Since his 1988 breakthrough HIGH HOPES, Mike Leigh has become one of the most distinctive voices in British cinema. In the years since, his credits read like a list of essential British films of the last quarter century: LIFE IS SWEET (1990), the shockingly misanthropic NAKED (1993), SECRETS & LIES (1996), TOPSY-TURVY (1999), VERA DRAKE (2004), HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (2008), and ANOTHER YEAR (2010) are generally considered great films to varying degrees, and even comparatively minor Leigh works like CAREER GIRLS (1997) and ALL OR NOTHING (2002) are very much worthwhile. I guess every great filmmaker has to have an off day, and with MR. TURNER, Leigh has delivered his first genuine misfire, though considering its current 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm clearly in the minority with that sentiment. A lethargic, coma-inducing biopic that focuses on the last 25 years in the life of famed British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and feels like it's being told in real time, MR. TURNER offers the great character actor and Leigh regular Timothy Spall the opportunity for the role of a lifetime, but after 30 or so minutes, his endless grunting, snorting, and harumphing in lieu of actual sentences--and when he does talk, you can barely understand him--gets old and there's still two tedious hours to go. Leigh has a method to his filmmaking that works for his small, intimate character studies: he brings his cast together for weeks or even months of improvisation and workshopping, collaborating as a team to develop the characters, their backstories, and their arcs, and from that, Leigh constructs a script and then the film is made. It's a system that has always worked but utterly fails him here. All Spall has is the tics and the mannerisms and they become a crutch because there's no narrative drive to MR. TURNER whatsoever.
It opens in the middle of the action and it's a good 45 minutes before you've worked out who's who and where they fit in Turner's world. It's all for naught because all Leigh presents is a series of vignettes and snapshots, jumping around the last two decades of Turner's life as characters drift in and out of view. It should be a perfect showcase for Spall, but it always ends up with Turner finding some inspiration for a landscape painting, then treating people like garbage--he has two children he doesn't acknowledge with a former mistress (Ruth Sheen) he ignores, and that mistress' psoriasis-stricken niece (Dorothy Atkinson) works as Turner's housekeeper and is routinely mounted from behind by her grunting, slobbering boss when he feels the urge. Turner has fleeting moments where he's a sensitive, caring individual in his own peculiar, grunty way, whether in his close relationship with his father (Paul Jesson is very good) or later, when he falls in love with his widowed landlady (Marion Bailey), but generally, he's a bastard, and maybe Leigh wants to make a point about the divide between the beauty of his art and the darkness of his soul. Unfortunately, it's lost amidst a guttural cacophony of snorts and gurgles that turn Spall's performance into a hammy and constipated embarrassment, regardless of how accurate the portrayal may be, and once Turner's father dies around an hour in, the film loses Jesson and its biggest source of warmth and humanity. Turner may be a great artist, but there's little here to suggest--at least in Leigh's unbearably monotonous presentation--that he's an interesting subject for a two-and-a-half hour film. By contrast, Turner's clashes with rival painter Benjamin Robert Haydon--and Martin Savage's performance in the role--bring a too-infrequent spark to the proceedings and definitely lead one to conclude that perhaps Haydon would've been a more interesting and cinematic subject for Leigh to pursue. Despite the beautiful, Oscar-nominated cinematography by Dick Pope--Academy Awards president Cheryl Boone Isaacs mispronouncing his name "Dick Poop" at the announcing of the nominees is more memorable than anything in the actual film--MR. TURNER is a shockingly empty and unfocused work from a great filmmaker, a tortuously, frustratingly dawdling 150-minute endurance test whose maddeningly molasses pacing is slower than any Merchant-Ivory film. (R, running time: endless) WINTER SLEEP (Turkey/France/Germany - 2014)
WINTER SLEEP is 45 minutes longer than MR. TURNER, and while it actually feels shorter than Leigh's film, it's still too much by at least an hour. The Palme d'Or winner at last year's Cannes Film Festival--a decision that suggests the Jane Campion-led jury was possibly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome--WINTER SLEEP, loosely based on the Chekhov short story "The Wife," is the latest from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan and demonstrates very much the same visual aesthetic of his 2011 masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA. It's also more self-indulgently bloated than it has any reason to be, with significant stretches of time devoted to escalating arguments between characters who make their point and keep circling back and restating those points for no other reason than to pad the film's absurd length, coming in at just under 200 minutes. In a performance with a demeanor and mannerisms that frequently recall Robert De Niro, Haluk Bilginer is Aydin, a one-time actor and now de facto town leader, landlord, and owner of the Hotel Othello, an unusual hotel carved into the side of a mountain. He fancies himself a benevolent and important figure but his arrogance is alienating everyone, including his much younger wife Nihal (Melisa Sozen). He owns all the property and writes a newspaper column that nobody reads, and tries to horn his way into Nihal's charity work for a local school, which she resents, accusing him of ignoring her requests to help improve the school for the last year and then swooping in to take all the credit at the end. He also claims to be busy working on a book about the history of Turkish theater, even though there's no demand and his blunt sister Necla (Demet Akbag) says he's only writing because he pontificates and loves the sound of his own voice. It's essentially a three-plus-hour horse pill that follows a not very likable person with an inflated sense of self-importance, both subtly and overtly denigrating everyone, and while there are some undeniably strong moments, both visually and with the work of the actors, it's just an exhausting experience. Riding high on the acclaim bestowed upon ANATOLIA, Ceylan just lets WINTER SLEEP go on and on and on to the point where he's like Michael Douglas' Grady Tripp in WONDER BOYS--he just doesn't know where to stop. You can probably zone out for several stretches of the film and still not miss anything in the way of plot development. By the interminable last hour, where Aydin leaves and Nihal tries to make amends with a local drunkard (Nejat Isler) who clashed with Aydin and his employee Hidayet (Ayberk Pekcan) early on, I have to admit that I was pretty much over it. WINTER SLEEP is well-made, beautifully shot, powerfully acted, and Ceylan is obviously a major international talent, but maybe he shouldn't read so much of his own press next time. (Unrated, 197 mins)
The 2014 Toronto Film Festival didn't go very well for Adam Sandler. Seemingly in response to criticism about his juvenile and increasingly lazy star vehicles that just give him an excuse to hang out with his buddies, Sandler tried to get serious with two smaller films, both of which were unveiled at Toronto: JUNO director Jason Reitman's dysfunction drama MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN and Tom McCarthy's THE COBBLER. McCarthy's made some respected and acclaimed indie films, such as THE STATION AGENT (2003), THE VISITOR (2008), and WIN WIN (2011), and Sandler would seem to be in good hands with either director if he was seeking an indie-cred reinvention. But whatever mojo Reitman had circa UP IN THE AIR is gone, as MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN was a ridiculous CRASH knockoff that got laughed off the screen with its "Old Man Yells at Cloud" attitude about social media and modern technology and eventually opened in theaters to the tune of a $700,000 total gross while asking the tough questions like "What's with all the selfies and the texting and the porn and the jerking off?" THE COBBLER got an even more toxic response. Earnest and schmaltzy to a fault, it plays like an excessively sappy take on the kind of middling, klezmer-scored, high-concept trifle that Woody Allen might churn out to lighten the mood between dramas. Acquired by Image Entertainment and relegated to a few theaters and VOD, THE COBBLER grossed just $24,000 and is somehow worse than any of Sandler's phoned-in Happy Madison joints.
The dumb concept might've provided passable entertainment had McCarthy been able to settle on the right tone. Instead, he veers wildly from comedy to fantasy to drama, with Sandler doing his best to keep up as schlubby Max Simkin, a fourth-generation cobbler in a Lower East Side neighborhood that's struggling to hold off gentrification. Weighed down by Allen-esque Jewish neuroses, deserted by his father (Dustin Hoffman), and living with his dementia-addled mom (Lynn Cohen), Max wishes he'd made different choices in life but just plugs away in his mundane existence. That is, until he discovers an old stitching machine in the basement that enables him to literally walk in someone else's shoes: when he slips on shoes that have been repaired using the antique stitcher, he turns into the person who owns the shoes. At first, he uses his new trick to mess with Jimmy (Steve Buscemi), who owns the barber shop next door, but then he's dining-and-dashing by switching into another pair of shoes in the restaurant's men's room and trying to get in the shower with the hot girlfriend of local DJ Emiliano (THE GUEST's Dan Stevens), and while wearing the shoes of neighborhood gangster Leon (Method Man), he threateningly steals the shoes of another (Joey Slotnick) because he wants to get that guy's sports car out of the parking garage and speed throuogh the streets. There's probably a ton of ways that shoe-stealing scene, relying on Leon being a stereotypical thug, could've been subversive and funny, but McCarthy treats the joke the same way a regular Sandler director would and it lands with the expectedly uncomfortable thud. THE COBBLER gets hopelessly maudlin as Max slips on his dad's shoes to stage a reconciliation with his mom, but he soon decides to use it to stop gentrification in his neighborhood, with Leon in cahoots with a corrupt property developer (Ellen Barkin, who can play this kind of bitch-on-wheels character in her sleep) to run elderly holdout Mr. Solomon (Fritz Weaver) out of his building so they can tear it down. This all leads to a twist ending that, among other things, somehow turns THE COBBLER into a superhero origin story ("You are the Guardian of Soles. You are the Cobbler" is probably the single worst line of dialogue Hoffman's been forced to utter in his 50-year career). In his defense, Sandler really isn't the problem here, nor was he the issue with the overwrought MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN. It's almost like he's acting out by defiantly choosing the most terrible serious scripts he can find so people stop giving him so much shit about paid vacations like GROWN-UPS 2. (PG-13, 98 mins)
THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST (Germany/Austria - 2013; US release 2015)
Though he'll always be the director of 1988's PAPERHOUSE and 1992's CANDYMAN, Bernard Rose's freefall into Roland Joffe depths of irrelevance continues with the laughable Niccolo Paganini biopic THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST. Rose directed 1994's well-regarded IMMORTAL BELOVED, anchored by a great Gary Oldman performance as Beethoven but here, he's saddled with violinist/PBS crossover sensation David Garrett as the maverick 19th century classical great Paganini. Garrett can obviously play but he can't act and as a result, there's a massive void in the center of the film that's impossible to fill. But really, Garrett is just one of many insurmountable problems with THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST: Rose wisely offers his inexperienced lead some support with veteran professionals, almost of whom decided to bring their D-game. In the worst performance of his career, Jared Harris is Urbani, a vaguely demonic figure in a ludicrous top hat who has Paganini sign a contract in exchange for fame and fortune. Rose seemingly treats the metaphorical "deal with the devil" as historical fact, and it leads to all manner of self-destructive behavior on Paganini's part. Rose has no interest in exploring Paganini as a character and simply bulldozes through the exposition--in rapid-fire succession, Paganini goes from unknown violinist to superstar to father of a five-year-old boy to hopeless opium addict. That's all in the first 12 minutes. Then the kid disappears, and we see him again 100 or so minutes later, then five minutes after that, he's a decade older. Then Paganini is on opium again after no signs of drug abuse for 90% of the movie. At times, it seems like a long "Previously on..." recap for a TV series that doesn't exist.
Goaded by Urbani, Paganini treats everyone like dog shit, callously bankrupting the London benefactor (Christian McKay gives the only thing resembling a performance) who tries to help him expand his audience, breaks the heart of Charlotte, the benefactor's daughter (Andrea Deck), and demands financial compensation to play for the King of England. He takes the stage hours late like some 19th century Axl Rose, and is targeted by an ever-present group of religious protesters--led by the prudish and perpetually haranguing Primrose Blackstone (Olivia d'Abo)--that also functions as a Greek chorus for the plot. Everything about THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST is wrong-headed: casting a violinist with no acting experience and a complete inability to correctly pronounce the name "Charlotte" instead of a real actor who could maybe learn to mimic the violin performance scenes; Harris playing Urbani with a Mephistophelian scowl more befitting a silent movie villain, and with a bizarre vocal affect that can best be described as "SLING BLADE starring Peter Lorre"; Joely Richardson as a rough, cigarillo-smoking journalist with Carrot Top's hair, getting catty with Charlotte over Paganini's attention; giving the great Helmut Berger prominent billing but nothing to do...I could go on. Boasting some nicely ornate interior production design, THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST is otherwise appallingly bad and just more proof, along with the little-seen 2014 found-footage horror film SX_TAPE, that Rose just has no idea what he's doing anymore. He's made some accomplished films and a couple of his early ones could arguably be called great, but while he keeps busy, he's done nothing noteworthy since his 1997 version of ANNA KARENINA with Sophie Marceau. Rose is prolific but his consistently barely-released or completely unseen films fly so far under the radar that it's easy to forget he's even still around, let alone cranking out six movies in the last five years. In the end, THE DEVIL'S VIOLINIST, released on just ten screens in the US by Freestyle two years after flopping in Europe, seems like as much of vanity project for Garrett as Klaus Kinski's humbly-titled 1989 Paganini chronicle KINSKI PAGANINI. Garrett, also one of 26 credited producers, gets to show off his chops numerous times, his Paganini beds a slew of comely women, and his female fans are always shown fanning themselves as they mob him like he's One Direction, accompanied by sounds of Elvis and Beatlemania crowd shrieking. And in a bizarre onscreen credit worthy of infamously self-aggrandizing neoclassical metal Paganini disciple Yngwie Malmsteen, there's even a special acknowledgment from the producers thanking Garrett for his work on the film. Does that mean he's thanking himself for starring in a movie that he co-produced? Isn't that like a Malpaso production thanking Clint Eastwood for showing up? (R, 123 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
STRYKER (Philippines - 1983) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Howard Cohen. Cast: Steve Sandor, Andria Savio, William Ostrander, Mike Lane, Ken Metcalfe, Julie Gray, Monique St. Pierre, Joe Zucchero, Jon Harris III. (R, 82 mins) Though Italy was largely ground zero for the 1980s post-nuke ROAD WARRIOR ripoff, it should come as no surprise that Cirio H. Santiago, the undisputed king of Filipino exploitation, wasted no time in getting his own post-apocalyptic saga in theaters when he saw the craze gaining momentum. Santiago (1936-2008) schlepped his way around the Filipino movie industry from the mid-1950s on before finding his niche in drive-in trash after forming a partnership with Roger Corman in the early 1970s. Corman would co-produce and distribute Santiago's Manila-shot T&A actioners like FLY ME (1973) and COVER GIRL MODELS (1975) as well as 1974's immortal T.N.T. JACKSON ("She'll put you in traction!"). Santiago and Corman would part ways by the late '70s as Santiago had some other successes with EBONY, IVORY & JADE (1976), THE MUTHERS (1976), VAMPIRE HOOKERS (1978) and DEATH FORCE (1978). Santiago and Corman reunited for 1981's FIRECRACKER, a remake of T.N.T. JACKSON. By the mid-to-late 1980s, the prolific Santiago was on a roll, with Corman's Concorde Pictures releasing a slew of his post-nukes (1987's EQUALIZER 2000, 1988's THE SISTERHOOD, 1992's DUNE WARRIORS), horror (1987's DEMON OF PARADISE), vigilante exploitation (1985's NAKED VENGEANCE), cop movies (1986's SILK), RAMBO ripoffs (1986's THE DEVASTATOR), post-PLATOON Vietnam sagas (1987's EYE OF THE EAGLE, 1988's NAM ANGELS, 1989's better-than-expected EYE OF THE EAGLE III), and one that was a fusion of everything (1986's insane FUTURE HUNTERS). Santiago slowed down a little in the 1990s, but still had time to crank out several BLOODSPORT knockoffs like the 1993 duo of ANGELFIST (with Vidal Sassoon's karate champ daughter Cat) and LIVE BY THE FIST, and a few more 'Nam offerings that provided jobs for fading American tough guys, such as 1992's BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY with Jan Michael Vincent, and 1993's KILL ZONE with David Carradine and Dallas Cowboys great Tony Dorsett. By the early 2000s, he was making jingoistic military actioners like 2003's WHEN EAGLES STRIKE, and producing a pair of 2006 films with Mark Dacascos: THE HUNT FOR EAGLE ONE (2006) and its sequel THE HUNT FOR EAGLE ONE: CRASH POINT (2006), which transplanted his Vietnam formula to the post-9/11 era.
Cirio H. Santiago (1936-2008)
Released in September 1983, STRYKER was Santiago's first post-nuke, and one of the last films distributed by the original incarnation of New World Pictures after Corman sold the company that same year. Santiago's style typically didn't concern much beyond getting the film in the can and shipped off to Corman, but with STRYKER, he seems to have taken some care as it demonstrates some of his most accomplished filmmaking. It's not just in the stunt work or the action sequences (Filipino writer/actor Joe Mari Avellana is credited as "associate director"), but Santiago also seems to have gotten access to a Steadicam for a few shots that really show off the barren, desolate look of the mines on the Filipino island of Marinduque (the site of terrible mining tragedy in 1996), which does a very effective job of standing in for a vast, post-nuke wasteland. As much of a shameless and aimless ROAD WARRIOR ripoff as it is, STRYKER stands as one of Santiago's best films, even though it could really use some Vic Diaz.
Even by the standards of the post-nuke ripoff, STRYKER's story is threadbare: years after the nuclear (or, as the opening narrator puts it, "nucular") holocaust, water is the scarcest commodity, and marauding bands of relatively good guys team up to take on the sadistic overlord Kardis (1950s pro wrestler turned B-movie actor/producer Mike Lane), who's bent on hoarding it for himself. A band of scantily-clad female badasses led by Delha (Andria Savio) are part of The Colony, where a natural spring has supplied them with water for years. They reach out to a compound run by Trun (Ken Metcalfe as Tom Atkins), figuring that an alliance between The Colony and Trun will force Kardis to realize he's outnumbered and negotiate a deal that finds them all sharing the spring. Of course, since Kardis is the villain in a post-nuke ripoff, there's no way he'll go along with this pie-in-the-sky bullshit, especially after he's revealed to be a thoroughly tone-deaf post-apocalyptic one-percenter who announces his plan to strictly ration the precious water "for those who contribute" while splashing his face after a refreshing, hot shave. Wandering in and out of the convoluted but somehow still empty story is Stryker (Steve Sandor), the requisite nomadic warrior in a souped-up muscle car. Stryker is Trun's younger brother but branched out on his own because that's just how he rolls. Stryker has a sidekick in Bandit (William Ostrander), who gets a love interest with one of the Colony ladies, but considering the movie is called STRYKER, Stryker doesn't figure much in the action until the climax, when he gets to face Kardis one-on-one and avenge his late wife, who was tortured and beheaded by Kardis years earlier.
Steve Sandor IS Stryker!
Santiago comes storming out of the gate with an opening scene that includes a disemboweling and several shotgun blasts to faces and heads. There's quite a bit of action, constant explosions, and dangerous stunts throughout (there's one impressive chase sequence where Ostrander clearly does his own stunt, falling from the top of a moving rig onto the truck passing by it, and it looks dangerous as hell), but the script by Howard Cohen (SATURDAY THE 14TH, DEATHSTALKER) has too many characters (there's also a group of robed, jabbering dwarves who get a lot of screen time) and almost treats its title hero as an afterthought. That's a shame, because Sandor is well-cast and plays the part with just the right tongue-in-cheek attitude. STRYKER was, for that time anyway, a rare big-screen lead for Sandor, who headlined a couple of late '60s biker movies but was mainly a jobbing journeyman making his living on TV guest spots. Santiago's film came in the midst of a brief renaissance for Sandor, who provided the voice for Darkwolf in Ralph Bakshi's FIRE AND ICE, which opened a week before STRYKER, and a month later, he had a co-starring role on the short-lived Cybill Shepherd/David Soul NBC series THE YELLOW ROSE. Sandor is perhaps best known to cult movie audiences of more refined taste than STRYKER for his role as the leader of a gang of sadistic bikers whose beating and humiliation of a fragile ex-astronaut (Scott Wilson) and his even more unstable shrink (Stacy Keach) kick off what's probably cinema's most harrowing bar fight in William Peter Blatty's THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (1980).
William Ostrander in his best-known role as bullying
Buddy Repperton in John Carpenter's CHRISTINE
A native of Euclid, OH outside of Cleveland, Ostrander also had a voice role in Bakshi's FIRE AND ICE and is best known to genre fans as Buddy Repperton in John Carpenter's CHRISTINE, released three months after STRYKER. As played by Ostrander, Repperton is one of the most memorable movie bullies of the 1980s, but even though the film was a hit and his performance is remembered by fans to this day, Ostrander never capitalized on it and it wasn't long before all of those roles started going to William Zabka (THE KARATE KID, BACK TO SCHOOL) instead. Ostrander plugged away for the rest of the '80s, but fame never materialized. He co-starred in the grim 1985 German-made women-in-prison drama RED HEAT, with Linda Blair and Sylvia Kristel and had a recurring role on KNOTS LANDING in 1986, but he only worked sporadically in the '90s and onward. He had a small role in David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DR. (2001), but he hasn't acted since an episode of ANGEL that same year.
Thai DVD art for WATER WARS
At the time of his death in 2008, Santiago was working on a sequel of sorts to STRYKER, which would be his first time behind the camera since 2005's futuristic kickboxing opus BLOODFIST 2050, an unusually long break for the director. An ill Santiago was battling lung cancer when he died five days into production on ROAD RAIDERS, which would eventually become WATER WARS. The film, starring Michael Madsen because of course it did, was shelved until 2011 when producer Corman brought in his veteran utility man Jim Wynorski to finish Santiago's final project. Wynorski shot new scenes and assembled what he could out of what Santiago managed to get done, and relied on copious amounts of stock footage from STRYKER and other Santiago post-nukes to fill in the gaps. All told, about 20-25 minutes of WATER WARS' 78-minute running time is stock footage from movies that were nearly 30 years old, featuring characters who have nothing to do with WATER WARS. The resulting patchwork, which has been charitably described as ranging from "amateurish" to "unwatchable," seems to have been shelved permanently by Corman as far as actual release is concerned, and has only been seen by a small number of masochists relying on the bootleg and torrent circuit. Its only official release thus far has been as a straight-to-DVD title in Thailand in 2014, the kind of under-the-radar rollout usually reserved for snuff films on the sex traveler and human trafficking circuit.
EX MACHINA (UK - 2015) Written and directed by Alex Garland. Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander, Sonoya Mizuno, Corey Johnson. (R, 107 mins)
It's easy to make surface comparisons to Caradog James' 2014 sci-fi film THE MACHINE, but Alex Garland's EX MACHINA, while sharing some similar ideas and, unfortunately, a focus on female android protagonists named Ava, goes in an otherwise completely different direction. A twisty, often philosophical mindbender, EX MACHINA marks the directing debut of novelist Garland, who's been a frequent Danny Boyle collaborator (he scripted 28 DAYS LATER and SUNSHINE, and his novel The Beach was adapted into a 2000 Boyle film by TRAINSPOTTING screenwriter John Hodge), and also wrote Pete Travis' instant cult classic DREDD (2012). Garland lays on the Kubrick worship a little thick, especially in the back end of the film, but he does it right, and the film's cold, clinical look, its long hallways, its recurring use of mirrors, and its limited number of protagonists in an isolated, claustrophobic location make it particularly indebted to THE SHINING. In conjunction with a throbbing electronic score co-written by Portishead's Geoff Barrow and the cinematography of Rob Hardy, EX MACHINA is one of those hypnotic films whose visual intoxication works on you quickly, but unlike many such instances, it's got the story to back up the style.
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a code writer for Bluebook, a Google-meets-Facebook-like behemoth and the internet's most utilized search engine. He wins a company-wide contest to spend a week with reclusive CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a billionaire several times over who lives in a distant, subterranean fortress that doubles as his secret research facility. Nervous Caleb wonders why he's there and why he has to sign a confidentiality agreement, but Nathan soon reveals that he wants Nathan to administer the Turing Test--whether an artificial intelligence can engage in human behavior and make human decisions on its own--on an android named Ava (Alicia Vikander). After several interview and observational sessions with Ava, an odd mutual attraction forms, and during periodic power blackouts that Nathan claims were caused by faulty installation but now has too much top-secret research to allow the electricians back in--during which time Nathan loses security camera access to what Ava and Caleb are talking about--Ava secretly warns Caleb "Do not trust Nathan. You can't believe anything he tells you."
Roles eventually shift in unpredictable ways, but as heavy-drinking Nathan becomes more erratic, Caleb grows more paranoid about his host's intentions, and Ava begins to exhibit more signs of intelligence and independent thought, the film definitely starts to resemble THE SHINING, with evil Nathan subbing in for Jack Torrance and Caleb and Ava functioning as Wendy and Danny. There's a fourth major character in Nathan's mute Japanese servant and sexual outlet Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), who doesn't understand English but clearly has secrets of her own and knows much more than she lets on. But little is at it seems in EX MACHINA, which doles out its plot twists in a restrained, organic fashion rather than ridiculous reveals that negate what's happened prior. Garland engages in some clever misdirection designed to make you think you've got things figured out in a "maybe Caleb isn't the one conducting the Turing Test" sort-of way, but ultimately, he isn't interested in going down that road. It's a near-flawless fusion of intelligent, hard sci-fi and rich, vivid atmosphere that just gets better and more intense as it goes along, though if it ended one scene before it did, it would've been flirting with perfection. All four stars are superb, with Isaac turning in another dynamic performance right on the heels of A MOST VIOLENT YEAR. Shot at the Juvet Landscape Hotel in Valldalen, Norway, with the long hallway shots done at Pinewood Studios in London, EX MACHINA is a remarkable film, intelligently written, visually stunning, and with top-notch android CGI on Vikander, proving that CGI can look good, and doing so on just a $16 million budget. It belongs on that short list of almost trance-inducing modern sci-fi cult classics like BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, UNDER THE SKIN, and the little-seen THE MACHINE, which also deals with AI and a female android named Ava but in an entirely different, post-apocalyptic setting and, it should be noted, lacking an amazing Isaac-Mizuno dance scene.
While Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns were game-changers in Europe and made Clint Eastwood a star, the US releases of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) were delayed for a few years (the first two hit US theaters in 1967 and UGLY was released in 1968). By that time, the spaghetti western explosion in Italy was completely out of control, with literally hundreds being made in the years following, with every handsome Italian and ambitious young (or coasting old) American actor heading to Europe to achieve the kind of fame that Eastwood was enjoying. By 1967, Eastwood was the biggest star in Europe but back home, he was still best known for his stint on TV's RAWHIDE as few were even aware of the massive popularity of the films he'd been making in Europe. That all changed when FISTFUL finally opened in America, marking the belated arrival of a phenomenon that had already been raging in Italy and the rest of Europe for three years. American westerns were now trying to emulate the Italian ones--even Eastwood's debut as a Hollywood headliner, 1968's HANG 'EM HIGH, is heavily indebted to the spaghetti westerns--in a rare reversal of the trend pattern that usually saw Italian genre offerings blatantly copycatting what was big in America (like the later Italian EXORCIST ripoffs and post-DAWN OF THE DEAD zombie movies). The spaghetti craze reached its artistic apex with Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969), an elegiac examination of the American west that drew the iconic Henry Fonda into Italian westerns, completely shattering his Tom Joad image by playing one of the most evil figures in all of cinema, one who's introduced shooting a small child point blank in the face.
The list of American actors hopping on the spaghetti western bandwagon is endless--even a young Burt Reynolds got into the act with Sergio Corbucci's 1966 film NAVAJO JOE, and William Shatner starred in the Spanish WHITE COMANCHE (1968) during a break between the first and second seasons of STAR TREK. One such actor was Tony Anthony, a New Jersey native whose background was covered at length on this blog in a piece on his 1983 film TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS. Born in 1937, Anthony had made a few independent productions and by 1967, through his producing partner Saul Swimmer, he had fallen in with Abkco Records head Allen Klein, the Rolling Stones manager who would also end up overseeing the Beatles after the death of their manager, Brian Epstein. It could be argued that Anthony's career is a classic case of smart networking, knowing the right people, and plain old dumb luck, as over the next few years, he and Swimmer would become tangential members of the Beatles' inner circle, with Swimmer directing George Harrison's CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH and Anthony working on a couple of projects with Ringo Starr. With Klein's help and a distribution deal with MGM, Anthony starred in three STRANGER films, the first two of which became surprise hits in the US in 1968. There were four STRANGER entries altogether, but MGM only released the first three, and as a result, Warner Archive's just-released STRANGER COLLECTION only includes those initial three, all directed by Luigi Vanzi under the Americanized pseudonym "Vance Lewis." Generally well-regarded by fans in their day, the films have fallen into obscurity over time, with Anthony better known today for his hand in the early '80s 3-D revival, but they're available once again, in decent if not spectacular widescreen transfers. And one of the films in particular, is a cult classic that's waited decades for rediscovery.
A STRANGER IN TOWN (Italy - 1967; US release 1968)
Anthony's Stranger arrives in a Mexican ghost town and watches psychotic bandit Aguilar (Frank Wolff) mow down a group of military officers. The Stranger concocts a gold heist with Aguilar with the full intention of ripping him off and turning him and his gang in for the reward money, but numerous double crosses ensue, with both the Stranger and Aguilar alternately getting the upper hand. This first entry in the series looks and sounds like any other spaghetti western of the era, but like most, it lacks artistic majesty of Leone and isn't quite up to the level of Corbucci, the other standard-bearer of the genre. A STRANGER IN TOWN is very laboriously-paced, with long stretches where not much happens, and the bland story lacks the kind of imagination and character of Leone's films and doesn't attempt any of the political subtext that was creeping into spaghetti westerns around this time, in films like Damiano Damiani's A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL (1968). In its defense though, it finally gets cooking in the last 15 minutes when the Stranger starts killing Aguilar's gang one by one, usually by sneaking up on them and blasting a shotgun into their face at point-blank range. The climax is so good that it almost makes you forgive the middling mediocrity of the first 70 minutes. Anthony is much more appealing here than he was in his comparitively bland '80s action star incarnation, and American expat actor Wolff, a fixture in Italian cinema and best known for his role as the doomed Brett McBain in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, is appropriately dastardly as the ruthless Aguilar. Between Anthony's looks, Wolff's curly hair, and Benedetto Ghiglia's very Morricone-esque score, if 1968 moviegoers left their glasses at home, they might be tricked into believing that it was Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria Volonte up on the screen. The killer finale gives it a nice boost, but A STRANGER IN TOWN is really only for spaghetti western completists and Tony Anthony stalkers. (R, 86 mins)
THE STRANGER RETURNS (Italy - 1968)
Released in Italy in January 1967, A STRANGER IN TOWN proved to be a surprise hit for MGM when they released it in the US in April 1968 to appreciative American audiences for whom the spaghetti western was still relatively new. By that time, Anthony and Vanzi had already made the sequel THE STRANGER RETURNS, which appeared in US theaters just four months after A STRANGER IN TOWN. The sequel is an improvement over the first film, though it also suffers from a flabby midsection that could use some serious tightening. But it opens and closes strong, and Anthony imbues the Stranger with even more quirky characterization, including a Roy Rogers & Trigger-type relationship with his faithful horse Pussy (yes, Pussy), and a sometimes whimsical attitude that almost looks like a prototype for the slapstick antics of Terence Hill in the TRINITY films and MY NAME IS NOBODY. Without ever crossing the line into outright comedy, Anthony plays the Stranger here in a decidedly offbeat way--he's not quite as sharp as the Man with No Name, and often gets himself into situations where he's unquestionably the intellectually inferior party. But there's a very amusing sequence early on that Vanzi lets play out to a comically absurd length, where two bad guys force the Stranger to dig his own grave at gunpoint, and he keeps digging and digging until the grave is twice the size it should be. One of the guys asks if the hole is too big, to which the Stranger smiles and says "No," as the two villains remain blissfully and cluelessly unaware that they're going to be sharing the double-wide grave in matter of moments. Here, the Stranger runs afoul of a gang led by El Plein (Dan Vadis), who kills a postal inspector who was their inside man on the heist of a gold shipment being transported by stagecoach. The Stranger ends up impersonating the postal inspector, again with a half-assed plan to keep the gold for himself while turning El Plein and his men in for the reward money.
It's almost the same plot as A STRANGER IN TOWN, and like that film, there's a lot of walking around and noisy mayhem that never leads anywhere until late in the film when, once again, the Stranger is pursued by an outlaw gang and does the "sneak up on them and blow them away with a shotgun" act, which is just as illogically silly and crowd-pleasing here as it was in the first film. The occasionally light tone doesn't always gel with the film's hard-hitting violence, still worth an R rating today, with Vadis' El Plein being as nihilistic a bad guy that's been in any spaghetti western. In addition to Pussy the Horse, the Stranger gets another sidekick in the form of a drunken, crazed old street preacher (Marco Guglielmi) looking for one last shot at redemption. There's also one returning character, Army Lt. George Stafford, played here by an uncredited Ettore Manni (Lars Bloch played Stafford in the first film), though he and the Stranger don't seem to know each other like they did in A STRANGER IN TOWN. THE STRANGER RETURNS suffers from a meandering middle that drags badly, but Anthony conceived the story and he was clearly attempting to take things in a different direction and make the Stranger not so much the Man with No Name/Django clone that we saw in the first film. (R, 95 mins) THE SILENT STRANGER (US - 1975)
After the success of A STRANGER IN TOWN and THE STRANGER RETURNS, MGM decided they wanted a STRANGER trilogy and went all in on THE SILENT STRANGER. This third film in the series took Anthony's Stranger (and Pussy the Horse) to Japan to deliver an ancient scroll to its rightful owner. Of course, being that this is a western, the Stranger ends up in the middle of a longstanding battle between two rival samurai clans--exacerbated by the meddling of an Ugly American (Lloyd Battista, a Cleveland native who would become an integral part of Anthony's stock company starting with this film), who introduces modern gatling gun technology to the samurai--in what's essentially the earliest example of an "east-meets-western" offshoot that finds the way of the samurai clashing with the American west (and naturally, the Stranger sneaks up on various samurai to blow them away with a bizarre front-loading sawed-off cannon). This would be popularized by the likes of Terence Young's RED SUN (1971), which paired outlaw Charles Bronson with samurai Toshiro Mifune, and later, during the post ENTER THE DRAGON craze, when gunslinger Lee Van Cleef teamed up with kung-fu warrior Lo Lieh in Antonio Margheriti's THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER (1976). In addition, samurai and elements of Japanese culture made it into other pre-RED SUN spaghetti westerns like Tonino Cervi's TODAY IT'S ME...TOMORROW YOU! (1968), co-written by Dario Argento, which had Brett Halsey and Bud Spencer assembling a posse to avenge the rape and murder of Halsey's wife by a sadistic Japanese outlaw chillingly played by Akira Kurosawa regular Tatsuya Nakadai, and Don Taylor's THE FIVE MAN ARMY (1970), which counted samurai Tetsuro Tamba among its titular band of heroes.
However, THE SILENT STRANGER is the forgotten film of the east-meets-western fad, though it was the earliest to actually take its hero east as opposed to bringing the east to the west. MGM was so pleased with the success of the first two films that they fully backed THE SILENT STRANGER with a big Hollywood budget and even let Anthony, who was taking a more creative role in the series and took over as producer with Klein, keep his same core group of partners, including director Vanzi (from Vanzi and Battista here to Ferdinando Baldi and Gene Quintano later, Anthony preferred to work with a close-knit circle of collaborators). Filmed on location in Japan, THE SILENT STRANGER boasts production values that are leaps and bounds ahead of the same old Almeria, Spain sets seen in the first two films and every other spaghetti western. The battle scenes between the samurai clans are staged with the enthusiastic fervor of any Kurosawa throwdown. THE SILENT STRANGER was a troubled production that used its problems to its advantage: filmed in the fall of 1968, the shoot was hit by no less than 13 typhoons in a horrifically awful weather season, but they worked it into the story and whole sequences play out in a jawdroppingly torrential downpour very reminiscent of the final battle in Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI (1954). And when it's not raining in sheets, the whole area is muddy from the rain that just fell, which adds significant atmosphere and gritty, harsh realism to the proceedings. The cast and crew are battling the elements and as a result, THE SILENT STRANGER almost comes off like it's Tony Anthony's FITZCARRALDO.
So why then, was the film not released until 1975? A management shake-up at MGM ended with the ousting of studio president Robert O'Brien--a strong supporter of Anthony and a big fan of the STRANGER films--and Klein aggressively taking his side, which didn't endear him or Anthony to the new people in charge. They responded to Klein's support of O'Brien by abandoning THE SILENT STRANGER and shelving it for seven years. It's a tragedy of sorts, because THE SILENT STRANGER is so good, and coupled with the momentum generated by the first two films--which aren't nearly as good-- it likely could've led to Anthony being a much bigger mainstream star than he ever would be, and the film might be cited as a great example of a Hollywood spaghetti western. Instead, by the time it opened in the summer of 1975, with new, MGM-ordered voiceover narration recorded under duress by Anthony that makes Harrison Ford's in BLADE RUNNER sound enthusiastic, the Stranger's time had passed. The buzz around Anthony had already died and the film was greeted with shrugs and dismissed as a RED SUN ripoff, when in fact, it was shot three years before that film.
After the shelving of THE SILENT STRANGER, Anthony moved on to BLINDMAN (1971), his first film with Italian director Ferdinando Baldi, who would eventually become his go-to director for his brief early '80 renaissance with COMIN' AT YA! and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS. BLINDMAN, thanks largely to the presence of Ringo Starr as one of the villains (Battista was the other), would become Anthony's biggest hit in America up to that time, but again, he marched to the beat of his own drum and made a seemingly deliberate effort to avoid the mainstream machine. His next film was the departure gangster drama 1931: ONCE UPON A TIME IN NEW YORK (1972), which reteamed him with Vanzi. In 1975, he decided to revisit The Stranger, this time with Baldi directing, as Anthony and his co-writer, co-star, and buddy Battista took the offbeat and increasingly surreal touches of the Stranger films and steered them straight into all-out insanity with GET MEAN, which pitted the Stranger against Vikings, barbarians, and the supernatural in what might be a dry run for TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS. After the big Hollywood-backed SILENT STRANGER, GET MEAN was released in the US on the grindhouse circuit in 1976 by the small-time Cee Note Films. Never a prolific actor and not one to take hired gun jobs, Anthony stayed offscreen for five years until he returned with sleeper hit COMIN' AT YA!, and it's the early '80s return of 3-D for which Anthony is best known. But with these STRANGER films returning from obscurity courtesy of Warner Archive, and Blue Underground set to release GET MEAN on Blu-ray later this year, 2015 seems to be the year of the Tony Anthony renaissance, a time to re-examine a genuinely uncompromising and strangely endearing maverick who never seemed very interested in playing Hollywood games. If nothing else, it's time to discover the minor masterpiece that is THE SILENT STRANGER. (PG, 90 mins)
Writer/director David O. Russell has been on a hot streak with THE FIGHTER (2010), SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012), and AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013), and that's probably what finally got his long-shelved NAILED released as ACCIDENTAL LOVE. NAILED was shot in South Carolina during the summer of 2008 and co-written by, among others, Russell and former Vice Presidential daughter Kristin Gore, based on Gore's 2004 novel Sammy's Hill. The film's primary backer was the financially-strapped Capitol Films, who ran out of money on this and several other films shot at the same time, including Taylor Hackford's LOVE RANCH (ultimately released in 2010) and AMERICAN HISTORY X director Tony Kaye's BLACK WATER TRANSIT (still unreleased). NAILED shut down production on at least eight occasions over that tumultuous summer, despite an initial budget alleged to be in the area of $25 million. One shutdown was caused when the crew revolted over not being paid, and another occurred when stars Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal followed suit and walked off the set over similar money issues. Production was halted permanently by the end of 2008 with all of the post-work still needing to be done and at least one major scene--one that all parties agreed was completely essential--still unfilmed. By early 2010, Russell ran out of patience and washed his hands of it. He publicly distanced himself from NAILED, moved on to THE FIGHTER, and never looked back. In 2013, co-producer Kia Jam corralled enough funds to cobble as much of the missing scene together as possible and complete post-production, but Russell wanted no part of it. Now carrying the generic title ACCIDENTAL LOVE, the film was acquired by Millennium and given a VOD dumping in February 2015, with the non-existent "Stephen Greene" shouldering the blame after Russell successfully petitioned to have his name removed as both director and co-writer.
It's hardly praise, but as far as abandoned clusterfucks go, ACCIDENTAL LOVE isn't as bad as Alec Baldwin's doomed directorial debut THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, shot in 2001 and ultimately aired on Starz in 2007 as SHORTCUT TO HAPPINESS, with director credit going to one "Harry Kirkpatrick." Biel stars as Alice, a small-town Indiana roller-skating carhop who gets shot in the head with a nail gun at a restaurant just after her cop boyfriend Scott (James Marsden) proposes. Uninsured Alice can't afford the brain surgery required to extract the nail, and it's deemed a pre-existing condition when she tries to get on Scott's insurance. Concerned about future medical issues, Scott bails and Alice goes to Washington to meet with her district representative, freshman Congressional newbie Howard Birdwell (a mannered, bug-eyed Gyllenhaal), to bring attention to her plight and plead the case for health care reform. Birdwell is a nebbishy type with great political ambition but he's kept under the thumb of lobbyists and powerful Rep. Pam Hendrickson (Catherine Keener, cast radically against type as a cold, brittle bitch-on-wheels), a former astronaut whose primary goal is getting the government to fund a military base on the moon. ACCIDENTAL LOVE vacillates between screwball comedy, with Alice's condition frequently causing spontaneous outbursts, speaking in a foreign language, or demonstrating insatiable lust, and political satire, which comes across as forced and rather toothless. It shouldn't come as a surprise or edgy insight to see that politicians are frequently corrupt, self-serving, and beholden to special interest groups.
"Stephen Greene"'s ACCIDENTAL LOVE obviously isn't as polished as David O. Russell's NAILED would've been, but what's here is almost all Russell's work, and it wouldn't have been his finest hour any way you cut it. There's some amusing bits here and there, and Kurt Fuller does a nice job as a priest with Viagra issues, but the more it goes on, the more shrill and heavy-handed it becomes. It's the kind of movie that ends with the whole cast gathered for a feelgood dance number, with the added bonus of closing credits bloopers, as if anyone had a good time making this thing (given the chaotic production, wouldn't footage of the Capitol money men telling a pissed-off crew they aren't being paid make for a much more entertaining blooper reel?). Other familiar faces lost in the quagmire include James Brolin as the Speaker of the House (a last-minute replacement when James Caan quit over "script disagreements," probably the film's liberal bent being at odds with the far-right Caan's politics); Tracy Morgan as Alice's friend Keyshawn, but he's essentially playing himself; Paul Reubens as Hendrickson's aide; Bill Hader as the snide ER doc who shuts down the surgery and grabs a burger when he's told Alice is uninsured; Beverly D'Angelo as Alice's mom (D'Angelo, in what must've been a frustrating summer in 2008, was also in BLACK WATER TRANSIT); and Kirstie Alley (her name misspelled "Kirstey" in the closing credits) as Alice's aunt. Perhaps NAILED could've been a sharp and prescient satire on pre-Obamacare politics, but ACCIDENTAL LOVE is a dated misfire best forgotten by all concerned. (PG-13, 101 mins)
EVERLY (US - 2015)
The idea of Salma Hayek spending an entire movie slicing, dicing, and blowing away a crew of yakuza goons in an apartment building sounds a lot more fun than EVERLY turns out to be. A reverse RAID of sorts, EVERLY has Hayek as the title heroine, a prostitute holed up on the sixth floor of a yakuza-owned slum where other women are pimped out to wealthy Japanese clients and other assorted perverts and sadists. Everly has secretly been working with the cops to bring down crime boss Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe), who owns the building and the women who live in it. Taiko knows what she's been up to and has a price on Everly's head as other prostitutes, Taiko flunkies, and her neighbors try to get into Everly's apartment and take her out while she frantically tries to reunite with her estranged mother (Laura Cepeda) and young daughter (Aisha Ayamah). Director Joe Lynch (CHILLERAMA, KNIGHTS OF BADASSDOM) manages to pull off a couple of fairly well-executed sequences involving long tracking shots and uninterrupted takes, but for the most part, EVERLY just never finds its groove and feels significantly longer than 90 minutes. When it was screened at the 2014 Fantastic Fest in Austin, it got an overwhelmingly positive reaction from participation medal-awarding scenesters who no doubt have Lynch among their Facebook friends, but what's here is in many ways reminiscent of Alexandre Aja's atrocious PIRANHA remake, another lazy grindhouse poseur of an exploitation flick that thinks showing up and making the references are good enough. There's a lot of Takashi Miike in the over-the-top bloodshed and a bit of Tarantino, not just in the adoring shots of Hayek's feet as Everly constantly goes from high heels to barefoot, but also in one Japanese john (Akie Kotabe) spending his entire screen time bleeding out from a gunshot wound on Everly's couch, just like Tim Roth in RESERVOIR DOGS right down to his wardrobe. As she demonstrated 20 years ago in DESPERADO (has it been that long?), Hayek, still stunning at 48, is more than game as a kick-ass action heroine, but EVERLY just isn't up to her level. It's an endless fanboy circle jerk that exists in an insulated, prefab cult movie echo chamber. Hayek could use a hit, and in better hands, EVERLY could've easily been her JOHN WICK. Instead, it's her HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN and nobody needs that. (R, 92 mins)
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (US - 2014)
There's a strong early-Jim Jarmusch vibe to this hypnotic vampire film from writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour, perhaps the most inventive of its kind since LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Co-produced by Elijah Wood and shot in black & white in and around Bakersfield, CA, GIRL is set in the fictional Bad City, Iran and is in Persian with English subtitles. Amirpour and cinematographer Lyle Vincent do a tremendously effective job with the widescreen framing and using things like smokestacks and pumpjacks to present Bad City as a depressing industrial wasteland where drugs and crime rule above all. Nice-guy Arash (Arash Marandi) is forced into settling the debts of his junkie father Hossein (Marshall Manesh) to ruthless drug lord Saeed (Dominic Rains) when Saeed decides to take the only thing that matters to Arash--his pristine '57 T-Bird--as repayment. Saeed is soon slaughtered by a strange, silent woman (Sheila Vand) who turns out to be a vampire. The remarkably expressive, sad-eyed Vand is one of the most memorable vampires to hit the screens in some time. Portraying The Girl as one those melancholy sorts doomed to a life of loneliness, Vand doesn't even utter a word until nearly 40 minutes in, and almost like a holdover from the silent era, lets her face do much of her acting. When she tells prostitute Atti (Mozhan Marno) "You're sad, you don't remember wanting, and nothing ever changes," she's really talking about herself. GIRL is largely a triumph of style over substance, but there are numerous parallels and dualities at work throughout, like flip sides of a coin--between The Girl and Atti, Arash and Saeed, and The Girl and Hossein, perhaps the biggest monster of all when he shoots Atti full of heroin and prompts The Girl to take on the role of avenger. The Girl longs for love and humanity--watch the small, subtle smile she allows herself in really great scene the first time she's alone with Arash and plays White Lies' "Death"--in a world where empathy and feeling simply have no place with the likes of Saeed and Hossein around. A fascinating thematic companion piece to Jarmusch's recent ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT has its tedious bits that scream "art house pretension," especially with a long scene of Reza Sixo Safai's Rockabilly dancing with a balloon, but overall, it's a unique and visually arresting addition to vampire cinema. (Unrated, 101 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS (Italy - 1983; US release 1984) Directed by Kevin Mancuso (Aristide Massaccesi and Luigi Montefiori). Written by Alex Carver (Luigi Montefiori). Cast: Harrison Muller, Al Cliver, Daniel Stephen, Peter Hooten, Al Yamanouchi, Sabrina Siani, Donald O'Brien, Geretta Geretta. (Unrated, 86 mins)
The credits of the Italian post-nuke ROAD WARRIOR ripoff 2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS take great pains to make the movie look American. All of the technical credits are pseudonymous, starting with score composer Carlo Maria Cordio going by "Francis Taylor" and production manager Donatella Donati as "Helen Handris," all the way to the end with assistant director and future Italian horror auteur Michele Soavi (CEMETERY MAN) hiding incognito as "Mike Soft." But all of that effort is for naught early on with the repeated sightings of signs reading "DANGER: EXSPLOSIVE," the tell-tale, "Do Not Entry" sign from THE BEYOND that, despite the Herculean efforts of everyone involved, the ruse collapses thanks to the Italian prop guy. And if you watch enough of these, you'll start recognizing not only the same actors being dubbed by the same voices, but also the same Italian locations, as 2020's action mostly has the actors running around the same abandoned factory and the stunt drivers careening around the same gravel pit and dirt mounds that can be spotted in most entries in the subgenre.
Set in the ruins of Texas several years after "the Atomic Wars," 2020 focuses on the Rangers, a group of mercenaries led by Nisus (Al Cliver). The Rangers battle the jack-booted forces of The Black One (Donald O'Brien), a nefarious dictator-type who's trying to conquer the community so he can have access to a refurbished refinery that now produces clean drinking water. After an early Rangers expedition results in Nisus banishing Catch Dog (Daniel Stephen) after he tries to rape single mother Maida (Sabrina Siani, in one of her few appearances outside of an Italian CONAN ripoff), Catch Dog immediately switches sides and joins the Black One, using his knowledge of the Rangers to get back at his former cohorts. When Nisus (the character is listed as "Nisus" in the credits, but it sounds like the dubbing team is saying "Nexus," which sounds cooler) is killed in a raid by the Black One's goons and Maida is sold into prostitution, the rest of the Rangers--Halakron (Peter Hooten), Jab (Harrison Muller), and Red Wolfe (Al Yamanouchi)--rescue her and avenge Nisus by taking on The Black One and Catch Dog. Filled with the usual goofy-looking cars, mutant goons, wild stunt work, gun battles, "exsplosions," completely inconsistent beard continuity for Hooten and Muller, over-the-top violence, and a pretty impressive body count, 2020 is total guilty pleasure stupidity, right from the start with the Rangers killing about 50 bad guys before the opening credits are even finished. There's no shortage of bloodshed and the near-constant action keeps things moving briskly, but 2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS doesn't really try to take advantage of its setting. Other than a hand-painted "Texas" sign, and Halakron challenging Maida's cowboy pimp to some DEER HUNTER-inspired Russian Roulette in an old west saloon, no effort is made to create the illusion of "Texas," unlike the many post-nukes set in NYC, like 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, where even a half-melted model of the Statue of Liberty went a little way toward creating some NYC atmosphere. 2020 does an OK job of being a post-nuke western of sorts--an idea more successfully explored in Giuliano Carnimeo's EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000--but it mainly resorts to cliches and cringe-worthy stereotypes that would've been antiquated in the 1940s, like the late-film introduction of some constantly war-whooping "Indians" who stop just short of saying "How!" and "We smokum peace pipe" when they reach a tentative truce with Halakron and the Rangers and join their fight against The Black One.
Aristide Massaccesi (1936-1999),
aka "Joe D'Amato," "David Hills,"
and at least 50 other pseudonyms
Released in the US in 1984 by short-lived grindhouse outfit Megastar Films and shown on TNT's MONSTERVISION with Joe Bob Briggs in 1999, 2020 was directed mostly by Aristide Massaccesi, who used countless pseudonyms over the course of his career, the most frequent and familiar being "Joe D'Amato." Massaccesi dabbled in everything, starting as a camera operator on Mario Bava's HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD (1961) before graduating to cinematographer by the late '60s and moving on to directing in the '70s, with everything from Laura Gemser's BLACK EMANUELLE films to the gore classics BEYOND THE DARKNESS, aka BURIED ALIVE (1979), and ANTROPOPHAGUS, aka THE GRIM REAPER (1981). As "David Hills," he directed several ATOR films during the post-CONAN craze, and under the name "Steven Benson," he would gather most of the cast and crew of 2020 for the same year's Italian post-nuke favorite ENDGAME. The workaholic Massaccesi also used the D'Amato name on several old-school Skinemax favorites like ELEVEN DAYS, ELEVEN NIGHTS (1986) and TOP MODEL (1988). By the early 1990s, Massaccesi was working exclusively in hardcore porn, where he would finish his career prior to his death in 1999. 2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS' direction is credited to "Kevin Mancuso," which is actually a shared pseudonym for Massaccesi and familiar Italian cult actor Luigi Montefiori, better known as "George Eastman."
Luigi Montefiori, aka "George Eastman"
Montefiori first gained notice as The Minotaur in 1969's FELLINI SATYRICON, and, as "Eastman," would later co-star in the Charlton Heston version of THE CALL OF THE WILD (1972) and with Kirk Douglas in SCALAWAG (1973), as well as one of the kidnappers in Mario Bava's RABID DOGS (1974), but that's about as classy as his resume got. As "George Eastman," he was a regular fixture in Eurotrash cinema, usually appearing in "Joe D'Amato" films. He starred as the cannibalistic killer in THE GRIM REAPER and in the D'Amato horror/porno crossovers EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980) and PORNO HOLOCAUST (1981), the latter known more for its close-ups of porn actor Mark Shanon's genital warts than anything else. "Eastman" is perhaps best known by post-nuke fans for his performance as Big Ape in 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK (1983). In addition to acting under his "Eastman" moniker, Montefiori scripted numerous films, either under his own name (1976's KEOMA) or under a variety of pseudonyms (as "Lew Cooper," he co-wrote Michele Soavi's 1987 breakthrough STAGEFRIGHT). Montefiori scripted 2020 under the name "Alex Carver," and wanted to try his hand at directing some of it as well. It's been rumored that Massaccesi handled the action scenes, which would mean he directed most of the movie. Considering they remained friends and worked together several more times over the years, it's doubtful that this was a situation where Massaccesi stepped in and took over for Montefiori. More likely, Montefiori wanted to get his feet wet behind the camera and Massaccesi delegated some scenes to the neophyte director. Cult actress Geretta Geretta--aka Rosemary in Lamberto Bava's DEMONS--had a small role in 2020 and when asked who directed what, she responded "All I remember is that the director was tall and handsome," which would probably indicate that the few scenes she was in were handled by the the 6' 9" Montefiori. If Montefiori wanted to branch out into filmmaking, it didn't really pan out after partnering with Massaccesi on 2020: to date, he's only stepped behind the camera on one other occasion, the Norfolk, VA-shot horror film METAMORPHOSIS (1990)--memorable to back-in-the-day video store denizens for having one of those great, gimmicky Imperial Entertainment VHS boxes--where he's credited as "G.L. Eastman." Now 72, Montefiori hasn't acted since 2004 and has spent recent years writing for Italian TV.
Despite being fourth billed in the credits, Hooten is the real star of 2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS, at least after second-billed Lucio Fulci regular Cliver gets Janet Leigh'd out of the film by the 30-minute mark. A native of Florida, Hooten worked steadily on TV in the early '70s with guest appearances on shows like THE MOD SQUAD, MANNIX, and THE WALTONS. Over 1977 and 1978, with a co-starring role in ORCA and the title role in the CBS/Marvel pilot movie DR. STRANGE, it appeared as if he was about to break out, but DR. STRANGE wasn't picked up for series and Hooten quickly became a Next Big Thing instantly forgotten. By the end of 1978, he made his way to Europe where he would work almost exclusively starting with Enzo G. Castellari's THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS. Already showing signs of disinterest in the projects he was being offered--his only Hollywood gig during this time came in a supporting role as one of Ken Wahl's commando unit in James Glickenhaus' 1982 actioner THE SOLDIER, and he didn't even stick around to dub himself for 2020, leaving it to voice actor Frank von Kuegelgen--Hooten only worked sporadically as the '80s went on. He eventually retired from acting in 1990 after starring in TROLL 2 director Claudio Fragasso's completely obscure NIGHT KILLER. It was shortly after shooting 2020 that the openly gay Hooten met Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill, and the two were together until Merrill's 1995 death from AIDS. Now 64, Hooten currently lives in Florida and came out of retirement in 2013 to appear in a pair of extremely low-budget Sarasota-shot regional horror movies, HOUSE OF BLOOD and SOULEATER.
2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS is a fun film, but between young Montefiori working with Fellini and Hooten almost becoming a Marvel superhero, it's also a film that those with once-promising careers settled for when they just needed the work. French-born Irish actor O'Brien was no exception. He got his start with supporting roles in big-budget films like John Frankenheimer's THE TRAIN (1964) and GRAND PRIX (1966) before finding his niche as villains and miscreants in a slew of Italian spaghetti westerns throughout the 1970s, going back to Sergio Sollima's RUN MAN RUN (1967), all the way up to era-enders such as Lucio Fulci's FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (1975), Enzo G. Castellari's KEOMA (1976), and Sergio Martino's MANNAJA (1977). He also played a Nazi general in THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS and an exorcist in Massaccesi's sleazy nunsploitation classic IMAGES IN A CONVENT (1979). O'Brien is best known to Eurotrash audiences for Marino Girolami's ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (1980), where his zombie-creating mad doctor was granted the title role when the film was rechristened DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. for its 1982 American release. Vacationing in Paris in 1980, shortly after completing his work on ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, O'Brien suffered a serious head injury when he slipped and fell in the bathroom of his hotel room. After spending several days in a coma, he awoke to find he was partially paralyzed. 2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS was his first film after the accident and its effects are obvious: he has a halting limp and is often dragging his left leg, and the right side of his face demonstrates frequent, involuntary twitching very similar to that of Japanese actor Takeshi Kitano/Beat Takeshi in the aftermath of his 1994 motorcycle accident. Still, the veteran actor, while dubbed, manages to create a vivid impression with his shaved head, hammy overacting (check out his overdone Dr. Evil cackle at a not-very-funny joke that Catch Dog makes), and memorable death scene. O'Brien continued to act in films, but his paralysis took its toll. He required a cane and as the years went on, in later films like HANDS OF STEEL (1986) and THE NAME OF THE ROSE (1986), he's usually seated or leaning against something. O'Brien would go on to appear in Massaccesi's final ATOR film QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD (1990) and Michele Soavi's THE SECT, aka THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER (1991), before retiring from acting in 1994 after severely injuring his hip in another fall. He died in 2003 at the age of 73.
