Film Review: CRY-BABY (1990, John Waters)

Stars: 4.6 of 5.
Running Time: 91 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Johnny Depp, Amy Locane (SECRETARY, AIRHEADS), Susan Tyrrell (FORBIDDEN ZONE, FAT CITY, FLESH + BLOOD), Polly Bergen (CAPE FEAR '62, THE MEN), Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake (HAIRSPRAY, SERIAL MOM), Traci Lords (VIRTUOUSITY, SERIAL MOM), Kim McGuire (SERIAL MOM, David Lynch's ON THE AIR), Willem Dafoe, Joe Dallesandro (THE LIMEY, FLESH, BLOOD FOR DRACULA), Mink Stole (PINK FLAMINGOS, DESPERATE LIVING, LOST HIGHWAY), Troy Donahue (IMITATION OF LIFE, COCKFIGHTER), Joey Heatherton (BLUEBEARD, THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO WASHINGTON), and Patty Hearst in her fiction film debut.
Tag-lines: "Too young to be square... Too tough to be shocked... Too late to be saved..."
Best one-liner: "Let's all put on a folk hat and learn something about a foreign culture!" (said by Patty Hearst) or perhaps "Woo-Wee, you caught me in my birthday suit, butt-naked" (said by Iggy Pop).

Psuedo-commercial John Waters (PECKER, SERIAL MOM) is not necessarily better than shoestringy, gutter sleaze John Waters (FEMALE TROUBLE, DESPERATE LIVING), they're just different- much like, say, the difference between TWIN PEAKS-Lynch and INLAND EMPIRE-Lynch. Some artists flourish under constraints (you can't show Divine devouring dog stools or Liz Renay getting rabies in the ass in a PG-13 film), and Waters is creative enough to make a film which nominally pleases the mainstream, yet is still deliciously infested with his trademarked pervy pizazz. This film is an oddball tour de force of sheer, ludicrous delights from a tittering, perfidious sewer rat to a devout Joe Dallesandro zealously bellowing "Let Jesus Christ be your gang-leader!" into a megaphone (as Joey Heatherton shudders beside him in a pious frenzy)-

In short, CRY-BABY is the bee's knees. It's Drapes vs. Squares, forbidden love, a 10th-rate Baltimore Disneyland, rockabilly concerts, an orphanage jailbreak, an epic “chicken” duel and an amalgamation of everything that Waters loves about the 1950's from JAILHOUSE ROCK to TEENAGE GANG DEBS.



The bizarro performances range from the hammy to the outré. Johnny Depp transforms the act of frequent, stoic weeping into something worthy of Tiger Beat magazine.

The legendary Susan Tyrrell (FAT CITY), while wearing a taxidermy bird helmet, sputters and chortles and emotes and blows away "goddamn gophers." It’s a work of mad genius and truly a sight to behold.

Tyrrell's trademark cackle.


Tyrrell and Pop. Best onscreen couple since Tyrrell and Rutger Hauer in FLESH + BLOOD. Who were the best onscreen couple since Tyrrell and Hervé 'Ze Plane' Villechaize in FORBIDDEN ZONE. Who were the best onscreen couple since Tyrrell and Stacy Keach in FAT CITY.

Iggy Pop is her husband, bathing himself in a wooden tub on the lawn and being an all-around good sport. Amy Locane embraces a sort of 'young Kathleen Turner' aesthetic, and Waters' two favorite pariahs (Traci Lords and Patty Hearst) exude, respectively, pose-worthy sass and adorable gullibility. Mink Stole speaks in tongues, and there's a 3-D moviegoing experience that'd make William Castle proud:

Willem Dafoe even appears for an ass-slapping cameo as a sleazoid, country-drawlin' prison guard.

"We gonna give you a haircut, pretty boy!"



By gum, this shit is great. Nearly five stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: PATTY HEARST (1988, Paul Schrader)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 108 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Natasha Richardson, William Forsythe, Ving Rhames, Dana Delany (LIGHT SLEEPER, TOMBSTONE), Frances Fisher (UNFORGIVEN, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN), Jodi Long (THE EXORCIST III, ROBOCOP 3).
Tag-lines: "Heiress... kidnap victim... turned urban terrorist... bank robber ."
Best one-liner: "It's just like pigs to glorify a mouse."

Yet another extraordinary biopic from writer/director Paul Schrader, whose biographical output includes MISHIMA, AUTO FOCUS, the screenplay for RAGING BULL, and, to some extent, his screenplays for THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and BRINGING OUT THE DEAD. Schrader's biopics stand alone, in my mind, as he not only epically and completely immerses you into his subject's lives, but also into their very minds. And despite this complete immersion, he also manages to involve you in HIS mind, HIS thought processes. His narratives unfold with at once the simple asceticism of Bresson and the slam-pop-bang mise-en-scene of Scorsese. Yet there's a sense of claustrophobia to all of this as well; almost an imprisonment, and indeed, almost all of Schrader's films end with a psychological or literal incarceration- and PATTY HEARST is no exception.

Her first confinement is brilliantly illustrated- you can almost feel the heat of the sun baking down on the California rathole that is Symbionese Liberaton Army headquarters, even as we, like Patty, are cramped, constricted, and entrenched in darkness.

Her eventual coercion, collaboration, and arrest are just natural steps along the path wrought by her initial trauma, seemingly par for the tragic course. Natasha Richardson (RIP) is terrific as Patty; she is our gateway into the film, and indeed into the mind of Patricia Hearst herself.

Bill Forsythe showcases his abilities as a powerful chameleon, as at ease here as a self-loathing white revolutionary as he is as the nerdy buddy in CLOAK AND DAGGER or as the government flunky in THE ROCK. He's one of Americas greatest underrated working actors. Ving Rhames, as always, is robust and frequently terrifying as the commanding leader of the SLA- until, that is, you realize there's no wind in his sails- only the rotely memorized cliches of revolutionaries past. A top-notch examination of one of Americas most notorious pariahs, and a criminally unavailable American classic.

-Sean Gill