John Dies at the End: (2012. dir: Don Coscarelli) In tribute to Coscarelli (mastermind behind that low-budget and eternal adolescent cult-classic Phantasm, as well as the unclassifiable Elvis v. the Undead joy of Bubba Ho-tep), this feels like the work of a much younger man, with its restless energy, libido, and shameless humor. The plot is better unfolded than told; I will say only that at its basis is a drug which will take you travelling in another concurrently-existing dimension, and, subsequently, dark and sometimes funny complications ensue.
Here's the catch: every single thing this movie does well (which are many, and some are excellent) is balanced by a failure, so that, in the end, it is very nearly a wash. For every good performance (and some are excellent: Rob Mayes as the eponymous John, Tai Bennett as the enigmatic Jamaican drug-dealer Robert Marley, Jonny Weston as the milk-white faux-homeboy Justin), there is a weak or failed counterpart. The story rose up from a graphic novel which in turn came from a web serial, and it seems Coscarelli has pruned and reshaped it into a more tractable but still fantastic and unpredictable tale. It follows a pleasantly dream-like, picaresque, drug-inspired logic which resembles that at the heart of some of Cronenberg's finest, maybe Naked Lunch or eXistenZ.
Although it's not an unmitigated success by any standard, neither was Phantasm, really, and I suspect this one will grasp hold of the imagination of adolescent boys in much the same way that one did. No, strike that: not in the same way. Phantasm took hold via the creep factor: the way the Tall Man walked will be forever recurring in the nightmares of a generation. This one will capture adolescent boys in the way that WD Richter's the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai did, shamelessly glorifying their most fundamental comic book daydreams.
My final word is that I liked it more than it perhaps deserves. I love the riddle which starts it. I love Bark Lee, the dog who saves the world. And I love that when I tell you that John, in fact, does not die at the end, but much earlier in the proceedings, I can say it without a spoiler alert, because truth has many levels, and time is an ocean, not a garden hose.
Dragonwyck: (1946. dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Mankiewicz's maiden voyage in the director's chair was a grand and unapologetic Gothic romp, based on a novel by Anya Seton which was obviously inspired by Sheridan le Fanu as much as the more predictable Brontes. Without giving too much away, a nobleman goes a little mad. Is it with lust for his innocent house-guest? is there something more diabolical at hand? Gene Tierney is the country cousin (in her unfortunately frequent blank-eyed and by-the-numbers persona, alas. In her defence, though, she has to say, "Golly Moses!" several times, and who could overcome that?) and the nobleman is played by a young Vincent Price, so you know where THAT goes. There's some Roderick Usher here, for sure, and when Vincent Price runs mad, he doesn't mess around. The cast is great: Walter Huston and Anne Revere are the girl's strait-laced parents, and Spring Byington is chilling as a twisted maidservant whose sole pleasure is indulging in Schadenfreude at the naif's expense. A very young Jessica Tandy is on hand, too, in a lovely performance in a throwaway role. The glorious black-and-white thunderstorms, and the castle at night, are well worth experiencing, and there are ghosts, and opium, and foul murders, and a doomed and dying aristocratic family standing as metaphor for an outmoded caste system in an increasingly free America. Who can resist?
The Ninth Configuration: (1980. dir: William Peter Blatty) I want so much to like this movie. Obviously a labor of love for writer and director Blatty, post-Exorcist, who based it on his own novel, Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane, you can see the strong imagery and theodical leanings which he will continue to hone (or overindulge, depending on your point of view; see my review for my own opinions on the matter) in 1990's Exorcist III: Legion.
There is a wonderful, bold use of the surreal here, the Moonshot with Crucifixion scene being the most obvious example, with its quiet voiceover discussion about the creation of the universe, but it goes further than that, diving right in with the opening credits and the gorgeous, ominous shots of a mist-enshrouded castle with a syrupy country-and-western ballad about San Antone playing over the top of it. It's filled with those great, undervalued character actors from the seventies: Jason Miller, Robert Loggia, Ed Flanders, Neville Brand, Joe Spinell, and many more. Scott Wilson gives a brave performance (as the astronaut who, Blatty said in an interview (1), is the one from the Exorcist who is warned by Regan that he'll "die up there"), and Stacy Keach is downright haunting as the new psychiatrist in charge of the nuthouse.
The premise is untenable, and smacks of the kind of Theatre-of-the-Absurd shenanigans which seem not just outdated but sour-makingly cliche from the modern perspective: "the inmates are running the madhouse" taken to a ridiculous extreme was a favorite trope from the fifties and sixties, when the book was written. There's also some apparent ambition toward the crazy-ironic humor of Catch-22, but it's nowhere near as engaging as the Heller version, and the dialogue between inmates often becomes tedious.
There's a late, climactic bar-fight with sadistic bikers (Steve Sandor (2) and Richard Lynch) which is extreme in its violent humiliation, the kind of scene which seems to have been obligatory in a certain type of '70s movie, possibly originating in Last House on the Left, possibly earlier as some Roger Corman twisted brainchild, but it's there in the Billy Jack and Walking Tall series, among others. This one is grotesquely protracted, but contains enough of the cartoonish that there is almost an innocence to the attackers, and you cannot easily look away.
The ending is both weak and overly prolonged, as are many of the scenes. At its best, it is captivating; at its worst, well-intentioned but leaden and contrived. Still, it is really like nothing else, and each time I watch it, my enjoyment is fuller.
(1) McCabe, Bob. the Exorcist: Out of the Shadows, Omnibus Press, 1999.
(2) Lt. Uhuru's "drill thrall" in "Gamesters of Triskelion" from season two of Star Trek
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