Opened 40 Years Ago: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (6/12/1981)

 

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK opening 
in Toledo, OH on 6/12/1981

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 1982 re-release

On Blu-ray/DVD/VOD: VALLEY OF THE GODS (2020) and EMPEROR (2020)

VALLEY OF THE GODS
(Poland/Luxembourg - 2020)

If VALLEY OF THE GODS wasn't so incredibly dull, it would be the must-see, instant classic Batshit Cinema event of 2020. As it is, it's so ponderous and heavy-handed that it ends up being a virtual arthouse parody. Given a stealth DTV/VOD release in the US after nearly four years (!) on the shelf, VALLEY OF THE GODS was written and directed by Polish auteur Lech Majewski (THE MILL & THE CROSS), who fashions it an utterly impenetrable hodgepodge of Navajo mythology, midlife crisis melodrama, existential L.A. ennui, sociopolitical/environmental treatise, and surrealistic bullshit all rolled into one self-indulgent fiasco. The best thing that can be said about it is that the cinematography in and around the title Utah region is beautifully shot and these sections of the film would've been breathtaking on a big screen. But the downside is that is you have to endure the rest of it. After his wife (Jaime Ray Newman) leaves him for her hang-gliding instructor, Los Angeles-based would-be novelist John Ecas (Josh Hartnett) walks away from his industrial marketing job and, at the suggestion of his therapist (John Rhys-Davies), tries various methods of finding inner peace. This includes walking down a busy street backwards while blindfolded, and then gathering all of his pots and pans, tying them to his ankles, and climbing a mountain. He heads out to Monument Valley where he unloads an old wooden desk out of the back of his SUV and, in the middle of the desert, begins to write his Great American Novel longhand with a fountain pen. Meanwhile, Navajo tribes in the area are rising up in protest against the purchase of the Valley of the Gods by Tauros Engineering, a nefarious corporation with plans to drill for uranium in this sacred area. Tauros was also John's employer, and the company is owned by Wes Tauros (John Malkovich), the world's richest man, and an enigmatic, Howard Hughes-like trillionaire who lives in a castle atop a mountain that's accessible by an elevator in a secret passageway in a brick building at its base.

Sound a little strange? That's only the beginning, because it's about to get really fucked-up. One of the Navajo locals climbs to the top of a mountain and has sex with a rock formation, which later, after a torrential downpour, spawns a child with a firehose-length umbilical cord connected to the rock. Tauros frequently sneaks out of his mansion and wanders the streets of L.A., pretending to be homeless because it's the only way he feels alive. John sets his SUV ablaze after receiving a divorce petition from his wife via a fax machine in his glove compartment. He's also invited to meet with Tauros at his mountaintop compound, where he's greeted by loyal Alfred-esque butler Ulin (Keir Dullea sighting!), who's introduced delivering a monologue about Elvis' fat years as they stroll through a courtyard filled with statues of "Tauros' friends." A financially-strapped mother (Berenice Marlohe) arrives in a CGI stretch limo the length of a train that snakes along mountain roads, and is given a makeover to resemble Tauros' dead wife, after which she has sex with him while Ulin stays in the room and watches (she also wears a ring with her son's extracted kidney stone in place of a diamond). Tauros invites a ton of guests to a formal gathering where he drives a Rolls Royce onto a giant catapult and sends it flying off the mountain. The guests are actually prisoners kept in cells and cages in a secret dungeon under the compound where Tauros has the power to turn them to stone if they're disobedient. Then Ulin oversees the mummification of Tauros, who's laid into a tomb and reborn as a giant, bare-assed kaiju-like rock-baby that stomps through downtown Los Angeles like an infant Malkozilla. Majewski borrows equal parts Wim Wenders, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Matthew Barney, and especially Stanley Kubrick with the castle's ornate interiors (the presence of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY's Dullea is an obvious nod, plus longtime Kubrick inner-circler Jan Harlan is one of a couple dozen producers), but VALLEY OF THE GODS is almost nonstop nonsense, executed in such a monotonous, molasses-paced way that it's never as bizarrely entertaining as a summary makes it sound. For what it's worth, Majewski made exactly the movie he wanted to make, though I'm not sure it's for anyone but himself. It might make a great midnight movie if anyone can stay awake before it boards the crazy train. (Unrated, 127 mins)



EMPEROR
(US - 2020)

Arriving as a DTV/VOD title after the pandemic canceled its planned April theatrical release, EMPEROR ends up getting pretty much the gala premiere it deserves. The directing debut of veteran B-movie producer Mark Amin, whose name was on a ton of straight-to-video Vidmark/Trimark titles throughout the '90s and into the early '00s, EMPEROR is a simplistic biopic of Shields "Emperor" Green, a runaway slave who became a key figure in abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859. Little is known about Green's life prior to his association with Brown, so EMPEROR feels free to take some significant dramatic license, citing it as being "based on a true legend." The film opens with the birth of Green and the supposition that he descended from African royalty, with his mother declaring "Your grandpa was a king, and you will be...an emperor!" Before you can even finish rolling your eyes, EMPEROR jumps ahead to 1859 Charleston, with Green (Dayo Okeniyi), affectionately called "Emperor" by his fellow slaves and a figure of some respect on a plantation owned by the kindly but heavy-drinking and financially hapless Duvane Henderson (comedian/podcaster Paul Scheer, in stunt casting that's almost as distracting as his combover wig/cap). Henderson loses the plantation to evil Randolph Stevens (M.C. Gainey) in a card game, and with his crew of brutal overseers, Stevens makes it clear to Emperor and the others that things are gonna change. When his young son Tommy (Trayce Malachi) is whipped for having the audacity to know how to read, Emperor snaps and kills three of Stevens' guys, and in their attempt to escape, Emperor's wife Sarah (Naturi Naughton) is shot dead.

Now a fugitive, Emperor becomes a folk hero as he makes his way along the Underground Railroad, encountering a seemingly kind but treacherous slave (Mykelti Williamson) who tries to turn him in to buy his own freedom, as well as affable white bank robber (Keean Johnson). In hot pursuit is ruthless bounty hunter Luke McCabe (Ben Robson) as EMPEROR basically becomes a pre-Civil War version of THE FUGITIVE before he crosses paths with Brown (James Cromwell), Frederick Douglass (Harry Lennix), and Robert E. Lee (James LeGros). The dialogue is as leaden as can be, with someone telling Emperor "You're not just a runaway slave anymore...you're a symbol!" and a wide-eyed Emperor asking Brown "Is that who I think it is?" as Brown replies "That's right, son...that's Frederick Douglass." Nigerian actor Okeniyi (whose credits include small roles in THE HUNGER GAMES and TERMINATOR: GENYSIS and was one of the corrupt crew of cops on the Jennifer Lopez/Ray Liotta NBC series SHADES OF BLUE) turns in a strong performance and gives the flimsy material a lot more gravity than it deserves, but even he can't overcome an inane finale that finds Emperor outrunning a CGI explosion that looks like something out of an Asylum ripoff of 12 YEARS A SLAVE. He gets solid support from the always-excellent Cromwell and Bruce Dern, who's upstaged by a hilariously terrible wig but nonetheless sympathetic as Levi Coffin, an ally along the Underground Railroad. (PG-13, 99 mins)

Retro Review: THE BLACK WINDMILL (1974)

THE BLACK WINDMILL
(US - 1974)

Directed by Don Siegel. Written by Leigh Vance. Cast: Michael Caine, Donald Pleasence, Delphine Seyrig, Clive Revill, Janet Suzman, John Vernon, Joss Ackland, Catherine Schell, Joseph O'Conor, Denis Quilley, Derek Newark, Edward Hardwicke, Maureen Pryor, Molly Urquhart, Hermione Baddeley, Paul Moss, John Rhys-Davies. (PG, 106 mins)

"If there are things about me that you hate, Alex...be grateful for them now." 

After setting up shop at Universal in the early 1970s, the producing team of Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown immediately knocked it out of the park by shepherding the Oscar-winning 1973 hit THE STING. The same year, they also produced the cult horror film SSSSSSS, and in 1974, gave the green light to Steven Spielberg's big-screen directing debut THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS. Impressed with the young director, they also produced his next film, JAWS, which set new standards for nationwide release strategies and defined the concept of the "summer blockbuster." In the midst of all this massive success for the Zanuck/Brown duo was 1974's THE BLACK WINDMILL, a kidnapping thriller that completely bombed with critics and audiences. Directed by the great Don Siegel (best known for the original 1956 version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and 1971's DIRTY HARRY), THE BLACK WINDMILL was based on Clive Egleton's 1973 novel Seven Days to a Killing, and was adapted by Leigh Vance, a veteran TV writer and producer whose credits included THE SAINT, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, MANNIX, CANNON, BARETTA, FANTASY ISLAND, and HART TO HART.

An American production shot in the UK and France, THE BLACK WINDMILL stars Michael Caine in GET CARTER mode as John Tarrant, a British intelligence agent working undercover to nail a crew of arms smugglers selling weapons to the IRA. Led by McKee (John Vernon) and Ceil (Delphine Seyrig), the smugglers seem to be on to Tarrant, since they kidnap his young son David (Paul Moss) and hold him for a specific ransom of $500,000 in uncut diamonds, which just happens to be the exact amount procured by Tarrant's boss Cedric Harper (Donald Pleasence) to fund a different covert mercenary operation. Suspicious about the timing and the ransom amount, Harper orders around-the-clock surveillance on Tarrant, who's having some financial problems in the wake of a pending divorce from his estranged wife Alex (Janet Suzman), even having Scotland Yard inspector Alf Chestermann (Clive Revill) bug his apartment at the request of MI-6 head Sir Edward Julyan (Joseph O'Conor). Harper, convinced Tarrant is secretly working with the arms smugglers and staged his son's kidnapping, refuses to authorize the ransom, while Tarrant can clearly see someone among his colleagues is setting him up to take a fall for their own purposes. Of course, this can only mean one thing: Tarrant disobeys his bosses and goes rogue, stealing Harper's stash of diamonds and chasing McKee and Ceil to France in an effort find his son.

Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), the fairly obscure THE BLACK WINDMILL sets up the pieces for a crackerjack thriller that would seem upon a cursory glance to be a 1970s TAKEN (there's also a really good action sequence with a foot chase through the London Underground), and while it moves fairly briskly and has a fine cast in support of a quietly enraged Caine, it never quite comes together like it should. Perhaps Siegel is just out of his element with an international thriller (though he did fine with 1977's TELEFON), but he can't seem to settle on a tone. Indeed, not all of the actors appear to be on the same page when it comes to exactly what kind of movie they're in. Caine is all steely gravitas, as one might expect (except in one inspired bit where he does an amazing impression of Pleasence that has to be seen to be believed), and while he loves his son, Tarrant displays a detached, matter-of-fact coldness with Alex over the very real possibility that David is already dead, which serves as a reminder about why she hates his job and how it's driven them apart. Likewise, Vernon plays it straight as the chief villain, but Pleasence seems to be acting like he's in a spy spoof, breaking out every nervous tic in his repertoire to play a clueless oaf of a boss who has no business overseeing secret government operations and heading something called "The Department of Subversive Warfare," which itself sounds like something out of DR. STRANGELOVE. Pleasence is an undeniable hoot throughout--whether his Harper is getting mocked by his superiors for mistakenly referring to an agent named "Sean Kelly" as "Sean Connery," dismissing Tarrant's story about his kidnapped son when he's giddily distracted by a Q-like gadget man demonstrating an exploding duffel bag, refusing to put a phone all the way up to his ear, or constantly tugging on his mustache--but he seems to have wandered in from a completely different movie.

I suppose it's feasible that Siegel is using Pleasence's character to make some kind of commentary on inept and unqualified idiots falling upwards in life (a common refrain in DIRTY HARRY and its sequels, where Clint Eastwood is constantly disgusted with his incompetent superiors and bureaucratic pencil-pushers), but Pleasence is playing it far too broadly. Revill, too, seems to think he's in something more comedic with the way he works a simmering slow burn as events unfold. There's a terrific ensemble here and they're all good, but their clashing approaches and wildly divergent acting styles, and the erratic tone in the context of the film make THE BLACK WINDMILL seem like a quirky JANUARY MAN of its day, and "quirky" is not a word you'd imagine using to describe an ostensibly gritty early 1970s kidnapping thriller directed by Don Siegel and starring Michael Caine. It's not difficult to see why it tanked and is largely forgotten today, and while it's a minor footnote in the storied careers of Siegel, Caine, and Zanuck/Brown, it has its moments and is worth seeing for completists. And if you're a Donald Pleasence fan, well, you've definitely been deprived of something special with his work here.