Review // MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW - Pretending that there aren't any facts to face

I'd never heard of director Leo McCarey until I popped Criterion's new release of Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) into my player. I guess that's terrible isn't it? I mean I had obviously heard of some of his films, like Love Affair and it's remake An Affair To Remember (which I just rented), but I was ignorant of McCarey the director. I didn't know that at one time he was one of the most successful director's in Hollywood and I certainly didn't know that he possessed a completely unique improvisational style and was known for deftly switching back and forth between whip-smart comedy and tear-jerking human drama (genuinely tear-jerking). While I feel bad about not knowing of McClary's work, after watching Make Way for Tomorrow I feel like I'm discovering him at the right time--a little older, a little wiser, and now a husband and father. I don't think I would've been ready to appreciate him as a teenager or in my 20's.

I intended to just start Make Way for Tomorrow before heading to bed, finishing up the rest on another night. But the film reeled me in from the get-go and didn't give me any reasons to want to pause. By the time its magical, beautiful and devastating ending gave way to credits, I had drank the better part of a bottle of wine and lost an hour and half of sleep to the laughter and tears that the film will milk from all but the most stone-hearted viewers.

 

On the surface, Make Way for Tomorrow appears to be about generational conflict--and it is to a certain extent--but in scene after scene it reveals itself instead to be an uncommon and tragic love story. Not your typical love story mind you, where boy meets girl and fate conspires to keep them apart for two reels before inevitable reconciliation. This is a love story about a couple who spend 50 years together and then are split apart by circumstance to face the final years of their life apart.

The film begins with a wide shot of a pleasant little house set behind a white picket fence in an idyllic rural winter wonderland. It's the kind of shot you often see in old black and white movies where you can't tell if it's a real place or just a painting, but either way you want to climb inside the screen and live there. But this is the last we'll see of the house and the warm feelings it invokes. Ma and Pa Cooper have called their children home to deliver some bad news. With Pa retired, he hasn't been able to keep up the payments and the bank is taking the house. The couple have to be out by Tuesday. Once the news hits the air the children begin nervously playing a game of hot potato with their elderly parents, tossing around the idea of taking them in, yet nobody wanting to hold onto it for too long. George, the eldest child, takes the role of chief negotiator. He works the problem out loud, tending to talk over his parents as if their opinions on the matter are of no importance. This scene is imbued with a great deal of comedy, with the children exchanging barbed remarks that reveal a life-long familiarity with each others quirks. McCarey is playing an uncomfortable familial scenario for some laughs, disarming the inherent sadness of the circumstance in order to draw the viewer in. But despite humour, the film begins with the saying "honor thy mother and father" and McCarey proceeds to etch this creed into your heart by showing the opposite

When the dust has settled, it has been established that none of the children are able (or willing) to accommodate both their parents, so they will have to split up. Everyone kids themselves that this is a temporary arrangement.  Pa with go to live with daughter Cora and her husband in an unnamed small town, while Ma will bunk in with George and his family in their apartment in New York City. Bark and Lucy Cooper have been married for 50 years and aside from his nightly visits to the barber shop to hang out with the boys, they have never been apart. But the couple is waging a silent battle with their own pride, and already feeling like burdens, they don't want to rock the boat by demanding another resolution. They go along with the plan, painfully saying goodbye.

The film then divides itself between each half of the couple, exploring the uncomfortable dynamics of their new living arrangements. First we follow Lucy, who is completely at odds with her uptown big-city surroundings. Her teenaged granddaughter is cavorting with a rotating cast of older men, while her son and daughter-in-law are hosting tuxedo bridge gatherings in their living room. This is a world and a pace of life that Lucy can't quite grasp and she sticks out like a sore thumb. When granddaughter Rhoda flippantly says "face facts, grandma" Lucy explains why she may seem a little out-of-touch, saying that at her age folks like to "pretend there aren't any facts to face". It's a crushing line that so simply puts the elderly experience into sharp relief against the inevitable. If the film were comprised of only moments like these, it would make for an absolutely joyless slog. But McCarey and screenwriter Vina Delmar wisely dial up the laughs before sucker-punching you in the gut with sadness.

 

In one of the most memorable sequences, Lucy is contrasted against the black tie guests that George and his wife Anita are entertaining. With her old rocking chair set in the middle of the room, it's incessant squeaking cuts through the silence of everyone working out their bridge hands. George and Anita are squirming in their seats, mortified by her presence. Then the phone rings, and it's Bark for his wife. Lucy shouts into the phone as old people often do, commanding the attention of the whole room who are forced to eavesdrop on her side of the conversation. With her back to the crowd, Lucy is framed as if she is performing on stage, with the black tie guests her audience. It is a funny comedy of manners, this old lady interrupting an uptown evening, but then the scene turns. The guests whose faces at first showed irritation begin to melt as Lucy exchanges loving sentiments with Bark. She misses him terribly and worries for his health with the winter weather so bitter. The faces of the guests fall and flash, showing sympathy and sweetness for Lucy, but then also shame at how that they had first received her. George and Anita are also riding this roller coaster of emotions, although more intensely than anyone. It deepens their characters, moving them away from caricatures of an ungrateful generation.  It's an absolutely brilliant sequence and one of the most moving scenes I can think of in a film.

It's scenes like these where McCarey shows his gift for making empathy look effortless, but also essential to navigating a family and society at large. He also further distinguishes himself away from sentimental manipulation. This would be an easy situation to exploit for generational guilt. The children could be spoiled and the parents saintly, but McCarey avoids this trap. He rounds out the characters of the children and exposes the faults of the parents. Bark and Lucy are sweet people, but they are also very stubborn and not a little irritating.  You can see how resorting to living with either of them again would be a bitter pill to swallow for their adult children who have lives and problems of their own.  And the children are selfish and self-absorbed, but yet still able to recognize and name their conflicting feelings about their parents, making it hard to hate them for their actions (well, maybe you do hate Cora a little). They are not simply one-dimensional brats and this is not a situation to view from only one side.

Life without his Lucy is hitting Bark hard. He is sick with a persistent cold and his daughter Cora doesn't have the bedside manner of his kindly wife. His only friend is Max Reuben, the Jewish merchant whose shop Bark likes to visit. The two men have become friends and Max is very concerned for Bark's lonely heart. In another tear-jerker scene, Max reads to him a letter from Lucy because his glasses are broken.  The actor that plays Max masterfully tells a story with his facial expressions, communicating the truth behind Lucy's words--she is just as lonely without him and her son George may or may not be softening her up to the idea of an old-folks home. This unspoken action beneath the surface of a scene is a common thread through Make Way for Tomorrow.  When Bark leaves the shop, Max immediately calls for his wife, just to look into her eyes and tell her he loves her--he wants to seize the little moments that most of us let slip by, because his friend Bark cannot. Another wonderful, heart-tugging moment in a film filled with similar universal emotions, explored with both craft and heart.

[*My Mom tells me I spoil the ending here, so from here on out- SPOILER ALERT*]

Towards the end of the film, Bark and Lucy are permitted one final afternoon together in the city where they took their honeymoon 50 years ago. Cora has persuaded a young doctor to agree that Bark's condition will only improve if he moves to a warmer climate, so he's in New York to catch a train to California, to stay with their other daughter. Once again, Lucy cannot come with him. Both of them know that this is likely the last time they will see each other--they spend the afternoon and evening pretending that there aren't any facts to face. Like I said, this ending is magical, giving the elderly couple a last hurrah that is as sweet and romantic as anything Hollywood has ever done with two lovebirds.

 

They visit the hotel where they stayed on their honeymoon and get a little tipsy at the bar. They dance a waltz and laugh about old memories over dinner--ignoring the fact that their worried family is waiting for them to arrive at goodbye dinner they have prepared. Every stranger they meet is delighted to accommodate the couple, as if they preternaturally sense their impending separation. This is no accident as McCarey seems to be saying that it is sometimes easier for us to see the humanity and emotional needs of strangers over the very people we share our lives with. The hotel manager and the big-band leader and even the somewhat sleazy car salesman all treat Lucy and Bart infinitely better than we see their children do. One of the small tragedies of everyday life.

 

Like many classic Hollywood romances, Make Way for Tomorrow ends on a train platform with a painful goodbye. The couple is forced to consider the line of their 50 year love affair that has led them unexpectedly to the open doors of a train that will end it once and for all. IT IS FUCKING BRUTAL. On the Special Features, you learn that Orson Welles said of Make Way for Tomorrow, "it would make a stone cry".   

  

Make Way for Tomorrow is a remarkable film, pretty much unlike anything I've ever seen. How many other movies can you name that deal so frankly with old age? Or with old age at all? Further, the film refuses to show growing old as some transition into a philosophical ease with one's own insignificance or lost vitality, like a fair trade for wisdom.  Bark and Lucy's love is still significant and they have lost none of their vitality or thirst for life--and yet they still have to act as if their feelings no longer matter. It is a bitter, bitter pill that the film tells us the world will try to make us all swallow one day, one that will inevitably catch in our throats. Make Way for Tomorrow is a simple yet universally important story told with a lot of nuance. It's fantastic.   

  

Review // THE DEEP - We're gonna need a bigger scuba tank

The Deep is one of those movies that has been on my radar since I was about 8 years old, but has eluded me until now. I'm a huge Jaws fan (who isn't?) so I've always meant to catch up with it, being that its one of two other movie adaptations of Peter Benchley's books (along with Island). But I'd never really heard or read any significant impressions of The Deep, good or bad, so I've always assumed that it was just middling or forgettable. However, I think its fate to be forgotten had less to do with the actual quality of the movie and more to do with a begged-for comparison to Jaws and its unfortunately timed entrance into theatres. The Deep opened just 2 or 3 weeks after Star Wars, a movie that redefined the idea of a blockbuster hit and reigned supreme over box office tallies for several years. Jaws and Star Wars made waves and changed the course of movies forever. The Deep made pop cultural ripples that quickly receded. 

Everything about The Deep seems poised to trade on the phenomenon that was Steven Spielberg's Jaws. The casting of Robert Shaw as crusty treasure-hunter Treece is one of the films more blatant attempts to blur the lines between the two Benchley adaptations. Even the poster design is meant to evoke the instant-classic that took summer theatres by storm just two years prior.

Look:


As it turns out, The Deep is mediocre, but only when held up against the forebear it so desperately wants to be mistaken for. The films strategy of riding in on the coattails of Jaws backfired, making it look empty, dull and opportunistic by comparison. But when viewed on its own, out from underneath the dark shadow of a 25 foot celebrity shark, The Deep is a fun little adventure story. And next to what counts as mediocre in 2010, it looks like a fucking classic.

The Deep begins with gorgeous, bronzed 70's couple Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset scuba diving in turquoise Bermuda waters. Despite the fact that I'd never heard one good thing uttered about the movie, I immediately knew it wasn't going to suck. For one, as Nolte and Bisset prowled the ocean floor, dusting off sunken relics during the credits, the first notes of a haunting John Barry score began tickling my groovy bone. And secondly, Jacqueline Bisset is scuba diving in a see-through white t-shirt and no bra! This also tickled my groovy bone. This first (of many) underwater scuba sequence is how we are introduced to our two main protagonists, who glide through the silent waters, communicating only in gestures. They explore a sunken wreck and make two significant discoveries-- a very old medallion and a small ampule of whiskey-coloured liquid. And then Bisset is jarred and attacked by some unseen force sending them scrambling for the surface. It's an interesting gimmick, introducing the main characters as well as the main plot device in a dialogue-free, almost silent scene.

As soon as their heads break the surface, the movie is underway and Nolte and Bisset are on the hunt for answers as to what they've uncovered. The ampule, with its amber liquid, turns out to be morphine ("half-way to heroin" as someone points out) which fits since the wreck it came from is an American cargo ship circa WWII, which carried ordinance and medical supplies . But the medallion is much older and it's discovery stumps the couple. Before long they run afoul of Clouche, a Haitian gangster played by Louis Gossett who is very interested in the ampule and where exactly they found it. They turn down Clouche's polite offer to buy their find, but soon find themselves being chased by his goons. This leads to a hilarious mid-speed moped chase and an uncomfortably dicey interrogation scene--uncomfortable because the scene seems to be trading in some barely concealed racist undertones. With the couple caught, Clouche orders his beefy black bodyguard to frisk Bisset, who is maybe not so coincidentally wearing all virginal white. The man licks his lips and grins as the camera tracks his hands as they move across her body. Then after the bodyguard finishes, for no apparent reason, Bisset angrily stands up and takes her top off, presumably to show Gossett that she doesn't have the morphine ampule balanced between her breasts. The film practically holds its breath during this scene and it's a little iffy. Viewed next to an ooga-booga Voodoo ritual later and a line from Nolte where he describes Gossett to Shaw saying, "he looks like a basketball player" and I'd say the movie has a pretty healthy old-school fear-of-the-black-man strain running through it. 

With Clouche on their case, the couple turns to local legend Treece (Shaw) a diver and treasure hunter who warns them of Clouche's plan to tweak the morphine into heroin and flip it for millions in New York City. The sunken cache of methadone is a local legend and divers have been searching for it for years, the medallion on the other hand is a mystery even to Treece. Despite first making a blustery refusal of their plea for help, Treece is intrigued by the medallion they found and eventually becomes their scuba-diving, treasure-hunting guru. From here the movie really divides itself into two distinct halves: underwater action and dry land action. The team make dives to the wreck, uncovering more and more clues and treasure each time. Then on the surface, they puzzle out the answers to this odd collision of lost medicine and sunken treasure, with the occasional fist fight or action scene thrown in as Clouche makes incursions into their investigation. Eventually the threesome strike a deal with the devil, agreeing to recover the methadone for Clouche if he backs off and ceases the threats. But Shaw (an anti-drug crusader for some odd reason) is planning to wire the wreck with explosives and blow it and the drugs into an abyss.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for this time period, but I was thoroughly entertained by The Deep, despite the fact that it's a fairly by-the-numbers adventure story with few surprises. That said, there is still a high quality of craftsmanship at work to create such an easily-digestible slice of 70's studio fast food. It clips along, sweeping you up into a Caribbean vacation fantasy, like something dreamed up on a beach towel. Essentially, it's beautiful people doing exciting things in a beautiful place, which sounds hard to fuck up, but when you consider modern examples like Into the Blue and Fool's Gold, you'll appreciate The Deep's sure-hand. The underwater sequences are very coherent and well choreographed, while the surface world action is stylishly shot. The script (co-written by Benchley himself) is very tight, briskly moving through plot beats without feeling like it's leaving logic or character behind. It also has some great quotable lines from Shaw and salty dog Eli Wallach.

It appears that most of the diving was actually done by the cast themselves, which is impressive when you see the underwater set pieces and consider the suffocating claustrophobia of acting in submerged sets--and the cast is really the key to movie's minor success. Bissett looks every bit the 70's sex symbol goddess she was. In one of the funniest scenes (unintentionally), Bissett is begging Nolte not to go night diving down to the wreck and Nolte is giving an impassioned speech as to why he has to. Except Bissett is sitting on the bed wearing nothing but a towel, rendering the whole argument ludicrous with her sheer sex appeal. Shaw and Notle look pretty iconic in the movie as well, almost like models for a line of toy action figures that were probably never made. Shaw does all his diving in slacks and dress shirts! And Nolte wears a blue and yellow striped wet suit that makes him look like he's some kind of scuba diving super hero. The other super rad thing about the movie is a very memorable fight scene between both Gossett and Shaw's beefy tough guy bodyguards. Oh yeah, Shaw for some reason has some silent, bodyguard/life partner played by legendary stunt-man and amazing movie tough Robert Tessier who menaced many a movie hero in flicks from The Longest Yard to Hard Times.



 

 

Despite the fact that the movie tries a few too many times to fool you into thinking your watching Jaws' younger brother (I mean the giant eel is a poor substitute for Bruce), it's a fun ride. And I dare anybody to leave the film unhappy after its final freeze frame of a smiling Nolte catching a priceless jewel in mid-air. 

Review // LES DIABOLIQUES - No Spoilers!

I recently watched French director Henri Georges Clouzot's 1953 masterpiece The Wages of Fear (and reviewed it here: http://tinyurl.com/yek3b8a), and my excitement around that film led me to his other heralded work, Les Diaboliques.

Fiendish! Fiendish! What a great trailer! And since it told me not to reveal the ending about 18 times--I won't.

Les Diaboliques is a thriller about a wife and a mistress conspiring together to kill the man who has made both their lives a living hell (that's not a spoiler by the way). Clouzot's real-life wife, Vera Clouzot plays Christina, a devout Catholic saddled with a wicked husband and a bad heart condition. Christina is a teacher at the private school her inheritance has purchased and that she runs with her husband Michel, a despicable and abusive sociopath, and one of cinema's all-time-great bastards. With her dark hair severely pinned and her collar buttoned tight, Christina is the warm-beauty turned depressed school-marm, withering under Michel's abuse. She flinches when he enters the room and makes herself small and insignificant to avoid attracting his wrath. Her state of constant anxiety is the worst possible thing for her delicate heart to have to endure, and her only solace is the makeshift shrine on her bureau that she constantly visits for guidance. 

Michel has installed himself as the schools brittle and cheap headmaster and he rules with fear and tyranny. How evil is Michel? Well, in one of my favourite scenes, two of the belittled teachers decry the injustice of having to drink the cheap wine that Michel supplies at dinner. Ah, the French! While Christina walks on egg shells, Michel is positively reveling in his complete mastery over those weaker than him, be they romantically entangled women, faculty member underlings, or sheepish children. To make matters worse, he is having an affair with Nicole played by Simone Signoret, one of the other teachers at the school. But Michel, who can also add arrogant and entitled to his list of good qualities, conducts the affair so imprudently that even the school children talk about it openly at recess. 

Nicole is Christina's polar opposite, a curvy blond with an attitude who commands a room, her confident presence hushing the loose talk that her name constantly floats atop. On the surface, Christina is the suffering wife and Nicole the femme fatale, but very quickly the film diffuses this notion and instead of pitting the women against each other, unites them in their hatred for Michel. When Nicole returns to the school from an evening out with Michel, he has given her a black eye and it is Christina of all people who is there for comfort. Nicole is as trapped by Michel's abuse as Christina, and so they plot how to get rid of him once and for all. Christina, being a deeply religious woman, is of course conflicted about her role in the scheme, while Nicole steadfastly maintains that Michel's torments will only end with his death. Michel is portrayed as such a ferocious asshole that there's never really any doubt as to whether he deserves his fate. But as fears of damnation cloud Christina's mind and cracks begin to show in Nicole's icy demeanor, uncertainty mounts. Can they out-fox the fox? And if they do, can they maintain a united front? 

Clouzot takes his time building the world of the private school and allowing his characters to soak in with the audience. It's an uncommonly patient approach to storytelling, but this steady acceleration, as opposed to both feet pressed on the gas, works wonders for the engine of suspense that drives the film. Knowing the characters, or thinking we know them, is so integral to our investment and to the way Clouzot uses this investment against us. His structure--an hour of character construction followed by an hour of character deconstruction--is similar to the one used in The Wages of Fear and either feels so unique because of Clouzot's skill, or because our instant-gratification culture no longer has any use for patience. A film that holds off revealing itself for one whole hour stands in stark relief against the endless stream of movies that bow to the page-20-turn formula.

[*Sorta-not-really spoilers ahead] 

After much hand-wringing and debate, both philosophical and practical, Nicole and Christina's plan to murder Michel is carried out, and the tyrant falls to their calculations (this isn't really a spoiler either since Michel's murder is treated as a foregone conclusion). They pack his body in a large coffin-like wicker hamper and drive it back to the school from Nicole's apartment--the scene of the crime. In the dead of night, the two women dump Michel's body in the school's neglected, dirty swimming pool, and it promptly sinks into the cloudy murk. The two women wait for the body to be discovered and for the moment they will begin performing the drama of their shared alibi for a rapt audience of police, faculty and students. They wait and wait, and excruciating days tick past shredding the already frayed nerves of the coconspirators. During this time Clouzot repeatedly gooses the audience and his characters until neither can take it any longer. Christina is frantic and she demands, perhaps foolishly, that the pool be drained, speeding up the process of Michel's death going public. But when the pool is drained, there is no sign of his body, and the film suddenly takes the first of many unexpected turns.  

Les Diaboliques straddles the various lines between complimentary genres, moving back and forth with ease from crime story, to horror movie, to thriller. It builds masterfully, squeezing the air out of your lungs until its final scene delivers a shocking punch to the gut. When the last shot fades to black a title card appears urging the audience not to spoil the twist ending for anyone who hasn't seen it--perhaps the first "no-spoilers!" message. It really drives home what a wicked game Clouzot has been playing and makes you wanna watch it all over again with new eyes.    

Review // BLACK DYNAMITE & 42ND STREET FOREVER - You can't beat the real thing

For some reason I thought Black Dynamite was going to be more of an experiment, an attempt by the filmmakers to make a Blaxploitation movie as if it were just unearthed from a dusty tomb of lost reels. Instead, they opted for a parody, albeit one with reverence and style, but a parody nonetheless, which has been done before in Undercover Brother and I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. The problem with Black Dynamite's parody is that it tries too hard, setting up its jokes and then hammering on them until you start to notice the silences your laughter is supposed to fill. I expected them to try to write bad dialogue that was unintentionally funny, but instead they end up writing actual jokey-jokes that are supposed to be funny and often aren't. These jokes collect over the course of the movie and end up making it feel like a feature length Mad TV sketch. I was hoping for intentional camp by way of a straight-faced homage. What I found instead is an appealing leading turn by Micheal Jai White hampered by so-so jokes and some manic over-sizing of the genre staples (like kung-fu fighting President Richard Nixon for instance).

Black Dynamite was just ok, kinda fun in parts, kinda draggy in others and not as funny as it wanted to be. But the futility of adding actual jokes to a blaxploitation mash-up became even more apparent to me after watching volumes 1 & 3 of the 42nd St Forever series, a dvd collection of exploitation movie trailers that is about twenty times funnier and more entertaining than Black Dynamite or just about any other movie I can think of. 

These collections (I think there is 5 in total or maybe more) are a treasure trove for trash junkies. One after the other, you are hit with 2 minute barrages of cinematic insanity and period absurdity in the form of vintage movie trailers. These lost and forgotten gems of the 60's, 70's and 80's keep coming in endless waves of awesome that you barely have time to breathe between laughs before the next one is crashing down on you, blowing your mind. None of these movies are trying to be funny (well, except for the comedies), but they are funny--fucking funny. If you like boobs, guns, kung-fu, bell bottom pants, groovy music, giant insects, revenge, car chases, and blood that looks like ketchup than you owe it to yourself to track down this series. Not only will they have you clawing at your face in amazement, but they will dredge up that niggling doubt you have in the back of your mind, the one that makes you think that maybe living in 2010 means you missed out on everything cool by about 4 decades. You did, you totally did.

Review // NEAR DARK - Is near perfection

Near Dark is a cult film, but even its membership in that dubious club doesn't quite sum up just how underrated it was and still is today. It doesn't screen at rep cinemas on Halloween, it isn't mentioned in the same breath as the Evil Dead's etc. and nobody is rushing to remake it on a nostalgia cash-grab like every other genre film that opened before 1991. However, at one point the soulless, imagination-starved fucks at Micheal Bay's Platinum Dunes were prepping a remake of it, but they apparently thought it was too close to Twilight and scrapped it. Yes, someone actually thought there would be too much cross-over between Near Dark and Twilight and that's why the project fell through. What that means is that the people who bought the rights to the movie don't even understand it and if that doesn't tell you how under-appreciated this film is, I don't know what does.

Near Dark is a vampire film that never utters the word "vampire" and it was the first feature directed by Kathryn Bigelow (she had a male co-director for The Loveless), who went on to screw James Cameron before later getting screwed by Hollywood. Now I have no definitive proof that she was screwed by Hollywood (and I wish I had definitive proof that she screwed Cameron, boom-chk-a-boom) but judging from the arc of her directorial career, the fact that she doesn't possess a penis, and the vindication narrative being concocted around her recent Hurt Locker awards run, I would say that it's a fairly safe bet to assume she was. 20 years after making her first film, Bigelow is now hot (and still hot!) and poised to take home the highest honor in filmdom, but the road to this point has been long and bumpy and the fact that she has finally arrived is about as unlikely a story as Hollywood could produce. But her career struggles were not for lack of an auspicious beginning, as Near Dark is a striking, bold, original and absolutely assured genre picture, and should have announced the arrival of a major talent.

I first saw Near Dark on VHS, probably about a year after its release in 1987. It knocked me on my ass and has remained one of my favourite films of all time and definitely my favourite vampire movie. My latest Blu-Ray viewing is easily the 20th time I've seen it, yet it still holds up completely and aside from some music cues, doesn't feel dated or unearthed from an airless tomb of period or nostalgia.

Adrian Pasdar plays Caleb, a red-blooded American farmboy. He tucks in his shirt and polishes up his cowboy boots, heading into town for a Friday night of drinking brewskies and seeing what's up on Main street. On this particular Friday night, Mae is what's up. A blond vision bathed in the fluorescent light of the strip mall, Mae is licking an ice cream cone when Caleb lays eye's on her and he doesn't waste any time taking his shot. They drive and talk and Caleb keeps repeating "I sure haven't met any girls like you". She tells him he's right. With dawn threatening to break over the flat plains, Mae suddenly becomes agitated. She bites Caleb on the neck after giving him the kiss he demands with a coy twinkle in his eye, then she takes off running, to where it isn't clear. Caleb is thrown for a loop, and with his truck stalled out, he sickly stumbles across the tilled fields toward home. As the sun climbs the sky, smoke begins to waft off of his body and char collects on his sweat-greased skin. Something is happening to him. As he reaches his home fields, his little sister is starting her morning chores and she spots him. But suddenly a Winnebago careens across the fields and scoops him up, speeding off with his sister running down the driveway screaming his name.

There is an hypnotic, dream-like quality to the images in this film and to the general mood, which grabs you immediately and distinguishes itself from the typical tongue-in-cheek teenage meat grinders of the time (nothing against teenage meat grinders mind you). It is a very evocative piece of filmmaking, casting small-town Americana as a place where darkness and foreboding stalk the routines of simple reality. Abandoning all the gothic trappings of most vampire movies, Near Dark instead interprets the desolate images of the Western and the road-reverence of biker films and filters them both through a prism of horror. And yet this is certainly not a case of style over substance, no matter how stylish it is. I would even say that it's a beautiful film, which is a feat for a low-budget 80's horror movie. But the dreamy imagery works in concert with the absolutely rock-solid concept and Bigelow's subtle approach to story and character. Bigelow and screenwriter Eric Red leave so much of these characters a mystery that the audience ends up filling in the blanks of their long, sordid pasts, imagining terrible exploits and innocent blood spilled through the ages.

Winnebago's are family vehicles. The Winnebago that Caleb finds himself in also belongs to a family, but it is a family of another kind altogether. The patriarch, Jesse, is a grizzled killer who's clocked millions of miles across southern roads in his long lifetime and dodged thousands of sunrises. Diamondback is his better-half, her dark roots reaching up for peroxide blond hair that is as wild as the murderous look in her eyes come feeding time. Severin is the leather-clad wild child with a gleeful devotion to anarchy. Mae is the ingenue, following the lead of the family, but looking outside its bounds for truth. And Homer is the baby, an ancient demon perpetually young and frustrated. They are a make-shift family unit of vampires, united not by their blood, but of their need to consume it. The bite on Caleb's neck has forced him into their dynamic, and no one but Mae is happy about it. Jesse agrees to give him a trial period, a chance to prove that he can kill and feed as one of them, and if not, they will punish him as only they know how.

Surprisingly, Near Dark is not a heavily plotted movie. The bulk of the story is devoted to Caleb travelling with the family and realizing that despite his strong feelings for Mae (hence the ridiculous Twilight comparisons), he will never truly be one of them. The normal rules and contrivances that horror movies are often saddled with are not really present here. There are no sharpened stakes, no wreaths of garlic, no holy water or crosses, no lore to remember. Aside from the blood drinking and aversion to sunlight, Jesse and the family would just be considered psychopathic killers, and precursors (along with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family) to murderous compacts in films like Natural Born Killers and the Devil's Rejects. The film travels with them, showing the meager, nomadic existence they have carved out for themselves and the hunting tactics that keep them fed. These are vampires interpreted as homeless drug addicts just scraping by and it's truly a revolutionary concept in the genre.

Until Near Dark, almost all vampires were portrayed as wealthy aristocrats. They were handsome and sexy, they lived in mansions and their charm and beauty was as eternal as their lives. Instead of fear, vampire portrayal's like this often provoked envy in men and lust in women, and with Twilight and True Blood it seems we have returned to this trad concept of vampires as Harlequin romance fantasy (although with True Blood it's at least presented with a knowing wink). The vampires of Near Dark however, are dirty, poor and mean. They don't wear capes and ascots, but greasy layers of stolen clothes worn down to rags. They don't romance their victims, they toy with them and terrify them before ripping out their throats. They live one night at a time, constantly moving like sharks in dark water. Their squalid existence answers the question How exactly do vampires acquire such great wealth when they can only go out at night? The answer is they don't.

The other really interesting thing about Near Dark is its structure, which breaks with most horror movies by embedding the viewer with the villains, forcing them into a kind of complicity with the havoc they wreak. Most horror movies frame the action through the hero/victim's eyes, and this perspective is meant to be shared with the viewer. Essentially the audience is kept on the outside of the villains machinations, a few steps behind, tensely waiting for the next strike. Near Dark puts the viewer on the inside, replacing cheap jolt thrills with a chilling depiction of survival of the fittest. In fact, it can hardly be said that Bigelow even treats Jesse and the gang as true villains since the film seems as seductively taken in by them as Caleb is. It's a risky move--essentially deconstructing both the vampire film and the horror movie form--but it's this approach that set it apart and has made it an absolute classic.

Bigelow's unlikely vampire gamble wouldn't have paid off however, if her cast weren't up to the task of inhabiting such unrepentantly awful characters with a certain amount of abandon, even glee. Not only that, but they had to be willing to play dirty and ugly, leaving any vanity behind. Of course Bigelow chose wisely, reuniting Aliens cast mates Lance Henrikson (Bishop/Jesse), Bill Paxton (Hudson/Severin) and Jeanette Goldstein (Vasquez/Diamondback) who brought their unique alchemy from Cameron's film, and ended up creating iconic badasses that haven't been topped since. Lance Henrikson, a character actor gift from the gods, plays Jesse with an insane facial scar and greasy rat tail running down his back. I could try to describe how impossibly amazing he looks in this film, but fuck it:



When asked how old he is, Jesse replies "I fought for the South. We lost". With his punk rock-meets-western britches and suspenders look, Jesse suggests a secret American history with his very presence. He is a creature who has watched the many cultural and industrial sea changes that have sculpted the country and all the while he has been doing what he does, un-fazed and unchanged. In Diamondback he has found a partner to head down the road with, to weather the storms of history by his side and to toast the burning future with blood. This loving relationship, built on mutual admiration, is one of the many surprising touches that Bigelow either engineers or encourages her actors to improvise and explore. It's not often that a film allows its murderous pariah's to express love and affection, but these tiny moments further distinguish Near Dark as a wholly unique horror movie.

The other major assets to the film are Bill Paxton as Severin and the odd-looking child actor Joshua Miller as Homer. Paxton brings the same manic energy he showed in Aliens, only applied to a supremely confident and psychotic character, as opposed to a bellowing coward. He absolutely runs with Severin and revels in his hooting-and-hollering id. Severin is the bad guy you want to watch do bad things. With the character of Homer, the film gets its creep factor upped. There is something about a punk rock, blood-drinking child that is undeniably squirm-inducing and Miller imbues Homer with a bratty petulance that creates a disturbing extra layer to the character. When a raid by cops threatens to bring daylight flooding into their motel room, Homer becomes hysterical. Jesse cocks his hand cannon and points it at his head saying, "Pull it together old man!" It simultaneously suggests that Homer, the baby of the family, is actually the most ancient of them all, but is forever doomed to retain a measure of his childish nature.

The raid on the motel room mentioned above is one of two classic sequences that Bigelow absolutely nails the fuck out of. The other is the roadhouse bar massacre, which I will get to. With the motel room siege, an army of cops riddle the motel with machine gun fire. This punches holes in the wall that bleed shafts of flesh-burning sunlight that cut up the room, creating light obstacles the family must battle around. I lost my shit during that sequence when I was a kid.

The bar scene is the film's most infamous sequence. Determined to show Caleb how they exist and get him to follow their lead, Jesse and the family brazenly pick out a roadhouse bar to be their all-you-can-eat buffet. When they walk in, everyone looks up from their drinks or their pool shot to see this raggediest of rag-tag misfits invade their home-away-from home watering hole. The effect is instant, their eyes narrowing, unsure. And when Severin let's out a hoo-ee! and declares that he's "died and gone to shit-kicker heaven" trouble immediately sours the air. The family take their time, toying with their room full of victims the way a cat sometimes gives a mouse just enough breathing room to lose its mind before it gets eaten. The tension builds to excruciating heights before the bloodletting leaves its disturbing mark on your mind. It's the showpiece of the film and is definitive proof of Bigelow's mastery of her craft.

If the movie ever falters or bows to convention, it's at the end, when it quite abruptly starts tying itself into a neat bow that is both disappointing an unnecessary. The movie does such an amazing job of etching these immortal creatures that it feels false when they are so easily and tidily erased. One gets the sense that Jesse has been around the block a few hundred times and would know when to cut his losses, so the naive Caleb being the catalyst for the family's downfall doesn't exactly ring true. But the ending (which was probably imposed from on high) doesn't hamper an otherwise ingenious and masterful reconsidering of the vampire mythos. Near Dark is a classic. If you've seen it, watch it again. If you haven't seen it, way to go jerk.