2013's TEXAS CHAINSAW functioned as a direct sequel to 1974's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, negating the three previous sequels (1986's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2, 1990's LEATHERFACE: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III, and 1997's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION) as well as the 2003 Michael Bay-produced remake THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and its 2006 prequel THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING. Even though THE BEGINNING addressed the early years of iconic chainsaw-wielding Leatherface in a prologue, LEATHERFACE sees fit to tell his origin story once more, but in feature-length detail. Shot in Bulgaria (some desolate farm areas and dirt roads doing a surprisingly credible job of doubling for Texas) in 2015 and shelved for two years before its gala premiere on DirecTV, LEATHERFACE was directed by the team of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, the French duo responsible for the 2007 cult classic INSIDE, one of the key films of France's extreme horror boom from a decade or so back. After the international notoriety of INSIDE, Maury and Bustillo were initially attached to HALLOWEEN II until Rob Zombie decided to direct it himself, and for a long time, they worked on developing a remake of HELLRAISER before finally leaving over creative differences during pre-production. LEATHERFACE marks their first English-language effort and if nothing else, they brought their gift of transgression along, with one scene involving a threesome with a decaying corpse as the third participant going down as one of the more jaw-droppingly depraved moments in a 2017 horror movie. The film was cut to avoid an NC-17, but what's here is probably still the goriest entry in the CHAINSAW canon.
While Maury and Bustillo enthusiastically throw gallons of blood all over the place (most of it the convincingly wet, practical kind), the story really leaves a lot to be desired, coming off like a half-baked retread of Rob Zombie's filmography, which serves as proof that everything comes full circle as Zombie's entire career seems like a tribute to the first two CHAINSAW movies. Owing a tremendous debt to THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and Zombie's remake of HALLOWEEN in terms of style and characterizations, LEATHERFACE (which counts the late Tobe Hooper and his back-in-the-day creative partner Kim Henkel among its army of producers) takes place in the 1950s (only the cars provide any shred of period detail; everyone else looks and talks like they're from the present day), with young Jedidiah Sawyer declared a ward of the state after being taken away from his deranged mother Verna (Lili Taylor, who really should have better things to do). He's renamed Jackson and as a teenager (played by British actor Sam Strike), he ends up as an unwitting accomplice in a mental institution breakout after Mother Firefly...er, I mean Verna incites a riot upon being denied a chance to visit her long-estranged son. Jedidiah/Jackson and new nurse Lizzy (Vanessa Grasse) escape with homicidal lovers Ike (James Bloor) and Baby Firefly...er, I mean Clarice (Jessica Madsen) and lumbering oaf Bud (Sam Coleman). Ike and Clarice hold Jedidiah and Lizzy captive and go on a killing spree, with vengeful Sheriff John Quincy Wydell...er, I mean Sheriff Harwood (Stephen Dorff as William Forsythe) in pursuit and still seeking vengeance after Verna's elder son Otis Driftwood...er, I mean Drayton (Dimo Alexiev) killed his teenage daughter years earlier. The script by Seth M. Sherwood tries to generate sympathy for young Leatherface much like Zombie's HALLOWEEN attempted to do for Michael Myers, and as in Zombie's film, it's all for naught. No one needed one Leatherface origin story, let alone an extended revisionist take a decade later. For all their insistence on staying true to their vision--the main reason they walked away from the HELLRAISER remake that has yet to materialize--you'd think Maury and Bustillo would deliver something more than stale leftovers from the tattered, dog-eared pages of the Rob Zombie playbook once they got another shot at a major horror franchise. Sure, there's some good splatter here and that necrophile menage-a-trois is legitimately shocking, but the story is rote and uninspired, a copy of a copy, and ultimately does nothing to enrich or enhance the CHAINSAW mythos. (R, 88 mins) BLOOD MONEY
(US - 2017)
It never quite comes together, but there's occasional flashes of a better movie trying to break free with BLOOD MONEY, the latest from MAY director Lucky McKee. A millennial TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE mixed with a survivalist thriller, BLOOD MONEY has three college-aged, childhood friends--Victor (BOYHOOD's Ellar Coltrane), Lynn (Willa Fitzgerald of the TV series SCREAM), and Jeff (GLEE's Jacob Artist)--going on a weekend rafting and camping trip. The tension is already palpable: Victor and Lynn slept together once just before graduating from high school. It was a one-time thing, but he's never gotten over it, and it doesn't take him long to figure out that Lynn and Jeff have hooked up and haven't gotten around to telling him yet. Victor's also passive-aggressively resentful that Lynn went off to college with a scholarship and Jeff comes from a rich family while he's stuck at home with a shit job and his friends calling him a "townie." Things are already nearing a boil when Lynn finds four duffel bags filled with a total of $8 million, wedged up against some logs on a riverbank. The money belongs to Miller (John Cusack), who followed it out of a plane by parachute but got separated from it on the way down. The trio periodically run into Miller, who seems to be an aimless, eccentric hiker trying to bum smokes and even strikes up a sort-of friendship with Victor after he leaves Lynn and Jeff over being a third wheel in terms of their weekend and after he's outvoted in his feeling that they should turn the money over to the police. But it soon dawns on Miller that Lynn and Jeff have the money and he forces Victor to take him to them, resulting in a game of cat-and-mouse between the bickering friends and Miller, which will of course end up in a confrontation at an abandoned grain mill.
There isn't a single likable character in BLOOD MONEY, but that might've worked if the filmmakers committed to the kind of pitch black comedy that's the specialty of the Coen Bros. There's far too much time spent on the ennui of the three friends whose longtime bond gets more frayed by the minute. It's interesting the way expectations are subverted and Lynn becomes so incredibly ruthless about keeping the money. Fitzgerald also gets a great speech near the end where she lets Lynn's long-gestating frustration rage forth, telling Victor how much better it was when they were kids and they were all happy just being friends, "but then I got my period and grew a pair of tits, and became a prize for you two to compete for." Cusack fares much better here than in his recent VOD atrocity SINGULARITY, a career low where newly-shot scenes of the actor were plugged into a long-shelved sci-fi movie from several years earlier. He still seems to exist in another movie than his co-stars for the most part but it works in context, as does his newfound disheveled look with his all-black wardrobe and bandana (he didn't bring his black cap and vape pen along for this one). Given his dubious track record in recent years, it's a rarity these days that a film is most alive when Cusack is onscreen, but he actually seems to give a shit here, spouting funny and possibly ad-libbed dialogue when he's tearing into Victor, who won't stop whining in self-pity about how he lost Lynn. He mocks him over his shitty townie job ("You think that's enough for Miss Thing?"), he dispenses unhelpful romantic advice ("Take her back to your one-room hovel and romance her on minimum wage"), and even throws in pop culture observations ("Everybody loves Metallica!"). It's in those moments where Cusack seems to channel his inner Nic Cage, and in Lynn's lashing out at Victor along with her unexpected character arc, that BLOOD MONEY hints at something better and smarter. It needed more of that to be a success, but in relative terms, it's one of the better Cusackalypse Now titles of late. Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar. (R, 85 mins)
"Half the big-name cast appears to be drunk; the other half looks as though it wishes it were" - Leonard Maltin on VENOM.
One of the most stupidly entertaining guilty pleasure horror movies of the 1980s, VENOM finds a claustrophobic London hostage situation made worse when the party is crashed by the world's deadliest and most venomous snake. Philip (Lance Holcomb) is the animal-obsessed, dangerously asthmatic ten-year-old son of a wealthy American hotel CEO based in London. When Mom (Cornelia Sharpe, wife of the film's producer Martin Bregman, and the Lorraine Gary to his Sid Sheinberg) goes on a business trip with Dad, Philip is left in the care of his grizzled, retired safari guide grandfather (the always wonderful Sterling Hayden, in his last big-screen role) and maid Louise (Susan George). Unbeknownst to Philip and Grandpa, Louise and surly chauffeur Dave ("and Oliver Reed as Dave") are conspiring with Louise's beau, international terrorist Jacmel (Klaus Kinski, who turned down the role of Toht in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK because he felt the script was "moronically shitty" and VENOM paid more) to kidnap Philip and get a fat ransom from his dad. That plan goes south when Philip's package at the neighborhood pet store--a harmless African house snake--is mixed-up with an order for a black mamba placed by an area toxicology lab overseen by Dr. Stowe (Sarah Miles). The box containing the mamba is opened and it immediately bites and kills Louise, then proceeds to hide in the vents, occasionally slithering out to launch itself at someone or just play games by scaring the shit out of them. Meanwhile, irate hostage negotiator Bulloch (Nicol Williamson) tries to contain the escalating crisis from outside the house and meet Jacmel's demands. And, of course, Philip can't breathe.
Opening in theaters in January 1982, VENOM began production in the fall of 1980 with THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE director Tobe Hooper at the helm, fresh off of his success with the 1979 CBS miniseries SALEM'S LOT and the 1981 hit THE FUNHOUSE. Shortly into filming, creative differences manifested, leading to Hooper either quitting or being dismissed, depending on who's telling the story. While Hooper went on to direct (or "direct") POLTERGEIST, his hastily-chosen VENOM replacement was found in journeyman Piers Haggard. A respected and consistently busy director for British television, Haggard occasionally dabbled in features like 1970's THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW and Peter Sellers' horrendous 1980 swan song THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU, where he was fired by the star, who finished directing the film himself, though only Haggard--the third director cycled through the doomed project--remained the credited fall guy. Haggard arrived on VENOM with very little prep time and had to not only contend with an already troubled production falling behind schedule, but also with the numerous volatile personalities in his cast. The key focus of the damage control was on anger management poster boy Kinski, whose legendarily bad behavior and near-constant screaming fits prompted even the normally difficult Reed and Williamson to tone down their acts and just stay out of the path of Hurricane Klaus. Haggard contributed a very enjoyable commentary to Blue Underground's 2003 DVD release of VENOM (a Blu-ray upgrade is due out this summer) where he detailed all of the hassles and brouhahas that developed during the shoot (Haggard recounts Miles at one point telling Reed to just punch Kinski in the face to shut him up, to which the usually short-fused Reed quietly balked and said "I'm no fool").
As problematic as everything was, he seems like a good sport about it, and the film works in spite of its silliness. It's hard not to be entertained by Kinski's climactic spaz attack as he flails around wrapping a rubber snake around himself, Williamson's obviously grouchy disinterest in the whole endeavor, and a gun-shot Reed rendered immobile and forced to watch the mamba crawl up his pants leg and bite him on the dick. Also with brief appearances by Michael Gough as the London Zoo's leading snake expert, and John Forbes-Robertson--best known as Hammer's ineffective replacement Dracula when Christopher Lee refused to appear in 1974's horror/kung-fu hybrid THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES--as a doomed cop killed by an impulsive and panicked Dave. Reed apparently had such a great time doing a horror movie about a snake that he did another one a year later with 1983's Canadian-made SPASMS. (R, 92 mins)
Directed by Tobe Hooper. Written by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby. Cast: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard, Nicholas Ball, Aubrey Morris, Nancy Paul, John Hallam, Chris Jagger, Bill Malin, John Forbes-Robertson, Peter Porteous. (R, 101 mins/116 mins)
When Menahem Golan offered him a job directing an adaptation of Colin Wilson's 1976 novel The Space Vampires, Tobe Hooper was coming off of the 1982 blockbuster POLTERGEIST, produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg, a film that's still shrouded in controversy over which person did what 31 years after the fact. Hooper had already established himself thanks to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), EATEN ALIVE (1977), the TV miniseries SALEM'S LOT (1979), and THE FUNHOUSE (1981). But he was also fired from two other horror films (1979's THE DARK and 1982's VENOM) and had to be frustrated with the endless gossip that he was just Spielberg's puppet on POLTERGEIST, a film that was supposed to elevate Hooper to the A-list, but only left him in Spielberg's shadow. Spielberg called their working relationship "collaborative," but many associated with the film say Hooper had to run his decisions by Spielberg and that Spielberg was present nearly every day of production and was essentially calling the shots even with Hooper on the set. When POLTERGEIST was being shot in the summer of 1981, Spielberg had RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in theaters and was about to begin work on E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL in the fall, and part of his E.T. deal with Universal stipulated that he couldn't direct another film for another studio in the meantime (MGM was handling POLTERGEIST). When POLTERGEIST was released in June 1982, critics and moviegoers considered it Spielberg's project. The controversy was enough for the Director's Guild of America to launch an investigation that yielded no real conclusions, but by the time he met up with Golan, Hooper was eager to show everyone that he didn't need Spielberg to make a Spielberg-sized blockbuster. He wanted vindication, which Golan and Yoram Globus were ready to provide--with some help--in the form of a whopping $25 million budget, more than double what POLTERGEIST cost to make. LIFEFORCE--which was shot as SPACE VAMPIRES, with the title change taking place during post-production as all parties involved thought it sounded too much like a B-horror flick--was going to be Cannon's and Hooper's biggest project yet, and was the first of a three-picture deal Hooper made with Cannon, who also agreed to finance his remake of INVADERS FROM MARS as well as his long-awaited THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (both films were released in the summer of 1986).
The much-ballyhooed Cannon/Hooper alliance failed to financially pay off. Only TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 made back its cost as LIFEFORCE and INVADERS FROM MARS tanked at the box office.
To help with the then-immense cost of LIFEFORCE, Cannon set up a US distribution deal with Tri-Star, who covered a little over half of the budget and pulled rank by re-editing the US theatrical version, cutting 15 minutes out of it (mostly at the beginning, which unfolds in a very choppy fashion in the US cut but plays much more ominously effective in the longer version), revoicing the British astronauts with American accents, and adding some incidental music by Michael Kamen and James Guthrie along with the film's regular score by the legendary Henry Mancini (again, Cannon sparing no expense). Cannon had enjoyed some success and was gaining momentum in production and distribution, and LIFEFORCE was to be their attempt to get into the Spielberg/George Lucas big leagues, but of course, much like selling Charles Bronson films to an aging audience that wasn't really interested in seeing the more exploitative elements, they failed to realize that the Spielberg/Lucas films didn't center on hot, naked vampire women from space. Sure, if you, like me, were a 12-year-old kid when LIFEFORCE came out, you loved it and probably still do today at 40. And if your mom dropped you and a couple of like-minded 12-year-old friends off at the theater, you probably bought tickets to THE GOONIES and snuck into LIFEFORCE. LIFEFORCE only grossed $11 million, but I'm sure it lost at least a few million thanks to boob-obsessed junior-high-age Fangoria readers doing exactly what we did.
Very much a product of its time (Hooper directed Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself" video and wanted Idol to play one of the male vampires, but the closest he got to a rocker was Mick Jagger's younger brother Chris), LIFEFORCE, just released on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory (both versions are included), opens with a joint US/British space mission to investigate Halley's Comet, which was due to return in 1986. The crew of the Churchill, led by American Col. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), discovers a 150-mile-long space ship in the tail of the comet, housing large bat carcasses and three encased, nude bodies--two male and one female--that are human-like in appearance. When Earth loses contact with the ship, a rescue team is sent and discovers the ship destroyed by fire, with only the three encased figures remaining. They're brought to a government research facility in London, overseen by Dr. Fallada (Frank Finlay) and the bureaucratic Bukovsky (Michael Gothard). Soon, the female alien (Mathilda May) awakens and draws the life out of a security guard, feeding on the energy--the "lifeforce"--and promptly escapes. As SAS officer Caine (Peter Firth) investigates, Churchill's escape pod lands in Texas, with only Carlsen onboard. Carlsen arrives in London and is haunted by nightmares that reveal he has some kind of psychic link with the Space Girl, who is able to enter the bodies of host victims to spread a vampiric contagion not by drinking blood, but by literally drawing--sucking--the life out of her victims.
It only gets crazier from there, as Hooper, working from a script by sci-fi/horror vet Dan O'Bannon (ALIEN, THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) and Don Jakoby, with some uncredited contributions by MARK OF THE DEVIL director Michael Armstrong and CRUCIBLE OF HORROR and THE GODSEND screenwriter Olaf Pooley, throws London into chaos and martial law with a vampire plague creating a horde of rampaging zombies, a large bat demon, and a pre-Picard Patrick Stewart as a doctor possessed by the Space Girl. LIFEFORCE combines elements of '80s blockbusters, old-school QUATERMASS sci-fi, vintage Hammer horror, modern special effects splatter, and the kind of zombie apocalypse mayhem that George Romero wanted to do with DAY OF THE DEAD before his budget got slashed. It's beautifully-made, epic in scope, with impressive visual effects by the great John Dykstra, but with a debuting May completely nude for about 98% of her screen time (19 at the time of filming, she became an instant cult horror icon with this, and has a pretty good sense of humor about it on the Blu-ray bonus features, and yes, she still looks great), it also feels like an B-grade exploitation flick. In a way, it perfectly sums up the dichotomy of Cannon's glory days: it's essentially a simple horror story that could've come from Hooper's or O'Bannon's salad days, but like its legendary producers, it has aspirations toward greatness. When I say LIFEFORCE bites off more than it can chew, it's one of those rare instances where it's meant as a compliment. It has a bold, go-for-broke attitude and its balls-to-the-wall insanity--marvel at Railsback's scenery-chewing performance--is infectious. It's the kind of film that works just as well if you approach it as a serious, unsung classic of modern sci-fi/horror or if you make it the main feature for your next Bad Movie Night. LIFEFORCE is the kind of movie where anything can happen at any moment.
LIFEFORCE, in its truncated 101-minute cut, opened in US theaters on June 21, 1985. It landed in fourth place at the box office (Ron Howard's COCOON opened the same day) and got generally negative reviews. Not surprisingly, horror fans were more appreciative of it and it found a significant cult over the years (this reappraisal was also helped once Hooper's intended version became available on DVD). LIFEFORCE gets a little too batshit at times for its own good and has more ideas than it can handle in two hours, but there's no denying that it's one of the essential sci-fi/horror films of the 1980s, and easily Hooper's most ambitious work as a filmmaker.
Hooper immediately followed LIFEFORCE with INVADERS FROM MARS (in theaters June 1986), and the extremely rushed THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (shot in June/July 1986 and somehow in theaters by late August 1986). LIFEFORCE didn't catapult Hooper on to the A-list, and in fact, his association with Golan & Globus has, thus far, constituted his last noteworthy work as a director. He did some hired-gun TV gigs in the '80s and '90s, but the last quarter century, with rare exception, has seen Hooper mired in one of the worst extended slumps ever endured by a major filmmaker. Since 1986, he's had one troubled production and terrible movie after another: 1990's SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, 1993's NIGHT TERRORS, and 1995's THE MANGLER range from awful at best to unwatchable at worst. Hooper spent a good chunk of the 2000s teaming with fanboy horror hacks Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch (co-writers of Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS and the useless 2010 remake of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS) on DTV fodder like 2000's CROCODILE, 2005's TOOLBOX MURDERS (a remake of the 1978 grindhouse classic), and 2006's MORTUARY. His most recent effort, the United Arab Emirates-financed horror film DJINN, was completed in 2011 but has yet to be released. It's great that Shout! Factory has assembled such a nice package for their LIFEFORCE Blu-ray and got the now-70-year-old Hooper to contribute a commentary. He seems like a smart guy who knows his horror history. He obviously knows how to make good movies, and milestones like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, SALEM'S LOT, and POLTERGEIST, and cult classics like THE FUNHOUSE and LIFEFORCE have cemented his place in horror history. But it's troubling to consider that this influential and talented horror legend hasn't really been able to get it together for over 25 years. Despite high points like LIFEFORCE and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, Hooper has never been able to shake the POLTERGEIST controversy, making it sadly ironic that the biggest commercial success to feature the credit "Directed by Tobe Hooper" was, in retrospect, the first major step in the derailing of his career.
1979's STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE made $82 million, but was the rare blockbuster that not many people liked. People have warmed up to it in the ensuing decades but at the time, it was deemed too slow and too difficult to follow, with too abstract an antagonist in "V'ger," and not always in the spirit of the TV show. Filled with innovative visual effects, it cost $46 million to make, an astronomical sum in 1979, and though it turned a sizable profit, Paramount was hesitant to go along with series creator Gene Roddenberry's idea for a sequel. When Roddenberry was more or less ousted from the picture, producer Harve Bennett promised Paramount he'd keep costs low, and STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN was shot for a mere $11 million. It opened June 4, 1982, and made back its budget and change with a $16 million opening weekend on its way to $78 million overall (oddly, still less than the take of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE) and was the sixth highest-grossing film of 1982.
But more importantly for fans, it successfully recaptured the spirit of the 1966-1969 TV series in ways that the 1979 film didn't. With Roddenberry given a respectful "Executive Consultant" credit after essentially being told his services were no longer needed, the film was developed by Bennett, sole credited screenwriter Jack B. Sowards, and director/uncredited co-writer Nicholas Meyer (THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION, TIME AFTER TIME). Neither Bennett nor Meyer had seen the TV show before taking on this project, and in going over the series, it's conceivable that fresh eyes and new blood were instrumental in giving STAR TREK II some sense of purpose and direction that THE MOTION PICTURE lacked. It was Bennett who decided to bring supervillain Khan into the film. Khan (Ricardo Montalban) was first seen in the first-season episode "Space Seed," where he hijacks the Enterprise and tries to kill Captain Kirk (William Shatner), who banishes him to the abandoned planet Ceti Alpha V. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN serves as more of a sequel to "Space Seed" than to THE MOTION PICTURE. Khan is back, vowing revenge on now-Admiral Kirk. Kirk is forced back into action with his old crew, joined by Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) Vulcan protege Saavik ("introducing Kirstie Alley"), when Khan attacks the Enterprise and steals the Genesis Device--created by Kirk's ex, Dr. Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch)--which can create inhabitable worlds where life doesn't exist, and at the same time, destroy worlds where life has been sustained.
Ricardo Montalban as Khan
STAR TREK II humanizes these familiar characters in ways we hadn't previously seen. Of course, fans found the crew of the Enterprise akin to old friends at this point anyway, but the stakes are higher than they've ever been: Khan's mad, destructive quest for revenge is personal. Kirk has much to lose with Carol and their son David (Merritt Butrick) in jeopardy. And when Spock makes the ultimate sacrifice ("the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one"), it's the most emotionally devastating moment in the entire STAR TREK canon. And, it should go without saying, STAR TREK II gives us arguably Shatner's most "Shatner" moment:
It's hard to find a celebrity more eager to mock himself than Shatner. Never taking himself too seriously and always in on the joke, Shatner is completely self-aware when it comes to his hammy tendencies. He's such a willing punchline that it's easy to forget that he can be a terrific actor when he wants to be. STAR TREK II features his best performance as Kirk and gives Shatner a wide range of emotions to play, and he brings his A-game. There's none of ironic silliness that comes with putting Shatner in anything today. At the end of the day, Shatner is Shatner and we love him for it (even if his STAR TREK co-stars haven't had many nice things to say about him over the years), but it's interesting to ponder how his career might've panned out if he'd taken himself and his abilities a little more seriously. Very early in his career, he held his own with a large cast of Hollywood legends in 1961's JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG. The guy's got the chops, and STAR TREK II gives him plenty of opportunities to prove it. He's matched by Montalban, who turns in the performance of his career as Khan. Montalban's scenes were shot last because he was busy working on the TV series FANTASY ISLAND. The tense standoff scenes between Kirk and Khan, where they communicate via screen on each of their ships, demonstrate the power of good editing and good acting when you consider that Shatner and Montalban's portions of those scenes were shot four months apart. Shatner and the Enterprise actors (except Walter Koenig's Chekov, who has scenes with Khan on Ceti Alpha V) were done with their work by the time Montalban arrived. Shatner and Montalban never even saw each other during filming.
STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN is considered by many to be the best of the films that feature the original crew, though STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986) and STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991) are held in high regard as well. STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984) is solid entertainment, and most have even come around to appreciating STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. That leaves the Shatner-directed STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989) as the odd man out, a misfire that pleased even less people than THE MOTION PICTURE. Perhaps STAR TREK V's day will come, but don't count on it.
Opening the same weekend was the Steven Spielberg production POLTERGEIST, directed by Tobe Hooper (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, SALEM'S LOT). Budgeted at just under $11 million, it made $76 million to become the eighth highest-grossing film of 1982. Spielberg co-wrote the script with Michael Grais and Mark Victor, and depending on who's telling the story, was either a "supervisory" figure on the set or was the de-facto director. Spielberg himself has described the working relationship with Hooper as "collaborative," while some cast members say Spielberg was present nearly every day of the shoot and was calling the shots even when Hooper was on the set. Just as many say Hooper was the director. The controversy was enough for the Director's Guild of America to launch a largely inconclusive investigation, and to this day (and for other, more tragic reasons as well), many of the people associated with POLTERGEIST have elected to not discuss the film at all, which is uncommon for something held in such high esteem.
Regardless of who directed it, POLTERGEIST became a much-referenced and much-parodied horror classic that introduced "They're heeeeere!" into the annals of popular culture. The story of five-year-old Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O'Rourke) abducted by vengeful spirits communicating through the TV hooked audiences and forever warned real estate developers to avoid cutting corners in the construction of any subdivision development. Carol Anne's dad Steve (Craig T. Nelson) helped design the planned community Cuesta Verde. The mayhem is taking place because not only did Steve's boss (James Karen) have the community built over a cemetery, but he never had the graves properly and respectfully moved; he only paid to have the tombstones moved. And the spirits of the dead are pissed off.
Zelda Rubinstein as "cleaner" Tangina Barrons
Stylistically and structurally, POLTERGEIST has Spielberg's fingerprints all over it. Not just with the thrills and chills and the liberal doses of humor, but with the centerpiece being a close family disrupted by outside forces. The Freeling family is one of the most likably appealing he's ever presented. And they're handled unpredictably: was it common in the era of "Just Say No" to depict loving, stable parents like Steve and Diane (Jobeth Williams) as recreational pot smokers? And Steve and Diane are untraditionally young to have a 16-year-old daughter, Dana (Dominique Dunne), who's significantly older than the other two children, Robbie (Oliver Robins) and Carol Anne. It's mentioned in passing that Steve and Diane had Dana when they were 16, and it's never brought up again, because it's not an issue in this family. That made the Freelings seem like a lot of families that many of us knew. Not the "perfect" family, but normal and real. Even the supporting characters exhibit their own flaws: parapsychologist Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight) is a respected expert in her field, but also a functioning alcoholic. Spielberg often focuses on flawed protagonists who might seem like "bad" people in today's more socially conservative world (could CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND be made today with the same ending, with Richard Dreyfuss simply abandoning his family and his responsibilities to leave with the aliens?). To Spielberg, they're just regular people and he had an unusually strong ability to connect with that and convey it in his films. One reason his films connected with audiences was his way of understanding average, everyday people and using that in the creation of his characters.
During this same period, Spielberg was known for pushing the PG rating about as far as it can go, and in a couple of years, films like INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and the Spielberg-produced GREMLINS were PG-rated releases that were instrumental in the MPAA's creation of the PG-13 rating in 1984. The PG-rated POLTERGEIST is probably still worthy of a PG-13 today, with some truly intense sequences throughout and one scene of a guy peeling off chunks of his own face that has to rank as one of the most horrifying visuals ever seen in a PG-rated film.
Heather O'Rourke (1975-1988)
POLTERGEIST spawned two inferior sequels, 1986's POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE and 1988's especially ill-fated POLTERGEIST III, and a 1996-1999 Canadian-made TV series POLTERGEIST: THE LEGACY, that had no relation to the films other than using the title. Tragedy also followed the franchise with the deaths of two of the Freeling children. 22-year-old Dominique Dunne (daughter of writer/journalist Dominick Dunne) was strangled to death by an angry ex-boyfriend just five months after the film's release. Heather O'Rourke died in early 1988 of septic shock during surgery to repair a bowel obstruction. She was only 12 years old and had been diagnosed with Crohn's disease a year earlier. Steroidal medication was the cause of her distractingly puffy, bloated appearance in POLTERGEIST III, which was ultimately released--against the wishes of stars Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen, and director Gary Sherman, who asked MGM to shelve it--in the summer of 1988, several months after O'Rourke's death.
With STAR TREK II and POLTERGEIST opening, the comedy HANKY PANKY was the red-headed stepchild of the June 4 weekend. Originally intended as a STIR CRAZY follow-up for Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor and director Sidney Poitier, the script was retooled for ex-SNL star Gilda Radner when Pryor backed out. The film grossed $9 million and was a dud for the popular Wilder, but he would come back in 1984 with the sleeper hit THE WOMAN IN RED. The only significant thing to come out of HANKY PANKY was its serendipitous pairing of Wilder and Radner, who became close friends during filming and a couple shortly after. They were married in 1984 until Radner's death from ovarian cancer in 1989 at age 42.
The summer of 1982 was huge for Spielberg with the success of POLTERGEIST and the planned July re-release of 1981's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. But the next week would unveil Spielberg's crowning achievement to that point, and what would become not just a surprise smash, but for a decade and a half, the highest-grossing film of all time.
