Only now does it occur to me... BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980)

Only now does it occur to me... that James Cameron first encountered the "TERMINATOR font" while working for Roger Corman.

What we have here is a John Sayles (!) scripted, low-ish budget sci-fi remake of Akira Kurosawa's THE SEVEN SAMURAI, starring a hodgepodge of affordable actors, from Richard Thomas (THE WALTONS) to Robert Vaughn (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) to John Saxon (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) to Sybil Danning (REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS) to George Peppard (THE A-TEAM). It's more enjoyable than you might expect––slightly better than STARCRASH (1978) or KRULL (1983), but pretty much playing in the same "poor man's STAR WAR" sandbox. I rate it lower than FLASH GORDON (1980), if that says anything.

According to James Cameron (credited as co-art director), he was responsible for most of the film's special effects, which are quite impressive for the budget. For comparison, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK had a $30.5 million budget, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS had a $2 million budget, and there are several spaceships which easily look good enough to be in STAR WARS. (The same cannot be said for the sets, costumes, and makeup effects.)

Anyway, it's notable that this early Cameron effort uses the same font that Cameron would make famous in THE TERMINATOR (I cannot find any interview where this is mentioned––since he had such an outsize role in the art direction, production design, and special effects, it's possible he helped pick out the font.)

It's also where Cameron met composer James Horner,

and the two would go on to collaborate many times before Horner's death––from ALIENS to TITANIC to two AVATAR films. In all, quite a formative experience for the 25-year-old Cameron.

Only now does it occur to me... THE WRAITH (1986)

Only now does it occur to me... that THE WRAITH is the only opportunity you'll have to see the ghost of Charlie Sheen wearing a faux-H.R. Giger stillsuit 

 

and seeking revenge on a gang of the world's oldest teenagers, a utopian coalition of punks, jocks, nerds, tweakers, and middle-aged bad boys,

 including everyone from Clint Howard with an ERASERHEAD hairdo

to a smug and scenery-devouring Nick Cassavetes.

 

Throw in Randy Quaid as the surly Sheriff and between this Sheen/Cassavetes/Howard/Quaid nexus, you begin realize that almost everybody involved has a significantly more famous relative!

 

This is technically a horror movie, but it has a lot more in common with MAD MAX or HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, as it's a part-sci-fi/part-supernatural/part-Western inflected revenge actioner featuring a vigilante specter driving a cyberpunk murder car around the American Southwest. It's an '80s movie that's drenched in nostalgia for the 1950s; so much so that the inciting incident is "murder by drag race." It's set in Tucson, Arizona (like the '80s Cannon giallo, WHITE OF THE EYE!) so there's plenty of saguaro cacti

 

and roadside charm.

 

Large chunks of the film take place at "Big Kay's Burger," an AMERICAN GRAFFITI-style teen drive-in hangout with roller-skatin' waitresses,

 

 

and at one point there's an extended "Makin' Burgers" montage set to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love"

 

which is a nice reminder that the director (Mike Marvin) also directed the (very real) HAMBURGER: THE MOTION PICTURE.

There are a number of John Carpenter references sprinkled throughout: the supernatural car element certainly speaks to CHRISTINE, at one point someone describes ghost-Charlie Sheen as "weird and pissed off" (referencing a line of dialogue from THE THING), and Randy Quaid's character is named "Loomis," like Donald Pleasence from HALLOWEEN.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention Sherilyn Fenn ("Audrey Horne" from TWIN PEAKS), who is trapped in a love triangle between ghost-Sheen and the man who killed him (Nick Cassavetes). Here, Fenn has none of the stylish charm that defines and elevates her iconic role in TWIN PEAKS (this particular role is severely underwritten, and all of her scenes with Charlie Sheen were rushed into a single day's shoot), and the best part of her performance is probably the parade of terrible/amazing Southwestern '80s outfits they forced her to wear.

 
Lotta fringe  

 
Were there supposed to be pants? 

Spray-tan overdose

Also, word on the street is that Oliver Stone hated THE WRAITH, and believed that Sheen's presence in such a B-movie would make a negative impact on PLATOON's Oscar chances. He didn't need to worry, as he still walked away with a Best Director statue, and PLATOON won Best Picture. (I'd have given it to THE MISSION or A ROOM WITH A VIEW, myself.)

I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL at Edinburgh Fringe

To anyone in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival this year, I must wholeheartedly recommend I WAS A TEENAGE SHE-DEVIL (from writer-composer Sean Matthew Whiteford and director Rachel Klein), a horror-comedy-rock musical and true love letter to the VHS era. A Faustian romp, chock full of demonic hair metal, dances to the death, teenagers making bad decisions, and extremely catchy tunes... it's giving PROM NIGHT 2, CARRIE, BLACK ROSES, and NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, just one of the tightest, leanest, meanest pieces I've seen in a while. This spooktacular fugue of '80s excess opens tonight (August 3rd) and runs through August 22, nightly at 10:30p at theSpaceUK @ Niddry Street – Upper Theatre. Tickets here!

Only now does it occur to me... FALLING IN LOVE (1984)

Only now does it occur to me... that I must say a few words about the romantic drama FALLING IN LOVE (1984), which, despite being generally forgotten today, seems to have maintained a small but fierce cult following. 

I could tell you that it stars Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, and that they have been occasionally celebrated for their chemistry here despite De Niro coming across as brooding and sinister even in moments like their Christmas meet-cute, whereupon they accidentally collide with heaping bags of Christmas presents including the clichéd "pair of skis with a bow on it," which, I would wager, is gifted far more often in Hallmark movies than in real life.

I could tell you that it's inspired mostly by David Lean and Noel Coward's seminal BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945),

 

which means that the two are already married, and their long-suffering spouses are played by, respectively, MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE's Jane Kaczmarek

and David Clennon ("Palmer" from John Carpenter's THE THING).

 

I could tell you that it features bit parts by Victor Argo (KING OF NEW YORK, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST), Frances Conroy (SIX FEET UNDER, THE AVIATOR), and Kenneth Welsh ("Windom Earle" on TWIN PEAKS), but in larger supporting roles, it manages to completely waste both multi-Oscar winner Dianne Wiest (HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) 

 and Harvey Keitel (TAXI DRIVER, RESERVOIR DOGS).

They languish in rote The Best Friend™ roles, dramaturgically existing only when they're on screen, to be used as nothing more than generic sounding boards for the protagonists.

But what I want to tell you about FALLING IN LOVE is that one of Streep and De Niro's first dates takes place in Manhattan's iconic Chinatown.

And that said date leads them to a peculiar 1970s arcade, where they are able to place coins in a machine to... play tic-tac-toe against a live chicken.

 

This was clearly a real, found location (the Chinatown Fair on Mott Street), featuring this incredible bit of bizarro entertainment. I love that the chicken makes its moves from a "Thinkin' Booth."

 

 

 

 

 

I love that De Niro gets in an argument with the chicken because it keeps winning.

 

 

 

 

I love that the prize it pays out is supposedly "a large bag of fortune cookies if you beat the chicken."

 

 

I love that when the chicken defeats you, there's a light-up sign announcing, "BIRD WINS."

 

This feels like something out of Werner Herzog's STROZEK (1978), which features the absurdist closing image of a coin-operated "dancing chicken" machine. 

 

This is the unequivocal high point of FALLING IN LOVE, and on this subject, I'm afraid I cannot be swayed.

See also: my thoughts on the animatronic bar fixture "Dirty Gertie" in Robert Altman's THREE WOMEN (1977).

Only now does it occur to me... KUNG-FU MASTER (1988)

Only now does it occur to me... that I must tip my hat to noted cat lover and French New Wave scamp Agnes Varda for making the most accurate video game adaptation of all time. That she does it in a twisted arthouse bildungsroman starring Jane Birkin and Charlotte Gainsbourg makes it all the more remarkable.

In a brief segment, Varda––who, bar none, is my favorite nouvelle vague gremlin–– recreates the stilted, sidescrolling action of arcade classic KUNG FU MASTER (a.k.a. SPARTAN X and SVT)

in a live action fantasy, down to the awkward walking animation, the weird crouches, and the unwieldy controls.

A+. What I wouldn't give to see Agnes Varda's MS. PAC-MAN.

Sean Gill's "Classic Florida Literature: On the Novelization of Porky's II: The Next Day" in Evergreen Review

My latest essay, "Classic Florida Literature: On the Novelization of Porky's II: The Next Day" has been published online by Evergreen Review, a longstanding literary journal, founded in 1957, and known for publishing Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Vladimir Nabokov, Susan Sontag... and now an essay about the paperback tie-in of Porky's II.

Only now does it occur to me... PHANTASM II: THE BALL IS BACK (1988)

Only now does it occur to me... is PHANTASM II (1988) good? I thought so, back when I saw it for the first time, about fifteen years ago.

The budget is ten times larger (at $3 million) than PHANTASM's, and Universal Pictures put its major studio heft behind it (though it was the cheapest movie that Universal produced in the 1980s and generally feels like an upper-tier New World Picture). 

The Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzman SFX are solid,

 

 and the cinematography by Daryn Okada is crisp and impressive. 

 

They've changed up the essential formula from melancholy horror to sci-fi actioner, and it's somehow the median point between EVIL DEAD 2, ALIENS, and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 on the "horror sequel reinvention" scale. Maybe it's the RETURN TO SALEM'S LOT of PHANTASM sequels?

In the lead role of "Mike," indie child actor A. Michael Baldwin has been upgraded (?) to '80s-'90s standby James LeGros (POINT BREAK, DRUGSTORE COWBOY) who basically plays him as THE EXTERMINATOR.

Slow-jammin' Ice Cream Man Reggie Bannister is back, baby,

 

as is Angus Scrimm, who is always a sobering, dangerous presence and, as the "Tall Man," wears the scariest bob haircut of all time. 

 

The sentinel sphere gang even gets a new member, in the form of a gold-plated, lightsaber-laser-wielding (?) video-game-boss-looking gadget. 

 

This movie features a four-barreled shotgun, for godssakes. 

 

There are a lot more explosions per capita, that's for sure.

Does this mean the movie is good, though? Not precisely. It doesn't have the craftsmanship or sheer adrenaline (or budget) of ALIENS, the satire of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, or the comedy of EVIL DEAD 2––though we do get one of the most ludicrous sex scenes of all time with Reggie the Ice Cream Man ("You're a bald, middle-aged former ice cream vendor," says LeGros' Mike) cavorting with a mostly unexplained hitchhiking fashion model, in a scene so gratuitous that Reggie Bannister's actual wife insisted on being on set, just out of frame, for the duration. 

The actress playing the hitchhiker––Samantha Phillips––cannot keep a straight face throughout, possibly due to the proximity of Reggie's wife, and her unabashed mockery of the scene almost reclaims it from the male gaze. If this film offers Reggie as a sex symbol (and he plays it... like Clint Howard doing James Bond?), Samantha offers, through her performance, a sly retort.

While watching the film, I, too, had something like a dumb grin on my face for much of the duration––it's a movie that feels like it shouldn't exist, as if it were inexplicable, higher-budget fan fiction of an obscure indie. It's chock full of references for genre nerds, like Alex Murphy's grave (Peter Weller from ROBOCOP)

 

 or a bag full of Sam Raimi's ashes 

 

(as well as some Raimi-inspired POV shots 

 

and an arch moment of self-amputation). 

 

There's a weird whiskey priest subplot that goes nowhere, extended chainsaw duels, 

 

rat-exploding lasers,

 

and the poetic use of "Suck on this!" as a third-act one-liner.

 

In the end, this is all more of a curiosity than a genre classic, but I suppose I'm glad that it exists? It seems that for most PHANTASM "phans," they either love part 2 and dislike part 3, or they dislike part 2 and love part 3. As you will soon see, I'm much closer to being in the latter camp.

To be continued...