"FROM HELL" SHARPLY DONE

          The cutting-edge stab at Jack the Ripper starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham.
          In the late summer through early fall of 1888, the freshly-installed Trans-Atlantic cable carried splashy news across the ocean of a series of grisly murders in the East End of London.
          Dubbed by the press Jack the Ripper, the murderer, who was never caught, slashed five prostitutes to ribbons. The extreme violence of the killings coupled with the lack of a culprit and the benefit of an exceptional moniker have kept the Ripper in the heart and mind of the world for 130 years.
          Among the many versions of the fog-enshrined events is the excellent made-for-TV two-part movie "Jack the Ripper" (1988), starring Michael Caine as Inspector Abberline. In From Hell (2001), Depp also plays Inspector Abberline. However, his character in the 2001 film is a combination of Abberline and a supposed clairvoyant named Robert Lees (featured in the 1988 movie).
          Both films purport to present the facts and produce the assailant. Yet in fact neither does anything of the sort. From Hell certainly has no merit to be marketed as an authentic source of reputable information. Case in point the combining of actual persons into a fictional character.
          That said, it's still the most stylish presentation of Jack the Ripper yet. Lots of great shots establish mood, nice inventive bits. Not on par with Bram Stoker's Dracula in terms of sheer eye-candy, but about as impressive as Sleepy Hollow and The Wolfman.
          A major attraction to the subject is the extreme combination of sex and violence. And in keeping with these supremely saleable themes is the class component. The popular conception of the Ripper is of a man in top hat with a Victorian cape. Conducting Masonic rituals, a member of the elite.
          One lasting hypothesis to the killer's identity is of a physician to the Royals, protected by the equivalent of a Secret Security limousine. However, DNA analysis in 2014 of the blood-stained shawl of a Ripper victim confirms, supposedly, that the murderer was actually an insane barber named Kosminski.
          There's a scene in the Jeff Goldblum version of The Fly where even though his character is totally physically repellent, with parts falling off and pus everywhere, Geena Davis just has to go in for a big ol' hug...and audiences don't buy it. Similarly, anyone who's ever seen the Mitre Square crime scene photo knows there's no way a crucial scene in From Hell could ever happen at all.
          Notably the film almost completely omits the letters to the police from the killer which were in fact authentic. It's from one of those letters that the film derives its name, and that much is included. But the Michael Caine version presents that taunting and revealing dialogue aspect much better.
          Aside from a couple bad ideas more suited to the graphic novel form, From Hell ranks high on the list of fall film fare.


FROM HELL
Starring Johnny Depp,
Heather Graham,
Ian Holm,
Robbie Coltrane,
Ian Richardson
Directed by Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
Written by Terry Hayes, Rafael Yglesias
Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell
Runtime 122 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

THE DEVILKILLERS

SCENE 1

PRESIDENT JESUS CHRIST'S darkly rich golden hair waved in the wind like a banner flag to orange combovers. Yeah, the Lord came back. Came back in a big way, bitches. He might have been thinking about His houses, His boats, His cars. He might have been thinking about His cash, or His wives. But right now all Jesus had on His mind was business, plain and simple. Business with a man named Ripper.

Jack the Ripper came with a rep. Hell, even Jesus was impressed. But He tried not to show it as the limo pulled up. And when the man got out, even without his jet black top hat on, Jesus saw he was big. Damn big. "Jesus," Jesus thought, "I'm gonna have to give the man his due."

    

Jack the Ripper leaned back against the limo, causing the costly machine to sink down onto the tarmac under the Ripper's incredibly muscular weight. The Ripper lit a cigar. A big one. Big as a hard penis.

"I hear those things are bad for you," the President said. 

"Who'd you hear that from, mate?" the Ripper replied, taking a nice long drag. "Some fuckin' libtard?"

"Libtards," said Jesus. "God I hate 'em. Hey, you wanna kill one?"

"Kill a fuckin' libtard?"

"Yeah."

"Shit mate, I'd do it for free."

"Crazy fucker! Jesus man," said Jesus, "I bet you would!"

So then President Christ jostled Jack the Ripper, and Jack the Ripper jostled President Christ right back, and one thing led to another and they wound up shooting guns together. 

"Beer me," said Jesus to the Ripper, man-to-man.

BOOM! went the guns, BOOM!

"Hey Mate," Jack the Ripper said to Jesus, "You didn't call me here just to go shootin' and talk fantasy football."

BOOM.

"You're right, my friend, I didn't. I want you to find the Devil..."

BOOM!

"...and I want you to terminate her command."

BOOM! BOOM!

"Damn, Mate, when You say fuckin' libtard, You mean fuckin' libtard! All right, I'll do it. I'll kill the goddam Devil right in her fuckin' libtard bed. I'll literally chop her into pieces. Then I'll send You the selfies and mock the authorities in the press to prove it."

"Hey Jack, I don't care how you do it, just get the job done," said Jesus Christ. "I'll pay you a great deal of money. I'll make you a very rich man."

"Mr. President, Mate," said Jack the Ripper shaking Jesus Christ's hand, "You got Yourself a deal."

"I knew I could count on you, Jack the Ripper. This will be my greatest peacekeeping mission ever, but you'll have to keep it secret. And one more thing, Jack. You're going to need some help."

"Mate, You know I work better alone."

"Not this time, Jack." Jesus touched the button that made the wall go up, revealing a vast underground world of weapons being tested. Jesus and the Ripper hopped in a Hummer with the top down.

"The Devil's not like any foe you've ever faced, Jack," Jesus said as they sped along together down miles of bare gleaming tunnel. "You're going to need to assemble a team."

SCENE 2

Adolf Hitler sat in his dark cell alone like a mountain of muscle, the strength of his gigantic body far too vast to measure. The light from the approaching Hummer crossed the form and revealed a glimpse of Hitler's giant white battle-scarred head. Hitler let the thousand-pound weight he had been curling crash onto the floor.

BOOM.

Jack and Jesus stood outside the Big Guy's cell, careful to avoid the energy beam barrier.

Jesus cut to the chase. "You ever seen the Devil?"

Long silence. Then:

"Ja," Hitler replied. "I have seen her."

"Hey mate, wanna help me kill her?"

"Ja. On ein condition."

"What's that, mate?"

"Ich need ein a fresh can of chew."

Jack looked at Jesus. "And in the libtard media they always say the Big Guy's no damn good."

Hitler returned to pumping his iron.

"That's the Devil's doing," Jesus said. "Fuckin' bitch!"

At this point, for the duration of perhaps eight minutes, very little took place in the lives of Jack, Jesus, and Adolf, almost as though they were all waiting for a sequence of invisible commercials to happen. And then, as though some imaginary camera resumed filming after said sequence of equally imaginary commercial advertisements, Hitler said to Jack the Ripper, "Wo to now, boss?" President Christ, standing behind Hitler, concurred: "Yeah boss, where to now?"

Good God, Jesus thought, is Adolf Hitler ever built. Producing a tape measure out of thin air with a benign expression on His face reminiscent of Doug Henning, the President was shocked to discover that Der Fuhrer's shoulders stretched seven and a half feet across! Jesus H. Christ, thought the President, where do you even find a wifebeater t-shirt big enough to fit him? When suddenly...

BOOM! Hitler backhanded Jesus and sent the Lord sprawling.

"Was ist das?" the Big Guy BOOMed. "Jesus Christ, You try to make the sex with Hitler! Hitler have say in matter! Hitler...have feelings."

Jesus got up. He was pissed off.

"Goddamit to hell, quit takin' my fuckin' name in vane!"

"Hey Mate, we heard You do it."

"Shut the fuck up! I swear to God!..."

"Ja, right there!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

"Look mates, you both asked where to now, right? Well let's just say I know a 13 foot-tall hillbilly who used to be a legendary logger--maybe even part Bigfoot--literally worshipped by other loggers. Now he's just a meth-head. He doesn't even have food money, mates. We can get this guy easy."

SCENE 3

MORE
THE DEVILKILLERS
SOON

"HOLLOW" SUBSTANTIVE

          The 1999 Gothic classic directed by Tim Burton loosely adapted from the now nearly two hundred year-old story by Washington Irving.
          Johnny Depp stars as Constable Ichabod Crane.
          Wha-at?
          That's right, he's a peace officer with limited authority, not a school teacher with ultimate authority at all. Sent from New York City to the backwoods Dutch community of Sleepy Hollow by none other than Christopher Lee himself to investigate in his Angela Lansbury way a series of mysterious beheadings, Crane uses reason and logic to find that the killer is...a headless specter.
          The first film version of Irving's story appeared in 1922 starring Will Rogers as Crane. In 1934, Ub Iwerks, who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney, animated "The Headless Horseman," and later helped Disney with the 1949 cartoon "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Other versions of the story have been filmed--Jeff Goldblum plays the gangly country schoolmaster in a 1980 made-for-TV movie, and there was a recent TV show ripoff which fortunately was cancelled--but the 1999 vision from the director of Beetlejuice takes, if not the proverbial cake, then at least the pumpkin pie.
          That said, a plethora of differences between Sleepy Hollow and the story by America's first man of letters wildly abound. Remaining intentionally vague to preserve the experience, suffice to say whereas Irving leans toward the Ann Radcliffe school of Gothicism which explains away the supernatural, Burton takes his instruction from Matthew "Monk" Lewis, meaning that supernatural elements are exactly that, and not to be explained in any other way at all.
          Even with marbled humor, it's still one of Burton's most "hardcore"-type movies. Featuring mouthwatering photography (largely of a totally artificial man-made forest) and an equally dark soundtrack composed by Danny Elfman, Sleepy Hollow is chalk-full of decapitations perpetrated by the ghost of a German mercenary.
          Two actors play the Headless Hessian: Christopher Walken and Ray Park. The former appears when we need to see the Hessian with a head (as in flashbacks, for example); the latter (Darth Maul in Star Wars - The Phantom Menace) fills the headless boots the rest of the time.
          To play the role, Ray Park may well have been literally murdered by Tim Burton himself as Park slept in order to secure an authentic performance, with promises paid to Park's deadly spirit that his head would be returned to his body upon completion of the film so that he could still have a few roles in death.
          Washington Irving's story--which originally appeared in his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.--concerns the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Dutch farmer who uses the nerdy Crane to make the town rowdy jealous. Burton's film downplays that, manufacturing instead the aforementioned mystery. And the resulting story, which emphatically does not exceed the timeless source material, nonetheless strikes all the right autumnal notes.


SLEEPY HOLLOW
Starring Johnny Depp,
Christina Ricci,
Miranda Richardson,
Christopher Walken,
Ray Park,
Christopher Lee,
Michael Gambon,
Casper Van Dien,
Michael Gough
Directed by Tim Burton
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, Kevin Yagher
Based on the story by Washington Irving
Runtime 105 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

ZEROING IN ON ZORRO

   
          Johnston McCulley's reworking of the Robin Hood legend as a tale of Old California was serialized but left no mark...until "The Curse of Capistrano" was made into an action picture starring Douglas Fairbanks.
          The Mark of Zorro (1920) features the unparalleled athleticism of the legendary Fairbanks as a rich son who returns to his home to find disrepair and tyranny. To remove suspicion from himself and to thereby protect his family, Don Diego Vega (Fairbanks) pretends to be a foppish dandy, yet uses his wealth to strike terror in the hearts of the oppressors as the masked hero who outfoxes his enemies and taunts them with his zeal.
          The film casts a long cultural shadow: Some of Zorro directly influences the Lon Chaney classic The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and Batman creator Bob Kane combined Zorro with Sherlock Holmes for the Dark Knight. With Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), Fairbanks returned to the character which gave rise to his career as film's first swashbuckler.
          Because the first film was shot in black and white, the red sash around Zorro's waist and red cloth over his head morphed into the all-black costume we expect.
          The 1940 version directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Tyrone Power is interesting because Mamoulian directed the highly-acclaimed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Both are stories about multiple identity, and the need to keep opposing identities from discovery through elaborate deception.
          The Power film is excellent. It's well-shot, boasts a supporting cast we expect to see with Errol Flynn--Basil Rathbone as an Old California Sheriff of Nottingham--and benefits from a rousing Alfred Newman score. Power has a classy presence and looks great in the suit, but no one has ever matched Fairbanks for the sheer confident exuberance of a character who enjoys slipping into a tavern and locking all the doors and windows so none of the soldiers inside looking for him can escape.
          Disney made a few movies and had a hit show with Guy Williams as Zorro. After that he went on to play John Robinson in TV's "Lost in Space" series. Frank Langella played Zorro in 1974, five years before he was Dracula in the motion picture. And there was a Saturday morning cartoon which began in 1980.
          Surprisingly, one of the best contributions to the world of Zorro is the 1981 film starring George Hamilton. Zorro, the Gay Blade has got to be the crowning achievement of Hamilton's artistic life. Not only does he make a terrific Zorro, but he also plays his effete brother, who, in a sort of twist on the premise in The Prisoner of Zenda, fills in as Zorro for the real one...yet with his own fabulous style.
          The result is a zany swashbuckling comedy which has aged quite well.
          The Mask of Zorro (1998) kicked off a successful franchise starring Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins (the latter two being from Wales, curiously enough). Lots of action and romance--Hopkins as the real Zorro passing on the tradition to the new guy is probably the best part of it--but the film also has a deal too much color and daylight for a character who works better in the shadows.
         

Tyrone Power

George Hamilton

Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas

Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"LITTLE BIG MAN" GREAT IN SPIRIT

          Dustin Hoffman stars in this free-wheeling version of the great American novel by Thomas Berger.

          The 1970 film opens in modern times with an interviewer recording the recollections of the oldest man in the world, 121 year-old Jack Crabb (Hoffman).

          Peppered with highly-effective narration, Little Big Man boasts a Twain-ish voice (Jack Crabb talks a lot like Huck Finn) and offers a sense of the true way of things regarding life in the West alternately comedic and dramatic.

          It's a movie that plays Emperor's New Clothes with Hollywood Westerns. Points right at 'em and says, "Nope. Weren't like that at all."

          And then proceeds to show the truth through a lot of wild tall tales while simultaneously pronouncing, "You callin' me a liar?"

          Old Jack Crabb talks about how Young Jack Crabb was both orphaned and raised by Native Americans.

          "For a boy it was a kind of paradise. I wasn't just playin' Indian, I was livin' Indian!"

          Incidental to nothing, this film uses a trick picked up years later by the makers of Superman - The Movie: When the actor playing the younger version of the star is on screen, we still hear the star's voice dubbed in.

          Reveling in revisionism is the fuel that powers the story. And the real star of the movie is a Salish tribal leader. Chief Dan George plays Cheyenne chief Old Lodge Skins, who is like a father to Crabb, himself reborn as Little Big Man.

          As an example of the revisionism, Little Big Man returns for awhile to the world of the white man, whereupon he goes through his gunfighter phase. Not knowing how to shoot, it's lucky for him he learns from his sister.

          "Shooting rifles against bow and arrow," J.C. pointedly recalls. "I never could understand how the white world could be so proud of winning with them kind of odds."

          Featuring Faye Dunaway as the pious--well, maybe not so pious--more like downright wanton, really--wife of a pious guy. When she's good enough to take Young Crabb in, she goes even further and makes sure he's scrubbed all clean and good.

          Also starring Richard Mulligan--eventually of TV's "Soap" and "Empty Nest" fame--as Custer. "I knowed General George Armstrong Custer for what he was," Crabb assures, "and I also knowed the Indians for what they was."

          Also in 1970 A Man Called Horse, starring Richard Harris, was released. That one imagines a tall blonde Englishman adopted by hostile Indians who eventually learn to respect him as a leader, and is famous for a rite-of-passage scene involving Harris being hung like a boob by hooks in his chest.

          Little Big Man comes from a different place. One not desirous of supremacy, but rather a place of respect.

LITTLE BIG MAN

Starring Dustin Hoffman,

Faye Dunaway,

Chief Dan George,

Martin Balsam,

Richard Mulligan,

Aimee Eccles,

Ruben Moreno

Directed by Arthur Penn

Written by Calder Willingham

Based on the novel by Thomas Berger

Runtime 139 minutes

Rated PG-13

Stewart Kirby write for

THE INDEPENDENT

and

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"LONGEST YARD" GOES EXTRA MILE

       

         The captivating 1974 cinematic touchdown starring Burt Reynolds about ex-pro quarterback Paul Crewe in prison leading a team of convicts in a game against the semi-pro guards.
          Eddie Albert plays the prison warden who embodies the rigged system in which antihero Burt finds himself caught.
          Featuring elements inspired by Cool Hand Luke and Papillon, The Longest Yard belongs to a genre of films--including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--which pit a tainted and imprisoned hero against perverted Establishment.
          Sort of an evolved version of director Robert Aldrich's earlier hit The Dirty Dozen, The Longest Yard has the same recruitment aspects, except instead of Lee Marvin selecting cons for an attack on the Nazis, it's Burt shopping for opposition to the warden's football team.
          The major pro recruiting the cons is the assumption that they will a.) play with unusually bad intention, and b.) amplify intention further in a chance to get back at the abusive guards.

          One of the guards is played by Mike Henry, a real-life former football player and former movie Tarzan. (Henry also plays the dim-witted son of Jackie Gleeson in Burt's Smokey and the Bandit.)
          Richard Kiel, who rose to fame as the silent but deadly giant henchman Jaws in Roger Moore's James Bond tenure, has several memorable scenes as the biggest of the cons.
          But the title of Baddest Cat in the Joint goes to the convict named Connie Shokner. The actor's name is Robert Tessier. He had a thriving career as the bald baddie, appearing in many movies and dozens of TV shows. According to IMDb, Tessier was of Algonquian Indian descent, and received not only a Purple Heart but also a Silver Star as a paratrooper in the Korean War.
          Also co-starring Bernadette Peters as the warden's secretary, who, in a plus for Burt, digs Burt. Score!
          Without his trademark mustache, Burt looks like Marlon Brando in '74, and the filmmakers had to be aware of this. Screenwriter Tracy Keenan Wynn (son of Keenan Wynn, grandson of Ed Wynn), seems to subtly refer to Brando's response in The Wild One when asked what he's rebelling against and replying, "What have you got?" When Crewe is asked what makes him so tough, he laconically responds, "I don't know, it just comes natural."
          Unnaturally re-made in 2005 with Adam Sandler and swiftly clotheslined.


THE LONGEST YARD
Starring Burt Reynolds,
Eddie Albert,
Ed Lauter,
James Hampton,
Mike Henry,
Bernadette Peters,
Richard Kiel,
Sonny Sixkiller,
Robert Tessier
Directed by Robert Aldrich
Written by Tracy Keenan Wynn
Based on a story by Albert S. Ruddy
Runtime 121 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for 
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

CRONENBERG'S "FLY" TRANSFORMATIVE

          Drink deep of the plasma pool.

          The year is 1986: Jeff Goldblum is known as the geeky guy from The Big Chill (1983) and the nerdy guy from TV's short-lived "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe" (1980). When suddenly, BAM, The Fly.

          It was part of a trend of re-makes of classic 1950s sci-fi: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Thing (1982), Invaders From Mars (1986), all of which are color versions of B-movies boasting decades of special effects advances. But The Fly also hearkens to the classic inspirations of "body horror" from an additional thirty years prior, notably the silent horror films of Lon Chaney.

          Goldblum stars as Seth Brundle, sort of a less-public Tesla with a charged libido who wants to share the wonder of his new invention, but isn't quite ready to tell the world. The result is he takes a journalist named Veronica (Davis), whom he meets at a party, back to his laboratory to witness a demonstration of his teleportation pods.

          Similar to Chaney as Erik in The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Seth Brundle plays piano in his dungeon-like lab, and would influence the career of his love-interest, with whom there is another potential suitor.

          The Raoul of The Fly is the editor of the science magazine Veronica writes for. An obsessively jealous former boyfriend, Stathis Borans (Getz) showers in Veronica's apartment when she's not there, stalks her around town, and conducts reprisals as her editor when rebuked.

          Whereas Chaney's roles reflected the aftermath of WWI, Goldblum's character may be seen as a product of the War On Drugs. At first his emergence from teleportation is fun. Then fun with problems. And then just problems.

          His teleportation pods have a hard time reintegrating animate life. Failed attempts graphically displayed account for a large part of the film's charm. As does Brundle's gradual transformation from quirky, bug-eyed, harmlessly mad scientist to full on unrecognizable monster.

          Brundle's biggest problem is accidentally teleporting himself...with a fly that wandered into the pod. Major oops.

          Fay Wray's unforgettable scene with Lionel Atwell in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), another darkly stylish gem, clearly influenced Cronenberg.

          Incredibly, Howard Shore's underappreciated score grabs the audience from the instantly moody notes and tells the tragic tale during the opening credits.

          Goldblum and Davis are perfectly cast. Dating each other at the time may account for some of that success.

          As a weakness to the film, there is a scene where Brundle is so far advanced in his transformation that there is just no way Veronica would possibly want to hug him. And that does take audiences a little bit out of the story. But most of the time, great pains taken toward believability pay off handsomely. All pre-CG, too.

          It was shot in Cronenberg's native Canada. That's Canadian boxing legend George Chuvalo in the bar room arm wrestling scene.

          On the uncanny strength of this breakthrough starring performance, Goldblum became the perfect choice to play the Chaos Theory expert in Jurassic Park (1993), which opened the giant doors to his name being associated with summer blockbuster success.

          Freely available online.

THE FLY

Starring Jeff Goldblum,

Geena Davis,

John Getz,

Joy Boushel,

George Chuvalo

Directed by David Cronenberg

Written by David Cronenberg, Charles Edward Pogue

Based on a story by George Langelaan

Runtime 96 minutes

Rated R

Stewart Kirby writes for

THE INDEPENDENT

and

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE