Death Before Dishonor (1987)

There is no way in Hell I can talk about Terry Leonard’s Death Before Dishonor without discussing the greatness that is Stephen J Cannell’s Hunter (I know, so jejune, right?).  Back when cop/private dick shows were fun, more than a little exploitive, and downright formulaic, Hunter hit an eleven-year-old me right in the kisser.  The true beauty of the show (outside of Cannell’s stylistic thumbprints) was the dual charm of its leads.  Stepfanie (I still can’t get used to that spelling of her name) Kramer was fiery brunette Dee Dee McCall who launched a thousand pubescent you-know-whats.  She was equal parts feminine and steely, sexy and flinty.  To this day, she is one of my all-time favorite female cop leads, and not simply because of her sex appeal (Mitzi Kapture, I’m also looking at you).  Of course, as befits this specific review, the other half of this dynamic duo was Fred Dryer as Detective Rick Hunter.  The character is a total Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry pastiche, but Hunter had a bigger heart and even, perish the thought, just a bit more charisma than Callahan.  Dryer, a former defensive end in the NFL, had a gruff but endearing (apologies for the cliché) magnetism that translated well to the screen.  I watched this show religiously, something I couldn’t say about Cannell programs like Riptide or Hardcastle & McCormick (though I definitely could for Stingray, 21 Jump Street, and Wiseguy).  Hunter had some harsh storylines, and the characters got put through their paces.  The episode I loved the most was “Dead or Alive,” which starred Wings Hauser as a cowboy-outfitted bounty hunter with a nasty streak wider than Hunter and McCall’s combined.  I recall it distinctly because it may very well have been the first time I saw a “good guy” kill a villain on a television show (I may be misremembering this, but I don’t believe so, otherwise it may not have been as impactful).  I’m truly surprised that Dryer’s acting career never really took off like some of his contemporaries (maybe he came into the action genre just a little too late, who knows?), though films like this one give plenty of evidence that even an actor as likable as Dryer can only raise some material up to a certain level.

Dryer plays the gruff but endearing (I am going to run this motherfucker into the ground now) Gunnery Sergeant Burns, an old Devil Dog trying to teach his young pups some new tricks.  Burns is picked by his mentor Colonel Halloran (Brian Keith) to lead his security detail in the (fictitious) Middle Eastern country of Jemal, where they run afoul of “Freedom Fighter” Abu Jihad (Rockne Tarkington, Black Samson himself) and his army of terrorists.

These types of action setups can be tricky to pull off.  Burns is a career SNCO (Staff Non-Commissioned Officer), and this doesn’t naturally lend itself to a film that needs to be cartoonish for the sake of the genre’s fans.  What this means is that Burns will have to go rogue at some point, all the more to satisfy the audience, but the script seems to not want to let him go full Rambo/Braddock/etcetera.  The filmmakers eventually let him cut loose, but he is, always and forever, a starched shirt (one could argue that this is an example of how “We” are superior to “They”).  The sort of antagonist in the picture also needs some distinction, because terrorists tend to be faceless masses until they distinguish themselves individually.  While the caricature-esque Jihad (literally “Holy War”) provides a nice physical threat for the towering Dryer, the true villains of the piece, the spotlight hogs, are the Teutonic Maude Winter (Kasey Walker) and Gavril (Mohammad Bakri).  Both are icy in demeanor, reptilian in their methods, and as hand-wringingly arch as Snidely Whiplash ever was.  Nothing that comes out of their mouths isn’t laced with menace.  They have a purpose.  They believe in what they do.  But they are also totally mercenary about it.  Of the two, the real attractant (sort of like Dee Dee McCall, minus any nuance) is Winter, with her pixie haircut, leather jacket, and oh-so-suggestively holstered pack of smokes.  The instant she shows up in the film, you want to know more about her.  Needless to say, we’re not given much more than superficial flourishes, but, I will admit, that was enough for me here.  I would strenuously argue that the characters of Simon Gruber and Katya in John McTiernan’s Die Hard with a Vengeance are taken directly from Death Before Dishonor’s contemptible couple but given far more shading.  Regardless, in juxtaposition to Gavril and Winter, how could our True-Blue heroes possibly measure up?

Movies of this ilk can be seen as jingoistic, or they can be seen as simply a sign of their time and enjoyed on their generic merits.  Or both.  The protagonists and antagonists are depicted as zealots on both sides.  The difference lies in their cause.  Burns and his men are about brotherhood, even more than they are about a love of their country.  During training for the newest recruits, the young men are hazed by chugging helmets full of beer.  They are then inducted as Brothers of the Golden Wing.  Dryer takes a golden pair of Force Recon wings and jams the pins directly into the newbies’ chests.  Then each soldier in the platoon takes a turn punching the wings until crimson blots their tee shirts.  These men are now united as brothers-in-arms, baptized in blood.  They stand up for each other, and their deaths mean something to their fellow Marines.  They have earned respect.  Jihad and company are religious fanatics, and this is easily comparable to patriotism.  However, the filmmakers clearly place the former over the latter in terms of nobility.  The terrorists also haze their recruits.  Young jihadi Amin (Daniel Chodos) is held in a headlock during a bomb training exercise, watching in terror as the lit fuse burns down.  Unlike the Americans’ hazing, this is no fun.  The contradistinction is further illumined in a couple of interrogation scenes.  In the first, Amin is intimidated (dare I say terrorized?) by Burns.  You can see he has been roughed up a little, but he’s far from crippled.  There is no music in this sequence.  In the second, Sergeant Ramirez (Joseph Gian) has had the living crap kicked out of him by the terrorists.  He is bloody, brutalized, and the score looms ominously.  We’re meant to give a shit about Ramirez.  Amin is just a gormless youth.  Further to this is the idea of sacrifice, again shown by these two characters.  Both give their lives for their beliefs, but Amin’s is senseless, destructive, and the boy has been manipulated through his convictions into this fate.  Ramirez’s sacrifice is in service of his superior officer, his country, and his brothers.  It is honorable, and it is his choice, made with eyes wide open.  It is obvious which of these has the moral high ground in the film.  

Leonard, being primarily a stunt man (this is his only directing credit), naturally handles the action in the film very well.  The big car chase, admittedly, is standard, but just about everything else is gratifying enough.  The script by John Gatliff (this is his only screenwriting credit) puts forth a nice amount of effort, and there are a couple of reveals that twist nicely.  But the film’s biggest detriment is the general banality of its protagonists.  Granted, they are meant to identify to a certain segment, but they are dry, even when they strain halfheartedly to be colorful.  While hardly a standout of the action genre from any decade, Death Before Dishonor certainly can’t be called dishonorable.  More like undistinguished.

MVT:  As much as I like Dryer, I have to give it to Leonard and his able-bodied handling of a mostly solid action film.

Make or Break:  The finale cuts loose just enough and finishes with a moment that almost lives up to the promise of its premise.

Score:  6.75/10   

Dance or Die (1987)

Jason Chandler (Roy Kieffer) is a dance choreographer/aerobics instructor in Las Vegas.  He’s also a recovering coke fiend, which isn’t helped any by the fact that his roommate Alan (Jack Zavorak) is a coke dealer.  After Alan is killed for his illicit activities, Jason is hounded by a crime kingpin who goes under the alias The Turtle.  But Jason has a show to finish prepping and a burgeoning romance with blonde bimbo Diane (Rebecca Barrington) to stoke.  What’s a guy to do?

Dance or Die is Richard W Munchkin’s directorial debut, and it’s a mostly solid one.  Shot on video, with a few stock establishing shots that were done on film, the movie almost holds together from start to finish.  That said, it is deceptively marketed, if the video box art is all you have to go on.  What a viewer expects is a slasher set against the backdrop of the world of dance, a la Michele Soavi’s Stage Fright which, by coincidence or kismet, was also released in 1987.  But the two couldn’t be further apart if they tried.  Soavi’s film knows what it is, and stays true to itself despite its ludicrous turns (this is, in fact, its biggest asset).  Dance or Die wants to serve several masters, never completely satisfying any of them, though it also sticks to its guns, for better or worse.  It is, at its core, a gutter level All That Jazz with a few more bullet hits and characters culled from the Cannon Films stock character list.  

The crime angle of the film isn’t nearly as important as either the dance numbers or Jason’s addiction.  There are multiple scenes of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where background characters tell their tales of woe.  Since none of these advance the plot any or develop the characters beyond what we already know, they become superfluous after the first one.  They do, however, introduce the character of Kay (George Neu), Jason’s sponsor.  She always has words of wisdom for Jason, and he rarely, if ever, listens to them, but she remains steadfastly in his corner.  But Jason doesn’t really seem to have any great cravings for drugs until the end (okay, a little at the beginning, too).  The time he spends with Kay is typically centered on the threats The Turtle makes against him (he has something the bad guy wants, although The Turtle is coy about naming it, which would, you know, expedite things, maybe) and his growing love for Diane.  Considering the amateurish way the action is orchestrated, perhaps this is for the best.  

The scenes which would attract action fans appear to have been done on the fly, with no regard for coverage.  Consequently, the geography is confused, and the shots don’t quite cut together well enough to be convincing or entertaining (except in a cheesy sort of way).  For example, a character on a motorcycle is chased by a car.  The two roll along streets in a way that makes M C Escher’s “Relativity” look like Route 66.  Things happen in defiance of the laws of time and physics just to have action beats.  So, instead of being pulled along by any sort of rising tension, the audience’s time is spent trying to figure out what exactly it is they’re looking at.  The initial hit on Alan and his barbecue buddies consists of random people, who may or may not have been seen prior to the attack, getting hit with blood splatter (the standouts here are the guy who tries to shield himself with a bag of briquets and the woman who nonchalantly eats her food well after the mayhem has begun, as if panic and gunshots wouldn’t tip one off that maybe they should run for shelter).  For as shoddy as this stuff is, there’s also just not enough of it.  Jason never becomes the action hero we expect him to become.  He remains a drug-addicted twit to the bitter end (like Joe Gideon, see?).

One interesting thing about Dance or Die does is how it incorporates its dance numbers into the film.  What Munchkin and company do is intercut clips from a particular routine with actions in the real world (which are not necessarily action-packed), until we get the full sequences.  While this does work as far as the technical editing goes, it doesn’t actually do anything for the plot lines of the narrative.  The threads are disparate, and they seldom tie together.  They mean nothing in direct relation to each other (with one exception: the big sex scene).  They’re just juxtaposed against one another, as if that’s all they need to be, bizarre transitions that look nice but are empty.  

It can be argued that dance and action sequences are basically the same thing (this most definitely applies to martial arts, but it can extend to more traditional action).  The difference lies in the fact that dance scenes tell you that they are a performance (most people don’t just break out in song, and, if they do, rarely are they instantly backed up by music and dancers who telepathically know all the steps).  Action, when done right, is just as choreographed, just as heightened, and is even often set to music, but it integrates into the world of the film.  Audiences accept this over the dissonance of the narrative break that accompanies dance numbers, even when the action portrayed in a fist fight or car chase is as ludicrous as anything in a musical number.  Dance or Die emphasizes the similarities and disparities simultaneously, just without any real context to make a connection.  

The dance scenes are representations of Jason’s inner conflicts.  For example, one routine has Jason strung upside down in a strait jacket while face-painted dancers in frill-accented bondage gear and hot-pink fright wigs attack him with clubs (indeed, it’s as much fun to watch as it sounds).  Another has a man and woman slither around each other on a motorcycle (in relation to the aforementioned sex scene).  Most startling is the one where the dancers are all hit by faux gunshots while they gyrate and paw at each other.  Any way you slice it, these are Jason’s anxieties visually translated for an audience: the feeling of insanity as the world beats you down, the passion of new love, the fear of death by gunshot, etcetera.  While these sequences are entertaining for their extremely Eighties conceits, it’s a shame they mix together with the rest of the film like oil and water.  And that, unfortunately, is the movie’s biggest drawback across the board.  That and the endless profile shots of Jason driving around Vegas.

MVT:  The dance routines are fun for what they are.

Make or Break:  The douchey, forced Meet Cute between Jason and Diane in the supermarket.  It’s pretty pathetic.

Score:  6.25/10

Aenigma (1987)

Escargot, that French delicacy that everyone wishes they could afford, but no one actually wants to eat.  Even if it’s slathered in garlic and butter, like in Lucio Fulci’s Aenigma, the prospect of eating some chewy gastropod with the consistency of snot holds little appeal.  In fairness, I’m sure there are, in fact, people who genuinely like escargot, but I don’t know any of them, thus no sane person craves them (this is a stone fact and totally not confirmation bias or somesuch).  But let’s be honest, if it weren’t for the continental air and the sheer status symbolism of their expense, snails would rarely be consumed in this country (outside of people stuck in the wilderness who have no other option).  I stand by this opinion.  Let’s not forget that these little bastards can be deadly, too.  They cover a victim in this film, smothering her, including one “I bought this from a gumball machine” slug that works its way into the girl’s mouth (surely, not a metaphor for anything).  Clearly, Fulci understood that snails are more horrific than savory to the vast majority of his audience (I ponder how this sequence played in France).  Considering the film’s director, I’m kind of surprised that the snails didn’t rip this girl apart with their tiny, fang-festooned maws (they don’t actually have teeth, but there is no way this scene cannot be compared to the pipe-cleaner spider scene from The Beyond).

Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) gets all dolled up to go on a big date with Fred (Riccardo Acerbi), the gym instructor at St. Mary’s College in Boston, which she attends.  The two-faced, prick friends of hers, however, have set her up for humiliation, and, after being chased into traffic and put in a coma, Kathy finds her mind free to exact revenge through the body of new student Eva (Lara Lamberti).  The more I think of it, the more this plot follows that of Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 (and, I’m sure, many others, but Prom Night 2 was a recent watch for me, so…).  Ah, well.

Fulci, it would seem, is something of a critic-proof director (at least in genre circles).  The worst thing I ever saw of his was Manhattan Baby, yet even that turkey couldn’t dissuade my rather high opinion of the filmmaker.  I think this allowance the man is given stems from two aspects of his filmography.  First, you’re guaranteed to see at least one thing in each of his films that you won’t see almost anywhere else.  Witness: the zombie versus shark scene from Zombie, if you have any doubt.  There is imagination at work in his films, despite the fact that sometimes he’s able to pull off the effect he desires and sometimes he isn’t (see the aforementioned spider scene).  But his films try so hard, one can’t help but be charmed both by their earnest ambition and their lunatic grotesqueries.  Second, the man and his movies unashamedly play to the peanut gallery.  Despite the themes that his films may or may not have (largely that the world is shit, and the people in it are shitheels), they are pulp entertainment, first and foremost, grand guignol for the spaghetti set.  Consequently, Fulci curries favor that other splatter meisters don’t/can’t, flying in the face of all sense, and it’s glorious.

Aenigma follows in line with this assessment.  To wit: Kathy is pursued by what, in any other movie, could be termed a lynch mob, and the revelers cackle and bray at the tops of their lungs.  It reminds me of a rib-tickler that the Joker tells in Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum graphic novel.  Basically, the punchline illustrates (with a moment of people screaming in a new dad’s face) that people are vicious, life is cruel, and it’s all a massive joke on us.  Kathy’s physician, Doctor Anderson (Jared Martin), not only can’t figure out why a braindead vegetable can “experience a violent emotion” but also can, apparently, read her mind in order to come up with this diagnosis in the first place.  He’s also completely not above chasing after girls half his age and all but fucking them in open view of anyone with eyes in their head (I’m including blind people in this statement, he’s that brazen).  A marble statue “comes to life” and chokes someone to death.  The beauty here is that the statue is actually an extremely obvious rubber suit.  Doctor Anderson wears a sweatshirt that simply states “University” (shades of John Blutarsky from Animal House).  Kathy’s mom, Crazy Mary (Dusica Zegarac), is the most pale, pasty-faced, pasta-haired nutso you can envision.  Her eyes turn red for no reason (is Kathy possessing her mother?  Is her mother the power behind Kathy?  Is the college’s faculty populated with witches/Satanists/bad apples?  Who knows?  Who cares?).  That’s just a smattering of the gonzo goings on at work here.

The intriguing thing is not so much the supernatural revenge idea as the classism taking place within this context.  Kathy is, of course, the Carrie White character (or Patrick, if you like that movie more), and she is as innocently gormless as they come.  She’s Melvin the Mop Boy from The Toxic Avenger, just a girl and slightly more restrained.  Furthermore, she is dirt poor, her mother’s job at the college providing the gateway for her to attend the exclusive institution for free.  This, in conjunction with her working class origin, places her beneath the other girls at the school and beneath contempt.  She is a thing to be mocked and tormented.  Consequently, Kathy’s vengeance is a strike back at the upper classes, and I would suggest that the forms of her vengeance imply a turning of the markers of high society back on their partakers.  Hence, we get things like a work of fine art dripping blood on a girl.  There are the previously noted marble statue and snail deaths.  An egoist of the fitness variety is strangled by a doppelganger.  The things the upper crust champion are the same things which enable their ends (mostly).     

Nonetheless, this wouldn’t be a Fulci film without a fetishization of the human eye.  The very first shot of the movie is a closeup on Kathy’s eyes as she puts on her makeup (while somebody croons, “put on your makeup”).  After the possession begins, there are a great many extreme closeups of eyes, sometimes with quick zooms, sometimes without.  Eyes in Aenigma are symbols of hatred, burrowing into the souls of others while simultaneously revealing the soul of the gazer.  It’s interesting to note, then, that there is no actual eyeball trauma in the film, which may upset some Fulci fanatics.  I can’t say I wasn’t expecting some ocular carnage, and the denial of this desire presents a subversion of this expectation from the man.  While the film does stand on its own well enough, a little eye pokery would, however, have made for a comfier watch (like waiting for Henny Youngman to deliver his “Take my wife.  Please” zinger).

MVT:  Lamberti is very easy on the eye, and she plays possessively bitchy as well as she does passionately vindictive.

Make or Break: The credits/opening sequence is as quintessentially Eighties Eurohorror as anything could be, for better and worse. 

Score:  6.25/10