Three laughs: Kinjite - Forbidden subjects

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file # 25:
Kinjite - Forbidden Subjects (USA, 1989)

Director: J. Lee Thompson

I know we are still on the edge about police brutality. Yet the cop-on-the-edge trope is one that's been central to a zillion action movies throughout the years. Now, in movies we usually take the cop's point of view, which tends to show that you may have to break a few rules to get to the goal you're reaching. Meaning, it's ok to use excessive violence if it's for purging streets of nasty criminals, who are evil for evil's sake.

But this is why trashy low-budget movies are more honest than their big budget counterparts. They have less to lose so they say what they mean without diluting the statement. Dirty Harry is a small fry when compared to some of the characters Charles Bronson played at films produced by Cannon Group.

At 1989 Bronson was getting pretty old, so the usual action movie tricks, like chases and gunfights were out of the question. That's probably why they upped the ante and made his character a racist who especially enjoys torturing criminals in inventive ways. When a japanese diplomat's daughter is kidnapped, he must find her even though he realizes that the family's father is the same guy that groped his daughter on a packed bus (or "touched her holiest of holies"). 

Now, the film may have some idea that what Bronson is doing is questionable. But he is proven right in his prejudices in the end, and never faces consequences of killing a whole lot of people, so the point is mute. In fact, the entire film is kind of ridiculous in that it seems to contain a message that the Japanese are perverted and should be monitored. Not to mention latino criminals. So, a fair point is to give this film a content warning. If you can't find anything funny about a film that protects police rights to be racist and violent since "they all deserve it", I totally understand. This is one of those films that make me feel dirty for watching, let alone writing about.

 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Bronsons's cop specializes in capturing dirtbags. The first fight ensues when he interrupts a businessman trying to get it on with a teenaged girl. Now, Bronson's pretty old by this point, so he's never in the same shot with a punch or a kick being thrown, resorting more to stuntmen and quick editing. Where he is, however, is when the sleazebag is defeated and he decides to show him what's what. He grabs a handy dildo from his bag and the scene is cut just as he's about to shove it where the sun don't shine.

2. In another scene a latino crook tries to bribe Bronson in a parked car with a gold Rolex. Bronson takes a look at the watch and tells he's like to shove it up his ass. But since that bit has been done already, he reaches for his gigantic handgun and threatens to blow the guy's head off if he doesn't eat the watch. The face he makes after the gulping is one of the most hilarious things in trash movie history. He also burns his car and threatens to kill him "dead in a gutter -dead".

3. Since throughout the film he's tortured and killed suspects without a trial, one would assume that what he has in mind for the sex-trafficing main bad guy is especially horrible. And it is, but in a totally different way. Bronson locks him up in a cell with a bunch of sexed-up Mexican gangsters, including a young Danny Trejo. As the villain howls as he's impliedly raped, Bronson smirks while walking away and quips "Now THAT'S justice". That's this film's idea of justice, all right.

Sean Connery in Memoriam

Cinema lost another giant this year as the legendary Highlander Sean Connery himself passed away aged 90 in the Bahamas. Now, he might have had some very regressive personal ideas that have been repeated ad nauseum by leftists. But one can't claim that he wasn't a mesmerizing screen star, and also (his constant Scottish accent and lisping s's notwithstanding), quite a great actor as well. This post takes a look at some of his best performances.

From Russia with Love (UK, 1963)
Dir. Terence Young

There are many ways of approaching the Bond series, but it is also interesting to watch the earliest entries where everything was not that set in stone. While Dr. No already had a version of the basic formula, the first sequel in the series took a different path, having a more real world espionage-based and dark sequel. As it is one of the more serious entries in the franchise, I find it also surprisingly underrated.

It's still a Bond film, so there's plenty of ludicrousness. The entire film begins with a scene where Bond is seemingly killed, but it turns out it's just some guy wearing a rubber mask (for some reason) in Red Grant's (Robert Shaw) training exercise. Grant's dark reflection of Bond is one of the reasons people remember this film so fondly, but it has some other good characterizations as well, from the double-agent Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) to the actual main villain Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), who never even meets Bond face-to-face. 

But Red Grant does, in perhaps the best fight scene of the entire series.

 

Before Daniel Craig came along, Connery was the only actor who managed to get a sense of danger out of the Bond movies. He is constantly in over his head, but his cocky nature and luck also make him come out on top of any situation. Bond is probably the worst secret agent possible, but it just adds to the allure of the character. Espionage is well below his radar after women and boozing.

★★★★

Marnie (USA, 1964)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock

 

Late-era Hitchcock films aren't also quite as well-known, and it may seem even surprising that Connery starred in a Hitch movie. Marnie is a exploration of trauma and lies and their effects on a relationship. It also has a Psycho-like table-turn, in which we at first follow Marnie (Tippi Hedren) as she cheats, swindles and steals money from each of her employers. When she gets caught by Connery's Mark Rutland, he takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of her personality flaws and functions.

 

As it was already the 60's, Hitch could have more graphic sex and violence than used to in his films. Connery is more of a hands-on actor than Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant who had problems with their masculinity in Hitch's movies. The central character of Marnie, however, is way too half-baked, a damsel in distress with little agenda of her own. Hitchcock has interesting scenes play out her panic attacks, but is seems he could have grounded the end reveals a bit more with the role of Marnie's mother being almost nonexistant beforehand. I think the film showcases a little too clearly Hitchcock's problems with women, and as a result, it's a good try to have a multilayered psychological thriller, but times had already passed such a chauvinistic view of things. It's not among the best of it's director's standards.

★★★

The Offence (USA, 1973)
Dir. Sidney Lumet

 

Connery made four films in total with Lumet, and as directed by a veteran who leaned heavy on good scripts and getting the best out of his actors, he also made some of the best work in his career. Here he plays a British policeman driven evenly more desperate as a child-murderer's case lingers on.

 

I'd say the bleak outlook on a 20-year police procedure has probably been a major influence on Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder. Lumet, however directs this mostly like a stage play, with minimalist interrogation rooms and very dialogue-heavy scenes. Lumet is interested in a breaking psyche, and the growing desperation that brings a seemingly good police to do atrocious deeds. It covers similar themes than a lot of showier films which is probably why this small-scale movie has had such relatively light attention.

Connery's role, however, is yet another character that takes out his inner anger and frustrations on women, in this case his long-suffering wife. Well, he has violent tendencies towards suspects as well, so he's not entirely likable by any means, but still, one has to wonder why so many of his characters share this woman-beating tendencies.

★★★ 1/2

The Wind and the Lion (USA, 1975)
Dir. John Milius

Milius found a good historical epic with which to tell a story about one of his greatest heroes, Theodore Roosevelt. It wasn't his last Roosevelt film, and Ol' Teddy is restricted here to a quite brief supporting role, though he is the Wind in the title. The Lion, then is Connery's Raisuli, a Berber prince out for glory. At that point it wasn't considered problematic to have Scots portray Arabs. Rather, he is used here to be a world-class lover and a fighter, in the same vein as Rudolph Valentino. 

There's planty of action scenes equal to Milius's later Conan the Barbarian, and a Stockholm sydromish romance with Candace Bergen's reporter, who finds that there's more to the Berber lifestyle than meets the eye at first. Meanwhile, Teddy (Brian Keith) faces pressures on his foreign policy back home, but meets them with his personal philosophies, which isn't nearly as interesting. The seperate stories don't quite click together and the ending is quite underwhelming. nevertheless, it is an enjoyable film to watch since Connery's and Milius's approaches to tell manly men tales are tangentially similar.

★★★

The Rock (USA, 1996)
Dir. Michael Bay

Finally, among the last really entertaining romps Connery made, and also the movie was more or less to blame for many of Connery's late-era woes. The Rock's stunt casting sees him play pretty much a James Bond type that has been kept in a prison cell for 30 years. He's a quippy man of action, but at the same time a mentor too. That the aged Connery happend to fit into a thoroughly modern action movie so well gave the wrong imprsiion to other filmmakers who attempted similar approaches, the bottom of the barrel being 2003's LXG which made Connery quit acting altogether.

 

You can find plenty to blame in Michael Bay's approach. Connery seems to enjoy to play a character that sees things to be as black-and-white as they were in the 1960's, which extends also on his sex politics. He also seemingly kills or maims a lot of innocent people in a very tacked-on car chase, that's nevertheless a great showcase of Bay's strengths as an action director. By contrast, Nicolas Cage's weirdo, modern action man and Ed Harris's noble main baddie are more nuanced characters, but Connery holds his own against these two great performances. Bay has only regressive things to say, but that's only if you try to search anything meaningful in his cavalcade of outrageous plot turns and huge explosions. As a 90's romp, it's still great fun, and perhaps should have been Connery's actual retirement film so he could have gone out on top.

★★★★

Three laughs: Double Team

 
It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #44:
Double Team (USA/Hong Kong, 1997)
Director: Tsui Hark

It's been known to come out of my mouth to say that Jean-Claude Van Damme has a surprisingly good filmography. Well, y'know, not good-good, but there's plenty of really over-the-top and silly actioners that are a lot more fun to watch than many of his peers. He also managed to star in both John Woo and Tsui Hark's Hollywood movies.

The hongkong cinema legends became rivals over dispute of the A Better Tomorrow series, directed by Woo and produced by Hark. Initially Hark made the third part without Woo, who became an international superstar in hos own right. It's quite clear which one of them was more talented, but Hark never gave up trying to upstage Woo's style. Case in point was 1997 when they both ran in the competition of who would make the more ridiculous Hollywood action movie. Woo made Face/Off, Hark made this.

The reason this film is called Double Team is first to cash in on Van Damme's previous Double Impact, but it also serves to remind that it's basically two very tangentially related movies in one. One, a gritty circle of revenge between a terrorist played by Mickey Rourke and Van Damme's counter-terrorist agent. The second, a weird ripoff of The Prisoner, where Van Damme is taken to a secluded scifi island retreat for ex-agents and plans for his escape.

And where does Dennis Rodman's arms dealer fit into all this? Basically nowhere, it seems they had a hunch Rodman would be a bigger star than he was, so his short role had to be expanded to be another of a buddy cop duo, with outrageous fashion items, bright hair colors and basketballl-related one-liners. The plot is a mess, the film tries very 90's-like to be cool with off-putting camera angles, endless explosions and cool-for-cools sake sets, locations, effects and visual elements that serve little purpose and eventually don't go nowhere. It all makes for a very entertaining, trashy movie that gets dumber and dumber as it goes along. 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. When Van Damme finds himself on Conter-terrorist Island, he is immideately in a hurry to get out. His lover thinks he's dead and Rourke is out to get vengeance on him, since he accidentally killed his child (it's a weird position for a film's hero to basically be a child-killer). Thus, he begins a hilarious training routine in his motel room that gives fans of Muscles from Brussels what they bought their ticket for. He does the Splits climbing a door frame, punches a bucket full of gravel and lifts a bath tub all the while making pained expressions. He's also doing some MacGyver-like experiments with a Coke can that somehow will help him escape the daily routine later on.

2. Since Rodman can't act his way out of a paper bag, and Van Damme famously has a limited grasp in English, all the buddy scenes between the two play out quite differently than the film's producers probably had in mind. My favorite scene is when the pair of them have to jump out of an airplane in the middle of nowhere (Rourke's base is in the Colosseum in the middle of Rome). They bicker since there was no parachutes, but luckily, Rodman did became prepared. He somehow turns on a giant basketball over the pair of them that somehow shelters them from the impact. Real xXxTREME SPORTS!

3. The overly conveluted Finale is miraclous in itself, since it involves Rourke having dug landmines in the middle of the Colosseum and let out an angry tiger loose. Van Damme and Rodman are platforming around to find a missing baby. It's almost avant-garde how incoherent this all is, but one can't look away. The final coup the grace is when all the explosives are triggered and the pair saves themselves by shetering behind a number of Coke machines THAT CAME OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE! One gets a sneaking suspicion that this film might have been sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company.

Three laughs: Birdemic - Shock and Terror

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 
Three Laughs Case File #40:
Birdemic: Shock and Terror (USA, 2010)
Director: James Nguyen

If you've noticed, I like to do a little something special every time this column reaches even tens. So, it was about time to get the other movie that gives The Room a run for its money for sheer ineptitude. The fun of Birdemic is that its director James Nguyen obviously had lofty standards. It's the sort of self-serious film that takes a major issue (in this case, global warming) and trying to hammer the audience in the head with it in the guise of an easy to watch thriller movie.

The movie has obvious reference points, the main one being Hitchcock's The Birds, which is given a shout-out several times. Nguyen goes so far as to bill Tippi Hedren third in the end credits for using a clip of her performance in Julie and Jack. It should be obvious, but Birdemic doesn't get anyone to change their minds about global warming, but the way it sets out to achieve this task makes for a bizarre and beffling journey.

Rod (Alan Bagh) is a software salesman, living his daily life albeit ominous news of melting glaciers, heat waves and forest fires. Rod meets his old flame Nathalie (Whitney Moore) and they begin dating. But one day, everything changes and angry eagles start attacking and killing people. It's up to our (pretty useless) heroes to get to the bottom of what's causing the birds to attack, save children and bring balance back to nature.

 Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. After the seemingly endless opening credits where the short main theme loops about three times, we get our first proper scene and it gives us a very good idea on what to expect. The sound mixing is terrible, making every line jump terribly and making it feel like you're watching a skipping record. About everything that's possible to be wrong about a quick scene of a man walking to a restaurant and being seated, is worng. The actors are hokey, the editing giving the scene odd emphasis and everything in general feeling awkward and weird. These kinds of bad movies are very good at revealing how odd our daily interactions may be, and as an entertainment it's something you don't get to see every day.

2. The dating scenes between Rod and Nathalie seem to go on and on, but there are occasional bright parts, like the one where they attend a R&B gig at a bar. The song "Hanging out with my Family" has hilariously bad lyrics, and it's cut to Rod and Nathalie doing the most hilariously awkward, white bread dancing. The next scene is the sex scene, so at least it worked for them.

3. The most famous terrible thing about the movie has got to be the special effects. The first scene of the birds attacking illustrates their hilarious ineptitude best. Shrieking GIF-animated birds fly up and about, with explosion GIFs added over the city (maybe the eagles are carrying TNT and kamikaze striking?). The high-pitched whine the birds keep making is also totally hilarious. Like everything else in the movie, it just keeps going, and going, and going...

Urban Gauntlets

One thing that gets lost amid all this quarantine is that major cities are seething hellholes. That's probably where I'm particularly drawn into the sort of neo noir films, where a hapless protagonist tries their best, but it seems the entire cities (usually NYC) are against them in every way. So, let's take a closer look at three of such examples.

 

Killing of a Chinese Bookie (USA, 1976)
Director: John Cassavetes

In the sweaty seventies, John Cassavetes was making his own minimalist art in between shoots of major big-budget Hollywood epics. He bled his own situation into his films, like here where an owner of a burlesque house (Ben Gazzara) strives to make art out of making middle-aged men horny.

He's also a gambling addict that gets into trouble with the local mob. The only way out is to do a favor, which in turn might suck out the last of humanity out of him. These kinds of films are basically tragedies about the failure of the American dream. The plucky underdogs dream of being big, but always have to face some harsh realities, and in the end, violence as well. Cassavetes didn't really like violence in films, so it's shot very discreetly, but the realities it causes changes the tone of the entire film. 

Unlike the two other films in this list, this one is set in Los Angeles. It can be seen in the greater emphasis on cars, distances, and heat eminating from the entire film. Cassavetes as a director usually had a very limited color palette to his films, this one also looks like the film was overexposed in the sun, even though it's mostly set during the night.

The film is mostly talk and no action. One shouldn't expect it to even have a climax of sort. Cassavetes is interested in the implications of the situation more than anything. The entire thing also works as a metaphor for the corruption of the power of money. How far are you willing to sell your soul?

★★★★

After Hours (USA, 1985)
Dir. Martin Scorsese

 

It used to be thought that the 1980's weren't really that good for the director Martin Scorsese. I beg to differ, I find he did some great work that riffed on ideas and themes he had set up in the previous decade. After Hours is one of his rare more comedic movies. But in fact, it's a thorough New York movie that sees the city, yuppified since the days of Taxi Driver, as dangerous as ever.

A hapless office worker (Griffin Dunne) is a regular young man but takes a few steps out of his comfort zone as he's looking for love. Out in the middle of the night in a weird part of the town alone and with no money seems to attract him to oddballs and authorities that don't mean him well and are out to get him. The neon-lit, cold and smoky New York never looked better but at the same time, more terrifying.

The film is emphatethic towards everyone who's down and out in the Big Apple, even if it casts most of the characters of the city with major mental issues and cynicism. But the key is that circumstantial setbacks can pile up and minor things like losing a $20 bill may cause a chain-reaction that only adds to the plight of the outcasts. It's a film that also gets to the heart of the loneliness felt in cities, even if there are plenty of people around. 

Scorsese has borrowed from Woody Allen a distrust of the city's intellectual and artistic class and mercilessly mocks it. He also manages to sneak in some of his personal obsessions, from late-night diners to talking about film classics to the mix as well, making this one of the movies surely influencing a young Quentin Tarantino. The only major problem with the movie is that it hits so close to truth it's not that funny as a comedy, but hey, you can't always have everything.

★★★★

Uncut Gems  (USA, 2019)
Dirs. Benny & Josh Safdie

The latest one, and the one that particularly inspired this writing comes from the arthouse cinema production house A24 and has Scorsese and Cassavetes in particular as influences. The seediness in the previous ones is now contrasted with more modern sports centers and auction houses. But even if it's not done in the open any more, the threat of violence looms even stronger behind every scene.

Lando Calrissian -styled gems dealer Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is at once a sleazy little rat, and a fast-talking trickster you can't help but to like even if his self-destructive adrenaline addiction is putting not only himself, but his his family and friends on harm's way. Ratner is about to make a huge sell on a particularly beautiful opal, which puts him in a position and mindset to make increasingly dangerous bets on sports. The movie follows as Ratner ups the ante again and again, always surviving by the skin of his neck, until finally the bets become way too big to handle.

For the fast-paced modern audiences, the movie is fast-cut and has plenty of side-plots going on at all times. The effect may be anxiety-inducing for some viewers, but the film also warrants repeat viewings if one is interested in seeing the strings of plotlines getting pulled. Given the chance, Sandler can be a great character actor, so it's a bit sad he didn't get the rcognition he deserved from this which will surely make him go back to making very half-assed comedies with no effort. But such are the joys and victories that the film presents, too. They are fleeting, and something much worse is yet to come soon enough.

 ★★★★ 1/2

Three laughs: Robotrix

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #37:  
Robotrix (Nu ji xie ren, Hongkong, 1991)
Director: Jamie Luk

I've heard movie pitches a lot worse than "sexy RoboCop". During Hongkong's mad "CAT III" years, someone had the bright idea, not only to do a combined scifi actioner and softcore film, but to also have it basically be Terminator 2 as well, having two killer robots battle it out. The evil robot, played by Billy Chow, is REALLY EVIL, and during the course of the movie performs rather nasty sexual violence against sex workers. So, there's a Trigger Warning to go with the film, they really don't slow down as it gets started.

The film has a little tongue in cheek, as in the beginning we see a German robot that resembles a little of the ol' T-800, and an American robot that in turn has stereotypical mullet wig and if I needed to make a guess, seems to be a reference to Jean-Claude Van Damme's Cyborg. Mammary-heavy Amy Yip plays the android body into which a dead policewoman's brain is inserted into. There's little nudity, though, even though for the first time in Hongkong cinema, Chow also reveals his member in a quick scene.

A lot of the film plays up the comedy rather than the serial-killing robot hunting. Not all of it is intentional, bad dubbing, bizarre dialogue and hammy acting carries a lot of the fun. Yip's cyborg is put on an undercover mission disguised as a sex worker, and caused by this, starts a really successful police-run brothel business, that also her co-workers in blue seem to enjoy using. Chikako Ayoma plays Yip's rival policewoman that comes to rely on her as a partner before the film's bloody climax.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The film's flimsy plot consists of several elements that don't quite click together. We are introduced to the villain of the film when he uses sleeping gas to knock out everyone in a bath house and to kidnap the daughter of an Arab prince to... ransom her for money? This idea doesn't really play out in the following scenes. But at this point Yip is still playing a flesh-and-blood policewoman. It is proven she is no match for the precision of a cyborg as she is immediately shot in the chest by the villain. She'll get better.

 2. The bad android's sex drive is so huge, he goes to bars picking on small-time gangsters' girlfriends. This enrages the Triad guys and they take the fight... to the toilet? As the android refuses to pay to use her, he is attacked, but the robot just punches the gangster so hard to the stomach, it implodes. The Itchy & Scratchy -level cartoonish violence that reminds of films like Riki-Oh is one of the best reasons to watch these CAT III films. There's also a memorable scene with a drill in this one.

3. Of the police group's characters, the most annoying one is the bearded sex-hungry virgin guy, who also tried to get a free round with sex worker Robotrix by disguising himself. In the lead up to the climax, he is unceremoniously cut in half with a car. The characters in the film are very sad to see him die, the audiences back home may have an entirely different reaction to seeing the sleazebag go.

DePalma x Hitchcock

 
Director Brian DePalma just turned 80 years old (yesterday, but I'm having trouble keeping schedules), so it's a good opportunity to take a look at three of his movies. Throughout his career, DePalma has been criticized for outright stealing scenes, set ups and camera angles from well-known directors, mainly Alfred Hitchcock. As a sort of postmodernist, both winking at people familiar with films and developing them into something new altogether, DePalma is a clear forerunner for filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino or Ben Wheatley. So in this post, I have three thriller films of DePalma's that really go all in in swiping stuff from Ol' Hitch, and see whether the steal made for a better movie or whether it's just a lukewarm version of stuff better made before.

Obsession (1976)

Pilfers from: Vertigo (1958)

While Sisters (1972) was DePalma's calling card for the world of the thrillers, this was a certain turning point in his career. For one, he managed to snatch Hitchcock's frequent collaborator, composer Bernard Herrmann to do the music. For the other, he got ire from Hitch himself, who considered the film to be a remake of his own Vertigo. Both movies are stories of an obsessed man (played by Cliff Robertson here) losing his beloved, but later finding a doppelganger who he remakes in her image. But in both cases, the "new" woman has a secret and some knowledge of the past that comes to cost the protagonist.

The original script was done by Paul Schrader, who is an expert in having troubled characters with an inner life in total turmoil. It was extensively rewritten by DePalma to better touch upon what he wanted from the film. Schrader had different ideas for the entire ending, which probably would have been considerably different from Vertigo. It would have been interesting to see another time-hop, since the 16-year skip in the beginning takes us quite by surprise.

Robertson is perhaps not the most charismatic leading man, he does sell the inner anguish, but is like a cold fish in romantic scenes. DePalma has later said he didn't really buy his performance here, also perhaps due to the actor being difficult to work with. John Lithgow as his best friend and business partner steals a lot of the intrigue, and if you're familiar with some of DePalma's later efforts, you'll know what kind of a role he's playing here as well.

The film goes into a lot more taboo subjects Hitch couldn't, including incest. They both don't really care on whether the central criminal plot makes little sense, but Hitchcock as a more mature filmmaker can better drive the focus of the film to be solely of the central character's, well obsession. Both movies are interested in trauma being played out, surfacing as PTSD in sudden bouts of madness. But the film is also perhaps too slow for its own good. Vertigo packs a huge story in a very compact running time, but here one keeps hoping the film would roll along, having mainly an interesting ending. It also seems like the ideas of the pain of lost love being mirrored in art or restauration thereof, was approached with more sophistication by Hitchcock.

DePalma also takes cues from Dial M for Murder, Rope and Marnie.

★★★

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Lifts from: Psycho (1960)

This one starts and ends with a threatening shower scene. Also one of the key scenes of this film is a heavy reference of the seduction scene from Vertigo; both of the take place in an art museum, and use very little dialogue. DePalma can and will use a lot more explicit sex scenes. Classic Hollywood star Angie Dickinson is surprisingly game, even though in nude scenes she used a body double.

The most notable steal from Hitchcock's sole horror movie comes from the structire. Both films kill off the main female character midway through, and from thereon follow her sister trying to solve her murder, played here by Karen Allen. The film also uses other similar stock characters, such as a young man hung up on his mother, a sleazy private detective and a psychiatrist trying to find the reason on theories of sexual repression (played by Michael Caine). But DePalma also enjoys a bit of misdirection, having some familiar seeming roles be entirely red herrings. 

DePalma can easily be criticized for misogynist attitudes in films, and in here too, an adulterer woman gets her comeuppance very bloodily. It's a bit of a SPOILER, but the trans community has also heavily criticized the film's portrayal of transsexual tendencies and, having the early 60's Psycho-like idea of having them act as serial killers. There really isn't anything positive the film will say about any sexuality out of your basic monogamous cis-sexuality, but at least Allen's character is a sex worker who also works as an active protagonist.

The film also has a point in pointing how Hitchcock's voyeristic tendencies are obsessive, damaging and toxic, taking their ideas to their logical counterpoint. But it also revels in these very same tendencies. DePalma also plays on his own experiences, since the infidelity that starts out the film was something that was happening in his own family as well. The film has great camerawork and a beautiful soundtrack that makes murder of women highly aestethicized and thus making the audience complicit of the filmmaker's perversions. Also the film's ending is frustratingly bad, having odd conclusions and a dumb jump scare straight out of Carrie.

★★ 1/2

Body Double (1984)

Purloins from: Rear Window (1954)

The idea of duality of an identity or dual personas is very central in DePalma's filmography which probably explains why he's so obsessed with Vertigo in particular. This one dives also deep into ideas of voyerism, prevalent also in Hitch's Rear Window and Dial M for Murder. It makes Hitch's distrust of authorities also an aspect of shame and self-hatred following from obsessive and sexual thoughts.

The film has a cold open on a B-grade horror movie which reminds of Blow Out. The main character (played by Craig Wasson) here is an actor struggling with mental illnesses such as claustrophobia. He wanders off the set and notices a woman who does erotic dances in her apartement every night. Looking at her through telescope, he becomes somewhat obsessed, but also starts to suspect her life may be in danger, giving him an excuse to stalk her in the streets. But even as he witnesses more and more evidence of brutal crimes being committed, he is not believed by the authorities because they see him just a pervert.

At the time, DePalma was seen having gone too far with his use of sex and violence in his films. It's easy to see DePalma just following on with what the Italians were doing a little prior (even if he himself strongly denies it), yet his success opened doors for plenty of Hollywood Erotic thrillers in the late 80's and 90's (most of which were a lot more moralizing). Also DePalma was very much on top of the neo noir movement, making sleek, beautiful pictures to go with gritty stories he was telling. The film even incorporates a Frankie Goes to Hollywood music video in the middle of itself. It's all highly entertaining.

One can see how DePalma is working to solve some mysteries of film entertainment and its use in the world himself. With this and Blow Out a craftsman working in the film industry finds a "true life" plot which affects his way of working. Which is of course just as outlandish and over the top as anything else in Tinseltown. Is real world violence catching up, and does it have a symbiotic relationship with thriller films as well? Do they feed each other? In this case, the lines between movie and reality really fall apart in the 4th wall-breaking finale. Was all the suspense and thrills for nothing? Is the film completed?

When he worked these ideas into his Hitchcock thriller, I think his constant steals also started to actually work for the film's own benefit.

★★★ 1/2

Three laughs: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

 It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #34:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (USA, 1986)
Director: Tobe Hooper

It's strange how some horror sequels can get away with a more silly tone, such as Evil Dead 2 or, to lesser extent, Phantasm II (maybe one could also argue Dawn of the Dead). Some that try out similar things are reviled, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. To be fair, Evil Dead 2 sets a gold standard in horror-comedy filmmaking and others that go that route aren't nearly as good or funny. But that's not to say they are bad movies, far from it!

Director Tobe Hooper has insisted that even the first one is a sort of black comedy. There are perhaps some chuckles to be had from the mad exploits of the Hitch-hiker or the dinner scene late in the movie. Nevertheless, the sequel goes a lot further in this aspect.  The film was made as a part of the director's deal with Cannon Group, which has brought up suspicions that it was made in order to secure funding to the more ambitious Lifeforce (1985), or perhaps earn back a little of what it lost.

The sequel sets out to skewer much more of the Americana than the previous did, with digs about the state of consumerism, media, sexual repression, dual moralism and 80's eat-or-get-eaten capitalism in general. It also dives deeper into distorted ideas of family values. Cannibalism and murder is a way of life, but the film's insane characters also revel in and enjoy it.

Basically the film's plot (such as there is one) is very similar to the one in the previous film. The lady DJ Vanita Brock, or "Stretch" (Caroline Williams) gets kidnapped by Leatherface and his family and must fight to survive in their secret lair, now close to Dallas in order to easier capture victims. Meanwhile Sheriff Lt. Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) is out to avenge the disappearance of his son in the previous film. This time, though having a "Chainsaw" massacre is not just empty talk, and power-tools buzz for a lengthy part of the movie. It's also made pretty clear on which body part these long blades are meant to be an extension of.

 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The very first scene makes clear the intentions and approach of the sequel as opposed to the first. A bunch of obnoxious yuppie teens hoot and holler, and blow people's mailboxes as they're driving to a party on their minivan. But when the night falls, they get a taste of their own medicine as a zombie geek jumps on the youngsters' car. In fact it's leatherface doing a bit of a puppet show with a corpse and soon gives them a show in the use of a massive chainsaw as well. Oingo Boingo is playing on the background for this scene.

2. The film's biggest new character, Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) is a truly slimy and obnoxious dude, out to make Stretch as uncomfortable as possible. It's almost a relief when suddenly Leatherface burtsts through the door. But the clumsy oaf can't catch Stretch as she makes good use of a fire distinguisher runs through a safety door.  Instead, he manages to injure Chop-Top's head, revealing the metal plate he got in 'Nam. But he woes more of the destruction of his terrible Sonny Bono wig.

3. Towards the end there's a touching but blackly comedic scene of Lt. Enright finding the remains of his son, which happen to be a gruesome skeleton on a wheelchair. He proceeds to destroy the entire lair with his own chainsaw. He comes to Stretch's rescue later on and declares himself "The Lord of the Harvest". But Leatherface isn't going to let the guy threaten his family, culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime duel with chainsaws. This was this franchise's high point. It was all downhill from there on.

Joe D'Amato triple feature

 

 

As a preview of next month's ABC's of Italian genre cinema post, I thought I'd take an opportunity to take a couple of monster movies that didn't make the cut for that one. Moreover, this post is to write a bit about Joe D'Amato (1936-99), born Artistide Massaccesi.

He's often seen as one of the more banal Italian genre film director, making shlock from popular cannibal and zombie genres. Yet I don't particularly find his movies "so-bad-they're-good". While he is not a brilliant horror director in disguise, I do find his films to often be more original and suspense-driven than their reputation suggests.

Probably what ruined his reputation was the moralistic fact that he also worked on Adult films, producing first the Erotic films like the Black Emmanuelle series, and then moving on to hardcore pornography (like making the notorious Porno Holocaust). But I have selected here three horror films that perhaps shed a light a bit on why D'Amato was an unique director after all, if not entirely successful.

Antropophagus: The Beast (Antropophagous, 1980)

Italian film fans know the character actor George Eastman, often playing nasty brutes, from films like 2019: After the Fall of New York and Warriors of the Wasteland. He had a fruitful work relationship with D'Amato, working with multiple genres and even co-directing 1983's 2020 Texas Gladiators. But with Antrophagus, he had a role of a lifetime. He also worked as one of the film's screenwriters.

Most of the film concerns a group of young vacationers exploring a mysteriously empty Greek island. It's as if all the occupants therein had died or fled. To spoil a little, it turns out a cannibalistic and mute killer with a scarred face (played by Eastman) lurks there.

The film builds up very slowly, which is partly impressive for a film deemed a Video Nasty, but also partly a bit boring as the puzzle pieces don't seem to reveal themselves. Nevertheless, as D'Amato started out as a cinematographer, he manages to create an unsettling vastness of the island, and claustrophobic interior scenes with ease.

The film's most memorable part comes when we get a flashback on the tragic events that made Eastman's character lose his mind and all sort of reasoning. D'Amato seems to have a point that we are only one bad day away from reverting back into cavemen and killing everyone within our territory.

★★★

Absurd (Rosso Sangue, 1981)

 

A sort-of sequel to Antropophagus, except it actually has an entirely different backstory. But Eastman looks and acts the same way. The actor worked as a screenwriter in this one as well. This time, Eastman's mute killer surfaces on the mainland, killing people that happen on his way, and seeming impervious to bullets.

It turns out the killer has escaped from a medical facility. He battles a motorcycle gang and some cops, but ends up in the houselhold of a seemingly regular family, The Bennetts, who have to fight for their life against the unremorseful killer. The film is a bit darker, utilizing night scenes and the fear of the unknown within a city setting to its advantage. It includes all the basics of a slasher movie, with its unfeeling and unstoppable force coming out of nowhere to intrude on a normal family life.

Compared to the previous one, this is more eventful, but also a bit confusing, as pieces don't seem to add up the same way to a big reveal as before. The violence is particularly brutal here, with plenty of gore and a particularly nasty scene where Katya Berger's head is being burned in an oven. This film turned out on the list of the notorious Video Nasties as well.

Massacessi used the pseudonym Peter Newton this time around. It might be that since he had directed ten Erotic movies in the year between these two movies, the name D'Amato started to wear out.

★★★

Beyond the Darkness (Buio Omega, 1979)

 

As much as those two monster pictures had some nasty and disgusting shades, they pale in comparison with D'Amato's best horror work. It is a thoroughly disturbing serial killer movie that cares not of the boundaries of taste and reason. It has some shades of black comedy as well, that were later more realized in purely comedic films such as DellaMorte DellAmore. It also takes ideas presented by films such as Psycho to their logical extremes.

Frank Wyler (Kieran Canter) loses his girlfriend to an illness. But instead of letting go, he decides to dig up the corpse and embalm her. The family villa houses this secret, but multiple people stumble upon the scene by accident and meet their grisly fate as punishment for this. Iris (Franca Stoppi), the strange housekeeper is culprit on all of this, finding also suitable victims for his young master and helping dispose of the corpses.

 

The film is a gruesome remake of The Third Eye, but also revels in the historical knowledge on stuff such as how mummies were used to be embalmed (we can see this in all gory detail). While the film centers around necrophilia, it also includes cannibalism and gory dismemberments. It seems the effects budget for this was considerably bigger than in most of D'Amato's other works.

While the film may seem to have so many tasteless elements in order to irate cencors and decency activists, it also has a very perculiar and odd sense of wonder in all this. The human mind in its most crazed can be oddly creative and logical in its illogicalities. It's not an easy movie to predict the next scene and it keeps surprising the viewer. The images are sterile and unmoving, which makes for an odd experience to follow such depravity.

 

On the worse side, the ending seems rushed and a bit clichéd compared to the rest of the movie. It had some ingredients that could have made it a serial killer classic, but now it stays more or less just a curiosity for those that can stomach its contents. It has a very cool Goblin soundtrack, though.

★★★ 1/2