“I remember being absolutely fearless because I was too young to know any better. I had no idea, I had never tasted failure — or pressure from the studio. You know, that film got made because Sean was very hot, Sean wanted me to direct it, and because he and I were so simpatico, we could do whatever we wanted because we held the power. I never appreciated that at the time, how important that was, so we literally did whatever we wanted and tried crazy things and didn’t care what other people thought — we didn’t have to care what other people thought.” James Foley interviewed by Walter Chaw for Film Freak Central, April 2003

At Close Range (1986)
Directed by James Foley
Screenplay by Nicholas Kazan, story by Elliott Lewitt and Nicholas Kazan
Produced by Elliott Lewitt, Don Guest
111 minutes

If the songwriting of Bruce Springsteen could conjure moving images, the result would be something very similar to At Close Range. Though The Boss didn’t supply any music for the soundtrack, echoes of “Thunder Road” or “Darkness on the Edge of Town” with their engines of discontented youth reverberate through this film, siphoned into a crime story and injected by an ensemble cast that makes a case for being one of the greatest ever assembled. Somewhere in the seemingly lawless farmland of Pennsylvania in 1978, Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) trucks into town to pick up his knucklehead brother Tommy (Christopher Penn). Brad summons the guts to talk to a girl named Terry (Mary Stuart Masterson) hanging out in the square. Lacking a job or even reliable wheels, he ultimately convinces the 16-year-old to light out west with him for a better life together.

Brad Jr. seeks out his absentee father Brad Whitewood Sr. (Christopher Walken), who local gossip has it is a thief. Brad Sr. introduces the boy to his woman (Candy Clark), as well as the uncles (R.D. Call, J.C. Quinn) and the epileptic (David Straithairn) he disappears with in the dead of night. Wary of Brad Jr. getting mixed up in the schemes of his dim witted Uncle Patch (Tracey Walter), Brad Sr. gives his son a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle and sends him back to his mother (Millie Perkins). Seeking respect and some extra cash, Brad Jr. and Tommy gather their friends (Crispin Glover, Stephen Geoffreys, Kiefer Sutherland) and start stealing tractors. Brad Jr. compels his father to show him the ropes, but sees more than he bargained for one night and breaks away from his dad. When his son is arrested, the bonds of family buckle and Brad Sr’s self-preservation kicks in.

In August 1978, producer Elliott Lewitt came across an account in the Philadelphia Inquirer of two teenagers — a federal witness and his 15-year-old girlfriend — who’d been riddled with bullets in rural Chester County. Details emerged that the boy’s father Bruce Johnston Sr. was patriarch of family notorious for stealing tractors and anything else that wasn’t moving. Seeing potential for a modern day Greek tragedy, Lewitt hired Nicholas Kazan to adapt a screenplay based on these events. Titled At Close Range, Kazan’s script became one nearly every executive in Hollywood wanted to see made but none were willing to bankroll. That changed in 1985 when Sean Penn was being heralded as the most talented young actor in movies. Penn had befriended USC Film School grad James Foley and a script both men loved was At Close Range. Hemdale Film Corporation agreed to finance the project with Orion Pictures handling distribution.

Kazan let it be known how displeased he was with Foley’s work, cutting scenes the scribe felt pivotal to the plot, redacting the humor and giving the picture a visual sheen Kazan thought undermined its reality. It’ll never be known how great At Close Range might have been, but in Foley’s defense, what’s on screen is remarkable. Cast by Risa Bramon and Billy Hopkins, the ensemble is extraordinary and in his sophomore feature, Foley knew to let his actors act. The energy harnessed by Sean Penn, his brother Chris and their mother Eileen Ryan (playing the boys’ grandma) is palpable, while Walken and Masterson and the great Tracey Walter mesmerize in every moment of their screen time. The lightning by Juan Ruiz Anchia bleeds shadow, but in a fresh approach, this is film noir set knee deep in the boondocks. Madonna co-wrote and performed the ubiquitous theme song “Live To Tell”, which materializes throughout the film as its own atmospheric effect.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 8,017 users: 71% for At Close Range

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

What do you say?

“I think a lot of it has gone into comic books, and to me, in comic books, it’s all about the men — and because they were written in the ’50s and ’60s especially. It just wasn’t where it was at for those writers and there’s only so many band-aids you can put on that to make it relevant for today’s society. There are gorgeous, occasionally kick-ass characters like Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2, but in general I don’t think those guys were thinking about women in those ways. I think as long as Hollywood is doing that, there won’t be these amazing action-women characters.” Sigourney Weaver interviewed by Eric Larknik for moviefone, July 2011

Aliens (1986)
Directed by James Cameron
Screenplay by James Cameron, story by James Cameron and Walter Hill & David Giler, based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon & Ronald Shusett
Produced by Gale Ann Hurd
137 minutes (theatrical version)/ 154 minutes (special edition)

Sequels start out as business deals and often build a case of buyer’s remorse among audiences as soon as they drive off the lot, but James Cameron wasn’t interested in business as usual when he signed on for part two of Ridley Scott’s 1979 outer space spookfest Alien. With ideas bountiful enough for three good movies, Cameron races away with a film that laps other sci-fi, horror and war movies for a far greater prize: the mantle of epic filmmaking. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), lone survivor of the freighter Nostromo, is discovered drifting through space by a salvage crew. Revived after spending 57 years in hypersleep, the home office remains skeptical that Ripley scuttled the Nostromo because a hostile alien (with acid for blood) got on board and killed her crew. The moon where Ripley first encountered the creature is now the site of a terraformed colony which hasn’t reported any trouble. Not yet.

Plagued by nightmares of her ordeal in space, Ripley is notified by smarmy case officer Burke (Paul Reiser) that contact with the colony has been lost. Burke promises to reinstate Ripley’s flight license if she accompanies him and a unit of colonial marines to investigate. These include the green Lt. Gorman (William Hope), quiet Cpl. Hicks (Michael Biehn), cocky Pvt. Hudson (Bill Paxton), two macho gunners (Jenette Goldstein, Mark Rolston) and an “artificial person” called Bishop (Lance Henriksen). The marines find one colonist, a girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) crawling in the ventilation ducts with no sign of the others. Advancing on an atmosphere processing station, the marines with their pulse rifles and motion trackers are overwhelmed by a swarm of ferocious creatures seeking human hosts. Ripley saves what’s left of the unit, which is now marooned with her and Newt in hostile terrain 17 days short of any rescue.

James Cameron was scrambling to finance a low budget sci-fi thriller he’d written titled Terminator when he met with Walter Hill & David Giler. Cameron pitched a few ideas, none of which went over well, until the producers mentioned they were thinking about a sequel to Alien. The up and comer submitted a 40-page treatment for Alien II, which Hill & Giler developed with Cameron, who was retained to write a screenplay. He turned in only 90 pages before departing to direct Terminator, but based on what they’d read, the producers made the unusual call not to hire another writer. Armed with the prestige of The Terminator, Cameron was handed directing duties for the sequel, with his 29-year-old partner Gale Ann Hurd producing a studio film for triple their last budget. Cameron coaxed Sigourney Weaver back, survived a skeptical British crew at Pinewood Studios and again exceeded expectations in the realm of modestly budgeted sci-fi.

Cameron wrote Aliens in tandem with First Blood Part II and without Sylvester Stallone’s input, Aliens persists as an allegory to the colonial wars of past, where superior technology is overrun by an indigenous enemy. As fantastic as the tech is — the next generation power loaders from Caterpillar are beautifully designed and rendered — Aliens is Zulu in deep space. Instead of making a copy, Cameron actually gives each element from the original film sharper and deeper imaging, from the alien biology, to the culture of a maritime shipping corporation, to space travel. What makes this business so engaging are characters drawn with distinctive humor and guts who live and die memorably based on those established traits. Instead of a plot pushing her from point A to point B, Ripley’s fear of the aliens and her desire for motherhood is what drives the expansive narrative, a trick that may be the most enduring Cameron was able to pull off.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 374,363 users: 90% for Aliens

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

What do you say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you say?

“The best thing about Red Dragon (Universal), the second adaptation of Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel, is that it reminds you how scary and seminal the first adaptation — Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986) — was. This new movie, directed by Brett Ratner, recycles the same narrative, many of the same lines, and even some of the same camera set-ups, but it stubbornly refuses to haunt … you could be watching a plodding, Hollywood-studio remake of some idiosyncratic foreign classic: The beats are the same, but the eerie vibe has been lost in translation.” David Edelstein reviews Red Dragon for Slate Magazine, October 2002

Manhunter (1986)
Directed by Michael Mann
Screenplay by Michael Mann, based on the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Produced by Richard Roth
121 minutes (theatrical version)/ 124 minutes (director’s cut)

For those who’ve feasted on almost every variation of the psycho killer genre — particularly through TV forensics shows, with their nice and tidy finishes in under an hour — this special category of crime thriller begins and ends with filmmaker Michael Mann’s fervent and nearly flawless adaptation of Thomas Harris’ 1981 bestseller Red Dragon. The tightly wound source material launched a franchise and still endures as the ultimate dance between predator and prey, yet the original film version has precision moves and timing all its own. FBI Special Agent Will Graham (William Petersen) is semi-retired and living in Marathon, Florida with his wife Molly (Kim Greist) and 11-year-old son Kevin (David Seaman) when his boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) visits the beach with a plea for help.

Graham’s dark talent lies in his ability to enter the mind of a killer and think as they think. To track down a sociopath who’s slain two families — earning the nickname “Tooth Fairy” for the post-mortem bite marks he’s left on the women — Graham reaches out to Dr. Hannibal Lektor (Brian Cox), a homicidal psychiatrist who Graham almost died bringing to justice. A note recovered in Lektor’s cell indicates the doctor is in communication with Tooth Fairy through coded ads placed in a tabloid. A gambit to lure Tooth Fairy to Graham using sleazy journalist Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang) backfires when the killer makes a date with Freddy instead. Revealed to be a gargantuan, socially awkward lab tech named Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), “Tooth Fairy” is drawn out of his shell by a blind co-worker (Joan Allen) who threatens to become Dollarhyde’s next victim.

Film rights to Red Dragon were snared by producer Dino De Laurentiis and after David Lynch tangled with the material — which he found too violent for his taste — Michael Mann was approached. The executive producer of TV’s new sensation Miami Vice, Mann had corresponded with convict Dennis Wayne Wallace for a penal script he’d since abandoned. Using an FBI agent to descend into the psychology of a criminal opened a door Mann had been looking for into that world. To play Will Graham, the director held out for William Petersen, who Mann had auditioned for the role that went to Jim Belushi in Thief. In a battle over the film’s title, Mann was overruled by De Laurentiis, who felt Red Dragon was too similar to his maligned cop thriller Year of the Dragon. Released in late summer with scant marketing support, Manhunter was dismissed by many critics. At the time, audiences ignored it as well.

What Michael Mann brings to the Hannibal Lechter game — a pastime revisited by Jonathan Demme, Ridley Scott, Brett Ratner and Peter Webber with diminishing attention — is a relentless pace and brooding chill that evokes Thomas Harris’ page turner, even if much of the author’s backstory is left in the dugout. Instead of focusing on the peccadilloes of the prey, Harris created a hunter whose skills set is far more compelling. Mann knows that guy well. The scenes between Will Graham and his family have an emotional purity, even with the starkest of dialogue, while close attention is paid to the psychologists, cryptologists and ballistics experts working together toward a common goal. Collaborating with casting director Bonnie Timmermann and composer Michel Rubini, Mann was restricted in budget and in time, but in spite of them, perhaps because of them, cranked out the definitive thriller of its class.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 48,623 users: 70% for Manhunter

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

What do you say?

“The studio wanted Raiders of the Lost Ark, clearly that’s what they wanted. They wanted a movie like that. ‘Can’t you just do that?’ They didn’t ever actually say that to me, but I know that’s what they wanted. ‘Xerox it.’ But I had other ideas and I thought it would have been interesting at least from my point of view, maybe nobody else’s, but to make the white lead … You know in the Tarzan films, Tarzan is white and he always saves the natives. ‘Oh, thank you, Tarzan.’ It’s just ridiculous. I was like, ‘What about if your white lead is a complete fool?’” John Carpenter interviewed by Eric Vespe, aka Quint, for Ain’t It Cool News, June 2011

Big Trouble In Little China (1986)
Directed by John Carpenter
Adaptation by W.D. Richter, written by Gary Goldman & David Z. Weinstein
Produced by Larry Franco
99 minutes

A gumbo of wildly divergent film genres handpicked from around the globe (head cook John Carpenter described his dish as “an action adventure comedy kung fu ghost story monster movie”), Big Trouble In Little China hasn’t lost its manic flavoring over the years. A generation of martial arts fantasies may not owe their existence to this production per se, but in a testament to its timeless élan, Big Trouble could be re-released and with the exception of Kurt Russell’s mullet, feel brand new. Blowhard trucker Jack Burton (Russell) rolls his rig into San Francisco on a dark and stormy night. Jack cleans the floor with Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) over a game of fan-tan and refusing to let his friend out of sight until he pays up, gives Wang a ride to the airport, where his green-eyed fiancee Miao Yin (Suzee Pai) is arriving from China.

When Miao Yin is abducted by a gang called the Lords of Death, Jack and Wang pursue the punks back to Chinatown, where they step into a brawl between the Chang Sing and their enemies, the Wing Kong. Exploding into the turf war are three supernatural warriors, Thunder (Carter Wong), Rain (Peter Kwong) and Lightning (James Pax), and their master, a 2,000 year old phantom named Lo Pan (James Wong). Jack and Wang escape and are clued by pesky attorney Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) that Miao Yin is being held by the Lords of Death in a brothel. Before they can spring her, the three storms whisk Miao Yin into an underground city, where Lo Pan must wed a girl with green eyes to lift his curse of the undead. Out of his element as he encounters booby traps, beasts and ancient sorcery, Jack unleashes as much destruction as heroics aiding Wang and the Chang Sing in the rescue of Miao Yin.

Big Trouble In Little China was the title of a spec script by Gary Goldman & David Z. Weinstein. Set in the Old West, its concoction of cowboys and sorcerers sold producer Paul Monash, until he opted to move the story into the present. When the scribes refused, W.D. Richter was put on the payroll. The script doctor kept the legend of Lo Pan and dumped almost everything else. A USC classmate of Richter’s named John Carpenter had been developing an adaptation of Erich van Lustbader’s bestseller The Ninja and when the project fell through, accepted an offer from 20th Century Fox to direct Big Trouble. The film went into production at the same time as Eddie Murphy’s new comedy The Golden Child, which also mixed wise cracking and Chinese mysticism. To compete, Carpenter felt he needed a star like Clint Eastwood, but Fox approved Carpenter’s regular leading man Kurt Russell for the role of Jack Burton.

Aside from dismal box office returns, the distinction Big Trouble In Little China holds over The Golden Child is the mythology; even the hero’s truck has a backstory. Among the many elements in its composition, the rarest is the rapid fire repartee that brings to mind Bringing Up Baby and qualifies Big Trouble as the first of its kind: a screwball martial arts comedy. While its fight choreography has been eclipsed by the way action movies are prepared today, Kurt Russell’s redneck bluster and his commitment to playing the fool from start to finish are a laugh riot. Instead of settling for spectacle, the script goes the extra mile, building a universe before mercilessly dismantling it. In a credit to casting director Joanna Merlin and stunt coordinator Kenny Endoso, every actor from Kim Cattrall down to the stuntmen seem in sync with the film’s whimsical goofiness.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 120,473 users: 78% for Big Trouble In Little China

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

What do you say?

“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.” Stephen King interviewed for Playboy Magazine, June 1983

The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson, based on the novel by Stephen King
Produced by Stanley Kubrick
146 minutes (original U.S. theatrical version)/ 144 minutes (U.S. theatrical version)/ 119 minutes (international version)

Debating whether or not Jack Nicholson’s fortissimo performance in The Shining — as a family man who slips into homicidal insanity during his season as caretaker of a haunted hotel — needed to be played at such a high volume is like debating whether Jimi Hendrix really needed to light a perfectly good electric guitar on fire at Monterey Pop. There may have been a perfectly good exercise in gothic terror and things that go bump in the night lurking within Stephen King‘s novel, but the film version was designed and constructed by Stanley Kubrick. Drawn up as a last will and testament to the horror genre as far as the high and mighty Kubrick was concerned, the film inflicts such psychic trauma on the viewer that it needs a joker like Jack in the deck to soften its wicked blow.

Striking ominous chords from the start, schoolteacher Jack Torrance (Nicholson) accepts a six month stint as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, encouraged that winter’s isolation will give him time to outline a novel. The general manager feels obligated to mention a tragedy in which a previous caretaker killed his wife and two daughters with an axe before shooting himself. Jack responds that his wife — a fan of “ghost stories and horror films” — will be thrilled. The skittish Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) finds the illustrious hotel spooky, while 7-year-old Danny (Danny Lloyd) receives visions of the future that are nothing short of terrifying. A departing cook (Scatman Crothers) confides to the boy that they share a special power his grandmother called ”shining”. Assured there’s nothing  to be scared of, Danny senses something bad lurking at the Overlook, particularly in Room 237.

Warner Bros. president John Calley knew that Stanley Kubrick had an interest in the paranormal and sent him a galleys copy of The Shining in 1977. Ignoring a first draft Stephen King had been contractually guaranteed to author, Kubrick adapted a script with novelist Diane Johnson, who was teaching a course on the gothic novel at UC Berkeley. Certain exterior shots of the Overlook Hotel would be filmed at the Timberline Lodge, on the slopes of Mount Hood in Oregon. The vast majority of the film — including the hedge maze — was manufactured at Elstree Studios outside London. Filming commenced in May 1978 and given Kubrick’s refusal to be hurried through a schedule, didn’t wrap until April 1979. Kubrick tinkered with his film even after it was in U.S. theaters for five days, cutting an epilogue in which the general manager visits Wendy in the hospital.

The film departed so radically from his book  that Stephen King authored the teleplay for a 4-hour mini-series version that aired on ABC in 1997. Kubrick ignored many of the elements King found eerie — an elevator, a firehose, animal shaped shrubs — to focus instead on a child’s subconscious dread of a parent turning into a monster. The magnificence of The Shining is how Kubrick exploits that fear viscerally. Snippets of a blood soaked future flash through Danny’s mind while the corridors of the hotel breathe with living images of the past. 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 most unnerving film scores ever. Criticized at the time for not watching enough horror movies, the bottom line is that Kubrick’s vision is scary as hell.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 423,027 users: 91% for The Shining

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

What do you say? The fan trailer below was superior to any I could find from Warner Bros.

“The interesting thing about Flesh+Blood is that when Paul was looking for music, he went to Luc Van de Ven, who has a record company, Prometheus Records, and he said, ‘What do you think, what kind of music should I use?’ and Luc played him Conan. That’s the score that took me to Paul. I think he had shown the film to James Horner and Horner said, ‘I can’t do that, it’s a terrible movie.’ And I just was, ‘I got to do it! This is the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life!’ and frankly, it really was. I loved it because I thought it was honest, and it was ruthless, and terrifyingly brutal, but what else would it be like? The whole marriage of politics and religion was brilliant.” — Basil Poledouris interviewed by Olivier Desbrosses in Ubeda, Spain, July 2006

Flesh + Blood (1985)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Screenplay by Gerard Soeteman & Paul Verhoeven, story by Gerard Soeteman
Produced by Gys Versluys
126 minutes

The Dutch filmmaker and cultural lightning rod’s first experience in Hollywood was not 1987′s critical and commercial sensation RoboCop. Paul Verhoeven actually made his English language directing debut two summers previous with Flesh + Blood, his first occasion to spar with the MPAA over censorship, American style. A quick release capsule of medieval death and eroticism, the film was bum rushed out of the U.S. box office, failing to launch action figures or sequels of any sort for its primary investor, Orion Pictures. Yet this relatively low budget pill holds up surprisingly well in a designer age of digital entertainment, delivering a potent kick of complex characterization, historical detail and brass balls, revving its sex and violence past legal limits in the United States.

Set in the way back of 1501 A.D., Flesh + Blood introduces a band of mercenaries receiving communion before they lay siege to a fortified city. The rabble includes an archer (Brion James), the very pregnant harlot he adores (Susan Tyrrell), a defrocked cardinal (Ronald Lacey) and various cutthroats and jezebels led by a charismatic soldier of fortune named Martin (Rutger Hauer). Promised 24 hours to ransack the homes of the rich if they can retake the city for its ousted lord Arnolfini (Fernando Hilbeck) and his captain of the guard Hawkwood (Jack Thompson), the rogues are observed by Arnolfini’s teenaged son Steven (Tom Burlinson), a cocksure engineer who aspires to the heights of Leonardo da Vinci. Victorious in battle, Martin and his band are double-crossed by Arnolfini Sr. and expelled from the city.

While Hawkwood retires to the countryside with a mute nun (Blanca Marsillach) he maimed during the invasion, Steven’s war booty arrives in the form of Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a daughter of aristocracy who enters marriage to Steven pure as the driven snow. The college boy announces he has career plans, but plans change when Martin and his marauders make off with his bride to be. More cunning than she appears, Agnes weighs her chastity against her odds of survival and throws herself at Martin sexually. This shifts the balance of power in the band, which storms a castle they fail to realize sits in a valley beset by the Black Plague. Steven coerces Hawkwood out of retirement to save Agnes, who may not be in as desperate need of rescuing as her prince believes.

Verhoeven and writing partner Gerard Soeteman had amassed medieval research dating back to their 1969 Dutch television series Floris starring Rutger Hauer. Their full throttled script for Flesh + Blood is woven with subject matter as fascinating as it is disparate: the Black Plague, piracy, 16th century mechanical engineering, Catholicism. An onslaught of debauchery that proved too flagrant for the MPAA to award an R rating without cuts, the irony of Flesh + Blood is that amid the impaled chests and bare bottoms, its characters (particularly the ladies played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Susan Tyrrell) possess far greater humanity than the caricatures of generic Hollywood action films. The outstanding international cast is mirrored on the other side of the camera by Dutch cinematographer Jan de Bont and American composer Basil Poledouris.

“I’ve always have been saying and have been saying for years that the position of the camera is as important as what you’re photographing. A dirty word to me is ‘coverage’. You know, ‘two shot’. ‘Over the shoulder’. It’s stuff you see all the time and it just drives me crazy because this to me is not directing. You have to think about where the camera is in relation to the material.” — Brian DePalma interviewed by Noah Baumbach in New York, October 2010

Blow Out (1981)
Directed by Brian DePalma
Written by Brian DePalma
Produced by George Litto
107 minutes

While cameras didn’t roll until the 1980s, Blow Out is the most deviously engineered political thriller of the 1970s. Veering down an alley familiar to anyone who’s poured over the Kennedy assassination or the Watergate cover-up, it’s also a love letter from a filmmaker to the nuts and bolts of his beloved craft. John Travolta (much closer in age to Tony Manero than whatever growed up moron he played in the Look Who’s Talking comedies) delivers just the right combination of geeky obsession and downtrodden sleaze as a B-movie sound man who records what he believes to be an assassination on audio tape. Quentin Tarantino was such a huge fan of Blow Out (placing it at one time among his three favorite movies of all time) that Travolta was likely cast in Pulp Fiction as a result of his performance here.

Travolta plays Jack Terry, a man whose love of electronics and the solitary hours tinkering over a work bench have led him to a shit job recording and mixing sound effects for a Philadelphia based producer of slasher movies. Sent back to the field when his employer (Peter Boyden) demands new effects for their latest picture Coed Frenzy, Terry is on Wissahickon Creek Bridge when he witnesses a Buick plunge into the water. He rescues the passenger — a daffy blonde named Sally (Nancy Allen) — but later discovers the stiff behind the wheel was Governor McRyan, the presumed frontrunner of the next presidential race. Terry’s ear and his tape enable him to reconstruct the blowout, which he believes was no accident. Meanwhile, the assassin (John Lithgow) comes out of the shadows to clip the loose threads left dangling from his crime.

The inspiration to use a sound man as protagonist came to Brian DePalma while he was mixing his previous thriller Dressed to Kill with sound editor Dan Sable. The idea of demonstrating to an audience how sound and images were synched together in an editing room and how that process might reveal a murder quickly obsessed DePalma as well. Filmways put up financing and permitted DePalma to shoot the picture in Philadelphia, where the filmmaker and his agent/producer George Litto had both grown up (the bridge spanning Wissahickon Creek had been a lovers lane when DePalma was a teenager). The film’s stark tone and jarring, unexpected climax may have given critics and audiences a cold shoulder. When Blow Out opened July 1981 in the United States, the press agreed it was a flop.

Viewed under the ever present magnifying glass that sweeps over the film, neither Travolta or Allen come across as very compelling human beings. The characters act and speak within the confines of a trade paperback plot, but the appeal of Blow Out is the doomed nature of their relationship and the technical virtuosity wielded to express it. DePalma’s passion for the possibilities of filmmaking and its limitations are potent, while watching Travolta splice together a snuff film from scratch is intoxicating as well. Blow Out starts strong, wanders around in a stupor a bit before delivering a knockout ending. As a bonus, Dennis Franz appears in the first of many Dennis Franz roles — as a private dick without a single redeeming quality — while cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond collaborated with DePalma on the film’s intricate, spellbinding look.

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

Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Directed by Dan Curtis
Teleplay by William F. Nolan (segments: Julie, Millicent and Therese) and Richard Matheson (segment: Amelia), based on the short stories The Likeness of Julia, Needle in the Heart and Prey by Richard Matheson
Produced by Dan Curtis
81 minutes

Like the Zuni fetish doll that appears in one of its segments and sent American kids diving behind furniture during prime time, Trilogy of Terror is a relic best left in a box. Producer/ director Dan Curtis and screenwriter Richard Matheson scored the highest Nielsen rating of all time with a made-for-TV movie titled The Night Stalker for ABC in 1972. Matheson notified Curtis that he had three stories he was willing to package for the boob tube. Matheson’s 1962 short story The Likeness of Julia had appeared in the author’s anthology Alone By Night; Needle in the Heart was published in the October 1969 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; Prey in the April 1969 issue of Playboy. At Matheson’s request, his friend William F. Nolan was hired to adapt the first two stories. Knowing he had an ace in his sleeve, Matheson held onto the third story to adapt himself.

Despite lobbying by her manager, Oscar nominated actress Karen Black had no interest in doing what was going by the title Trilogy in Terror. Black gave in on the condition that her then husband, an aspiring actor named Robert Burton, was thrown a part. Premiering March 4, 1975 as an ABC Movie of the Week, Trilogy of Terror was another ratings smash for Matheson, who’d written the teleplay for Duel (1971), the feature length debut from a promising director named Steven Spielberg. Trilogy of Terror is not engineered with much precision, a pedestrian effort by one of the more prolific genre writers of the 20^th century and reminder of a time when TV was mostly junk. Segments 1 and 2 are as thin and disposable as Kleenex, while the beloved Segment 3 is some impressive snot, at least. The kooky Karen Black is no better than the material, sadly, all leftovers.

Mild-mannered literature professor Julie Eldridge (Karen Black) finds herself pursued by Chad Foster (Robert Burton), a photography enthusiast who suddenly develops the hots for teacher. Following the advice of her roommate Anne (Kathryn Reynolds), Julie agrees to a date with Chad at the local drive-in, unaware he’s been prowling around her home. A drugged beverage and a set of amateur photos put the professor in a compromising position with her pupil, until one of them realizes they’re way over their head. In the second story, a spinster named Millicent Larimore (Karen Black) laments the wild ways of her twin sister Therese (Karen Black), who she blames for her father’s death.Millicent succeeds in warning away of one Therese’s suitors, but the evil one retaliates by ripping up the doll of a neighbohood girl.

Millicent’s therapist Dr. Chester Ramsey (George Gaynes) pays his patient a house call, fighting off the advances of her blonde twin. At the end of her rope, Millicent elects to use Therese’s own black magic against her. In the third and final story, Amelia (Karen Black) returns to her apartment with a present she picked up at a curio shop: a Zuni fetish doll. According to the instructions, spirit and doll will become one if the gold chain around its waist is removed. Distraught after a phone conversation with her mother, Amelia is tormented by noises in her apartment. Finding the doll has disappeared, her calf is slashed with a carving knife wielded by the malevolent doll, possessed in a bloodthirsty rage. Amelia barricades herself in her bedroom, until the little Zuni bastard demonstrates a troubling ability to open doors.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,293 users: 57% for Trilogy of Terror

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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

The Orphanage (2007)
Directed by J.A. Bayona
Written by Sergio G. Sánchez
Produced by Joaquín Padró, Mar Targarona, Álvaro Augustín, Guillermo del Toro
105 minutes

To call The Orphanage a Steven Spielberg ghost story is actually more of a compliment to Mr. Spielberg than to the Spaniards who crafted one of the most thrilling explorations of the afterlife in many years. Sergio G. Sánchez had Peter Pan and The Turn of the Screw in mind when he finished a draft of The Orphanage in 1998. Hoping he might direct it, Sánchez set out to prove himself behind the camera with a 17-minute short, which caught the eye of director J.A. Bayona at a film festival. Asking Sánchez if he had written anything else, the director took The Orphanage to Barcelona based producers Joaquín Padró & Mar Targarona, whose company Rodar y Rodar had employed Bayona in his commercial career. Another call was put in to Guillermo del Toro, who Bayona had met at the 1992 Sitges Fantastic Cinema Festival when del Toro was screening his debut feature Cronos.

With the name “Guillermo del Toro” above the title, Rodar y Rodar was able to raise $4 million in financing, partnering with commercial network Telecinco for Bayona to make his feature film debut. The result became the highest grossing Spanish language film in Spain’s history and was named their entry in the 2008 Academy Awards.  The Orphanage is a jewel among junk in the fantasy and horror genres. Instead of showcasing special effects, the sophistication of old-fashioned storytelling is what shines through here. Sánchez’s intricate puzzle box of a script taps into our mutual fear and our fascination of the unknown, grounded by Belén Rueda playing a modern day Mrs. Darling haunted by the disappearance of children who’ve been taken away to Neverland. In his first feature outing, Bayona juggles magic, fright and melodrama to beautiful and remarkable effect.

7-year-old Simón (Roger Príncep) wakes in the night crying for his mother Laura (Belén Rueda). An only child, Simón both entertains and scares himself with a rich fantasy life that includes a couple of invisible friends. Newly arrived in the 19^th century mansion where she was raised when the house was an orphanage, Laura takes a break preparing an open house for her own orphanage with husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) to accompany her son to the seashore. After exploring a cave, Simón asks permission to invite home a boy he claims he met in there. Laura receives a visit from an old social worker (Montserrat Carulla) inquiring about Simón, who has not yet been told he is adopted and is receiving treatment for HIV. Waken in the night by strange noises in the garage, Laura finds the social worker snooping around and chases her away.

Simón introduces his mother to a game his invisible friends have invented: hiding something of value and replacing it with clues that lead back to the missing object. Pressed by Laura to stop lying, Simón reveals that it’s his parents who have been lying to him; his new friend Tomás told him so. During the open house, a strange child wearing a sack over his head and the name “Tomás” sewn on his shirt locks Laura in a bathroom. By the time she’s rescued, Simón has vanished. The state has no record of the social worker Laura reported in her home and the police have no clues in the disappearance of her son. Convinced Simón still in the house and that his “friends” know where, Laura invites a medium (Geraldine Chaplin) and a team of parapsychologists to help, fracturing her marriage, but revealing a secret about the Good Shepherd Orphanage and the fate of her son.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 38,413 users: 85% for The Orphanage

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 74 for The Orphanage

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