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.
The venerable Shout! Factory has released another four-film, budget-priced "Movie Marathon" package on the heels of their excellent "Action-Packed Movie Marathon" from a few months back. This time, however, the results are mixed at best. They were upfront well before the release with the fact that three of the four films in this sci-fi package were being presented in cropped, 1.33 full frame transfers, which is really inexcusable at this point in time. But, those are the materials they got for these titles in their licensing deal with MGM and that's the best with which they had to work. It's just unfortunate that a genuine cult movie like ELIMINATORS is finally represented on DVD, and it looks like little more than a slightly cleaned-up VHS transfer. Shout! Factory is run by people who love these movies, and if they say that's what they had at their disposal, then that's what they had. You can't knock 'em all out of the park, and they've done enough great things for cult movie preservation that they can certainly get a pass for an occasional flubbed, second-rate job like this one. With a list price of $9.99 for four movies (no extras, not even trailers), it comes out to about $2.50 per flick, so when it's all put in perspective, I guess it's not that bad.
Disc 1 offers 1991's ARENA and 1986's ELIMINATORS, a double feature showcasing the collaborative efforts of Empire Pictures fixtures Peter Manoogian, Danny Bilson, and Paul DeMeo. Manoogian directed several films for Empire (including 1987's high-rise mayhem gem ENEMY TERRITORY), and these two were penned by the TRANCERS writing team of Bilson (father of THE O.C.'s Rachel Bilson) and DeMeo, who would go on to script Disney's THE ROCKETEER (1991), produce the CBS superhero series THE FLASH, and create the UPN series THE SENTINEL. On the merits of TRANCERS alone, Bilson & DeMeo are a cult duo deserving of far more attention and employment than they've received. The pair haven't scripted a feature since THE ROCKETEER. They spent much of the last decade writing and designing video games, and got a story credit on this year's COMPANY OF HEROES, a WWII vehicle with Tom Sizemore and Vinnie Jones that went straight to DVD, as it starred Tom Sizemore and Vinnie Jones. Disc 2 presents a pair of one-and-done big-screen directing efforts from screenwriters who should've avoided the urge to get behind the camera: Cannon's forgotten 1986 post-nuke effort AMERICA 3000 and the 1987 Australian TERMINATOR-inspired THE TIME GUARDIAN.
Manoogian, Bilson, and De Meo first teamed on this engagingly silly sci-fi actioner that, like TRANCERS, has aspirations well beyond its budget. The basic summary is that a ragtag group of heroes joins forces to stop Abbott Reeves (Roy Dotrice), a time-traveling, megalomaniacal madman who wants to change the course of world history by going back to rule ancient Rome. One of his creations is Mandroid (Patrick Reynolds), a military pilot shot down in action and transformed into a cyborg with an accompanying tank-like mobile unit. When Reeves tries to decommission him, the Mandroid escapes and finds Dr. Nora Hunter (Denise Crosby, around the same time she appeared in Black Sabbath's "No Stranger to Love" video and a year before STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION), who created the android technology used to assemble him and is unaware that Reeves is using it for evil purposes. Nora, along with her helpful pet-like robot S.P.O.T., decides to accompany Mandroid to deep into Mexico to find his secret underground jungle lair and they hire cynical river guide Harry Fontana (Andrew Prine) to guide them. Some time later, the three meet up with ninja Kuji (Conan Lee), the son of Reeves' sympathetic assistant, who was killed for trying to help Mandroid escape. The quartet battles rival boatmen in the employ of Reeves, plus some Neanderthals brought back by Reeves during one of his time-traveling excursions.
After a clunky opening, ELIMINATORS finds a nice groove and gets much better as it proceeds, even if takes too long to get all of the heroes together (Lee doesn't even appear until a little over an hour in). One element of ELIMINATORS that's a bit ahead of its time is the way the film often becomes a sort-of meta-commentary on itself, usually in the form of Fontana's disbelief at the lunacy happening around him ("What is this, some kinda goddamn comic book? We got robots, we got cavemen, we got kung fu!"). One of the more ambitious productions of Empire's glory days, ELIMINATORS isn't always successful (the first half could use some tightening), but it hits a lot more than it misses, and really gets a nice momentum going in its last third. ELIMINATORS could've benefitted from a decent restoration--or at least presented in its proper aspect ratio--and really deserves its own special edition release with a commentary track from the filmmakers. Shortly after co-starring in this, Reynolds, grandson of R.J. Reynolds and eventual black sheep of the Reynolds tobacco family, would quit acting to denounce the family business and become a prominent anti-smoking activist. (PG, 96 mins)
AMERICA 3000 (US - 1986)
I haven't seen everything released by Cannon, but I've seen enough to make the judgment call that AMERICA 3000 could very well be the worst film they ever made. The lone directorial effort from DEATH WISH II screenwriter David Engelbach, AMERICA 3000 takes place in post-nuke Colorado, 900 years after the end of civilization. The world is once again in caveman times, and ruled by women, who are known as "tiaras," with men--aka "seeders" if they're well-hung or "machos" if they're slaves--the subservient class. Nomadic warrior Corbus (Chuck Wagner, fresh off the title role on the short-lived NBC series AUTOMAN) has taught himself to read from an old childrens book he found and tries to lead the machos and seeders into a fight for equality that's actually supported by Tiara leader Vena (Laurene Landon), who reluctantly took charge upon the passing of her beloved Tiara mother (Camilla Sparv, the only somewhat big name in the cast, and she's dead by the 15-minute mark). Vena doesn't have the support of her underlings, namely her jealous sister Lakella (Victoria Barrett), who leads a revolt against her. I think AMERICA 3000 is trying to be a comedy, but it's so painfully unfunny that it's hard to tell. Engelbach makes some half-hearted attempts at political satire--the voiceover narration of Corbus' brother, played by William Wallace, mentions a "Camp Reagan," with the caveat "I never figured out what 'Reagan' meant," and Corbus finds the underground bunker of the US President, still in pristine condition after 900 years with a functioning boombox and an arcade version of Centipede, and watches a video tape that convinces him that he is the "Pres-ee-dent" as he pronounces it--but he just has nothing to say and his sole purpose seems to be to make this as gratingly annoying as possible. The constant use of the film's own specific post-nuke slang (tiaras, seeders, machos, "woggos" for crazy, "hot eats" for food, "scan-it" for seeing), makes for maddening dialogue like "You're machos, but I'm a free man. You hungry? We've got hot eats, scan-it?" that would make it hard to follow the plot if there was one.
There's probably a lot of reasons there weren't many post-nuke comedies in the '80s, and AMERICA 3000 should be labeled Exhibit A. Golan & Globus spent $2 million on this thing? It's one of Cannon's most obscure titles and it should've stayed that way. If they wanted a post-nuke comedy that was in the MGM library, Shout! would've been better off putting the sublimely ridiculous 1985 version of SHE with Sandahl Bergman on this set. Unfunny, uninspired, unwatchable, and cropped to 1.33, I can't imagine anyone getting anything remotely enjoyable or entertaining out of AMERICA 3000. Look, I love Shout! Factory, and they're doing great things, but there's so many more worthwhile things they could've resurrected. Are there really AMERICA 3000 fans out there? Any whose surname isn't Engelbach? It's not even entertaining on a "so bad, it's good" level. It's just bad. Engelbach went on to write an early draft of 1987's OVER THE TOP that was reworked by star Sylvester Stallone, but he's been MIA since writing a few episodes of MACGYVER in the late '80s. (PG-13, 93 mins)
THE TIME GUARDIAN (Australia - 1987; 1989 US release)
The only film in this set presented in its proper aspect ratio (2.35:1 anamorphic), THE TIME GUARDIAN is a big-budget 1987 Australian sci-fi film that took two years to get a token US release from Hemdale in the fall of 1989. I know I rented the VHS back then and recall thinking the film was bad, but 23 or so years on, I remembered nothing about it until this revisit. Yep...still terrible. There's promising ingredients: nice-looking BLADE RUNNER-esque production design, an interesting concept, directed and co-written by Brian Hannant, who co-wrote THE ROAD WARRIOR, so he certainly knows his way around a sci-fi action movie...but THE TIME GUARDIAN never really comes together. Here's a situation where some bonus features would be nice, as Hannant has said in the years since that interference from Hemdale and script changes that were forced on him ended up compromising the film. It's clear that Hannant was shown the door at some point during production, since second-unit director A.J. Prowse is also credited with directing additional scenes with an entirely different crew. Whatever drama went down behind the scenes was probably more interesting than anything that ended up onscreen, and it seemed to have a career-altering impact on the now-73-year-old Hannant: 26 years later, he has yet to direct or write another film.
Opening in the year 4039, THE TIME GUARDIAN deals with a post-apocalyptic world where armies of armored robots known as Jen-Diki have wiped out almost all of humanity. That is, except for one domed city that has found a way to bounce back and forth through time when the Jen-Diki find them. Two warriors--the tough-as-nails Ballard (Tom Burlinson of THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER) and 20th century expert Petra (Carrie Fisher, onboard to lure in the STAR WARS crowd) are sent by their leader (Dean Stockwell, who puts in a few scenes and goes off to enjoy his paid Australian vacation) to survey 1988 Australia in a daring attempt to trap the Jen-Diki and be done with them once and for all. Petra is quickly injured and sidelined (meaning, the filmmakers probably only had Fisher for a few days) as Ballard teams up with attractive local geologist Annie (Nikki Coghill) and some aborigines to thwart the Jen-Diki. They don't get any help from McCarthy (Tim Robertson), who seems to have graduated summa cum laude from the Brian Dennehy Academy of Small-Town Asshole Sheriffs, tossing Ballard and Annie in the slammer and messing around with their futuristic armbands, after which, of course, the Jen-Diki figure out exactly where Ballard is and launch a full-scale invasion of this small outback town, starting with the police station in a sequence that's in no way modeled on a similar one in THE TERMINATOR. Ultimately, despite some good ideas (I liked the notion of the time-traveling city), THE TIME GUARDIAN is just too confusing, too dull, and too derivative of other, better movies (THE TERMINATOR, BLADE RUNNER, STAR TREK, and the whole subplot with the dumbass, bullying sheriff is straight out of FIRST BLOOD), and Burlinson, fine in the SNOWY RIVER films and PHAR LAP, overdoes it and isn't a very convincing jaw-clenched badass of the Schwarzenegger mold. The material is there, but judging from the apparently troubled production history, this one just feels like it got away from everyone involved. Also featuring the maudlin closing credits tune "This Time I Know" by Rose Tattoo frontman Angry Anderson. (PG, 88 mins)
