Film Review: EXTREME PREJUDICE (1987, Walter Hill)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Written by John Milius, Fred Rexer, Deric Washburn, and Harry Kleiner. Starring Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Rip Torn, Michael Ironside (TOTAL RECALL, SCANNERS), William Forsythe (PATTY HEARST, THE ROCK), Clancy Brown (HIGHLANDER, LOST), Matt Mulhern (BILOXI BLUES), Larry B. Scott (THE KARATE KID, IRON EAGLE, the gay nerd in REVENGE OF THE NERDS), Dan Tullis Jr. (UNDER THE GUN, MARRIED WITH CHILDREN), Tiny Lister (BEVERLY HILLS COP II, 9 1/2 NINJAS), Mickey Jones (Bob Dylan's drummer), Maria Conchita Alonso.
Tag-lines: "An army of forgotten heroes, all officially dead. They live for combat. Now they've met the wrong man."
Best one-liner: "Música! and make it sweet, goddammit, or I'll shoot the band!"

Before you stick this thing in your player, I want you to mark out an 8 foot radius around your TV set. Then I want you to make sure there's nothing in that zone that you wouldn't mind having 40 gallons of testosterone poured over. EXTREME PREJUDICE has been proven to make wombs shrivel and has turned the frilliest of ladies quite husky; it makes men stumble, confused, into the street with a mysterious desire to chomp on cigars and arm wrestle. It's robust, potent, severe, and is completely safe when used as directed.

It's about men staring at men staring at men.

The ensemble cast possesses a dangerous volatility that borders on the atomic:

we got Powers Boothe crushing scorpions with his bare hands and calling people "shitheel,"


we got quasi-hick Bill Forsythe skewering rats on a hunting knife,


we got Michael Ironside correcting us in our misconception that the scariest face to ever wear a nylon stocking was Willem Dafoe's in WILD AT HEART,

Well, I guess this question's still up in the air.

we got Rip Torn as a drawlin' sheriff spoutin' aphorisms like "the only thing worse than a politician is a child molester,"

we got Clancy Brown as a man so stern that I think he's the original form in Plato's cave for "No Nonsense,"


and we got Nick Nolte as a Ranger whose tolerance for "bureaucratic fatasses fluffin' their duff" is- that's right- ZERO.

And the only woman of any note, Maria Conchita Alonso, is HOT. And I mean that quite literally: she's kept well-steamed, sweaty, and safely objectified for the duration via contrivances such as showers and non-air conditioned bars.

Everyone in this movie is sweaty.

She's one of those women who wants to "talk" with her man, Nolte. Talk?! Screw that. He doesn't even know what that means. Writer John Milius' reactionary political views are at first offensive, then charming, and finally just 'stand back and let the gringos kill each other.' Limbs are blown off, bombs are hidden in cute little rabbits, and the inspiration for BULLETPROOF has never been more apparent (adding more fuel to the Busey/Nolte fire). Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out, and give this thing five stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: VAMPIRE'S KISS (1988, Robert Bierman)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 103 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Writer Joseph Minion (AFTER HOURS), Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Beals, Maria Conchita Alonso (THE RUNNING MAN), David Hyde-Pierce, Amy Stiller (Ben's sister), Marc Coppola (Nic Cage's brother), Elizabeth Ashley (HAPPINESS, SHIP OF FOOLS).
Tag-lines: "Seduction. Romance. Murder. The things one does for love."
Best one-liner: "I'm a vampire! I'm a vampire! I'm a vampire!"

You know, I'm not really sure where to begin. This is definitely one of those cases (see also: D.C. CAB) where I'm so perplexed that I just hand out four stars as sort of a knee-jerk reaction. Yes, I am aware Nicolas Cage is insane.

Yes, I'm aware that he CHOOSES to exhibit these affectations of insanity, unlike, say, genuinely bonkers individuals like Klaus Kinski, Gary Busey, or Werner Herzog. And, yes, I am aware that through this conscious decision, he is, in a way, MORE insane than the people I've just named. (Well, maybe not, but you see my point.)

Alright. Now that's out of the way, we can discuss the film at hand. Written by Joseph Minion, VAMPIRE'S KISS amplifies the vague misogyny and obliterates the nuanced humor present in AFTER HOURS (also written by Minion- though basically the first half of that script is plagiarized from a Joe Frank monologue). It's a 'descent into madness' movie, and it's about as hamfisted and embarrassingly slapsticky as a film of its type could possibly be. And as the center of its whirling, lunatic universe is our boy Nic Cage, who has more than a few bats loose in his belfry. Cage eats, in one long take, a live, honest-to-goodness, water-buggin' NYC cockroach.



He psychotically recites the alphabet to make a minor point. He literally screams "Boo hoo" when he's sad. It's difficult to tell if he's playing the role as a Gordon Gecko-type evil yuppie, an English dandy, someone afflicted with Down's Syndrome, or a Keanu Reeves impersonator.

All this is combined with deeply atmospheric music, sharp cinematography, elements of George Romero's MARTIN, and Minion's overwhelming fear of females and relationships to create a work that is utterly, utterly unhinged.

It doesn't REALLY work as an existential art film OR as a piece of entertainment (a dual feat that AFTER HOURS managed), but I really have to give it points for at least succeeding at being as exasperatingly frustrated as its own protagonist. Whew!

-Sean Gill

Film Review: PREDATOR 2 (1990, Stephen Hopkins)

Stars: 3 of 5.
Running Time: 108 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ruben Blades, Bill Paxton, Adam Baldwin, Robert Davi, Kevin Peter Hall, Calvin Lockhart, Alan Silvestri, Mark Goldblatt (editor and director of DEAD HEAT)
Tag-line: "Pull over, park, and pray." AND "Hunting season opens again... this Christmas."
Best one-liner(s): "Want some candy?"
Best lazy one-liner: "I'll show you insubordination, you sonofabitch!"

MYTH: The finale of PREDATOR 2 involves Gary Busey putting the Predator in a headlock and biting off some of his dreds with his ginormous, shining teeth. FACT: If it did, this movie would have garnered five stars.

Another FACT: the Busey storyline is given the short shrift, and has a frankly anticlimactic conclusion. Although they at least allow him to psychotically say, "Lions and tigers and bears...OH MAI."

MYTH: Danny Glover's main character trait in this film is that he likes having an extensive collection of handguns.

FACT: Glover's key character trait is that he despises birds. "Damn. Damned birds!" Maybe they figured, hey, snakes worked for Indiana Jones, so...

MYTH: The Predator is pro-choice. FACT: The Predator has a stranglehold on an ARMED woman, and is about to deliver the coup de grace when his thermal vision spies a baby within her womb.

He spares her, thus affirming his pro-life ideals or that he considers all fetuses to be humans or something.

MYTH: The filmmakers accurately depict voodoo and its rituals. FACT: Shall we begin with the fact that in the film, it's a JAMAICAN, not Haitian, killer voodoo posse? In fact, I'm pretty sure the only reason they inserted this plotline was so there could be a couple shots of dudes in dredlocks in silhouette and then for half a second you could be like "Wait, is that the Predator?... Oh."

MYTH: This movie tried to make "Damn birds" into a catchphrase. FACT: It was "Want some candy?"

MYTH: There's hardly any POV Predator-vision in this movie. FACT: They went overboard. Even the main title is in Predator-vision.

There's so much Predator-vision that the viewer will later DREAM in Predator-vision. They should have called this movie PREDATOR 2: PREDATOR-VISION.

Concluding thoughts: Three stars: five stars for Busey, Glover, and overall insanity, minus two stars for not using Busey to full capacity. "It's between ME and HEIM!"

-Sean Gill