All posts by Rod Lott

Reading Material

Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies

Leave a comment

madashellYes, the subtitle of Dave Itzkoff’s Mad as Hell promises a behind-the-scenes chronicle of Sidney Lumet’s Network. Yes, the reader gets that, but the author delves deeper than that, to the point of telling not just the making of the 1976 film, but its conception, release, impact, blowback, legacy and continuing influence.

Part of that is because the book is as much as story about Network‘s celebrated screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, as it is about the Oscar-winning movie. A magnificent writer of television, stage and screen, Chayefsky was also an incredible control freak who ironically had no control over his family life; he clearly cared more about the written word than his flesh and blood.

Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, Chayefsky could not ever truly enjoy his incredible success — Network would bring him his third Academy Award for screenwriting — and harboring a near-extreme paranoia couldn’t help matters; he believed a second Holocaust was imminent. Nevertheless, he was able to function to do his job, starting with his much-abhorred boob tube. But it was film we forever will associate him with, especially the one with which Itzkoff’s book is concerned.

Network, we know now, was prescient — and continues to be more so as the years tick by — and even in scenes that never made it past the page, which Itzkoff details. One such case I found astounding is when the UBS execs dream up programming that is supposed to be considered wild: a show adapted from The Exorcist and a soap about homosexuals. We already have the latter; the former is being developed.

That’s one of many juicy bits the Mad as Hell reader will learn, thanks to Itzkoff’s judicious digging. Others include the revelation that Peter Finch could not complete two takes of “the” speech, that Lumet considered firing Faye Dunaway well after filming had begun, the pronunciation error that the to-the-letter Chayefsky failed to catch, and how Ned Beatty lied his way into a role. (I’d include how Dunaway did her damnedest to alienate most everyone, but everyone already knows that.)

If you haven’t seen Network — first off, shame on you — do not read this book until you do. Those who have may not want Mad as Hell to end, particularly knowing the fate of a reinvigorated Finch before the film could be fêted as that year’s Oscars. Only in a coda examining how Finch’s Howard Beale character has given rise to the likes of Glenn Beck does Itzkoff — turning from storyteller to social critic — produce a paragraph that’s not intensely readable. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Sex

The Ultimate Degenerate (1969)

Leave a comment

ultdegenerateHaving completed his Touch of Her Flesh trilogy, New York City writer/ director/producer/editor/perv Michael Findlay attempted to top his horndog histrionics with The Ultimate Degenerate. He failed. Watching it, if you can get through all of its 72 minutes, you may find yourself wishing some women would get murdered — not because you have something against the superior gender, but because the film needs something to liven it up. Nudity should not be so dull, even when accounting for black-and-white budgets.

Frequent Findlay skin-starlet Uta Erickson has zero inhibitions as Maria, a close-cropped blonde nympho with a thing for putting on window shows for an elderly neighbor. (As in Findlay fashion — one where moving mouths rarely match dialogue — viewers never see this old man.) Such exhibitionism sickens her live-in lover (Donna Stone, A Thousand Pleasures‘ Boobarella), so Maria answers a sex ad for a three-week gig that promises $500 per.

ultdegenerate1Said “job” is in the home of Spencer (Findlay), a wheelchair-bound man who pays various lovelies to bring his seemingly endless sexual kinks to life; to that end, he injects them with “a harmless aphrodisiac of my own creation.” Spencer’s right-hand man is played by Earl Hindman, who co-starred as Wilson on the long-running family sitcom Home Improvement. Remember how you never saw his face on that show? Well, sometimes you don’t see it here, either, but that’s because instead of being concealed by a backyard fence, it’s buried in whores’ crotches. #nomnomnom

Several of Spencer’s twisted games rely on dairy products sprayed from an aerosol can. On one occasion, “games” becomes literal, when a fully nude body becomes a board for whipped-cream tic-tac-toe. One might expect the scene in which Spencer pesters a rope-tied woman with a metal clamp to be the flick’s cruelest, but nope — my vote is cast for the extended one involving about a dozen cobs of corn. You may never eat this vegetable again … but if you do, may you be unable to think of anything but this sequence. More butter, friend? —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Horror

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

1 Comment

hellworldHalf a dozen friends are so obsessed with an online game that one of them, not being of sound mind and body, is driven to suicide. (Note: This film predates Farmville.) Two years later, all but the headstrong Chelsea (Amusement‘s Katheryn Winnick, the Canadian Scarlett Johansson) are still into the game — Hellworld, a role-playing version of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series — and they flip the freak out when they unlock an invitation to a secret, fans-only party. Begrudgingly, Chelsea attends only as the designated driver / voice of reason.

The soirée takes place in a mansion that, according to the host (Lance Henriksen, Aliens), once was a convent and an asylum, although not at the same time. Regardless, for this night, it’s a multilevel monkey house of bacchanalian activities, complete with numbered face masks for anonymous sex — the kind of environment conducive for pickup lines like, “I’d love to see your puzzle box” (uttered by future Man of Steel Henry Cavill) and, naturally, the eventual death and dismemberment of the guests by party-crashing Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his fellow Cenobites.

hellworld1The eighth film of the franchise, Hellraiser: Hellworld is the first to present its source material as something that exists outside the bounds of itself, with the young cast portraying ‘Raiser superfans who not only play the game, but wear Pinhead T-shirts and “ooh” and “ahh” over official merchandise. As with 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, it was only a matter of time that the Hellraiser sequels use that bitchin’ Internet as a springboard, and Hellworld‘s one-by-one kills bear striking influence of the then-ascendant Saw series.

All the Hellraisers in which Barker was not involved take a lot of heat as inferior product, and Hellworld doesn’t exactly help its own cause when Henriksen’s host quips, “Like a bad horror movie, isn’t it?” Such statements invite viewer ire. But separate from the others and taken on its own, Hellworld is an enjoyable slasher, competently directed by Rick Bota, who helmed the previous two sequels as well. Packed into black leather pants, Winnick is a heroine I can get behind — and do — in everything she appears; her skills as an actress keep this afloat and far from sinking into the sludge. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Action

Machete Kills (2013)

Leave a comment

machetekillsWhile Machete Kills is nearly indistinguishable from the 2010 original Machete, it does bring one differentiating element to the table by beginning with a fake trailer. This in-joke within an in-joke not only nods to the accidental franchise’s birth as a faux coming attraction that kicked off Robert Rodriguez’s half of 2007’s Grindhouse, but also proves to be the best part of this sequel. Since it promotes a purported third chapter set in the realm of ’70s cinematic outer space, how could it not? Perhaps Rodriguez should have ended Kills with this gag, as the whole movie sets the story up for heading that direction; it’s like hearing the punchline first.

After his partner is killed during a mission at the border, the superhuman Mexican known as Machete (Danny Trejo, xXx), is hired by the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen, here credited under his actual name of Carlos Estevez) to execute a cartel turncoat / schizophrenic madman named Mendez (Demian Bichir, The Heat) who has a big ol’ missile pointed at America and a $10 million bounty on his head. Machete soon learns that Mendez has whipped up a life-insurance policy, so to speak, by wiring the missile to his heart; should his meat ticker stop, the weapon’s ticker starts.

machetekills1And that’s merely one loco idea in the screenplay by newcomer Kyle Ward (and not by Rodriguez, strangely enough). Others include pairing Machete with a Texas beauty pageant contestant (Amber Heard, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane); befitting a bordello madam (Sofia Vergara, the hot tamale of TV’s Modern Family) with a metal bra that fires bullets; and having a character named El Camaleón be played by, in order of appearance, Walt Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lady Gaga and Antonio Banderas. Exactly none of these wacko bits advances the plot, save for the stunt casting of former Lethal Weapon Mel Gibson as the villainous Voz, a tech billionaire who happens to be a clairvoyant end-timer.

As with its predecessor, Machete Kills is to be taken as a chunk of cinematic queso, period. Trejo’s ever-frowning hero is easy to root for — especially for an action-oriented protagonist pushing 70 — and several of the supporting players get the joke, none more than the unexpectedly very funny Bichir. That joke has a shelf life, however, and would operate better under the economy of Rodriguez’s early work. (Lest we forget, his 1992 debut, El Mariachi, was only 81 minutes.) Even at his usual breakneck pace, this action-packed goof is just a little too long in the tooth — one that nonetheless still gleams with mischief. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Comedy

Welcome to the Jungle (2013)

Leave a comment

welcomejungleSome would argue that Jean-Claude Van Damme has been doing comedy his entire career — he just didn’t realize it. Whichever side of the argument you fall, there’s no denying Welcome to the Jungle is Van Damme’s first intentional comedy — not a bad step toward a redemption/comeback that started with 2008’s self-aware JCVD and enlisting in 2012’s The Expendables 2.

So what if his role is really just an extended cameo? In being open to poking fun at himself, he’s genuinely enjoyable as Storm Rothschild, a past attendee of web-design classes at DeVry University and current he-man leader of team-building corporate retreats. Storm’s latest clients are the dysfunctional denizens of an advertising agency where young pup Chris (Adam Brody, Scream 4) is constantly bullied — not to mention having his good ideas stolen — by douche-tastic senior VP Phil (Rob Huebel, Hell Baby).

welcomejungle1Storm flies the gang via rickety aircraft to a jungle island, where they are stranded when the old coot of a pilot croaks. Phil is so power-mad that he practically wills a Lord of the Flies scenario into existence, while Chris tries to overcome his wimpy rep and keep the peace among his co-workers, particularly his über-luminous office crush (Megan Boone, TV’s The Blacklist).

A mix of tribal trouble and the more relatable office politics, Welcome to the Jungle never quite finds a stride with which director Rob Meltzer is comfortable. Laughs are present, albeit all front-loaded and operating only as internal chuckles. I suspect few were in freshman Jeff Kauffmann’s script, since so many land by Huebel’s sheer force of delivery alone. (If you dislike his Human Giant style of comedy, don’t even bother.) The large cast, which underuses Kristen Schaal (TV’s Flight of the Conchords), is nonetheless incredibly game and genial, making the mild disappointment at least pleasingly painless. Plus, there’s a tiger. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.