Only now does it occur to me... SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (1991)

Only now does it occur to me... that SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO––a film by action master Mark L. Lester, director of COMMANDO and CLASS OF 1984––functions as a true culmination of his favorite thematic obsessions: brilliant/groan-inducing action one-liners, explosions, and male musculature.

From my understanding, this film was butchered by the studio during the edit, but I think the general sensibility of Lester's vision still shines through. For instance, the man who brought us the lingering closeup of Arnold's jiggling pecs during a machine gun battle in COMMANDO begins SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO with what feels like a formalist experiment: male musculature––covered in full-body irezumi (yakuza tattoos) is drenched in, alternatively, light and shadow.

It's the early 1990s action equivalent of Hollis Frampton's experimental 1969 short LEMON, whereupon a static shot of a lemon is subjected to different lighting techniques, revealing something 'profound' about the nature of darkness. Anyway, Lester and Frampton both pare the narrative to the bare essentials: in this case, pectoral muscles, and the different and dramatic ways in which one can view them.

Also, this movie––and those pecs, by extension––were shot by David Cronenberg's resident cinematographer Mark Irwin (SCANNERS, VIDEODROME, THE FLY, etc.). How 'bout that!

What is this movie about? You may be wondering. I've already told you. But if you insist on labels, it's about two tuff cops: Dolph Lundgren

 

 and Brandon Lee.

It's set in Los Angeles' (apparently) yakuza-ravaged Little Tokyo, and its premise is firmly rooted in 1991. You see, Dolph's Aryan-looking buddy cop is fluent in Japanese and was raised in Japan. Whereas Brandon's Asian American buddy cop was raised in the Valley and apparently has never even heard of Japan. This creates what we call dramatic tension. 

 

Acting-wise, as "the straight man," Dolph is basically doing That Thing that Dolph does, and Brandon, as the "funny one," is kind of doing a less cartoonish Bruce Campbell shtick. My wife and I are pretty sure that Brandon Lee took some acting classes before appearing in THE CROW.

Tia Carrere (WAYNE'S WORLD) is in here, too, as a singing gangster's moll who eventually is swept up in a (chemistry-challenged) romantic subplot with Dolph. The tracks she sings sound very "Olivia Newton John."

The villain is yakuza boss Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (MORTAL KOMBAT, THE PHANTOM, VAMPIRES, LICENSE TO KILL) who, as usual, treats us to some solid scenery chewing throughout.

The music, by David Michael Frank (THE MASK, OUT FOR JUSTICE), is, like the pecs, majestically pared down to the basics. There are essentially two tracks here, a "danger" track––used for all the action/peril scenes––and an "ambient" track, for everything else. The ambient track sounds a lot like the rootin-tootin electro-nonsense in THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS: THE MOVIE. All of this is intended as a compliment. 

The one-liners are amazing. COMMANDO brought us "Don't disturb my friend, he's dead tired" and "Remember Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied." SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO gives us "You have the right to remain... dead!," "It's kinda like one of those video games... you just defeated the first wave," and "We're gonna nail this guy, and when we get done, we're gonna go eat fish off those naked chicks!" The latter refers to a yakuza restaurant featuring the klassy combination of nude women and sushi, and is immediately followed up by this manly hand clasp, straight out of PREDATOR.

Speaking of gender politics, SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO objectifies the male and female form with relative and trashy equivalency.

Of course, we have to give the advantage to the male form, so celebrated in this film that I'm pretty sure both Dolph and Cary-Hiroyuki spend more time in various states of undress than they do clothed.

 

The highlight (lowlight?) may be when Brandon Lee's character tells Dolph, apropos of nothing, "Kenner, just in case we get killed, I wanted to tell you, you have the biggest dick I've ever seen on a man." That being said, I am certain there is nothing in this film that can match the poetry of the final battle in COMMANDO.

In the end, I would categorize this as second-tier Lester and a damn fun time. Also, I'm pretty sure Tarantino is a fan, since A. It stars Dolph Lundgren, and one of Tarantino's first jobs was working as a P.A. on the Dolph Lundgren workout video, MAXIMUM POTENTIAL; B. it stars Brandon Lee, and Tarantino is a Bruce Lee obsessive (and a "children-of-Hollywood-stars" obsessive); and C., Dolph's character's backstory is very similar to O-ren Ishii's in KILL BILL (as a child, his parents were murdered in front of him by yakuza, in their bedroom).

Finally, I must point out that one Little Tokyo filming location––a crime scene exterior––is shot outside the church from John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS! (Which is now the Union Center of the Arts.)

(Also note, far left: Vernee Watson, a.k.a., "Viola 'Aunt Vy' Smith" from THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR.)

Only now does it occur to me... THE BRAIN (1988)

Only now does it occur to me... that THE BRAIN is a weird, late '80s mutation of THEY LIVE, THE SHINING, and David Cronenberg, but mostly David Cronenberg. It's that dreary brand of '70/'80s Canadian horror, blanketed in overcast skies, drenched in seasonal affective disorder, and playing out within dystopian concrete spaces punctuated only by ugly primary colors.

I'd still like to eat at that restaurant, though––"Jay's Pit: Steaks & Burgers." Also note the closed captioner's choice to label the music as "afflicted." I love it.

And here, too: "Bitter synth music." That's just terrific. O Canada!

 

The plot, as it is, involves REANIMATOR's own David Gale running a Scientology-adjacent religious pseudoscience TV show/reeducation center called "Independent Thinking."

The secret––revealed in the first ten minutes––is that said broadcasts are powered by an enormous alien brain monster capable of hypnotizing/brainwashing the populace,

a process which is only made possible with the assistance of its human collaborators, both witting and unwitting.

This is probably where the THEY LIVE comparisons come from, and because I am a diehard fan of that film, it's been the major reason THE BRAIN has been pitched to me by friends over the years. Despite a general anti-authoritarian stance, THE BRAIN never quite delves into the razor-sharp satire I craved (though there are some good lines like "Dr. Blake wouldn't be on TV if he wasn't good," said by a clueless parent; or said of a power-abusing cop, "[He] needs a shrink, but they give him a badge and let him tell us what to do.").

Mostly, though, it's interested in having some fun in a Cronenbergian universe, and it can hardly be blamed for that.

Our teenage hero Jim (Tom Bresnahan) is an incorrigible prankster whom we first meet while flushing a block of pure sodium down a toilet

and causing antics of the "explosive plumbing" variety. It is for these crimes that he is sentenced to this form of delinquent conversion therapy, which, at times, feels like a cross between VIDEODROME and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

His therapy in the above scene involves assistance from lab assistant Janet (Christine Kossak), who for all intents and purposes is the "Debbie Harry from VIDEODROME" of this movie. The background there even looks like the wall in the Videodrome torture chamber, and the monstrous/sensual breathing sounds heard throughout are certainly plucked from that film as well.

"Come to me, Max"/"Come to me, Jim"

The Kubrick influence can also not be understated, as THE BRAIN very much adheres to the coldness and sterility of his aesthetic. One particular scene involves our hero hallucinating in an Overlook-esque storeroom

as he imagines blood bubbling and spurting from some canisters therein, a sort of poor man's version of the gushing elevators from THE SHINING.

There are some solid, artistic tableaux along the way,

and David Gale loses his head during a presentation, which feels equally a nod to his legendary headlessness in REANIMATOR as well as to the gory ends to the corporate/scientific exhibitions in SCANNERS, THE BROOD, and VIDEODROME.

Big 'Barry Convex energy' here is what I'm saying.

In the end, my favorite thing about THE BRAIN just might be the closing credits. Before we can even get to the cast and crew, the movie apologizes to us for the sodium prank which kicked off the movie, and it warns us not to try it in real life. Aww, thanks, THE BRAIN––you're so responsible!

Film Review: THE BROOD (1979, David Cronenberg)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 92 minutes.
Tag-line: "The Ultimate Experience Of Inner Terror."
Notable Cast or Crew: Oliver Reed (THE DEVILS, WOMEN IN LOVE, SITTING TARGET), Samantha Eggar (DOCTOR DOLITTLE, THE COLLECTOR, THE EXTERMINATOR), Art Hindle (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS '78, PORKY'S), Cindy Hinds (THE LITTLEST HOBO, THE DEAD ZONE), Susan Hogan (DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, THE LITTLE VAMPIRE), Robert A. Silverman (SCANNERS, NAKED LUNCH), Henry Beckman (MARNIE, DEATH HUNT).  Produced by Pierre David (VISITING HOURS, SCANNERS, VIDEODROME).  Cinematography by Mark Irwin (SCREAM, ROBOCOP 2, VIDEODROME).  Music by Howard Shore (AFTER HOURS, THE LORD OF THE RINGS).
Best One-liner:  "Thirty seconds after you're born you have a past and sixty seconds after that you begin to lie to yourself about it."

"THE BROOD is my version of KRAMER VS. KRAMER, but more realistic."   –David Cronenberg

"You got involved with a woman who fell in love with your sanity and hoped it would rub off."  –"Frank Carveth," a character in THE BROOD

What better time than a blizzard for this icy Canadian horror psychodrama?  It's David Cronenberg's THE BROOD!

In this, his fourth theatrical feature (though it's actually his twenty-first film, if we include his shorts and television work), Cronenberg gets personal––really personal.  Specifically, he delves into the intimate and troubling emotional landscape of his divorce and the subsequent custody battle.  My impression is that the artistic process must have been so draining and generally unnerving that he would require years to recover––in fact, SCANNERS, his 1981 follow-up, unfolds at such a passive, Kubrickian remove, that I would go so far as to call it his most impersonal film.  Perhaps using cinema as a tool for psychological self-analysis in THE BROOD felt a little too much like toying with the "new flesh," like something out of the Philip K. Dick novels Cronenberg idolized as a young man and would later deconstruct and reassemble as frightening, post-modern, sterile techno-hellscapes (SCANNERS, VIDEODROME).

Did he fear becoming one of the half-benevolent, half-mad techno-sages that pepper his films (like Oliver Reed's "Hal Raglan" in THE BROOD, Patrick McGoohan's "Paul Ruth" in SCANNERS, or Jack Creley's "Brian O'Blivion" in VIDEODROME)?  I've always thought the greatest horror writers are the ones fully capable of scaring themselves––and so we enter the world of THE BROOD.

Oliver Reed plays the aforementioned Dr. Hal Raglan, a techno-guru whose new methodology, "Psychoplasmics," attempts to physically manifest emotions like resentment, melancholy, and rage within his patients.

The film imagines the following scenario: what if discontent could be grown externally, like a sore or a lesion? Would people perceive mental illness differently? Could it be treated simply and painlessly? Perhaps the fallout from a bad job, bad marriage, bad childhood, or bad life could be frozen, disintegrated, and forgotten as easily as a wart or a blister.

The opening scene involves a public presentation of Psychoplasmics, and it is well on par with the infamous demonstration from SCANNERS (if not as Grand Guignol). It's a simple interaction between doctor and patient (Oliver Reed and Gary McKeehan), but Cronenberg's execution is fresh and hypnotic.  There is a distinct performative, theatrical aspect, but also an uncomfortably intimate one.  In the context of the film and behind the camera, the layers of staging and representation are as poignant as they are disquieting.




You might occasionally chuckle at the intensity of the performances, but only in the way you might whistle, wide-eyed and skittish, through a graveyard at night.

I don't want to tell you too much about THE BROOD.  I think it's a sci-fi horror film that's sadder than it is scary (quite an achievement, because it is incredibly unnerving), and it really toes the line between Body Horror and Melancholy Horror.  It is a film about cycles of abuse, the reverberations of divorce, and the repression of emotional scars. It is a film about how psychological damage inevitably resurfaces, no matter how deeply it is buried.  And yet it is also a film about damage extracted from the soul––scrutinized, treated, and compartmentalized––and how it, despite our best efforts, may very well resurface, too.

On a slightly lighter note, I'll close out the review with a few stray observations (without spoiling THE BROOD).


#8.  Let's talk a little more about Oliver Reed.  The man was known to phone in (from the bar, to be specific) many of his performances (usually in genre fare) from the late 1970s and beyond.  That's not the case here.  I'm not sure I've seen him this committed and connected outside of a Ken Russell film.

Out of all of Cronenberg's techno-sages, Reed's is the only one who truly lays claim to a full story arc, and the bulk of that rests in his performance.  For instance, I can't think of many actors who can project "blind arrogance" and "reflective self-doubt" simultaneously, or with such panache.


#7.  Samantha Eggar.

I'm not so familiar with Samantha Eggar's catalog, but when I see that her most-viewed credits involve films like DOCTOR DOLITTLE and Walt Disney's HERCULES, I'd say that her talents have been under- or mis-used.  In THE BROOD, she is magnificently intense and eerily authentic.  She's only in a handful of scenes, but, ohhhh boy, does she make her mark.  At once she is the storm and the storm's eye; a dormant volcano, biding her time.  


#6.  And, by virtue of their intensity, this brings us to "Oliver Reed vs. Samantha Eggar,"


who in a number of scenes engage in one-on-one "scary eye" combat.

This is, in essence, why I go to the movies.


#5.  Art Hindle.

He's servicable, but not particularly colorful. In early Cronenberg films, the heroes tend to be blanker slates (see: Hindle here, or Stephen Lack in SCANNERS), and I'm not sure if this changes due to maturations in Cronenberg's writing or in his casting.  After SCANNERS, his heroes become far more memorable––James Woods' wondrous sleaze in VIDEODROME, Christopher Walken's spooky quirkiness in THE DEAD ZONE, Jeff Goldlum's lovable verbosity in THE FLY, Jeremy Irons' glum freakiness in DEAD RINGERS...


#5. This is peculiar: at one point, a policeman's (incorrect) theory about what's actually going on describes the plot twist of Dario Argento's PHENOMENA. Maybe Dario saw this at the movies and figured it was a red herring too good to pass up!


#4.  Mark Irwin's crisp, sterile, and foreboding cinematography.  You could chalk it up to the natural visuals of 1970s Canadian architecture or the way the overcast Ontarian light strikes the lens, but Cronenberg and DP Mark Irwin (VIDEODROME, THE FLY, SCANNERS, THE DEAD ZONE) are clearly a match made in heaven.  Or perhaps hell.  Or more accurately, perhaps the waiting room to a body-horror clinic at the icy inner circle of hell.


And naturally, it has the requisite "little girl in a horror film wearing red" (á la DON'T LOOK NOW, et al.).


 #3.  With his second film score, Howard Shore has not quite yet come into his own––here, he's channeling Bernard Herrmann, and is more melodramatic than usual.  (It is solid work, though derivative.)  In the six years following THE BROOD, he will go on to compose SCANNERS, VIDEODROME, and AFTER HOURS––three of the finest and most original soundtracks of the 1980s.


#2.  Hey, it's Robert A. Silverman!  One of the key "Cronenberg Cronies," he's lent his oddball, off-kilter presence to classics like RABID, SCANNERS, NAKED LUNCH, eXistenZ, and even Cronenberg's episode of FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES.

Here, he has a, um––shall we say, "neck condition?"


#1.  Cindy Hinds, a child actor with serious chops.

A bad performance here would have wreaked serious consequence on the rest of the film, but Ms. Hinds (who also appears in THE DEAD ZONE) is capable of adapting to very subtle changes in tone, at times displaying a frightening detachment or a traumatized vulnerability.

She is perhaps the true center of this film, an open-ended enigma whose fate, depending on your own emotional state, can be unwritten or preordained.

Five stars.


––Sean Gill