Reviews

Within Dennis Hopper's infamous post-EASY RIDER flop, THE LAST MOVIE, are several movies with great potential had they been more fleshed-out - or if at least one took center stage...

These include an American-made cowboy picture being filmed in the main location of Peru where a stuntman dies, leading Hopper's character, Kansas, an extra and stuntman, caterer and acquirer of horses, to deal with the conscious-brooding aftermath...

A psychotic local, after witnessing the Western being made, filming his own makeshift movie with bamboo cameras, actual punches pulled and real gunshots fired without blanks...

A melancholy priest dealing with how his small town is altered by the Ugly American production, having come and gone with all its bogus yet influential, shoot-em-up violence...

A gold-seeking expedition-plan between Hooper and his scruffy (future OUT OF THE BLUE) sidekick Don Gordon...

Or our moping American film-worker falling in love with a beautiful Peruvian prostitute, Maria, played by natural beauty Stella Garcia...

The latter holds the most value since it's the only subplot with actual layers: Which includes a pretty, classy, uptight yet progressive wife and daughter of a broom factory owner: the first awkwardly seduced by Hooper's Kansas in THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON scream queen Julie Adams and TV actress Donna Baccala as this non-linear, documentary-style odyssey goes from the gorgeously green and/or canyon-backed Peru exterior to a grainy night on the town, as an unrefined love triangle ensues...

Hopper's lady-friend, Maria, hired her workmate... future COLUMBO victim Poupée Bocar as a bisexual nightclub singer... to entertain the ragtag group. And the following daytime scene involves a seemingly important conversation about Don Gordon's supposed gold mine followed by a quick, unrealized trek to find it - lasting less than most scenes would need to begin...

Which is the main problem with this extremely problematic LAST MOVIE, an anti-film that has the title appearing twenty-six minutes in as nothing really begins or ends but goes on a continuous forward motion - without the characters gaining insight or qualifying for the audience to take part in their eclectic quests.

But during the intentionally distracted psychedelic era, is all this surrealistic piecemeal intentional?

What everything boils down to is Hopper's Kansas in love with a whore who's more real, capable, experienced and tough than he is.

Meanwhile, the stunt man's supposedly pivotal death, mentioned in plot-summaries ranging from the back of VHS copies to the new Criterion Blu Ray, means close to nothing. In fact, we only catch one quick moment of his final plummet which, strangely enough, is shown after the movie-within-a-movie has already packed up and gone away...

Before which is a collage of blink-or-miss cameos of Hopper's cinematic cohorts ranging from John Phillip Law to Henry Jaglom to EASY RIDER Captain America himself, Peter Fonda to the b-Western's director played by real life gritty auteur Samuel Fuller...

Meanwhile, Kris Kristofferson provides a disjointed Roman Chorus of sorts, crooning his most famous ballad made famous by Janis Joplin, ME AND BOBBY MCGEE, and the likes of character-actor Severn Darden and lovely hippie chicks Toni Basil and Michelle Phillips glide in and out like in some deranged oasis, especially during nighttime parties where we possibly learn what this deliberately confusing film's really about...

Since Hopper's Kansas is merely a caterer, having to provide alcohol to the selfish and raucous cast and crew while brooding outside of both the real and fake film's perimeter, it could be this LAST MOVIE is Hopper's way of not only being a dissociated artist but playing one in his own disassociated motion picture...

One telling moment and perhaps the best scene overall has Kansas demonstrating to the insanely-inspired Peruvian "director" how a beaten-up "actor" should throw a punch instead of continuing to bloody each other up. After which this director/dictator informs Kansas that his picture isn't fake like the Western that Kansas worked on...

Perhaps the askew logic is: Since those bamboo camera's aren't actually filming anything, real life isn't being captured like the kind of trickery... or "game" as the priest calls it... that inspired this local violent mockery. In other words, anything being recorded for posterity is futile and worthless compared to the real thing: just as Maria is more of a real person than Kansas. The problem is that both the actual-fake and fake-fake movies are all being filmed, and have to seem real to the audience. So Hopper's attempt to make a distinction between the two are somewhat futile in the end...

Either way, the misplaced yet strangely intriguing bedlam leads to a rushed third act that ultimately implodes upon itself: Especially in one scene as Hopper sits with the two leading Peruvian/Spanish characters... the priest and the loco-local director... and says, with finality, "To Hell with it!"

Which would occur a few years later when Hopper's frantic hippie photographer in Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW says the world will end with a whimper, not a bang, followed by "I'm splitting, Jack" before vanishing from the scene, and movie, altogether. But it's one thing for a character to take off, and something else entirely when it's the film's own director...

In actuality, this irritated exodus, after Kansas becomes a bloody martyr/captive of the Peruvians violent "passion play" (taking on the same expressive guilt he did concerning Jack Nicholson's EASY RIDER death during the acid trip), is entirely redundant: Symbolically, Hopper crashes and departs from his own party while drowning with a life-preserver on...

If he had had more fun and action within the chaos instead of so much art-house distraction, we, the viewer, could have shared in that pandemonium as if it were ours as well as the director's: Experiencing a voyeuristic catastrophe that only a genius could make is more of an addictive and bizarre, awkwardly intriguing journey than an insightful or overall effective one...

Thankfully, the timeless, legendary and groundbreaking road classic EASY RIDER had an actual destination, which was, within the story, tragically unfulfilled. So maybe, just maybe, THE LAST MOVIE was Hopper's next step after having nowhere left to go. There is no death in the afterlife, after all.

A visual masterpiece with Film Noir elements despite being a decade shy of that particular "genre" and/or style of edgy crime thriller led by a flawed yet sympathetic hero (turned anti-hero)...

In this case it's James Allen played by Paul Muni, who, with a Noir edge, is discontented after surviving a war and winds up caught between two opposing dames: one good, one bad...

And the most Noir-esque is the Wrong Man element, falsely accused of a theft that put him into the titular CHAIN GANG to begin with (later hilariously parodied in Woody Allen's TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN: from a guard whipping what the audience can only see is a prisoner's shadow, right down to a muscular black prisoner helping loosen the shackles so our man can go free)...

His inevitable escape from the rock-breaking exterior... sprinting through the woods to breathing through swamp bamboo and then blending into the big city... has fast-paced directorial elements that would be used, intentionally-inspired or otherwise, in the following years' blockbuster KING KONG: the camera moving perfectly with the sprinting character in both a horizontal and straight-on exterior dolly track pan and, either way, I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG is a groundbreaking vehicle for, if anything else, setting the stage of the quintessential action flick...

While originally intended for James Cagney, the brooding, tragic, lanky figure of Paul Muni makes more sense, providing the swarthy SCARFACE actor (who a young Robert Forster strongly resembles) a much deeper, more fleshed-out character balancing pathos and hard-driven desperation. And perhaps the most important element involves the use of past/present-time grammar: It's I AM A FUGITIVE as opposed to I WAS A FUGITIVE...

And although a genuine classic, CHAIN GANG is far from perfect: Normal for this era of post-silent/new-talkies and the subtle, timeless Muni aside, other performances are either stiff, stagey or completely absurd...

Meanwhile, the entire premise is flimsy since the robbed diner's owner/hold-up victim witnesses the armed man barking even more threatening orders with his gun mostly pointed at Muni's Allen: then being forcing to grab the cash from the register, which in a few seconds he's caught holding onto after the real villain gets shot and killed by police. But despite this living, and thereafter absurdly forgotten witness, the judge hands our man a ten-year sentence. This is the movie we paid for, after all. And another head-shaker is when Allen decides to trust the same tyrannical brutal southern warden into leaving the lawyer-protected freedom of big city Chicago in order to...

Well that's what becomes of the movie's otherwise compelling, multi-tier second act involving the sprung captive who's so free you eventually forget he's on the run: all the while, using a different name, running a construction site from the inside/out...

Which is what he'd originally planned during the post WWI prologue (including several minutes on a returning benign battleship), getting lectured by a creepy, overacting priest while more politely manipulated by his dotting mother... to return to a safe-seat factory, stuck within the cozy yet boring confides of a limited paper-filing desk-job, staring dreamily onto the construction work-field where he'd much rather be...

After which, some of the best moments occur in quick scenarios: traveling throughout the East Coast (as a map fades in and out of the background), looking for work and finding a few short-lived gigs along the road to nowhere...

And while the entire movie works fine as a whole: like this traveling montage, it's even more interesting in spurts...

Every sequence has its own beginning, middle and end despite the literal end having no definite closure, which is where the aforementioned I AM A FUGITIVE becomes clear: For this is not a narrated, after-thought memoir, but an ongoing perdition of repose as the ultimate Film Noir lesson is to not rush things, and most of all, never tale shortcuts.

Director Jacques Tourneur, in the first of two 1950's collaborations with actor Dana Andrews followed by THE FEARMAKERS and a decade after CANYON PASSAGE - wanted the CURSE OF THE DEMON demon - resembling a grizzly bear mated with an irate buffalo - to be revealed later on instead of the first ten minutes...

During an investigation by Dana Andrews as John Holden, a scientist who debunks a powerful occult/cult leader and is simply begging to learn his lesson the hard way, it's obviously less mysterious since we know exactly what kind of monster he'll wind up dealing with, as opposed to the audience being in-the-dark along with the main character... Kind of an implied and ambiguous gumshoe Film Noir approach within a supernatural horror picture...

On the other hand, Dana's "Doubting Thomas" is more important to the story since the beast is visually out of the way...

So now the suspense relies on him finding out what we know as he catches up: So while the surprise element is deleted, taking its place is a sort of reverse mystery relying not on who or how but when the monster will eventually come around again...

The way the demon had stalked and killed its initial victim... a British professor who Dana replaces... is anticipated throughout. And now added to when is where will the same menacing nightmare occur? In that, several locations during the second and third act become the demon's potential runway... And those are, basically, wherever Professor Holden is "currently" located...

For example, about fifteen minutes in, eerie yet subtle, ominous music is heard, which turns out is only audible to Holden as he apprehensively glances down a long, spooky hotel corridor...

Without experiencing firsthand the demon's method of charging forward with the right amount of space to gain momentum, this dark, suspenseful moment wouldn't mean half as much...

Also, since the demon looks exceptionally dated and hokey, especially up close, it's not something to hinge an entire film anticipating, and, compared to modern effects, is bound to be a let-down...

But the creature returning is something else entirely, relying more on space and dimension than aesthetic. "If this world is ruled by demons and monsters," Dana's John Holden says at one point, "we might as well give up right now." And in a way, that's just it: CURSE OF THE DEMON is more about The Curse than The Demon... And our leading man wasn't talking to the wall...

Enter cute and energetic, determined ingenue in British GUN CRAZY starlet, Peggy Cummins as Joanna Harrington, fitting the role as it takes place in England, which provides a kind of doomed and grainy Baker Street vibe, counteracted by her innocence and beauty but especially an ongoing persistence... one of the reasons Dana's Holden keeps at it...

Niece of that original cursed scientist killed in the opening, she wants to find answers, and believes the best clue lies within the massive estate of an eccentric millionaire...

Who is the brilliantly subtle, classy yet underline-formidable Niall MacGinnis as Doctor Karswell: as if James Bond's rotund villain Auric Goldfinger had a brother into Black Magic...

Like he did the first scientist, Karswell's out to keep Holden from writing a negative article, and will do anything in order to hold the press so that his followers will have a place to worship without prejudice or intrusion...

One particular scene, as Karswell conjures up a wind-swept tempest during a child's party outside his mansion, feels like a subtle yet palpable, surreal dream. But Andrews still doesn't believe; and with his rich, smooth voice, always makes for confident, headstrong characters: herein a perfect clean slate going in and out of dark proverbial mazes, and this is literally one hell of a maze...

The best thing DEMON has going is creative camerawork of the brilliant director who turned CAT PEOPLE into a unique, foreboding classic... And he also directed several of the other better Val Lewton productions including I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and especially intense and memorable is THE LEOPARD MAN...

The underrated but not under-appreciated Horror-Noir auteur makes this CURSE seem all too real, moving shadows around in an eerie and meticulous, mysterious fashion with a hybrid of pulpy, Gothic images and locales, including Stonehenge...

While an unseen presence lurks around corners, stalking our overly self-assertive yet inevitably vulnerable hero, and perhaps making you forget what the pontificating antagonist had conjured up: and that he'll be unleashing again on his new target...

Originally titled NIGHT OF THE DEMON in England (which should be reviewed separately), CURSE was edited-down and with key scenes either trimmed or shuffled around: one involving a quiet, knee-jerk group of seemingly common townsfolk refusing to disclose information, feeling more tacked-on than necessary, and, while the shorter American version gets to the point quicker, the original is what was intended for audiences to see, feeling more like a cinematic page-turning novel or Hammer Films production... only better. Darker. Deeper. Scarier...

And while each version takes a slightly different path, and gets somewhat tedious and overlong in the middle, both are genuinely classic cult films and one of Dana Andrews' best latter-career vehicles.

Like there are two movies in GRINDHOUSE, there are also two in the second feature, written, directed and photographed by Quentin Tarantino titled DEATH PROOF: story one is eerie, torturous, dark, bizarre, perverse, shoddy and dodgy-looking while the second looks far more professionally filmed but is overall, unbearably awful...

The device of DEATH PROOF and Robert Rodriquez's co-feature, PLANET TERROR, are an abundance of contrived aesthetic flaws: a tribute to b-movies that played so many times in low-rent "grindhouse" theaters, they wound up tarnished and with entire reels missing. In the two-parts of DEATH PROOF... which can be broken up into Nighttime since story one's in Texas, indoors at night, and the second, Daylight, occurs under a bright and rural Tennessee sun... it's one man, Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, who connects each...

As does Quentin Tarantino's dialogue, spoken by the two groups of pretty young girls: the first with a local billboard-famous leader (while the next group actually work in show biz)...

Especially pop culture savvy is this self-promoting Sydney Poitier as the Austin, Texas morning disc jockey, Jungle Julia. And while Tarantino's no stranger at placing characters inside a contained, often claustrophobic setting, from RESERVOIR DOGS to FROM DUSK TILL DAWN to THE HATEFUL EIGHT, there were reasons to be there, and basically, no way out as opposed to merely harboring spontaneous, incessant chatter. Meanwhile, the buried lead and most interesting overall, is sexy, full-lipped Vanessa Ferlito as Butterfly, who Jungle Julia sets up on what can only be described as a "blind date lap-dance..."

Which is just about the only thing resembling an actual plot-point or plot-driven device, and the significance involves who eventually gets that dance...

Enter Kurt Russell's weathered and leathery, facially-scarred stalker, who's somehow intriguing to these hot young girls, especially lone "skinny hippie" fox Rose McGowan, who fatefully needs a ride home. The fact she'd trust an old man with a DEATH PROOF vehicle that includes a working driver's side while the passenger area, separated by Plexiglas, has only a removable metallic bicycle seat, is farfetched and ludicrous...

But horror/slasher victims are usually way too gullible; here resulting in the only truly nightmarish death as the following "four birds with one stone" slaying occurs much too quick, and after the amount of time spent with these girls, is downright anti-climatic...

Leading to the second story headed by real life Uma Thurman KILL BILL stand-in Zoë Bell, who, while doing her own stunts, isn't very interesting, attractive or talented as an actress/character. Then again, her more legitimately trained on-screen cohorts, including Rosario Dawson, are equally dull and forgettable...

So to really get off on what's intended as a b-movie exploitation tour-de-force, the first story is terribly flawed but after several viewings can be extremely addictive, and effective...

With layers thinly disguised and partially revealed at the primary rainy-night location: a BBQ tavern where Tarantino himself plays Warren, a movie-geek owner and bartender: as director and especially as cinematographer, some of the best shots are of what's actually his own jukebox that, as usual in QT cinema, plays awesomely obscure, vintage tracks...

As other subtle and ultimately futile plot-points include Julia's desperate and lonely attempts to connect with a famous filmmaker on her cell phone, when she's not trying to score pot with a dealer/friend as the otherwise annoying, parenthetical stoner chick camaraderie becomes more worthwhile and edgy once Kurt Russell is introduced, in the flesh and outside his formidably foreboding car: an example of Alfred Hitchcock's theory of how an otherwise mundane, superfluous dinner conversation becomes genuinely suspenseful when a time bomb's revealed under the table: shown only to the audience. And this guy's definitely ticking...

Alas, while Russell's potentially iconic Stuntman Mike becomes one of cinema's most pathetic horror movie antagonists by the atrociously obvious, politically-correct "Girl Power" finale, he starts out an effectively mysterious, Neo Western loner... a hybrid of Burt Reynolds (including a 4th wall-breaking grin) and Norman Bates... and he may or may not even be an actual stuntman...

Strangely enough, an 11th hour rural Daylight car chase (with a strap-grabbing roof-ride ala TEEN WOLF) pales to the Nighttime group of empty souls drinking, smoking pot and otherwise doing and discussing absolutely nothing. As if Quentin Tarantino's meantime vices/hobbies were put on camera but with girls: Along with the usual pop culture references, he's writing what he knows, and in other films is beyond capable of writing females...

But in the beginning of part two, a girl talks about how she loves when a dude kisses with "mushy lips." Ugh!!! Whether that's a chick thing or not, it's downright banal and embarrassing dialogue, intentional or otherwise...

Thankfully, Quentin didn't give that line to movie-stealer Vanessa Ferlito (who reluctantly allowed her own kisses to one of several barroom losers, all the while seeming to harbor an interest/attraction for Rose McGowan's Pam). Arlene aka Butterfly was the one and only girl who really called the shots. Unfortunately, her only mistake was simply going along for the ride.

From slap-happy, smitten Film Noir dicks onward, the cinematic equivalent of a girl that's just no good or a "no good dame" is usually one who's simply too good to be true. And when a loose, liberal young lady from America - in the usually idyllic dreamland of Vienna - hooks up with a loose yet intellectual American professor who thinks he's more liberal-minded than he actually is, things go from... well in this case, worse to better to pretty bad to pretty good to downright awful... for her, that is...

Initially taking place at a hospital emergency room where Theresa Russell's Milena is being frantically kept alive by desperate surgeons, BAD TIMING consists of flashbacks concerning her doomed romance with leading man Art Garfunkel as Alex...

The most intriguing aspect of Nicolas Roeg's comparably obscure motion picture is how a dying Milena is edited into sporadic bouts of love-making, laughter, arguments, more love-making, tantrums, aspersions, more tantrums, wandering through Vienna and even a quick road trip along desert terrain, like where the late auteur shaped his future assisting David Lean on a little excursion titled LAWRENCE OF ARABIA before carving-out his own desolate territory for WALKABOUT...

Harvey Keitel has a determined, steady, sharp yet peripheral and thankless role as a detective investigating whatever's been left behind of Alex and Milena's relationship, which isn't much but empty rooms. It's from the cold, off-putting indifference of Garfunkel's Alex that made Keitel's Inspector Netusil suspicious - more or less an intriguing distraction in an altogether glorious hybrid of direction and editing: a semi-surreal, sometimes sluggish and thoroughly offbeat template grounded and narrowed by an otherwise typical, inevitable device: the green dragon jealousy with its siamese twin, obsession: She's not only too good to be true, she's too good for you, buddy...

Making Art Garfunkel's reactions rise slightly above and beyond a somewhat bland performance: Injecting random bursts of wry energy throughout Nicolas Roeg's intentionally washed-out, dull-beige and in one scene, blurred photography... And as usual, his creative camerawork literally makes the movie while the actors merely follow along...

Save for an exceptional Theresa Russell's sexually riddled femme fatale, who's also an oblivious victim of what makes this feature ultimately daring, and controversial. Like STRAW DOGS and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE before, BAD TIMING is an example of otherwise "progressive" critics mixing up and/or blending together a fictional character's cruel actions with an avant garde director ambiguously pulling the strings, and without taking sides.

Thanks to the DVD artwork showing our favorite grimacing madman, it seems THE SHINING, a Stephen King novel turned into a suspenseful horror masterpiece by director Stanley Kubrick, would be nothing more than a fiendish Jack Nicholson running around with an axe. The sinister "Here's Johnny!" line is as over-quoted as the TAXI DRIVER "you talkin' to me?" scene... Yet there's more to THE SHINING than a crazy antagonist.

It's sad that audiences, whether returning fans or youngsters wanting to be scared, are mislead into a deliberately slow-paced cerebral/surreal journey that takes time to encompass the film's true villain, The Overlook Hotel.

We learn of the Hotel's backstory from the expository-driven interview scene with Barry Nelson's Stuart Ullman, leading to the interior tour that ends with Scatman Crothers' Mr. Hallorann and his personal conversation with Jack's son, Danny. Through this extensive set-up, making up an entire first act, we're brought into this sinister place where Jack Torrance is merely a pawn.

Stephen King didn't like the usually offbeat Nicholson for the lead role... But Kubrick saw fit to hire the man he had possibly slated to play Napoleon in a biopic that never took flight...

Instead, following A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, the eclectic auteur directed another time period epic, BARRY LYNDON, faring well with Kubrick fanatics but the long run time and unsympathetic title character confused mainstream audiences...

Even the once-adoring art house critics were perplexed: Thus THE SHINING, which remains Kubrick's most commercial venture, was a perfect choice for the man to step into a more conventional spotlight.

Back to Stephen King's anti-Nicholson stance: he felt that Jack Torrance, a would-be novelist/teacher hired to take care of the immense Hotel during an isolated winter, needed a progressive changeling... Wherein Nicholson seemed crazy right off the bat (ironically, author Ken Kesey said, during a private phone call in the mid-90's, he was against Jack's casting in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, although he claimed to have never seen the film)...

A Michael Moriarty or Jon Voight would have been more subtle for the lead role, in Stephen King's eyes, and he does have a point... But let's look into a theory that maybe Jack Torrance was never quite crazy enough...

Even hardcore Nicholson and/or SHINING fanatics have felt that Jack goes sporadically over the top in the role... When he speaks to Joe Turkel's Lloyd the Bartender, or any of his famous triads against Wendy, the put-upon wife played by Shelley Duvall... These moments are often viewed as hammy, or, as Kubrick's friend Steven Spielberg stated, something out of Kabuki Theater...

But here's a theory to consider: The Hotel ghosts overseeing Jack's violent task, something former caretaker Delbert Grady pulled off (most likely) with ease, might have realized they picked the wrong man for the job...

"Mr. Torrance, I see you can hardly have taken care of the business we discussed," Grady's voice speaks through the storage room door, where Wendy locked Jack inside following his stair-climbing tirade... A failed attempt halted by a swinging baseball bat. "I and others have come to believe that your heart is not in this."

That particular dialogue is very telling... And Jack's over-the-top performance might not be an intense actor playing a lunatic - but rather a character trying desperately to be crazy-enough to muster the energy to do such a horrendous thing... "Your heart is not in this," Grady had said. Thus Jack Torrance, not Jack Nicholson, is seeking the right motivation to get into the part of a cold-blooded killer.

If you view Jack Torrance as a failed madman rather than the poster-child for a trademark horror film heavy, certain aspects become clearer and Nicholson's performance is that much more intriguing... Also keep in mind that Delbert Grady - played by a mesmerizing Philip Stone, the other three-time Kubrick actor besides Joe Turkel - probably didn't have a child with the ability to "Shine" through the ominous location... At least not successfully.

In the role of Danny Torrance, young Danny Lloyd possesses a natural childlike finesse that keeps the entire movie in check... Whether riding his Big Wheel through the semi-carpeted hallways, being mentally tackled by nightmare visions of a bloody elevator lobby or two ghost girls perfectly suited for a demonic doll house, THE SHINING is his special power... Or curse.

Another Stephen King gripe was that his peripheral hero, Mr. Hallorann, winds up being killed... And with so much post-tour time spent with the likable side-character, from lying on his bed in Florida... to traveling on a plane... to driving down long snowy Colorado roads... resulting in such a quick and bloody demise... Does a character with so much buildup and importance deserve this sudden fate?

Well in a suspense-driven movie finally harboring a fully-realized axe-wielding killer, especially when played by an unshaved, goblin-jawed Jack Nicholson, there needs to be at least one slaughter! Torrance might have been a failure, ultimately... but he had to get something accomplished: After all, there's a bloodthirsty horror-genre audience to consider!

We can go on and on into other SHINING avenues, but this particular essay merely centers on the mental state of Jack Torrance, and the possibility he wasn't loony enough, thus making for a vicarious psycho trying desperately to find his path...

So the next time you watch this iconic 1980 Kubrick classic, keep in mind that perhaps Mr. Torrance may be battling those demons more than heeding their call... It makes for a much more interesting ride.