the first time, no one I knew had seen it or heard about it. I read a review in the News and Observer that mentioned a giant bunny named Frank and then it never came out. Showing it to everyone I knew was like sharing a secret, and then about six months later everyone knew about it. It was all over college campuses and for some reason, things were less fun. It's weird.

Discovering movies is really hard now, because most of the time I hear about it all over the place online before I think about renting it. The last "discovery" I can think of was Primer, and that was after months of reading about the film. Word of mouth still happens, but it's usually coupled with "yeah, I saw that online" or "I read about that" The conversations about "Holy Fuck have you heard of this movie about puppets throwing up and killing each other?!" don't seem to happen as much. It's kind of a bummer.

Rarer and rarer are the days of something like Blood Car, a movie that came from a friend of Neil's that I'd never heard of before and, had he not brought it to our attention, I may well have never seen. The same goes for Terrorvision, which came from the memories of Major Tom. Both of those are "must see" movies, and they're pretty tough to find if you don't know where to look, but that ilk of movie is getting more and more difficult to find these days. Mrm.


* I don't actually know if that exists but if googled, I wouldn't be surprised to find it.

Here we go again...

I knew it. When we went to see Crank: High Voltage, the Carousel was swarming with teenage girls, and as we were leaving, a contingent of Girl Scouts were setting up sleeping bags to spend the night there. I jokingly suggested they were all there to see Crank, but the reality is that there's only one reason that many teenage girls were in one place: Zac f'n Efron.

The Cap'n doesn't know much about Zac Efron. Hell, I don't really know anything about him other than he's in those High School Musical movies and that he was in the Hairspray that isn't Hairspray*. Oh, and that his new movie, 17 Again, came out on Friday.

For those of us who grew up during the 80s, seeing trailers for that film were groan-inducing because they reminded us of a series of "Body Swapping" movies that were all the rage between 1980 and 1990. 18 Again, Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa, Big, Dream a Little Dream. All of them essentially borrowed the Freaky Friday premise (with the exception of Big) and came out within a few years of each other. They also all sucked (again, with the exception of Big), so it wasn't a huge loss when they went the way of the dodo.

But now it's back, and not in the Freaky Friday remake** or The Hot Chick one-off way. Now it has Zac f'n Efron to guarantee interest, and sure enough 17 Again was tops at the Box Office. As much as I'd like to think that Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip and Reno 911 fans had something to do with it***, I think we all know who forked over their babysitting dollars to see shirtless Zac Efron (yes, that was actually in a review).

Crank: High Voltage, on the other hand, was number six, behind 17 Again, State of Play, Hannah Montana: the Movie, Monsters vs Aliens, and Fast and Furious.

I'm not truly broken up over this, although it is sad. Crank: High Voltage is not the kind of movie that's going to appeal to... well, just about everybody. There's a very specific audience to this film, and you can usually tell by their reaction to the title. If they say "What's that?", change the subject. If they say "Holy Crap! There's a Crank TWO???" and then proceed to jump around like a maniac, get that person a ticket. After all, that's going to be one out of a hundred or so people you talk to.

Still, I'm bummed it didn't do better. That movie is so gleefully subversive that I'd love to see more of them (especially in light of how Crank: High Voltage ends) but the Box Office is boss as far as Hollywood is concerned. We can instead look forward to the return of the Body Swap genre with tween stars in the lead. Oh boy.

Again, nothing personal to Zac Efron. Don't know the guy, haven't seen his work, not planning on doing so either. Your movie just landed opposite a film that at last figured out how to bring exploitation cinema back into the multiplexes and did it very well. That, and I really hated Vice Versa and 18 Again. And Like Father, Like Son. Hell, I hate all of them, except Big. So forgive my lack of enthusiam for your triumph.



* Speaking of successful adaptations that supplanted the original film. You can't even mention Hairspray anymore and expect a conversation about John Waters to follow. Such a shame...
** Again, now people think of that stupid Lindsay Lohan movie. Poor Jodie Foster.
*** Matthew Perry and Thomas Ian Lennon are in the movie too. And Leslie Mann, of Apatow movie fame.

Movies at Midnight? What a Concept!

Weird neck pains irritate me. Stop it, neck.

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Not even a score by Daft Punk can deter my interest in Tron 2. Nothing against Daft Punk, and certainly it's a step up from Journey, but it's not like this movie needs a big "name" attached in the score column. I'm down anyway.

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I watched The Foot Fist Way last night. While I did enjoy it, the film reminds me of Bottle Rocket in some ways, in that it's a dry run of better things to come. In Bottle Rocket's case, Wes Anderson went on to make Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums; in The Foot Fist Way's case, Danny McBride really went on to showcase the unbridled form of his comedy.

Don't get me wrong: McBride is playing the cruel, rude, sociopathic bastard you'll recognize from East Bound and Down or Tropic Thunder, it's just that he and director Jody Hill don't push the character as far as he has since. I could almost sense them pulling their punches to keep Fred Simmons from being totally unlikeable, so the film goes far but then holds back.

It's still funny as hell most of the time and if you like McBride, Foot Fist Way is most definitely worth checking out. If you've seen any of the Conan O'Brien "king of the demo" material, you'll know what to expect from Foot Fist Way, only more cruel and profane.

KING OF THE DEMO - watch more funny videos

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I've also been watching Midnight Movies, which is so far a fun documentary about the birth of the "midnight" cult film phenomenon. It begins with Jodorowsky's El Topo (the first "midnight movie"), and also covers Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Eraserhead, with shout outs to Reefer Madness and Bambi Meets Godzilla, among other movies that played at the Elgin in New York and the Orson Welles theatre in L.A.

.. The directors are all involved and it's half about how the films came to be and half interviews with theatre owners, distributors, critics, and fans. Interesting tidbit: Roger Ebert gave Night of the Living Dead a harsh review because he watched it with parents who brought their children to the show. Just let that simmer a little bit, and imagine the review you might write after seeing the reactions he did. I'm not done yet but they've just transitioned from Rocky Horror to Eraserhead, and it's particularly interesting to hear the overlap with people involved. Richard O'Brien talking about watching Eraserhead is almost as interesting as John Waters talking about seeing NotLD first run at a drive-in in Baltimore. For that, this is a definite "must see". --- Finally, there's a new Jim Jarmusch movie coming. Here's the trailer, since I don't want you to have to wait for Sunday. .. Good night.