Category Archives: Movies

Revisiting: The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Last night I pulled out my DVD and re-watched the 1973 film  The Spook Who Sat by the Door.

The central plot of the film is Dan Freeman becomes the CIA’s first black officer but the processing is in reality nothing more than a stunt to lift a Senator’s sagging re-election prospects. After enduring years of racism and menial assignments Freeman resigns from the Agency and returns as a social worker to his home the mean streets of Chicago. However, Freeman has no intention of being a mere cog in the vast system and subverts his old street gang and utilizing his training from the Agency begins crafting a violent Black Liberation movement. Along the way his relationships with former lovers and close friends are tested by his radicalism and when Freeman’s devotion to his cause comes with a terrible price he doesn’t hesitate to pall in full.

Given the unrest, protests, and injustice currently flowering in our nation this film has been mentioned by several podcasts I listen to prompting me to revisit the movie. Laboring under budget and resource constraints the director, Ivan Dixon best known for his role as an actor in the sit-com Hogan’s Heroes, manages to produce a film that is tight, compelling, and without any fat. Watching the film, it is impossible to determine if the conservative directorial choices area  product of limitations or are an influence from Dixon’s long television career, either way Dixon’s makes the most of limited camera set-up and location to explore the characters and their conflicts. The only major weakness in the script is the late introduction of Freeman’s close friend Dawson, played with screen-grabbing presences by J.A. Preston. Given the emotional weight the character brings to the story and the powerful final scenes the film would have been better served introducing him in the first act along with a little revelation of Freeman’s personal history.

The film, though inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural and historical importance, is not available on any rental or streaming service and to watch it you much, as I did, buy the DVD.

With the resurgence of racially challenging media in the wake of Get Out’s astounding financial success, there is a new adaptation of the novel in development as a series but it is unknown if this will be executed as a period piece or if the event will be transposed into the current day. I think it should remain a period piece, if for no other reason than as a faithful adaptation of the source material.

I have discovered that there is a documentary about the production of the movie Infiltrating Hollywood: The Making of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, but so far, I have been unable to locate a copy, damn it.

Share

SF Movie: Attraction (2017 – Russian)

After seeing clips of this film on a special effects YouTube program my sweetie-wife and I became interested in seeing Attraction. This was the same show that sparked out interest in the WWII Russian movie T-34 which was silly but fun.

Attraction is about a large alien spacecraft that crashes to Earth causing massive destruction and loss of life in the Chertanovo district of Moscow. The protagonist is Julia daughter of s senior military leader from whom she is estranged over the death of her mother. When Julia’s friend is killed in the alien’s crash landing, she and her boyfriend, along with his street gang, become fixed on the ‘invaders,’ though the aliens have remained unseen and taken no overt hostile actions.

What follows is a decent SF movie that manages to avoid most of the over used tropes while exploring Julia’s relationship with her boyfriend, her father, and herself. The movie at point looks to be retreading the tired excuse that the aliens are ‘here for out water,’ but then manages to subvert that expectation. With decent acting, writing, and impressive special effects Attraction is well worth the two hours of screen time. We watched it in the original Russian language

Share

Lifeforce: 35 Years Later and Still a Terrible Movie

Sometimes I will revisit a movie I disliked and check-in if it was the movie that was bad or my take on it. Usually the movie is at fault and Lifeforce, currently streaming on HBO, is no exception.

Released in 1985 and part of Cannon Films’ attempt to expand into big budget cinema Lifeforce, adapted from the novel The Space Vampires, is about a derelict alien spacecraft discovered in the coma of Halley’s Comet by a joint American and European manned space mission. The commander of the mission Col. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), and seriously as a friend of mine once clued me in you can pre-judge a film’s quality by the haircuts of the ‘military’ characters and Carlsen’s is terribly non-regulation. Carlsen and his crew discover three aliens with human forms within the craft and bring back to Earth. Something goes wrong and the European space vessel Churchill arrives in Earth orbit but itself now a derelict. A rescue mission finds everyone aboard dead but the three aliens, still in their suspended animation, unharmed and the aliens are brought down to ground. The aliens are of course not dead and ignite a sweeping plague of energy vampirism, and not the cool kind that you get from Colin Robinson, that threatens humanity.

With a budget of 25 million dollars and box office receipts of under 12 million, which I and two friends were part of, Lifeforce crashed and burned on its release gathering neither critical nor commercial success. In some circles the most memorable aspect of the movie are the numerous exploitive nude scenes by the actress Mathilda May. ( I am pleased to report that this did not derail the young woman’s acting career and still is currently still working with nearly six television and film credits.) Lifeforce is a movie that cannot make up its mind as to what it wants to be. At times it’s a sensual vampirism flick, at other times it’s an invasion of body snatchers paranoia movie and by the end it’s an apocalyptic zombie movie with a tacked on happy ending.

There is scarcely an aspect of this movie that works, not in direction, casting, writing, or production design does this film make any sort of sense. Though I will admit that the end credit score by Henry Mancini is a terrific march.

While Lifeforce has found a following as a cult film it is not something anyone really needs to watch.

 

Share

Understanding Your Material

It’s interesting and instructive to compare two bits of film, though one is television, and their approach towards the military and their depictions of military men.

In Them! military characters confront giant ants created by mutation induced from the first atomic explosions. It is simply amazing to see the nuanced actions that are correctly capture in their bearing, their methods, and in their characters. One excellent example is when attacking a nest in the open desert and they are using bazookas as part of their assault. When you load that WWII weapon there is actually a wire lead that goes from the round to a terminal on the firing tube. I know this because I’ve watched training films from the war on how to properly load and fire the weapons. The characters in the movie correctly follow the weapon system’s procedure.

Nearly 50 years later in the iconic television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer the titular character Buffy is working with an elite special forces unit hunting down demons and monster in her hometown. When these best of the best warriors are briefed by a scientist on their next target thy have no questions for her and are silently dedicated to the mission and following orders. Buffy is the outsider and non-conformist with a string of questions and concerns.

This scene entirely misses the boat about what it means to be an elite warrior in U.S. service. These men are smart and those smarts are part of why they are elites. It is simplistic and reductive to think of special forces personnel as silent followers of orders.

The difference between the two productions likely comes down to the fact that in the 1950s nearly everyone knew someone who served and that close association informed the writing and production choices. For Hollywood of the late 90s and early 2000s people will actual services records in the production pipeline are likely to be rare to non-existent. Production companies get their writers and producers and directors from college and industry training with very few coming to film production later in life with the sort of life experiences that could help avoid these sorts of mistakes. It is also unlikely that anyone in the production system knows or knew anyone that served is such a capacity. All of us lead lives that are far too insular. Having veterans among the staff and having veterans review the material to help assure accuracy would be baby steps to getting such characters correct.

And the same is true for characters beyond those with military service. It is true for characters of religion, nationality, or ethnicity.

 

Representation matters.

Share

Silly Foreign Fun: T-34

A few of weeks ago I was watching one of my favorite YouTube shows where visual effects artists watch, react, and critique visual effects from various films and television shows. During that episode that had a couple of sequences from recent Russian films one of which was T-34 a World War II story about a Russian tank crew.

The story takes place in two period, the first during the German invasion of the Soviet Union as the NAZI forces approach Moscow when our lead character Ivushkin is part of a desperate effort to blunt the threat to his county. The second and majority of the film take place four years later when Ivushkin and others escape a POW/Concentration camp, thing seem a little mixed up in the movie but it is not one you’d watch for any form of historical accuracy, with a repaired T-34 tank and half a dozen rounds of ammunition making a desperate drive for freedom.

Sadly, the edition available on Amazon Prime is dubbed and there is no Russian language version for streaming. While the voice actors did what they could I and my sweetie-wife prefer subtitled movies to dubbed ones. She likes listening to the foreign languages and I find that the vocal performances tend to be better.

There are quite a few technical errors in the movie but this is not the sort of story where you want gritty, depressing realism. It is a story of heroism against an evil foe. (Set aside that the Soviet unions murdered millions this is their mythology and everyone is the hero of their own myths.) The use of elaborate visual effects through the tank battle sequences that follow fired rounds in exaggerated slow motions provided a lot of engaging moments.

The film was a smashing success at the Russian box office and it is easy to see why. The stars are engaging, the story never really pauses, and it celebrates a heroism that everyone can imagine. This is a perfect streaming choice of a Saturday matinee.

 

Share

Retro Movie: Ms .45

Released in 1981, and I watched this film on its initial released, Ms .45is an exploitation film that is charitably about sexism in society and more accurately an excuse to watch for nearly an hour and a half of a young woman taking revenge with the aid of a semi-automatic pistol. Be warned, spoilers for the entire film abound ahead.

Thana, played by the tragically doomed Zoe Tamerlis, is young woman, mute, who works as a seamstress in the New York City’s garment district. On her way home from work she is attacked and raped in an alley, then when she gets to her apartment, she interrupts a burglar armed with a .45 caliber pistol, who also rapes her. During the assault Thana fights off her attacker and kills him. With her sanity snapped by the violations Thana dismembers her attacker’s corpse and takes his pistol. The rest of the film is following Thana around as she disposes of body parts by leaving them in various trash bins or grinding them into dog food and shooting dead men who attack her, frighten her, or make sexual advances towards her. The film culminated in a costume party thrown by her employer where Thana attends dressed as a nun and after her boss makes a sexual advance, proceeds to shoot every male in at the celebration, though momentarily confused by the man who had cross-dressed as a bride for his costume. The final scenes of Ms .45 has a wildly different context today with mass shootings now ubiquitous compared to 1981 when there were still rather rare.

Ms .45 was written and directed by Abel Ferrara and had I realized eleven years later that he also wrote and directed Bad Lieutenant I would have dissuaded by friend from selected that film as the one we were going to see. The film while attempting to have a thematic point about sexism and the treatment of women in American society lingers on the violence presented following the footsteps of other exploitation movies about crime and revenge that populated theaters of the 1970s and 1980s. Thana’s marksmanship with her pistol is never explained falling into one of Hollywood’s most beloved firearms tropes, precision shooting is easy.

On its release the film received terrible reviews but has become something of a cult favorite and has even had a high definition released of a restored print from the original negative.

Zoe Tamerlis as Thana is really quite good. Bereft of dialog and voice she fully conveys Thana’s inner life with her large and expressive eyes. Sadly, she was devoted to recreational drug use and died from it at the age of 37.

For people who enjoy the trashy sub-genre of rape and revenge films Ms .45may possibly fit your tastes but I was not moved by this movie in 1981 nor in 2020.

 

Share

Weekend Movie: An American Werewolf in London

This past Saturday and friend and I re-watched An American Werewolf in London, John Landis’s 1981 groundbreaking and genre defining monster movie. It had been decades since I last watched the movie but my memory was one of it being an entertaining but flawed film and my experience this weekend confirmed that.

The story concerns David and Jack two Americans on a backpacking trip and their encounter in the north of England with a werewolf that leaves one dead and the other cursed with lycanthropy. There is a tragic romantic sub-plot with a nurse, Alex, played by genre favorite Jenny Agutter and a massive climatic sequence of the werewolf rampaging through central London to complete the movie.

An American Werewolf in London is a film that has left its mark on the horror genre and specifically on how people have dealt with and described werewolves and their transformations ever since. Both this movie and The Howling, released earlier in 1981, presented the first on-screen transformation that were not simply variations of the lap-dissolves used in previous werewolf films all the back to Universal’s The Wolf-Man in 1941. Both Rick Baker who did the special make-up effects in An American Werewolf in London and Rob Bottin for The Howlingprogressed to careers that pushed the boundaries of practical effects until the advent of digital visual effects.

An American Werewolf in London also presented the transformation from human to wolf as something terribly painful and motif that with its overuse has since become a cliché.

With a running time of 97 minutes the movie is by far too brief, and simultaneously feels leisurely in its developing romance and rushed in its head-long drive to get to the next supernatural sequence. This blinding speed short-cuts characters and their development for the sake of plot and exposition and contributes the film’s finale feeling abrupt. I distinctly remember sitting in the theater during its initial run feeling like the it needed to be more, that it was unfinished, as the credit’s scrolled across the screen.

Share

Why Love Some Bad Movies and Not Others?

Recently I re-watched on HBO, though I own the Blu-ray, 1980’s Xanadu. This film along with Can’t stop the Music is credited with the inspiration that created The Golden Razzie award for bad cinema. Now I can both recognize that Xanadu is in many ways a terrible film, miscast, no character arc, very nearly plotless, but it is also a film that is near and dear to my heart. It is a romantic film centered on dreams and the message that dream don’t die we kill them. And what Xanadu is to me other bad movies are to other people, but it’s the rare bad film that really generates this sort of feeling.

Star Trek: Insurrection is a terrible film that is also essential a romantic film, not in terms of Eros but in rather prioritizing inner emotional life over reason, with a central message but that movie is a tedious bore and its message if examined closely is one that advocate murdering those who do not think as you do.

There lies the answer to the conundrum, it is in the emotional resonance that a bad movie can rise to something special. There are those for whom Star Trek: Insurrection is a beloved film, no doubt due to deep emotional connection to the characters of the cast. (I’m an old fart and more emotionally tied to the original series than and subsequent entry.) So, while Xanadu is mostly a string of expository scenes linking musical numbers it is in my own heart that its emotions truly lie. I love the film not because of what it is but because of who I am.

 

Share

Coded versus Interpreted

I have been watching some documentaries about films and film makers, including some of the better Cinema youtubers. (Really, that makes them sound related to potatoes.) One thing I kind of struggle and rebel against is the idea that something is ‘coded’ into a film when there is no documented evidence of the filmmaker’s intent.

Coded has the clear implication that something was done with intent. In Robocop the Christ imagery, though in my opinion it is highly misplaced, is there by intent. Paul Verhoeven deliberately created that imagery for his own artistic purpose. It is coded. However, I can find no evidence supporting my interpretation that the corporate executives enjoying Robocop food paste that ‘tastes like baby food,’ is a deliberate symbolism that they are children playing with things that have moral implication that they do not understand.

Perhaps the best example of coded versus interpreted comes from John Carpenter’s They Live. From interviews and on-line debates, plus anyone with even a passing knowledge of Carpenter’s political philosophy, it’s clear that the aliens in that film and their objectives are a stand in for Conservatism and particularly Reaganism. Neo-Nazis interpreted the aliens to be coded as Jewish and have embraced the film as something delivery their kind of message.

Another example is Disney’s The Lion King. One interpretation is that the film contains a message about environmentalism and the great circle of life, but it can also be seen as an argument for conservative social Darwinism because the entire system collapses when Scar brings the ‘takers’ in has them live off the ‘makers.’ I do not think that is what the filmmakers intended but I can and has been read in that manner.

There are times when the message is clear, there is no coding in Birth of a Nation, the message is plainly racist and it is meant to be, but I would be wary of seeing intent where there is possibly only interpretation.

 

Share

A Virtual Film Festival

For the past several years one of my favorite things has been the Horrible Imaginings film festival. In 2018 the festival moved the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego to the Frieda Cinema in Orange county, about a 90-minute drive from my home. However, an all-day and deep into the night festival or short and feature length horror films is well worth the drive and so I still attend. Indeed, I have discovered some of my favorite horror film at the festival including Alena a ghost story set in an all-girl Swedish school.

Last year Festival Director Miguel Rodriguez started a new element with Campfire Tales where one evening per quarter the Frieda cinema and Horrible Imaginings would host three or so hours of horror shorts. While the evenings sounded fun and interesting, I couldn’t quite justify driving for three hours and eliminating an evening with my sweetie-wife, for essentially one long films worth of entertainment and so I haven’t attended any of the campfire tales events.

This year COVID-19 changed that. Because in person events were still banned Miguel moved the festival on-line and after paying a very reasonable admission donation, I was able to watch the offerings at this quarter’s Campfire Tales. Better yet I watched them on my schedule, after an evening of board and card games with my sweetie-wife and a couple of friends. From 9 p.m. until nearly midnight a friend and I watched the short horror films and had a truly wonderful time.

I hope, even though it goes against my own interests, that Miguel can soon get back to the in-person screenings he adores and hosts so very ably but I can’t deny how much fun it was to take part in a cycle of ghost, monster, and psychological horror films.

 

Share