Only now does it occur to me... DAYS OF THUNDER

Only now does it occur to me...  that following in the footsteps of incredibly "whacky" credit pairings like George A. Romero & Menahem Golan and Jesse Ventura & Andre Gregory that the mind-blowing, onscreen juxtaposition of Robert Towne and Tom Cruise is truly one for the record books.

You will note:  one of these men is the screenwriter of CHINATOWN and THE LAST DETAIL.  The other one is Tom Cruise.  Extra bonus:  the "76" car up there says "Die Hard" on the side of it.  Fine by me.

DAYS OF THUNDER subscribes to the genre of movie (TOP GUN, COCKTAIL, RISKY BUSINESS, THE COLOR OF MONEY) where Tom Cruise engages in a flashy and specialized activity (jet-flyin', cocktail-makin', pimpin', pool-hustlin'), works with a mentor (Tom Skerrit, Bryan Brown, Joe Pantoliano?-admittedly a stretch, Paul Newman) gets the girl (Kelly McGillis, Kelly Lynch, Rebecca De Mornay, Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio), loses the girl, gets the girl back again, and triumphs over all. To fill in the ingredients of DAYS OF THUNDER, we have:  Nascar-racin', Robert Duvall, and Nicole Kidman.

It's designed as a high-octane Tony Scott thrill ride where we cheer on our bad-boy hero who dips his hat low over his eyes, cause he's cool like that and quite the bad boy:

but upon watching it today, you can't help but root for Michael Rooker the whole time.  Michael Rooker (character-actor extraordinaire and veteran of HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, THE WALKING DEAD, SLITHER, JFK, CLIFFHANGER, MISSISSIPPI BURNING, RENT-A-COP, and THE DARK HALF)

plays a rival driver who eventually becomes a sidekick to Cruise, but his natural pathos and inspired acting choices contrast so severely with Cruise's tiny-whiny-bad-boy demeanor that you have no choice but to think of him as the true protagonist of the film.  Also, Rooker's character name is "Rowdy Burns" and for the record, I have never disliked anyone named Rowdy.

At one point, after they're both  injured in a wreck, Rooker and Cruise have an epic wheelchair race (to their orderlies' dismay) that just might be the highlight of the film.

Furthermore, Rooker's wife is played by Junta Juleil favorite Caroline Williams (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, ALAMO BAY, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, STEPFATHER II: MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY, LEPRECHAUN 3) who still remains one of Texas' best exports.

Seen here a little more morose than usual.

In closing, I will rattle off three disjointed observations:

#1.  I love it when Randy Quaid says that we look like monkeys fucking a football.

#2.  "Superflo" is only one letter away from "Superflu."

Also, there is so much "1990" happening in that picture, that I feel as if staring at it and meditating (á la SOMEWHERE IN TIME) could in fact transport you back to 1990.

#3.  Nicole Kidman plays an Australian medical doctor whom Tom Cruise mistakes for a stripper.  Later, Tom tries to buy Nicole's love (as in real life) by sending her a shitload of balloons, and– most importantly– a stuffed kangaroo dressed in a doctor costume, you know, because she's a doctor from Australia.

And the best part is that...  it works!  Score one for 'Merica.

Film Review: THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN (1985, Matthew Robbins)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Helen Slater (SUPERGIRL, CITY SLICKERS, RUTHLESS PEOPLE), Christian Slater (GLEAMING THE CUBE, TRUE ROMANCE), Richard Bradford (THE UNTOUCHABLES, MISSING), Peter Coyote (E.T., SOUTHERN COMFORT, SLAYGROUND), Keith Gordon (JAWS 2, CHRISTINE, DRESSED TO KILL), Dean Stockwell (BLUE VELVET; PARIS, TEXAS), Yeardley Smith (THE SIMPSONS, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE). Music by The Divinyls, Pat Benatar, Billy Idol, Wendy O. Williams, & Craig Safan (the composer of CHEERS and THE LAST STARFIGHTER).
Tag-line: "The last thing she ever expected was to become a hero."
Best one-liner: "Hey, get your hand off that!" –"What, your sister? Or your fagmobile?"

Feeling like sort of a cross between LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: THE FABULOUS STAINS and BONNIE AND CLYDE, it may surprise some to learn that THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN is actually an adaptation of THE LEGEND OF MICHAEL KOHLHAAS, an 1811 novel based on historical events that took place in Saxony in the 1530's. It's a series of injustices that might seem trivial to a member of the ruling class (stolen horses or a trashed scooter), but which make all the difference in the world to someone eking out a poverty-laden existence (be it in a fiefdom or a trailer park). However, in adapting this story for mainstream 80's audiences, a lot gets lost in translation, and our suspension of disbelief undergoes some serious wear and tear. But it doesn't matter- pump up the power on that Pat Benatar, arch your burgeoning Slater eyebrows, and sing it loud- "FAIR IS FAIR!" The casting is perfect: Helen 'SUPERGIRL' Slater is striking, fiery, and determined.

Part Joan of Arc, part Travis Bickle, she riles up the masses with a genuine charisma and righteous indignation that make this movie so damned watchable.

Bleached blond Christian Slater (no relation) reveals, even at the tender age of 15, some of the smart-alecky greatness that was to come.

Note eyebrows.

Nicholson pal Richard Bradford is fantastic as a Stacy Keach-style skeeze who seems beyond the law:

Look at that curled lip, that sleazy stache, the gutter 'tude.

Peter Coyote embodies the beleaguered, good-hearted cop who's won over by the kids' plight:

Coyote: getting too old for this shit?

and Dean Stockwell (BLUE VELVET) is an a-hole politico whose rebellious wolfman-lovin' son (Keith Gordon) gets thrown into the mix. Yeardley Smith (Lisa from THE SIMPSONS) is a lovable hayseed, and we even get a bit part from quintessential Texas gal Caroline Williams ('Stretch' from TEXAS CHAINSAW 2). There's some ridiculous homoerotic mistreatment at the hands of some Golan/Globus-worthy jag-offs (in cut-offs), which ends with some homoerotic milkshake-pouring revenge:

Messing with young Slater leads to eyebrow action and....

SPLOOOSH

there's some classic '80's media circus' social commentary; there are not 1, not 2, not 3, but FOUR senseless lowblows; and Christian Slater gets to rock out a dress.

Note lipstick.

Yes, this is a cult classic. Four stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: ALAMO BAY (1985, Louis Malle)

Stars: 3.9 of 5. Running Time: 98 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: Ed Harris, Amy Madigan (NOWHERE TO HIDE, THE PRINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA), Ho Nguyen (FINAL VERDICT), Donald Moffat (THE THING, TALES OF THE CITY), Caroline Williams (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, THE STEPFATHER 2), Music by Ry Cooder. Written by Alice Arlen (SILKWOOD, THE WEIGHT OF WATER). Tag-line: "Alamo Bay. A place where everyone risked everything for a piece of the American Dream." Best one-liner: "Communist cunt!" Wow. Said by Harris to Madigan. 

 

More in the vein of his working-class documentaries than his arthouse fare, Louis Malle's ALAMO BAY was unjustly maligned by critics at the time of its release and has basically languished in obscurity ever since. I'm not suggesting that Malle is one of the most perceptive commentators on race in America, or that this film isn't at times a little ham-fisted in its approach (i.e., climactic shootouts), but there's a lot to like here. Ed Harris plays a racist Nam vet who wears confederate flag hats, works on a boat named the "American Dream Girl," and has the beard of a sub commander.

  

Ed is one of my favorite actors, and I was fully expecting to see glimpses of his now-classic 'Ed Harris as a crazed madman' role. Instead, Ed delves deeply and delivers a performance where he doesn't quite seem like himself at all- he genuinely transforms into a terrifying, real-McCoy redneck.  

He and a bunch of other white guys are fairly rankled that a bunch of Vietnamese immigrants are shrimping in their waters. At first, they have valid concerns- the newcomers engage in overfishing and ignore just about every rule and regulation. Of course, the native Texans haven't got a moral leg to stand on as soon as they make it 100% racial, enlist the aid of the KKK (via right-wing grassroots organizing), and start wavin' the guns around.  

Donald Moffat plays a grizzled, well-meaning, cigar-chomping entrepreneur who runs the only fishery that'll employ (or is that exploit?) the Vietnamese.

   

Moffat weighs some shrimp. 

Amy Madigan plays Moffat's resolute daughter and Ed's old flame (by the way, Ed and Amy are real-life husband and wife, and there's genuine, scary chemistry),  

a delicate predicament which could explode into violence at any moment, given the community's volatility.

   

Ed dances for the first time since CREEPSHOW. 

Ho Nguyen plays a newly-arrived immigrant whose callow enthusiasm belies his unwavering resolve; he's not about to let a bunch of douches with guns rule his life- he's already lived that nightmare before.

   

Ho, like the rest of us, is transfixed by the natural electromagnetic energy that flows between Madigan and Harris. 

Malle imparts his tale with quotidian realism: failing to obtain a loan at the bank, striking nets and sorting shrimp at sea, knockin' back a few Lone Stars at the bar... it's extremely vivid, and you can almost feel the briny sting of the seawater or smell that miasma of oily, piscine, sweaty deck odors mixed with the remnants of stale cigarettes.  

And in the world of ALAMO BAY, everyone has a got a beer in their hand at all times. Driving? Have a beer. Working? Have two. Going to church? You're gonna need a bunch of beers. You'd almost think this was a dive bar-topia if it wasn't for all the hate crimes. Ry Cooder's score is decent, but phoned in to the max– it's nearly an exact retread of his work on PARIS, TEXAS. He was generally making a much greater effort on the Walter Hill films of the day. Although, who knows? Maybe Malle told him to senselessly plagiarize himself. Also of note is a bit part by native Texan Caroline Williams (Stretch from TEXAS CHAINSAW 2, Lady in Truck from THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, etc.) as a xenophobic bar waitress.

   

Caroline Williams serves some ice cold Lone Stars to some grassroots KKKers. Yeesh. Note the light-up Schlitz sign. 

In all, an atmospheric social drama which certainly deserves to be seen. Nearly four stars.

Film Review: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986, Tobe Hooper)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 100 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Tom Savini's makeup (DAWN OF THE DEAD, FRIDAY THE 13th), Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams (STEPFATHER II), Bill Moseley (ARMY OF DARKNESS, CARNIVALE, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS), Jim Siedow ("Old Man" and the only returning cast member from TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 1), Lou Perryman (POLTERGEIST, THE BLUES BROTHERS), and a cameo from novelist Kinky Friedman. Produced by Golan and Globus' Cannon Films, the team that brought us everything from THE APPLE to THE DELTA FORCE to RAPPIN' to OVER THE TOP to 52 PICK-UP to BARFLY to COBRA to DEATH WISH 3 to NINE DEATHS OF THE NINJA to RUNAWAY TRAIN to BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO to a hundred others.
Tag-lines: "After a decade of silence... The buzzz is back!"
Best one-liner(s): "You have one choice, boy: sex or the saw. Sex is, well, nobody knows. But the saw, the saw is family. "

"'Nam Land!' It's what the public wants!" TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 is a masterpiece, a complete reinvention of the series' low-key art film roots, and horror-comedy-drama of the highest order- an epic Gran Guignol.

And indeed it even begins with a ghastly puppet show of sorts, the striking image of Leatherface atop a car, fluttering in the night wind to Oingo Boingo's "No One Lives Forever," operating a human corpse as a marionette; our post-modern grim reaper bearing a chainsaw instead of a scythe.

The TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE movies couldn't take place anywhere but Texas. And when Clu Gulager-esque, improvising machine Jim Siedow (the 'Old Man' and the only returning cast member from part 1) screams "I love this town! This town loves prime meat!" to a crowd, and the crowd responds with wildly enthusiastic cheers, you believe it, for better or worse, because it's Texas.

Texas is the perfect, over-the-top stage for such a present-day American Gran Guignol. It's the only place you could set it. Other filmmakers have taken note of the locale, the style, or the flavor: this film, for all of the critical (and even fan) animosity, has helped shape the direction of modern horror, obviously persisting as a key influence on the likes of Robert Rodriguez (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, PLANET TERROR), Peter Jackson (BAD TASTE, BRAINDEAD), Rob Zombie (HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS), and Quentin Tarantino (NATURAL BORN KILLERS, DEATH PROOF).

This film has it all: a fantastic, carefully chosen soundtrack featuring The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Timbuk 3, Lords of the New Church, Stewart Copland and Concrete Blonde, among others.

It has a totally insane Dennis Hopper, out for revenge, kicking Leatherface in the nuts and dueling him Dark Ages-style


while wielding two-chainsaws, wearing a ten-gallon hat, and screaming things like "It's the devil's playground!" and "May the Lord have mercy on our souls!"


It has the lovely Caroline Williams (STEPFATHER II) totally prefiguring the Juliette Lewis-type in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN as our likable DJ heroine.

It's got the wildly improvising Bill Moseley as a 'Nam vet and the possible inspiration for the title character in BEETLEJUICE.

All of this, and it still has a tremendous amount of class:

the downright Lynchian crying of the old man at the chainsaw shop;



the pull-in, pull-out tracking shot of Grandpa's dinner arrival that recalls a similar shot down a hotel hallway in F.W. Murnau's THE LAST LAUGH;


the pathetically poignant 'Leatherface Waltz' sequence, which brings to mind Jean Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST;

the slapstick of Grandpa's failed hammering attempts which channels Buster Keaton's ONE WEEK; and the incredible pathos you feel for all of the characters (save for the 100% psychotic Chop-Top and the two D-bag victims at the start).

There's even a peculiar impotent-chainsaw dry-humping episode that's a disturbingly bizarre and completely surreal in its exploration of unfocused childish psychosexual tension.



It culminates in frustration (the sort that doggedly pulling the starter cord on an impossible chainsaw would inspire) and aimless destruction- an analysis worthy of Catherine Breillat, or at the very least, Sigmund Freud.

It's a first-rate film that didn't supply the scares (the poster parodies THE BREAKFAST CLUB for God's sakes!) or the laughs (there's too much depth for it to feel satisfying as purely a comedy) that its target audience might have liked, but it becomes something much more: one can view it as a tale of revenge with a nihilistic ending, a chaotic, visceral ourobouros connecting to the first film; or simply as top-notch entertainment that continually surprises with its boldness and artistry. Bravo, Mr. Hooper. At perhaps the partial expense of your career, you created something NEW instead of trying to retread unrepeatable ground. Five stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: STEPFATHER II: MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY (1989, Jeff Burr)

Stars: 4 of 5. Running Time: 93 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: Terry O'Quinn, Miriam Byrd-Nethery, Meg Foster, Jonathan Brandis, Caroline Williams. Tag-line: " Tonight - Daddy's Coming Home - To Slice Up More Than Just The Cake!" Best one-liner(s): "I think it's time I cracked out this bottle–" [CRASH] AND "Well, my last house had a basement workshop... I like to work with my hands."

"MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY! MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY!" All Terry O'Quinn wants is a nice family, that's all he wants. I totally believe him, too. Each time he tries to make it work, they just keep disappointing him. If only they would just be the perfect family, just GIVE a little, instead of TAKE and TAKE and TAKE and TAKE, then Terry wouldn't have to murder them and start over. Make no mistake, the Stepfather is meant as the protagonist and the hero of these films. It was topical for the time, too. Lots of divorces, lots of remarriages, lots of stepfathers. And you know what, these stepfathers were getting the short end of the stick. They weren't getting a fresh start or a perfect family, they were getting a lot of smartass snot-nosed teens, sniffling and saying stuff like 'You're not my REAL dad!' And how are you supposed to deal with that? Well, watch the movie and find out.


This time around, Terry is trying to hook up with Meg Foster, sometimes known as "the evil chick from THEY LIVE." (It also features a rare appearance by Miriam Byrd-Nethery, legend in her own right and wife of Clu Gulager.) Anyway, a snot-nosed kid, a dippy ex-husband, a nosey neighbor later, and guess what happens. Yeah, the perfect family turned out to be a bunch of backstabbing a-holes.

They don't deserve you, Terry O'Quinn. Just pack up and walk away. I swear, there's gotta be a perfect family out there somewhere for you...