Opened 35 Years Ago: DEATH WISH 3 and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (11/1/1985)

 

DEATH WISH 3
(US - 1985)
Directed by Michael Winner

TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.
(US - 1985)
Directed by William Friedkin

Retro Review: P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE (1986)

P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE
(US - 1986)

Directed by Gideon Amir. Written by Jeremy Lipp, James Bruner, Malcolm Barbour and John Langley. Cast: David Carradine, Mako, Charles R. Floyd, Steve James, Phil Brock, Daniel Demorest, Tony Pierce, Steve Freedman, James Acheson, Rudy Daniels, Ken Metcalfe, Kenneth Weaver, Jim Gaines, Eric Hahn, Henry Strzlkowski.  (R, 89 mins)

"He's got one rule that's never been broken: everybody goes home!" 

Released by Cannon in the spring of 1986, the Namsploitation outing P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE isn't a MISSING IN ACTION sequel but it might as well be. It shares one MISSING IN ACTION co-writer and its plot has quite a few surface similarities with MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING, but instead of Chuck Norris as Col. James Braddock, we get David Carradine as Col. Jim Cooper, a military legend and Pentagon strategist who volunteers for One Last Mission. It's 1973 Vietnam, five days before the cease fire, and the US is launching a last hurrah raid on a known POW camp out of concern that the men will be forgotten after the cease fire and declared MIA. Cooper's rule is "Everybody goes home!" but that's not the case when the small unit accompanying him is wiped out in a chopper explosion waiting for Cooper, who went back to save the injured young Teague (Kenneth Weaver), whose fate was sealed the moment he kissed a cross on his necklace and declared "I got my own insurance right here." Instead of freeing the men, Cooper ends up captured with them in a camp run by the ruthless Capt. Vinh (THE SAND PEBBLES Oscar-nominee Mako). Vinh is informed that Cooper is now the highest-ranking American in captivity and his commanders want him taken to Hanoi for a sham trial before being executed, but Vinh has another idea: he wants Cooper to take him to Saigon, where Vinh will renounce his allegiance to North Vietnam and defect to the US to join relatives in Miami.

Of course, Vinh has ulterior motives, mostly involving an ever-growing stash of gold and jewelry he's confiscated from American POWs over the years that he intends to cash in once he's in America, but for the time being Cooper agrees to the plan, with one caveat: the POWs go with them, because everybody goes home. Complicating matters is loose cannon POW Sparks (Charles R. Floyd), who attempts one failed escape before constantly putting everyone in jeopardy looking out for #1, basically functioning as this film's "Waingro from HEAT" before the filmmakers grant him an unlikely redemption in the end. Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE was the directing debut of Gideon Amir, who logged some time in the trenches for Cannon, doing first AD and second unit work on films like THE AMBASSADOR and MISSING IN ACTION, and co-writing AMERICAN NINJA before Menahem Golan gave him a shot at making his own movie. Amir does a serviceable job and keeps the film moving, but there's a couple of hiccups, namely a bizarre moment when a nighttime Jeep chase just abruptly ends and cuts to the next morning. Amir has only directed one other movie to date--1989's ACCIDENTS--but remains active in cable and streaming TV shows, most recently as a producer on Amazon Prime's CARNIVAL ROW and DC Universe's DOOM PATROL.

Shot mostly in the Philippines (as evidenced by the presence of Cirio H. Santiago regulars like Ken Metcalfe, Jim Gaines, Eric Hahn, and Henry Strzalkowski in bit parts), with some obvious reshoots in L.A. (the scenery's different and Carradine's hair is longer in some shots), P.O.W. utilized much of AMERICAN NINJA's crew and, most notably, co-star Steve James, again relegated to sidekick duty as Jonston, a POW who becomes Cooper's closest confidant en route to Saigon. It's always great to see James, a terrific actor with top-notch action skills who succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 1994 at just 41, and one who was always cited as a genuinely great guy by everyone who worked with him. Cannon gave James a lot of work, but they never used him to his full potential. Even when he finally secured top billing in 1989's Michael Dudikoff-less AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT, he was still saddled playing second fiddle to new American Ninja David Bradley, when simply handing the franchise over to James would've been a much smarter decision. P.O.W. seems more interested in making a star of "Charles R. Floyd," who had appeared on the last few years of the long-running daytime soap THE EDGE OF NIGHT under the name "Charles Grant," and who, according to Amir in a newly-shot interview on the Blu-ray, was seen by Golan as "a new James Dean." Not quite. Not helping Floyd/Grant--either an aspiring actor or the least cooperative person in witness protection--was the fact that he acted in three different Cannon films under three different names. He's "Charles R. Floyd" here, he was "Charles Floye" in THE DELTA FORCE, and he was credited in RAPPIN' as "Charles Flohe." Following P.O.W., he found consistent work on more daytime soaps like ANOTHER WORLD, SANTA BARBARA, and THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, reverting back to his "Charles Grant" name.

P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE would be one of the last times Carradine headlined a relatively wide theatrical release, even though he never stopped working until his death in 2009, and he was so prolific that he still turned up in over a dozen movies you've never heard of that were trickling out as late as 2013. He was still getting high-profile TV gigs like the miniseries NORTH AND SOUTH and NORTH AND SOUTH BOOK II around the time of P.O.W., but he would soon embark on a long stretch of mostly crummy B-movies and D-list straight-to-video titles. A supporting role as the villain in the 1990 Mel Gibson/Goldie Hawn comedy BIRD ON A WIRE was his only dalliance with the A-list until Quentin Tarantino gave him a brief respite with the KILL BILL films in 2003 and 2004. That got him some better TV guest spots in the short term, but the resurgence that everyone was expecting never happened, and he was soon back to garbage movies, and that includes his supporting turn as "Poon Dong" in 2009's unwatchable CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE. He's a solid hero in P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE, and definitely brings more of a loose screen presence to the proceedings than the more stoical Norris did to the MISSING IN ACTION films. He even goes one step further with the blatant "America! Fuck yeah!" jingoism by spending most of the climactic battle literally draped in the American flag as he blows away VC commies before one of the guys leads them all in a "Proud Mary" sing-along. Suck on that, Chuck!

P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE opening in Toledo, OH on 4/4/1986

Retro Review: BODY AND SOUL (1981)

BODY AND SOUL
(US - 1981)

Directed by George Bowers. Written by Leon Isaac Kennedy. Cast: Leon Isaac Kennedy, Jayne Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Peter Lawford, Michael V. Gazzo, Perry Lang, Kim Hamilton, Gilbert Lewis, Nikki Swasey, Danny Wells, Johnny Brown, Azizi Johari, Rosanne Katon, Chris Wallace, Al Denavo, Robbie Epps, J. B. Williamson, Mel Welles, DeForrest Covan, Eddie Mustafos, Ola Ray. (R, 105 mins)

"I just wish you were double-jointed so you could turn around and kiss your own ass!" 

A minor hit for Cannon in the fall of 1981 before being generally forgotten in the ensuing decades, BODY AND SOUL was a remake of the 1947 John Garfield boxing classic retooled for Leon Isaac Kennedy and Jayne Kennedy during the brief moment in time when they were a celebrity power couple. Leon was a DJ in Cleveland and Detroit who broke into movies in the early '70s with small roles in HAMMER and MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS before scoring a huge sleeper hit with Jamaa Fanaka's 1979 prison boxing saga PENITENTIARY. Jayne was a model, actress, and sportscaster who became the first African-American woman to co-host a Sunday NFL show when she replaced Phyllis George and joined Brent Musberger on CBS' NFL TODAY in 1978. Leon and Jayne were married in 1971 and appeared together in Cirio H. Santiago's 1978 Filipino actioner DEATH FORCE (aka FIGHTING MAD), but by 1981, between Leon's success with PENITENTIARY and Jayne's high-profile presence in sports broadcasting and on magazine covers, they had enough clout to get the green light on a dream project like BODY AND SOUL--written by Leon himself--even if it was with Cannon, still finding its niche in the early days of the Golan-Globus era.

Leon stars as Leon Johnson, a gifted boxer who doesn't really take the sport very seriously until his wheelchair-bound kid sister Kelly (Nikki Swasey, who had a recurring role on DIFF'RENT STROKES as Arnold's snobby nemesis, Lisa Hayes) needs expensive treatments to battle sickle cell disease. He drops out of med school to reinvent himself as Leon "The Lover" Johnson, a flashy showoff who even seeks out Muhammad Ali--as himself--as a trainer. Ali turns him down ("Look at you, you look like a mosquito!" the Champ quips), and instead gives him one of his own entourage, grizzled old Frankie (GODFATHER PART II Oscar-nominee Michael V. Gazzo, credited as "Mike Gazzo" in one of those short-lived, mid-career name changes that never stick unless you're Laurence Fishburne--just ask Charles Sheen, Chris Walken, Don Pleasence, Brad Dillman, or Jim Brolin), to function as the Mickey to his Rocky, along with Leon's usual trainer, his goofball buddy Charles (a really terrible performance by Perry Lang). All the while, Leon falls hard for sports reporter Julie Winters (Jayne), who's assigned to cover his quick ascent in the ring and ends up engaged to him over the course of a single montage set to "With You I'm Born Again" by Billy Preston and Syreeta.

Leon and director George Bowers (THE HEARSE, MY TUTOR) lean in on the montage as a way to cut through huge chunks of story, which soon relies on an extensive checklist of every rise-fall-redemption cliche in the playbook: Leon gets seduced by the glitz and glamour, starts sleeping around, Julie catches him in a foursome (!), he's offered a too-good-to-be-true-deal by sleazy, corrupt, mob-connected promoter "Big Man" (Peter Lawford, in one of his last films), and Charles falls under the spell of drugs after one of Big Man's flunkies (Gilbert Lewis) gives him some coke and immediately gets him hooked ("Hey, man...you ever heard of freebasing?" he asks Charles in the most Afterschool Special tone imaginable). Big Man then offers Leon $200,000 to bet against himself and throw a fight, forcing him to get his priorities together, win back Julie, get Charles off drugs after they have a huge falling-out ("Give your money to your dope man for your freebase and your angel dust!"), and finally get some workout time in with Ali, who takes part in a sparring sequence with the writer/star but you can tell The Champ--who would lose his final fight and retire from the ring a month after BODY AND SOUL hit theaters--is going a little easy on him.

Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), BODY AND SOUL has enough overwrought elements that you almost wish it would go all-in on its heavy-handed histrionics, whether it's Charles' drug addiction ("We created monsters, Leon!") or the soap opera melodrama of Leon and Julie's up-and-down relationship. She has to put up with his ego, his female fan base who call themselves "Leon's Lovelies" and throw their panties in the ring during his fights, and then she bets it all when she mortgages her house and puts it all on him to win, forcing him to put integrity first ("I don't play with hearts the way you do!" she yells, reminding him "I bet every cent I have on my man to win!"), even though he's ostensibly only in it for his sister ("You bought into it! You became your biggest fan!"). The climactic bout, pitting Leon against Big Man's next big thing--raging psycho Ricardo "Madman" Santiago (Al Denavo), who's introduced violently hurling a baby to the ground when its diaper leaks on his lap--is one of the most ludicrously absurd boxing matches ever depicted onscreen. Santiago does about 25 things worthy of disqualification--including below-the-belt hits, a very late blow to the head after the bell, and an early version of Mike Tyson's infamous Evander Holyfield ear chomp--and yet the ref never stops the fight.

Sure, BODY AND SOUL is dumb, predictable, and formulaic as hell, but there's a scrappy energy to it amidst all the stupidity. It never goes all the way into full-on bad movie territory but takes itself just seriously enough to be sufficiently amusing in an unintentional way. Leon Isaac Kennedy--who, despite his striking resemblance to Sugar Ray Leonard and starring in several boxing movies, was not an actual boxer--would reteam with Jamaa Fanaka for 1982's PENITENTIARY II and 1987's insane PENITENTIARY III (the latter tragically MIA on DVD and Blu-ray), and would write and star in 1986's KNIGHTS OF THE CITY (featuring Smokey Robinson, an old friend from his Motown radio days and best man at his and Jayne's wedding), while staying busy in B movies like 1983's LONE WOLF MCQUADE, 1985's TOO SCARED TO SCREAM, and 1986's HOLLYWOOD VICE SQUAD. Both Leon and Jayne would retire from acting by the early '90s, with Leon becoming a minister and Jayne devoting much of her time to the charity organization Children's Miracle Network and raising awareness for endometriosis after being diagnosed with the condition in the late '80s. BODY AND SOUL didn't lead to further pairings for the celebrity couple, however: they divorced in 1982, not long after the film's release.

BODY AND SOUL opening in Toledo, OH on 11/20/1981

Retro Review: DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE (1980)

DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE
(US - 1980)

Written and directed by Charles B. Griffith. Cast: Oliver Reed, Sunny Johnson, Maia Danziger, Virgil Frye, Mel Welles, Kedric Wolfe, Jackie Coogan, Corinne Calvet, Sharon Compton, Denise Hayes, Charles Howerton, Dick Miller, Jack Warford, Lucretia Love, Ben Frommer, Joe Anthony Cox (Tony Cox), Yehuda Efroni, Michael & Steve Ciccone, Candi & Randi Brough, Herta Ware, Dan Sturkie. (R, 98 mins)

Though it sports the credit "Screenplay by Charles B. Griffith...with apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson," that pre-emptive mea culpa doesn't begin to atone for DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE, an astonishingly unfunny comedy/horror knockoff of THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and probably the worst film of Oliver Reed's career. Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), it was also directed by Griffith (1930-2007), a longtime associate of Roger Corman's going back to 1956's GUNSLINGER. Griffith's place in cult movie history is secure thanks to his screenplay credits on two early Corman classics--1959's A BUCKET OF BLOOD and 1960's THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS--as well as 1975's Corman-produced DEATH RACE 2000. Griffith also wrote notable Corman titles like 1957's NOT OF THIS EARTH and ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS and 1966's THE WILD ANGELS, and it was good that he was able to dine out on that connection for so long, because when left to direct his own films, the results land in varying degrees of unwatchability, with two of his projects for Corman--1979's JAWS ripoff UP FROM THE DEPTHS and 1981's Jimmy McNichol car chase comedy SMOKEY BITES THE DUST--ranking among the very worst films ever released under the auspices of Corman's New World Pictures.

Sandwiched between those two bottom-of-the-barrel duds was DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE, which isn't a Corman production but certainly feels like a particularly abysmal one. Instead, it was produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus in the early days of their Cannon reign, before they carved their niche as the home of Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and all things ninja, which kept the lights on while they made doomed, clandestine deals on cocktail napkins. Golan and Globus were still finding their footing in Hollywood, and several of their releases around 1979-1980--GAS PUMP GIRLS, INCOMING FRESHMEN, HOT T-SHIRTS, THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD--seem more like standard-issue New World drive-in offerings from the time. That's especially so with DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE, from the involvement of Griffith, in one of the very few films he would make away from Corman, to the presence of Corman and/or New World stalwarts like Mel Welles (THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), Kedric Wolfe (UP FROM THE DEPTHS), Corinne Calvet (TOO HOT TO HANDLE), Charles Howerton (EAT MY DUST), and the legendary Dick Miller, perfectly cast as a loudmouth garbageman. What HECKYL lacks is the sense of exploitation and fun that Corman films almost always delivered (unless it was a movie helmed by Charles B. Griffith), barely earning its R rating and even cutting away at the first hint of nudity that doesn't even arrive until late in the film, which is something Corman never would've tolerated in a New World product. DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE is so deadeningly tedious and so mind-bogglingly awful that one can't help but wonder if Griffith initially took his script to Corman, only to have him thumb through it, answer a phone that wasn't really ringing, tap his watch and politely say "Yeah sorry, Chuck, I, uh, I got a thing."

The idea of spoofing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is nothing new. Abbott and Costello met the pair in 1953, and THE NUTTY PROFESSOR alredy reversed the formula, with nerdy, socially inept Dr. Julius Kelp turning into "Buddy Love," and is generally regarded as Jerry Lewis' crowning achievement. But HECKYL is absolutely dead on arrival, with Reed--not a guy noted for his comedic skills and in a role initially pitched to Dick Van Dyke--as Dr. Heckyl, a monstrously ugly podiatrist with boils, warts, a bulbous, misshapen nose, awful teeth, a red eye, mop-top hair with the texture of steel wool, green fingernails, and pale green skin, making him look very much like a live-action version of Weirdly Gruesome from THE FLINTSTONES. People flee from him in terror ("Mine is the face that ruins a sunny day," he says) but all he wants is to find love. His colleague Dr. Hinkle (Welles) has been experimenting with a weight loss serum that has a side effect of turning one into what they've coveted, so the obese women he's used as guinea pigs all become young and gorgeous in addition to losing weight. It only takes a drop to be effective, and after Hinkle interrupts his attempt at suicide via garden-shear decapitation, a depressed Heckyl guzzles a significant quantity of the serum and morphs into his own id, "Mr. Hype," a handsome, well-dressed lothario with a nasty penchant for killing his conquests and throwing them in the dumpster outside Heckyl's apartment. Heckyl has no idea what Hype has done when he reverts back to usual self, but his actions have gotten the attention of cigar-chomping Lt. Mack Druck, aka "Il Topo" (Virgil Frye) and Coral Careen (Sunny Johnson), a patient for whom Heckyl has been carrying a torch for some time.

Reed's early narration establishes some level of pathos for Heckyl, but the decision to make him look so cartoonishly off-the-charts grotesque undermines any attempt at plausible empathy for the character or his situation. It also doesn't work as a spoof, since a total of zero jokes land, most of them limited to Lt. Druck's flat feet (he's a flatfoot, get it?) and his "ingrown nail" just being a metal nail impaling his toe and removed with a pair of pliers, a sight gag that's aimed at five-year-olds. Elsewhere, the jokes are limited almost entirely to characters having silly names that are supposed to be funny in and of themselves, like Wolfe as another Heckyl colleague, the lecherous Dr. Lew Hoo; Jackie Coogan as bumbling Sgt. Fleacollar; Calvet as French seductress Pizelle Puree; Howerton as Clutch Coogar, a good ol' boy car salesman with two left feet (more childish sight gags), and others like "Herringbone Flynn," "Fritz Pitzle," "Fran Van Crisco," nurses Pertbottom, Lushtush, and Rosenrump, twin rookie cops (Michael and Steve Ciccone) named "Hollowpoint" and "DumDum," and another cop named "Gurnisht Hilfn."

Sunny Johnson (1953-1984)

There's nothing here for anyone other than the most fanatical Oliver Reed completist (and maybe the curio value of spotting future BAD SANTA sidekick Tony Cox, credited as "Joe Anthony Cox"). It's hard to imagine what Reed saw in this project other than easy money, but he actually appears to be trying here, though one can only imagine the flop sweat under his makeup and the drunken rages he hopefully indulged in off-camera. He gets to sink his teeth into some bile-soaked rants as Hype lashes out at his victims, surrogates for all the women who have rejected the virginal Heckyl based solely on his looks, but through the lens of 2019, it comes off like excerpts from a manifesto by the world's most debonair incel. HECKYL caught Reed just as his days as an A-list lead were winding down on his way to the world of straight-to-video. Not long after this, Reed would basically accept any offer if it paid enough, even starring in 1983's CLASH OF LOYALTIES, a three-hour, mega-budget Iraqi propaganda war epic produced by Saddam Hussein that played at a couple of film festivals but was never officially released anywhere but Iraq. He then became a regular presence in Harry Alan Towers-produced exploitationers shot in South Africa in the waning days of apartheid in the late '80s (DRAGONARD, CAPTIVE RAGE, GOR, SKELETON COAST, HOUSE OF USHER). Once in a while, there was a rare acclaimed lead (Nicolas Roeg's 1987 film CASTAWAY) and an occasional high-profile supporting gig (THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN), up until his final role in 2000's Oscar-winning GLADIATOR. His wonderful performance as wizened old gladiator trainer Proximo would've undoubtedly kick-started a late-career Reedassaince had he not died during production in 1999, collapsing in a Malta bar from a heart attack after buying rounds for everyone and out-drinking a group of sailors, which even Reed would probably agree was the most Oliver Reed way to go. And though she's given little to do, Johnson manages to convey some charm as Coral, enough that you'll feel sad remembering that she died tragically young, taken off life support by her family following a ruptured brain aneurysm at just 30 in 1984, a year after she landed her best-known role as Jennifer Beals' figure-skating best friend in FLASHDANCE. DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE was only given scant distribution in the fall of 1980 before being shuffled off to cable and home video. Griffith would return to the New World lumberyard for the worthless SMOKEY BITES THE DUST and retired from movies after 1989's WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM II, a cheapjack sequel from Corman's Concorde headlined by David Carradine, Sid Haig, and future Phil Spector murder victim Lana Clarkson, and stitched together with copious amounts of stock footage from THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS, BARBARIAN QUEEN, AMAZONS, and DEATHSTALKER II.

Retro Review: GRACE QUIGLEY (1985)

GRACE QUIGLEY
aka THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION OF GRACE QUIGLEY
(US - 1985)

Directed by Anthony Harvey. Written by A. Martin Zweiback. Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Nick Nolte, Kit Le Fever, Elizabeth Wilson, Chip Zien, Christopher Murney, William Duell, Walter Abel, Frances Pole, Truman Gaige, Paula Trueman, Nicholas Kepros, Harris Laskawy, Denny Dillon. (PG, 87 mins)

On the basis of its strangeness alone, the largely forgotten GRACE QUIGLEY should be better known, even if it's for the wrong reasons. It's not every day that one encounters an offbeat, dark comedy from Cannon about elder suicide that offers the unlikely buddy-movie teaming of Katharine Hepburn and Nick Nolte, with songs by The Pretenders. This was a long-gestating pet project for Hepburn going back to 1972 when, according to legend, screenwriter A. Martin Zweiback (whose credits include 1969's ME, NATALIE, notable as Al Pacino's film debut, and 1980's GORP) tossed a copy of his script over the security gate at director George Cukor's house when Hepburn (star of several Cukor classics, among them 1933's LITTLE WOMEN, 1940's THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and 1949's ADAM'S RIB) happened to be visiting. In its earliest planning stages, GRACE QUIGLEY was set to star Hepburn and Steve McQueen, with Hal Ashby directing, coming off of 1971's acclaimed HAROLD AND MAUDE. The project soon fell apart but was back in pre-production in 1979, minus McQueen but Hepburn managed to get the interest of Nolte, then the Next Big Thing. Again, it never came to be, and it was stuck in development hell until Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus came aboard and were only too eager to work with a Hollywood icon of Hepburn's stature, along with a bonus of Nolte being as bankable as ever following the blockbuster success of 1982's 48 HRS. With some pull that comes with being a living legend and following her Best Actress Oscar for 1981's ON GOLDEN POND, Hepburn got her old friend Anthony Harvey (who guided her to an Oscar for 1968's THE LION IN WINTER) to direct, and production got underway in NYC in the fall of 1983.

The initial result got a toxic response at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, where another Cannon prestige project, the all-star Agatha Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, was also crashing and burning. The bad press at Cannes prompted producers Menaham Golan and Yoram Globus to have Harvey recut the film, chopping it down from 102 to 87 minutes. No one was happy with that version either, and GRACE QUIGLEY only managed a limited release in a few major cities in the spring of 1985 before turning up in video stores a short time later. A third version exists, assembled by Zweiback (who was hoping to direct until Hepburn's friendship with Harvey nudged him out of consideration), and retitled THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION OF GRACE QUIGLEY, clocking in at 94 minutes. With some scenes reinstated and others shifted around, the ULTIMATE version played in even fewer cities than the GRACE QUIGLEY cut and is reportedly the best of the three variants, though it's only the universally-panned 87-minute version that's on Kino Lorber's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead). A comprehensive box set with the three versions of GRACE QUIGLEY would probably overkill with little in the way of a target audience, but it would've been nice for comparison's sake, especially since anyone who's seen it seems to unanimously agree that the Zweiback-supervised cut is the way to go.

So that leaves GRACE QUIGLEY being rescued from obscurity in its least-liked but, relatively-speaking, most-seen version. In its 87-minute incarnation, the film is done in by its schizophrenic tone and choppy editing, looking every bit like the begrudging compromise that a disgruntled Harvey felt it to be (it ended up being his last big-screen directing effort). The subject matter demands that the film find the right tone, which it absolutely doesn't do. Relying solely on social security, elderly widow Grace Quigley (Hepburn) lives with her parakeet Oscar and is about to be evicted from her tiny, rent-controlled NYC apartment by her shady, shitbag landlord (Harris Laskawy). No sooner does she wish him dead than it actually happens, via a bullet to the head courtesy of neurotic hit man Seymour Flint (Nolte). Grace witnesses the hit from a park bench across the street, runs away in a panic and hides in the backseat of a parked car that happens to belong to Seymour. Despite her joy over the landlord being out of the way, Grace is still lonely and depressed (Zweiback's cut apparently mentions that she's also outlived her children in addition to being widowed), and having already survived two failed suicide attempts, offers Seymour $1000 to kill her. His lowest asking price is $2000, so she manages to talk suicidal neighbor Mr. Jenkins (William Duell) into forking over the money and making it a twofer in exchange for not turning Seymour over to the cops. Before long, all of Grace's aging friends and neighbors decide they're ready to pack it in and end it all, as she eventually talks Seymour into offing them--at a "group rate"--and making it look natural or accidental.

Director Anthony Harvey with
Hepburn and Nolte on the set

With some seriously dark shit brewing at its core, the idea behind GRACE QUIGLEY has some terrific black comedy potential, but it just never quite comes together. The more it goes on, the more chickenshit it gets, opting to tug at the heartstrings, and getting maudlin and feel-good as Grace and Seymour bond over the voids in their lives, starting with Grace encouraging Seymour to get serious with hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Muriel (Kit Le Fever) and culminating in a painful moment where orphaned Seymour asks Grace "Can I call you 'Mom?'" It even gets off to a bizarre start with periodically freeze-framed opening credits that seem to go out of their way to be as unflattering as possible to the 76-year-old Hepburn. Though Hepburn rode Nolte pretty hard about his excessive drinking and his wild ways during the shoot, they seem to be having a good time, with Nolte sometimes visibly in awe that he's working with Katharine Hepburn (he's never said anything good about the movie, but he wrote in his memoir they got along great and he loved working with her). To Hepburn's credit, she seems game for the subject matter and is even seen at one point eschewing a stunt double and riding on the back of a motorcycle sans helmet with Nolte. But there's just no sense of consistency with this version of GRACE QUIGLEY. It's filled with weird scenes that seem to come out of nowhere, like Muriel doing a striptease for Grace's elderly friends, several laborious sessions between Seymour and his prickish, twerpy shrink (Chip Zien, soon to provide the voice of the title character in HOWARD THE DUCK), or one embarrassingly heavy-handed bit where Grace talks Seymour into going along with the "suicides" by disguising themselves as doctors and touring a decrepit nursing home filled with depressed old people. GRACE QUIGLEY isn't very good, but any movie with Katharine Hepburn involved in a climactic hearse chase and earlier crouched on the floor of the backseat of Seymour's car while he flees a crime scene to the tune of The Pretenders' "Bad Boys Get Spanked" is simply too bizarrely surreal to dismiss. GRACE QUIGLEY would prove to be Hepburn's penultimate feature film appearance. She made several TV movies throughout the '80s and early '90s before returning to the big screen for a supporting role that saw her dropping an F-bomb as Warren Beatty's aunt in 1994's LOVE AFFAIR. Her final role came in the 1994 NBC TV movie ONE CHRISTMAS before her death in 2003 at 96.

Retro Review: ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE (1985)

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.

Retro Review: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
(US - 1990)

Directed by Tom Savini. Written by George A. Romero. Cast: Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Tom Towles, McKee Anderson, William Butler, Kate Finneran, Bill Moseley, Heather Mazur, Bill "Chilly Billy" Cardille. (R, 88 mins)

Generally dismissed by horror fans in the fall of 1990, the remake of George A. Romero's landmark 1968 zombie masterpiece NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was in and out of theaters and pretty much forgotten in a couple of weeks. It was also another flop for 21st Century Film Corporation, Menahem Golan's short-lived, post-Cannon company. 21st Century was hemorrhaging money so quickly that Golan only managed to get a few of its films in theaters solely under its banner--the 1989 Robert Englund take on PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, the Golan-directed MACK THE KNIFE, and the women-in-prison grinder CAGED FURY--before Columbia had to assume distribution responsibilities. Along with THE FORBIDDEN DANCE, a film Golan rushed into production to duke it out with Cannon's LAMBADA  because he sincerely believed the world needed two competing lambada movies, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was one of the last to get a theatrical release before Columbia decided they'd seen enough and sent the rest of 21st Century's completed projects and other acquisitions straight to video or directly to cable. Made in part because Romero and his creative partners John A. Russo and Russell Streiner never properly secured a copyright for NOTLD '68 and weren't seeing any revenue or royalties from it thanks to its public domain status, NOTLD '90 was scripted by Romero himself, rewriting much of the original script he co-wrote with Russo. Directing duties were handed off to beloved makeup effects maestro Tom Savini, whose work was vital to the success of Romero films like MARTIN, DAWN OF THE DEAD, CREEPSHOW, and DAY OF THE DEAD, in addition to other '80s horror essentials like FRIDAY THE 13TH, MANIAC, and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. To date, NOTLD '90 is Savini's only feature-length directing effort, and he's been open over the years about his creative disagreements with 21st Century, the under-the-gun shooting schedule (filming began in April 1990 and it was in theaters six months later), and how the end result was a compromised one that forced him to make numerous cuts to secure an R rating. He also didn't get much backup from Romero, whose involvement ended with the script and a courtesy producer credit, as he was instead off prepping the Stephen King adaptation THE DARK HALF, which would begin shooting in the fall of 1990 but wouldn't be released until the spring of 1993 due to Orion's financial woes.

Despite the rushed and troubled production, and faced with an initial fan reaction that ranged from ambivalent at best to hostile at worst, NOTLD '90 has built a sturdy fan base over the last three decades, enough that it's become a legitimate cult classic in its own right. Given a proper amount of time and space, it's been re-evaluated by many horror fans, and while no one's posited the absurd notion that it's better than Romero's film, it certainly stands as one of the better horror remakes of the modern era. It tells the same essential story, with a small group of people taking refuge in a rural farmhouse and fighting off an increasing horde of the living dead, but it isn't just a scene-for-scene carbon copy. The initial differences--beyond being in color--are slight: instead of just one, there's now three zombies in the cemetery where Barbara (Patricia Tallman) and her obnoxious brother Johnny (Bill Moseley) are attacked; it's their mother who's buried there instead of their father; Barbara seems to have some serious underlying psych issues stemming from a mother that Johnny clearly doesn't miss; and their initial bickering has a notably increased hostility ("When's the last time you had a date?" Johnny asks his prim, uptight sister). Like the original, Johnny is killed (in a much nastier fashion here), and Barbara escapes on foot, ending up at the farmhouse. There's already a few living dead dragging ass around the house before Ben (future CANDYMAN star Tony Todd in Duane Jones' iconic role) arrives and starts taking charge.

It's here where Savini's version starts differentiating itself from its source film. As played by Judith O'Dea in 1968, Barbara is so shell-shocked by the cemetery encounter that she's largely catatonic and helpless for the rest of the film. Tallman's Barbara starts out that way, but she quickly snaps out of it, becoming an equal with Ben when it comes to handling the situation, sometimes even more so once the other players emerge from hiding in the basement. There's the loudmouthed coward Harry Cooper (Tom Towles of HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER), his fed-up wife Helen (McKee Anderson), and their bitten daughter Sarah (Heather Mazur), along with young couple Tom (William Butler) and Judy Rose (Kate Finneran). Ben and Cooper spend so much time arguing in a back-and-forth alpha male pissing contest that it takes Barbara and Judy Rose to put a stop to it, with Judy Rose even threatening to kick everyone out since the house belongs to Tom's uncle, who they've already seen come back to life as a zombie.

Many of the plot elements remain the same, whether it's the disastrous attempt to unlock the gas tank out by the barn or the endless argument about whether they'll all be safer in the cellar. But while Savini and Romero know there's no need to reinvent the wheel, they tweak things enough that NOTLD '90 feels almost like an alternate universe take on Romero's original. Ben and Cooper are such hotheads here that they don't get much of a chance to get any news updates from the outside world, since they get into a scuffle that results in the TV taking a smashing tumble down the basement stairs. They also introduce a previously unexplored hiding space with one character ending up in the attic, which leads to a finale that's equal parts downbeat like NOTLD '68 while still giving the audience a crowd-pleasing payoff that's just one example of NOTLD '90's dark and morbid streak (watch out for that junkie zombie with a needle still sticking out of its arm). From start to finish, Savini's NOTLD is familiar yet so much about it is completely different, including the fates of key characters. It ends on a powerful note and is anchored by a strong performance by Tallman that's never really been given its due. Sony has very quietly re-released this on Blu-ray, six years after the justifiably-maligned limited edition Twilight Time release where cinematographer Frank Prinzi supervised a transfer that bathed the film in an unsightly dark blue that no one liked except for Prinzi and apparently Savini, who somehow gave it his approval. The new Sony Blu-ray corrects Prinzi's ill-advised makeover and the film now looks like it's supposed to, and if you're not one of the converted, it's a perfect opportunity to take another look at an unfairly neglected gem that a lot of us didn't give a fair shake back in 1990.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD opening
in Toledo, OH on 10/19/1990