THE FIFTH FLOOR (US - 1980) Directed by Howard Avedis. Written by Meyer Dolinsky. Cast: Bo Hopkins, Dianne Hull, Patti D'Arbanville, Sharon Farrell, John David Carson, Julie Adams, Robert Englund, Mel Ferrer, Anthony James, Pattie Brooks, Earl Boen, Betty Kean, Alice Nunn, Cathey Paine, Udana Power, Michael Berryman, Marie Marq, M.G. Kelly, Tracey Walter. (R, 90 mins) A late-night cable fixture in the early '80s, THE FIFTH FLOOR has largely disappeared from view in the decades since. Just out on Blu-ray from Code Red (because physical media is dead) in a transfer that;s only acceptable but oddly appropriate given its exploitative nature, the film was just scuzzy enough for the perpetually shady Film Ventures International to release on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit over the spring and summer of 1980, but it's tamer than you might think, and it even aired on CBS in 1983. Its plot has several similarities with 1979's grungier HUMAN EXPERIMENTS and 1985's exponentially more tacky HELLHOLE, all three films combining staples of the women-in-prison potboiler with a quasi-SNAKE PIT tropes with a nice young woman thrown into a mental institution. After she suffers a seizure at a disco that's eventually determined to be caused by strychnine poisoning and considered by the ER doc to be a botched suicide attempt, college girl Kelly (Dianne Hull), who just broke up with her boyfriend Ronnie (PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW's John David Carson), is deemed a risk to herself and ordered to spend 72 hours in observation in the mental ward on the fifth floor, referred to as "Psycho City" by the other patients.
Distraught and unable to convince anyone that someone poisoned her and that she wasn't attempting suicide, Kelly is incredulously dismissed by everyone charged with her care, and no one--Ronnie, attending shrink Dr. Coleman (Mel Ferrer), head Nurse Hannaford (Julie Adams), and especially leering orderly Carl (an unhinged performance by Bo Hopkins)--seems very eager to hear her out, let alone release her. She makes friends with some of the other patients, like pregnant Cathy (Patti D'Arbanville), unstable Melanie (Sharon Farrell), who lost it after her husband's affair with a younger woman, and kooky Benny (Robert Englund), the fifth floor's resident class clown, but her defiant attitude keeps inevitably extending her stay. She also has to contend with the unwanted attention of Carl, who makes her shower while he watches and insists on soaping her back, and when she runs away, he tells Nurse Hannaford and Dr. Coleman that she grew violent and had paranoid breakdown, which forces Coleman to keep her confined for another 90 days.
THE FIFTH FLOOR was allegedly based on a true story, but that claim seems pretty suspect. Director Howard Avedis (THE TEACHER SCORCHY, MORTUARY, THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE) was no stranger to trashy B-movies before or after THE FIFTH FLOOR, and the film marked one of the rare big-screen scripting efforts by veteran TV scribe Meyer Dolinsky, whose journeyman career included stops on shows like BONANZA, THE OUTER LIMITS, WAGON TRAIN, DAKTARI, STAR TREK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, HAWAII FIVE-0, and MARCUS WELBY, M.D. Though it's generally lumped in with the horror genre, THE FIFTH FLOOR is more of a suspense drama, closer in spirit to ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST than anything inherently "scary." It was probably easy to sell it as a horror film ("Once the door closes here, it never opens!"), but if you remove some profanity, Hull's nudity and a surprisingly gory comeuppance for the villain, it could've easily been a made-for-TV movie. It's more uncomfortable than anything, especially with Hopkins' genuinely repellent performance, though even entertaining the notion that standards may have been lax 40 years ago compared to now, it's hard to believe any hospital would've kept this creep on the payroll. Avedis and Dolinsky also completely lose track of the whole "Who poisoned Kelly?" plot thread, addressing it in a throwaway line late in the film that should've gotten her released from the hospital weeks earlier but no one seems to be doing their job. It's possible that was the whole point (Adams' Nurse Hannaford clearly doesn't trust Carl, but Ferrer's Dr. Coleman is absolutely useless), but it's doubtful Avedis was crafting this as some kind of hard-hitting, SHOCK CORRIDOR-style statement.
Toledo, OH, 6/27/1980
The charms of THE FIFTH FLOOR lie mainly in nostalgia for its era and with its cast, which also includes such recognizable faces as Anthony James (the chauffeur in BURNT OFFERINGS), Earl Boen (the disbelieving police shrink in THE TERMINATOR), Michael Berryman (THE HILLS HAVE EYES), Tracey Walter ("Bob the Goon" in Tim Burton's BATMAN), and Alice Nunn (whose place in pop culture is cemented thanks to her work as Large Marge in PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE) as fifth floor patients. Film Ventures somehow managed to corral the services of Casablanca Record & Filmworks (known primarily as a disco label thanks to Donna Summer and the Village People, but also the home of rock bands like Kiss and Angel) to handle the soundtrack, though the only performer they could get to contribute anything was Pattie Brooks, who just had a huge hit in 1978 with THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY's "After Dark" and is seen onscreen singing "Fly Away." THE FIFTH FLOOR has an appropriately grimy feel that's matched by Hopkins and the performance of Hull, if you can overlook her borderline Elaine Benes dance moves in the opening sequence. Born in 1949, she had a few prominent roles--as Kirk Douglas and Deborah Kerr's daughter in 1969's THE ARRANGEMENT, as Rose in 1975's ALOHA, BOBBY AND ROSE, and as John Savage's wife in 1979's THE ONION FIELD--but her career never took off. She has no IMDb credits after 1991 and her last big-screen role was as Mrs. Settigren in 1988's THE NEW ADVENTURES OF PIPPI LONGSTOCKING. THE FIFTH FLOOR was a minor hit at drive-ins and found a cult following on VHS and cable, but even the poster art did nothing to sell it as Hull's movie, since it's adorned with the image of distraught Sharon Farrell.
THE FIFTH FLOOR opening in Toledo, OH on 6/27/1980
NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE (US - 1986) Directed by Gil Bettman. Written by Steven Paul and Anton Fritz (Tony Foutz). Cast: John Stamos, Vanity, Gene Simmons, George Lazenby, Robert Englund, John Anderson, Ed Brock, Peter Kwong, Tara Buckman, Tim Colceri, Randy Hall, Branscombe Richmond, Patrick Wright. (R, 96 mins) A demented mash-up of GYMKATA, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, and Andy Sidaris that was demanded by no one, NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE has a minor cult following but isn't nearly the gut-buster it should be considering its individually insane ingredients. It never takes itself seriously, but it doesn't quite demonstrate the cleverness or the panache required to be the kind of self-conscious, winking 007 parody that its fan base claims it to be. Making his big-screen debut, John Stamos, then best known for his stint as Blackie Parrish on GENERAL HOSPITAL and still a year away from the premiere of FULL HOUSE, is Lance Stargrove, a star gymnast at a posh private school. He's estranged from his father, CIA agent Drew Stargrove (George Lazenby, the one-and-done 007 of 1969's ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE), who's killed trying to thwart the evil schemes of performance artist and hermaphrodite supervillain Velvet Von Ragnar (Gene Simmons). The elder Stargrove infiltrated the Ragnar compound to steal the key component of his nefarious master plan: a disc encrypted with data containing codes Ragnar needs to dump tons of radioactive waste into the city's water supply and decimate it for decades to come...that is, unless of course he's paid a hefty ransom. The disc ends up in Lance's possession as Ragnar's goons come after him, prompting him to team up with his dad's sultry partner Danja Deering (Vanity) to secure the disc and stop Ragner's reign of toxic terror...if they don't kill each other first!
The brainchild of producer/screenwriter Steven Paul (A MILLION TO JUAN, BABY GENIUSES, KARATE DOG), who's still active in the business (he's one of the producers of the recent GHOST IN THE SHELL), NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE was intended to be a more serious action movie in its earliest stages. But Paul's script went through numerous overhauls, with the only other credited writer being "Anton Fritz," a pseudonym for Tony Foutz, who was a minor figure in the Rolling Stones' inner circle back in the late '60s. At one point, Foutz was planning a HELP!-style dystopian sci-fi musical for the Stones that never happened. Instead, he took that idea and turned it into SATURATION 70, which ended up starring Gram Parsons, Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, and Brian Jones' young son. Foutz started shooting the film in 1969 but funding dried up and he never finished it. Foutz worked as a production assistant on a few Italian films and was a member of the Gene Corman/Monte Hellman-led team of fixers brought in to salvage 1979's AVALANCHE EXPRESS after star Robert Shaw and director Mark Robson both died during production. Foutz also had a brief career as a screenwriter in the '80s, though that seemed to be the result of a friendship with Ben Gazzara, as Foutz's only writing credits under his real name are three Italian films that starred the future Jackie Treehorn: Marco Ferreri's TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS (1983), the obscure Gazzara-directed vanity project BEYOND THE OCEAN (1990), and FOREVER (1991), which doesn't appear to have ever been released. It's unclear how Foutz ended up on NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE, but his and Paul's work was later rewritten by director Gil Bettman (whose claim to fame was directing the video for Sammy Hagar's 1984 hit "I Can't Drive 55") and Lorenzo Semple Jr., one of the key architects of the 1960s BATMAN TV series and a top journeyman screenwriter of the 1970s on films like THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974), THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), THE DROWNING POOL (1975), KING KONG (1976), FLASH GORDON (1980), and NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (1983). According to "pop culture historian" Russell Dyball's commentary on the just-released NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE Blu-ray (which includes a bonus option to view the film in a blurry VHS transfer), Bettman and Semple are the ones who steered the script into the level of high camp reflected in the finished film, despite Paul's wish to keep it more straight-faced. Neither Bettman nor Semple receive credit for their script contributions, and it's telling that only one of the film's four writers wanted his name on it.
Bettman also directed the Tawny Kitaen/Lee Curreri rock romance CRYSTAL HEART around the same time, but mainly settled into a sporadic TV career, with his only other feature being the 1997 straight-to-video Fred Williamson/Cynthia Rothrock thriller NIGHT VISION. His direction on NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE is largely undistinguished, with inept, clumsily-edited action sequences (several editors are credited, including Paul Seydor, who would later become a reputable Sam Peckinpah biographer) and an uneven tone that results from an inability to commit to being a legitimate action movie or a campy comedy, ulltimately succeeding at neither (STEELE JUSTICE, another '80s action obscurity recently resurrected on Blu-ray, achieves this balance much more successfully). Ragnar and his dune buggy-driving creeps look like they wandered in off the set of an Italian post-nuke (check out Ed Brock as "Pyramid"), and a gloriously-mulleted Stamos is never believable as an action hero, not even when he's beating the shit out of the venerable Branscombe Richmond as one of Ragnar's henchmen and especially not when he's trading would-be 007 witticisms with Ragnar. You won't mistake Stamos for Sean Connery (or George Lazenby for that matter) when he smirks "You're half of each, but I'm a whole man...and I don't have time for this. I gotta save the world!" Vanity never looked better than she did here, exhibiting a convincingly icy badassery that would've excelled in a better film--watch her in NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE and you can see she would've made a terrific Bond girl.
NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE was barely released in theaters before finding its ultimate destination: gathering dust on video store shelves. The real reason anyone remembers it today isn't Stamos, it isn't Vanity, it isn't a cackling Robert Englund, taking a break between NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET films as Ragnar's weaselly computer nerd sidekick, it's not the fact that Danja's CIA boss is obviously someone wearing what appears to be the world's least convincing Chuck Norris disguise, and it's not the anthemic "Stargrove" theme song. It's rock icon Simmons' flamboyantly over-the-top performance as Ragnar. Simmons was trying to launch a career as an actor during this period, and did some solid work as the villain in the underrated 1984 Tom Selleck sci-fi thriller RUNAWAY. He also appeared in a 1985 MIAMI VICE episode, the 1986 cult classic TRICK OR TREAT and he played a terrorist pursued by Rutger Hauer in 1987's WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE, but it's Ragnar that will ultimately go down as his crowning achievement (?) on the big screen. Putting more effort into this than he did any of Kiss' generally lackluster studio albums from the period, Simmons is having a blast here, vamping and strutting across the screen like a freakish fusion of Mae West and Chyna, rolling his eyes back, showing off his legendary tongue, performing at a drag bar called "The Incinerator," and finally, being defeated by young Stargrove's gymnastic prowess, falling off a dam to his death after Lance unveils his ultimate power move: ripping open the homicidal hermaphrodite's shirt and biting him/her on the tit. John Stamos was in the news and on the talk show circuit recently, sharing memories of his friend Don Rickles after the comedian's passing. They were close for a number of years, with Stamos and FULL HOUSE co-star Bob Saget regularly taking the comedy legend out to dinner, which usually consisted of listening to endless insults being hurled their way. Let's hope Mr. Warmth saw NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE and never let Stamos hear the end of it.
Even though nobody really liked literary lion Philip Roth's universally-panned 2009 novel The Humbling, it's easy to see what appealed to Al Pacino when he bought the movie rights shortly after it was published. The protagonist, Simon Axler, is a legendary stage actor renowned for his devotion to Shakespeare, indirectly linking it to Pacino's terrific 1996 semi-documentary LOOKING FOR RICHARD and his portrayal of Shylock in 2004's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and is also roundly criticized for being past his prime and a hammy version of what he once was, charges often justifiably leveled at the inconsistent, hoo-aah!-prone 74-year-old screen legend. While Pacino does some top-notch--and restrained--work here, THE HUMBLING starts fine but quickly devolves into a grating, self-indulgent misfire, with Simon suffering an onstage breakdown and haplessly attempting to off himself with a shotgun as an homage to Hemingway ("Hemingway must've had longer arms," he concludes) before being admitted to a psych facility. Once released, he's visited by 31-year-old Pegeen (Greta Gerwig), the daughter of some past stage colleagues. Pegeen has nursed a crush on the 65-year-old Simon since childhood when he was a family friend, and though she's an out lesbian, she seduces him, much to the disapproval of her just-dumped ex (Kyra Sedgwick) as well as her parents, Simon's now-estranged friends Asa (Dan Hedaya) and Carol (Dianne Wiest). Meanwhile, Simon is badgered by his agent Jerry (Charles Grodin) to get back to work and is stalked by Sybil (Nina Arianda), a deranged fellow psych patient who wants him to kill her pedophile husband, who she claims has been molesting their young daughter.
Directed by Barry Levinson (who teamed with Pacino for the 2010 HBO film YOU DON'T KNOW JACK) and co-written by Buck Henry (penning just his fourth screenplay in the last 30 years), THE HUMBLING gives Pacino ample opportunity to shine in long, single-take monologues and he's up to the challenge. But too much of it plays like second-tier Woody Allen, right down to the very Allen-esque opening credits, the young woman throwing herself at the short old guy, and the presence of Wiest, who won both of her Oscars in Allen films (not to digress, but why hasn't Pacino ever worked with Allen?). There's also an unavoidable and wholly coincidental parallel to last year's BIRDMAN, another film that dealt with an aging, washed-up actor drifting in and out of reality while planning a comeback. The early promise gives way to endless pontificating and shouting matches, the possibly Alzheimer's-stricken Simon being an unreliable narrator in Skype sessions with his therapist (Dylan Baker), and even some tired "old lady being raunchy" humor with Simon's housekeeper (Mary Louise Wilson) matter-of-factly advising Pegeen on how to better store her sex toys, which is just an excuse to hear an elderly woman say things like "vibrator," "butt plug," and "double-dong." The subplot with Arianda's Sybil gets entirely too much screen time and goes nowhere, other than to underscore a hinted-at but never-confirmed detail about Simon and Carol's past that doesn't really need Sybil to enhance it. Pacino dials it down and plays it straight throughout and he's always great to watch when he's legitimately invested in a project, and Grodin gets some laughs as the very Charles Grodin-esque agent, but there's ultimately no reason to care about any of the characters in the forgettable THE HUMBLING. Among the critiques of Roth's novel was that it felt like a short story padded to barely-novel length at 140 pages. To that end, THE HUMBLING is faithful, having little to say and taking nearly two interminable hours to say it. (R, 107 mins)
FEAR CLINIC (US - 2015)
Indiegogo crowd-funding helped make this feature-length spinoff of the six-episode 2009 FearNet web series a reality for its tens of fans. The web series starred A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET horror icon Robert Englund as Dr. Andover in six six-minute segments, each specifically devoted to a patient's phobia. In the film, shot in Medina, OH, Andover's clinic is in a state of disarray after comatose patient Paige (Bonnie Morgan) dies following a session in his "fear chamber," a machine that produces hallucinations of a patient's fears in order to directly face and fight them. Paige was one of several Andover patients who survived a restaurant shooting rampage a year earlier, and they've all noticed manifestations of the others' deepest fears creeping into their own reality. The FearNet series co-starred cult horror convention fixtures Danielle Harris and Kane Hodder because of course it did. Harris and Hodder dropped out of the film, so Englund is joined by future convention fixture and CURSE OF CHUCKY star Fiona Dourif (Brad's daughter) as the tough, proactive heroine Sara. You also get Kevin "Still Coasting on Being 'Waingro' in HEAT" Gage as a handyman named Gage; Thomas Dekker (TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) as a wheelchair-bound shooting survivor whose big revelation won't surprise anyone; daytime soap vet Brandon Beemer; former porn star Angelina Armani; and Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor as an insubordinate, bad-tempered orderly.
FEAR CLINIC was directed by Robert Hall, whose LAID TO REST (2009) and CHROMESKULL: LAID TO REST 2 (2011) have very minor cult followings with the most undemanding of today's horror fans. Hall and screenwriter Aaron Drane don't give Englund much to work with, but the veteran actor turns in a strong and surprisingly sympathetic performance that doesn't rely on standard mad doctor histrionics. At times recalling a subdued Jack Palance, Englund's Andover is a shattered altruist who was sincerely trying to help his patients only to find that his "fear chamber" inadvertently opened a portal to an alternate world whose evils begin materializing in the real one. A committed Englund (acquiescing to the demands of no one, he gets naked twice) is the film's sole saving grace but by the end, his work is all for naught when his face is stuck on some nonsensical CGI creature as Hall and Drane briefly elevate FEAR CLINIC from boring to shameless, opting to rip off Stuart Gordon's 1986 classic FROM BEYOND with fear subbing for the pineal gland. Robert Kurtzman--the "K" in KNB--handled some of the atrocious makeup and creature effects and just because Taylor is in the cast, the closing credits are accompanied by Stone Sour's lunkheaded cover of Metal Church's "The Dark." The film feels like it was made 20 years ago and has no ending, and afterwards, you realize the only thing you have to fear is not fear itself but rather, the idea of crowd-funding for FEAR CLINIC 2. (R, 95 mins)
