Opened 40 Years Ago: KNIGHTRIDERS (4/10/1981)

 

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KNIGHTRIDERS opening in Toledo, OH on 5/15/1981

Retro Review: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
(US - 1990)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retro Review: TWO EVIL EYES (1990)

TWO EVIL EYES
(Italy - 1990; US release 1991)

Directed by Dario Argento and George A. Romero. Written by George A. Romero, Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini. Cast: Harvey Keitel, Adrienne Barbeau, Ramy Zada, Sally Kirkland, Martin Balsam, E.G. Marshall, John Amos, Kim Hunter, Madeleine Potter, Bingo O'Malley, Tom Atkins, Jeff Howell, Holter Ford Graham, Julie Benz, Christine Forrest, Chuck Aber, Anthony DiLeo Jr., Tom Savini. (R, 120 mins)

In its earliest stages of development, TWO EVIL EYES was intended by producer Dario Argento to be a four-part anthology horror film celebrating the work of Edgar Allan Poe, with the Italian master of horror joined by fellow genre legends George A. Romero, Wes Craven, and John Carpenter. By the time production began in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1989, Craven and Carpenter bowed out, leaving Argento and Romero as the remaining participants, each helming a present-day Poe segment running approximately one hour in length. TWO EVIL EYES was supposed to be timed with the ill-fated Poesploitation craze of 1989, which primarily saw rival producers Roger Corman and Harry Alan Towers cranking out a series of Poe adaptations in honor of the 140th anniversary of the writer's death (this included two competing versions of THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH). Most of these films weren't released until 1990 or 1991, thereby making the anniversary element pointless, and that went for TWO EVIL EYES as well. While it debuted in Europe in January 1990, it wouldn't hit US theaters until much later in October 1991, courtesy of Taurus Entertainment, who gave it a limited release on just 150 screens. Though an Italian production and Argento's baby, both segments of TWO EVIL EYES were shot in Romero's Pittsburgh stomping grounds, with the beloved NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD auteur providing his usual behind-the-scenes crew for Argento to use, including production designer Cletus Anderson, editor Pasquale Buba, and makeup effects maestro Tom Savini. Though he did some location work in Central Park for 1980's INFERNO, TWO EVIL EYES marked the first time Argento shot an entire project in the US, and he would return to the States for 1993's TRAUMA, which found him unable to create much of a stylish giallo atmosphere in exotic Minneapolis.

Romero kicks things off with "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar," previously filmed by Roger Corman as the closing segment in 1962's TALES OF TERROR and best remembered for Vincent Price waking from the dead and melting into ooze over scheming hypnotist Basil Rathbone. Wealthy Ernest Valdemar (Bingo O'Malley) is in a coma induced by his physician and amateur hypnotist Dr. Robert Hoffman (Ramy Zada). Hoffman is having an affair with Jessica (Adrienne Barbeau), a former flight attendant who became an aging Valdemar's trophy wife years ago and is anxious to reap the benefits of his impending passing ("I let him use me," she explains. "For pleasure and for show...and I intend to be paid for my services"). Hoffman puts Valdemar under hypnosis to ease the pain but that's also the time that he can control the old man's mind, getting him to repeat things over the phone to his suspicious attorney Pike (E.G. Marshall) and signing documents transferring untold amounts of cash over to Jessica. They need to keep Valdemar alive for three weeks before the estate transfers to Jessica, but he dies while under hypnosis, putting him in a purgatory where he remains "alive" and part of our world and "the next," with the ominous "the others" attempting to use him to cross over. Romero takes some significant liberties with the story, his attempt to wedge in some social commentary about the greed of the wealthy doesn't really work (nor does the shot of blood dripping on money--Romero wasn't usually so ham-fisted in his societal critiques), and it's flatly shot in a way that makes it resemble a gorier-than-usual episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, but "Valdemar" has some effective moments that make it better than its reputation. It's certainly a lesser work in the Romero canon, trying but not quite succeeding in re-establishing that CREEPSHOW mood--with Barbeau as another bitchy harridan, plus the presence of Marshall and O'Malley, not to mention Romero's then-wife Christine Forrest, playing a mean nurse just like she did in 1988's MONKEY SHINES--but it just looks bland and Romero doesn't feel as engaged as he might've been if this project was his idea rather than him being the only guest who showed up to Argento's party thinking Craven and Carpenter would be there as well.

Argento's "The Black Cat" is almost universally regarded as the superior half of TWO EVIL EYES, and while it's got some signature Argento style and, like Romero's "Valdemar," is a reasonably entertaining horror piece, it's too uneven in its approach to be a complete success. A lot of the problems with "The Black Cat" stem from a miscast Harvey Keitel, caught just before his spectacular early '90s resurgence thanks to films like BUGSY (his only Oscar nomination to date), THELMA & LOUISE, RESERVOIR DOGS, and BAD LIEUTENANT. Though he was occasionally appearing in prestigious offerings like THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and THE TWO JAKES around this same time, he was also making ends meet by taking a lot of hired gun gigs in instantly obscure European films that nobody saw. As anyone who's seen the FROM DUSK TILL DAWN documentary FULL TILT BOOGIE will recall, Keitel has been known to be a needy method actor who requires extensive one-on-one time with his directors, and if there's one thing for which Argento has zero patience, going back to his combative working relationship with Tony Musante on 1970's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, it's actors who pester him with questions about character motivation. Argento's been bitching about Musante for 47 years, and while little has been said about his experiences with Keitel, the actor doesn't really look happy to be there, almost like he's intentionally shutting down and withdrawing inside himself when his character is going crazy and he should be a little more animated.

"The Black Cat," written by Argento and frequent collaborator Franco Ferrini, is a mash-up of several Poe stories, filled with characters named after Poe protagonists. Keitel is Rod Usher, a Pittsburgh crime scene photographer who's working on compiling his shots of murder and death into a morbid coffee table book called Metropolitan Horrors. His dark side seems to be known to his younger girlfriend Annabel Lee (Madeleine Potter), a new age-y violinist who adopts a black cat, much to Usher's disapproval. While she's away on a short tour, Usher gets drunk and kills the cat. Of course he denies it, though Annabel isn't buying it, especially when he buys her a new cat--from a sultry barmaid named Eleonora, played by Sally Kirkland--and she catches him trying to murder that one as well. In a violent rage, Usher kills Annabel and walls her up in a closet, while her students (among them a young Julie Benz), nosy neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Pym (Martin Balsam and Kim Hunter), and dogged detective Legrand (John Amos) keep bothering him with questions about her disappearance, clearly not buying his story that she left him. All the while, Usher is tormented incessantly by a ringing phone a la "The Tell-Tale Heart," along with a persistent meowing coming from somewhere in the house.

Where Romero's segment had almost no visual flair at all, Argento goes full throttle, with some arresting camera work, dazzling Steadicam moves throughout Usher's massive three-story house, and some uniquely Argento-ish touches like a premonition of death in the form of a noose-shaped white marking on the cat's otherwise black hair. It ends in an abrupt fashion, which would typify a lot of Argento's films in the coming years, where he often starts the closing credits while the final scene is still playing out (I'm thinking specifically of 2001's SLEEPLESS), and breaks the cardinal rule of horror anthologies that the end segment has be an ace closer to send the audience out buzzing (though Pino Donaggio's closing credits score sorta helps). Regardless of its flaws, Romero's "Valdemar" has the more relatively crowd-pleasing ending, but "The Black Cat" never gets around Keitel being completely wrong for the part. He's a weirdo from the start and it's hard to grasp why Annabel is even interested in this creep, but Keitel makes the mistake of overplaying it early and underplaying it later. He's screaming "I didn't do anything!" immediately after murdering the first cat in a way that only a guilty person would, but later on, when he's being driven batty by the phone and all of the meddling interlopers, he suddenly seems half-asleep, mumbling and morose. It's a strange, mannered performance that never finds the right tone, and it's all the more perplexing because Keitel is one of our great actors, though given the track record of both of them, it's not hard to imagine Keitel and Argento not getting along. Horror fans would've gone to see TWO EVIL EYES in theaters had it been playing anywhere near them. Romero was in his commercial Hollywood phase at the time, between MONKEY SHINES and the Stephen King adaptation THE DARK HALF, and Argento's notoriety among American horror enthusiasts was significant even though much of his work was still difficult to see in the pre-DVD era (his 1987 film OPERA had finally been given a straight-to-video release just a month earlier in September 1991, retitled TERROR AT THE OPERA), with his post-1990 output showing some wild inconsistency that morphed into a precipitous decline from the late '90s onward that continues to this day. TWO EVIL EYES opened the same weekend as HOUSE PARTY 2 and CURLY SUE, but landed in 17th place and was out of theaters a week later, leaving most Argento and Romero fans to discover it in video stores. It doesn't represent either filmmaker at their pinnacle--for that we'd have to go back to 1979 when SUSPIRIA-era Argento helped finance DAWN OF THE DEAD, got Goblin onboard for the score, and recut the film as ZOMBI for European audiences--but it's entertaining enough to make it required viewing for superfans and completists.

George A. Romero and Dario Argento on the set of TWO EVIL EYES

In Theaters: MACHETE KILLS (2013)

MACHETE KILLS
(US/Russia - 2013)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez.  Written by Kyle Ward.  Cast: Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Mel Gibson, Demian Bichir, Sofia Vergara, Amber Heard, Antonio Banderas, Lady Gaga, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Walton Goggins, Vanessa Hudgens, Jessica Alba, Alexa Vega, William Sadler, Tom Savini, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Marko Zaror, Electra Avellan, Elise Avellan, Marci Madison, and introducing Carlos Estevez. (R, 107 mins)

Originating as one of the fake trailers in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's GRINDHOUSE (2007), MACHETE was spun off into its own film in 2010, finally giving the great Danny Trejo the spotlight in his own project.  The resulting film, parodying the same grindhouse aura of GRINDHOUSE, was gleefully over-the-top trash with everyone from Steven Seagal, Jeff Fahey, Lindsay Lohan, and Robert De Niro on hand to make fun of themselves.  MACHETE KILLS is more of the same, only sillier, if that's even possible.  Rodriguez isn't so much emulating '70s grindhouse trash anymore as much as he's just making a ludicrous parody of action movies.  There's a good amount of laughs and some even more self-deprecating casting, but it's all just too much.  Running a gaseous 107 minutes, Rodriguez gets pretty self-indulgent with MACHETE KILLS, and it probably would've been better if it had been 20-30 minutes shorter, making it more in line with what it's supposed to be riffing.

 

After seeing his partner and lover Sartana (Jessica Alba) killed while on a covert government mission, Machete is summoned to the White House and assigned by President Rathcock ("introducing Carlos Estevez") to go into Mexico and kill Mendez (Demian Bichir), a revolutionary with a split personality who has a nuclear missle aimed at Washington, DC that's wired to his heart and will launch if his heart stops beating.  During their confrontation, Mendez's evil personality pulls the pin on the heart device, giving Machete 24 hours to dismantle it, which requires the two of them crossing the border into the US (as the film briefly turns into an "...if they don't kill each other first! mismatched-buddy movie) to find the only man who can do it:  megalomaniacal multi-billionaire weapons manufacturer and global terrorist Luther Voz (Mel Gibson).  Voz designed the detonator and has even bigger plans beyond nuking Washington:  he's got a space station hovering above the planet and will be populating it with the richest of the rich after starting a series of global catastrophes.  With crazed, gun-barrel-breasted madam Desdemona (a scenery-chewing Sofia Vergara) and elusive assassin La Chamaleon (alternately played by Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr, Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderas) in hot pursuit, Machete gets help from sexy undercover agent Miss San Antonio (Amber Heard), and his old cohort Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) to thwart Voz's nefarious plan of taking over the galaxy.

Filled with intentionally dubious-looking CGI and ridiculous levels of violence and gore, MACHETE KILLS is dumb fun, which is the whole point.  But there's no denying that it starts to drag after a while and you wonder if maybe this should've been left as a trailer.  A lot of it is repetitious and could've been trimmed down, like the whole subplot with William Sadler as a racist sheriff on the Arizona border, who keeps calling Machete "Taco."  The character of "La Chamaleon" is funny, but Rodriguez and screenwriter Kyle Ward don't do much with it other than put increasingly unlikely actors in the role for a scene before they disappear.  Only Trejo appears throughout the film, and it's obvious that everyone else dropped by as their schedule allowed ("Carlos Estevez" never interacts with any other cast members--he and Trejo are never in the same shot together--and he actually looks CGI'd in his final scene).   Stone-faced Trejo is still a badass Machete and his emotionless delivery of lines like "Machete don't Tweet" are never not funny.  Between this and his role as the main villain in the upcoming THE EXPENDABLES 3, it's clear that the far-beyond-damage control Gibson is throwing in the towel and diving right into the self-parody phase of his career, probably because there's no other offers coming his way, but still, it's amusing seeing him on a huge set straight out of MOONRAKER and wearing a Darth Vader-like space cape.  Thanks to Trejo and some stars checking their egos at the door, MACHETE KILLS is enjoyable and the actors are having a blast, but there's just too much of it.  It overstays its welcome and simply doesn't know when to quit.  Hopefully, Rodriguez can rein it in a little and keep it to more sensible 85-90 minutes if and when he gets around to the promised third entry whose trailer is featured at the beginning of the film:  MACHETE KILLS AGAIN...IN SPACE!