October Horrors # 8: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

Well, speaking of doppelgangers, look what else I watched this month…

There’s an awful lot to unpack in this ambitious attempt to take the Freudian conception of the unheimlich / uncanny to its ultimate extreme, but, given that I’ve got around to it five years late, and given that it was the high profile follow up to an Oscar-winning hit, I’m sure all of its semiotic / socio-political sub-texts and cultural antecedents so on have already been discussed and picked over ad nauseam. 

So, hopefully instead I can just use this space to throw up a few random observations about how well it stands up as horror film - which will be for more enjoyable for all of us, let’s face it. 

 #1:

There is a section of about ten or fifteen minutes in the middle of ‘Us’ (delineating the script’s first and second acts, pretty much), during which the underground / ‘shadow’ version of the film’s central family make their presence known to their real world/above ground counterparts, which is absolutely, honest-to-god terrifying.

In particular, the impact of this sequence is heightened because everything which has happened up to this point has been pretty light-hearted in tone. A bit of eerie atmos, some quirky character dynamics, lots of ‘80s/’90s cultural signifiers, a few laughs… but then, without warning, the tone crashes down into fucking hades. Suddenly, things have the potential to become incredibly grim and upsetting, extremely quickly, as we enter a seemingly inescapable home invasion / captivity scenario, with (checks watch)… nearly ninety minutes still left on the clock?

Thankfully though, this is not the film Jordan Peele chose not to make - for which I am grateful, because it is not one I wanted to watch either.

So, instead, our family members make their assorted, unlikely escapes from what seemed to be their inevitable gory fates, and for the remainder of the picture we are kept entertained by stylised action sequences, an ersatz Romero zombie survival narrative, the pleasure of watching a bunch of unsympathetic secondary characters get whacked, and - under the circumstances - an unfeasibly swift return to an atmosphere defined by wisecracks, laughs and familial banter.

For a few minutes back there though…. well, let’s just say that the (admittedly rather niche) concept of being tortured and killed by a soulless, inarticulate doppelganger of yourself has rarely been conveyed on screen as powerfully as it is here.

#2:

[Not quite a ‘spoiler warning’ as such, but the relevance of this next observation is probably limited to those who have already seen the film, so you might want to skip over it if you’ve not.]

Ok, so, to get straight to the point re: the biggest problem I had with ‘Us’, in spite of its many strengths - am I alone in feeling that everything in this film would have worked so much better if we never received an explanation of what the ‘shadow people’ are, or where they came from?

I mean, we’re given a few fragmentary hints in earlier dialogue about these creatures living underground, subsisting upon raw rabbit flesh etc - which I feel essentially gives us everything we need to pencil in some suitably horrific back story for ourselves, should we care to.

And, I’m about 99% sure that whatever twisted sketches we conjure up as viewers at that point, would prove vastly more effective than the staggeringly absurd, plothole-ridden, poorly thought out ‘rational explanation’ which Peele eventually concocts to help justify the various, totally irrational, scenes and images which clearly inspired him to make this film in the first place.

Given that the ‘big reveal’ segment of the final act is by far the weakest part of the movie, jettisoning it would also have helped slash about twenty minutes from ‘Us’s somewhat bloated run time - but, more importantly, I mean… why can’t contemporary filmmakers just have the balls to keep things mysterious, y’know?

This entire film is basically patterned upon a surrealistic / sub-conscious nightmare scenario, so… can’t we just keep it on that level sometimes, please?

But no. Instead, 21st century cinema’s curse of over-explanation - along with the simultaneous insistence that a story’s protagonists must play a personal/exceptional role in whatever global/societal events are depicted - rear their ugly head yet again.

As a result, we’re left watching the equivalent of a 2.5 hour cut of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ in which the characters travel to the source of the zombie plague and discover that Ben’s dad was actually behind it all, using recovered DNA from Atlantis to re-animate the corpses of astronauts whose deaths were covered up by the CIA, because he just can’t bring himself to reconnect with his estranged son, or some such horseshit.

As I think both Romero’s masterpiece and (more to the point, perhaps) the Two Faces of Evil episode of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ clearly demonstrate, this sort of thing is just not needed - and in fact proves catastrophically detrimental to an attempt to tell this kind of story.

#3:

Random talking point:

I realise this will seem like a bit of an off-beat comparison, but having now watched all three of the horror films Jordan Peele has been to date as writer/producer/director, I keep thinking that, in some way, his directorial style and generally approach to things reminds me of no one so much as Dario Argento.

Clearly the biggest difference between the two of course is in terms of subject matter and characterisation, given that Peele seems like a good-natured fellow who invests a lot of thought and affection into his characters, and doesn’t enjoy seeing them hurt, which is certainly the polar opposite of Argento’s approach to such matters (or, the general perception of it, at least).

Aside from THAT, though…

Peele, like Argento, focusses heavily on technically audacious, attention-grabbing Big Shots and painstakingly pre-planned set-pieces of outlandish mayhem, which nonetheless tend to end up feeling a bit confused, emphasising visceral impact over coherence.

And, both directors have a tendency to announce these set-piece scenes through the use of big, booming over-amped pieces of Signifying Music.

Additionally, although ‘Get Out’ was admittedly a pretty lean and efficient piece of work, in his other two films to date, Peele also seems to share Argento’s chronic difficulties with story-telling. As writers, both mean insist on cramming their scripts with far too many ideas, themes, images, cultural references and so, without ever pausing to think them through properly, or to consider how they might cohesively combine into a single narrative.

Related to which, both directors are also entirely shameless in their willingness to confront their viewers with events or ideas so ridiculous that they basically short circuit any attempt at rational thought, presenting projects which dispense with real world logic and diverge from their core ideas/themes to a quite extraordinary degree. Which is definitely a compliment in Argento’s case, once you get used to his uniquely peculiar MO. In Peele’s case, I’m note quite so sure...

Certainly, ‘Us’ sees him turning in a movie which gets about half way toward being absolutely extraordinary, then over-reaches itself to the point of absurdity.

Which, in a similar spirit, concludes my random, insufficiently processed, thoughts on ‘Us’ for the time being.

Lovecraft on Film Appendum: The Evil Clergyman (Charles Band, 1987 / 2012)

As anyone familiar with his work will be aware, H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Evil Clergyman’ is a brief, half-formed fragment, obviously written in haste, perhaps extrapolated from a bad dream, and presumably never intended for publication in its extant form. Nonetheless, it saw print several years after Lovecraft’s death, in the April 1939 edition of ‘Weird Tales’, and - rather irksomely - it has formed part of his accepted canon ever since, seemingly more by accident than design.

As such, it seems appropriate that the story’s movie adaptation should take the form of an orphaned, 28 minute short, originally intended for inclusion in a 1988 Empire Pictures anthology flick named ‘Pulse Pounders’ which never saw the light of a projector at the time, remaining unreleased due to (it says here) circumstances arising from the company’s bankruptcy.

Furthermore, it appears that the original film elements for ‘The Evil Clergyman’ were subsequently misplaced or destroyed, leaving the footage presumed lost until, a quarter century later, Charlie Band found a VHS work print knocking about in his attic and smelled a quick buck to be made.

A bit of a clean up, a new credits sequence and a newly commissioned score from brother Richard later, and ‘The Evil Clergyman’ finally premiered, streaming on Band’s Full Moon Features website, in 2012.

I’m unfamiliar with the back story re: how exactly those film elements ended up disappearing, but I can only assume it must have been the result of some terrible and unprecedented freak accident, as any other explanation would frankly beggar belief given the breadth of talent involved in creating this segment, and the relatively lavish budget obviously invested in this thing.

With the exception of an AWOL Stuart Gordon in fact, ‘..Clergyman’ is effectively a ‘Reanimator’  reunion, with Dennis Paoli providing the script, photography by Mac Ahlberg, effects by John Carl Buechler, and a cast comprising Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs and David Gale, with the ever wonderful David Warner (R.I.P.) thrown in for good measure.

In the grand tradition of Poe/Lovecraft adaptations through the ages, the film’s narrative has pretty much nothing in common with the supposed source story whatsoever. Instead, Paoli’s script sees Crampton taking centre stage, playing a woman returning to the attic chamber of a medieval castle which she had previously shared with her lover (Combs), a lapsed priest and alleged black magician who has recently taken his own life, prompting her to flee and leave the room vacant.

This ill-stared chamber is apparently still up for rent from the castle’s acid-tongued landlady (Una Brandon-Jones) however, and, once ensconced within it (ostensibly to “collect her things,” although the room looks bare), Crampton begins to experience a series of increasingly hair-raising manifestations related to her deceased partner, and reflective of the unholy depredations the pair apparently got up to prior to Combs’ decision to sling a noose slung over the high beams, and depart this mortal coil… temporarily, at least.

Along the way, Warner pops up as the revenant spirit of another dead priest, who pops up to warn Crampton of the error of her ways, whilst Gale is in full effect as Combs’ familiar, a chittering, man-faced rat-thing straight out of ‘Dreams in the Witch House’.

And... it actually all works really well. Paoli’s story is weird, memorable and unnerving, leaving plenty to the imagination, whilst the production design and performances are excellent.

Though she’s not really called upon to do much more than act terrified, confused and distraught here, Crampton achieves this quite brilliantly. Always a good few rungs up the ladder from yr average ‘80s ‘scream queen’, the sheer intensity scruff of the neck and drags us through this compressed ghost train ride of a viewing experience very effectively.

By contrast, we get a relatively low-key turn from Combs, but there is still a hell of a lot to enjoy in his sleazily sinister presence. His introductory “hi” at the moment his character first takes on corporeal form is a delight in itself, and the spectral love scenes he shares with Crampton take on an appropriately fevered quality, drawing us further into the odd story being told here.

Warner meanwhile seems a bit surplus to requirements here in terms of the narrative, but it’s great to have him along for the ride, and he’s clearly having a fine time regardless. In the midst of a seemingly endless series of rent-a-villain / mad scientist roles at this point in his career, the old boy knows exactly how to pitch a high-handed spectral priest, managing to deliver lines like “I’m a bishop, from Canterbury, sent to expel your lover from our church” entirely straight, without eliciting laughs from the peanut gallery.

As for the long-suffering David Gale meanwhile, one shudders to imagine the indignities he must have been subjected to in the process of realising Buechler’s man-faced rat effects - an inspired mixture of puppetry and facial prosthetics which is actually extremely effective, allowing Gale’s face and voice remain present, even when seemingly attached to a repulsive, ankle-high critter capering about on the castle floor.

Essentially functioning as a foul-mouthed, perpetually enraged manifestation of the Combs character’s id, Gale manages to deliver a memorable performance under what we might reasonably assuming were challenging circumstances; his spittle-flecked delivery of words like “WHORE” and “SLUT” in particular are imbued with an old world, puritan gusto which I very much enjoyed.

Shot, inevitably, amid the imposing environs of the swanky Italian castle which Charles Band inexplicably ended up owning in the late ‘80s (also see: ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (1991), ‘Castle Freak’ (1995)), ‘..Clergyman’ benefits greatly from the location’s in-built atmosphere, adopting an almost abstract / fairy tale-like vibe which slips further into delirium as Crampton’s visions take told, and the world outside her lofty chamber effectively ceases to exist.

Moodily lit by Ahlberg in a none-more-80s manner, with deep shadows and shocks of blue-tinged moon light drifting in across the ancient brick-work, this is certainly one of the more accomplished efforts I’ve seen bearing Charles Band’s name as director. As is often the case, it’s perhaps questionable to what extent creative decisions here were actually taken by Band, but for what it’s worth, everything here is very solidly done. (I particularly liked the striking use of vertiginous high and low angles, reflecting the constant presence of both the swinging noose above, and the skittering rat-thing below.)

Even Richard Band’s retrospectively recorded orchestral score goes over gangbusters, really classing up this murky VHS-sourced work-print, much like his similarly bombastic/melodic work on Gordon’s ‘80s films, hovering just on the precipice of Elfman-esque parody, but never quite taking the plunge, or overpowering the action on-screen.

Given how strong this short is overall, it’s easy to see why a few elements ended up being recycled in other productions during the years in which the material shot for ‘Pulse Pounders’ remained unreleased.

Most notably, the effects used to create the human-faced rat creature were repurposed pretty much in their entirety for the creation of Brown Jenkin in Gordon’s 2005 TV adaptation of Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, whilst the “erotically charged predatory haunting” conceit of Paoli’s script also strongly reminded me of another Gordon-adjacent film, Danny Draven’s 2002 ‘Deathbed’ (not to be confused with the late George Barry’s outsider masterpiece of the same name), an interesting obscurity, also shot by Ahlberg and executive produced by Band, which saw release on DVD under the rather niche banner of “Stuart Gordon presents…”. (Were there any other entries in that series, I wonder? I don’t recall ever seeing any...)

In summary then, ‘The Evil Clergyman’ stands as something of an unexpected minor miracle for fans of the Empire/Full Moon/Stuart Gordon milieu. Alongside this year’s Suitable Flesh, it offers encouraging proof that the spirit of Gordon’s Lovecraft movies could live on and flourish, even in circumstances in which the man himself was unable to call the shots. Well worth making a small amount of time for if (as is understandable) it passed you by upon its belated release in 2012.

Horror Express: Verotika (Glenn Danzig, 2019)

Say what you like about Glenn Danzig’s widely derided feature debut as writer/director/composer/co-cinematographer, which I finally persuaded myself to get around to watching last week - it’s a remarkable achievement in at least one respect.

Specifically, I’m referring to fact that, despite having been a successful musician and public figure for at least forty years at the time of this film’s production, Danzig still managed to create a movie exactly like the one a horny sixteen-year-old goth kid would probably have made, given access to the same resources.

Whatever your thoughts on the result of his efforts, his refusal to countenance any form of maturity whatsoever here is genuinely quite extraordinary, arguably making ‘Verotika’ the most purely (accidentally?) punk rock thing he has been associated with since Robo quit as The Misfits drummer in 1983.

Unfortunately however, simply being a contender for the most adolescent film ever directed by a sixty-four year old man does not necessarily mean ‘Verotika’ is worth watching. Indeed, for anyone lacking either a pre-existing interest in its creator’s oft-questionable oeuvre or a very indulgent attitude toward low budget 21st century horror, I’d recommend a hard pass.

As much as I’d love to defy critical consensus and declare this an unappreciated masterpiece, the sad truth is that, by any reasonable yardstick, ‘Verotika’ is an extremely bad film in pretty much every respect; indifferently directed, cheaply staged, sketchily scripted (to put it kindly), thoughtlessly misogynistic, entirely devoid of originality and filled with dead-eyed non-performances from a cast seemingly comprised of aspirant fetish models and porn stars. (1)

To paraphrase Chris Morris, we’re looking here at a crass, ugly and deeply stupid work, and yet.... what kind of horror/exploitation fan would I be if I couldn’t find something perversely captivating in the midst of this lumbering, irredeemable mess of nonsense?

Though it is not remotely as significant or enjoyable, ‘Verotika’ still, to some extent, captures the same mixture of gleeful nastiness and utter weirdness which helps make the early Misfits material so extraordinary. For all its faults, it bears the same gory signature of an artist whose brain-damaged concerns have (perhaps worryingly) remained remarkably consistent across five decades of creative output.

To run down a few elements of the ‘weirdness’ part of that equation, I’ve firstly got to commend Danzig’s refusal to adhere to the narrative conventions which usually govern the EC-via-Amicus anthology framework he has chosen to work within here.

The idea that segments within a horror anthology should consist of concisely rendered cautionary tales with a circular/twist ending goes completely out the window form the outset, but… in a way, I appreciated the open-endedness of this. 

 I mean, let’s just take the first story here - ‘The Albino Spider of Dajette’ - and admit that I have no idea why the aspirant fetish model with eyeballs where her nipples should be (played by Ashley Wisdom) gets victimised by an anthropomorphic spider monster which manifests itself whilst she is asleep, and proceeds to rape and murder women.

And if there is ultimately no connection at all between the eyeballs-for-nipples thing and the spider-monster thing, well… why not? That’s life, right? Here’s this poor girl, just tryin’ to get through life with her freakish eye-boobs, and today, she’s having an especially hard time of it, vis-a-vis the whole aforementioned spider-monster situation. There’s no moral pay-off, no clever resolution, no lessons learned - fuck you, O.Henry! It’s actually quite refreshing.

(Of course, I didn’t realise at this point in my viewing that I was actually watching by far the most well-developed of the film’s three segments, but… we’ll get back to that soon enough.)

More mystifying - as one or two commentators have noted - is Danzig’s inexplicable decision to have the cast of this first story deliver their lines in ersatz French accents.

If the intention here was to lend the film a sense of continental exoticism, I’m afraid it's rather undercut by the fact that ‘Verotika’ otherwise remains as all-American as a burger van parked outside a Sunset Boulevard strip joint. And, given that few of the performers appear to have much prior acting experience, and seem to have been informed about the whole accent thing about sixty seconds before shooting began.... well, you can imagine the range of out-rrrageous ac-CENTS we’re treated to here.

(My favourite must be the waiter who advises our heroine to hurry home before she falls victim to “zee neck brea-CURR”.)

Were it not for Danzig’s total devotion to the gospel of low-brow / trash culture, I’d be tempted to speculate that he intended this French accent thing as a kind of Brechtian disassociation technique - like Werner Herzog using hypnotised actors in ‘Heart of Glass’, but far more entertaining. But no. There is no way a man as steadfast in his aesthetic beliefs as Glenn Danzig would countenance such pretentious/abstract bullshit.

Indeed, the most incredible thing about all this is that he is entirely sincere, but… we’ll return to that train of thought later, because unfortunately we still need to address the film’s two remaining stories. 

So, sadly, the weird charm of the eyes-for-nipples/spider-monster business is entirely jettisoned in the second ‘tale’ presented here. A paper-thin item about a stripper with a mildly burned face (Rachel Alig) murdering and stealing the faces of other strippers, this one largely just serves as an excuse for what feels like hours of dispiriting bump n’ grind strip club footage, accompanied by a succession of mediocre stoner rock tracks.

Disappointingly, it also drops the French accents, but is notable for those of us charting ‘Verotika’s divergence from horror anthology tradition in that it doesn’t even attempt to have an ending. It basically just sets up its premise, and… stops? C’mon Glenn, give us something!

The third story, ‘Drujika: Countess of Blood’, certainly gives us… something… in that it’s a period-set Countess Bathory type affair. The attempt at a medieval setting is fairly ambitious under the circumstances, including use of actual horses, some limited location shooting and - get this! - a real wolf (albeit a not terribly threatening one).

But, on the other hand, you know we’re in trouble as soon as you note that the green-screened panoramic photo backdrop depicting the Contessa’s castle includes clouds of unmoving, still photographed smoke. Mario Bava, this ain’t.

With her spiked crown, latex fetish gloves and habit of staring contemplatively at bunches of grapes, the Contessa (played by Alice Tate) takes us straight into full-on Nigel Wingrove territory, somewhat reminiscent of those dreadful Redemption video promos we all had to sit through back in the bad old days every time we wanted to watch a Jean Rollin film.

Probably the film’s most overtly erotic segment, this one also finds Danzig indulging in some pretty shameless ‘chained virgin’ type fantasies. Perhaps he was going for a vague Borowcyzk / ‘Immoral Tales’ kind of vibe, though the faint Eastern European accents adopted by the cast aren’t as funny as the French ones, and again, the intended effect is rather spoiled by the arid, atmos-free L.A. porno feel, which hangs around the footage like disinfectant in a hospital ward.

Unfortunately, this also proves to be the film’s most boring segment - because, above all I think, what kills ‘Verotika’s chances in the midnight movie / so-bad-its-good stakes is actually its pacing.

Like so many amateur / first time filmmakers, Danzig just cannot cut his stuff for shit, stretching out most shots at least a few beats too long, and the concluding story finds him expanding this lethargic approach to a frankly quite trying degree, as he subjects us to several extended, silent medium-close ups of the Contessa bathing in blood or gazing at herself in the mirror which just seem to go on forever, seriously challenging the wakefulness of any late-night viewers who have proved hardy enough to stick with the movie thus far.

As expected by this point, there’s also pretty much no narrative here at all - just the blood-bathing Contessa going about her virgin-slaying day-to-day in more or less the manner you’d expect.

There is a certain audacity to the bit where she manages to begin fondling and eating a girl’s extracted heart whilst it remains beating and attached to the victim’s blood vessels, but the impact is deflated by the absurdly realised special effects, including the use of a heart prop whose size seems closer to that of an organ belonging to a large mammal than that of a human being. 

But, it matters not. Only an utter goon would demand realism in a context like this, and besides, to return to the point I touched on above, ‘Verotika’s sole saving grace - the unique component that allows this otherwise terrible film to cycle back round and grasp at something approaching warped greatness - is that Danzig is utterly sincere in his intent to make a sexy, gory erotic horror movie.

Unbelievable as it may sound in view of what I’ve outlined above, there is not an ounce of self-mockery or camp intent discernible here. Given how rare this total absence of self-awareness is in any creative industry these days, maybe we should take a moment or two just to think about that - to let it sink in.

Like the aforementioned goth kid sitting in the corner of the classroom, scribbling drawings of women who look like Death from ‘Sandman’ fucking bat-winged demons, Danzig believes his half-baked cartoon atrocities are transgressive and shocking, and that if you don't like it, you just can't handle his dark vision.

Given how few of us can make it to adulthood whilst retaining such knuckleheaded naivety - let alone preserve it through the rigors of adult life - isn’t that, in itself, a beautiful thing?

Or, to put it another way, I’d rather sit through ‘Verotika’ a million times than read a page of Morrissey’s stupid novel.

Saner voices may contend that neither option is compulsory, but saner voices have no place in this discourse. For as the man of the hour himself once sang, “possession of a mind is a terrible thing..”.

 --

(1)As it seems ungallant to let a statement like that stand without unpacking it a bit, here are the results of my IMDB-based research into ‘Verotika’s cast. So, we do indeed have several porn stars (primarily Ashley Wisom), along with a large number of people who have very few IMDB credits aside from this one (so who knows what they normally do all day), and a few legit actors.

Surprisingly, probably the most noteworthy person in the cast is actually the one with the silliest name, Kansas Bowling, who it turns out has won considerable acclaim as a director of music videos (working with Iggy Pop amongst others) and played a small role as one of the Mansonites in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As one of the Contessa’s victims in ‘Verotika’, she is assigned the thankless task of remaining dead and topless through several very long scenes.

Horror Express 2020 #9: The Night Eats The World (Dominique Rocher, 2018)

I was kind of in two minds about this one. On the one hand, it certainly starts off strong, as a well-directed and well-shot take on the ol’ zombie apocalypse formula (last-man-on-earth subdivision), with requisite nods to ‘I am Legend’, ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘28 Days Later’ all present and correct, and that gut-wrenching “something dreadful is about to happen” feeling effectively established.

Protagonist Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie), sole survivor of a zombie-crashed house party at his ex-girlfriend’s Paris apartment, initially seems to have reassuringly good survival instincts too - scoping out his surroundings, stockpiling food and weapons and sizing up the abilities of his undead opponents, just as we’d all probably like to think we would in his situation. But, as the film transitions from the straight survival horror of its first act toward a more psychological study of long-term isolation and loneliness, it lost focus and began to annoy me.

Although on one level we’ve got to commend the filmmakers for having the foresight to essentially make a lockdown movie in 2018, their protagonist’s predicament never really rings true (see below), and, well… basically, as we spend more time with the man, and as his actions become more irrational and self-indulgent, we begin to realise that he's actually a bit of a dick. Not in a “the filmmakers are challenging us to accept an unsympathetic protagonist” sort of way either, I should specify, but more of a “this character is the fimmakers’ idea of a relatable, everyday guy, but frankly that guy is a tosser” situation. And when you’re watching a film with only one character, that’s kind of a problem.

Also, despite the film's painstakingly naturalistic, contemporary setting, the apocalyptic scenario it is asking us to accept begins to seem more ridiculous, the longer you stop to think about it.

By which I mean - a crucial element of this film is that its zombies are not capable of breaking through locked doors. Our protagonist survives the initial, nocturnal zombie attack because he is unconscious in a locked room. When subsequently reclaiming the apartment block, he simply secures the exterior doors and windows, and is safe for the duration.

So far so good, but, given that MOST people essentially spend their nights asleep behind a locked door or two, and probably tend to at least look out of the window in the morning before they step out for a stroll... surely there would be loads of survivors? The idea that everyone else in the city has been wiped out overnight by zombies with less agency than feral animals is patently absurd.

Likewise, despite the movie being set in the late 2010s present day, no one in this apartment building seems to have owned a computer, or a TV, or even a radio. Instead, like our painfully hip, DIY musician protagonist, the residents seem to have favoured cassette tapes (so retro and chic, y’know?). Conveniently, this allows him to bop around the empty rooms using up the batteries on a walkman he reclaimed from a ‘punk’ teenager’s bedroom (in 2018? really??), instead of, say, using his smartphone to try to contact the outside world. (You see what I mean about this whole ‘dick’ thing?)

In fact, he briefly checks his voice messages on his phone during the first morning, establishes that his nearest-and-dearest are dead, then abandons it. I get that “isolation” is the film’s watch-word, but the idea that he wouldn’t have at least tried to find out what was happening in the wider world whilst the electricity was still running is difficult to accept.

Of course, I don’t mind directors bending a film’s world to suit their own needs in a movie whose presentation is pulpier or more fantastical, but given this one’s absolute realist aesthetic, the failure to address these issues just seems like an insult to the viewer’s intelligence - a wilful refusal to provide us with the information we need to make this story work for us, on either an emotional level or a purely narrative one.

My wife, incidentally, has already christened ‘The Night Eats the World’ “that emo zombie movie”, and whilst I wouldn’t go that far in my criticism (I thought it had its moments), I get where she’s coming from.

Thoughts on… Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2018)

1.
Having initially approached it with a certain amount of trepidation, I finally took a deep breath and watched this one a couple of weekends ago. Long story short, I needn’t have worried. ‘Dragged Across Concrete’ leaves writer/director S. Craig Zahler scoring three for three when it comes to making exceptionally good contemporary genre movies. If pushed, I’d perhaps rank ‘Dragged..’ a touch below Bone Tomahawk (2015) and Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017), but it’s a close thing. All three stand as recommended viewing for anyone who likes solid film-making and good storytelling… assuming they have a sufficiently high tolerance for testosterone and extreme violence to get to the finish line, at any rate.

In fact, each time I hear some frustrated filmmaker talking about what a nest of vipers the film industry is, and how it’s impossible to get a project off the ground these days without it being compromised into oblivion etc etc, my thoughts will likely turn to Zahler, and cause me to wonder anew at the fact that (from the layman’s POV at least), he appears to have come out of nowhere and made three relatively ambitious films in quick succession, all of which seem to 100% reflect his personal creative vision whilst simultaneously winning a more-than-respectable amount of critical and commercial success. Whatever he does next, that’s one hell of an achievement.

If anything, Zahler’s three films to date are almost too consistent for their own good. As far as the old ‘spot-the-auteur’ check-list goes, he’s got all the boxes ticked, to the extent that his scripts – heart-felt and accomplished though they may be – basically follow the exact same formula once you begin to boil them down.

In each film, we are introduced to one or more blue collar / working class male characters who do not initially appear terribly sympathetic, but, we are slowly drawn into their lives through a series of naturalistic ‘character scenes’, until we feel we know them and their families/significant others fairly intimately, and care fairly deeply about what happens to them.

At this point, professional circumstances cause our character(s) to inadvertently cross paths with a group of remorseless, psychopathic scary people, instigating a series of events – in all three cases involving the kidnapping/imprisonment of a woman – which will draw them into an inhumanly ghastly situation necessitating acts of extreme violence, during which we are forced to seriously consider the question of – to quote the tag line from a very different movie with a not-entirely-dissimilar set-up – who will survive, and what will be left of them. As far as formulas for a movie script go, it ain’t exactly reinventing the wheel, but it sure does the trick [see point # 5 below].

All the same though, I can’t help but feel that… well, you know the way that, after you’ve read any one Elmore Leonard book, you’re inclined to throw up your hands in praise and declare him the best crime writer who ever lived…? But by the time you’ve read six or nine of ‘em, you start to realise he’s basically just shuffling the same set of building blocks around, telling slight variations on the same story again and again?

Well, I’d hate to see Zahler falling into the same kind of rut. Peckinpah is a name that seems to come up a lot when people [myself included – see below] write about his films, so, sticking with that comparison, perhaps now might be a good opportunity for him to take some time out and make his ‘..Cable Hogue’ or ‘Junior Bonner’, y’know what I mean? (Say what you like about Bloody Sam, but he never made the same movie twice.)

2.
Which seems as good a moment as any to address the numerous articles and reviews which swirled around the release of ‘Dragged Across Concrete’ in 2018, suggesting that the film harboured some kind of insidious right wing / reactionary agenda.

Well, speaking here as a card-carrying pinko, humanitarian leftie, I’m very happy to report to my local Culture War commanding officers that I absolutely do not believe this to be the case.

Insofar as I can see, the only possible crime the film commits in this regard is to take a pair of borderline-corrupt cops who sometimes do bad things or make off-colour remarks, and to present them as three dimensional characters whose life circumstances might engender a certain amount of audience sympathy. And if that’s something fiction is no longer allowed to do, then… stop the world man, I want to get off.

I mean, call me old fashioned, but I’ve always been taught that melodrama / potboiler stuff ends, and serious drama begins, at the point at which characters shed their reductive ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ identities and instead become equally relatable and morally equivalent antagonists in an unfolding conflict of some kind.

In fact, it is this queering of black & white moral certainties, the re-framing of the fictional world as a never-ending sprawl of sinister and potentially deadly greyscale ambiguity, which fascinates me above all about the crime genre, and it is in creating this kind of atmosphere that Zahler’s writing and direction excels.

(Admittedly, this may be somewhat undermined by his repeated reliance on the good ol’ ‘remorseless psychopath gangs’ to get his stories moving, but really these function more as forces of nature than anything else. In both ‘Dragged..’ and ‘Bone Tomahawk’, they are literally faceless - kinetic events which simply serve to set the human characters against each other, as impersonal as a natural disaster or pack of rabid dogs.)

Contrary to some reports, Zahler is not pulling a ‘Dirty Harry’/ ‘Death Wish’ number on us here, portraying Gibson and Vaughn’s characters as rule-breaking heroes whose quasi-vigilante tendencies should be celebrated. On the contrary, their decision-making is consistently dumb and their shady/brutal conduct achieves little, for them or anyone else. If they’d reined in these tendencies over the years and played things by-the-book, they’d probably be both better people and more successful cops at the point at which we meet them, and would not need to immerse themselves in the ugly depths to which this story takes them.

But, do these failings mean we need to jam black hats on their heads, teach them some comedic moustache-twirling and deny them the kind of respect and consideration to which all human beings are entitled..? Because that’s, like, kinda fascist, man. And more to the point, not very interesting.

3.
Speaking of which, the casting of Mel Gibson in the modern era is admittedly a… shall we say,  provocative... choice. Personally, I’d be hesitant about spending time with or giving money to someone of his widely reported beliefs and behaviour patterns, but, fair’s fair I suppose, he does seem to have ‘turned a corner’ in terms of the crazy racist outbursts in recent years, and purely in terms of his performance in this movie, he does sterling work. I’d say pretty much career-best level in fact, speaking as someone who’s never much liked the guy, successfully sloughing off whatever remains of his star persona to play a convincingly embittered, down-at-heel cop, letting us feel the weight of each of the sixty years of drudgery which sit heavy on his character’s shoulders.

4.
Whilst we’re at it though - deep sigh - I suppose that we probably also need to address the fact that the few female characters in ‘Dragged Across Concrete’ are defined entirely in accordance with their roles as wives, mothers, daughters or girlfriends, and that the top billed female (fifth billed overall) is served up an diet of pure, unmitigated hell by the script.

To rise to Zahler’s defence on this, I’ll simply dredge up my go-to defence of Peckinpah and point out that this is a film about men living in an unremittingly masculine world, and we see women from their point of view, waving from the margins. If you watch the relatively few scenes here in which women are given a voice however, you will not (I would argue) come away with the impression that the writer/director of this material is in any way a misogynist, or someone who wishes to revel in the side-lining or mistreatment of women.

On the contrary, Zahler’s naturalistic character scenes reek of a kind of humane, inclusive emotional intelligence which undercuts any such accusations of prejudice or thoughtlessness. Just as in ‘The Wild Bunch’, the very absence of women from the story’s centre allows them to serve as a kind of muffled Greek Chorus, emphasizing the failings of the damaged men whose warped sense of masculinity leads them to their inevitably ugly fate.

Regarding the singularly horrendous fates doled out to both Jennifer Carpenter’s character and the heist gang’s unnamed(?) female hostage meanwhile, it is worth noting that this fits into the by-now established Zahler trope of using entirely blameless characters as some kind of ‘judas goat’, serving not just to hammer home the mercilessness of the psychotic bad guys in classic drive-in fashion, but going one step further in heightening the drama by deliberately casting shade on the judgement/sanity of the writer/director-as-god.

By which I mean, if the guy who’s taking us on this ride is capable of indulging in this level of unmotivated, Old Testament cruelty, then we know that literally anything might happen next, and that our finer feelings will not be spared. Again, it may not be the subtlest way to establish nail-biting tension, but by god, it’s an effective one.

5.
Apparently I invoked the spectre of ‘serious drama’ above, so let’s get into that a bit. One of the most distinctive elements of Zahler’s filmmaking, and the one which audiences seem to have the most difficulty getting their head around, is the way he plays with genre conventions, mixing up committed, emotionally involving, almost arthouse-ish character interactions with scenarios and plot elements which could have been pulled straight from some ‘70s drive-in beat ‘em up, or a sub-Spillane pulp detective novel.

‘Dragged..’ is first and foremost a Cop Movie, and as such, it is full of cop movie ‘bits’ we’ve seen so frequently, they feel almost like trusted old friends by this point. Our cops get the “we deserve a medal, instead we get a suspension” speech from their superior officer, who in this case just happens to be the same age as Gibson’s conspicuously under-promoted flat-foot, with a newspaper clipping pinned to his office wall no less, reminding them both of when they used to be partners back in the good old days. Or, how about the younger cop who embarks on a reckless and dangerous mission, a day before he plans to propose to his girlfriend? (Best not book that chapel quite yet, son.)

Then, there’s the ex-con with a heart of gold, who only ended up inside because he put the guy who crippled his kid brother in hospital (an excellent performance by the way from the heretofore unmentioned Tory Kittles, providing the real heart n’ soul of the movie). Plus, I’m sure we’ve all seen the “one wrong move and we kill you all” bank heist scene enough for one lifetime, and, do U.S. high street banks really still keep millions of dollars-worth of gold bullion in their vaults, to which the manager happily strides around with the key and/or passcode..? I could go on, but you get the idea.

By playing these potential clichés with resolute, straight faced seriousness however, Zahler manages to make them feel fresh as a freezing winter breeze, reminding us of their blunt effectiveness as narrative building blocks whilst also providing a powerful antidote to the in-jokey, smart alec tone which has come to dominate so much of 21st century American culture.

He is not ashamed of using these tropes, nor of acknowledging the generic lineage his work aspires to belong to. Much in the same way that he had the moxy to name a contemporary movie ‘Brawl in Cell Block 99’, delivering abundantly upon the promise of that title whilst offering not even the slightest hint of Tarantino-esque nudge-wink pastiche or retro post-modernism, Zahler here invites us to reflect upon the inherent beauty and solidity of a simple crime movie structure, testing it out as if it were the engine of some lovingly-restored vintage car.

In fact, it often feels as if Zahler is daring us here to explain to him why these stock scenarios should be treated with any less weight than those of some slightly more quote-unquote ‘original’, sui generis type material. As a lifelong fan of genre-qua-genre, I really dig this approach.

6.
The extended confrontation which comprises almost the entirety of ‘Dragged Across Concrete’s final act proves as gruelling, intense and traumatic as we’ve come to expect from this director, amply justifying the film’s inspired title as several heavily armed factions are pitched against each other in zero sum survival game, confined within a flat, concrete parking lot, offering participants nothing except their own vehicles to use as cover. It is, of course, a brilliant set piece, but one which I sadly found to be slightly marred by a couple of niggling feasibility issues which I just can’t shake, no matter how much I think back over the film’s action.

[To spend a paragraph going into specifics for the benefit of readers who have already seen the film:
 1. That whole business with the guy swallowing the key – are you really telling us that a bunch of criminals in a hurry couldn’t simply use their semi-automatic weapons to shoot a padlock off a flipping garage door, rather than going to excessive and time-consuming lengths to reclaim the key? 2. Likewise, are we supposed to believe that Gibson and Vaughn’s characters would not smell a rat, when the merciless crooks decide, for no apparent reason, to release their hostage and send her crawling across the battlelines to hang out with them..? It’s just absurd to think they wouldn’t have remained on their guard and kept her at a safe distance until they knew what was going on.]

For a writer who clearly sweats over the details of his script to the nth degree, forging unbreakable chains of cause and effect upon which the success of his story largely relies, I find it deeply frustrating that Zahler was apparently unable to give the material another quick going-over to clarify these issues before shooting. Admittedly, we’re deep into splitting hairs here, poking at slight imperfections in what is otherwise an exemplary piece of work, but as I say – it’s an inherent rule of the ‘police procedural’ territory we’re treading that these little things kind of matter.

7.
Another thing I’ve grown to love about Zahler’s films is their pacing. Observing ‘Dragged..’s 159 minute run-time and noting the impressive line-up of character actors in secondary roles (Udo Kier, Don Johnson, Fred Melamed – together at least) could easily lead one to expect some sprawling, Scorsese-esque underworld saga. In fact though, the script’s events take place over the course of a mere couple of days, and the film is basically content to make do with about the same amount of plot you’d find in an episode of ‘The Sweeney’.

Those august gentlemen mentioned in the above para are each on-screen for the duration of a single, short scene (they respectively play a clothes shop owner, a bank manager and a police lieutenant), and for the most part the story told here is defiantly linear – just introducing us to a handful of characters and setting them on a slow trudge down the straight path to their respective fates.

Stretching time out beyond the standard wham-bam, next-plot-point tempo that Hollywood has helped acclimatise us to since the silent era is certainly a bold move on the part of a commercial American filmmaker. Like a good doom metal song though, Zahler’s pacing may be slow, but it’s never slack. The consistent, rock steady rhythm of the film’s cutting, together with the director’s innate confidence in the strength of his cast and material, is such that you’d be hard-pressed to find time to even pause for a toilet break across these two and a half hours of thoroughly engrossing slow-burn.

8.
Actually though, perhaps my music metaphor above is just slightly off-base. Like ‘Brawl in Cell Block 99’, ‘Dragged Across Concrete’s greyscale brutality is moderated by a beautifully soothing neo-soul soundtrack (much of it co-written by Zahler himself), but, more than anything, the film feels as if it’s been cut to the sound of Goblin’s main theme for Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’. Right from the opening scenes, I could almost hear those steady, throbbing bass notes, implacably drawing us forward, closer and closer to something unspeakably awful. I love it. It almost makes me hope though that Zahler never sees fit to actually make a full strength horror movie - the sheer accumulated menace of the damned thing might just kill us all.

Creepy-Crawl Cinema: One Upon a Time in… Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

1969 feels pretty impossible to escape at the moment. All these 50th anniversaries coming thick and fast – moon landing, Manson murders, Woodstock, Brian Jones, Altamont – and now, man-of-that-particular-moment Peter Fonda passing away right on schedule, an exact half century after his image was pinned up on a thousand dorm room walls. Perfect timing then, for retromancer in chief Quentin Tarantino to chime in with the celluloid equivalent of a shiny collectible plate. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some room on the sideboard.

I.

Like many movie fans, I could frankly spend all day here trying to unpack my mixed feelings about Tarantino and his work, but for the sake of both your sanity and mine, I’ll try to keep it brief.

As sophisticated, cine-literate readers, you will no doubt have realised long ago that all of Tarantino’s films are essentially set within a fantastical movie wonderland. They are films-about-films, indulgent thrill-rides with zero real world relevance, offering pure, dumb-headed escapism.

An obvious point perhaps, but one that is worth restating at the outset, given the persistent failure of many mainstream critics to comprehend it. (Honestly, how they can continue to toil away under the misapprehension that ‘Django Unchained’ actually has something to say about slavery, or ‘Inglorious Bastards’ about the Second World War, is beyond me.)

Though I can dig this superficial, ‘fantasy-land’ approach to a certain extent, I confess its appeal has worn pretty thin for me over the years, particularly when (as in the examples above) the Big QT finds himself romping around in the midst of subject matter which would conventionally seem to demand a certain amount of depth or ideological engagement. For a while now, I’ve been hoping that one day he might finally leave the play-pen behind and make, like, you know – a proper, sincere movie of some kind?

By gently weaning Tarantino away from his films-about-films universe and moving to a painstakingly researched, naturalistic historical setting that just happens to be all about the making of those films he loves so much, ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ (man, I HATE that ellipsis) would seem to offer him the perfect opportunity to do this, allowing him to play his meta-textural, movie nerd games, but in a more grounded / ‘realistic’ context - one in which actions may be seen to have consequences, and in which characters might finally manage to acquire a second or third dimension for themselves.

Given that he basically fails to take up this offer though, instead delivering yet another barrage of defiantly shallow, crowd-pleasing nonsense, I think we can assume by this stage that he probably never will make the jump to the quote-unquote ‘next level’.

As such, this leaves us with a few things that we are just going to have to accept if we are ever going to enjoy any Tarantino movies.

Firstly, they will mean nothing. Any thematic framework or ideological intent detected within will be purely coincidental - probably just a by-product of all the cultural tropes being re-heated and played around with.

Secondly, they will be massively indulgent, typically containing upwards of an hour of entirely irrelevant material that he shot and kept in the movie just because he could. (We may roll our eyes, but hey, if it’s good enough for Fellini…)

And, thirdly, everything in his films will feel just slightly cartoon-ish and overblown. Comedy / character scenes will drag on too long, just to make sure everyone gets the joke. Serious/violent scenes will pretty much always fall off a cliff into OTT absurdity, just because, as all exploitation fans know, crazy stuff is cool, and cool = good. Pop-cultural references and tributes meanwhile will be so shamelessly foregrounded that they might as well be accompanied by a little QT popping up in a box in the corner of the screen ala a Japanese TV show, pointing to them and guffawing.

Once we accept these certainties and abandon the possibility that things may one day be otherwise, we can hopefully loosen up a bit and appreciate the fact that, taken on its own terms, ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ is about the most purely enjoyable three hours of cinema that the 21st century has yet been able to offer.

II.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time living and breathing the storied mythos of Hollywood ’69 over the years, I’ll confess that I was pretty psyched about seeing this movie, and that – leaving aside the caveats outlined above – I was not disappointed.

Although the film is packed with things (small details, creative decisions, wasted potential) which irked me, each of them is balanced out by two other things (character beats, clever gags and references, likable performances) which delighted me. (1)

Yes, this makes for a large number of ‘things’ in total - but such is only right and proper for a picture with this kind of gargantuan run time. If you like films with ‘things’ in them, well strap in buddy, cos you’ll certainly get your money’s worth here. The frantic pace barely ever flags across 170-odd minutes, and new stimuli comes thick n’ fast with every shot. As an immersive ‘Where’s Wally?’ puzzle for a pop-culturally literate crowd to lose themselves within, this film is hard to beat.

As such, it is ‘Once Upon a Time…’s production design which is chiefly deserving of celebration. Barbara Ling [Production Designer], John Dexter [Art Direction], Nancy Haigh [Set Decoration], Arianne Phillips [Costumes] – take a collective bow.

There are, it is safe to say, few other living filmmakers who have both the resources and the inclination to retro-fit vast swathes of Los Angeles to conform to some mystic, rose-tinted dream of late ‘60s perfection, and the results Tarantino’s team achieve in this regard are magnificent – a triumph of “world building” equal to any of this century’s CG-enhanced fantasy epics, and a hell of a lot more fun from my personal POV.

Again and again over the past forty years, we may have seen movie directors pay teary-eyed tribute to the days when Americans could roar around guilt-free in massive, pastel-coloured automobiles, chain-smoking their way into an early grave as they negotiate a neon labyrinth of cinema marquees, movie billboards and fast food outlets…. but never has this celebration been rendered quite so exuberantly, quite so convincingly, as it is here.

As a result, moments such as the panoramic shot in which Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth stands on the roof of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio)’s Cielo Drive house to fix the TV aerial, looking down over the perfectly rendered sprawl of the Hollywood Hills and down to the streets below, are pretty darn spine-tingling.

(The cinema in which I saw the film isn’t exactly what you’d call top of the line in terms of its A/V presentation, but even so, Robert Richardson’s 35mm photography, ripped through whatever kind of cutting edge HD processing brings it to our 21st century screens, looked *incredible*.)

Yes, brothers and sisters (but mainly brothers, let’s face it), this really WAS the promised land, Quentin seems to be telling us, and for a moment or two here and there, I do not feel inclined to disbelieve him.

The fact that Tarantino grew up in L.A. and was six years old in 1969 should probably be noted here, particularly in view of ‘Once Upon a Time..’s all-consuming obsession with syndicated TV, movie posters and radio ads. As you might well imagine, the film’s dense collage of movie nerd fan service is a joy to behold, at times becoming so dominant that it almost takes the movie into quasi-documentary territory, complete with voiceover narration and clip / poster-based alternate history recaps.

And, just as inevitably, I can’t help but love this stuff. Whatever high-minded reservations I may have about Quentin’s oeuvre, all I need do is think back on the fact that Rick Dalton’s calling card action movie was “The Fourteen Fists of McClusky”, or upon hearing Al Pacino (playing Dalton’s liaison with the Italian movie industry) describe Sergio Corbucci as “…only the SECOND BEST director of Spaghetti Westerns in the world” (in outraged, what-do-you-mean-‘who’ tone of voice), or indeed upon the clip of DiCaprio appearing in an Antonio Margheriti spy movie… and all is forgiven. I might as well be sharing popcorn with the fucker on weekend movie night.

(Incidentally, based on the audience’s mocking laughter, I think many of them must have assumed Tarantino was just making all this Italian b-movie shit up for giggles. Little do they know…)

III.

More surprisingly meanwhile, the film’s other great strength is its cast. In the past, I’ve often been surprised to read critics earnestly praising the committed performances of actors in Tarantino movies, given that the director doesn’t display much more concern for in-depth characterisation than if he were Michael Winner shuffling around the cannon fodder in a ‘Death Wish’ sequel… but, such is the paradox of an exploitation filmmaker who finds himself working with the kind of talent and resources usually reserved for critically-acclaimed Oscar-winners, I suppose.

Here though, the plaudits seem more justified. After all, ‘Once Upon a Time..’ is a long film which needs to retain our attention whilst holding back violent action or pyrotechnics until the final reel, and, as fictional creations with the chutzpah to get us there, Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth certainly make for a winning pair of protagonists.

An anxious, clumsy, floundering movie star and his vastly more handsome and confident stuntman / gopher, they’re clearly conceived as an odd couple in the age-old Jeeves and Wooster mould, but their relationship is believable, their interplay with the movie’s other characters is always fun, and it’s basically easy for us to settle in and have a good time with their assorted travails and misadventures.

DiCaprio’s performance may have a touch too much huffing-and-puffing Wellsian grotesquery about it for my tastes, but this suits his character, and if nothing else, he certainly succeeds in persuading us to anchor our sympathies to a guy who is essentially pretty pathetic and dislikeable.

Here, though, is a sentence I never thought I’d find myself writing in a Breakfast in the Ruins post: it is Brad Pitt who is the real revelation here. He is not an actor I’ve ever much cared for in the past, but what can I say, he really seems to have “grown into himself” in ‘Once Upon a Time..’, if that makes any sense?

Essentially representing Tarantino’s ideal of the time-honoured Hollywood hero, Cliff Booth is our requisite humble, taciturn working class guy who looks good, does good, and always comes out on top. And, somehow, Pitt manages to embody this storied archetype whilst also ringing true as a fully-formed and immensely charming individual, absolutely nailing that crucial “yeah, what a cool guy” feeling we all love to get from our favourite movie heroes.

Of all of the far-fetched notions which film’s script asks us to accept in fact, probably the most outlandish is the idea that this guy has apparently been hanging around on TV and movie sets for decades, and no one seems to have noticed that he radiates star quality like a goddamned lighthouse.

IV.

Backing up this dynamic duo meanwhile are a wide variety of equally talented supporting players, whose work in small roles and ‘one-scene-wonder’ parts enhances the film considerably. I don’t so much mean the inevitable big name cameos (Pacino, Kurt Russell), but more the younger cast members really… which brings us neatly to the thorny issue of the film’s portrayal of the Manson Family.

Again, I have mixed feelings about this. In script terms, the Mansonites don’t really serve much of a purpose here beyond providing some generic antagonists, parachuted in to liven up the final act of what would otherwise basically be a stress-free three hour “hang out” movie. Indeed, Tarantino seems entirely unconcerned with exploring the context behind the Family’s existence and activities, instead relying entirely upon his audience’s perceived familiarity with the historical background – an approach which worked just fine for me, but which could easily cause problems in terms of the way the film plays for a wider audience.

For instance, I watched the film with a predominantly young crowd, and when, in a beautifully rendered scene early in the film, we see Cliff and Rick cruise past a group of ragged teenage girls who are scavenging from a roadside dumpster whilst singing one of Charlie’s songs, I could almost sense a 50/50 split in the audience between those who shared my shiver of recognition, and others who had no idea of the intended significance of what they were seeing.

Throughout the film, references to the cult’s lunatic beliefs or to Manson’s psychological hold over his followers are entirely avoided, leaving us in a strange situation where the only message which can drawn from the text itself is that dirty hippies are inherently evil and murderous, and that Quentin Tarantino hates ‘em.

That said however, the pivotal sequence in which Cliff visits the Spahn Ranch after picking up a fictional (I think?) Manson girl named ‘Pussycat’ (Margaret Qualley - and yes, fear not, Tarantino’s feverish obsession with trying to wring comedic value out of terms for female genitalia remains undiminished here), is wonderfully observed, feeling ‘real’ enough, and crammed with enough esoteric detail, to satisfy even the most demanding of Manson obsessives. (2)

Although Tarantino has the scary, dead-eyed hippies swarm and diminish like Romero zombies at times, what really won me over here is the fact that most of the Mansonites (barring a witchy, passive-aggressive turn from Dakota Fanning as Squeeky, and James Landry Hébert as a redneck grotesque Clem) are disarmingly naturalistic. The fact that they play it calm, friendly and not overtly crazy is to me more unsettling than any quantity of ominous, horror movie shit the film might have thrown at us.

(In view of my speculations below, it might be worth noting that the kill squad, when we share some time with them in the car on their way to Cielo Drive, basically speak very much like 21st century young people; I particularly liked Sadie/Susan (Mikey Madison) exclaiming that, “I’m sorry if I’m not familiar with every FASCIST who was on TV in the FIFTIES”.)

Likewise, the decision to concentrate during the ranch sequence on Cliff’s need to ascertain the well-being of George Spahn (a splendidly cantankerous performance from Bruce Dern – notable here I think as the only cast member who was actually on the scene in Hollywood when these events went down) proves an inspired one. It’s dramatically interesting, true to Pitt’s character, and allows the film to shine a light on an element of the Manson mythos which has largely been side-lined in the past, in factual and fictional chronicles alike.

Thinking about how Cliff immediately zeroes in on the necessity of speaking to George (because I mean, of course this 40-something stuntman would be more concerned with checking in on an old buddy than with quizzing a buncha fuckin’ hippies about the finer points of their belief system) meanwhile gets me thinking about the extent to which Tarantino essentially frames this entire film through the prism of his protagonists’ worldview. (Admittedly, it could be argued that this is not too far removed from his own worldview as another middle-aged Hollywood dude, but… let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume at least a thin line of division, shall we?).

V.

Though the surface signifiers of the counter-culture – in the form of sex, drugs and long hair - may have been ruling the roost in Movieland by 1969, Hollywood nonetheless remained a world in which women were expected to be seen and not heard, and in which non-white faces were almost literally invisible. And, this is exactly what Tarantino gives us - reality filtered through the eyes of a couple of old school, movie industry bros, with no explanation or apology offered along the way.

For better or for worse, proceeding in this manner, without even a passing nod to contemporary standards of representation, is a ballsy move on the director’s part, and as usual, certain sections of the media seem to have had a hard time even comprehending it. In particular, articles such as this one, which criticise the director for giving Margot Robbie little to do beyond looking pretty in her role as Sharon Tate, seem to be missing the point entirely.

After all, the sad fact is that the real Sharon Tate was given little to do in her tragically foreshortened life, beyond looking pretty. She was the product of a culture that allowed young women few other avenues for advancement, and her portrayal in the film merely reflects this. Of course, we can always imagine that she may have steered her life and career in a more rewarding direction had she lived, but trying to retrofit this ultimate victim of the era’s chauvinist attitudes as a super-capable 21st century heroine would have seemed questionable to say the least.

Likewise, I’m happy to defend Tarantino when it comes to the movie’s other big bone of contention, comedian Michael Moh’s portrayal of Bruce Lee as an egotistical buffoon. In a complete reversal of the Robbie/Tate issue, I have no reason to believe that this is an accurate characterisation of Bruce Lee, but at the same time there is something very refreshing about seeing such a revered, untouchable figure get the bubble of his legend so crudely ‘popped’ and – the ultimate justification for anything in a Tarantino film – the scene he shares with Pitt is loads of fun. (I particularly enjoyed the perfect take-down of the old “my fists are registered as lethal weapons” routine.) (3)

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WARNING: Spoilers follow in the next few paras. This film has some nice surprises, so please do go and see it before reading the rest of this review.

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Whilst I’m generally cool with all this stuff though, I do fear that, whether by accident or design, the director’s willingness to court controversy and blow a few gentle raspberries in the direction of quote-unquote “political correctness” may be apt to lead him into some choppy waters here, should anyone choose to disregard my First Rule of watching a Tarantino movie above, and succumb to the cardinal sin of actually thinking about the damn thing for five minutes after the lights go up.

After all, QT’s personal/professional reputation only just made it out of the whole Miramax / Weinstein debacle in one piece, so, as much as I wish I could just turn my brain off and go with the flow, it’s pretty difficult not to detect a certain, uh, emphasis in the fact that the first movie he has made since severing those connections ends with the triumphant spectacle of two middle-aged Hollywood dudes violently murdering a couple of mouthy young women who wish to forcibly disrupt their comfortable, decadent way of life… y’know what I mean…?

In real life of course, we know that those women were the brain-washed pawns of a criminal lunatic whose practice of racism and misogyny dwarfed that of any Hollywood playboy, but, given that ‘Once Upon a Time..’ pointedly fails to address this and instead merely depicts them as a bunch of damn fuckin’ hippies who won’t get off Leonardo DiCaprio’s drive…. well, let’s just say that the potential for a very troubling alternative reading of the film is certainly there, should you insist on poking it with a stick.

Personally, I’m happy to leave it be. As I stated at the outset, I’d question whether Tarantino has *ever* set out to make a film with this kind of ideological subtext, and even if he did, I’d inclined to believe that this film’s violent finale should be read as heavily tongue in cheek – an intent clearly acknowledged by the young audience at the screening I intended, as they gasped and guffawed in “I-can’t-believe-he-just-did-that” style disbelief.

Basically, I think Tarantino chose to end the film this way for the only reason he has ever done anything in his films – because it’s cool, and funny, and will leave the audience feeling good. The bad guys lose, and DIE! Movies and the swell guys who make them triumph! Brad and Leo save the ‘60s, and a brighter alternative pop cultural universe opens up for everyone.

Which, come to think of it, is the only possible conclusion for a movie named ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’. Fairy tale ending meets Western ending meets po-mo inter-textural headfuck ending. Perfect.

It may be crass and ugly and contrived and stupid… but there’s a strange kind of beauty here too. Just like Hollywood, am I right?

Boom, great ending for a review! Cut and print!

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(1) I couldn’t find a way to slot this into the main text, but the only thing that seriously annoyed me about Tarantino’s direction here was his decision to include lengthy scenes of DiCaprio’s character performing his lines in a TV western pilot,  shooting them with gliding Steadicam, beautiful diffuse lighting, Leone-esque cutting between multiple angles and other things that would obviously NOT have been present in a 1969 TV pilot.

Basically he presents these scenes exactly as if they were part of one of his *own* Westerns, having apparently not yet got that bug out of his system, which feels both disruptive to this film’s period setting and indulgent in all the worst ways. Wouldn’t it have been a lot more interesting to pull back and take a verite / behind-the-scenes kind of approach to these TV-show-within-the-film bits, giving us a look at the detail of how shows like this were made, and of what the crew were getting up to as the actors did their thing etc…? Just a thought.

(2) The set looks pretty much like an exact repro of the photos I’ve seen of the Spahn Ranch, and I loved details like the pile of dune buggy parts, the sign pointing toward the ‘chop shop’, and the inclusion of a few surly, disengaged bikers, and even a guy done up like Bobby Beausoleil, in the background. Well done, team, well done.

(3) For anyone counting the beans re: the film’s representational issues, I’m fairly sure Moh is the only non-white actor in the cast who actually even has *lines* -- but again, I’d put this down to nature of the world inhabited by our viewpoint characters, rather than any reflection of Tarantino’s personal agenda.

New Movies Reviews!

As in, a few short-as-possible takes on recently released movies – because, uncharacteristically, I seem to have watched quite a few of them recently.

One Cut of the Dead

(Shin'ichirô Ueda, 2017)

If you’ve not yet seen this high concept Japanese indie mega-hit, let me simply say that you probably should, because it’s wonderful.

Beyond that however, it is the very definition of a film that is almost impossible to write about without spoiling the surprise, so what follows is less of a conventional review, and more just a couple of quick pieces of advice for potential viewers.

1. Though it is being marketed as a zombie film, I’d probably tag this one more as a family drama, disguised as a film-about-filmmaking, disguised as a zombie film, so - keep your monster kid expectations in check.

2. Though the opening half hour might well cause you to question why you’re bothering to watch this thing, stick with it and you will be richly rewarded.

3. Likewise, if you, like me, tend to experience motion sickness when watching shaky-cam handheld footage, this opening act will soon become a horrendous, stomach-churning nightmare. Once again though, please keep it together and keep your eyes on the screen, because blessed relief awaits at the thirty minute mark, and you’ll be disappointed if you missed some important details whilst staring at your shoes feeling nauseous.

And finally, I will note that, despite its low budget origins, this film’s achievements in the oft-overlooked fields of pre-production planning and continuity are quite possibly unparalleled in the medium, and, I believe, deserve to be recognised with some kind of gigantic medal and a hearty round of applause from the entire international film community.

Get Out

(Jordan Peele, 2017)

So yes, I was pretty late getting around to this one. I really liked it though! In particular, I appreciated the way in which Peele manages to spin his “yeah, I see where this is going” Stepford/Bodysnatchers type premise into a considerably more challenging and thought-provoking social allegory than I had been expecting.

By which I mean, I like that he clearly decided that making his bad guys traditional white supremacists would be just too easy, and instead sets his satirical sights upon a slightly trickier target – namely, a very particular slice of white, liberal America that tends to fetishize the black experience whilst failing to respect the existence of black people as independent, self-determining, well… people, basically.

Elsewhere, the film has some fine acting and character interplay and some effective bits of humour, together with an exquisitely rendered atmosphere of unease, top notch cinematography and a handful of queasily surreal images that will live long in the memory. All in all, it rather put me in mind of a slicker and more professional Larry Cohen film, which is certainly no bad thing. (One Larry Cohen film in particular in fact, but… that’s a story we’ll get into in another forthcoming review, I suspect.)

All of these qualities are meanwhile only slightly undermined meanwhile by a script so monumentally unfeasible that plotholers will no doubt be gleefully trooping toward this one with their hardhats and grappling hooks for years to come.

(My biggest personal bugbear: I know there’s probably a point to be made about the black community being ill-served by law enforcement, but even so, surely someone in a position of authority must have noticed that ten plus missing persons cases were all in a relationship with the same woman at the time of their disappearance…?)

The Sisters Brothers

(Jacques Audiard, 2018)

A sprawling, historically detailed pre-Civil War western with an oddball, black comic tone, ‘The Sisters Brothers’ is in many ways an unmistakably contemporary (by which I mean, 21st century) prospect, but at the same time, it certainly wouldn’t have embarrassed the architects of the great, revisionist westerns of the 1970s, in terms of its narrative ambition, production design, immersive visuals and general sense-of-place.

In these days of micro-managed, producer-bedevilled screenplays, I appreciated the way that the film feels, for better or worse, like the sole vision of writer-director Jacques Audiard (who makes his Hollywood debut here I believe, having previously hit big in his native France with ‘A Prophet’ (2009) and ‘The Beat My Heart Skipped’ (2005)). This in spite of the fact that the list of production companies & sundry other entities involved in ‘presenting’ ‘The Sisters Brothers’ takes up an entire widescreen frame of subtitle-sized text. (Honestly, I thought it was a gag, until the opening scene – depicting a massacre - established a considerably less flippant tone.)

In particular, I liked the way that this film’s storytelling moves away from the “leaden gravity of karmic fate” approach so often favoured by westerns, instead adopting a rambling, quixotic framework that allows all kinds of episodic diversions and sidebars to distract us from the main thrust of the title characters’ intertwined arcs, including random bear attacks, shipwrecks, transgender casino proprietors and a tour through the bright lights of Gold Rush-era San Francisco.

Adherence to conventional screenwriting doctrine would have seen most of this stuff mercilessly excised, but personally, I’m glad that that these various bits and pieces made the final cut, simply because they are fun and interesting, and help to make the world of the film richer and more involving than it may have been if restricted to a straight-down-the-line, three act type job.

Speaking of rambling however…. well, let’s just say that, whereas the great American westerns of the past were largely united by their zen-like mastery of the ‘SHOW, DON’T TELL’ approach to character development, Audiard by contrast takes the Wes Anderson route here, allowing his characters to bang on interminably about their family backgrounds, personal ambitions and psychological conflicts, sometimes even in the form of fourth wall-breaking, straight-to-camera monologues.

Lord in heaven, I’ve never known such a bunch of touchy-feely cowboys – The Wild Bunch they ain’t. In fact, if sainted Sam Peckinpah was still with us, the effect of a screening of this one on the old boy’s blood pressure might have finished him off for good.

This all culminates in a curious variation on the old ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre’ gold prospecting expedition, in which three of the four grizzled, gun-toting participants gradually come to recognise each other as frustrated, autodidact intellectuals who share a utopian belief in the common brotherhood of man…. leaving only one authentically brutish tough guy amongst their number. Needless to say, it doesn’t end well, but, like most everything else in this film, it at least ends badly in a pretty unusual way, breaking curious new ground within this most heavily codified of cinematic genres.

I’ll admit, all the self-reflective nattering and teary pontificating in ‘The Sisters Brothers’ really got my goat – perhaps simply because it conflicts so strongly with my own personal ideal of the western – but on the other hand, there’s a whole load of satisfyingly cathartic violence here too, so hey - swings and roundabouts.

In most other respects however, this is an admirable piece of proper, old fashioned filmmaking, anchored by a truly exceptional performance from John C. Reilly as the older, more mature of the two brothers. His relationship with his wilder younger sibling (Joaquin Phoenix) touches upon that same ‘old, dying west vs new, incoming civilisation’ conflict that lies at the heart of so many of those brilliant ‘60s and ‘70s westerns - only here, it is civility, settlement and compromise that Audiard sees as the more noble, more poetic option, in contrast to the doomed, twilight-of-the-gods masculine belligerence hymned by directors like Peckinpah and Leone.

Though the film’s occasionally quirky tone and failure connect with me emotionally prevent me from hailing it as a modern classic, there is a lot going on in ‘The Sisters Brothers’ for western scholars to get their teeth into, and it certainly makes for a fine way to pass an evening, irrespective of one’s personal investment in the genre.

Widows

(Steve McQueen, 2018)

Venturing even further toward the mainstream (because Japan Airlines in-flight entertainment neglected to include any English friendly old movies), I actually thought the trailer for this all-star heist movie from Steve McQueen (not *that* Steve McQueen, as I will insist on specifying until the day I die) actually looked quite promising, and indeed, as an intricately plotted crime procedural set in modern day Chicago, it’s rock solid.

In fact, watching it feels very much like reading a rock solid, intricately plotted contemporary crime novel, an achievement which I’m going to assume goes all the way back to Lynda La Plante’s source novel. (I’ve never previously felt the need to read any of her charity shop-filling doorstops, but I do feel somewhat warmer toward them on the basis of this satisfyingly labyrinthine, POV-hopping yarn.)

Outside of all the stuff with gun and gangsters and vans blowing up, there is plenty of swelling music, emotive flashbacks, manipulative ‘tearjerking’ moments and a lot of (perfectly reasonable, let’s face it) commentary on the hard road faced by women and ethnic minorities in contemporary society to endear the film to the Oscar Bait crowd, but I personally didn’t find any of it too cloying, and the relentless mechanics of the plotting keeps the engine ticking over nicely throughout; keeping our eyes always on the next corner, so to speak.

Initially, I thought we might be looking here at a kind of sophisticated, non-exploitative modern Hollywood take on the old Pam Grier/Jack Hill via Pinky Violence formula, wherein we get to enjoy the cathartic release of seeing wronged women exact revenge against a grab-bag of utterly despicable, cartoonishly horrid males (representatives of course of an utterly despicable, cartoonishly horrid system), but, as ‘Widows’ progresses, characterisation on both sides of the gender divide becomes murkier, casting at least some welcome shade onto the film’s socially progressive right n’ wrong dynamics.

Ironically for a film that so deliberately puts its female characters centre stage, I actually found that by far the most compelling aspect of the story was the material concerning the behind the scenes machinations of a local election, wherein two equally corrupt, duplicitous male candidates from opposite sides of the tracks attempt to put one over on the voting populace of the city ward in which the action takes place.

Both Colin Farrell as the Teflon-coated old money candidate who secretly hates the hypocrisy of the role his domineering father has groomed him for, and Brian Tyree Henry as the ruthless gangster who has reinvented himself as the “progressive social change” candidate simply because he believes politics will offer him better kickbacks and a longer lifespan, are fantastically monstrous creations, and it’s great too to see old Bobby Duvall pretty much napalming the joint in a ferocious turn as Farrell’s aforementioned father.

To be honest, the interlocking sisters-doing-it-for-themselves narrative suffers in comparison, feeling a bit underdeveloped, in spite of the vast acres of screen-time allotted to filling in the protagonists’ respective back stories. Nonetheless though, performances remain strong, and the film believably conveys the destabilising trauma that can ensue when every day, more-or-less-law-abiding citizens suddenly discover that their lives sit precariously atop a steaming mountain of corruption, violence and extortion.

The eventual emotional impact of all this is muffled by a few loose ends and a BIG PLOT TWIST which feels poorly handled and unnecessary, but hey, you can’t have everything. Overall, ‘Widows’ is a solid crime film that lives and breathes within the conventions of its genre despite its wider thematic concerns, and its heart is certainly in the right place.

I’ve not yet had the opportunity to see S. Craig Zahler’s controversial cop epic ‘Dragged Across Concrete’, but I’d imagine it could make for an interesting “compare and contrast” with this one. Something tells me I’ll probably rate ‘..Concrete’ more highly as a film, but I’m pretty sure I already know which of the two I’d rather hang out with were they to take on human form, if you get my drift.

The Predator

(Shane Black, 2018)

I’m assuming that, by this point, this awkwardly monikered sequel/reboot/whatever must have already been consigned to obscurity, from whence it will be distantly recalled as one of the biggest franchise-killing turkeys ever to have strutted its way through the gates of the Fox backlot onto the baking streets of Hollywood. I’d normally be content to leave it there, sizzling on the sidewalk, but the curvature of the earth adds about ninety minutes to the reverse leg of my annual Tokyo / London flight, so – ladies and gents, ‘The Predator’.

Actually, in truth, I feel a certain sympathy for this effort simply because I’m aware that director Shane Black is a close friend and long term collaborator of Fred Dekker, a man still revered by us horror fans as the creator of ‘Night of the Creeps’ (1986) and ‘The Monster Squad’ (1987). Indeed, Black & Dekker (ha! I only just noticed…) share the sole screenplay credit for ‘The Predator’, although god only knows what percentage of the movie they originally had in mind actually made it to the screen after what I imagine to have been a torturous nightmare of uncredited re-writes, executive producer ‘notes’ and studio-mandated re-shoots.

Nonetheless, the movie (during its first hour, at least) retains a breezy, happy-go-lucky b-movie feel that is actually somewhat endearing, including a few dialogue exchanges which I’m sure must have come straight down the line from Dekker’s sainted keyboard. (In particular, I enjoyed the running gag about the Predator not technically being a predator at all, because it hunts for sport rather than for food, with a character at one point likening it more to “an intergalactic bass fisherman”.)

With its definitive article title rendered even more redundant thanks to the fact that the script actually features several Predators, ‘The Predator’ is, undoubtedly, a bad movie, rife with forehead-slappingly dumb ideas and mindless, video game-y nonsense. Crucially however, it is not an unenjoyable bad movie.

Unlike most second tier Hollywood action product, the first hour here is neither boring nor charmless, and it’s muddled totality can perhaps best be appreciated by considering it as the kind of movie that some ‘80s trash maven like Albert Pyun or Fred Olen Ray might have made, had they been gifted with an eighty million dollar budget and a cruise liner full of Red Bull-huffing digital effects “artists”.

Would Pyun or Olen Ray’s Predator movie have included cute alien doggies who chase and swallow hand grenades? Probably!

Would they have presented us with the idea that a bus-load of inmates from the psychiatric ward of a military prison might actually turn out to be a gang of lovable, good-natured goofballs who can be safely left in charge of children and trusted with an array of city-block-levelling firepower? Sure, why not!

Would they have tapped into some paint-by-numbers Spielberg type shit by having a hard-done-by autistic kid take possession of a Predator helmet and wear it out as a Halloween costume, using its powers to take care of bullies, etc..? Well, ok, perhaps that’s a little bit far off the low rent sci-fi action movie tracks for Pyun and co, but if you can get some school holiday/family TV appeal into the bargain it’s all money in the bank, right?

Well, either way -- you know that whole business with the hot lady biologist being whisked off by helicopter to a top secret pentagon alien research lab built into the side of a mountain, where visitors need to strip naked for the ‘decontamination chamber’, whilst a white-coated scientist-who-looks-like-Gary-Busey-but-isn’t cracks wise over the body of a sedated Predator they have restrained on the examination table (absolutely NO danger of it waking up and slaughtering everybody, no siree)..? THAT is some prime ‘80s trash sci-fi business right there, no question about it.

(The only difference is, in the ‘80s, there would have been boobs. But, as we all know, they don’t exist anymore (at least outside the context of grim, taboo-breaking ordeal movies about how sex is horrible and people would rather cut bits of themselves off with rusty knives), so no dice, lechers.)

In this spirit, I’d go so far as to say that – bearing in mind I was sitting in an air-conditioned tin can thousands of feet above the plains of Siberia when I watched it - I actually found much of ‘The Predator’s run-time uproariously entertaining, in an “I can’t actually believe what I’m seeing here” kind of way.

My enjoyment was further enhanced by the fact that the film’s in-flight presentation had been “edited for content” in the most hilarious fashion, leading to dramatic exclamations of “FUDGE!”, confusing references to a female character’s “pudding” and macho soldier guys who tell each other to “shut the heck up”. (I’d assumed that this kind of melon-farming TV redubbing was now a thing of the past, so I’m delighted to see it making a comeback.)

It’s a shame then that the film’s final act more or less squanders this good feeling and proceeds to become extremely boring and charmless – an interminable, knocked-up-inside-a-PC, sound & fury styled action finale in which the sight of characters the film has tried its best to make us care about getting violently killed off inspires little more than a passing shrug as we wait in vain for the damned thing to be over.

Unfortunately, this finale also serves highlight my least favourite aspect of the film – namely, the generic “bombastic action movie music” that seems to have been plastered wall-to-wall across the entire picture without even the slightest attempt to match it to the on-screen action. It’s like some kind of hellish anti-muzak, designed to keep you aggravated and on edge, and it gets pretty tiresome after a while. Perhaps this is just normal now though, I don’t know?

In fact, there are a lot of things I don’t know. Like the reason why Fred Dekker hasn’t been allowed to write or direct a film in over 25 years, despite his brief run in the late ‘80s suggesting he might be quite good at it, for instance. Eat my pudding, Hollywood!