Legendary Chilean cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has been best-known for his surrealistic midnight movie classics EL TOPO (1970) and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973), as well as his 1989 masterpiece SANTA SANGRE. Now, however, at the age of 84, he's gotten the most attention of his career for a film he didn't make, an abandoned adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic 1965 sci-fi novel Dune. Jodorowsky and French producer Michel Seydoux began putting their DUNE together over 1974-75, with the director given carte blanche by the producer with a then-enormous $15 million budget. Jodorowsky's ambitions for the project almost went beyond what cinema of the time deemed capable--he wanted the film to resemble an acid trip without actually dropping acid--and he began to assemble a team of what he called "spiritual warriors" with the ability to pull it off. He commissioned artists like H.R. Giger, Jean Giraud (aka "Moebius"), and Chris Foss to design elaborate storyboards compiled in a tome thicker than a phone book, copies of which were eventually shipped to Hollywood studios. Jodorowsky got Pink Floyd and French prog band Magma to compose the music, and DARK STAR's Dan O'Bannon to design the special effects after declaring 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY's Douglas Trumbull too "technical" and not spiritual enough. He secured what would've been a once-in-a-lifetime cast including Salvador Dali as the Emperor, Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen, David Carradine as Duke Leto, Jodorowsky's son Brontis as Duke's son Paul Atreides, Mick Jagger as Feyd Rautha, plus Udo Kier, Dali muse Amanda Lear, and Gloria Swanson. With the script, crew, and cast already locked down, Jodorowsky and Seydoux sought $5 million in additional financing from a Hollywood studio and the project--and Jodorowsky's dream--promptly collapsed. Studio execs balked at the extent of the filmmaker's vision and the lack of commercial appeal. The studios liked the storyboards but felt Jodorowsky, based on his sales pitch and his past films, was too "out there" and too unwilling to compromise. They wanted a 90-minute sci-fi movie, where Jodorowsky's script, if shot as it was, would've led to a film running at least 12 hours. With Jodorowsky and Seydoux unable to obtain further funding to construct the sets and begin filming, their DUNE was cancelled in pre-production, and the two men parted ways.
Documentary director Frank Pavich ultimately presents JODOROWSKY'S DUNE as a classic "art vs. commerce" scenario, with the gregarious but obsessive Jodorowsky committed to the DUNE he wanted to make and not really interested in how much money it would cost or lose. Only when the subject of money comes up does Jodorowsky demonstrate any bitterness and resentment, grabbing a wad of cash out of his pocket and bemoaning that "it's just paper...it has no soul." Of course, DUNE was eventually made by David Lynch for Dino De Laurenttis in 1984, and though Jodorowsky says he admires Lynch greatly, he was happy that he found the Lynch film "terrible." Jodorowsky's DUNE exists only as an epic storyboard book, and Pavich, via animation, plays out a number of the sequences in a film that never was. What's very intriguing is how much imagery and ideas in these storyboards ended up in other movies: O'Bannon, Giger, and Foss all worked on ALIEN (1979), and the influence in some of the designs, even in the much later ALIEN-related PROMETHEUS (2012) is obvious when you see the work they did for Jodorowsky. DRIVE director Nicolas Winding Refn states "His DUNE never got made, but its fingerprints are all over other movies that came after. If he made DUNE, history is changed. You wouldn't have ALIEN, and without that, you wouldn't have BLADE RUNNER or THE MATRIX," adding that the Hollywood studios were "afraid" of Jodorowsky and how his DUNE would've changed everything. Jodorowsky's storyboards circulated around Hollywood for years and Pavich shows that designs and artwork in them are apparent in numerous future films from that time, from STAR WARS (1977) to FLASH GORDON (1980) to THE TERMINATOR (1984), and the later CONTACT (1997). Pavich lets Jodorowsky speak at length and the film is just as much about his failed, would-be game-changer as it is his dedication to his art itself, which he conveys without ever coming off as pompous or pretentious, often telling great stories like one where he gets a firm commitment Welles by promising to hire his favorite chef to prepare his meals daily (some of the filmmaker's stories sound a little suspect, especially in the way he never seems to know how to contact the people he wants but instead keeps happening to bump into them somewhere in Paris). JODOROWSKY'S DUNE is a fascinating film that contemplates just how much film history might've been altered if Hollywood was willing to take a chance on one man's impossibly audacious and quite possibly lunatic vision. (PG-13, 90 mins)
STAGE FRIGHT (Canada/US - 2014)
This blood-splattered horror musical gets off to a solid start with a very Dario Argento/OPERA-esque prologue and a legitimately inspired opening credits production number before rapidly exhausting every bit of its gimmick. Films like Brian De Palma's classic PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974) and SAW II, III, and IV director Darren Lynn Bousman's more recent REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA (2008) have done the horror musical thing in a stronger fashion in the past, and regardless of how you felt about REPO, at least it was sincere and stuck to its convictions, right down to the casting of Sarah Brightman in a key role. STAGE FRIGHT can't decide if it wants to be a legitimate musical or one that's ironically bad-on-purpose, with a killer who uses a butcher knife as a capo before a shredding guitar solo as he shrieks like a laryngitic Rob Halford-by-way-of-Axl Rose while offing his victims. The novelty wears off quickly, though writer/director Jerome Sable does a nice job with some of the outrageously gory giallo-derived killings. Teenager Camilla (Allie MacDonald) and her twin brother Buddy (Douglas Smith) work in the kitchen at Center Stage, a summer performing arts camp for kids run by the manager (Meat Loaf) of their late mother Kylie Swanson (Minnie Driver), a beloved stage star brutally murdered ten years earlier by a masked killer in the opening sequence. This summer's Center Stage production is the musical The Haunting of the Opera, which, of course, was Kylie's last production. Camilla tries out for the lead role to honor the memory of her mom, and naturally gets the part, and before long, the same masked killer--looking like a refugee from the EYES WIDE SHUT orgy--starts murdering those behind the production one by one. STAGE FRIGHT sometimes resembles an old-school '80s splatterfest and would probably function better as such, but after the opening credits (done in the John Carpenter font), the musical numbers do nothing but slow things down, making this fairly short film seem much longer than it is. Some of the killings are imaginative, and MacDonald is an appealing final girl, but the killer's identity and an accompanying twist are both obvious. A passable time-killer, but if you feel the need to watch a slasher film titled STAGE FRIGHT, where members of a theater troupe are dispatched one-by-one, you're better off checking out Argento protege Michele Soavi's identically-titled 1987 cult classic again instead. (R, 88 mins)
Directed by Tobe Hooper. Written by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby. Cast: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard, Nicholas Ball, Aubrey Morris, Nancy Paul, John Hallam, Chris Jagger, Bill Malin, John Forbes-Robertson, Peter Porteous. (R, 101 mins/116 mins)
When Menahem Golan offered him a job directing an adaptation of Colin Wilson's 1976 novel The Space Vampires, Tobe Hooper was coming off of the 1982 blockbuster POLTERGEIST, produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg, a film that's still shrouded in controversy over which person did what 31 years after the fact. Hooper had already established himself thanks to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), EATEN ALIVE (1977), the TV miniseries SALEM'S LOT (1979), and THE FUNHOUSE (1981). But he was also fired from two other horror films (1979's THE DARK and 1982's VENOM) and had to be frustrated with the endless gossip that he was just Spielberg's puppet on POLTERGEIST, a film that was supposed to elevate Hooper to the A-list, but only left him in Spielberg's shadow. Spielberg called their working relationship "collaborative," but many associated with the film say Hooper had to run his decisions by Spielberg and that Spielberg was present nearly every day of production and was essentially calling the shots even with Hooper on the set. When POLTERGEIST was being shot in the summer of 1981, Spielberg had RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in theaters and was about to begin work on E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL in the fall, and part of his E.T. deal with Universal stipulated that he couldn't direct another film for another studio in the meantime (MGM was handling POLTERGEIST). When POLTERGEIST was released in June 1982, critics and moviegoers considered it Spielberg's project. The controversy was enough for the Director's Guild of America to launch an investigation that yielded no real conclusions, but by the time he met up with Golan, Hooper was eager to show everyone that he didn't need Spielberg to make a Spielberg-sized blockbuster. He wanted vindication, which Golan and Yoram Globus were ready to provide--with some help--in the form of a whopping $25 million budget, more than double what POLTERGEIST cost to make. LIFEFORCE--which was shot as SPACE VAMPIRES, with the title change taking place during post-production as all parties involved thought it sounded too much like a B-horror flick--was going to be Cannon's and Hooper's biggest project yet, and was the first of a three-picture deal Hooper made with Cannon, who also agreed to finance his remake of INVADERS FROM MARS as well as his long-awaited THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (both films were released in the summer of 1986).
The much-ballyhooed Cannon/Hooper alliance failed to financially pay off. Only TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 made back its cost as LIFEFORCE and INVADERS FROM MARS tanked at the box office.
To help with the then-immense cost of LIFEFORCE, Cannon set up a US distribution deal with Tri-Star, who covered a little over half of the budget and pulled rank by re-editing the US theatrical version, cutting 15 minutes out of it (mostly at the beginning, which unfolds in a very choppy fashion in the US cut but plays much more ominously effective in the longer version), revoicing the British astronauts with American accents, and adding some incidental music by Michael Kamen and James Guthrie along with the film's regular score by the legendary Henry Mancini (again, Cannon sparing no expense). Cannon had enjoyed some success and was gaining momentum in production and distribution, and LIFEFORCE was to be their attempt to get into the Spielberg/George Lucas big leagues, but of course, much like selling Charles Bronson films to an aging audience that wasn't really interested in seeing the more exploitative elements, they failed to realize that the Spielberg/Lucas films didn't center on hot, naked vampire women from space. Sure, if you, like me, were a 12-year-old kid when LIFEFORCE came out, you loved it and probably still do today at 40. And if your mom dropped you and a couple of like-minded 12-year-old friends off at the theater, you probably bought tickets to THE GOONIES and snuck into LIFEFORCE. LIFEFORCE only grossed $11 million, but I'm sure it lost at least a few million thanks to boob-obsessed junior-high-age Fangoria readers doing exactly what we did.
Very much a product of its time (Hooper directed Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself" video and wanted Idol to play one of the male vampires, but the closest he got to a rocker was Mick Jagger's younger brother Chris), LIFEFORCE, just released on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory (both versions are included), opens with a joint US/British space mission to investigate Halley's Comet, which was due to return in 1986. The crew of the Churchill, led by American Col. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), discovers a 150-mile-long space ship in the tail of the comet, housing large bat carcasses and three encased, nude bodies--two male and one female--that are human-like in appearance. When Earth loses contact with the ship, a rescue team is sent and discovers the ship destroyed by fire, with only the three encased figures remaining. They're brought to a government research facility in London, overseen by Dr. Fallada (Frank Finlay) and the bureaucratic Bukovsky (Michael Gothard). Soon, the female alien (Mathilda May) awakens and draws the life out of a security guard, feeding on the energy--the "lifeforce"--and promptly escapes. As SAS officer Caine (Peter Firth) investigates, Churchill's escape pod lands in Texas, with only Carlsen onboard. Carlsen arrives in London and is haunted by nightmares that reveal he has some kind of psychic link with the Space Girl, who is able to enter the bodies of host victims to spread a vampiric contagion not by drinking blood, but by literally drawing--sucking--the life out of her victims.
It only gets crazier from there, as Hooper, working from a script by sci-fi/horror vet Dan O'Bannon (ALIEN, THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) and Don Jakoby, with some uncredited contributions by MARK OF THE DEVIL director Michael Armstrong and CRUCIBLE OF HORROR and THE GODSEND screenwriter Olaf Pooley, throws London into chaos and martial law with a vampire plague creating a horde of rampaging zombies, a large bat demon, and a pre-Picard Patrick Stewart as a doctor possessed by the Space Girl. LIFEFORCE combines elements of '80s blockbusters, old-school QUATERMASS sci-fi, vintage Hammer horror, modern special effects splatter, and the kind of zombie apocalypse mayhem that George Romero wanted to do with DAY OF THE DEAD before his budget got slashed. It's beautifully-made, epic in scope, with impressive visual effects by the great John Dykstra, but with a debuting May completely nude for about 98% of her screen time (19 at the time of filming, she became an instant cult horror icon with this, and has a pretty good sense of humor about it on the Blu-ray bonus features, and yes, she still looks great), it also feels like an B-grade exploitation flick. In a way, it perfectly sums up the dichotomy of Cannon's glory days: it's essentially a simple horror story that could've come from Hooper's or O'Bannon's salad days, but like its legendary producers, it has aspirations toward greatness. When I say LIFEFORCE bites off more than it can chew, it's one of those rare instances where it's meant as a compliment. It has a bold, go-for-broke attitude and its balls-to-the-wall insanity--marvel at Railsback's scenery-chewing performance--is infectious. It's the kind of film that works just as well if you approach it as a serious, unsung classic of modern sci-fi/horror or if you make it the main feature for your next Bad Movie Night. LIFEFORCE is the kind of movie where anything can happen at any moment.
LIFEFORCE, in its truncated 101-minute cut, opened in US theaters on June 21, 1985. It landed in fourth place at the box office (Ron Howard's COCOON opened the same day) and got generally negative reviews. Not surprisingly, horror fans were more appreciative of it and it found a significant cult over the years (this reappraisal was also helped once Hooper's intended version became available on DVD). LIFEFORCE gets a little too batshit at times for its own good and has more ideas than it can handle in two hours, but there's no denying that it's one of the essential sci-fi/horror films of the 1980s, and easily Hooper's most ambitious work as a filmmaker.
Hooper immediately followed LIFEFORCE with INVADERS FROM MARS (in theaters June 1986), and the extremely rushed THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (shot in June/July 1986 and somehow in theaters by late August 1986). LIFEFORCE didn't catapult Hooper on to the A-list, and in fact, his association with Golan & Globus has, thus far, constituted his last noteworthy work as a director. He did some hired-gun TV gigs in the '80s and '90s, but the last quarter century, with rare exception, has seen Hooper mired in one of the worst extended slumps ever endured by a major filmmaker. Since 1986, he's had one troubled production and terrible movie after another: 1990's SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, 1993's NIGHT TERRORS, and 1995's THE MANGLER range from awful at best to unwatchable at worst. Hooper spent a good chunk of the 2000s teaming with fanboy horror hacks Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch (co-writers of Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS and the useless 2010 remake of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS) on DTV fodder like 2000's CROCODILE, 2005's TOOLBOX MURDERS (a remake of the 1978 grindhouse classic), and 2006's MORTUARY. His most recent effort, the United Arab Emirates-financed horror film DJINN, was completed in 2011 but has yet to be released. It's great that Shout! Factory has assembled such a nice package for their LIFEFORCE Blu-ray and got the now-70-year-old Hooper to contribute a commentary. He seems like a smart guy who knows his horror history. He obviously knows how to make good movies, and milestones like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, SALEM'S LOT, and POLTERGEIST, and cult classics like THE FUNHOUSE and LIFEFORCE have cemented his place in horror history. But it's troubling to consider that this influential and talented horror legend hasn't really been able to get it together for over 25 years. Despite high points like LIFEFORCE and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, Hooper has never been able to shake the POLTERGEIST controversy, making it sadly ironic that the biggest commercial success to feature the credit "Directed by Tobe Hooper" was, in retrospect, the first major step in the derailing of his career.
