THE DEADLY TRAP (France/Italy - 1971; US release 1972) Directed by Rene Clement. Written by Sidney Buchman, Eleanor Perry, Daniel Boulanger and Rene Clement. Cast: Faye Dunaway, Frank Langella, Barbara Parkins, Maurice Ronet, Karen Blanguernon, Raymond Gerome, Michele Lourie, Patrick Vincent, Gerard Buhr, Massimo Farinelli, Robert Lussac, Franco Ressel. (PG, 97 mins) French filmmaker Rene Clement (1913-1996) dabbled in various genres over his career, achieving notoriety for some WWII-themed films like 1952's Oscar-winning FORBIDDEN GAMES, 1963's THE WAY AND THE HOUR, and 1966's all-star epic IS PARIS BURNING? But beginning with 1960's PURPLE NOON--from the same Patricia Highsmith novel that was the basis for 1999's THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY--and especially with 1970's RIDER ON THE RAIN, he carved a niche for himself as a sort-of French Hitchcock. After RIDER, Clement would maintain that image by focusing exclusively on mystery and suspense thrillers for the remainder of his career until his retirement after 1975's WANTED: BABYSITTER, generally considered his worst film. After the worldwide success of RIDER ON THE RAIN, which was also the key film in establishing Charles Bronson as an international superstar (much like PURPLE NOON did for Alain Delon), Clement followed in rapid succession with 1971's THE DEADLY TRAP, and 1972's AND HOPE DIE. Both films have just been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, because physical media is dead.
Based on the 1966 Arthur Cavanaugh novel The Children Are Gone, THE DEADLY TRAP's script is credited to four writers, among them Clement, Eleanor Perry (who wrote several of her husband Frank Perry's films, including DAVID AND LISA, LAST SUMMER, and DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE), as well as a Hollywood old-timer in Sidney Buchman, whose long list of credits included 1939's MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, 1941's HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (which won him an Oscar), and 1963's CLEOPATRA. There was also an uncredited fifth writer, with contributions from then-recent M*A*S*H Oscar-winner Ring Lardner, Jr. With all of those cooks in the kitchen, it's little wonder THE DEADLY TRAP is a muddled and curiously uninvolving mess with disparate plot elements that never quite come together. Expat American couple Jill (Faye Dunaway) and Philip (Frank Langella, who had just co-starred in the Perrys' DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE) live in Paris with their two young children Cathy (Michele Lourie) and Patrick (Patrick Vincent). Jill seems preoccupied and has been plagued of late with memory lapses, which have been prevalent enough that it's beginning to cause a rift in their marriage (Jill, defending her recurring distractions and her wandering mind: "Have you done always done exactly what you're supposed to do?" Philip: "Yes. When you got pregnant, I married you. Isn't that what I was supposed to do?"). Philip works as an editor for a publisher of mathematics textbooks, and he's got his own distractions to worry about: he's been summoned by a sinister former employer (Maurice Ronet) to fulfill one final "contract" in his past life of corporate espionage. It was a shady and often dangerous business and it's hinted that it's the reason he and Jill fled to Paris. But the past has caught up with Philip, and they won't take no for answer, going so far as to follow Jill and the kids around. They even use an associate (Karen Blanguernon) posing as an employee from the couple's regular babysitting service to pull off the abduction during one of Jill's frequent easily-distracted moments on a busy street outside a crowded department store at Christmastime.
The cops suspect Jill of negligent parenting at best and outright murder at worst, with lead investigator Chameille (Raymond Gerome) straight-up accusing her of killing the children as a way to get her husband's attention, even interrogating her with humiliating questions like "You and your husband haven't had sexual relations in some time, yes? So, he has a mistress, then?" Jill has the support of her best friend, downstairs neighbor Cynthia (Barbara Parkins), who may or may not have a thing for Philip, while Philip knows that the kids have been kidnapped but can't say anything without divulging his own past as a corporate spy and putting them in even greater danger. THE DEADLY TRAP certainly has the makings of a solid thriller with some pieces that foreshadow the non-supernatural aspects of DON'T LOOK NOW, but its lugubriously slow pace (it's a good 45 minutes before the kids are even taken) and the meandering story are handled with little sense of urgency by Clement, who seems to be having somewhat of an off-day after RIDER ON THE RAIN. The story has two potentially interesting threads--Jill's almost Leonard Shelby-like memory issues and Philip and the kids being threatened by his previous employers--but doesn't follow either to a wholly satisfying conclusion. There's no suspense in the kidnapping angle, and the big reveal about one supporting character is something you'll see coming the moment they're introduced.
THE DEADLY TRAP opening in Toledo, OH on 11/15/1972
It's interesting to see the two stars in an early '70s Eurothriller, with the often-difficult Dunaway already in a post-BONNIE AND CLYDE/THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR slump from which she'd emerge after 1974's CHINATOWN (Langella recounted a story in his memoir about Dunaway wasting an entire day of shooting deciding which pair of shoes she wanted for a particular shot). THE DEADLY TRAP opened in Europe in June 1971 but didn't hit the US until October 1972, courtesy of then-struggling National General Pictures, which would be defunct by the beginning of 1974. It aired in prime-time on CBS in August of 1978 and occasionally ran on late-night TV into the 1980s, but aside from a 1988 VHS release, absurdly retitled DEATH SCREAM and shortened by several minutes--that same crummy DEATH SCREAM print is what's streaming on Amazon Prime--THE DEADLY TRAP has been tough to see in its proper form until now and is probably the least-remembered film from Dunaway's heyday (even 1969's notorious bomb THE EXTRAORDINARY SEAMAN turns up on TCM with some degree of regularity). Fans of Dunaway, Langella (in just his third film, maybe hoping Clement could do for him what he did for Delon and Bronson), and VALLEY OF THE DOLLS star Parkins will find completist curio value here, but given that roster of talent and with Clement coming off RIDER ON THE RAIN, this was regarded as a big disappointment then and the passage of time hasn't made it any better.
THE DEADLY TRAP airing in prime time on CBS on 8/15/1978
AND HOPE TO DIE (France - 1972) Directed by Rene Clement. Written by Sebastian Japrisot. Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Robert Ryan, Lea Massari, Aldo Ray, Jean Gaven, Tisa Farrow, Andre Lawrence, Nadine Nabakov, Daniel Breton, Louis Aubert, Beatrice Belthoise, Don Arres, Mario Verdon, Emmanuelle Beart. (PG, 141 mins) After the middling THE DEADLY TRAP was greeted with shrugging indifference by critics and moviegoers, Rene Clement quickly returned with 1972's AND HOPE TO DIE, a loose adaptation of David Goodis' 1954 novel Black Friday that also reunited him with RIDER ON THE RAIN screenwriter Sebastian Japrisot. The end result is even more eccentric than RIDER, and one of the most unusual and offbeat European crime films of its day. Loaded with references to Lewis Carroll and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass from the opening shot of a mirror and a bookstore window adorned with the grinning visage of the Cheshire Cat, AND HOPE TO DIE is a fascinating, metaphorically oblique puzzle that's never quite solved, starting with a shy child being taunted by some other kids (including a very young Emmanuelle Beart, 15 years before MANON OF THE SPRING) and an onscreen quote "My love, we're simply overgrown children running around before we go to sleep." Clement cuts to a train arriving at a Montreal station in almost spaghetti western fashion, as three members of a gypsy clan are waiting for Antoine "Tony" Cardot (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a French fugitive who manages to get away, hitching a ride and hiding out in the abandoned American Pavilion (later turned into the Montreal Biosphere) at the Expo 67 World's Fair site. Tony's luck doesn't get any better, as he happens to stumble into a shootout where corrupt ex-cop Renner (Louis Aubert) is whacked by cohorts Rizzio (Jean Gaven) and Paul (Daniel Breton). Just before he dies, Renner hands Tony a wallet and an envelope with $15,000, but after stuffing the money down his pants, he's caught by Rizzio and Paul before he can get away. They handcuff him and take him by car (where he manages to push Paul out of the vehicle, causing a serious head injury), then by boat to a vacant inn being used as a hideout for their gang of criminals led by the fearsome Charley (Robert Ryan), with the gypsy mystery men following close behind and not letting Tony out of their sight.
It soon becomes apparent to Tony that he's traded in one deadly predicament for another. Charley wants the $15,000 that Rizzio and Paul were supposed to get--Tony initially claims he doesn't have it--and in addition to Charley's threats, he also has to deal with his brutish, hapless flunky Mattone (Aldo Ray). Derisively rechristened "Froggy" by Charley, Tony tells a story about how he's on the run because he killed a cop, which gets him enough cache to be kept alive for a while, but he remains on thin ice with Charley throughout, the situation growing even more volatile when he starts sleeping with Charley's free-spirited, open-relationship girlfriend Sugar (Lea Massari). Tony also unexpectedly bonds with Pepper (Tisa Farrow, Mia's younger sister and later the star of Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE), Paul's younger sister (they were "adopted" by Charley as kids, when their father--a member of Charley's crew--was killed on a job), who feels drawn to him even though she knows he's responsible when Paul eventually dies from his head injury. With Paul out of the picture and already down another man in dead traitor Renner, Charley decides to include Tony as an impromptu fill-in for a bizarre heist he's been commissioned to pull off by an incarcerated mobster (Mario Verdon).
The what and why of the heist ("Toboggan?") would be revealing too much, but it's perfectly in line with this remarkably unconventional crime thriller that's on Blu-ray in its original 141-minute French-language version. It's easy to see why US distributor 20th Century Fox didn't know what the hell to do with AND HOPE TO DIE, cutting it by 42 minutes (!) when it hit American theaters in November 1972 and puttered across the country well into the next year (it opened in Cleveland, OH as late as August 1973). The 99-minute, English-language US cut occasionally aired on late-night TV and had a VHS release through Monterey Home Video, but has since completely disappeared from circulation. It would've been an interesting bonus feature on the Blu, but one can assume the American version eliminates much of the character-building, the slow-burn tension, the Lewis Carroll allusions, and does what it can to offset the general sense of the strange, dreamy melancholy of the entire situation to instead focus on the more action-oriented heist and its aftermath. The reviews were predictably brutal (New York Times film critic Vincent Canby put it on his ten-worst list for 1972), but even European audiences experiencing Clement's intended vision may have been left baffled and scratching their heads. It's filled with nail-biting suspense, but it's not really interested in being a straightforward thriller (there's even some absurdist humor in the way Charley makes Tony sleep in a child's bed), and it's book-ended by scenes of children playing that may even indicate that it's all being imagined. You're never sure if a character is being truthful about their background, starting with Tony, whose reasons for being on the run--hinted at in almost William Friedkin-esque subliminal flash cuts--are eventually revealed to be quite different than what he's telling everyone. Even a whiny, dim-witted meathead like Mattone has layers to his character, and his weird and seemingly out-of-nowhere encounter with a psychic majorette (Nadine Nabokov) will have disastrous consequences later on. That's just one example of how everything that seems random and nonsensical in AND HOPE TO DIE is there for a reason, probably an important aspect of the film's construction that was likely lost on 20th Century Fox when they hacked it down and sold it as action-packed caper.
AND HOPE TO DIE is easily the most peculiarly idiosyncratic film of Clement's career. With its genuinely unpredictable story, character development and arcs, and some effective use of Montreal locations, it's a unique, forgotten gem and a buried treasure of a cult item that's been patiently waiting to be rediscovered, even if it takes a while to adjust to a dubbed-in-French Robert Ryan, who's absolutely terrific in one of his last films (he gets a great intro, putting a cigarette out in Tony's coffee, kicking off a running gag where they don't let him eat or drink). Already terminally ill with lung cancer, Ryan spent the final year of his life working nonstop (he made four more movies after this--LOLLY-MADONNA XXX, THE OUTFIT, EXECUTIVE ACTION, and THE ICEMAN COMETH, the last three being posthumously released in the months after his death in July 1973 at 64). He doesn't look well here, but he doesn't allow cancer to hinder him in the slightest (that would especially be the case with his brilliant final performance in THE ICEMAN COMETH), participating in a few action sequences and getting into rough scuffles with Trintignant and Ray throughout. Though they're revoiced in French (with the American cut seemingly lost and no clips of it on YouTube to verify--not even a US trailer--it's possible Clement shot two versions of the all dialogue scenes, one in French and one in English, like he did with RIDER ON THE RAIN), Americans Ryan and Farrow are phonetically speaking/mouthing the language, and Ray, who previously worked with Ryan in 1957's MEN OF WAR and 1958's GOD'S LITTLE ACRE, goes one step further by delivering his entire performance in French with his actual voice. Aldo Ray fluent in French? Who knew? It's a jarring sight and sound, and an unexpected level of commitment from a guy who was notoriously difficult in his prime, was a couple years away from slumming in Al Adamson movies, who would cap off the decade by appearing in a non-sexual co-starring role in the 1979 Carol Connors hardcore porn western SWEET SAVAGE, and would later have his SAG membership temporarily revoked in the mid '80s for taking quick cash in non-union projects. AND HOPE TO DIE has totally fallen off the radar in the decades since its release, but this new Blu-ray will hopefully be the start of a long-overdue resurrection and reappraisal. It's an often impenetrable, strangely haunting, one-of-a-kind film that stays with you for days after seeing it, and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as revered Clement essentials like FORBIDDEN GAMES, PURPLE NOON, and RIDER ON THE RAIN.
ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE (UK - 1985) Directed by Desmond Davis. Written by Alexander Stuart. Cast: Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway, Sarah Miles, Christopher Plummer, Ian McShane, Diana Quick, Michael Elphick, Annette Crosbie, George Innes, Valerie Whittington, Phoebe Nichols, Michael Maloney, Cassie Stuart, Billy McColl, Ron Pember. (PG-13, 90 mins)
The critical and commercial success of 1974's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS kickstarted a big-screen Agatha Christie revival that lasted into the early 1980s, with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot in 1978's DEATH ON THE NILE and 1982's EVIL UNDER THE SUN, as well as Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple in 1980's THE MIRROR CRACK'D. The small screen also proved to be a popular venue, with Ustinov continuing to portray Poirot and Helen Hayes taking a few turns as Miss Marple in a series of TV-movies. It was after Christie mysteries seemed relegated to television that Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus belatedly brought Cannon into the act with a trio of mid-to-late '80s Christie projects that received little theatrical exposure, starting with 1985's ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, based on the legendary mystery writer's 1958 novel. Like most Christie adaptations, it was a star-studded affair, but the end result is a dreary, ponderous misfire that's arguably the worst movie version of her work. The novel was a bit of a departure for Christie at the time, focusing less on any mystery and more on psychological drama, but it simply doesn't translate well to the screen. Much of this was due to a troubled production that saw director Desmond Davis (CLASH OF THE TITANS) being relieved of his duties after a disastrous rough cut screening at Cannes in 1984. He was replaced by New Zealand-born British exploitation hack Alan Birkinshaw (KILLER'S MOON, INVADERS OF THE LOST GOLD), who shot about 25 minutes worth of new footage and oversaw extensive re-editing into its finished 90-minute state, though Davis remains the sole credited director (this wasn't the first time Birkinshaw stepped in for a fired director; he also took over for Edmund Purdom on 1984's killer Santa movie DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, juicing it up with numerous splatter scenes and gratuitous T&A). Also jettisoned was a moody, atmospheric score by Pino Donaggio that Cannon and test audiences didn't like and would've had to be significantly reworked after Birkinshaw's new footage and subsequent restructuring. Donaggio had already moved on to another project and was no longer available to tweak the score to anyone's liking, prompting Golan and Globus, in search of a "name" composer, to make the ill-advised decision to sub in newly-recorded versions of existing pieces by Dave Brubeck and his quartet. Brubeck is one of the most important figures in the history of American music, but these compositions simply don't belong in this movie, with dark and somber scenes accompanied by bouncy jazz piano, noodling clarinet solos, and bombastic, pseudo-Buddy Rich drum histrionics that make the entire score sound like a temp track left in as a joke.
Just back in mid-1950s England after a two-year expedition to Antarctica, paleontologist Dr. Arthur Calgary (Donald Sutherland) finally gets around to delivering an address book left behind in his car by Jacko Argyle (Billy McColl), a stranger to whom he gave a lift en route to his departure by ship two years ago. They parted ways, but Calgary hung on to the address book, and when he delivers it to the Argyle mansion, he's informed by patriarch Leo (Christopher Plummer) that his son Jacko was hanged two years earlier for the murder of his mother, Leo's wife and Argyle matriarch Rachel (Faye Dunaway). Upon hearing the details of the murder and the time that it took place, Calgary is stunned to realize that Jacko had to be innocent, because he was in the passenger seat of his car when the murder occurred, making Calgary the perfect alibi, albeit two years too late. While Jacko apparently professed his innocence and insisted he was hitching a ride with a stranger at the time, the family sees fit to let sleeping dogs lie and not address the issue that there is a murderer among them. But the persistent Calgary becomes obsessed with exonerating Jacko, conducting his own investigation, much to the disapproval of the Argyles, who are only now beginning to recover from the scandal, and chief investigator Inspector Huish (Michael Elphick), who doesn't want his closed case reopened.
Most of ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE consists of an uncharacteristically bland Sutherland wandering from place to place to interview Argyle family members and ask each of them the same series of questions, which gives you a chance to see a parade of fine actors that are unfortunately not put to good use. Dunaway is wasted in a glorified cameo, seen only in black & white flashbacks, while 43-year-old Sarah Miles is improbably cast as the daughter of 55-year-old Plummer and 44-year-old Dunaway. Ian McShane has a couple of scenes as Miles' wheelchair-bound, Argyle-hating husband. There's also one weird bit where Jacko's widow (Cassie Stuart) attempts to seduce Calgary, with Stuart playing the entire scene topless, a move that has Birkinshaw's greasy fingerprints all over it. Screenwriter Alexander Stuart (who would fare much better by adapting his controversial 1989 novel The War Zone into Tim Roth's acclaimed 1999 directing debut) takes some liberties with the source novel, starting with Jacko being executed instead of dying in prison, but the finished film is so choppy, badly-paced, and obviously truncated (with scenes either cut or never filmed in the first place) that it never builds any sense of momentum, suspense, or urgency (not helped at all by Brubeck's completely inappropriate score), ending with a big reveal about the real killer and Sutherland's Calgary just shrugging and ambling away to the dock to take the boat back to the mainland, likely mirroring the reaction of the very few people who saw this when it was barely released in theaters in the spring of 1985. It's just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), which would've been a good opportunity to have an alternate audio track that played parts of the film with Donaggio's discarded score just for the sake of comparison (it was eventually released on cd), but there's no bonus features other than a couple of trailers, as ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE is met with the same ambivalence today as it was in 1985, seemingly doomed to its destiny as a justly-forgotten footnote to the careers of everyone involved.
Cannon went on to make two more Christie adaptations with 1988's Michael Winner-helmed APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH (with Ustinov returning as Hercule Poirot, accompanied by legends like Lauren Bacall, Piper Laurie, and John Gielgud), and 1989's South Africa-shot Harry Alan Towers production TEN LITTLE INDIANS, directed by Birkinshaw and starring Frank Stallone, Donald Pleasence, and Herbert Lom. Ordeal by Innocence was retrofitted as a 2007 episode of the ITV/PBS series MARPLE (with Geraldine McEwan in the title role), and was recently turned into an acclaimed three-part miniseries by BBC One and aired on Amazon Prime in 2018 with Luke Treadaway as Calgary and Bill Nighy as Leo Argyll (changed to "Argyle" in the Cannon film). While it was much better-received than the 1985 version, the miniseries encountered some controversy when co-star Ed Westwick (as another Argyll son) was accused of sexual assault by multiple women, prompting BBC execs to pull an ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD and completely reshoot his scenes with replacement Christian Cooke.
INCONCEIVABLE (US/UK - 2017) Directed by Jonathan Baker. Written by Chloe King. Cast: Gina Gershon, Faye Dunaway, Nicolas Cage, Nicky Whelan, Natalie Eva Marie, Jonathan Baker, James Van Patten, Sienna Soho Baker, Harlow Bottarini, Ele Bardha, Corrie Danieley, Tyler Jon Olson. (R, 106 mins) A de facto remake of the 2015 Will Ferrell/Kristen Wiig Lifetime thriller A DEADLY ADOPTION as well as 2016's WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS, INCONCEIVABLE is the kind of glossy "(blank) from Hell" thriller that was a multiplex fixture back in the 1990s. INCONCEIVABLE had the chance to be trashy fun, especially with a script penned by Chloe King, daughter of softcore auteur Zalman King (writer of 9 1/2 WEEKS, director of TWO MOON JUNCTION), and a writer on her late dad's erotic Showtime series RED SHOE DIARIES, plus the presence of a couple of slumming Oscar winners, but it takes itself far too seriously. It's the feature directing debut of Jonathan Baker, an L.A. entrepreneur with deep ties to the entertainment industry and, well, don't take it from me. Take it from Baker's IMDb bio that was in no way written by Jonathan Baker:
"On the surface, Jonathan Baker is an eclectic personality, Upon closer examination, however, it comes to light that for years his every endeavor and adventure have all been achieved with the same goal in mind: entertaining people by making their dreams come true. His close involvement with the entertainment industry, as well as his ownership of the #1 rated day spa in the country both served as evidence of that love for realizing dreams."
Yes, it was his love of realizing dreams that led to Baker's defining moment: berating and shoving his then-wife, former Playboy Playmate Victoria Fuller, when they came in second in a race on a 2004 episode of THE AMAZING RACE, an incident that immediately put him in the elite company of universally loathed reality show assholes like THE REAL WORLD's Puck, THE APPRENTICE's Omarosa, and, more recently, the guy on SURVIVOR who outed a transgender contestant. But we're not here to judge Baker's past. We're here to talk about INCONCEIVABLE, and Baker is about as good a director as he is a sport about coming in second.
A thriller that couldn't be any sillier if Wallace Shawn periodically popped up to blurt the title at every ludicrous plot reveal, INCONCEIVABLE focuses on affluent husband-and-wife doctors Brian (Nicolas Cage) and Angela Morgan (Gina Gershon), who have the perfect life in an impossibly huge mansion with five-year-old daughter Cora (Harlow Bottarini), conceived with a donor egg after the couple endured four miscarriages. Angela's friend Linda (Natalie Eva Maria) introduces her to Katie (Nicky Whelan, Cage's co-star in LEFT BEHIND and DOG EAT DOG), a single mom of four-year-old Maddie (Sienna Soho Baker, the director's daughter). The kids become instant best friends, as do the moms, but no one knows Katie's secret (well, one of them anyway), revealed in a prologue: she murdered her abusive husband when Maddie was a baby, and has been living under an alias, moving from town to town since. Angela and Katie are fast friends, with Angela asking Katie to move into the guest house and be Maddie's nanny, but Brian's meddling mother Donna (Faye Dunaway), who lives in another guest house on the property, has a bad feeling about her, and of course, she's right. Brian and Angela decide to have another baby, this time with a surrogate, using the second donor egg harvested from the first pregnancy with Cora, and they ask Linda to carry it. This upsets Katie, with whom Linda is having a secret fling. Katie reveals that her finding Brian and Angela was no coincidence, as she provided the anonymous donor egg for Cora and that she wants to take her and raise her as Maddie's sister. And she also wants to carry the other egg she donated, which means being in a position to step in as the surrogate mother, which necessitates drowning Linda and passing it off as a boating accident. This was not a boat accident!
INCONCEIVABLE is terrible but take the small victories where you can: it actually remembers "I before E except after C." It's is so indebted to the "(blank) from Hell" concept that it's both a Nanny-from-Hell and a Surrogate Mother-from-Hell thriller, but there's no suspense because Baker has no idea how to present an interesting plot reveal. He constantly shows his cards too soon and can't stop tripping over his own leaden feet. Characters constantly drop exposition into casual conversation that feels stilted and awkward (Angela's miscarriages, her past Xanax abuse), and the plot moves in a completely unreal way with characters doing stupid things, as when Brian demands a urine sample to see if Angela's clean after Katie accuses her of pill-popping, and Angela gives the sample to Katie to take to the lab?! Linda's drowning is immediately followed by Angela and Donna having breakfast and Angela saying "Katie was great when Linda was killed in that boating accident." Wait, you mean the drowning that we just saw? Exactly how much time has passed? I'm surprised they didn't get up from the table and have Angela say "Remember when we had breakfast and talked about how great Katie was?" When Katie announces she's moving to Colorado for a job, Angela immediately blurts "You can't just leave! Why don't you move into our guest house? You could also be our part-time nanny," with Brian nodding "Absolutely." People don't talk or make important decisions like this. The characters rely on suppositions and assumptions (Angela's phone call to the egg donor facility is a howler), and of course, Brian's younger brother Barry works in a DNA lab and comes through in the end with a key piece of evidence to save the day. It should go without saying that Barry is played by...you guessed it...Jonathan Baker.
It's nice to see Gershon getting a leading role, but she's better than this uninspired garbage. Academy Award-winner Dunaway, following her triumphant appearance in THE BYE BYE MAN, is thoroughly wasted and only has a few brief scenes, despite her second billing. And it's INCONCEIVABLE how Nic Cage got to here, exactly 20 years to the week that the classic FACE/OFF was unleashed in theaters: third-billed in a vanity project by an infamous reality show douchebag. Cage is an Oscar-winning actor who, at some point, made the conscious decision to play the thankless Matt McCoy role in a belated HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE ripoff 35 years into his career. Cage has one "Cage" moment near the end, but he's on total autopilot here, visibly not giving the slightest whiff of a shit playing the obligatory clueless husband who has no idea what's going on in his own mansion. It's also unclear what kind of a doctor he is, since he's never seen leaving the house or arriving home with a bag or any kind of files indicating that he's employed, and is almost always seen wearing jeans and a leather jacket. I'm willing to bet that Baker wanted to play Brian, but someone, whether it was Lionsgate, Grindstone, Emmett/Furla, or any of the six production companies and 25 credited producers involved other than his own "Baker Entertainment Group," vetoed that and insisted on someone notable who could actually act, or once had acted. Baker is just dreadful in his scenes as Barry, and as a director, he's a great day spa owner. None of that stops the auteur from showing off the least humble production company logo ever, one that's shockingly not accompanied by an image of a smiling Baker with a "ting" gleaming off of his teeth. He also extends his personal gratitude to none other than Warren Beatty in the closing credits. And Warren thought the Best Picture debacle at the Oscars would be his biggest movie-related embarrassment of the year?
For children of the '80s who still hold dear the films of their formative years in that eventful decade of horror, it's always nice to see something new created by people who get it--filmmakers who get you and speak your language. The writing and directing team of Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski--part of the Canadian filmmaking collective Astron-6 (MANBORG, THE EDITOR)--are two such guys. THE VOID is basically one big '80s horror lovefest that storms out of the gate but ultimately falls victim to its own void: no matter how many beloved '80s horror treasures you reference, invoke, or outright steal from, there still needs to be a foundation of something at its core beyond mere shout-outs and callbacks. Partially crowd-funded on Indiegogo by fans who would've otherwise spent the money buying steelbook editions of movies they already own, THE VOID is the cinematic equivalent of perusing your DVD/Blu-ray collection for something to watch. It puts an ensemble cast into a classic John Carpenter scenario, trapped in a hospital with shape-shifting creatures taking over dead bodies while robed, hooded cult figures stand guard outside, preventing them from leaving. Deputy Carter (Aaron Poole, who might convince less attentive viewers that he's Aaron Paul) tries to contain the situation, which is exacerbated by a trigger happy father and son (Daniel Fathers, Mik Byskov) after a local meth head (Even Stern), a pregnant teenager (Grace Munro) and her loving grandfather (James Millington), a trainee nurse who can't even (Ellen Wong, best known as Knives Chau in SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD), a state trooper (Art Hindle) who gets devoured by a Lovecraftian creature as soon as he arrives on the scene, and a head nurse (Kathleen Munroe) who happens to be Carter's estranged wife, their marriage falling apart after the death of their infant child.
Most of these characters may as well be named "Dead Meat," thanks to Dr. Powell (Kenneth Welsh), the doc on duty who happens to be the head of a cult that's set up shop in the basement of the hospital. Powell has made a pact with a force in "The Void," a netherworld whose entry portal exists behind an illuminated triangle in the basement. Powell is able to "transform" people into other beings and defeat death, which became his obsession after the death of his teenage daughter, with his ultimate goal to bring the power of The Void into our world. Gillespie and Kostanski are obviously having a lot of fun here and for a while, you too can have a good time playing Name That Reference. The big selling point of THE VOID is the filmmakers' insistence on using practical creature and gore effects, which look great but are too often left in murky darkness. Seeing old-school splatter of that sort was enough to establish THE VOID's bona fides with many, but with a set-up that combines Carpenter's THE THING and PRINCE OF DARKNESS, the extent of homage crosses the line by the climax, when Gillespie and Kostanski are ripping off no less than three films at the same time--PRINCE OF DARKNESS, Clive Barker's HELLRAISER, and Lucio Fulci's THE BEYOND--plus some gratuitous H.P. Lovecraft for good measure. It's one thing to wear your love of these films on your sleeve, but it's another entirely to just straight-up copy shots and imagery without bringing anything new to the table. What's here is reverent and respectful of iconic '80s horror, but at the same time, it's not that far removed from the same mentality that drives a Friedberg/Seltzer spoof movie--namely, just making the reference is supposed to be good enough. Seeing a transformed Dr. Powell acting like a combination of Frank and Pinhead from HELLRAISER as he blathers endlessly at the Void portal--stopping just short of proclaiming that he "has such sights to show you"--just makes me want to watch HELLRAISER again (if nothing else, THE VOID proves to be a better HELLRAISER sequel than most HELLRAISER sequels). Gillespie's and Kostanski's hearts are in the right place, and it was a joy seeing these kinds of vintage practical effects in a new movie in 2017, further demonstrating that no matter the advancements or the cost-effectiveness, CGI will never be able to top practical in these circumstances. But by the time the credits roll, THE VOID is a film whose title ultimately becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Unrated, 90 mins)
MINDGAMERS (Austria - 2017)
Shot in 2014 as DXM, the sci-fi hodgepodge MINDGAMERS is about as good as you'd expect a movie produced by an energy drink to turn out. Bankrolled by Red Bull's Terra Mater Factual Films media division, MINDGAMERS really wants to be a circa-1999 Wachowski Brothers groundbreaker but ends up feeling like a decade-too-late MATRIX ripoff. Directed and co-written by Andrew Goth (the ill-fated GALLOWWALKERS, a film shelved for several years while star Wesley Snipes was incarcerated), MINDGAMERS opens in 2027 and deals with quantum technology being the next evolution of human connectivity. Renegade priest Kreutz (a visibly befuddled Sam Neill, probably getting a lifetime supply of Red Bull whether he wanted it or not), a deranged quantum physicist who only joined the church so it would fund his pseudo-theological experiments, argues with a monsignor that "the border between physics and faith is dead!" before making his point by bashing the monsignor's head in. Cut to years later at the exclusive DxM Academy ("DxM" an abbreviation for Deus Ex Machina--no, really, it is), where a group of hip and edgy young geniuses led by Jaxon (Tom Payne, now on THE WALKING DEAD) are recruited to perfect the ability to transmit thought and ability via "brain connectivity." Their case study is quadriplegic combat veteran Voltaire (Ryan Doyle) and things start progressing when new team member Stella (Melia Kreiling) taps into DxM super computer "En.o.ch." Once their minds are all linked, the DxM Xtreme Fyzzicystz (OK, that one I made up) start demonstrating as a group the levels of Voltaire's strength and agility prior to his paralysis. There's also an aged Kreutz, slowed down by a stroke, trying to hijack their discoveries for his own purposes, whatever they may be, and then everyone convenes for some kind of interpretive dance flash mob in a torrential downpour.
I'll be honest with you: I haven't the slightest idea what's going on in MINDGAMERS. But I'm not alone, because I don't think the filmmakers do either. Hard sci-fi so flaccid that it might've been better off being financed by Cialis, MINDGAMERS starts out like an extreme gamer remake of PRINCE OF DARKNESS before changing course and finally answering the never-asked question "What would WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW!? look like if just got fuckin' rekt with more parkour and random Jesus Christ poses, brah?" MINDGAMERS screened at the 2015 Grimmfest in the UK, but then sat on a shelf for almost two years before Universal gave it a one-night, live-streamed theatrical release through Fathom Events in March 2017, where it was hyped that 1000 audience members nationwide could wear connectivity headbands and gather data from their thoughts as the movie unfolded. There wasn't much to report, as many of the screenings were cancelled due to no tickets being sold. There's some impressive-looking Romanian ruins used for exterior shots and the ornate sets show the movie isn't cheap, but it's a mercilessly talky, hopelessly muddled buzzkill that's pretentiously pleased with itself and completely full of shit. (R, 99 mins) THE BYE BYE MAN (US - 2017)
STX Entertainment's half-assed attempt at creating a new horror franchise with a would-be horror icon ready-made for convention cosplayers, THE BYE BYE MAN plays like a low-end Dimension Films production that went missing in 2000 and has just now been discovered in a vault. Mixing elements of CANDYMAN, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and FINAL DESTINATION, THE BYE BYE MAN has a trio of college students--Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and his perpetual third wheel buddy John (Lucien Laviscount, which could either be the name of an actor or a rakish cad about to face Barry Lyndon in a duel)--moving into a spacious and creepy old house where strange things start happening. A nightstand drawer has a warning "Don't think it don't say it" scrawled "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"-style, along with "The Bye Bye Man" carved into the wood. After they hold a seance with the requisite psychic friend Kim (Jenna Kanell), they're all haunted by hallucinations and jump-scare visions of the titular hooded, demonic figure (Guillermo del Toro favorite Doug Jones). The Bye Bye Man was awakened by Elliot's discovery of his existence, which was long buried by local newspaper reporter Larry Redmon (SAW's Leigh Whannell), who went berserk back in 1969 and went on a shooting rampage, killing several of his neighbors before guzzling a can of drain cleaner. THE BYE BYE MAN lumbers along, utilizing every cliche in the book as the characters are stalked one by one before the film wheezes to its conclusion which, of course, leaves the door open for a sequel.
Filled with amateurish performances, scenes that play like rehearsal footage, arbitrary Bye Bye Man rules ("When you hear the hound and the coins, you know he's near!"), multiple characters serving no purpose other than being motor-mouthed exposition dumps, and outright stupid plot contrivances--with one getting killed when she's standing in the middle of a darkened road for no reason whatsoever other than the movie needed her to be there at that time--THE BYE BYE MAN was directed by Stacy Title and written by her husband Jonathan Penner, both of whom have made real movies in the past. She directed and he wrote and co-starred in the acclaimed 1995 indie THE LAST SUPPER and 1999's little-seen Hamlet-inspired L.A. mystery LET THE DEVIL WEAR BLACK before their filmmaking careers petered out. They both resurfaced in 2006 with the unlikely SNOOP DOGG'S HOOD OF HORROR, and this is Title's first film since. There isn't much to say about the Cleveland, OH-shot THE BYE BYE MAN, other than it gets even more depressing when Carrie-Anne Moss turns up in a frivolous supporting role as a hard-nosed cop and downright tragic with the arrival of Faye Dunaway (yes, that Faye Dunaway), the Oscar-winning screen legend squandered in a five-minute cameo as Redmon's reclusive widow, on hand to provide more exposition before quickly disappearing from the movie. Heed this warning about THE BYE BYE MAN: don't think it, don't say it, and better yet, don't even see it. (PG-13, 96 mins, also available in a 100-minute unrated version if anyone cares)
