In addition to creating random franchises for its 1440 DTV division with sequels to TREMORS, THE SCORPION KING, DEATH RACE, DRAGONHEART, and JARHEAD, Universal has also decided to start raiding their back catalog for some really belated follow-ups like KINDERGARTEN COP 2 (27 years between films), HARD TARGET 2 (21 years after the first), COP AND A HALF: NEW RECRUIT (24 years), and THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE (a ludicrous 42 years after THE CAR). After 28 years, they've given us the sequel you never knew you didn't need with BACKDRAFT 2. Incredibly, they managed to get screenwriter Gregory Widen to cobble a script together, somehow convincing him to take a brief respite from cashing HIGHLANDER and THE PROPHECY royalty checks for the rest of his life. Also returning are William Baldwin as Brian McCaffrey, now a Chicago fire chief, and Donald Sutherland as the incarcerated Ronald Bartel, the Hannibal Lecter of Windy City arsonists. The story focuses on Chief McCaffrey's hothead nephew Sean (Joe Anderson as the son of Kurt Russell's late character from the 1991 original), a plays-by-his-own-rules arson whisperer prone to inner monologues that begin with statements like "We only come out at night..." when confronting a fire and "Stay out of my burn!" when higher-ranking fire department desk jockeys and pencil-pushers question his methods. Forced to take on rookie partner Maggie Rening (Alisha Bailey) and greeting her with "You know anything about this work?," Sean--who also says things like "I don't like fire...but I understand it"--is convinced he's dealing with a serial arsonist in a convoluted plot that ends up involving mercenary contractors selling missile production secrets to either the Russians or the Chinese. Or something. Who gives a shit?
Less a sequel to BACKDRAFT and more like a pilot for a bad spinoff series that got rejected by Crackle, BACKDRAFT 2 never gets around the insufferably grating performance of Anderson (who was a great Mason Verger when he replaced Michael Pitt on the third season of HANNIBAL), who comes off as one of the most off-putting heroes in quite some time. Much of that is due to the British actor seriously overcompensating with his American accent, a problem facing every cast member aside from Baldwin (who's really looking like Alec these days) and Sutherland, as this was shot mostly in Romania and Canada with an almost-entirely British cast (more than everyone else, the guy playing Sean's ATF nemesis is seriously struggling with his American accent). At least Baldwin emerges unscathed in his handful of scenes, but Sutherland, who couldn't have spent more than a day on the set, is a hammy embarrassment as the gleeful, cackling Bartel, who's consulted by Sean, correctly assuming that the arsonists have sought the advice of "the master." So terribly-written and cartoonishly cliched in almost every aspect that it practically qualifies as self-parody, BACKDRAFT 2, directed by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (APOLLO 18, THE HOLLOW POINT), offers a hero who lives in an abandoned warehouse that's approximately the size of an airplane hangar, a potential drinking game every time someone gravely intones "It's a backdraft," a climactic showdown in a massive shipyard, a shitty theme song by what sounds like an Imagine Dragons cover band, and what might go down as the funniest bad guy demise of the year. It's one of the most cynical name-brand DTV cash-ins to come down the pike since, well, THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE, and that also goes for BACKDRAFT director Ron Howard, who gets a courtesy executive producer credit but I'm willing to bet he won't even know this exists until his accountant shows him his 2019 income tax return. As for Universal dusting off ancient catalog titles for really late Redbox sequels, what's next? May I suggest Scott Eastwood in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER 2? (R, 102 mins) NEVER GROW OLD (Ireland/Luxembourg/Belgium/France - 2019)
A muddy and bloody western of the post-PROPOSITION sort, NEVER GROW OLD is part of a recent trend of underseen revisionist European art westerns, similar in tone and style to SLOW WEST, THE SALVATION, and BRIMSTONE. Written and directed by Irish filmmaker Ivan Kavanagh (THE CANAL), the film is set in 1849 in a puritanical haven of Garlow, a town on the California Trail. Overzealous Preacher Pike (Danny Webb) effectively rules Garlow, having banished alcohol, gambling, and prostitution to its economic detriment. Most of the businesses have left, and the residents are following suit. Garlow's undertaker/carpenter, Irish immigrant Patrick Tate (Emile Hirsch), doesn't have much work, but he does have a pregnant French-born wife, Audrey (Deborah Francois), son Thomas (Quinn Topper Marcus), and young daughter Emma (Molly McCann). Patrick tries to talk Audrey into leaving on the two-month journey to the promised land of California, but she hopes to build a good, Christian life in Garlow. That goes to hell on a dark and stormy night with the arrival of outlaw Dutch Albert (John Cusack, looking like cult filmmaker Richard Stanley) and his two cohorts, Sicily (Camille Pistone), and hulking mute Dumb-Dumb (Sam Louwyck), who carries his preserved severed tongue and uses it as a comedic prop. Albert is in pursuit of Bill Crabtree, an ex-partner who cheated him out of some money, and intimidates Patrick into taking him to see Crabtree's wife (Anne Coesens), who claims he left her and their teenage daughter a year ago. Disappointed that there's no booze, gambling, or women in Garlow, Albert decides to buy the decrepit hotel, reopening it as a saloon with gambling and whores, defying Preacher Pike and causing an escalating body count, which keeps Patrick busy but puts a strain on his family, especially when Dumb-Dumb decides he wants Audrey for himself and Patrick is too afraid to do anything about it.
NEVER GROW OLD opens with some thinly-veiled jabs at evangelicals and quickly takes a turn for the relentlessly downbeat, with Patrick constantly being prodded, bullied, and emasculated by the ruthless Albert, who doesn't get much resistance in his takeover of Garlow, either from the all-talk Preacher Pike or the useless sheriff (Tim Ahern), and you know this is the type of movie where a meek character like Patrick will only be pushed so far before he snaps. Albert's atrocities are endless, particularly when Crabtree's financially-strapped wife begs to be hired as a prostitute, and he'll only take her on if the teenage daughter is part of the package. Dutch Albert is a character who makes UNFORGIVEN's Little Bill Daggett look affable, and to NEVER GROW OLD's benefit, this is the John Cusack that even John Cusack seems to have forgotten about most of the time. He's absolutely terrifying as a western outlaw version of Frank Booth, and it's easily his best performance since 2014's LOVE & MERCY. NEVER GROW OLD doesn't blaze any new trails, but it makes an unsettling impression with its grim atmosphere, a climax as violent as Travis Bickle's rampage in TAXI DRIVER, and Cusack bringing to life a personification of pure evil that sticks with you. Look for this one to find a cult following pretty quickly. (R, 100 mins)
THE NIGHTCOMERS (UK - 1972) Directed by Michael Winner. Written by Michael Hastings. Cast: Marlon Brando, Stephanie Beacham, Harry Andrews, Thora Hird, Verna Harvey, Christopher Ellis, Anna Palk. (R, 97 mins) A prequel before the term was part of the moviegoing lexicon, 1972's THE NIGHTCOMERS details the events that took place prior to those depicted in THE INNOCENTS, the 1961 film based on Henry James' classic 1898 gothic horror novella The Turn of the Screw. In THE INNOCENTS, co-scripted by Truman Capote, Deborah Kerr starred as Miss Giddens, a governess in charge of Miles (Martin Stephens) and Flora (Pamela Franklin), two orphaned young children essentially left on their own at a foreboding estate by their cold-hearted uncle (Michael Redgrave), who became their guardian and has never had any interest in raising them. The estate is haunted by the ghosts of their previous governess, Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop) and groundskeeper Peter Quint (Peter Wyngarde), and Miss Giddens comes to believe the ghosts are attempting to possess the children. Much changed as far as what could be shown in movies in the decade since THE INNOCENTS, and THE NIGHTCOMERS, directed by Michael Winner (THE MECHANIC, DEATH WISH) and just released on Blu-ray by Kino-Lorber (because physical media is dead) takes full advantage of it. It delves with little restraint into the sordid backstory of Quint and Miss Jessel, buoyed by ability to explicitly depict things that could barely be hinted at in 1961, and given Winner's tendency to revel in being a provocateur, that really seems to be the only reason for THE NIGHTCOMERS' existence.
Winner and screenwriter Michael Hastings (THE ADVENTURERS) are hampered by the fact that the scares are limited because the horror elements--the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel haunting the estate--don't yet exist in context. They're just people here, and with little in the way of horror, the filmmakers have to go for unease and discomfort. Miles (Christopher Ellis) and Flora (Verna Harvey) are left in the care of Miss Jessel (Stephanie Beacham) and cranky but doting housekeeper Mrs. Grose, played here by Thora Hird (and by Megs Jenkins in THE INNOCENTS), with specific instructions by their absent uncle (Harry Andrews) to basically leave him alone unless there's a medical issue with one of the kids and he'll check in every six months or so. The kids, particularly Miles, idolize the eccentric, mischievous Quint (Marlon Brando, with long hair and an inconsistent Irish brogue that makes him look and sound like Richard Harris and serves a test run for his MISSOURI BREAKS histrionics), who seems to do little but clown around and indulge in drunken philosophical blather. This angers killjoy Mrs. Grose but falls right in line with Marlon Brando's love of tossing the script, ad-libbing, and doing whatever the hell he feels like doing while the cameras are rolling.
Quint and Miss Jessel's relationship begins with violence as he sexually assaults her in her room, but it soon gives way to consensual sadomasochism as the prim, proper governess finds she enjoys bondage, rough sex and being hog-tied by Quint in a couple of sweat-soaked sex scenes that prefigure the kind of explicit material in Brando's still-controversial turn in the next year's LAST TANGO IN PARIS. Miles spends a lot of time following Quint around, and after he spies on the pair's carnal games, he convinces Flora to role-play the same kind of S&M activities as they naively mimic intercourse, or as Miles calls it when they're caught by Mrs. Grose, "doing sex." There's enough "problematic" content in THE NIGHTCOMERS that Woke Twitter's Class of 2019 would have a field day cancelling Winner and Brando permanently, but the impact of Quint and Miss Jessel's relationship on the children was enough in 1972 to necessitate making Miles and Flora older than they were in THE INNOCENTS, simply due to the increased sexual element.
Marlon Brando and Michael Winner on the set of THE NIGHTCOMERS
The casting doesn't really work, as Flora should be about nine years old if this is purported to take place before THE INNOCENTS, yet Harvey is 19 and looks it, plus Flora is supposed to be the younger sibling but Harvey is clearly older than Ellis, who was only 14 at the time of filming (it's interesting that Winner felt the need to address the more overt sexuality of the story by casting an adult female as the younger sibling, but determined the material was acceptable enough for a 14-year-old boy to be shown hog-tying his sister and engaging in clothed play-thrusting on his of-age co-star). Feeling like a lesser Hammer or Amicus production of the period, THE NIGHTCOMERS is a slow-burner that never really ignites until an admittedly unsettling climax, and while it's developed a cult following over the years, it's really only notable as Brando's sole foray into horror until 1996's THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Though a few prominent critics were fond of it, THE NIGHTCOMERS was a box office flop upon its release by Avco Embassy in February 1972. It did, however, mark the last film in Brando's free-falling "lost years" phase that dated back to the mid-1960s, as THE GODFATHER would be in theaters a month later, giving the notoriously difficult actor a triumphant comeback for the ages and a second Oscar.
THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN (Ireland/France/Iceland - 2019) Directed by P.B. Shemran (Farhad Safinia). Written by Todd Komarnicki and P.B. Shemran (Farhad Safinia). Cast: Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Natalie Dormer, Steve Coogan, Stephen Dillane, Ioan Gruffudd, Eddie Marsan, Jennifer Ehle, Jeremy Irvine, David O'Hara, Anthony Andrews, Laurence Fox, Lars Brygmann, Bryan Murray, Sean Duggan, Olivia McKevitt, Brendan Patricks, Shane Noone. (Unrated, 124 mins) A longtime dream project that Mel Gibson's had on the backburner since purchasing the movie rights to Simon Winchester's book when it was released in 1998, THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN ultimately became a nightmare of behind-the-scenes clashes and multiple lawsuits. Gibson began developing it as far back as 2001, when the great John Boorman (DELIVERANCE, EXCALIBUR) was set to write and direct. That fell apart and Boorman's script was reworked in 2007 by Todd Komarnicki (SULLY), with Luc Besson attached to direct, but that was right around the time that Gibson's traffic stop and other offscreen problems essentially made him persona non grata in Hollywood for at least the next decade. Nine years later, with numerous international financiers, Gibson finally got THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN going with a new script by his friend and APOCALYPTO collaborator Farhad Safinia, who would also be making his directing debut. It was near the end of filming in Ireland in 2016 that disagreements began to develop between Gibson/Safinia and Voltage Pictures head Nicolas Chartier, when the pair asked for an additional $2.5 million for five additional days to shoot some scenes that they insisted had to be done on location at Oxford University (Trinity College was filling in for Oxford until then). Chartier rejected the request, telling them that they were already behind schedule and over the $25 million budget, so Trinity in Dublin would have to suffice.
Believing the film wouldn't be complete without these Oxford-shot scenes, Gibson told Chartier that Safinia wasn't being permitted to sufficiently finish the film. Gibson sued Voltage Pictures for breach of contract, claiming the film wasn't completed and he was guaranteed final cut, with Safinia also suing, claiming copyright infringement, accusing Voltage of never finalizing his contract, thus "his" script (which still contained some of Boorman's and Komarnicki's work) was never officially handed over to them. When Voltage released a statement accusing Gibson and Safinia of trying to "hijack the movie," Safinia sued for defamation. A judge ruled in favor of Voltage all around, and when Safinia's planned 160-minute film was whittled down to 124 minutes with neither Gibson nor Safinia's input, Gibson unsuccessfully tried to prevent it from being screened for potential distributors. These lawsuits kept the film on the shelf over 2017 and 2018 until a settlement was reached in early 2019, with Gibson removing his producer credit and any mention of his Icon Productions company. Safinia also successfully petitioned to have his name removed as director and co-writer, with credit now going to the non-existent "P.B. Shemran." Also absent is any mention of Boorman, still credited as a co-writer in initial press releases, in festival reviews, and on IMDb, but whose name is nowhere to be found on the released film. A troubled production, for sure, but there was a time when a prestige period piece starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn would've been one of the most anticipated films of its year instead of one that gets a buried on VOD like a state secret by lowly, Redbox-ready Vertical Entertainment, with seemingly everyone involved actively distancing themselves from what sounds less like a battle of artistic differences and more like an alpha-male pissing contest.
With that kind of chaotic backstage melodrama, you'd think THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN would be a folly of category five shitstorm proportions along the lines of LONDON FIELDS, another recent film left unreleased for several years due to endless litigation. It's a handsomely-produced period piece with meticulous production design that's often beautiful to look at and undeniably sincere in its approach, and while this Gibson-disowned version has some all-too-obvious red flags for post-production discord, it has other problems for which Gibson and Safinia should probably be held accountable. An account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN focuses on Prof. James Murray (Gibson), a Scottish autodidact and linguist and self-taught expert in over a dozen languages, who successfully lobbies the powers that be at Oxford to entrust him with the task of compiling every word in the English language and its origin into a comprehensive, epic volume ("We are about to embark on the greatest adventure our language has ever known!" he declares). He estimates it'll take five years, but the project soon becomes too daunting, even with research assistants Henry Bradley (Ioan Gruffudd) and Charles Hall (Jeremy Irvine). It also places a strain on his family, with wife Ada (Jennifer Ehle) dutifully supporting him but truthfully not very enthused about moving their large family to a smaller home as Murray obsesses over his all-consuming project. The OED hits a brick wall, not helped by sneering publisher Philip Lyttleton Gell (Laurence Fox, conveying the erudite pomposity that his dad James and uncle Edward have projected so masterfully throughout their long careers) and supercilious Oxford board member Benjamin Jowett (Anthony Andrews), both of whom deem Murray's self-education dubious and a dishonor to the university ("I wonder if it's time to ease our gentle Scotsman off his little perch," Jowett harumphs).
Realizing it will take much longer than five years to complete the dictionary, Murray comes up with the idea of having a "dictionary by democracy," asking the general public to contribute words and origins, with Murray and his assistants determining the validity of the info provided (a pre-Wikipedia of sorts). Their largest selection of entries comes from an unexpected source: Dr. William Chester Minor (Penn, in his first feature film since 2015's THE GUNMAN), an American expat, paranoid schizophrenic and PTSD-afflicted Civil War vet being held at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane after killing a married father of six that he mistook for a wartime enemy. Minor is also a gifted surgeon and intellectual who earned reading privileges in the asylum after saving the life of an injured guard. He also feels remorse for what he's done and offers his military pension to his victim's widow Eliza (Natalie Dormer), who reluctantly accepts after briefly turning to prostitution to support her children. She begins to visit Minor in the asylum, he teaches her to read, and she slowly comes around to forgiving him after witnessing the extent of his mental illness. Dr. Murray visits and befriends Minor as well, which causes friction with the Oxford board when he insists that a known murderer be lauded as a major OED contributor.
Frequently heavy-handed and filled with barely-concealed allusions to Gibson's own personal quest for redemption, THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN benefits from his solid, committed performance, but almost everything else is miscalculated to varying degrees. As in Komarnicki's script for SULLY, the film needs a villain where there really isn't one, so Gell and Jowett are there to undermine Murray and stonewall the OED at every turn for no legitimate reason at all aside from manufactured drama. Likewise at the asylum, the kindly and benevolent Dr. Richard Brayne (Stephen Dillane) suddenly does everything short of twirl a mustache while maniacally cackling to make Minor's life a living hell, starting with cutting off visits from Murray and Eliza and eventually barbaric forms of "therapy" like violently-induced vomiting that he blames on "catalepsy." Maybe some of this was explained in the excised 40-odd minutes of footage, but as presented here, Minor's deteriorating condition (starting with a self-castration) lacks a proper buildup. Not helping matters is a wildly overacting Penn, who's been given carte blanche to gorge on a buffet of scenery by Safinia and Gibson, who also seriously bungle the time element. There is one major instance where the blame can obviously be laid on some sloppy editing in post, as evidenced when Eliza's daughter slaps a white-bearded Minor, who's next seen in his room shouting "Look what you've done!" and his beard is suddenly dark brown, making it almost certain that the scene doesn't belong where Voltage's editors have placed it. But elsewhere, it becomes a huge distraction when Penn's Minor seems to be the only person who ages over the course of the film, set from 1872 to 1910. With a big, bushy salt-and-pepper beard, Gibson looks exactly the same from start to finish, as does everyone else and, save for the final shot at a Murray family gathering, neither Murray's nor Eliza's kids ever grow up as the story progresses and the decades pass. There's also some extensive Minor voiceover in letters he sends to Murray and it's clearly not Penn's voice reciting it. These goofs and haphazard stitches aside, what's here is a compelling story. Penn seems to keep himself in check in his initial scenes with Gibson (who is really good here), and the film also offers nice supporting turns from Eddie Marsan as a sympathetic asylum guard and Steve Coogan as Murray's biggest supporter on the Oxford board. But this is a compromised work that represents the vision of an executive producer doing damage control, and not that of the producer-star who spent a decade-and-a-half trying to get it made and was perhaps too close to it for his--and the film's--own good.
IRON WARRIOR (Italy - 1987) Directed by Al Bradley (Alfonso Brescia). Written by Steven Luotto and Al Bradley (Alfonso Brescia). Cast: Miles O'Keeffe, Savina Gersak, Elisabeth Kaza, Iris Peynado, Tim Lane, Tiziana Altieri, Frank Daddi, Josie Coppini, Malcolm Borg, Conrad Borg, Jon Rosser. (R, 87 mins) One of the countless Italian ripoffs of CONAN THE BARBARIAN, 1983's ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE helped keep Miles O'Keeffe employed following his career-killing Hollywood debut opposite Bo Derek in her husband John's 1981 fiasco TARZAN THE APE MAN. Directed by the venerable Italo sleaze king Aristide Massaccesi (aka "Joe D'Amato") under his "David Hills" pseudonym, ATOR led to the 1984 sequel THE BLADE MASTER, better known today by its MST3K incarnation CAVE DWELLERS. The third in the franchise, IRON WARRIOR, is an odd in-series reboot of sorts that almost feels like it wasn't intended to be part of the ATOR universe. Made not by Massaccesi and his Filmirage outfit but by producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (BEYOND THE DOOR, THE VISITOR, PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING), IRON WARRIOR gives Ator a completely different origin story and puts him in decidedly different, R-rated surroundings with gore and T&A that doesn't gel with its two PG-rated predecessors. Assonitis farmed out directing duties to Alfonso Brescia as a consolation prize after removing him from 1986's CHOKE CANYON during pre-production when he decided the action-and-stunt-heavy film was too much for Brescia to handle. Better-known by his Americanized pseudonym "Al Bradley," and a perennial Italian D-lister, Brescia (1930-2001) cut his teeth on low-grade peplum (1964's THE MAGNIFICENT GLADIATOR), spaghetti westerns (1968's CRY OF DEATH) and men-on-a-mission WWII movies (1969's KILL ROMMEL!), never distinguishing himself in any conceivable way as his filmography ranked several notches below mediocre. As his career went on, he made the 1974 action comedy SUPER STOOGES VS. THE WONDER WOMEN and even managed to get Jack Palance to star in the 1976 GODFATHER knockoff BLOOD AND BULLETS, but it wasn't until his quartet of oppressively dull post-STAR WARS space operas (and the sexually explicit 1980 offshoot THE BEAST IN SPACE, which featured hardcore footage) that Brescia cemented his place in Eurocult history, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
Shot on the same sets with most of the same supporting cast and looking like inept community theater versions of Antonio Margheriti's GAMMA 1 quartet over a decade earlier, 1977's COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS, 1978's BATTLE OF THE STARS, 1978's WAR OF THE ROBOTS, and 1979's STAR ODYSSEY are virtually interchangeable and are differentiated only by their leading men (John Richardson in the first two, followed by Antonio Sabato in ROBOTS and Gianni Garko in ODYSSEY) and rank among the ultimate feats of cine-masochistic endurance. COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS actually made it into some US theaters in 1979 but the other three went straight to syndicated TV and later surfaced on any number of public domain DVD sets, though I wouldn't be surprised if someone put them out on Blu-ray box set if the elements are able to be tracked down (nor would I be surprised when I clicked on "pre-order" when that hypothetical listing turns up on Amazon). With Scorpion's release of IRON WARRIOR, we're forced to confront what was once unthinkable: the stunning realization that an "Al Bradley" joint is on Blu-ray which, depending on your tolerance for bad movies, is either cause for celebration or the cracking of one of the seven seals that will open the gates of Hell.
IRON WARRIOR isn't exactly an expensive epic, but it's obviously got the biggest budget that the perpetually hapless Brescia was ever granted. It's his most polished and professional-looking film, shot on some stunning locales on Malta, where the production also took full advantage of some still-standing sets left over from Robert Altman's POPEYE seven years earlier. Brescia also had the added bonus of having veteran optical effects technician Wally Gentleman as a cinematographer. A real person despite his name sounding like a hastily-blurted alias, Gentleman worked on the effects crew of Assonitis' BEYOND THE DOOR and scored a visual effects gig with Francis Ford Coppola on 1982's ONE FROM THE HEART. Gentleman also worked on Douglas Trumbull's effects team for Stanley Kubrick's 1968 landmark 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and how he went from that to serving as Alfonso Brescia's cinematographer on the third movie in the ATOR series is a story that demands to be told. Watching IRON WARRIOR in a pristine HD transfer is quite a different experience than seeing it on VHS back in the late '80s. It's less of an ATOR movie and more like a companion piece to Lucio Fulci's hallucinatory 1983 sword-and-sorcery saga CONQUEST. It's trippy and surreal, like if an Italian CONAN ripoff was directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
The script, credited to "Al Bradley" and veteran voice actor Steven Luotto (who can be heard dubbing Mark Gregory in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS), is a hot mess of curses, hexes, and mysticism, with Brescia shamelessly stealing iconic imagery from SUPERMAN, STAR WARS, and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Believing in a prophecy that she would be destroyed by twin brothers, evil old witch Phoedra (Elisabeth Kaza) spies on eight-year-old siblings Ator and Trogar and kidnaps Trogar as part of a revenge plot against Deeva (Iris Peynado), who freed Phoedra's enslaved people. 18 years later, Phoedra summons the Iron Warrior (Frank Daddi) to kill the King (Tim Lane), who sends his princess daughter Janna (Assonitis' girlfriend Savina Gersak) away for her own safety. Deeva puts Janna in the care of lone warrior Ator (O'Keeffe), but not before he's seduced by Phoedra in the form of a nude young temptress (Tiziana Altieri). Prophesied to protect the King's daughter ("She for who you are fated needs you now!" Deeva gravely intones), Ator leads Janna on a treacherous journey where they're constantly thwarted by the supernatural shenanigans of Phoedra, who pits brother against brother as the deadly Iron Warrior is--you guessed it--the grown Trogar, whose body and soul have been taken over by the spell of Phoedra.
Or something like that. IRON WARRIOR makes absolutely no sense and there's no chemistry between O'Keeffe and Gersak, reunited from Ruggero Deodato's 1986 Indiana Jones ripoff THE LONE RUNNER (released in the US in 1988 by Trans World Entertainment, who also got IRON WARRIOR on a whopping 17 screens in January 1987), but it's so hypnotic and strange from beginning to end that it ultimately doesn't matter. It's disorienting by design, especially a scene where Ator and Janna cross a precarious suspension bridge that's genuinely dizzying to watch. It's an ATOR movie on shrooms, something that Red and Mandy would watch while eating TV dinners, and the only reason it hasn't been embraced by the stoner crowd is because they just aren't aware of it. There's enough craziness here that I'm willing to bet Assonitis--known for firing directors and finishing movies himself--had more to do with the creative direction of this than Brescia, especially when you consider the bizarre imagery in something like THE VISITOR. But for all its visual flair, it's still tough to take it seriously when Deeva's trial of Phoedra employs the same type of "Council of Elders" faces on a giant screen behind the accused, who stands there shackled by rotating hula hoops on loan from Jor-El. Or the Iron Warrior's resemblance to Darth Vader. Or a long action sequence where Ator and Janna are in a cavern being chased by giant RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK rolling boulders. O'Keeffe's catatonic performance actually enhances the hazy, stoned vibe, though he wouldn't be back for the fourth and final ATOR installment, 1990's QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD. That marked the return of Massaccesi and the introduction of a new Ator in the form of Grand Rapids, MI native Eric Allan Kramer, who presumably got the job after playing Thor in the 1988 TV-movie THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS (Kramer is probably best known as Little John in Mel Brooks' ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS, and he's currently co-starring on the critically-acclaimed AMC series LODGE 49). As far as IRON WARRIOR is concerned, Scorpion's Blu-ray certainly makes the case that there's some artistic merit to it, even if the method to its madness gets lost along the way. Nevertheless, it takes a lesser-ranked place among other threequels--HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH or THE EXORCIST III, for example--that either break from established formula or serve as outliers or stealth secret weapons in their respective franchises, an ATOR: TOKYO DRIFT, if you will.
THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER aka BEHIND THE SHUTTERS (Spain - 1973; US release 1975) Directed by J.A. Bardem. Written by Santiago Moncada. Cast: Jean Seberg, Marisol, Barry Stokes, Perla Cristal, Rudy Gaebel, Gerard Tichy, Alicia Altabella, Vidal Molina, Maria Bardem, Juan Bardem, Miguel Bardem, Gustavo Re. (R, 113 mins) A Holy Grail of sorts for Eurocult aficionados, the 1973 Spanish thriller THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER has long been a staple of the bootleg circuit in editions that have been cropped and chopped and, at best, semi-watchable. Vinegar Syndrome has just released a fully-restored, uncut version on Blu-ray, in its original 2.35:1 widescreen (because physical media is dead), and in an era where obscurities tend to be revered and hailed as lost classics simply because they've been virtually impossible to see for so long, this is an insidious and quietly unsettling little gem that's been waiting patiently to be rediscovered and is thus far the top Blu-ray resurrection of 2019. What makes its chilling effectiveness all the more surprising is that director Juan Antonio Bardem (Javier's uncle) was a filmmaker known more for exploring social and political concerns in Spanish neo-realist works like 1955's DEATH OF A CYCLIST and 1956's MAIN STREET, films that earned him a spot on the shit list of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. An avowed communist whose early films offered blistering critiques of Spain's politics and bourgeois hypocrisy, Bardem had no ties to or demonstrable affinity for the horror genre aside from stepping in to complete the final shots and post-production of 1973's A BELL FROM HELL when the director, his friend Claudio Guerin, died tragically in an on-set accident when he fell from the film's bell tower on the last day of shooting. But make no mistake, Bardem has a horror master's touch with THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER, showing off an palpable verve and panache with at least two terrifying and unforgettable sequences that are so audaciously well-crafted that it's a regretful missed opportunity that he never hopped on the '70s giallo bandwagon or teamed with someone like Paul Naschy, the face of Spanish horror during that period.
In a rural Spanish town, an actress named Perla (Perla Cristal) wakes up in the morning and is brutally stabbed to death by a one-night stand who emerges from the bathroom dressed in Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp costume. The killer raids her belongings for whatever cash he can find, leaves the Chaplin mask and wardrobe behind, and disappears down a lonely country road. Cut to an isolated house in the vicinity, where things are tense between Ruth Miller (Jean Seberg) and her stepdaughter Chris (25-year-old Marisol, whose career began as a popular Spanish child star and then a singer in her teen years) after they were abandoned by Chris' father a year earlier. While Ruth hides mail and rants that "Men don't love...they possess, they injure, they invade," Chris is bitter and resentful and blames Ruth for driving her father away. The increasingly fragile, unstable Chris also has a paralyzing fear of rain and running water after being raped in a locker room shower shortly after her father left. Ruth's comforting of Chris involves leering looks and lingering kisses that aren't in any way maternal, and that's only the beginning of the perverse dysfunction that's going on. Following a violent storm, Ruth finds drifter Barney Webster (British actor Barry Stokes, later to play a similar role but as a disguised alien in Norman J. Warren's PREY), with only a backpack and a guitar, sleeping nude in the barn. While Chris is out horseback-riding with local trainer Lewis (Rudy Gaebel), sex-starved Ruth makes breakfast for Barney and the pair end up in bed under the stipulation that he leaves before Chris returns home. That only encourages Barney to stick around (Ruth: "You've had your breakfast, now get out!" Barney: "How could I leave after something as tasty as that?"), and before long, he's a guest in the house and in Ruth's bed, much to Chris' disgust. That is, until Barney makes a play for her as well, which turns an already precarious situation into a powderkeg of jealousy and sexual intrigue, with Chris sneering "He's never been in my room...yet."
Bardem and screenwriter Santiago Moncada (HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON) engage in some clever misdirection by letting this slow-burn situation reach a boil for over an hour, with little mention of the opening murder until an enraged Ruth kicks Barney out in the middle of the night during a torrential downpour. Shortly after, an entire family is murdered in their farmhouse by a sickle-wielding killer in a hooded black raincoat. This brings in a detective (Gerard Tichy) on the trail of a serial killer who's murdered seven people in the region over the last two years, with one witness describing a young man with a backpack and a guitar. And with that, the film just floors it, turning into a relentless, terrifying nail-biter when Ruth and Chris, convinced they would've been the killer's next victims, are stirred awake in the middle of the night after Barney breaks into the house, seemingly to take care of some unfinished business.
THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER was a moderate success with Spanish moviegoers, but Spanish critics beholden to important films like DEATH OF A CYCLIST generally dismissed it with the consensus being that Bardem was slumming with a paycheck genre gig that was beneath him. But viewed today, from its jawdropping prologue to its hypnotic, stylish finale, it stands with the top Italian gialli of the time, with the jarring suddenness and sheer ferocity of the farmhouse massacre rivaling anything in the unforgettable, stomach-knotting last half hour of Sergio Martino's 1974 classic TORSO and standing up to any jump-from-your-seat kill in the '80s slasher pantheon (even Waldo de los Rios' score seems to prefigure FRIDAY THE 13TH's Harry Manfredini at times). The killer decked out in a long, hooded black raincoat and wiping out the family with a sickle should've been an iconic horror image long before I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER co-opted it for the post-SCREAM craze over two decades later. THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER was relegated to US drive-ins and grindhouses by the one-and-done "Chris Releasing" (likely a dubious tax scam) in 1975, and they tried launching it again a year later with the more lurid title BEHIND THE SHUTTERS. The SHUTTERS title was used again when the short-lived Analysis re-released it in November 1979 to capitalize on the death of star Seberg, the Iowa-born Otto Preminger ingenue who starred in 1957's SAINT JOAN before heading to Europe, where she became an iconic figure in the French New Wave with Jean-Luc Godard's BREATHLESS (1960).
Jean Seberg (1938-1979)
Seberg divided her time between America and Europe throughout the 1960s until her left-wing political activism and support of the Black Panthers essentially got her blackballed from Hollywood after a pair of major 1970 releases (AIRPORT and MACHO CALLAHAN), and made her a target of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who regularly briefed President Richard Nixon and/or White House counsel John Ehrlichman on his findings. Through the bureau's infamous COINTELPRO program, Seberg was the subject of round-the-clock government surveillance, her home was bugged, her phones tapped, and she was the victim of a ruthless Hoover-orchestrated smear campaign in the media that didn't stop when she left America for good following the premature birth of her daughter, who died at just two days old on August 25, 1970 (at the behest of Hoover, FBI agents planted a story with a Los Angeles Times gossip columnist that was picked up by Newsweek, alleging that the baby's father was prominent Black Panther Raymond Hewitt). She lived and worked exclusively in Europe for the rest of her career, and was still under surveillance and wiretapping through the FBI working in conjunction with the CIA and the US military as late as 1972, the year of Hoover's death. Professionally, Seberg wasn't happy about starring in movies like THE CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER, but you wouldn't know it by watching her performance (perhaps in their mutual outspoken political activism, she saw in Bardem a kindred spirit who also had bills to pay). Haunted by the death of her infant daughter (and according to her second husband Romain Gary, attempting suicide on more than one occasion in the ensuing years around the August 25 anniversary of her passing), Seberg's psychological state continued to deteriorate and she disappeared on August 30, 1979. Her body was found eight days later, wrapped in a blanket in the backseat of her car, with a bottle of sleeping pills and a note addressed to her 17-year-old son. Paris police ruled it a "probable suicide," but there was enough alcohol in her system to lead investigators to believe that someone had to be with her when she died for the body to be blanketed the way it was, though who that is remains a mystery to this day. Seberg was 40 years old. Following her death, Time ran an extensive piece titled "The FBI vs. Jean Seberg," where top-ranking FBI officials attempted to distance themselves from the actions of J. Edgar Hoover, admitting that there was a coordinated defamation of the actress, which is the subject of the film AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, due out later this year and starring Kristen Stewart as Seberg.
EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE (US - 2019) Directed by Joe Berlinger. Written by Michael Werwie. Cast: Zac Efron, Lily Collins, Kaya Scodelario, John Malkovich, Jim Parsons, Jeffrey Donovan, Angela Sarafyan, Dylan Baker, Brian Geraghty, Terry Kinney, Haley Joel Osment, James Hetfield, Grace Victoria Cox, Morgan Pyle, Ken Strunk, Justin McCombs, Ryan Wesley Gilreath, Tess Talbot, Forba Shepherd (R, 110 mins) Infamous serial killer Ted Bundy has been the subject of numerous true crime books, nearly a dozen movies, and even more TV documentaries. The 1986 NBC TV-movie THE DELIBERATE STRANGER capped off of a banner year for Mark Harmon, who received critical acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as Bundy on top of being named that year's Sexiest Man Alive by People. Until then, the former college football star was known as a competent TV actor who was gaining some momentum on ST. ELSEWHERE as lothario Dr. Bobby Caldwell, but playing Ted Bundy unquestionably opened some doors for him and turned him into a big-screen headliner for a couple of years before returning to journeyman duty on TV, eventually finding his career role on the still-running CBS series NCIS. With his charm and good looks, Harmon was perfect casting for a truly reprehensible serial killer who didn't fit the stereotype, one of the main reasons Bundy remains such a popular topic today. The same degree of perfect casting applies to Zac Efron, who made his name as a teen superstar with Disney's incredibly popular HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL franchise. As the years have gone on, Efron has found steady work in comedies both good (NEIGHBORS) and godawful (DIRTY GRANDPA), and his attempts to branch out and be taken seriously have yielded results both interesting (ME AND ORSON WELLES) and woefully misbegotten (THE PAPERBOY). With an absurd panini beard and about ten mintues of screen time, Efron managed to steal this year's earlier THE BEACH BUM from both Matthew McConaughey and Snoop Dogg, and in playing Ted Bundy in the Netflix original film EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE (a verbatim description of Bundy used by the judge who sentenced him to die in the Florida electric chair), Efron uses his persona to chilling effectiveness in a performance that matches Harmon's, but through no fault of his, the film only works in fits and starts.
That's largely due to the approach taken by director Joe Berlinger, helming his first narrative feature since 2000's little-loved BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2. Best known for his documentaries like the PARADISE LOST trilogy detailing the saga of the West Memphis Three, and Metallica's SOME KIND OF MONSTER, Berlinger also directed this year's earlier Netflix documentary series CONVERSATIONS WITH A KILLER: THE TED BUNDY TAPES. A companion piece of sorts, EXTREMELY WICKED is based on the memoir The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy by Elizabeth Kendall, who was romantically involved with Bundy for several years until his initial incarceration in the mid-1970s. Played here by Lily Collins, Liz Kloepfer (her maiden name) is a college student and single mom when she meets Bundy in a Seattle bar in 1969. They instantly hit it off and the film cuts to 1974, with both of them pursuing law degrees and Ted a loving father figure to Liz's daughter Molly. They maintain a long-distance relationship while Bundy is in law school in Utah, where he's picked up as a suspect in a kidnapping and eventually accused of the crime. He keeps giving Liz flimsy excuses about being set up, but when an Aspen, CO detective (Terry Kinney) starts asking questions and contacting Liz, it sets off a chain reaction of investigators in several states gradually realizing that they're all pursuing the same suspect. Despite endlessly proclaiming his innocence, it looks so dire for Bundy that even his own lawyer (Jeffrey Donovan) bails on him with an insincere "Good luck."
EXTREMELY WICKED ostensibly looks at the Bundy story from Liz Kloepfer's point-of-view, but Berlinger sort-of drops the ball on that angle, starting with a rapid jump from 1969 to 1974. We don't see much of the foundation of her relationship with Bundy, or why she sticks with him despite all the evidence against him, and the film ultimately resorts delaying a reveal in the story until it can make a dramatic impact, except that it doesn't really land. Berlinger obviously knows Efron-as-Bundy is the selling point here, so it doesn't take long to shift to that focus, whether it's his two escapes from custody (one from a courthouse and the other from an Aspen jail) and his circus of a trial in Florida (where he fled after Aspen), when he fires his public defender (Brian Geraghty) and represents himself, with prison groupies forming a Bundy fan club in the courtroom, cheering him on and often describing him as "dreamy" and admitting to reporters that they fantasize about him. Exploring that bizarre phenomenon (known as hybristophilia, with Bundy arguably the most prominent example) might've been a more interesting subject for Berlinger to explore, especially when it comes to the pathetic Carole Ann Boone (Kaya Scodelario), a former co-worker of Bundy's in Seattle who follows him to Utah and eventually to Florida, all in the hopes of getting him to fall in love with her.
We never see any of Bundy's killings, but with his tangles with the law and his antics in the courtroom where he often spars with the sardonically folksy judge (John Malkovich) and the incredulous prosecutor (Jim Parsons), all we're left with concerning Liz is her increasing dependence on booze and a hesitant relationship with her nice-guy co-worker Jerry (Haley Joel Osment), who keeps unsuccessfully trying to get her to forget Bundy and move on. This only leads to cliches, like the inevitable scene of Liz gathering all of her empty liquor bottles and throwing them in a trash can, and Berlinger resorting to Scorsese needle-drops like Bundy being hauled out of court to Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Lucky Man," and escaping from the Aspen courthouse from a second-story window to The Box Tops' "The Letter." EXTREMELY WICKED is a serial killer thriller that wants to be different, realizes there's not enough there for what it wants to do, then tries to have it both ways, which only results in an uneven structure and a lack of focus. In other words, it's flawed but not without interest, thanks mostly to a revelatory performance by Efron and some solid supporting work from the cast, particularly Scodelario, who's good enough here that you wish the story was being told from her POV.
A showcase for the always-reliable Danish character actor Mads Mikkelsen, ARCTIC is a cold and punishingly harsh survivalist saga from Brazilian musician-turned-debuting filmmaker Joe Penna. Shot in some desolate locations in Iceland with nothing to see but vast, snow-covered nothingness, the film gets a committed and physically demanding performance from Mikkelsen, and opens in medias res with almost no backstory as his character, Overgard, goes about his daily routine after being stranded somewhere in the Arctic. He sleeps in a crashed plane, but spends his days mapping coordinates, checking various fishing lines, and hand-cranking a small distress beacon. The only sign of life in the area is an occasional sighting of a lone polar bear who invades his camp and steals some fish while he's away. He spots a rescue helicopter that gets caught in a snowy wind gust during a whiteout and crashes. The pilot is killed and the lone passenger, a woman (Maria Thelma), is severely injured and barely conscious. Overgard raids the chopper for food and equipment--including a sled--and takes the woman back to his plane. With no sign of a further rescue attempt and the woman's situation growing more dire by the hour, he makes the decision to embark on a several-day hike, pulling her on a sled over the snowy terrain to where he believes a remote seasonal rescue station might be.
That's really it as far as the story goes. Almost all of ARCTIC's effectiveness comes from Mikkelsen, who has minimal dialogue and lets his weary, exhausted, exposed face say everything. Penna put Mikkelsen and Thelma out in the brutal elements (except for a couple of composited moments that look like post-production reshoots and do somewhat stick out like a sore thumb), and in addition to fighting off a polar bear with a flare (another scene that's dampened by some obvious CGI), there's a long, arduous sequence where Overgard encounters a mountain that wasn't on the map, and tries to haul the woman and the sled over it FITZCARRALDO-style, eventually giving up and opting to go around it, which will add another five days to the trip at a time when every moment counts. Speaking of FITZCARRALDO, one is reminded of Werner Herzog while watching ARCTIC, as Penna isn't afraid to let things unfold in a way that captures the monotony and the hopelessness while never being dull. He tells you next-to-nothing about Overgard or the woman (we briefly see his pilot's license, and we're led to assume the dead chopper pilot was her husband), and we only learn who they are over the course of this journey, as Overgard is a man who's willing to risk his life to save a stranger. We've seen these triumph of the human spirit stories countless times before, and they live or die based on the star. Mikkelsen's work here isn't as showy as James Franco in 127 HOURS nor does he carry the iconic weight of the legendary Robert Redford in ALL IS LOST, but it's a study in low-key persistence and quiet determination. That, and the pervasive sense of isolation are the standouts in ARCTIC, a tough sell that Bleecker Street only got on 268 screens at its widest release, but it's a must see for fans of Mikkelsen and survivalist cinema. (PG-13, 98 mins)
THE HOLE IN THE GROUND (Ireland/Belgium/Finland - 2019)
Released a week before Nicholas McCarthy's THE PRODIGY, this past spring's other "evil kid" movie, albeit on a much smaller scale (A24 put it on just 24 screens and VOD), THE HOLE IN THE GROUND has a handful of effective moments, but can't stop tripping over its own feet and more importantly, can't settle on what it wants to be. Right from the start, with a high aerial shot of a yellow vehicle driving down a road through a forest, director/co-writer Lee Cronin is letting us know that he's seen THE SHINING, and the entire film ends up feeling like warmed-up leftovers from other horror films, namely THE BABADOOK and HEREDITARY. Living in the outskirts of a rural Irish town, Sarah (Seana Kerslake) works in an antique shop and is a single mom to young Chris (James Quinn Markey). She's evasive about her past and has to style her hair to hide a large scar on her forehead that presumably came from an abusive, estranged husband. One gets the sense that she's fled rather than moved and doesn't want to be found ("I know Dad makes you sad," Chris tells her), and she's on edge enough that the town doc prescribes a mild anxiety medication. Sarah and Chris live in an old, dark house bordered by an expansive forest with a massive sinkhole. Chris wanders off near the sinkhole and from that point on, Sarah feels something is different about him. Her increasing paranoia isn't helped by two near-misses in the middle of a road with local crazy woman Noreen Brady (Kati Outinen), who gets right in Sarah's face and declares "It's not your boy." Noreen's husband Des (the great James Cosmo) apologizes for his wife, but the townies know all about Noreen: years earlier, she became convinced that her own son was replaced by an impostor and she "accidentally" ran him down with her car and has been in a virtually catatonic state since.
Shortly after, Sarah happens upon Noreen's dead body near the side of the road her head buried in the dirt. Chris' behavior grows more erratic, with Sarah finding all the proof she needs when he has no idea what to do during an affectionate game the two have played for years, where they each make a funny face to see who laughs first. There's some intriguing ideas here about motherhood, which is where the BABADOOK parallels are most prevalent (though Markey's Chris isn't grating like the BABADOOK kid), and the panic and dread Sarah feels in looking at Chris and wondering if he's just like his father. That psychological horror gives way to something more, with Chris eating spiders and crawling on the floor like one, and demonstrating enough strength to throw Sarah around the kitchen. Cronin wants to deal in both metaphor and reality, and the story begins working at cross purposes. The atmospheric look turns to murkiness as it goes on, with Cronin indulging in pointless directorial flourishes like a perpetually flickering light in a dark basement and an inevitable journey into the sinkhole, where something even more horrific awaits. A debuting Markey is fine, and the promising Kerslake delivers a strong performance--both stars could've benefited from more focused script instead of what feels like a greatest hits compilation of the last several years of acclaimed indie horrors. Though, to its credit, it does have one late-breaking development that kinda sorta prefigures Jordan Peele's US, which opened a month and a half later. (R, 90 mins)
AMERICAN HANGMAN (Canada/UK - 2019)
It's not every day that you get a heavy-handed, SAW-inspired courtroom drama, but here's AMERICAN HANGMAN. A hectoring, finger-pointing lecture disguised as a suspense thriller, the film was written and directed by Wilson Coneybeare, a veteran of numerous Canadian kids TV shows in what appears to be a serious step away from his comfort zone in addition to being his first IMDb credit in a decade (back in the mid- '80s, he also wrote for the Don Adams-starring syndicated Canadian import CHECK IT OUT!). AMERICAN HANGMAN opens with two kidnapped men being carried into a concrete bunker of some kind. One is a guy named Ron (Paul Braunstein), who was sitting in his car in a fast-food parking lot, and the other is an elderly man (Donald Sutherland) who was unloading groceries in his driveway. Their captor (Vincent Kartheiser) snips off one of Ron's fingers and gives the two men five minutes to figure out their connection. When they can't come up with one, he shoots Ron in the head. All of this is captured by a dozen cameras in a complex tech set-up, with the captor broadcasting the events live across social media. It's soon picked up by cable news, the cops, and the public. The captor explains his actions: the old man is retired Judge Oliver Straight, who years ago sentenced a convicted child murderer to death. The convicted killer was executed that morning, but the captor, who says he's the victim's uncle, appoints himself "prosecutor," accusing the Judge of murder in sentencing the wrong man to die. Also on trial are the police and the media, who also joined in the mad rush to condemn the wrong man, and the millions of viewers who tune in as the stream goes viral are the judge and jury--"the voice of the people"--voting to sustain or overrule every objection and ultimately decide Judge Straight's fate.
AMERICAN HANGMAN plays like one of those CBS crime procedurals when they try to break from the formula and do something "deeper." It's pompously full of itself, taking rudimentary, fish-in-a-barrel shots at the "breaking news" culture of today's media, represented by ambitious USCN (United States Cable News) reporter Harper Grant (Lucia Walter), while at the same time utilizing every tired, generic trope in the book. The captor's motivation is supposed to be a third-act twist that's obvious from the start, and the wild goose chase he sends the cops on won't fool anyone who's seen THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. And Lt. Roy (Oliver Dennis), the cop put in charge of this as it unfolds over the course of the day, is also busy overseeing a shuttering precinct AND it's his last day before retirement (no word on whether he's "too old for this shit"). Judge Straight is apparently a man of renowned standing in his field, and the murder case in question was national news, but no one watching the stream in its early stages--the cops, the media, the public--recognizes him, and nobody seems to know that this is the day the girl's killer was set to be executed. And when Roy and his cops finally start getting an idea of who the captor is, one announces "He has a record for some sort of endangerment but he got off on a technicality, and get this...he's an IT guy!" like a bad LAW & ORDER: SVU episode, as Coneybeare is so preoccupied with pummeling the audience with messages that he loses any semblance of basic logic and common sense. Kartheiser, sporting dorky glasses and kind of unflattering bowl haircut that no normal, innocent non-creep would willingly have, isn't asked to do much other than yell Coneybeare's talking points, while Sutherland brings some effortless professionalism to a role that has him seated at a makeshift witness stand the entire time and was probably shot in a few days. He's obviously the best thing about AMERICAN HANGMAN, the kind of movie where a supporting character is named "Josh Harkridge" and we're still supposed to take it seriously. (Unrated, 99 mins)
