Only now does it occur to me... MURDER BY DECREE (1979)

Only now does it occur to me... that if we were staging a March Madness-style tournament of Donald Sutherland mustaches, I do believe we've found our number one seed.

 

To quote Kurt Russell, who wore a similar Franz Joseph-sweeper in TOMBSTONE and THE HATEFUL EIGHT, "It's a mustache wearing a man."

(Also, if we're comparing late 1970s revisionist Jack the Ripper movies, I prefer TIME AFTER TIME––but Bob Clark's MURDER BY DECREE is still an enjoyable, horror-adjacent Sherlock Holmes flick with the inspired casting of Christoper Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson.)

Film Review: INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978, Philip Kaufman)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 115 minutes.
Tag-line: "Get some sleep."
Notable Cast or Crew: Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, Brooke Adams (THE DEAD ZONE, DAYS OF HEAVEN), Art Hindle (PORKY'S, THE BROOD), Veronica Cartwright (ALIEN, THE RIGHT STUFF). Cameos by Don Siegel, Robert Duvall, and Kevin McCarthy. Written by W.D. Richter.
Best one-liner: "Here I am, you pod bastards! Hey, pods! Come and get me you scum!"

Now this is how you do a remake- measured, requisite homage to the source, a balanced degree of artistic reinterpretation, and a top-notch ensemble cast. As far as I'm concerned, this film ushered in a decade of well-made horror remakes (THE THING, THE FLY, THE BLOB, CAT PEOPLE)- a phenomenon that sadly, did not outlast the 80's. Philip Kaufman's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS brings a tremendous amount of artistry to the table: using a taut screenplay by W.D. Richter (BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS), Kaufman masters the slow build, the character development, and paranoiac atmosphere necessary to pull this off. There are perfectly alienating moments that feel like they're culled from a film by Teshigahara: the cobwebby aliens fleeing their home planet, wafting through space- abstract forms set to atonal music:

a cameo by Robert Duvall as a sinister priest pendulating back and forth on a squeaky swingset:

a world in panic, viewed through the distorted, cracked windshield of a car...

These impressions build, ever so slowly, to a crescendo of sorts- one of encroaching madness. We see a world in transformation: a puzzle assembled before our very eyes- only by the time its true face is revealed, we've passed the point of no return. Our heroes (who strain to seek the truth before it's too late) include Donald Sutherland as a likable, rational health inspector:

Jeff Goldblum as a high-strung, rambling writer:

Brooke Adams as a winsome, persistent botanist:

Veronica Cartwright as a resolute hippie; and Leonard Nimoy as a self-help guru who preaches reason in a time where what's called for is volatility.


The special effects are entirely disturbing, and not on a level of sheer gore- it's an unsettling depiction of wholly alien, biological, bodily processes, and it really begins to get under your skin.

This is a disorienting movie, full of convex mirrors, handheld cameras, and wide-angle lens shots-

I would go as far to say that it surpasses the original in sheer effectiveness- and it culminates with an (atonally?) pitch-perfect finale. Five stars.

-Sean Gill

And as a side note- watch for ingenious Don Siegel and Kevin McCarthy cameos-

You're next!

Film Review: KELLY'S HEROES (1970, Brian G. Hutton)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 144 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Clint Eastwood, Carroll O'Connor, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Donald Sutherland, Harry Dean Stanton. Music by Lalo Schifrin.
Tag-lines: "Never have so few taken so many for so much."
Best one-liner: "Take that underwear off your head, enh? Enough is enough."

KELLY'S HEROES combines the 'men on a mission' action drama (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE DIRTY DOZEN) with the ensemble comedy (IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD) and a touch of the spaghetti western (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY), and the results are, surprisingly, excellent. Director Brian G. Hutton (who had directed Clint in his other WWII movie, WHERE EAGLES DARE, two years prior), writer Troy Kennedy-Martin (THE ITALIAN JOB), and the eclectic cast maintain this difficult balance well, never letting the proceedings get too goofy or, conversely, too serious. The perpetually scowling Clint and the super-pissy Telly Savalas are our straight men, the stressed-out Don Rickles and the screwy 1940's hippie Donald Sutherland are our goofs, and the possibly drunken Harry Dean Stanton and the pompous Carroll O' Connor lay somewhere in between. Basically, it's the DIRTY DOZEN with slackers instead of convicts. And these guys, especially Sutherland, are lazy as shit. They make Beetle Bailey look industrious and the soldiers in THREE KINGS (loosely based on KELLY'S HEROES) look like candidates for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

As Sutherland's "Can you dig it?" hippie gleefully attests, the filmmakers' primary aim is not historical accuracy. There's even a ridiculous Lalo Schifrin-composed anthem named "Burning Bridges" that plays throughout, conjuring imagery of 70's TV shows more readily than that of Operation Overlord. (Clint even recorded a .45 of this theme song!)

Schifrin's music at times is facetiously Morricone-esque, and many sequences are given an Italian Western flavor, recalling the "Spaghetti War Films" that began to pop up in the late 60's, like Enzo Castellari's EAGLES OVER LONDON, Mino Loy's DESERT ASSAULT, or Alberto de Martino's DIRTY HEROES. Of course, none of those would exist without DIRTY DOZEN, but that's just the ouroboros of filmic influences continually rearing it's (tail-eating) head. Four gold brickin' stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992, Fran Rubel Kuzui)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 86 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Kristy Swanson, Rutger Hauer, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Swank, David Arquette, Paul Reubens, Luke Perry, Stephen Root, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Ben Affleck
Tag-lines: "Pert. Wholesome. Way Lethal."
Best one-liner(s): "All I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die. Now it may not sound too great to a sconehead like you, but I think it's swell. And you come along and tell me I'm a member of the hairy mole club so you can *throw* things at me?"

Kristy Swanson. She won the hearts of a nation with her stunning turns in DEADLY FRIEND and FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC. She fell pretty damn hard in the mid to late 90's, but here she was still A-list. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is a pretty solid movie. It's saved from mediocrity by a couple key elements. Swanson is solid. And when Buffy says her greatest goals in life are to marry Christian Slater and move to Europe, you really gotta respect that. Also respectable is Donald Sutherland in a ridiculous overcoat and fedora. Sometimes he stares off into space and gives it weight, as if he is considering the eons he's lived through.

He's actually just visualizing his paycheck, but since he's a real trouper, he's able to make it work for the picture. Crossing her eyes and doing spit-takes is two time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank. Maybe she was channeling this character by mistake in BLACK DAHLIA. Yeah, that movie's an abomination, but that's neither here nor there. Sporting some svelte lip carpet, playing the violin, and classin' up the joint is Rutger Hauer.

He still has a lot of dignity left after WEDLOCK and BLIND FURY, which is a most impressive feat, and one worthy of accolade and a hearty pat on the back. Here. But the silver lining is Paul Reubens. Like some bizarro cross between his Pee-Wee Herman persona and Tom Savini, Reubens' vampire comes out of nowhere and improvises up a storm.


His memorable final scene gives this film it's fourth star, and is a tribute to actors who are able to rise above studio mediocrity... by doing whatever the hell they want! Side note: look for an uncredited Ben Affleck as #10 at the basketball game.

-Sean Gill