Cut and Run (1985)

Ruggero Deodato’s Cut and Run (aka Inferno in Diretta aka Straight to Hell) opens with a vicious attack on a jungle drug lab by loincloth-clad natives led by topless madman, Quecho (Michael Berryman).  Waiting in the wings for the narcotics is Colonel Horn (the late Richard Lynch) and his amphibious plane.  Meanwhile in Miami, reporters Fran (the late Lisa Blount) and Mark (Leonard Mann) stumble upon another drug-related massacre while investigating a smuggling ring.  The duo talk their way into a travel assignment to probe deeper on the premise that their search will also turn up TV exec Bob’s (Richard Bright) missing scion Michael (Willie Aames).  Naturally, this is a great idea, and will turn out just fine and dandy.

Cut and Run is an Action film.  It is a Cannibal film (in texture if not content).  It is a Survival film.  It is a Cult film (in the zealotry sense of the word).  You’ll notice that’s a lot of influences.  You’ll also notice that sounds like an awful lot to try and pack into a ninety minute film.  And you would be right.  For as much as this is any one of the things it wants to be at any given point in its runtime, it doesn’t completely satisfy that facet before it leaps to the next one.  The film begins with a strong action scene.  The natives and Quecho are brutal, terrifying in their animal ferocity, yet the filmmakers cut around some of the “money shots.”  They take the time to show the natives strip and attack two women and then cut away at the moment of their fate.  Yes, we get an aftermath shot, but it feels like a whole lot of build up to not much payoff.  And this is the general approach to almost every scene in the film.  It’s not simply that they exit scenes early.  They exit scenes prematurely, and so the viewer is left dangling.  Interestingly, there are some extremely graphic splatter effects later in the film.  Yet, what they chose to show and what they chose to edit around is baffling, because it doesn’t feel motivated in the slightest.  Coming from a director who is best known for one of the most notorious Splatter films ever (Cannibal Holocaust, in case you were wondering), this backing off on the grue is a letdown.

Further to this, the hopscotch approach by the filmmakers is a detriment to the narrative.  For example, Michael cares for fellow prisoner Ana (Valentina Forte).  He watches her be used for the pleasure of any man Vlado (John Steiner) wishes.  He does nothing to stop this (and it should be noted, Aames’ character does little more than mewl whenever he’s on screen).  He connects with her afterward in a very cursory way.  They get split up.  They meet their individual fates.  The various arcs in the film have beginnings and endings, but they lack any real sense of development before they finish.  Consequently, there is no resonance and very little gratification.  And this doesn’t just apply to Michael and Ana’s story.  The whole reason the audience is willing to take the journey to the jungle in the first place is because we want to see what Horn and his minions are planning.  But even after we get any kind of an explanation, we still have no idea what the hell is going on; the reason given is as nebulous as the course Fran and Mark followed to get there.  It’s like having a comic book with all but the first two and last two pages torn out, and the last two are sliced down the middle besides.  The art may be appealing.  What writing you take in may be entertaining, but that doesn’t change your feeling of being cheated (or maybe just frustrating your desire for completion).  With a little bit more connective tissue, a tiny bit more fleshing out, and a tighter focus on the end goal, this could have been a great film.  Inexplicably, what the film does give you is certainly enjoyable up to a point.  However, by continually pulling the rug out from under our expectations, the film ultimately only ever confounds.  Despite my kvetching, however, I have to say I will almost definitely revisit this film at some point, and I dare say I’ll find something to like when I do.  Nevertheless, anyone coming to this movie for the first time really needs to do so with lowered expectations.

As with Deodato’s aforementioned gutmuncher classic, there is an element in Cut and Run about the media.  When Fran and Mark come upon the initial bloodbath in Florida, they do what we expect from the media: they film a report detailing the carnage, exploiting it.  Later, they will do this again as they send transmissions from the jungle back to America.  Unlike the despicable characters in Cannibal Holocaust, Fran and Mark do not facilitate the butchery they are in the midst of, yet they impassively dwell on it, leer at it.  By following the “if it bleeds, it leads” ethos to the letter, they surrender part of their humanity.  They never really do what’s “right” outside of their documentation of their experiences.  Of course, the viewer becomes complicit in this dehumanization because this is what we want to see from the comfort of our seats.  Additionally, it should be noted that Horn’s interaction with Mark and Fran is a form of punctuation on this.  He has the reporters film his statement of purpose (it doesn’t matter that it’s head-scratchingly vague) because he knows that this is the only way to be heard in this world.  For years, he hid away, believed dead, but Horn understands that through the media his thoughts can live on and perhaps inspire others to follow.  To be fair, this most likely will never happen since his words and deeds seem contradictory and unconvincing, but that he wants his actions filmed for posterity forces viewers to confront how they interact with the media, to some degree or another.

Similarly, there are themes of idolatry.  Horn was a follower of the infamous Jim Jones, and Horn’s own cult among the natives is an extension of that.  Like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now, Horn is, for all intents and purposes, a god to these people.  He understands the value of showmanship to promote his brand of cultism to his select few, but he also appears to be a true believer.  He wants to keep these people “pure,” and he feels that the outside world, especially the media, has brought nothing but contamination into the jungle.  Despite this, Horn claims no ultimate wisdom.  He states, “There are no answers.  Only actions.  By our actions, we are judged, pure or unholy.”  It’s an intriguing enough philosophy on its surface, but how Horn draws it to its final conclusion belies his words.  He thinks he’s showing members of the electronic jury a true path, but what he is actually doing is giving them more of what they want.  I do think the filmmakers have things like this to say in Cut and Run, but the questions they want to raise are muddled by the schizophrenic film that surrounds them.  Like I said, it’s confounding.

MVT:  Deodato is quite adept at manufacturing atmosphere, and Cut and Run certainly has a palpable texture to it.  It’s just laid over top of seriously shaky foundations.

Make or Break:  The opening assault is impressive.  Its culmination is indicative of what to expect: simultaneous highs and lows.

Score:  6.75/10                

Midnite Ride #32: The Washing Machine

Large William discusses Ruggero Deodato's The Washing Machine (1993).

Direct download: MidniteRide_Washing_Machine.mp3 

 

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Adios!!!

The Concorde Affair (1978)

I’ve spoken before about my half-Italian ancestry.  I don’t really go making a big deal over it, but this, combined with having a rather large family of siblings, led directly to how I express myself in conversation, I think (not necessarily in my writing, though feel free to disagree).  You see, most times, conversing with my family involves one of two modes of speech (and sometimes even a combination of both): yelling and screaming.  It’s not uncommon to have dinner with my family and go home with an acute case of tinnitus, and that’s if all you’re asked about is passing something to someone.  Topical conversations can quickly become shouting matches that would put almost any government bureaucracy and their modes of debate to shame.  This is not to say that there are ill feelings involved.  Far from it.  This is merely the knuckle-dusting, teeth-gnashing, ear-splitting method of communication with which I was raised.  There’s still love at work underneath it all, though for an outsider, this may be difficult to comprehend.  Unlike the titular vehicle of Ruggero Deodato’s The Concorde Affair (aka Concorde Affaire ’79), my family and I don’t need massive engines doing over Mach One to break the sound barrier.  We have our natural speaking voices.

Evil businessmen Milland (Joseph Cotton) and Danker (Edmund Purdom) are up to hijinks, shenanigans, and all-around malfeasance.  Concurrently, a Concorde on a test flight suddenly encounters all sorts of issues and crashes somewhere around the Antilles archipelago.  Maverick reporter Moses Brody (James Franciscus) receives a phonecall from his ex-wife Nicole (Fiamma Maglione), who just so happens to own a swank restaurant in the Caribbean, and she informs him that she has crucial information regarding the plane’s crash and urges Moses to come down and investigate.  So he does.  Meanwhile, stewardess (back before they were more commonly referred to as “flight attendants”) Jean (Mimsy Farmer) turns up as the sole survivor of the wreck but quickly finds herself a blackmail pawn of scoundrel Forsythe (Venantino Venantini).  

The Disaster film was huge in the Seventies.  Irwin Allen made a cottage industry out of these films, some great (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno), some not so great (When Time Ran Out, The Swarm).  Starting in 1970 with Airport, there were no less than four films centered on people’s natural fear of flying.  And that’s the essence of them.  These are thrill rides designed for people to have some catharsis over their claustrophobia, aquaphobia, pteromerhanophobia, etcetera.  To that end, they typically showcase a microcosm of characters, running the gamut from working class heroes to snotty rich folks, none of whom can negotiate the obstacles required for survival by themselves.  No, they must band together, however reluctantly, and act as a group.  These films also require one character who is level-headed and resourceful enough to lead the others to safety (like, say, another character named Moses?).  The reason why the plane, ship, skyscraper, whatever fails is fairly inconsequential.  What’s important is that their failure plays on the audience’s inherent distrust of machines (how does something so heavy stay in the air?  How does something so heavy stay afloat?  You get the idea), and their eventual salvation reaffirms mankind’s superiority to machinekind (that is, until Skynet becomes self-aware in 1997) and their mastery of their domain.  When this sort of film is done right.

It’s unfortunate, then, that Deodato’s film seems to miss the point almost entirely.  The first two thirds of the film are focused on Moses finding the downed aircraft and convincing the authorities that there’s something going on.  The last third is focused on his rescuing Jean and then getting her to talk with a flight controller at a London airport as the second Concorde flight starts experiencing the same catastrophic problems.  We get the filmmakers’ idea of the microcosm aboard the second flight.  We have the priest, the cripple, the proud athlete, the cutesy kid with her dolly, the fat guy with heart problems, and so forth.  Yet, none of them is developed beyond these broad descriptions.  None of them actively participates in the action of the film.  None of them means anything to us the way characters like Steve McQueen’s Chief O’Hallorhan or Gene Hackman’s Reverend Scott do.  Further, there are no complications for any character to actively have to deal with midflight.  It’s pretty bad when the main tension of a film is essentially resolved via a phonecall.  It appears as if Deodato and company wanted to make a straight up action film but were saddled with the Disaster elements, so they just threw together whatever they could in about five minutes worth of scriptwriting and filmed it.  Of course, the producers also wanted to get a piece of all that JAWS money which was floating around in the late Seventies, so they inserted a shark inside the plane wreckage.  And did you notice Franciscus’s character’s last name?  No coincidences here. 

That said, the action scenes are capably handled (as you would expect, because Deodato is a capable director).  Further, the underwater scenes are very well-shot and edited, whole minutes of the film going by without dialogue and generating some decent thrills.  The idea of diving to come to the truth is interesting, and that’s part of the point to which the film is heading.  Nevertheless, the film is such a hodgepodge, it never focuses on what it needs to focus on long enough to allow any of it to reach a satisfying conclusion, and what it does focus on simply doesn’t quite fit into the whole in a nice case of Square-peg-round-hole-itis.  This film is nothing short of schizophrenic.  And even this wouldn’t be so terrible an offense if the filmmakers seemed to give a shit about any of it, but I never felt as if they did.  I’ll give you an example.  A character has to amputate a hand to escape certain death.  Maybe a minute later, this same character is shot dead.  So, why the drama with the amputation?  Because at that moment in the film, they needed to generate some suspense.  Afterward, it didn’t matter, because the character had fulfilled every need the script had for him, and it’s heavily debatable that he was even necessary for that.  I suppose there are worse ways to idle away time, but The Concorde Affair feels at what heart it has like nothing more than a solid reason to take a nap.

MVT:  The film uses some miniature effects work that would likely make Ed Wood shake his head.  They are dizzyingly bad.  I was astounded they actually allowed the footage to be used, but in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been, considering the film’s origins.  By that same token, eating it all up was delicious.  Connoisseurs of this sort of thing know what I’m talking about.                 

Make Or Break:  The expositional scenes between Cotton and Purdom illustrate fully how little there actually is going on in the film.  All of the plot’s twists are revealed in these boardroom scenes, and once they are, it becomes clear to the audience that, yes, that’s pretty much all you’re going to get out of this movie.  So, love it or lump it.

Score:  6/10

Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man (1976)

The neckerchief is fashion’s way of saying, “Sure, I put enough thought into my clothes to accent my outfit with something around my neck, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to learn how to tie a double Windsor knot.”  Achievers (both under and over) have sported neckerchiefs for years (but mostly in the 1970s).  The late, great Charles Nelson Reilly varied his Match Game outfits between neckerchief-centric and captain’s-hat-centric (and has even been known to chuck in the double whammy of both at once, much, I’m sure, to Gene Rayburn’s chagrin).  Fred (of Scooby Doo fame) strutted his stuff in the face of faux fiends and pseudo specters whilst engaging in the fine art of neckerchiefery (okay, I made that word up), and we all know this haute couture accessory was the real reason that Daphne was into him (hell, she even sported one of her own like they were twins or something).  It even forms the focal point and most distinguished feature (aside from the disturbingly short shorts) of the uniforms for the Boy Scouts Of America.  The inevitable question then becomes why has this always-fashionable length of cloth gone out of fashion?  Best guess?  Like so many things people thought were “far out” in the 70s, the power of hindsight and sobriety brought into clear focus just how lean its actual merits were (plus people needed more money for coke in the 1980s).  At least it would seem that way to the uneducated, but we know better, don’t we, gentle reader?  

Alfredo (Marc Porel) and Antonio (Ray Lovelock) are policemen who work in a special forces unit under the gruff but kind of unctuous superintendant (Adolfo Celi).  Their mission?  Chase criminals, murder them (rather publicly) with impunity, and stick their dongs in anything with a vagina.  After a fellow officer (Marino Masé) is brutally gunned down by the henchmen of Roberto (aka Bibi) Pasquini (Roberto Salvatori), the lads make it their sworn task to terrorize and take down the crime lord and his minions.  And stick their dongs in anything with a vagina during any lulls.

Ruggero Deodato is best known the world over for the incendiary quasi-shockumentary Cannibal Holocaust.  However, Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man (aka Uomini Si Nasce Poliziotti Si Muore, aka The Terminators) is proof-positive that the director was equally adept at the poliziotteschi subgenre (think Dirty Harry in Italy).  My understanding is that films like this one were a reaction against the escalating violence in Italy (and certainly around the world, to be fair).  Audiences wanted a certain type of sanitized street justice to help them deal with their feelings over their perceived lack of control and security.  By that same token, however, movies focused on career criminals were (and are) equally popular, yet these were typically more about the rise and fall of a criminal than a glorification of the lifestyle.  

As much as we like to watch the bad guys get offed without the messy complications and uncertainties inherent in a trial, there is a strong sociopathic vibe coming off Alfredo and Antonio.  Their expressions when killing (and they are killing these guys; it’s not like they were chasing them, and the baddies accidentally ran into a brick wall or somesuch) are either stony-eyed or eerily satisfied.  The leads are almost bloodthirsty in their pursuit of criminals, and they are not above a bit of torture and testicular trauma to get the answers they need.  And yet, the two also seem to be in a state of arrested development.  They room together and appear to have the exact same schedule/routine every day.  They do the sort of idiotic shit kids with BB guns and dirtbikes would do, but these two use real ammo.  The dynamic duo are also two of the most brazenly horny young men ever put on screen.  They ritually harass the superintendant’s secretary (Silvia Dionisio), asking with which of them she would like to have sex.  She, of course, succeeds in making them even hornier for her by saying she would have both of them and then a couple more men.  While searching Pasquini’s sister’s (Silvia’s younger sister Sofia Dionisio) apartment, the cops (literally) tag team the woman, who is apparently the 70s interpretation of a nymphomaniac.  But it’s the earnestness with which Alfredo and Antonio act that allows the audience to forgive some of their boorishness.  They never pretend to be anything than what they are, they don’t put on airs, and they don’t make excuses.  Plus, they kill bad guys, and that goes a long way.

Like so many of this type of film, it has a vignette sensibility in its structure.  Long stretches of the runtime seem to not deal at all with the conflict between Pasquini and his cronies and our leads.  Rather random, violent crimes just happen, our demoniac doublet arrive on the scene and kill everything in their path.  That these rather long sequences are not linked to the main story in any way other than that they involve our protagonists causes the mid-sections of the film (and those like it) to sag.  Granted, there’s enough violence and action to maintain a sense of excitement and tension, but as far as pacing goes, it’s horrid.  Funny enough, this is one of the eurocrime/poliziotteschi subgenres’ more charming attributes.  It may not be quality plotting, but it does give an air of authenticity (sometimes) to these films.  After all, as Allen Saunders so famously said, “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”  And this sense of verisimilitude is given a big assist in Deodato’s documentary style of filmmaking.  Handheld and dynamic camerawork combine in many of the action scenes (particularly the opening bike chase, which I found reminiscent of the acclaimed chase from William Friedkin’s The French Connection).  Filmmakers of today, please take note: Even with a wealth of handheld shots, this film never induces nausea, headaches, or both.  There’s a correct way to use cinematic techniques and there’s an incorrect way (not to say experimentation is bad, but failure is failure in any language).  This is the correct way, and the quality in the filmmaking makes for a damn good (if fairly deranged and sanguinary) buddy cop movie everyone should check out at least once.

MVT:  Deodato’s television commercial work taught him to work both quickly and with distinction, and these skills really shine through in this film.  Only a few years before making stomachs turn and audience’s feel like they needed a shower after watching his work, he put his stamp on a genre which far too often is little more than strictly generic.

Make Or Break:  The opening scene is not only a cracking good action sequence; it also sets up the stakes and levels at which the inhabitants of the film’s world are playing.  The criminals are not above dragging a woman along a sidewalk and stomping her already-dead face to get her valuables.  And the cops are not above causing thousands in property damage while pursuing them and summarily executing the criminals once the chasing is done.  

Score:  7.25/10             

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