This Week In Film (4/5/2021 - 4/11/2021)

April 5, 2021 - April 11, 2021

Hello readers. I'm guessing this has already happened for most of you, but I finally got around to Euphoria and it was perfect. The wife and I were supposed to go out of town together this week, but I had my second vaccination scheduled for Saturday. I learned quickly that one doesn't just reschedule. I was laughed at on the phone when I inquired about such things. I knew that upon my second dose there would be a good chance I would feel like sh*t. So I carved a couple days into my schedule where I allowed myself to do NOTHING. It has been so long since I've granted myself that kind of freedom. Whether it be work, social obligation, or that incessant need to ABC - always be creating. Prior to the wife leaving, we watched the first episode, and we were both hooked. I knew at that moment, this was going to fill my nothing schedule. After episode one, we both felt dumb for holding off for so long. We were fans of Dare Me when we should have been watching this. What finally forced our hand was the realization that it was an A24 show. We both belong to the A24 group on Facebook and they mostly discuss Midsommar (2019), Hereditary (2018), The Lighthouse (2019), The VVitch (2015), or Lady Bird (2017). When it was eventually revealed that Euphoria was an A24 show, it moved to the top of our TV list. From the Labrinth score to the anti-Hollywood color grading (instead of orange and teal, the show goes for magenta and green) or the Roger Avery (Rules of Attraction (2002)) style narration and the Paul Thomas Anderson via Magnolia (1999) style direction, Euphoria feels like constant chaos. It makes me remember all the drugs I once did. All the terrible decisions I once made. And how intolerant people were in my past. Some say that Euphoria shows the disaster of youth. But I firmly believe that every generation has a disastrous youth, and what sets the teens apart in Euphoria is their acceptance of sexuality as a spectrum. Anyway, in the past few days I've watched all of Season 1 and the two specials, and I can't wait for more. But that's not what I came here to tell you about...

This Week In Film where I create a weekly rundown of the random sh*t I watch. There’s a HIGH / LOW at the end of this entry, so if words aren't really your thing, you can scroll quickly, look at pictures, and skip to my favorite viewings of the week.

Lets begin...

OVERVIEW:
 

******

KING KONG LIVES (1986)

dir: John Guillermin, Charles McCracken

As fans of Joe Bob Briggs, we signed up for Darcy's Lost Drive-In Patreon - link here. Darcy The Mail Girl, or really Director of Communications for all things Joe Bob, has taken on the task of digitizing all of Joe Bob's footage from MonsterVision, Joe Bob's Last Call, Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater, and all other iterations of Joe Bob. For $5 a month, you get access to all the clips she posts. Darcy doesn't stop there, when possible she also includes the timecode so you can watch the film and cut in with Joe Bob at the right moment. This is the only reason I decided to take a trip down memory lane and watch King Kong Lives.

It's a mess. King Kong (1976) also directed by John Guillermin had Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, and Charles Grodin. It was a faithful retelling of the 1933 film and garnered success for everyone involved. Rick Baker did make-up effects. It was a spectacle to behold and in some ways better than Peter Jackson's version in 2005, namely shorter. But for Kong's follow up, producer Dino De Laurentiis pitched an idea nobody wanted to back. No stars returned. Linda Hamilton, who had already been Sarah Connor, believed it would be a good career move as she'd been following in the footsteps of Fay Ray and Jessica Lange. Everyone was duped. Dino hired two writers to sculpt the film he imagined. Steven Pressfield, one of the writers, stated years later that it was with King Kong Lives that he became a professional. As a professional, "He hadn't yet had a success, but he'd had a real failure." The film's director should have never been behind the camera. Guillermin was still suffering the loss of his son and would abandon set for days. Eventually, the film was completed by a young documentary filmmaker, Charles McCracken. And I wish I could say that the experience allowed for McCracken to have a great career, but this was his last film credit.

Kong's artificial heart transplant. King and Lady Kong sharing flirtations on Honeymoon ridge. Linda Hamilton and Brian Kerwin sharing a sleeping bag with the line: We're primates too. This thing should not have been made. Thank you Joe Bob and Darcy for making it bearable.

MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM

dir: George C. Wolfe

I, like most people, was introduced to the brilliance of Chadwick Boseman in Season 4, Episode 4 of Fringe. I wish I was that cool. I wish that I had that much time admiring him. To be one of those insiders that knew of his meteoric rise the moment he graced us with his presence in Captain America: Civil War (2016). Five years with Boseman is not enough. But what he left us are gifts that will always be cherished. T'Challa, Andre Davis, Stormin' Norman, and most importantly Levee. These characters exceed their premise in every way. In some cases due to the words on the page, but always because Boseman expressed the varied layers under each of them.

Levee is a tragic protagonist and antagonist throughout the vastness of August Wilson's play and Ruben Santiago-Hudson's screenplay. Ma Rainey may be about Ma cutting her latest record, but scratch the surface and you have a moment that acts as a time capsule with a voice reaching out into any era. Oppression, art, appropriation, and repeat. The performances and monologue's are phenomenal. When Boseman tells the band about knowing how to treat white people and the tragedy that befell his mother and father, we are no longer in the room with Boseman. We are Levee as a child. We're grabbing a knife and trying to stop what's happening. We're Levee's smiling father. We are a revenge best served cold. 

Not all the love goes to Boseman, because Viola Davis' Ma is a force to be reckoned with. She knows the game. She knows that once the white folks get what they want they can go back to treating them like servants or worse. When she explains this to Cutler, again, monologues haven't felt this powerful in a long time. Final words: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom will gut you.

 

976-EVIL (1988)

dir: Robert England

Evil Ed from Fright Night (1985) in a Freddy Krueger film, what could go wrong? Well, a lot of little things actually. Little things like pacing, editing, acting, effects, and story. Speaking of story lets jump right in. Evil Ed, err Hoax is a high school teen who gets bullied at school and whose mother is a religious fanatic played by Sandy Dennis (Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)). Here, Dennis is trying her damnedest to replicate some Piper Laurie level of crazy, but instead gets eaten by cats. Hoax's cousin Spike lives with them, well he's in a fancy coach house out back. There's some back story about him inheriting money from his dead parents, but it only comes up once so I guess it doesn't matter. Spike's a bad boy biker and gambling addict with his girlfriend Lezlie Deane who will one day go on to beat the sh*t out of her director in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). But here Deane is killed by spiders conjured up in her TV dinner. That's about it for the cast. Oh there's also the feature debut of Darren Burrows who would be known as Ed Chigliak from Northern Exposure.

I digress because the cast is more interesting than the film. Where was I? Okay, Hoax is timid and awkward due to his fanatic mother. He wants to be more like the care-free Spike. That's where the Horrorscope hotline comes into play. Hoax calls and begins his transformation. As he gains confidence and succumbs to the power, he becomes a demon. Where there is nothing left of the old Hoax, Spike throws him into a pit that leads to hell. That's it.

Stephen Geoffreys is the reason to watch 976-Evil. He declined to make an appearance in Fright Night 2 (1988) to star in this. His performance, voice, and demeanor as the nervous Hoax to the calculating demon is great. The makeups used to transform him into a demon are at first subtle and look awesome. The most iconic scene is when he walks into the projection room at the theater and kills all of his tormentors. The bullies use the room for their poker game. When Hoax kills two of the bullies, he walks up to the table and delivers this gem: "Would it be possible to enter this game with a pair of hearts?" And he shows the hearts he just ripped out of his foes. Brilliant. The other reason to watch is a game of name that horror movie and devil reference. From a character wearing a Return of the Living Dead shirt to Geoffreys standing next to a Fright Night poster, there's references galore. As for devil references one can visit the El Diablo theater, Dante's diner, eat deviled egg sandwiches or Devil Twin brownies, and use Devil's root for spells. Bottom line: its not good, but it's entertaining enough.

976-EVIL 2: THE ASTRAL FACTOR  (1991)

dir: Jim Wynorski

We meet again Jim. Last time we hung out we had to suffer Munchie (1992). And while I'm of the opinion that Chopping Mall (1986) solidifies you as a horror hero, Dom DeLuise as puppet was a difficult watch. In the tradition of Empire Strikes Back, Godfather 2, Ghoulies 2, House 2, and Hello Mary Lou, Prom Night 2 this sequel outdoes its predecessor. Why there's not a larger cult following, I'll never know. Where the original was content with showing movie posters and wearing T-shirts from horror films, the sequel takes this even further. 

Extended swimming, showering, dressing, running, and a preaching killer take us through the first six minutes. Who could this killer be? Oh, it was the dean the whole time. Now the entire movie is ruined by the fourteen minute mark. In one of the films biggest twists we find out that Hollywood's favorite bum, Buck Flower, is actually the janitor. The dean can astral project; this is the so-called astral factor from the title. His murder of Buck is fun. As the dean is a projection, he holds Buck in the middle of the road and lets a semi do the dirty work. A burst of blood later and no meddling janitor. Spike from the first film turns up in Slate River after hearing of the dean / serial killer. He receives a call from his favorite hotline that forces his return and marks him as the film's savior. With the Dean in custody and the murders continuing, the sheriff's daughter Robin (Debbie James) becomes the new meddler. Robin and Spike team up to defeat the Dean, but how do you conquer an astral projection?

"Everytime you hear a bell, a zombie takes a soul to hell."

No one cares, we're here for the references. Let's start with the best reference of all. The college is putting on Goethe' Faust, and it is directed by Joe Bob Briggs under the oversight of the head of the department Roger Goreman. There's a mounted boar that comes to life à la Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987). A fun reference to the original film's use of the word 'devil' comes across as a storefront. Come on down to Lucifer's where we have all your astral factor answers. Open every night till midnight. In Lucifer's we get a few lines of priceless dialogue between Spike and the shops proprietor, Brigitte Nielsen (Chained Heat II (1993)). She tells Spike, "You remind me of a young Freddy Kruger," to which Spike replies, "Yeah, you remind me of Elvira on steroids." This tête-à-tête is nothing to the paramount reference moment that follows. Robin and her friend Paula are watching Night of the Living Dead (1968), but it's too disturbing for Robin so she changes it to It's A Wonderful Life (1946). They fight over zombies versus family until Robin leaves the room. A commercial comes on for the Zap-O-Matic a controller that controls everything. The spokesperson is the dean doing his best Vincent Price impression. Next thing we know, Paula is transported into It's A Wonderful Life with a cool twist. This sequence is a crash course in low budget filmmaking. Use everything at your disposal, especially films that are in the public domain.

Where they saved part of their budget recreating public domain images, they blew the rest of it on a semi-truck explosion that leads to Spike's ability to project. This lets him punch the dean off a cliff and float to the cosmos. And our heroine is arrested for murder. The end. So much better. My plea to the purveyors of cult cinema, let's induct 976-Evil 2. It deserves its due, or at least a Shout! Factory release.

TRON LEGACY (2011)

dir: Joseph Kosinski

To make a one minute short film about Gear Of War, then be given the reigns to a huge intellectual property such as Tron is a recipe for disaster. I remember enjoying this film in the theater when it came out. Most likely because I was filled with the oooh and aaah of nostalgic dopamine rushing through my brain. Having watched the original recently and following it up with Legacy, I'm astounded by how inept this sequel is. I have many questions. The biggest question of all is Quorra. She's an ISO without a creator found randomly in the digital frontier. She is not a program or a user. We are told that she is evolution and must be protected. She even gets to cross over into the real world. But now what? Is she just a damn MacGuffin with as much significance as Pulp Fiction's briefcase? Okay, even if her abilities are ambiguous, what about daddy Flynn? He is the ultimate user, a god, and when he touches any element of the system he can create change. So why has he locked himself up and become a zen guru? In Tron, Flynn could convert any Master Controller system to do his bidding. And once Master Controller is out of the picture, he invents the entire frontier. I won't keep boring you with all of my questions because I have an infinite amount. The last one I'll address here is: you remember how in the first Tron, programs looked like their users and there were real world implications to events occurring in the grid? Why is there none of that here?

Let's say you've had your second dose of the COVID vaccine and you just want a mindless movie playing in the background as you suffer some side effects. You choose Tron Legacy. And at first it's working. You're not thinking of your symptoms, but instead you're immersed in the grid. Your semi-sick brain is telling you that you are watching a kick-*ss Daft Punk music video. Your brain is correct. But then you loose focus of the fun you were having. You cringe at the terrible effects used to make Jeff Bridges young. Your mind then has time to flutter with questions during the long stretches of movie without action. You laugh at Michael Sheen's impression of David Bowie, but then grow sad because you begin to realize your own youth is dead. You wonder if it's symptoms of the vaccine working or watching Tron that triggered your sadness?

******

Best viewing of the week. Too easy since I only watched 5 films this week.

HIGH: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM

Worst viewing of the week. Again, too easy since I only watched 5 films this week.

LOW: KING KONG LIVES

TV CORNER: