Generation X (1996)

Director: Jack Sholder

Screenplay: Eric Blakeney

Based on the Generation X comic book series from Marvel Comics

Cast: Matt Frewer as Russel Tresh; Finola Hughes as Emma Frost; Jeremy Ratchford as Sean Cassidy; Heather McComb as Jubilation Lee / Jubilee; Agustin Rodriguez as Angelo Espinosa / Skin; Randall Slavin as Kurt Pastorius/ Refrax; Bumper Robinson as Mondo; Suzanne Davis as Arlee Hicks; Amarili as Monet St. Croix / M

Ephemeral Waves

 

You know I don't like Jello.

There for me is a dividing line between when superhero films meant just Superman and Batman, with the others for theatrical cinema and television a random assortment, with DC Comics in dominance and no standard template, and then the moment Marvel Comics managed to get its act together, leading to the current era which began as far back as Blade (1998) when they got their foot through the door, then the X-Men (2000) firmly planting their flag in the genre. Personally, I find the older era for more interesting, a lot of esoteric productions I am more inclined to watch, as decisions  even with great films like Batman Returns (1992) you get something idiosyncratic, whilst the template the Marvel Studios films have stuck to bored me to the point I have not watched them at all. Which is a shame as, open to American comics as a medium, Marvel have a fascinating history of figures and stories I would be interested to look, even the bad creative decisions, and whilst The Cannon Group did release Captain America (1990), the company were mostly regulated to television and had to also deal with rights issues in lieu to that company, hence why it took the 2000s when Spider Man finally had a theatrical movie.

That television should not be ignored though, and whilst the elaborate films of now sadly, from the few I saw up to the early 2010s, been very predictable, there is a greater joy in those titles which were not high budget films but attempts at hits like Generation X. It is ironic that the 2000 X-Men film had a huge significance on the way superhero films would dominate cinema globally, apt as this review is about the first attempt to adapt the characters to live action, a TV movie that acted as a pilot for a show that never came to be, trying to adapt these iconic characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at a time when they were a big seller in the nineties.

The X-Men, and I say this as an outsider with lack of knowledge on the actual comics, had to take a while to get to that success, steadily growing as a franchise since the sixties. Created in 1963, they were a metaphor for racial intolerance, as outsiders marginalised by society and even seen as a threat, one which has lasted as long as it has due to the fact the metaphor can still tragically relevant to the modern day and that, for a reader, that metaphor can also extend to anyone LGBT, trans, even just an outsider like the loners at a school could easily see themselves as these characters and have someone to represent themselves with. This was  especially when through the seventies onwards more characters were added, including the iconic Wolverine, and X-Men became an actual rainbow of figures of all ethnicities, men and women, even characters with disabilities, as the character of M here, just an overconfident girl with insane levels of invulnerability, was all this in the comics by accounts but also autistic.

By the time of this TV movie, we already had the 1992 X-Men animated series, which I have fond memories of watching as a young kid at the time. I would have been too young to know of this, especially as this is not based on the main series but the titular spin off, part of a time when the X-Men comics were very popular and these spin-offs could exist. This film however, which yet has a fitting connection or two with what came before and after in the franchise, was definitely a failure. A curious one, from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), a film without his knowledge was coded with blatant metaphors of the main male character's struggle with his own homosexuality, and The Hidden (1987). Someone also clearly saw Batman Forever (1995), the Joel Schumacher films in that franchise with Batman & Robin (1998) closing off the old superhero films, as Batman & Robin was reviled and Superman was M.I.A since the Cannon Group acquired the rights and fumbled the character in the late eighties with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). I like the Joel Schumacher Batman films, and I will not try to defend them nor claim them as guilty pleasures. In fact, whatever you think of their erratic natures and ridiculous camp, you cannot just lift Schumacher's trademark that he wanted to make every location bold and distinct even in all the neon gels he used. He made more grounded films, but the former production designer had an eye for aesthetic which is an acquired taste but I admired.

Batman Forever was actually a hit, so Generation X borrows all the canted camera shots and coloured gels it can get. That is actually one of the best bits of the TV movie, alongside Max Headroom star Matt Frewer looking at Jim Carrey's performance, playing one of the villains in that earlier film, and thinking he can be even more over the top and a sex pervert too. What likely killed the show before it even got started were many creative choices which feel like the screenwriter was bored with the comic they had and decided to doodle off to the side. Writer Eric Blakeney, whose career before was writing television like 21 Jump Street, could have easily went with the main metaphor of these characters. For those who have no ideas what the X-Men are, or at least going to their origin to scrutinise where someone deviated greatly from the source material, in the world of the comic people have mutant genes which provide them superhuman abilities or drastic bodily changes when they hit puberty, also leaving a potentially subversive metaphor that the cruelty and bigotry the normal world has for them is a jealously as much as a fear that they are now evolutionarily inferior. It also leaves many metaphors of the existential and moral crisis teenagers and even adults have in drastic circumstances, as these "mutants", in coping with the changes few can share the equivalent of and affecting them physically and mentally.

In the world of Generation X, this has already lead to the darkest timeline as, when the comics had the likes of giant "Sentinel" robots created to hunt down mutants, where Frewer's evil scientist Russel Tresh tries to lobotomise a mutant, to get his pineal gland, just to only get a discharge for medical misconduct and the poor mutant victim gets shipped off to a mutant camp ran by the government. The nineties, as we neared the Millennium, even with a title like this speculated about the future ahead, where here night time in the setting is a neon soaked dark metropolis, and Tresh lands on his feet well after his dismissal. Now he has joined an advertisement company where he is paid to brainwash people with subliminal messages for Slick Lips Lipstick, Coffin Nail Cigarettes and, with wonder why Sega thought it was a wise decision contextually to allow this, the real life beat em up arcade game Virtua Fighter. He only comes off as going too far when he now wants to control people in their dreams.

With a little research, the production had to change and create new characters because of the budget being preventative from trying to bring certain characters onscreen, comics with a lot more ability to push imagination with fewer resources required. Set at the Xavier Academy where young mutants have been rescued from the camps and persecution, at the same real building used in the Bryan Singer X-Men films, the two adults in charge are Emma Frost, soap actress Finola Hughes wandering around in sexy leisure wear, and Banshee, played by Jeremy Ratchford who also voiced him in the animated show I grew up with, even though his Irish accent is terrible. The teens, a little group in a giant school are thus: Refrax (eye lasers), Mondo (a toned down gift from the source character of being able to briefly absorb the density of what he touches), Skin (one of the leads, with a super stretchy body), M (perfect, but does little, original a more interesting sounding character due to being with a learning disability), Buff (an interesting female character in this time period as, with a super muscular body, she is uncomfortable with her appearance before such body types were more accepted), and Jubilee, a character I also saw in the animated series who was clearly meant to be a character sold to viewers at the time. It is strange how Jubilee, standing out in the animated series is the mall rat teen who shot fireworks out of her hands, was a trend character who never became as big as the attempts to sell her did, especially as the character would appear in other live action films.

Inexplicably the screenwriter, like the one I have imagined in this review for a joke and build up, was much more interested in writing a premise about a fifth dimension, where dreams are a real life version of Plato's realm of perfect forms, and can be accessed with psychic powers and a dream machine. I am sure one mutant, maybe more, exist who could tap into dreams, and considering Dr. Strange in the Marvel back catalogue and all their creations there has to be a few, but baring every mutant now being a "little" psychic", someone got bored and accidentally created a premise befitting a director of a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel instead. I am not precious about accuracy to source material, the man who has no real investment in the X-Men, but there was a fine line between a drastic story risk which still played to the premise about adolescent mutants with powers, and a premise which limits this aspect almost entirely even in knowledge of the budgetary restraints.

Beyond this, Generation X has a lot of plot, but is vet limited to what actually transpires. Whilst X-Men gained so many parallels to keep the metaphor alive, this is instead the school of TV action, drama and exposition, a constant flux of event which when works is why television is compelling, makes the notorious oddities like Steel Justice (1992) (about a detective in a futuristic Los Angeles who can make a dinosaur robot toy a giant one with magical powers) more compelling, but also makes anything which does not really push the limited budget or characterisation less exciting. This story eventually becomes a group of over powered mutants against one normal man, more severe as a plot fault if you stop and think about it. Matt Frewer's Russel Tresh is a deeply creepy figure, who coxes Skin in dreams to become a voyeur to and [Trigger warning] threats to "mind rape" his little sister to get his to follow orders, but he never has any sense of threat to suggest this film, with no greater depth to it. There is no real sense of threat from this character even when he gets dream powers. The only time that he stands out in terms of how he should have been written as is when the film recreates the scene from Batman Forever where he kills his boss from a fall from a giant window in a tall building; using television budget effects to conjure dreamt shadows of birds, in a dream sequence surrounded by business people at conference table, it is one of the only moments  where the film gets vaguely imaginative as well.

The darker tone is surprising, as the release that came after, not for television but beyond on VHS, even has cursing, not dancing around the subject but a scene just created for Jubilee to say "shit" and "fuck" for go measure in the same sentence. The result however, in spite of this clear attempt at a darker and neon stained tone is something missing the mark. Definitely, with good reason, it never got the television series - tonally it varies drastically, where Tresh can be an uncomfortably menacing figure but who also auto suggested a board of potential investors beforehand in their dreams to fart at the same time at a certain hour mid-meeting. The only constant detail is the aesthetic, which is compelling even on this television budget as hyper-saturated. Even the teen protagonists are not likable, bickering and insulting each other to the point of being detestable. The only time, and the one plot detail that stands out, is when Refrax suddenly shows real nobleness, when in his affections with Buff, going on a date at a country fair, an ability to see through clothes finally clicks; he goes before anything transpires, with actual honour, only for her to think otherwise, his sincere attempt to tell the truth and show his love for her a good moment.

I admit I enjoyed Generation X, just as a failed curiosity sadly ignored, as it never had a DVD release. X-Men, the Bryan Singer film, came only a few years later and erased this title from existence. Ironically, it was Wolverine, a grizzled old vet, rather than the teenagers who broke out, all because the production hired an unknown named Hugh Jackman at the last minute that ran with the role and made his own career. X-Men has had a lot of films over the 2000s, from 21st Century Fox, to a varying amount of success but with the perverse tale of New Mutants (20??) as a fitting coda, an attempt to go back to young teen mutant characters which has been in limbo since it was first announced for release in 2018, between Fox being gobbled up by the House of Mouse and the COVID-19 pandemic. Generation X itself was meant to be a big title, causing one to wonder how the production and Marvel reacted to its clear failure; Stan Lee himself made the unfortunate comment, in an L.A Times article just before its television premiere¹, that "[if" this thing doesn't create demand[...] I'll eat my hat!". One wonders whether he would have lived up to the bet and ate said hat, considering how gun-ho and passionate he was.

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1) Source HERE.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

From http://www.impawards.com/1995/posters/
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Director: Joe Chappelle

Screenplay: Daniel Farrands

Cast: Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Paul Rudd (as Tommy Doyle); Marianne Hagan (as Kara Strode); Devin Gardner (as Danny Strode); George P. Wilbur (as Michael Myers)

A Night of a Thousand Horror Movies #65

An important note for this review is that I viewed the theatrical cut. The Producer's Cut, which was made available in the USA in a limited edition Scream Factory set which put all the Halloween franchise together, is difficult for me to acquire so I had to judge the theatrical cut. This is important as there're well documented differences which drastically effect the versions. The theatrical cut of The Curse of the Michael Myers, after a tolerance even to the dumber moments of the Halloween sequels, is where the wheels fully fall off the franchise's cart. I could accept illogical plot points, dumb characters and death by boiling therapeutic Jacuzzi beforehand but The Curse of the Michael Myers is legitimately bad in its theatrical form, not able to get away with its sillier content because of how utterly dull and visibly tampered with it is.

At this point, the franchise acquired by Dimension Films, this is the first 90s Halloween film with an entirely new decade of fashion and type of horror movie in existence, yet they decided to follow the twist ending of the 1989 fifth film and the entire pagan plot line from before, Jamie Lloyd (J. C. Brandy replacing Danielle Harris) having escaped a cult with her newly born child, leading a much older Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance in one of his last films) and a grown up Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd), one of the charges of Laurie Strode's from the original 1978 film, to discover said cult which has been responsible for Michael Myers and is using him to kill. Allowing six years to pass for real is not a necessarily a bad idea in terms of sequels - as Halloween H20 (1998) will show, having time passing for viewers to have lived with the prequel adds to the significance of the plot alongside seeing actors and their characters age. Even visibly weak in voice and appearance, it's not sad to see Pleasance here as a milder, inquisitive Dr. Loomis investigating the events that are taking place, instead what should've been perfect closure as the character is trying to close the book on what's consumed his life. The problem is that's the only good comment I've got for The Curse of the Michael Myers within a film that's utterly disastrous.

What happens, in terms of trying to take the cultist lore of the sequels before it, is that most of Pleasance's scenes are visibly cut from the theatrical cut, absolutely reprehensible especially as the film's dedicated to him after his death during its production, and Tommy Doyle comes off as a sociopath, through Rudd's cold delivery and spying at the old Myers house through a telescope, rather than a sympathetic and psychologically damaged young man. The other protagonist, young mother and college student Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan) - a member of another Strode family clan living in the older Myers' house under an abusive alcoholic father, and whose young son is being corrupted by the cult - doesn't have a lot to do and, in how she looks and acts, would make more sense if she was a single mother in her early thirties, forced to live back with her parents, rather than the young college student she's clearly meant to be.

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The film's also an utter mess in terms of plot; even if the previous sequels weren't exactly bulletproof in their logic, here it does feels like the narrative was cut to shreds by post-production issues. The whole narrative arc of Part 4 onwards if already killed off in a terrible creative decision, to make a cult the reason behind Michael Myers in the first place, turning the character from a bogeyman to a toothless puppet, but the theatrical cut ironically cuts out all the cult subplot that originally tried to deepen it in the original version, thus making the whole point of the Part 4 to 6 story ultimately pointless. The noticeable tampering on the film also leaves a literal mess of snap cuts of images just for cheap scare effects, an obnoxious soundtrack of screams and moans for each kill, and more bloodier but terrible murder scenes including something worse than any from Halloween II (1981), involving a washing machine that somehow still works with all the electricity being turned off and electrocution, despite the power being cut out, leading to a Scanners-like head explosion. The ending, knowing what happened with the final cut of the film until the Producer's Cut came to existence, is embarrassing in how jarring the events in each scene are connecting to each other, taking place in a mental health facility that's designed as an industrial hellhole from a Silent Hill videogame with an abrupt end and Myers being able to be subdued with merely an iron pipe.

I find however the most problematic aspects of The Curse of the Michael Myers is how it's both aesthetically awful and as mean spirited as it is. The general tone of the later is one dimensional, with crass figures like the alcoholic father or especially the obnoxious shock jock who comes to Haddonfield for cheap Halloween season publicity, less adult but more like being screamed at in un-meaningful dreck. As for the former, the nineties was a glorious decade for cinema, the last when celluloid was the main medium before digital started to take over, and when even blockbusters could be unconventional and inventive, but it was especially for horror films after Scream (1996) also when the worst traits of the American genre industry started to appear, where the post-music video aesthetic used in The Curse of the Michael Myers is distracting and the film even fails in using John Carpenter's musical theme, turning it into a guitar lick abomination. Altogether, unless Halloween Resurrection (2002) manages to be even worse, this is really the nadir for the franchise; all the sequels before this still have some fun to them, whilst the only humour I have here is calling it The Curse of the Michael Myers with "the" added intentionally rather than by mistake of my typing. 

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Freeway (1996)

From https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/
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Director: Matthew Bright

Screenplay: Matthew Bright

Cast: Reese Witherspoon (as Vanessa Lutz); Kiefer Sutherland (as Bob Wolverton); Wolfgang Bodison (as Detective Mike Breer); Dan Hedaya (as Detective Garnet Wallace); Amanda Plummer (as Ramona Lutz); Brooke Shields (as Mimi Wolverton)

Synopsis: When her mother is arrested for soliciting, and her step father is arrested at the same time for drugs and for potentially molesting her, delinquent teenager Vanessa Lutz (Witherspoon) decides to search for her grandmother on her late father's side, hitchhiking when the car she borrows breaks down in the middle of the freeway. The person who picks her up is boys' school councillor  Bob Wolverton (Sutherland), who seems sweet and understanding of her problematic upbringing but starts to reveal a psychotic side to him as the trip continues.

Matthew Bright is certainly a one-off; writing his first script for Forbidden Zone (1980) and starring in it under the pseudonym of Toshiro Boloney as Squeezit the Chicken Boy and his twin sister René Henderson is certainly as unique a debut as you can get and he went on from this in his own offbeat path. Before seeing Freeway, even Forbidden Zone, my first Bright film was Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby (1999), a separate narrative with another actress in the lead memorable for Vincent Gallo playing a transvestite nun. Then there was Tiptoes (2003), a film even if its politically incorrect to say this can only be described as a Life Time melodrama about dwarfism where, considering a talented actor like Peter Dinkledge was in the cast in an early role, Gary Oldman spends the narrative on his knees as the dwarf brother of Matthew McConaughey. Bright in the world of cinema, as well as being completely alien to political correctness, is an apt candidate for the Hunter S. Thompson description of being " too weird to live too rare to die" and the fact that Tiptoes was his last film and, alongside Bundy (2002), only directed four films emphasises this fact.

From https://moonwolves.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/freeway-3.jpg?w=479

Unlike Forbidden Zone, which is a zany musical document of the original version of the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo, Freeway arguably has a political side behind its transgressive personality in how it deals with poverty row working class and a female juvenile delinquent who in a fifties exploitation would be a one dimensional danger to wholesome society. Witherspoon's Vanessa is a very morally grey person, capable of horrific violence and detached from human sympathy to others but also a troubled young woman whose upbringing is tragic, a charismatic and lovable person in spite of her behaviour thanks to a great debut performance from Witherspoon and Bright's script willingly celebrating amorality through the character. This is more so when a far more amoral figure, completely unsympathetic and evil, exists in Sutherland's Bob Wolverton, at first a likable adult who gains Vanessa's trust as he takes her in his car to her destination but is quickly revealed to be a monster who gets off scot-free as a victim, Vanessa viewed as the stereotypical "white trash" criminal sent to juvenile detention as the prosecutor argues she should be in jail for her act of violent self defence against him.

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Stereotypes of the working class in American films are rife and problematic; like rednecks, they are the one group people somehow get away with mocking without consequence, the same vitriol in the jokes that would be homophobic, racist and misogynistic if used at the expense of another group. Freeway's willingness to be distasteful and sordid means you're forced onto the side of Vanessa, who can be remorseless and break another girl's nose when angry but is as much someone who only became that way because of being treated as garbage by society. Discrimination and bigotry is found in the police towards her as much as she can be bigoted to others, and the un-PC dialogue having a depth when characters show layers, such as Vanessa having an African-American boyfriend Cutter (Bokeem Woodbine) who she loves dearly but willingly using racial epilates when a black police detective Detective Mike Breer (Bodison) first calls her a "hooker" and a "trickbaby" during an interrogation. That it's a female protagonist is even more significant. As it's bigoted to mock the working class American, there's as much a deep seated sexism that looks down on working class women more so for their class status - those in films who work in diners, those who are drug addicts in movies, those in juvenile detentions or went to prison, those who are prostitutes in movies or are the children of sex workers. To be gladly on the side of a young woman who, not to spoilt the film, has a history pyromania and shoplifting, is unrepentant in a lot of her behaviour, and escapes juvenile detention by way of an official and a guard being killed within her influence is very subversive. Unlike the cute but ultimately middle class attitude to such a character in Citizen Ruth (1996), where Laura Dern plays a solvent addict who realises she's pregnant and  becomes the object of an ideological tug-of-war, Bright's decision to throw good taste out the window and throw everything including the kitchen sink back in is actually more progressive in hindsight for not getting on its moral high horse about the subject and try to have a blatant satirical message. Effectively, the John Waters attitude of respecting even those on the extreme borders of class and morality, and it wouldn't be a surprise if he loved this film for this and many reasons.

From http://secondclasscinema.com/wp-content/
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It's a grimly humorous film as a result, bordering on an absurd weirdness and yet having a smorgasbord of taboos including a serial killer that forces a viewer into a ringer about what they see. It belongs to a clear subgenre of the nineties, which only existed in that decade with this specific style, of American films (many involving roads or actual road movies) which had very nihilistic or black humoured views of the world, usually with a lot of gore and the nineties aesthetic at their most saturated including in the soundtracks. David Lynch's Wild At Heart predated them at the cusp of 1990 and includes the likes of Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers (1993) and U-Turn (1997)) to Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation (1995)). Freeway is amongst them also showing their habit of casting actors that would become exceptionally popular later on or already had followings - here with a young Renee Witherspoon to a young Rose McGowan in The Doom Generation - and like them they all have the effect of the viewer being spiked with a hallucinogen when watching them, the border between the tasteless and the satirical sharpness blurred as far as possible that it's amazing a few of these films were high budgeted Hollywood productions.

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Technical Detail:

Bright's debut film, originally made for television for HBO but built upon for a theatrical release when it gained positive responses, it's solidly made and ultimately more like bathing in the nineties aesthetic than stylish, in itself as much a style that it wears with pride with its plastic flamingos and grey highways. Instead it's the script and personality that stands out more. The score from Danny Elfman adds a great deal as well, stepping out from the stereotype of his work with Tim Burton and leaning towards the weirdness of his Oingo Boingo work, the vibes of Forbidden Zone within it after their first collaboration on that film.

The performances in this film are as much part of its makeup and the biggest aspect of its tone. Renee Witherspoon is exceptional, making the fact that her career has very few films like this that allowed her to subvert the public view of her very disappointing; these nineties films had a lot of great and debut performances from actresses, from Rose McGowan to Rosario Dawson in Kids (1995), who sadly don't get the recognition they deserve in terms of acting ability and charisma, these types of meaty roles in edgier and bolder films the kind they deserve and need more of. The same can be said for Kiefer Sutherland too; already engaging when he's transitioning from a wholesome man to a lunatic, the moment a certain prophetic is given to him he dials up his performances to an even greater height of creepy magnetism. The cast in general is pretty strong - Dan Hedaya and Wolfgang Bodison as two police detectives have a very interesting and argumentative relationship with each other, the characters' conflicting views a standout in terms of the film's tone, as is Brooke Shields in a small role that stops feeling like stunt casting as her narrative path becomes the blackest, hollow humour possible, the kind of humour that you'll feel the need for a cold shower afterwards if you find it completely unfunny and disturbing.

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

This is a case where, rather than strange imagery or a weird plot structure, it's the tone and deliberate provocation which causes it to feel weird. It's a mild form which could be contested on rewatches; it gives the film an unrelenting, sordid edge but whether this would mean it would get on the Abstract List is up to debate. At the point of this review being created, it wouldn't.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque

Abstract Tropes: Teenage Rebellion; Provocative Dialogue; Serial Killer; Facial Disfigurement; Cheering on Amoral Anti-Heroes

Personal Opinion:

An edgy gem. Not for everyone but for those with the stomach for something this dark, this is a neglected and underappreciated film that deserves more attention given to it.