I, Madman (1989)

Hey, kids, remember mixtapes?  Of course, you do.  And even if you didn’t, the insanely wild popularity of the “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” from Guardians of the Galaxy (okay, and the insanely wild popularity of the movie, too) has certainly brought them back into the public eye with a vengeance.  James Gunn’s film also succinctly summed up what made mixtapes special and appealing.  They didn’t have to have a theme.  They could simply be a collection of songs you like.  Nevertheless, it was the ones that were assembled with purpose that were the most special.  We laugh today at some of the motifs (“Doug’s Rockin Party Mix,” “Mellow Jams,” et cetera), but there was a soul-baring forthrightness to them that held the majority of their charms (the others would be the packaging and the format itself, but that’s a much longer conversation).  For those who were awkward talking to people (I’m of course thinking of other people, not me), the mixtape could express all the things they couldn’t say, and set it to a catchy beat.  They were like serenades for which you didn’t have to pay live musicians.  I can’t honestly think of any longterm couple who came together because of a mixtape, but it sure is a nice thought, don’t you think?  And almost anything would be a better gesture of someone’s affection than what Malcolm Brand (Randall Cook) gets up to in Tibor Takacs’ I, Madman (aka Sola in Quella Casa aka Hardcover).  

Virginia (Jenny Wright) just loves herself some scary Horror novels, and she becomes particularly entranced by the work of one Malcolm Brand after reading his first book, Much of Madness, More of Sin.  Virginia’s hunky cop boyfriend Richard (Clayton Rohner), however, doesn’t like how her reading habits affect her, especially since they usually lead to his receiving a booty call  in the middle of the night (what the hell is wrong with this cat?).  After a fruitless search, Brand’s second book (the eponymous one) mysteriously shows up at Virginia’s front door, and the people around her start dropping like flies in line with the tome’s plot.

Dark Love is a subject running heavy through I, Madman, and it’s a theme that’s been around seemingly forever (if not, actually forever).  Brand craves the love of Anna (in the book) and Virginia (in the “real world”), but her rejection of him causes what must have been an unstable psyche to begin with to plunge off the proverbial cliff into full-blown psychopathy.  And so the stalking begins.  Brand collects the physical features he thinks Anna/Virginia is attracted to from his victims and attaches them to his own face.  That these individual pieces, when added onto his face, only serve to make Brand more grotesque completely escapes him.  But it is the act of transformation which he believes will attract his unrequited love to him.  That this transformation is only on a physical level further reinforces Brand’s misunderstanding of the situation (and it’s worth noting that not all of the features he purloins are from males).  After all, one can own a Porsche and still be a total douchebag (as we have learned from so many Teen Romantic Comedies).  

But it takes two to tango, and Virginia has moments of transformation as well.  In the real world, Virginia wears glasses much of the time (something she makes sure to remove when Richard comes to visit).  She also has a tendency to hunch her shoulders, a picture of timidity.  She likes Richard, maybe even loves him, but as she tells co-worker Mona (Stephanie Hodge), she doesn’t want to commit to him.  By that same token, she is not the virginal prude the audience expects in a character who is primarily defined as a bookworm.  She reads some of Brand’s work to Richard as she peels off his clothes, but it’s not indicative of her desire for “bad boy” loving in her life with Richard acting as a stand-in.  Virginia does what she wants to with her body.  That she gives it freely to Richard (the safe, status-quo-upholding, protective, handsome figure) while rejecting Brand (the dangerous, deviant, threatening, hideous figure) puts the lie to the notion that she wants anything other than an unadventurous life, particularly since she rejects Brand immediately outside of the written page.  As words in a book, he’s enthralling.  As a flesh and blood suitor, he’s the pits.

Art not only imitates life in this film; it is life.  It’s hinted that Brand was into Alchemy and all sorts of Dark Arts.  Outside of the Jackal Boy (a great, Randall Cook [yes, the same one] stop motion creation), there’s very little in-depth probing of this angle.  The film’s metatextual facet is a major appeal for me, and through this Super Science device, there is some narrative explanation for the return of Brand.  Virginia enters into the stories in the form of Anna, and the physical world around her changes accordingly.  Clearly, this points to I, Madman’s roots as a take on the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.  And yet, as a visualization of how we invest in words and imagine them transporting us, it’s marvelous.  But there is also some hinting that Virginia is the specific focal point for Brand’s resurrection.  After all, she couldn’t have been the only person who ever read Brand’s books, no matter how miniscule the print runs from publisher Sidney Zeit (Murray Rubin) were.  In fact, Richard reads the book with no adverse effects whatsoever.  It only makes sense, then, that Virginia’s emotional involvement is the key needed to unlock the door to the afterlife for her lovelorn lunatic.  

With that in mind, everything that happens in the film could also be seen as a figment of Virginia’s deteriorating psyche.  She could just as easily be the “madman” of the title as Brand.  This sort of story has this concept built in, because anyone who Virginia tells about her ideas is going to be disingenuous.  Naturally, none of the cops, including Richard, believe her.  One of her first sightings of Brand is for a split second in a book store mirror.  How does she know it’s him?  How does she know what he looks like?  How do we know she didn’t actually just catch sight of herself in the reflection (camera angle aside; We’re talking about Virginia’s psychology here)?When she interacts with Brand directly, the scenes are shot in a stylized, dreamlike fashion (again harking back to Nightmare).  There is copious fog, bright backlighting, wide angle lens usage, billowing curtains, Dutch angles, and so on.  Since Virginia’s reading of Brand’s words seemingly incite the mayhem in the story, she bears some form of complicity in the murders and mutilations.  Takacs and company want the viewer to doubt (if only slightly) whether what’s occurring onscreen is real or imaginary.  There is more than enough information here to read the film as a straight up Supernatural Slasher movie (and this is most likely the preferred reading).  But there is evidence to allow interpretation as a Psychological Thriller, as well.  The main problem with either is that the film doesn’t set up clearly defined rules to follow in these regards.  The rules of this cinematic world are capricious at best.  It makes the overall viewing experience something of a hodgepodge and not as satisfying as I wish it was.  Also, and perhaps worse, Brand is underdeveloped as anything other than a standard boogeyman.  Outside of his narrative motivation and what we’re told about him, he does not distinguish himself in any significant way from the pack of Slashers.  I still have a major soft spot in my heart for I, Madman.  I always will.  Just not enough to record a mixtape for it.

MVT:  I love the ideas in the film.  They’re right up my alley in so many ways.  If only the filmmakers had taken the time to hammer out their story’s bumps and give us more three-dimensional characters.

Make or Break:  The opening scene is atmospheric visually and has a distinct, heightened, pulpy flavor that sets the tone for the film’s ambitions.  

Score:  6.5/10                

The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

It is rather distressing to me, the facility with which people will place their trust in technology.  Perhaps it’s because I work daily with machines which appear to have been “updated” simply for the sake of being updated.  Perhaps it’s that (for all my claims to the contrary) I could very well be a Luddite at heart.  I don’t think that people who trust in ever-evolving technology (let’s call them “trusters” for the sake of brevity) are by any means less smart than me or that they’re easily duped, per se, and I can completely understand the desire of making things faster, more compact, and more portable.  Hell, I’ve been tempted on more than one occasion to purchase one of these newfangled e-readers.  But my main issue (which I’ll probably get over around the time I’m on my deathbed) lies in the nature of data storage.  

Let’s say, I buy a book.  So long as I take relatively decent care of it, I can keep this book for the rest of my life.  I can open it to any page at any time in an instant.  If I buy a digital edition of the same book, I have now linked myself to a device which requires power of some variety in order to read it.  I have to wait for said device to start up and say it’s okay for me to open up the book file.  If there is an issue that the data gets corrupted or lost, I now have to go through a process to try and retrieve that which I have spent my money on or risk having to buy the file all over again (unlikely maybe but certainly possible).  I’m sure there are some safeguards built in, possibly at point of purchase, to protect against this, and you can even back your data up (and give yourself some form of physical copy of the material, thus defeating part of the whole reason for downloading a book in the first place), though I would be wary of saving anything to ”the cloud.”  How do you know you’re going to be able to get to it?  How do you know your files haven’t been lost or corrupted in the cloud?  What if you’re experiencing problems with internet connectivity?  How do you protect yourself in a growing sea of cybercrimes as you expand your presence in the digital realm?  I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.  Books rock.  You should read more of them.  And besides, I’m fairly confident that an e-reader doesn’t have that same pulp and ink smell which only a physical book can give you.

One evening, as Doc Calkins (Bob Hyman) is just relaxing at his cabin, he is startled by the sudden appearance of Susan (Kacey Cobb) who declares that her boyfriend Dan (Richard Garrison) has made an incredible discovery.  Racing to the mine-shaft-cum-archaeological-dig site, the trio wends its way down to a wall upon which have been painted ancient depictions of Native American tribes fighting with a (rather well-delineated) Plesiosaur.  At that very moment, a meteor streaks across the sky and hits the lake next door.  The force of the impact brings down the mine shaft walls and (I assume) floods the caverns with water.    Hitting up the mustachioed, limp-coiffed Sheriff Steve (Richard Cardella), the scientists try to investigate the meteor, but the heat is too much for them to handle.  Needless to say, the meteor’s vicinity to a dinosaur egg at the lake bottom will prove to have disastrous consequences for everyone.

I would wager that William R. Stromberg’s The Crater Lake Monster was produced solely to cash-in on the world’s fascination with the paranormal in general and the cryptid Nessie specifically.  It has the stop-motion wizardry of the late, great David Allen as well as Jim Danforth, Phil Tippett, and Randall Cook to recommend it.  That’s some lineup of talent, and when their work is onscreen, it’s as impressive as it can be.  However, I don’t know if it was due to budget or time concerns (probably a combination of the two), but the shots with the stop-motion creature are sparse, even though we get to see the beast quite well early on.  Consequently, the monster never really has any sort of personality for the viewer to discern, and the life-size model of the creature’s head is immobile, thus adding nothing of value other than something to physically grab a character onscreen.  It’s just a large, dumb animal which was birthed and developed unnaturally and wants to eat people. If this were a Nature Amok film, then having a creature of this type would be perfectly acceptable, acting as an unknown and unknowable quantity (after all, who among us can know what really transpires in the minds of Plesiosaurs?), but we see the thing when it’s around, and all of its attacks are telegraphed.  This is something of a letdown for someone like me who has been a massive fan of the artistry of stop-motion techniques for as long as I can remember.  But I suppose we take what we can take where we can take it. 

Nonetheless, the film does not follow a standard Nature Amok framework.  It does not follow a standard Creature Feature framework (and, to be sure, the two are quite similar).  It doesn’t even follow a standard Melodrama framework.  There is no evil corporation polluting the environment or threatening to kick the indigenous people off their land.  There is no big festival on the lake for the monster to disrupt.  There is no venal, (but not strictly) evil city council member/mayor who places his constituents lives in danger by ignoring the warning signs and allowing the annual regatta/swim meet/seasonal park opening to proceed.  Yet, we have come to expect a certain structure in genre films of this era.  We expect an inciting incident to hook us.  We expect a lot of exposition and filler, punctuated here and there with briefly satisfying bits to keep us from walking out.  We expect an ending that, even if it doesn’t bring the house down, fulfills something of the come-on which enticed us to see the film in the first place.  This is not to say that we necessarily need to see generic conventions (despite our anticipation of them), nor that a standard framework of any variety needs to be followed in a film, but we’re getting to that, as well.

The Crater Lake Monster both meets and subverts expectations.  It is, in fact, loaded with subplots which go on for far too long and contribute nothing to the story other than enabling the monster to (thankfully) make a few brief appearances.  So far, so good.  However, almost the entirety of the rest of the film has jack shit to do with any sort of hunt for the titular creature.  In fact, what the vast majority of the film centers on are the not-so-funny antics and misadventures of local shitkickers and boat rental magnates  Arnie and Mitch (Glen Roberts and Mark Siegel, respectively).  Like a Northern Californian equivalent of something Hal Roach or Mack Sennett would have produced (but not remotely as entertaining or sophisticated), this unseemly duo just sort of gad about, take advantage of the “squares,” get wasted on what I can only imagine is corn mash, and peregrinate through the woods, woolgathering about how they’re going to be successful one day.  The typically heroic characters for this sort of film, the lawman, the scientist, the old wise man, predominantly occupy the background.  In effect, it makes the film into a quasi-statement on hope and modernity.  Mitch and Arnie are low tech guys.  They can’t even fix their own boat motors.  They talk big about what they’re going to do, their future constantly ahead of them, never living in the moment.  The creature comes along, and the pair suddenly have something new (ironically from the Mesozoic era and therefore being both modern and primitive) on which to hitch their wagon.  However, their hubris in believing that this deceptively primordial animal can be mastered may very well prove lethal.  Arnie and Mitch’s dreams run into the reality of the modern world in which they are living.  It is how they adapt (or if they can) which will determine their survival.  And yet, even with all of that in mind, I still prefer physical books to digital files.  Oh, well.

MVT:  The monster is the headliner, and he (she/it) is the reason to watch.  That it gets short shrift is somewhat disheartening, but to be frank, I’ll take any excuse I can to marvel at a stop-motion monster.  Sure, they have an artificiality to them, but if that’s your argument for not liking them, I would suggest that you’re missing their charms entirely.

Make Or Break:  I was actually surprised that they showed the creature as clearly and for as long as they did for how early it first shows up in the film.  Essentially, the monster’s first appearance is both payoff and inducement, and that the rest of the film is so unusual in approach as well makes the whole movie stand just a few inches away from the rest of the crowd.  

Score:  6.25/10