TOO SCARED TO SCREAM (US - 1985) Directed by Tony Lo Bianco. Written by Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold. Cast: Mike Connors, Anne Archer, Ian McShane, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Murray Hamilton, Ruth Ford, John Heard, Carrie Nye, Maureen O'Sullivan, Chet Doherty, Ken Norris, Sully Boyar, Karen Rushmore, Val Avery, Rony Clanton, Beeson Carroll, Victoria Bass, Adrienne Howard, Harry Madsen. (R, 99 mins)
The sole feature directing effort to date from veteran character actor Tony Lo Bianco (THE FRENCH CONNECTION), TOO SCARED TO SCREAM is an obscure oddity in the '80s slasher craze in that it skews much older than expected. Sure, there's the requisite splatter and some gratuitous nudity, but in a genre focused on dead teenagers, this has an overqualified cast on the mature side, headed by Mike Connors--TV's MANNIX--who also produced with his buddy, co-star Ken Norris, and A. Kitman Ho, the latter going on to be Oliver Stone's producing partner during the director's glory days from 1986's PLATOON through 1993's HEAVEN & EARTH. At times, TOO SCARED TO SCREAM (shot in NYC in 1982 as THE DOORMAN, but shelved until the short-lived B outfit The Movie Store got it into a few theaters in early 1985) feels less like a slasher film and more like a pilot for a Connors cop show that's been spruced up with enough violence, F-bombs, and T&A to qualify for an R rating. When a high-class call girl (Victoria Bass) is stabbed to death in her Manhattan high-rise apartment, Lt. DiNardo (Connors) and his partner Frank (PENITENTIARY's Leon Isaac Kennedy, his middle name misspelled "Issac" in the credits) zero in on their prime suspect: weirdo night doorman Vincent Hardwick (Ian McShane). Hardwick certainly seems the guilty type--he's evasive with questions, randomly spouts Shakespeare like a pompous asshole, and lives with and dotes obsessively on his paralyzed, wheelchair-bound mother (Maureen O'Sullivan, Mia Farrow's mother and the original Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan, and who somehow chose this to end a long big-screen sabbatical), who can no longer speak but conveys with her eyes and worried looks that even she's creeped out by him.
A few more of the building's residents turn up dead, including a horny old woman (Ruth Ford, best known as the First Daughter opposite an Oscar-nominated Alexander Knox in 1944's WILSON) who keeps trying to booty call Hardwick in the wee hours when he's on duty; a lecherous fashion guru (Sully Boyar, of all people); and a model (Karen Rushmore) who takes the time to give herself a long, lingering nude oil rubdown before being offed (Lo Bianco had a few episodic TV directing credits under his belt, but he's definitely relishing the freedom he has here). Even though all of the murders happen on Hardwick's shifts, the evidence against him barely even qualifies as circumstantial, so DiNardo decides to take a break from busting the chops of ambitious female cop Kate Bridges (Anne Archer) by sending her in undercover as a new tenant (one of a few plot points that echo PIECES, along with one victim being dismembered and the remains compared to a jigsaw puzzle). Lo Bianco's direction is serviceable as he manages to create a few moderately tense moments and captures some vintage Times Square location shots (E.T., FIRST BLOOD, THE BURNING, and the porno I LIKE TO WATCH are on various theater marquees). He also leaves a blown Connors line in the finished film, when the star refers to McShane's Vincent Hardwick as "Mike Hardwick." Already a busy actress but still a few years from breaking out with her Oscar-nominated turn in 1987's FATAL ATTRACTION, Archer brings some charm to her role, even if her dancing skills land more on the side of Elaine Benes than FLASHDANCE. Connors more or less reprises his MANNIX persona, albeit with a few bizarre moments like when DiNardo finds the first victim's S&M-enthusiast john from the night before (Beeson Carroll) naked, hog-tied, and burned, slapping him on the ass and telling him "Don't catch cold," later quipping to Frank that "his butt looked like an ashtray at a Lucky Strike convention." Kennedy has next to nothing do, like many of the name actors who pop up in brief cameos, presumably as a result of Lo Bianco and Connors calling in some favors from friends who maybe stuck around just long enough to hit craft services: in addition to O'Sullivan and Ford, there's Carrie Nye just killing it in her one scene as a sardonic fashion designer; Murray Hamilton is a drunk, disgraced ex-cop and the older sugar daddy ex-husband of the first victim; Val Avery plays a coroner with a morbid sense of humor; and John Heard drops by as a forensic lab tech, perhaps because it was on his way to the set of C.H.U.D. They even managed to get legendary French singer Charles Aznavour to contribute the incongruous opening credits song "I'll Be There,"which also gets a more contemporary take at the end by Phyllis Hyman.
On VHS from Vestron back in the day, and just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), TOO SCARED TO SCREAM is of little interest to anyone other than '80s slasher completists and Ian McShane superfans. Written by Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold, a pair of '70s and '80s Saturday morning cartoon vets who also scripted Joseph Zito's much nastier 1981 cult classic THE PROWLER (Barbera's father was Hanna-Barbera's Joseph Barbera), the movie isn't very good, but the climactic plot twist does take things into an admittedly unexpected direction for the time, and is probably one of several things throughout that wouldn't fly in today's cancellation culture. As far as McShane is concerned, the future DEADWOOD star goes all in here, obviously patterning his performance on Anthony Perkins in PSYCHO. He gets to do some crazy and deranged shit, like putting on makeup, smiling at himself in the mirror, picking fights in an Irish bar, acting all twitchy, having meltdowns, and, in a scene that's worth the price of admission, force-feeding heaping forkfuls of cake to a game O'Sullivan. The Blu-ray has a couple of decent bonus features, with 82-year-old Lo Bianco and 70-year-old Kennedy on hand for newly-shot interviews, mainly reminiscing about cast members but never addressing why it took three years for the movie to be released or why no one behind the scenes knew how to spell "Isaac."
FM (US - 1978) Directed by John A. Alonzo. Written by Ezra Sacks. Cast: Michael Brandon, Eileen Brennan, Alex Karras, Cleavon Little, Martin Mull, Cassie Yates, Norman Lloyd, Linda Ronstadt, Jimmy Buffett, Jay Fenichel, James Keach, Joe Smith, Tom Tarpey, Tom Petty, Janet Brandt, Mary Torrey, Terry Jastrow, Cissy Wellman, Robert Patten, Brenda Venus, REO Speedwagon. (PG, 104 mins) Long erroneously credited with being the inspiration for WKRP IN CINCINNATI, which was in development at CBS at the same time, FM, released by Universal in the spring of 1978, is a killer soundtrack in search of a movie. The soundtrack, a time-capsule snapshot of 1978 rock radio with the title track written for the film by Steely Dan, ended up being a huge seller and was far more popular than the movie, which did only middling business. It's easy to see why: for a comedy, it's rarely laugh-out-loud funny, and the dramatic elements are managed in a heavy-handed way that leads to a contrived feelgood ending that comes off as phony and unearned. The cast is likable, though it might've helped to have someone more magnetic than Michael Brandon in the central role. Best known for his debut in 1970's acclaimed LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS and, if you're a horror fan, Dario Argento's 1971 giallo FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, Brandon had a rare big-screen lead with FM at a time when he was pretty firmly entrenched as a TV actor or an occasional support (fourth-billed in 1980's A CHANGE OF SEASONS, for instance, after Shirley MacLaine, Anthony Hopkins, and Bo Derek). Just out on Blu-ray from Arrow (because physical media is dead), FM stars Brandon as Jeff Dugan, the program director and morning drive-time deejay at L.A.'s second highest-rated FM station QSKY. He manages a motley crew of characters, including Mother (Eileen Brennan), the aging veteran who's getting burned out with the weirdos who call in; Doc (Alex Karras), whose low ratings and country & western playlist in the pivotal afternoon slot ultimately cost him his job; Dugan's on-again/off-again girlfriend Laura (Cassie Yates), promoted from fill-in and weekends to replace Doc; the Prince of Darkness (Cleavon Little), who has the midnight-6am slot; and the mercurial Eric Swan (FERNWOOD 2 NIGHT star Martin Mull in his movie debut), the evening deejay who's hired an agent and is constantly looking to parlay his on-air popularity into something more, like hosting a game show, but is time and again his own worst enemy.
QSKY's corporate owners send in sales stooge Regis Lamar (Tom Tarpey) to drum up advertising, even calling on a friend in the Army to set up a deal where QSKY will play corny military recruitment jingles throughout the day. Of course, Dugan is vehemently against the idea, arguing that the station is already profitable and it has to be about more than dollars ("Wall-to-wall commercials!" Lamar beams, with Dugan sneering "Yeah, too bad we can't get rid of the music completely!"). Eventually, Dugan is canned after refusing to go along with corporate's directive, prompting Mother, Swan, and the rest of the staff to announce an on-air strike, barricading themselves in the building as fans riot outside to the tune of Queen's "We Will Rock You." Dugan is introduced speeding to work and avoiding the cops to the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane," and Swan has an on-air meltdown to Player's "Baby Come Back." Hardly a minute goes by without some now-classic rock staple putting in an appearance (here, check out the incredible tracklist; Anchor Bay released this on DVD many years ago and it's hard to believe they and now Arrow were able to clear all the music rights), and there's certainly an argument to made that FM's soundtrack is better than any K-Tel compilation of the day or as effective as any late '70s rock playlist you would create today (Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" is also in the movie, but isn't on the soundtrack album). You also get live concert footage of Jimmy Buffett and Linda Ronstadt, and, in a canny display of corporate synergy, MCA Records rising star Tom Petty drops by the QSKY studio to plug his new single "Breakdown" and be interviewed on air by Dugan and Laura.
Much of the musical talent was corralled by executive producer/record exec/talent manager Irving Azoff, who ultimately had his name taken off the credits after a disagreement with Universal. The music is phenomenal and scenes like Dugan and Mother hosting an REO Speedwagon meet-and-greet at an L.A. Tower Records are priceless, but storywise, there just isn't much here. The lone feature directing effort by renowned cinematographer John A. Alonzo (CHINATOWN), FM is clearly the work of a D.P., with effective use of windows, glass, and reflections throughout, but is also saddled with a TV look at times, especially the climactic riot, which Alonzo is forced to stage in what looks like a cramped corner on a laughably unconvincing Universal backlot. The scant laughs usually come courtesy of Mull, whether he's getting blown by a fan in the deejay booth and unaware that he's on the air, or having one of his many diva moments where he goes silent with dead air, then comes to his senses by telling listeners that he just played the new single by Marcel Marceau. Both Brandon's Jeff Dugan and Gary Sandy's Andy Travis on WKRP IN CINCINNATI were based on famed KMET program director "Captain Mikey." But the difference between FM and WKRP is that FM errs in taking itself far too seriously, even if it gives Brennan some fine dramatic moments, like when she decides to quit, telling Dugan "I need more than five hours a night ego-tripping in this toy store." FM suffers from its inability to decide if it wants to be an insightful drama about the inner workings of a radio station or a wacky comedy about a zany crew of misfits who play by their own rules. It ends up falling short at both ends, and all that's left is the music, which, in this instance, is enough to justify its cult status.
FM opening in Toledo, OH on 5/5/1978
BETWEEN THE LINES (US - 1977) Directed by Joan Micklin Silver. Written by Fred Barron. Cast: John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Jeff Goldblum, Gwen Welles, Bruno Kirby, Stephen Collins, Jill Eikenberry, Lewis J. Stadlen, Michael J. Pollard, Jon Korkes, Lane Smith, Joe Morton, Richard Cox, Marilu Henner, Raymond J. Barry, Gary Springer, Susan Haskins, Charles Levin, Guy Boyd, Martina Deignan, Robert Costanzo, John H. Gartner, Douglas Kenney, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. (R, 101 mins) Released a year before FM, BETWEEN THE LINES follows a similar formula and has many funny moments with several irreverent smartasses among its character ensemble, but it's a more observational piece of a specific time and place, with counterculture disillusionment setting in and the realities of "adulting" (to use the parlance of our times) and a changing business structure taking hold. Like FM, BETWEEN THE LINES saw the corporate nature of the '80s coming before it did, but many of the characters in BETWEEN THE LINES weren't paying attention to Peter Fonda's despondent "We blew it," near the end of EASY RIDER. The alternative Boston newspaper The Back Bay Mainline is at a turning point. Once a beacon of the underground and the counterculture going back to the late '60s, it's now gone relatively mainstream, with publisher Stuart (Richard Cox) needing more ad revenue to keep the paper afloat and pay the staff. Editor Frank (Jon Korkes) doesn't want to sacrifice copy and keeps butting heads with dweeby, bow-tied advertising sales director Stanley (Lewis J. Stadlen), who insists they need to cut down copy and increase ads to stay profitable. Stanley's the kind of guy who's only too happy about the rumors swirling that Stuart is looking to sell the paper to Roy Walsh (Lane Smith), a powerful business mogul who's amassing a print media empire, a move that will instill a sense of across-the-board policies and likely push out the writing staff, anchored by mainstay Harry Lucas (John Heard), once a counterculture hero in Boston but now just jaded, cynical and barely showing up for work.
At one point, Frank tells Stanley "There's two kinds of writers here: they're either on their way up or on their way down." There's also Michael (Stephen Collins), who's shopping around for a book deal to leave the Mainline behind and go to NYC, though colleague and girlfriend Laura (Robert Altman vet Gwen Welles) wants to stay put; photographer Abbie (Lindsay Crouse), who has an on-again/off-again thing going with Harry and often proves better at his job than he is; ambitious David (Bruno Kirby), who still wears a tie to work; the eccentric "Hawker" (Michael J. Pollard, cast radically against type as "Michael J. Pollard"), a seemingly homeless man who sleeps in the office and sells copies of the paper on the street; Max (Jeff Goldblum), the popular, wisecracking music critic who keeps failing to convince Stuart and Frank that his loyal following warrants a raise from his current pay of $75 per week; and Lynn (Jill Eikenberry), the sweet receptionist who has to put up with all of them. They do what they do because they love the job or, in Harry's case, what the Mainline once was, even though it pays so little that most of them have second jobs, with Max scrounging for extra cash by selling promo copies of reviewed LPs to a used record store down the street.
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver, who found much acclaim with her 1975 debut HESTER STREET (which earned Carol Kane a Best Actress Oscar nomination) and would go on to direct 1988's CROSSING DELANCEY among several other films, BETWEEN THE LINES deftly captures the mood, the spirit, and the lingo of working at a small publication that's struggling to keep the lights on. That's not surprising, as screenwriter Fred Barron (who would go on to create the Lea Thompson sitcom CAROLINE IN THE CITY) spent time in the early '70s working at the Boston alternative weekly The Real Paper, the most obvious influence on the Mainline. Amidst its serious issues and its predictions of exactly how corporate America would take over the news business (also hammered home a year earlier in the scathing NETWORK), with Walsh ultimately buying the paper and saying he wants to keep things the way they are but reminding Frank on day one that "I run several newspapers...I can have a staff in here tomorrow," there's a lot of laughs. They come mostly from Goldblum, in one of the earliest presentations of his "Jeff Goldblum" persona, and future Character Actor Hall of Famer Raymond J. Barry, not a guy generally known for his comedy skills, steals the one scene he's in as a crazed "conceptual artist" with long hair and overalls, barging into the office, smashing Lynn's typewriter to the floor and declaring "I call that 'End of Communication.'" Critically acclaimed at the time, BETWEEN THE LINES, like HESTER STREET, was released independently through Midwest Films, a company founded by Micklin Silver and her husband Raphael Silver. It didn't get a lot of theatrical exposure, though it was rescued from obscurity with a recent Cohen Media restoration that had a limited run in NYC and L.A. before hitting Blu-ray (Collins, his career essentially over following 2014 revelations of past instances of sexual contact with minors going back to 1973, is noticeably left out of the credits on the Blu-ray packaging). It's a time capsule from an bygone era that's never coming back, and with a great ensemble of young actors about to go places (Marilu Henner has a small role as a stripper, a year before TAXI), plus live footage of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and a cameo by National Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney. It's oddly fitting that both it and FM have been resurrected on Blu-ray at exactly the same time.
MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE (US/UK - 2017)
A middling biopic that goes into the Watergate saga from the POV of the whistleblower, the cumbersomely-titled MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE focuses on the veteran FBI company man who, 30-plus years later, admitted that he was the informant known as "Deep Throat," who regularly fed information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. These provided some of the most memorable scenes in the 1976 classic ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, with Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, but MARK FELT goes into what drove him to secretly talk to the press. Felt (1913-2008) is played by an excellent Liam Neeson, and as the film opens in 1972, J. Edgar Hoover has just died and Felt is generally considered by D.C. insiders as a lock to take over as director. The job goes to former deputy Attorney General L. Patrick Gray (Marton Csokas as Russell Crowe), a Nixon loyalist who also brings back disgraced agent Bill Sullivan (a twitchy and overly mannered Tom Sizemore), a longtime rival of Felt's. After the Watergate break-in, Felt leads the FBI investigation but is quickly shut down by Gray, who insists on reporting all of their findings to White House counsel John Dean (Michael C. Hall) over Felt's objections that the FBI doesn't work for the President. A frustrated Felt begins feeding info of a cover-up to Time reporter Sandy Smith (Bruce Greenwood) and eventually Bob Woodward (Julian Morris)at the Post as Gray and Dean desperately try to find the source of the leaks and protect the Oval Office.
Produced by Ridley Scott, MARK FELT was released in September 2017, just after President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey over concerns of "loyalty" and stopping an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. There's some unintended contemporary parallels with the FBI side of the story in MARK FELT and the Oval Office's misunderstanding of the limits of its power and who answers to it, and for a while, as Felt keeps digging for info and keeps being stonewalled by his own boss--this is as much about Felt butting heads with Gray as it is about Watergate--it's a compelling flip side to events seen in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. But as the film goes on, writer/director Peter Landesman (who also wrote the underrated and little-seen KILL THE MESSENGER) loses focus. Felt's decision to become a whistleblower seems initially rooted in his bitterness at being passed over as director after 30 years of doing and saying all the right things, but as he uncovers more evidence that leads directly to Nixon's inner circle, he refuses to play along and be the good soldier that Gray expects. This sort of thing plays to Neeson's strengths, and he turns in one of his best serious performances of the non-TAKEN variety in a long time. The large cast of supporting actors (there's also Josh Lucas, Brian d'Arcy James, Eddie Marsan, Tony Goldwyn, Noah Wyle, Ike Barinholtz, Kate Walsh, and Wendi McLendon-Covey) exists primarily to dump reams of exposition, exclaim cliches ("What you're doing...will bring down the whole house of cards!"), and stare suspiciously at one another as paranoia mounts. To the film's credit, it doesn't ignore Felt's post-Watergate conviction for illegal wiretapping of the Weather Underground and other activist groups and his subsequent pardon by Ronald Reagan in 1981, but it's included almost as an afterthought and it doesn't go deep enough into his reasoning for the overzealous surveillance of those groups: his daughter Joan (Maika Monroe) ran away and joined a commune and he was trying to find her while at the same time hoping to shield her from any prosecution for things she might've done as part of these activist groups. The entire subplot about Felt's home life is botched, leaving Diane Lane with almost nothing to do but complain and guzzle wine as Felt's neglected, long-suffering wife Audrey (who would commit suicide in 1984). Both Neeson and Landesman have expressed regret that most of Lane's performance ended up being cut from the film for time reasons, but really, the whole second half of MARK FELT collapses into total incoherence and starts demonstrating all of the tell-tale signs of a movie that's been hacked to pieces in post-production (Felt is shown meeting with Woodward just one time). At 103 minutes, MARK FELT is curiously short for this kind of sweeping historical saga, almost as if Landesman was told to ditch everything that didn't involve Watergate. Sony had no idea what to do with this, even with a big name like Neeson headlining: this only made it to 332 screens at its widest release, grossing just $768,000. (PG-13, 103 mins)
LAST RAMPAGE: THE ESCAPE OF GARY TISON
(US - 2017)
A refreshingly old-fashioned B-movie of the sort that would've played drive-ins back in 1980, the true crime saga LAST RAMPAGE: THE ESCAPE OF GARY TISON deals with a prison break and subsequent statewide manhunt that took place in Arizona in July and August of 1978. The film is a gritty labor of love for veteran character actor Robert Patrick, who produced and stars as Tison, a convicted murderer and tyrannical father who lords over his three devoted sons Donnie (Alex MacNicoll), Ricky (Skyy Moore), and Ray (Casey Thomas Brown). It's his sons who help pull off the escape during a visit, with Tison's psycho prison buddy Randy Greenawalt (Chris Browning) tagging along. Weary Sheriff Cooper (Bruce Davison) leads the manhunt and, of course, it's personal since Tison killed one of his close friends, while an ambitious reporter (Molly C. Quinn) tries to get a story out of Tison's devoutly dutiful wife Dorothy (Heather Graham). Tison is a brutal, ruthless sociopath with no capacity for mercy. He's not above shotgunning a newlywed couple or a toddler if it means saving his ass, and he doesn't hesitate to point a gun at Donnie's head when the eldest son starts thinking for himself, questioning his actions and refusing to call him "sir."
LAST RAMPAGE was directed by career journeyman Dwight Little, who made his name in the horror genre back in the day with 1988's HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS and 1989's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with Robert Englund. Since then, he's gone wherever his services have been required, from the 1991 Steven Seagal vehicle MARKED FOR DEATH, the 1992 Brandon Lee actioner RAPID FIRE, 1995's FREE WILLY 2, and 1997's MURDER AT 1600. Little's spent most of the last 20 years as a busy TV director, and LAST RAMPAGE is his first feature film since the $30 million video game adaptation TEKKEN went straight to DVD in 2011. Little doesn't bring any real sense of style to LAST RAMPAGE, but he keeps it fast-moving and focused, like a professional B-movie hired gun knows how to do. Patrick is terrifying and oozes pure evil as the monstrous Tison, and Davison has some nice moments as the folksy, matter-of-fact Cooper, even if the character seems to be a composite of Tommy Lee Jones in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and Jeff Bridges in HELL OR HIGH WATER. The film fails to take advantage of the unusual casting of Graham, and the scenes between the subtly manipulative Dorothy and the naive young reporter don't really seem to go anywhere. Dorothy is a woman who's convinced herself of many things, and Graham seems eager to disappear into a dowdy, unglamorous role with some truly hideous 1978 eyeglass frames, but the script, written by Alvaro Rodriguez (Robert Rodriguez's cousin) doesn't really give her much to do. The supporting cast also includes Megan Gallagher as Cooper's wife, Jason James Richter (the kid from FREE WILLY) as a deputy, and the late John Heard in one of his last roles (he died two months before the film's VOD release) as the useless warden. The Tison story was told once before, albeit in a more sanitized fashion, in the 1983 ABC TV-movie A KILLER IN THE FAMILY, which starred Robert Mitchum as Tison, with his three sons played by Lance Kerwin (SALEM'S LOT), and a young and unknown Eric Stoltz and James Spader. (R, 93 mins)
There's some intriguing ideas in this occasionally effective but more often muddled horror film that has a hard time deciding what it wants to be. Debuting writer/director Blair Erickson shows some promising technique, knows how to use darkness to his advantage and has a clear knack for delaying reveals to the point of nail-biting agony--plus I'm always a sucker for the inherent unease of instantly disturbing garbled radio transmissions--but the movie's a bit of a mess and once everything is laid out, the finale is too predictable to be the shocking twist that Erickson wants it to be. Predominantly straight narrative but mixing in bits of faux doc and found-footage (ugh...I know), BANSHEE CHAPTER focuses on Anne (Katia Winter of DEXTER and SLEEPY HOLLOW), a reporter investigating the disappearance of her friend James (Michael McMillian of TRUE BLOOD). She has some footage of James ingesting a dose of a liquid drug supposedly used in the US government's top-secret MK Ultra mind control experiments of the 1960s. He got the drug from a source in Colorado and upon ingesting it, immediately senses that "they're coming," and a shadowy figure appears by the window as James' face distorts and his eyes bleed and turn black. Anne's investigation leads her to Colorado where she meets James' source: washed-up '60s counterculture hero and gonzo writer/conspiracy theorist Thomas Blackburn (Ted Levine). Blackburn informs her that the drug doesn't cause hallucinations, but rather, allows the user to become a receiver to see our "alternate reality." All clues point to an abandoned military research station, so the pair hit the road, all the while seeing visions of monstrous figures and hearing a nursery rhyme and gibberish coming from a short-wave numbers station.
Playing a lot like a shaky-cam, road-movie version of Stuart Gordon's FROM BEYOND with the Soy Sauce element of Don Coscarelli's JOHN DIES AT THE END, BANSHEE CHAPTER suffers from a clunky, lugubriously-paced first half that takes forever to get going in a typical post-Ti West slow-burn fashion, and the early found-footage sequences just feel like desperate pandering to make sure the film would be able to find a distributor (Anne even starts out filming her trip in faux-doc style, but Erickson abandons that rather quickly). The film gets a lot of mileage out of a strong performance by Winter and a gregarious one by Levine, playing a character clearly based on Hunter S. Thompson. There are some undeniably chilling moments scattered about, especially the long sequence where Anne is in a lab at the abandoned military facility and looks back eight minutes on the security footage and sees that something has entered the room and must still be in there with her. But too much of BANSHEE CHAPTER is derivative and filled with ostensibly smart characters doing dumb things. While his script could've used another polish or two, Erickson demonstrates enough skill behind the camera that I'm intrigued to see what he does next. Zachary Quinto was one of the producers. (R, 87 mins)
RUNNER RUNNER (US - 2013)
Justin Timberlake's status as an iconic pop music figure and his comedic skills on SNL are without question, but he hasn't had a lot of luck on the big screen other than supporting roles in acclaimed films like THE SOCIAL NETWORK and INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS. Duds like IN TIME haven't done much to establish him as a box office draw and that trend continues with RUNNER RUNNER, a bland, boring thriller that audiences pretty much avoided during its theatrical run last fall. It had potential, considering the script was written by ROUNDERS scribes David Levien and Brian Koppelman, but it seems like all they did was rewrite that script and move it to the world of online gambling while half-assedly peppering it with references to the financial meltdown of several years ago. Timberlake is Richie Furst, a former Wall Street hot shot who lost everything in the collapse and is now struggling to pay his way through Princeton, largely through bookmaking and with commission earned by luring profs and fellow students to an online poker site. When he's ordered by the dean (Bob Gunton!) to shut down his operation, Richie gambles his entire savings on a poker site and loses. Sensing something fishy about the algorithms, Richie learns he was scammed and does what any struggling, broke college student would do: flies to Costa Rica to personally confront online gambling magnate Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), who's able to operate unencumbered by US federal laws. He manages a brief meet with Block, who's impressed enough to hire Richie to work for his operation. Now with money beyond his wildest dreams--and getting to sleep with Ivan's sultry assistant/lover (Gemma Arterton)--Richie is living the life. That is, until he's shaken down by overzealous FBI agent Shavers (Anthony Mackie), who's obsessed with bringing down Block and will do anything to nab him, even planting drugs in Richie's luggage to ensure his cooperation.
When he isn't helming crummy video-game adaptations, Uwe Boll has made a habit of belatedly jumping on bandwagons that have already passed through long ago, be it torture porn horror (SEED), an end-of-days LEFT BEHIND ripoff (THE FINAL STORM) or a late '80s-style Vietnam exploitationer (1968 TUNNEL RATS). Dr. Boll is slightly more topical with his latest, ASSAULT ON WALL STREET, which boasts his best--relatively speaking--cast in years in a hysterically hyperbolic attack on big-money fat cats and assorted one-percenters while putting his "hero" through an introductory hour of deck-stacking misery. Dominic Purcell stars as armored truck guard Jim Baxford, a decent, hard-working, blue-collar guy just trying to make ends meet in the aftermath of his wife Rosie's (Erin Karpluk) battle with a brain tumor. The prognosis is good, but she still needs some expensive treatments, and Jim's reached his insurance cap. At the same time, the economy crashes and he loses his savings in some bad investments, and through some legal fine print in a real estate deal, finds he's on the hook for an additional $60,000 that he doesn't have. He borrows $10,000 from his buddy (a haggard, bleary-eyed Edward Furlong) to retain the services of a high-priced attorney (Eric Roberts), who then never takes his calls. Then the bank forecloses on his house and his boss is forced to let him go after a collection agency tries to garnish his wages. Then Rosie kills herself. Jim decides to make Wall Street pay for ruining his life and does all the textbook things that pissed-off-guys-on-rampages do in movies: wanders the streets, glowering and chain-smoking; rents a room in a fleabag hotel; has maps, newspaper headlines, magazine covers, and pics of the financial bigwigs he's targeting pinned to the wall (of course, he draws a big red "X" through their mugs after he kills them); spends hours listening to talk radio; lets his calls to go voice mail; buys some guns and ammo from a skeezy creep (Clint Howard!); and practices drawing his weapons in front of a mirror. Stopping just short of giving himself a mohawk and saying his name is Henry Krinkle, Jim arms himself to the teeth with various guns and grenades and goes after the firm that mishandled his savings.
Boll's glamorization of Jim is appalling. Of course we're supposed to hate these financial assholes, but the way it pans out--with Jim confronting callous, heartless, egotistical CEO Jeremy Stancroft (John Heard, seated at the same desk in all of his scenes, probably shot in one day) and turning the tables on him in the most improbable way imaginable--makes Jim out to be some avenging superhero of the middle class. There's supposed to be a gray area when it comes to vigilante protagonists. Movies like DEATH WISH (the first one, not the later ones), TAXI DRIVER, and ROLLING THUNDER justify the cathartic actions of the vigilante in the context of the film but stop short of legitimizing them as "heroes." Not here. It's probably just his way of again poking people with sticks, much like POSTAL's jokes about 9/11 and concentration camps, but in POSTAL's defense, it is a comedy. When Jim starts mowing down investment brokers, is the audience supposed to stand up and cheer? Boll's done ripped-from-the-headlines drama before with surprisingly competent results--his ATTACK ON DARFUR really isn't that bad--but his frothing histrionics over the Wall Street implosion and eventual bailout don't make for a credible film. It would be one thing if Boll presented this as some anarchic, absurdist, satirical fantasy but up until Jim goes on his rampage, ASSAULT is humorlessly stone-faced and serious, handled with zero subtlety (does any character name scream "rich asshole" like "Jeremy Stancroft"?), and prone to ham-fisted proclamations by the characters (Michael Pare and Keith David, as Jim's disgruntled cop buddies, almost serve as a Greek chorus, spouting dialogue like "We bust homeless people and issue citations for jaywalkin', but the real criminals are downtown, on fuckin' Wall Street, wearin' suits that cost more than we make in a year!"). Purcell doesn't help matters. This guy's a lumbering bore in everything he does, and even from the outset, Jim comes off like a ticking time bomb with a huge chip on his shoulder, so it's hard to really "like" the guy. It's also hard for a film to establish any credibility when it casts Edward Furlong as someone who has $10,000 readily available. (R, 99 mins)
BLACK ROCK (US - 2013)
Upon first glance, BLACK ROCK looks like writer/producer/mumblecore icon Mark Duplass (BAGHEAD, CYRUS, JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME) designed it as a vanity project for his wife Katie Aselton, who directed and co-stars. But it's actually a surprisingly effective fusion of character piece and wilderness/survivalist thriller, a sort-of chick flick version of DELIVERANCE or SOUTHERN COMFORT. Sarah (Kate Bosworth) arranges a weekend getaway with Lou (Lake Bell) and Abby (Aselton) to a distant, abandoned island they explored as children. It's also a chance for Sarah to play peacemaker for Lou and Abby, who haven't spoken in six years since Lou drunkenly slept with Abby's then-boyfriend. Tensions flare between the two and when they seem to be making progress toward a reconciliation, they find they aren't alone on the island. Henry (Will Bouvier), Derek (Jay Paulson), and Alex (Anslem Richardson) stumble upon the girls' camping area, carrying hunting rifles. They recognize Henry as the younger brother of Jimmy, a guy in their graduating class (Abby to Lou: "Didn't you blow Jimmy in high school?") and Abby invites them to hang out. Married Abby gets drunk and starts aggressively flirting with Henry, eventually luring him into the woods where they start making out while Derek tells Sarah and Lou about their dishonorable discharge from the military for a murderous act that they justify by saying "you do what you have to do." Abby tries to stop it from going to far and when Henry gets forceful, she bashes him in the head with a rock. Enraged, Derek and Alex decide to kill the women but they manage to get away, leading to an all-night pursuit through the island's dense forest.
BLACK ROCK admirably doesn't pretend to be anything more than what it is: a suspenseful B-movie. There's some clever sleight-of-hand in the way what seems like a mumblecore drama focused on three old friends having a weekend getaway quickly shifts gears and becomes a gritty, intense, brutal thriller. There's nothing particularly inventive here, but it's well-acted, fast-moving, wastes no time, and does what it does, all in the span of 80 brief minutes. The three stars have a solid chemistry and really feel like old friends in the way they read each other and know how to push one another's buttons and in the way the set aside the baggage of the past and deal with the serious shit at hand. The lean and admittedly slight BLACK ROCK isn't a threat to the supremacy of DELIVERANCE or SOUTHERN COMFORT (or even RITUALS) in this sort of genre offering and it only made it into a handful of theaters in early summer, but it's likely to find an audience on DVD, VOD, and its inevitably long life as an eventual Netflix streaming title. (R, 80 mins)
Here's yet another post-CRASH, "everything is connected" ensemble collection of vignettes and it's one of the worst. Produced, written, directed, and self-distributed by "groundbreaking" would-be indie auteur Leone Marucci, the New Orleans-shot THE POWER OF FEW gathers a group of unlikable characters into a 20-minute time span--replayed from different perspectives--where fate causes their lives to intersect. There's a homeless ex-news anchor (Christopher Walken) and his sidekick (Jordan Prentice), who come into possession of a dim cop's (Caleb Moody) misplaced firearm; a teenager (Devon Gearhart) attempting an impromptu robbery of a carryout because he needs to buy medicine for his infant brother; two undercover agents, one by-the-book (Christian Slater) and the other a hot-tempered cokehead (Nicky Whelan) in pursuit of a suspected terrorist (Navid Negahban); a quirky courier (co-producer Q'orianka Kilcher) hired by the suspected terrorist to deliver an important package, but she gets distracted by a meet-cute (Jesse Bradford) who's got bad people after him; and two thugs (Anthony Anderson, Juvenile) in pursuit of Bradford, only to be distracted by Few (Tione Johnson), a teenage girl with wisdom beyond her years, stowing away in the backseat of their car to plead with them to stop the violence and the killing.
Announced in industry trades as far back as 2006 and shot in 2010, THE POWER OF FEW was hyped as an "interactive" community filmmaking experience, where fans would get to edit the movie. That ended up being just a bit of a chase scene involving Kilcher and Bradford, though perhaps Marucci, not likely to be mistaken for Akira Kurosawa anytime soon, would've been better off letting random anonymous people on the internet work on this RASHOMON FOR DUMMIES. Pompously self-important and gratingly self-indulgent, the amateurish THE POWER OF FEW never gets going because Marucci can't stop showing off, whether it's a POV shot from a gunk-filled bathroom sink or dizzying over-the-shoulder shots when people are running. The writing is terrible (Slater: "We have to follow the law!" Whelan: "WHOSE LAW?!"), there's a ludicrous MacGuffin subplot about the missing Shroud of Turin and what's actually in the mysterious package, Larry King appears as himself, and several actors get long monologues that just go nowhere. Walken's might've worked if it wasn't painfully obvious that he's reading cue cards. Walken is a guy who's breathed life into his share of shitty movies and when even he's bad, you know the project is doomed. Put it this way: thanks to THE POWER OF FEW, KANGAROO JACK is now the second-worst movie that Walken and Anderson have appeared in together. (R, 96 mins)
CRAWLSPACE (Australia - 2012; 2013 US release)
CRAWLSPACE is somewhat of an Australian horror summit: produced by WOLF CREEK and ROGUE director Greg McLean, co-written by Adam Patrick Foster (the brutal revenge thriller CLOSURE) and featuring a score by STORM WARNING and NATURE'S GRAVE director Jamie Blanks, it's also the feature directing debut of veteran makeup effects artist Justin Dix, who worked on films like LAKE MUNGO and RED HILL. Dix gets a lot right with CRAWLSPACE, namely the sense of claustrophobia and his use of practical makeup and splatter effects, which in this era is almost an act of defiance, and he has a plethora of ideas, but whether it's meant to be twisty misdirection or just a fusing on influences, they all end up coming off as half-baked and unfocused, causing the film to drift into incoherence. The Australian government has lost contact with a secret underground military base located in the desolate Outback and sends in the requisite elite unit to locate personnel and exterminate any quarantined prisoners that may have escaped from a certain level. They also find a clearly non-human life form as well as Eve (Amber Clayton), an apparent amnesiac with a recent brain surgery scar. Eve has no recollection of how she got there, and her existence is also of interest to squad leader Romeo (the awesomely-named Ditch Davey, which is perhaps Australian for "Almost Jason Statham"), who recognizes her as his dead wife. The creature angle is quickly abandoned as the team, with Eve in tow, finds a couple of scientists who tell them of secret experiments involving memory implants and a new kind of espionage, a sort-of "psychic combat," where soldiers are trained to telepathically turn their enemies against themselves.
Dix borrows/steals from a lot of other films here and can't really settle on what kind of movie he wants to make: it starts off as an action-packed throwback to '80s fare like ALIENS mixed with the more recent RESIDENT EVIL, but then goes into a weird SCANNERS/UNIVERSAL SOLDIER hybrid, with elements of EVENT HORIZON and psychological horror tossed in at random. It's always watchable and certainly competently-made, but the plot is all over the place and around an hour in, you'll just stop caring and give up trying to make sense of it. Dix obviously has a knack for this sort of thing from a directing standpoint and he wears his love of these movies on his sleeve, which buys him a little breathing room, but it would be really interesting to see what he could do with a more disciplined script that didn't feel like it was bound with the pages in random order. (Unrated, 87 mins)
