The following is my contribution to The Class of ‘84 Blogathon convening here at This Distracted Globe.

The Terminator (1984)
Screenplay by James Cameron & Gale Ann Hurd and William Wisher (uncredited), story by James Cameron
Directed by James Cameron
Produced by Pacific Western/ Hemdale Film Corporation
Running time: 108 minutes

Should I Care?
After three sequels and a Fox TV series each decreasing in quality and relevance, what’s most striking about The Terminator is its mood of unrelenting bleakness. Though exciting, its B-movie budget restraints keep this from escalating into the all-ages action spectacle its spin-offs would happily aspire to. Instead, this is one dark cup of coffee, a lurid, appropriately ultra-violent and nihilistic sci-fi horror flick. While I wouldn’t call this James Cameron’s masterpiece — his follow-up Aliens has my vote — it does feel like his most honest, sacrificing none of its ideas in a concession for broad commercial appeal.

The cast may seem unremarkable, but Arnold Schwarzenegger’s less than half an hour of screen time is a model of efficiency. In hindsight, there was no better performer on the planet to play the Terminator, the most iconic screen role of Schwarzenegger’s life. Linda Hamilton & Michael Biehn aren’t great actors, but fit within the economics the director was rather fortuitously stuck with here. Cameron — who doesn’t get enough credit for his strength as a writer — forges an unusually potent relationship between Sarah and Reese, while making a drive-in flick look and feel like something much bigger. Brad Fiedel’s electronic musical score remains one of my favorite of all time.

So, What’s This About?
In Los Angeles of the year 2029, machines have risen from the nuclear apocalypse they initiated against mankind to wage a losing war against the survivors. In desperation, a cybernetic organism known as a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) — part man, part machine — is sent back to Los Angeles of 1984. A soldier named Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) has followed the cyborg through time. Reese clothes and arms himself by breaking into a sporting goods store. The next day, the Terminator pays a visit to an unlucky gunsmith (Dick Miller) and begins assassinating the Sarah Connors in the L.A. phone book one at a time.

Waitress Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) realizes she may be in danger. She ducks into a nightclub and calls the cops, where Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield) urges her to stay in public until they can get there. The Terminator reaches Sarah first. Reese manages to protect her and goes on to explain that the Terminator has targeted Sarah in order to eliminate her unborn son, who is 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 far more rational explanation for her ordeal. This theory lasts as long as it takes for the Terminator to track Sarah to the police station and come after her.

Who Made It?
James Cameron grew up around Niagara Falls on the Canadian side of the border. He came to the United States when his family moved to Brea, California in 1971 and attended Fullerton College, scouring the USC library for information on film technology while putting himself through college as a machinist. Cameron would drop of school in 1978 and with $400,000 he raised from dentists in Tustin — looking to produce their own Star Wars — made a 12-minute special effects demo. This got the attention of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, whose head of visual effects hired Cameron to do front screen projection work on Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).

With battlefield speed, Cameron was promoted to production designer and to head of a visual effects camera unit at New World. He was named second unit director and got the chance to work with actors on Galaxy of Terror (1981). Dismissed by his executive producer after wrapping Piranha II, Cameron would write The Terminator, with a production manager named Gale Ann Hurd polishing his script and producing. William Wisher — a college buddy — pitched in additional dialogue and after years of rejection due to Cameron’s non-existent directing resume, Hurd finally secured $6.4 million in financing from Hemdale on what became one of the most profitable and iconic movies of all time.

How’d They Do It?
Arriving February 1981 in Rome to shoot his first film as a director — Piranha II — James Cameron realized that his Italian executive producer merely hired him as a contractual obligation to New World. As soon as filming wrapped, Cameron was sent home and the film was recut without him. He recalled, “When I got back from Piranha II, I knew that I was never going to get offered another movie unless I came up with something myself. I had to write a film. That made sense for me as a director. I thought it had to have effects, which justified my existence on the project, but I had to not price myself out of the kind of budget that they were likely to trust me with.”

“I thought, how can I introduce that otherness, that element of wonder, into a low budget environment that can be shot on the street, very conventionally, very guerilla filmmaking. So, I thought, fine. It’s present day. It’s present day Los Angeles. It’s the back streets of L.A. So, what happens next? Maybe it can come from outer space. It can come from the future. From a narrative standpoint, it starts to limit your options. It starts to lay out a certain way based on those givens. So I had a given: a contemporary environment that was determined by budget. No big movie stars, so maybe the main characters can be kind of young.”

Cameron backed into the idea of a robotic hitman sent through time, arrived on the title Terminator and wrote a treatment and most of a first draft screenplay. Gale Ann Hurd had been a production manager at New World and co-produced Smokey Bites the Dust. She helped polish Cameron’s script, which he sold to Hurd for the price of $1, striking a pact that he would keep her on as producer, if she agreed not to go with a more experienced director. Cameron recalled, “Our strength in doing the movie was pooling our resources and forming an impenetrable barrier to anyone who wanted to take it away from us or change to concept.”

Gale Ann Hurd spent the next two years trying to raise the financing for Terminator. “Some actors turned down the film because Jim was attached as the director. Buyers approached Jim as the director provided he got rid of me as producer. I trusted him and he trusted me. We held out and were able to do it essentially on our own terms. I thought if I just persevered I’d get the movie made. My idealism and my naiveté carried me through at least two years of trying to get it together and keep it together. If I’d known then what I know now — some 23 pictures later — I’m not sure I would have persevered.”

Hurd zeroed in on an executive at Hemdale Film Corporation named Barry Plumley. “Of course, he wouldn’t return my phone calls. Practically no one would.” Hurd found out that Plumley was selling a desk. She needed a desk and when they met to complete the transaction, Hurd handed him a 48-page treatment for Terminator. Plumley called the next day to tell her that he loved it. Hurd had also mentioned her project to a comrade from New World named Barbara Boyle, who was now senior vice president of Orion Pictures. “Barbara talked Mike Medavoy into reading the script, talked him into meeting with Jim and me.” Hemdale agreed to finance Terminator at $6.4 million, while Orion came on board as U.S. distributor.

To play the Terminator, Cameron wanted a survivor from Piranha II, Lance Henriksen. The actor pitched in on the drive for financing.”I went into Hemdale decked out like the Terminator. I put gold foil from a Vantage cigarette package in my teeth and waxed my hair back. Jim had put fake cuts on my head. I wore a ripped-up punk rock T-shirt, a leather jacket and boots up to my knees. It was a really exciting look. I was a scary person to be in a room with. I kicked the door open when I got there and the poor secretary just about swallowed her typewriter. I headed in to see the producer. I sat in the room with him and I wouldn’t talk to him. I just kept looking at him. After a few minutes of that he was ready to jump out the window!”

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name soon came up. Cameron recalled, “Arnold was never really slated to be in the picture. Mike Medavoy at Orion suggested Arnold play Michael Biehn’s character, Reese. I don’t think there’s anybody that would think that was a great idea. At that point in his career, doing 25 pages of expository dialogue and talking really fast and painting the picture of a future world we didn’t have the budget to actually visually create was not going to be Arnold’s strong suit, you know.” To play the Terminator, Medavoy suggested O.J. Simpson. Cameron immediately put The Juice out of his mind, but was intrigued with meeting Schwarzenegger.

Cameron revealed, “Over lunch I started thinking, This guy has got the most amazing face. I almost wanted to say, ‘Arnold, just stop talking for a second and be real still,’ but I was petrified. I thought, This guy would make a great Terminator. But he doesn’t want to play the Terminator. I went back to John Daly and said, ‘Forget it, it’s not going to work. But, boy, he’d make a hell of a Terminator.’ Anyway, the upshot is that the deal was closed that afternoon and we were making the movie after a two-year hold.” Schwarzenegger was already booked to spend the fall of 1983 in Mexico shooting a sequel to Conan the Barbarian, pushing a potential start date for Terminator back 10 months.

With the Austrian Oak on board, Cameron recalled, “What changed was the original concept as written — and the script didn’t change at all, not a single line of dialogue was changed — but the visual concept was that the Terminator was this anonymous character who could walk out of a crowd, just one face in a crowd, could walk up and kill you, for no apparent reason, except for what your life would mean in some future time. And that concept changed, because Arnold doesn’t vanish into a crowd. It took on a slightly more hyperbolic visual style, a little larger than life. It still played sort of realistically, but it became more nightmarish.”

Linda Hamilton was initially only in the running to play Sarah Connor. Cameron revealed, “She was among a number of actresses I saw. I think it narrowed down to her, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rosanna Arquette. At the time, Jennifer Jason Leigh had only done a couple of TV movies. She is an awesome actress, but Linda was great in the part.” Despite auditioning with a Southern accent because he’d spent that morning reading for a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Michael Biehn would be cast as Reese. After months spent storyboarding and designing the film — as well writing Alien II and First Blood Part II on assignment — Cameron finally called action on Terminator March 1984 in Los Angeles.

Cameron recalled, “The executive producer begged us to write more of the scenes as daytime, because of the perceived cost difference, but, you know, I plunged madly on. It seemed so important stylistically to keep the film in night, a night film, as much as possible. And so we kept it that way. And I don’t think it really impacted the cost all that much.” Terminator was shot mostly with a single camera by journeyman Adam Greenberg, while Stan Winston labored up to the hour to build a mechanical Terminator for the climax. Fantasy II Effects executed the special effects shots, including a stop-motion puppet animated by Peter Kleinow.

Barbara Boyle mused, “Now, everybody in town knew of that Terminator script because it had been all around. Everybody knew that it had a woman as producer who co-wrote the script with some guy with no credits called Jim Cameron and that he came with the package as the director, that’s why it hadn’t been picked up. That’s always dicey.” She added, “Hemdale was scared and why wouldn’t they be? The director didn’t talk much, he drew pictures. The producer’s only credit was as an associate on Smokey Bites the Dust. No one at Orion had confidence in the movie.” Seven months after shooting commenced and The was inserted in its title, Terminator opened October 26, 1984 in the United States at 1,005 theaters.

In its opening weekend, The Terminator was one of six new releases: the action comedy American Dreamer was from Warner Bros., Brian DePalma’s thriller Body Double from Columbia, the drama Firstborn from Paramount, the Paul McCartney starring Give My Regards To Broad Street from Fox and a horror compilation film titled Terror In the Aisles from Universal. To the surprise of most in the film industry, The Terminator debuted #1 at the box office. After adding 100 theaters the following weekend, instead of its attendance dropping, it actually went up. The low budget sci-fi flick would go on to earn $38.3 million in the United States and add $40 million overseas.

On At the Movies, Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert hadn’t even seen The Terminator before it opened. The critics bought a ticket just like everyone else and would split over whether the film was any good. Roger Ebert: “In fact, this is a surprising movie. It’s violent, it’s bloody, it’s sadistic, but it’s also well-acted and directed, it is R-rated — don’t go unless you like strong action pictures — but I must say, I did like it.” Gene Siskel: “Yeah, I was rooting for it, I mean, I thought, everyone’s talking about it and I saw it a little bit late and I was not impressed.” Siskel added, “As an action picture, I thought it was not particularly well made, but the love story, you’re right, is kind of nice.”

Emboldened by his success, James Cameron ran into trouble with outspoken science fiction writer Harlan Ellison. As Terminator was headed into production, friends had tipped Ellison off that its script bore a strong resemblance to two episodes Ellison had authored for the 1960s TV series The Outer Limits, “Soldier” and “Demon With A Glass Hand”. Ellison was later contacted by Starlog Magazine and notified that Cameron had boasted of “ripping off a few Outer Limits” to form the basis of Terminator. Hemdale would settle out of court, writing Ellison a check for $75,000 and amending the end credits of all future prints of The Terminator to acknowledge Ellison’s contributions.

Nonetheless, 15 years later Cameron was still proud of what he considered his first film as director. “So I think from the standpoint of the Hollywood mainstream, they got up one morning and opened the trades and went, ‘What the hell is this movie that’s number one this weekend?’ And, by the way, it was number one the next weekend and the weekend after that. It dominated the Thanksgiving weekend against a couple of big pictures, like Dune, for example, and 2010, which were big studio pictures. Actually, 2010 was a big studio picture and Dune was a high-end independent film. But these were megabuck movies and Terminator just steam rolled over them. And it had been done by these nonentities.”

Where’d You Get All of This?
“James Cameron – How To Direct a Terminator” By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. Starlog Magazine, December 1984

“James Cameron Interview” By Kenneth Turan. US Magazine, August 1991

“The Making of The Terminator: A Retrospective”. 1992

The Directors: Take One. By Robert J. Emery. TV Books (1999)

Women Who Run the Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood, 1973-2000. By Mollie Gregory. St. Martin’s Press (2002)

“The Terminator: Past Perfect” By Ben Braddock. SFX, September 2003

Drag Me To Hell (2009)
Written by Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi
Directed by Sam Raimi
Produced by Ghost House Pictures
Running time: 99 minutes

So, What’s This About?
In Pasadena, California, 1969, a migrant couple frantically seeks the help of medium Shaun San Dena (Flor de Maria Chahua) to dispel the demons that began harassing their son after he stole from a gypsy. 30 years later, Los Angeles loan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) strives to overcome a few personal demons of her own. With her professor boyfriend (Justin Long) offering emotional support, Christine covets a management position at the bank where she works. Hoping to demonstrate to her boss (David Paymer) that she can make tough decisions, Christine denies a decaying gypsy named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) an extension on her home loan.

After a violent encounter with Mrs. Ganush — in which the crone snatches a button from her coat and breathes a curse on it — Christine visits a storefront psychic named Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) who sees an evil spirit haunting her. Following an attack by an unseen force at home and a freak sickness at the office, Christine revisits Rham and learns that her tormentor is the Lamia, a demon that will plague the owner of a cursed object for three days before dragging their soul into hell. He suggests Christine appease the Lamia with an animal sacrifice, but when that fails, she comes up with $10,000 for Shaun San Dena (Adriana Barraza) to vanquish the Lamia.

Who Made It?
Sam Raimi grew up in Birmingham, Michigan. While his older brother Ivan Raimi would go on to become a practicing doctor of osteopathic medicine, Sam dropped out Michigan State University after three semesters to raise money and shoot a feature version of a 32-minute horror movie demo Raimi had patched together with his roommate Bruce Campbell starring and brother Ted’s roommate Rob Tapert producing. Titled The Evil Dead (1981), the hyperkinetic no budget flick grew into a cult classic. Raimi helped inspire the careers of Joel & Ethan Coen, who co-wrote Crimewave (1985) with Raimi. The tongue-in-cheek Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987), the superhero adventure Darkman (1990) and the special effects romp Army of Darkness (1992) followed.

Sam and his brother Ivan had written a short story about a gypsy hex they referred to simply as The Curse. As Sam Raimi’s directing career made a build toward prestige with A Simple Plan (1998), The Gift (2000), Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), Raimi hoped to produce The Curse through his production shingle Ghost House Pictures, with another director taking the reins. Unable to interest anyone, Raimi opted to direct the film, making a return to his low budget spooky roots with Nathan Kahane and Joe Drake of Mandate Pictures financing a comparatively low budget of around $30 million. Sneaking into theaters Memorial Day 2009 under the title Drag Me To Hell, the B-movie became one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2009.

How’d They Do It?
Ivan Raimi pinned the genesis of Drag Me To Hell to an exercise he and his brother Sam gave themselves. “We started writing this so far back. We were working on Darkman, I believe, at the time. We’d reached some sort of impasse, and we had the weekend off, we decided to do something else. We challenged ourselves to write a short story in the time we had. It was something that might be meant for a half-hour TV show. That was the beginning of Drag Me to Hell. We wanted to write a gypsy curse story. A story of what somebody would do if they inadvertently got cursed and the lengths they would go to to remove the curse. I think I was dating a bank teller at the time and that’s how the woman became a bank teller.”

He continued, “It got shuffled to the bottom of the trunk, and we always wanted to work on it. Every now and then we’d dust it off and start working on it. Eventually, Sam had this company, Ghost House Pictures and said, ‘Yeah, we should work on it for Ghost House.’ So it became more earnest. It kept going in slightly different directions. It was always a little story. Every time we had a B-story, we’d work hard to integrate it into the A-story, but it never wanted to be that. It always wanted to be the very simple, nonstop story of a curse and the clock’s ticking and what to do to remove it. It went through a lot of permutations but eventually got back to what it was originally intended to be. It’s almost completely an A-story. There’s not much subplot or subtext.”

Sam Raimi recalled the origins of Drag Me To Hell by stating, “My brother, Ivan, and I had written this short story in 1989. Then just a few years ago, in 2002, we adapted it into a screenplay. I have a horror movie company called Ghost House Pictures, so I thought, why not make it into a full-fledged screenplay for the new company? We wrote it in mind with me to produce and for another director to come in and shoot it. Unfortunately that meant cutting the script so it could be made on a smaller budget. And as I started cutting, I realized that’s not why I was in it. I wasn’t there just to make a movie. I wanted to make this movie.”

He continued, “We did the most minor amount of research and discovered there are different demons that exist in many different cultures under the name of ‘Lamia’. In one culture, it’s this baby-eating God. In another, it’s a snake. In another, it’s a very sexy, but evil woman. And we thought, how interesting that they all have the same name, yet they’re all different. Maybe they’re just telling different stories about the same thing? Maybe we can tell our own story about that demon and call it The Lamia? What we really have at the core here is a timeless story concept that was used in this film, along with many others: the idea of a character that commits a sin of greed and has to pay the terrible price for it. It’s a morality tale that many churches have told, throughout the ages. So it’s a tried and true, old horror story in the book, basically.”

Ivan Raimi — who practices osteopathic medicine at Saint Joseph Mercy Livingston Hospital in Howell, Michigan — elaborated on his and his brother’s creative process. “When we write, we’ll have a project that’s assigned to us, or Sam and I will come up with some very basic concept that we try to turn into a couple pages, then together we’ll work it into a five-page story, then we’ll maybe make it into a ten-page story. Then we roughly outline it as well as our limited brains can, then give it a three act structure. But we’re not super structure guys.” He added, “Occasionally, he’ll write a little bit on his own, or I’ll write a little bit on my own, but when we write together, it’s sort of an extension of playing. It’s like being a kid when you’re making up stories. That’s the advantage of working with your brother.”

Sam Raimi commented on the partnership. “I’ve worked on many scripts with Ivan. He’s a doctor by day and a writer by night. We’ve actually spent a lot of time together, writing sometimes on the Spider-Man films, Darkman, Army of Darkness, and we have a great time being together. So it’s really both great family time and great work time for us. Unless he tries to rewrite me. The quality of that family time goes down a little bit, proportional to the amount he wants to rewrite me.” In December 2007, it was announced that Sam Raimi was returning to the horror genre by directing Drag Me To Hell for his Ghost House Pictures banner. The company had produced American remakes of The Grudge (2004) and The Grudge 2 (2006) and the vampire flick 30 Days of Night (2007).

Through Ghost House’s partnership with Mandate Pictures, roughly $30 million in financing was scared up. To play the cursed heroine, Ellen Page — who in December 2007 was being celebrated by critics and adored by moviegoers for her performance in Juno — was cast. Mandate had already booked the ingénue to play a supporting role in the mystery Peacock and the lead in Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It. Despite efforts to get Drag Me To Hell rolling in mid-March to accommodate her schedule, a two-week delay in production forced Page to drop out. Alison Lohman — who’d experienced an Ellen Page year in 2002-03 with pivotal roles in White Oleander, Matchstick Men and Big Fish — was cast instead.

Drag Me To Hell commenced filming May 2008 in Tarzana, California, the site of an empty bank building that was transformed into “Wilshire Pacific Bank” by Steve Saklad, art designer of Spider-Man 2. Director of photography Peter Deming had shot Evil Dead 2 for Raimi before serving as David Lynch’s DP on Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. Supervising the special makeup effects were Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB EFX Group, who also met Raimi on Evil Dead 2; the company has since become the premiere makeup effects team in Hollywood. Nicotero commented, “Visual effects are fun, but there’s just something about a bunch of guys pulling cables and moving a puppet around. Sam is still enamored with that.”

Deming concurred. ““Sam loves B-movie stuff. He really embraces the wind out of nowhere and the camera shaking and the inventive, interactive lighting. He eats that up.” Raimi maintained he didn’t have other movies in mind specifically during the making of Drag Me To Hell. “I was just trying to make this story as dramatic and fun as I could. Our goal was never to follow any trends or even to try to give the audience what we thought they would want. We always tried to please ourselves — myself and my brother Ivan Raimi — when we were writing the script and in doing so, hoped that we would please the audience.” Additional scenes were filmed at Cal State Northridge and Union Station, while most of the interiors were shot on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles.

With Universal Pictures acquiring domestic and international distribution rights, Drag Me To Hell was screened March 2009 at the South By South Film Festival in Austin and at the Cannes Film Festival just before opening in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Israel in May. While more than a few horror buffs expressed reservations about the film’s PG-13 rating, Raimi explained, “I definitely, when I was writing the picture with my brother Ivan, didn’t want to rely on what I had relied on in the previous horror films, the Evil Dead films which was outrageous amounts of violence, blood and gore. I wanted to go in a slightly different direction with this one so I said, ‘Let’s try not to have any of that if we can, blood and violence and gore.’”

Critics jumped out of the theater praising the film. Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times: “At a time when horror is defined by limp Japanese retreads or punishing exercises in pure sadism, Drag Me to Hell has a tonic playfulness that’s unabashedly retro, an indulgent return to Mr. Raimi’s goofy, gooey roots.” Michael Phillips, The Chicago Tribune: “This hellaciously effective B-movie comes with a handy moral tucked inside its scares, laughs and Raimi’s specialty, the scare/laugh hybrid.” Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle: “Raimi pairs his love of Three Stooges-style physical comedy with moments of pure gross-out schtick and ends up with one of the purest and flat-out satisfying horror films in decades.”

Considered a marketing challenge — with a PG-13 rating that may have alienated horror fans and subject matter that definitely turned away families — Drag Me To Hell still grossed $42.1 million in the United States and $40.7 million overseas. Echoing the response of many who discovered the film, Sam Raimi enthused, “It was the most fun I’ve had in 20 years directing pictures. It was great to make a horror film where we had money to hire the best technicians in their fields. I had the luxury of not freezing to death when I was making the movie or filming it myself like in the first Evil Dead film, which was shot in 16mm and we didn’t have money for heat. I remember washing fake blood off my hands with hot coffee because we didn’t have running water there.”

Should I Care?
When watching a film directed by Sam Raimi, I almost expect to see characters depart in a puff of dust accompanied by rocket sound effects, like Looney Tunes. Whether your point of entry are the spastic Evil Dead trilogy, the Sharon Stone quickdraw epic The Quick and the Dead (1995) or the artificially flavored Spider-Man series, Raimi approaches movies less as art and more like a carnival funhouse, which over time, like the Looney Tunes, sort of makes them art. Drag Me To Hell is the latest coaster from a ride operator who’s had 30 years and over a billion dollars of expertise shelling out intense amusement. Never for a moment scary, this movie does have a moral, a mind and an old school style that gives the horror genre a desperately needed shot in the arm.

Framing a story against the economic recession, mining folklore for inspiration and delivering one of the best shock endings in recent memory, Drag Me To Hell has replaced A Simple Plan as my favorite Sam Raimi movie to date. Plenty goofy on the surface, there are strong ideas under the current here (Patton Oswalt theorized the movie was an allegory for anorexia!) I liked the suggestion that the westerners were seemingly oblivious of the supernatural world that the Mexican, Eastern European and South Asian characters had a hunting blind into. Whether there’s any subtext here or not, the movie is fun as hell, abetted by Christopher Young’s terrific musical score and an Oscar caliber sound mix that makes squishing gums, creaking gates or gust of wind outright characters in the film.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Raimi Hell Bent on Thriller” By Michael Fleming. Variety, 19 December 2007

“Sam Raimi Interview for Drag Me to Hell” By Matt Elfman. ScreenCrave, 27 May 2009

“Sam Raimi has horror in his clutches” By Gina McIntyre. The Los Angeles Times, 28 May 2009

Drag Me To Hell – Production Notes

“Sam Raimi Interview, Drag Me To Hell” MoviesOnline

“The Script Doctor” By Denis Faye. Writers Guild of America

Trick ‘r Treat (2009)
Written by Michael Dougherty
Directed by Michael Dougherty
Produced by Legendary Pictures/ Bad Hat Harry Productions
Running time: 82 minutes

So, What’s This About?
In “Warren Valley, Ohio” on Halloween Night, a Yuppie couple (Leslie Bibb, Tahmoh Penikett) are paid a visit by a demonic trick ‘r treater with a burlap sack for a head. In the first of four tongue-in-cheek horror tales to follow, a junior high school principal (Dylan Baker) poisons an obnoxious candy seeker and attempts to dispose of the body before his young son finds out. Three sexually aggressive party seekers (Lauren Lee Smith, Moneca Delain, Rochelle Aytes) get separated from their more precocious friend Laurie (Anna Paquin). Costumed as Little Red Riding Hood, she soon draws the attention of a psycho killer dressed in black.

Four adolescent trick ‘r treaters (Britt McKillip, Isabelle Deluce, Alberto Ghisi, Jean-Luc Bilodeau) let an outcast named Rhonda (Samm Todd) join their expedition to the local quarry. The trick ‘r treaters intend to make an offering of eight pumpkins to the eight children who as legend has it were driven off the quarry by a homicidal bus driver; their ceremony does not go as planned. Finally, the reclusive Mr. Kreeg (Brian Cox) wants to be left alone on Halloween, but receives a visit from the burlap headed trick ‘r treater, who’s been wandering in and out of all the stories. The imp seems to have retribution on its mind for All Hallow’s Eve.

Who Made It?
Michael Dougherty was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. He attended New York University, graduating in 1996 from Tisch School of the Arts. Dougherty spent three years toiling on Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues, while an animated short he’d written and directed titled Season’s Greetings made it to television. Director Bryan Singer read a spec script Dougherty had written titled Trick ‘r Treat — expanding the character and themes from Dougherty’s short — and introduced him to aspiring filmmaker and screenwriter Dan Harris. After moving to L.A. independent of each other, the duo won jobs writing X2 (2003) and Superman Returns (2006) for Singer.

Championed by late makeup effects maestro Stan Winston — originally slated to produce the film — Trick ‘r Treat was developed by Legendary Pictures, the Burbank based production company behind Superman Returns, Lady In the Water and 300, co-financing and co-producing in partnership with Warner Bros. Bryan Singer of Bad Hat Harry Productions came on board as a producer in the fall of 2006 and was present on the set of Doughtery’s live action directing debut in Vancouver. Despite overwhelmingly positive word of mouth, Warner Bros. backed away from giving Trick ‘r Treat a theatrical release, finally rolling it out on DVD in October 2009.

How’d They Do It?
Seasons Greetings (1996) was a 4-minute, hand drawn and hand colored short film, which writer-director Michael Dougherty spent nine months drawing with pencils and paper at NYU. Each frame was colored with magic markers instead of paint with fellow film students helping him color many of the cels. The short — about a trick ‘r treater with a burlap sack for a head being menaced by a stalker — was broadcast on MTV’s Cartoon Sushi and Sci-Fi Channel and played a few film festivals. As Dougherty brainstormed ideas for short films or short stories he noticed they all ended up being about Halloween.

Dougherty recalled, “So I started thinking, well how neat would it be to put them all together into one movie and I guess it was kind of my way of cheating and saying here’s, look, here’s my feature film screenplay, it’s an anthology movie. But then they also started interweaving and it became one movie, just with a lot of characters whose lives start intersecting. I realized I could take this character and make him the next door neighbor of that character and make these trick-or-treaters show up at the door of this guy and so it all ended up coming together. And Sam became a character that wandered though all of their stories.”

He continued, “The first story is really just about a father and a son and introducing the son to the holiday and its traditions. The next one, it’s a group of kids who are between ages 12 and 15 and it’s when you break away from your parents and you’re walking around the town by yourself trick-or-treating. And then the next one, you’re in your twenties and the holiday becomes about nothing but partying and having sex and trying to find the hottest costume possible. The fourth one is the twilight years, when you’re old and alone and celebrating the holiday by yourself, which hopefully none of us end up like, but it’s kind of these weird four seasons of Halloween in a sense.”

Dougherty’s spec script — Trick ‘r Treat – became his calling card to meeting the director of The Usual Suspects and X-Men, Bryan Singer, in 2000. After working with his writing partner Dan Harris on drafts of X2 and Superman Returns, executive producers Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni and William Fay of Legendary Pictures were prepared to give Dougherty a shot making the transition from screenwriter to director of Trick ‘r Treat. Dougherty revealed, “I think the transition was made easier by the fact that Bryan Singer always had me and my writing partner Dan Harris on set throughout X2 and throughout Superman Returns and it’s interesting to realize how much I picked up just from osmosis.”

Dougherty added, “In terms of preparing, interacting with the crew, knowing how to set up a shot, getting your coverage, etc. I think I’m blessed in that I’ve had Bryan to show me the ropes as well as my writing partner Dan who directed a feature film a few years ago called Imaginary Heroes. They’ve both been available to give me pointers and tips and help me out. As well as Alex Garcia; he’s been on the set of Bryan’s movies and produced his TV projects. It’s been good, but I definitely know that those two movies, Superman Returns and X2 were basically boot camp. I’d be twenty times more terrified doing this if I hadn’t been on set for 131 days on each of those two movies.”

With Bryan Singer and Alex Garcia of Bad Hat Harry Productions as producers, Trick ‘r Treat commenced filming November 2006 in Vancouver. Singer was reportedly on set throughout the film’s nine-week shoot. Also working with Dougherty was NYU alum Breehn Burns, who’d come on board as a concept artist and would also design the film’s comic book panel title sequence. Of Burns, Dougherty added, “He referred me to a storyboard guy named Simeon Wilkins, who’s a young guy who has an amazing resume. He worked on The Ring, Monster House, he just finished Beowulf for Bob Zemeckis, and we click really well too.”

Scheduled for release October 2007, Halloween came and went without Warner Bros. giving audiences Trick ‘r Treat. Legendary Pictures screened it December 2007 at the annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon in Austin, Texas, an invitation-only film festival hosted by the architect of Ain’t It Cool News, Harry Knowles. Avid dispatches from film geeks who’d seen the movie would trickle through the popular website for the next two years. “Massawyrm”: “Horror fans are going to have a ton of fun with this and I fully expect this to take its rightful place as the holiday classic that gets pulled out every year, much the same way Halloween was for many of us in our youth. It is a film very much about the holiday and its spirit, and it captures that wonderfully.”

Warner Bros. began to license Trick ‘r Treat T-shirts, graphic novels and action figures, but the studio was at a loss over how to market the movie. Dougherty mused, “I remember having a conversation with, you know, an executive who shall remain nameless about this, and he said, ‘Oh, it’s a horror movie.’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ He goes, ‘Well, we’ll target the Saw and the Hostel demographic.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no, that’s not them.’ ‘Well but they’re the horror audience.’ ‘No, they’re not this horror audience.’ Horror itself isn’t just a genre. There’s so many subgenres to it, just like there’s so many types of comedy. You have your Wayans Brothers comedies and you have your Judd Apatow comedies. Very different audiences. And so, sometimes it can be difficult to try to explain horror as a genre to people.”

Despite successful screenings at Screamfest L.A. in October 2008, Comic Con in July 2009 and recently at L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema, Warner Bros. shuttled Trick ‘r Treat onto Video On Demand and DVD in October 2009. Reviewers were effusive with praise. Bill Gibron, Pop Matters: “Almost too clever for its own good, Trick ‘r Treat is a really good film. In fact, it’s so unusual in its practical F/X approach and retro direct to video charms that a second viewing is definitely needed before confirming its almost masterpiece status.” Alex Billington, First Showing.Net: “There hasn’t been a horror movie this original and this inventive since Wes Craven brought us Scream in 1996. I guess it only took twelve years to finally find the next great horror franchise.”

Commenting on his film’s winding road to release, Dougherty suggested it was caught between two business models, one dying out, the other taking its baby steps. “We’re reaching a day and age where the generation of kids growing up expect to have the option of going to the theater or watching a movie at home. I think that window is going to close completely, soon. But I think, in the meantime, I think it’s smart for distributors to look at that limited-release fan demand method of distribution.” He added, “Why not try to open it in two cities and let the fans post on Facebook or send out tweets about getting it in their hometown? I really wish we could have tried that model with Trick ‘r Treat, but by the time the decision had been made it was too late.”

Should I Care?
Here’s a movie stoked by such an outpouring of love from its target demographic that I’m left to ponder whether I even saw the same film the fanboys did. Trick ‘r Treat isn’t really for people who read reviews, it’s for the people who love those movies that aren’t screened for critics. It’s also blatantly the work of a first time screenwriter and director. At 82 minutes with credits, Doughtery gets in a hurry introducing too many characters without giving us a reason to care about a single one. Some of his ideas are sketchy and poorly executed. Burlap head — referred to as “Sam” in the credits for reasons that are never explained — never makes the leap from doodle to compelling screen creep.

There’s a segment here — the film’s best — about 13-year-olds trick ‘r treating that recalls those Saturday afternoon, kids on a mission movies I grew up with like The Goonies or The Monster Squad. That’s nice, and so is Breehn Burns’ gorgeous title sequence with comic book panels illustrated with scenes from the movie flipping by. Douglas Pipes supplements this with a fantastic musical score that easily surpasses anything Danny Elfman has composed in 16 years. Trick ‘r Treat isn’t a bad movie. I can name 10 recent horror movies that were a lot worse. But if this is destined to become a Halloween standard, I’ll be watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Superman Returns Writers Ride a Wave of Success” By Torquin Hedd. Moving Pictures Magazine, July 2006

“Quartet are in for Treat” By Pamela McClintock. Variety, 9 November 2006

“Trick ‘r Treat: Writer/Director Michael Dougherty, On Set in Vancouver, BC Canada” BloodyDisgusting.com, 11 January 2007

“Director on what the long-delayed release has meant for Trick ‘r Treat” By Patrick Lee. Sci-Fi Wire, 28 July 2009

“Q&A: Trick ‘r Treat writer-director Michael Dougherty” Heat Vision Blog. The Hollywood Reporter, 8 October 2009

Trick ‘r Treat. DVD audio commentary with Michael Dougherty. Warner Home Video (2009)

Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Screenplay by Kelly Reichardt & Jon Raymond, based on the short story Train Choir by Jon Raymond
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Produced by filmscience/ Glass Eye Pix
Running time: 80 minutes

So, What’s This About?
Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) treks through the woods near a town in Oregon with her dog, Lucy. They stumble onto some young hobos gathered around a campfire, and Wendy reveals that she’s headed to Ketchikan, Alaska for summer work. She spends the night in her ’88 Honda Accord in a Walgreens parking lot. Come morning, an elderly security guard (Walter Dalton) politely asks her to move along, but Wendy’s car stalls. Marking time until a mechanic opens shop, she makes a decision that lands her in jail for several hours. By the time Wendy returns to the spot where she left Lucy, she discovers her traveling partner is missing.

Wendy puts in a call to her brother-in-law and antagonistic sister in Indiana, but we learn little about her background except where she came from, where she’s headed and that she has very little cash to make it on her own much longer. When Lucy fails to turn up at the local pound, Wendy spreads “lost dog” notices all over town. She finds the kindness of strangers in the security guard, as well as an honest mechanic (Will Patton) who regrettably has bad news about her car. Wendy finally reunites with Lucy, but the difficulties on the road ahead prompt her to reconsider taking the dog along on the journey.

Who Made It?
Kelly Reichardt grew up in Miami. The daughter of homicide detective father and narcotics agent mother, she immersed herself in photography after borrowing her dad’s crime scene camera in the 5th grade. Reichardt would drop out of high school and move to Boston, where she enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Making non-narrative films on Super 8 led to a BFA. Reichardt returned to Florida in 1993 to shoot a feature film, River of Grass. Rather than making filmmaking her focus, Reichardt entered teaching — first at the School of Visual Arts in New York, later at Columbia and NYU. She returned to directing in 1999 with a 48-minute short she’d filmed in North Carolina titled Ode.

Reichardt met Portland based author Jon Raymond through her friend Todd Haynes. The positive experience on Ode led her to ask Raymond if he had any short stories they might adapt into a film together. Their collaboration resulted in Reichardt’s second feature: Old Joy (2006). They came up with the idea for another feature — Wendy and Lucy — together, with Reichardt working on a script while Raymond realized it as a short story titled Train Choir. Producer Anish Savjani secured financing and with Michelle Williams starring, Wendy and Lucy would prove Reichardt’s most critically and commercially successful work to date.

How’d They Do It?
After college, Kelly Reichardt worked as a property master and set dresser on Todd Haynes’ first live action feature, Poison. Reichardt went on to teach while Haynes rose to acclaim as director of Safe and Velvet Goldmine. Haynes later met Jon Raymond, editor of a Portland arts magazine called Plazm. Credited as “Slats Grobnik”, Raymond would serve as Haynes’ assistant on Far From Heaven in 2001 and publish a novel titled The Half Life in 2004. Haynes stated, “After reading The Half Life, I was amazed at Jon’s strong sense of regional identity, and then I spent some time around him and saw the sort of old-school way he related to his friends, the intimacy and warmth they shared.”

Raymond recalled, “I met Kelly through Todd, both here and then when I moved back East. Kelly was actively looking for a story to adapt for a new project. She had read a novel I had written called The Half Life, in 2004, and she liked that and was looking for something to do with people she knows. She wanted a story that had very few characters, largely took place out doors — so she would not have to deal with a lot of sets — and would have room for a dog to be written in. I had this story, Old Joy, although I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing a feature in it. But she did and went off and made it. It was an amazing surprise and blessing for me.”

Discovering Jon Raymond, Reichardt mused, “There is something elliptical about his writing. His stories are very open and leave a lot of room for the reader to bring their own experiences to the subject. This translates well to my approach to filmmaking. He also is very good at setting people into their environments so that whatever is going on with them internally is linked to where they happen to be. The landscape becomes more than just a place, but something like a character in the story. Which fits with my own long-term interest in representing the American landscape.” The success of Old Joy — a study of alienation between two friends on a camping trip — left Reichardt eager to collaborate with Raymond again.

Reichardt recalled, “It was very post-Katrina — what it was for everyone just to be watching, but also the conversation of, you know, ‘Those people, living in such peril,’ they wouldn’t be in the shape they’re in, the position they’re in. We just started pondering: If you don’t have a net and you’ve had a shitty education and you don’t have the benefit of family that’s in any better situation than you’re in, how does one improve their lot? Not even reaching the middle class, but how do you just get a toehold in the next level? That was the seed, and then Jon went off and wrote the story. The screenplay was just an adaptation of his story.”

Reichardt’s own traveling companion — a golden Labrador retriever mix named Lucy — had made her screen debut in Old Joy. The director added, “Two elements were there from the beginning: the dog and economics. We knew we had to have Lucy in the movie, since she came along anyway, and we felt like the times were right for a real financially driven plot-line. Jon wrote a few drafts of the story, with editing and commentary from me. And then I wrote the screenplay, making additions and subtractions, with editing and commentary from Jon. Once shooting began, the actors also made their own contributions to the dialogue and characterization.”

A former assistant to producer Scott Rudin named Anish Savjani established a production company — filmscience — in 2005. Producer of Old Joy, Savjani wanted to be involved in Kelly Reichardt’s next film as well. “With Old Joy, I came into the project during the post-production stage in order to raise money, and we stretched the budget. But Wendy and Lucy needed all encompassing financing, and the budget was a combination of financing from filmscience and private equity.” Todd Haynes again served as executive producer, putting Reichardt in touch with an actor he was eager to cast in I’m Not There – Michelle Williams.

Wendy and Lucy commenced an 18-day shooting schedule August 2007 in and around Portland on a budget of $300,000. Reichardt recalled, “It’s a small crew and we’re shooting on location so you just try and make the limits work for you aesthetically. That’s all you can do. Which it does, I think. I mean, we’re small enough that we can go shoot in these public places and nobody really notices us. I mean, it’s a struggle certainly, but the reward is that it’s a really private process. Jon and I, we don’t have anyone giving us script notes.” Reichardt then spent six months editing the film by herself in her apartment in Astoria, Queens. She added, “The process can continue and it’s just done when I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s done.’ There are very few hands in the pot and I’d say that it is the payoff.”

After screening Wendy and Lucy at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Reichardt’s teaching semester was over and she was driving from New York to Portland when her “shitty cell phone” rang. Oscilloscope Laboratories — the film distributor founded and owned by Adam Yauch (alias MCA) of hip-hop pioneers The Beastie Boys — was calling. The company had distributed two documentaries — Dear Zachary and Flow: For Love of Water – but Wendy and Lucy would be their first narrative release. Reichardt recalled, “I sat in this parking lot, ironically, since the whole film takes place in parking lots and you know, it sounded like they just had a lot of energy and they seemed like they were really interested in focusing on theatrical. And that was really appealing to me.”

Premiering at New York’s Film Forum in December 2008 and expanding to other cities through January 2009, Wendy and Lucy was championed by critics. A.O. (Tony) Scott, The New York Times: “Much as Old Joy turned a simple encounter between two longtime friends into a meditation on manhood and responsibility at a time of war and political confusion, so does Wendy and Lucy find, in one woman’s partly self-created hard luck, an intimation of more widespread hard times ahead.” Michael Phillips, The Chicago Tribune: “If a Warner Bros. social-protest film from the early 1930s somehow got into bed with an American indie from the 1970s, how would the love-child turn out? Like this.”

Without expanding beyond 40 theaters in the United States, Wendy and Lucy grossed $865,695 domestically, and added $323,948 internationally. Kelly Reichardt remained humble about aspirations for her next film. “I don’t consider myself to be working in this industry. I didn’t find the industry that inviting. So to me it’s just been trying to figure out how to make films outside of it. Do it yourself. By any means necessary. And, you know, it’s nice. It’s been a really good ride.” She added, “I’m always prepared that I’ll go back to making smaller films at any given time. In between my two features I was making these sorts of films, but on Super 8. And when the well dries up, that’s where I’ll go back.”

Should I Care?
Wendy and Lucy stands apart from a lot of recent indie films by simply rejecting the quirk that has become standard issue for so many of them. This is a fine example of addition by subtraction. There’s no contrived romance with a young hunk Lucy meets at the laundromat. No local yokels are trotted out to provide laughs. There are no hugs, no lessons. There’s no hip music on the soundtrack. There isn’t any music, actually. As spare as this effort is, I can’t call it a great film, but it is great work, benefiting from the uncanny timing of the worst economic recession in anyone’s memory, as well as a beautiful performance by former teen soap opera star Michelle Williams.

Kelly Reichardt has the heart of a jazz artist, both to her credit and detriment. There’s a tremendous sense of freedom in setting her film outdoors, with shots of Michelle Williams lingering where it seems obvious the production had no permits to shoot. But like a lot of jazz, the movie is pretentious to the point of being anti-people. Will Patton is outstanding in his two scenes, but I would have preferred fewer shots of trains or trees and more time with the people Wendy encounters on her journey. In the plus column, Williams — who received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Brokeback Mountain — again conveys the restraint of an actor who’s at the top of her craft.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“By Any Means Necessary: Wendy & Lucy Director Kelly Reichardt” By Peter Knegt. indieWIRE, 10 December 2008

“Interview: Kelly Reichardt on Wendy and Lucy” By Alison Willmore. IFC, 10 December 2008

“Writer Jon Raymond sees his work realized in Oregon films” By Jeff Baker. The Oregonian, 5 January 2009

“Interview with Anish Savjani, the producer of Wendy and Lucy” By Eren Gulfidan. Film Annex, 19 January 2009

“Filmmaker Eyes The Frayed Edge Of Social Fabric” By Laura Winters. The Washington Post, 25 January 2009

“Jon Raymond’s Portland” Film In Focus, 27 February 2009

Wendy and Lucy – Production Notes

[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
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard College graduating class of the year 1870 – which includes James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) – assembles in a massive auditorium to hear a speech by their class orator, Billy Irvine (John Hurt). Irvine rejects the high-minded ideals mapped out by the reverend doctor of the university (Joseph Cotten), and advises his classmates to merely rise no further than each of them is capable. Twenty years later, Averill arrives by train in Casper, Wyoming after transporting an immigrant woman to St. Louis to be hanged. Averill is now sheriff of Johnson County, mountainous and pristine territory in which more settlers – mostly Polish, German or Ukrainian immigrants – are pouring into every day.

Averill can’t help but notice Casper is teeming with mercenaries. By the time he drops by a saloon operated by his friend John Bridges (Jeff Bridges) in the town of Sweetwater, Averill has learned that the local cattle association, led by the unscrupulous Frank Canton (Sam Waterston) has drawn up the names of 125 settlers suspected of cattle rustling or troublemaking and put them on a death list. The most efficient of the assassins is Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken), who roams Johnson County hunting down and executing immigrants who’ve stolen livestock. Averill returns to his pastoral home and to his girlfriend Ella Watson (Isabelle Hupert), who manages a bordello and accepts stolen cattle as payment.

After adjourning to the town reception hall – Heaven’s Gate, which hosts music and roller skating – Averill asks Ella to leave the county, not wanting to tell her that her name is on the death list. Champion – who in addition to being one of Ella’s customers is in love with her – offers to take her away under the protection of his men (Geoffrey Lewis and Mickey Rourke). She rejects both offers and chooses to stay. Three of the killers make their way to Ella’s bordello and rape her. Averill arrives in time to dispatch the men with his pistols, while Champion rides to Canton’s camp and kills the mercenary who planned the raid. After debating the matter, the town chooses to stand their ground and repel the invasion.

Production history
In 1971, a filmmaker no one in Hollywood had heard of – putting his pictorial eye and camera skills to use in New York directing commercials for Kodak, Pepsi and United Airlines – wrote a screenplay titled The Johnson County War. The screenwriter was Michael Cimino and his script was loosely based on a range war that took place in 1892 between cattle ranchers and settlers, many of them immigrants, who flowed into Johnson County, Wyoming after passage of the Homestead Act. Producer David Foster set the project up at Fox, only to have production head Jere Henshaw put it into turnaround in 1972. Henshaw later told American Film, “It looked to us like a pretty downbeat story at a pretty heavy cost.”

An idiosyncratic caper Cimino wrote titled Thunderbolt and Lightfoot fared much better, with Clint Eastwood enjoying the script enough to gamble on the first time director. Co-starring Jeff Bridges, the picture was very favorably reviewed and a modest box office hit in the summer of 1974. Four years later, Cimino was riding a tidal wave of industry buzz for his second film, an ode to brotherhood and sacrifice set against the Vietnam War titled The Deer Hunter. Among those in Hollywood who were high on the movie was David Field, a production executive for United Artists. “We saw an advanced print of Deer Hunter – I don’t know how many weeks before it was released – and we were blown away.”

Cimino’s agent submitted a package for his client’s next film – The Johnson County War – to United Artists. UA’s head of production Danton Rissner read the script in August 1978 and was cool to it. His story department concluded: “If it were not for Cimino, I would pass.” What distinguished the script from the typical western was its assertion that the U.S. government had sanctioned the range war in what amounted to ethnic genocide. Rissner remained dubious that theater exhibitors would welcome such liberal revisionism of a fading genre. But by September, UA agreed to a pay-or-play package of $1.7 million for The Johnson County War: $250,000 for Cimino’s script, $500,000 for Cimino’s directing services, $100,000 for Cimino’s producing partner Joann Carelli and $850,000 for Kris Kristofferson to star, all to be paid whether the movie was made or not.

Cimino continued to tune his script. He inserted a prologue introducing the characters of Averill and Billy Irvine at Harvard twenty years before the events in Wyoming, and added a brief epilogue, taking place 10 years after the range war. Averill is moored in a yacht off the coast of Rhode Island, still haunted by the events of the film. The script concluded with the quote, “What one loves about life are the things that fade.” Cimino had also arrived on a new title, and in April 1979, one week after The Deer Hunter won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, principal photography began on Heaven’s Gate. Glacier National Park at Kalispell, Montana had been selected as a filming location and a release date of December 1979 set. The accelerated schedule dictated a budget of $11.5 million, $15 million at most.

Recalling Cimino’s exacting work methods, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond stated, “It was very unusual the way he worked. He would actually paint by selecting extras and put them in the right place in a set. It was like a painter would paint them. He painted by picking up people and put them into the right place. Then, once we started to shoot, you know, sometimes we would go for three takes, sometimes you would go for ten takes. And many, many times you had to go for forty takes.” In the first six days of shooting, Cimino had fallen five days behind schedule, with roughly 90 seconds of usable footage in the can. After twelve days, Heaven’s Gate was ten days behind schedule.

In his book Final Cut, former United Artists head of worldwide production Steven Bach recounted the expenses that accumulated: “It was true, as later press reports informed, that Michael Cimino was building sets and rebuilding them, hiring 100 extras, then 200, then 500, adding horses and wagons and hats, shoes, gloves, dresses, top hats, bridles, boots, roller skates, babushkas, aprons, dusters, buckboards, gun belts, rifles, bullets, cows, calves, bulls, trees, thousands of tons of dirt, hundreds of miles of exposed film, and all this mattered economically. But what mattered most was that what he was adding was takes and retakes and retakes of the retakes. And retakes of those. Michael Cimino was taking – and retaking – time. Getting it right.”

To get it right, Cimino was shooting many, many, many takes of shots and printing nearly every one, burning through $200,000 a day and $1 million per week. Actor Brad Dourif recalled, “I’m not used to seeing 57 takes. I’m really not. I’m not used to doing a minimum of 32 takes. He wanted to try a bunch of different ways. It was like workshopping on film, you know, we did the happy version, we did the crying version, we did the furious version. I mean, each scene was taken to these degrees, beyond which you weren’t going for the ultimate take, you were going for a lot of choices.” At its current rate, Heaven’s Gate was on track to exceed its budget by 500% and end up costing United Artists a then stellar sum of $35 million.

United Artists got its first peek at Heaven’s Gate on June 6, 1979 when Bach and David Field made the trip to Kalispell to view about thirty minutes of the film. Bach recalled, “The footage was ravishing. There was nothing that anybody on Earth could say to criticize the footage, so we knew it wasn’t the case of a production that was falling apart. We never thought it was a case of Michael sitting in his trailer eating chocolates and watching television when he should have been out on the set. That was never the issue. The issue was we didn’t agree that you could take this much time to achieve perfection. And if you continue to take this much time to achieve perfection, you’re going to break our bank and there’s not going to be any company to release the picture.”

Jeff Bridges recalls, “From somebody on the outside it would look like it was almost too much, but it never appeared that way to me. It was like, this guy really cares.” But with John Hurt due to start work on The Elephant Man in October and the mountain roads in Montana closing for winter, Cimino heeded United Artists’ pleas to pick up the pace. UA pushed the release of the film back a year, settling on Christmas 1980. The studio planned exclusive reserved seating 70mm print engagements in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto for November 1980. Heaven’s Gate would then expand to additional cities in December before a general release in February 1981 to benefit from the many Academy Award nominations the film industry would bestow on the picture.

On June 26, 1980, after eight months of editing, Cimino was ready to show United Artists the film. Studio executives assembled in Los Angeles for a private screening. Bach recalls, “I thought Michael looked exhausted, truly, truly depleted. I remember asking, ‘How close are we to a final cut?’ And he said, ‘It’s a little long. I can lose maybe fifteen minutes.’ And we sat down and we watched the movie. And the movie that we saw was 5 hours and 25 minutes long. The battle sequence alone was as long as most feature motion pictures. I was angry, I was angry, I was angry. The company had been put through turmoil … And the internal hope that had kept us all going for those two or three years at this process now – which was that it was going to be a masterpiece, and that would justify everything that we had gone through – was suddenly gone.”

By mid-October, Cimino had Heaven’s Gate down to 3 hours and 39 minutes. No one at United Artists bothered to see his cut until its public unveiling in New York one month later. Jeff Bridges recalls “I can remember going to the first screening, the premiere in New York, and we were all very excited and Mike was quite anxious because I don’t know if he even saw the film before it was shown, you know, it was wet right out of the soup. He had just put it together and just barely made the deadline to get it all together. And the movie comes on. I remember my first impression of seeing it was, you know, kind of the splendor of it was wonderful, but the rhythm of it was so unusual and so kind of slow and not what you expected to see that the audience certainly was frustrated. And you hear that [smattering of applause] terrible applause at the end. Ugh, it was terrible.”

The next morning, Cimino, Joann Carelli and Bridges were on their way to Toronto for the next screening when they picked up a copy of the New York Times. The opening paragraph of Vincent Canby’s review read: “Heaven’s Gate … fails so completely you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter, and the Devil has just come around to collect.” Brad Dourif recalls, “Well I read Vincent Canby’s – I don’t read reviews, that’s the first thing – I read Vincent Canby’s because it actually had the line in it, ‘like being given a four-hour tour of your own living room’ and I just wanted to see how bad a review could be and it was really scathing. Angry review. I mean, basically, everything that people hated about the direction of film was piled onto Michael.”

Interviewed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1982, film critic Pauline Kael defended the stoning Heaven’s Gate took in the mainstream media. “I did think Canby’s review was rather brutal. On the other hand, the fact is the picture does not have one good scene, or one good character, and it goes on for several hours. I think it’s very interesting visually, but there is nothing that can carry it with an audience. If the company had thought that the critics were wrong, they would have put in millions in advertising and they might have recouped on the picture. A lot of terrible movies get by if the companies believe in them … But they were dismayed because they could see the justice of what the reviewers were saying, that there was nothing there.”

Steven Bach disagreed. “I think the critics were reviewing the production history. They were rewriting their reviews for The Deer Hunter, which they thought they had over praised. They were getting back at what they perceived as hostile treatment from the director. I think they were slapping United Artists for having allowed this to happen. But I never felt that there was a real serious attempt to see what is this picture trying to do and does it succeed on its own terms. It didn’t succeed on the terms they wanted to lay on the picture and that was what they were writing about, was their terms for the picture, not the picture’s terms.” After playing for a week in New York, Cimino took out ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter asking UA to withdraw the film from release so he could rework his 219-minute cut.

A 149-minute version of Heaven’s Gate opened in 810 theaters nationwide in April 1981. But audiences ignored it completely, buying $3.4 million in tickets in the U.S. Tom Brokaw introduced a segment on Heaven’s Gate for the NBC Nightly News by proclaiming “a $40 million film from an Oscar winning director may be the biggest bomb in Hollywood history.” The loss to United Artists was tabulated at $44 million. Within a month, Transamerica decided it was done with the movie business and sold UA to rival studio MGM. Michael Cimino and Kris Kristofferson were at the Cannes Film Festival in May when the news broke. UA’s new president Norbert Auerbach maintained that while Heaven’s Gate had not been directly responsible for the collapse of the prestigious 62-year-old studio, it hadn’t saved it either.

Naturally, the first audiences to appreciate Heaven’s Gate were French. In December 1982, celebrated film magazine Cahiers du Cinema sponsored a screening of Cimino’s 219-minute cut in Paris. Word reached Los Angeles, where Jerry Harvey and Fred Grossbud of pay cable’s Z Channel persuaded MGM/UA to let them air the long version of Heaven’s Gate starting on Christmas Eve. It marked the first time a wide audience had been permitted to see the film at its original length. In the Los Angeles Times – whose film critic Kevin Thomas had been one of the few to submit a rave review of Heaven’s Gate while it was in theaters – Charles Champlin wrote, “Not a damn thing was gained economically by forcing Cimino to eviscerate his work, but audiences were denied the chance to see fully whatever it was that Cimino had in mind.”

In August 1983, England’s National Film Theatre booked the long version of Heaven’s Gate for six performances, with Cimino on hand to introduce the film. Derek Malcolm wrote in The Guardian: “The full version, I can assure you, is quite an experience – an extraordinary attempt to make a major American movie at a time when only the minors held sway.” The long version was released theatrically at the Plaza 2 theater in London, but its box office was so negligible that MGM/UA nixed plans to re-release the uncut Heaven’s Gate elsewhere. Michael Cimino – who has not directed since 1996 and refuses requests to discuss his infamous magnum opus – had this to say in 1990: “I would respond to Heaven’s Gate the same way Jack Kennedy responded to the Bay of Pigs. I’d take full responsibility and all other questions are answered by the film itself.”

Opinion
Some academics still accuse Heaven’s Gate of vaporizing the Golden Age of the director and putting the controls of Hollywood back in the hands of the studio, a process that was under way long before Michael Cimino ever got to Montana. What ultimately matters here is what’s on screen and what isn’t. On that basis, it’s time to call Heaven’s Gate what it is: the last great American film of the 1970s. It has nothing to live up anymore – making a fresh eyed and open minded reappraisal a win-win situation – but the movie is really that good. For all its excesses, what Cimino does is capture a lyrical beauty virtually missing in filmmaking since the days of David Lean. Heaven’s Gate is all at once one of pictorial brilliance, almost unparalleled scope, terrific performances and haunting grandeur.

Micahel Cimino’s screenplay not only visualizes the Old West in a way I imagine it really was – crowded and sparse, violent and peaceful, ugly and beautiful – but features dialogue of surprising depth and pathos. The cast featured no stars, but Kristofferson, Walken, Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Brad Dourif, Sam Waterston, Mickey Rourke, Richard Masur all do outstanding work. Few films recreate a bygone era with the detail of this one, assisted by majestic cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond and a heartbreakingly beautiful musical score by David Mansfield. Unlike so many cinematic turkeys of the last 30 years that truly qualify for “worst ever” status, for all the money spent on Heaven’s Gate, there’s never any question of where those bucks ended up.

@ Joe Valdez

Sources
Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate by Steven Bach (1985)
Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate (2004), directed by Michael Epstein

Synopsis
When his exhaustive knowledge of Elvis Presley fails to convince a woman he meets a bar to watch a triple feature of Sonny Chiba movies with him, Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) goes to the theater alone. There he meets Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) when she spills popcorn on him. Taking a seat next to Clarence, Alabama not only makes it through all three kung-fu movies, but actually seems impressed when Clarence takes her to his workplace, a comic book store. They go to bed, after which Alabama confides that Clarence’s boss hired her to keep him company for his birthday. Conflicted because she’s fallen in love with Clarence, Alabama quits her new job as a call girl and elopes with him.

Clarence goes to see Alabama’s vile pimp Drexl (Gary Oldman) to settle his wife’s accounts. During the melee that ensues, Clarence grabs a suitcase filled with cocaine instead of Alabama’s clothes. He visits his estranged father Cliff (Dennis Hopper) to find out if Detroit PD is on to him. Cliff notifies his son that Drexl was an associate of gangsters and the cops assume his death was gang related. Clarence and Alabama depart for their honeymoon, but Cliff receives a visit from Vincent Coccotti (Christopher Walken), the rightful owner of the narcotics. Rather than be forced to give up his son, Cliff uses his knowledge of Sicilian history to infuriate the gangster into shooting him.

Clarence and Alabama arrive in L.A., where Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) – an aspiring actor up for a role on T.J. Hooker – lives with his stoner roommate Floyd (Brad Pitt). Clarence hopes his buddy can find a buyer for the cocaine. The only possibility Dick can think of Elliot (Bronson Pinchot), a guy he knows from his acting class who’s an assistant to a big movie producer named Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek). They set up a meet, but Coccotti’s enforcer Virgil (James Gandolfini) intercepts Alabama at her motel room. Only one of them makes it out alive.

Meanwhile, Elliott is pulled over for speeding and is caught wearing a bag of Clarence’s cocaine all over him. Two narcs (Tom Sizemore and Chris Penn) pressure Elliott into wearing a wire for the business meet. Arriving at the Beverly Ambassador Hotel, Clarence – who’s been receiving guidance from the spirit of Elvis Presley (Val Kilmer) – makes a good impression on the movie producer. But before he can complete the drug deal, the LAPD and the Sicilians and the producer’s own gunmen find themselves in a Mexican standoff.

Production history
In 1985, an employee at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach named Roger Avary started a screenplay called The Open Road. The script was about an uptight businessman who encounters a wild hitchhiker and travels with her to a bizarre town in the Midwest. Avary ran out of gas after eighty pages. Moving on to other projects, he gave his buddy and fellow video store clerk Quentin Tarantino the okay to rewrite The Open Road using his own sensibility. Tarantino came back with close to five hundred handwritten pages.

Avary helped Tarantino hone the epic manuscript to a presentable length. The result was True Romance, the first screenplay Tarantino ever finished. Over the next five years, his manager Cathryn James beat down doors trying to sell it. Meanwhile, Tarantino used his magnum opus as the genesis for his second script, Natural Born Killers. Buyers weren’t interested in that title either. Many were put off by its profanity, while others felt that Tarantino’s writing style – which featured fractured timelines and lengthy monologues – was the sign of an amateur.

Craig Hamann, a friend of Tarantino’s and co-writer of a home movie the pair were trying to finish called My Best Friend’s Birthday recalled, “Cathryn James took calls all around from people in the industry who were just livid at that script. They absolutely didn’t like it at all. One person who’s very prominent in the film industry sent the script back to Cathryn and said, ‘I will seriously consider reading anything else that you send me again if this is the quality.’ I mean that kind of hostile thing was going on and I’m not sure even Quentin understands that completely, but then after Reservoir Dogs everybody was, ‘Oh we really like this film.’”

Finally, a B-movie company called CineTel optioned True Romance. Their plan was to have William Lustig of Maniac Cop 2 fame direct. The company gave Tarantino his first professional writing job, doing dialogue polishes on scripts they had in development. CineTel executive Catalaine Knell took Tarantino under her wing. Knell had been an assistant to director Tony Scott, and introduced her protégé to her former boss. Tarantino gave Scott a copy of True Romance and a script he’d just finished titled Reservoir Dogs.

Scott wrapped The Last Boy Scout in June 1991 and was on a flight to Italy when he read the scripts. When he landed, Scott called Tarantino and said that he wanted both of them. Tarantino wanted to direct Reservoir Dogs, but told Scott he was welcome to True Romance. Scott recalled, “I’m not a good reader but I read it in one sitting and I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was very fresh and very different and totally character based. My love of the piece was based on how much I fell in love with the characters, so therefore it’s an actor-based movie and it’s the first time I’ve had one of those. After Top Gun, the movies that I was offered were, for better or worse, what you’d call hardware action movies.”

Scott commenced shooting in June 1992 in Los Angeles on a $12.5 million budget. Other than structuring the action in chronological order, the only change Scott made to the script was the ending. Tarantino had Clarence perishing in the climactic gun battle, but Scott had become so enamored by the couple that he brought in Roger Avary to write a happier ending. Tarantino recalled, “At first, I was really distraught about it. In fact, I was talking about taking my name off the film. I had a lot of faith in Tony Scott – I’m a big fan of his work, especially Revenge – but where I was coming from, you just couldn’t change my ending, you know?”

Released September 1993 in the U.S., even critics who liked the movie seemed embarrassed to admit it. On Siskel & Ebert, Roger Ebert stated, “True Romance is like a case study of the inflamed fantasies of violent, stupid, amoral, gun loving, sexually obsessed teenagers, and on that level – which is an admittedly low level – it is well made and very entertaining. It tells the kind of story that a lot of teenage boys think they would like to live through, before they grow up and begin to develop average intelligence, of course.” Gene Siskel simply retorted, “It’s kind of sloppy and dumb and not fun.”

True Romance was ignored at the box office, where it grossed only $12.2 million in the U.S. Interviewed in 2003, Scott commented, “Unfortunately, the film wasn’t successful. It bombed, really. I think maybe it’s too violent. But if you ask me to make a choice and state which of my films is my favorite, I think I would say True Romance, because it invaded my life so easily, because it was so well written. The characters were so well drawn. Every day, I went to the set and had an amazing smorgasbord of the best actors around.”

Opinion
When viewed as the sum of its parts, True Romance is a classic because it has scenes that rank among the most spectacular in film history when it comes to the written word. By far the most memorable is the showdown between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper; the 11-minute scene features two of the greatest actors of their generation chewing up two of the most enthralling monologues a writer has ever crafted. The muscular confrontation between Patricia Arquette and James Gandolfini is a blue ribbon award winner as well. Gary Oldman in bananas as the dreadlocked white pimp who believes he’s black. The same goes for Brad Pitt, who is the epitome of the completely useless roommate.

The conceit of a pop culture geek taking down pimps and cold blooded killers may be the stuff of science fiction, and it’s hard to believe that if Tarantino had chosen to direct this, Christian Slater would have appeared on his list to play Clarence (Val Kilmer desperately wanted the role.) Some of the casting and almost all of the music is completely generic Hollywood, while Tony Scott – director of Beverly Hills Cop II and Days of Thunder – gets mixed results filming a down and dirty exploitation flick like it was a cologne commercial. But for the most part, the cast is one of the finest ever assembled, while Scott remains true to the spirit of Tarantino’s text, which is both uncompromising in its brutality and invigorating in its repartee.

Colin Jacobson at DVD Movie Guide writes, “In the end, Romance feels like an odd piece. The script seems unusually thin and sketchy for something from Quentin Tarantino, but since it was his first finished work, that makes sense; he clearly hadn’t quite found his voice just yet. Had Tarantino taken on the project himself and made it as a low-budget indie production, it could have worked, but unfortunately, it went the other way and became a glossy piece of Hollywood fluff. Romance enjoys a few decent moments, but overall it falls short of its goals.”

David Medsker at Bullz-Eye.com writes, “True Romance was a pioneer action movie in many respects, in that it placed an equal influence on the dialogue and characters as it did on the action. It may not have reinvented the genre entirely, but the action movies that soon followed (The Professional, Con Air, Grosse Pointe Blank) were far more enjoyable than their predecessors (again, The Last Boy Scout). Sonny Chiba and Elvis would certainly approve.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Mild mannered Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) arrives for an interview at the luxurious Overlook Hotel in Colorado. General manager Mr. Ullman (Barry Nelson) explains his duties as caretaker will be to maintain the hotel when it shuts down for six months during the winter. Jack maintains that the isolation will give him time to outline a novel. Ullman feels obligated to mention a tragedy that occurred in 1970 when their winter caretaker killed his wife and two daughters with an axe before shooting himself. This fails to deter Jack, who proclaims that his wife – a fan of “ghost stories and horror films” – will be thrilled.

Back in Boulder, Jack’s passive wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) watches cartoons with their 7-year-old son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Danny is hyper intuitive, and though he keeps his abilities secret from his parents, receives glimpses of the future. He attributes these to “Tony,” a little boy he says lives in his mouth. “Tony” shows him a terrifying, bloody vision of what waits for him at the Overlook Hotel, and Danny blacks out. Arriving at the hotel, Jack and Wendy are shown through the hallways, lounges, kitchen and boiler room that will soon be completely deserted. The hotel also features a 13-foot tall hedge maze outside.

Head cook Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) senses that Danny and he share the same ability. He tells the boy that his grandmother called this “shining,” the ability to see things that haven’t happened yet. Danny feels that there’s something bad in the Overlook Hotel, particularly in Room 237. Hallorann orders him to stay out of there. With the coming of snow, Jack grows more annoyed by Wendy, and more withdrawn. Danny knows something’s wrong. Moaning in his sleep, Jack is awakened from a nightmare by Wendy. He tells her, “I dreamed that I killed you and Danny. But I didn’t just kill ya. I cut you up in little pieces.” Nightmare and reality soon become blurred for the Torrances.

Production history
Following the publication of Carrie and Salem’s Lot, Stephen King felt he needed a change of scenery. Relocating his family from Maine to Colorado for a year, King’s wife Tabitha ultimately suggested a Halloween getaway to the Stanley Hotel. The resort was closing for the season, and the Kings were the only guests. The author recalls, “That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire hose … I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind.”

Titled Darkshine at one point, later The Shine, the novel was published in 1977 as The Shining. Printed in a hard cover edition of only 50,000 copies, the book went on to become a bestseller in paperback. Producers Robert Fryer, Mary Lea Johnson and Martin Richards of The Producer Circle optioned the film rights. During this time, director Stanley Kubrick had spent the two years since completing Barry Lyndon combing through newspapers and magazines piled around his home in England, searching for a story for his next film. Warner Bros. president John Calley knew that Kubrick had an interest in the paranormal, and sent him a galleys copy of The Shining.

Kubrick was not moved by King’s prose. “I had seen Carrie, the film, but I have never read any of his novels. I should say that King’s greatest ingenuity lies in the construction of the story. He does not seem to be very interested in writing itself. They say he wrote, read over, rewrote maybe once and sent everything to the editor. What seems to interest him is invention and I think that is his forte.” King was contractually guaranteed the right to adapt a screenplay and turned in a first draft, but Kubrick didn’t read it. He turned to American novelist Diane Johnson, who impressed Kubrick when he learned she was teaching a course on the gothic novel at UC Berkeley.

Johnson recalled, “Kubrick was thinking of making either the Stephen King or my novel, The Shadow Knows. And, you know, he ultimately decided on the King. The Shadow Knows had some problems like being a first person narrative . . . he and I, in talking about it got along better than he and Stephen King, I guess … And I spent, oh, I don’t know, a couple of months, I guess eleven weeks all together, so almost three months in London, working everyday with him.” Kubrick had never directed a horror film. He was a studious viewer of movies, and when asked in 1980 which ones were his favorites, the reclusive director offered The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.

Kubrick had wanted to work with Jack Nicholson for close to a decade and cast him as Jack Torrance. King stated in an interview that he much preferred an everyman like Jon Voight to play Jack. “To me, he would have been much more convincing as an ordinary man going crazy.” Kubrick’s first and only choice for Wendy Torrance was Shelley Duvall. A six-month search for a child actor to play Danny culminated in 5,000 boys being interviewed in Chicago, Denver and Cincinnati. Danny Lloyd was chosen. Kubrick hoped to round out the cast with Slim Pickens as Hallorann, but the Dr. Strangelove vet had no desire to reunite with Kubrick. Scatman Crothers was ultimately rewarded the part.

With a budget of $13 million, shooting commenced at Elstree Studios outside London in May 1978. The exteriors of The Overlook Hotel were done later at The Timberline Lodge, located on the slopes of Mount Hood in Oregon. The interiors – including the hedge maze – were all built on a soundstage. Kubrick’s obsessive attention to detail slowed what had been scheduled as a 17-week shoot to a grind. Nicholson stated in 1980, “He’ll do a scene fifty times and you have to be good to do that. There are so many ways to walk into a room, order breakfast or be frightened to death in a closet. Stanley’s approach is, how can we do it better than it’s ever been done before? It’s a big challenge.”

The Shining took 200 days to shoot. Elstree Studios waited anxiously for Kubrick to clear out so Raiders of the Lost Ark and Reds could move in. The intense lighting that Kubrick and director of photography John Alcott poured through the windows of the set was so intense, temperatures climbed to 110 degrees. With filming nearly completed in February 1979, the Colorado Lounge set burst into flames and was destroyed. Elstree hoped Kubrick would pack it in, but he ordered the soundstage rebuilt and the set reconstructed to finish his close-ups. Steven Spielberg used the soundstage to shoot the Well of Souls sequence for Raiders.

Warner Bros.’ strategy was to open The Shining Memorial Day weekend 1980 in New York and L.A. – in ten theaters and one drive-in – with the intent of going wide to 750 theaters two weeks later, after word of mouth started to build. But after playing for five days, Kubrick was still honing the film, cutting an epilogue in which the hotel manager Mr. Ullman visited Wendy in the hospital. “After several screenings in London the day before the film opened in New York and Los Angeles, when I was able to see for the first time the fantastic pitch of excitement which the audience reached during the climax of the film, I decided the scene was unnecessary.”

Critics were split on The Shining. While Newsweek gushed that it was “the first epic horror film, a movie that is to other horror movies what 2001: A Space Odyssey was to other space movies,” Variety countered, “The crazier Nicholson gets, the more idiotic he looks. Shelley Duvall transforms the warm sympathetic wife of the book into a simpering, semi-retarded hysteric.” The New Yorker (Pauline Kael), Time Magazine (Richard Schickel) and the Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) were supportive of Kubrick, but the critical reaction at the time was that the director hadn’t watched enough horror movies.

In an interview with Playboy in 1983, Stephen King stated: “The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it screams that from beginning to end, from plot decision to the final scene – which has been used before on The Twilight Zone.” Despite its lukewarm reviews, The Shining opened to the biggest grosses in the history of Warner Bros. It ultimately minted $44 million in the U.S. When King wrote and produced his own adaptation of The Shining as a four-hour mini-series for ABC in 1997 – with Steven Weber and Rebecca DeMornay – critics assailed it for being nowhere near as good as Kubrick’s “classic.”

Opinion
While Kubrick departs radically from King’s text – jettisoning among other things the backstory that explains where the specters that haunt the hotel come from – The Shining remains one of the great entertainments in the history of the movies, so exquisitely designed, so well cast and so filled with gothic terror that other filmmakers have been trying to top it for decades. The tedious mini-series demonstrated that many of the devices King felt were spooky – animal shaped shrubs, a fire hose, a boiler – are nothing compared to a child’s primal fear of a parent turning into a monster. The magnificence of the film is how the film exploits this dread viscerally.

Kubrick’s chilly aesthetic and his photographic work with Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown – gliding the camera through the corridors of the hotel – is noteworthy, but the film was destined to be a classic from the moment it was cast. Jack Nicholson, in perhaps the most iconic performance of his career, is breathlessly lunatic, while Shelley Duvall’s emotional depth charge is nothing short of brilliant. Danny Lloyd and Scatman Crothers are sublime as well. Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind provided electronic sound elements, which Kubrick sourced with music from classical composers György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki to create one of the more unique scores ever created.

Gregory Dorr at The DVD Journal writes, “The beauty of Kubrick is that each of his films, with the exception of maybe Barry Lyndon, can be appreciated on several different levels: aesthetically, viscerally, and intellectually. Stanley Kubrick is also a master at including tiny moments, minuscule details that enrich his films beyond the scope of films not by Stanley Kubrick. Such moments in The Shining include: The sound of Danny’s Big Wheel rolling on the hard floor of the Overlook Hotel and then rolling over a rug and then over the hard floor again, etc.; The twin ghosts of murdered twin daughters who both eerily resemble dwarfish twin Christina Riccis … The red bathroom that looks like a set from 2001 … Every look, gesture, smile, frown, glance, and spoken word from Jack Nicholson.”

“The Shining (1980) is creative director Stanley Kubrick’s intense, epic, gothic horror film and haunted house masterpiece – a beautiful, stylish work that distanced itself from the blood-letting and gore of most modern films in the horror genre … Kubrick deliberately reduced the pace of the narrative and expanded the rather simple plot of a domestic tragedy to over two hours in length, created lush images within the ornate interior of the main set, added a disturbing synthesized soundtrack (selecting musical works from Bela Bartok, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki), used a Steadicam in groundbreaking fashion, filmed most of the gothic horror in broad daylight or brightly-lit scenes, and built an unforgettable, mounting sensation of terror, ghosts, and the paranormal,” writes Tim Dirks at The Greatest Films.

Graeme Clark at The Spinning Image writes, “Although a long film, especially for its genre, it never drags due to the obvious precision of the technique – every part of it is assembled with the attention to detail of a Swiss watchmaker … The Overlook is a time trap, where it makes sense that Jack has always been mad, Wendy always scared, and Danny always the possessor of powers that alarmingly fit right in there. It’s up to Wendy and Danny, with the help of a suspicious Hallorann, to break the cycle. An absolute joy from start to finish for those with a taste for the sardonic side of the macabre, The Shining is one of the best horrors of its time.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Disc jockey Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood) opens his show at jazz station KRML in Carmel by promising “a little verse, a little talk, and five hours of music to be very, very nice to each other by.” A regular female caller phones in and purrs, “Play ‘Misty’ for me.” Winding down at his favorite watering hole, Dave attracts the attention of a brunette at the end of the bar. Introducing herself as Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter), she tells Dave that she’s been stood up on a date. He gives Evelyn a ride home, but feels he knows the woman from somewhere. She reveals she’s his “Misty” caller.

Dave tells Evelyn he doesn’t want to complicate his life. She doesn’t see why this is any reason they shouldn’t sleep together. He sneaks off in the morning, but Evelyn shows up unannounced at Dave’s house to make him dinner. The disc jockey establishes a few boundaries before sleeping with her again. Dave is more interested in patching things up with his artsy ex-girlfriend (Donna Mills) when he discovers she’s moved back from Sausalito. But Evelyn tracks Dave down, asking why he hasn’t taken her calls. He’s not amused. “Where does it say I’ve got to drop what I’m doing and answer the phone every time it rings?”

Evelyn continues to smother Dave – banging on his door in the middle of the night and professing her love for him – until he makes it clear he doesn’t feel the same way. She responds by slashing her wrists in his bathroom and drawing out her recovery so he won’t send her home. When he finally leaves his house for a business meeting, Evelyn follows him to the restaurant and has a fit. Dave breaks it off with his schizophrenic woman for the last time, unaware she’s copied his house key and considers the affair far from over.

Production history
Jo Heims met Clint Eastwood while working at Universal as a legal secretary in the early 1960s. She wanted to be a screenwriter. He was a TV star taking acting classes with aspirations to be a serious actor. Some years later, Heims wrote a sixty-page treatment called Play Misty For Me. Eastwood read it and recalled, “I liked the Alfred Hitchcock kind of thriller aspect, but the main thing I liked about it was beyond that, the story was very real. The story was believable because these kind of commitments or misinterpretations thereof go on all the time.”

Eastwood optioned the treatment and took the project to CBS, to Universal and to United Artists, but with his feature film career limited to the spaghetti westerns he’d done in Europe, none of the studios were interested. While in England shooting Where Eagles Dare, Eastwood received a call from Heims. She had an offer from Universal to purchase Play Misty For Me. Unsure when he’d ever get around to the project, Eastwood told Heims to sell it. When Universal later signed him to a three-picture deal, Eastwood asked what had happened to that “odd little story about a disc jockey.”

He was shown a script the studio had commissioned, but didn’t care for it. Eastwood worked with Heims on a new draft – changing the setting from L.A. to Monterey County – then approached Dean Riesner to do a polish. Studio VP Jennings Lang was dubious. He tried to talk the star out of the project by mentioning that the woman had the best part, but Eastwood had already made up his mind that Play Misty For Me was going to be his directorial debut. Studio chief Lew Wasserman approved of the idea immediately, but notified Eastwood’s agent that he’d only be paid the DGA minimum for his services behind the camera.

With a budget of $700,000, Misty commenced shooting September 1970 in the area of Carmel, where Eastwood lived. He cast his mentor Don Siegel in the role of Murph the bartender, but ended up not needing the directorial guidance, bringing his first film in on budget. Despite an enthusiastic preview in San Jose a year later, Universal showed little inclination to support the picture. It performed well at the box office anyway, so well, that Eastwood received a call from the manager of the Cineramadome in Hollywood, asking if he could stop Universal from pulling the film after only four weeks. “The audience just keeps coming.”

Opinion
In the 1980s, Brian DePalma and John Carpenter were both approached to direct a potential blockbuster about an obsessive affair, but turned it down – in part – because they felt it was too similar to Eastwood’s directorial debut. Play Misty For Me is not only superior to Fatal Attraction as a thriller – slowly building dread and paying off with a couple of sharp, unexpected shocks – but remains a classic because it actually has something relevant to say about men and women; specifically, how flirtations can easily ignite into obsessions.

While not a model of perfection – the bar scenes are too bright and some of the casting is on the level of a nighttime soap – shooting on real location lends the film a terrific energy. Jessica Walter and Clint Eastwood are the chief reason the movie works as well as it does. Equally impressive is the fact that Dave Garver never picks up a weapon, but is left completely at the mercy of his conquest. Bruce Surtees provided the stark cinematography and Dee Barton – who Eastwood met at an L.A. nightclub where his band was performing – composed the moody score, his first.

Scott Weinberg at Apollo Movie Guide writes, “I doubt many people would argue against Eastwood’s skill on both sides of the camera. It’s a film that’s achieved cult status worldwide and was also the inspiration for the blockbuster hit Fatal Attraction. Regardless of the box office receipts, this one is easily the better film. As a cautionary tale on the benefits of monogamy or as a straight ‘psycho-girlfriend-from-Hell’ thriller, it’s worth your investment of time and money.”

“I could’ve easily gone without the Jazz concert bit. Felt trivial, self indulgent or/and there to ‘kill time’. Overall though Play Misty for Me was a tight, suspense laced little ditty that sported a couple of nasty surprises along the way and ended it off in a refreshingly grounded fashion. No overlong and flashy finale for this film! It capped off the way it should; “to the freaking point”. You going to Play Misty For Her or run for your life? This bitch is nuts!” writes John Fallon at Arrow In the Head.

Earl Cressey at DVD Talk writes, “Even though Play Misty for Me is highly regarded as one of the top films in the suspense thriller genre, I had overlooked it until now. However, when it came up for review, I was glad to correct this oversight. And it’s a good thing, as Misty is a terrific film. Though it was Eastwood’s first time directing, viewers will be hard pressed to notice, as everything looks and comes together great. The acting is all top-notch as well, especially on the parts of Eastwood and Walter. Though the movie slows down in the second half, it really is a great film that no fan of the genre should miss.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Resorting to a fantasy in which a stranger accosts her in the shower, Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) gets through a thoroughly unsatisfying round of sex with her husband. Revealing this to her psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), she’s advised to think about where her anger is going and to confront her husband with her sexual frustrations. Kate visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art and after a prolonged game of gallery tag with an amorous stranger, climbs into a cab and indulges in a quickie in the backseat with him. Leaving his apartment, Kate is cornered in the elevator and slashed to death by a blonde with a straight razor.

Call girl Liz Blake (Nancy Allen) witnesses the slaying and is hauled before the crass cop (Dennis Franz) leading the investigation. Kate’s geeky teenaged son Peter (Keith Gordon) eavesdrops on the interrogation electronically, hoping to nab the killer himself. Meanwhile, “Bobbi” – a disturbed patient who feels he’s a woman trapped in a man’s body – leaves a message for Dr. Elliott in which he reveals he’s taken the shrink’s razor. Peter follows Liz on the subway and saves her from Bobbi’s razor. Liz and Peter then hatch a plan to snoop through Dr. Elliott’s appointment book to learn who “Bobbi” is and stop her before she kills one of them.

Production history
Brian DePalma spent a year working on an adaptation of Robert Daley’s book Prince of the City when Orion Pictures balked at where the script was headed and dismissed the director. DePalma returned to an unproduced screenplay he’d adapted from the novel Cruising. Taking the idea of a character engaging in random sex, DePalma married it to a woman who gets picked up in an art gallery, something he’d tried in his college days. Seeing a transsexual interviewed on The Phil Donahue Show gave him the idea of a psychiatrist whose female side murders the women arousing his male side. This formed the basis for Dressed To Kill.

DePalma sent the script to his former agent George Litto, whose response was, “If you and I can’t agree that I can produce the movie, I’ll kill ya.” Litto knew that Samuel Z. Arkoff was an admirer of DePalma’s and set the project up at Filmways, which provided $6.5 million in financing and gave DePalma full creative control. His first choice to play Kate Miller was Liv Ullmann. The esteemed Norwegian actress turned the part down. Sean Connery was asked to play the psychiatrist and also passed. DePalma talked Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine into filling the roles, joining DePalma’s wife Nancy Allen, who the role of Liz Blake had been written for.

The first crisis arrived when DePalma submitted Dressed To Kill to the MPAA. The film was stamped with an X rating. To ensure that the theater chains would exhibit the film and that newspapers would run ads, the director reluctantly toned down the nudity in the shower scene and the bloodshed of Kate’s death to win an R rating. DePalma recalls, “I had an impression that because it so effective I was being penalized by being effective, not because I showed so much, but because it was so scary and so violent.” Audiences in Europe were able to see DePalma’s uncut version, while in the United States, they had to wait for home video.

Arriving in theaters July 1980, Dressed To Kill received some of the most enthusiastic critical notices of the year. The New York Times (Vincent Canby), the New Yorker (Pauline Kael) and New York magazine (David Denby) went out of their way to praise the film. Andrew Sarris dissented, calling it “soft-core porn and hard-edged horror” and citing DePalma for ripping off Alfred Hitchcock. An even more hostile reaction came from Women Against Pornography, which organized protests outside theaters in New York, Boston, L.A. and San Francisco. One of the group’s leaflets read, “If this film succeeds, killing women may become the greatest turn-on of the Eighties!”

The picket lines amounted to free publicity and vaulted Dressed To Kill past Airplane! and The Empire Strikes Back to the number one grossing movie in the country its second week of release. It went on to earn $31.8 million in the United States. Looking back on the furor in 2001, DePalma commented, “All those movies that they were trashing in the ‘60s and the ‘70s or ‘80s are the ones that people are writing about now and the ones that seem to have some kind of life. The revisionism will start basically and you basically as an artist, you just have to just do what you feel is what you’re doing and not get crushed by the particular establishment in place at the time.”

Opinion
Whether you’re an academic taking notes in the aisle with a pen light, a jackass up in the balcony with a box of Goobers, or a regular moviegoer somewhere in between, Dressed To Kill is a classic because it has something to marvel over regardless of which demographic you fall into. It’s my favorite Brian DePalma film, one that absolutely has to be considered on any list of top five achievements in the director’s infamous yet prodigious career. It is gruesome (the DVD features the film in both its theatrical and “unrated” versions,) but in a way that’s more electric than upsetting, soused on a pure intoxication for cinema and eliciting a visceral response from the audience. And does it ever.

From the opening chord of Pino Donaggio’s billowing musical score, the movie is too far over the top to be taken seriously as a drama. As an orchestration of camera movement, film and sound editing and art design, even the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock would have to admit that DePalma knows how to utilize the medium. Michael Caine sort of looks like he came in on his time off between Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and Blame It On Rio, but Nancy Allen and Keith Gordon have never been more engaging in a movie. Terrifying in parts, the film is also hilarious in others, courtesy Dennis Franz, who takes off running with the full range of New York cop talk, without ever looking back.

Gary Militzer at DVD Verdict writes, “Stylish psycho-shock films don’t come any better than this. Talented acting, superb direction, shocking twists, taut suspense – it’s all here. Sure, there is style to burn here – Brian De Palma is a filmmaker in love with his camera, after all – but De Palma sprinkles in just enough lingering substance to gel it all together into a memorable suspense classic that only gains in stature with repeat viewings. And it’s not just a one-trick, gimmick-twist of a film that insults your intelligence in the end… This is the real deal; Dressed to Kill is an essential De Palma masterwork that is not to be missed.”

“It has some genuinely creepy sequences and some really well-shot scenes, but De Palma strays too often into gratuitous violence and sensationalism. De Palma was one of the major voices in the 1970s-1980s school of filmmaking that wanted to see how far they could push the envelope. What they learned (or, at least, what the audiences learned) is that being able to show everything that classic Hollywood had to cover up is not necessarily a good thing, especially if the films exist only to see how far they could go,” writes Michael W. Phillips Jr. at goatdog’s movies.

Daniel Stephens at DVD Times writes, “The brilliance of the movie begins at its core: the script. De Palma has managed to create a taut thriller filled to the gills with false avenues, red herrings and ambiguity. It is much more original than it may look at first glance, combining visual scenes driven by the camera rather than dialogue, and for all intents and purposes throws out any remnants of genre conventions. For all its worth as a thrilling psychological drama, it has true connotations of gothic horror, romance, comedy and porn.”

© Joe Valdez