Over the Top

My partner and I were channel surfing. When I passed Over the Top, she asked me to go back. Reluctantly, I did. I was in the mood for literally anything else, but whenever I’m dead set against watching something, Starla goes all in. I tried to explain it’s an embarrassingly sappy film about arm wrestling. This only enticed her.

Several minutes in, she asked, “Wait, are you sure this is about arm wrestling?” The movie takes forever to warm up, but once it does: whoa boy. You’re going to need a serrated blade to cut this cheese, maybe even an electric carver. Sylvester Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk, a truck driver who just reunited with the son he walked out on a decade earlier. See, the mother is dying. Although her wealthy father (Robert Loggia) is gunning for custody, she wants the boy to be with his deadbeat father. Long story short: complex emotional conflicts will be resolved with arm wrestling. As God intended.

Hawk, with his muscular physique and rust bucket of a truck, is portrayed as an everyman whose home contains one-arm exercise equipment. Loggia’s character, who may be perfectly justified in his assessment of Hawk, is portrayed as the villain. Loggia represents The Man who despises his son-in-law because no college-educated sophisticates could possibly understand arm wrastlin’ and truck drivin’. It’s always bizarre and highly entertaining to view American culture through the eyes of Israeli director Menahem Golan, co-founder of The Cannon Film Group, whose unpretentious productions greatly shaped the pop culture of my formative years. Here he cranks his unique patriotism up to eleven… or perhaps “jumps the shark” is more accurate.

Nonetheless, Over the Top is a fun ride through the cheesiest depths of the 1980s. This remarkable artifact even films its climax during a real life arm wrestling tournament. I know what you’re thinking: “Arm wrestling tournaments really exist?” Well, sort of. This one was created specifically for the film, and two guys actually got their arms broken. One of the gruesome incidents ends up in the obligatory sports movie montage.

In typical Cannon fashion, Over the Top is vapid but impossible to turn off. It’s interesting how Golan spins sport-movie clichés to make them fit arm wrestling instead of ball games. In case you’re wondering about the curiously apt title, Over the Top refers to a special move Stallone’s character has incorporated into his matches. I suspect the physics have no basis in reality, but this movie isn’t directed by a man who lived in reality, so who cares?

Don’t Breathe (2016)

There’s a scene in Don’t Breathe that people are going to talk about for a long time. It’s a rabbit-in-the-stew kind of moment. Think along the lines of what Kathy Bates did in Misery… or maybe the “hair gel” scene in There’s Something About Mary is a more apt comparison. Either way, I haven’t seen such a memorable WTF moment since Bone Tomahawk. I guarantee the scene is fueling Don’t Breathe’s runaway word-of-mouth.

On the way out the theater doors, I overheard just as many people praising the scene as lambasting it. But at least the audience was electrified. Most of the movies I’ve seen this year evoked little more than a shrug as attendees quietly collected their belongings and shuffled outside to remember where they parked. Don’t Breathe knows the secret to making a story stick: you can try to please everyone, but nobody falls in love with movies that play it safe.

Have you ever seen The People Under the Stairs? Don’t Breathe reminds me of that one. A trio of good-for-nothing burglars break into a house, knowing full well the Gulf War veteran who lives there (Stephen Lang) is blind. They expect the guy to be a pushover, but once he shuts off the electric to his fortified home, they come to realize the odds are in his favor. You’ll probably be rooting for him until you discover… well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Although I wasn’t the biggest fan of Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remake, I was interested to see what the guy made next. Now he tries his hand at an original horror movie which doesn’t comprise on scares. Unlike his previous film, this one is quiet—so quiet you can hear a pin drop in the theater. You’ll notice the people around you holding their breath, tensing for the next jump-scare, which are few and far between. It’s just a straightforward (and gross) horror film that works.

My biggest complaint is the Rottweiler in the film. That dog is one of the shittiest actors I’ve seen in years.

Doctor Mordrid (1992) [Midnight Movie]

Doctor Mordrid entered production as an official Doctor Strange film until directors Albert and Charles Band let their option expire. That didn’t stop them from making the movie anyway (I wouldn’t expect any less from Full Moon Pictures). The character names have been changed. The filmmakers are legally obliged to inform you that absolutely no part of their movie takes place in the Sanctum Sanctorum. This is a film about an alchemist—not a wizard, not a magician, and certainly not a sorcerer. Any similarity to Marvel characters, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The “alchemist’s” name is Anton Mordrid (Jeffrey “The Re-Animator” Combs) and he’s in charge of protecting the film’s MacGuffin: the Philosopher’s Stone. He and his brother Kabal (Brian “Cobra” Thompson) were taught all manner of wizardry—er, I mean alchemy—when they were children. Kabal is breakin’ bad now that he’s all grown up and he plans to unleash demons from hell… or something. I didn’t really follow that part, but if he succeeds, Earth is all kinds of fucked. He leaves a rash of murders in his wake, which begs the attention of Samantha Hunt (Yvette Nipar), the policewoman who just happens to live in Mordrid’s apartment building.

What develops between Mordrid and Samantha is one of the mildest romances in movie history. You won’t even know they’re attracted to each other until the last scene in the movie—and even then you won’t know for sure. What Mordrid suggests to her, out of the clear blue, is the equivalent of popping the question to a neighbor you occasionally see when you go for a walk. I love Combs to death, but his chemistry with actress Nipar is nonexistent. Considering they appear quite at ease with one another in this behind-the-scenes video, I’m not sure how the ball was dropped, but I suspect it had something to do with Full Moon’s speedy production schedule.

Look, Full Moon made tons of movies. They’ve managed to produce more memorable features than you would expect from a fledgling studio, so you can’t be surprised whenever they make a dud like this one. The directors, at that point in their careers, were such experienced filmmakers you can’t even laugh at the movie in a so-bad-it’s-good way. Technically, it’s a well-made film, it just happens to stink. Even if you go into it seeking the “so bad it’s good” factor, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Midnight Movie: Starship Troopers (1997)

“If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn’t work, no one will listen to me. So I’m going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it’s only good for killing fucking bugs!” — Paul Verhoeven

At first glance, the cast looked like it belonged in a television drama for teenagers. The jingoistic satire didn’t translate well to newspaper ads and 30-second TV spots. The goofy marketing made it look like a straight-to-video movie had somehow wormed its way into a theatrical release. And yet, I still went to see Starship Troopers on opening night, shuffling into the theater with the lowest of expectations. There were maybe six other people there including, I think, a local film critic who occasionally shone a penlight on his notes and impatiently touched the illumination dial on his wristwatch.

In Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop, the narrative is frequently interrupted by satirical advertisements and news segments, as if the film has commercial breaks baked right into it. Likewise, Starship Troopers opens with over-the-top war propaganda, simultaneously establishing its irreverent attitude and the premise: in the future, humans really hate bugs: the arachnid alien combatants who’ve thrown a wrench in humanity’s plan to colonize every nook and cranny of the galaxy. In fact, humans hate bugs so much that young men and women everywhere can’t wait to give up everything and fight the bastards.

Enter Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and his dimwitted high school friends. Amusingly, the first act plays like a futuristic teenybopper drama before jerking the rug out from under the heroes’ feet. Rico has a hot girlfriend (Denise Richards), a hunky rival (Patrick Muldoon), a dangerously flirty gal pal named Dizzy (Dina Meyer), and an ultra-nerdy best friend played by Neil Patrick Harris, whose appearance in an R-rated romp was mildly scandalous at the time (Verhoeven had employed similar stunt casting with Elizabeth Berkley in his trash-masterpiece Showgirls, two years prior).

Rico’s girlfriend is sent to the space navy, his brainy best friend gets absorbed by the military’s science sector, and Rico ends up in the most elite squad of ground troops in existence. His drill sergeant is played by Clancy Brown, who always takes genre projects seriously and the same can be said of Michael Ironside (Total Recall’s Richter), who plays the lieutenant of Rico’s group. There Rico makes new friends for the first time in his adult life, including Jake Busey, whose maniacal appearance instantly washes away the Dawson’s Creek vibe from the earlier portion of the picture.

Just when Rico’s finally begins to gel with his new life, who of all people will suddenly transfer to his squad? Dizzy, the hot little baddie who’s been pursuing Rico since high school. Here’s something I really love about Starship Troopers: in practically every movie in which the leading character is pursued by two love interests, he or she inevitably ends up with the sickeningly wholesome, less attractive option. Not my boy Rico. Soon after his boring girlfriend dumps him via a video call, Rico hooks up with the considerably more exciting Dizzy.

The score by Basil Poledouris is as rousing as anything he’s ever done while the early CGI is somehow much more convincing than most digital effects today. As for the action, it’s exciting, well-paced, and comically bloody as per Verhoeven’s style. If you held a gun to my head and asked me to choose my favorite film of Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers, I literally couldn’t do it.

I had friends in high school who were even bigger science fiction readers than I. Two of them were dead-set against the idea of a Hollywood adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s source material. There are still critics who assert Verhoeven “ruined the book” by choosing to parody its values (though a lot fewer of them exist today as the general consensus of the film only seems to improve with time). Yes, Isaac Asimov wrote in his memoirs that Heinlein grew more conservative and militaristic with age. Though this is certainly true, Heinlein has suggested he was merely exploring such a society as a possibility, not necessarily promoting it.

Then you have modern SF writers like John Stalzi, who are about as liberal and anti-war as they come, writing military fiction in nearly the same vein as Heinlein. Long before the Sad Puppies (an extreme right-wing group of close-minded assholes who attempted to manipulate the Hugo Awards) I used to enjoy reading science fiction from a wide swath of political and philosophical backgrounds. To like Heinlein’s version and Verhoeven’s isn’t contradictory, but exemplary of what I loved about the brainy genre in the first place. In fact, Joe Halderman’s The Forever War, itself a direct counter-argument to Heinlein’s novel, is among my favorite SF novels of all time.

Though I wish the movie version had gotten the jet packs that Heinlein imagined in the novel, I’m going with Verhoeven’s version all the way.

The Disaster Artist [Book Review]

Here are a few facts about vanity filmmaker Tommy Wiseau:

He shot The Room on film and video using side-by-side cameras. Why? No one knows.
He built the infamous rooftop set in a parking lot despite having access to at least two real-life rooftops.
He built an alley set in a building which had a perfectly usable alley outside.
He’s mysteriously rich.
Whenever questioned about his bizarre creative decisions, he often replies, “No Mickey Mouse bullshit.”
He maintained a billboard of his face on Highland Avenue for five years at five grand a month.

When it was clear Hollywood wasn’t going to give him the role of a lifetime, Tommy Wiseau decided to take matters into his own hands. He wrote, directed, and produced The Room, which is today considered one of the greatest bad movies of all time. This thing has such a cult following that James Franco purchased the movie rights to The Disaster Artist, which will feature Franco himself as Wiseau, Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Hannibal Buress, Kate Upton, Zac Efron, Alison Brie, Sharon Stone, and Bryan Cranston.

The Disaster Artist is a 2013 book by working actor Greg Sestero, The Room’s co-star. In the book, Sestero details the unlikely friendship he forged with Wiseau who was at least twenty years his senior (Wiseau’s exact age is unknown). It quickly becomes apparent the reclusive filmmaker is a deeply guarded person despite his dreams of megastar fame. Whenever he does open up about his past, the contradictory stories are unlikely at best. To this day people are still trying to piece together the clues about his origins. He’s like the Jack the Ripper of independent cinema, a guy who stormed out of obscurity and plunked down a ridiculous amount of cash to make himself a star.

Not only did The Room cost six million dollars to make, but Wiseau maintains homes in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, the latter of which he hadn’t visited in so long he couldn’t remember the code to the alarm system (1234, as it turns out). The story is mostly about Sestero—because there’s so much we’ll never know about Wiseau—and his own quest as a Hollywood hopeful. It’s at an acting class where he first meets Wiseau, who is last picked when the students are instructed to pair up. Sestero, at the time, thinks Wiseau’s madness is charming. Despite the protests of friends and family, who suspect Wiseau is either mafioso or possibly the Zodiac Killer, Sestero agrees to move out to LA with his new buddy.

When Wiseau meets Sestero’s concerned mother for the first time, as the men are headed out to LA, she warns Wiseau not to hurt her son. Sestero writes:

I put my hands over my eyes. The worst thing Tommy could do in response to this request, I thought, would be to chuckle creepily.

“I would not,” Tommy said, chuckling creepily.

The Disaster Artist is so funny at times my laughter woke my partner up even though she was in a separate room. Most readers will probably come to this book seeking the same answers I did, hoping for a shred of insight into Wiseau’s bizarre mind. Yet by the end of the book you won’t know much more about why Tommy Wiseau made the movie he did. If the book had shed light on these matters, The Room, and Wiseau himself, may have lost their allure.

I’m thrilled the story behind the scenes is as curious as the movie itself. There are a lot more questions than answers, which makes it all the more fun. The best answer you’re going to get? “No Mickey Mouse bullshit.” Ha ha ha, what a story, Greg.

Midnight Movie: A Cat in the Brain (1990)

“A lot of Italian genre directors are animal lovers. Mario Bava loved cats, Riccardo Freda loves horses, and Dario Argento loves himself.” — Lucio Fulci

Fade in: An aerial shot of a man, sitting at his desk, writing frantically. We hear him muttering like a lunatic. His scribbling pen can barely keep up with the ideas boiling out of him: “A throat torn out by a maddened cat… burned alive… buried alive… tortured… scalded…!” Meanwhile, the camera pushes in close to his head and the perspective enters his skull. There’s a cat in there, which munches on his brain like a vulture on roadkill.

Cut to: A cold body lying on a medical table. A section of the rump is missing. The body is then ripped apart by a chainsaw as the camera lingers.

Cut to: A man frying meat in a pan. He sits down in front of a television screen and cuts into his meal with a knife and fork. On the television, an actress seductively informs the viewer, “I love you so much I could eat you.” The man raises his fork and proclaims, “Just what I’m about to do!”

Lucio Fulci’s A Cat in the Brain (aka Nightmare Concerto) is gleeful insanity. This is Fulci’s version of 8 1/2, but instead of casting a movie star surrogate, Fulci casts himself in the lead role. Like many of Fulci’s movies, the camerawork and acting are dreamlike, but this time used to comedic effect. Meta-horror is often lame, especially when there are movies inside the movie (this time it’s stock footage from Fulci’s own films), but this one isn’t. It took me a while to get the joke—all of fifteen minutes. This isn’t Fulci ripping off Fellini; it’s Fulci making fun of Fellini as well as filmmaking in general. Being a horror director must be one of the strangest jobs in the world, which is especially apparent (and hilarious) when Fulci’s fictional shrink reviews some of his actual films.

Here are some of the things you’ll see in A Cat in the Brain: a Nazi using a woman’s vagina as a billiards pocket, a hilariously psychopathic psychiatrist, and a literal cat inside a man’s head. Fulci is one of the unlikeliest likable protagonists.

Green Room (2016)

You could argue Green Room is more thriller than horror, but bones are broken, throats are torn out, and faces are mauled. The camera rarely cuts away as the imagery shocks and awes. There’s no supernatural element—not that that’s a requisite for horror—but the skinheads here are effectively monsters because they’re depicted not as cannon fodder, but three-dimensional humans. The things that happen in Green Room are, to put it mildly, horrific. And if I were to make a list of the best movies of the twenty-first century, I’d rank it extremely high.

A wandering punk band is hard up for cash. They reluctantly end up taking a gig at a rundown neo-Nazi joint in the middle of nowhere. In true punk fashion, the band decides to rile up the crowd with a cover of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.” That goes over about as well as you might expect. Fortunately, the rest of their set is played hard enough to win the skinheads over by the end. After the show, the band heads back to the green room and accidentally discover the venue’s operators are covering up the murder of a young woman.

While the skinheads scramble to come up with a plan, the band is locked in the green room with a psychopath. He subtly mentions his revolver only holds five cartridges, “because they’re so fucking big that’s all that can fit in the cylinder.” Meanwhile, the neo-Nazis outside the room call Darcy Banker, their leader and the owner of the property. Banker is played by Patrick Stewart, whose performance is neither too cold or too hot. He’s not a man who relishes his villainy. His only motivation is to get the witnesses off his property as quickly as possible so he can murder them elsewhere.

The simple plan complicates quickly. Banker, who’s always failing to keep the situation from escalating, comes up with one idea after another to flush the band members out of the green room. He approaches the problem matter-of-factly, as if coordinating the extermination of rodents. To him, it’s just another problem in the life of a businessman, albeit an amoral one. Another interesting choice is the skinheads aren’t caricatures; when Banker loses his cool and humiliates one of his men, he promptly apologizes for his transgression. His henchmen aren’t expendable in his mind, they’re family.

There’s no fantasy violence here. There are no characters who do unbelievably heroic or villainous things. The good guys are gonna take a licking. Some of the bad guys are gonna take a licking, too. We all hate movies in which stupidly written characters do stupid things, but here’s a rare example in which smartly written characters do stupid things. After all, they’re young, immature, and panicking in a realistic way.

New Year’s Evil (1980)

“Shhhh… I can hear your heart beating. I don’t like that.”

Roz Kelly (Pinky Tuscadero from Happy Days) plays Blaze Sullivan, the VJ-like host of a televised New Year’s Eve bash. During one of the show’s call-in segments, a modulated voice promises to kill someone very close to her. The police quickly discover it’s not just a prank call: someone’s already dead. The man responsible refers to himself as Evil and he intends to murder someone every hour, on the hour, as each timezone in the United States welcomes the new year.

As per Cannon Film Group’s philosophy, everything in New Year’s Evil has been cranked up to 11. This ensures even the mundane scenes are sensational as absolute anyone in the picture might be packing a switchblade. Right off the bat we see a group of punk rockers drinking and driving down a Hollywood street in a convertible that’s pushing capacity. The televised party they’re heading to hosts a gaggle of similar delinquents as one presumably real life band after another plays fantastic-shitty 80s music.

Meanwhile, the killer paroles mental institutions and bars for his victims. Remember: his plan is to kill someone every hour on the hour until the clock strikes twelve. He’s capable of getting an awful lot done between attacks, including: finding his victims, arranging their dead bodies for cinematic reveals, changing disguises, sneaking into guarded buildings, and calling into the TV show. At one point he even gets into a traffic accident with a biker gang that leads to a foot chase through a drive-in movie. Yet he still manages to get to his next appointment on time.

Unless you’ve never seen a movie in your life, you’ll figure out the twist ending: the killer is actually Blaze’s oft-mentioned but curiously missing-in-action husband. Even if the repeated “Where’s Dad?” line doesn’t clue you in, you’ll start to suspect it the moment their son pulls his mother’s pantyhose over his head and pierces his ear with a needle. Here’s the best part: during a wonderfully cheesy soliloquy he looks into the mirror and tells himself, “I think I have a mental disorder.”

Don’t worry: there’s yet another twist at the end which I won’t spoil. Unfortunately, you’ll see that one coming from a mile away, too. Oh well, it’s still a fun picture.

Midnight Movie: Deadly Friend (1986)

Paul, the teenage hero of Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, not only designs advanced robots, but he teaches college courses, dissects human brains, and somehow finds the time to hang out with his friends. The robot he’s created, “BB,” looks like a robot from any other 80s movie. It can crack locks, shoot hoops, and move heavy furniture. The only thing his robot can’t do is dodge shotgun spray, which we learn when it ding-dong ditches the neighborhood crazy lady, played by Anne Ramsey from The Goonies and Throw Momma from the Train. Don’t you just love her?

Paul’s love interest (Kristy Swanson in her first leading role) is repeatedly abused by her alcoholic father. In one of the film’s three or four dream sequences, which are filmed Nightmare on Elm Street style, she stabs her dear old dad with a broken flower vase. What follows is a jarringly bloody scene. Jarring because watching Deadly Friend is like getting thirty minutes into Short Circuit before discovering it’s an R-rated horror movie.

And here’s where my objectiveness flies out the window. I love killer robot movies. Terminator, Runaway, Chopping Mall, Screamers… I can’t get enough of this shit. What’s disappointing about Deadly Friend is they dispense with the actual robot twenty minutes in. The movie then goes the Donovan’s Brain/Frankenstein route: after Swanson’s father accidentally kills her, Paul transplants BB’s brain to her body. As expected, the world’s first robo-girl doesn’t come in peace. How she got superhuman strength isn’t explained nor is it entirely important in a movie like this.

This is an 80s movie, through and through, no doubt conceived by coked-up movie executives who wanted a gorier E.T. The Extraterrestrial. I mention E.T. because that’s exactly what Deadly Friend’s plot structure seems to mimic. Genre movies back then simply moved at a different pace than they do now. While most “slow-burn” horror films bore, this one has a pleasant pace. It really takes its time, but never takes more than we’re willing to give it. It makes the absurd climax, which is cram-packed with unintentional laughs, all the more entertaining.

J.J. Abrams said he got the name for one of his The Force Awakens characters from Phantasm. I’m beginning to wonder if he lifted BB-8’s name from this movie.

Midnight Movie: The Vagrant (1992)

The Vagrant stars Bill Paxton, Michael Ironside, Marshall Bell, and Collen Camp. Killer cast, right? Unfortunately, each supporting character is compartmentalized. If you don’t see them interacting with the main character, you don’t see them interacting at all.

Paxton plays Graham Krakowski, which is pronounced “Crack-house-ski” by some characters. He has a stable yet mind-numbing job, which allows him to buy a fixer-upper from his nymphomaniacal real estate agent (Camp). Soon he’ll learn there’s a vagrant in the neighborhood (Bell) who’s squatting on a nearby lot. Krakowski takes out a second mortgage and fortifies the property with the best security money can buy, including a perimeter fence, stadium lights, and an automatic music player that makes intruders think someone’s at home when he’s away.

After spending every dime on this worthless stuff—worthless because it doesn’t stop the vagrant from letting himself into Krakowski’s house—he realizes he should have bought furniture instead of Pentagon-level security. So he has the inside of the house decorated at his girlfriend’s insistence and puts it all on his credit cards. Now that he’s ensured he’ll spend the rest of his life in debt, the vagrant’s antics drive him crazy, he loses his job, and an over-the-top homicide detective (Ironside) is trying to finger him for a murder the vagrant actually committed.

Did I mention this is supposed to be a comedy? I love horror-comedies, but this one isn’t scary and it isn’t very funny, either. The concept was ripe to become a cult classic and I’m a fan of all these actors. This is actually my second viewing and I was hoping I would notice satirical complexities I was too young to pick up on the first time around. Nope. It’s shallow and intentionally cheesy and pretty incompetent to boot.

The Vagrant isn’t a terrible movie, just mediocre, but it does entertain here and there.