It's debatable whether Hollywood's resurgent obsession with the third dimension is a step forwards or backwards for the art of cinema, but it certainly gives us younger folk a glimpse of the gimmicky showmanship that often defined the medium in years past. The silent era spawned largely from the vaudeville stage, with films frequently screened along with more traditional live entertainment. The fledgling format's novelty and purely visual nature made spectacle the order of the day; a natural fit for the vaudevillian circuit. Story and drama eventually took over as the medium ascended to the upper echelons of cultural importance, but spectacle not only remained an important feature, it returned with a vengeance whenever television threatened to topple the silver screen.
Some of the resulting innovations have transcended the pejorative 'gimmick' to become important facets of cinema. Wide aspect ratios are taken for granted in this time of 16:9 HDTVs, but originated with non-standard formats like Cinemascope that were originally implemented by competitive theater operators looking to out do each other as well drag customer eyeballs away from the Radiation King in their living rooms.
Few other cinematic gimmicks were as classy or successful as Cinemascope, but they definitely added a cheesy, carnival like atmosphere of spectacle. The undisputed king of such contrivances was William Castle, director of House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, and Mr. Sardonicus. To add some extra zazz to the scary bits of his films, he would set up elaborate contraptions in select theaters. Haunted Hill famously had a fake skeleton fly over audiences' heads at certain times, and The Tingler boasted electrified seats scattered randomly through the theater. Other films would have 'nurses' on hand to treat fear induced heart attacks, or micro-intermissions before the climax so that anyone too scared could leave and get a full refund (also a public shaming for their cowardice).
While modern moviegoers are a little too sophisticated (cynical?) to be taken in by plastic skeletons or hollow boasts of death by fright, such practices have fortunately not faded entirely away. The director of Indian horror film, Phoonk 2(Electric Boogaloo?), recently offered $10,000 to anyone brave enough to watch the movie alone in an empty theater. Plus, as mentioned above, Hollywood is making pretty much anything that it can think of into a 3D movie these days. (I miss the '80s, where you could apparently only use the process on the third film in a franchise.)
Sadly, the director of The Human Centipede (First Sequence) has not announced any sort of free vomit bag promotion at theatrical screenings of his film, but after coming up with such an outlandish and disturbing premise, everything else (likely including the film itself) will have to play second fiddle. Watch the trailer below:
Is it a spoiler to show that the centipede is completed at some point in the movie? It will surely steal some of the suspense from the cat and mouse games between the crazy German surgeon and his nubile victims, but it would be a far greater crime for us to sit through a mediocre horror/suspense film called The Human Centipede about a mad scientist trying to create said human centipede without actually having any human centipede action. I'm not buying a $10 ticket to The Human Centipede to see people narrowly escape being turned into a human centipede. The rest of the film is just (for lack of a better term) foreplay. To use another example for context: does anyone go see Friday the 13th movies to see a bunch of people narrowly escape getting murdered by Jason Vorhees? No. So let's not pretend that we're going to The Human Centipede to see if the characters manage to escape when we really just want to know what happens when the middle one has to go [insert bodily function here].
Also, you all have to go see it so the director can make The Human Centipede (Full Sequence) which may have up to a dozen(!) poor bastards sewn together.
Update (2/9): To clear up some confusion that this rambling, barely coherent post has induced in some of you, I consider the centipede itself to be the movie's gimmick. It's a premise so unique and outlandish that I have absolutely no problem with the construction of an entire movie (maybe two) around it. Plus there is the carnival freakshow aspect to it. Anyways, I don't have to explain myself to the likes of you.
Giant oil drums of ink have already been spilled in tribute to The Fly, David Cronenberg's most commercially and critically successful film, and since it is yet another of his works that I currently don't have a copy of (Damn you, '06 Chaska DVD thieves!) I'll do little here but scratch the surface.
Originally a short story published in Playboy, The Fly was quickly adapted into a 1958 Vincent Price film, and has since spiraled outward into a massive, loosely connected franchise. As of 2009 there have been two sequels, one remake (which we are discussing today), one sequel to said remake, an operatic adaptation of the remake, a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment, and a possible remake of the remake. (That is a lot of houseflies getting trapped in teleportation devices; perhaps these scientists need to keep their labs tidier.)
For Cronenberg's career, the film was a watershed moment in several ways. As mentioned above, it ended up being his biggest hit by a wide margin, becoming the world's first (and probably only) mainstream body-horror film. The academy award winning makeup effects involved in the tragic hero's gruesome metamorphosis (often described a brutal metaphor for the aging process) horrified and resonated with audiences, while the doomed romance and melodramatic love triangle at the heart of the film gave it an emotional heft rarely found in horror or sci-fi. In fact, the quality of Cronenberg's writing and directing of actors in The Fly signals the beginning of the end for those of us who have mixed feelings about the auteur's transformation into a high caliber, genre-free filmmaker. With the notable exception of eXistenZ, all of his post-Fly movies have drifted away from gross out effects and outlandish premises and toward straight, character driven thrillers. They're still as violent and disturbing for the most part, but the body-horror themes have been internalized by the various tortured, psychologically damaged protagonists.
If Cronenberg's films are looked at as a ven-diagram or continuum between his fleshy, venereal horror shows and dark, cerebral character studies, The Fly will always end up at dead center. The perfect balance of gore and character makes it his most perfect film, even if it only ends up as #4 on my personal list of favorites. (In case you're wondering, it goes: Videodrome, Dead Ringers, eXistenZ, The Fly.)
More Reasons The Fly is Awesome:
Pacing: Cronenberg's films can never be criticized for being overlong. Unlike many of the self indulgent filmmakers currently pumping out 3+ hour epics, he has skills with the editing blade to rival even pre-Gladiator Ridley Scott. The Fly begins practically in media res, with Jeff Goldblum and Gena Davis hitting it off at a party before going back to his place for a telepod demonstration. No time is wasted setting the characters up beforehand, and every scene has a clear purpose. (It helps that their are no added subplots beyond Goldblum's transformation and the central romance.) In fact, considering the quality of the writing, acting, and special effects, it could even be argued that the film is too short.
Stathis Borans: Played by the chronically underemployed John Getz of Blood Simple 'fame,' Stathis is a sleazy, '80s corporate villain type and the third prong in the film's love triangle. With a bushy rapist beard and hair as slick as his demeanor, the dude spends 75% of the movie radiating intense douchebag vibes. However, thanks to Getz's performance, there are subtle hints of vulnerability sandwiched between his smug cigar chomping and pompous theatrics. By the third act, the audience can almost believe that his despondent ex-girlfriend would look to him for help in her time of need. He even gets to save the day in the end, though at a gruesome personal cost.
It's amazing how much sympathy (read: any whatsoever) the film manages to find for such an unlikable character. Despite limited screen time in a relatively short film, he goes from 1980s cinema archetype to three dimensional character. In the end, he's arguably the film's most interesting character. Cronenberg even admits as such in the DVD commentary track (recommended BTW), and laments his choice to not develop him further. (Perhaps the 2007 opera version rectified this.)
Music: Yet another reason it isn't surprising that there is a Fly opera; the Howard Shore composed score can only be described with hyperbolic language like 'epic' and 'intense.' It's heavy, orchestral, and manages to highlight the characters' intense, borderline melodramatic emotional arcs without sending the whole ordeal passed that thin, hazy line separating good drama from "over the top." Here's the main theme:
No Neo-Luddism: Unlike most 'science gone wrong' movies (including the original 1958 film), The Fly does not blame science itself for the protagonist's fateful predicament. He gets drunk and teleports himself without proper precautions after his girlfriend disappears on him for the evening to meet with her ex-boyfriend. No one tries to make a case that the telepods are too dangerous or that he tried to play god; emotion and strong drink simply made him sloppy.
Buff Jeff Goldblum in tiny underwear:I mean... if you're in to that sort of thing... which I'm not... not that there is anything wrong with that.
While not perfect, The Brood is Cronenberg's finest pre-Videodrome work, and can probably be thought of as his most generally 'Cronenbergian.' It has the human body being altered through the power of the mind, creepy reproductive/sexual undertones, and Robert Silverman. Partially inspired by the director's own brutal custody battle, the film tells the story of a family torn asunder by its emotionally unstable matriarch, who has been whisked away by a radical psychotherapist who is more interested in using her to advance his research than actually curing her.
That research is in Psychoplasmics, the study of effects on the body caused by emotional states. In typical Cronenberg fashion, a minor character (a police psychologist in this case) inadvertently explains the film's premise long before the audience has enough information to realize it. Referring to the protagonist's young daughter, who has just been traumatized by the brutal slaying of her grandmother, he proclaims "These things tend to express themselves one way or another. I've seen five year olds ... with ulcers as bad as any middle aged business man." By itself the sentence is fairly innocuous, but the film surrounding it expands that premise to the point of having a woman asexually produce creepy mutant babies via her severe rage problems. Like Videodrome and the motif of harmful sensation, The Brood takes a common sense idea, that emotional stress can cause a physical reaction, and stretches it deep into speculative fiction territory.Since I've previously rambled about the film, here are some bullet point reasons for you to add it to your Netflix queue:
The late, great Oliver Reed: England's heaviest drinking thespian plays the ethically challenged super-psychiatrist responsible for Psychoplasmics. For the most part it's a soft spoken role couched in rationality and passive-aggressive therapist talk, but he really takes off during the roll playing sessions involved in his radical treatments. The film begins with him and a simpering patient demonstrating Psychoplasmics for an audience in a manner strongly reminiscent of Kabuki theater. (A style Cronenberg would later explore in his adaptation of M. Butterfly.) With accelerating anger, Reed plays the role of the patient's father, emasculating and humiliating him until the rage manifests as gross boils all over the man's body.Plus, we get to see exactly how many children it would take to down the famously pugnacious actor:The Kindergarten Beatdown:In the second most shocking scene in the film, a kindergarten teacher with the absolute worst haircut late '70s Canada has to offer gets singled out by a pair of snowsuit clad broodlings when their "mother" begins to see the woman as a rival for her ex-husband's affections. Passing for kids at a distance they easily sneak into the classroom and arm themselves with little wooden hammers. They then proceed to beat the teacher to death (not an easy task, considering their size and weapon choice) in front of all her students. Some of the kids' "traumatized" faces are absolutely priceless. (Imagine the therapy bills. Yikes)The Laid Back Canadian Police: Not only does the sudden appearance of brutal midget murderers get no reaction from the cops other than "We weren't looking for anything that small," but the coroner explains the inner workings of a dead broodling with the calm demeanor of someone who autopsies previously unknown species of mutant children all the time. They even let the civilian protagonist sit in on the affair."Oh look, some sort of grotesque midget monster with no belly button and a life sustaining nutrient pouch to make up for the lack of a digestive system. That's probably the scientific discovery of the decade, if not century. I'd better calmly explain it to the son in law of the people it murdered instead of frantically calling National Geographic or the Weekly World News. Man, I'm hungry. I wonder what's on TV right now?"
The Terrible Day-for-Night:The Psychoplasmics research center is a fascinating slice of Canadian modernist architecture and is an easily readable location in the film. However, many scenes there take place at night, and without a massive budget for lighting, the film needed a way to show the building's distinctive silhouette for nighttime establishing shots. This is the result:The dusk photography and gradated blue filter makes for a nice try, but nothing can hide the fact that the shot breaks a cardinal day-for-night rule: never show the sky. It's a dead giveaway that you're using photographic trickery. (For some truly excellent, albeit CG assisted day-for-night see 28 Weeks Later.)
Note to Minnesota folk: don't forget to check out the last Cronenberg screening at the Trylon Microcinema this weekend. It's The Fly!
My apologies for the lack of stills in this post, but it turns out I don't actually have a copy of the film sitting around. It was stolen along with a bunch of other DVDs and Gamecube games a few years ago, and I guess I never got around to replacing it.
As a rung on the ladder of David Cronenberg's progression as a filmmaker, Scanners was both a big step up and a bit of an odd duck. It was his first big hit since the now practically forgotten Shivers, the very first publicly funded Canadian film to make a profit, and kick-started his '80s genre glory days. Also, thanks to one memorably gruesome shot, the film arguably has the biggest cultural footprint of his entire oeuvre. On the other hand it is literally his only film (ignoring the non-genre, tax shelter funded, race car oddity, Fast Company) without any sort of creepy psycho-sexual themes. There is nary a stomach vagina or scene of implied spine-hole fucking in sight; not even disturbingly intense marital sex.
Basically, Scanners is a breezy corporate espionage thriller with some Cronenbergian window dressing. Canadian Neo-Expressionist painter Stephen Lack (as in Lack-ing thespian talents, yuk-yuk) plays Cameron Vale, a remarkably well groomed hobo doomed to a life of misery by his uncontrollable ability to "scan" the thoughts of others. He is brought under the tutelage of Patrick McGoohan (the esteemed #6 and all around badass) to control his powers for use in combating evil scanner Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside, also pretty badass). Mysteries are solved, double crosses are uncovered, and secret labs are repeatedly snuck into.It's all pretty standard spy stuff, only with a psi-twist that, while common today (especially in video games), was relatively unexplored at the time. Cronenberg's interest in the mind's fictional (unless you're a new-age weirdo) power over the body and physical world fits neatly within the film's sci-fi secret agent framework, but the film would have probably been long forgotten if not for the director's trademark use of unpleasant viscera. Scanners don't just passively read thoughts, they physically affect nervous systems, and with enough power, they can overwhelm a victim with enough intensity to detonate his or her skull.
Yup, this is essentially the shot that put Cronenberg on the map. People may not remember much about the film's lose storytelling or its lead's somnambulant performance, but they sure as hell remember "when that dude's head exploded." It's just one of the many ways the film makes the idea of people killing with their minds visually interesting, and it is excellent cultural shorthand for painful headaches and wishing ill towards your boss/spouse/annoying guy on the bus. Personally, whenever I'm stuck in a long boring meeting I make a concerted effort to mentally explode the head of whoever is currently talking. It's never going to happen, but at least I look like I'm paying attention.
Even though Scanners is an extremely important film in Cronenberg's history, it's still probably his worst film. (That's assuming you ignore Fast Company and grade his early works on a curve.) The ideas are there, but the story is oddly paced and completely free of emotional gravity. The script, which had to be completed over the course of filming due to draconian scheduling, takes some of the blame, but the majority is shouldered by poor Stephen Lack. He manages to pull off the various pained expressions and intense staring required of his psychic character, but nearly every time he opens his mouth it's an embarrassment. Yes, his character is supposed to have a "poorly developed sense of self" due to the lifetime of listening to other's thoughts in place of his own, but for the most part he doesn't seem to be trying for Keanu Reeves in A Scanner Darkly style introversion. When he proclaims "You murdered the future!" to his arch-enemy/long lost brother in the climactic scene, there is a clear attempt at angry inflection, even though it ends up being spread arbitrarily throughout the line. Also, in one of Lack's rare performances outside of Scanners, a brief cameo in Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, he is just as cringeworthy. Clearly the dude just can't read dialog to save his life, but at least he can do this:
The following post contains spoilers, but probably won't make any damn sense if you haven't seen the movie anyway.
This may come as a shock to you, but I loves me some Videodrome. It is probably my all time favorite movie, and it certainly had a massive influence on the disheveled 16 year old version of me who picked up its sun bleached plastic case at a rapidly decaying Mr. Movies. Despite the existence of a most excellent Criterion Collection release, this is arguably the best way to experience Videodrome for the first time. The film practically craves the blurry texture and fuzzy tracking problems of a long neglected analog video tape. It certainly goes out of its way to work the medium's technical, physical, and cultural artifacts into the mise en scène.As a bona fide high school AV nerd spending as much time as possible with the half broken, second hand video production equipment, I was also essentially Videodrome's ideal viewer. The great rack-mount towers of oscilloscopes, VTRs, and broadcasting equipment fascinated me with its clunky DIY aesthetics and odd juxtaposition (sometimes simultaneously) of the advanced and the antiquated. I was completely taken by the film's zeitgeist, so the occasional nudity and infamous bizarro-gore were merely the icing on the cake.This analog-philia, combined with the weirdly artificial grime of the Toronto back alleys in which much of the film takes place (it's like no one has cleaned in decades, but no one has been littering either) gives the film a subtle vibe of alternate reality. I like to call it "tubepunk" or "analog-punk," because while it is obsessed with the ramifications of advancing technology, the real world has long ago surpassed it in ways it only dimly perceived. One character gives a fairly accurate prediction of 'user names' and the Internet's egocentric pseudo-anonymity, while another decries the socially destructive effects of media over-stimulation, a laughably quaint idea coming out of 1983. On the other hand, it is too obsessed with looking forward and too subtly different from the '80s as we knew them to ever truly feel like the past. The result is a fascinating world that is sadly unique to the film that spawned it. (Hence my clamoring for a video game sequel, and decrying of a "modern" remake.)For Cronenberg's career, Videodrome marks a clear turning point in his slow evolution from high concept horror auteur to a more mature director of cerebral thrillers. It's also arguably his first truly good film, unmarred by the weak performances that periodically raise their heads in his earlier work (I'm looking at you, dude from Scanners), and completely saturated with dark subtext. Films like Scanners and The Brood obviously had a lot of ideas and certainly revolve around his favored themes, (the power of the mind over the physical world, gooey abjections of the human form) but Videodrome takes these ideas and runs with them.One theme, further explored in the film eXistenZ, is the traumatic effect of exposure to alternate layers of reality. When protagonist Max Renn (James Woods) is exposed to the Videodrome signal, he begins having hallucinations so vivid that they cannot be distinguished from reality. Another character, Professor Brian O'Blivion, suffers from a Videodrome induced brain tumor (similar to the emotion fueled cellular carnosity in The Brood) that he postulates is actually a new organ with the ability (purpose?) to create an even closer relationship between the mind and the cathode ray tube. "Television is the retina of the mind's eye," he frequently proclaims, possibly meaning that Renn's hallucinatory experiences with the Videodrome show and signal are the result of his consciousness being extended into the television program. Once the boundaries between meatspace and the 'video' world are totally blurred, it becomes impossible for Renn and, by extension, the audience to tell exactly how real the events on screen are, and how characters untainted by the signal are perceiving the events. For instance, Max gets a crazy mutant gun hand, but when he is brainwashed into murdering his unaffected business associates he merely shoots them with a totally normal weapon. This gives the impression that his fleshy new powers only exist within his Videodrome fugue state. (Perhaps other victims of the signal could also see them.) However this is later contradicted by an unaffected character getting his hand mutated into a flesh grenade, which background extras react in horror to, after sticking it into Renn's stomach vagina along with a mind controlling video tape. What exactly were these unaffected characters witnessing and what are the ramifications for the seperation between the real hallucinatory worlds.
The film gives no easy answer to the above question, which merely scratching the surface of possible textual analysis. There are many more interesting questions about perception, censorship, the motif of harmful sensation, the social effects of violent and pornographic media, and our relationship with media in general. Max has a career as a small time cable pornography provider eager to break the next taboo. There are repercussions of the Videodrome signal's increased effectiveness under sexually violent imagery, as well as the hints of vast, moralistic, right wing conspiracies. There's enough to chew on in this 89 minute film to write a whole book. In fact someone did! (Which I confess I have yet to read.)Videodrome: way more than "that movie where James Woods has a stomach vagina," (though it certainly is that too) or a Family Guy joke about nudity. Buy it, steal it, Netflix it. If you are in Minnesota, the Trylon Microcinema just had a showing and will be doing more Cronenberg movies through the end of October. I'll be attempting to catch all of them, so drop me a comment if you're going as well.
"It has a philosophy. And that is what makes it dangerous."
The Devil's Rain was colossal fuck-up. Despite having a spectacular cast, a solid premise, and an honest-to-god Satanist on board as a technical adviser, the movie failed so spectacularly that it destroyed or irreparably damaged the careers of almost everyone involved. The press hated it, audiences hated it, and Jesus almost certainly hated it, considering the subject matter. The director, having already established himself with the Dr. Phibes movies, went on to die a slow career death making after school specials. The writers' IMDB pages are far spookier ghost towns than the spooky ghost town found within the movie. The only person involved to have a career upswing afterwards was John Travolta, and that's because he was merely an eyeless background shemp. Even Anton LaVey, the film's technical advisor from the Church of Satan, probably leaves the film off his resume.Things start off promising enough. After a nice opening credits montage of Hieronymus Bosch paintings, the film dives right into the crazy with a media in res scene of William Shatner arguing with his mother Ida Lupino over her recurring nightmares. Dad has apparently gone missing in the rainstorm, and senile ol' gramps just keeps making more coffee to keep everyone on edge.The father finally shows up, only he is missing his eyeballs and melting rapidly. (Acid rain?) Before dissolving completely, he demands they return 'the book' to some dude named Corbis out in the desert. It looks like cowboy hatted Captain Kirk has himself an adventure to embark upon. Ida gives him the worlds largest, creepiest crucifix and sends him on his way.So Shatner leaves for little more than two seconds, just long enough to walk slowly to his truck, find a creepy voodoo doll of his mom, and run back inside, and suddenly the whole house is completely trashed. Grandpa is strung upside down and beaten around the face, and Ida is nowhere to be found. This is where the real meat and potatoes of the movie begins: people walking slowly through rooms. Nothing creates more tension than William Shatner walking suspensfully through a room that he was already in not more than five minutes ago. It is starting to look like the movie will not have the crackerjack editing its breathless opening scene would have us believe.
With the movie's pacing completely upended, the editor obviously felt like he could relax things by a few thousand notches. Shatner hops into his awesome station wagon and proceeds on his mystical quest, which turns out to mostly involve driving through the desert, followed by more driving through the desert, until finally coming to a gradual stop at the local Wild West Tourist attraction.He briefly explores the backlot ghost town before running into the real reason to be watching The Devil's Rain, Ernest Borgnine operating at maximum creepy. First appearing as a cowboy creeper, he feigns hospitality by giving Shatner some bitter well water. Kirk's having nothing of it, and over the course of a tense conversation their relationship is established. Borgnine is the evil Corbis previously mentioned, and he has apparently converted Wild West Town into a Satanic cult. He desperately wants a book in the possession of Shatner's family, but he's got to deal with his surly attitude, faith in Jesus, and .45 pistol first. (In that order.)
You know what I don't hate? I don't hate vests.
We're still in the first act and it's already showdown time. Shatner proposes a challenge of faith to Borgnine, the book and his life vs. his kidnapped family members. Satanists, taking after their master, apparently get their rocks off with bargains and challenges, so Ernest giddily accepts. They head to the nearby boarded up church for an old fashioned faith-off, which seems like kind of a boneheaded move on William's part, but still pales in comparison to the unceasing, epic numbskullery the audience will be subjected to by the end of the film. Not since The Rats, have I seen a film with heroes concocting such terrible stratagems.
Inside the church, Shatner nervously adapts the Lord's prayer in his signature style, while Borgnine, blessed with the instant costume change powers of darkness, performs a black mass for his be-cloaked cultists. His intestinal fortitude failing, Shatner turns away from the service to discover his mother, now missing her ocular organs, amongst the congregation. This proves too much for our hero's nerves, and he switches out the protective mega-cross for the more concrete protection of a handgun. Since the cultists appear to be filled with some sort of sherbet or frozen yogurt like substance (possibly the Stuff?), the weapon is surprisingly effective.
In a rare moment of decent cinematography, Kirk exits the tainted temple and makes his escape halfback style through the swarming cultists. While the children of Lucifer lack the running or tackling skills to stop him, they already planted a guy in the driver's seat of his station wagon.
Now that the film's pace has picked back up, it is obviously time to grind to a screeching halt in order to introduce an entire new cast of characters. Yay! Silly Shatner fans, this is really a Tom Skerrit movie. He's a scientist and William's brother, so when his psychic wife/specimen receives a distress signal from his rapidly shrinking family, it's time to go solve some mysteries with Science. He packs up the misses and fellow scientician, Eddie Albert, for a quick road trip to the barren, middle-of-nowhere desert where his family resides. (Why the hell do they live in the same region as the dark forces hunting them?)There is quite a bit of promise in this turn of events; while Shatner's faith based solution faltered against the righteousness of evil Ernest, Skerrit's character has two things his brother lacked: science and a 'stache. (See the 1973 film Pioneer Woman for an honest to goodness Shanter mustache--handlebar no less.) Scientists versus Satan? It worked like a charm for Prince of Darkness and Quatermass & The Pit. (Yeah yeah, Satan turned out to be space grasshoppers. Big deal.) The problem is that whenever it finds a spot to inject actual ideas, The Devil's Rain is content to inject mindless filler instead. There is no science v. magic smackdown, just Skeritt walking suspensfully through Satanic churches and western sets.Finding no help from local law enforcement, the gang heads to the ghost town to investigate. Their car randomly explodes, but a crazy cultist is tooling around in Shatner's beat up wagon. They chase him into the old hotel set, and nothing of interest happens for a while. Eventually Tom gets the drop on the eyeless goon so his telepathic wife can suck exposition out of its head.Thanks to an endless, orange-hued flashback, it turns out that Ernest Borgnine is a three century old Satanic priest who was burned at the stake after his congregation is ratted out by the wife of a wig sporting old-timey William Shatner. He was a direct ancestor of the film's leads, and Borgy damned their whole family with a prophetic curse. Why he bothered to do this while they were being burned at the stake alongside him is a mystery, but they must have somehow managed to pump out and raise some children before becoming crispy critters, because their lineage has obviously been established.
Having fought a goon and solved part of the mystery, they decide to leave town. Only Skeritt changes his mind or something, because he stops at the edge of town, gets out, and sends his wife on her way while he continues the investigation. This is Shitty Plan #1, because not only does he no longer have a method of quick escape when things inevitably go off the rails, but his Satanically controlled mom is hiding in the back seat of the car. When she pops up for a scare, his wife's reaction is to completely let go of the wheel in order to cover her head. Car meets tree; wife meets Ernest Borgnine.Back in town, Tom is still walking suspensfully. He tracks the Satanists to a nearby rocky outcropping and observes them performing an elaborate ritual on a restrained Shatner. They burn a waxen effigy of him, carve crap onto his chest, and purify him with the "water of forgetfulness." During the process, Borgnine calls forth Satan himself, who obliges by entering his body, revealing the awesome power of Satan-goat-man-thing-guy.The ritual, which Skeritt makes no attempt to disrupt, is a resounding success. The result: Shatner loses his eyeballs and becomes possessed by the spirit of his long dead forefather. Impressive, but how come it takes them so long to convert William that his brother manages to travel from wherever he was doing sciencey stuff, investigate the town, and show up in time for the main attraction, when they managed to do the same to their mom in less time than it took for Shatner to merely drive across the desert? Also, how did Ida get from the station wagon to the ceremony in time to expose her remaining non-evil son, and why didn't she take the wife along with her? And how do they not already know about Tom Skeritt, if they had planted a trap in the station wagon? Wasn't it day time just a minute ago? What the hell is happening?
Obviously this whole desert exists in some kind of Satanic spacetime warp, because after Tom takes out a couple cultists with a shotgun and makes his escape, he miraculously appears back at the ranch the next day. He also loses the gun in the process, and even though he would just have to walk down some stairs that he probably has to go down anyway, he doesn't bother to retrieve it. It's almost like the good guys want to lose.Back at home base with Eddie Albert, the two men have the worlds most casual conversation about Satanic forces and missing wives. Tom gets a little riled up at one point, but no more so than if they were arguing the merits of string theory. Ed has located the magic macguffin book and uses it to quickly fill in the remaining exposition gaps. It turns out that Hell is a vicious bureaucracy (why am I not surprised?) that requires extensive paperwork on the souls delivered to it. Inside, Borgnine had written down all the names of his parishioners in blood. Without the names, their souls can't be properly delivered to Satan and must remain in some sort of limbo related to the ill defined eponymous precipitation.
So it's established that the villain desperately needs this tome to complete his evil scheme to deliver a bunch of colonial era souls to the devil. (Step 3 is profit.) Instead of burning the book, flying it to Istanbul, or otherwise preventing him from obtaining it, they use their powerful science-brains to formulate an even worse plan than Shatner's previous 'walk right into the evil church and sit down' idea. At least Captain Kirk had the good sense not to take Borgnine's coveted macguffin along with him; the scientists not only take it with them after deciding to go right back to evilburg, they accidentally leave it sitting on the church floor for a random cultist to pick up while passing by. For a while I thought they were setting up a trap with the book as bait, but no dice; after the sheriff randomly shows up as an eyeless axe wielding muppet (When the fuck did they have time to get him?) it gets dropped on the floor and completely forgotten about.
Jesus Christ! Waldorf is trying to fucking kill me!
The expedition is not a total wash. They do manage to locate and steal the Devil's Rain in between losing both the book and yet another shotgun. (Maybe you should have brought a second gun instead of the goddamn source of the villain's power, chowderheads.) It turns out to be the giant lovechild of a Fabergé egg and a Chumby. Inside it's viewing screen, which is actually a pretty nifty effect, are the wailing souls of Borgnine's follower-victims.Before they can beat another hasty retreat, the Satanists show up en masse to unite the book with its magic console TV. Instead of immediately smashing the fragile looking thing, Eddie casually walks to the center of the room and offers to exchange it for Borgnine's recently aquired 20th century souls. He makes a big deal out of not over or under-estimating the Satanists' power, but it rings a little hollow since he is just standing in the middle of a huge swarm of them with no weaponry or plan. Sure enough, evil Shatner has only to reach out and easily snatch the macguffin from him. So every single thing the heroes have done in this movie has only made the antagonist's job easier. If they would have stayed in bed he'd have been fucked.Fortunately for the mouth breathing forces of good, the Shatner ancestor currently occupying Shatner prime's body finds one last sliver of free will, and before you can say "deus ex machina" he performs the movie's first sensible act by tossing the egg/tv/soul-jar/chumby thing to the ground. Ker-Pow! The church's roof blows off so that the Devil's Rain can finally rain down... as rain.
Does this thing get the Playboy channel?
Depending on who you ask, this is where the film either finally gets good or goes completely off the deep end. The rain, if you remember from the first scene, makes the eyeless cultists melt into waxy goo. The next ten or so minutes of the movie is all melting, all the time. They melt. Goat-Borgnine melts. Everyone melts some more. Skeritt and Goatnine wrassle a little. More melting. The church explodes a bit. Melting.To mix things up, the cultists appear to not be melting for a couple shots, but they are actually still melting. Then the church explodes again. Everyone looks sad at each other then melts some more. (It's hard not to look sad when you are melting, though.) Is this a special Devil's Rain that is making them melt, or does any water do it, like for the Wicked Witch? That would certainly explain the desert setting. Patch Adams with a headful of cold medicine notwithstanding, I don't usually fall asleep during movies, but I'm pretty sure I nodded off a bit during the melt-tastic climax. When I awoke moments later, everyone was... still melting.
Meanwhile, the heroes have rescued the damsel in distress and make their way to a safe distance. Eddie Albert slinks away so they can have a tender moment in front of the raging inferno and gooey remains of their tormenters. But wait, there's more: in a completely original and totally not pulled out of anyone's ass twist ending, it turns out that Tom Skeritt is actually embracing Ernest Borgnine! The film then fades out with a legitimately creepy shot of the psychic wife starring out from what is apparently a backup Devil's Rain. (One soul? Satan's gonna be pissed.) Spooky, until you think about it for two seconds. When did it happen? How did it happen? How come no one used shapeshifting powers earlier? Where is Eddie Albert in all this?The Devil's Rain is not a movie, it is a second string Twilight Zone episode stretched with more tasteless filler than North Korean meatloaf. There is at least a solid hour of footage that could be cut from the film without disrupting the 'plot', and it might actually benefit from some disruption. It's pretty clear that the filmmakers came up with the various elements before trying to wrangle them into a cohesive plot. There is an occasional bout of excuse making, such as the sheriff's recalcitrance towards helping the investigation, but mostly things just happen without rhyme or reason. Someone had an idea for a cool scare scene in the car, so Skeritt just abandons his wife. The plot required Borgnine to somehow get ahold of his prized macguffin, so the heroes just bring it along and practically hand it to him. There was a cheap western backlot available, so they set the whole thing in a desert. Basically, everything that happens can be more easily traced to an artifact of the arduous process of making a movie than to any reasonable logic of character or story. It's just plain awful, and that is coming from someone who considers Man's Best Friend one of his favorite films.Also, a special place in hell needs to be set aside for those responsible for authoring the terrible DVD Netflix sent me. The best thing I can say about it is that it was not pan-and-scan. It was not an anamorphic transfer, looks only marginally better than VHS, and is so poorly mastered that you can actually see individual keyframes. They are noticable because they are the only times when the film's considerable grain is visible; otherwise the grain is compressed into blurry, geometric artifacts. This creates a strange rhythm to the film, as every third or so frame is grainy, while the rest are not. It was actually a little more fun to watch than the film itself.
For more "Meltocaust" action, check out this month's Final Girl Film Club. There are legions more folk giving this film the lighthearted ribbing it so terribly deserves, so check 'em out (if only to compare the metaphors used to describe the crazy TV jar... thing).
Brian Yuzna's unjustly forgotten masterpiece of strange, Society, combines two of our favorite obsessions here at Video Updates: the perverse, day-glo decadence of 1987 through 1995, and the tiny sub-genre referred to as "Body Horror." One of the few movies he's done without his usual partner in crime and fellow Lovecraft nerd, Stuart Gordon, (together they created the Re-Animator film franchise and wrote the script for Honey I Shrunk the Kids) it is worth tracking down both for its anthropological value (read: gawk at the stupid haircuts) and for its third act sucker punch of disgusting peculiarity.
Starring 1989's greatest mullet as the skullwarmer of daytime TV and Baywatch hunk Billy Warlock (if you think that's a great monicker, his father was a stuntman for Kurt Russel by the name of Dick Warlock) the movie spins a timeless yarn about family, fitting in, young love, and just trying to survive as a 28 year old high school senior in Beverly Hills. (Much like a certain television show that would debut a year later.)
Billy should be having the time of his life; he's a star athlete and soon-to-be class president with a spectacularly wealthy family, an expensive Jeep Douchemobile™, and a shallow girlfriend who wears denim dresses and hair so tall it scrapes the heavens. In short, he has everything a SoCal high school senior circa 1989 could ever want.
So horrifying... yet I can't look away.
Yet poor Billy can't help thinking that something sinister is going on beneath the surface. Not only is he plagued by nightmares and hallucinations, but someone keeps taunting him with mysterious mental illness themed pranks. Unable to talk to his parents due to their incredibly distant, awkward relationship (not to mention that they seem to be the source of his unease) he turns to the family shrink, who merely patronizes him and tries to explain away the disturbing feelings as normal teen angst.
Meanwhile, he's got to deal with all the usual high school drama. (Now with 60% more class warfare.) There's the upcoming election for class president, featuring Billy versus a preppy dork straight out of Metropolitan. Actually, the whole movie could easily pass for a tacky, West Coast sequel to Whit Stillman's ode to snobby, youthful pretentiousness... if not for the occasional backward boobs shower scene.
There is also the small matter of the huge upcoming party at the even richer, even snobbier kids house. Billy's gal, Valley Girl Barbie, desperately wants to be invited, and unceasingly Lady-MacBeths him into ingratiate himself with the cool kids. (That's right, 'Lady MacBeth' is a verb now. Deal with it.) He makes an attempt at the nearby countryclub, but is thwarted by general snobbishness and the embarrassing antics of other beachgoers.
Sunscreen Facial: The gag so nice they used it twice.
After a fun filled afternoon of quasi-sexual humiliation and practicing for his later role on 'Baywatch,' Billy is accosted by his sister's dorky stalker, who reveals that he has been surreptitiously recording the family's conversations. To avoid the imminent pounding, he quickly plays back a tape of Billy's parents and sister discussing strange new ways of having sex with other snobby rich folk. A moment later, the tape devolves into some sort of violent, inhuman orgy. Billy takes the recording to his psychiatrist, who convinces him to hand over the tape. More mullet than common sense, he complies, only to return later to find that his family has rerecorded the events on the tape with innocuous versions. Again proving his total inability to deal with conspiracies, Billy calls his contact on the shrink's phone (right in front of him) and repeats the location of their next meeting place outloud. Sure enough, the wiretapper is immediately killed in a freak car accident, that Billy merely gets yelled at for walking all over. I'm pretty sure if you walk onto a the scene of an accident, step all over the blood and broken glass, and then start rooting around in the deceased's suitcase, the cops will toss you in the clink.
Time for an ol' fashion doucheoff
Around this point the movie starts to really sag, sadly. There is more intrigue, more awful fashion, and some unnecessary plot elements startling revelations. Billy's family attempts to throw him off the trail with transparent flattery, formal party invitations, and sudden ivy league acceptance letters, but his paranoia continues to grow. He loses his cheerleader girlfriend and shacks up with a dark, mysterious debutante whose mother is a mute, lumbering giant that steals people's hair... or something.Billy eventually confronts his family about all the conspiratorial shenanigans, but they are ready for him. He gets jumped by some EMTs and tranquilized, then wakes up in the hospital and, against all logic and his buddy's best wishes, goes back to the house only to get captured again. That is a solid ten minutes of action that serves absolutely no purpose. (It's implied that there is some sort of Wicker Man-esque game or ritual going on, but no one elaborates.) I imagine that if Zack Snyder were to ever see such a decadent waste of running time, he would think bitterly about all the valuable, important detail he had to cut out of his still overlong epic, then curl into a little ball and cry himself to sleep. At last it is time for the big party. Billy is paraded in front of the "well dressed" crowd and joined by the not actually dead whistleblower. The psychiatrist provides the requisite massive exposition dump while everyone else stands around acting smug and wealthy. (Except for one mustachioed redneck who won't stop looking at the camera.) It seems that the wealthy anglo-saxon elite are not actually human beings, but a species of humanoid slugs with the ability to shapeshift. They can't do it instantly or even quickly, but can change quite radically and even merge with each other.
Scariest. Picture. Ever.
Billy has apparently been adopted and raised for the last 18 years solely for this night, where he is to be devoured in a messy ritual known as 'shunting.' Not only have the snobbish slug-people been exploiting the labor of the hard working, non-slug proletariat all these years, but they have been literally feeding off the lower class as well. Bill must watch helplessly as they demonstrate the process on the appetizer.
Everyone strips down to their skivvies and begins getting all sweaty and slimy, then swarm the poor victim zombie style. Instead of biting or clawing, they simply rub and poke until their mucous covered slug skin begins to bond with him. It appears that they are also sucking nutrients out, but mostly its an excuse for a truly epic makeup effects extravaganza. Fingers get inserted into asses (not the 'normal' way--through the cheeks), limbs are stretched exponentially farther than normal, eyeballs are gouged, and a fist is rammed so far up an ass that it comes out the face. (Actually, that happens twice.) This all eventually culminates in a disturbing wide shot of the poor bastard stretched all over the room in an orgy of wealthy slug-people feeding. If Hieronymus Boschhad ever decided that hell was the year 1989, this is what he would have painted:
Slurp slurp. Please pass some lower intestine. Nom nom nom.
Meanwhile, Billy's high school chum and the slug-girl with a heart of gold manage to spring him. He flees, but ends up finding his fake family having a private sex/merging party in another room.
"I already finished. Now I just get to watch those two."
Things look hopeless for poor cappin mullet, until he gets the brilliant idea to challenge his former (well I guess current, too) bully to a duel, mano-a-sluggo. Turns out the dude is a judo expert, but Billy manages to get the upper hand when he goes all rubbery for the shunt. Messiness ensues, and it turns out that the slug-folk are filled with worms or something. Perhaps they are gestalt creatures.
It is exceedingly difficult to render a decision on whether or not Society is a good movie or not. ('Good' by Video Updates' standards, not the real worlds') While there is a vast well of entertainment to be found in how ridiculously dated the fashion is (note to filmmakers: movies about poor people are much harder for the audience to 'date') and the charnel house finale is practically worth the price of admission on its own, the second act is a crippling millstone around the film's neck. The occasional pair of tits aside, it's the part of where you start to realize that the film actually takes itself a little seriously. Enough so that it actually expects us to be legitimately intrigued by the unfolding conspiracy, even when it schizophrenically switches between piling on the red herrings and being cringe inducingly obvious. The giant mongo mom gets no explanation and serves no purpose in the story other than a momentary distraction near the end. The taunting messages Billy keeps getting turn out to be lighthearted pranks by his best friend, unrelated to the society. From a narrative standpoint whole swaths of the story turn out to be completely pointless.
So here is how I suggest you get the most out of your viewing of Brian Yuzna's Society: invite some friends over, drink (or smoke drugs if that's your bag) heavily, have some laughs and enjoy yourself, and when you start to get bored, just drink more and chit chat with your pals. Just make sure you start paying attention at the hour and ten minute mark or skip to chapter 18. Its your Video Updates Bad Movie Ala Carte!
Also, don't forget to stick around for the awesome end credits music.
It's debatable whether Hollywood's resurgent obsession with the third dimension is a step forwards or backwards for the art of cinema, but it certainly gives us younger folk a glimpse of the gimmicky showmanship that often defined the medium in years past. The silent era spawned largely from the vaudeville stage, with films frequently screened along with more traditional live entertainment. The fledgling format's novelty and purely visual nature made spectacle the order of the day; a natural fit for the vaudevillian circuit. Story and drama eventually took over as the medium ascended to the upper echelons of cultural importance, but spectacle not only remained an important feature, it returned with a vengeance whenever television threatened to topple the silver screen.
