Film Review: LAST EMBRACE (1979, Jonathan Demme)

Stars: 3.5 of 5.

Running Time: 102 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Roy Scheider (JAWS, ALL THAT JAZZ, MARATHON MAN), Janet Margolin (ANNIE HALL, GHOSTBUSTERS II), John Glover (52 PICK-UP, BATMAN AND ROBIN, GREMLINS 2), Christopher Walken (THE DEAD ZONE, MCBAIN), Charles Napier (RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), Sam Levene (SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, CROSSFIRE).  Music by Miklós Rózsa (THE KILLERS '46, BEN-HUR, SPELLBOUND).  Cinematography by Tak Fujimoto (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE SIXTH SENSE, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF).

Tag-line:  "It begins with an ancient warning.  It ends at the edge of Niagara Falls.  In between there are five murders.  Solve the mystery.  Or die trying."
Best one-liner:  "You gotta do better than that, Jack!  WHO SENT YA?!"

LAST EMBRACE is one of acclaimed director Jonathan Demme's (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, PHILADELPHIA, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED) first commercial efforts, and though it's reputation is nearly nonexistent (I hadn't even heard of it until this week), it ranks somewhere between "fairly okay Roy Scheider vehicle" and "lost De Palma film."

Based on the novel THE 13TH MAN by Murray Teigh Bloom, LAST EMBRACE stars Scheider as a CIA-ish secret agent who sees his wife gunned down in Mexico by a gang of dudes including MANIAC's Joe Spinell, a character actor who I've described as "Ron Jeremy meets Vincent Price."

In the wake of her death, Scheider undergoes a nervous breakdown and spends several months in a Connecticut sanitarium.  Upon his release, he finds a stranger (Janet Margolin) subletting his apartment, receives cryptic Aramaic messages, and encounters all sorts of people who are probably trying to kill him, including his own agency.  ...Or is he simply delusional?
And so that's the set-up– Scheider tries to stay alive while attempting to unravel this conspiracy which may or may not actually exist.

How is the film?  It's pretty good.  It's got a great hook, some nice Hitchcockian suspense, and in Scheider, an excellent star.  Scheider really knows how to carry a movie.  The man's one of the best actors of the 1970s.  If you haven't already– go see ALL THAT JAZZ.  Do it now.  
Anyway, the plot of LAST EMBRACE begins to degenerate around the halfway mark, and it builds to some hilariously bad melodrama that may or may not involve the white slave trade.  But Scheider never stops giving it his all, and he will in all likelihood convince you that you're watching a much better movie than you actually are, and that's okay with me. 

His intensity has rarely been matched.  In the scene pictured above, he needs to speak with Janet Margolin, who happens to be taking a shower.  He whips back the shower curtain (with Norman Batesian panache) and begins saying what he needs to say.  There's no hint of lasciviousness or peeping Tomitude– he's got the precision and matter-of-factness of a surgeon.  Scheider has played a lot of CIA and military types before (MARATHON MAN, TIME LAPSE, THE RUSSIA HOUSE, THE FOURTH WAR, etc.) and you absolutely believe him.  His acting choices are simple and understated- when he wants to indicate that ice water runs though his veins, he doesn't showboat around, he just becomes that hardened man.   Incidentally, I recently found out that Roy Scheider was a boxer, long before he was an actor.  He went 12-1 before moving on to theater.  Who knew?

In any event, a few of the signposts and highlights of LAST EMBRACE are these:

#1.  Tak Fujimoto's cinematography.  A long-time Demme crony, Fujimoto is a master craftsman whose first film was fuckin' BADLANDS.  Along the way, he slummed for Corman (DEATH RACE 2000 and others), lensed a few John Hughes classics (FERRIS BUELLER and PRETTY IN PINK), shot the MACGYVER pilot episode, and worked with Demme 17 times.  Somehow he's never even been nominated for an Academy Award.  What the hell!?

#2.  Scheider is waiting for the MetroNorth train to take him from Connecticut to NYC.   On the platform, he's pushed from behind and nearly tumbles into the oncoming train.  He grabs the nearest guy (a young Mandy Patinkin!), puts him in a stranglehold, and begins to question him ("You gotta do better than that, Jack!  WHO SENT YA?!"), all the while poised to deliver an insane karate throat blow, or maybe even the throat-rippin' move from ROAD HOUSE.  God bless Roy Scheider.

#3.  Christopher Walken's brief appearance as a CIA handler.  As always, he's hilarious, creepy, and enunciating unexpected syllables.

He's also wearing ginormous glasses.

#4.  Junta Juleil Hall-of-Famer John Glover as a religious scholar who helps Scheider ascribe meaning to his cryptic Aramaic messages.

He's not particularly given a great deal to do here, but he still imbues his character with the amazing, eccentric energy we've come to love and expect from Glover.

#5.  Hitchockian setpieces.

There's a chase/shootout scene up a bell tower that recalls VERTIGO, and the final showdown takes place at Niagara Falls, referencing Hitchcock's propensity to end films at national landmarks (like Mount Rushmore in NORTH BY NORTHWEST or the Statue of Liberty in SABOTEUR to name a couple). 

In the end, it's a sort of lackluster thriller with some great character actors and brilliant, anchoring lead performance by Roy Scheider.  Three and a half stars.

–Sean Gill

Only now does it occur to me.... SCROOGED!

Only now does it occur to me... that once upon a time, John Glover and Robert Mitchum once sat at the same table and shared incredulous looks regarding the increasingly erratic behavior of one Bill Murray.



Long time readers of the site will know of my love for Mitchum and Glover, and to see them both in the same 80s locale in a popular movie that I'd even seen before came as a tremendous and welcome shock. Now, neither of these gents have a great deal to do in SCROOGED (Mitchum is sort of a low-key conscience figure for TV exec Bill Murray, and Glover is an L.A. quasi-sleazebag who's been brought in to direct the SCROOGE TV special which features the Solid Gold Dancers), but it's comforting to know that somewhere out there, John Glover was sitting beside Robert Mitchum, perhaps even helping him in his career-long pursuit of not giving a shit. Happy holidays!

Television Review: THE HITCHHIKER- 'Striptease' (1985, Jerry Ciccoritti)

Stars: 4 of 5. Running Time: 24 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: John Glover (52 PICK-UP, GREMLINS 2, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS), Donna Goodhand (X-MEN), Jill Hennessy (CROSSING JORDAN, ROBOCOP 3), Victor Ertmanis (BRAINSCAN, STORM OF THE CENTURY), Frank Adamson (SHORT CIRCUIT 2, DOLORES CLAIBORNE), Lawrence Bayne (BLACK ROBE, GETTING GOTTI). In my continuing series of HITCHHIKER reviews of episodes featuring some of my favorite people- I submit to you: STRIPTEASE, starring the inimitable John Glover.
A lot of these HITCHHIKER episodes abandon the 'horror' or 'thriller' setup entirely, settling for a straight-up character study, which, since John Glover is involved, is a real good thing. I'm not sure what the title refers to, unless it's a metaphorical 'striptease of the soul' that Glover is performing for us. It's certainly within the realm of possibility. Playing a full-time troublemaker and semi-public recluse, Glover's Miles Duchet wanders through this episode, first clashing with whomever he can, and then backtracking and wallowing in self pity. It's a stunning portrayal of an artist at war with himself and the world, a sort of diary of a misanthrope. I really have no idea why this is a HITCHHIKER episode. ... Oh yeah!– it's so that the tale could be enhanced by the astute, nuanced musings of the Hitchhiker himself!
"Miles Duchet is a man steeped in the anger and bitterness of a life spent too alone. At some point in every life, someone will appear to crack our armor of loneliness. The trouble is, that person may be hard to recognize and the moment is often fleeting..." Oh, you hitchhikin' sonofabitch. I'll bet this episode hit close to home for you. Solitude, loneliness, all that jazz. But I think all that highway wanderin' has rattled your brain– instead of listening to you, why don't I look at the face of John Glover, which renders everything you've said reductive and redundant:
Also––uh, I see your Confederate flag patch, Hitchhiker. It's been noted.

Anyway, the episode proceeds to show us Glover- rejecting the world and being rejected by it: a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Glover: despondent.

The boss: a real shitbag.

We see him berated by his boss ("Maybe that's from using that brain too much," "thinking isn't what you're paid to do," "we're runnin' a business here!," etc., etc.) and immediately spurning the nearest sympathetic ear. Next, Glover calls up an ex and theatrically threatens suicide.

Failing in that noble endeavor, and not for the first time, he hits the mean streets and meaner dives, picking fights with brawny strangers and spitting repugnant, self-righteous venom.

"YOU LOOKING FOR A FIGHT?! TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT, SCUMFACE!" Then, in a self-pitying 180-degree turn, he searches for companionship in the form of some old art buddies who know his asshole tendencies all too well. They allow him to accompany them because, well, they're assholes, too. And why pass up front-row seats to the most pathetic spectacle in town?

The most pathetic spectacle in town.

They're headed for drinks with the newest flavor-of-the-month-toast-of-the-art-world who happens to be involved with Glover's ex (Jill Hennessy). Yeah, his former buddies have a pretty good idea what'll happen. It starts off with the wounded puppy routine:

but ends, predictably, with an inappropriate makeout session between the smarmy new lovers
and a bitter outburst from Glover which ends with him, literally, on the floor, choking on his own bile. In a final humiliation, the grotesque extravaganza ends with Glover begging the ex for fifty dollars- which he actually gets- though, I suppose the subtext is something along the lines of 'this fifty dollar bill carries with it the unspoken promise that I never again have to see your raggedy ass.' Moving on to the next bar (and the next bleary-eyed confrontation), Glover strikes up a conversation with a barfly (Donna Goodhand) who seems to find her current existence just as intolerable as Glover does his. In a rare moment of self-reflection, Glover explains his true outlook on life: he is the a dog who snaps at you when you try to pet him- an unfortunate specimen who inspires in others something of a 'reverse food chain' of regurgitation and contempt- truly the gift which keeps on giving.

But somewhere behind that mutual self-hatred is a kind of magnetism- and they end up connecting-

-until the next morning when Glover says "Thanks for a really hot night- leave your number and I'll pass it around." While that in and of itself would have been a fine ending, there's still more- as she leaves the apartment, he has a change of heart and realizes, I suppose, that he is a human being after all. But it's too late- and, shall we say... tragedy strikes...

And now with the rebuttal- The Hitchhiker:

"Deep down, Miles Duchet longed for a connection. But he was so accustomed to pushing people away that he didn't understand when love had penetrated his defense and, sadly for him, fragile feelings treated once with scorn never allow for a second chance." I have a hard time getting it up to be that angry at you today, Hitchhiker, but you're totallly killin' my buzz. I think I pity you. Or maybe I'm still just confused as to why this episode was entitled STRIPTEASE. In closing, it's a fine character study and one which overcomes any weaknesses in the writing through John Glover's tour de force performance of anguished sleaze and oily discontent. He is the man who pounds his head against the wall... and then wonders 'from where does this sanguinary ooze flow?' I can't praise Glover enough- if an actor ever shared a complete connection to the material at hand, it's him.

Film Review: IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994, John Carpenter)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 95 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Sam Neill (THE PIANO, JURASSIC PARK), Julie Carmen (THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR, Tarantino's epiosde of ER), Frances Bay (BLUE VELVET, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME), John Glover (52 PICK-UP, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO), Jürgen Prochnow (DAS BOOT, BODY OF EVIDENCE), Bernie Casey (REVENGE OF THE NERDS, SHARKY'S MACHINE), Peter Jason (PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THEY LIVE), Charlton Heston, David Warner (MY BEST FRIEND IS A VAMPIRE, TRON).
Tag-line: "Lived Any Good Books Lately?"
Best one-liner: "You're my mommy. Know what today is? Today is Mommy's Day!"

"What about the people who don't read?" –"There's a movie." IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is the last great horror movie of the 1980's (yes, I’m aware it was made in 1994). It's the sort of film that deserves a rightful place in the critical canon, yet was perhaps too intricate, too esoteric, or too labyrinthine for mass consumption. The visuals are sharp, glossy, and atmospheric, whether depicting an unearthly New England town on the cusp of autumn:

or a foreboding, black Byzantine church rising from the earth like a Stygian fist.

H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos are a point of departure (and the source of many a reference), but the film bursts with tropes from film noir (an insurance investigator, interrogational storytelling, and plenty of smoking), Philip K. Dick (mindfucks and illusions within delusions abound- "Reality isn't what it used to be"), and Stephen King (maybe it took a film with no concrete relation to any King story to perfectly nail the man's vibe!).

Most of the film's success rests upon Sam Neill's capable shoulders, and he remains entirely connected to the role whether he’s a debonair contrarian or a deranged head case.


AWWW, SHIIIIIT

We're afforded bold glimpses of the monsters Lovecraft deemed "indescribable," and Neill captures the ineffable dread of one's mind recoiling in terror at the sight of said monsters.


Jürgen "Did I ever tell you my favorite color was blue?" Prochnow IS Sutter Cane- bringing the ideal balance to a character who is equal parts bestsellin' hack and Judas to the human race.


The supporting roles are quite vivid, as well: an incomparable, twitchy John Glover:

Talk about the lunatics running the asylum! One of the greats.

a stately, grim David Warner:

David Warner- always a class act.

a likable, bewildered Bernie Casey; a gruffly fraudulent Peter Jason; and a charmingly off-kilter Frances Bay.

Frances Bay- she's the terrifying Grandma you always secretly wished you had.

This film takes us deep into the abyss- an endless, repeating chain of psychosis and decay- and forces us to look again and again, as if we were a playing card trapped in a bicycle wheel or a blade fused to a creaky, rusty windmill.

And the end- if we can call it that- strikes the perfect note of senseless absurdity. We’re left with no alternative other than to sit in the darkness, cackling at our own foolishness.

PFFFFFT!

Five stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: THE EVIL THAT MEN DO (1984, J. Lee Thompson)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 90 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Charles Bronson, José Ferrer, John Glover, Joseph Maher.
Tag-line: "In the execution of justice there is no executioner like BRONSON."
Best one-liner: "Three is all right with me!"

"In the execution of justice there is no executioner like BRONSON," says the tag-line. The fifth of about twelve billion collaborations between Charles Bronson and English director J. Lee Thompson (ST. IVES, DEATH WISH 4), THE EVIL THAT MEN DO is one of those Bronsons that frequently shifts between 'mediocre' and 'fan-fuckin-tastic.' J. Lee wants you to know right off the bat that he is not effin' around, so he introduces our villain, Dr. Molloch, a kindly old man who kills captured dissidents for a living. We begin with frontal nudity, electrodes on balls, and a tooth-snappingly horrific torture session. It's not long before ex-hitman Bronson's on the case and killing those responsible, one by one. Standard stuff. But here's eight reasons why this flick is still of note:

#1. Associate producer Jill Ireland. Gotta fit her in somehow.

#2. How damn happy Bronson is at his beachside home.

He's all smiles, and has a friendship with a fish named Quasimodo. Unfortunately the evil that men do requires Bronson to take a road trip to Guatemala.

#3. John Glover. One of the finest actors of all time.

Here, he plays an evil, mincing U.S. ambassador who is sleazy to the max. His best scene involves a weaselly rage directed at some warm Guatemalan beer.

"It's CALIENTE!"

#4. Extended Bronson low blow. Now, the other day, I see that someone found this site by Googling "brutal ball-squeezing." I now feel as if I have standards of quality in brutal ball-squeezing to maintain. So, submitted, for your consideration:




In perhaps the longest balls-grab in film history, Bronson dives at some goon's junk with both hands- twisting and crumpling for nearly a minute- until the big lug passes out. DAMN!

#5. Undercover Bronson pretending to be a swinger.

Bronson:

"We've been into things like wife-swappin'. THREE'S all right with ME!"

Unsuspecting villain: "You got a place?"

Bronson:

"YOU BET!"

My mind has been blown.


#6. Bronson's look of disdain as he hides beneath a mattress as two lesbians do it!

He seems to showing the rare Bronson emotion of FEAR. Is he afraid of the concept of lesbianism or that he'll be crushed by the mattress?

One of my all-time favorite Bronson scenes best viewed out of context.


#7. Another dummy flung from a great height.

When I first said I thought this was in Bronson's contract, I meant it as a joke, but now I'm beginning to think I've been right from the start.

#8. The FREAKS-style revenge finale. I won't spoil it, but after some run-of-the-mill car chases, it ends on a borderline trashy, extremely cathartic note.

Four stars.

-Sean Gill