On Blu-ray/DVD: LET THE CORPSES TAN (2018), WHAT THEY HAD (2018), and GALVESTON (2018)

LET THE CORPSES TAN
(Belgium/France - 2017; US release 2018)

If Alejandro Jodorowsky followed up EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN with an Italian crime thriller in the mid-1970s, it would probably end up looking a lot like LET THE CORPSES TAN, the latest from the Belgium-based filmmaking duo of Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Much like their previous efforts, the giallo homages AMER and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, LET THE CORPSES TAN is a fetishistic rollercoaster ride of Eurocult worship, incorporating elements of poliziotteschi, spaghetti westerns, the work of French crime novelist and screenwriter Sebastien Japrisot (RIDER ON THE RAIN), and liberally borrowing soundtrack cues from 1971's tawdry ROAD TO SALINA as well as composers like Ennio Morricone and Nico Fidenco. Based on a 1971 novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, LET THE CORPSES TAN is riddled with bizarre, impenetrable, and hypnotic imagery but at the same time, it's the most narrative-driven of Cattet and Forzani's films thus far. The fusion of the wildly surreal and the rigidity of story structure don't always mesh, especially since the story is pretty much a standard-issue cops-and-robbers standoff on a sparsely-populated Mediterranean island getaway. The action centers on an isolated resort of adobe-style ruins run by misanthropic artist Madame Luce (Elina Lowensohn, who a brief moment in the '90s indie spotlight with Hal Hartley's AMATEUR and FLIRT and the title role in Michael Almereyda's NADJA). Among the guests are Max Bernier (Marc Barbe), a washed-up  writer, and Luce's sleazy attorney and occasional lover Brisorguiel (Michelangelo Marchese). There's also three criminals--Rhino (Stephane Ferrara), Gros (Bernie Bonvoisin, lead singer of the French metal band Trust, whose "Prefabricated" was on soundtrack for 1981's HEAVY METAL), and Alex (Pierre Nisse)--who sport Frankenstein masks as they pull off a gold heist from an armored car but get stopped by a trio of hitchhikers during their escape. The hitchhikers include a woman (Dorylia Calmel), who's just stolen her son (Bamba Forzani Ndiaye) from her ex-husband and escaped with him and his nanny (Marine Sainsily). As it turns out, they're all headed to Madame Luce's, as the criminals plan to use it as a safe house and the woman is tracking down her estranged second husband Bernier.

Things more volatile by the minute, especially once two cops (Herve Sogne, Dominique Troyes) happen by with news of the gold heist and an abducted child on the radio, completely unaware that they're about to walk into both situations at once. From then, it's a mix of violent shootouts and trippy imagery, with frequent cutaways to a nude woman looming over a miniature recreation of Luce's resort, populated by ants in an apparent homage to the opening scene of THE WILD BUNCH. There's more, from urination to champagne lactation to an overt reference to a really nasty moment in Andrea Bianchi's CRY OF A PROSTITUTE, and a foolhardy attempt by Brisorguiel to steal the gold and drive a wedge between Gros and his cohorts, and from a plot standpoint, there's little here that's going to surprise anyone, even with supernatural allusions regarding Madame Luce. There's still that sense of surreal delirium that's become synonymous with Cattet and Forzani, and they also use some impressive, rapid-fire editing techniques in conjunction with an occasionally non-linear time element that keeps bouncing back to show events from different perspectives. But by embracing both their style and attempting to stick to the structure required by a story and to do right by the novel, they're sometimes working at cross purposes. Cattet and Forzani are admittedly an acquired taste, but if you liked AMER and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, you'll generally like LET THE CORPSES TAN. The difference here is that you've got an abundance of plot and characters getting in the way of what this filmmaking team does best. (Unrated, 92 mins)




WHAT THEY HAD
(US/UK/Canada - 2018)

Whether it was a lack of confidence or cash flow, it's a shame that distributor Bleecker Street didn't treat WHAT THEY HAD a little better, stalling its release at just 53 screens for a gross of $260,000. Showcasing some of the best performances of 2018 that nobody saw, the film is a semi-autobiographical look at a family affected by Alzheimer's, written and directed by a debuting Elizabeth Chomko, a playwright and occasional actress who conceived the project as a tribute to her parents. Elderly Ruth (Blythe Danner) gets out of bed on Christmas Eve and wanders out into a Chicago snowstorm wearing only her robe and slippers. Her husband Burt (Robert Forster) wakes up to find her missing and the front door wide open. He places a frantic call to his son Nick (Michael Shannon), who lives nearby, and Nick calls his sister Bridget, or "Bitty" (Hilary Swank), who flies in from California with her teenage daughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga). By the time Bitty and Emma land, Ruth has been found, and it's just the latest incident in an ongoing and inevitable decline that's now a few years running and one that stubborn Burt refuses to see as a problem. Bullheaded and devoutly Catholic, he believes in taking care of his wife on his own ("In sickness and in health...that's the deal!") and has no patience for "teenage doctors" who don't know his wife as well as he does. Nick keeps unsuccessfully trying to convince Burt--who's 75, survived four heart attacks, and is clearly physically and emotionally exhausted from being a round-the-clock caregiver--that Ruth needs to be put in a nursing home, and he's hoping Bitty, who has power of attorney if their parents are incapacitated, will back him up.

As is the case in films like this, old wounds are reopened and the family gnaws on one another's nerves as only family can, but WHAT THEY HAD never panders and never goes the easy maudlin route. Having experienced Alzheimer's with her own mother, Chomko cuts through the bullshit and sugarcoats nothing, particularly in the script's many instances of dark humor, recognizing the ordeal as one of those situations where you frequently have to laugh to keep from crying. Danner plays Ruth with compassion and dignity, never overdoing it or going for cliched awards-bait moments, often speaking volumes just with a confused look on her face or a periodic flash of clarity (it's also heartbreaking to see Bitty's optimism when her mom sees her and excitedly says "Is that my baby?" only to soon realize Ruth says that to anyone younger than she is). Of course, those clear moments get increasingly rare as the story unfolds, and her family is forced to contend with embarrassing and uncomfortable incidents like Ruth in church flipping the bird to a fellow parishioner or drinking the Holy Water ("Well, at least she's hydrated," Nick deadpans), then hitting on Nick on the way home, completely unaware that he's her son. Bitty, presumably based on Chomko, has her own problems, namely an increasingly distant Emma and a stale marriage to Eddie (Josh Lucas), while abrasive Nick ("What are you, dead inside?" Emma asks, and he replies "Almost"), who resents his sister for living across the country and leaving him to deal with Burt and Ruth, has sunk his life savings into a bar and sleeps in its basement, seemingly never able to live up to his dad's standards (Shannon is terrific in a scene where he completely loses his composure and starts stammering when Burt keeps derisively calling him a "bartender"). But it's the great Forster who provides the rock-solid foundation of this ensemble with his best performance since JACKIE BROWN, making a complex character out of Burt that other films would just turn into a loud, Catholic blowhard. Even as he's laying down his "my way or the highway" stance on Ruth's care, Forster lets you see in his face that Burt is finding it increasingly difficult to keep believing his own excuses, but doing his best to ignore the fact that, despite his best intentions, he may be doing her more harm than good (also, nobody yells "What am I, some kinda horse's ass?!" quite like Robert Forster). He's a goddamn national treasure who, in a perfect world, would be a Best Supporting Actor Oscar front-runner right now, and it's unfortunate that this fine film completely fell through the cracks and was never given a chance by its distributor. (R, 101 mins)


GALVESTON
(US - 2018)

Nic Pizzolatto's debut novel Galveston earned some critical acclaim upon its release in 2010, but didn't attract much attention from the book-buying public until his later success as the creator of the HBO series TRUE DETECTIVE. It's likely the success of that show (at least its first season, probably not the much-maligned second) that led to Pizzolatto adapting Galveston into a screenplay, and while he gets a "Based on a novel by" credit, he ultimately had his name removed from the film--script credit now goes to his vaguely hard-boiled pseudonym "Jim Hammett"--when he felt that director Melanie Laurent's reworking and reshaping of his screenplay into her own work during production was so extensive that he didn't feel he should take sole credit per WGA rules, so he took none at all. Laurent, the French actress best known for her performance as the vengeance-seeking Shosanna in Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, has very quietly been establishing herself--at least among critics and festival programmers--as a versatile filmmaker, with works that include narrative features (BREATHE, DIVING), and a documentary about climate change (TOMORROW). GALVESTON is her US directing debut, and it's very much a slow-burning, often mumbly mood piece that isn't in any hurry to get to where it's going, but it sneaks up on you in an emotional and often devastating second half.

Set in 1988, the story focuses on Roy Cady (Ben Foster), a 40-year-old New Orleans hit man who's introduced storming out of a doctor's office when faced with what he knows is a terminal lung cancer diagnosis. After narrowly escaping a set-up orchestrated by his boss, dry-cleaning magnate and Big Easy crime kingpin Stan Pitko (Beau Bridges), Cady goes on the run with teenage prostitute Rocky (Elle Fanning), who was being held captive by the men hired to kill him. Cady was just doing the right thing by rescuing her, with the expectation of dropping her off somewhere on his way to die in his hometown of Galveston, but the two form a tentative bond that's strengthened when Rocky insists they make a stop and end up with her three-year-old sister Tiffany (twins Tinsley and Anniston Price) after Rocky shoots their abusive stepfather. Cady's got files of Pitko's invoices that leave a paper trail of his corrupt and shady business dealings, and tries to blackmail his boss for $75,000 in an attempt to do one good thing before he dies and provide some money to Rocky and Tiffany to start a new life, but seeing as this is a downbeat, back roads noir written by Nic Pizzolatto, it's certain the worst will happen. It's easy to see why some found GALVESTON inert and uninvolving. Laurent is more focused on mood than action, so much so that a late Cady rampage at Pitko's business, done in a long take reminiscent of similar sequence in the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE, initially seems jarring, but it's a natural response given a key event that led to it. For the most part, GALVESTON is more early Terrence Malick than TRUE DETECTIVE, with fine work by Foster and especially Fanning, who does a marvelous job with Rocky's motel room revelation (that you'll figure out long before Cady does), which is just about the point where you realize you're more engrossed in this than you thought. (Unrated, 93 mins)

Retro Review: THE INCIDENT (1967)

THE INCIDENT 
(US - 1967)

Directed by Larry Peerce. Written by Nicholas E. Baehr. Cast: Tony Musante, Martin Sheen, Beau Bridges, Brock Peters, Ruby Dee, Jack Gilford, Thelma Ritter, Ed McMahon, Diana Van der Vlis, Mike Kellin, Jan Sterling, Gary Merrill, Robert Fields, Robert Bannard, Victor Arnold, Donna Mills, Kathleen Smith, Henry Proach, Marty Meyers. (Unrated, 100 mins)

Though it has a devoted cult following, THE INCIDENT is a film that's flown under the radar for a half-century, vividly remembered by the few who saw it during its 1967-68 theatrical run and those who caught it on late-night TV well into the 1980s. After a 1989 VHS release, it's been unrepresented on home video until Twilight Time's new "Limited Edition Series" Blu-ray release (in her essay in the package's accompanying booklet, Julie Kirgo writes "Where has this extraordinary movie been all our lives?"). Shot in black & white at a time when it was used very sparingly aside from the occasional IN COLD BLOOD, THE INCIDENT has been restored to all of its edgy, gritty glory and is long overdue for discovery. Even now, over 50 years after its release, THE INCIDENT is an artifact from a bygone era that remains a visceral, shocking gut-punch today. Though it came just before the introduction of the MPAA rating system and is devoid of F-bombs, the language used and situations depicted in the film (including one pretty clearly alluding to a sexual assault taking place just below the frame) induce such a level of tension and unease that it's still worthy of an R rating even now. THE INCIDENT is a film that leaves you exhausted, shattered, and physically drained when the closing credits roll. It's arguably the best American film of the 1960s that nobody knows about, and it's possibly more potent today that it was then. There's certainly elements here that couldn't fly in the present without being labeled "problematic" or "triggering" and leading to numerous outraged thinkpieces, including the use of homophobic and racist slurs. This is a troubling, uncomfortable, claustrophobic, and profoundly unsettling film that stays with you long after it's over. Even revisiting it after 20+ years, scenes and dialogue remained etched in my memory and even though I knew what was coming, I could still feel my heart racing, my stomach in knots with tension, and a palpable anger brewing as a bad situation gets uglier by the minute.

A feature-length expansion of the more luridly-titled "Ride With Terror," a 1963 episode of NBC's THE DUPONT SHOW OF THE WEEK, THE INCIDENT was written by Nicholas E. Baehr, who went on to a workmanlike career writing for TV shows like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, DAN AUGUST, and MCCLOUD. It was directed by Larry Peerce, who won significant acclaim for his 1964 debut ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO, but would gradually shift to mainstream assignments in the mid '70s like the Jill Kinmont biopic THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN (1975) and the sniper-in-a-football-stadium disaster movie TWO-MINUTE WARNING (1976). Peerce would drift into TV work later in his career after box-office duds like the 1984 Rick Springfield drama HARD TO HOLD and 1989's universally-maligned John Belushi chronicle WIRED, ultimately finishing his career (for now) with paycheck gigs directing episodes of TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL and a couple of Lifetime movies with Roma Downey. Now 87 and still very sharp on the Blu-ray commentary track with film historian Nick Redman, Peerce has been inactive since 2003 and THE INCIDENT remains his masterpiece that's also indicative of a time when he was still carving a niche for himself. On the commentary track, he mentions "rageful films intrigue me," and THE INCIDENT certainly qualifies as such. After a big hit with 1969's Philip Roth adaptation GOODBYE, COLUMBUS, Peerce turned down an offer to direct LOVE STORY and instead opted to make the theater-clearing, audience-alienating 1971 bomb THE SPORTING CLUB, which rendered him virtually unemployable. That, coupled with a divorce and needing the money, Peerce effectively abandoned his auteur aspirations and went the genre-hopping mercenary route with mixed results. He made a few decent theatrical and TV movies, but never again did Peerce direct anything like THE INCIDENT.

Set roughly between 2:00 and 3:30 am on a Sunday night/Monday morning in the Bronx, THE INCIDENT opens with rowdy troublemakers Joe Ferrone (Tony Musante, the only cast member to reprise his role from "Ride With Terror") and Artie Connors (a debuting Martin Sheen) hassling a pool hall manager and a couple on the street before rolling a guy and beating him to a pulp (possibly to death) for $8. Deciding the night is young, they mention going to Times Square as the film cuts to various groups of people headed for the subway from different locations. There's Bill (Ed McMahon, of all people) and Helen Wilks (Diana Van der Vlis), finally extricating themselves from a family gathering and arguing about money problems and her wanting a second child while their four-year-old daughter sleeps; smooth-talking Tony Goya (Victor Arnold) trying to seduce his latest conquest, 18-year-old virgin Alice Keenan (Donna Mills in her debut); elderly, bickering Jewish couple Sam (Jack Gilford) and Bertha Beckerman (Thelma Ritter), with Sam unable to shut up about how "these kids today are a disgrace" and bent out of shape that their son won't loan him "a lousy $500 so I can get my teeth fixed"; Oklahoma native and Army private Felix Teflinger (Beau Bridges who would go on to be a frequent Peerce collaborator), on leave with a broken arm and visiting his NYC-born Army buddy Philip Carmatti (Robert Bannard); nebbishy history teacher Harry Purvis (Mike Kellin) and his shrewish wife Muriel (Jan Sterling), who never misses a chance to remind Harry that his friends are richer and more successful than he is; Kenneth Otis (Robert Fields), an awkward homosexual trying to make small talk and connect with anyone; recovering alcoholic Douglas McCann (Gary Merrill; a young, pre-fame Gene Hackman played the role in "Ride With Terror"), eight months on the wagon and desperately waiting for news about a job offer; and Arnold (Brock Peters) and Joan Robinson (Ruby Dee), a black couple on their way home from a civil rights group meeting deemed too peaceful by militant anger management case Arnold, who has a huge chip on his shoulder about "Whitey" and starts an argument with the ticket booth operator.

All of these characters--plus a sleeping homeless man (Henry Proach)--end up in the same subway car, eventually joined by Joe and Artie, who enter making a huge racket and a drunken spectacle of themselves. After Artie attempts to give the vagrant a hot foot, McCann is the first to speak up, unleashing a barrage of torment and terror from Joe and Artie. Artie jams the door with the vagrant's shoe, preventing anyone from getting on or off, and Joe, who's smarter than he appears, is quickly able to deduce the Achilles' heel of everyone aboard. He accosts them one by one, instantly figuring out their weaknesses and exploiting them for maximum humiliation as Artie cheers him on. Artie primarily functions as the Chester to Joe's Spike, but even he gets into the act, immediately figuring out that Kenneth is gay and slyly seducing him into earning his trust. "You gotta help me...this guy I'm with is real buggy," Artie deceptively confides before beating him, calling him a "rotten fag," forcing him to dance with him and Joe, and spending the rest of the film referring to him as "The Princess" and making him sit in the corner. Joe exposes tough-talking Tony as a coward by sidling up to Alice and, judging from her body language and the pained faces she's making, doing things out of frame that couldn't be explicitly shown in 1967 as Tony freezes and does nothing. And starting with a loaded "Sho 'nuff!," he then demolishes Arnold, who's only too happy to watch a train car full of "crackers" being verbally and physically assaulted ("I'm with you, Jack," he smiles at Joe), but has it thrown right back at him when Joe repeatedly calls him the N-word and insinuates that his "smell" is all over the train. Throughout all of this, no one speaks up or makes any serious attempt to deter them other than Teflinger, but even he backs off after suggesting they "settle down" and Joe grabs him by the neck.

The infamous Kitty Genovese case--where a woman was killed while neighbors heard it all and did nothing--comes to mind while watching THE INCIDENT, and likewise, Peerce doesn't make things as simple as black or white. Yes, Joe and Artie are two of the most loathsome, psychotic creeps you'll ever see--the tragically underrated Musante, who died in 2013, is unforgettable here, and absolutely, terrifyingly repulsive in a way that prefigures the kinds of roles David Hess would make a career of after THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and THE INCIDENT stands all the evidence anyone needs to conclude that he should've had a much bigger career than he did--but Peerce doesn't let the passengers off the hook, never hesitating to spotlight their cowardice and hypocrisy. As "The Princess" is agonizingly humiliated, dweeby Harry chuckles, Joan buries her face in a book, and tough guy Tony dismisses it as "Eh, they got a hold of some queer, so what?" No one stands up when Joe verbally assaults Arnold and Artie grabs Joan and threatens to break her arm. Everyone looks the other way while Joe's doing whatever he's doing to Alice while Tony sits there frozen (this is a really difficult scene to watch). No one intervenes when Muriel confronts Joe and he grabs the fascinator off of her head and uses it to caress her chest, asking "What do you want, lady? Maybe you want both of us," while Artie starts kissing her neck as hapless, helpless Harry stands there, utterly emasculated.

Photographed by the great Gerald Hirschfeld (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN), THE INCIDENT is a film that could only work in black & white. Peerce indicates they did some color tests in pre-production and it was "a disaster," though he still had to fight to shoot it the way he wanted. It began as an independent production but ran out of money halfway through, salvaged by some major studio cash when two young junior execs at 20th Century Fox--Richard Zanuck (studio head Darryl F.'s son) and David Brown, both of whom went on to meet Steven Spielberg and produce JAWS at Universal--liked what they saw and agreed to back the film to completion, largely leaving Peerce alone to make the film he wanted to make. The only change they suggested, which Peerce said was a good idea, was to move the intro to Joe and Artie at the beginning instead of in the middle of the film, as their mugging of the guy for $8 takes place in the context of the story right before they get on the subway, even though they disappear for 40 minutes of screen time while the other characters are introduced. This also establishes an early prototype of an overlapping narrative time element that filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino would make commonplace in the 1990s. Every performance in THE INCIDENT is pitch-perfect, even McMahon, who's terrific as a blowhard, working class martyr in what Peerce describes as stunt casting that worked. The film brilliantly captures the scuzzy seediness of the big city after dark, fulfilling every warning you've ever heard about nothing good happening after 2:00 am. This was years before the blight and crime that became synonymous with Times Square and the Bronx of the '70s and '80s, but that aura is in its infancy here (I'm betting Martin Scorsese saw this, because much of MEAN STREETS has that same vibe in its locations), and even though the interiors were all constructed sets (Peerce and Hirschfeld caught some guerrilla-style exterior shots on the fly at real subway platforms, but the Transit Authority wouldn't authorize the use of a real subway car, insisting that crime on the subways wasn't an issue), THE INCIDENT looks like an image frozen in time. A master class in suspense, tension, and blistering social commentary (note the still-relevant bit at the end where the cops get on the train and, without a single word said and taking all of one second to assess the situation, immediately handcuff the black guy) that never feels "stagy" despite its close confines. THE INCIDENT isn't the only film of this type (the similar and equally obscure 1979 squirm-fest WHEN YOU COMIN' BACK, RED RYDER? is also worthy of unearthing), but it's a film not easily shaken, and an American classic that's patiently waited 50 years for some recognition. There's never been another movie quite like it.

Martin Sheen, Larry Peerce, and Beau Bridges
at a 2017 TCM Festival screening of THE INCIDENT

THE INCIDENT opening in Toledo, OH on 3/29/1968, paired with
the Bette Davis "thrill hit" THE ANNIVERSARY, also a time
when someone thought a drive-in double bill of THE GOOD,
THE BAD AND THE UGLY and FITZWILLY was a good idea.