Favorite First Watches of August
New-to-me this month: Fail Sons, Vincent Price, and at least one movie where a woman murders people mid-orgasm
Winter Kills (1979)
Director: William Richert
Earlier this month I dragged my brother-in-law to a screening of the 35mm restoration of this cult comedy film at Film Forum, knowing virtually nothing about it, except that it was being presented by Quentin Tarantino, a man who — for all flaws — knows every obscure old film that’s worth getting eyes on. In all my years studying 70s cinema and cult classic films, I’d never heard of this parody of Joe Kennedy and the machinations behind the Kennedy political machine that led to JFK’s untimely assassination in 1963, which feels insane. Most of y’all know that I allow myself to indulge in just one conspiracy theory: Oswald did not act alone (my evidence? COME ON). The film runs with the assumption that Oswald was a patsy, telling the story of a deathbed confession by a dead president’s assassin, given to the dead man’s brother (a hapless Ted Kennedy type, played by Jeff Bridges). In search of answers and guidance, Not-Ted-Kennedy turns to his father, a powerful backseat businessman and unrepentant pervert (played with clear delight by John Huston, a powerful patriarch in his own right). Soon, he’s trapped in one of those paranoia thrillers of the 1970s, but if they were deeply, deeply funny. The film killed with our audience, who took vocal delight in its irreverence and screwball logic; you can almost see the blueprint for Bridges’ performance as The Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998) in Bridges’ (deeply funny) leading man performance as someone who is simply too dumb to be caught up in all of this. The film is full of bizarre and oddly resonant elements that have aged like wine (such as the underrated Anthony Perkins playing a man tasked with overseeing Not-Joe Kennedy’s vast surveillance operation). Knowledge is the ultimate currency (just ask Jeffrey Epstein!) and nothing matters but power, not really. I don’t know how or why a movie this strange exists, or how actors like Elizabeth Taylor and Toshiro Mifune wound up in it, I’m just thrilled to (accidentally) find out about it! Winter Kills (1979) is currently streaming on Tubi (free with ads); the restoration is still playing at Film Forum in NYC.
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Director: Roger Corman
I had a great time diving into Criterion Channel’s “Grindhouse Gothic” collection of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations made by director/producer Roger Corman, a true pioneer of independent filmmaking who is single-handedly responsible for the careers of basically every director of the New Hollywood Era of the 1960s and 70s. In the early 1960s, Corman began filming loose adaptations of Goth Icon Edgar Allan Poe's most beloved works, including The Masque of the Red Death (1964). An adaptation of the 1842 short story of the same name, the film stars Vincent Price as a spoiled prince who hides out from the plague in his castle, fortified and filled by his amoral courtiers. For a moment in time, highbrow and lowbrow culture met so deliciously in the middle: 19th century literature with an exploitation film lens. Is there anything more fun? To be honest, a lot of those Corman / Poe films are not very good, padded out with lengthy speeches, stagey sets, and confusing characterizations. Corman wasn’t exactly Howard Hawks, but he does have a love for busty beautiful women and Vincent Price, specifically, that make the best of these collaborations soar, and this film is really among the best. Shot by legendary British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg (The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Witches), the film is a stunning phantasm of color and early psychedelia defined by unicolor palettes, palatial sets, and striking costuming outfitting a decadent, hermetically sealed world perverse in its obfuscation of the proximity of death. British beauty (and Paul McCartney’s ex!) Jane Asher stars as a village woman forcibly taken by Price to be pretty window dressing, while Price himself (at his best) plays double duty as the source of (and solution to) the prince’s pathological hubris.
White Men Can’t Jump (1992)
Director: Ron Shelton
SPOILER: it turns out that white men can jump in this classic buddy basketball film about two men who become unlikely friends after teaming up to shark people in games of pick-up basketball around the city of Los Angeles…which is just delightful. The conceit is simple: Woody Harrelson is a corny looking white guy with a folksy accent (and a gambling addiction) who loves Jimi Hendrix and is actually really good at basketball (like Larry Bird good). Wesley Snipes is a seasoned hustler who hatches a plan to hit up basketball courts in black LA neighborhoods, where he pretends not to know Harrelson and tricks their opponents into being forced to team up with him. Meanwhile, Woody Harrelson’s smokin’ hot girlfriend, Rosie Perez (lethally funny) spends her days drinking and studying facts in the hopes to appear on (and win) Jeopardy. The film is an early 90s update of the black-and-white odd couple pairings of the back half of the 20th century, and it really only works as well as it does because of the enemies-to-besties (verging on homoerotic) relationship between Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. I’d seen Money Train (1995), the deeply misguided (and deeply entertaining) attempt to recapture the financial success of this film, so I knew the two actors had terrific chemistry, but it’s really electric here, thanks to a tight script and the easy comedy stylings of its leading men, both of whom are also pretty decent basketball players? Wesley Snipes was a true movie star, and the film showcases the actor’s masterful blend of leading man charisma and physical comedy, previously flexed in the (far inferior) sports film Major League (1989). Snipes was the perfect leading man for the 90s: easy on the eyes (with a fighter's body and natural grace) yet classically trained as an actor. He was able to competently flit between genres (and believably play characters across the class spectrum) while breaking larger cultural ground as a darker skinned sex symbol until well-publicized tax issues and bad action movies derailed his (seemingly untouchable) career. Movies haven’t been good since, not like this. Maybe I’m an easy mark for this kind of humor (white people are dorks), but I laughed harder during this movie than I have at anything else in a long time. White Men Can’t Jump (1992) is currently streaming on [HBO] Max.
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)
Director: Charles Reisner
There’s a lot of talk about Fred Astaire/Gene Kelly preferences and not enough about Charlie Chaplin/Buster Keaton preferences: although both were extremely gifted silent performer/choreographers, their films couldn’t have been more different. Chaplin was international: a man with no name and no origin, who stumbles into scenarios before walking away at the end, in possession of nothing but a smile. Buster Keaton was inherently American: a black ink spot on the red, white, and blue, who grimaced through situations brought about by being too weighed down by expectation and obligation. His characters typically possess a lot, but never a smile; he’s American Gothic in motion. I was a big Chaplin fan as a kid, but didn’t get into Keaton until college, when his deadpan antics really connected with my undiagnosed clinical depression. But that does mean I have a few Keaton blindspots, including this, the final film that he made for United Artists before moving to MGM, the studio that would infamously, eventually wrest the comedian’s creative control, tanking his career in the process (they were really good at that, they did something similar, later, to the Marx Brothers). Though not particularly successful at the time, the film is now regarded as one of Keaton’s best, thanks to the elastic performer’s signature unkillability: in the film’s most famous sequence, a tornado destroys a town around him, causing the full side panel of a building to fall down on top of him (he isn’t crushed because he’s standing in the exact spot where the second floor window hits the ground). But there’s a lot more than just physical comedy that makes this one so entertaining, such as Keaton’s characterization as an effete young man turned ersatz sailor. He plays the titular Bill Jr., a young man who is reunited with his burly Mississippi steamboat captain father following several years studying in Paris. The captain expects his son to be a stereotypically masculine man such as himself: what he meets, instead, is a man with a beret and a ukulele, who looks like a strong breeze could knock him over. It’s all very queer-coded and low-key homophobic, which makes it a particularly relevant watch for the audiences of today, whose brains are melted down by the internet by a constant barrage of (not dissimilar) jokes. Although Keaton tries (and fails) to dress the part, mind the boat, and even falls in love with the (vaguely slutty) daughter of a a rival steamship captain, it’s not enough for his dad, whose blinding toxic masculinity means even his son’s dogged pursuit of a woman isn’t right either. Things improve when the son breaks his father out of prison (by baking bread with a weapon in it), and things skew towards that Hollywood ending (isn’t it ironic that for as sardonic as Keaton was, his films had happy endings?). Funny as hell and starkly modern, this is a great entry point into silent film for any unaccustomed viewers who might find the performing styles of Keaton’s contemporaries less accessible. Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) is streaming on The Criterion Channel and Tubi (free with ads).
She Killed in Ecstasy / Sie tötete in Ekstase (1971)
Director: Jesús Franco
This tawdry, scrappy little pseudo-slasher / erotic thriller is the spiritual sister to director Jesus Franco’s more famous 1971 film, Vampyros Lesbos, whose iconic “sexadelic” soundtrack was memorably featured in Quentin Tarantino’s best film, Jackie Brown (1997). Filmed with nearly the same cast and crew as Vampyros Lesbos, the film — which depicts one woman’s extremely dedicated commitment to the art of revenge — isn’t supernatural in nature, though it does feel possessed with a vibe that’s pretty unnatural. I bought a bunch of blu-rays of Jesús Franco films as a birthday present for myself, and watched both this and Vampyros Lesbos over the course of one long, smutty weekend. Vampyros Lesbos is a pretty flashy success: stylish and sensual, the film asks us to watch the seduction of Swedish actress Ewa Strömberg at the hands of beautiful vampire Soledad Miranda…a pretty easy sell! This film, though equally smutty, is almost the inverse in execution, presenting sex as something powerful and violent…and almost unpleasant! Miranda once again seduces Strömberg in the course of this film, but it’s only to get close enough to kill her in cold blood. She’s just one of many targets for Miranda’s character, who seeks revenge against a committee of doctors who publicly humiliated her husband for his controversial experiments involving human embryos, effectively ending his career and sending him into an inescapable depression. The plan? Seduce all of them and kill them at the moment of her personal climax. Crazy! And there are, quite frankly, quite a few of them! It only works because Soledad Miranda was one of the most beautiful women of all time, ensuring the success of her plan, and the film relishes in the opportunity to capture her frenzied, tortured face, frozen and manic like some European screen goddess of the silent film era. Although the star and the director worked a few times together (including for the terrific 1970 film Count Dracula, a faithful adaption of Bram Stoker’s original novel starring Christopher Lee), the actress’ life was tragically cut short in 1970, when she died in a car crash in Lisbon right before she was set to sign a contract with Franco’s producer. She was only 27. Like Jean Harlow or Sharon Tate, the allure of watching her onscreen is bittersweet: she’s so talented, and the camera loves her face, but you can’t help but think of her tragic end. For a film like this, it only heightens the surreality of the final product. Unfortunately, She Killed in Ecstasy (1971) is not available on streaming…legally..but don’t let that stop you. A beautifully remastered Blu-Ray is also available from Severin Films.
Oldboy / 올드보이 (2003)
Director: Park Chan-wook
Most of my favorite filmmakers are straight-up Alfred Hitchcock fetishists, and Korean cinema auteur Park Chan-wook has to be one of the best fanboys in the game, constantly churning out gorgeous, morally ambiguous ruminations on ultraviolence and sexual taboos that would make the master of suspense proud. Somehow I had never actually watched his breakthrough (and most infamous) film, Oldboy, which just received a 4K remaster and theatrical reissue from NEON after years of being incredibly difficult to view (it is still unavailable on streaming). A child (and withered veteran) of the internet (and internet film culture), I’ve been well aware of the central “twist” that makes this film particular notorious, as well as the shocking, totally real act involving a live octopus…the film always showed up on Cracked.com articles and things of that nature as one of “The Most Fucked Up Movies Ever.” So maybe that desensitized me to the truly transgressive nature of the film, which probably would have stunned me if I went in blind, but it really made me sit back and appreciate Park Chan-wook’s craftsmanship, particularly in the film’s more shocking moments (such as when star Choi Min-sik eats a still-alive octopus — which tries to attach itself to his face mid-act — a particularly gruesome flip on the cultural practice of eating still-wriggling octopi called san-nakji in Korean). There’s less overt Hitchcockian homage in this one (except maybe some Spellbound), but its deep focus shots, visual re-construction of the painful past, and representation of a Kafkaesque situation completely outside the control of the protagonist are all reflective of someone with a keen appreciation for classic Hollywood cinema. Elsewhere, Park Chan-wook employs 21st century magic — such as CGI, which is used to prevent breaking up the film’s iconic hallway fight — and stylized onscreen graphics that suggest a young filmmaker just having a good time. Based on the Japanese manga of the same name, the film tells the story of an unrepentant drunken flirt, who misses his daughter’s 4th birthday only to get snatched off the street while he’s trying to call her. He wakes up imprisoned in a furnished bedroom, with no explanation as to why he’s detained; any attempts to end his life are thwarted by unidentified strangers. One day, he’s unceremoniously released. His first desire isn’t to try to find his daughter or reconnect with his lost past: all he wants is bloody revenge, and he’s spent 15 years training to be able to do just that. His dark (and darkly funny) path towards self-obtained justice unveils secrets from the past that would definitely best stay buried. Although transformed and humbled from his time incarcerated, it doesn’t really matter: the consequences of our actions live on in the minds of those affected by them. Revenge is a ravenous void, needing to be filled but never satisfied. It’s a stronger force than anything, even love. Oldboy (2003) is currently playing in theaters across the country; sadly, it is not available (legally) on streaming, though that shouldn’t stop you.
Totally F***ed Up (1993)
Director: Gregg Araki
"another homo movie by Gregg Araki" opens this terrific DIY film from essential queer punk filmmaker Gregg Araki, a gay teen drama that is a wild mix of faux-documentary talking-heads, loose narrative, and sequences shot-on-location throughout Los Angeles as its scuzziest. Conceived as a meta-video experiment by one of the protagonists and consisting of 15 “parts,” it depicts a group of queer teenagers, including gay and lesbian couples, as they navigate a bleak, unaccepting post-AIDS world they've met with nihilism and/or despair. Too punk for the We-Ho gay scene, too gay to shield themselves from the consequences, it captures a kind of poetic ennui only felt in the extremely young. California dreamboat James Duval, making his feature debut, is the film's beautiful (and doomed) Saint Sebastian, and the screen feels ill-equipped to handle the weight of his sad eyes and hesitant surfer boy smile. Shot on 16mm by Araki himself, without permits or any real crew, the director reflected on its raison d’être to Indiewire in 2005: “I was kind of surprised by how political and angry the film was. It really was a reaction to the sociopolitical climate of the times and it did specifically speak for and to this audience that had no voice at all in those days — young gays and lesbians who didn’t fit into the cultural stereotype of the ‘gay community.’ I knew a lot of kids like that back then and the film was very specifically for and about them.” Like any of Araki’s earliest works, it’s not really enough to describe the film as angry: it’s also massively funny, sexy, melodramatic, and deeply, deeply cool. Totally F***ed Up (1993) is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
