All posts by Rod Lott

Action

Assassination (1987)

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AssassinationAssume your best Trailer Guy voice: “The United States’ new first lady is a major bitch … and only Charles Bronson can protect her from … Assassination!”

In this rickety product from the Cannon Films assembly line, Death Wish master Bronson plays Secret Service agent Jay Killion (note that last name), who’s assigned to guard the life and body — upturned nose included — of Lara Craig, wife of the newly elected POTUS. That she is portrayed by frequent co-star Jill Ireland, then Bronson’s real-life wife, is the most interesting element of an otherwise routine actioner.

assassination1Killion takes his job very seriously, whereas Mrs. Craig could give a shit, assuming her haughty attitude of entitlement somehow makes her impervious to bullets. She slowly changes her tune when bad guys in their vicinity start playing tag with heat-seeking missiles. She and Killion fight; she and Killion flirt; she and Killion are trapped in what feels like Hart to Hart fan fiction.

One would expect a tighter film from Peter Hunt — director of the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and editor of many more 007 adventures — but Assassination is a royal mess, overstuffed with weaponry, a dune buggy chase and so. Many. Motorcycles. It’s one of the weakest, least engaging projects to emerge from the Bronson/Cannon partnership, so wrong that Bronson even quips, “I don’t want to die from a terminal orgasm.” Sorry, Chuck, but that sounds like exactly the way to go. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Death Ship (1980)

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deathshipCruise ship Capt. Ashland (George Kennedy, The Naked Gun series) stands a mere three days from retirement, so you know what that means: There will be no woodworking and around-the-house puttering in his future. Not when there’s a Death Ship on the horizon!

Void of passengers but supposedly steered by ghosts, the rusty ship deliberately puts itself in harm’s way of Ashland’s party boat, ensuring a collision. The accident occurs via stock footage from at least two sources — one a third-rate Titanic TV-movie — that don’t come close to matching up with one another. The handful of survivors includes Ashland; his replacement, Marshall (Richard Crenna, Leviathan); Marshall’s wife and two kids, one of whom precociously possesses a small bladder; the band leader (Saul Rubinek, True Romance); an old lady; and a hot woman so someone can take a shower in blood later, after they all board the mysterious vessel.

deathship1See, as the title would have it, the Death Ship has a mind of its own, and has one thing on its mind: death, natch. It wastes no time in proceeding to knock off the cast members, because that’s what Nazis would do. (Oh, sorry — spoiler: The ship belonged to Nazis.)

Largely a television director, Alvin Rakoff (1979’s City on Fire) doesn’t bother with subtlety, hitting viewers on the head over and over with the Nazi angle. (We get it, Al!) When he lets up, he’s able to get some effective scenes out of his characters’ demise, particularly those that play upon the universal fears of drowning and seeing one’s face become covered in an ugly crust.

Having an old pro like Kennedy in command helps when the plot veers into turns the script makes no real effort to explain. Death Ship is a lot like Ghost Ship, the 2002 Dark Castle Entetainment picture that stole this film’s terrific poster art, but without the studio gloss — in other words, one of those cheap, haunted-house spookfests that works in spite of itself. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Twisted Nerve (1968)

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twistednerveSo memorable is Bernard Herrmann’s whistled theme to Twisted Nerve that Quentin Tarantino wisely appropriated it to equal unsettling effect in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. While good, the British thriller itself is not close to being as “sticky.”

Hywel Bennett lost his penis in 1971’s Percy, but here, he loses his mind. As Martin, the young man fancies shifting into an alternate personality — that of the 6-year-old Georgie — in order to weasel his way into the life of Susan (Hayley Mills, The Parent Trap), a beautiful, 17-year-old librarian.

twistednerve1It works. In a real credibility-strainer, no matter the lengths taken by the screenplay to set it up, he goes to live with her for a week in the boardinghouse run by Susan’s single MILF (Billie Whitelaw, The Omen). Ingratiating himself to the fellow residents, Georgie refers to himself in the third person, laughs at burps, makes nonsensical jokes (“Batman is a fat man, ha-ha!”) and eventually dabbles in fatal stabbings.

Twisted Nerve is pinched by the permissiveness of its times. While it can do little more than hint at Martin’s suppressed homosexual urges and the Oedipal draw Whitelaw’s character feels toward Georgie, it operates on the theory that “mongolism” (now called Down syndrome) equates to psychopathic. Today, we know that’s not just poor science, but pure offense.

The title refers to “a ganglion gone awry,” and although director Roy Boulting (There’s a Girl in My Soup) is able to keep the film on its rails (thanks to the performances), it does become less and less special the more it drones on. It could be twice as suspenseful by losing a quarter of its two hours. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy

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hellraiserfilmsRecently I read Stefan Jaworzyn’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion, which sets out to cover the entire franchise (up to its 2004 publication date, at least), yet does it in a way that’s lazy, shoddy and unfriendly to the reader. By contrast, Paul Kane’s The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy shows how a retrospective on a horror-film franchise — or on any genre, really — should be done. It’s not difficult.

Jaworzyn’s book is not new, and neither is Kane’s, but the latter is now available in a reprint — and in a much more affordable paperback edition, at that — from McFarland & Company. Needless to say, any Hellraiser fan worth his or her satanic salt should own it.

Benefitting from a wealth of interviews, Kane recounts Clive Barker’s creation of the world of the Cenobites in The Hellbound Heart and his aim to bring that novel to the big screen himself, having been less-than-enthused about what filmmakers had done with adapting his work prior (see: Transmutations or Rawhead Rex — or don’t, as Barker would prefer).

We now know he succeeded, but in real life, conclusions aren’t so foregone. Turns out, there’s a real story to be told of the 1987 hit’s making, including battles over the budget and its rating. Hollywood’s response was not to give Barker creative freedom on his next project … but to offer him Alien 3.

Kane could’ve stopped there, but instead continues giving the same thorough, behind-the-scenes treatment for each and every sequel (except 2011’s Hellraiser: Revelations, made after the book’s original 2006 publication), whether released theatrically or straight to home video. Among them, the greatest tale of production belongs to the tortured one of the series’ fourth, 1996’s Hellraiser: Bloodlines, the one that sent Pinhead into space and took three directors to complete, if you count the infamous Alan Smithee disowning pseudonym to whom it’s credited.

Smartly avoiding start-to-finish, beat-for-beat synopses, Kane instead follows each film’s story of conception with an exploration into the themes it presents and probes. Luckily, the author does a damn good job of it. Rounding out the book is a brief look at Hellraiser‘s entry into other media, most notably comics.

Jesus wept … for joy! —Rod Lott

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Contests

Wanna Win The Guillotines?

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guillotinesUPDATE: Winner is Caleb Forrest!

We’re giving away a copy of The Guillotines on Blu-ray to one lucky summabitch in these United States of America. How to enter? Easy!

Just leave a relevant comment on any review on this site before next Saturday, Aug. 24. That’s when one lucky commenter will be picked at random to have this movie shipped to his or her door. Winner will be notified via email, so make sure the email address you leave to comment is a valid one.

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