Underrated '86

Something a little different for you, this time, folks.

Bob Freelander is hosting a wonderful series over at RupertPupkin Speaks, inviting guest bloggers to discuss the most underrated films of 1986.

I’ve decided to play along. 

You see, 1986 was a watershed year for me.  That spring, I graduated from the UCLA Motion Picture & Television Department, ready and raring to go conquer Hollywood.  Fueling my wide-eyed optimism was a banner crop of life-changing films that opened that year.  Yeah, I said it.  Life-changing!  Movies that spoke of love and life… And that whispered the secrets of storytelling.

Forget a Top 10 list, I could easily craft a Top 25 for 1986!

In fact, in order to narrow down my own Underrated ’86 list, I had to apply strict guidelines.

1) No films that I didn’t actually see in 1986. 

Sorry, Betty Blue, Sid & Nancy, and A Better Tomorrow, but we didn’t meet and fall in love until much later.

2) No films that were huge hits at the time

I heart you Aliens, Back to School, and The Color of Money.  And so does everyone else.

3) No films, no matter how brilliant, that I don’t re-visit on a regular basis

I’ll catch you later, Something Wild, Salvador, and At CloseRange.   It’s not you, it’s me.

What’s left are a handful of mangy mutts.  Each has some flaw, real or imagined, that wounded it in the eyes of the public.   Yet, I find my appreciation growing with each passing year.

So, let’s get started! 

Big Trouble In Little China

Big Trouble in Little China threw me a lifeline in the weeks after graduating college. 

My life had completely changed – I was done with school! – and it hadn’t changed at all.  I was still working the same dead end, fast food job in L.A., and I still had a summer job in a factory waiting for me in New Jersey.  Same shit, different year.

By this time, I was already a huge fan of both John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, but there was a third name in the mix that made me even more excited to see this film: Co-screenwriter W.D.Richter.  A couple of years before, Richter directed a film called The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which is a completely uncategorizable sci-fi/rock ‘n’ roll/superhero mash-up. 

The film played a run of midnight shows at the Nuart Theater in L.A. and became a touchstone for a group of friends and I who worked there.   The movie is packed with all of these strange, nonsense asides and we loved hurling quotes at each other, as we tore tickets and shoveled popcorn.

By the time BTiLC came out, the group had become scattered.  Yet, as the lights dimmed and the film came up, I felt like I was right back in their company.  

BTiLC has some of the most quotable lines of the ‘80s:

  “It’s all in the reflexes!”

  “If we’re not back by dawn… Call the president.”

  “Everybody relax.  I’m here.”

  “I feel kind of… Invincible.”

  “You know what Jack Burton always says at a time like this?”

  “Jack Burton.  Me!”

The lines may seem meaningless outside the context of the movie, but the joke is that they are just as ridiculous in context.  Yet, when you’re in over your head, and the weight of adulthood is staring you down like a wild-eyed, eight-foot tall maniac, you could do worse than remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like this…

“Have you paid your dues, Jack?”  “Yessir, the check’s in the mail.”

I saw the film four times in two weeks, and then Aliens opened.  1986 was that kind of year.

8 Million Ways to Die

I saw 8 Million Ways to Die in a half-empty house on opening night.  That was rare in Westwood, back in the day, when even obvious crap, such as St. Elmo’s Fire, would sell out.

The ensuing years have not been kinder. 

The film has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray in the US.  In fact, after my well-loved VHS started to falter, I had to import a DVD from the U.K.

Honestly, I can’t understand how this film has become so forgotten.  Written by Oliver Stone (and David Lee Henry), directed by Hal Ashby and starring Jeff Bridges, Roseanna Arquette and Andy Garcia, the production is A-list all the way. 

Have you ever heard of Andy Garcia?  Do you know why?!  This film!!

Let’s put it this way… Jeff Bridges gives one of his best performances, as alcoholic detective, Matthew Scudder.  Yet, Garcia almost over-shadows him, in his first major role.

Garcia’s performance is so unpredictable, so entertaining that he literally made himself a star here.  As the dangerously coked-up drug dealer, Angel Maldonado.  Garcia flirts with going over the top, perhaps best exemplified by his peevish insistence on pronouncing Scudder’s name as “Scooter” throughout the film.  Yet, you never doubt for a moment that underneath the cool surface, a psychotic rage boils inside Maldonado.

Accompanying the action is a wonderfully woozy score by James Newton Howard.  Certain films make me stop and watch them, no matter what I am doing, as soon as I hear the opening notes of their themes:  8 Million Ways to Die, The Dead Zone (Composer: Michael Kamen), and The Hitcher (Composer: Mark Isham) top that list.

Speaking of The Hitcher…

The  Hitcher

As soon as C. Thomas Howell’s character threw open his car door to Rutger Hauer’s hitchhiker and uttered the immortal line, “My mother warned me never to do this,” I knew that I was going to love The Hitcher.

What I didn’t expect was how much every one else would hate it.

Today, The Hitcher may seem downright restrained in its violence, but at the time of its release, it stirred up a shit-storm.  Famously, the "Los Angeles Times" ran a cover story, in its Sunday Calendar section, with the poisonously double-edged headline: “How do these movies get made?”

To this day, The Hitcher remains the most unfairly maligned film of the ‘80s.

The vitriol with which it was attacked probably helped make it one of my favorite films.  Time and again, I re-visit it, partly because it is such a great ride, and partly to mine for evidence against claims that it is misogynistic and pointless.  The film is so stripped down, in both characterization and motive, that its theme is stubbornly elusive.  Yet something deep and disturbing churns beneath the surface of this sunny actioner.

To me, the film is very much akin to the later, more celebrated Seven.  It rewards repeat viewings.

Still not convinced?   Watch it anyway, if only to hear composer Mark Isham’s complex, haunting, and otherwise unavailable score.   Man, would I love to watch this film with an isolated music track! 

Twilight Time, are you listening?

One day, I’ll give this film the in-depth post it deserves (as I’ve promised since Day One).  Until then, swing open your door and give it a lift.

Manhunter & The Fly

I lump these last two films together because I saw them together.

They were released within weeks of each in August 1986, as I was winding up that final summer at home with my mom, before moving back to Los Angeles for good.   You know, to conquer Hollywood, and all that…

Somehow, during this time, my mom and I had fallen into a habit of going to the movies every Wednesday night.   For one of our last outings, I suggested Manhunter, as my mom likes thrillers.  Once that ended, I talked her into sneaking over to see The Fly, on the screen next door!    What a strange double-bill to see with your mom, right?  Regardless, I was immediately taken with both films.

Of course, Manhunter suffers from being “that other Hannibal Lechter film,” the one made before Anthony Hopkins stole (and ate) our hearts in The Silence of the Lambs.  In fact, this film was later remade, as Red Dragon, solely so they could have Hopkins reprise the role of Lechter, one last time (Brian Cox plays him here.  Different, but no less effective). 

They shouldn’t have bothered.  There was nothing wrong with this film in the first place.

Lektor (as the good doctor’s name is spelled in Manhunter…for no apparent reason) is only the appetizer.  William Petersen’s performance, as FBI agent, Will Graham, is the main course.

Throughout the film, Graham struggles with how far to push himself, while trying to climb into the headspace of the serial killer whom he’s tracking. “They’re the worst thoughts in the world,” he explains to his son at one point.

Finally, in one of my favorites scenes of that year, Graham cracks how the killer is choosing his victims.

On the eve of the next murder, with no breakthrough in sight, Graham dives off the deep end.  He watches the 8mm family films of the previous victims, over and over, trying to see these people as the killer does. “See the woman?  See the bloom on the woman?”  He’s skating the edge of sanity, and sending back dispatches that only barely make sense

Petersen is magnetic in this scene and Graham’s sudden, stunning insight into the killer’s MO is one of the great meta- moments in cinema.

Ever wonder how TV came to be awash in crime scene forensics and criminal profiling shows?  This film (and the book on which it based) led the way.

As for The Fly, the film needs no defense from me.  Along with John Carpenter’s The Thing, it is rightly considered one of the best remakes of all time.   Yet, I’m not convinced that it fully receives its props as a love story.

I’m not kidding.

I mean, I’m all in for the David Cronenberg body-horror, as well as the quintessentially quirky performance by Jeff Goldblum.  But, as Cronenberg has pointed out, this film is at heart a tragic love story.  Befitting a tragedy, it has the most heartless ending ever. 

Spoilers ahead... 

When his final teleportation awry, Goldblum becomes an abomination, a man/pod/insect hybrid.  Geena Davis, the ex-lover, is repulsed by what he has become yet still has feelings for the man that he was.  She grabs a shotgun but can’t bring herself to kill him.   He pleads, and out of love, or mercy, or pity, she pulls the trigger.   Boom!    His head explodes. 

And… black.   The End.

Wait.  What?

Imagine for a moment, if Love Story, the weepy classic from the ‘70s, ended the second that Jenny died.  No reconciliation between Oliver and his father.  No final narration, celebrating all that was Jenny.   Just boop-boop-beeeeeeeeeeep! 

And… black.

This is a cruel and cunning move by Cronenberg.    Any other film would have had a comforting coda to ease us back into the world of the living, as we watch Davis’s character pull it together and move forward…  Life goes on, right?

Not in this film, it doesn’t.

Right at the pinnacle of despair and horror?  Black...  Show’s over, folks!  Sort through all of those complex emotions on the way home.   Have a nice night!

This abrupt cessation -- movie/no movie -- hits you exactly like your worst break-up.   There is no hope, no glimmer of light.  There is no…more.  It’s over.  Deal with it.

And you thought this was just a fable about technology gone awry, didn’t you?  Ha!  Your ex-girlfriend called.  She wants your future back.

                                                                                     *****

There you have it, folks.  1986!  An important time in my life.  Fresh out of school, whole life ahead of me, a bevy of great movies pointing the way to success in Hollywood…

30 years ago... Where does the time go? 

And… black.

Footnotes:

1. Tell me you don't want to watch the rest of the movie after hearing the opening theme of 8 Million Ways to Die, above.  Also, tell me that the credits design did not influence Nicolas Winding Refn for Drive.

2. All of the screen grabs for the posters were taken from MoviePoster.com, a site that I wish existed in 1986.

3. Big Trouble in Little China and The Fly have been treated well by Fox on home video.  Blu-rays of each available on Amazon, here and here.

4. Manhunter has just been re-released as a Collector's Edition blu-ray from the always awesome folks at Shout! Factory, available here.

5. The Hitcher and 8 Million Ways to Die are the least respected, as always.  Go region-free and pick up these great DVD releases of the title from Amazon U.K., here and here.

"Night of the Living Dead" and The Joy of Research

Released: 1968

Director: George A. Romero

Writers: John A. Russo and George A. Romero

Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon

“Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”

When I came up with the idea for this blog, I thought that Dawn of the Dead would be the first film I discussed.  It’s not only a great F’dup Flick, it’s also one of my favorite films.  But as I gathered my thoughts, I came to the realization that, like the movies themselves, Night must come first.

I first saw Night of the Living Dead on TV, as part of the WABC 11:30 Saturday Night Movie some time in the early 1970s.  I was probably about 10 or 11 years old.

I’d long ago won the battle for a later bedtime on Saturday nights, so that I could stay up and watch monster movies (Godzilla, being my first victory).  This was likely a concession on the part of my mother so that the rest of my family wouldn’t be forced to watch these kinds of films with me. 

I knew nothing about Night before the broadcast, but it did have “dead” in the title.  So, with the rest of the family off to bed, I tuned in and hoped for the best.

 

The first thing I remember about this broadcast was that the station made a special point of reminding viewers at commercial breaks that the events being depicted were fictional.

How odd.  I’d never heard a disclaimer like that before (and only rarely since).   So, already I had the feeling that there was something unique about this film.  Later, I figured out that the station must have taken this precaution due to the faux radio and TV reports incorporated throughout the film.  After all, we didn’t want another “The War of the Worlds” broadcast now, did we?

The second thing I remember is that I fell asleep!

No, I wasn’t bored.  The flick starts off great with Johnny and Barbara’s ambush in the graveyard.  And Ben’s monologue, about his escape from the zombies at the dinner, is so vividly told that I was convinced, for years afterwards, that I’d actually seen the zombies racing after that burning fuel truck.

It was just late and I was a kid.

Before I fell asleep, my mother came over and asked what I was watching.  I filled her in and she sat down to watch it with me.  And then I nodded off…

The next morning, I asked my mother how the film ended.  This was not an unusual occurrence.  Normally, she recounted the events, in a slightly dismissive tone, as if these films were so predictable that she could have written them.  On this morning, however, her mood turned serious.  “What was that film?  It scared the crap out of me!”

A film so terrifying that it scared my mom?!  And I missed it?!!

Immediately, an obsession was born.   I MUST see the rest of this film!

In those days of pre-home video, seeing a film more than once meant waiting for it to air again on broadcast TV.  Dutifully, I checked TV Guide’s weekly movies list every issue, but I never saw it listed again.  

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Unable to actually watch the film, I decided to read everything I could about it.  This consisted mainly of a capsule review in my beloved copy of Steven H. Scheuer's “Movies on TV” book and maybe a brief footnote in whatever books on current cinema I could find in the library.  In other words, not much.

As I was introduced to new research tools in school, I immediately tested how useful they were by looking-up Night of the Living Dead. 

The Periodical Contents Index (do these guides even exist any more?) led me to an essay by Roger Ebert in "Reader’s Digest". 

For years afterward, I disliked Ebert, based on that single article, as I had misunderstood his self-described “review of the audience reaction” to be a condemnation of a film that was just TOO scary.

So, both “Reader’s Digest” and my mother were declaring this film the scariest movie ever made…and I MISSED IT!

My research into Night eventually led me to “Film Comment” magazine, and, in particular, the concept of the “Return of the Repressed” in an article by critic Robin Wood. (Vol. 14, No. 4 - July/August 1978). 

Oh, how I wish I could link to this groundbreaking article!  Alas, the piece is nowhere to be found online (but I’ll keep looking).

Not to overstate its importance, or anything, but that article struck me like Col. Kurtz’s “diamond bullet straight through my forehead.” 

For the first time I'd ever seen, a serious critic was treating these movies seriously, presenting the case that they reflected the turbulence of the era.  Wood later expanded upon these ideas in his books, but never again would he present the main points in such simple and straightforward language. If you are a fan of horror, you owe it to yourself to seek it out that article.

As I researched Night, I learned of Romero’s other flicks – Season of the Witch, There's Always Vanilla, The Crazies, and Martin – all of which sounded interesting and all of which were equally impossible to see. 

I also discovered other filmmakers in the horror genre, all creating a body of work that sounded darkly fascinating: David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, Bob Clark.  Of course, there was no way to see their films, either (though Bob Clark became a happy exception, to be covered in another post).  

A whole new world of cult and disreputable cinema existed out there...and no one in my hometown had even heard of it.

Finally, one summer day when I was about 17 or 18 years old, I heard a radio ad for a midnight show of Night: “Complete and unedited”. 

I could not believe my luck!

And so, come Saturday night, a group of friends and I headed to a theater a few towns over for my long anticipated, second chance screening of Night, together with a packed house and a six pack of beer.  

The screening went down pretty much exactly as Ebert described all those years before, sans the teary-eyed toddlers. 

The film starts out creepy but fun in the early going, then settles in for some slow-boil interpersonal conflict.  But nothing prepares you for the final 30 minutes, when the film drags you straight down to hell.

From the moment the group decides to make a break from the farmhouse, the film delivers on its premise in a way that most horror films never do. 

The young lovers die first, burned to a crisp.  As if that’s not shocking enough, the zombies then descend and eat their burnt flesh, in gory detail.  Whoa!

Ben retreats back to the house and kills Mr. Cooper, after the coward locks him out. Johnny returns, as one of the dead, and pulls his sister Barbara, screaming, into a pack of the zombies.  Turns out that HE was coming to get you, Barbara.

In the most chilling sequence in the film, the sickly little girl in the basement, turns ghoul and kills her mother with a garden spade, before eating her.  The lighting, the shot selection, the distorted audio, the sheer awfulness of a child becoming a thing that sees only food when she looks at her mother, is one of the most terrifying sequences in horror. 

Ah, but in the end, the sun rises and the forces of good sweep down to rid the area of zombies.  Ben comes out of hiding, revealing that he survived the ordeal. Order is restored.

Except that the instrument of said order is some ignorant good ol’ boy, who promptly mistakes Ben for a zombie and shoots him in the head!

The film closes with a series of newspaper-like photographs depicting Ben’s lifeless body as it is dragged by meat hooks – meat hooks! – to a bonfire, where he is unceremoniously burned along with the rest of the dead.  The End.

What.  The.  Fuck!

Everyone died.  Everyone.  The smart, the cowardly, the lovers, the parents.   And these weren’t noble deaths.  These people did not go gentle into that good night.  They raged, raged against the dying of the light.  Fighting, clawing, betraying one another, until no one was left standing.

It was the bleakest ending I’d ever seen.  And yet it rang true in some post-‘60s hangover sort of way.  This was some heavy shit.

In many ways, falling asleep during that film shaped my taste in movies forever. Unlike you lazy bit torrent junkies today, I couldn’t just download the film to my phone and finish it on lunch break the next day.   I had to wait.

And wait and wait and wait...  As I waited for Night to return, I kept the light burning by reading as much as I could about it.   

What I uncovered was an alternate reality, an underground cult of filmmakers, fans and critics who recognized that horror could be so much more than just cheap scares.  It could be ABOUT stuff.

I couldn't say exactly WHAT, right then and there, but I knew for certain that, whatever it was, everyone else wanted to ignore it.

In effect, these films weren’t just about the return of the repressed, they WERE the return of the repressed.  To seek them out was to go down the rabbit-hole along with them.  As the meta-trailer might scream: "Finding them was a test of will.  Seeing them, an act of defiance!"

It was all so life-imitates-art perfect.  I was hooked!

P.S.: for an in-depth examination of the many themes at play within Night of the Living Dead, I highly recommend this BFI Film Classics book by Ben Hervey 


Footnotes:

1. The pictures on this page are screengrabs from the Elite Entertainment Millennium Edition DVD, now out of print.  The photos are heavily compressed and do not represent the actual PQ of this release.  If you are an Amazon prime member you can watch this movie for free here.