SPLIT SECOND (UK - 1992) Directed by Tony Maylam and Ian Sharp. Written by Gary Scott Thompson. Cast: Rutger Hauer, Kim Cattrall, Neil Duncan, Michael J. Pollard, Alun Armstrong, Pete Postlethwaite, Ian Dury, Tony Steedman, Steven Hartley, Sarah Stockbridge, Ken Bones, Dave Duffy, Stewart Harvey-Wilson, Paul Grayson, Chris Chappel, John Bennett. (R, 91 mins) "We need to get bigger guns! Big fucking guns!" Few films scream "early '90s at the video store" like SPLIT SECOND. After making a quick exit from American theaters in May 1992, the British import went on to be discovered by a more appreciative audience on home video, where it got a second wind and became a legitimate word-of-mouth cult hit. It's also an essential for fans of Rutger Hauer, by then a fixture in B-movies, with SPLIT SECOND being one of his best. He stars as Harley Stone, a renegade, plays-by-his-own rules cop in a near-future hellscape of 2008 London, with the city feeling the effects of global warming and largely submerged in perpetual flooding after 40 days and nights of torrential rain. It's a dark, dreary, smoggy, neon-lit, waterlogged hellhole with a production design that's typical of dystopian British cinema of the time, whether it's Richard Stanley's HARDWARE (1990), Bob Keen's PROTEUS (1995), and Stephen Norrington's DEATH MACHINE (1995) to name a few. Norrington would go on to direct big-budget Hollywood productions like BLADE (1998) and THE LEAGUE OF ORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003), but before that, he worked on the effects and design crew of both HARDWARE and SPLIT SECOND, making him a key figure in this period of British genre fare. SPLIT SECOND had a long and troubled journey to the screen, with the script by Gary Scott Thompson (who would later go on to co-write THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and subsequently cash in on that "Based on characters created by" action) initially making the rounds in 1988 as an L.A.-set Satanic serial killer thriller titled PENTAGRAM and written with Harrison Ford in mind. That never happened, as it ended up being put in turnaround after the similar Lou Diamond Phillips chiller THE FIRST POWER hit theaters in 1990.
After some rewrites and some additional tweaks and several title changes, the script made its way to Hauer and he liked it. Production began in June 1991 with director Tony Maylam (best known for 1981's post-FRIDAY THE 13th slasher THE BURNING) at the helm. Rewrites continued throughout the shoot and after several weeks, Maylam exited the production over "creative differences" and Ian Sharp (THE FINAL OPTION) was brought in to finish the film, with an "additional sequences directed by" credit at the end. SPLIT SECOND is pretty incoherent at times, and the end result barely hangs together, but it's got enough style, action, and Rutger Hauer being fucking awesome that it succeeds in spite of everything wrong with it. Like any cop who plays by his own rules, Hauer's Stone is constantly on suspension, and often so out of control that it's not unusual for him to be detained and placed under psychiatric observation. He "lives on anxiety, coffee, and chocolate" in a hoarders' nightmare shithole of an apartment that would take several deep cleanings to reach condemned status. He hasn't been the same since the murder of his partner in the line of duty, and not even a brief fling with the partner's widow Michelle (Kim Cattrall) made things any better. That was three years ago, and now the same Satanic serial killer who killed his partner is back (we know this because "I'm back!" is tauntingly written in blood at a murder scene), offing victims, ripping out their hearts, and sometimes eating them. Stone ("I work alone!") is teamed with dweeby, brainy new partner Dick Durkin (Neil Duncan) in a classic "...if they don't kill each other first!" mismatch, but they gradually bond amidst constant ballbusting and quotable dialogue. The body count continues to rise, there's something about the murders taking place at the start of the new moon when the tide is highest, and the killer is some kind of ten-foot-tall supernatural creature that's able to absorb the DNA of its victims both dead and surviving, which explains why Stone has developed a psychic connection to it, having been scratched and left scarred in a confrontation years earlier.
SPLIT SECOND's wild plot developments have a pretty obvious "making it up as they go along" aura, but Hauer and Duncan are such a great team that you can't help but roll with whatever bullshit the filmmakers throw at you (there's a scene where they're jawing at each other as Duncan breaks and Hauer starts grinning but keeps it together, and they just left it in, and you know what? It's perfect). They bust each other's chops, they get chewed out by their blustering boss Thrasher (Alun Armstrong as Bob Hoskins as Frank McRae), and Stone has a perfect foil in asshole, desk jockey precinct adversary Paulsen (a pre-mainstream success Pete Postlethwaite), which generates some amazing shouting throughout, particularly during one epic rant from Armstrong. Duncan's manic, Roy Scheider-like freakout after a near-fatal encounter with the creature ("We need bigger guns!") got a lot of laughs in the theater, as did any number of zingers like "Zip up, Dick," Stone's coffee-stirring staredown with Paulsen, and his incredulous reactions to Durkin's repeated boasting about how much he gets laid and how he manages to work it into the conversation ("You read these?" Stone asks, seeing books on demonology and astrology in Durkin's car, with Durkin deadpanning "Yeah, last night. After sex"). In a perfect world, SPLIT SECOND would've been a huge hit and Hauer and Duncan would've teamed up as Stone and Durkin for at least two sequels in the future London dystopia version of the LETHAL WEAPON franchise.
It all leads to a showdown in the ruins of the London Underground, where Stone and Durkin are taken by the reluctant Rat Catcher (Michael J. Pollard, cast once again as "Michael J. Pollard"). Pollard shows up 75 minutes into the 91-minute film, and everything from his first appearance through the gory climactic showdown in the abandoned subway station was directed by Sharp after Maylam left. SPLIT SECOND was one of only a handful of titles released by the short-lived InterStar Releasing, a company whose fate was pretty much sealed when they kicked things off with 1991's universally-loathed HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING. SPLIT SECOND was InterStar's fourth and final release, the other two in between being Keith Gordon's acclaimed A MIDNIGHT CLEAR and the Christopher Lambert/Diane Lane chess thriller KNIGHT MOVES (why isn't that on Blu-ray?). A quality edition of SPLIT SECOND has been hard to come by, but that situation's been remedied with the new Blu-ray from MVD (because physical media is dead), which includes a ton of interviews with Duncan (who now goes by Alastair Duncan) and several crew members, some vintage behind-the-scenes footage and, as an additional bonus, a standard-def transfer of the 96-minute Japanese release which restores Roberta Eaton's performance as Durkin's oft-mentioned girlfriend, which was cut from the film everywhere else in the world even though her name is still in every version, even with an "introducing" credit!
SOLDIER BLUE (US - 1970) Directed by Ralph Nelson. Written by John Gay. Cast: Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, Donald Pleasence, John Anderson, Jorge Rivero, Dana Elcar, James Hampton, Mort Mills, Bob Carraway, Martin West, Jorge Russek, Aurora Clavell. (R, 115 mins) A revisionist western inspired by the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in the Colorado Territory that also tries to be a then-topical Vietnam allegory, Ralph Nelson's SOLDIER BLUE was a controversial misfire in the summer of 1970 (though its theme song by Indigenous Canadian singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie became a big hit in the UK) and despite some positive critical reassessment and an inevitable cult following over the ensuing 50 years, it hasn't really improved with age. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), SOLDIER BLUE generated some buzz at the time of its release for its sickeningly violent climax, with a cavalry attack on a Cheyenne tribe so gory and over-the-top it that out-splatters THE WILD BUNCH and goes several steps beyond, with heads blown apart, limbs hacked off, children being decapitated, trampled, and/or impaled, a Cheyenne woman gang-raped and getting her left breast sliced off, and a laundry list of other unmentionables in a seemingly endless barrage of atrocities that remains shocking today and seems more in line with an Italian jungle exploitation grinder. That the perpetrators are American soldiers attacking "savages" is a salient point that directly invokes both Sand Creek and the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. The finale of SOLDIER BLUE needed to be as difficult to watch as it is, certainly one of the most disturbing depictions of historical carnage ever seen in a mainstream American film, but it's such a tedious buildup in a generally standard western that the abrupt shift in tone seems like a tacked-on afterthought. Imagine if you can a pre-WILD BUNCH Hollywood western that feels like it was started by Henry Hathaway and finished by Ruggero Deodato.
A cavalry escorting military fiancee Cresta Marybelle Lee (Candice Bergen) across the Colorado Territory to her husband-to-be is attacked by the Cheyenne warriors of the feared Spotted Wolf (Jorge Rivero). The only survivors are Cresta and Private Honus Gant (Peter Strauss), who must make their way across the harsh terrain to the safety of her fiance Lt. Johnny McNair's (Bob Carraway) unit at Fort Battalion. Along the way, they brave the elements, deal with a shortage of food and water, have a run-in with Kiowa tribesmen, and encounter a duplicitous trader named Isaac Q. Cumber (Donald Pleasence), who's been getting rich by selling military weapons to various tribes. Complicating matters is that the headstrong, independent Cresta sympathizes with the "savages" and spent two years married to Spotted Wolf. Of course, she and Gant will develop feelings for one another, but there's a lot of bickering and arguing along the way, with the brash, vulgar, uninhibited Cresta and the fussy, whiny, uptight Gant turning into the stars of a mismatched "...if they don't kill each other first!" buddy movie as he expresses continued dismay at her behavior while she derisively refers to him as "Soldier Blue" for his naive, puritanical ways.
The opening attack on Gant's cavalry unit is well-choreographed and features some attention-getting Peckinpah-esque bloodletting, with a memorable shot of a bullet ripping through the cheek of Gant's clownish best friend Private Menzies (James Hampton). But the opening and closing sequences are tonally at odds with everything in the sluggish middle. Bergen and Strauss (in just his second film after his 1969 debut as Michael Douglas' younger brother in HAIL, HERO) both deliver seriously grating performances, with Bergen's especially feeling much too 1970 counterculture to work in an 1864 period setting (when John Anderson's psychopathic colonel sees Cresta and harumphs "When I see young people today behaving like that, I just can't help but wonder what this goddamn country's coming to," the point is a little too on-the-nose). Strauss' Gant is one of the least-appealing western genre heroes you'll ever see, and it's little wonder that SOLDIER BLUE began and effectively ended his career as a big-screen leading man. He next did Sergio Grieco's obscure 1971 Italian desert adventure MAN OF LEGEND before embarking on a successful TV career, vying with Richard Chamberlain for the "King of the Miniseries" title with must-see blockbusters like 1976's RICH MAN, POOR MAN and its 1978 sequel, and 1981's MASADA, along with an Emmy-winning turn in the 1979 TV-movie THE JERICHO MILE, the directing debut of Michael Mann. Strauss only made occasional appearances in feature films for the next two decades (1976's THE LAST TYCOON, 1983's SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE) before aging into the character actor phase of his career in the late '90s and into the '00s. Now 73, Strauss remains busy, and was most recently spotted in multiplexes in a supporting role in 2018's OPERATION FINALE and he guest-starred on a February 2020 episode of GREY'S ANATOMY.
Perhaps SOLDIER BLUE needed a more risk-taking director than Nelson, a high-end journeyman who directed Sidney Poitier and Cliff Robertson to Best Actor Oscars in 1963's LILIES OF THE FIELD and 1968's CHARLY, respectively. Nelson was a top television director in the 1950s and generally took whatever big-screen assignment came his way, whether it was the 1964 Cary Grant comedy FATHER GOOSE, the 1966 Poitier/James Garner western DUEL AT DIABLO, or the 1976 Rock Hudson sci-fi/horror outing EMBRYO. SOLDIER BLUE has some valid points to make and the comparison between Sand Creek and My Lai is a legitimate one, but it needed someone with vision to properly pull it off. Nelson was a go-to "get it in the can" director, but at a time when American cinema was at a crossroads with the New Hollywood era being ushered in by the auteurist likes of BONNIE AND CLYDE and EASY RIDER, SOLDIER BLUE struggles to find its identity. It seems to have one foot in the formulaic, old-fashioned John Wayne westerns of the past and one in the post-WILD BUNCH "Bloody Sam"-style of the present and future. As a result, it never reconciles those discrepancies and ends up working at cross purposes. It's a western with a score by Roy Budd that invokes the grandiose majesty of a composer like Dimitri Tiomkin (HIGH NOON, GIANT), but it doesn't gel with off-the-charts levels of graphic violence and gory atrocities so extreme that it's legitimately surprising that the film somehow managed to avoid an X rating. Nowhere is that inability to settle on a tone more apparent than in Pleasence's unthreatening, almost comic-relief secondary bad guy, complete with his silly name and a set of ludicrous fake teeth to make him even more buffoonish. No politically-charged Vietnam-era allegory that features gang rape, breast mutilation, realistic scalpings, copious amounts of horse-tripping, and children being decapitated, impaled, and trampled as buckets of blood splash across the screen in one stomach-turning shot after another should include a total goofball character named "Isaac Q. Cumber."
It would appear that Lionsgate/Grindstone's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series has come to an end, as what would logically be the latest installment is instead being distributed by the lowly Vertical Entertainment. Sure, maybe Emmett/Furla Films' distribution deal was up, but I'm willing to bet that Lionsgate watched HARD KILL and decided that even with COVID-19 production shutdowns, they weren't this desperate for product. It's hard to believe Willis has been doing these VOD/DTV walk-throughs for a decade now (there's almost 20 of them so far, with more on the way), and the bottom-scraping HARD KILL is by far the worst of the bunch. Teaming for a third consecutive time with regressing director Matt Eskandari after TRAUMA CENTER and SURVIVE THE NIGHT, Willis once again does the bare minimum in HARD KILL, spending most of his screen time alone in a safe room, until his ubiquitous double sneaks out, gets caught, then Willis spends the rest of the film zip-tied to a chair, grimacing at either the sounds of a shootout or wondering exactly how he--Willis, not the character--ended up here. To call the plot threadbare would be overselling it, but Willis is Dayton Chalmers, the CEO of the tech behemoth Chapterhouse. His daughter Dr. Ava Chalmers (Lala Kent) has created a potentially dangerous AI program known as "Project 725," which has vaguely-defined destructive powers if it ends up in the wrong hands. That's exactly what happens when the easily-manipulated Ava falls in with "The Pardoner" (Sergio Rizzuto), an international terrorist who wants to use Project 725 to burn down the global economy. Enter PTSD-stricken Black Ops military contractor Miller (Jesse Metcalfe), who brings along his crew--Dash (Swen Temmel), Sasha (WWE star Natalie Eva Marie), and her brother Harrison (Jon Galanis)--at the suggestion of Chalmer's security chief Fox (Texas Battle), and sets up shop in an abandoned warehouse where The Pardoner is supposed to bring the kidnapped Ava in exchange for Project 725's fail-safe access code. Naturally, it's personal for Miller, who was nearly killed during a past encounter with The Pardoner, exposition conveyed in the most leaden way possible ("He put a bullet in my back...and I still have the scars to prove it").
Even the most generic action movies usually have to work their way up to the climactic showdown at the abandoned warehouse, but HARD KILL--on Blu-ray and DVD four days after bowing at a handful of drive-ins and theaters--spends about 95% of its duration there. That leaves everyone little to do but walk around and yell in between periodic shootouts where The Pardoner's seemingly unlimited supply of faceless, black-helmeted goons run in only to be immediately killed by Miller and his team. HARD KILL is so uninspired that it's the second one of these VOD-era Willis titles--after 2015's EXTRACTION--where he spends most of the movie tied to a chair. And EXTRACTION almost looks like DIE HARD compared to HARD KILL, which is positively Albert Pyun-esque with the way everyone just wanders around the abandoned warehouse to pad the running time, with Eskandari not even remotely interested in conveying the layout or where anyone or anything is in relation to anything else. Willis is visibly bored beyond belief, and he's almost got some competition in the coasting department from Battle, whose character gets shot early and spends the rest of the movie sitting on a table. Kent, Temmel, and Rizzuto appear to be trying to one-up each other to see who can give the worst performance, but I'm calling it for Rizzuto, who gets one of those long bad guy speeches that starts with "You know why they call me 'The Pardoner?'" and proceeds to invoke "The Pardoner's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. Shot in the Cincinnati area and boasting a ludicrous 31 credited producers, HARD KILL is depressingly bad. It's Seagal bad. There is absolutely nothing here. And worst of all, it's insanely boring, lethargically-paced with no sense of urgency to the proceedings, no suspense given the high stakes, and no effort on the part of the cast to convincingly sell any of it, with Rizzuto about as plausible a feared international terrorist as VANDERPUMP RULES' Kent is as a scientific genius who invents a game-changing AI program. Willis' mumbling sleepwalk of a performance is the least of HARD KILL's problems, and in all seriousness, is he OK? Willis has never been particularly good at hiding his disinterest in a project, but in these last few VOD outings, he's talking slower, he moves gingerly--something seems off in a 1945-1946 Curly Howard way and it's getting noticeable to the point where roasting him really doesn't feel right. (R, 98 mins)
THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY (UK/US/Italy/Canada - 2020)
A low-key thriller set in the art world that manages to keep your interest while not quite working to its full potential, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY is based on a 1971 novel by Charles Willeford, best known for his series of Hoke Moseley detective thrillers that inspired the 1990 cult classic MIAMI BLUES. The script is written by Scott B. Smith, who earned an Oscar nomination for adapting his own novel A Simple Plan into a film for Sam Raimi back in 1998, and to that end, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY is in that same wheelhouse with a seemingly easy, simple act that snowballs into something out of control, but the stakes never quite resonate and the forward momentum is lacking, even when things really start to go south. Some of that might be due to the Merchant-Ivory pacing, some of it to Scott and THE DOUBLE HOUR director Giuseppe Capotondo's many deviations from the novel, which was set in the noir hotbed of Florida, while the more TALENTED MR. RIPLEY-esque film moves to lush areas of Italy. But much of the sense of inertia that permeates the proceedings can be laid on the shoulders of the bland Claes Bang, the Danish star of Ruben Ostlund's wildly overrated THE SQUARE and the extremely divisive Netflix miniseries DRACULA. Purveyors of international art cinema keeps trying to make Bang happen, but beyond his awesome name, there's just not much movie star charisma or screen presence there.
Bang is James Figueras, a pill-popping Milan-based art critic and arrogant bullshit artist who hooks up with American Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki) after one of his museum lectures. She accompanies him to an already-planned weekend visit to the Lake Como summer estate of obscenely wealthy art collector Joseph Cassidy (a grinning, reptilian Mick Jagger, in his first acting role since 2002's THE MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELDS). Cassidy offers Figueras an exclusive once thought unimaginable: an interview with reclusive artist Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland), who's been off the grid for the last 50 years, after all of his work was destroyed in a fire. Debney is living in a cottage on the Cassidy estate, but won't sell or allow anyone to even see his paintings, not even Cassidy, whose offer to Figueras is two-fold: he also wants a Debney for his collection and more or less encourages Figueras to do whatever is necessary to procure it. Smith and Capotondi indulge in some caustic commentary on the general idea of critics as being pompously full of shit at best and utterly immoral at worst, which gives you an idea of the places a corrupt bastard like Figueras is willing to go, especially being prodded by an almost Mephistophelian Cassidy. Jagger is well-cast, while Sutherland (also in Giuseppe Tornatore's somewhat similar Italy-set art forgery drama THE BEST OFFER back in 2014) deploys some inconsistent Southern drawl that's just distracting, and Debicki creates an interesting character that the film doesn't always successfully utilize. All these shortcomings manage to dissipate in a terrific finale that's almost enough to trick you into thinking the rest of the movie was just as good. Even with the void at the center that is Claes Bang, there's still enough to appreciate that it warrants a look, especially for Jagger completists and fans of the promising Debicki (WIDOWS and Christopher Nolan's COVID-19-delayed TENET). Speaking of the pandemic, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY was yet another coronavirus casualty, its limited release stalled after its second week in March and its April expansion nixed when US theaters were closed. Sony Pictures Classics very quietly relaunched it in early August just a couple of weeks before its Blu-ray/DVD street date. (R, 98 mins)
DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR (US - 1987) Directed by Terry J. Leonard. Written by John Gatliff and Lawrence Kubik. Cast: Fred Dryer, Brian Keith, Joanna Pacula, Paul Winfield, Mohamad Bakri, Kasey Walker, Joey Gian, Peter Parros, Sasha Mitchell, Rockne Tarkington, Tuvia Tavi, Yossi Ashdot, Jullianno Merr, Dan Chodos, Haim Geraffi. (R, 95 mins) "Go home, Sergeant. Bury your dead and go home. This isn't your war."
"It is now."
Released in the spring of 1987, DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR was New World's attempt to get a piece of the Reagan Era's "America! Fuck yeah!" flag-waving counterterrorism action so jingoistic that it made THE DELTA FORCE look like a Costa-Gavras film. One of the most Cannon-esque '80s actioners that Cannon somehow didn't make, DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR was the lone big screen starring vehicle for former New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams defensive end Fred Dryer, then in the midst of a successful run as the title character on the NBC cop show HUNTER. A 13-season NFL vet who remains the only player to score two safeties in one game, Dryer was 34 when he retired from football in 1981 and, like many of his contemporaries inspired by the likes of Jim Brown and Fred Williamson some years earlier (Joe Namath, O.J. Simpson, Alex Karras, Dick Butkus, Bubba Smith, etc), parlayed that gridiron success into an acting career. He nabbed some supporting role in a few TV-movies and in 1982, was almost cast as Sam Malone on CHEERS before Ted Danson ultimately won the role (Dryer did appear in several episodes as one of Sam's buddies from his baseball days). But it was HUNTER that proved to be his breakout acting gig, with Dryer perfectly cast as a tough, plays-by-his-own-rules cop with the obligatory DIRTY HARRY-inspired catchphrase ("Works for me!"). DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR was developed specifically for Dryer by his HUNTER producer Lawrence Kubik, but despite the show's popularity during this period, the audience didn't follow Dryer to the multiplex. The film opened in seventh place and was out of the top ten its second week.
Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR proved a durable video store and cable favorite in the late '80s, but amidst the RAMBO and Chuck Norris movies that came out around the same time, it's more or less fallen through the cracks over time. Dryer relies a lot on his HUNTER persona as Gunnery Sgt. Jack Burns, a hardass Marine who's tough with those under his command but also doesn't shy away from occasional camaraderie and goofing off. He's all business when base commander--and his dad's Korean War buddy--Col. Halloran (Brian Keith) is dispatched as a defense attache to the fictional Middle Eastern country of Jemal (the film was shot in Israel), which the US government has been arming in their fight against terrorist insurgents. Burns and some of his men are sent along as Halloran's security detail, and Burns immediately ruffles some feathers and almost causes an international incident when he intervenes in a weapons hijacking by Arab insurgents led by the nefarious and not-very-subtly-named Jihad (Rockne Tarkington) and his associates Gavril (Mohamad Bakri) and Maude Winter (Kasey Walker, Kubik's wife at the time), a pair of international terrorists-for-hire. Burns blows up one of their getaway Jeeps with a rocket launcher, killing several Jihad followers, prompting spineless US Ambassador to Jemal Virgil Morgan (Paul Winfield) to order him to stand down. Of course, Jihad wants revenge for his murdered men, so he orchestrates the kidnapping of Halloran and his driver Sgt. Ramirez (Joey Gian) hostage, demanding the release of his imprisoned comrades in exchange.
Needless to say, Burns has neither the time nor the patience for Morgan's dithering brand of diplomacy--especially after the US embassy in Jemal is destroyed in a suicide bombing--and he becomes a virtual one-man Delta Force in his pursuit of Jihad, Gavril, and Maude. Caught in the middle is Elli Bauman (Joanna Pacula), an embedded Israeli photojournalist who's caused some controversy for her stance as a Jihad sympathizer, but has information that Burns needs. The lone directing effort to date for veteran stuntman and stunt coordinator Terry J. Leonard (still active in the industry today at 79, and whose plethora of credits date back to the 1963 John Wayne western MCLINTOCK!), DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR doesn't disappoint in the action and explosion department, and even more so than most similar Cannon titles of the time, the violence is pretty over-the-top, whether it's a shot of splattered chunks of brain sliding down a wall, or Jihad's men taking a large power drill to Halloran's left hand. The politics are such that Dryer makes Chuck Norris look like Bernie Sanders, and the casting of blaxploitation actor Tarkington (BLACK SAMSON) as an Arab terrorist and TV character actor Dan Chodos (who played a few different bit characters on HUNTER) in brownface as a would-be despot named "Amin" are decisions that have "canceled" written all over them. But DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR is a product of another time, and taken on its own terms as a brain-dead, flag-draped '80s action movie, it's entertaining enough that it's a surprise Dryer didn't at least have a career as a lead in the world of straight-to-video.
HUNTER ended up running several more seasons before its cancellation in 1991. In 1995, Dryer starred as a cop-turned-private eye in the one-season syndicated series LAND'S END before concentrating on TV guest spots, TV movies, and an occasional supporting role in a DTV outing, like 1999's Roger Corman-produced actioner STRAY BULLET or 2000's Playboy-produced erotic thriller WARM TEXAS RAIN. HUNTER remained popular in syndication and NBC ended up doing a pair of reunion movies with Dryer and co-star Stepfanie Kramer in 2002 and 2003. That led to a 2003 revival of HUNTER--a good decade before the "TV series reboot" became a trendy thing--but lightning didn't strike twice and it was a ratings disaster, prompting NBC to pull the plug after just three episodes. Now 74, Dryer is a frequent guest on sports talk radio, particularly in the L.A. area where he remains an NFL legend, and as an outspoken conservative, he made the rounds on Fox News during the Colin Kaepernick controversy. He's still an occasional presence on TV, with guest spots on shows like AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. and NCIS, and was most recently seen on the big screen in a supporting role in the 2018 TRANSFORMERS spinoff BUMBLEBEE.
DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR opening in Toledo, OH on 3/13/1987
THE CALLER (US - 1989) Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman. Written by Michael Sloan. Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Madolyn Smith. (R, 97 mins)
An Empire Pictures production that really only turns into something recognizably "Empire Pictures" in its last ten minutes, THE CALLER is a bizarre oddity that connoisseurs of '80s cult movies have pretty much kept to themselves. A dialogue-heavy two-hander mostly confined to a single set except for a couple of exteriors and one brief drive down a mountain road, THE CALLER was written by Michael Sloan, best known as the creator of the acclaimed 1980s CBS series THE EQUALIZER. In its style and structure, it plays a lot like a TV-movie, not surprising given that journeyman director Arthur Allan Seidelman has spent most of his long career as a small-screen hired gun (though he did helm Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1970 debut HERCULES IN NEW YORK). Shot in Rome at Empire's Italian studio, THE CALLER opens with an exterior supermarket parking lot set so blatantly phony that you might be inclined to think it's some Italian production design team's idea of a "normal American parking lot." Whether that's a happy accident that's taking advantage of an existing set is up for debate, but the artifice in these early scenes of THE CALLER is so pronounced that it creates such a sense of disconnect from reality that, eventually, it's quite clear that it's by design. That also extends to the staginess of the entire project, set almost entirely in a remote cabin that seems designed more for a Country Living photo spread than a place where one might actually live. An unnamed woman (Madolyn Smith) returns home from shopping after finding an abandoned car in the forest around her home. She appears to live alone, but there are framed photos all over the house indicating that she has (or had) a husband and a daughter who are presently nowhere to be found.
After a bizarre phone conversation with her daughter ("It's gonna be really fine...this time. You'll see. You're gonna be proud of Mommy...what Mommy's going to do!"), there's a knock on the door. The caller is a stranger (Malcolm McDowell) who's been following her since she was out shopping. He says his car broke down and he needs to call for a tow. The tone of their subsequent conversation indicates that they may or may not already know each other or at least he knows about her. They feel one another out in ways that are alternately friendly, flirtatious, interrogating, accusatory, and cruel. He wants to know where her husband and daughter are. He suspects she may have killed at least the husband. She accuses him of acting like characters in cliched TV cop shows. Whenever she gets the upper-hand in a line of questioning, he says "A point for you." They're playing head games with one another, but that doesn't explain what appears to be blood seeping from the bottom of a cake box from her shopping trip, or the discovery of a doll hanging from a noose in a locked closet, with each accusing the other of putting it there.
Mind you, this synopsis makes just as much sense watching it play out as it does reading it. The artifice of the production design, along with the jarring tonal shifts, and the stilted acting, particularly by Smith, combine for a frequently off-putting effect but rest assured, it's all intentional. Things don't become any clearer after a fade to black around the midpoint, followed by the two of them crossing paths once again the next morning in the supermarket parking lot, with McDowell suddenly dressed like he just blew through a gift card from Bass Pro Shops. And there's never anyone else around (she stops at a gas station in the beginning of the film and leaves money on the pump when she can't find an attendant). Given Sloan's roots in television (he also created the short-lived Lee Van Cleef NBC ninja series THE MASTER), THE CALLER feels an awful lot like it should've been an episode of the '80s TWILIGHT ZONE revival, especially with what transpires in the absolutely bonkers climax. There's a good idea here, but it's a 30-to-45-minute TV episode idea that just becomes repetitive and tiresome as a feature-length film. That is, until it goes completely berserk in the last ten minutes. Given how it pans out, THE CALLER, just out on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome (because physical media is dead), might be a rare example of a twist-ending film that plays better on a second viewing, when you know how it ends and can watch for all the hints along the way. Smith's mannered, erratic performance certainly makes a lot more sense once you know the big reveal. The film itself still may not make much sense by the end, and its an extremely laborious set-up getting there, but you can't help but admire its go-for-broke audacity and its off-the-charts WTF? factor. THE CALLER was shot in late 1986, but aside from a 1987 Cannes screening and another festival in Italy that summer, its release was stalled by Empire's financial troubles and eventual bankruptcy prior to its 1989 rebirth as Full Moon Entertainment. They sold a number of titles to various other distributors, and THE CALLER ended up with Trans World Entertainment, who gave it a belated straight-to-video at the tail end of 1989.
If VALLEY OF THE GODS wasn't so incredibly dull, it would be the must-see, instant classic Batshit Cinema event of 2020. As it is, it's so ponderous and heavy-handed that it ends up being a virtual arthouse parody. Given a stealth DTV/VOD release in the US after nearly four years (!) on the shelf, VALLEY OF THE GODS was written and directed by Polish auteur Lech Majewski (THE MILL & THE CROSS), who fashions it an utterly impenetrable hodgepodge of Navajo mythology, midlife crisis melodrama, existential L.A. ennui, sociopolitical/environmental treatise, and surrealistic bullshit all rolled into one self-indulgent fiasco. The best thing that can be said about it is that the cinematography in and around the title Utah region is beautifully shot and these sections of the film would've been breathtaking on a big screen. But the downside is that is you have to endure the rest of it. After his wife (Jaime Ray Newman) leaves him for her hang-gliding instructor, Los Angeles-based would-be novelist John Ecas (Josh Hartnett) walks away from his industrial marketing job and, at the suggestion of his therapist (John Rhys-Davies), tries various methods of finding inner peace. This includes walking down a busy street backwards while blindfolded, and then gathering all of his pots and pans, tying them to his ankles, and climbing a mountain. He heads out to Monument Valley where he unloads an old wooden desk out of the back of his SUV and, in the middle of the desert, begins to write his Great American Novel longhand with a fountain pen. Meanwhile, Navajo tribes in the area are rising up in protest against the purchase of the Valley of the Gods by Tauros Engineering, a nefarious corporation with plans to drill for uranium in this sacred area. Tauros was also John's employer, and the company is owned by Wes Tauros (John Malkovich), the world's richest man, and an enigmatic, Howard Hughes-like trillionaire who lives in a castle atop a mountain that's accessible by an elevator in a secret passageway in a brick building at its base.
Sound a little strange? That's only the beginning, because it's about to get really fucked-up. One of the Navajo locals climbs to the top of a mountain and has sex with a rock formation, which later, after a torrential downpour, spawns a child with a firehose-length umbilical cord connected to the rock. Tauros frequently sneaks out of his mansion and wanders the streets of L.A., pretending to be homeless because it's the only way he feels alive. John sets his SUV ablaze after receiving a divorce petition from his wife via a fax machine in his glove compartment. He's also invited to meet with Tauros at his mountaintop compound, where he's greeted by loyal Alfred-esque butler Ulin (Keir Dullea sighting!), who's introduced delivering a monologue about Elvis' fat years as they stroll through a courtyard filled with statues of "Tauros' friends." A financially-strapped mother (Berenice Marlohe) arrives in a CGI stretch limo the length of a train that snakes along mountain roads, and is given a makeover to resemble Tauros' dead wife, after which she has sex with him while Ulin stays in the room and watches (she also wears a ring with her son's extracted kidney stone in place of a diamond). Tauros invites a ton of guests to a formal gathering where he drives a Rolls Royce onto a giant catapult and sends it flying off the mountain. The guests are actually prisoners kept in cells and cages in a secret dungeon under the compound where Tauros has the power to turn them to stone if they're disobedient. Then Ulin oversees the mummification of Tauros, who's laid into a tomb and reborn as a giant, bare-assed kaiju-like rock-baby that stomps through downtown Los Angeles like an infant Malkozilla. Majewski borrows equal parts Wim Wenders, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Matthew Barney, and especially Stanley Kubrick with the castle's ornate interiors (the presence of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY's Dullea is an obvious nod, plus longtime Kubrick inner-circler Jan Harlan is one of a couple dozen producers), but VALLEY OF THE GODS is almost nonstop nonsense, executed in such a monotonous, molasses-paced way that it's never as bizarrely entertaining as a summary makes it sound. For what it's worth, Majewski made exactly the movie he wanted to make, though I'm not sure it's for anyone but himself. It might make a great midnight movie if anyone can stay awake before it boards the crazy train. (Unrated, 127 mins) EMPEROR (US - 2020)
Arriving as a DTV/VOD title after the pandemic canceled its planned April theatrical release, EMPEROR ends up getting pretty much the gala premiere it deserves. The directing debut of veteran B-movie producer Mark Amin, whose name was on a ton of straight-to-video Vidmark/Trimark titles throughout the '90s and into the early '00s, EMPEROR is a simplistic biopic of Shields "Emperor" Green, a runaway slave who became a key figure in abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859. Little is known about Green's life prior to his association with Brown, so EMPEROR feels free to take some significant dramatic license, citing it as being "based on a true legend." The film opens with the birth of Green and the supposition that he descended from African royalty, with his mother declaring "Your grandpa was a king, and you will be...an emperor!" Before you can even finish rolling your eyes, EMPEROR jumps ahead to 1859 Charleston, with Green (Dayo Okeniyi), affectionately called "Emperor" by his fellow slaves and a figure of some respect on a plantation owned by the kindly but heavy-drinking and financially hapless Duvane Henderson (comedian/podcaster Paul Scheer, in stunt casting that's almost as distracting as his combover wig/cap). Henderson loses the plantation to evil Randolph Stevens (M.C. Gainey) in a card game, and with his crew of brutal overseers, Stevens makes it clear to Emperor and the others that things are gonna change. When his young son Tommy (Trayce Malachi) is whipped for having the audacity to know how to read, Emperor snaps and kills three of Stevens' guys, and in their attempt to escape, Emperor's wife Sarah (Naturi Naughton) is shot dead.
Now a fugitive, Emperor becomes a folk hero as he makes his way along the Underground Railroad, encountering a seemingly kind but treacherous slave (Mykelti Williamson) who tries to turn him in to buy his own freedom, as well as affable white bank robber (Keean Johnson). In hot pursuit is ruthless bounty hunter Luke McCabe (Ben Robson) as EMPEROR basically becomes a pre-Civil War version of THE FUGITIVE before he crosses paths with Brown (James Cromwell), Frederick Douglass (Harry Lennix), and Robert E. Lee (James LeGros). The dialogue is as leaden as can be, with someone telling Emperor "You're not just a runaway slave anymore...you're a symbol!" and a wide-eyed Emperor asking Brown "Is that who I think it is?" as Brown replies "That's right, son...that's Frederick Douglass." Nigerian actor Okeniyi (whose credits include small roles in THE HUNGER GAMES and TERMINATOR: GENYSIS and was one of the corrupt crew of cops on the Jennifer Lopez/Ray Liotta NBC series SHADES OF BLUE) turns in a strong performance and gives the flimsy material a lot more gravity than it deserves, but even he can't overcome an inane finale that finds Emperor outrunning a CGI explosion that looks like something out of an Asylum ripoff of 12 YEARS A SLAVE. He gets solid support from the always-excellent Cromwell and Bruce Dern, who's upstaged by a hilariously terrible wig but nonetheless sympathetic as Levi Coffin, an ally along the Underground Railroad. (PG-13, 99 mins)
ALPHABET CITY (US - 1984) Directed by Amos Poe. Written by Gregory K. Heller, Amos Poe and Robert Seidman. Cast: Vincent Spano, Michael Winslow, Kate Vernon, Jami Gertz, Zohra Lampert, Ray Serra, Kenny Marino, Daniel Jordano, Tom Mardirosian, Tom Wright, Clifton Powell, Martine Malle, Harry Madsen, Alex Stevens, Christina Marie Denihan. (R, 85 mins) One of the more mainstream offerings in the short-lived "No Wave Cinema" movement that began in the Lower East Side and the East Village in the late '70s, ALPHABET CITY didn't really make a dent outside of NYC when Atlantic released it in theaters over the spring and summer of 1984, but its location shooting in parts of the city that no longer exist make it a vital snapshot of a bygone era. That's the primary reason for its current rebirth as a cult movie, and its standing as the inaugural Blu-ray release of the new Vinegar Syndrome offshoot Fun City Editions, because physical media is dead. Having first received attention in the scene with the 1976 punk chronicle THE BLANK GENERATION, ALPHABET CITY director/co-writer Amos Poe was one of the key figures in No Wave, along with Beth B (VORTEX), Susan Seidelman (SMITHEREENS), Lizzie Borden (BORN IN FLAMES), Eric Mitchell (UNDERGROUND U.S.A.), and Kathryn Bigelow (THE LOVELESS). Seidelman and Bigelow went on to successful mainstream careers, while filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Tom DiCillo and actors such as Willem Dafoe, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Buscemi, and Vincent Gallo also had connections to No Wave in their early days.
The most famous film associated with the No Wave Cinema is arguably Slava Tsukerman's 1983 cult classic LIQUID SKY, but by the time ALPHABET CITY came out, the movement was winding down and its major players were either gravitating toward art and music or, in the case of Seidelman with DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, opting to play the Hollywood game. With ALPHABET CITY, Poe has one foot in the mainstream and the other in the East Village, and the end result has the gritty immediacy of early Abel Ferrara while perhaps somewhat lacking when it comes to a momentum-driven narrative, which is at odds with the urgency of its antihero's predicament. On the cusp of becoming a Next Big Thing after RUMBLE FISH and BABY, IT'S YOU, Vincent Spano stars as Johnny, a successful young drug dealer given control of his Alphabet City neighborhood by powerful crime boss Gino (Ray Serra). Only just out of his teens but wielding much respect and power, Johnny has it made, driving a flashy Firebird (personalized license plate: "CHUNGA"), and living in a spacious loft with his artist fiancee Angie (Kate Vernon) and their infant daughter. But he's secretly been plotting a way out, and that time comes when Gino orders him to torch a dilapidated tenement to clear the way for some lucrative real-estate deals. It happens to be the tenement where he grew up and where his mother (Zohra Lampert) and would-be high-class call girl sister Sophia (Jami Gertz) still live. He can't talk them into leaving, so he spends the night cruising around the neighborhood tying up all loose business ends before taking his cash, his car, and Angie and the baby and disappearing. But Gino has eyes and ears all over the East Village and making a clean getaway won't be easy.
Essentially a "survive the night" scenario, ALPHABET CITY is curiously meandering once the plot is set in motion. Poe doesn't really establish much in the way of suspense, but where the film excels in the way it nails the sights and sounds of the East Village in 1984. It's a highly-stylized look with an unmistakable music video aesthetic--one almost has to think that the GOOD TIME and UNCUT GEMS directing team of the Safdie Brothers are fans--with rain-slicked streets, neon, garish lighting and colorgasms out of a Mario Bava film, shadows, tunnels, and Dutch angles inspired by THE THIRD MAN, and much of the action taking place in some dangerously seedy parts of Alphabet City. One standout is a long sequence in a vacant, bombed-out tenement that's been turned into a drug den overseen by Johnny and his right-hand man Lippy (POLICE ACADEMY's Michael Winslow) who, unlike the all-business Johnny, has spent too much time getting high on their own supply. Poe shot the film with a small crew over 24 nights (Spano is interviewed on the Blu-ray, and mentions lunch was at 2:00 am), and it vividly captures the time and the place, whether it's the fashions, the soundtrack by Nile Rodgers, some guys breakdancing outside of a nightclub, or even a Menudo bumper sticker plastered on a wall (Paul Morrissey's 1985 film MIXED BLOOD, another crime thriller set and shot in and around Alphabet City, would prominently feature a bloody shootout in Menuditis, the official Menudo store).
Poe also captures the mood of the period in real time, showing how the writing was already on the wall with gentrification, or the way that AIDS--not mentioned by name--was wreaking havoc, with Johnny admonishing Sophia to find another line of work because "too many girls are getting sick." Never mind that his own shooting gallery is filled with hopeless addicts and shared needles, with one well-dressed guy forced to show his track marks at the entrance to prove he isn't a narc. To that end, ALPHABET CITY, for all its narrative wishy-washiness and genre cliches (of course, his embittered mother knows what he does for a living and refuses any of his "dirty money"), remains a fascinating time capsule. Poe went on to a brief career directing music videos, most notably Animotion's "Obsession," Run-D.M.C.'s "You Talk Too Much," and Anthrax's "Madhouse." An odd outlier in his filmography came when he scripted the 1988 family drama ROCKET GIBRALTAR, starring Burt Lancaster in one of his last films and Macaulay Culkin in his first. Poe also gave Philip Seymour Hoffman his first movie role in his 1992 indie TRIPLE BOGEY ON A PAR FIVE HOLE. Other mainstream efforts include the 1995 Showtime sci-fi thriller DEAD WEEKEND and 1998's FROGS FOR SNAKES, but the now-71-year-old Poe's post-No Wave work has largely concentrated on documentaries and short films.
ALPHABET CITY opening in Toledo, OH on a busy 6/22/1984
BLUE MONKEY (Canada - 1987) Directed by William Fruet. Written by George Goldsmith. Cast: Steve Railsback, Gwynyth Walsh, John Vernon, Susan Anspach, Joe Flaherty, Robin Duke, Don Lake, Helen Hughes, Sandy Webster, Joy Coghill, Stuart Stone, Sarah Polley, Peter Van Wart, Cynthia Belliveau, Philip Akin, Dan Lett, Michael J. Reynolds, Ivan E. Roth. (R, 96 mins) A cult classic due almost entirely to its ridiculous title, 1987's BLUE MONKEY is a low-budget Canadian monster movie that's a blatant response to the previous year's box-office smash ALIENS and, to a lesser extent, David Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY. A staple of any self-respecting video store back in the day, BLUE MONKEY has been MIA in the modern era but has just resurfaced on Blu-ray from Code Red offshoot Dark Force (the print used has the alternate title INSECT), because physical media is dead. It's moderately entertaining trash if approached with realistic expectations, with plenty of slime, ooze, and general grossness to go along with some generally well-done practical creature FX. It's got an eclectic mix of American and Canadian faces and an energetic score by Patrick Coleman and Paul Novotny that would be right at home in something from Empire Pictures. And it boasts a fine cult B-movie pedigree with a script by FORCE: FIVE and CHILDREN OF THE CORN screenwriter George Goldsmith and reliable Canuxploitation director William Fruet (THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, FUNERAL HOME, SPASMS, BEDROOM EYES) at the helm, guided by executive producer Sandy Howard, a noted purveyor of '80s exploitation who bankrolled hits like VICE SQUAD and ANGEL.
Released in the fall of 1987 by the short-lived Spectrafilm, BLUE MONKEY opens with elderly handyman Fred (Sandy Webster) flirting with sweet old Marwella (Helen Hughes) before being bitten by an insect hiding in one of her plants. He's rushed to the local hospital where he loses consciousness just as a worm-like parasite slithers out of his mouth. At the same time, intense, on-the-edge cop Bishop (intense, on-the-edge Steve Railsback) arrives with his partner (Peter Van Wart), who's just been shot during a stakeout. Soon, the paramedics who brought in Fred fall ill and the parasite is moved to a lab while the ER's Dr. Carson (Gwynyth Walsh) and Dr. Glass (Susan Anspach) wait for the arrival of renowned entomologist Dr. Jacobs (Don Lake). When horny nurse Alice (Cynthia Belliveau) is left in charge of watching the secured parasite but sneaks off with douchebag orderly Ted (Dan Lett), a quartet of adorable ragamuffins from the pediatric ward (including an eight-year-old Sarah Polley in one of her earliest credits) sneak into the lab and pour a chemical on the parasite that causes it to grow and mutate, escaping from the lab and hiding in the basement boiler room. With the parasitic virus infecting the hospital, the health department orders the entire building closed and the people in it quarantined, much to the chagrin of bloviating hospital director Levering (John Vernon, cast radically against type as "John Vernon"). This also makes for a long night, as the growing and rapidly spawning, hermaphrodite creature (played by Ivan E. Roth) periodically pops up to snatch victims to use as incubators for its asexually-produced eggs, with Jacobs predicting there could be an untold number of these creatures in the hospital by morning.
Originally set to be released as GREEN MONKEY, as if that makes a difference, BLUE MONKEY has an OK set-up and third act, but the midsection is filled with an awful lot of ass-dragging, with people endlessly wandering around dark corridors or heading to the boiler room to watch the creature lay its eggs. The kids run around the hospital and cause trouble, and unfunny comic relief is provided by usually reliable SCTV stars Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke (also an SNL vet) as the Bakers, dorky expectant parents who show up to deliver the baby even though she isn't in labor yet, but obnoxious Mr. Baker's scientific calculations have determined that today is the day. Anspach's promising early '70s career (FIVE EASY PIECES, BLUME IN LOVE) had pretty much flamed out by the time she was turning up in stuff like BLUE MONKEY, and neither she nor Vernon have very much to do as both vanish for long stretches, perhaps pleading with their respective agents to get them some more reputable gigs.
Railsback is typically Railsbackian, a quirky actor who was briefly the Nicolas Cage of his day after his mesmerizing performance as Charles Manson in the hugely popular 1976 CBS miniseries HELTER SKELTER. That led to the title role opposite Peter O'Toole in 1980's highly-acclaimed, Oscar-nominated THE STUNT MAN, but beyond that, 1980s Hollywood never really could figure out what to do with him. Railsback was a promising actor who just came off as too twitchy and weird to make it as an A-list leading man, like a Christopher Walken or a Jeff Goldblum minus the eccentric sense of humor and the winking self-awareness. Even when he's playing the hero in BLUE MONKEY, he manages to look like a creep in physical pain when he's goofing off with the kids. Railsback had a long run in cult movies throughout the '80s--Brian Trenchard-Smith's ESCAPE 2000 and Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE being the standouts--and he did manage one more critically-acclaimed performance in the 1985 cocaine addiction drama TORCHLIGHT, but by 1987, BLUE MONKEY was typical of the kind of B-movie and straight-to-video gigs he was getting. In the '90s, he would occasionally land supporting roles in major releases like IN THE LINE OF FIRE, BARB WIRE, and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, and managed to channel some of that Manson insanity when he landed the title role in the barely-released 2001 indie ED GEIN. Now 74, Railsback works much less frequently these days, most recently appearing in an apparently unreleased 2019 horror movie called IT WANTS BLOOD! with such convention luminaries as Eric Roberts, Felissa Rose, Ola Ray, Tuesday Knight, and Brinke Stevens.
PROJECT POWER (US - 2020) Directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman. Written by Mattson Tomlin. Cast: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dominique Fishback, Rodrigo Santoro, Courtney B. Vance, Amy Landecker, Colson Baker, Allen Maldonado, Tait Fletcher, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Kyanna Simpson, CJ LeBlanc, Jazzy De Lisser, Corey DeMeyers, Casey Neistat. (R, 112 mins) If you can imagine Michael Mann directing a hard-R comic book movie, you'll have some idea what to expect with at least the visual and stylistic elements of the Netflix Original film PROJECT POWER. Scripted by Mattson Tomlin (also a co-writer of the forthcoming THE BATMAN) and directed by the "Henry & Rel" team of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, best known for the documentary CATFISH and the third and fourth PARANORMAL ACTIVITY entries (they're the ones behind that memorable "fan cam" in the third one), PROJECT POWER scratches that big-budget, VFX-driven summer blockbuster itch that we've been deprived of on the big screen and likewise, its story doesn't hold up under much scrutiny.
New Orleans is the epicenter of a new drug epidemic in the form of Power, given out for free to the city's biggest dealers by severely-scarred criminal Biggie (Rodrigo Santoro). Six weeks later, the city is reeling over the effects of Power, which grants its users unlimited strength and superhuman capabilities in five minute bursts per dose. Everyone's reaction to Power is different--you might become impervious to bullets, you might be set ablaze like Ghost Rider, you might turn into a variation of The Incredible Hulk, it might give you the chameleon-like power of camouflage, or you might have a bad reaction and just melt or explode. Hard-nosed NOPD cop Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) plays by his own rules and goes out on his own sting operations with the help of informant and aspiring freestyle rapper Robin (THE DEUCE's Dominique Fishback), a high-school student who deals Power to pay for her mother's (Andrene Ward-Hammond) cancer treatments. Frank thinks New Orleans' criminal element will use Power to wipe out the cops, but his boss Capt. Crane's (Courtney B. Vance) hands are tied, since every time there's a major bust involving Power, government mystery men in suits and military vehicles show up to pull rank and cut the cops out of the equation.
Frank, Crane, and the government goons are all after "The Major" (Jamie Foxx), a fugitive vigilante who's just arrived in town to track down the source of Power. He immediately has a throwdown with high-on-his-own-supply Power dealer--and Robin's cousin--Newt (Hollywood still trying to make Colson "Machine Gun Kelly" Baker happen) that results in the dealer's explosive death. The cops are led to believe The Major is behind all the mayhem, but he's really after his daughter Tracy (Kyanna Simpson), who appears to have fallen victim to the Power epidemic and has disappeared. But there's more to the story, namely a government conspiracy involving a Tuskegee-type military experiment called "Teleios" that went south in a botched attempt to create the next stage in humanity's evolution. They've been unable to control the results and instead partnered with the criminal element to use the residents of New Orleans as lab rats. Eventually, The Major, Frank, and Robin will join forces, with a nefarious government agent (Amy Landecker) in hot pursuit, and it all ends up--where else?--at an industrial dockyard with cargo ships and stacks of shipping containers.
As far as high concepts go, PROJECT POWER has an intriguing one, but it's a concept that relies too heavily on plot convenience, as almost everyone who takes a dose of Power ends up having it provide exactly the kind of indestructibility they need at that moment (Frank secretly doses on it, and takes a pill right before he gets shot in the head and of course, the bullet leaves a mark but bounces right off of him). With a synth-driven score by Joseph Trapanese and its use of garish color schemes, PROJECT POWER is always fun to watch and it moves fast enough that you won't really question its flaws until it's over. But like Netflix's recent THE OLD GUARD, it's an assembly-line product that won't really stick with you afterward. Not that it really matters, but the closing credits containing a separate "additional photography" crew, cast members, and stunt personnel for just the shipyard climax could be an indication of some hasty eleventh-hour reshoots.
Whenever things are finally back to normal in terms of going to the movies, THE WRETCHED will have carved itself a unique spot in film history as the COVID-19 era's Little Movie That Could. With a diminishing number of drive-ins and only a handful of indie theaters open at the beginning of summer 2020, this micro-budget indie horror film shot in Northport, MI, about 40 miles north of Traverse City, became--even if almost entirely by default--the highest-grossing movie in America for six straight weeks, a feat that hadn't been achieved since AVATAR back in 2009. Its box-office take to date is a mere $3 million, which is pretty huge for something that cost only $66,000 to make. Of course, thanks to advances in technology, a regional horror flick today can look significantly more polished and professional than ones from back in the day, and THE WRETCHED establishes its low-budget fright flick bona fides not just by relying on lot of practical effects, but with the writing/directing team of The Pierce Brothers (Brett and Drew) having a direct link to a landmark in Michigan-based DIY horror: their dad Bart Pierce was part of the Sam Raimi/Robert Tapert/Bruce Campbell crew and was an effects technician on THE EVIL DEAD and EVIL DEAD II. Alas, beyond the novelty of its pandemic-abetted success, THE WRETCHED's comparisons to THE EVIL DEAD pretty much end there.
It gets off to an iffy start with a 1980s prologue featuring glimpses of an Etch-a-Sketch and a Rubik's Cube accompanied by a catchy synth-pop jam that serve to illustrate the continued IT-and-STRANGER THINGS-ificiation of modern horror, but it fortunately moves to the present day after the opening credits. Teenage Ben (John-Paul Howard) is spending the summer at a lakeside town with his dad Liam (Jamison Jones), who manages the local marina and puts him to work. Struggling with his parents' separation--and not pleased that his dad already has a girlfriend (Azie Tesfai)--Ben has a flirty rapport with co-worker Mallory (Piper Curda, a Disney TV vet who's the closest thing to a "name" here), but is distracted by some strange goings-on at the house next door. Through a convoluted chain of events, he becomes convinced that Abbie (Zarah Mahler) has been possessed by a witch--a "dark mother born from root, rock, and tree who feasts on the forgotten"--who gathers children and takes them into the woods to be sacrificed. The reason there isn't a panic and how this witch has gone undetected dating back to the '80s prologue? She has the ability to wipe her victims' existence from the memories of their loved ones. It's an interesting concept that the movie kinda bungles--when "Abbie"'s son becomes a victim and her husband (Kevin Bigley) no longer remembers him, that's all well and good, but Ben and Mallory still remember him and comment that he didn't show up a the marina to go paddle-boating. The Pierce Brothers have an obvious affection for '80s horror and throw in some visual shout-outs to THE SHINING and David Cronenberg's THE FLY, and they deserve some points for taking the '80s horror aesthetic and updating it to the present-day instead of crafting yet another snarky, reference-packed exercise in retro pop culture fetishism. Ben's inability to convince anyone that Abbie is a witch is a direct homage to FRIGHT NIGHT (and REAR WINDOW and, more recently, DISTURBIA), but the script's internal logic doesn't hold water, and the third act is curiously very sluggishly-paced when it should be kicking into high gear. The performances are better than expected for this sort of thing and there's a legitimately surprising twist late in the game. So to that extent, flaws and all, THE WRETCHED is slightly better than most of its ilk, and it's not hard to see how it managed to find an audience at the nostalgic comfort of drive-ins during These Uncertain Times™, but were it not for the unusual circumstances of American moviegoing in 2020, it probably would've debuted at your nearest Redbox with little notice. (Unrated, 95 mins)
ARCHIVE (UK/US/Hungary - 2020)
It's doubtful that the moody, melancholy hard sci-fi ARCHIVE would exist without EX MACHINA or, for that matter, the lesser-known THE MACHINE. It also owes a huge debt to a veritable inventory of influences but it manages to transcend its surface familiarities and genre cliches to become its own film thanks to some intelligent writing, surprising emotion, and top-notch production design. The feature debut of writer/director Gavin Rothery (who worked on the art department for MOON), ARCHIVE centers on scientist George Almore (Theo James of the DIVERGENT films), who's nearing the end of a three-year contract at a top-secret research facility in the remote mountains of Japan. He's been hired to develop an AI android program and is alone except for two prototypes named J1 and J2. The first experiment, J1 is a large robot that lumbers around, is silent except for a few sounds, and can perform simple tasks with strict supervision. J2 is a modified, smaller version of J1, more mobile and with the ability to speak and assist George with specific duties, and she's often left in charge of keeping an eye on the childlike J1. George is working on J3, a sleeker unit that almost resembles a human being. But he's distracted--not just by Simone (Rhona Mitra in a couple of Skyped-in or hologram appearances), the ballbusting corporate exec who keeps checking on him--but by the memory of Jules (Stacy Martin of Lars von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC), his late wife who was killed in a car accident shortly before he took the job in Japan. He's still able to connect with Jules via "Archive" an AI with an analog program that allows up to 200 hours of limited, low-tech interaction with the consciousness of a deceased loved one, and Jules periodically contacts him to let him know that she's OK.
Unbeknownst to Simone, George has been using his AI work with the J series androids to harness Jules' consciousness, creating a template from pattern recognition, with the intention of converting the analog signal to digital in order to store "Jules" into the updated and almost human-like J3 model. Each of the J androids houses different facets of Jules' personality, and while J1 isn't articulate enough to convey anything aside from grunts and sighs, it's J2 who begins to feel rejected by her creator, ultimately attempting to sabotage his work and destroy J3. ARCHIVE isn't trying to kid itself into believing it's not liberally borrowing from the likes of not just EX MACHINA, MOON, and the work of William Gibson, but also SOLARIS, SILENT RUNNING, and BLADE RUNNER. A big plus is that it's not content to merely go through the motions, finding its own place in the AI subgenre with complicated, conflicting emotions and some pretty heavy scenes involving the heartbroken J2, who's grown tired of being kept occupied with cartoons and kids video games. In the wrong hands, ARCHIVE could've easily veered into the realm of the unintentionally hilarious, but Rothery displays some remarkable confidence for a debuting filmmaker. He gets outstanding performances from a never-better James, as well as Martin--cast in three roles as Jules in flashbacks, the J3 model, and the voice of J2--plus a Tangerine Dream-ish score from GRAVITY Oscar-winner Steven Price, and he wraps it up with an ending that's either going to knock you on your ass or be a total deal-breaker (I'm in the former camp). This was supposed to be a big title at this year's canceled SXSW, so it ended up on VOD and in a handful of open theaters courtesy of the lowly Vertical Entertainment, who are to be commended for branching out beyond their usual DTV and Redbox swill and acquiring something that has A24 written all over it. ARCHIVE is a highly-recommended gem that will have a sizable cult following in no time at all. (Unrated, 109 mins)
