I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #193 - Q: The Winged Serpent (1982, dir. Larry Cohen)

Poking around other reviews of this 80’s horror/comedy cult fave I found one written by Jason Hernandez on his site The Constant Bleeder that starts out “Writer/director Larry Cohen is a huge weirdo. So is lead actor Michael Moriarty.” And though I don't generally like quoting other reviews in my own, it’s hard to get around the fact that he’s zeroed in on the key thing I like about this film, and Cohen’s work in general - this guy’s a weirdo. He’s a funny weirdo. He’s a smart weirdo. And a weirdo who understands cinema. And a weirdo whose approach to filmmaking - rough and loose as it is - is like nobody else’s.

            Cohen began his career in television, writing for many genre-based series - westerns, detective/cop shows, thrillers, sci-fi, courtroom dramas - often creating episodes or entire series from eccentric blends of genres that undercut generic conventions. And though well-paid as a writer, he wanted to direct features. But feature films are expensive, and his eccentricity made it difficult to slot his concepts into niches that would be easy to advertise and to sell. Take his first feature, Bone, in which Yaphet Kotto plays a man who insinuates himself into the home of a Beverly Hills couple who are falling apart already partly due to the fallout of their Vietnam vet son who’s become an addict. Kotto demands that the husband retrieve money (that he believes they have but they don’t because the husband has squandered it unbeknownst to the wife) while he holds the wife hostage. The husband sees an opportunity to get out of his marriage and life, the wife waits at home with her kidnapper while her husband is off attempting retrieve money they don’t have (little knowing that he may not return), and she talks to and gets to know and perhaps even fall for Kotto’s kidnapper. What kind of film is that? It’s a drama, but can hardly be put into the more exaggerated superhero types of the then-new “Blaxploitation” genre; it’s comically satirical, but not laugh-out-loud funny; it comments side-wise on Vietnam but isn’t a Vietnam film. As the studio marketing person, how do you sell this film to audiences?

            And so it is with the rest of his work - he puts so many different things in them that they never fit neatly into a niche, they’re hard to pin down, and they don’t often satisfy those coming to them looking for the simple, straightforward genre pieces they appear to be. However, those who appreciate the way he confounds category, mixes up genres, elicits great performances from actors, and generally works intelligence and humor into every frame find much to enjoy in his films. And that’s where Q: The Winged Serpent comes in. On the surface, this is a simple monster movie – the artwork shows a sinister flying serpent hovering over the Chrysler Building holding a bikini-clad beauty – but it’s so much more than that. Taking off from ideas of 50s/early 60s horror films like It Conquered the World, The Amazing Colossal Man, Monster of Terror and the like, Cohen interjects a story of would-be-lounge-singer-turned-petty-criminal Jimmy Quinn (played beautifully by Michael Moriarty) into the mix.

The film opens with an Empire State Building window washer (played by an actual window washer on the Empire State Building, naturally) getting his head chomped off by the flying lizard. Quinn then sits down with mobsters to plan a jewelry store robbery. We get more chomping action from the lizard (which rains blood down on to unsuspecting NYC pedestrians) then we see perhaps why Quinn isn’t working as a singer as he bombs an audition (with a jazzy number improvised by Moriarty himself) that Captain Shepard (David Carradine) happens to catch. Next, Quinn is off with his mob acquaintances for the robbery, which of course goes disastrously wrong, and he flees the pursuing police, running into the Chrysler Building where he discovers a giant nest at the top of the building. Shepard and his partner Powell (Richard Roundtree) meanwhile, are investigating a murder committed in what appears to be a ritualistic style reminiscent of ancient Aztec sacrifices in which the victim gives himself willingly to bring forth Quetzalcoatl, a flying serpent god. Is it possible that the ritualistic murders are connected to the flying lizard plucking victims off of New York City’s rooftops? If so, can Captain Shepard convince his superiors that an ancient Aztec serpent god has been raised and is wreaking havoc on 1980s New York City? Can Jimmy Quinn extricate himself from the mobsters who are looking for the stolen diamonds? Will there be a half dozen more absurd questions like these that raise themselves when you actually watch the film? The answer is a resounding YES for the last one, but I don’t wanna spoil any of the others for you! Watching the plot unfold in many directions at once is part of the fun of the film, but the real fun is watching the actors play it deadpan serious.

According to writer/director Larry Cohen’s hugely entertaining (and highly recommended) commentary, Moriarty got more interested in the film after learning Cohen’s way of working on the fly – only a few notes would be written about a scene to shoot, with dialogue often laid down on the spot and allowing for maximum improvisation; finding a location, showing up with cast and crew at the ready and knocking on the door to ask if it was available to shoot at – in ten minutes – and blocking out the action as soon as the location was secured, and so forth. It’s the exact opposite of every-shot-planned-out-to-the-last-detail directors like Kubrick and Hitchcock and gives Cohen the room to change things, improvise (and improve) scenes, dialogue, and ideas as the film is being created. Everywhere Moriarty seems smaller than his 6’4” frame as he inhabits this slouchy, hunched-over loser who’s very much an echo of the can’t-win characters Richard Widmark played in Night in the City and Pickup on South Street. David Carradine agreed to work with Cohen again (they’d worked together in Cohen’s TV days) sight unseen, and arrived direct from the airport for his first day of shooting knowing nothing about his character or the film he was about to make, only having been told by Cohen “Wear a suit.” And this film, with its special effects, many interlocking story threads, was put together in about a week, and shot in less than three – after Cohen was fired from a bigger budget production of I, The Jury he turned around, knocked out this script he’d been holding on to and made Q. Cohen found an ideal producer in Samuel Z. Arkoff, producer of all three of the 50’s horror/sci-fi “classics” above, and for whom the idea of a flying lizard god over Manhattan was right up his alley (upon meeting Rex Reed after a screening at Cannes and hearing him gush: “All that dreck--and right in the middle of it, a great Method performance by Michael Moriarty!” Arkoff deadpanned “The dreck was my idea.”). And the New York of 1981 is as much a character in the film as any actor – it’s as much a New York piece as any Lou Reed album.

Films like this just aren’t made any more – it’s simply not possible to get together a film for just over a million bucks and get it into mainstream theaters anymore. It’s a continuation of the B movies of the 30s – 50s –cheaper, shorter films meant to support a big budget “A” film on a double feature – that were largely given over to the “exploitation film” boom of the 50s and 60s. By the 1970s, producers like Arkoff and Roger Corman had brought these films to mainstream theaters – manufactured at a fraction of a mainstream film’s cost – but by the 80s this style of film was already being pushed out following the blockbuster successes of Jaws and Star Wars with studios’ eyes firmly set on massive money, not modest, well-crafted, profit-turners like Q. And now it’s big budget, big studio versions of films like this that seem to dominate the box office and mainstream theaters, and in this field Cohen seems to be forgotten, not having written or directed a film in over 8 years after a hugely productive 70s and 80s. But these newer films almost never have the verve, love, guts, brains, or humor of Cohen’s best work – and they *never* have the low budget!

-          Patrick Brown

I'd Love To Turn You On - At the Movies #38 - Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (1984, dir. David Markey)

The first thing you need to know about Desperate Teenage Lovedolls is that it’s a really bad movie. Horrible. The acting sucks. The plot is ridiculous. It was shot on a sound super 8 camera with the microphone attached to it, so you can hear the motor whir throughout every scene. But it’s a good bad, definitely in the “so bad it’s freakin great” zone. I’ve watched it more times than I care to admit, going all the way back to the early nineties when I found it in a video store on Haight St. Directed by Dave Markey, who would go on to make the documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke, it’s the story of Kitty, Bunny and Patch, three rocking chicks who put together a band after Patch escapes from the nut house. One day they’re playing their guitars and singing by the ocean when a sleazy record producer hears them and promises boundless fame and riches. But the path to success is not a smooth one. They’ve first got to get past their archrivals, the knife-wielding She Devils, in a fight on the beach at sunset to the accompaniment of the jamming part of “Stairway to Heaven.” The scene is so righteously raw and cheesed up, it made me love that song like I never had before.

Be forewarned: Desperate Teenage Lovedolls is not for innocent eyes. There’s a shooting up scene where you can see the needle sinking into one of the Lovedolls’ veins, and a rape scene that always pushes me right to the edge of my comfort zone, especially when I’m watching it with a woman whose never seen (which for some reason has always been the case). But the film’s awfulness is so campy it’s irresistible. And the soundtrack kicks ass. The project was spearheaded by the members of Redd Kross, who wrote and played the Lovedolls’ “big hit” and sing the theme song. There are also numbers by Black Flag, White Flag, and the Bags. I had a copy of it in high school and I played it all the time in the mid-to-late eighties. It’s a nice blend of loud and scuzzy punk chords with pop, heavy metal and a pinch of psychedelia. The music and the movie nicely capture that moment in time, when punk rockers were starting to master their instruments and began exploring actual music as opposed to stuck-in-one-gear hardcore thrash. The guys in Redd Kross chose the 70s as their palette, and ironically this put them well ahead of their time, because the retro fad of the late 80s was the 60s, and the 70s wouldn’t really be “in” until the 90s.  

One mark of this film’s greatness is its sequel. Lovedolls Superstar is similarly low-budget and bad, but it’s nowhere near as charming as the original. Yet it stars a veritable who’s who of the L.A. underground scene at the dawn of the 90s. Which proves that the first one was such a surprise runaway success that everybody wanted to be part of round two.

- Joe Miller

I'd Love To Turn You On - At the Movies #35 - Streets of Fire (1984, dir. Walter Hill)

If you have made it this long in life without having experienced a screening of Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire then it must be said that you have done something wrong that can easily be remedied by picking up the DVD case below, purchasing it from your friendly Twist cashier and racing home to watch it as soon as humanly possible. “But hey” you say, “What’s it about?” and I will quiet your mouth with my finger and tell you “That’s not important because tonight is what it means to be young.”

Actually, what it’s about is pretty integral to the experience so let’s start there. Directed by Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours) and written by Hill and Larry Gross, who had collaborated on 48 Hours previously and had developed a tone of “gritty fun” in Hollywood’s eyes. This led to a request from Universal Pictures to apply that “gritty fun” to a film that would attract the youth of the time (circa 1984) and capture all the momentum that the recently launched MTV was building in the youth market with all the pow and zing of a music video. Hill and Gross agreed to the idea but began quickly hammering out an idea that on one hand would seem attractive to the youth of the time but was based more on ideas that would have excited them in THEIR youth: spaghetti westerns, comic books, Nicholas Ray films and the wild and dangerous vibe of old school Rock N Roll. Put all of that in a blender, shake it up, pour it out and you’ve got yourself a tall glass of Streets of Fire.

The film is set in, as the credits indicate, “Another Time, Another Place…” which is a great descriptor of Streets’s world. The music and talk and style are all 1980’s but the cars, styles, sets and clothing are all circa 1957. In this world we meet pop star Ellen Aim (a baby faced Diane Lane) as she’s about to take the stage at a raucous and electric sold-out show. She barely gets to finish a song before she’s kidnapped by Raven Shaddock (a baby-faced Willem Dafoe) and his gang of vinyl wearing motorcycle thugs. Into this situation a hero must emerge and who better than Tom Cody (Michael Pare), who is Ellen’s ex-love and Raven’s long standing enemy? Tom is helped by his brave sister Reva (Deborah Van Valkenburgh), a plucky new sidekick McCoy (Amy Madigan in a great role that was rewritten as a woman just for her) and Ellen’s new boyfriend/manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis showing a great side as a D-bag). At this point the story couldn’t become more simplistic; the hero and his gang must rescue the damsel and take out the thugs but it is here that Hill’s direction, Gross’ writing and the hot cinematography by Andrew Laszlo take a rote plan and execute it into a vivid, colorful and absolutely fascinating rock ‘n’ roll fever dream. Oh, and the music! We gotta talk about the music!

With some original music from the incomparable Ry Cooder, the Streets soundtrack is absolutely owned by Jim Steinman whose collaborations with Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler created some of the best, and I do mean best, rock ‘n’ roll ballads of the late seventies and early eighties. I dare you not to lose your cool the next time that you hear “Nowhere Fast” or “Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young” playing at a party. In fact, just step a few feet over from this display and pick up the Streets of Fire soundtrack while you’re at it and infuse your ears with the aural satisfaction that it craves from a movie soundtrack. It’s this music in Streets that gives the entire masterful soufflé its real flavor and leaves you wanting another piece.

What are you waiting for? Pick up this DVD right now and correct the biggest mistake of your life then save the dates of June 1 & 2 for a big screen presentation of Streets of Fire in the Denver FilmCenter’s Watching Hour program. You’re welcome.

- Keith Garcia

I'd Love To Turn You On - At The Movies #32 - Portrait of Jennie (1948, dir. William Dieterle) and Out of Sight (1998, dir. Steven Soderbergh)

Portrait of Jennie (1948, dir. William Dieterle)

There is no more covered subject in the artistic world than love. Maybe violence, but if the actual references could be added up, I’m sure love would come out on top. That is why it is so difficult to make a movie about love that offers something new. So often love stories just default to two beautiful actors making googoo eyes at each other, living through some ridiculous plot twists and ending up where we knew they belonged: in each other’s arms. Portrait Of Jennie is different. It is a love story, but it is a love story that intersects with an exploration of what drives an artist. Of course the obvious answer is: love. So what’s to talk about? Portrait of Jennie takes the notion of the muse and treats it both metaphorically and literally. In the form of the always-reliable Joseph Cotton, Portrait Of Jennie follows struggling artist Eben Adams as he seeks inspiration and an audience for his landscape paintings. Everyone agrees he is good, but not great. While walking through a wintry Central Park (the entire movie is gloriously shot on locations in and around New York) he chances upon a girl. We aren’t sure how old she is, but she’s young enough to be childlike and old enough to be beguiling. They strike up a conversation, but Eben quickly realizes this is no ordinary girl. She tells him they will be together always. He laughs because she is just a child. She sings a song to him and when he turns his back for a moment she is gone. He is curious, and he can’t get the song she sang out of his head, but he doesn’t make too much of it…until he runs into her again a short time later (we’re not really sure how long) and he is amazed how much older she looks. She has left childhood and is a teenager now. Again their meeting is short and mysterious, but she insists he must wait for her to grow up so they can be together forever. This continues to happen: each meeting finding Jennie (actress Jennifer Jones at her sweetest and most lovely) at a different milestone; graduating high school, college, etc. and Eben finding himself more and more in love. Jennie is the perfect muse; mysterious, inspiring and just out of reach, and Eben finds that his paintings are starting to find an audience. He is becoming a famous artist, and he begins working on his masterpiece: you guessed it, a Portrait Of Jennie.

So at this point it seems as though the movie has veered into supernatural territory, with a woman who magically ages and can disappear at will, but at the same time, the story of Eben’s art persuades us that this might just be metaphor. It really doesn’t matter, because you see, ultimately Portrait Of Jennie is just tremendously entertaining. While telling this love story and following the progress of an itinerant artist, the movie also successfully ponders such subtexts as: the nature of art, the lure of the supernatural, the renewal of spring, the finality of winter, the inevitability of loss and the beauty of the natural world. We watch as fate draws the two lovers together through the years in spite of the fact that one of them may not even be real. Spoiling the end would be both cruel and difficult, because the supernatural vein continues as the plot hurtles toward a spectacular, and inevitable end. In spite of the unreal elements we come away from Portrait Of Jennie with insights about both love and art.

In addition to the dreamy, unforgettable story and the beautiful actors, the film itself holds many delights. Many of the scenes employ a special effect that makes the beginning of the scene look like a painting, which slowly morphs into film. There are also a number of subtle optical effects that make the movie seem surreal. It is this sense of “otherness” that ultimately makes Portrait Of Jennie transcend the love story genre and allows it to stand in a class by itself. There is a magical quality to this movie. Like love itself, it is complex, not prone to easy explanations, and once it gets under your skin, it is impossible to forget.

- Paul Epstein

Out of Sight (1998, dir. Steven Soderbergh)

Director Steven Soderbergh has made a major splash on the film world ever since he shook up a little film festival in Park City, Utah with his 1989 indie classic Sex, Lies, and Videotape. That film quickly established Soderbergh as a director to watch who had a way with actors and a tight script. His subsequent films, including Kafka, King of the Hill and Gray’s Anatomy, showed his refusal to get pigeonholed into any particular genre or filmmaking style. Soderbergh just makes solid movies, period.

So when the novels of writer Elmore Leonard began rolling around in Hollywood, beginning with Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty and Quentin Tarantino’s superb Jackie Brown, it made perfect sense for Soderbergh to be at the helm of one of his most exciting novels yet, Out of Sight.

It should be known from the get go that on top of being a great crime comedy the film version of Out of Sight also has the honor of capturing one of the greatest on-screen romantic pairings, just juicy with as much chemistry as Bacall and Bogey, in the performances of actor George Clooney (still freshly planted in his fame from the TV show ER) and flygirl turned singer turned actress Jennifer Lopez (with a rising star and some good roles already behind her). It’s this pairing that makes the film, which is already chock full of enough solid film treats.

Clooney plays Jack Foley, a career bank robber who is put away in the slammer after his latest job gets him pinched in the most humiliating of ways.  While in jail he befriends an old associate (Ving Rhames) and the two plot to bust out of jail and get back to doing one major last job. But while escaping prison they cross the path of beautiful but tough as nails US Marshal Karen Cisco (Lopez) and Foley spends a long time locked in a car trunk with her, sparking a bizarre but hot little spark. After a safe return Karen finds herself conflicted about her feelings for Jack especially after she is put on the case to bring him and his cohorts down or face the disapproval of her Marshal father (Dennis Farina). What’s a tazer gun-wielding Marshal in love to do?

On the whole Out of Sight is chock-a-block with all of the ingredients that Soderbergh needs to pull off a slam-dunk. It boasts a tight script written by Scott Frank (Get Shorty) that’s absent of fat and very faithful to its source material in that it keeps the action coming and allows plenty of room for a twisty story AND fosters a fine and fully developed romance that gives the whole package some tasty depth. The film also has a cast to die for which includes (alongside Clooney, Lopez, Rhames and Farina): Don Cheadle, Catherine Keener, Steve Zhan, Albert Brooks, Luiz Guzman, Viola Davis and, in a brief return to form, the lovely Nancy Allen who really makes you wonder why she ever left the big screen for such an extended time. Add to that a lovely tip of the hat to Tarantino by casting Michael Keaton to reprise his role from Jackie Brown as cocky police man Ray Nicolette in a brief cameo and you have yourself a tasty film stew.

And then there’s that romance and the amazing and unexpected chemistry between Clooney and Lopez! Beginning with an intimate and brilliant meet-cute in the trunk of a getaway car, the banter and sizzle that Soderbergh captured can truly be added to the history of cinema as one of the greatest scenes ever. What ends up on screen was a re-shoot that began with dozens of static shots and morphed into the masterpiece that it was. Though only about 1/48 of the final film, that scene is the hot glue that keeps the picture together. It’s the piece of the puzzle that makes sense to the totality of the film and keeps the action and the stakes at a comfortable yet dizzying high.

So pick up Out of Sight and surprise your loved one with an evening of smart, and yes, sexy, romantic thrills and laughs for this Valentine’s Day. You just might get a kiss as a reward and, if you’re lucky, some handcuffs.

Also note that Out of Sight will be screening on Friday the 10^th and Saturday the 11^th at Denver FilmCenter/Colfax at 10PM as part of The Watching Hour series.

- Keith Garcia, Programming Manager, Denver Film Society

I'd Love To Turn You On - At the Movies #28 - A Christmas Carol (Scrooge) (1951, dir. Brian Desmond Hurst)

When I initially agreed to review this movie, three months ago, I thought, “Hey no problem; December, my favorite X-mas movie - easy peasy right?” Then when I got closer to the due date, I started freaking out - “Oh what the hell can I possibly say about this movie? Everybody knows this tired story.” So, it was with some trepidation that I approached it. I hadn’t seen it in about five years, so as it opened I immediately started seeing things that I had forgotten about or new details about the sets I’d never noticed before. But, as usual the things that draw you into this movie are the almost miraculous writing by Dickens and one of the great performances in movie history by the sublime Alastair Sim.

First Dickens. How rare is it that a short work of fiction so accurately sums up a facet of the human condition that it speaks to literally everyone? How often does a fictional character’s name become an adjective, an insult, a state of mind? What level of genius does it take to think “I’ll take the happiest, most important day in western culture and use it to point out the worst inclinations of mankind?” Dickens did all these things when he wrote A Christmas Carol. All men have the tendency to turn away from the joy of his fellow man and instead see it as the foolishness of simple minds. When one is not happy, it is so easy to see the happy man as an idiot. And that is the lesson of this wonderful parable: one makes the life one has, and your life will be what you make of it. Ebeneezer Scrooge was a crabby old skinflint who hated people and in return was hated by the society he inhabited. It takes an intervention of supernatural proportions to convince him that he is wrong. When he is shown the folly of his ways, he has a revelation and becomes a better person. One might claim that Dickens copped out by resorting to the supernatural, but the three ghosts that visit Scrooge during Christmas Eve merely show him things that are true, and that he already knows. Dickens is really saying, if we look at the world around us, we will see the truth, and the truth can only lead a soul to kindness. This is a simple message that so few have heard, and even fewer have persuasively written about. That Dickens’ tale is so universally accepted as the embodiment of this message speaks volumes about his effectiveness as a writer. Scrooge’s experiences have a universal appeal to all who have seen darkness when looking in the mirror.

Dickens, like Shakespeare, was successful in capturing a fundamental truth about human nature, but bringing this truth to life is actor Alastair Sim whose portrayal of Scrooge accurately takes us from bitterness to fear to joy in less than two hours. Sim, a Scottish actor who made literally dozens of movies gets it just right. In the beginning he can barely contain his contempt for his fellow man, spitting out insults and looking down his nose at anything but the pursuit of wealth. When the spirits begin to visit him he beautifully follows the arc from fear to incredulity, to denial, to anger, and finally being broken down into acquiescence. The movie moves along at a breathless pace, whizzing us through the shame that is Ebenezer Scrooge’s life, as each painful detail registers on Sim’s rubbery face. Through his superb acting we watch a man go through a life changing series of events and find each change in his demeanor credible and heartbreaking. The real revelation of the movie comes in the last twenty or so minutes, when Ebenezer Scrooge, realizing he has made it through the night and is still alive, now has a chance to make amends for his bad behavior becomes a different man. His performance borders on hysterical, yet he shows just enough restraint to make it completely believable.

It was during this last fourth of the film that I found myself crying uncontrollably. I didn’t realize it, but I was taking the journey with Scrooge. Sim’s performance is so accurate, so true to the human frailties that plague us all, and his conversion at the end is so cathartic and joyous that we weep with him, not for him. Here I was dreading this movie, and at the end of it I am having the reaction that I desire from all the best art and yet so rarely get. It’s a small trick - it just requires the best writing in the English language coupled with a career making star turn by a great actor - no biggie.

- Paul Epstein

I'd Love To Turn You On - At the Movies #27 - Southland Tales (dir. Richard Kelly, 2006)

Back in 2001 writer/director Richard Kelly introduced himself to the world of cult cinema with his unforgettable film Donnie Darko. The film was an odd time-traveling parable that featured a star studded cast and made a star out of a young unknown actor named Jake Gyllenhaal. The film’s release itself was something of legend; released to terrible reviews in a handful of cities to a dismal box office, the film slowly found its audience and became a small cult phenomenon. Suddenly the weird little film that could was a hit and its creator Kelly got a wee bit cocky. He did a director’s cut that did nothing but complicate the film even more and over explained some mysteries that gave the first cut its real charm. Perhaps this was the first sign of what was to become of Mr. Kelly’s future and his next film Southland Tales.

Riding the high of Donnie Darko gave Kelly major gumption to create a very ambitious project with Southland. On tap was not only a gigantic event film filled with a cast of celebrities but Kelly began work on a series of graphic novels that would be released a year before the film and would expand a large universe of back story of Star Wars proportions. Everything was going well, Southland was granted a budget three times that of Darko, anyone who was anyone in Hollywood was circling a role in the film and main casting went to Dwayne  “The Rock” Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott and Miranda Richardson. Filling in supporting roles were Justin Timberlake, Mandy Moore, Nora Dunn, Amy Poehler and nearly every one else who read the script. People were falling over themselves to join the incredible second vision of Richard Kelly and the filming went off without a hitch. The studio trusted Kelly and gave him carte blanche on every aspect of the film and the planned universe that would surround it. Then, what luck, Southland Tales was selected to premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and Kelly was ready with his gigantic three-hour opus ready to unspool and that’s when things went downhill.

As soon as the credits rolled Southland was met with a thunderous boos from the audience and the studio and Kelly began to realize that having no limits on control was probably not the smartest choice that he’d made and as bad word quickly spread a black hole opened up and swallowed Kelly’s ambitious universe whole. The studio declared the Cannes cut un-releasable and demanded gigantic cuts and re-shoots in an effort to reclaim the money they put in to the project. Suddenly gone was the planned graphic novel release, Kelly was to change the film with no prescribed back story outside of what was on the screen.  A year passed and Kelly finished a 2 hour-25 minute cut and with his tail between his legs handed it over to the studio to be released in early 2007 with nearly none of the acclaim and hullabaloo that had been dreamed about. The film hit theatres but unlike Darko, and tainted with major bad buzz, it never found its audience and disappeared quickly.

So why, you might ask, should you watch Southland Tales with all of this back story? Well, it’s because the film is one of the most interesting failures in cinematic history. Unlike big failures like Ishtar, Hudson Hawk or Cutthroat Island the time spent “fixing” the film may have been the best thing for it. Going in with as little knowledge about the plot as possible is really the best way to enjoy the film so here’s the bare idea: After a nuclear explosion in Texas the futuristic landscape of California, circa 2008, is on the brink of social, economic and environmental meltdown. When a popular action star (Dwayne Johnson) is suddenly struck with amnesia he seeks out the truth and becomes intertwined with a porn star (Sarah Michelle Gellar) whose reality television project is reaching messiah-like proportions and a police officer (Seann William Scott) whose very body and soul holds the key to a major conspiracy as vast as the whole world.

Every actor does a great job in the film, showing some level of understanding what was going on during production and though the film threatens to go off the rails at nearly every turn, be it thru small musical numbers or with the heaviness of a very prominent Jesus story on tap, nearly every frame of the film, in its own failed way, actually makes sense once the entire picture unfolds. Southland Tales stands as a warning that you should dream as big as you want to when it comes to storytelling but never let your ego get so big that it gets in the way of sharing your story with the world.

Give Southland Tales a whirl and let’s hope that Richard Kelly will rise from the ashes soon. He’s got a lot of things to say. 

-Keith Garcia

Denver FilmCenter Programming Manager

I'd Love To Turn You On - At The Movies #26 - Never Cry Wolf (dir. Carroll Ballard, 1983)

I was surprised when I watched Never Cry Wolf recently and noticed for the first time that it’s a Disney film. I’ve always thought of it as an art film. Based on a memoir by Farley Mowat, it follows the adventures of a Canadian biologist named Tyler who is sent to the Arctic to study wolves and find out whether or not they’re killing off herds of caribou. On the journey north, he begins to realize the magnitude of what he’s about to do – live alone for an entire summer in a harsh wilderness, hundreds of miles from civilization – and he calms his nerves with a local beverage called “Moose Juice” – half beer, half pure grain alcohol. He grows so fond of this elixir that he buys cases and cases of it to take with him. When it comes time to take off for the final leg of the journey though, the beer combined with his mountain of supplies weighs down the two-seat prop plane, and the pilot starts chucking supplies indiscriminately—science equipment, food, toilet paper and god knows what else. He’s dropped off on a frozen lake in the middle of vast valley. He looks around, tries to light his pipe, and ponders what to do next. “The possibilities,” he thinks to himself, “are many.”

Indeed they are. He almost dies in several harrowing scenes before he starts to get a knack for the place and not only survives but becomes quite close to the wolves, even going so far as to adopt some of their traits by eating mice, howling and marking his territory by drinking a bunch of Moose Juice and pissing on every rock within a 100-yard radius. There’s also a compelling narrative thread of his interactions with Inuit natives that gives the film a satisfying layer of complexity. The storytelling is top notch throughout, with sparse and smart dialogue and voice-over narration to delicately move the plot along. But the real star here is the photography. Never Cry Wolf is filled from credit to credit with gorgeous shots of the Arctic wilds. The light up there has a thin, blue quality that’s unlike the light I’ve seen in any other film, and the director (Carroll Ballard) often pulls way back to show Tyler dwarfed by his immense and desolate surroundings, shots that carry as much thematic weight as aesthetic. Even better than the landscape shots, though, are those of the wolves. The movie really gives the feel of living with them, and they’re beautiful, fascinating creatures, with a complex social order. The best subplots in the film are the completely wordless scenes in which the wolves slowly accept Tyler into their society, and he not only comes to understand that they’re not a violent threat, he comes to love them. It’s like watching the earliest stages of humans’ relationship with dogs, and it’s very touching. But it’s never overbearing and sentimental, so it holds up to repeated viewings better, I think, than many of its siblings in the Disney family—so much so that it’s hard to believe at times that actually is a Disney film.  

 - Joe Miller

I'd Love To Turn You On - At The Movies #25 - Carnival of Souls (1962, dir. Herk Harvey)

There used to be a Friday night show in Denver called Creature Features. It was essentially a vehicle for a local channel to show low-budget monster flicks. Each week it began with atmospheric footage of ghost towns and cemeteries in the mountains and then a creepy host (Mr. First Nighter) introducing the film. There was nothing really scary about Mr. First Nighter, but I remember whenever that footage of mountain cemeteries would come on I would get scared. I was in my late childhood and not all that experienced with horror, but those weird scenes of deserted, shadowy graves just scared the hell out of me. It was around this time that I was first exposed to Carnival Of Souls. Late night and half-asleep is the way to view this movie. More than anything it is a dark mood piece, which makes up in atmosphere what it lacks in plot. Made in 1962 by an industrial filmmaker, the original idea came to director/star Herk Harvey when he passed the abandoned Salt Air amusement park by the Great Salt Lake on a cross-country trip. The abandoned pavilion is indeed a mysterious sight - kind of a Moorish castle sitting dark and brooding on the shores of this immense inland body of water. He drove home to Lawrence, Kansas and described the scene to an author friend of his who then set about writing a script.

The story itself is somewhat irrelevant. It is the overwhelming mood of dread and fear that pervades every frame of this film that makes it so memorable. The protagonist, Mary Henry (played by Candace Hilligoss) is an attractive young woman who begins the film involved in an illegal drag race that goes wrong and the car she is in plunges over a bridge. Thus ends any normal plot conventions. We have every reason to believe she and everyone else in the car has died, yet Mary emerges from the water dazed and covered in mud. We then learn that she is a church organ player who is relocating to Salt Lake City. As soon as she hits the road, the weirdness begins. She sees a monstrous visage; a chalk white man, disheveled and malevolent, peering in her car window, stalking her. On her way into town she passes the Salt Air pavilion and is fascinated and drawn to the gothic edifice. As the movie hurtles toward its inevitable showdown, Mary sees the chalk-white man and other zombie-like people more and more frequently. It is never clearly stated, but we start to realize that Mary has been in some state between life and death and these terrifying apparitions beckon her to join them in the pavilion for the Carnival Of Souls. Apparently, when you die you go to abandoned amusement parks and participate in pagan dance rituals - kinda makes sense. As I stated, the particulars of the plot are somewhat irrelevant; what makes this movie so special are the beautiful use of light, the well-chosen shooting locations and the ever-present and somewhat remarkable organ score which keeps the viewer on edge the whole time. The overall effect of the movie is a chill that runs down your spine and causes you to look over your shoulder.

By today’s standards there is absolutely nothing scary about this movie. There is no blood, no explicit violence, no bad language - in fact there are really no bad people in this movie; just dead people who leer at Mary and creep her out. Carnival Of Souls asks if there is a place between the shadows of living and dying and answers: yes, there is - it’s just outside Salt Lake City. This is the perfect movie to play at your Halloween party. People will find themselves mysteriously drawn to the screen as the weird images flicker on the screen in glorious black and white.

I'd Love To Turn You On - At The Movies #24 - Tears of the Black Tiger (2000, dir. Wisit Sasanatieng)

The longstanding tradition of American film paying homage or remaking foreign classics gets turned on its head with this Thai salute to spaghetti westerns and Technicolor-soaked love stories in Wisit Sasanatieng’s avant-garde western Tears of the Black Tiger. Employing a simple plot that is equal parts loving tribute and fun parody, Tears introduces us to Dum, known by reputation as Black Tiger for his quick reflexes and sly demeanor. Dum lives in the employ of local crime boss Fei, who also employs his best friend Mahesuan and often sends the young hood around to dispatch his boss’s enemies. While on his latest job Dum discovers that the man he is being paid to kill has recently become engaged to sweet beauty Rumpoey, who happens to have been the childhood love of our film’s hero. What’s a gun for hire with an easy trigger finger and an easier plucked heart to do?

The most delightful thing in Tears that speaks volumes to its magic is Sasanatieng’s mastery of visual style that has the familiarity of Technicolor epics past but becomes wholly its own beast. The film makes great use of giant, elaborately painted backdrops that aren’t realistic but instead create a dreamlike state that spins the world of the characters into a vibrant pastel candy land that raises its many action sequences to wild Chuck Jones-esque stature while equally creating a soft hand-painted feel that covers every frame of film.

Going back to that action and its cartoon like feel, Tears blows most homages out of the water by going full-tilt-boogie in its dispatch. Gunfights aren’t limited to pistols - machine guns and grenade launchers add to the melee of wounds that spray candy apple red blood geysers; thousands of bullets fly but miraculously never hit our heroes; and more wild bullet POV shots are used than needed but it’s an opera of overkill that keeps the film so sweet.

Lest you think that the film is all bullets and blood, fear not - Tears does a great job with the love story at its hero’s core. Dum and Rumpoey’s reintroduction and subtle dance around their childhood seduction becomes a thing of melodramatic joy. It’s loaded with luscious parting glances and wistful stares out of windows into skylines filled with the loving faces of a couple that should be together but due to their newfound lots in life, may never get the chance to see what their future could hold.

Few movies, and even fewer of them foreign titles, can succeed with a stew of pastiche from genre classics and make it so delicious like Tears of the Black Tiger does, especially given just how far the film rides the red line of over the top with so much of its style. Between the wild sets, sappy melodrama and crazy violence Tears should topple over on itself at just about every turn but instead becomes so enjoyable that you never really want it to end. By the time the closing credits roll and the final song plays out you may just be crying your own tears over this Black Tiger and find yourself hitting play one more time.

 - Keith Garcia
Denver FilmCenter Programming Manager

I'd Love To Turn You On - At The Movies #23 - Fast Cheap & Out of Control (1997, dir. Errol Morris)

Errol Morris mostly makes documentaries. But like any good documentary filmmaker he’s still telling a story, just using true parts instead of things he made up. Morris has been responsible for some of the most interesting and thought provoking docs of our time – not just political bludgeons like what passes for a documentary in the wake of Michael Moore’s films, but docs designed as films first, tell

ing their unique stories and letting the viewer think about the topics brought up in the process. He’s covered subjects as diverse as pet cemeteries and the meanings of them for the pet owners, a convicted murderer whose case left a lot of gray area (so much so that the ruling was later overturned and the man freed based largely on compelling evidence and a confession brought forth in Morris’s film), physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking, former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara, and others. What unites his films is not a set of ideas he keeps going to, but a process of discovery. A question is posed early on – Why are pet cemeteries important to these people? Is there really enough evidence on hand to put this man to death? What drives Stephen Hawking? Is McNamara really the architect of the Vietnam War that he’s portrayed to be? – and then he asks a lot of questions around the topic, rather than going in to find a preconceived conclusion.

When many people have approached Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, it’s with a measure of confusion. Here we have four different people doing four totally unrelated jobs. Morris takes his usual thorough approach to digging into their work and what drives them, but keeps cutting in between them, not offering obvious signifiers of why the four are put together in the same film. It’s referred to throughout the IMDB reviews with a slew of words trying to say without saying outright that it’s an odd film, referring to the “unconventional” structure, the cast of “misfits,” it being “about the thin line between genius and madness,” or using adjectives like “unusual,” “quirky,” “arbitrary,” “disjointed,” when they don’t just come right out and say that it’s weird. I think a lot of what’s hard to get a handle on is that the film is not merely trying to present a simple story of different four peop

le here. In fact, it’s probably the subtlest and most entertaining examination of the philosophical treatise of what it means to be human ever put on film. I know that’s reaching pretty far, especially when the material you’re using to make that leap is examining the careers of four eccentrics, all of whom study behaviors to varying ends. In the film we meet Dale Hoover, the

Lion Trainer, George Mendonça, the Topiary Gardener, Ray Mendez, the Mole-rat Specialist (and former entomologist), and Rodney Brooks, the Robot Scientist, and each of them spends a roughly equal amount of time telling us about their work and their thoughts about it.

The way they’re edited together in the film – which is a mixture of film, video, cartoons, mediocre serial films from the 40’s, TV shows, and comic book images – one talks for a little, then another talks for a little, each advancing their own story bit by bit in a non-linear progression. Sometimes these interviews are laid over images of a different interviewee’s work, sometimes over their own. And bit by bit, their interviews start to connect ideas, which makes the juxtapositions that at first seem so odd – one recurring set of shots under varied narrations is of the audiences at the Lion Trainer’s circus – start to make sense. While the Mole-Rat Specialist, who has devoted himself to studying the behaviors of the insect-like communities of one particular mammal, theorizes not about his beloved subterranean rats, but the spectators who see displays of his work at zoos: "They're looking to find a common ground... they're constantly trying to find themselves in another social animal” and the Robot Scientist says of his job that he is "Understanding life by building something that is life-like" the Lion Trainer and the Topiary Gardener live in the thick of the natural and social organizations that the other two theorize about, but unknowingly reaffirm their ideas with unprompted lines like "They're all different though. They're like people” and "You can't control them any more" - referring to wild animals and plants, respectively. As the film moves on, it keeps drawing lines that are then unwittingly picked up from another one of our narrators – the Robot Scientist studies behaviors and thought processes and speculates about the differences between man and machine; the Mole-rat Specialist works in areas about the social organization of a “hive” of the small mammals and extrapolates those ideas to human social organizations; the Lion Trainer constantly anthropomorphizes his big cats and other animals, giving insight into the behaviors of some mammals higher up the evolutionary ladder; and the Topiary Gardener brings it all back to the earth, opining that with his plants – or here you could substitute any life – "It's a touchy situation. You're fighting the elements... It's a constant battle all the time." Parallels are constantly drawn between the human, animal, and plant kingdoms – as when we see humans walking on balls after seeing bears do the same earlier – and the urge of man to tame nature crops up over and over.

I like to think of the film as an examination of order vs. chaos in four parts. The brilliance of how Morris overlays his interviews and images deepens the relations between those parts and shows his mastery of the medium, finding philosophy in the most unlikely quarters and asking a lot of questions without going in to find a pre-formed answer – just letting the questions themselves make for the meat of the film, and inspire new questions in turn. And drawing things up to a completely untidy closing, our Topiary Gardener offers this final line of the film: "As long as I live,

I'll take care of it. I don't know what'll happen after that." He’s in for the haul of life, and who knows what happens after that? That’s a question for another film.

- Patrick Brown

I'd Love To Turn You On - At the Movies #22 - Over the Edge (1979, dir. Jonathan Kaplan)

Matt Dillon’s film career started in Denver. Aurora, to be precise. A sprawling subdivision called Mission Viejo, to be even more precise. That’s where the 1979 teen-sex-drugs-vandalism-explosions-and-rock-and-roll exploitation movie Over the Edge was filmed. A very young, long-haired Dillon plays Ritchie, a suburban hoodlum who lives by one law: “A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid.” He was about 14 when the film was made, and he looks as cute as can be as he struts around the screen in a sleeveless shirt, bell-bottom jeans and a leather wristband on his left arm.

Much of what makes this so terrific is that it’s a supreme historical document. In addition to capturing a Hollywood superstar at a moment he’d probably prefer would remain hidden, it’s a shameless parade of what might well be the best-worst fashion faze of the last half century – a frenzy of feathered hair, high-waist jeans and ring-neck T-shirts with glittered tigers on the front. The cars are all boxy and big and painted in drab colors (the dad of one of the main characters runs a Cadillac dealership). And the soundtrack pulsates with power chords and screaming guitar licks: Hendrix, Van Halen, the Ramones and, of course, Cheap Trick; lots and lots of Cheap Trick. 

And all of this is happening in the eastern suburbs of Denver at a time when there was still more prairie than housing out there. The Mission Viejo subdivision where most of the action takes place is a stone’s throw from Smoky Hill High School, which opened a couple of years before the movie came out. It’s funny to see its split-level homes and boxy apartment complexes staged as a high-end real estate, because it has since become decidedly more low-rent. There are a few scenes at Cherry Creek Reservior, both on and below the dam, a shot of the old Stapleton runway that went over I-70 and a yellow taxicab with an Elitch Gardens signboard advertising a wax museum. How long’s it been since they had one of those?

Oh, and there’s a plot, too, and a fairly well developed theme. The grown-ups who created an oasis away from the city on the Plains forgot that a quarter of their residents would be kids, so there’s nothing for the youngins to do except hang out at a Quonset hut rec center until it closes at six at night, then spend the night getting high, screwing and breaking stuff – and dodging Sgt. Doberman, an asshole cop who gets off on throwing kids up against his squad car and frisking them. To make matters worse, a long-promised bowling alley/skating rink/movie theater is jettisoned to make way for an industrial park. Then, near the end of act one, a gun appears, almost inexplicably, sending the whole story careening down the road toward all-out teenage bedlam.

- Joe Miller

I'd Love To Turn You On - At the Movies #21 - Altered States (dir. Ken Russell, 1980)

Ken Russell is a madman. I’ve seen almost every film he’s made and that is the conclusion I’ve drawn. Altered States is no exception and it is his most conventional film. Based on a Paddy Chayevsky novel the real kernel of the film goes back to a short story by H. P. Lovecraft called “Back There.” In it, a man discovers a way to access the genetic history inherent in all our brains and become, essentially, a caveman. In Altered States Harvard Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt in his first film role) conducts experiments with graduate students that combine strong hallucinogenic drugs with sessions in an isolation tank. The results start to get weird and, being a man of science in 1967, Professor Jessup decides he needs to try it for himself. He does so and the results are startling. Eddie is a big question kind of guy, and his experiences floating in total sensory deprivation lead to incredible hallucinations involving his religious upbringing, his feelings towards his wife (played with doe-eyed beauty by Blair Brown - whatever happened to her?), and his desire to understand and be part of a more primitive state of being. He finds out about a tribe of Indians in Mexico who use a mushroom to induce common visions of ancestral creation. Jessup visits them and has a powerful trip that leaves him naked on a hillside with a dead lizard next to him. He decides he must combine this mushroom with the isolation tank. And this is all in the first 20 minutes of the movie!

Ken Russell attacks the subject with such vigor and visual flair that one hardly questions what is happening. It is only after Jessup returns to his experiments and enhances them with the mushroom extract, which he somehow talked the Indians out of, that things really start to get weird. His colleagues at Harvard are starting to think he is a flake and his wife is ready to take the kids and leave. His sessions find him physically regressing and actually becoming a primitive man. Although the film has been moving at a fast clip up to this point, it is now that the special effects really take over and the film goes into hyperdrive. Jessup ultimately takes the experiment as far as it can go, physically mutating into a dangerous ape like creature. To learn how he gets out of this state will require you seeing the movie. It is very worth the journey because Russell is such a fearless and personal director. Tackling hallucinations on film has historically proven to be a dicey business. Many directors less talented than Russell have failed miserably. While some of his techniques are dated, there is a colorful brilliance to these sequences that justify the price of admission. The movie keeps to a dark palette of colors during the rest of the action, so the hallucination scenes nearly explode off the screen. Filled with flying sparks, religio-sexual imagery, and cells breaking down into DNA it is all great fun, and Russell’s own sense of authority in the fields of both asking the big questions and tripping balls are obvious in every frame.

Walking the line between serious science fiction and action-filled crowd pleasing is a perilous task. It is so easy to undermine the important thematic elements of a film by making the action too bread and circus-y. Altered States takes it as far as one can go in both directions without splitting in two. Ken Russell’s film is both intellectually rewarding and filled with enough pulse-pounding to keep even the most primitive human engaged.