Since his death in 1999, Stanley Kubrick's legend has only grown, especially with some once-verboten looks into his filmmaking methodology, which was largely shrouded in secrecy during his lifetime. Such projects include the documentary STANLEY KUBRICK: A LIFE IN PICTURES, by his producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan, the archival making-of doc by Kubrick's daughter Vivian that's on the SHINING Blu-ray, and Matthew Modine's essential Full Metal Jacket Diary, a coffee table book compiling the actor's bluntly candid journal entries and behind-the-scenes photos he took from the audition process through the completion of 1987's FULL METAL JACKET. Kubrick's dual nature--a genius artist with a demonstrable capacity for warmth and humor and the mercurial, 100-plus-take perfectionist who thought nothing of mercilessly haranguing actors and colleagues to the point of tears and even nervous breakdowns in the pursuit of his art--is on display in all of these. But Tony Zierra's documentary FILMWORKER gets inside the head of a man who walked away from his acting career just as it was taking off to essentially serve at Kubrick's beck-and-call to this day, even though the director has been gone for nearly 20 years. Born in 1947, Leon Vitali was a jobbing young British actor in the late '60s and early '70s, landing gigs on stage, TV, and in a few movies, never really breaking out but never out of work. His big break came when he landed the pivotal supporting role of Lord Bullington in Kubrick's 1975 film BARRY LYNDON and immediately bonded with the director, who wrote additional scenes for Vitali, expanding his role to keep him on the production. Vitali was fascinated by Kubrick's attention to detail and intensive, obsessive management of every aspect of the gargantuan production and expressed an interest in working behind the scenes. After finishing BARRY LYNDON, Vitali had the title role in the 1977 Swedish/Irish co-production VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN and asked director Calvin Floyd if he could stick around after filming wrapped and observe him putting the movie together in the editing room. He reconnected with Kubrick, who gave him an assignment to read Stephen King's The Shining and before long, Vitali was pressed into service as the director's chief assistant and trusted confidante, abandoning his promising acting career and heading to America to both oversee auditions for the crucial role of Danny Torrance in THE SHINING as well as taking extensive photographs of lodges and hotel interiors across America in order to help Kubrick design the perfect Overlook Hotel interior to be constructed on sets at Elstree Studios in London.
BARRY LYNDON stars Ryan O'Neal and
Leon Vitali, reunited over 40 years later.
With his dark glasses, long hair, and hoarse voice ravaged by decades of chain smoking, the present-day Vitali looks like the kind of aging rocker that Bill Nighy played in STILL CRAZY. It was Vitali who discovered Danny Lloyd for THE SHINING and functioned as his guardian and protector through the shoot. It was Vitali who worked closely with R. Lee Ermey on FULL METAL JACKET and had to break the news to an already-cast Tim Colceri that Kubrick decided to replace him with Ermey in the key role of the merciless drill instructor. Colceri, who was given a consolation prize of playing a crazed door gunner ("Get some!") is interviewed, and still seems haunted by losing the role, and though he was kept in the movie, he remains resentful that Kubrick demoted him via a typewritten letter (Colceri still has the letter) and tasked Vitali with delivering it to him. Numerous talking heads appear with memories of Kubrick and the heavy workload dumped on Vitali: Modine, Colceri, the late Ermey, a grown-up Lloyd, BARRY LYNDON star Ryan O'Neal (Zierra arranges an affectionate reunion for Vitali and O'Neal), EYES WIDE SHUT's Marie Richardson, past Warner Bros. execs, film historian Nick Redman, and Vitali's adult children. In addition to his duties on Kubrick's films, Vitali was also responsible for cataloging negatives, color timing, lab and restoration work, cutting trailers for countries all over the world, overseeing and approving DVD and Blu-ray transfers according to Kubrick's strict specifications, and even, as shown by one handwritten note ("Leon, billiard room!"), tidying up rooms and offices at Kubrick's estate.
Vitali at the far left, with Joe Turkel, Stanley Kubrick,
and Jack Nicholson on the set of THE SHINING
Vitali with Kubrick on the set of FULL METAL JACKET
A look back at Vitali's childhood reveals his stern, domineering father died when he was eight years old, and it's more or less inferred by three of his siblings that his need give over everything to Kubrick was a way of filling a paternal void that's existed since Vitali was a child (one Modine diary entry in his book reads "I feel sorry for Leon, but he's chosen this life," and in FILMWORKER, he calls Vitali's servile sacrifice "a crucifixion of himself for Kubrick"). Over old home movie footage of Vitali's young children playing around stacks of film cans in a cluttered office while Vitali slaves away at a desk, his now-grown son describes his dad's 24/7 work schedule for Kubrick as "Kafka-esque," recalling a childhood memory of Vitali working late one Christmas Eve, long after everyone else left the office. Kubrick gave him some gifts and wished him a Merry Christmas, but then, "Sure enough, around 1:00 in the afternoon on Christmas Day, the phone started ringing. It was Stanley." When Kubrick died just after finishing EYES WIDE SHUT, Vitali took it upon himself to act as the keeper of all things Kubrick, nearly wrecking his health with countless sleepless nights at the Warner offices in L.A. supervising a frame by frame restoration of all of the director's films, approaching it with his mentor's same obsessive quest for perfection, so much so that he proceeded to alienate the execs overseeing the project (this is the only point in the film where an upset Vitali cuts off Zierra and says "I don't want to talk about this anymore"). Vitali recognizes the dysfunction that existed in his relationship with Kubrick (he says his tirades were similar to those by chef Gordon Ramsey), but accepts it as his calling, has no regrets, and misses him dearly. FILMWORKER is a fascinating glimpse into one of the most enigmatic and unsung figures in the Kubrick universe, a man whose selfless devotion to the filmmaker and preserving the integrity of the presentation of his work almost seems to take precedence over every other aspect of his own life. (Unrated, 94 mins)
GHOST STORIES (UK - 2018)
An earnest British horror film that plays like an old-school Amicus portmanteau for the BLACK MIRROR crowd, GHOST STORIES was written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and star Andy Nyman, based on their popular play that debuted in 2010. The change in medium doesn't always work in the film adaptation's favor in terms of telegraphing its plot turns on its way to a reveal that isn't as clever or as original as it thinks it is, but there's some nicely atmospheric chills along the way. Nyman stars as professional skeptic and paranormal debunker Prof. Philip Goodman, the host of a reality TV show called PSYCHIC CHEATS. He's contacted by Charles Cameron (Leonard Byrne), another celebrity debunker who went off the grid in the late '70s. An embittered Cameron is aged and sickly, and confesses that he feels like an arrogant fraud and excoriates Goodman likewise. Cameron now believes the supernatural is real, and with one directive ("Tell me I'm wrong...I need to know") hands Goodman a file with three cases that he's been unable to debunk. "Case 1" is Tony Matthews (Paul Whitehouse), a widower who encountered something evil as a nightwatchman at an abandoned asylum. "Case 2" is Simon Rifkind (Alex Lawther of Netflix's THE END OF THE F***ING WORLD and the great "Shut Up and Dance" episode of BLACK MIRROR), a teenager with cold, impossible-to-please parents who had an up-close-and-personal encounter with a goat-like creature that believes is the Devil when he hit it with his dad's car on a dark and lonely road. "Case 3" is Mike Priddle (Martin Freeman), a self-absorbed, asshole businessman who believes he was being targeted by a poltergeist while his wife was in the hospital about to deliver a baby that may or may not be human.
Dyson and Nyman utilize the anthology element as each case is shown as a flashback as they tell Goodman their tales, but it's Goodman's wraparound story that ultimately becomes the central focus. There's references throughout to his own miserable upbringing with a psychologically abusive, devoutly religious father and a mother who remained quiet and looked the other way. He was also bulled by other kids for being Jewish, and as Cameron suggests, his present career as a sarcastic debunker is his way of getting back at the world. Where GHOST STORIES--both the ghosts in the cases and the ghosts of Goodman's past--eventually goes won't really be surprising by the end, but it's an enjoyable ride for the most part. The filmmakers stage numerous shots where it looks like an ominous figure might be lurking in the background, the dysfunction in young Simon's house is suffocatingly uncomfortable (he has multiple locks on his bedroom door to keep his parents out, telling Goodman "They don't like me"), and Matthews wandering the long, underground corridors of of the abandoned asylum and encountering a roomful of mannequins is an unnerving enough image that it'll take you a few moments to question exactly why mannequins are being stored in an asylum. The inconsistencies (if Cameron is off-the-grid, how are people still sending him cases?) are such that it becomes clear that there's at least one unreliable narrator among these characters, the directors can't resist going for one hackneyed, INSIDIOUS-style jump scare (no doubt a necessary concession in the transition from stage to screen) and the payoff isn't quite worthy of the elaborate buildup (it's ripped off from a certain acclaimed TV drama from the 1980s), but GHOST STORIES has its heart in the right place. Not essential viewing, but worth a stream for sure. (Unrated, 98 mins)
DISTORTED
(Canada/US - 2018)
Right on the heels of his HUMANITY BUREAU triumph, Canadian director Rob King is back with the equally dismal techno-paranoia thriller DISTORTED. Lauren (Christina Ricci) and Russell (Brendan Fletcher of Uwe Boll's RAMPAGE trilogy) are a financially well-off but emotionally troubled couple who move into The Pinnacle, a high-tech, state-of-the-art "smart" building with around-the-clock security and surveillance. Prior to the move, Lauren is plagued by disturbing dreams and visions of a figure in their apartment, and despite The Pinnacle's sense of security, the nightmares increase in frequency and intensity. Lauren starts seeing subliminal words and images flash across their TV, is constantly being stared at by neighbors scratching the left side of their neck and humming "Beautiful Dreamer," and even watches one Pinnacle resident take a dive off the top of the building. After a cursory browse through a chat room and a conversation with a neighbor (Vicellous Shannon) whose father just so happens to be a pioneer in the world of subliminal advertising, Lauren becomes convinced that the building's owners are conducting secret experiments involving binaural sound waves and message transmissions on a higher-frequency level than the conscious brain--or Rob King--can process. She learns a lot of this from underground journalist and dark web hacker Vernon Sarsfield (John Cusack), who informs her of covert government projects to brainwash the public via subliminal transmissions in "smart" buildings.
One of the dumbest thrillers of 2018, DISTORTED could've been fun in a batshit way, but its story is so muddled and its twist ending so confusing that nothing in it makes much sense. Ricci freaks out a lot, but never really sells you on what Lauren is going through, and a past trauma from which the couple still hasn't recovered is so obviously and repetitively telegraphed from the get-go that when it's finally revealed, it's not even a surprise. The exterior shots of The Pinnacle are laughable--the building is a completely computer-generated visual effect, looking like something out of a shitty Pixar knockoff, and a typically sweaty, disheveled-looking Cusack turns up midway through for a few scenes and disappears from the movie during the climax. He's wearing his usual black ball cap (as seen in RECLAIM and DRIVE HARD) with an added hoodie, a cleverly-deployed accoutrement that frequently obscures Cusack's face and allows him to further embrace Cusackalypse Now by fully committing to the groundbreaking methods pioneered by Dr. Bruce Willis and Prof. Steven Seagal, whose collaborative tutorial "Fake Shemping in the Age of Redbox" takes what was once an unfortunate necessity in the event of an actor's unexpected death and has co-opted it to vigorously prepare any once-relevant and now-visibly inconvenienced actor in the fine art of just sticking around long enough for the close-ups and a quick raid of the craft services table before letting a stand-in handle the rest. (R, 86 mins)
THE TERROR WITHIN (US - 1989) Directed by Thierry Notz. Written by Thomas M. Cleaver. Cast: George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Starr Andreeff, Terri Treas, John Lafayette, Tommy Hinckley, Yvonne Saa, Joseph Hardin, Al Guarino, Butch Stevens. (R, 88 mins) It doesn't scale the glorious cult movie heights of New World classics like 1980's HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP or 1981's GALAXY OF TERROR, but by the lesser standards of late '80s, Concorde-era Roger Corman, THE TERROR WITHIN isn't bad. Owing a lot to both ALIEN and HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, the film is set in a post-apocalyptic America of an unspecified future--not too far in the future, if the presence of mullets are any indication--after a plague has wiped out a good chunk of mankind. A small group of military scientists have taken refuge in an underground lab in the Mojave Desert, occasionally scouting the land above for food and dodging "Gargoyles," hideous mutant creatures that run rampant. During one excursion to find the remains of two of their team killed by a Gargoyle, David (Andrew Stevens) and Sue (Starr Andreeff), along with David's dog Butch (played by Stevens' own dog, who gets onscreen credit), find a shell-shocked young woman named Karen (Yvonne Saa) and bring her back to the lab, much to the concern of the group's leader Hal (George Kennedy), after a Gargoyle discovers their secret entrance through a dilapidated shed and knocks out their main security camera to the outside. Head doc Linda (Terri Treas) runs some tests and finds that Karen is expecting, but the pregnancy is accelerating. During an attempted C-section, the baby claws its way out of Karen, the mutant result of a rape by a Gargoyle. The mutant spawn escapes into an air vent and grows at a rapid rate, occasionally emerging from a hiding place to pick off the survivors one by one in sequences that will in no way remind you of ALIEN.
The HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP-derived idea of the Gargoyles hunting women in order to propagate their species brings some exploitative tackiness to the proceedings, which elsewhere mimic ALIEN right down to the top-billed actor and biggest name in the cast being killed off halfway through, just like Tom Skerritt in Ridley Scott's 1979 classic. Both happen offscreen and are implied, but Skerritt's is handled in a much better fashion compared to the way TERROR WITHIN director Thierry Notz has a bellowing Kennedy foolishly charge the gargoyle and yell "Die, you miserable ugly fuck!" Elsewhere, John Lafayette as Andre and Tommy Hinckley as Neil are carbon copies of Yaphet Kotto's Parker and Harry Dean Stanton's Brett, respectively, with Brett's repeating of "Right!" echoed here with Neil's "Maybe," and David asking "Do you just repeat everything he says?" just like Sigourney Weaver's Ripley (elsewhere, STAR TREK gets invoked as a frustrated Linda barks "I'm a doctor, not an engineer!"). THE TERROR WITHIN suffers from chintzy makeup work, with the body of the Gargoyle an obvious rubber suit that looks like Corman borrowed it from a HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP cosplayer, and some serious lapses in logic, as a limited-power laser is tested on a fire extinguisher, not only draining the laser by 25% but also emptying out the fire extinguisher, almost certainly foreshadowing a raging inferno to come later (SPOILER: it does). But THE TERROR WITHIN is a fairly solid little B-movie, with Notz enthusiastically letting the blood splatter everywhere as well as establishing a convincing claustrophobic atmosphere in the underground lab. He even pulls off a couple of stylish, De Palma-esque split diopter shots. A native of France, Notz didn't spend much time working for Corman--his other directing assignment around this time was 1990's WATCHERS II and he served as second unit director on the same year's FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND, Corman's one-off return to directing after a 20-year hiatus--before moving on. He directed a pair of obscure war dramas with 1994's FORTUNES OF WAR and 1997's GOODBYE AMERICA, and the latter remains his last credit on IMDb.
THE TERROR WITHIN opening in Toledo, OH on Feb 24, 1989
THE TERROR WITHIN II (US - 1991) Written and directed by Andrew Stevens. Cast: Andrew Stevens, Stella Stevens, Chick Vennera, R. Lee Ermey, Burton Gilliam, Clare Hoak, Larry Gilman, Barbara A. Woods, Rene Jones, Lou Beatty Jr, Gordon Currie, Brad Blaisdell, Cindi Gossett, Brewster Gould, Pete Koch, Butch Stevens. (R, 85 mins) Two years after THE TERROR WITHIN, Andrew Stevens and a noticeably older Butch returned to reprise their roles, wandering the post-apocalyptic wasteland for THE TERROR WITHIN II. The sequel provides some backstory that the first film didn't really address, namely that a nuclear disarmament treaty led to covert experiments in biological warfare, resulting in a plague that wiped out most of mankind, creating the creatures that were called "Gargoyles" in the first film, but are now referred to as "Lusus." David is eventually joined in his nomadic existence by a young woman named Ariel (Clare Hoak, from Concorde's MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH remake). The sole survivor of the first film (apparently, Terri Treas' Dr. Linda died in the desert after they got away), David is en route from the Mojave stronghold to a similar underground lab in the Rocky Mountains run by Von Demming (R. Lee Ermey, on the heels of a similar role in Juan Piquer Simon's ENDLESS DESCENT), with the intent of bringing along a Lusus vaccine derived from a cactus extract. David and Ariel fall in love and after one night of passionate desert lovemaking, she's convinced she's pregnant. They eventually run afoul of Aunty Entity-type despot Elaba (Cindi Gossett), which leads to Ariel being kidnapped and strapped to a rape stand as a Lusus has its way with her. David and Ariel eventually make their way to Von Demming's compound, where it's discovered that Ariel is indeed pregnant with David's child, though a mutant sperm from the Lusus has infiltrated the egg and caused yet another human/creature hybrid. Meanwhile, a finger severed from an earlier Lusus attack on the Rocky Mountain lab is regenerating an all-new Lusus as David, Von Demming and the rest--including Kyle (Chick Vennera), treacherous scientist Sharon (Barbara A. Woods), who's created just enough vaccine to hoard it for herself, and head doc Kara (Stella Stevens, Andrew's mom)--are hunted down one by one by Ariel's rapidly growing offspring, a half-human/half-Lusus monstrosity that looks a lot like Dr. Pretorious in Stuart Gordon's FROM BEYOND (1986).
Stevens was being groomed for stardom back in the late '70s with co-starring roles in a pair of 1978 films, THE BOYS IN COMPANY C and as Kirk Douglas' brainwashed psychic son unable to control his powers in Brian De Palma's THE FURY. He then headlined a pair of high-profile NBC miniseries with 1978's THE BASTARD and its 1979 sequel THE REBELS, as well as a 1979 made-for-TV remake of the 1938 classic TOPPER that paired him with then-wife Kate Jackson. He co-starred in two Charles Bronson movies (1981's DEATH HUNT and 1983's 10 TO MIDNIGHT) and played a psycho stalker obsessed with TV news anchor Morgan Fairchild in 1982's THE SEDUCTION, but big-screen stardom never panned out and Stevens spent most of the '80s on short-lived TV shows like CODE RED and EMERALD POINT N.A.S. He also had numerous guest spots on shows like THE LOVE BOAT and MURDER, SHE WROTE, as well as a recurring role as J.R. Ewing underling Casey Denault on DALLAS. It was during his time on DALLAS from 1987 to 1989 that Stevens first began dabbling in the world of low-budget B-movies, with 1987's SCARED STIFF and a pair of Spanish actioners with director Jose Antonio de la Loma, 1988's COUNTERFORCE and 1989's FINE GOLD. Stevens would ultimately find his niche as a leading man with the advent of the straight-to-video erotic thriller thanks to 1990's video store mainstay NIGHT EYES. Thus began a series of what could best be described as "Stevensploitation," leading to three sequels, with 1992's NIGHT EYES 2 and 1993's NIGHT EYES 3 pairing him frequent co-star Shannon Tweed, as the duo would also star in 1994's SCORNED, 1994's ILLICIT DREAMS, and 1995's BODY CHEMISTRY 4: FULL EXPOSURE, the Concorde franchise that Stevens inherited with 1993's BODY CHEMISTRY 3: POINT OF SEDUCTION. Stevens also starred in the Tweed-less 1997 sequel SCORNED 2, making him the DTV erotic thriller equivalent of compulsive franchise-joiner Jeremy Renner (THE AVENGERS, THE BOURNE LEGACY, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE).
Clare Hoak between takes of the human/Lusus-hybrid birth scene
While he paid the bills enduring endless unrated sex scenes with the likes of Tweed, Shari Shattuck, Tanya Roberts, and others, Stevens was also pursuing his interest in directing. THE TERROR WITHIN II marked his debut as a filmmaker, and it's only fitting that the opportunity came courtesy of Roger Corman. Corman was known for shepherding many young, aspiring filmmakers of the '60s and '70s, like Francis Ford Coppola (DEMENTIA 13), Peter Bogdanovich (VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN), Martin Scorsese (BOXCAR BERTHA), Jonathan Demme (CAGED HEAT), Joe Dante (PIRANHA), John Sayles (writer of PIRANHA and BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS), James Cameron (an art director and production designer on BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS and GALAXY OF TERROR), and Ron Howard (GRAND THEFT AUTO) just to name a few. Corman didn't establish much in the way of bench strength during his '80s Concorde years, with only two directors having any notable degree of mainstream Hollywood success (Luis Llosa with SNIPER and THE SPECIALIST and Carl Franklin with ONE FALSE MOVE and the Denzel Washington thrillers DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, and OUT OF TIME). Corman letting Stevens earn his stripes with THE TERROR WITHIN II was an old-school move out of the 1970s New World playbook, and that extended to the involvement of Polish-born cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who shot THE TERROR WITHIN II and THE RAIN KILLER for Concorde before quickly graduating to the big leagues as Steven Spielberg's go-to cinematographer, winning Oscars for his work on 1993's SCHINDLER'S LIST and 1998's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (it's doubtful Kaminski mentioned THE TERROR WITHIN II in either acceptance speech), while also earning nominations for 1997's AMISTAD, 2011's WAR HORSE, and 2012's LINCOLN. The end result is somewhat less than its predecessor, though Stevens does what he can with the pocket change given to him by Corman (in an interview on Code Red's new TERROR WITHIN II Blu-ray, Ermey claims the budget was only $500,000, and judging from the finished film, that's probably accurate). Incredibly cheap-looking and raggedly-assembled, THE TERROR WITHIN II makes THE TERROR WITHIN look like a lavish sci-fi epic, with no money spent on even the most basic props, as evidenced by a great shot of Vennera--a Stevens BFF who appeared in several of his films, and this one just three years after starring in Robert Redford's acclaimed THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR--angrily firing an assault rifle but he's really just holding it and shaking it as sounds of firing ammo are put over it in post. The first hour of THE TERROR WITHIN II plays more like a Cirio Santiago post-nuke than a sequel to an ALIEN knockoff, and once David and Ariel arrive at the Rocky Mountain compound with 25 minutes to go, it morphs into a rushed, condensed version of the first film, with David apparently remembering absolutely nothing of what he endured since he faces the same situations and makes the same mistakes once again.
Complaining about plot holes and contrivances in something called THE TERROR WITHIN II is a waste of time. It's an enjoyable enough time killer, though Stevens' direction lacks even the most basic sense of style that Notz brought to the table two years earlier, and considering that he was just a couple of years away from becoming one of the most respected and sought-after D.P.'s in the movie industry, Kaminski's work here is functional at best. Stevens would continue directing throughout the '90s (NIGHT EYES 3, SCORNED, ILLICIT DREAMS) before launching a second career as a producer, forming Franchise Pictures with business partner Elie Samaha. Franchise had a hand in everything from low-budget action movies (STORM CATCHER, AGENT RED) to future cult classics (THE BOONDOCK SAINTS), and major studio fare with big name actors (THE WHOLE NINE YARDS, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND, DRIVEN). Franchise would eventually crash and burn in a controversial court case involving allegations of scamming investors with inflated and fraudulent budget reports, leading to the company declaring bankruptcy in 2007. It was during this period that Stevens was accused of hiring private investigator and "wiretapper to the stars" Anthony Pellicano to tap the phones of one of the plaintiffs in the case. Pellicano became the subject of an extensive, years-long FBI investigation involving everything from racketeering to illegal possession of explosives and firearms, and Stevens was granted immunity for testifying against him in the same investigation that eventually led to the imprisonment of DIE HARD and HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER director John McTiernan after he allegedly lied to an FBI agent about hiring Pellicano. Now 61, Stevens has laid relatively low in recent years. He hasn't directed or appeared in a film since 2010, and his last credit as a producer was on Fred Olen Ray's 2013 DTV kids movie ABNER THE INVISIBLE DOG. In 2014, he published the book Foolproof Filmmaking: Make a Movie that Makes a Profit, and embarked on another career giving seminars and online tutorials covering the ins and outs of movie production.
ENDLESS DESCENT aka THE RIFT
(Spain - 1990; US release 1991) Directed by J.P. Simon (Juan Piquer Simon). Written by David Coleman. Cast: Jack Scalia, R. Lee Ermey, Ray Wise, Deborah Adair, John Toles-Bey, Ely Pouget, Edmund Purdom, Emilio Linder, Tony Isbert, Alvara Labra, Frank Brana, J. Martinez Bordiu, Garrick Hagon, Luis Lorenzo. (R, 83 mins) Around the time of James Cameron's 1989 sci-fi/adventure epic THE ABYSS, underwater monster movies became a trend over the next year. In the first three months of 1989, moviegoers were offered Sean S. Cunningham's DEEPSTAR SIX and George P. Cosmatos' LEVIATHAN, with lowly, cost-cutting stragglers like the abysmal Roger Corman-produced LORDS OF THE DEEP, the Wayne Crawford-starring THE EVIL BELOW, and Antonio Margheriti's Italian ripoff ALIEN FROM THE DEEP also stepping up to meet a demand that didn't exist. Shot in 1989 as THE RIFT but unreleased in the US until it turned up on video stores in early 1991 as ENDLESS DESCENT, this Spanish contribution to the unlikely craze was ghost-produced by Dino DeLaurentiis, whose brother Luigi and nephew Aurelio produced LEVIATHAN. A legendary mega-budget showman, Dino apparently found some loose change in between his couch cushions and gave it to his aspiring producer daughter Francesca to help finance a pair of films with her then-husband Juan Piquer Simon (the other was 1988's molluscsploitation classic SLUGS). No stranger to fans of bad movies, Simon (1935-2011) was also the man behind the MST3K favorite POD PEOPLE (1983), but will forever be best known for the indescribable chainsaw killer/waterbed/bad chop suey masterpiece PIECES (1983). ENDLESS DESCENT follows the same template as its influences, with a Navy-led research team heading to unfathomable depths to investigate the disappearance of a state-of-the-art submarine. The missing sub, Siren 1, was designed by feathered-hair nautical wunderkind Wick Hayes (Jack Scalia), who was thrown under the bus by the US government when they took his initial design and co-opted it as their own. Drunk and disgruntled, Hayes is ordered by a D.C. bureaucrat (Edmund Purdom) to accompany the crew of the Siren II as an advisor in their search for Siren I.
Jack Scalia IS Wick Hayes
The crew is the usual ragtag group of miscreants, including the weaselly Robbins (Ray Wise, right before TWIN PEAKS); black stereotype comic relief (cue copious exclamations of "Aw, dayyyyum!" and "Aw, sheeeeeeiiit!") Kane (John Toles-Bey); just-one-of-the-guys Ana Rivera (Ely Pouget), and some cartoonish European types speaking with overdone dubbed voices, including Spanish Simon regular Frank Brana sporting a bizarre beard and revoiced with a ridiculous German accent as Muller. Complicating matters for the bountifully-coiffed Hayes is the presence of two Navy officers--his ex-wife Nina (Deborah Adair), and the commander of the mission, Captain Phillips, played by R. Lee Ermey, cast radically against type as "R. Lee Ermey." Plunging 35,000 feet into the ocean off the coast of Norway, the Siren II follows the black box signal of the Siren I, and loses a crew member along the way when Swedish diver Sven (played by Spanish J. Martinez Bordiu) is killed by a tentacled creature while collecting a strange seaweed sample and taking photographs. Soon, the Siren II is attacked by another creature that they fight off with an electroshock defense mechanism built into the exterior. Heading deeper into the ocean to trace the signal, the Siren II discovers an unlikely "naturally pressurized" subterranean cavern--35,000 feet below the ocean, mind you--where they find a secret laboratory and some dead members of the Siren I. They're also attacked ALIENS-style by creatures who start coming out of the rocks in a nicely-done splatter sequence. The seaweed sample sent back by Sven before he was devoured also starts to mutate into some kind of toxic life form, causing anyone who touches it to go full "Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" and mutate into pus-oozing, plant-like vegetation.
Since the film is heavily inspired by ALIENS, they also find a nest filled with eggs and amniotic sacs, overseen by a pissed off mother mutant who isn't happy about her space being invaded. It becomes clear to Hayes that someone aboard the Siren II is sabotaging the mission Paul Reiser-style, deeming the mutant life form more vital than the expendable crew. ENDLESS DESCENT is laughably cheap at times, with shots of a miniature sub that look pretty embarrassing coming out anywhere near the vicinity of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. But the gore is plentiful and gushes with enthusiasm, and the cast actually seems to be taking it somewhat seriously. It's strange seeing Ermey in such a junky Eurotrash ripoff just a couple of years after FULL METAL JACKET and MISSISSIPPI BURNING, but as he explains in an interview on Kino Lorber's new Blu-ray (released under the title THE RIFT), "you gotta pay your dues." As in the Vietnam cult classic THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA, it's quite probable that Ermey wrote--or at least spruced up--his own dialogue to suit his persona, especially in scenes where he's butting heads with Scalia's Wick Hayes, a man whose name is as amazing as his hair. Scalia and Wise also have interviews on the Blu-ray and are a bit more kind to the film than Ermey, who flat-out calls it a piece of shit and doesn't pull punches about his co-stars (he liked Scalia very much, while derisively referring to Wise as a "whiner," a "belly-acher," and a "pussy"), but concedes that had an alright time making it. Looking at it today, ENDLESS DESCENT/THE RIFT is a well-assembled, fast-paced, low-budget, lowbrow B-movie that doesn't quite achieve the ludicrous delights of Simon's PIECES or SLUGS, but still has plenty of head-scratching plot elements and ample splatter and slime to please nostalgic fans of the video store heyday.
THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA (Philippines/Australia - 1989)
Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Written by William Nagle, Tony Johnston, Brian Trenchard-Smith and R. Lee Ermey. Cast: Wings Hauser, R. Lee Ermey, Albert Popwell, Robert Arevalo, Mark Neely, Gary Hershberger, Clyde R. Jones, Margi Gerard, Richard Kuhlman, John Calvin, Nick Nicholson, Michael Cruz, Henry Strzalkowski. (R, 99 mins)
Before it came back into circulation on MGM's HD cable channel, streaming services, and as an "MGM Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand DVD in recent years, Brian Trenchard-Smith's THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA was a hard-to-find VHS obscurity going for exorbitant rates on eBay. It was a sought-after title not just for B-movie aficionados and cine-hipsters who embraced it after learning Quentin Tarantino was a huge fan, but also for Vietnam War veterans. Released in January 1989 by the short-lived Fries Entertainment, THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA was one of many post-PLATOON Vietnam War dramas that saw a marked reduction in the "The war's not over till the last man comes home" side of Namsploitation, where the heroes of UNCOMMON VALOR (1983), MISSING IN ACTION (1984), and RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985) went back to 'Nam to settle scores and take care of unfinished business. Instead, there was a shift to grittier fare like HAMBURGER HILL (1987), PLATOON LEADER (1988), and EYE OF THE EAGLE 3 (1989), throwbacks to the types of straightforward, formulaic, B-grade WWII and Korean War battle pictures that Sam Fuller made in the 1950s. FIREBASE GLORIA's trump card was the presence of R. Lee Ermey, a Vietnam vet and former Marine drill sergeant who found work as a Vietnam genre Hollywood technical advisor on films like THE BOYS IN COMPANY C (1978) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), where he can be seen as a helicopter pilot during the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" sequence. Ermey was hired by Stanley Kubrick to mentor actor Tim Colceri, who was cast as the brutal drill instructor Gunny Sgt. Hartman in FULL METAL JACKET (1987). Kubrick's instructions to Ermey were simple: "Lee, I want it real." What Kubrick realized in witnessing Ermey's training of Colceri was that he cast the wrong guy in the part and that Ermey should be playing Hartman. Kubrick, never known as the most sympathetic director to actors, felt bad enough about replacing Colceri that he gave the young actor the consolation prize of a small but memorable one-scene role as a trigger-happy doorgunner ("Get some!"). Ermey, meanwhile, was given wide latitude by Kubrick to improvise and actually wrote much of his own dialogue, creating one of the most memorable characters and some of the most quotable lines in cinema history in the film's harrowing opening 45-minute basic training segment (it's worth noting that Hartman's insults about "steers & queers" and "I will gouge out your eyes and skullfuck you!" were bellowed five years earlier by an Oscar-winning Louis Gossett, Jr. in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN).
Ermey's FULL METAL JACKET success led to him being given the lead in THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA, even though '80s B-movie icon Wings Hauser (VICE SQUAD) gets top billing. Like Kubrick, Trenchard-Smith gave Ermey a lot of wiggle room, allowing him to rewrite much of the script, which is credited to William Nagle and Tony Johnston (Trenchard-Smith and Ermey are credited with "additional dialogue"). Nagle wrote the novel The Odd Angry Shot, about Australian soldiers in Vietnam, and it was turned into the acclaimed 1979 film that may very well have the worst trailer ever. He also scripted the WWII courtroom drama DEATH OF A SOLDIER (1986) before working as an assistant director on 1990s straight-to-video fare like INDECENT BEHAVIOR II. It's hard telling how much of Nagle and Johnston's work made it into the finished film, but the result resonated with many Vietnam veterans who feel that THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA is the most accurate cinematic depiction of the war. You can find that sentiment on message boards and IMDb user reviews, and I can even attest from my days at Blockbuster Video that this film was regularly cited as the most brutally realistic look at Vietnam that many of these vets had ever seen.
Now, as someone who's never served in the military, I can only approach THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA from the perspective of a fan or a film critic. You can see it trying to be a little more than the typical Namsploitation offering. Its depictions of the savagery of war are unflinchingly grim and bloody, and the battle scenes have a relentless intensity to them. I suspect these are the bits of realism that the vets are talking about, along with paying briefly futile lip service to the idea that "The VC are soldiers, too," in the way it spends time with Viet Cong commander Cao Van (Robert Arevalo), who believes in respecting the courage of one's enemies. Other than that, the story and the characterizations roll straight off of the war movie assembly line. At the start of the Tet Offensive in 1968, Sgt. Maj. Hafner (Ermey) and his right-hand man DiNardo (Hauser) and their squad commandeer and fortify a ramshackle firebase populated by stoned, disillusioned burnouts and led by a C.O. (John Calvin), who sits at his desk nude while jerking off to nudie mags and getting high. Of course, the no-nonsense Hafner is outraged over such things as weed and long hair, as Ermey himself probably is, and proceeds to whip the men into shape using the same kind of speeches he gave in FULL METAL JACKET. Sure, it's entertaining hearing Ermey fire off quips like "We're gonna fortify this shithole and protect it like it's your daughter's cherry," or "It's time to sprinkle some shit in Charlie's rice," and another about how "there is no such thing as an atheist in a combat situation!" but when Ermey's not doing his Ermey schtick, FIREBASE GLORIA becomes so awash in cliches that it defeats itself. There's a little Vietnamese boy named "Pee Wee" (Michael Cruz), who becomes a surrogate son to battle-hardened DiNardo, who's still mourning the death of his own young son; there's Hafner having no time for emotional silliness like a female captain (Margi Gerard) who's in charge of the infirmary; there's wide-eyed, naive innocent Murphy (Mark Neely), who immediately goes off the deep end and starts thousand-yard-staring like he invented it as soon as the shit hits the fan when Cao Van's forces attack; there's the crazed, stoned photojournalist (Nick Nicholson as Dennis Hopper); and with several reminders that he only has 17 days left in his tour, is there any chance radio communications guy Shortwave (Clyde R. Jones) is making it out alive?
One of the few instances of Namsploitation doubling as Ozploitation, THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA was a Filipino/Australian co-production that displayed the kind of grandiose action sequences that Trenchard-Smith was known for in his prior Australian exploitation films, which often showcased the death-defying stuntwork of perpetual Trenchard-Smith man-crush Grant Page (STUNT ROCK). Once it gets going, FIREBASE GLORIA is almost non-stop battle sequences, with some explosions that would make Antonio Margheriti envious. And that's really what this film is all about. It may have some scattered moments of lofty ambition, but it's really just a higher-end, Philippines-shot Namsploitation entry that's just made with more precision and care than, say, the Cirio H. Santiago joints of the same period, like BEHIND ENEMY LINES or EYE OF THE EAGLE (both 1987). Ermey is onboard to be R. Lee Ermey, but perhaps FIREBASE GLORIA's dramatic element would work better if Hauser's performance wasn't so terrible. Hauser is a legend in B-movie histrionics, but that approach doesn't adapt well to serious drama. His big emotional scene near the end, where he talks to Hafner about his dead son and how a drunken, post-funeral, three-week AWOL bender got him busted down to corporal should be DiNardo's big moment, but Hauser's bug-eyed over-emoting is just embarrassing and cartoonish, as is every line of dialogue spoken by Gary Hershberger, who turns up late in the film as Moran, an Army chopper pilot who lends the men some assistance. When Hafner gives Moran a list of necessary supplies, Moran quips "You want french fries with that?" Hershberger seems to have been told to act as much like Bill Paxton's Chet-from-WEIRD SCIENCE as possible, and he's so grating that you almost expect him to smirk "Cleanup, aisle 3!" after mowing down some VC. Speaking of ridiculous, don't miss the scene where an enraged Hafner yells at his men while carrying the severed heads of two slaughtered Marines. It's possibly the most batshit moment of R. Lee Ermey's career.
If one approaches THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA as a B-grade actioner in the Namsploitation subgenre, it doesn't disappoint. It may occasionally try to go the extra klick quality-wise, but when it's all said and done, it's still the kind of movie that expects you to cheer and chant "U-S-A!" when DiNardo tortures an enemy soldier. That, coupled with Hafner/Ermey's almost John Wayne concepts of social conservatism (Hafner has bigger fish to fry than Moran getting a haircut and a shave), probably puts FIREBASE GLORIA more on the right-wing HANOI HILTON end of the political spectrum as far as these films are concerned. But it's all in the eye of the beholder: THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA wasn't seen by many people in theaters, but became a word-of-mouth hit with both military vets and exploitation fans on video, and it's a film many of them have held near and dear in the 25 years since. In other words, it's the very definition of a cult classic.
