Summer of Films: Odd Thomas (2013)

When I ran across Odd Thomas the other day, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. Marketed as a mystery-thriller by horror author Dean Koontz, it struck me right away that this didn’t appear to be a horror movie. It wasn’t a mystery either. Nor did it look like a thriller. It obviously wasn’t aimed at the tent-pole crowd either, or the film-snob crowd. So what was it? Well, perhaps the best way to describe it is as a quirky film about a likeable guy in a quasi-horror-comedy.

Plot

Like the kid in The Sixth Sense, the hero of this film, Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin), can see dead people. Only, in this film, Thomas is an adult and he uses his abilities to catch the people who killed the dead people: “I see dead people, but then, by God, I do something about it.” Helping him in this regard are his supportive girlfriend Stormy (Addison Timlin) and the Chief of Police (Willem Dafoe), who knows about his abilities and trusts him completely – this thankfully avoids the “the police think I’m the bad guy” cliché.

As the story opens, Thomas captures a killer. He then tells us about something he calls “bodaks,” which are like shapeless, see-through creatures that feed on upcoming horror. Thomas can see these too, but he warns us that if they know that you can see them, they will kill you. He tells us that there is usually only one bodak at a time and that he rarely sees them, typically less than one per month. As he tells us this, a man walks into the diner where Thomas works. This man is surrounded by bodaks and more are coming all the time. This means the man will do something truly horrible.

As Thomas investigates the man, who Thomas nicknames Fungus Bob, he uncovers a plot to kill a lot of people, which meshes with a dream he has in which he sees a bowling team get murdered. As he investigates, Thomas discovers that the plot is larger than he originally expected.

Why I Recommend This Film

In the opening paragraph, I called this a horror-comedy, but that’s not really all that accurate. For one thing, this film isn’t scary. There are a few moments where some tension is created, but that’s about it. Instead, the film goes for tense and even that is alleviated by the comedic overtones of Yelchin’s narration and the utter lack of fear displayed by the supporting characters. That said, the film isn’t a comedy either. There are a few moments that might make you laugh, like how Willem Dafoe seems to be having sex every time Thomas calls him, but it’s nothing that will make you laugh out loud and there aren’t any jokes you will recall.

So if this isn’t a horror-comedy, and it’s not a mystery or a thriller or a tent-pole film, what is it? Well, I’d say this is a quirky film along the lines of the original Fright Night or An American Werewolf in London. This is a film that thrives by giving you an unusual character you like, who goes through an adventure involving something unnatural and they must use their unusual traits and their ingenuity to solve the movie. And while you know the film will definitely end well for the hero, what holds your interest is the steadily rising challenge the character faces, the odd twists and turns along the way, and the fact you like the character and the world they inhabit.

Fortunately, that works out well here. Thomas is very likeable and his narration makes him even more likable, it gives the film a comfortable feeling like a friend is telling you a story. The other characters are likeable as well. Importantly, this film has none of the unpleasant ideas often tossed in to ratchet up the drama, e.g. the fight with the frustrated girlfriend, the unbelieving police deciding to arrest the hero, the insanely angry boss, the lost best friend, etc. Thus, there is no phony unpleasantness tossed in to damper the flow of the story. Instead, the film focuses on the plot itself. In that regard, the story moves well and proves quite surprising despise your knowledge that Thomas will solve the film. In fact, the film is full of little surprises throughout as things you expect to happen one way happen another way or don’t happen at all, and I can say that I was not able to guess where the film was headed at any particular moment, even though I knew how it needed to end. All of this makes for an engaging and enjoyable film, and that is the best way to describe this film: it is entertaining. It isn’t much more than that, but that’s enough to make a film worthwhile.

That said, I should provide a note of caution. Films like this tend to be cult films. Either you have a taste for this type of film, or you don’t. Either you get the humor, which is quite subtle, or you don’t. Either you can stomach the ambiguity throughout, or you can’t, as the film does not force-feed you everything you need to know. The critics hated this film, giving it a 34% rating, but I suspect this film will find its audience and will be recognized as a cult classic within a decade.

Thoughts?

** As an aside, this one may be difficult to find. It's on Netflix and DVD, but legal issues apparently kept it out of theaters.

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Summer of Films: Body Double (1984)

Body Double is a more pervy remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Directed by Brian de Palma and starring Craig Wasson and Melanie Griffith, Body Double was a box office bomb which later proved to have tremendous legs over the long term. It also happens to be an excellent film.

The Plot

Like Vertigo, Body Double involves a man who has been set up to observe a murder. In Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart was asked by a friend to follow a woman he was told was suicidal. He watches her and slowly develops an obsession from afar. When she later appears to jump from a tower killing herself, Stewart’s testimony seals the deal with the law that she killed herself. However, Stewart’s obsession causes him to start looking for a replacement for the woman and, in the process, he stumbles upon the woman who pretended to be the supposedly suicidal woman and tricked Stewart into thinking the woman had killed herself when in reality she was murdered.

Body Double twists this formula slightly. The story begins with Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) losing his job as an actor and being kicked out of his apartment by his girlfriend, who is having an affair. Unlike Stewart’s character who suffers from vertigo, Scully suffers from claustrophobia. In his moment of need, a man named Sam appears and befriends Scully. They keep running into each other. Soon, Sam offers to let Scully stay in his luxurious home while Sam is out of town, provided he take care of the place and water the plants. Scully is thrilled and accepts. They toast their mutually beneficial arrangement, and in the process, Sam tells Scully to look through a telescope which is trained on the home of a woman named Gloria. Sam tells Scully that each night, Gloria does an erotic dance before she goes to sleep. Sure enough, Scully observes this dance.

With Sam gone, Scully continues to observe the woman. As he does, he sees a man who appears to be an American Indian. This Indian seems intent on harming Gloria. Soon enough, Scully is following Gloria. He tells himself that he wants to protect Gloria from the Indian, but it’s obvious he wants more. In any event, the Indian does follow Gloria and steals her purse at the beach. Scully helps, but his claustrophobia allows the Indian to escape. The next thing Scully knows, the Indian breaks into Gloria’s home as Scully is waiting to watch her dance. He tries to run to her home, but is too late. The Indian has killed her.

After this, Scully mopes around the house, upset at failing to save Gloria. Being the pervert he is, he starts watching porn. As he does, he sees a video advertised in which a woman (Melanie Griffith) is doing the exact same dance Gloria had done. Scully is suddenly suspicious. He tracks down Melanie and tries to determine if she had been paid to do the dance for him, and by whom. (As an aside, I find this to be a much more believable way for Scully to stumble upon the woman pretending to be Gloria than the way Stewart found the woman in Vertigo, which seemed far too random.)

Why This Film Works

Body Double is perhaps the best Hitchcock knock-off I’ve seen. This film not only captures the pacing and feel of Jimmy Stewart’s obsession in Vertigo but it feels even more natural to us. Indeed, unlike Stewart and Hitchcock, who were limited by the Hays Code, Scully is free to be more loathsome. This makes him more believable as a stalker and a peeping Tom. He’s also more believable as the dupe. Scully lies to himself about his problem and he comes across as not very bright. He’s not nearly as collected or as cautious as Stewart’s portrayal. That make it more believable that he would let himself be so easily manipulated and that he would make the wrong choices time and again.

Wasson does excellent work in selling this portrayal of Scully. Had Wasson not come across as so “innocent,” he would have been creepy and the audience wouldn’t have cared what happened to him. But as it is, he comes across as a guy who genuinely believes he cares about Gloria and wants to help her, and you actually do sympathize with him. This was all Wasson’s doing as an actor, as nothing written in the script sold this perspective. Personally, I always thought deserved Wasson deserved a better career.

Director de Palma deserves major credit here too. For one thing, his timing is perfect. The film never drags, but it also feels deliberate. It doesn’t rush. To the contrary, it takes the time it needs to make everything we see work. The images he picks help sell the story too. They paint Los Angeles as a maze, perfectly built for the cat and mouse game Scully plays with Indian. Making the characters actors helps sell the idea that the killer could disguise himself as the Indian, that Scully could find a way to join a porno, and that he would accept this arrangement in the first place. The film is very well cast as well, and it has an excellent score including the song "Relax" from Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

The film does have two weaknesses, though one is forgivable. The first, the forgivable one, is that Wasson can simply get a job as the lead in a porno so he can get to know Griffith. It’s certainly possible, especially with him being an actor, but it feels a little coincidental that it came so easily. The bigger weakness is that de Palma suddenly blurs the reality of the story at the end by making it unclear if all of this had just been a dream during a claustrophobia attack while on set. That’s adds nothing and it’s unnecessary. It’s also confusing and undermines the story. Still, this film is quite good and well worth your time.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a cult classic. In fact, it’s the first film I personally recall ever being called a cult classic. We’ve said before that what causes a film to become a cult classic is that the film is original, smart and well written, but doesn’t spoon-feed the audience, so it ends up being rejected by general audiences who lack the ability to understand the film but then finds a home with smarter audiences who “get” the film. This time, that may be a bit of a stretch.

What Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

For those who don’t know, Rocky Horror began as a musical by Richard O’Brien. In 1975, it was turned into a feature film. It bombed. Boy did it bomb. But like a Phoenix, it rose from the ashes and became wildly successful. How successful? The film opened in only eight theaters and only did well in Westwood, Los Angeles. It was withdrawn. Seven months later, on April 1, 1976, the film was shown at the Waverly Theater in New York City at midnight. This time, it caught on. By October of that year, people were attending the show in costumes and talking back to the screen. Fan groups formed. By 1979, it was showing twice-weekly in over 230 theaters. Since that time, this film has taken in $365 million on its original budget of $1.4 million... with no end in sight.

So what is it? Well, it’s a musical.

The story begins with Brad Major (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) driving on a back country road in the rain. They get a flat tire and are forced to walk to a nearby castle. They are let into the castle by the creepy butler Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien) and an even creepier maid, Magenta (Patricia Quinn). The frightened couple are told to wait for the master. As they do, they discover a group of weirdoes dressed in tuxedos and various accessories that appear kind of clownish. They suddenly break out into song and dance, singing “The Time Warp.” As they finish, the master arrives. This is Dr. Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry), and he’s uh... eccentric. To give you a sense of how eccentric he is, the song he sings to enter the film is "Sweet Transvestite From Transsexual, Transylvania."

The film gets weird from there. Dr. Frank N. Furter has built a “monster,” in the shape of a bodybuilder, who comes to life. He fights Meat Loaf (pre-Bat Out Of Hell), who plays Eddie, an ex-delivery boy on a motorcycle. Frank N. Furter molests both Brad and Janet, kills and cooks Eddie, throws a hissyfit or two, and in the end, it turns out that some of the characters are really aliens sent here for no reason you will be able to understand.

How Did This Become A Cult Classic?

So this is the part where I tell you that while most people find this film strange and confusing, in reality, it’s a brilliant and wickedly clever film that has been widely misunderstood by general audiences. Yep, that’s what you’re expecting. Not gonna happen. Rocky Horror, as a film, is bizarre, confusing, confused and ultimately pointless. It feels like a campy comedy that pushed everything too far and became clinically insane. And to put a fine point on it, if this hadn’t been a musical, this film would be long forgotten.

But it was a musical. And therein lies what made this a cult hit, because these songs are unique, catchy, and a cut above what you get from most musicals. How? Well...

For starters, this is a rock musical and that makes it more accessible to a broader and younger audience than it would have been if this had been a more classical musical, and those are the very people who would run with a story like this. At the same time, the songs are nowhere near as pretentious or relentlessly negative as The Wall or Tommy. These are fun songs, meant to be enjoyed, not bitter, angry or depressed songs meant to exploit teenage angst. That fact alone makes this a unique musical. Moreover, the types and styles of songs vary a good deal, which gives the film a lot of reach. Indeed, there is something here for everyone to love, as compared to most musicals that stick with a single song style from start to finish.

Making the songs even better, they fit perfectly into the film. Too often, in musicals, once the song starts, the plot stops. Not here. These songs move the plot along and the characters maintain their personas. You can actually skip all the songs in Cabaret without affecting the plot. You can’t do that here. Again, this is rather unique in the world of musicals and that makes this stand out.

In a related point, these songs are perfectly integrated with the action and the dialog to tie the film together in a manner much like the way The Fifth Element is tied together, where lines of dialog spoken by different characters (often in different locations) are jammed together to form meanings that the audience can pick up. Thus, for example, you may find one character starting a line and another character in a completely different scene finishing it. That gives the film an interesting, clever, quirky feel which cult fans seem to enjoy... it’s like being treated like an adult for once.

Further, the lyrics (and the dialog at times) are sharper than they appear at first glance. The rhymes used are clever, and the analogies, allusions and meanings are complex and deep. And each song has multiple layers of meaning. For example, the song “Over At The Frankenstein Place,” which essentially starts the film, has the obvious meaning that the characters see a light in a building and they believe that means someone there can help them. But the song is awash with deeper meaning as well. Brad and Janet actually sing: “There’s a light, In the darkness of everybody’s life.” Clearly, they are talking about something larger than finding someone to help change a tire. What they are saying is the theme of the film: this film will be about people who aren’t happy in their very normal lives and who want to try something new... and boy are they going to get it. Riff Raff then adds a lyric related to the use of morphine to find “light” in his life.

Throughout the film, the lyrics constantly have these layers of meanings. On the surface, each song is about that particular moment in the film and advances the plot, but simultaneously, the lyrics are also about drug addiction or O’Brien’s struggles with coming to terms with being a transsexual. And then there is the overriding theme which hides in each of these lyrics as well, which is the idea of normal people looking for something new. Consider this lyric:

You better wise up Janet Weiss,
Your apple pie don’t taste too nice

Here, Tim Curry sings this very aggressively at Janet when he’s trying to seduce her and she rebuffs him. On the surface this sounds like Curry is simply telling Janet that she’s not desirable. But there’s more here. The context is actually deeply sexual and there is a suggestion Curry is talking about oral sex and telling Janet she better be thankful for his attentions because she’s not going to get this from Brad or anyone else. Further, the word “apple pie” suggests “wholesome” to most people (as in “mom and apple pie”), which is what Janet is claiming to be and why she won’t have sex with Frank N. Furter. And what Curry is telling her here is not only that she’s not particularly desirable, but that her wholesomeness turns him off. This is the theme throughout as Brad and Janet delve into this bizarre, definitely un-wholesome world. Sadly for them, they are poorly equipped to handle it.

So what you end up with are clever songs that deal with a variety of truly bizarre topics and which offer multiple layers of meaning. The lyrics are edited together, as with The Fifth Element, to make you pay attention to get the full meaning. The music is varied and of a fairly high quality. The tone and songs are unique among musicals. All of this speaks rather highly of the film.

Add to this that the film touches upon a series of taboo subjects (drug use, murder, cannibalism, homosexuality, transsexuality, and swinging, among other things) which is always popular with young audiences, but it does so in a safe and ultimately ridiculous manner that lets people enjoy the topic. In fact, the ridiculousness here is the key because it’s the difference between seeing a murder and joking about a murder. If Frank N. Furter was earnestly examining his feelings as a transsexual or his murder of Eddie had been taken more seriously, then this film would probably be unbearable. But he isn’t. Instead, he’s so far over the top that the black humor of the film crosses over into genuine humor. And what this does is make this a highly entertaining film for audiences who want a little abnormal in their lives... just not as much as Brad and Janet get.

That’s how this film found its audience and why this film has become a cult classic.

Thoughts? (Other than WTF?)

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Film Friday: Phantasm (1979)

I love Phantasm. Phantasm is one of those films that somehow does it all right. Relatable characters. The mood is tense. The villain is scary. The plot is strong and original. The sets and effects are believable enough that you can suspend your disbelief without trouble. Indeed, the low budget lends a reality to this film which slicker productions typically lack.

Plot

Our story opens with a funeral. Mike Pearson’s parents have died. Thirteen-year-old Mike has been barred from the funeral by his older brother Jody, an aspiring musician. But Mike sneaks to the cemetery anyway to watch the proceedings. What he sees is shocking. Not only does he think that he sees dwarf-like creatures scurrying just out of sight behind headstones, but he witnesses the mortician, a tall man in a black suit, lift a coffin all by himself!

Mike races home and tells Jody what he saw. Jody doesn’t believe him. Jody is twenty-four and he doesn’t want to be tied down by a thirteen-year-old kid. He wants to be out on the road trying to build his career as a musician, and he thinks Mike is making this up because he senses that Jody is planning to leave him with relatives, and he wants to trick Jody into staying. With Jody refusing to believe him, Mike goes to a fortune teller and her granddaughter for advice. She warns Mike that fear itself is the killer. But is that really true?

Apparently not, because Mike soon finds himself attacked by the Tall Man’s minions. These are dwarves, dressed like Jawas from Star Wars. Then the Tall Man himself attacks. He has several unusual powers, and when Mike cuts off his fingers, they subsequently come to life. This is enough to convince Jody that something evil is going on. Jody, Mike and their friend Reggie, a milkman who also plays guitar, check out the mortuary. Once there, they discover a portal to another world. They also learn that the dwarves are the dead who have been entrusted to the mortuary, e.g. their parents. These dead are sent through the portal to another world, where they are crushed down and made to work as slaves.

Can they escape the Tall Man? Can they stop him?

Why This Film Works

This is another one the critics hated, but which has become a cult favorite. (Ignore the sequels.) The critics essentially said the film shows flashes of brilliance and the director had raw talent, but the film was a mess. But the film isn’t really a mess at all, it just doesn’t spell everything out. And as we’ve learned, a lot of these people who claim to be experts on film are incapable of understanding films that don’t spoon-feed them all points.

Phantasm is a solid film with moments of genius. The story is highly original, but it doesn’t spoon-feed you. Yet, it’s easy to follow and understand if you use your brain. For example, they never tell you what the Tall Man really is, i.e. they never explain his true nature. But his threat is obvious. It’s also obvious that he’s not human. But again, you have to pick this up from his behavior, because they don’t tell you “Hey, he’s not human!” What they do instead is show him doing things humans cannot do, like lifting a casket on his own or re-growing fingers. As for his nature, they give you clues to that too. For example, he can appear to be something he is not, like when he appears to be a scantily-clad woman to lure a man to the graveyard and when he appears in dreams. There is also a truly brilliant scene where you see him stop to smell what appears to be steam rising from dry ice.

This is a brilliant scene. Reggie is taking ice out of his truck and you see the Tall Man, who has an unnatural stride, walk along the street intending to pass Reggie. Mike is watching the Tall Man from a distance. The Tall Man suddenly stops right next to Reggie. He turns to face Reggie and he seems to breath in the smoke/steam coming from Reggie’s truck. This is intensely creepy for two reasons. First, it’s creepy because this isn’t human behavior. Yes, humans do this, as they may stop to smell at a bakery, but no human would stop to smell dry-ice steam. This suggests alien origin. Indeed, it feels like he has stopped because what he smells reminds him of his home world.

The second reason this is creepy is that we don’t actually know what he thinks he’s smelling. It is equally possible that he can smell death or the soul or something along those lines and he smells it on Reggie. In effect, he has stopped to savor the smell of a victim he wants. You don’t know which is it or what he smells, but you know it’s bad news and you know this isn’t human. He then looks directly into the camera and thereby pulls you in... is it you he is really after? Or is he warning you that there is nothing you can do to help Reggie?

None of these things are explained, but that’s not a problem unless you need everything explained to you. To the contrary, by not explaining these things, you have a brilliantly creepy scene that is open to many interpretations depending on what would be most creepy to you. It’s actually an inspired bit of filmmaking.

The film’s themes are the same way. The minor themes are obvious, though relatable: Mike is dealing with the fear of being left alone now that his parents are dead and Jody is dealing with the tug between the responsibility he feels for his younger brother and wanting to be free to live his life. These are real world themes that each of us can appreciate and which bring us to the right state of mind for what comes next, which is the main theme (as an aside, this is also more and more complex “character development” than you usually get these days).

The main theme involves the struggle against the Tall Man. The Tall Man represents the fear of the unknown that accompanies death. Most people think of death as involving either a blinking out of existence or some presumably happy afterlife. But we all have a fear in the back of our minds that maybe... just maybe... there is something worse waiting for us. That is what Phantasm delves into: Mike learns that death is a nightmare of enslavement to an evil, cruel master on a hellish alien world. But again, this is not something the characters stop to explain through exposition. Once again, you need to pick this up from seeing the dwarves, from their speculation about what the dwarves are, from their brief five word acknowledgement (“What about mom and dad?!”) that their dead friends and family could be among the dwarves, from the nature of the portal and from the brief glimpse through the portal. Presumably, that’s too much for the reviewers to grasp, but it really is laid out quite simply if you pay attention to the film.

And what do we get in exchange for this ambiguity? Well, you get a movie that lets an active mind run wild. You get a mystery buried within a film where you weren’t expecting one. You get clues that you need to assemble and base around educated guesses as to what is going on, who the Tall Man is, what he wants, and what each part means. That allows you to imagine so much more than the movie is able to provide in its run time; indeed, you can imagine whole worlds of backstory... as people have done on the net. And that gives you is a very rich film. That’s a decent tradeoff.

There’s one more thing to mention: the budget. One of the things I love about this film is that it feels more real and has stronger imagery than most big budget films. In fact, this film puts the lie to the idea of the tent-pole film. Consider the portal to the other world. This is a tuning fork made of two silver tubes placed in a bright white room with a loud hum in the soundtrack. This makes for a stunning visual and is better than all the “gateway” CGI I’ve seen. Indeed, think of all the lights and CGI-whatnots needed to move John Carter to Mars and then compare it to the simplicity here. Tens of millions of dollars of CGI effort couldn’t hold a candle to a smart director who used $10 worth of tubing and $50 worth of paint to make a truly memorable image.

Or consider the ice-sniffing scene discussed above. Most films would use CGI to show the creature transforming from human into its natural form. But in so doing, they would inject a cartoony monster into the story which will lose half the audience. Not here. Here the director had the actor stop and sniff the air in a very non-human and creepy way. Thus, $0 resulted in an iconic moment that directors with access to tons of cash never would think to do.

Indeed, part of what makes this film so inventive, I suspect, is the need to work around the low budget. The budget was $300,000, borrowed from friends and family. The director’s mother made some of the special effects. The cast and crew were friends. It was filmed over weekends over the course of one year. The car was borrowed. And the director, Coscarelli, handled all the technical aspects because he couldn’t afford to hire a cameraman or an editor.

Nevertheless, in finding ways to tell this story without CGI, without special effects, and without a huge budget, the director created a series of iconic horror images that all horror fans know today; he also netted around $12 million at the box office. Clearly, a smart director not only can get by without money, but can thrive in that environment. This film is the posterboy for the fact that money means nothing when it comes to making quality films. What matters is the quality of the story and the creativity of the presentation. And the more crutches directors rely upon, the more their films cost... but they aren’t getting any better.

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Film Friday: Men in Black (1997)

Men in Black is an excellent film. It was such an excellent film that it made a fortune, spawned a franchise, and has proved to have very strong staying power. What’s interesting about this film though, is that it is the perfect marriage of a tent-pole film with a cult film. Seriously.

The Plot

Although it appears to have a complex story, Men in Black is really just a superhero origin-story centered around Agent J (Will Smith). Smith is a New York City cop who gets recruited by Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) to work for a shadow organization known as M.I.B. (Men In Black). Located in New York City, M.I.B. polices all the extraterrestrials who live secretly among the human population of the Earth. Their job is to make sure that the aliens behave and that the humans never discover the aliens. They also protect the Earth from various threats.

J’s first case involves tracking down a bug (Vincent D’Onofrio), who has come to Earth to kill an Arquillian prince. The prince lives in Brooklyn and his people are at war with the bugs. As J and K track down the bug, they are given an ultimatum from an Arquillian battle cruiser, which threatens to destroy the planet unless something stolen from the prince (“the galaxy”) is returned within a few hours. Simple.

What Makes This Movie Work

So what makes this film work? Well, in a sense, everything. The actors have a strong screen presence and excellent chemistry. Will Smith was a rising, bankable star at this point, having just come off of Independence Day. His presence in what appears to be a lighthearted summer film all but guaranteed success. Adding to that, Smith gets teamed with the cranky, quasi-redneck Tommy Lee Jones, also a bankable star at the time, which evokes memories of prior successful opposites-attract buddy-cop films like Lethal Weapon. Barry Sonnenfeld had cache as a direct as well, having just directed Get Shorty and the Addams Family films. Sonnenfeld did a great job too: solid pacing, clean visuals, memorable scenes and great effects. The film also had the right feel. It came across as lighthearted, funny, and easy to enjoy.

Those are the perfect tent-pole traits and are guaranteed to put butts into seats.

What kept them there, however, and what has kept people enjoying this film so many years later, is the thing almost all tent-pole films lack: intelligence. In fact, at its core, this is one heck of a smart film. That intelligence, however, was hidden within a ton of ambiguity, just like a cult film.

As I’ve said before, what makes a film into a cult film seems to be that the film is highly intelligent, but lacks the clarity most general audience require. Thus, the film finds an audience because of its intelligence, but it is a limited audience because of its ambiguity. You would think Men in Black would suffer the same fate because of its ambiguity, but it doesn’t. Consider this:

● Unexplained Jokes: This film is crawling with jokes general audience will never get on their own. I saw this film in the theaters and it was fascinating to watch the audience. When Will Smith calls K’s car a “Ford POS,” about ten people laughed. The rest waited for the joke. When Z tells the smug guys who just brutally bombed the test to become members of M.I.B., “You’re everything we’ve come to expect from years of government training,” the same ten people burst out laughing. The rest didn’t see the joke. Oh, they laughed a moment later when Will Smith said, “Yo, yo, with the thing,” but they didn’t see the joke about government training leading to hopelessly rigid thinking.

Throughout this film, there are jokes that don’t pay off until a scene or two down the line. There are jokes that require you to grasp that what the characters say isn’t what they mean. There are jokes that require you to have some understanding of the outside world to get the joke. The general audience I sat with didn’t get those. Those other ten people got each one. Fortunately, there were enough other simple jokes that the general audience didn’t miss them. In effect, both groups laughed, they just laughed at different things.

● Unexplained Background: So who are the M.I.B.? You never really find out. You get a lot of words thrown at you, but in the end there’s little in the way of clarity. In fact, it’s a running joke that Tommy Lee Jones avoids answering those questions. Then they toss out ideas like the nature of “the galaxy,” but they never clearly answer it, unless you are smart enough to connect the ending of the film to that answer -- it turns out the Earth is in a “galaxy” of its own, which is in a bus station locker, which is itself in a marble being played with by some kids.

Throughout this film, we are introduced to characters whose fates we never learn. We run into subplots that go nowhere. We get no answers to basic questions. This is the sort of stuff that excites cult-film fans because it leaves it up to the viewer to debate the answers and fill in the movie... this is the stuff a thousand web pages are made of. But general audiences don’t normally like this. So why did they like it here? The reason is that every time something ambiguous happens, the scene finishes with Will Smith distracting the audience... “Look, shiny!” That way, both audiences get what they want.

● Hidden Depth: The film is crawling with hidden depth too. A good chunk of the jokes involve scientific principles or theories. The film constantly makes hilarious analogies, always without telling you. For example, the film starts with border patrol agents rounding up illegal aliens. That is exactly what M.I.B. are, which makes that scene rich with irony. But no one points this out. The bug is driving around in a truck belonging to an exterminator. The fact that “superior” aliens view coffee and cigarettes as our highest achievement is hilarious too.

Then there’s philosophical depth. Throughout the film, you are constantly being bombarded with ethical, moral and philosophical questions. Is it immoral to change someone’s memories? Does it make it less immoral to give them a happy memory? Would you want to be able to block out memories? What is the nature of the human race? One of the most insightful comments ever in film was this:

J: “People are smart. They can handle it.”
K: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

There was also this: “The only way these people get on with their lives is they don’t know the truth.” That’s very true of humans. Do our prejudices blind us to truth:

“Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”

These are not only intensely complex questions, but the film frames them in amazingly clever ways to allow those who “get it” to think about it and to allow those who don’t to just see dialog.

So what does all this mean? Well, on the one hand, I think the intelligence is what has given this film its longevity. Tent-pole audiences are remarkably fickle, but cult-fans tend to be the ones who watch movies over and over. It also tells us that you can make a film that appeals to both audience. This film provides a guidepost on how.

Think about this. Here is a film that actually satisfies both groups, groups who rarely see eye to eye: “It was mindless and stupid” v. “It was confusing and stupid.” The reason it did was that it let each audience see what they wanted. People who are looking for smarter films got deep, philosophical points, jokes that trusted the audience, and rich depth throughout. Then people who are looking for something mindless got The Big Shiny from Will Smith to punctuate each joke or close out each philosophical moment.

I would call this a model for successful filmmaking.

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Film Friday: The Warriors (1979)

The Warriors is a 1979 cult classic by Walter Hill about a gang that must traverse New York City from Van Cortlandt Park to Coney Island as hundreds of other gangs hunt them down. Even though that description sounds simple and exploitative, the film is deeply complex and interesting. Believe it or not, it’s also a Greek epic playing out in New York City.

Plot

The plot is straight forward. The story opens with the main characters traveling to Van Cortlandt Park under a flag of truce. They are the leaders of a street gang called the Warriors. They’ve been told to send nine unarmed representatives to the park to hear a proposal from the leader of the most powerful gang in the city (the Riffs). His name is Cyrus and he proposes that all the gangs stop fighting each other and band together. With there being 60,000 of them, and only 20,000 New York City cops, they could take over the city.

As he reaches the high point of his pitch, a shot rings out and Cyrus is killed. He is shot by a gangbanger named Luther (David Patrick Kelly). At this moment, the cops show up to attack the gangs, which sends everything into confusion as all the gangs flee. In the confusion, Luther starts screaming that the Warriors are the ones who shot Cyrus. The Warriors’ leader Cleon is attacked and taken down but the rest escape, though the rest aren’t yet aware of what they’ve been accused.

Word goes out to hunt down the Warriors... alive is preferred, dead is acceptable. As the Warriors make their way back to Connie Island, they are hunted by various gangs, all in ridiculous costumes, as well as the cops. Their new leader, Swan (Michael Beck), picks up a woman (Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Mercy) with whom he argues the entire way. The gang feuds about leadership. They get sidetracked. One dies, one gets caught by the cops, and the rest need to overcome all the obstacles in their way as they try to make it home.

Why The Film Works

This film became a major cult hit, and the main reason for that is the depth. I’ve noted before that what makes a film a cult hit, rather than a popular hit, seems to be that it’s a smart film with lots of depth, but doesn’t spell everything out as clearly as general audiences need. Thus, general audiences will see the film as confused or pointless because they just don’t get what is going on. This film has those traits as well, and likely will seem like a schlock action film to general audiences... akin to how Rollerball is wrongly seen as a film about violent sports.

Indeed, this film traffics heavily in ambiguity. The dialog here is sparse and terse. Little is explained. Questions are answered with actions, not exposition. The characters speak in slang which doesn’t get translated. Character actions aren’t explained through exposition either. The relationship between Swan and Mercy is all handled through looks and levels of tolerance rather than professions of love. For example, the fact he lets her continue with them speaks volumes and, even then, he only tells her near the end of their journey that she can come with them and he talks around why. Characters, like the leader of the Orphans, change their minds in dramatic fashion, but never say what caused it, though you can understand it if you get the context. The only reason you know the Lizzies are lesbians is the absence of males and that they are dancing together. Fox dies, but it’s never clearly said or shown. We have no idea if the Warriors’ original leader Cleon lived or died, or what was Ajax’s ultimate fate after he stars fighting with the cops. The Riffs never even say they know the Warriors didn’t kill Cyrus, they just tell them they’re all right. These are the types of things general audiences typically need explained.

But ambiguity alone does not a good movie make. What makes this film so good is all the depth packed into it. Indeed, what appear to be little more than a movie about one gang being chased by others is so much more. Consider these themes and issues:

1. The film is about leadership. Cyrus is a messianic leader. He is replaced by a man who is almost the polar opposite, almost robotic or satanic. Swan takes over the Warriors when Cleon vanishes. There is immediately a power struggle and we see the troops pick Swan. Why? Was it his toughness or his responsibility or something else? Swan must immediately show that he’s up to the task by becoming a diplomat, when he has never been that before. He must understand when to stand up for pride and when to swallow his pride. And he must motivate his troops. His actions are a study in leadership.

2. Why do they fight? The obvious answer is that they fight because they don’t want to die. But that’s not really true. Cyrus thinks fighting is the natural order of things and it’s “a miracle” when they don’t. Swan fights first to survive, but then fights for pride even when he could avoid a fight. They all seem to cite their territory as the real reason they fight, but when the Warriors reach Connie Island and see it in the morning, Swan asks derisively if this is really why they fought and he thinks of getting away from it.

The characters are complex too. Look at Mercy’s character. She takes great offense at being called a whore, even though she probably is. She talks about how the future promises her nothing and she wants to live now, but at the same time, she’s looking for a better future. Yet, she joins this group knowing they are being hunted and will likely be dead by the end of the evening, and she does so despite Swan showing her nothing but contempt. Cyrus, who seems like such a fantastic leader with the power to unite them all is actually a murdering thief who wants to unite them so they can steal the city blind and terrorize its people. Luther is a true sociopath who just wants to see the world burn. He proves why Cyrus’s plan can never work... it’s doomed by the very nature of the people required to make it work.

There’s an interesting social commentary too. The film is based on a novel and in adapting it, the filmmakers added a bunch of white characters (there are no white characters in the book). Still, despite these token whites, for most middle-class white people in suburbia or Minnesota, this film would have been a shock in 1979. Cyrus is talking about a minority uprising. He is talking about 60,000 mostly black and Puerto Rican gangbangers overwhelming the cops and taking over the city. This plays into the black power movement, which scared the crap out of white America in the 1960s/1970s – the Riffs even borrow from the Black Panther/Viet Cong look and affect military-like precision. This film digs deeper than Hollywood ever delves into this issue.

The film also explains why people join gangs: poverty, lack of education, fear, a desire to feel powerful, and psychopathic/sociopathic personalities. It shows the cops as faceless oppressors (indeed, try to get a good look at one in the face anywhere in the film), which reflects the gang mindset. Again, this is deeper than Hollywood ever gets when it talks about gangs - Hollywood talks only about economics or fear of the cops. And while the film does make the Warriors sympathetic, it also reminds us that they too are rotten. We see this as one tries to rape a woman, as they fight for stupid reasons like refusal to take off their vests as they pass through a street, and as they strike terror into some kids riding home from the prom.

And if all of that isn’t enough to be packed into a film about a gang being chased, there is another level which I find the most fascinating. This film is based on a 1965 novel by Sol Yurick, but it’s ultimately an adaptation of the Greek Epic Anabasis by Xenophon.

Xenophon was a soldier who accompanied a large army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger. They intended to take the throne of Persia, but even as they won the battle, Cyrus was killed, making the expedition pointless. Their leaders were then killed, and the remaining troops needed to fight their way home. It even ends at the sea, where The Warriors also ends.

In other words, this simple film about some gangs is actually a Greek epic. What’s more, once you start to think of it in those terms, each of the encounters takes on a new significance. In many ways, Mercy becomes a Helen of Troy figure, the prize Swan wins. The gangs represent challenges like the Cyclops or armies they come across. The Lizzies are Circes. The Furies are Furies or the Harpies. Turnbull is the Minotaur. The subway is the labyrinth. You have very classic-Greek betrayal in them being falsely accused of killing Cyrus. Characters who fail morally fail in the story and end up dead or captured. And in the end, you have the unveiling of the truth and the retribution against the betrayers. Very classic. These things don’t all come from Anabasis, but they give the film a mythical, epic feel.

This is why this film continues to have such a following, because it offers so much. There isn’t a scene in this film which doesn’t give you a lot to think about or multiple ways to see it. And to get this, you need to use your brain because the film feeds you nothing. That makes it all the more interesting because it leaves it up to the audience to solve the riddle.

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Film Friday: The Big Lebowski (1998)

Few people are indifferent when it comes to the Coen brothers. Most people either love them or hate them. Personally, I find their films to be either brilliant or completely flat, though even the brilliant ones are rarely satisfying. The Big Lebowski sits in the brilliant category. Interestingly, what makes this film work is that it provides compelling moments and it strings them together in a unique way.

** spoiler alert **

Plot

The Big Lebowski is a sort-of-comedy centered around Jeff Lebowski aka “the Dude” (Jeff Bridges). He’s a slacker who lives in Los Angeles. Bowling is the only thing that matters in his life. The Dude becomes a pawn in a kidnapping plot when he is mistaken for another Lebowski and some thugs appear at his house and threaten him. In the process, they urinate on his rug. This upsets him because “the rug really tied the room together,” and he decides to see the Lebowski they were really after to get compensation for his rug. In the process, he and his bowling buddies run into a veritable freak show of characters.

In its initial run, the film faired poorly with critics and audiences alike. It brought in only $17 million. Over time, however, this film has attained cult status. Indeed, there are festivals to the film and there’s even an online religion (Dudeism) with 130,000 members. The film is now also widely regarded as genius by the same critics who panned it originally.

What Makes This Film Work

So what made this film work? Well, ultimately, what really works here is that the Coen brothers created a film which draws you in. It does that with strange characters who make you curious and by making each scene compelling. To do that, the Coens do something interesting. They abandon the traditional mechanics of plot, i.e. each scene must efficiently convey the next plot point, with each step in the plot being shown, each scene logically following from the last, and nothing irrelevant being included. Instead, the Coens make each scene its own fantastic little moment which only vaguely makes sense in the overall plot, and they tie all these scenes together with themes.

Thus, for example, the Dude constantly mentions his rug, which we are repeatedly told “tied the room together.” This becomes the seeming motivation behind each scene even though none of the scenes have anything do with the rug and none of the characters care about it. Similarly, each character talks about “the money” to make it seem like the story is focused on the kidnapping plot, even though most of the characters don’t really care about that either. And everything always comes back to bowling even though none of the characters involved in the plot have anything to do with bowling. By constantly mentioning these things, the Coens manage to make each of the scenes feel completely related and like they are all working toward a single plot point, even though only a handful of the scenes really matter to the plot. This results in a fascinating bit of misdirection as it keeps you thinking the plot is moving forward when it really isn’t.

So why do this? Well, it allows the Coens to build each scene independently and to maximize the punch because they don’t need to worry about tying each scene into the plot story-wise. It also allows them to skip the transition scenes/“workman” parts of the plot that move the story along, but which hold little real interest. Thus, for example, we don’t need to watch the character do research or acquire a weapon or warn his girlfriend about what he’s doing. There are no montages as the characters get ready for a confrontation and there’s no scene where the characters are shown sneaking around. Instead, scene after scene is basically its own self-contained vignette of things that happen to the Dude during this period. Each is stylish, incredible, and unexpected. Ultimately, that gives each scene more punch and it makes each scene more interesting because, unlike other films, there are no points where you can tune out because you know what’s about to happen during the upcoming scene.

That’s half the puzzle. That allowed the Coen brothers to make a more interesting film because each scene feels more like a highlight with it’s own build up and climax, and there are no “down” parts of the film. But that alone would not be enough to make a good film without them also filling the scenes with memorable images. That’s where the film really shines. Consider these characters and their moments:

● Jesus (John Turturro): Jesus has NOTHING to do with the plot. He’s a convicted child molester who is now the world’s most bizarre bowler. You can’t help but watch this guy like a train wreck. And the use of the Gypsy King version of “Hotel California” as he licks his bowling ball is the kind of image you never forget (LINK).

● Walter (John Goodman): Walter is the Dude’s best friend and teammate. He turns everything into some point about Vietnam. He’s converted to Judaism, and clearly misunderstands it. Bowling is his real religion. He’s also intensely hotheaded. He causes trouble constantly. He also gives us the great image of himself bullying a twelve year old, destroying a car (it’s the wrong car), and a scene involving some ashes you have to see to believe.

● The Nihilists: The people who supposedly kidnapped Bunny are a gang of German nihilists. It turns out they are really a new wave band – Autobahn. The lead singer Uli Kunkel (Peter Stormare) appeared in a porno film with Bunny as Karl Hungus. And they don’t even have Bunny. They just want money, but aren’t competent.

● Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston): Lebowski is a wheelchair-bound millionaire... sort of. Bunny is his trophy wife. He’s insulting, condescending and talks about his success. He comes across as part general, part madman, part villain and God knows what else. He and his butt-kissing henchman Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman) pull the Dude into the kidnapping plot.

● Maude (Julianne Moore): Oy. She’s a feminist, avant-garde artist who describes her work as “strongly vaginal.” She’s Lebowski’s daughter and she’s the one who really owns the money. She introduced Bunny to Uli, and she decides she wants to have a child with The Dude... but wants nothing else to do with him. This results in memorable scenes like the obnoxiously laughing David Thewlis and a naked painting session that involves a harness and two musclemen dressed in leather.

● Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara): Treehorn comes out of nowhere in the film. He’s a pornographer and loan shark and Bunny owes him a lot of money. His scene leads to the film’s strange but fascinating dream sequence (LINK).

This is a wild collection of characters. They are fun to watch, shocking and memorable. Each is also set free to roam the scenes in which they appear. They aren’t bound by the plot or the need to give plot points. If something has to be said, it will be said, but not before you get to see them do their thing, and not before the scene leaves you with a couple memorable moments and images. These scenes also expertly incorporate a strong, but eclectic soundtrack.

This is why this film stands out. It stands out because it delivers punch after punch and it does so without all the usual necessary-but-uninteresting scenes that other films employ. It’s an interesting way to make a film actually. It’s kind of a cross between the avant-garde films of the 1960s, which stink, and modern films. And in this case, it works really well.

All of that said, there are two things I don’t like about this film. The narrator (Sam Elliot) lends the film an unreal feeling which detracts from a film which is already right on the edge of believability. The film would be stronger without him. Secondly, while the film is fun and the scenes are great, the film ultimately feels unsatisfying to me because it doesn’t wrap up. It just kind of ends. This is a direct result of the film not having the normal narrative structure and I think the Coens failed to compensate for that by not giving the film a definite climax. Still, it’s absolutely worth seeing.

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Film Friday: Clue (1985)

With Scott reviewing Battleship, which is based on a board game, it’s time to review one of my favorite comedies, which also happens to be based on a board game: Clue. Clue was a box office bomb that his since become a cult classic for the same reason we discussed about Highlander becoming a cult classic, i.e. this was a good film which confused the generic public.

Plot

Directed and co-written by Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny), co-written by John Landis (The Blues Brothers, Animal House), and produced by Debra Hill (who typically collaborated with John Carpenter), Clue involves an all-star cast who find themselves stuck in a mansion on a rainy night in the 1950s. Each of the people invited to the mansion has been given a false name to hide their identity and a potential murder weapon. The audience will recognize these names from the board game “Clue.” Soon, Mr. Body turns up dead and they all have motives for killing him. They must solve the murder before the police arrive. In the meantime, they need to deal with the fact that the staff and everyone who shows up at their front door ends up being killed. Simple enough, right? Well, that’s a matter of some debate.

What Makes This Film Work

Clue failed with general audiences, but has since become a cult classic. The conventional wisdom is that cult films are bad films that somehow find an audience because they are quirky and quirkiness magically finds audiences. As I mentioned when discussing Highlander, however, I don’t buy that. I suspect cult films are actually good films which fail with general audiences because they put too much faith in their audience and they don’t spell things out clearly enough for general audiences to understand them.

In Highlander, the problem was that the film lacked the exposition general audiences need. It flashed back and forth between the present and the past without a character saying, “Do you remember what things were like 400 years ago?” It also used clever dialog rather than exposition to give the audience background information, such as having a character read two words from the newspaper (“baffled” and “incompetent”) rather than having a character explain through exposition the status of the current police investigation. This was beyond general audience’s ability to comprehend.

Clue does the comedy version of this. Indeed, the film is packed with jokes that are not highlighted and punchlines that require the audience to remember what they were told earlier. For example, when Michael McKean’s character (Mr. Green) refers to himself as a plant, Leslie Ann Warren (Ms. Scarlet) quips, “I thought men like you were called a fruit.” This is a reference to his having been outed earlier as gay, but no one reminds you of this when she makes the quip. . . you need to remember. That apparently asks too much of general audiences and this film is full of these moments where the writers leave it up to the audience to piece the jokes together. In fact, the only time Clue actually reminds you of something to make sure you got the joke was when Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn) tells you that her husband is dead. This is the punchline to a joke from several minutes earlier where White was asked what her husband does and she acts cagey before responding, “He just lies around all day.” In this instance, the writers felt the audience wouldn’t get it, so they had Ms. Scarlet remind everyone of White’s earlier statement by saying, “So that’s what you meant when you said ___!” This feels incredibly clunky when it happens and it stands out as the film talking down to you. But ironically, it only feels that way because the film doesn’t do this at any other point; most films did this so often that you stop noticing they are doing it. So why would the writers of Clue do this? Because it preserves the pacing and it makes the dialog punchier and more natural when you aren’t constantly stopping to explain things to the audience.

Clue is also crawling with unexplained jokes which take a quick mind to spot. Consider this joke by Professor Plumb (Christopher Lloyd). He is asked who he works for and he responds, “The United Nations Organization.” But, someone asks, aren’t you a psychiatrist, not a politician? He responds that he works for a sub-agency called “the World Health Organization.” Nothing more is said to drive the joke home and general audiences probably didn’t even know there was a joke here. Yet, the people who would become the film’s cult audience pretty quickly realized that the initials of these organizations together are “WHO UNO,” which was actually what they were trying to figure out – who they all knew in common. This is similar to two jokes in Men in Black, where Will Smith refers to their car as a “Ford POS” and where Zed says to the failed applicants, “You’re what we’ve come to expect from years of government training.” Neither joke is ever explained and I can tell you that the audience I saw the film with missed both jokes, but a couple people got them.

Even beyond this, Clue does lots of things you have to think about to get. When they separate, for example, they manage to put the most perfectly incompatible people together as teams, such as people who threatened to kill each other earlier or how Yvette (Coleen Camp), who every man is after and who flirts with every man, gets randomly teamed up with Mr. Green, who is gay. At no point do the characters say, “hey, we’re incompatible,” but if you’ve been using your brains throughout, you quickly realize the irony in all of the pairings. Similarly, the character names are all ironic in one form or another. Mrs. White is a black widow who dresses head-to-toe in black except for a white liner on her cape. Ms. Scarlet runs a house of prostitution, i.e. a “red-light” establishment, and is later accused of being communist (i.e. a red) – Communism is then described to as “a red herring.” Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull) is a Major and reveals himself to be a coward (i.e. yellow). Mr. Green is a plant and plants are green. Professor Plumb is a psychiatrist who plumbs the human mind. Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan) is an overdressed, ostentatious woman who fits the expression “proud as a peacock.” In each instance, these jokes are there for you to see them if you can spot them, but the filmmakers never explain them or point them out.

The film also includes a lot of wordplay where you need to be able connect the fact that the characters are using different means for the same words. The best example of this is when Mrs. Peacock is revealed to have taken bribes in a mensroom in exchange for delivering the vote of her husband the Senator. When this is pointed out, it gets asked rhetorically “What do you think of that?” Scarlet responds, “I think it stinks.” Peacock immediately counters, “How would you know? When were you in that mensroom?” Notice that her response not only ascribes a different meaning to the word “stinks” than Scarlet meant, but it also flips the subject of Scarlet’s comment from the bribe to the mensroom. This is a great verbal trick, but it requires the audience to think and it requires the audience to realize that a joke has been told. Most films would alert the audience to this by having a character say, “I think she meant the situation, not the mensroom stank!” and that’s the point when general audiences finally laugh. Clue didn’t do this.

This is what I suspect turned off general audiences. As with Highlander and several other cult classics that come to mind, few of the jokes were spoon-fed, and that led people like Roger Ebert (who was King of the Simps despite pretending to be erudite) to see the movie as a series of “throwaway gags and one liners” which he didn’t think were funny. Clearly though, he just didn’t understand the jokes because few of them can legitimately be called one liners, as each was carefully set up over time, and as none of the gags were throwaways as each provides clues as to the motives of the characters.

Finally, there’s one more thing which hurt this film. When the film was originally shown in theaters, they used a gimmick to market it. The film was shot with three possible endings. Depending on which theater you went to, you saw a different ending. The idea was to get people to see the movie three times (these days, all three are stuck together), but this proved a problem with general audiences because the public wants the story in a tidy package, they don’t want to work for it. Giving them multiple possible endings puts the onus on them to finish the story and general audiences don’t like that.

Ebert tries to justify his own need to have things spoon-fed to him by claiming that having multiple endings made the entire film “meaningless.” That’s a rather telling conclusion. Alternate endings are highly prized by film buffs who love seeing the “craft” and enjoy thinking about the possibilities that were considered. The idea of alternate endings also forms the foundation of the human fascination with reliving the past and asking the “what if” question that is so popular in science fiction. To see a film as “meaningless” merely because it offers you different endings to choose from speaks of a one-dimensional mind that doesn’t want to use independent judgment, not any flaw within the film.

This is why Clue struggled with general audiences but has since found a cult following, not because this is a stupid quirky film, but because it is a good, extremely well-written film which just didn’t spoon-feed general audiences enough.

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Film Friday: Highlander (1986)

Highlander failed at the box office, making only $12 million worldwide on a $19 million investment, but it quickly found a cult following. This cult following was strong enough to spawn sequels and a television series. It’s never been clear why some films become cult classics, but I wonder if this film might not hold the answer?

** spoiler alert **

The Plot

Highlander stars Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod, an immortal born in the 16th century Scottish Highlands. MacLeod is part of a group of immortals who are fighting each other to win some amazing power. To win this power, they need to be the last immortal left alive; immortals can only be killed by being decapitated. Interestingly, whenever one immortal kills another, he gains the knowledge and strength of that immortal.

The story flips back and forth between 1986 and various time periods in history where significant events happened to MacLeod. For example, we see him discover his immortality when he survives a mortal wound and he gets chased out of his village because his people think he’s made a deal with Satan. We see him trained by Sean Connery (Ramirez), who plays an Egyptian immortal masquerading as a Spaniard. We also see MacLeod’s first wife grow old and die. Each flashback gives us insight into his character.

In the 1986 storyline, we see MacLeod become a suspect in the decapitation murders of several people in New York City. What’s happening is that the final few immortals are being drawn together in New York (by something called “the quickening”) to fight to the death. . . “There can be only one!” The main bad guy is the Kurgan (Clancy Brown). The Kurgan is the strongest of the immortals and is evil to the core. He’s tried to kill MacLeod in the past, but never quite managed it. Now, he and MacLeod will fight with the fate of mankind hanging in the balance.

Too Smart For General Audiences?

It’s hard to tell what causes a film to become a cult classic. The general idea is that these are bad films which somehow offer something quirky which resonates with a certain segment of the population. But I wonder if that’s correct. I wonder if the truth isn’t that these films actually offer a combination of originality (perhaps too much originality for the general public) and a movie that is too smart for general audiences?

For most audiences, Highlander probably came across like this: “That’s not how they did Back to the Future.” The film stock is grainy. The sets and costumes are not grand. The lead actor is an unknown French-American actor Christopher Lambert (whose English is not great) even though Sean Connery could have been cast. And the story flips back and forth without explanation for quite some time. . . a plot device guaranteed to confuse the simps.

But if you look deeper, you see something different. First, the grainy quality of the film sets this film apart visually. It gives it a gritty, visceral feeling which makes the film unlike anything else out at the time. This sets the mood and keeps the film from feeling like a low-budget science fiction film – it’s also helped the film avoid feeling dated. Add to this an awesome soundtrack by Queen, high quality effects (sparingly used), and excellently choreographed sword fights, and you get a truly high quality film. . . but you have to be willing to look past the “this isn’t what films should look like” mentality of the general public.

Secondly, the acting is actually quite good. I would venture to say that this is Connery’s best role in a long time at this point in his career, and he fits the lively yet violent Ramirez perfectly. . . he would not have fit MacLeod. Lambert also fits the role perfectly because his accent gives him an outsider quality which is essential to set him apart from the other actors who are playing mortals. It makes him feel different, which is something Connery in the lead would not have done. And Clancy Brown is just all kinds of awesome, as always.

 

Where this film really pays off, however, is in the writing. The story is ingenious in many ways. It involves immortality, which is always a draw because everyone likes to think about living forever. It doesn’t actually involve time travel, but the film gives the feel of time travel by drifting back and forth between the past and the present and making them feel connected. The film also adds the idea of a contest to the death, which is always popular with audiences. This is a very smart combination of elements to get people to think about a film after they leave the theater. Moreover, the film is intelligent in how it reveals itself. This isn’t a film which rushes to tell the audience what is going on. For the first half hour, the film flips back and forth between 1986 and the past with little explanation. All the audience knows is that this man lives in both periods and there seems to be some society of sword fighters in modern New York City. It isn’t until Connery explains to MacLeod who he is that the audience is told what is happening. And even then, the story is still revealed through clues rather than a single moment of exposition. This is similar to films like those of Nolan or something like The Usual Suspects, something unheard of in 1986. To the contrary, most 1980s films would have a character (like Doc Brown in Back to the Future) explain the story right at the beginning of the film.

The film is well written too. There is a real economy of words, which makes the story tighter. Think of the line, “There can be only one!” This line encapsulates the entire contest between the immortals and it short circuits the need for pages of discussion to explain what is going on. It gives the audience a perfect understanding with a minimum of words and those words are like a catchphrase which the audience can adopt. Another example is MacLeod describing Ramirez as “you Spanish peacock.” Lesser writers would have used lines of dialog to try to create the same image of someone beholden to pomp. Even the bit characters work this way, like the hot dog vendor who asks the cops, while reading the paper, “What does ‘baffled’ mean? [laughs] What does ‘incompetent’ mean?” This is brilliant writing. Without this character even being part of the on-going discussion between the cops, and without any more than these two lines, this character explains to the audience that state of the police investigation. Again, entire scenes of discussion get condensed into two seemingly throwaway lines.

But therein lies the catch.

When I first published my books, I discovered a bit of a mystery. The overwhelming e-mails and reviews I got for the books were extremely positive. But mixed in were a series of people who really hated the books. And the criticisms they all gave made no sense to me. Specifically, they complained that the books “said nothing” about the characters’ motivations. Well, this is completely wrong. So I investigated. It turns out that a big chunk of the general public has been programmed to expect exposition. To them, unless the narrator says, “Bill was unhappy,” then they have no way to know if Bill is unhappy even if the character is described as frowning and even if another character says in the dialog, “Why are you unhappy?” Since discovering this, I’ve seen a similar issue in films, such as with Speed Racer. A big chunk of the audience simply is not able to understand context or to translate dialog into “the missing” exposition. Thus, the fact that Speed is haunted by the death of his brother is not something these people understand, because no character actually tells them, “Speed is haunted by the death of his brother,” even though it’s obvious throughout the film.

I think the same thing happened here. This film runs for about thirty minutes before you are told MacLeod is immortal, forty minutes before you are told who the Kurgan is (even though you’ve been watching his story), about an hour before the connection between New York City and the events in Scotland is made clear, and 98 minutes before you are told what the power is they are seeking. Even then, few of these things are spelled out in long single bursts of exposition. Thus, to understand this film, you need to actually think about everything you see and understand it from the dialog and the behavior of the characters. That doesn’t work with general audiences.

I am now wondering if this isn’t the difference between cult classics and other films. Perhaps, the reason cult classics are ignored by audiences in the first place, and then are strongly loved by the people who “get them,” is this issue. Perhaps, these are films general audiences simple can’t understand because they lack the generic exposition those audiences require? So a cult classic isn’t a bad film that finds a quirky audience, it’s actually a good film which the general public simply couldn’t understand.

Interesting.

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