Octopussy

(1983, 2:35, John Glen)

*= Moments of Interest

Not the “all time high” the tagline of the poster, or the title song crooned by Rita Coolidge, promises.  The atmosphere is manufactured, the script is paper thin, the editing compress almost every scene into a series of malnourished set-ups, and director John Glen’s indifferent attitude towards the material reinforces the by-the-numbers feel.  (Dave Kehr astutely commented that Glen’s naturalistic tendencies are at odds with the cartoon elements of the script, and Glen can’t serve up the tongue-in-cheek elements of the Bond films like Lewis Gilbert.) Still, there are a few moments and elements that keeps this entry alive: the interplay between Roger Moore and villain Louis Jourdan during a high stakes backgammon game; an extended action sequence that shifts from a car chase to a fight on top of a moving train; and then there’s Moore himself. While his face manifests the exhaustion that was coming on to the whole series, Moore still has enough sparkle, wit and intensity –who else could get away with James Bond trying to disarm a nuclear bomb while dressed up in a clown suite?– to make the film’s two hour plus running time almost bearable.

Lover of the Last Empress

(1994, 2:35, Andrew Lau)
* = Moments of Interest

The oft-filmed story of Tzu Hsi’s beginnings as a concubine in the Manchu court to her becoming the infamous Empress Dowager is given the sexploitation treatment in this glossy but empty version. Staying with the basic historic outline of Hsi’s rise, many liberties are taken in illustrating the literal lust for power and revenge that fuels the characters. The brother of Emperor Hsien Feng, Prince Kung (played by Tony Leung who, unlike in “The Lover”, does his sex scenes visibly clothed from the waist down) saves Hsi (Yau Shuk Ching) and her nanny from roadside bandits in a preposterous scene that would belong better in a wuxia/swordsman film.Emperor Feng (Yu Rong Gaug) and Hsi make whoopee in a Buddhist temple, while Hsi’s climb to power is likened to her premonitions of sexually riding a large dragon and her vengeful nature is explained as due to a spiteful concubine that, who in the first act, boils her cat.

This reductive but inflamed version of history is given a high-production look that sets it apart from a lot of softcore, but director Andrew Lau (who not only has shot films for Wong Kar-Wai and Tsui Hark, but who directed the “Young and Dangerous” series and served as co-director on the “Infernal Affairs” series) seems very bored by the material. There is a professionalism to the execution, but it belies a mechanical approach that just moves from one scene to another with a detached eye. The filmmaking is serviceable, but the film’s lurid elements need to be pushed more for it to become the scandalous exposé it purports to be, or even just an enjoyable romp. The lack of verve or resonance results in a film that plays like a tepid schoolboy fantasy told by a wise but dry history teacher.

Vampire Hunters

(2002, 1:85, Wellson Chin)
*- Moments of interest

Tsui Hark, serving as screenwriter and producer, tries for another cross-genre hit, but the assigned director for what appears to be an attempt at a new supernatural series, Wellson Chin, is no Ching Siu-tung. Some debate the contributions of Ching Siu-tung to the “Chinese Ghost Story” series –though I consider his 1983 film, “Duel to the Death”, a major entry in the swordsman films from that period– but his careful compositions, rapturous lighting designs and dynamic cutting, evident in all his features with or without Tsui, are sorely missing.

Though Tsui embellishes a story of Taoist monks who hunt down a vampire with a plethora of horror film references–“Dawn of the Dead”, “The Evil Dead”, “Predator”, “Lifeforce”, “John Carpenter’s Vampires” and even Tsui’s own “Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain” get quoted–the mix doesn’t congeal into a new dish, but rather sits in the pot like overcooked leftovers. The main problems are Chin’s lackluster direction –his pictorial sense and pacing are barely adequate, giving the film a sluggish feel– along with the cursory and calculated participation by Tsui himself. Not a totally dispiriting experience –some images and sequences grab one’s attention and imagination –but a big disappointment from a dynamic and vital genre-revisionist.

Golden Swallow / Gam yin ji

(1988, 1:85, O Sing-Pui)
* – Moments of Interest

To complain that “Golden Swallow” (a 1988 production not to be confused with the 1968 film directed by Zang Che) borrows heavily from Tsui Hark’s and Ching-Siu Tung’s “A Chinese Ghost Story” is not an entirely accurate criticism. The makers of “Golden Swallow” lift direct passages from Thomas Dolby’s score for Ken Russell’s “Gothic”, mimic images from John Boorman’s “Exclaibur”, and end the film with a climactic sequence straight out of Tsui’s “Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain”. While Hong Kong films may work off of each other and borrow from popular Hollywood films, the makers of “Golden Swallow” move outside the realm of artistic inspirations and into the land of plagiarism.

The plot is almost identical to “A Chinese Ghost Story” (to be fair, both plots may derive from the same traditional Chinese fable) in which a young scholar (Anthony Wong Yiu -Ming) falls in love with a ghost (Cherie Chung) who serves as a siren to lure men to their death at the hands of a forest demon. There are a few changes: this time the scholar is a lampshade-maker, the lovers do come together and live in the mortal world, and instead of one spirit-fighting swordsman there are three, though only one has the true power to defeat the forest demon. Beyond that, however, the film looks and plays like a copy of Tsui’s and Ching’s film.

This is not to say that the film doesn’t have any redeeming qualities;the cinematography by Arthur Wong is quite rich, the use of reds and blues in the art direction works in unison with the costume and lighting design to create a strong atmosphere of otherworldliness, and the graceful flying sequences and wire work help add to the sense of phantasmic beauty. Perhaps the technical quality of the production shouldn’t come across as a surprise, as the art director, Yee Chung-man, served the same duties on “A Chinese Ghost Story”, and the director, O Sing-Pu, worked as an assistant director on the early works of Tsui Hark (this may also explain the tendency to replicate Tsui’s “Zu” and “Ghost Story”)

The film’s flights of fancy come crashing down during the dramatic sequences, for Sing shoots them with little regard to tempo, space, or framing, letting the camera remain in static long shots and cutting to close-ups indifferent to dramatic emphases. The changes in style are jarring, and the indifferent attitude towards the drama severely impairs the crux of the film, the love affair between a mortal and a spirit. The photogenic but emotionally weak leads don’t help either, lacking both the charisma and passion of Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong in “Ghost Story” — Sing is content to have them stare at each other and unconvincingly declare their mutual love.

The shifts between the static, impoverished images and the dynamic, lush ones indicate that while Sing may know how to create a pretty image, he doesn’t know how to put a series of sequences together to create a smooth whole. As the case with a number of Hong Kong films, the action director may have a stronger grasp on film language than the main director. Unfortunately, the strengths of the action sequences are marred by a rushed third act, where the editing is so fragmented as to render events incomprehensible and gives the sequences a choppy and clumsy rhythm. The final result ends up being like a number of Hong Kong films, displaying a conflict and/or discrepancy between the style and skill of the assigned directors as well as a frenzied rush to a climax that undermines the film’s accomplishments and coherence, ultimately tarnishing the film as a whole. While there are many films that can overcome the patchwork, derivative quality typical of many Hong Kong productions, the makers of “Golden Swallow” seem to be working with different aptitudes and their differences, approaching with accelerated speed in the editing room, ultimately collide on the screen.

Spontaneous Combustion

(1991, 1:85, Tobe Hooper)
** – Worth Seeing

After dealing with The Cannon Group wreaking havoc on Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, director Tobe Hooper was reported to have said that his next film would be his own production. That way, Hooper reasoned, no one else but he could be blamed if the film was bad. If Hooper had known that the film that would follow this statement, Spontaneous Combustion, would be subject to a post-production re-haul and a straight-to-video release, he might have thought twice before speaking. The post-production history of Spontaneous Combustion is unclear, but it is known that the film was released in a version that Hooper said was far from his own vision. Many in the press and the horror fan-base said that this was to cover up for what they saw as Hooper’s long suspected filmmaking inadequacies, questioning the degree to which he had a true directorial hand in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist. Since Hooper also credited himself as the producer and screenwriter, critics reasoned that all of the film’s deficiencies unquestionably pointed to him.

Most of the criticism focuses on the narrative of Hooper’s film, calling it a rip-off of Stephen King’s Firestarter, and, I grant, there are some similarities. In the 1950s, a young couple agrees to become subjects in nuclear tests for the US military and for a corporation, in exchange for a house, car and all the other accoutrements of postwar prosperity. Soon after the test, the seemingly unscathed newlyweds produce a boy, yet the promised suburban bliss goes up in smoke when the parents spontaneously combust just hours after the child’s birth. The sponsors of the test convene and decide to keep the whole affair secret, leaving the child, Sam, to be closely monitored through adulthood by the head of the corporation, who covertly nurtures Sam’s inherited powers. The narrative jumps twenty some-odd years, during which Sam, played as an adult by Brad Dourif, has grown up in a small town unaware that it is a hive of secrets and hidden agendas. Everyone — from his girlfriend to his ex-wife to the family doctor — is playing some secret role in grooming Sam to be a new weapon for the military. All goes awry when Sam hears a witness to the nuclear experiment call into a talk show that Sam is listening to, and the threads of his life begin to untangle. Sam’s girlfriend, Lisa, confesses that she herself is the birth child of the same nuclear tests and that she has been placed in Sam’s life by his uncle. Sam confronts his uncle at his mansion, who reveals that he is not only the head of the corporation which sponsored the tests, but also Sam’s real father, impregnating Sam’s mother before her willing exposure to a nuclear blast. Enraged by the web of deceit that his life has been enmeshed in, Sam draws upon his destructive power to literally burn the house down, taking most of the conspirators with it.

While the plot of Spontaneous Combustion is similar to King’s story, Hooper’s own preoccupations override any surface resemblance. Foremost is the emphasis on the bloodline and history of families that spawn abnormal and dysfunctional individuals, the vicious mechanisms of American industry and capitalism that create these families, and the facade of suburban normalcy that is an attempt to hide these deficiencies. Also present are the themes of destructive forces of nature that exist inside and outside the body that manifest themselves in relation to sex and rage, along with supernatural and psychic powers such as ESP and telepathy. Hooper, as usual, strikingly works these concerns into the set design and look of the film. Reflecting the theme of fire and heat, the art direction is constructed of hot colors and glowing neon, and the lighting design radiates a bright sheen, represented visually in all the lighting fixtures that decorate the sets.

To find an article or interview where Hooper spoke at length of the changes made to Spontaneous Combustion would be of great service, because what remains of the film hints at a well thought-out and designed horror film. The sequences that take place in the Fifties seem to be the most intact and therefore fully realized, but when the film shifts to the Seventies to focus on Sam, the narrative becomes wobbly, and at times, incoherent. Character’s relations to each other become ill-defined, as do their motivations, and the subplot that links Sam’s realization of his powers with the start date of the town’s new nuclear power plant is totally underdeveloped. A further understanding of Hooper’s intentions may also clarify Brad Dourif’s performance, which shifts from exaggerated naiveté to drooling, over-the-top rage and thus almost renders itself a parody. Hooper’s films always have elements of black humor and parody, but so much is missing between and within the scenes here that it is impossible to discern the proper tone or intentions of the film. (A perfect example is the exclusion of any scene establishing Sam and Lisa as high-school teachers, thus making them look like the oldest students in history to be wandering the halls.)

All that remains, however, is what either the other producers or the distributor found dynamic or fit to remain. Hooper said that Lifeforce was cut by 22 minutes because the producers wanted to get to the effect scenes as quickly as possible; gutting story, atmosphere and suspense in the meantime. Spontaneous Combustion seems to have met a similar fate, but with even more destructive results. Some sequences appear to have been edited out of order; shots that were to be intercut now remain separate actions resulting in moments when absolutely nothing is happening on screen. While slow pacing may be a problem in a lot of Hooper’s films, anyone familiar with his work knows he has far surpassed the rudiments of film editing. Then there is the matter of the ending: after Sam has destroyed his birth father, ex-wife and doctor, the film abruptly ends as Lisa helplessly watches as Sam dissolves into a swirling pool of fire or something like that. There is no resolution as to what will happen with Lisa, or, for that matter, what happened to Sam; once the nemeses of Sam’s life are extinguished, the film cuts to the end credits, the theme music pounding out — giving the sense that something exciting has happened, but if it has, its been left on the editing room floor.

Those who have been eager to dismiss Hooper fail to realize that with Spontaneous Combustion, and some of his other work, a comprehensive evaluation is difficult, for one is dealing with incomplete texts: texts that have been disassembled and reconstructed apart from the author’s intentions. In considering an auteur’s work- or perhaps any filmmaker- one needs to keep in mind the mode and conditions of production under which a particular film was made, especially in America for the past 23 years. Hooper’s career is a case in point in this respect: having started working independently in the 70s, absorbed by the studio system in the 80s, and then cast back out into the realm of independent film production, which had changed greatly from the 70s due to the advent and marketing of video. If this seems like special pleading for a director with an uneven filmography, I would insist that the case needs to be made in defense of Hooper, whose work demonstrates a high level of visual sophistication and thematic continuity. Therefore, no matter what the problems with Spontaneous Combustion, the film can still be seen as a worthwhile contribution to Hooper’s body of work and can be recommended.

The Accidental Spy

(2001, 2:35, Teddy Chen)
** = Worth Seeing

Continuing the mix of international casts and locations found in Police Story Four: First Strike, Jackie Chan and company set their sights further to the west, read American audiences, with mixed results. As the title suggests, Chan plays an ordinary man who in thwarting a bank robbery at a mall he works in, becomes involved in finding a bio-terrorist virus called Anthrax II. His search takes him from Hong Kong to Seoul and Istanbul, meeting Koreans, Turks, and Americans on the way.

Though a Hong Kong production, the look and shape of the film is for the most part modern Hollywood; glossy photography, shallow focus, close-up heavy and character driven. The filmmakers also adapts the Hollywood practice of multiple camera set ups and heavy editing for action sequences, thus further diluting the key elements of a Jackie Chan picture. Almost gone is the exhilaration of long takes and camera movements capturing the action choreography, though a comic fight scene in an outdoor market in Istanbul, with Chan in the buff, still retains the dynamism of Chan’s best work. (The credited director here is Teddy Chen, but I have a feeling that Chan had a major hand in calling the shots.) The film is also taken down a peg by a cloying “mickey mouse” soundtrack that makes sure the western audiences don’t miss the humorous bits of business during the action scenes. The irony of Chan and his company making the film more accessible to a western market is that the US distributor, the infamous Dimension Films, still cut 20 minutes and released it straight to video.

Even with all these weaknesses, The Accidental Spy doesn’t have the almost faceless characteristics of Chan’s Hollywood productions, where he farms out the dialogue scenes to an American director and has little control over the editing of his own action sequences. The film overall is fluid in its execution with decent use of the ‘Scope frame and, despite the fast cutting, there is none of the spatial disorientation and violations found in most current American action films. There is a certain amount of sadness rustling through the film in regards to Chan’s character being an orphan –his main motive in becoming wrapped up in espionage is to quell his curiosity that the man supposedly responsible for creating the Anthrax II virus may be his father– and Chan’s inability to save a orphaned young woman who has fallen victim to heroin addiction through her relation with an international smuggler. These melancholic moments give the film a bit more weight and allow Chan to demonstrate his range as an actor.

Yet the film’s strengths are weakened as it mechanically moves to deliver a show-stopping set piece in the third act, and switches gears from a spy story to vigilante wish fulfillment when Chan decides to personally take down the smuggler. As the sequence moves from an airfield to a freeway, complete with an overheated tanker that will explode if it does keep moving, ala 1994’s Speed, the editing jumps from one attraction to the next with little build or tempo. In this rush to add one set piece after another, there’s a lot of longwinded exposition between characters explaining what needs to be done to stop the truck, catch the villain, save the hostages, etc.. (When a Hong Kong action film has to rely on narration to illustrate action, you know it is in trouble.) Along with this manufactured feel, there’s the vigilante bent that leaves a slightly bad taste in the mouth. Any nuances or complexities in the film or Chan’s character get erased in the move to such simple mindedness, and ends up compromising and tainting the material. The film further stumbles near at the end, where Chan learns that his involvement in the bio-terrorist plot was not so accidental, along with a sequence playing over the end credits hinting at Chan’s character continuing his espionage adventures. Were Chan and his production company keeping things open for a new franchise? Box office receipts may prohibit that.

With all the bases –and markets– the film tries to touch, the end result becomes so top heavy as to be lopsided, and the cumulative flaws of The Accidental Spy renders the film below most of Chan’s Hong Kong work. Yet with all this, the film still retains fragments of what makes Chan and his films so dynamic and appealing, fragments that get totally lost when added to the Hollywood mix of his Disney and DreamWorks productions. Perhaps the dilution of Chan in America makes this viewer starved for a real fix of Chan, and while this Hong Kong entry does not contain all the proper ingredients there’s a sprinkling of enough as to keep one mildly content, though the lost opportunity or reluctance of delivering a genuine item lingers on.

On John Guillermin

About ten years ago, I was flipping channels and came across a letterboxed version of “The Blue Max” on AMC, pre-commercial interruptions days. Though I tuned in during the last 10 minutes, I was very impressed with a shot in which the camera tracked back/forth and in/out of a crowd of spectators watching a pilot perform stunts. The camera weaved in and out like it was floating and the amount of time the shot was sustained –carefully choreographed with the plane– resulted in me making a mental note to check out the film and the work of the director, John Guillermin.

I believe that one should approach action sequences carefully when viewing a film through an auteurist lens, for it may be a second unit director or cameraman who is ultimately responsible. So when
“The Blue Max” laserdisc appeared on EBay earlier this year, my memories of the flying sequence–along with a rather decent review of the film and disc on Doug Pratt’s dvdlaser website– persuaded me to put down a small bid and the disc was easily won.

I can’t say I liked the film very much. It’s is a task to sit through: the editing and pace are dreadfully slow. The story premise of a young upstart German war pilot could have been knocked out by Hawks or Wellman in about 90 minutes with more skill and impact. While acting is pretty low on my list of what makes a film successful, the incredibly wooden performance of George Peppard and the sight of James Mason screaming a lot of bad dialog to make it sound dramatic– with Guillermin placing the camera at a very low angle beneath Mason at one point– added to my suspicion that perhaps it really was the second unit that was responsible for the shot that stayed in my memory the past 10 years.

However, through all the objectionable aspects I noticed that in terms of composition of the ‘scope frame, Guillermin demonstrated an awareness of how to arrange and utilize the frame. The problem was how these shots work together. The sense I got from watching “The Blue Max” was that Guillermin designed shots without really thinking about how they would cut together. The compositions tended to clash against each other, creating a disjointed and rather lumpy editing rhythm. Guillermin’s penchant in composing shots for effect was confirmed by my viewing of “Never Let Go” (1960), “Waltz of The Toreadors” (1962), “Guns at Batasi” (1964), “The Bridge at Remagen” (1969), “Shaft in Africa” (1973), “King Kong” (1976) and “Death on the Nile” (1978). (I should note that as of this time, a great deal of Guillmermin’s pre-1960’s work is not available on any video format.)

Now “King Kong” is a rather questionable and dangerous film to use as a demonstration of Guillermin’s compositional talents,–though I am always ready and willing to seriously consider and defend the disreputable– and while I agree with Dave Kehr’s capsule review on the Chicado Reader’s website that the film is ultimately “low camp”, I would make a case for the island scenes before Kong’s appearance.
The sense of scale, which ties into Guillermin composing for effect–is striking, particularity the night sequence when the natives prepare Jessica Lang for her blind date. Guillermin’s sense of creating shots for impact serve him well in this sequence, and it’s unfortunate that his sense of scale abandons him or does not translate to the effects department, for the use and the scale of miniatures for the film’s special effects are probably the worst I have ever seen.

Are there any other consistencies or personal signatures in the work of John Guillermin? None that I can see so far. How one goes from “Waltz of the Toreadors” to “Shaft in Africa” is beyond me, and Guillermin strikes me as a director who is ultimately only as good as his script. With a film like “Death on the Nile”, Guillermin seems very bored and his staging is, to again quote Dave Kehr’s capsule review: “”sluggish, repetitious and clumsy.” (When a director has Peter Ustinov and David Niven together and fails to generate any chemistry, you know something is wrong.) For a director who appears to be often indifferent or disengaged with his material, the interviews that I have read with actors who have worked with Guillermin describe him as very short-tempered and prone to violent outbursts. It would be interesting to know what made Guillermin so volatile on the set.

At this time I would place Guillermin in the ranks of the proficient British technician, way above the almost impoverished mise-en-scene of Guy Hamilton but far from the astuteness of Terence Fisher. Ultimately, I cannot write off a filmmaker who, in their limited and flawed ability, attempts to engage the frame and I will not pass up the chance to see his work –particularly his pre-1960’s work– but with this particular filmmaker and with the works that I have seen thus far, the parts are definitely better than the whole.

Replicant

Replicant
(2001, 1:85, Ringo Lam)
*** – Recommended, a strong film

Poor Jean Claude van Damme. He struggled and climbed his way out of hack-work Cannon kickboxer films to work with the cream of the crop of Hong Kong action directors, which yielded three extraordinary but underappreciated action films; “Maximum Risk”, “Double Team”, and “Knock Off.” The last film, “Knock Off,” was dumped by the studio with no support and Van Damme’s next film, “Legionnaire,” an ambitious and entertaining homage to 20’s and 30’s adventure/romance films, went straight to video. Add to that another straight to video release, “Desert Heart”, and a theatrical release of the sequel to “Universal Solider” that, according to a studio executive, tanked at the box office, and Van Damme has now found himself in the straight-to-video/cable hell of long spent (box office wise) action performers. I cannot attest to the virtues of “Desert Heart”, but “Replicant”, Van Damme’s continuing work with director Ringo Lam (Maximum Risk), is a film that deserves a better fate than a premiere on a video shelf. Though the storyline of the film once again concerns itself with Van Damme and a doppelganger (what is his obsession with that?), what makes “Replicant” more interesting and watchable than, say, “Double Impact”, is the use of Van Damme’s screen persona and Lam’s tight direction.

“Replicant” begins with Van Damme as an elusive and meticulous serial killer who, in leaving some hair follicles at the scene of the crime, inadvertently plants the seed for his own capture. Long frustrated and baffled with trying to catch the killer, the police give the follicle to a top secret and technologically advanced security agency for cloning. Cloning, the agency hopes to prove, will produce a double that will share the same thought-patterns as the killer and therefore allow them to easily track him down, not to mention giving the agency a large share of the market in man-hunting. Yet rather than being born with the full mental capacity of the killer, the clone is literally an infant in an adult body. Hired to extract information on the killer’s whereabouts from the clone is a retired detective, played with utterly annoying but effective macho sadism by Michael Rooker, who has been tracking the killer for years.

The bulk of the film focuses on the relationship between the clone and detective, and while it would be easy to make the film an action buddy movie with a sci-fi twist, Van Damme and company aspire to make it more. I, for one, have always liked Van Damme’’s screen persona: he always appears to be a reluctant hero, who must mask his pouty face and sad eyes with a he-man’s veneer. Out of all the current action film performers—Segal, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, etc.—he is the most open to letting his body be eroticized for both female and male viewers—Van Damme has acknowledged his gay audiences in various interviews—and like his persona, his body alternates between a hard weapon and a gentle embrace. As the clone in “Replicant”, Van Damme is at his most vulnerable and sympathetic, a literal man-child who is born into a world of violence and ruthless determination. The clone is everything the killer is not—trusting, protective, and able to empathize. As both the killer and the clone, Van Damme is a duality of masculinity, a sci-fi Jeckyll and Hyde.

These undercurrents of masculine duality also appear in the relation between the detective and the killer, for the detective is just as brutal and self-obsessed. His treatment towards the clone is sadistic and contemptuous, like that of a father venting out his frustrations on a guiltless son. Ironically, as the clone becomes closer to identifying with the killer, the detective is able to humanize the replicant. The male psyche shifts from destructive to nurturing in the film and hovering over these shifts is a sense of fear that the detective’s abusive and bullying behavior will push the clone into madness and produce another killer.

Ringo Lam directs all of this with a solid and sure hand, proving again that he is a capable, if not original, director of clean action and effective drama. While Lam’s sober approach can be problematic in his work, here it helps realize the material’s ruminations on the duality of masculinity without making the whole premise seem silly. Lam utterly fails, however, when he tries a jokey or satirical jab—such as when the detective’s mother finds him in the bathroom with the replicant handcuffed to the toilet. The homoerotic aspect of this situation is tossed off with a few clumsy lines of dialogue. Though Lam shies away from expanding the material into a deeper examination of masculinity, he never dumbs down the material into a routine action flick.

Jean Claude Van Damme has been trying to push his screen persona and vehicles into new territories, and while he has limitations as an actor –his turn as a serial killer is just as ill-conceived as Keanu Reeves’ in “The Watcher” — his attempts to deliver dynamic films that rework the action genre should be acknowledged. Yet these films are treated like rotten fish by the studios, which throw them to a hostile and cinematically illiterate press and a pacified public.

One of the most dumbfounding viewing experiences was watching the number of people who walked out of the theater during “Knock Off”, a film that delivers non-stop inventive action without being bogged down with romantic sub-plots and character motivation that I guarantee few care about. (“Die Hard” immediately comes to mind.) Yet this is what Van Damme and his career have wrought—an empty theater with “Replicant” only continuing the series of straight-to-video releases.

All in all, it’s a shame that this film will get buried in the previously-viewed bargain bin, while unremarkable or cinematically incoherent studio action films open on 2,000 screens every week.

The Black Hole

The Black Hole
(1979, 2:35, Gary Nelson)
* – Moments of Interest

A strange, confused and ultimately absurd Walt Disney production, “The Black Hole” reworks Disney property “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, telling the same story of a mad captain and the a crew who stumble upon him, this time in outer space rather than at sea. With the seal of Nemo’s Nautilus now replaced by a cute robot and the captain’s crew resembling Jawas and Stormtroopers, the main point of reference and the target audience is that of “Star Wars”, a film whose success Disney hoped it could match.

The late 70’s were a dismal time for the Disney studios, their automated mode of production made every film look like it was directed in 1973 by their in-house workhorse Robert Stevenson, and so the studio set out to make contemporary pictures with an edge(read: rated PG) to prove that it could be a player in the new Hollywood of Lucas and Spielberg. Thus “Escape from Witch Mountain” became “The Watcher in the Woods” (which, ironically, was recut in post-production because Disney feared
that the occult theme was too strong and would scare away their family audience) and “The Cat from Outer Space” morphed into “The Black Hole”, which was heralded as the new beginning of the modern Disney film.

Technically, the film may match or even excel the special effects of “Star Wars” and its imitators but the sequences between these attractions still have the stolid and flat feel of older Disney films, as if the studio were afraid of or reluctant in entirely retooling their production process. Much of the design and lighting of the film retains the look of their Fifties to Seventies live-action pictures, thus almost rendering the film outdated. A sequence taking place within a stunning set of a large control center with the cosmos stretching outside is followed by a dinner scene that looks and plays like it was lifted directly from the 1952 “20,000 Leagues”. The characters are carbon copies of those in any 50’s sci-fi film: while these characters may be a genre convention, they are written and played with no attempt to expand upon or update them from that era (though Ernest Borgnine does say damn a few times, assuring the film would get a PG rating back then). Disney may have wanted to have it both ways, telling young audience members that they could be hip but assuring older generations that they haven’t gone too far out.

The shifting from the shopworn to the latest fad is reflected in a conflict and/or confusion in the film’s style, and the many borrowings of past science fiction films further deter it from having much of an original vision. Yet, there is something oddly compelling about the film. The visual anachronisms do not entirely override the sense of scope and awe in some sequences and while the script is mostly compost, it does have some of the strangest subtext of any Disney film. There is an undercurrent of homoeroticism between the captain of the ship, Dr. Hans Reinhardt (played with effortless pomposity by Maximilian Shell), and one of the captive crew, Dr. Alex Durant (played by, of course, Anthony Perkins). The glances and mutual remarks of recognition between the two doctors, along with the almost drooling admiration of Reinhardt that Perkins imparts in his performance, makes one wonder what the folks at Disney were intending or just oblivious to.

As if the homoerotic aspect of the film is not baffling enough for a Disney film, there is the matter of the ending. While Dr. Reinhardt is hell bent in seeing his large ship travel through the black hole, the remaining captives slip out via an escape pod. It seems the path of the black hole literally ends in heaven or hell, and depending on the characters’ morality, that’s where they end up. So, while the “good guys” find themselves in an atmosphere of bright light reminiscent of the ending of “2001” — with soft focus angels filling in for the Starchild — Dr. Reinhardt and his evil, robot henchman crash-land in hell. In this extraordinary sequence, the camera tracks across a giant miniature of hell complete with burning flames, cavernous mountains and tortured souls, and ends on the doomed villains.

After the financial failure of “The Black Hole”, the teen comedy “Midnight Madness” — which was released under the banner of Buena Vista Distribution because the folks at Disney were embarrassed by the film — and “Tron”, Disney created Touchstone Pictures so it could venture more freely into PG and R-rated features without hurting Uncle Walt’s reputation. It is also worth noting that the release of “The Black Hole” on DVD was spearheaded by the independent company Anchor Bay — who also produced the DVD–indicating how little Disney wanted anything to do with their own production or thought that it had any audience. With its mixture of 50’s science-fiction films, “2001”, “Star Wars” and the generic style of Disney live-action films, “The Black Hole” may be an ill-conceived venture into contemporary filmmaking that some feel should be forgotten, but a Disney film that literally takes the audience to hell is a unique experience.