Why Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave...

I spent a lot of time sitting with my father on Saturday afternoons, watching “Six-Gun Saturday” programming on Ted Turner’s Superstation 17 when I was a kid. If it wasn’t college football season, of course. If Larry Munson wasn’t calling a game, we were watching Randolph Scott, Joel McRae, Jimmy Stewart, or, the Big Dog, John Wayne managing to get ten shots out of a revolver and wiping out the black hats.

I know it’s a major stereotype, guys loving Westerns, but, hey, it’s in my blood. If there’s a horse, a bad guy, and a saloon fight in it, I will watch it. One of my go-to cures for a case of insomnia is to throw Rio Bravo into my Blu Ray player, not because it will bore me to sleep, but because I can recite every line of it. It’s like counting sheep.

So, as I was planning out my links for the first few weeks of this, I noticed, several times, where I could throw in a good Western. But, it almost seemed too easy. Every actor of the last fifty years has done at least one Western. As I was writing up my entry for Band of the Hand, something occurred to me - Stephen Lang is IN one of my freakin’ favorite Westerns!

It throws my whole plan out of whack, but I will gladly plot a new course on my way back to Mr. Romero, just so I can spend some time talking about Tombstone.

The story is one of the classic Western plots. Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) has cleaned up Dodge City and has moved on to Tombstone, Arizona with his brothers, Virgil (the legendary Sam Elliott) and Morgan (the late, great Bill Paxton). The Earps and their wives plan on settling in Tombstone. Wyatt has had it with  being a peace officer and just wants to find his pot of gold in the West. They quickly take over a saloon and a faro game and start raking in the money. Wyatt’s old friend/nemesis Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer, who has never been as good since as he is in this movie) is also in town, gambling and trying not to die of tuberculosis.

But Tombstone, as a town, is not all beer and skittles. A group of cutthroat outlaws known as The Cowboys own the town. They rob, rape, steal, kill, and maraud anything and everything they want to, and the local sheriff could care less. He just wants to wear a badge and act important. He looks the other way, and The Cowboys let him wear his star. The local marshal tries his best, but he’s an old gunslinger, just looking for some peace and quiet in his old age. Well, when the leader of The Cowboys, Curly Bill Brocius (Powers Boothe), kills the marshal while severely jacked up on opium, the town leaders come to Wyatt to take over the job. Wyatt tells them no. But his brother Virgil has other plans. Virgil wants to settle down for good in Tombstone, and he wants a safe place for his family and the rest of the citizens to live in. He takes the job. Wyatt goes ballistic, but soon finds out that Morgan has also signed on as a deputy marshal. Wyatt has no choice – he wants to support his brothers, so he reluctantly takes a badge.

The Earps start cleaning up Tombstone, but The Cowboys are less than thrilled by this. When they issue an ultimatum to the Earps, to get out of town or meet them at the O.K. Corrall and settle it once and for all, the Earps, with Doc Holliday joining them, accept the challenge. Many Cowboys die, all but one, actually – Ike Clanton, played by the above-mentioned Stephen Lang. The rest of The Cowboys take their revenge – late one night, they gun down Morgan while he is playing pool, and shoot Virgil so bad, he loses the use of one arm.

And, well, let’s just say, Wyatt goes on a killing spree, wearing the badge of a U.S. Marshal, but being as unlawful as he wants to. I’ll leave it at that…

If I were to start telling you how much I love this movie, this post would be longer than five other posts combined. So let me try to be brief… yeah, right…

I have already spoken about my man-crush of sorts when it comes to Kurt Russell. What he lacks in great hair here is more than made up by his INCREDIBLE mustache and his “I will kill you with a look, but I’d rather use a shotgun” persona. His Wyatt could care less about being subtle in the first half of the movie, and, in the last half, he just could care less, period. He has one thought in his head – rid the world of The Cowboys by any means necessary. Shooting them once might work, shooting them ten times is better.

Sam Elliott is just… damn… Sam Elliott. One of my “bucket list” items is to have Sam Elliott read Larry MacMurty’s Lonesome Dove out loud to me, cover to cover. His voice is far from beautiful, but, damn, it resonates like a fine violin, if that violin had been aged in a tobacco barn, then moved to the Jack Daniels’ distillery and soaked in a barrel of Jack’s finest bourbon for eleven years. Bill Paxton is always great to watch in a movie, bless his soul. Paxton went full-bore with every role he played, no matter what.

But they ain’t all there is to see in this movie, believe me. Val Kilmer plays Doc Holliday like Doc should have always been played. He’s constantly drunk, damn near falling-over dead, sarcastic as hell, but ready to kill a man for looking at him the wrong way. His enemy of choice in this is Johnny Ringo, played by Michael Biehn. Biehn has  played characters before that were, shall we say, a little.. off. In Tombstone, his Johnny Ringo is a whole other kind of crazy. His eyes radiate a psychotic haze that is just scary as hell. If you ran into this guy in the streets, you would wet your pants and cry for momma before you even thought about running away. Ringo’s  kind of crazy is perfectly described by Doc in a few lines of dialogue that I would, well, let’s just say I would kiss screenwriter Kevin Jarre on the mouth just for putting them on paper. I’m gonna put them here as they appear in the script and let them say it plain:

Wyatt : What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?

Doc : A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.

Wyatt : What does he need?

Doc : Revenge.

Wyatt: For what?

Doc : Bein’ born.


In that one small exchange, Ringo’s whole existence is described, and it is a frightening revelation.

There is also the final scene between Doc and Ringo, when they face off for the last time. It is a thing of pure beauty, this scene. One of the images, of Doc smoking a cigarette while he talks to Ringo, is fascinating, and it was made so by an accidental gust of breeze during the take. Holliday speaks, and he takes the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaling smoke. The breeze takes the smoke and swirls it around his head, almost forming a halo of sorts. It’s a beautiful accident that makes the scene all the more brilliant to watch.

There are so many other outstanding supporting actors in this movie, it’s almost like a who’s who of acting. Harry Carey, Jr makes one of his last appearances in films as old Marshal Fred White. Dana Delaney is an actress in a traveling troupe that becomes Wyatt’s lover. Dana Wheeler-Nicholson plays Wyatt’s laudanum-addicted wife, Mattie. Billy Zane is the head of the acting troupe. The great Michael Rooker plays Sherman McMasters, one of The Cowboys who defects to become one of Wyatt’s men after The Cowboys make an attack on the Earp wives. John Corbett, who will forever be in my head as “Chris at KBEAR” from Northern Exposure, is one of The Cowboys, and, of all people, Jason Priestly plays another Cowboy, one who may or may not have a crush on Billy Zane’s character.

If you have not seen Tombstone because it’s “just another Western,” you have missed a true gem of a movie, Western or not. If cowboy movies are not your thing, see Tombstone to watch the performances. If you love Westerns, Tombstone is one of the best you will see. Pop some corn, sit back, and let this movie take you back to the days of your youth, when every kid had a holster and a capgun, and every sunset was something to ride off into…

One sharp knife can feed you, clothe you, keep you warm and dry.

I was never really tuned in to the 1980’s. I mean, I was alive then, yeah, but I always felt like I was one step out off the marching line. I despised the whole “preppy” thing to the point of deliberately dressing non-preppy. I took Urban Cowboy to heart, and went with rodeo shirts, jeans, and boots. If I had to go more dressy, I unbuttoned my collars and wore Chuck Taylor Converses rather than penny loafers or, God forbid, those L.L. Bean duck boot things. I leaned more toward classic rock and country music than most of the pop music on the radio. Yeah, I was a rebel without a cause… sue me.

It was only about fifteen years ago that I really started embracing ‘80’s music. I am known now to wear the occasional polo shirt, albeit minus that stupid alligator. I even wear khakis now and then.

But, one thing I never rebelled against in the ‘80’s was the movies. We really had some kick-ass stuff going on in the ‘80’s, thanks to Hollywood. I particularly enjoyed the whole “Miami Vice”- genre of movies, full of intricate mood lighting, shadowy colors, neon lighting, and lots of pretty twenty-somethings playing teenagers. One of my favorites of that genre was a movie I think a lot of people overlooked because it got buried under the landslide of Aliens, Platoon, Crocodile Dundee, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Top Gun. The film I am talking about is Band of the Hand.

In the story, a former war hero, a Seminole Indian named Joe (Stephen Lang), is allowed to take custody of four teenagers who are already career criminals. Gang members, mostly, with some history of murder, drug running, arson, and other assorted lovely habits. The teens, played by Al Shannon, Michael Carmine, John Cameron Mitchell (who would go on to create and star in Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Leon Robinson (now known only by his first name, go figure…), and Danny Quinn, as the unofficial second-in-command of the team, Carlos. Joe is determined he can save these kids from a life in prison, if they lived at all. He takes them deep into the Florida swamps and begins training them in survival techniques – building shelters, hunting and trapping for food, and hand-to-hand combat. His theory is one well-known now, used by “boot camp” reform camps for juvenile offenders. Strip away the persona the juvenile has been brought up with, and teach the kid how to live on their own. No phones, no contact with their peers who were their partners in crime, nothing. Break away the tough-guy/girl brickwork they have built,, and rebuild them with skills and knowledge that can take them out of the sewers of our society and set them on a new course in life.

In this case, Joe does, indeed, make these kids, who were all bitter enemies from rival gangs, into a trusting team who are ready to work together to take on the crime in the inner-city streets of Miami. They buy a beat-up house in the middle of the crime area, fix it up, and make it their base. Once Joe’s team starts challenging the order of crime, though, the gangs start fighting back.Cream ( played by a young Laurence Fishburne), the head crime lord, has had enough, and declares war on the team. One of Cream's underlords, lords, Nestor (the always-great bad guy James Remar), who had been Carlos's boss, takes Carlos’s girlfriend in as his new “pet,” and Carlos is not happy about this. Joe keeps him in check and focused, though, until the time is right. But, in a vicious assault on the base, Joe is gunned down. His last words to the team – “You know what to do…” set the team into motion, their leader gone but not forgotten.

On the surface, this movie is a lot of shine and substance, I’m not gonna argue that. It fits the mold of every MTV-reflection movie of that decade. But director Paul Michael Glaser (yes.. the Starsky and Hutch Paul Michael Glaser…) pulled a rabbit out of his hat and produced a basic plot line from years before – he made a 1940’s war movie in the 1980’s. Think about it for a minute – in all those WWII movies, you always seemed to have a platoon made up of one soldier of every basic stereotype (one Brooklyn guy, one Italian guy, one country boy, one scared guy, one guy who could care less about anything but killing Nazis, etc). In reality, how many platoons would have six guys THAT spread out across the American melting pot, all somehow in one group? And that platoon would be led by a sergeant who is gruff, mean, stand-offish, but had a heart of gold buried under all the soldiering stuff? It’s positively ridiculous, but you know what? It works. It did then, and it works now (*ahem* Saving Private Ryan.. *ahem*). And it worked in Band of the Hand.

Granted, the Nazis in this case were Miami street gangs, but hey…

Here lately, it feel s like Stephen Lang is in about every fifth movie that comes out, but he was a newcomer in 1986. With this film and Manhunter, which I talked about earlier on in 365 Degrees, he got his feet firmly planted in the movie world. His intense, chiseled face, his riveting eyes, and his “I can kill you with a glance” looks were just beginning to take form, but they’re there, you can see it. James Remar has made a career out of his oddly-mean looks and voice. Michael Carmine had a great run in movies until his very untimely death, at the age of 30, in 1989 of heart failure. Lauren Holly, who was in our previous movie, plays the tragic heroine, Carlos’s girlfriend, Nikki, and she is every bit of the young girl, trapped by her past and her love for her boyfriend.

I will refrain, of course, from divulging the ending, but, if you know the WWII-platoon plot line, you can guess…

I do want to throw this out there, though. As a newcomer to the world of “I LOVE THE 80’S” army, this movie has one hell of a soundtrack. You have Prince, with “Let’s Go Crazy,” you have Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings,” which has almost become an anthem of 80’s music, you have Andy Summers’ “Carry Me Back Home.” It’s like MTV (the REAL MTV, not the faux version we have now) fell in your lap. But you also have Bob Dylan’s title song, “Band of the Hand.” Dylan was in an odd funk for most of the 80’s, delving into more bluesy work, exploring new ways of making his form of music. I don’t know how he got talked into doing a song for a movie, but bless whomever it was that made the deal, because this song KICKS ASS!! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXcsW-5ueVQ

In many ways, it was the rebirth of Dylan as a performer. The song was produced by Tom Petty, and Petty’s mixing of the tune shows – heavy on the guitar, hard blues guitar, killer back-up singers. In many ways, this song led to the making of the British-American supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys, a teaming of Petty, Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison. Some scoffed at this group at first, until the first album, The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1, came out and it was, in a word, amazing. Each of these phenomenal performers collaborated on each of the songs on the album, and each one had a lead in at least one song. The blend was perfect, and the group won a Grammy for their effort.

But, I digress…

If you are looking for a trip back in time, minus a DeLorean and an old guy yelling “GREAT SCOTT!”, throw Band of the Hand into the player. Then put on your pink Izod and khakis, pop the collar, open a couple of wine coolers (yeah, remember them things???), sit back and enjoy. Double it up with Manhunter, and you may never look back at the 80’s with anything but nostalgia again.

You're ten seconds away from the most embarrassing moment in your life.

August 6, 2017

Okay, folks. I am back on the job with 365 Degrees!! I will spare you the details of my absence, but, long story short, it don’t pay to have two computers go Crap City on you at the same time…

That being said, my computer guy got me back on track, and it’s time to catch up. When last we talked, we had reveled in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Our first movie today is a complete shift of gears, one that could give you whiplash, so hold on tight. We go from one of the ultimate scares to one of the most irreverent, crude, sexist, but terribly funny movies you will ever see. It stars one of the most controversial comedians of the past 30 years. So, from ultimate horror, we go to the rock and roll detective stories known as The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.

Andrew Dice Clay stars as Ford Fairlaine, the detective whose clientele is exclusively targeted to the music industry in L.A. He is a successful  detective, but his clients tend to pay him in almost every way other than cash. He gets gold records, watches, even koala bears. His long-suffering assistant, Jazz (the incredibly lovely Lauren Holly), puts up with his ridiculous attitude because she has a lingering crush on him, but Ford is more interested in almost everything else in a skirt.

On the day after rock star Bobby Black (Vince Neil) dies of a suspicious overdose, Ford starts getting phone calls. His old pal, DJ Johnny Crunch (Gilbert Gottfried) wants to hire him to find his estranged daughter, a band groupie named Zuzu Petals. Not ten minutes after their meeting, Johnny is electrocuted in his DJ booth, and the plot thickens. The LAPD detective assigned to the case, Lt. Amos (Ed O’Neill) hates Ford because Ford wrecked his career as a disco singer back in Ford’s days as a publicist. Rich socialite Colleen Sutton (Priscilla Presley) also wants to hire him to find "her sister," who supposedly is also Zuzu Petals.

When Ford finds Zuzu Petals at Bobby Black’s funeral, she gets snatched by a maniacal madman with a freaky smile (Robert Englund, with no Freddy Krueger makeup!!), he and the maniac have a car chase through Hollywood Cemetery in hearses. During the chase (yes, DURING the chase), Ford finds out Colleen Sutton’s money comes from her alimony checks from another of Ford’s many enemies, record company owner Julian Grendel (Wayne Newton!) . When someone blows up Ford’s beachfront home, a temple to rock and roll, and his custom 1957 Ford Fairlane (yeah, I know, but it is a car. Ford took his name from the car…), all bets are off. He has Zuzu, who is as stupid as a person can be, but he has no idea who she is or what part she plays in this mystery, but, as he says, “Time to do the detective thing.”

Look, I’m not gonna sit here and tell you this is a great detective movie. It definitely ain’t The Maltese Falcon. Hell, it ain’t even a Maltese dog. It’s basically a star vehicle for Clay, who was at the crest of his career as a foul-mouthed, crude, rude comedian. Daniel Waters and James Cappe wrote the screenplay knowing this, and they made the most of it. Renny Harlin, who loves to make things blow up almost as much as Michael Bay, directed the movie, and he makes good action movies. Combine all these elements and you get a jackpot of humor, action, and attitude that makes a really good movie.

Special focus time – the supporting cast here is surprisingly good. Englund plays a great maniac, but we all knew that. But watching people like Wayne Newton and Priscilla Presley be nasty bad guys is rather fun. Morris Day, who I will always swear was the saving grace of Purple Rain, plays Ford’s good friend, record producer Don Cleveland. Maddie Corman is hysterical as the utterly brainless Zuzu Petals. But let’s give a huge shoutout to Lauren Holly. As the brains behind her boss, Holly really shows her talent for comedy as well as action. This was only her second feature film, Band of the Hand being the first. From Band, to Ford Fairlane, she went stellar with her roles in Dumb and Dumber and Down Periscope, then a long run on the great TV show Picket Fences, and on to her Emmy-nominated role as the ultra-tough head of Mark Harmon's investigative team on NCIS, a show I don’t think you could kill with a stick and a silver bullet.

 

But, for all that, this movie revolves around Andrew Dice Clay. And, hey, I will be the first to say he can be revolting sometimes with his comedy. He’s boorish, he’s sleazy, yadda yadda yadda. In this movie, though, he shines. His Ford Fairlane is basically a slightly-shined up version of his own stage personality. He even takes advantage of this several times in his voiceover narration, making references to having been close to being a rock star until he was banned from MTV, and in one very funny exchange, with a girl in a club, he gives her his phone number, starting with 555. She stops him, complaining that “that’s not a real phone number, that’s the one they use in the movies.” His reply? “No shit, honey, what do you think this is, real life?” Ford is completely aware he’s in a movie about himself, and he loves that fact. It’s the Diceman being the Diceman, playing Ford Fairlane being Ford Fairlaine. He even sings a nice little number at one point, trying to show a very lame new singing prospect how to really sing "rockin'-rapin'-roll," and it's not a bad song at all. Everything Ford/Dice does just works!

If you need a no-brainer of a movie, something to sit back with after work with a beer or two and a bag of fried green tomato-flavored Lay’s chips (thanks Tammy!), grab The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and sit back on the couch. You will laugh, you will grimace, and you will have fun. And, really, in Ford’s universe, it’s all about that – just sitting back and having fun.

Whatever you do... don't fall asleep.

August 4, 2017

Insomniacs of the world, unite!! To tell it plain, I have always had trouble sleeping. Part of it is just my nature, I know that. But part of it is the simple fact that I love the nighttime (yeah, get that song out of your head now… ). I have always felt that sleeping just wastes a great part of the 24-hour day. Sunlight is highly overrated. In the night, everything looks like it has a secret. The shadows of night are so much more… interesting… than the ones in the daytime.

Even so, the night can be frightening. Even sleeping can be a fearful experience. Children fear the monsters in the closet, or under their bed. But, as Wes Craven helped us find out, the monsters are not just figments of our imagination. You could die in your sleep, and die for real. Especially if Freddy Krueger is waiting for you in the dream world. He does just that in the minds of the kids of Springfield, on one particular street.

You guessed it, we’re all trapped in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

If you don’t know the story by now (and shame on you if you don’t), the teenagers on Elm Street are all having the strangest dreams. A horribly disfigured man, wearing a glove made of what look like razor-sharp claws, is pursuing them. And he isn’t going to be satisfied until he catches them. Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) is one of these kids. Her friends, Glen (Johnny Depp, WAYYY before Jack Sparrow), Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss), and Rod Lane (Jsu Garcia) are all seeing this monstrous stalker in their dreams, or rather, in their nightmares. One by one, Nancy’s friends succumb to the monster, named Freddy Krueger, in their dreams, and by doing so, they wind up dead. The only way they find to stay safe is to stay awake, but, as we all know, eventually, the body has to sleep. And when they do, that safety zone disappears.

For the very few of you who may not have seen Nightmare before, I will leave it at that. You can see the rest for yourself.

I was a freshman in college when Freddy Krueger entered my world. And I was soooo very happy he did. This movie, directed by Wes Craven, who was mainly known for his visceral horror movie Last house on the Left, created Freddy, and thus, creating the legend. What makes this movie so intense is the very fact that it hits the viewer right in the heart. Every person sleeps, and every person has bad dreams once in a while. The movie takes that fact and implants the thought in your head – what if your bad dreams could actually kill you? Then, it takes that fact a step further by personifying the “boogeyman’ in our bad dreams in the form of a terribly-burned man with a handful of razor-sharp claws, who is only focused on killing you. And every time you go to sleep could be the last time you go to sleep…

Now, let’s call a spade a spade here. Robert Englund brought Freddy to life in a way that immediately made him unforgettable. In this movie, the FIRST of several, Freddy was not a wisecracking antihero, the guy you loved to fear. Here, he is just evil incarnate. The great actor David Warner (he of Time After Time, Titanic, Tron…. wow… alliteration… ) was originally cast as Freddy, but the pre-production took too long and his other film commitments cause him to bow out. In steps Robert Englund. While he is buried under prosthetics and makeup, his eyes are his own. And you can see a particular something in those eyes that made Freddy different. With Robert’s eyes, you see the fact that he is LOVING being evil, and that transfers into his portrayal of Freddy. Freddy is relishing how evil he is. He is not a prisoner of evil, he is not a tortured soul. In horror movies of old, the monsters are usually misunderstood. Frankenstein's monster was not evil, he was just a creature, made by another, who just wanted to be accepted. Freddy has no desire to be accepted. As we learn later in the film, Freddy was a child molester who had been preying on the children of Elm Street, and the parents formed a vigilante group one night and caught him and burned him to death. Freddy is after those parents’ children out of revenge, and he could care less about himself. He only wants to torture those kids. He is not misunderstood, he knows exactly what he is doing, and he loves it. And that, folks, is an evil bastard.

The other cast members are very good. Most of the Elm Street kids are played by virtual unknowns. Heather Langenkamp was a beautiful young girl who only had one on-screen credit to her name. She had done some scenes in The Outsiders, but they had been cut. One TV movie role, then, boom, she is in a movie that would make her a scream queen who is still revered to this day. Amanda Wyss went on to have a solid career after this, but, according to her own words in several interviews, she is more recognized for being slaughtered by Freddy than anything else she has done. And we all know how Johnny Depp’s career has gone.

But let’s talk about John Saxon and some of the other supporting actors. Saxon had a second-level career as an action movie star. He was best known for being the only Caucasian in Bruce Lee’s Enter The Dragon, but he had played off that into assorted ass-kicking roles. Here, he is Lt. Thompson, a policeman who was part of the group who burned Freddy to death. Craven made sure Saxon knew to play the role as straight as possible. This is not a camp movie, this is a serious horror film. Saxon’s portrayal is perfect. Ronee Blakely, who plays Nancy’s alcoholic mother, does a very tight job here. Blakely’s character, on the surface, is just a drunk mom, but we learn that her drinking comes from her own guilt in creating Freddy as a supernatural killer. When that is revealed, it makes you see just how good Blakely is as an actress.

Look for two special people in minor roles. One is Charles Fleischer, who plays the doctor trying to treat the kids. You may not know who Fleischer is to see him, but you know him for his role as the voice of Roger Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? If you listen carefully, you can pick up his vocal style and hear shadows of Roger Rabbit when he speaks.

The other person I have to mention is Lin Shaye. Shaye, who plays the high school teacher, also played Woody Harrelson’s nasty, unwashed, horny landlady in Kingpin. Shaye has done many roles since, but Nightmare was her first real role. She does a great job as a voice of sympathy while most of the adults are hiding secrets. She is also the sister of Robert Shaye, the founder of New Line Cinema, the studio that made Nightmare.

New Line Cinema had made its name only by distributing foreign films and art films to college campuses. Shaye himself signed a deal with John Waters and drove around the East Coast with copies of Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living in the trunk of his cars, taking Waters’ films to college campuses, making them into cult classics. New Line earned a lot of respect on college campuses, too, for signing a contract that brought the ridiculous classic Reefer Madness back into vogue. When they made Nightmare, it was rejected by virtually every major studio in the business, so Robert screwed up his courage and decided to release it himself under the New Line name. He risked everything on Nightmare, and it paid off in spades. Now, New Line is one of the major players in Hollywood, probably best-known now for being the studio that made The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. But, when it comes down to it, New Line Cinema is the house that Freddy built.

Go back and watch the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Try to put the sequels behind you for a while and watch how many times you find yourself jumping in fright rather than laughing at Freddy’s wisecracks. Craven knew how to make terrifying movies, rest his soul, but Englund’s wonderful worship of his character’s black heart makes Craven’s ideas even better. You won’t be sorry. And, who knows, you may never sleep again…

And, from all of us who thought you were a genius, we miss you, Wes... and we always will...

One day, when people say the name Munson, they're gonna think "winner." Just like DiMaggio is to baseball or, or Unitas is to football, that's what Munson will be to bowling.

August 3, 2017

Sometimes, you just gotta admit it… stupid wins. I will refrain from using Washington DC, Fox News, and such as proof. Rather, I will stay with the topic of movies. And believe me, the fact that I am doing so is probably an exercise in self-control I have rarely been accused of…

I could spend hours talking about Airplane!, or Hot Shots. The team of Zucker, Zucker, and Abrahams struck a chord with many, just by deciding to spoof other movies and make the most ridiculously stupid jokes. They made a damn cult hero out of Leslie Nielsen, for God’s sake!

But then came the Farrelly Brothers. And stupid became the name of the game…

I liked There’s Something About Mary, a lot, actually. But when Kingpin came out, I joined the church of the Farrellys.

Woody Harrelson plays Roy Munson, a man who could have been the best bowler in the world. Until he met Ernie McCrackin, that is. McCracken (played by the genius that is Bill Murray) sees Munson’s talent on display in the Indiana State Championships, and enlists him in a little scam involving some local bowlers. They hustle the guys out of a few hundred bucks, but the bowlers catch on to Ernie’s scheme and go after them. McCracken escapes, leaving Roy to take the punishment. The angry bowlers stuff Roy’s bowling hand into the ball return chute, which… files his hand off? Rips it off? At any rate, Ernie’s gutless escape costs Roy his bowling hand.

These days, Roy is balding, he sports a prosthetic hand, or a hook, depending on the day, where his magic bowling hand once was, and he is a traveling salesman, selling bowling alley wax and fluorescent comdoms. Then, one day, he spots young Ishmael (Randy Quaid), an innocent Amish man who loves to sneak away to the local bowling alley, something his righteous family objects to. Roy convinces Ishmael to come with him on a  road trip, and to let him become Ishmael’s manager. Roy has a scheme to finally ger his revenge on Ernie McCracken, who is now the most famous bowler in the world. But the scheme involves hustling bowling alleys across the country to raise enough money to get into the Reno Invitational tournament and face down McCrackin once and for all.

Ishmael, through Roy’s tutelage, of course, learns the real world is much more fun than his strict Amish village. In short, Ish goes wild with his new-found freedom, and Roy is finally loving his life again. After an accident, though, it becomes Roy who has to take up the challenge – facing Ernie in the Reno Invitational and finally facing his demon, one frame at a time.

Don’t ask me how it ends, watch it for yourself…

This movie is ridiculous, it is rude, crude, socially unacceptable, and it is so much better for it. The Farrellys seem to direct by throwing every joke imaginable into a pot, and drawing a few out every day to film. And it works perfectly here. If you don’t laugh out loud at least ten times, you are dead inside.

One of the things I love about this movie is that it is a VERY irreverent spoof of Paul Newman’s The Color of Money. You have the manager, who is manipulating his charge to make money by using the young man’s talent. You have the road trip. You have the young charge who is basically stupid to most everything around him. You have the manipulating girlfriend, here played by the beautiful Vanessa Angel (and if that name alone doesn’t imply "manipulating beauty," nothing ever has…). You have the charge being put aside before the final tournament, and the mentor becoming the one who has to win it all. And yet, the story seems fresh and new. It’s probably because bowling has never been in the forefront of a movie like it is in this one. The Farrelly’s shoot the bowling action much like Scorsese shoots the pool table in Color of Money. Tracking shots following the ball, the pins tumbling into each other in slow motion at times, other times, it’s as it happens, we see the ball sailing down the alley, and boom, the pins fall away.

Woody Harrelson is great in this movie, something I don’t say often when talking about his early films. But he was willing to grasp the formula the Farrellys like to yous. Let the jokes do the talking, and act like you don't notice them happening. Randy Quaid is always fun to watch, before he lost his damn mind a few years back. The supporting cast features David Letterman regular Chris Elliot and Lin Shaye, as Roy's absolutely disgusting but horny landlady, among other great little parts.

But, who’s kidding who here? It’s Bill Murray who steals the show, and rightfully so. Murray is at the top of his game here, a pedestal he has not fallen off of yet. As Ernie McCracken, he is boorish, rude, sexually inappropriate, and condescending as hell, and you will love him. With his out of control comb-over hair, his incredible collection of rodeo shirts, his Lucite bowling ball with the single rose embedded in it, he is every bit the prima donna of the sports world he seems to think he lives in. In this universe, bowling is like pro football, pro baseball, and pro basketball. Teeming crowds of fans crowd the tournament
s, bowlers have groupies, there are laser shows as the bowlers enter the alleys for their intros, it’s hysterically over the top, and Bill Murray fits perfectly into the center of this universe.

I will spare you the final details, except to tell you this one trivia bit – in the final frame of the tournament, McCracken has to bowl three strikes in a row. Murray, as you might guess, bowled three strikes in a row, in character the whole time. The Farrellys simply turned on the camera, told Murray to bowl three strikes as if his world depended on it, and sat back. When the last strike is bowled, the crowd reaction is completely real. They went nuts as Murray acted out his whole scene.

When I grow up, I want to be Bill Murray…

If you need a bit of stupid to wind down from a tough week, look no further than Kingpin. It was not any sort of box-office triumph, but, when it hit home video, it became a sincere cult classic. There are bowling alleys that have "Kingpin Nights", where everyone comes dressed as the characters, with their mystical bowling balls, and they bowl while the film is shown on all the scoring monitors. That, folks, is what a great underrated movie does. It grabs people and does not let go until the last pin falls…

You didn't think I was what? Serious? You think I'm not serious just because I carry a rabbit?

August 3, 2017

Sometimes, there are movies you just cannot really explain. David Lynch’s Eraserhead, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, Emile Ardolino’s Dirty Dancing…

Okay, I can explain the PLOT of Dirty Dancing… I cannot explain why it has a following, though… or its existence in this universe…

But there are exceptions to this theory. Every now and then, a movie will appear that you cannot really explain to others, but despite this, the movie is fantastic. Writer/director Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths is one of these beautiful exceptions.

Colin Farrell stars as Marty Faranan, a screenwriter who is desperately trying to finish his screenplay, a work entitled “Seven Psychopaths.” Marty’s best friend, Billy Bickle (Sam Rockwell of last night’s movie…) is an unemployed actor who wants to help Marty with his screenplay. Billy makes a living now by kidnapping dogs with his partner-in-crime, Hans Kieslowski (Christopher Walken, one of my gods and idols), a deeply religious man with a cancer-stricken wife. Billy and Hans kidnap the dogs then wait for the owners to offer rewards, then give the dogs back after collecting said rewards. Billy suggests to Marty that he include the “Jack of Diamonds,” the mysterious serial killer who has pulled off a double murder in L.A. Marty also has a story about another psychopath known as “The Quaker,” a man who has been stalking his daughter’s murderer for years, finally driving the murderer to suicide and cutting his own throat as the dying killer watches, hhis last memory being The Quaker following him to Hell.

Yeah, it gets even weirder… trust me…

Billy and Hans accidentally kidnap the Shih Tzu, Bonny,belonging to Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson), a very unhinged and violent gangster. While Billy places an ad in the paper, inviting psychopaths to call him and give him their craziest stories, Costello manages to track Hans down. They take him to a warehouse where they threaten to torture Hans to get Bonny’s location, but the Jack of Diamonds shows up and shoots all the thugs, setting Hans free. Billy and Hans decide to go on the run, with Bonny, and they drag Marty along for the ride.

I honestly cannot tell you any more of the plot without giving away the third act of the movie, which has more freaky, wonderful twists than the Auntie Anne’s Pretzel Shop at your favorite mall.

If you have ever seen Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, you  know he loves writing and directing movies with some hellacious convoluted stories. I love him for that. Who the hell needs to see the same six plotlines over and over and over again? He shifts it into overdrive with Seven Psychopaths, lemme tell you. He is also a great casting man, too. Seven has so many wonderful stories blended into it, he could have used virtually anyone in some of the smaller supporting roles, but nooooo. He breaks out Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Harry Dean Stanton (Roger Ebert rule in effect!!), Tom Waits (!!!), Zeljko Ivanek (who I know you won’t know by name, but IMDB.com him, and you will know plenty of his work), and more.  And he knocks it out of the park here. I mean he goes “Teddy Ballgame goes YAHHHHHD” with it… Tarantino reference, if you’re curious.. look it up…).

You might think with all this going on, you don’t get more than a flash of character development. Not even close. We learn so many stories of so many characters, and each one is like a Falkner short story, told with precise details and emotional depth. It’s truly amazing this movie is not three hours long. But with a tight 110 minutes, you feel like you have just watched a Godfather-quality level of storytelling. All of these stories slowly mesh into one, and when that one finely-braided rope tightens, you are captured in McDonagh’s net. And you will not mind a bit, I promise.

I have never been much of a Colin Farrell fan. After watching him drown in that morass that was Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, the ridiculous Phone Booth, and the most-unnecessary remake of Fright Night, I was ready to declare his career deader than Kurt Cobain. He flashed a beacon in McDonagh’s  In Bruges, and I thought he might be saved. Then, he hit gold again with this movie. His Marty is the straight man for what amounts to be the whole universe. He is the reactor to the collection of other actors. Marty is a nobody, drawn into an insane adventure he wants no part of, but, at the same time, finds fascinating. His writer’s block starts to erode as the absurdity grows around him. He is really interesting to watch again!

The others in this cast are like dice in a Yahtzee cup. You find yourself watching it shake, and when it dumps out, you get a whole new story. One of the best ones comes from musician/actor Tom Waits. I call him that because, well, I love his music almost as much as I love music itself, but, on the rare occasion when he acts, he always seems to steal the film from the rest of the cast. Not in a bad way at all, though. You just find yourself riveted on everything he says and anything he does. Be it Mystery  Men, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, even Short Cuts, it is Waits who sticks in your head. Here, when his “psychopath” story becomes known, it is horrific, but you don’t even want to try to judge him because it is also heartbreaking. Waits’ Drano-and-gravel cocktail voice adds so much to his dialogue. It echoes the pain his character has gone through, and lived with for all the years since.

There is no need for me to praise Walken’s performance. He seems to play the hell out of every role he gets his hands on. Some may argue that he is basically playing himself in every role, but, I mean, damn! If that is true, how freaky cool has his life been?? Sam Rockwell comes to the true limelight  in this movie as well. He folds into and out of his character smoother than Fast Eddie Felson could stroke a pool cue. He’s a screw-up, and has been one his whole  life, but, dammit, he has tried so hard to get life right, and so many times it has failed, but his Billy just gets up, dusts himself off, and tries again.

Get a copy of Seven Psychopaths and settle in for 110 minutes of genius disguised as bedlam. Don’t sit there with the remote in your hand, daring the movie to be something special. Instead, sit back and say to the movie, “Okay, bring it on. I’m ready for anything.”

You do that, and you will feel that finely braided rope of stories pulling you in. Let it pull you. You will love it when the net falls.

I'm tired, boss. Tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain...

August 1, 2017

There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to confess to something he would rather not admit, for fear of being thought of as “less than a man.” It’s early in this adventure of daily blogging, but, well, the time has come. I do hereby now confess – there have been scenes in movies where I cry. I know, I know, not a big deal at all, you say. But, for me, it’s a sticking point, because it means I let the film capture me rather than being the critical, observational student of film.

Since we are being all open here, I will go one better and tell you of one particular scene that I literally cannot watch. I have walked out of rooms because the scene was coming up. I once walked out of a pavilion at Walt Disney World because the scene was part of a montage. Even now, past the age of fifty, the scene tears me apart inside when I am trapped and cannot look away. Intrigued, aren’t you…?

Okay, it’s a scene from Walt Disney’s Dumbo. Dumbo’s mother has been locked inside a circus wagon and cuffed by one foot to the flooring. Dumbo has been treated badly, and is very sad. Timothy Mouse leads him over to the wagon. Dumbo’s mother hears him, and tries to go the window to see him, but her chains keep her just shy of being able to see out the window. So she lowers her trunk to caress her baby. The animators gave such sensuality to that elephant’s trunk… it moves all over her baby, as if making a memory, and Dumbo openly weeps as he entwines his trunk in hers, grasping for the one “person” who can make him feel better – his mother. And, the evil bastards in the Disney Studios put a piece of music with the scene, a song called "Baby Mine," that… oh my god… and when Dumbo has to leave??? Just… damn…  

Well, here… watch it for yourself…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=calHOKucYMw

Anyway… I tell you all that to tell you this… There is one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen on film based on the power of movies to completely take your soul to a new level. The movie is The Green Mile.

Tom Hanks stars as Paul Edgecombe, a veteran prison guard in the 30’s. He is the lead guard on Death Row, known as The Green Mile, at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. He and his other guards keep a quiet life for their prisoners. They treat their charges with respect, and the prisoners, in turn, treat their guards with the same respect. Over the space of a few days, though, three men enter The Mile, and change the lives of the guards forever. One is Percy Wetmore, an egotistical bully of a man, who comes into the Mile as a new guard. The second is William “Wild Bill” Wharton, a convicted murderer who has nothing left to lose, so he acts like a crazed maniac most of the time. And the third is a giant of a man named John Coffee, “like the drink, but not spelled the same.” John is a huge man, over seven feet tall and built like a brick wall. He is a convicted murderer as well, but his simple-minded ways do not match the descriptions of his horrific crimes. Nonetheless, he is living on borrowed time on Death Row.

Boss Edgecombe, as he is known to the prisoners, is suffering from a terrible bladder infection as the movie begins. He is in terrific pain, but he is managing as best he can. When “Wild Bill” arrives on the Mile, he puts up a fight, and Edgecombe takes a massive shot to the… uh.. groin, which makes his bladder infection pain even more excruciating. He orders the others to take Wharton down to the infirmary, and collapses in the passageway between the cells. Suddenly, he hears John Coffey calling out to him. Edgecombe slowly moves toward Coffey’s cell, and before he knows what it happening, Coffey grabs him and pulls him into the bars, where Coffey drops one hand to his groin and grasps.

By doing so, Coffey is able to literally suck the pain away from Edgecombe, then allow the pain to escape his mouth in the form of what look like houseflies, which dissolve soon after escaping Coffey’s mouth. Edgecombe slowly backs away from Coffey, realizing that the pain in his body is gone. He also realizes that there is much more to John Coffey than anyone truly understands.

Later, after a humorous search for a mouse that has invaded The Mile, the mouse, now known as Mr. Jingles, becomes a pet to one of the prisoners, a condemned arsonist named Eduard Delacroix. Percy Wetmore, the sniveling little new guard, cannot stand the fact that Delacroix is allowed even the most basic happiness while on Death Row, takes an opportunity and stomps Mr. Jingles to death. Again, Coffey calls out to Edgecombe, telling him to bring Mr. Jingles to him. Once Coffey has Mr. Jingles in his hands, he performs his “magic” again, sucking the death away from the little mouse, and allowing him to run back to Delacroix across the passageway. When Edgecombe sees this, he truly believes Coffey is something more than just a convicted murderer, and goes about finding out the truth of Coffey’s case.

I will let you enjoy the rest of the movie, with maybe a small spoiler or two coming up.

I have always found it remarkable that the best movies made from Stephen King books are made from books which are not the stereotypical King works. There are no underground clowns here, no rabid St. Bernards, no plagues that wipe out most of humanity. This story is about human beings who discover more about themselves. Director Frank Darabant has recognized this point, and has turned two of King’s (arguably) lesser-known works into works of art through filmmaking. The Green Mile is one, The Shawshank Redemption is the other. The only other director who has grasped this point is Rob Reiner, who turned a story in the same collection The Shawshank Redemption came from into one of the best coming-of-age movies ever made, Stand By Me.

Darabant’s casting in The Green Mile is flawless. Hanks, of course, leads the show with grace and purity of talent, but Darabant also backs Hanks up with a crew of actors who are just amazing to watch. David Morse, who was the lead bad guy in last night’s movie, plays guard Brutus “Brutal” Howell, a 6’ 4” hulk of a man himself, who still has a heart and has not become as jaded as some would. Jeffery DeMunn, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting several times, is Harry Terwilliger, another guard who acts almost as the conscience of the team. Barry Pepper, as Dean Stanton, the youngest guard on the crew, has the most emotional tie to the group, looking at them all as father figures, yet wanting to achieve his own status and make the group proud.

But, let’s talk about three of the other supporting actors here. First, there is Sam Rockwell, in what was proven to be his break-out role as Wild Bill Wharton. He is every bit the crude, rude, conscience-free bastard that you would think a Death Row inmate might be. He literally doesn’t give a damn about anyone and anything. Later in the movie, when we find out just how evil Wharton can be, it’s almost like the entire audience collectively gasps in recognition of what role he really plays in the story. Michael Clarke Duncan, who plays John Coffey, had been relegated to a few stand-out small appearances in movies like Armageddon, making a career of sorts out of playing the humongous, scary, threatening character, usually some second in command to a crime boss or the like. Here, though, he is a secondary hero, a character so troubled by his mysterious power that he honestly wants to be executed, just so he can stop feeling the pain of others all around him. While Edgecombe and the other guards see Coffey as a gift of God, Coffey has spent his entire life feeling as though he was cursed. His lack of education has only enforced this idea. Coffey is a good man, a strong, heroic man, trapped in the mind of a punished child, whose only longing comes from escaping the torment of others and finding peace.

The third actor I want to talk about is Michael Jeter. He is probably best known, outside of this movie, for his role as the bumbling assistant coach on Burt Reynolds’ TV show, Evening Shade. If you have children who were born after the year 2000, you may know him as Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street and Elmo’s World. But Jeter had a very impressive line of movie work until his untimely death in 2003. He had a very underrated spot as a homeless man who became friends with Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King, but here, in The Green Mile, his true strength of talent shines. His Eduard Delacroix is a man tortured by his own acts. He did not mean to kill anyone in the fire that he started, but those dead souls have so haunted him since, he has become, well, for lack of a better word, crazy. He is a sad, cowardly man. Until Mr. Jingles comes into his life. The adoration and love he shows for this little mouse is probably more love than Delacroix has ever received in his life. There is a scene, just before Delacroix is to be executed, where he, Edgecombe, and Howell are in Delacroix’s cell, talking very quietly about his coming execution. Delacroix has no fear of the electric chair, his main concern is what will become of Mr. Jingles. He offers Edgecombe the mouse, but Edgecombe, rather humorously, turns down the offer, telling Eduard that he lives way out in the woods, and he knows Mr. Jingles would not like it out there in the dark, scary woods. Finally, Brutal Howell, the mean-looking guard, pipes up, telling Delacroix of a place in Florida called “Mouse World,” where trained mice get to go and live out their lives in a circus tent, where they all get to perform and play and enjoy their little mousy lives. Watch Michael Jeter’s face as this story is told to him. He goes through so many emotions, you can almost count them as they float across his face. Distrust, skepticism, relief, happiness, relief, sadness, and many more. His Delacroix is finding his last will and testament, of sorts, being taken care of by the men who were supposed to be his guards, but, instead, have become his friends. Edgecombe and Howell feel the same way, they are preparing to say goodbye to a man who has been a part of their lives for a long time. Yes, they are the ones who are throwing the switch, but neither Delacroix nor the guards look at it like that. They see it as the natural order of life as they know it. It is a beautiful moment.

And, speaking of beautiful moments, I want to address the one I began talking about at the first of this post. As it comes time for John Coffey to be executed, Edgecombe and the guards ask him if he would like them to turn their backs and let him escape. Coffey chides them, telling them he doesn’t want them to get in any trouble. But he does have a last request. He has “never seen a flicker-show,” meaning he has never seen a movie before. So, late one night, Edgecombe and his crew sneak Coffey into the prison theatre room and screen Fred Astaire’s Top Hat for him. During the classic dance number “I’m In Heaven,” the camera shows the guards smiling and nodding at one another, then it slowly moves to Coffey’s face. In that moment, Michael Clarke Duncan’s face is a picture of pure heavenly grace. He is smiling angelically, completely enraptured by the graceful dancing of Astaire and Rogers. The camera lingers on him forever, it seems, while the light from the projector booth forms a saintly halo around Coffey’s head. It is a scene of pure brilliance, showing both the magic behind Coffey’s life, and the magical power of a movie.

If you have not seen The Green Mile, and I do not know how that is humanly possible, but, if you haven’t seen it, do so immediately. If you have seen it, watch it again. Frank Darabant knows how to find the humanity of Stephen King’s characters, and he gets the absolute best out of every actor he casts. If you want to double your fun, watch The Green Mile, then back it with The Shawshank Redemption, but hey, that’s almost too much genius for mortal man…