Crimes of Passion (1984)

Director: Ken Russell
Writer(s): Barry Sandler
Starring: Kathleen Turner, Anthony Perkins, Bruce Davison, and John Laughlin

The first thing that pops up on the screen, immediately after pressing play on your remote control, are the words “A Ken Russell Film”. It's not very often that a credit serves dual notice as a warning, but Russell has always been known for his visual flamboyance and over-the-top fearlessness, and both of them are on display in Crimes of Passion, a hooker-falls-in-love-with-man film unlike any other. If you took Pretty Woman, removed all of the sappy hopefulness and lightheartedness, replaced it with both a healthy dose of cynicism, and Anthony Perkins as a maniacal street preacher, you would still be pretty far off from accurately describing this bizarre '80s concoction, but you would be getting warmer.

Kathleen Turner plays both Joanna Crane and China Blue: the first is what her coworkers refer to her as by day, when she holds a steady job working in a fashion design house, while the second is what her clients call her by night, when she throws on a blue dress and transforms herself into a self-described “$50 hooker” that focuses on fetishes. She shuns the safety of the safe, suburban apartment that she owns as Joanna, and operates out of a dingy, rundown studio in the city's red-light district, dressing up and playing roles that appeal to her paying customers.

Bobby Grady (John Laughlin), on the other hand, is a married man who's stuck in a sexless marriage with his annoying, frigid bitch of a wife. As the film opens, he is at a group therapy session, under the guise of merely being there to provide support to his friend, whom he came with. But all it takes is a little bit of ribbing from some females there before serious cracks start to show in his assurance that his life is perfect; it takes even less time than that once he returns home for us to realize just how miserable his existence truly is. She's an emotionless wreck of a woman, who's first reaction at everything he does seems to be rolling her eyes and sighing, while he recoils for a few seconds before trying again. According to him, they have been married for eleven years, and it's a wonder how he has even managed to last that long (although they do have two kids, so that is probably a rather large factor).

Bobby works at his own electronics repair shop, which doesn't bring in a lot of money; unsurprisingly, this is also a constant point of frustration from his wife, who seems to constantly be in want of material things that his meager income cannot provide. She urges him to work more so they can get the hot tub that only she seems to dream of getting, and nags him into responding to a job offer a friend had given him. It's a night gig as a private investigator. The owner of a fashion design house has noted that his business is losing money for the first time in twenty years, and is certain one of his workers has been selling patterns to competitors. His likely suspect is the shy, reserved Joanna Crane, who he feels is almost too good of a worker to be true; Bobby's job is to shadow her at night, to see where she goes and what she is doing in her free time.

From here, it's your standard sexually-repressed-married-man-turned-private-investigator-discovers-suspected-thief-is-actually-prostitute romance, as a series of events pull the two together for a steamy sexual encounter that shatters both of their worlds. For Bobby, it not only represents the first sexual encounter he has had in many months, but also the most open and honest; for China Blue, it represents the first time that someone was able to legitimately fight through her facade and catch her emotionally off guard. Through her character, she has made a secondary living out of anonymously manipulating men; the way they seem to long for her even after their paid time expires seems to be the only thing that gets her off. But her usual tricks don't work with Bobby—it's evident even as she denies it that she is reciprocating his feelings, a fact that clearly upsets her because it's the first time that she is not in control.

There is another, twisted piece to this already-complex web, and it comes in the form of disturbed street preacher Peter Shayne (an over-the-top Anthony Perkins). From the looks of things, Shayne has been a longtime fixture in these seedy city streets, rambling long-winded passages to sex workers and promising to absolve them of their sins, thus saving their souls. But for some reason, he takes a specific interest in “rescuing” China Blue, and begins to constantly stalk and harass her; things reach a peak when he (unknowingly to her) rents out the apartment next to her and installs peepholes, allowing him to hear and watch everything that she does.

I mentioned that Perkins is over-the-top as Shayne, but that wasn't a knock; it fits right at home with Russell's lurid vision. Reportedly, he molded himself so completely into his character, that he even became an ordained minister to help prepare for his role; he also allegedly sniffed nitrites before every scene, something that no doubt helped to bring an unhinged unpredictability to his character (indeed, the “piano scene” might just be one of the most effective villain moments in film history; it's so legitimately out of left-field, yet so convincingly portrayed, that it somehow simultaneously baffles, humors, and chills).

Turner and Laughlin also have great chemistry as the star-crossed lovers. The weakest link in the acting department would appear to be Annie Potts as Amy Grady, Bobby's whiny, empty shell of a wife. But I wouldn't be surprised if this was an intentional decision by Russell, to heighten her lack of appeal, and to succinctly summarize in just a few minutes of screentime how Bobby must feel having been married to her for the last eleven years.

The film's biggest drawback is that, once you look past the audacious visual style and vulgar dialogue, this winds up being too close for comfort to your average, everyday thriller. Russell is always keen on tossing in some unexpected visual surprises, such as an in-your-face music video for Rick Wakeman's “It's a Lovely Life” that comes out of nowhere, but no such attention is paid to the script, which meanders along the obvious path, and ends on an interesting note; “interesting” only in how noteless and truly uneventful it really is.

Speaking of Wakeman, his score (which is entirely based upon Antonin Dvorak's symphony, “From the New World”) is fantastic. It seems to catch a lot of flak online (much to my astonishment), and I'm generally not a fan of synth-heavy music at all, but there are some choice cuts here, like the aforementioned “It's a Lovely Life”, or “Eastern Shadows”, which accompanies a rather long sex scene. His music sets the appropriate mood, without sounding too dated, an impressive feat for any '80s score, made even more amazing by one so reliant on keyboards and the sounds of the times. It's truly an underrated work that really heightens Russell's own visual approach and makes it all stick together as one cohesive unit.

This isn't Russell at his best, nor is it Russell at his worst: it's just Ken Russell, period. His wild, carefree directing style never aimed to impress with pinpoint accuracy, which means his films frequently went all over the place, as if seemingly on a whim. It doesn't always work, just as Crimes of Passion doesn't always hit the mark, but this fearlessness and refusal to bow down to the “laws” of film (not to mention good taste) is what made him a truly underrated director. That, and his under-acknowledged knack for frequently bringing out the best in his leads, making him not only the stylish, confrontational visual tour-de-force for which he will always be remembered, but also a true actor's director.

RATING: 7/10

TRAILER

Gremlins (1984)

Director: Joe Dante
Writer(s): Chris Columbus
Starring: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, and Corey Feldman 

The first time I saw Joe Dante’s Gremlins was about the same time everyone sees Gremlins for the first time—as a small child.  I was so small, in fact, that I didn’t remember a single thing about it, and might have never watched it again had a simple search for popular Christmas movies not placed it back on my radar.

I really wish it hadn’t, because this movie is godawful.  Kids may like it, which is no surprise, considering kids can be entertained by the stupidest of things for hours, but how anyone over the age of ten can enjoy this is beyond me.  It’s the kind of movie where people are given clear instructions on what to do, completely ignore them, and then we are supposed to cheer for them as they try to fix everything wrong that they’ve done.  I don’t get any satisfaction out of cheering for complete morons.

Gremlins begins with some idiot dad going into a creepy, hidden shop in Chinatown.  He’s an inventor, and apparently feels the best place to sell some of his items is in a hidden shop so far off the beaten path that the owner’s grandson has to lead him to it.  Anyway, while he’s there, he hears noises coming from a small chest, and discovers what the owner and his grandson call a “mogwai”:  he’s a cute little furry creature that strongly resembles a Furby (through no coincidence; Tiger Electronics clearly modeled the look of their “smart toy” after the little guy).  The owner refuses to sell the mogwai to the inventor, but he ends up talking the grandson into selling it to him.

After the purchase, he is alerted to three super-important rules: 1.) Keep the mogwai away from bright lights, but especially sunlight. 2.) Do not put him anywhere near water, and 3.) Do not feed him after midnight (a curious rule, considering feeding him at 8 a.m. is technically “after midnight,” and no specific timeframe is ever mentioned).  The inventor dad immediately gives it to his son, Billy (who I was thinking would be very young from the way the dad was talking about him to the shop owner, but he turns out to be a teenager), and alerts him to the three rules.  True-to-form, Billy’s friend knocks water onto the poor creature, because it seemingly is impossible to not have water anywhere near something at all times.  This causes him to “give birth” to several other adorable mogwais. 

Fascinated by this, Billy takes him to his science teacher for analysis, but conveniently forgets to warn him of the rules; things get bad when he feeds a mogwai after midnight, causing him to turn into an evil gremlin!  Astonishingly, Billy also feeds his mogwai offspring after midnight, because he didn’t realize that his clock was stuck at 11:40 for three hours—as it turns out, they cut the cord to the clock to trick Billy into feeding them!

At first, the freshly-born mogwais all look cute and innocent, but soon turn into evil gremlins who want to make life terrible for all of mankind.  And there you have it…it alternates between scenes of the gremlins terrorizing Gizmo, the cute and initial mogwai the dad purchased from the shop, with scenes of them causing destruction all over the town.  And of course it’s up to Billy to stop it.

The writing is flat and terrible; there is a strongly divisive scene in the middle of Gremlins where the film’s obligatory love interest/female lead Kate, recalls a horrifying story to Billy, about the surprisingly disturbing fate of her father one Christmas Eve.  Everything about this scene is terrible, from the timing (the two are looking for something, and Billy never even acknowledges her as she talks, so it just feels like she’s rambling on for no reason), on down to the content, which could have been played for laughs, but is completely and utterly serious.  Steven Spielberg and Chris Columbus (the film’s executive producer and writer, respectively) both wanted it cut from the movie, because they couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be sad or funny.  Director Joe Dante fought to keep it in, claiming that also summarized the entire gist of the movie (which isn’t true—it’s clearly supposed to be comical), and inexplicably won.  I feel I have to congratulate him on owning up to one of the worst scenes ever included in any film.

Gremlins only has two things going for it, and neither involve writing: the excellent effects work, and the fact that Gizmo is one of the most adorable things ever put on screen.  Scenes of the evil gremlins frantically riding bikes are hysterical—it’s a shame there wasn’t more of a focus put on their scenes, beyond showing them grumble incoherent phrases while they drink and smoke (a joke that wears off after the millionth time it’s shown).  Meanwhile, Gizmo is so freakin’ adorable that you just want to jump through the screen and give him the world’s biggest hug—his noises and songs only add to his utter adorableness.  It’s really no surprise that his look was ripped off for the popular toy line.

Rumor has it that the movie was originally going to be even darker, featuring a scene where Billy’s mom was decapitated; her head tossed down the stairs for comedic effect.  As filming commenced, the filmmakers agreed to tone down the violence, to make it more palatable for younger viewers.  It was rated PG upon release, but many felt that the violence and dark tone was too strong for a PG, but not nearly enough to warrant an R—this, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, lead to the MPAA creating the PG-13 rating.  Now imagine if Steven Spielberg actually made daring, audacious movies instead of mainstream crowd-pleasers—he might have helped usher in a rating between R and NC-17, like one Roger Ebert was calling for, for decades. 

Instead, we have a movie that came from a script that Spielberg himself said, at the time, was “one of the most original things I’ve come across in many years”.  It comes as no surprise to me that the master of bland, safe blockbusters would both call this “original” and find something in here actually worth making.

RECAP: Painfully unfunny and poorly written, Gremlins succeeds only in the excellent special effects work; scenes of the evil gremlins riding bikes and cackling with sadistic glee are hilarious.  Unfortunately, most of their scenes merely consist of them angrily talking while they smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol.  Gizmo is utterly adorable, and the sole consistent bright spot.  If you do get stuck watching this, for whatever reason, look for Kate’s monologue, which is one of the worst scenes ever included in a film.  Whether you’re wanting to view this as a Christmas movie, or a movie for any other day of the year, don’t.

RATING: 2.5/10

KATE'S MONOLOGUE:

TRAILER:

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) (Unrated Director's Cut)

Director: Charles E. Sellier, Jr.
Writer(s): Paul Caimi and Michael Hickey, from a story by Caimi
Starring: Lilyan Chauvin, Gilmer McCormick, and Toni Nero

My my, how times do change.  It was roughly thirty years ago that Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s serial killin’ Santa hit the big screen, to impassioned protests from angry parents concerned about the level of sex and violence contained in a Christmas movie.  Although pulled from its initial release due to public pressure, future releases have used the controversy as a selling point…along with the four sequels that it spawned.  Nowadays, a movie this tame could open without anyone so much as batting an eye (like the god-awful remake of Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, which opened on Christmas Day in 2006 with little-to-no resistance).

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a curious picture; one that reverses the typical complaints I have with slasher films.  I’ve made the analogy before that slasher movies are akin to pornographic movies; not because they feature often copious amounts of sex and nudity, but because the only reason people watch them is to see the violent kill scenes.  Obviously, this is parallel to pornos, where people skip the story to get straight to the “good stuff”.

Normally, I share this mindset, as many slasher films have threadbare plots designed solely to contain as many graphic scenes of mayhem as possible.  Silent Night, Deadly Night is the first one I can remember that gets off to a great start, only to get derailed once the pointless murders start to take place.  This bummed me out, because the first half-hour really exceeded my expectations, to the point that I thought we might have a new Christmas movie tradition in our family; alas, it only turned out to be a lump of coal.

Billy is a child who was orphaned after watching his mother and father get killed by a man dressed up as Santa Claus (he had used the disguise to rob a bank).  Life doesn’t get much better in the orphanage, where he is treated like garbage by a sadistic Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin).  The only person who seems to understand his ordeal is Sister Margaret, but even she is powerless to stand up to her boss, and so the punishments continue.

We flash forward ten years later, and Billy is now all growed up (well, he’s eighteen).  Sister Margaret manages to get him a job in a local toy store, leading to one of the cheesiest, most ill-fitting (and absolutely hysterical) montages in cinema history.  If it was purely intentional, it’s easily the most inspired thing in the entire movie; it really is a stroke of absolute genius (I always expect him to smile at the camera during the scene, which can be viewed below, while his name appears underneath, in an ode to old sitcoms).

Of course, neither Billy, nor Sister Margaret has revealed his “problem” to anyone, and so when he gets nervous around Christmastime, everyone just thinks that he’s weird.  Also of course, when Billy’s boss approaches him, asking him to play Santa Claus after their initial choice breaks his ankle while ice skating, he somehow accepts, the lingering trauma of his childhood still fresh on his mind.

Surprisingly, he manages to keep it together throughout the day, only severely creeping children out, without snapping.  But everything comes to a head when the store is closed, and the manager brings out alcohol.  He encourages Billy to drink…bad move.  Before long, he’s strangling an attempted rapist with a string of Christmas lights…then turns his anger on the victim.  The rest of the movie he spends killing anyone who happens to get in his way, whether they are good or bad, naughty or nice.  But before he does, he always says the word “punish” in an indescribably annoying way that grates at the nerves before long. 

Along with the drop in the overall quality of the film, there is also a correlatable dip in the dependability of the performances.  All of the main players at least met my expectations, with many of them exceeding it; yet when the film decides to drop two dimensions and become a one-dimensional killfest, with victims that only have time to make out and get naked before they are killed, the acting talent takes a noticeable nosedive.  It honestly feels like two separate movies were blended into one, with results that are about on par with what you would expect.

RECAP: It starts off fascinating, by actually trying to create a backstory for the killer, instead of just setting him loose on victims; once it does set him loose, all the interest is gone.  The kill scenes aren’t anything too original or spectacular, with very few of them having any kind of Christmas theme.  The biggest plus is an absolutely genius, randomly cheesy montage that occurs about at the halfway mark…you have to see it to believe it.  Aside from that, if you’re a slasher completist, then you might want to check this one out, otherwise I would just watch the montage and steer clear from the rest.

RATING: 5/10

BRILLIANT MONTAGE

RED-BAND TRAILER

The Company of Wolves (1984)

Director: Neil Jordan
Writer(s): Jordan and Angela Carter, based on her own novel
Starring: Sarah Patterson, Angela Lansbury, David Warner, and Tusse Silberg

Where does one even begin with Neil Jordan’s In the Company of Wolves, a collection of fables and tales that all take place in the mind of a sleeping girl?  Or, more accurately, how does one even begin to classify it?  It features werewolves and some downright nasty special effects, yet focuses more on its story than shocks; to call this a horror movie just seems terribly misleading, but fans of dramatic storytelling will more than likely be turned off by its ghastly images.

The Company of Wolves begins in the present day with a girl named Rosaleen asleep in her bed.  Her dreams take her back to a previous century, as her sister is attacked and killed by a pack of wolves, an act that no one seems particularly disturbed by.  Following the funeral, Rosaleen goes to stay with her grandmother (“Murder She Wrote”’s Angela Lansbury) for a night, where she proceeds to tell her a story—and so begins the curious setup to a curious little film.

Ignore the DVD packaging’s tidy little blurb about how Rosaleen must make it to her grandmother’s house while narrowly avoiding wolves along the way—while this section does factor into the movie, it’s such a teeny-tiny part that it would no doubt disappoint those expecting this to be a full-on horror-themed retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”.  Instead, The Company of Wolves is made up of four stories, all about wolves in some capacity:

In the first, a traveling man marries a woman, only to be “summoned by nature”, where he turns into a werewolf and runs off.  Years later, he returns to her, only to find she has remarried and now has three children; enraged by what he feels is a betrayal of their marriage, he turns into a werewolf, only to be promptly killed by the woman’s new husband.  In the second, a young man receives a potion from a mysterious man traveling in a Rolls-Royce; the boy promptly begins to rub the potion on his chest, causing him to sprout hair.  Unfortunately for him, are the potion’s side effects, which cause nearby vines to wrap around him as he screams.  In the third, a man’s wedding reception is wrecked by the man’s former lover, who turns the entire wedding party into werewolves.  Lastly, a wolf wandering through a village is shot by a villager.  The wolf escapes, ending up on the door of a chapel, where she is bandaged up by a priest; she then returns to the safety of her world through a well.

If all of them sound pretty random and unconnected, that’s precisely because they are.  But between these stories, there’s an actual narrative involving Rosaleen trying to avoid the affections of an “amorous boy” (that’s actually how he’s listed in the credits), who eventually discover that the local cattle are being attacked by wolves—when the villagers shoot the wolf responsible, the corpse turns into that of a human!

Meanwhile, Rosaleen is seduced by a stranger on her way to her grandmother’s house.  Upon learning of her destination, he makes a bet with her that, using the help of his compass, he can make it there before she does.  Who is this mysterious stranger, and what does he want with Rosaleen? 

This is one of the few films I’ve seen where the individual parts are better than the film as a whole; when put together, it all just feels so random and unsatisfying.  I kept watching, thinking maybe the end was leading to a revelation that would somehow tie everything together, but it only ended up adding more questions while somehow managing to provide any answers. 

That’s not to say that The Company of Wolves is a bad film; it’s far from it.  The photography (by Bryan Loftus) is absolutely incredible—it seems as though you could take a snapshot of every single frame, and it would make a perfect picture.  The fog-laden woods occasionally approach the visuals of Mario Bava at his peak, with the added benefit of being shot in color.  Also astonishing, assuming you can stomach them, are the film’s special effects.  I’m genuinely shocked that the creature transformations in movies like American Werewolf in London and The Howling get all the attention; the violent, disturbing mutations on display here are the stuff of nightmares, and I would even argue that the execution here is better.  I thought the scene on the DVD cover was just a metaphor for the inner beast of man trying to get out…nope, that’s an actual scene from the movie, and it’s even more horrifying in action.

I really just can’t shake the lack of a more straightforward structure—as presented here, too many of the stories feel totally out of place.  As standalone tales, they are interesting, but when blended in with the main narrative, they just feel like pointless departures that offer nothing to the main narrative.  One could argue that, since they are all supposedly part of a dream, that any inconsistencies with reality could simply be dream logic; but I honestly didn’t feel like the movie was even going for a dreamlike atmosphere.

On the acting front, it’s hilarious seeing Angela Lansbury inside a horror tale, but her grumpy grandmother character is over-the-top; her hatred and distrust of every single man gets old pretty quickly.  However, Sarah Patterson as Rosaleen is the perfect blend of looks (she’s absolutely gorgeous, a statement that kind of becomes creepy when evidence suggests she is just 14 years old here) and talent—while her performance doesn’t require many advanced techniques (she is barely required to emote), she has an authentic innocence about her that is perfect for her character, and could have been perfect for Hollywood. 

Strangely, Ms. Patterson went on to star in a film adaptation of Snow White, as the titular character, just three years after this one, and when that failed commercially, she retired from acting altogether.  She came out of her retirement to star in two films for filmmaker friend Lisa Gornick: 2002’s Do I Love You?, followed up by Tick Tock Lullaby in 2007, and that is where her credits end.  That’s a shame, because she was the kind of actress that, given the right picture, I feel really could have “caught on” and become a household name.

RECAP: If you’re in the mood for something different, and don’t mind a movie that feels like it has an identity crisis, The Company of Wolves could be right down your alley.  The photography is stellar, and the transformation scenes are unbelievably grotesque, especially for their time (both are available on Youtube, for those interested).  However, the film’s narrative structure, which focuses on four separate tales told by two different characters, aren’t connected in any way to the film’s main story, and thus feel like unnecessary departures.  There’s definitely enough here to keep the average viewer engrossed and entertained until the end, but as a whole, it doesn’t feel very satisfying.

RATING: 6.5/10