Crimewave (1985)

Crimewave (1985)

Director: Sam Raimi

Writers: Joel & Ethan Coen, Sam Raimi

So you guys know how there are certain films that have nightmarish production stories, where everything goes wrong and they turn into total fiascos? Well, that’s what happened with Sam Raimi’s Crimewave. This was Sam Raimi’s film after he showed the world what he was capable of doing behind the camera with Evil Dead (1981). This was also the first time that Raimi worked with a real budget. Not money from his dentist or from his friends. Nah, this was a real true blue Hollywood production, with professional actors and producers. Would Raimi adapt to working in a studio production when he was so used to artistic freedom? Would the ensuing film be worth watching? 

This is like a long lost gem for me because I watched it a lot as a kid when it was first released. I discovered it because HBO played it a lot back in 1985. Sad part is that Crimewave is a film that everyone involved wanted to forget about. The studio didn’t like it, test audiences didn’t like, the studio decided that Bruce Campbell wasn’t big enough of a star to star in the film and to top things off, the film went over budget and had a couple of the actors  go on drug binges. Brion James and Louise Lasser would hault production because of their drug problems! So yeah, things didn’t go well for Raimi and Crimewave. Thing is, I think the way the film was treated was total boloney. This film is not without its merits!

The story is about this guy called Vic Ajax, a regular every day Joe. Sadly, this every day Joe gets blamed for a bunch of murders that these two crazy rat exterminators committed. Yes you read that sentence right. Anyhows, Vic is sitting in the electric chair about to get zapped away for crimes he did not commit. The film transpires as he tells us the story of how everything went down. Will he survive? Will his innocence shine through? Will someone save this poor dope?

What I absolutely love about this movie is the film noir feel it has all throughout. There isn’t a second of film on Crimewave where you don’t feel like you’re in this big, dark, lonely metropolis in which lots of evil things happen in every dark corner or alley. To make things even spookier, it’s always stormy and windy…a lightning storm is about to strike! The wind cries in the middle of the night and newspapers fly through the air, it is definitely not the kind of night anyone wants to be out and about. So there’s always that feeling of dread all throughout the movie. The city exudes this feeling of emptiness…as if everyone is hiding away, looking out through their windows, peeking at the evil things scourging in the night; kudos to Sam Raimi for successfully maintaining that feeling of dread all through the film.  

And yes, I said Sam Raimi, he of Evil Dead and Spider Man fame. You see, this here film was his sophomore effort and his first studio film, with a budget. The great thing about Crimewave is that it has all of that Sam Raimi style and flare. Lots of camera tricks, lots of movement and lots of composite shots…basically, this movie has a lot of what I love about Sam Raimi, a lot of what I miss about this filmmaker. You see, when he became an A list director, he sort of lost that zany style he was so known for in order to play the Hollywood game. I personally loved low budget Sam Raimi because he was free to do all these crazy things with the camera. Thankfully,  Crimewave was a small enough picture that it allowed Raimi to show off his comic/kinetic style in spades! In other words, this movie is extremely cartoonish and feels a lot like a Three Stooges sketch. The whole film is made up of camera tricks, unorthodox angles and cartoony situations. 

All the characters in Crimewave behave like cartoon characters. We got the snake, we got the nerdy guy, we got the damsel in distress and we got the two crazy villains! Now these two crazy villains are special, they are so over the top that they end up being the real stars of the show. There’s a reason why they are on the poster, it’s because they are the best thing in the movie! One is played by Paul L. Smith who some of you might remember as the guy who played Bluto in Robert Altman’s Popeye (1980) and the other is played by Brion James, better known for his role as Leon the Replicant in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). He’s the guy who tells Harrison Ford “Wake Up! Time to Die!”  So anyway, these two guys are basically rat exterminators. And how do we know this? They drive a truck with a huge rat on top of it that’s how we know! They kill rats during the day but work nights as Hit Men. So they kill whoever they have to kill in the same way they kill rats! With a machine that generates bolts of electricity called ‘The Shocker’! Trust me; these two guys will have you cracking up.

Bruce Campbell has said that with Evil Dead they learned all about success and that with Crimewave they learned how to fail. Well, the film might have failed at the box office (hell it was only released in Kansas and Alaska) and the studio might have had no faith in it, but there’s a lot to like here. It was written by the freaking Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi! It has style and fun to spare! Its film noir! It’s cartoonish! It’s dark and gruesome fun; this is dark humor of the best kind. Of course a lot of people might be put off by seeing some of the unrealistic cartoonish action, but for lovers of that sort of unrealistic silly fun, well, you’re in for a treat! This movie was made for you! It’s a real shame that Crimewave has been treated like some sort of unwanted step child. I mean, yeah the studio messed around with it and cut it to pieces, still, a fun film shines through. A similar situation happened with David Lynch’s Dune (1984) and many adore that film, myself included; same thing with Crimewave. This is a very kinetic film, visually, you will never be bored. There’s always some gag going on. It might have been a nightmare to make, but it sure is a pleasure to watch. Enjoy this forgotten gem, you won’t regret it.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

Death and Androids: Explorig the Themes of Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner, like so many of Ridley Scott’s films, is an immersive experience. The world of Blade Runner is constructed in such an intricate and layered manner that you can’t help but get lost in the film. Aesthetically speaking, it’s one of my favorite films because it’s just beautiful to look at, those scenes with flying cars over a futuristic skyline filled with metal pyramids? Count me in! A lot has been said about Blade Runner as the quintessential cyber punk film because it’s about androids and because it’s set in a bleak future, like so many of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels. Who is William Gibson you ask? Well, he’s the father of cyber punk that’s who; Gibson’s the guy who practically invented what we now know as 'cyber punk' through a trilogy of novels, the first of which is the seminal ‘Neuromancer’. If you want to truly find out what cyber punk is all about, I recommend starting there. But Blade Runner is based on Phillip K. Dicks ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’; a novel with its fair share of cyber punk elements, some of which bled onto the film. As a side note to this article, I'd like to mention that the book and the film are two different things all together, so you might want to try and read the novel, it’s an entirely different experience. Actually, you might end up being surprised just how different book and film are! How different is the book from the film? Well, the books main theme is religion! The film has nothing to do with religion! The book explores a whole different set of themes and has an entirely different tone to it. The book remains a special experience, I highly recommend checking it out! The difference between book and film points to one thing, what an amazing filmmaker Ridley Scott is. He basically took the world that Phillip K. Dick presented us with in his book and weaved a story that played with other themes  which though different, are equally relevant.   

Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott

For the longest time, I would just watch Blade Runner because I loved that world, the look, the feel. And you have to admit, the film is a lush production, it’s not a cheap looking film. But it wasn’t until adulthood that I started to appreciate the film from a whole other angle, I started to realize that there was a lot more to Blade Runner than flying cars and murderous androids. What was Blade Runner really about? What was it commenting on? The films central theme is mans own disillusionment with our short time on this earth. We come and go in the blink of an eye and when you really stop and think about it, it’s a really sad thing how short our lives are. I mean, our lives can be so rich, filled with so many memories and experiences, but as Roy Batty muses in the climax of the film, all of it just fades away when we die. When Roy Batty goes up to Tyrell, his creator to ask him for more life, Tyrell tells him it’s not possible, but not without offering a glimmer of hope to Batty’s preoccupations about death. Tyrell tells Batty “The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly Roy!” In this sense, the films offers us the only glimmer of hope when it comes to death, we have to live an amazing life, try and leave our mark in the world, to make what little time we were given matter.   Unless you lived an outstanding life and shined so brightly that your mark will be indelible for time immemorial, chances are, no one will even remember you were 100 years from now. So let’s make that time count my friends!

Now, taking all that in consideration, what would you do if you could go up to your god and ask him or her for more life? What if you could have a conversation with your creator, what would you say? I’d ask him why he allows decease, dictatorships and death. I’d ask him why he is so silent and apparently not even here. In Blade Runner, the Nexus 6 androids or ‘Replicants’  to use the term that they went with for the film get to actually talk to their creator, the “God of bio-mechanics” as Roy Batty calls him. They question him about why they die so soon, they want more life, they want for the god of bio-mechanics to let them into "heaven" so to speak. Problem is that the engineers who made the Nexus 6 androids gave them a four year life span. Why? Because if given any more than that, they get too smart, revolt and kill their masters. When given more than four years to live, the Nexus 6 would get too independent, volatile and unpredictable and that’s not what the powers that be want with a serving class; nope, they want the working class dumb and controllable. Here the film also offers us an interesting allusion to class issues. Should we take our given place in society? Or should we aim for more? The androids in Blade Runner want just that, they want to be like their creators. So, in order to keep the androids from rebelling or getting smarter, as a failsafe device, the Tyrell Corporation gave the Nexus 6 replicants only four years to live, after which they expire and die. In other words, the Nexus 6 are conscious of their mortality and they will fight it to the bitter end. 

So it is with some desperation that Roy Batty and his gang of androids manage to find Tyrell himself in order to ask for more life. Sadly Tyrell tells them that it’s not possible, essentially denying Roy and his crew of life. The frustration is so huge that Roy kills Tyrell, his creator, but not before telling him “I want more life fucker!”  To me this is the most pivotal scene in the whole film because it lets us know exactly what the film is about: our frustrations with death. At the same time, this scene offers some of the films most shocking and daring ideas. On this scene, Tyrell plays the role of God, the creator, while Roy Batty plays the role of the human, close to his death bed, asking god for a few more years. Again, what would you ask God if you were ever face to face with him? Well, Roy asked for more life and when he was denied it, he killed his creator, a shocking idea if you ask me, that of killing God. It’s not just any movie that will deliver the idea of anger and hatred towards God, but this one has the guts to do so. The films characters show certain contempt towards God for not having given us longer life. In this film God has created imperfect creatures with the ultimate decease: death! Not so different from the world we live in if you ask me! But, was Roy Batty justified to do what he did? Did his plea have any weight to it?

Well, if you ask me, Roy Batty may be the villain, but it feels to me like his plea is genuine, it has validity. To Batty, death just isn’t fair. He has seen and lived so much; he is frustrated that it’s all going to fade away “like tears in the rain” as he so eloquently puts it in the last moments of the film; which reminds me just how beautiful and poetic the ending of the film is. I mean, to be honest, I completely get the villain of the film, he may be a bit ‘batty’  as his last name implies, but you have to admit, his anger and frustrations are very real, it’s a cry out to life and death. Roy Batty is a desperate individual, but you have to understand, the guys body is freezing up! He can’t feel his fingers! His skin is turning white! He has to penetrate his fingers with rusty nails in order to make himself feel alive.  I compare this to those moments we’ll eventually get to in our life when we start feeling the aches and pains of old age and we start doing everything we can to battle it. We go to the gym, we eat better, we go to the doctor, doing whatever we can to fight what’s inevitably going to come. Yup, there comes a time in everyone's life when we simply won't run as well, when our resistance will be less, and we'll get tired faster. At some point in our lives, our energies will no longer be what they used to be. Our bodies will sooner or later start to show signs of wear and tear and we'll see death rearing its ugly head.  I find those last scenes in Blade Runner when Roy Batty is reminiscing about the beauty of life, when he starts remembering about that “he has seen things that you wouldn’t believe” just beautiful, like an old man remembering all those experiences he once lived and enjoyed; in many ways, Roy Batty has a lust for life, which is why death deeply saddens him. I have to admit, that scene always gets to me.

"All those moments will be lost in time...like tears in the rain"  

As an artist, Ridley Scott is obviously terribly concerned with death, which let’s face it, is kind of one of the big mysteries of life. What happens when we die? Where do we go? Do we truly just vanish? This is why inquisitive characters have always been a part of Ridley Scott’s films, so they can ask the big questions. Most recently in Prometheus (2012) he revisits the exact same themes as he played with in Blade Runner, but with a slightly more existential twist to them because in Prometheus characters aren’t just asking for life, they want the answers to the big mysteries of the universe, they want to know where we all came from as well. Prometheus is less subtle with its themes; it asks its questions louder. It proposes that our creators not only don’t like us, they also want to wipe us out like some failed experiment that has to be started over again. Hell, even Ridley Scott’s brother, director Tony Scott was obsessed with this theme of death as well; I guess it runs in the family? For example, Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983) has David Bowie playing a half vampire who is searching for a scientific solution to old age and death. Again the idea is visited on that film, can life be expanded? Can’t we live just a little more? But going back to Blade Runner, this is a film that is extremely consistent with its death theme, for example, when Deckard is confronted by one of the androids in a fight and the android tells Deckard “Wake Up! Time to Die!” we are reminded that it’s not only old age that can kill us. And then again, in the ending of the film, when Gaff, who knows that Deckard has fallen in love with an android, tells him: “Too bad she won’t live. But then again, who does? “  And I think that ultimately, that is the films final message, that we should live our lives as passionately and as intensely as we can, because death will be a part of it, eventually.

   

Cherry 2000 (1987)

Title: Cherry 2000 (1987)

Director: Steve De Jarnatt

Cast: Melanie Griffith, David Andrews, Pamela Gidley, Laurence Fishburne, Brion James, Tim Thomerson, Robert Z’Dar

Review:

Cherry 2000 is one of those movies that once completed; had the head honchos over at Orion Pictures  scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to sell the picture. A Romantic post apocalyptic movie? Do they sell it to the female demographic because its lead is an actress and it has romantic elements attached to it? Or do they sell it to the male audience, because of its post-apocalyptic/action/adventure elements? Is it a comedy or an action film, or what? This ambiguity held the film back, not knowing who to sell the movie to always gives studio heads cold feet. This insecurity from part of the studio is what killed the movie. Even though it was filmed in 1985, it ended up being released in theaters in 1987! And that was only in foreign countries! It made its way to American audiences through home video market in 1988 which is when I first got a glimpse of it and where it acquired its current cult status. It wasn’t even deemed worthy of a theatrical release in the United States; as a result, the film was a huge flop. I guess it was just too off beat for some people.  But was it? Read on my friends!

The perfect couple?

Cherry 2000 is all about a guy named Sam Treadwell, a guy who’s extremely happy because he has this smoking hot blonde bomb shell waiting for him at home. She looks beautiful, she has dinner ready for him (his favorite dish: Cheese Burgers and French Fries!) and she has nothing but good things to say to Sam. She’s also willing to have sex on the kitchen floor at the tip of a hat! No problemo! Oh wait, I failed to mention that this magical lady is also a cyborg! A robotic model called Cherry 2000! So one day, when Sam and Cherry are ‘doing it’ on the kitchen floor, they get so into each other that they don’t realize that the dishwasher is over flowing and the soapy water begins to pour all over the floor; they are so into each other that they don’t care. Problem is that Cherry is a cyborg, and the soapy water messes up her circuits! She ends up shorting out right there on the kitchen floor! What’s Sam to do now that he doesn’t have his ‘perfect woman’? Send a bounty hunter to find the same model that’s what! And there’s no better bounty hunter for the job than E. Johnson. The real problem is that this Cherry 2000 model is so old that one of the few remaining models can only be found in a post apocalyptic wasteland called ‘Zone 7’. Will E. Johnson and Sam find the new Cherry 2000 and make it out of Zone 7 alive? 

So yeah, I think it’s safe to say that this film is ‘off beat’, but not off beat enough to deserve the kick in the groin that it got from the studio, I mean, I’ve seen far stranger films that’s for sure. Still, I have to admit that a romantic/post-apocalyptic/comedy/action/adventure is quite the mash up of genres. Genre mixing is a risky move for any studio, but some times the illusion of novelty that these films offer works; for example Back to the Future III (1990) a film that mixed science fiction elements with a western, or Army of Darkness (1992) which was a mixture of horror and slapstick comedy with a good measure of adventure thrown in.  Since Cherry 2000 is a difficult film to categorize within a particular genre, well, it then becomes a hard sell because the studio doesn’t know on what channel or magazine they are going to spend their advertising money.  The thing about Hollywood is that they like a sure thing, and films like Cherry 2000 do not offer them that. Hollywood will rarely take a chance with films of this nature.

But this doesn’t make Cherry 2000 any less watchable, and films like this always find their audience one way or another. Monster Squad (1987) is an example I always use. Monster Squad was a mixed genre film. It mixed a kids movie, with monsters. Hollywood didn’t know who to sell it too, it was too scary for kids and too kiddie for adults. As a result, the film was a box office flop even though it was actually a good flick. Audiences found it anyway on home video, and so, Monster Squad’s is currently one of those beloved cult classics people can’t seem to get enough of. Melanie Griffith says that Cherry 2000 is her least favorite movie (must be all those shameless one liners she hurls through out the whole film) yet recognizes that it has a cult following. What is it that people find likable about Cherry 2000? It could be various things, but one of them has to be Melanie Griffith looking all sorts of hot, she’s sexy and tough all rolled up into one. She’s a one liner spewing loner with a heart of gold. She’s a kick ass driver, and has a cool looking red mustang with buttons and doo dads that make the car go faster. She fires freaking rocket launchers for god sakes! This is one tough chick, which equals sexy on many a fan boys book. E. Johnson is the quintessential ‘bad girl’. Then there’s of course her car, which I should have included in my 40 Memorable Movie Cars article I wrote a while back. The car is all sorts of awesome and it of course steals the show in some sequences, the most memorable one of course is the one where E. Johnson shoots her guns while hanging from her red mustang, which is being dangled over the Hoover Dam. Which by the way I have to commend, that was a real stunt. Not CGI, not miniatures…that’s a real car and a real stunt person hanging from that car! The sequence is the most spectacular in the whole film.

Thematically speaking, Cherry 2000 speaks about, amongst other things, classism. Sam and E. Johnson encounter a colony of survivors who live on top of a mountain called “Sky Ranch”. They have all the commodities, have all the parties, all the food, but it you are not like them, they’ll probably end up killing you. The film also addresses women’s rights; the idea that women are not robots, or sex slaves or merely there to have your meal ready when you get home. The film speaks about women’s right to an opinion, to express themselves, to have careers, to have feelings that need to be taken into consideration.  Basically, the film speaks rather bluntly about how women aren’t in this world to serve men as slaves. They have their own lives to live and their own choices to make; and E. Johnson is representative of that. She’s the anti-thesis of what some men expect of a woman. Sam is the typical guy who thinks all he wants is this pretty little house wife who looks beautiful all day long and will have his dinner ready when he gets back. E. Johnson is the independent girl who knows how to look out for herself, she’s opinionated, driven and has time for love and sweetness at the same time. In the end, this is a film that speaks about accepting each other the way we are, warts and all. Nobody is perfect, so why should we expect perfection from others? 

Ultimately, this isn’t the best film ever made. It has action and likable characters, but sometimes runs into dull areas. It’s a mish-mash of genres, but if you’re ready for that well, you should have no problem. Also, the film is peppered with cameos from genre favorites like a very young Lawrence Fishburne playing a lawyer in a dance club called ‘The Glu Glu Glub’. We also get to see Brion James and even the big jawed dude Robert D’Zar, better known for his contributions to Maniac Cop (1988). The one who will probably get the most recognition from hardcore genre veterans is Tim Thomerson as Lester, the leader of the crazy colonists. Some of you genre loving fans out there might recognize him from many Full Moon productions like Dollman (1991) and Trancers (1985) where he played the time traveling dude, Jack Death. Many will probably see a bit of  Mad Max in Cherry 2000 because of its post apocalyptic roots, but in all honesty, it reminded me more of Susan Seidelman’s Making Mr. Right (1987) only in reverse. On that one the nature of relationships is also explored by using cyborgs as the main thrust for the film, only on that one it was a male cyborg played by John Malkovich. This of course proves once again that one of the best film genres to explore the realities and complexities of humanity is science fiction.  

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5