Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
written by Justin Marks
starring Kristen Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neal McDonough, Robin Shou, Moon Bloodgood, Michael Clarke Duncan, Taboo, Josie Ho, Edmund Chen
This is the story of a little girl who longed to be nothing short of a renowned classical pianist. We learn of her ambition through voice over narration by her adult Self. She is Chun-Li (Kreuk) and along with her piano studies she also undertakes extensive martial arts training with her father Xiang (Chen) who teaches her a wide variety of useful techniques that she proves to be exceedingly adept with. Unfortunately their idyll is shattered by Bison’s (McDonough) henchmen who kidnap her father and leave her mother in a crumpled heap. Chun-Li grows up to indeed by a pianist who plays extravagant concert halls and is well received. She receives a scroll written in ancient Chinese and this ultimately leads her to Bangkok where she has been instructed to meet a man named Gen (Shou). Eventually she does meet him and he instructs her while helping her get more control over her anger.
This film, adapted from the successful video game franchise, suffers as most adaptations of this sort do. It quite often feels like a video game with little character development, ludicrous dialog, and absurd fight sequences. Still, it does have its charms which mostly come through in the performances which are mostly excellent.
Kristen Kreuk has an unassuming personality as Chun-Li in this film and her tiny frame contains a fireball of martial arts skills that seem to erupt as if out of nowhere. It’s delightful to watch her launch herself into full on fighting mode and her particular fighting scenes have a ballet quality to them as well as seeming to be incredibly athletic. She manages to infuse the scenes with an erotic quality that is conspicuously missing from other such scenes in the film. She expresses a tremendous energy and possesses a strong presence throughout the course of the film.
The character of Bison is presented to be one who has basically sold his soul to the devil. Literally, in one of the more preposterous scenes which is never properly explained, he removes his unborn daughter from his wife’s stomach and transplants his conscience in her so he can be rid of it once and for all. Ostensibly this is so he can continue to fleece people without ever having to suffer the damned pangs of guilt that generally accompany such nefarious transactions. He grew up a thief and continues his activities by managing to buy out all of the waterfront slums in Bangkok and forcing all of the residents out of their homes so he can build expensive, exclusive hi-rises for the affluent. Neal McDonough plays him with fiendish glee yet he never makes the mistake of turning his character into a cartoon. In this film Bison is all too human and representative of the corrupting influence that greed and power can hold over certain individuals who do not know how to reign in their appetites.
Bison’s sinister machinations are not fully explored in this film. I wanted more evidence as to why he’s such a dangerous person and I only got a hint of what he is up to. I learn that he’s prone to extreme violence, commands an army of sycophants, kidnaps well-connected businessmen to do his bidding, and makes plans for obliterating the lifestyles of scores of people for his own profit and amusement. But, there is clearly so much more sinister goodness inside this man. His reign of terror is just too local to have much street value. I assume he is more ambitious than what he appears but perhaps he’s satisfied with his corruptive schemata.
As Chun-Li makes her way to Bison, whom she has learned is holding her father, a cop named Maya Sunee (Bloodgood) and an operative named Charlie Nash (Klein) are following a series of decapitated heads to Bison. Eventually they both intersect setting up the final showdown between the police and Bison’s military squad. It’s a typical battle sequence and nothing particularly dramatic stands out although again Chun-Li possesses a legitimate sense of grace and elegance as she administers her various assaults on her enemies.
Overall, this film manages to be fairly entertaining despite its myriad flaws regarding pacing, style, and dialog. It has the requisite amount of energy for an action film and the performances are mentioned are uniformly good. Robin Shou quietly commands the screen in every scene he’s in. His character is spiritually wise and it’s consistently enlightening to listen to him wax philosophically about various aspects of martial arts and yoga. Ultimately, it’s a film that probably should have gone straight to video as it doesn’t exactly feel very cinematic most of the time. It feels restrained, as if it were trapped in a tiny box not very unlike a gaming system or television set.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Film Review--Friday the 13th (2009)
Friday the 13th (2009)
directed by Marcus Nispel
written by Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, Mark Wheaton
based on characters created by Victor Miller
starring Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle, Aaron Yoo, Derek Mears, Julianna Guill, Ben Feldman
In this stellar, atmospheric reimagining of the Friday the 13th film series, the various aspects that made the earlier films in the franchise so effective are maintained and occasionally enhanced. The result is a menacing, deeply haunting telling of the mythos that surrounds the character of Jason Voorhees (Mears).
Jason is hard in this film. His movements, demeanor and cold calculations render him one of the more salient mass murderers in recent horror history. This film reworks elements from the first four films to tell the familiar story of a disgruntled homicidal manic who preys on those who stumble into his terrain. Jason is territorial here and the locals know enough not to enter into his domain. There is a quiet complicity amongst the locals who seem to accept the fact that a crazed killer routinely stalks and butchers his prey in their midst. They just want to be left alone and are not prone to asking any questions. Also, it is perhaps likely that they too view the incursions of the outsiders as troublesome and that those who suffer at Jason’s hands somehow deserve their fate for their dissolute lifestyles.
The film features two sets of killing sprees six weeks apart. In each a group of young people are out for a good time of sex, booze, and whatever other substances they can find and ingest. The first group are seeking out weed that they have learnt grows around Crystal Lake and they want to procure it in order to sell it at a huge profit. The first kill who is obsessed with GPS tracking systems but is clearly not one that the ladies favor finds the marijuana just before he is slaughtered by Jason. These kids fall relatively quickly except one girl named Whitney (Righetti) who resembles Jason’s mother when she was younger. Jason keeps her chained in his basement although there is no clear indication that he attempts to torture or sexually assault her.
Six weeks later a man named Clay (Padalecki) is looking for his sister, Whitney, who disappeared and he is traveling around knocking on doors asking if anyone has seen her. One woman says “She ain’t missin’. She’s dead” before slamming the door in his face. He gravitates to the beach house of Trent (Van Winkle) who is hosting a wild weekend for his friends. Trent and Clay do not hit it off and a clear rivalry is set up between them. The kids booze it up and some of them have sex which it has been proven is never a good idea in these films. Gradually, Jason makes his way through the group until all but Clay and Jenna (Panabaker) are left. The film focuses mainly on Clay’s continuing search for Whitney as Jason bores down on satisfying the edicts of his killing plan.
There is a definite mood set up in this film through editing and music. The killings seem brutal and more intense than the majority of recent remakes and most contemporary horror films in general. Jason is depicted as not so much a raging force out of control but as a calculating killer who has a set agenda that involves careful planning and deliberate action. Jason has evolved into more of a modern day serial killer who knows precisely what he wants to accomplish and has the tools to reach his aims. He is also a mass murderer who kills a great number of people all at once. For the first time he captures and detains a victim and also tortures a girl named Amanda (America Olivo) by stringing her up in a sleeping bag over a camp fire.
The film starts with the beheading of Jason’s mother (Nana Visitor) which took place at the end of the original film. Jason observes this act and it is this moment that is assumed to have triggered his violent course of revenge. Thirty years later the kids show up and Jason takes his pleasure at their unwitting expense. Clay is similar to a character in one of the early films in that he is also looking for his disappeared sister. The use of a sleeping bag as a death chamber is similar to a girl who was slammed against a tree in a previous film.
There is some comedic relief in the form of Chewie (Yoo) who offers up the occasionally witty remark before getting his in the shed. We actually spend quite a bit of time with Chewie which is almost unheard of in the series. We get to know his quirks as well as the contents of his one-track mind. He’s one of the only characters worth knowing in this film and his demise comes as something of a shock although we know from the outset that it’s inevitable. There are others who are more developed than is typical including Clay and Jenna who necessarily become the two who are thrust into the role of key survivors who face Jason and make concerted efforts to eliminate him.
It is possible that Jason is just defending his weed from the greedy mitts of intruders. Perhaps he’s been cultivating it all along and becomes exceedingly angry when it is disturbed. He wants it to be left alone and is bent on ensuring that it remains protected by those who would ravish it for mere profit.
The killings have a visceral quality that renders them immediate and vital. The use of sound enhances the deaths and accentuates their brutal natures.
The performances in this film are all relatively impressive for the genre. Jared Padalecki has a particularly strong presence and carries his part of the film effectively. Amanda Righetti is at ease looking terrified and her character possesses a genuine spark that is actualized near the end of the film
Overall, this is one of the most satisfying remakes of recent memory. In fact, it’s one of the most invigorating horror films of recent vintage and does everything right to jack up the series and return it back to its roots. It provides the viewer with an opportunity to revisit the elements that have made this one of the most popular franchise series in cinematic history. There are moments of legitimate terror which is brought to bear by the score and set design. Each of the main characters are well thought out and seem necessary to the story being told. Still, the majority of the characters are just fodder for Jason’s peculiar tastes and he dispatches them without fanfare. Jason himself is exceedingly swift and energetic in this film. He seems more human and therefore more terrifying than in many of the more recent additions to the film’s canon. In every way this is a successful take on these films and it seems as if they have set it up so that there will likely be a sequel.
directed by Marcus Nispel
written by Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, Mark Wheaton
based on characters created by Victor Miller
starring Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle, Aaron Yoo, Derek Mears, Julianna Guill, Ben Feldman
In this stellar, atmospheric reimagining of the Friday the 13th film series, the various aspects that made the earlier films in the franchise so effective are maintained and occasionally enhanced. The result is a menacing, deeply haunting telling of the mythos that surrounds the character of Jason Voorhees (Mears).
Jason is hard in this film. His movements, demeanor and cold calculations render him one of the more salient mass murderers in recent horror history. This film reworks elements from the first four films to tell the familiar story of a disgruntled homicidal manic who preys on those who stumble into his terrain. Jason is territorial here and the locals know enough not to enter into his domain. There is a quiet complicity amongst the locals who seem to accept the fact that a crazed killer routinely stalks and butchers his prey in their midst. They just want to be left alone and are not prone to asking any questions. Also, it is perhaps likely that they too view the incursions of the outsiders as troublesome and that those who suffer at Jason’s hands somehow deserve their fate for their dissolute lifestyles.
The film features two sets of killing sprees six weeks apart. In each a group of young people are out for a good time of sex, booze, and whatever other substances they can find and ingest. The first group are seeking out weed that they have learnt grows around Crystal Lake and they want to procure it in order to sell it at a huge profit. The first kill who is obsessed with GPS tracking systems but is clearly not one that the ladies favor finds the marijuana just before he is slaughtered by Jason. These kids fall relatively quickly except one girl named Whitney (Righetti) who resembles Jason’s mother when she was younger. Jason keeps her chained in his basement although there is no clear indication that he attempts to torture or sexually assault her.
Six weeks later a man named Clay (Padalecki) is looking for his sister, Whitney, who disappeared and he is traveling around knocking on doors asking if anyone has seen her. One woman says “She ain’t missin’. She’s dead” before slamming the door in his face. He gravitates to the beach house of Trent (Van Winkle) who is hosting a wild weekend for his friends. Trent and Clay do not hit it off and a clear rivalry is set up between them. The kids booze it up and some of them have sex which it has been proven is never a good idea in these films. Gradually, Jason makes his way through the group until all but Clay and Jenna (Panabaker) are left. The film focuses mainly on Clay’s continuing search for Whitney as Jason bores down on satisfying the edicts of his killing plan.
There is a definite mood set up in this film through editing and music. The killings seem brutal and more intense than the majority of recent remakes and most contemporary horror films in general. Jason is depicted as not so much a raging force out of control but as a calculating killer who has a set agenda that involves careful planning and deliberate action. Jason has evolved into more of a modern day serial killer who knows precisely what he wants to accomplish and has the tools to reach his aims. He is also a mass murderer who kills a great number of people all at once. For the first time he captures and detains a victim and also tortures a girl named Amanda (America Olivo) by stringing her up in a sleeping bag over a camp fire.
The film starts with the beheading of Jason’s mother (Nana Visitor) which took place at the end of the original film. Jason observes this act and it is this moment that is assumed to have triggered his violent course of revenge. Thirty years later the kids show up and Jason takes his pleasure at their unwitting expense. Clay is similar to a character in one of the early films in that he is also looking for his disappeared sister. The use of a sleeping bag as a death chamber is similar to a girl who was slammed against a tree in a previous film.
There is some comedic relief in the form of Chewie (Yoo) who offers up the occasionally witty remark before getting his in the shed. We actually spend quite a bit of time with Chewie which is almost unheard of in the series. We get to know his quirks as well as the contents of his one-track mind. He’s one of the only characters worth knowing in this film and his demise comes as something of a shock although we know from the outset that it’s inevitable. There are others who are more developed than is typical including Clay and Jenna who necessarily become the two who are thrust into the role of key survivors who face Jason and make concerted efforts to eliminate him.
It is possible that Jason is just defending his weed from the greedy mitts of intruders. Perhaps he’s been cultivating it all along and becomes exceedingly angry when it is disturbed. He wants it to be left alone and is bent on ensuring that it remains protected by those who would ravish it for mere profit.
The killings have a visceral quality that renders them immediate and vital. The use of sound enhances the deaths and accentuates their brutal natures.
The performances in this film are all relatively impressive for the genre. Jared Padalecki has a particularly strong presence and carries his part of the film effectively. Amanda Righetti is at ease looking terrified and her character possesses a genuine spark that is actualized near the end of the film
Overall, this is one of the most satisfying remakes of recent memory. In fact, it’s one of the most invigorating horror films of recent vintage and does everything right to jack up the series and return it back to its roots. It provides the viewer with an opportunity to revisit the elements that have made this one of the most popular franchise series in cinematic history. There are moments of legitimate terror which is brought to bear by the score and set design. Each of the main characters are well thought out and seem necessary to the story being told. Still, the majority of the characters are just fodder for Jason’s peculiar tastes and he dispatches them without fanfare. Jason himself is exceedingly swift and energetic in this film. He seems more human and therefore more terrifying than in many of the more recent additions to the film’s canon. In every way this is a successful take on these films and it seems as if they have set it up so that there will likely be a sequel.
Film Review--Freddy vs. Jason
Freddy vs. Jason
directed by Ronnie Yu
written by Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
based on characters created by Victor Miller and Wes Craven
starring Robert Englund, Ken Kerzinger, Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Kelly Rowland, Chris Marquette, Brendan Fletcher, Lochlyn Munro
From the bowels of Hell, Freddy Krueger (Englund) fears his ability to terrorize the dreams of the unwitting is fading so he turns to Jason Voorhees (Kerzinger) for help. Unfortunately, he fails to acknowledge that Jason’s fundamental purpose, that which gets him out of the bed in the morning, is to kill as many humans as possible before sundown. Jason simply cannot be shut off on a whim and kills just as naturally as another man brushes his dog’s teeth.
From the beginning, it’s not a particularly square arrangement. Freddy simply wants Jason to do all the work so he can take all the credit. He imagines that he can control Jason but this proves to be a most unfortunate miscalculation. So, Jason returns and starts killing as if he never let off. He butchers a couple of kids and a parent leaving Springwood utterly beguiled with fear and anticipation.
One of the most satisfying Jason moments takes place in this film. A group of kids all attend a rave in a cornfield and as they get plastered on whatever’s most readily available, one cannot possibly wait for what happens next. Right on cue, Jason comes a swingin’ his machete and manages to take out nearly a dozen drugged out kids before he’s done. It’s truly as glorious as it sounds and fits nicely into Jason’s fundamental moral outrage toward those damn kids and their rampant sexuality and drug taking.
But, Freddy is not pleased. His charge is threatening to usurp all his glory and this troubles him immensely. His sole purpose for tricking Jason into working for him is becoming unraveled at the seams.
The kids, led by Lori Campbell (Keena) and Will Rollins (Ritter) soon become aware of what is happening and take measures to protect themselves from Freddy’s dream land. They try to get their hands on an experimental dream-suppressant drug called Hypnocil and are attacked by Jason but not before one of them injects him with two massive syringes that temporarily knock him out. They cart him back to Crystal Lake to “send him” home but he escapes. Meanwhile Lori also in injected with the tranquilizer in order to pull Freddy out so that Jason can deal with him.
We learn through Jason’s dreams that he is indeed mortally afeared of water. He and Freddy battle to a standstill before Jason wakes up setting the stage for the final, epic battle.
Freddy has an ability to “possess” certain individuals and convince them to do his bidding. This is most readily apparent at Westin Hills Asylum where the kids travel to procure their medication. A stoner named Freeburg (Kyle Labine) finds the medication but is forced to dump it all out when taken over by Freddy. By this stage Freddy is enraged that he is losing so many kills to the unstoppable Jason. He wants nothing more than to ensure that fear will reign in the community so he can once again wreak utter havoc and satisfy his insatiable lust for blood.
There is a ward of patients in the asylum who appear to be sleeping but they are actually comatose from taking too much Hypnocil. Apparently, there is a citywide structure in place to reduce fear so Freddy doesn’t return to torment anyone else’s dreams. It’s not precisely clear why so many healthy, seemingly normal kids are being locked up at Westin Hills. It has something to do with Freddy’s appearance four years back when he went on his most recent killing spree.
The battle sequences between Freddy and Jason are all handled relatively well. They go at each other as one would expect and the tenacity of their fight is readily apparent throughout. It’s a lot of quick editing, and great lighting that changes from red (fire) to blue (water) once Jason becomes faced with his gravest fear. It feels like clash of the titans in hell which is precisely what the film makers are going for.
Lori and Will are two star crossed would-be lovers who dated when they were fourteen. When her mother was killed, he disappeared and spent the next four years at Westin Hills. He claims he was locked up because he saw Lori’s father (Butler) kill her mother. Apparently, Dr. Campbell is the man responsible for keeping all of the kids doped up on the dream suppressing drug. Again, we only get a hint about what happened four years ago. We know that Freddy was active and that the town reacted very strongly in order to eliminate the threat of his returning again. This has something to do with suppressing fear amongst the population which explains why Freddy Krueger had felt compelled to summon help in making the townsfolk terrified again.
One of the most fascinating sequences occurs when Jason and Lori are both dreaming at once. Lori is at camp Crystal Lake the day Jason drowned. She sees a group of kids taunting Jason, driving him onto the dock. Lori runs up to two counselors who are fornicating to draw their attention to what is happening at the dock. One of them morphs into Freddy and Jason is thrown into the water. Lori runs to save him but he is pushed down by Freddy who holds him underwater until Jason awakens and boy Jason disappears. It’s some well-needed back story that helps explain some of the mystery that has always existed in the series regarding Jason’s death. It creates a portrait of a child with a misshapen head who is cruelly teased without as much as an attempt at intervention. It explains his mother’s rage and much of his subsequent behavior.
Overall, this film is a consistently entertaining cross fertilization of the two franchises. It provides the best of both characters and brings to light significant aspects of both narratives. The performances are all effective for the genre and the story has a logical thrust that it maintains over its duration.
directed by Ronnie Yu
written by Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
based on characters created by Victor Miller and Wes Craven
starring Robert Englund, Ken Kerzinger, Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Kelly Rowland, Chris Marquette, Brendan Fletcher, Lochlyn Munro
From the bowels of Hell, Freddy Krueger (Englund) fears his ability to terrorize the dreams of the unwitting is fading so he turns to Jason Voorhees (Kerzinger) for help. Unfortunately, he fails to acknowledge that Jason’s fundamental purpose, that which gets him out of the bed in the morning, is to kill as many humans as possible before sundown. Jason simply cannot be shut off on a whim and kills just as naturally as another man brushes his dog’s teeth.
From the beginning, it’s not a particularly square arrangement. Freddy simply wants Jason to do all the work so he can take all the credit. He imagines that he can control Jason but this proves to be a most unfortunate miscalculation. So, Jason returns and starts killing as if he never let off. He butchers a couple of kids and a parent leaving Springwood utterly beguiled with fear and anticipation.
One of the most satisfying Jason moments takes place in this film. A group of kids all attend a rave in a cornfield and as they get plastered on whatever’s most readily available, one cannot possibly wait for what happens next. Right on cue, Jason comes a swingin’ his machete and manages to take out nearly a dozen drugged out kids before he’s done. It’s truly as glorious as it sounds and fits nicely into Jason’s fundamental moral outrage toward those damn kids and their rampant sexuality and drug taking.
But, Freddy is not pleased. His charge is threatening to usurp all his glory and this troubles him immensely. His sole purpose for tricking Jason into working for him is becoming unraveled at the seams.
The kids, led by Lori Campbell (Keena) and Will Rollins (Ritter) soon become aware of what is happening and take measures to protect themselves from Freddy’s dream land. They try to get their hands on an experimental dream-suppressant drug called Hypnocil and are attacked by Jason but not before one of them injects him with two massive syringes that temporarily knock him out. They cart him back to Crystal Lake to “send him” home but he escapes. Meanwhile Lori also in injected with the tranquilizer in order to pull Freddy out so that Jason can deal with him.
We learn through Jason’s dreams that he is indeed mortally afeared of water. He and Freddy battle to a standstill before Jason wakes up setting the stage for the final, epic battle.
Freddy has an ability to “possess” certain individuals and convince them to do his bidding. This is most readily apparent at Westin Hills Asylum where the kids travel to procure their medication. A stoner named Freeburg (Kyle Labine) finds the medication but is forced to dump it all out when taken over by Freddy. By this stage Freddy is enraged that he is losing so many kills to the unstoppable Jason. He wants nothing more than to ensure that fear will reign in the community so he can once again wreak utter havoc and satisfy his insatiable lust for blood.
There is a ward of patients in the asylum who appear to be sleeping but they are actually comatose from taking too much Hypnocil. Apparently, there is a citywide structure in place to reduce fear so Freddy doesn’t return to torment anyone else’s dreams. It’s not precisely clear why so many healthy, seemingly normal kids are being locked up at Westin Hills. It has something to do with Freddy’s appearance four years back when he went on his most recent killing spree.
The battle sequences between Freddy and Jason are all handled relatively well. They go at each other as one would expect and the tenacity of their fight is readily apparent throughout. It’s a lot of quick editing, and great lighting that changes from red (fire) to blue (water) once Jason becomes faced with his gravest fear. It feels like clash of the titans in hell which is precisely what the film makers are going for.
Lori and Will are two star crossed would-be lovers who dated when they were fourteen. When her mother was killed, he disappeared and spent the next four years at Westin Hills. He claims he was locked up because he saw Lori’s father (Butler) kill her mother. Apparently, Dr. Campbell is the man responsible for keeping all of the kids doped up on the dream suppressing drug. Again, we only get a hint about what happened four years ago. We know that Freddy was active and that the town reacted very strongly in order to eliminate the threat of his returning again. This has something to do with suppressing fear amongst the population which explains why Freddy Krueger had felt compelled to summon help in making the townsfolk terrified again.
One of the most fascinating sequences occurs when Jason and Lori are both dreaming at once. Lori is at camp Crystal Lake the day Jason drowned. She sees a group of kids taunting Jason, driving him onto the dock. Lori runs up to two counselors who are fornicating to draw their attention to what is happening at the dock. One of them morphs into Freddy and Jason is thrown into the water. Lori runs to save him but he is pushed down by Freddy who holds him underwater until Jason awakens and boy Jason disappears. It’s some well-needed back story that helps explain some of the mystery that has always existed in the series regarding Jason’s death. It creates a portrait of a child with a misshapen head who is cruelly teased without as much as an attempt at intervention. It explains his mother’s rage and much of his subsequent behavior.
Overall, this film is a consistently entertaining cross fertilization of the two franchises. It provides the best of both characters and brings to light significant aspects of both narratives. The performances are all effective for the genre and the story has a logical thrust that it maintains over its duration.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Film Review--A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
written and directed by Wes Craven
starring John Saxon, Robert Englund, Ronee Blakley, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Johnny Depp, Charles Fleischer.
We still do not know much if anything about our dreams, suggests a doctor doing research into dreams in this film. In this film, the dream scape is unleashed upon cold, waking reality and possesses the ability to kill the unwitting while they sleep.
A decade after an angry mob of parents burnt alive famed serial child murderer Fred Krueger (Englund) he has returned to haunt the dreams of their children.
Fred Krueger seems to have had a special relationship with the local children. We don’t learn specifics only that he lured and butchered a great number of them before finally being caught. Due to a technicality he was set free but was unable to enjoy his solitude for very long because the raging fury of the parents of the dead children swarmed upon him and took their anger and frustration out on him. Like all great cinematic spooks Krueger could not be put down so readily and he made it his mission to make them pay for their mistake.
The film deftly explores the relationship between the dream state and reality through several characters who encounter Krueger in their dreams and return to waking life with physical evidence of what occurred. The prospect is immensely attractive and cinema and fiction writers have been trying for centuries to fully express the implications that such possibilities inherently suggest. This film is an inspired rebuff to our hopes regarding this potentiality because with great bounty comes great sorrow. This is just one manifestation of the idea but naturally there are many more.
Fred Krueger reached a level of infamy in death that very few achieve in life. He became a fiend of such depraved magnitude that the very mention of his name was enough to chill the bones of those left to remember.
Tina Gray (Wyss) has a terrible nightmare where she is being threatened by a horrifically burnt man wearing a tattered green and red striped sweater and with razor-sharped knives extending from the fingers on his right hand. She wakes up with slash marks on her dress as proof of her experience in the dream. She learns that her friend Nancy Thompson (Langenkamp) has been dreaming of the same figure.
Fred Krueger once terrorized the entire community when he stalked, captured, and murdered over twenty children. Yet he has managed to make a deal with his custodians in Hell and been allowed to enter into the dreams of anyone he chooses. It’s not so clear just where the ability to transfer dream characters and objects into real life comes from. It’s not all Krueger’s doing because Nancy is able to drag his hat back with her when she snatches it off of his head just before waking up.
Tina and her boyfried Rod Lane (Garcia) have intense sex and fall asleep. Freddy comes back for her and this time he gets her and brutally murders her while Rod watches in amazement. It’s a fairly thrilling death sequence as she is dragged up a wall and across the ceiling with blood splattered everywhere. Rod is arrested and Freddy hangs him in his cell. Nancy and her boyfriend Glen Lantz (Depp) devise a plan to defeat Freddy but Glen falls asleep and is obliterated in his bed with an impressive spew of flesh and bone spewing toward and coating the entire ceiling. This leaves Nancy alone to deal with the beast so tenaciously assaulting her in her dreams.
So, much of the film deals with Nancy’s continuous torments at the hands of Fred Krueger. In one key scene she is in the tub and the camera is placed at the end so we see her with her legs spread open as the knife-hand emerges from the water. It’s a strangely telling scene that illustrates the sexual nature of Krueger’s intent toward Nancy. It suggests that he is interested in mutilating her sexually or at least violating her in some way. Krueger tends to lay on his victims on occasion simulating a rape. He is more driven by sex than, say, Jason Voorhees, or even Michael Myers. Krueger is not repelled by sex and seems to rather enjoy it whenever he’s afforded an opportunity to get near it.
Nancy is really still a girl trying to make sense of the changes that are occurring in her body. She is not they typical oversexed female teen who has populated so many modern day horror films. She’s much more modest and self-effacing. She doesn’t use her sexuality to manipulate others mostly because she hasn’t been trained, however, subliminally, in the art of seduction. Perhaps it is this girlish quality that attracts Krueger to her. She reminds him perhaps of one of the little girls he raped and slaughtered and he’s eager to relive that experience through her.
Lucid dreaming is explored subtly in this film as Nancy on several occasions attempts to remind her dream Self that what she is experiencing is only a dream. However, awareness is not enough to combat the sinister machinations of Fred Krueger. Eventually, Nancy learns a trick and uses it to (albeit temporarily) defeat Krueger which is something she learned earlier in the film from Glen.
The film employs expert lighting techniques and sound cues to create a legitimately frightening landscape that it maintains throughout. The opening sequence sets up the tone effectively and generates a considerable amount of chills in the audience. Tina is in a boiler room where she is being taunted by Krueger. She’s wearing a sheer nightgown, taunting him with her form readily apparent beneath the fabric. She is alluring and he is terribly excited. He wants her but is most likely impotent. Did he not sexualize his child victims or was it just a matter of predator catches prey with no overt sexual content attached to the killings? These new victims are supposed to be fifteen and yet Krueger murdered children much younger than that. So, why did he wait so long for these kids to become teen-agers? If the thrill was strictly with one age group, then one would expect it to remain so through the special avenue of dreams.
Fred Kreuger possesses all of the frenetic posturings of the oversexed killer. His problems most likely stem from sexual inadequacies which explains why he would target children as they are not likely to point out and subsequently laugh about any shortcomings.
With her friends dead Nancy takes it upon herself to bring Krueger out of her dreams in order to defeat him. In a rather imaginative final battle sequence she uses her ingenuity to assist in her capture of the demonic child killer. The ending is wonderfully ambiguous as it always must be in top notch horror films. Here, it appears as if the dream state cannot be properly absolved of its complicity in creating horror for the victims on Elm Street.
The performances in this film are all effective for this genre. Heather Langenkamp captures her character’s essential naivety and stresses Nancy’s lack of full maturity into womanhood. Langenkamp allows us to follow her character through her dreams and out into waking reality. Johnny Depp, in his first feature role, is believable in a quiet role. His character’s most dramatic moment comes with his death; otherwise, he’s secondary to the true thrust of the narrative. John Saxon is quite impressive as a character that represents law and order or the perfectly rational against all of the chthonic and measureless forms that populate dreams. Robert Englund is magnetic and infinitely creepy as the butcher of children who has found himself a most eventful and delightful new hobby in Hell. Englund provides audiences with a character who is, to the minds of most folks, utterly evil, and manages to make him likable throughout.
Overall, this film does everything it needs to do in order to create a world of legitimate horror. Fred Krueger is an audacious character who nevertheless is easy to get behind. Certainly, he’s a notorious killer who has taken the lives of many children but he’s also something of a dark romantic hero. He’s a villain with a terrific bloodlust who is necessarily fascinating to observe. He goes about his business with maniacal efficiency and one can’t help but admire his fortitude and his perseverance. The characters are all well written and their stories come off as believable.
Ultimately, this film stands as one of most consistently entertaining horror films in the genre. It gets under the skin and most certainly disrupts the dreams of those who encounter it.
written and directed by Wes Craven
starring John Saxon, Robert Englund, Ronee Blakley, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Johnny Depp, Charles Fleischer.
We still do not know much if anything about our dreams, suggests a doctor doing research into dreams in this film. In this film, the dream scape is unleashed upon cold, waking reality and possesses the ability to kill the unwitting while they sleep.
A decade after an angry mob of parents burnt alive famed serial child murderer Fred Krueger (Englund) he has returned to haunt the dreams of their children.
Fred Krueger seems to have had a special relationship with the local children. We don’t learn specifics only that he lured and butchered a great number of them before finally being caught. Due to a technicality he was set free but was unable to enjoy his solitude for very long because the raging fury of the parents of the dead children swarmed upon him and took their anger and frustration out on him. Like all great cinematic spooks Krueger could not be put down so readily and he made it his mission to make them pay for their mistake.
The film deftly explores the relationship between the dream state and reality through several characters who encounter Krueger in their dreams and return to waking life with physical evidence of what occurred. The prospect is immensely attractive and cinema and fiction writers have been trying for centuries to fully express the implications that such possibilities inherently suggest. This film is an inspired rebuff to our hopes regarding this potentiality because with great bounty comes great sorrow. This is just one manifestation of the idea but naturally there are many more.
Fred Krueger reached a level of infamy in death that very few achieve in life. He became a fiend of such depraved magnitude that the very mention of his name was enough to chill the bones of those left to remember.
Tina Gray (Wyss) has a terrible nightmare where she is being threatened by a horrifically burnt man wearing a tattered green and red striped sweater and with razor-sharped knives extending from the fingers on his right hand. She wakes up with slash marks on her dress as proof of her experience in the dream. She learns that her friend Nancy Thompson (Langenkamp) has been dreaming of the same figure.
Fred Krueger once terrorized the entire community when he stalked, captured, and murdered over twenty children. Yet he has managed to make a deal with his custodians in Hell and been allowed to enter into the dreams of anyone he chooses. It’s not so clear just where the ability to transfer dream characters and objects into real life comes from. It’s not all Krueger’s doing because Nancy is able to drag his hat back with her when she snatches it off of his head just before waking up.
Tina and her boyfried Rod Lane (Garcia) have intense sex and fall asleep. Freddy comes back for her and this time he gets her and brutally murders her while Rod watches in amazement. It’s a fairly thrilling death sequence as she is dragged up a wall and across the ceiling with blood splattered everywhere. Rod is arrested and Freddy hangs him in his cell. Nancy and her boyfriend Glen Lantz (Depp) devise a plan to defeat Freddy but Glen falls asleep and is obliterated in his bed with an impressive spew of flesh and bone spewing toward and coating the entire ceiling. This leaves Nancy alone to deal with the beast so tenaciously assaulting her in her dreams.
So, much of the film deals with Nancy’s continuous torments at the hands of Fred Krueger. In one key scene she is in the tub and the camera is placed at the end so we see her with her legs spread open as the knife-hand emerges from the water. It’s a strangely telling scene that illustrates the sexual nature of Krueger’s intent toward Nancy. It suggests that he is interested in mutilating her sexually or at least violating her in some way. Krueger tends to lay on his victims on occasion simulating a rape. He is more driven by sex than, say, Jason Voorhees, or even Michael Myers. Krueger is not repelled by sex and seems to rather enjoy it whenever he’s afforded an opportunity to get near it.
Nancy is really still a girl trying to make sense of the changes that are occurring in her body. She is not they typical oversexed female teen who has populated so many modern day horror films. She’s much more modest and self-effacing. She doesn’t use her sexuality to manipulate others mostly because she hasn’t been trained, however, subliminally, in the art of seduction. Perhaps it is this girlish quality that attracts Krueger to her. She reminds him perhaps of one of the little girls he raped and slaughtered and he’s eager to relive that experience through her.
Lucid dreaming is explored subtly in this film as Nancy on several occasions attempts to remind her dream Self that what she is experiencing is only a dream. However, awareness is not enough to combat the sinister machinations of Fred Krueger. Eventually, Nancy learns a trick and uses it to (albeit temporarily) defeat Krueger which is something she learned earlier in the film from Glen.
The film employs expert lighting techniques and sound cues to create a legitimately frightening landscape that it maintains throughout. The opening sequence sets up the tone effectively and generates a considerable amount of chills in the audience. Tina is in a boiler room where she is being taunted by Krueger. She’s wearing a sheer nightgown, taunting him with her form readily apparent beneath the fabric. She is alluring and he is terribly excited. He wants her but is most likely impotent. Did he not sexualize his child victims or was it just a matter of predator catches prey with no overt sexual content attached to the killings? These new victims are supposed to be fifteen and yet Krueger murdered children much younger than that. So, why did he wait so long for these kids to become teen-agers? If the thrill was strictly with one age group, then one would expect it to remain so through the special avenue of dreams.
Fred Kreuger possesses all of the frenetic posturings of the oversexed killer. His problems most likely stem from sexual inadequacies which explains why he would target children as they are not likely to point out and subsequently laugh about any shortcomings.
With her friends dead Nancy takes it upon herself to bring Krueger out of her dreams in order to defeat him. In a rather imaginative final battle sequence she uses her ingenuity to assist in her capture of the demonic child killer. The ending is wonderfully ambiguous as it always must be in top notch horror films. Here, it appears as if the dream state cannot be properly absolved of its complicity in creating horror for the victims on Elm Street.
The performances in this film are all effective for this genre. Heather Langenkamp captures her character’s essential naivety and stresses Nancy’s lack of full maturity into womanhood. Langenkamp allows us to follow her character through her dreams and out into waking reality. Johnny Depp, in his first feature role, is believable in a quiet role. His character’s most dramatic moment comes with his death; otherwise, he’s secondary to the true thrust of the narrative. John Saxon is quite impressive as a character that represents law and order or the perfectly rational against all of the chthonic and measureless forms that populate dreams. Robert Englund is magnetic and infinitely creepy as the butcher of children who has found himself a most eventful and delightful new hobby in Hell. Englund provides audiences with a character who is, to the minds of most folks, utterly evil, and manages to make him likable throughout.
Overall, this film does everything it needs to do in order to create a world of legitimate horror. Fred Krueger is an audacious character who nevertheless is easy to get behind. Certainly, he’s a notorious killer who has taken the lives of many children but he’s also something of a dark romantic hero. He’s a villain with a terrific bloodlust who is necessarily fascinating to observe. He goes about his business with maniacal efficiency and one can’t help but admire his fortitude and his perseverance. The characters are all well written and their stories come off as believable.
Ultimately, this film stands as one of most consistently entertaining horror films in the genre. It gets under the skin and most certainly disrupts the dreams of those who encounter it.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Film Review--Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Jason Goes to Hell
directed by Adam Marcus
written by Adam Marcus and Jay Huguely
starring Kane Hodder, John D. LeMay, Keri Keegan, Steven Williams, Steven Culp, Erin Gray, Rusty Schwimmer, Richard Gant, Andrew Bloch
In the ninth installment of the popular gore fest, Jason goes airborne and is suddenly capable of infecting others with a mangy virus and taking over their bodies in order to kill.
The film opens with a dodgy FBI operation where Jason (Hodder) is pulled into a trap with a slinky undercover agent who lures him into showing up at the cabin with her slick, sexy shower tricks. Jason is essentially obliterated and his body parts are gathered up and taken to the morgue where his crusty beating heart is eaten by the coroner (Gant). Jason enters the coroner’s body and the mayhem begins.
There is much carnage including a trio of randy kids out for some kicks at Camp Crystal Lake. Jason returns and quickly eliminates them before we hardly get their names. Still, as is always the case, it’s never a good idea to have sex anywhere near Crystal Lake because Jason abhors intimacy and must annihilate it at every turn.
The film explores new lunacy in the Jason mythos. We discover that he has a half-sister named Diane Kimble (Gray) and that he can only be killed with a magic dagger by one of his female kin. That leaves Diane, her daughter Jessica (Keegan) and Jessica’s daughter Stephanie. The film gets really wacky in the end as the great climax comes to a close. There are elements of Aliens that just don’t seem to work here. It’s comical rather than being dramatically effective.
Jason infects his targets by transferring a thick black ooze into their throats. Apparently this act replaces their hearts and he takes over operations from there. In one scene Jason actually kidnaps a policeman named Josh (Bloch) and straps him to a table before replacing his heart. From here there are many more deaths including that of Diane which is blamed on Steven (LeMay), Jessica’s former boyfriend and father of her child.
The story is fairly convoluted and includes a Crime show host named Robert (Culp) who decides to jazz his line up a bit by stealing Diane’s corpse and filming a show at the old Voorhees place. Of course he becomes the next empty shell killer when Josh does the whole ooze transfer on him. He too murders many people and naturally there are complications with Jessica.
So, this story has some interesting, if not wholly original ideas to play around with. Having Jason possess the ability to take up a new body when the old one is a bit creaky is fairly well-heeled territory. The film doesn’t do anything novel with the premise and we are actually left with a slimy black creature that comes out of Jason’s mouth looking for a way to be born. He finds a way and it’s the most interesting aspect of the film. The visual repercussions of the scene resonate long after the film is over.
Steven is the main mail protagonist in this film as he gets himself caught square up in the middle of the killing spree by merely being in he wrong place at the wrong time. He’s somewhat ineffectual but he can take and throw a punch. Still, he’s lacking in a discernible personality which drags the film down considerably whenever he’s on screen. He’s paired up with yet another charisma-lite female character who is supposed to force audiences into caring but we don’t care for her and we certainly could care less about her damn baby. I think it would have been a find idea to have Jason possess the baby and make her into a killer of other babies in playpens and such. It would be cool to have her smothering all the fat little babies in the neighborhood when their mothers come over to knit.
Jason Voorhees hardly makes an appearance here as himself. He fills the bodies of at least four men and we are given the succinct privilege of watching them hack their way to orgasmic oblivion. Admittedly, it’s just not the same as when Jason does it in his own flesh. His body, gnarled and rotten, adds a certain grittiness to his killing sprees which is completely lost in the new versions. It seems like a decent idea but the application is all wrong and the end result is essentially disappointment that this could have been something potentially more unnerving and toxic. Instead, it’s just silliness from beginning to end; once the final scenes commence you know you are in the place where interesting scenarios go to die. These ideas were not properly thought out and leave the viewer in a state of acute perplexity.
The film features a bounty hunter named Creighton Duke (Williams) who apparently is the only one who knows how to stop Jason. At the beginning of the film he offers his services to a TV station for $500,000 and they accept. All he has at his disposal is one tiny bit of information that he has culled from some source or another. That’s all he has although it does turn out to be a very valuable piece of info. It’s just not worth the money he demands from his potential client. So, he stands on the sidelines as Jessica goes about doing her business with the magic dagger. We know its magic because green light surrounds it when she picks it up. This also occurs whenever Jason transplants his heart into another body. It’s corny and turns the film into something completely outside the realm populated by the earlier films in the series.
Overall, the film isn’t as scary as it ought to be. The premise is fairly sound and there are plenty of opportunities to create a brutal, uncompromising film experience but it just never quite turns out that way. It’s comical in a way that the film makers most likely never intended although the men who are the recipients of Jason’s heart look like proper zombies with their mouths caked in blood and their frenetic killing styles. Ultimately, there is nothing in this film that requires Jason’s presence whatsoever. It could have been made with an entirely different character. It’s a Friday the 13th film without its star player and the result is entirely underwhelming.
directed by Adam Marcus
written by Adam Marcus and Jay Huguely
starring Kane Hodder, John D. LeMay, Keri Keegan, Steven Williams, Steven Culp, Erin Gray, Rusty Schwimmer, Richard Gant, Andrew Bloch
In the ninth installment of the popular gore fest, Jason goes airborne and is suddenly capable of infecting others with a mangy virus and taking over their bodies in order to kill.
The film opens with a dodgy FBI operation where Jason (Hodder) is pulled into a trap with a slinky undercover agent who lures him into showing up at the cabin with her slick, sexy shower tricks. Jason is essentially obliterated and his body parts are gathered up and taken to the morgue where his crusty beating heart is eaten by the coroner (Gant). Jason enters the coroner’s body and the mayhem begins.
There is much carnage including a trio of randy kids out for some kicks at Camp Crystal Lake. Jason returns and quickly eliminates them before we hardly get their names. Still, as is always the case, it’s never a good idea to have sex anywhere near Crystal Lake because Jason abhors intimacy and must annihilate it at every turn.
The film explores new lunacy in the Jason mythos. We discover that he has a half-sister named Diane Kimble (Gray) and that he can only be killed with a magic dagger by one of his female kin. That leaves Diane, her daughter Jessica (Keegan) and Jessica’s daughter Stephanie. The film gets really wacky in the end as the great climax comes to a close. There are elements of Aliens that just don’t seem to work here. It’s comical rather than being dramatically effective.
Jason infects his targets by transferring a thick black ooze into their throats. Apparently this act replaces their hearts and he takes over operations from there. In one scene Jason actually kidnaps a policeman named Josh (Bloch) and straps him to a table before replacing his heart. From here there are many more deaths including that of Diane which is blamed on Steven (LeMay), Jessica’s former boyfriend and father of her child.
The story is fairly convoluted and includes a Crime show host named Robert (Culp) who decides to jazz his line up a bit by stealing Diane’s corpse and filming a show at the old Voorhees place. Of course he becomes the next empty shell killer when Josh does the whole ooze transfer on him. He too murders many people and naturally there are complications with Jessica.
So, this story has some interesting, if not wholly original ideas to play around with. Having Jason possess the ability to take up a new body when the old one is a bit creaky is fairly well-heeled territory. The film doesn’t do anything novel with the premise and we are actually left with a slimy black creature that comes out of Jason’s mouth looking for a way to be born. He finds a way and it’s the most interesting aspect of the film. The visual repercussions of the scene resonate long after the film is over.
Steven is the main mail protagonist in this film as he gets himself caught square up in the middle of the killing spree by merely being in he wrong place at the wrong time. He’s somewhat ineffectual but he can take and throw a punch. Still, he’s lacking in a discernible personality which drags the film down considerably whenever he’s on screen. He’s paired up with yet another charisma-lite female character who is supposed to force audiences into caring but we don’t care for her and we certainly could care less about her damn baby. I think it would have been a find idea to have Jason possess the baby and make her into a killer of other babies in playpens and such. It would be cool to have her smothering all the fat little babies in the neighborhood when their mothers come over to knit.
Jason Voorhees hardly makes an appearance here as himself. He fills the bodies of at least four men and we are given the succinct privilege of watching them hack their way to orgasmic oblivion. Admittedly, it’s just not the same as when Jason does it in his own flesh. His body, gnarled and rotten, adds a certain grittiness to his killing sprees which is completely lost in the new versions. It seems like a decent idea but the application is all wrong and the end result is essentially disappointment that this could have been something potentially more unnerving and toxic. Instead, it’s just silliness from beginning to end; once the final scenes commence you know you are in the place where interesting scenarios go to die. These ideas were not properly thought out and leave the viewer in a state of acute perplexity.
The film features a bounty hunter named Creighton Duke (Williams) who apparently is the only one who knows how to stop Jason. At the beginning of the film he offers his services to a TV station for $500,000 and they accept. All he has at his disposal is one tiny bit of information that he has culled from some source or another. That’s all he has although it does turn out to be a very valuable piece of info. It’s just not worth the money he demands from his potential client. So, he stands on the sidelines as Jessica goes about doing her business with the magic dagger. We know its magic because green light surrounds it when she picks it up. This also occurs whenever Jason transplants his heart into another body. It’s corny and turns the film into something completely outside the realm populated by the earlier films in the series.
Overall, the film isn’t as scary as it ought to be. The premise is fairly sound and there are plenty of opportunities to create a brutal, uncompromising film experience but it just never quite turns out that way. It’s comical in a way that the film makers most likely never intended although the men who are the recipients of Jason’s heart look like proper zombies with their mouths caked in blood and their frenetic killing styles. Ultimately, there is nothing in this film that requires Jason’s presence whatsoever. It could have been made with an entirely different character. It’s a Friday the 13th film without its star player and the result is entirely underwhelming.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Film Review--Andy Warhol's Trash
Trash
written and directed by Paul Morrissey
starring Joe Dallesandro, Andrea Feldman, Holly Woodlawn, Geri Miller, John Putnam, Jane Forth, Bruce Pecheur, Diane Podel
Andy Warhol presents a sleazy underground tour through decadence and rampant drug abuse featuring Paul Morrissey’s leading hunk Joe Dallesandro.
The film opens with a woman named Geri (Miller) trying to give head to burnt out lover, Joe (Dallesandro). He’s been on the junk too long and can no longer get it up. No problem, Geri decided to shake her ass a bit and jumps up on stage to do a little strip number for Joe. Still, there’s nothing happening and all poor Joe can do is complain that he hasn’t got another fix.
Joe and Holly (Woodlawn) are living together and she also complains that Joe cannot achieve an erection. They are ghastily poor and she collects garbage and brings it back to furnish her apartment. He spends much of his time whining about scoring and when he does finally get loaded he passes out and it seems as if he might actually be dead. He goes to visit a rich girl (Feldman) who chatters on for days before he finally shuts her up by nearly raping her. He finally ends up trying to break into the house owned by Bruce (Pecheur) and Jane (Forth). Jane is a buttoned-up ice queen who nevertheless tries to convince Joe to sleep with her and Bruce. Joe agrees and then they let him shoot up while ogling his gear. Naturally, Joe nods off and Bruce kicks him naked out of the house.
There is ample sex and nudity including some bits that have a kinkiness aspect to them. Holly uses a beer bottle in an exceedingly exaggerated pantomime to get off. Joe nearly has sex with Holly’s sister (Podel) who is pregnant.
This feels like a deliberate push for smut without fully exploring hard core sex. It’s fairly light fare although the sex does have a gritty, raw quality that is a step up from most sexploitation cinema. The characters seem to be begging for release; they writhe and they nearly all appear to be famished for something be it sex, drugs, fame, power.
This is a well acted film although I’m not sure how much of the dialog is improvised. Regardless, the scenes all seem natural and the characters are entirely believable. These are the sort of people one wishes they could meet and get really high with. Their trashy like the best of all the Warhol superstars were in real life. It’s not a stretch to believe that these folks are really just playing themselves although I highly doubt that Dallesandro has ever had the same problem as his character in this film.
It’s true that it’s impossible to take your eyes off of Mr. Dallesandro. He’s got a remarkable presence throughout the film and he’s a born leading man. His charisma is really subdued in this film considering how often he passes out but it works entirely too well. He’s at ease in front of the camera and possesses fine attributes that serve him well in the film.
Andrea Feldman has a voice that is absolutely original and impossible to forget once it crawls into one’s skull. It’s got a sing song quality that is truly hypnotic and its genuinely thrilling to hear her rattle on about her $800 fur coat or how much she just has to take LSD. She’s loaded and living rather low which mimics personas like Edie Sedgewick who also spent a considerable amount of time slumming. Another interesting twist is that both Edie and Andrea Feldman died rather young. Edie died at 28 of an accidental barbiturate overdose and Andrea jumped out of 14th floor apartment in New York when she was 24.
There is a vibrancy to this film that is generated practically from the first frame. Dallesandro’s dead wood quickly morphs into a tantalizing erotic dance and this carries over to the rest of the film. There isn’t a tremendous amount of action in this film and indeed most of it consists of characters sitting around talking about or doing drugs. For Joe, his entire life consists of scoring or shooting up. He doesn’t seem to have any other ambitions besides getting high and getting laid although he can’t even successfully do that any more. By the end of the film he is even more tired than usual and he and Holly create a plan for straightening out their lives and becoming more respectable. Apparently they are so low that they don’t even qualify for welfare so they concoct a scheme to procure it. It’s strange that Holly considers Welfare to be a ticket to respectability but she most definitely believes it.
Much of the film has a very open quality to it and the camera work is quite loose as quite a bit of it is done with a hand held. The camera moves about–sometimes its shaky or blurry–and the film occasionally has a documentary feel to it. Certainly the actors and the subject matter are not exactly divorced from one another and their interaction with the material has a solid ring of truth behind it.
The performances in this film are as mentioned entirely natural. There isn’t very much actual acting in this film and it works considerably well. Holly Woodlawn is simply brilliant at playing a quasi-hysterical mad woman who is absolutely afflicted with glamor that she owns completely. Joe Dallesandro doesn’t really have to say anything whatsoever in this film and he comes across like a million bucks. He’s one of the few actors that can literally melt celluloid with a look. Andrea Feldman does a dance through a field of skulls in this film and her voice is positively sublime. Jane Forth plays a plastic princess with a terribly wicked heart. Her character comes across as a bored housewife type who wants nothing more than to crawl about in the filth for a while looking for an experience that will completely ravish and terrify her.
Overall, this is a smart collision of robust sexuality and degradation stolen from the anus of fear. It’s gloriously filmed, the actors are all a smashing good time, and it actually manages to feel like not being able to procure one’s medicine and being broke. It’s got an oozing stickiness to it that is seemingly too difficult for other similarly themed films to pull off. It’s a success in that it creates an actual physical reaction to the film that is unsettling and discomforting. One wants to immediately eat a salad, run fifteen miles, and plant a tree. Ultimately, this film expresses a certain life that is both exciting and nauseating. It gives us characters who are slightly deranged and perfectly loveable for it. The story can be read as being about bored kids with nothing much to do finding their entertainment in whatever avenue is most convenient. The kids are alright in the end.
written and directed by Paul Morrissey
starring Joe Dallesandro, Andrea Feldman, Holly Woodlawn, Geri Miller, John Putnam, Jane Forth, Bruce Pecheur, Diane Podel
Andy Warhol presents a sleazy underground tour through decadence and rampant drug abuse featuring Paul Morrissey’s leading hunk Joe Dallesandro.
The film opens with a woman named Geri (Miller) trying to give head to burnt out lover, Joe (Dallesandro). He’s been on the junk too long and can no longer get it up. No problem, Geri decided to shake her ass a bit and jumps up on stage to do a little strip number for Joe. Still, there’s nothing happening and all poor Joe can do is complain that he hasn’t got another fix.
Joe and Holly (Woodlawn) are living together and she also complains that Joe cannot achieve an erection. They are ghastily poor and she collects garbage and brings it back to furnish her apartment. He spends much of his time whining about scoring and when he does finally get loaded he passes out and it seems as if he might actually be dead. He goes to visit a rich girl (Feldman) who chatters on for days before he finally shuts her up by nearly raping her. He finally ends up trying to break into the house owned by Bruce (Pecheur) and Jane (Forth). Jane is a buttoned-up ice queen who nevertheless tries to convince Joe to sleep with her and Bruce. Joe agrees and then they let him shoot up while ogling his gear. Naturally, Joe nods off and Bruce kicks him naked out of the house.
There is ample sex and nudity including some bits that have a kinkiness aspect to them. Holly uses a beer bottle in an exceedingly exaggerated pantomime to get off. Joe nearly has sex with Holly’s sister (Podel) who is pregnant.
This feels like a deliberate push for smut without fully exploring hard core sex. It’s fairly light fare although the sex does have a gritty, raw quality that is a step up from most sexploitation cinema. The characters seem to be begging for release; they writhe and they nearly all appear to be famished for something be it sex, drugs, fame, power.
This is a well acted film although I’m not sure how much of the dialog is improvised. Regardless, the scenes all seem natural and the characters are entirely believable. These are the sort of people one wishes they could meet and get really high with. Their trashy like the best of all the Warhol superstars were in real life. It’s not a stretch to believe that these folks are really just playing themselves although I highly doubt that Dallesandro has ever had the same problem as his character in this film.
It’s true that it’s impossible to take your eyes off of Mr. Dallesandro. He’s got a remarkable presence throughout the film and he’s a born leading man. His charisma is really subdued in this film considering how often he passes out but it works entirely too well. He’s at ease in front of the camera and possesses fine attributes that serve him well in the film.
Andrea Feldman has a voice that is absolutely original and impossible to forget once it crawls into one’s skull. It’s got a sing song quality that is truly hypnotic and its genuinely thrilling to hear her rattle on about her $800 fur coat or how much she just has to take LSD. She’s loaded and living rather low which mimics personas like Edie Sedgewick who also spent a considerable amount of time slumming. Another interesting twist is that both Edie and Andrea Feldman died rather young. Edie died at 28 of an accidental barbiturate overdose and Andrea jumped out of 14th floor apartment in New York when she was 24.
There is a vibrancy to this film that is generated practically from the first frame. Dallesandro’s dead wood quickly morphs into a tantalizing erotic dance and this carries over to the rest of the film. There isn’t a tremendous amount of action in this film and indeed most of it consists of characters sitting around talking about or doing drugs. For Joe, his entire life consists of scoring or shooting up. He doesn’t seem to have any other ambitions besides getting high and getting laid although he can’t even successfully do that any more. By the end of the film he is even more tired than usual and he and Holly create a plan for straightening out their lives and becoming more respectable. Apparently they are so low that they don’t even qualify for welfare so they concoct a scheme to procure it. It’s strange that Holly considers Welfare to be a ticket to respectability but she most definitely believes it.
Much of the film has a very open quality to it and the camera work is quite loose as quite a bit of it is done with a hand held. The camera moves about–sometimes its shaky or blurry–and the film occasionally has a documentary feel to it. Certainly the actors and the subject matter are not exactly divorced from one another and their interaction with the material has a solid ring of truth behind it.
The performances in this film are as mentioned entirely natural. There isn’t very much actual acting in this film and it works considerably well. Holly Woodlawn is simply brilliant at playing a quasi-hysterical mad woman who is absolutely afflicted with glamor that she owns completely. Joe Dallesandro doesn’t really have to say anything whatsoever in this film and he comes across like a million bucks. He’s one of the few actors that can literally melt celluloid with a look. Andrea Feldman does a dance through a field of skulls in this film and her voice is positively sublime. Jane Forth plays a plastic princess with a terribly wicked heart. Her character comes across as a bored housewife type who wants nothing more than to crawl about in the filth for a while looking for an experience that will completely ravish and terrify her.
Overall, this is a smart collision of robust sexuality and degradation stolen from the anus of fear. It’s gloriously filmed, the actors are all a smashing good time, and it actually manages to feel like not being able to procure one’s medicine and being broke. It’s got an oozing stickiness to it that is seemingly too difficult for other similarly themed films to pull off. It’s a success in that it creates an actual physical reaction to the film that is unsettling and discomforting. One wants to immediately eat a salad, run fifteen miles, and plant a tree. Ultimately, this film expresses a certain life that is both exciting and nauseating. It gives us characters who are slightly deranged and perfectly loveable for it. The story can be read as being about bored kids with nothing much to do finding their entertainment in whatever avenue is most convenient. The kids are alright in the end.
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