B-MOVIE BULLSH*T - Part Eighteen & Nineteen "Dark(ish) Shadows"

B-Movie Bullsh*t

Parts Eighteen & Nineteen

House of Dark Shadows (1970)

Night of Dark Shadows (1971)

Synopsis

Vampire Barnabas Collins has spent the past 200 years locked away in a coffin. It’s only when local caretaker Willie Loomis opens the casket in search of some fabled lost jewels that he is finally free to see what has happened to Collinwood, his family estate, in the centuries that marked his absence. With the exception of the main house, the estate has gone to seed, which is strange since his ancestors appear to be quite wealthy—enough so to afford a houseful of servants, including a pretty young governess named Maggie. Barnabas is shocked to discover that Maggie is a dead ringer for his beloved Josette, who committed suicide rather than join him as a member of the living dead. With the help of the Collins' live-in doctor, Julia Hoffman, Barnabas is able to hold back the effects of his vampirism through injections, but his treatment ends before he’s fully cured when Hoffman becomes jealous of his affection for Maggie. Returning to his full-on vampire ways, Barnabas spreads his affliction amongst the Collins clan, but is finally stopped from marrying Maggie and turning her into a vampire through the combined intervention of Willie and her fiancé, Jeff Clark.

Synopsis

Quentin and Tracy Collins are a young married couple who are leaving the big city to take over Collinwood, his family’s ancestral home. There they find the manor’s only two current inhabitants, housekeeper Carlotta Drake, and stable hand, Gerald Stiles. Within minutes of arriving, Quentin is taken by a painting of Angelique Collins, an ancestor through marriage who was hung for being a witch. That first night he has a dream in which he sees himself as Charles Collins, a direct ancestor who enjoyed an adulterous affair with Angelique—his brother’s wife—before she was executed. Within days Quentin finds himself blanking out and acting like Charles—including walking with his distinct limp—while vivid memories from a past life hit him at every turn. He confronts Carlotta about what is happening and learns that Angelique vowed to live on so long as her memory was kept alive by someone who loved her. It turns out Carlotta is the reincarnation of the little girl who did just that. Carlotta warns Quentin that Tracy has to leave or risks suffering from Angelique’s wrath. Quentin refuses to heed her warning and almost drowns Tracy himself while possessed by Charles. Carlotta sends Gerald to try to get rid of Tracy and her friends, the Jenkins, but he’s killed in the process. Convinced that Carlotta must be killed for them to be safe, they chase after her, only to have her fatally jump off Colinwood before they can get to her. The nightmare appears to be over, but it turns out Carlotta wasn’t the only person keeping Angelique’s memory alive. When the Collins return to retrieve Quentin’ paintings, he becomes Charles and strangles Tracy while Angelique’s ghost watches and the Jenkins are killed (off-screen) in a car crash.

The enduring popularity of the late 60s gothic TV soap opera, Dark Shadows, is one of those things I have to take on faith, since I have never seen so much as a single episode of the show, despite that fact that there are over 1200 of them in existence. According to Wikipedia, the show was syndicated to TV stations across North America throughout my childhood, but never to a single channel that ever appeared on my screen. I had never even heard of the show until I first read about it in Stephen King’s classic non-fiction look at the horror genre, Danse Macabre.

As obnoxious as it sounds, a part of me couldn’t believe that something could actually be as beloved as Dark Shadows was supposed to be, if I had never had a single opportunity to experience it. I wish I could say that this attitude of mine has changed, but that wouldn’t be the truth. If anything, having just sat through the two cinematic spin-offs the original show inspired during its run, the cult popularity of the show seems like an even bigger urban legend than it did before.

“There really are people out there who are obsessed with this?” I found myself wondering throughout the two films. But then it occurred to me that this was probably an unfair question. The better one would be, “There really were people out there who were obsessed with this?”

That I can believe. It’s easy to imagine how a production like this might have caused a cult sensation when it originally aired, over 40 years ago. Where I stumble is at the idea that this fervor still exists today, because—unlike Star Trek—all of the attempts to recreate the magic since then have met with failure—most notably a weekly prime-time TV remake made in the early 90s that died after just 12 episodes.

Many will point out the upcoming feature version directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp is proof of the show’s lasting power, but I actually think it proves the opposite. Most folks who will go to see Burton’s Dark Shadows will likely do so without any previous knowledge of the original. They will be drawn instead by the continued collaboration of one of cinema’s most successful actor-director teams. Despite interviews both will give about how much they loved the show when they were kids, the more likely truth is that the project went ahead because it was a property seemingly tailor-made to suit their mutual talents. It was either this or The Munsters (which just happens to be receiving its own “re-imagining” in an upcoming hour long dramatic pilot called Mockingbird Lane).

From what I’ve read, the two feature films the first incarnation spawned aren’t that well respected among Dark Shadows cultists—enjoying the same disreputable status as the odd numbered Star Trek films. Even though I have never seen the series I can understand why this would be true—especially in the case of the first film, House of Dark Shadows, which does just about everything wrong a film adaptation of a popular TV series can.

Rather than create an original story using the series’ characters that would have benefited from bigger production values (apparently the show was notoriously low budget and regularly featured atrocious special effects and sets) and more opportunities for sex and violence (the film takes some bloody advantage of the latter, but does nothing with the former), House of Dark Shadows re-visits the main storyline of its breakout character, vampire Barnabas Collins (as played by Canadian Jonathan Frid).

(Perhaps the biggest leap of faith newcomers to the Dark Shadows legend have to make is to accept the idea that Frid became a genuine sex symbol as the result of playing Barnabas, even though he makes Bela Lugosi look like George Clooney in comparison. Lacking the danger of Christopher Lee or the tragic nobility of William Marshall, Frid—at his best—most resembles Harry Dean Stanton’s less popular older brother, not a panty-wetting heartthrob in the Robert Pattison vein.)

My guess is that Frid’s popularity had less to do with his natural charisma (which is definitely not apparent in this, the first of only two movies he starred in—the second being Oliver Stone’s feature debut, Seizure) than the novelty of the character he played. When Dark Shadows originally aired it was designed as a moody, gothic soap opera without any supernatural elements. It was only six months into the series’ run that everyone figured out how fucking boring it was and decided to inject some monsters into the mix. The debut of an actual vampire in a “serious” daytime drama was a truly revolutionary concept and Frid rode a brief wave of success as a result.

Unfortunately vampires were old hat in the movie game and Barnabas Collins didn’t seem at all extraordinary compared to the other bloodsuckers who had filled the screen since Murnau’s Nosferatu. And this is a serious problem for House of Dark Shadows, because his is the only character who makes the slightest bit of an impression.

It’s a dilemma everyone who tackles such an adaptation must deal with—how much time should be spent developing characters at least some part of your audience is already familiar with? Spend too much and you alienate the fans of the TV show, who’ll just want you to get on with the story. Spend too little and you alienate newcomers who will spend most of the film focusing on who everyone is and how they're connected, rather than what’s going on.

House of Dark Shadows went the “too little” route and the film suffers dearly for it--a problem that is further exacerbated by the decision to compress a story that took months to unfold on television into 90 minutes of screen time. As a result, the film feels overstuffed, even though not much actually seems to be going on. The nature of soap opera is to extend drama as far as it can go—with a whole week’s worth of episodes often spent on a single afternnon in the world of the show. Because of this, the focus is set on microscopic, which means a story as slight as this one strangely feels far too big for one feature film.

This compression also explains the odd turns the characters take throughout the film. The show had weeks and even months to set up these developments, while the movie forces characters to change their behaviour without any justification from scene to scene, simply because the series' previously established plot led them organically to those points.

The best example of this is the strange journey of Dr. Hoffman (Grayson Hall, who would also play the role of Carlotta in the sequel), who goes from identifying the strange cell found in Barnabas’ victims’ blood to offering to cure him of his vampirism to falling in love with him to betraying him to being murdered by him in what seems like ten minutes worth of screen time. The entire film could have focused entirely on their relationship, but is instead treated like a necessary side-plot.

Beyond this, the Hoffman scenes also feature one moment I found interesting for its possible evidence of self-plagiarism. In the scene where Barnabas discovers that she has betrayed him, he is shown to rapidly age off screen. When we next see him he appears as an old man who bears a distinct resemblance to Dustin Hoffman’s 121 year-old character in Little Big Man, which was also made in 1970 and featured the handicraft of makeup legend Dick Smith. Did Smith make a genuine effort to differentiate the two makeup effects (and subsequently failed), or did he just do what most of us would and got lazy and handed in secondhand work? Whatever the answer, I would be curious to know which film gave him the assignment first.

As disappointing as House of Dark Shadows was, it must have found an audience, since the sequel, Night of Dark Shadows, followed a year later. With Barnabas having been staked to death in the first film, the decision was made to focus on another villainous character from the show—Angelique Collins (as played by the gorgeous Lara Parker), the witch who turned him into a vampire when he rejected her for Josette, the true love of his life.

With a lower budget and smaller cast of characters, Night is a more satisfying and enjoyable film than House, but isn’t without its own major problems. While lacking the first film’s need to fit in all of the requisite story beats, Night instead suffers from the opposite problem—it takes too long to get to the places we know it’s going all along. Thanks to all of the constant dream sequences and flashbacks, the pacing of the first hour is extremely uneven and frequently irritating. When the final act is set in motion, the action picks up considerably, but the payoff doesn’t feel earned.

This is especially true of the ending, which feels as though it was tacked on sometime in the process to avoid a predictable happy ending. Unfortunately the end result is less chilling than it is lame, especially since it is predicated on its protagonist being a major idiot and going back to the house to pick up his worthless paintings.

Beyond Parker, Night’s major saving grace is a charming performance by a young pre-Charlie’s Angels Kate Jackson as Tracy. Whatever impact the wannabe-bleak ending does actually have is the result of the natural affection we’ve developed for her charming character.

Removed from the context of their origins, both films suffer from feeling like Americanized rip-offs of the established Hammer Studio formula, but without all of the cheesy good stuff (namely hot babes in revealing clothing) that make those films worthwhile. Viewed today its easy to see why the audience they were made for rejected them, even if the idea that such an audience actually existed still strikes me as a little hard to believe.

I Saw This IN THE THEATER! Part Four in a Continuing Series

Ringmaster

(1998)

Brief Explanation

I can honestly claim that I've never been a fan of the The Jerry Springer Show, not even in that annoying ironic hipster way us creative types are prone to during our early 20s. Yet there I sat, one of maybe five others during the first matinee of Ringmaster's opening day. Why? Part of it was my perverse fascination with starsploitation, of which this was a textbook example. Part of it was that I was intrigued by the premise of a BTS look at a Springer-esque production. But mostly it was just as a youthful fuck you to all of the folks out there who had been proclaiming (sight unseen) that its existence augered the fall of mankind (which obviously didn't happen).

Having not seen it again in the intervening 13 years (and couple of months), I have only the barest recollection of its characters and plot, but I remember that for all of its exploitative zeal there was a real attempt to give some humanity to the white trash characters whose journey to appearing on the show made up the bulk of the screen time . I especially recall being genuinely moved by Molly Hagen's performance as a women locked in sexual competition with her daughter, Jamie Presley (channeling her white trash essence years before My Name is Earl). That said, I have no idea how the film holds up. The trailer is excrutiatingly bad, but I'm not sure it actually reflects the movie I saw so long ago. I think I'm going to have to revisit this one someday and see how much it matches up with my faded memories of a Friday afternoon I enjoyed a long time ago.

Rejected By Rod(?) Part Thirteen - Primal Rage

Not everything I've written for FLICK ATTACK has made it to the show. Mr. Lott insists that these rapidly aging reviews will be posted eventually, but until then I'm just going to assume that they have been:

Rejected By Rod(?)

Primal Rage

(1988) 

Primal Rage is a rare example of a horror movie that manages to create some degree of tension due entirely to a pre-production fuck up. When the filmmakers decided not to cast the highly appealing Sarah Buxton as their female lead, but instead as her doomed roommate, they made it impossible for viewers not to agonize over the likelihood of her eventual fate—if only because she’s the only remotely sympathetic person in the entire picture. That her painful descent into madness and violent death is suggested to be an indirect punishment for a previous abortion only makes the film that much more infuriating.

An Italian production shot in the States, Rage is about what happens when university professor Bo Svenson (sporting the most pathetic ponytail in the entire history of mad science) experiments on a monkey, which then goes on to bite a muck-racking student journalist who contracts a contagious disease that turns all of its victims (all five of them) into zombie-like homicidal maniacs. 

Written by the auteur responsible for the infamous Cannibal Ferrox and directed by the son of FX artist Carlos Rambaldi (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), Primal Rage —with the exception of one decapitation near the end—is virtually gore-free and filled with cheap looking effects. Yet despite its being ineffective even as unintentional camp, horror completists might want to watch it as a double feature with Deborah Brock’s Slumber Party Massacre II make their way through star Patrick Lowe’s entire filmography in just one sitting.

50 Words or Less - Squirm

For some the capsule review comes easy, but for me it’s an exercise in pure frustration. As a means of self-discipline I have decided to confront that which tortures me through this continuing feature—B-Movie Bullsh*t in 50 Words or Less.

The best film to ever be mocked by MST3K (and, yes, that DOES count This Island Earth), Squirm transcends its goofy premise (worms become carnivorous thanks to typical eco-horror shenanigans) thanks to a script that treats its characters like real people. Not quite as classic as Lieberman's Just Before Dawn.

Repost - Gotta Strut!

(Another repost! Deal with it!)

I bet if I were to ask even the sharpest of movie freaks to compose a list of performers most closely associated with that glorious enterprise known as the Bad Seventies Musical it would take quite a long while for the name Sylvester Stallone to eventually come up, but the truth is that the Italian Stallion has not one, but two such memorable disasters hidden away amongst the many lunk-headed sequels, misguided comedies and action flops that dominate much of his filmography.  The second of these two, Rhinestone (in which he played a monosyllabic New York cab driver who Dolly Parton bets she can transform into a Country Music star) is the more obvious of the two, since he actually stars in it and is as horrifyingly bad as you would imagine, but the first is far more important since it is the film that marked the true turning point in his career.

Looking back with the gift of hindsight and the knowledge of all the truly terrible films to come (Rhinestone, Rocky IV, Cobra, Over the Top, Rocky V, Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot!, Judge Dread and Driven to name just the most purely wretched of a wretched bunch) it seems odd to read Roger Ebert describe the subject of today’s post as “…the first bad film [Stallone has] made,” but people forget that following his star-turning breakout in the Academy Award-winning megahit Rocky, there was a period where Stallone was actually considered a gifted actor and filmmaker (as incredible as it seems he not only had been nominated for Best Screenplay, but Best Actor as well).

After Rocky he co-wrote the screenplay (with the infamous Joe Eszterhas, who made his own contribution to the world of Bad Seventies Musicals with his screenplays for Flashdance and Showgirls) and starred in Norman Jewison’s union drama F*I*S*T, which wasn’t nearly as well received, but kept afloat his reputation as a serious actor and writer who had the potential to be one of the great talents of the decade. The same was true for the period wrestling drama Paradise Alley, which also marked his directorial debut.  Rocky II, which he also directed, proved to be a much bigger hit and though the general consensus was that it was inferior to the original, both critics and audiences seem to agree that it was still a well-made and entertaining film.  After that Rutger Hauer’s villain got most of the attention from Nighthawks and North America’s indifference to soccer kept Victory from being a hit, but the back-to-back smashes of Rocky III (which he wrote and directed) and First Blood (which he did not) truly made it seem like Stallone was a man with the Midas touch.  True, there were some rumblings that he had taken the Rocky franchise into a strangely cartoonish direction that seemed far removed from the sweet, realistic drama of the original, but even this could be deemed excusable when you considered that the first film was about a no-name boxer who dreamed of being the champ and the third was about a champ who had already gotten everything he had ever wanted.

 

 

It was a position Stallone could write about from personal experience, having gone from a bit-part actor struggling to pay his rent to a superstar who now had the professional freedom to do whatever he wanted.  And what he wanted to do in 1982 was make the transition towards becoming a pure filmmaker—one who could make the movies he wanted without having to star in them as well.

This was not as simple as it sounds.  Though by this time Clint Eastwood (an actor turned director whose reputation for minimalist performances and cheesy patriotic action movies was at one time almost identical to Stallone’s) had already directed nine films, he had only failed to star in one of them and it, Breezy, remains the most obscure film he has ever made.  Decades earlier, Gene Kelly made three films purely as a director, but the only one people remembered was Hello Dolly, an infamous financial fiasco.  And Jack Lemmon’s sole directorial effort, Kotch, told a tale not unlike the one found in Breezy—with just as memorable results.

At that time Robert Redford had been the only superstar actor to successfully make the transition to non-performing director with his debut Ordinary People.  But unlike Redford, who used his clout to get a downbeat and commercially questionable film made with the actors he wanted (rather than ones he thought would sell tickets), Stallone decided that for his first film completely behind the camera, he would instead craft a sequel to the huge 1977 hit film that had made John Travolta an overnight star and taught the world the glory of the discothèque.

I am, of course, talking about:

 

 

STARRING

 

John Travolta as Tony
A Struggling Dancer

 

 

Cynthia Rhodes as Jackie
Another Struggling Dancer

Finola Hughes as Laura
A Successful Dancer

 

 

Sylvester Stallone as Random Asshole On the Street
A Random Asshole On the Street

And

Frank Stallone as Carl
A Rhythm Guitarist


PLOT
(OR LACK THEREOF):

Back in Brooklyn in 1977, Tony Manero was the king of the disco, but six years later he’s just another out of work dancer in Manhattan, making ends meet teaching classes to untalented wannabes and waiting tables at the kind of club he used to rule.  Thanks to his only slightly more successful friend and occasional bedmate Jackie, he meets Laura, a wealthy British dancer whose moves and “intelligent” accent instantly catches his interest.  When he is cast in the chorus of her new show, Satan’s Alley, he manages to spend half a night in her bed, but quickly learns that she has no interest in a man who can’t do anything for her or her career.  Torn between the bitch who won’t have him and the saintly girl who will, Tony risks ruining his first big break, but when the director decides to take a chance and have him replace the show's male lead, he learns who he really is and is finally able to decide who he really loves.

MUSICAL NUMBERS:

As a “behind the scenes” musical, Staying Alive eschews the traditional break-out-into-song-and-dance scenes in favour of the kind of musical montages popularized by the success of Flashdance, but best exemplified by the extraordinary “On Broadway” sequence in Bob’s Fosse’s All That Jazz.  That said, the following scenes certainly do qualify:

FAR FROM OVER
PERFORMED BY
FRANK STALLONE

FINDING OUT THE HARD WAY
PERFORMED BY
CYNTHIA RHODES

I’M NEVER GOING TO GIVE YOU UP
PERFORMED BY
FRANK STALLONE AND CYNTHIA RHODES

FAR FROM OVER (REDUX)
PERFORMED BY
FRANK STALLONE

(WE DANCE) SO CLOSE TO THE FIRE
PERFORMED BY
TOMMY FARAGHER

THE WINNING END
PERFORMED BY
JOE BEAN ESPOSITO

 

 

SNARKY DECONSTRUCTION:

 

Assuming you merely scrolled down past the above list in a hurried attempt to get to this post's chewy, snarky center, I think it would behoove you to quickly look at it one more time and see if you notice an odd pattern forming.  While you take care of that, I'll just insert a jpeg of a magazine cover from this period that does little to downplay the long-held rumours of Travolta's closeted homosexualty:

 

 

Ready now?  Okay, then I'm sure you noticed that of the six musical numbers noted above, half feature songs performed by the director's infamously less-successful younger sibling, Frank.  What you probably didn't note--because it's the kind of information no sane person should actually know off the top of their heads--is that the remaining three numbers feature songs that were written by Frank Stallone as well.  This is not insignificant, as it is the clearest example of the level of hubris Stallone possessed as he worked on the project.

 

Lemme explain.

 

 

As iconic as Tony Manero's white suit was, it was three brothers from Australia who were truly responsible for turning a movie about an asshole who likes to dance into something much, much more.  It has become popular now to praise Saturday Night Fever the film as a classic example of how the 70s cinematic pursuit of verisimilitude was able to transform a typical teen dance movie into a major work of art--to the point that it more resembled a work of cultural anthropology than any mere trifling entertainment.  On the other hand, the popular opinion of Saturday Night Fever the record album is that it is one of the archetypal examples of the wretched tastelessness that defined the end of the lamentable me-decade--a craven musical sell out from a group once best known for folky pop songs with memorable harmonies.  What this clearly ignores is that while the film was a popular success, the album was a zeitgeist-changing uber-phenomenon.  By the time they got around to filming Staying Alive (which itself was named after the album's biggest hit) the soundtrack recorded by the brothers Gibb still held the record for best selling LP of all time, having gone platinum 15 times over since its release.  It wouldn't be until a year after Staying Alive bombed that Michael Jackson's Thriller would finally best the Bee-Gee's achievement.

 

What some folks might not realize is that this was not an accident.  Saturday Night Fever was produced by an Australian gentleman named Robert Stigwood, who at that time was best known as the manager of a group of singing brothers known as--you guessed it--The Bee-Gees.  It should come as no surprise then that his principal interest in the project wasn't in presenting an anthropological study of the social rituals of Brooklyn douchebags, but rather in crafting the perfect comeback vehicle for his biggest meal ticket.  Rather than the album being a fortuitous offshoot of the film, the film was made specifically to justify the creation of the album. 

 

But that had been over five years ago--a lifetime in the world of music--and The Bee-Gees had become the Celine Dion's of their time, a group no one with even the tiniest iota of taste and/or self-awareness could admit to enjoying.  Because of this Stallone recognized that the group's music would have to be featured in the film, but it could not be allowed to dominate.  Thanks to Stigwood's role as the film's producer, the group received prominent billing in its opening credits, but--with the exception of the use of the title song at the very end--the truth is that their contributions amount to little more than anonymous background filler.  Rather than rely on the music of the group that allowed for the first film's creation and massive cultural success, Stallone chose to ignore it in favour of the questionable efforts of his baby brother, who he also cast in the not-so-crucial role of the guitar player in Jackie's band.

 

I could spend a good long while discussing the reasons why he would choose to do something so obviously foolish, but in the end the only one that matters is the simplest--because he could.

 

As reasons justifying disastrous decisions go, "Because he could," is probably responsible for destroying more careers than any other in Hollywood.  As any proper student of cinematic failure can tell you, there are two distinct kinds of Hollywood flop--the corporate folly and the vanity project--and in most cases the ultimate blame for their failures can both be attributed to "Because he could," the only variable being just who the "he" in the equation is.  With the exception of perhaps Eddie Murphy, no other iconic 80s superstar suffered more as a result of his ability to make his decisions without having to justify them to the people signing his massive paychecks.  Unlike Bruce Willis, who could survive and thrive after a "Because he could" flop on the level of Hudson Hawk (a film I am proud to say I actually saw in the theater when it was released), once Stallone started failing, it became impossible for him to stop.  Given the freedom to do whatever he wanted with a project that had nothing to do with Rocky Balboa or John Rambo, he proved that his less-than-stellar vision would lead to him attempting to turn his brother into The Next Big Thing, regardless of whether or not Frank had the talent to justify it.

 

For this reason Staying Alive is important as the turning point in Stallone's career.  Despite his only appearing onscreen for a couple of seconds, its failure laid the groundwork for all of his other failures to come.

 

That said, I have to admit that the music provided by Frank Stallone does amount to being the high point of the film, for as cheesy as it may sound, it's downright revolutionary compared to the film's script.

 

What Stallone and Norman Wexler, Staying Alive's two credited writers, didn't seem to realize is that if you choose to forgo plot in favour of a more intimate character drama, you are then required to create interesting three-dimensional characters who are compelling enough on their own to make you forget the utter lack of story.  Instead they crafted a screenplay inhabited by cyphers whose actions are entirely dependent on what the director wanted to have happen in each scene, rather than what they would actually do in that situation.

 

But more than that, the screenplay fails because the director is never able to convince us that its logical conclusion is at all valid..  According to the script, we are supposed to come to believe that while Laura is initially compelling, her ambition and self-devotion make her unworthy of Tony's affection, while Jackie's ability to forgive his trespasses and love him for who he is makes her the deserved choice.

 

 

This may have flew in 1983, but 25 years later, it reeks of old-fashioned sexism.  Laura's faults are no different than Tony's, but because she's a woman they are deemed unseemly, while Jackie's strange willingness to be continually treated like a doormat is portrayed as her most noble quality, rather than the tragic weakness it is.  It doesn't help Stallone's cause that Finola Hughes is so much more interesting and charismatic than her blond counterpart, Cynthia Rhodes (whose greatest contribution to pop culture remains her performance as the girl whose botched abortion compels Baby to dance with Johnny in Dirty Dancing).  Perhaps Stallone wanted to make a point about how settling for mediocrity is the fate of everyone, even gifted dancers, but if so he does not properly sell this conclusion and instead leaves the viewer hating Tony even more than they already did for settling for someone as challenging as a People magazine crossword puzzle.

 

 

THE KINDA-GAY PART:

 

What then is there about Stallone's first major folly to make it worthy of the attention of the second Project Kinda-Gay post?  Well, as strange at it may seem, for all of his vanity and undeserved egomania, Stallone was a filmmaker who wanted to stretch beyond the limits of his comfort zone and the proof of this lies in Staying Alive's existence.  And though its failure doomed him to direct only the sequels and "reboots" of his two most profitable franchise, there is something honourable in the attempt--even considering how poorly that attempt ending up being.

 

Anyone can do what they're good at and continue to succeed, but it takes a brave soul (albeit a brave foolish soul) to try something different and risk embarrassing themselves in the process.  Stallone in this instance was that brave foolish soul and for that he derserves to strut:

 

Repost - Attack of the Muses

(Hey, I'm BUSY! So, I'm reposting this "classic" from July of 2008. Like you're so great!)

As ridiculous as it may seem announcing a new House of Glib feature during a period where my output can justifiably be called “Pathetic,” I’m going to do so anyway, because that’s just the way this playa plays the game (holla!).  For the past little while I’ve been finding my attention increasingly diverted by what many would consider the worst and most lamentable films in the Bad Movie Pantheon, but in which I have started to find increasing amounts of comfort and solace.  Given the amount of time I’ve been spending with these films, it seems only right to start documenting them for the enjoyment of all of the Googler’s who’ve come here in search of “Superfriends Porn” or “Sophie Simmons Breasts” and since every House of Glib feature needs a slick, fancy name, I have decided to dub this latest venture:

Project Kinda-Gay

That’s right folks, these posts are all about musicals, but not any kind of musicals.  No, we’re talking about the most twisted, terrible, hilarious, wonderful, demented musicals of all time—Bad Seventies Musicals!  But before we can get started let me provide you with this helpful FAQ:

Q) What is a Bad Seventies Musical?

A) A bad musical made in the 1970s, duh.

Q) Is That It?

A) Well, no, it is more complicated than that.

Q) How So?

There’s a special kind of cheesiness that one must achieve to be considered a Bad Seventies Musical.  For example take Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York.  It was made in the seventies, is a musical and—to all but a few stubborn contrarians who refuse to accept that El Maestro has ever been capable of an obvious self-indulgent failure—isn’t very good.  Yet despite the fact that it is—technically speaking—a lowercase bad seventies musical it is not an uppercase Bad Seventies Musical, since Scorsese’s skill and natural sense of good taste keep it from achieving the level of pop-culture hilarity that is necessary for it to merit the proper capitalization.

Q) Is There Anything Else?

A) Of course there is.

Q) Like What?

A) To start off with, in order to be considered a Bad Seventies Musical, a movie doesn’t actually have to be bad or made in the 1970s.

Q) WTF?  Are You Crazy?  That Totally Contradicts Your Answer To The First Freaking Question!

A) No, it’s true.  Take Tommy for example.  It was nominated for a whole bunch of Oscars, got great reviews and is considered by many to be a classic, yet it can also be considered one of the best examples of the form.  No matter how well respected it is, any musical that features a scene of Ann-Margret writhing orgasmically in a sea of baked beans is the epitome of everything a Bad Seventies Musical represents.

Q) And What About Movies Not Made in the Seventies?

A) The term Bad Seventies Musical refers as much to a state of mind as it does to a specific period and by that standard there are many films produced in the 1980s that must be considered Bad Seventies Musicals.  In fact (and I haven’t checked this out, but it certainly seems true) there might actually have been more Bad Seventies Musicals made in the 80s than in the 1970s.

Q) Then Why Don’t You Call Them Bad Eighties Musicals?

A) Because that would be retarded.

Q) You Mentioned That These Movies Are All Inherently Cheesy.  Can You Go Into Any Better Detail Than That?

A) I could, but I think that after the first couple of entries, you’ll start noticing the overall pattern.  It’s probably best to just end this charade and start talking about the movie this post is supposed to be about.

Q) Which Is?

A) A 1980 (see, told ya!) roller disco classic starring the chick who put on tight, slutty leather pants to turn on a greaser, a young Warrior and some old guy who once starred in the greatest musicals ever made, but still somehow ended up in this.

Q) Oh God…You Don’t Mean—?

A) Yes!  It’s:

 

 

 

STARRING:

 

Michael Beck as Sonny Malone

A Struggling Artist

 

Gene Kelly as Danny McGuire

A Rich, Old Dude

 

And

 

Olivia Newton-John as Kira

A Roller-Skating Muse

 

 

PLOT

(OR LACK THEREOF):

 

Sonny, a struggling artist, is walking along Venice Beach when he is randomly kissed by a beautiful, blond, roller-skating muse named Kira.  During his attempts to find the beauty he runs into Danny McGuire, a rich, old dude who spends his time playing the clarinet on the beach, remembering the days when he was a big band leader at his own nightclub in the 1940s (where he too once received the attention of a beautiful, blond muse).  Wanting to relive his glory days, Danny decides to open a new nightclub and asks his new artistic friend to help him find the perfect building for it.  Drawn to a dilapidated old wrestling arena by the muse who kissed him earlier, Sonny convinces Danny it's the perfect place for the nightclub, while he also falls in love with the blond babe in wheeled shoes.  For the first time in her existence, Kira reciprocates an artist's love, even though she knows such feelings are forbidden by her father, Zeus.  Breaking Sonny's heart, she returns to her otherworldly home, where he manages to find her.  Forced back into the mortal realm by Zeus, Sonny arrives at the grand-opening of his and Danny's new roller disco palace, Xanadu, certain he will never know true love again, unaware that the gods work in oh-so mysterious ways.

 

 

MUSICAL NUMBERS:

 

 

I'M ALIVE

PERFORMED BY

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA

 

 

MAGIC

PERFORMED BY

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN

 

 

WHENEVER YOU'RE AWAY FROM ME

PERFORMED BY

OLVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND GENE KELLY

 

SUDDENLY

PERFORMED BY

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND CLIFF RICHARD

 

 

DANCIN'

PERFORMED BY

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND THE TUBES

 

 

DON'T WALK AWAY

PERFORMED BY

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA

 

ALL OVER THE WORLD

PERFORMED BY

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA

 

 

THE FALL

PERFORMED BY

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA

 

SUSPENDED IN TIME

PERFORMED BY

OLIVA NEWTON-JOHN

 

 

XANADU

PERFORMED BY

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA

 

 

 

SNARKY DECONSTRUCTION:

 

While in the future there shall be films that test the boundaries of what can be truly considered a Bad Seventies Musical, Xanadu is definitely not one of them.  No, it truly is an archetypal example of the form and from it one can devise a handy checklist by which all other examples can (and will) be judged.

 

1) Insultingly Simple Plot:

 

I've gone on record many times as being one of the worst synopsizers in the history of humankind.  Once in an email to a friend, I actually took 750 words to describe a 725 word story I had written (which is actually a fairly admirable achievement if you think about it).  That said, the fact that I could accurately sum up all of the events in Xanadu in the one medium-sized paragraph found above shows you how little story the filmmakers felt they needed to justify this collection of songs and dance numbers.  This simplicity is an essential part of every Bad Seventies Musical--if you actually have to spend any time thinking about the plot, you are watching something else, no matter how bad, how musical or how seventies it may be.

 

2) Hilariously Tacky Production and Wardrobe Design:

 

The standard here is not to judge the film's overall design aesthetic by today's modern standards, but instead by the standards of good taste that existed when the film was actually being made.  Even though the 1970s is considered by most people to be the stylistic nadir of the 20^th Century (followed closely by the one that came immediately after it), one should be careful not to assume that the tackiness on display in a Bad Seventies Musical was actually considered acceptable when it was produced.  This is especially true of Xanadu, whose crimes against design were just as heinous the day it opened as they are today.  One need only consider the scene where Gene Kelly and the gang go to a "modern" clothing store and his dignity takes such a beating one has to literally close their eyes, cover their ears and repeat "Singin' in the Rain, On the Town, An American in Paris and It's Always Fair Weather," over and over again until it finally ends.

 

3) Music That Makes You Question Your Own Judgment:

 

The score of a Bad Seventies Musical must walk a narrow line.  On the one hand, it must be memorable enough that you'll find yourself haunted by at least one of its songs until the day you die, while on the other hand it must be misguided enough that even its most ardent defender wouldn't go so far as to insist that it is genuinely good.  The music of a Bad Seventies Musical sounds as though it might have actually once been good, but has been made much less so as the result of the demands of the production.  Again, few films illustrate this with better clarity than Xanadu.  Days after watching the film, you'll find yourself unconsciously humming the tunes to "I'm Alive", "All Over the World", "The Fall" and "Xanadu" while at the same time wishing you could find Jeff Lynne and give him the ass-kicking your conscious mind tells you he deserves.

 

4) Annoying Retro Touches:

 

As a misguided attempt to mitigate its crimes against good taste, a Bad Seventies Musical will often look back to the past for touches of old school glamour.  But rather than elevate the production, these retro touches inevitably serve to only remind the viewer how much better the musicals of the past actually were.  No sequence in the history of the genre better illustrates this than Xanadu's "Dancin" number, in which the worst excesses of the 1940s and 70s are wedged together into a union that only serves to degrade and humiliate them both.  Some films choose to also reach for this nostalgic goodwill through the stunt-casting of celebrities whose best years are famously behind them.  Xanadu takes this approach to the highest possible level by casting one of the genre's two biggest legends (Fred Astaire at that point being too old to even credibly play an old, rich dude), with the result that younger viewers are left wondering why they have to watch Grandpa gliding around on roller skates, while older viewers are reminded that there are certain things a person should not be allowed to do once they've reached their declining years.

 

5) An Appalling Sense of Waste:

 

All of the best Bad Seventies Musicals leave the viewer with the impression that what they are watching led (justifiably or not) to the destruction of more than one show business career.  Whether it's a once-promising newcomer who never received the second-chance they deserved or an actual star who never recovered from the damage the film did to their reputation, there should at least be one person involved in the production for whom you feel a tremendous amount of pity, certain that they did not deserve to have their trajectory halted by "this."  In that vein, did you know that the only mainstream Hollywood feature film Olivia Newton-John starred in after Xanadu was the unfortunate John Travolta Grease-reunion project Two of a Kind, which despite featuring many of the key attributes of the genre, cannot be considered a Bad Seventies Musical due to its lack of music?

 

THE KINDA-GAY PART

 

Now comes the section where I blatantly ignore everything I've previously written in this post, so I can argue that--despite what you may think--your life really isn't truly complete until you've sat down and watched this crappy movie starring the world's blondest faux-Australian (no, really, she was born in England.  Look it up if you don't believe me--I was just as shocked and devastated as any right-thinking person would be), one half of Houston Knights and the legend whose last few roles serve as textbook examples of why celebrities should just enjoy their retirement years like Johnny Carson did--playing tennis and slowly dying of smoking-related emphysema.

 

Having spent the last year closely dissecting the Roller Disco movie phenomenon that briefly threatened the world during the last throes of the "Me Decade" (that is to say I watched this and Roller Boogie, while dreaming of the day I could get my hands on a copy of Skatetown USA), I wish I could say that in them I have found some grand metaphor for existence that suggests a sub-textual profoundity that rises them above the level of faddish exploitation, but I can't.  Created only as a means to chase a quick buck (foolishly so in the case of Xanadu, which immediately went down in history as one of Hollywood's more infamous financial disasters, despite its spawning a hit soundtrack), these films were not designed to be of the ages, but rather to be immediately consumed and immediately forgotten.  Yet here we are, 28 years later, and we can't get the stupid things out of our heads.

 

 

Xanadu like all Bad Seventies Musicals is important because its failure is so impressive it resonates within us long after we have experienced it.   A mere mediocrity can be forever consigned to oblivion, but a true disaster can never really go away--it will always linger and the longer it does, the more we are able to forgive its brazen flaws and appreciate its subtle charms.  The lesson then is obvious--fail modestly and you'll vanish without notice, fail egregiously and you just might achieve cultural immortality.  Don't believe me?  Last year, some folks saw fit to mount a stage version of Xanadu, resulting in a hit Broadway show that was nominated for four Tony Awards and the release of the "Magical Music Edition" DVD that I purchased two weeks ago, spurring me to write this post. 

 

When Kira appears in mortal form at the film's end, her metamorphosis goes unexplained.  The filmmakers hope that we will  not question her inexplicable appearance because they are giving us the happy ending they correctly assume we desire, and as crass and lazy as this may be, this denouement serves as an ironic counterpoint to the film's ultimate fate.  In choosing love, Kira forgoes immortality and a life spent inspiring artists to create their greatest works, while the producers of Xanadu chose commerce (their every creative choice based not on what felt right, but rather on what they thought would sell) and unwittingly created a lasting work destined to inspire future creators.  And while I'm not necessarily sure this is a good thing, it does allow us the comfort of knowing that it is possible to someday see your past mistakes be, if not redeemed, then at least made to seem  a little less terrible.

 

KARMA

(IN WHICH THE FATES OF THE GUILTY ARE REVEALED)

 

In 1984 the film's director, Robert Greenwald, treated us to another infamous movie starring an iconic blond when he made the then-controversial TV movie The Burning Bed, which featured a battered Farrah Fawcett barbecuing an abusive Paul Le Mat on the titular piece of furniture.  Today he is better known as the liberal documentarian behind the muckraking features Outfoxed and Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices.

 

Choreographer Kenny Ortega gained fame as the man who made Swayze move in Dirty Dancing and parlayed this success into a seemingly mediocre directing career that has suddenly grown hot due to the success of his High School Musical franchise.

 

Producer Joel Silver went on to earn his fortune making Action Jackson, Road House, Hudson Hawk and Fair Game (as well as Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, The Matrix and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and in so doing tied Robert Evans and Harvey Weinstein's records for most parodied and mocked film producers of all time.

 

Olivia Newton-John got "Physical" and made one more (previously mentioned above) bad movie before she accepted her destiny of being rediscovered every six years or so by young girls exposed to the questionable glories of Grease.

 

Michael Beck revisited his famous role of Swan in 2005's video game recreation of The Warriors.

 

And, finally, Gene Kelly did what all aging celebrities must eventually do--he died ten years after everyone had already assumed he was dead.

 

 

Rejected By Rod(?) Part Twelve - Stephen King's Cat's Eye

Not everything I've written for FLICK ATTACK has made it to the show. Mr. Lott insists that these rapidly aging reviews will be posted eventually, but until then I'm just going to assume that they have been:

Rejected By Rod(?)

Stephen King's Cat's Eye

(1985)

At the risk of committing genre blasphemy, I have to say that when it comes to 80s Stephen King anthology movies, I’ve always preferred Lewis Teague’s Cat’s Eye to George Romero’s beloved Creepshow. That’s not to say I think Creepshow is a bad movie, just that I always felt its attempt at paying tribute to the old E.C. comic books resulted in a general lack of originality in its stories. The same can’t be said for Cat’s Eye, though, as the three tales it tells are all classic examples of King working at the height of his abilities.

Its stories linked together by a gifted feline’s search for an endangered young girl played by Drew Barrymore, the film begins with James Woods as a lifelong smoker who unwittingly gets involved with a company that takes its pledge to get him to quit the nasty habit far more seriously than anyone would ever imagine.

The second story features Airplane! star Robert Hays as a broke tennis pro who is forced to make his way around the five inch ledge of a skyscraper to satisfy the vengeful whim of a cuckolded gambler and in the third the heroic cat finally finds Barrymore and saves her from a tiny, evil troll determined to steal her breath while she sleeps at night.

The first two stories benefit greatly from the kind of dark humor so often found in King’s best work, while the third succeeds thanks to the amazing mechanical effects created by Italian FX whiz Carlo Rambaldi, whose tiny monster ranks right up there with E.T. as his greatest achievement (the less said about his King Kong the better).

Along with excellent cinematography by legendary British cameraman Jack Cardiff, the film is also well served by director Teague’s tongue in cheek approach, which includes multiple references to King’s previous work and clever use of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” in both the first and final stories.

50 Words or Less - Saturn 3

For some the capsule review comes easy, but for me it’s an exercise in pure frustration. As a means of self-discipline I have decided to confront that which tortures me through this continuing feature—B-Movie Bullsh*t in 50 Words or Less.

My favourite novelist, Martin Amis, wrote the screenplay for this Stanley Donen film about a maniac who disturbs the peace of a couple living alone on a remote space station, but all I remembered after it was over was Kirk Douglas’ butt, Harvey Keitel’s dubbed voice, and the horny robot.

B-MOVIE BULLSH*T - Part Seventeen "A Cure That Kills"

B-Movie Bullsh*t

Part Seventeen

Cobra

(1986)

Synopsis

Lieutenant Marion “Cobra” Cobretti is a member of Los Angeles’ “Zombie Squad”—the term used for cops who take the cases that require them to sink to the lowest depths of human society. His latest case finds him searching for the “Night Slasher”, a vicious serial killer whose ubiquity and lack of any discernable pattern suggests he might not be working alone. Cobretti and his partner catch their first break when the Slasher and his cultists fail to kill the witness to a previous murder—a tall Nordic model named Ingrid Knudson. When it becomes clear that the Slasher has an inside man on the force, Cobra takes Ingrid out of L.A. to protect her, unaware that Nancy Stalk, a cop assigned to join them, is the mole. The Slasher and his goons descend upon the small town where they are hiding and Cobretti is forced to protect Ingrid and rid the world of the Slasher’s irredeemable evil.

As a film buff I can think of few careers I find more fascinating than that of Sylvester Stallone’s. After making a good impression in a series of low budget movies like The Lords of Flatbush, Capone, and Death Race 2000 (which features my favourite performance of his career), he rocketed to super-stardom as the writer/star of Rocky, which was not only a major box office hit, but also made him only the third person in Oscar history to be nominated for both writing and acting in the same year (Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles were the two who preceeded him). He didn’t win, but at the time he seemed destined to join the pantheon of great American actors, with comparisons to Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro not being uncommon.

But then he followed up Rocky with two big flops—the union drama, F.I.S.T., and the period wrestling film, Paradise Alley, which he also wrote and directed. Fortunately, Rocky II resurrected him as a moneymaking force—enough so that the relative disappointment of the WWII soccer drama Victory had little effect on his clout, especially when Rocky III was on its way. His luck continued with First Blood, a film that gave him another iconic character in the form of emotionally damaged Vietnam vet, John Rambo, but then disaster struck in the double whammy of Staying Alive and Rhinestone.

This is the period where Stallone’s hubris suddenly became apparent and his choices grew much more questionable. Staying Alive saw him staying behind the camera as writer/director (save for a two-second cameo) in an ill-advised sequel to Saturday Night Fever. The film confirmed what many suspected after seeing his previous directorial efforts—the success of Rocky was a group effort that included the participation of director John Avidson. Working solo and with full creative control Stallone suffered from severe creative limitations, including unimaginative storytelling and a complete lack of subtext.

Rhinestone saw him attempting to stretch his legs with a light musical comedy in which he played a taxi driver who’s transformed into a country singer after Dolly Parton makes a bet with her manager. A gender reversed My Fair Lady with cowboy hats and tassels, it was the first film that clearly showed the limits of his acting abilities.

Left bloodied by the back-to-back mega-flops, Stallone performed what would become his trademark move and returned to his two most popular characters in the same year. The results, Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV, were so overtly designed to appeal to the mid-80s audience that they turned once-credible characters into living cartoons. The slide in this direction had already started with Rocky III, which featured Hulk Hogan and the hilariously menacing Clubber Lang as its villain, but that film was a virtual cinema verite documentary compared to the cold war absurdity of Rocky IV.

With that film Stallone attempted to transform his inarticulate, working-class-schlub-made-good into an out-and-out action hero. Rocky Balboa no longer fought to prove himself or to take care of his family, he fought to honor his former rival turned friend, Apollo Creed, who was murdered by nothing less than the terror of communism itself. In terms of absurd anti-Soviet propaganda, the film was in the same class as Red Dawn and Invasion U.S.A. Rocky ceased to be a recognizable human and became an unstoppable god bent on protecting capitalism at all costs.

At this point I’d get all pretentious about what Rambo: First Blood Part II was about, but I’ve never actually seen the whole thing from beginning to end, but the snippets I have seen more than back up this analysis.

Unfortunately for Stallone both sequels were massive hits. Having been responsible for the two least-subtle films ever made, he came to the conclusion that this was what people wanted and he partnered up with a small studio for three films that paid him a lot of money, but also managed to wreck his career in a way from which he has never truly recovered, despite some notable successes here and there.

The studio was Cannon, founded and operated by two Israeli cousins named Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. After breaking out with the Israeli period T & A teen flick Lemon Popsicle (a film that you’d assume was a Porky’s rip off if you didn’t know it was actually released in 1978), they gradually took over A.I.P’s spot as the pre-eminent producer of low budget genre movies, most of which had already made their money back before a single frame of film had been shot, thanks to foreign pre-sales.

But for Golan, money wasn’t enough. He wanted prestige and respect as well and decided to try to buy it by hiring Hollywood’s biggest star to become synonymous with Cannon. The failure of the second and third of the three films they would make together would eventually result in the bankruptcy of his once successful company.

Before this, though, Stallone made his Cannon debut with a cop picture he wrote that marked a clear attempt to add a third iconic character to his repertoire. Using a novel originally published by Paula Gosling in 1974 as the basis for his plot, he reimagined its male protagonist as a gun-worshipping cop whose distaste for lawbreakers made Dirty Harry look like Alan Alda in comparison.

In the novel, which was first published as A Running Duck and then retitled four years later as Fair Game, the cop hero was Mike Malchek, which didn’t come close to matching the badass cool Stallone was intent on giving the character. Instead he gave the character the last name of Cobretti, which supplied him with both a dangerous sounding nickname and the title for the film, Cobra. Interestingly, he then gave the character a feminine sounding name in Marion, which added a touch of much-needed humour to the film and served as a specific reference to the man who famously turned down the role of Dirty Harry Callahan—John Wayne (whose given name was Marion Morrison).

From the novel he took the elements of a cop protecting a woman who witnessed a violent crime and the mole who constantly leads the criminals to them, but from there he let his own imagination run wild. In the place of Gosling’s hitman, he came up with a hulking, monstrous serial killer who commands a cult of similarly insane maniacs (some of whom appear to be everyday businessmen in suits), and he turned her attorney heroine into a glamorous foreign model, which allowed for a fabulous posing/investigation montage (easily the film’s best scene) and the casting of his wife, 6’0” Danish goddess Brigitte Nielsen.

(In fact Stallone changed the plot of Gosling’s novel so much that virtually no one noticed when the same book served as the basis of the Joel Silver-produced Cindy Crawford starsploitation flop, Fair Game, just 9 years later.)

Possibly exhausted after taking on the directing chores of Rocky IV, Stallone handed over the reigns to Cobra to his Rambo: First Blood Part II director, George P. Cosmatos—a Greek born Canadian who would later direct the cult western Tombstone and who was previously responsible for the man-vs-rat Canuxploitation classic, Of Unknown Origin. In the end, all of Cobra’s virtues—eye-pleasing style, interesting mise-en-scene, exciting action—can be credited to Cosmatos’ influence and direction. Unfortunately he was working with a script and a star with two absurd agendas.

There’s a great moment in the documentary The Hamster Effect, where Terry Gilliam is talking to Bruce Willis on the set of Twelve Monkeys about a scene where his character is supposed to be knocked out by co-star Madeleine Stowe. Gilliam tells Willis how he wants to film it, but Willis argues with him, insisting that a woman Stowe’s size could never knock out a man the way Gilliam is suggesting. The argument is long and passionate and it quickly becomes clear that Willis’ reluctance has less to do with the integrity of the film than his desire to not be seen as a pussy.

It’s an insight into the behind the scenes process that explains many a terrible film (fortunately for Gilliam, he finally got what he wanted and Willis benefited by giving a great performance in one of his best movies). Many movie stars, especially in the action genre, want to be perceived as the most cool, awesome people alive and they do this without any irony. Therefore they force changes upon any script featuring moments that might humanize or lessen the awesomeness of their characters. Go back to my first B-Movie Bull-Sh*t review and you’ll find a film where Chuck Norris kills dozens of commies without so much as a scratch to show for it.

Now imagine what happens when a star who is very much of this persuasion actually writes the script himself! That’s Cobra, a film so dedicated to promoting the awesomeness of its title character (and the actor playing him) that the film instantly devolves into unintended self-parody.

I mentioned Dirty Harry before and the comparison is extremely apt (although the film’s plot more closely resembles another Eastwood picture—The Gauntlet). Like Callahan, Cobretti is a gun fetishist (his weapon has a cobra pictured on its handle and we watch him clean it with loving care the first time we see him in his apartment) whose tough stance against criminals is harshly criticized by his liberal, namby-pamby superiors (one of whom, in the film’s biggest Dirty Harry homage, is played by Andrew Robinson aka The Scorpio Killer, Callahan’s original nemesis). But if Don Siegel’s film wore its conservatism on its sleeve, than Cobra dons it like a three piece suit, culminating in the truly hilarious moment where the Night Slasher taunts Cobretti by telling him how as a lawman he’s obligated to take him in and be tried by the courts, which will find him not guilty by reason of insanity.

Cobretti’s response to this is to

impale him on a large metal crane hook.

And whereas Callahan chose to throw his badge into the water after gunning down Scorpio vigilante-style, Cobretti is congratulated for his actions and gives the audience a thrill when he punches Robinson’s character in the face for being such a left-wing fag.

The two films also depart significant in the depiction of their two villains. In Dirty Harry, Scorpio is a pathetic hippy whose big plan to stop his adversary is to hire a black man to beat him up and pin his bruises and injuries on Callahan—getting him thrown off the case and earning the sympathy of liberals concerned more about so-called “police brutality” than keeping the public safe. In Cobra, the Night Slasher is played by Brian Thompson, a 6’3” monster of a man whose craggy face invokes a strange kind of handsomely charismatic monstrosity. Rather than acting alone, his character is shown to be a leader of a cult dedicated to the creation of a “new world” where the hunters rule over the hunted, but we’re never shown any reason why he would have such a following or why they would be so dedicated to him. We’re simply supposed to take their existence at face value.

And just like Cobretti’s gun, the film fetishizes the Slasher’s primary instrument of terror, a large menacing knife with sharp spikes along its bearer’s knuckles. The absurd bigness of the villain is clearly meant to prove the badass amazingness of Stallone’s character. Any wimp with .45 Magnum can kill a hippy—it takes a real man to take down a monster straight from Hell.

As frequently (and unintentionally) funny as this all is, there’s a clear sense of desperation that saturates the entire film. It would have seemed impossible after Rocky IV that Stallone could pander any lower to the public’s desire to see the clearly good battle the obviously evil, but with Cobra he managed to do just that and deliver a movie so pathetically geared to get morons to shout out “FUCK YEAH!” he might as well have ended it with a group chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

That said, for all his lack of subtlety and willingness to pander to the public’s most basic impulses, his scripts almost always feature an interesting character detail or two that suggests the highly intelligent, articulate man he frequently comes across as in interviews and making-of documentaries. In Cobra I enjoyed a moment between Cobretti and Knudson at a local truck stop diner where we see her purposefully dump half a bottle of ketchup on her French fries. It's completely extraneous but reminded me of Paulie’s paintings in Rocky Balboa—another touch that suggested the work of a much better filmmaker.

Cobra ended up doing relatively well at the box office (but not enough to warrant a sequel, even though the creation of a new franchise was its clear intention), but his next film for Cannon—for which he earned the then-shocking payday of $12,000,000—was Over the Top, an arm-wrestling melodrama directed by Golan. It flopped so spectacularly that Cannon bought the rights to Stallone’s second biggest franchise in a clear bid to recoup their costs with a sure thing. The resulting Rambo III was—at $60,000,000—one of the most expensive movies made up to that time and proved to be another costly flop. The one-two punch of these costly failures resulted in Cannon’s bankruptcy.

Since then Stallone has famously spent his career starring in major flops (Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!, Oscar, Judge Dread, Assassins, An Alan Smithee Movie: Burn Hollywood Burn, Get Carter, Driven, D-Tox, Avenging Angelo) and the occasional modest hit (Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, The Specialist). After killing his top franchise with the humdrum and disappointing Rocky V, he waited 16 years before doing the one thing that kept his career going in the 80s—returning to the two characters people loved the most. The results, Rocky Balboa and Rambo, managed to earn money and even some good reviews largely on the basis of nostalgia alone. Sensing this, Stallone decided to capitalize on Gen X’s fondness for the no-nonsense action pictures of old and created The Expendables, which marked his first successful attempt at a franchise in over two decades.

For all of its many faults, I found Cobra fascinating for its part in such a tumultuous Hollywood career. Made for all of the worst reasons possible, it’s a textbook example of what happens when a superstar aims for the lowest common denominator and still manages to miss.

I Saw This IN THE THEATER! Part Three in a Continuing Series

Hudson Hawk

(1991)

Brief Explanation

Once again I found myself sitting alone in the Londonderry Theater, and--based on Hawk's infamous B.O.--I just might have been the only person to see it that afternoon. Why was I there? One word: Heathers. Like all alienated teenagers from the period, I'd seen it over a dozen times since it came out three years earlier. Being a movie geek, I naturally knew all about the folks who made it and excitedly waited for their big-budget major Hollywood follow-up effort (the less said about Meet the Applegates the better). And y'know what? I fuckin' liked it! Sure I was just 15, but I was a 15 year old who had seen Annie Hall 20 times, so it's not like I was totally without judgment. I haven't seen it in a decade, so I have no idea how it holds up, but considering it's the biggest and most infamous flop I ever saw during its intial release (with the possible exception of Babe: Pig in the City) I'd probably say I loved it just to be a contrary bastard.