“I finally realized that the only way I was going to get my career jump-started was if I created my own project and then held onto it tenaciously, like an abalone, until somebody would put up the money for it. So I conceived a project that had the imagery I could create cost-effectively with my experience in visual effects. It had some of that imagery but not so much that the budget was proportionately large, because I knew no one would trust me with a large budget.” James Cameron interviewed by Robert J. Emery for The Directors: Take One

The Terminator (1984)
Directed by James Cameron
Written by James Cameron with Gale Ann Hurd
Produced by Gale Ann Hurd
107 minutes

By now, anyone with ears should have heard of The Terminator, a down and dirty science fiction action thriller about Adam and Eve on the run from a killer cyborg played by the future governor of California. A surprise box office hit that was championed by enough critics to qualify as a success on every level, few at the time may have realized how extraordinary it was that this movie ever got made, while those studying the DIY production techniques today might miss what a great movie it is. In Los Angeles of the year 2029, machines have risen from the nuclear apocalypse they triggered against mankind to wage what has turned into a losing war against the survivors. In a last desperate act, a cybernetic organism known as a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent to Los Angeles of the year 1984.

Also traveling back in time naked as the day he was born is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). After the Terminator visits an unlucky gunsmith (Dick Miller), it begins assassinating every “Sarah Connor” in greater Los Angeles. The next Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) realizes she’s in danger and calls police from a nightclub. The steady Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield) urges her to stay in public until LAPD can get to her, but the Terminator displays no regard for witnesses as it attacks. Reese rescues Sarah and explains that the Terminator has targeted the young waitress to eliminate her unborn son, who’s destined to lead mankind to victory against the machines. Once captured by police, Traxler, his partner (Lance Henriksen) and a psychologist (Earl Boen) offer Sarah a rational explanation for her ordeal. Their theory lasts as long as it takes for the Terminator to track Sarah to the police station.

While on the payroll of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, James Cameron was promoted out of the fx department with battlefield speed. When his first gig as director — Piranha II: The Spawning — ended badly for all interested parties, Cameron had to create a project for himself. Mixing low cost locations with a sci-fi element that favored special effects, Cameron backed into the idea of a robotic hitman sent through time, arrived on the title Terminator and wrote most of a screenplay. A former production manager at New World named Gale Ann Hurd helped polish the script, which Cameron sold to her for one dollar in a pact that he’d direct it. Hurd spent two years struggling to raise money for that, finally cajoling Hemdale Film Corporation to finance Terminator and Orion Pictures to distribute it. Shot with a single camera, the picture caught critics and the industry by shock when it opened #1 at the U.S. box office.

The Terminator is the ultimate B-movie. Like the relentless killing machine that became the best known role of the Austrian Oak’s career, Cameron locks in on his target audience and in terms of artistry and intensity, keeps coming. Over-delivering became standard operating procedure for Cameron but in a departure from his big budget action movies, the violence here is as uncompromising as it is audacious, with police officers and even women mowed down or blown apart by gunfire. What lifts The Terminator out of the grindhouse and into the Library of Congress (where it was preserved in 2008) is its foreboding of how dependent we’ve truly become on machines and where we’re headed if we surrender our humanity completely. Unfolding over a 24-hour time frame, the cast is well picked for the nonstop physicality of the story, while the electronic score by Brad Fiedel strikes a powerful doomsday vibe.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 685,301 users: 81% for The Terminator

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“We sent Barry Bernardi, who was our location manager, who also served as our associate producer, on a sort of all-expense paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America. He stopped off at various places and they were much too clean and unworkable. He eventually called us up from St. Louis. There had been a recent fire, which had destroyed about 20% of the downtown area. Block after block was burned-out rubble. In some places there was absolutely nothing, so that you could see three or four blocks away these brownstone buildings in the distance.” Debra Hill interviewed by Michael Beeler for Cinefantastique, September 1996

Escape From New York (1981)
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter and Nick Castle
Produced by Larry Franco, Debra Hill
99 minutes

Juggling dire predictions for the United States as the nation dragged itself out of the 1970s and the creative freneticism of filmmakers in complete rapture with their medium is Debra Hill‘s production of a John Carpenter film, Escape From New York. One of the most enduring B-movies ever made, this low budget cirque du soleil stretched its budget and its vision to the limits, delivering a show quite unlike any action picture, sci-fi movie or western had up to that point in time, or for that matter, since. In the near future of 1997, soaring crime has resulted in modifications to the city of that never sleeps: Manhattan is now the country’s one maximum security prison. Waterways and bridges are mined. Paramilitary units and a containment wall surround the island, where the only rule is that once you go in, you don’t come out.

When Air Force One is hijacked and the president (Donald Pleasance) is jettisoned en route to a summit, Police Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) opts for a one-man rescue by convict Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), nihilist with attitude who “volunteers” when he discovers tiny charges have been injected into his arteries. Given 24 hours to return the president, Plissken lands a glider atop the World Trade Center and with the clock ticking, navigates a Big Apple now the domain of deadly gangs and the worlds they’ve created. Plissken is rescued from cannibals by a cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) who reunites the gunslinger with his compadre Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), who occupies the Public Library solving problems for The Duke (Isaac Hayes), feared leader of the gang that runs New York and have taken the president.

Intrigued by the potential for NYC as an urban jungle after he sat through Death Wish in 1974, USC Film School grad John Carpenter wrote a strange, violent and apocalyptic script no studio wanted to touch titled Escape From New York. Six years later, Carpenter and his producer Debra Hill dusted it off to fulfill the second of a two-picture deal with Avco Embassy Pictures, bringing in a college buddy named Nick Castle to inject some irreverence into the nonstop action. Carpenter dreamed of Clint Eastwood playing Snake Plissken, while his financiers lobbied hard for Charles Bronson. Going against type, a child actor all grown up named Kurt Russell was cast, while the urban decay the filmmakers were desperately searching for was found in St. Louis, where a fire in 1977 had reduced 20% of downtown to ruins.

While the geopolitical landscape of Escape From New York remained purely speculative, Carpenter’s prophecy of rising gang activity and rioting actually came to pass, at least on the West Coast, where a deliriously overcooked 1996 sequel, Escape From L.A., was set. The joys of the original are the character actors who are as solid in front of the camera as the poor and hungry crew is behind them. In addition to Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Tom Atkins bring an understated nobility to their respective roles as gun moll and deputy warden. Carpenter composed a crackerjack musical score synthesized by Alan Howarth, while Dean Cundey utilized newly developed Panavision lenses to light exterior shots with remarkable depth. A classic western at its heart, the film’s “fuck you” attitude toward authority seems to embody the best punk rock music bombarding airwaves at the time.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 65,662 users: 72% for Escape From New York

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“See, I grew up as a kid watching science fiction and monster movies and it was always a guy in a suit. Or sometimes it was kind of a bad puppet, like It Conquered The World comes to mind right now, Roger Corman’s movie, this kind of vegetable monster, kind of going like this woodenly, and my fear was, they’ll laugh at us, you know, they’ll laugh at it, it’ll be a joke. I mean, even as great as the movie was – and Alien was a terrific movie – it’s still in the very end, up stood this big guy in a suit. I don’t want a suit, I want something that’s alive.” John Carpenter interviewed for Terror Takes Shape in 2002 on The Thing: Collector’s Edition [DVD]

The Thing (1982)
Directed by John Carpenter
Screenplay by Bill Lancaster, based on the short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.
Produced by David Foster, Lawrence Turman
109 minutes

Look up the word “doom” in the Encyclopedia Britannica and you won’t find mention of John Carpenter‘s The Thing, but a wave of barometric pressure hangs over this masterpiece of science fiction horror. Beyond the doom its characters are infected with, this remake of the 1951 classic The Thing From Another World was damned by waves of nausea, hostility and derision upon its release. It faltered at the box office, altered the career of its director and alerted studios there was a toll to pay for bankrolling movies that weren’t nice, like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial was nice. Developed by Universal Studios, The Thing was a dream car of sorts for Carpenter, who’d directed one mean, lean low budget machine after another and was offered the keys to adapt one of his favorite movies for a mass audience.

Elegant in its simplicity and overwhelming in its foreboding, The Thing takes place on an American research station isolated in Antarctica. A Norwegian chopper appears on the horizon and a sniper fires at a Siberian husky racing across the ice. When one of the Americans is wounded, the station manager Garry (Donald Moffat) returns fire, killing the Norwegians. To investigate, pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and physician Doc Copper (Richard Dysart) helicopter to the Norwegian camp. They encounter a last stand from hell and even more startling, something contorted in a burn pile outside. Biologist Blair (Wilford Brimley), dog handler Clark (Richard Masur), mechanic Childs (Keith David) and the nine other Americans don’t know what to make of the specimen at first, but quickly learn it isn’t dead yet.

Even more so than the 1950s monster movie he was a fan of, Carpenter was fascinated by themes creeping through the original John W. Campbell Jr. short story, published by Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1938: A hostile alien is awakened and reveals a tenacity to assume the shape and memory of anything it devours, generating rampant paranoia among the men over who is still human and who isn’t. A screenplay by Bill Lancaster ran with these ideas and to visualize them, a 20-year-old makeup effects prodigy named Rob Bottin was entrusted with delivery. Bottin hit on the concept that The Thing wasn’t one monster, but could transform into any lifeform in the universe it had imitated, with gut wrenching effect. Critics and audiences initially felt that the film had gone too far in that regard.

The irony is that Carpenter could have scaled back the violence he was heavily censured for at the time, but with unremittingly stark chords and a pulsating doomsday pace, The Thing is just a dark fucking movie, one that audiences weren’t prepared for at the time. The Thing refuses to favor good over evil, clarity over ambiguity, and that becomes what’s disturbing about it, as well what makes it great. The gothic lighting by cinematographer Dean Cundey, rich production design by John Lloyd and the ominous musical score by Ennio Morricone all feel perfectly in synch. That the special effects hold up as some of the most amazing ever captured on camera is a testament to Rob Bottin; without him, the movie would not be the nightmare it turned out to be. As for Carpenter, this represents the director at the peak of his creative energy.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 113,449 users: 80% for The Thing

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Fantasia (1940)
Directed by Samuel Armstrong (segments: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, The Nutcracker Suite), James Algar (segment: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), Bill Roberts & Paul Satterfield (segment: The Rite of Spring), David D. Hand (segment: Meet the Soundtrack), Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley & Ford Beebe (segment: The Pastoral Symphony), T. Hee & Norm Ferguson (segment: Dance of the Hours), Wilfred Jackson (segment: Night on Bald Mountain/ Ave Maria)
Written by Lee Blair, Elmer Plummer, Phil Dike (segment: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor), Sylvia Moberly-Holland, Norman Wright, Albert Heath, Bianca Majolie, Graham Heid (segment: The Nutcracker Suite), Perce Pearce, Carl Fallberg (segment: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), William Martin, Leo Thiele, Robert Sterner, John Fraser McLeish (segment: The Rite of Spring), Otto Englander, Webb Smith, Erdman Penner, Joseph Sabo, Bill Peet, Vernon Stallings (segment: The Pastoral Symphony), Campbell Grant, Arthur Heinemann, Phil Dike (segment: Night on Bald Mountain/ Ave Maria)
Produced by Walt Disney, Ben Sharpsteen
125 minutes (roadshow version)/ 88 minutes (general release version)/ 124 minutes (DVD version)

Like piano lessons or spinach, Fantasia wavers between arduous and unpalatable, at least for those kiddies notified that the program will be good for them. Revisiting the film as an adult is a revelation. In late 1937, flush from the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney hit on the idea of an animated short that would interpret a piece of classical music through the medium Disney’s studio was pioneering: motion picture animation. Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was selected, but the project grew from a short to a feature length portmanteau film, which Disney insisted be recorded stereophonically to mimic the acoustics of a concert hall. His engineers developed a stereo sound system dubbed “Fantasound”, but most exhibitors refused to pony up for its installation. Upon its U.S. release in November 1940, Fantasia was screened in only 14 theaters before being drastically recut for a general release.

Produced for roughly $2.2 million, Fantasia returned only $361,800 in its initial theatrical run, with World War II cutting off most of the international market. Despite winning two special Academy Awards, the picture was regarded as a failure by Disney himself. In 1969, the studio urged exhibitors to market the reissue the same way they would Easy Rider, “a special kind of trip”. Baby Boomers embraced it and today, the film is regarded as one of Disney’s milestone achievements. In essence, Fantasia is one of the boldest experiments (re: head-trips) Hollywood has ever produced. Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite is the most dazzling segment, in both the playful mystery of the music and its singular visual interpretation, with sprites putting on a fireworks display for the unseen world. The more open the imagination — or the more inebriated the cerebellum — the more stimulating the film proves to be.

Joining the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra in front of an immense canvas draped in blue light, emcee Deems Taylor introduces the first of eight classical music compositions conducted by Leopold Stokowski and interpreted by the artists of Walt Disney Studios. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue In D Minor is a thundering trip through rays of light, cloud forms and geometric shapes. Nature is explored through Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, with sugarplum faeries animating inanimate objects of the natural world. Paul Duka’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice tells the familiar story of magic and mischief with a mute Mickey Mouse as the star. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is set to the biggest story in the universe, the evolution of life on earth, from its creation in the seas to its near extinction in the age of dinosaurs.

Returning after a brief intermission, our emcee employs the unsung hero of the Fantasia program — The Soundtrack — to appear and introduce several of the instruments of a symphony orchestra. Next up is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, The Pastoral Symphony, with unicorns, fawns, centaurs and the creatures of Greek myth enjoying a bacchanal, which is threatened by the appearance of Zeus and a lightning storm brought down by Vulcan. Andre Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda finds a ballet dancing hippo wooed by a hungry crocodile. The final segment combines two contrasting pieces; Modeste Moussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain opens with Satan conducting the armies of darkness in a booming nocturnal festival, which is defeated by dawn and the bells of Franz Schubert’s reverent Ave Maria.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 104,499 users: 77% for Fantasia

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films.  First stop: Emeryville, California, USA.

WALL-E (2008)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
Screenplay by Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, story by Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter
Produced by Jim Morris
98 minutes

The most visionary film by Pixar Animation Studios to date — reaching for Fantasia, surpassing Tron and marrying science fiction to romance magnificently — is WALL-E. The idea was hatched in 1994 during a session in which animators tossed out ideas for a follow-up to Toy Story. One concept was the last robot on Earth, a machine that was stuck doing the same solitary job for all eternity. Andrew Stanton, who would co-direct and co-write A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo, thought this was the saddest character he’d ever heard of. Animator Pete Docter agreed and the pair would return to the idea in 2002. Using the screenplay for Alien as a reference, Stanton & Docter wrote a script driven by description as opposed to dialogue. At a minimum budget of $180 million, WALL-E became the most expensive project from Emeryville yet. Every cent was bankrolled by Pixar’s parent company Disney.

After development testing got underway in 2005, Stanton and the story crew watched Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton films during lunch, getting into Harold Lloyd’s work for ideas as well. The absence of singing animals in an animated film would be cause for celebration; the absence of dialogue for the first 40 minutes of this picture is a revelation. If the film has a star, it’s sound designer Ben Burtt, who pioneered the field in Star Wars and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and for WALL-E, engineered every click, blip and pop as if was language. Loaded with as much substance as audio/visual splendor, the film offers sophisticated entertainment for anyone in the mood for diversion while illustrating that mankind cannot keep producing garbage (or Wal-Marts) faster than the ecology can sustain them. Sigourney Weaver is nearly imperceptible as the voice of the Axiom’s computer.

In the distant future, mankind has abandoned rising toxicity levels on planet Earth for destinations beyond the stars. Carrying out his program unaware of these changes is WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt), a robot manufactured to scoop up and compact trash. WALL-E brightens his lonely routine by saving the best pieces of refuse — cigarette lighters, utensils, a VHS tape of Hello, Dolly! — to store them in the shipping crate where he powers down at night. One day, an infared dot appears on the ground. WALL-E chases the dot oblivious to a spacecraft that roars down on him. The craft dispatches a sleek anti-gravity probe that begins scanning the ruins. WALL-E becomes instantly smitten. Risking annihilation by her state of the art defenses, WALL-E introduces himself to the probe, whose name is EVE (voiced by Elissa Knight). Taking cover from a windstorm, he invites her to his home.

EVE reveals her directive when WALL-E shows her a seedling he discovered and keeps in an old shoe. EVE confiscates the plant and powers down, but WALL-E tethers her in Christmas lights and takes her on his rounds so they can remain close. When the spacecraft returns for the dormant EVE, WALL-E hitches a ride as it blasts through the cosmos. The spacecraft docks with the Axiom, an interstellar ocean liner where mankind has resided for the last 700 years. Due to disuse atrophy in zero gravity, humans have devolved into blobs that live out their days in a perpetual beach resort, drinking their food in cups and tended to by robots. The seedling WALL-E and EVE return sets in motion a protocol by the ship’s lethargic Captain (voiced by Jeff Garlin) to return to Earth, but the computer who really runs the Axiom takes measures to stop this from happening.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 192,598 users: 89% for WALL-E

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 94 for WALL-E

What do you say?

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

Left Bank (2008)
Directed by Pieter Van Hees
Written by Pieter Van Hees & Dimitri Karakatsanis
Produced by Bert Hamelinck, Kato Maes, Frank Van Passel
102 minutes

Cut with the same psychological straight razor that splices the great films of Roman Polanski, Left Bank unsettles like only the most powerful thrillers can. After directing several short films in Belgium, Pieter Van Hees was looking to break into features with a project called Dirty Mind, a thriller that had morphed into a social satire. Waiting for financing to fall into place, Van Hees started work on a story “that creeps up in the head of a confused young woman struggling with her relationship.” Having lived briefly on the left bank of Antwerp, Van Hees huddled with writing partner Dimitri Karakatsanis and wrote a script. Brussels-based Caviar Films — producers of commercials, music videos and feature films — had worked previously with Van Hees and raising a budget of €700,000, were prepared to put Left Bank into production ahead of Dirty Mind.

Left Bank is one of those movies that leaves a mark, not with excessive gore or sadism, but overwhelming atmosphere and characters suffering afflictions of modern living that seem almost too real. Its potent blend of sex and mystery gives the film far more weight than what usually plays in American theaters. Left Bank picks up where Rosemary’s Baby and Blue Velvet left off, with an exceptional cast, highly effective sound montage and a disquieting musical score composed by electronic group Eavesdropper and featuring cellist Simon Lenski. While Van Hees and director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis took visual cues from movies as disparate as The Shining, The Thin Red Line and The Yards, the film swims the same currents as The Ring or Dark Water, driven not by a boogeyman but a spiritual dread that creeps in from every direction.

22-year-old Belgian sprinter Marie (Eline Kuppens) is in training for the European Championships when she meets a car salesman and recreational archer named Bobby (Matthias Schoenaerts). Going out on a date, they return to his apartment on the left bank of the Scheldt River in Antwerp and make impassioned love on the floor. Tearing the cartilage in her knee during a run, Marie moves in with Bobby for some peace and quiet while she recuperates. Her new neighbor Veerle (Sara De Bosschere) notifies Marie that the apartment’s previous tenant Hella Govaerts (Ruth Becquart) mysteriously disappeared. When an envelope arrives for the missing woman with information about the black mud the building was built on, Marie telephones Hella’s boyfriend Dirk (Tom De Wispelaere), who instructs Marie to throw the package away.

During a visit from Marie’s mother (Sien Eggers), Dirk arrives to share research his girlfriend was working on before she disappeared. During The Middle Ages, the left bank was reserved for outcasts: witches, criminal gangs, plague sufferers. The locals believed they lived near a black hole that descended into the underworld. Marie’s mother agrees that she has always felt a negative energy here and urges her daughter to come home. Conducting her own research, Marie discovers a link between a pit in the left bank with the pagan festival of Samhain on All Saint’s Day. As her health deteriorates and her athletic career is jeopardized, Marie confides to Bobby that she wishes she could just start over again. Her mother becomes convinced that an underground stream runs beneath the basement.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 254 users: 46% for Left Bank

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

Kimberly Lindbergs raves about Left Bank on her superlative B-movie blog Cinebeats.

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

[Rec] (2007)
Directed by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza
Written by Jaume Balagueró, Luis Berdejo, Paco Plaza
Produced by Julio Fernández
78 minutes

In terms of thrills, [Rec] offers everything in the carnival except corndogs. The film was willed into existence out of a conversation between directors Jaume Balagueró (Darkness) and Paco Plaza (Second Name) over horror films, what they considered scary about them and what they didn’t. Agreeing that credibility seemed to be key, they came up with the idea of co-directing a first person, single camera thriller in the style of a TV news report. Sketching a scenario with Luis Berdejo, the project attracted Julio Fernandez, chairman of Barcelona based Filmax Entertainment, which put up a budget of roughly €1.5 million ($1.9 million USD). Casting unknowns and using director of photography Pablo Rosso to “play” the cameraman in the film, Balagueró & Plaza shot [Rec] chronologically, without giving their actors dialogue to recite or scripted events to anticipate.

Released November 2007 in Spain, [Rec] was a box office hit in its native land. It’s launched a 2009 sequel [Rec] 2, as well as a U.S. remake starring Jennifer Carpenter titled Quarantine (2008) which neither Balagueró or Plaza had a hand in. The Spanish language original is like an episode of Cops, if patrol officers and a camera crew were dispatched to an outbreak of living dead. Anyone adverse to shakycam or zombies might tire of the conceit quickly, but like a funhouse that someone put real ingenuity into, [Rec] is an enjoyable brand of cheap, with an intense beginning, no middle and terrifying ending that takes advantage of its medium well. Even at 78 minutes, there doesn’t seem to be anything that could have been added to reach a feature length running time, which says a lot about the limitations of this style, but also the dedication the filmmakers show to it.

News correspondent Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her unseen cameraman Pablo are escorted through a fire station on a segment for the TV show While You’re Sleeping. Embedded with rescue workers Alex (David Virt) and Manu (Ferran Terraza), a call comes in for a person trapped in an apartment. Entering the lobby, the rescuers confront bewildered tenants who report they heard an old woman screaming. Joining a veteran police officer (Vicente Gil) and his nervous young partner (Jorge-Yamam Serrano), they find the old woman semi-naked, bloody and disoriented. The older cop is attacked and bitten in the neck. Carrying the officer downstairs, the rescuers and tenants find that the building has apparently been sealed off by authorities and put under some type of quarantine.

Hell breaks loose. Alex plummets into the lobby with a bite mark on his cheek. A medical intern (Carlos Vicente) cares for the two victims. A hysterical mother (Maria Lanua) cares for a 4-year-old daughter suffering from tonsillitis. Authorities refuse to let anyone leave the building until a health inspector can check them for biological or nuclear contamination. Angela and Pablo continue to film as the two victims exhibit the same mindless aggression of the old woman and attack. The health inspector (Ben Temple) reveals that a dog treated by a veterinarian for these same symptoms was traced back to the building. The virus seems to spread through saliva. With more people being bit and transformed into freaked out killers, Angela and Pablo keep filming long enough to discover the truth behind what’s happening.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 30,079 users: 77% for [Rec]

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Roman Polanski, based on the novel by Ira Levin
Produced by William Castle
136 minutes

Crafted with elegance and wit so assured that its style is nearly invisible, Rosemary’s Baby has earned its spot in discussions of the scariest film ever made. Ira Levin — whose debut novel A Kiss Before Dying was published to acclaim in 1953 — found inspiration in his wife’s pregnancy for a second novel in 1967. Film rights were obtained by William Castle, the director whose in-theater gimmicks for movies like House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler involved rubber skeletons flying over the audience or electrified seats. Unable to raise financing for Rosemary’s Baby, Castle partnered with Paramount Pictures, whose production chief Robert Evans agreed to split the profits with Castle, but refused to let the shlockmeister direct. Castle accepted the role of producer as Evans convinced Roman Polanski to adapt and direct Rosemary’s Baby.

One of Polanski’s few revisions to the novel was a brilliant one: embracing psychological horror and leaving it to the viewer decide whether Rosemary was the victim of witchcraft or her own prenatal paranoia. Richly designed by Richard Sylbert, the film was shot in 14 weeks: two weeks in New York for exterior shooting around the Dakota Hotel were followed by 12 weeks of interiors on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. Urban legends supported by Castle that the picture was cursed neglect how gripping Rosemary’s Baby ultimately is without using elaborate special effects to generate unease. The dream sequences are effective because like the film, they unlock irrational fears we keep locked in our subconscious. Skillfully adapted and wonderfully cast, the ending ranks among the most gloriously black of all time.

Looking for an apartment to rent, Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) follow a leasing agent (Elisha Cook) up to a 7^th floor unit of the “Bramford Building” in New York. The couple ignores the stories their erudite friend “Hutch” (Maurice Evans) shares about the building’s “unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century”, including tenants whose preoccupation with witchcraft earned it the name “Black Bramford”. Rosemary and Guy hear their new neighbors — bickering through the thin partition wall — before they see them. In the basement laundry room, Rosemary meets reformed junkie Terry Gionoffrio  (Angela Dorian) who was taken in by Rosemary’s neighbors and given a new lease on life. Not long after, Terry is found on the sidewalk, dead from an apparent suicide.

Rosemary finally meets her elderly neighbors Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) when the couple invite her and Guy to dinner. While her husband is quickly won over by the magnetic Castevets, Rosemary is suspicious of the strange potables and desserts Minnie pushes on her. Good fortune finds Guy when another actor suddenly goes blind, landing him the leading role in a play. With his career taking off, he suggests they have a baby. The night they conceive, Rosemary feels faint and experiences a strange dream. At the urging of the Castevets, she leaves her obstetrician for one the Castevets recommend, Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy). Alarmed by her weight loss and abdominal pain, Hutch delivers Rosemary a book that leads her to suspect those closest to her belong to a coven of witches who are keenly interested in her baby.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 26,945 users: 83% for Rosemary’s Baby

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Directed by Don Siegel
Screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring and Richard Collins (uncredited) and Sam Peckinpah (uncredited), based on the magazine serial by Jack Finney
Produced by Walter Wanger
80 minutes

One of the most beloved of the science fiction B-movies that attacked the 1950s, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a testament to how a powerful story and an appealing cast can elevate an otherwise awful mess into a classic. Originally published in Collier’s Magazine as a three-part serial beginning in November 1954, Jack Finney’s source material captured the imagination of producer Walter Wanger, who was coming off a personal scandal, prison term and even worse, a commercial calamity in 1948 with Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman. Languishing in a deal at Allied Artists for Walter and Harold Mirisch, Wanger and director Don Siegel made box office lemonade with a prison reform picture titled Riot On Cell Block 11. When Wanger pitched the studio The Body Snatchers, AA purchased the screen rights.

Shot in 19 days on a $300,000 budget — $2 million in today money — Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a hit in spite of its studio, which hoping to sell more tickets, mangled Ellsworth Fredericks’ 1.33:1 compositions by cropping the frame to fit RKO’s “SuperScope” format of 2:1. They also inserted a prologue and epilogue that gave the film a resolution far more upbeat than what Siegel intended. The conceit of alien pods stripping human beings of their individuality while they sleep is seductive in how easily it can apply to any number of social or political paranioas, while Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter appear to have a blast as the doomed couple. A stiff voiceover narration kills the suspense and makes it difficult to stay on edge about anything in the film, but with so little money for special effects, the original Body Snatchers plays like a drum tight film noir as opposed to a silly sci-fi movie.

A psychiatrist (Whit Bissell) is summoned in the middle of the night to treat to a raving lunatic being held by police at a local hospital. The wild-eyed Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) insists that he is not insane and begging to be listened to, begins his story. Returning from a two-week conference to his practice in the idyllic town of “Santa Mira”, Dr. Bennell’s nurse Sally Withers (Jean Wiles) reports that several of his patients have demanded to see the doctor, only to later cancel their appointments as if everything was fine. On their way back from the train depot, Dr. Bennell almost mows down a boy running away from his mother; apparently, he’s scared to go to school. At his office, Dr. Bennell is reunited with a recently divorced college flame named Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter).

Becky is troubled by a cousin who claims Becky’s uncle is no longer her uncle. Santa Mira’s psychiatrist Dr. Kauffman (Larry Gates) reveals that he’s had a dozen patients suffering the same hysteria, which he theorizes is due to stress over world events. Dr. Bennell and Becky have their romantic evening cut short when his writer friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan) and wife Teddy (Carolyn Jones) summon them to their home, where the body of a strange being with a resemblance to Jack is laid out on a pool table. Dr. Bennell later discovers imitations of them hatching from seed pods in the Belicec greenhouse, where it becomes clear that aliens lacking emotion have replaced townsfolk while they sleep. With the phone company and police already fallen victim, the couples try to stay awake long enough to get help.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 5,280 users: 81% for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 2 of a bill featuring our friends the pod people.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Directed by Philip Kaufman
Screenplay by W.D. Richter, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
Produced by Robert H. Solo
115 minutes

Whether drawing up a ballot of Best B-Movies, Best Science Fiction Films, Best Remakes or even Super Cinema of the ‘70s, oddly enough, the intoxicating 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers would land on any of those lists. Based on a 1954 novel by Jack Finney, the 1956 film version hit multiple zeitgeists in its day, arriving at a moment when Americans seemed obsessed with invasion, whether from outer space or the U.S.S.R. Directed by Philip Kaufman and adapted by W.D. Richter, the remake boasts far more insidious wit, characters as contemporary as they are compelling and a brilliantly pitch black ending that in its own way, puts a stake through the heart of the ‘60s. It’s gleefully written, perfectly cast, jarringly made and more than three decades later, looks a lot like a minor masterpiece.

The Body Snatchers beautifully exploits a paranoia that seems wired into the American psyche: fear that others are coming to eliminate your way of life. The 1978 version could be interpreted as a warning against feminism or urban alienation, take your pick. Kaufman cast thoroughly offbeat performers in Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright and too cool for school Leonard Nimoy; as opposed to movie stars, their survival is far from assured. Kaufman employs discordant camera angles and sound effects but instead of horror, focuses on the characters and their doomed love affair, making the story intense without much in the way of gore or cheap scares. Michael Chapman handled the stark lighting while Thomas Burman and Edouard Henriques executed the unsettling makeup effects.

Seeking escape from the surface of a dying world, alien spores drift into space and reach the Earth’s atmosphere, raining down on the city of San Francisco. Taking home one of the strange pink flowers than begin to bloom, biologist Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) recognizes the pollinization of two different species to create a third. Unable to pry her dentist boyfriend Geoffrey (Art Hindle) away from TV sports, Elizabeth shares her discovery with Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a health inspector and her close colleague at the Department of Health. Geoffrey’s alienated behavior the next morning prompts Elizabeth to follow him. Distraught by the sinister changes she begins to detect in her boyfriend and in the city around them, Elizabeth is assured by Matthew that a friend — pop psychologist Dr. David Kibner — will have a logical explanation.

At Kibner’s book signing party, Matthew and Elizabeth meet up with another one of his friends, struggling poet Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum). While Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) reveals that six of his patients swear that loved ones have changed into something less human, the doc believes our fear of commitment is at the root of the hysteria. Returning to the mud baths he operates with his New Age spouse Nancy (Veronica Cartwright), Jack drifts off to sleep and is wakened to his wife’s screams when she discovers a dormant being with an uncanny resemblance to her husband growing in one of the stalls. Matthew rushes to Elizabeth’s house and wakes her before she too crumbles to dust and is replaced by an imitation. The two couples realize that most of San Francisco is no longer who they appear to be and fight to stay awake long enough to escape.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 404 users: 89% for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?