Cult Classics Revisited: THE SQUEEZE (1978)

THE SQUEEZE
aka THE RIP-OFF
(Italy/West Germany - 1978; US release 1981)

Directed by Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti). Written by Simon O'Neill (Giovanni Simonelli), Marc Princi, and Paul Costello. Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Karen Black, Edward Albert, Lionel Stander, Robert Alda, Angelo Infanti, Peter Carsten, Antonella Murgia, Dan Van Husen, Roy Brocksmith, Ron Van Clief, Steve Burche. (R, 99 mins)

Italian cult director Antonio Margheriti (1930-2002) was the consummate journeyman over the course of his career, dabbling in everything from muscleman epics, gothic horror, and 007 ripoffs in the '60s, spaghetti westerns and gialli in the '70s, and Namsploitation, commando, and INDIANA JONES-derived action films in the '80s.  He's perhaps best known today for his "Gamma 1" quadrilogy of goofy and practically interchangeable far-out space operas THE WILD, WILD PLANET (1965), WAR OF THE PLANETS (1966), WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS (1966) and SNOW DEVILS (1967) as well as the immortal YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983) and his many actioners of the '80s, like THE LAST HUNTER (1980), HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN COBRA (1982), CODENAME: WILDGEESE (1984), and INDIO (1989). Margheriti, aka "Anthony M. Dawson," dabbled in a little bit of everything and could stage an explosion with the panache of any Hollywood blockbuster.

With his 1975 spaghetti western/kung-fu hybrid THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER, Margheriti worked with legendary badass Lee Van Cleef for the first time and the pair became good friends who would team up for five more projects before Van Cleef's death in 1989.  After STRANGER, Margheriti cast Van Cleef as the bad guy squaring off against Jim Brown in the 20th Century Fox blaxploitation western TAKE A HARD RIDE, which would be Margheriti's only Hollywood studio gig. Van Cleef also turned up in Margheriti's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK knockoff JUNGLE RAIDERS (1985) and two of his WILD GEESE ripoffs with CODENAME: WILDGEESE (released in the US by New World in 1986), and the unreleased-in-the-US THE COMMANDER (1988). But the pinnacle of the Margheriti/Van Cleef alliance is 1978's THE SQUEEZE, a wonderfully grungy little heist flick that began production in December 1977, with extensive location work in the NYC metropolitan area in January and February 1978. According to Edoardo Margheriti, the director's son and regular production assistant, some of THE SQUEEZE's NYC shoot coincided with a major late January snowstorm that, given the time frame, would've been the tapered-off remnants of the Blizzard of '78 that hit Ohio during the last week of January.  By the time it hit the east coast, it wasn't quite the monster that incapacitated Ohio, but it managed to dump heavily on the city, which also got hit with its own separate blizzard during the first week of February and you can see some of both storms in THE SQUEEZE. The brutal cold, the unplowed streets, the wet slush, the visible breath on the actors, and cars getting stuck in the snow all add to the harshly gritty ambience that makes it an essential NYC movie of the era, playing more like a street-tough American crime thriller rather than the generously budgeted, Carlo Ponti-backed Italian/German co-production that it was.  Margheriti made a lot of films over his long career, but none boasted the bitterly cold and uniquely scuzzy verite atmosphere that he and cinematographer Sergio D'Offizi captured with THE SQUEEZE.  They secured an American production office and permits to shoot in certain areas, but there's an unmistakable handheld immediacy to scenes set in fleabag hotels, bars, tenements, a police precinct, filthy cabs, and a ride on the Roosevelt Island tram, and enough gawking onlookers throughout to suggest that Margheriti caught a lot of footage on the fly in the guerrilla-style of many Italian filmmakers shooting in the city without permits in the 1970s and 1980s.  The only mistake Margheriti makes in his depiction of the city's sublime grime of the time is not finding a reason to send any of the characters to Times Square.

THE SQUEEZE was written by veteran Italian screenwriter and frequent Margheriti collaborator Giovanni Simonelli (SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE), Marc Princi (GREAT WHITE), and voice/dubbing actor Paul Costello, who was probably in charge of the English translation.  The script is essentially another in the One Last Job heist subgenre, with legendary safecracker Chris Gretchko (Van Cleef) in self-imposed exile on a Mexican ranch under the name "Ray Sloan."  He's tracked down by Jeff Olafson (Edward Albert), the son of an old criminal associate who told his son to find Chris if he ever got into a jam.  Jeff is involved with some German mobsters led by Van Stratten (Peter Carsten), and he needs Chris to open a safe filled with diamonds or Van Stratten's goons will whack him.  Chris is reluctant ("The last door I opened cost me eight years!"), but out of loyalty to Jeff's late father, agrees to help the kid out and heads back to NYC and secures the assistance of his old fence, grumpy pawn shop owner Sam (Lionel Stander).  When Van Stratten tries to cut Jeff out of the deal, Jeff tells Chris that Van Stratten's going to kill him as soon as he opens the safe, prompting Chris to hatch a scheme to keep the diamonds for themselves and split the take.  To do so requires Jeff being out of the picture so nobody knows about his involvement, so he gets himself arrested on a minor charge so he can spend a month in jail while Chris plans to wait it out at a safe house rented by Jeff. Chris gets the stones, but takes a bullet in the leg in the process, and is tended to at the safe house by ditzy, new age neighbor Clarisse (Karen Black), while Van Stratten's guys and the muscle for the safe owner (Roy Brocksmith) try to track down Jeff, figuring there's some kind of con game going on.  All the while, irate police captain Donati (Robert Alda) is perpetually one step behind but closing in.

As the double and triple crosses ensue, Chris takes too long to realize that he's being played, and the script could do a better job of exploring that storyline. Once he knows Chris has the diamonds, Jeff is already figuring out a way to get rid of him. Chris is a smart enough guy that he should see this, but time and again, he lets his loyalty to Jeff's father blind him to what should be right in front of his face. These are interesting ideas that are never fully fleshed out, as Margheriti gets sidetracked with an extended action sequence and a series of explosions that were impressive enough for Ponti to have him recycle the footage for his 1979 PIRANHA ripoff KILLER FISH.  THE SQUEEZE is one of the rare Margheriti films where dialogue scenes really come alive, and it's likely due in part to the abundance of American actors working together instead of European actors being post-synched later on. For instance, here's a very loose and improvisational feel to some of Van Cleef's and Stander's scenes together, with Stander even making fun of Van Cleef's earring at one point.

There's that same familiar feel in the conversations between Chris and Jeff.  Albert was a promising actor in the early '70s, winning a Golden Globe for his breakout performance as a young blind man who falls in love with Goldie Hawn in BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE (1972), but while he remained busy until his death in 2006 at just 55, stardom eluded the son of GREEN ACRES star Eddie Albert. He turns in one of his best performances in THE SQUEEZE, but not long after, he was mainly doing TV guest spots and B-movies like GALAXY OF TERROR (1981) and THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS (1982).  His most high-profile gig after that was a recurring role as Linda Hamilton's love interest on the CBS series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.  But Albert was still getting major Hollywood work when he made THE SQUEEZE, which features an unusually strong cast for a Margheriti film--probably because Ponti could afford them--the most notable being the participation of Black. Black was nominated for an Oscar for 1970's FIVE EASY PIECES and was only a couple of years removed from films like THE GREAT GATSBY (1974), NASHVILLE, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, the legendary TV-movie TRILOGY OF TERROR (all 1975), BURNT OFFERINGS, and Alfred Hitchcock's swan song FAMILY PLOT (both 1976). Black's fall from the A-list was alarmingly rapid--she worked for Margheriti again on KILLER FISH--though she remained a beloved B-movie figure until her death in 2013, her late-career cult status due in large part to shock rockers The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and for her role as Mother Firefly in Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES (2003), which she apparently disliked so much that she refused to do the 2005 sequel THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and was replaced by Leslie Easterbrook.

Many American actors did these sort of Eurotrash movies for quick paychecks and free vacations, but the ensemble of THE SQUEEZE brings their A-game. At the heart is a top-notch Van Cleef, who does everything he can to add deeper dimensions to the character. Chris is a guy who made his money and enjoyed the life, but he knew when to get out, especially now that the game is run by greedy bastards like Van Stratten and amoral shitbags like Jeff.  It's only through his loyalty to Jeff's father that he inadvertantly allows himself to be manipulated by the young man. It almost takes too long for Chris to realize that Jeff isn't like his father (or Chris or Sam, for that matter), and Van Cleef's weary yet stone-cold Angel Eyes demeanor in the climax is some terrific acting. When he's forced to shoot Jeff and tells Sam with a resigned sadness "I had to kill the kid," both old men lament not just the loss of someone they trusted and that Chris came to regard like his own son, but the loss of another era when a man's word and his honor meant something.  Chris doesn't even care about the diamonds at that point.  He's already lost too much for the stones to even matter. As Sam's car drives down the unplowed, snowy, slushy streets with the NYC skyline in the background, there's an overwhelming sense of melancholy artistry that Margheriti rarely attempted. Throughout its duration, THE SQUEEZE, while containing some weak writing, some typically dubious Margheriti miniatures in the explosion sequence and boasting a cheesy yet oddly effective and infectiously catchy score by Paolo Vasile (Italian pop group I Nuovi Angeli performs the opening credits tune "Now"), comes dangerously close to being a genuine auteur statement by the guy who would go on to make YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE.  It's almost a legitimately great movie.

On-set wardrobe malfunction or Lee Van Cleef
making unreasonable demands of Antonio
Margheriti? (photo from antoniomargheriti.com)

Even with its NYC shooting and the cast of American headliners, THE SQUEEZE wasn't released in the US until 1981, when it was acquired by the short-lived exploitation outfit Maverick Pictures International, whose distribution slate consisted of a whopping five films over 1980-81 before they threw in the towel.  THE SQUEEZE was also released as THE RIP-OFF, and that was the title used when it aired on CBS in 1986 and on cable and in late-night syndication after that.  The film fell into the public domain and is available on any number of budget DVD labels under those titles as well as the less common DIAMOND THIEVES. You could probably walk into any Wal-Mart and find it on one of those VHS-transfer multi-film DVD sets in the $5 bin. It's a film long overdue for a proper widescreen presentation and critical re-evaluation.  THE SQUEEZE is a buried treasure of sorts--a solid thriller, a cinematic snapshot of a harsh 1978 winter in NYC, and an essential film for Lee Van Cleef fans--and it may be Margheriti's masterpiece.

In Theaters: GODZILLA (2014)

GODZILLA
(US - 2014)

Directed by Gareth Edwards.  Written by Max Borenstein.  Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, Richard T. Jones, Victor Rasuk, Al Sapienza, Taylor Nichols, Carson Bolde, CJ Adams. (PG-13, 123 mins)

The second attempt at an American GODZILLA serves to commemorate the iconic monster's 60th anniversary as well as erase any lingering trauma left by Roland Emmerich's universally-despised 1998 GODZILLA. Emmerich's "Zilla" was so reviled by Godzilla purists that 2004's GODZILLA: FINAL WARS (thus far the final film in the official Toho franchise) brought Zilla onboard and, in one of the all-time great big-screen disses, had Godzilla kill it in a matter of seconds. Director Gareth Edwards previously helmed the overrated 2010 monster movie MONSTERS, which was unique in its minimalist approach but lacking overall even though it already has a devoted cult following.  Edwards' affinity for Godzilla is obvious and he does a nice job of honoring its legacy as well as reshaping it for today's audiences.  Edwards knows he has to eventually give the audience what it wants, but he utilizes the same kind of anticipatory buildup that young Steven Spielberg used on JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, letting the tension mount and making Godzilla's entrance--about an hour into the film--a truly impressive sight to be behold. This is the biggest and most imposing Godzilla has ever been onscreen, but in finding some common ground between his low-budget MONSTERS roots and this mega-budget GODZILLA, Edwards often seems to be working at cross purposes.  It wasn't uncommon in the Toho productions of old for Godzilla's appearance to be delayed, and Edwards paces his film as such that even though Godzilla doesn't make his entrance until halfway through, it still works because it's just the way this story flows to that point.  Edwards also takes a page out of Spielberg's JAWS playbook by not showing too much.  There are very few full-on shots of Godzilla and even that isn't a problem.  The biggest mistake Edwards makes is that Godzilla simply isn't in the film enough, and it's a film that frequently seems to relegate its namesake to a minor supporting character and could just as easily have been titled ATTACK OF THE MUTOS.

The "MUTO"'s are "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms."  Opening with a prologue set in 1999, Japanese scientist Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his colleague Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins) are investigating a creature skeleton found in the Philippines with evidenced of hatched eggs.  At the same time, a Japanese power plant explodes, and American supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) has been tracking strange seismic shifts. The explosion, which kills several scientists including Brody's wife (Juliette Binoche), is blamed on an earthquake and the entire area is quarantined due to intense radiation. 15 years later, Brody is a raving conspiracy theorist convinced that there's no radiation in the area and that the Japanese and American military are covering something up regarding the truth behind the explosion. Of course, he's right. His Navy explosive experts son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has to go to Japan to get his father out of jail and the two are eventually arrested for trespassing in the quarantined area.  They're met by Serizawa and Graham, who are on the scene and recognize the same seismic patterns Brody was talking about 15 years earlier.  It's then that the first MUTO, a winged arachnid-esque creature, appears.  Serizawa deduces that it feeds on radiation and was trying to send a signal to a second MUTO that they trace to a nuclear waste site in the desert outside of Las Vegas.  But the signal was also heard by another creature, an ancient god resting near the core of the earth.  Known as "Godzilla," it has the power to restore balance to the natural order of things, and Serizawa is convinced that it will rise to fight the MUTOs, one of which is female and looking for a place to lay hundreds of eggs.  From Japan to Hawaii to Vegas and finally to San Francisco, the monsters will wreak havoc and do battle, and oh yeah, Ford has to figure out how to get back to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son (Carson Bolde) in San Francisco.

True to the Godzilla that most fans love, Edwards opts to make him a good guy here, despite his villainous, horrific kaiju origins in Ishiro Honda's 1954 classic.  As those films went on and were aimed at younger and younger audiences, Godzilla eventually became a good guy who would even do victory dances after winning a kaiju battle.  Godzilla is the hero here, but that doesn't mean he's any less furious.  His final battle with the MUTOs culiminates in perhaps Godzilla's angriest moment in the last 60 years.  It's a crowd-pleasing capper to the expected fight, but Edwards fumbles the ball a few times.  I heard grumbling from the audience on a few occasions where a Godzilla/MUTO throwdown was about to happen and Edwards cuts back to whatever Ford is doing.  It's one thing to subvert expectations and formula, but that's dangerously close to just being a contrarian dick.  It's commendable that Edwards has no interest in turning this into a generic Michael Bay-style, quick-cut, shaky-cam, video-game, CGI blur--and the CGI on display throughout GODZILLA is top-notch and proof that it can look good when the filmmakers want it to--but why cut away from a kaiju battle?  Edwards walks a fine line and mostly ends up on the right side with the film's effective pacing, less-is-more reveals, and some stunning visual effects, but when he ends up on the wrong side, it's glaring and deflating. The actors are fine, but no one cares about Ford, especially when Watanabe's Serizawa (a nice nod to the 1954 film for those in the know) is the far more interesting character (it's too bad Watanabe and Hawkins vanish for most of the last third of the film).  Taylor-Johnson has little to do other than run from place to place and doesn't really have much to build on, though I suppose it's nice that Edwards and screenwriter Max Borenstein (with uncredited contributions by Frank Darabont) didn't turn him or Navy Admiral Stenz (David Strathairn) into the kind of slogan-spouting, flag-waving cartoons that most films of this sort would.

It's got some major flaws (the climactic battle is sometimes too dark and murky-looking for its own good), but overall, GODZILLA is a fun time, especially in the almost quaintly old-school way that it's made.  The suspense is allowed to build, the action sequences are coherent, the CGI is done with care, and the monsters are genuinely frightening.  It's as much a tribute to Spielberg as it is to Godzilla.  This is once again a situation--OCULUS was another recent one--where it's a surprise that a film is made in an almost defiantly old-fashioned way and manages to stick out from the crowd simply for looking more like a movie instead of a video game.  I like Edwards' Spielbergian mindset.  It shows he's studied the classics, he knows what works, and he knows what doesn't need fixed.  We've seen it enough times that we're maybe a little numb to its magic, but remember the first time you saw JAWS or JURASSIC PARK?  Remember that feeling? Edwards goes for that here and sometimes pulls it off.  Sometimes he doesn't and makes some questionable decisions that have the best intentions but seem to stem from him wanting to go too far in the opposite direction.  No one needs a feature-length WWE battle, but at the same time, cutting away from kaiju throwdowns is a risky move that provoked audible frustration in the crowd.  Edwards gets enough right that this is a good GODZILLA, but his missteps prevent it from being a great one.  Yes, it's a classic compared to Emmerich's botch job, and while every dollar is up there on the screen and it looks fantastic, I'm still partial to the guys running around in monster suits while demolishing scale models of Tokyo.

On DVD/Blu-ray: I, FRANKENSTEIN (2014); DEADLY CODE (2014); and MOBIUS (2014)

I, FRANKENSTEIN
(US/Australia - 2014)

It's no surprise that I, FRANKENSTEIN looks like an UNDERWORLD sequel, as it's based on an unpublished graphic novel by UNDERWORLD co-writer and actor Kevin Grevioux and features Bill Nighy (UNDERWORLD's nefarious vampire leader Viktor) as the villain.  It seems to take place in the same Vampires-and-Lycans world, but it owes just as much to THE DARK KNIGHT, right down to that film's Harvey Dent/Two-Face, Aaron Eckhart, in the title role. Relying heavily on mimicking Christian Bale's grunting Batman voice, Eckhart is Frankenstein's monster, here dubbed "Adam," and any faithfulness to Mary Shelley is buried by the four-minute mark, along with Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Aden Young), laid to rest by Adam just as he's confronted by a horde of winged demons. He's rescued by warriors in the service of Lenore (Miranda Otto), Queen of the Gargoyles, who's been locked in an eternal struggle with the army of demon prince Naberius.  Cut to 200 years later, as Adam is now a globetrotting demonslayer still pursued by Naberius' minions.  Naberius is passing himself off as wealthy Charles Wessex (Nighy), CEO of the Wessex Institute, where his science research is a cover for his real plot:  to learn the secrets inside Dr. Frankenstein's diary in order to transfer the damned souls of descended demons into thousands of reanimated corpses stored in a secret bunker at the lab's headquarters.

Considering that Lionsgate kept this on the shelf for a year after its original planned release, only to see it gross $19 million domestically against a $65 million budget, it's not likely that I, FRANKENSTEIN will become an UNDERWORLD-like franchise (or the initially-rumored crossover film), or that there will be any future interest in actually publishing Grevioux's graphic novel.  It's got a goofy enough plot that it should be campy fun, but while the dark and dour demeanor worked for THE DARK KNIGHT, it doesn't bode as well here.  No film with a story this silly should be as somber and self-serious as this, though there are occasional hints at humor that manage to shine through, like Adam doing a "bad cop" interrogation of a demon and dunking his head in holy water, or the requisite speed-ramping where Adam punches a winged demon in the face. But overall, I, FRANKENSTEIN is just an eye-glazing blur of crummy CGI and graphic novel cliches.  Eckhart rarely seems comfortable with the character or his idiotic dialogue, such as Adam grunting "I think your boss is a demon prince!" to Wessex's leading researcher, hot electrophysiologist Terra (Yvonne Strahovski), and Nighy is past the point where he can play this character--it's basically Viktor with a different name--in his sleep. Writer/director Stuart Beattie previously helmed the acclaimed Australian film TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN (2010) and wrote Michael Mann's COLLATERAL (2004), but is best known as a screenwriting mercenary on fare like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003), 30 DAYS OF NIGHT (2007), and G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (2009).  Given that resume, it's easy to see COLLATERAL as an anomaly and that Beattie's seemingly opted to instead channel his inner Len Wiseman or Stephen Sommers.  Cult movie nerds will enjoy seeing Bruce Spence--THE ROAD WARRIOR's Gyro Captain--in a small role as one of Wessex's lab flunkies, but I, FRANKENSTEIN isn't a movie.  It's a bland, boring, assembly-line product. (PG-13, 92 mins)


DEADLY CODE
(Italy/UK - 2013; US release 2014)

Italian filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores has worked steadily for the last 30 years but is best known for directing 1991's MEDITERRANEO, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and the overrated 2003 thriller I'M NOT SCARED.  Elsewhere, most of his output is forgotten or unseen outside of Italy--his 1997 virtual reality sci-fi snoozer NIRVANA was picked up by Harvey Weinstein, who shelved it until dumping it on DVD in 2005--and that seems the likely fate for DEADLY CODE, which has gone straight-to-DVD in the US with perhaps the least-appealing cover art of the year.  Shot in 2011 under the title SIBERIAN EDUCATION, the tedious and cliche-filled DEADLY CODE wants to be the Russian Mafia version of THE GODFATHER, but comes off as a third-rate EASTERN PROMISES knockoff.  The confusing narrative jumps around from 1985 to 1998, telling the story of two men, Kolima (Arnas Fedaravicius) and Gagarin (Vilius Tumalavicius), who--wait for it--were childhood best friends who became bitter adversaries as adults.  As if that wasn't a tired enough story foundation, it's a woman who comes between them, in this case the mentally-challenged Xenja (Eleanor Tomlinson), a sweet but simple-minded young lady referred to by the locals as everything from "a special gift from God" to "retarded."  Both men enter a life of crime and spend time in prison--Gagarin as a youth and Kolima as an adult--and once Kolima is released, he swears vengeance on Gagarin, who raped Xenja while he was gone and left her a catatonic shell of the vibrant, innocent woman she was, the quick culmination of a sudden conflict between the two men that, until Kolima finds out about the rape, seems to come out of nowhere.

DEADLY CODE tries and fails to address the culture of the Russian mob and its ties to the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, represented in the hammiest possible fashion by John Malkovich as ruthless Siberian crime boss Grandfather Kuzia, who happens to actually be Kolima's grandfather.  Malkovich gets to dust off his Teddy KGB-from-ROUNDERS accent while dispensing sage advice and hackneyed metaphors.  It's hard to believe it took six screenwriters--including THE BEST OF YOUTH scribes Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli--to put together a story this cookie-cutter rote and by-the-numbers.  The film was shot in English, so perhaps something got lost in the translation, especially with stilted dialogue like an enraged Gagarin yelling "I destroy everything I touch!" and "I don't follow your rules!  I don't believe in anything, so I can do what I want!"  Lithuanian actors Fedaravicius and Tumalavicius both debut here and aren't bad, though they're sabotaged by poor writing and a bland story. Tomlinson (JACK THE GIANT SLAYER) is stuck with an almost unplayable character about which we learn very little, so really the only entertainment value here is Malkovich, who spends a lot of time tending to his doves, showing his grandson how to properly shiv someone, and taking a steam with other underworld figures, like Ink (Peter Stormare), who's in charge of all the body art.  DEADLY CODE had an opportunity to explore a unique subject, but instead opts to fall back on trite dialogue, stale genre conventions and a scenery-slurping guest turn by its American export value.  (R, 103 mins)


MOBIUS
(France/Belgium/Luxembourg - 2013; US release 2014)

Quite possibly the most boring financial thriller this side of 1981's ROLLOVER, the deadening MOBIUS offers little aside from the novelty of THE ARTIST Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin in a straight-faced and completely serious role.  Dujardin is Russian FSB agent Gregory Lubov, codename "Moses," caught in a complex web of lies and deception involving American financial analyst Alice Redmond (Cecile de France), who's been exiled from Wall Street after helping bring down Lehman Brothers.  She's now working as a trader at the headquarters of a Monaco firm owned by billionaire Russian banking magnate Ivan Rostovski (Tim Roth), whose firm is a front for a global money laundering scheme.  Alice is actually working for the CIA as a mole in Rostovski's employ in order to obtain information that will enable her to return to the US. Rostovski keeps trying to get Alice into bed, but she's more interested in Moses, who's posing as a writer and, judging from Alice's facial twitching, popped neck veins, and quivering body spasms in their sex scenes, may very well be the inventor of the female orgasm.  These scenes aren't particularly explicit and de France's nudity is brief, but writer/director Eric Rochant's static, lingering close-ups of her face as Alice reaches multiple orgasms just feels like an odd decision that completely fails to come off as erotic, especially considering that, taken out of context, it looks like she could just as easily be constipated. The Monaco scenery looks beautiful, but Rochant's script is weak, especially when a folksy CIA agent (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS' Brad Leland) has to explain the concept of the Mobius Strip to Moses in the most heavy-handed fashion imaginable. Dujardin is good and is obviously capable of anchoring a suspense thriller, but it would've worked out better if MOBIUS was even remotely suspenseful or thrilling. De France isn't exactly a convincing American, and the always-reliable Roth is horribly miscast, playing the ruthless, big-money power broker with a glum, slouched disinterest that borders on narcolepsy. Also with Emilie Dequenne as Moses' FSB associate and John Lynch, John Scurti (RESCUE ME, HOUSE OF CARDS), and Wendell Pierce (THE WIRE, TREME) as CIA honchos overseeing Alice's infiltration of Rostovski's empire, MOBIUS is a sleep-inducing, hopelessly convoluted dud of a thriller where the most versatile acting is done by Cecile de France's facial muscles. (R, 108 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE ART OF THE STEAL (2014) and 47 RONIN (2013)

THE ART OF THE STEAL
(Canada - 2013; US release 2014)

Is there anybody who doesn't like Kurt Russell?  Over his 50-year career, he's managed to become a beloved movie icon without actually having many blockbusters at the box office.  1991's BACKDRAFT and 1994's STARGATE were his biggest hits, and they never broke $80 million in 1990s dollars. Russell's best films tend to cultivate their bases over time, which is a trait he shares with his old friend John Carpenter.  None of their collaborations performed spectacularly on their initial theatrical releases, but 1981's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, 1982's THE THING, and 1986's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA are frequently cited as essential films of their decade.  They found their audience on video and cable and they've remained popular over the years as they've been discovered by new generations of fans. Even TOMBSTONE wasn't that massive a hit in 1993.  But it has such a fervent following today that it's hard to believe it topped out at $56 million and never got higher than third place at the box office.  The typical Russell vehicle has been one that did modest business in theaters and became popular video rentals on their way to constant rotation on cable. Russell's filmography reads like TNT's and AMC's weekend schedule over the last 20 years: USED CARS, OVERBOARD, TEQUILA SUNRISE, TANGO & CASH, UNLAWFUL ENTRY, CAPTAIN RON, EXECUTIVE DECISION, ESCAPE FROM L.A., BREAKDOWN, DARK BLUE, POSEIDON, etc. Russell may be the patron saint of "Movie you end up watching until it's over if you find it while channel-surfing."

Now 63, Russell's slowed down in recent years and took a five-year break after his turn as Stuntman Mike in the DEATH PROOF half of GRINDHOUSE before returning in a supporting role as a coach in the barely-released 2012 football drama TOUCHBACK.  It's no surprise that, with today's "$100 million on the opening weekend or it's a bomb" mindset, a new Kurt Russell movie only managed to get released on 60 screens for a $64,000 gross, but THE ART OF THE STEAL is a fun heist comedy that finds the man in vintage "Kurt Russell" form.  Russell is Crunch Calhoun, a veteran wheelman who just spent over five years in a Polish prison after taking the fall for his younger brother Nicky (Matt Dillon) when their last job went south.  Nicky is a slick con artist who's just made off with a priceless Georges Seurat painting but did so by cutting out his partner (Dax Ravina) who demands compensation from Crunch. Crunch touches base with Nicky and they reassemble the old crew--French forger Guy (Chris Diamantopoulos) and Paddy the Rolodex (Kenneth Welsh), with new additions Francie (Jay Baruchel), and Crunch's greedy wife Lola (Katheryn Winnick), on a $20 million plan to get a rare Gutenberg-printed Gospel According to James out of a Montreal customs house and smuggle it over the US border into Detroit, all with an incompetent Interpol agent (THE DAILY SHOW's Jason Jones) and a reluctant informant (Terence Stamp) on their tail. Of course, double and triple-crosses transpire and there's really nothing here plot-wise you haven't seen in a ton of other caper movies, but the Russell-led ensemble works very well together and writer/director Jonathan Sobol throws in some offbeat touches (like Ravina's brawny goon being a Seurat connoisseur), and numerous snappy exchanges and bits of quotable dialogue (Crunch and Nicky referring to lecherous Paddy as "Uncle Fucks-a-lot" and "Sloppy Balls McCarthy"; Francie putting on a fake Amish beard and telling a border officer that he's starring in a Broadway musical version of WITNESS! "with an exclamation point").  The heist itself is fairly routine and the story rather slight, but THE ART OF THE STEAL is an enjoyable little movie that doesn't overstay its welcome and gets a lot of mileage out of Russell's engaging presence and genuinely funny performance. It's the kind of film you'll stop on and end up watching if you come across it on TV some lazy Saturday afternoon--in other words, it's a quintessential Kurt Russell movie, and you can always use one of those.  Also, "Crunch Calhoun" is right up there with "Snake Plissken," "R.J. MacReady," "Reno Hightower," "Jack Burton," "Gabriel Cash," and "Bull McCaffrey" on the list of Awesome Kurt Russell Character Names.  (R, 90 mins)


47 RONIN
(US - 2013)

In the coming years, the long-delayed 47 RONIN is likely to be regarded less as just a bad movie and more as a case study for meddlesome production mismanagement and apocalyptically out-to-lunch decision-making.  It's not just a case of too many cooks in the kitchen--it's also a case of everyone just assuming someone else has got the cooking covered.  Every problem that the production encountered got worse when simply throwing more money at it failed to magically solve anything.  The legendary Japanese tale of the 47 Ronin has been told before and referenced many times in Japanese cinema:  in the 18th century, 47 outcast former samurai seek to avenge the death of their master, driven to suicide after being shamed in a dispute with a rival lord who insulted him.  It's a story that's influenced everything from Japanese folklore to the classic samurai films of Akira Kurosawa or Kenji Mizoguchi, who made the original 1941 version of 47 RONIN (Kon Ichikawa directed the 1994 remake).  The 2013 47 RONIN may share a title and the setting, but it ends there.  Why?  Because the people behind the latest 47 RONIN offer what the other versions lack and they felt we've been missing all this time:  a first-time director (Carl Rinsch) working with a $175 million budget; a shape-shifting witch disguising herself as a demonic fox and casting spells on samurai warriors; and absurdly inappropriate creatures like ogres, orcs, dragons, something called "the Lovecraftian Samurai," and Keanu Reeves. It's the famous story filtered through LORD OF THE RINGS and coming out as something akin to IN THE NAME OF THE RONIN. Who thought any of this was a good idea? Reeves has done some fine work over his career, but after DANGEROUS LIAISONS and BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, how does anyone willingly cast him in a serious period piece?

Universal knew they were in trouble when they announced a writedown before the film even opened.  It grossed just $38 million domestically and bombed overseas. Of course, it was Rinsch who got thrown under the bus, but things only got ridiculous when the suits didn't like the rough cut he submitted as far back as the fall of 2011. They complained that it felt like "a samurai art film" and demanded more special effects and more Reeves. Reeves plays Kai, a Japanese/British half-breed adopted by the benevolent samurai leader Lord Asano (Min Tanaka). Kai is a character invented for the film, and it constantly struggles to find a use for him.  The real star is veteran Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada as Oishi, the leader of the late Lord Asano's disgraced ronin, who's plotting vengeance against Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano), who's under the control of the aforementioned shapeshifting witch (Rinko Kikuchi). Kikuchi was added to the film after Rinsch's original cut was rejected and DRIVE screenwriter Hossein Amini was brought on to reconstruct Chris Morgan's script.  Amini added the supernatural elements as well as more scenes for Reeves, whose Kai was so secondary to the crux of the plot that he initially wasn't even involved in the climax of the film.  Production was delayed since they had to wait until Reeves was finished with MAN OF TAI CHI so he could return to shoot the new scenes, causing the fall 2012 release date to get bumped to over a year later, when the film finally opened on Christmas Day 2013. It already felt like Reeves was in another movie altogether, but it's never more glaring than in the climax, where Oishi and Kira fight it out while Kai battles the witch, who has shape-shifted into a snake-like, fire-breathing dragon.  Not since hastily-shot footage of Eddie Murphy goofing off in a tank was shoehorned into the two-years-on-the-shelf Dudley Moore comedy BEST DEFENSE in 1984 has post-production stitching looked so cumbersome and desperate. How does a beloved, culture-defining story of the samurai code of honor end up with Keanu Reeves discovering his CROUCHING TIGER-meets-THE MATRIX flying powers while battlling a dragon?

Actual shot from 47 RONIN

You want to know the extent of the cluelessness of everyone involved?  It wasn't discovered until shooting began that many of the Japanese actors weren't fluent in English and had to speak their dialogue phonetically (some of them are quite clearly dubbed or they at least looped it in post).  Who was in charge here?  Sure, some of this probably lies on Rinsch, but this stopped being his vision once the rough cut was shot down.  From that point on, he was simply an employee on his way to becoming a convenient scapegoat.  The majority of the blame should rest with the producers and studio execs who insisted on abandoning the source story with the lethal combo of Reeves and CGI monsters and let the budget bloat without ever really settling on or communicating to Rinsch exactly what it was they wanted.  Sanada and Asano give it their best effort and try to bring some sense of dignity to the grease fire spreading around them, and the film would work a lot better if it stayed focused on them instead of Reeves and orcs and dragons.  The visual effects are subpar for such an obscene budget and where's the sense of spirit that vital to any samurai film? These things are supposed to be rousing and alive! Where's the camaraderie among the ronin? There's 47 of them but we meet something like five, tops. This whole catastrophe might've been more palatable with the right kind of tongue-in-cheek attitude, but 47 RONIN is dour, dull, and takes itself far too seriously for a film that has little use and even less respect for its source story.  Its only accomplishment is in the way it effectively demonstrates everything wrong with Hollywood in just under two hours.  (PG-13, 119 mins)

Cult Classics Revisited: KING OF THE GYPSIES (1978)

KING OF THE GYPSIES
(US - 1978)

Written and directed by Frank Pierson. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Shelley Winters, Susan Sarandon, Judd Hirsch, Eric Roberts, Brooke Shields, Annette O'Toole, Annie Potts, Michael V. Gazzo, Antonia Rey, Stephen Mendillo, Roy Brocksmith, Matthew Labyorteaux, Danielle Brisebois. (R, 112 mins)

It's easy to forget that there was once a time in the early 1980s when critics were routinely hailing Eric Roberts as one of the greatest actors of his generation.  His performances as tragic Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten's estranged, possessive husband and eventual murderer Paul Snider in Bob Fosse's STAR 80 (1983) and as a dim-witted, small-time criminal in Stuart Rosenberg's THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE (1984) showed a raw, intense talent unlike any other leading men of the time, with the possible exception of his POPE co-star Mickey Rourke. Roberts wasn't generating big box office numbers but there was no denying that he was the real deal and an actor's actor. He received international acclaim for Yugoslav auteur Dusan Makavejev's offbeat comedy THE COCA-COLA KID (1985) and in just his sixth film, scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Andrei Konchalovsky's RUNAWAY TRAIN (also 1985).  He lost to Don Ameche in COCOON, and that Oscar nod would prove to be his career pinnacle.  Word of his being "difficult" along with drug abuse and instances of assaulting a police officer and domestic violence would tarnish his image over the next decade, the same decade that saw his younger sister Julia, from whom he would soon be estranged for many years, skyrocket to the kind of worldwide fame and fan adoration that he would never receive.  Roberts wasn't exactly blackballed out of Hollywood, but the accolades that culminated in a potential Oscar for RUNAWAY TRAIN led to nothing more than the little-seen romantic comedy NOBODY'S FOOL (1986), the period drama BLOOD RED (where he used his clout to get Julia a small role in her first acting job), which was filmed in 1986 and went straight-to-video three years later, and some made-for-TV movies. By 1989, Roberts was playing a replacement Tommy Chong to Cheech Marin in RUDE AWAKENING and starring in the kickboxing actioner BEST OF THE BEST, while Julia was getting her first Oscar nod for STEEL MAGNOLIAS and was about to star in PRETTY WOMAN.  In just a decade, Roberts went from being the Marlon Brando of his day to the misbehaving, troublemaking older brother of America's Sweetheart and one of the signature faces of straight-to-VHS in the 1990s.

But back in 1978, 22-year-old Roberts came storming out of the gate, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Acting Debut for his performance in KING OF THE GYPSIES, written and directed by Frank Pierson.  Pierson got his start writing for TV shows like HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL and NAKED CITY, and created the acclaimed but short-lived 1971 James Garner TV series NICHOLS.  He received Oscar nominations for his CAT BALLOU (1965) and COOL HAND LUKE (1967) screenplays and also wrote the Sidney Lumet apartment heist favorite THE ANDERSON TAPES (1971).  Pierson won a Screenplay Oscar for Lumet's DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975), which got him enough clout to tackle the 1976 remake of A STAR IS BORN with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. That was his second directing effort, the first being 1970's THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, his strangely inert adaptation of the John Le Carre spy novel that's best known for a brawl-for-the-ages between Christopher Jones and Anthony Hopkins, but stumbles badly in the second half when Pierson turns it into his own tedious version of an ennui-drenched Antonioni film.  But after blockbusters like DOG DAY AFTERNOON and A STAR IS BORN, he was essentially able to make whatever he wanted, which led him to KING OF THE GYPSIES, a very loose adaptation of the non-fiction book by Serpico and The Valachi Papers author Peter Maas (the credits read "Suggested by the book..." rather than "Based on the book..."), and by "very loose," I mean "uses the title and little else." What Pierson's film does is basically take the concept of the modern-day gypsy--and all the stereotypes that come with it--and fashion it into a de facto reworking of THE GODFATHER with gypsies in place of gangsters.  It's not a bad idea as far as commercial entertainment goes, but, like THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, KING OF THE GYPSIES starts out strong and and loses its way.

Shot in NYC in early 1978 in the snowy aftermath of the legendary blizzard that dumped on the midwest and moved east, KING OF THE GYPSIES tells the story of a gypsy tribe led by the fierce and ruthless King Zharko Stepanowicz (Sterling Hayden) and his wife Queen Rachel (Shelley Winters).  Years earlier, Zharko abducted Rose, the teenage daughter of rival tribe leader Spiro Giorgio (Michael V. Gazzo), when Giorgio tried to back out of a deal that would've seen Rose marry Zharko's despicable son Groffo (when Giorgio justifies his actions by saying "She hates him!" old world Zharko replies "Since when did 'like' or 'not like' have anything to do with marriage?").  When a tribal council rules against Zharko, the old man refuses to be "fucked like a $3 whore" and takes what he believes is his.  Eventually, Rose (Susan Sarandon) enters a loveless marriage with drunken, abusive Groffo (Judd Hirsch, right around the time TAXI was taking off) and they have a son, Dave. Growing up, young Dave assists his mother in scams and thefts as Groffo continues to be an drunken lout earning the perpetual disdain of his father, who sees in Dave everything Groffo is not.  As a young adult (Roberts appears 40 minutes in), Dave gets by on insurance money he scams from staging car accidents and slip-and-falls in grocery stores, but he has bigger dreams outside of the sheltered gypsy world. He gets a job as a singing waiter in a restaurant and starts dating pretty Sharon (Annette O'Toole), but King Zharko is determined to pull him back into the family and marry Persa (Annie Potts, who gets the film's most 1978 bit of dialogue with "His family's got a Betamax!"). Zharko is dying, and recognizing that Groffo would be the Joffrey Baratheon of gypsy kings, wants Dave to be his successor. When the old man passes and Dave holds the medallion and ring signifying his kingship, Groffo is so enraged that he hires two men to kill his son.  They fail, and Dave gets back at his father by attempting a daring rescue of his 12-year-old sister Tita (Brooke Shields), who Groffo's just sold for $6000 (that he's already lost at the track) in a hastily-brokered deal with another tribe leader (Roy Brocksmith) who's arranging a marriage for his own very Groffo-like son.  The story then turns into an almost TAXI DRIVER redux as a shotgun-toting Dave goes full vigilante against his father.

David Grisman's score has cues that recall the work of Nino Rota, but the GODFATHER parallels throughout KING OF THE GYPSIES go beyond that:  Zharko is Vito Corleone, Dave is Michael (though he's even more reluctant to get involved, he eventually fulfills that role), and Groffo displays some characteristics of Sonny, though Sonny's worst offense is that he was impulsive and bad-tempered, even though he thought he was doing the right thing for the family. Groffo puts himself first and has no redeeming qualities, whether he's selling his daughter, gambling away his money, or beating Rose, ripping her shirt off and violently shoving Dave's face against her bare breasts in some imagined Oedipal outrage. The very presence of Hayden and Gazzo is another nod, with Hayden's role as corrupt cop McCluskey in THE GODFATHER and Gazzo's Oscar-nominated performance as Frankie Pentangeli in THE GODFATHER PART II. The back end of KING OF THE GYPSIES reeks of either Pierson dropping the ball or Paramount and/or producer Dino De Laurentiis demanding a big, crowd-pleasing finale.  This is a rare instance of a film that would probably be much stronger if it was an hour longer.  Pierson wants this to be an epic, but once Zharko dies, it seems as if he started panicking and realized he only had 30 minutes to wrap this thing up.  When Hayden exits the film, everything after feels rushed and incomplete and the ending is terrible, with Roberts' voiceover--never a good sign--not very confidently mumbling "Maybe I can lead them into the 20th century," demonstrating all the craft, forethought and emotional resonance of a "Poochie died on his way back to his home planet" quick fix.  KING OF THE GYPSIES also has no idea what to do with its female characters--only Sarandon's Rose is given any significant screen time, while the rest are underwritten or simply vanish from the movie (Winters has nothing to do).  Even in the case of Shields' Tita, whose fate should change the course of the story, it's like she was never even there.  It's difficult to tell if this is deliberate, as in the context of this film's depiction of gypsy women as a commodity, or if Pierson simply forgot about her and assumed audiences would too as he turned Dave into a gypsy Charles Bronson.  All of this goes to illustrate that Pierson was a much better screenwriter than a director. Pierson's writing in the hands of a guy like Lumet produces celluloid magic.  Pierson's writing in the hands of Pierson the director seems to show him at odds with himself.  By the time Pierson died in 2012 at the age of 87, he went out on top as a producer on hugely popular TV shows like THE GOOD WIFE and MAD MEN.  He also served as the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 2001 to 2005, and before that, directed acclaimed Showtime and HBO films like SOMEBODY HAS TO SHOOT THE PICTURE (1990), CITIZEN COHN (1992), TRUMAN (1995), DIRTY PICTURES (2000), and CONSPIRACY (2001).  It's also worth noting that he didn't write any of those cable films, which again supports the notion that Pierson was at his best when he didn't have to make directorial decisions that undermined and compromised his own scripts.

If you've seen Roberts in enough shitty movies over the last 25 years, going back to his early days as an ambitious, rising star is a revelation.  Roberts was doing the kind of acting that made Brando and James Dean legends.  He has such an unusual presence in films like this, STAR 80, and THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE that it's easy to see why some may have found him off-putting in the era of post-JAWS, post-STAR WARS blockbusters.  Young Roberts was the kind of actor who would've flourished in the late '60s and early '70s.  He's terrific as the conflicted would-be king, torn between family (mainly his respect for his grandfather and his concern for his baby sister) and his own dreams ("I'd kinda like to be a surgeon, you know...help people" he haplessly tells Zharko in a scene Roberts and Hayden improvised that's almost an homage to the "I coulda been a contender!" speech in ON THE WATERFRONT).  There are numerous instances where he recalls both Brando and Dean in the way he seems uncomfortable in his own skin and lashes out because of an inability to articulate his emotions, whether he just starts punching a wall or hurling multiple coffee cups across the room.  He's occasionally mannered and jumpy, but it's an extremely impressive debut.  A look at Roberts' IMDb page is a thoroughly depressing experience. His '90s decline still included supporting roles in hit movies like FINAL ANALYSIS (1992) and THE SPECIALIST (1994), with a good lead every now and again (1996's IT'S MY PARTY got him some acclaim but led nowhere), and in recent years, he occasionally turned up in a major film like THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) or THE EXPENDABLES (2010), but these days, apart from sporadic one-shot guest spots on TV shows like CSI, JUSTIFIED, and GLEE, Tom Six's upcoming THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE III is about as high-profile as he gets. He seems incapable of turning down an offer, resulting in bit parts in scores of films that probably won't even get released and probably shouldn't.  How else does one explain Roberts having 66 credits for 2014 alone? And 42 in 2013?  Those are the kinds of cameo gigs where you're on the set for half a day, tops, or where you can literally phone in your performance as the voice of A TALKING CAT!?!  Roberts gave up years ago and is simply taking advantage of name recognition for quick cash (of course, he managed to squeeze in a season on CELEBRITY REHAB, and he and his wife Eliza just appeared on a CELEBRITY WIFE-SWAP episode that also served to alert the world to the continued existence of Robin Leach and Joan Severance).  There's no shame in that and he knows the stuff he's doing is garbage, but it's sad that it's come to that when you see the dynamic, hungry young man in KING OF THE GYPSIES.  Hollywood doesn't know what to do with unconventional actors like Roberts and Rourke.  Their star vehicles bomb and execs usually have them play villains and psychos and the actors get frustrated, sometimes acting out by deliberately sabotaging themselves and their implosions become self-fulfilling prophecies. Obviously, Roberts' career didn't pan out the way he'd hoped, he's burned every bridge along the way and, like Rourke, he'd very likely squander another chance if he got it, but guys like Roberts and Rourke are survivors. Roberts is pushing 60 and shouldn't have to schlep this hard, appearing in so many Z-grade turds that a cameo in Uwe Boll's ASSAULT ON WALL STREET actually qualifies as one of his better recent assignments. Sure, he's always working and he probably lives comfortably, but there must be a serious filmmaker out there with a late-career-defining role for Eric Roberts.  Everybody loves a comeback. Wouldn't it be nice to see him in the kind of WRESTLER-type triumph worthy of his talents?

Cult Classics Revisited: CONTAMINATION (1980)

CONTAMINATION
aka ALIEN CONTAMINATION
(Italy/West Germany - 1980; US release 1981)

Directed by Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi). Written by Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi) and Erich Tomek. Cast: Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau, Marino Mase, Siegfried Rauch, Gisela Hahn, Carlo De Mejo, Carlo Monni, Martin Sorrentino, Mike Morris, Brigitte Wagner. (Unrated, 95 mins/R-rated US theatrical version, 84 mins).

Given its box-office popularity and groundbreaking special effects, it couldn't have been much of a surprise when Ridley Scott's 1979 classic ALIEN spawned its own subgenre of B-grade ripoffs over the next few years.  And it's also no surprise that the Italians climbed aboard the bandwagon, even though the most prominent of the ALIEN imitations were from the US with the Roger Corman productions GALAXY OF TERROR (1981) and FORBIDDEN WORLD (1982), plus the non-Corman CREATURE (1985), and the UK, with  HORROR PLANET, aka INSEMINOID (1982) finding fans in drive-ins and on late-night cable.  The Italian exploitation scene inevitably got into the act, but they must've been too busy with zombie and cannibal films and getting prepped for the flood of post-nuke and barbarian ripoffs coming down the pike because they didn't contribute much to the post-ALIEN cash-in cycle other than two films from 1980:  Ciro Ippolito's misleadingly-titled ALIEN 2: ON EARTH and Luigi Cozzi's CONTAMINATION.  What differentiates the Italian ALIEN clones from their American and British counterparts is spelled out in the title of Ippolito's film:  they primarily took place on Earth instead of space, and they only used the Scott film as a starting point for stories that went into generally different directions.  ALIEN 2: ON EARTH, which came out on Blu-ray in 2011 as the first and last release of Midnight Legacy, was considered a long-lost Holy Grail of obscure Eurotrash, allegedly never given an official US release, though Cinema Shares acquired it and it's listed under the title STRANGERS in John Stanley's Revenge of the Creature Features Movie Guide, published in 1988, so it must've gotten some kind of exposure somewhere in America, either theatrically or perhaps on TV.  It's a mind-numbing bore with Belinda Mayne as a psychic spelunker that has some occasional bits of inspired splatter caused by some alien rocks but is killed by a plethora of padding, with endless tracking shots inside the caves, Mayne standing at a marina while a boat docks in real time, and Ippolito's bizarre idea of how Americans hang out...with its group of heroes (among them is future CEMETERY MAN director Michele Soavi) heading to the local bowling alley to share a big can of pineapple juice.  ALIEN 2: ON EARTH is worth seeing for Italian ripoff completists, but it's a chore to sit through.  Fortunately, the news is better with CONTAMINATION, which is no less idiotic but is filled with some genuinely lively splatter, so much so that it landed itself a spot on the infamous British "video nasties" list in the early '80s.

CONTAMINATION was directed by genre vet and Dario Argento associate Luigi Cozzi under his usual "Lewis Coates" pseudonym. Cozzi was coming off of his highly entertaining STAR WARS ripoff STARCRASH (1979) and would go on to make two HERCULES movies with Lou Ferrigno for Cannon, who acquired CONTAMINATION in the early days of the Golan-Globus empire, cut 11 minutes out of it, and retitled it ALIEN CONTAMINATION to make sure everyone knew it was ALIEN ripoff.  But Cozzi and co-writer Erich Tomek, who worked under a variety of pseudonyms and spent most of his career penning screenplays for German softcore porn films, are less interested in an alien of the H.R. Giger variety and more concerned with constantly replicating that film's unforgettable chestbursting moment.  In an opening remarkably similar to Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE (1979), a ship careens into New York Harbor, and police find the crew gruesomely slaughtered. Following one of the most awkward introductory handshakes you'll ever see, sarcastic NYPD Lt. Tony Aris (Marino Mase) and Dr. Turner (Carlo Monni) investigate the cargo hold and find countless crates of coffee filled with strange green, football-sized eggs. One of the eggs rolls under a pipe and, from the warmth, "ripens" and explodes, spraying a toxic goo all over Dr. Turner and an assistant, causing their torsos to explode.  Aris flees the scene and is detained by the military, led by brittle Col. Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), who's from "Special Division #5," and prone to barking numerically-based orders like "Put emergency plan #7 into effect!" and "Call in the Special Section, Squad 2!" Military scientists determine that the eggs are filled with an alien bacteria, and then, almost as an afterthought, Holmes remembers she headed an inquiry into a disastrous space mission to Mars two years earlier where Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) claimed he and fellow astronaut Hamilton (Siegfried Rauch, Steve McQueen's racing nemesis in the 1971 vanity project LE MANS) found a cave filled with the same mysterious eggs, with Hamilton being drawn in by a strange power and never making it back home. Hubbard was written off as a delusional madman and is now a disheveled, self-pitying, alcoholic wreck when Holmes finds him and tells him he was right all along.  Hubbard joins Holmes and Aris, and they trace the ship to a Colombian coffee plantation where the presumed-dead Hamilton, taken over by an alien force known as "the Cyclops," is enacting a plan for the alien domination of Earth by spreading a chestbursting virus housed inside these Mars-based eggs that are to be distributed all over the planet.  Yes, that's right--the primary side effect of the alien bacteria is that it causes your chest and gut to explode: the perfect excuse to recreate ALIEN's signature move over and over and over again.

Of course, that was enough to make gorehounds happy, and the gleefully explosive splatter throughout CONTAMINATION is what's endeared it so much to Eurotrash fans over the years even though it really drags in the middle and almost turns Rauch's Hamilton into a Bond villain at times, right down to his Blofeld suit.  It also has an infectiously goofy main theme by "The Goblin" (when the band was led by Fabio Pignatelli and Agostino Marangolo and without Claudio Simonetti), which boasts a synth cue that sounds like Cozzi's hoping he doesn't land on the Whammy. CONTAMINATION was made during the period when British actor McCulloch found himself an unexpected witness to the Italian gore revolution:  he had just finished shooting both Fulci's ZOMBIE and Marino Girolami's ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, which would be infamously released in the US in 1982, with additional Roy Frumkes footage, as the legendary DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D.  All three films were banned in the UK as part of the Video Nasty controversy. McCulloch didn't make any more Italian horror films after CONTAMINATION, opting instead for regular work on British TV until the mid '90s, when he seemed to retire from acting.  Now 74, McCulloch appeared in the 2013 British horror spoof BEHIND THE SCENES OF TOTAL HELL, but in recent years, has found a following on the cult horror convention circuit, usually as part of Italian horror panels discussing the career of Lucio Fulci and the Video Nasty era.

CONTAMINATION found Cozzi in the prime of his filmmaking career.  He co-wrote Argento's 1972 giallo FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, had a hand in his four-part 1973 Italian TV series DOOR INTO DARKNESS, and directed his own giallo with 1975's impressive THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN. But it was the run from STARCRASH to 1983's HERCULES for which Cozzi is best remembered and there isn't much of note after 1985's hilariously bad THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES.  Cozzi was often called upon for uncredited clean-up duty to fix the messes left by fired directors.  In what must've been a purely money gig, he finished LA GEMELLA EROTICA, a 1980 hardcore porno started by BLUE MOVIE director Alberto Cavallone.  He was one of five (!) directors cycled through the notoriously troubled NOSFERATU IN VENICE, the barely-released 1988 semi-sequel to Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979).  Producer Augusto Caminito is the credited director and helmed most of the picture, but Cozzi, Mario Caiano, and Maurizio Lucidi were onboard at various times and were either fired or driven away by the unstable nature of volatile star Klaus Kinski, who even took his own turn behind the camera.  In 1986, Cozzi reunited with Lou Ferrigno and Cannon when he wrote and planned on directing SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS, which was intended to be a mini-series for Italian TV.  Cozzi was fired during pre-production and replaced by Enzo G. Castellari (THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS), who rewrote most of Cozzi's script. Castellari's footage was deemed unusable and Cannon shelved the entire project until 1989, when they rehired Cozzi and had him take the six hours of Castellari footage, shoot new wraparound sequences framing the plot as a thoroughly confusing bedtime story being read by a mom (Daria Nicolodi) to her daughter (Cozzi's daughter Giada) and edit it all down to a 90-minute feature. The result was understandably an incoherent hodgepodge and went straight-to-video in 1990, though Cozzi did manage to salvage John Steiner's gloriously hammy performance as evil wizard Jaffar from the wreckage.

Cozzi's career in narrative cinema has been on hold since two films he made in 1989:  THE BLACK CAT, an oddity marketed as a Poe movie but really Cozzi's unofficial attempt at completing Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy, following 1977's SUSPIRIA and 1980's INFERNO (Argento officially completed the trilogy himself with 2007's MOTHER OF TEARS), and the bizarre PAGANINI HORROR, about a possessed Paganini composition unleashing hell on an all-female rock band--whose hit singles sound suspiciously like ELO and Bon Jovi--shooting a video in an old dark manor.  Cozzi made two documentaries about Argento in the 1990s and since then, has managed Profondo Rosso, the Argento and Italian horror memorabilia store and horror-fan tourist destination in Rome, named after Argento's 1975 classic DEEP RED.  These days, the now-67-year-old Cozzi can usually be found behind the counter at the store, a museum curator of sorts, preserving the memory of the glory days of Italian horror and genre cinema.  Like his former star McCulloch, Cozzi is also a fixture at horror conventions and has taken part in several interviews for DVD releases of his films.  Never the visionary auteur that many of his contemporaries were, Cozzi was at least proactive enough to see the writing on the wall concerning the decline of Italian horror (and, it should be added, his own films), and got out early. Perhaps his mentor Argento would've been wise to follow his lead.

This 1981 Florida newspaper ad, archived by horrorpedia.com, strongly suggests that
Cannon was trying to attract fans of SCANNERS as well as ALIEN.

On DVD/Blu-ray: BAD COUNTRY (2014); THE LEGEND OF HERCULES (2014); and ODD THOMAS (2014)

BAD COUNTRY
(US - 2014)

Fans of Troy Duffy's cult classic THE BOONDOCK SAINTS should recognize producer Chris Brinker's name.  Brinker made his directing debut with this "inspired by true events" crime thriller shot in the fall of 2012 and it unfortunately proved to be his only film:  the 42-year-old Brinker died unexpectedly from an aortic aneurysm in February 2013 while BAD COUNTRY was in post-production. While the film wasn't 100% finished when Brinker died, he did have it in the can and must shoulder the bulk of the blame for the utterly mediocre results. The elements are here for a solid crime thriller, but lethargic pacing, veteran actors often being outperformed by their facial hair, and some truly amateurish filmmaking, particularly in the botched climax, do it absolutely no favors. It does give Brinker a chance to work with his old BOONDOCK SAINTS pal Willem Dafoe, who turns in a typically intense performance as on-the-edge cop Bud Carter, who leads a squad of plays-by-their-own-rules badasses looking to up-end all manner of criminal lowlifes in their neck of the woods in 1983 Baton Rouge. A diamond bust results in Carter getting the name of Jesse Weiland (Matt Dillon), a jack-of-all-trades shitheel who dabbles in contract killing, drug-dealing, gun-running, and white supremacy. Weiland's got limitless connections to the Baton Rouge underworld, and he's also got a wife (Amy Smart) and a newborn son, and Carter, forced to work with an incompetent, wet-behind-the-ears FBI newbie (Chris Marquette), offers him a chance to stay out of prison and be with his family by becoming a snitch and leading them to the bigger fish, namely wealthy businessman and Ayran brotherhood crime lord Lutin Adams (Tom Berenger). Of course, loyalties are tested, lines are crossed, tables are turned, etc, etc, blah blah blah.

BAD COUNTRY features a generically predictable plot you've seen a hundred times before. Perhaps Brinker and screenwriter Jonathan Hirschbein should've kept the focus on Dafoe's Carter, a character based on the exploits of cop Don "Bud" Connor, one of the film's 23 credited producers. When Dafoe is onscreen doing his thing, BAD COUNTRY feels alive, but too much time is spent with a sulking Dillon, who can't do much with the role since we never care about the redemption of this unrepentant scumbag, and Smart is stuck with a role so woefully underwritten that she barely registers.  There's sporadic appearances by other familiar faces, like IN PLAIN SIGHT's Frederick Weller; loathed Cadillac pitchman and I KNOW WHO KILLED ME/88 MINUTES/STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI bomb magnet Neal McDonough, cast radically against type as an smirking, asshole lawyer; Kevin Chapman, best known as BLACK DYNAMITE's traitorous O'Leary; ARGO's Christopher Denham as Weiland's even bigger loser brother; veteran New Orleans-based character actor Don Yesso, also one of the producers; and the always-awesome Bill Duke as an irate fed, but top acting dishonors have to go to an embarrassing Berenger, who can't decide what he wants to do from word-to-word, let alone line-to-line.  He'll start a sentence in his usual voice and finish it with a hammy drawl that sounds like he's playing tribute to Adam Sandler's Cajun Man by way of Alicia Bridges' "I Love the Nightlife" (listen to him say "Where did he get that information?" with  "Where did he get that..." in his usual Berenger voice, but finishing the sentence with a garishly cartoonish "info-may-shaaaaawn?"). Berenger is hilariously awful throughout, but never more so than in the climax, where his one-on-one brawl with Dillon is staged so badly by Brinker that it doesn't even take coverage into consideration, with Berenger only doing some Seagal-esque closeups while his completely unconcealed double--with noticeably darker hair and his face visible--dukes it out with Dillon.  And if you're expecting a reunion of PLATOON Oscar nominees Berenger and Dafoe, this ain't it:  they have two brief scenes together, but they're shot in a way that the actors are never sharing the frame, making it obvious that they either weren't there at the same time or if they were, Brinker just shot it in the most awkward, cumbersome way possible. BAD COUNTRY seems like it was made with good intentions, and sure, perhaps some of its rough edges could've been smoothed over had Brinker lived to completely finish it, but what's here is just by-the-numbers stuff and the very definition of "straight-to-DVD."  It's almost like the film's been released in the exact condition Brinker left it in the editing room at the time of his death.  (R, 104 mins)


THE LEGEND OF HERCULES
(US - 2014)

I'm not saying Kellan Lutz is the worst Hercules ever, but he does bring something to the role that famed predecessors like Steve Reeves and Lou Ferrigno lacked.  Of course, I'm talking about frosted tips.  Rushed into production by Millennium Films honcho Avi Lerner in the classic fashion befitting his Cannon cover band in order to beat Dwayne Johnson's upcoming HERCULES to theaters, the origin story THE LEGEND OF HERCULES allegedly cost $70 million to produce, but you'd never know it by the shoddy results.  Shot in 3D at Lerner's Sofia-based Nu Boyana Studios and loaded with CGI courtesy of his usual Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES is dull and plodding, and seems to have been created by people who aren't even vaguely aware of the Hercules mythos. For the most part, this is yet another 300 ripoff, filled with stop/start slo-mo and the usual speed-ramping battle scenes. There's even a BEN-HUR slave galley detour and a section that blatantly cribs from SPARTACUS and GLADIATOR, with Hercules and friend Sotiris (Liam McIntyre, who replaced the late Andy Whitfield on the Starz series SPARTACUS) forced to fight for their lives in an arena.  Lutz's Hercules doesn't even get to display his strength until 75 minutes in, and even then he just swings some bricks around before a sword fight with his vengeful stepfather King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins), who's spent the entire film trying to have him killed. Other than fighting the Nemean Lion, this is pretty much a standard-issue sword-and-sandal opus about a bland pretty boy who happens to be named Hercules.  They don't even bother making Chiron a centaur; here he's just a doddering but wise elder played by Rade Serbedzija. Say what you will about director Renny Harlin, but he used to make entertaining movies once upon a time. THE LEGEND OF HERCULES isn't one of them.  A barely-there Harlin sets himself to hack mode and is so content to just let the FX crew and the Almost Basil Poledouris score carry the load that it doesn't take long before you're wishing Lerner sent Lutz packing to the nearest TWILIGHT convention so the overacting Adkins could play Hercules and second unit director Isaac Florentine (WHY isn't he getting better gigs?) could relieve Harlin of whatever it is he's doing.  Feeling twice as long as it is and exhibiting a laziness that borders on audience contempt, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES is saddled with an unengaging story, a complete blank of a leading man, Johnathan Schaech in corn-rows, and astonishingly bad visual effects that look like an already-outdated video game, in addition to wasting great character actors like Serbedzija and Kenneth Cranham. This is probably the cheapest-looking, wide-release would-be "blockbuster" you'll see in 2014. Is there any reason that 50-year-old muscleman epics look better than THE LEGEND OF HERCULES does now? I skipped this in theaters, but I have to believe that even the most ardent CGI apologists would've had to laugh this off the screen, right?  (PG-13, 99 mins)

ODD THOMAS
(US - 2014)

The first in Dean Koontz's best-selling series of novels had a tumultuous journey to its release after being shot back in 2011, with lawsuits between disputing production companies and a brief period where filming was suspended because money ran out. A labor of love for writer/producer/director Stephen Sommers, working with a relatively low--for him, at least--budget of $25 million after the bloated nothingness of 2004's reviled VAN HELSING and 2009's forgettable G.I. JOE: RISE OF THE COBRA, ODD THOMAS still has all the usual Sommers touches of whooshing camera movements and an overload of CGI. The biggest difference is that now it's all a bit less convincing and the whole film looks and plays less like a $25 million feature and more like the pilot to a CBS TV series.  The story unfolds in a manner that makes it seem more at home on TV than on the big screen, which could at least partially be the reason it was practially smuggled into just a few theaters and on VOD earlier this year with absolutely no publicity. Another more likely one is that the central plot of the film's antagonists involves a mass shooting at a crowded shopping mall, which everyone involved perhaps felt was too touchy a subject.  Anton Yelchin is Odd Thomas, whose first name came about because "Todd" was misspelled on his birth certificate.  Odd can see dead people, and murder victims frequently come to him seeking justice against their still-free killers. Odd's gift comes in handy to small-town Pico Mundo police chief Porter (Willem Dafoe), who usually devises a way to entrap the guilty based on info provided by Odd.  When Odd starts seeing "bodachs"--harbingers of evil who look like sinewy, ectoplasmic versions of H.R. Giger's ALIEN design--hovering around town, specifically around strange newcomer Fungus Bob (Shuler Hensley), he knows something horrible is about to happen that may obliterate Pico Mundo.

Yelchin is very well-cast as Odd, an affable guy who didn't ask for his "gift" but knows he must use it for the common good.  He really just wants to work his simple job as a diner cook and hang out with his impossibly wholesome girlfriend Stormy (Addison Timlin), but duty frequently calls.  Early on, the quaintly old-fashioned back-and-forth between the couple, Porter's head-shaking but fatherly "Oh, Odd!  Why, I oughta..." admonishings, and the cozy, Spielbergian small-town atmosphere comes off as more than a little hokey, the charming Timlin is stuck with some irritatingly cutesy dialogue that seems to belong in an '80s sitcom ("That's some plan, Odd one!" she often chirps, almost pausing for the laugh track to kick in), and Sommers' script has a definite "TV show exposition" style to the plot set-up.  That, coupled with the B-level visual effects, creates some hiccups and stumbles along the way, but once the main plot commences and Odd, Stormy, and Porter figure out what's going on, ODD THOMAS gets much better, leading to a legitimately surprising twist ending (if you haven't read the book) that probably would've been the first thing to go had Sommers made this for a major studio.  Sommers makes some significant changes--he completely eliminates Stormy's backstory of being sexually abused by a foster father, and Little Ozzie, a major character in the book, is played by Patton Oswalt in just one scene here--but knew that the story wouldn't work without sticking with its original ending.  Sommers deserves some credit for pulling off this ending and, considering most of his output, making a film that isn't terrible (though I will cop to being a big DEEP RISING fan), but ODD THOMAS is too blandly shot and just feels too much like a workmanlike television show to work as effective cinema.  Put this on prime-time TV as a weekly series, and Sommers has a winner, but there's no way this is leading to a big-screen ODD THOMAS franchise. (Unrated, 97 mins, also streaming on Netflix)