CHARLTON HESTON: MASTER OF DISASTER Part One

SKYJACKED (1972) Dir: John Guillerman

For film-goers of my generation Charlton Heston wasn't Moses, or Ben Hur, or even Michelangelo. For children of the Seventies, he was the stalwart hero of a series of five "disaster" movies that defined the people-in-jeopardy genre. Heston's cinematic fame falls into three cycles of big screen success. His initial stardom began in 1956 with The Ten Commandments, and flourished in the late 1950s and 1960s with such grandiose epics as: The Buccaneer (1958), Ben Hur (1959), El Cid (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The War Lord (1965), Khartoum (1966), Heston then helped rejuvenate the Science Fiction genre with the box-office blockbuster The Planet of the Apes (1968). He followed this with a popular trio of dystopian tales; a shockingly nihilist sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), the progressively biracial The Omega Man (1971) and a prescient forewarning of ecological devastation in Soylent Green (1973). Between these years Heston had a run of films that he produced, starred in, and/or directed that were notable flops including: Counterpoint (1967), Number One (1969), Julius Caesar (1970), The Hawaiians (1970) and Antony and Cleopatra (1972). The exception during this period was Skyjacked, a thriller inspired by the mega-success of the film Airport (1970). As producer and developer of the project, Heston helped to fine tune the disaster genre as a trendy Seventies vehicle for both up and coming young performers, and old time stars alike. According to historical statistics between the years 1961 and 1973 nearly 160 airplane hijackings occurred on American soil. Universal Pictures keen to exploit this deadly epidemic, bought the rights to Arthur Hailey's bestselling novel Airport, which featured a disturbed unemployed airline passenger trying to blow himself for the insurance money. Audiences loved it and after  grossing ten times its budget, the Academy nominated it for a Best Picture Oscar- it didn't win. Heston and his producing partner Walter Seltzer, mindful of this potential box office bonanza, hired television writer Stanley R. Greenberg to adapt David Harper's 1970 novel Hijacked for the big screen, with MGM securing distribution. To realize the film visually, British director John Guillerman was hired on account of the technical craftsmanship he brought to The Blue Max (1966), where he had vividly recreated the perilous existence of WWI aviation aces. In Skyjacked, Guillerman made masterful use of an actual Boeing 707, filming all of the scenes on a real interior flight deck and passenger compartment, matched by authentic exterior in-flight footage. This dedication to realism forced cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr. (Little Big Man) to employ an inventive shooting style, one that communicates the claustrophobia of the passengers while providing the audience with a kinetic atmosphere where the action can unfold. Another ace-in-the-hole was editor Robert Swink who had previously cut two other famous single location films The Narrow Margin (1952) and The Desperate Hours (1955). Swink's lean editing ratchets up the tension as the mystery of the hijacker's identity is methodically teased to a tense viewer. As the plagued pilot Heston anchors the film with his inimitable commanding presence. Although deprived of any strong character moments, he does share one emotional flashback with stewardess Yvette Mimieux, who had played his little sister a decade earlier in Diamond Head (1962). The most memorable portrayal in the film is from James Brolin as the psychotic soldier who demands to be flown to the U.S.S.R.. Totally convincing in a challenging role of emotional extremes, he embodies the duality of a damaged veteran, the eager to please enlisted man and the frustrated fury of someone who has witnessed the senseless brutality of war. Other notable performances are provided by teen star Susan Dey in her feature debut, mountainous football player Rosie Grier as a jazz cellist (?!), Canadian Walter Pidgeon believably cast as a U.S. Senator, and the always elegant Jeanne Crain in her farewell film role. The care with which Heston and Seltzer lavished on the production certainly paid off, Skyjacked was MGM's second higher grosser of the year and Heston's bankability was again assured. He and Seltzer would collaborate on two further projects, one a hit, the other a miss: Soylent Green, also written by Greenberg, and a violent western The Last Hard Men (1976)  adapted from the novel by Brian Garfield (Death Wish). When it was finally issued on DVD, Skyjacked was marketed as a "Camp Classic". Dated fashions notwithstanding, nothing could be further from the truth. In an age where terrorism is a near daily occurrence, stories such as these are a valuable reminder of the selfless courage individuals in danger demonstrate toward each other. Charlton Heston would take this message to heart as he embarked on a series of films exploring this theme in various contexts. DVD 

THE DEMME MONDE

LAST EMBRACE (1979: Dir. Jonathan Demme)

When an esteemed film-maker dies my first instinct is to research his or her filmography for the orphaned works in their curriculum vitae. These are the forgotten and forlorn films that have for no apparent reason, been overlooked by the public and cognoscenti alike. Jonathan Demme will forever be remembered as the director of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1992). However many years prior, Demme, who had previously been toiling away on drive-in exploitation fare, made one of his most satisfying early efforts, the Hitchcock inspired spy thriller Last Embrace. Unlike the contemporaneous work of Brian DePalma, Demme was not employing the genre in order to exercise his stylistic visual chops, rather he used the suspense form as a template to create a psychologically complex world for his protagonist, a practice he would later refine in Something Wild (1987), The Silence of the Lambs, Beloved (1998), and most recently The Manchurian Candidate (2004). Roy Scheider (Jaws) is the star of Last Embrace and as he demonstrated throughout his career, his is a screen charisma based on a uniquely vulnerable masculinity. One that could be both resolute and conflicted, sometimes within same scene. Playing these character traits to full effect, Demme forces Scheider's burnt-out secret agent through a gauntlet of arcane clues, paranoid attacks, and sexual duplicity nearly destroying his faith in humanity. In spite of the odds the viewer never doubts Roy's ingenuity for survival, much as he proved when outwitting the cinema's most famous ocean predator. Demme's eye for an eccentric supporting cast lends additional gravitas to the panicky proceedings, particularly the choice of two hot young actors: John Glover (Annie Hall) and Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter), destined to dominate both stage and screen in the years to come. On the technical side, Demme was fortuitously re-united with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, with whom he had previously collaborated on the Roger Corman-produced prison pic Caged Heat (1974). Their intuitive teaming would continue for most of their careers, but for this, their second joint effort, Fujimoto shot with a slightly diffused look that reflected the unease of the Scheider's shady world, expertly utilizing slow-motion dissolves to tease the tension and accentuate the anxiety. It all culminates in a melodramatic climax at Niagara Falls, abetted by a classically grandiose music score composed by Hitchcock alum Miklos Rosza (Spellbound). Released in early May of 1979 Last Embrace, was a disappointing failure at the box office, ironically followed by a similar paranoid thriller, William Richert's Winter Kills (see my blog here: http://motionpicturepredilections.blogspot.ca/2015/05/film-failures-i-refuse-to-abandon-part.html ) which opened unsuccessfully a week later. They both were devoured by the juggernaut of Ridley Scott's Alien which burst onto screens a week after that. Undaunted, Demme turned a much talked about Bo Goldman script into the cult hit Melvin and Howard (1980) garnering multiple Oscar wins and major studio int erest in its still-young director. His career was finally on track, and now as one looks back upon his eclectic body of work in both narrative and documentary films, it is evident that Jonathan Demme wrote his own epitaph in light and shadow, as a true original. BLU-RAY

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE JIMMY WOODS?

CITIZEN COHN ( 1992: Dir. Frank Pierson)

In the 1980s James Woods was arguably the most exciting American actor working in film and televsion. I followed his career religiously: Videodrome (1983), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Joshua Then and Now (1985) Salvador (1986), Best Seller (1987), Cop (1988), True Believer (1989). I saw them all. When the 1990s came along he seemed to stumble with miscast duds like 1992's Straight Talk (as Dolly Parton's love interest?). He finally put his career back on track with a trio of real-life legal dramas made-for-cable: Citizen Cohn (1992), Indictment:The McMartin Trial (1995) and Dirty Pictures (2000). Having just revisited Citizen Cohn, I was once again reminded that nobody plays a more compelling egomaniac than James Woods. As corrupt counsel to Joe McCarthy's Commie witch hunt hearings, Woods devours the role of Roy Cohn as if it were the last steak dinner of a man on death row. Moral turpitude oozes from every pore of his portrayal. Even his harrowing death from AIDS does little to engender any sympathy for a man who ruined countless lives for his own self-aggrandizement. In our now progressive era of LGBTQ rights, Cohn's denial of his own homosexuality as well as his blackmailing of closeted public figures provides a disturbing history lesson for Donald Trump's America. Later in life Cohn became a mentor to the young Trump, educating him in the ways of malicious threats and legal chicanery. Sadly no reference is made to his Trump ties, instead the audience is enlightened as to Cohn's kinship with the hollowed-out hulk of Joe Don Baker's Senator McCarthy and the sedentarily sleazy J. Edgar Hoover played by Pat Hingle. Special mention should also be made to Frederic Forrest, who in an amusing interrogation scene briefly reprises his laconic Dashiell Hammett performance from Francis Coppola's ill-fated production of Hammett (1982). Now celebrating its 30th anniversary, Citizen Cohn remains an uncompromising drama written by David Franzoni (Gladiator), directed by Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon), and fueled by Woods' infectious go-for-broke dynamism. Ironically, Woods has recently claimed that his right wing politics have hampered his career in Hollywood so we have been deprived of his fiery presence in recent years. I for one, hope that he will get another meaningful chance to dazzle us with his rare talent.  DVD 

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

THE NIGHT VISITOR (1971: Dir. Laszlo Benedek)

Some films crawl under your skin and make a home there. Upon my first viewing, I knew that I would never shake off The Night Visitor, a frigid thriller of resolute revenge. Directed without artistic pretension by Budapest native Laslo Benedek (The Wild One, Death of a Salesman), this US/Swedish co-production revels in the cold landscape, both physical and emotional, of its protagonists. Harnessing the intense screen personas of Ingmar Bergman alumni Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann cast as resentful siblings, The Night Visitor, is a mesmerizing cat and mouse potboiler detailing the meticulous retribution of an imprisoned man who escapes from a remote asylum to frame his brother-in-law (Per Oscarsson) for murder, then returns to his cell undetected. An atmosphere of chilly alienation emanates from the Nordic locations of the story, shot in the wintry wilds of Sweden and Denmark. Exacting his rancorous reprisal, Salem (Von Sydow), must use almost every scrap of tied-together clothes and bedding in order to scale his high prison walls and travel miles across windswept snowy tundra in shorts and a t-shirt. Proper Brit Trevor Howard is the wily Inspector investigating this seemingly perfect crime and it's his scenes matching wits with Von Sydow's stoical Scandinavian psychopath that demonstrate the unique effectiveness of seemingly mismatched international casting. Despite its starry cast The Night Visitor had a rather unremarkable origin starting as a story by hack American TV writer Samuel Roeca (Rawhide, Mission:Impossible) and later polished into script form by British screenwriter Guy Elmes (Across the Bridge). Securing the respected talents of Benedek, and superstar film composer Henry Mancini (Experiment in Terror) producer Mel Ferrer must have seen the film as a companion piece to his hit big-screen adaptation of the Broadway nail-biter Wait Until Dark (1967), which had starred his former wife Audrey Hepburn. Both are Hitchcockian tales of suspense, but whereas Wait Until Dark invites the audience to experience the nerve-wracking vulnerability of its blind protagonist, The Night Visitor, asks its viewers to identify with, and even be impressed by, the near super-human tenacity of a central character twisted by an obsession for vengeance. Mancini, who scored Wait Until Dark with a darkly melodic accompaniment, here chose more dissonant and atonal compositions, amplifying the audience's anxiety as they bear witness to an inevitable and cruel catastrophe. Max Von Sydow went on to portray a legion of menacing malefactors, but for me he will always be the relentless lone figure of wrath from The Night Visitor. BLU-RAY

DOOMSDAY QUARTET Part Four

CIGARETTE BURNS (2005: Dir. John Carpenter)

Having strip-mined his own sci-fi horror oeuvre for the self-referential satire of Ghosts of Mars (2001), John Carpenter was clearly experiencing an extended period of creative burn-out when he received an attractive offer to return to his television roots. Showtime, the cable channel who had previously been unable to come to terms with Carpenter over his proposed portmanteau series Body Bags in 1993, had partnered with former film journalist turned writer-director Mick Garris to create an anthology show based on a series of raucous Hollywood dinner parties attended by a who's who of horror auteurs. Dubbed Masters of Horror, each 60 minute episode would be directed by a different veteran filmmaker, each enjoying complete artistic freedom in the matter of subject and content, within certain budgetary limitations. Appealing to these rebel outsiders who had been repeatedly worn down by the Hollywood development process, Showtime were able to attract a rogue's gallery of talent behind the camera. Enthusiastically joining Carpenter were many of his ghoulish contemporaries including John Landis, Joe Dante, Don Coscarelli, and Larry Cohen. The results were an often refreshing return to form, and in Carpenter's case, a brilliant book-end to his continued obsession with the supernatural apocalypse. Written by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, as his segment is entitled, could be read as a sly reference to the director's own oral addiction, as much as it refers to the vernacular for the ring-shaped reel-change markers that appear in the top right-hand corner of a projected celluloid frame of film. These markers have ominously begun appearing in the nightmares of the story's protagonist Kirby, a repertory cinema owner and film detective, played by a suitably seedy Norman Reedus. He has been hired by reptilian film collector Udo Kier, to locate the (fictional) lost horror classic La Fin Absolue du Monde, a notoriously chimerical cinematic opus reputedly responsible for driving everyone who saw it, including its own creator, insane. Kirby is also haunted by the loss of his girlfriend Annie (Zara Taylor), whom he was unable to save from a deadly drug overdose. Brought on by Kirby's search, reality itself seems to unravel, allowing Carpenter to stage imaginative scenes of the coming cataclysm, running the gambit from disquieting dread to giggling gory excess. It is however, the tragedy of a lost love that hangs over the events like a veil of sadness, with the director deftly bringing the manic atmosphere into emotional focus just in time for the rushed bravura climax dictated by the abbreviated running time. Cigarette Burns signaled Carpenter's renewed relish as a compelling storyteller, and he immediately followed this up with Pro-Life, a Season 2 Masters of Horror episode satirizing fundamentalist religious groups  and the ongoing U.S. abortion debate. This brief burst of creativity seemingly came to an end in 2010 with The Ward, a well-acted and suitably atmospheric tale of five women confined to a mental ward who become the prey of a vengeful ghost. Set in 1966 with a female dominated cast, The Ward was a fresh twist on Carpenter's typical tales of terror that disappointingly failed to engage both audiences and critics. More than half a decade later and he has still not returned to either the big or small screens, but last year he did release a album of instrumental music reminiscent of his spooky film scores. Even if Carpenter officially retires from film-making he will forever be revered for a lasting body of work, and of these horrific hallucinations none are memorable than his doomsday quartet. DVD 

DOOMSDAY QUARTET Part Three

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1995: Dir. John Carpenter)

The year was 1995 and writer-director John Carpenter's career was faltering, yet again. Having recently experienced his most dispiriting studio production, the Chevy Chase debacle Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) and experimented with the entertaining but slight Body Bags (1993), a cable TV horror anthology for Showtime, designed in the style of Tales from the Crypt with the director himself in ghoulish make-up as a cadaverous host, Carpenter knew he needed to get back to what his fans and he himself knew were his strengths as a filmmaker, scaring people's socks off. He found his opportunity with a script written by young New Line Cinema studio executive Michael De Luca. If many of Carpenter's previous films had cleverly cherry-picked devices from the seminal fantastique literature of H. P. Lovecraft, he now took the opportunity to re-embrace with his horror roots by making an all-out Lovecraft pastiche. Lovecraft's mythology posited the existence of old gods returning from their trans-dimensional imprisonment to punish humankind for its misdeeds. De Luca's script takes that premise as the underpinning for a story about the disappearance of a Stephen King-like author whose writings not only drive readers insane but are in fact opening a portal to the dimension where Lovecraft's demonic deities await their resurrection. An insurance investigator played with smarmy charm by Sam Neill is the audience's cynical alter-ego, whose sanity slowly disintegrates as he witnesses reality itself being pulled apart. Tapping into the burgeoning millennial anxiety of Western culture at the time, Carpenter created his ultimate meta-film statement about the artistic responsibility of creative people and how their work is often shamelessly exploited despite the harm this does to the artist and public alike. These charismatic profiteers are amusingly parodied in the casting of a righteous Charlton Heston as the publisher who hires Neill, a benignly evil-enabling role which foreshadows Heston's own future as a messianic president of the NRA. Perhaps not unexpectedly In The Mouth of Madness was largely overlooked during its initial release but as with nearly all of Carpenter's work, its value was eventually recognized by critics and fans on DVD and Blu-Ray despite being accompanied by a most tedious technical commentary from Carpenter and his director of photography Gary Kibbe.  It was to be the pinnacle of his work during the Nineties and remains his last great feature film to date.  BLU-RAY 

DOOMSDAY QUARTET Part Two

PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1987: Dir. John Carpenter)

I vividly remember when John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness first opened. I was living in Halifax at the time and it was playing at one of the city's seediest cinemas, The Casino situated in the impoverished North End. The area was known to be unsafe and infrequently visited by my friends who insisted on taking a taxi directly to and from the cinema. I even recall hearing about a bar fight across the street where someone was attacked with an axe! Regardless of these warning signs I would not to be swayed from my support for the work of my favourite contemporary horror auteur. It had been four years since filmmaker John Carpenter had been attached to a film where he was not a director for hire. Both Christine (1983) and Starman (1984) had been penance for The Thing, and although they found an audience, the undeserved failure of his follow-up, Big Trouble In Little China, left a bad taste in his mouth for the corporate bureaucracy of Hollywood. To restore his faith in film-making he decided on a personal project that would be independently financed. Carpenter has always acknowledged his affection for British fantasy writer Nigel Kneale. Kneale was a unique talent in the U.K. having created legendary science fiction character Bernard Quatermass for a trilogy of 1950s TV serials later remade for the big screen by Hammer Films, as well as scripting the feature film versions of  playwright John Osborne's seminal kitchen sink dramas Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer. Carpenter had even employed Kneale to dream up an esoteric ancient pagan boogeyman for Halloween III, a collaboration which fell apart after Kneale stubbornly refused to compromise his early draft ideas. Despite this personal rift, Carpenter retained his admiration for Kneale's eerie ouevre so in a concerted effort to return to the artistic freedom of his indie horror roots he chose to make an explicit hommage to Kneale's spine-tingling BBC haunted house tale The Stone Tape. With a minimal budget of 3 million dollars, and a pseudonymously written script by "Martin Quatermass", Carpenter grafted his trademark group under siege template (Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog) to a Lovecraftian doomsday story about a group of scientists investigating the properties of a vessel kept hidden for a millennium by the Catholic Church and said to contain the anti-God. It was to be the most intellectually audacious film of his entire career, incorporating Carpenter's then recent obsession with the science and philosophy of quantum mechanics into a challenging theological horror context. Made at such a low cost the film couldn't help but make money, however one is left with the nagging feeling that the film's quality could have been much improved with more accomplished supporting players. This is no reflection on the peerless casting of Carpenter favourite Donald Pleasence (Halloween), who brings an effortless authority and dignity to his role as a priest courageously confronting his own loss of faith as he seeks to defeat a supernatural being that defies the boundaries between science and religion. This epic battle over evil is atmospherically accompanied by Carpenter's own pulsating electronic musical score, menacingly summoning up an aural anxiety of the apocalypse. It all takes place in a lonely church located within a desolate district of Los Angeles, an area not unlike the poor Halifax neighbourhood that greeted me as I exited the cinema 28 years ago. Still shaken by Carpenter's intense and profound vision, I dared the dangerous journey back home to the "safe" part of town, but the thrill and paranoia of that viewing remains with me to this day. BLU-RAY