FILM FRENZY

Charles Vanel in The Wages of Fear (Photos: Criterion)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

DAYLIGHT (1996). In interview after interview back in ’96, Sylvester Stallone insisted that Daylight would be his final action film and that he would henceforth focus solely on less testosterone-fueled flicks. I guess that’s the reason people generally categorize The Expendables and Bullet to the Head as rom-coms? At any rate, Daylight proved to be a financial nonstarter stateside (it fared better overseas) and earned tepid reviews, so maybe that’s why he’s hung around the genre for an additional 29 years and counting. The movie does get off to a rousing start, as a commuter tunnel that links New York to New Jersey gets blown to bits — the visual effects team and the Oscar-nominated sound effects team earned their pay for this sequence alone. The explosion ends up trapping a dozen people (and a dog) inside the tunnel’s dark, dank bowels — among the survivors is Madelyne (Amy Brenneman), a whiny, struggling playwright whose most memorable (and disgusting) scene finds her picking up a coffee mug in her apartment, discovering two cockroaches circling it, and then proceeding to dump instant coffee into it without bothering to clean it (ew). There’s also Roy Nord (Viggo Mortensen), a self-centered sports enthusiast who figures he alone can save the survivors. Wrong, Roy; that task falls to Kit Latura (Stallone), a disgraced (of course) EMS head seeking to redeem himself. But the survivors are a shrill, ungrateful lot, so Latura might as well have stayed home and watched Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot for the umpteenth time. Daylight boasts a promising premise, but too many heavy-handed exchanges and all those insufferable characters sink it. Only Stan Shaw, as a sweet-natured tunnel cop, generates any sympathy, so you know what that means.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by director Rob Cohen; a making-of featurette; and trailers.

Movie: ★★

MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR (1954). Nineteen-fifty-four was when it all began, “it” in this case referring to the career of Roger Corman. Although he was given co-producer and co-story credit for the January release Highway Dragnet, it was on May’s Monster From the Ocean Floor that he received solo producing status, thus leading to this often being tagged as the start of his staggering run as producer. Directed by Wyott Ordung (that name making me recall a crack about somebody else by MST3K’s Tom Servo: “That’s not a name; it’s a bad Scrabble hand.”), this finds American tourist Julie Blair (Anne Kimbell) believing the Mexican locals when they insist a murderous sea creature lives in a nearby cove. The less charitable would dismiss this with a one-star rating, but beyond its historical worth, there are other points of merit. It was one of the first films to employ nuclear fallout as the reason for the emergence of enormous creatures bent on destruction (Godzilla and Them! were also released in 1954). Also, Julie proves to be a brave and resourceful heroine who has to deal with a chauvinistic boyfriend (Stuart Wade), thus lending credence to Corman’s long-debated status as a feminist filmmaker (yes, at least two of the movies he produced find females being raped by monsters, but he was known for hiring more women in key roles than other producers over the decades, and many of his pictures featured memorable heroines). The monster is laughable, but a $300,000 gross versus an $18,000 budget showed that Corman had found his calling.

Blu-ray extras include film historian audio commentary, with archival contributions from Corman; an archival interview with Corman in which he talks about his earliest pictures; and a piece on Bob Baker, the marionette master whose creations were used in such projects as Monster From the Ocean Floor, the first aired episode of Star Trek, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Movie: ★★

MY GIRL (1991). Or, Macaulay Culkin Meets The Swarm. Culkin, still basking in the massive success of the previous year’s Home Alone, gives a more natural and less smug performance in this interesting coming-of-age story. A supporting player here, he’s cast as Thomas J., the best friend of Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky), an 11-year-old girl dealing with personal issues while growing up in the early 1970s. Her mother passed away shortly after childbirth, her father Harry (Dan Aykroyd) is the town mortician and works out of their home, and her grandmother (Ann Nelson) suffers from dementia. She’s surrounded by death and has never been able to fully process it — her father remains (willfully?) oblivious to her condition, but it’s noticed by Shelly DeVoto (Jamie Lee Curtis), a cosmetologist newly hired by Harry to touch up all the corpses at the homegrown funeral parlor. The period setting doesn’t really add much to the film, but scripter Laurice Elehwany does a commendable job of keeping the specter of death hovering around the edges throughout, only allowing it center stage during the picture’s third act. Chlumsky is excellent as the brainy girl whose large vocabulary belies the fact that she behaves like an actual preteen rather than a pint-sized adult, and Aykroyd and Curtis handle the actual grown-up material with sweetness and sensitivity. As for Culkin, his character’s ultimate fate was at the time of the film’s initial release one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets, perhaps second only to Sean Connery’s “surprise” cameo in the same year’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. This was followed in 1994 by My Girl 2, with Chlumsky, Aykroyd, and Curtis all reprising their roles.

Extras in the 4K + Digital Code edition include audio commentary by Elehwany; a behind-the-scenes featurette; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

TRICK OR TREAT (1986). For once, rock and roll is noise pollution. It was in 1985 that Tipper Gore began the crusade that eventually led to parental advisory labels being placed on all albums featuring potentially controversial content, so the time was certainly right for a motion picture to at least peripherally address the issue. Unfortunately, Trick or Treat isn’t really that movie, foregoing anticipated outrageousness in favor of recycling standard horror flick conventions. Marc Price stars as Eddie “Ragman” Weinbauer, an unpopular metalhead who perpetually takes abuse from the jocks at his high school. Eddie worships heavy metal superstar Sammi Curr (Tony Fields) and is devastated when his idol perishes in a fire. Local DJ “Nuke” (KISS’s Gene Simmons) tries to cheer him up by giving him the original copy of Sammi’s final, unreleased album, but after Eddie plays the record backward, it leads to Sammi being resurrected and proceeding to destroy not only Eddie’s tormenters but anyone else unfortunate enough to cross his path. A movie mixing horror and heavy metal shouldn’t be described as tame, yet that’s how the picture pans out, with a lack of genuine thrills and chills, a warmed-over revenge plot, and a fiery finale at a high school dance that’s straight out of a certain Brian DePalma classic (except Curr ain’t no Carrie). In a bit of inspired (if unconvincing) casting, Ozzy Osbourne appears in a small part as a reverend preaching against the evils of rock ‘n’ roll.

The film’s fans will love the impressive 4K edition, as it’s jam-packed with extras. These include audio commentary by director Charles Martin Smith; audio interviews with co-writers Michael S. Murphy and Rhet Topham; a tribute to Fields, who passed away from AIDS-related cancer in 1995 at the age of 36; a look at the shooting locations in Wilmington, NC; and the music video for Fastway’s “After Midnight.”

Movie: ★★

TWO WAY STRETCH (1960). When is an Ealing Studios comedy not an Ealing Studios comedy? When it’s Two Way Stretch, for one. It was British Lion Films that had released the Ealing-esque The Green Man in 1956 (it’s reviewed here), and that outfit was also behind this irresistible yarn starring Peter Sellers (who, of course, had a supporting role in Ealing’s 1955 classic The Ladykillers, covered here). Jailbirds Dodger Lane (Sellers), Jelly Knight (David Lodge), and Lennie Price (Bernard Cribbins) are serving the final days of their respective sentences, all having been pinched for taking part in a robbery. The fourth member of their team, Soapy Stevens (Wilfred Hyde-White), evaded capture and has now turned up at the prison posing as a vicar for easy entrance. He tells the lads how they can successfully pull off a diamond robbery: The trio will break out of jail on the day before their release and then return to their cell after the caper is completed, thus giving them a perfect alibi. The plan requires the unwitting assistance of the prison’s jovial Chief Police Officer (George Woodbridge), but his sudden retirement means that a new Chief P.O. will be on duty, and he turns out to be the boys’ former tormentor (Lionel Jeffries). The script by John Warren and Len Heath is packed with amusing dialogue (I always love hearing the British word “git” in a film) and clever interludes, most brought to riotous life by director Robert Day (also the helmer of the aforementioned The Green Man). The caper itself is the least interesting part of the picture, but all of the prison material is choice.

Blu-ray extras consist of comedy historian audio commentary; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for other movies offered on the Kino label.

Movie: ★★★

THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953). Nitroglycerin figures prominently in the plot of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, but it’s the movie itself that’s truly explosive, a powder keg of social outrage and cinematic thrills. This isn’t one to watch on the couch with the elders or the kiddies: If the level of nail-biting suspense doesn’t kill them, then the piece’s nihilistic worldview will surely lay them out. Set in a Latin American hellhole named Las Piedras, an impoverished town that hasn’t been helped in the least by the American company that’s been raping the surrounding land for its oil, the film focuses on the international denizens who have come to the area for various reasons and are now in search of the means to escape it. When the U.S. company seeks volunteers to drive two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over 300 miles of rocky terrain (one bump could mean bye-bye), many apply but only four are chosen: gruff Mario (Yves Montand), bullying Jo (Charles Vanel), ice-cold Bimba (Peter Van Eyck), and blustery Luigi (Folco Lulli). Although Clouzot treats everything in his film with the same lack of sentimentality, this French import garnered a reputation in this country for being anti-American; as Dennis Lehane reported in an essay on the film, Time magazine wrote that The Wages of Fear is “a picture that is surely one of the most evil ever made.” This was remade by William Friedkin in 1977 as Sorcerer; starring Roy Scheider; it has its legion of admirers, but it’s nowhere near as good as this bruising beauty.

Along with a booklet containing the aforementioned essay by Lehane, extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a 1988 interview with Montand; a look at the cuts made for the film’s U.S. release in 1955; and the 2004 documentary Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant.

Movie: ★★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

THE CHASE (1966). Set in Texas (but of course), The Chase focuses on a small town in which practically all of the well-scrubbed, well-to-do characters turn out to be brutish, racist, and adulterous gossipmongers who spend most hours getting drunk, getting laid — usually by someone else’s spouse — and getting violent with the town’s peaceful black citizens. The news that former resident Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford) has escaped from prison and possibly killed a man in the process stirs the yahoos into a vigilante rage, one that the decent Sheriff Calder (Marlon Brando) has trouble containing. Meanwhile, Bubber’s wife (Jane Fonda) is having an affair with his best friend (James Fox), although she still cares enough for her husband that she’ll do anything to aid him. This might be a case of too many gourmet cooks spoiling the broth, as the well-documented conflicts between producer Sam Spiegel, director Arthur Penn, and screenwriter Lillian Hellman (adapting Horton Foote’s play) doubtless had something to do with the haphazardness that plagues this interesting if erratic endeavor. Brando, Fonda, and Redford are all miscast, conveying too much intelligence to be convincing as the rubes on display here (and in what universe would a redneck named Bubber look and talk like the WASPy Redford?). This leaves the more convincing turns to come from the other all-stars cited lower in the cast list, particularly Angie Dickinson as Calder’s supportive wife and Robert Duvall as a weak-willed bank officer. That’s Marlon’s older sister, Jocelyn Brando, as Mrs. Briggs, and look for Paul Williams as one of the town youths.

Movie: ★★½

IMPERIUM (2016). Although they wouldn’t seem to have much in common, The Chase and Imperium actually do share some thematic DNA. Both, after all, show the hideous reality of what happens when self-centered white men — most of them not particularly bright — collectively appoint themselves judge, jury, and executioner and proceed to soil the American terrain with their grotesque prejudices and violent activities. At least The Chase enjoyed a wide and heavily promoted release; the thoughtful (and superior) Imperium, on the other hand, barely received a theatrical release and still deserves to find an appreciative audience on disc. Daniel Radcliffe is impressive as Nate Foster, an FBI agent whose desire to make a difference finds him accepting an assignment from a superior (Toni Collette) bent on bringing down white supremacists. Nate goes undercover and becomes a trusted friend and ally of small-time neo-Nazi Vince Sargent (Pawel Szajda); this in turn leads him into contact with more organized — and therefore more dangerous — leaders like a humorless militia man (Chris Sullivan), a Limbaugh-like radio show host (Tracy Letts), and, most startlingly, an unassuming suburbanite (Sam Trammell). Working from a script co-written by former FBI agent Michael German, who himself had spent some time infiltrating racist right-wing outfits, director Daniel Ragussis has fashioned a timely treatise that shines a harsh light on this nation’s deplorables and serves to remind discerning viewers that homegrown terrorism is no less a threat than the international brand.

Movie: ★★★

THE MAN FROM LARAMIE (1955). The 1950s were a fine time for psychologically hefty Westerns, and much of the credit goes to director Anthony Mann, who teamed up with star James Stewart to craft a series of oaters in this vein. The Man from Laramie was the fifth and final of these collaborations, and while it may not be as widely acclaimed and admired as the pair’s Winchester ’73 (my fave of the five) or The Naked Spur, it’s nevertheless an excellent picture in its own right. Stewart is typically commanding as Will Lockhart, seeking to avenge the death of his younger brother by finding the man who sold the Apaches the guns that killed him and his fellow calvarymen in an ambush. His travels take him to the town of Coronado, New Mexico, an area largely ruled by cattle baron Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp). Alec’s son Dave (Alex Nicol) is a worthless and weak-willed bully; far more dependable is ranch foreman Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy), who loves Alec like a father but doesn’t always get the respect he deserves. Lockhart’s mere presence disrupts the entire community, with his only allies appearing in the form of Alec’s niece (and Vic’s girlfriend) Barbara (Cathy O’Donnell) and a rival rancher by the name of Kate Canady (Aline MacMahon). The Man from Laramie packs plenty of incident into its 100-minute running time, stuffing (but not overstuffing) the piece with memorable characters (look for Western vet Jack Elam as a duplicitous drunk), exciting set-pieces, and divergent storylines that eventually end up at the same spot.

Movie: ★★★½

THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE (1967). The late, great Roger Corman produced just shy of 500 films over the course of approximately 70 years, but he sat in the director’s chair for only 50 of them. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre represents one of those occasions when he wore both hats; more significantly, it also marked the first time he worked in such lofty capacities for a major studio (in true Corman fashion, he wasn’t thrilled with the lack of control and went back to making movies his way). His rat-tat-tat helming is one of the strengths of this crime flick, which uses documentary-style narration but exploitation-style violence to relate the events leading up to the notorious 1929 gangland slaying. The production values are top-notch, while the script by Howard Browne hews to real-life events to an impressive degree. As for the supporting roster, it’s peppered with familiar faces, particularly that of Bruce Dern (poignant as a struggling mechanic); there are even uncredited bits by Corman stable boys Jack Nicholson, Dick Miller, and Jonathan Haze. What damages the film are the performances by the two top-billed stars. Jason Robards handles the heavy lifting as Al Capone while George Segal provides more muscle as a giggly rival gunman (and he even smashes a sandwich in Jane Hale’s face, aping James Cagney planting that grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s kisser in 1931’s The Public Enemy), but their hammy turns, more suited to Warren Beatty’s cartoonish Dick Tracy than this Godfather precursor, strip the characters of any much-needed menace.

Movie: ★★½

WILD ORCHID (1990). While it hardly set the box office on fire, writer-director Zalman King’s Wild Orchid could be considered the Fifty Shades of Grey of its day: a would-be erotic romp that ultimately carries as much of a sexual charge as a Chicken McNugget. Mickey Rourke, in the lengthy flame-out phase of his career, stars as James Wheeler, a wealthy businessman living in the picaresque city of Rio de Janeiro. Through a mutual friend (Jacqueline Bisset), he makes the acquaintance of visiting lawyer Emily Reed (Carré Otis), and it’s not long before Emily’s under his spell and privy to his mind games and dominant behavior. As scripter, King also had a hand in 1986’s equally risible Nine 1/2 Weeks (also starring Rourke), but that picture at least had the benefit of an excellent central performance by Kim Basinger. Otis, on the other hand, is simply dreadful. As for Rourke, his sleepy-eyed performance leads one to believe that all Wheeler really wants out of life is a good night’s sleep. The film achieved a small measure of media notoriety back in 1990, first when it had to be trimmed to garner an R rating rather than an X (the more explicit version has now long been available), and later when the rumors wouldn’t cease regarding the contention that the on-screen sex between then-couple Rourke and Otis wasn’t simulated and the couple really “did it.” To which a nation collectively shrugged and muttered, “Who cares?”

Movie: ★