THE UNHOLY FOUR (Italy - 1970) Directed by E.B. Clucher (Enzo Barboni). Written by Mario di Nardo and Franco Rossetti. Cast: Leonard Mann, Woody Strode, Peter Martell (Pietro Martellanza), Luigi Montefiori, Evelyn Stewart (Ida Galli), Helmuth Schneider, Lucio Rosato, Alain Naya, Giuseppe Lauricella, Dino Strano, Andrew Ray (Andrea Aureli), Enzo Fiermonte, Luciano Rossi, Salvatore Billa, Romano Puppo. (Unrated, 94 mins) A spaghetti western mostly by virtue of being Italian, THE UNHOLY FOUR is a throwback of sorts and more in line with the psychological, character-driven 1950s westerns of Anthony Mann than with the more distinct 1960s spaghettis of the Sergios Leone and Corbucci. Even Riz Ortolani's score sounds like it came from an older Hollywood western, unlike the groundbreaking, iconic cues of Ennio Morricone. The film opens with a Dodge City asylum being set on fire as a distraction for an overnight bank robbery by a gang of miscreants led by Tom Udo (Lucio Rosato), the son of a wealthy landowner (Giuseppe Lauricella). Four inmates escape the burning jail: slow-witted, God-fearing strongman Woody (Woody Strode), intimidating card cheat Hondo (Luigi Montefiori, better known as "George Eastman"), loony Silver (Peter Martell), and Chuck Mool (Leonard Mann), an amnesiac with no idea who he is or why he's in the asylum until one of Udo's dying cohorts sees him and exclaims "Chuck Mool!" With his three unlikely compadres in tow, Chuck Mool (a name concocted by the English dub team--the Italian version was titled CIUKMULL, so everyone constantly refers to him as "Chuck Mool" on the English dub track) embarks on a quest to uncover the chain of events that led him to being locked up in Dodge City
But there's more to the story than the plight of Chuck Mool: the Udo family is fighting off an attempt to take over their land by John Caldwell (Helmuth Schneider), another rich asshole who's buying up everyone's property and wants the Udos out of the way. Caldwell believes Chuck Mool is his son, presumed dead in a fire three years earlier. Learning that Chuck Mool is alive and heading their way with three presumed-dangerous madmen, Old Man Udo devises a scheme to convince Chuck Mool that he's his father and that he's supposed to kill the Caldwells. Udo's daughter Sheila (Evelyn Stewart) isn't happy about the scam and tries to warn Chuck Mool after he arrives. Tensions escalate as Chuck Mool, Woody, Hondo, and Silver are forced to take on the duplicitous Udo family and a bunch of their hired killers (among them ubiquitous Eurocult stalwart Romano Puppo) and shoot their way out of town.
THE UNHOLY FOUR was the directing debut of veteran cinematographer Enzo Barboni, who shot Sergio Corbucci's influential 1966 classic DJANGO, as well as Corbucci's THE HELLBENDERS (1967) and American director Don Taylor's spaghetti western THE FIVE MAN ARMY (1970). Adopting the pseudonym "E.B. Clucher," Barboni (1922-2002) would go on to direct the enormously popular spaghetti western comedies THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1971) and TRINITY IS STILL MY NAME (1972), which led to international fame for stars Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Barboni's experience as a cinematographer is put to excellent use in THE UNHOLY FOUR, with some expertly choreographed gunfight sequences and some--for the time--unusually fluid, almost Steadicam-like camera movements throughout the action scenes. For the most part, it doesn't really play like the more stylish and violent Leone westerns or the politically charged genre offerings from Corbucci, but rather like something out of the 1950s or early 1960s and more beholden to the Hollywood western. There's one wacky, comedic bar brawl that hints where Barboni's career would soon head with the TRINITY movies, but THE UNHOLY FOUR gets darker and more downbeat as it goes on, making Ortolani's incongruously upbeat music cues sound somewhat inappropriate. There's occasional flashes of genuine unpleasantness scattered throughout, none more shocking than the jaw-dropping moment when a leering, lip-smacking Tom Udo tells Sheila "You got a hell of a lot to offer...too bad we're brother and sister...I could show you what it's all about."
In just his second film, Mann, an American actor who spent the bulk of his career in Italy before retiring from movies in 1989 at the age of 42 (his few American gigs included 1981's NIGHT SCHOOL, 1987's FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, and his final film to date, 1989's SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 3: BETTER WATCH OUT) to become a teacher and playwright under his real name Leonard Manzella, is good as the lost hero in an existential crisis. Things slow down a little too much in the sluggish midsection, which seems to just be killing time for the undeniably ass-kicking last 20 or so minutes, where Barboni really starts firing on all cylinders and the titular quartet bands together to take on Udo's army. Though it was dubbed in English by the usual suspects (Ed Mannix, Robert Spafford, and others can be heard), THE UNHOLY FOUR was never released theatrically in the US and pretty much fell into obscurity, a curio known only to the most devoted spaghetti western completists. Wild East released a gray market double feature DVD that paired it with Ferdinando Baldi's 1969 western THE FORGOTTEN PISTOLERO, which also starred Mann and Martell, but it was was recently issued on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber in another textbook example of the death of physical media being greatly exaggerated.
The story of the USS Indianapolis is familiar to anyone who's seen JAWS, where Robert Shaw delivers arguably the greatest monologue in film history as salty shark hunter Quint recounts his experiences on the doomed ship near the end of WWII. After completing orders to deliver the materials for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, the Indianapolis, without sonar and with no customary escort due to the top-secret, classified nature of the mission, was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58 between Tinian and Okinawa. It sank within 12 minutes, as Captain Charles Butler McVay ordered the crew to abandon ship, leaving them stranded for five days in shark-infested waters. Of the 1196 on board, nearly 300 died in the initial attack. Of the remaining 900 left in the water, only 317 survived, the rest dying from dehydration, saltwater poisoning, drowning, and, as JAWS fans know, shark attacks. It's a horrific tragedy that deserves a more dignified presentation than USS INDIANAPOLIS: MEN OF COURAGE. The 1991 CBS TV-movie MISSION OF THE SHARK, with Stacy Keach as McVay, did a better job with the limited expectations of being a made-for-TV movie. This film, starring Nicolas Cage as McVay, is undoubtedly sincere in its intentions but can't overcome a trite, cliched script and rock-bottom visual effects that makes it look like an Asylum production debuting on Syfy. The explosions are laughable and the CGI sharks jump out of the water looking like deleted SHARKNADO files e-mailed to director Mario Van Peebles.
The film is divided into three sections, with the interminable opening act devoted to the camaraderie and ballbusting among an interchangeable and impossibly dull group of sailors, focusing on two--wholesome, all-American Bama (Matt Lanter) and gregarious D'Antonio (Adam Scott Miller), who does everything short of yell "Hey, you's boys wanna play some stickball?" to let you know he's from Brooklyn--who fall in love with the same woman (Emily Tennant). The second is the sinking of the ship and the five days stranded in the water, where Van Peebles turns the film into a cheap jump-scare shark attack horror movie, and third is a courtroom drama when the Navy, looking for someone to scapegoat for their failure to answer multiple distress calls (they thought it was the Japanese trying to deceive them), decides to court-martial McVay, saying he could've "zig-zagged" the ship to avoid the torpedoes. McVay's story is a sad one--he committed suicide in 1968 after over two decades of harassment and death threats by the families of the dead sailors even though he was fully supported by the survivors as well as by I-58 commander Mochitsura Hashimoto (Yutaka Takeuchi), who testified that there was no way McVay could've avoided the torpedoes. McVay and the men aboard the USS Indianapolis deserved something a little more polished and professional-looking than a WWII movie that looks like it was directed by Anthony C. Ferrante. The writing isn't much better--try not to laugh at the torpedoes hitting the ship a nanosecond after a guy playing dice in the mess hall rolls snake eyes. Or at decisions being made in darkened and ominous film noir-lit rooms filled with cigar-sucking fat cats ("War's good for business, and business is good for America!"). Or at McWhorter, the Chief Petty Officer played by Tom Sizemore in what's apparently an extended tribute to William Bendix (and of course, McWhorter's wife just had a baby that he describes as "nine pounds of rompin' stompin' dynamite!" which is code for "McWhorter's never going to meet his kid"). There are scattered moments where USS INDIANAPOLIS rises above its schlocky, Redbox-ready nature: Thomas Jane does some nice work in a small role as Lt. Adrian Marks, the pilot who disobeyed orders and made a daring water landing to rescue as many survivors as he could, and Cage, who's subdued and surprisingly restrained throughout, shares a scene with Takeuchi very late in the film where both actors are demonstrating such raw emotion that they almost convince you that they're in a better movie. With more money, a better script, a supporting cast of actors that you could actually tell apart, more directorial flair (Van Peebles' heart may be in the right place, but his bland direction is pure clock-punching and irrefutable proof that his NEW JACK CITY and POSSE days of being a filmmaker of note are long gone), and a time machine to go back to around 2000 when Nicolas Cage movies were still major events, the well-meaning USS INDIANAPOLIS could've been a strong WWII movie instead of what has to be the cheapest-looking $40 million movie ever, looking like total amateur hour despite having 30 credited producers and the participation of RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION cinematographer Andrzej Sekula. (R, 130 mins) THE HOLLOW POINT
(US - 2016)
There's absolutely no reason why this shouldn't be a nifty little desert noir B-movie in the vein of '90s video store mainstays like RED ROCK WEST and BLACK DAY BLUE NIGHT, but the barely-released THE HOLLOW POINT just never gets its shit together. Content to churn out a nearly decade-too-late ripoff of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (APOLLO 18, OPEN GRAVE) and first-time screenwriter Nils Lyew waste an inspired and entertaining performance by the great Ian McShane in total Al Swearengen mode as Leland Kilbaught, a gruff, grubby, hard-drinking, burned-out sheriff of Los Reyes County, right along the Arizona-Mexico border. Kilbaught's got a reputation among the locals for not really caring much about the rules, and after he shoots Clive Mercy (Nathan Stevens) in the head during a traffic stop, he's relieved of his duties and new sheriff Wallace (Patrick Wilson) is sent in to replace him. Kilbaught knows what Clive was up to--running armor-piercing ammo into Mexico as a flunky for a cartel operation. Clive's equally hapless loser brother Ken (David Stevens) ends up killing a mid-level cartel figure after a botched ammunition run before skating back to Los Reyes County and hiding out. Complicating matters is that Wallace, who's from the area and couldn't wait to get away, knows his ex-wife Marla (Lynn Collins) is hooked up with Ken, which puts her at serious risk when the cartel sends unstoppable killing machine assassin Atticus (John Leguizamo as Javier Bardem) to find Ken and kill anyone who knows him, including Marla and sleazy used car dealer Shep Diaz (Jim Belushi), who also has connections to the cartel.
Other than a truly startling moment when Atticus hacks off Wallace's right hand with a machete, the only thing THE HOLLOW POINT has going for it is McShane, who single-handedly saves it from total oblivion. Lyew's script is an incoherent mess, Lopez-Gallego, who also serves as his own editor, couldn't generate any dramatic momentum if his career depended on it, occasionally resorting to stupid POV shots like the one from inside a spinning washing machine at a laundromat. The entire film is so sloppily-constructed that we never get a full grasp of who's who or why they're even in danger. Leguizamo is just Anton Chigurh with a better haircut and Belushi, sporting a cheap suit and a hideous combover, can play this kind of obnoxious shitbag in his sleep. But McShane valiantly tries to save the day, with his gravelly line readings and snide deliveries of mellifluously poetic bon mots like "You are not an unfortunate man...you're an auspicious parasite!" and "Buenos Diaz!" He seems to be having a blast playing this character, making it almost criminal that his efforts are squandered on such an uninspired and otherwise completely forgettable project. (R, 97 mins)
SCAVENGER HUNT (US - 1979) Directed by Michael Schultz. Written by Steven A. Vail and Henry Harper. Cast: Richard Benjamin, James Coco, Scatman Crothers, Ruth Gordon, Cloris Leachman, Cleavon Little, Roddy McDowall, Robert Morley, Richard Mulligan, Tony Randall, Dirk Benedict, Willie Aames, Stephanie Faracy, Richard Masur, Meat Loaf, Vincent Price, Pat McCormick, Avery Schreiber, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liz Torres, Maureen Teefy, Carol Wayne, Stephen Furst, Stuart Pankin, Henry Polic II, Hal Landon Jr, Marji Martin, Jerado Decordovier. (PG, 116 mins) When you go a couple of decades or longer without seeing a favorite film from your younger, formative years, you always run the risk of childhood nostalgia blowing up in your face, forcing you to confront the harsh realization that this thing you loved so much just might be a steaming pile of dog shit. Such is the case with SCAVENGER HUNT, a comedy that did only middling business in theaters when it was released the week of Christmas 1979. It found an audience on cable, where it was in constant rotation on Showtime and The Movie Channel in the early '80s, watched over and over again by latch-key kids like me who got home from school and had a couple of hours to kill before Mom and Dad got home from work. It was a movie I watched many times and always guffawed at the wacky, slapstick antics of the all-star cast of comedy stars and familiar character actor ringers I recognized from TV. I hadn't seen SCAVENGER HUNT in over 30 years and I still vividly recalled specific scenes. The film was just released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber and in watching it again, many of those scenes played out exactly as I remembered, but something was different this time. It's the same movie, but I wasn't laughing. So is it me? Have maturity, life experience and age combined to make SCAVENGER HUNT a miserable slog now compared to the uproarious classic it was when I was eight or nine? Other comedies from that era that I watched a million times hold up beautifully. SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. THE BLUES BROTHERS. CADDYSHACK. AIRPLANE! PORKY'S. I still love the Three Stooges and Looney Tunes shorts I watched repeatedly at that age. But SCAVENGER HUNT? Was it always this awful and I was just too young and dumb to know any better? Because let me be clear: what was comedy gold at nine was excruciatingly painful to watch through 44-year-old eyes.
The film opens with the death of wealthy board game creator Milton Parker (Vincent Price). His attorney Charles Bernstein (Robert Morley) reveals that Parker left a unique will for the "scavengers" looking to inherit his $200 million fortune: they're to form five groups and work from a checklist with objects to acquire for point value and bring back to the Parker estate by 5:00 pm that day. The teams: Parker's greedy sister Mildred Carruthers (Cloris Leachman), her oafish man-child of a son Georgie (Richard Masur), and her sleazy lawyer Stuart Selsome (Richard Benjamin); the servant staff consisting of butler Jenkins (Roddy McDowall), limo driver Jackson (Cleavon Little), chef Henri (James Coco), and sexy French maid Babette (Stephanie Faracy); Parker's hunky, nice-guy nephews Jeff (Dirk Benedict) and Kenny (Willie Aames), who welcome Mildred's outcast stepdaughter Lisa (Maureen Teefy) along; Parker's widower son-in-law Henry Motley (Tony Randall), who sees it as a way to bond with his four kids after his wife's death; and lunkhead cabbie Marvin Dummitz (Richard Mulligan), who failed to get Parker's business partner to a meeting in a timely fashion many years earlier, therefore enabling him to take over their company and include Dummitz in the scavenger hunt as a form of gratitude. That Mad-inspired name--obviously a riff on Melvin Dummar, the guy who claimed to have given a ride to a disheveled Howard Hughes and was later named in a disputed will after Hughes' death--is the closest SCAVENGER HUNT comes to a clever joke, and it's a reference I never would've gotten at nine years of age.
With the ground rules set, the rest of the movie basically consists of acts of wanton slapstick destruction as a bunch of actors run and flail around, shouting, screaming, and mugging shamelessly as they do whatever it takes to get the items on their list. This leads to scenes where the servants have to steal a toilet, Selsome has to move a huge safe from the top floor of a building with an out-of-service elevator, Kenny has to tear the clown head off the drive-thru order speaker at a Jack-in-the-Box, and Dummitz has to disguise himself as a mummy, for some reason. Other objects on the list include tennis rackets, laughing gas (yes, it leads to a scene with everyone hysterically laughing), a fat person (yes), false teeth, a bulletproof vest, a globe, five ostriches, a stuffed fish, an oar, a stroller, a medicine ball, a table, assorted kitchenware, a football helmet, an old cylinder phonograph, etc. By the time of the climactic car chase with everyone heading to the Parker mansion with the random junk spilling out of their vehicles, SCAVENGER HUNT starts to look like an unfunny hybrid of IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD and SANFORD AND SON. As in IAMMMMW and other similar, star-studded comedies that send their large casts on a madcap pursuit (THE GREAT RACE, THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES, THE GUMBALL RALLY, MIDNIGHT MADNESS, THE CANNONBALL RUN, GREEDY, THE RAT RACE, etc), other parties end up joining the ensuing fracas, including a bridal shop security guard (Scatman Crothers), three obese people (Stuart Pankin, Stephen Furst, and Marji Martin) who are among the "items" and exist only to be the butt of endless "fatty eats and/or falls down" jokes, an old Native American (Jerado Decordovier) whose dentures were stolen by Selsome, and a lisping, Sylvester the Cat-sounding zookeeper (Avery Schreiber), looking for his stolen ostriches. Various parties also cross paths with a batty old weapons nut (Ruth Gordon), fearsome motorcycle gang leader Scum (Meat Loaf), and pumped-up gym trainer Lars (Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Over 116 laborious minutes, nothing funny happens. It's a pretty amazing grouping of actors and they seem to be having a good time (Benjamin, especially), but SCAVENGER HUNT is the kind of comedy where everyone equates being loud with being funny. Everyone plays everything too broadly and most of the one-liners are totally rimshot-ready ("I loved him like a brother," Mildred says of Parker, to which Bernstein replies "He was your brother"). Bankrolled by shopping mall magnate turned movie producer Melvin Simon, SCAVENGER HUNT was co-written and produced by Steven A. Vail, whose only prior credit was the smutty 1978 late night cable favorite and KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE ripoff JOKES MY FOLKS NEVER TOLD ME, and directed by Michael Schultz, which leads to the bizarre opening credit "A Steven A. Vail film by Michael Schultz." Schultz already had a reputation as a top African-American filmmaker of the decade with hit films like 1975's COOLEY HIGH and 1976's CAR WASH, and was a frequent Richard Pryor collaborator (WHICH WAY IS UP? and GREASED LIGHTNING, both from 1977, and he directed some of 1981's BUSTIN' LOOSE, though only Oz Scott received credit). Schultz's career hit a major speed bump with the expensive 1978 flop SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, which gathered a huge cast of non-singers in a musical starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. After SCAVENGER HUNT, Schultz stayed busy but he never lived up to the potential of his early hits. He enjoyed moderate box office successes with THE LAST DRAGON and KRUSH GROOVE in 1985, and directed the 1987 comedy DISORDERLIES, notable for its much-anticipated teaming of The Fat Boys and Ralph Bellamy. Other than 1991's LIVIN' LARGE and 2004's WOMAN THOU ART LOOSED, the now-78-year-old Schultz has worked exclusively in TV since the late 1980s, directing episodes of a myriad of shows, among them PICKET FENCES, ALLY MCBEAL, FELICITY, THE PRACTICE, BOSTON PUBLIC, EVERWOOD, TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, JAG, BROTHERS & SISTERS, and most recently, BLACK-ISH and ARROW. Schultz contributes a commentary track to the SCAVENGER HUNT Blu-ray, and cites it as his most successful film in terms of people mentioning it to him. It's remained a minor cult classic beloved by those who saw it at an impressionable age, and part of that ongoing affection might be because it was out of circulation for so long unless, as Schultz points out, "you taped it off of TV years ago or found an old VHS tape at a garage sale or on eBay." If you want to keep having fond memories of SCAVENGER HUNT, then you'd be wise to just leave it alone, because revisiting this one was a soul-crushing disappointment.
BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN (US - 2017) Directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky. (Unrated, 115 mins) Hobbled by leaden pacing and an unfocused narrative, BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN isn't exactly the second coming of PARADISE LOST as far as documentaries about arrested teens and moral panics go. Irene Taylor Brodsky's film looks at the circumstances surrounding the attempted murder of 12-year-old Payton "Bella" Leutner, a Waukesha, WI girl who was lured into the woods on May 31, 2014 by two friends--Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, also 12 at the time--and stabbed 19 times. The reason? Morgan and Anissa wanted to impress the Slenderman, a fictional supernatural figure in a suit, with long arms and no face. The character was created in 2009 for a paranormal Photoshop contest on the Something Awful forum, which led to a viral explosion of Slenderman photos, YouTube videos, and fan fiction. Morgan and Anissa discovered Slenderman on the Creepypasta Wiki and became obsessed with the idea of becoming "proxies," or servants, to him. Morgan eventually convinced Anissa that killing Bella would sufficiently appease the Slenderman, enabling them to live in his so-called "Slender Mansion," which they believed to be located in the middle of Nicolet National Park in northern Wisconsin.
The fact that the girls attempted to walk from Waukesha to Nicolet National Park after leaving the crime scene--it's a 320-mile trip--is as good a tip-off as any to show how disconnected they were from reality. Through interviews with parents, police, psychologists, teachers, and footage from the girls' interrogations (Morgan and Anissa were not interviewed for the film, nor was Bella, who miraculously survived the attack), we're given background information on the accused. Anissa was a loner who had a hard time making friends, and bonded with Morgan over their mutual interest in Slenderman. Lonely Anissa tells her fourth grade teacher "You're like a second father to me," and the teacher wonders if any of this would've happened if the girls had more friends ("In a group of eight girls, this wouldn't have happened--they wouldn't be talking with just each other and spending all of their time on the Internet"). Both girls come from stable homes with loving parents who can't help but wonder how or why any of this happened or what they should've done differently (Anissa's father says Bella's parents would be completely justified if they hated him). Brodsky withholds a vital piece of information about Morgan, who never showed much in the way of empathy even as a little girl (her mother recalls watching BAMBI with young Morgan years earlier and being shocked that she wasn't even fazed by the death of Bambi's mother, a scene that's traumatized children for over 70 years), until very late in the film and while her reasons for doing so make sense in the context of the audience needing to remain objective, it still plays like a fumbled attempt at a plot twist and something that should've been divulged earlier.
At nearly two hours, BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN eventually becomes a laborious slog. The girls haven't even gone on trial yet (that's happening sometime in 2017) and the courtroom footage seen here is simply to determine if they should be tried as adults or as juveniles. Brodsky and her crew went to Waukesha to chase the story almost immediately after it happened--the first round of parent interviews in the film take place just two months after the stabbing--so there's a lot of repetitive interrogation footage that's sometimes chilling in the girls' shrugging ambivalence (when told Bella is fighting for her life, a presumably shell-shocked Anissa's only concern is "How far did I walk before I got picked up?") but eventually grows tiresome. There's some eerie recreations of Slenderman imagery and a history lesson in folklore (talking heads label Slenderman a mythical figure along the lines of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Pied Piper) and how Slenderman varies from person to person to be whatever the person telling the tale needs it to be, whether it's a malevolent evil or a guardian angel of sorts for troubled children. Brodsky also examines the power of the viral meme, with mentions of planking and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and Richard Dawkins briefly drops by to helpfully define the word "meme." All of this is very informative, but the story jumps all over the place, and by the time Brodsky spends several minutes of screen time with the camera planted on a monitor as we go through Morgan's and Anissa's browser history, it really just feels like she's belaboring the point. The tedious BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN has its moments, but it might've made a better DATELINE or 20/20 segment than a two-hour movie.
SPLIT (US - 2017) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus, Izzie Coffey, M. Night Shyamalan, Neil Huff. (PG-13, 118 mins) While most viewed 2015's THE VISIT as a comeback for wunderkind-turned-pariah M. Night Shyamalan, I was in the minority and hated it with a near-blind fury that even LADY IN THE WATER and THE LAST AIRBENDER couldn't touch. A tardy trendhop onto the found footage bandwagon, THE VISIT was the most cynical move yet in the cratering of Shyamalan's career and I was pretty much ready to write him off for good. But now there's SPLIT, an ingenious and ambitious horror film that's easily his best work since the post-SIXTH SENSE glory days of UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS. A complex Hitchcockian mindfuck, SPLIT opens with three teenage girls--birthday girl Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), her best friend Marcia (Jessica Sula), and quiet outcast Casey (THE WITCH's Anya Taylor-Joy)--being abducted from a shopping mall parking lot and kept in a locked room in a vast basement. Their captor is Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), who suffers from an extreme case of dissociative identity disorder and has 23 personalities existing within him. The girls were kidnapped by OCD neat-freak "Dennis," and the girls soon meet the prim, proper, British-accented "Miss Patricia," who wears a dress and explains that "Dennis knows he can't touch you." "Hedwig" is an eager-to-please, nine-year-old boy who knows what Dennis and Miss Patricia are up to: the two biggest troublemakers of the 23 personalities, they've planned an internal revolt and launched a coup in Kevin's mind, with Dennis even going so far as to pretend to be the affable, laid-back amateur fashion designer "Barry," the personality who regularly represents Kevin in his appointments with psychiatrist Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), and the most conscientious and good-hearted of "The Horde," the collective name given to Kevin's personalities. All of this is to prepare for the coming of "The Beast," a powerful 24th personality brewing within the deepest recesses of Kevin's mind. Dr. Fletcher senses something is off about Barry in her sessions ("I'm gonna guess that you're....Dennis?" she asks at one point, and Dennis denies it) and is alarmed by the number of urgent e-mails he sends her, wanting to meet with her to warn her that something bad is about to happen but always overpowered when either Dennis or Miss Patricia step into "the light" or, the center of Kevin's head, making it necessary for Dennis to pass himself off as Barry to keep Dr. Fletcher from digging further.
"Dennis"
Among the girls, the focus is on Casey, who elects to hang back and survey the situation before attempting to escape. Casey has no friends and was only at Claire's party because Claire felt guilty about inviting everyone in her art class but her. Casey needed a ride home and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time ("Dennis" has been stalking Claire and Marcia for days). Periodic flashbacks to young Casey (Izzie Coffey) and her relationship with her father (Sebastian Arcelus) and uncle (Brad William Henke) add depth to her character and help illustrate why she can read the situation more accurately and react to it more effectively than Claire or Marcia (sensing Dennis' germphobia and how to use it to their advantage, she advises Marcia to "pee on yourself" when she's carried into another room by Dennis, knowing he'll be too grossed out to touch her). To say anything more would risk spoilers, but SPLIT shows a Shyamalan that's rejuvenated and at the top of his game, with the film going into some disturbing places that stretch the PG-13 rating to its breaking point. SPLIT is a strange and inventive take on the psychological horror film, with a late development that has you scratching your head until a stinger early in the closing credits drops a ballsy twist that has you reconsidering the entire film from a different perspective once you realize exactly what Shyamalan has been up to for the last two hours. Shyamalan has demonstrated no shortage of arrogance and chutzpah over his career, to a detrimental degree in recent years, but the wrap-up of SPLIT is one that immediately goes down as one of the most daring and divisive that you'll see in any movie in 2017.
"Miss Patricia"
"Barry"
"Hedwig"
SPLIT wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without the tour de force performance of McAvoy in the most difficult role of his career. Though we only meet maybe eight of Kevin's 23 personalities, McAvoy is a sight to behold in each one, switching characters on a dime and also tasked with playing a personality impersonating another personality. He runs the gamut of emotions and acting techniques, sometimes playing to the back row as with the child Hedwig, or pursing his lips and emoting only with the slightest judgmental eyebrow arch that speaks volumes, as with Miss Patricia. The direction that SPLIT heads--and with it, Kevin's character and McAvoy's performance--requires a leap of faith from the audience that Shyamalan rewards with that reveal in the stinger. It doesn't so much change anything that happens before, but it does change your perspective on the film and what it's really doing. SPLIT isn't for everyone: it's a tad too long, Shyamalan still gives himself an annoying cameo, and some may find the extensive psychoanalytical dialogue a little too talky and clinical (though it does provide veteran actress Buckley with her most significant big-screen role in many years). Regardless, it's already going to go down as one of the strongest genre films of the year, with a go-for-broke, gives-it-everything-he's-got performance by McAvoy that's deserving of serious award consideration but will receive none. All is not yet forgiven, Mr. Shyamalan...but this is a huge step in the right direction and it's great to have you back for now.
SPLIT IMAGE (US - 1982) Directed by Ted Kotcheff. Written by Scott Spencer, Robert Kaufman and Robert Mark Kamen. Cast: Michael O'Keefe, Karen Allen, James Woods, Peter Fonda, Elizabeth Ashley, Brian Dennehy, Ronnie Scribner, Michael Sacks, Lee Montgomery, Ken Farmer, Cliff Stevens, John Dukakis, Peter Horton, Deborah Rush, Irma Hall, Bill Engvall. (R, 111 mins) Journeyman director Ted Kotcheff (WAKE IN FRIGHT, NORTH DALLAS FORTY, UNCOMMON VALOR, WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S) had two movies in theaters in October 1982. One was the Sylvester Stallone sleeper hit FIRST BLOOD, a relatively serious drama that introduced the iconic John Rambo, loner Vietnam vet turned flag-draped American killing machine in a series of increasingly ridiculous sequels not directed by Kotcheff. The other was the barely-released SPLIT IMAGE, which only played on 129 screens at its widest release but found a major cult following in video stores and through constant cable airings throughout the decade. Made at a time when Jim Jones and 1978's Jonestown Massacre in Guyana were still in the public consciousness, SPLIT IMAGE followed the very similar 1981 Canadian drama TICKET TO HEAVEN, both involving a young man brainwashed by a religious cult until his family arranges for his kidnapping and subsequent deprogramming. TICKET was nominated for a whopping 14 Genies--the Canadian Oscars--winning four, including Best Film and Best Actor for star Nick Mancuso. SPLIT IMAGE is a bit more conventional take on the subject, with better-known actors for commercial potential, but still has moments of grueling intensity, unflinching brutality, and stomach-knotting suspense.
Following his Oscar-nominated performance in 1979's THE GREAT SANTINI and having 1980's CADDYSHACK stolen from him by four comedy legends, Michael O'Keefe stars as Danny Stetson, a college gymnast from a normal, happy, well-to-do upper-middle class family, with dad Kevin (Brian Dennehy), mom Diana (Elizabeth Ashley), and younger brother Sean (Ronnie Scribner). At a sports bar, Danny flirts with and is immediately attracted to Rebecca (Karen Allen, who had just been in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), who invites him to a movie night at an outreach program called "Community Rescue." He then attends a weekend retreat where he and other visitors meet Neil Kirklander (Peter Fonda), the charismatic leader of "Homeland." Kirklander talks of life needing meaning and how Homeland needs to become a self-sustained community by turning their back on the greed and decadence of modern society (he rails against "Cuisinarts, Perrier, and designer jeans") to focus on love and "creating a better world." While longstanding members busy themselves with woodworking, pottery, and a print shop, newer members are deprived of sleep and sufficient levels of nutrition as a way of systematically breaking them down. Danny is immediately skeptical ("This is a religious cult, isn't it?") and thinks about leaving but as he soon discovers, none of the new recruits (another is played by ubiquitous '70s child star Lee Montgomery of BEN and BURNT OFFERINGS) are ever left alone, and a clingy Rebecca won't even let him go off to use the bathroom by himself. Eventually, Danny decides he's seen enough and attempts to escape in the middle of the night. He almost drowns in a river in the process, and is taken back to Kirklander, and it doesn't take long before an exhausted, scared, and emotionally drained Danny surrenders to what's been a slow and insidious indoctrination. He renounces his former life, burning his clothes and his belongings as Homeland renames him "Joshua," and he calls his mother to curtly inform her that he loves them but he's never coming home.
When an attempt to visit Danny at Homeland results in a scuffle that gets Kevin arrested, the desperate Stetsons have nowhere to turn. They're soon contacted by Charles Pratt (James Woods), an outwardly sketchy sleazebag who's actually an expert deprogrammer hellbent on taking Kirklander down. For $10,000 cash, Pratt and his team will find Danny, abduct him, and bring him home for deprogramming--"to clean out his mind and hang it out to dry"--which, in Pratt's experience, can take anywhere from one hour to several days. Pratt finds Danny handing out pamphlets and flowers on a college campus and his guys grab him and throw him in the back of a van, taking him back to the Stetson home and locking him in a room with boarded-up windows, where Pratt goes to work. Hours upon hours are spent with the aggressive, enraged Pratt breaking through to Danny/"Joshua" in ways that almost parallel an exorcism (Pratt's repeated invocation of "I will not leave this room until Joshua is dead on the floor and Danny is reborn!" is SPLIT IMAGE's version of THE EXORCIST's "The power of Christ compels you!"). Things approach a religious cult take on STRAW DOGS as Rebecca and other Homelanders show up at the Stetson residence under Kirklander's orders in an attempted home invasion to bring "Joshua" back to Homeland.
SPLIT IMAGE is a riveting experience--the sequence where the Homelanders get into the house and Pratt reveals just how driven, obsessed, and violent he can be is absolutely terrifying--filled with top-notch performances that can't help but pale next to Woods. Three years after his breakout in 1979's THE ONION FIELD, the actor was perfecting that twitchy, crude ("I live in a pisshole," he tells Diana), fast-talking "James Woods" persona that we saw in so many great performances in his prime years (FAST-WALKING, VIDEODROME, SALVADOR, BEST SELLER, COP), and his work in SPLIT IMAGE is right up there with the best of them (Woods and Kotcheff would reunite for 1985's much more low-key Mordecai Richler adaptation JOSHUA THEN AND NOW). Another standout is Dennehy (who would later team with Woods in the underrated BEST SELLER), for whom SPLIT IMAGE also helped establish a recurring onscreen persona. Dennehy's Kevin is a loving father but also a successful businessman used to throwing his weight around and getting his way, evidenced in the way he presumptuously assumes he can just buy Danny out of Homeland ("Look, I'm just gonna write a check to this yo-yo," he says of Kirklander). This is vintage Brian Dennehy, who's always been one of our greatest character actors when it comes to conveying overconfident arrogance, which Kotcheff also used for maximum effect in FIRST BLOOD, where the actor's Sheriff Teasle gets way more than he bargained for when he decides to start harassing quiet drifter John Rambo for no reason when all he wants to do is pass through town.
Though O'Keefe is fine in a difficult role, he's overshadowed by Woods, Dennehy, and a coolly sinister Fonda and ultimately undermined by an unconvincing wig he's forced to wear in the second half of the film when he gets his post-indoctrination haircut, almost sidelining him in the same way the quartet of Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, and Bill Murray made him all but invisible in CADDYSHACK (no one cares about Danny Noonan and his college money and his Irish girlfriend anyway, right?). O'Keefe does get a few good moments, particularly in a creepy and absurdly comedic scene where a brainwashed "Joshua" is so overcome with desire for Rebecca--Kirklander forbids romance and any kind of sexual interaction and expression--that he's stirred awake in mid-ejaculation by a wet dream, which traumatizes him so much that he and Rebecca request an immediate meeting with Kirklander, who orders "Joshua" to speak in tongues to rid him of his filthy thoughts. There's some ahead-of-its-time commentary with a pre-emptive rebuking of the culture of greed of the '80s, only in its infancy here, but still voiced in criticism leveled at Kevin and Diana for not noticing that Danny was having a quarterlife crisis because they were focused on money and materialism. It's a facile argument that's not really explored to its full potential, and it's voiced by Danny's little brother Sean in a hackneyed speech that seems more than a little unlikely. SPLIT IMAGE has some other things that don't work. The time element isn't handled very well--it's not clear how long Danny is at Homeland before trying to escape and as a result, his brainwashing can either be seen as too abrupt or so subtle that you don't realize how well they've slowly worked him over (I'm guessing the filmmakers intended the latter, but it doesn't always play that way). And as great as Woods is here, we could use more background into his character. Was he a member of Kirklander's cult who got away? Did he lose a loved one Homeland? He's wearing a wedding ring but a wife is never mentioned. All we learn from the script, credited to Scott Spencer (1981's ENDLESS LOVE was based on his novel), Robert Kaufman (FREEBIE AND THE BEAN, LOVE AT FIRST BITE), and future KARATE KID screenwriter and frequent Luc Besson collaborator Robert Mark Kamen (THE FIFTH ELEMENT, THE TRANSPORTER, TAKEN), is that Pratt really hates Kirklander.
Things almost shit the bed with a terrible final scene that reeks of someone demanding a happy ending, as it just doesn't seem plausible that Kirklander and some of the more intimidating Homelanders would chase Danny and Rebecca (who's ready to leave the cult to be with the reborn Danny), finally corner them and just let them skip away hand-in-hand after Danny simply tells Kirklander to leave them alone. It's a pat and far too easy wrap-up when we should've had at least one confrontation between Pratt and Kirklander, considering how much they allegedly hate one another. It's an unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise mostly solid film, one that managed to overcome its almost non-existent theatrical release to become a word-of-mouth cult movie on VHS and cable. SPLIT IMAGE has been hard to see over the years. It's never been released on DVD or Blu-ray, though it's available to stream on YouTube and still occasionally appears on late-night TV (Epix recently ran it at 2:20 am on a weeknight) if you scour the outer reaches of your onscreen cable guide.
The Roger Corman-produced 1975 classic DEATH RACE 2000 already got a remake with 2008's Jason Statham-starring DEATH RACE. That film has spawned a series of DTV sequels with Luke Goss in place of Statham, with a fourth installment due out later this year. With DEATH RACE 2050, the belated DTV sequel to/unnecessary remake of the 1975 film, Universal now has two different DEATH RACE franchises going. But only DEATH RACE 2050 has the direct involvement of Corman. who wanted another DEATH RACE that recaptured the look and feel of Paul Bartel's original. The satirical element is definitely here, along with some IDIOCRACY-style roasting of American culture, self-aware Syfy snark, and over-the-top Troma levels of comedic gore. In the future of 2050, the United Corporations of America is run by the Chairman (Malcolm McDowell), and the biggest cultural event going is the Death Race, what the Chairman terms an annual celebration of "the freedom to sit on your big fat ass all day!" The top driver is Frankenstein (Manu Bennett), the reigning champion of the Death Race, where the key is to win the race but points are scored by running down pedestrians. Frankenstein's competition is comprised of macho but insecure Jed Perfectus (Burt Grinstead), a closet case unable to face his homosexuality; religious fanatic and right-wing domestic terrorist Tammy the Terrorist (Anessa Ramsey); and rapper/sex tape celebrity Minerva Jefferson (Folake Olowofoyeku). The final car is the self-driving A.B.E., the product of UCA ingenuity and the kind of technological advancement that Death Race co-host Junior (Charlie Farrell) calls a gift that "finally eliminated America's outdated burden of employment." The race is jeopardized by a Resistance movement led by disgruntled former network TV exec Alexis Hamilton (Yancy Butler), who's got a mole inside the operation in the form of Frankenstein's proxy navigator Annie Sullivan (Marci Miller).
DEATH RACE 2050 earns some goodwill by wearing its love of its predecessor on its sleeve, looking every bit as cheap as the 1975 film, with CGI that's probably intentionally bad filling in for some old-school matte work. The jokes fly fast and furious, with Farrell's Junior an almost carbon copy of the performance by The Real Don Steele, and the same goes for the way Shanna Olsen's sycophantic co-host Grace Tickle captures the cloying ass-kissing of Joyce Jameson's Grace Pander in the old film, right down to the repeated refrain of every famous person being "a very good friend of mine." Director/co-writer G.J. Echternkamp has some fun with the renamed cities and states of 2050 (there's "Nueva York," Baltimore is now "Upper Shitville," Arkansas is "Walmartinique," and Dubai is "Washington, DC"), the subplot with Abe suddenly quitting the race to drive off and find itself after an existential AI crisis ("What am I?" the computer voice wonders) is inspired nonsense, and with his crazy toupee, crude demeanor, and being surrounded by topless women, McDowell's Chairman is obviously a 2050 incarnation of Donald Trump. But a little of DEATH RACE 2050 goes a long way. The comedy is too blunt and heavy-handed, and the referencing a little too winking for its own good. It drifts off into post-nuke MAD MAX territory by the end, probably to take advantage of being shot on Corman's old Peru stomping grounds where several of his VHS mainstays from the late '80s and early '90s were made (Luis Llosa, one of Corman's top proteges from that period, went on to direct Hollywood movies like THE SPECIALIST and ANACONDA, and gets a producer credit here). As Frankenstein, the dull Bennett doesn't even come close to the stoical badassery of David Carradine, but shows he can adequately function as a backup Scott Adkins should the first choice be unavailable. In the end, DEATH RACE 2050 has its moments, and if approached with low expectations, isn't terrible by any means, even if it's just a significantly louder and much more obnoxious DEATH RACE 2000. (R, 93 mins) TRAIN TO BUSAN (South Korea - 2016)
At this point, there really isn't much anyone can add to the zombie genre, but the South Korean import TRAIN TO BUSAN finds ways to spruce up the familiar with clever ideas, inspired set pieces, interesting characters, and some unexpected instances of gut-wrenching emotion. Saek-woo (Gong Yoo) is a workaholic fund manager whose wife left him and their young daughter Su-an (Kim Soo-an), who's now mostly left in the care of Saek-woo's live-in mother. Upset at her father's distance and that her birthday gift is a duplicate of something he already gave her, Su-an insists on being taken by train to Busan to visit her mother. Once on the train, all hell breaks loose when a bleeding, nearly feral woman sprints about, bites a passenger, and unleashes a rapidly-spreading virus that turns victims into ferociously aggressive zombies. What follows is the usual scenario of a small band of resourceful survivors fighting their way through the train to safety, trying to outrun the contagion and the growing zombie horde as a state of emergency is declared and train station after train station is closed. An easy description of TRAIN TO BUSAN would be "WORLD WAR Z meets SNOWPIERCER," but it also plays a bit like DEMONS on a bullet train as well as demonstrating the tone of a 1970s disaster movie. Where writer Park Joo-suk and director Yeon Sang-ho help separate TRAIN TO BUSAN from the rest of the crowd is by packing it with one nail-biting sequence after another, with the stop at the Daejean train station cementing itself as an instant classic, culminating in the horrifying revelation that the military personnel sent to save them have already been infected and have turned. Other standout scenes include the devastating moment when Saek-woo calls his mother and expresses concern about the sound of her voice as her infection becomes apparent and he's forced to listen to her turn over the phone.
The bond that forms between the ever-diminishing group of survivors is strong and the actors excellent, making you really feel it when they start getting killed off. Saek-woo has an initial adversary in burly smartass Sang-hwa (a terrific performance by Ma Dong-seok), which isn't helped by Saek-woo not hesitating to leave Sang-hwa stranded in one of the cars with the zombies until the last second, but they set aside their differences, form a grudging partnership and take turns looking out for one another's loved ones, whether it's Su-an or Sang-hwa's very pregnant wife Seong-kyeong (Jung Yu-Mi). Self-absorbed Saek-woo undergoes a transformation into a selfless hero over the course of the film, starting out by telling his daughter "Look out for yourself before anyone else" when she offers her seat to an elderly woman who reminds her of her grandmother ("Granny's knees always hurt!" the compassionate child says). His daughter shows him the error of his ways ("You only care about yourself! That's why Mommy left!") and between that and Sang-hwa's merciless ballbusting ("Fund manager? No wonder you're an asshole"), Saek-woo becomes a hero. To go with the notion of this being an updated take on a '70s disaster epic, there's also the obligatory villain who makes an already bad situation worse with his actions: loathsome businessman Yong-suk (Kim Eui-sung) is this film's Richard Chamberlain from THE TOWERING INFERNO or Paul Reiser from ALIENS, an unbelievably duplicitous asshole who starts rumors, sabotages the safety of others, and puts his own well-being ahead of everyone, usually in the form of literally throwing other passengers at zombies in order to save his own ass. At one point, he even cavalierly sacrifices someone who comes to his assistance after he trips and falls running away from the zombies. This archetype is a staple of such films, and they've rarely been as off-the-charts despicable as Yong-suk, but true to TRAIN TO BUSAN's refusal to stick too closely to convention, even he gets a slightly redeeming trait by the end. The crux of the story with TRAIN TO BUSAN breaks no new ground, but there's enough tweaking and unexpected depth to its characters that it manages to separate itself from the crowd and successfully establish its own zombie bona fides. (Unrated, 118 mins)
THE DISAPPOINTMENTS ROOM (US - 2016)
There's a legitimately sincere attempt at a modern gothic aesthetic to THE DISAPPOINTMENTS ROOM, but it just never takes off. It's co-written by PRISON BREAK star Wentworth Miller, who wrote Park Chan-wook's similarly gothic 2013 arthouse film STOKER, and perhaps this was intended as some sort of companion piece with its dark secrets and family tragedies. These are definitely recurring themes to Miller's work as a screenwriter, but THE DISAPPOINTMENTS ROOM's title becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Obviously mangled in post-production and even after it set a land-speed record for vacating multiplexes--the DVD/Blu-ray and streaming version runs seven minutes shorter than what was in theaters last fall, omitting an apparently important scene where the main character has a meltdown in front of some dinner guests; here the guests are shown waiting for her then simply leaving as if the dinner never happened--the film was also left on the shelf for two years as a casualty of Relativity's bankruptcy woes. The end result is a film that feels unfinished and abandoned, even more so now that it's missing that dinner scene.
Architect Dana (Kate Beckinsale), her Mr. Mom husband David (the unbelievably bland Mel Raido), and their young son Lucas (Duncan Joiner) move to a decrepit mansion ominously known as The Blacker House. They're trying to get away from the city and some bad memories, namely the sudden death of their infant daughter. While exploring the house, Dana moves a large armoire and discovers a hidden room that's not on the blueprints and can only be locked from the outside. She learns from a local historian (Marcia DeRousse) that it's a "disappointments room," the kind of room where wealthy families in less enlightened times would lock away a deformed or mentally challenged child that would cause social embarrassment. Dana regularly visits the room and is soon plagued by visions of a young girl with a facial deformity as well as encountering the ghost of Judge Blacker (Gerald McRaney), the home's original owner, a rich and powerful local who kept his "disappointment" daughter hidden from the public. Dana goes off her meds, starts losing track of time and unknowingly becoming violent toward Lucas, all while engaging in a testy but flirtatious back-and-forth with stud handyman Ben (Lucas Till), one of many story threads that go absolutely nowhere as slowly as possible. Some of Miller's gothic intentions come through (a character is shown watching JANE EYRE on TV at one point), director D.J. Caruso (THE SALTON SEA, DISTURBIA) occasionally invokes a mood tantamount to a modern take on an early '60s AIP production, and the film seems to be trying to say something about motherhood and mental illness a la THE BABADOOK or LIGHTS OUT, but by the time the big reveal comes and the credits abruptly start rolling at 77 minutes, you're left with the realization that there's simply nothing here and the whole endeavor was just smoke and mirrors that can't even be salvaged by a pro like Beckinsale. Still, as disastrous as THE DISAPPOINTMENTS ROOM is, it has to get a little credit for the effective casting of McRaney as the ghostly villain. But that's all it's got going for it. (R, 85 mins)
