Cult Classics Revisited: BLOODFIST (1989)

BLOODFIST
(US/Philippines - 1989)

Directed by Terence H. Winkless.  Written by Robert King.  Cast: Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Rob Kaman, Billy Blanks, Kris Aguilar, Michael Shaner, Riley Bowman, Joe Mari Avellana, Marilyn Bautista, Kenneth Peerless, Vic Diaz, Ned Hourani. (R, 86 mins)


For the last 40 or more years, Roger Corman's keen instincts as a producer/moneymaker have always been quick to predict a trend or hop on one as soon as possible.  From the women-in-prison classics of the early '70s to the car chase movies of the late '70s to the ALIEN, STAR WARS, and CONAN ripoffs of the early '80s, no one in Hollywood knew how to make a buck quicker or cheaper than Corman.  So when kickboxing movies entered the mainstream with Jean Claude Van Damme in 1988's BLOODSPORT and 1989's KICKBOXER, it was inevitable that Corman would quickly unveil his own kickboxing opus. 

BLOODFIST, starring three-time WKO light heavyweight world champ Don "The Dragon" Wilson, opened in the fall of 1989 and became one of the biggest successes of Corman's Concorde Pictures.  Which is not to imply that it was a blockbuster, but rather, it actually played two weeks instead of just one.  Several months later, BLOODFIST proved to be hugely popular in video stores, so it was a certainty that Wilson would return for BLOODFIST II (1990).  Seven additional sequels followed, six starring Wilson, and zero of which were actual sequels.  After BLOODFIST II, the films had no connection other than Wilson in the lead role--as a different character in each film--and BLOODFIST in the title.  1992's BLOODFIST III: FORCED TO FIGHT might've made it into a few theaters, but after that, they all went straight-to-video:  BLOODFIST IV: DIE TRYING (also 1992); BLOODFIST V: HUMAN TARGET (1994); BLOODFIST VI: GROUND ZERO (1995); BLOODFIST VII: MANHUNT (also 1995); and BLOODFIST VIII: TRAINED TO KILL (1996).  Wilson sat out the most recent entry, the 2005 straight-to-DVD reboot BLOODFIST 2050, but there's no reason to believe that's the end of the franchise.  The series proved extremely popular with fans and profitable for Corman, even when parts III to VIII were disconnected, stand-alone Don "The Dragon" Wilson vehicles with the BLOODFIST title tacked on.  Wilson's output has slowed considerably in the last decade (he's 57 now and hasn't been in a movie since 2007), but he had quite a video store following throughout the '90s and headlined in the vicinity of 30 low-budget actioners in the decade after BLOODFIST, including several different franchises that ran simultaneously with BLOODFIST.  In addition to his work for Corman, he also made three RING OF FIRE's and two CYBER-TRACKERS for the action-crazed madmen at PM Entertainment, and starred in the first of two BLACK BELT's for Corman, plus such video store fixtures as FUTUREKICK, RED SUN RISING, NIGHT HUNTER, and VIRTUAL COMBAT.  PM Entertainment even gave Wilson his own Chuck Norris/SIDEKICKS ripoff, playing himself in the family-oriented martial arts comedy MAGIC KID, about a young kickboxer whose hero is...you guessed it...Don "The Dragon" Wilson!   In short, he never became a household name like a Stallone or a Schwarzenegger, or even a Van Damme (well, except in the MAGIC KID's house), but you couldn't walk into a Blockbuster in the 1990s without seeing at least one recent Don "The Dragon" Wilson flick on the New Release wall, and it all started with BLOODFIST.

The plot is pretty threadbare:  L.A.-based gym owner and former fighter Jake Raye (Wilson) heads to Manila when his half-brother Mike (Ned Hourani) has died under mysterious circumstances. Through circumstances best described as "plot convenience," Jake meets Kwong (Joe Mari Avellana), an eccentric trainer who takes him under his wing to prepare him for the Red Fist, a fight-to-the-death kickboxing tournament that looks like the Kumite restaged in the gym of a condemned high school.  Kwong believes that Mike's murderer is one of the fighters in the tournament.  While fast-moving and with lots of scenes of bloodied guys beating the shit out of each other, BLOODFIST looks budget-starved even by the standards of Philippines-shot Corman productions.  But where BLOODFIST no doubt scored with kickboxing fans was the cred it establishes with the all-star cast of kickboxing and martial arts figures:   karate champ and future Tae Bo fitness king Billy Blanks kicked off a brief but busy straight-to-video acting career with his work here as ruthless fighter Black Rose.  There's also kickboxing champs Rob Kaman and Kris Aguilar as other tournament fighters/possible murder suspects.

Billy Blanks, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and Rob Kaman in a BLOODFIST publicity shot

Van Damme had Donald "Ogre from REVENGE OF THE NERDS" Gibb as his hard-living American sidekick in BLOODSPORT, so of course Wilson also gets a wacky pal in BLOODFIST in the form of the obnoxious Baby Davies (Michael Shaner), a con-man/party animal who's also in the tournament and may as well be named Dead Meat.  Jake also hooks up with Baby's sister Nancy (Riley Bowman), thus allowing director Terence H. Winkless to meet Corman's required topless-shot quota.  Winkless, a co-writer on the 1981 classic THE HOWLING, made the mutant cockroach thriller THE NEST for Corman a year earlier and would continue to be a journeyman on the Corman assembly line for several years to come, with such B fare as CORPORATE AFFAIRS, THE BERLIN CONSPIRACY and one of the 17 remakes of NOT OF THIS EARTH, in addition to work away from Corman, helming a number of episodes of MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS, and shows like the USA Network's PACIFIC BLUE and TNN's 18 WHEELS OF JUSTICE.  He's not exactly an auteur, but he obviously demonstrates the kind of efficient professionalism that Corman wanted.  The New World Corman of the '70s was about making money, but also about shepherding directing talent like Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, and so on.  The Concorde Corman of the '80s was mainly about making a profit, and his stock company of directors had capable craftspersons like Winkless, Rodman Flender, Jim Wynorski, Katt Shea, Kristine Peterson, and Larry Brand--people who could take the script and get it in the can on time and on budget--but no one from this period of Corman's career really broke out into the big time except for Luis Llosa (who went on make such films as SNIPER, THE SPECIALIST, and ANACONDA) and Carl Franklin (who left Corman and made ONE FALSE MOVE, DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, HIGH CRIMES, and OUT OF TIME).  Winkless does the best with what he's got.  It's not a particularly good-looking movie, but it gets the job done (and has a surprising twist ending, albeit with an awkwardly bizarre reveal), and has that uniquely grungy, cheap Filipino action vibe to it throughout (plus a supporting role for Vic Diaz, as required by Filipino law).   Wilson isn't the most magnetic leading man, though he did get better with the superior follow-up BLOODFIST II.

Joe Mari Avellana as Mr. Miyagi.  Er, I mean, Kwong.

Still, BLOODFIST was an important film for Corman, Concorde, Wilson, video stores, and the entire straight-to-VHS business model of the 1990s.  BLOODSPORT, and perhaps even 1986's NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER might've started the kickboxing genre, but the success of BLOODFIST on video really started a flood of low-to-no-budget kickboxing movies, much like BASIC INSTINCT instigated a wave of unrated erotic thrillers.  As the drive-ins faded away, these types of films simply migrated over to video store shelves.  It was a unique era that produced franchises and stars of its own who still amassed tons of fans without the benefit of a big-screen national rollout, and it gave fading stars and second/third-tier actors a place to call their own.  The big studios maybe didn't want them, but that didn't mean they weren't in-demand or lacking a fan base.

Currently available on Netflix Instant

PIECES: Greatest Bad Movie Ever?

PIECES
(Spain/Italy - 1983)

Directed by J. Piquer Simon.  Written by Dick Randall and John Shadow.  Cast: Christopher George, Paul Smith, Edmund Purdom, Lynda Day George, Ian Sera, Jack Taylor, Frank Brana, Gerard Tichy, Isabelle Luque, Hilda Fuchs, May Heatherly. (Unrated, 85 mins)

I love PIECES.  I love PIECES so much that if I was told I had 24 hours left to live, I'd be sure to set aside 1.5 of those 24 hours to watch PIECES one last time.  It has everything:  extreme gore, gratuitous nudity; slumming actors; bad dubbing; a complete disregard for logic and common sense; and no sense of restraint or decency whatsoever.  It is pure Bad Movie joy of the highest order.

The plot?  Well, for what it's worth, the film opens in 1942 Boston with a child putting together a nudie jigsaw puzzle, prompting his mother to throw an hysterical fit.  Not to be outdone, the kid kills Mom with an axe.  Cut to 1982, and a chainsaw killer, using that same jigsaw puzzle as his inspiration, is killing girls on a Boston college campus and collecting the body parts to piece together a real-life puzzle.  Get it?  PIECES!

On the case are Lt. Bracken (Christopher George) and Sgt. Holden (Frank Brana, best known to MST3K fans as the butt of the "Leslie Nielsen! Leslie Nielsen! Leslie Nielsen!" jokes from POD PEOPLE), seeking the cooperation of the Dean (Edmund Purdom), who understandably doesn't want a panic.  As what's left of the bodies continue to pile up, Bracken enlists the aid of Kendall (Ian Sera), the unlikely BMOC, a smirking twerp who scares easily and inexplicably has all of the campus hotties succumbing to his Horshackian charms despite owning an alarming number of Cosby sweaters.

As the mayhem continues, Bracken, cementing his place as the laziest detective in cinema history, has Kendall keep an eye on tennis pro-turned-cop Mary Riggs (George's wife Lynda Day George, strangely billed as "Linda Day" even though she'd been going by "Lynda Day George" since their 1970 nuptuals), who's undercover as...wait for it...the new tennis coach!  The list of suspects is seemingly endless:  is the killer Kendall?  Is it the Dean?  Is it grumbling, stink-eyed groundskeeper Willard (Paul Smith)?  Or is it the mysterious Professor Brown (Jack Taylor)?  The Dean seems to think so, as he snottily informs Bracken that Brown is "unmarried and lives with his mother."

"Agatha Christie got nothin' on Juan Piquer Simon!" - Tomb It May Concern's David Zuzelo

Directed by Spanish hack Juan Piquer Simon, PIECES was destined for grindhouse glory.  It was produced by Dick Randall, an American exploitation vet who spent most of the 1960s and 1970s working between Italy and Hong Kong.  Randall co-wrote the script with one "John Shadow," generally assumed to be one of the countless pseudonyms of legendary Italian sleaze merchant Aristide Massaccesi, best known as "Joe D'Amato."  Also involved in this and a few future Randall projects was American producer Steve Minasian, who was peripherally involved in getting the original FRIDAY THE 13TH made.

Where to start in listing the many highlights of PIECES?  Is the stupidity of the plot enough?  The ease at figuring out the killer's identity?  The inept direction?  The way two actresses in a tennis match have clearly never played tennis before?  The way Simon can't get the extras watching the tennis match to follow the ball in unison?  The way the CSI guys find a sawed-up body and put one arm in a plastic bag, and the rest of the body parts in one giant bag, while perpetually useless Bracken asks if the killing could've been done by the blood-splattered chainsaw left next to the body?  The way Bracken emphatically tells the Dean that the killer "is someone on...or near the campus"?   The way Bracken keeps pawning his work off on a college student?  The way the killer hides his chainsaw behind his back while on an elevator with his next victim?  The way Holden forgoes a holster and just puts his gun in the waist of his pants?  The completely uncoordinated aerobics class?   One of the most ludicrous final shots in all of horror cinema?  The out-of-nowhere attack on Mary by Kendall's "kung-fu professor"?

Or how about the quotes?
--"We're just buying clothes without labels and trying them on for size."
--"The most beautiful thing in the world is...smoking pot and...fucking on a waterbed!"
--"So I'm slayed by a withering look.  Who gives a shit?"
--"One, two, three...OK!"
--"Get me a plastic bag!  I'm gonna burn everything!"
--"Hey, it's my kung-fu professor!  What's the story, Chow?"
--"Bad chop suey!  So long!"
--"I just love the cream!"
--"Take some uppers or something!"
--"I'll send you a case of lollipops!"
--"Casanova!"


And, of course....

Somehow, Oscar ignored Lynda Day George.

I've had a strange obsession with PIECES since June 1984, when it belatedly opened in the Toledo area and I saw a couple of ads for it on TV.  Back then, the idea of straight-to-video wasn't as prevalent as it would become in just a few years, and things took longer to come out on home video.  With drive-in schlock like PIECES, the plan in many cases would be to open it slowly and, with a limited number of prints, it would make its way around the country slowly as opposed to opening wide.  PIECES opened in the US in September 1983, and took uncommonly long to reach my area.  So long, in fact, that Christopher George was dead by the time the film hit Toledo.  George died of a heart attack in November 1983, and PIECES was the veteran actor's next-to-last film.

The great Christopher George (1931-1983)

There was something captivating about the bluntness of the TV spot and the luridness of the newspaper ads ("You don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!"), and, of course, the tell-tale sign that it was the real deal for gorehounds: it was unrated, with the warning "Absolutely no one under 17 admitted!" which was usually reserved for the likes of Lucio Fulci films and stuff like MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY.  It took me a couple of years, but I eventually caught up with PIECES via the Vestron Video VHS.  And what child of '80s trash cinema doesn't get misty over the old Vestron logo?

And even as a teenager, it was easy to laugh at PIECES.  But damn...this was a sick movie.  For all its controversy, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE really isn't that gory.  But PIECES was a different beast.  It showed everything.  Pig carcasses were used for the chainsaw-slicing closeups.  The shot of a scared victim wetting herself seemed a little too real (because it was).  As terrible as PIECES is--and it is indeed a terrible, horrible, laughable movie--my love for it knows no bounds.  I've lost count of how many times I've seen it, especially since the definitive two-disc special edition DVD was released by Grindhouse in 2008 (packed with bonus features, this also includes the Spanish audio track with a completely different score by Librado Pastor that doesn't work at all; the US version had CAM library tracks that are an infinitely better fit), with a really nice 1.66 anamorphic transfer.

PIECES probably isn't the funniest bad movie ever, and the rampant sleaze and extremely graphic violence will likely be a major turn-off for some, but something about this has just clicked with me since I first saw those TV commercials back in 1984 when I was 11.  This actually opened at an eight-screen cinema at the then-biggest mall in the city. I'm just trying to imagine seeing PIECES in a mall cinema.   What else can I say?   The hipsters can have their prefab bad movies like BIRDEMIC.  For me, PIECES is the gift that keeps on giving and shows no signs of stopping. 

In Theaters: SAFE HOUSE (2012)

SAFE HOUSE
(US/Japan/South Africa - 2012)

Directed by Daniel Espinosa.  Written by David Guggenheim.  Cast: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard, Ruben Blades, Robert Patrick, Liam Cunningham, Joel Kinnaman, Nora Arnezeder, Fares Fares.  (R, 115 mins)

The ominously-named Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) finds himself pursued by men with guns in Cape Town, South Africa, and when they close in on him from all sides, his only way out is to walk into Cape Town's US embassy.  Turns out he's a rogue CIA superagent who's been off the grid for ten years and wanted for espionage on four continents.  The honchos at Langley (among them Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga and the always-authoritarian Sam Shepard) order him to be transported to a secret CIA safe house, where ambitious, low-level operative Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) spends his days listening to his iPod and throwing a tennis ball at the wall while waiting to be stationed somewhere other than Cape Town.  The extraction team--led by Kiefer (Robert Patrick)--arrives to interrogate the uncooperative Frost (who's such a badass that he can withstand waterboarding), when the same men who were pursuing him show up and kill everyone except Weston, who gets Frost out through a secret passageway.  No one knows about the safe house except the CIA, and Weston begins to doubt that Frost is the traitor his bosses say he is, and the two have to set aside their differences and work together.

If they don't kill each other first!

Watching SAFE HOUSE, one can be forgiven for assuming it's directed by Tony Scott, who's collaborated with Washington a number of times in the past, on films ranging from straightforwardly entertaining (UNSTOPPABLE, DEJA VU) to garish and barely-watchable (MAN ON FIRE, THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123).  Swedish director Daniel Espinosa definitely shows off his inner T-Scott here, utilizing a grainy, oversaturated look (lots of closeups, and you can see every pore on the actors' faces) and, especially in the second half, a lot of dizzying, hyper-edited shaky-cam.  The second half of the film goes in a mostly predictable direction, but Espinosa and screenwriter David Guggenheim do much better with the first half, which relies less on headache-inducing directorial wankery and more on character and suspense.  The entire sequence inside the safe house when Frost first arrives is knots-in-your-stomach intense, and the car chase when Weston and Frost first escape is one of the best in quite some time.  But once it's established that Frost isn't the bad guy after all, and that someone at the CIA wants him silenced, it becomes pretty standard fare.

Nevertheless, Washington, with his usual gravitas and expert command of the screen, is as awesome as you expect him to be.  It's a testament to his abilities that, with all the familiar things in his bag of tricks (cue the sarcastic slow clap and the mildly condescending "alright, alright...AH-HA-HAAA!"), he hasn't pulled a Nic Cage and completely succumbed to self-parody.  He's got a good chemistry with the consistently-underrated Reynolds, who holds his own with his co-star while seeming genuinely awestruck at the same time.  Also a big plus is the effective use of Cape Town locations (the City Bowl/Table Mountain; the Cape Town Stadium; the slums of Langa) in some of the many action sequences.  SAFE HOUSE is an entertaining time at the movies, but it does suffer from some overfamiliarity in the back-end.  Not that it runs out of steam, but just that it turns into something we've seen a hundred times before.  A riveting first hour and the seemingly effortless work of the ageless Washington (is he really 57?  One character refers to Frost as "the black Dorian Gray," and the line might very well have been improvised by co-star Ruben Blades) make it an overall solid action outing.

Cult Classics Revisited: Special "Canadian DELIVERANCE Ripoff" Edition

Often lumped in with DELIVERANCE ripoffs, these two Canadian productions have attained sizable cult followings in the ensuing decades since their release.  Neither really follows the plot of the 1972 classic, other than putting men in the wilderness, trapped in a situation spiraling out of control.  In short, there's no "squeal like a pig" moment in either of these films, and one actually plays more like a precursor to Walter Hill's 1981 film SOUTHERN COMFORT, itself lumped in with the post-DELIVERANCE subgenre without real cause.

SHOOT (1976) is an occasionally fascinating film that too frequently fails to live up to its potential, mostly due to a sluggish pace and lackluster direction by Harvey Hart (THE PYX).  SHOOT's strength is the commanding, quietly frightening performance by Cliff Robertson as Rex, a department store owner and gun enthusiast who oversees a local militia group and lives for weekend hunting excursions with his war buddies, among them Lou (Ernest Borgnine) and Zeke (Henry Silva), and a few others.  After a bad day where no one's bagged anything, they encounter another group of hunters on the other side of a creek.  They stare at each other, and a shot comes from the other side.  Zeke opens fire, killing a member of the other group.  Both groups flee the scene, and Rex reads in the paper that the other group told authorities it was "a stray bullet."  From this, Rex concludes a) they didn't want to tell the authorities they shot first, and b) they want to settle the score.  This is all Rex needs to dive back into his combat fantasies, and the other men, with the exception of the "bleeding heart" Lou, are only too eager to stockpile weapons and ammo to go into battle. 

The message is ham-fistedly clear:  these men never left combat and are only happy when they're killing, regardless of the success of their everyday professions (Rex's store, Lou's printing press, Zeke's barbershop--who the hell thought casting Henry Silva as a barber was a good idea?).  Robertson does his damndest to sell it, and there's intriguing character bits throughout--his dysfunctional relationship with his wife; two other women seemingly throwing themselves at him; all the macho talk; the willingness to bully and mislead his inexperienced militia group--mostly local guys barely out of their teens, just looking for something to do and a place to hang out--into what will certainly be a bloodbath.  But the pace is so slow and the energy so low that SHOOT just never gains any momentum, at least not until the stunning climax, but by then, it's too little too late.  Lots of interesting ideas--not just with Robertson's character but with some of the others as well, like Zeke's disgust at letting Rex's black store security chief into the group.  Most impressive is an extremely uncomfortable, awkward scene where Rex bluffs his way into the home of the dead man's wife (Kate Reid) under the guise of being an old friend paying his respects (he actually wants to find out how much she knows).  She starts off by asking if he's a gun nut as well, and we think she's going to go off on him, but instead, goes into an ugly, bile-filled rant about how guns are necessary "with all the hippies, druggies, and jigs that wanna break into your home and rape you," followed by her coming on to Rex and announcing that she isn't wearing any underwear.  There's a lot of moments like this that make SHOOT memorable, like it's better than it is, but as a whole, it's curiously not.  With all the things there are to admire about its occasional audacity, Hart too often drops the ball with clumsy editing (Silva just disappears from the climax, probably because he had to work on another movie), abandoned subplots (what about Rex being propositioned by another buddy's sexually frustrated wife?), and general incompetence (the boom mic peeks into the frame about four times).  I can see how SHOOT has found a cult, but it's still a bit of a letdown. (R, 95 mins)

RITUALS (1978), on the other hand, totally deserves its cult rep.  Almost unbearably grueling at times, the film, shot in 1976 and directed by Peter Carter, has five doctors on a six-day hiking trip in the remote wilderness.  They're dropped off by plane and totally cut off from civilization, which makes it very convenient for them to be systematically tormented, stalked, and eventually offed, by a madman occasionally seen as an ominously shadowy figure in the trees. It's hardly an original idea, especially in the 1970s, but RITUALS excels with some gritty, believable performances by Hal Holbrook (as Harry), producer Lawrence Dane (as Mitzi),  Martin (Robin Gammell), his brother D.J. (Gary Reineke), and Abel (Ken James).  Not only do they expertly sell the idea that they're old friends (my friend Marty McKee, at his Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot blog, has cited the way they talk in shorthand shows uncommon character development in low-budget, B-movie fare like this), but they have a willingness to dive right into the shit and live the terror these characters are going through.  These actors earned every penny of their paycheck on this one, out in the elements--climbing, crawling, dragging through mud, getting swept down rapids--with minimal use of doubles or stuntmen.

RITUALS is a smartly-written film with some truly terrifying set pieces (the shots of the killer watching them from a distance are extremely unsettling), that in many ways transcends its lazy labeling as "a DELIVERANCE ripoff."  I wouldn't put it in the same class as DELIVERANCE, but it's definitely near the top of the "wilderness horror" subgenre.  Code Red's DVD, released in April 2011 after a two-year delay, is the uncensored 100-minute version and, while not perfect, is about as good as this will ever look.  It's also available on some of those low-priced, public domain "50 Horror Classics" sets under its alternate title THE CREEPER, but it's a shoddy, fullscreen transfer that's probably the 89-minute edited-for-TV version that was released on VHS. (R, 100 mins)

If This Wasn't Streaming On Netflix, Would Anyone Remember It Existed? Vol. 5: HEAT (1987)

HEAT
(US - 1987)

Directed by R.M. Richards (Dick Richards, Jerry Jameson, Robert Altman).  Written by William Goldman.  Cast: Burt Reynolds, Karen Young, Peter MacNicol, Neill Barry, Howard Hesseman, Diana Scarwid. (R, 102 mins)

This review was originally published in a slightly different form on the Mobius Home Video Forum in April 2011

It was announced today that Brian De Palma was teaming up with star Jason Statham for a remake of this until-now forgotten Burt Reynolds vehicle that had a very troubled production, going through three directors, one of whom had an on-set altercation with the star. The film, scripted by Oscar winner William Goldman (BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN) was started by Robert Altman, who left after a day of shooting. He was replaced by TOOTSIE producer Dick Richards, who helmed most of the film (and got his ass kicked by Burt), then veteran TV director Jerry Jameson was brought in to finish it. Richards gets sole credit, under the name "R.M. Richards." To date, he has not directed or produced another film.

Made at a time when Reynolds was seeing his popularity dwindle and his critics grow increasingly hostile, the disjointed HEAT never had much of a chance. I rented it back in '87 or '88 and was bored silly by it, but looking at it again with fresh eyes, it's a noble misfire. This is actually one of Burt's better 1980s performances, finding him in low-key, melancholy SHARKY'S MACHINE mode as Las Vegas "chaperone" Nick "Mex" Escalante, a tough-guy for hire who dreams of leaving the Vegas sleaze behind and getting away to Venice. The episodic plot has Mex helping his prostitute friend Holly (Karen Young) get revenge on a mob-connected twerp (Neill Barry) after he beats and rapes her and sodomizes her with a gun. Then Mex meets up with a young software-industry millionaire (Peter MacNicol) who wants lessons in how to be tough. There's not a whole lot here in the way of plot, and indeed, it's more of a character study. But that's not what anyone wanted out of Reynolds in the 1980s, and the extensive reshooting is obvious. There's a couple of badly-assembled slo-mo action scenes that seem totally out of place, and Reynolds sports no less than four distinctly different hairpieces throughout the film. In one scene, he'll have a flatter, "serious" toupee (© Marty McKee at Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot), then he'll have the curlier CANNONBALL RUN one, and a couple of other slight variants throughout (but none on the MALONE bouffant level). It's also interesting to note that the film opens with Burt fighting with a guy in a bar, as Burt rips off the guy's rug and mockingly pets it, which is actually pretty hilarious.

HEAT isn't a very cohesive film and its behind-the-scenes issues are all too apparent. But it does have a good Burt Reynolds performance at its core, and, with the passing of a couple of decades, it seems to play a lot better now that one can view it without the baggage of the Reynolds expectations of that era. It's clearly not SHARKY'S MACHINE, but flaws and all, Burt was at least trying here, which is more than one can say for stuff like STROKER ACE and CANNONBALL RUN II. I think he went into this with the intention of it being a change-of-pace character-driven piece. Otherwise, why would a non-action guy like Altman be onboard to direct?   Altman and Burt must've been on good terms by 1992, because Burt's cameo as himself in Altman's comeback film THE PLAYER made reference to HEAT's troubled shoot.

It's also worth noting that the 1.33:1 print streaming on Netflix is an alternate version that features a different outcome for one major character and an additional scene with an uncredited Mickey Knox as a doctor (and Reynolds looks completely different in this added scene; not just his hairpiece, but his moustache is also trimmed differently). It seems this alternate version was released on the budget-priced R1 DVD by Platinum Disc, and is not the version released in US theaters or on the Paramount VHS.

On DVD: FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN (2011); THERE BE DRAGONS (2011)

FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN
(US - 2011)

These days, with the changing ways of theatrical distribution and the sheer number of movies being made, some films get unexpectedly spotty, limited releases or just get shelved for years before getting dumped on DVD/Blu-ray or VOD.  Having a bankable name no longer matters when it comes to getting a movie in theaters. Recently, we've seen it happen to the likes of Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Willis, and Richard Gere, just to name a few. Not even Julia Roberts is immune to this phenomenon, as demonstrated in the long-shelved FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN, shot way back in 2007 but unreleased in the US until it opened on five screens in October 2011.  It's not a bad movie and at times, it's a very good one.  Its problems lie more in the significant evidence of post-production re-editing and general indecisiveness:  it ran 120 minutes at the Berlin Film Fest in 2008 and in its initial theatrical releases throughout the rest of the world in 2008 and 2009.  The German theatrical cut ran 99 minutes.  It ran 98 minutes in its US theatrical cut, and now, on DVD, it's been whittled down to just 89 minutes. A 94-minute version also exists.  There's no extras on the DVD and no one involved seems too keen on talking about it, so now, losing just over 1/4 of its original running time and presented in no less than five different versions since the 2008 Berlin screening, FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN has been discarded rather than released.  It's hard to tell what director Dennis Lee's intended version looked like, but it certainly can't be what's here on the DVD release.

I've defended Ryan Reynolds in the past, and continue to do so here.  FIREFLIES is probably his best work as an actor, but again, his performance is one of many things severely compromised in this mangled version.  Returning home to attend the college graduation of his stay-at-home mom (Roberts), Reynolds is immediately greeted with tragedy when she's killed in a car accident.  What follows is sort-of a pruned-down TREE OF LIFE (minus dinosaur interludes) as Reynolds remembers his often-traumatic childhood with the loving Roberts (seen mostly in these flashbacks) and his cruel, demanding college prof father (Willem Dafoe), and how it's shaped him as an adult.  For about an hour, this is a well-acted, compelling drama, but at some point, it's obvious that a chunk of story has been cut out because there's a woefully underdeveloped subplot involving Reynolds' young cousin and his guilt over the car accident (the speeding Dafoe swerved to avoid hitting him, and drove into a tree, and Roberts wasn't wearing her seat belt), and everyone's suddenly upset with Reynolds, blaming him for all the turmoil with still-abusive Dafoe.  There's no consistency in many of these later scenes.  Dafoe has a total meltdown at the dinner table, but everyone's pissed at Reynolds two scenes later.   This is a case where there's chunks and pieces of a really good film, but it's just been cut down to the bone as it plows through the story, leaving entire subplots in the dust, racing to an abrupt conclusion that rings completely false.  The characters at the end of this film have almost no connection to what they were in the preceding 80-odd minutes.  I guess that's an inherent risk when 25% of the film has been cut, seemingly at random.  A fine cast gets lost in the shuffle: Emily Watson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hayden Panettiere, George Newbern, and Ioan Gruffudd.  (R, 89 mins).


THERE BE DRAGONS
(Spain/US - 2011)

Roland Joffe directing 2007's universally-reviled post-SAW torture-porn travesty CAPTIVITY was one of the more shocking career turns for an established director in recent memory.  But even before his mind-boggling decision to direct that film (imagine, say, Michael Cimino coming out of exile to make HOSTEL IV or something), Joffe's never quite been able to recapture the magic of his two most renowned films: THE KILLING FIELDS (1984) and THE MISSION (1986), though 1999's underseen noir GOODBYE LOVER is worth a look if you happen upon it while channel-surfing.  For his first film since the CAPTIVITY fiasco, Joffe is back on somewhat familiar turf with THERE BE DRAGONS, which looks great but is an otherwise turgid religious epic filled with Cliffs Notes storytelling, whitewashed history, and miscast actors with unconvincing accents.  Ostensibly a biopic of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva (played here by Charlie Cox), Joffe gets sidetracked with both a 1982 framing device involving fictional London-based Spanish journalist and aspiring Escriva biographer Torres (Dougray Scott) and his estranged, ailing father Manolo (Wes Bentley), who knew Josemaria when they were children and later became a Franco spy infiltrating rebel forces in 1930s Spanish Civil War.  Joffe has Josemaria being sympathetic to those against Franco, which doesn't really gel with most historical opinion that he, while not an outright fascist, was almost certainly a Franco sympathizer. 

No one in this film is properly cast, but the worst is Bentley, especially when he's in old-age makeup. Joffe even manages to embarrass the great Derek Jacobi, ill-used in a two-scene cameo as Josemaria's father's kindly boss, Honorio.  Derek Jacobi can do almost anything, except play a Spanish candy shop owner named Honorio, getting a deathbed visit from Josemaria, where Jacobi gasps, "Do you remember the chocolate bean?"  I don't even think Joffe knew what film he wanted to make: a reverent hagiography of Josemaria Escriva (who died in 1975 and was canonized in 2002) or an overbaked telenovela involving fictional characters who have little to do with the Escriva plot.  Also with Charles Dance, Olga Kurylenko, Jordi Molla, Ana Torrent, Golshifteh Farahani, and Geraldine Chaplin, THERE BE DRAGONS is all over the place and can't overcome so much crucial miscasting and lack of focus on Joffe's part.  It's a dull, endless, meandering misfire, and the wait for Roland Joffe's triumphant comeback stumbles into its 25th year.  (PG-13, 122 mins)

In Theaters/On VOD: THE INNKEEPERS (2011)

THE INNKEEPERS
(US - 2011)

Written and directed by Ti West.  Cast: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis, Lena Dunham, George Riddle, Alison Bartlett, Brenda Cooney.  (R, 100 mins)

A couple years back, Ti West's THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL became an instant cult horror item with its distinctly retro '80s feel and its uncommonly slow build to pure terror and mayhem.  It took about an hour for anything to happen, but West skillfully let the tension build to an almost unbearable level, so much so that many felt the payoff wasn't worthy of the buildup.  I loved the film and thought West was an impressive new figure in cinematic horror. 

Sara Paxton as Claire

But then a skeleton emerged from West's closet: the long-shelved CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER, shot long before THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, but released after.  CABIN FEVER 2 is a shit-the-bed disaster of the messiest order, though in his defense, West claims the producers took the film away from him and has since disowned it.  So now, in limited theatrical release after a VOD premiere in late December, we have THE INNKEEPERS, West's true follow-up to his HOUSE OF THE DEVIL breakthrough.

And...it's not good.  In fact, it's quite awful.

Kelly McGillis as Leanne

West takes the slow burn practice to ridiculous extremes.  With the exception of one brief jolt in the vicinity of minute 50, nothing happens until around 80 minutes into this 100-minute film.  The Yankee Pedlar Inn, an old-timey hotel, is on its last weekend of operation, and the staff is whittled down to just two:  Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy).  Luke has created a web site documenting the hauntings at the Yankee Pedlar, which supposedly houses the ghost of Madeline O'Malley, a bride who was allegedly murdered in the hotel basement decades earlier.  Claire also buys into it and the two spend their spare time trying to record EVP phenomena throughout the hotel.  One of the two remaining guests happens to be psychic ex-TV star Leanne (Kelly McGillis), who warns Claire to stay out of the basement.  But of course, Claire and Luke get drunk and go into the basement.

Pat Healy as Steven Soderbergh

The one sequence in the film that West handles well is when the ghost of Madeline makes herself seen while Claire and Luke are in the basement.  It works to a point, and the fact that we never see what Claire sees is, in retrospect, a red flag of West's clear intention to stick it in and break it off with an infuriating non-ending.  It's a very real possibility that everything is in Claire's imagination (Luke never sees the ghost), including her encounter with a third guest who arrives, a mysterious old man (George Riddle, aka "DJ Nuss" from the Vistaprint TV ads, as well as The Onion's crotchety political commentator Joad Cressbeckler) who wants one last night at the inn for nostalgia.  The whole "slow burn" buildup worked with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, but West's attempt to go back to that trough fails miserably with THE INNKEEPERS.  He clearly has so little material (probably just the contact scene in the basement) that he has to stretch out the mood and the characterization to absurd lengths, when all he's really doing is killing time.  THE INNKEEPERS stalls, pussyfoots, hems, haws, dithers, beats around the bush, sidesteps, shuffles, and finally weasels out with an awful ending that raises the bar for audience contempt. 

A random viewer after waiting for something...ANYTHING...to happen in THE INNKEEPERS

And the bigger crime than that is how West utterly wastes a charming performance by the appealing Paxton.  I think a more interesting film could've been made of her being alone for the night in the inn, as Healy's moping misanthrope just comes off like a cowardly dick and really adds nothing to the film. THE INNKEEPERS might've made a decent half-hour TALES FROM THE CRYPT episode, and even then it would've needed more material.  But as an hour and forty minute drag, it becomes all the more clear that West has nothing to say and just as much to show and people are mistaking that for "atmosphere."  Props where they're due:  THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is a terrific little film, and it earned West enough credit that I'm not bailing on him yet, but his first attempt to replicate that magic definitely falls under "pretender" rather than "player."  I can't overstate it enough:  I hated THE INNKEEPERS.