Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) [Theatrical Cut]

 

Director: Joe Chappelle

Screenplay: Daniel Farrands

Cast: Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle, Marianne Hagan as Kara Strode, Mitch Ryan as Dr. Terence Wynn, Devin Gardner as Danny Strode, J. C. Brandy as Jamie Lloyd, Keith Bogart as Tim Strode, Mariah O'Brien as Beth, Kim Darby as Debra Strode, Bradford English as John Strode, Leo Geter as Barry Simms, George P. Wilbur as Michael Myers

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It took six years to get a follow up to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), yet we finished the Thorn cult story. In an attempt to elaborate on a premise, in the killer Michael Myers terrorised one Halloween night, the previous two films had brought up a secret cabal based on sinister Druid practices who created Myers. For a story which was never designed to be an entire franchise without having to drastically elaborate on this one night's worth of story and the epilogue, they had set up a drastic change in the world beyond this being a single night of murders from a person who became a psychopath, but an entire conspiracy. They tried, bless them, with this idiosyncratic direction but they ended up finished it with a change of studio with Dimension Films, and not without infamously a drastically altered theatrical release. Director Joe Chappelle himself was left unscathed, but perversely ended up having to work on another horror sequel which faltered and needed him to film reshoots, Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), which was also from Dimension Films, which presents the ultimate irony with The Curse of Michael Myers itself. This review is not about the Producer's Cut, which got an official release eventually, which changes a lot in tone, but for a series' turn which took the risk of even bringing in supernatural details into the main franchise, not the non-Myers tangent in the third Season of the Witch film from 1982, but the original slasher film premise, the resulting Theatrical Cut even without seeing the other version is visible damaged on arrive to its theatrical release. Removing almost all the main actors from the original films barring Donald Pleasance, we ended up with an abrupt conclusion as a result of this.

Continuing from the fifth film's huge "To Be Continued" ending, we finish off the tale of Jamie, the character who was central to the previous two films, abruptly written out when she was that important to the previous two. She was kidnapped as a child and, whilst never explaining the huge age jump considering the six years are chronologically nodded to in film world time as much as between the sequels, there is the disturbing implication of a young adult Jamie having being forced to have a child with her uncle Michael Myers watching on. Whilst the Producer Cut gives this character more time, the sense of the film having this disregarding her in the first version that was released in edited form, and with what came before, is really felt, and even for those who hated this Thorn story arch, they would still have found this insulting to have even attempted to finish off in this cut. She is the catalyst for this story if cruelly removed, which sadly emphasises this - despite the fact she gave birth the night before or less, and should not be able to walk yet let alone drive, Jamie is allowed to flee (and steal a car) with the baby by a female doctor's kindness. The theatrical cut was also going for more violence, with newly filmed scenes, and nineties edginess, Jamie's end by way of farming equipment in this version, and significant emphasis on sharp cuts in the editing and grungy industrial influences. Whilst it has its grimy charm, the immediate problems come from the production slicing the story up into shreds, and not sticking it back together in a cohesive and sensible way.

One of the kids from the original films, Tommy Doyle (as played by Paul Rudd here), grew up obsessed with the idea Michael Myers will return to Haddonfield, and that in itself was an inspired idea to have, as Tommy from the original narrative crosses over into the Thorn trilogy, finding the baby, staying all night in a public bathroom cupboard unscathed, and decides to protect it. Dr. Sam Loomis as mentioned returns, in one of Donald Pleasence's last roles before his passing, now retired only for Jamie's call to a radio shock hock DJ whilst fleeing to drag him back in. Sadly, Tommy, nor Loomis, have much to do. Neither the female lead Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan), a daughter on the Strode family tree who moved into the old home of the original Strode character from the first film, who is bullied by her father as a college student who had a son named Danny in her teens. Three layers of interesting dynamic are here for a sequel to continue this franchise, of one of the survivors of the original 1978 Halloween as an adult, Loomis closing his story, and a female character with a fascinating back-story never used, and also related to the Myers' family by blood, with Danny likely cursed by their lineage and hearing creepy voices like Michael would have, none of which is found in this mangled cut.

There is a nasty, fun film to have been found in the theatrical cut if it had not been such a pig's ear in presentation - a man does explode from electrocution, and that cannot be ignored - and because of the clear problems with this more initially available cut, there is a sense midway this franchise was not going to get off the ground from this turn into a lucrative franchise into the late nineties. The drastic reinterpretation which ditched three films' worth of lore with hindsight makes little sense, and even the decision to have more gore was an attempt to sell a film which feels a mess in this cut. It also really does not stand out, which is worse. Baring the morbid image of a girl twirling under red, warm rain from a tree at one point, there is the sense the Halloween name is not helped by this, even if you reinterpret the iconic tension stinger in the score with an edgy industrial guitar solo, and the film should have been its own original and be allowed to breathe. It could have been its own Halloween tribute, about a town celebrating the season and getting an edgy Howard Stern-like radio host, one which felt its era of the mid-nineties when Stern was popular, rather than making details like that party and this obnoxious DJ figure barely existent subplots. Even very important plot points, like a conspiracy to cultivate the perfect lineage of Michael Myers-like killers, with a scene in a medical room full of foetuses from possible failed attempts, feels barely detailed in the slightest, making no sense of the plot progression this film's titular "Curse" is meant to be about. I am aware that the Producer's Cut had more idiosyncratic traits, playing more to the Samhain folklore even in how Myers is defeated, but focusing on this version, with its nineties mood lighting and an ending involving green neon toxic needles for the win, as toxic neon green was also very nineties, it would have been a future weirdo cult nineties slasher people would admit a guilty pleasure for if this never had to worry about being a Halloween film or be the mess it came.

As it is, a Frankenstein's cobble of the negative, I can see why Scream (1996) was such an important resurrection for the slasher franchise a year later in the mainstream, a much needed kick in the ribs to shake the subgenre up. It was not just the self-referential tone with hindsight that was important, but arguably more important was updating the template to how people dressed and talked like the new audience for horror even if the idealised version, with the type of male and female characters they would like to see onscreen, like casting Courteney Cox in mind to her success on the Friends television series or Neve Campbell as the lead, who were close to their target audience in having their emotions and dramas as much as now having some self aware snark and irony on the tropes. We cannot even get a logical plot to the theatrical cut of The Curse of Michael Myers, let along real characterisation or even unintentional mangled humour to the proceedings. Thankfully Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998) got Scream's screenwriter Kevin Williamson onboard, and he thankfully even with new snark get back both sympathetic characters and also paid respect to the source in a way which allowed a sequel to work. Halloween 6 in this original theatrical version, even in how abrupt in ends and ends Dr. Loomis in the final, is a deflated mess to the whole Thorn trilogy. All three films have their pleasures, but from Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) to here, we sadly ended this era with this flat conclusion which felt like the two previous films were a nuisance but ends up sabotaging the entire rebooting of the series, requiring another one three years to fix this issue.

BloodRayne I and II: Deliverance (2005/2007)

 

Director: Uwe Boll

Screenplay: Guinevere Turner (BloodRayne); Christopher Donaldson and Neil Every (BloodRayne II)

Cast:

BloodRayne: Kristanna Loken as Rayne; Michael Madsen as Vladimir; Ben Kingsley as Kagan; Michelle Rodriguez as Katarin; Matthew Davis as Sebastian; Meat Loaf as Leonid; Billy Zane as Elrich

BloodRayne II: Natassia Malthe as Rayne; Zack Ward as Billy "The Kid"; Michael Paré as Pat Garrett; Chris Coppola as Newton Pyles; Chris Spencer as Bob, The Bartender; Brendan Fletcher as Muller; Sarah-Jane Redmond as Martha; Michael Teigen as "Slime Bag" Franson; Michael Eklund as The Preacher

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

People reading this will immediately think, if this is first review of mine they have read, that this will be a burial. With hindsight, I held these two as among two of the worst films I had ever seen once, so I was in that camp, but alongside the fact I liked the second film Deliverance, the tale I want to write specifically with BloodRayne is what happens when you can have all the resources at your hands but, if rushed, leads to something that gained the notoriety it did rather than present the entertaining film we would have all rather had. I would want to know what happened with the first BloodRayne specifically, and how it came as it did considering its resources include its cast - Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, Sir Ben Kinsley, Kristanna Loken, even a cameo by Meatloaf - in its writer Guinevere Turner, who will stand out for many as the one who adapted Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho to the screen, and enough of the budget here to have gotten something as a video game film. Especially as I would be one of the first to defend the Street Fighter (1994) film with Raul Julia, and even find Super Mario Bros. (1993) a compellingly weird adaptation, videogame adaptations even if they are ridiculous are not something I will dismiss. Even in terms of hardcore, cult cinema niche, among the multiple roles he had in the production including the special effects team is Olaf Ittenbach, a German splatter film director I am aware of, as others may be, for the truly twisted pieced of no-budget gore cinema known as The Burning Moon (1992), and even if he barely contributed onscreen you can even see in BloodRayne splatter film influences in some of the gnarlier moments. There was enough here to adapt this videogame into something distinct.

BloodRayne was originally developed by Terminal Reality, who started in 1994 and worked through the computer era of the nineties videogames until the point the original 2002 game allowed them to spread their wings onto multiple consoles, and the game was clearly made under the shadow of Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series of the attractive female lead who could actually be a pinup in magazines with real models. This comes to mind that, yes, Rayne appeared in a Playboy magazine as a fictional character, the first videogame character in October 2004, and that, published by Majesco Entertainment, they focused grouped the character to explicitly attract a young male audience at the time. Liz Buckley, product manager for Majesco from this time, had her designers learning what boys and young men in focus groups prefered¹, which drastically revised how the character originally was from initial design², all in mind to a time now washing away in the past as we have had sexually appealing female videogame characters become more of a contentious concept, even to the point Mortal Kombat, which was sexualising its characters in the 2000s games, have back peddled from this, and even Dead or Alive, a beat-em-up franchise infamous for this, had to include measures least in the costume choices suitable for videogame fighting tournaments.

After BloodRayne 2 (2004) however, the games also leaning on Terminal Reality having worked on horror games beforehand among other genres, there was a huge period of silence for this franchise, lost to the original Xbox/Playstation 2 era of games as a franchise. Alongside the original games being having remasters in the 2020s, there was then BloodRayne: Betrayal (2011), which showed how much changed in trends including with its 2021 enhanced version BloodRayne: Betrayal - Fresh Bites. Gone were the three dimensional levels, now a 2D side-scrolling platform game befitting the growing interesting in two dimensional and "retro" games of the past, and even a significant change in Rayne the dhampir. Whilst still the attractive vampire, gone is the voluptuous pin-up of Playboy, evoked in the two film adaptations by Uwe Boll too, but a version influenced by comic books and even Japanese animation and manga in appearance who is less explicitly sexualised.

This is worth bringing up as, with how Uwe Boll was making these films, he picked up upon not the biggest licenses but ones even from Sega (House of the Dead) which were cult hits, this review finding itself in his most controversial era between 2003 to 2008 when he was making these videogame adaptations, where Far Cry (2008) was adapting a game from its origins and not when it became the ultra-expensive Triple A franchise that would have been out of Boll's franchise nowadays to adapt. His infamous run, which barely covers a long career, is of this era, and taking an immediate change of pace from the first game, where Rayne is hunting Nazis, and starting in 18th-century Romania, he came to this clearly without heart for the material, not even the dangerous (but inventive) spinning camera scenes or Clint Howard from House of the Dead, and made a film which was not carefully through in its creation.

Immediately problems arise with the film in how there is no stop to the exposition and events, charging along without pace. There is the anecdote Guinevere Turner has talked of that, with her script late by two weeks, Uwe Boll had been angered by this and that, even when she still sent him a first draft after this moment, he worked from that version and even let the story deviate entirely from her work³. Honestly, so much more feels amiss with the film, even when one realises that most b-movies have little time to be produced and are rushed. The plot can be written on a napkin - evil vampire lord (Kingsley) clashes with the dhampir he sired (as played here by Kristanna Loken) over ancient artefacts which would allow him greater power, whilst vampire hunters led by Michael Madsen take her in as a potential ally - but it is amazing to feel and heard this film not take time to breath and coordinate itself.

It feels like a production which suffers at the hands of juggling all its variables, not just in terms of the screenplay anecdote, but also with the cast a great example of seeing this in a variety of ways. Billy Zane, who is on screen in only a few moments and has no ties to the end despite being a vampire, feels at ease, one of the more rewarding figures whilst others are hustled through scenes awkwardly, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriquez and Kristanna Loken among the noticeable examples. Geraldine Chaplin, daughter of that Charlie Chaplin, is a tarot reader for one scene, all her lines exposition, but feels at ease too, as does Udo Kier, who is also comfortable onscreen, whilst it feels like there is both the script and the lack of pause which forces the acting along with many of the bigger stars, who feel the most struggling with the scenario. With no time to step back and see how the mood is, as it hurtles along, and you cannot really gather yourself in both the content and the performances.

Which sucks as you can see the production design was trying. This is a rich world even on a budget where there is enough to stand out. Even in mind to its practical effects team, there is grotesqueness too, such as the monstrous helper of a monastery's secret, mallet in hand, or when we get to the Meatloaf scene and the best moment of the entire prequel. Meatloaf's hall of orgies and splatter film approved horrors, prosthetic effects and nudity crossing in ways normally not found in a more mainstream film, sticks out alongside the fact that Meatloaf, surrounded by naked actresses when introduced, came correct for the role and steals the entire production eating the scenery. Even this is rushed however, and there is a sense that Boll was forced to churn out a film against the right intentions he should have done. Some of this could not be helped, as it is clear they only had Ben Kinsley for a day or so, filming all his scenes in the same two rooms, but you see so much more to the production not being appreciated as a film has to be quickly put together within it. You can see this is in how the film skips past its plot points, skips through fight scenes, even when they have hired actors who have martial arts skills too, or the sex scene. Sold entirely on Kristanna Loken herself, after her role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and sold off titillation, it does make little sense, beginning a romance with a male vampire hunter which is abrupt, and feels so cynically shoved in whether it made to or not, both in Loken's comfortableness to do the scene, and Rayne being sold as a sexual videogame hero back in that era.

In vast contrast, made after the BloodRayne games would go on their hiatus, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance is a film with none of the recognisable names, barring Michael Paré as Pat Garrett, but is actually an entertaining movie with a pace and reward. Set later in history in the Wild West, westerns are a genre cheap to make but that is not an insult in the slightest, as whilst they no longer exist as a mainstream genre, they are still being made straight to DVD and other mediums from this period on when this one was produced. Following the idea of what outlaw Billy the Kid would be like as a vampire, this with Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe now Rayne has also recast the pace with one which allows this film to breathe, with care to take in its plot.

It is a b-movie horror western, which not everyone will enjoy, but in contrast to the first film, I enjoyed a film immensely which was not heavily compromised, even if I miss the practical effects team from the first production. I can be happy to see Uwe Boll here make a genre film which is entertaining like this, which no expectations but the execution accomplished, working around its limited production and retelling western clichés only with significantly cruder dialogue at points. Even the slow-mo he uses was not that bad to experience, and the aspects which could have been fleshed out, such as a band of vampire hunters consisting of Pat Garret and a corrupt preacher conman, still crackle with personality. Even how Rayne herself is no longer the figure of the first film, but just a strong female lead, feels like a considerable change in pace, and whilst there is a third film, BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), that feels its own review to consider, particularly as that is also in a different time period for Boll as a filmmaker to these two. Set in World War II, made in mind to the original game having its lead fighting Nazis, that film deserves its own focus as three films came from one production - The Third Reich itself, Blubberella (2011), which is a terrible parody film I will say Boll should not have made, and Auschwitz (2011), which was a serious and grim depiction of the Nazis, all based around the locations built for the time period.

The only thing more interesting than this director making a watchable genre film was whenever Uwe Boll made "serious" films, the heavy handedness of a film like Hearts of America (2002), tackling school shootings, yet contrasting with material which do have interesting things to examine within them. By the point of the first BllodRayne, a German tax law, where the German Tax Fund makes film production costs immediately tax-deductible, was dashed from existence in 2006^4&5, and whilst it did not end his productivity, it was something he had clearly used and it makes for the unfortunate argument that, as with the first BloodRayne, he focused on a string of films, videogame adaptations, which were not made with as much interest from him as a creative figure. This was the  time when he was notorious as a bad filmmaker for many, not as a filmmaker to dissect, and in 2006 came the "Raging Boll" publicity stunt, competing with critics of his films in boxing matches which would be compiled into a 2010 documentary of the same name. It became less the Boll behind films like Seed (2007), which at least presented things of interest even if the viewer hated them, but this period would make his infamy rather than these more interesting films, entirely focused on video game adaptations in the mid-2000s which feels like a compromise. The irony is that his notoriety is based really on 2003 to 2005 films, not the video game films from the years after - House of the Dead (2003), Alone in the Dark (2005) and BloodRayne - whilst by the time of BloodRayne II, I am watching a film that, regardless of its video game license, is more a working director juggling genre films and dramas in the straight-to-video era. The worst part is that the later is far more interesting and arguably more focused, but not what we talk about with this German filmmaker. What made Boll's infamy, stepping away from filmmaking by the mid-2010s as things changed, with the streaming industry coming into being, is frankly the less rewarding side to him if the first BloodRayne is to be considered.  

 

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1) Fighting Women Enter the Arena, No Holds Barred, written by Michel Marriott and published for the New York Times on May 15th 2003.

2) Getting the Girl: The myths, misconceptions, and misdemeanors of females in games, written by Zoe Flower and published for 1UP.com on 18th December 2007. Retrieved 12th July 2009 by Web Archive.

3) Bloodrayne screenwriter explains the perils of working with Uwe Boll, written by Ben Gilbert for Engadget and published October 26th 2011.

4) Uwe Boll and the German Tax Code, written by Allen Varney and published by The Escapist on January 23rd 2007.

5) Tax changes threaten German film, written for the Guardian on November 9th 2005.

The Wicker Man (2006)

Director: Neil LaBute

Screenplay: Neil LaBute

Cast: Nicolas Cage as Edward Malus, Ellen Burstyn as Sister Summersisle, Kate Beahan as Sister Willow Woodward, Leelee Sobieski as Sister Honey, Frances Conroy as Dr. T.H. Moss, Molly Parker as Sister Rose / Sister Thorn, Diane Delano as Sister Beech, Mary Black as Sister Oak, Christine Willes as Sister Violet, Erika Shaye Gair as Rowan Woodward

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

OH, NO, NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES!

The perfect introduction to this remake is stating I had wanted to revisit the original 1973 directly to make comparisons, but decided against this as that would put Neil LaBute's film under an unfair shadow cast over it, let alone with the problems this has even if it had been an original premise. Contrary to popular belief though, I am going to argue no matter how ridiculous Nicolas Cage in a bear suit punching people out is, the real folly for this was how generic a lot of this film actually was for me to revisit, a slight horror film which missed out much of its loaded premise of a male cop Edward Malus, played by Cage, going to the island of Summersisle of the USA coast to track down a missing girl in a matriarchal commune.

The original Robin Hardy directed film has to be talked of in some form, and in context, that was the tale of a very Christian police office played by Edward Woodward, sent over to Summersisle off Scotland to a pagan community lead by Christopher Lee, a tale of the conflict of Judeo-Christian values and pagan heritage at a time past the sixties of re-evaluating mortality and spirituality. It was not always a canonical masterpiece, maligned as the b-side to a double feature bill and infamously with excised footage buried in a road under construction. Rebuilt to its intended form, it has lasted, and the issue the 2006 film had, with all remakes and sequels attempting to re-adapt these horror classics, is as with adaptations of classic horror literature, that they should be more what you can bring to them, something that needs to be more a concern then being "faithful". Screw remaking a film exactly, Neil LaBute could have really made his own weird folk horror film from an American's perspective, but instead you probably know how this (and laugh as I admit too) at Nicolas Cage screaming about the bees. Even as a huge fan of Cage who says he is one of the better parts of this production, this film became notorious for his career too.

Even without the shadow of the original Wicker Man over this, a lot of the issue I have is how LaBute made a pretty conventional horror film from the mid-2000s, which I sat through many from that time and was put off by their entire storytelling template even now. LaBute was from the American independent boom with films like Your Friends & Neighbours (1998), which suggested the potential for something very idiosyncratic with this film when it was being produced. These were also films however which lead to accusations that he was a misogynist for content in them, starring the likes of Aaron Eckhart as less than morally white male figures. LaBute, in mind to this, positioned himself in a loaded premise of Cage as the lone male in a world of women, where they are manufacturers of honey with any men he encounters mindless drones. Tellingly though, with Nicolas Cage reflecting on how he originally wanted the ending of the film more gruesomely absurd than it became, with him keeping the bear suit on even for the denouement¹, there was a sense that, in another context, this could have been more intentionally ridiculous than unintentionally as it became. The issue of gender politics part of the tonic whiplash this could have used for a point becomes less interesting, or one would hope would be for LaBute as he was the screenwriter as well as the director, because Cage plays his role as increasingly more dubious as he goes on. Considering Cage's character progresses from a heroic figure to become a questionable loose cannon, you see there was a misanthropic edge to all this. The original film had this, where Edward Woodward would be the hero to some, but with others in the cinema likely cheering on the pro-sex, musically vibrant pagans to roast him alive. Even if I became a mindless drone, a man like me would still cheer on the matriarchal cult here, led by Ellen Burstyn, over a man who pulls a gun on a woman to steal her bicycle, even if to rescue his daughter from a sinister cult she belongs.

The issue with the film instead becomes how standard this is, in that you have to wade through a lot of stock scenes of suspense which were the reason I once viewed this as one of the worst I had seen. Cage's character offers a potentially interesting figure, scarred by seemingly seeing a mother and daughter die as a highway patrolman, and reconnecting to an old flame (Kate Beahan) who left his life and whose daughter he is trying to find is likely his too. Cage plays this as a neurotic, as this nods to the question whether this community, said to sacrifice someone for replenishing their harvest, really believe that would happen and would attempt to try it out. Unfortunately nothing is made of Cage's mind in context of this, buying positivity self help tapes and someone with clear emotional issues, a type of character Cage would work with well, as he is very good at playing neurotic and morally unstable figures. I admit a bias to him, but his performances makes sense, already someone who hallucinates and is anxiety ridden, only to become more deranged and eventually expose himself with misogynistic comments. Even before the end, he shows as Woodward a sense of superiority that makes him a literal phallus, and that sense our hero, even if the mission is a noble one, is the wrong person for this. In another work this moral ambiguity, as the first version of this film, would be compelling.

This film was not helped by when it was made, absorbing a lot of the trademarks of horror films coming from Hollywood I grew up with at the time in the mid-200s, including coming at a time when a theatrical cut and an uncensored "mature" cut existed to sell the HD discs. For what could potentially be a problematic film in subject, it becomes not really about "evil feminists", but one where the feminist cult could be replaced with a vague one with any genders in power. Nowadays Cage's increasingly notorious line readings feels on point, even if he was the only one to read the tone right, to someone losing his mind as he goes, whilst my problems are from that everything else, that did not become on online meme, plays it too safe as a horror film. This leaves the middle acts to the bad habit in horror films I saw from this decade, minus jump scares, of pulling the carpet under your viewers over and over until it loses all weight to them. Be it false attempts to put Cage in peril to the many times he thinks he is seeing his daughter, only to realise he is dreaming, it is the tone of an action film in an inappropriate position, causing one to react as for an action film when we should only accept this pacing tone for a horror action film or a really good haunted house equivalent. This is the problem here as we never really get more about Cage, barely touching his character, or Ellen Burstyn as the leader of this commune of women and how they exist as more than just a sinister entity that may burn children, something explicitly part of the virtues of the original 1973 film even if they had not had the inspired decision to cast Christopher Lee who could provide sympathetic gravitas.

The thing about the original 1973 Wicker Man too, why it likely did not succeed back in the day but has its legacy, is that it is an unconventional and eccentric film. The plot is far less important in the original to its themes, its sensuality, and how it is technically a musical, as famous for its folk music and traditional songs as the performances and shocking conclusion. None of this is to be found in equivalence in the 2006 Wicker Man, and it is telling Cage became the iconic figure here because everything else is safe and/or not standing out at all. [Spoilers] Yes, it is pointlessly lurid, to a sick humoured level, to break his legs and sting him with bees, before putting him in the Wicker Man, but Cage screaming “Killing me won’t bring back your goddamn honey!” is among the few moments of personality, even if I laughed, because it has an energy to it. [Spoilers End] The notoriety of the film does feel over the top with hindsight, especially as whilst Nicolas Cage was able to ride the wave of this, Neil LaBute whilst still thankfully working after this probably took a shot in the chest with this as a big studio film for him, an albatross he would be stuck with. In the end, it is bad, but not infamous, just generic.

 

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1) Nicolas Cage on his legacy, his philosophy of acting and his metaphorical — and literal — search for the Holy Grail, written by David Marchese and published for the New York Times on August 7th 2019.

Sex Lives of the Potato Men (2004)

 

Director: Andy Humphries

Screenplay: Andy Humphries

Cast: Johnny Vegas as Dave; Mackenzie Crook as Ferris; Mark Gatiss as Jeremy; Annette Bentley as Linda; Julia Davis as Shelley; Lucy Davis as Ruth; Evie Garratt as Joan's Mum; Robert Harrison as Kevin; Nick Holder as Gordon; Dominic Coleman as Tolly

Ephemeral Waves

 

You've upset the Gherkin man!

Ace of Spades by Motorhead is not what I expect opening a British sex comedy, particularly one about two guys in Birmingham delivering potatoes to fish and chip stores, but this is one of the most infamous British films of its time period, forgotten except how it was negatively dog piled upon. Likely greater controversy came from the fact it proudly wares being funded by the UK Film Council, a fund for British cinema production that was contributed to from tickets bought for the National Lottery¹; this means as well family of mine, who bought lottery tickets at this time, may have paid for this among others. The tale of Dave (Johnny Vegas), a slubby guy kicked out the house by his wife for being lazy, and Ferris (Mackenzie Crook), whose allure to the women (even the mother-in-law of his ex he is stuck living) is also his tragedy, alongside a series of other characters at the potato firm in vignettes - it is a bizarre film to return to, and not in a good way for me, just surprising it ever even got made in the first place. Beyond the non-metaphors for sex from the get-go, like "Fishy Fingers" the chippie to unsubtle pickle jar labels, it is gross from the get-go too on purpose, with the fixation of one side character, because of his old girlfriend's fetish for using strawberry jam in the bedroom, of said jam and fish in inappropriate ways. It is also far too niche and peculiar in its humour and tone to have ever appealed to anyone with hindsight, those not on the same wavelength with its gags, but the entire thing for me as a viewer also felt off entirely for other reasons.

It is immediately meant to be confrontation in the gross out humour, but its tone feels like it is missing what British director Jim Hosking got with The Greasy Strangler (2016) a decade on, a notoriously vulgar and twisted film in its gross out, but with the more gleeful edge of wittedness, and a John Waters influence clearly there, to lead it to being a success for a viewer like me. Sex Lives... is just peculiar and actually dour, even when the point is to find humour in the sexual neurosis of its male characters, the intent of its writer-director². The problem is as much because it is not really a sex comedy but plays to the tone of one as, whilst there is enough lewdness to warrant only 18 year olds seeing this back in the day in a British cinema, with the exception of one scene in a sex shop and nude photos on background walls, there is no nudity or explicit sex even as a gag onscreen like in a Confessions... era seventies sex comedy, but it is a lot of gross out comedy rather than playing to the deadpan nature of its series of men struggling with their libidos either. It de-eroticises sex, set in the council estates, reducing it down to shabby men and their existential crisis, replacing the flamboyance of a Carry On sex comedy with just saying "shag" instead, but without necessarily enough wit or just being vindictive in a funny way about the material.

Even in terms of just having as much sexual language as possible to be crass, even Judge Dread, to make an ultra obscure British-only reference, was a lot more elaborate than this, an English ska and reggae musician who, in the seventies especially, gain traction for taking the likes of fairy tales, and making songs around them with sexual innuendo and double entendres alongside just songs about sex. Considering Judge Dread was not subtle either, but more flamboyant on a song like Big Six in his big pun, that pretty much sets up the tone, although considering this film ends on someone wishing to kill a panda to have sex with it, because they would not be able to alive without being attacked, we are in a film which, directed and written by Andy Humphries, is idiosyncratic in a way that I look with a perverse form of admiration in for going to this level, but also never really running with it in anything more perversely clever or so twisted until it goes full circle into inspired. It never tries to go further, and speaking of the John Waters reference earlier, to really got bad taste this should have gone further until it became subversive and gross, rather than gross and merely crass. It is peculiar, in how it really does not follow a plot and falls into a series of vignettes, the closest things to this in tone and shock value being Freddy Got Fingered (2001) and Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie (2012) for American equivalents, non-sequitur films where the humour is mostly bodily humour or weirdness at one tone, in which there is a tangent on everyone wondering how bees make honey (or if wasps do), or a young Mark Gatiss as an incel stalker that has not aged well. From The League of Gentlemen to some, Sherlock for others, and for me a series of horror documentaries on horror cinema and culture, Gatiss is one of the few mostly rewarding aspects, trying him damndest with the performance, and having one joke that lands, the failed attempt to kill his interest's dog by placing him on a chopping board on the kitchen top and threatening him with a knife.

It is a film, and I apologise for having to type this, where "proper fanny flavour" is a phrase used, and especially in mind that term means different things to different countries in slang, I feel embarrassed regardless for using dialogue which feels of an alien logic. For any time it gets the tone right for a crude working class story about horny guys - cutting in Buzzcock's Orgasm Addict, a deeply crude but funny punk song about wanking too much - to surreal non-sequiturs that do work, the nameless but majestic gherkin delivery man who, manly stud to all, is open to being with young women working at chip shops to elderly old women with his body, Sex Lives... can work but those are the narrowest moments where it manages to find itself. Most of the time it is depressing, without bringing even callous humour to the proceedings, merely leaving us to wallow in the lives of Dave and Ferris's characters, discussing wanting to have all the sex they want and wasting their lives in pubs, and not landing at all. It opens up a lot of male neurosis about men who are uncomfortable against sexually aggressive women who are, which is a joke which eventually reveals the female characters are archetypes, including Dave's tired wife, without anything really to them, not even fascinating mirrored distortions of what these men view the opposite sex as, but just two dimensional. The mother-in-law, the women who are just more comfortable in themselves, the woman who has group sex with multiple men, leading to one of the other few good jokes about the guys discussing where they parked their cars outside waiting for the orgies to happen, and the relationship between the chip shop employee and her husband are all there for punch lines which do not work. The later pair especially is kink shaming in parodying a consensual voyeuristic relationship where he likes to hide and she likes to mock-adultery with her boyfriends; strange as it is depicted onscreen, barring the lack of safety on his basement supports to lift him on the ceiling, or getting locked in his own car boot by accident, theirs is at least a healthy if peculiar sex life to theirs worth of a film that would funny weird, icky but funny in a sex positive way.

A film could be gotten a lot from the awkward reality of trying to have the sex life one imagines in porn, where two guys in a potential threesome with a woman find themselves more concerned about getting an allen key to fix the bed frame beforehand, but instead it cuts to Carl Douglas' Kung Fu Fighting in the middle of the act, which makes no sense and does raise that the song probably should stay in another time period if it keeps being brought out for films like this. Instead of being a world of desperate men panicking about their masculinity, it keeps skipping the more interesting concern here in favour of them going down the pub being meant to be celebratory, or a scene of dog poo being fired through a super soaker. It does not even get into the fact this is sexist, in that ultimately one of our leads, Dave, does not really deserve the happy ending he gets, or that Ferris' character never gets anywhere, not even a cynical gag in this repetition brought in to emphasis this non-conclusion. By the time we have a neon sex sign montage set to an American lounge ballad song, I again wonder how this managed to get produced, simply because even the 2000s, the UK Film Council for all the unconventional films they funded should have found this too niche or not sellable as a sex comedy as it was, rather than provide the money to the production they did.

At the time when the film was being panned, Andy Humphries actually wrote a defence of the film he made in the Guardian newspaper², making it a class argument that critics were middle class and hated the film, taken from real life experiences, for being working class including the cast not being "glamorous" in the idea form. Honestly, speaking as a working class person myself, Sex Lives of the Potato Men is a film, now forgotten, which I find fascinating to witness, but is narrow in its sense of humour, and neither sexy nor a dark comedy poking holes in sexual hang-ups to ever have worked, a form of strange humour like the American films I have mentioned earlier which is the one area of weirdness I can rarely get into. Jim Hosking, who I mentioned with The Greasy Strangler, got on my vibes, with non-conventional body types, crude and disgusting humour, and enough penises onscreen (including fake ones) to fill a sex shop, but it was also idiosyncratic and clever in its mix of the banal and the arch, whilst also being well made in its production choices from the music to the location scouting. Even knowing that Humphries made the film as dour on these male characters on purpose, which I have to admire, does not really get past that, for me, it never gets this humour across in a way I was won over at all and was lost as a viewer from early on with.

It is a cruel ending punch line to end this review on what Humphries made next, a documentary named Darts Players' Wives (2005), but his career has stayed in TV documentaries and works about British comedians of the golden eras between the sixties to the nineties, Sex Lives of the Potato Men's lasting effect sadly one unintentionally or intentionally putting him in this era of filmmaking only from then on. The UK Film Council itself, founded in 2000, would last until 2011, with way too many films to name behind their legacy. To just name a few, there is Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), a Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner, Andrea Arnold's Red Road (2006), Armando Iannucci's In the Loop (2009), Steve McQueen's Hunger (2008), Shane Meadow's This Is England (2007), Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001), even genre films like Christopher Smith's Severance (2006), with their last film The King's Speech (2010), which proved a last hurrah for an entire decade of British cinema I grew up in, and for the Council, by winning the Best Picture Oscar at the 83rd Academy Awards. If anyone remembers Sex Lives of the Potato Men, we quote the ending of Some Like It Hot (1959) - "Nobody's perfect..." - but this is a type of weird I do not enjoy. I just return to it, once despising it as "completely obnoxious and moronic", and finding its entire existence bizarre to consider instead with less hatred.

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1) Sex comedy film grant criticised, published by BBC News February 21st 2004.

2) If it's too smutty, you're too snooty, written by the director-writer Andy Humphries for The Guardian, published February 26th 2004.

Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

 

Director: Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond

Screenplay: Herbert Tevos

Cast: Jackie Coogan as Doctor Aranya; Richard Travis as Dan Mulcahey; Allan Nixon as "Doc" Tucker; Mary Hill as Doreen; Robert Knapp as Grant Phillips; Chris Pin Martin as Pepe; Harmon Stevens as Masterson; Nico Lek as Van Croft; Samuel Wu as Wu; John Martin as Frank; Tandra Quinn as Tarantella

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Of course, I was not a fan of this sort of film when I was younger - cheesy b-movies back in the day would be something I would view from merely their surface in terms of their "badness". As a result, returning to Mesa of Lost Women, the flamenco guitar over the beginning, I was more at home to appreciate it, especially when the opening overblown narration, mocking humanity's constant struggle against insects, was already enough to hook me.

An oil surveyor encounters a distressed man and woman in the Muerto Desert, the book end for this couple to tell a tale about giant spiders and an evil doctor, specifically one named Doctor Aranya (Jackie Coogan) who is experimenting on the pituitary gland and hormones in humans, exchanging them with hexapoda and vice versa with a specific tarantula breed. The problem with Mesa of Lost Women, with any film like this, is entirely that they fail to deliver even for unintentional pleasures; their bizarre expedition in genre plotting are not undermined by the wooden performances or lower budgets but, as this comes to sadly, a string of bland dialogue scenes. The premise is strange enough to not need these, as Aranya's experiments have lead to human spiders - only the males are all cast with dwarf actors, as to reflect the size of the male spiders to the female, and the spider women are cast with beautiful models. One doctor's psychically controlled harem (with one actual giant spider) is contrasted by the obvious metaphoric fear of women from men that is impossible to not ignore, the paradoxical idea of women who films like this want men to fantasise about, but see as a threat in themselves for the same virtues they are fantasised about. It comes obvious as the film was sold on Tandra Quinn as Tarantella, a model and starlet whose career was sadly very short with this her most prominent production, a shame as, one of the virtues in a dialogueless role, the film for its many flaws is distinct for the likes of her character, its personification of a femme fatale. The real set piece of the production is her "spider dance" in the middle, a performance meant to be erotic but show something if off with her figure, as the spider women are dangerous and are immense to even gunshot wounds. You can view it as sexist (even misogynistic) alongside other genre films about inhuman tribes of women, but alongside the tameness of the film, its quirks undercut this instead making tropes like this fascinating to encounter in realms of pulp storytelling, reoccurring trends of men's own libidos as much their undoing as the female figures themselves, a neurosis patterned onscreen unintentionally for how many times it was raised in these genre films.

It is an absolute shame Mesa of Lost Women is sluggish eventually, its real crime as eventually every main character brought into this is stuck in a woodland to pad out the hour plus running time. Say what you want of a Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), even if a bad film to many, but before even the Tim Burton film on Ed Wood, we could see how idiosyncratic that film was, never feeling padded and always memorable, being one of its monologues or a wobbling tombstone. It is a shame as, for pure cheese, you have so much to run with in the premise of Mesa of the Lost Women. There is enough to salve the flaws, though he cannot heal them entirely, in Harmon Stevens playing Mr. Masterson, the scientist Aranya tries to convince to help him, stealing the film as he got the idea to be the Renfield of the scenario. The man tuned insane by immortal spider women, his line reactions alone alongside the dialogue itself, with disassociated detachment and innocence despite being gun crazy, won me over as the best part of the film, what the film should have been entirely in tone even if others may mock his performance as being comically broad by accident. You have possible melodrama to work with too, a younger woman on her wedding night with a vain (and unreliable) older man who falls for the male pilot, who is also more adapt to surviving their plight when Masterson hijacks the wedding plan and forces it to land near Aranya's mountain. Even Wu (Samuel Wu, his only role), a stereotype of the man servant who is docile and quotes philosophical platitudes, the dogsbody who eventually betrays everyone, is memorable as one of the only other people you could envision surviving in the jungle in this scenario, showing his bravery enough for a crazed man to even hand him his firearm out of respect.

Mesa of the Lost Women is not Plan 9, nor Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), lacking that spice of being truly unique in this realm of weirdo public domain films, even if they all have Mystery Science Theater 3000 runs written all over them. It is a shame that this is not as memorable as it is, and among the cheap DVD I saw it on originally, alongside a William Beaudine film The Ape Man (1943), a poverty row Bela Lugosi film, I am not surprised I was not a fan back in the day as it is eventually a sluggish production. Far more interesting nowadays too, whilst I had fun with this, is in one of its creators Ron Osmond. Osmond proliferated in low budget westerns in the forties, and exploitation cinema from the fifties, until an airplane accident in the late sixties devastated him and brought him to Christianity. This did not stop his film career, merely brought him to working with Mississippi evangelist Estus Pirkle on an infamous trilogy of religious films. Preserved by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn through his NWR label, those films - The Believer's Heaven (1977), The Burning Hell (1974), and especially If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971), the latter Pirkle's anti-communist tale where lawnmower death threatens Americans if the Soviets invaded - make Mesa of Lost Women quaint in comparison. The older film is still fun, not too long to draw itself out, but clearly was a title that could have been better even as a cheesy production, Ron Osmond by himself far more wonderfully psychotronic than the film itself.