1990: The Bronx Warriors

June 30, 2015 Gordon Maples 7 Comments

1990: The Bronx Warriors

Today’s feature is an infamous Italian knock-off of The Warriors: 1990: The Bronx Warriors, starring Vic Morrow and Fred Williamson.

1990 :The Bronx Warriors was co-written and directed by Enzo Castellari, who also created The Shark Hunter, Keoma, and the original Inglorious Bastards. His co-writers were Elisa Briganti (Hands of Steel, Zombie, The House By The Cemetery) and Dardano Sacchetti (The Beyond, Devil Fish, The Demons, Amityville II, A Bay of Blood).

The cinematographer for The Bronx Warriors was Sergio Salvati, yet another member of the crew who was a frequent cohort and collaborator of Lucio Fulci’s: he shot his films City of The Living Dead, They Died With Their Boots On, Four of the Apocalypse, Zombie, and The Beyond. Later on, he worked on a handful of other memorable horror movies, such as Ghoulies II and Puppetmaster.

The editor for the movie was Gianfranco Amicucci, who also cut a number of Castellari’s other films, including Keoma, The Inglorious Bastards, and The Shark Hunter. He also went on to edit a number of Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust) movies, including The Washing Machine and Mom I Can Do It.

The producer of the film was Fabrizio De Angelis, who also produced a handful of memorable Italian films like Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, Manhattan Baby, and The Beyond. He also directed and produced the entire Karate Warrior franchise, as well as a number of other low budget films.

The makeup effects team for The Bronx Warriors was made up of Antonio Maltempo (The Godfather Part III, The English Patient, Manhattan Baby) and Maurizio Trani (Zombie, Piranha II, Troll 2, Ator 4),

The musical score for 1990: The Bronx Warriors was done by Walter Rizzati, who also has composing credits on such films as The House By The Cemetery, Deadly Impact, and something called Flying Sex, which IMDb doesn’t have a description for. Just let your imagination decide on that one.

The cast of 1990: The Bronx Warriors includes Vic Morrow (The Bad News Bears, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Humanoids From The Deep), Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem, From Dusk Til Dawn, MASH, The Inglorious Bastards), Marco De Gregorio (Thunder, Escape From The Bronx), Christopher Connelly (Manhattan Baby, Django 2), Joshua Sinclair (Keoma), George Eastman (Hands of Steel, Porno Holocaust, Anthropophagus, Django Kills Softly), Stefania Girolami (Sinbad of the Seven Seas, The Last Shark) and Angelo Ragusa (The Pumaman, Double Team).

The plot of 1990: The Bronx Warriors takes place in the futuristic wasteland that is New York City in 1990. The city is ruled by rival gangs, and is considered essentially lawless. After a wealthy heiress runs away from home into the city, a mercenary is sent into the warzone to insure her safe return. What results is a convergence of warlords and cut-throat baddies into an all-out battle for the city.

Marco De Gregorio was cast as the lead role of Trash in the movie based on his appearance alone. Apparently, the director just ran into him at a gym, and made the casting decision based on his looks and the physical impression he made. He had only previously appeared in a television movie in an unnamed role according to IMDb.

Unfortunately, this film marked Vic Morrow’s last completed movie role, as he died tragically and horrifically due to an on-set stunt accident while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie the next year, which also killed two young children. The accident resulted in a number of lawsuits, and is one of the most infamous on-set accidents in movie history.

1990: The Bronx Warriors ultimately spawned a sequel: Escape From The Bronx, which focuses more on ripping off Escape From New York than The Warriors.

1990: The Bronx Warriors was partially filmed on location in the Bronx, but also features a significant amount of sound stage footage that was shot in Italy, apparently due to an attempt to exploit some filming loophole for domestic Italian features.

Reportedly, actual members of The Hell’s Angels were used during filming to depict the extra members of The Riders throughout the film, which gives the movie an unexpected element of realism at times.

Vic Morrow’s character’s name in this film is The Hammer, which is also the real life nickname of his co-star, Fred ‘The Hammer’ Williamson. I’m curious if that ever got confusing on the set.

The reception for 1990: The Bronx Warriors has been generally negative, though it certainly has a cult following as a classic bad movie. It currently holds an IMDb rating of 5.2, along with a 37% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The acting is overall pretty awful in this flick, particularly on the part of “Trash,” who is way too inexperienced for what they wanted from the role. Speaking of which, that’s a pretty uninspiring nickname for a powerful gang leader. It is supposed to evoke a low-class impression, but why not something like “Gutter” or “Sludge?” Everyone else has names like “Hammer,” “Hot Dog,” “Ogre,” “Blade,” and “Ice,” so “Trash” is definitely the odd one out of the group as far as cool names go.

Fred Williamson is always awesome, and is one of my favorite b-movie actors for a reason. He notably has an outstanding death scene in this movie, wherein he is torched to death by flamethrowers while smoking one last cigarette. It is…so awesome.

There are a lot of moving parts to the story of The Bronx Warriors, but it irons itself out as it goes along. There are arguably a few too many character names and affiliations that aren’t adequately explained, but you pick up the essential stuff as the story goes along, to the point that everything is clear by the climax. That said, there are definitely a few elements that never quite make sense.

In the spirit of The Warriors, there are plenty of ridiculous costumes throughout this movie, as you would expect. Plenty of roller blades, motorcycles, leather, and fancy suits make their way into combat at one point or another, and it is just delightful.

This movie has one hell of an explosive ending, with just about every character dead and/or on fire. The movie finishes on a freeze frame of Hammer’s corpse being drug behind a motorcycle, impaled on a harpoon. I mean, wow. This especially potent because it takes place after a fake-out happy ending, complete with a damn cake.

1990bronx7 — A cake shaped like NYC, that was catered in a war zone. Can you imagine the cost?

The central crux of the movie’s plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. The heiress is apparently about to come of age, and she is afraid of her responsibilities as the head of a massive military corporation, and more specifically worried about being manipulated and used as a puppet. Of course, the current operators need her to be just that, so they a sink a ton of money into mercenaries to track her down and bring her back. However, in the conclusion, Hammer just decides to basically burn everything down, including the heiress. What was the point of all of that, then? This may have just been Hammer being bloodthirsty and angry, but he seemed to be using the military company’s men, so there is no way that the head honchos didn’t know that this was an extermination mission. In any case, pretty much everybody loses at the end of this thing, as I mentioned previously. It is a real nasty bloodbath filled with sadness and tragedy.

This movie is so much fun that it is easy to overlook a lot of the flaws in it. It certainly helps that a lot of those flaws, like the poor production values and nonsense story, totally add to the charm. It is evident from the start that this is a cheap knock-off, but if you enjoyed The Warriors or Escape From New York, this is genuinely more of the same, and that isn’t a bad thing.

Seriously, bad movie lovers have to check this one out. It is kind of surreal to see a bunch of Lucio Fulci’s Italian cohorts take on a quasi-remake of The Warriors, but it totally works.

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American Chinatown

June 29, 2015 Gordon Maples 1 Comment

American Chinatown

Today’s feature is an obscure flick called American Chinatown, from the writer and director of the ludicrous cult classic film, Miami Connection.

American Chinatown was written, directed, and produced by Woo-sang Park, who regularly credits himself under the pseudonym of Richard Park. His best known film by far is Miami Connection, but he made a handful of other low-budget movies from the 1970s through the 1990s, including L.A. Streetfighters, Gang Justice, and Shaolin: The Blood Mission.

One of the cinematographers on American Chinatown was Maximo Munzi, who also shot Miami Connection for Woo-sang Park.

The team of producers for American Chinatown included Larry Larson (City Dragon), star Tae-joon Lee (Ninja Terminator), Simon Bibiyan (City Dragon, The Malibu Beach Vampires), and Moshe Bibiyan (Warrior of Justice, City Dragon).

The musical score and editing for American Chinatown was done by Ron Adler, who worked on a handful of other small movies like Invisible Temptation, The Secret Force, and City Dragon.

The American Chinatown cast is headlined by the late Robert Z’dar (Maniac Cop, Tango & Cash, Soultaker, Maniac Cop 2, Maniac Cop 3, Samurai Cop), and also features Tae-joon Lee (Ninja Terminator), Bobby Kim (Black Belt Angels, Deadly Kick, Mark of the Black Dragon), and Liat Goodson (Vice Girls, The Prince), along with a number of inexperienced and non-actors to fill out the cast.

The plot of American Chinatown centers around a gang war, during which a top enforcer unknowingly falls for his boss’s adopted sister. He has to figure out a way to reconcile his feelings for the woman with his loyalty to the gang, all while leading the charge in an ever-heating conflict with the cross-town rival criminal organization.

American Chinatown is also known as Chinatown 2, which is not to be confused with the actual sequel to Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (The Two Jakes), which released in 1990.

The reception to American Chinatown has been generally negative, though very few people have actually heard of it or seen it. It currently has an IMDb rating of 4.2, and has a Rotten Tomatoes average audience score of .5/5. However, less than 90 ratings of the movie have been recorded on the two sites combined.

Right out of the gate, American Chinatown starts with an attempted rape, followed up by some completely inaudible and indecipherable dialogue, which is about as bad of a start as you can possibly have for a movie. On top of that, the editing and cinematography for the sequence is also astoundingly terrible, to the point where is honestly difficult to tell what is actually happening. Eventually, a mysterious man stops the assault, kicks the would-be rapists a bunch, steals their wallets and clothes, and then lets them go on their way. I guess this is supposed to set up this fellow as a badass, but the whole thing plays out really strangely, and I don’t understand why he just let them meander on their merry way.

The acting in this movie is, across the board, just dreadful. Most movies at least have a bright spot somewhere in the cast, but that just isn’t the case here. I don’t know how this film was cast, but Robert Z’Dar is the only person who seems to know what acting even is, and that is a sad state of affairs for any film. The lead character’s love interest also has one of the most perplexing fake accents that I have ever heard in a movie, and I still can’t figure out exactly what it is supposed to be.

There are a couple of cool fight sequences spread throughout the movie, but they are all shot really poorly, so the talent of the stunt people is mostly wasted. Still, they are entertaining as the movie ever gets.

The music for American Chinatown, when it does bother to pop up, is ridiculous in the best way you could possibly hope for. It is always heavy on the synthesizers and funky beats, but suffers immensely from constantly disappearing for long periods of time, which is a damn shame.

One big problem with this film is the unlikability of the hero, who is frankly a complete asshat. I already covered how he allowed attempted rapists to wander away in the opening sequence (he does that again, by the way), but the rest of his interactions with his love interest for a good portion of the movie primarily consist of him berating her and trying to force her to leave him alone. I understand that the point is that he doesn’t want her to get wrapped up in the criminal world he lives in, but he really is a complete shit about it, though.

The whole movie has a disappointing lack of Robert Z’Dar in it, which I wasn’t exactly surprised about. He only pops up in a handful of scenes, and overall doesn’t get much time on screen when all is said and done. He does get the shit beaten out of him way more than I expected, though, particularly towards the end of the flick.

The ending to American Chinatown feels like they didn’t quite finish the move. Basically, a fight sequence ends with a freeze frame and a fade to black, without any visual resolution for the story. Then again, maybe something was covered in the inaudible dialogue that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. In any case, it is both jarring and unsatisfying as a conclusion.

Overall, American Chinatown isn’t nearly as memorable or entertaining as similar films like Miami Connection or either Lethal Ninja, but it has a few bright moments here and there. Unfortunately, they are very spread out, and the awful acting, sound editing, and cinematography makes for a trying experience to sit through, which isn’t going to be worth most people’s time.

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Marmaduke

June 26, 2015 Gordon Maples 9 Comments

Marmaduke

Today’s feature is a 2010 comic strip movie adaptation that literally no one wanted or asked for: Marmaduke.

Marmaduke is loosely based on the comic strip created by Brad Anderson and Phil Leeming. The screenplay for the movie was written by Tim Rasmussen (License to Wed) and Vince Di Meglio, the latter of which worked as a visual effects artist on films like Miss Congeniality and Daredevil.

The director for Marmaduke was Tom Dey, who has also been behind such Hollywood comedy films as Shanghai Noon and Failure to Launch. The cinematographer was Greg Gardiner, who previously shot Son of the Mask and Elf, among many others. Don Zimmerman, who has had a long career as an editor in Hollywood with such movies as Rush Hour 3, Over The Top, Rocky IV, Patch Adams, Galaxy Quest, Being There, and Coming Home, did the cutting for Marmaduke.

The musical score for the film was provided by Christopher Lennertz, who has worked extensively on the television show Supernatural, as well as films like Soul Plane, Disaster Movie, and Horrible Bosses.

The special makeup effects on Marmaduke were provided by a team including Bill Terezakis (Taken 2, House of the Dead, Snow Dogs, Friday the 13th Part VIII), Frida Norrman (TRON: Legacy, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Todd McIntosh (Masters of the Universe, Torchwood), and Celine Godeau (American Mary, Slither, Dreamcatcher).

The Marmaduke special effects team was made up of Gary Heidrick (Scary Movie 3, Catwoman), Hike Hyrman (Van Helsing, Brothers Grimm, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Black Cat), Wayne Syzbunka (Lake Placid, The Black Cat, Pick Me Up, Dreams in the Witch House, Blade: Trinity), James Lorimer (Cellular, Van Helsing, Tank Girl, Drive, Flubber, Garfield), Steve Davis (Scary Movie, Snow Buddies, Friday the 13th Part VIII), Richard Darwin (Lost in Space, Dungeons & Dragons, The Flintstones, Babe), and Cara E. Anderson (Trucks, The Mangler 2, The Core, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2).

The massive visual effects team for Marmaduke included work by a number of effects companies, including Cinesite, Rhythm and Hues, and Image Engine, and in total included elements that worked on such diverse movies as Iron Man, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Life of Pi, The Golden Compass, Skyfall, Live Free or Die Hard, The Ugly Truth, Piranha 3D, Cloud Atlas, Pacific Rim, The Frighteners, The Brothers Grimm, Guardians of the Galaxy, Alvin and the Chipmunks, 47 Ronin and Yogi Bear.

The team of producers for Marmaduke included Derek Dauchy (xXx, Master of Disguise, Mr Popper’s Penguins), Arnon Milchan (Epic Movie, Daredevil, Fight Club, Heat, LA Confidential, King of Comedy, 12 Years A Slave, Gone Girl, Birdman), Jeffrey Stott (Drive, Nightcrawler, Whiplash, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, North), and John Davis (Waterworld, Eragon, Fortress, Predator 2).

The deep cast for Marmaduke includes Lee Pace (Guardians of the Galaxy), William H. Macy (Evolver, Cellular, Edmond, Fargo) Owen Wilson (Anaconda, Inherent Vice, The Life Aquatic, Wedding Crashers), Emma Stone (Birdman, Paper Man, Gangster Squad, The Amazing Spider Man), Keifer Sutherland (The Lost Boys, Phone Booth, Stand By Me, Pompeii) George Lopez, Steve Coogan (Tropic Thunder, Hamlet 2), Fergie, Sam Elliott (The Big Lebowski, Frogs, Road House), Marlon Wayans (The Ladykillers), Damon Wayans (Major Payne), and Judy Greer (Archer, Arrested Development).

Ron Perlman was apparently at one point attached to the movie in the role that ultimately went to Sam Elliott, but left the production for unknown reasons.

According to the IMDb trivia section for the movie, Marmaduke contains:

two dog farts, three urine gags, two hits to the groin, one animal belch, two record scratch moments and two uses of the phrase “Who let the dogs out?”

The reception to Marmaduke was very negative, and it currently holds an IMDb rating of 4.1 alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 9% (critics) and 42% (audience). Regardless of the negative reception, Marmaduke wound up being profitable in overseas markets, in total grossing almost $84 million on a $50 million budget. Despite being in the black at the end of its run, the film certainly didn’t meet expectations, particularly in the domestic sphere.

The first and most distracting aspect of the movie I have to mention is the dog mouths, which are computer manipulated to move with speech patterns. While the result looks better than similar children’s movies that have tried the same thing, it actually winds up stuck in the uncanny valley, creating a sort of hypnotic and unsettling effect.

Speaking of the effects, the movie goes beyond overboard in a number of sequences. The scenes that feature Marmaduke dancing or surfing, both of which happen more than you might expect in the film, look absolutely awful, particularly the Bollywood-style dance scene at the end of the film. If the film had kept the effects a little more subtle, they might have gotten away with a watchable product. However, it definitely goes the way of Son of the Mask and Cats & Dogs in the excessive effects use.

The story of Marmaduke is a lot deeper than it has any right to be, considering how much of the humor is related to farting or peeing. At the same time, however, it is all painfully cliche and predictable. Most of the plot centers around an oppressive racist/classist system that operates at a local dog park, which grants pure breed dogs privileges not afforded to mutts. Marmaduke, a newcomer to the area, spends most of the movie trying to ingratiate himself with the ruling class, before learning a valuable lesson about friendship, turning his back on it, and throwing a wrench into the system. Keep in mind, this is theoretically based on a comic strip that not only does not address classism or systemic oppression in any form, but rarely even features actual humor.

Speaking of which, why bother with trying to make a movie out of this source material? I have a hunch that this was at some point a speculative script for a generic talking dog movie, and that the Marmaduke brand was pretty much tossed onto it as a promotional plan. Because, really, there is just no content in the source material to create a plot out of, so why not just use whatever is laying around? It is true that Marmaduke doesn’t have a whole lot of die hard fans, but it is at least a recognizable name that could be marketed based on that recognition, giving it some value.

I’m not going to bother digging into the laziness of the humor in this movie, because there is just no point to it. However, there are a number of things about the story that bother me. Theoretically, the plot is your typical fish out of water setup, but the audience has no frame of reference of what Marmaduke’s usual surroundings are like, which undermines the whole premise. What was Kansas like for this giant dog, anyway? How is this new situation in California different for him? Aside from the audience being told that things are different, nothing is ever shown to drive home the contrast between the two locations.

Overall, Marmaduke is your typical children’s movie trash, bowing to base humor, bad effects, and tired plots. While the cast is really impressive, it is totally wasted on this movie. There isn’t really anything to recommend about the movie, outside of the fact that it is a near-perfect example of what is wrong with children’s and family films today. Unless you are just deathly curious, you should avoid this wreck. Or, better yet, check out The Flop House Podcast for another perspective on the film (with the same conclusion).

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Wild Wild West

June 25, 2015 Gordon Maples 19 Comments

Wild Wild West

Today’s feature is Wild Wild West, one of the strangest alternate history movies ever to come out of mainstream Hollywood.

Wild Wild West is loosely based on a television show of the same name that ran from 1965-1969 on CBS, which featured characters of the same names and a similar focus on ridiculous gadgets.

The screenplay credit for Wild Wild West is given to two writing duos: Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson (Tremors, Ghost Dad, Short Circuit), and Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, How The Grinch Stole Christmas). The story credit, however, is given to another duo: Jim Thomas and John Thomas, who have been behind such movies as Predator, Predator 2, and Mission to Mars.

The director/producer for Wild Wild West was Barry Sonnenfeld, who also directed Men in Black, Get Shorty, RV, and The Addams Family, and was previously a cinematographer under the Coen brothers for Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller’s Crossing.

The cinematographer on Wild Wild West was Michael Ballhaus, a frequent Martin Scorcese collaborator who has shot such acclaimed films as The Departed, Gangs of New York, Sleepers, After Hours, Quiz Show, and Goodfellas.

The editor for the film was Jim Miller, who frequently cut movies for Barry Sonnenfeld, including Get Shorty, Men in Black, and The Addams Family. He also edited another movie I particularly like: Michael Mann’s Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.

The team of producers for Wild Wild West included Jon Peters (Batman, Caddyshack II, Man of Steel, Tango & Cash, An American Werewolf in London), Tracey Barone (Money Train), Barry Josephson (The Last Boy Scout, The Ladykillers), Graham Place (The Hudsucker Proxy, Barton Fink), Joel Simon (Steel), Chris Soldo (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1941, Snake Eyes), and Neri Tannenbaum (Orange is the New Black).

The visual effects team for Wild Wild West included a number of workers from Industrial Light and Magic, one of the most acclaimed effects companies in the business. The company was founded by George Lucas for the purpose of providing visual effects for the Star Wars films, and has since worked on films like Howard the Duck, Cocoon, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to The Future, Jurassic Park, Hudson Hawk, Deep Blue Sea, Small Soldiers, and Congo.

The special effects makeup on Wild Wild West included work by Rick Baker (Black Caesar, It’s Alive, It Lives Again, Videodrome), a 7-time Academy Award winner who is easily one of the most acclaimed individuals in special effects and makeup today. He won one of his Academy Awards in the previous year for work on the Barry Sonnenfeld film Men in Black, which goes a long way towards explaining his involvement here.

The music for Wild Wild West was provided by Elmer Bernstein, a legendary film composer who worked on scores for such films as Bringing Out The Dead, My Left Foot, Slipstream, Leonard Part 6, Airplane!, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Great Escape, Robot Monster, and The Magnificent Seven, among countless others.

The cast of Wild Wild West is primarily comprised of Will Smith (After Earth, Hancock, Bad Boys, Winter’s Tale), Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet, Henry V, Valkyrie), Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda, The Big Chill), Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs, The Mangler), and Salma Hayek (From Dusk Til Dawn, Dogma, Desperado),

Wild WIld West follows two special government agents in the Reconstruction era, who are charged with tracking down a notable Confederate sympathizer with significant financial capacity who has reportedly been kidnapping expert scientists. The further they dig into the matter, the more the eccentric duo discover a plot to kick-start a second Civil War through the use of advanced technology, which they have to figure out a way to stop.

Writer/director Kevin Smith (Tusk, Red State, Clerks, Chasing Amy) has a famous story about Wild Wild West producer Jon Peters from when they briefly worked together on the abandoned project to remake Superman in the 1990s, which theoretically explains the mechanical spider / spider motif that appears throughout Wild Wild West. If you haven’t heard the story before, I highly recommend checking it out.

Will Smith reportedly turned down the lead role in The Matrix to do this movie, which he has since said was the worst decision of his career.

Robert Conrad, star of the Wild Wild West television show, spoke out against this film adaptation, harshly criticizing it publicly. Apparently, Will Smith himself apologized to Conrad years later for the poor quality of the film.

Plans apparently existed to make a film version of Wild Wild West since at least the early 1990s, and at one point Mel Gibson was attached to star, and Richard Donner was going to direct.

The reception to Wild Wild West was overwhelmingly poor, and the film currently holds an IMDb rating of 4.8, along with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 17% (critics) and 28% (audience).

Wild Wild West had a worldwide theatrical gross of just over $222 million, on a reported production budget of $170 million. While it was profitable based on those numbers, it didn’t come anywhere near the lofty Hollywood expectations for it, particularly given the price tag, and is publicly remembered as a failure.

Wild Wild West features some hammy acting from Kline and Branagh, with the two chewing scenery all over the movie. However, I thought Kline was actually a pretty solid U.S. Grant that is totally wasted on this movie. Will Smith does his charismatic shtick, which isn’t particularly remarkable or horrible here.

The movie features a lot of over the top technology, which is a fair homage to the show, at least to an extent. I can understand the thinking here: people liked the eccentric gadgets in James Bond movies and Men in Black, so I can see why the team thought the steam-punk inventions would resonate with people. However, it all goes a few steps too far into the ridiculous, with killer disks, head projectors, and giant mechanical death spiders.

Wild Wild West was pitched to audiences as a buddy cop action comedy, but the comedy just doesn’t work throughout the film, and Kline and Smith never particularly click. It turns out that a lot of the comedic elements in the movie were added through reshoots that were done after poor test screenings, which gives the whole movie an unbalanced feel. Comedy isn’t something that can be added haphazardly after the fact: if it is going to work, it needs to either be specifically directed, or ingrained in the screenplay from the beginning.

The length of Wild Wild West is a bit too long for what it is, and the movie already feels stretched out due to the meandering plot structure and interspersed moments of bad comedy. Really, there is no reason for this movie to stretch anywhere near a two hour run-time, given it isn’t particularly complicated or epic.

Overall, Wild Wild West isn’t a totally un-entertaining movie, but it was definitely poorly conceived and executed. The effects and production design are specifically pretty cool, and it still has a bit of a cult following for that aspect alone. However, the humor is pretty bad, which drags the whole thing down. It is still worth checking out thanks to the ridiculous performances from Kline and Branaugh (and to a lesser extent Levine), though, and there is plenty of nostalgia tied into the film for a lot of people.

Larry Cohen Collection

Larry Cohen Collection: “The Ambulance”

June 24, 2015 Gordon Maples 8 Comments

The Ambulance

Today’s feature is Larry Cohen’s paramedic terror: 1990’s “The Ambulance.”

“The Ambulance” was both written and directed by Larry Cohen, marking his 17th theatrical directorial feature. However, it is also one of only two feature films he directed throughout the 1990s.

The cinematographer for “The Ambulance” was Jacques Haitkin, who also famously shot such films as “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Wishmaster,” “Shocker,” and “Maniac Cop 3.”

The musical score was provided by Jay Chattaway, who additionally worked on the William Lustig flicks “Maniac Cop,” “Maniac Cop 2,” and “Maniac.”

“The Ambulance” ultimately featured two editors: Armond Lebowitz, a frequent Larry Cohen collaborator who cut “Special Effects,” “Q,” “The Stuff,” and “Full Moon High,” and Claudia Finkle, who did the editing for “Howling IV” and “Howling V.”

The effects team for “The Ambulance” included Theo Mayes (“Boogie Nights,” “Maniac Cop 2”), Jennifer Aspinall (“The Toxic Avenger”), Larry Arpin (“The Dentist,” “Highlander II,” “Maniac Cop,” “Leprechaun”), Rob Benevides (“Strangers With Candy”), Kevin McCarthy (“Hobgoblins,” “Demonic Toys”), and Ron Petruccione (“Serenity,” “Con Air,” “Dante’s Peak”).

The producers for “The Ambulance” were Barbara Zitwer (“It’s Alive III,” “Vampire’s Kiss”), Robert Katz (“It’s Alive”), and Moctesuma Esparza (“Gettysburg,” “Selena”), the latter two of which have worked together extensively for Maya Entertainment and Esparza/Katz Productions.

The cast of “The Ambulance” includes Eric Roberts (“Inherent Vice,” “Miss Castaway,” “Wolves of Wall Street,” “Best of the Best”), James Earl Jones (“Field of Dreams,” “Exorcist II,” “Conan the Barbarian”), Eric Braeden (“Titanic,” “The Rat Patrol”), Red Buttons (“The Poseidon Adventure,” “The Longest Day”), Megan Gallagher (“Hill Street Blues,” “The Larry Sanders Show”), Janine Turner (“Northern Exposure,” “Cliffhanger”), Nick Chinlund (“Con Air,” “Lethal Weapon 3”), Laurene Landon (“Maniac Cop,” “Maniac Cop 2,” “Pick Me Up”), and Jill Gatsby (“Class of 1999,” “Maniac Cop,” “Vampire’s Kiss”).

The story of “The Ambulance” follows an amateur investigation into a series of mysterious disappearances after the victims were taken away by what appeared to be an ambulance crew. As the comic artist turned vigilante digs deeper, he begins to uncover a conspiracy, putting his life and sanity in danger.

A while back, I attended the premiere of horror flick called “Old 37,” which features a number of similarities to “The Ambulance.” The Kane Hodder vehicle also centers around killers utilizing an ambulance to kidnap people, though it lacks a lot of the more interesting story aspects of “The Ambulance.” That said, it isn’t all too bad, particularly for a film directed by “Alan Smithee.”

The legendary superhero creator Stan Lee has a quick cameo in “The Ambulance,” which is something he has become famous for with the recent boom of Marvel superhero films over the last decade and a half.

Larry Cohen’s entry into the television series “Masters of Horror,” titled “Pick Me Up,” features an homage to “The Ambulance” with it’s twist ending, featuring two killers who have commandeered an ambulance for nefarious purposes.

I wasn’t able to dig up any budget or gross information on “The Ambulance,” but it is fair to say that it was a low-budget affair. The reception to the film was mixed: it currently has a 5.8 rating on IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 75% (critics) and 55% (audience). For the most part, the film has been forgotten outside of die hard horror circles, though the film has certainly influenced a handful of other works.

I found James Earl Jones to be a bit too cartoon-y with his portrayal of the obsessive, bubble gum chewing, eccentric detective here. Eric Roberts, on the other hand, is surprisingly solid in the lead role. I always associate him with lower-tier roles, which is where he usually seems to thrive, but he manages to pull his weight here with the spotlight. However, his hair is every kind of ridiculous in this movie, which is at least mildly distracting.

Eric Roberts’s character, however, is written like an absolute creep. The entire instigation for the film is because he was essentially harassing a woman on the street, and refused to leave her alone. It was clearly supposed to come off as charming and eccentric, but the whole exchange is skin-crawling. The woman does her damnedest to get him to go away, and has a couple of solid lines over the course of the interaction, the highlight of which is this:

“I have met creepier guys than you, but I don’t recall when”

“The Ambulance” curiously plays more like a conspiracy movie than I expected, and is less of a horror film than it is a thriller, and has some action and comedy elements as well. It sits on the boundary between a lot of different genres, but doesn’t balance it as well as some other films do.

The plot is interesting, and ties into people’s anxieties about the monolithic medical industry and the cruelty of product testing. There is also certainly a fear associated with the prone state of being in an ambulance on a stretcher, as well as being helpless in the face of corporate bureaucracy. On the surface “The Ambulance” isn’t much, but there is more to it than there appears to be at first glance.

The soundtrack to “The Ambulance” notably has an awful lot of synthesizer and saxophone, which is a mixture that I am always on board for in these 1980s / 1990s flicks.

Eric Roberts’s job as a Marvel comics artist allows for a quick Stan Lee, but apart from that, it isn’t particularly important to the story. He winds up spending the entire film investigating and chasing down leads, so why not just make him a private investigator or a journalist? I can understand not making him a cop because of the progression of the story, but the skills he winds up using don’t make much sense for a comics illustrator.

Last but not least, Eric Braeden’s evil Doctor is chillingly creepy as the villain, and is the highlight of the whole flick. However, the parlor scene he has early on explains a little too much too quickly in my opinion. It also doesn’t make much sense for him to divulge the information he does to the forced patient, apart from to inform the audience of what is actually happening. I’m a little curious if this sequence was added in at some point, or if it was initially placed somewhere else in the script.

Overall, “The Ambulance” is in the lower tier of Larry Cohen’s filmography, but had the potential to be much better. It feels like it wasn’t given time to percolate properly, and the result is something rushed and of lower quality than it should be. I love the premise and the story, but the details are really lackluster, and the pacing isn’t great. Also, some of the performances are pretty weak, like Red Buttons, who seems totally out of place here. For Larry Cohen fans, it is worth checking out. However, it really could have been much better given the originality of the concept.

Larry Cohen Collection

Larry Cohen Collection: “Best Seller”

June 23, 2015 Gordon Maples 6 Comments

Best Seller

Next up in the Larry Cohen Collection is 1987’s “Best Seller,” starring James Woods and Brian Dennehy.

“Best Seller” was directed by John Flynn, who also made “Brainscan,” “Out for Justice,” “Lock Up,” and”Rolling Thunder.” His primary style has always been crime-based action-dramas, which fits well with Larry Cohen’s flair for police procedural.

The original screenplay for “Best Seller” was, of course, written by Larry Cohen. However, John Flynn may have considerably modified himself it before filming, but wasn’t ultimately given a writing credit. He also apparently came up with the title, which was originally “Hard Cover” (which I think sounds way cooler).

The cinematographer for “Best Seller” was Fred Murphy, who also shot “Secret Window,” “October Sky,” “Hoosiers,” and Larry Cohen’s own “Q: The Winged Serpent.”

“Best Seller” was edited by David Rosenbloon, who also cut such features as “Deep Impact,” “Primal Fear,” “Fracture,” “Frequency,” and “Blue Chips.”

The musical score for “Best Seller” was provided by Jay Ferguson, who also scored flicks like “Double Dragon” and “Tremors II.”

The producers for “Best Seller” included John Daly (“Vampire’s Kiss,” “Hoosiers,” “Platoon”), Derek Gibson (“The Return of The Living Dead”), and Larry Cohen collaborator Carter DeHaven (“Special Effects,” “Perfect Strangers”).

The effects team on “Best Seller” was composed of Ken Speed (“2 Fast 2 Furious,” “God’s Not Dead,” “Cobra,” “The Doors”), Robert L. Olmstead (“Cellular,” “Predator 2,” “Iron Man”), Peter Kunz (“Precious,” “Changing Lanes,” “Exterminator 2,” “The Hurricane”), Pamela Peitzman (“The Last Airbender,” “Alien From L.A.,” “The Hitcher”), and Deborah Figuly (“True Believer,” “Never Too Young To Die,” “Less Than Zero”).

“Best Seller” was distributed by Orion Pictures, which was behind a handful of well-regarded flicks throughout the 1980s and early 1990s before falling into bankruptcy. Such features included “RoboCop,” “Amadeus,” “Mississippi Burning,” “Dances With Wolves,” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” but also turkeys like “RoboCop 3,” and “Car 54, Where Are You?.” Former head and co-founder of Orion, Mike Medavoy, has a pretty great book out there called “You’re Only As Good As Your Next One” about his experiences in the industry (which included stints with United Artists and TriStar as well as Orion) that I highly recommend picking up for movie trivia junkies.

The cast for “Best Seller” is headlined by James Woods (“Videodrome,” “Cat’s Eye,” “Casino,” “True Believer”) and Brian Dennehy (“First Blood,” “Cocoon”), with other roles filled out by Victoria Tennant (“L.A. Story,” “Flowers in the Attic”), Paul Shenar (“Raw Deal,” “Scarface”), and George Coe (“The Omega Code,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Archer”).

The story of “Best Seller” follows a cop-turned-author who is pulled into a massive conspiracy by a former hitman looking to tell the story of his career working for a corrupt politician.

The reception to “Best Seller” was pretty mixed: it currently holds Rotten Tomatoes scores of 67% (critics) and 54% (audience), along with an IMDb rating of 6.5.

I couldn’t dig up any budget numbers for “Best Seller,” but it ultimately grossed just under 4.3 million in its domestic theatrical release. That is hardly Earth-shattering (or best-selling), but if the budget was low enough, it may have been profitable.

Personally, I wasn’t sold on Brian Dennehy as the lead here. There are plenty of cop-style character actors out there that I think would have fit better, like Robert Davi or Tom Atkins. However, he is definitely physical intimidating at times, which I assume was the reason for his casting. James Woods, on the other hand, is thoroughly awesome here. He blends his peculiar charm with a sense of menace to create a likable yet dangerous character who is clearly capable of snapping into violence at a moment’s notice. The chemistry between the two actors is pretty good, but the rest of the cast comes up a bit short. The antagonists just aren’t intimidating or large enough to feel like the massive threat that they are supposed to be. Also, the daughter character comes off as having no depth or practical intelligence with her minimal screen time, and winds up inexplicably running into the arms of a guy who just shot her father for no clear reason, other than to create a hostage situation. She also accepts rides in cars from mysterious figures, like she is the lead in a stranger danger PSA.

The story pacing to “Best Seller” isn’t great: the tension is built pretty well, but it is never quite clear how much time has elapsed, how close the book is to being finished, or how near the story is to a climax or resolution. It feels more like a simmer than the tension of a burning wick, with no clear ending ever in sight. The lack of a clear finish line (book publication? how many drafts is that going to take?) really hurts the plot, but it is still a pretty good thriller regardless.

Roger Ebert brings up another issue with the movie in his perhaps excessively scathing review of the film:

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a movie about a character who is slow to catch on. When I’m watching a movie and something is perfectly obvious and the hero persists in not understanding it, my frustration grows and I want to shout advice at the screen. “Best Seller” has a character like that, played by Brian Dennehy, an intelligent actor who usually plays characters who are fairly swift. Not this time.

Ebert certainly has a point, and it is something that I noticed while watching the movie. However, I assumed most of his reticence about the conspiracy was more because of his suspicions and unease with James Woods rather than him not catching on with the clues, though he has one or two lines (“corporations don’t kill people” / “I don’t believe that someone could destroy police evidence”) that either reveal an immense naivete or a flaw in the character writing.

The ending credits song for “Best Seller,” called “Perfect Ending,” is absolutely ridiculous, and sounds like an honest buddy cop love theme. Everything from the melodramatic lyrics to the guitar riffs to the synthesizer background work is just off the charts wacky in the best possible way. It seems like the sort of song that would have fit into something like “Dead Heat” or “Samurai Cop.”

Overall, “Best Seller” is a flawed but entertaining flick. There are some things to like about it, and some things that don’t click. It doesn’t belong in an elite category for the genre, but it is worth giving a shot for James Woods, who gets to show off a bit here. Also, that ending song gave me a solid belly laugh.

Larry Cohen Collection

Larry Cohen Collection: “Pick Me Up”

June 22, 2015 Gordon Maples 13 Comments

Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up

Today, I’m going to be taking another stroll through the career of writer/director Larry Cohen with the “Masters of Horror” feature, “Pick Me Up.”

“Pick Me Up” was directed by Larry Cohen for the television show “Masters of Horror,” which showcased original work by some of the most famed figures in horror film history. I have already covered two episodes of the series directed by Stuart Gordon: “The Black Cat” and “Dreams In The Witch House.”

“Pick Me Up” was written by David J. Schow, who penned such horror flicks as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre III,” “Critters 3,” “Critters 4,” and “The Crow.”

“Pick Me Up” was edited by Marshall Harvey, a veteran horror editor and frequent Joe Dante collaborator who also cut “Lake Placid,” “Small Soldiers,” and “Matinee” (among many others).

The cinematographer on “Pick Me Up” was Brian Pearson, who also shot the more recent horror flicks “American Mary,” “The Butterfly Effect 2,” and “Into the Storm.”

The makeup effects team for “Pick Me Up” included Mike Fields (“Dreams In The Witch House,” “The Black Cat”), Sarah Graham (“The Cabin In The Woods,” “Supernatural”), Margaret Solomon (“Timecop,” “The Black Cat”), and Amanda McGowan (“Sucker Punch,” “Final Destination 5”).

The “Pick Me Up” special effects were done by the KNB EFX group, which has worked on “The Walking Dead,” “Maniac Cop 3,” “Army of Darkness,” “The Faculty,” and “Sin City” under the lead of Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger. The rest of the team included Scott Patton (“The Mangler”), Frank Rydberg (“Devil’s Advocate,” “Drag Me To Hell”), Andy Schoneberg (“Dead Heat”), Shannon Shea (“Leviathan”), Wayne Szybunka (“Lake Placid,” “Marmaduke”), Lindsay Vivian (“Sin City”), Grady Holder (“Lake Placid,” “Small Soldiers”), Robert Freitas (“Men In Black,” “Species”), and Michael Deak (“From Beyond,” “The Dentist”).

The visual effects for “Pick Me Up” were done by a team that included Sebastien Bergeron (“Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”), Mladen Miholjcic (“Andromeda”), Lee Wilson (“The Fly,” “Videodrome”), and Stephen Paschke (“Watchmen”).

The music for “Pick Me Up” was composed by Jay Chattaway, who also did the scores for the Larry Cohen films “Maniac Cop,” “Maniac Cop 2,” and “The Ambulance.”

The cast for “Pick Me Up” features frequent Larry Cohen collaborator Michael Moriarty (“It’s Alive III,” “A Return to Salem’s Lot,” “Q,” “The Stuff”), along with Fairuza Balk (“Almost Famous,” “The Waterboy”), Warren Kole (“The Following”), Laurene Landon (“Maniac Cop,” “Maniac Cop 2”), Malcolm Kennard (“The Matrix Reloaded”), Crystal Lowe (“Insomnia”), and Paul Anthony (“Blade: Trinity”).

Michael Moriarty does some improvised piano work during a sequence in “Pick Me Up,” much like he did in his audition scene in “Q: The Winged Serpent.”

The two dueling serial killers in “Pick Me Up” are named Walker and Wheeler, obviously coined after their modes of transportation: hitch-hiking and an 18-wheeler truck, respectively.

As far as highlights go, there is at least one highly memorable murder committed by Walker, in which he strangles a man with a dead snake. Apart from that, deaths are interestingly not emphasized, and a number happen off-screen. More attention is paid to suspense and the serial killers themselves rather than their actions, which I found pretty interesting.

“Pick Me Up” features a number of tongue-in-cheek direct references to classic horror movies, including “Psycho” and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” The flick also adopts major elements from both of those movies for the plot: the setting of a creepy, remote hotel (“Psycho”), and the presence of a killer hitch-hiker (“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”).

My biggest issue with “Pick Me Up” is surprisingly Michael Moriarty, who seemed more than a bit spaced out to me, like he might have been excessively drunk during the shoot. That might have just been part of the character, but I got the feeling from watching him that that wasn’t the case. Regardless, he is still a scene stealer and has his same quirky charm, but he isn’t on the top of his game.

Overall, “Pick Me Up” works with an interesting premise, and both the writing and directing is done with a clear affection for the genre. There are a couple of solid sequences, but I can’t help but feel that it could have been pulled off better. Compared to Stuart Gordon’s “Masters of Horror” episodes, Larry Cohen’s contribution here is a bit lacking. For fans of horror, it is worth checking out, but it is probably skippable for anyone else.

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On Free Speech and Reddit

June 19, 2015 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

This post is based on a viewer request, which is being filled due to a donation to the Secular Student Alliance via during Secular Students Week (June 10-17, 2015). Thanks to all for your contributions!

This is probably the most interesting and difficult request I received over the course of Secular Students Week. Right in the middle of the week, the popular link aggregator site, Reddit, decided to have a collective breakdown after a handful of subreddit forums were banned based on spreading hate speech. The front page was flooded with negative images of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao and unflattering photos of obese people, due to the largest of the banned subreddits being r/fatpeoplehate. Countless redditors claimed that their right to free speech was being violated, and that they were being unfairly censored. So, someone decided to ask my opinion on the whole matter.

I’ve been using Reddit for a few years now, but I stay pretty compartmentalized to subreddits that suit my interest, which is really what the site seems to be designed for. The site also harbors a lot of vile, dark corners dedicated hate speech, racism, sexism, and violence, most of which I have managed to stay blissfully ignorant to. However, this past week wasn’t the first time that the Reddit community threw a collective tantrum over a subreddit banning, even in just the time that I recall. r/jailbait, which was dedicated to often non-consensual pornographic images of women on the edge of legal ages of consent, was banned in 2011 after being the subject of a CNN segment by Anderson Cooper.

More recently, r/TheFappening, which was dedicated to the distribution of hacked nude photos of celebrities, was banned in 2014, which also led to backlash from the greater Reddit community.

From what I have seen, Reddit has historically been run and populated by extreme believers in free speech, who advocate for the forum to have little to no moderation or censorship of content. However, this certainly isn’t true across the board: each subreddit has a specific set of rules that can place any number of limitations on the smaller sub-communities.

Ellen Pao, who is the current target and pariah of these Reddit traditionalists, has a different direction and vision for Reddit. Her opinion seems to be that the position of Reddit as an unfiltered free speech platform has turned countless potential members away by harboring antagonistic hate groups, and wants the community to be more about acceptance and openness to all instead of being a staunch paragon of extreme free speech at the expense of certain groups. In the wake of all of the negative coverage about places like r/jailbait, r/TheFappening, r/creepshots, and others, I think it is pretty easy to understand why this is Pao’s projected direction.

The criticism of Pao comes from two distinct perspectives. One population wants her removed, and Reddit as a whole to refocus on being a broad and essentially lawless land of free speech. The other (less vocal) population has focused their criticisms on Pao not taking the policy far enough, noting that numerous subreddits that promote racism and sexism have been left unbanned. Obviously, it is impossible to make both of these populations happy at the same time, and Reddit is at a crossroads of which way it should go.

My opinion on the matter is that the flag-bearing advocates for absolute free speech on all platforms will always exist, but that they are a generally toxic element to communities. Their belief in equal-opportunity verbal assault and expression without repercussion naturally favors those who are in majority and privileged positions, and thus creates communities that primarily only serve those people (because everyone else is implicitly turned away). This population is naturally going to drift into the next platform that is going to be willing to accept them, and it is really inevitable that they will do so sooner or later. Growing communities have to diversify their user base, and the free speech brigade can serve to actively work against that goal, even if that isn’t what they intend.

The most common complaint that I have heard from the absolutist free speech advocates about the changing state of Reddit is that banning subreddits based on content will lead to subjective bannings in the future for everything from blasphemy to dissenting political opinions. Personally, I don’t think that is particularly realistic: places like r/atheism and r/politics aren’t in any danger, because they don’t (for the most part) actively harass people, and have their own internal guidelines dictating post content.

A good example of this in the film world is the MPAA ratings board, Despite all of the problems with the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board, it was initially created as an insurance of free speech in film: an internal policing/labeling organization for the film industry to subvert any attempts at censorship by local or state governments. It has become a thoroughly corrupt institution now, but that’s a conversation for another time. The point is, its purpose isn’t unlike subreddit moderators: to self-censor and label content, so the big guys (the government, Reddit) don’t have to get involved. As long as subreddits are held to a basic standard of not harboring hate speech, threats of violence, harassment, illegal activities, etc, then all should be fine and dandy. Subreddits already follow a labeling standard not unlike the one the MPAA started with: NSFW (not safe for work) and SFW (safe for work), and no one seems to be bothered by that. Of course, this isn’t a perfect parallel: Reddit, as a private entity, can ban subreddits, users, and content (as it should be able to) as retribution for violating guidelines, whereas the MPAA ratings are strictly about labeling, and the government is limited in how it can interfere with the individual films. Still, the parallels are notable.

Personally, I think the concepts of both the MPAA ratings board and the Reddit site-wide content standards are good. Reddit’s changing standards will hopefully continue to make the site more welcoming to a diverse set of users and drive away the darker, toxic elements of the community. The MPAA, on the other hand, has at least allowed for an effective system of labeling content (except for all of that corruption involved), and theoretically hasn’t stood in the way of films being made (in practice, that hasn’t been the case). Again, I could spend a lot of time just talking about the positives and negatives of the MPAA ratings, but that isn’t what this post is about.

I’m not going to get too deep into how misguided the free speech warriors of Reddit are, but I will say that they aren’t necessarily uniformly awful. Free speech is a serious issue, particularly when it comes to government censorship of art, protest, and blasphemy, and these die-hard free speech folk do a lot of speaking out on those fronts. However, a private company refusing to offer a platform to hate speech isn’t a free speech issue. When it comes down to it, they don’t have any obligation to provide soapboxes to anyone. Likewise, a movie studio turning down a proposed remake of Triumph of the Will isn’t a free speech issue: you can make that movie if you want, but nobody is under an obligation to help you do so. In a more realistic and current example, no one is under any obligation to help Uwe Boll make yet another shitty movie. So, regardless of how much good work these free speech warriors might otherwise do, it is pretty much irrelevant for this conversation, and it doesn’t make them any less damaging to the construction / cohesion of a diverse community.

Looking at Reddit as the private company that it is, I think that it is doing exactly what it needs to: in order to continue forward growth and diversification, the growing pains are going to be experienced in saying farewell to the free speech warriors who have historically provided the site’s foundation. Realistically, the free speech flag-bearers are going to find new platforms to suit them, and Reddit will be able to move on with a user base that doesn’t allow for as much hate and toxicity. I don’t think that is going to happen tomorrow, but I see it as an inevitability on both fronts. Reddit is never going to be able to serve the free speech warriors the way it used do, and the free speech warriors are only going to increasingly serve as an anchor to growth going forward.

So, I think Reddit should lean in, and continue becoming a place that is less hospitable to the free speech warriors. Of course there will be complaining and revolting, but all of that noise, I think, is going to work in the long run to Reddit’s benefit: it will sound a bell out to the previously disenfranchised ex-Redditors and folks who were turned off by the site’s darker elements that the coast is clearing, and that Reddit is re-branded and open for business.

There is a lot of tension between Reddit and a rival website, Tumblr. The two sites have no need to be at odds, though: they are fundamentally different in structure, and perfectly capable of co-existing for a cross-section of users. The tension that exists is solely because of the generally more progressive user base of Tumblr, which frequently butts heads with the free speech warriors who call Reddit home. If those free speech warriors can successfully be jettisoned, and Reddit refocused as a link aggregator and community host rather than a safe haven for hate speech and radical free speech advocates, then I think it can better serve the up and coming base of the internet. This might be to the malign of many, but it is what makes the most sense for the website going forward. It might mean a lot of shitposts from 14 year olds for the time being (which are both bearable and inevitable regardless, and are at least better than white supremacists flooding the site), but they will eventually grow into shitposting 24 year olds and 34 year olds in time, which is better for the site in the long run.

Just as I kind of expected, this post meandered and rambled a bit. I hope folks found it interesting, though, and I highly recommend checking out the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated for a crash course on the MPAA ratings board and the history of film censorship in the United States, and the YouTube video of Uwe Boll getting pissed off about Rampage 3 just for the hell of it (both videos are embedded in this post). Next week, I’ll be back to the usual movie reviews!

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Borat

June 19, 2015 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Borat

Today’s feature is Sacha Baron Cohen’s infamous shock-documentary, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Borat was directed by Larry Charles, who has also been behind the documentary-style comedies Religulous, Bruno, and The Dictator, and has also served as a producer on television shows like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dilbert, The Tick, and Entourage.

Borat is based on a character originally created by Sacha Baron Cohen for Da Ali G Show, but the movie astoundingly has a total of 9 credited writers, including both story and screenplay credits for Cohen, Anthony Hines (Bruno), and Peter Baynham (I’m Alan Partridge), as well as a screenplay credit for Dan Mazer (Da Ali G Show) and a story credit for Todd Phillips (Old School, Road Trip, The Hangover Part II, The Hangover Part III).

The cinematography in Borat was provided by the duo of Anthony Hardwick (Bruno, Religulous, Entourage) and Luke Geissbuhler (Helvetica, A LEGO Brickumentary)

Borat in total had three primary editors: Craig Alpert (Pineapple Express, Funny People, Knocked Up), Peter Teschner (Horrible Bosses, Bride of Re-Animator, I Spy, Josie and the Pussycats), and James Thomas (The Muppets, Fanboys, Hot Tub Time Machine).

The music for Borat was provided by Sacha Baron Cohen’s brother, Erran, who has also provided the music for his other films The Dictator and Bruno.

The team of producers on Borat included co-writers Sacha Baron Cohen, Dan Mazer, and Peter Baynham, as well as Jay Roach (Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery) and Monica Levinson (The Watch, Bruno).

The cast of Borat is made up mostly of unaware non-actors, outside of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ken Davitian (The Artist, Meet the Spartans, Get Smart, Frogtown II). A couple of recognizable faces do pop up in non-acting roles as themselves, like Pamela Anderson and politician Alan Keyes.

Todd Phillips was initially slated to direct the film, but left after filming just one sequence (the rodeo) due to creative differences with the rest of the team. He did wind up with a story credit on the final product, however.

The release of Borat unsurprisingly met with an immense amount of controversy, with countless individuals speaking out against the depictions and representations in the movie, as well as a handful of lawsuits being filed against the production.

In spite of the controversy, the initial response to Borat from critics and audiences was generally positive, and it still holds a 91% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a MetaCritic score of 89%. However, time hasn’t been particularly kind to the movie: the continuously recorded IMDb rating has sunk to 7.3, alongside the currently updated Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 79% and MetaCritic user score of 7.2.

Borat made well over $128 million in its initial domestic theatrical release, on top of $133 million internationally, despite a number of national bans. The initial production budget was $18 million (what the hell was that money spent on?), making the movie wildly profitable, especially for a documentary.

There is a certain unfocused quality to Borat. Who is the audience supposed to laugh at in this movie? Instead of punching up or punching down, it just seems to flail, swinging limbs confusedly in every direction and hitting whatever it happens to come into contact with. This idea of the ‘equal opportunity offender’ seemed to be particularly popular at the time, using the idea that making fun of everyone excused making fun of stigmatized and oppressed groups in even the most lazy and demeaning ways. For an example of that, just take a look at Carlos Mencia’s Mind of Mencia, which ran on Comedy Central for 3 years from 2005 to 2008, operating specifically on this mentality.

The moments of humor that are effective in Borat are pretty niche in their interest, having a specific focus on a combination embarrassment and schadenfreude. While this has gotten more popular over the years due to the correspondent segments on The Daily Show and the style of The Colbert Report, it still isn’t the sort of comedy that pops up a lot in blockbusters. This makes it all the more perplexing as to why it was so widely successful at the time. The best way to explain it is that the movie is satire gone wrong, and a lot of people were laughing at the ‘wrong things’. For instance, when Borat is referenced in popular culture, it is never done by playing on the humor of making common people look ridiculous for their hypocrisies and prejudices, but by mimicking the eccentricities of the character of Borat himself, like his bathing suit and his accent. Those aspects seem to me to be more of a means to an end in the movie, where the laughs are meant to be focused on the reactions of the people. Still, that doesn’t make these details ok, because they are still incredibly negative and shallow, but it is telling that those are the aspects of the film that people latched onto.

However, most of the humor throughout Borat is lazy and based on a ludicrous, concocted version of the nation of Kazakhstan: a lot of it seems to be based on massive misconceptions and general xenophobia towards people from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, making the movie not all that unlike the clueless conservative people it primarily aims to mock. Even the way the film is shot keeps the focus almost exclusively on the character of Borat, whereas Daily Show correspondent segments almost always stay trained on the target, with the character specifically being used to draw out reactions.

Speaking of which, why use Kazakhstan here? There is no resemblance between the portrayal in the movie and the actual country, so why not just make up a fake country? It just strikes me as being antagonistic without reason, just as a way to piss off yet another group of people. It is also a thoroughly confused portrayal, bouncing between considering the country Middle Eastern or Eastern European, which aren’t the same thing. Even worse, it isn’t really either of those things: It is a massive country, but is best classified as Central Asia. Hell, it has a massive Eastern border with China, and a significant Northern border with Russia. Honestly, I think they only picked Kazakhstan for this movie because it ends in “-stan,” and I guess that qualifies as ‘close enough’.

Borat definitely capitalizes off of domestic xenophobia and racism in the wake of 9/11 and the renewed American engagement in the Middle East, but it also punches hard at conservative and evangelical elements in the US, as I mentioned previously. It is also worth noting the amount of Russian and former Soviet influence on the style of pseudo-Kazakhstan, which provides kind of a double-whammy as far as ingrained negative bias from the perspective of western audiences.

It is worth pointing out that Cohen’s style of humor has seemingly rapidly decreased in popularity over time, with each of his Borat-esque films making less of an impact than the last. However, he has done some acting in a few acclaimed films in recent years, like 2012’s Les Miserables and Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, and isn’t awful as a comic relief element in those dramas.

On the Rotten Tomatoes aggregator, one review blurb in particular stood out to me, from critic Matthew De Abaitua of Film4:

“Borat is the funniest film imaginable right now.”

I think that kind of captures the phenomenon of this movie: for better or worse (mostly worse), it is a product of a specific time. I think a lot of people rightfully look back on it negatively now, but that should tell us a lot about the movie-going masses of 2006 in comparison to today’s audience more than anything else.

Sacha Baron Cohen made the decision to retire the character of Borat not too long after the film’s release, which I think was the best move for everyone. His reasoning is that he couldn’t surprise people anymore due to the character’s popularity, but I think there’s much more to it than that: Borat as an entity doesn’t belong in the present day, and it rapidly became the sort of tone-deaf portrayal that it was theoretically trying to mock. On some level Cohen must have known that, and it had to have influenced his decision to set the character aside.

I think Borat is worth rewatching for a lot of people, particularly to understand where society was at the time for it to become such a hit. The movie is honestly unremarkable, and suffers from being horrifically unfocused and poorly paced. If there is anything positive to say about it, it is that Cohen is capable of disappearing into a role, and that the film manages to sporadically capture the elusive quality of schadenfreude. However, it gets very bogged down in focusing on Borat as a semi-human caricature, rather than on the people around him. It does provide a semi-coherent example of how satire can so easily drift astray, and become a negative force.

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Don’t Copy That Floppy

June 18, 2015 Gordon Maples Leave a comment

Don’t Copy That Floppy

There are few things in this world as delightful as dated Public Service Announcements and safety videos. There is so much nostalgia tied to these often extreme and tone-deaf cautionary messages, that it is hard not to look back fondly on them. Some of them have even become cultural staples of their times. Is there a better encapsulation of 1950s America than “Duck and Cover?” Or the late 1980s and early 1990s, as depicted by the Partnership for a Drug Free America?

But, of course, as you get deeper into the world of PSAs and children’s educational videos, things get much cheesier and weirder pretty quickly. This is the world where you might stumble across “Don’t Copy That Floppy,” right next to “Be Cool About Fire Safety” and “The Kids’ Guide To The Internet.”

“Don’t Copy That Floppy” was created in 1992 by the Software Publisher’s Association, to raise awareness about copyright infringement and piracy. It was distributed to countless schools on VHS, but didn’t gain the popularity it has today until it popped up on YouTube many years later, and has gained a particular ironic popularity as a meme among the internet-savvy and technologically proficient. It even gained enough popularity that a sequel was produced in 2009, in order to update the message for a new era of technology and younger audiences.

There are a lot of reasons why this video has become so popular, not the least of which is the widespread nostalgia for the earlier days of computer technology. Given how quickly developments and improvements have occurred, it is hard not to giggle at the simpler days of floppy discs in a year when even CDs are on the way out as a storage device. However, in the case of “Don’t Copy That Floppy,” the message is what has really given it longevity (or the lack of it): anti-piracy.

Online piracy of video and music content is now easily commonplace, and is the topic of major legal battles and debate all over the world. Terms like “Napster” and “The Pirate Bay” are now in the public lexicon, in a way that the makers of “Don’t Copy That Floppy” just couldn’t have anticipated. The conversation over the ethics of online piracy is easily one of the biggest and most heated battlegrounds in the technological sphere today, so seeing it boiled down to such one-sided simplicity in the form of an early 1990s rap number is nothing short of ludicrous from the point of view of someone watching today.

Also, the video definitely goes over the top with its claims, such as implying that piracy will ultimately destroy the computer age, and that all computer businesses will have to shut down as a result of making duplicate copies of “The Oregon Trail.” It also only presents the most basic of straw man counterarguments, making it essentially propaganda as opposed to being an informative piece.

Last but not least, “Don’t Copy That Floppy” seems to perfectly capture the style of the early 1990s with its colorful backgrounds, dated hair styles, memorable fashion, awful music, and cheesy use of a green screen for effects. For anyone who lived through that decade, this video is an absolute delight.

I don’t remember ever actually seeing this video in school, but I certainly recall a whole bunch like it. Thanks to YouTube, these kinds of videos are easily within reach for anyone to check out, and thank goodness for that, because it is awful fun to go back through videos like these. If you have 10 minutes to kill on the internet, do yourself a favor and give a watch to “Don’t Copy That Floppy.”

Misan[trope]y

Monthly Archives: June 2015

1990: The Bronx Warriors

1990: The Bronx Warriors

American Chinatown

American Chinatown

Marmaduke

Marmaduke

Wild Wild West

Wild Wild West

Larry Cohen Collection: “The Ambulance”

The Ambulance

Larry Cohen Collection: “Best Seller”

Best Seller

Larry Cohen Collection: “Pick Me Up”

Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up

On Free Speech and Reddit

Borat

Borat

Don’t Copy That Floppy

Don’t Copy That Floppy

Reviews/Trivia of B-Movies, Bad Movies, and Cult Movies.