[All through the month of February, Jeremy Richey at Moon in the Gutter has declared a tribute to films that are "M.I.A. on Region 1 DVD." This article is a contribution to his series.]

Synopsis
In Planet Terror - the first half of a double feature – go-go dancer Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) walks off the job and ends up reuniting with her enigmatic ex-boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) at a Texas barbecue shack. At a nearby military base, a platoon led by the stoic Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis) accidentally unleashes a nerve toxin, exacerbating the marriage between Dr. Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) and her temperamental husband Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) as townspeople filter into the ER with grotesque skin conditions. A full blown outbreak of cannibalistic sickos is soon at hand. Cherry is attacked and loses her leg, which the resourceful El Wray replaces with a table leg and later, a machine gun. Also banding together against the onslaught of freaks are the sheriff (Michael Biehn), his estranged brother and rib shack owner (Jeff Fahey) and a pair of nutty babysitters (Electra Avellan, Elise Avellan).

In the bottom half of the bill – Death Proof – Austin drive-time deejay Jungle Julia (Sydney Poitier) is picked up by her friends (Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd) and goes in search of a party the night of her birthday. They end up drunk, stoned and bored at the “Texas Chili Parlor,” where the girls cross paths with a scarred loner who goes by the name Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell). When the girls decide to head to Lake LBJ, Stuntman Mike follows them out, giving a ride to a bar patron (Rose McGowan again) in his loaded for bear 1970 Chevy Nova. None of the ladies reach their destinations. Months later, Stuntman Mike appears in Tennessee, where a pair of stuntwomen (Zoe Bell, Tracie Thoms), a makeup artist (Rosario Dawson) and a model/actress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) takes a prized 1970 Dodge Challenger for a spin through the backroads. Stuntman Mike intercepts the girls, but gets a little more than he bargained for.

Production history
Robert Rodriguez met Quentin Tarantino in 1992 at the Toronto Film Festival. “I knew about his movie, Reservoir Dogs already ’cause my agent had seen it and said, ‘You’re going to love this guy Quentin Tarantino; he’s made a new movie, Reservoir Dogs, it’s really cool.’ I saw it at the Telluride Film Festival; he wasn’t there, but then we met in Toronto. So Toronto Film Festival, we ran into each other in the lobby; I had already seen the movie and I just went on and on about it. And he hadn’t seen Mariachi yet … We went to the El Mariachi screening together; he sat next to me, because by then we had become fast friends. I was video taping all my screenings at that time to get audience reactions; I couldn’t believe anyone was screening the movie. And so I had gotten the Telluride screening on tape with Quentin’s laugh track through the whole movie.”

After shooting a 3-D picture in 2004 (The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl), Rodriguez was kicking around ideas for another gimmick that would lure audiences into a theater. He came up with the idea of a double feature. Before Rodriguez could get very far, he was in post-production on Sin City, which featured a scene that he’d invited Tarantino to direct. “When I went to show him my cut of Sin City, I went to his house and laying on the floor with a bunch of other junk was a double bill poster for Rock All Night and Drag Strip Girl which was the same one I had at my house also on the floor. I was using that as inspiration for my double feature – just the layout of it. I said, ‘I got that same poster and it’s on my floor.’ This underlined how similar we were, but then I thought, ‘You know what? I had this crazy idea. I was going to do two short features but you do one and I’ll do one.’ He said, ‘I love double features! I love double features! We gotta call it Grindhouse.’”

In the film’s production notes, Tarantino described the experience of the grindhouse. “… they were all-night theaters that would play three or four movies. It would be a place for the bums to go and sleep. If you’re hiding out from the law you’d go there for the night. Then, at six in the morning they wake you up and send you out, and you’d walk around for ninety minutes and come right back in again. Drive-ins had the same shows, but were a whole different setting. Grindhouse theaters were in more urban areas. Dallas would have grindhouses, and Houston would have grindhouses, but when you get into the outer regions of Texas, it’s more about drive-ins.” In terms of the motion picture typically offered at the grindhouse, Tarantino exclaimed, “That shit was raw. The shit was off the hook. Sexuality was wild. You couldn’t even believe some of the sexuality and brutality that they got away with in these movies, and gore. You literally had to pinch yourself and say, ‘Am I even watching what I’m watching?’”

Rodriguez had 30 pages of a zombie script he’d been doodling on for close to a decade. Makeup effects artist Greg Nicotero recalls, “I remember during Spy Kids, maybe even as early as The Faculty, that Robert said, ‘I’ve got this cool idea for this zombie movie. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen yet, but there’s going to be a doctor and his wife, and they’re going to be working in a hospital, and there’s going to be this really great scene where we see a girl on the road, and every time a car passes we reveal silhouettes of zombies getting closer and closer to her.’” Titled Planet Terror, Rodriguez styled his contribution to Grindhouse as a brooding B-movie John Carpenter might have directed between Escape From New York (1981) and The Thing (1982), with zombies. Sort of. Nicotero adds, “It’s a big misconception because technically they’re not zombies. They don’t die then come back, and they don’t necessarily all eat flesh. We have a couple guys that eat brains, and people get torn apart and get disemboweled, but generally they don’t really die. They just become infected and become these mindless killers.”

To write his segment, Tarantino started virtually from scratch. “And the first idea was a bunch of young college history students that were going through a tour of the plantations of the old South. And there’s a ghost of an old slave that is part of negro folklore. Jody the Grinder actually went down and bested the devil, by fucking him. And so the devil put him on earth for all eternity to fuck white women. And that was the devil’s punishment. The opening scene would take place in the classroom, with the professor telling the story of Jody the Grinder in a big four-page monologue. I would probably have had Sam Jackson playing that part. And it was really good. But then I didn’t have anywhere to go with it, because if you have a story about a killer slave with supermacho powers done in the style of a slasher films, then even if he’s doing it today, and even if the white girls are innocent, how can you not be on the slave’s side?”

Tarantino continued, “Then I remembered a time when I told somebody I was thinking about getting a safer car. I was thinking about a Volvo and he says, ‘Oh, Quentin, if you want a safer car all you have to do is buy any car and give it to a stunt team plus $10,000 and they’ll make it death proof.’ And for two seconds I actually thought about doing that. He actually used the words ‘death proof’ but I forgot about it – this was 11 years ago. So now I’m thinking about this tale, and I thought, what if he uses a car? And what if his thing is to follow girls who travel in a posse? His car wipes the girls out and he gets to live, because it is death proof. To me he was a sex act, so what he was doing was a rape murder, his act of sex. He does it in such a way that it looks like an accident so he gets away with it. Then we wait until he recovers and, like a serial killer, he goes to another state and does it again.” Tarantino titled his segment Death Proof.

As far as Bob and Harvey Weinstein – co-owners of Dimension Films – were concerned, Grindhouse would cost $40 million to produce, with Rodriguez and Tarantino delivering segments running 70 minutes each. But Tarantino – who enjoyed inserting vintage trailers into grindhouse film festivals he programmed for his buddies – got directors Eli Roth and Edgar Wright involved. “They just seemed natural guys to just step into the breach, especially where their interests were concerned. Eli would make a slasher film trailer using the one holiday that hadn’t been used: Thanksgiving. And Edgar was going to do a ’70s-style British horror film trailer because he remembered that nobody opens their mouth in the trailers. You never wanted the audience to know that it’s a British movie.” Rob Zombie – directing a remake of Halloween for Dimension – also wanted in on the act. He got the go-ahead from Rodriguez to shoot a trailer based on his title alone: Werewolf Women of the S.S. The production cost for Grindhouse soon rose to $53 million.

Planet Terror commenced filming March 2006 at Troublemaker Studios, the production facility Rodriguez and then-wife Elizabeth Avellan built on the former site of the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport in Austin. Tarantino not only made a cameo appearance in Planet Terror (as Rapist #1) but filmed second unit as well. He somehow found time to direct an audition reel Josh Brolin submitted for a role in No Country For Old Men. With the intended release date of Christmas scrubbed, Tarantino began shooting Death Proof in August 2006, also around Austin. The high speed stuntwork took until January 2007 to complete, leaving Tarantino with a mere six weeks to edit his film. By chance, both Planet Terror and Death Proof would clock in at 85 minutes. This prompted the Weinsteins to suggest the directors release their segments as two separate movies, but Tarantino – who had gone along with the scheme to split his last movie (Kill Bill) into two volumes – insisted that Grindhouse would give audiences two movies for the price of one.

While Dimension always planned on exhibiting Planet Terror and Death Proof separately as extended versions in non-English speaking countries – where moviegoers had little idea what a double feature was – the design was always to present Grindhouse in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia as one epic theatrical experience. Headed into theaters April 2007 in the States – over the Easter holiday – Harvey Weinstein felt the picture was a throwback to the gambles he’d taken out of necessity in the early days of Miramax Films, with groundbreaking films like sex, lies and videotape, The Crying Game and Pulp Fiction. “When you see it, you just say, ‘OK, you’ve got to be brain-dead not to get that one, it’s so good and fun.’ It’s the fastest three hours you ever spent in a theater. It’s an event, like a Stones concert, or The Who at Leeds. We’re asking people to go to the movies. It’s not something to watch on DVD or cable.”

Critics flew out of their pants praising Grindhouse. Nathan Lee, the Village Voice: “Rodriguez, Tarantino, and Co. aim for nothing more noble than to freak the funk, and it’s about goddamn time. Go wasted, go stoned, go without your parents’ permission. In paying homage to an obsolete form of movie culture, Grindhouse delivers a dropkick to ours.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: “Grindhouse, like Ed Wood and Boogie Nights, celebrates how certain low-grade entertainment, viewed in hindsight, looks different now than it did then, since we can see the ‘innocence’ of its creation – the handmade quality of it – in a world not yet ruled by corporate technology.” Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: “I suspect that Death Proof will throw some of its director’s admirers for a loop, though it may be the most revealing thing Tarantino has yet done – a full-throttle expression of a singular artistic temperament disguised, like so many gems of grindhouses yore, as a glittering hunk of trash.”

But for reasons that would be debated beginning the Monday after its opening weekend, audiences stayed away from Grindhouse, which would gross a shabby $25 million in the U.S. and $25.1 million overseas. Daily Variety’s Anne Thompson offered theories galore: “What went wrong? Let’s list the ways. Grindhouse was a cult concept, with a cult following. It was the kind of movie critics praise (Metacritic gave it a very good 78) but it was beat by Ice Cube’s execrably reviewed comedy Are We Done Yet? (Metacritic ranking: 39). Many audiences said: ‘I don’t have three hours.’ The Rodriguez half of Grindhouse was for horror fans, and was far too gross for women, who might have liked the Tarantino half, which is a total female empowerment flick. My friend in Chicago who eagerly took a pal on opening day reported about 30 people in the theater. Not a good sign.”

Plans to turn Grindhouse into a franchise – with Rodriguez interested in adapting his fake trailer Machete into a feature length film – were put on hold. The Grindhouse experience now exists as two separate DVDs; Planet Terror is extended 20 minutes over its theatrical running time, while Death Proof is padded with almost 30 minutes of trivial footage. Rodriguez’s fake trailer for Machete can be found on the Planet Terror disc, but the other trailers and promos exist only on YouTube. Some observers pegged the failure of Grindhouse on the seeming inability of its filmmakers to put away their childhood obsessions, to which Tarantino mused, “I remember 25 years ago reading critics slugging on Lucas, on DePalma, on Spielberg saying these guys are so talented but they’ve dedicated their lives to recreating the junk of their childhood. I guess the same people could say that about me and Robert Rodriguez.”

Opinion
Grindhouse was a theater going experience like no other. Viewing Planet Terror or Death Proof on a DVD is a lot like showing up first for a party; the kegger is out, but without other guests, the event leaves something to be desired. In an era where even the decent movies resemble consumer entertainment product – to be guzzled down, tossed in the recycle bin and forgotten – almost every scene of Grindhouse beams with sincere adulation for B-movies, busting out three hours worth of intense audience appreciation. Planet Terror is the best work Robert Rodriguez has done yet. It’s loaded with a ridiculous amount of gags – my favorite is the steely eyed anesthesiologist who loses use of her arms for half the film – but aside from recapturing the ingenuity of El Mariachi, Rodriguez pulls together a complete film for once, as opposed to what feels like six or seven shorts held together by duct tape.

Death Proof provoked the usual suspects who rant “Tarantino is a hack” at the drop of a lightsaber. These are the same douche bags who can tell you shot-by-shot how Reservoir Dogs ripped off City on Fire; if they’re bitching about the length of Death Proof, they might actually have an argument this time. At 85 minutes the exhaustive banter between the girls tested my endurance, while at 113 minutes on the DVD version, the chatter becomes nearly unbearable. It’s too idle for too long, but like all master directors, Tarantino knows how to play an audience, and rewards our patience with not only the greatest car stunt sequence of all time, but the audacity to cast an actual stuntwoman (the charismatic Zoe Bell) as the lady in peril. Like the male leads in all Tarantino films, Kurt Russell gives his best performance in decades. To watch Tarantino give us his version of My Bloody Valentine or Vanishing Point - completely breaking with formula while worshipping it at the same time – is fucking exhilarating.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
“Weinsteins ready for Grindhouse” By Anne Thompson. Variety, March 30, 2007

“Filmmakers and Friends Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez Talk Grindhouse” By Rebecca Murray. About.com, March 31, 2007

“Enter the Grindhouse with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez” By Steve Chupnick. MovieWeb, April 1, 2007

Grindhouse production notes. Dimension Films, April 2007

“Quentin Tarantino: Cult Hero” By Philip Berk. Film Ink, November 2007

“Tarantino Bites Back” By Nick James. Sight & Sound, February 2008

Synopsis
“My name is Tom Van Allen. Or Danny Parker. I honesty don’t know anymore. You can decide. Yeah, maybe you can help me, friend. As you can see I don’t have a hell of a lot of time left.” So says the voice of Tom/Danny (Val Kilmer), wailing on a trumpet as flames engulf the room he’s trapped in. Taking us into the subterranean world of methedrine (speed) and speed freaks (tweakers), Danny braves daylight with his loyal fellow tweaker Jimmy the Finn (Peter Sarsgaard) to score more dope. A run-in with a dealer (Glenn Plummer) who keeps a live woman under his mattress and a speargun by his bed bleeds into “the land of the perpetual night party,” until Danny meets with the narcs (Anthony LaPaglia, Doug Hutchison) he works for as an informant.

Notified that one of the dealers he’s ratted on is coming after him, Danny’s benefactors advise him to get out of Los Angeles. He returns to his apartment instead, removing his jewelry and washing the dye out of hair. Changing into a suit, he plays his horn. Danny’s memory takes him back to when he was still musician Tom Van Allen and visited the Salton Sea of California with his wife (Chandra West). Before leaving L.A., Danny attempts to string together a quarter of a million dollar meth deal between a Chinese cowboy (B.D. Wong) and a sadistic, wheezing meth cook in Palmdale named Pooh Bear (Vincent D’Onofrio), so named because he stuck his nose in so much speed that it had to be amputated.

After taking pity on a neighbor (Deborah Kara Unger) with an abusive boyfriend (Luis Guzman), Danny hits rock bottom when the narcs are tipped off to his deal. They threaten him with prison time unless he agrees to set up Pooh Bear for them. Danny gains the cook’s trust after being forced to strip and endure a close encounter with a caged badger Pooh Bear keeps for amusement. Moving back in time again, we learn that Tom’s wife was killed when the couple crossed paths with two meth cowboys in the Salton Sea. Rather than tell the police what he knew, the musician uses a strand of hair and a ring to launch his own investigation, masquerading as a tweaker who’s pretending to be a snitch.

Production history
Tony Gayton was a USC Film School grad who in the mid-1980s was an assistant for John Milius, producer of a movie Gayton’s older brother Joe had written titled Uncommon Valor. In between writing jobs, Tony Gayton shot a “kamikaze style” documentary titled Athens, Georgia: Inside/Out – which featured R.E.M. and The B-52s – but took him out of the Hollywood loop for a year and drained his bank account. Gayton spent a few months teaching high school phys ed in Compton and considered dropping out of the film industry for good. He decided to write something for himself, something that might make a good writing sample and maybe lead to an assignment. The result was The Salton Sea.

Producer Ken Aguado – a principal of Humble Journey Films with actor Eriq LaSalle – became a champion of Gayton’s script. “Character revelations and plot twists are introduced throughout the entire piece, which is one of the reasons it’s such a fascinating movie. A lot of scripts are boring after the thirteenth page because everything has been revealed. This film is not about the immediate moment. It’s about the future, the past, and it requires two hours to figure out.” Aguado passed the script to D.J. Caruso, who had also started his career as an assistant – to director John Badham – before directing second unit on Point Of No Return and Another Stakeout. Caruso had recently directed a highly rated B-movie airing on HBO in 1998 titled Black Cat Run.

Urged by Aguardo to read The Salton Sea immediately, Caruso recalls, “I loved it. I flipped out because I had been waiting for the right opportunity to direct my first feature film. I’ve had a couple of opportunities before, but I really wanted my first film to be something that meant something to me. I’m obsessed with character journeys, whether that growth is a positive or negative growth. I was really compelled by the dilemma the lead character Danny Parker experiences.” Ken Aguado knew that Frank Darabont – who had written and produced Black Cat Run – was eager to work with Caruso again. He sent Darabont a copy of The Salton Sea as well.

Darabont said, “What I loved about the script was that it took me into a world that I was quite unfamiliar with, but did so in a way that made it tremendously accessible to me as a reader and to me as a viewer. The story delves into a real underbelly kind of existence. It has an absurdist kind of reality where anything can happen and at the same time the script has its other foot in this very intense, real crime drama that you can take seriously.” Directing The Green Mile for Castle Rock Entertainment, Darabont suggested setting up The Salton Sea there. Caruso recalls, “Frank said to me that Castle Rock would never make this movie because it was way too dark for the studio that made Miss Congeniality. Not to dismiss those types of films but The Salton Sea was not typical Castle Rock stuff. But, Rob Reiner was looking for something that was a little dirtier to make the company a little more diverse.”

In July 1999, Castle Rock not only paid $750,000 for the “spec comedy thriller,” but asked Tony Gayton for only minor changes – “I rewrote maybe 10 pages,” he recalled – while also hiring the scribe to write an idea of Reiner’s that became Murder By Numbers. Echoing several of the actor’s key performances, Caruso wanted Val Kilmer for the lead role. Kilmer recalled, “I had played a couple of alcoholics before – Doc Holliday and Jim Morrison – and other similar characters in theater, so I had a pretty good idea about addiction and those arenas of characters who become suicidal.” On a budget of $18 million, shooting commenced April 2000. Interiors were filmed at Center Stage Studios in Los Angeles, with additional photography taking place around L.A. and in the Antelope Valley.

Arriving in theaters April 2002, The Salton Sea received two thumbs up from At The Movies – Richard Roeper commented, “A lot of people have tried to do Pulp Fiction type movies and Tarantinoesque things and they usually fall far short. This is equal to the task” – but most critics were dismissive. Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Taking issue with efforts like The Salton Sea, cold and unemotional films that couldn’t be more pleased at the opportunity to enthusiastically drag audiences through unhappy material, is as futile as getting mad at the wind.” Never expanding beyond 30 screens, the film grossed just $760,000 in the U.S. Tony Gayton mused, “It’s not an easy film for a studio, not the kind of product you can bottle and sell. I mean, how many movies do you have to actually see to figure out what’s going to happen? The TV spots usually tell you everything.”

Opinion
Of all the recent down and dirty movies to explore drug culture – from Trainspotting (heroin) to Blow (cocaine) to Homegrown (marijuana) – The Salton Sea (meth) is the boss for several reasons. The manic compulsions of the tweaker make them by far the most entertaining drug addict to watch stoned in a movie. Tony Gayton’s script is a beautifully structured piece of screenwriting – full of sharp dialogue and rich characters – that actually possesses a story, as opposed to sketches on a lost weekend. The material attracted one of the finest casts of actors and in his feature film debut, D.J. Caruso keeps a cool breeze of mystery flowing through the proceedings, so instead of being ahead of the score at all times, you’re in a constant state of trying to figure it out.

Far from taking itself seriously as an art movie, The Salton Sea is a throwback to the two-fisted fare that used to play on the bottom of the bill, pulp fiction featuring stars reminding you how good they could be, and new faces trying to prove it. Tom Van Allen is the last major role anyone offered Val Kilmer, and his jazz lounge narration in particular is savory. Peter Sarsgaard provides an immensely likable moral center, Adam Goldberg and Deborah Kara Unger give memorable performances as characters off on a bender, while Vincent D’Onofrio is the chief reason to see the movie. As a deformed dirt farmer with a trick up each sleeve, D’Onofrio’s Pooh Bear ranks as one of the best big screen bad guys of recent memory. Thomas Newman composed the coolly efficient score.

Michael W. Phillips Jr. at goatdog’s movies writes, “The Salton Sea is a highly original and entertaining look at the lives of crystal meth addicts that can’t quite free itself from the run-of-the-mill revenge tale it’s trapped in. For every completely new character or scene, there’s one taken from Cop Film 101. It’s a sort of rollercoaster ride through the salvaged wreckage of a hundred similar movies. At the center are two very good but completely different performances: Val Kilmer as the main character, Danny/Tony, who is an addict with a plan; and Vincent D’Onofrio as Pooh-Bear, one of the most original characters I’ve seen in a long time.”

Derek Smith at Apollo Movie Guide writes, “It is the mystery of the film that makes it enjoyable and it’s important to note that this is not truly a “drug film” such as Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, but rather an exploration of a man’s identity and how tragedy forces him to extreme measures. The sharp script always keeps us on edge and makes it nearly impossible to predict what will happen next. While it’s not always original, this film holds its mystery until the very end – a feat not often accomplished by a Hollywood movie.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Five year old Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O’Rourke) wakes in the middle of the night and wobbles downstairs, where the TV has been left on, transitioning to white noise. She talks to the static, waking the household. Life in the Southern California suburb of “Cuesta Verde” is otherwise uneventful: Steven (Craig T. Nelson) is a successful realtor. His wife Diane (Jobeth Williams) is a homemaker. Their spunky teenager daughter Dana (Dominique Dunne), sensitive 10-year-old son Robbie (Oliver Robins) and cocker spaniel share the house. A pool is being dug into the backyard. But signs point to something seriously awry in suburbia.

Carol Anne is drawn to the TV again at night and this time, a mist slithers out and blasts a hole in the wall. The next morning, silverware at the breakfast table turns up bent and kitchen chairs balance themselves. These pranks amuse Diane and bore Carol Anne, who attributes them to “the TV people.” Benign spirits are soon joined by malevolent ones. Knowing what scares each member of the family, a tree comes to life during a storm and grabs Robbie. With the Freelings distracted, the spirits snatch Carol Anne and take her back with them to the spirit realm, where the Freelings are still able to hear her voice through the static of the TV.

Steven goes to the University of Irvine to seek the help of parapsychologists led by Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight). One look at Carol Anne’s bedroom – with toys and furniture spinning around in a cyclone – convinces the researchers that this is not a hoax. They stay through the night and observe spectral light descending the staircase, as well as a portal in the ceiling that drops jewelry in the Freeling’s living room. The dwarf sized clairvoyant Tangina (Zelda Rubenstein) who specializes in cleaning haunted houses notifies the family that Carol Anne is alive, but is being restrained by a spirit she refers to as The Beast, using the girl’s power to corral the wayward spirits. Tangina follows this up with a plan to cross over into the spirit plane and rescue Carol Anne.

Production history
Steven Spielberg met Tobe Hooper in 1978, being a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Spielberg noted, “It’s a real cult film, I know, but one of the most truly visceral movies ever made. Essentially it starts inside the stomach and ends in the heart. As a filmmaker who likes to see everything, I loved it.” Spielberg suggested he and Hooper work together. He would later state that Poltergeist had its roots in his own early childhood, when Spielberg was transfixed by a crack in the wall. “I remember lying there, trying to go to sleep, and I used to always imagine little Hieronymous Bosch-like creatures inside, peeking out and whispering to me to come into the playground of the crack and be drawn into the unknown there, inside the walls of my home in New Jersey.”

Hooper’s version of the genesis of Poltergeist went that when he moved onto the Universal lot to make The Funhouse in 1980, he was put up in the office of Robert Wise, director of The Haunting. Rummaging through Wise’s old desk, Hooper found a book on the supernatural. Taking that as an omen, he proposed to Spielberg that they join forces on a ghost story. The pair collaborated via mail on a treatment while Spielberg was in England shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was during this period working for George Lucas as a director for hire that Spielberg decided he wanted to make something personal, to get back to the tranquility of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He began to develop what became E.T. with screenwriter Melissa Mathison.

MGM president David Begelman – whose studio had rotten tomatoes like Tarzan the Ape Man, Rich and Famous and Buddy Buddy on their slate – was eager to go into business with Steven Spielberg, and awarded him a producing deal. To adapt his haunted house treatment into a script, Spielberg turned to Stephen King. Following a productive meeting, King left it to his publisher to hammer out a deal. The publisher asked for so much money that MGM and Spielberg turned the deal down. King had no regrets, commenting at the time, “Spielberg is somebody who likes to have things his way. Really, as far as writing, it would have been the experience of working with him and watching him work. I could’ve used that. But in the end, I would’ve been hired help.”

Spielberg had read a script called Turn Left or Die about air traffic controllers by Michael Grais & Mark Victor. He hoped to get their take on a remake of A Guy Named Joe, but the writers asked about the ghost story Spielberg wanted to do. Grais & Victor turned in a draft, which Spielberg did not care for. With a Writers Guild strike looming in the spring of 1981, Spielberg cranked out a shooting script himself. Referencing a Twilight Zone episode by Richard Matheson (Little Girl Lost), books on ghosts and his own childhood memories, Spielberg wrote over seven days, with input daily from producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. He showed his script – titled Nighttime – to Tobe Hooper, who in Spielberg’s words, “Hung around with me while I was writing that draft.”

MGM approved a budget of $9.5 million. Producing the film with Marshall, Spielberg soon arrived on the title Poltergeist. He selected the cast and crew. He developed storyboards with illustrator Ed Verreaux, designing the look and feel of the film. With E.T. already in pre-production and scheduled to begin filming September 1981, Spielberg was contractually bound to Universal not to take on directing duties for other films, so Tobe Hooper was hired to helm Poltergeist. What became a 57-day shooting schedule commenced May in Agoura Hills, a suburb in Los Angeles County that – along with a street in Simi Valley – stood in for “Cuesta Verde.” Interiors were shot on four soundstages at MGM Studios in Culver City.

Who had directed Poltergeist depended on who was asked. Making a cameo as one of Steve Freeling’s football buddies, writer-producer David Giler recalled, “When I came back from the set, I said, ‘Well, now I know what an executive producer does. I’ve always wondered. He sets up the camera, tells the actors what to do, stands back, and lets the director say action!’” Jobeth Williams commented, “It was a collaboration with Steven having final say. Tobe had his own input, but I think we knew that Steven had the final say.” Craig T. Nelson had his own assessment: “It’s not fair to eliminate what Tobe did – he gave a tremendous amount of support because he’s a warm, sensitive, caring human being. Tobe was simply pushed out of the picture after turning in his cut.”

According to Marshall, Hooper delivered his cut of Poltergeist in October 1981 and was virtually uninvolved with the editing, special effects at Industrial Light & Magic, sound recording or scoring. Composer Jerry Goldsmith recalled, “I worked only with Steven. One day, Hooper came to a screening and sat down. Steve just ignored him, and five minutes later, he got up and left.” Sound mixer Bill Varney – who won an Academy Award for Raiders of the Lost Ark – said of Hooper, “He dropped by one or two times, but he had no input whatsoever as far as our work was concerned. Basically, Tobe didn’t participate at all.” When casting director Mike Fenton was asked about Hooper, he responded, “Did he direct the film? Not that I saw.”

Spielberg explained his side to L.A. Times reporter Dale Pollock in May 1982: “My enthusiasm for wanting to make Poltergeist would have been difficult for any director I would have hired. It derived from my imagination and my experiences and it came out of my typewriter. I felt a proprietary interest in this project that was stronger than if I was just an executive producer. I thought I’d be able to turn Poltergeist over to a director and walk away. I was wrong.” Tobe Hooper kept mum until he saw a trailer in which the title “A Steven Spielberg Production” was twice as big as “A Tobe Hooper Film.” Hooper took the matter before the Director’s Guild of America. The union considered the credit a violation of their charter and sought $200,000 in damages from MGM.

A guild arbitrator ruled that the trailer “denigrated the role of the director” and further eluded that “broader issues of dispute exist between the producer-writer and the director which seem to have exacerbated the current dispute over the trailer credit.” A reduced settlement of $15,000 was awarded to Hooper, but MGM was ordered to remove the trailer and take out full page ads in trade papers apologizing. Spielberg took out his own ad in Variety, implying that his working relationship with Hooper had simply been misunderstood in the press. Spielberg did admit to Pollock that moving forward, “If I write it myself, I’ll direct it myself. I won’t put someone else through what I put Tobe through, and I’ll be more honest in my contributions to the film.”

Released June 1982, most critics panned Poltergeist. Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker, “it’s The Amityville Horror done with insouciance and high-toned special effects. Because Spielberg is a dedicated craftsman and a wit, he can make a much better low-grade, adolescent entertainment than most directors. But he isn’t really thinking in this film – he’s just throwing ideas and effects at us …” On Sneak Previews, Roger Ebert said, “Poltergeist is a good summer thriller, with good special effects, not a great movie, I give it kind of a mild recommendation” while Gene Siskel retorted, “Anybody can do these special effects now and this doesn’t have a convincing story at all.”

Vincent Canby’s review in the New York Times took an opposing view: “Poltergeist is like a thoroughly enjoyable nightmare, one that you know that you can always wake up from, and one in which, at the end, no one has permanently been damaged. It’s also witty in a fashion that Alfred Hitchcock might have appreciated. Offhand, I can’t think of many other directors who could raise goose bumps by playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ behind a film’s opening credits.” Audiences seemed to agree. Poltergeist grossed $76.6 million in the U.S. It spawned two vastly inferior sequels – with some of the original cast members but none of Spielberg’s involvement – and a syndicated TV series that somehow ran from 1996 to 1999.

Opinion
Debate on who actually wrote or who really directed this will likely persist until film geeks can come together on what constitutes a writing credit and what exactly a director does. What we can agree on until then is that Poltergeist is one of the seminal movies of its generation, a flawlessly designed and executed experience that all these years later, would be impossible to improve upon. It arrived in a period when slasher flicks were en vogue at the box office, but instead of mimicking other horror movies, mined the nocturnal nightmares and also the suburban dreams of creator Steven Spielberg. Poltergeist runs so well because – like Jaws – the best moments don’t involve special effects, but the family relating to each other.

Every detail in Poltergeist feels wholly inspired, from the casting of Craig T. Nelson as the attentive dad who holds it all together, Jobeth Williams as a postmodern mom who sports gray streaks in her hair after crossing the spectral plane, and Zelda Rubenstein as the priceless pint sized psychic. Like Spielberg’s best work, it taps into our fear and fascination of the unknown, delivering playful spirits, as well as moments still too spooky to watch in the dark. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is one of his most spellbinding ever and most surprising, the script features acute wit, satirizing the rituals of suburbia while holding the Freelings above them. What exactly is being said here about the effect of television is probably worthy of its own dissertation.

The Vocabularist at Movie Cynics writes, “Poltergeist is a strong flick with some great special effects (that have started to look a little dated), but in the end, it’s got a little too much ‘family’ stink on it. The film feels weak and pulls its punches at key moments, despite the fact that there are some truly terrifying scenes in the film. Still, it is a key moment in film history, as the ghost finally achieves some semblance of cinematic respect thanks to the use of creative special effects, strong characters, and some high production values. Part of me almost wishes this movie was never made, because it has ultimately led to a glut of moronic ghost stories that never quite manage to attain the emotional peak of Poltergeist.”

Brett Cullum at DVD Verdict writes, “Poltergeist is my favorite example of a modern horror movie that is truly terrifying without any deaths and only one minor scene of gore. Think of it as The Haunting remodeled for the ’80s with bombastic special effects from Industrial Light and Magic. It trucks along with plenty of shocks, but the beauty of the film is how much we come to care about the family as the terror unfolds … This is solid storytelling and a handsomely crafted film that works even twenty-five years after its initial release. E.T. won out in the box office, but how many sequels did that one get? There was something about Poltergeist that captured America’s pop-culture conscious just as well.”

© Joe Valdez

In New York of 1933, vaudevillian Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) finds herself out of work when the theater that employs her is shuttered. Meanwhile, filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) discovers that studio executives are so contemptuous of his plan to shoot the rest of an epic jungle picture somewhere in the South Seas, they plan to shelve the project and sell his film as stock footage.

With the help of his assistant (Colin Hanks), Denham takes off with his negative. His leading lady has quit, but he spots Ann stealing an apple and offers her the role in his picture. Boarding the tramp steamer Venture one step ahead of the authorities, Denham detains his screenwriter, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) when he learns the dramatist hasn’t completed the script.

Heading into uncharted waters, Ann and Jack fall in love. The crew – including the capable captain (Thomas Kretschmann) and first mate (Evan Parke), matinee idol Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler), cook (Andy Serkis) and kid (Jamie Bell) – express anxiety when they learn their destination is the mythical Skull Island. Making their approach through a fog bank, the Venture runs aground.

Denham brazenly takes his cast and crew ashore, where they’re attacked by a ferocious tribe. The captain rescues them, but natives pole vault onto the ship by night and kidnap Ann, who they offer as a sacrifice to a huge beast that crashes through the jungle. Jack leads a rescue mission, but the expedition discovers Skull Island teeming with dinosaurs and carnivorous insects that stomp on or devour the men.

Ann is captive of a malcontented 25 foot ape. She performs pratfalls and dancing for the beast, and he develops an affinity for her. Ann manages to escape, but the island creatures she encounters – including three T-Rexes – convince her she needs Kong to survive. Jack rescues her, and as Kong pursues them back to the ship, Denham uses chloroform to sedate and capture the giant ape and return with him to New York.

While shooting The Frighteners for Universal Pictures in 1996, director Peter Jackson received a call from the studio. He was asked whether he would be interested in a couple of horror movies they wanted to remake. One was Creature From The Black Lagoon, which didn’t excite Jackson much. The other was King Kong. The original 1933 version was Jackson’s favorite movie of all time, and had been his inspiration for becoming a filmmaker.

Jackson adapted a screenplay with producer Fran Walsh. Described as “kind of flippant, kind of Hollywood,” it had a tone similar to what would become Universal’s remake of The Mummy. Jackson and his Weta Workshop did preproduction artwork and built maquettes, but in January 1997, the studio delivered bad news. Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young were going to beat them to theaters, and they were canceling the project.

Jackson put Weta to work on designs for The Hobbit instead, which led to six years making The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Halfway through filming The Two Towers, Jackson was contacted by Universal and asked if he would still be interested in revisiting Kong. The director felt a new version should be a “thank you” to the original, and with Walsh & Philippa Boyens, rewrote the script to have more emotional depth and adhere more faithfully to the 1933 version.

The film became one of the top five moneymakers in the history of Universal. Two top selling DVDs raked in added revenue. One thing about Peter Jackson is that the movie that gets released in theaters isn’t really the movie. In this case, 13 minutes were restored to the DVD “extended edition.” As well as inserting two new monster sequences, the 201 minute running time tempers the frantic pacing on Skull Island and does improve the film.

What never comes into focus is a theme. The 2005 King Kong is a colossus that tries to run a dozen directions at once and falls over itself. Jackson seems to want this epic to be about the Depression, vaudeville, a maverick movie crew, a tramp steamer, a love story, a character ensemble, a serial adventure, and a horror movie. It gets less cluttered as characters die and the story nears its iconic climax, but man, is this a mess trying to get there.

Both Kong – part motion capture performance by Andy Serkis, part digital effects – and the recreation of 1933 New York are pioneering visual achievements. Many of the effects shots – like sunsets – are breathtaking, while others come off like dusty workshop efforts. This unevenness is really apparent in a film that falls flat when it comes to developing its characters and has little more than spectacle to get by on.

Effort went into adding some dimension to the crew of the Venture, but none of that stuff plays. I got the sense Jackson grew bored with the actors. Once we get to the creature feature portion of the film, the camera whips around so wildly it’s difficult to feel any awe or terror about the creatures being unveiled. There’s some fantastic stuff here, but simply too much of it to process without a headache.

Michael Phillips Jr. at goatdog’s movies enthuses, “Jackson has made a film that is both a remake of the 1933 film and a celebration of its impact on movies.” He gives it 4 goats out of 5.

“King Kong is fine, but nothing more. Unless we are talking sheer volume; there it reins supreme,” says Jonny Lieberman at Ruthless Reviews.

Andre Soares at Alternative Film Guide calls the remake, “a technically proficient, unscary, highly sentimental, and utterly soulless thrill ride.”