R.I.P., Billy Drago

I was very sorry to hear that Billy Drago died today––prolific character actor, cheekbone wonder, menacing Kansan, and portrayer of exquisite madmen. He was one of my favorite eccentric performers in an A-and B-movie canon (and Cannon) full of them... I've written before that his brilliant volatility ought to have resulted in warning labels on VHS tapes that said "HERE THERE BE DRAGOS."

Some classic roles included when he enforced Al Capone's reign of terror in De Palma's THE UNTOUCHABLES, engaged in complex cartel homoeroticism with Chuck Norris in DELTA FORCE 2: THE COLOMBIAN CONNECTION, preached and handled snakes in GUNCRAZY, led a punk gang against vampire Grace Jones in VAMP, ran an insane asylum in THE HERO AND THE TERROR, slithered through INVASION U.S.A. while testing all the coke, and was a frighteningly pathos-filled john in MYSTERIOUS SKIN, among many, many others. His body of work runs the gamut from arthouse films to workaday TV shows to Cannon actioners to music videos to the only episode of MASTERS OF HORROR deemed too extreme to air (directed by Takashi Miike). In each performance, he imbued his characters with a real, lived-in quality; an authenticity that was sometimes startling, sometimes nightmarish, and always profound. Here's to you, Billy: R.I.P.

"Obsessions: Authoritarian Kitsch" Online at ZYZZYVA

A new short essay of mine called "Authoritarian Kitsch" is available to read online at ZYZZYVA, as a part of their ongoing "Obsessions" series. It takes on some of my more complicated feelings regarding camp entertainment––and when it overlaps with fascist mythmaking.

ZYZZYVA is a San Francisco literary journal, founded in 1985, that has published work by writers such as Haruki Murakami, Amy Tan, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Film Review: THE HITMAN (1991, Aaron Norris)

Stars: 3.5 of 5.
Running Time: 95 minutes.

Tag-line: "He's so far undercover, he may never get back."

Notable Cast or Crew:  Chuck Norris (DELTA FORCE, DELTA FORCE 2: THE COLUMBIAN CONNECTION), Michael Parks (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, DEATH WISH 5, KILL BILL, TWIN PEAKS), Al Waxman (CAGNEY AND LACEY, HEAVY METAL), Alberta Watson (THE SWEET HEREAFTER, POWER PLAY), William B. Davis (THE X-FILES, AIRWOLF), Ken Pogue (CHAINDANCE, THE DEAD ZONE), James Purcell (DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN), Salim Grant (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, GHOST DAD).  Co-written and produced by Don Carmody (producer on Cronenberg's SHIVERS and RABID, WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S II, CHICAGO).   Co-produced by André Link (SNAKE EATER, MEATBALLS, MY BLOODY VALENTINE).

Best One-liner:  "You!  Fuck!  Motherfuck!"  or perhaps "He's gonna cut off your balls and stick 'em up your ass!" or perhaps "It's your job to carve him a new asshole, right between the fuckin' eyes!" or perhaps "Don't come in my house and shit on my furniture!"

THE HITMAN is a post-Golan Cannon Film originally intended as a Charles Bronson vehicle.  After a labyrinthine pre-preduction period, however, it ended up as an atypically dark Chuck Norris flick.  Fine by me.  It has a strange kind of RED HARVEST/YOJIMBO/A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS vibe to it, with "good-guy" Norris masquerading as a mobster in order to play different criminal factions against one another.  So as not to blow his cover, he must engage in all sorts of morally reprehensible behavior.  Subsequently, it doesn't feel like a dose of the "All-American Chuck" like we see in DELTA FORCE, and definitely it would have made more sense as a Bronson vehicle, or even a Steven Segal one.  The picture's dark, too, and I mean literally dark.  Most of it takes place at night, and it has an overwhelming shadowy feeling, with the fog machines working double overtime.  Who knew Seattle (I mean Vancouver, where they actually filmed most of this) was so spooky?

Anyway, all this gritty atmosphere is meant to disguise the film's frequent nonsensicality– it's made up almost entirely of scenes with no anchor, action governed by motivations we barely understand, and a population of characters we don't know who are floating in and out of the proceedings with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

Yes, THE HITMAN's a strange, confusing, and awkwardly disquieting film.  Obviously, those are three of my favorite attributes in cinema, and so here are the six strangest and most disquieting facets of the trash-terpiece that is THE HITMAN:

#1.  Michael Parks.

As Chuck's former partner who betrays him and leaves him for dead, character acting legend Parks is the ostensible antagonist of the film.  I can't say this often enough: gosh gad-diddly goddamn, Michael Parks is amazing.  He's always so powerfully in the moment, he can give weight and pathos to drinking coffee.  I mean, look at him:

Upon seeing THE HITMAN, it now occurs to me that he must always be improvising his own dialogue.  After seeing him in the Tarantino and Rodriguez cycle (KILL BILL, PLANET TERROR, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, DJANGO UNCHAINED), I assumed that they had settled on the folksy, foul-mouthed curmudgeon he plays and kept it consistent for aesthetic purposes– but now I realize they must simply turn him loose to do his own thing.  There's no way that a writer for Cannon Films came up with "My dick's like a cold stack of buttons" or "I'm so horny I could fuck mud" or "Funny as a dead baby" or "You can take it any way you fuckin' like, jackoff!" or his constant use of expressions like "fuckin' the dog" and "numbnuts."  He spits all the time, too, as if he's spewing tobacco juice nonstop, and somehow it's the perfect punctuation for each ridiculous and colorful bit of vulgarity.

The film begins with a buddy-cop style exchange between him and Norris where his acting so outshines his scene partner that it becomes essential to turn his character evil just to get him offscreen and keep him from embarrassing Chuck too badly.  (See also:  DELTA FORCE II: THE COLUMBIAN CONNECTION, in regard to the acting brilliance of Billy Drago.)

Later, there's a mind-blowing dream sequence, whereupon Chuck Norris imagines he's being shot by Michael Parks, but then wakes up, safe and sound, napping away in his Yuppie-Western chic bedroom.

I have slightly altered and edited this remarkable scene into a nearly endless, hypnotic clip I have entitled "Chuck Norris vs. Michael Parks Dream Loop."
Also, speaking of dreams, could this random blue velvet curtain be a reference to his work with David Lynch on TWIN PEAKS?

I'm probably reading too much into that one.


#2.  Cigarette-Smokin' Doc.
After Parks shoots Norris, he's declared clinically dead and undergoes a magical resurrection, replete with Christian imagery,

and is reborn as an even bigger badass with a rockin', always moist mullet.

Note moisture.

Upon waking, Chuck's physician is played by William B. Davis, a.k.a., "The Cigarette-Smoking Man."

These events seem pretty inexplicable to me... perhaps we should open... an X-FILE?  Drop a dime and get Scully and Mulder on the horn, pronto!


#3.  Religious tolerance?  Nah.
There's an extremely out-of-place torture scene that feels like something out of HELLRAISER flick

that also involves force-feeding pork products to a Muslim (oh, Cannon Films– always keeping it klassy).  As if this wasn't offensive enough, later Chuck wanders into a Middle Eastern restaurant, insults the very concept of couscous, 

and in response to the proclamation, "Allah will protect us," shouts "Then this shouldn't hurt!" before kicking everyone in the face.  Hoo boy.

#4.  Racial tolerance?  Kind of, but the creepy kind.

So Chuck meets a black neighbor boy and takes him under his wing (initially, without his mother's knowledge), begins calling him "Tiger," gives him a key to his apartment, and promises to build model airplanes.  Meanwhile, he's continuing to work undercover as a mob enforcer, which means that there are people even more unsavory than Chuck hanging around all the time, too.  This is all pretty creepy, but it gets weirder.

He's always offering the kid "juice" to drink, and the kid declines because he's heard of roofies, and then Chuck offers the juice again and again and again.

"C'mon, just a sip."  –"Hey, man, I said 'no' once already!"  

The kid reveals that racist bullies are giving him a hard time at school, so Chuck starts training him in martial arts and inappropriate touching

and when the kid is ready, he says "When I call you Tiger now, I'm gonna mean it!"
Furthermore, he delivers an anti-racist pep talk about being on the receiving end of reverse racism from some mean, mean Native Americans, which I later found out was an autobiographical anecdote inserted in the film by Chuck himself.  Fresh with the knowledge that Chuck overcame reverse racism through self-righteous punching, the kid defeats the bully, the poor man's redneck Edward Furlong,

and then Chuck defeats the bully's dad in a clip I have entitled "Chuck Norris Tackles Racism."
 Dig that slappy bass!


#5.  Evolution!
Chuck ordinarily wouldn't touch evolution with a forty-cubit pole, but here it's all over the place!

Meeting his police handler in the dolphin wing of an aquarium, he incorrectly surmises "Did you know there was a time that they walked on land?"  WHAT?!   Seriously.  Where is this coming from?  Then he strokes the glass of the dolphin tank, muttering "Yeah, yeah, baby, yeah, you're beautiful..." in what may be the creepiest line reading in the history of cinema.  Don't believe me?  See for yourself:

And how'd you like that bit at the end of the clip, there?  He's meeting with a French mobster who calls his boss an "Oily anthropoid," prompting Chuck to declare that he's not here "to discuss evolution."  Oh, but he is!  

(It must also be noted that "oily anthropoid" is one of the greatest, most head-scratching insults to come out of the Cannon canon, on par with anything from MURPHY'S LAW.)

#6.  The Final Showdown.

It doesn't disappoint.  Michael Parks brings the art of acting, and Chuck Norris brings the art of kicking.  And I think that one specific element of the finale may have even inspired the fate of the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT.

Bon appetit.  Three and a half stars, ya oily anthropoids!

–Sean Gill

P.S.– Halloween schtuff coming soon!

RIP, Menahem Golan

It saddens me to report that Menahem Golan, mastermind of Cannon Films and bringer of joy to moviegoers everywhere, passed away last Friday.  He was 85, and he had a hell of a good run. 

Longtime readers of this site know that I adored the man (and his cousin/Cannon partner Yoram Globus), and have referred to him in turns as "the king of the 1980s," "an arm-wrestling auteur," "breakdance pioneer," "Norris whisperer," "Mama Rose to Van Damme's Gypsy," and "a Charles Bronson casting agency."  He made trash, he made art– and all of it was fabulous:   he presided over the most seminal action flicks of the 80s (BLOODSPORT, DEATH WISH 3) as well as genuine high art (Konchalavsky and Bunker's RUNAWAY TRAIN, Cassavetes' LOVE STREAMS, Schroeder & Bukowski's BARFLY, etc.).   He directed films personally (THE APPLE, OVER THE TOP, THE DELTA FORCE), and was an unparalleled wheeler-dealer who believed in the integrity of every project, whether it was THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 or Zeferelli's OTELLO.

I cannot describe how much joy this man has brought me.  As a child, the first film I ever saw on the big screen carried his stamp (SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE), and there have been times in my life where I was broke, depressed, bored, what have you– and just what the doctor ordered (Doc Golan, that is) was BLOODSPORT, DEATH WISH 3, RAPPIN', BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, or whatever the case may be.

It was my pleasure to see he and Globus in person several times during a Lincoln Center retrospective a few years ago, and it was my honor to meet the man himself (albeit briefly, but while wearing a Cannon Films t-shirt) at the after-party to a screening of THE APPLE.  You can read about those zany experiences here.

So this weekend, pick a Cannon Film (or one that Golan worked on outside of that glorious company), have some friends over, pick up some junk food, some beers, or whatever floats your boat, and watch it.  Watch the hell out of it!  And raise a toast to a man who empirically raised the levels of fun on this sorry planet.  I'll be doing MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE myself, but I have a few others I can recommend:


Splits, full-contact, and JCVD crazy-face in BLOODSPORT.


BIM exercise hour and disco dystopia in THE APPLE.


Chicken's good and it's my car in DEATH WISH 3.


Acting greatness and a light dose of Danny Trejo in RUNAWAY TRAIN.


Boomboxes and Bronson's loose in DEATH WISH II.


The Ninja film finds its voice in ENTER THE NINJA.


Robby Rosa treats himself to "mucho money" in SALSA.


Not payin' and not punkin' in DEATH WARRANT.


Dennis Hopper double fists chainsaws and 80s Gran Guignol reaches operatic heights in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2.


Gutter Rouke and Bukowski realness in BARFLY.


John Glover and Clarence Williams III scare the bejeesus out of Roy Scheider in 52 PICK-UP.


High-steppin' Chris Walken and feline grace in PUSS IN BOOTS.


Poor man's Indiana Jones and holy Chuck in FIREWALKER.


Chuck's Rambo routine in MISSING IN ACTION.


High fashion, low blows, and killer soccer balls in DEATH WISH 5: THE FACE OF DEATH.


Naked space vampires and slummin' Patrick Stewart in LIFEFORCE.

Explodin' Trejo, roller-skatin' panic, and Bronson sandwich makin' in DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN.


Chuck "treats that lady nice" in THE HERO AND THE TERROR.


Ninja madness and mustache choppin' in REVENGE OF THE NINJA.


Bronson, Mormons, and a dearth of action in MESSENGER OF DEATH.


Oscar-chasin' Christopher Reeve and pimpin' Morgan Freeman in STREET SMART.


Flamethrower vigilantes and Mario Van Peebles pushing the boundaries of good (?) taste in EXTERMINATOR 2.


Norris tailpipe action, crabby Lee Marvin, and beers for everyone in THE DELTA FORCE.


The perversions and high-kickin' senior citizens of KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS.


"Toejams" and "fart brains" in MURPHY'S LAW (but hold the mayo!).


Knife-sharpening and facial contortions in CYBORG.


Axe gangs, pizza-scissorin', and AWESOM robot fashion in COBRA.


Bayou Chuck, l'il armadillos, and slick Billy Drago in INVASION U.S.A.


or Menahem teamin' up with George A. Romero and Tom Savini for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD '90.

P.S., the New York Times also posted a surprisingly reverent obituary that's worth your time.