Verhoeven and Motor City enthusiasts rejoice!

"Your move, Creep!" To those who have been following the drama in Detroit (a clash between disciples of Paul Verhoeven and the Dave Bing administration) it appears that, despite a rejection from city officials, a grassroots movement to build a statue honoring ROBOCOP has received the necessary funding. Perhaps it will stand tall beside the Rocky statue in Philadelphia, the 'Bronze Fonz' in Milwaukee, and the statue of Leatherface and Dennis Hopper, mid-chainsaw duel, that I hope exists somewhere in the backwoods of Texas.

Film Review: OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN (1983, George P. Cosmatos)

Stars: 3 of 5.
Running Time: 88 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Peter Weller (ROBOCOP, NAKED LUNCH, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI), Kenneth Welsh (SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, TWIN PEAKS, PERFECT), Maury Chaykin (TWINS, THE ADJUSTER, DANCES WITH WOLVES), Jennifer Dale (THE ADJUSTER, SUZANNE), Shannon Tweed (HOT DOG THE MOVIE, STEEL JUSTICE, ex-Playboy Playmate, and ex of Gene Simmons), Lawrence Dane (SCANNERS, BRIDE OF CHUCKY), Louis Del Grande (SCANNERS, ATLANTIC CITY). Produced by Pierre David and Claude Héroux (VIDEODROME, SCANNERS, THE BROOD, VISITING HOURS).
Tag-line: "Two forces have claimed the house. Only one will survive."
Best one-liner: "You never said anything about rubber gloves, you boneheaded fart."

It's like MOBY DICK, except instead of Captain Ahab, we have Peter Weller. And instead of a great white whale, we have a giant brown rat. And instead of the high seas, we have a New York apartment building (actually filmed in Montreal). It's a familiar tale. You know- He had it all. The perfect wife. The perfect job. The perfect kid. The perfect home.

Until... a mere rodent made his life into a living hell... a succession of grotesque blightings... an obsession beyond human comprehension...
I suppose, the main lesson here being, 'Don't fuck with a man's brownstone.' And so it's war. Peter Weller is taking this infestation personally.

Needless to say, only one of our two combatants will be left standing. But who? And at what cost?

Helmed by creature-feature conoisseur and ghost-director extraordinaire George Pan Cosmatos (RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, COBRA, LEVIATHAN, and TOMBSTONE), OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN possesses that strangely sterile, alienating 'Canadian horror' vibe that Cronenberg has used to such great effect in films such as THE FLY, CRASH, and DEAD RINGERS.

Of course, this may have something to do with the producers, Pierre David and Claude Héroux, who produced most of Cronenberg's 70's and 80's output. The atmosphere certainly works: we have man, existing in the carefully constructed steel, glass, and concrete compartments he has created for himself. Tubes and vents ensure proper ventilation and waste disposal. Everything fits within the lines and the walls and the gridlike streets and life is good and– SCHLERP SCHLERP SCHLERP–

Next thing you know, the rat is leaving its creepy little footprints on your coffee table. You know, those terrifying, pink, viscous, semi-translucent, soggy fuckin' paws. It's eating your cereal, knockin' your phone off the hook, leavin' its hairs in your sandwich, playin' your piano, and tryin' to chomp your nuts as you're sittin' on the toilet.

My thoughts exactly, Peter Weller.

Filmed with PHASE IV-style macroscopic photography and hideous attention to detail, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN dashes headlong into the claustrophic, nasty little world of vermin.

Sewer rat POV.

Peter Weller slowly descends into madness– the rat is one tough customer. Can't trap it. Can't poison it. Can't shoot it. Can't even sic the cat on it. Next thing you know, Pete's talking to the stuffed animals. He's reading MOBY DICK. His day job suffers. It's awesomely clichéd: oh, now he's hitting the bottle.

Next he's sifting through microfiche. He's researching the rat. He's discovering there's 24,000 reported rat bites a year. It's becoming an obsession. He loses touch with co-workers. At a company dinner, he just rattles off facts about rats, much to everyone's chagrin.

Including the chagrin of genius character actor, Kenneth Welsh.

He witnesses the miracle of rat birth. He watches Spencer Tracy in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. It's man versus nature versus man versus nature. "This isn't some ordinary rat I'm dealing with. It killed my cat." He screams "You want a war, I'll give you a war!" Weller is great. He's always great. He appears to be wearing the same nerdy glasses he later wears in NAKED LUNCH, and he's unraveling at the seams. There are other characters, I suppose, but this is a one man show.

Before you can say, "It's clobberin' time," Weller has devised a rat-smashing implement that can be best described as an 'atomic bear-trap war-club.'

He's gotten to the point where he just sits in his home. In the dark. Wearing a woolen cap. Clutching his atomic bear-trap war-club. Waiting. Like a coiled spring. Waiting. Ready to snap.
There's a final showdown, of course. It's pretty satisfying. Only one of the two rivals will survive. Who will it be? Our hang-dog urban commando? Our twitchy, disease-spreading, four-legged fiend? Will it be "watch and weep, you furry fucker!" or will it be curtains for the man who thinks of his home as his castle? Well, watch the movie and find out.

Three stars. A fine, crittery, jittery time. Not a classic, but it's one of the best 'man versus rat' movies out there.

-Sean Gill

Television Review: THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (2005, John Putch)

Stars: 1.5 of 5.
Running Time: 174 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Rutger Hauer, Steve Guttenberg, Adam Baldwin (FULL METAL JACKET, D.C. CAB), Bryan Brown (COCKTAIL, F/X), Peter Weller (NAKED LUNCH, ROBOCOP), Alex Kingston (CROUPIER, Dr. Corday on ER), C. Thomas Howell (THE HITCHER, RED DAWN, SOUL MAN), Nathalie Boltt (DISTRICT 9, DOOMSDAY), Peter Dobson (THE FRIGHTENERS, LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN). Directed by John Putch (THE BOY WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS), screenplay by Bryce Zabel (MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION).
Tag-lines: "THE GREATEST DANGER IS ALREADY ON BOARD"
Best one-liner: "How do you celebrate saving nine people when thousands have died?"

How did it come to this? How did it come to watching a Hallmark original movie with a running time of nearly three hours on a Saturday night which I had not previously reserved for such self-flagellation? Well, I'll give you a reason: Rutger Hauer. You want another one? You got it: Peter Weller. Thirsty for more? Hang onto your hats: Steve Guttenberg. Bryan Brown. C. Thomas Howell. That's right- this movie is a late-career pit stop for the luminaries who helped bring us BLADE RUNNER. ROBOCOP. COCKTAIL. THREE MEN AND A BABY. It's a reunion for the two leads of THE HITCHER, an excuse to show us how much the Gute's been working out, and an opportunity for Bryan Brown to down a couple Singapore Slings and get paid for it (except there's no Hippy-hippy Shake or Tom Cruise wing-manning this time around).

A remake of the 1972 disaster classic (starring Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters, among others) that chronicled the overturning of a doomed ocean liner and the attempts of the survivors to escape, Hallmark's 2005 POSEIDON ADVENTURE does not disappoint. Oh wait––yes, it does. Despite the staggering talent lined up before the camera, the film manages only to be an awkward shitstorm of bad CGI, unbearable bit players, cumbersome writing, intolerable pacing, and bungled set-pieces which only serve to remind the viewer of the superiority of the original, a film held together by that incredible human glue called Ernest Borgnine.

Such a film as this does not deserve a coherent review, so I shall offer some semi-articulate stream-of-consciousness ramblings that we may pretend are well-organized talking points. After all, I just pretended that Hallmark's POSEIDON ADVENTURE was a real movie, so if we all just go through the motions, perhaps we can salvage some of C. Thomas Howell's dignity.

A few observations on Hallmark's POSEIDON ADVENTURE:

1. The POSEIDON itself. Now, I'm not even going to get into how, in this version, it's "terrorists" and not a tidal wave that flips the infamous ship, but let's give some thought to a cruise ship that's all CGI, all the time. Not just when it's sinking or flipping over or exploding... all the time.

Note CGI moon.


AHHHHHHH

Was stock footage of a cruise ship that hard to find? Or even shooting new footage of an actual cruise ship? I'm having a rough time coming to grips with the fact that it's apparently easier to book Rutger Hauer than it is to find stock footage of a cruise ship. Although it gives renewed hope to my dream that Rutger Hauer will one day host a screening of BLIND FURY in my apartment.

2. Adam Baldwin. He played 'Animal Mother' in FULL METAL JACKET with a twisted joie de vivre that was so memorable, I would go as far as to say that the name "Animal Mother" is more recognizable than "Adam 'no, not one of those Baldwins' Baldwin."

Playing some sort of anti-terrorist agent, he wanders around the ship scowling with intensity, mumbling about "terroristic activities in this hemisphere," and growling lines like "Everything's safe till it isn't!" He- like most everyone else in the film- is giving it his best shot, but without trying toooo hard. I'm imagining a conversation between Baldwin and maybe a gaffer dude at the craft services table...

Baldwin: "You know... I worked with Kubrick."
Gaffer: "Oh yeh?"
Baldwin: "He took me aside once, and said–"
Gaffer: "Do you think you could get me Alec's autograph?"
Baldwin: "..."

3. There may be no Borgnine this time around, but there is an annoying kid with a video camera.


Why you gotta do that, Hallmark POSEIDON ADVENTURE? Haven't we suffered enough already? Everybody hates that device in a movie when somebody whips out a video camera and then we see 'Video POV' ––generally just the •REC logo slapped on the image, which doesn't actually look like a real camcorder's viewfinder anyway. You played with fire, Hallmark POSEIDON ADVENTURE. You played with fire, and you got burned. (More on that later.) 

4. The ill-conceived "Sea Pass" sequence, whereupon the major players are introduced by their snazzy Photoshopped Poseidon I.D.s...

...no further comment.

5. 'Gute the sex bomb.

Maybe my memory's a little fuzzy, but I don't remember in POLICE ACADEMY or in THREE MEN AND A BABY or even in THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY the Gute getting naked more often than Harvey Keitel. I think it's a recent development. And I shall not judge: I mean, the dude has been working out a lot, apparently. So he gets a quasi-erotic massage from a lady who's not his "harpy wife,"

which leads to the two of them in flagrante delicto when the POSEIDON flips. He puts some clothes on to escape, and lo and behold, a sleeve immediately tears, revealing Gute bicep action.

It goes past the point of 'the director had a crush on the Gute' to 'it was probably in the Gute's contract.' And so the Gute joins the ranks of Keitel and Dafoe, which for some reason has me pondering how different ANTICHRIST would have turned out had it starred the Gute. More on him and his massage-mistress in a bit.

6. C. Thomas Howell.


Looking pretty gaunt but still holding up well, I thought I'd be happy to see C. Thomas. E.T. THE OUTSIDERS. RED DAWN. THE HITCHER. TANK. The man made the most of the 80's. But something about his presence here depressed me. He does a fine job with his paper-thin character, but I think the disheartening element is how happy he is. He's exuding genuine peppiness. Vim and vigor. He is damned excited to be on set. No one else, not even the twenty-somethings getting their first "break" by appearing in this film are that excited. This is a Hallmark production. C. Thomas, you've appeared in enough quality pictures in your lifetime, that even if you're not at the top of the A-list these days, you should kind of be phoning it in for a Hallmark movie. Rutger Hauer is mailing it in, for godssakes (more on that later).

7. But how great is it to have Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell chowing down at the same table for the first time since that diner in THE HITCHER.


According to the DVD bonus interviews, Howell said that "it was great to reconnect with Rutger." He also says "Hallmark stories are from the heart." I say he was still probably as scared shitless of Rutger as he was the first time around. Anyway, on a semi-related note, I'm pretty sure that this makes me the first person to actually indulge in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE's bonus features.

8. Rutger, Rutger, Rutger.

I see you. I see you recoiling in horror at this movie. You know you're in the Gene Hackman role, and you know he played the part with a selfless ferocity that was downright electric. I know you know that you could pull it off, too. I also know that you know that you're in a Hallmark movie. And you know that I know that you're in a Hallmark movie. And we both know that you're phoning it in, and we both know that there's nothing else you can do. Fade into the background and hope people mistake you for the wallpaper. Live to act another day. In something like HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. You are the true survivalist, Rutger. I salute you.

9. Peter Weller. Donning Grandma glasses and a captain's uniform, he plays his brief role with a soft-spoken old-Hollywood-style charm which sort of recalls, I dunno, Fred Astaire?

He's solid enough, and doesn't wear out his welcome. But even if he were terrible, I don't think I could ever say anything bad about Peter Weller.

10. Bryan Brown, playing a Simon Cowell-esque celebrity.

You could say, "I bet it was easy for him to play the part, because he is a celebrity." But then I would ask you, "When was the last time I made a 'Rollie' Tyler reference and somebody knew what the hell I was talking about?" Regardless, Bryan Brown's always a lot of fun to watch, and I though I don't actually think he was wasted for the duration, I'd still prefer to think so. His character's got a young French wifey (Tinarie Van Wyk-Loots) who presents two problems for us:

#1. Her fake French accent is pretty rough, and #2. We have to listen an extremely overproduced singing voice. I 'get' that it's a nod to "The Morning After" (the Oscar-winning song from the original POSEIDON), but that don't make it hurt any less.

11. Alex Kingston. I'm a big Kingston fan because of her role as Dr. Corday on ER, where she embodied that elusive combination of classy charm and smart-ass smarm.

Here, she's required to furrow her brow, look at a radar screen, and mutter shoddy faux-sincere dialogue. I hope she bought herself something nice with her paycheck.

12. THE MAW OF CGI FLAMES!!!

In goes the terrorist! Boo! Hiss!

Then, in a semi-shocking series of extremely judgmental events––in goes the massage-mistress!


That'll teach ya, ya chippy! Mess around with a married man and you can taste the flames of the CGI inferno! Guttenberg's character somehow avoids this moral death penalty. Thank you, Hallmark. If you had let her live, the very values systems which guide our lives may have been tarnished.

I can't write any more about this. And because I can't quite focus on driving my points home, I'm afraid that it may leave you with the impression that Hallmark's POSEIDON ADVENTURE is not quite as bad as it actually is. It is bad. It is very bad. And it is three hours long. Hold that in your heart, and go forth.

Film Review: LEVIATHAN (1989, George P. Cosmatos)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 98 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Written by David Webb Peoples (UNFORGIVEN, SOLDIER, BLADE RUNNER). Starring Peter Weller (BUCKAROO BANZAI, NAKED LUNCH, ROBOCOP), Ernie Hudson (THE SUBSTITUTE, GHOSTBUSTERS), Richard Crenna (RAMBO, UN FLIC), Amanda Pays (MAX HEADROOM), Daniel Stern (HOME ALONE, narrator on THE WONDER YEARS), Hector Elizando (PRETTY WOMAN, AMERICAN GIGOLO), Meg Foster (THEY LIVE, STEPFATHER II). Music by Jerry Goldsmith (CHINATOWN, ALIEN, RAMBO). Special effects by Stan Winston (PREDATOR, THE TERMINATOR, JURASSIC PARK).
Tag-line: "Welcome to your worst nightmare, welcome to Leviathan." (...Butt-horn?)
Best one-liner: "Say 'Ahhh,' motherfucker!"

"That's JUST great! You tellin' me we got a god damn Dracula in here with us?" Like its human-absorbing, hybrid fish-creature star, LEVIATHAN is a film built entirely from pre-existing components. Everything here, we've seen before, be it in THE THING or ALIEN or THE ABYSS. We've already seen Peter Weller (ROBOCOP) and Ernie Hudson (GHOSTBUSTERS) hoist gigantic futuristic weapons around.

Daniel Stern (HOME ALONE) opens soda cans with his mouth and is always talkin' about how much he'd like the female crew members to sit on his face. There's the British woman (Amanda Pays) who requires no character development, because her accent already tells us that she's a quick-witted expert of some kind. We got Richard Crenna (FIRST BLOOD) sitting in front of an ancient monitor, shaking his head at some statistics, EXACTLY like Wilford Brimley does in THE THING.


The creature even drains the blood supply! We've got a nefarious corporate master played by the evil chick from THEY LIVE.

And it's a cautionary tale: the chain of events (that causes slavering, mutating monsters to emerge) all starts with a practical joke and some purloined booze. Somehow that's even worse than the Jason movies, where sex begets death. Jokin' around equals death? Jeez! Cut us some slack!

Anyway, I don't think I've yet mentioned that I really enjoyed this movie. Like ACTION JACKSON or UNDER SIEGE, you don't really care that it's completely unoriginal. Plus our eel-man comes courtesy of FX master Stan Winston, and the screenplay's by David Webb Peoples (BLADE RUNNER, UNFORGIVEN, TWELVE MONKEYS), so clearly this isn't really catering to the least common denominator. And Weller is great.

Wearing a hot pink and blue trucker hat, he exudes layers of 'performance' (as an actor in the film, and pretending to be a 'tough as nails captain-type' for the benefit of his crew), and ends the film by punching a woman in the face. Only you can get away with that kinda thing, Pete. Four stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: SCREAMERS (1995, Christian Duguay)

Stars: 3 of 5.
Running Time: 108 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Peter Weller, Jennifer Rubin, co-written by Dan O'Bannon, who'd been kicking around the screenplay since the early 80's.
Tag-lines: "The silence of space is about to be shattered." Although, given the involvement of O'Bannon, maybe it should have been "In space no one can hear you... scream(ers)."
Best one-liner: "He's a fucking toaster!"

For what it is, I was pretty impressed with SCREAMERS. It ought to have three strikes against it from the outset:
1. A fairly low budget for an outer space epic,
2. A release date of 1996 (a dark time for quality sci-fi, as bad CGI began to rear its loathsome head), and
3. Direction by Christian Duguay. Duguay is basically David Cronenberg's sloppy seconds. He's Canadian, he made SCANNERS into a straight-to-video trilogy (WITHOUT Michael Ironside), he uses post-NAKED LUNCH Peter Weller, and here he also tackles Philip K. Dick (one of Cronenberg's greatest influences- see VIDEODROME). And SCREAMERS is basically THE THING meets TREMORS meets PHANTASM, but without being as good as any of them. This should be awful. And the mawkish, inane ending is. But everything that precedes said hideous denouement is extremely solid.

As solid as Peter Weller.

We've got a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, TOTAL RECALL, ALIEN), an excellent lead performance by the always serviceable Weller, and- be still my heart- minimal use of bad CGI! (With stop motion, trick photography, and makeup used to a generally favorable effect.)


Jennifer Rubin (the switchblade swingin', recovering junkie from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3) is our female lead, and appears to be quite literally under the influence of 'ludes for her first couple scenes- but somehow it works!

There's mind-boggling soundtrack choices and bad comic relief (with the taciturn Weller getting annoyed by a chatterbox rookie), but out of nowhere, a few genuine (O'Bannon) humanizing moments creep through. And, eerily, it seems that the flick wanted to make "Can I come with you?" a catchphrase in the same vein as "Want some candy?" in PREDATOR 2.

Is that PREDATOR-VISION?

In fact, for the dipsomaniacal drinking game fans among us, if you take a drink every time you hear the repeated lines "Can I come with you?" and "Get off my back!," by the film's close you'll probably think that you're a Screamer. Solid sci-fi, disappointing ending, three stars.

-Sean Gill