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)
DESTROYER (US/UK - 2018) Last fall, DESTROYER had some awards-season buzz going for Nicole Kidman, but financially-strapped distributor Annapurna decided to focus their attention on the Oscar-baiting VICE instead, leaving DESTROYER to flounder on just 235 screens at its widest release. Looking what can be charitably described as several degrees south of haggard, Kidman did get a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as hard-drinking LAPD detective Erin Bell, a disgraced ex-FBI agent who's pretty much regarded as a total shitshow among her colleagues and always looks like she hasn't slept in days. Though two other cops have already caught the case, she shows up at a homicide where the John Doe murder victim was shot dead and has dye-stained $100 bills scattered around his body. Back at the precinct, someone mails her an envelope with an identically dye-stained $100 bill. She's convinced it's a message and she knows who's sending it: Silas (Toby Kebbell), the leader of a ring of bank robbers she and her former FBI partner Chris (Sebastian Stan) infiltrated as part of an extensive undercover operation nearly 17 years ago. Going rogue and blowing off her partner Antonio (Shamier Anderson), Erin starts tracking down all of Silas' known associates, none of whom are happy to see her since her cover was ultimately blown. She eventually works her way to Silas' sleazy, money-laundering lawyer DiFranco (Bradley Whitford), who's been holding the take and doling it out as requested in clandestine park handoffs to Silas' drug-addled girlfriend Petra (Tatiana Maslany). As Erin predicted, Silas' money is running out and he's resurfaced to plan another robbery and settle old scores.
At its core, DESTROYER is another saga of a morally-conflicted cop, with Kidman fearlessly diving into her own TRAINING DAY crossed with a bit of BAD LIEUTENANT, with one shock value scene where she goes to absurd lengths to get info on Silas' whereabouts from one of his terminally-ill former accomplices. But director Karyn Kusama and writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (the trio also worked on 2005's AEON FLUX and 2016's terrifying THE INVITATION), have a few unexpected tricks up their sleeves beyond a cleverly-constructed ending and one incredibly intense robbery sequence. These are doled out slowly in a series of flashbacks to the undercover operation that play as a parallel timeline to the current events. Erin's job, boozing, and pill-popping are at the expense of fractured relationships with her ex Ethan (Scoot McNairy) and her teenage daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn), and as the backstory gradually fills in, you finally get a sense of the extent to which she's gone to numb the pain. Everyone in her life has written her off, with the possible exception of her sympathetic former FBI boss Gil (Toby Huss), who invites her to a Bible study, insisting "It's low-key...nobody's handling snakes," prompting one of the very few times present-day Erin cracks a sort-of smile. In the end, DESTROYER doesn't absolve Erin of her sins and doesn't ask the audience for sympathy, but Kidman succeeds in conveying the humanity underneath an irreparably damaged person who can't stop making terrible decisions. (R, 121 mins)
WE DIE YOUNG (US/Bulgaria/UK - 2019) Following the French drama THE BOUNCER, Jean-Claude Van Damme gets another chance to go serious with the earnest but cliched WE DIE YOUNG. Hampered by obvious budget constraints, the film gets off to a clunky start with too many shots of a Bulgarian backlot unsuccessfully portraying the mean streets of Washington, D.C. (no streets have as many mailboxes and pay phones as these do), but it gets better and more compelling as it goes on. Set in a barrio war zone controlled by MS-13 kingpin Rincon (David Castaneda of the Netflix series THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY), who's already reaching "heavy is the crown" levels of paranoia, so much so that he really only trusts teenage drug delivery boy and collector Lucas (Elijah Rodriguez), who lost his older brother in Afghanistan and is doing everything he can to shield his younger brother Miguel (Nicholas Sean Johnny) from gang life. Rincon is preoccupied with the wedding of his baby sister Gabriella (Robyn Cara) and entrusts Lucas to deliver two bricks of heroin to a contact just outside his territory. But Lucas is distracted when he learns that Rincon's guys are planning to initiate Miguel into MS-13, so he never makes the drop and is instead pursued by Rincon's hot-headed cousin and ambitious second-in-command Jester (Charlie MacGechan). Fleeing for safety, they end up in the car of Daniel (Van Damme), an Oxycontin-addicted neighborhood mechanic and ex-Marine who lost his ability to speak when he took some shrapnel in a bomb blast in Afghanistan.
Set over the course of Gabriella's wedding day, WE DIE YOUNG turns into a standard-issue, urban "survive the night" scenario with Rincon's guys eventually catching Lucas and Miguel, forcing Daniel to channel the long-dormant warrior within to mount a daring one-man rescue. Making his narrative feature debut, Israeli-American documentary filmmaker Lior Geller has obviously spent time worshiping at the altar of Alfonso Cuaron, with a couple of reasonably well-executed handheld, long-take chase sequences, both in a car (complete with blood splattering against the lens, as required by law) and on foot. The problem is that you've seen them all before, along with the heavy-handed digital insertion of the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument into the background to remind you that This Is America, and all the hackneyed literary allusions with Daniel trying to get Lucas to read A Tale of Two Cities and Rincon serving as an ersatz Shakespearean figure who even quotes The Merchant of Venice at one point. To his credit, Castaneda tries to bring some complexity to a potentially cartoonish character, and Van Damme (one of 37 credited producers) does a fine job letting his aged face, pinched into an almost constant contorted grimace due to Daniel's chronic pain, speak volumes. But for the most part, there's nothing new here--the kid who's been sucked into the gang life trying to keep his little brother from the same fate, the SCARFACE trope of the powerful gangster being possessive of his little sister, the quiet loner silently suffering in a shell of his former self until he has a reason to take action. In the end, it's a decent enough Redbox rental, as Geller gussies it up with some occasionally effective documentary immediacy, and its three solid lead performances (Castaneda and Rodriguez were both in SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO as well) give it a little more credibility than those early Bulgarian backlot scenes would initially indicate. (R, 93 mins)
UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (US - 2019) Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Cast: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace, Callie Hernandez, Don McManus, Jeremy Bobb, Riki Lindhome, Zosia Mamet, Patrick Fischler, Jimmi Simpson, Grace Van Patten, India Menuez, Wendy Vanden Heuvel, Chris Gann, Stephanie Moore, Sibongile Mlambo, Rex Linn, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Laura-Leigh, Luke Baines, Sydney Sweeney, David Yow, Summer Bishil, Deborah Geffner. (R, 139 mins) It says something about just how strange and impenetrable UNDER THE SILVER LAKE is that distributor A24--the folks who specialize in giving nationwide rollouts to divisive audience-alienators like THE WITCH, IT COMES AT NIGHT, GOOD TIME, and HEREDITARY--were at a complete loss as to what to do with it. The much-anticipated follow-up to writer/director David Robert Mitchell's acclaimed 2015 horror hit IT FOLLOWS, UNDER THE SILVER LAKE was filmed in late 2016 and released overseas last summer after a mixed reception at Cannes. Skittish about its commercial prospects at home, A24 moved the film to December 2018, then pulled it from the release schedule entirely, ultimately unveiling it with little fanfare on just two screens on April 19, 2019, with a VOD dumping four days later. In more ways than one, UNDER THE SILVER LAKE is to Mitchell what SOUTHLAND TALES was to Richard Kelly, the acclaimed writer/director who was given wide latitude after 2001's DONNIE DARKO got zero attention in theaters before becoming a bona fide cult sensation once it hit video stores. Following the success of IT FOLLOWS, Mitchell was more or less permitted to make the film he wanted to make with UNDER THE SILVER LAKE. It's not IT FOLLOWS, just like SOUTHLAND TALES wasn't DONNIE DARKO, and it's an odd time for visionary auteurs when Kelly hasn't made a movie in ten years and unfortunately seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, and here's Mitchell, another wunderkind granted almost complete freedom on a project and creating something that's left its producers and distributors (and some audiences) completely dumbfounded. History has a way of repeating itself.
That said, UNDER THE SILVER LAKE is a better and, relatively speaking, more disciplined film than SOUTHLAND TALES, and it's not just Kelly to whom Mitchell owes a debt. He's also wearing his love of David Lynch and Brian De Palma on his sleeve and fashioning the whole thing as a sort-of INHERENT VICE-esque shaggy dog story that's incredibly ambitious and compulsively intriguing for much of its lengthy duration. That is until Mitchell starts trying to explain too many things, which is something Lynch would've never done. In probably his best performance to date, HACKSAW RIDGE Oscar-nominee Andrew Garfield stars as Sam, an aimless, unemployed L.A. slacker who's five days away from being evicted. He loves comic books and movies, his apartment is filled with old movie posters and his mom calls him to talk about Janet Gaynor and remind him that the silent classic SEVENTH HEAVEN is airing on Turner Classic Movies later that night. Sam fills his days hooking up with an aspiring actress and friend-with-benefits (Riki Lindhome) and watching his bikini-clad neighbor Sarah (Riley Keough) through binoculars. That night, she invites him over. Her bedroom walls are adorned with movie posters and they watch HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE on TCM. After some flirting and a kiss, her two roommates return home with an eye-patched, pirate-looking guy and a suddenly nervous Sarah abruptly ends the evening, telling him to come over and hang out tomorrow. The next day, Sarah's apartment is empty, she and the roommates are gone, and the building manager (Rex Linn) says they just up and left. Sam sneaks into the vacant apartment and is almost seen by a mystery woman (Zosia Mamet), who grabs a shoebox full of Sarah's personal items from a closet and gets in a car with two other women. Sam follows them and witnesses them hand off the shoebox to the pirate guy, who urgently sprints away with it.
To go any deeper into a straight synopsis is pointless, as it'll likely make me sounds as insane as Sam, who embarks on a dangerous journey throughout and underneath L.A. and Hollywood in search of Sarah. Her disappearance was really all he needed to fully embrace his inner crackpot conspiracy theorist, especially once the actress friend is scared away after finding pages upon pages of papers on Sam's bedside table revealed to be his scribbled notes documenting old episodes of WHEEL OF FORTUNE, as he's convinced that Vanna White is sending coded messages with her eye movements. Sarah may or may not be dead, and Sam's investigation involves, in no particular order: a rash of serial dog killings plaguing the neighborhood; strange, shadowy figures following him; the July 1970 issue of Playboy; the death of prominent billionaire Jefferson Sevence (Chris Gann) and three women in a car fire; a freeze-frame of a TV news update on the Sevence death showing the burned remnants of what looks like Sarah's hat and the charred remains of a dog found in the purse of one of the women; Sam's drinking buddy (Topher Grace) using a drone to spy on women; self-published graphic novel writer Comic Guy (Patrick Fischler), who has an intense interest in subliminal messages and the "programming" inherent in advertising; a symbol painted on the wall of Sarah's apartment that Comic Guy reveals to be known among the homeless to mean "Keep quiet;" Sam finding hidden codes and messages in the lyrics of an up-and-coming L.A. indie rock band called Jesus and the Brides of Dracula; one such code sending him to the James Dean bust at the Griffith Park Observatory, where The Homeless King (Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow) introduces him to a series of hidden tunnels under the park; the sudden appearance of Owl's Kiss, a murderous figure from Comic Guy's zine Under the Silver Lake; a map found in an old cereal box that mirrors the tunnels underneath Griffith Park; and an elderly songwriter (Jeremy Bobb), whose influence on popular culture is more than Sam can fathom.
What does all of this mean? It means there's certain to be years of thinkpieces and essays written about UNDER THE SILVER LAKE. Even Mitchell says there's too much here to unpack on one viewing, but from the start, you're paying attention to every number and detail that appears, as everything on the screen is likely there for a reason (Comic Guy's address is 1492, the drinking buddy's is 1016, and there's a flashing "751" on a scoreboard). But it's just as likely that some of these details are just there for Mitchell to fuck with the audience. There's a prescient subtext that definitely addresses the issue of toxic masculinity, invoked with background chatter of "the male gaze" at a Jesus and the Brides of Dracula secret show that Sam attends, his eventually meeting a trio of actresses who work for an escort service called "Shooting Star" and are also seen in the company of the pirate guy (Sam will see one of them in a club as they dance to R.E.M.'s "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" a further nod to conspiracy kooks); and in the drinking buddy's use of a drone to secretly record women. But it's also a blistering rebuke of a kind of male, namely the adult stuck in a state of perpetual adolescence. Sam has no apparent job or means of supporting himself, yet he drives a nice car (that eventually gets repossessed) and hangs out at pricey coffee shops (one assumption might be that his mom is sending him money and he's pissing it away). But Sam's humiliating dressing-down by the songwriter is a key moment as the man claims that he's responsible for everything formative in everyone's lives, from classic songs to memorable jingles, even playing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on a piano and cackling that people think that song changed their lives ("That song wasn't written for distorted guitar...it was written by me between a blowjob and an omelette! I'm the voice of your generation!").
With the brutal takedown of pop culture by the songwriter (a great scene, by the way, and destined get 30 million views on YouTube), and Sam's ultimate discovery of what's really going on and the reasoning behind it all, UNDER THE SILVER LAKE's third act veers into FIGHT CLUB territory, which is maybe one influence more than the narrative of this labyrinthine saga can handle. The "waking nightmare" feel of the story begins collapsing when Mitchell feels the need to start explaining, and his decision to force it all to make sense (and a lot of it still doesn't) grinds things to a tedious halt when it matters most. But in fairness, this is the kind of film that you can watch ten times and have ten different reactions, depending on which element you choose to focus. On one viewing, it feels like it's biting off way more than it can chew, though the endless in-jokes (there's a funny sight gag involving an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, a pointed reference to nobody liking Garfield's turn as Spidey, a planned trilogy halted after two films) and movie references (there's a slew of David Lynch shout-outs, like the tunnels invoking the horror underneath the Norman Rockwell-esque surface of BLUE VELVET; Sam beating the shit out of two teenage vandals in a moment that's every bit as gratifying as mobster Robert Loggia's revenge on an obnoxious tailgater in LOST HIGHWAY; and the very presence of Fischler, unforgettable in the traumatizing Winkie's scene in MULHOLLAND DR) are undeniably entertaining. Is UNDER THE SILVER LAKE a brilliantly-conceived, unsolvable puzzle that cineastes will be deciphering for years to come or is Mitchell is sending the gullible on a wild goose chase? It's impossible to tell, but one recurring theme throughout is masturbation, which becomes a metaphor for Sam's obsessive pursuit, never more blatantly than when he takes a break to jerk off while a Jesus and the Brides of Dracula vinyl plays in reverse as he scours their album for hidden messages. Maybe all we're doing with all this overanalyzing is jerking ourselves off. Maybe that's kinda what Mitchell's doing with UNDER THE SILVER LAKE.
EMMANUELLE (France - 1974) Directed by Just Jaeckin. Written by Jean-Louis Richard. Cast: Alain Cuny, Sylvia Kristel, Marika Green, Daniel Sarky, Jeanne Colletin, Christine Boisson, Samantha, Gaby Brian, Gregory. (X, 94 mins) Based on the scandalous 1959 novel by Emmanuelle Arsan that was long-rumored to be at least semi-autobiographical, 1974's controversial EMMANUELLE was a groundbreaking, X-rated deep-dive into post-LAST TANGO IN PARIS softcore erotica and it's likely that there never would've been a Skinemax without it. Focused on the intense sexual awakening of a beautiful and sexually-gifted but naive young woman, Emmanuelle was the first in a series of erotic novels by "Arsan," initially thought to be the pseudonym of French-Thai novelist Marayat Rollet-Andriane, an occasional actress who had a prominent supporting role as Richard Attenborough's love interest in the 1966 epic THE SAND PEBBLES, but the actual writer was later revealed to be her UNESCO diplomat husband Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane. The directing debut of French photographer Just Jaeckin, EMMANUELLE was a much-discussed sensation worldwide and made an international sex symbol of 22-year-old Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, who would, for better or worse, be inextricably linked with the character for the rest of her career. As the film opens, Kristel's Emmanuelle is flying to Bangkok to visit her diplomat husband Jean (Daniel Sarky). They have an open marriage, though only Jean seems to take advantage of it and wishes his wife would indulge in similar exploits to share with him. Jean considers this the one negative aspect of his marriage to Emmanuelle, boasting to a colleague "I married her because no woman enjoys making love more, or does it better." Once in Bangkok, she's encouraged by other women, most of whom have slept with Jean, to explore her wild side, with young Marie-Ange (Christine Boisson) admonishing "He's only your husband...you have to take a lover if you want to be a real woman!" before masturbating in front of her to a magazine photo of a smiling Paul Newman.
Emmanuelle confesses that she had sex with two strangers on the flight from Paris to Bangkok, joining the mile-high club in the first-class cabin with a man across the aisle while others watched, then she was whisked away to the restroom by another man emboldened by her fearlessness. Jean has aggressive sex with Arianne (Jeanne Colletin), who also desires Emmanuelle, confronting her with "You're nude under your dress, aren't you...have you made love since I last saw you?" Emmanuelle is coveted by everyone, and she finds unexpected passion with archaeologist Bee (Marika Green, aunt of actress Eva Green). Emmanuelle confesses her love for Bee, who likes her very much but politely rejects her. A heartbroken Emmanuelle is chastised by Ariane ("What I live for is pure enjoyment. Your violins, your hearts and flowers, your promises of eternal love make me sick"), who boasts of her fling with Jean in a country club locker room dialogue exchange that pretty much sums up Euro softcore porn in a nutshell:
Ariane: "You know, I made love with your husband."
Emmanuelle: "Yes, he mentioned it. How'd it go?"
Ariane: "I thought you knew, it was practically rape."
Emmanuelle: "Help me unhook my brassiere."
As Jean grows jealous over Emmanuelle's sudden interest in taking advantage of the open marriage that was all his idea, it's Ariane who suggests that she visit Mario (Alain Cuny), an aging playboy and an expert in the ways of mature lovemaking. Mario is infatuated with Emmanuelle at first sight but refuses to make love to her, instead promising to take her to "the land of eroticism." This essentially involves a series of degrading activities that include being pawed by a vagrant, drugged in an opium den and gang-raped to pilfered King Crimson riffs, and then taken to an underground fight club where Mario promises Emmanuelle to the winner. He's really just a perv--and presumably impotent--who likes to watch, and it's the last third of EMMANUELLE that really becomes unpleasant to watch, and not just through the lens of 2019. I don't wish to sound like a representative of Woke Twitter, and I'm not advocating canceling EMMANUELLE 45 years after its release, but it's hard to imagine the Mario section of the film, with Emmanuelle experiencing her ultimate sexual awakening through one humiliation and degradation after another, being a turn-on to audiences or even a symbol of female empowerment, since it's all for Mario's pleasure. Even after this, Mario still doesn't sleep with Emmanuelle and moves on to his next subject, offering the kind of explanation where the only suitable response would be a kick in the balls: "I collect situations. I want to find the next Emmanuelle...through the looking glass!"
It's putting it mildly to say that EMMANUELLE hasn't aged well, but it obviously set the template for the countless European-made "sexual awakening of a young woman" films that came in its wake, such as Corinne Clery in THE STORY OF O (1975) and Dayle Haddon in THE FRENCH WOMAN (1977), both directed by Jaeckin; Sirpa Lane in Roger Vadim's CHARLOTTE (1975); Patti D'Arbanville in BILITIS (1977); Olivia Pascal in VANESSA (1977); and Annie Belle in both ANNIE (1976) and LAURE (1976), the latter written and co-directed by the Rollet-Andrianes, and featured "Arsan" herself as the title character's sexual mentor (the film was released in the US in 1982 as FOREVER EMMANUELLE). EMMANUELLE itself spawned two sequels (all three films have just been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber) and was so popular that it was spoofed in the 1978 British comedy CARRY ON EMMANUELLE. But it's the BLACK EMANUELLE series (note the missing "M") with Laura Gemser that was the most successful of the knockoffs, and in many ways, surpasses the inspiration (and Gemser most closely resembles the real Arsan). Released in the US by Columbia with the attention-getting tag line "X was never like this," EMMANUELLE is insufferably pretentious, with the constant hot air blather of "making love" growing unintentionally funny very quickly. It really fancies itself as something chic, artistic, and profound, and the presence of top-billed Cuny (memorable in Federico Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA and FELLINI SATYRICON) certainly gives it an air of importance, though the respected actor was said to be difficult and later commented that he only took the role to show his contempt for modern cinema. It also exploits the exoticism of Thailand and the Far East, with a particularly memorable shot of a dancer using a certain orifice to smoke a cigarette that's exactly the kind of thing you think of when you hear "bar in Bangkok." But it's Kristel's film from beginning to end. She's lovely and has haunting eyes that hypnotize when she stares into the camera, and it's easy to see why EMMANUELLE catapulted her to fame, while at the same time leaving her hopelessly typecast.
EMMANUELLE opening in Toledo, OH on 2/27/1976
EMMANUELLE 2 aka EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN (France - 1975; US release 1976) Directed by Francis Giacobetti. Written by Bob Elia. Cast: Sylvia Kristel, Umberto Orsini, Frederic Lagache, Catherine Rivet, Venantino Venantini, Caroline Laurence, Henry Czarniak, Tom Clark, Marion Womble, Florence Lafuma, Claire Richard, Laura Gemser, Eva Hamel, Christiane Gibelin, Sterling St. Jacques. (X, 91 mins) With no shortage of "Emmanuelle Arsan" stories, and with EMMANUELLE being such a worldwide box-office smash (it opened in the US in December 1974 and moved across the country slowly, letting the notoriety continue to build, and it was still hitting first-run theaters in America well into 1976), a sequel was inevitable. Just Jaeckin passed on directing, not wishing to be associated strictly with EMMANUELLE, and instead made the similarly X-rated, S&M-themed THE STORY OF O and the brothel-set THE FRENCH WOMAN. Kristel returned for EMMANUELLE 2, better known by its eventual US title EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN, directed by a debuting Francis Giacobetti. It's a loose sequel, with a markedly more confident and assured Kristel playing what appears to be an Emmanuelle, if not the same Emmanuelle from the previous film, with Jean now either an engineer or an architect and played by Italian actor Umberto Orsini (THE DAMNED, VIOLENT CITY). The film opens with Emmanuelle boarding a ship to Hong Kong, where Jean is working, but a booking snafu forces her into a dormitory sleeping arrangement with some commoner women, which instantly leads to some girl-on-girl action between a now sexually-emboldened Emmanuelle and young traveler Ingrid (Caroline Laurence), who seduces Emmanuelle by confessing a violent gang-rape fantasy. Emmanuelle and Jean continue to have the most open marriage imaginable, with Jean practically salivating over her exploits. Jean is also providing room and board to a pilot named Christopher (Frederic Lagache), who sleeps with his propellor (?) and, of course, becomes a fantasy object for Emmanuelle, especially after he takes her to an acupuncturist and she masturbates to him with needles sticking out of her face. In Emmanuelle's absence, Jean has been sleeping with (or, in the parlance of EMMANUELLE, "making love to") Laura (Florenca Lafuma), the younger wife of aging diplomat Peter (Tom Clark). When she isn't fantasizing about Christopher or masquerading as a prostitute in a Hong Kong brothel and having sex with three men in a consensual re-enactment of Ingrid's rape fantasy, Emmanuelle becomes obsessed with Laura's virginal stepdaughter Anna Marie (Catherine Rivet). She eventually convinces the naive young girl (oooh...could she remind Emmanuelle of her younger self?) to partake in a threesome where Jean is only all too happy to deflower the young woman. You know, if that's what Emmanuelle wants and all...
Of course, that's after the film's most famous scene, a long massage sequence where Emmanuelle, Jean, and Anna Marie are given soapy, oily rubdowns and happy endings by a trio of masseuses, including one played by Indonesian actress Laura Gemser, who made such an impression in this one scene that she would immediately be cast in the Italian knockoff BLACK EMANUELLE, which led to her own series of films that lasted well into the 1980s. EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN understands first and foremost what drew audiences to EMMANUELLE and as such, it doesn't waste time with endless philosophizing about "making love" and instead just gets down to it. It's much closer in spirit to the Italian-made Gemser series, perhaps in part since it features Italian actors like Orsini and Eurocult regular Venantino Venantini (who would also appear in three of Gemser's BLACK EMANUELLEs), seen here as a tattooed polo player who gets fellated by Emmanuelle in a locker room before fisting her. EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN is often jawdropping in its brazen explicitness, rivaling the carnal content of any of Gemser's outings, so much so that even after being cut down to 84 minutes for its 1976 US release by Paramount (yes, Paramount), it still got handed an X rating. It wasn't quite as big of a hit as its predecessor, but it enjoyed a reasonably successful run as a midnight movie into the early 1980s. EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN is the best of the Kristel EMMANUELLEs by far (strangely, Giacobetti never made another movie), and Kino Lorber's Blu-ray offers the uncut 91-minute version, so plan accordingly..
EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN
opening in Toledo, OH on 10/22/1976
Further evidence that things just used to be different: here's
EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN playing
at a goddamn mall in Toledo, OH on 6/16/1978
GOODBYE EMMANUELLE (France - 1977; US release 1981) Directed by Francois Leterrier. Written by Monique Lange and Francois Leterrier. Cast: Sylvia Kristel, Umberto Orsini, Jean-Pierre Bouvier, Alexandra Stewart, Olga Georges-Picot, Charlotte Alexandra, Caroline Laurence, Sylvie Fennec, Radiah Frye, Jacques Doniol-Valcroize, Erik Colin, Jack Allen, Bob Asklof, Greg Germain, Patrick Victor. (R, 98 mins) The EMMANUELLE series made Kristel an international star, though it limited her to largely similar roles in various Euro erotica outings ranging from artsy to commercial, including Alain Robbe-Grillet's PLAYING WITH FIRE (1975), Roger Vadim's GAME OF SEDUCTION (1976), and Walerian Borowczyk's THE STREETWALKER (1976). Kristel returned to her signature role for the final film in the original trilogy, 1977's GOODBYE EMMANUELLE, which reteamed her with Umberto Orsini as Jean but under the direction of a third helmer, this time Francois Leterrier, who had a minor hit in France with 1973's PRIVATE SCREENING, with Francoise Fabian, Jane Birkin, and Bulle Ogier. GOODBYE EMMANUELLE drastically tones down the "anything goes" titillation of its predecessor and desperately wants to be taken seriously like Jaeckin's original. It's got a very catchy theme song by Birkin and her husband, renowned French singer and composer Serge Gainsbourg, and its cast has more prestigious actors than usual, like Olga Georges-Picot (Alain Resnais' JE T'AIME, JE T'AIME, Fred Zinnemann's THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, Woody Allen's LOVE AND DEATH) and Canadian-born Alexandra Stewart (Francois Truffaut's THE BRIDE WORE BLACK and DAY FOR NIGHT, Louis Malle's BLACK MOON). But it gets everything about EMMANUELLE fundamentally wrong. The central premise has Emmanuelle, now traveling to the Seychelles, where Jean is (allegedly) working, but this time, she's growing tired of the sexual histrionics of their open marriage--of course, not before an opening threesome with Jean and local dressmaker Angelique (Radiah Frye). She even begins sympathizing with frigid Clara (Sylvie Fennac, a dead ringer for Dayle Haddon), who tried to play that game with her husband, Jean's friend Guillaume (Erik Colin), but just wasn't into it. Clara also blames Emmanuelle and Jean for Guillaume's sudden interest in pursuing an open marriage and his obsession with perfecting the art of "lovemaking," which is understandable since it's all anyone in these movies ever fucking talks about. Emmanuelle develops feelings for Gregory (Jean-Pierre Bouvier), a filmmaker scouting locations in the area, who doesn't believe in Jean's lifestyle philosophy and happens to catch Emmanuelle at the very moment she's been thinking the same thing, especially her growing disgust with how Jean and all of the expat swinger couples in their social circle pass eager, nubile young Chloe (Charlotte Alexandra) amongst themselves for their endless sexual pleasure. Though Jean loves nothing more than being turned on by Emmanuelle's stories of making love to other men, he soon grows jealous of Gregory and starts deliberately sabotaging her relationship with him, driving Emmanuelle to make the decision to abandon her sexually adventurous world and consider settling down with Gregory.
The less said about GOODBYE EMMANUELLE, the better. "Emmanuelle Goes Monogamous" might've seemed like a thought-provoking and even subversive idea on paper, but it's deadening in execution, unless you're a big fan of the endless "making love" philosophizing and highbrow poseurdom that constitute everything you fast-forwarded through in your teenage years in an impatient dash to get to "the good parts." The good parts are few and far between in the impossibly dull GOODBYE EMMANUELLE, and it must've been apparent to any potential US distributors. While EMMANUELLE was released by Columbia and EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN by Paramount, GOODBYE EMMANUELLE went unseen in America until it was picked up in 1981 by ambitious young concert promoter Harvey Weinstein, who was looking to get into the movie distribution game, thus earning the film its only claim to future notoriety by being the first release of the fledgling Miramax Films. It was so tame that it didn't even need any trimming for an R rating. And it was only given a spotty release, with Weinstein's acquisition likely due less to the fading brand recognition of the EMMANUELLE films (even Gemser's EMANUELLEs were being retooled as women-in-prison grinders like CAGED WOMAN and WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE) and more because Kristel, then in the midst of a short-lived run in Hollywood after 1979's THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 and 1980's THE NUDE BOMB, was having a pretty good year in 1981, and here was one of her EMMANUELLE movies, sitting there unclaimed. 1981 saw Kristel reunite with Jaeckin for the future cable favorite LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER and she also enjoyed her biggest US success that same year with PRIVATE LESSONS. Like EMMANUELLE, PRIVATE LESSONS was another influential first centered on Kristel, in this case kickstarting a string of "horny, virginal teenage dweeb inexplicably gets seduced by his hot teacher" comedies (followed by the likes of HOMEWORK, MY TUTOR, and THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE) that wouldn't have a chance in hell of being made today, much less being huge moneymakers at the box office, and, it bears mentioning, inspiring Van Halen's hit "Hot for Teacher."
But it's the success of PRIVATE LESSONS that was a blessing and a curse for Kristel. It finally gave her a non-EMMANUELLE hit, but a scheming agent talked her into signing her percentage profits over to him, so while the film was a smash hit, she barely made anything from it. Coupled with the collapse of her often volatile relationship with Ian McShane, who she met while making 1979's THE FIFTH MUSKETEER, and a worsening drug and alcohol problem (she was very open in later years about having a serious cocaine addiction in the late '70s and into the '80s), Kristel was quickly bottoming out personally and professionally. Out of desperation, she was lured back to the world of Emmanuelle for the 1984 Cannon reboot EMMANUELLE IV, which played like an erotic take on SECONDS, almost insulting then-32-year-old Kristel by having her Emmanuelle go through plastic surgery to emerge in a younger incarnation played by Mia Nygren. After that, Kristel was simply taking jobs for the money, from 1985's MATA HARI to the same year's German-made women-in-prison potboiler RED HEAT to a disastrous attempt to once again crack the American market with 1988's DRACULA'S WIDOW, which was caught up in the bankruptcy of DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group and ended up going straight to video. The increasingly dubious and decreasingly-budgeted EMMANUELLE series continued without her, but Kristel was eventually reduced to starring in 1993's EMMANUELLE 7, which has the title character now running a virtual reality lab where people can fulfill their sexual fantasies. The same year, she appeared as "Old Emmanuelle" (Kristel was 41 at the time) in a series of French made-for-cable movies where she's featured in wraparound segments recounting her youthful sexploits to a new Mario (George Lazenby, of all people), with young Emmanuelle played by Venezuelan actress Marcella Walerstein. Kristel remained in Europe, working primarily in France, Italy, and her native Netherlands in obscure films and on TV, but her career never bounced back. While she successfully conquered her substance abuse issues, she spent the bulk of the '00s battling cancer, first in her throat, then spreading to her lungs, and she suffered a stroke shortly before her death in 2012 at just 60.
